Here is Christianity with its marvellous parable of the Prodigal Son to
teach us indulgence and pardon. Jesus was full of love for souls wounded
by the passions of men; he loved to bind up their wounds and to find in
those very wounds the balm which should heal them. Thus he said to the
Magdalen: "Much shall be forgiven thee because thou hast loved much," a
sublimity of pardon which can only have called forth a sublime faith.
Why do we make ourselves more strict than Christ? Why, holding
obstinately to the opinions of the world, which hardens itself in
order that it may be thought strong, do we reject, as it rejects, souls
bleeding at wounds by which, like a sick man's bad blood, the evil of
their past may be healed, if only a friendly hand is stretched out to
lave them and set them in the convalescence of the heart?
It is to my own generation that I speak, to those for whom the theories
of M. de Voltaire happily exist no longer, to those who, like myself,
realize that humanity, for these last fifteen years, has been in one of
its most audacious moments of expansion. The science of good and evil
is acquired forever; faith is refashioned, respect for sacred things has
returned to us, and if the world has not all at once become good, it has
at least become better. The efforts of every intelligent man tend in
the same direction, and every strong will is harnessed to the same
principle: Be good, be young, be true! Evil is nothing but vanity, let
us have the pride of good, and above all let us never despair. Do not
let us despise the woman who is neither mother, sister, maid, nor wife.
Do not let us limit esteem to the family nor indulgence to egoism. Since
"there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over
ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance," let us give joy
to heaven. Heaven will render it back to us with usury. Let us leave on
our way the alms of pardon for those whom earthly desires have driven
astray, whom a divine hope shall perhaps save, and, as old women say
when they offer you some homely remedy of their own, if it does no good
it will do no harm.
Doubtless it must seem a bold thing to attempt to deduce these grand
results out of the meagre subject that I deal with; but I am one of
those who believe that all is in little. The child is small, and he
includes the man; the brain is narrow, and it harbours thought; the eye
is but a point, and it covers leagues.