PREF. - A speaker’s spontaneity is proven by his abandoning the cold and colorless language printed in books.

CONFERENCE I

St. Paul asks in Athens if it is reasonable to adore the work of human hands and Lacordaire asks in Paris if it is reasonable to stay totally away from God. In our lifetime there was a stage in which our thinking and feeling depended on our mother’s... In short, there came a time for us to move beyond adolescence, and doubts slowly entered into our thinking, a time in which we stopped seeing our mother as infallible... This crisis which touched each of us is a part of the human condition.

CONFERENCE II

18^th Century Persecutions. Less violent struggle in the 19^th century. Fides periit ... If Christianity was an improvement, there will be improvement in that Christianity itself. All artificial religion that caters only to children and the immature must be replaced by human reason. There are two teams on the field of Christ’s defenders. The young one... The old who parody last century’s philosophical method, and persecute and mercilessly flog even the most serious and honorable of the non-Christian world; they try to reduce Christianity to the medieval 13^th century.

Let us get this straight: Christianity in its divine aspect is imperishable and unchangeable. Christ. Is changeable and subject to transformations in its human aspect. The imprudent medieval apologists did Christ. A great disservice in presuming that it could not progress along with humanity’s progress...

Conclusion... The light will shine because God... and in this respect I have convictions that grow fonder as I glance about at those before me whose hair is already greying with age... They have experienced all life’s realities; they are conscious of their passions, their terrible seductions and deceptions and resulting disasters.

CONFERENCE III

Syllogism on the perfection of Chr. -If in studying Christ.’s human aspect, that is the external forms in which it is manifested in the midst of human society, it appears evident that such manifestations have obeyed a certain law of adaptability to the varying needs of society and the changing times... We must conclude that this law of Chr.’s adaptability is one of its perfections, one of the conditions for its strength and endurance.

CONFERENCE IV

Christ. Has an indisputable advantage over the theories of its adversaries: its marvelous essential unity. Even if it were nothing more that a brilliant hypothesis, it would be impossible not to recognize its harmony and wonderful sense of proportion... Before us is division, doubt, denial.

CONFERENCE V

All religions are nothing more than deviations from the patriarchal religion.

CONFERENCE VI

History of Theophilantropism and Saint-Simonianism. -Third hypothesis for an eclectic religion–A tempering of dogmas... X great and fortunate champion... Well then... “There is a logic behind doctrines; they always translate into daily living, and it isn’t difficult to judge what a person believes by how he acts, just as a tree is judged by its fruits.” Following this religion, you won’t know if the person next to you is an impious blasphemer or an angel who practices his faith. -“It’s a glorious credit to Christ. that it has not rejected any of the natural inspirations of peoples. It violates none of our natural rhythms. This religion, which in itself makes such serious demands on fragile beings, seems to have spared all the heart’s feelings and all the imaginations’s poetry to refer them to God.” This hypothesis leads to skepticism, and practically breeds irreligion. History.

CONFERENCE VII

The human theodicy proceeds methodically and hurls itself into metaphysics. Christ.ty: “From ver. 1 of Gen. Up through Ap. You’ll not find one chapter of metaphysics, and yet is (D.S.) Contains solutions for all philosophical and religious problems. Thus C. Is naturally see to be the universal religion.” –Process of teach. Christ.: Which is more worthy of God, that which proceeds from the labyrinth of personal opinions, or that which opens to the Spirit’s gaze that great book that everyone may read? In contrast to the human sciences = tradit mundum disputationibus illorum = here humans will always feel great because their most magnificent ideas do not wander beyond the arena of that same creation in which they are called to exercise their prodigious activity. –This is so for science, but it should not be so for divine science.

CONFERENCE VIII

A learned man whose name is famous all throughout Europe told me, before his authentic conversion and sincere return to God, that what most surprised him in the Divine Book was that in Chapter I of Genesis, Moses’ writing had sounded like Cuvier. – Story of Creation– story of one’s own convictions.

CONFERENCE IX

History of humanity’s fall. Philiosophism’s ridiculous response. It’s necessary for the response given by Revealed Relig. To bear the print of the Divine Revealer. By his rebellious action Adam willed to destroy the laws of harmony and subordination established by God. He willed to transgress finite limits so as to sit equal to God and to know what God knows. Harmony is broken, disequilibrium begins. His faculties cease to have the outside help that had sustained him. Humanity felt its shame, its nakedness. Animal skin will be worn on his back as a perpetual reminder of his fall. Creation’s most beautiful being will cover his body and will need a second instinct, modesty, to hide from him his soul’s subjection to his own senses.

CONFERENCE X

Decline of the first faculty: Intellect. Order is the rule for all that issues from God’s hands. Hence the harmony of creation, which science has presented as a visible proof of the Divinity. But his order is such in the faculties of the human soul. This beautiful resemblance to God in the limits of the finite...

CONFERENCE XI

The history of sophism against truth, and of violence against justice is as the world–Cain and Abel, Ham and Japheth, Esau and Jacob, Jesus and Caiaphas ...