What then, my dear hearer, prevents the truth from triumphing in your heart? Wherefore do you change, into an inexhaustible source of cruel remorses, lights which ought to be, within you, the whole consolation of your sorrows? Since, by a consequence of the riches of God's mercy upon your soul, you cannot succeed, like so many impious and hardened hearts, to stifle that internal monitor which incessantly recalls you to order and duty, why will you obstinately withstand the happiness of your lot 2 Why so many efforts to defend you from yourself, so many starts and flights to shun yourself? At last, reconcile your hearts with your lights, your conscience with your manners, yourself with the law of God: behold the only secret of attaining to that peace of heart which you seek. Turn yourself on every side, you must always come to that. Observance of the law is the true happiness of man; it is deceiving himself to look upon it as a yoke; it alone places the heart at liberty. Whatever favours our passions, sharpens our ills, increases our troubles, multiplies our bonds, and aggravates our slavery; the law of God alone, in repressing them, places us in order, — quiets, cures, and delivers us. Such is the destiny of sinful man, to be incapable of happiness here below but by overcoming his passions; to attain by violence alone to the true pleasures of the heart, and afterward to that eternal peace prepared for those who shall have loved the law of the Lord.
SERMON XXV.
IMMUTABILITY OF THE LAW OF GOD.
"And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?" — John viii. 46.
It is not enough to have defended the evidence of the law of God against the affected ignorance of the sinners who violate it; it is necessary likewise to establish its immutability against all the pretexts which seem to authorize the world to dispense itself from its holy rules.
Jesus Christ is not satisfied with announcing to the Pharisees, that the truth which they knew shall one day judge them: that in vain they concealed it from themselves; and that the guilt of the truth, known and contemned, would be for ever upon their head. It is through the evidence of the law that he at first recalls them to their own conscience; he afterward accuses them of having struck even at its immutability; of substituting human customs and traditions in place of the perpetuity of its rules; of accommodating them to times, to circumstances, and to interests; and declares to them that, even to the end of ages, a single iota shall not be changed in his law; that heaven and earth shall pass away, but that his law and his holy word shall for ever be the same.
