are severe, doctor."

"I am not severe. It is the truth."

"How does it happen that a people so weak, feeble, and base could
overthrow the power of the French in the world?"

"That was because the German people were not yet corrupted by that
shallow, unreal, hollow twaddle of the educated classes about humanity.
It was not the princes, not the nobility, who overthrew Napoleon. It
was the German people who did it. When, in 1813, the Germans rose, in
hamlet and city, they staked their property and lives for fatherland.
But it was not the enlightened poets and professors, not modern
sentimentality, that raised their hearts to this great sacrifice; not
these who enkindled this enthusiasm for fatherland. It was the
religious element that did it. The German warriors did not sing
Goethe's hymns to Napoleon, nor the insipid model song of 'Luetzows
wilder Jagd,' as they rushed into battle. They sang religious hymns,
they prayed before the altars. They recognized, in the terrible
judgment on Russia's ice-fields, the avenging hand of God. Trusting in
God, and nerved by religious exaltation, they took up the sword that
had been sharpened by the previous calamities of war. So the feeble
philanthropists could effect nothing. It was only a religious, healthy,
strong people could do that."

"But the saints, doctor! We have wandered from them."

"Not at all! We have thrown some light on inimical shadows; the light
can now shine. The lives of the saints exhibit something wonderful and
remarkable. I have studied them carefully. I have sought to know their
aims and efforts. I discovered that they imitated the example of
Christ, that they realized the exalted teachings of the Redeemer. You
find fault with their contempt for the things of this world. But it is
precisely in this that these men are great. Their object was not the
ephemeral, but the enduring. They considered life but as the entrance
to the eternal destiny of man--in direct opposition to the spirit of
the times, that dances about the golden calf. The saints did not value
earthly goods for more than they were worth. They placed them after
self-control and victory over our baser nature. Exact and punctual in
all their duties, they were animated by an admirable spirit of charity
for their fellow-men. And in this spirit they have frequently revived
society. Consider the great founders of orders--St. Benedict, St.
Dominic, St. Vincent de Paul! Party spirit, malice, and stupidity