M. Thiers was the president of this commission, which sat during five months. It discussed every question respecting the organization of public instruction with a passionate ardor, and, at the same time, with an earnest and sincere desire to conciliate, by their resolutions, all opinions. According to the character of the times and the state of public sentiment, critical and perilous situations precipitate men sometimes to the commission of insane acts of violence, and sometimes keep them within the line of fairness and prudence. The project of law which issued from the commission of M. de Falloux had the merit of prudence.In making mutual concessions, the representatives of the different systems took good care to protest that they did not renounce their peculiar principles—a language which made sometimes their resolutions have the air of a superficial and incoherent compromise; but men could, nevertheless, observe how conspicuous that project was for its large and practical character, and its respect for different rights; and they could also see how the State, the Church, and private establishments were left free to compete in matters of public instruction. When this project was discussed in the Legislative Assembly, M. de Falloux was no longer minister; but the impulse had been given, and his measure was out of danger; his successor, M. de Parien, too, gave it the support which it deserved; and after a discussion which occupied thirty-seven sittings, the Assembly, by a strong majority, passed the law, without introducing any important modification. The Liberty of Instruction was founded.
Fifteen years have passed, and it subsists. The State, the Church, private institutions founded by laymen or by ecclesiastics, have competed actively during all that period. Religious congregations, Lazarists, Dominicans, Oratorians, Jesuits, have in this struggle displayed all the enthusiasm of faith, all the ardor of reciprocal rivalry. The Jesuits, since the year 1850, have opened twenty colleges for secondary instruction, and have founded at Paris, for courses of study preparatory to the special schools, an establishment whose successes have attracted the attention of the government and of the public; for it sends every year to the Military Schools, the Polytechnic, Naval, or Central, an extraordinary number of successful candidates, who have passed with honor, although the competition has been extensive and the examinations are severe.A great school, founded by the Archbishop of Paris for the higher branches of ecclesiastical study in the ancient house of the Carmelites, has formed priests who, in the public examinations and theses, have proved themselves capable of taking rank by the side of the best pupils of the lay establishment of the "École Normale Supérieure." Everywhere the University has encountered numerous and ardent rivals; and it has been at the same time in its own interior a prey to painful trials. Under the pretext of an interest for studies of a scientific and practical nature, classical and philosophical studies have been displaced and depreciated. At the very moment that the University was losing its privileges beyond, it saw its principles and its organization shaken inside its walls.
Faithful to her convictions and traditions, even while accepting the experiments and the struggles that were forced upon her, the University has surmounted perils from within and rivalries from without; on the one side, little by little, it has returned to its system of a large and solid teaching of the classics; on the other, the level of the studies in its principal establishments has been raised, and the number of its pupils has been ever on the increase.The Lycées counted (in 1850) 19,300; they have now (1865) more than 30,000 pupils. The State has thrown open the career of instruction to the Church, and has at the same time redoubled its own solicitude and success. Liberty of instruction has calmed both the anxieties of the religious party that made them demand it, and those anxieties of the laity which that liberty had inspired. It has given peace to the State and to the Church, at the same time that it has excited their emulation and stimulated their progress.
An incident which made some noise at the time has, under the new regime, shown the force of the Liberal spirit, and proved that, when needed, it would have unforeseen defenders.Under the influence of a blind zeal, a pious ecclesiastic, the Abbé Graume, demanded by what right the literature of pagan antiquity occupied the place it did in public teaching; denounced it as "the devouring canker of modern societies;" and insisted that the Christian classics should replace in our schools the Greek and Latin classics. What was this but to reject one of the great cradles of modern civilization; to condemn the renaissance of literature in the fifteenth century, as well as the religious reform in the sixteenth century; and to close to the minds of rising generations of Christians the general history of the world! This attack upon the system of public instruction which had been in vigor during the last four centuries in all the States of Christendom, met from a part of the Romanists with a sympathetic reception: bishops, eminent for learning, thanked its author; M. Veuillot constituted himself his champion. But in the Catholic Church itself, as well as in the University, the fire of the defense silenced that of the attack; ecclesiastics, as eminent by their piety as by their science, the Bishop of Orleans at their head, proclaimed aloud their sympathy for the comprehensive scheme and the liberal studies which embrace all the fair works of man's intelligence.The Jesuits on this occasion set an example of broad views and common sense; they introduced no modification into the programmes of their colleges; the Pères Cahoux and Daniel demonstrated their propriety, nay, their necessity; and the literature of the Greeks and of the Romans has preserved in the education of Christians the place which it gained in their history by the right of genius and by the splendor of its productions.
Scarcely had this controversy on a literary and moral subject been settled, when questions of far more gravity were raised, and more profoundly agitated Christian society. Christians found themselves attacked simultaneously upon scientific and upon political grounds. Men denied to the Christian Faith its reasonableness and its vital sources—to the Church of Rome its traditional and historical régime, and the temporal power of its chief.
Two things strike me in this double attack—on the one hand its timidity, yet gravity; on the other, the powerful resistance which it encounters. Nothing is less novel than a denial of the supernatural character of Christianity, and of its primitive facts, of its miracles, of the divinity of its founder. The eighteenth century carried on this war in a far more violent, rude, and iniquitous spirit than the nineteenth century has done. M. Renan, in the attempt to dethrone Jesus, has at least treated him with admiration and respect; not from calculation, I feel assured, but from the natural tone of his mind. In our time, men have instincts and tastes, at once inconsequent and prudent; at the very time when they engage in a deadly struggle they affect to carry thither the cool impartiality of spectators; they flatter themselves that they unite the acumen of the critic to the feeling of the poet. The skeptic shows no disinclination to play the mystic; and the erudite man strives to cover with the vail of fancy the ruin that he makes.Hume was a more stubborn skeptic, and Voltaire an enemy more daring. If I pass from philosophy to politics, and from books to events, I observe the war undergoing a similar transformation. What a contrast between the attacks of the Directory and the Emperor Napoleon the First upon the Papacy, and the circumspect and hesitating treatment of which, in spite of the blows that it receives, the Papacy is in these days the object? Are we to conclude that the general course of events has changed, and that the flood, which for a century whirled Europe along, is arrested and subsiding? Certainly not: there are abundant facts to prove the contrary. Whether regarded as a religious or a political question, whether considered as affecting opinions or interests, the contest between authority and liberty, between faith and incredulity, is carried on more earnestly and more systematically now than ever: principles on each side are pushed to their extreme consequences, and contrasted in a manner never before the case.But experience imposes a restraint upon men even where it does not change them. In the years of internal order which the Empire insured, and in the years of liberty to which the constitutional Monarchy gave the sanction of its laws, the different parties learned to appreciate the obstacles with which they had to contend, and to measure their own strength and that of their opponents: they now know that everything is not possible to them; and necessity has inculcated a certain amount of equity and good sense. The experience of the past, as well as that of each day, convinces them of their inability to insure a complete success to their systems and their designs. Its adversaries thought Christianity expiring; but they soon saw that it was still full of life: while they express their surprise and persevere in their warfare, they admit its practical influence, render homage to its moral value, and strive, although they contest its rights, to appropriate to themselves the inheritance of its blessings.The wind has often blown from the right quarter for Catholic Absolutists during this century; they have enjoyed the favor of more than one master, and more than once they have requited him by devoted services. More than once, also, they have obtained from the supreme head of their Church official declarations, which have been used by them against the Catholic Liberals. The Absolutists, nevertheless, have not succeeded in changing the tendency of Christian societies; they have arrested the course neither of ideas nor events; their defeats have cost them dearer than their victories were worth; and in spite of the obstinate infatuation of parties, I doubt whether they themselves believe in the progress of their cause. And how often has the Papacy itself in our days been insulted and despoiled? Has it not even been vanquished and expelled?Still, in spite of what it has suffered, sometimes from revolutions, sometimes from arbitrary power, it has outlived not only the triumphs of its enemies, but its own impolitic measures: and at this day, assailed by freethinkers in spirituals, by ambitious neighbors in temporals, menaced with abandonment even by its protectors, it is more energetically defended and efficaciously supported than it ever was at the commencement of this century in its reverses. Pius VII. never received such pecuniary contributions as have been forwarded to Pius IX. in his necessities; and if the French bishops were now summoned to a council, their conduct would, beyond doubt, be more dignified and more influential than was that of their predecessors in 1811.
Why such changes in a situation itself in effect unchanged? Whence these hesitating measures, this embarrassed attitude of the adversaries of the Christian faith and of the Christian Church? What cause at the same time gives such boldness and even success to their defenders?
Each age has its own peculiar and characteristic mission, and one from which it cannot escape; every human being has his share in it, whether he knows it or not. As a consequence of the truths and the errors, of the good and evil, of the triumphs and reverses of the preceding centuries, the nineteenth century has before it a special task, which will employ all its energies, and which will also, I hope, constitute its glory. It has both in the State and in the Church found the two supreme forces that preside over man's life, and over that of society, Authority and Liberty, in violent conflict, in turn intoxicated with victory, or vanquished, ruined. It is the mission of the nineteenth century to make them live together, and live in peace; or at least in an antagonism entailing upon neither any mortal danger. The recognition of, and respect for, authority; the acceptance and guarantee of freedom; these are the imperative necessities which our age is called upon to feel and to satisfy, both in State and Church.Nor does this imply, as is often pretended, any inconsistency or any compromise of principle or any policy of expedients; it is not by inconsistency that great questions are settled, it is not by expedients that we content the cravings of men's souls, or calm the anxieties of human society; for mankind yields genuine submission and feels real confidence only where it believes in the existence of truth and justice. The recognition, veneration, and guarantee of the different rights which co-exist naturally and necessarily in human societies—of the rights, both of individuals and of the State—of the rights of religious society and of civil society—of the rights of little local societies as well as of the grand general society—of the rights of conscience as well as of tradition—of the rights of the future as well as of those of the past—these are the dominant principles of which the nineteenth century has to insure the triumph.Triumphs assured, if Liberals and Christians are both of them determined to accomplish it! Notwithstanding all the violent emotions of party, and of all our differences on intellectual and social subjects, the consciousness of this situation is ever before our minds; and whether we admit it or not, the alliance of the liberal movement with the movement of awakened Christianity, is the grand measure and the grand hope of the day.
A Catholic priest, now a bishop, inquiring the origin of the actual disputes of religion, and their probable issue, expresses himself as follows:—"Free institutions, freedom of conscience, political liberty, civil liberty, individual liberty, liberty of families, of education, and of opinions, equality before the laws, the equal division of imposts and of public charges, these are all points upon which we make no difficulty; we accept them frankly; we appeal to them on solemn occasions of public discussion; we accept, we invoke the principles and the liberties proclaimed in 1789; even those who combat those principles and those liberties admit that liberty of religion and free education have become acknowledged, self-evident truths (des verités de bon sens)." [Footnote 13]
[Footnote 13: De la Pacification religieuse. By the Abbé Dupanloup, pp. 263, 294, 306. Paris, 1845.]
This Catholic, this bishop, is no timorous priest, disposed to make every sacrifice for the purpose of conciliation. It is the same priest, who, from the first attack made upon the constitution of the Catholic Church, has always distinguished himself by the warmth and ability with which he has defended it. The Papacy, its rights, its temporal independence and spiritual sovereignty never had a champion more resolute, more opposed to weak concessions or fallacious compromises, more constantly intrepid in the breach than the Bishop of Orleans.
When the contest was warmest, the Pope (Pius IX.) published his "Encyclical" of the 8th of December, 1864. Exempt from every feeling of prejudice and hostility, and having no connection or relation with the Papacy to make me pause, I feel no hesitation in saying what I think of this document, at once the occasion and the pretext for such a stir. In my opinion the error was a grave one. Regarded as doctrine, the "Encyclical" was dignified and yet embarrassed, positive and yet evasive; it confounded in the same sweeping condemnation salutary truths and pernicious errors, the principles of liberty and the maxims of licentiousness; it made an effort to maintain, in point of right, the ancient traditions and pretensions of Rome, without avowing in point of fact that the ideas and potent influences of modern civilization were the objects of its declared and unceasing hostility. In a system like that of the present day—a system of publicity and freedom of discussion—this manner of proceeding, its inconsistencies, its reticence, its obscurities, whether arising from instinct or premeditation, have ceased to be good policy, and in fact serve no purpose whatever.As a measure to meet a particular emergency, the "Encyclical" of the 8th of December 1864 did not resemble that of Gregory XVI. in 1832; it was not called for by such extravagances as those of theAvenir, or those of the Abbé de la Mennais; no urgent necessity, no public exigency required that Rome should pronounce itself; the debate between the Catholic Absolutists and the Catholic Liberals was of ancient date, and was evidently destined to long duration; the Papacy could not flatter itself that it could put an end to this contest by any peremptoriness of decision; her indulgent consideration was as due to the one party as to the other. Doubtless the Catholic Liberals had not shown less zeal for her cause, nor had the services which they had rendered been less important; it was not a moment of peril for Rome, and Rome was bound in justice, without any open declaration at least, to maintain toward them an attitude of reserve.The party, even before the publication of the "Encyclical," had earned, as it still merits, her gratitude and her esteem; neither M. de Montalembert, nor the Prince Albert de Broglie, nor M. de Falloux, nor M. Cochin, nor any of their friends had imitated the example of the Abbé de la Mennais; nor has one of them shown subsequently any irritation, or even uttered a word of complaint; they have maintained a respectful silence. The Bishop of Orleans has done even more. A man of action as well as of faith, he thought in the midst of the storm excited by the "Encyclical" of the 8th of December, that he was bound to consider the perils rather than the faults, and that it became a priest who had supported liberty to support authority also when the object of attack. He threw himself into the arena to cover the Papacy at all hazards with his valiant arms: after having played the part of a sagacious counselor, he played that of a faithful champion, and he inflicted upon her adversaries blows so sturdy, that the latter were in their turn obliged to put themselves upon their defense, even in the midst of the success that the "Encyclical" had insured them.
The Bishop of Orleans is probably reserved for many other struggles; he may even be hurried by a warlike temperament to carry the war into a field where it is uncalled for; but I shall be both surprised and grieved if he do not always remain what he is at this moment in the Church of France, the most enlightened representative of its mission, moral and social, as well as the most intrepid defender of its true and legitimate interests.
Whether the matter in debate concerns religious or social affairs and contests, parties are liable to two errors of equal gravity: they may misapprehend their respective perils, or their respective strength. Wisdom consists in a just appreciation of these perils and of these forces, and it is upon such an appreciation precisely that success itself depends. The actual perils to which Catholicism is exposed are evident to all. It owes its development and its constitution to times essentially different from the present. It adapts itself with reluctance to the principles required and the demands made upon it in this age.Its antagonists think and assert that it will never so adapt itself. Most of the lookers-on, who are indifferent or vacillating—and their number is great—incline to believe its antagonists in the right. This is the trial through which Catholicism is at this moment passing. To pass through it triumphantly, it has two great forces to rely upon; the one is, the reaction in favor of religion occasioned by the follies and the crimes of the Revolution, the other is, the liberal movement that took place among the Catholics after the faults of the Restoration, and the new opening made for them by the Government of 1830. The Concordat built up again the edifice of the Catholic Church; Liberalism is laboring to penetrate its sanctuary, and, without impairing its faith, to obtain for it once more the sympathies of civil government.Let sincere Catholics reflect well upon their course, for here is their main stay, here their best chance for the future; let them maintain with a firm hand the strong constitution of their Church, but accept frankly, and at once claim, their share also in the liberties of their age; let them take care of their anchors and spread their sails, for this is the conduct prescribed to them by the supreme interest, which should be their law, the future interests, I mean, of Christianity.
The time has been short, but the experiment has been made and is successful. I have now enumerated the principal events connected with religion which have taken place in the course of this century in the bosom of the Catholic Church of France. In spite of the obstacles, the oscillations, the deviations, and the faults that are remarkable, the awakening of Christianity is evident. Under the influence of the causes which I have pointed out, Christian faith has evidently made progress; Christian science, progress; Christian charity, as shown by works, progress; Christian force, progress; progress incomplete and insufficient but still progress, real, and fall of fruit, symptomatic of vital energy and future promise.Let not the enemies of Christianity deceive themselves; they are waging a combat of life and of death, but their antagonist is not in extremis!
I pass without any transitional stage from the awakening of Christianity in the Roman Catholic Church to the awakening of Christianity in the Protestant Church. What need of a transition? I am not quitting the Christian Church. With respect to their claims as Christians, Protestant nations have been put to the test. They have had, like Catholic nations, to pass through violent struggles, to combat evil tendencies, to undergo perilous trials; but the peculiar characteristic of Christianity, the simultaneous action of faith and of science, of authority and liberty, has received a glorious development in the bosom of Protestant nations.England and Holland, Protestant Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, and the United States of America, have had their vices, their crimes, their sufferings, and their reverses; but, after all, these States have in the last four centuries labored with effect at the solution, in a Christian sense, of that grand problem of human society—the moral and physical progress of the masses, as well as the political guarantee of their rights and liberties. And in these days the States to which I have alluded resist effectually the shocks—now of anarchy, now of despotism, which alternately trouble the peace of Christendom. As for the Christian Faith itself, if, in Protestant countries, it does not escape the attacks elsewhere made upon it, neither is it without its powerful defenders and faithful followers. In those countries, Christian Churches are full of adherents, and the cause of Christianity finds every day valiant champions to devote to its service the arms which science and liberty supply.There is on the part of the Romanists a puerile infatuation upon this subject, which makes them absolutely close their eyes to facts; by an error fatal to themselves, they persist in imputing the fermentation in society, and the abandonment of religion, to the influence of the Protestant nations—nations among whom these two scourges are combated with at least as much resolution and effect as elsewhere. It is not my wish to institute disparaging comparisons, or to foment a rivalry opposed to the spirit of Christ's religion. Protestantism is not, in Christendom, the last, neither is it the sole bulwark of Christianity; but there exists none that is stronger, that offers fewer weak points to assailants, or that is better provided with faithful and able defenders.
At the commencement of this century, and in the years which followed the promulgation of the Concordat, the Protestants, like the Catholics in France, thought only of the re-establishment of their worship and of the liberty of their faith. A liberty the more precious in their eyes, as it followed upon two centuries of persecutions and of sufferings of which we cannot, in these days, read the accounts without mingled sentiments of astonishment, of indignation, and of sorrow. Faithfully should men guard the memory of such outrages; they would be infinitely better than they are if they had always present to their minds the vivid pictures of the iniquities and woes which fill the page of their history; and evils would not so soon recur if they were not so soon forgotten. The system of Terrorism under the Revolution had confounded Catholic and Protestant in a common oppression; it had abolished the forms of worship of each, denied all free expression of opinion to Christians; and without distinction condemned to the same scaffold the "pastors of the desert" and the bishops of the Court of Versailles—Rabaut Saint-Etienne as well as the nuns of Verdun.When this terrible regime had ceased to exist, neither party had religiously or politically any desires or pretensions that were not extremely moderate: the one thing regarded by all as the sovereign good was, the right to live without molestation and the liberty to address their prayers to God in the light of day. No other subject so seriously interested them; and they heartily wished to show their gratitude and deference to the Government, which, while it gave security to their bodies, permitted their souls to breathe freely. The condition of the Protestants was in one sense better than that of the Catholics, for the former were now experiencing the joy, not only of a deliverance but of a positive conquest; they had just escaped as well from the system of Terrorism, as from the ancient régime; they had lost nothing to regret; no revengeful feeling made them desire a reaction; their sole aspiration was for the consolidation of their rights, and of their new acquisitions."You who lived, as we did, under the yoke of intolerance," (thus they were addressed in 1807 by M. Rabaut-Dupuy, formerly president of the legislative body, and the last surviving son of one of their most estimable pastors,) "you, the relics of so many persecuted generations, behold! compare! It is no longer in the desert and at the peril of your lives that you render to the Creator the homage which is his due. Our temples are restored to us, and every day beholds new ones erected. Our pastors are recognized as public functionaries; they receive salaries from the State; a barbarous law no longer suspends the sword over their heads. Alas! to those whom we have survived it was permitted, it is true, to ascend Mount Nebo, and to obtain thence a glimpse of the promised land, but it is we alone who have taken possession."
What wonder if, on the morrow after the Concordat, which had procured them the free exercise of their faith and the impartiality of the law, the Protestants acquiesced without difficulty in the incomplete organization with which the new system had left their Church, and that they troubled themselves little with the attacks made upon its independence and its dignity!
But this modest enjoyment of their new privileges did not render them indifferent to their ancient belief, and they returned to the open practice of Christ's faith simultaneously with the acquisition of their liberty. In 1812, in the midst of the profound silence which reigned throughout the Empire, a professor of the faculty of Protestant theology at Montauban, M. Grasc, attacked, in his teaching, the dogma of the Trinity. Earnest remonstrances were instantly made from the general body of the Protestants in France; a great number of consistories, among others those of Nîmes, of Montpellier, Montauban, Alais, Anduze, Saint Hippolyte, pastors and laity, addressed their complaints, some to the "Doyen" of the faculty of theology, others to M. Gasc himself, demanding, all of them, the maintenance of the doctrine of the Protestant Church.The grand master of the University, M. de Fontanes, "earnestly invited the professor not to depart from it," and M. Gasc himself admitted that his teaching ought to be in conformity. The spirit which had animated the Reformation in France in the sixteenth century was still living in the nineteenth; and under the new-born system of liberty, the Awakening of Christianity announced itself by a summons to the faith.
When, under the Restoration, France had regained her political liberty, it was not long before that liberty bore its natural fruits in French Protestantism; it was accompanied, both on religious and political subjects, by the manifestation of discordant ideas and discordant tendencies, which were soon to struggle for victory.As at epochs of great intellectual crises eminent men emerge who represent dominant ideas, so now M. Samuel Vincent and M. Daniel Encontre immediately appeared in the Protestant Church: both were pastors, and each worthily represented one of the two principles which naturally develop themselves in the bosom of Protestantism, faith in traditions and the right of private judgment; principles different without being contradictory; principles which may subsist in peace provided they remain respectively in their proper places, and within the limits of their rights. M. Samuel Vincent was a man of a mind remarkably comprehensive and of great versatility and fecundity; but his habits at the same time were those of a student, fitting him rather for intellectual meditation than qualifying him either for expansive sympathies or for action; he was versed in the philosophy and erudite criticism of Germany, at that time novel and rare to France; he made the essence of Christianity, according to his own expression, "to consist in the liberty of inquiry." [Footnote 14:]
[Footnote 14: Vues sur le protestantisme en France, par M. Samuel Vincent. 2e édition, p. 15. Paris, 1859.]
He rejected all written articles of faith, every limited idea of religious unity, and claimed within the Church, for both pastors and congregation, the greatest latitude in matters of opinion and of teaching. But when he clung closely to this view of the subject, and was pressed to indicate the extreme point to which, within the Church itself, the diversity of men's individual beliefs might be carried, his embarrassment became extreme, for he had too much sense to admit that this diversity had no limit, and that a Church, whether Protestant or not, could exist without certain articles of faith common to all its members, and recognized by them all. "Protestantism," said he himself, "must not be merely a negation; it should also have its real and positive side; it must be beyond all things a religion; that is to say, it must be in the possession of the means to endure and of the means to edify men by the propagation of a doctrine benevolent and Christian. … Christianity is the basis of ecclesiastical teaching." [Footnote 15]
[Footnote 15: Vues sur le protestantisme en France, par M. Samuel Vincent, pp. 17, 22.]
When, after having laid down this principle, M. Samuel Vincent inquired how the Protestant Church could remain a Church, and a Christian Church, in the midst of the independence of individual beliefs, he found no other way out of the difficulty than "to determine," he said, "by conventions, oral and unwritten, a certain number of opinions that each man should, in the interest of the general peace, be entreated to keep to himself." [Footnote 16]
[Footnote 16: Vues sur le protestantisme en France, p. 24.]
How strange a proceeding, how difficult of realization, to prescribe with once voice silence and liberty! M. Samuel Vincent did not attempt to determine what those opinions were which, in order to maintain the existence of a Christian Church in the midst of the broadest system of free inquiry, "each man should be entreated to keep to himself."As for himself, he professed his faith in the supernatural, in the revelation of the Old and of the New Testaments, in the inspiration of the Scriptures, in the divinity of Jesus Christ; in the grand historical facts as well as in the moral precepts of the Gospel; he was one of the pastors, too, who signed the remonstrance of the consistory of Nîmes, for the irregularity in preaching of which Professor Grasc had been guilty. Did M. Samuel Vincent regard every opinion contrary to these great evangelical doctrines as an opinion which each man should, in the interest of the general peace, be entreated to keep to himself? I doubt whether he would have dared to engraft upon the liberty of judgment such a reservation; but I doubt at the same time if he would have persisted in regarding as true and faithful pastors of the Protestant Church, men who should have openly deserted and combated, in its most essential foundations, that Christian faith which he himself professed. He dreaded almost equally "unity defined," and "dissent declared." He would have remained in the embarrassment into which those inevitably fall who neither accept one basis and manifesto of a common faith, nor admit the moral necessity of a separation into free and distinct Churches when a common faith does not exist. [Footnote 17]
[Footnote 17: The principal works of M. Samuel Vincent are: 1. Vues sur le protestantisme en France, première édition. 2 vols. 8vo. 1829. A second edition, in 1 vol. 12mo., was published in 1859 by M. Prévost-Paradol.2. Observations sur l'unité religieuse et observations sur la voie d'autorité appliquée a la religion, (1820,) contre l'Essai sur l'indifférance en matière de religion de l'Abbé de la Mennais.3. Meditations ou recueil de sermons, 1829.4. Mélanges de religion de morale et de critique sacrée. A periodical published from 1820 to 1825.]
No such embarrassment was experienced by M. Daniel Encontre when he began his career to serve the movement of awakened Christianity in the bosom of French Protestantism. I will not venture here to cite the precise words, harsh and severe, employed by him on the 13th of December, 1816, at Montauban, in his capacity of "Doyen" of the faculty of Protestant Theology, respecting those termed by him "the pretended ministers of the Gospel, disbelievers in the Gospel and in the divinity of Jesus Christ."He regarded harmony of faith and language, harmony between shepherd and flock, as the first law of religious society. Born in a grotto of La Vaunage, to which his mother had fled to escape from the flames of persecution; devoted from his birth by his father, the Pastor Pierre Encontre, to the service of a "preacher in the desert," M. Daniel Encontre belonged to that class of indomitable Protestants who cling to their faith through all the perils, sufferings, and sacrifices which it entails. His first steps in life seemed to indicate in him other aptitudes, and to promise for him a different career. After having studied divinity at Lausanne and at Geneva, and been consecrated by his father himself to the ministry of the Gospel "in an assembly in the desert," he seemed to doubt his own vocation; for while performing the functions of his ministry he devoted himself to the study of mathematics, physics, philosophy, and the classical languages, with an enthusiasm eager to become familiar with every department of knowledge, and encountering no hinderance from, internal obstacles or from preconceived opinions.Having established himself at Montpellier, where his taste for science found subjects of gratification, he led there, during the dark days of the Revolution, a life very obscure, and at the same time most laborious; giving lessons to the master masons upon stone-cutting, imparting instruction, rendering the aids of religion to Protestants, celebrating the baptismal and marriage services, and pursuing at the same time his labors in geometry, botany, philosophy, divinity, literature, and even poetry. When order began to be re-established, he was led by his own natural tastes and the counsel of his friends to select as his career that of public instruction. He competed for and obtained, first the appointment of professor of literature at the École Centrale of Montpellier; then that of the higher mathematics, at the Lycée and in the faculty of science, of which he was nominated "Doyen."As his merits established themselves by repeated proofs, his reputation increased; the papers of learned societies were filled with his contributions, and the École Polytechnique with his pupils. "I have met in our department," said Fourcroy, "two or three heads equal to his, but not one superior." M. de Candolle gladly selected him to aid him in his "Researches respecting the Botany of the Ancients;" and M. de Fontanes has more than once spoken of him to me as one of the men who most honored the University. But in him, neither the mathematician, the botanist, nor the philologist took precedence of the Christian. At one time as expounder of Moses and of Genesis, [Footnote 18] at another as a writer defending the Apostles, accused of being a copyist of Plato. [Footnote 19] he neglected no occasion of placing his scientific attainments at the service of Christianity;
[Footnote 18: Dissertation sur le vrai système du monde comparé avec le récit que Moïse fait de la création. Montpellier, 1807.]
[Footnote 19: Lettre à M. Combes-Dounous, auteur d'un Essai historique sur Platon. Paris, 1811.A remarkable essay of M. Daniel Encontre, "sur le Péché original," was published, after his death, in 1822, and he left a great number of manuscripts, among others a "Traité sur l'Église," (600 pages,) written in Latin; "Etudes théologiques," a Hebrew Grammar, a "Cours de philosophie," a "Cours de litérature Française," a "Flore biblique," several "Memoires de mathématiques transcendantes," etc. As a teacher of transcendental mathematics at Montpellier he had as pupil M. Auguste Comte, the head of the "École positiviste," who, in spite of the profound diversity of their opinions, regarded it as a duty to dedicate to him in 1856 his treatise, "Sur la Synthèse subjective," in testimony of admiration and of gratitude.]
and when, in 1814, he was asked to quit Montpellier, to abandon his habits, his tastes, and his friends, for the chair of the professorship of divinity at Montauban, where he was to fulfill the functions of "Doyen," he sacrificed without hesitation the enjoyment of his life to his religious vocation, and applied himself with unceasing energy to the warlike activity of a Christian professor, until the day when, overcome by fatigue and sickness, he accorded to himself the melancholy satisfaction of returning to Montpellier, in order to die near the tomb of a beloved daughter, who had long aided him in his labors.
The destinies of Protestantism in France have, to a singular degree, been at once varied and uniform, confused and simple. After having in the sixteenth century valiantly disputed the victory, it was vanquished, decimated, expelled. But it resisted, and survived not only its defeat, but the gradual process of its enfeeblement and its expulsion. In the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the French Protestants lost the protection of the laws, their secure sanctuaries, their great chiefs, their great divines, their great writers; but they preserved nevertheless their faith and their religious honor. In the times that ensued their successors remained faithful to the belief and the customs of their fathers; even persecuted and condemned to death, having their property confiscated, or become tenants of prisons and laborers in the galleys, they found in their very sufferings a resource to confirm them in the principles of Protestant piety.Theological controversies died away from among them, leaving behind them the fundamentals of Christianity—living and guiding principles.
Among the higher and wealthier classes, the philosophical ideas of the eighteenth century made also their way; the great liberal movement filled the Protestant section of the nation with joy, and commanded its sympathy without detaching it from its religious habits and traditions. In its members faith had ceased to be erudite; the popular Protestant sentiment had been always profoundly biblical and evangelical. Freer and more fortunately situated than their fathers, the French Protestants now anxiously desired to remain, as they had been, Christians; and when, in 1790, Rabaut Saint-Etienne, who succeeded the Abbé de Montesquieu as President of the Constituent Assembly, wrote to his aged father, the Pastor Paul Rabaut, "The President of the National Assembly is at your feet," he manifested to the humble and zealous preacher in the assemblies of the desert, the pride at once of a politician, the piety of a son, and the fidelity of a Protestant.
M. Daniel Encontre was, at the commencement of the nineteenth century, the faithful representative of this traditionally religious character of French Protestantism; just as M. Samuel Vincent was the well-meaning and sincere introducer to it of the science and criticism of the Germans. The former corresponded more closely to the pious and national spirit of Protestant France of the olden times; the latter to the tendencies, at once novel and indefinitely latitudinarian, of a foreign philosophy and a foreign erudition. Doubtless, neither measured the range of the religious crisis of which they were themselves the symptoms; neither foresaw that within the bosom of Protestantism that crisis was to be marked by an avowed struggle between Rationalism in its progress and Christianity in its reaction.
This crisis began to manifest itself at Geneva. The mocking skepticism of Voltaire, the rhetorical deism of Rousseau, proclaimed at its gates, had deeply undermined the faith of Christ in the very city of Calvin. It was not merely some of the Calvinistic doctrines of the sixteenth century that the pastors of Geneva doubted or denied, but it was also the fundamental articles of Christianity; they abandoned not only the Dogmas of predestination and salvation by faith alone, but the dogmas of original sin, and of the divinity of Jesus Christ. In 1810 according to some, as far back as 1802 according to others, symptoms of an evangelical reaction showed themselves at Geneva among the students in theology, some of whom afterward became distinguished pastors or writers. It was not long before MM. Gaussen, Malan, Gonthier, Bost, Merle d'Aubigné, displayed their orthodox fervor and their ability. In 1816 a pious Scot, Mr. Robert Haldane, previously an intrepid sailor, who had only quitted his calling to devote himself entirely to the service of his faith, went to Geneva, and contracted with the young Methodists of that city relations of the greatest intimacy and activity.They had meetings; they discussed, they preached, they prayed, they wrote. Mr. Haldane could hardly express himself in French; having his English Bible continually at hand, he turned over its pages incessantly, pointed out to his friends the passages that he regarded as decisive, invited them to read them aloud from their French Bible, and then commented upon them in a manner that always commanded their favorable attention, the conviction of the commentator had such moving and persuasive power. [Footnote 20]
[Footnote 20: Genève religieuse au XIX siècle: par le Baron de Goltz; traduit de l'allemand par C. Malan: 8vo., pp. 137-149. Genève et Paris. 1862.]