own upon his
head the avenging lightning of this word: "Thou art the man!" The
sword attacks, destroys, but it defends, also, and this is its fairest
work. Never is the voice more touching than when it is lifted in favor
of the weak, and, when, suddenly, in the midst of the iniquities
of brute force that it denounces, marks with its stigma, it causes
justice to shine forth and the truth to be felt, in the holy
soul-traversing thrill, that God Himself is there and that His hour
has come!

A voice has its echo. When this echo is sympathetic, it is endowed
with the sweetest recompense and obliterates the memory of many
sorrows. But this echo is often hostile. It arises from wrath and is
increased by hatred. Then it is resistance, riot, that rumbles. It is
the passions and the scourged vices that twist and bellow like deer
under the lash of the trainer. How many times, O, faithful voices,
souls of peace and truth, has the spirit that animates you driven you
to these fearful encounters--you who have heard in the silence of your
hearts the holy verities and who know their worth, you are obliged to
go bearing them in the face of menace, of mockery, of trembling rage
where they seem to us like Daniel in the lion's den! A terrible
ordeal! but one before which the testifying voices have never
recoiled. Luther, who knew the emotions of the great battles of the
spirit where one man is alone in the face of a thousand, where tinder
the growing clamors and the cries of death ... a voice struggles like
a torch in a tempest, has given to the servants of truth a counsel
that is the alpha and omega of their austere mission. When they have
said all, done all, essayed all, put all their being and all their
love into the proclamation of what they have to announce, then, he
says, "let them be ready to be hooted at and spat upon!" And not only
should they be ready but they should accept this lot with happiness.
Christ says to them: "Happy are they that are outraged and persecuted
for the sake of justice!"

Alas, the rudest proof for him who speaks the truth is not to arouse
indignation. That, at least, is a result, and however sad it may be,
it bears witness to him who has spoken. Certain protests, despite
their fury, are a sort of involuntary homage. The supreme trial for
a voice is indifference. When John called himself a voice in the
wilderness, he alluded to that external solitude where his voice was
raised. But this solitude, on certai