XXXVl BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 



council chamber of-" lil)ci-alisni," and llicre vindicated liis Saviour 

 and ours as being the Peacemaker of the world. 



Those who read this marvellous speech in tlie subsequent pages 

 of this volume, will ilnd reason enough v.diy inlidelit}' 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 what 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* witli patient, thougli profound dissatisfaction. 

 Inlidelity 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 listened 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- 

 light 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- 

 ([uiring him thenceforth to refrain from addressing secular assen\- 

 blics, and, in tlie pulpit, to restrict himself to the point.s on which 

 all Catholics were agreed. 



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

 this time, as in what he was, and that his time had come. Those 



* The Hpccch before the Peace Leai,'ae was ])ronoiincc(l consulorably belbro 

 that meeting of the French Lo<,'itrhitiire in which the attack npon "jiersonal 

 f^'overument" was roncwcd in the bitlcr interpclluticjiH of Ihe lib. Tula. 



