says my author, 'that there are devout persons to be met with, pale and melancholy in their temperament, fond of silence and retirement, with phlegm instead of blood in their veins, and with faces of clay; but there are many others of a happier complexion, and who possess that sweet and warm humour, that genial and rectified blood, which is the true stuff that joy is made of.' "You see," resumed the monk, "that the love of silence and retirement is not common to all devout people; and that, as I was saying, this is the effect rather of their complexion than their piety.Those austere manners to which you refer are, in fact, properly the character of a savage and barbarian, and, accordingly, you will find them ranked by Father Le Moine among the ridiculous and brutal manners of a moping idiot.The following is the description he has drawn of one of these in the seventh book of his Moral Pictures.'He has no eyes for the beauties of art or nature.
Were he to indulge in anything that gave him pleasure, he would consider himself oppressed with a grievous load.On festival days, he retires to hold fellowship with the dead.He delights in a grotto rather than a palace, and prefers the stump of a tree to a throne.As to injuries and affronts, he is as insensible to them as if he had the eyes and ears of a statue.
Honour and glory are idols with whom he has no acquaintance, and to whom he has no incense to offer.To him a beautiful woman is no better than a spectre; and those imperial and commanding looks- those charming tyrants who hold so many slaves in willing and chainless servitude- have no more influence over his optics than the sun over those of owls,' &c." "Reverend sir," said I, "had you not told me that Father Le Moine was the author of that description, I declare I would have guessed it to be the production of some profane fellow who had drawn it expressly with the view of turning the saints into ridicule.For if that is not the picture of a man entirely denied to those feelings which the Gospel obliges us to renounce, I confess that I know nothing of the matter." "You may now perceive, then, the extent of your ignorance," he replied; "for these are the features of a feeble, uncultivated mind, 'destitute of those virtuous and natural affections which it ought to possess,' as Father Le Moine says at the close of that description.Such is his way of teaching 'Christian virtue and philosophy,'
as he announces in his advertisement; and, in truth, it cannot be denied that this method of treating devotion is much more agreeable to the taste of the world than the old way in which they went to work before our times.""There can be no comparison between them," was my reply, "and I now begin to hope that you will be as good as your word." "You will see that better by-and-by," returned the monk."Hitherto I have only spoken of piety in general, but, just to show you more in detail how our fathers have disencumbered it of its toils and troubles, would it not be most consoling to the ambitious to learn that they may maintain genuine devotion along with an inordinate love of greatness?" "What, father! even though they should run to the utmost excess of ambition?" "Yes," he replied; "for this would be only a venial sin, unless they sought after greatness in order to offend God and injure the State more effectually.Now venial sins do not preclude a man from being devout, as the greatest saints are not exempt from them.'Ambition,'
says Escobar, 'which consists in an inordinate appetite for place and power, is of itself a venial sin; but when such dignities are coveted for the purpose of hurting the commonwealth, or having more opportunity to offend God, these adventitious circumstances render it mortal.'" "Very savoury doctrine, indeed, father." "And is it not still more savoury," continued the monk, "for misers to be told, by the same authority, 'that the rich are not guilty of mortal sin by refusing to give alms out of their superfluity to the poor in the hour of their greatest need?- scio in gravi pauperum necessitate divites non dando superflua, non peccare mortaliter.'" "Why truly," said I, "if that be the case, I give up all pretension to skill in the science of sins." "To make you still more sensible of this," returned he, "you have been accustomed to think, I suppose, that a good opinion of one's self, and a complacency in one's own works, is a most dangerous sin? Now, will you not be surprised if I can show you that such a good opinion, even though there should be no foundation for it, is so far from being a sin that it is, on the contrary, the gift of God?" "Is it possible, father?" "That it is," said the monk; "and our good Father Garasse shows it in his French work, entitled Summary of the Capital Truths of Religion:
