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couraging spectacles afforded by triumphant vice, was a fallen and 

 punished angel, who, remembering his origin, and foreseeing his 

 recompense, accomplished his task and obeyed his noble mission. 

 The sublime acts of resignation, of which Christianity has afforded 

 most touching examples, then appeared in all their glory. He 

 placed the martyrs on their funereal pires, or at the glowing stake 

 of ardent flames, and almost despoiled them of their merit in 

 stripping them of their sufferings. He showed the internal angel in 

 the heavens, whilst his outward covering or external man was in the 

 blood-thirsty pincers of the executioners. He painted, he made 

 known by celestial signs, by privileged beauties, angels among 

 men, as if he himself existed in a sphere above them. He went 

 then to tear from the inmost recesses, from the very entrails 

 of the understanding, the veritable sense of the word fall which is 

 to be found in every language. He seized upon the most futile 

 traditions, in order to demonstrate the truth of our origin, and ex- 

 plained with incredible lucidity the passion that all men have to 

 mount, to raise themselves above others; instinctive ambition, per- 

 petual revelation of our destiny. He embraced, and led those who 

 heard him to do the same, at one glance the entire universe, and de- 

 scribed the substance of God himself, ever flowinglike an immense flood 

 scarcely contained within its banks from the centre to the extremi- 

 ties, and from the extremities towards the centre. Nature was one, 

 and compact. In the work to all appearance the most insignificant, 

 as in the most vast, all obeyed this law. All created matter pre- 

 sented, in miniature, an exact image of it, be it in the sap of the 

 plant, be it in the blood of man, or in the course of the stars. He 

 heaped proof upon proof, and embodied his ideas always by pictures 

 full of harmony, melodious by their poesy. He advanced boldly to 

 confront objections. Thus he crushed, as it were, under the moral 

 weight of an eloquent interrogation the monuments of our sciences 

 and all the human superfetations for which society seizes upon the 

 elements of the terrestrial world. He demanded whether our wars, 

 our misfortunes, our depravations, presented the great movement 

 impressed by God on all worlds. Arid then he turned into ridicule 

 the impotence of man. He showed us our noblest efforts every where 

 effaced. He invoked the manes of Tyre, of Carthage, and of Baby- 

 lon; he summoned Babel and Jerusalem to appear; and he sought 

 for, without finding them, the ephemeral traces of the human 

 plough. Humanity was floating over the world like a vessel whose 

 track disappears under the peaceable bosom of the ocean. Such 

 were the fundamental notions of the discourse pronounced by the 

 doctor Sigier: ideas which he enveloped in the mystical language 

 and barbarous Latin in use at that period. The Scriptures, of which 

 he had made a particular study, furnished him with the weapons r 

 armed with which he appeared to his age, in order to urge on its 

 inarch. He covered his hardihood, as with a mantle, by his great 

 knowledge, and his philosophy under the sanctity of his manners. 

 At this instant, after having set his audience face to face with God, 

 after having compressed the world in an idea, and almost unveiled 

 the idea of the world, he contemplated the silent, palpitating: assem- 



