YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

CHRISTIANITY

NINETEENTH CENTURY:
A RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL SURVEY
OF THE IMMEDIATE PAST,
ACCORDING TO THE SPIRIT OF JESUS.
BY
ETIENNE CHASTEX,
PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OP GENEVA.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
BY
JOHN R BEAED, D.D.

"The work of Christianizing the world is immense, and requires the efforts
of each and all. By these the Church will be spread, by those it will be puri
fied. The brute metal which some will extract from the mine, others will
cleanse of its dross, others refine in the crucible ; and by these combined
operations, accomplished under the direction of the Master, the human family,
always increasing in number, will be led to the knowledge of its Heavenly
Father, in the communion of Jesus."— Concluding Words.

WILLIAMS AND NOEGATE,
14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON;
And 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH.

1874.

LONDON !
PRINTED BY C. GBEEN AND SON, 178, STRAND.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR.

The learned, accomplished and venerable author of the fol
lowing pages was born in Geneva, the 11th of July, 1801, of an
old and cultured family of Montbeliard, in the department of
the Vosges, which was compelled to expatriate itself in the
time of the persecutions of the Lutheran prince, Jean Frederic,
Duke of Wurtemberg. On the maternal side, the Eev. Stephen
Chastel descends equally from a family of refugees, which was
forced, for the cause of religion, to quit the South of France.
In a parentage so truly estimable, the youth had sufficient
reason for consecrating himself to the work of the ministry,
his natural call to which he may be allowed to feel he has not
dishonoured in the course of a long and chequered professional
life. Some slight circumstances in his early studies, and the
desire of his father to keep him by his side after the prema
ture decease of his mother, finally determined his destination
to the ecclesiastical career. ¦ He commenced his theological
studies at the outbreak of the religious dissensions of his native
city, the same year (1819) in which the partizans of the ortho
dox revival re-edited the Helvetic Confession of 1566, insist
ing that Geneva, recently re-united to Switzerland, should

VI BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR.
impose that old and voluminous formulary on all its pastors
and professors of theology. The despotic pretensions sustained
in the face of a Church which had for a century been proud
of having abolished all confessions of faith, and of thenceforth
depending solely on the gospel, determined his choice in the
subject of his academical thesis. Delivered in 1823, under the
title, " The Use of Confessions of Faith in Eeformed Com
munities," if it displeased the retrograde party, it had the
privilege of being honoured by the commendations of Sis-
mondi, who cited it in an article of La Revue Encyclop&lique
of Paris, 1826.
The suffrage of the illustrious historian encouraged the
young essayist. Among the diverse branches of theology, the
History of the Church was that which, from the first, won
his affection. A sojourn in Paris, where he attended the
lectures of Villemain, and was present at the discussion of
the famous law on Sacrilege ; an abode in Italy under the
Pontificate of the fanatical Leo XII. ; a journey into England,
where he received from the lips of different theologians, in
particular . from those of John James Tayler, afterwards Pro
fessor of Ecclesiastical History in Manchester New College,
information which he highly valued on the religious con
dition of the country ; — all this only cultivated and strength
ened his taste for historical studies. Those studies he pursued
in Geneva during the course of a laborious pastorate. But he
soon became aware that Germany alone offered in this matter
sufficient resources. He therefore gave his mind to the writings
of Gieseler, Neander, their predecessors and disciples, and in
1835 turned to account their labours in a series of lectures
intended to prepare the Genevese public for the Jubilee of the

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR. vii
Reformation, which it was on the point of celebrating. Sur
prised on that occasion to find the Protestant population so
little instructed in the principal evolutions of the Church, he
undertook to trace them for their advantage in four new series
of lectures, which in 1839 led to his nomination to the chair
of Ecclesiastical History. There he was not long in coming
upon rocks which he had not foreseen. Certain appreciations
of some historical facts in the evangelical history which had
long been current in Germany, even in orthodox circles, asto
nished some of his young French auditors. Immediately the
Evangelical dissidents sounded the alarm in France and in
Switzerland against the pastoral body which had appointed
him : the latter was moved by their attacks ; his position was
threatened, and he owed its preservation only to the de-
votedness of certain friends. Escaped from this danger, he
soon saw himself in presence of another. The Council of
State had just confided to him the direction of the public
Library, when the Eevolution of 1846 broke out in the city.
The ecclesiastical body had judged him too liberal ; the
radical government found him too conservative. A new law
obliged him to choose between the functions of the Librarian
and those of the Professor. He could not hesitate, although
under that government the Professorship itself was not
sheltered from all attack. But in confining himself to the
office of teaching, he wished, if he could, to justify the efforts
of the noble friends who had given themselves much trouble
to maintain him in it. In 1847, the Parisian Academy of
Inscriptions offered a prize for the best essay on The History
of the Fall of Paganism in the Eastern Empire. With the aid
of numerous resources which his duties as a Librarian enabled

Viii BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR.
him to consult, he treated the question in such a manner as
to obtain the honour. At the moment when it crowned his
labour, the French Academy (the Institute), acting under the
social crisis of 1848 and 1849, offered a prize for the best
essay on Christian Charity in the First Centimes. He entered
with ardour on this new subject and the historical studies
required by the programme : he added to the results con
siderations drawn from his pastoral experience on The Part of
Charity (or Christian love) in our Modern Societies. His essay,
crowned ex equo with that of Professor Schmidt, of the Uni
versity of Strasburg, had the high honour of sharing with his
the extraordinary prize proposed by the Academy. Entirely
occupied for a long time with his favourite science, whose
gigantic steps he could scarcely, follow, and not expecting, on
account of his age, to be able to publish the whole of his
course, he resolved at least to deposit its substance in four
volumes, which have successively appeared, and of which this
is the last.*
* Christianity in the First Nineteen Centuries: 1st Fart, Chris
tianity in the Six First Centuries, 12mo ; 2nd Part, Christianity in the
Middle Ages, 12mo ; 3rd Part,' Christianity in Modern Ages, 12mo ;
which (the translator adds) are not less instructive, interesting and
liberal, than the fourth volume now laid before the English public.

A FEW WORDS OF EXPLANATION BY THE
TRANSLATOR.

Acquaintance with the first of the four parts which in
union transmute our author's " Christianity in the Nineteenth
Century" into his "Christianity in the Nineteen Centuries,''
or a History of Christianity from the earliest ages, and a high
appreciation of the merits of that first part, induced me to obtain
and peruse the present volume. So great was the gratification
which I received from the study, that I resolved, with the con
sent of the author, to lay it before the English public. And
I was the rather inclined to perform the task because it would
enable me to renew literary ties with the city of Geneva formed
as early in the century as 1831, when M. Dnby, Professor
of Theology and Eloquence in the Protestant University of
Geneva, gave his valuable aid to the second of my two volumes
of " Sermons designed to be used in Families," which among
their contributors bear the honoured names of John James
Tayler, J. G. Eobberds, R. Wallace, W. J. Fox, J. Hutton,
John Kenrick, C. Wellbeloved, H. Montgomery, James Marti-
neau, at home ; and J. Tuckerman, H. Ware, F. Parkman, M.
Duby, abroad. The reference carries me back over a period of

X WORDS OP EXPLANATION BT THE TRANSLATOR.
more than forty years of a long and busy life, and gives me an
impressive illustration of the surpassing value of the principles
which it has been my happiness to hold in common with those
religious and highly cultivated members of the truly " Broad
Church" of Christ.
In some sort the volume I present to the English public is a
resume' of those principles. That fact constitutes its intrinsic
value. It is also an indirect history of their progress. What
a distance has society passed over in the way of religious
amelioration since the earlier years of this century ! The foot
steps of that distance are in these pages clearly and sharply
marked, together with the influences out of which they issued,
and the immediate consequences to which they have con
duced, with a certain vaticinatory prospect, full of hope and
encouragement, of better things to come. The work is an
unfolding of the heart and life of the nineteenth century in all
its principal aspects, done by a hand equally skilful, experi
enced, reverend and loving, such as might be expected to grow
out of constant and intimate contact with the hand of Jesus.
Professor Chastel has taken Christ with him, Christ and no
one else, in this instructive and charming survey of the Church
and the world, or of Christian civilization during this spring
tide of the new year of the Lord. The tone and tendency of
the work, while rigorously just, is hopeful and cheering, and
so an attentive perusal of it will tend to correct despondency,
remove doubt, and generally edify in that " faith, hope and
charity," which constitute the essence, as of Christianity, so
of all true religion,
There is no feature in this book which will strike the
reader more than its rigorous impartiality. The names of all

WORDS OP EXPLANATION BT THE TRANSLATOR. XI
the great leaders of religious thought in the present century
find mention in these pages in a tone of simple justice, how
ever near or however distant they stand from their judge,
the learned and benevolent author. Totally free from bias,
and neither fearing nor courting orthodoxy or heterodoxy,
whatever their shades, he justly characterizes alike the Catholic
and the Protestant, the Calvinist and the Arminian, nor does
he pass in neglect the Unitarian. His treatment of the latter
class not only exemplifies his love of fair-play, but illus
trates his minute and discriminating method of handling his
subject. Here we find Priestley, Charming and Parker truly
placed in their own high position, but so characterized rela
tively to each other, as in a few words to present a history
of religious movements among the modern Unitarians. And
here his special theological predilection comes into view, yet
without being displayed. Mons. Chastel has a strong attach
ment to our late beloved friend, John James Tayler. Accord
ingly, among his multifarious minor productions we find a
brochure which bears for title, John James Tayler, a Biogra
phical Notice (1873), in which that pure-minded and tender
hearted man is drawn in outline, not only correctly and faith
fully, but with an obvious leaning as of the heart of the
biographer to the heart of his subject. As confirmatory of
these statements, we quote from the pamphlet the following
paragraph :— "The details into which we have entered permit
us, it seems to me, to consider Tayler as one of the heads of
that modern Unitarian school, already so numerous in America,
which, entirely detached from that of Priestley, whose literal
ism, dry and narrow, excited little sympathy in him, uniting
on the contrary, as that of Channing, to width of view, prac-

xii WORDS OP EXPLANATION BY THE TRANSLATOR.
tical activity and the unction of Christian sentiment, — is
superior to him in critical and historical science, owing to
the light and impulse which it had received from Germany.
In one of the anniversary meetings of the Unitarian Associa
tion, Tayler characterized this new school. ' It cannot be de
nied that, in the formation of its judgments in the matter of
religion, our generation has resources more abundant than its
predecessor. There result among us dogmatic types not a
little diverse. Some, applying with faith and sincerity to the
New Testament what they consider as the principles of true
exegesis, return in some degree to sympathize rather with a
modified orthodoxy. Others, with an equal sincerity, an equal
attachment to Christianity, have been led by the progress of
Science to give more importance to the spirit than the letter,
and to admit in the examination of the New Testament a large
spirit of historical research, which is represented in America
by Theodore Parker'" (p. 40). This progress, thus described
by Mr. Tayler, has continued to the present hour, producing
happily one result — that the life of Jesus, in its broad and
essential historical outlines, is the essence of Christianity. It
is pleasant to add, that to this all-sufficient conclusion the
leading minds of Protestant Christianity are at this moment
manifestly, if slowly, converging. Hence it ensues that the
life of the true Christian is the life that is moulded and
inspired after the image of Jesus. This thought is the central
principle of the present volume, and because it is so I have
thought it my duty and found it my pleasure to put its con
tents into my native tongue. The breadth of the thought is
such, that the volume may prove serviceable to all who prefer
Christ to themselves.

WORDS OF EXPLANATION BT THE TRANSLATOR. Xlll
I must not conclude without tendering to the author my
grateful acknowledgments of the pleasure and profit I have
derived from his work, and of the truly Christian courtesy
with which he entered into my proposal for publishing this
product of his mature culture and vivid piety in an English
dress.
John E. Beard.
The Meadows,
Ashton-on-Mersey, near Manchester,
November 17, 1874.

CONTENTS.

.first $&rt.
CHRISTIANITY AMONG CHRISTIANS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. — Christian Revival and Retrograde Christianity.
1. In Catholicism  5
2. In Protestantism and the Greek Church  28
3. Return of Conflicts between the Civil Order and the
Religious  56
i. Return of Confessional (or Dogmatic) Struggles  70
II. — Anti-Christian Reaction.
1. In Catholic Nations  82
2. In Protestant and Greek Nations  91
III.— Christian Progress.
1. Progress in Liberty  102
2. Progress in Truth  129
3. Progress in Moral and Religious Life  178

CONTENTS.

£utmb fart.
CHRISTIANITY IN NON-CHRISTIAN NATIONS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. —Christianity, and Judaism  199
II. — Christianity and Mohamedanism  211
III. — Christianity and Polytheism  218

CHRISTIANITY

NINETEENTH CENTURY.

gmt farf.
CHRISTIANITY AMONG CHRISTIANS.

In the religious order, as in the intellectual and social,
the progress to which God invites humanity is not possible
except on two conditions : the maintenance of the con
quests, which it has been privileged to make in the domain
of the true and the good, and a clear path to all other con
quests which it may be privileged to make in the future.
But it is rare for these conditions to be sufficiently under
stood by the men and the parties who undertake to direct
its advance. Now their respect for the past makes them
obstinately retain imperfect beliefs and institutions ; now
their impatient flight toward the future makes them repu
diate beneficial institutions and important truths for the
sole reason that they are old, or blindly embrace systems
which a ripe examination has not yet justified. This

2 CHRISTIANITT among christians.
person respects even useless constructions which encumber
and disfigure his abode ; that, at the risk of remaining un
sheltered, is eager to demolish it. This person prunes and
cuts his tree unsparingly ; that, lets his tree perish under
the weight of its dead branches. This person rejects the
precious metal on account of its envelope ; that, fearing
to lose a part of his gold, scrupulously leaves it unpro
ductive in some hiding-place. It is still more rare for one
of these extremes not to bring the other. Now frightened
at sudden changes, humanity not less suddenly turns on
its heels toward the past. Now impeded in that past too
indistinctly accepted, it rejects its most respectable con
ditions. Thus it passes from one excess to another, coasts
along the precipices which line its route, hastens from
reactions into revolutions, from revolutions into reactions,
ever oscillating between anarchy and despotism, between
servility and licentiousness, tossed by contrary parties <
from one to the other as they get the upper hand ; and
thus would it go on ceaselessly without gaining ground,
had not God made it accessible to the lessons of expe
rience, or if, from time to time, He had not allowed it to
find on its path instructed guides, who, with their eye
fixed on their object, direct its progressive steps through
the labyrinth of rocks. Such guides, between the most
stationary Catholicism and the most destructive Ana-
baptism, were in the sixteenth" century the wisely progres- 1 h
sive reformers who, taking the Church back from the evil
ways in which it was retained by faithless guides, and from i l
those in which frantic innovators threatened to lead it
astray, brought it near to that which Jesus himself had
marked out for it. Humanity then does advance, as God
wills and provides ; but it does not advance, as is desired
by infirm individuals, like that drunken peasant to which it

christianitt among christians. 3
is compared by Luther, who moves only in a series of oscil
lations and ups and downs. At a later time we see in
Christendom in general, and in each of the great com
munions into which it is divided, the same opposite
tendencies actuate minds and dispute each for the pre
ponderance. But never were those struggles more severe
or more continuous, never were their alternations of victory
and defeat more sudden and decided, than in the three
score years and ten which have elapsed within the present
century. The great crisis of the sixteenth century was
followed by the immobility of the seventeenth, and then
came the subversive spirit of the eighteenth. In our age —
and this is one of its most prominent features — -we see the
extreme conservative parties and the unsparingly destruc
tive ones, engaged in ceaseless conflicts, gain the advantage
one after another ; each political or social revolution pre
paring itself by a crisis of irreligion, accompanied in the
Church by a retrograde movement, while Christian pro
gress disengages itself from the warring elements only
insensibly and not without effort. Hence it appears that
the internal history of Christianity in our age cannot be
summed up better than in three pictures in which you will
see successively in operation, among the different Christian
communions, each of the three parties, the three currents
which we have just indicated — together with the circum
stances which made each in turn predominate, and the
principal facts which were produced under their influence.
Accordingly, we shall develops our ideas under the guidance
of this tabular view of the contents of these essays.

b2

4 christianitt among christians.
First Part.
CHEISTIANITY AMONG CHEISTIANS.
Chap. I. — Christian Eevival and Eetrograde Chris
tianity.
1. In Catholicism.
2. In Protestantism and the Greek Church.
3. Eeturn of Conflicts between the Civil Order
and the Eeligious.
4. Eeturn of Confessional (or Dogmatic) Struggles.
Chap. II. — Anti-Christian Eeaction.
1. In Catholic Nations.
2. In Protestant and Greek Nations.
Chap. III. — Christian Progress.
1. Progress in Liberty.
2. Progress in Truth.
3. Progress in Moral and Eeligious Life.
Second Part.
CHEISTIANITY IN NON-CHRISTIAN NATIONS.
Chap. I. — Christianity and Judaism.
„ II- — Christianity and Mohamedanism.
„ III. — Christianity and Polytheism.

CHAPTER I.
CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE
CHRISTIANITY.

CATHOLICISM.

Never does a people return to its ancient beliefs with
more ardour than after the extreme calamities which fol
lowed a long period of oblivion. The fact is illustrated
in the Jewish people during and after its captivity, and in
the Roman people during the critical periods of its history.
It is illustrated also in the nations of Europe after the
catastrophes of the last century, and specially in France
after the Reign of Terror. We say enough in remarking
that the current of religious restoration is that which pre
vailed at the commencement of this century, and that it
was in France that it most suddenly made its appearance.
Violent revolutions may for a time turn every thing upside
down — perhaps shake for ever the institutions of a nation
— but they cannot stifle in the individuals which compose
it the instinctive sentiments of human nature. The
French democracy, eager to abolish a detested political
form of government, not satisfied with sapping the eccle
siastical institutions connected therewith, hastened to pro-

6 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
scribe all religious manifestation, to close the churches, to
banish the priests, to pursue even into the sanctuary of
private life all trace of attachment to the ancient worship,
and finally to inaugurate the reign of Atheism. The reli
gious sentiment forcibly suppressed in the soul acquired
only greater spring, and reacted only with more vigour.
All that during this disastrous period had suffered in their
interests, their person, or their affections, all that did
suffer, all that were menaced with suffering, turned back
towards the supreme Consoler, the sole support of the
oppressed, and reproaching in His ears their past neglects,
thought only of being reconciled to Him by sincere con
trition and thorough repentance. Even those who, more
or less strangers to these pious emotions, had reckoned
on the natural progress of civilization for securing the
morality and weal of nations, cruelly deceived by the
spectacle of anarchy which they had under their eyes,
began to recognize in religion an educating power which
nothing can replace. Doubtless they could have wished
to see it revive under purer forms ; but the peace, the
repose which they promised themselves on its restoration,
prevailed for the moment over every other consideration.
Men's minds were no longer indulging in criticism ; what
ever bore the impress of sincere piety obtained respect and
sympathy. The word of the priests, previously so decried
owing to their worldly lives, renewed and re-invigorated by
their sufferings, recovered its former authority. Scarcely
were the churches re-opened when they were filled by
compact and devout audiences. In more than forty thou
sand communes or parishes the Catholic worship was in
stantly restored. The press quitted its hostile attitude
toward it. Chateaubriand, returning into France still
imbued with the ideas of the eighteenth century, finding

CATHOLICISM.

men's minds raised to another key, withdrew his " Essay
on the Revolution," andj amid the acclamations of the
French public, published his Genie du Christianisme
( Genius of Christianity ). Philosophy itself, without yet
becoming positively Christian, made an approach to re
ligion. The sensualism of Condillac followed the material
ism of Lamettrie in its discredit. The wise spiritualism
of Reed and Stewart, after in England triumphing over
Hume's scepticism, took root in France. Ampere, Maine
de Biran, Jouffroy, Cousin, Roger Collard professed its
doctrines with distinction. Then it was thought that in
France philosophy had divorced itself from Atheism, and
it was announced that the progress of a sound psychology
would render the return of Atheism impossible. The fol
lowing is the way in which Sismondi characterized the
state of opinion at this time. " When the Church," he
says in a letter to Channing, " had been overturned by the
double effort of the Encyclopedists and the Revolutionists,
when specially a little calm had succeeded to the tempest,
the need of tender affections, the need of confidence and
hope, admiration for creation, the sentiment of the spiritu
ality of our nature, the thirst for immortality, made them
selves felt in human hearts. . . . Nearly all men accus
tomed to think, and whose opinions were formed before
the Revolution, belong still to the school of Voltaire ; but
they are now seventy years of age, and they are alone. . . .
No one aged seventy and less, who knows how to write,
who exercises the least influence, professes a mocking
incredulity; doubt there is, but also desire to acquire
more elevated opinions ; there is a want of religion and of
respect for beliefs which, nevertheless, few adopt com
pletely. This is France; it is by no means Italy or
Spain." " No one can more skilfully," adds Saint-Beuve,

8 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
" explain the causes of the revival of religion in 1800."
Policy was naturally compelled to pay attention to such
symptoms. Seeing French society eager to re-seat itself, to
breathe again under the shadow of the worship which had
been proscribed by the enemies of its repose, the Consul
Bonaparte judged that liberty of conscience, proclaimed in
the republican constitutions, but so little respected by even
those by whom it had been decreed, would not suffice to
reassure religious souls. He resolved to take under his
own protection the worship which he meant to re-establish,
and with that view entered into negociations with the
new Pope, Pius VII. (1800—1823). By that, he thought,
he gained in every country the suffrage of the Catholic
populations ; he freed Italy from the yoke of Austria, and
attached it to the interests of France ; he removed the
clergy from the royalist opposition, the Pope from the
European coalition, and then made use of both to incline
his people to obedience. "When I shall rebuild the
altars, when I shall protect the priests, when I shall feed
them," he said to his counsellors, " the Pope, for the sake
of general repose, will calm men's minds, will re-unite
them under his hand, and will place them in mine." Then,
carrying his views still further, " You will see," he added
privately, " the advantage I shall obtain from the priests."
The imperial crown which already he, the new Charle
magne, aspired to place on his head would receive the
Pope's benediction, and in the eyes of the other powers
the sacred unction would serve him instead of legitimacy.
From that ambitious policy, full of foresight, proceeded
the Concordat of the 15th July, 1801. "It was," says
Quinet, " his visit to the sands of Jupiter Amnion."
Catholicism was then re-established as the religion of
the majority of Frenchmen; the clergy, in place of its

CATHOLICISM. 9
ancient properties which remained alienated, was provided
with an annual salary sufficient for its support and the
requirements of worship; ten archbishops and fifty bishops,
appointed by the Government and instituted by the Pope,
directed the Church of France, which was afresh placed
under the authority of the Roman Pontiff.
This was something considerable for a clergy not long
since proscribed, and for a Pontiff who was but just re
installed in Rome. Yet was it little for a Pontiff and a
clergy whose ambition, excited by the return of public
favour, already dreamt of the return of the Church to its
former domination. The articles of 1802, surreptitiously
added to the Concordat, and the subsequent acts of Napo
leon, soon scattered that flattering dream, and introduced
between the two contracting parties that state of perpetual
strain which we shall shortly describe — that series of con
flicts which ended in the fall of Pius VII., in his exile
and captivity, and issued in the dethronement of the
Emperor himself.
Here the movement of the retrograde restoration begins
to become general. Not only in France, but in all Europe,
under the favour of the reaction brought on by Napoleon's
fall, Catholicism labours to repair its breaches, and the
revival of the beginning of the century is transformed
into a reaction henceforward more ecclesiastical and poli
tical than religious, in which the interests of religion are
confounded with the interests of the priest, as the interests
of states were confounded with those of sovereigns.
During the wars of the Revolution and of the Empire
the Catholic powers had particularly suffered. The sove
reigns of Italy and Spain, the ecclesiastical princes of
Germany, had been dethroned to make way for the mem
bers of the new Imperial family ; those of Austria, of

10 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
Bavaria, after seeing their capitals and their provinces
occupied and dearly ransomed, had been obliged to submit
to the law of the conqueror. On his fall there was
one, and only one, voice for restoring downcast thrones,
dynasties and aristocracies, and for re-constituting dismem
bered or dissolved nationalities. Moreover, there was one,
and only one, voice for arresting the torrent of revolu
tionary passions which the armies of France had every
where set in movement, and which already threatened
serious peril ; for the citizens claimed the constitutions so
strongly promised, and which the authorities still hesitated
to bestow. Still trembling from the shock which they
had suffered, the legitimate royalties sought support every
where. The clergy, who had shared their reverses (in
some places even their ill fortunes and their exile), pre
sented themselves to them with confidence. The throne,
they said, cannot stand except on the basis of the altar.
Give us your subjects faithful Catholics ; we will return
them to you sincerely monarchical. Multiply in your
dominions religious establishments, and you will find them
as many outposts for your power; replace in our hands
the education of the young, and we will render the coming
generations as supple as philosophy made them indocile
and stubborn. Restore our authority, and it will shelter
you under its prestige. Support us, and we will support
you. This language was understood. The ecclesiastical
restoration, considered as the complement of the political
restoration, was seconded with ardour by the powers.
Quite naturally the Bishop of Rome hastened to profit
by dispositions so propitious. Formerly dethroned by a
Catholic power, now restored on his seat and his dominions
by four powers, of whom one was schismatic and two
Protestant, received in triumph by his subjects, who re-

CATHOLICISM. 1 1
vered in him the captive of Savona and Fontainebleau,*
Pius VII. nevertheless, gathering wisdom from his dis
honours, would willingly make, at least in the sphere of
administration, concessions to the spirit of the age. Such
was the advice of Consalvi, his faithful councillor. The
fanaticism of the zealots gained the upper hand in the
Sacred College. In the patrimony of Saint Peter, every
thing was placed on the old footing ; the Code Napoleon
had for substitute the Canon Law, the government of the
provinces was restored to the Cardinal legates, the civil
charges in Rome were confided exclusively to ecclesiastics,
the chapters and the monasteries were replaced in posses
sion of those whose properties were not alienated, and,
even under Leo XII. (1823 — 1829), of all the alienation of
which had not been agreed to by the Pope. The Roman
nobility and clergy were re-established in all their privi
leges; under the same Pope the prisons of the Inquisi
tion were rebuilt to receive the Carbonari and the Free
thinkers, while the right of asylum, restored in favour of
the Holy Office, was to shelter the malefactors who would
engage to cultivate their possessions.
But the restorative views of the Pope did not bear
alone on his own States. His solicitude embraced the
entire Church, and one of the first acts of Pius VII. after
his return, was to re-establish that famous Order in which
the Church had, during two centuries, found its strongest
bulwark, and which Clement XIV. (1769) had suppressed
only under the irresistible pressure of his age. In truth,
that suppression had never been either in earnest or com
plete. Disguised here under the name of "Liguorians"

* Places where Napoleon Bonaparte held Pope Pius VII. prisoner. —
Translator.

12 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
or " Redemptorists," then under that of "Fathers of the
Faith," the Jesuits had in many a land retained in their
hands the instruction of the young. Pius VII., however,
thought that he owed to them distinguished reparation.
He augmented their endowments, restored their confes
sionals, enriched their colleges, and finally gave them a
position which enabled them everywhere to direct the
work of ecclesiastical restoration.
And what moment more favourable for seconding their
efforts ? It was the period when, in France, De Bonald,
Lamennais, d'Ekstein, Joseph de Maistre ; in Switzerland,
the convert C. L. de Haller ; in Germany, Fred. Schlegel,
the editors of the " Cierge," of " L'Ami de la Religion,"
supported by the simultaneous impulse of " the historical
school " and of the Romantic literature, spoke of carrying
back the Church to the glorious days of Gregory VII.
(1073) and Innocent III. (1198). It was the time when
jubilees, processions, pilgrimages, pious fraternities, mis
sions, plantations of the cross, regained favour ; when the
perpetual worship of the sacred hearts of Jesus and of Mary,
established in 1804 at Picpus, had just been sanctioned by
the Pope, and when those bloody symbols were carried
up and down in Paris ; when the Prince of Hohenlohe
offered to cure all diseases from the centre of his oratory,
when Migne's Cross appeared in the skies, as in the days
of Constantine; when in the diocese of Cologne a flame.
came of itself to light on the Virgin's crown ; when the
stigmatics* of the Tyrol showed on their hands the wounds
of the Saviour bleeding every Friday. While by these
practices the priests laboured to galvanize popular devo-
* Fanatics who pretend that they bear the wounds inflicted on Jesus
when on the Cross. They are said to bleed spontaneously every now
and then. N.B. Soap and water are an effectual cure.  Translator.

CATHOLICISM. 13
tion, the emissaries of the Holy See crept into the houses
of princes, and by the heat of their prayers for the safety
of crowns and the salvation of states, obtained solid ad
vantages for the Church. If some Courts — those of Portugal,
Parma, Tuscany — yielded to their suggestions only with
reserve, Ferdinand VII. (1823) on his return into Spain,
was dispatchful in nothing more than to restore to vigour
the Concordat of 1753, to recall the Jesuits, to re-establish
the Inquisition. The abortive revolutions of 1821 served
only to confirm the clerical influence in Italy and else
where. The Duke of Modena suppressed the university of
that city, and gave to the clergy the direction of public
instruction. The Court of Naples, in its turn, recalled the
Jesuits. In Switzerland, the Cantons of Fribourg and of the
Vallais founded in their favour splendid establishments of
education, which soon became the focus of an intense
Ultramontane agitation. The new federal pact of 1815
was to guarantee the existence and the properties of the
convents. The part of Switzerland which previously de
pended on the diocese of Constance, was detached from
it and placed under the authority of an apostolic vicar,
while awaiting the erection of two new bishoprics, which
depended directly on the Pope. Austria established a
most rigorous censorship of the press, exacted from the
functionaries of the State, under the supervision of the
bishops, their regular attendance on the ceremonies of
worship, required students to confess six times a-year,
forbade them to visit foreign universities, banished history
and physics from the State schools ; finally, in its Italian
provinces, gave full scope to clerical manoeuvres. Bavaria,
then its faithful satellite, followed Austria on this path.
In 1817, it concluded with the Holy See a concordat which
¦with reason was proposed as a model for sovereigns who

1 4 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
were zealous on behalf of the Roman religion. The
number and the endowments of the bishopries, as well
as of the monastic institutions, had greatly increased then;
the Pope confirmed the bishops, received from them the
annates or annual tributes, named the heads, and in part
the members of the chapters ; all books denounced as
dangerous by the bishops were to be suppressed ; finally,
all the privileges consecrated by canonical law were to be
secured to the Catholic religion. In this same year, 1817,
similar measures were proposed for France. Thence, it
was said, the wind of incredulity had first swept over
Europe; there, consequently, it was most urgent to re
store the empire of faith. The point involved nothing
less than the suppression of the organic articles, the aboli
tion even of the Concordat of 1801, to return to that of
1516, to re-establish the suppressed bishoprics, to restore
to the clergy the civil registers and its territorial endow
ments. The enormity of this project and the protests of
enlightened royalists prevented its being submitted to dis
cussion in the Chambers. But at least an effort was made
by all possible means to give back to France its ancient
religious physiognomy. Catholicism was raised to the
rank of the religion of the State, and while in 1815 base
men made use of that title to organize in the South a
massacre of Protestants, the Government cited before the
tribunals writers that were hostile to the established wor
ship ; by the law of sacrilege, under colour of punishing
an indecent profanation of the host, it caused, as Roger
Collard remarked so eloquently in Parliament, the fun
damental dogma of Catholicism to be inscribed on the
French Code. Divorce was abolished as contrary to the
Canons of the Church ; marriage was forbidden to priests
that had resigned their functions in order to secure, it was

CATHOLICISM. 15
said, the secrecy of confession ; the article of the penal
code, directed by Napoleon against suspected political
meetings, was made to bear on dissident religious assem
blies, which were thus left at the mercy of local civil
officers, and converted into a lie the article of the charter
which consecrated the liberty of worship. Add to all this
the annual increase in the clerical budget, the enormous
salaries allotted to the cardinals, the expedition into Spain,
undertaken for the benefit of the Church as much as for that
of royalty, the exclusive choice of civil functionaries among
the members of the " Congregation," the Minister of Wor
ship and the Minister of Public Instruction united in the
hands of a bishop, the suppression of the schools of mutual
instruction for the benefit of the schools of " the Brethren
of Christian Doctrine," the exclusion of independent pro
fessors from the chairs which they occupied in the uni
versity, their replacement by Jesuits ; finally, the lay youth
attracted in crowds into the small seminaries destined at the
beginning for ecclesiastical instruction exclusively, and di
rected in the narrowest spirit. The revolution of 1830 (Louis
Philippe), although occasioned in great part by the bigotry
of the house of Bourbon, brought only a pause in the work
of Catholic restoration. It is true, the title of religion of
the State was taken from the dominant worship, and the
law of sacrilege and some decrees too extreme were abo
lished. But the long civil troubles which followed this
crisis, those to which it gave occasion in the rest of Europe,
the revolutions of Switzerland, those of Poland, Belgium,
the rising in the Romagna, the apprehension of a new
European war, which was expected to break out every day,
above all, the new social theories of Fourier, Owen, St.
Simon, which, favoured by the liberty of the press, began
to spread abroad, the credit they found among the labour-

16 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
ing classes, the sanguinary outbreaks in Paris and Lyons'
which they produced, the reiterated attacks on the person
of the new King, did not alarm only the governments, and
the privileged classes ; the middle class itself, scarcely put
in possession of its rights, saw its interests threatened;
family relations, property, ceased to be owned as inviolable;
the working classes, whose lot had been worsened by re
volutionary agitation, being stirred up by ambitious agi
tators, declared themselves in an intolerable state of
oppression and slavery which demanded a fresh distribu
tion of wealth. Socialism and Communism were openly
advocated ; new revolutions seemed imminent. In these
threatening symptoms the clergy appeared to see only a
fresh opportunity for increasing its influence, for running
riot against the spirit of free inquiry, against flie press,
against the academies, against science, against liberty of
all kinds. Gregory XVI. was equal to the occasion. While
with the aid of Austrian garrisons he reduced his Roman
subjects into order, his celebrated Encyclic served him for
the purpose of combatting liberal ideas; nor were his efforts
unsuccessful. " Every class," says Tocqueville, " stood by
religion in the degree in which they saw it threatened or
smitten. The citizen class, terrified by the demagogues;
as much as courted by the Church, which seemed to
zealously take its cause in hand, redoubled their deference
for the sacred institution. Several even of those who under
the reign of Charles X. had stood up most firmly against
the pretensions and enterprizes of the clergy, seeing the
civil power so insecure, began to consider the influence of
the ministers of the altar as a bridle on the young, a
mound against the rising waves of the democracy, a means
of tranquillizing popular passions, and the monastic asso
ciations of labour and charity as preservatives ao-ainsfc

CATHOLICISM. • 17
socialism. The measures, not very liberal, it is true, pre
viously sought for against -those societies, were left on one
side or indefinitely adjourned; the "Brethren of Christian
Schools" were maintained at the head of the primary
teaching ; the religious seminaries continued for the lay
youth to compete with the university courses. The Go
vernment approached the Sovereign Pontiff, purchased
the prayers of the Church by important concessions, closed
its eyes on the multiplication of -the religious orders, and
when, after the conferences of Father Ravignan, the pre
tended " Fathers of the Faith " ventured to appear under
their own name, the only reply made to the complaints
uttered against their illegal intrusion was a seeming re
pression concerted with their general, and which changed
scarcely anything in their situation. Better off at Court
than ever, the Jesuits were the principal instruments of
that retrograde movement which was everywhere favoured
by the terrors of the middle classes. The. revolution,
which its enemies thought they could ward off by all
these means, broke out nevertheless, and in a form more
terrible than the preceding one. Like it, it broke out with
the cry of, " Down with the Jesuits ! " But always supple
before force, as well as haughty before weakness, the
clergy bent their head under the storm ; feigning to believe
the insurrection directed by Catholic principles against a
King whom they accused of being half a Protestant, they
conferred their benediction on " Trees of Liberty," and
sang in their public services, Salvam fac Rempublicam (0
Lord, save the Republic !) waiting for the time when they
could sing their old song of, 0 Lord, save the King! in
favour of some pretender disposed to repay their services.
This moment could not be distant. Every new revo
lution, in extending the suffrage down to strata of the
c

18 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
population, always less instructed, whose sole teachers
were monks, more and more favoured the influence of the
clergy, who, directing the votes, bade high for political
supremacy. The sovereignty of the people proclaimed in
1848, thus became the sovereignty of the priests. Much
astonished, doubtless, were those who had called forth this
movement, and who thought themselves able enough to
conduct it, when the first elections brought forth from the
urn names dearest to the clergy ; when a law, jesuitically
presented as if for the liberty of teaching, devolved the
principal direction on the bishops ; when the separation
of Church and State, formerly claimed with so much
urgency, was indefinitely adjourned ; when ecclesiastical
celibacy was upheld, the election of the parish priests
taken out of the hands of the parishioners ; when the in
ferior clergy was left under the control of the bishops; and
when, finally, the French Republic, declaring war to her
sister in Rome, undertook to replace, and henceforward to
retain in his see, the Pontiff whom it had removed from it.
After this exploit, Napoleon III., for whom his promises
to the clergy had gained the President's chair, had only to
stoop in order to rise, wearing the crown that had fallen
from his uncle's head. From that moment the Catholic
restoration boldly pursued its way. Religious liberty
figured no longer in the new Constitution, except in profile
and incidentally, according to the inclinations of a senate
in which sat cardinals little eager to protect it. Religious
assemblies, as well as political meetings, were again sub
jected to previous authorization. In the programmes of
instruction, historical and philosophical studies, alleged to
be injurious to religion, were reduced to a minimum.
Literary men, who had thrown most lustre on preceding
reigns, were put and kept in the shade. The bishops,

CATHOLICISM. 19
prodigal in flattery, at each new concession which they
solicited, became menacing as soon as the Imperial favour
seemed to grow cold ; they were well aware of the need
there was for them in the renewal of the legislatures.
Finally, owing to the terrors ably kept in a population
"which," as Tocqueville remarks, "walks constantly between
two fears — that of socialism and that of the priests— and
which to escape from the one only gives itself to the
other," a revival of the monkish spirit was not long in
making its appearance. Pious foundations, territorial and
others, now publicly, now secretly authorized by the State,
and augmented by much inveigling, multiplied beyond
measure. The number of monks and nuns in France sur
passed what it had been in the first Revolution ; that of
the Jesuits, in particular, amounted in 1864 to nearly one-
third of their number in the Catholic world.*
The same influences made themselves felt in several of
the wars fought under the last reign (1853). The old
quarrel respecting " the Holy Places" served for a pretext
to the expedition to the Crimea. The complaints of some
missionaries caused those of China and Cochin-China to
* I copy from a Catholic work entitled, "The Council of the Vatican
and the Events of the Time :" — " Society op Jesus. Very Rev. Peter
Becks was Provost-General of the Society of Jesus at the time of the
Council of the Vatican, and the following are the number of priests and
scholastics of the Society in the whole world at that time (1869).
Italy: Roman, 235 priests, 97 scholastics; Neapolitan, 192, 41;
Sicilian, 139, 14; Turinese, 167, 39; Venetian, 130, 47. Gbkmany:
Austrian, 174, 134; Belgian, 269, 179; Galician, 68, 84; German,
300, 202 ; Netherlands, 108, 102. France : Champagne, 235, 162 ;
France, 332, 177; Lyons, 336, 167; Toulouse, 290, 164. Spain:
Arragon, 160, 205 ; Castile, 203, 320 ; Mexican, 9, 4. England :
English, 78, 61. United States : Maryland, 80, 67 ; Missouri, 83, 41."
Total, 3749, 2427 = 6176. Of this number, 6176, 1909 are in France;
that is, about one-third of the whole.— Translator.
C2

20 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
be undertaken (1857). It was for the interests of a much
less honourable clergy that an army was sent to, Mexico.
The dictator Jaurez (1864), following the example of his
predecessors, had made a seizure on the immense property
of that clergy, and, in order to brave it out the better,
decreed full liberty of worship. The Pope profits by a
debt which France would recover in the country. He
dazzles the eyes of Napoleon with the glory of founding
there a Latin empire capable of arresting the encroach
ments of the Anglo-Saxon race in the new world. The
new Emperor is Maximilian, the Archduke of Austria. He
repairs to Rome and asks of the Pope, together with his
benediction, authority to levy on the Mexican clergy the
funds necessary for the support of his army. The bene
diction is given, the authorization is promised. But,
arrived in Mexico, he finds only repulsion and deceptions.
Obliged to struggle at once against the ill-will of the
clergy, the troops of the Dictator, and the United States,
which were interested in the failure of the enterprize,
soon summoned by the latter to quit America — from that
time abandoned by Napoleon himself — he dies, shot by
his own subjects, while the French army, after unheard-of
fatigues and sufferings, return to Europe half destroyed.
But could less be done for the holy Pontiff who just
before had condescended to be godfather to the Imperial
Prince ? It would take too much space to pass in review
all the features of this Ultramontane reaction in France, in
which one is astonished to behold, not indeed professional
necromancers such as the editors of the Monde and the
Univers, but men in many respects distinguished by the
elevation of their character and the comprehension of their
mind. The same movement took place in all Catholic Europe.

CATHOLICISM. 21
In Germany, the radical constituent Assembly of Frank
fort (1849) signalized itself by its concessions to Ultra-
montanism, and the high clergy assembled at Wurzburg
profited by the little solidity of the newly established
governments to put out the most excessive pretensions ;
the Archbishop of Friburg in Brisgau put himself into
open revolt against his government. This attitude suc
ceeded for the bishops, and was not without profit to the
Sovereign Pontiff. A new Concordat, concluded between
Austria and the Holy See (1855), abolished all the liberal
measures decreed by Joseph II., and gave up to the clergy
the absolute superintendence of the press and that of
public instruction. He had, it is true, to acknowledge
the gifts which he had received from the Church for his
armaments against Italy, to secure them for himself for
the future, and to obtain from the Pope an extension of
the right to fortify and garrison, previously conceded in
the Roman States. The governments of Wiirtemburg, of
the Grand Duchy of Baden, and those of the Duchies
of Hesse and Nassau, thought that out of deference for
Austria they ought to associate themselves with its retro
grade measures (1857-59).
In 1830, the Belgian clergy, impatient to throw off the
yoke of Holland, made an alliance with the Republicans,
and in concert with them proclaimed in the enfranchised
state the four fundamental liberties — that of the press, of
worship, of teaching, and of association. It was a skilful
step on their part ; for in a nation profoundly Catholic,
henceforth disembarrassed of the Protestant element, all
these liberties turned to the advantage of the Church.
The liberty of teaching ensured the prosperity of its schools
and of its religious seminaries ; the liberty of worship, the
pompous publicity of its ceremonies ; finally, the liberty

22 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
of association, the indefinite multiplication of its monastic
establishments, the number of which doubled in the space
of ten years. But that did not satisfy the clergy. The
liberties of its old auxiliaries gave it umbrage. At the
signal given by the Bull of Gregory XVI., it undertook
to confiscate them all. To the university of Bruxelles,
become too independent, it soon opposed that of Louvain,
which it subjected to the strictest Catholicism and to the
absolute authority of the bishops. In 1856, the Bishop
of Gand issued an interdict against the university and the
literary society of that city ; the following year, by its
preponderant influence in the elections, the Belgian clergy
obtained from the Minister a bill which, had it passed into
a law, would have given back into the hands of the clergy
the supreme direction of the public beneficence. Some
years after (1863), in the Catholic congress of Marines,
there was set forth that famous plan for the " Christian
izing of capital," which, after supplying the deficiency of
the papal treasury, gorged five or six stock-jobbers with
gold, secured insurance payments to country priests, their
partners, and stript thousands of poor and credulous lay
members of the Church of their savings, ended in a scan
dalous law-suit, which in 1871 almost set all Belgium in
flames, and which had its like in Munich two years after.
In the same way it is on Ultramontane zeal that through
out the Catholic world is raised the productive levy of
" Peter's Pence," which, at the time of the first withdrawal
of the French troops from Rome (1864), enabled^he Pope
to engage in his service his garrison of 5000 men, at a
later time to remunerate the members of his council, and
at the present time to supply the outlays of the palace
which it pleases him to call his prison.
Testimonies of devotedness so varied could not fail to

CATHOLICISM. 23
powerfully encourage the conductors of the Ultramontane
reaction. But what the Jesuits had principally at heart
was to universalize the dogma of the spiritual Supremacy
of the Pope. For once let it be admitted that the Bishop
of Rome ruled the Church as an absolute sovereign, such
a rule could not fail to be altogether propitious for th&
order which, hound to him by a vow of passive and com
plete obedience, everywhere arrogated to themselves the
right to command in his name. It was necessary then
that no authority, not even that of the Universal Church
and of General Councils, should surpass that of which the
Jesuits asserted they had received the inspirations. It was
necessary to erect into a universal monarch that puppet of
which they held the strings. It was necessary to settle,
once for all, in favour of the Roman see, that question,
agitated in all ages and never finally resolved : " What is
the organ of the supreme ecclesiastical authority ? In
whom — in the Pope or in the Councils — resides the infal
libility inherent in the Church of Christ?" So grave a
decision demanded time and prudence. It was first neces
sary to make a trial on another question, equally unsettled, '
but which risked less to call into action self-love and to
enkindle passions.
" The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin" was chosen.
The first public act of Pius IX. during his exile at Gaeta
(in Naples) was to name an ecclesiastical commission to
examine this question. On his return to Rome he con
voked a kind of conference, composed of two hundred
prelates, who unanimously voted in the affirmative. The
conception of Mary was free from sin. Who indeed among
the judges would have the courage to deprive of this ad
ditional honour her to whom the Pontiff affirmed that
he owed his safety 1 Accordingly they supplicated him to

24 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
yield to their impatience. In consequence, on the 8th of
December, 1854, in presence of the bishops convoked at
Rome, but not consulted, Pius IX. proclaimed the new
dogma as " obligatory under the penalty of heretical pravity
and damnation." Let us in passing observe the bearing
of this decree. At the beginning of the restoration, it
was still to Christ that the principal homage of Catholics
was addressed. They worshipped his body, displayed all
bloody on crucifixes along the high roads. He was wor
shipped in the Host (or victim) carried in the processions
of "God's Festival," then the most solemn of all the
festivals. He was worshipped, after the Italian manner,
as the Divine Infant carried in his mother's arms, who
interceded with Him on behalf of sinners. From the
time of the decree of 1854, the Mother begins to take
precedence of her Son. Henceforward she appears alone
in sacred edifices, opening her arms to suffering hu
manity; she saved the Pontiff in his day of humilia
tion ; she will, equally save whosoever believes in her
immaculate conception. The Bishop of Rome has so de
cided, and this worship paid to "God's Mother '' was the
first step toward the proclamation of the infallibility of
Saint Peter.
The second must not be delayed. Ten years after to a
day appeared the famous Encyclic of Pius IX. (1864),
which, recalling and summing up in a Syllabus the nume
rous politico-ecclesiastical decrees published during his
Pontificate, thundered out anathemas against all the
modern liberties reputed to be injurious to the Church.
This second step was more perilous than the first. It
was nothing less than the glove thrown down to the
civilization of our age, a bold reverting to the maxims
of the middle ages, an impudent summons addressed to

CATHOLICISM. 25
governments to subordinate their policy to that of the
Holy See, a daring injunction to the nations to submit
in everything to the injunctions of the Bishop of Rome.
Strong protests were issued against the Syllabus ; several
princes forbade its publication in their dominions. Then
came tortuous explanations. " The Pope," it was said,
" did not mean to condemn either modern civilization or
modern liberty, but solely the abuses made of those terms.
The Encyclic had only a purely theological and pastoral
bearing. If the bishops could not, on this occasion, dis
regard their duty toward the Holy See, the lay members
of the Church remained at liberty to fulfil in all con
science their obligations as citizens, and to keep the oaths
they had taken to their governments." And the Pope,
who had blessed my Lord of Poictiers for his unqualified
adhesion, equally blessed my Lord of Orleans for his bene
volent explanations, adding, that " as supreme Head of
the Church, he could, when and where he would, suspend
the effect of his own decrees." Thus the political powers
were lulled into slumber; other affairs caused the Encyclic
to be forgotten. Meanwhile Pius IX. had, in one of the
gravest questions, of his own free will, done a new act of
sovereign authority bearing not only on matters of faith
and worship, but also on matters of temporal government.
A last step remained to be taken; and this was the most
important; for who is ignorant that in ancient times Gene
ral Councils had been universally and even at Rome re
garded as possessed of supreme authority in the Church,
and that Popes denounced by them as heretics — the Pope
Honorius, for instance — had been by their own successors
formally acknowledged and anathematized as such ? With
what face, then, could the Papal authority pretend to the
supremacy and to infallibility'! This difficulty did not

26 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
stop the wily counsellors of Pius IX. " The Oecumenical
Councils," you say, " are superior to the Pope ; represent
ing the entire Church, they alone can assume the privilege
of being exempt from error." But if an CEcumenical Council
were itself to declare its authority inferior to that of the
Pope, what would be the pretensions of future Councils
against this decision? Now to arrive at this result all the
batteries were during a long time prepared. For ten years
provincial councils, opened in different cities under the
orders of Rome, had uttered declarations favourable to
Papal infallibility. These declarations were carefully col
lected to serve when the occasion came. At length it was
thought that men's minds were well prepared, and that in
the first sittings of the projected Oecumenical Council the
dogma would be voted by acclamation. Any way, the
Council was convened in Rome ; delegates from princes
were to take no part in it ; votes were to be taken not by
nation, but by head ; and on the supposition that a certain
number of bishops should shew themselves unfavourable
to the Pope's designs, supposing that the Pope could not
purchase their support, or at least their silence, by the
Cardinal's Red Hat and places of all kinds that he had
at his disposal, still he had at his service the one hundred
and thirty Italian bishops, then that crowd of servile
priests that he had rewarded beforehand by making them
bishops in partibus (infldelium), and that other crowd
of general or apostolic vicars to whom he had assigned
fictitious episcopal sees in schismatic or Protestant coun
tries, all of whom, as well as the preceding ones, had a
right to vote in the Council. Finally, to keep adversaries
without and within in a state of submission, to prevent all
risings, the Pope, happily for him, had in Rome a good
number of French bayonets. But despatch was necessary,

CATHOLICISM. 27
for a war with Prussia was at hand (this was known to
none better than to those who had advised it) ; France
might be compelled to withdraw its troops, and to turn to
account the presumed happy issue of that war ; nothing
could be more useful to the Catholic Church than a patent
of infallibility delivered to its Head.
Consequently, on the 8th of December the Council,
convened eighteen months before, was opened. The event
proved that at least in what concerned it the measures
were well taken. If the opposition of some deputies from
Germany and Hungary was more ardent, more tenacious
than had been expected, it failed to effect, before the com
pact vote of that multitude of pretended bishops convoked
from all the ends of the earth, and who, subsidized in
Rome, pliantly voted in agreement with the wishes of the
Pope, and by their clamours drowned the voices of the
independent prelates. Finally, Pius IX., whose impa
tience was more and more visible, obtained (1870) the
decree which recognized in him, as well as in his suc
cessors, " the right to pronounce ex cathedra infallible
decrees on every question concerning faith and morals."
Four days after this memorable decision, the long ex
pected war broke out. But instead of the victories on
which the Pope reckoned for gathering the fruits of his
triumph in the Vatican, a continuation of unparalleled
reverses, and as their sequel the exile, the captivity, the
dethronement, struck blow after blow the Monarch, his
protector ; and then in Paris, not yet recovered from the
effects of a long siege, unbridled anarchy displayed its
furies in pillage, massacre, conflagration, and chose its
principal victims in the clergy.
And now, thus soon after those disasters which it mainly
contributed to bring on France, what is the attitude of the

28 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
Ultramontane party 1 What lessons has it gathered from
those heaps of ashes and ruins ? Who would believe it 1
Never were those pretensions more haughty, its blindness
more complete. At the moment when France, despoiled
of two rich provinces, exhausted of men and money, needs
for herself all her remaining resources, she is pressed, she
is in some way summoned, to arm afresh in order to restore
the Papal throne. More than ever she has experienced
to what an extent the intelligence, the culture, the civil
courage, the sound and manly faith of its children, are
necessary to her ; and it is by replacing public instruc
tion in the hands of those who hitherto have only de
graded minds and patronized ignorance, it is by feeding
the people on degrading superstitions, by parading them
selves in pilgrimages to Lourdes and Paray-le-Monial, by
voting thousands for an expiatory chapel to the Sacred
Heart, that statesmen have pretended to labour for the
safety of France, and prelates for the revival of religion !

PROTESTANTISM.

The circumstances which, at the beginning of this
century, took the Catholic nations back to their ancient
religious traditions, were too grave and too general not to
call forth among Protestants, under different forms, a move
ment of a similar nature. Here also the void which the
negations of philosophy had left in men's souls, the im
pression of horror caused by the crimes of the revolution,
of which it was accounted an accomplice, the long and
sanguinary wars, and all the calamities that ensued, in
stinctively led men to religious thoughts. Everywhere a

PROTESTANTISM. 29
cry was heard which said, "We must break with the
eighteenth century." It was specially needful to heal the
wounds which it had inflicted on religion, to return to
that God which the world had forgotten, and whose aveng
ing hand lay heavy on them. In England, the return
was sudden. The elevated classes which, in the preceding
century, had the first given the tone of scepticism or in
difference, were the first to return to Christian senti
ments and habits. It is during the dark days of the
French republic, and those which followed the execution
of Louis XVI., when war broke out between the two
countries, that the principal pious foundations which still
subsist in England have their date. In Germany, in 1799,
Schleiermacher addressed to the instructed classes his cele
brated " Discourses on Religion," the influence of which
made itself specially felt during the War of Independence.
" It was," says Gieseler, "understood how much the aban
donment of religious and patriotic sentiments had contri
buted to the debasement and enslavement of the country;
afterwards, in the great events which brought the fall of
the despot and the emancipation of Germany, men saw the
in some sort immediate action of God in the events of
the world. Thus the religious sentiment was powerfully
awakened, and spread itself in expressions of repentance
and gratitude. " God and our Country !" These two words,
henceforth closely bound together, echoed throughout Ger
many. At the same time, M. Necker, his daughter, Ma
dame de Stael, Sismondi, pleaded in France and Switzer
land, as did Schleiermacher in Germany, the cause of re
ligious revival ; in the same spirit Benjamin Constant
finished his great work on religion, which he had com
menced at the age of eighteen under the influence of the
Encyclopedic school. On all sides there was a concurrence

30 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
of efforts to support and to fecundate in men's hearts the
rising and growing piety. The more they returned from a
distance to their cradle, the more men enjoyed the happi
ness of the change, and the more, by the communicative
expansion of their sentiments, they sought to make them
durable in themselves and contagious for their brethren,
We have seen that in Catholic lands the religious orders
shewed themselves specially active for the revival of piety.
In Protestant countries, for similar reasons, it was the
dissident bodies, less shackled in their movements than
the Churches united to the State, that lent themselves
most easily to the new circumstances to which the revolu
tions had given rise. Unions more intimate and frequent,
expressions of sentiment more earnest and copious, means
of edification more energetic and more varied, and by that
better suited to the divers wants of the masses whom
it was wished to gain, could be put in action by inde
pendent associations. Thus was it early that you saw at work
religious agents — Moravians, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists,
and even Swedenborgians — pursuing with new ardour the
awakening of piety, not only in lands where they had origi
nated, but in all Christian communions. Near the end of
Napoleon's reign, certain small communities, founded in
Switzerland and in France by Zinzendorf, were re-organized
(1810). From the peace of 18.15, a crowd of agents, English
and Scotch, Calvinists for the most part, supported by the
new Society of " Continental Missions," went forth into
the countries which henceforward were open to them.
Their views were directed especially toward France. Their
object was to unfold, and set up there under the banner of
religion, the influence of England, and to destroy, as far as
possible, the evil germs left by the revolution. For this
purpose it was necessary to commence operations in the

PROTESTANTISM. 31
cities where were educated ministers intended to serve the
churches of France. Such places were Montauban, Geneva,
Lausanne, Strasburg. Owing to the large resources they
had at their disposal, those missionaries soon eclipsed the
pietistic or Moravian agents by whom they had been pre
ceded, and who, not without a certain bitterness, now
claim priority in the work of revival. A young theo
logian who had (1816) raised his head proudly against
the emissaries of Madame Krudener, did not resist the
superior ascendancy of the British propagandism. By
means of the ecclesiastics and laymen which those agents
of diverse societies succeeded in enrolling, were founded
schools and chapels, in which they introduced their own
means of edification.
Their efforts, when they were directed in the spirit
which had animated Spener, Franke, Spangenberg, Penn,
Wesley, and when they met with the impulses of en
lightened piety in the populations on which they operated,
could not fail to fecundate it by the importation of new
methods of evangelization, and thus to become, for the
constituted churches, a salutary example, and even by
rivalry a beneficial stimulant. The same results ensued
when those dissidents, fixing themselves in districts where
instruction was less common, found in their proselytes
diseased or misdirected imaginations, unquiet or fiery tem
peraments, such as are produced by the critical times
• through which Europe had passed. In itself nothing more
agreeable to the genius of Protestantism than to endeavour,
as did several of those congregations, to approach as nearly
as possible to the beliefs, the forms of worship, the rules of
discipline, which belonged to the primitive church. It is
certainly not this which we term retrograde Christianity.
Would that all Protestants had retrograded so far — yea,

32 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
farther still — so as to find themselves in intimate com
munion with Jesus ! But from not knowing and under
standing well the institutions of the primitive Church, and
not discerning to what point they were applicable to the
present day, several committed mistakes which now led to
ridicule, and now called forth legitimate blame. Seeing,
not without some grounds, in the Established Churches,
unions in which there was little or no Christian edifica
tion, in their members worldlings, if not heathen and
impious, such as those in face of whom the first Christians
found themselves, certain dissidents made separation the
most exclusive a duty, which extended from ecclesiastical
to private relations, and disregarded the claims of friend
ship and kindred. This separatism shewed itself specially
violent in the pietists of Wiirtemberg. After having en
gendered there a thousand troubles, it grew calm only after
the foundation of the colony of Kornthal (1818), and by
the emigration of the most fanatical of them, who with
drew, some into Southern Russia, the rest into America,
where, duped and used by hypocritical leaders, they had
severe trials to undergo. The same separatism, placing
them beyond the supervision of other Christian communi
ties, favoured in certain dissidents all kinds of grotesque
eccentricities. Among some of these pietists, disciples of
Michael Hahn, there was a dark asceticism which made
celibacy a law ; among others, instructed by Pregitzer, there
was an assurance of salvation, which, filling them with*
foolish joy, made them sing their hymns to dancing tunes.
Methodism had its "Shakers," "Ranters," "Dancers;"
its followers of Anna Lee, with child of a new Messiah ;
its "New Israelites," who believed it their duty to ob
serve the Jewish Sabbath ; finally, its " Protracted Meet
ings," its noisy " Revivals," imitated from those of America,

PROTESTANTISM. 33
which thence propagated themselves into England, Ireland,
and even the Continent, with their ordinary accompani
ment of groans, sobs, convulsions, which did not always
leave after them signs of durable conversion.
The discipline of the primitive Church was also one of
the features which the dissidents, especially those that pro
ceeded from the Moravians, wished to appropriate. But
in the degree in which each community extended, that
discipline, severely required by these, appeared to those
difficult to maintain. There ensued violent disputes, which
were soon complicated by theological diversities, sometimes
also by struggles of self-love or even interest, and which
made of their dissidence a sight little edifying for those
who were without.
The first Christians, applying to themselves certain de
clarations of the prophets, represented themselves as speak
ing and acting under the special direction of the Holy
Spirit — an application which did not prevent them from
humbly acknowledging their imperfections, any more than
from accepting the directions of the more enlightened guides
which the Church placed at its head. The sectaries of our
age, without always using the same modesty, assumed the
same privilege. The Holy Spirit, they gave out, directed
all their determinations, and infallibly dictated t6 them
what on all occasions they were to believe, to say, to do.
Of what use in future, with the true disciple, are reflection
and science 1 Of what use in the Church the charges which
were obtained by thorough instruction and varied culture ?
The sole gifts of fhe Holy Spirit (so was it declared at Ply
mouth, in Geneva, in Lausanne, and by the disciples of
John Darby) conferred the right to explain the Scripture.
The establishment of charges in the Church originated
its degeneration and apostasy. Until the day when the

34 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
children of God, now scattered abroad, should he received
and united in celestial glory, the absence of government
was the sole government that suited the Church ; every
ecclesiastical community ought to be dissolved ; in future
there ought to be only assemblies in which each has the
right to speak and act according to the gifts he has re
ceived. The first Christians, before the books of the New
Testament were collected, sought in those of the ancient
prophets the prefiguration of the facts of which they were
the witnesses, the precurrent signs of the approach of the
last days, of the advent of Antichrist, of the glorious coming
of the Saviour by which it was to be followed, of his
reign of a thousand years on the renovated earth, of the
resurrection of the dead, and the final judgment. These
grand pictures of the future, which animated the first
Christians in their combat of faith, ought, they said, to
be constantly present in the meditation of the members of
the Church. Accordingly, in certain Protestant conven
ticles of our age, the explanation of the Apocalypse and
of prophets of the Old Testament occupied the principal
place. With the aid of a varied supply of allegories, the
inspired Bengel, Darby, Cumming, had not much difficulty
in finding allusions to contemporaneous events, and spe
cially to those which were held to announce the end of the
actual economy. Scarcely is there a year of this century
which was not indicated by some preacher as to be the
last, and in which some credulous sectaries, such as the
adherents of Miller in America, did not make preparations
for going forth to meet the Lord. What reason, then, is
there for astonishment that these fancies suggested to Joe
Smith the idea of making them the auxiliary of his exodus;
that among the members of these conventicles, always on
the look-out for news of the Millennium, " the Latter-Day

PROTESTANTISM. 35
Saints " found, and still find, believers who, on the faith
of the Mormon Bible, are ready to emigrate for the
new American Zion, and young women not unwilling to go
to people their harems 1 Little, under these circumstances,
was wanting for the evocation of spirits by means of turning
and talking tables becoming a new snare to credulity.
Even the miraculous gifts of the early days of the
Church were attempted to be renewed in the early days of
this revival. Numerous visionaries, of whom Jung Stilling
may he considered the first, asserted that they possessed
the power to heal bodily disease by prayer. Irving, the
renowned preacher of the Caledonian chapel in London,
long implored the gifts of the Holy Spirit for his Church,
persuaded that the lack of faith alone prevented disciples
from obtaining them. Finally, he had the consolation
(1832) of learning that among his disciples in Glasgow
there re-appeared the gift of tongues and prophecies, that
at his voice young women fell into ecstacy, and in their
ravishments seemed to renew the prodigies of the first
Pentecost. The Montanist prophetesses of the second
century would have furnished a more exact comparison.
But what shall we say of the depravation of religious
ideas which manifested itself in certain sects issued from
pietism, say among the Loesare (Readers) of Sweden
(1803), and in the case of that Saxon visionary, whose
fanaticism, over excited by some pages of the Bible
indiscreetly commented, found its expression in suicide
(1846) ? What shall we say of those Inspired Seers of
Germany, disciples of Schonherr and of Stephan, who in
their chapels in Dresden and Konigsburg renewed the
scandals of the Butlerian faction (1830-40); of those
Antonians, of those Michelians of the Canton of Berne,
who reproduced those of the brothers Kohler? What,
d2

36 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
finally, shall we say of the fearful wanderings into which
a young peasant girl fell (1823) in the Canton of Zurich,
whose spiritual pride, it is said, was intoxicated by the
flatteries of Madame Krudener ? Certainly nothing could
be more unjust, or rather nothing more absurd, than to
judge from such examples the persons who were most pro
minent in the religious revival of our time. These were
only sad exceptions, well fitted to illustrate the fact how
dangerous it is for the religious sentiment to repel the
indispensable guidance of reason and conscience, and how
liable to perversion are religious manifestations beyond
the control of publicity. While excellent friends of the
revival laboured by a more attentive reading of the sacred
books, by more animated and impressive preaching, by
reforming sacred song, by the dissemination of religious
tracts — in a word, by new means of edification, to re-ani
mate piety among Protestants, some theologians thought
they should attain the same object by a strict return to
the doctrines consigned in the old symbols of the Refor
mation, from which the churches and the national clergies
had insensibly deviated. In the eighteenth century, and
at the commencement of this, Protestant orthodoxy had
itself felt the necessity of softening its asperities and of
accommodating itself, both by concessions and by discreet
reticences, to the exigencies of a period when philosophy
was still in credit. In the new state of public thought,
orthodoxy thought it could shew more self-confidence.
Simple minds, urged to renew their bonds with Heaven,
accepted without too much examination the doctrines of
ancient date, which, by the fact that they were ancient,
affirmed themselves with more authority. Many theolo
gians, also, after the great shipwreck in which the faith of
nations had appeared ready to sink, thought they could

PROTESTANTISM. 37
not ascend too high the current which had carried it away,
or fix it on too solid moorings.
In this dogmatic retrogradation they found for auxiliaries
the chief dissident bodies who, while separating from the
old Churches, had not abjured the creeds of the Reforma
tion, and even took credit for throwing certain forms of
religious opinion into relief. Dogmatic fidelity, as it was
called, was then the common ground on which the national
and dissident orthodox believers threw up their batteries
in common. The word of command was to rally and
strengthen everywhere the adherents of the ancient theo
logy, to procure for it new supporters among the clergy,
to enrol under that banner, to patronize, and, when neces
sary, to subsidize, young theologians able to defend it, to
form associations in which the old doctrine should be
regularly preached and taught, in the hope that it would
resume the upper hand in the national Churches them
selves. Thus organized, thus favoured by the spirit of the
moment, the dogmatic reaction declared itself, with more
or less force, in all the communities that had issued from
the Reformation. If the hierarchy of the middle ages,
with its privileges and omnipotence, was the ideal pro
posed to the Catholic peoples, the theology of the sixteenth
century, such specially as it was when stereotyped after the
days of the first Reformers, was the ideal set before the
Protestant nations. All the pretended progress, they said,
accomplished from that date, all the systems advanced in
the name of superior reason or a more exact acquaintance
with the sacred books, were only a deplorable deviation
from the truth; all the objections against the articles
reported fundamental ought to be accounted of no value ;
in the sixteenth century the immovable basis of the evan
gelical faith had been laid. Apart from that, it was

38 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
affirmed, on the authority of certain jurists, there was no
legal existence for any Protestant community, no certain
marks by which the restored governments might recognize
the Churches authorized to treat with them. Not only,
then, absolute submission to all the teachings of the Bible
ought to be vigorously exacted, but the sense of its words
should be firmly observed which the old Protestant symbols
authorized. Such was the law laid down at the anniversary of the
Reformation in Germany (1817) by the fiery preacher
Klaus Harms, when in his ninety-five theses, as if he were
a second Luther, he gave his age a severe lesson, launched
out against the papacy of reason, taxed the German people
with apostasy, and summoned his colleagues to hasten
back to the doctrines of the great Reformer. Gruntvig, in
Denmark, held the same language (1826). Similar was
the claim made by the Evangelical party in England for
the Thirty-nine Articles ; in Scotland, by " the moderates,"
for the Confession of Calvin ; in France, by " the Archives
of Christianity" (1824), fo: the Confession of LaRochelle;
in Holland, by " the classes of Amsterdam" (1819), for the
Belgian Confession and the articles of Dort; in Geneva, by
two or three pastors who, in re-editing the second Helvetic
Confession, demanded that, recently re-united to Switzer
land, Geneva should afresh submit its Church to the
authority of that symbol Moreover, they added, in pro
posing it for signature to the members of the pastoral body,
there was no attempt to constrain conscience ; it was not
said to them, Believe ; but, Do you believe 1 Only (which
was kept in the back-ground) in case of a negative reply,
total or partial, the ecclesiastic best qualified for his func
tions would have to resign, except he preferred being
deposed.

PROTESTANTISM. 39
While awaiting the re-establishment of these different
symbols, their advocates denounced in terms, the violence
and injustice of which were blamed by more than one
partizan of the old beliefs, the Churches which tolerated
another tone of preaching ; against them foreign Churches
were stirred up ; by their side there were founded sepa
rate schools and chapels, as so many batteries of assault
against their influence. Against such attacks true science,
united with enlightened zeal, furnished the surest weapons.
It was necessary to frankly accept the struggle on the
ground on which it was offered. Far from treating as
indifferent for faith the questions made the order of the
day, it was necessary to discuss them with calmness, but
with all gravity ; to oppose to the declarations of the
retrogradists a fundamental examination of their doctrines,
and an instructive history of those symbols in which so
much Roman tradition was mixed with Evangelical teaching.
It was necessary, with the aid of a wise exegesis, to combat
that unintelligent literalism, which, applying to the ques
tions of the day apostolic words having no relation to
them, transformed into slavish doctrines, doctrines of eman
cipation. It was also necessary, with the aid of a sound
criticism, to define the real authority of the Bible ; to un
mask that doctrine of plenary inspiration which shewed
itself so respectful toward it only to elude or to twist the
clearest texts ; to execute justice on all those petty papacies
which installed themselves under the shelter of its infal
lible authority ; moreover, to leave to those who had been
thus refuted full liberty of discussion ; to impose no obstacle
to their meetings, their discourses, their publications ; rely.
ing on its own solid right and on the power of truth frankly
professed. But disciplinary measures are a weapon more
convenient in appearance, the employment of which eccle-

40 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
siastical bodies renounce with difficulty. In Geneva, the
fear of schism caused young theologians to be forbidden to
attend separatist assemblies (1813), and limited for all
parties the discussion in the pulpit of controverted subjects
(1817). These regulations, which were properly abolished
afterwards, although less tyrannical than the re-establish
ment of the Confessions of Faith would have been, were
specially less so than the measures of coercion decreed by
the State against nonconforming assemblies. In Prussia,
in Scandinavia, in Wiirtemburg, in divers cantons of Swit
zerland, where those measures were particularly rigorous,
far from producing the intended effect, they only gave
more strength and vigour to dissent. Meetings dissolved
by force had only greater attraction for souls agitated by
religious wants. Even benignant steps easily passed for
persecution. Deposed ministers, if only on account of the
noise they made, obtained over the minds of laymen credit
all the greater, the stronger their convictions appeared, the
more austere their piety, and their repute of having suf
fered for the truth.
Then, in the degree in which the democratic tendencies
of our age became more decided, when the radical or
socialist publications, the increase of secret societies, finally
fresh revolutions, came to threaten social superiorities —
first the governments, then the privileged classes, afterwards
the opulent, finally simple citizens — in a word, all that
had anything to lose, any position to preserve, took into
favour, even without personally adhering to them, doctrines
which were presented to them as the sole guarantees of
social order. It was not only in the Catholic world that
the terrors of the powerful and the fortunate of the age
were turned to account on behalf of the dogmas of the
past. According to Klaus Harms, Bilderdyck, Hengsten-

PROTESTANTISM. 41
berg, Stahl, Krummacher, and many others, it was the
moment when orthodox dogmas had been shaken, when
the individual judgment took to controlling the articles of
belief, that the spirit of subordination had disappeared,
and the covetous and factious passions were unchained.
What theology was capable of arresting their career, and
in bringing back the disowned authority, if not that which
imposes silence on reason, and humiliates human pride
before an infallible word 1
Not only by thus courting wealth and power, but at
Geneva, for example, by courting the revolution when it
could serve to demolish a rival church or school, did retro
grade orthodoxy pursue its way. Certain ecclesiastical foun
dations which might tempt the people were pointed out to
its eye (1847), or, under the veil of the anonymous, bor
rowing the democratic phraseology, " the free constitution
of the religious republic" was claimed by setting in oppo
sition what was called " The People's Church" to " The
Church of the Clergy;" intending at a later day to pacify
allies alarmed- at such maxims by explaining that the
believing people were meant, and by flattering afresh con
servative interests in the statement that Church questions
were but secondary to "the great dogmas on the main
tenance of which depended personal safety and the safety
of families and states." Many people allowed themselves
to be taken by this language. Here is a prince who seri
ously thought that he strengthened his throne by calling
the eulogists of the past to ecclesiastical and even civil
dignities. Religious doctrines were no longer judged
according to their intrinsic truth, but their momentary
utility, their political or social convenience. "The Pope
is infallible," said Joseph de Maistre, " for it is necessary
to society that he should be so." Certain Protestants fol-

42 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
lowed the example to demonstrate the infallibility of the
whole contents of the Bible. Here is an individual whom
the revolutions had set aside from public functions, called
to an active part in the religious world, acted there under
the sole assumption of the need of authority, and without
ever thoroughly examining, if he examined at all, the
doctrines under discussion, believed that by asserting these
and scorning those, by denying the spirit of free inquiry,
and by encouraging with his credit or his purse the exclu
sive profession of the old dogmas, he contributed to arrest
the tumultuous movement of the age. " Reaction of had
alloy," observes M. de Remusat, "inspired by fear or by
interest, residing in the head and not in the heart, and
which sinks none of the preceding worldliness." " World-
liness'returned !" exclaimed Vinet in the same sense. As
early as 1820 and 1821, seditions rendered the progressive
doctrines suspected by the Protestant governments. The
Revolution of 1830, its reverberations which it had in
Switzerland and in the rest of Europe, the socialist move
ments with which it was accompanied, in alarming the
higher class of citizens, increased the influence of orthodoxy.
The same year (1831) which saw so many new monastic
institutions founded in Bavaria and elsewhere, saw evan
gelical societies founded at Geneva and Paris, from one of
which proceeded a new school of theology which took for
programme an entire conformity with the Helvetic Con
fession. In 1835 arose the central Society of Bordeaux,
directed in the same spirit ; in 1842, that of " the General
Interests of French, Protestantism," which, if the con
sistories had agreed, would have charged itself with pro
moting its influence under the direction of an exclusively
orthodox committee. It became fashionable to take part
in the new movement of minds.

PROTESTANTISM. 43
This aristocratic position of the new revival, as it was
called, at Geneva, in the Evangelical assembly of 1861,
this new direction of opinion in the elevated or opulent
classes, a direction soon followed by those who for divers
reasons desired to draw near to them, then by the dependent
classes who sought their patronage, could not fail to find
favour among the national clergy, who at first had shewn
themselves less disposed to them. It was felt desirable to
put a stop to this increasing desertion by unfolding a flag
which should everywhere regain favour, to take part in
the retrograde movement which could not be arrested, and
which had high influences on its side. Not content then
to remove (that which was only justice for all) the hin
drances previously put in the way of dissident assemblies
and preaching, they imposed on themselves obstacles, sus
picion was thrown on inquiry and science, and the status
quo was decreed. Henceforth it was against the friends of
progress that distrust was turned ; then came a struggle
with the partizans of the past in rigour and dogmatic
intolerance. "All the Bible and nothing but the Bible"
became the cry, together with the advocacy of plenary in
spiration. Candidates, whose blind docility guaranteed
security, were put forward for the ecclesiastical ministry,
while others were turned aside by engagements which
excluded all liberty of thought. Wherever it was safe,
the confessions of faith were re-established; otherwheres the
same end was sought, now by examinations of conscience,
now by official catechisms, now by liturgies dressed up in
an orthodox sense, the textual reading of which was made
obligatory, by giving to them that value of personal decla
rations of faith which they had not before. From Pietism
and Methodism they borrowed their dogmatic hymnology.
" The Evangelical Alliance," imported from England and

44 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
Scotland, served to league the orthodox and national dis
sidents against the progressive theologians.
In France particularly, as a consequence of the events
of 1848, advantage was taken of the emotion caused by
daring publications to bring against old pastors, who had
expressly combatted the principles, accusations of heresy,
which were followed by depositions ; to others, chairs, to
which they had full right, were refused ; while to others
again, assistant ministers were refused, though made neces
sary by protracted services. Finally, in the re-establish
ment of the old synodal government of the Churches of
France, a means was found of keeping out of the ministry
candidates imbued with the principles of the modern theo
logy. In the first session, opened in June, 1872, the
orthodox majority, after having in a declaration histori
cally expressed what it held to be " the actual faith of the
Church," was not long in transforming it into a confession
of faith, to be required, before induction, from every candi
date for the ministry; moreover, it added to the electoral
conditions fixed by the law a dogmatic profession ; and in
its haste to apply these measures, it demanded from the
Government the ratification of them without delay, inde
pendently of the other resolutions of the synod. Supposing-
the immediate object that orthodoxy proposed attained by
these acts, the future will teach how far they will contri
bute to raise the pastoral character and influence, and to
unite and vivify the Reformed Church of France.
In Germany, also, the spirit of free inquiry was an
object of active hostility. " The Evangelical Gazette " of
Berlin, founded under the auspices of the feudal party,
ceaselessly harassed, as suspected in both a political
and religious point of view, all theologians inculpated of
rationalism. Wegscheider and Gesenius, the first de-

PROTESTANTISM. 45
nounced, would not have preserved their academical posts
at Halle but for the equitable intervention of Neander.
Many others, including Schleiermacher himself, were ex
posed to the same attacks. The furious Gazette solicited
and welcomed from all parts of the Protestant world similar
denunciations, without even avoiding the meanness of ano
nymous communications. The popularity gained by Dr.
Strauss, and by the appearance of the party styled " the
Annalists of Halle," was cleverly worked against inde
pendent theologians. The reign of Frederic William IV.
especially opened a full career to the zeal of informers.
Under that pusillanimous prince, who took revenge on re
ligious liberalism for the anxieties caused to him by the re
volution of 1849, a troublesome oppression weighed on con
sciences. Without a profession of orthodoxy, attested when
required by a dogmatical examination before the Minister of
Worship, there was no means of getting possession of any
ecclesiastical and academic chair. Young theologians, ambi
tious of success, crowded to the lectures of Hengstenherg ;
while aged pastors were rudely set aside for having pro
tested against the anathemas of the Athanasian Creed,
refused to exorcise in baptism, or uttered doubts on some
miracle of the Bible. It was the time when the names
dearest to Germany, those of Herder, Kant, Lessing, Schiller,
Humboldt, were disgraced in the name of sound doctrine ;
when the jurist Stahl, armed with his theory of "the
Christian State," outlawed whoever did not adopt the
dogmas in credit at Court; and when the most faithful
friends of the Monarch complained of "the hypocritical
obscuration which, proceeding from the Cabinet of his
Ministers, invaded the whole of Prussia."
But the return to the dogmas professed in common by
the old Protestant parties no longer sufficed for the rigid

46 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
Lutherans ; Luther himself — the Luther of Worms, of the
Wartburg — was not orthodox in their eyes. They must
have the Luther of 1525 worried to death by the Sacra-
mentists, who retained in their worship the most of the
Catholic elements they could, and for whom the Real Pre
sence of the Body of Christ in the Supper had become a
fundamental article of religion. With these strict Lutherans,
Zwingli was not more than an unbeliever, whose " doc
trine," said Stahl, " went to the entire annihilation of
Christianity." As early as 1817, when the King of
Prussia, by measures somewhat precipitate, wished to unite
the two Protestant communions of his realm, they violently
opposed the project. They profited by the reaction of
1849 to fortify their position in face of the Reformed
Churches, as well as of those in which the union had been
effected, and to secure the domination of their party wher
ever they could. The "Evangelical Gazette" of Berlin
itself, abjuring its old sympathies, characterized as apostasy
the appeal of Calvinist theologians to the Evangelical
Assembly of 1857. In the provinces where the union
was rejected, Saxony, Bavaria, especially Hanover and
Mecklenburg, Lutheranism assumed more decided forms.
A return was openly made to the formulas of the sixteenth
and seventeeth centuries. What were called " the faithful
pastors," as in our days the bishops of Germany, became
the supreme judges of the teaching of the universities.
In dogma and in worship, the points on which Lutheranism
distinguished itself most from the other Protestant con
fessions, were those which they undertook to throw most
into prominence. With those " Hyperlutherians," every
thing was referred to the Church, to the visible Church,
recruited by baptism. Christianity was nothing without
that Church; nothing without the sacraments, invested

PROTESTANTISM. 47
with a kind of magical virtue ; nothing, consequently,
without the priesthood, who, drawing its privileges from
the rite of ordination, alone gave the sacraments their effi
cacy, conferred the Holy Spirit by confirmation, the for
giveness of sins by the absolution pronounced at the sacred
table. In divine service, preaching was but an accessory;
the altar was set up at the cost of the pulpit ; even in
Berlin, and in the churches of the nobility, purely litur
gical services were instituted, in which the psalms were
chanted on the knees. The holy Supper, almost assimi
lated to the Mass, might be celebrated without attendants.
In short, approximations, ever increasing, were made to
Catholic forms and tendencies. Neither Hengstenberg,
nor Leo, nor Stahl, nor the Court itself, any longer dis
guised the sympathies by which they were drawn in that
direction. In concert with the Ultramontanes, they pro
tested against lay instruction and civil marriage. There
was in Erfurt an assembly in which was expressed a desire
that "the Protestants and the Roman Catholics should
give each other their hand as a pledge that they would
withstand the revolution and anti-Christianity ;" so eager
were they to strengthen society in its bases by planting in
Protestantism itself the absolute principle of authority. The
Syllabus, proclaimed at Rome, and immediately turned to
account by the enemies of Germanic unity, came at the right
moment to arrest on that incline the Protestant Church of
Germany, and to discover to it the abyss whither it was
being led.
In the Anglican Church, by the very fact of its origin
and of its primitive institutions, the movement of hierar
chical and ritualistic restoration was destined to be more
precocious and specially more tenacious. Queen Elizabeth,
in maintaining the Thirty-nine Articles drawn up under

48 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
Edward VI., had preserved all the Catholic forms of
government and worship that she could. The co-existence
of elements so disparate had not delayed to give birth in
the Anglican Church to two parties, of which one, attached
to the confession of faith, inclined in consequence to
Puritanism ; while the other, attached to the liturgy and
episcopal authority, made the Roman Catholic element
predominate in Anglicanism. Nevertheless, united under
the common law of the State, they insensibly approached
to, if they did not blend with, each other. The retrograde
movement of our age, in carrying each of the parties hack
to its point of departure, made their contrasts come forth
afresh. While the first, known under the name of " the
Evangelical party," made it its aim to revive the rigour of
the dogmas of Calvin, — the second, insisting on the value
of tradition, revived the credit of the study of the ancient
Fathers, and that of ecclesiastical archaeology, while it
specially laboured to restore to public worship its attrac
tions by perfecting music and sacred architecture. Its
efforts, still imprinted with wisdom and moderation, as
sumed from the date of the parliamentary ecclesiastical
decrees of 1833, a direction more determinate and less
pacific. When it saw that, with the aid of the Evangelical party
and with that of the Dissenters recently admitted into
Parliament, the moiety of the bishops was suppressed in
Ireland, changes were proposed in t the Liturgy, and other
more decisive measures announced in the future, it seriously
took alarm. Grouped around Drs. Pusey and Newman,
two distinguished Professors of the University of Oxford,
it resolved to enlighten the English public on the dangers
which threatened the Church, and to throw into relief the
principles and institutions which served as its foundation.

PROTESTANTISM. 49
This was the object of ninety essays which appeared under
the title of " Tracts for the Times" (1833-4). The incom
petence of the civil government in ecclesiastical matters ;
the authority of ancient Tradition maintained by the side
of that of Scripture ; the Liturgy, which was its expres
sion, an indispensable element, consequently, for the ex
planation of the Thirty-nine Articles; divine grace attached
to the sacraments; their exclusive administration by a
priesthood which could prove its legitimate succession from
the apostles ; the regenerative virtue of baptism ; the body
and blood of Christ really present in the Supper, and
offered to God by the priests as a sacrifice of reconciliation ;
the obligatory observance of the saints' days ; that of fast
ing on Friday ; frequent communion ; finally, of all the
ancient rites that had been allowed to fall into disuse —
such were the principles on which the " Puseyite " party
insisted in those Tracts, whence it took the name of " Trac-
tarian." In advancing so far in the Catholic direction,
consistent minds felt it difficult not to proceed to the end.
Pusey, it is true, stopped in time; butNewman (1843) took
the final step, drawing after him, by the prestige of Catholic
authority and pomp, several hundred of his disciples,
students in Oxford, members of the clergy, nobles of En
gland and Scotland. The scandal caused by these defec
tions, and certain equivocal declarations which were added
thereto, stopped the progress of Catholicism for a moment,
but without delaying the advance of moderate Ritualism
or " Puseyism." The latter, it is said, counts to-day among
its followers nearly a third of the members of the Anglican
clergy, who, flattering the taste of a certain part of the
flock, re-introduced emulously into their parishes, wax
candles, holy water, the crucifix, the elevation of the Host,
public processions, penance, spiritual direction, and even

50 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
the claustral life, not without danger of inveiglements to
the detriment of opulent families. Is it solely for the love
of discipline that a petition of five hundred English eccle
siastics lately demanded (1873) the restoration of " auri
cular confession" in their parishes? Let us add that in
1865, by the organ of Dr. Pusey, an alliance was seri
ously proposed between the English Church, the Greek
Church, and the Latin Church, by the adoption of a
common ritual, liberty of monastic associations, and of the
institution of General Councils, under the presidency of
the Bishop of Rome. This programme of the Ritualist or
Anglo-Catholic party, which has been acceded to by most
of the bishops, the leader of the Evangelical party brought
before Parliament in a Bill supported by numerous peti
tions. Moreover, without proceeding to these extremes,
many Protestant doctors unconsciously allowed themselves
to be drawn on to the same descent. They seem to envy
the Roman clergy that which gives them so much empire
over souls, the right to confess, that of absolving, espe
cially that privilege of unquestionable authority which puts
away at once all objections, and, by allowing you to com
mand, removes the trouble of persuading and convincing.
Have we not finally seen certain "Evangelical Com
mittees,'' in drawing up their formularies, leave in the
shade dogmas characteristic of the Reformation, and in
preference put forward, in order to oppose Liberalism,
those which brought them near the Catholic faith, espe
cially that of the Trinity, as if all the Christian formulas
had become indifferent with them, provided they served
to close the way of progress ?
But nothing better attests the force of this retrograde
movement in the Christian communions of the West than
the attitude which it has made certain philosophical schools

PROTESTANTISM. 5 1
momentarily to assume. In the middle ages Philosophy
acknowledged itself the humble servant of Theology. In
our days, doubtless it has not gone so far back as that.
But we have seen several of those who down till then
cultivated it freely and according to their own impulses,
gradually incline their meditations, their methods, their
language, in the direction of what suited the favourite
ecclesiastical parties ; resuscitate to the benefit of religious
authority the philosophical scepticism of Huet and Pascal ;
count for nothing the arguments drawn from observa
tion and experience ; find everywhere antinomies which
weakened the legitimate deductions of reason ; refuse them
selves the right to believe in God on the natural proofs
which Paul adduces with confidence ; and, as philosophers
nevertheless could not decently deny the science which
they professed, adapt it at least to the taste of the day
by putting it at the service of a theology that had fallen
into the rear. You saw them, as the Neo-platonics of
old, puzzle their brains to find profound senses, meta
physical necessities for the most simple conceptions of
former ages; while others, to lead the religious public
to like systems the naked exposition of which would have1
caused scandal, clothe them in terms borrowed from the
accredited vocabulary. By this feature you will.recognize
the leaders of " the Speculative School " which reigned in
Germany in the first half of this century. Down to 1803,
Schelling, it is said, had not dreamt of comprising Chris
tianity in his system ; free from all religious pre-occupa-
tion, he had constructed his "Philosophy of Nature" ab
stractly. But his century, having become Christian again,
asks of him what he does with Christianity. Schelling
does not hesitate. Christ is " one of the evolutions of the
Deity, manifesting itself in humanity, as formerly He had
e 2

52 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
manifested Himself in nature, God appearing in the finite
to bring it back to the infinite, from which it had sepa
rated. Hegel follows in his master's footsteps. After speak
ing magnificently of religion, as of " the region in which
are resolved all the enigmas of life and the contradictions of
thought, and in which the gifts of sentiment are stilled,"
he unhesitatingly declares its identity with philosophy;
their common source, he says, is the God-man, the Word
made flesh. Then there appear in his system, as in that
of Schelling, all the dogmas dear to orthodoxy. The Trinity,
the incarnation of the Word, the fall of man, the origin of
physical and moral evil, the redemption, the miraculous
birth, death, the resurrection of the God-man, expiation
by his blood, occupied so large a place in speculative phi
losophy, that Lutheran orthodoxy thought itself returned
to the fine days of its domination, and congratulated itself
on finding, against the neologism-of the preceding cen
tury, auxiliaries so valuable. In truth, we must not look
too closely into the matter.. The words employed in common
had not the same sense on both sides. In explaining him
self on the Trinity, Schelling taught that " God — Father,
Son and Holy Spirit — was the absolute, the root and sub
stance of all things, objectivating itself in the world to
contemplate Himself there, and hence to acquire conscious
ness of Himself;" or, according to Hegel's definition, God
in Himself, God for Himself, God in and for Himself, re
turns in the Holy Spirit to His primitive identity. The
world, separated from the substance of God, found itself
lost ; that loss required a redemption, for which God must
make Himself man ; but this was an ideal incarnation, desig
nating the eternal union of humanity with divinity. God
born, suffering, rising again, were the successive phases of
the process or development of the absolute, the crises in

PROTESTANTISM. 53
the midst of which they were accomplished ; so that after
all there is no personal God, and for man no liberty, nor
personal immortality ; but solely the great whole, in which
beings that had only the appearance of individuality were
to lose themselves as drops of water in the ocean. In
short, the system was full of Pantheistic idealism ; but the
phraseology was orthodox, and that sufficed for a great
number of theologians : to speak their language was a
homage paid to their credit — a proof of the value that was
attached to their suffrage. Hegel, moreover, a conservative
in politics, had introduced into history a system of philo
sophic fatalism much relished by absolute governments of
the day. Whatever is, he said, has its reason for being,
and thereby is founded in right ; so that the existing
monarchies, as well as the theological symbols in vigour,
thought they had found in Hegel the most faithful ally.
There was a time when, in the Court of Prussia, they in
some sort swore only by him ; when by his influence he
appointed ministers of State, pastors for the Church, pro
fessors of theology in the Universities. We shall see other
wheres what became of this eccentric alliance between a
philosophy which consented to travesty itself in order to
escape from insulation, and a theology which accounted
that compliment an honour.
If we could follow the movements of the Russian Church,
as we have followed the movements of the Churches of the
West, we should, under the influence of the same political
crises, meet with general facts analogous in character ; a
period of revival promptly followed by a movement of
retrocession. Consternated by the capture of Moscow, which had put
the empire of the Czars within two inches of its ruin,
but soon reassured by the disastrous retreat of the French

54 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
army (1812), Alexander I. lent an ear to the pious exhor
tations of some Moravian sectaries, who had represented to
him these events as miraculously directed by Providence
and announced in sacred Scripture itself. "The con
flagration of Moscow," he said, "has thrown light into
my soul." One of his first acts was the foundation of
the Bible Society of Petersburg. The Russian court and
nobility shared his enthusiasm for that work. He took
under his protection the missionaries who evangelized the
Pagans and Moslems of his states. He took pains to ex
tend among his Christian subjects solid religious instruc
tion. Finally, to him and to his pietistic counsellors has
been ascribed the text of the celebrated treaty in which
the three allied Sovereigns, meeting in Paris after their
victory, undertook, in the name of the Holy Trinity, to
" take Christian teachings for the sole rule of their policy,
and in concert to govern their people as a single Christian
family." But soon a more selfish and worldly policy got
the upper hand in Petersburg, as well as in Vienna and
Berlin. The liberal ideas with which Alexander for some
time shewed himself imbued, when he knew that they
were propagated in the lodges of Freemasons, began to
appear to him threatening for his authority ; the Bible So
ciety, already little relished by the Russian clergy as an
importation from abroad, began to be less in favour with
the monarch himself; the popular movements of 1820-21
completed the dissipation of his illusions ; all his efforts,
as those of the sovereigns his allies, turned henceforwards
toward the suppression of the new ideas.
Nicholas I., his successor, still more opposed to every
thing that could compromise his repose and that of the
state (1825), signalized his reign by an absolute religious
reformation conformed to the exigencies of his policy. One

PROTESTANTISM. 55
sole faith, one sole nation, one sole monarch — these three
interests were identified in the mind of the Czar. The
strict union of the State with the Russian Church, the
exclusive preponderance of the latter became in his eyes
the firmest support of the national unity. The revival in
the beginning of the century had set the old sects in
movement, and they then counted about five millions of
adherents. The zeal of the Rascolnikes had revived under
the form of absolute separatism, which here and there was
not a little fierce. Nicholas resolved to subdue it at any
cost, forced the children of those sectaries to be baptized
by the priests, transported their parents by thousands into
the convents of Siberia or to the mountains of the Cau
casus, while the ecclesiastics and the civil functionaries of
the empire exercised on others a thousand extortions. On
the urgencies of his clergy, he suppressed the Bible So
ciety (1826) founded by Alexander, and sent away the
Bile missionaries who refused to introduce their proselytes
into the Greek communion. In the national church itself,
all progress of science, all movement of thought, coming
from the West, was an object of suspicion with him. Three
doctors in theology were all that existed in his dominions
in 1836. In a word, the Russian Church fell back into
the torpor whence Alexander I. had for a moment sought
to lift it. A new reign was necessary to call forth in it
any life.

56 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.

III.
RETURN OP THE CONFLICTS BETWEEN THE CIVIL AND THE
RELIGIOUS ORDERS.
A movement of religious restoration, such as that whose
history we have just sketched, by reviving in the eccle
siastical bodies old pretensions, old and ambitious hopes,
could not fail to raise between them and the governments
conflicts of authority more or less threatening to peace.
Of these we must now give an account. In Russia, in
truth, those conflicts were less to be feared than elsewhere.
On the part of married priests, whose interests, closely
allied with those of the nation, were protected by the
government as those of the nation itself, the civil order
did not run the risk of very dangerous collisions. In all
times the Greek clergy had docilely recognized the autho
rity of the Sovereign. The Czars, moreover, had main
tained order. In emancipating the Russian Church from
the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and then from that of
Moscow, they had subjected it to the Holy Synod, whose
members were for the most part appointed by them, and
presided over by an imperial officer ; they had also reserved
to themselves the choice of the bishops; they had restricted
the number and the privileges of the convents, subjected
to taxation ecclesiastical property, and reduced the clergy
to the rank of officers salaried by the State. On another
side, content to watch them from without in such a way
as to repress in them every act threatening their authority,
they avoided trespassing on the ecclesiastical domain
properly so called, interposed only in matters of mixed

CONFLICTS BETWEEN CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS ORDERS. 57
interest, took no part in those of worship, particularly in
those of dogma ; for them the orthodox creed of 1642 was
the sacred ark which they carefully abstained from touch
ing; their Czar-papacy, in a word, much less extreme, much
more discreet than that of the ancient Greek emperors,
revolted consciences less, and raised on the part of the
clergy much less opposition.
In the Catholic States, the mutual relations of the govern
ments and the clergy could not be of a nature so habitually
pacific. Placed by celibacy on the outside of civil society,
directed by other principles, pursuing other interests ; sub
ject to a chief in whom they say exists the representative
of God Himself ; finding, finally, in the past toward which
they saw themselves drawn, traditions which flattered their
ambition, they easily resumed their old attitude of domi
neering in regard to the State ; the more, in consequence,
the official bonds between the civil order and the religious
were tightened, the more did conflicts between them become
inevitable. Bonaparte and Pius VII. had the first experience in the
matter. Scarcely had the Concordat of 1801 been signed,
scarcely had the laudations of " the new Cyrus " (as he was
called) echoed in the churches of France and Italy, than
the discharge of shots was heard from one side and the
other. Pius VII. desired that the protection that resulted
from their alliance should extend to the Catholic worship
alone ; that marriage, considered as a sacrament, should be
valid only under the priest's benediction ; that divorce,
forbidden by the ecclesiastical law, should he equally for
bidden by the civil law ; that the relations of the French
clergy with their spiritual Head should be maintained abso
lutely free ; and that the supervision of public education
should be wholly theirs. The First Consul, on his part,

58 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
instructed by history and the advice of his lawyers of the
pretensions which an independent religious authority had
never failed to raise against the civil order, judged it
prudent to trace boundary-lines which they were not to go
beyond, even in the religious order. The articles of the
Concordat of 1801 were not published, except with the
complement of the organic articles of 1802, which declared
obligatory in the seminaries the teaching of the maxims
which secured what were called " the Gallican Liberties,"
maintained the right of appeal against abuses, made clerics
answerable for alleged misconduct to civil tribunals, re
quired the placet (or civil sanction) for the bulls of the
Pope and directions of the bishops, &c. All the protests
of Pius VII. were nugatory, all the hopes of modifications
which were held out to him as the price of his services
were disappointed. The Catechism of the Empire, sub
scribed by the minister of religion, placed in the first rank
of Christian duties, as a direct consequence of obedience
toward God, absolute obedience to the Empire. The
decree on the University, which gave to that body the
supreme direction of the public instruction, had for result
the nullification of the influence of the clergy in this
domain. Then soon came the exigencies occasioned by the compli
cations of the European war, and Pius VII. learnt that he
was expected to be an instrument much more than an ally.
It was signified to him, as a vassal of the Empire, that he
was to introduce the French code of laws into his dominions,
to acknowledge the French princes invested with sove
reignty in Italy, to close his ports to the enemies of France ;
then, at the first sign of disobedience to these orders, he
found himself stript of his principality, and in punishment
for his Bull of Excomunication he was personally trans-

CONFLICTS BETWEEN CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS ORDERS. 59
ported as a captive to Savona, as his predecessor had been
to Valentia. But his revenge was ready ; for neither in the
Concordat, nor even in the organic articles, had Napoleon
provided for everything. In charging the Pope with the
canonical institution of the bishops named by the Emperor,
he had forgotten to fix the term within which the institu
tion was obligatory, and the measures to be taken in case
of its refusal. This omission was adroitly worked. As
early as the first nominations, Pius VII., required to
institute the new bishops, replies, that being no longer
free he cannot perform any valid act. Among the vicars-
general charged with the interim, some refused to officiate,
others are not recognized; the dioceses protest, the pro
vinces murmur, the ordinary members of the Church agi
tate ; it becomes necessary to think of means for legally
doing without the Papal institution. Here, then, we behold
Napoleon, in the midst of his colossal enterprizes, held in
check by an old man in captivity ; behold the successful
warrior engaged with his jurisconsults and theologians in
all the intricacies of the canonical law, having recourse to
trickery and force which turn against himself, reduced to
deplore the Concordat " as the greatest fault of his reign,"
and expiating in Spain by the sufferings of his army, deci
mated by the poison and poignard of the monks and the
trabuco (musket) of the guerillas, his acts of violence against
the Pontiff. Finally, when by terrifying the bishops he
found in Paris a council docile to his orders, and at Fontain-
bleau compelled the Pope to sign the conciliatory decree
which was to disarm him, the European powers, now masters
of Paris, force the Emperor to abdicate, when the prisoner
escapes and the gaoler in his turn becomes the captive and
the exile. Will the delivered Church and legitimate Royalty,
restored and united together by common interests and an

60 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
alliance which promises to be perpetual, live together in
peace ? By no means. The Church of France, supported
at Court by a bigoted faction, supported in the Chambers
by a nobility which relies on it for aid to recover its pro
perty and privileges, supported in the rural districts by the
ignorance of the populations, takes a high tone with the
State ; it is the Church that commands, the Church that
exacts, the Church that will bear no chain, the Church which
demands to communicate directly with the Pope, and which
claims, with the entire freedom of its own teachings, the
restriction of the lay instruction, which it treats as im
pious and atheistic; finally, it is the Church that declares
through its bishops, that above the power of Kings soars
the divine authority of the Pope, adding, by the voice of
Leo XII. himself, that " the Head of the Church possesses
with full right at least an indirect authority over all states"
(1825). But how are these pretensions reconciled with
the Concordat and the Charter ? And if the Royal autho
rity subscribes to them, into what discredit will it fall 1 To
alienate the clergy, on which it rests, as against the citizens;
to incur the contempt of the citizens by yielding to the
clergy — such are the rocks on which the dynasty of the
Bourbons will make shipwreck. On one side, Montlosier
reproaches it with serfdom to the authority of Rome ; on
another, Lamennais accuses it of detaching itself from the
centre of Catholicity. Now the Royal Courts, following
the example of the Parliaments of old, assume, by appeals
against abuses, to dispose of the sacraments and benedic
tions of the Church ; now the bishops set their seminaries
free from the superintendence of the university, and trans
form them into colleges of Jesuits for the instruction of
the children of the nobility. In 1828, under the ministry
of Martignac, the Chamber of Peers closes eight of these

CONFLICTS BETWEEN CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS ORDERS. 61
seminaries, and forbids all members of unauthorized so
cieties to teach. In 1830, under the ministry of Polignac,
the clergy resume the upper-hand, and recommend to the
King the fatal " ordinances." And under each of the new
governments which succeed each other, scarcely has the
alliance between the two powers been renewed, but, under
the favour of public opinion, you see a revival more or less
disguised of the pretensions of the Church to direct the
State, or to withdraw itself from the just rights which the
latter had reserved. To-day it is the preponderance of the
clergy in regard to public instruction that is asserted against
the Constituent Assembly ; to-morrow it is the privilege
of appointing the bishops which, by a word thrown out as
if by hazard, the Sacred See attempts to transform for the
State into a simple right of presentation ; or, again, it is
the re-establishment of the throne of the Bourbons, plotted
by the Pope and the clergy in union with the Legitimists.
In general, in our age, the constant aim of the Roman
Church has in all countries been to obtain, with the entire
and exclusive protection of the temporal power, the most
complete independence in the spiritual order, to secure the
support of the State while refusing all guarantees.
Such was the programme of the German bishops as
sembled in 1848 at Wiirzburg; such was the principle
proclaimed in the Encyclic of Pius IX., and which the
Italian bishops set forth in opposition to the measures of
the Minister of State, Ricasoli. "What!" they said to
him, " the Catholic Church is free in Protestant America,
and in Catholic countries she is not to be free ?" " Yes,"
replied the statesman ; " in America she is free because she
foregoes the support of the State ; do you forego it, and
you will be equally free. A free Church i Yes ; but in
a free State, as Cavour desired." This was the view which,

62 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
since 1830, Lamennais himself upheld. Down till then
sacerdotal pride had revolted in him against the shackles
which governments aimed to impose on the Church. " We
will let them see," he then said, "what a priest is." And
with a view of throwing off those shackles, it was nothing
less than a theocracy that he contemplated for France.
The revolution of 1830 suggested other thoughts to him.
He acknowledged that', in order not to depend on the State,
the Church must owe nothing to the, State, and hence
forth it was on liberty that he attempted to found the
Church. But when he saw liberty anathematized in Rome
(1834), and the Church, at the feet of princes, purchase
afresh the stable at the price of the yoke, then he shook
off the dust of his feet against the Church, and from being
a priest became an agitator. With a little more perspi
cacity, his friends need not to have watched till then to
discern the future agitator under the gown of the priest.
In Spain, still more than in France, the ecclesiastical
power had the preponderance, and it was only by coups
d'etat that from time to time the civil authority succeeded
in asserting its rights. When the treasury was empty and
the army ready to revolt, the convents were bled; but
soon was it necessary to stop the operation before a popu
lace stirred up by the monks to regain peace with Rome
by acts of submission ; to expiate by the restitutions of
1845 and the Concordat of 1851 the spoliations of 1834-37 ;
to suspend in '56 those of '55 ; finally, under a Queen who
needed forgiveness so largely, to submit to the hateful
ascendancy of a confessor and of an intriguing nun, until
a new revolution seemed necessary to rescue the kingdom
from so degrading a yoke (1868). The position of Pro
testant governments in regard to the Catholic clergy was
not without its difficulties. In receiving in 1815 annexa-

CONFLICTS BETWEEN CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS ORDERS. 63
tions of territory which brought with them Catholic in
habitants, they had to undertake to maintain the advan
tages which those annexations had previously enjoyed,
while on their part they reserved certain guarantees. These
accommodations, in their nature thorny, frequently gave
occasion to new disagreements. The collective Concordat
proposed at Frankfort in 1818 by some states of Germany,
had to be indefinitely adjourned. The transactions with
Prussia had been more easy, thanks to the condescendence
of that power, whom the Holy See could not then praise
sufficiently. While, in 1821, the King bound himself by
express engagements, the Pope, who thought his dignity
compromised by Concordats with Protestants, bound him
self only by letters more or less vague. Hence arose be
tween them the grave and interminable conflicts on the sub
ject of mixed marriages. During some time in Prussia, the
validity of those marriages had been tacitly recognized by
the Catholic Church itself (1830) by means of the mere
passive presence of the priest during the performance of
the ceremony by the Protestant minister. All of a sudden
(1835) the new Archbishop of Cologne, Droste von Vische-
ring, who in his election had promised to maintain the
existing arrangement, begins to play false as to the import
of the Papal Brief. He declares null in his diocese all
mixed marriages in which the wedded couples had not
undertaken to bring up their children in the Catholic
religion. In this case, the Prussian Government had a
very simple means for protecting the rights of its subjects ;
it was to make, as in France, the validity of the marriage
in the eyes of the law independent of the religious cere
mony. But, owing to the old customs of the country?
reinforced by the new theory of " the Christian State,"
the civil registers throughout Germany were still in the

64 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
hands of the ministers of religion. Instead of a wise law,
Frederick William III. had recourse to constraint ; the re
calcitrant bishop was imprisoned. But this Napoleonic
method of acting had little success ; the prelate, hitherto
hated by his flock, was henceforward venerated as a martyr;
the opposition of which he had set the example spread
over the oriental provinces ; the arrest of the Archbishop of
Posen for the same cause aggravated the conflict, which the
Monarch terminated only by a new act of weakness. He
established in the Ministry of Religion an exclusively Catho
lic department, which more than ever enabled the Church
to dictate laws to the State.
But the Church, always ready to abuse testimonies of
deference, had, under firmer hands, to learn the limits of
its authority. Gregory XVI., who in his Bulls of 1832-34
had appeared to sustain the cause of Kings as much as that
of the Church, obtained from them efficacious measures
against its adversaries. Pius IX., less prudent, while pro
claiming by the Vatican Council his universal supremacy
in political matters as well as religious, has obliged govern
ments to put themselves in a state of defence against him.
In his earliest attempts at encroachment, those of Germany
reminded him that the times were changed, and that in
passing beyond his bounds he compelled them to pass
beyond theirs. To the political machinations of the bishops
and the Jesuits, they opposed a series of measures destined
to suppress their religious influence. Not only they main
tained in their functions the educators and the ecclesiastics
unjustly deposed by their negation of the Syllabus ; not
only they confirmed the rights of the State in the nomi
nation of the priests and bishops, whose salaries they
pay, and transferred to the civil authority the supreme
direction of lay instruction ; but they also conferred on it a

CONFLICTS BETWEEN CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS ORDERS. 65
right of supervision over the preaching, of inspection over
the instructions of the religious seminaries and schools,
bound young ecclesiastics to undergo the university ex
aminations, but finally suppressed, as an instrument of
division and agitation, the order of the Jesuits and all
who are affiliated with them. Thus somewhat rudely
expelled from Germany, those soldiers of the Pope have
taken refuge in England, where the Archbishop of West
minster (Dr. Manning) is arranging to found for them, out
of the contributions of the newly converted, a university
and colleges exclusively Catholic.
In Switzerland also, the enterprizes of the Ultramontane
clergy have called on the civil governments to take against
them precautions of the same nature. As a consequence of
intrigues carried on for nearly half a century, the Papacy,
in contempt of express conventions, thought itself able to
detach the Catholic Church of Geneva from the diocese of
Fribourg and Lausanne, and to create and establish in it,
under the title of Apostolic Vicar, an independent bishop,
invested with the most extensive authority. What a
seductive prospect for the Bishop of Rome thus to place
Geneva again under the cross of a resident bishop ! The
ambitious priest for whose advantage this manoeuvre was
executed, and who employed himself ardently in the under
taking, was deposed and conducted out of the Swiss terri
tory by order of the Confederation ; the religious corpora
tions which acted as his auxiliaries were suppressed ; popular
instruction was placed under the supervision of the State ;
finally, by a new constitutional law, in which one regrets
to see a formal oath which all priests must take, the old as
well as the new, the ecclesiastical functions, which, at the
Pope's order, the Bishop of Fribourg refused to exercise,
are handed over to the Catholic community itself. In the
F

66 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
diocese of Bale, when the bishop undertook to exact from
his priests, under pain of deposition, obedience to the new
dogma decreed by Rome, five cantons of the diocese pro
tested against the attempt, upheld in their functions the
priests faithful to their conscience and dear to their flocks,
and finally declared, each in what concerned it, the prelate
stript of his episcopal authority ; the canton of Berne, still
more rigorous, deposed the priests who, by the public and
unauthorized reading in public of the bishop's mandate,
had broken the laws of the State. It is probable that in the
greater part of Switzerland, while waiting for the separa
tion of Church and State, a democratic form of government
imposed on the national clergy by the Catholic people
themselves, will put a bridle on their abuses of authority,
and that, by being obstinate to support the Roman de
spotism, it will have to submit to popular control, and
introduce into its constitution changes which it has hitherto
repelled. Already, owing to the communal form of govern
ment, the nomination of the priests by the parishes begins
to gain favour in the principal cantons. The offensive terms
made use of by the Pope to discredit these different mea
sures, have led to the suppression of the Roman Nunciature
in Switzerland (1873), which had long been a piece of
useless, if not dangerous, machinery.
If the Court of Rome, relying on its ancient traditions,
thought itself authorized to impose laws on political powers,
Protestant governments, on their side, took authority from
past events to assume a high hand against the churches of
their states. Accordingly, without much trouble in Switzer
land since 1830, they, on different occasions, changed the
ecclesiastical constitutions with the concurrence of the
people and in a popular direction. But when they wished
to interfere in too direct a manner in the administration of

CONFLICTS BETWEEN CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS ORDERS. 67
spiritual interests, the spirit of religious reaction sometimes
threw unexpected difficulties in their way. We have
already alluded to those which the German princes had
to encounter in their attempts to bring about a union of
the Lutheran and Reformed communities. The Kings of
Prussia, Reformed princes ruling over populations of which
the majority was Lutheran, attached to that union more
importance than all the others. Nothing, moreover, ap
peared to them more easy, at a moment when Lutheran
and Reformed Churches were preparing to celebrate (1817),
with common accord, at once tjie deliverance of their native
Germany and the third centenary of its successful Reforma
tion. After a paternal invitation addressed to his sub
jects of the two communions, Frederick William III.
charges a commission with the office of drawing up a
form of Liturgy and ecclesiastical constitution acceptable
to both. The labours of this commission advancing too
slowly to satisfy him, he himself sets to work, composes a
Liturgy, an immediate trial of which he makes in his
chapel at Potsdam. Its first reception was little favour
able ; Lutherans and Reformed persons, orthodox and
liberal, emulously criticise the production of the Royal
theologian, especially complaining of his interference in
Church affairs. By force of perseverance, however, and
by means of a certain latitude left to the different parties
in the choice of liturgical formularies, he in 1830 obtains
the adhesion of a number of churches, particularly of
the Reformed party, belonging to different parts of Ger
many, those specially of the Duchy of Nassau, of the
Grand Duchy of Baden, of Bavaria and Prussia lying on
the Rhine. He then thinks himself prepared to act with
severity against the recalcitrant Lutheran conventicles ;
f2

68 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
but immediately a formidable schism breaks out. The
most excited Lutherans, rather than adhere to the threat
ened union, emigate to America. To retain the others,
Frederick William IV, on his ascent to the throne, finds
himself obliged to acknowledge their separation, and to
grant them a distinct department in the ecclesiastical
council. The political reaction of 1849 increased still
more the ascendancy of this ultra-Lutheran party, the
number of which rapidly grew from fifteen to sixty-five
thousand souls. Instead of one single Protestant Church,
Germany counts three, on whom new attempts at union
have not yet been crowned with full success. In other
Protestant countries, the same debates between the civil
and the religious authority have been reproduced under
other forms, and, owing to the retroactive movement which
affects certain churches, have ended in similar results.
In England, when Dr. Hampden, known as a rationalist, _
had been promoted to the see of Hereford ; then, when
the Queen's Council had absolved Vicar Gorham, con
demned by his bishop for certain bold opinions on bap
tismal regeneration, a numerous assembly of ecclesiastics
and laymen of various ranks, convoked in London, pro
tested against those judgments, and demanded the restora
tion of the authority of the synodal meetings of the clergy,
as the sole judge competent in ecclesiastical matters.
There were the same protestations some years after, when
the Court of Arches had absolved two of the editors of
" Essays and Reviews." The two parties, the Evangelical
and the Ritualistic, combined to demand the re-establish
ment of the ancient -'Ecclesiastical Convocation," and by
that means obtained from the civil authority " the Act of
Subscription," by which young ecclesiastics engage to

CONFLICTS BETWEEN CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS ORDERS. 69
profess the received doctrines. In Scotland, it is the
right of patronage over the churches, with the incontest
able abuses which it engenders, which has put the govern
ment and the clergy in an attitude of hostility. After
long and fruitless action on the civil authority, which con
sidered the right of patrons in the election of pastors as
an inviolable authority, the Church of Scotland came to
another rupture ; a considerable number of its ministers,
under the direction of Dr. Chalmers, separated from the
national Establishment, and, owing to the liberality of
their flocks, founded an independent Church, still more
numerous than those which, in the preceding century,
separated on the same account. This, last secession, it is
said, reckons nearly a thousand places of worship.*
In the Canton of Vaud, where the authority of the Hel
vetic Confession was suppressed in 1839 by an act of the
Grand Council, and where the radical government attempt
ed a new abuse of authority, it is by separation that one
part of the pastoral body took its revenge and asserted its
autonomy. The success of that separation would have
been more real and more complete if its necessity had been
more evident, and the political power had had less to do
with it. You may refuse to read a radical manifesto, and
then leave to the government the odious act of a suspen
sion or a general deposition, instead of aiding, by a volun
tary resignation, to free yourself without risk from a
hostile and recalcitrant clergy. The separation of the
Vaudois clergy, effected under conditions very different
to those of the clergy of Scotland, had the character of a
* Moreover, in the last Parliament, a change in the same direction
was made, which transferred the patronage in the Established Church
of Scotland from the hands of a few persons of position and wealth,
into those which represent the congregations themselves. — Translator.

70 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
suicide much more than a martyrdom, and did nothing
but injure the ascendancy of the ecclesiastical ministry
which it was intended to elevate.

IV.
RETURN OF CONFESSIONAL STRUGGLES.
The retrograde movement which in each of the Chris
tian communions thus put the civil authority in conflict
with the religious, exercised a worse influence still over
the relations of those communions one with another. At
the beginning of our century, those relations seemed to be
sensibly ameliorated. " The critical spirit of the pre
ceding period," says Professor Dorner, " in causing the
secondary points which divided the Christian parties to be
appreciated in a calmer manner relatively to the vital
principles of Christianity, had contributed to the enlarge
ment of people's hearts." In Germany, the traditions of
philosophic toleration of Joseph II. ; in Russia, those of
Catherine II., strengthened in Alexander I. by the lessons
of his preceptor ; in France, Napoleon's firm resolution
to maintain the religious rights of all his subjects, sufficed
to keep fanaticism at bay. Moreover, there was scarcely
need of the check. The different Christian parties had
suffered together and from the same adversaries ; they had
sought their support, their consolations, at the same source,
in the common treasury of the sentiments and hopes
which, for truly religious souls, are at the bottom every
where the same. With that common language all could
and did understand each other, because they were sin-

RETURN OF CONFESSIONAL STRUGGLES. 71
cerely disposed to do so. How far were they from apply
ing the microscope to the questions by which they were
divided ! In the midst of the political interests of the
moment, what leisure had they for dogmatical disputes ?
While the fire of war raged all over Europe, who could
have the courage to enkindle that of religious discords ?
In their common disgraces they had need of mutual aid.
The priests, in particular, could not forget that, in the
days of proscriptions and massacres, it was among heretics
that they had often found an asylum and protection.
Relations of touching fraternity were thus formed between
members of different communions, and public life itself
felt the happy effect of the influence. It was at this
moment that the Academy of Niort crowned with its
prize a panegyric by Duplessis-Mornay ; that the Institute
of France opened a competition on the influence of
Luther's reformation, and crowned a Catholic author
(Villers) who had celebrated its benefits ; it was then
that, on occasion of the coronation of the Emperor by
Pius VTL, Lecoz, Archbishop of Besancon, invited the
Protestant ministers of Paris to "revive, under the aus
pices of such a prince and such a pope," the projects of
union that had been put forward between Molanus and
Bossuet. With probably greater sincerity and earnest
ness, the excellent Tabaraud, priest of the Oratory at
Lyons, manifested the hope that, " awaiting the moment
of union in a common faith, all parties, animated by the
spirit of Christianity, would live together in peace and
concord." There were the same dispositions in the Catho
lic clergy of Germany. " The Church," says Tschirner,
" beaten down by its reverses, in several countries deprived
of its bishops, forcibly subjected to military powers, shewed
itself moderate in its pretensions. Catholics in high places

72 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
— Dalberg, Wessenberg, Michael Sailer, Werkmeister, and
others — propagated around them humane and tolerant
maxims : even in the dogmatic works published at that
time, polemics were all but absent." In 1815, finally, in
the treaty of "the Holy Alliance," the sovereigns mani
fested the same spirit of concord, when, in the intoxication
of their triumph, they declared that they wished to forget
all ecclesiastical diversities.
But what, under the influence of a real religious revival,
had seemed practicable and easy, was less so under that
of the retrograde movement which we have described.
Among the churches, which to re-animate the faith and
piety of their adherents accounted nothing more urgent
than for each to return to their original principles, to
replace themselves on their ancient bases, for each to throw
into prominence their institutions, their distinctive doc
trines, and who found their rulers eager to support them
— among these clergymen, entirely occupied with regaining
their old ascendancy, to dispute with each for the control
of souls, how was it possible for old controversies not to
be re-agitated ? In yielding themselves severally to the
current of the age, they insensibly approached each other.
In going back, on the contrary, toward a past made up of
periods so different, here toward the dogmas of the six
teenth century, there toward those of the thirteenth, they
again found themselves in the same opposition — were, in
a word, carried back to the rivalries and the hostilities of
former days. Peace was scarcely signed between the civil
authorities, than war broke out between the churches,
and naturally, before all others, in the countries where, as
in France, in Germany, in Ireland, they existed together
under the same government. Now, since the peace of
1815, the number of those mixed states had considerably

RETURN OF CONFESSIONAL STRUGGLES. 73
increased. In re-casting the map of Europe, the Congress,
solely prepossessed with political interests and the con
veniences of the victorious powers, had beaten down
almost everywhere in the West the walls of legal separa
tion formerly raised by the Treaty of Westphalia, had
united in the same states and under the same laws, peoples
who of old had fought with each other bitter religious
wars, — former subjects of Bavaria and the Palatinate, of
Brandenburg and the bishoprics of the borders of the
Rhine, of Dutch and Belgians, of Genevese and Savoyards,
of French and Bernese, of Catholics and Protestants of
the banks of the Aar. Brought together thus for the first
time, and mostly against their will, those populations of
different faiths soon accused each other mutually of pro
jects of domination or absorption, to which they opposed,
on their side, projects of the same nature. These distrusts
were vivid specially among the Catholics of Belgium, of
Hesse, of the Rhine provinces, of Hanover, of Baden, of
Wiirtemberg, of several cantons of Switzerland, which,
subject to Protestant governments, saw everywhere
intentions adverse to their liberty of conscience. These
animosities, now secret, now open, gaining the minds of
Catholics the most indifferent, but disquieted respecting
the maintenance of their civil rights, ended, as in Belgium,
Ireland, Argovia, in projects of violent separation, fomented
by the aid of revolutions. Otherwheres, in countries sub
ject to Catholic governments, the same hatred, fired by the
clergy, manifested themselves by exclusive or persecuting
measures. In reality, the Roman Church had abandoned
none of its absolutist pretensions. Its representatives
repeated in all manner of tones the maxim, that toleration
in matters of faith is only indifference ; that a people
without a State religion is a nation of Atheists ; that reli-

74 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
gious liberty is the exclusive privilege of truth ; and that,
when you are not compelled, to authorize the profession
of heresy is a crime against God of the deepest dye. One
of the first acts of Pius VII., on his return, was to rage
against the Bible Societies, the " impious and pestilential
machination of the innovators," he said, " a device which
shook religion in its very foundation." From that moment
fanaticism opened a new career in Italy. The Vaudois
of Piedmont fell back into the same state in which they
were before 1796, exposed, as then, to the vexations of
their adversaries, and, until 1848, the toleration which
it was desired to obtain for them was not secured except
owing to the particular protection of England and Prussia.
In Germany, the sixth article of the Conclusions of the
Congress of Vienna, declaring that the difference of Chris
tian confessions put no difference in the enjoyment of
political and civil rights, was truly observed in only
Protestant lands. In Austria, nearly all the liberty
bestowed by Joseph II. was taken back ; the Protestants
enjoyed only a precarious toleration, and were, particularly
in the Tyrol and Hungary, exposed to treatment which
forced thousands of them to emigrate into the States of
Prussia. In France, the article of the Charter of 1814, which
gave back to the Catholic religion the title of religion of the
State, evidently re-opened the door to measures of intole
rance, and in the higher as in the lower classes there
was no lack of people disposed by ambition^ hate or
jealousy, to re-commence, under a crowd of pretexts, the
persecutions against the Protestants. Had they not taken
part in the Revolution ? Were they not secret partizans
of the fallen usurper ? Had they not, under Robespierre
and Napoleon, got all offices into their hands 1 Had they

RETURN OF CONFESSIONAL STRUGGLES. 75
not given the Bourbons a cold reception ? In the depart
ment of the South, especially in Gard, where they were
the more numerous and consequently the most detested,
the more rich and consequently the most envied, bands of
assassins, emboldened by the baseness or the connivance
of the local magistrates, spread themselves abroad in
Nimes, Uzes, Anduze, plundering Protestant houses and
massacring all that resisted. In Paris nothing of this was
known, or ignorance of all was pretended. When Voyer
d'Argenson denounced these crimes to the Chamber of
Deputies, he was called to order ; yet more than a hundred
Protestants had been murdered in Nimes, without reckon
ing the garrison which protected them, traitorously mas
sacred after a capitulation, and three generals, whose
murderers were acquitted by the Assize Court. It was
necessary for Sir Samuel Romilly to obtain a vote in the
Parliament of England solemnly protesting against these
atrocities, which the French Government was compelled
to acknowledge, when supported by all Protestant Europe.
The Charter of 1830, in recognizing Catholicism only as
" the religion of the majority," sensibly ameliorated the
position of the French Protestants. But after 1848, the
Socialistic movements furnished -the Catholic Church
throughout Europe with pretexts for restricting or sup
pressing religious liberty. That Church, which by its blind
rancour toward the Orleans family, and by its ignorance
of all the true principles of social economy, was to so
great an extent responsible for those movements ; that
Church, which had fallen on its knees before Radicalism
in power, did not cease to preach in all pulpits, and to
assert by the pen of its principal writers, the complicity of
Protestantism with Socialism and the Revolution. Under
this pretext, proscription began again in Spain and Italy ;

76 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
Tuscany retrograded two centuries on the road of religious
liberty ; all the strength which its government succeeded in
regaining was consecrated to the burning of Bibles, the
closing of chapels, thrusting excellent people into prison,
who had been guilty of having circulated the sacred
writings or spoken in favour of reform. Protestant Hun
gary, which since 1844 had recovered some liberty and
obtained some redress, saw itself, after the war of 1849,
replaced under the yoke. Most of the liberal resolutions
decreed in 1 849 in the National Assembly of Frankfort,
were, with all the others, annulled in 1853 by the reac
tionary " Act of Alliance ; " and the Concordat of the
Emperor of Austria with Rome, concluded two years
afterwards, without bringing on the Protestants persecu
tions properly so called, gave to the bishops a control
over the civil order, over the press, over public instruc
tion, the most dangerous to liberty of conscience. Finally,
in France, on each new revolution, scenes similar to those
of 1815 made their appearance, and in 1870 the Pro
testants were pointed out by certain bishops to the blind
fanaticism of their flocks as the emissaries and spies of
Prussia. Unhappily, intolerance is a contagious vice which at
last seizes those who have had most reason to complain of
it. In seeing from the commencement of this century its
maxims all but constantly professed and re-produced by
the Roman clergy, down to the day when, with greater
solemnity than ever, they were proclaimed by the Encycli
cal Syllabus of Pius IX. (1864)— in seeing them so fre
quently transformed against them into acts of unjust
violence, the Protestants may intelligibly, if not in a mea
sure excusably, as measures of precaution, have allowed
themselves to deviate from the principles of freedom inhe-

RETURN OF CONFESSIONAL STRUGGLES. 77
rent in the Reformation, and shewn themselves less ready
than might have been expected to bestow on the Catholics
living in their midst an entire equality of rights. Having
so often learnt by experience that Catholicism admits no
other liberty than its own, they feared, if they yielded
ever so little of their preponderance, lest they should find
themselves duped hy their generous dispositions. Hence
the anxieties of the ecclesiastical Company of Geneva,
when, in 1814, the Sardinian parishes were annexed to the
territory of the Republic under the protection of the Treaty
of Turin, and the request which it addressed to the Go
vernment that, " reserving the privileges granted to the
Catholics by that Treaty, it should engage to maintain the
Reformed religion as being that of the State." Then, when
the fears on the subject of the increase of the Catholic
population in the canton were realized, and its clergy were
seen working with Radicalism in order to overturn ancient
institutions of the country, measures of exclusion, which
if equitable were impracticable, were attempted to main
tain the Protestant ascendancy intact. About the same
time, as reprisals for a display of Ultramontane fanaticism
and separatist attempts in divers cantons, the Government
of Argovia sequestered, as accomplices, eight old monas
teries on its territory guaranteed by the federal treaty
(1841); the Diet sanctioned that spoliation; required the
Catholic Diet to dissolve 'their "League of Sarnen," and
to dismiss the Jesuit teachers established at Lucerne
(1844), the seat of their governing-body ; by the war of the
Sonderhund upset the governments of those cantons, and
again and again expelled the Jesuits from all the Helvetic
territory. The same distrusts maintained down to 1829 the exclu
sion of the Catholics of Great Britain from the English

78 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
Parliament, and down to 1870 compelled the immense
majority of those of Ireland to- support magnificently a
form of worship hostile to their own. Thence have ensued
irreconcilable aversions and at the least offensive manifes
tations ; sanguinary rows broke out in Stockport, Limerick,
Belfast, Birmingham, &c. (1852-67). Even in America,
that land of liberty, a formidable assemblage of Irish, who
by means of their number had got possession of the muni
cipal offices (1834-44), called forth in Boston and Phi
ladelphia bloody conflicts which lasted several days. In
1862, the States General of Sweden rejected a law in favour
of religious liberty, and renewed against the Catholics
measures of exclusion which, under the preceding reign,
had fallen into disuse. In Mecklenburg, down to 1873,
they remained excluded from the rights of citizenship.
In the Russian empire, the Confessional struggle "pre
served still longer than in the West the character of seve
rity which the politico-religious reaction of our age had
imprinted upon it. Alexander I., who at the beginning
of his reign had shewn a pretty extensive toleration, soon
became disquieted at the abuses which the Jesuits com
mitted at his expense. Informed of their intrigues with
certain noble families of Russia, and of the state of excite
ment which they kept up among the Catholics of Poland, he
took from them the hospitality granted them by Catha
rine II. (1820), and expelled their order from his domi
nions. Nicholas, moreover, suppressed all the Catholic
convents which contained only a small number of monks,
and all those who lived in the provinces of the Greek
religion, in Southern Russia among others ; he thus dimi
nished the number by three-fourths, and consecrated the
product of the sale of their goods to an annual subvention
to the secular Latin clergy. In 1596, the Jesuits had, with

RETURN OF CONFESSIONAL STRUGGLES. 79
the aid of Sigismund III., succeeded in subduing to the
yoke of Rome, under the name of United Greeks, two mil
lions of the inhabitants of Lithuania, then subject to
Poland. This province having in 1774 fallen into the
hands of Russia, and the Greek element growing stronger
there every day, Nicholas, at the unanimous request of the
bishops and a part of the clergy, made them return into
the Greek Church, whose rites and liturgy they had pre
served almost entirely (1839). All this did not satisfy his
policy of unification. From the time of the rebellion of
Poland (1831), he resolved to denationalize that country,
four-fifths, of whose population were Catholics ; impeded
in every way the relations of its clergy with Rome ; per
mitted it only under rigorous conditions to construct new
churches ; took from it all its influence over the public
schools; and finally confiscated its endowments to the
public treasury. These measures, though mitigated by the
Concordat of 1847, did not fail to call forth strong dissatis
faction among the Poles. The events of 1848 raised their
hopes ; the clergy profited thereby to encourage among
them a spirit of insubordination, which soon issued in a
revolt (1861). Five days after the publication of the
decree of Alexander IL which abolished serfdom, the Polish
nobility, who considered themselves injured by that measure
of justice and humanity, broke out into an insurrection, and
with the aid of the monks and the clergy drew the people
over to their side. The rebellion, heated by prayer-meet
ings, soon shewed itself by odious assassinations and then
by open war (1863), during which the convents served the
insurgents as strongholds. The suppression of the revolt
gave occasion to fresh rigour, followed by the rupture of
the Concordat and that of all bonds with Rome. Finally,
conversions attempted, not without success, in some saloons

80 CHRISTIAN REVIVAL AND RETROGRADE CHRISTIANITY.
of Paris on members of the exiled Russian nobility, and
other griefs still more serious, completed the discord of the
two courts. All the Catholic dioceses of Poland, except
two, were deprived of their episcopal rights, and priests
who refused to officiate in the Russian language were trans
ported into the interior of the country (1868). The Rus
sian language became obligatory in most of the provinces
and in the University of Varsovia; in 1869, a bishop was
exiled into Siberia for having refused to acknowledge the
authority of the Catholic College established by the Em
peror. But it was not at the cost of Catholicism alone
that the Czars aimed to establish religious unity in their
empire. According to an edict of Nicholas, every Russian
that abjured the national religion, whatever form of faith he
embraced, was, in virtue of an ancient law lately revived
(1832), deprived of his civil rights and condemned to con
fiscation. In spite of the Treaty of 1743, which had
guaranteed to the Lutherans of the provinces of the Baltic
the free exercise of their religion, Nicholas, in 1846, ex
tended to those provinces another law which stipulated
that every child born of a mixed marriage should be bap
tized in the Greek communion. A general plan of organi
zation for the Protestant churches of all Russia placed
them under the direction of a superintendent or bishop
and of a general consistory, the administration of which
was in the hands of the minister of the interior. More
over, Nicholas established in some of the principal cities
of Livonia Greek bishops, who engaged in proselyting
attempts, now vexatious, now perfidious. It is thus that
in 1847 the Bishop of Riga, profiting by a famine which
raged in the Russian provinces of the Baltic, led the
Lutheran peasants to hope, as the price of their abjuration,
for concessions of land, with an exemption of taxes and

RETURN OF CONFESSIONAL STRUGGLES. 81
imposts. This deceptive promise induced more than fifty
thousand of them to pass over to the Greek religion ; then,
when afterwards their families wished to re-enter the
Lutheran Church, the laws against abjuration were placed
in their way, and those who refused communion at the
hands of the Popes were exposed to vexations which were
not mitigated until the reign of the actual Czar.

CHAPTER II.
ANTI-CHRISTIAN REACTION.

AMONG CATHOLICS.

When a religion has momentarily lost its empire over
opinion, it cannot recover its influence durably except so
far as it frees itself from the errors and abuses which had
alienated the popular mind, and gives satisfaction to their
new moral and spiritual wants. What then was there to
hope for Christianity from the retrograde movement which
we have described, and which so closely followed the
happy revival of the commencement of the century ?
What a rock for the reviving faith was that new rupture
with the human mind ! what a deception for a well-in
formed generation, eager for more light, to see itself carried
back by its religious guides into a sphere where all was
darkness and mystery ; where, to escape from the suspicion
of heresy, it was necessary to close your eyes to evidence ;
where reason, treated as a rebel, was interdicted or sub
jected to ceaseless torture ; where, the more effectually to
mortify it, the Church took pleasure in making it confess
what was absurd and incredible ! Where are the means
in the nineteenth century, to persuade yourself that a

AMONG CATHOLICS. 83
priest, with his prayers, his genuflexions, his signs of the
cross, made God come down on to the altar, and thence
pass into the mouths of the communicants? Some, indeed,
in order to humour the sentiment of the multitude, affected
to bow before so great a mystery — to hear in the service
without a frown the legend of the saint of the day ; they
would even, in order to honour the ashes of a relative,
pay liberally for masses, wax candles, litanies, and De Pro
fundi^; but recompence was sought for the constraint thus
imposed on themselves, by scepticism in the heart's core,
and, in presence of their equals and associates, by disdain
and mockery.
After a revolution which boasted of having broken
every yoke, how could men consent to bear that of the
priest ; how make him as a matter of duty the confidant of
their thoughts ; how see him mingle in the family rela
tions, to which his vocation and his desires made him an
utter stranger ; how see him speculate on -the religious
indifference of husbands, in order to get possession of the
direction of their wives ; or the worldly tastes of fathers
and mothers, in order to get into his hands the education
of their children ; how hear him authorize or prohibit
marriage, seat himself at the bed of the dying in order
to obtain, now legacies and bequests, now retractations pro
fitable for the Church ; and, when he was unable to give
to his pretensions the support of the law, to have recourse
to moral constraint, and, with the aid of the secrets of
which confession made him master, govern by fear when
he failed to do so by love and confidence? Since pro
tracted wars had come to an end, since the natural and
artificial barriers had sunk among nations, humanity as
pired more and more to form only one nation, and, in some
sort, one single family; and yet this was the age that
g 2

84 / ANTI-CHRISTIAN REACTION.
fanaticism chose for raising new walls between individuals
and peoples; that, in the name of national unity, confes
sional unity was claimed ; that, in the name of confessional
unity, intolerant priests demanded laws of exclusion ; that
a press, calling itself Christian, while in reality it, is Ultra
montane, took pleasure in surpassing in violent invective
the most licentious political papers ; that the communion
which calls itself emphatically the Church, when its tem
poral interests were at stake did not think it wrong to
raise the cry of war ; finally, that a Pope, to expiate the
political weaknesses of the commencement of his pontificate,
devoted to the execration of the Christian world the liber
ties that are most urgently claimed by modern civilization !
Scarcely had the middle classes entered into possession of
their rights, so long contested, when, in the name of re
established Christianity, they saw them disputed afresh.
The same divine character with which the clergy asserted
that they were stamped, was invoked by them in favour
of civil powers which secured for them an honourable
place in the State, and in favour of the higher classes
which supported the Church by their wealth and their
influence. Privilege had no more ardent advocates ; liberty,
however moderate, had no more embittered adversaries, if
only because it served as an auxiliary to science and a
support to free inquiry. The liberty of governments
themselves, when they were in conflict with the preten
sions of the Church, was not better respected. Did they
wish to spread and to popularize instruction, it was neces
sary, under penalty of encountering a tenacious and almost
insurmountable rivalry, to employ therein the monastic
congregations. Did they wish, in order to raise the stan
dard of knowledge, to employ the best qualified teachers,
if such men were not approved by the Church they must

AMONG CATHOLICS. 85
be set aside as suspected. Did they wish, in order to
promote commerce, industry and the arts, to secure for
foreigners full liberty of worship, the clergy invoked the
laws which protected its own exclusively. Fresh opposi
tion if, in .order to encourage labour, they wished to lessen
the number of legal holidays. Everywhere, in a word,
they found their hands tied in the execution of the mea
sures that were required by the interests of the people.
When, then, was the condition in which the Church
ruled as absolute master? Since 1815, there was not
among civilized nations a state in which commerce and
industry were more languishing, agriculture more deplor
ably neglected, justice worse administered, popular instruc
tion worse in kind and more restricted, the sciences more
in the rear, the whole administration, in a word, more in
opposition to the actual wants and possibilities of civiliza
tion, than the Papal Government, and all that were framed
after its model. To judge Christianity independently of
the forms under which it appears at different times and
in different places, to disjoin its cause from that of men
who speak and act in its name, supposes, we have said,
a discernment rare among the many, and especially rare in
a communion in which Christianity is identified with the
Church and considered as incarnated in it, and where the
gospel is a sealed book to the people — where the words of
Christ reach them only in an indirect manner, and most
frequently in a language which they do not understand.
Witnesses of the hindrances which the clergy in our days
throw in the way of the most desirable advances, such as
the advances of truth, peace, true liberty, and social union,
many persons impute these imperfections to Christianity
itself, array against it hostile sentiments which were
thought to have disappeared with the last century, and

86 ANTI-CHRISTIAN REACTION.
pronounce it incompatible with all forms of social pros
perity, with every well-regulated social constitution. Most
adverse, under some popes, have been the civil and reli
gious dispositions of the Roman and Italian citizens. " In
Germany," says Gervinus, " scarcely had the governments
withdrawn, in the name of civil and religious order, the
liberties that had been promised during the war, when
there appeared among the youth a current of ideas at once
revolutionary and anti-christian." In France, in the
same way, under the first restoration, hardly were the mea
sures seen which the clergy took to recover their old
prerogatives, scarcely did people see the convents re-peo
pled, fanaticism re-kindled, a society adverse to progress
formed near the throne in order to patronize these arrange
ments, than the irreligious movement of the preceding
century regained favour. The violent sermons of the
clerical missionaries were replied to by the blasphemies of
the crowd. Each new publication of Bonald and Joseph
de Maistre gave birth to the re-impression of some of the
works of Voltaire; and while, amid the applauses of the
higher classes, Hugo and Lamartine celebrated in their
songs the triumph of restored Christianity,. P. L. Courier
in his clever pamphlets, and Beranger in his songs,
covered with ridicule the stupid yoke which it was at
tempted to fasten on their shoulders. "It is from the
beginning of the nineteenth century," says M. Vacherot,
" that we must date the true popular movement against
religious tradition. There existed that ' anarchy of minds '
with which Lamennais said the youth were infected. At
an early day Saint-Beuve and Tocqueville saw the move
ment and indicated its cause." Sismondi, who had saluted
the religious revival with joy, when he had witnessed in
1831 the new profanations of which- Paris was the theatre,

AMONG CATHOLICS. 87
deplored the ill-considered measures that were attempted
to be opposed to it. " Religious sentiments," he said in
a letter to Channing, "have during this century made
progress in France ; but I am not sure that the imprudent
efforts of those who wish to re-animate them have not
really put them back. Like you, I believe that quite a
new kind of instruction is necessary to satisfy pious minds,
but I do not see such a blessing announced anywhere.
Quite the reverse. I see religion reproduced in its abuses
and on its hateful side." Spiritualism, restored to honour
by some eminent philosophers, was at first welcomed with
transport by the lettered youth ; their dispositions changed
when, introduced by authority into schools and lyceums,
it appeared only as an instrument of the double reaction.
The French philosophy, on the traces of the medical school
of Cahanis, Gall and de Broussais, began again to deviate
from the side of materialism, whose followers became daily
more numerous. One of them, Auguste Comte, without
explicitly denying God, declared that he knew Him not.
" There is no reason," he said, " for searching for anything
beyond sensible phenomena ; science ought to be sober
in regard to hypotheses, and forbid itself every question
touching causes and ends. Content with observing facts
and tracing their laws, it ought to exclude from its de
terminations all ulterior conclusions. Religion, the sole
means of education accessible for the infancy of humanity,
as are metaphysics in its youth, ought in its ripe age to
yield place to pure empiricism." Such was the principle
of what received the name of " the Positive school." Posi
tive enough, doubtless, but not philosophical, if the essen
tial character of philosophy is the research of causes, of
first principles ; so that philosophy, which after having,
often with sagacity, traced the laws which govern the

88 ANTI-CHRISTIAN REACTION.
universe, disdains to inquire what is the name of the law
giver, mutilates capriciously the human mind by disown
ing one function while owning others, and seems to cut
the wings of metaphysics only from the fear of seeing that
application of the human mind meet and welcome in flight,
that religion which must at whatever price be barred out.
By the side of that Positive philosophy there stands in
France " the critical school," which, struck by what it
calls the imperfection of this world, in face of the perfec
tion inseparable from the idea of God, sees in Him only
the ideal world insensibly disengaging itself from the
actual world, in such a way that, according to it, God,
properly speaking, does not exist, but becomes, and ceases
not to become, without ever being able to be. From this
school comes a sceptical school more dangerous still, which
sees in God only a category or form of thought — the abso
lute ; but, the absolute not being able to exist, the idea of
God has in consequence nothing real, and immortality,
defined as survival in God, equally disappears. The exist
ence of the world is explained " by a kind of internal and
secret spring which impels into existence everything pos
sible." As to the person of Jesus, if that school does not
idealize him, as we shall see it has done in Germany, to
such an extent as to take from him all real existence — if
even, in a celebrated work, it has evidently endeavoured
and in some respects succeeded in elevating him in the
eyes of the indifferentists of our age (1863), failing to
apprehend in its exquisite simplicity the physiognomy of
Jesus such as it appears in the Gospels— it paints him
under features, now of a gallant, now of a fanatic, and
now, in the explanation of certain miracles, of a charlatan.
(Renan.) Finally, there is in France a class of minds which, taxin«

AMONG CATHOLICS. 89
with feticism even the systems but now mentioned, as well
as all those who retain a shadow of religion, proclaim athe
ism as the principle of every truly republican government.
If such were the sentiments of a part of the middle class
while yet it had to struggle for the maintenance of its
rights, what were the dispositions of the people when even
more urgently, claiming its place in society, demanding
of society labour less crushing, better paid, a system which
should open to it in its turn access to liberty and to com
fort, it complained that, far from finding in Christianity
the auxiliary on which it thought it might rely, it really
found in it only an additional obstacle to its legitimate
aspirations ?
Food and shelter in some religious house under the con
dition of celibacy and the cloister, alms from day to day
obtained by some appearances of devotion, were for the
people less a benefit than a humiliating servitude. Despite
all the palliatives, the secret of which the Church boasted
the possession of, the wound of pauperism remained open ;
and the indigent, comparing his habitual nakedness with
the prosperity which he witnessed around him, was only
too ready to lend an ear to perfidious enticements. " Cease,"
it was said, " to reckon for the alleviation of thy lot on
God and His worshippers. Those who call themselves thy
brethren in Christ are not afflicted at thy privations except
on account of the perils which they occasion to themselves ;
at the bottom they resign themselves to them, and their
priests agree with them in not hastening their termination.
Their religion is only a lure to deceive thy misery and
cares ; their hell is only a bugbear against the temptations
to which thou art exposed by thy poverty. Solely absorbed
with the interests of the rich, they have long enough
preached to you abstinence and resignation ; long enough

90 ANTI-CHRISTIAN REACTION.
have they talked to you of the joys of Paradise, while re
compensing themselves out of the good of which you are
deprived here below. Why do they refuse you that para
dise on earth ? Christianity has never ceased to glorify
the spirit ; the time is come to give matter its due ; to
inaugurate that new religion whose ministers — pontiffs in
art, science, industry — shall apportion social forces and
riches to each one according to his capacity, and to each
capacity according to its products." Others would indeed
retain Christianity, but on the condition that, taking for
type what is told of the primitive church of Jerusalem,
they should unfold the banner of Communism and make
of each church a sort of phalanster.
At this time all the religious questions in France were
absorbed in social questions. The Socialist systems of St.
Simon, Fourier, Considerant; the Communist systems of
the Icarians, the Reformists, of Babeuf and Proudhon —
right of labour, right of credit, equality of wages, sup
pression of competition, abolition of property — were so
many solutions proposed and tried, only to dash themselves
against ridicule, impossibility, bankruptcy, or society armed
in its own defence. But while waiting for the combined
efforts of science and true charity to aid in solving this
formidable problem, the leaven of irreligion continued to
ferment in the bosom of the masses, in secret societies, in
the Carbonari of Italy, the " Solidaires" of France and Bel
gium, among the associates of " Free Thought" in the inter
national clubs, who set in front of their frightful designs
savage proclamations of Atheism. We must, they said,
tear out of the heart of modern society that religion which
is a perpetual obstacle to its progress ; we must drive it
from the school, from the state, from the hearth ; we must
take from it every pretext and every means of interposing

AMONG PROTESTANTS AND GREEKS. 91
in social relations. No more religious instruction ; no other
morality, if you want a morality at all, than an inde
pendent one ! The priest has identified his interests with
those of religion, his authority with that of God ; in order
the more surely to hand him out of all the domains that
he has invaded, we must banish God from all hearts.
The result did not tarry long. In these ill-omened days,
when hates long smouldering might gratify themselves
with impunity, the conflagration of Paris, the assassination
of the ministers of religion, "have," to quote the words of
Father Hyacinthe, " been the work of a people who no
longer has a God;" and, as he adds with equal reason,
" the work of those who make it impossible to believe in
God, and emphatically impossible to love Him."

n.
AMONG PROTESTANTS AND GREEKS.
The Protestant retrograde movement was doubtless far
from putting human reason, conscience and dignity, to trials
so severe. Accordingly, the reaction which it occasioned
was far from reaching the degree of violence and generality
that it attained in the Catholic world. Who, however,
will assert that it gave no hold to the detractors of the
Christian cause ? Without speaking of the dryness of its
traditional dogma, opposed to the spirit of Jesus on so
many points ; without recalling the vain disputes which it
revived, it made religion serve ends unworthy of it ; asso
ciate it with a policy adverse to intellectual and social pro
gress ; purchase the support of the civil power, the protec
tion of the upper classes, by authoritative doctrines kindred

92 ANTI-CHRISTIAN REACTION.
to those of Rome ; proscribe science, imprison thought in
the inflexible bonds of old formularies; abuse Scripture as
Rome abused tradition; and finally bring back into theology
notions incompatible with all that observation reveals to
us on the harmony and perfection of the Divine govern
ment. This spirit of obscurantism in the bosom of Protestant
communities, those measures of spiritual enslavement for
which Christianity was unjustly made responsible, awak
ened against it an opposition which in some Protestant
countries led to the return of the anti-christian Deism of
the last century, and in others, in greater number of in
stances, to the re-appearance of Pantheism. This sad system
— which makes of the universe an effect without a cause,
which excludes from it a good and wise Providence, which
explains the harmonious action visible on all sides only by
the action of blind necessity — had in former times served
to combat now the polytheism and now the dualism of the
popular beliefs — adopted for the same purpose by some
mystic Jews and Christians of the middle ages — resuscitated
and learnedly elaborated in the seventeenth century by the
genius of Spinoza, favoured by the tendency to unity which
characterizes modern science — it, from the end of the eigh
teenth century, introduced itself into the spiritual schools
of Germany. Fichte made of it the basis of his " Theory
of Science ;" Schelling, of his " Philosophy of Nature ;"
Hegel, finally, of his "Absolute Idealism." In none of
them, however, any more than in its first disciples, did this
system present itself as hostile to Christianity. Gbthe,
who avowed himself "a not -Christian," denied that he
was "against Christ;" and as to the philosophers just
named, we have seen that the majority, whether from
prudence or deference, set forth their doctrine clothed in

AMONG PROTESTANTS AND GREEKS. 93
the most orthodox attire. The death of Hegel tore in
pieces all the veils (1831). After he was gone, his school
split into two parts, and while the Hegelian right faith
fully preserved the formulae of the master, the left, an
innovator in religion as well as politics, boldly unfolded
the consequences of his doctrine, and turned them against
the Church as well as against the State. Dr. Strauss, he-
fore becoming a disciple of Hegel, had applied to the
Gospels the most absolute maxims of the critical school
of Tubingen. Collecting together all the objections which
it had raised against the reality of certain facts of the
evangelical history, and advancing new ones ; dissecting
with the boldest and sharpest scalpel the whole of that
history ; devoting to ridicule the arbitrary explanations by
which the old rationalism of Paulus had attempted to save
the authority of the sacred historians (1835), he left in the
life of Jesus only a series of myths, or, to speak more
directly, one single great myth, destined in the first ages
of our era to represent an idea with which, according to
him, humanity was then pre-occupied, namely, that of the
manifestation of God in man — of the ideality of the human
nature with the divine. It was a new path, a critical path,
by which he arrived at the conclusions of the Hegelian
philosophy. But after all, he said, what matters the false
ness of the fact, provided the idea is recognized as true ?
This epithet of God-man, which ecclesiastical Christology
applied to an individual, the Hegelian Christology applied
to the race ; all that was false in the one became true in
the other, in such a way that an Hegelian could accept, as
an emblem of the highest conceptions of philosophy, what
the evangelists recount of Christ. Thus Strauss displayed
the pantheism which formed the foundation of the pre
tended orthodoxy of Hegel. Great was the scandal in the

94 ANTI-CHRISTIAN REACTION.
theological world. Strauss's work was assailed on all sides,
and if several of his criticisms survive, and compel his
adversaries to concessions more or less important, it was
nevertheless easy to defend against him the historical
reality of the person of Jesus. "Not thus do people
invent," Rousseau had already said. Dr. Strauss himself,
in the second edition of his book, acknowledges that the
negation of the miracles in no way involves the non-exist
ence of the personage of whom the miracles are narrated.
But even the repute gained by a book whose conclusions
are so fantastic, sufficiently proved that more absorbing
questions, more actual interests, agitated men's minds at
the time. These were political and social questions. It '
was the middle class which claimed the constitutions pro
mised and constantly postponed; it was the labouring class
who demanded a prompt alleviation of their misery ; it
was the ambitious class of scholars, or (as they are called)
" Literates " emerging in university cities ; in a word, it
was, as in France, Radicalism, and in its suite Socialism,
which were preparing their batteries ; it was the revolution
suppressed in 1830, which smouldered under its ashes. The
governments of Germany made a rampart of the restored
orthodox Church ; to overthrow the political edifice, the
assailants began to bombard the religious bastion; to
capture the palace, they undermined the sanctuary. In
vain did Schelling, seeing the excitement of the political
powers, hasten to deny all paternity in regard to these
subversive doctrines ; in vain did he boast that by his
metaphysics he healed the wounds inflicted by He^el.
From his lectures in Berlin (1841), though their etiquette
was Christian and their tissue was brilliant, there after all
came forth only a new form of Pantheism. The work of
demolition carried on by the Hegelian left pursued its

AMONG PROTESTANTS AND GREEKS. 95
path, and its new chiefs, finding in the idealism of Strauss,
too vaporous for them, only an insufficient weapon, drew
more absolute consequences from the master's principles.
Then they spoke only of "the evolutions of the idea
through the spheres of the phenomenal world," of " its
incarnation in the God-man." All these metaphysical
subtleties they touched only with their fingers' ends ; but
they intoxicated themselves with humanitarian pantheism.
"The hostile powers," said M. Vacherot, "had resumed
their weapons ; theology found itself face to face with
criticism." That mythical creation which Strauss referred
to a noble enthusiasm, Bruno Bauer made the product of
a gross error in these, and an interested fraud in those.
In his " German Annals," Feuerbach declared that in the
belief in a God he saw only a discreditable illusion which
man imposes on himself, in worshipping as God his own
individuality. If, as the master has made clear, it is in
humanity alone that God acquires consciousness of Him
self, humanity can recognize no other God than itself.
But, said Max Stirner in his turn, what is that humanity,
that abstraction, that they want us to worship ? I know
no other than the me; it is to it alone that I owe myself;
and that me I know only under its palpable form, which
in my eyes is the only real form. The material I is our
God; its qualities are our law. Every man is his own
God, and this world is all its future. The soul is a sense
less word. As to that world to come that they preach to
us, it is an error upheld bj^Absolutism in nations whose
present it confiscates. "Each one has a right to all," was
the motto of " Young Germany," whose views it expressed
in regard to morality and social order, and it was under
this flag that it prepared to combat the political and reli
gious despotism preached up by the "Evangelical Gazette"

96 ANTI-CHRISTIAN REACTION.
of Berlin. Thus, under the influence of the revolutionary
spirit, there came forth from the empty and hollow bosom
of German idealism a materialism more dense, more gross
even than that of the French Communists, and which,
profiting by the discontent of the labouring classes, dif
fused among them its maxims subversive of all religion
and all morality. As soon as the first symptoms of po
litical agitation had caused the condition of beliefs and
morals in Protestant Germany, as well as Vienna and
Munich, to be closely examined, the saddest sight offered
itself to the eyes of the investigators. It was found (so
states "The History of the Interior Mission") that " during
the sleep of worthy souls " — say rather the placid content
of stationary minds — "there had been formed a formidable
organization which, armed with insult, hate and fury, had
undertaken a war to the knife against religion and faith."
At Hamburg, while the number of human births increased
considerably every year, that of communicants decreased
in a greater proportion; a number of young men and
women had not been confirmed, and formed part of no
church. In Prussia, the commissioners found in the
poorer classes multitudes to whom the Gospel was some
thing unknown, and thousands who never entered a temple,
" so that in Berlin, in parishes of twenty thousand souls,
there were churches which had not a dozen present at
public worship, while in the streets you might meet a
crowd of intoxicated persons." In the single year 1843
thirty-five thousand childre^were born out of marriage.
Here there were formed societies of " Free-thinkers " that
had ten thousand members, and corresponded with forty
similar societies in Germany. There you might find con
fraternities of fellow-workmen whose mission it was to
form the labouring youth to idleness, insubordination,

AMONG PROTESTANTS AND GREEKS. 97
disorder, irreligion, and all the vices. In their meetings,
and in many families where their lessons had produced
fruit, the most odious blasphemies were uttered, and the
lowest principles held the place of morality. " We have,"
said Dr. Wichern, " heard in a cottage these very words :
' Religion and its Head have been invented only to harass
the poor and keep power in the hands of the great,'"
"I myself am God," said a working man. "I am a
pagan," said a mother of six children, with perfect in
difference; "I have never known anything of Christian
ity." At the moment then when, under the reign of the
pious Frederick William IV., " The Evangelical Gazette "
exulted in seeing, owing to the severe measures of the
Minister of Public Worship, rationalism decrease from
year to year in the bosom of the clergy, such were the
discoveries that were made in the beliefs and morals of the
people. The preaching was irreproachably orthodox, the
liturgy was exactly read, the creed regularly signed ; but
the most part of the "faithful" pastors that the Church
had recruited, had no flock before them ; a number of
places of worship remained empty, while public-houses
were full ; and to remedy this state of things such men as
Kmmmacher, Hengstenberg and Stahl, being consulted in
relation to the matter, could recommend nothing else than
to send a swarm of young missionaries, who should preach
from house to house the faith, " such as it is professed in
our Church — faith in Christ as God, and in the Scripture
as containing the Word of God in every page." During
the momentary calm which followed the reaction of 1849,
politics, left on one side, no longer played the same part
in the anti-christian warfare. But the scientific spirit had,
in all its provinces, and specially in that of the natural
sciences, made new progress in Germany. Its tendency,
H

98 ANTI-CHRISTIAN REACTION.
always more marked toward unity, was adverse to the
dualism of the reigning theology. The violent opposition
had ceased, but the ancient objections were not removed,
and new objections arose, so that there resulted a state of
permanent antagonism between science and faith.
Modern discoveries have led men of science to recognize
that most natural forces, which had been considered as
separate, are identical ; that electricity, magnetism, heat,
light, are only varieties of the general phenomenon of move
ment, which itself, according to some, is only a result of
the aggregation of matter. If then, they infer, on one side
force is inseparable from matter, and if, by general consent,
nothing in matter or force is ever lost — if the two are im
mortal, they are also infinite and eternal, and then where
is the need of an agent external to them for their creation 2
In the degree, it was also said, in which physiology and
pathology progress, the intimate union of mind and body,
the constant action they exert on one another, manifest
themselves by phenomena even more striking. Why then
distinguish them ? Why should not the same forces which
impress movement on matter produce the operations of
mind ? Why should not thought, like the other functions of
our being, be a product of our organs, the effect of nervous
electricity, for instance, or a secretion of the brain ? The
facts unfolded by Geology and Paleontology shew us life
developing itself successively and in a manner constantly
more perfect over the globe in the degree in which its
surface is modified. Why should not the first appearance
of life on the earth be also the result of a simple combina
tion of matter favourable to that appearance ? Finally, on
seeing always more clearly the more deeply you penetrate
into the research of causes, natural facts, as well as those
of history— the revolutions of the globe, as well as those

AMONG PROTESTANTS AND GREEKS. 99
of empires, engender each other, succeed each other as by
a kind of mathematical necessity, why seek an external
cause which presides over these movements and determines
their succession ? While waiting for these objections to
be answered, as we shall see that they have been, by a
more rigorous examination, the persistent vivacity with
which they were reproduced shews us how religion was
suffering in the world of Science. In England, similar
speculations ardently pursued gave birth to the same nega
tions. At an early day Pantheism had brilliant interpreters
in Byron and his friend Shelley. After them, idealistic
scepticism was introduced from Germany. The Positivist
theories of Comte have, owing to the turn of the national
mind, found there more adherents than in France. Another
sect, already powerfully organized, has recently been born
there, having for its object the destruction of the Esta
blished Church and that of the actual political order. Its
doctrine, known under the expressive name of Secularism,
teaches men to break with every religious idea in order
to limit themselves to this world. To extract all that is
possible from our present life is the sole morality it ac
knowledges. The census of 1851 already shewed in the
lower classes of England an almost complete desertion of
public worship, an almost total absence of religious habits.
But the evil spread more widely. A materialistic book,
published in 1828, spread in a short time to the number
of 80,000 copies. About the same time there was formed
in London a society of Atheists, under the name of " Free
thinkers." In the year 1851, the publications in English
in which Atheism was professed were estimated at 600,000
volumes ; the principal places where they were read were
the universities and the manufacturing districts.
America herself, notwithstanding the glory of its revival
h2

100 ANTI-CHRISTIAN REACTION.
meetings, is far from being free from this contagion ; witness
the club of Atheists organized in Washington under the
title of " Philosophic Lycseum."
In Russia, the reign of Catharine had left germs of
scepticism which the revival of 1812 seemed for a moment
to have destroyed, but which re-appeared as soon as the
religious zeal of Alexander grew cold. This might have
been anticipated on seeing the worldly luxury displayed by
the nobility in the first assemblies of the Bible Society.
In the measure in which the Czar grew indifferent to his
work, the number of subscriptions Tapidly grew less ;
fashion and flattery had occasioned more than a moiety of
the success. As to the reign of Nicholas, it was, accord
ing to the historians, " a period of spiritual death which
had its rebound in a state of agitation as dangerous for
religion as for the political institutions." The rites of the
Church were punctually observed, but under a complicated
ritual was hidden an entire absence of faith ; German Pan
theism, and even hostility to Christianity, were propagated
by lodges of Freemasons, not only among the workpeople,
among whom were thousands of Nihilists, hut also in the
upper classes, and in even the bosom of the clergy. " In our
days," says a publicist, " there has arisen in Russia an ex
treme democratic party which calls to their aid, while giving
them a new impulse, the irreligious doctrines and passions
which have long fermented in that country. Materialism,
Atheism, Nihilism, after having been in a sporadic state in
Russian society, have become there an epidemic, which spe
cially pervades the middle class, takes its impulses from the
books of naturalistic Atheists, and invades morals as well as
literature. Two of its periodicals, the most widely circulated,
have been suppressed as attacking marriage, the family and
property, and preaching Atheistic communism openly. "

CHAPTER III.
CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.

The excesses of irreligion may doubtless, with some men,
have no other cause than voluntary blindness, depravation
of character, or disorderly morals. But when, at the be
ginning of a religious and Christian age, Atheism comes of
a sudden and infects numerous classes, more general causes
alone can explain a fact so contrary to the natural instincts
of humanity. The invasion of Atheism at certain periods
is then a symptom, which the friends of religion should
seriously study. It is an admonition which invites them
to inquire what there is in its present state, in the direc
tion which it takes, in the influences to which it is subject,
that claims correctives and remedies.
On this point illusion is impossible. While observing
the powerlessness of so many efforts to bring back to
Christianity the generality of men of our time, in behold
ing the scepticism, the materialism of the last century
revive in this under new forms, it has been wisely asked
whether in the labour of Christian restoration, ardently
undertaken in our days, the most intelligent and efficacious
methods have been pursued; whether excess was not often
combated by contrary excess ; whether the materials em
ployed were always sufficiently examined; whether the
doctrines, the usages, the institutions sought to be esta.-

102 CHRISTIAN progress.
blished, were the truest and the best; whether all legitimate
liberties were respected ; whether all essential truths were
respected ; whether, finally, the means employed, suitable
possibly in other times, were the most appropriate to the
wants of the present day. Such is the problem which has
been put by sincere friends of Christianity ; and the result
of that inquiry, loyally pursued in the midst of the ana
themas of the retrograde spirit and the sarcasms or the
acts of violence of the subversive spirit, has been a move
ment of progress, which we are about to follow out under
the three heads of Liberty, Truth, Religious Life.

PROGRESS IN LIBERTY.
§ 1-
Whatever obstacles the retrograde tendencies have
hitherto opposed, and oppose still, to the enfranchisement
of consciences, it cannot be denied that veritable progress
has been effected in this important matter. The general
movement of the century, mingling together the popula
tions of different countries, obliges them each to grant
within their limits the just rights of which they claim the
enjoyment for themselves. The treaties of commerce,
on which depends so much the prosperity of states, bring
with them treaties of reciprocal free institutions. The
means of intercommunication, by multiplying voyages,
favouring emigrations, and facilitating the exchange of
ideas, dissipate dogmatical prejudices, and gradually tend
to abrogate the old laws of intolerance.
These positions are illustrated in the new cantonal con
stitutions decreed in Switzerland from 1830 and 1847, and

PROGRESS IN LIBERTY. 103
which will probably be completed shortly in the reforms
projected in the Federal Constitution. In the kingdom
of Hanover, an ordinance published in 1824 put an end to
all difference between the dominant and the tolerated re
ligion. In England, access to Parliament, opened to the
Catholics by the abolition of the Test Act, had been the
previous year conceded to the Nonconformists, and the
same liberality has since opened to both admission to degrees
in the Oxford and Cambridge Universities. In Sweden,
religious liberty, long refused to the Catholics by the
union of the clergy, the nobility and the peasants, has
partially triumphed by the concurrence of the King and
the citizens. The new Constitution of Denmark has also
guaranteed to all religious parties liberty of conscience.
In Russia, the toleration of Alexander I., so little imi
tated by his first successor, has been better observed by
the next. Alexander II. bestowed religious liberty on the
sect called Rascolnikes, at least on the most moderate of
them. He has opened his states to the missionaries of
different societies, and re-established the missions for the
Caucasus. Finally, while maintaining the ancient law
touching children born of mixed marriages, and forbidding
all attempts to make proselytes among his Greek subjects,
he has granted full liberty of conscience to the members of
the different Christian communions, moderated the zeal of
his bishops for the conversion of the Lutherans, and finally;
it is said, removed the old civil penalties in case of abju
ration, so that a Russian may become a Catholic or Pro
testant without thereby losing his titles to nobility or his
rights of citizenship (1866). Even Catholic countries open
gradually to the same progress. It was at this price that
in Belgium the Ultramontane party in 1830 purchased the

104 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
co-operation of the liberals on behalf of the revolution
which freed the country from the domination of Holland,
and the efforts it has made since to take the liberty from
them by indirect means and appropriate its benefit entirely
to themselves, have been defeated by the union of the
independent party.
In Italy, the era of religious liberty opened in 1848 by
the emancipation of the .Vaudois of Piedmont, which was
soon, by a new statute, extended to all the Protestants of
the kingdom (1850). Each of the annexations by which
that kingdom completed itself in the sequel has given a
new extension to those liberties, which now are nearly as
complete as in any country of Europe, though troubled
here and there, as in 1866 was seen in the small town of
Barletta, by clerical and popular fanaticism. In Austria,
the fatal issue of the battle of Sadowa made the govern
ment reflect (1866) on the little profit it had drawn from
its Concordat of 1855 with Rome. Italy, against which
that treaty was directed, formed a league with Prussia ;
the Protestant populations of the empire, Hungary among
others, could serve a power hostile to their liberties only
against its will ; even the Pope and the clergy had but
moderately supported Austria in the struggle. By a just
return, the Austrian Concordat, without being expressly
annulled, as had been those of Baden and Wiirtemberg,
was annulled in fact in 1870, and in a more effective
manner in 1873, by laws protecting liberty, which the
ministers valiantly supported. Spain, since her revolu
tion of 1868, has attempted, as much as her condition
of perpetual anarchy has allowed, to enter on the same
road. Her American colonies had entered thereon for the
most part since their separation from the mother country.

PROGRESS IN LIBERTY. 105.
Frequently, however, have they deviated therefrom, except
Brazil, where religious liberty seems to have struck the
deepest roots.
§2.
Moreover, it is a widely-extended opinion at the present
hour that religious liberty cannot be entire so long as the
religious order continues united with the civil ; under this
conviction Samuel Vincent and Alexander Vinet and many
others, in their pleas for liberty of conscience, have main
tained the necessity of rigorously separating the Church
from the State.
This position, nevertheless, although supported by the
example of the United States of America, whose influence
on the old continent has not ceased to grow in our age, has
indeed been introduced and discussed in several legislative
assemblies, but has triumphed over the obstacles which stand
in its way but imperfectly as yet. In Russia, where in the
spirit of the people, as that of the Government, nationality
is closely united with the profession of the Greek religion,
this separation is at present absolutely impossible. In
Catholic states, it is from the clergy specially that the opposi
tion comes. It pretends, and it has solemnly declared by the
Bishop and the Council of Rome, that the civil power has
no more imperative duty, no more glorious mission, than
to sustain by all its resources the Church, that column of
the truth. Now, as long as governments shall accept that
mission, it will be difficult for Protestants, even the most
disposed to renounce the patronage of the State, to leave
to their adversaries the exclusive enjoyment of that privi
lege. To these obstacles add those which come from habits
so deeply rooted, bonds contracted so long since, which
even in America were broken only by exceptional circum
stances ; add also the difficulties attached to the division

106 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
and application of old ecclesiastical foundations ; and you
will understand that the desired separation, in the most
diverse camps, among religious men as well as free-thinkers,
find as many adversaries as partizans, and down till now
has been effected but very partially, as we have seen, in the
new secession of Churches in Scotland, and in the forma
tion of the free Churches of France and Switzerland.
The recent separation of the Protestant Church of Ire
land has more importance, because it is the State itself
which has undertaken to carry it into effect. Doubtless
there was in this case an old and notorious injustice to
repair, and for England a serious peril to put an end to.
Profound and inveterate hatreds, acts of rebellion cease
lessly returning, a permanent agitation, long kept up
with the aid of the clergy by the celebrated demagogue
O'Connell, and accompanied by threatening demands for
the repeal of the Union (1809), the general refusal of tithes,
secret machinations organized against the tithe collectors
(1831) — such were the sad effects of the religious situation
of Ireland. The palliatives to which recourse was had
remained generally without success. Neither the admis
sion of the Catholics to Parliament, nor the alleviation of
the tithe system, nor the foundation of colleges specially
Irish (1838), nor the ample endowment of Maynooth for
the instruction of the clergy, had succeeded in overcoming
the national antipathy. When, after the emigration which
followed the famine of 1847, legions of Protestant mis
sionaries were sent into the country, their pastoral in
structions, their open-air preachings, produced less edifi
cation than scandal. Finally, the new agitation caused by
the Irish Fenians (1865) returning in a mass from the
service of South America, and with them the return of
scenes of revolt and violence, made the English Govern-

PROGRESS IN LIBERTY. 107
ment feel that the time was come for trying on that ex
citable people the virtue of a great act of justice. On the
proposition of the Prime Minister Gladstone, and with
determined opposition in the House of Lords, it was de
cided that, dating from the year 1871, the revenue of the
ancient capital enjoyed by the Irish Protestant Church
should be all but totally appropriated to beneficent and
educational institutions on behalf of the country, and that
in future the newly-elected Protestant ecclesiastics, as well
as their worship, should be supported by their Church
itself. A similar measure was, the preceding year (1870),
adopted by the colonial Churches of Canada, Australia,
and Jamaica. As to the separation declared in Mexico by
the constitutional decree of the 6th of October, 1873, the
sequel will shew to what point it may be considered as
definitive. If these are till now the only instances of an effective
rupture between the religious and civil order, it must he
admitted that there is in Europe a general tendency in that
direction. The more intimate mixture of populations of
different origin, consequently the simultaneous presence of
worships increasingly more numerous and more diverse,
the religious divisions continually going on in the degree
in which convictions become more individual, separations
such as those which are on the point of taking place as
a consequence of the Vatican Council and the Synod
of Paris, every day increase the difficulty of the task of
governments charged to protect and support forms of
religion, and promote .more and more the efforts of the
adversaries of national churches. On another side, in the
degree in which religious life and spirit of association
make increase, the different worships, more in a condition
to suffice for themselves, renounce more willingly support

108 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
from the State. On all sides the influence of these dif
ferent causes already manifests itself. During now half a
century, in most European states, each political convulsion
breaks some bonds existing with religious society, and the
ensuing restorations try in vain to renew them with some
solidity. Neither the Ultramontane theory of "the Catholic
State," nor that of " the Christian State " upheld by some
jurists of Germany, has succeeded in gaining acceptance.
More and more, even in Catholic states, civil marriage
is reputed sufficient in the eyes of th,e law ; the trial
of causes touching marriage and divorce is taken from the
ecclesiastical tribunals ; worships, where there are several,
are restricted to celebrate their ceremonies only in the interior
of their sacred edifices. The Church imposts abolished, the
ancient religious foundations, those of Italy in particular,
progressively taken possession of by the governments, are
converted into an annual salary for the clergy. Nearly
everywhere the official budget for worship tends to lessen,
and you can catch a glance of the moment when it will be
definitively cut off. This is a situation which the Churches,
as long as their just independence is respected, are not
bound to accelerate, but for which they cannot too soon
prepare, by habituating themselves to rely on their own
resources, and which they ought, when the moment is
come, to accept frankly, considering what they will gain
thereby in legitimate influence. In effect, although legally
separated, civil society and religious society will not on
that account be insulated one from another. By the sole
fact of their co-existence, they may effectively aid each
other ; the one by diffusing religious principles, the guar
dians of public morality; the other by maintaining ex
ternal order, necessary for the peaceful and harmonious
development of the religious spirit. And these mutual

PROGRESS IN LIBERTY. 109
services they will render more effectually the more liberal
they become. The minister of religion being no longer
supported by the government, will appear in his veritable
part, all the more ; being no longer a servant of the civil
power, he will be the better heeded by his flock when ho
shall remind them of their duties as citizens. He will
persuade the more readily when he shall possess no autho
rity to constrain, and will be an auxiliary of peace and
good, the less suspected and the more effective, when no
political character belongs to him.
§3.
But the most considerable advantage that we may promise
ourselves, and which we already gather from the gradual
separation of the civil and religious order, is the appease
ment of the conflicts, formerly so frequent, between the
authorities that preside over this one and that. In the
degree in which we approach the American system, those
authorities, each more free in its own sphere, are less liable
to oppose each other by their mutual exigencies, and to
come into collision owing to their mutual pretensions.
The same independence that has been secured for them
selves by the fractions of churches which of their own
accord have renounced pay from the State, and all other
protection than that of the police, equal for all forms of
worship, the salaried national churches have partially ac
quired by gradually parting with their ancient privileges.
The Protestant communities, in their origin almost entirely
subordinated to the civil authority, are to-day less con
strained in their internal administration; the State is satis
fied with the right of confirming the choice of the ecclesias
tics which they put at their head, and in general abstain from
taking cognizance of the doctrines, the forms of worship,

110 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
the creeds that they adopt, so long as there is nothing
in them directly contrary to public order. The Catholic
Church itself, deprived of the influence given it by its
exorbitant wealth in former days, is now the object of a
less jealous supervision on the part of governments. In
France, most of the articles of 1682 are allowed to sleep;
the placets, the appeals against abuses, fall more and more
into disuse. In Italy, the clergy, less richly endowed, has
become more free in its movements. No longer are prayers
for the monarch required for it, nor Te Deum in honour
of the statute ; it blesses only what it chooses to bless, and
refuses the sacrament at its own pleasure ; since it has
lost the right to constrain the conscience of others, its own
conscience has ceased to he violated. Everywhere this
progress would be still more manifest, had not Pius IX.,
like the Popes of old, constituted himself the judge of the
civil and political administration of princes, if he had not
found a council to sanction his pretensions, and bishops
ready to carry them into effect. To these rash encroach
ments we have seen some governments obliged to oppose
the ancient hindrances, and this will continue until they
have recourse to the solely efficacious guarantee — namely,
that of separation. But already we see a remarkable con
trast. At the moment when Pius IX. obtained recogni
tion of his divine right to govern peoples and kings, he
finds himself deprived of the government of his own
states, fallen from the throne which he recovered in 1849;
in a word, stript of the temporal power which he persists
in regarding as the firmest support of his pontifical autho
rity. Let us stop for a moment or two on this memorable
catastrophe. The general movement of secularization
whence it proceeds, dates in Europe from the first decline
of feudalism ; it took a new flight at the epoch of the

PROGRESS IN LIBERTY. Ill
Reformation; the French Revolution made it still more
decided. In France, in Italy, the bishoprics, the abbeys,
the chapters, lost with their old domains the feudal rights
that were attached to them ; the ecclesiastical electorates
of Treves, Cologne and Mayence, were destroyed, and their
territories united to France (1800) ; those of the eccle
siastical principalities of Germany served to indemnify the
lay princes for their losses during the war. In Switzerland,
the act of mediation despoiled of its possessions the abbey
of Saint-Gall for the benefit of the neighbouring cantons
(1803), and all these secularizations were ratified in the
Congress of Vienna (1814). In what concerned the Roman
States, the allied powers did not think themselves able to
pursue the same course. To render the sovereign Pontiff
of the Catholic world subject to one of these powers,
would then have appeared not so much, as has been said,
to constrain his spiritual liberty, as to give to the prince
who had him under his sway a considerable advantage,
in particular too preponderant in Italy. It was judged
specially necessary to keep that country separate, as it had
been of old, and to prevent the formation of that Italian
unity which the neighbouring states, when they could
not seize its reins, as did Napoleon I., have always pro
fessed to fear. In re-establishing in their provinces the
petty Italian princes, they equally restored (1814) to the
Popes their sovereignty in the ancient patrimony of Saint
Peter. But under the exclusive sacerdotal administration
which immediately established itself there, under the load
of the abuses which it revived, under the apprehension of
the foreign despotism to which it lent its favour, Rome and
Italy soon became a permanent focus of plots and troubles
which threatened the tranquillity of all Europe. In vain
the powers disquieted addressed to the Pontiffs their repre-

112 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
sentations and their advice ; to all the requests for admi
nistrative reforms in the Roman States they replied either
by promises which they never kept, or by purely illusory
changes. The situation, already very strained under Leo
XII. and under Pius VIII., appeared intolerable from the
time of Gregory XVI., whose pontificate, coinciding with
the then recent fall of the Bourbons in France, kindled
revolution in Italy, and twice obliged the Austrian troops
to occupy it. Accordingly, at Gregory's death, France, by
the ascendancy which it was allowed to obtain in the Con
clave, appointed (1846) Cardinal Mastai Pope, who passed
for a declared friend of reforms. The Italian national
party, who knew his weak side, flattering his vanity and
profiting by his inexperience, finally profiting by the
revolutions which broke out otherwheres, extracted from
him by their laudations and their menaces, turn and turn
about, acts of extreme liberalism, until the day when they
solicited him to put himself at the head of a crusade against
foreign domination. Before the threats of Austria the Pontiff
was compelled to stop ; but the radical party continued to
advance toward their object by the assassination of the
minister Rossi and the proclamation of the Roman republic.
In the war which followed (1849), Austria, already victori
ous over Piedmont, was about to occupy Rome, intending
to occupy all Italy. France intervened ; its troops seized
Rome, led back thither Pius IX. from Gaeta, whither he
had fled, and replaced him in his chair and on his throne.
But soon what happened ? That which several had pre
dicted, and which everybody might have foreseen. The
holy Father returned from exile cured, as may be believed,
of his constitutional fancies, — the holy Father, from whom
France had obtained promises of amnesty and reform, but
whom from prudence it did not wish to constrain, profited

PROGRESS IN LIBERTY. 113
by his position to concede as little as possible. Looking
favourably on France, he yet turned a deaf ear to its
advice, while quietly but ceaselessly he laboured to bring
the Austrians back into Italy.
France and Piedmont, threatened afresh, united their
interests strongly, and that agreement, cemented by the
war of the Milanais and the cession of Savoy, enabled
Piedmont to achieve the conquest of northern Italy, and
to annex to it the States of the Church on the east of the
Apennines, to take from the Bourbons the possession of
the two Sicilies, and thus to constitute the kingdom of
Italy. Rome, with its immediate territory, nevertheless
remained in the power of the Holy See (1864), and the
government of Victor Emanuel had to promise to see it
respected ; but that engagement did not hold out long
against the impatience of Italian liberals. After a fresh
attempt, defeated by France, as soon as the latter withdrew
its troops to direct them toward Berlin, they took posses
sion of Rome (1870), and the capital of the Catholic world
became the capital of the new Italian kingdom. Thus the
domination of the prince bishops in Europe came to an
end. Thus also, unless there arise new circumstances
which many efforts tend to bring, but which will not pre
vent the definitive result, the movement of secularization
which has gone on for several centuries, and which, after
having successively reached all the ecclesiastical dignitaries,
abbots, canons, bishops, has finally reached the supreme
episcopate, and taken effect in the very centre of Catholicity.
In taking possession of Rome, the Italian Government
had to assure Catholic consciences by the most extensive
guarantees given for the maintenance of the spiritual
liberty of the holy Father. By him they are repelled ; he
hopes to bring a favourable issue in imitating Pius VII.,
i

114 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
by playing the part of a prisoner, which in his case is
somewhat fictitious. Without doubt, it is a strange mor
tification for the King-Pontiff to lose one of his crowns
at the moment when the other had been surrounded with
a new lustre. But by a little attention he may, perhaps,
discover the necessary and fatal connection that there is
between these two events. Perhaps, also, in going over
in the annals of the primitive Church the glorious history
of Clement, Fabian, Cornelius, Leo and Gregory I., he, or
at least his successors, will understand all that the Ponti
ficate, in ceasing to be a royalty, may gain in dignity and
liberty in the spiritual order.
§4.
If the relations between religious and civil authority
tend to improve under the progressive separation of the
domains over which they preside, the progress of religious
liberty does not exercise a less happy influence on the
mutual relations of the different Christian communions.
In the degree in which governments, better understanding
their part as moderators, shew themselves more firmly de
cided not to allow any inoffensive religious society to be
oppressed — in the degree in which each communion feels
its rights more equitably, more loyally guaranteed, con
troversies lose their bitterness, mutual animosities are
composed. To-day, moreover, when almost everywhere,
with the material barriers between nations, the moral
barriers between worship sink and disappear, the desig
nations of Catholic and Protestant states, by which the
old continent and the new were divided at the commence
ment of this century, lose day after day their signification ;
nearly all become in reality, if not yet in name, mixed
states. In such circumstances it will be difficult to put

PROGRESS IN LIBERTY. 115
into fermentation agam the passions of another age, to
rekindle religious wars, or to gain for the suggestions of a
narrow confessionalism preponderance over the large ideas
of country and humanity. Does it follow that the Greek,
Latin and Protestant communions are ready to become
one ? Certainly not. Too many causes, proceeding from
diversities of country, original, national genius, political
circumstances, still keep them apart. Although disarmed,
the parties are not reconciled ; no one of them has re
nounced making conquests to the prejudice of the others.
But despoiled, though still incompletely in certain lands,
of their previous means of constraint, they are obliged to
recur, and recur in fact, to the more legitimate ways offered
to them by liberty itsel£ It is thus that Catholicism,
under the aegis of these liberal principles, which are dear
to it wherever it does not yet bear sway, introduces in
crowds into Protestant countries its missionaries, its insti
tutions, founds there churches and chapels, where it displays
as publicly as it can its pomps and its ceremonies. To
support its proselytism, vast brotherhoods, founded in
Paris, Lyons and other principal cities, collect every year
considerable sums of money, which they distribute espe
cially in countries whose conquest Rome desiderates. In
France, the Societies of Saint Francois de Sales and Vincent
de Saint Paul ; in Germany, those of Saint Boniface, the
Pius-Verein, &c, are So many aggregations devoted to a very
active propagandism. That of Saint Vincent de Saint Paul
among others, founded in Paris by Ozanam (1833) with
solely eight sub-societies, counted more than thirty thou
sand thirty years afterwards. Their efforts tend specially to
people, as much as possible, Protestant states with Catholic
families, whose emigration, establishment and naturaliza
tion, they facilitate. Then, when these families have planted
i2

116 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
their feet there in sufficient numbers, and when, by favour
of universal'suffrage, their heads have obtained a voice in
the local or general councils, the Pope on his side retakes
possession of the country, and dividing it into dioceses over
which he sets bishops, without caring at first whether
or not they are recognized by the governments, but in
always reckoning on some happy opportunity to get them ac
knowledged. It is thus that in Holland, where the Catholics
already form two-fifths of the population, Pius IX. has re
established the five bishoprics which existed there before
the Reformation ; that in England, where the Catholic
population has increased by more than two millions, prin
cipally by the immigration of Irish labourers, he has
instituted twelve bishops, who are dependent on an Arch
bishop of Westminster (1850). In the United States,
where there was at first only one bishop, the Bishop of
Baltimore, there are at present more than fifty, under
the control of several archbishops, the last of whom has
already founded three hundred churches. Finally, to con
firm itself, whether in the old countries under its sway or
in newly-obtained posts, the Catholic Church, with the
aid of opulent families, founds there numerous religious
houses, monastic or demi-monastic, devoted to works of
piety or beneficence, and specially to education. Thither
she draws and brings up children of poor families, and,
availing herself of the feeling of want, attaches them closely
to her service. Under the Second Empire, houses of the
kind were multiplied, and became possessed of much
property. By omitting examinations as to capacity, the
monks and nuns who conduct these schools, and who
have tripled in twenty years, have got into their hands
the education of the half of the French youth. At the
same time, for the daughters of opulent families, convents

PROGRESS IN LIBERTY. 117
or boarding-schools, conducted with a kind of luxury, were
established, by means of which the female instruction,
taken from domestic influence, passed into the hands of
the clergy. Hence the violent opposition which Pius IX.
and the bishops of France made to the League of Elemen
tary Instruction, to the establishment of professional schools
of women, of normal schools for lay female tedchers, and
especially to gratuitous public instruction, which would
combat the clerical instruction with equal arms. The
Protestants on their side did not remain idle. Although
in Catholic states the new regime of liberty is for them
restricted within narrower limits, they profit as much as
they can by sending out their distributors of Bibles and
religious tracts, their missionaries, their evangelists charged
with establishing chapels and schools. Since the promul
gation of the statute of Charles Albert, and specially since
the establishment of the kingdom of Italy, the efforts of
Protestantism have been exerted over this area. The
Vaudois churches of Piedmont and different dissident
churches, supported by England and America, maintain
in nearly all the Italian cities evangelists and teachers, for
the preparation of whom a Protestant academy has been
founded in Florence. Recently a Bible Society has been
established in Rome, as well as new evangelical chapels
(1872). Of all the modern Protestant institutions, the
Societies of Religious Aid for scattered Protestants seem
to promise the, surest and the most prolific results. Such
are, for France and the neighbouring countries, the national
and dissident Societies of Evangelization in the south and
the east, of which that of Geneva is an auxiliary. Such is,
for Germany, the great Society of GustavusAdolphus, which,
founded first in Sweden to celebrate the bisecular anni
versary of that great monarch, two years later established

118 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
in Saxony, has since 1842 obtained immense extension,
and despite the opposition and hindrances which it has
long encountered, especially in Bavaria and Austria, has
extended its ramifications throughout Germany, and within
the space of twenty years increased its annual budget
tenfold. Already in many places, by the zeal of these associations
there were formed old flocks which fanaticism had dis
persed, old churches which had been destroyed, and which,
with the schools that were connected with them, became
in the midst of the Roman populations valuable centres
of evangelization. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged
that, in regard to schools, Catholicism finds in its unmar
ried and unsalaried instructors an advantage against which
Protestantism cannot struggle, except by a redoublement
of zeal in its laymen, its pastors, and its directors. As to
the other means of propagandism, they have profited dif
ferently to the two parties. If Protestantism tends to
gain ground, and in truth does gain ground, among the
friends of free inquiry, and among those who wish to
escape from the clerical yoke, Catholicism on its side
makes its way among those who, seeking before all in religion
a source of authority, complain that they find in Protestant
communities, even the more stationary, what can hardly
be called authority, since it is too uncertain and vacillating.
Such was, in the first half of this century, the considera
tion which led to certain apostasies — for instance, those of
Stolberg, Hurter, Adam Miiller, Schlosser, De Haller,
Newman, and, more recently, of a part of the nobility of
England and Scotland. Those of the poets Tieck, Werner,
and of the painter Winklemann, had their origin rather in
the love of the fine arts and the Romanticism of the period.
In general, however, these passings from one of the camps

PROGRESS IN LIBERTY. 119
into the other are comparatively rare in these times. As
long as the two parties are in conflict, a kind of point of
honour, joined to a thousand personal proprieties, domestic
or social, keeps each individual under his old flag. The
civil registers, in classing citizens according to their bap
tism, also contribute to fixing persons in the communion
in which they were born. Up to now, it is less by con
versions properly so called than by infiltrations of new
populations that the two rival communions increase in
each place the number of their adherents. Opposite currents
incessantly carry Protestants into Catholic countries, and
Catholics into Protestant countries. While Ireland peoples
with poor and ignorant hand-workers the manufacturing
districts of England, Scotland and North America, wealthy
Scotchmen purchase in Ireland hereditary lands, recently
alienated or abandoned by the emigrants, and people them
with industrious Protestant farmers and day-labourers.
While in Catholic countries the learned professions, high
commercial and manufacturing positions, are more and more
occupied by Protestant foreigners, in Protestant lands
foreign Catholics come in a crowd to exercise mechanical
pursuits. All things being equal, however, as in the long
run the advantage sooner or later turns inevitably to the
side of knowledge and civilization, Protestantism, as well
as the sections of Catholicism which begin to approach
those blessings, seems to have for itself the most favourable
prospects. The countries in which Ultramontanism bears rule are
at present in a state of incontestable inferiority. Now for
a long time Spain has lost its part on the stage of Europe,
and from the bosom of anarchy by which it is devoured
does not seem likely to regain it. Austria, since Sadowa,
has descended from the high rank which it occupied some

120 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
years ago; it is on the fidelity of its Hungarian subjects
that henceforward it sees itself obliged to reckon. Germany
more and more circulates around Prussia, which by its
recent annexations has gained many millions of Protestant
subjects. Since 1847, Switzerland has its centre of acti
vity in its Evangelical cantons. England and the States of
North America hold in the two oceans the sceptre of mari
time commerce ; their missions, more productive than those
of Catholicism, prepare for Protestantism new conquests.
Who, finally, does not foresee in America itself new in
vasions of the Northern States into the Southern? For the
moment, if we may trust the statistical tables, Catholicism
still reckons on the globe a number of adherents double
of that which belongs to Protestantism (150 to 170 millions
against 70 to 80). But in the majority there undoubtedly
are a much larger number of indifferentists, who belong to it
only by the hazard of birth and the rite of baptism. This
indifference, however, appears less to be regretted than
might be supposed. The Church has learned to resign
itself to it, for it finds therein one of the best preserva
tives against apostasy. "Those indifferentists," says M.
Quinet, " prefer keeping their ancient religion to laugh at
it when they like, while the crowd worships it. To change
religion, they say, is a serious business, and we have too
much sense for that." Thus speak those who care nothing
about religion, and the Church lets them have their say,
knowing well when she shall one day recover them. Each
of the two communions thus preserves its own advantages,
and it is not probable that, at least for a long time, the one
will succeed in supplanting or absorbing the other. Still
less under their old form are they likely to blend together.
But what may be foreseen, and that of which this sketch
shews several symptoms, is a kind of " natural selection "

PROGRESS IN LIBERTY. 121
which, taking place in the midst of the gradual decomposi
tion of old parties, will bring together and group minds
according to the affinity of their religious tendencies, and
for the old confessional distinctions others will be substi
tuted which will better correspond to the real state of
beliefs. Awaiting this transformation, let us again acknow
ledge the happy influence which the progress of religious
liberty has already exercised on the real state of men's
opinions. Under a regimen which more efficaciously
guarantees the maintenance of their rights, their proselyt-
ism, kept within legitimate bounds, takes a happier direc
tion, that of an emulation, which, multiplying in each
country religious associations, turns entirely to the increase
of zeal. Then, even in the midst of the rivalries which
keep them apart, Catholics and Protestants, approaching
each other, become mutually acquainted, and so under
stand and appreciate their several qualities as to make
what is general predominate over what is particular, and
to shew to each children of God in both. Wherever there
are common dangers to encounter, sufferings to mitigate, a
common country to defend, shades of religious difference
are forgotten, each feels a man's heart heat in himself, for
which everything human is dear and sacred.
§ 5.
After having presented in a general manner the progress
of religious liberty, and noticed the influence of it on the
relations of State and Church, and on those of the different
Christian communions, it remains for us to inquire how in
each of them it has modified the internal constitutions of
the different churches, substituted in these the aristocratic
government for the monarchic, and in those for the latter a
government inclining more and more to the democratic,

122 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
and which finally gives to the laity a part more or less
considerable in the direction of general religious interests.
1. In the Middle Ages, the monarchical constitution was
that of the Eastern Churches as well as those of the West.
The Patriarch of Constantinople held under his pastoral
crook the orthodox Greek churches, as the Pope of Rome
held the Catholic churches of the Latin rite. After the
capture of Constantinople had rendered the Patriarch of
that city subject to the Turks, he saw the body of the
Russian Church, which had passed under the domination
of the Metropolitan of Moscow, progressively detach itself
and separate from him, until it was finally subjected by
Peter the Great to a union of prelates named the " Holy
Synod" (1723). Other Greek Churches followed in our own
age the example of the Russian Church. From the time
when Greece freed itself from the Ottoman yoke (1821), the
Hellenic Church would no longer recognize for its spiritual
head the nominee of the Sultan ; it broke the bonds which
united it to the Patriarch of Byzantium, and in an assembly
held at Nauplia resolved (1833), while remaining faithful
to the ancient symbols of orthodoxy, to own no other spi
ritual head than Jesus Christ, no other temporal governor
than the King, who was to direct it according to the sacred
canons by a permanent synod of bishops and archbishops.
The Patriarch, after some resistance, ended by consenting
to this separation (1850). The Ionian isles, since their
annexation to the kingdom of Greece, submitted to the
new Hellenic Synod. Servia, since its enfranchisement by
the treaty of Adrianople, gave itself a head in an inde
pendent Metropolitan (1830). The Danubian provinces,
half emancipated from the Turkish domination, followed
the example of Russia and Greece (1865), renounced the
authority of the Patriarch, and recognized that of the Synod

PROGRESS IN LIBERTY. 123
of bishops and metropolitans. Bulgaria did the same,
except ten villages previously converted by Catholic mis
sionaries (1869) ; and notwithstanding the opposition of
the Bishop of Constantinople, the Sultan ratified that
separation. If you understand the displeasure of the Greek
Patriarch in seeing the churches which during so many
centuries acknowledged his supremacy, detach themselves
from him one after another, you will wonder at the pre
sumption of the Roman Pontiff, who, on the point of
convening the Council in which his infallibility was to be
pronounced, invited, as the head of the universal Church,
the Patriarch of Constantinople and the other bishops of
the East to come to Rome to abjure their pretended schism ;
the Armenians, the Copts, and the Maronites, united to
renounce the liberty of their elections and the other im
munities which had been previously acknowledged ; and
finally the Protestants (whom as heretics he did not
condescend to call to an assembly of believers) to declare
their return into the Church from which, three centuries
ago, their fathers had maliciously separated. To these
summonses the Protestants replied- — these, by a peremptory
refusal — others, more suitably, by the silence of disdain.
The Patriarchs of the East reminded the Pope, who forgot
it, of the primitive dignity of their sees, equal to that of
the See of Rome; the Armenians of Constantinople replied
by the complete rupture of their union and the nomina
tion of an independent Patriarch recognized by the Porte ;
finally, the Maronites, by a threat of separation which has
been on the point of accomplishment. But greater vexations
awaited Pius IX. In getting himself recognized as the
Sovereign and Infallible Head of the entire Church, heforgot
the spirit of independence which in all ages had nestled in
the churches of Germany, the first explosion of which was

124 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
marked by the schism of Luther; he forgot the new
symptoms by which the same spirit had made itself
anticipated in our age — the boldness of university science,
the petitions of the German clergy against celibacy, the
concert of protests raised by the exhibition of the sacred
tunic of Treves, the reiterated appeals for the foundation
of a German Church. The Roman Council, in thinking it
should for ever stifle these troublesome voices, only made
them burst forth all at once. To the renewed pretensions
of the Popes of the Middle Ages, they to-day set in oppo
sition the authority of the universal Church, which in
the most ancient times had depended only on the body
of the bishops, or, better still, on Jesus Christ alone. On
nearly all the points of Germany, even in Bavaria, in Silesia,
in Rhinau Prussia, in the mixed cantons of Switzerland,
and even in some purely Catholic countries, separate associ
ations are formed under the name of " Ancient Catholics,"
or "Liberal Catholics." The professors, the governors,
the parish priests, excommunicated by their bishops, are
supported by public opinion and maintained in their func
tions by the civil authority, which recognizes the equality
of their rights to the protection and support of the State.
Let us not anticipate as to the future of a religious move
ment which as yet is only in its birth, and to which,
moreover, we shall shortly have occasion to return. Let
us merely add, that it was under such auspices that in
Germany and in Switzerland the Reformation of the six
teenth century declared itself.
2. While in the old Greek and Latin Churches the
ecclesiastical monarchy underwent these partial checks,
in the Protestant Churches it was the aristocratic consti
tution. The kings of Prussia had at an early day, it is
true, the thought of establishing the episcopal regime in

PROGRESS IN LIBERTY. 125
the churches of their states. This thought was present
in the negociations of Frederick William I. with the Arch
bishop of Canterbury for the union of the Churches of
England and Prussia. Under the influence of the re
actionary ideas of the restoration, Frederick William III.
in 1816 instituted two bishops, one for Berlin, the other
for Konigsberg; in 1829, he named for each province
general superintendents, to whom for some time the title
of bishops was given, and any way a considerable increase
of authority. The co-operation of his son in the erection
of the Anglo-Prussian bishopric of Jerusalem (1841), inde
pendently of the projects which attached to it for the
protection of Christian interests, had also for object to
familiarize his subjects with the episcopal administration.
But that same year, public opinion, which it was thus
sought to influence, manifested itself in a manner so formal
against this form of government, that the King thought
he ought to renounce the project. To-day public opinion
in Germany speaks more and more strongly in favour of
the synodical regime. Its friends see in it the means not
only of uniting the two communions more effectually, and
to remove the Church from the authority of governments,
but also to give more development to ecclesiastical and
religious life. The governments themselves, after attempt
ing to maintain their ancient rights and those of their
consistories, have begun to understand the difficulty of the
enterprize, and prefer saving their responsibility by putting
their authority into the hands of the representatives of
the Church. It is this which determined Eichhorn, a
disciple of Schleiermacher, to introduce into the united
Church of his states the synodical regime promised in
1817, but which was not established till 1835 in the new
provinces of the Rhine and of Westphalia. The convoca-

126 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
tion of the provincial synods, constituted in 1844 in the
provinces of the East, then that of the general synod of
Berlin in 1846, were the consequence of this new resolu
tion. The efforts of the liberal Protestant Union (Reform-
Verein), convoked in these last years (1866) in different
cities, tend in a measure to spread this new form of Church
administration everywhere, while profiting for that end by
the progressive unification of the Germanic body, and the
Prussian Government has just deferred to this desire (1873)
in what concerns the six provinces of its monarchy.
3. In face of the ultra-Lutheran party, obstinate to
maintain intact the regime most favourable to the exclusive
authority of the clergy, the establishment of synods con
stitutes a step in advance assuredly considerable. Other
wheres, however, especially in the Dissenting communities,
it does not appear yet to reply sufficiently to the demo
cratic aspirations of our times, and the same reasons which
more and more make the Presbyterian form prevail in
Protestant states, tend in America, and even among the
English Dissenters, to make the Congregationalist or
Independent form prevail over the Presbyterian. In
America, the number of Independent congregations has
prodigiously increased in our century. It has also in
creased in England, where in 1839 were nearly two
thousand communities thus constituted, and where, among
the Presbyterian churches themselves, a great number,
from the lack of general synods to regulate their common
interests, insensibly tend toward Congregationalism. In
France, it is by other ways that in the nineteenth century
the old Presbyterian regime takes the same direction. The
Protestant churches, broken and almost dissolved during
nearly 120 years of persecution, notwithstanding the cou
rageous and persevering efforts of Antoine Court, did not

PROGRESS IN LIBERTY. 127
re-constitute themselves in a regular manner till under the
Consulate, by the law of the 18th Germinal, in the year
X (1802), but in losing their principal administrative
machinery, the conferences, the provincial synods and the
national synods. These were replaced by the Council of
State, presided over by the Minister of Worship, and by
a central Council of twelve members serving as an inter
mediary between the Church and the Government. There
remained then no ecclesiastical authority properly so-called
except that of the great Consistories, presiding each one
over a Protestant population of about six thousand souls.
This ecclesiastical organization did not appear sufficient
for a Church which its past attached to the Presbyterian
form of government. It requested the re-establishment of
provincial and national synods, which was finally granted,
but whose constitution, at least in the project which pre
vailed in the Synod of Paris (1872), seems to guarantee
but imperfectly an equitable representation of parishes, as
well as the different parties which divide the Church of
France. It would be sad to see this regime, called for in
Germany in a spirit of union and progress, constitute itself
in France with opposite views. As to the relations of the
laity with the clergy, if in the national churches the
excesses of Darbyism are to be little feared, if they are
little disposed to charge the laity with functions of the
ministry properly so called, far from falling into the opposite
extreme, that of sacerdotalism, they tend rather, with some
exceptions, to render the action of the ecclesiastical ministry
less exclusive, and to make the flock interpose more directly
in the government of the Church. They judge with reason,
in certain respects, that the laity will interest themselves
so much the more in religious matters, if they consecrate
thereto their time and care. Thus, independently of the

1 28 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
institution of deacons, destined to aid the pastors in the
administration of the parishes, especially in the direction
of schools and the distribution of alms, the bodies charged
with the general administration of the Church are to-day
in the great majority composed of laymen. Nearly wherever
universal suffrage has been introduced into the State, it
has been into the Church : the consistories and the pastors,
the bishops themselves, in the Anglican Church of Ireland,
are appointed by the flock. In several cantons of Switzer
land, the pastors are re-eligible by the flock at the end of
some years'. This is carrying democracy rather far. This
clause of periodic re-election scarcely seems likely to en
courage serious studies among the Protestant clergy. But
in general we cannot contest the happy influence of a
moderate Presbyterianism, in which the ecclesiastical
authority is divided between the pastors and the members
of the flock. In the consistories and the synods, while
some are initiated more profoundly in religious things by
the contact of men, who make it the subject of their
habitual studies, others find in the control of lay voices
a corrective of the dangerous privilege of speaking from
the pulpit without being contradicted; the science of the
one and the practical sense of the other thus mutually
aid each other, and truth profits in every way by this
exchange of light. But it is from the concurrence of many
other causes, and, before all, from the increase and general
diffusion of information, that we are to expect the progress
of religious truth, the happy evolution by which it will
by little and little disengage itself from the darkness into
which retrograde tendencies and subversive passions emu
lously try to plunge it.

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 129 '

II.
PROGRESS IN TRUTH.
§ 1.
The movement imprinted on men's minds by the Refor
mation of the sixteenth century was too energetic for any
barrier, any restrictive law, to long arrest its flight. One
step in advance soon led to others. One cannot suppose
that the Reformers, notwithstanding their knowledge and
their genius, embraced the entire truth at once ; nor was the
liberty which they enjoyed themselves interdicted to their
successors. The creeds in which their doctrines were con
signed were consequently soon subjected to a new examina
tion. Different attempts were made' to put them more in
harmony with conscience, reason, and specially the gospel.
Against the partial Augustinianism of Luther arose the
semi-Pelagianism of Melancthon and his disciples ; against
the absolute Predestination of Calvin arose Arminianism;
against Trinitarianism and the Christological doctrines
borrowed from the ancient Councils arose the Arianism
of Episcopius and the Unitarianism of Socinus ; against
the infallible authority ascribed to the entire Scripture
arose the criticism of Cappel and Eichhorn, the rationalism
of Kant and Sender ; and these doctrines, despite strong
opposition, fixed themselves in various faculties of theology,
and penetrated even into the national clergy. Repelled
again by the retrograde current of our age, as injurious to
the cause of political and religious restoration, not only
they did not succumb, but, ripened by deeper studies,
K

130 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
formulated with more elevation, as well as more exactitude
and boldness, they every day gain new adherents.
Thus, although the preachings of the Scotch and Whit-
fieldian missionaries gave momentary vogue to the Calvin-
istic doctrines, the dogma of absolute predestination was
too contrary to the universalism of the gospel ; it too
directly shocked the ideas admitted in most of the Pro
testant churches on the perfections and government of
God, to easily take root therein. The Church of Geneva
formally rejected it a century ago ; the Churches of Vaud,
of NeucMtel, and the rest of Switzerland, those of France,
had much mitigated it; the Lutherans, the Moravians, the
Pietists, the greater number of Methodists, never admitted
it. The logical rigour with which certain sectaries under
took to revive it, even so far as to teach the impecca
bility of disciples, completed its disrepute. The Whit
field chapels were soon eclipsed by those of the party of
Wesley. The Confession of La Rochelle, the Canons of
Dort, have no place but in history ; the munificence of some
Scotch patrons alone preserves in the Vaudois churches
of Piedmont some remains of life in the Confession of 1655;
and even in Holland, whence Arminianism had been at
first so violently banished, it has for some time been in the
ascendancy. Unitarianism, in the struggles which it had
to maintain in the sixteenth and seventeenth century
against orthodoxy, and in the eighteenth against anti-
christian doctrines, had, like Arminianism, contracted an
argumentative character more appropriate to the wants of
controversy and defence than those of edification. It lacked
that unction, or, as has been said, that grain of mysticism,
necessary to a real religious influence. Such it shewed
itself in England in Priestley and in Belsham. In the
period of revival, its intellectualism passed for coldness, for

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 131
dryness, if not for lack of devotion. People went so far as
to see in it an ally, an accomplice of French incredulity.
It was denounced from the pulpit, and stigmatized even
in Parliament; capital punishment, suppressed in 1792 in
regard to other Dissenters, was down to 1813 maintained,
though the law was a dead letter, against its followers ;
more Unitarians than one, Priestley among others, pursued
by the popular animosity, were obliged to seek a refuge in
America. But this was a salutary crisis for Unitarianism.
It is with religious parties condemned to exile as with those
vegetables which, carried by storms into distant climates,
assume there new forms, colours and properties. The Bap
tist doctrine, Quakerism, thus carried into the New World,
were there happily modified. In those countries, where
the glorious founders of independence, in throwing off the
yoke of England, at the same time threw off the yoke of
Anglican prejudices and proclaimed religious liberty, Uni
tarianism underwent a still further transformation. A
young ecclesiastic, whom we shall by and by meet with
among the most eminent Christian philanthropists of our
age, W. Ellery Channing, placed in Boston at the head of
a Unitarian congregation (1803), infused into his preach
ing from the first a religious tone full of life and warmth.
Far removed from the dry and dialectical method of the
English Unitarian preachers, he kept himself, as far as he
could, free from all party spirit, accepted that denomi
nation only when he saw in it a title of unmerited repro
bation, when on a given signal, which probably came from
Great Britain, a revival of Puritan fanaticism suddenly
declared itself in the United States. Seeing Unitarianism
rejected from all congregational pulpits, denounced to the
crowd as a system " impious, monstrous, let loose by Satan
k2

132 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
for the ruin of souls," Channing thundered in his turn
against the " Protestant Papism more irritating than that
of Rome." With the gospel in his hands, he proved that
the two favourite dogmas of orthodoxy, the deity of Christ
and the expiation of sins by his blood, both injurious to
the highest perfections of God, were unknown to Jesus
himself. During fifteen years he maintained the struggle
with firmness. But as soon as it was calmed, free hence
forth to yield to the impulses of his heart, he occupied
himself with feeding his flock with the sanctifying prin
ciples of Christianity, and with pressing the applications
of it with the penetrating unction which characterizes his
discourses and his writings in general. Preached with
so much impressiveness, Unitarian Christianity took in
America a rapid flight, the number of churches increasing
every day. At a later time, a sojourn which Channing
made in England and on the Continent, the valuable rela
tions he there formed, the propagation of his works, the just
renown which his social writings acquired, extended his
influence far and wide, and thus there was formed in the
two worlds a new Unitarian school, more bold than ancient,
but also more attractive, more living, more prolific, the
ascendancy of which, more and more marked even in the
bosom of the National Churches, presents in Protestant
dogma a new and considerable step in advance. What
Church would now venture to propose to its members the
rigid adoption of the old Trinitarian symbols, especially
since the discovery of the Sinaitic manuscript (1863), as
previously that of the Vatican, confirms the objections of
old raised against those symbols, and justifies the Unitarian
translators whom orthodoxy had accused of falsifying the
sacred text ?

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 133
§ 2.
In face of the plenary inspiration of the period of revival,
the rationalism of certain schools of Germany had much to
do to keep its position. On the traces of Ernesti, Semler,
&c, Paulus, Eichhorn, Wegscheider, Roehr and Bretsch-
neider, entered into the critical questions relative to the
Scriptures ; — in the Protestant point of view, nothing as
suredly more legitimate, and for the teachers nothing more
necessary. The moment that they refused the authority
of the tradition of the Church, to substitute for it the
absolute authority of the books which it had transmitted
as fully inspired of God, — before proposing them, and espe
cially before imposing them as such on the Christian world,
it was necessary to make them the object of a serious ex
amination ; it was necessary, with all the scientific resources
at their command, to ascertain the period, the author, the
object, the true text, the true sense of each of them ; to
appreciate their contents; to apply those contents, in a
word, as with all ancient documents, the general rules of
criticism as bearing thereon. But in this labour of erudi
tion and analysis, the theologian who gave himself to the
task in an exclusive manner was easily accused, not only
of failing in respect for the Bible, but also in drying up its
vivifying sap and withering its poetic beauties. Already
Herder, Jacobi and Lessing, in the name of sentiment
and imagination, had protested against the aridity of this
criticism. With more reason, the old literalism spoke out
against it. The Protestant theologians of Germany at the
beginning of this century were then still divided into two
opposite camps, under the name of "Rationalist" and
" Supranaturalist." While for the latter everything in
the Bible was divine, and the intervention of God shewed

134 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
itself specially in the facts that were on the outside of
nature there recounted, for the former it was, on the con
trary, the presence of those narratives which damaged the
authority of the Bible, and did not allow belief in divine
inspiration except with reserve. All the activity of theo
logians then was employed in arguing for or against the
reality of these supranatural allegations. Instead of col
lecting in this venerable monument of the faith of ancient
days the treasures of edification and instruction which it
contains, without denying and also without being astonished
at the disparities which it presents with the ideas of our
own time ; instead specially of going directly to Jesus, of
yielding themselves, as those who of old gathered round
him, to the infinite charm of his words, of ingenuously
opening their soul to his sacred exhortations, to his sym
pathetic appeals, they in their schools spent their time in
discussing the degree of doctrinal authority, of natural or
supranatural inspiration that ought to be ascribed to them.
It was with both sides the same arid intellectualism which
Priestley and his contradictors had been reproached with.
It was time to have done with these sad and sterile de
bates. On one side there were results acquired to science,
and which it could not repudiate without injuring faith
itself — for faith is solid only as far as it takes possession
of the entire men, and that which does not satisfy the
intellect can hardly make its way to the heart ; but, on
another side, that which does not satisfy the intellect or
penetrate the heart remains without influence on the life.
The soul cannot live on pure negations. If the primitive
Protestantism, certainly very negative in comparison with
the Catholic theology, could have advantageously sustained
the struggle, the reason is that it insisted more on what it
affirmed than on what it denied ; the reason is that it. de-

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 135
stroyed only to build again with more solid materials. In
this respect it was necessary to follow its example, to give
in necessary measure satisfaction to the new wants of the
time, and, leaving to science the free scope which the
Reformation had impressed upon it, to give also free scope
to the profound religious sentiment which had animated
its authors. It was reserved for Schleiermacher to ac
complish in Germany this double task, to conciliate by a
theology appropriate to the genius of his nation the inte
rests of faith and those of free inquiry. By the religious
education which he had received among the Moravians, by
the profound philosophical studies to which he afterwards
gave himself up, by his eminent and admirably adjusted
faculties, that illustrious theologian seemed in every respect
prepared for the part he was about to play.
Appointed originally pastor at Berlin, where still reigned
the frivolous incredulity imported from France under
Frederick IX, he addressed to " the instructed classes "
(1799) his celebrated "Discourses," in which, combating
the false ideas which kept them at a distance from religion,
he shewed to them in it, not, as they had figured it, a dry
nomenclature of theological dogmas or moral precepts, but
a primitive and natural force inherent in the human soul,
and which, although developing itself by reflection, and
in its turn unfolding activity, thus embracing science and
morality, is nevertheless neither the one nor the other, but
has its seat in sentiment — that is to say, as he defined it, in
the consciousness of our dependence on God and the uni
versal order. This definition, though incomplete, since in
it love has no place, human libertyis not formally expressed,
and although the first developments which he gave of it
are not exempt from a tinge of Pantheism inherited from
Schelling, yet made a salutary impression on the classes to

136 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
which it was addressed, in indicating to them what was
lacking in that intellectual culture of which they were so
proud. At a later day (1810) called to profess theology
in the newly-founded University in Berlin, in presence of
the interminable controversy that was going on between
rationalism and supernaturalism, Schleiermacher, dissatisfied
with their want of breadth and elevation, espoused neither
the one nor the other, nor offered himself as a reconciler of
the two, making by turn concessions to both ; but separat
ing with a penetrating glance the essential from the acces
sory, displacing the question on which the endless combats
proceeded, he took between the parties of his day that
higher position which forms an epoch in the modern history
of German theology. Nothing more uselessly prolongs
discussions than questions badly put. Such, according to
him, was the question which divided the theologians of his
time. It was not " the supernatural," it was " the contra-
natural," " the extra-natural," that was in question. The
question was to decide if the Supreme Being, who possesses
omniscience, in making man free, had been ignorant of the
possiblo misuses of that liberty, and if to remedy them He
was compelled, as a non-prescient artist, to overturn the
admirable order of which he was Himself the author ? This
Schleiermacher could not admit. In Christianity, he said,
everything is supernatural, as proceeding from the Infinite
Being, superior to nature which He formed and governs ;
but at the same time everything is natural, as taking place
by the natural agents of which He makes use in the execu
tion of his designs. The sole question, consequently, which
he admits in this matter is this, Is Christ for us the ideal
of humanity ? Is it he that we wish to resemble ? Is it
his impulse that we wish to follow, his spirit that we wish
to breathe 1 On this ground, added Schleiermacher, supra.

PROGRESS OF TRUTH. 137
naturalists or rationalists, all right-hearted men, will be of
one mind. The true proof of Christianity then was not,
according to him, either the argument more or less skilful
of its apologists, or the value assigned to these testimonies
or those. It lies altogether in " Christian experience,"
that is, in the sanctifying, regenerative impression experi
enced by every sincere soul^in habitual communion with
Jesus. Religion has its seat in the heart. This is the
point to which we mustjever^refer. Just as there is in
each man a religious sentiment, innate and instinctive,
which leads him to rise and unite himself with the Infinite
Being, so is there in every man born in a Christian country,
brought up in a Christian communion, " a Christian con
sciousness," a reflection of the spirit of Christ with which
his Church is penetrated, and which, developed by medita
tion and experience, unites him more and more to Christ,
and through Christ to God, whose will, thus becoming his
own, makes him a partaker of the peace which can be found
only in Him. For a soul which enjoys this grace and this
happiness, all other proof becomes superfluous. To this
conclusive proof, external proofs, drawn from such or such
facts, add nothing ; but equally is it true that all the diffi
culties which may be raised against these proofs do not
touch the faith which has its roots in such depths. This
testimony which Christianity renders to itself in the
intimate sanctuary of the soul, was thus, says Professor
Dorner, "happily substituted for the arguments which the
old supernaturalist arsenal borrowed from miracles and
prophecies." Indeed, it was the decisive argument to which
appeal was made by many a Father of the Church — by
Luther, Calvin himself, Herder, Lessing — all the great
souls. It is the victorious argument which brought hi3
first disciples to the feet of Jesus. To believe in him they

138 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
needed neither his miraculous resurrection nor ascension ;
it was his own personality itself, the invincible attraction
which he exercised over their souls, which, at a single
word, made them follow in his train and share his labours
and his cross. Not less peremptorily did Schleiermacher
cut the gordian knot of plenary inspiration, which still held
bound the rationalists themselves. The writings of the
apostolic period, a source rich and indispensable for the
Christian's instruction, did not constitute an absolute rule
of belief. The Christian faith existed before the Scripture ;
it was not then the Scripture that founded the faith ; and
as to the Old Testament, notwithstanding the historical
bond which unites it to the New, it possesses much less
still of that normative authority.
Hence it is easy to understand how much the theology
of Schleiermacher stood at a distance on many points from
the orthodox dogma of his time, and at what point stood the
doubts which had removed him from the Moravian com
munion. But those doubts he surmounted by placing his
Christianity on bases where it could be marked neither by
philosophy nor criticism. Moreover, he voluntarily avoided
the excessive neology so much objected to in the rational
ists. In the rear of the theologians accused of wishing to
demolish everything, he announced the formal intention of
re-constructing. His criticism, in reality more advanced
than theirs, was at the same time more respectful, and
brought to him orthodox persons which the ill-conducted
apology of Paulus had not disarmed. In consideration of
what he aided to save, his daring acts were pardoned.
But what principally reconciled the moderate party to
him, at least the moderate party of the Lutheran clergy,
was the importance which he attached to the idea of the
Church, so little prominent in the rationalistic dogma, and

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 139
even the supernaturalistic dogma of his time. The Church
was for him the living organism by which the life of
Christ is transmitted through the ages, the focus of
Christian life and activity, and, as such, the great and
indispensable educator of the human race. He took plea
sure in shewing the continuity of this channel in all the
periods of Christianity ; he loved to throw into relief the
merits of the holy men which had glorified the Church in
all ages. By this process he brought ecclesiastical history
out of the exclusively critical ruts into which the eighteenth
century had led it. Neander, in making that history serve
as an auxiliary to the Christian revival of our age, only
followed the route that Schleiermacher had traced. All
this, joined to the eminent gifts which he displayed in
preaching, explains to us how, without forming a school
properly so called, and despite the numerous adversaries
which he met with during his life, he exercised an im
mense influence on his countrymen. There are few theo
logians in Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, that have
not felt his ascendancy. When the book of Strauss ap
peared which threw the theological world into disorder and
gave the death-blow to the old rationalism as well as the
old supernaturalism, the theology of Schleiermacher, which
had prepared the fall of both, alone withstood the assaults
of the daring demolisher, and became the rallying-point of
all the partizans of historical Christianity. From that time
dates the great authority which attaches to his name. At
a later time, when the old rationalists of Prussia and
Saxony, in the assemblies which they organized under the
title of "Protestant Friends," or "Friends of Light,"
allowed themselves to be overrun by the materialism and
revolutionary party of "the Annalists of Halle," which
paved the way to the convulsions of 1848 ; when, decried

140 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
by that sad alliance, enveloped in the rigours which fol
lowed the reaction, they saw their meetings proscribed by
even the citizens who had formerly supported them ; finally,
when the orthodox periodicals, proclaiming the fall of
liberal Christianity, urged the civil authority to deal it the
final blows, it was the disciples of Schleiermacher which
raised it up in public opinion, re-organized its public assem
blies, pure henceforth of all compromising alliance, and in
gathering at Frankfort (1863), where was inaugurated the
Protestanten-Verein (Union of Protestants), called forth
an expression of unanimous desires for the formation of a
great German Church in which scientific liberty and liberty
of the pulpit should be religiously respected. Since the
conquests of Prussia in 1866, the influence of the Protes
tanten-Verein has still more extended. The ecclesiastics
displaced or threatened for their progressive opinions have
found numerous and devoted friends to procure them
justice ; energetic resolutions have been taken against the
despotism of certain consistories ; and the spirit which has
presided at the patriotic festivals in honour of John Huss,
Luther, Schiller, Alexander Humboldt, Schleiermacher
himself, has proved that the sympathies of the middle
classes are gained over to Christian liberalism. Schleier
macher, who enlarged, elevated and enfranchised theolo-
logical science, was not able, notwithstanding the prodigious
activity of his mind, to cultivate in the same degree all its
branches. Others after him gave themselves to those which
he was compelled to neglect. The critical researches
relative to the text and the canon of the sacred books, to
the origin and primitive history of Christianity, found in
his disciple, De Wette, in Chr. Baur, and in " the School
of Tubingen," investigators penetrating and ingenious, but
adventurous, who perhaps would have made German theo-

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 141
logy re-enter into ways too exclusively negative, if by
their side theologians renowned for their piety as much as
their learning, Rothe and Bunsen among others, while pur
suing those useful researches, and insisting on the necessity
" of reconciling the enlightened classes with the gospel by
the union of Christianity with civilization," had not at the
same time preserved to Science the Christian elevation and
unction which it had received from Schleiermacher.
§ 3.
Down to our own days, the Protestant populations on
this side the Rhine were less prepared to welcome critical
labours on sacred Scripture. The formal principle of its
normative authority, proclaimed in a manner the most
express in the symbols dictated or inspired by Calvin, had
also deep roots in the colleges founded under his influence.
Perhaps had that of Saumur, early penetrated with the
independent spirit of Descartes, pursued or even carried
farther than L. Cappel the labours of sacred criticism, &c,
forcibly repressed by Louis XIV, as well as its more
orthodox sisters of Montauban and Sedan, it would not
have seen, like them, its professors dispersed in exile. At
least we know that several of them, welcomed at Berlin,
rendered themselves suspected there of independent views,
and that Frederick William I. shewed himself dissatisfied
with the too exclusive moral tendency of their preaching.
But, even in France, the violent persecutions suffered by
the readers of the Bible had rendered it the object of a
species of worship. It was not immediately after the heroic
struggles sustained in its name that the authority or the
value of one of its books could be advantageously discussed.
It was the same in the churches united in spirit with those
of France, as well as in those which had undergone the

142 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
influence of the Puritans ; even those of the Reformed clergy
who were accounted most innovating, professed absolute
respect for the authority of Scripture. When, in his cele
brated panegyric of the Gospels, Rousseau added reserves
as to miraculous accounts which they contain, the pastoral
body of Geneva, then accused of Socinianism, if not Deism,
added its censure to that of the Archbishop of Paris. At
the commencement of this century, the Reformers were
then nearly unanimous in confessing the divinity of Jesus
as miraculously announced and confirmed by the prodigies
narrated in the evangelists. The Unitarian churches of
England and America did not differ in this respect from
the foregoing. Priestley made miracles the basis of his
apology; and we see Channing maintain in his works,
without superstition, it is true, and without narrowness,
the dogma of the inspiration of the sacred books.
However, when the peace of 1815 had made the literary
and scientific productions of Germany penetrate into all
Western countries, it was not possible to ignore or regret
without examination the theological products of the other
side of the Rhine. It was known that the great number
and the competition of the universities had long kept up
there a movement of ideas more active, more free and more
prolific, than existed anywhere else. Without being blind
to the systematic spirit of the Germans, without adopting
indiscriminately their too hasty or too absolute conclusions,
we cannot deny how much the history of the Church, that
of dogma, the criticism and interpretation of the sacred
books, had been enriched by their labours. Students then
began to set themselves free from the bonds of theopneustia ;
they shewed themselves not less respectful, but less timid
and circumspect, in researches which had the Bible for
their object. To the results of theological science imported

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 143
from without, there were soon added in different Protestant
countries original researches, the mass of which, increased
from day to day, composes what is called "modern" or
"liberal" Christian theology, in contrast with the traditional
theology. Alsace and Switzerland, more nearly connected
with Germany, were the first to receive from it the impulse,
and they communicated it to the countries that speak the
French language. From the College of Strasburg, among
other sources, there came forth critical and exegetical
labours of the first order, which, published in French, and
in consequence invested with more clearness and precision,
naturalized in that country the results of German science.
In Switzerland, Zurich became the spot most marked by
this movement ; but all the Protestant cantons, even those
of Roman Switzerland, have more or less felt its influence.
In Holland, while the school of Utrecht and that of the
Hague are still connected with ancient orthodoxy, and that
of Groningen with a progressive Arminianism, the school
of Leyden is distinguished by the boldness of its researches;
it is to it that we owe the emanicpation of the Dutch
Church from the yoke of confessions of belief. What the
resemblance of languages has produced in this country,
German emigration, more numerous every day, has effected
in North America. With the masterpieces of German
literature, its theological and philosophical systems have
been introduced. Theodore Parker (1810), who had been
one of the first to study them, and who in the beginning
was alarmed at their boldness, soon entering by his travels
into relations with the theologians of our continent, was
not long in feeling, like many of them, that a free and
sincere examination of the Bible, far from lessening the
edification he received from it, made him admire its beau
ties and appreciate its excellence. It was not, it is true,

144 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
without difficulty that he made the American public share
his impressions. Nearly all the Unitarian ministers them
selves closed their pulpits against him, philanthropic so
cieties refused to receive him as a member; he had to work
alone, or with a small number of friends, in the labours
of beneficence to which he had consecrated his youth.
Liberal Christians of Boston did him more justice. Ap
pointed minister of their congregation, he captivated and
ravished them with his enthusiastic words. The intrepid
courage which he displayed still more augmented his popu
larity. He was soon one of the most popular preachers
in all America ; it was held that so ardent a pastor could
not be a despiser Of Christ. " It sufficed to hear him to be
assured that he had not left the paths of the traditional
theology except to draw nearer to God, or humanized the
person of Jesus except to make him his model in reality."
His premature death (1860) did not cause him to lose any
of his influence with his fellow-citizens, and the Universalist
school, already so numerous in the United States, con
siders him as its principal leader. It is in the spirit of that
school that the Unitarian Association of Boston in 1870
declared itself opposed to all creeds, and for the union of
all Christians around the sole centre of the name of Christ.
Finally, in Great Britain they began to feel the necessity
of a revival in theology. The abolition of the Corporation
and Test Acts for Dissenters, the foundation of the free
University of London, in 1854 the abolition of signature
to the Thirty-nine Articles at Oxford and Cambridge for
non-theologians, prepared the way for considerable inde
pendence for theologians themselves. Between the Hi<di
Church, which inclined more and more to Puseyism
and the Low Church, which by reaction strengthened its
Calvinism every day, there was formed among the en-

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 145
t
lightened citizen^ jftie Broad Church, which proclaimed
the necessity of a close union between science and faith,
and which, since the embassy of Bunsen in England, pro
fited by the knowledge of German theology. From this
progressive school there came forth in 1832 the "Bampton
Lectures" of Dr. Hampden, then the "Essays and Reviews,"
with their twelve editions, the "Ecce Homo" of Professor
Seeley, and the essays of Colenso, the Bishop of Natal, on
the Pentateuch (1860). At the same time (1869), owing
to the labours of John James Tayler and his associates,
there flourished "the New College, Manchester," in 1853
affiliated to the University of London,* which, with full
liberty and scope of religious thought, works freely in the
line of Theodore Parker. Thus England has taken rank
among the foci of progressive Christianity, and already its
light begins to pervade England and to penetrate into
Scotch Calvinism, notwithstanding the doctrinal law-suits
by which the movement is withstood. Although modern
criticism has exercised itself more or less on the whole area
of Biblical literature, it is on the reality of the extra-
natural facts that the debates it has occasioned have more
particularly borne; it is thereby that it has caused most
emotion in the ancient theological world. It is also on
this side that it has been principally regarded by the
author of the " Development of Rationalism in Europe,"
Mr. Lecky. He sees in it the continuation of an anterior
movement, which, under the influence of different causes,
has become marked and prominent in our time. " In the
history of the three last centuries," he says, " there has
* On the removal of this institution to London, the Unitarian Home
Missionary Board, established in Manchester in 1854, took up the same
liberal work in a more popular form, and in the intervening twenty
years has settled above sixty ministers. — Translator.
L

146 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
not been a more striking change than that which has
manifested itself in the appreciation of miraculous narra
tives." Among the causes which have accelerated in our
age, he mentions the success of the physical sciences in the
explanation of phenomena long regarded as supernatural;
the modern critical spirit, more severe than ever in the ex
amination of proofs, especially since the knowledge recently
acquired of the ancient mythologies and their origin; the
movement of modern secularization, involving the decline
of ecclesiastical authority; finally, the new conceptions
which result from the reform of the natural sciences. "The
earth," he says, " is no longer the centre of the world, or
man, consequently, the centre of creation. Geological
discoveries have crumbled down the whole pre-adamite
history of the globe, as well as the old notions as to the
origin of death, since the appearance of man on earth was
preceded by the death of so many living beings. Scientific
discoveries in general have gradually substituted the idea of
law for that of an anomalous capricious action which pre
viously was identified with the consciousness of the Divine
presence." All this is doubtless true, and in this relation
modern science tends to produce in Protestant theology a
change analogous to that which the revival of letters pro
duced in the Middle Ages. In our opinion, nevertheless, it
Would be to form a false and narrow idea of progressive
Christianity to restrict it to the negation of the miraculous
element, and we find it difficult to understand, on the part
of those who deny as Well as those who affirm it, all the
noise which is made around the question. How can one
avoid seeing in the narratives of this kind which Jewish
and Christian antiquity has transmitted to us, the neces
sary product of a time when, the laws of nature being
unknown by the bulk and ill-known even by the in-

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 147
structed, every extraordinary event, every exceptionally
endowed individual, were accounted as surpassing all
known bounds, and every elevated and impressive thought
as the result of an express revelation from 'heaven ? After
the martyrdom of Stephen, Paul is seized with horror at
the cruel mission which he is proceeding to Damascus
to fulfil, and thinks he hears the voice of Jesus himself
stopping and addressing him on his way. Welcomed
earnestly by the Pagans on his leaving the synagogues
whence the Jews expel him, the call of the Gentiles to
salvation, a sublime idea, the natural result of the doctrine
of a paternal Deity taught by Jesus, though strange to an
old scholar of the Pharisees, strikes his mind like a flash of
lightning. The idea seizes, follows, impels, masters him.
It is the thought of Christ, and in that thought he sees
Christ himself, who says to him, " Speak, and fear not!"
Arrived at Troy, he has before him the shores of Europe.
There are millions of God's children who claim his ministry.
Accordingly a Macedonian during the night cries out to
him, " Come over and help us!" Thus each of the heroic
resolutions of the apostle bears in his eyes the appearance
of a divine oracle. Ls it surprising that in cities where his
ardent words make themselves heard, transported crowds
believe they see prodigies performed by garments which
have touched his body, or that reports of a miraculous
nature would not spring in after days or distant places from
kindled and wondering imaginations ? The whole atmo
sphere was filled with phosphorescent matter which could
not find utterance in the narratives. Wonder within became
wonder without, and wonder without is merely recorded
wonder or miracle. Thus the whole was not only natural,
but at the time of day and under the circumstances inevi
table. Nor does rniracle become a matter of dispute, except
l2

148 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
when it is made an argument or an article of faith. Very
poor then, I repeat, would be the progress which issued in
results so negative. The discernment of the false serves
science only as it leads to a clearer or fuller perception of
the true. In religion also negation is useful only when it
paves the way to faith. Emile Saisset, asked, " Do you
believe in the supernatural?" replied, " I believe in Provi
dence." In the same way, if the progressive Christian
claims the right to subject all things to the judgment of
his conscience and his reason, it is not solely to reject
what they cannot receive; it is specially that he may
appropriate what in all teaching they recognize as holy or
true. Like Paul, he "tries all things, that he may hold
fast that which is good." Leaving on one side, as Paul
himself did in regard to the Jewish law, what after a
scrupulous examination he cannot assimilate, he gathers
with the more eagerness every accent of truth which calls
forth an echo in his soul, and attaches himself the more
strongly to whatever elevates, purifies, regenerates him.
In the evangelical history in particular, in the midst of the
marvellous features placed there by the spirit of the age,
he seizes the thought, everlastingly great, everlastingly
holy, which belongs entire to Jesus, which pervades and
dominates all his instruction, and which from the Jordan
to Golgotha was the soul and the power of his ministry.
To bring back sinful man to God by repentance and
humility; to unite sinful man to God by love, obedience,
sanctity; to unite sinful man to his fellow-men by the
bond of fraternal devotedness, — that in the eyes of the
progressive Christian is the essence of Christianity, what
constitutes its sublimity, what ensures its duration, what
far more than all external proofs, attests its supreme ex
cellence ; and it is because he seeks to intimately appro-

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 149
priate that thought, because he makes it the focus, the
regulator of his religious life, that he proudly entitles him
self Christian.
§4.
Without extending so far the rights of individual judg
ment, many theologians acknowledge now that the limits
placed in the sixteenth century cannot be maintained in
our own except to the injury of the sanctifying effects
which faith ought to produce, the first condition of which
is sincerity. On seeing earnest souls led to Christianity
by the way of examination, and the ineffectiveness of so
many efforts made to lead them by another way, so many
gigantic resources dispensed in vain for the object, the
short duration of so many revivals of which very much
had been expected, so many churches where orthodoxy
reigned alone deserted by the male population ; finally,
all the secret troubles, the secret incredulity in a large
number of souls supposed to have been converted, — many
friends of the ancient theology, whose avowals we possess,
have not been able to prevent entertaining the question so
lemnly discussed in 1857 in the Evangelical Assembly of
Berlin, "Whence comes it that the revival of the faith
has not led to the revival of Christianity?" and replying,
as it has been replied then and since — viz. that the doc
trines of the sixteenth century are no longer in complete
harmony with the actual state and wants of men's minds.
Under the influence of these reflections there has insensibly
arisen in the old orthodox schools what is now called
the " Third Party," which reckons in the Lutheran and
Reformed churches a number of theologians enjoying well-
deserved repute.
While admitting the influence of the Divine Spirit in
the composition of the Scriptures, this party reserves to

150 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
itself the right of treating a crowd of critical questions till
now interdicted in the orthodox school. It wishes that in
future the common bond in the Christian Church should
be, not belief in the infallibility of the Scriptures, nor that
of what is called " the Providential Canon," but a living
faith in the person of Jesus, and in a supernaturalism which
it defines but vaguely. In Germany, this party forms what
is called the centre of Schleiermacher's school. Neander,
one of its most distinguished chiefs, formerly a contributor
to the "Evangelical Gazette" of Berlin, lost no time in
protesting against its system of reprobating such as did not
come up to its standard of doctrine, a course which is the
mortal enemy of the rights of science. In his Biblical
historical works he makes no scruple to call in question
the literal recital of certain cures and certain miracles, such
as those of Pentecost and the conversion of Paul ; in the
account of the temptation of Jesus he sees a pure symbol.
The noise produced by Strauss's Life of Jesus was, accord
ing to him, principally due to the efforts made to restore
the repute of the mechanical notion of inspiration. In the
preface to the " Theological Review," which he undertook
with Drs. Nitsch and J. Muller, he declared his agreement
with them in the conviction that " no progress could take
place in understanding the truths confided to the Church
without a formal distinction between the word of God and
the sacred Scripture, a new determination of the relations
between the Old Testament and the New, full liberty of
research on the point of the Bihilical canon," &c. A great
number of German theologians have followed in this path
and Dr. Tholuck declared more than twenty years ago
that you would not find in Germany two theologians that
held the absolute inspiration of the Bible. " To-day "
says Professor Dorner, "the old juridical theory of satis-

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 151
faction is rejected  There is a general tendency
toward admitting a continual development of the soul in
the eternal life, and the possibility of conversion in another
economy." A similar movement has taken place in the
Reformed churches of the French language. This owes its
origin to Samuel Vincent and Alexander Vinet.
Samuel Vincent, in the beginning of his pastorate at
Nimes, remained imbued with the intellectualist theology
of his time (1809). With him, as with Chalmers, whose
" Evidences of Christianity" he had translated, revelation
was " a course of teaching bearing upon truths which,
without it, would have been beyond the reach of the
human mind. The divinity of that revelation, demon
strated by the external proofs drawn principally from the
Biblical miracles and prophecies, stamped all the contents
of the New Testament with one and the same quality of
authority, in such a way that, without denying revelation,
the Protestant could not lower any of it." At a later time,
without combating those miraculous statements which he
found mixed with the tissue of the evangelical history, he
did not hesitate to acknowledge the insufficiency of the
proof commonly drawn from it. Kant, Schleiermacher,
De Wette, whom he studied, taught him to give his Chris
tian convictions a more solid basis. From that time, says
his friend Ferd. Fontanes, there is in his publications more
depth and a more decided tendency to put Christianity into
relations with the facts of conscience and the wants of our
soul. Without ceasing to employ reflection and science in
historical religion and theology, he penetrates further into
human nature, passes from ideas to the sentiment which
has produced them, and draws from the heart a faith
throbbing with life and fecundity. Such is the second
phase of his theological career. The intimate agreement of

152 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
Christianity with conscience, its power to call forth in
man the divine principle, to transform the moral being
in him — such is the principal title which he invokes in
Vincent's favour. Samuel Christian was thus one of the
first to remove Reformed French theology out of the ruts
in which it was engaged, and to proclaim a pure Christian
spiritualism. He did not live long enough to follow out
the prolific applications of it to the end. But this question
which he put to himself in the preface of a work composed
a little before his death, " What is there transient, what
permanent in Christianity?" and this maxim, by which he
seems to have intended to reply to the question, " Every
dogma which does not awaken an echo in the soul, and
produce a reverberation in it, is not necessary to salvation,"
shew to what an extent his views had been enlarged.
Alexander Vinet was not slow in following him, and in
getting beyond him on the same road.
Born at Lausanne (1797), and professor of French litera
ture at Bile (1847), while De Wette was in exile in that
city, he there, probably by means of the latter, underwent
the influence of Schleiermacher. His rehgious behefs were
not yet fixed when he heard of the attacks which, in his
birthplace, had been made on the rights of the orthodox
dissidents, the dispersion of peaceable meetings by popular
violence and by a government which made itself the blind
instrument of the misdeeds (1824). Occupied at this time
with the grave question of rehgious liberty, he undertook
the defence of the oppressed, and in espousing their cause
espoused their doctrines, which had many zealous friends
in Bile.
However, in uttering them from the pulpit he did not
fail to make some of the observations of which we spoke
but now, and which were made at the same time in En-

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 153
gland by the celebrated preacher, F. Robertson. In his
efforts to bring to the gospel cultivated persons, he found
that a style of preaching which was fully successful with
converted auditors, was not always the most fit to convert;
that to insult reason was not the means to reduce it to
silence ; that to deny human liberty, to lower sentiment
and works to the advantage of faith, to declare yourself
saved on the ground that you were certain of being so, was
to run on the rock of antinomianism, and in any case to
astound those who found in the gospel very different teach
ings. The process that was silently going on in his mind
(1837) made its appearance in his installation in the chair
of Practical Theology at Lausanne. He boldly combated
some of the defects of the preaching of the revival, and in
the degree in which he more closely saw those whose cause
he had pleaded, his ideas insensibly took a new turn. In
truth, in 1839, when the great Vaudois Council abolished
the compulsory signature of the Helvetic Confession, he
spoke against the intrusion of the civil authority in matters
of faith. But eight years later, when after the dismissal
of the pastors the new free Church had to be organized,
the dogmatic symbol which he proposed for it was so
moderate and liberal as to scandalize some members of the
Synod, so little place was held in it by what were called
the fundamental dogmas of the revival; and thenceforward
he did not cease to insist on the too small part assigned to
sanctification in the work of salvation. " Faith saves only
because it regenerates; sanctity is paradise, vice is hell," he
said, with Origen. Like Schleiermacher, he acknowledged
more continually the insufficiency of the ancient mode of
defending Christianity founded on external proofs ; the
impossibility for a man to become a Christian so long as
his conscience and his heart were not won over by the

154 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
excellence of Christianity. " The miracles," he said, " do
not convert; the same may be said of the prophecies. The
divinity of the gospel is proved by its power, that is, by
its quickening concurrence with the most elevated aspira
tions and needs of man. Christ is the centre of the gospel >
to be a Christian is to belong to Christ." "The great merit
of the Reformation," he also said, " was the restoration to
the individual of all his responsibility; to remove him
from the convenient government of the faith of authority,
and to impose upon him the most 'severe of laws, that of
liberty. The characteristic principle of Protestantism lies
on the outside of dogma; it is the absolute independence
of conscience." This subjectivism, this individualism of
Vinet's theology, would have conducted him very far with
out the influence of his surroundings and his orthodox
connections. It was, in some sort, to authorize each person
to strip religion of all the elements which his conscience
repels, to regard as an alien element whatever is not in
friendly relations with his inmost sentiment ; in a word, it
was to make a good part of the journey which modern
theology had to make. If Vinet did not discern the whole
bearing of his principles, some of his disciples had a more
distinct view of them. One of them, who joined to the
subjective tendency acquired in Vinet's lessons a theo
logical culture superior to his own, invited to be a pro
fessor in a school subject to theopneustic doctrines of
Scotland, raised his voice against a theology built on such
a basis, and a rupture ensued (1850), which gave birth
to " La Revue de Strasburg" ("The Strasburg Review"),
the first manifesto of modern theology in France. Other
disciples of Vinet, less consequent or more docile, propa
gated his principles not only in Switzerland but in France,
where already his influence had made itself felt by the

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 155
preaching of Vemy, by the publication of " Le Semeur "
(" The Sower") ; finally, by the Vaudois pastors, who, after
their retirement, were called to direct churches and schools.
There was then formed in the Reformed communion a
" Third Party," similar to that which we have seen arise
in the Lutheran communion. More familiar than Vinet
with the processes of Biblical criticism and the results of the
history of dogma, this party separated more and more from
that of infallibility, that of "the Providential Canon,"
from the ancient apology founded on external proofs, from
the doctrine of original sin in the absolute sense of Augustine,
from the juridical theory of "equivalent satisfaction" ac
cording to Calvin, from the doctrine of the Trinity formu
lated by the ancient councils. He does not acknowledge
in Jesus " the God-man," except under reserve of his sub
ordination to the person of the Father; he hesitates on
the personality of the Holy Spirit; and finally admits the
Christian supernaturalism, except so far as the origin of
Christianity appears to him inexplicable in the order of
natural facts, whatever idea may be formed of particular
miracles. Accused by the old orthodoxy, and sometimes very
severely, of tending by its philosophic method to overturn
Christianity, it accuses that orthodoxy in its turn of giving
it up to the contempt of cultivated men, and of conducing
by its narrow despotism to perpetuate rationalism. In vain
does it grow angry with the new theology ; it finds itself
drawn away by the current. Not being able to obtain a
complete return to the old doctrines, it is obliged, under
pain of insulation, to enter on the way of compromise, and
to be content with what the Third Party is good enough
to grant it. Provided Unitarianism is sacrificed to it, as
well as the liberal theology, it ends, as has been seen on

156 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
many an occasion, by adopting professions of faith the
least explicit on dogmas which, it had before pronounced
the most important.
Nothing better describes the actual disorder of the old
dogmatic parties than the impossibility in which they are
of re-establishing the old confessions of faith, their em
barrassment when the question comes up of promulgating
new ones, the number of attempts that have been made
and failed, the unexpected breadth of the new formulas
adopted by the free or national churches, which on this
point have shewn themselves the most exacting. The
difficulty has been greater still when the aim has been to
unite under the same dogmatic flag the orthodox members
of different countries, as was proposed in the foundation
of " the Evangelical Alliance."
The spirit of exclusion to which the first promoters of
the religious revival surrendered themselves, had ended in
a breaking up that became disquieting and troublesome for
themselves when they saw Protestantism crumble into a
crowd of dissident churches and chapels, each having their
very narrow symbol; they feared they had compromised it
in public opinion and weakened it in face of its formidable
adversary. They found themselves constrained on the
narrow area within which they had confined themselves,
and which did not enlarge as they at first expected. Thus
reduced to make themselves understood only before assem
blies not numerous and always the same, they wished to
occupy wider areas. They said to each other that the recog
nition of different ecclesiastical authorities did not involve
the exemption of common points on which they might
understand one another, was it solely for the exclusion of
common opponents. The project conceived first in Scot
land, shortly after the new Scotch secession, definitively

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 1 57
arranged in an assembly in London, soon found favour
among the orthodox of the old and new continent. But
to bring together these assembhes reputed oecumenical, a
considerable number of disciples, both dissident and national,
required numerous mutual concessions, as well as the miti
gation or even the annulling of points of doctrine regarded
as fundamental. The symbol of nine articles drawn up in
England, latitudinarian as it appeared in Scotland, seemed
narrow to the orthodox of the continent. It became neces
sary to reduce it to five articles, then to three, then to one
alone, on which they have not been very strict.
Such, then, at present is the position of a theological
party which at the beginning of the century was proud of
its immobility, and pretended to impose it on the entire
Church. Urged forward by the Third Party, which itself
underwent the influence of a more advanced party, it
abandoned its old entrenchments one after another, lowered
its standard opportunely, sacrificed characteristic dogmas,
or, if it retains the words, lessens the sense every day.
Thus was gradually accomplished in the bosom of Pro
testantism that new reformation called for in these days by
the progress of general intelligence. The new ideas sug
gested to some by views more exact, deeper spiritual wants,
at first astonished many. But united to sentiments, the
genuineness of which could not be doubted, they became
acceptable to other minds, which, perhaps in moderating
them, facilitated their way among the crowd. What was
at first accounted heresy was soon a simple boldness, with
which 'the most timorous finally familiarized themselves.
By degrees truth comes into light, passes one after the
other the barriers set in its way, spreads from neighbour to
neighbour by the slow but sure way which God has traced
for it; and rehgion, which had been thought threatened at

158 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
every step, only confirmed itself the more at every step-
Then, in the degree in which the stationary party shewed
itself less decisive in its affirmations, less provoking in its
censures, the progressive party in its turn is able, without
betraying the interests of truth, to moderate an opposition
which was become less necessary, quit the field of contro
versy at the right moment; finally, follow the precept and
the example of Paul, who, while defending Christian hberty
against tyrannical requirements, avoided making a stone of
stumbling for his brethren, condescended to the infirmities
of the weak, and recommended to all to seek peace and
mutual edification by the union of charity with truth.
§5-
However high the walls with which a Church may sur
round itself, it cannot for ever guard against the law of
progress. We have seen that law penetrate into the Pro
testant nations which were most opposed to its influence.
It was also to emerge in more than one Catholic nation,
and first in those which, by their habitual contact with,
Protestant populations, opened to it freer access. Here
then it is again on the side of Germany that our eyes must
first turn. It has in our time manifested itself there in
two directions. One of the two, somewhat similar to the
tendencies of the pietistic revival, proceeded specially from
the school previously founded (1796) in Bavaria by Michael
Sailer. Baader, Ellendorf, Martin Boos and others, dis
ciples of that theologian, nurtured, like him, in the works
of the ancient mystics, and almost all of them in rela
tions with the modern pietists, made the essential element
of rehgion to consist, not in external union with the Church
but in direct union with Christ, independent, according
to them, of every external observance. Treating as vain

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 159
parade the pomps of Catholicism, they spread among the
students contempt for indulgences, as well as the worship
of saints and images. Thus they brought on themselves
from the clergy violent persecutions, which obliged some
to flee in a mass into Protestant lands (1817-24), while
others gave themselves up to outbreaks of fanaticism too
frequent among persecuted parties. In the convents of the
Tyrol, some of their adepts, embracing the reveries of Rose
of Lima, seriously believed they had received the stigmata
of the crucified Jesus. The parishioners of Poeschl, parish
priest of Lintz, who after his retirement would recognize
no other pastor, immolated on Good Friday (1817) in one of
their conventicles a maiden who of her own accord resolved
to die to expiate the sins of the community. These sad
aberrations opened the eyes of the heads of the party,
which afterwards restricted their mysticism within wiser
limits, and sought, according to the example of Fenelon
and. Francois de Sales, nothing more than to mW with
Catholicism a salutary leaven of spirituality. It is in this
direction, little liked in Rome, that, among others, the
Abb6 Bautain laboured, who was afterwards Bishop of
Strasburg. The other progressive tendency in the bosom
of Catholicism proceeded rather from the regions of science.
From the end of the last century, and till toward the year
1835, a great number of CathoHc ecclesiastics, brought up
in the mixed universities of Germany, and living familiarly
with the Protestants, had renounced many ancient pre
judices and approached Protestant doctrines. The CathoHc
universities themselves, founded in different cities of the
West and the South, stimulated by the vicinity of Pro
testant universities, had favoured the cultivation of the
theological sciences in their own bosom ; thence proceeded
scholars who in many respects might take rank with the

1 60 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
representatives of Protestant science. Such were Jahn,
Hug, Scholz, in BibHcal Criticism and Introduction ; Lo-
cherer, in the history of the Church, &c. Some did not
even fear, in the exposition of dogmas, to profit by the
philosophical systems of Kant and Schelling, and the
labours of Schleiermacher. Froschammer, professor at
Munich, published (1858-61) his Introduction to Philo
sophy and his book on the Liberty of Science. Rey-
berger declared that he did not recognize the tradition of
the Church as authentic and true, except so far as it ac
corded with scripture, human nature and sound reason.
Others, classing among " divine " verities the dogma of
the Real Presence, acknowledged in that of Transubstantia-
tion only an " ecclesiastical" dogma. Hermes, professor
of Bonn (died 1834) declared that the Roman faith,
founded on authority, could not raise the mind above
doubt, and attempted to give a more soHd basis to the
CathoHc doctrine by conciliating it with reason.
But it is in worship and discipline that reforms were
speciaUy urgent, and it is also for these purposes that the
principal friends of progress directed their efforts. Wessen-
berg, Bishop of Constance, not satisfied with introducing
into the divine service, as much as was possible, the use of
the vulgar tongue, combated the absolute infalhbiHty of
the Pope, the obligation of ceHbacy for the priests ; esta
blished among the ecclesiastics of his diocese theological
conferences, the result of which he published in the
periodical archives. Anthony Theiner of Breslau, in his
work on "The Church of Silesia" (1826), unsparingly ex
posed some of the most prominent abuses of CathoHc doc
trine, worship and government; and by his polemics on
the subject of obligatory ceHbacy, caUed forth (1824-32)
against that abuse petitions from numerous ecclesiastics

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 161
of the south of Germany, and even of the diocese of Treves.
The Papacy, it is true, strong in the spirit of political
reaction which expressed itself in aU the courts, triumphed
for the most part over these oppositions. It took from
Wessenberg (1833) the administration of the diocese of
Constance, peremptorily rejected the greater part of the
articles which were proposed to it for the Concordat (1832),
paralyzed by a solemn declaration the movement in favour
of the marriage of the priests, educated ecclesiastics in
seminaries separated from the universities (1835), put the
. faculties of theology in Germany under absolute dependence
on the Jesuits ; then, not satisfied with concessions ob
tained from Frederick WilHam IV., prohibited by the
Archbishop of Cologne the teaching of the doctrines of
Hermes, and compeUed his principal disciples to make a
retractation (1844). In Switzerland, finaHy, where many
Lucerne ecclesiastics had declared for the " Conference of
Baden," by its intrigues it frustrated that Hberal move
ment, and overset the government of Lucerne which had
supported it (1836). But when, emboldened by these
successes, the Ultramontane party thought it could revive
the ancient superstitions, when the Bishop of Treves
invited (1844) the populations to come and worship in his
church the celebrated " coat without seam," more than a
million pilgrims, it is true, went to put its miraculous
virtue to the test ; the protest of two young ecclesiastics,
Ronge and Czerski, sufficed to call forth in the enlightened
citizens a movement quite similar to that which the ex
cesses of the rehgious reaction had just caHed forth among
the Protestants. In the principal cities numerous assem
blies were organized of "German Catholics," separated from
Rome, who were not slow in aUying themselves with the
Protestant "Friends of Light." The two parties worked

162 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
in common for the defence of their Hberty, and would,
perhaps, have achieved its recognition, if, at the approach
of the political agitation which was in preparation, invaded
the one and the other, overflowed, compromised by the
revolutionists and the new Hegehans, they had not lost
their popularity with the citizen class and seen their assem
blies early dissolved. The joy of their adversaries was,
nevertheless, of short duration. The Hberal CathoHc opposi
tion, always active, though latent and compressed on the
outside, but henceforth sheltered against aU suspicion of
connivance with the revolution, waited only for a new
opportunity for manifesting itself. In 1861, A. De Toque-
viHe recommended to the French clergy the example of the
CathoHc professors of Bonn, who saw in the rehgious
liberty, and in the concurrence of the rehgious parties, an
auxiliary of the old revival of which the Church had need.
The EncycHc of 1864 and the Council of 1870 soon gave
birth to the expected opportunity. If the German bishops,
at first undecided and rather opposed, as they had shewed
themselves in the first assembly of Fulda, dared not at the
last moment separate their cause from that of the Holy
See; if indeed some of them, as the Archbishop of Mayence,
took pains, by an increase of Ultramontane violence, to
atone for their preceding hesitations, it was not thus with
the professors and pupils of the universities. In the
faculties of theology themselves, though thoroughly given
up for the most part to the influence of the Jesuits some
distinguished doctors, after having combated the prepara
tions, the procedure, and finally the decree of the Vatican
Council, with the arms of the gospel and of historical sci
ence, being excommunicated for their persistent opposition
saw group around them a noble body of ecclesiastics and
laymen who openly declared that they withdrew from the

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 163
authority of the Court of Rome, and wished to form them
selves into a " German CathoHc Church." At this decisive
moment we see in CathoHcism, as we have before seen in
Protestantism, a sunderance between the Church and Sci
ence declare itself. To the absolutist maxims of the Middle
Ages those doctors opposed the principles that were in
vigour in the first ages of the Church, and in their quaHty
of " Old CathoHcs" (this is the name by which they desig
nated themselves) shewed themselves decided to repel the
novelties which Rome, in a pretended Oecumenical Council,
had caused to be ratified. The movement has not ceased
to extend since; it counts, it is said, in Germany more
than two hundred thousand adherents. In several cities
the municipaHties have put churches at their disposal.
Several governments, those of Prussia and Baden, recog
nized the justice of their cause. Threatened themselves
by the poHtical maxims of the SyHabus, and by the spirit
of separation and even sedition which they developed in
the people and the clergy of certain provinces, they under
took the defence of the deprived priests and excommuni
cated professors, and put the servants of Rome out of con
dition to injure them. We have seen that in the principal
cantons of Switzerland the opposition was not less active
or less supported. The chiefs of this opposition, moreover,
in breaking with Rome, declare that they remain faithful
to the Catholic Church, of which they say that the Pope
is not the head but the tyrant. "Neither slaves nor rebels,"
such is their maxim. One of their first measures in
Germany was the nomination of a bishop, whom they had
consecrated by the Jansenist Archbishop of Utrecht, and
who was recognized by the Prussian and Baden govern
ments. But under the episcopate they estabHshed parish
councils and synods nominated by the flock. Then, once
m 2

164 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
the chain which held them bound, to the Middle Ages
being broken, they progressively approach evangelical sim-
pHcity and spirituaHty. Among them, ecclesiastical celibacy,
monastic vows, compulsory confession, are already not in
principle solely, but in fact, abolished. Divine service is
celebrated in the national languages ; the ideas of tran-
substantiation, real and expiatory sacrifice, are excluded
from the Mass. Who can say where this advance will
stop? The scholars assembled at Munich in June, 1871,
announced themselves willing to found a free Church,
organized in agreement with the civilization of Germany.
In many respects they surpass the Hmits indicated by their
name of " Old Catholics," and would justify rather that of
" Liberal Catholics," if the former did not better suit their
present situation. Thus, on the part of Protestantism, no
impatience, no indiscreet proselytism ! Let us leave to this
secession from the CathoHc Church the care to constitute
and consolidate itseH. Spontaneousness is an indispensable
condition of success and duration for a party which, better
than ours, is qualified to evangelize those in different multi
tudes whom Rome held under its sway without ever know
ing how to lead them to Jesus. If there is a country
where the last decree of the Vatican seemed likely to
encounter an energetic resistance, it was that which now
for a long time had given its name to the anti-Roman
opposition; that where GalHcanism* had thrown out so
much splendour, and struck roots held to be so deep; that
* Grallicanism, or what is now called Liberal Catholicism in contrast
with Ultramontanism, the preponderant power in the Papal Church
since the Vatican Council, took a definite shape from the pen of the
celebrated Bossuet in these terms (1682) : "1st. That the Pope has
received power from God only over spiritual things, and not over tempo
ral and civil things. 2nd. That even in spiritual matters the authority

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 165
of Bossuet, Mabillon, Pithou ; that where the articles of
1682, which unbound the prince and enchained the clergy,
had been drawn up by the clergy themselves ; where, to
recal only more modern times, Hberal Cathohcism under
the restoration, and later under the Orleans dynasty, had
had on its side the first of the writers and pubHcists; where
one of them maintained at MaHnes, in a congress of bishops,
the necessity of closely in future uniting Catholicism with
Hberty; where his friend, a not less zealous Catholic, de
clared (1852) that " the Church, to recover its ascendancy
in the present day, ought to appropriate aH the true Hghts
shed abroad in the world ; that the Catholic philosophy,
instead of being demonstrative, as in the Middle Ages,
ought to be inquisitive, and go back to faith along the
path of examination ;'' where an Archbishop of Paris
publicly lauded the preacher who, in the pulpit of Notre
Dame, had just affirmed "the solidity of the bases which
reason furnishes to morality,'' and represented as "the
essential mission of the Church to prepare the faithful for
entering into direct communion with God ;" where, finaUy,
prelates and monks seemed for a moment united to deplore
the convocation of the Council of Rome, and to combat the
decree which would be published there.
And yet, excepting the eminent preacher whom we
cited but now, and who previously, denounced by the
Jesuits, rather than betray his conscience, had preferred
quitting the pulpit which he made iHustrious, not one of
those prelates, not one of those monks, refused his signa
ture to the Vatican decree; the bishops of Paris, Orleans,
of the Pope is not unlimited, unless the assent of the Church inter
venes. 3rd. That the rules, customs and institutions received in the
kingdom and in the Gfallican Church ought to retain their virtue and
their force, and the usageB of our fathers remain unshaken." — Trans.

166 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
Sura, gave up the proud attitude which they had held
during the Council; Father Gratry erased with one stroke
of his pen the most sohd objections consigned in his books;
the Oratoire and the Sorbonne bowed their neck to the
same yoke. The sentiments of Lacordaire against Papal
infaUibility were known only after his death; and as to
Montalembert, who revealed them, it is only on his death
bed that he himself abjured his worship for " the idol that
is incensed in the Vatican." It is aU over; the ancient
GalHcanism has extinguished itself. Perhaps among the
high French clergy it was never anything but a doctrine of
circumstances. Who does not remember in what interest
it drew up its declaration of 1682, with what eagerness it
afterwards excused itself with the Holy See, and what
urgency it employed with Louis XIV. to suspend its effect?
Under an absolute prince, who before aU things meant to be
master in his own house, that clergy, to obtain the ruin of
dangerous rivals, Protestants and Jansenists, had taken a
position against the Pope by the side of the Monarch; the
reward it expected once obtained, it turned toward the
Pontiff with redoubled deference and submission.
With greater reason in our own days this return to
Ultramontanism may be understood, and to a certain point
excused. After so many proofs that the civil power in
France has given of its instabiHty, after the horrible ex
cesses to which the revolutionary anarchy has been carried
against the clergy, one understands that, not finding any sure
support around it, the ecclesiastics seek it in the Vatican and
under the protecting wing of the Jesuits. Under such con
ditions they give themselves up to them entirely. No more
Hght, no more science that may be of disservice to them ;
even no more simple good done to control their miracles
and their new forms of worship; every bishop owes incense

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 167
to the Sacred Heart,* and his faith to the word of the
infalHble Pontiff.
As to the inferior clergy, proceeding for the most part
from the lowest classes of the population, educated by the
Jesuits in their seminaries, cut off from aH commerce with
Protestants, placed by the Concordat under the entire con
trol of the bishops, it marches under their orders, as said a
certain archbishop, " with the docdity of a regiment." It
is only in the times of revolution that it dared shew any
reHc of resistance, and speak of making the Church of
France independent of Rome. But for that it was not
sufficient, as appeared in Lyons, where an attempt was
made (1864) to oppose to the Roman Hturgy a pretended
Hturgy of Saint Irenaeus, although it did something to
decorate with the title of " Church of France" a microscopic
chapel opened in Paris, to entitle it the Primate, to cele
brate in it mass in French, and to associate in the sermon
a panygeric of Napoleon with one of Jesus Christ.
Among the laymen themselves, Hberal Catholicism counts
but a smaH number of earnest adherents. For a long time
it has not found in France to support and stimulate it
anything similar to what supports and stimulates it in
Germany. The Jesuitical breath freezes every intellectual
aspiration, every rehgious individualism, and leaves to
independent minds no other refuge than indifference.
Jansenism, if it stdl subsists, Hves retired in an old quarter
of Paris. The nobUity, in its dream of legitimacy, closely
binds its cause to that of the Bishop of Rome. The opulent
class, in the alarm caUed forth in it by revolutions, requires
* See in the Anti-papal Library, No. I., Mary Alacoque and the
worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus presented in their real character,
from the French of Louis Asseline, by John R. Beard, id. London:
Smart and Allen.

168 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
of religion, not an enlightened people, but a deferential
one. The people itself, brought up in ignorance by a
clergy which has a monopoly of education, dares not, even
after it has ceased to beHeve in the priest, repel his
ministry or resist his influence ; they resist only in days
of trouble, and then by acts of violence which tend to call
forth a reaction. Finally, in a state composed of elements
so diverse and yet so centralized as France, no government
would venture to authorize the measures which otherwheres
are accomplished without difficulty. No place, then, to
day in the Church of France for any one who, wishing to
remain Catholic, claims liberty of thought. On the out
side of Ultramontanism and phdosophy there is only Hre-
ligion, orat least scepticism. " Liberal Christianity," says
M. Vacherot, "wiH make numerous conquests in the Pro
testant world. . . As to CathoHc societies, their repugnance
to it is invincible. . . In France particularly, it would be
more easy to pass of a sudden from religion to philosophy,
than to stop at any form of Christianity whatever." This
is what Lamennais did after his rupture with Rome. At one
bound he leapt over Catholicism and Protestantism, which
last he treated as " a bastard system," and published his
"Esquisse d'une Phdosophie" ("Sketch of Phdosophy").
Before him Jouffroy spoke of Christianity as the last re-
Hgion, and phdosophy as alone destined to survive it. It
is then on the phdosophie party alone that we can now
definitely reckon for the emancipation of Catholic France.
Consequently it is worth our trouble to closely examine
in what direction phdosophy now inclines, on what terms
it finds itself with Christianity, and whether its actual
evolutions tend to put them at a distance or to bring
them near to each other.

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 169
§6.
For a moment, we have said, there was a fear that we
might see the modern discoveries of science in the provinces
of nature and history put philosophy again in hostility with
religion. That fear seemed so much the more founded, that
at the same time persons who called themselves Christian
philosophers, in order to raise the value of revelation, as they
thought, re-enthroned philosophical scepticism, attempted
to weaken the natural proofs of Providence and immortality,
and, as if they had never heard speak of Socrates and
Plato, repeated in an oracular tone — " Christian or Atheist !"
" CathoHc or Pantheist!" This was done to gratify certain
believers, but in reaHty it gave countenance to unbelief.
More recently, in France as weU as in Germany, phdoso-
phers, truly worthy of that name, placing themselves, in
order to defend Theism, on the same ground of the natural
sciences where others had taken their stand in order to
attack it, demonstrated at least the uncertainty of the facts
aUeged by atheistic naturaHsts. They boldly deny spon
taneous generation; they have more than doubts on the
indefinite transformation of species, which, moreover, would
not exclude a first creation; and as to the facts the reaHty
of which is less contestable, they victoriously combat the
conclusions deduced from them. In vain do they interro
gate and scrutinize matter ; they declare they do not find
in it any sign of that spontaneous moving force, much less
of that inteHigence, which is attributed to it. Does the
organism give an account of the phenomena of life and
mind, they ask, who wiH give an account of that organism
itself? Who made the brain capable of scrutinizing thought;
who has provided it with that nervous electricity, capable
of feeHng, observing, judging, wdling, communicating the

170 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
effect of its will; how can a purely material being, whose
integral materials are ceaselessly renewed, in the midst of
that perpetual circulation, preserve, during so many years,
the sentiment of its personal identity ? How, especially,
can materiaHsm explain in man those determinations of
the moral being which, for a superior interest, make it
resist the material instincts, even so far as to brave the
destruction of the organism ? FinaHy, in the regular con
catenation of the phenomena of nature and history, instead
of a mechanical succession bHndly advancing of its own
accord, without beginning and without end, everything
leads to the recognition of the evident action of laws which
a wise and supreme Regulator has put in action, the result
of properties with which He has endued His inanimate
creatures, and incHnations with which He has gifted free
beings in order to lead them to His own ends. It is thus
that modern phdosophy, after having, in its uneasy re
search after unity, osciHated for some time between ideafist
and materialist Pantheism, returns in the footsteps of
scientists of the highest authority, to a spiritualistic Theism
much more Hving than that of the Deists of the last cen
tury, since it admits the constant action of God in His
works; much more soHd also than the ancient Theism,
since, less exclusively founded on metaphysical principles,
it gives a better account of the results of observation, and
has undergone the test of the new discoveries of science.
But what sincere Theist, said Barclay, can be the enemy
of Christianity? Let us say rather, what Theist truly
phdosophie, who, with the light of history, does not con
fess that if the knowledge of the true God, instead of re
maining, as with the ancient sages, the exclusive property
of some prophets and some thinkers, has in the space of
only eighteen centuries become the heritage of the entire

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 171
world, and now is spreading to the ends of the earth ; if the
God who was of old unknown now presents Himself to the
adoration of the lowliest minds under features at once sub
lime and touching ; if the worship in spirit and in truth
which is His due has already triumphed over so many
barbarous superstitions ; if moral civilization has made in
the world progress so far surpassing that of ancient days, —
it is to Jesus, to his incomparable teaching, to his saintly
life, to his ministry devoted even to death ; finaUy, to his
glorious martyrdom, so proHfic of the purest and highest
effects — where, I ask, is the phdosopher who, in presence
of this grand fact, does not recognize in the gospel,
despite some inferior elements easy to be eliminated, the
most inestimable of spiritual treasures conferred on the
world, without blessing God for the share which he has
himself received, and returning with the aid of study and
reflection, perhaps through many doubts, to the principles
with which his chddhood was imbued, traces of which he
finds in his heart's core — does not appreciate so much the
more the benefits of Christian education, which spares to
the multitude of human beings those long and anxious
wanderings ? " Society," says Emde Saisset, " needs a
spiritual ministry, which has the character of universaHty,
which embraces aH the members that compose it, the great
and the smaH, the rich and the poor, the learned and the
ignorant. . . But phdosophy is incapable in itself to under
take this spiritual ministry in modern society." " In vain
wiH you interrogate the entire history of the human race,"
says M. Barthelemy Saint Hdaire; "you wdl find nothing
equal to the rehgious edifice raised by Christianity, and
which forms its present state, the guarantee of a future,
the end of which no one can assign." Nevertheless, let
us make no mistake, in acknowledging in Christianity, for

172 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
the progress of religious truth in the world, a vehicle which
cannot be replaced; phdosophy does not intend to abdicate
its rights, or to allow its special services to be disowned.
"Philosophy," says Saisset, in the same article that we
have just cited, " has acquired in the two last centuries
not only the right to exercise itself with independence, but
the right to comprehend in its domain, as vast as reason
and humanity, aU the wants, all the developments of
human nature. To abdicate that right would be a weak
ness." . . " Phdosophers," adds M. Paul Janet, " in all
ages combated by the theologians in the name of faith,
ask for nothing better than alliance with the theologians,
with those at least who do not systematically attack reason
and Hberty, as well as with the scientific men attached to
pure spiritualism." How in effect can we do else than recog
nize that right in our turn ? The religious sentiment, left
to itself, without counterpoise and without control, is sub
ject to strange, at times baneful deviations. Divers religious
parties furnish more than one example. The philosophy
of the last century had caused them partially to disappear ;
they have re-appeared with the rehgious revival of our age ;
and wid re-appear, so long as piety shaU not have for
monitor and guide within, or for superintendent and cor
rector without, an enlightened and severe philosophy. It
is necessary from time to time for reason to hold its torch
over the manifestations of which religion is the source,
under the penalty of its destroying itself by its own eccen
tricities, or the extravagances of those who speak in its
name. It is from the school of Voltaire that France, led
astray by its priests, had to learn religious toleration. It
is the influence of Franklin and Jefferson that has neutral
ized in America, as that of W. Robertson in Scotland, the
rugged fanaticism of the Puritans. It was a Cardinal friend

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 173
of the phdosophers, Lambertini, who raised his voice against
the ignoble devotion of the Sacred Heart. Such, in regard
to the Church, is the part of philosophy ; a part favourable
or hostde according as it is welcomed or repelled by it,
but which is never better fulfilled than by the medium
of a purified and progressive Christianity. Insulate your
house, some day it will be smitten by the lightning ; with
draw the threatening fluid from the cloud, it will be safe
from its blow. You wish to preserve the Church from
impious and anarchical doctrines ; let it be pervaded by
true lights of ad kinds. This, as has been shewn by
judges as competent as impartial, Remusat, Montegut,
Saint- Ren^, was the cause of the success of Unitarianism
in its struggle against the subversive tendencies of the last
century. It is in giving legitimate satisfaction to the
philosophic spirit, that, " in the midst of an unbelieving
generation, it maintains in England, in Switzerland, in
America, a public sincerely Christian." The progressive
Christianity of our days, in stdl recognizing the rights of
philosophy, wdl render to the Church a service not less
essential. Let us go further, and considering philosophy not only
as a just and legitimate employment of the human facul
ties, but under its own point of view the most elevated, as
the top-stone, the crown of the sciences, whose results it
gathers together, co-ordinates and generalizes, let us ask
if the progress of those sciences during three centuries has
impoverished or aggrandized the ideas which Christianity
gives us of the Divine attributes ; if the invisible perfec
tions of God which Paul contemplated in his works must
have shone with less brilliancy in the eyes of a Kepler and
of a Newton ; if, consequently, a still deeper acquaintance
with the world and its marvels, of the harmony which

174 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
unites all its parts one with another, will not more vividly
excite our sentiments of adoration for its Author ; if the
attentive study of nature and of history in shewing us
everywhere in the Divine economy the good emerging out
of evd, liberty correcting its own excesses, the general
order constantly maintained, then even when it seems
most disturbed, the infinite variety of means which the
Sovereign Disposer employs to conduct His inteUigent
creatures to good ; — if all this, I say, even in the midst of
the obscurities which still envelope us, wdl not enlighten
for us with a new light the problem of our destiny, and, by
replacing in us by a courageous optimism the dark and
enervating dualism of former times, will not imprint more
deeply stdl on the religious thought that stamp of pious
submission and serene confidence, entire devotement to the
Divine will, which characterizes the prayer of the true
Christian ? If, then, phdosophy itself is discredited in
breaking with religion, you wdl not better serve the inte
rests of religion by in its name denying the rights of philo
sophy, by putting faith in hostdity with science. " The
men of science," said Prince Albert, "are not, as the
ignorant have sometimes said, presumptuous unbeHevers,
Titans bent on scaling the skies." In the first rank of
the scientific ladder you now see men who, without seek
ing the patronage of any religious party, uphold all the
causes dear to humanity, all the principles of which
Christian wisdom is proud. Will the Church be so blind
as to disdain their co-operation 1
Philosophy and Religion, " those two immortal sisters,"
are now more than ever necessary one to another — " phdo
sophy to throw light on religion, religion to sanctify
philosophy." Separated, enemies so far as they will not
treat except on the footing of a mutual servitude, they

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 175
ought henceforward to unite by the bond of mutual ser
vices, appropriating each willingly the truths which the
other has established, and work in concert, each by its
own method, to enrich humanity. Now this, we repeat,
is the happy evolution which seems in our day to bring
them near each other, and which permits us to discern
a better future for France, despite the slowness of the
progress and the momentary checks of liberal Catholicism.
Theism, that Theism which is at once philosophic and
Christian, which cads upon us to draw water from every
pure well, to go to God by all the ways which He has
opened before us, to put at His service all the gifts which
we have received at His hand, — such is the banner under
which, in the future, the friends whom religious truth
reckons in ad camps wdl unite and fraternize one with
another.
§7.
The considerations into which we have just entered apply
principally to the Western churches. They, indeed, are
at the head of the modern progress of religious science.
During long time the Greek Church, the Russian Church
herself, had not been able to partake therein. The regular
clergy who filled its numerous convents, supported by the
female nobdity and the people in the rural districts, was
systematically hostde to ad novelty in the Church as in
the State. The popes or simple priests, coming for the
most part from, poor families, compulsordy married before
entering into orders, succeeding each other not less com
pulsordy from father to son, constrained for the subsistence
of their families to consecrate themselves to the labours of
the field, the majority without any veritable occupation for
their ministry, and having learnt in the schools hardly more
than to read the Hturgy mechanically, vegetated, they and

176 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
their parishes, in a spiritual state the most deplorable.
However, in the degree in which civilization penetrates
into the heart of Russia, the character and the instruction
of the clergy receives a happy impulse. As early as the
end of the last century and the beginning of this, Plato,
Metropolitan of Moscow, a learned historian and eloquent
preacher, was the founder of a seminary and the head of
a theological school, which presided over the revival of
zeal and the progress of science. Philaretes, his disciple,
conversant with the Protestant literature of Germany,
directed a society of friends of religious instruction, which
had for its object to raise the Russian people out of its
spiritual abasement. Other associations of a like kind
were later on founded by Gregory, Metropolitan of Peters
burg, by Bishop Macarios, and by some other members of
the high clergy. From the year 1855, religious journals
began to be multiplied, as wed as versions of the Bible, in
its different languages and dialects. The religious press
in general became more active. Alexander II. seconded
those efforts by the foundation of new seminaries, animated
by quite a different tendency than that of Kief, and where
the influence of Protestant principles and the German
philosophy and theology began to penetrate. Moreover,
Alexander II. rendered eminent services to the Church
by binding the ecclesiastics to serious studies, in allowing
sons of the priests to enter into orders only so far as they
felt a real vocation to the ministry, and in making that
ministry accessible to all those who judged themselves fit
for its exercise, so that the Russian Church already counts
in its ranks young priests well informed and of exemplary
morals. After a reform of so salutary a nature, there
is everything to be hoped for from clergy who,' as M.
Boissard observes, "connected with their country by family

PROGRESS IN TRUTH. 177
and social ties, far from insulating themselves from the
nation, and from raising their influence above that of the
State which protects them, become in their turn the sup
port of its institutions, and know what the word patriotism
signifies. The Empress on her side has founded numerous
gymnasia (1873) for the instruction of all the classes of
the female youth, and has Hberady opened them to the
girls of every religion. One of the noblest famdies of the
country has also just founded a normal school to form
professors for the natural sciences. Favourable expecta
tions are also encouraged by some of the sects formed on
the outside of the national Church, and, among others, by
the spiritualistic sect of Duchoborzi, who, as the Quakers,
believe in an internal and personal revelation, reject the sa
craments, the worship of images, the merit of external prac
tices ; find in mysticism a way to escape from the slavery
of the latter; admit miraculous narratives only in a spiritual
point of view ; and finaUy deny to the sacred books the
character of an exclusive revelation. The Hellenic Church,
on its side, since the emancipation of Greece, has also made
advances in intellectual and religious culture. Since 1834,
by reducing the number of convents, they have, by the
sale of their property, created a fund for the support of
popular and higher schools. In 1837, they founded the
University of Athens, in which theological studies begin
to be encouraged and developed by relations which Greece
maintains with England, Germany, and other countries of
the continent. M. Forschammer affirms that he has found
in the cultivation of the interior of the Morea a population
intelligent, in no way superstitious, rather Protestant in
their rehgious tendencies; and among the Greek clergy,
independent of the Patriarch of Constantinople, priests
who have received a university education. Doubtless, the
N

178 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
teaching given in the different academies of the Greek
rite wdl not soon break publicly with the symbols conse
crated by the orthodox Church, which stdl enjoys great
authority. But, as you may already see in the principal
Russian preachers, the sense which they attach to them
becomes constantly more spiritual ; and the Greek doctors,
in going back to the origin of their Church, wdl draw
from the writings of those ancient and dlustrious Fathers
purer instructions than those which the Protestant Re
formers drew from those of Augustine.

in.
PROGRESS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE AND MORALS.
The progress of rehgious liberty, insufficient in itself, if
it does not advance the reign of truth, would not be less
insufficient were it not accompanied by a marked progress
in the Christian life. It is to that the promoters of the
revival principally aimed in the commencement of this
century, and one of the first means that they set at work
was the foundation of the Bible Society (1804). This
excedent institution, although sometimes directed in a
narrow and routine spirit, was a necessary supplement of
the great revolution which, three centuries ago, put the
gospel into the hands of the people. In indefinitely multi
plying the copies and the translations of the sacred books,
and in thus enabhng each disciple to go back to the origin
of his faith, to enter into constant contact, with his Master
and his model, the Bible became a powerful means of

PROGRESS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE AND MORALS. 179
Christian edification, and at the same time, in proportion
as versions of it were ameHorated, and the knowledge and
intelligence of its readers increased, a valuable auxdiary to
the spirit of inquiry and the attainment of truth. Associa
tions for the better observance of the Sabbath were also
one of the important creations of the revival. Certainly, to
recommend to ad, and principady to those who have the
disposal of others' labour, the observance of a seventh day
of repose, was an eminent service rendered to religion and
humanity. When you remove ad useless rigour, ad sombre
and Puritanical excess ; when you reconcde, in connec
tion with it, the satisfaction of the wants of the soul and
those of the intedect and social life, including the most
seemly variations of the famdy circle and of friendship,
which form the best part of the boddy repose necessary to
the workman ; when you remember how some religious
communities of America and England begin practically to
remember that "the Sabbath is made for man, and not
man for the Sabbath," there is great reason for rejoicing at
the efforts which are made for the consecration of Sunday.
It is equady satisfactory that places of worship are multi
plied wherever they are insufficient in number or kind to
meet the wants of the population. Speciady important is
it that services should be given which suit the tastes and
meet the wants of the neighbourhood. Sacred music offers
a source of attraction and usefulness which has received
some, but by no means adequate, attention. Then the old
liturgies, so long and so full of repetition, need to be
reformed; and prayers at once short, simple and carefully
premeditated, coming directly from the soul, are speciady
needed, especiady when free prayer is used. Finally, im
provement in the sermon is imperative. A short address,
not in general exceeding twenty minutes, on some point
' n2

180 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
bearing directly on the intimate wants and noble capacities
of the soul, and generally on subjects of a practical kind,
treated in a careful and striking manner, not without
illustrative examples and instances, should supersede the
wordy and tedious emptiness or declamation or dogmatic
argumentation so common in the pulpit, which might be
made the greatest instrument of religious impression and
individual and social usefulness. In what concerns the
direction of morals, the progressive Christian, from the
very fact that he is vividly impressed with its intimate
connection with Christianity, is careful to guard his own
individualism, and whde willing and eager to gather in
struction from the lip as wed as the pen, he is not less
careful to guard against ad sacerdotal pretensions what
ever, especiady remembering the words of the Lord Jesus,
" One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren."
The benediction of the Church in calling God to' witness
the engagements of wedlock, assuredly increases its solem
nity and ratifies its vows. But when the civil law required
it as an indispensable condition of the validity of the
contract, it put into the hands of the Roman clergy a
weapon which it has not ceased to wield to the prejudice
not only of rehgious liberty, but also of the sanctity of
the union it was meant to consecrate. Marriage between
couples of different religious communions, considering the
interested demands of the priest, not being possible except
on conditions which conscience has a right to refuse is
often changed into an immoral and illicit commerce. It is
then a real advance in public morals which more and
more takes out of the hands of the clergy the registers'of
the State, and, whde recommending a religious service
makes it merely supplementary to the civd act, which is
all that the State should require as necessary. In England

PROGRESS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE AND MORALS. 181
this contract is at present performed under one or two ob
jectionable conditions. The presence of the registrar at
Nonconformist weddings would be unobjectionable if it
was equally required in such as are celebrated by the
episcopal clergy. It is one of the evils of an established
church that it receives from the State privdeges which
are disqualifications for ministers of other religious bodies.
Such favouritism must soon come to an end. The State
has to do solely with a civil contract in this, as in every
other matter. Not less objectionable is the difference that
is made in regard to interment. If episcopalians desire
consecrated ground, by aU means let them have it, but
not under such circumstances as stamp even on the grave
an imprint of reUgious inequality and incompatibility.
The sufficiency of the civd attestation to marriage was
decreed in France in 1789. It has been declared in our
days in the different cantons of Switzerland, in the kingdom
of Italy, and doubtless wdl soon be owned in all Germany.
Whde waiting for the CathoHc Church to abolish in gene
ral obHgatory ecclesiastical marriage, as has already been
done in Italy, it is important that the marriage of priests
who have renounced 'their functions should be made legiti
mate. In the instruction of the young nothing is more
important than the moral direction, and this direction is
never better secured than when it is founded on religion.
But when the clergy profit by the fact so as to claim as
their duty and their right the superintendence of public
instruction, they compel citizens and governments to call
to mind in what spirit they have always performed the
task. To form the judgment of the young, so necessary to
enable them to understand the foundation and the reason
of their duties ; to imbue them with a sense of the duties
which they wdl have to fulfil as citizens and future heads

182 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
of families ; to prepare them for self-government by leading
them to practise self-help, more than ever indispensable
in our age, — this, which is the first duty of all competent
teachers, is the last which the CathoHc clergy has thought
of; and even by Protestant ministers this has been super
seded by indoctrination into the creeds and articles of their
different churches. The clergy of ad denominations must
themselves receive a better training, a training more in
unison with the spirit of the age, before they can, be fit to
be intrusted with the momentous task of forming the mind
of the coming generation by moulding the mind of our
youth. It is no wonder, while our clergy are enamoured
of the spirit of the dark ages rather than the simple and
loving spirit of Jesus, that some have gone to the extreme
of declaring morality independent of religion. The sole
cure of this extravagance is to make the religion taught in
our schools the religion of Jesus in ad its active simplicity
and impressiveness, as construed and held by the most
religiously advanced minds of our age. After the sad dis
coveries of the lamentable condition of large masses of our
populations made as a sequel to our modern revolutions,
the interests of public morality have assumed the highest
importance in the minds of the religious friends of human
ity. Qualities there are, and but too numerous and threat
ening, which suggest that society is sleeping on a social
volcano. To remove these evds, societies have been formed
of a purely practical as wed as benevolent kind, which
disown the disturbing and perverting . influences of sect,
creed, church and party. These are among the wisest
instruments for good. Thus asylums have been opened
for the recovery of polluted women, for the reformation
of neglected and vicious chddren; refuges for vagabonds
homes for discharged seamen. The celebrated Quakeress

PROGRESS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE AND MORALS. 183
Elizabeth Fry, gave a noble example by traversing Europe
and America in order to carry into prisons the counsels
and consolations of the gospel (1845). Almost everywhere
the penitentiary system, destined for the regeneration of
criminals, has taken place of the purely coercive system,
and brought about the mitigation of the penal legislation.
Not to mention other works of pure and wise Christian
beneficence, the ravages of drunkenness have drawn the
attention of philanthropists and legislators. Father Mat
thew founded for Ireland, demoralized by this plague,
Temperance Societies, whose members took a pledge to ab
stain altogether from intoxicating drinks. In our days, in
view of the innumerable crimes engendered by intoxica
tion, governments have felt it a duty to subject the trade
in such beverage to special restraints. Here indeed is a
sin which seems to be spreading, and which certainly de
mands immediate and efficacious remedies. Never, however,
was there an instance which idustrated more decisively
the wisdom of the maxim, that prevention is better than
cure; and the application of that maxim in educatory and
refining influences of all kinds, nor least those which
mingle amusement and recreation with instruction, is of
great and immediate necessity.
These general remarks in favour of practical Christian
beneficence we shad conclude with remarks on three great
pests which this age has inherited from the past — slavery,
war and pauperism — in the treatment of which Christianity
has won many a laurel.
1. The Quakers, under impulses from George Fox and
Widiam Penn, were the first to adopt and to carry into
effect in their American colonies resolutions for the aboli
tion of slavery. In the other colonies, those of the North
especially, at the time of the declaration of Independence,'

184 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
measures having the same object were carried into effect
(1782). In Denmark, their example was followed in 1804.
It would have been so in the same period in England,
when Clarkson and Granvide Sharp warmly pleaded the
cause of the slaves, if the massacre of the planters of Saint
Domingo (1793) by the blacks, whom the French revolu
tion had too suddenly enfranchised, had not for a time
suppressed the aspirations of Christian benevolence. Not
withstanding the perseverance of Wilberforce, seconded by
the eloquence of Pitt and Fox, it was only in 1807, after
a speech by Sir Samuel Romdly, that the Parliament of
England, in a transport of enthusiasm, passed a bdl for the
abolition of slavery. In 1824, on the motion of Canning,
the slave-trade, assimdated to piracy, was punished by
forced labour; at the same time, to destroy it in its source,
cruisers placed on the Western shores of Africa were
directed to capture vessels loaded with negroes, and to
transport the rescued slaves to the colony of Sierra Leone,
where missionaries laboured to civilize them by means of
Christianity. Finally, in 1834, after the vote of a just
indemnity for the proprietors of slaves, those of the English
colonies were set at Hberty, in connection with a time of
apprenticeship or noviciate intended to prepare them for
their new condition.
Nevertheless, despite the treaties of 1814, the American
planters of the South, by means of factories which they
supported on the coast of Africa, deceived the vigdance of
the English cruisers, and carried on an active trade in
negroes, which they purchased from the kings of the
country. Without paying attention to the Bull of Gregory
XVI. (1839) which condemned slavery, they hanged, with
out trial, the principal abolitionists, and the negroes who
listened to them; the missionaries themselves, intimi-

PROGRESS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE AND MORALS. 185
dated, could do nothing but preach patience to the poor
wretches, on the utterly untenable ground that, being of
the race of Ham, they had to expiate his crime in their
sufferings. Finally, speculating on the interests of the
manufacturers of the North, who bought at a low price
the cotton cultivated in their colonies, the States of South
America demanded and obtained from the Confederation
a decree for the restitution of their fugitive slaves (1850).
President Lincoln had the courage to revoke this base con
cession. This was the signal for the revolt of the South,
which was subdued only after a sanguinary war of four
years. The victory of the Northern States decided in the
union the entire abolition of slavery. The Emperor of
Brazd also suppressed it in his states (1865). This, how
ever, does not prevent its re-appearing from time to time
under diverse forms. Samuel Baker has defeated in the
upper vadey of the Nde (1873) a horde of brigands who,
under the pretext of trading in ivory, carried on a traffic in
slaves. After having delivered them, he subjected the
country to the government of the Sultan. But slavery
subsists stdl in some parts of Africa. Some twenty years
ago, a new kind of trade in slaves established itself at
Macao, under the deceptive designation of " emigration of
the Chinese coolies." Informed of the frightful condition
to which these slaves are subjected, slaves in reality though
pretended volunteers, on the Portuguese vessels that bring
them, the consuls of the principal Powers of Europe
claimed and obtained their liberty, and a treaty with En
gland now permits the recruitment of free labourers in
India. If slavery was the plague of America, Asia and
Africa, that of Russia was serfdom. It dated from the six
teenth century, when, after the expulsion of the Mongols,
the Court of Moscow, to restore the country to culture, at-

188 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
tached the peasants to the sod. Alexander I. in a measure
improved their condition. Alexander II., immediately
after his ascending the throne, abolished serfdom on the
lands dependent on the crown. Then, braving the menaces
of the lords, he published, a general edict for the emancipa
tion of the serfs to the number of fifty millions, whose
proprietors he indemnified, at the same time that he took
precautions against the vagabondism of the enfranchised.
Lately also, and after the capture of Khiva, the Russian
government set at Hberty the Persian slaves detained in
that city (1873).
2. Ad the wars have not had motives as honourable,
nor results as happy for humanity, as those which set the
slaves of these different countries free; witness the war
which still raged in Europe at the commencement of this
century, and which, during more than twenty years, covered
it with blood and ruin. When, finally, the peace was
signed in 1815, ardent desires arose on ad sides that that
war might be the last. The pacific dreams of Henry IV,
of the Abb6 Saint Pierre, of the philosopher Kant, became
those of ad men of sense and Christian feeling. America
joined its desires and efforts to those of Europe. Channing,
who in the midst of the most brilliant exploits of Bona
parte spoke with indignation so eloquent against the spirit
of conquest, founded, with Noah Worcester and other
Christians, the society of "the Friends of Peace," and drew
up the appeal in which the Congress of the United States
was entreated to undertake " the grand and sublime office
of pacificator of the world." At the same time the Society
of Quakers founded an annual congress, in which it was
mainly attempted to indicate in arbitration an efficacious
as well as Christian means of settHng the differences of
nations. At the first apprehension of fresh hostilities

PROGRESS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE AND MORALS. 187
these societies and meetings were multiplied. But in the
interval popular opinion was strangely perverted. Histo
rians had unduly extoHed deeds of valour, the poets had
celebrated them in song, the ministers of religion them
selves had offered incense to warlike glory ; the theories of
a European equdibrium, those of nationaHties, of natural
frontiers, had found too many advocates among statesmen ;
finally, oppressed peoples, impatient to throw of their yoke,
standing armies kept in wearying and unprofitable repose,
pushed society to war too powerfudy for it to be possible
to avoid it. Also when it broke out again, rendered more
formidable than ever by the destructive efficacy of new
arms, all that Christian charity could accomplish, after
redoubHng its urgent appeals (1861-70), was to prepare
consolations for its victims, to gather together under the
inviolable banner of the Cross devoted volunteers, who
should supply without distinction assistance to the wounded
and to prisoners of ad nations, and to gather funds for
sowing the ravaged fields afresh, and to restore cottages in
ruins. This, however, was only a padiative which, if the friends
of peace had been satisfied with, might have served chiefly
to tranquidize the conscience of promoters of fresh wars.
Accordingly, without adowing themselves to be discouraged
by so many checks, those friends resumed their generous
crusade with augmented ardour. But charity cannot sub
sist without justice. Real evds not repaired, contrary pre
tensions not reconciled, are, among nations as individuals,
a perpetual seed of dissension, which it is indispensable to
destroy. Perhaps in the degree in which international
relations multiply, and the exchange of ideas becomes more
easy and prompt, society will be led to approve and adopt
the alternative of peace long recommended by the Quakers.

188 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
Perhaps when nations shad better understand their true
interests and their mutual duties, there wdl be formed
among them a general opinion powerful enough to impose
itself on parties in litigation, to obhge the offender to
repair his wrongs, the injured to be satisfied with an equit
able reparation, to suppress self-love too intense and exact
ing ; finally, to constitute, if not a permanent institution,
by means of an international code and a universally ac
knowledged tribunal, at least in each particular case, a
pacific means of arbitration like that to which recourse has
been successfully had on several occasions, and to which
England and the United States in particular not long
since submitted their differences in. the Conference of
Geneva (1872). It is in this direction that to-day the
most illustrious friends of peace are zealously labouring.
3. Unhappily ad the evils of this world are enchained
together and engender each other. War, which from ad
antiquity has given birth to slavery, is in its turn perpe
tuated by wretchedness. It is famine endemic among
savage tribes that ceaselessly drives them into war. It
was famine which, in the Middle Ages, threw floods upon
floods of the barbarians of the North on the civilized
countries of the South. And in our own days, but for the
pauperism which incessantly troubles the nations, which
maintains in them a constant state of disquiet and un
certainty, would the sovereigns seek so earnestly, would
they find so easily, soldiers for their unjust wars, or dema
gogues the artizans of revolt, the instruments of revolu
tion ? To banish this plague from the bosom of the working
classes, too much was expected from the immediate en
franchisement of labour. " It was with this liberation as
with others, which, for not having been sufficiently pre
pared, caused in the lot of the populations perturbations

PROGRESS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE AND MORALS. 189
full of danger. . . The workman, having got out of the
tutelage of his master, found himself charged with care for
his own subsistence, and often out of condition to make
the needful provision; the ordinary artizan, thrown without
capital into the arena of universal competition, found him
self unhorsed at the first rencontre ; the law had emanci
pated him, want put him into a state of dependence ; he is
again obliged to hire out his services, to be harnessed to
the chariot of general industry. But suddenly a crisis
supervenes . . . the markets close, the manufacturer sus
pends production, or a new machine invented replaces
human hands; the workman, whom the division of labour
has transformed into a machine, finds no longer employ
ment for his hands, and thousands endure hunger by the
side of the accumulated products of their tod." Struck
with the dangers with which this state of things threatens
social order, and which are aggravated by the disturbance
of the civil power, dreading especially the remedies which
certain operators propose to apply to it, the governments,
under the impulse of the elevated classes, have sought a
preservative in returning to the religious doctrines of the
-past. They hoped that, preached by a privdeged clergy
who had the same interests as themselves to make autho
rity respected, propagated by writers of credit, they would
serve to retain the multitude in submission to order, cause
maxims of obedience to power to penetrate into public
morality, turn minds away from dangerous aspirations, and
thus supply aid to the suppressive force of governments.
We must, it was said, suppress in the poor man this un
quiet want of improving his position, proscribe an indis
creet science which exaggerates to his eyes the extent of
his privations ; we need a theology which ceaselessly re
minds him of the fall of humanity, the evils to which the

190 CHRISTIAN PROGRESa
posterity of Adam is justly and irremediably condemned,
and of which patience is the sole corrective. We have
seen that the falseness of this calculation soon became
manifest. The very privdeges with which the clergy were
invested, the interest they were supposed to possess in
diffusing maxims of obedience, rendered them suspected
by the people from the first. The organs of reHgion passed
for servants of the opulent classes ; the use which policy
wished to extract from them turned at once against politics
and reHgion.
Other Christians, less pre-occupied with their own
dangers, more sympathetic with the sufferings of their
brethren, have with generous eagerness sought the means
of giving them aid. In nearly ad Protestant churches,
ministries have been instituted to assist the populations in
their new wants; establishments have been founded, such
as "Infirmaries" and "Hospital Sundays," to supply them
with medical aid. One result is, that it is beginning to be
felt that the labouring classes by small periodical contribu
tions may, by acting in common, supply their own wants in
sickness, apart from the pauperizing tendency there is to
be feared in every eleemosynary movement. In Catholic
churches, however, "the Little Sisters of Charity" have
been added to the former " Sisters of Charity." In both
communions we find dispensaries, houses of recovery, •
hospitals for the infirm, for the blind, for the deaf and
dumb, for idiots, for lost children. Laws have regulated
and limited for chddren the hours of labour in mdls ¦ so
cieties of young laymen and laywomen have been organ
ized for visiting and succouring the poor in their homes.
In general, what distinguishes subventive charity in our
age, is that it relies less on the co-operation of the state ;
that, being more individual, it is on that account more in-

PROGRESS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE AND MORALS. 191
teUigent, more discriminating, more equitable, and not less
salutary to him by whom it is exercised than beneficent
for him who is its object. Ln critical moments, finady,
and particularly in great calamities, it opens its hand
wide and repairs innumerable losses. But purely sub-
ventive charity, however valuable to lessen evds which
demand immediate succour, too often leaves the root behind,
and sometimes even, from lack of discernment, only aug
ments the evd it is meant to remove. Russia, it is said,
superabounds in alms, yet nowhere is the lower class
more wretched; the citizens scarcely form a hundredth
part of the population. The ministration of alms, in a
word, whde solacing poverty, is ad but powerless against
pauperism ; it creates, or at least leaves behind, that plague
which, Hke an hereditary cancer, transmits from father to
son a permanent state of distress and nakedness, a too
prolific source of demoralization.
To labour to heal is the great task of our age ; and here
more than anywhere else is necessary, nay, indispensable,
that union called for by Chalmers of Christian charity and
science — the former a powerful motive which prompts
research for the remedy, the other a valuable torch which
aids its discovery. During the sequel of the events of
1848, the grave question of pauperism was agitated among
the French pubhcists, when one of the most distinguished
of them, turning over the leaves of an English book which
had faden into his hands, was deHghted to find in it the
solution so much desired and sought after. The author of
this book, Dr. Channing, whom we have already seen at
work against the plague of war and that of slavery, had
from the beginning of his ministry in Boston been deeply
interested in the condition of the labouring classes. But
far from seeing in their agitations the effect of an inordi-

192 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
nate ambition which it was necessary to restrict, to put
down at any cost, far from invoking against it pessimist
and enslaving doctrines, too like those which make the
Hindoo bend down under his misery, he saw there aspira
tions worthy of sympathy, the effect of that ascensional
movement to which God successively calls social classes,
and which the Christian, when he sees it free from violence
and injustice, ought to feel himself called upon to second.
The true policy, in agreement here as in ad things with
true religion, consists in facditating to all access to the
advantages which you desire to secure for yourself. It
is not then a movement of restraint, but a principle and
a means of elevation, which, according to him, you are
to seek in Christianity. By its influence you ought to
enlighten the poor as to his true interests, to fortify him
against the vices which engender and perpetuate wretch
edness, to fid him with confidence in that Great Being
who crowns every virtuous effort, call forth in him the
sentiment of the dignity of his origin and of his destiny.
Then, without ever substituting your efforts for his, you
must sustain him in his struggle against evd, smooth down
his obstacles, aid him to get over his difficulties, hold out
to him your hand when he totters, lift him up when he
has fallen. It is in this spirit that Channing, not satis
fied with lavishing on workpeople the admirable directions
given in his " Social Works," founded in Boston, in concert
with his friend Tuckerman, the " Ministry of the Poor "
which has for object to visit, instruct, encourage by well-
informed and pious Christians, without any distinction of
belief, the indigent destitute of other succour. The same
thought which animated Channing in America, animated
in Switzerland, Peslatozzi ; in Alsace, the pastor Ober-
lin ; in Germany, Madame Sieveking and Dr. Wichern

PROGRESS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE AND MORALS. 193
the founder of the Rauenhaus, near Hamburg. At an
early day the last had pointed out to his fellow-citizens the
ravages which irreligion caused in the poor class, the simul
taneous growth of misery and immorality. In 1845, he
established a seminary of instructors who, without any
other aid than food and clothing, formed themselves there
for the education of chddren, and whom he sent forth on
ad sides to direct schools and establishments of charity.
The risings of 1848 and 1849 soon came to expose the
double wound which he had indicated. After the insur
rection was overcome, it was on all sides asked whether it
was necessary periodically to have recourse to these violent
means ; whether these obstinate rebellions were not the
symptom of a deep dissatisfaction, which ought to be re
moved by charitable institutions in order not to have in
cessantly to fight against it. At the appeal of the philan
thropic Christian, people of high character put themselves
to work. In a great assembly convoked at Wittenberg
from all parts of Germany, " the Interior Mission " was
founded, a vast association which has for its object "to
remedy the temporal and spiritual miseries of the German
people by the propagation of the gospel and paternal
succours of Christian love." Among its numerous and
various labours of kindness, let us mention the forty insti
tutes which, in the space of a year, it opened, similar to
that of Hamburg, for deserted and vicious children, and
where more than ten thousand such have received, with
the cares of hospitality, the benefits of a Christian educa
tion. In France, in Switzerland, in England, the same cir
cumstances have occasioned the same reflections and called
forth similar efforts. It is felt that it is imperative to give
the labouring classes that education which, in the natural
order of things, ought to precede their emancipation, and

194 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
which must, indeed, precede any emancipation which de
serves to be caUed real. The elementary instruction which
they receive in schools is no longer sufficient. It is neces
sary to communicate to them with the utmost clearness
not only the knowledge required for the carrying on of
their occupations, but the principles of domestic and social
economy. It is necessary, by good methods of instruction,
to develop in the youth the habit of reflecting; to form in
him a sound judgment which may guide him in ad the
circumstances of his life ; a wed-cultivated spirit of initia
tive which shall permit him under all circumstances to be
come the artificer of his own weH-being; and, which is neces
sary before all else, to inculcate on him the virtues of his
condition, " signed, sealed and delivered" by the religion
of Jesus. It would take a long time to enumerate the
institutions which have come into existence in our own age
to supply these new necessities. Free schools for chddren
and adults, religious schools on Sunday and other days of
the week, industrial schools for poor children, philotechnic
associations for the workmen, professional schools for young
agriculturists, popular teaching of the principles of political
economy, societies for apprenticeship, for finding situa
tions, societies of labour, saving banks, retreats for old age,
provision for the future, co-operative societies of workmen,
who put into a common fund their savings for the forma
tion of a capital, societies of emigration, industrial esta
blishments, villages and towns founded under the auspices
of benevolent manufacturers and capitalists — an honourable
example given by masters who, of their own accord, asso
ciate in their profits the industrious and honest workman,
surround him with friendly patronage, aid him to make
his labour fruitful, and thus pave his way to the possession
of property, — such are the principal foundations suggested

PROGRESS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE AND MORALS. 195
by Christian good-wdl, by the formidable crises of our
century, and which, by ameliorating the condition of the
working classes, wdl attach them to the cause of order,
right and justice, more surely than the employment of
force. Such, during three quarters of this century, has been
the progress accomplished in the bosom of Christendom.
Shall we not view with admiration how, scarcely awakened
from a long slumber, and almost immediately solicited
by contrary currents, equady threatening for faith, Chris
tianity has made its way between them, and advanced
towards its object in the triple direction which we have just
traced out ? Doubtless the progress is incomplete ; before
ideal perfection it wid always be so ; nevertheless it has
been real. Our impatience has often accused it of slow
ness, and been irritated at seeing it interrupted or traversed ;
but perhaps it has only been the surer. It is in the way
of evolution, not revolution, that nations truly progress.
Minds need time for getting Hght ; interests are not settled
and harmonized ad at once. Protestantism itself, from
having been at the beginning compelled to arm itself with
precipitation and even some violence against the crushing
tyranny of Rome, has at the end of half a century seen itself
slacken its pace, and even in some places to cease its con
quests. In our days it is very far from having recovered
its expansive force, and it is but indirectly, by the inter
mediation of spiritual phdosophy and liberal CathoHcism,
that it makes breaches in the strongholds of Rome. To
be connected with the past without being confined in it,
to prepare the future without hastily anticipating it, — it is
thus that society advances on the road of reformation, and
the resistance which it meets with, when it does not extend
so far as to suppress liberty, is a moderating power provi-
o 2

196 CHRISTIAN PROGRESS.
dential and sometimes necessary. Moreover, it is only
justice to say in addition what fodows. That progress,
whose path we have attempted to lay down, has not been
and could not be the work of any single party. It required
the concurrence of a number of aptitudes, and consequently
of diverse agents, who, without always understanding each
other or according, have none the less co-operated. Even
those whom their excessive preddection for the past has
caused to receive the epithets of stationary and retro
grade, have often given to works of piety, morality and
beneficence, a concurrence active and generous which each
ought to be ready to recognize. In a word, in the multi
form and pregnant labour which Jesus bequeathed to his
disciples, all cannot play the same part, for ad have not re
ceived the same gifts ; but if all, entering into the " more
excellent way" which his apostle has traced out, employ
for the common good and in a spirit of charity the gifts
which they have severally received, Christian progress wdl
go forward without limits and at once in all directions.
Let us then not fear for the future of Christianity. The
human race, finding it always at hand, no longer to impede
but to forward it, to sustain it in its progressive advance,
wdl never more be tempted to desert from its banner.
Let us now turn our eyes on another side, and after
having studied the present situation of Christianity in
Christian nations, let us examine it in other nations, which
stdl form three-fourths of the population of the globe. Let
us look at the actual state of its conflict with their dif
ferent forms of worship, the favourable and unfavourable
circumstances which its proselytism has met with among
them, the checks which it has undergone, the victories
which it has gained; finady, to what point it is on the
way to extend its spiritual empire over the world.

SwnUt fart
CHRISTIANITY AMONG NON- CHRISTIANS.

Stand* farf.
CHEISTIANITY AMONG NON-CHEISTIANS.

CHAPTER I.
CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM.

Of all the religions foreign to Christianity that, the
followers of which, although much less numerous, sus
tain most relations with Christians, is the religion of
Israel. The Jewish population spread over the globe is
valued at about eight mdlions of souls, one moiety of
which at least inhabit divers countries of Europe. The
prejudices, the antipathies, the rival interests, which in
preceding ages animated the Christian populations against
the Jewish have not entirely disappeared in our age.
Scarcely had the Papacy been re-instaded in Rome than
the Jews were again banished into the Ghetto; very much
later, when, in 1863, a certain number of them attempted
to establish themselves at Velletri, the bishop of that city
immediately expeded them from his diocese. The same
contempt as heretofore, and the same denial of justice, were
lavished upon them in the city of the Pontiffs ; their
children, sometimes fraudulently carried off and baptized,

200 CHRISTIANITY AMONG NON-CHRISTIANS.
then confined in houses for catechumens, like the boy
Martara in 1858, were detained in spite of all protests.
Sometimes also, in different countries, even in France,
Holland and Germany, one has seen renewed against them,
on the part of an ignorant crowd, the absurd accusations
accredited in the Middle Ages, and the barbarous treat
ment to which they gave rise. The times of popular
effervescence, the year 1816 for example, in Germany,
have been particularly baneful to them. During the risings
in Bohemia in 1848, especially in the cities where trade
corporations still subsisted, several German Jews were
shamefudy massacred. In Roumania, when the new legis
lature wished to secure to the Jews religious Hberty, the
synagogue was pillaged and destroyed, and a crowd of
Israelites maltreated ; one of the ministers, to render him
self popular, revived an old law which excluded the Jews
from the right to have farms or keep - hotels, as wed as to
purchase property. They were also hunted in great numbers
from the provinces of Moldavia, where they resided; taking
refuge in Jassy, they underwent new vexations, not only
on the part of the people, who feared their competition
in commerce, but also on the part of the nobility, whose
creditors they were. Under Frederick William IV. the
idea of a " Christian State" caused them to be refused the
right to marry Christian women and to teach as professors
in schools and universities. In Russia, the policy of the
Emperor Nicholas was even more contrary to them. In
1844 particularly, the Polish Jews, accused of smuggling,
were violently transported into the middle of the country.
In Switzerland, several cantons, and those the most demo
cratic, such as Argovia and Bale-Campagne, long refused
them their civd and poHtical rights. However, you must
not judge from these particular instances of the general

CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM. 201
situation of the Jews in our century. The same circum
stances which, despite confessional prejudices, do not cease
to advance the reign of religious Hberty and equality to
the profit of CathoHcs and Protestants, equally promote
the cause of the emancipation of the Jews ; among these
circumstances we particularly note the increasing liberty of
commerce, the suppression of absurd laws on the amount of
interest to be paid for money, the progressive abolition of
trades' unions, the importance gained by able financiers of
that nation in their competition in great industrial enter-
prizes. Let us add to the honour of the Israelites, that in
this age, as wed and even better than in the preceding,
rarely has one seen an oppressed religious minority gain
success like them : this has been done by their activity
and energy, and by their making themselves necessary to
their oppressors, so that they have made for themselves a
place in societies where they had long been denied access.
Not only in commerce and finance, but in letters, the arts,
the sciences, industry, politics, and even in arms, numbers
of Jews have made their way to an elevated position.
They have moreover distinguished themselves by their
sobriety, their domestic virtues, their patriotism, of which
they have given proofs on several occasions — in Prussia, for
example, during the war of independence ; finally, by their
spirit of mutual good-will, which, exercising itself more
judiciously, labours to communicate instruction to their
indigent. All this could not fad in time to concdiate
pubhc opinion and the favour of enHghtened governments.
We have seen how, towards the end of the last century,
the United States, andfoHowing them the French Republic,
took in this respect a glorious initiative. However, Na
poleon I., during his sojourn in Germany and at his return
through Alsace, having received grave complaints on the

202 CHRISTIANITY AMONG NON-CHRISTIANS.
exorbitant claims of the Jews in regard to their debtors,
resolved, before confirming them in the new rights which
the Republic had bestowed on them, to demand guarantees
that they would shew themselves worthy of the favour.
He assembled deputies of the Jews from all parts of the
French Empire, and put to them a series of questions rela
tive to the manner in which they understood their obliga
tions as citizens. A commission was appointed, and the
assembly, at his request, having repUed in a satisfactory
manner to these questions, Napoleon, in order to imprint
on these replies a permanent authority, which made them
into positive rules, instituted the great Sanhedrim, which
sanctioned them and was charged to watch over their
observance. Some momentary reserves, made on the rights
of the Jews, with a view to humour the susceptibdities
of the Church, disappeared by little and little, and were
completely effaced after the Revolution of 1830. The
Israelite worship, like the worship of the Christians, was
from that moment supported by the State ; in return, the
government of Louis Philippe, in 1844, fixed the salaries
and the influence of the consistories presiding over that
religion, and subjected the rabbis, as well as the other
ecclesiastics, to correction before the Councd of State. The
emancipation of the Jews by Napoleon I. extended to
Hodand and Belgium, where it has since maintained itself;
to a part of Germany, where it underwent restrictions after
the restoration of 1815 and 1849 ; finally, to Italy, where
it was fully recognized only in 1850 by the statute of Victor
Emmanuel, and in 1870 for the Roman States. France,
wherever its influence has extended, has not ceased to pro
tect the Jews in the exercise of their rights, and to interest
the European powers in their cause. Those of Roumania
owed to it the abolition of the decree of expulsion hurled

CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM. 203
against them (1866). About the same time, in sanction
ing a treaty of commerce with Switzerland, it stipulated
that its Israelite subjects should freely settle there, and
thus forced several cantons, stdl recalcitrant, to adhere to
that act of justice in such a way that, in the revision of
the federal constitution, the right of free settlement, de
clared independent of the rehgious profession, should be
extended to the IsraeUtes ; it wdl be so more largely stid,
without doubt, in the approaching revision.
In England, their emancipation, undertaken in 1830, had
to encounter many more obstacles. The prejudices were
such, that in 1827 citizenship had been refused to a Chris
tian merchant because his father was a Jew. In 1830, the
IsraeHtes were admitted to those privdeges on taking an
oath on the Old Testament. Five years after, the Jew
Salomon was elected Sheriff of London and Middlesex;
but to maintain him in that double dignity it was neces
sary each year by a special act to strain the oath he had
to take. The difficulties increased when the question of
the admission of Jews to ParHament came to be enter
tained. Though voted by the House of Commons, it was
every year rejected by the House of Lords untd in 1858,
when the Commons having, without an oath, seated in one
of their Committees a celebrated Israelite financier recently
elected, the Upper House, which prefers granting of its
own free wdl the liberal measures which it is threatened
with seeing accompHshed in spite of it, faithful to its
tactics in 1829, authorized the House of Commons to
henceforth require of the Jews no other oath than that
which they took before the courts of law. Thus were
the from thirty to forty thousand Jews emancipated that
have their hpmes in England. Their emancipation had
not to wait much longer in Russia, where, begun by

204 CHRISTIANITY AMONG NON-CHRISTIANS.
Alexander I. and interrupted by Nicholas, it was all but
completed under Alexander II. In Wiirtemberg it was de
clared in 1861, and since the reign of William I. in the
rest of Germany. In 1864, the Jews were admitted at
Frankfort to the exercise of ad civd and political rights.
Mecklenburg and Limburg, which were most in the rear in
this matter, have, as well as the city of Cracovia, adopted
new measures of toleration (1868). We may indeed assert
that henceforth, in most Christian lands, the cause of the
Hberties of the Jews is ad but gained. The progressive
amelioration established in the civil relations of the Jews
and the Christians, has naturally brought about between
them an approximation which one hopes to see turn to
the advantage of Christianity. In the last century, John
Muller of Gotha, Hermann Franke, Cadenberg, Zinzendorf
and his Moravians, had already profited thereby to organize
missions to the Israelites.
In Germany, however, the zeal had grown somewhat
cold, when in England the London Missionary Society
placed, in 1809, the conversion of the Jews in the circle of
its labours. This example has been fodowed by the ma
jority of simdar societies on the two continents. Several
occupy themselves especiady with the task. In 1863,
they had in their service about two hundred missionaries,
of whom one hundred work in England alone. The number
of Jews baptized since the beginning of the century is
reckoned at about twenty thousand. The circulation of
the New Testament, the circulation of tracts, whether in
Hebrew or in the modern tongues, the establishment of
schools for young Israelites, and of a regular form of
worship for adults, the publication of a journal under the
name of " The Friend of Israel," chapels for the converted
Jews, seminaries conducted by those of the Jews who de-

CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM. 205
vote themselves to the conversion of their fellow-beHevers,
workshops for those whom their conversion might deprive
of their former means of support ; in Jerusalem, Christian
worship and a bishop established on Mount Zion by the
united efforts of the two Courts of Prussia and England ; —
such, besides the missions properly so called, are the prin
cipal means of Christian proselytism set in action for the
-conversion of the Jews. The success obtained hitherto
has not been proportioned to so many efforts. Among
those who are most zealously employed in it, several com
plain that they find the sod continually more unproductive.
One who had been a rabbi, but now converted and a mis
sionary in Bessarabia, wrote recently that from Odessa and
other places Israelites come to him to be instructed in the
gospel, but that during seven months out of one hundred
and fifty he had been able to baptize only eighteen. The
Society of Bale, in 1843, counted only one proselyte ; at
Jerusalem, in one year (1857-8), Gobat baptized only
fifteen. Many Jews of Palestine and Syria turn to their
own account the creduHty of the missionaries by trafficking
in the Bibles they receive, and by selling their apostasy
three or four times to Christians disposed to give a high
price for it. Sincere and durable conversions are obtained
rarely. The dogmas of the Trinity, the divine nature of
Jesus, scandalize their absolute Monotheism ; that of ex
piation by blood repels the enlightened Jews. " Retrench
those dogmas of your Christianity," they said to a mis
sionary; "we shad then be more ready to Hsten to you."
" What keeps us at a distance from your religion," said
another, " is the number of new doctrines which you have
introduced into it; but if Jesus himself were to re-appear
on earth, we should be among his most ardent fodowers."
As to the prospect which, on the authority of the prophet

206 , CHRISTIANITY AMONG NON-CHRISTIANS.
Hosea (xiv.), the missionaries display before their eyes
of returning to Jerusalem in a body under the guidance of
Jesus, it seems to touch most of them very little. Ubi
bene, ibi patria (Where you are wed off, there is your
country), is their motto. Since their lot has been improved
in the different countries where they reside, since they
find there, with easy circumstances, personal liberty and
dignity, they wish nothing more for this life ; and for the*
other, the kingdom of heaven seems to them preferable
to the reign in Jerusalem. They leave to the ignorant
Jews of Poland, id-treated and miserable in that country,
the ignis fatuus of Canaan. They lose from sight the
heritage of Jacob. " We enjoy ourselves where we are,"
they reply, " and we care little about going to Jerusalem
to live under the yoke of the Turks." A Jewish Synod
held in 1868 at Leipzig, where twenty-five rabbis were
present, formally rejected the notion of a restoration of
Israel and the liturgies which relate to it.
Thus authors whose judgment has weight in this matter
depend, in what relates to the conversion of the Jews,
much less on the missions properly so called than on the
internal movement which is taking place in the bosom of
Judaism itself; on the part, continually increasing, which
this people — thanks to the increase of toleration — take in
the intellectual and religious activities of the Christian
nations in the midst of which they reside, and on the pro
gressive change which insensibly ensues in the separating
beliefs. As much as in preceding ages the Jews, to resist the
oppression of which they were the objects, grouped them
selves closely around their distinctive doctrines and prac
tices, so much in our days, in the countries where ad
cornenare open to them, they conform to the institutions

CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM. 207
of those countries, enter into the current of Christian
civdization, and in the same degree detach themselves
from the traditions and narrow observances of their fore
fathers. It is, as has been wed said by an English writer,
the old history of Phoebus and Boreas : " The cloak which
they drew around themselves all the more closely the more
violent the gale of persecution, opens now and falls of
^itself under the gentle influence of sympathy and re
spect." That cloak is the Talmud. For ages considered as
divine by ad the Jews, and now stid by the orthodox
Jews, it has lost, if not its attraction, at least its authority,
over the best-informed and most intedigent amongst them.
This anti-Talmudist movement, which is carried back to
Maimonides, which in modern times was renewed by
Spinoza, and thrown into reHef in the last century in Ger
many by the labours of Mendelssohn, has in our day,
under the influence of causes which we have just indicated,
taken much more extent and consistency, principally in
the cities of Berlin, Hamburg and Frankfort. In the last
place, a numerous assembly of Jews, coming from different
parts of Germany, published (1843) a confession of faith
in three articles, of which the first recognized in the Mosaic
reHgion the possibdity of indefinite progress, the second
declared the authority of the Talmud null, the third ex
horted the Jews to consider as their only country the land
where they were born. A multitude of German Israelites
forthwith attached themselves to this programme, aban
doned their ancient ritual, several even the ceremonial law
of the Pentateuch, refused to present their children for
circumcision, and renounced the distinction of clean and
unclean meats. They bear the name of "The Newly
Reformed." Other rabbis assembled afterwards in Bruns
wick and Frankfort, while condemning those reforms, were

208 CHRISTIANITY AMONG NON-CHRISTIANS.
themselves drawn by the spirit of the age to concessions
which in the eyes of orthodox Jews passed for apostasy.
They renounced the Talmud, took the Old Testament for
their only guide, published it in the vulgar tongue, prayed
in the same tongue and in abridged forms, lessened the
authority of Rabbinism, and sought well-instructed rabbis
for their synagogues. Despite the resistance of the Tal-
mudists, specially numerous on the other side of the
Vistula, the reform movement has graduady extended ; a
Jewish university founded at Berlin tolerates or favours
in its theologians very bold doctrines. If the Jews of
Holland, Belgium and France, shew themselves more sub
missive to the received doctrine, that external orthodoxy
conies, it is said, a good deal from indifference ; while in
England a branch of IsraeHtes has been formed which
begins to meet with a certain toleration in their co-reli
gionists. When once, then, the two barriers are beaten
down which of old kept the Jews rigorously separated
from the Christians — I mean the intolerance of these, the
Talmudic fanaticism of those — there wid arise between the
two populations a community of ideas and interests which,
if it turns to the advantage of one of those forms of wor
ship, will naturally turn to that of the less imperfect. In
Wiirtemberg, from the promulgation of the law which pre
pared for the emancipation of the Israelites, they shared
more and more in the agricultural and industrial life of
the country, and borrowed from it its system of schools
and institutions of beneficence. Even in their form of
worship there were remarkable signs of approximation to
the Christian side. Among these were preaching in Ger
man, confirmation with forms borrowed from the Pro
testant Hturgy, a book of hymns taken in part from the
Lutheran service. In America, Jews are seen contributing

CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM. 209
generously to the erection of Christian chapels. Those of
Offenbach, near Frankfort, those of Konigsberg, substituted
Sunday for Saturday as the day of rest. Two great rabbis,
one of Austria, the other of Frankfort, did the same.
Recently new concessions are made (1857) to the modern
spirit. Besides the substitution of Sunday for Saturday,
the vulgar tongue for Hebrew in worship, the suppression
of superannuated rites, they admit as true worship only
" that which penetrates and vivifies the heart ; " they deny
ad the baneful consequences attributed to the sin of the
first man, and declare man capable of advancing in moral
perfection by the due employment of his faculties. " Now,"
says an IsraeHte member of the French Institute, " now
that all social careers are open to us, we become attached
to an order of things in which we hope to see our famdies
prosper. We serve with you, we study with you; our
sons in the codeges contract with yours friendships which
last for Hfe. On quitting their home, where they were
hound to the old traditions, without ceasing to respect
them, they cease to observe them; drawn on by the current
of your civdization, they renounce our old formalism. The
sole obstacle to a complete approximation of ideas is the
Christian mythology ; it is particularly the dogmas of the
Incarnation and the Trinity. Without being, any more
than Mendelssohn, disposed to quit our own community to
embrace Christianity, like him we feel for Jesus the most
respectful sympathy; we venerate in Paul the courageous
apostle that broke the narrow mould in which the Israelite
theism was imprisoned, and proclaimed the fine thought of
the human brotherhood. In the Christian Church we re
cognize the powerful means of which Providence has made
use for spreading in the world the elements of general
p

210 CHRISTIANITY AMONG NON-CHRISTIANS.
civdization which the reHgion of our legislation contained
in germ."
In view of such declarations, one would be dl disposed
if one for a moment required from the children of Israel
more complete testimonies of religious fraternity. But it
must be added, that among all the forms of Christianity,
progressive Christianity is in a condition to obtain utter
ances of the kind. It is, then, in the province of progress
that the followers of the two forms of worship meet in
future and may some day unite. Accordingly, at the Peace
congress of 1869, you saw the representative of liberal
Catholicism unite with the representatives of Hberal Pro
testantism and liberal Judaism, to proclaim those three
forms as the only ones that have a future in the civilized
world.

CHAPTER II.
CHRISTIANITY AND MOHAMEDANISM.

The relations of Christianity with the reHgion of Mo-
hamed are quite different from those which it sustains with
Judaism. Whde the Israelite people is ad but entirely
subject to Christian governments, milHons of Christians,
orthodox or schismatic Greeks, are subject to the Moslem
domination, whose yoke, although made somewhat lighter
in modern days, does none the less offer great obstacles to
the progress and influence of Christianity, and at certain
times and in certain places threaten even its existence.
The Greek orthodox Church, with its four patriarchates,
which comprise in European Turkey eleven millions of
souls, with four in Asiatic Turkey, preserves under the
sway of the Sultans its position as an established Church,
but is oppressed, or at least precariously tolerated. The
Patriarch of Constantinople, considered as a high dignitary,
exercises in that quality civd jurisdiction over the members
of his flock ; but he is not recognized by the Sultan except
after having paid an exorbitant sum, which he raises on
the bishops his subordinates, the weight of which fads ulti
mately on the people. Moreover, besides the imposts to
which every Turkish subject is Hable, the Christians pay
p2

212 CHRISTIANITY AMONG NON-CHRISTIANS.
a number of extraordinary taxes, all but crushing in their
totality, and are besides exposed to the arbitrary tyranny
of the Pashas. Nowhere is the despotism more severely
felt than in Africa, Hellas, the Morea and Albania. The
massacre of the Patriarch of Constantinople on Passover day
before the gates of his palace, caded forth the Greek in
surrection in 1821; the people of the Morea and the
islands arose and fought bravely for nine entire years,
until the European powers, under the pressure of liberal
opinion, went to the aid of the Greeks, and combined
(1829) to recognize their independence and to erect Greece
into a Christian kingdom, though with frontiers which a
selfish policy made as narrow as possible.
On different occasions these same powers, Russia in par
ticular — whose policy, as wed as its religion, renders it the
natural protector of Oriental Christians — profited by the
decay of the Turkish Government to exact from it more
humane treatment. In 1839, the Sultan had to sign the
Edict of Gulhane^ which declared the Christians and the
Moslems equal before the law. This Edict was so badly
executed, that the Greeks, driven to extremes, revolted
several times, and that Russia, intervening afresh, claimed
a protectorate which seemed to threaten the European equi
librium and gave occasion to the war of the Crimea. En
gland and France, before declaring in favour of the Sultan,
demanded of him engagements of toleration (1854), which
at the end of the war he had to renew by his " Hatti-
Humaioun" (1859). This Edict, not less idusory than
that of Gulhane', only disclosed the Moslem fanaticism,
which manifested itself in different provinces, notably at
Djeddah, the port of Mecca, by acts of savage violence, and
turned against the government itself, which attempted to
restrain it. On new complaints made by Russia, the

CHRISTIANITY AND MOHAMEDANISM. 213
Sultan, threatened with a Congress, which might have
ended in the dismemberment of his states, undertook to
make a serious inquiry against the authors of the massacres.
After the repression of the revolt of the island of Crete
(1867), new representations of the Powers, new promises,
which the Sultans perhaps would desire to keep, if the
Muftis left them the power. It is admirable that such a
state of oppression which has existed for four centuries has
so rarely shaken the fidelity of the Greek Christians. If
we except the nobility of Bosnia, where there is a con
siderable number of apostates, and Bulgaria, where, rather
than again belong to the Church of Constantinople, of
which it was independent till the year 1764, some vidages
have embraced Islamism, the great mass of the Christians
of the Greek rite have resisted all temptation to abjure
their faith. But on their side, in their condition of servi
tude, they could not hope, any more than the Catholic and
Protestant missionaries spread over the Turkish empire, to
effect in the Moslem population even a few conversions.
The severity of the Turkish Government strikes specially
those of its subjects that are gudty of apostasy. According
to the Koran, the Moslem renegade is punishable . with
death, and this penalty has occasionady been inflicted in
our century with horrible accessories, which occasioned the
intervention of the Christian Powers, and caused to be
inserted in the decree of 1856 a clause guaranteeing liberty
for Turkish subjects that embraced Christianity, but with
the obligation, in the case of those who did so, to quit
Stamboul, and with the missionaries to retire into the Frank
quarter, or to disperse in the provinces. The old penalty
has then been abolished. But scarcely was it necessary to
prevent all thought of apostasy in a nation animated with
sovereign contempt for whatever is foreign, assured that it

214 CHRISTIANITY AMONG NON-CHRISTIANS.
alone professes the pure Monotheism, nursed in the pre
judice by an almost complete absence of intellectual culture,
and knowing scarcely any other literature than the text
and the numberless commentaries of the Koran. More
than seventy thousand pdgrims go every year to worship
at Mecca, where thousands of animals are immolated in
commemoration of Abraham's sacrifice. In India, the
Moslems are, of all the inhabitants, the most inaccessible
to Christian preaching. There, with passionate fanaticism,
they prepare (1857) revolt against the English rule. The
missionaries in particular have very much to suffer from
their fury. The only mission somewhat flourishing among
them — somewhat flourishing because its conditions are
much more favourable — is that which the Greek clergy
carries on among the Moslems which people some provinces
of the Russian empire, whose centre is Tiflis. A thousand
disciples of Mohamed received baptism in 1858. Every
where else, as in Syria and Palestine, even in Jerusalem,
where the bishopric founded by England and Prussia
directed the Christian propagandism, the influence of the
Christian missionaries on the Moslems is almost null ; aU
that they can do is to attract into their schools a certain
number who come there to get a little profane instruction,
to the exclusion of ad religious teaching whatever. Here
also there is advantage to be hoped for from the internal
movement which is taking place in Islamism by the sects
formed at different times. Independently of the anti-
traditional sect of the Shyites, and of the mystic sect of
Sophis, all but contemporaneous with Mohamed, and
which are stdl numerous in Persia, independently of the
rationalist sect of Wahabites which, at the beginning of
this century, succeeded in getting possession of Mecca,
and which, though vanquished and dispersed by Mohamed-

CHRISTIANITY AND MOHAMEDANISM. 215
AH, has left shoots in Arabia, there have arisen at Chiraz,
in modern times, two new sects stdl more independent on
ancient Islamism, that of the Nossayris, and speciady that
of the Bahys, who, relying on mystic principles, reject the
superstitious precepts of legal purity, polygamy, the seclu
sion of women, attempt to reform education, and finally
distinguish themselves by their universal sociabdity. The
founder of this last sect (1843-52), the Bab, attacked and
overcome by the Shah of Persia, over whom he at first gained
some advantages, suffered a cruel death with martyr cou
rage; but he left after him devoted disciples, who trans
ferred the seat of the sect to Bagdad, and whose principles,
like their master's, approach Christianity. Another mystic
association of the same kind, and which reminds you, it is
said, of that of the Quakers, was founded at Broussa, in
Asiatic Turkey ; its head has been recently incarcerated
in Constantinople.
These interior reforms attempted in Islamism, and evi
dently born of communication with the Europeans, seem
to announce what wdl be the effects of the yet nearer
approximation which must come from the rapid progress
of the ascendancy and domination in the East of Christian
Powers. In our age, Russia, continuing its victorious
march, has taken from the Turks the provinces between
the Dnieper and the Danube (1809-12); then, as a result
of the wars against Persia (1829), a part of Turkish
Armenia. The revolts of the Viceroy of Egypt obliged
the Sultan to put himself at the mercy of the Czars, and
to open the Bosphorus to them, which, closed for a moment
after the taking of Sebastopol, was re-opened by the treaty
of London (1871). Recently his armies advanced into
Turkestan, captured Khiva, received the submission of the
Moslem peoples who border on it, and approached nearer

216 CHRISTIANITY AMONG NON-CHRISTIANS.
and nearer to India, where England on its part pursues its
gigantic advances, subjecting, one after the other, the pro
vinces of the dismembered empire of the Mongols ; so that
on the platform of Upper Asia, Islamism is surrounded by
the ascendancy of these two great Christian powers. At
the same time France, since 1830 mistress of Algeria, and
since 1856 of Kabylia, extended its conquests over nearly
all the northern littoral of Africa. Spain took possession
of a part of Morocco. Finally, since the Hberation of the
Morea, other provinces prepare to throw off the Turkish
yoke. The union of the Danubian provinces, as a sequel
of the war of the Crimea, has already procured for them a
demi-independence. Montenegro, Albania, Servia, threaten
the Porte with an approaching insurrection ; Crete in re
volt was reduced only by the greatest efforts. Finady, it
may be said that the Ottoman empire has only a name to
be reckoned among the states of Europe. Probably it
would have already ceased to exist if the important posi
tion of Constantinople, and the fear of the encroachments
of Russia, had not prevented the Christian powers from
extending their sway in that direction In vain now for
sixty years have the Sultans made great efforts to restore
the forces of their empire ; in vain have they removed the
obstacle opposed to them by the Janissaries (1826); opened
schools, authorized journals, prepared the re-organization
of justice ; in vain one of them, returning home from his
travels, announced the most imposing projects ; they have
at once to struggle against the apathy of their populations,
the fanaticism of their Imauns, the incapacity of their
ministers, and, before ad, the exhaustion of their finances;
and when, to repair that evil, they shall, as they are
believed to intend, lay their hands on the property of the
mosques, it wdl be a formidable attack on Islamism, which

CHRISTIANITY AND MOHAMEDANISM. 217
is supported by its immense possessions. Stdl more, in
countries already conquered by the European powers, the
perpetual contact of Christian civdization produces in
Moslem ideas and usages a gradual alteration which in
sensibly saps the authority of the Koran, and prepares the
ground for the preponderance of Christianity.
Meanwhile the powers of Europe ought not, for miser
able struggles to gain influence and adjust equdibriums, to
continue to shackle the aspiration of Christian nations stdl
subject to the Turkish yoke, and — as was seen at the time
of the emancipation of Greece, the revolt of the Pasha of
Egypt, the troubles of Syria and the island of Crete — to
prevent the Greek Christians from coming to an under
standing, and to confederate in order to conquer their
independence. Still less should those same rivalries hinder
them in future from concerting to stop the course of vio
lence of which the Christian populations of the East have
so often been the victims ; the Nestorians in Kurdistan,
the Armenians in Mount Taurus (1842), the Maronites
in the Lebanon (1862), where a hundred and fifty villages,
with the secret connivance of the Turkish troops, were set
on fire by the Druses (1860). To prevent the renewal of
such acts of barbarity, it would be wed to keep the Sultan
under the control of fear. On these conditions we may
hope to see Christianity profit by the decay of the Moslem
states, so as to put its foot firmly on their territory ; whde
on its side Islamism, which stid bears sway in the Pagan
countries of Africa, Australia and part of the Indies, may,
in propagating Monotheism, become there, as it specially
becomes in the interior of Africa, the forerunner of civdi
zation.

CHAPTER III.
CHRISTIANITY AND POLYTHEISM.

The Pagan tribes, which to-day form more than a moiety
of the population of the globe, occupy the most diverse
degrees in the social scale : some, Hke the Papous of
Mdanesia, are still in the lowest and grossest state of
savageness ; others, like the Hindoos, the Chinese, the
Japanese, possess a certain degree of civdization ; among
these, finally, all the imaginable degrees of barbarism or
semi-barbarism. Although the method followed and the
results obtained in their evangelization differ in the same
proportion, we evidently cannot give an account of ad
those differences. Stdl less can we attempt to fodow,
country after country, the missionary work undertaken
in our days on nearly all points of the idolatrous world.
Besides the time which it would require, the results still
present here and there too much uncertainty. After having,
in many a country, given bridiant expectations, they ad of
a sudden come to a stop, or are even annulled by acci
dental circumstances. We must then here be satisfied
with general views on the new flight which this work has
taken in our century, the diverse processes which have
been employed, the success already obtained, and the pros
pects which it offers in the future.

CHRISTIANITY AND POLYTHEISM. 219
The Roman Church, which, untd the last century, had
almost alone conducted the work of missions among the
Pagans, found itself suddenly paralyzed in its enterprize by
the union of different causes. The diminution of its re
sources, the discredit into which the rehgious orders had
fallen, the decay of the principal CathoHc powers, the wars
in which they had lost most of their colonies ; finally, the
embarrassment of the Papacy, and the suppression of their
two great missionary seminaries, — had placed a thousand
obstacles in the way of its propagating efforts. In our days
more favourable circumstances have presented themselves
for it. The peace of 1815 opened the ocean to it ; lacking
the ships of Spain and Portugal, it has those of France at
its disposal ; its two seminaries were restored, and owing
to the encouragements lavished by Pius VII., Gregory
XVI. and his successors, found donors and pupils. The
House of Foreign Missions, which in 1822 had only twenty
students, counted a hundred twenty years after. The
"Annals of the Propagation of the Faith," circulated to
the extent of nearly two hundred thousand copies, have
popularized the work of the Roman missionaries. New
rehgious orders, the Passionists, the Redemptorists, the
Oblates of Marseides and others, associated themselves
with their predecessors. Every year some of their members
are sent either to reinforce the old stations at Ceylon, in
China, in Japan, in Indo-China, in the Indian Archipelago,
of old colonized by the Portuguese and the Spaniards, or
to found new missions in the Pacific Ocean, under the
protectorate of France. The annual resources of the
Catholic propagandism amount to-day to more than two
hundred thousand pounds. The Russian Church itself
has been less indisposed to mission work than is some
times supposed ; but with it that work is done less by

220 CHRISTIANITY AMONG NON-CHRISTIANS.
independent missionaries, belonging to different orders or
religious parties, than by the national priests, under the
direction of the bishops. We have seen with what jealous
care the Emperor Nicholas drove from his territory the
Moravian missionaries and others that had established
stations there. Although his successor relaxed this system
of exclusion, the Russian bishops remain specially charged
with the evangelization of the Pagans spread over their
vast dioceses. In the north and the south of the country
their zeal has been exercised in five principal stations, and
with a certain success among the Kalmucks of Astrachan
and the Samoyedes of Archangel, given up previously to
the grossest Shamanism. The movement of the Protestant
missions is far more powerful. As early as the end of the
last century, the immense progress of the dominion of the
English in India, their voyages and discoveries in Oceania,
the search for and the acquisition of new colonies to replace
those of North America, the duty of moralizing the negroes
which they enfranchised, — ad this claimed a new degree of
activity on the part of their missionaries. The peace with
North America concluded in 1814, the European peace of
1815, in estabHshing new bonds between the Protestant
states, gave them an opportunity for combining for the
missionary enterprize, set minds free from exclusively
political pre-occupations, left capital disposable for phdan-
thropic and religious undertakings, opened the way in
missionary employment for a crowd of young people pre
viously carried off by war, and shewed a new career to
those whose character inclined in favour of a religious and
benevolent vocation. From the year 1815, new missionary
societies, with which, as well as with the old ones, auxdiary
associations were connected, were founded in Germany,
Switzerland and France. In 1869, there were forty-two

CHRISTIANITY AND POLYTHEISM. 221
mother societies, having under their direction eighteen
hundred missionaries, in ad nearly ten thousand agents,
and annually disposing of a total revenue of more than a
midion sterling : to such an extent does the spirit of free
association among the Protestants shew itself in this re
gard, as in so many others, more powerful and more prolific
than the official organism of the Greek or Roman unity.
A single glance thrown on the Atlas of Missions suffices
to establish this superiority. The Russian stations, as we
have seen, are opened exclusively on the surface or in the
vicinity of the territory of the empire ; the Catholic stations
exist nearly all on the boundaries ; while those of the Pro
testants, much more numerous, penetrate into the heart of
countries yet Pagan.
The most active societies in this work are naturally
those of maritime nations ; among them, the most manu
facturing and commercial, and so the most interested in
opening new outlets for their goods, in forming relations
with young populations, having numerous wants to satisfy.
For them, as Livingstone made no scruple to declare, it is
a national work as well as a religious one. England occu
pies the first position therein ; its higher classes, as well as
its middle classes, shew themselves equally devoted to the
duty. " What," says M. Esquiros, " it cannot conquer by
arms, it seeks to assimilate by behefs ; by its missionaries
it succeeds in reigning over many peoples whom it has
not subdued." Accordingly it alone furnishes nearly two-
thirds of the missionary agents, as well as of the sums of
money, consecrated to the purpose. It is greatly aided by
its colonizing spirit, and by the tendency to emigration
which ensues in it from a population too large for the
resources of the country. Among those emigrants, the
number of whom, since 1815 only, has reached in the

222 CHRISTIANITY AMONG NON-CHRISTIANS.
New World the figure of more than six millions of souls,
many, instead of seeking by chance the means of existence,
put their diverse aptitudes and talents at the service of
the missionary societies. After England came the United
States of America, whose population is not less industrial
and enterprizing. Then came the Dutch and the Danes,
who have never attempted to conceal the fact that their
labours for the evangelization of distant countries had in
great part for its object the extension of their commerce
and the strengthening of their colonies. The Protestant
sects, less restrained in their movements than the national
churches, more accustomed to rely on their own resources,
exercising over their members a more direct authority —
finally, more active in religious revival, are so as well in
foreign missions : in this respect they form the correlative
of the monastic orders. Such, from their origin, have been
the Methodists, especially the Wesleyans ; in the same
line work the Baptists, the Moravians, &c. Nevertheless,
the national churches are not disposed to leave them the
monopoly of these efforts; and whde, in the last century, all
the friends of missions considered them as common ground
on which they could work together, in this century the
Anglicans and the ultra-Lutherans have wished to have
their societies directed exclusively by themselves.
You also see in the different Protestant communions the
distinction observable at all times between the zeal which
labours for the propagation of Christianity and that which
labours for its purification. As, since the Reformation of
the sixteenth century, the Catholic Church long presided
alone over the conversion of the Pagans, and while the re
ligious orders which shewed themselves most devoted to the
work were also the most opposed to internal reforms ; so
in the Protestant communions, it is among the stationary

CHRISTIANITY AND POLYTHEISM. 223
parties in matters of doctrine that the work of missions
found its most active workers and its most effectual pro
moters. The progressive Christians, on the contrary, far
from being indifferent to the conquests made by the
Christian faith among the Pagans, feel that little good
would ensue from success at a distance, if in Christian
lands themselves, for want of keeping abreast with civdiza
tion, it parted with its simplicity and truthfulness. On
this subject Dr. Wichern remarked, that foreign missions
have often been prejudicial to home missions ; he recalled
the fact that in the days of Constantino and Charlemagne
the progress of the Church among the Pagans in a measure
paganized the Church, and regarded it as Luther's finest
title to glory that he restored to honour the home mission
in Germany. Like him, the progressive Christians con
sider that their post is in the bosom of Christianity ; that
their task, like that of the Reformers, is to strengthen re
hgion by its gradual purification; to bring back souls
which an id-satisfied want of Hght and spirituaHty often
render the prey of increduHty. The Protestant missions
among the Pagans, prosecuted at present in the four parts
of the world, although in the way of advance and power-
fudy supported in several directions, have nevertheless
encountered, and stdl encounter, obstacles of various kinds.
Some governments fear to see themselves compromised
with the populations by the imprudent fanaticism of mis
sionary sects, and prefer the more calm and regular action
of the national clergy. Such, in particular, is the case of
Hodand. The jealous distrust of commercial companies,
that of planters and European colonists, uneasy for their
monopoly or their domination, have also long thrown im
pediments in the way of the missionaries. The EngHsh
Company of the East Indies went so far as to favour, to their

224 CHRISTIANITY AMONG NON-CHRISTIANS.
disadvantage, the fanaticism of the Brahmans, and to give
countenance to the idolatrous festivals and ceremonies. It
is only in 1813 that the English government, listening to
the complaints put forth against them, restricted their
privdeges, which were finady abolished after the insurrec
tion of 1857. For a long time in the beginning of this
century, and down to the suppression of slavery, the
American planters persecuted those who laboured for the
conversion of the blacks. In the South of Africa, the
French and English missionaries have much to suffer
from the Boers, who on many an occasion have destroyed
their most flourishing stations. The trafficking Europeans,
on their side, if they do not always try to turn aside the
missionaries from their road, do injury to their work by
seducing the savages by intoxicating beverages, or by
corrupting them with their Hbertinism. It is painful to
acknowledge that it is a war undertaken by England to
secure the trade in opium imported from its Indian colo
nies which opened China to the Protestant missionaries ;
that quite recently a bid intended to prohibit that traffic
was rejected by the House of Commons ; and that more
over, as Livingstone complained, pretended evangelists
open the field to speculators, who, guided solely by the love
of gain, satisfy it by corrupting the morals of the natives.
The missionaries themselves have not always been at
the height of their vocation. In the midst of a great
number of them, truly devoted men, often courageous even
to heroism, some are accused of discharging their duty as
a trade, in a kind of mechanical manner, with a lan»ua°e
of convention, in stereotyped phrases, sermons formed in
the same mould, rarely vivified by sentiments of the heart;
others are charged with almost only thinking how to Hve
at ease on the pay, sometimes very good, which they re-

CHRISTIANITY AND POLYTHEISM. 225
ceive, and, under the pretext of honourably representing
the nation by which they are sent, with indulging in
luxury anything but apostolic ; others, finady, in India
and elsewhere, have merited more grave reproaches for
their rigour, their fanaticism, their mutual rivalries ; some
even for their moral unworthiness.
But the greatest obstacles to the success of the mis
sionaries proceed from the difficulty of their work, and
speciady the difficulty they experience in communicating
with the people that they wish to evangelize. Solely
among the aboriginal tribes of North America there were
four or five hundred dfalects totally different, and now
that most of them have disappeared with the tribes that
spoke them, you find stdl two hundred clans having each
its own tongue. If the missionaries succeed in making
themselves acquainted with these idioms, so strange to
Europeans, they have to do,^now with hordes stid sunk in
the lowest animalism, ad but destitute of the religious
sense, such as the negroes of Central Africa ; now with
tribes who have but the most rudimental and confused
notions on the subject — for instance, the Patagonians and
the Papous, who know no God but evd spirits, or a great
spirit, which is evil, and which they lodge in some re
markable animal; or, finally, they are people whom slight
or erroneous instruction has perverted, so as to render
them more inaccessible than savages to pure evangeH-
cal instruction. These different races are, moreover, en
slaved, some to priests or sorcerers, who, seeing in the
missionaries trade rivals, feel interested in keeping them at
a distance at any cost ; others, to governments more or
less regular, to aristocracies, to chiefs full of distrust of ad
foreign influence. In China and Japan, such has been the
most frequent cause of the expulsion of the missionaries.
Q

226 CHRISTIANITY AMONG NON-CHRISTIANS.
Finally, in certain lands the nomad morals of the natives
preclude all instruction, ad regular and continuous wor
ship ; otherwheres, as in the Fidji Isles, vices of a revolting
and inveterate barbarism, perpetual wars between tribes,
infanticide, murder of the aged, even anthropophagy, stand
in the way of ad true religious instruction.
You cannot get over ad these impediments by one effort ;
and sometimes trials are made ' that are anything but wise
and intelligent. While the Catholics, often satisfying
themselves with building a church, with baptizing tribes
in a mass, with teaching certain external practices, and
hold their hearers to be converted when they can make
the sign of the cross ; the Protestants sometimes imagine
that they have gained everything when they have taught
their disciples to repeat certain formularies, or have dis
tributed among them Bibles and Testaments which they
never read, or if they read would not understand. In
structed by experience, the missionaries have by degrees
entered on better ways. They have discovered that the
surest guarantee of success is to put themselves into direct
and continued relations with those whom they wish to
convert, at first by becoming acquainted with their lan
guage, and then by a permanent establishment among them.
Since the time of Egede, the apostle of Greenland, such is
the method which the Moravians have adopted, and they
were the first to adopt it. Persuaded that the internal
transformation aimed at by Christian instruction ought
to be supported by a correspondent transformation in the
habits of active life, and that if you neither can nor wdl
impose it by force, you must cad it forth by example,
they plant themselves in the midst of the Pagans, and by
smad colonies form agricultural establishments, in which
they subsist by the labour of their hands, and which gradu-

CHRISTIANITY AND POLYTHEISM. 227
ady become points of attraction for the natives. Their
success, if not always prompt, is nearly always sure, be
cause it is purchased by indefatigable perseverance. The
most dlustrious missionaries — Marsden, Livingstone— cease
not to insist on the advantage of material progress as a
means of spiritual success. The introduction of agriculture
among the natives of New Zealand, by supplying sub
sistence on their own sod, is beginning to wean them from
their primitive cannibalism. To these means of success
the Protestant societies of our day add one still more effi
cacious. It is instruction, which, acting early and con
tinuously on young Pagans, unfolds in them, instead of the
false and barbarous traditions in which they would have
been nurtured, sound moral and rehgious ideas, which
insensibly penetrate into families, and thence into the
nation. To-day then, in all their stations, the Protestant
missionaries found schools, keep their scholars in them as
long as they can before admitting them to baptism, then
send the most advanced into seminaries, where the latter
are themselves prepared to become heralds of the gospel.
Everywhere there has been reason for commending this
apostolate exercised by natives, who are in a much better
state than strangers to act on the hearts and lives of then1
fedow-countrymen. On their side, the wives of mission
aries (and this is an inappreciable aid -peculiar to Protest
antism) estabHsh schools for girls, whom they form to
virtues and labours fitted for their sex. The Scottish
mission in India displays a particular zeal for this kind of
missionary effort, and has already obtained by this means,
at Tinevelly, among other places, remarkable results. The
total number of schools founded by Protestant missionaries
contain about two hundred and fifty thousand scholars.
Those of Bale alone reckon more than three thousand.
Q2

228 CHRISTIANITY AMONG NON-CHRISTIANS.
Doubtless, the instruction given even by European in
structors in these schools is often very imperfect. Com
plaint is made that only a small number of such as have
received a university education — one hundred and twenty-
five, it is said, since the commencement of the century —
enrol themselves as missionaries. But it must be ad
mitted that a more developed knowledge would often be
superfluous with pupils whose intedectual culture is so
little advanced. The essential is the presence of tact and
skid in teaching, and that the ignorance of proselytes is
not made use of to the prejudice of good sense and moral
ity. Had not the churches of Europe, now the most
enlightened, monks often destitute of instruction for their
founders in the Middle Ages? The evangelization of a
people is nofra work to be accomplished in a day. After
those first missionaries, others wid come to deepen the
furrow which they have cut, to perfect the work which
they did but sketch. We may then be excused if we do
not look too closely at the extent of their knowledge, or
require from them, as Leibnitz would have wished, a
science to be found only in collegians. Practical know
ledge is more necessary. Simple artizans have been known
to succeed better than lettered missionaries. Accordingly,
the societies do not disdain teachers who, to a certain ac
quaintance with the* rudiments of general knowledge and
experience in the art of teaching, unite the essential moral
qualities. Those qualities are devotedness to duty, perse
verance, patience, kindness, a veritable interest, an interest
living and active, in the temporal and spiritual good of
those whom they desire to convert. In these times, as in
the earhest days of Christianity, the surest means to get
people to embrace Christianity is to get them to love it
and never can teachers succeed so wed as by and through

CHRISTIANITY AND POLYTHEISM. 229
the good-will and tenderness which it inspires. The
proper spirit for missionary teaching, as indeed for all
teaching, is the spirit of Jesus.
Among savage or barbarous tribes it is the chiefs who,
when they have surmounted their first distrust, shew them
selves most accessible to Christian *preaching ; whether it
is that their intedigence aids them to comprehend its ex
cellence, or that they find in European civilization a new
title of distinction in the eyes of their subjects, or, finally,
by their relations with the missionaries they hope to
secure self-support from some civilized nation. Among
the Bassoutos in the Punjaub, in several islands of the
South Sea, at Java, in AustraHa and elsewhere, the last
motive seems to have had most influence.
It happens frequently, as in the Middle Ages, that the
conversion of the chief entails that of his clan. Thus at
Madagascar, in 1869, the conversion of the Queen suddenly
quadrupled the number of her Christian subjects. Often
also the conversion of one tribe brings as a consequence
that of neighbouring tribes, especiady if in any war the
converted chief is victorious. In general, as was seen in
the Middle Ages the presumed power of the Christian's
God to preserve from some danger or plague against which
the Pagan divinities had proved powerless, is a decisive
circumstance ; in cases of doubt or division of opinion, the
decision comes from what is called chance ; sometimes
recourse is had to " the judgment of God," and then the
balance incHnes to the side of the Christians, who, superior
in resources as in civilization, are accounted by the natives
favourites of the Deity. It is not, it is true, rare that
after the conversion of a part of a people, idolatry for a
moment resumes the upper hand, and that the safety of
the Christian proselytes is compromised thereby. Then

230 CHRISTIANITY AMONG NON-CHRISTIANS.
the aid of a Christian power becomes necessary, now
that support may safely be reckoned upon, if however
slightly its interests are involved therein : for instance,
if it finds in it means of strengthening its preceding
conquests, of preparing the way for new conquests, of
extending its commerce, of procuring its navigators places
for provisioning. Ostertag plainly acknowledges that in
the protection granted to missions by Protestant govern
ments, policy played a considerable part; that for the
Dutch, for example, the interest was the preservation of
the trade of Sumatra, Molucca, Ceylon, which the influence
of the Spanish or Portuguese missionaries threatened to
alienate. The kings of Denmark were the first to seek
Moravian missionaries for the conversion of their Malabar
subjects, and recently the Protestant mission had no suc
cess in New Zealand till since the Britannic government
has taken possession of the country. The same govern
ment protects by its treaties, consuls, police, and, when
necessary, the cannon of its fleet, the missionaries of India,
who in South America at their own expense instruct and
baptize the King of the Mosquitoes, who, since 1839, sup
ports the stations at the Cape against the attacks of the
Boers, who, at the risk of a war with France, required
from that country an indemnity for Pritchard, expelled
from Tahiti by the intrigues of Rome (1844), and to
secure the deliverance of some missionaries, prisoners in
¦Abyssinia, decreed for that country an expedition difficult
and expensive (1867). Sometimes war serves to open
Pagan countries to missionaries, who in their turn keep
them open for European commerce ; and if they are outraged
without receiving sufficient satisfaction, those outrages
serve as a ground for the occupation or the conquest of
the country, as took place in China and Cochin-China

CHRISTIANITY AND POLYTHEISM. 231
(1840-47). Sometimes, again, as in Afghanistan in 1839,
as at Madagascar since 1820, as in Southern Africa since
the labours of Livingstone, the mission, on the contrary,
prepares the way for the conquest.
Now what down to the present are the real results of the
Protestant missions ? It is very difficult to make even an
approximative estimate. The missionaries, however sincere
the reports of a great number of them, are naturally inclined
to exaggerate the results of their labour, and to shew the most
favourable side to the societies by which they are supported.
It is, however, notorious that their hopes are too often hasty
and their foresight deceptive : witness those founded for
Madagascar, under the influence of this queen or that for
China, at the time of the revolt of the Taipings, who, after
being represented to the English as Christians, or " almost
Christians,'' turned out to be brigands as formidable to
the Christians as the Chinese themselves : witness also
those five hundred thousand natives of India whom the
messenger of the Pagan missions declared converted, the
same year when the missionary Mullens reported at most
a quarter. FrankHn observed that very often the mis
sionaries believed they had prevailed with the American
savages, because, according to the usage of their nation,
they abstained from interrupting them in their appeal,
but that in coming to an explanation with them they were
soon convinced of their error. One of the missionaries to
the Lessoutos recounts that very often those who seem to
receive their instructions the best, are the first to laugh at
them afterwards. Among the savages given to the wor
ship of nature, among those of the South Seas, among the
negroes, the Esquimaux, on the admission of authors in
different or hostile, the missionaries report the most real
success, and their devotedness deserves admiration. But

232 CHRISTIANITY AMONG NON-CHRISTIANS.
those conversions, when made, are not always very durable.
A zealous missionary of our days, M. Casalis, acknowledged
that "a truly converted church is obtained only after
much time." In a number of cases, the subsequent con
duct of the proselytes proves that they had scarcely, if at
aH, felt the regenerative impulse of the gospel. The King
of the Sandwich Islands, at the anniversary banquet on the
destruction of the idols, drank to intoxication; difficulty is
experienced in getting the new moral teachings observed ;
then there is the return of Idia, Queen of Tahiti, to Pagan
ism; the Greenland converts became relaxed in their morals
after they had tasted European civdization. Beyond a
doubt, many savage tribes have perverted their position as
converts to drunkenness and prostitution. Thence from
time to time revivals are attempted, and they do not
always terminate favourably ; that, for instance, among the
negroes of Jamaica (1860) accompanied by demoniacal
manifestations. Sometimes stations which were accounted
the most prosperous, as those of British Guiana, have had
to be given up. In 1855, the number of proselytes made by
the Protestant missionaries since the beginning of this cen
tury was calculated to be six hundred thousand. In 1870, it
had reached a mdlion. This doubtless is little, compared
with the eight hundred millions of Pagans reckoned to be
on the face of the globe. In proceeding at this pace, many
centuries must pass before the work is completed, and
that the more because the number of missionaries, very re
stricted compared # with their task, has latterly continued
to decrease. This disproportion between the sums ex
pended and the results obtained, has raised serious objec
tions among the friends of missions. Let us, however, not
forget that in such an enterprize the commencements are
the most difficult. A forest once planted reproduces and

CHRISTIANITY AND POLYTHEISM. 233
extends itself. Thus in Oceania, Christianity propagated
itself from one island to another with surprising rapidity.
Let us also not lose from sight the fact that till this cen
tury its first progress in America and elsewhere was effec
tuated much less by the conversion of the natives than
by the establishment of Christian colonies ; that owing to
the facdity of voyages and the frequency of emigrations,
colonies ceaselessly extend and new colonies are constantly
formed. Now it is observed that savage populations
among which Europeans plant their feet, not being able
to adapt themselves to the exigencies of civdized life, or
endure the system of excitement which they introduce, or
pursue in the midst of agricultural populations the hunts
on which they exclusively live, or specially, in case of
codisions, support the struggle against regular arms, be
come extinct rapidly. Thus one after the other disap
peared, now decimated by plagues, now driven to a distance
by European colonists, the savage hordes of North America,
of Southern Africa, of Australia, of New Zealand, of Mda
nesia, of most part of the islands of the Southern Sea, of
Labrador, of the Esquimaux, where Christianity estabHshed
itself without obstacle with the civdized emigrants which
took their place. On the territory of the United States
there are not more than three hundred thousand Indians,
who only occupy it under the good pleasure of the govern
ment. As to the half-civdized populations of India, China
and Japan, they wid not for a long time be supplanted in
the vast countries which they inhabit. But their relations
always more frequent, their commerce always more inti
mate, with the civilized nations of Europe and America
which open their ports to them, the ever more vivid taste
for our civdization which they acquire, exercise an in
fluence more and more difficult to withstand. The civil

234 CHRISTIANITY AMONG NON-CHRISTIANS.
schools founded by the English government singularly
favour the education of the natives. Every year a greater
number of Hindoos repair to England to finish their educa
tion, to give themselves to manufactures or to commerce,
return home prepared to fraternize with people whose
approach they would not have tolerated before, and carry
with them new ideas which they try to give effect to in
their own country. "The most opulent," says M. Nagel,
" found libraries, colleges, bursaries for students." During
some years since, learned societies have been instituted at
Lahore, Calcutta and Benares ; the population shakes off
its old torpor, applies to labour ; information spreads,
communications multiply. Since the overthrow of the
Taicoon in Japan (1868), the Micado, clad with the double
authority of priest and king, has quitted his seclusion,
emancipated the inferior classes, invited the nobdity to
take part with him in everything which can favour the
education of the people and contribute to the civilization
of the country. In the imperial College of Yeddo, directed
by learned Englishmen and Americans, there are already
more than three thousand pupils. Young Japanese come
into Europe and go to the United States to complete their
education. Religious liberty, without being formady de
creed in Japan, is already as a fact established there.
Who can deny the importance of such transformations ?
How can religious opinions fail to be profoundly modified
in these movements ? How should not these new ideas,
this new morality, infiltrated into the minds of the natives,
destroy in time their ancient beliefs, which the vicinity
of Mohamedanism had begun to shake ? Travellers, mis
sionaries are unanimous in attesting the crumbling away
of the old Hindoo superstitions ; the scepticism which
makes its way into all classes, even into the Brahmanical,

CHRISTIANITY AND POLYTHEISM. 235
rejected idols, abandoned pagodas, the festivals of Jugger
naut which now lack peasants to draw the murderous car ;
in fine, Buddhism fallen into discredit in Japan, and its
temples threatened with ruin.
It would doubtless be a small gain if the Buddhist or
Brahmanical beliefs were replaced, as you may see here
and there, only by religious nihilism. But the young
Hindoos that attend the civd schools or those of the mis
sionaries, those who repair to England to complete their
studies in the universities, and there find themselves in
dady contact with instructed Christians, if they do not
all return in possession of positive Christian beliefs, for
the most part carry back at least a culture which raises
them without effort to the dogma of the unity and spiri
tuality of God. This Unitarian belief, which was, at the
beginning of the century, that of the illustrious converted
Brahman, Rammohun Roy, has become that of a sect re
cently formed in Calcutta under the name of Brahmo
Somaj, which, already influential, publishes religious tracts,
a monthly review, holds regular meetings, and reckons, it
is said, fifty thousand adherents, the major part of whom
belong to the elite of the nation, and occupy in it civil and
military posts. Denied by the Hindoos, it is ill regarded
by some missionaries, who see in it only a union of Theists.
Nevertheless, the society pursues its reformatory views,
raising its voice against the prejudice of castes, seeking to
elevate the condition of women, sustaining by charity the
zeal of its proselytes, and finally propagating a moral
Theism which, without foundation it is true, it tries to
connect with the primitive beliefs of the country. In
every age emigrants from civilized countries, remaining
connected with their native centres, have served to propa
gate sounder religious ideas among the barbarous tribes

236 CHRISTIANITY AMONG NON-CHRISTIANS.
in the midst of whom they find themselves. The Greek
colonies founded of old in Sicily, Italy, Asia Minor, Syria,
Egypt, Libya, the Roman colonies established in Africa,
Gaul, Great Britain, naturalized there less fierce divini
ties, less absurd forms of worship, more humane morals,
religious customs less cruel and shameful. With greater
reason the Christian colonies of Europe and America wdl
continue to spread over the earth the worship of the true
God. And their influence in this respect wdl be the more
productive in so far as it is impregnated with the spirit of
religion. In those distant countries, where too often baneful
germs accompany our commerce, our industry and our arts,
the action of devoted missionaries cannot be too highly
appreciated ; it is the reign of the spirit counteracting the
predominance of material interests ; it is Christian zeal im
printed on the work of civilization; it is the leaven of the
sacred word which keeps the bread from becoming corrupt,
the salt which communicates to it its savour.
Christianity then, in its relations with other forms of
religion, offers us the aspect of a slow but incontestable
progress. Through numerous obstacles, but by the aid of
modern civdization, which is in part its work, we have
seen it make its way in the most different nations, and,
even when it does not effect positive conversions, at least
by its ascendancy modify their morals, their customs, their
religious ideas, and create in them affinities which bring
them into some resemblance with itself. Here, moreover,
as in its internal progress, we have remarked the concur
rence of the different Christian communions and parties
into which it is divided.
The old Unitarian party, by its severe monotheism,
makes itself respected by the Jews and the Moslems ; it
finds favour with those of the Hindoos and Japanese

CHRISTIANITY AND POLYTHEISM. 237
whom contact with Europeans detaches from their national
beliefs, and gives birth among them to Theistical sects, of
whom some are very near deserving the title of Christian.
Christian liberalism in its turn, by its unshaken principles
of equity and justice for ad, dissipates prejudices still too
much spread against Christianity. By the broad access
which it opens to inquiry and science, it gains the sym
pathy of spiritual phdosophers, and paves the way for a
new cathode reform. Finady, by its love of progress, by
the enHghtened use which it makes of Scripture, it ex
tends a hand to neo-Judaism, and by its influence disposes
it to more and more substitute for the hard formalism of
the old law the penetrating unction of the evangelical
morals. On idolatrous nations this spiritual proselytism
has necessarily less hold; it is on their imagination, much
more than on their reason, that we can hope to act. The
language of authority, the employment of material symbols,
marvellous narratives, even innocent superstitions (if such
there are), taking the place of barbarous ones ; these are
useful auxiliaries with the Pagans, but which only the
stationary parties can make use of with sincerity. Dogmas
and practices which are unsuitable for well-informed per
sons, with whom they only injure Christianity, are suit
able and operative with such as are uncultivated. The
Methodist missionary, with his lowering pictures of the
consequences of the first sin, his material paintings of the
joys of Paradise, the punishments of bed, his adjurations to
secure by a sudden conversion a refuge against everlasting
torments and a part in the deHghts of the New Jerusalem,
produces on the negro, on the barbarian, more impression
than can the most eloquent preacher with his persuasive
accents. On his side, the CathoHc missionary, with his
images, relics, miracles ' of the saints, his exorcisms, his

238 CHRISTIANITY AMONG NON-CHRISTIANS.
signs of the cross, with the mysterious rites of Mass and
Baptism, produces effects less desirable but more prompt.
Both, notwithstanding the imperfection of the means which
they employ, by the fact that they sow among these people
the first seeds of the Christian faith, they also labour at a
work of progress, light and civilization.
Thus, we fear not to repeat it, in the field of the Lord
there is employment for all well-disposed labourers. It is
for each of them to own and accept his own task without
hindering his fedow-workmen in that which belongs to
them ; otherwise much time is lost, harmony is disturbed,
and the work is not accomplished. " If," says Paul, " all
were only a single member, where would be the body ?
We are all members one of another. Let not the eye say
to the hand, I have no need of thee nor the head say to
the feet, I have no need of you." (1 Cor. xii. 21.) The
work of Christianizing the world is immense, and requires
the efforts of each and all. By these the Church will be
spread, by those it wdl be purified. The brute metal
which some wid extract from the mine, others wdl cleanse
of its adoy, others will refine in the crucible, and by these
combined operations, accomplished under the direction of
the Master, under the influence of the, same Divine Spirit,
the human famdy, always increasing in number, wdl be
led to the knowledge of its Heavenly Father, in the com
munion of Jesus.

C. Green & Son, Printers, 178, Strand.

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