,
what is most humiliating and most cruel in the death of the Savior of
the world! Then tell me if this is not precisely what we now see,
of what we are every day called to be witnesses. Let us resume; and
follow me.

Betrayed and abandoned by cowardly disciples; such, O divine Savior,
has been Thy destiny. But it was not enough that the apostles, the
first men whom Thou didst choose for Thine own, in violation of the
most holy engagement, should have forsaken Thee in the last scene of
Thy life; that one of them should have sold Thee, another renounced
Thee, and all disgraced themselves by a flight which was, perhaps, the
most sensible of all the wounds that Thou didst feel in dying. This
wound must be again opened by a thousand acts of infidelity yet more
scandalous. Even in the Christian ages we must see men bearing the
character of Thy disciples, and not having the resolution to sustain
it; Christians, prevaricators, and deserters from their faith;
Christians ashamed of declaring themselves for Thee, not daring to
appear what they are, renouncing at least in the exterior what they
have profest, flying when they ought to fight; in a word, Christians
in form, ready to follow Thee even to the Supper when in prosperity,
and while it required no sacrifice, but resolved to abandon Thee in
the moment of temptation. It is on your account, and my own, my dear
hearers, that I speak, and behold what ought to be the subject of our
sorrow.

A Savior mortally persecuted by pontiffs and hypocritical priests!
Let us not enter, Christians, into the discussion of this article, at
which your piety would, perhaps, be offended, and which would weaken
or prejudice the respect which you owe to the ministers of the Lord.
It belongs to us, my brethren, to meditate to-day on this fact in the
spirit of holy compunction; to us consecrated to the ministry of the
altars, to us priests of Jesus Christ, whom God has chosen in His
Church to be the dispensers of His sacraments. It does not become me
to remonstrate in this place. God forbid that I should undertake to
judge those who sustain the sacred office! This is not the duty of
humility to which my condition calls me. Above all, speaking as I do,
before many ministers, the irreprehensible life of whom contributes so
much to the edification of the people, I am not yet so infatuated as
to make myself the judge, much less the censor of their conduct.

But tho it should induce you only to acknowl