guisedly spoken to us; from the moment that they have said to us, " It is not lawful for thee," they are stripped, in our opinion, of all their grand qualities: their zeal is no longer but whim; their charity but an ostentation, or a desire to censure and contradict; their piety but an imprudence or a cheat, with which they cover their pride; their truth but a mistaken phantom. Thus, frequently convinced in our minds of the iniquity of our passions, we would wish others to give them their approbation; forced, by the inward testimony of the truth, to reproach them to ourselves, we cannot endure that they should be mentioned to us by others: we are hurt and irritated that others should join us against ourselves. Like Saul, we exact of the Samuels, that they approve, in public, what we inwardly condemn; and, through a corruption of the heart, perhaps more deplorable than our passions themselves, unable to silence truth in the bottom of our heart, we would wish to extinguish it in the hearts of all who approach us. I was right, therefore, in saying, that we all make a boast of loving the truth, but that few court it, like the magi, with an upright and a sincere heart.
Thus, the little attention which they pay to the difficulties which seemed to dissuade them from that research, is a fresh proof of its sincerity and heartiness. For, my brethren, how singular must not this extraordinary step, which grace proposed to them, have at first appeared to their mind! They alone, of all their nation, among so many sages and learned men, without regard to friends and connexions, in spite of public observations and derisions, while all others either contemn this miraculous star, or consider the attention paid to it, and the design of these three sages, as an absurd undertaking and a popular weakness, unworthy of their mind and knowledge, — they alone declare against the common opinion; they alone entrust themselves to the new guide, which Heaven sends them; they alone abandon their country and their children, and reckon as nothing a singularity, the necessity and wisdom of which the celestial light discloses to them.
Last instruction. The cause, my brethren, of truth being always unavailingly shown to us, is, that we judge not of it by the lights which it leaves in our soul, but by the impression which it makes on the rest of men with whom we live: we never consult the truth in our heart; we consult only the opinions which others have of it. Thus, in vain doth the light of Heaven a thousand times intrude upon us, and point out the ways in which we ought to go; the very first glance which we afterward cast upon the example of others who live like us, revives us, and spreads a fresh mist over our heart. In those fortunate moments when we consult the sole truth of our own conscience, we condemn ourselves; we tremble over a futurity; we promise to ourselves a new life; yet, a moment after, when returned to the world, and no longer consulting but the general example, we justify ourselves, and regain that false security which we had lost. We have no confidence in the truth which the common example disproves; we sacrifice it to error and to the public opinion; it becomes suspicious to us, because it has chosen out us alone to favour with its light, and the very singularity of the bless-
