Eternity and truth are inseparable, just as are error and decay. All that is true is eternal; all that is not eternal has but the name and the semblance of being. God has made all that appears out of what appeared not. The spirit, whose centre is God, existed before matter and without matter; matter was created only to serve as an instrument to the created spirit,-as form to its life, and object to its activity. But it has no intrinsic, absolute value; it derives all that it has from its aims and its employment. The spirit alone, derived from God, like to God, capable of uniting itself with God,-the spirit alone is immortal, because it is worthy of being so. One single soul is worth all the world; or rather, all the worlds, actual and possible, put together, cannot be compared, cannot measure themselves, with one single soul. The spirit alone deserves in itself the chief attention of man, because it has obtained the chief attention of God, and inasmuch as the spirit, and all that belongs to it, is invisible, one may say with truth that it is only things unseen which deserve to be looked at, and that we must, in a certain sense, be blind to all besides.

All that is true is Christian. All truths are scattered in the world, and the great Christian truth is a centre pointed out to them, a confluence whither all these truths, separated from each other, and powerless in their isolation, tend, like so many rivers, there to unite and to form a whole.

Where should we now be if there were nothing

absolute? And what would have become of the gospel? If the principles of the gospel are not absolute, what is it? For this is precisely its character, and it is by this that it offends.

III. MODE OF ACTION OF CHRISTIANITY.

1. A Life.

Christianity, far from destroying natural sensibility, exercises and develops it.

Christianity is only strong by the spontaneity which is essential to it.

The glory of Christianity is to rule only by influencing, and under the form of liberty.

Christianity at bottom is not a book, though it has a book for basis and support; it is a fact, and a moral fact.

Truth is life; to see and to live are only one and the same; truth is not a form, but a substance, and there is but one way to know the truth, namely, to be in the truth.

Christianity is not a system external to us, it is a life within us. Truth is not a name, a formula ; truth is being, is life; is consequently love, since in the moral world, which is the true, it is love which is life and being, and that in this sphere whatever is not love has no existence.

Truth, the whole truth, truth in the heart, this is the want of us, each and all, and our first want, for truth is the source of love, as love is the source of happiness.

The religion of the gospel is a force, a sap pervading the whole of life. It is not a system of arguments, it is a fact, of a nature to occupy the heart and mould the conduct. It is by a fact, a unique but new fact, that God has seen fit to act upon humanity. There already existed an immense and magnificent fact, which at first sight might have seemed calculated to take possession of the heart and mind of man,-the works of creation. But this primordial fact had lost its power, man having lost that of perceiving it. Experience had proved, as in our days it still proves, that the fact of creation was one worn out, exhausted, incapable of regenerating the human soul; another therefore was needed. Then was produced the great fact of the gospel, in which the whole idea of God and the whole nature of man have met and embraced.

In the gospel, the question is no longer whether God can be appeased towards man; he is so by the very fact of the appearance of Jesus Christ, and before he speaks to us of virtue, he speaks of grace, remission, salvation. This fact accepted changes the whole position of man; operates a revolution in his entire being; moves, draws, renews him. But it is only when, after having received this impression, man studies the cause of his renewal, that he observes with admiration the wonderful beauty of the system as such.

Wherever you recognise life, truth is not far off; wherever, too, a part of truth is frankly avowed and

cordially professed, the other parts, although indeed hidden in silence and shadow, and perhaps even apparently rejected, yet secretly dwells in the soul, side by side with the other elements from which they are inseparable. If Jesus Christ can be divided in theory, that is to say, in formulas and words which are external to man, he cannot be so in the consciousness, which is the man himself.

A Christian is not a man who has expelled one theory from his mind to make room for another; he is a humbled sinner, who feels that he only exists through mercy; who adores and blesses this mercy; who nourishes himself with the promises of God as his only hope; who incessantly strips off all pretensions of his own; who offers himself daily as a sacrifice to his Saviour, and no longer lives himself, but lets Christ live in him, and determines that the life which he still must live in the flesh shall be lived by faith in the Son of God, who has loved him.

As a bond of union with another Christian, the systematic professor requires more than Christianity; he wants, if not equality of rank, at least equality of culture; he has nothing to say to the illiterate believer; he is ill at ease in his society; he dreads it. He needs also a similitude of views,—a shade of difference disturbs him; he cannot rise above the impression that an irrational opinion produces; he does not know how to abstract himself from the form to attach himself to the essence, which is

Christianity itself. He seeks rather for equals and counterparts than for brothers.

The childhood of the heart is that which distinguishes the practical Christian from the theoretical. But this childhood of the heart, what is it but humility?

2. Individual Character.

Christianity is the positive advent of individual religion. Nothing short of this could suffice. This only deserved the name of religion, and if this goal has not been reached, Christianity is still but a transitory and intermediate fact; the worship in spirit and truth is not yet inaugurated; and it is prematurely that Jesus Christ has announced to the universe, It is finished!

Individual religion, if it be permitted to give it this name, has for motto that beautiful expression of a poet: "Yes, it is a hidden God in whom we must believe." Intrusted to the heart, in the most secret chambers of which it dwells, it fixes and concentrates its empire there, and seeks not to display it. without this sanctuary. It animates the inner life, rules, characterizes it; by a gentle magnetic influence it draws, each to each, all who are actuated by the same desires and encouraged by the same hopes; and in intimate communion and common prayer raises their souls together towards the only Being capable of satisfying every desire and realizing every hope. For this religion everywhere temples rise; and if it