mortification is much more so, and that if rashness be culpable, cowardice is more culpable still.

3. Sects; Sectarian Spirit; Unity; Religious Sophistry; Heresies.

One attaches to the word sect a disagreeable and repulsive idea. A sectarian is in the eyes of the majority a half-crazed creature, whose very name awakens gloomy thoughts; and yet who is there who does not form part of some sect or other? Where is the society which is not subdivided into sects, amidst which each individual capable of feeling may make his choice and form his habits?

Each coterie is a sect; all partisans of the same political opinions form a sect; all who are united by specially related views, feelings, desires, equality of rank, similarity of external circumstance; seek each other out by preference; love to associate, and in some measure isolate themselves from the rest of society; these are so many sects.

We are all sectarians; the great point is, not our exemption from this rule, but our spiritually dominating the sect of which we form part,-our making the essence prevail over the form. We can hardly succeed in this except by means of some inconsistency, or to speak more plainly, some decided contradiction; for every sect contains an element of error, and we can only prevail over error by truth.

Death is the true name of unity without liberty.

The unity of the Spirit! the unity of the truth! How excellent and beautiful are these! and how much should we not pardon to diversity when it brings out more vividly the communion of thought and affection between the servants of the same Master!

If even it were possible that one communion should have on its side the whole of dogmatic truth, it would not in consequence of this have the whole of practical truth. Truth under these two aspects will long, will perhaps always, be distributed in varying proportions between different religious communities; one may be in some respects surpassed by another, and again in its turn surpass it in other respects.

Unity is only true where diversity is possible. Truth in an absolute sense is a life. Now life is a complex fact. The obstinate overlooking of this maxim is the inexhaustible source of sects; it reduces our pride to despair by forbidding to our analysis the ultimate nature and reality of things.

Christianity is a sect, and the true Christian, the spiritual Christian, is a sectary.

Man is naturally sectarian, even though truly great men may not be so; the human mind only wants one thing at a time, it is at the mercy of vehement and exclusive genius; two steps are taken forward, one backward,-such is its march. But do not let us, however, believe that serene and moder ate temperaments lose their time and labour. Their day is coming, or rather, it is eternally their day. Let them be content not to receive the popular applauses

reserved for more passionate and more narrow intellects.

All that is equally profound is alike; and if there be a religion so intimate and earnest as to echo in the last depths of our being, it must produce there essentially the same sound. Such is the nature of Christianity. No religion is more calculated to divide at the surface and narrowly to unite at the base. No religion can produce more sects; none can maintain a closer unity between the really religious members of those sects. We must make up our mind to the one fact, and rejoice in the other; we must trust to this secret and powerful principle of unity. We must not expect eventually to see only individuals in the religious sphere;-always, and to the end of the world, the contrary fear will be far better grounded; rather must we, under the just apprehension of seeing some factitious agglomeration reproduced at every instant, avoid the coarsest and falsest of the forms under which that agglomeration might take place.

Life and diversity are strictly correlative in this domain. There is no life where there are no sects; uniformity is the symptom of death.

True Christianity is the most powerful reaction against a false uniformity; it is both, and alternately, a solvent and a cement.

There will always be narrow sects, and narrowness in all sects; but I do not know whether, taking all things into account, there is anywhere so

much narrowness as in national sects. What is more common, in fact, in these pretended communities; and what can be more narrow, than to attach to quite external circumstances motives of security and earnests of salvation?

Most certainly we do not see the aberrations of the religious sentiment without regret, but we cannot share the distress or the offence that too many feel at the spectacle of certain eccentricities. Our distress is more keenly elicited by other facts, which afford no public spectacle. What do we care for the macerations, the ecstasies, the dances, the convulsions of a few imperceptible sects? There is more of truth and of reason in these manifestations, than in the proud and stupid calm of a sceptic; and nothing, in our eyes, is more extravagant than indifference, just as in morals there is nothing worse than egotism.

A crowd of heresies, distinguished and defined by their authors, are, if we look to the root of their opinions, only one and the same heresy. The difference of form, and of certain outward circumstances, misleads the very authors of these heresies as to their kinship, or, to express ourselves more correctly, their identity. With a less prejudiced eye they would discern that, at a distance of several centuries, it is but the same claim which makes itself heard, the same idea which, whether true or false, returns to the charge, and insists upon its cause being finally settled. If force undertakes anew to

put an end summarily to the difficulty or discussion, it is a reason for the reappearance of the illused opinion, on some future day, to demand from reason an impartial examination of its merits. When reason shall have exposed and rendered tangible the hitherto unperceived side on which this opinion, so often reproduced, errs, the heresy will have lost the prestige which made its strength, and the idea which had so repeatedly troubled the world will go and die away in general contempt.

Heresy does not now-a-days insult, does not deny; or if it denies, does so in affirming. It honours religion; it only desires to perfect, or rather to bring back the latter to its pristine purity. It is a respectful incredulity. Let not this homage deceive you. Do not be simple enough to feel reassured. Be indulgent to intentions which are always, indeed, to be presumed good, and which are often far more so than we suppose; not indulgent to the error itself; and look to its acts, not its demonstrations. Above all, do not let yourselves be too much impressed with what, at the first glance, seems true in each of those errors which tend to diminish the plenitude of Christ, the plenitude of his grace or of his wisdom. If, for the sake of the true side of an error, you accept that error, you may equally accept all errors; for they all have some truth, nay, they may even be said to be only truths out of place. Do not, then, be content merely to see whether there be any truth in the opinion pro