LACORDAIRE
185
LACTAKTIUS
he retiinied by preference to such as spared him least. His thirst for penances of this description appears the more extraortlinary from the fact that his exceedingly delicate and sensitive temperament rendered them in- supportably painful to him." To Protestants this sounds like the rehearsal of an unreal moral tragedy, a rehearsal which must have done far more to bewilder the minds of those who were guilty of these artificial, cruel, and unmeaning insults to one they loved and revered than to deepen his own love for his Lord. Yet in scenes like these were fostered the roots of his life as a Dominican friar— the spirit less of a modern Catholic thinker than of a mediajval monk. But if his change to a monastic seclusion from the turmoils of Paris life must appear strange to a Protestant reader, greater still will ever be the task to explain how this advocate of liberty of con- science and the impropriety of the interference of the civil power for the punishment of heretics could find it iu his heart to resuscitate an order which has more crimes and cruelties to answer for than even the infa- mous sect of the Assassins — an order whose founder was the very incarnation of persecution. Just here also it may not be out of place to alhule to the uncritical man- ner in which Lacordaire composed a life of St. Dominic — the founder of the Inquisition — entirely ignoring all those historians who have detailed and proved the atro- cious cruelties perpetrated by that saint and his follow- ers (r/fl de Saint hominiqne, Paris, 1840^, 8vo).
In 1840, after a three-years' novitiate in the convent of Querela, Lacordaire took the vo\vs of the order of St. Dominic, and in 1841, with shaved head and clad in the white robe of his order, which had not been seen in France for half a century, he once more ascended the pidpit of Xotre Dame. From this time his voice was frequently heard within the walls of that great cathe- dral of the capital of the French, as well as in many other parts of France. Thus, in 1847, he preached in the cathedral church of Nancy the funeral sermon of general Drouot, by many (e. g. Ste.-Beuve) pronounced a masterpiece of pulpit oratory. In the first election which succeeded the Revolution of 1848 he was chosen one of the representatives of Marseilles, and took part in some of the debates in the Assembly ; but he resigned in the following !May, and withdrew entirely from polit- ical life. In 1849, and again in 1850 and 1851, he re- sumed his courses at Notre Dame. To immense au- diences, such as no orator in France had ever been able to call together before, he delivered in these eventfid years a series of discourses on the communion of man with God, on the fall and the restoration of man, and on the providential economy of the restoration, which, to- gether with earlier discourses, have been collected in three volumes, under the title of Conferemes de Noti-e Dame de Paris (1835-50 ; a selection was published in English dress by Henry Langdon, N. York, 1871, 8vo). His last public discourse at Paris he delivered at St. Roch in February, 1853. To some of his remarks the imperial government took exception ; and Lacordaire, finding himself restricted in that freedom of speech of whieli he had been throughout life a steady and power- ful defender, never again preached in Paris ; but at Toulouse — the birthplace of St. Dominic and the burial- place ofvjt. Aquinas — h* delivered in 1854 six discoiurses on life — the life of the passions, the moral life, tlie super- natural life, and the influence of the supernatural life on the public and private life of man — which his biogra- pher (Montalembert) pronounces " the m(}St eloquent, the most irreproachable of all." Offered the direction of the school and convent of Soreze, he withdrew to that noted retreat of the Dominicans, and there died, Nov. 21, 1861. Besides the v.-orks alluded to — the Confe- rences and Considerations 2>fiilosophiques — Lacordaire wrote a Memoire pour le retahlisseinent en France de Vordre des fr'eres jirecheurs (1840). His correspondence with ]\Iadame Swetchine (by Falloux, 18G4), with :Mont- alembert (1863), and with a young friend (by I'abbe Perreire, 1863), as well as all his other writings, were
pidjlished as (Euvres completes in 1851,1858, and 1861, in 6 vols. 8vo and 12mo. Pie was elected a member of the Academy in 1860 as successor to M. de Tocqueville, upon whom he pronounced a eulogy — the customary in- augural address — which was liis last public address.
Of tlie ability Lacordaire displayed in his works a writer in the Brit, and For. Evang. Rev. (Oct. 1863), p. 726 sq., thus comments: "As a writer, Lacordaire has not the slightest pretensions to compete with Lamen- nais, one of the greatest writers of French prose. His loose, declamatory, theatrical style is in every respect far inferior to the simple, grand, nervous eloquence of Lamennais. ^^'e also venture to atfirm that, in too ■ many of his discourses, instead of explaining the Word of God simply and familiarly to the people, he goes out of his way to attack what he terms the prevailing doubt and scepticism of the age, and attempts to guide his hearers to a positive divine faith by the utter annihila- tion of the natural reason. In many of his discourses, too, he falsifies history for the purpose of making it co- incide with his Romanist prejudices. He absolutely refuses to recognise any good whatever in former sys- tems of reUgion and philosophy. Without the pale of the Romish Church all is evil, within it everything is good. As to human reason, he cannot endure it. ' That which at present ruins everything,' he says, ' that which causes the world to ride insecurely at anchor, is the reason.' 'Our intelligence appears to me like a ship without sails or masts on au unknown sea.' ' Societies are tottering when tlie thinkers take them in hand, aiid the precise moment of their downfall is that wherein they announced to them that the intellect is emanci- pated.' And while human reason is thus summarily condemned, the infallibility of the Church is asserted and defended in the most absolute manner. ' The Cath- olic doctrine.' he says, ' resolves all questions, and takes from them even the cpiality of questions. We have no longer to reason, which is a great blessing, for we are not here to reason, but to act, and to build up in time a work for eternity.' ''