ning but in repentance. The orthodox man must retravel with his heart and his conscience all the road that he has gone over with his understanding and his imagination, and he must believe in one manner what he has for a long time been believing in another manner. This dead orthodoxy has two shades, which produce their colors under two characters. There are orthodox formalists, who must be taught to worship in spirit and in truth (John, iv., 12); and there are orthodox legalists, who attach themselves to the letter of the evangélical precepts, and let their spirit escape from them. As to these last, however, we must avoid a hasty judgment, since these are slaves of the law who are nowise pharisees, that is to say, nowise filled with a sense of merit and selfrighteousness. We must consider whether, in the servility and anxiety of their obedience, they are not still of the number of those whom the Gospel has at the same time characterized and blessed, in the following declarations : Then Jesus beholding him, loved him, and said to him, One thing thou lackest go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: And come take up the cross and follow me" (Mark, x., 21); “ And the scribe said to him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth; for there is one God, and there is none other but he. And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbor as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said to him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." In persons of the class to which these two belonged, there is the foundation or the germ of a true faith.*

*Was not this foundation or this germ that "one thing" which the first of these two "lacked?" What meant his going away "griev ed," verse 22; and the observations which Jesus made to his disciples, after he had gone, verses 23, 25?—Transl.

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There are souls in a singular state, to which we have given too little thought. They are those which have anticipated, I was going to say taken on credit, the grace of the Gospel; or who have appropriated the promises before having felt all that grief, that disgust, that fear, that species of death which naturally belong to conviction of sin. They believe, they bless, they confess, they profess intelligently and sincerely, all that is essential to Christian character, but may want, I will not say the joy, which is not the habitual disposition of every true Christian, but the peace, the love, and, in a word, the life of the Christian. We must not confound them with those we call orthodox; they have not their security; they are at the same time in a worse and in a better state; they have not fulfilled all righteousness, but they know that they have not. This state, though singular, is no less common; and though it is difficult to disentangle it, since he who is in it can scarcely give any account of it, a minister whose experience and study of his own interior have rendered him searching can readily discern it. To apply the remedy is more difficult. The degrees, the movements of the spiritual life have been inverted. This Christian is one by anticipation, and, so to speak, by hypothesis. He is used to the profession and the outward joy of the Christianity of the intellect or imagination. His mouth has been before his heart in saying, Lord, Lord! He is familiar with the words, with the forms, with the thoughts of Christianity, without having his soul in them, and consequently in a way rather to be without a taste for them than to be in union with them. To have a taste of life, we must first taste death; but if we may ascend naturally from death to life, we can not re-descend also from life to death, and we can not at once pass at will through all the phases of a sorrowful novitiate. This difficulty is one of the greatest we have to encounter in the spiritual career, and it may put to the proof the patience and the prudence of a pastor. One sign by which these persons may be rec

ognized is the want of progress and movement in the spiritual life. When the pastor visits them, he may find them well disposed, ready to confess their sins, their insufficiency, their need of redemption, and the aid of the Holy Spirit; but at each succeeding visit their language will be the same; variety is wanting, because the reality is wanting. If he ist called to treat a malady of this kind, he ought, on one hand, to see that the soul, of which we speak, takes account of its own state; and, on the other, to take care that he does not renounce what he has, because of the manner in which he obtained it. He should not refrain from speaking to him of grace, or withhold the promises which he has accepted, and which we do well always to accept. He must not change at all the conditions of the covenant of grace, and withdraw from this soul the privileges which belong to it; but he should guard it against hypocrisy, against the usual evidences which both to itself and others exaggerate the advantage of its state; he must then exhort it to a silent and interior activity, to the severe study and application of the law, and to whatever disciplines and mortifies the soul, as well as to all works which, while they imply charity, develop it without danger of inflating the heart; in a word, silently to imitate Jesus Christ. But the shades of this state are exceedingly various; each of them at once requires and indicates particular measures; the important point is (and it is what he had specially in view) precisely to distinguish and estimate each

of them.

VI. We may form another class out of skeptics who are neither indifferent nor troubled, neither unbelieving nor believing, but who, through an infirmity or an evil disposi tion, can be settled in no point. There are minds naturally skeptical which are forever considering, and never come to any conclusion. The pastor can hardly hope to be a reformer of them; but, after trying as much as possible to throw arguments in one of the scales, or, rather, before even trying, he

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should strongly endeavor to make them much more serious, who, without being of the same class with the indifferent, are perhaps far from giving to religious questions all the interest they deserve. In order to make a man of this character serious and capable of decision, let him be filled with a sense of the infinite. The most wavering skeptic does not doubt that he has a soul; and if we can succeed in giving him a sense of the reality and the great value of his soul, we have put him at the true point of view as to questions of this kind, and we have in some sort turned his face to the east.

There are sincere and unhappy minds who, impressed by the spirit of truth and touched by the Gospel, believe in their state of sin, abjure all self-righteousness, desiring to be clothed only in that of God, which they would be prepared to receive if they believed it were offered to them, and yet find themselves detained from entering at the gate, as by a chain which seems to be stretched before them by their education, their first impressions, too much or too little knowledge, I know not what -a skeptical temperament, which shows itself in them, even in things the most foreign from religion. It is well when we meet with such as these, to remind them that "faith," according to the expression of an enlightened author, "realizes itself in the will; that faith is nothing else than willingness to accept a pardon from God, and to renounce the pursuit of all other means of salvation; that doubts which remain in the mind do not change it; that God has not made our salvation to depend on the vacillations of our feeble understanding; that it is not the understanding which consents to accept of grace; that it is not the imagination which is moved by it; that it is the will, the only faculty always free, though feeble, which receives pardon, turns itself to God, and may even cry, 'Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.'

VII. The indifferent are a numerous class, inferior not only to the orthodox, but to unbelievers themselves, inasmuch as these latter are unbelievers in a positive manner. M

Their

opinions, however, or rather their want of opinions, give them logically an intermediate position.*

These are, in general, worldly persons, dissipated men or men of business, who have not leisure either to be orthodox or to be unbelievers. There are occasions of reaching them in the actual state of things. They are not without relations to the Church, in the bosom of which they are still retained by habit or decency. They meet the pastor in social intercourse at the houses of others, or in civil affairs, or in solemn circumstances. They have affections, domestic pleasures and sorrows; they are men: on the side of humanity they may be reached; all their natural affections have an affinity for religion, without which, also, none of them have complete exercise. All these fundamental relations call and invite to a higher one.

When we have obtained the ear of the indifferent, we must destroy their security, and make them see that their position is not indifferent. We must not hesitate to arouse fear in them; in the majority of cases, it is impossible to connect the idea of God, in the mind of an indifferent person, with any other sentiment than fear; but, without neglecting to use this means, if we may give vibration to other chords, we should make them vibrate.

VIII. There are many unbelievers that we have full right to approach as such. And doubtless we can scarcely engage with these without a preliminary step, a conversation, which, from the circumstances, will necessarily have the interrogatory form. But infidelity has practical maxims as well as forms of doctrine; and the first, in default of the second, may open for us a door to religious discussion; and then infidelity is sometimes unwilling openly to declare itself; it more frequently appears in oblique forms; allusion or irony contents it. We must not start with the idea that every attack, direct or indirect, should lead to a discussion. Much rather should we avoid discussion in the presence of company, if it * See a discourse by M. VINET on Religious Indifference, etc.-Edit.