Those who meet these bold travellers ought to succour them, and
to tell all that they have met them, for in so doing they point
out the way. It is not a question of setting at the outset of
life two sign-posts, one bearing the inscription "The Right Way,"
the other the inscription "The Wrong Way," and of saying to those
who come there, "Choose." One must needs, like Christ, point out
the ways which lead from the second road to the first, to those
who have been easily led astray; and it is needful that the
beginning of these ways should not be too painful nor appear too
impenetrable.

Here is Christianity with its marvellous parable of the Prodigal
Son to teach us indulgence and pardon. Jesus was full of love for
souls wounded by the passions of men; he loved to bind up their
wounds and to find in those very wounds the balm which should
heal them. Thus he said to the Magdalen: "Much shall be forgiven
thee because thou hast loved much," a sublimity of pardon which
can only have called forth a sublime faith.

Why do we make ourselves more strict than Christ? Why, holding
obstinately to the opinions of the world, which hardens itself in
order that it may be thought strong, do we reject, as it rejects,
souls bleeding at wounds by which, like a sick man's bad blood,
the evil of their past may be healed, if only a friendly hand is
stretched out to lave them and set them in the convalescence of
the heart?

It is to my own generation that I speak, to those for whom the
theories of M. de Voltaire happily exist no longer, to those who,
like myself, realize that humanity, for these last fifteen years,