your brethren, the external courtesies, you satisfy the claims which civil society hath upon you, but you do not satisfy those of religion; you disturb not the political order, but you overturn the order of charity; you are a peaceable citizen, but you are not a citizen of heaven; you are a man of the age, but you are not a man of the age to come; the world may acquit you, and demand no more, but what you do is a blank in the sight of God, because you are not in charity; and your condemnation is certain. Come and tell us, after this, that you will not be wanting in decorum, and that religion exacts no more of us. f It exacts, then, only dissimulation, outsides, and vain appearances! It exacts, then, nothing true, nothing real, nothing which changes the heart! And the great precept of charity, which alone gives reality to all our works, would no longer then be but a false pretence and a vain hypocrisy!
And trust not solely to us on this point; consult the public itself. See if, in spite of all the appearances which you still keep up with your brother, it be not an established opinion in the world, that you love him not; and if the world do not act in consequence of that persuasion. See if your creatures, if all who approach and who are attached to you, do not affect to keep at a distance from your brother. See if all those who hate him, or who are in interests opposite to his, do not court your friendship and form closer ties with you, and if all those who are inimical to your brother do not profess themselves your friends. See if those who have favours to expect from you do not begin by forsaking him, and that if they do not think that in so doing they are paying court to you. You see that the wrorld knows you better than you know yourself; that it is not mistaken in your real sentiments; and that in spite of all these vain shows toward your brother, you are actually in hatred and in death, and that in this respect the world itself is of our opinion; that world which, on every other occasion, we have constantly to combat.
Behold in what terminate the greatest part of the reconciliations which are every day made in the world. They once more see each other, but they are not reunited; they promise a mutual friendship, but it is never given; their persons meet, but their hearts are always estranged; and I had reason to say, that the hatreds are unchangeable, and that almost all the reconciliations are mere pretences; that the injury may be forgiven, but that the offender is never loved; that they may cease to treat their brother as an enemy, but that they never regard him as a brother.
And, behold what takes place every day before our eyes. In the world are to be seen public characters, families of illustrious names, who still preserve with each other certain measures of decency, which, indeed, they cannot break through without scandal; yet, nevertheless, live in different interests, in public and avowed sentiments of envy, of jealousy, and of mutual animosity; thwart and do every thing in their power to ruin each other, view each other with the most jealous eyes, and make all their creatures partisans in their resentments and aversions; divide the world, the
