The Destiny of Man. 105 



shall inherit the earth." In the cruel strife 

 of centuries has it not often seemed as if 



r 



the earth were to be rather the prize of the 

 hardest heart and the strongest fist ? To 

 many men these words of Christ have been 

 as foolishness and as a stumbling-block, 

 and the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount 

 have been openly derided as too good for 

 this world. In that wonderful picture of 

 modern life which is the greatest work of 

 one of the great seers of our time, Victor , \ 

 Hugo gives a concrete illustration of the r V' 

 working of Christ's methods. In the saint- 

 like career of Bishop Myriel, and in the 

 transformation which his example works in 

 the character of the hardened outlaw Jean 

 Valjean, we have a most powerful com- 

 mentary on the Sermon on the Mount. 

 By some critics who could express their 

 views freely about " Les Miserables " while 

 hesitating to impugn directly the authority 

 of the New Testament, Monseigneur Bien- 

 venu was unsparingly ridiculed as a man of 

 impossible goodness, and as a milksop and 



