Chapter V · (continued 2)

M. Alphonse Du Pasquier declared that the responsibility of recent events undoubtedly lay at the door of the citizens who invited the Salvation Army to come to Neuchâtel. He had been at some of the meetings at the Hotel Mont Blanc, and observed that the disturbances were at first caused by eight or ten children or young men. The other persons assembled were listening quietly. It would only have been necessary to make an appeal to the quiet part of the auditory in order to give effect to the action of the gendarmes. He regretted for the honour of the Canton that the police had shown itself so powerless to quell the disturbances. If it had taken up the matter at the beginning it would have found no difficulty in fulfilling its duties. He could scarcely believe the sight before him. The Council of State sitting to forbid private meetings! If the Neuchâtel citizens then had no longer any right to invite to their houses whom they pleased, and if gendarmes were sent to interrupt private meetings, what became of the inviolability of domicile, guaranteed by the Constitution? The Council regarded the Salvation Army as a corporation because its members obeyed a chief. According 182to that theory the whole Roman Catholic Church would be entitled a corporation, seeing that all its members were obedient to a chief also. Among us we have no official definition of a religious corporation, and the question has never been raised practically. M. Du Pasquier considered the question ought to be examined by a Legislative Commission. It seemed to him that there were times when Republican magistrates, in spite of the unpopularity which they might risk in doing so, ought boldly to do their duty in defence of the Constitution, whatever might be the consequences.

M. Comtesse, President of the Grand Council, made merry over the question, regretting that the eccentricities of the Salvation Army had not been treated by the people of Neuchâtel as a simple religious epidemic, after the passage of which it would be necessary to disinfect the town. Unfortunately, the matter was too grave for that, and the disturbances had been so serious that the police had been powerless to repress them. A good deal had been said about the advisability of having special constables^[28]—a voluntary police—but such special constables would be impossible at Neuchâtel. Their presence would inevitably have given rise to conflicts and rows, and perhaps even to bloodshed. The very sight of such constables would have created disturbances. The Government had been obliged to take account of the facts, and it was impossible to remain indifferent to them. The inquiry which they had instituted concerning the Salvation Army, had brought out the fact that it is a religious corporation, and even styled itself a corporation. Its primary motive, he said, was to make money—to amass a great fortune; it rested on the principle of absolute 183obedience to a chief, no discussion or voting being allowed. If it was not a corporation, what was a corporation? Hence the Council of State was forced to impose upon it the conditions of Article 72 of the Constitution, and to forbid its meetings. He assured M. Du Pasquier that he had no idea that the Council of State would send gendarmes to violate the houses of private persons: but if the police should hear that meetings were held in spite of the prohibition of the authorities, it would report to the magistrates, and the delinquents would be prosecuted.

M. Jacottet, in reply to the question of M. Cornaz, “What was to be done in the meanwhile?” said the Council of State would no doubt cause its decree of prohibition to be respected as soon as it was pronounced. But in the meanwhile, was it not necessary to defend the right of meeting and the right of association?

M. Cornaz: By no means.

M. Jacottet (with a shrug of the shoulders): Have we come to that? Does the Council of State, he asked, declare itself powerless in the presence of these disturbances, and pretend to have no means of protecting private houses, religious liberty, personal liberty, and the right of public meeting against such attacks as occurred the other evening? In one word, has the Council of State professed itself too weak to uphold the Constitution?—for it was the Constitution which was imperilled, not the Salvation Army. The police had been very weak, no doubt, simply because the police had not been backed up; but if it were necessary, the Militia might be called up, and they could not be better employed, or in a nobler cause than in defending the liberty of the citizens. He was as much a friend of the people as M. Cornaz, but he would never sacrifice his convictions to the desire of popularity.

M. H. Morel spoke strongly of the restrictions to religious liberty in the Article of the Constitution, in which it is stated that the liberty of worship could only be claimed if the worship was carried on in a manner not contrary to “public 184order and good behaviour.” He maintained that the Salvation Army had disturbed public order. M. Jacottet had spoken of calling out the troops. He (the speaker), was shocked to hear such words. Might not this lead even to civil war? Moreover, where would they find soldiers willing to defend the Salvation Army?

M. Cornaz accused M. Jacottet of being a doctrinaire, and wishing to kindle a civil war. Replying to M. Du Pasquier, he said special constables were one of those importations from Great Britain which they in Switzerland did not want to have anything to do with. The Salvation Army, the British and Continental Federation, and a Special Constabulary! The people of Neuchâtel wished nothing better than that they should all be packed off again across the English Channel, whence they came!

M. Jacottet said he was accused of wishing to kindle civil war, when he said the first duty of the State was to guarantee the rights of citizens, and if necessary even to employ public force. He maintained that opinion. M. Cornaz had called him a doctrinaire; so he was, and he hoped to remain so. Everyone needed a doctrine—that is to say, a principle—and he who was without one was like a mariner without a compass.

M. Jeanrenaud maintained in the name of the people, to whom he was attached, that he had no sympathy with the handful of cowards who caused the disturbances in the streets. There would have been no need of gendarmes to keep order if the Council of State had accepted the offer made by a certain number of citizens belonging to all classes and to different political and religious parties to form themselves into a band of special constables. Order would then have been promptly re-established. In support of the motion of M. Jacottet, he proposed that all the petitions relative to the Salvation Army should be placed on the same footing, and that the Council should not pass to the Orders of the Day upon the two latter only.

The debate being closed, the voting began.

185A motion of M. Jacottet was rejected by 50 votes against 15.

M. Jeanrenaud’s motion was rejected by 43 votes against 14.

An amendment proposed by M. Morel was adopted.

The decree of the Grand Council, forbidding the meetings of the Salvation Army, was then carried by 57 votes against 14.

A Swiss friend, who was present at this debate, wrote to England as follows:—

“The debates were most interesting, but very, very sad; for only two or three speakers dealt with the question from the point of view of principle. Liberty and justice were represented in this Council by a minority of 14 against 57, and a revolting resolution was passed, proclaiming that all religious exercises connected with this movement should be stopped, whether conducted by English or Swiss people, in private houses or anywhere else. All persons who have taken part in such meetings received a circular the next day from the Prefect of Police, forbidding them not only to hold any such meetings again, but never again even to attend any such meetings in any place whatsoever.”

A correspondent of the Christian wrote:—

“The tremendous significance of such an attack on freedom and personal rights must surely be evident to every man and woman who understands the merest elements of justice. This precedent will serve as a justification for the tyrannical suppression of any movement in future which may not happen to please the dominant party of the day in Switzerland—a party hostile to religion, and leaning towards a strongly centralized and despotic form of Government.”

The final decree of the Council of State forbidding all Salvationist meetings was published, as has been said, on the 20th of June. M. Cornaz, the President of the Department of Justice and Police, gave thanks for this event in his own fashion in his organ, the Reveil, and in the following words:—

“It is finished! Thank God! For some years past from time to time the good city of Neuchâtel has been visited by those talkers and workers of miracles, who appeal to the nervous sensibilities of certain people, and to 186those depths of human folly, to which, a philosopher has said, there are no limits. We had the Missionary Havich, then Donato; and now we have the Salvation Army. There is a family likeness amongst all these invasions. The same infamous quackery on the one side, the same inexhaustible credulity on the other. It makes one doubt whether a portion of the citizens retain any remnants of good sense. Every one who attends these representations is doubtless placed in a dilemma—they must either figure as dupes or as accomplices. It does not surprise us to see the persons who are possessed of a religious monomania going in for the eccentric practices of this new sect. They are all marching along the highway to Prefargier. The lunatic asylums will have a large number of additional inmates presently. Public opinion has been grieved, on the other hand, to see a man whose name is connected in the most honourable manner possible with the establishment of our Republic, entering into the debates relative to the Salvation Army. An experienced patriot, and a just and high-minded magistrate as he was in the most difficult and agitated times in our history, the Canton of Neuchâtel owes him a great debt. We speak of M. Aimé Humbert. But has not his judgment been warped by the British and Continental Federation (for the Abolition of Regulated Vice) for whose presence amongst us there is not the shadow of an excuse? Their advent here was already too much, and the more recent advent of the Salvation Army is the consummation.”

After the Grand Council’s decree of the 20th June, M. Convert continued, as before, to maintain his rights as a Swiss citizen, and to open his house to whom he pleased. Others did the same. The more violent portion of the population, under the influence of their sympathising leaders in authority, seeing that even this measure did not prevent the Salutistes from being received by Neuchâtel citizens, and from worshipping God after their own manner, formed themselves into a sort of police, and, stationing themselves every night at the corners of all the principal streets, they watched for the appearance of Salvationists; as soon as one was perceived, a signal was given by a whistle, the steps of the Salvationist were dogged, and a watch was posted at the door of any house he or she was seen to enter. If other persons were seen to enter also, the alarm was raised, a crowd collected, and speedy notice was given to the police to come to the spot. This self-constituted anti-Salvationist police on one occasion perceived several friends of the Army entering a 187house. They immediately collected a crowd, which besieged the house, and the Prefect was sent for in all haste. He arrived with two gendarmes. On entering the drawing-room, they found half-a-dozen people quietly chatting together. The Prefect immediately charged them with the offence of holding an illegal Salvation meeting. They replied that they were not members of the Salvation Army, and were only having a simple conversation. But the Prefect, pointing to a bible which lay upon the table, declared that that furnished proof that the meeting was a Salvation meeting, and therefore illegal. The inmates of the house having at last succeeded in satisfying him that their little gathering was not such as to endanger the interests of the State, he left. On going out into the street, he was grossly insulted by the mob, enraged at finding themselves disappointed of their prey.

A similar incident had occurred at la Coudre, a village between Neuchâtel and St. Blaise. A band of roughs attacked a private house in which a few persons, strangers to the Salvation Army, had assembled for reading and prayer. The windows were broken, several of the persons present were assaulted and hurt, and the bible which they had been reading was trampled under foot.

In the month of July, being at Neuchâtel, I attended a meeting (in the Temperance Hall in the Rue du Château), of members of the British and Continental Federation for the Abolition of the State-Regulation of Vice. The weather was intensely hot, and the windows were of necessity kept wide open. The proceedings had been very quietly conducted, and the suspicions therefore of the Salutist-hunters had not been excited. But at the close of the meeting, a venerable pastor, moved, as were many others, by the contemplation of the subject which had been treated—the prevalence of impurity and its sanction, in Switzerland as well as elsewhere, as an organised institution of the State—offered a fervent prayer for the purification of his country, and for the youth of his own and all lands. He raised his voice in the earnestness 188of his pleading and was heard in the streets. The ringleaders of the opposition to religion and law were skulking in the neighbourhood, according to their wont, watching the movements of those suspected of being about to meet to pray. The voice of prayer is to them the signal to be on the alert, and they rush upon those who are heard as worshipping God outside a church, like bloodhounds upon their prey. On this occasion we caught the sound of their deep-throated growlings under the windows, and I then realized more fully than before the folly of the authorities of that city, in thus permitting the worst passions and prejudices to rule, and freely to run riot among the liberties of the people. Some explanation adroitly given by a young lady from a window above us, concerning the object of the meeting, in the course of which she remarked, “certain of your own pastors are there,” had the effect of allaying the suspicions of these wretched men, and they retired. There were present amongst us “tall Jacques” and several other Swiss Salvationists, converts from a life of sin or carelessness, and now ready to help the work of the Federation, seeing it to be a part of the great world-wide conflict against the powers of darkness. On retiring to my hotel that night I found rest and sleep prevented until the morning by the continued wild cries and coarse songs of drunken men,^[29] whose voices, singly or in 189chorus, echoed through the streets and open spaces of the city as they reeled along or hung about in groups. There was no police to interfere with these, although their ribaldry might strike on the ears of many a pure woman or child, or Christian man on his knees at the midnight hour. But a voice raised in prayer to God is so discordant in the ears of the party which now reigns, that it must be silenced; and if silenced by violence, it may be “regrettable,” but cannot be interfered with by the police.

Happily now for the Salutistes the summer was at hand. Meetings were held in the Canton, in forests, and on the Jura slopes, where no annoyance could be caused to M. Cornaz and his friends the roughs, by their fervent prayers or their glad songs of praise. Probably at the early hours when they met, most of the public functionaries and rioters were still in their beds. Captain Becquet continued his labours for the salvation of souls with his usual indomitable cheerfulness. A little man, of sprightly bearing and character—humorous, playful, courageous as a lion, lythe as a squirrel, he seemed the very man for such times. His constant joy of soul won many to inquire concerning the salvation which had thus set him free from all care, while it seemed to aggravate the hatred of his enemies. He was often attacked and pursued. On one occasion gendarmes surrounded a house in which Becquet was with others at prayer, in order to arrest him. His friends considered, and Becquet agreed, that he could be of more use to the cause for the present if free, than he could be in prison. He ran upstairs, crept out upon the roof of the house, scrambled across several roofs, first taking an amused and furtive look down over the eaves at the gendarmes waiting below for their escaped victim, and then scrambled down without much difficulty to his own dwelling, and was in bed and fast asleep when the police came round to enquire for him. The possibility of so nimble an escape did not occur to them, and he was left unmolested. Miss Patrick wrote at this time:—

“We have marched through difficulty after difficulty in 190Neuchâtel, and at this moment if our trust were not in God we should be without hope. But we know that at one word from Him all our enemies would be confounded. He does not, perhaps, pronounce this word now, in order to prove us; but we have the conviction that the Lord of Hosts will not permit His work to be destroyed. It would be impossible to give here all the details of what has passed during the last few weeks. Those whom we have sought to rescue from evil have been deceived, prejudiced by our enemies, who have succeeded in making them believe that we seek our own interests, and thus they are furious against us. The troubles occasioned by the last private meeting have manifested this. On Wednesday evening the house of one of our friends was besieged by a band of roughs, who hurled against it a torrent of stones, even tearing up the pavement to furnish missiles. (And this occurs in the nineteenth century, and in a free country so-called.) We attended the sitting of the Grand Council, which reminded us forcibly of the times when the Apostles appeared before the Sanhedrim; there was the same hatred, the same false accusations, the same evident purpose to stamp out these people ‘who exceedingly trouble our city,’ (Acts xvi., 20). Our enemies do not hesitate to say boldly that we bring divisions into families, that our end is to amass a great fortune, &c., &c., &c. We put all that into the hands of our God, who searches all hearts, and before whom these men will have to appear face to face with us. I ask myself if our persecutors can think as calmly of that moment as we do. One thing which has pained us is to see how little they understand the Gospel, how little they know Him who is the friend of publicans and sinners. They show this in accusing us of trailing religion in the mud, of exhibiting upon our platforms jail birds and drunkards, who say they are saved. The result of this is not only that the English are forbidden to hold their meetings, but that a Swiss in his own country and in his own Canton must not pray and sing with whom he likes.

“God keep our soldiers in all these storms! We believe 191they will come through the fight as gold proved by fire—more independent of man, more dependent upon God—sanctified soldiers, filled with the Holy Ghost. Pray for us, and bless God for all that He has done, and all that He will do at Neuchâtel.

“Yours, fighting for Jesus,

K. H. Patrick.”

Another writes:—

“Our friends who used to receive us have been notified by the Prefect that they must cease to receive the Salutistes. X. (a man high in the country ) says that law is set aside just now; the roughs are masters; what they ask they must have. Our brave soldiers are like fishes out of water—they cannot assemble anywhere to pray; they are spied upon and hunted like brigands. I tremble for Neuchâtel. They have been unwise not to accept the Saviour. What folly to reject their best friend! If they only knew how good He is! We will continue to put our trust in Him.”

From the same officer:—

“The soldiers meet in groups of half-a-dozen in their own houses, and must take great care not to be spied. This time the authorities show themselves in their true colours; hatred of the Gospel, and of Jesus the Crucified. There in two words is the whole of the cause of the persecution which rages at this moment. If there were no converts they would have left us perfectly quiet. But the Prince of this world is roused when he sees his kingdom attacked. It is not over—he still roars, and he will roar again; for the ranks of Christ are preparing for a lutte acharnée against the principalities and powers and the evil spirits which are in the air. Our God and His Christ shall have the victory. We are persuaded that neither persecution nor affliction, nor prison nor sword, nor Councils of State, can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

192I conclude this portion of my narrative with the following beautiful testimony from a Neuchâtel convert:—

“I render thanks to God for what He has done for me. At the age of thirteen I was apprenticed. I remained four and a-half years with my master, during which time I went through my religious instruction. What a sad time was that! I am ashamed when I think of it. Religion was for me a mere show by which I obtained a reputation. My life in the world was a deception. I was honest in the world’s eyes, but God alone knows what was in my heart. My body a temple of the Holy Spirit! No, it was the temple of a LEGION OF DUMB DEVILS. I was restrained in my outward life. I went to church; I went there voluntarily, and was indeed a pillar of it. The Christian Union also counted on me as one of its most assiduous and Christian members. All that did not hinder me from being the slave of my earthly desires and lusts. What a sad life! I wished to be saved by faith, but I kept my pleasures. I was saved in hope, but not in reality—not from sin. When the Salvation Army arrived in Geneva they spoke of it in Neuchâtel, both good and evil. It was at a moment when I was most discouraged, and most miserable spiritually; it was also a moment when my sins weighed most heavily on me, and I thirsted for salvation. At last the blessed Army came to Neuchâtel. At first sight I thought it was eccentric. But when I heard its members speak with such force of persuasion, and such love, and above all such faith in the efficacy of the blood of Jesus to purify, to save, to deliver, to vivify, I was irresistably impelled to accept this salvation, this complete deliverance from sin. I resisted for three days—pride kept me back. It was on the 24th January, 1883 (happy day), when Jesus Christ saved me from my sins, and cleansed me for His service.

“Now, my only wish is to do the will of my Heavenly Father, that He may be glorified in me.

“Henri ——

“Neuchâtel, June, 1883.”

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