HKB
265
Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them and not contrary to them.
266
How many stars have telescopes revealed to us which did not exist for our philosophers of old! We freely attack Holy Scripture on the great number of stars, saying, "There are only one thousand and twenty-eight,[103] we know it." There is grass on the earth, we see it--from the moon we would not see it--and on the grass are leaves, and in these leaves are small animals; but after that no more.--O presumptuous man!--The compounds are composed of elements, and the elements not.--O presumptuous man! Here is a fine reflection.--We must not say that there is anything which we do not see.--We must then talk like others, but not think like them.
267
The last proceeding of reason is to recognise that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. It is but feeble if it does not see so far as to know this. But if natural things are beyond it, what will be said of supernatural?
268
Submission.--We must know where to doubt, where to feel certain, where to submit. He who does not do so, understands not the force of reason. There are some who offend against these three rules, either by affirming everything as demonstrative, from want of knowing what demonstration is; or by doubting everything, from want of knowing where to submit; or by submitting in everything, from want of knowing where they must judge.
269
Submission is the use of reason in which consists true Christianity.
270
St. Augustine.[104]--Reason would never submit, if it did not judge that there are some occasions on which it ought to submit. It is then right for it to submit, when it judges that it ought to submit.
271
Wisdom sends us to childhood. Nisi efficiamini sicut parvuli.[105]
272
There is nothing so conformable to reason as this disavowal of reason.
273
If we submit everything to reason, our religion will have no mysterious and supernatural element. If we offend the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous.
274
All our reasoning reduces itself to yielding to feeling.
But fancy is like, though contrary to feeling, so that we cannot distinguish between these contraries. One person says that my feeling is fancy, another that his fancy is feeling. We should have a rule. Reason offers itself; but it is pliable in every sense; and thus there is no rule.
275
Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.
276
M. de Roannez said: "Reasons come to me afterwards, but at first a thing pleases or shocks me without my knowing the reason, and yet it shocks me for that reason which I only discover afterwards." But I believe, not that it shocked him for the reasons which were found afterwards, but that these reasons were only found because it shocks him.
277
The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. I say that the heart naturally loves the Universal Being, and also itself naturally, according as it gives itself to them; and it hardens itself against one or the other at its will. You have rejected the one, and kept the other. Is it by reason that you love yourself?
278
It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason. This, then, is faith: God felt by the heart, not by the reason.
279
Faith is a gift of God; do not believe that we said it was a gift of reasoning. Other religions do not say this of their faith. They only gave reasoning in order to arrive at it, and yet it does not bring them to it.
280
The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.
281
Heart, instinct, principles.
282