“I say the acknowledgment of God in Christ,
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee
All questions in the earth and out of it.”
BROWNING.
BAIRDON of Glenmair had withdrawn, closing the door behind him. Gerard had ceased to speak, and sat with flushed cheeks and parted lips, gazing into the old priest’s perplexed and sorrowful face. There was a pause; then gradually the old man’s brow cleared, his eye kindled, and at last he spoke. “I am not careful to answer you concerning these things,” he said. “God established his Church in the world, but He left men to administer it; there, I doubt not, is the clue to the mystery. But I entreat you to remember that the problem contains elements other than the Catholic Church and Humanity. It concerns yourself, your needs, your dangers, your destinies. What of these, M. Gerard?”
“Oh! as for me,” said Gerard, “I shall triumph in the triumph of Humanity―in truth, in freedom, in nature―in the full and joyous satisfaction of all my propensities, those only excepted which are hurtful to my fellow men.”
“Suppose that―like thousands who have gone before you―you never see the triumph of Humanity, never find truth, never win freedom?”
“I have still―myself.”
“Of yourself death will rob you.”
“I think not. I am rather disposed,” said Gerard, with the air of one who makes large concession, “to believe in the existence of God, and, perhaps, in the immortality of the soul.”
“Ah! you account these doctrines, if not probable, at least convenient? You feel that your scheme of the world halts somewhere, and needs, to make it perfect, a judgment to come, and a judge to give sentence? So, like Voltaire, you are willing for the present to accord a conventional homage to an ‘invented God?’ But you are too sincere, too ardent for that creed. To you, God must be more or nothing. You will either return to Christianity, or advance to the open Atheism already avowed by Diderot, Helvetius, D’Holbach.”
“Or else,” said Gerard thoughtfully, “I may, as so many around me are doing, exchange the cold and reasoning Deism of Voltaire for the passionate Deism of Jean Jacques Rousseau.”
“Not likely. Transports of devout affection towards an unknown God ring false to the ear and hollow to the heart. They may be the best thing Deism has to offer the soul of man, but you will not find them sustain yours. Amidst a feast of rare wines and choice confections you will hunger and suffer thirst, for you will have spent your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which satisfieth not. At present, however, you are not worshipping either the God of Reason or the God of Sentiment; you are worshipping Humanity.”
“And Nature―Truth―Freedom,” Gerard hastened to add.
“But in your human soul there is a great need which neither the God of Voltaire, nor the God of Rousseau, nor yet Humanity, Nature, Truth, Freedom, can avail to satisfy. We were speaking just now of M. de Vauvenargues. His acquaintance was a privilege you are too young to have enjoyed, but your literary friends must have spoken to you of him. You may even remember to have seen him, in your earliest childhood.”
“I was not then in Paris,” said Gerard, flattered nevertheless at being taken for a Parisian, and a probable acquaintance of marquises and philosophers. “But I have heard the story of his life―I know how the brave soldier, invalided in the wars of his country, sought in vain from a corrupt government employment that would have given scope to his genius, and satisfied his honorable ambition―how shadows, darker even than disappointment and obscurity, fell upon him early: disease, blindness, long years of weakness and suffering, closed by an untimely death which yet for him seemed a deliverance.”
Thus briefly did Gerard retrace a story none the less full of pathos because it was true of the French philosopher as of the English poet that ―
“When one by one sweet sounds and wandering lights departed,
He wore no less a loving face because so brokenhearted.”
Amongst the writers of the age, Vauvenargues and Rousseau stand pre-eminent for sensibility; only, contrary to what might have been expected, the marquis of the old régime felt chiefly for others, the Genevan watchmaker’s son for Jean Jacques Rousseau.
“Truly my heart yearns over that noble nature,” the priest confessed.
“And yet, in spite of his blameless life, you would consign him to everlasting perdition and torture, because on his deathbed he refused the sacraments of the Church, and chose to die without her pale, calmly ‘returning,’ as he said, ‘into the bosom of Infinite Mercy.’”
“Nay,” the priest replied with deep humility, “I judge him not. ‘All souls are mine,’ the Master saith; and who am I, the meanest of his servants, that He should confide to me his pleasure concerning them? Yet this I know. I had rather Vauvenargues’ soul, or thine, or mine, were in the hands of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, than in those of the God of the philosophers. Vauvenargues himself has said, that ‘at least it is impossible not to wish the Christian religion to be true’ And again, The greatest geniuses, in the greatest fullness of their powers, have believed in and loved Jesus Christ: He yearned towards Him, longed for Him, felt alter Him. Did he find Him? God of the spirits of all flesh, thou alone canst tell!”
“I see,” said Gerard, “that your faith does not make all things clear and certain to you.”
“All things are not clear and certain to any save God,” the priest answered. “And the only voice that ever promised, ‘Ye shall be as gods,’ was the voice of the tempter.”
“Then wherein are you better than we?”
“Herein, that we know One to whom all things are clear and certain. You and I, M. Gerard, are traveling blindfold through an untrodden land to an unseen goal. But I have joined a company under the guidance of One who sees, and who knows the way from its first step to its last.”
Gerard might have been more impressed if the priest had spoken of holding in his the warm and living hand of his Guide; but this would have been Protestantism, and Francois Goudin was not a Protestant.
“What!” said Gerard, “we philosophers are enlightening the world, and you call us blind?”
“What do you call yourselves when the world’s bewildering voices are hushed, and your hearts speak aloud in the silence? Hear Vauvenargues, perhaps the deepest thinker amongst you, and the most loyal to his own convictions. Daring as he was in speculation, he owned one mystery unsolved; brave as he was in action, one dark dread overhung his sky like a thundercloud, and would not pass or be dispelled. In Scripture phrase, through fear of death, ‘he was all his lifetime subject to bondage.’”
“Yet when his hour came, he died with heroic calmness,” said Gerard.
“Outwardly, yes: for he was Vauvenargues. But see him when he unveils the secret places of his soul. Now it is a quotation, like that from La Rochefoucauld― ‘There are two things that cannot be looked at steadily, the sun and death.’ Then, an epigrammatic hint, ‘The thought of death deceives us, for it makes us forget to live.’ Again, a cry of pain, escaping as if unawares from those patient lips, ‘The necessity to die is the most bitter of our affections.’ And once more, a noble thought, only needing the illumination of faith to make it sublime, ‘To do great things we must live as if we should not die.’ Thus ever, underneath all, you hear the same low murmur―that moan of the dark and restless sea that encompasses this little island of our life.”
“He knows all now, for he has crossed the sea,” Gerard said softly. “But other ears do not hear what his did.”
“It is the finest ear that hears most. Besides, others may not pause to listen, or may drown the murmur in nearer and louder noises.”
“M. de Voltaire, for instance, seems troubled by no such mysterious murmurs,” Gerard said. “Nothing ever reaches his ear that he cannot understand and describe.”
“And laugh at? You may live to acknowledge, M. Gerard, that Voltaire, as thinker, has misunderstood the heart of things; as poet, has failed to catch the deeper harmonies of life and nature. But as man, he is just as you are, a living soul, standing ignorant and helpless between the mysteries of life and death. If you were only mind, reason, pure intelligence, perhaps philosophy might satisfy you; but since you are not simply a mind, but a man, with a soul that needs life, a conscience that needs peace, a heart that needs love, you must have something more, or remain unsatisfied.”
“What more?” asked Gerard.
“What has satisfied the wants of ten thousand times ten thousand. Nor has it failed with natures deep and high as Vauvenargues’. Jesus Christ suffices for genius and thinker, for poet and philosopher, as well as for the poor man at his toil or the priest over his breviary. Hear the witness of that great man whom Vauvenargues resembled, not in his genius alone, but also in the circumstances of his life. To Blaise Pascal, as to Vauvenargues, were appointed those wearisome days and nights of pain which take the life out of life. He too, like Vauvenargues, went straight to the inmost heart of things; and if ever any man saw vanity and vexation of spirit written there, he did. If sometimes he appeared to feel less than Vauvenargues the mournfulness of death, it was because he felt so profoundly the mournfulness of life. Yet see him, in that lonely midnight hour when first the love of Christ, which is the heart and center of Christianity, breaks upon his soul. He weeps—but he writes upon the blotted page, Joy, joy! tears of joy! ‘This is life eternal, that I might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.’ And before and after there come broken disjointed words, meant for no human eye save his own―faint inadequate utterances of unutterable joy, the joy of a soul that has found its resting place.”
“But,” said Gerard, “may not this have been merely a poetic rapture, a thrill and glow of the imagination, like that I feel when the spirit of some glorious melody sweeps by me, touching me in the dark?”
“A thoughtful question, my young friend. But no; the Christian’s joy is not that of the poet or the artist; not wine for the chosen few, but water of which all may drink. And it lasts. Pain, sickness, trouble, all those things that disturb the artist’s joy and dim his vision, only make that of the Christian clearer, brighter, more intense. We have heard Vauvenargues upon the great mystery, which both he and La Rochefoucauld confessed they could not Look on steadily. Now hear Pascal― ‘I expect death in peace, in the hope of being united with Christ forever.’ And again―seeing all the darkness, all the mystery Vauvenargues saw, but seeing the light of God beyond it― ‘Without Christ death is horrible, detestable, the horror of nature. In Christ all is changed, death becomes amiable, holy, the joy of the faithful. In Christ all is sweet, even death; for He suffered and died, that He might sanctify death and suffering.’
“My friend, it is in its relation to human life that you must regard Christianity. The problems of life are its wants. If Christianity satisfies the wants, it has solved the problems. If it make life, which without it were a desolate wilderness, rejoice and blossom as the rose―if it make death, without it the great dread of humanity, the object of hope and the gate of everlasting life, it must be a faith good to live by, to die in―ay, and at need to die for. As we said just now, the philosophers, fearing lest man should drink some deadly thing, dash the cup from his lips, and forget that he is perishing with thirst; while that which we, who preach the faith of Christ, offer to his need is no ‘poison, but living water―living, for it fails not to sustain and satisfy the living soul.’
“M. L’Abbé,” said Gerard, “you do not speak like other priests. In one respect you resemble the philosophers whom you condemn; you recognize humanity.”
“Who ever recognized, who ever loved humanity as did He who became the Son of Man, ‘who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven?’”
“You churchmen always merge the individual in the Church.”
“That is one of the mistakes against which it has been the mission of the Jansenists to protest. The followers of Jansenius, of Arnauld, of Nicole, have constantly maintained the cause of spiritual life and freedom, and sought to bring the soul of each man face to face with God.”
“But―excuse me, M. l’Abbé― as a party the Jansenists are stained with the wildest excesses. They believe in miraculous cures, and trances, and visions. They delude wretched women into allowing themselves to be beaten, tortured, even crucified, and pretending they enjoy it.”
The priest rose from the table, and withdrew to a window at the other end of the apartment. Gerard feared he had offended him, but was reassured by seeing that he beckoned him to follow. He obeyed, and they stood together looking out upon the courtyard.