"I am not severe. It is the truth."
"How does it happen that a people so weak, feeble, and base could overthrow the power of the French in the world?"
"That was because the German people were not yet corrupted by that shallow, unreal, hollow twaddle of the educated classes about humanity. It was not the princes, not the nobility, who overthrew Napoleon. It was the German people who did it. When, in 1813, the Germans rose, in hamlet and city, they staked their property and lives for fatherland. But it was not the enlightened poets and professors, not modern sentimentality, that raised their hearts to this great sacrifice; not these who enkindled this enthusiasm for fatherland. It was the religious element that did it. The German warriors did not sing Goethe's hymns to Napoleon, nor the insipid model song of 'Luetzows wilder Jagd,' as they rushed into battle. They sang religious hymns, they prayed before the altars. They recognized, in the terrible judgment on Russia's ice-fields, the avenging hand of God. Trusting in God, and nerved by religious exaltation, they took up the sword that had been sharpened by the previous calamities of war. So the feeble philanthropists could effect nothing. It was only a religious, healthy, strong people could do that."
"But the saints, doctor! We have wandered from them."
"Not at all! We have thrown some light on inimical shadows; the light can now shine. The lives of the saints exhibit something wonderful and remarkable. I have studied them carefully. I have sought to know their aims and efforts. I discovered that they imitated the example of Christ, that they realized the exalted teachings of the Redeemer. You find fault with their contempt for the things of this world. But it is precisely in this that these men are great. Their object was not the ephemeral, but the enduring. They considered life but as the entrance to the eternal destiny of man--in direct opposition to the spirit of the times, that dances about the golden calf. The saints did not value earthly goods for more than they were worth. They placed them after self-control and victory over our baser nature. Exact and punctual in all their duties, they were animated by an admirable spirit of charity for their fellow-men. And in this spirit they have frequently revived society. Consider the great founders of orders--St. Benedict, St. Dominic, St. Vincent de Paul! Party spirit, malice, and stupidity have done their worst to blacken, defame, and calumniate them. And yet, in a spirit of self-sacrifice, the sons of St. Benedict came among the German barbarians, to bring to them the ennobling doctrines of Christianity. It was the Benedictines who cleared the primeval forests, educated their wild denizens, and founded schools; who taught the barbarians handiwork and agriculture. Science and knowledge flourished in the cloisters. And to the monks alone we are indebted for the preservation of classic literature. What the monks did then they are doing now. They forsake home, break all ties, and enter the wilderness, there to be miserably cut off in the service of their exalted mission, or to die of poisonous fevers. Name me one of your modern heroes, whose mouths are full of civilization, humanity, enlightenment--name me one who is capable of such sacrifice. These prudent gentlemen remain at home with their gold-bags and their pleasures, and leave the stupid monk to die in the service of exalted charity. It is the hypocrisy and the falsehood of the modern spirit to exalt itself, and belittle true worth. And what did St. Vincent de Paul do? More than all the gold-bags together. St. Vincent, alone, solved the social problem of his time. He was, in his time, the preserver of society, or rather, Christianity through him. And to-day our gold-bags tremble before the apparition of the same social problem. Here high-sounding phrases and empty declamation do not avail. Deeds only are of value. But the inflated spirit of the times is not capable of noble action. It is not the modern state—not enlightened society, sunk in egotism and gold—that can save us. Christianity alone can do it. Social development will prove this."
"I do not dispute the services of the saints to humanity," said Frank. "But the question is, Whether society would be benefited if the fanatical, dark spirit of the middle ages prevailed, instead of the spirit of modern times?"
"The fanatical, dark spirit of the middle ages!" cried the doctor indignantly. "This is one of those fallacious phrases. The saints were not fanatical or dark. They were open, cheerful, natural, humble men. They did not go about with bowed necks and downcast eyes; but affable, free from hypocrisy, and dark, sullen demeanor, they passed through life. Many saints were poets. St. Francis sang his spiritual hymns to the accompaniment of the harp. St. Charles played billiards. The holy apostle, St. John, resting from his labors, amused himself in childish play with a bird. Such were these men; severe toward themselves, mild to others, uncompromising with the base and mean. They were all abstinent and simple, allowing themselves only the necessary enjoyments. They concealed from observation their severe mode of life, and smiled while their shoulders bled from the discipline. Pride, avarice, envy, voluptuouness, and all the bad passions, were strangers to them; not because they had not the inclinations to these passions, but because they restrained and overcame their lower nature.
"I ask you, now, which men deserve our admiration—those who are governed by unbounded selfishness, who are slaves to their passions, who deny themselves no enjoyment, and who boast of their degrading licentiousness; or those who, by reason of a pure life, are strong in the government of their passions, and self-sacrificing in their charity for their fellowmen?"
"The preference cannot be doubtful," said Frank. "For the saints have accomplished the greatest, they have obtained the highest thing, self-control. But, doctor, I must condemn that saint-worship as it is practised now. Human greatness always remains human, and can make no claims to divine honor."