The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1850-04-30 00:00:00

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Pietro rushed forwar

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the ankle. Vainly the Pope bade him rise. At last he
exclaimed, looking at the little man with wonder, Eh !
Chd Don Pietro con una barba !" Ah,' said the uncle-
rieal priest, not in any degree taken by surprise, Since
our misfortunes, your Holiness, I never bed the heart to
shave.' Then, now that happier times are come, we
shall see your face quite clean,' was the Pope's reply.
More genuflexions, more embracings, and away we went.
After a few minutes' delay the gentlemen of the chamber
gave notice that his holiness was about to pass ; he was
preceded by priests bearing the crucifix, and this time
wore a rich embroidered stole ; his face lighted up as he
blessed all his servants who knelt on his passage."

M. GUIZOT UPON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

IN FRANCE

The annual meeting of the Bible Society was held on
Wednesday last in the church of the Redemption, rue
Chauchat. M. Guizot, vice-president of the society,
delivered a speech, of which the following is the princi.
pal portion :—Your work is in perfect harmony with the
paramount interests and with the most pressing wants of
our society and of our day. What are these interests—
what are these wants ? Listen to what is everywhere
said :—Everywhere are heard the words of faith, hope,
and charity. It is faith, charity, and hope which are
wanting to society, and which it needs. Those are the
wishes, the appeals, which arise from all parts. Every-
where the satisfaction of these wants is sought for. The
aspirations towards faith are most frequently only the
passionate anxieties of doubt, and doubt is again fallen

into. Practical charity is general, active and efficacious.
Never was more assistance given; or more individual mis-
fortunes relieved; and yet the relations which should be
established between those who relieve and those who are
relieved only slightly exist. Practical charity ill attains
its moral end ; neither one nor the other is mutually con-
fident and tranquil. Never did more hopes, or hopes
more ardent, break out, but they are scarcely anything
else than the flights of the imagination in delirium or the
transports of material appetites. Our society seeks every-
where a solid faith, an efficacious charity, a hope which
calms and fortifies. But it does not find them ; and that
because it seeks them where they are not to be found.
Men demand from themselves their belief and their vir-
tues ; they have the pretension to derive them from them-
selves, and themselves alone. But that cannot be. Men
cannot be, in the great questions of their destiny, the
inventors, the authors of faith, charity, and of their
hopes. These wants are not satisfied at purely human
sources. We must derive them from superhuman sour-
ces. These are the sources which you open to men by
distributing to them the holy books. Therefrom they
may derive faith, charity, and hope. Faith ! for therein
God shows himself constantly present, and acting in the
world and in man ; therein is the action of God ; Vierein
is the necessary starting point of faith. Archimedes de-
manded, but found not, a fulcrum on which to move the
world. Man cannot by himself alone find a base on
which to fix it. He must receive it from God. Charity I
the love of God for men is manifested in the gospel, and
that alone is sufficient source of the love of men for men.
Except therein, all charity is weak, and soon exhausted.
Hope ! there is none which pacifies and satisfies the heart
of men, if it does not extend beyond and rise above this
earth. Eternal hopes can alone purify and ennoble the
terrestrial hopes. Confined to the earth, our hopes trans-
form themselves into avidity and selfishness. Christianity
alone, then, can pacify and satisfy the need of faith,
charity and hope, which so powerfully agitate man and
society. If any one doubt this, let him look at what the
adversaries of Christianity do, let him listen to what they
say. At the same time that they attack it with fury, they
pass themselves off for its heirs and successors, and pre-
tend that they walk in the path it has opened. False-
hood and profanation ! What is most anti-Christian is
the spirit of revolt and the spirit of license. When
the spirit of Christianity appeared in the world there was
a fine opportunity of propagating the spirit of insurrec-
tion. Than at that epoch, when was there ever more
despotism, moral degradation of the upper classes, and
oppression of man by man ? And yet you will not find a
single trace of insurrection in the history of the founda-
tion of Christianity, nor the spirit of insurrection in its
words. This immense revolution was accomplished by
moral action alone—by the moral and interior reforma-
tion of men. That is, because Christianity is essentially
submissive—submissive to God, submissive to established
order. It has the spirit of liberty, and even of conscien-
tious resistance, hut no spirit of rebellion. It is also es-
sentially severe : license is as hateful to it as revolt. it is
madness to attempt to extend liberty and democracy by
means of the relaxation of religious belief and of morals.
Sincere belief and sincere morals are indispensable to de-
mocracy and democratic liberty. The relaxation of
opinions and of morals in a democratic society lesds in-
evitably—first to anarchy, then to despotism. See how
the United States were founded. Do you think it was by
the relaxation of morals? No : the founders of the
American Republic were rigid for themselves and for
others, and it was the spirit of rigidity which formed their
strength and preserved them from the disorders and er-
rors inherent in democracy. Be assured that with the
spirit of revolt nothing will ever be founded : as Christi-
anity has the secret of faith, charity, and hope, it is it,
also, which has the true secrets of order and social rege-
neration in democractic societies more than in any other.
Let the spirit of revolt and license not flatter itself, then,
in being able to usurp the Christian work—there is abso-
lute incompatibility between them. At the same time
that Christianity can alone satisfy the want of faith,
charity, and hope, in any democratic society, it can alone
giyo it the spirit of order, resignation, and mere morality,