We promise you the sweetness of work Christianly accepted. Says a great Christian: “What matters work when Jesus Christ is there?” It is here that we must recall those splendid verses of the greatest of our poets—those verses which we would wish to see written on the walls of all our transfigured workshops: “God, look you—let the senseless reject—causes to be born of labor two daughters: Virtue which makes cheerfulness sweet, and Cheerfulness which makes virtue charming.” And with work, you will conquer also the “courage of life”; for you will be convinced that all beings are subjected to this great law, and that the blows of your hammers are the notes of a universal chant. “All work, each one is at his post; he who governs the state; the savant, who extends the limits of human explorations; the sculptor, who makes the statue spring from his chisel; the poet, who sings between his tears and his sighs; the priest, who punishes and pardons—all, down to you, poor workman, in your smoky workshop. We are all living stones of that cathedral formed of souls and of centuries for the glory of God.”[200] With such thoughts, the day appears short, and labor assumes an exquisite character. What joy to say, “I work with the entire universe; I work as God himself has set me the example.”
Still further, we promise you honor and pride. The Christian workman, he whom we hope to see multiplied in Paris, loves his trade; he is proud of it, and would blush if he did not prefer it to all others. He contemplates with satisfaction the work which he has just accomplished, and, like the Creator, with innocent simplicity, finds it beautiful. He attempts without jealousy to equal and even surpass the best workmen of his kind. He thinks that his country should be the most honorable and the most honored of all, and that France should be the equal of all other powers. On this subject he will not jest, but becomes grave. If he belongs to a corporation, he is enthusiastic for the glory of his banner, and will not allow it to be insulted. When a man thus respects his position, he respects himself, and is led to respect God. Such are the elements of what I willingly term the workman’s honor.
We promise you peace of conscience, the happiness that follows accomplished duty, the repose in joy. Every workman among us should say to his children what one of the most learned men of the day, the illustrious Emmanuel de Rougé, wrote in his will: “May my children preserve the faith. Repose of mind and heart can only be found in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and the Saviour of man.” To work, says a contemporary philosopher, is easy; to repose is difficult. Man works without repose when he labors relying only upon himself; he works and reposes when he commences by first confiding himself to God. This is the repose we offer you; it is supremely delicious, and the workman will be led to repose, in working for others, like good Claude des Huttes, the stone-cutter of St. Point, the friend of Lamartine, who, poor as he was, worked gratuitously for those poorer than he, and said to himself, when retiring to rest: “I have earned a good day’s wages; for the poor pay me in friendship, my heart pays me in contentment, and the good God will pay me in mercy.” O greatness of the Christian workman!
We promise to labor as unceasingly for the amelioration of your material condition as for the enlargement of your understanding. Evil be to us if we did not think of the lodging, warming, nourishment of the workman’s family; if we would confiscate science to our profit, and not extend to you the treasure; if we ceased for a single instant to open schools, asylums, circles, conferences, institutions of peace and of light. We do not recoil before progress; no light terrifies us. From texts of the Gospel, we have and ever will produce new consequences, religious, philosophical, and social; and these conclusions constitute a progress incessant and ever new—our progress, the only true progress.
Finally, we promise to organize with your aid the workingmen’s associations. Association only frightens us when it leans towards despotism, and we wish principally to give it a religious character. The confraternity! an old word, which is ridiculed, but which in reality is a great thing; men reunited for one temporal aim under the protection of God, their angel guardians, and their celestial patrons; free men, discussing with all loyalty the interests of their trade, and knowing how to govern themselves. You will invent nothing better, provided always that, in this enlarged institution, the Catholic spirit is harmoniously mingled with the positive rules of social science. We are in the midst of a crisis which cannot last long; to our mutual aid and co-operative societies others will succeed more scientifically organized, and, above all, more Christian. We hope in this future, and believe it very near; it is the ideal for this world now, and for heaven hereafter—heaven, which is the great association of the happy ...
III.
It would seem impossible, in the face of such doctrines, that any misunderstanding could exist between the church and the workman; but Satan has not understood it in this manner, and objections pour against the church.
It has been said repeatedly that the church has done nothing for the workman. It is the conclusion that Victor Hugo has given to his Les Misérables, and this book has singularly contributed to develop hatred in the hearts of the people. Numerous writers, animated with the same ardent hate, affirm daily that, to find society well organized, we must go back to antiquity, or take 1789 as the place of departure.
To refute these assertions, we will first say that, in regard to antiquity, they forget that it was devoured by the frightful cancer of slavery; among the greater part of nations before Christ, the workmen were for a long time principally slaves. Manual labor, which was universally despised, was performed by entire nations of slaves, who were paid with lashes of the whip. Thus were built many of the magnificent monuments of the Greeks, and, above all, of the Romans—monuments which they place so far above those of the present. I remember, one beautiful October night in the Eternal City, contemplating with stupefaction the immense mass of the Coliseum; the gigantic shafts of the columns which lay pell-mell at my feet; the colossal aqueducts defined against the horizon—all the splendors which are still grand even in their ruins. A priest who accompanied me exclaimed, in astonished admiration, “You must acknowledge that the Christian races have never produced such great works.”
“‘Tis true,” I replied, “and I thank God for it; for these monuments you behold were chiefly constructed by the hands of slaves, and we now only employ free workmen, whom we pay for their labor.”