al decision Jesus Christ _inspires_ the pope to decide, and
the bishops to obey: every thing is an oracle and a miracle in this
clownish system. Reason is decidedly rooted out of theology.

From that time there is very little of a dogmatical character, and
still less of sacred history; an instruction which would be void, if
ancient casuistry did not assist in filling up the vacuum with immoral
subtilties.

The only part of mankind to whom they have addressed themselves for a
long time, namely, women, is the world of sensibility. They do not ask
for science; they wish for impressions rather than ideas. The less
they are busied about ideas the easier it is to keep them ignorant of
outward events, and make them strangers to the progress of time.

When they maintain that holiness consists in sacrificing the mind, the
more material the worship, the more it serves to attain that end; the
more the mind is degraded the holier it becomes. To couple salvation
with the exercise of moral virtues, would be to require the exercise of
reason. But what do they want with virtue? Wear this medal: "_It will
blot out your iniquities_." Reason would still have a share in
religion, if, as reason teaches us, it was necessary for salvation
absolutely to love God. Marie Alacoque has seen that it was sufficient
_not to hate Him_; and those who are devoted to the Sacred Heart are
saved unconditionally.

When the Jesuits were suppressed, they had in their hands no other
religious means than this paganism, and in it they placed all their
hope of coming to life again. They had engravings made, to which they
added the motto, "I will give them the shield of my heart."

The popes, who, at first, were uneasy about the weak point which such a
materialism would offer to the attacks of the philosophers, have found
out in our time that it is very useful to them, being addressed to a
class of people who seldom read the philosophers, and who, though
devout, are nevertheless material. They have therefore preserved the
precious equivocation of the ideal and the carnal heart, and forbidden
any explanation as to whether the words "_Sacred Heart_" designated the
love of God for man, or some bit of bleeding flesh. By reducing the
thing to the idea, the impassioned attraction in which its success
consisted would be taken from it.

Even in the last century, some bishops had gone farther, declaring that
_flesh_ was here the _principal_ object; and the