(At Geneva, 8th Dec. 1863.—At Lausanne, 1st Feb. 1864.)

Gentlemen,

We have proposed for solution the problem which includes all others whatsoever—the problem of the universe. What are the laws which govern the universe? They are those which are the objects of science, taking that word in its largest and most general meaning. What is the cause of the universe? The eternal power of the Infinite Mind. These are the two answers which we have hitherto obtained, but, as we have explained, a study is not complete if it confine itself to these two answers. When we know the law and the cause of an object submitted to our study, we further look for the end designed. This is no freak of our fancy, but the direct result of the constitution of our understanding. The universe is the creation of God. What is the design of the creation? I answer: the design of the creation is the happiness of spirits. Nature is made for the spiritual beings to which it offers the condition of their life and development; spiritual beings are made for felicity. The moving spring of infinite power is goodness: this is my thesis. If I succeed in establishing it, it will follow that we shall in imagination see issuing from the supreme unity of the Infinite Being three rays: the power which creates the being of things; the intelligence which orders them; and the love which conducts them to their destination. It will also follow that I shall have justified the title under which these Lectures were announced: Power and wisdom are attributes of the Creator; the Father reveals Himself in goodness.

What shall be our method? Can we enter into the counsels of God? By what means? To place our understanding in the midst of the Divine consciousness, there to behold the spring of the determinations of the Infinite Being, were an attempt so far exceeding our capacity, that it is impossible to point out any means whatever by which it could be made. This would be to conceive of God in His eternal essence, independently of His relation to the universe, to nature, and to our reason. I do not say merely that the attempt would be fruitless; I say that we have no means of attempting this metaphysical adventure. But might we not, in looking at the work of God, discern in it the evidence of its design? This is a process which we often follow in regard to our fellow-creatures. Do we wish to know the object which a man has in view in his labor? He may himself disclose that object to us directly in words, or we may endeavor to discover it. We watch him at work, and by observing the way in which he proceeds we sometimes come to know what his thoughts are, because we find ourselves in presence of the work of a mind, and we ourselves are mind. Can we in the same way, by looking at the universe, that grand work, succeed in discovering its end?

The way on which we are entering raises two objections, which proceed from the difficulties felt by two classes of men of opposite views; and our first business will be to rid ourselves of these preliminary difficulties.

You will never succeed, it has been said to me, in proving the goodness of God, because evil is in the world. I am not inventing, Gentlemen. A letter containing this challenge has been addressed to me by one of you. It is manifest, since we propose to ourselves to recognize in the work the intention of the Worker, and since our thesis is the goodness of the First Cause of the universe, that evil, in all its forms, sin, pain, imperfection, is the main objection which can be addressed to us. Evil is real; it is a sad and great reality; I am forward to acknowledge it. Any system which would prove that evil does not exist, or, which comes to the same thing, that evil is necessary, that good and evil in short are of the same nature, is an impossible, I had almost said a culpable, system. The strongest minds have worn themselves out in such attempts with no result whatever. The great Leibnitz attempted an enterprise of this nature. His system consisted in extenuating evil as far as possible, and in pronouncing that amount of evil, of which he could not dissemble the existence, to be necessary. He failed. The strong intellectual armor of one of the greatest geniuses the world has ever seen was completely transpierced by the sharp and brilliant shaft of Voltaire.

For once, Gentlemen, we will not contradict our old neighbor of Ferney. Yes, evil is on the earth; and it constitutes, in the question which we are discussing, the greatest of problems, the most serious of difficulties. Let us listen to a modern poet:

We have only to put this poetry into common prose to obtain this argument, namely,—The presence of evil in the world is not compatible with the idea of the goodness of God. Here is the objection in all its force. And what is the answer? Simply this, that God did not create evil. It was not He who brought crime into the world. He created liberty, which is a good, and evil is the produce of created liberty in rebellion against the law of its being. I borrow from Jean-Jacques Rousseau the development of this thought. "If man," says he, "is a free agent, then he acts of himself; whatever he does freely enters not into the ordained system of Providence, and cannot be imputed to it. The Creator does not will the evil which man does, in abusing the liberty which He gives him. He has made him free in order that he may do not evil but good by choice. To murmur because God does not hinder him from doing evil, is to murmur because He made him of an excellent nature, attached to his actions the moral character which ennobles them, and gave him a right to virtue. What! in order to prevent man from being wicked, must he needs be confined to instinct and made a mere brute? No; God of my soul, never will I reproach Thee with having made it in Thine image, in order that I might be free, good, and happy, like Thyself.

"It is the abuse of our faculties which renders us unhappy and wicked. Our vexations and our cares come to us from ourselves."

Such is Rousseau's answer to the objection drawn from the existence of evil. It is a good one. It is so good that it is impossible to find a better. If we are determined not to outrage the human conscience by denying the reality of evil; if God is the sovereign good, and if there is no other principle of things than He; evil cannot be accounted for otherwise than by the rebellion of the creature. But now, Rousseau's answer, excellent in itself and in the abstract, becomes profoundly inadequate, as the citizen of Geneva goes on to develop his theory. Evil comes from the creature; but each individual is not the exclusive source of the evils which he does and suffers. To attribute to each individual, not only the responsibility of his acts, but the origin of the evil germs which exist in his soul, is the untenable proposition of a desperate individualism. There is evidently among men a common property in evil; Rousseau sees it clearly enough, but he makes vain efforts to find in the organization of society and in the condition of civilization the causes of pain and of sin. When one has come to see clearly that the source of evil is in the creature, the close mutual connection of created wills and their relations with nature present a field for long and difficult study; and Rousseau has no sooner discerned the road to truth than he wanders away into byroads in which the solution of the problem escapes him. This problem, Gentlemen, I have the intention and desire of studying some day, if God permit, with those of you who may be willing to undertake it with me. We shall then have to deal with an objection, or rather with a difficulty. But this difficulty, which we cannot now dispose of, must not hinder us from stating our thesis. In every well-conducted study, the propositions to be maintained must be laid down and supported before dealing with objections. If it were maintained that evil is the principle of things, it would be necessary first of all to endeavor to establish the thesis, in which the existence of good would be brought forward, and would constitute the objection. The objection would have to be answered—Why has good appeared in the world? And I would just say in passing, that our libraries are full of treatises upon the origin of evil, and I have never met with one upon the origin of good. It appears therefore that reason has always admitted, by a sort of instinct, the identity of good, and of the principle of being. Our thesis is that the principle of the universe is good. We are going to try to demonstrate it. Afterwards the difficulty, evil, will present itself, of which it will be necessary to seek the explanation. This will be the natural sequel, and the necessary complement of the course of lectures which we are concluding to-day.

I pass to another difficulty, another challenge which also has been addressed to me.

Your object, Christians have said to me, is to establish that the principle and ground of all things is goodness. This you will not be able to do without departing from your prescribed plan, and entering upon the domain of Christian faith properly so called. In your examination of the universe will you leave out of view Jesus Christ and His work? Do you not know that it is by means of this work that the idea of the love of God has been implanted in the world, and that it is thence you have taken it? Do you think to climb to the loftiest heights of thought, and to make the ascent by some other road than over the mountain of Nazareth and the hill of Calvary?

Gentlemen, I declared my whole mind on this subject at first starting. The complete idea of God demands, for its maintenance, the grand doctrinal foundations of our faith. Christian in its origin, firm faith in the love of God the Creator requires for its defence the armor of the Gospel. But before defending this belief, we must first establish it; we must show that it has natural roots in human nature. Christianity purifies and strengthens it, but it does not in an absolute sense create it. The mark of truth is that it does not strike us as something absolutely new, but that it finds an echo in the depths of our soul. When we meet with it, we seem to re-enter into the possession of our patrimony. The Cross of Jesus Christ is without all contradiction the most transcendent proof of the mercy of the Creator; but the Cross of Jesus Christ rather warrants the Christian in believing in the Divine love than gives him the idea of it. We must distinguish in the Gospel between the universal religion which it has restored, and the act itself of that restoration, which constitutes the Gospel in the special sense of the word. Now what I am here maintaining is the fact of the existence in modern society of the elements of the universal religion. I am far from sharing in the illusions of my fellow-countryman Rousseau, when he affirms that even if he had lived in a desert isle, and had never known a fellow-man, he would nevertheless have been able to write the Profession de foi du Vicaire Savoyard. I know very well that if I were a Brahmin, born at the foot of the Himalayas, or a Chinese mandarin, I should not be able to say all that I am saying respecting the goodness of God. The light which we have received—I know whence it radiates; but, by the help of that light, I seek its kindred rays everywhere, and everywhere I find them in humanity.

Let us endeavor, then, according to our plan, to recognize in the universe the marks of the Divine goodness. Let us first of all interrogate the human soul, which is certainly one of the essential elements of the world; and let us interrogate it with regard to the great fact of religion.

The universal religion presents to observation two principal forms of mental experience: the sense of the necessity for appeasing the Divine justice, and the sense of the necessity for obtaining the help of God.

The sense of the necessity for appeasing justice reveals itself in sacrifices. There are sacrifices which are merely offerings of gratitude, and freewill gifts of love. But when you see the blood of animals flowing in the temples, and not seldom human blood gushing forth upon the altars, you will be unable to escape the conviction that man, in presenting himself before the Deity, feels constrained to appease a justice which threatens him.

The sense of the need of help shows itself in prayer; and this must be the especial object of our study, because it is in the fact of religious invocation that we shall encounter the idea, obscure perhaps, but real, of the goodness of the First Cause of the universe.

Prayer is a fact of the universal religion. Whence is it that we derive a large part of what knowledge we have of the ancient civilizations of India and Egypt? From ruins: and the chief of these ruins are the ruins of temples, that is to say, of houses of prayer. Would we go further back than these monuments of stone? I interrogate those pioneers of science who are searching for the traces of antiquity in old languages,—in the ruins of speech. I inquire, for example, of my learned fellow-countryman, M. Adolphe Pictet: "You who have studied, with patient care, the first origins of our race—what have you discovered in the way of religion?" He replies: "When I have gone as far back as historical speculations can carry us by the aid of language, it appears to me that I no longer see temples built by the hand of man, but, beneath the open vault of heaven, I see our earliest ancestors sending up together the chant of prayer and the flame of sacrifice."[174]

And now, from this remote antiquity, I come down to the paganism, in which modern civilization had its beginning. Tertullian teaches us that the pagans, seeming to forget their idols, and to offer a spontaneous testimony to the truth, were often wont to exclaim—Great God! Good God! What in their mind was the order of these two thoughts, the thought of greatness and that of goodness? The pediment of a temple at Rome bore this famous inscription, Deo optimo maximo; and Cicero explains to us that the God of the Capitol was by the Roman people named "very good" on account of the benefits conferred by him, and "very great" on account of his power.[175] It is the idea of goodness which here appears to be first. But let us go more directly to the root of the question: What do we gather from the universality of prayer? What is it to pray? To pray is to ask. Prayer may be mingled with thanksgivings, and with expressions of adoration, but in itself prayer is a petition. This petition rises to God: and when does it so rise? In distress, in anguish. It is misery, weakness, the heart cast down, the failing will, which unite to raise from earth to heaven that long cry which resounds across all the pages of history: Help!—I analyze this fact, and inquire what it means. A request is made, and for what? For strength, for tranquillity, for peace; for happiness under all its forms. And of whom is happiness asked? Of goodness. Justice is appeased, power is dreaded, but it is goodness which is invoked. It is so in human relations. The man who supplicates the fiercest tyrant only does so because he supposes that a fibre of goodness may still vibrate in that savage heart. Take from him that thought; persuade him that the last gleam of pity is extinct in the heart to which he appeals, and you will arrest the prayer on the lips of the suppliant. There will remain for him only the silence of despair, or the heroism of resignation.

To sum up:—Religion is a universal fact. "There is no religion without prayer," said Voltaire, and he never said better. There is no prayer without a confused, perhaps, but real, conviction of the goodness of the First Cause of the universe. If you could stifle in man's heart the feeling that the Principle of things is good, you would silence over the whole globe that voice of prayer which is ever rising to God. Thus humanity itself testifies to the truth for which I am contending. Humanity prays; it believes therefore in the goodness of God. This fact is an argument. The heart of man is organized to believe that God is good: it is the mark set by the Worker Himself upon His work.

Let us study now another of the elements of the universe. We have heard the answer of man's heart; let us ask for the answer of reason. Has reason nothing to tell us respecting the intentions of the Creator? Let us place it in presence of the idea of God—of the Infinite Being, and see what it will be able to teach us.

To attain my object, I must explain more particularly than as yet I have done, a word rendered frivolous by the levity of our heart, a word defiled by the disorder of our passions, and too often by the unworthiness, and worse, of poets and novelists, but which still, in its virgin purity, is ever protesting against the outrages to which it has been subjected: that word is love.

This word has two principal meanings. In the Platonic sense of it, it is the search after what is beautiful, great, noble, pure,—after what, as being of the very real nature of the soul, attracts, fills, and delights it. But there is another sort of love, which does not pursue greatness and beauty, but which gives itself; a love which seeks the wretched to enrich him, the poor to make him happy, the fallen to raise him up. These two kinds of love seem to follow different and even contrary laws. Here, for instance, is a description of what often occurs in a large city.[176] A man leaves his house in the evening in order to be present at performances in which I am willing to believe that everything bears the stamp of nobleness and grandeur, or at least of a pure and wholesome taste. He experiences keen enjoyment, and that of an elevated kind. The spectacle over, he returns to his dwelling, and at a still later hour he retires at length to his repose. He has not long extinguished his luxurious tapers, perhaps, when other men, who have slept while others were seeking amusement, rise before daylight, and, lighting their small lanterns, go forth to succor the unfortunate, without witnesses and without ostentation.

I have taken this example from Xavier de Maistre. Let me give you another from scenes more familiar to ourselves. You know those pure summer mornings, when one may truly say that the Alp smiles and that the mountain invites. A young man quits his dwelling at the first dawning of the day, in his hand the tourist's staff, and his countenance beaming with joy. He starts on a mountain excursion. All day long he quaffs the pure air with delight, revels in the freedom of the pasture-grounds, in the view of the lofty summits and of the distant horizons. He reposes in the shade of the forest, drinks at the spring from the rock, and when he has gazed on the Alpine chain resplendent in the radiance of the setting sun, he lingers still to see—

Twilight its farewell to the hills delaying.[177]

Noble enjoyments! This young man enjoys because he loves. The spectacle of the creation speaks to his heart and elevates his thoughts. He loves that enchanting nature, which blends in a marvellous union the impressions which in human relations are produced by the strong man's majesty and the maiden's sweetest smile.

On this same summer-day, another man has also risen before the sun. He is devoted to the assuaging of human miseries, and he has had much to do. He has mounted gloomy staircases; he has entered dark chambers; he has spent time in hospitals, in the midst of the pains of sickness; he has come, in prisons, to the relief of pains which are sadder still. Day, as it dawned, gilded the summits of the Alps, but he saw not that pure light of the morning. Day, as it advanced, penetrated into the valleys, but he did not notice its progress. The sun set in his glory, but he had no opportunity to admire either the bright reflection of the waters, or the rosy tint of the mountains. And yet he too is joyful because he loves. He loves the fulfilment of stern duty, he loves poverty solaced, and suffering alleviated.

Here are the two kinds of love. The disciple of Plato rises, far from the vulgarities of life, into the lofty regions of the ideal, and feeds on beauty. Vincent de Paul takes the place of a convict at the galleys that he may restore a father to his children. These two kinds of love seem to us to be contrary one to the other: the one seeks itself, and the other gives itself. Still they are both necessary to life, for in order to give we must receive. In the accomplishment of the works of goodness, the soul would be impoverished and would end by drying up in a purely mechanical exercise of beneficence, had it no spring from which to draw forth the living waters. Man must himself find joy in order to diffuse it amongst his fellows. But mark the incomparable marvel of the spiritual order of things! The love which gives itself is able to find its worthiest object and its purest satisfaction in the very act of kindness. There is joy in self-devotion; there is happiness in self-sacrifice: the fountain furnishes its own supplies. Thus are harmonized the two contrary tendencies of the heart of man. "It is more blessed to give than to receive;" words these, of Jesus Christ, which, forgotten by the Evangelists, have been recorded by the Apostle St. Paul. And since the thought is a beautiful one, it has adorned the strains of the poets: says Lamartine—

And Victor Hugo, personifying Charity, makes her speak as follows:

And because this thought is profound as well as beautiful, it has been taken up by the philosophers. "To love," said Leibnitz, "is to place one's happiness in the happiness of another." Here is the connecting link between Platonic love and the love which is charity. Hear how a Christian orator comments upon these words:—"This sublime definition has no need of explanations: it is either understood at once, or it is not understood. The man who has loved understands it; and he who has not loved will never understand it. He who has loved knows that a shadow in the heart of the beloved one would darken his own: he knows that he would reckon no means too costly—watchings, labors, privations—by which to create a smile on the lips of the sorrowful; he knows that he would die to redeem a forfeited life; he knows that he would be happy in another's welfare, happy in his graces, happy in his virtues, happy in his glory, happy in his happiness. The man who has loved knows all this; he who has not loved knows nothing of it:—I pity him!"[180]

But the great mistake, which seems peculiar to our nature, is that we are ever connecting happiness with the idea of receiving, and are always thinking of giving as of a loss to ourselves. We do not understand that selfishly to keep is to be impoverished, while freely to relinquish is to be enriched. Yet here is the grand discovery of the spiritual life; and once this discovery made, in order that the spiritual life may attain its object, it only remains to find the strength to put it into practice. Selfishness is wrong, no doubt, but it is not only wrong, it is ignorant, for it looks for happiness where it is not; and it is unhappy, for it wanders from the paths of peace.

Let us now apply these considerations to the Infinite Being, and to the problem of the end of the creation. Leaving ourselves to the guidance of the laws of our reason, let us ask what object we shall be able to attribute to the Creator in His work? Will creation be the effect of a necessity? No, Sirs, for in that case everything in the world would be a matter of fate, and liberty would remain inexplicable. If a blind power were directing the Almighty Will, we should return to the worship of destiny. Will creation, then, be the carrying out of a design of which the motive is interest? But what conceivable interest can influence Him who is the plentitude of being? Or will creation be a duty? But whence should come the obligation for the Being who is in Himself the absolute law? Creation can only be conceived of as a work of love. But of what love? Of that which is the manifestation of absolute disinterestedness, of supreme liberty. Allow me to introduce into this discussion some eloquent words, uttered in the year 1848, in the midst of the revolutionary agitations of Paris. The problem which we are debating was treated then, in the presence of an excited crowd, by PÈre Lacordaire.[181] He is entering upon this question: What can have been the motive of the creation? And he distinguishes between love in the Platonic sense of it, for which he retains the name of love, and the love which gives itself, which he designates by the term—goodness. "Was it then love," he asks, "which impelled the Divine Will, and said to it unceasingly: Go and create? Is it love which we must thus regard as our first father? But, alas! love itself has a cause in the beauty of its object; and what beauty could that dead and icy shade possess before God, which preceded the universe, and to which we cannot give a name without betraying the truth?... There remained something, Sirs, be very sure, more generous than self-interest, more elevated than duty, more powerful than love. Search your own hearts, and if you find it hard to understand me, if your own endowments are unknown to you, listen to Bossuet speaking of you:—'When God,' says he, 'made the heart of man, the first thing He planted there was goodness:' goodness; that is to say, that virtue which does not consult self-interest, which does not wait for the commands of duty, which needs not to be solicited by the attraction of the beautiful, but which stoops towards its object all the more, as it is poorer, more miserable, more abandoned, more worthy of contempt! It is true, Sirs, it is true: man possesses that adorable faculty. It is not genius, nor glory, nor love, which measures the elevation of his soul,—it is goodness. This it is which gives to the human countenance its principal and most powerful charm; this it is which draws us together; this it is which brings into communication the good and the evil, and which is everywhere, from heaven to earth, the great mediating principle. See, at the foot of the Alps, yon miserable crÉtin, which, eyeless, smileless, tearless, is not even conscious of its own degradation, and which looks like an effort of nature to insult itself in the dishonor of the greatest of its own productions: but beware how you imagine that that wretched object has not found the road to any heart, or that his debasement has deprived him of the love of all the world. No: he is beloved; he has a mother, he has brothers and sisters; he has a place at the cottage-hearth; he has the best place and the most sacred of all, just because of all he may seem to have the least claim to any. The bosom which nursed him supports him still, and the superstition of love never speaks of him but as of a blessing sent of God. Such is man!

"But can I say, Such is man, without saying also, Such is God! From whom would man derive goodness, if God were not the primordial Ocean of goodness, and if, when He formed our heart, He had not first of all poured into it a drop from His own? Yes, God is good; yes, goodness is the attribute which includes in it all the rest; and it is not without reason that antiquity engraved on the pediment of its temples that famous inscription, in which goodness preceded greatness."

Now, to say nothing of the sparkling beauty of these words, let us pause at this definite idea: The Eternal, the first universal Cause of all things, independently of which nothing exists, could only create under the impelling motive of the goodness which gives, and not of the love which seeks requital. This proposition is as clear in the abstract as any theorem of geometry. But we have touched the threshold of the infinite; and we never touch the threshold of the infinite without falling into some degree of bewilderment. Clear as this thought is in the abstract, if we wish to analyze it in its real substance, our view is confused. You understand well that goodness increases in the proportion in which its object is diminished. We are by so much more good as we stoop to that which is poorer and more miserable. What then shall be the infinite goodness? In order to find it, we must infinitely diminish its object: and here we encounter mystery. To diminish an object infinitely is an operation impossible to our thought. This mystery is encountered even in the mathematical sciences. We take a quantity, halve it, and again halve this half, and so on without end, but we shall never obtain the infinity of smallness; for the quantity indefinitely divided will always remain indefinitely divisible. At whatever degree of division we may have arrived, between what remains and nothingness there extends always the abyss of the infinite. So I seek for the object of infinite goodness: that object must be infinitely destitute. I diminish accordingly the existence of the universe: I extinguish all the rays of its beauty; I take from it order, life, measure, color, light; I reduce it until it is nothing but formless matter, a something—I know not what—which has no longer a name. Vain attempt! This nameless something, so long as it is anything, will not be nothing. Between it and nothing there will always be the infinite. If the goodness of God is applied to any object which was existing independently of Him, however poor and abject that object be conceived to have been, then God is no longer the unique, the absolute Creator. If imagination will cross the abyss, we shall come of necessity to say—what? that the object of infinite love must have been non-existence. This is what the orator already quoted has done:—"All perfection supposes an object to which to apply itself. The divine goodness therefore requires an object as vast and profound as itself. God discovered it. From the bosom of His own fulness He saw that being without beauty, without form, without life, without name, that being without being which we call non-existence: He heard the cry of worlds which were not, the cry of a measureless destitution calling to a measureless goodness. Eternity was troubled, she said to Time: Begin!"

This, Gentlemen, is eloquence. The thought in itself does not bear a rigorous analysis; but do not think that the lustrous beauty of the language is only a brilliant veil to what in itself is absurd. We have arrived at darkness, but it is at darkness visible; the cloud is lighted up by the ray that issues from it. Our goodness, finite creatures as we are, is so much the greater as the object on which it is bestowed is less. Infinite goodness must create for itself an object. It does not love nothingness, but a creature which is nothing in itself, a creature simply possible, which, before owing to it the blessings of existence, shall owe to it that existence itself. The only being that we can represent to ourselves, by a sublime image, as stooping towards nothingness, is He whose look gives life. The creature is willed for itself, or,—to quote the words of Professor SecrÉtan, addressed to you last year,—the foundation of nature is grace.[182] We ask: What can have been the object of creation? Our reason answers: The Infinite Being can only act from goodness, He can have no other object than the happiness of His creatures.

And now I recapitulate. We ask what is the object of creation; and whereas we cannot transport ourselves into the inaccessible light of the Divine consciousness, we question the work of God in order to discern the intentions of the Creator. From the fact that humanity prays, we gather the reply that man has a spontaneous belief in the goodness of the First Cause of the universe. We place reason in presence of the idea of the Infinite Being; reason declares to us that He who is the plenitude of Being could not have created except from the motive of love. We understand that God has made all for His own glory, and that His glory consists in the manifestation of His goodness. These thoughts, in their full light, belong to the Gospel revelation, but they appear, under a veil, in the conceptions which lie at the basis of pagan religions. Without entering the temple of idols, we may bow the knee before the pediment of the ancient sanctuary, and, beneath the open vault of heaven, adore, with the Roman people, that God whose goodness takes precedence of His greatness.

The direct consequence of the principles which we have just laid down is that happiness is the object of our existence. Created by goodness, we can have no other end than blessedness.

But beware of supposing that we can take for our guide our desire of happiness, and ourselves calculate its conditions. Happiness is our end; it is the will of our Father; but we must let ourselves be conducted into it. If, shutting our ears to the voice which lays upon us commands and obligations, we would take our destinies into our own hands; if we made the search after happiness our rule, understanding happiness in our own way, we should be taking for light fantastic gleams which would lead us into abysses of ruin. The unruly propensities of our heart would lead us to make ourselves the centre of the world. To "live for self" is the motto of selfishness, and the watchword of unhappiness. To live for God is the way to happiness. To live to God, that is to say, over the ruins of our shattered selfishness, to enter into order, to take our place in the spiritual edifice of charity, and to share in the joy which God allots to all His children—this is the end of our creation. Once lifted to the height of this thought, we are able to understand the great struggle which rent the conscience of the ancients, because in their times the light of truth illumined only at intervals the clouds of error which covered the world.

There are in man two voices; the one leading him to happiness, the other calling him to holiness. The first impulse of his nature is to start in eager pursuit of mere enjoyment; but ere long the second voice is heard, the voice of conscience, striving to arrest him in his course. If man do not obey her call, conscience becomes his chastiser. Hence arises a painful struggle of conflicting feelings, and the human mind is the subject of a strong temptation to pacify itself by silencing one of the two voices. It is the history of antiquity. Socrates, the wise Socrates, had indeed cried aloud: Woe! woe to the man who separates the just from the useful; and had warned men that happiness may be found apart from what is right and good. Cicero put into beautiful Latin the lessons of the Grecian sage; but the torn heart of man was not long in tearing the mantle of the philosopher. From the thought, full and complete as it is, of Socrates issued two celebrated sects, one of which wished to establish man's life on the basis of duty without reference to happiness; and the other on the basis of happiness without reference to duty.

The Stoics attached themselves to duty; but the need of happiness asserted itself in spite of them, and sought satisfaction in the gloomy pleasure of isolation, and in the savage joy of pride. The sage of these philosophers sets himself free, not only from all the cares of earth, but from all the bonds of the heart, from all natural affection. Finally, by a consequence, at once sad and odd, of the same doctrine, the highest point of self-possession is to prove that man is master of himself, by the emancipation of suicide and in the liberty of death. The Stoic philosopher declares himself insensible to the ills of life; he denies that pain is an evil; and, on the other hand, he claims the right to kill himself in order to escape from the ills of existence! So ended this famous school. At the same period, the herd of Epicurus' followers, giving themselves over to weak and shameful indulgences, were thus in fact laboring with all their might (this is Montesquieu's opinion) to prepare that enormous corruption under which were to sink together the glory of Rome and the civilization of the ancient world.

This struggle which rent the ancient conscience, and which still rends the modern conscience wherever the goodness of God continues veiled—this great conflict is appeased when we have come to understand that goodness is the first principle of things, that happiness is our end, and that the stern voice of conscience is a friendly voice which warns us to shun those paths of error in which we should encounter wretchedness. The conscience is the voice of the Master; and the same authority which, speaking in the name of duty, bids us—"Be good," adds, in the gentle accents of hope—"and thou shalt be happy." Happiness, duty,—these are the two aspects of the Divine Will. Love is the solution of the universal enigma. Therefore, surprising as the thought may be, it is our duty to be happy. Our profession of faith, when we look above, must be: "I believe in goodness;" and when we enter again into ourselves, our profession of faith should be: "I believe in happiness." And we do not believe in it. Not to believe in happiness is the root of our ills; it is the original misery which includes all our miseries. Triflers that we are, we give ourselves up to pleasure because we do not believe in joy: frivolous, we run after giddy excitement because we do not believe in peace: with hearts corrupt, we abandon ourselves to the devouring flame of the passions, because we do not believe in the serene light of true felicity. But the more the thought of God's love enters our mind, the more will faith in happiness issue from our soul as a blessed flower. Happiness is the end of our being; it is the will of the Father. To each one of us are these words addressed: God loves thee; be happy! If therefore (and I address myself more particularly to the younger of my hearers), if in the depth of your soul you are conscious of a sudden aspiration after true felicity, ah! do not suffer the holy flame to be extinguished, do not talk of illusions; do not, I pray you, resign yourselves to the prose of life; to a dreary and gloomy contentedness with a destiny which has no ideal. Your nature does not deceive you; it is you who deceive yourselves, if you seek your own welfare in the world of foolish or guilty chimeras. Listen to all the voices which speak to you of comfort; be attentive to all the words of peace. Seek, labor, pray, till you are able to utter, in quiet confidence, those words of the Psalmist:

God in the heart—this it is which adds zest to our enjoyments, sanctifies our affections, calms our griefs, and which, amidst the struggles, the sorrows, and the harrowing afflictions of life, suffers to rise from the heart to the countenance that sublime smile which can shine brightly even through tears.

THE END.

Cambridge: Printed by John Wilson and Son.