The last incarnation. Gospel legends of the nineteenth century

Front matter

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“ ^ WILL not leave you fatherless,” said the Christ, when about to quit the earth ; il I will come again to you.”

Ye people, who have believed in the words of the Christ, and who still await a consoler, know that the Christ, your Saviour, has never abandoned you. Know that he suffers with you, that he labors with you, that he groans, and that he prays with you.

The Christ is the human form of the divine idea. That form you are all called upon to realize, and to clothe yourselves anew with its royal majesty.

A model has been given to us in the person of Jesus, our brother, the head and the mediator of humanity, in whom God himself lived, willed and acted, so that his person was that of the Man- God.

Now, Jesus, the Man-God, did not accomplish life in all its phases; he went through only the sorrowful periods here below.

Because it was necessary that humanity should first learn how to'suffer, in order to know how to be happy afterwards ,* should know how to obey, in order to learn howto reign. It'was to holy and austere poverty that was intrusted the education of the heirs of God, in order that through privations they might learn the true use of their Father’s riches.

In teaching men to love their neighbor more than themselves, and their soul more than their body, and God more than their soul, the Christ emancipated them from the servitude of the flesh, and he elevated the flesh itself by calling it to share the glory of free souls.

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The Christ did not limit his word to an exclusive form; the spirit of which it contains the germ is universal.

He sowed the seed, and time has ripened the grain.

The word of the Christ, like that of the ancient prophets, has had unintelligent and self-interested interpreters, who have wished to seal it like the stone of his sepulchre.

But the word traverses stones, and cannot be kept captive; it escapes in spite of walls; it passes in spite of gates of iron ; it goes forth in spite of sentinels.

Brothers, the word of the Christ is the word of liberty, of equality, of fraternity.

Of liberty, because he has told us not to fear those who can kill the body, and to preserve before God the independence of our souls.

Of equality, because he has said to us: you have all only one and the same father, one and the same master: he is God, and you are all brothers !

Of fraternity, because he has told the strong to be the pro¬ tectors of the weak, the learned to instruct the ignorant, the rich to provide for the necessities of the poor.

This word presided at first over the construction of the hier¬ archical body of the primitive church; then the priests were fathers chosen by the people ; the bishops were superintendents, who took care of the poor, and who protected the orphans and the widows; and all, from a spirit of conciliation and peace, referred their differences to a single judge chosen from among themselves, and who was therefore called the servant of the servants of God.

Oh! how beautiful was the Church then, in the unity of her head and in the harmony of her members ! How grand was that society of brothers, presided over by its fathers, and administered by its old men !

The unity of object, and the simplicity of means, found a use for the co-operation of each in the work of all; each group of the faithful moved harmoniously around its centre, like the satellites around their planets, which themselves move peacefully around their sun.

For then the interest of the pastors was that of their flocks, and the demon of avarice, which destroyed Judas, had not yet brought

THE LAST INCARNATION.

trouble into the sanctuary; pride had not yet transformed the charges of charity into prerogatives and worldly grandeurs, and the rival passions had not divided the inheritance of the Lord.

But, in order that it might be overcome by good, evil had to be manifested; and the Christian law was as a snare spread for the errors and the irregularities of the flesh.

Human vices, by manifesting themselves in the Church of the Christ, condemned themselves; therefore they were not able to prevail there even for a few moments, but by means of hypocrisy and lying.

When misguided pontiffs surpassed the luxury and the inso¬ lence of kings, the spirit of the Church, which has never ceased to be that of the Christ, groaned in the heart of the saints, and condemned the sacrilegious usurpers, by always reminding the sovereign pontiff that he was the servant of the servants of God.

When the inquisition tortured souls and bodies, to constrain that which God himself respects in man,—liberty of conscience, the spirit of the Christ wept over the victims, and justly excom¬ municated the persecutors, by protesting that the Church has a horror of blood. .

Thus, by their very crimes, the priests have shown more mag¬ nificently and more splendidly how holy is religion !

Now the Church seems to sleep a sleep of death, because the priests have separated themselves from the people, and form a caste apart, imbued with pharisaical traditions and the prejudices of education ; but the Church cannot be separated from humanity. If the priests remain stationary while humanity advances, it is because they wish soon to separate themselves from the religion of the Christ, for the spirit of the Saviour of the people advances with the people.

Those men have grown old, without being able to free their feet from the swaddling bands of their earliest infancy ! They believe in the Gospel, without interrogating its admirable sym¬ bolism, and they admit its marvels literally, as little children give faith to the fantastic stories of the woman who rocks them.

They are the guardians of the doctrine after the manner of the sentinels of kings’ palaces; they defend the entrance, and never go in themselves. The dead letter has remained in their hands,

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as the mortal body of the Christ remained in the arms of his weeping mother, under the lowering and gloomy sky of Calvary ; but the spirit has gone to make war on the powers of darkness, to break the gates of hell, and to deliver the groaning crowd of captive souls.

Everywhere the spirit of the Gospel makes conquests, except in the closed minds and frozen hearts of those who call themselves the depositaries of the Gospel.

The sciences gravitate towards their grand synthesis; unity governs all ideas, and harmony arranges them in a marvellous order ; analogy gives to faith, enlightened by science, the key of all problems ; synthesis brings together all symbols, and proclaims religious unity by the voice of all ages; the truly Catholic idea merely begins to be born, and those old men are there, stopping their ears, closing their eyes, making themselves motionless upon the ruins of the past, like urns upon graves!

Well then, since those who should teach the people have no longer any voice, since the Word has no longer any need of them for interpreters, let us borrow a new gospel legend from the genius of the people, and from their aspirations after humanitary progress !

Let us complete the epopoeia of the Christ by the allegorical recital of his second coming, and let us relate his triumphs to those who have wept so much over his sorrows.