virtues which only show themselves to the eye of the faith which looks
for them, and of the attention which discovers them. Bethink you,
especially, how the laws of morality set at defiance appear again
triumphant in the sorrows of repentance; those laws have their hour, and
that hour is usually a silent one. Let a poet of genius defile his works
by the impure traces of a life spent in dissipation, and his brow shall
shine in the sight of all with the twofold splendor of success and of
scandal. But if, stretched on a bed of pain, he renders a tardy but
sincere homage to the law which he has violated, to the truth which he
has ignored, his voice will often be confined to the sick chamber; his
companions in debauchery and infidelity will mount guard perhaps around
his dwelling, in order to prevent the public from learning that their
friend is a _defaulter_. The ball and the theatre make a noise and
attract observation; but men turn their eyes from hospitals, those
abodes in which, in the silence of sickness, or amidst the dull cries of
pain, there germinate so many seeds of immortality. Yes, Sirs, evil is
more apparent than good. The violations of the divine law have more
_éclat_ than penitence. And what is the consequence? The man who
abandons himself to the spectacle of the world, and who takes that
spectacle for the rule of his thoughts, will see the world under a false
aspect, and, in his estimation, evil will have more advantage over good
than it has in reality. It will appear to him altogether dominant, and
will thenceforward become his rule. From the glorification of success,
we passed to the glorification of fact; from the glorification of fact,
we arrive at last at the glorification of evil. We have seen how is
illustrated the morality of victory. In the same current of ideas, a
book famous now-a-days, and quite full of outrages to the conscience,
supplies us with illustrations of the morality of falsehood. M. Ernest
Renan, in his explanation of Christianity, has applied, point after
point, the theory which I have just set forth to you. In order to