On religion and the people

Conferences of the Rev. Père Lacordaire, p. 395

The people are religious; not as their masters would wish them to be, in accepting religion like a bit which men put into the mouth of an untamed steed, —the people would blush for shame at that! They accept religion as a want, —as an honourable passion of their nature; and although an effort may be made to dishonour their faith by calling it the faith of the ignorant, they protect it by their poverty, their toil, and their majesty. They exclaim: We are poor, we are lowly, but we are not disinherited from that which is grand; we are not disinherited from that which is sublime. Longinus— they do not know the name of Longinus, but I speak for them, and I know Longinus— Longinus has said: “The sublime is the expression of a great soul;” and the people, … have not renounced the joy of the sublime, and as they cannot experience this by the world, as the world refuses to their intelligence and to their hearts the opportunities of this enjoyment, they dilate so much the more, in order to proclaim the God who elevates them, who blesses them, who says to them: “I am thy brother and thy equal, be not afraid.”