CHAPTER VIII.

FAITH, LAW.

A few words more. We blame the Church when it is steeped in intrigues. We scorn the spiritual when it is not in accord with the temporal; but we honor the thoughtful man wherever we find him.

We bow to the man who kneels.

A faith of some kind is necessary to man. Alas for him who believes nothing!

We are not necessarily idle because we are absorbed. Labor may be invisible as well as visible.

To reflect is to labor; to think is to act.

The folded arms labor, the clasped hands work. The gaze directed to heaven is a labor.

Thales stayed immovable for four years. He founded philosophy.

In our opinion, monks are not drones, and hermits are not idlers.

To think of the future life is a serious business.

Without withdrawing at all from the position which we have just taken, we believe that a continual reminder of the tomb is good for the living. On this point the priest and the philosopher agree. _We must die._ The Trappist Abbé replies to Horace.

To mix with his life some presence of the tomb is the law of the wise man; and it is also the law of the recluse. Here recluse and wise man agree.

There is such a thing as material growth; we are glad of it. There is also such a thing as moral grandeur; we insist upon it.

Thoughtless and hasty spirits say: "What is the use of these figures motionless by the side of mystery? What purpose do they serve? What good do they do?"

Alas! In presence of the darkness which envelops us, and which awaits us, not knowing what will become of us in the dispersion of all things, we answer, "There is no work more sublime, perhaps, than that which these souls are doing." And we add, "There is, perhaps, no work more useful."

Those who always pray are needed for those who never pray.

In our opinion, it all depends on the amount of thought that enters into the prayer.

Leibnitz in prayer, this is grand. Voltaire in adoration, this is sublime. _Deo erexit Voltaire._

We are on the side of religion against religions.

We believe in the worthlessness of supplications and the sublimity of worship.

Besides, at this moment through which we are passing, a moment which luckily will not leave its imprint upon the nineteenth century, at this hour when so many men have the forehead low and the soul far from lofty, among so many beings whose code is selfish enjoyment, and who are taken up with material things, ephemeral and shapeless, he who exiles himself seems to us worthy of veneration.

The monastery is a renunciation. Mistaken sacrifice is still sacrifice. To mistake for duty a serious error, this has its noble side.

Taken by itself ideally, and looking on all sides of truth until we have exhausted impartially all its aspects, the monastery and still more the convent for women,--for in our society woman is the greatest sufferer, and her protest appears in this exile of the cloister,--the convent for women has undeniably a certain grandeur.

This cloistered life so austere and so sad, some of whose features we have pointed out, is not life, for it is not liberty; it is not the tomb, for it is not lasting. It is the weird place from which is seen as from the crest of a high mountain on one side the abyss in which we now are, on the other, the abyss in which we shall be; it is a narrow and misty boundary which separates two worlds, cast into light and into shadow by both at a time, where the weak ray of life blends with the flickering ray of death; it is the penumbra of the tomb.

While we do not believe as these women do, we live like them by faith; and we have never been able to think, without a kind of terror, religious and tender, without a sort of pity mixed with envy, of these devoted creatures, trembling and trusting, these souls humble and proud, who dare to live on the very border of mystery, waiting between the world which is closed, and heaven which is not yet open, faced toward the light which they do not see, having only the consolation of thinking that they know where it is, longing for the gulf and the unknown, with eyes fixed upon the motionless darkness, kneeling, distracted, stupefied, shuddering, half lifted at times by the deep breathing of eternity.