FROM THE FRENCH OF LEON GAUTIER IN THE REVUE DU MONDE CATHOLIQUE.
DISCOURSE PRONOUNCED JANUARY 13, 1873, TO INAUGURATE THE LECTURES INTENDED FOR THE WORKING-CLASSES.[198]
To-day we inaugurate the lectures specially consecrated to workingmen. We are full of joyous hopes, and believe that this work of light will be at the same time a work of reconciliation, of love, and of peace. The cross, which we have placed conspicuously in all our places of reunion—the cross, that we elevate and display everywhere as a magnificent standard—the cross, that we will never consent to hide, indicates clearly what is our faith and what is our aim. We wish to enlighten your understandings, dilate your hearts, direct your wills in the way of the good, the beautiful, and the true. In a word, we wish to conquer you for Christ, and we say it here with a frankness which profoundly abhors all cunning of speech. You will give us credit for sincerity, which you have always loved; for, as has been said by a great contemporary orator,[199] “The people are not deceived; they feel when they are approached with faith in them and in their eminent dignity.”
We come, then, to you with this cross of Constantine, which has converted the world. This glorious sign we have surrounded with rays, to show you that light proceeds from Christianity, as the stream flows from its source, and the beams radiate from a star. If possible, we would have adopted as a flag the beautiful cross in the catacomb of S. Pontian, from which spring roses—symbols of joy. We would have chosen it, to show you that in Christ is found not only the repose of the enlightened understanding, but also the repose, the joy, and the alleluia of the satisfied heart. It is by this sign we will conquer.
In this first lecture, which will serve as an humble preface to the discourses of so many eminent orators, we intend only to take up the working question, to tell you our entire thought on the subject, to open to you our whole heart. Do not hope to hear an academic speech; do not expect those vain compliments to which you have been accustomed from flatterers who did not love you. We say at first and without circumlocution that between Christian society and the working world there exists to-day a certain misunderstanding, and it is this misunderstanding we would wish to dissipate, and we beg of the divine Workman of Nazareth to direct our words, blessed by him, to the understanding and heart of the workmen of Paris.
In the first part of this discourse, which will be brief, we will say what we are; in the second, what we wish; and in the third, we will reply to certain objections to the church which are current among workingmen, and cause the deplorable misunderstanding from which we wish to deliver your minds and hearts, equally oppressed. It is time that the truth should free you.
I.
In order that you may better understand what we are, we wish to commence by showing you what we are not.
We are not politicians; this we desire to declare openly. Never, never will there be pronounced in this precinct one word that may even remotely touch upon our old or recent discords. We will never deserve to be called partisans. Whatever may be our intimate convictions (and we have the right to have them), we only wish to be and we will only be Christians. We suppose there may be in the bosom of all the avowed parties sincere Catholics who are by no means independents. When we tread upon the threshold of her basilicas, the church, which rises before us, does not ask if we are monarchists or republicans, but only if we believe in the eternal Word, who created heaven and earth, who became man in the crib of Bethlehem, and who saved us on a cross. Thus will we do, and the only popular song you will hear in this place will be the Credo; come, come, and sing it with us.
Thank God, we do not belong to the group, too numerous, of pretended conservatives, who only see in the labor question a painful preoccupation which might trouble the calm of their digestion; who do not wish to impose upon themselves any real sacrifice, and are easily astonished that the working-classes complain of their sufferings. We are not like the fashionable and delicate egoists who for several centuries have given the fatal example of indifference, of doubt, and of negation in religion, who have followed Voltaire, who have wickedly laughed in the face of outraged truth, who have torn God from the heart of the workman, and who nevertheless persist in affirming that “religion is good for the people”—men of refinement, who to-day edit journals full of talent, where on the first page is offered ultra-conservative articles, and on the second ultra-obscene romances. No; we are not of this class. Away with those sceptics whose fears make them pretend to have the faith! Away with those who doubt the people, and who do not love them!