Poitiers, Agincourt? We reply, that the Cross does not guarantee success in the affairs of this world, any more than it preserves the fighting hero from the musket-shot. Could doubt disturb the mind of any who believe in a God, the Saviour of society as well as the Saviour of individuals, they have only to enumerate the disasters that have befallen France since September 21st, 1792; they are as many as befell France during fourteen centuries of Monarchical sway. Surely the Free Thinkers of 1882, just as the Dictators of Bordeaux, in lending their countenance to infamy and ruin, cannot lay the blame thereof on the Christ whom they ignore.
But, men who seek Him find Him in all the glorious eras ot national History, in the ages of the might of a country, whether military or intellectual. He is hidden from the nation during misfortunes, defeats, revolutions.
We state our own belief, the result of our studies, we do not teach. The Unbeliever and Atheist are free to criticize facts which they cannot deny. The eminent Philosopher d'Alembert says: " There is a bond whose power is greater than any other, and to which the whole of Europe to the present day is indebted for the fellowship existing among its States. This bond is Christianity. Despised at its birth, it offered a shelter to the very caluminators who had so cruelly and so vainly persecuted it. Some advanced thinkers, as they wished to be styled, declare that Christianity is a restraint; this is a confession of their inability to bear the virtuous yoke which it imposes. They declare it to be noxious; this is to ignore those very evident and indispensable advantages which it confers on society. They assert its duties interfere with those of a citizen; this is manifestly to calumniate it, since one of its first precepts is, that each must fulfil the duties of his state of life. They pretend it countenances despotism, the arbitrary authority of Princes; this is to misunderstand its spirit, since it declares in the most powerful language that at the judgment-seat of God Kings shall be judged more rigorously than other men, and that they will have to redeem at a great price the impunity they have enjoyed on earth. The faith exacted by Christianity—they say—contradicts and humbles reason; it is insulting both to experience and to reason to consider as humili-
