of religious knowledge — the Elevations developing all Christian dogma, and the Meditations all Christian morality. The biographer quoted above says that the effect of a really thorough study of them is a peculiar repose of mind and satisfaction of heart, arising from the fact that they make the mysteries of religion as clear as God intended them to be made, and shed a soft light on the Gospel precepts which shows these to be as well fitted to make man happy as to teach him virtue. He declares that by reading them we learn to know 'God, mankind and ourselves’; that they alone may serve the purpose of many books on religion and morality; and that De la Harpe was right when he said : ‘ Those who have not read the Meditations and Elevations do not really know Bossuet.’
These works were written for the Visitation nuns at Meaux. The Meditations sur l’Evangile — of which the 'Sermon on the Mount,’ here presented in an English version, is a small portion — were written first, though in point of subject they are rather the sequel than the introduction to the Elevations sur les Mysteres, In style they are more simple than the latter, which treat of the very origins of religion and of the sublimity and power of God; whilst the subject of the
