APPEAL TO WORKINGMEN.

APPEAL TO WORKINGMEN.FROM THE FRENCH OF LEON GAUTIER IN THE REVUE DU MONDE CATHOLIQUE.DISCOURSE PRONOUNCED JANUARY 13, 1873, TO INAUGURATE THE LECTURES INTENDED FOR THE WORKING-CLASSES.[198]To-daywe inaugurate the lectures specially consecrated to workingmen. We are full of joyous hopes, and believe that this work of light will be at the same time a work of reconciliation, of love, and of peace. The cross, which we have placed conspicuously in all our places of reunion—the cross, that we elevate and display everywhere as a magnificent standard—the cross, that we will never consent to hide, indicates clearly what is our faith and what is our aim. We wish to enlighten your understandings, dilate your hearts, direct your wills in the way of the good, the beautiful, and the true. In a word, we wish to conquer you for Christ, and we say it here with a frankness which profoundly abhors all cunning of speech. You will give us credit for sincerity, which you have always loved; for, as has been said by a great contemporary orator,[199]“The people are not deceived; they feel when they are approached with faith in them and in their eminent dignity.”We come, then, to you with this cross of Constantine, which has converted the world. This glorious sign we have surrounded with rays, to show you that light proceeds from Christianity, as the stream flows from its source, and the beams radiate from a star. If possible, we would have adopted as a flag the beautiful cross in the catacomb of S. Pontian, from which spring roses—symbols of joy. We would have chosen it, to show you that in Christ is found not only the repose of the enlightened understanding, but also the repose, the joy, and the alleluia of the satisfied heart. It is by this sign we will conquer.In this first lecture, which will serve as an humble preface to the discourses of so many eminent orators, we intend only to take up the working question, to tell you our entire thought on the subject, to open to you our whole heart. Do not hope to hear an academic speech; do not expect those vain compliments to which you have been accustomed from flatterers who did not love you. We say at first and without circumlocution that between Christian society and the working world there exists to-day a certain misunderstanding, and it is this misunderstanding we would wish to dissipate, and we beg of the divine Workman of Nazareth to direct our words, blessed by him, to the understanding and heart of the workmen of Paris.In the first part of this discourse, which will be brief, we will say what we are; in the second, what we wish; and in the third, we will reply to certain objections to the church which are current among workingmen,and cause the deplorable misunderstanding from which we wish to deliver your minds and hearts, equally oppressed. It is time that the truth should free you.I.In order that you may better understand what we are, we wish to commence by showing you what we are not.We are not politicians; this we desire to declare openly. Never, never will there be pronounced in this precinct one word that may even remotely touch upon our old or recent discords. We will never deserve to be called partisans. Whatever may be our intimate convictions (and we have the right to have them), we only wish to be and we will only be Christians. We suppose there may be in the bosom of all the avowed parties sincere Catholics who are by no meansindependents. When we tread upon the threshold of her basilicas, the church, which rises before us, does not ask if we are monarchists or republicans, but only if we believe in the eternal Word, who created heaven and earth, who became man in the crib of Bethlehem, and who saved us on a cross. Thus will we do, and the only popular song you will hear in this place will be the Credo; come, come, and sing it with us.Thank God, we do not belong to the group, too numerous, of pretended conservatives, who only see in the labor question a painful preoccupation which might trouble the calm of their digestion; who do not wish to impose upon themselves any real sacrifice, and are easily astonished that the working-classes complain of their sufferings. We are not like the fashionable and delicate egoists who for several centuries have given the fatal example of indifference, of doubt, and of negation in religion, who have followed Voltaire, who have wickedly laughed in the face of outraged truth, who have torn God from the heart of the workman, and who nevertheless persist in affirming that “religion is good for the people”—men of refinement, who to-day edit journals full of talent, where on the first page is offered ultra-conservative articles, and on the second ultra-obscene romances. No; we are not of this class. Away with those sceptics whose fears make them pretend to have the faith! Away with those who doubt the people, and who do not love them!We are not of those who are led to you by this vile fear or by a still viler interest; we are not of those who see in you an armed force before which they must tremble, or an electoral majority before whom they must kneel. We will never come to solicit your votes, and we are bent upon serving you with absolute disinterestedness. Briefly, we are for you and will always be your friends and servants, but will never condescend to court you. Besides, the victory which we desire is not that which can be gained by force, consequently we do not count on force. We only wish to win your understandings with our faith, your hearts with our love.We do not place the golden age in a past too superstitiously loved. Whatever affection I may feel in my heart for those dear middle ages, to which I have consecrated all my studies and all my life, I do not find them sufficiently Christian to be the only ideal. We know that those centuries, so differently judged, were the theatre of a gigantic struggle between paganism, more and more conquered, and the church, more and more victorious; and we draw afundamental distinction between the chivalry that so heroically defended the truth and the feudality that did it such injury. We do not ignore the fact that paganism, in dying, left to the Christian ages, as a frightful legacy, the traditions of slavery, impurity, and violence; and we confess that Christianity could not in one day decapitate the hundred-headed hydra.If we regard especially the workmen’s guilds or corporations, we will go so far as to own that their organization, so admirably Christian in some respects, nevertheless left too much room for certain abuses that we hate; and, as a decisive example, we assert that the material condition of the members was not then what a Christian heart would wish to-day. We have the religion, not the superstition, of the middle ages; of that epoch so unworthily calumniated we preserve all the elements truly Christian, and reject the others. We recognize in that rude and laborious age the dawn, the beautiful dawn, of Catholic civilization so scandalously interrupted by the Renaissance. In those centuries, so slighted and misunderstood, we salute above all the cycle of the saints.We ardently love the sublime period when S. Benedict gave to a hundred thousand men and to twenty generations the order and signal to clear the minds and the fields, equally sterile; when S. Francis conversed with the birds of the air, reconciled all nature with humanity Christianized, and gave to his contemporaries the love of “our lady, poverty!” We love the period made joyful by the death of slavery under the font of the church; when all the institutions of the state and of the family were energetically Catholic; when royalty was represented by a S. Louis, love by a S. Elizabeth, science by a S. Thomas of Aquinas. But our soul has still stronger wings, and would fly still higher. We wish still more, we wish still better, and we will build up the future with two kinds of materials—with the past undoubtedly, but also with our desires, which are vast.We are not of those who ingenuously think the world at present is organized as one would wish. Doubtless there are in the working-class of our time illegitimate desires, guilty jealousies, unrighteous thirsts; but we also know all that the world of laborers can offer to the eyes of God, of cruel sufferings, of noble sighs, and of honest tears. God preserve us from ever laughing at one of those griefs, even should they be merited! On the contrary, we hope that Christian society will one day come, through peace and prayer, the sacraments and love, to a better disposition, a more profound pacification, a happier distribution of riches, a wider-spread prosperity, and to something more resembling the reign of God. But, alas! we are convinced that the definitive repartition and equality will only be consummated in eternity. Those who do not believe in a future life will never see their desire of infinite justice satisfied—they condemn themselves to this punishment.We do not despise the work of the hands; far from it, we seek to place the mechanic close to the artist. For centuries, there have been Pyrenees between art and industry; these Pyrenees we wish to remove, and we will succeed. In truth, the workman is an august being; and the title of his nobility will be easily found in the depths of faith and of theology. Listen: the eternal type, the adorable type, of the workman is the Heavenly Father, theFaber divinus, who, not content with makingobedient matter spring from nothing, like a sublime goldsmith chiselled it into a splendid jewel. Beauty, Goodness, personal and living Truth—such, to the letter, was the first Workman. God joined, framed, hewed, cemented, carved the whole universe, the firmament, the stars. His gracious and magnificent hand, armed with an invisible chisel, is discovered in every part of the creation which has been wonderfully sculptured by this marvellous Workman. Workmen of every condition, here contemplate the work of your Model, of your Master, of your divine Patron. The sombre forests, the transparent foliage, the flowers whose wonders are only revealed by the microscope, the mountains, the ocean, the infinite depths—all, all were made by the great Workman.Incomparable Artificer! he conceived the plan of all these beings in His eternal Word, and one day, to realize this design, he pronounced these words: “Be they!” and they were. But it was not enough to show himself the workman; God feared, if I may be allowed so to speak, that his calling might be despised; and he desired so truly to be a workman that of a God he made himself a carpenter as well as man. He chose a noble position, perfectly characteristic, and, with his divine hands, sawed, planed, polished, worked the wood that in the first hour of the world he had worked in the design of the creation. Workmen, my brethren, it is not a fable, it is not a symbol: Jesus, the Son of God, was the apprentice, the companion, the workman, the carpenter; and the venerable monuments of tradition show him to us making ploughs, perhaps crosses. What can I not say to you of the Holy Ghost, considered as the Workman of the spiritual world, which he had really cemented, hewed, and framed? What can I not explain of the beautiful realities of symbolism? With regret I leave this workshop of the church, and now content myself with the workshop of the creation, and with that of Nazareth.But you question me more earnestly, and ask what I think of the contemporary workman. And I reply that, notwithstanding his faults and errors, I feel for him a great love, invincibly aroused by Christ. Yes; I close my eyes, I abstract myself. I forget so many ignoble flames, so much blood, the pure blood so sacrilegiously shed. I wish to separate my thoughts from so many ruins, so many scandals. I come to you, pagan workman, rebellious to God, and, in the midst of your rebellious and Satanic orgies, I approach you, who formerly were baptized, and place my hand upon your heart, that I may not despair. Your mind is darkened, your will misled; but there are yet some pulsations which allow me still to hope, and I willingly repeat the words of that great bishop who has devoted so much time to the social question: “The people love that which is beautiful, they understand what is great; know that they have high aspirations, and that they seek to rise.” And again: “The workman of our day has eliminated the generous ideas from the Gospel, and yet borrows from Christianity his noble and holy sentiments.”Nothing is truer; if chemistry could analyze souls, what Christian elements would be found in those of workmen! I readily see in each the admirable material of one of those poor men so powerfully sketched by Victor Hugo. He speaks of a miserable fisherman on the sea-shore, who already has five children, perishing from hunger; when one day at market, he sees and adopts twoorphans poorer than he, and thus he reasons: “We have five children, these will make seven; we will mingle them together, and they will climb at night on our knees. They will live, and will be brother and sister to the five others. When God sees that we must feed this little boy and this little girl with the others, he will make us catch more fish, that is all!” Workmen of Paris, read these lines; they are worth more than those of theAnnée terrible, and paint you exactly. You are capable of this sublime devotion, and I recall you to the true nobility of your nature.You know now what we are not, and I think that we have never failed for an instant to be truly sincere. On the contrary, we have designedly multiplied all the difficulties with perfect frankness. It is scarcely necessary to add that we are not of those who disdain the social and labor questions, and who, while hiding themselves in the graceful domain of fancy, repeat with Alfred de Musset:“If two names by chance mingle in my song,They will always be Ninette or Ninon.”This charming indifference is but a form of selfishness. Let us go further, and although in our quality of Catholics (the only nobility, the only title to which we are really attached) we place a higher estimate on the future life than the present, we do not think only of the heavenly destiny of the workman. For more than eighteen hundred years, the church has not ceased for an instant to occupy herself with the temporal condition of all the working-classes. In her firmament, there are fourteen magnificent constellations, which are called the seven corporal works of mercy, and the seven spiritual. She has made them all shine on the brow of the workman, and it is for him, above all, that she preserves the light. This example of our mother, the church, we always wish to imitate. We know, besides, and it is a powerful argument, that misery is a poor counsellor, and, if it is badly accepted, turns souls from duty and eternity.Therefore, we declare a mortal war against want and misery, and it is thus that, in ameliorating the earth, we hope to prepare heaven.We wish at this moment our heart were an open book, written in large characters, and readable for all. Our brothers, the workmen, would see that we do not blindly accuse them of all the crimes and mistakes of modern society, and that we very well know how to comment severely on the other classes. They would there read the programme of our work, as recently sketched by a great bishop of the holy church: “We should believe in the people, hope in them, love them.” For you must not imagine that alms will here suffice, and that the people will accept them; they exact all our heart, our esteem, our respect. He who does not respect the workman can do nothing. Thus, this doctrine of respect for the workman, the truly Christian doctrine, is the base upon which the Catholic Circle of Workingmen has erected its edifice: may God prosper and bless it!Ask us now with frankness what we are, what is our faith, and listen well to our reply, which will not be less sincere.We believe in one only God, the supreme and sovereign Workman, whom we do not confound with his work; the work is divine, but it is not God. Beyond the world, above the world, in an inaccessible region, lives and reigns from everlasting to everlasting the majesty of God, the Infinite and Absolute, the Justiceand Mercy, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, living and personal, the eternal Providence, who watches over the workmen of all races and of all times. There are among you some who refuse to this God the free adhesion of their faith, and it is this negation which we come here to combat with the arms of reason and of light. All depends upon your faith; even though you may be atheists, we will love you, but, alas! you will not return our love, and the reconciliation so ardently desired will not be easily realized; for you can only be dissolved in love, and God is love.We believe, then, in God the Creator, and we bow before him with the simple and magnificent faith of the humble stone-cutter of whom Lamartine speaks, and who one day said to our great poet, “I do not know how other men are made; but, as for me, I cannot see, I do not say a star, but even an ant, the leaf of a tree, a grain of sand, without asking who made it; and the reply is, God. I understand it well, for, before being, it was not; therefore, it could not make itself.” I quote these beautiful words with great joy under the roof of a chapel especially consecrated to workmen. Meditate upon them, workmen, who listen to me; and, if you are republicans, respect, love, believe in what this republican of 1848 respected, loved, and believed. Then the workman believed in God; this time must return, and for this necessary work we will expend our time, our strength, our life. But it is not enough to believe in God; we must render to the Creator the act of the creature, and offer him respect, homage, confidence, prayer, and love. Blessed be this little chapel ofJésus-Ouvrier, if this night one of these sentiments will be offered by one of the souls who are here and listen to me.We also believe in the Son of God, the Word, the interior Speech, the creative Word of the Father, and we affirm that this Word, at a determined moment of history, came down on our earth that sin had stained, and that had to be purified. To arrive at God, who is absolute purity, we must be white or whitened. Are we white of ourselves? Look into your souls, and answer. Christ, then, came to suffer, to expiate, to die for us all, and especially for all workmen, past, present, and to come. Such is the admirable doctrine of the solidarity of expiation; and it is here that Jesus is again the type of workmen. Oh! who can complain of work, when God for thirty years submitted to the rigorous law of manual labor! Who can complain of suffering, when he bore the weight of all the sufferings of the body and of the human soul! Who can complain of loneliness and abandonment, when this God was betrayed by his tenderest friends, and abandoned by all except his mother, who remained standing at the foot of the cross! Who can complain of dying in solitude, in grief, and in shame, on the pallet of a garret or the bed of a hospital, when he, the Creator of so many millions of suns and of the universe, gave us the example of the most cruel death, after having offered us as model the most wretched life! Ah! they had reason to decree the suppression of the crucifix in the hospitals and schools; for a true workman cannot look at the crucifix without being moved to the bottom of his soul, without extending to it his arms, without being profoundly consoled, without crying, “Behold my Master, my Example, and my Father!”We believe that Christianity is contained in these words, which we should ponder: “Imitation of Christ,” and, in particular, “Imitation of Jesus the workman.” It is by that means we will be led to give a place to private virtues, which our adversaries do not wish to accord to us. Nowadays it is fashionable among workmen and others to repeat this ill-sounding proposition, which is an exact summary of Victor Hugo’s last work: that “Society is bad, and man is good.” Do not believe it; man is an intelligent, free, responsible being, who can, when he wishes, and with the aid of God, conquer the evil in him, and do good. As society is only a composition of men, it follows and will ever be that, if each one of us becomes purer, more humble, more charitable, better, society will itself become less savage, more enlightened, better organized, every way improved. In political economy, we cannot too highly exalt therôleof private virtues.It can be demonstrated mathematically, and it will soon be shown, that everything socially springs from sacrifice. If you wish to know here what distinguishes the Catholics from their enemies, I will tell you very simply that they place duty before right, and that the enemies of the church place right before duty. Certainly, we believe in right as strongly as you can; but we make it the logical consequence and, if I may say so, the reward of accomplished duty. Weigh well this doctrine, to which is attached the destiny of the world.Finally, we believe in the life everlasting. Doubtless it is to be desired that all men should make every effort for the reign of justice on this earth; in this, the Catholics have not been wanting, nor ever will be. But whatever may be the legitimate beauty of these attempts, I think that the perfection of ideal justice will only be found in the future life, and that, to make the definitive balance of the fate of each man, heaven must always enter in the calculation. Here below there are too many inconsolable sorrows, more suffering than social equality can ever suppress. Alas! there will always be the passions that ravage the heart; always ingratitude and abandonment; always sickness and the death of those whom we love best. Paradise of my God! you will re-establish the equilibrium; paradise of my God! if you are, above all, destined for those who have suffered, you will be assuredly opened to workmen. In this hope I live.And here I am led to recapitulate, not without emotion, all the benefits that Providence has more especially reserved for you. “A heavenly Father, who merits above all the title of workman, and who made the earth; a God, who comes on earth to take up the plane, the saw, and the hammer, and become the prototype of workmen; an infallible church that for eighteen hundred years has bent over workmen, to enlighten, console, and love them; an eternity of happiness, where all present injustice will be superabundantly repaired.”Workmen, my brethren, what can you ask further? In the place of God, what could you make better? Answer.II.What do we wish, however? In other words, what can we promise you?First of all, there are twenty promises we cannot make you, and it is our duty here to warn you of ournon possumus.We cannot promise you ever to consider armed revolt as a duty or a right. We cling with all the strength of our understanding to thedoctrine that even against injustice the protest should be martyrdom, heroically accepted, heroically submitted. Thus did the first Christians; they allowed themselves to be slaughtered like beautiful sheep, covered with generous blood. This sublimely passive resistance will not take from us, as it never did from them, the liberty of speech; they died declaring their belief in God, the supreme Principle, and in the Son of God, the sovereign Expiator. And when fifteen or eighteen millions had been killed, the church triumphed; she then came forth from the catacombs, and to her was given the mission to enlighten the world.We do not promise you the liberty of doing evil, and it would be false if we even appeared to make such an engagement. At this instant, there are five hundred men in France who pervert, corrupt, putrefy France; among these are four hundred and ninety writers and ten caricaturists; according to our idea, it is deplorable that they can freely exercise their trade, and destroy with impunity so many millions of souls among young girls, young men, and workmen.We cannot with sincerity promise you absolute equality on this earth. What we can promise you hereafter is that beautiful equality of Christians who are sprung from the same God-Creator, saved by the same God-Redeemer, enlightened by the same God-Illuminator. It is the equality, the profound equality, of baptism and the eucharist; the equality of souls in trials and reward; it is, in fine, equality in heaven. As for the other, we will exhaust ourselves in the effort to obtain it; but we have two obstacles before us, over which we do not hope to triumph—sickness and vice. No equality is possible with these two scourges, and they are ineradicable. We cannot promise you either illegitimate pleasure or even the end of suffering. In taking suffering from man—which is impossible—they would take from him his resemblance to God, and consequently his true greatness and his titles to heaven. The more we suffer, the more we resemble our Father, the more we merit eternal joy. In suffering will be found the Christian principle, which we cannot efface from the Gospel, and which is even the essence of the Christian life. But we promise to suffer with you, and, as the church has done for eighteen hundred years, to alleviate your sorrows, to heal your wounds, to satisfy your material and moral hunger, and to quench your thirst for truth. The fathers of the church invite us only to consider ourselves as “depositaries of riches.” All property is but a deposit in our hands—a deposit which we are strictly obliged to communicate to you, and for which we must render an account to the Master.We promise you also faith, which gives to the soul a noble attribute and a happy tranquillity. And with faith we can give you what has been well called theintelligence of life—the intelligence thanks to which the workman knows how to accept inequality, because he sees in the horizon the beautiful perspective of eternity. We promise you calmness in certainty, the consolation that every workman can feel in regarding his divine type; and, in giving you this type, you will possess a rare treasure, for which your souls are justly eager.We promise you the sweetness of work Christianly accepted. Says a great Christian: “What matters work when Jesus Christ is there?” It is here that we must recall those splendid verses of the greatest of our poets—those verses which we wouldwish to see written on the walls of all our transfigured workshops: “God, look you—let the senseless reject—causes to be born of labor two daughters: Virtue which makes cheerfulness sweet, and Cheerfulness which makes virtue charming.” And with work, you will conquer also the “courage of life”; for you will be convinced that all beings are subjected to this great law, and that the blows of your hammers are the notes of a universal chant. “All work, each one is at his post; he who governs the state; the savant, who extends the limits of human explorations; the sculptor, who makes the statue spring from his chisel; the poet, who sings between his tears and his sighs; the priest, who punishes and pardons—all, down to you, poor workman, in your smoky workshop. We are all living stones of that cathedral formed of souls and of centuries for the glory of God.”[200]With such thoughts, the day appears short, and labor assumes an exquisite character. What joy to say, “I work with the entire universe; I work as God himself has set me the example.”Still further, we promise you honor and pride. The Christian workman, he whom we hope to see multiplied in Paris, loves his trade; he is proud of it, and would blush if he did not prefer it to all others. He contemplates with satisfaction the work which he has just accomplished, and, like the Creator, with innocent simplicity, finds it beautiful. He attempts without jealousy to equal and even surpass the best workmen of his kind. He thinks that his country should be the most honorable and the most honored of all, and that France should be the equal of all other powers. On this subject he will not jest, but becomes grave. If he belongs to a corporation, he is enthusiastic for the glory of his banner, and will not allow it to be insulted. When a man thus respects his position, he respects himself, and is led to respect God. Such are the elements of what I willingly term the workman’s honor.We promise you peace of conscience, the happiness that follows accomplished duty, the repose in joy. Every workman among us should say to his children what one of the most learned men of the day, the illustrious Emmanuel de Rougé, wrote in his will: “May my children preserve the faith. Repose of mind and heart can only be found in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and the Saviour of man.” To work, says a contemporary philosopher, is easy; to repose is difficult. Man works without repose when he labors relying only upon himself; he works and reposes when he commences by first confiding himself to God. This is the repose we offer you; it is supremely delicious, and the workman will be led to repose, in working for others, like good Claude des Huttes, the stone-cutter of St. Point, the friend of Lamartine, who, poor as he was, worked gratuitously for those poorer than he, and said to himself, when retiring to rest: “I have earned a good day’s wages; for the poor pay me in friendship, my heart pays me in contentment, and the good God will pay me in mercy.” O greatness of the Christian workman!We promise to labor as unceasingly for the amelioration of your material condition as for the enlargement of your understanding. Evil be to us if we did not think of the lodging, warming, nourishment of the workman’s family; if we would confiscate science to our profit, and not extend to you the treasure; if we ceased for a single instant to openschools, asylums, circles, conferences, institutions of peace and of light. We do not recoil before progress; no light terrifies us. From texts of the Gospel, we have and ever will produce new consequences, religious, philosophical, and social; and these conclusions constitute a progress incessant and ever new—our progress, the only true progress.Finally, we promise to organize with your aid the workingmen’s associations. Association only frightens us when it leans towards despotism, and we wish principally to give it a religious character. The confraternity! an old word, which is ridiculed, but which in reality is a great thing; men reunited for one temporal aim under the protection of God, their angel guardians, and their celestial patrons; free men, discussing with all loyalty the interests of their trade, and knowing how to govern themselves. You will invent nothing better, provided always that, in this enlarged institution, the Catholic spirit is harmoniously mingled with the positive rules of social science. We are in the midst of a crisis which cannot last long; to our mutual aid and co-operative societies others will succeed more scientifically organized, and, above all, more Christian. We hope in this future, and believe it very near; it is the ideal for this world now, and for heaven hereafter—heaven, which is the great association of the happy ...III.It would seem impossible, in the face of such doctrines, that any misunderstanding could exist between the church and the workman; but Satan has not understood it in this manner, and objections pour against the church.It has been said repeatedly that the church has done nothing for the workman. It is the conclusion that Victor Hugo has given to hisLes Misérables, and this book has singularly contributed to develop hatred in the hearts of the people. Numerous writers, animated with the same ardent hate, affirm daily that, to find society well organized, we must go back to antiquity, or take 1789 as the place of departure.To refute these assertions, we will first say that, in regard to antiquity, they forget that it was devoured by the frightful cancer of slavery; among the greater part of nations before Christ, the workmen were for a long time principally slaves. Manual labor, which was universally despised, was performed by entire nations of slaves, who were paid with lashes of the whip. Thus were built many of the magnificent monuments of the Greeks, and, above all, of the Romans—monuments which they place so far above those of the present. I remember, one beautiful October night in the Eternal City, contemplating with stupefaction the immense mass of the Coliseum; the gigantic shafts of the columns which lay pell-mell at my feet; the colossal aqueducts defined against the horizon—all the splendors which are still grand even in their ruins. A priest who accompanied me exclaimed, in astonished admiration, “You must acknowledge that the Christian races have never produced such great works.”“‘Tis true,” I replied, “and I thank God for it; for these monuments you behold were chiefly constructed by the hands of slaves, and we now only employ free workmen, whom we pay for their labor.”We do not sufficiently reflect on this. Obelisks, immense pyramids, splendid porticos, hippodromes where so much plebeian blood flowed; theatres where modesty was brutallyviolated; temples where they adored so many passions, so many vices; tombs where so much vanity is revealed; elegant houses, but where the wife and child were so little valued; astonishing monuments of incomparable art, I admire you much less since I know by whose hands you were raised. It is not thus that they have built since the advent of Jesus Christ and the church.There is in history a proposition of more than mathematical clearness, which I declare solemnly to be true; it is thatthe church destroyed slavery. It is the church that gradually transformed the slave into the serf; that by degrees compelled society, formed by her, to change the serf into the freeman. This is established by the records, century after century, year after year, day after day. It is true, the church did not improvise in an hour this admirable change, this marvellous progress; it is not her custom to improvise, and, truth to say, she improvises nothing; she moves slowly but surely. She never roused the slaves to revolt, but she recalled the masters to their duty. She gave great care to the question of marriage between slaves; for, with intelligent foresight, she knew that the whole future depended on it: briefly, in 300, there were millions of slaves—in 1000, not one.Everywhere existed admirable confraternities of workmen, who worked without pay on the numerous cathedrals scattered throughout Europe; thousands of men labored gratuitously for God, or nobly earned their living in working for their brothers. Will you deny this fact? I defy you to do it. The church conquered for the workmen two inappreciable things—liberty and dignity; and, for so many benefits, she too often receives but ingratitude and forgetfulness. One day, while rambling through the wide streets of Oxford, that city of twenty-four colleges, formerly founded by the church, and which live to-day on those foundations of our fathers, I inquired if there could be found a Catholic Church. I was conducted into a kind of room, narrow and low, which many of your employers would not use for a factory or shop. That was what they condescended to lease the holy church of God in the splendid city, built with her hands, and bathed in her sweat. It is thus with the working-class, which is also a creation of the church; its mother is forgotten, and it is with difficulty that she is left a little corner in the workshop; but it is there we will endeavor to replace her with honor, and then each one of you can say with the poet Jasmin: “I remember that, when I was young, the church found me naked, and clothed me; now that I am a man, I find her naked, in my turn I will cover her.” It is this cry we wish to hear from you.Again, we hear that “the church is not the same to the rich and to the poor.” When will it be proved, when can it be shown, that there are two Creeds, two Decalogues, two codes of morality, two families of sacraments, two dogmas, two disciplines, two altars—one for the use of the great ones of the earth, the other destined for the poor? It can never be done. They can bring forward a certain number of facts; they can cite abuses more or less deplorable, and which we condemn implacably; but the equality remains entire. I go further, and affirm that the church has unceasingly favored the humble, the weak, and the laborers. They are her privileged ones, and she has well shown it.Another objection current amongthe working-class, another calumny which has triumphed over the minds of the people, unworthily deceived, is the scandalous assertion that “the church is the enemy of instruction,” and this abominable falsehood is, above all, applied to primary instruction. Now, it is mathematically proved that, before the establishment of the church, there did not exist in the much-lauded antiquity a single school for workmen. This first proposition is clearly evident, and it is not less mathematically demonstrated that, since the advent of the church, “free schools have been attached to each parish, and confided to the direction of the clergy.” Such are the words of a learned man of our day, who has best appreciated this question, and who, in order to establish his conclusion, appeals to texts the most luminously authentic.[201]We will not pause here to speak of the profound love of Christ for the ignorant—that love which shines forth in every page of the Gospel; nor will we linger over the epoch of the persecution of the early church; but we will transport ourselves to France in the first period of our history.At the commencement of the VIth century, the Council of Vaison declares that for along timein Italy “the priests had brought up young students in their own houses, and instructed them like good fathers in faith and sound knowledge.” In the year 700, a Council of Rouen goes further, and commandsall Christiansto send their children to the city school: is not that instruction Christianly free and Christianly obligatory? Meanwhile, Charlemagne appears, and watches energetically that these noble lights shall not be extinguished, or that they may be relighted. In 797, a capitulary of Theodulph offers these admirable words: “That the priests should establish schools in the villages and boroughs, and that no pay should be exacted from the children in return.” The same decrees are found in the canons of the Council of Rome in 826, in the bulls of Pope Leo IV., and in the capitulary of Hérard, Archbishop of Tours, in 858.Observe that these last quotations belong to the darkest, most savage epoch of our history. Feudalism reigned supreme; that redoubtable institution had recently come into existence, without having yet at its side the Christian counterpoise of chivalry. But if we make a leap of two or three hundred years, and arrive at the XIIth and XIIIth centuries, all becomes brilliant, and history can furnish the list of all the schools that then existed even in the smallest villages. These statistics are extant, and can be consulted; and from so many accumulated documents, which extend from 529 to 1790, the conclusion, rigorously scientific, must be drawn that “from a distant period, even at the foundation of our parishes, the clergy in the country dispensed instruction to the agricultural classes. It was thus throughout the middle ages; and even at a recent epoch we have seen the priests in many parishes perform the functions of teachers.”[202]What do our adversaries think of such exact testimony? All the schools, then, having been founded by the church, what satanic skill was needed to persuade the people that the church had not established one!Still more scandalous is the objection that the church has failed in her errand of mercy; for they accuse her of not having sufficiently lovedthe poor and abandoned. We were stupefied, several years ago, to find this strange assertion in a celebrated review: that the church owed to the Protestants the idea of the Sisters of Charity. Now, we have before our eyes acts truly innumerable, establishing clearly that there were many thousand institutions of charity in France in the XIIth and XIIIth centuries. During the first ages of the church, in the midst of the persecution, the poor,all poor, were assisted in their homes by the deacons; and, after the persecutions, these same poor were reunited in splendid palaces, which were divided into as many classes as there were miseries to relieve. But for the fear of being called pedants, we would cite here theBretotrophia, or asylums for children; theNosocomia, or houses for the sick; theOrphanotrophia, reserved for orphans; and theGerontocomia, consecrated to old age.Such establishments continued to exist from the XIIth and XIIIth centuries in all the episcopal cities, in the monastic centres, and in the humblest parishes, where they never ceased, during the Christian ages, to soothe the suffering, feed the hungry, counsel the erring, and instruct the ignorant. By these we are easily led to the XIVth and XVth centuries, when we behold so many hospitals, so many charitable institutions, flourishing on the surface of the Christian soil. Where are the tears the church has not dried? the nakedness she has not covered? the captives she has not redeemed? the sick she has not visited? the strangers she has not received? the dead she has not buried with her tears? the sinners she has not pressed to her heart? the children she has not made smile, and has not instructed and consoled? the laborers she has not loved? This is a blow to error and misrepresentation; the proofs are clear—you can, youmustread them.Again, they object that “the church does not occupy herself at the present time with thesocial, the labor question.” I can show a hundred books, bearing the greatest Catholic names, entirely consecrated to this new science. For eighteen hundred years, the church has not ceased for an instant to put political economy into action; for she has not ceased an instant to lean towards all miseries to relieve them; towards all enjoyments to purify them. Without ever having regarded sacrifice and resignation as the last solution of the social problem; without ever having renounced the hope of seeing the reign of God in a happier future, she has never ceased to preach resignation to the weak, and sacrifice to the powerful. For eighteen hundred years, the church has also written her economical theory; for, on account of the intimate connection between the social question and theology, it can be said with all truth that, up to the XIXth century, there have been as many books written of political economy as treatises of theology.Thanks be to God, the day has arrived when a science has been founded entirely consecrated to the study of the social question. Far from recoiling before it, the church has valiantly advanced to the charge. Undoubtedly she has a hundred other works on hand, and is obliged to choose the hour when she commences the task; the hour has sounded in this same house, where you listen to me with so much patience; every Monday a modest council is held, which also wishes to take the name ofJésus-Ouvrier. From all parts of Paris come representatives of the religious orders, and for that they joyfully sacrifice every occupation;they occupy themselves with the labor question and the workman. These meetings last two, three, and even four hours. They seek to study the principles which govern this question; the history of the efforts that have been made until the present day in favor of the workman; the obstacles which oppose the solution of this grand problem; and, finally, the remedies which can be brought to bear upon these accumulated evils. This is what is done by these priests, these religious, these Catholics; they will review one after the other the workman, the workingman’s family, the workingman’s association. This is the plan of the book whose materials they are gathering; these are the three parts of a species of theology of labor which they are preparing in concert. In twenty other places in Paris are held twenty other assemblies, not less Catholic, animated by the same spirit, pursuing the same end; and we can now say that the principle of Catholic social economy is erected.I will now conclude, and throw a last glance over the space we have traversed together. I commenced with the cross, and will finish with it.In one of our romances of chivalry, it is related that the wood of the cross borne in front of the Christian army in a battle against the Saracens suddenly assumed gigantic and miraculous proportions; it touched the sky, and was more luminous than the sun. The infidels, seized with terror, broke and fled, and the Christians counted another victory. The cross of the Circles of Workingmen is small, very small, and will not probably be the subject of such a prodigy; nevertheless, I hope that its gentle light will end by assuring the victory; and the victory that we desire is that the workman may be thrown in the arms of Jesus Christ.

APPEAL TO WORKINGMEN.FROM THE FRENCH OF LEON GAUTIER IN THE REVUE DU MONDE CATHOLIQUE.DISCOURSE PRONOUNCED JANUARY 13, 1873, TO INAUGURATE THE LECTURES INTENDED FOR THE WORKING-CLASSES.[198]To-daywe inaugurate the lectures specially consecrated to workingmen. We are full of joyous hopes, and believe that this work of light will be at the same time a work of reconciliation, of love, and of peace. The cross, which we have placed conspicuously in all our places of reunion—the cross, that we elevate and display everywhere as a magnificent standard—the cross, that we will never consent to hide, indicates clearly what is our faith and what is our aim. We wish to enlighten your understandings, dilate your hearts, direct your wills in the way of the good, the beautiful, and the true. In a word, we wish to conquer you for Christ, and we say it here with a frankness which profoundly abhors all cunning of speech. You will give us credit for sincerity, which you have always loved; for, as has been said by a great contemporary orator,[199]“The people are not deceived; they feel when they are approached with faith in them and in their eminent dignity.”We come, then, to you with this cross of Constantine, which has converted the world. This glorious sign we have surrounded with rays, to show you that light proceeds from Christianity, as the stream flows from its source, and the beams radiate from a star. If possible, we would have adopted as a flag the beautiful cross in the catacomb of S. Pontian, from which spring roses—symbols of joy. We would have chosen it, to show you that in Christ is found not only the repose of the enlightened understanding, but also the repose, the joy, and the alleluia of the satisfied heart. It is by this sign we will conquer.In this first lecture, which will serve as an humble preface to the discourses of so many eminent orators, we intend only to take up the working question, to tell you our entire thought on the subject, to open to you our whole heart. Do not hope to hear an academic speech; do not expect those vain compliments to which you have been accustomed from flatterers who did not love you. We say at first and without circumlocution that between Christian society and the working world there exists to-day a certain misunderstanding, and it is this misunderstanding we would wish to dissipate, and we beg of the divine Workman of Nazareth to direct our words, blessed by him, to the understanding and heart of the workmen of Paris.In the first part of this discourse, which will be brief, we will say what we are; in the second, what we wish; and in the third, we will reply to certain objections to the church which are current among workingmen,and cause the deplorable misunderstanding from which we wish to deliver your minds and hearts, equally oppressed. It is time that the truth should free you.I.In order that you may better understand what we are, we wish to commence by showing you what we are not.We are not politicians; this we desire to declare openly. Never, never will there be pronounced in this precinct one word that may even remotely touch upon our old or recent discords. We will never deserve to be called partisans. Whatever may be our intimate convictions (and we have the right to have them), we only wish to be and we will only be Christians. We suppose there may be in the bosom of all the avowed parties sincere Catholics who are by no meansindependents. When we tread upon the threshold of her basilicas, the church, which rises before us, does not ask if we are monarchists or republicans, but only if we believe in the eternal Word, who created heaven and earth, who became man in the crib of Bethlehem, and who saved us on a cross. Thus will we do, and the only popular song you will hear in this place will be the Credo; come, come, and sing it with us.Thank God, we do not belong to the group, too numerous, of pretended conservatives, who only see in the labor question a painful preoccupation which might trouble the calm of their digestion; who do not wish to impose upon themselves any real sacrifice, and are easily astonished that the working-classes complain of their sufferings. We are not like the fashionable and delicate egoists who for several centuries have given the fatal example of indifference, of doubt, and of negation in religion, who have followed Voltaire, who have wickedly laughed in the face of outraged truth, who have torn God from the heart of the workman, and who nevertheless persist in affirming that “religion is good for the people”—men of refinement, who to-day edit journals full of talent, where on the first page is offered ultra-conservative articles, and on the second ultra-obscene romances. No; we are not of this class. Away with those sceptics whose fears make them pretend to have the faith! Away with those who doubt the people, and who do not love them!We are not of those who are led to you by this vile fear or by a still viler interest; we are not of those who see in you an armed force before which they must tremble, or an electoral majority before whom they must kneel. We will never come to solicit your votes, and we are bent upon serving you with absolute disinterestedness. Briefly, we are for you and will always be your friends and servants, but will never condescend to court you. Besides, the victory which we desire is not that which can be gained by force, consequently we do not count on force. We only wish to win your understandings with our faith, your hearts with our love.We do not place the golden age in a past too superstitiously loved. Whatever affection I may feel in my heart for those dear middle ages, to which I have consecrated all my studies and all my life, I do not find them sufficiently Christian to be the only ideal. We know that those centuries, so differently judged, were the theatre of a gigantic struggle between paganism, more and more conquered, and the church, more and more victorious; and we draw afundamental distinction between the chivalry that so heroically defended the truth and the feudality that did it such injury. We do not ignore the fact that paganism, in dying, left to the Christian ages, as a frightful legacy, the traditions of slavery, impurity, and violence; and we confess that Christianity could not in one day decapitate the hundred-headed hydra.If we regard especially the workmen’s guilds or corporations, we will go so far as to own that their organization, so admirably Christian in some respects, nevertheless left too much room for certain abuses that we hate; and, as a decisive example, we assert that the material condition of the members was not then what a Christian heart would wish to-day. We have the religion, not the superstition, of the middle ages; of that epoch so unworthily calumniated we preserve all the elements truly Christian, and reject the others. We recognize in that rude and laborious age the dawn, the beautiful dawn, of Catholic civilization so scandalously interrupted by the Renaissance. In those centuries, so slighted and misunderstood, we salute above all the cycle of the saints.We ardently love the sublime period when S. Benedict gave to a hundred thousand men and to twenty generations the order and signal to clear the minds and the fields, equally sterile; when S. Francis conversed with the birds of the air, reconciled all nature with humanity Christianized, and gave to his contemporaries the love of “our lady, poverty!” We love the period made joyful by the death of slavery under the font of the church; when all the institutions of the state and of the family were energetically Catholic; when royalty was represented by a S. Louis, love by a S. Elizabeth, science by a S. Thomas of Aquinas. But our soul has still stronger wings, and would fly still higher. We wish still more, we wish still better, and we will build up the future with two kinds of materials—with the past undoubtedly, but also with our desires, which are vast.We are not of those who ingenuously think the world at present is organized as one would wish. Doubtless there are in the working-class of our time illegitimate desires, guilty jealousies, unrighteous thirsts; but we also know all that the world of laborers can offer to the eyes of God, of cruel sufferings, of noble sighs, and of honest tears. God preserve us from ever laughing at one of those griefs, even should they be merited! On the contrary, we hope that Christian society will one day come, through peace and prayer, the sacraments and love, to a better disposition, a more profound pacification, a happier distribution of riches, a wider-spread prosperity, and to something more resembling the reign of God. But, alas! we are convinced that the definitive repartition and equality will only be consummated in eternity. Those who do not believe in a future life will never see their desire of infinite justice satisfied—they condemn themselves to this punishment.We do not despise the work of the hands; far from it, we seek to place the mechanic close to the artist. For centuries, there have been Pyrenees between art and industry; these Pyrenees we wish to remove, and we will succeed. In truth, the workman is an august being; and the title of his nobility will be easily found in the depths of faith and of theology. Listen: the eternal type, the adorable type, of the workman is the Heavenly Father, theFaber divinus, who, not content with makingobedient matter spring from nothing, like a sublime goldsmith chiselled it into a splendid jewel. Beauty, Goodness, personal and living Truth—such, to the letter, was the first Workman. God joined, framed, hewed, cemented, carved the whole universe, the firmament, the stars. His gracious and magnificent hand, armed with an invisible chisel, is discovered in every part of the creation which has been wonderfully sculptured by this marvellous Workman. Workmen of every condition, here contemplate the work of your Model, of your Master, of your divine Patron. The sombre forests, the transparent foliage, the flowers whose wonders are only revealed by the microscope, the mountains, the ocean, the infinite depths—all, all were made by the great Workman.Incomparable Artificer! he conceived the plan of all these beings in His eternal Word, and one day, to realize this design, he pronounced these words: “Be they!” and they were. But it was not enough to show himself the workman; God feared, if I may be allowed so to speak, that his calling might be despised; and he desired so truly to be a workman that of a God he made himself a carpenter as well as man. He chose a noble position, perfectly characteristic, and, with his divine hands, sawed, planed, polished, worked the wood that in the first hour of the world he had worked in the design of the creation. Workmen, my brethren, it is not a fable, it is not a symbol: Jesus, the Son of God, was the apprentice, the companion, the workman, the carpenter; and the venerable monuments of tradition show him to us making ploughs, perhaps crosses. What can I not say to you of the Holy Ghost, considered as the Workman of the spiritual world, which he had really cemented, hewed, and framed? What can I not explain of the beautiful realities of symbolism? With regret I leave this workshop of the church, and now content myself with the workshop of the creation, and with that of Nazareth.But you question me more earnestly, and ask what I think of the contemporary workman. And I reply that, notwithstanding his faults and errors, I feel for him a great love, invincibly aroused by Christ. Yes; I close my eyes, I abstract myself. I forget so many ignoble flames, so much blood, the pure blood so sacrilegiously shed. I wish to separate my thoughts from so many ruins, so many scandals. I come to you, pagan workman, rebellious to God, and, in the midst of your rebellious and Satanic orgies, I approach you, who formerly were baptized, and place my hand upon your heart, that I may not despair. Your mind is darkened, your will misled; but there are yet some pulsations which allow me still to hope, and I willingly repeat the words of that great bishop who has devoted so much time to the social question: “The people love that which is beautiful, they understand what is great; know that they have high aspirations, and that they seek to rise.” And again: “The workman of our day has eliminated the generous ideas from the Gospel, and yet borrows from Christianity his noble and holy sentiments.”Nothing is truer; if chemistry could analyze souls, what Christian elements would be found in those of workmen! I readily see in each the admirable material of one of those poor men so powerfully sketched by Victor Hugo. He speaks of a miserable fisherman on the sea-shore, who already has five children, perishing from hunger; when one day at market, he sees and adopts twoorphans poorer than he, and thus he reasons: “We have five children, these will make seven; we will mingle them together, and they will climb at night on our knees. They will live, and will be brother and sister to the five others. When God sees that we must feed this little boy and this little girl with the others, he will make us catch more fish, that is all!” Workmen of Paris, read these lines; they are worth more than those of theAnnée terrible, and paint you exactly. You are capable of this sublime devotion, and I recall you to the true nobility of your nature.You know now what we are not, and I think that we have never failed for an instant to be truly sincere. On the contrary, we have designedly multiplied all the difficulties with perfect frankness. It is scarcely necessary to add that we are not of those who disdain the social and labor questions, and who, while hiding themselves in the graceful domain of fancy, repeat with Alfred de Musset:“If two names by chance mingle in my song,They will always be Ninette or Ninon.”This charming indifference is but a form of selfishness. Let us go further, and although in our quality of Catholics (the only nobility, the only title to which we are really attached) we place a higher estimate on the future life than the present, we do not think only of the heavenly destiny of the workman. For more than eighteen hundred years, the church has not ceased for an instant to occupy herself with the temporal condition of all the working-classes. In her firmament, there are fourteen magnificent constellations, which are called the seven corporal works of mercy, and the seven spiritual. She has made them all shine on the brow of the workman, and it is for him, above all, that she preserves the light. This example of our mother, the church, we always wish to imitate. We know, besides, and it is a powerful argument, that misery is a poor counsellor, and, if it is badly accepted, turns souls from duty and eternity.Therefore, we declare a mortal war against want and misery, and it is thus that, in ameliorating the earth, we hope to prepare heaven.We wish at this moment our heart were an open book, written in large characters, and readable for all. Our brothers, the workmen, would see that we do not blindly accuse them of all the crimes and mistakes of modern society, and that we very well know how to comment severely on the other classes. They would there read the programme of our work, as recently sketched by a great bishop of the holy church: “We should believe in the people, hope in them, love them.” For you must not imagine that alms will here suffice, and that the people will accept them; they exact all our heart, our esteem, our respect. He who does not respect the workman can do nothing. Thus, this doctrine of respect for the workman, the truly Christian doctrine, is the base upon which the Catholic Circle of Workingmen has erected its edifice: may God prosper and bless it!Ask us now with frankness what we are, what is our faith, and listen well to our reply, which will not be less sincere.We believe in one only God, the supreme and sovereign Workman, whom we do not confound with his work; the work is divine, but it is not God. Beyond the world, above the world, in an inaccessible region, lives and reigns from everlasting to everlasting the majesty of God, the Infinite and Absolute, the Justiceand Mercy, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, living and personal, the eternal Providence, who watches over the workmen of all races and of all times. There are among you some who refuse to this God the free adhesion of their faith, and it is this negation which we come here to combat with the arms of reason and of light. All depends upon your faith; even though you may be atheists, we will love you, but, alas! you will not return our love, and the reconciliation so ardently desired will not be easily realized; for you can only be dissolved in love, and God is love.We believe, then, in God the Creator, and we bow before him with the simple and magnificent faith of the humble stone-cutter of whom Lamartine speaks, and who one day said to our great poet, “I do not know how other men are made; but, as for me, I cannot see, I do not say a star, but even an ant, the leaf of a tree, a grain of sand, without asking who made it; and the reply is, God. I understand it well, for, before being, it was not; therefore, it could not make itself.” I quote these beautiful words with great joy under the roof of a chapel especially consecrated to workmen. Meditate upon them, workmen, who listen to me; and, if you are republicans, respect, love, believe in what this republican of 1848 respected, loved, and believed. Then the workman believed in God; this time must return, and for this necessary work we will expend our time, our strength, our life. But it is not enough to believe in God; we must render to the Creator the act of the creature, and offer him respect, homage, confidence, prayer, and love. Blessed be this little chapel ofJésus-Ouvrier, if this night one of these sentiments will be offered by one of the souls who are here and listen to me.We also believe in the Son of God, the Word, the interior Speech, the creative Word of the Father, and we affirm that this Word, at a determined moment of history, came down on our earth that sin had stained, and that had to be purified. To arrive at God, who is absolute purity, we must be white or whitened. Are we white of ourselves? Look into your souls, and answer. Christ, then, came to suffer, to expiate, to die for us all, and especially for all workmen, past, present, and to come. Such is the admirable doctrine of the solidarity of expiation; and it is here that Jesus is again the type of workmen. Oh! who can complain of work, when God for thirty years submitted to the rigorous law of manual labor! Who can complain of suffering, when he bore the weight of all the sufferings of the body and of the human soul! Who can complain of loneliness and abandonment, when this God was betrayed by his tenderest friends, and abandoned by all except his mother, who remained standing at the foot of the cross! Who can complain of dying in solitude, in grief, and in shame, on the pallet of a garret or the bed of a hospital, when he, the Creator of so many millions of suns and of the universe, gave us the example of the most cruel death, after having offered us as model the most wretched life! Ah! they had reason to decree the suppression of the crucifix in the hospitals and schools; for a true workman cannot look at the crucifix without being moved to the bottom of his soul, without extending to it his arms, without being profoundly consoled, without crying, “Behold my Master, my Example, and my Father!”We believe that Christianity is contained in these words, which we should ponder: “Imitation of Christ,” and, in particular, “Imitation of Jesus the workman.” It is by that means we will be led to give a place to private virtues, which our adversaries do not wish to accord to us. Nowadays it is fashionable among workmen and others to repeat this ill-sounding proposition, which is an exact summary of Victor Hugo’s last work: that “Society is bad, and man is good.” Do not believe it; man is an intelligent, free, responsible being, who can, when he wishes, and with the aid of God, conquer the evil in him, and do good. As society is only a composition of men, it follows and will ever be that, if each one of us becomes purer, more humble, more charitable, better, society will itself become less savage, more enlightened, better organized, every way improved. In political economy, we cannot too highly exalt therôleof private virtues.It can be demonstrated mathematically, and it will soon be shown, that everything socially springs from sacrifice. If you wish to know here what distinguishes the Catholics from their enemies, I will tell you very simply that they place duty before right, and that the enemies of the church place right before duty. Certainly, we believe in right as strongly as you can; but we make it the logical consequence and, if I may say so, the reward of accomplished duty. Weigh well this doctrine, to which is attached the destiny of the world.Finally, we believe in the life everlasting. Doubtless it is to be desired that all men should make every effort for the reign of justice on this earth; in this, the Catholics have not been wanting, nor ever will be. But whatever may be the legitimate beauty of these attempts, I think that the perfection of ideal justice will only be found in the future life, and that, to make the definitive balance of the fate of each man, heaven must always enter in the calculation. Here below there are too many inconsolable sorrows, more suffering than social equality can ever suppress. Alas! there will always be the passions that ravage the heart; always ingratitude and abandonment; always sickness and the death of those whom we love best. Paradise of my God! you will re-establish the equilibrium; paradise of my God! if you are, above all, destined for those who have suffered, you will be assuredly opened to workmen. In this hope I live.And here I am led to recapitulate, not without emotion, all the benefits that Providence has more especially reserved for you. “A heavenly Father, who merits above all the title of workman, and who made the earth; a God, who comes on earth to take up the plane, the saw, and the hammer, and become the prototype of workmen; an infallible church that for eighteen hundred years has bent over workmen, to enlighten, console, and love them; an eternity of happiness, where all present injustice will be superabundantly repaired.”Workmen, my brethren, what can you ask further? In the place of God, what could you make better? Answer.II.What do we wish, however? In other words, what can we promise you?First of all, there are twenty promises we cannot make you, and it is our duty here to warn you of ournon possumus.We cannot promise you ever to consider armed revolt as a duty or a right. We cling with all the strength of our understanding to thedoctrine that even against injustice the protest should be martyrdom, heroically accepted, heroically submitted. Thus did the first Christians; they allowed themselves to be slaughtered like beautiful sheep, covered with generous blood. This sublimely passive resistance will not take from us, as it never did from them, the liberty of speech; they died declaring their belief in God, the supreme Principle, and in the Son of God, the sovereign Expiator. And when fifteen or eighteen millions had been killed, the church triumphed; she then came forth from the catacombs, and to her was given the mission to enlighten the world.We do not promise you the liberty of doing evil, and it would be false if we even appeared to make such an engagement. At this instant, there are five hundred men in France who pervert, corrupt, putrefy France; among these are four hundred and ninety writers and ten caricaturists; according to our idea, it is deplorable that they can freely exercise their trade, and destroy with impunity so many millions of souls among young girls, young men, and workmen.We cannot with sincerity promise you absolute equality on this earth. What we can promise you hereafter is that beautiful equality of Christians who are sprung from the same God-Creator, saved by the same God-Redeemer, enlightened by the same God-Illuminator. It is the equality, the profound equality, of baptism and the eucharist; the equality of souls in trials and reward; it is, in fine, equality in heaven. As for the other, we will exhaust ourselves in the effort to obtain it; but we have two obstacles before us, over which we do not hope to triumph—sickness and vice. No equality is possible with these two scourges, and they are ineradicable. We cannot promise you either illegitimate pleasure or even the end of suffering. In taking suffering from man—which is impossible—they would take from him his resemblance to God, and consequently his true greatness and his titles to heaven. The more we suffer, the more we resemble our Father, the more we merit eternal joy. In suffering will be found the Christian principle, which we cannot efface from the Gospel, and which is even the essence of the Christian life. But we promise to suffer with you, and, as the church has done for eighteen hundred years, to alleviate your sorrows, to heal your wounds, to satisfy your material and moral hunger, and to quench your thirst for truth. The fathers of the church invite us only to consider ourselves as “depositaries of riches.” All property is but a deposit in our hands—a deposit which we are strictly obliged to communicate to you, and for which we must render an account to the Master.We promise you also faith, which gives to the soul a noble attribute and a happy tranquillity. And with faith we can give you what has been well called theintelligence of life—the intelligence thanks to which the workman knows how to accept inequality, because he sees in the horizon the beautiful perspective of eternity. We promise you calmness in certainty, the consolation that every workman can feel in regarding his divine type; and, in giving you this type, you will possess a rare treasure, for which your souls are justly eager.We promise you the sweetness of work Christianly accepted. Says a great Christian: “What matters work when Jesus Christ is there?” It is here that we must recall those splendid verses of the greatest of our poets—those verses which we wouldwish to see written on the walls of all our transfigured workshops: “God, look you—let the senseless reject—causes to be born of labor two daughters: Virtue which makes cheerfulness sweet, and Cheerfulness which makes virtue charming.” And with work, you will conquer also the “courage of life”; for you will be convinced that all beings are subjected to this great law, and that the blows of your hammers are the notes of a universal chant. “All work, each one is at his post; he who governs the state; the savant, who extends the limits of human explorations; the sculptor, who makes the statue spring from his chisel; the poet, who sings between his tears and his sighs; the priest, who punishes and pardons—all, down to you, poor workman, in your smoky workshop. We are all living stones of that cathedral formed of souls and of centuries for the glory of God.”[200]With such thoughts, the day appears short, and labor assumes an exquisite character. What joy to say, “I work with the entire universe; I work as God himself has set me the example.”Still further, we promise you honor and pride. The Christian workman, he whom we hope to see multiplied in Paris, loves his trade; he is proud of it, and would blush if he did not prefer it to all others. He contemplates with satisfaction the work which he has just accomplished, and, like the Creator, with innocent simplicity, finds it beautiful. He attempts without jealousy to equal and even surpass the best workmen of his kind. He thinks that his country should be the most honorable and the most honored of all, and that France should be the equal of all other powers. On this subject he will not jest, but becomes grave. If he belongs to a corporation, he is enthusiastic for the glory of his banner, and will not allow it to be insulted. When a man thus respects his position, he respects himself, and is led to respect God. Such are the elements of what I willingly term the workman’s honor.We promise you peace of conscience, the happiness that follows accomplished duty, the repose in joy. Every workman among us should say to his children what one of the most learned men of the day, the illustrious Emmanuel de Rougé, wrote in his will: “May my children preserve the faith. Repose of mind and heart can only be found in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and the Saviour of man.” To work, says a contemporary philosopher, is easy; to repose is difficult. Man works without repose when he labors relying only upon himself; he works and reposes when he commences by first confiding himself to God. This is the repose we offer you; it is supremely delicious, and the workman will be led to repose, in working for others, like good Claude des Huttes, the stone-cutter of St. Point, the friend of Lamartine, who, poor as he was, worked gratuitously for those poorer than he, and said to himself, when retiring to rest: “I have earned a good day’s wages; for the poor pay me in friendship, my heart pays me in contentment, and the good God will pay me in mercy.” O greatness of the Christian workman!We promise to labor as unceasingly for the amelioration of your material condition as for the enlargement of your understanding. Evil be to us if we did not think of the lodging, warming, nourishment of the workman’s family; if we would confiscate science to our profit, and not extend to you the treasure; if we ceased for a single instant to openschools, asylums, circles, conferences, institutions of peace and of light. We do not recoil before progress; no light terrifies us. From texts of the Gospel, we have and ever will produce new consequences, religious, philosophical, and social; and these conclusions constitute a progress incessant and ever new—our progress, the only true progress.Finally, we promise to organize with your aid the workingmen’s associations. Association only frightens us when it leans towards despotism, and we wish principally to give it a religious character. The confraternity! an old word, which is ridiculed, but which in reality is a great thing; men reunited for one temporal aim under the protection of God, their angel guardians, and their celestial patrons; free men, discussing with all loyalty the interests of their trade, and knowing how to govern themselves. You will invent nothing better, provided always that, in this enlarged institution, the Catholic spirit is harmoniously mingled with the positive rules of social science. We are in the midst of a crisis which cannot last long; to our mutual aid and co-operative societies others will succeed more scientifically organized, and, above all, more Christian. We hope in this future, and believe it very near; it is the ideal for this world now, and for heaven hereafter—heaven, which is the great association of the happy ...III.It would seem impossible, in the face of such doctrines, that any misunderstanding could exist between the church and the workman; but Satan has not understood it in this manner, and objections pour against the church.It has been said repeatedly that the church has done nothing for the workman. It is the conclusion that Victor Hugo has given to hisLes Misérables, and this book has singularly contributed to develop hatred in the hearts of the people. Numerous writers, animated with the same ardent hate, affirm daily that, to find society well organized, we must go back to antiquity, or take 1789 as the place of departure.To refute these assertions, we will first say that, in regard to antiquity, they forget that it was devoured by the frightful cancer of slavery; among the greater part of nations before Christ, the workmen were for a long time principally slaves. Manual labor, which was universally despised, was performed by entire nations of slaves, who were paid with lashes of the whip. Thus were built many of the magnificent monuments of the Greeks, and, above all, of the Romans—monuments which they place so far above those of the present. I remember, one beautiful October night in the Eternal City, contemplating with stupefaction the immense mass of the Coliseum; the gigantic shafts of the columns which lay pell-mell at my feet; the colossal aqueducts defined against the horizon—all the splendors which are still grand even in their ruins. A priest who accompanied me exclaimed, in astonished admiration, “You must acknowledge that the Christian races have never produced such great works.”“‘Tis true,” I replied, “and I thank God for it; for these monuments you behold were chiefly constructed by the hands of slaves, and we now only employ free workmen, whom we pay for their labor.”We do not sufficiently reflect on this. Obelisks, immense pyramids, splendid porticos, hippodromes where so much plebeian blood flowed; theatres where modesty was brutallyviolated; temples where they adored so many passions, so many vices; tombs where so much vanity is revealed; elegant houses, but where the wife and child were so little valued; astonishing monuments of incomparable art, I admire you much less since I know by whose hands you were raised. It is not thus that they have built since the advent of Jesus Christ and the church.There is in history a proposition of more than mathematical clearness, which I declare solemnly to be true; it is thatthe church destroyed slavery. It is the church that gradually transformed the slave into the serf; that by degrees compelled society, formed by her, to change the serf into the freeman. This is established by the records, century after century, year after year, day after day. It is true, the church did not improvise in an hour this admirable change, this marvellous progress; it is not her custom to improvise, and, truth to say, she improvises nothing; she moves slowly but surely. She never roused the slaves to revolt, but she recalled the masters to their duty. She gave great care to the question of marriage between slaves; for, with intelligent foresight, she knew that the whole future depended on it: briefly, in 300, there were millions of slaves—in 1000, not one.Everywhere existed admirable confraternities of workmen, who worked without pay on the numerous cathedrals scattered throughout Europe; thousands of men labored gratuitously for God, or nobly earned their living in working for their brothers. Will you deny this fact? I defy you to do it. The church conquered for the workmen two inappreciable things—liberty and dignity; and, for so many benefits, she too often receives but ingratitude and forgetfulness. One day, while rambling through the wide streets of Oxford, that city of twenty-four colleges, formerly founded by the church, and which live to-day on those foundations of our fathers, I inquired if there could be found a Catholic Church. I was conducted into a kind of room, narrow and low, which many of your employers would not use for a factory or shop. That was what they condescended to lease the holy church of God in the splendid city, built with her hands, and bathed in her sweat. It is thus with the working-class, which is also a creation of the church; its mother is forgotten, and it is with difficulty that she is left a little corner in the workshop; but it is there we will endeavor to replace her with honor, and then each one of you can say with the poet Jasmin: “I remember that, when I was young, the church found me naked, and clothed me; now that I am a man, I find her naked, in my turn I will cover her.” It is this cry we wish to hear from you.Again, we hear that “the church is not the same to the rich and to the poor.” When will it be proved, when can it be shown, that there are two Creeds, two Decalogues, two codes of morality, two families of sacraments, two dogmas, two disciplines, two altars—one for the use of the great ones of the earth, the other destined for the poor? It can never be done. They can bring forward a certain number of facts; they can cite abuses more or less deplorable, and which we condemn implacably; but the equality remains entire. I go further, and affirm that the church has unceasingly favored the humble, the weak, and the laborers. They are her privileged ones, and she has well shown it.Another objection current amongthe working-class, another calumny which has triumphed over the minds of the people, unworthily deceived, is the scandalous assertion that “the church is the enemy of instruction,” and this abominable falsehood is, above all, applied to primary instruction. Now, it is mathematically proved that, before the establishment of the church, there did not exist in the much-lauded antiquity a single school for workmen. This first proposition is clearly evident, and it is not less mathematically demonstrated that, since the advent of the church, “free schools have been attached to each parish, and confided to the direction of the clergy.” Such are the words of a learned man of our day, who has best appreciated this question, and who, in order to establish his conclusion, appeals to texts the most luminously authentic.[201]We will not pause here to speak of the profound love of Christ for the ignorant—that love which shines forth in every page of the Gospel; nor will we linger over the epoch of the persecution of the early church; but we will transport ourselves to France in the first period of our history.At the commencement of the VIth century, the Council of Vaison declares that for along timein Italy “the priests had brought up young students in their own houses, and instructed them like good fathers in faith and sound knowledge.” In the year 700, a Council of Rouen goes further, and commandsall Christiansto send their children to the city school: is not that instruction Christianly free and Christianly obligatory? Meanwhile, Charlemagne appears, and watches energetically that these noble lights shall not be extinguished, or that they may be relighted. In 797, a capitulary of Theodulph offers these admirable words: “That the priests should establish schools in the villages and boroughs, and that no pay should be exacted from the children in return.” The same decrees are found in the canons of the Council of Rome in 826, in the bulls of Pope Leo IV., and in the capitulary of Hérard, Archbishop of Tours, in 858.Observe that these last quotations belong to the darkest, most savage epoch of our history. Feudalism reigned supreme; that redoubtable institution had recently come into existence, without having yet at its side the Christian counterpoise of chivalry. But if we make a leap of two or three hundred years, and arrive at the XIIth and XIIIth centuries, all becomes brilliant, and history can furnish the list of all the schools that then existed even in the smallest villages. These statistics are extant, and can be consulted; and from so many accumulated documents, which extend from 529 to 1790, the conclusion, rigorously scientific, must be drawn that “from a distant period, even at the foundation of our parishes, the clergy in the country dispensed instruction to the agricultural classes. It was thus throughout the middle ages; and even at a recent epoch we have seen the priests in many parishes perform the functions of teachers.”[202]What do our adversaries think of such exact testimony? All the schools, then, having been founded by the church, what satanic skill was needed to persuade the people that the church had not established one!Still more scandalous is the objection that the church has failed in her errand of mercy; for they accuse her of not having sufficiently lovedthe poor and abandoned. We were stupefied, several years ago, to find this strange assertion in a celebrated review: that the church owed to the Protestants the idea of the Sisters of Charity. Now, we have before our eyes acts truly innumerable, establishing clearly that there were many thousand institutions of charity in France in the XIIth and XIIIth centuries. During the first ages of the church, in the midst of the persecution, the poor,all poor, were assisted in their homes by the deacons; and, after the persecutions, these same poor were reunited in splendid palaces, which were divided into as many classes as there were miseries to relieve. But for the fear of being called pedants, we would cite here theBretotrophia, or asylums for children; theNosocomia, or houses for the sick; theOrphanotrophia, reserved for orphans; and theGerontocomia, consecrated to old age.Such establishments continued to exist from the XIIth and XIIIth centuries in all the episcopal cities, in the monastic centres, and in the humblest parishes, where they never ceased, during the Christian ages, to soothe the suffering, feed the hungry, counsel the erring, and instruct the ignorant. By these we are easily led to the XIVth and XVth centuries, when we behold so many hospitals, so many charitable institutions, flourishing on the surface of the Christian soil. Where are the tears the church has not dried? the nakedness she has not covered? the captives she has not redeemed? the sick she has not visited? the strangers she has not received? the dead she has not buried with her tears? the sinners she has not pressed to her heart? the children she has not made smile, and has not instructed and consoled? the laborers she has not loved? This is a blow to error and misrepresentation; the proofs are clear—you can, youmustread them.Again, they object that “the church does not occupy herself at the present time with thesocial, the labor question.” I can show a hundred books, bearing the greatest Catholic names, entirely consecrated to this new science. For eighteen hundred years, the church has not ceased for an instant to put political economy into action; for she has not ceased an instant to lean towards all miseries to relieve them; towards all enjoyments to purify them. Without ever having regarded sacrifice and resignation as the last solution of the social problem; without ever having renounced the hope of seeing the reign of God in a happier future, she has never ceased to preach resignation to the weak, and sacrifice to the powerful. For eighteen hundred years, the church has also written her economical theory; for, on account of the intimate connection between the social question and theology, it can be said with all truth that, up to the XIXth century, there have been as many books written of political economy as treatises of theology.Thanks be to God, the day has arrived when a science has been founded entirely consecrated to the study of the social question. Far from recoiling before it, the church has valiantly advanced to the charge. Undoubtedly she has a hundred other works on hand, and is obliged to choose the hour when she commences the task; the hour has sounded in this same house, where you listen to me with so much patience; every Monday a modest council is held, which also wishes to take the name ofJésus-Ouvrier. From all parts of Paris come representatives of the religious orders, and for that they joyfully sacrifice every occupation;they occupy themselves with the labor question and the workman. These meetings last two, three, and even four hours. They seek to study the principles which govern this question; the history of the efforts that have been made until the present day in favor of the workman; the obstacles which oppose the solution of this grand problem; and, finally, the remedies which can be brought to bear upon these accumulated evils. This is what is done by these priests, these religious, these Catholics; they will review one after the other the workman, the workingman’s family, the workingman’s association. This is the plan of the book whose materials they are gathering; these are the three parts of a species of theology of labor which they are preparing in concert. In twenty other places in Paris are held twenty other assemblies, not less Catholic, animated by the same spirit, pursuing the same end; and we can now say that the principle of Catholic social economy is erected.I will now conclude, and throw a last glance over the space we have traversed together. I commenced with the cross, and will finish with it.In one of our romances of chivalry, it is related that the wood of the cross borne in front of the Christian army in a battle against the Saracens suddenly assumed gigantic and miraculous proportions; it touched the sky, and was more luminous than the sun. The infidels, seized with terror, broke and fled, and the Christians counted another victory. The cross of the Circles of Workingmen is small, very small, and will not probably be the subject of such a prodigy; nevertheless, I hope that its gentle light will end by assuring the victory; and the victory that we desire is that the workman may be thrown in the arms of Jesus Christ.

FROM THE FRENCH OF LEON GAUTIER IN THE REVUE DU MONDE CATHOLIQUE.

DISCOURSE PRONOUNCED JANUARY 13, 1873, TO INAUGURATE THE LECTURES INTENDED FOR THE WORKING-CLASSES.[198]

To-daywe inaugurate the lectures specially consecrated to workingmen. We are full of joyous hopes, and believe that this work of light will be at the same time a work of reconciliation, of love, and of peace. The cross, which we have placed conspicuously in all our places of reunion—the cross, that we elevate and display everywhere as a magnificent standard—the cross, that we will never consent to hide, indicates clearly what is our faith and what is our aim. We wish to enlighten your understandings, dilate your hearts, direct your wills in the way of the good, the beautiful, and the true. In a word, we wish to conquer you for Christ, and we say it here with a frankness which profoundly abhors all cunning of speech. You will give us credit for sincerity, which you have always loved; for, as has been said by a great contemporary orator,[199]“The people are not deceived; they feel when they are approached with faith in them and in their eminent dignity.”

We come, then, to you with this cross of Constantine, which has converted the world. This glorious sign we have surrounded with rays, to show you that light proceeds from Christianity, as the stream flows from its source, and the beams radiate from a star. If possible, we would have adopted as a flag the beautiful cross in the catacomb of S. Pontian, from which spring roses—symbols of joy. We would have chosen it, to show you that in Christ is found not only the repose of the enlightened understanding, but also the repose, the joy, and the alleluia of the satisfied heart. It is by this sign we will conquer.

In this first lecture, which will serve as an humble preface to the discourses of so many eminent orators, we intend only to take up the working question, to tell you our entire thought on the subject, to open to you our whole heart. Do not hope to hear an academic speech; do not expect those vain compliments to which you have been accustomed from flatterers who did not love you. We say at first and without circumlocution that between Christian society and the working world there exists to-day a certain misunderstanding, and it is this misunderstanding we would wish to dissipate, and we beg of the divine Workman of Nazareth to direct our words, blessed by him, to the understanding and heart of the workmen of Paris.

In the first part of this discourse, which will be brief, we will say what we are; in the second, what we wish; and in the third, we will reply to certain objections to the church which are current among workingmen,and cause the deplorable misunderstanding from which we wish to deliver your minds and hearts, equally oppressed. It is time that the truth should free you.

I.

In order that you may better understand what we are, we wish to commence by showing you what we are not.

We are not politicians; this we desire to declare openly. Never, never will there be pronounced in this precinct one word that may even remotely touch upon our old or recent discords. We will never deserve to be called partisans. Whatever may be our intimate convictions (and we have the right to have them), we only wish to be and we will only be Christians. We suppose there may be in the bosom of all the avowed parties sincere Catholics who are by no meansindependents. When we tread upon the threshold of her basilicas, the church, which rises before us, does not ask if we are monarchists or republicans, but only if we believe in the eternal Word, who created heaven and earth, who became man in the crib of Bethlehem, and who saved us on a cross. Thus will we do, and the only popular song you will hear in this place will be the Credo; come, come, and sing it with us.

Thank God, we do not belong to the group, too numerous, of pretended conservatives, who only see in the labor question a painful preoccupation which might trouble the calm of their digestion; who do not wish to impose upon themselves any real sacrifice, and are easily astonished that the working-classes complain of their sufferings. We are not like the fashionable and delicate egoists who for several centuries have given the fatal example of indifference, of doubt, and of negation in religion, who have followed Voltaire, who have wickedly laughed in the face of outraged truth, who have torn God from the heart of the workman, and who nevertheless persist in affirming that “religion is good for the people”—men of refinement, who to-day edit journals full of talent, where on the first page is offered ultra-conservative articles, and on the second ultra-obscene romances. No; we are not of this class. Away with those sceptics whose fears make them pretend to have the faith! Away with those who doubt the people, and who do not love them!

We are not of those who are led to you by this vile fear or by a still viler interest; we are not of those who see in you an armed force before which they must tremble, or an electoral majority before whom they must kneel. We will never come to solicit your votes, and we are bent upon serving you with absolute disinterestedness. Briefly, we are for you and will always be your friends and servants, but will never condescend to court you. Besides, the victory which we desire is not that which can be gained by force, consequently we do not count on force. We only wish to win your understandings with our faith, your hearts with our love.

We do not place the golden age in a past too superstitiously loved. Whatever affection I may feel in my heart for those dear middle ages, to which I have consecrated all my studies and all my life, I do not find them sufficiently Christian to be the only ideal. We know that those centuries, so differently judged, were the theatre of a gigantic struggle between paganism, more and more conquered, and the church, more and more victorious; and we draw afundamental distinction between the chivalry that so heroically defended the truth and the feudality that did it such injury. We do not ignore the fact that paganism, in dying, left to the Christian ages, as a frightful legacy, the traditions of slavery, impurity, and violence; and we confess that Christianity could not in one day decapitate the hundred-headed hydra.

If we regard especially the workmen’s guilds or corporations, we will go so far as to own that their organization, so admirably Christian in some respects, nevertheless left too much room for certain abuses that we hate; and, as a decisive example, we assert that the material condition of the members was not then what a Christian heart would wish to-day. We have the religion, not the superstition, of the middle ages; of that epoch so unworthily calumniated we preserve all the elements truly Christian, and reject the others. We recognize in that rude and laborious age the dawn, the beautiful dawn, of Catholic civilization so scandalously interrupted by the Renaissance. In those centuries, so slighted and misunderstood, we salute above all the cycle of the saints.

We ardently love the sublime period when S. Benedict gave to a hundred thousand men and to twenty generations the order and signal to clear the minds and the fields, equally sterile; when S. Francis conversed with the birds of the air, reconciled all nature with humanity Christianized, and gave to his contemporaries the love of “our lady, poverty!” We love the period made joyful by the death of slavery under the font of the church; when all the institutions of the state and of the family were energetically Catholic; when royalty was represented by a S. Louis, love by a S. Elizabeth, science by a S. Thomas of Aquinas. But our soul has still stronger wings, and would fly still higher. We wish still more, we wish still better, and we will build up the future with two kinds of materials—with the past undoubtedly, but also with our desires, which are vast.

We are not of those who ingenuously think the world at present is organized as one would wish. Doubtless there are in the working-class of our time illegitimate desires, guilty jealousies, unrighteous thirsts; but we also know all that the world of laborers can offer to the eyes of God, of cruel sufferings, of noble sighs, and of honest tears. God preserve us from ever laughing at one of those griefs, even should they be merited! On the contrary, we hope that Christian society will one day come, through peace and prayer, the sacraments and love, to a better disposition, a more profound pacification, a happier distribution of riches, a wider-spread prosperity, and to something more resembling the reign of God. But, alas! we are convinced that the definitive repartition and equality will only be consummated in eternity. Those who do not believe in a future life will never see their desire of infinite justice satisfied—they condemn themselves to this punishment.

We do not despise the work of the hands; far from it, we seek to place the mechanic close to the artist. For centuries, there have been Pyrenees between art and industry; these Pyrenees we wish to remove, and we will succeed. In truth, the workman is an august being; and the title of his nobility will be easily found in the depths of faith and of theology. Listen: the eternal type, the adorable type, of the workman is the Heavenly Father, theFaber divinus, who, not content with makingobedient matter spring from nothing, like a sublime goldsmith chiselled it into a splendid jewel. Beauty, Goodness, personal and living Truth—such, to the letter, was the first Workman. God joined, framed, hewed, cemented, carved the whole universe, the firmament, the stars. His gracious and magnificent hand, armed with an invisible chisel, is discovered in every part of the creation which has been wonderfully sculptured by this marvellous Workman. Workmen of every condition, here contemplate the work of your Model, of your Master, of your divine Patron. The sombre forests, the transparent foliage, the flowers whose wonders are only revealed by the microscope, the mountains, the ocean, the infinite depths—all, all were made by the great Workman.

Incomparable Artificer! he conceived the plan of all these beings in His eternal Word, and one day, to realize this design, he pronounced these words: “Be they!” and they were. But it was not enough to show himself the workman; God feared, if I may be allowed so to speak, that his calling might be despised; and he desired so truly to be a workman that of a God he made himself a carpenter as well as man. He chose a noble position, perfectly characteristic, and, with his divine hands, sawed, planed, polished, worked the wood that in the first hour of the world he had worked in the design of the creation. Workmen, my brethren, it is not a fable, it is not a symbol: Jesus, the Son of God, was the apprentice, the companion, the workman, the carpenter; and the venerable monuments of tradition show him to us making ploughs, perhaps crosses. What can I not say to you of the Holy Ghost, considered as the Workman of the spiritual world, which he had really cemented, hewed, and framed? What can I not explain of the beautiful realities of symbolism? With regret I leave this workshop of the church, and now content myself with the workshop of the creation, and with that of Nazareth.

But you question me more earnestly, and ask what I think of the contemporary workman. And I reply that, notwithstanding his faults and errors, I feel for him a great love, invincibly aroused by Christ. Yes; I close my eyes, I abstract myself. I forget so many ignoble flames, so much blood, the pure blood so sacrilegiously shed. I wish to separate my thoughts from so many ruins, so many scandals. I come to you, pagan workman, rebellious to God, and, in the midst of your rebellious and Satanic orgies, I approach you, who formerly were baptized, and place my hand upon your heart, that I may not despair. Your mind is darkened, your will misled; but there are yet some pulsations which allow me still to hope, and I willingly repeat the words of that great bishop who has devoted so much time to the social question: “The people love that which is beautiful, they understand what is great; know that they have high aspirations, and that they seek to rise.” And again: “The workman of our day has eliminated the generous ideas from the Gospel, and yet borrows from Christianity his noble and holy sentiments.”

Nothing is truer; if chemistry could analyze souls, what Christian elements would be found in those of workmen! I readily see in each the admirable material of one of those poor men so powerfully sketched by Victor Hugo. He speaks of a miserable fisherman on the sea-shore, who already has five children, perishing from hunger; when one day at market, he sees and adopts twoorphans poorer than he, and thus he reasons: “We have five children, these will make seven; we will mingle them together, and they will climb at night on our knees. They will live, and will be brother and sister to the five others. When God sees that we must feed this little boy and this little girl with the others, he will make us catch more fish, that is all!” Workmen of Paris, read these lines; they are worth more than those of theAnnée terrible, and paint you exactly. You are capable of this sublime devotion, and I recall you to the true nobility of your nature.

You know now what we are not, and I think that we have never failed for an instant to be truly sincere. On the contrary, we have designedly multiplied all the difficulties with perfect frankness. It is scarcely necessary to add that we are not of those who disdain the social and labor questions, and who, while hiding themselves in the graceful domain of fancy, repeat with Alfred de Musset:

“If two names by chance mingle in my song,They will always be Ninette or Ninon.”

This charming indifference is but a form of selfishness. Let us go further, and although in our quality of Catholics (the only nobility, the only title to which we are really attached) we place a higher estimate on the future life than the present, we do not think only of the heavenly destiny of the workman. For more than eighteen hundred years, the church has not ceased for an instant to occupy herself with the temporal condition of all the working-classes. In her firmament, there are fourteen magnificent constellations, which are called the seven corporal works of mercy, and the seven spiritual. She has made them all shine on the brow of the workman, and it is for him, above all, that she preserves the light. This example of our mother, the church, we always wish to imitate. We know, besides, and it is a powerful argument, that misery is a poor counsellor, and, if it is badly accepted, turns souls from duty and eternity.

Therefore, we declare a mortal war against want and misery, and it is thus that, in ameliorating the earth, we hope to prepare heaven.

We wish at this moment our heart were an open book, written in large characters, and readable for all. Our brothers, the workmen, would see that we do not blindly accuse them of all the crimes and mistakes of modern society, and that we very well know how to comment severely on the other classes. They would there read the programme of our work, as recently sketched by a great bishop of the holy church: “We should believe in the people, hope in them, love them.” For you must not imagine that alms will here suffice, and that the people will accept them; they exact all our heart, our esteem, our respect. He who does not respect the workman can do nothing. Thus, this doctrine of respect for the workman, the truly Christian doctrine, is the base upon which the Catholic Circle of Workingmen has erected its edifice: may God prosper and bless it!

Ask us now with frankness what we are, what is our faith, and listen well to our reply, which will not be less sincere.

We believe in one only God, the supreme and sovereign Workman, whom we do not confound with his work; the work is divine, but it is not God. Beyond the world, above the world, in an inaccessible region, lives and reigns from everlasting to everlasting the majesty of God, the Infinite and Absolute, the Justiceand Mercy, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, living and personal, the eternal Providence, who watches over the workmen of all races and of all times. There are among you some who refuse to this God the free adhesion of their faith, and it is this negation which we come here to combat with the arms of reason and of light. All depends upon your faith; even though you may be atheists, we will love you, but, alas! you will not return our love, and the reconciliation so ardently desired will not be easily realized; for you can only be dissolved in love, and God is love.

We believe, then, in God the Creator, and we bow before him with the simple and magnificent faith of the humble stone-cutter of whom Lamartine speaks, and who one day said to our great poet, “I do not know how other men are made; but, as for me, I cannot see, I do not say a star, but even an ant, the leaf of a tree, a grain of sand, without asking who made it; and the reply is, God. I understand it well, for, before being, it was not; therefore, it could not make itself.” I quote these beautiful words with great joy under the roof of a chapel especially consecrated to workmen. Meditate upon them, workmen, who listen to me; and, if you are republicans, respect, love, believe in what this republican of 1848 respected, loved, and believed. Then the workman believed in God; this time must return, and for this necessary work we will expend our time, our strength, our life. But it is not enough to believe in God; we must render to the Creator the act of the creature, and offer him respect, homage, confidence, prayer, and love. Blessed be this little chapel ofJésus-Ouvrier, if this night one of these sentiments will be offered by one of the souls who are here and listen to me.

We also believe in the Son of God, the Word, the interior Speech, the creative Word of the Father, and we affirm that this Word, at a determined moment of history, came down on our earth that sin had stained, and that had to be purified. To arrive at God, who is absolute purity, we must be white or whitened. Are we white of ourselves? Look into your souls, and answer. Christ, then, came to suffer, to expiate, to die for us all, and especially for all workmen, past, present, and to come. Such is the admirable doctrine of the solidarity of expiation; and it is here that Jesus is again the type of workmen. Oh! who can complain of work, when God for thirty years submitted to the rigorous law of manual labor! Who can complain of suffering, when he bore the weight of all the sufferings of the body and of the human soul! Who can complain of loneliness and abandonment, when this God was betrayed by his tenderest friends, and abandoned by all except his mother, who remained standing at the foot of the cross! Who can complain of dying in solitude, in grief, and in shame, on the pallet of a garret or the bed of a hospital, when he, the Creator of so many millions of suns and of the universe, gave us the example of the most cruel death, after having offered us as model the most wretched life! Ah! they had reason to decree the suppression of the crucifix in the hospitals and schools; for a true workman cannot look at the crucifix without being moved to the bottom of his soul, without extending to it his arms, without being profoundly consoled, without crying, “Behold my Master, my Example, and my Father!”

We believe that Christianity is contained in these words, which we should ponder: “Imitation of Christ,” and, in particular, “Imitation of Jesus the workman.” It is by that means we will be led to give a place to private virtues, which our adversaries do not wish to accord to us. Nowadays it is fashionable among workmen and others to repeat this ill-sounding proposition, which is an exact summary of Victor Hugo’s last work: that “Society is bad, and man is good.” Do not believe it; man is an intelligent, free, responsible being, who can, when he wishes, and with the aid of God, conquer the evil in him, and do good. As society is only a composition of men, it follows and will ever be that, if each one of us becomes purer, more humble, more charitable, better, society will itself become less savage, more enlightened, better organized, every way improved. In political economy, we cannot too highly exalt therôleof private virtues.

It can be demonstrated mathematically, and it will soon be shown, that everything socially springs from sacrifice. If you wish to know here what distinguishes the Catholics from their enemies, I will tell you very simply that they place duty before right, and that the enemies of the church place right before duty. Certainly, we believe in right as strongly as you can; but we make it the logical consequence and, if I may say so, the reward of accomplished duty. Weigh well this doctrine, to which is attached the destiny of the world.

Finally, we believe in the life everlasting. Doubtless it is to be desired that all men should make every effort for the reign of justice on this earth; in this, the Catholics have not been wanting, nor ever will be. But whatever may be the legitimate beauty of these attempts, I think that the perfection of ideal justice will only be found in the future life, and that, to make the definitive balance of the fate of each man, heaven must always enter in the calculation. Here below there are too many inconsolable sorrows, more suffering than social equality can ever suppress. Alas! there will always be the passions that ravage the heart; always ingratitude and abandonment; always sickness and the death of those whom we love best. Paradise of my God! you will re-establish the equilibrium; paradise of my God! if you are, above all, destined for those who have suffered, you will be assuredly opened to workmen. In this hope I live.

And here I am led to recapitulate, not without emotion, all the benefits that Providence has more especially reserved for you. “A heavenly Father, who merits above all the title of workman, and who made the earth; a God, who comes on earth to take up the plane, the saw, and the hammer, and become the prototype of workmen; an infallible church that for eighteen hundred years has bent over workmen, to enlighten, console, and love them; an eternity of happiness, where all present injustice will be superabundantly repaired.”

Workmen, my brethren, what can you ask further? In the place of God, what could you make better? Answer.

II.

What do we wish, however? In other words, what can we promise you?

First of all, there are twenty promises we cannot make you, and it is our duty here to warn you of ournon possumus.

We cannot promise you ever to consider armed revolt as a duty or a right. We cling with all the strength of our understanding to thedoctrine that even against injustice the protest should be martyrdom, heroically accepted, heroically submitted. Thus did the first Christians; they allowed themselves to be slaughtered like beautiful sheep, covered with generous blood. This sublimely passive resistance will not take from us, as it never did from them, the liberty of speech; they died declaring their belief in God, the supreme Principle, and in the Son of God, the sovereign Expiator. And when fifteen or eighteen millions had been killed, the church triumphed; she then came forth from the catacombs, and to her was given the mission to enlighten the world.

We do not promise you the liberty of doing evil, and it would be false if we even appeared to make such an engagement. At this instant, there are five hundred men in France who pervert, corrupt, putrefy France; among these are four hundred and ninety writers and ten caricaturists; according to our idea, it is deplorable that they can freely exercise their trade, and destroy with impunity so many millions of souls among young girls, young men, and workmen.

We cannot with sincerity promise you absolute equality on this earth. What we can promise you hereafter is that beautiful equality of Christians who are sprung from the same God-Creator, saved by the same God-Redeemer, enlightened by the same God-Illuminator. It is the equality, the profound equality, of baptism and the eucharist; the equality of souls in trials and reward; it is, in fine, equality in heaven. As for the other, we will exhaust ourselves in the effort to obtain it; but we have two obstacles before us, over which we do not hope to triumph—sickness and vice. No equality is possible with these two scourges, and they are ineradicable. We cannot promise you either illegitimate pleasure or even the end of suffering. In taking suffering from man—which is impossible—they would take from him his resemblance to God, and consequently his true greatness and his titles to heaven. The more we suffer, the more we resemble our Father, the more we merit eternal joy. In suffering will be found the Christian principle, which we cannot efface from the Gospel, and which is even the essence of the Christian life. But we promise to suffer with you, and, as the church has done for eighteen hundred years, to alleviate your sorrows, to heal your wounds, to satisfy your material and moral hunger, and to quench your thirst for truth. The fathers of the church invite us only to consider ourselves as “depositaries of riches.” All property is but a deposit in our hands—a deposit which we are strictly obliged to communicate to you, and for which we must render an account to the Master.

We promise you also faith, which gives to the soul a noble attribute and a happy tranquillity. And with faith we can give you what has been well called theintelligence of life—the intelligence thanks to which the workman knows how to accept inequality, because he sees in the horizon the beautiful perspective of eternity. We promise you calmness in certainty, the consolation that every workman can feel in regarding his divine type; and, in giving you this type, you will possess a rare treasure, for which your souls are justly eager.

We promise you the sweetness of work Christianly accepted. Says a great Christian: “What matters work when Jesus Christ is there?” It is here that we must recall those splendid verses of the greatest of our poets—those verses which we wouldwish to see written on the walls of all our transfigured workshops: “God, look you—let the senseless reject—causes to be born of labor two daughters: Virtue which makes cheerfulness sweet, and Cheerfulness which makes virtue charming.” And with work, you will conquer also the “courage of life”; for you will be convinced that all beings are subjected to this great law, and that the blows of your hammers are the notes of a universal chant. “All work, each one is at his post; he who governs the state; the savant, who extends the limits of human explorations; the sculptor, who makes the statue spring from his chisel; the poet, who sings between his tears and his sighs; the priest, who punishes and pardons—all, down to you, poor workman, in your smoky workshop. We are all living stones of that cathedral formed of souls and of centuries for the glory of God.”[200]With such thoughts, the day appears short, and labor assumes an exquisite character. What joy to say, “I work with the entire universe; I work as God himself has set me the example.”

Still further, we promise you honor and pride. The Christian workman, he whom we hope to see multiplied in Paris, loves his trade; he is proud of it, and would blush if he did not prefer it to all others. He contemplates with satisfaction the work which he has just accomplished, and, like the Creator, with innocent simplicity, finds it beautiful. He attempts without jealousy to equal and even surpass the best workmen of his kind. He thinks that his country should be the most honorable and the most honored of all, and that France should be the equal of all other powers. On this subject he will not jest, but becomes grave. If he belongs to a corporation, he is enthusiastic for the glory of his banner, and will not allow it to be insulted. When a man thus respects his position, he respects himself, and is led to respect God. Such are the elements of what I willingly term the workman’s honor.

We promise you peace of conscience, the happiness that follows accomplished duty, the repose in joy. Every workman among us should say to his children what one of the most learned men of the day, the illustrious Emmanuel de Rougé, wrote in his will: “May my children preserve the faith. Repose of mind and heart can only be found in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and the Saviour of man.” To work, says a contemporary philosopher, is easy; to repose is difficult. Man works without repose when he labors relying only upon himself; he works and reposes when he commences by first confiding himself to God. This is the repose we offer you; it is supremely delicious, and the workman will be led to repose, in working for others, like good Claude des Huttes, the stone-cutter of St. Point, the friend of Lamartine, who, poor as he was, worked gratuitously for those poorer than he, and said to himself, when retiring to rest: “I have earned a good day’s wages; for the poor pay me in friendship, my heart pays me in contentment, and the good God will pay me in mercy.” O greatness of the Christian workman!

We promise to labor as unceasingly for the amelioration of your material condition as for the enlargement of your understanding. Evil be to us if we did not think of the lodging, warming, nourishment of the workman’s family; if we would confiscate science to our profit, and not extend to you the treasure; if we ceased for a single instant to openschools, asylums, circles, conferences, institutions of peace and of light. We do not recoil before progress; no light terrifies us. From texts of the Gospel, we have and ever will produce new consequences, religious, philosophical, and social; and these conclusions constitute a progress incessant and ever new—our progress, the only true progress.

Finally, we promise to organize with your aid the workingmen’s associations. Association only frightens us when it leans towards despotism, and we wish principally to give it a religious character. The confraternity! an old word, which is ridiculed, but which in reality is a great thing; men reunited for one temporal aim under the protection of God, their angel guardians, and their celestial patrons; free men, discussing with all loyalty the interests of their trade, and knowing how to govern themselves. You will invent nothing better, provided always that, in this enlarged institution, the Catholic spirit is harmoniously mingled with the positive rules of social science. We are in the midst of a crisis which cannot last long; to our mutual aid and co-operative societies others will succeed more scientifically organized, and, above all, more Christian. We hope in this future, and believe it very near; it is the ideal for this world now, and for heaven hereafter—heaven, which is the great association of the happy ...

III.

It would seem impossible, in the face of such doctrines, that any misunderstanding could exist between the church and the workman; but Satan has not understood it in this manner, and objections pour against the church.

It has been said repeatedly that the church has done nothing for the workman. It is the conclusion that Victor Hugo has given to hisLes Misérables, and this book has singularly contributed to develop hatred in the hearts of the people. Numerous writers, animated with the same ardent hate, affirm daily that, to find society well organized, we must go back to antiquity, or take 1789 as the place of departure.

To refute these assertions, we will first say that, in regard to antiquity, they forget that it was devoured by the frightful cancer of slavery; among the greater part of nations before Christ, the workmen were for a long time principally slaves. Manual labor, which was universally despised, was performed by entire nations of slaves, who were paid with lashes of the whip. Thus were built many of the magnificent monuments of the Greeks, and, above all, of the Romans—monuments which they place so far above those of the present. I remember, one beautiful October night in the Eternal City, contemplating with stupefaction the immense mass of the Coliseum; the gigantic shafts of the columns which lay pell-mell at my feet; the colossal aqueducts defined against the horizon—all the splendors which are still grand even in their ruins. A priest who accompanied me exclaimed, in astonished admiration, “You must acknowledge that the Christian races have never produced such great works.”

“‘Tis true,” I replied, “and I thank God for it; for these monuments you behold were chiefly constructed by the hands of slaves, and we now only employ free workmen, whom we pay for their labor.”

We do not sufficiently reflect on this. Obelisks, immense pyramids, splendid porticos, hippodromes where so much plebeian blood flowed; theatres where modesty was brutallyviolated; temples where they adored so many passions, so many vices; tombs where so much vanity is revealed; elegant houses, but where the wife and child were so little valued; astonishing monuments of incomparable art, I admire you much less since I know by whose hands you were raised. It is not thus that they have built since the advent of Jesus Christ and the church.

There is in history a proposition of more than mathematical clearness, which I declare solemnly to be true; it is thatthe church destroyed slavery. It is the church that gradually transformed the slave into the serf; that by degrees compelled society, formed by her, to change the serf into the freeman. This is established by the records, century after century, year after year, day after day. It is true, the church did not improvise in an hour this admirable change, this marvellous progress; it is not her custom to improvise, and, truth to say, she improvises nothing; she moves slowly but surely. She never roused the slaves to revolt, but she recalled the masters to their duty. She gave great care to the question of marriage between slaves; for, with intelligent foresight, she knew that the whole future depended on it: briefly, in 300, there were millions of slaves—in 1000, not one.

Everywhere existed admirable confraternities of workmen, who worked without pay on the numerous cathedrals scattered throughout Europe; thousands of men labored gratuitously for God, or nobly earned their living in working for their brothers. Will you deny this fact? I defy you to do it. The church conquered for the workmen two inappreciable things—liberty and dignity; and, for so many benefits, she too often receives but ingratitude and forgetfulness. One day, while rambling through the wide streets of Oxford, that city of twenty-four colleges, formerly founded by the church, and which live to-day on those foundations of our fathers, I inquired if there could be found a Catholic Church. I was conducted into a kind of room, narrow and low, which many of your employers would not use for a factory or shop. That was what they condescended to lease the holy church of God in the splendid city, built with her hands, and bathed in her sweat. It is thus with the working-class, which is also a creation of the church; its mother is forgotten, and it is with difficulty that she is left a little corner in the workshop; but it is there we will endeavor to replace her with honor, and then each one of you can say with the poet Jasmin: “I remember that, when I was young, the church found me naked, and clothed me; now that I am a man, I find her naked, in my turn I will cover her.” It is this cry we wish to hear from you.

Again, we hear that “the church is not the same to the rich and to the poor.” When will it be proved, when can it be shown, that there are two Creeds, two Decalogues, two codes of morality, two families of sacraments, two dogmas, two disciplines, two altars—one for the use of the great ones of the earth, the other destined for the poor? It can never be done. They can bring forward a certain number of facts; they can cite abuses more or less deplorable, and which we condemn implacably; but the equality remains entire. I go further, and affirm that the church has unceasingly favored the humble, the weak, and the laborers. They are her privileged ones, and she has well shown it.

Another objection current amongthe working-class, another calumny which has triumphed over the minds of the people, unworthily deceived, is the scandalous assertion that “the church is the enemy of instruction,” and this abominable falsehood is, above all, applied to primary instruction. Now, it is mathematically proved that, before the establishment of the church, there did not exist in the much-lauded antiquity a single school for workmen. This first proposition is clearly evident, and it is not less mathematically demonstrated that, since the advent of the church, “free schools have been attached to each parish, and confided to the direction of the clergy.” Such are the words of a learned man of our day, who has best appreciated this question, and who, in order to establish his conclusion, appeals to texts the most luminously authentic.[201]We will not pause here to speak of the profound love of Christ for the ignorant—that love which shines forth in every page of the Gospel; nor will we linger over the epoch of the persecution of the early church; but we will transport ourselves to France in the first period of our history.

At the commencement of the VIth century, the Council of Vaison declares that for along timein Italy “the priests had brought up young students in their own houses, and instructed them like good fathers in faith and sound knowledge.” In the year 700, a Council of Rouen goes further, and commandsall Christiansto send their children to the city school: is not that instruction Christianly free and Christianly obligatory? Meanwhile, Charlemagne appears, and watches energetically that these noble lights shall not be extinguished, or that they may be relighted. In 797, a capitulary of Theodulph offers these admirable words: “That the priests should establish schools in the villages and boroughs, and that no pay should be exacted from the children in return.” The same decrees are found in the canons of the Council of Rome in 826, in the bulls of Pope Leo IV., and in the capitulary of Hérard, Archbishop of Tours, in 858.

Observe that these last quotations belong to the darkest, most savage epoch of our history. Feudalism reigned supreme; that redoubtable institution had recently come into existence, without having yet at its side the Christian counterpoise of chivalry. But if we make a leap of two or three hundred years, and arrive at the XIIth and XIIIth centuries, all becomes brilliant, and history can furnish the list of all the schools that then existed even in the smallest villages. These statistics are extant, and can be consulted; and from so many accumulated documents, which extend from 529 to 1790, the conclusion, rigorously scientific, must be drawn that “from a distant period, even at the foundation of our parishes, the clergy in the country dispensed instruction to the agricultural classes. It was thus throughout the middle ages; and even at a recent epoch we have seen the priests in many parishes perform the functions of teachers.”[202]What do our adversaries think of such exact testimony? All the schools, then, having been founded by the church, what satanic skill was needed to persuade the people that the church had not established one!

Still more scandalous is the objection that the church has failed in her errand of mercy; for they accuse her of not having sufficiently lovedthe poor and abandoned. We were stupefied, several years ago, to find this strange assertion in a celebrated review: that the church owed to the Protestants the idea of the Sisters of Charity. Now, we have before our eyes acts truly innumerable, establishing clearly that there were many thousand institutions of charity in France in the XIIth and XIIIth centuries. During the first ages of the church, in the midst of the persecution, the poor,all poor, were assisted in their homes by the deacons; and, after the persecutions, these same poor were reunited in splendid palaces, which were divided into as many classes as there were miseries to relieve. But for the fear of being called pedants, we would cite here theBretotrophia, or asylums for children; theNosocomia, or houses for the sick; theOrphanotrophia, reserved for orphans; and theGerontocomia, consecrated to old age.

Such establishments continued to exist from the XIIth and XIIIth centuries in all the episcopal cities, in the monastic centres, and in the humblest parishes, where they never ceased, during the Christian ages, to soothe the suffering, feed the hungry, counsel the erring, and instruct the ignorant. By these we are easily led to the XIVth and XVth centuries, when we behold so many hospitals, so many charitable institutions, flourishing on the surface of the Christian soil. Where are the tears the church has not dried? the nakedness she has not covered? the captives she has not redeemed? the sick she has not visited? the strangers she has not received? the dead she has not buried with her tears? the sinners she has not pressed to her heart? the children she has not made smile, and has not instructed and consoled? the laborers she has not loved? This is a blow to error and misrepresentation; the proofs are clear—you can, youmustread them.

Again, they object that “the church does not occupy herself at the present time with thesocial, the labor question.” I can show a hundred books, bearing the greatest Catholic names, entirely consecrated to this new science. For eighteen hundred years, the church has not ceased for an instant to put political economy into action; for she has not ceased an instant to lean towards all miseries to relieve them; towards all enjoyments to purify them. Without ever having regarded sacrifice and resignation as the last solution of the social problem; without ever having renounced the hope of seeing the reign of God in a happier future, she has never ceased to preach resignation to the weak, and sacrifice to the powerful. For eighteen hundred years, the church has also written her economical theory; for, on account of the intimate connection between the social question and theology, it can be said with all truth that, up to the XIXth century, there have been as many books written of political economy as treatises of theology.

Thanks be to God, the day has arrived when a science has been founded entirely consecrated to the study of the social question. Far from recoiling before it, the church has valiantly advanced to the charge. Undoubtedly she has a hundred other works on hand, and is obliged to choose the hour when she commences the task; the hour has sounded in this same house, where you listen to me with so much patience; every Monday a modest council is held, which also wishes to take the name ofJésus-Ouvrier. From all parts of Paris come representatives of the religious orders, and for that they joyfully sacrifice every occupation;they occupy themselves with the labor question and the workman. These meetings last two, three, and even four hours. They seek to study the principles which govern this question; the history of the efforts that have been made until the present day in favor of the workman; the obstacles which oppose the solution of this grand problem; and, finally, the remedies which can be brought to bear upon these accumulated evils. This is what is done by these priests, these religious, these Catholics; they will review one after the other the workman, the workingman’s family, the workingman’s association. This is the plan of the book whose materials they are gathering; these are the three parts of a species of theology of labor which they are preparing in concert. In twenty other places in Paris are held twenty other assemblies, not less Catholic, animated by the same spirit, pursuing the same end; and we can now say that the principle of Catholic social economy is erected.

I will now conclude, and throw a last glance over the space we have traversed together. I commenced with the cross, and will finish with it.

In one of our romances of chivalry, it is related that the wood of the cross borne in front of the Christian army in a battle against the Saracens suddenly assumed gigantic and miraculous proportions; it touched the sky, and was more luminous than the sun. The infidels, seized with terror, broke and fled, and the Christians counted another victory. The cross of the Circles of Workingmen is small, very small, and will not probably be the subject of such a prodigy; nevertheless, I hope that its gentle light will end by assuring the victory; and the victory that we desire is that the workman may be thrown in the arms of Jesus Christ.

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