were obliged to work. Down to the middle of the nineteenth century the
orthodoxy of Bossuet, stiffly opposing the letter of Scripture to
every step in the advance of science, had only yielded in a very slight
degree. But then came an event ushering in a new epoch. At that time
Jules Simon, afterward so eminent as an author, academician, and
statesman, was quietly discharging the duties of a professorship, when
there was brought him the visiting card of a stranger bearing the
name of "Ernest Renan, Student at St. Sulpice." Admitted to M. Simon's
library, Renan told his story. As a theological student he had devoted
himself most earnestly, even before he entered the seminary, to the
study of Hebrew and the Semitic languages, and he was now obliged,
during the lectures on biblical literature at St. Sulpice, to hear the
reverend professor make frequent comments, based on the Vulgate, but
absolutely disproved by Renan's own knowledge of Hebrew. On Renan's
questioning any interpretation of the lecturer, the latter was wont
to rejoin: "Monsieur, do you presume to deny the authority of the
Vulgate--the translation by St. Jerome, sanctioned by the Holy Ghost and
the Church? You will at once go into the chapel and say 'Hail Mary' for
an hour before the image of the Blessed Virgin."

"But," said Renan to Jules Simon, "this has now become very serious; it
happens nearly every day, and, MON DIEU! Monsieur, I can not spend ALL
my time in saying, Hail Mary, before the statue of the Virgin." The
result was a warm personal attachment between Simon and Renan; both were
Bretons, educated in the midst of the most orthodox influences, and both
had unwillingly broken away from them.

Renan was now emancipated, and pursued his studies with such effect that
he was made professor at the College de France. His Life of Jesus, and
other books showing the same spirit, brought a tempest upon him which
drove him from his professorship and brought great hardships upon him
for many years. But his genius carried the day, and, to the honour of
the French Republic, he was restored to the position from which the
Empire had driven him. From his pen finally appeared the Histoire du
Peuple Israel, in which scholarship broad, though at times inaccurate in
minor details, was supplemented by an exquisite acuteness and a poetic
insight which far more than made good any of those lesser errors which a
German student would have avoided. At his death, in October, 189