en, in the
high and full acceptation of the term. In order that the meeting
together of the individual and of humanity may produce such fruits, God
must dwell continually in the sanctuary of the conscience. The inner
light is kindled in the intercourse of the soul with its Creator; it is
afterwards brightened and nurtured by the soul's intercourse with the
traces of God which humanity reveals. But this light makes manifest
within us, and without us, great darkness. We have no right to abandon
ourselves to every spectacle which strikes our view. If, in presence of
what is passing in the world, we are tempted to regard the prosperity of
the wicked with cowardly envy; if we would fill up, for the satisfaction
of our evil desires, the abyss which separates the holy from the impure,
the inner voice lifts itself up and cries to us: "Woe! woe to them who
call evil good, and good evil."[142] God is our Master, even as He is
our good and our hope. The fact of the revolts of humanity can have no
effect against His sovereign will. Soldiers in the service of the
Almighty, life is for us a conflict, and duty imposes on us a combat.

Such, Sirs, is the explanation of our destinies, an old, and, if you
like, a vulgar one. Let us now give our attention to the doctrine which
deifies humanity, and follow out its consequences. Humanity carries
within its bosom the idea of truth, the love of beauty, the sense of
good. What does it need more? These noble aspirations mark for it the
end of its efforts. What will be wanting to a life regulated by duty,
enlightened by truth, ennobled by art? What will be wanting to such a
life? Nothing, or everything. Nothing, if the search after good, truth,
and beauty leads to God. Everything, if it be sought to carry it on
without any reference to God, because from the moment that man desires
to be the source of light to himself, the light will be changed into
darkness, as we said at the beginning of this lecture. Put God out of
view, and good, beauty, and truth will disappear; while you will see
produced the decline of art, the dissolution of thought in scepticism,
the absolute negation of morality. Let us consider with the attention
it deserves, and in contemporary examples, this sad and curious
spectacle.

I open a treatise by M. Taine. The English historian Macaulay speaks of
literary men who "have taken pains to strip vice of its odiousness, to
render virtue ridiculous, to rank adultery among the eleg