SERMON XXII.
THE TRUTH OF RELIGION.
"Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel." — Matthew viii. 10.
Whence came, then, the incredulity with which Jesus Christ at present reproaches the Jews; and what cause could they still have for doubting the sanctity of his doctrine and the truth of his ministry? They had demanded miracles, and, before their eyes, he had wrought such evident ones that no person before him had done the like. They had wished that his mission were authorized by testimonies; Moses and the prophets had amply borne them to him; the precursor had openly proclaimed, Behold the Christ and the Lamb of God, which taketh sway the sin of the world; a Gentile renders glory in our gospel to his almightiness; the heavenly Father had declared from on high, that it was his well-beloved Son; lastly, the demons themselves, struck with his sanctity, quitted the bodies, confessing that he was the Holy, and the Son of the living God. What could the incredulity of the Jews still oppose to so many proofs and prodigies?
Behold, my brethren, what, with much greater surprise, might be demanded of those unbelieving minds, who, after the fulfilment of all that had been foretold, after the consummation of the mysteries of Jesus Christ, the exaltation of his name, the manifestation of his gifts, the calling of his people, the destruction of idols, the conversion of Caesars, and the agreement of the universe, still doubt, and take upon themselves to confute and to overthrow what the toils of the apostolic men, the blood of so many martyrs, the prodigies of so many servants of Jesus Christ, the writings of so many great men, the austerities of so many holy anchorites, and the religion of seventeen hundred years, have so universally and so divinely established in the minds of almost all people.
For, my brethren, amid all the triumphs of faith, children of unbelief still privately spring up among us, whom God hath delivered up to the vanity of their own thoughts, and who blaspheme what they know not; impious men, who change, as the apostle says, the grace of our God into wantonness, defile their flesh, contemn all rule, blaspheme majesty, corrupt all their ways like the animals not gifted with reason, and are set apart to serve one day as an example of the awful judgments of God upon men.
Now, if, among so many believers assembled here through religion, any soul of this description should happen to be, allow me, you, my brethren, who preserve with respect the sacred doctrine which you have received from your ancestors and from your pastors, to seize this opportunity either of undeceiving them or of confuting their incredulity. Allow me for once to do here what the first pastors of the church so often did before their assembled people, that is to say, to take upon myself the defence of the religion of Jesus Christ against unbelief; and, before entering into the particulars of your duties during this long term, allow me to begin by laying the first foundations of faith. It is so consoling for those who believe to find how reasonable their submission is, and to be convinced that faith, which is apparently the rock of reason, is, however, its only consolation, guide, and refuge!
Here, then, is my whole design. The unbeliever refuses submission to the revealed truths, either through a vain affectation of reason, or through a false sentiment of pride, or through an illplaced love of independence.
Now, I mean at present to show, that the submission which the unbeliever refuses, through a vain affectation of reason, is the most prudent use which he can make even of reason: that the submission which he refuses through a false sentiment of pride, is the most glorious step of it: and, lastly, that the submission which he rejects through an ill-placed love of independence, is the most indispensable sacrifice of it. And from thence I shall draw the three great characters of religion: — it is reasonable, it is glorious, it is necessary.
O my Saviour, eternal author and finisher of our faith, defend thyself, thy doctrine. Suffer not that thy cross, by which the universe hath been submitted to thee, be still the folly and the scandal of proud minds. Once more triumph at present, through the secret wonders of thy grace, over that same unbelief which thou formerly triumphedst over through the striking operations of thy power; and by those lively lights which enlighten hearts, more efficacious than all our discourses, destroy every sentiment of pride which may still rise up against the knowledge of thy mysteries.
Part I. — Let us begin with admitting that it is faith, and not reason, which makes Christians; and that the first step exacted of a disciple of Jesus Christ, is to captivate his mind, and to believe what he may not comprehend. Nevertheless, I say, that we are led to that submission by reason itself; that the more even our lights are superior, the more do they point out the necessity of our submission; and that unbelief, far from being the result of strength of mind and of reason, is, on the contrary, that of error and weakness.
In faith, reason hath therefore its uses, as it hath its limits: and as the law, good and holy in itself, served only to conduct to Jesus Christ, and there stopped as at its term; in the same way, reason, good and just in itself, since it is the gift of God, and a participation of the sovereign reason, ought only to serve, and is given to us, for the sole purpose of preparing the way for faith. It is forward, and quits the bounds of its first institution, when it attempts to go beyond these sacred limits.
This taken for granted, let us see which of the two, namely, the believer or the unbeliever, makes the most prudent use of his reason. Submission to things held out to our belief, perhaps suspected of credulity, either on the side of the authority which proposes them; if it be light, it is weakness to give credit to them: or on the side of the things of which they wish to persuade us; if they be in opposition to the principles of equity, of honour, of society, and of conscience, it is ignorance to receive them as true: or, lastly, on the side of the motives which are employed to persuade us; if they be vain, frivolous, and incapable of determining a wise mind, it is imprudence to give way to them. Now, it is easy to prove that the authority which exacts the submission of the believer, is the greatest, the most respectable, and the best established, which can possibly be upon the earth; that the truths proposed to his belief are the only ones conformable to the principles of equity, of honour, of society, and of conscience; and, lastly, that the motives employed to persuade him are the most decisive, the most triumphant, and the most proper to gain submission from the least credulous minds.
When I speak of the authority of the Christian religion, I do not pretend to confine the extent of that term to the single authority of its holy assemblies, in which, through the mouths of its pastors, the church makes decisions, and holds out to all believers the infallible rules of worship and of doctrine. As it is not heresy, but unbelief, which this discourse concerns, I do not here so much consider religion as opposed to the sects which the spirit of error hath separated from the unity, that is to say, as confined to the sole catholic church, but as forming, since the beginning of the world, a society apart, a sole depository of the knowledge of a God, and of the promise of a Mediator; always opposed to all the religions which have arisen in the universe; always contradicted, and always the same; and I say that its authority bears along with it such shining characters of truth, that it is impossible, without folly, to refuse submission to it.
In the first place, in matters of religion, antiquity is a character which reason respects; and, we may say, that a prepossession is already formed in favour of that belief, consecrated by the religion of the first men, and by the simplicity of the primitive times. Not but what falsehood is often decked out with the same titles, and that old errors exist among men, which seem to contest the antiquity of their origin with the truth; but it is not difficult, to whoever wishes to trace their history, to go back even to their origin. Novelty is always the constant and most inseparable character of error; and the reproach of the prophet may alike be made to them all: "They sacrifice to new gods that come newly up, whom their fathers feared not."
In effect, if there be a true religion upon the earth, it must be the most ancient of all; for, if there be a true religion upon the earth, it must be the first and the most essential duty of man toward the God who wishes to be honoured by it. This duty must therefore be equally ancient as man; and, as it is attached to his nature, it must, as I may say, be born with him. And this, my brethren, is the first character by which the religion of Christians is at once distinguished from superstitions and sects. It is the most ancient religion in the world. The first men, before an impious worship was carved out of divinities of wood and of stone, worshipped the same God whom we adore, raised up altars, and offered sacrifices to him, expected from his liberality the reward of their virtue, and from his justice, the punishment of their disobedience. The history of the birth of this religion, is the history of the birth of the world itself. The divine books which have preserved it down to us, contain the first monuments of the origin of things. They are themselves more ancient than all those fabulous productions of the human mind which afterward so miserably amused the credulity of the following ages; and, as error ever springs from the truth, and is only a faulty imitation of it, all the fables of Paganism are founded on some of the principal features of that divine history; insomuch, that it may be affirmed that every thing, even to error itself, renders homage to the antiquity and to the authority of our holy Scriptures.
Now, my brethren, is there not already something respectable in this character alone? The other religions, which have vaunted a more ancient origin, have produced nothing in support of their antiquity, but fabulous legends, which sunk into nothing of themselves. They have disfigured the history of the world by a chaos of innumerable and imaginary ages, of which no event hath been left to posterity, and which the history of the world hath never known. The authors of these gross fictions did not write till many ages after the actions which they relate, and it is saying every thing to add, that that theology was the fruit of poesy, and the inventions of that art the most solid foundations of their religion.
Here, it is a train of facts, reasonable, natural, and in agreement with itself. It is the history of a family continued from its first head down to him who writes it, and authenticated in all its circumstances. It is a genealogy in which every chief is characterized by his own actions, by events which still subsisted then, by marks which were still known in the places where they had dwelt. It is a living tradition, the most authenticated upon the earth, since Moses hath written only what he had heard from the children of the patriarchs, and they related only what their fathers had seen. Every part of it is coherent, hangs properly together, and tends to clear up the whole. The features are not copied, nor the adventures drawn from elsewhere, and accommodated to the subject. Before Moses, the people of God had nothing in writing. He hath left nothing to posterity but what he had verbally collected from his ancestors, that is to say, the whole tradition of mankind; and the first he hath comprised in one volume, the history of God's wonders and of his manifestations to men, the remembrance of which had till then composed the whole religion, the whole knowledge, and the whole consolation of the family of Abraham. The candour and sincerity of this author appear in the simplicity of his history. He takes no precaution to secure belief, because he supposes that those for whom he writes require none to believe; and all the facts which he relates being well known among them, it is more for the purpose of preserving them to their posterity than for any instruction in them to themselves.
Behold, my brethren, which way the Christian religion begins to acquire influence over the mind of men. Turn on all sides, read the history of every people and of every nation, and you will find nothing so well established upon the earth. What do I say? — you will find nothing more worthy the attention of a rational mind. If men be born for a religion, they are born for this one alone. If there be a Supreme Being who hath manifested the truth to men, this alone is worthy of men and of him. Every where else the origin is fabulous; here it is equally certain as all the rest; and the latter ages, which cannot be disputed, are, however, only the proofs of the certitude of the first. Therefore, if there be an authority upon the earth to which reason ought to yield, it is to that of the Christian religion.
To the character of its antiquity must be added that of its perpetuity. Figure to yourselves here that endless variety of sects and of religions which have successively reigned upon the earth. Follow the history of the superstitions of every people and of every country; they have flourished a few years, and afterward sunk into oblivion along with the power of their followers. Where are the gods of Emath, of Arphad, and of Sepharvaim? Recollect the history of those first conquerors: in conquering the people, they conquered the gods of the people; and, in overturning their power, they overturned their worship. How beautiful, my brethren, to see the religion of our fathers alone maintaining itself from the first, surviving all sects; and, notwithstanding the diverse fortunes of those who have professed it, alone passing from father to son, and braving every exertion to efface it from the heart of men! It is not the arm of flesh which hath preserved it. Ah! the people of God hath, almost always, been weak, oppressed, and persecuted. No: it is not, says the prophet, by their own sword that our fathers got the land in possession; but thy right hand, O Lord, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, because thou hadst a favour unto them. One while slaves, another fugitives, another tributaries of various nations; they a thousand times saw Chaldea, Assyria, Babylon, the most formidable powers of the earth, the whole universe, conspire their ruin and the total extinction of their worship; but this people, so weak, oppressed in Egypt, wandering in the desert, and afterward carried in captivity into a foreign land, no power hath ever been able to exterminate, while so many others, more powerful, have followed the destiny of human things; and its worship hath always subsisted with itself, in spite of all the efforts made by almost every age to destroy it.
Now, whence comes it, that a worship so contradicted, so arduous in its observances, so rigorous in its punishments upon transgressors, and even so liable to be established or to be overthrown, through the mere inconstancy and ignorance of the people who was its first depositary; whence comes it that it alone hath been perpetuated amid so many revolutions, while the superstitions supported by all the power of empires and of kingdoms, have sunk into their original oblivion? Ah! is it not God, and not man, who hath done all these things? Is it not the arm of the Almighty which hath preserved his work? And since every thing invented by the human mind has perished, is it not to be inferred that what hath always endured was alone the work of the divine wisdom?
Lastly, if, to its antiquity, and to its perpetuity, you add its uniformity, no pretext for resistance will be left to reason. For, my brethren, every thing changes upon the earth, because every thing follows the mutability of its origin. Occasions, the difference of ages, the diverse humours of climates, and the necessity of the times, have introduced a thousand changes in all the human laws. Faith alone hath never changed. Such as our fathers received it, such have we it at present, and such shall our descendants one day receive it. It hath been unfolded through the course of ages, and likewise, I confess, through the necessity of securing it from the errors which have been attempted to be introduced into it; but every thing which once appeared to belong to it, hath always appeared as appertaining to it. There is little wonder in the duration of a religion, when accommodations are made to times and to conjunctures, and when they may add or diminish according to the fancy of the ages, and of those who govern; but never to relax, in spite of the change of manners and of times; to see every thing change around, and yet be always the same, is the grand privilege of the Christian religion. And by these three characters, of antiquity, of perpetuity, and of uniformity, which exclusively belong to it, its authority is the only one upon the earth capable of determining a wise mind.
But if the submission of the believer be reasonable on the part of the authority which exacts it, it is not less so on the part of the things which are proposed to his belief. And here, my brethren, let us enter into the foundation of the Christian worship. It is not afraid of investigation, like those abominable mysteries of idolatry, the infamy and horror of which were concealed by the darkest obscurity. A religion, says Tertullian, which would shun examination, and would dread being searched into, should ever be suspected. The more the Christian worship is investigated, the more are beauties and hidden wonders found in it. Idolatry inspired men with foolish sentiments of the Divinity; philosophy, with very unreasonable ones of himself; cupidity, with iniquitous ones toward the rest of men. Now, admire the wisdom of religion, which remedies all these three evils, which the reason of all ages had never been able to eradicate, or even to find out.
And, first, what other legislator hath spoken of the Divinity, like that of the Christians? Find elsewhere, if you can, more sublime ideas of his power, of his immensity, of his wisdom, of his grandeur, and of his justice, than those which are given us in our Scriptures. If there be over us a supreme and eternal Being, in whom all things live, he must be such as the Christian religion represents him. We alone compare him not to the likeness of man. We alone worship him seated above the cherubim, filling every where with his presence, regulating all by his wisdom, creating light and darkness, author of good and punisher of vice. We alone honour him as he wishes to be honoured; that is to say, we make not the worship due to him, to consist in the multitude of victims, nor in the external pomp of our homages; but in adoration, in love, in praise, and in thanksgiving. We refer to him the good which is in us, as to its principal; and we always attribute vice to ourselves, which takes its rise only in our corruption. We hope to find in him the reward of a fidelity which is the gift of his grace, and the punishment of transgressions, which are always the consequence of the bad use which we make of our liberty. Now, what can be more worthy of the Supreme Being than all these ideas!
Secondly. A vain philosophy either had degraded man to the level of the beast, by centring his felicity in the senses; or had foolishly exalted him even to the likeness of God, by persuading him that he might find his own happiness in his own wisdom. Now, the Christian morality avoids these two extremes: it withdraws man from carnal pleasures, by discovering to him the excellency of his nature and the holiness of his destination: it corrects his pride, by making him sensible of his own wretchedness and meanness.
Lastly. Cupidity rendered man unjust toward the rest of men. Now, what other doctrine than that of Christians hath ever so well regulated our duties on this head. It instructs us to yield obedience to the powers established by God, not only through fear of their authority, but through an obligation of conscience: to respect our superiors, to bear with our equals, to be affable toward our inferiors, to love all men as ourselves. It alone is capable of forming good citizens, faithful subjects, patient servants, humble masters, incorruptible magistrates, clement princes, and zealous friends. It alone renders the honour of marriage inviolable, secures the peace of families, and maintains the tranquillity of states. It not only checks usurpations, but it prohibits even the desire of other's property; it not only requires us not to view with an envious eye the prosperity of our brother, but it commands us to share our own riches with him, if need require; it not only forbids to attempt his life, but it requires us to do good, even to those who injure us; to bless those who curse us, and to be all only of one heart and of one mind. Give me, said St. Augustine, formerly, to the heathens of his time, a kingdom all composed of people of this kind: good God, what peace! what felicity! what a representation of heaven upon the earth! Have all the ideas of philosophy ever come near to the plan of this heavenly republic? And is it not true, that if a God hath spoken to men, to lay open to them the ways of salvation, he could never have held any other language?
To all these maxims, so worthy of reason, it is true that religion adds mysteries which exceed our comprehension. But, besides that, good sense should induce us to yield thereon to a religion so venerable through its antiquity, so divine in its morality, so superior to every thing on the earth in its authority, and alone worthy of being believed, the motives it employs for our persuasion are sufficient to conquer unbelief.
First. These mysteries were foretold many ages before their accomplishment, and foretold with every circumstance of times and places; nor are the vague prophecies, referred to the credulity of the vulgar alone, uttered in a corner of the earth, of the same age as the events, and unknown to the rest of the universe. They are prophecies which, from the beginning of the world, have constituted the religion of an entire people; which fathers transmitted to their children as their most precious inheritance; which were preserved in the holy temple as the most sacred pledge of the divine promises: and, lastly, to the truth of which the nation most inveterate against Jesus Christ, and their first depository, still at present bears witness in the face of the whole universe: prophecies, which were not mysteriously hidden from the people, lest their falsehood should be betrayed; like those vain oracles of the Sybils, carefully shut up in the capitol, fabricated to support the Roman pride, exposed to the view of the pontiffs alone, and produced, piece-meal, from time to time, to authorize, in the mind of the people, either a dangerous enterprise or an unjust war. On the contrary, our prophetical books were the daily study of a whole people. The young and the old, women and children, priests and men of all ranks, princes and subjects, were indispensably obliged to have them continually in their hands; every one was entitled to study his duties there, and to discover his hopes. Far from flattering their pride, they held forth only the ingratitude of their fathers: in every page they announced misfortunes to them as the just punishment of their crimes; to kings they reproached their dissipations, to the pontiffs their profusion, to the people their inconstancy and unbelief; and, nevertheless, these holy books were dear to them; and, from the oracles which they saw continually accomplishing in them, they awaited with confidence the fulfilment of those which the whole universe hath now witnessed. Now, the knowledge of what is to come is the least suspicious character of the Divinity.
Secondly. These mysteries are found upon facts so evidently miraculous, so well known in Judea, so agreed to then, even by those whose interest it was to reject them, so signalized by events which interested the whole nation, so often repeated in the cities, in the country, in the temple, and in the public places, that the eyes must be shut against the light to call them in question. The apostles have preached them, have written them, even in Judea, a very short time after their fulfilment; that is to say, in a time when the pontiffs, who had condemned Jesus Christ, still living, might so easily have controverted and proclaimed their imposture, had they really been a deception upon mankind. Jesus Christ, by fulfilling his promise of rising again, confirmed his gospel, and it is not to be supposed, either that the apostles could be deceived on a fact so decisive and so essential for them, — on that fact so often foretold, and looked forward to, as the principal point on which all the rest was to turn; that fact so often confirmed, and that before so many witnesses; nor that they themselves wished to deceive us, and to preach a falsehood to men at the expence of their own ease, honour, and life, the only return which they had to expect for their imposture. Would these men, who have left to us only such pious and wise precepts, have given to the earth an example of folly hitherto unknown to every people, and, without view, interest, or motive, have coolly devoted themselves to the most excruciating tortures, and to a death suffered with the most heroical piety, merely to maintain the truth of a thing of which they themselves knew the falsehood? Would these men have all tranquilly submitted to death for the sake of another man who had deceived them, and who, having failed in his promise of rising again from the grave, had only imposed, during life, upon their credulity and weakness? Let the impious man no longer reproach to us, as a credulity, the incomprehensible mysteries of faith. He must be very credulous himself to be able to persuade himself of the possibility of suppositions so absurd.
Lastly. The whole universe hath been docile to the faith of these mysteries; the Caesars, whom it degraded from the rank of gods; the philosophers, whom it convicted of ignorance and vanity; the voluptuous, to whom it preached self-denial and sufferance; the rich, whom it obliged to poverty and humility; the poor, whom it commanded to love even their abjection and indigence; all men, of whom it combated all the passions. This faith, preached by twelve poor men, without learning, talents, or support, hath subjected emperors, the learned equally as the illiterate, cities and empires; mysteries, apparently so absurd, have overthrown all the sects, and all the monuments of a proud reason, and the folly of the cross hath been wiser than all the wisdom of the age. The whole universe hath conspired against it, and every effort of its enemies hath only added fresh confirmation to it. To be a believer, and to be destined to death, were two things inseparable; yet the danger was only an additional charm; the more the persecutions were violent, the more progress did faith make; and the blood of the martyrs was the seed of believers. O God! who doth not feel thy finger here? Who, in these traits, would not acknowledge the character of thy work? Where is the reason which doth not feel the vanity of its doubts to sink into nothing here, and which still blushes to submit to a doctrine to which the whole universe hath yielded? But not only is this submission reasonable, it is likewise glorious to men?
Part II. — Pride is the secret source of unbelief. In that ostentation of reason, which induces the unbeliever to contemn the common belief, there is a deplorable singularity which natters him, and occasions him to suppose in himself more vigour of mind and more light than in the rest of men, because he boldly ventures to cast off a yoke to which they have all submitted, and to stand up against what all the rest had hitherto been contented to worship.
Now, in order to deprive the unbeliver of so wretched a consolation, it is only necessary to demonstrate, in the first place, that nothing is more glorious to reason than faith; glorious on the side of its promises for the future; glorious from the situation in which it places the believer for the present: lastly, glorious from the grand models which it holds out to his imitation.
Glorious on the side of the promises contained in it. What are the promises of faith, my brethren? The adoption of God, an immortal society with him, the complete redemption of our bodies, the eternal felicity of our souls, freedom from the passions, our hearts fixed by the possession of the true riches, our minds penetrated with the ineffable light of the sovereign reason, and happy in the clear and always durable view of the truth. Such are the promises of faith; it informs us that our origin is divine, and our hopes eternal.
Now, I ask, is it disgraceful to reason to believe truths which do such honour to the immortality of its nature? What, my brethren, would it then be more glorious to man to believe himself of the same nature as the beasts, and to look forward to the same end? What, the unbeliever would think himself more honoured by the conviction that he is only a vile clay, put together by chance, and which chance shall dissolve, without end, destination, hope, or any other use of his reason and of his body, than that of brutally plunging himself, like the brutes, into carnal gratifications! What! he would have a higher opinion of himself, when viewed in the light of an unfortunate wretch, accidentally placed upon the earth, who looks forward to nothing beyond life, whose sweetest hope is that of sinking back to nonentity, who relates to nothing but himself, and is reduced to find his felicity in himself, though he can there find only anxieties and secret terrors! Is this, then, that miserable distinction by which the pride of unbelief is so much flattered? Great God! how glorious to thy truth, to have no enemies but men of this character! For my part, as St. Ambrose formerly said to the unbelievers of his time, I glory in believing truths so honourable to man, and in expecting the fulfilment of promises so consolatory. To refuse belief to them is sorrily to punish one^s self. Ah! if I be deceived in preferring the hope of one day enjoying the eternal society of the righteous in the bosom of God, to the humbling belief of being of the same nature as the beasts, it is an error dear to me, which I delight in, and upon which I wish never to be undeceived.
But if faith be glorious on the side of its promises for the future, it is not less so from the situation in which it places the believer for the present. And here, my brethren, figure to yourselves a truly righteous man, who lives by faith, and you will acknowledge that there is nothing on the earth more sublime. Master of his desires and of all the movements of his heart; exercising a glorious empire over himself; in patience and in equanimity enjoying his soul, and regulating all his passions by the bridle of temperance; humble in prosperity, firm under misfortunes, cheerful in tribulations, peaceful with those who hate peace, callous to injuries, feeling for the afflictions of those who trespass against him, faithful in his promises, religious in his friendships, and unshaken in his duties; little affected with riches, which he contemns; fatigued with honours, which he dreads; greater than the world, which he considers only as a mass of earth — what dignity!
Philosophy conquered one vice only by another. It pompously taught contempt of the world, merely to attract the applauses of the world; it sought more the glory of wisdom than wisdom itself. In destroying the other passions, it continually, upon their ruins, raised up one much more dangerous; I mean to say, pride: like that prince of Babylon who overthrew the altars of the national gods, merely to exalt upon their wrecks his own impious statue, and that monstrous colossus of pride which he wanted the whole earth to worship.
But faith exalts the just man above even his virtue. Through it he is still greater in the secrecy of his heart, and in the eyes of God than before men. He forgives without pride; he is disinterested without show; he suffers without wishing it to be known; he moderates his passions without perceiving it himself; he alone is ignorant of the glory and of the merit of his actions; far from graciously looking upon himself, he is ashamed of his virtues much more than the sinner is of his vices; far from courting applauses, he hides his works from the light, as if they were deeds of darkness; love of duty is the sole source of his virtue; he acts under the eyes of God alone, and as if there were no longer men upon the earth — what dignity! Find, if you can, any thing greater in the universe. Review all the various kinds of glory with which the world gratifies the vanity of men; and see, if, all together, they can bestow that degree of dignity to which the godly are raised by faith.
Now, my dear hearer, what more honourable to man than this situation? Do you consider him as more glorious, more respectable, more grand, when he follows the impulses of a brutal instinct; when he is the slave of hatred, revenge, voluptuousness, ambition, envy, and all those other monsters which alternately reign in his heart?
For, are you, who make a boast of unbelief, thoroughly acquainted with what is an unbeliever? He is a man without morals, probity, faith, or character, who owns no rule but his passions, no law but his iniquitous thoughts, no master but his desires, no check but the dread of authority, no God but himself: an unnatural child, seeing he believes that chance alone hath given him fathers; a faithless friend, seeing he looks upon men, merely as the wretched fruits of a wild and fortuitous concurrence, to whom he is connected only by transitory ties; a cruel master, seeing he is convinced that the strongest and the most fortunate have always reason on their side. For, who could henceforth place any dependence upon you? You no longer fear a God; you no longer respect men; you look forward to nothing after this life; virtue and vice are merely prejudices of education in your eyes, and the consequences of popular credulity. Adulteries, revenge, blasphemies, the blackest treacheries, abominations which we dare not even to name, are no longer, in your opinion, but human prohibitions, and regulations established through the policy of legislators. According to you, the most horrible crimes, or the purest virtues, are all equally the same, since an eternal annihilation shall soon equalize the just and the impious, and for ever confound them both in the dreary mansion of the tomb. What a monster must you then be upon the earth! Does this representation of you highly gratify your pride, or can you support even its idea?
Besides, you pride yourself upon irreligion, as springing from your superiority of mind; but trace it to its source. What hath led you to free-thinking? Is it not the corruption of your heart? Would you have ever thought of impiety had you been able to ally religion with your pleasures? You began to hesitate upon a doctrine which incommoded your passions; and you have marked it down as false from the moment that you found it irksome. You have anxiously sought to persuade yourself what you had such an interest to believe; that all died with us; that eternal punishments were merely the terrors of education; that inclinations born with us could never be crimes; — what know I? And all those maxims of free-thinking originating from hell. We are easily persuaded of what we wish. Solomon worshipped the gods of foreign women only to quiet himself in his debaucheries. If men had never had passions, or if religion had countenanced them, unbelief would never have appeared upon the earth. And a proof that what I say is true, is, that in the moments when you are disgusted with guilt, you imperceptibly turn toward religion; in the moments when your passions are more cool, your doubts diminish; you render, as if in spite of yourself, a secret homage in the bottom of your heart to the truth of faith: in vain you try to weaken it, you cannot succeed in extinguishing it; at the first signal of death, you raise your eyes toward heaven, you acknowledge the God whose finger is upon you, you cast yourself upon the bosom of your Father and the Author of your being; you tremble over a futurity which you had vaunted not to believe; and, humbled under the hand of the Almighty, on the point of falling upon and crushing you like a worm of the earth, you confess that he is alone great, alone wise, alone immortal, and that man is only vanity and lies.
Lastly. If fresh proofs were necessary to my subject, I could prove to you how glorious faith is to man, on the side of the grand models which it holds out for our imitation. Consider Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, said formerly the Jews to their children. Consider the holy men who have gone before you, to whom their faith hath merited so honourable a testimony, said formerly St. Paul to the faithful, after having related to them, in that beautiful chapter of his Epistle to the Hebrews, their names, and the most wonderful circumstances of their history, from age to age.
Behold the excellency of the Christian faith. Recollect all the great men who, in all ages, have submitted to it; such magnanimous princes, such religious conquerors, such venerable pastors, such enlightened philosophers, such estimable learned men, wits so vaunted in their age, such noble martyrs, such penitent anchorites, such pure and constant virgins, heroes in every description of virtue. Philosophy preached a pompous wisdom; but its sage was no where to be found. Here what a cloud of witnesses! What an uninterrupted tradition of Christian heroes from the blood of Abel down to us!
Now, I ask, shall you blush to tread in the steps of so many illustrious names? Place on the one side all the great men whom, in all ages, religion hath given to the world, and on the other that small number of black and desperate minds whom unbelief hath produced. Doth it appear more honourable for you to rank yourself among the latter party? To adopt for guides, and for your models, those men whose names are only recollected with horror, those monsters whom it hath pleased Providence to permit that nature should, from time to time, bring forth; or the Abrahams, the Josephs, the Moseses, the Davids, the apostolic men, the righteous of the ancient and of modern times? Support, if you can, this comparison. Ah! said formerly St. Jerome, on a different occasion, if you believe me in error, it is glorious for me to be deceived with such guides.
And here, my brethren, leaving unbelievers for a moment, allow me to address myself to you. Avowed unbelief is a vice perhaps rare among us, but the simplicity of faith is not perhaps the less so. We would feel a horror at quitting the belief of our fathers; but we wish to refine upon our sincerity. We do not permit ourselves to doubt upon the main part of the mysteries; but obedience is philosophically given, by imposing our own yoke, by weighing the holy truths, receiving some as reasonable, reasoning upon others, and measuring them by our own feeble lights; and our age, more than any other, is full of these half believers, who, under the pretext of taking away from religion all that credulity or prejudice may have added to it, deprive faith of the whole merit of submission.
Now, my brethren, sanctity ought only to be spoken of with a religious circumspection. Faith is a virtue almost equally delicate as modesty: a single doubt, a single word injures it; a breath, as I may say, tarnishes it. Yet nevertheless, what license do they not allow themselves in modern conversations on all that is most respectable in the faith of our fathers? Alas! the terrible name of the Lord could not be even pronounced under the law by the mouth of man; and at present, all that is most sacred and most august in religion is become a common subject of conversation; there every thing is talked over, and freely decided upon. Vain and superficial men, whose only knowledge of religion consists of a little more temerity than the illiterate and the common people; producing, as their whole stock of learning, some common-place and hackneyed doubts, which they have picked up, but never had formed themselves; doubts which have so often been cleared up, that they seem now to exist no longer but to glorify the truth; men who, amid the most dissolute manners, have never devoted an hour of serious attention to the truth of religion, — act the philosopher, and boldly decide upon points which a whole life of study, accompanied with learning and piety, could scarcely clear up.
Even persons of a sect, in whom ignorance on certain points would be meritorious, and who, though knowing, good-breeding and decency require that they should affect to be ignorant; persons who are better acquainted with the world than with Jesus Christ; who even know not of religion what is necessary to regulate their manners, — pretend doubts, wish to have them explained, are afraid of believing too much, have suspicions upon the whole, yet have none upon their own miserable situation and the visible impropriety of their life. O God! it is thus that thou deliverest up sinners to the vanity of their own fancies, and permittest that those who pretend to penetrate into thine adorable secrecies know not themselves. Faith is therefore glorious to man: this has just been shown to you: it now remains for me to prove that it is necessary to him.
Part III. — Of all the characters of faith, the necessity of it is the one which renders the unbeliever most inexcusable. All the other motives which are employed to lead him to the truth, are foreign, as I may say, to him; this one is drawn from his own ground-work, — I mean to say, from the nature itself of his reason.
Now, I say that faith is absolutely necessary to man, in the gloomy and obscure paths of this life; for his reason is weak, and it requires to be assisted; because it is corrupted, and it requires to be cured; because it is changeable, and it requires to be fixed. Now, faith alone is the aid which assists and enlightens it, the remedy which cures it, the bridle and the rule which retain and fix it. Yet a moment of attention; I shall not misemploy it.
I say, first, that reason is weak, and that an aid is necessary to it. Alas! my brethren, we know not, neither ourselves, nor what is external to us. We are totally ignorant how we have been formed, by what imperceptible progressions our bodies have received arrangement and life, and what are the infinite springs, and the divine skill, which give motion to the whole machine. " I cannot tell/' said that illustrious mother, mentioned in the Maccabees, to her children, "how ye came into my womb; for I neither gave you breath nor life, neither was it I that formed the members of every one of you: but doubtless the creator of the world, who formed the generation of man, and found out the beginning of all things, will also, of his own mercy, give you breath and life again, as ye now regard not your own selves for his law's sake/' Our body is itself a mystery, in which the human mind is lost, and overwhelmed, and of which the secrets shall never be fathomed; for there is none but him alone who hath presided at its formation, who is capable of comprehending them.
That breath of the Divinity which animates us, that portion of ourselves which renders us capable of loving and of knowing, is not less unknown to us; we are entirely ignorant how its desires, its fears, its hopes, are formed, and how it can giye to itself its ideas and images. None have yet been able to comprehend how that spiritual being, so different in its nature from matter, hath possibly been united in us with it by such indissoluble ties, that the two substances no longer form but one whole, and the good and evil of the one become the good and evil of the other. We are a mystery therefore to ourselves, as St. Augustine formerly said; and it would be difficult to say, what is even that vain curiosity which pries into every thing, or how it hath been formed in our soul.
In all around us we still find nothing but enigmas; we live as strangers upon the earth, and amid objects which we know not. To man, nature is a closed book; and the Creator, to confound, it would appear, human pride, hath been pleased to overspread the face of this abyss with an impenetrable obscurity.
Lift up thine eyes, O man! consider those grand luminaries suspended over thy head, and which swim, as I may say, through those immense spaces in which thy reason is lost. Who, says Job, hath formed the sun, and given a name to the infinite multitude of stars? Comprehend, if thou canst, their nature, their use, their properties, their situation, their distance, their revolutions, the equality or the inequality of their movements. Our age hath penetrated a little into their obscurity, that is to say, it hath a little better conjectured upon them than the preceding ages; but what are its discoveries when compared to what we are still ignorant of?
Descend upon the earth, and tell us, if thou knowest, what it is that keeps the winds bound up; what regulates the course of the thunders and of the tempests; what is the fatal boundary which places its mark, and says to the rushing waves, " Here you shall go, and no farther;" and how the prodigy so regular of its movements is formed? Explain to us the surprising effects of plants, of metals, of the elements; find out in what manner gold is purified in the bowels of the earth; unravel, if thou canst, the infinite skill employed in the formation of the very insects which crawl before us; give us an explanation of the various instincts of animals — turn on every side; nature in all her parts offers nothing to thee but enigmas. O man! thou knowest nothing of the objects, even under thine eyes, and thou wouldst pretend to fathom the eternal depths of faith! Nature is a mystery to thee, and thou wouldst have a religion which had none! Thou art ignorant of the secrets of man, and thou wouldst pretend to know the secrets of God! Thou knowest not thyself, and thou wouldst pretend to fathom what is so much above thee! The universe, which God hath yielded up to thy curiosity and to thy disputes, is an abyss in which thou art lost; and thou wouldst that the mysteries of faith, which he hath solely exposed to thy docility and to thy respect, should have nothing which surpasses thy feeble lights! — O, blindness! Were every thing, excepting religion, clear and evident, thou then, with some show of reason, mightest mistrust its obscurities; but, since every thing around thee is a labyrinth in which thou art bewildered, ought not the secret of God, as Augustine formerly said, to render thee more respectful and more attentive, far from being more incredulous?
The necessity of faith is therefore founded, in the first place, upon the weakness of reason; but it is likewise founded upon its profound depravity. And, in effect, what was more natural to man than to confess his God, the author of his being and of his felicity, his end and his principle; than to adore his wisdom, his power, his goodness, and all those divine perfections of which he hath engraved upon his work such profound and evident marks? These lights were born with us. Nevertheless, review all those ages of darkness and of superstition which preceded the gospel, and see how far man had degraded his Creator, and to what he had likened his God. There was nothing so vile in the created world but his impiety erected into gods, and man was the noblest divinity which was worshipped by man.
If, from religion, you pass to the morality, all the principles of natural equity were effaced, and man no longer bore, written in his heart, the work of that law which nature has engraven on it. Plato, even that man so wise, and who, according to St. Augustine, had so nearly approached to the truth, nevertheless abolishes the holy institution of marriage; and, permitting a brutal confusion among men, he for ever does away all paternal names and rights, which, even in animals, nature hath so evidently respected; and gives to the earth men all uncertain of their origin, all coming into the world, without parents, as I may say; and, consequently, without ties, tenderness, affection, or humanity; all in a situation to become incestuous, or parricides, without even knowing it.
Others came to announce to men, that voluptuousness was the sovereign good; and whatever might have been the intention of the first author of this sect, it is certain that his disciples sought no other felicity than that of brutes; the most shameful debaucheries became philosophical maxims. Rome, Athens, Corinth, beheld excesses, where, it may be said, that man was no longer man. Even this is nothing; the most abominable vices were consecrated there: temples and altars were erected to them: lasciviousness, incest, cruelty, treachery, and other still more abandoned crimes, were made divinities of: the worship became a public debauch and prostitution: and gods, so criminal, were no longer honoured but by crimes; and the apostle, who relates them to us, takes care to inform us, that such was not merely the licentiousness of the people, but of sages and philosophers who had erred in the vanity of their own thoughts, and whom God had delivered up to the corruption of their own heart. O God! in permitting human reason to fall into such horrible errors, thou intendest to let man know, that reason when delivered up to its own darkness, is capable of every thing, and that it can never take upon itself to be its own guide, without plunging into abysses from which thy law and thy light are alone capable of withdrawing him.
Lastly. If the depravity of reason so evidently expose the necessity of a remedy to cure it, its eternal inconstancies and fluctuations yet more instruct man that a check and a rule are absolutely necessary to fix it.
And here, my brethren, if the brevity of a discourse would permit all to be said, what vain disputes, what endless questions, what different opinions have formerly engrossed all the schools of the heathen philosophy! And think not that it was upon matters which God seems to have yielded up to the contestation of men; it was upon the nature even of God, upon his existence, upon the immortality of the soul, upon the true felicity.
Some doubted the whole; others believed that they knew every thing. Some denied a God; others gave us one of their own fashioning; that is to say, some of them slothful, an indolent spectator of human things, and tranquilly leaving to chance the management of his own work, as a care unworthy of his greatness, and incompatible with his conveniency; some others made him the slave of fates, and subject to laws which he had no hand in imposing upon himself: others again incorporated, with the whole universe, the soul of that vast body, and composing, as it were, a part of that world which is entirely his work. Many others of ' which I know nothing, for I pretend not to recapitulate them all; but as many schools, so many were the sentiments upon so essential a point. So many ages, so many fresh absurdities upon the immortality and the nature of the soul: here, it was an assemblage of atoms: there, a subtle fire; in another place, a minute and penetrating air; in another school, a portion of the Divinity. Some made it to die with the body; others* would have it to have existed before the body; some again made it to pass from one body to another; from man to the horse, from the condition of a reasonable being to that of animals without reason. There were some who taught, that the true happiness of man is in the senses; a greater number placed it in the reason; others again found it only in fame and glory j many in sloth and indolence. And what is the most deplorable here is, that the existence of God, his nature, the immortality of the soul, the destination and the happiness of men, all point so essential to his destiny, so decisive with regard to his eternal misery or happiness, were, nevertheless, become problems, every where destined merely to amuse the leisure of the schools and the vanity of the sophists; idle questions, in which they were never interested for the principle of truth, but solely for the glory of coming off conqueror. Great God! it is in this manner that thou sportest with human wisdom.
If from thence we entered into the Christian ages, who could enumerate that endless variety of sects which, in all times hath broken the unity, in order to follow strange doctrines? What were the abominations of the Gnostics, the extravagant follies of the Valentinians, the fanaticisms of Montanus, the contradictions of the Manicheans? Follow every age; as, in order to prove the just, it is necessary that there be heresies. You will find that in every age the church hath always been miserably rent with them.
Recall to your remembrance the sad dissensions of only the past age. Since the separation of our brethren, what a monstrous variety in their doctrine! What endless sects sprung from only one sect! What numberless particular assemblies in one same schism! — O faith! O gift of God! O divine torch, which comes to clear up darkness, how necessary art thou to man! O infallible rule, sent from heaven, and given in trust to the church of Jesus Christ, always the same in all ages, always independent of places, of times, of nations, and of interests, how requisite it is that thou served as a check upon the eternal fluctuations of the human mind! O pillar of fire, at the same time so obscure and so luminous, of what importance it is that thou always conducted the camp of the Lord, the tabernacle and the tents of Israel, through all the perils of the desert, the rocks, the temptations, and the dark and unknown paths of this life!
For you, my brethren, what instruction should we draw from this discourse, and what should I say to you in concluding? You say that you have faith; show your faith by your works. What shall it avail you to have believed, if your manners have belied your belief? The gospel is yet more the religion of the heart than of the mind. That faith which makes Christians is not a simple submission of the reason; it is a pious tenderness of the soul; it is a continual longing to become like unto Jesus Christ! it is an indefatigable application in rooting out from ourselves whatever may be inimical to a life of faith. There is an unbelief of the heart equally dangerous to salvation as that of the mind. A man who obstinately refuses belief, after all the proofs of religion, is a monster, whom we contemplate with horror; but a Christian who believes, yet lives as though he believed not, is a madman, whose folly surpasseth comprehension: the one procures his own condemnation, like a man desperate; the other, like an indolent one, who tranquilly allows himself to be carried down by the waves, and thinks that he is thereby saving himself. Make your faith then certain, my brethren, by your good works; and if you shudder at the sole name of an impious person, have the same horror at yourselves, seeing we are taught by faith that the destiny of the wicked Christian shall not be different from his, and that his lot shall be the same as that of the unbeliever. Live conformably to what you believe. Such is the faith of the righteous, and the only one to which the eternal promises have been made.