Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Religion [1908]

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Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Religion


ELEVENTH OBJECTION. THERE ARE MANY LEARNED MEN AND PEOPLE OF MIND WHO DO NOT BELIEVE IN RELIGION.

Answer. What is to be concluded from this, except that it is not enough to have profane learning or to possess talent, in order to be a Christian, and to receive from God the gift of faith; but that something more is required; namely, a pure and upright heart, humble, well-regulated, willing to make those sacrifices that the knowledge of truth imposes.

Now, this is just what is wanting among those learned men (and they are few) who are irreligious.

1st. Either they are indifferent and ignorant in matters of religion; absorbed in their mathematical, astronomical, physical studies, they think neither of God nor of their soul; and hence it is not surprising that they know nothing of religion. In what concerns religion they are ignorant, and their judgment on it is worth no more than that of a hodcarrier about music and painting.
There are some learned men who are more ignorant of religion than a child of ten years old, who is assiduous in learning his catechism.

2d. Or else, what happens oftener, they are haughty spirits who presume to judge God, to argue with Him as an equal, and to measure His word by the dimensions of their feeble reason. Pride is the profoundest in its malice of all the vices. Therefore, they are justly rejected as presumptuous minds, and deprived of that light which is given only to simple and humble hearts. God does not love proud rebels.

3d. Or else, what happens still oftener, and is generally accompanied by the other two vices, these learned men cherish some bad passions of which they will not rid themselves, and which they know to be incompatible with the Christian religion.
Moreover, if one will only weigh the number and value of the witnesses, the difficulty entirely disappears.

One may affirm that, for the last eighteen hundred years, among the eminent men of each century there has not been more than one in twenty who was a freethinker.

And in this trivial number one may also affirm that the majority were not steadily incredulous, but before their death took refuge in the arms of that religion which they had so often blasphemed. Such were, among others, some of the leaders of the Voltarian school of the eighteenth century, Montesquieu, Buffon, la Harpe, etc.

Voltaire himself, when illness overtook him in Paris, sent for the rector of St. Sulpice about a month before his death. The danger passed, and with the danger the fear of God, which it had inspired. But a second crisis came on: all the impious companions of the sick man hastened to his side. His physician, an eye-witness of the scene, attests that Voltaire again called for the assistance of religion, but this time in vain; the priest was not allowed to approach the dying man, who expired a prey to the most horrible despair!

D'Alembert also was anxious to confess his sins; and he was prevented, just as his master had been, by the philosophers surrounding his bedside. "If we had not been there," one of them afterwards said, "he would have played the coward just like the others!"
What moral value have these men? And what does their irreligion prove, above all if you oppose to them the enlightened faith of the most learned men, the great geniuses, the men most worthy of our veneration that have ever appeared on earth?

Their faith required of these great men, as it does of all men, disagreeable restraints and imperative duties. The evidence of the truth of Christianity alone could have compelled them to give in their adhesion to its teachings.

Not to speak of those admirable doctors of the Church, called Fathers, and who were almost the only philosophers and savants of the first fifteen centuries, such as St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose, St. Gregory the Great, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Bernard, St. Thomas of Aquinas (the most extraordinary man who has ever existed, perhaps), how many illustrious names may not religion count among her children?

Roger Bacon, Copernicus, Descartes, Pascal, Malebranche, d'Aguesseau, Lamoignon, Mathew Mole, Cujas, Domat, de Maistre, de Bonald, etc., among the great philosophers, jurisconsults, and erudite of the world.

Bossuet, Fenelon, Bourdaloue, Massillon, among great orators.

Corneille, Racine, Dante, Tasso, Boileau, Chateaubriand, etc., among men of letters and poets.

And our military glories, are they not for the most part blended with religion? Was not Charlemagne a Christian? Godfrey of Bouillon, Tancred, Bayard, du Guesclin, Joan of Arc, Crillon, Vauban, Villars, Catinat, etc., did they not bend before religion their illustrious brows, bound with the laurels of a thousand victories? Henry IV., Louis XIV., were Christians. Turenne was a Christian, he had received the Holy Communion the very day of his death. The Great Condé was a Christian. And above all these, St. Louis, that real hero, that prince so perfect and so amiable, the glory alike of France and of the Church.

All know the sentiments of the great Napoleon touching Christianity. In the intoxication of power and ambition, he neglected the practical duties of religion, I admit; but he always preserved his belief in it and respect for it: "I am a Christian, a Roman Catholic," he said; "so is my son. I would be much grieved if my grandson should not be the same." . . . "The greatest service I have ever rendered to France," he also added, "is the re-establishment of the Catholic religion." "Without religion, to what would men come? They would cut one another's throats for the prettiest woman, or for the largest pear!" When he found himself alone, at St. Helena, he began to reflect on the faith of his childhood, and in his profound genius Napoleon found the Catholic faith to be both real and holy. He asked of religion its last consolations.

He sent for a Catholic priest to come to St. Helena, and attended the Mass which was celebrated in his apartments. He desired that on abstinence days no flesh-meat should be served at his table. He surprised the companions of his exile by the force with which he set forth, in conversation, the fundamental doctrines of Catholicism.

When near to death he sent away the physicians, begged to see the Abbé Vignali, his chaplain, and said to him: "I believe in God; I was born in the Catholic religion; and I wish to fulfill the duties which it imposes, and to receive the last aid that it affords us."
And the emperor confessed, received the Holy Viaticum and Extreme Unction. "I am happy to have fulfilled my duties," he said to General Montholon. "I wish you, at your death, the same happiness, general. I never practiced them when on the throne, because power dazzles the mind. But I have always had faith; the sound of church-bells is agreeable to my ears, and the sight of a priest affects me. I wanted to make a mystery of all this, but that is a weakness. I desire to render glory to God!"

He then gave orders himself that an altar should be erected in the next room, so that there might be an Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and the Forty Hours devotion.

Thus died Napoleon, as a Christian.

We should not be afraid of deceiving ourselves in following the example of all those great men, the number of whom, and their religious knowledge, but above all their moral worth, prevails far over those few men who have chosen to despise Christianity.
Pride, the passion for profane knowledge which absorbed them entirely, and other passions yet more degrading and headstrong, are more than sufficient reasons to explain their unbelief; while the truth of religion alone has been powerful enough to bow the necks of the others under the sacred yoke of Catholicism!

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Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Religion


TWELFTH OBJECTION. PRIESTS MAKE A TRADE OF RELIGION, THEY DO NOT BELIEVE WHAT THEY PREACH.

Answer. What do you venture to assert? The priests of Jesus Christ are impostors! Pray, how do you know that? How can you read their hearts, and pronounce whether they believe or do not believe in the sacred origin of their priesthood? It is the accuser's business to prove what he advances. I defy you to prove this accusation.

You will, perhaps, cite, by way of proof, the name of some bad priest.

I must then remind you that the exception proves the rule. A wicked, unbelieving priest would not be so much the subject of comment if the great majority were not so holy, pure and venerable.

A spot of ink is seen with extraordinary distinctness on a pure white robe; it would be hardly perceptible if the robe were black or soiled.

So it is with the Catholic priesthood, to whom impiety thus pays an involuntary homage.

That there are bad priests is not a strange thing. Remember there was a Judas among the twelve Apostles! Just as the Apostles, the first priests, the first Bishops of the Church, thrust out the traitor from among them, and were not responsible for his crime, so the Church condemns, with even more energy and horror than you yourselves express, those traitorous priests who desert their sublime duties! She first endeavors to bring them back into the right way by gentleness and pardon; priests, as well as other men, have a right to mercy; but the irreclaimable, those who persevere in the bad road, she cuts off from her communion, and strikes them with her anathemas.

Priests are impostors! And what interest have they then in hearing your confessions, reproving you for your vices, preaching to you, catechising your children, feeding the poor, giving to this one good advice; to that one, consolation; to another, bread?
Would it be possible to curtail by a farthing their slender revenues, and the still more slender nature of their occasional fees, if they kept silence about the irregularities and excesses of their parishioners, if they admitted any or every person to the sacraments, without giving themselves the trouble of examining the state of their conscience, or if they were to abridge their catechising, etc.? What worldly interest have they then in fulfilling well their ministry?

No, no; the priest is not what the impious proclaim him to be, and it is because they are aware of this that these people detest the priest so cordially. They see in him the representative of the God Who condemns their vices, the envoy of Jesus Christ, whom they blaspheme, and Who will judge them. They see in him the personification of that law of God which they unceasingly violate; and it is because they do not wish to acknowledge the Master that they do not wish to recognize His minister.

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Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Religion


THIRTEENTH OBJECTION. PRIESTS ARE DRONES IN THE HIVE! OF WHAT USE ARE THEY?

Answer. They are of use in saving souls! Certainly, here is an employment which is at least as good as many others.
The mechanic works upon matter; the priest works on the soul. As much as the soul is higher than matter, so much is the priest's work higher than all the labors of the earth.

The priest continues the great labor of the salvation of mankind. Jesus Christ, his God and his Model, began it; His priests continue it through all ages.

After His example, the priest goes about doing good. He is a man who belongs to all; his heart, his time, his health, his diligence, his purse, his life, belong to all; above all, to the lowly ones of the earth, to children, to the poor, the neglected, those who weep, and who are friendless. He expects nothing in exchange for this devotedness; most frequently, indeed, he receives only insults, abominable calumnies and ill treatment. True disciple of his Divine Master, he replies only by continuing to do good. What a life! What superhuman abnegation!

In public calamities, civil wars, contagious diseases, in times of cholera, when the Protestant ministers and philanthropists think of personal preservation, the priest is to be seen exposing his life and health to relieve and save his brethren; such was Monseigneur Affre, Archbishop of Paris, on the barricades; such were Belzunce and St. Charles Borromeo, in the time of the plague at Marseilles and Milan; such, during the cholera in 1832 and 1849, all the clergy of Paris and so many other towns, who made themselves the public servants of the whole people.

This, then, is the use of the priests! I should like to know if those who attack them are of more use.

The ungrateful wretches! They are never weary of loading with insults him whom they summon to their bedside in time of sorrow or privation, who has blessed them in their earlier years, and who never ceases to pray for them.

All the miseries of our country arise from our not practicing what the priests teach. And unfortunate France, torn with civil discords and political commotions, may apply to herself the language addressed to the chaplain of one of the Paris prisons by a poor convict, who had returned to God with all his heart. The priest had given him a little Christian's manual. "Ah, father!" he said one day, showing the little book, "if I had known the contents of this, and had practiced these maxims all my life, I should not have done what I have now done, nor should I have been where I now am!"

If France had always known, and if she now knew what priests really do teach, and if she had always practiced those doctrines, and continued doing so, she would not have been tossed about by three or four revolutions in the space of fifty years, and be reduced to ask herself in the present day, Am I about to perish entirely? Can I still hope to be saved from destruction?

She may hope to be saved, if she will again be truly Catholic! She may hope to be saved if she will but take heed to the ministers of Him who saves the world.

The priesthood is then the safety of France! For without religion society would be destroyed.

Her children, then, owe honor, veneration, gratitude, more than ever to the priestly character. Those who repulse the idea have not the intelligence of our age or country.

Away with these worn-out prejudices, then. Away with these coarse and injurious epithets, with which the blind impiety of Voltaire and his followers have so long assailed the Catholic priesthood!

Let us respect our Priests. If we see imperfections, even vices occasionally, among them, let us remember that we must ascribe to the man all that belongs to frailty.

Let us endeavor, in those cases, not to look at the man, to see nothing but the priest; as a priest, he is always worthy of respect, and his ministry is always a holy one; for he is the perpetuator of the office of Jesus Christ, the great High Priest, through successive ages, and it is of him that the Saviour has said, "He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Him that sent you!"

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Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Religion

FOURTEENTH OBJECTION. THERE ARE CERTAINLY SOME BAD PRIESTS - HOW CAN THEY BE THE MINISTERS OF GOD?

Answer. Because, in becoming bad men, they do not cease to be Priests.

Do you cease to be a Christian, because you commit a sin? Does a judge cease to be a judge, do his decisions cease to have a binding force because his own integrity is not above reproach? Does a father cease to be a father because he fails in his duties? Does a captain lose the right to command his men because he himself commits a breach of discipline?

If it is so in human affairs, where public trusts may, in the strictest sense, be taken away from those who are not worthy of them, how much more stable, more inalienable yet, should not be, in spiritual things, that sacred character of the priesthood on which rests the security of men's consciences, and the whole life of the faithful! 

If our Priests ceased to be Priests by the sole fact of committing some grievous sin, we should never know if we really received the holy things from their hands; for God alone knows and searches men's consciences.

It is for us that they are priests; and for us that they remain so, even when they forget their greatness.

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Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Religion - 1908


FIFTEENTH OBJECTION. PRIESTS OUGHT TO MARRY. CELIBACY IS CONTRARY TO NATURE.

Answer. Not contrary to nature, but above nature; which is quite different.

Therefore, the chastity of the priest is not natural, but supernatural; it comes from the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, in the sacrament of holy orders, gives to His ministers a divine character and a supernatural virtue which raises them above other men. God is single and alone; so should His priests be.

"The Great Spirit has no wife," said an Indian chief to an American captain, who proposed to send some Protestant missionaries among them; "His priests should be like Him; since yours are married, we will have nothing to say to them. They resemble ourselves, and would be of no use to us."

Jesus Christ, God made man, preserved perfect continence. His envoy should follow the same path. The disciple is perfect when he resembles his Master.

It is chastity which surrounds the Priest with his divine halo. It is that which invests him with such a moral power, that he has the right of attacking the vices of his brethren, of counselling not only good, but perfection; of consoling penitents, of penetrating secrets so hidden, that the daughter dares not tell them to her mother, the wife to her husband, the brother to his brother.

Marry the Priest; the wonder-worker vanishes, the man alone remains!

The apologists for the marriage of Priests know this well. They desire only one thing: to humanise the Priest, that is to say, to unpriest him.

They see that these men, so uncompromising toward what is wrong, would become the most accommodating in the world, if one could only give them wives and children. Occupied with their own concerns, they would not have much time to occupy themselves with the things which concern God, or attend to the state of their parishioners' consciences.

And, then, heavenly things would be treated of quite freely in the family. To obtain the good will of the parish-priest, his lady would be flattered, one would sigh at the feet of the eldest daughter of his reverence, and admire before their papa the talent, the good looks of the whole saintly progeny, even though they were more stupid than blocks and uglier than scarecrows. The husband-papa-confessor would not hold out against that, and would grant everything that was asked of him.

Woe to the Priest, and woe to us, if a woman — a wife — touch, in this manner, the spring of his power! For, forthwith, "a virtue is gone out of him;" the vivifying virtue which resuscitates souls; the powerful virtue which sustains and encourages them in the ways of God; above all, the virtue of virtues in the priest, that which makes him the arbiter between the heart of God and the heart of man, the virtue of charity!

Yes; charity — that apostolic charity which embraces all men alike, poor and rich, bad and good, strangers and neighbors — it is Virginity which kindles it and keeps it alive.

Continence must first have consecrated without reserve to the service of God that sacerdotal body which charity daily immolates for the relief and salvation of its neighbor.

He may be humane, he may be compassionate, but never will he be a martyr whose heart is occupied with the love of a woman.
He may be touched by the sorrows of widows and orphans, but never will he devote himself to them, who feels that he owes his first affections and his first savings to the support, the education and the future of his own children.

The morsel of bread which he would, perhaps, take from his own mouth to sustain the starving creature at his door, he would not like to snatch from the hands of his son.

The life which, in times of public disease and contagion, he would sacrifice to the salvation of his fellow-men, he owes and will preserve for his family. What are the most generous of resolutions before the tears of a beloved wife and the caresses of a child?

Marriage is the solemn murder of the Priest. If we desire that our Priests should help us to salvation, let us leave them alone with Jesus Christ. Besides, are they so desirous of marrying? Not the least in the world, I assure you.

Since when have people been obliged to marry against their wills?

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Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Religion - 1908


SIXTEENTH OBJECTION. I BELIEVE ONLY WHAT I UNDERSTAND. CAN ANY REASONABLE MAN BELIEVE ALL THE MYSTERIES OF RELIGION?

Answer. Then don't believe any thing, nothing in the world, not even that you live, that you see, that you speak, that you hear, etc., etc., for I defy you to understand any of these phenomena.

What, in fact, is life? what is language? what is sound? what are noises, color, smell, etc.?

What is the wind? where does it begin? where and why and how does it stop? What is cold, or heat? what is electricity?

What is sleep? How comes it, that when I am asleep, my ears remaining open the same as when I am awake, I hear nothing? Why, and how do I awake from sleep? and what is the process?

What are fatigue, sorrow, pleasure? etc. etc.

What is matter, that indescribable something, which takes all forms, all colors, etc.?

Who understands what it is?

How is it, that with my eyes, which are merely two little balls, quite black in the inside, I can see all surrounding objects, even millions of miles off (the stars, for instance)?

How is it that my soul would separate from my body if I did not, regularly, cause to enter into that body, by my food, certain morsels of dead animals, of plants, of vegetables, etc.?

All is mystery* in me; even down to the most vulgar things, to the purely animal functions.

What learned man has ever comprehended the why and wherefore of the wonders of nature? Who has ever comprehended a single one of them?

What mysteries!

And I wish to comprehend Him who has made all these beings which I cannot comprehend! I do not comprehend the creature, and yet I want to comprehend the Creator! I do not comprehend the finite, and I would comprehend the infinite! I do not comprehend even an acorn, a fly, a pebble, and I want to comprehend God and all His precepts!

But it is absurd! There is nothing else to answer.

The mysteries of religion are like the sun. Impenetrable in themselves, they enlighten and vivify those who walk with simplicity in their radiance: they only blind the audacious eyes which would fathom their splendor.

Mysteries are above reason, and not contrary to reason; in which there is a great difference. Reason does not perceive, of her unaided strength, the truth which they express; neither does she perceive the impossibility of that truth.

No, faith is not opposed to reason. Far from that, she is her sister and her helper. It is a more brilliant light which comes to add itself to a light already shining.

Faith is to reason what the telescope is to the naked eye. The eye, with the aid of the telescope, sees what it could not perceive alone. It penetrates into regions which are inaccessible without that aid. Will you say that the telescope is opposed to the eyesight?

Such then is faith. It does but regulate and extend reason. Faith leaves to reason its free exercise in all that comes within its range; and when its natural powers have reached their limits, faith comes to its aid, raises it higher, and causes it to penetrate into new supernatural divine truths, even into the secrets of God.

I believe the mysteries of religion, then, as I believe the mysteries of nature, because I know that they exist.

I know that the mysteries of nature exist, because they are attested by the most unexceptionable witnesses; namely, all my senses and common sense.

I know that the mysteries of religion exist, because they also are attested by the most unexceptionable witnesses, Jesus Christ and His Church.* My reason serves me to examine and to weigh the value of their testimony. But when by the touch of philosophy, of criticism, and of good sense, I have examined the facts which prove to me the truth, divinity, and infallibility of these testimonies, my reason has finished its work; faith must take its place, reason has conducted me up to truth. Truth speaks, and I have only to listen, to open my heart, to believe, to adore.

My faith in the Christian mysteries is then supremely reasonable. It proves a solid and logical mind. My reason has said to me: "These witnesses can neither deceive you nor themselves. They bring you the truth from heaven!" I should not be true to my reason were I not to believe their word.

It is a pitiful weakness of mind to wish to believe only what one comprehends.

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Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Religion - 1908


SEVENTEENTH OBJECTION. I WOULD WILLINGLY HAVE FAITH, BUT I CANNOT.

Answer. That is a pure illusion, which will not excuse you at the tribunal of the awful Judge, who has declared to us, that "he who believes in Him has eternal life, and he who believes not in Him is already condemned."

You cannot believe? And what means have you taken to arrive at faith? He who desires the end desires the means also; he who neglects the means shows evidently that he is not very anxious about the end.

Now, that is your case, if you have not faith. Either you have not adopted the means of obtaining it, or you have not adopted them thoroughly, which comes to nearly the same thing.

1st. Have you prayed? It is the first condition of all God's gifts, consequently of faith, which is the most precious of them all, and the fundamental condition. Have you asked of God this grace of faith? How have you asked for it? Have you not asked indifferently, without feeling deeply interested in it; once only, perhaps, and without perseverance? Had you while praying, have you at this present moment, a deep, a sincere, a lively desire to believe and to be a Christian? There are some who ask for virtues, and who are very much afraid of obtaining them.

2d. Have you studied religion with a sincere love of the truth? Have I not seen skeptics studying religion in Voltaire, Rousseau, etc.? As well might you try to learn the manners and customs of the United States from the Chinese. Have you sought out a well-informed priest, or, at least, a Christian of enlightened belief, to whom to expose your difficulties, and have them solved? Pride is at hand, and often hinders this.

3d. Are you resolved, if God were to give you faith, to live according to its holy and rigid maxims, to combat your passions, to labor for your sanctification, to make to God the sacrifices which He shall demand of you?

Here, with the most part of unbelievers, is the true reason of their incredulity. It is in the main the heart, it is passion rather than reason, which rejects faith as too difficult, too wearisome. "Light has come into the world," said Jesus Christ, "and men have preferred darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." The heart gets the better of the head. Then all arguments are useless, truth is not to be listened to. "None are so deaf as those who will not hear," says the proverb.

This blindness is voluntary and culpable in its cause; this is why our Lord Jesus Christ declared that all unbelievers are judged beforehand; they have resisted truth.

Be of good faith then in your researches after religious truth; ask God for light with sincerity and perseverance, lay your doubts before some charitable and enlightened Priest; be disposed to live according to the faith as soon as the divine light shall illuminate your mind; and I affirm to you, in the name of Jesus Christ, that you will not fail soon to believe, and to become a good Catholic. "Ask, and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."

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Mgr. Louis de Ségur: Short Answers to Common Objections Against Religion - 1908


EIGHTEENTH OBJECTION. ALL RELIGIONS ARE GOOD.

Answer. All religions are good, in this sense that it is better to have some, of whatever kind it may be, than to have none at all; but not in the sense that it is quite unimportant whether you profess one or another.

You think, perhaps, provided a man is a worthy member of society, it signifies little whether he be Heathen, Jew, Turk, Christian, Protestant or Catholic; that all religious forms are human inventions, about which our good God must trouble Himself very little.

But tell me, whence have you obtained this notion? And who has revealed to you that all the forms of worship one sees in the world are equally pleasing to the Lord?

Because there are some false religions, does it follow that there is none which is true? If one is surrounded by deceivers, is it no longer possible to discern a real friend?

You have then discovered that God receives with the same love the Christian who adores Jesus Christ, and the Jew who only sees in Him a vile impostor? That it is good and lawful in heathen countries to adore, in the place of the one Supreme God, Jupiter, Mars, Venus? To render divine honors to the sacred crocodiles, and to the ox Apis, in Egypt? To sacrifice, among the Phoenicians, one's children to the god Moloch? In Gaul or Mexico, to immolate hundreds of human victims to the hideous idols there venerated? Elsewhere, to prostrate oneself before a trunk of a tree, before stones, plants, the remains of animals, masses of decay? To repeat from the bottom of the heart, at Constantinople, "God is God, and Mohammed is His prophet?" At Rome, in Paris, to abhor all these false gods, to despise this same Mohammed as an impostor?

It is quite impossible that you believe all this sincerely! That is what you say, however, "All religions are good."

Why not rather have the merit of frankness, and own that you do not wish the trouble of seeking for truth, that it is of little consequence to you, and that you look upon it as useless?

The search after religious truth useless? . . . Rash man! Suppose, in direct contradiction to your affirmation, which is supported by nothing, that God has imposed on man an order of determinate homage? Suppose, that among all religions, one, one only is the religion, religious and absolute truth, like all other truth, rejecting all mixture, excluding all which is not itself. To what are you, then, exposing yourself? Do you think that your indifference will excuse you before the tribunal of the sovereign Judge? And can you, without perfect madness, brave such a terrible prospect?

Just see the misery of man without a divine religion! See him with only the pale rays of his reason, abandoned to doubt, often even to the most inevitable, the most perilous ignorance with regard to the fundamental questions of his destinies, his duties, his happiness! From whence do I come? Who am I? Whither am I going? What is my last end? How am I to attain to it? What is there beyond this life? What is God? What does He desire of me, etc., etc.

Now what answer can reason, left to its unaided strength, give to these important problems? It stammers, it remains mute; it can offer only probable, possible solutions, a thousand times insufficient to enable us to surmount the violence of our passions, to sustain us in the rugged path of duty.

And you would be willing to think that the God of all wisdom, of all goodness, of all light, has thus abandoned His reasonable creature, man, the greatest work of His hands?

No, no. He has caused to shine before his eyes a heavenly light, which, corresponding to the imperious wants of his being, reveals to him, with a divine evidence, the nature, and the justice, and the goodness, and the designs of that God who is his first principle and his last end; a light which shows to him the road of good, and the road of evil, both lying open before him, the one leading to eternal joys, the other to eternal punishments; a light which, amidst the false gleamings wherewith human corruption has surrounded it, is distinguished by the sole splendor of its truth; a light which illumines, quickens, perfects all which it penetrates!
And this light is the Christian Revelation, Christianity, the only religion which has proofs, the only one which enlightens the reason, which sanctifies the heart, and, referring all our moral perfection to the knowledge and love of God, is worthy of God and of ourselves.

What human tongue could enumerate all the titles that Christianity has to our belief? Behold it, at the outset, ascend to the very cradle of the world by the prophecies which announce it, by the faith, the hope, and the love of the holy patriarchs, and by the ceremonies of the Mosaic and primitive worship which foreshadow it!

It has ever been, in fact, one sole and identical religion, though it has been developed in three successive phases.

1st. In the patriarchal religion, which lasted from Adam till the time of Moses;
2d. In the Jewish religion, which Moses promulgated, as sent from God, and which lasted till the Advent of Jesus Christ;
3d. In the Christian, or Catholic religion, taught by Jesus Christ Himself, and preached by His Apostles.

It developed itself, from its origin, gradually and majestically, like all the works of God — like man, who passes through the stages of childhood, of adolescence, before arriving at the perfection of his age; as the day passes through the stages of twilight, and dawn, before it shines in its midday splendor; as the flower, which is first a mere germ, next a closed bud, before it discovers the beauty of its unfolded petals.

And thus Christianity, and it alone, embraces humanity at large; it rules all things, the present time, and the ages past and present. It sets out from eternity to return again to the bosom of eternity. It proceeds from God only to repose eternally in God!

All in it is worthy of its author. All in it is truth and sanctity. And those who study it discover in it a marvellous harmony, a beauty, a grandeur, an evidence of truth; and these ever increasing and growing in proportion as they examine its dogmas.

It touches and purifies the heart, at the same time that it enlightens the mind. It fills the whole man.

• The sublime, superhuman and incomparable character of Jesus Christ, its founder;
  
• The divine perfection of His life;
  
• The sanctity of His law;
  
• The practical sublimity of the doctrine which He taught;
  
• His language, which is absurd, if it is not divine;
  
• The number and evidence of His miracles, recognized even by His most violent enemies;
  
• The power of His Cross;
  
• The events of His ineffable Passion, all foretold beforehand;
  
• His glorious Resurrection, announced at fourteen different times by Him to His disciples, and the unbelief even of His Apostles, whom actual evidence compelled to believe in the truth of the Resurrection of their Master;
  
• His ascension into heaven, in the sight of more than five hundred witnesses;
  
• The supernatural development of His Church, in spite of so many natural impossibilities, both physical and moral;
  
• The resplendent miracles which accompanied, all over the earth, the teachings of the apostles, ignorant and timid fishermen, changed suddenly into doctors and conquerors of the world;
  
• The superhuman strength of His nine millions of martyrs;
  
• The genius of the Fathers of the Church, crushing all errors, by the mere exposition of the Christian faith;
  
• The holy lives of true Christians, opposed to the corruption and natural weakness of men;
  
• The social transformation which Christianity has operated, and still in our day operates, in all the countries where it penetrates;
  
• Finally, its duration, the immutability of its dogmas, of its constitution, of its Catholic hierarchy; its indissoluble unity in the midst of the empires which are crumbling away, of societies which are daily changing; all show us that the finger of God is here, and that it is not in the power of man to conceive, to create, or to preserve a similar work.
  

There is then, you see, a true religion, one only, the Christian religion.

It alone is religion, that is to say, the sacred tie which attaches us to God, our Creator and Father.

It is the only one which transmits to us true religious doctrine, that which God teaches us with regard to Himself, His nature, and works, with regard to ourselves, our eternal destinies, our moral duties.

All other pretended religions, which teach what Christianity rejects, and reject what Christianity teaches, Paganism, Judaism,* Mohammedanism, whatsoever they may be called, are then false, and, consequently, bad.

They are human inventions, while religion is a divine institution. They are only sacrilegious imitations of true religion, as false coin is the dishonest imitation of the genuine.

Would it not be preposterous to say, "All pieces of money are good," without distinguishing the real from the counterfeit?
It would be more preposterous still to repeat henceforth that phrase of which we have just been proving the folly, "All religions are good."

Either it is a piece of heinous impiety, or of prodigious absurdity; of impiety, if said from indifference; of folly, if from ignorance or heedlessness.