Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/268

Rh the protest itself, and directed the mind to its highest object. Whilst he, like the great Pascal, asserted the power of the conscience to recognize the highest truth, and, in consequence thereof, the human right of self-decision in those questions which most nearly concern its eternal weal or woe, he placed before his hearers the relationship of Christianity to the human soul and life, with the inspiration of an evangelical genius.

His glorious work, “De la Manifestation des Convictions Religieuses,” became, to the general reader, the result of his earliest position. It received the prize from Guizot, in the name of the French Academy. I do not know any thing more beautiful or more elevating than the first chapter of this book, or any thing more deeply affecting than its last pages.

The result of Vinet's second and highest position; the relationship of Christianity to the human heart and life was read in his Discours Evangeliques; which are still read with rapture in the educated circles of Christendom, in all the larger cities from Paris to Petersburg. New Discours Evangeliques poured forth afresh, as from an ever-welling fountain, presented in ever-new pictures the word of Christian revelation, to the inquiring, truth-seeking, suffering, combating, human being. But Christianity was to Vinet, above all things, Christ, the living Saviour. He laid humanity anew upon the Saviour's breast. He himself reposed there, like another St. John, and derived thence his inspiration. In character and disposition, Vinet resembled the Master's most beloved disciple.

Vinet, by his assertion of the right of conscience,