passions, or if religion had countenanced them, unbelief would never have appeared upon the earth. And a proof that what I say is true, is, that in the moments when you are disgusted with guilt, you imperceptibly turn toward religion; in the moments when your passions are more cool, your doubts diminish; you render, as if in spite of yourself, a secret homage in the bottom of your heart to the truth of faith: in vain you try to weaken it, you cannot succeed in extinguishing it; at the first signal of death, you raise your eyes toward heaven, you acknowledge the God whose finger is upon you, you cast yourself upon the bosom of your Father and the Author of your being; you tremble over a futurity which you had vaunted not to believe; and, humbled under the hand of the Almighty, on the point of falling upon and crushing you like a worm of the earth, you confess that he is alone great, alone wise, alone immortal, and that man is only vanity and lies.
Lastly. If fresh proofs were necessary to my subject, I could prove to you how glorious faith is to man, on the side of the grand models which it holds out for our imitation. Consider Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, said formerly the Jews to their children. Consider the holy men who have gone before you, to whom their faith hath merited so honourable a testimony, said formerly St. Paul to the faithful, after having related to them, in that beautiful chapter of his Epistle to the Hebrews, their names, and the most wonderful circumstances of their history, from age to age.
Behold the excellency of the Christian faith. Recollect all the great men who, in all ages, have submitted to it; such magnanimous princes, such religious conquerors, such venerable pastors, such enlightened philosophers, such estimable learned men, wits so vaunted in their age, such noble martyrs, such penitent anchorites, such pure and constant virgins, heroes in every description of virtue. Philosophy preached a pompous wisdom; but its sage was no where to be found. Here what a cloud of witnesses! What an uninterrupted tradition of Christian heroes from the blood of Abel down to us!
Now, I ask, shall you blush to tread in the steps of so many illustrious names? Place on the one side all the great men whom, in all ages, religion hath given to the world, and on the other that small number of black and desperate minds whom unbelief hath produced. Doth it appear more honourable for you to rank yourself among the latter party? To adopt for guides, and for your models, those men whose names are only recollected with horror, those monsters whom it hath pleased Providence to permit that nature should, from time to time, bring forth; or the Abrahams, the Josephs, the Moseses, the Davids, the apostolic men, the righteous of the ancient and of modern times? Support, if you can, this comparison. Ah! said formerly St. Jerome, on a different occasion, if you believe me in error, it is glorious for me to be deceived with such guides.
And here, my brethren, leaving unbelievers for a moment, allow me to address myself to you. Avowed unbelief is a vice perhaps
