The Sun.
London, England, 1869-10-11 00:00:00

A precious amulet is this exquisite volume. Its
perusal is a consolation. It breathes forth the
aroma of the Evangel, as appreciably in every word
of it as 4-Kernpis masterpiece, De Imitatione.
Lacordaire, the great Dominican Friar Preacher,
who was one of the last glories of the Gallic
Church, the worthy disciple of the greatest school
of pulpit orators in the Christian world, the school
of Bossuet, of Massillon, of Foneion, of Bourdaloue
—Lacordaire, the some time associate of Lamen-
nais, the friend to the last of Charles, the Count de
Montalewbert, has now for some years past disap-
peared from amongst us. Silenced though his voice
has been by death, his soul yet speaks to us most
persuasively through his superb Conferences. From
among these, a selection has here been made by a
grateful and venerating admirer of those noble
discourses, delivered by him from the pulpit of
of Notre Dame, upon the Inner Life, the Public
Power, the Foundation of the Reign, the Per-
petuity and Progress of the Reign, the Pre-Exist-
ence and the reiterated conquest of Rationalism,
of the Incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ. In
this age of hypercritical unbelief and of analytical
infidelity, in these days when Strauss and Renan
have been striving to blow down, by the warblings
of flageolets—what had withstood; a century ago,
the blast of trumpets sounded by the lips of Vol-
taire and Rousseau—the walls not of Jericho, but
of the heavenly Jerusalem, it is a joy of the soul
more even than of the heart and of the intellect,
to listen for a while to the accents of a believing
genius, like that of this " Christian Achilles," as
Montalembert has before now called him, the Abb6
Henri Lacordaire. The anonymous translator, who,
has done this good work for England, proffers it " to
his well-beloved country, as a guide in her present
religious confusion." Turning the single leaf of his
Preface, we come at once to the Conferences
themselves, and listen thenceforth, as it were,
no longer to the Translator, but to the impassioned
tones of the great Friar Preacher himself, to those
lips touched with sacred fire, to the tones and the
lips of Lacordaire. Accepting his sublime theme,
at once, he describes our Lord as, " like Atlas,
bearing heaven and earth upon his shoulders."
Apostrophising Him, directly at the very outset he
exclaims, "Lord Jesus, now and more directly, I
come to Thyself, to those divine features which are
the daily object of my contemplation ; to Thy
sacred feet, which I have so often kissed; to Thy
divine hands which have so often blessed me ; to
Thy forehead crowned with glory and with thorns ;
to that life whose sweetness I have respired from
my birth, which my youth disregarded, which my
manhood regained, which my riper age adores and
proclaims to every creature. 0 Father I 0 Master !
0 Friend ! 0 Jesus ! second me, now, more than
ever, since, being closer to Thee, it is meet that my
hearers should perceive it, and that the words which
fall from my lips, should manifest the nearness of
Thy adorable presence." That is the exordium of
Lacordaire, who thereupon accumulates the Re-
deemer's explicit declarations of His Divinity, from
the New Testament. " Whom do men say that I,
the Son of Man, am ?" he asks ; and Simon Peter,
answering, says, " Thou art Christ the son of the
living God." Whereupon, instead of rebuking the
apostle for a blasphemy, our Lord pronounces a
formal benediction upon Peter for that utterance,
saying, " Blessed art thou Simon Barjonah, for
flesh and blood have not revealed it to thee, but My
Father who is in heaven"—adding as an especial
reward for this sublime act of faith on the part of
the Prince of the Apostles, "I say unto thee, that
thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My
Church, and the gates of bell shall not prevail
against it." Again, when Philip says, " Lord,
show us the Father and it is enough for us" —the
Redeemer answers him almost in the language of
reproach. "So long have I been with you, and you
have not known Me? Philip, he that seeth lle
seeth the Father also." Another while, he says,
" Ise that cloth not believe is already judged, be-
cause he believ,th not in the name of the only be-
gotten SAi of Go I." At another time he most
positively declares--" I and the Father are one"—
Ego et Pater unum sumus. Du: ing the Pa sion,
when solemnly apostrophised, thus, by the High
Priest, " I adjure 'lice by the living God that thou
tell us if Thou be the Christ the Son of Go I—the
Redeemer replies calmly, simply, emphatically, " 1
ant"—Ego sum—" I am, and you shall sec the Son
of Man sitting on the right hand of the power of
God, and coming with the clouds of heaven." Then
it is that the high priest rends his garments, ex-
exclaiming, " You have heard the blasphemy."
Then it is that Pilate is told by the Jews, "We
have a law, and by that law he ought to die, be-
cause he made himself the Son of God." During
the crucifixion, the rabble, as if in final attestation
of the divine claim he had advanced, and for which
he died, cry aloud mockingly, " Yak . . if Thou
be the Son of God, come down from the cross."
When he has actually expire], and the veil of the
temple is rent in twain, and the sun becomes
darkened, and the graves give up their dead, the
Roman Centurion, striking his breast with awful
wonder, avows, " Indeed this was the Son of
God." After his resurrection, when he appears
among the Apostles before the hitherto incredu-
lous Didymus, St. Thomas, on being ad-
dressed, can only apostophise him, in so many
words of adoration—" My Lord and My God."
After his ascension, moreover, St. John, the Apostle,
closes his Gospel no otherwise than with the deli-
berate
affirmation, "These things arc written that
you may believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of
God." Those are the among the Redeemer's own
assertions of his Divinity. The attestations of his
Divinity are innumerable. His whole life is its con-
clusive demonstration. So, for that matter, are all
the words that fell from His lips—are His sublime
miracles—are His divine doctrines. "Never man
spake as He spake." At His touch the blind saw, the
dumb spoke, the deaf heard, the lepers were cleansed.
At His voice the dead rose from the grave. At His
look the denying Peter was converted with a pas-
sion of tears. At the touch of the hem of His gar-
ment the bloody issue was closed. As Lacordaire
remarks, He alone, among all the historical charac-
ters of whom the world has record, is cherished in
the thoughts of men with Love and with Adoration.
"Among great men, who," asks the Dominican
Preacher, "is loved? Among Warriors ? Is it
Alexander ? Caesar? Charlemagne? Among sages?
Aristotle? or Plato ? Who is loved among great
men ? Who? Name me even one !" Yet for
ninteen centuries there is one being, and one
only, the very thought of whom, the very name of
whom, whose empty sepulchre, the very dust trod-
den by whose footsteps, whose remembered suffer-
ings, the symbol of whose ignominous death, each
and all are suffused with an ineffable tenderness.
"There is one whose love is founded upon earth,
and that one," exclaims Lacordaire, with an exqui-
site and consummate rhetorical force, suddenly
turning his indirect allusion into a direct apostrophe,
"is Thyself, 0 Jesus, who has deigned to baptize
me, to anoint me, to consecrate me in thy love, and
whose name alone now opens my very heart and
draws from me these accents which overpower me
and raise me above myself." Another attribute in
which the Redeemer of the world stands utterly
alone in the annals of the human race, is that of His
all.embracing tenderness and, at the same time, of
his ineffable and unsullied purity. " 11'hatsoev‘2r
you shall do to the least of these, you will have done
it unto me." Coming not to those who are in
health, but to those who are sick ! Calling to
Zaccheus the Publican ! S tying of Magdalen at
llis feet, that her sins though many are forgiven,
because of her loving repentance ! Bidding the ac-
cuser; of the woman taken in adultery to cast the
first s' one who themselves were scathless ! Yearning
over Jerusalem as the hen gathering her chickens
under her wings ! Pleading for His executioners in
the midst of the agonies of his crucifixion-44 Father,
,
forgive them, for they know not what they do:
Jesus Cl.ri.t all the while, as Lacordaire exclaims in
holy awe,—" bearing his love in a vase so pure
that the shadow even of doubt does not approach
his heart, posterity which for eighteen centuries,