lacking. If it be not absolutely universal, we have a pr text for applying the exception to the matter in hand, an for saying: This is not always true, hence there are cases i which it is not so. It only remains to show that this is one of them. And we must be very awkward or unlucky if we d not find one some day.

Contradictions.

Infinite wisdom and wisdom of Religion.

Contradiction is a bad mark of truth.

Much that is certain is contradicted.

Much that is false passes without contradiction. Contradiction is not a mark of falsehood, nor the want of contradiction a mark of truth.

There is a pleasure in being in a vessel beaten about by a storm, provided we are certain it will not founder. persecutions which try the Church are of this kind.

The

The history of the Church should rightly be called the history of truth.

Those who find difficulties of belief seek an excuse in the unbelief of the Jews. "If it was so clear," say they, "why did not the Jews believe?" And they almost wish the Jews had believed, that they might not be deterred by the example of their refusal. But their very unbelief is the foundation of our faith. We should be much less disposed to believe if they were on our side. We should then have a far more ample pretext. This is the wonderful point, to have made the Jews great lovers of the things foretold, and great enemies of their accomplishment.

What could the Jews, his enemies, do? Receiving him they give proof of him by that reception, for then the Messiah is acknowledged by those to whom was committed the expectation of his coming; rejecting him they prove his truth by that rejection.

On the fact that the Christian Religion does not stand alone.

This is so far from being a reason against believing it the true one that, on the contrary, it proves it to be so.

Those who love not the truth take as a pretext that it is contested, and that a multitude deny it; and thus their error comes from this alone, that they love neither truth nor charity. So they are without excuse.

The wicked who profess to follow reason, ought to be extremely strong in reason.

What then do they say ?

Do we not see, say they, beasts live and die like men, and Turks like Christians? They have their ceremonies, their prophets, their doctors, their saints, their religious, as well as we, etc. But how is this contrary to the Scripture? Does it not say all this?

This

If you care but little to know the truth, here is enough for your peace, but if you desire to know it with your whole heart, this is not enough, look to the details. would suffice for a question in philosophy, but not here, where your all is concerned. And yet, after a slight meditation of this kind, we shall go off to amuse ourselves, etc. We should acquaint ourselves with this religion; even if it does not disclose the reason for such obscurity, it will perhaps teach it to us.

If God had permitted one only Religion, it would have been too easily recognised. But when we look at it near we can easily see the true through the confusion.

PROOFS OF THE DIVINITY OF JESUS

PERPE

CHRIST.

ERPETUITY.-Let it be considered that from the beginning of the world the expectation or the worship of the Messiah has subsisted without a break; that there have been men who said that God had revealed to them the future birth of a Redeemer who should save his people; that afterwards came Abraham saying he had had a revelation that the Messiah was to spring from him by a son who should be born; that Jacob declared that of his twelve sons the Messiah would spring from Judah; that Moses and the prophets then came to declare the time and the manner of his advent; that they said their law was only provisional till that of the Messiah, that it should last till then but the other should endure eternally; that thus either their law or that of the Messiah, of which it was the promise, would be always upon earth; that in fact it has always endured; that at last Jesus Christ has come with all the circumstances foretold. How wonderful is this!

The two most ancient books in the world are those of Moses and Job, the one a Jew, the other a gentile, both of whom regard Jesus Christ as their common centre and object: Moses in reporting the promises of God to Abraham, Jacob, etc., and his prophecies. And Job, Quis mihi det ut, etc. Scio enim quod redemptor meus vivit, etc.

I believe that Joshua was the first of God's people who

had this name, as Jesus Christ was the last of God's people.

What man had ever so great renown? The whole Jewish people foretold him before his coming. The Gentile world worships him after his coming. The two worlds, Gentile and Jewish, regard him as their centre.

Yet what man ever had less enjoyment of his renown? Of thirty-three years he passed thirty in retirement. For three years he passed as an impostor, the priests and rulers rejected him, his friends and kinsmen despised him. At the end he died, betrayed by one of his own disciples, denied by another, abandoned by all.

What part then had he in all this renown? Never man had more glory, never man more ignominy. All this renown was for our sakes, to enable us to recognise him, he took none of it for himself.

Office of Jesus Christ.-He alone was to produce a great people, elect, holy, and chosen, to lead it, to nourish it, to bring it into a place of rest and holiness, to make it holy to God, to make it the temple of God, to reconcile it to God, to save it from the wrath of God, to deliver it from the slavery of sin, which visibly reigns in man, to give laws to this people, to engrave these laws on their heart, to offer himself to God for them, to sacrifice himself for them, to be a victim without spot, himself the priest, needing to offer himself, his body and his blood, and yet to offer bread and wine to God.

After many persons had come before, at last came Jesus Christ, to say: "Here am I and this is the hour, that which the prophets had said was to come in the fulness of time. I tell you what my apostles will do. The Jews shall be cast out, Jerusalem shall be soon destroyed, and the Gentiles shall enter into the knowledge of God. My apostles shall do this after you have slain the heir of the vineyard."

Then the Apostles said to the Jews, "You shall be accursed," and to the Gentiles, "You shall enter into the

knowledge of God;" and that came to pass. Celsus laughed at it.

Then Jesus Christ came to tell men that they had no enemies but themselves, that their passions cut them off from God, that he came to destroy these, and give them his grace to unite them all in an holy Church, that he came to call into this Church Gentiles and Jews, that he came to destroy the idols of the former and the superstition of the latter. To this all men are opposed, not only by the natural opposition of lust; but above all, the kings of the earth, as had been foretold, gathered together to destroy this religion in its infancy. Quare fremuerunt gentes. Reges terræ adversus Christum.

All that was great on earth was united together, the learned, the wise, the kings. The first wrote, the second condemned, the last slew. Yet notwithstanding all these oppositions, these men, so simple and so weak, resisted all these forces, subduing even the mighty, the learned and the wise, and removed idolatry from all the earth. And all this was done by the power which had foretold it.

And prediction crowns all this, so that none may say that chance has done it all.

Whosoever having only a week to live, does not perceive that belief is the right side to take, and that all this is not a stroke of chance ..

Now were we not slaves to passion, a week and a hundred years would seem one and the same thing.

The prophets foretold, and were not foretold. The saints were foretold, but were not foretellers. Jesus Christ was foretold and foreteller.

If I had never heard anything of the Messiah, yet after the admirable predictions of the course of the world which I see accomplished, I see that it is divine. And if I knew that these same books foretold a Messiah, I should be certain that he would come. And seeing that they place his time before the destruction of the second temple, I should say that he had come.