RELIGION IN THE LIFE OF NATIONS. ÔO 



one. Oiiee \ct tliiii liviiii^ tniditioii Ix' interrupted, and 

 it is no lono^or the same people. It loses its identity. 

 This people has ii common conscience in the present, a 

 common stock of beliefs, aifections, interests, morals: 

 and it is in the profound consciousness of this collective 

 life that it declares its unity to itself, before declaring it 

 to its rivaL^'. 



Xow, in this national soul, 1 do not hesitate to say, 

 the lar<^est and best place belongs to religion. It is the 

 essential law of the soul that it is constituted, in its na- 

 ture and its proper life, by virtue of its relation -with 

 God. So that the materialists show their good sense 

 when, in order to make an end of God, they seek, in the 

 first place, to make away with the soul, both in the in- 

 dividual and in society. The soul of a people is, above 

 all, its religion : it is this national worship of ours which 

 (as some one so well expresses it) has held us in its 

 embrace for twelve centuries, which has inspired our 

 arts, our arms, our whole history, and which can be re- 

 nounced only by renouncing with it the soul of the 

 count rv. 



[II. It is mainly by lucts tliat we must convince an n^c which 

 is all the time appealini? from theory to facts. Father Hyacinthe 

 seeks, tlierefore, in ancient and in contemporary history, the ex- 

 perimental proof of the alliance of the religious sentiment with 

 the national sentiment. With this in view, he questions the his- 

 tory, successively, of the times before Christ, of the times after 

 Christ, and finally of this present and doubtful hour of which 

 the poet speaks — 



" By what name shall we call thee, troubled hour 

 On which our fate is cast ?"* 



* " De quel nom te nommer, heure trouble où nous sommes ?" 



Victor Ilcao.l 



