24 How the Church Has Changed the World drink, and be merry,” they said, but their eyes were dull and their lips hard. To this place, then, Father John had been sent. It seemed that the whole of France had heaved itself into apostasy, and what could one frail priest do about it? “If you can believe,” said Jesus to that desperate father, “all things are possible.” A holy simplicity Perhaps a more learned man would have been desperate. What could one simple man do against the witty slashes of Voltaire, who had cried out against the very Church to which he owed his humane education, Ecrasez l’infâme! Tear down the unspeakable thing! What could he do against the still deadlier poison of Rousseau, that urbane fellow who, having abandoned his own children, dared to write about the natural goodness of man, seeming to praise the teachings of Jesus while dismissing him to oblivion? What could he do? Everywhere he turned, he found mockery. If he went to the city, some sour old revolutionary would spit upon his soutane, or some young epicure would do it, not out of spite, but from sheer boredom and irreligion. In the seminary it was little better. Father John had struggled for years over his lessons. He stammered. He knew what he thought, but his thoughts had the greatness and simplicity of a mountain; and it was hard
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