Volume 6 — Translated from the French of L. Vitet. The Present Condition of Christianity in France

Some time ago M. Guizot published the second series of his Meditations on the Christian Religion. He is now prosecuting right valiantly, and will ere long have completed, the noble task that won for him two years since so novel a triumph among his many victories, and crowned his illustrious life with what may be considered its brightest glory. That calmest and most serene of creeds, a lucid definition and summary of the fundamental dogmas of Christianity, viewed from the highest stand-point, in all their native simplicity and grandeur, was greeted, it will be remembered, with gratitude by some who looked upon it as furnishing most timely aid, and with respect and partial embarrassment by others; and so marked was its effect that the most exciting religious polemics were for the time being quieted. The first series referred to the very essence of the Christian religion; what is the subject of the second?

The author, in his preface, had thus drawn the general plan of the work: First, the essence of Christianity, next its history, then its present condition, and, finally, its future. Thus a complete history of Christianity was really promised us. The plan determined upon had, perhaps, some advantages. The history of Christianity is nowadays the point that anti-christian critics would show to be vulnerable, and the portion of the armor they seek to penetrate. The public, however, after a moment's surprise, has of itself meted out partial justice to this manner of attack; or at all events, new attempts, as skilfully devised as the first, have been received with a coolness of good augury that weakens vastly the importance of previously achieved successes. Was it not most opportune, then, to enlighten still more and at once a public whose furore had but just died away? was it not most important not to adjourn, even by a brief delay, a decisive refutation? As for ourselves, we yearned to behold, striving with the new-comers of criticism and history—who claim to be their masters and almost their inventors—him who, nearly half a century since, founded in our land modern historical criticism. By setting face to face with their rash assertions the true and severe laws of historic certainty; by taking down, piece by piece, their most cleverly contrived scaffolding; by reducing to naught their credit, was not the writer rendering to Christianity a most great and needed service?

M. Guizot has thought that there was something still more urgent to be accomplished; without abandoning his original idea, involving the four series, he has inverted their order of sequence; he now dwells upon the present state of Christian beliefs. At a later day he proposes to resume the discussion of historical questions, dilate upon the authority of holy books, continue his commentary on the concord of the Scriptures, and his arguments concerning technicalities and minor details; subsequently he will try to look into the future. At present, he has but one care, one thought: he wishes to know what is occurring, or rather what men are believing, around him. To place in the strongest light the present state of Christianity; to enumerate its armies and those of its opponents, and establish a comparison between the strength of both; thus to summon all Christians to awaken to a sense of the events concerning the common safety; to teach them not to be deceived either as to their might or as to the magnitude of the perils besetting them, and to guard against a feeling of treacherous security as against cowardly discouragement; this it is that engrosses his attention, and, forming the subject of all his thoughts, indicates to him that which he is to consider his first duty. As he says himself, he supplies the most pressing emergency, and, hurrying to the spot where the struggle is commencing, rushes into the thick of the fight.

We can readily understand his impatience. All other questions become unimportant when compared with such a problem. No eagerness can be more legitimate than that of M. Guizot, and the investigation which it is necessary to make is surely the most serious and interesting that could be prosecuted. Let us add that few inquiries are as intricate and as difficult.

It is not, in fact, the mere exterior and apparent state of Christianity that it is necessary to depict; but its life, its action, its power, which simple statistics can by no means describe. Figures may set forth how many churches there are in France; how many priests, congregations, and convents; how many children are baptized, and couples married; how many dying mortals receive spiritual succor; but after these computations are completed, are they of any genuine value? Though the civil code is not compulsory as to the choice of a religion, and though each one be free to elect his own belief, does it follow that the conclusion arrived at is always the result of proper reflection? Are all those who, either from early childhood, through the medium of their parents, or in after life and by their own free will, on certain solemn days, publicly proclaim their adherence to Christianity, real and true Christians? How many can you designate who knew what they were doing, who did not simply conform with a custom, and for whom the sacred contract did not become at once a dead letter? To arrive at a correct estimate as to the actual strength of Christianity, we must not consult registers, but make researches in the bosoms of families, and descend into the depths of consciences. Thus should we make our soundings to ascertain the state of Christian belief. We admit that such a mode of investigation would be impracticable; we must be content, therefore, with less precise data, and pass judgment upon apparent events. Draw a parallel, then, between Christianity as it was in the early part of the century and Christianity as it is, criticise the two periods in accordance with the same rules, make allowances for deceptive appearances on both sides, and exclude from your calculation the apocryphal believers who are only Christians in name; however numerous the false men and things at present, you will, nevertheless, be compelled to concede that in our country, during the past sixty years, Christianity has at least taken root again in the soil, that it has recovered its life, and that its progress has been undeniable.

M. Guizot describes the phases of the resurrection or rather the awakening of Christianity; the comprehensiveness of his views and the choiceness of his expressions render this largely developed portion of his work of absorbing interest. We have, however, no intention to attempt its analysis. In these later meditations, as in those that precede them, one would in vain seek to follow the author step by step. His work alone can speak for its contents; a person must peruse it, or abandon the idea of becoming acquainted with it. Let us only point out the plan the writer has drawn, and notice the succession of his thoughts. From its commencement, by a natural division, the volume to which we allude forms two parts: one relates to Christianity, the other to its adversaries. What do we see in the first? The narrative of the Christian awakening, or rather an exposé of the religious beliefs in France since the year 1800. This is a composition in which the incidents follow each other in natural sequence, an historical painting as well as a picture-gallery, comprising none but portraits from nature, such as M. Guizot, with that firmness and concision that characterize in few words ideas as well as men, can produce; portraits full of expression and life, though always of a sober coloring and subdued effect. M. Guizot had abundant opportunities for word-painting, for sitters were not scarce. Evidently Providence was resolved, from the beginning of the century, to repair by almost perceptible progress the effects of the great disaster of Christianity, and the damage caused by the cataclysm into which it seemed to have sunken. How numerous the men who suddenly came into existence, each worthy of the mission to be entrusted to him! How marked the contrast with the days gone by, when there was none to shiver a lance for that ancient religion still replete with honors, wealth, and apparent life, but without credit, without influence upon souls, without new adepts, and gradually forsaken, like unto those tottering edifices whose abandonment ere their fall is decreed by a prophetic instinct! The scaffold was needed to restore it to life. The first symptom of regeneration was observed when humble priests and monks, who, a day previous, were heedless of their duty, arose as intrepid and as ready for martyrdom as if theirs had been austere lives, passed in the desert or in the darkness of the catacombs. Then a brighter signal and one more easily understood was to be given by two men, who, each in his sphere and within the limits of his power, were really the earliest promoters of the Christian awakening. We refer to a great politician and to a great writer—to the First Consul and to M. de Chateaubriand, to the Concordat and to the Genius of Christianity. There is nothing artificial nor strained in this connection; for these two men and these two works, at the commencement of this century, played the most important part in the work of resurrecting the traditions of Christianity. M. Guizot speaks of Bonaparte and Chateaubriand in a rare spirit of justice and impartiality. Though possessed of little sympathy for them, and aware that their works have become antiquated and, so to say, somewhat out of fashion, he asserts quite warmly that the Genius of Christianity, despite its imperfections, is a great and powerful work, such as only appears at long intervals—one of those productions that, having deeply moved men's souls, leave behind them traces never to be effaced. And as for the Concordat, albeit the sincerest friends of Christian beliefs point out nowadays with sadness, if not with bitterness, its defects and dangers, M. Guizot concedes that, in 1802, its promulgation was, on the part of the First Consul, an act of superior intelligence rather than of despotism, and, for the sake of religion, the most opportune and necessary of events, the sine qua non condition of the existence of Christianity. He thinks that, after ten years of revolutionary orgies, a solemn recognition of religion by the state was needed to endow it with that influence, dignity, and stability which it had totally lost.

In this respect, we share M. Guizot's opinion, certain reservations, however, being made. The Concordat was a welcome gift; neither its timely advent nor the necessity for it can be disputed. Why? Because two years previous the national movement of 1789 was suddenly transformed into an abdication, by which one man benefited. If, instead of submitting to this saviour, half out of lassitude and half out of enthusiasm, France had had the energy, by making a supreme effort, and, perhaps, at the cost of new calamities, to see to her own safety and remain mistress of her fate, the Concordat would have been an unneeded blessing. Christianity would have had more labor and expended more time in regaining the lost ground; it would not have obtained possession at once, by the scratch of a pen, and between sunrise and sunset, of all its presbyteries and churches; it would have recovered them little by little, after having conquered men's souls. Had it had no other staff of support but its flock, it would have neglected nothing to strengthen it and increase its numbers; it would have won the confidence of the people and obtained their acceptance of it as a counsellor, a father, a friend, and would not have been looked upon as an emigrant, amnestied and recalled by tolerance, favor, and an act of authority, and thus placed under obligations to one man, and made the vassal of his power. It is not sufficient that one should be cured of a fatal disease; the remedy, in destroying the evil, must not leave the patient with an altered constitution or impaired vitality. The Concordat undoubtedly delivered us from a great affliction for a nation, and saved us from a complete divorce from God; it restored Christianity to France, but restored it less robust and less prepared for the strife, less life-like and less popular, and in a less fit condition to face the danger than if the old beliefs had been compelled, when born anew, to clear their own pathways. In religion, as in politics, France still feels, and will probably ever experience, the effects of having been saved by the events of the 18th of Brumaire.

That which we must admit with M. Guizot is that, when, in these later days, we criticise the work of our fathers, written upward of sixty years ago, we can speak of them with wondrous facility. Their doubts are at hand to enlighten us. But we must carry ourselves back to 1802, and behold flocks without shepherds, tombs without prayers, and cradles without baptismal fonts! Where is the proud and far-seeing Christian who would then have refused, as a destructive present, in the name of his belief and for the sake of his faith, a régime that did the work of Christian restoration, and by the touch of a magic wand repaired all the evils that bore it down? No one then would have even dreamed of such a paradox. Let us, therefore, blame with indulgence, and to a certain degree only, the men who invented the compromise, although the consequential events subsist, and when we examine the present state of Christian belief, we cannot avoid meeting at every step the still evident traces of defective origin, and its resurrection by process of law. Even as the government of the Restoration, despite its sincerest efforts and never-failing good-will, was never absolved by France from the reproach that attached to its self-commitment by friendship with the Emperor Alexander and Lord Wellington, even so Christianity in this land, during the past sixty years, is partly indebted for its weakness, and for the prejudices that maintain it in a state of excitement, to the honor of having had for a godfather the Emperor Napoleon. Sheltered and warmed under the purple, and having become an imperial pensioner, Christianity acquired, against its will, a certain need of protection and certain habits of submission and almost of complaisance, which having rendered it under some régimes a party to the acts of the government, has caused it to be called upon to share the responsibility of many errors, and exposed it to the perils of unpopularity.

Within the sixty years gone by, have we not seen by a transient example how much religion would have gained by remaining on less compromising terms with the heads of the nation and boldly dispensing with their favors? There was once a government whose members were imbued with profound respect for the religious interests of the country, and who were always ready to render unto its ministers the most kindly offices; this same government, however, from its earliest days, was viewed with coldness and hostility by a certain number of Catholics and a great portion of the clergy; is it not known how favorable that attitude proved to Catholicism itself? For eighteen years it was looked upon as possessed of no credit, and, for that very reason, each day acquired more and more power, not, indeed, in public places and in ante-chambers, but in men's consciences. It may be boldly asserted that the greatest and most definite progress which the Christian religion can justly claim for itself since the commencement of the present century was made during that period. We do not deduce from this fact that systematic hostility to the ruling powers is necessary for the propagation of religious ideas, for intestine strifes are evils and not to be fomented; but that the sacred ministry, to have influence upon rulers, must possess a degree of independence carried even to the extent of pride, and bringing into prominence its abandonment of all things earthly, and its absolute indifference to worldly interests.

From 1830 to 1851, whatever may have been the true motives of its estrangement and indifference, the Catholic clergy was benefited by the situation. It had prospered and increased in numbers, it had won for itself, to the great advantage of Christian belief, the esteem, the respect, and even the minds of persons who, until then, had been rebellious and inclined to disparage it. Was it aware of the cause of this unusual kindliness of feeling? Did it comprehend how much this was to be preferred, for the cause of religion and for its own sake, to former courtly favors? Has it since guarded against the temptations which have surrounded it? Has it persevered in burning incense before God only, in adoring none but him? Have not more earthly and apparently less disinterested bursts of enthusiasm caused it to lose a goodly portion of the conquered ground? These are questions which it may be well not to look into too deeply; but enough is known concerning them to enable us to understand how it came that, during the fifteen years that have just elapsed, the radical vice of the Concordat, the spirit in which it was framed, the danger of establishing between Christianity and the absolute power a so-called natural alliance, a kind of necessary complicity, have awakened in the hearts of some Christians objections, fears, and antipathies now more active and potent than ever.

We next behold one of the great incidents of the Christian awakening whose history M. Guizot recounts. The First Consul, by raising the altar from the dust, partly obeying the great views of his genius, and partly yielding to his despotic instincts; M. de Chateaubriand, by moving and delighting French society by the revelation of the treasures of Christian poetry, of the existence of which it was unaware; M. de Bonald, by honoring the governmental traditions of the old régime by translating them into metaphysical theories; M. de Maistre, by outpouring, in floods of fiery eloquence, overwhelming invective against the revolutionary spirit; all these but paid homage to noble ruins, and, hurling indignation at the destroyers, made a generous attempt to rehabilitate the past, to glorify it, and to give it renewed life. The important questions, the questions of the future, are not yet propounded. It is not sufficient that Christianity should be restored; it must be given health, and taught to live in peace and friendship with a power henceforward beyond all estimate, with an irresistible force—that of modern civilization. How could the Christian, and more especially the Catholic Church, be led to acknowledge the liberty of civil society as constituted by the French revolution? How could that society be brought to respect the just rights of the church? Such was the problem that could not fail to speedily appear.

Until the year 1830, the question was only foreshadowed; its solution was by no means urgent. As Catholicism had recovered under the government of the Restoration its former privilege as a state religion, reconciliation, or a reciprocal tolerance between itself and society, was no longer in discussion. It was understood that its portion was to be secured by an actual struggle, and the secular power was at its disposal—without violence, with due moderation, but not without injury to its authority and detriment to its influence upon men's souls. The Catholic religion had to assume the responsibility as well as accept the profits of its privileged situation. Subsequent to 1830, circumstances changed. Inasmuch as the words "state religion" had been erased from the constitutional compact, no one religion could lay claim to special immunities or occupy an exceptionally exalted position. All enjoyed equal rights. Whatever the number of their adherents, as soon as they were recognized by and receiving a subsidy from the state, the law held them to be equally sacred and deserving of respect. The neutral attitude of the government excited the anger of some Catholics. In their opinion, privilege was the very essence, the normal and vital condition of their belief. The powers of the day, by reducing them to the slender diet of equality and common rights, was guilty not only of indifference and culpable abandonment, but of spoliation and persecution. Their complaints were loudest because their adversaries feigned to have won a most brilliant triumph. Extremes meet: on both sides a firm belief prevailed that, without special support, without the favors of the magistracy and the soldiery, Catholicism had no chance of life, and that, both armies being provided with equally effective weapons, it could never withstand the onslaughts of the foe. The conduct of the persons interested, however, differed; for some wished to be regarded as martyrs, and cursed the atheism of the government, charging it with bringing about the inevitable ruin of the faith; whilst others reproached the same government for its supposed weakness toward the once privileged religion, and accused it of prolonging its existence by secretly favoring it.

During the progress of this conflict there was gradually formed a group of Catholics who contemplated events in an entirely new light. They were all young in years and men of the age; their hearts throbbed with the noble thoughts of liberty and independence that were maddening France for the second time, and, seemingly, carrying the nation back to the dawn of 1789. What did these fervent and sincere Christians, animated by a firm resolve, propose to do? Were they to sacrifice to their religious faith that political faith just born within them? To what end? What was to prevent them from being both Catholic and liberals? In what respect were the principles of the evangels and those of a free government incompatible with each other? Was not the government of the church, in the early ages, the result of the free choice of the faithful? Were not respect for human liberty, love of justice, and opposition to tyranny and barbarity, the glory and actual essence of Christian belief? Had not they who for three centuries had linked religion to the fortunes and precepts of the old monarchy, and identified it with them, really deformed Catholicism?

When these men had become thoroughly convinced not only that their views and their faith were, by no means irreconcilable, but also that it was their duty as Christians to render the church the greatest of all services by checking its retrogressive tendency and reconciling it with the world and with modern ideas, they inaugurated the campaign, unfurled their flag, organized a committee, and commenced the publication of a journal, neglecting none of the means by which to disseminate their ideas and gain accessions to their ranks. Had they been so fortunate as to choose, not a more eloquent, but a less rash and more unimpassioned chief than the Abbé de Lamennais; had the noble minds, the brave hearts, the wondrous talent centred in those grouped around him belonged to men of riper years; had his adherents been less fiery and impatient, and less prejudiced against a new power which was still insecure on its foundation, but was imbued with the spirit of true liberty to such a degree that it imperilled its own existence every day to avoid attacking the rights of its adversaries, and thus overstep the limits of the law; had they understood what service their cause could have expected of that government on the sole condition of not demanding impossibilities, of not harassing and chiding it on all occasions, and of not aiding and abetting its destroyers; in a word, had the same talent, ardor, sincerity, and devotedness been coupled with greater experience, prudence, and practicability, perhaps, after thirty years had gone by, the great work of effecting a reconciliation between the church and the spirit of the age would be more thoroughly comprehended and approved than it is at present. The boldness of the opinions professed from the commencement by liberal Catholics increased the difficulty and rendered the problem more complicated. Their enterprise would certainly not have been one of easy achievement had it even been reduced to the simplest form. Was it not enough to ensure the acceptance, by a majority of the clergy and of the faithful, of the definite results of the revolution, the for ever acquired rights of civil society the blessings of liberty as understood by the July government and by all truly free governments; of liberty based upon the sovereignty of the law, a respect for the rights of all, for the rights of the power as for those of the poorest citizen? By preaching to Catholics extreme liberalism, without either limits or guarantee, Utopian, absolute, aggressive, and revolutionary liberalism, such as was advocated by l'Avenir, the organ of the Abbé de Lamennais and his young friends, they compromised everything, put an end to all attempts at encouragement, terrified those whom they sought to convert, and furnished a pretext to the faithful, in the event of an opportunity being offered them, to throw themselves, out of prudential considerations, into the arms of the absolute power.

The same ardor that carried them, in politics, even to the practice of liberty unrestrained, led them, in religion, to the recognition of the principles of excessive obedience. They never dared dispense with the explicit approval of Rome; her silent consent was deemed insufficient. They ever sought to elicit a reply, notwithstanding the expectant reserve usually and most prudently maintained by the Holy See previous to passing judgment upon any new enterprise. They required a notice or a formal decision. With this object in view, they never hesitated to risk their all; they ceased not their endeavors until the Holy Father had sanctioned or disapproved their action. Then, after the sentence had gone forth, after such words of censure, as might have been anticipated, had been uttered, they were compelled, under pain of rendering themselves amenable to a charge of revolt, to submit, to bow their heads and abandon the field, to the great detriment of the cause in which they labored. Not only had they lost their authority over the minds of a certain portion of the faithful, as was seen when, a few years later, weary of inaction, they reentered the arena, but they had brought about another and greater misfortune: they had made the court of Rome enter, before the time had come, and without the slightest necessity for such a proceeding, upon the course that she now follows, kept to it by her own words. Is it not possible that, had she been questioned at a later day, in other terms and under other circumstances, her reply might have been different?

But it happens that we cannot but admit that, though since the beginning of this century Christianity has achieved in France great and true progress; though valiant adherents and illustrious champions have arisen; though it has recovered little by little a portion of its domains; though it has in certain respects extended the field of its conquests, one success is wanting, one victory has not been achieved, the work commenced in 1830 is still unfinished, the question is no nearer its solution, the entente cordiale is not yet established, and the treaty of peace between Christianity and the spirit of the times has not yet been concluded.

Some persons find consolation for this state of affairs: the attempt to remedy it has borne in their eyes a chimerical appearance, and they look upon the discord which most men would quell as most natural. Has not this manner of war, they say, ever raged between the lay spirit and the religious spirit? Has not Christianity, since its infancy, been destined to blame and combat, century after century, the prevailing ideas and tastes; has not this been its part, its mission, and, it may be said, its glory? Why seek to change that which has always been? Christian faith is now, as ever, quite intolerant toward the age in which it thrives: do not interfere with events; it must be so. To these arguments we would answer by stating that, not to discriminate between two objects as distinct from each other as the spirit of the age which, to speak in general terms, is the worldly spirit, that train of never-changing passions and vices reappearing at all periods under slightly different forms—and the spirit of each age taken separately—that is to say, the uniformity of ideas, manners, and institutions which give to the society of each century its peculiar traits—is to quibble as to the significance of words and deal in mere equivocation. That Christianity is the natural, permanent, and necessary adversary of the worldly spirit and of the vices and passions of men; that it is such at all times, in all places, in the present as in the past; to assert that to give its followers a word of advice as to the adoption of innovations under any of these heads would be to mistake and forget its real reason to exist, is incontestable: but to affirm that its very character renders it incapable of adaptation to the spirit of such and such an epoch, and that it can only blame and oppose the ideas, tendencies, and laws of the days in which it lives, is to give to the testimony of history, to the most self-evident and authentic facts, a singular denial. Compare the latter centuries of the empire of the West and the first of the feudal ages: was the state of society, were the manners, customs, and institutions of those days the same? Could aught have been more dissimilar and contradictory? Yet, did not Christianity first uphold the empire until it crumbled into the dust, and subsequently aid most cheerfully and efficaciously in the establishment of the feudal power? Again, when the monarchical system gradually regained the ascendency and triumphed over feudal anarchy, did Christianity prove an obstacle to the movement? Did it offer any opposition to the change? Did it not submit to it with a good will? Did it not share the ideas, principles, and even the good fortune and greatness of royalty? What we now demand of it is, to do once more that which it has always done, to recognize without regret and without hostility a necessary and irrevocable change—a change in conformity with the nature of circumstances, and therefore legitimate; in a word, we call upon it to treat the modern spirit of the day as it has treated all other modern spirits that have successively appeared.

Why should a reconciliation be at present peculiarly difficult and embarrassing? Are thoughts of liberty foreign and unknown to Christianity? Has Christianity never acted in accordance with them? Have not those thoughts watched, rather, over the cradle of religion? Has not that system of elections, discussion, and censure which honors our modern spirit come forth from the very womb of the church? To make peace with liberty, to become suited to its rule, to understand and bless its gifts, does not imply the necessity of absolving it from its errors, approving its crimes, or making the slightest concession to disorder and anarchy. Never mind, it will be said, do not mingle religion and party questions, do not inspire it with any interest in wrangles of such a kind. The more persistently Christianity stands aloof from the affairs of this world, the more solid will be the foundation of its power. With these views we cordially agree, and but recently dwelt upon their importance; but of however little moment politics or worldly affairs be to them, however deeply engrossed by prayer and good works, can the most religious mind and the clergy itself live on this earth in utter ignorance of events? To attack the vices, meannesses, and misdeeds of the time, must they not know them, and by their own knowledge? We ask of those pious souls who are most terrified by the coupling of the words liberalism and religion, do they complain because eloquent speakers denounce and stigmatize from the pulpit the wanderings of the spirit of modern times and the revolutionary delirium, those impious doctrines, the curse of families and society? If religion is to wage war upon civil liberty, ought it not to be authorized to allude to beneficial freedom? Ought it not to be encouraged to speak of it in kindly terms, to place it in the brightest light, to make us understand and cherish it? If not, what is Christianity, and what fate have you in store for it? Would you make of it but a puny doctrine, a privilege to be enjoyed by a few chosen ones only, the tardy and solitary consolation of those whom old age and grief separate from the world? If you seek nothing else of it, if it be sufficient for you to have it live just enough to prevent the recording of its death, like a ruin guarded by archaeology, and preserved and respected in its tottering condition, then keep it apart from the rising generation, from the flood of democracy; let it be isolated and grow old; let it seek a place of concealment, and there, contenting itself with the praises of the past, dwell in disdain of the present, lacking indulgence for all persons and things—chagrin, morose, and unpopular. But if, with a better understanding of its true destiny, you desire it to exercise a salutary influence not only upon yourselves and your friends, but upon all humanity; if you wish it to enter into the hearts of all your brothers, young and old, small and great—to inspire men with the spirit of justice and truth—to transform, purify, and regenerate them, let it speak to them in their own language; let it become interested in their ideas; let it suit itself to their peculiarities—not like a weak flatterer, but as a loving father, who takes unto himself his children and becomes a child for their sake, by sharing their tastes while correcting their errors, guarding them from the perils of life, and pointing out to them the narrow and straight paths of wisdom and truth.

To Be Concluded In Next Number.