It is not permitted to the most equitable of men to be a judge in his own cause. Without Jesus Christ man must be in vice and misery; with Jesus Christ man is free from vice and misery; in Him is all our virtue and all our happiness. Apart from Him there is but vice, misery, darkness, death, despair. Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness. Nature diversifies and imitates; art imitates and diversifies. Not only do we know God by Jesus Christ alone, but we know ourselves only by Jesus Christ. We know life and death only through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves. Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care. This religion taught to her children what men have only been able to discover by their greatest knowledge. Some vices only lay hold of us by means of others, and these, like branches, fall on removal of the trunk. There is nothing more real than this, nothing more terrible. Be we as heroic as we like, that is the end which awaits the noblest life in the world. Let us reflect on this and then say whether it is not beyond doubt that there is no good in this life but The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death. |