“If two names by chance mingle in my song,
They will always be Ninette or Ninon.”
This charming indifference is but a form of selfishness. Let us go further, and although in our quality of Catholics (the only nobility, the only title to which we are really attached) we place a higher estimate on the future life than the present, we do not think only of the heavenly destiny of the workman. For more than eighteen hundred years, the church has not ceased for an instant to occupy herself with the temporal condition of all the working-classes. In her firmament, there are fourteen magnificent constellations, which are called the seven corporal works of mercy, and the seven spiritual. She has made them all shine on the brow of the workman, and it is for him, above all, that she preserves the light. This example of our mother, the church, we always wish to imitate. We know, besides, and it is a powerful argument, that misery is a poor counsellor, and, if it is badly accepted, turns souls from duty and eternity.
Therefore, we declare a mortal war against want and misery, and it is thus that, in ameliorating the earth, we hope to prepare heaven.
We wish at this moment our heart were an open book, written in large characters, and readable for all. Our brothers, the workmen, would see that we do not blindly accuse them of all the crimes and mistakes of modern society, and that we very well know how to comment severely on the other classes. They would there read the programme of our work, as recently sketched by a great bishop of the holy church: “We should believe in the people, hope in them, love them.” For you must not imagine that alms will here suffice, and that the people will accept them; they exact all our heart, our esteem, our respect. He who does not respect the workman can do nothing. Thus, this doctrine of respect for the workman, the truly Christian doctrine, is the base upon which the Catholic Circle of Workingmen has erected its edifice: may God prosper and bless it!
Ask us now with frankness what we are, what is our faith, and listen well to our reply, which will not be less sincere.
We believe in one only God, the supreme and sovereign Workman, whom we do not confound with his work; the work is divine, but it is not God. Beyond the world, above the world, in an inaccessible region, lives and reigns from everlasting to everlasting the majesty of God, the Infinite and Absolute, the Justice and Mercy, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, living and personal, the eternal Providence, who watches over the workmen of all races and of all times. There are among you some who refuse to this God the free adhesion of their faith, and it is this negation which we come here to combat with the arms of reason and of light. All depends upon your faith; even though you may be atheists, we will love you, but, alas! you will not return our love, and the reconciliation so ardently desired will not be easily realized; for you can only be dissolved in love, and God is love.
We believe, then, in God the Creator, and we bow before him with the simple and magnificent faith of the humble stone-cutter of whom Lamartine speaks, and who one day said to our great poet, “I do not know how other men are made; but, as for me, I cannot see, I do not say a star, but even an ant, the leaf of a tree, a grain of sand, without asking who made it; and the reply is, God. I understand it well, for, before being, it was not; therefore, it could not make itself.” I quote these beautiful words with great joy under the roof of a chapel especially consecrated to workmen. Meditate upon them, workmen, who listen to me; and, if you are republicans, respect, love, believe in what this republican of 1848 respected, loved, and believed. Then the workman believed in God; this time must return, and for this necessary work we will expend our time, our strength, our life. But it is not enough to believe in God; we must render to the Creator the act of the creature, and offer him respect, homage, confidence, prayer, and love. Blessed be this little chapel of Jésus-Ouvrier, if this night one of these sentiments will be offered by one of the souls who are here and listen to me.
We also believe in the Son of God, the Word, the interior Speech, the creative Word of the Father, and we affirm that this Word, at a determined moment of history, came down on our earth that sin had stained, and that had to be purified. To arrive at God, who is absolute purity, we must be white or whitened. Are we white of ourselves? Look into your souls, and answer. Christ, then, came to suffer, to expiate, to die for us all, and especially for all workmen, past, present, and to come. Such is the admirable doctrine of the solidarity of expiation; and it is here that Jesus is again the type of workmen. Oh! who can complain of work, when God for thirty years submitted to the rigorous law of manual labor! Who can complain of suffering, when he bore the weight of all the sufferings of the body and of the human soul! Who can complain of loneliness and abandonment, when this God was betrayed by his tenderest friends, and abandoned by all except his mother, who remained standing at the foot of the cross! Who can complain of dying in solitude, in grief, and in shame, on the pallet of a garret or the bed of a hospital, when he, the Creator of so many millions of suns and of the universe, gave us the example of the most cruel death, after having offered us as model the most wretched life! Ah! they had reason to decree the suppression of the crucifix in the hospitals and schools; for a true workman cannot look at the crucifix without being moved to the bottom of his soul, without extending to it his arms, without being profoundly consoled, without crying, “Behold my Master, my Example, and my Father!”
We believe that Christianity is contained in these words, which we should ponder: “Imitation of Christ,” and, in particular, “Imitation of Jesus the workman.” It is by that means we will be led to give a place to private virtues, which our adversaries do not wish to accord to us. Nowadays it is fashionable among workmen and others to repeat this ill-sounding proposition, which is an exact summary of Victor Hugo’s last work: that “Society is bad, and man is good.” Do not believe it; man is an intelligent, free, responsible being, who can, when he wishes, and with the aid of God, conquer the evil in him, and do good. As society is only a composition of men, it follows and will ever be that, if each one of us becomes purer, more humble, more charitable, better, society will itself become less savage, more enlightened, better organized, every way improved. In political economy, we cannot too highly exalt the rôle of private virtues.
It can be demonstrated mathematically, and it will soon be shown, that everything socially springs from sacrifice. If you wish to know here what distinguishes the Catholics from their enemies, I will tell you very simply that they place duty before right, and that the enemies of the church place right before duty. Certainly, we believe in right as strongly as you can; but we make it the logical consequence and, if I may say so, the reward of accomplished duty. Weigh well this doctrine, to which is attached the destiny of the world.