Letters to Young Men

Paris, May n, 1824.

MY DEAR FRIEND, — All that I have to tell you might be said in very few words, and yet my heart tells me that I must write at some length. I am giving up the bar: we shall never meet there again. Our dreams of the last five years will never be realized. I am going to enter the seminary of St-Sulpice to-morrow morning. Only yesterday my mind was full of worldly fancies, although religion had already some share in my thoughts, while glory was still my daydream. To-day my hopes are set higher, and I covet nothing here below save obscurity and peace. I am very much changed, and I assure you I cannot say how this has come about. When I look at the working of my mind during the last five years, at my starting-point, at the phases through which my mind has passed, and at the final result of this long and difficult journey, I am myself astounded, and feel impelled to adore the hand of God. All this, dear friend, is realized thoroughly by him alone who has passed through error to truth, who has the course of his previous ideas clearly marked in his mind, who sees the connection between them, as well as the strangeness of their combinations and their gradual development, and who compares them one with another at the different stages of his conviction. It is a moment truly sublime when the last ray of light breaks in upon the soul, and marshals into a single group all the truths which lie there scattered and disconnected. So vast is the difference between the moment which follows and the moment which precedes it, between what we were before and what we thereupon become, that the word grace has been invented to convey the idea of this magic stroke, of this flash from on high. One may picture a man groping his way blindfold: the bandage is gradually withdrawn; he has a glimmering of the daylight, and the very moment the handkerchief falls, he stands face to face with the broad sunlight.