men will tell you with a sigh:  “All this does not satisfy; we are but pursuing chimeras.”  Still they continue to run after these chimeras.  They cry Vanity!  Vanity! and they do not cease to pursue vanity.  They flee from themselves:  if they retired within themselves, they would find there ennui, inexorable ennui, which is but the sense of that place which God should fill left void in the depth of the soul.  For the deceived heart, life becomes a bitter comedy.  Those who do not succeed in blinding themselves by the dust of thoughtless folly, end oftentimes by wrapping themselves in disdain as with a cloak; they seek a sad and solitary satisfaction in the greatness of their contempt for life.  But neither does this satisfy:  disdain is not a beverage, and contempt is not food.

Such are the destinies of the heart, to which God is wanting.  But I hope, Gentlemen, that you have here some remonstrances to offer.  I have just spoken of the pleasures of sense, of pride, of vanity, and I have made no allusion to those affections in which the heart manifests its highest qualities.  Shall we forget the joys of pure love? the domestic hearth? friendship? country?  Do not fear that, having given myself up to a fit of misanthropy, I am come hither to blaspheme the true happinesses of life.  But do the affections of earth offer us sufficient guarantees?  We have need of the infinite to answer to the immensity of our desires; in the presence of those we love, have we no need of the Eternal that we may lean our hearts on Him?  Will not all human love become a source of torment, if we have no faith in the love of Him who will stamp holy affections with the seal of His own eternity?

A single question will suffice to enlighten us on this head.  Do you know the feeling of anxiety?  We all know it, though in different degrees.  Epidemical disease may appear.  The cholera has started on its course; it has left the interior of Asia, and is approaching.  The report is current that neighboring cities have begun to feel its ravages.  Those we love—­in a month, in a week, where will they be?  War is declared.  We hear of preparations for death; the sovereigns of Europe apply themselves to calculations which seem to portend torrents of blood.  If war breaks out, that brother, that son, who will have to take up arms, that daughter who will one day perhaps find herself at the mercy of an unbridled soldiery——.  But let us not look for examples so far away.  Have you no dear one in a distant land of whom you are expecting tidings?  And those who are near you!  To-morrow, to-day, now perhaps, while you are listening to me, a fatal malady is discovering its first symptoms——.  Have you received the hard lessons of death?  If you see children playing, full of ruddy and joyous health, does it happen to none of you to think of another child, once the joy of your fireside, now lying beneath the sod?  Does it never happen to you, by a sinister presentiment, to see features you