known what is this sacred thing.

It requires a

sincere heart; and loyalty in the means, as its first condition: the second is, that generosity which does not wish to enslave, but rather to set at liberty and fortify what it loves; to love it in liberty; leaving it free to love or not to love.

:

Come, my saints! and listen to worldly men on this subject to dramatists, to Molière, and to Shakspeare. These have known more about it than you. The lover is asked who is the loved object? of what name? of what figure? and of what shape? "Just

A noble standard, which is that of love, as well as that of education, and of every kind of initiation: a sincerely wished for equality, the desire of raising the other person to one's own height, and of making her one's equal, "just as high as one's heart," said Shakspeare; and Molière has done the same. The latter was, in the highest degree, "the educating genius†;" one who wishes to raise and set free, and who loves in equality, liberty, and intelligence. He has denounced, as a crime‡, that unworthy love which surprises the soul by keeping it apart in ignorance, and holding it as a slave and captive.

In his life, conformable to his works, he gave the noble example of that generous love, which wishes

* Shakspeare's "As you Like it."

†The ingenious and very just remark of E. Noël.

In his Ecole des Femmes, and elsewhere.

that the person loved should be his equal, and as much as himself, which strengthens her, and gives her arms even against himself. This is love, and this is faith. It is the belief that sooner or later the emancipated being must return to the most worthy. And who is the most worthy? Is it not he who wished to be loved with liberty?

Nevertheless, let us well weigh the meaning of this important word his equal, and all the dangers

it

may contain. It is as if this creator said to the creature, whom he has made and is now emancipating, "Thou art free; the power under which thou hast grown up holds thee no more: being away from me, and attached to me now only by the heart and memory, thou mayest act and think elsewhere, nay, against me if thou wilt!"

This is what is so sublime in love; and the reason why God pardons it so many weaknesses! It is because in its unlimited disinterestedness, wishing to make a free being, and to be loved freely by it, it creates its own peril. The saying, "You may act elsewhere," contains also "to love elsewhere," and the chance of losing the object. That hand, so weak before, but now strengthened and made bold by all the cares of affection, receives the sword from love: even would she turn it against him, she can; there is nothing to hinder her, for he has reserved nothing for himself.

Pray let us exalt this idea, and extend it from the

love of woman, to universal love, to that which makes the life both of the world and of civil society.

In the world, it calls incessantly from kingdom to kingdom the ever-quickening life, which receives the flame, and goes on rising. It raises from unknown depths beings which it emancipates, and arms with liberty, with the power of acting well or ill, and even of acting against him, who creates them, and makes them free.

In the civil world, does love (charity, patriotism, or whatever they call it,) do any thing but this? Its work is to call to social life and political power whatever is yet without life in the city. It raises up the weak and poor in their rough path, where they crawl on their hands and feet against destiny, and bestows upon them equality and liberty.

The inferior degree of love is a desire to absorb life. Its superior degree is to wish to exalt life in energy and fruitfulness. It rejoices in raising, augmenting, and creating what it loves. Its happiness is to see a new creature of God rise under its influence, and to contribute its aid to the creation, whether it be for good or for ill.

"But is not love, with this disinterestedness, an uncommon miracle? One of those very short instants when the night of our egotism is illumined by a ray from God?"

No, the miracle is permanent. You see it, you have it before your eyes, but you turn away your

head. Uncommon, perhaps, in the lover, it is every where visible in the mother. Mortal, you seek God in heaven and under the earth, but he is in your own domestic circle.

Man, woman, and child, the unity of the three persons, and their mutual mediation- this is the mystery of mysteries. The divine idea of Christianity is to have thus put the family upon the altar. It placed it there, and there it has left it, for fifteen hundred years: my poor monk, in the middle ages, contemplated it there in vain. He could never understand the mother as initiation.* He exhausted his energies by taking the sterile side: he pursued the Virgin †, and left us Our Lady.

* The middle ages go either too high or too low: they knew no middle course. The triumph of woman is quite ideal in Beatrice, and the passion of woman falls too low in Griselda, who submits even as a mother. There is nothing practical. This ignorance of a middle course is shocking, and assuredly still more so in the sermons of the present day. Nothing but heaven or hell; nothing between. Woman, in their estimation, is either a saint or a harlot. But they say not a word for the prudent spouse, or the respectable mother. This spirit of exaggeration makes their language singularly sterile.

†This poetry of monks and unmarried men is every where perceptible. They make the Virgin younger and 'younger, ever more childish, and less motherly. They preserve a thousand silly and indecent legends, and they throw aside the essential legend, that would have fertilised the middle ages- "The education of Jesus by the Virgin." They must have perceived, however, that he too had a maternal heart. He weeps for Lazarus.—“Let the little children come unto me," &c.

Man of modern times! thou shalt do what he could not. This shall be thy work. Mayest thou only, in the height of thy abstract genius, not disdain women and children, who will teach thee life. Instruct them in science and the world, and they will speak to thee of God.

Let the family-hearth become firm and strong, then the tottering edifice of religion, political religion, will quietly settle down. Let it never be forgotten, that humble stone, in which we see only our good old domestic Lares, is the corner-stone of the Temple, and the foundation-stone of the City.

ONE WORD TO THE PRIESTS.

I have finished, yet my heart has not. Therefore, one word more.

One word to the priests. I had handled them gently, yet they have attacked me. Well! even now, it is not them that I attack. This book is not against them.

It attacks their own slavish state, the unnatural position in which they are kept, and the strange conditions which make them at once unhappy and dangerous if it has any effect, it will prepare for them the period of deliverance, personal and mental freedom.

Let them say and do what they please, they will not