XXXll BIOGRAnilCAL SKETCH. 



friar, and make a proposition to him from which ahnost any man 

 miglit have been excused for slirinking -with misgivings as to his 

 capacity. It was that lie shouki revive tlie Advent " Conferences 

 of Notre Dame." 



Tliis word " Conferences," in this sense, is a new word in tlie 

 vocabulary of the Roman Catholic Church. When the great 

 Dominican, Lacordaire, in the last generation, felt called of God 

 to vindicate for the Christian religion its right to a place in the 

 France of the nineteenth century, he proposed to reach the ear 

 of the French public, not by means of sermons, which they were 

 habitually indisposed to attend upon, but by "Talks" — "Lec- 

 tures," as we (using a word which in English has dropped its 

 original meaning) would have called them. Associated with 

 Lacordaire, the word Conference grew in the French language to 

 be a synonym for manly, liberal, and Christian eloquence ; and 

 when, after the coup d'etat, the congenial forces of political and 

 ecclesiastical absolutism combined to shut his mouth and drive 

 him to the fierce austerities of his monastic seclusion, there were 

 still meetings and discourses at Notre Dame, but the Conferences 

 were no more. The Lenten Conferences were maintained in 

 form, but the Advent Conferences had been entirely suspended, 

 waiting for another Lacordaire. Tlie Archbishop proposed now 

 to Father Hyacinthe that he should revive the Advent Confer- 

 ences of Notre Dame, and the proposition was accepted. From 

 that day to this, the preaching of these annual Lectures has been 

 the chief function of the great preacher ; and the naming of the 

 subjects of them is the chief record of his life. 



In the very first course, beginning December, 1864, the preaclicr 

 opened his attack, fiiii- and square, against the atheism of French 

 society and of much of modern science and philosopln\ with six 

 Lectures on A Perwn/d God. 



In close sequence with this, tlie next winter, he undertook to 

 exhibit the foundations of morality and of the autliority of con- 

 science, as resting upon God. This discussion was not only in 

 consecutive relation witli the preceding, but it was most oppor- 

 tune to th(^ course of i)ublic tliouglit when it was uttered. A 



