Hear the words of life, you who doubt, who search, who suffer! Hear them also, you who triumph, who rejoice, who lord it over your fellowman! Hear the words that the church calls her little children to repeat at every rising of the sun: _Credo_, I believe! I believe in one God, the Creator. See, _savants_, here is the answer to your uncertainties. _Credo_, I believe! I believe in a Saviour of the world who has consecrated purity by his birth, confounded pride by his precepts, rebuked injustice by his sufferings, and proved his divinity and immortality by his resurrection, I believe in Jesus Christ! See in him, poor, afflicted humanity, poor, oppressed people, an answer to your despair. _Credo_, I believe! I believe in the Holy Ghost, in the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, in the judgment, and in a life of everlasting happiness to those who have fought the good battle. See in our creed, O Protestants and philosophers! so divided in your affirmations, so narrow in your hopes, the response to your disputes. See in it, oppressive monarch, the answer to your iniquities! And see, also, O pitiless death! the answer to your terrors. {30} To love, to hope, to believe! Everything is contained in these words; and it is the church who alone can preserve in unshaken majesty and in the universal truth this _Credo_, that the nineteenth century, now in the dawn of the twentieth, is going to repeat with the two hundred and sixty-second successor of the fisherman Peter, first apostle of Jesus Christ. But, brothers, let us cease speaking; let us cease disputing, let us cease fearing, let us bend the knee and pray! O God! who knows the secret of your Providence, and who knows the wonders which the church will yet display to the world, if men's faults and their passion do not retard her? If religion and society, leaning one upon the other, should advance, with mutual concord, on their blessed course, what great steps would there be toward the establishment of your reign upon the earth, toward the progress of nations, toward liberty by the way of truth, toward the real fraternity of men, toward the extinction of revolution and of war, toward the peace of the world. Then a new era would open before us, and a new great century appear in history. Let us throw open our souls to these hopes; let us beg these blessings of God, and let us foresee possible misfortunes only to prevent them. Let it be known at least that Catholics are not men of discouragement, of dark predictions, or of peevish menaces; but men of charity, of noble hopes, of peaceful effort, and, at the same time, of generous struggle. Let us invoke St. Peter and St. Paul; let us invoke the Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus, the honor and the heavenly guardian of the race of man; and, united to the souls of all the saints, let us pray to the adorable Trinity reigning in heaven!