be that has guided them to such precipices ; my fervent prayer is that he would fill their hearts with that love of himself from which they have dared to give man a dispensation." What he uttered on his death-bed was the real motive which prompted him in all his contro- versies : " As one about to give an account of all his actions, I declare that all my conscience gives me no trouble on the score of my "Provincial Letters;' in the composition of that work I was influenced by no bad motive, but solely by regard to the glory of God and the vindication of truth, and not in the least by any passion or personal feeling against the Jesuits." Yet we do not wonder that the Jesuits charge Pascal with malice. For these letters were the handwriting on the wall against them, and the people interpreted it, " Thou art weighed in the balance, and art found wanting.'' All the efforts made to suppress the letters, which had been speedily translated into the Latin, the Spanish, and the Italian languages, and had been widely spread among all the nations of Europe, served only to pro- mote their popularity. Though they were censured at Rome, and burned by the hangman at Paris, yet they circulated freely everywhere, and their principles ac- quired much credit and authority among the people, and took deep root in their minds. The Society of Je- sus itself felt the attacks beyond any one's calculation. From the moment of the publication of the " Provincial Letters" the order degenerated, the necessary conse- quence of a full discovery of its principles. It hastened to its dissolution ; and if the " Provincial Letters" Avere not the means of the extinction of the Jesuitical broth- erhood, they certainly accelerated its doom. Of course it was some time before public opinion was thoroughly aroused and the Jesuits were brought low. But the final blow came at last. In 1759 they were expelled from Portugal, in 1764 from France, in 1767 from Spain, and on July 21, 1773, they were suppressed by the papal bull. See Jesuits. If we judge of eloquence b)'- such effects, then the "Provincial Letters" were truly elo- quent. Ironical and vehement by turns, Pascal climbed to the very climax of eloquence. Sometimes he reminds us of the satire of the Dialogues of Plato; sometimes of the Philippics of Demosthenes and Cicero. Voltaire calls him the first French satirist, and says: "The first comedies of Moliere have not more salt than the first Lettres Provinciales ; Bossuet has nothing more sublime than the last" {Siecle de Louis XI V, ch. xxxvii). " Pas- cal," says Hallam, " by his ' Provincial Letters,' did more to ruin the name of Jesuit tlian all the controver- sies of Protestantism, or all the fulminations of the Par- liament of Paris. . . . He has accumulated so long a list of scandalous decisions, and dwelt upon them with so much wit and spirit, and yet with so serious a severity, that the order of Loyola became a byword with man- kind."
The " Provincial Letters" were, however, only a pas- time with Pascal. His great and favorite labors were of weightier matters. He desired purity in Christen<lom, and his heart longed for the strengthening of Christ's kingdom in the earth. In silence he prepared the mate- rials for a great work, which death prevented him from accomplishing. Yet the scattered fragments Avhich re- main are sufficient to insure for their author the admi- ration of posteritj-. Persuaded that there was need of a work on the evidences of the Christian religion, he aimed in his Pensees to show the necessity of a divine revelation, and to prove the truth, reality, and advan- tage of the Christian religion. He proposed to demon- strate the evangelical system by the Cartesian method. He undertook to establish the religion of prophecy and of miracle by the most severe logical induction. He sum- moned reason to lead the way to those elevated regions of thought in which she must resign her charge to the guidance of faith and adoration. From a review of the relations and analogies between the nature of man and the revelation of God was to be wrought out a chain of internal evidences linking indissolubly together those
PASCAL
PASCAL
primary verities which our consciousness attests and those ultimate verities -winch Christianity discloses. Des Cartes liad demonstrated the existence of God. Pascal wished to go much fartiier than his master, and taking by the hand a doubtinjj, indifferent reader, to seat him, docile and faithful, at the feet of relicjion. A pupil of Montaigne, tilled with his spirit and his style, and the heir of St. Cyran, whose gloomy doctrine liad been transmitted to him by Singlin and Sacy, he com- bined these two influences in the most remarkable man- ner. By a bold manoeuvre he attempted to turn the scepticism of the first master against rational meta- physics to the advantage of the faith of the second. For him, then, there is neither reason, justice, truth, nor natural law. Human nature is deeply corrupted by its original fall. Grace is the only resource, faith the only refuge for reason convinced of its own impotence. Small and incomplete as is the work, it is a mine of profound thought and evangelical piety which deserves to be explorad. The ideas and sentiments, though partially evolved and imperfectly developed, display an intellect of surprising energy and expansion, a richness and novel- ty of illustration, a depth and pregnancy truly admirable — all expressed in a style terse and simple, and abounding with examples of that serene eloquence which becomes the philosopher and the Christian. Of course the un- qualified approbation of the Protestant is not expected for these Peitsees. There are sentiments foreign and repugnant to the Protestant, arising from that system of faith in which Pascal was educated, and which, not- withstanding his high regard for Scripture authority, exerted an influence over him — sentiments on the sub- ject of miracles, the character of the Church and some of its ceremonies, auricular confession, and the benefit of that extravagant austerity and voluntary suffering of which he was so painful an example at the close of his life. Neither can the Protestant be perfectly satis- fied with the very dark view of human life which he presents. Addison has wisely pointed out our way of escape from Pascal's extreme in the one direction and the world's escape in the opposite extreme, when he says : " To consider the world as a dungeon, and the whole human race as so many criminals doomed to exe- cution, is an idea of an enthusiast; to suppose the world to be a seat of delight, where we are to expect nothing but pleasure, is the dream of a Sybarite." Waiving all these blemishes, in the Protestant's view, the thoughts even in their unfinished state must be recognised as con- stituting the most effectual perhaps of all the succors by which uninspired man has relieved the human mind from the heavy burden of religious scepticism. Dr. Vinet, in his work. Studies on Pascal (referred to be- low), thus comments on Pascal's ability as a Christian apologist :