s? We will tell them that they
depart from the grand Christian tradition, of which they believe
themselves _par excellence_ the representatives. We will add that they
outrage their Master by seeming to believe that in order to exalt Him it
is necessary to calumniate humanity. Again, what shall we say to those
philosophers, who do not wish for truth except when they have succeeded
in educing it by themselves? to those philosophers who draw a little
circle about their own personal thought, and say: If truth discovers
itself outside this circle we have no wish to see it; and who boast that
they only are free, because they have abandoned the common beliefs? We
will tell them that they are deceiving themselves by taking for their
own personal thought the _debris_ of the tradition of the human race.
We will add that their pretended independence is a veritable slavery. A
strange sort of liberty that, which should forbid those who affect it to
accept a faith which appeared to them to be true, because they were not
the inventors of it. Listen to this wise reflection of a contemporary
writer: "Philosophy allows us to range ourselves on the side of
Platonism: why should it not also allow us to range ourselves on the
side of the Christian faith, if there it is that we find wisdom and
immutable truth? The choice ought to seem as free and as worthy of
respect on the one side as on the other; and philosophy which claims
liberty for itself, is least of all warranted in refusing it to
others."[18] To be free, is to look for truth wherever it may be found,
and it is to obey truth wherever we meet with it. When the question
therefore relates to God, or to the soul and its eternal destinies,--to
the man who asks me, Are you occupied with religion or philosophy? I
have only one answer to give: I am a man, and I am seeking truth.

A final consideration will perhaps put these thoughts in a more
striking light. If you think the most important of the discussions of
our day to be that between natural and revealed religion, between deism
and the Gospel, you have not well discerned the signs of the times. The
fundamental discussion is now between men who believe in God, in the
soul, and in truth, and men, who, denying truth, deny at the same time
the soul and God. When these high problems are in question, periodicals
and other publications, which have the widest circulation, and which
gain admission into every household, bring us too often the work