“I mean, and L’Ouverture, I think, means,” said Pascal, “that nothing can immediately alter the nature of men; that the glorious Gospel itself is made to change the face of the world gradually; all the more surely, because slowly and naturally. This seed of life was cast upon the flood of human passions, and the harvest must not be looked for till after many days. Meantime it sprouts out, now here, now there, proving that it is alive and growing; but the harvest is not yet.”
“We find one trace of the Gospel here, and another there,” said Toussaint; “but a Christian nation, or race, or class of people, who has seen?”
“Not in the earliest days?” asked Euphrosyne. “Were not the first confessors and martyrs a Christian class?”
“They were so according to their intention, to their own idea,” said Toussaint. “They were votaries of the one Christian principle most needed in their time. The noble men, the courageous women, who stood, calm and resolved, in the midst of the amphitheatre, with the heathen altar behind them, the hungry tiger before them, and a careless or scoffing multitude ranged all around—these were strong witnesses to the great principle of Faith—noble proofs of the power of living and dying for things unseen. This was their function. It was for others to show forth the humility and modesty in which, as a class, they failed.”
“The anchorites,” said Pascal, “each in his cave, solitary, abstemious, showed forth in its strength the principle of Devotion, leaving Charity unthought of.”
“And then the nun,” said Toussaint—
“What possible grace of religion did the nun exhibit?” asked Euphrosyne.
“The original nun, Euphrosyne, was inspired with the reverence of Purity. In an age of licence, those who were devoted to spiritual things were the salt of the earth. But in their worship of purity they outraged human love.”
“The friar,” said Pascal, “was a perpetual emblem of Unworldliness. He forced upon the admiration of a self-seeking world the peace of poverty, the repose of soul which is troubled with no thought for the morrow. But for other teachers, however, industry would have been despised—the great law of toil would have remained unrecognised.”
“The Crusaders worked hard enough,” said Denis. “Thousands and thousands of them died of their toils, besides the slain.”