Xll PREFATORY LETTER. 



(luctioiis to the iiulnlgeiice of your readers. French- 

 man and Catholic as I am, I present them, through 

 your hands, to that great American republic of which 

 you are a citizen, to those numerous and flourishing 

 Protestant churches of which you are a minister. 



I am proud of my France, but I deem it one of its 

 most solid glories to have contributed to the independ- 

 ence of this noble country, which it has never ceased to 

 love, and which it shall some day learn to imitate; — a 

 people with which liberty is something else than a 

 barren theory or a bloody practice; with which the 

 cause of labor is never confounded with that of revolu- 

 tion, and never divorced from that of religion ; and 

 which, rearing under all forms and denominations its 

 houses of prayer amid its houses of commerce îind 

 finance, crowns its noisy and productive week with the 

 sweetness and majesty of its Lord's Day. " x\nd on the 

 seventh day it ends the work which it has made, and 

 rests the seventh day from all its work which it has 

 made.''* 



I remain faithful to my Church ; and if I have lifted 

 up my protest against the excesses which dishonor it 

 and seem bent upon its ruin, you may measure the in- 

 tensity of my love for it by the Ijitierness of my lamen- 

 latiDii. Whi'U lie wlio is in all (hiugs our blaster and 

 our K\'ami)le armed himself with the scourge against 

 the profaners of the Temple, his discii)les remembered 

 that it was written, " The zeal of Ihy house hath eaten 



* Gencsiti, ii. 2. 



