Would that there were time to speak of his works in their various departments, especially those in the departments of education, social morals, and religion.
No name stands above his among the leaders in the great cause of education. None surpass him in the power with which he defended the mind of woman from the impoverishing and distorting systems prevalent in his day, and by his example and pen taught parents to educate their daughters in a manner that should rebuke vanity and deceit, and blend grace with utility. None went before him in knowledge of the art of taming obstinate boyhood into tenderness, and with all modern improvements our best teachers may find in his works a mine of knowledge and incentive both in their tasks of instruction and discipline.
In social morals he was a great reformer; not, indeed, so remarkable for being engrossed with some favorite innovation, as for urging the constant need of applying Christian truth and duty to every social institution. He rebuked the passion for war, by his own demeanor disarmed the hostility of combatants, and by his instructions struck at the root of warfare in the councils of princes. We may well be amazed at his political wisdom, and taught more emphatically than ever that we are to look for this not to the hack-politicians who think only of the cabals of the moment, but to the sage men who interpret the future from the high ground of reason and right. His political papers embody the lessons that France has since learned by a baptism of blood. Hardly a single principle now deemed necessary for the peace and prosperity of nations, can be named, that cannot be found expressed or implied in Fenelon's various advice to the royal youth under his charge. Well may the better minds of France and Christendom honor his name for the noble liberality with which he qualified the mild conservatism so congenial with his temperament, creed and position.
As a theologian, he constantly breathes one engrossing sentiment. With him, Christianity was the love of God and its morality was the love of the neighbor. Judged by occasional expressions, his piety might seem too ascetic and mystical--too urgent of penance and self-crucifixion--too enthusiastic in emotion, perilling the sobriety of reason in the impassioned fervors of devotion--sometimes bordering upon that overstrained spiritualism, which, in its impulsive flights, is so apt to lose its just balance and sink to the earth and the empire of the senses. He has written some things that prudence, nay, wisdom, might wish to erase. But, qualified by other statements, and above all, interpreted by his own life, his religion appears in its true proportion--without gloom, without extravagance. To his honor be it spoken, that in an age when priests and prelates eminent for saintly piety sanctioned the scourging and death of heretics, and enforced the Gospel chiefly by the fears of perdition, Fenelon was censured for dwelling too much on the power of love, that perfect charity that casteth out fear. It may, perhaps, be a failing with him that he had too little sympathy with the fears and passions of men, and appreciated too little the more sublime and terrible aspects of Divine Providence. His mind was tuned too gently to answer to all of the grandest music of our humanity, and we must abate something of our admiration of him for his want of loyalty to the new ages of Christian thought and heroism. He evidently loved Virgil more than Dante, Cicero more than Chrysostom, and thought the Greek Parthenon, in its horizontal lines and sensuous beauty, a grander and more perfect structure, alike in plan and execution, than Notre Dame or Strasbourg Cathedral, with its uplifting points and spiritual sublimity. He was a Christianized Greek, who had exchanged the philosopher's robe for the archbishop's surplice.