XXXVl BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



council chamber of •" liberalism," and there vindicated liis Saviour 

 and ours as l)eing- the Peacemaker of the world. 



Those who read this marvellous speech in the subsequent pages 

 of this volume, will iind reason enough why infidelity might have 

 been enraged to listen to it ; and reason enough why the " per- 

 sonal government" of the Cesar of France might have burned to 

 avenge itself upon the preacher ; but they will look, and wonder, 

 and look again, to see wiiat scruple the friends of the gospel and 

 the church, even taking this latter word in its narrowest sense 

 of an external corporation, could have had at this vindication of 

 Christ among unbelievers. And yet the government listened to 

 this fatal invective* with patient, thougli profound dissatisfaction. 

 Infidelity had nothing but admiration for the brave priest who 

 liad attacked it to its face. Those who denounced him were the 

 representatives of the religion which he had defended, and of the 

 Christ whom lie had vindicated. Strangely enough, the passage 

 of the speech on which they flistened their accusations was that 

 eulogy on the word of God as the true source of genuine light 

 and civilization, in which the preacher declares that those three 

 communions only which derive their principles from that word — 

 Judaism, Protestantism, Catholicism — are able to bear the day- 

 Hght of modern civilization. For this the party of absolutism 

 gnashed upon him with their teeth, declaring that he had "cruci- 

 fied the Catholic Church between two thieves." Under the pres- 

 sure of a chorus of indignant complaints, open and secret, the 

 support of the Carmelite General, which hitherto had never failed 

 Father Hyacinthe, at last gave way. A sharp rebuke was ad- 

 ministered to him, condemning his course as a preacher, and re- 

 (piiring him thenceforth to refrain from addressing secular asscm- 

 lilics, and, in tlie puljiit, to restrict himself to tlie point.s on which 

 all Catholics wore agreed. 



After all, the fault was not so much in anylhiiig he had said at 

 Ihis time, as in what he was, and tiiat his time had come. Those 



* The H])cecli Ijcforc tho Peace Lcai^ne was pronounced cons^iderably before 

 that meeting of tlie French Lof,'it^latllre in which the attack npon "personal 

 poverumeiit" was renewed in llie hitter inferpelhitionHi of the liberals. 



