The literary
opinions
seemed
to be the cause of the small number of per-
sons who changed their religion; and the
ancient church has hardly regained any pro-
selytes.
to be the cause of the small number of per-
sons who changed their religion; and the
ancient church has hardly regained any pro-
selytes.
Madame de Stael - Germany
handle.
net/2027/hvd.
32044051734390 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.
hathitrust.
org/access_use#pd-google
? MORAVIAN" MODE OF WORSHIP. 295
and demands of them the person he wishes
to espouse. They draw lots in the church,
to know whether he ought to marry thg
woman whom he prefers; and if the lot is
against him, he gives up his demand. The
Moravians have such a habit of resignation,
that they do not resist this decision; and as
they only see the women at church, it costs
them less to renounce their choice. This
manner of deciding upon marriage, and upon
many other circumstances of life, indicates
the general spirit of the Moravian worship.
Instead of keeping themselves submitted' td
the will of Heaven, they fancy they can
learn it by inspirations, or, what is still more
strange, by interrogating Chance. Duty and
events manifest to man the views of God
concerning the earth; how can we flatter
ourselves with the notion of penetrating
them by other means?
We observe, in other respects, among the
generality of Moravians, evangelical man-
ners, such as they must have existed from
the time of the Apostles, in Christian com-
munities. Neither extraordinary doctrines
nor scrupulous practices constitute the bond
of this association: the Gospel is there in-
terpreted in the most natural and clear
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? 296 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
manner; but they are there faithful to the
consequences of this doctrine, and they
make their conduct, under all relations, har-
monize with their religious principles. The
Moravian communities serve, above all, to
prove that Protestantism, in its simplicity,
may lead to the most austere sort of life,
and the most enthusiastic religion; death
and immortality, well understood, are suffi-
cient to occupy and to direct the whole of
existence.
I was some time ago at Dintendorf, a
little village near Erfurtb, where a Moravian
community is established. This village is
three leagues distant from every great road;
it: is situated between two mountains, upon
the banks of a rivulet; willows and lofty
poplars environ it: . there is something tran-
quil and sweet in the look of the country,
which prepares the soul to free itself from
the turbulence of life. The buildings and
the streets are marked by perfect cleanliness;
the women, all clothed alike, hide their hair,
and bind their head with a riband, whose
colour indicates whether they are married,
maidens, or widows: the men are clothed
in brown, almost like the Quakers, Mer-
cantile industry employs nearly all of them;
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? MORAVIAN MODE OF WORSHIP. 297
but one does not hear the least noise in the
village. Every body works in regularity
and silence; and the internal action of re-
ligious feeling lulls to rest every other im-
pulse. ? . ;. '>. . ';
The girls and widows live together in a
large dormitory, and, during the night, one
of them has her turn to watch, for the pur-
pose of praying, or of taking care of those
who" may be ill. The unmarried men Jive
in the same manner. Thus there exists a
great family for him who has none of his
own; and the name of brother and sister is
common to all Christians. ? ? !
Instead of bells, wind instruments, of a
very sweet harmony, summon them to di-
vine service. As we proceeded to church,
by the sound of this imposing music, we felt
ourselves carried away from the earth; we
fancied that we heard the trumpets of the
last judgment, not such as remorse makes
us fear them, but such as a pious confidence
makes us hope them; it seemed as if the
divine compassion manifested itself in this
appeal, and pronounced beforehand the par-
don of regeneration.
The church was dressed out in white roses,
and blossoms of white thorn: pictures were
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? RE1IGION AtfD EKTHUSIASM*
not banished from the temple; and music
was cultivated as a constituent part of re-
ligion: they only sang psalms; there was
neither sermon, nor mass, nor argument,
nor theological discussion; it was the wor-
ship of God in spirit and in truth. The
women, all in white, were ranged by each
other without any distinction whatever; they
looked like the innocent shadows who were
about to appear together before the tribunal
of the Divinity.
The burying-ground of the Moravians is
a garden, the walks of which are marked
out by funeral stones; and by the side of
each is planted a flowering shrub. All these
grave-stones are equal; not one of these
shrubs rises above the other; and the same
epitaph serves for all the dead. "He was
"born on such a day; and on such another<.
"he returned into his native country/'
Excellent expression to designate the end
of our life! The ancients said, " He lived f
and thus threw a veil over the tomb, to divest
themselves of its idea; the Christians place
over it the star of hope.
On Easter-day, divine service is performed
in the burying-ground, which is close to the
church, and the resurrection is announced
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? Mtfft,AV<*sr ftor>? of Worship.
in the middle of the tombs. All those who
are present at this act of worship, know the
stone that is to be placed over their coffin;
and already breathe the perfume of the
young tree, whose leaves and flowers will
penetrate into their tombs. It is thus that
we have seen, in modern times, an entire
army assisting at its own funeral rites, pro-
nouncing for itself the service of the dead,
decided in belief that it was to conquer hm
mortality*.
The communion of the Moravians danrrot
adapt itself to the social state, such a3 Cir-
cumstances ordain it to be; but as it has
been long and frequently asserted that Ca-
tholicism alone addressed the imagination, it
is of consequence to remark, that what truly
touches the soul in religion is common to all
. Christian churches. A sepulchre and a
prayer exhaust all the power of the pathetic;
and the more simple the faith, the more
emotion is caused by the worship.
* The allusion in this passage is to the siege of Saragossa.
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? 300 EELIOI0N AND ENTHUSIASM.
CHAPTER IV. . ;
. . . . . . Of Catholicism. , .
? >> ? > a?
''>> ? ? . "'' ". . ? .
The Catholic religion is more tolerant in
Germany than in any i other country. The
peace of Westphalia having fixed the rights
of the different religions, they no longer
feared their mutual invasions; and, besides,
this mixture of modes of worship, in a great
number of towns, has necessarily induced
the occasion of observing and judging each
other. In religious as well as in political
opinions, we make a phantom of our adver-
saries, which is almost always dissipated by
their presence; sympathy presents a fellow-
creature in him whom we believed an enemy.
Protestantism being much more favour-
able to knowledge than Catholicism, the
Catholics in Germany have put themselves
in a sort of defensive position, which is very
injurious to the progress of information.
In the countries where the Catholic religion
reigned alone, such as France and Italy,
they have known how to unite it to litera-
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? CATHOLICISM. T 301
ture and to the fine arts; but in Germany,
where the Protestants have taken possession,
by means of the universities, and by their
natural tendency to every thing which be-
longs to literary and philosophical study,
the Catholics have fancied themselves obliged
to oppose to them a certain sort of reserve,
which destroys almost all the means of dis-
tinction, in the career of imagination and of
reflection. Music is the only one of the
fine arts which is carried to a greater degree
of perfection in the south of Germany than
in the north; unless we reckon in the number
of the fine arts a certain convenient mode of
life, the enjoyments of which agree well
enough with repose of mind.
Among the Catholics in Germany there is
a sincere, tranquil, and charitable piety;
but there are no famous preachers, nor reli-
gious authors who are quoted: nothing there
excites the emotions of the soul; they con-
sider religion as a matter of fact, in which
enthusiasm has no share; and one might say,
that in a mode of religious worship so well
consolidated, the future life itself became a
positive truth, upon which we no longer
exercise our thoughts.
The revolution. which has taken place
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? 302 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
among the philosophical minds in Germany*
during the last thirty years, has brought
them almost all back to religious sentiments,
Thpy had wandered a little from them;
when the impulse necessary to propagate
toleration had exceeded its proper bounds:
butj by recalling idealism in metaphysics,
inspiration ia poetry, contemplation in the
faiences, they have restored the eiftpire of
religion; and the reform of the Reformation,
or rather the philosophical direction of liberty
which it has occasioned, has banished for
ev,er ((at least in. theory) materialism, and
all it? fetal consequences. In the midst of
th*s intellectual revolution, so fruitful in
noble results, some writers have gone too
far? ; as it always happens in the oscillations
of thought.
>Ve might say, that the human mind is
continually hurrying from one extreme to
another; as if the opinions which it lias just
desested. , were changed into regrets to pursue
}i. The Reformation, according to some
authors of the new school, has been the
cause of many religious wars; it has sepa-
rated the north from the south of Germany;
it has given the Germans the fatal habit of
fighting with each other; and these divisions
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? CATHOLICISM. SQ$
have robbed them of the right of being
denominated one nation. Lastly, the Re-
formation, by giving birth to the spirit of
'inquiry, has dried up the imagination, and
introduced scepticism in the place of faith;
it is necessary then, say the same advocates,
to return to the unity of the church, by re-
turning to Catholicism.
In the first place, if Charles the Fifth had
adopted Lutheranism, there would Jhave
been the same unity in Germany; and the
whole country, like the northern portion of
it, would have formed an asylum for the
arts and sciences. Perhaps this harmony
would have given birth to free institutions,
combined with a real strength; and perhaps
that sad separation of character and know-
ledge would have been avoided, which has
yielded up the north to reverie, and kept the
south in ignorance. But without losing
ourselves in conjectures as to what would
have happened, a sort of calculation always
very uncertain, we cannot deny that the
sera of the Reformation was that in which
learning and philosophy were introduced
into Germany. This country is not perhaps
raised to the first rank in war, in the arts,
in political liberty: it is knowledge of
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? 304 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
which Germany has a right to be proud>>
and its influence upon the thinking part of
Europe takes its date from Protestantism.
Such revolutions neither proceed nor are
brought to an end by arguments; they be-
long to the historical progress of the human
mind; and the men who appear to be their
authors, are never more than their conse-
quences.
Catholicism, disarmed in the present day,
has the majesty of an old lion, which once
made the world tremble;--but when the
abuses of its power brought on the Refor-
mation, it put fetters on the human mind;
and far from want of feeling being then the
cause of the opposition to its ascendancy, it
was in order to make use of all the faculties
of the understanding and of the imagination
that the freedom of thought was so loudly
demanded again. If circumstances, of en-
tirely divine origin, and in which the hand
of man was not in the least operative, were
hereafter to bring about a reunion between
the two churches, we should pray to God,
it appears to me, with new emotion, by
the side of those venerable priests, who, in
the latter years of the last century, have
suffered so much for conscience sake. But,
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? Catholicism. '305
assuredly, it is not the change of religion in
a few individuals, nor, above all, the unjust
discredit which their writings have a tend-
ency to throw upon the reformed religion,
that can lead to the unity of religious opi-
nions.
There are in the human mind two very
distinct impulses; one makes us feel the
want of faith, the other that of examination.
One of these tendencies ought not to be
satisfied at the expense of the other: Pro-
testantism and Catholicism do not arise from
the different character of the Popes, and of
a Luther: it is a poor mode of examining
history to attribute it to accidents. Protest-
antism and Catholicism exist in the human
heart;--they are moral powers which are
developed in nations, because they are in-
herent in every individual. If in religion,
as in other human affections, we can unite
what the imagination and the reason sug-
gest, there is harmony in the whole man;
but in man, as in the universe, the power
of creating and that of destroying, faith and
inquiry, succeed and combat each other.
It has been attempted, in order to har-
monize these two inclinations, to penetrate
deeper into the soul; and from that attempt
VOL. III. x
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? 306 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
have arisen the mystical opinions of which
we shall speak in the following chapter; but
the small number of persons who have ab-
jured Protestantism have done nothing but
revive resentments. Ancient denominations
reanimate ancient quarrels; magic makes use
of certain words to call up apparitions; we
may say, that upon all subjects there are
terms which exert this power; these are the
watch-words which serve for a rallying
point to party spirit; we cannot pronounce
them without agitating afresh the torches of
discord. The German Catholics have, to the
present moment, shown themselves very ig-
norant of what was passing upon these points
in the North.
The literary opinions seemed
to be the cause of the small number of per-
sons who changed their religion; and the
ancient church has hardly regained any pro-
selytes.
Count Frederic Stolberg, a man of great
respectability, both from his character and
his talents, celebrated from his youth as a
poet, as a passionate admirer of antiquity,
and as a translator of Homer, was the first
in Germany to set the example of these new
conversions, and he has had some imitators.
The most illustrious friends of the Count
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? CATHOLICISM.
Stolberg, Klopstock, Voss, and Jacobi, sepa-
rated themselves from him in consequence of
this action, which seemed to disavow the
misfortunes and the struggles which the re-
formed have endured during three centuries;
nevertheless, M. de Stolberg has lately pub-
lished a History of the Religion of Jesus
Christ, which is calculated to merit the ap-
probation of all Christian communities. It is
the first time that we have seen the Catholic
opinions defended in this manner; and if
Count Stolberg had not been educated as a
Protestant, perhaps he would nothavehad that
independence of mind which enables him to
make an impression upon enlightened men.
We find in this book a perfect knowledge of
the Holy Scriptures, and very interesting re-
searches into the different religions of Asia,
which bear relation to Christianity. The
Germans of the North, even when they sub-
mit to the most positive doctrines, know
how to give them the stamp of their philo-
sophy.
Count Stolberg, in his publication, attri. j
buted to the Old Testament a much greater
importance than Protestant writers in general
assign to it. I consider sacrifices as the basis
of all religion; and the death. of Abel as the
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? 308 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
first type of that sacrifice which forms the
groundwork of Christianity. In whatever
way we decide upon this opinion, it affords
much room for thought. The greater part
of ancient religions instituted human sacri-
fices; but in this barbarity there was some-
thing remarkable, namely, the necessity
of a solemn expiation. Nothing, in effect,
can obliterate from the soul the idea, that
there is a mysterious efficacy in the blood of
the innocent, and that heaven and earth are
moved by it. Men have always believed
that the just could obtain, in this life or the
other, the pardon of the guilty. There are
some primitive' ideas in the human species
which re-appear with more or less disfigure-
ment, in all times, and among all nations.
These are the ideas upon which we cannot
grow weary of reflecting; for they assuredly
preserve some traces of the lost dignities of
our nature.
The persuasion, that the prayers and the
self-devotion of the just can save the guilty,
is doubtless derived from the feelings that
we experience in the relations of life; but
nothing obliges us, in respect to religious
belief, to reject these inferences. What do
we know better than our feelings? and why
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? CATHOLICISM. 3Q9
should we pretend that they are inapplicable
to the truths of religion? What can there be
in man but himself, and why, under the
pretext of anthropomorphism, hinder him
from forming an image of the Deity after
his own soul? No other messenger, I think,
can bring him news from heaven.
Count Stolberg endeavours to show, that
the tradition of the fall of man has existed
among all the nations of the earth, and par-
ticularly in the East; and that all men have
in their hearts the remembrance of a happi-
ness of which they have been deprived. In
effect, there are in the human mind two
tendencies as distinct as gravitation and at-
traction in the natural world; these are the
ideas of decay, and of advance to perfection.
One should say, that we feel at once a regret
for the loss of some excellent qualities which
were gratuitously conferred upon us, and a
hope of some advantages which we may
acquire by our own efforts; in such a manner,
that the doctrine of perfectibility, and that of
the golden age, united and confounded, excite
at the same time in man grief for having lost
these blessings, and emulation to recover
them. The sentiment is melancholy, and
the spirit is daring; and from this reverie
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? 310 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
and this energy together, springs the true
superiority of man; that mixture of contem-
plation and of activity, of resignation and of
will, which allows him to connect his worldly
existence with heaven.
Stolberg calls those persons alone Christians
who receive the words of the Holy Scrip-
tures with the simplicity of children; but he
bestows upon the signification of these
words a philosophical spirit which takes
away all their dogmatism and intolerance
from the Catholic opinions. In what then
do they differ, these religious men by whom
Germany is honoured, and why should the
names of Catholic and Protestant divide
them? Why should they be unfaithful to
the tombs of their ancestors, by giving up
these names,or by resuming them? Has not
Klopstock consecrated his whole life to the
purpose of making a fine poem the temple
of the Gospel? Is not Herder, as well as
Stolberg, the adorer of the Bible? Does he
not penetrate into all the beauties of the
primitive language, aud of those senti-
ments of celestial origin which it expresses?
Jacobi --does he not recogniselhe Divinity in
ah the great thoughts of man? Would any
of these men recommend religion merely a*
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? CATHOLICISM.
311
a restraint upon the people, as an instrument
of public safety, as an additional guarantee
in the contracts of this world? Do they not
all know that every superior mind has more
need of piety than the common herd? For
the labour ordained by the authority of
society may occupy and direct the working
class in all the moments of life, whilst idle
men are incessantly the prey of the passions
and the sophistries that disturb existence,
and put every thing into uncertainty.
It has been pretended that it was a sort of
frivolity in the German writers to represent
as one of the merits of the Christian religion,
the favourable influence that it exercised
over the arts, imagination, and poetry: and
the same reproach, with respect to this
point, has been cast upon that beautiful
work of M. de Chateaubriant, the Genius of
Christianity. The truly frivolous minds are
those which take rapid glances for profound
examinations, and persuade themselves that
we can proceed with nature upon an exclu-
sive principle, and suppress the greater part
of the desires and wants of the soul. One
of the great proofs of the divinity of the
Christian religion is its perfect analogy with
all our moral faculties; at least it does not
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? 312 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
appear to me that we can consider the poetry
of Christianity under the same aspect as the
poetry of Paganism.
As every thing was external in the Pagan
worship, the pomp of images was there
prodigally exhibited; the sanctuary of Chris-
tianity being at the bottom of the heart, the
poetry which it inspires must always flow
from tenderness. It is not the splendour of
the Christian heaven that we can oppose to
Olympus, but grief and innocence, old age
and death, which assume a character of ex-
altation and of repose, under the shelter of
those religious hopes, whose wings are spread
over the miseries of life. It is not then true,
it appears to me, that the Protestant religion
is unprovided with poetry, because the ritual
of its worship has less eclat than that of the
Catholics. Ceremonies, better or worse, per-
formed according to the richness of towns,
and the magnificence of buildings, cannot be
the principal cause of the impression which
divine service produces; its connexion with
our internal feelings is that which touches
us, a connexion which can subsist in sim-
plicity as well as in pomp.
Some time ago I was present at a church
in the country, deprived of all ornament;
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? CATHOLICISM. 313
ho picture adorned its white walls; it was
newly built, and no remembrance of a long
antiquity rendered it venerable: music itself,
which the most austere saints have placed in
heaven as the employment of the happy,
was hardly heard ; and the psalms were sung
by voices without harmony, which the la-
bour of the world, and the weight of years,
rendered hoarse and confused: but in the
midst of this rustic assembly, where all hu-
man splendour was deficient, one saw a
pious man, whose heart was profoundly
moved by the mission which he fulfilled *.
His looks, his physiognomy, might serve for
a model to some of the pictures with which
other temples are adorned ; his accents made
the responses to an angelic concert. There
was before us a mortal creature convinced of
our immortality ; of that of our friends whom
we have lost; of that of our children, who
will survive us by so little in the career of
time! and the convincing persuasion of a
pure heart appeared a new revelation.
He descended from his pulpit to give the
communion to the faithful, who live under
the shelter of his example. His son was
with him, a minister of the church; and,
* Mr. Celerier, preacher of Celigny, near Geneva.
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? 314 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
with more youthful features, his countenance
also, like that of his father, had a pious and
thoughtful expression. Then, according to
custom, the father and the son gave each
other the bread and wine, which, among
Protestants, serve for the commemoration
of the most affecting of mysteries. The son
only saw in his father a pastor more ad-
vanced than himself in the religious state
that he had chosen to adopt; the father re-
spected in his son the holy calling he had
embraced. They mutually addressed each
other, as they took the Sacrament, in those
passages of the Gospel which are calculated
to unite in one bond strangers and friends;
and, both feeling in their hearts the same
inward impulses, they appeared to forget
their personal relations in the presence of the
Divinity, before whom fathers and sons are
alike servants of the tombs, and children of
hope.
What poetical effect, what emotion, the
source of all poetry, could be wanting to the
divine service at such a moment!
Men, whose affections are disinterested,
and their thoughts religious; men who live
in the sanctuary of their conscience, and
know how to concentrate in it, as in a burn-
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? CATHOLICISM.
315
ing-glass, all the rays of the universe; these
men, I say, are the priests of the religion of
the soul; and nothing ought ever to disunite
them. An abyss separates those who conduct
themselves according to calculation, and
those who are guided by feeling. All other
differences of opinion are nothing; this alone
is radical. It is possible that one day a cry
of union may be raised, and that all Chris-
tians may aspire to profess the same theolo-
gical, political, and moral religion; but be-
fore this miracle is accomplished, all men
who have a heart, and who obey it, ought
mutually to respect each other.
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? 316 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
CHAPTER V.
Of the religious Disposition called Mysticism.
The religious disposition called Mysticism,
is only a more inward manner of feeling and
of conceiving Christianity. As in the word
Mysticism is comprehended that of Mystery,
it has been believed that the Mystics pro-
fessed extraordinary doctrines, and formed a
separate sect. There are no mysteries among
them, but the mysteries of sentiment applied
to religion; and sentiment is at once the
clearest, the most simple, and the most in-
explicable of things: it is necessary, at the
same time, to distinguish the Theosophuts,
that is to say, those who are busied with phi-
losophical theology, such as Jacob Boehmen,
St. Martin, &c. from the simple Mystics;
the former wish to penetrate the secret
of the creation; the second confine them-
selves to their own hearts. Many fathers
of the Church, Thomas-a-Kempis, Fenelon,
St. Francois-de-Sales, &c. ; and among the
Protestants a great number of English and
German writers, have been Mystics; that
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? MYSTICISM.
317
is to say, men who have made religion a sort
of affection, and have infused it into all their
thoughts, as well as all their actions.
The religious feeling, which is the foun-
dation of the whole doctrine of the Mvstics,
consists in an internal peace full of life. The
agitations of the passions leave no calm; the
tranquillity of a dry and moderate under-
standing destroys the animation of the soul;
it is only in religious feeling that we find a
perfect union of repose and motion. This
disposition is not continual, I think, iri any
man, however pious he may be; but the re-
membrance and the hope of these holy emo-
tions decide the conduct of those who have
experienced them. If we consider the pains
and the pleasures of life as the effect of
chance, or of a well-played game, then de-
spair and joy ought to be (if we may use the
expression) convulsive motions. For what a
chance is that which disposes of our existence!
what pride, or what respect, ought we not
to feel, when we have been considering a
mode of action which may influence our
destiny? To what torments of uncertainty
must we not be delivered up, if our reason
alone disposed of our fate in this world? But
if we believe, on the contrary, that there are
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? 318 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
but two things important to happiness,
purity of intention, and resignation to the
event, whatever it may be, when it no longer
depends upon ourselves; doubtless many cir-
cumstances will still make us cruelly suffer,
but none will break our ties to Heaven. To
struggle against the impossible, is that which
begets in us the most bitter feelings; and
the anger of Satan is nothing else than liberty
quarrelling with necessity, and unable either
to subdue or to submit to it.
The ruling opinion among the mystical
Christians is this, that the only homage which
can please God is that of the will, which he
gave to man: what more disinterested of-
fering can we, in effect, offer to the Divinity?
Worship, incense, hymns, have almost always
for their object the attainment of the good
things of this world; and it is on this account
that worldly flattery surrounds monarchs:
but to resign ourselves to the will of God, to
wish nothing but that which he wishes, is
the most pure religious act of which the
soul is capable. Thrice is man summoned
to yield this resignation; in youth, in man-
hood, and in age: happy are they who sub-
mit at first!
It is pride in every thing which puts the
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? MYSTICISM. 319
venom into the wound: the rebellious soul
accuses Heaven; the religious man suffers
grief to act upon him as the intention of Him
who sent it; he makes use of all the means
in his power to avoid or to console it; but
when the event is irrevocable, the sacred
characters of the supreme will are imprinted
there.
What accidental malady can be compared
to age and death?
? MORAVIAN" MODE OF WORSHIP. 295
and demands of them the person he wishes
to espouse. They draw lots in the church,
to know whether he ought to marry thg
woman whom he prefers; and if the lot is
against him, he gives up his demand. The
Moravians have such a habit of resignation,
that they do not resist this decision; and as
they only see the women at church, it costs
them less to renounce their choice. This
manner of deciding upon marriage, and upon
many other circumstances of life, indicates
the general spirit of the Moravian worship.
Instead of keeping themselves submitted' td
the will of Heaven, they fancy they can
learn it by inspirations, or, what is still more
strange, by interrogating Chance. Duty and
events manifest to man the views of God
concerning the earth; how can we flatter
ourselves with the notion of penetrating
them by other means?
We observe, in other respects, among the
generality of Moravians, evangelical man-
ners, such as they must have existed from
the time of the Apostles, in Christian com-
munities. Neither extraordinary doctrines
nor scrupulous practices constitute the bond
of this association: the Gospel is there in-
terpreted in the most natural and clear
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? 296 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
manner; but they are there faithful to the
consequences of this doctrine, and they
make their conduct, under all relations, har-
monize with their religious principles. The
Moravian communities serve, above all, to
prove that Protestantism, in its simplicity,
may lead to the most austere sort of life,
and the most enthusiastic religion; death
and immortality, well understood, are suffi-
cient to occupy and to direct the whole of
existence.
I was some time ago at Dintendorf, a
little village near Erfurtb, where a Moravian
community is established. This village is
three leagues distant from every great road;
it: is situated between two mountains, upon
the banks of a rivulet; willows and lofty
poplars environ it: . there is something tran-
quil and sweet in the look of the country,
which prepares the soul to free itself from
the turbulence of life. The buildings and
the streets are marked by perfect cleanliness;
the women, all clothed alike, hide their hair,
and bind their head with a riband, whose
colour indicates whether they are married,
maidens, or widows: the men are clothed
in brown, almost like the Quakers, Mer-
cantile industry employs nearly all of them;
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? MORAVIAN MODE OF WORSHIP. 297
but one does not hear the least noise in the
village. Every body works in regularity
and silence; and the internal action of re-
ligious feeling lulls to rest every other im-
pulse. ? . ;. '>. . ';
The girls and widows live together in a
large dormitory, and, during the night, one
of them has her turn to watch, for the pur-
pose of praying, or of taking care of those
who" may be ill. The unmarried men Jive
in the same manner. Thus there exists a
great family for him who has none of his
own; and the name of brother and sister is
common to all Christians. ? ? !
Instead of bells, wind instruments, of a
very sweet harmony, summon them to di-
vine service. As we proceeded to church,
by the sound of this imposing music, we felt
ourselves carried away from the earth; we
fancied that we heard the trumpets of the
last judgment, not such as remorse makes
us fear them, but such as a pious confidence
makes us hope them; it seemed as if the
divine compassion manifested itself in this
appeal, and pronounced beforehand the par-
don of regeneration.
The church was dressed out in white roses,
and blossoms of white thorn: pictures were
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? RE1IGION AtfD EKTHUSIASM*
not banished from the temple; and music
was cultivated as a constituent part of re-
ligion: they only sang psalms; there was
neither sermon, nor mass, nor argument,
nor theological discussion; it was the wor-
ship of God in spirit and in truth. The
women, all in white, were ranged by each
other without any distinction whatever; they
looked like the innocent shadows who were
about to appear together before the tribunal
of the Divinity.
The burying-ground of the Moravians is
a garden, the walks of which are marked
out by funeral stones; and by the side of
each is planted a flowering shrub. All these
grave-stones are equal; not one of these
shrubs rises above the other; and the same
epitaph serves for all the dead. "He was
"born on such a day; and on such another<.
"he returned into his native country/'
Excellent expression to designate the end
of our life! The ancients said, " He lived f
and thus threw a veil over the tomb, to divest
themselves of its idea; the Christians place
over it the star of hope.
On Easter-day, divine service is performed
in the burying-ground, which is close to the
church, and the resurrection is announced
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? Mtfft,AV<*sr ftor>? of Worship.
in the middle of the tombs. All those who
are present at this act of worship, know the
stone that is to be placed over their coffin;
and already breathe the perfume of the
young tree, whose leaves and flowers will
penetrate into their tombs. It is thus that
we have seen, in modern times, an entire
army assisting at its own funeral rites, pro-
nouncing for itself the service of the dead,
decided in belief that it was to conquer hm
mortality*.
The communion of the Moravians danrrot
adapt itself to the social state, such a3 Cir-
cumstances ordain it to be; but as it has
been long and frequently asserted that Ca-
tholicism alone addressed the imagination, it
is of consequence to remark, that what truly
touches the soul in religion is common to all
. Christian churches. A sepulchre and a
prayer exhaust all the power of the pathetic;
and the more simple the faith, the more
emotion is caused by the worship.
* The allusion in this passage is to the siege of Saragossa.
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? 300 EELIOI0N AND ENTHUSIASM.
CHAPTER IV. . ;
. . . . . . Of Catholicism. , .
? >> ? > a?
''>> ? ? . "'' ". . ? .
The Catholic religion is more tolerant in
Germany than in any i other country. The
peace of Westphalia having fixed the rights
of the different religions, they no longer
feared their mutual invasions; and, besides,
this mixture of modes of worship, in a great
number of towns, has necessarily induced
the occasion of observing and judging each
other. In religious as well as in political
opinions, we make a phantom of our adver-
saries, which is almost always dissipated by
their presence; sympathy presents a fellow-
creature in him whom we believed an enemy.
Protestantism being much more favour-
able to knowledge than Catholicism, the
Catholics in Germany have put themselves
in a sort of defensive position, which is very
injurious to the progress of information.
In the countries where the Catholic religion
reigned alone, such as France and Italy,
they have known how to unite it to litera-
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? CATHOLICISM. T 301
ture and to the fine arts; but in Germany,
where the Protestants have taken possession,
by means of the universities, and by their
natural tendency to every thing which be-
longs to literary and philosophical study,
the Catholics have fancied themselves obliged
to oppose to them a certain sort of reserve,
which destroys almost all the means of dis-
tinction, in the career of imagination and of
reflection. Music is the only one of the
fine arts which is carried to a greater degree
of perfection in the south of Germany than
in the north; unless we reckon in the number
of the fine arts a certain convenient mode of
life, the enjoyments of which agree well
enough with repose of mind.
Among the Catholics in Germany there is
a sincere, tranquil, and charitable piety;
but there are no famous preachers, nor reli-
gious authors who are quoted: nothing there
excites the emotions of the soul; they con-
sider religion as a matter of fact, in which
enthusiasm has no share; and one might say,
that in a mode of religious worship so well
consolidated, the future life itself became a
positive truth, upon which we no longer
exercise our thoughts.
The revolution. which has taken place
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? 302 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
among the philosophical minds in Germany*
during the last thirty years, has brought
them almost all back to religious sentiments,
Thpy had wandered a little from them;
when the impulse necessary to propagate
toleration had exceeded its proper bounds:
butj by recalling idealism in metaphysics,
inspiration ia poetry, contemplation in the
faiences, they have restored the eiftpire of
religion; and the reform of the Reformation,
or rather the philosophical direction of liberty
which it has occasioned, has banished for
ev,er ((at least in. theory) materialism, and
all it? fetal consequences. In the midst of
th*s intellectual revolution, so fruitful in
noble results, some writers have gone too
far? ; as it always happens in the oscillations
of thought.
>Ve might say, that the human mind is
continually hurrying from one extreme to
another; as if the opinions which it lias just
desested. , were changed into regrets to pursue
}i. The Reformation, according to some
authors of the new school, has been the
cause of many religious wars; it has sepa-
rated the north from the south of Germany;
it has given the Germans the fatal habit of
fighting with each other; and these divisions
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? CATHOLICISM. SQ$
have robbed them of the right of being
denominated one nation. Lastly, the Re-
formation, by giving birth to the spirit of
'inquiry, has dried up the imagination, and
introduced scepticism in the place of faith;
it is necessary then, say the same advocates,
to return to the unity of the church, by re-
turning to Catholicism.
In the first place, if Charles the Fifth had
adopted Lutheranism, there would Jhave
been the same unity in Germany; and the
whole country, like the northern portion of
it, would have formed an asylum for the
arts and sciences. Perhaps this harmony
would have given birth to free institutions,
combined with a real strength; and perhaps
that sad separation of character and know-
ledge would have been avoided, which has
yielded up the north to reverie, and kept the
south in ignorance. But without losing
ourselves in conjectures as to what would
have happened, a sort of calculation always
very uncertain, we cannot deny that the
sera of the Reformation was that in which
learning and philosophy were introduced
into Germany. This country is not perhaps
raised to the first rank in war, in the arts,
in political liberty: it is knowledge of
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? 304 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
which Germany has a right to be proud>>
and its influence upon the thinking part of
Europe takes its date from Protestantism.
Such revolutions neither proceed nor are
brought to an end by arguments; they be-
long to the historical progress of the human
mind; and the men who appear to be their
authors, are never more than their conse-
quences.
Catholicism, disarmed in the present day,
has the majesty of an old lion, which once
made the world tremble;--but when the
abuses of its power brought on the Refor-
mation, it put fetters on the human mind;
and far from want of feeling being then the
cause of the opposition to its ascendancy, it
was in order to make use of all the faculties
of the understanding and of the imagination
that the freedom of thought was so loudly
demanded again. If circumstances, of en-
tirely divine origin, and in which the hand
of man was not in the least operative, were
hereafter to bring about a reunion between
the two churches, we should pray to God,
it appears to me, with new emotion, by
the side of those venerable priests, who, in
the latter years of the last century, have
suffered so much for conscience sake. But,
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? Catholicism. '305
assuredly, it is not the change of religion in
a few individuals, nor, above all, the unjust
discredit which their writings have a tend-
ency to throw upon the reformed religion,
that can lead to the unity of religious opi-
nions.
There are in the human mind two very
distinct impulses; one makes us feel the
want of faith, the other that of examination.
One of these tendencies ought not to be
satisfied at the expense of the other: Pro-
testantism and Catholicism do not arise from
the different character of the Popes, and of
a Luther: it is a poor mode of examining
history to attribute it to accidents. Protest-
antism and Catholicism exist in the human
heart;--they are moral powers which are
developed in nations, because they are in-
herent in every individual. If in religion,
as in other human affections, we can unite
what the imagination and the reason sug-
gest, there is harmony in the whole man;
but in man, as in the universe, the power
of creating and that of destroying, faith and
inquiry, succeed and combat each other.
It has been attempted, in order to har-
monize these two inclinations, to penetrate
deeper into the soul; and from that attempt
VOL. III. x
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? 306 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
have arisen the mystical opinions of which
we shall speak in the following chapter; but
the small number of persons who have ab-
jured Protestantism have done nothing but
revive resentments. Ancient denominations
reanimate ancient quarrels; magic makes use
of certain words to call up apparitions; we
may say, that upon all subjects there are
terms which exert this power; these are the
watch-words which serve for a rallying
point to party spirit; we cannot pronounce
them without agitating afresh the torches of
discord. The German Catholics have, to the
present moment, shown themselves very ig-
norant of what was passing upon these points
in the North.
The literary opinions seemed
to be the cause of the small number of per-
sons who changed their religion; and the
ancient church has hardly regained any pro-
selytes.
Count Frederic Stolberg, a man of great
respectability, both from his character and
his talents, celebrated from his youth as a
poet, as a passionate admirer of antiquity,
and as a translator of Homer, was the first
in Germany to set the example of these new
conversions, and he has had some imitators.
The most illustrious friends of the Count
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? CATHOLICISM.
Stolberg, Klopstock, Voss, and Jacobi, sepa-
rated themselves from him in consequence of
this action, which seemed to disavow the
misfortunes and the struggles which the re-
formed have endured during three centuries;
nevertheless, M. de Stolberg has lately pub-
lished a History of the Religion of Jesus
Christ, which is calculated to merit the ap-
probation of all Christian communities. It is
the first time that we have seen the Catholic
opinions defended in this manner; and if
Count Stolberg had not been educated as a
Protestant, perhaps he would nothavehad that
independence of mind which enables him to
make an impression upon enlightened men.
We find in this book a perfect knowledge of
the Holy Scriptures, and very interesting re-
searches into the different religions of Asia,
which bear relation to Christianity. The
Germans of the North, even when they sub-
mit to the most positive doctrines, know
how to give them the stamp of their philo-
sophy.
Count Stolberg, in his publication, attri. j
buted to the Old Testament a much greater
importance than Protestant writers in general
assign to it. I consider sacrifices as the basis
of all religion; and the death. of Abel as the
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? 308 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
first type of that sacrifice which forms the
groundwork of Christianity. In whatever
way we decide upon this opinion, it affords
much room for thought. The greater part
of ancient religions instituted human sacri-
fices; but in this barbarity there was some-
thing remarkable, namely, the necessity
of a solemn expiation. Nothing, in effect,
can obliterate from the soul the idea, that
there is a mysterious efficacy in the blood of
the innocent, and that heaven and earth are
moved by it. Men have always believed
that the just could obtain, in this life or the
other, the pardon of the guilty. There are
some primitive' ideas in the human species
which re-appear with more or less disfigure-
ment, in all times, and among all nations.
These are the ideas upon which we cannot
grow weary of reflecting; for they assuredly
preserve some traces of the lost dignities of
our nature.
The persuasion, that the prayers and the
self-devotion of the just can save the guilty,
is doubtless derived from the feelings that
we experience in the relations of life; but
nothing obliges us, in respect to religious
belief, to reject these inferences. What do
we know better than our feelings? and why
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? CATHOLICISM. 3Q9
should we pretend that they are inapplicable
to the truths of religion? What can there be
in man but himself, and why, under the
pretext of anthropomorphism, hinder him
from forming an image of the Deity after
his own soul? No other messenger, I think,
can bring him news from heaven.
Count Stolberg endeavours to show, that
the tradition of the fall of man has existed
among all the nations of the earth, and par-
ticularly in the East; and that all men have
in their hearts the remembrance of a happi-
ness of which they have been deprived. In
effect, there are in the human mind two
tendencies as distinct as gravitation and at-
traction in the natural world; these are the
ideas of decay, and of advance to perfection.
One should say, that we feel at once a regret
for the loss of some excellent qualities which
were gratuitously conferred upon us, and a
hope of some advantages which we may
acquire by our own efforts; in such a manner,
that the doctrine of perfectibility, and that of
the golden age, united and confounded, excite
at the same time in man grief for having lost
these blessings, and emulation to recover
them. The sentiment is melancholy, and
the spirit is daring; and from this reverie
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? 310 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
and this energy together, springs the true
superiority of man; that mixture of contem-
plation and of activity, of resignation and of
will, which allows him to connect his worldly
existence with heaven.
Stolberg calls those persons alone Christians
who receive the words of the Holy Scrip-
tures with the simplicity of children; but he
bestows upon the signification of these
words a philosophical spirit which takes
away all their dogmatism and intolerance
from the Catholic opinions. In what then
do they differ, these religious men by whom
Germany is honoured, and why should the
names of Catholic and Protestant divide
them? Why should they be unfaithful to
the tombs of their ancestors, by giving up
these names,or by resuming them? Has not
Klopstock consecrated his whole life to the
purpose of making a fine poem the temple
of the Gospel? Is not Herder, as well as
Stolberg, the adorer of the Bible? Does he
not penetrate into all the beauties of the
primitive language, aud of those senti-
ments of celestial origin which it expresses?
Jacobi --does he not recogniselhe Divinity in
ah the great thoughts of man? Would any
of these men recommend religion merely a*
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? CATHOLICISM.
311
a restraint upon the people, as an instrument
of public safety, as an additional guarantee
in the contracts of this world? Do they not
all know that every superior mind has more
need of piety than the common herd? For
the labour ordained by the authority of
society may occupy and direct the working
class in all the moments of life, whilst idle
men are incessantly the prey of the passions
and the sophistries that disturb existence,
and put every thing into uncertainty.
It has been pretended that it was a sort of
frivolity in the German writers to represent
as one of the merits of the Christian religion,
the favourable influence that it exercised
over the arts, imagination, and poetry: and
the same reproach, with respect to this
point, has been cast upon that beautiful
work of M. de Chateaubriant, the Genius of
Christianity. The truly frivolous minds are
those which take rapid glances for profound
examinations, and persuade themselves that
we can proceed with nature upon an exclu-
sive principle, and suppress the greater part
of the desires and wants of the soul. One
of the great proofs of the divinity of the
Christian religion is its perfect analogy with
all our moral faculties; at least it does not
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? 312 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
appear to me that we can consider the poetry
of Christianity under the same aspect as the
poetry of Paganism.
As every thing was external in the Pagan
worship, the pomp of images was there
prodigally exhibited; the sanctuary of Chris-
tianity being at the bottom of the heart, the
poetry which it inspires must always flow
from tenderness. It is not the splendour of
the Christian heaven that we can oppose to
Olympus, but grief and innocence, old age
and death, which assume a character of ex-
altation and of repose, under the shelter of
those religious hopes, whose wings are spread
over the miseries of life. It is not then true,
it appears to me, that the Protestant religion
is unprovided with poetry, because the ritual
of its worship has less eclat than that of the
Catholics. Ceremonies, better or worse, per-
formed according to the richness of towns,
and the magnificence of buildings, cannot be
the principal cause of the impression which
divine service produces; its connexion with
our internal feelings is that which touches
us, a connexion which can subsist in sim-
plicity as well as in pomp.
Some time ago I was present at a church
in the country, deprived of all ornament;
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? CATHOLICISM. 313
ho picture adorned its white walls; it was
newly built, and no remembrance of a long
antiquity rendered it venerable: music itself,
which the most austere saints have placed in
heaven as the employment of the happy,
was hardly heard ; and the psalms were sung
by voices without harmony, which the la-
bour of the world, and the weight of years,
rendered hoarse and confused: but in the
midst of this rustic assembly, where all hu-
man splendour was deficient, one saw a
pious man, whose heart was profoundly
moved by the mission which he fulfilled *.
His looks, his physiognomy, might serve for
a model to some of the pictures with which
other temples are adorned ; his accents made
the responses to an angelic concert. There
was before us a mortal creature convinced of
our immortality ; of that of our friends whom
we have lost; of that of our children, who
will survive us by so little in the career of
time! and the convincing persuasion of a
pure heart appeared a new revelation.
He descended from his pulpit to give the
communion to the faithful, who live under
the shelter of his example. His son was
with him, a minister of the church; and,
* Mr. Celerier, preacher of Celigny, near Geneva.
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? 314 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
with more youthful features, his countenance
also, like that of his father, had a pious and
thoughtful expression. Then, according to
custom, the father and the son gave each
other the bread and wine, which, among
Protestants, serve for the commemoration
of the most affecting of mysteries. The son
only saw in his father a pastor more ad-
vanced than himself in the religious state
that he had chosen to adopt; the father re-
spected in his son the holy calling he had
embraced. They mutually addressed each
other, as they took the Sacrament, in those
passages of the Gospel which are calculated
to unite in one bond strangers and friends;
and, both feeling in their hearts the same
inward impulses, they appeared to forget
their personal relations in the presence of the
Divinity, before whom fathers and sons are
alike servants of the tombs, and children of
hope.
What poetical effect, what emotion, the
source of all poetry, could be wanting to the
divine service at such a moment!
Men, whose affections are disinterested,
and their thoughts religious; men who live
in the sanctuary of their conscience, and
know how to concentrate in it, as in a burn-
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? CATHOLICISM.
315
ing-glass, all the rays of the universe; these
men, I say, are the priests of the religion of
the soul; and nothing ought ever to disunite
them. An abyss separates those who conduct
themselves according to calculation, and
those who are guided by feeling. All other
differences of opinion are nothing; this alone
is radical. It is possible that one day a cry
of union may be raised, and that all Chris-
tians may aspire to profess the same theolo-
gical, political, and moral religion; but be-
fore this miracle is accomplished, all men
who have a heart, and who obey it, ought
mutually to respect each other.
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? 316 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
CHAPTER V.
Of the religious Disposition called Mysticism.
The religious disposition called Mysticism,
is only a more inward manner of feeling and
of conceiving Christianity. As in the word
Mysticism is comprehended that of Mystery,
it has been believed that the Mystics pro-
fessed extraordinary doctrines, and formed a
separate sect. There are no mysteries among
them, but the mysteries of sentiment applied
to religion; and sentiment is at once the
clearest, the most simple, and the most in-
explicable of things: it is necessary, at the
same time, to distinguish the Theosophuts,
that is to say, those who are busied with phi-
losophical theology, such as Jacob Boehmen,
St. Martin, &c. from the simple Mystics;
the former wish to penetrate the secret
of the creation; the second confine them-
selves to their own hearts. Many fathers
of the Church, Thomas-a-Kempis, Fenelon,
St. Francois-de-Sales, &c. ; and among the
Protestants a great number of English and
German writers, have been Mystics; that
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? MYSTICISM.
317
is to say, men who have made religion a sort
of affection, and have infused it into all their
thoughts, as well as all their actions.
The religious feeling, which is the foun-
dation of the whole doctrine of the Mvstics,
consists in an internal peace full of life. The
agitations of the passions leave no calm; the
tranquillity of a dry and moderate under-
standing destroys the animation of the soul;
it is only in religious feeling that we find a
perfect union of repose and motion. This
disposition is not continual, I think, iri any
man, however pious he may be; but the re-
membrance and the hope of these holy emo-
tions decide the conduct of those who have
experienced them. If we consider the pains
and the pleasures of life as the effect of
chance, or of a well-played game, then de-
spair and joy ought to be (if we may use the
expression) convulsive motions. For what a
chance is that which disposes of our existence!
what pride, or what respect, ought we not
to feel, when we have been considering a
mode of action which may influence our
destiny? To what torments of uncertainty
must we not be delivered up, if our reason
alone disposed of our fate in this world? But
if we believe, on the contrary, that there are
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? 318 RELIGION AND ENTHUSIASM.
but two things important to happiness,
purity of intention, and resignation to the
event, whatever it may be, when it no longer
depends upon ourselves; doubtless many cir-
cumstances will still make us cruelly suffer,
but none will break our ties to Heaven. To
struggle against the impossible, is that which
begets in us the most bitter feelings; and
the anger of Satan is nothing else than liberty
quarrelling with necessity, and unable either
to subdue or to submit to it.
The ruling opinion among the mystical
Christians is this, that the only homage which
can please God is that of the will, which he
gave to man: what more disinterested of-
fering can we, in effect, offer to the Divinity?
Worship, incense, hymns, have almost always
for their object the attainment of the good
things of this world; and it is on this account
that worldly flattery surrounds monarchs:
but to resign ourselves to the will of God, to
wish nothing but that which he wishes, is
the most pure religious act of which the
soul is capable. Thrice is man summoned
to yield this resignation; in youth, in man-
hood, and in age: happy are they who sub-
mit at first!
It is pride in every thing which puts the
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? MYSTICISM. 319
venom into the wound: the rebellious soul
accuses Heaven; the religious man suffers
grief to act upon him as the intention of Him
who sent it; he makes use of all the means
in his power to avoid or to console it; but
when the event is irrevocable, the sacred
characters of the supreme will are imprinted
there.
What accidental malady can be compared
to age and death?
