[Translated from the French of D'ALEMBERT,* by Rev. CHARLES FREEMAN, of Limerick, Me.] JOHN BAPTIST MASSILLON was born at Hieres, in Provence, in 1663. His father was a poor citizen of this little city. The obscurity of his birth, which gives so much splendor to his personal merit, should be the first line of his eulogy; and we may say of him as of the illustrious Roman, who • When I had read the eulogy on the Bishop of Clermont, I looked again at the title, and asked, can this D'Alembert be the man who is mentioned sometimes as an infidel philosopher, in connection with Voltaire, Diderot, and Tom Paine? He writes here like a Christian; and how could an infidel present such a picture of a good bishop? Some account then of D'Alembert may be proper in this place. According to the wretched manners of Paris, he was born out of wedlock, and was exposed by his unnatural mother, but owned by his father, and committed to the care of a glazier's wife. It is said that when D'Alembert began to exhibit proofs of extraordinary talent, she sent for him, and acquainted him with the relationship which existed between them; and that his reply was, "You are only my step-mother-the glazier's wife is my mother." Thus does immorality annihilate natural ties and natural affections; and thus does a corrupt religion introduce infidelity, and infidelity immorality. On an income of 1,200 francs, or about 250 dollars, settled on him by his father, D'Alembert devoted himself to literary studies altogether. When he left college, he returned to his foster-mother, the glazier's wife, with whom he lived altogether forty years, and continued his studies. He pursued no profession for a support. His delight was in study. He says that he awoke every morning, thinking with pleasure on the studies of the preceding evening, and on the prospect of continuing them during the day. In 1762, Catharine of Russia requested him to undertake the education of her son, with an income of 100,000 francs. On declining the offer, she wrote again to press him, and says in her letter, I know that your refusal arises from your desire to cultivate your studies and your friendships in quiet. But this is of no consequence: bring all your friends with you, and they shall have every accommodation in my power. D'Alembert was too much attached to his situation and his income of 1501. or about 3,628 francs a year, to accept even this princely offer. D'Alembert died Oct. 29, 1783. Not having received extreme unction, it was with great difficulty that a priest would be found to inter him, and then only on condition that the funeral should be private. The character of D'Alembert was one of great simplicity, carried even to bluntness of speech, and of unusual benevolence, mixed with a keen sense of the ridiculous, which exerted itself openly and without scruple upon those who attempted the common species of flattery. It was his maxim that no man ought to spend money in superfluities while others were in want; and a friend, who knew him well, declared to the editor of his works, that when his income amounted to 8,200 francs, he gave away the half. His attentions to his foster-mother, to the end of her life, were those of a son. D'Alembert has been held up to reprobation on account of his religious opinions. But on this point it should be observed, that there is a wide line of distinction between him and some of his colleagues in the Encyclopedia, such as Diderot and Voltaire. The published writings of D'Alembert contain no expres sions offensive to religion: they have never been forbidden on that account, as La Barpe observes, in any country of Europe. Had it not been for his private correspondence with Voltaire and others, which was published after his death, the world would not have known, except by implication, what the opinions of D'Alembert were. This account of D'Alembert is taken from the Penny Cyclopedia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, London. It is not intended to palliate here the guilt of Massillon in upholding the Roman Catholic Religion, or of D'Alembert in giving even his silent countenance to infidelity. Their virtues may only make apparent and more dark their crime. When Lavalette, the Postmaster-general of France, betrayed the cause of Louis 18th to Napoleon, his general excellence of character was thought to have made his example more pernicious and his punishment more necessary. While I record the doubt of D'Alembert that there was a God; I must avow my feeling, that even to doubt the existence of Jehovah is monstrous impiety and absurdity. The influence of such infidelity, even in an amiable and moral man, is disastrous on a community. We need not deny to infidels all the common virtues of mankind. Though they should be temperate, diligent, benevolent, sincere, and regardful of the common decencies of society, 2 VOL. XV. owed nothing to his ancestors, Videtur ex se natus, He seems to be born of himself. But his humble origin honors not only himself, it honors still more the enlightened government, which, in going to seek him in the midst of the people, to place him at the head of one of the greatest dioceses of the kingdom, braved the very common prejudice of our day, that Providence has not destined to high places the genius which it has made to spring up in the lowest ranks. If the distributors of ecclesiastical dignities had not had the wisdom, or the courage, or the happiness to forget sometimes this maxim of human vanity, the clergy of France had been deprived of the glory, with which it is now so greatly honored, of reckoning the eloquent Massillon among her bishops. When he had finished his classical studies, he entered the Oratoire at the age of seventeen years. Resolved to consecrate his labors to the church, he preferred to the indissoluble bonds which he might take in one of the religious orders so strangely multiplied among us, the free engagements which are contracted in a Congregation, to which the great Bossuet gave this rare eulogium-that there every one obeys while no one commands. Massillon preserved, even to the close of his life, the most tender and sacred remembrance of the lessons which he had received and of the principles which he had imbibed in this truly respectable Society, which, without intrigue, without ambition, loving and cultivating letters with the sole desire of being useful, has acquired a distinguished name in the sacred and profane sciences; which, sometimes persecuted, and at all times little favored by those whose support it might expect, has done, in spite of this fatal obstacle, all the good it was permitted to do, and has never injured any one, even its enemies; and which, finally, has known at all times that which makes it most dear to wise men, how to practise religion without littleness, and to preach it without fanaticism. Massillon's superiors soon perceived by his first essays, the honor he would secure to their congregation. They destined him to the pulpit ; but it was only in submission, that he consented to comply with their wishes, for he alone was blind to the celebrity which awaited him, and which was to reward his submission and modesty. There are some minds, full of confidence, which recognize, as by instinct, the object to which nature has destined them, and who grasp it with vigor. There are also modest and timid minds, which need to be informed of their power, and which, by this unaffected ignorance of themselves, are only the more interesting, the more worthy of being drawn from their modest obscurity, to be presented to fame, and to be shown the glory that awaits them. The young Massillon did at first every thing he could to avoid this glory. Already he had pronounced, from pure submission, while yet in the province, the funeral orations of M. de Villeroy, Archbishop of Lyons, and of M. Villars, Archbishop of Vienne. These two discourses, which were in truth but the first attempts of a young man, yet of a young man, who announced already what he would become in time, had the most brilliant success. The modest preacher, terrified at his growing reputation, and fearing, as he said, the Demon of pride, resolved to escape from it forever, by devoting yet if they do not give their countenance to Christianity, but express doubts of the existence of the God of the Bible, they overthrow the foundations of good order, and open the flood gates of immorality. Confusion and every evil work may be expected to follow the prevailing influence of such men in a community. Nor can the goodness of a Massillon, or the piety of a Fenelon, prevent that religion, which they uphold, from occasioning immense evil. The Roman Catholic Religion may raise a people somewhat above the ignorance, and immorality of heathenism; but then it most powerfully restrains them from rising highes than a certain low level of true knowledge and virtue. TR. himself to a retirement the most profound, and even the most austere. He went to bury himself in the abbey of Sept Fonts, where the same rules were followed as at la Trappe, and there he took the habit. During his noviciate, the cardinal de Noailles addressed to the Abbe of Sept Fonts, whose virtue he respected, a mandate which he was to publish. The Abbe, more religious than eloquent, but still preserving, at least for his community, some remains of self-love, wished to make to the prelate a reply worthy of the mandate which he had received. He imposed this service on the expreacher novice, and Massillon served him with equal promptness and success. The cardinal, astonished at receiving from this Thebaid a communication so well written, did not fear to wound the vanity of the pious Abbe of Sept Fonts by asking him who was its author. The Abbe named Massillon; and the prelate replied that so great a genius must not, according to the expression of the Scripture, remain hid under a bushel. He required that they should make the young novice abandon the habit, and resume that of the Oratoire, and he placed him in the seminary of Saint-Magloire, in Paris, exhorting him to cultivate the eloquence of the pulpit, charging himself, he said, with his fortune, which the desires of the young orator limited to that of the Apostles, namely, the strictest necessaries, and the most exemplary simplicity. His first sermons produced the effect which his superiors and cardinal Noailles had foreseen. Scarcely had he begun to show himself in the churches of Paris, before he eclipsed all those, who then were distinguished as preachers. He had declared that he would not preach like them, not in a presumptuous opinion of his superiority, but from a just and well considered view which he had taken of Christian eloquence. He was persuaded that if the minister of the divine Word degrades himself by announcing in a trifling manner common truths, he also fails of his object in thinking to subdue, by profound reasonings, hearers, who, for the most part, cannot follow him; and if all his hearers have not knowledge, all have affections which the preacher may move; that in the pulpit we must show man to himself, less to disgust him by the hideousness of the portrait than to afflict him by its resemblance; and finally, if it is sometimes useful to trouble and terrify, it it still more useful to cause to flow the kindly tears, which are much more efficacious than those of despair. Such was the plan which Massillon proposed to himself; and he fulfilled it as he had conceived it, that is to say, in a superior manner. He excelled in that quality of the orator, which has the precedence of all others,— in that eloquence which directly reaches the soul, which agitates but does not confound, which alarms but does not overwhelm, and which penetrates, but does not rend. He sought in the recesses of the heart, those close folds, in which the passions are enveloped, those secret sophisms, which the passions employ so skilfully to blind and seduce us. To combat and confute these sophisms, it was almost sufficient for him to develop them, but he exposed them with a spirit so affectionate and tender, that he allured rather than subdued; and in presenting to us even the picture of our vices, he would still retain and please us. His diction, always easy, elegant and pure, is always of that noble simplicity, without which there is neither good taste, nor true eloquence; a simplicity which, being united in Massillon with a harmony the most sweet and fascinating, acquired still new graces. That which gave a finish to the charms of this enchanting style, was that these many beauties seemed to flow freely from their sources, and to have cost the author no effort. There sometimes escaped him, either in his phrases, or sentences, or in the touching melody of his style, some negli |