itself with it, which lives upon it, which derives all its glory from it, and waits, with a patience of which we are yet the witnesses, for the accomplishment of the redemption promised to its fathers. Do you say to the Jews that they have not hoped for this? they reply to you by their present hope which twenty centuries have not disturbed. They will show you their Scriptures translated into Greek, and distributed in the world even before Jesus Christ. It is a material fact beyond all criticism. So much for the past. As to the future, that is to say the accomplishment of that which was written and hoped for so long, the Catholic Church is there to teach you that a great remission has been brought about by a great sacrifice. The Jewish people and the Church! Who will attack these two monuments which support each other, and so much the more because they are irreconcileable enemies? They are both elements of the prophetic character of the Scriptures: one is the past term, the other the term to come; and, in order that they may not be accused of having conspired together to deceive the world, they reject each other, so as to remain separated even to the end, to the day when, the final consummation being near, the past and the future will embrace each other to show to the last generations the last accomplishment of the prophecies, which, amongst the ancient people as amongst the new, have announced this kiss of peace.

Time, Gentlemen, will never cease to develope the threefold sign of the divinity of our Scriptures, the traditional sign, the constituent sign, and the prophetic sign. As we advance in the future the past will increase, and it will become more impossible for human labours to affect antiquity; all will appear new except the Bible of Christians, and the precocious decay of that which will be new will again attach minds to the immutable throne of tradition. On the other hand, Christianity will be seen achieving the conquest of the earth. After Europe, it has subdued America, and already it presses hard upon all the frontiers

of Africa and Asia. Space vanishes before the genius of Christian nations; and it is you, men of time, princes of human civilisation, it is you who are without knowing it the pioneers of Providence in this great work. These bridges which you suspend in the air, those mountains which you open before you, the roads on which fire bears

you along, you think they are destined to serve your ambition; you do not know that matter is but the channel in which the spirit flows. The spirit will come when you shall have hollowed out its bed. Thus did the Romans, your predecessors; they employed seven hundred years to bring nations together by their arms, and to furrow the three continents of the old world with their long military roads; they thought that their legions would eternally pass over them to convey their orders to the universe: they did not know that they were preparing the triumphal ways of the Consul Jesus. O you, then, their heirs, who are also as blind as they-you, the Romans of the second race, continue the work of which you are the instruments; abridge space, diminish the seas, draw from nature its last secrets, so that the progress of truth may some day be no longer checked by the rivers and the mountains, that it may fly from right to left, and that there may no longer exist a spot where tyranny, protected by isolation, may refuse to it the means of support. How beautiful then will be the feet of those who spread the gospel of peace! The apostles will praise you; they will say, whilst passing by, as on the wings of eagles, How powerful and courageous our fathers were! How fertile was their genius! How good they have been to us poor missionaries, to enable us to be borne so rapidly to the help of souls! Blessed be they who have assisted the spirit of God by their own! May they receive in the other country a portion of those dews of heaven of which they have unconsciously aided the effusion!

And, thanks to the expansion of the doctrine favoured by this drawing together of all the divisions of mankind,

the prophecies also will approach their last accomplishment. After that, in the fusion of nations, all the various teachings shall have been subjected to the fiery ordeal, and the intermediate religions shall have succumbed, there will only remain, face to face, total truth and total error, Christianity and Atheism, God alone and man alone. Then, no cloud any longer interposing between the two chosen people, between the Jew and the Christian, between the people of the past and the people of the future, they will distinguish each other from the extremities of the world; they will regard one another stedfastly, and, at this mutual recognition, they will march like two giants to embrace each other. There will, then, be only one flock and one pastor; the past and the future will be but one thing, and this will be the signal that time is at an end, and that the eternal day draws near.

ELEVENTH CONFERENCE.

OF REASON.

MY LORD,

GENTLEMEN,

TRADITION and Scripture are the two great depositaries of divine testimony, the two principal sources of the doctrine of the Church. Nevertheless, these sources are exterior with regard to man; it is a light which reaches him from without, and if it penetrated within man without meeting there with a corresponding light, it would not be understood, it would shine there in darkness. It is not so. God, having made of man an intelligent creature, gave him a primitive light “which lighteth every man coming into the world," according to the words expressed by the apostle Saint John. This light consists in certain fundamental ideas beyond which we cannot ascend, and without which our intelligence is inactive. Philosophers have much. occupied themselves with the question of knowing from whence these ideas come. Some have maintained that they come from the senses; others that they are innate; others, again, that they are transmitted to us with the word which produces them, or at least awakens them, within us. We shall not discuss any of these sentiments. It suffices for us to state that there exist in the intelligence a certain number of primitive fundamental ideas, from which the

If a

others are deduced, and which constitute its reason. man have not arrived at a clear and distinct consciousness

of these first ideas, he is already an intelligent being, but he has not yet attained to the age of reason; from the time that he loses the consciousness of these first ideas and of the connexion which attaches them to their consequences, he falls into the state of unreasonableness or of folly.

Now, as reason comes from God, it should be in accordance with the divine testimony contained in tradition and in Scripture; without this, light would be in contradiction with light, and God with himself. To what point is this accordance effected? to what point does this light which is within us render testimony to the divine testimony itself? This, Gentlemen, is the subject of the present Conference.

In the first place, reason renders testimony even to the foundation of the mystery which is manifested to us by tradition and Scripture, namely, the mystery of good and evil. Reason not only has knowledge of it, and affirms the difference between good and evil, but it affirms this difference with the concurrence of another faculty, which is conscience. Reason is but the perception of good, conscience is the sentiment of it. Reason of itself would have been weak against the will; for it perceives only that which is, whilst the will loves that which pleases it. If reason present objects to it worthy of its love, the will would reject them and say to reason, Do that which is pleasing to thyself; as for me, I am free here, I love and hate whom and what I please. And if reason, trying to vanquish by importunity, should return to the charge, the will, wearied by its solicitations, would say, Thou tirest me; thy light is odious to me; I command thee to turn it away from here: close thy eyes, even if there be ten thousand suns there before thee. It is then that conscience comes to the help of reason against the omnipotence of the will. Conscience does not permit it to enjoy a peaceful sovereignty; conscience proves by remorse that good is not a stranger to it,