did memorials of their victories: it might have been said that they held their existence from different irreconcilable creators, always watchful to destroy each other, and who had placed them here below only to revenge their quarrel, and to terminate their disagreement by the general extinction of one of the two parties; every thing disunited men, and nothing bound them together but interest and the passions, which were themselves the only source of their divisions and animosities.

But Jesus Christ is become our peace, and our reconciliation, the corner-stone which binds and unites the whole fabric, the living head which unites all its members, and makes but one body of the whole. Every thing knits us to him; and whatever knits us to him unites us to each other. It is the same Spirit which animates us, the same hope which sustains us, the same bosom which brings us forth, the same fold which assembles us, and the same Shepherd who conducts us; we are children of the same Father, inheritors of the same promises, citizens of the same eternal city, and members of the same body.

Now, my brethren, have so many sacred ties been successful in binding us together? Christianity, which ought to be but the union of hearts, the tie to knit believers to each other, and Jesus Christ to believers; and which ought to represent upon the earth an image of the peace of heaven; Christianity itself is alas! no longer but a horrible theatre of troubles and dissentions: war and fury seem to have established an eternal abode among Christians, and religion itself, which ought to unite, divides them. The unbeliever, the enemy of Jesus Christ, the children of the false prophet, who came to spread war and devastation through

men, are at peace; and the children of peace, the disciples of him who, this day, comes to bring it to men, have their hands continually armed with fire and sword against each other! Kings rise up against kings; nations against nations; seas which separate, reunite them for their mutual destruction: a morsel of stone is sufficient to arm their fury and revenge, and whole nations perish and bury themselves under its walls, in contesting to whom its ruins shall belong: the earth is not sufficiently vast to contain them, and to fix each one within the limits which nature herself seems to have pointed out for states and empires: each wishes to usurp from his neighbour; and a miserable field of battle, which is scarcely sufficient to serve as a burial place to those who have disputed it, becomes the price of those rivers of blood with which it is for ever stained. O divine Reconciliator of men! return then once more upon the earth, since the peace which thou didst bring to it at thy birth still leaves so many wars and so many calamities in the universe!

Nor is this all: that circle itself, which unites us under the same laws, unites not our hearts and affections; hatreds and jealousies divide citizens equally as they divide nations; animosities are perpetuated in families, and fathers transmit them to their children, as an accursed inheritance. In vain may the authority of the prince disarm the hand, it disarms not the heart; in vain may the sword be wrested from them, with the sword of the tongue they continue a thousand times more cruelly to pierce their enemy; hatred, under the necessity of confining itself within, becomes deeper and more rancorous, and to forgive is looked upon as a dishonourable weakness. Oh! my brethren, in vain then hath Jesus Christ descended upon the earth! He

is come to bring peace to us; he hath left it to us as his inheritance; nothing hath he so strongly recommended to us as loving each other; yet fellowship and peace seem as if banished from among us, and hatred and animosity divide court, city, and private families; and those whom the tenure of offices, the interests of the state, decency itself, and blood, ought, at least, to unite; tear, defame, and wish to destroy, and to exalt themselves on the ruins of each other religion, which shews us our brethren even in our enemies, is no longer listened to; that awful threatening, which gives us room to expect the same severity on the part of God which we shall have shewn to our brethren, no longer touches or affects us; and all these motives, so capable of softening the heart, still leave it filled with all the bitterness of hatred. We tranquilly live in this frightful state: the justice of our complaints with regard to our enemies, calms us as to the injustice of our hatred and of our rooted aversion towards them; and if, on the approach of death, we apparently hold out to them the hand of reconciliation, it is not that we love them more, it is because the expiring heart hath no longer the force to sustain its hatred, because almost all our feelings are extinguished, or, at least, because we are no longer capable of feeling any thing but our own weakness and our approaching dissolution. Let us then unite ourselves to the newly born Jesus Christ; let us enter into the spirit of that mystery; with him let us render to God that glory which is his due; it is the only means of restoring to ourselves that peace, of which our passions have hitherto deprived us.

SERMON XXVII.

FOR THE DAY OF THE EPIPHANY.

MATTHEW ii. 2.

For we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.

TRUTH, that light of Heaven, figured by the star which on this day appeared to the Magi, is the only thing here below worthy of the cares and the researches of man. Truth alone is the light of our mind, the rule of our heart, the source of real joys, the foundation of our hopes, the consolation of our fears, the alleviation of our evils, the cure for all our afflictions: truth alone is the refuge of the good conscience, and the terror of the bad, the internal punishment of vice and recompense of virtue: truth alone immortalizes those who have loved it, and renders illustrious the chains of those who suffer for it, attracts public honours to the ashes of its martyrs and defenders, and bestows respectability on the poverty and abject state of those who have quitted all to follow it: lastly, truth alone inspires magnanimous thoughts, forms heroical men, souls of whom the world is unworthy, and sages alone worthy VOL. II. .41

of that name.

All our endeavours ought therefore to be confined to making ourselves acquainted with it; all our talents to manifest it; all our zeal to defend it: in men we ought to look only for truth, to have no wish of pleasing them but by truth, to esteem in them only truth, and to be resolved that they never shall please us but through truth. In a word, it would appear that it should have only to shew itself, as on this day it did to the Magi, in order to be loved; and that it shews us to ourselves in order to teach us to know ourselves.

Nevertheless, it is astonishing what different impressions the same truth makes upon men. To some it appears as a light which directs their steps, and, in pointing out their duty, renders it amiable to them: to others it is as a troublesome, and, as it were, a kind of dazzling light, which vexes and fatigues them : lastly, to many it is as a thick mist, which irritates, inflames them with rage, and completes their blindness. It is the same star which, on this day, appeared in the firmament: the Magi see it; the priests of Jerusalem know that it is foretold in the prophets; Herod can no longer doubt that it hath appeared, seeing wise men come from the extremities of the east, to seek, guided by its light, the new King of the Jews. Nevertheless, how dissimilar are the dispositions with which they receive the same truth manifested to them!

In the Magi it finds a docile and sincere heart: in the priests, a heart mean, deceitful, cowardly, and dissembling in Herod, a corrupted and hardened heart. Consequently, it forms worshippers in the Magi; dis. semblers in the priests; and in Herod a persecutor. Now, my brethren, such is still among us the lot of truth it is a celestial light which is shown to us, says St. Augustin; but few receive it, many hide and dim