[Footnote 8: Père Ravignan.]
We must return, then, to this broad and tender benevolence. Let our congregations feel it, read it; see it in our persons, in our features, in our words, in our minutest actions. Let them understand that the priest is, before all others, their best, their most faithful friend. Nothing must disconcert our charity. Our heart must be enlarged, and soar above the frail ties, the prejudices, and the vices of humanity. Did not Saint Paul say: "I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ," for the sake of his erring brethren? And did not Moses elect to be blotted out from the book of life rather than see his cowardly, ungrateful, fickle countrymen stricken by the hand of the Almighty? The weaker men are, the more need have they to be loved.
Such love does good to all. It cheers the heart of the preacher. It also creates sympathy, and those electric currents which go from the speaker to the hearts of the faithful, and from the hearts of the faithful back to the speaker. It reveals what should be said, and, above all, supplies the appropriate accent wherein to express it. Saint Augustine writes: "Love first, and then you may do what you choose." We may subjoin: "Love first, and then you may say what you please;" for affectionate speech fortifies the mind, removes obstacles, disposes to self-sacrifice, makes the unwilling willing, and elevates the character as well as the mind.
Charity is the great desideratum of the present time. It is constantly being remarked that the age in which we live requires this and that. What the age really wants is this:—It needs to be loved. … It needs to be drawn out of that egotism which frets and consumes it. It needs a little esteem and kindly treatment to make good all its deficiencies. How silly we are, then, to go so far in search of the desired object, overlooking the fact that the kingdom of God is within us—in our hearts.
Be it ours, therefore, to love the people. … Is it not to that end that we have no family ties? … Let us prevent their hate, which is so harmful to them. Let love be present with us always, according to the saying of Saint Augustine:—"Let us love in speaking, and speak in love. Let there be love in our remonstrances … love also in our reproofs. Let the mouth speak, but let the heart love." Yes, let us learn to love, to endure, to be devoted. What! do we not belong to the same family as those excellent and self-denying men who leave country and home to seek and to save souls beyond the ocean? Were we not brought up at the same school? They love infidels, they love pagans and savages sufficiently well to sacrifice every thing for them. … Are not our pagans in France worth as much as the pagans of Oceania? Are not our French little ones as deserving of compassion as Chinese children? True, their parents do not expose them on the highways; but they abandon them to shame, to vice, to the education of the streets. … It is right that we should commiserate the heathen, that devotion should be manifested on their behalf; but let us have compassion on our own children also, on our brothers in France, that they be not suffered to perish before our eyes. … Yes, I invoke pity for this people; pity for their sufferings, their miseries, their prejudices, their deplorable subjection to popular opinion, their ignorance, their errors. Let us, at least, try to do them good, to save them. Therein lies bur happiness; we shall never have any other. All other sources are closed to us; there is the well-spring of the most delectable joys. Apart from charity, what remains? Vanity, unprofitableness, bitterness, misery, nothingness.
Chapter II.
The People.
The actual State of the People.
Their good and bad Qualities.
The People in large Cities.
The People in small Towns.
The People in rural Districts.
How to benefit these Three Classes of People.
One powerful Means is to act upon the People through the upper Classes, and upon the latter through the former.