Chapter VIII

The Times of September 26th, 1883, remarks, concerning the scene which I am about to describe: “There is a curious old-world look in a telegram which we publish this morning from Geneva, relating how a citizen of that Canton has braved the authorities in vindicating the principle of religious liberty.”

M. Audeoud, one of those citizens of Geneva who hold fast all the good traditions of liberty and of justice, has played a prominent part in the late conflict, and will probably continue to do so; for the present history of the events I have been describing must close shortly after his challenge has been given to the illegal decrees of the Geneva Government, and before the record can reach us of the succeeding acts of the drama which will have to be played out. On Sunday, 23rd September, a large meeting of Salvationists and others was held in the house of M. Audeoud, who has a country residence about two miles from Geneva, with extensive wooded grounds. A report had been current during the previous week that such a meeting would take place; it had, indeed, been announced at several private meetings of the Salutistes. The police in consequence made their plans. At half-past two in the afternoon a number of Salutistes were seen gathering in the grounds at Conches, or pursuing the road from Florissant in that direction. There were many young men among them, most of them having the “S.” on their collars. The drawing-room and dining-room on the ground floor of M. Audeoud’s house were occupied by this assembly, which, however, afterward became so numerous as to form an audience also in the grounds immediately around the house.

The proceedings had scarcely begun when the Mayor of Chêne Bougeries, M. Aubert (the same who had arrested the Salutistes at the cemetery, at the funeral of Wyssa), arrived 279with a company of his agents at the house of M. Audeoud. The latter, with his wife, Mme. Audeoud, were in the drawing-room. The Mayor presented himself, and explained to the master of the house the motive of his visit, demanding, in a judicial manner, that the meeting should be dissolved. M. Audeoud persisted in declaring his intention to show hospitality to the members of the Salvation Army. A long discussion ensued. M. Audeoud then opened the Penal Code, which he held in his hand, and read before the Mayor and his attendants several of the articles concerning religious liberty and freedom of meeting. The only reply which the Mayor made was to open and display a placard, bearing the decree of the Council of State, of the 2nd February of the same year, forbidding the Salutistes’ meetings. He then asked M. Audeoud if this was a public meeting, and received the following reply:—“I shall admit to this meeting all who present themselves with a proper motive, while I maintain my right to dismiss from this meeting all who come with the purpose of disturbing our proceedings.” Upon this, the Mayor and his companions retired. During the hour which followed the attendance increased greatly, and now numbered about three hundred persons. At three o’clock, while they were on their knees in prayer, hasty footsteps were again heard upon the gravel walk outside; the Mayor and his attendant again presented themselves, accompanied by three gendarmes, an agent of the rural police, and an agent de la Sûreté.

M. Audeoud now stood surrounded by several friends, prominent citizens of Geneva, MM. Alfred and Edmund Pictet, jurists, M. Lenoir, banker, &c. The Salvationists did not cease their singing, but continued the joyous chorus of one of their hymns—

“Les Salutistes sont toujours en fête.”

The Mayor again addressed M. Audeoud, and said: “M. Audeoud, you are aware why I have come here. I have already told you my object an hour ago. I come to dissolve this meeting.” In a voice much more calm, and 280quite as firm, M. Audeoud replied: “Sir, in the name of the three following rights, I forbid you to dissolve this meeting: The right of freedom of assembly; of liberty of worship; and of the inviolability of domicile.” Standing before that large and quiet concourse of people, animated by one steady principle and fixed purpose, M. Audeoud, taking off his hat in token of respect for the law, again opened the Penal Code, and slowly and clearly read out to the magisterial and police forces before him as follows: “Article 108 of the Penal Code. Every magistrate, administrative or judiciary, or agent, or officer of justice or of police, every agent of the public police force who, acting in his official character, shall enter the house of any citizen against the will of him who occupies it, except in cases clearly defined by the law, and without all the formalities prescribed by the law, shall be punished by imprisonment of from eight days to six months, and by a fine of from thirty to three hundred francs.” He also read Article 107: “Whosoever by threats or violence shall in any way attack the freedom of worship and freedom of teaching or the liberty of the press or of meeting, shall be punished with the same penalty.” “Therefore,” said M. Audeoud, looking at the Mayor, “I request you to retire.”

The Mayor then read aloud the decree of the Council of State of the 2nd February, which suspended the exercises of the Salvation Army, adding: “In pursuance of this decree I must dissolve this meeting, which is a public meeting as you yourself have allowed.”

M. Audeoud: “Pardon me, I did not allow that. I am free to admit to my house all persons who wish to take part in this meeting, but I reserve the right of refusing entrance to the meeting to those who come here with the manifest intention of interrupting it.”

The Marshall attending the Mayor: “This a public meeting.”

M. Audeoud: “I forbid you to go a step further!” So saying, M. Audeoud placed himself resolutely in front of the 281Mayor to prevent his further entrance, and added, “I call these gentlemen around to witness. I have a legal case against you.”

The Mayor: “Under these circumstances I will force my way in.”

M. Audeoud: “You mean to push me aside?”

A policeman: “Yes, we shall force an entrance.”

M. Audeoud: “Then you will have to walk over my person.”

The Mayor, who had taken off his scarf, his badge of office, waved it so as to display it to the citizens assembled, and said “With this can I not pass?”

At this moment Madame Audeoud came to the side of her husband, the brothers Pictet and M. Lenoir being also around him, filling the entrance. The Mayor, however, pushed his way through the group, followed by his chief agent, and made an attempt to approach the door of the salon whence the sounds of prayer were proceeding. M. Audeoud and his wife, however, slipped past them and reached the door before them, stationing themselves upon the threshold. M. Audeoud said in a loud voice, “You will not proceed a step further; I am master of my own house!”

The Mayor confronting M. Audeoud shouted with a loud voice which could be heard by all present: “In the name of the decree of the Council of State I declare this meeting dissolved.”

It was a remarkable scene. At the moment when the Mayor with agitated countenance called out these words looking over the shoulder of M. Audeoud, the assembled worshippers, led by a young man of Neuchâtel, were singing one of the Salutiste’s hymns:—

“Les Salutistes sont toujours vainqueurs.”

Their voices sounded in joyous and harmonious accord, contrasting strangely with the harsh, troubled tones of the Mayor. Several could be heard praying aloud, asking the 282presence of God in the midst of this strange scene, and expressing confidence in Him.

When the Mayor had made his proclamation sufficiently heard, M. Audeoud replied firmly: “I resist your authority” and then the whole police force retired. Some of those present believed they heard the Mayor say to the agents as they left the garden, “We are not sufficiently numerous, we must return in force.”

In dealing with this strange scene the Times again remarks:—

“The Mayor, who entered that gentleman’s house, seems to have been disconcerted when M. Audeoud told him that he was liable to be sued in damages for having violated the domicile of a Swiss citizen; and the scene was rendered additionally impressive by M. Audeoud removing his hat in token of respect for the law, as he read the articles of the Constitution which guarantee to every citizen liberty of conscience. Geneva is the last place in which one could have expected to hear of such an episode as this; and it must be hoped that now the question of religious liberty has been mooted, the Swiss will seriously reconsider the position which they have taken up as regards the Salvationists.”

The Mayor having retired, the meeting continued as if nothing extraordinary had happened. Until half-past five in the evening there was a succession of addresses, testimonies, prayers and hymns. Great calmness and a feeling of confidence prevailed. Not one word was heard against the public authorities. On the contrary, in their prayers petitions were addressed to God for a blessing upon the police, the Council of State, the Mayor, &c.

The only consequence which immediately followed was a proclamation against M. Audeoud for non-compliance with the decree of 2nd February.

During a former meeting at his own house, M. Audeoud discovered a member of the police force lying upon the ground behind a tree in a copse, at a point from which he could watch the house and all who approached it. When discovered he pretended to awake out of a heavy sleep, but M. Audeoud recognised him, and seeing that, the spy ran off, scrambling rather ignominiously through a hedge, and 283joined the rest of the “armed force,” who were waiting outside the grounds, ready to come down upon any meeting suspected of containing Salutistes.

The Evangelical Alliance of Switzerland having been awakened, though somewhat tardily, to the full significance of the attacks made in Switzerland on religious liberty, addressed an appeal to the Swiss people, from which the following are extracts:—

“Dear Fellow-Citizens,—For some time past events have been passing in Switzerland which we cannot but regard with much regret. Religious meetings have been violently disturbed. Those who attended them, sometimes defenceless women, have been the butt of insults and even of personal assaults. Private houses, the refuge of every citizen, have not always been respected. The occasion of all these outbreaks of violence has been, as all are aware, the arrival of the Salvation Army in Switzerland. We can understand that its methods of action displease some, but this is no justification whatever of persecution in a free country which glories in its liberty. We are convinced that the great majority of the Swiss people deprecate persecution as only worthy of an age of gross ignorance and brutality. It is with confidence therefore that we address you, free citizens, counselling you to hold firmly the religious liberty which the Federal Council has so distinctly guaranteed. Claim it for yourselves, claim it for foreigners, claim it for all.... Has not our country been a refuge where those persecuted for their religion or for their politics have found safety? Have we not opened our doors to thousands of fugitives? Let us recall our past history. It is because our fathers have so freely opened their doors to fugitives to our land, that Switzerland has received the blessing of God, and the esteem and gratitude of other nations.... Many times already the Evangelical Alliance, whom we have the honour to represent, has raised its voice in favour of religious liberty. In Spain, in Italy, in Sweden, in Russia, in Bohemia, &c., it has intervened in favour of unprotected men persecuted for their religious convictions. It cannot, therefore, be silent when in Switzerland itself religious liberty is threatened. It does not, however, desire to instigate the general intervention of this vast association; but we esteem it is the imperious duty of the Swiss Branch of the Alliance to protest solemnly against this violation of the most sacred rights; and that which binds us to such a course of action is not only the obligation imposed on every free citizen to watch with jealous care that no one lays hands on his liberty, but it is still more the higher law, which is binding on every Christian, that law of grace and love which Jesus Christ came to bring into the world, and for which he shed his blood on the cross. We earnestly 284deprecate, therefore, all violence, and every attempt to extinguish by brute force the liberty of those who think differently from ourselves. We may strive against error, but only with a spiritual arm. We must respect all religious convictions so long as they do not offend against morality or the law.

“Freedom of conscience is one of the noblest acquirements of civilization, and the nation which allows it to be curtailed is in the position of seeming to doubt the power of truth. Let us arouse ourselves to the work as fellow citizens; let us unite our efforts in order that in every part of Switzerland religious liberty shall be respected and enjoyed by all and for all without distinction.

“May God continue to protect our beloved country, and preserve to us the most precious of gifts—justice and liberty.

“Signed for the Swiss branch of the Evangelical Alliance.”

According to the usual custom, the authors of this appeal prepared to placard it in the conspicuous places used for advertisements, having only to go through the formality of giving notice of the same to the Department of Police. To their great astonishment they received from M. Héridier the following message forbidding them to publish their appeal: “You attack us in it. The public pillars (advertising stations) are ours; we cannot grant them to you in order to attack us.”

About the same date the following petition was addressed to the Council of State of the Canton of Geneva:—

“We, the undersigned, all Genevese or citizens of other Swiss Cantons, electors, and domiciled in the Canton of Geneva, come before you respectfully to submit the following:

“Possessed of our right to the free exercise of our judgment, ... we have become members or adherents of the Salvation Army, whose doctrine and practices have appeared to us conformable to the truth, and responding to the aspirations of our souls. We possess, consequently, the right of following their methods of worship, and of uniting ourselves together toward this end, without being hindered by any restriction beyond that which can be legally imposed on the exterior exercises of our worship. The State owes us not only tolerance, but protection. This obligation is formally expressed in our Constitutional Law of the 26th August, 1868, Article 2.

“Individual liberty is guaranteed to us as it is to all other citizens by Article 2 of the Constitution, and that liberty has always been considered amongst us to carry with it the right of association, and consequently of meeting.

285“All Genevese are equal before the law, as proclaimed by Article 2 of our Constitution. We come to claim this equality in practice, and we refuse to admit that the right of meeting and of association, for every kind of object which is not illegal, can be limited in what specially concerns ourselves.

“Since the time when we began to follow the religious assemblies of the Salvation Army up to the present moment, we have been disturbed, and hunted from place to place, by enemies whom we need not specify, and even by the agents of authority themselves. Such a fact can only arise from a false application of your decree of the 2nd February last. It is impossible that this decree could take upon itself to deprive citizens of their constitutional rights; nevertheless, since that time we are not allowed to unite, are constantly disturbed, and our constitutional rights violated in the most serious manner.

“Under these circumstances, we, the free citizens of a free country, address ourselves to the Government of our country. We now have recourse to you gentlemen, praying you publicly to recognise that we ought not to be deprived of the rights guaranteed to every citizen, and in consequence to take such measures as may be needful in order to assure to us the free exercise of these rights, and in particular to cause to be removed every prohibition against uniting to worship together, and for that end to make use of buildings and places which may appertain to us or be placed at our disposal.

“Whatever you do, do justice.

“Geneva, 4th October, 1882.”

(Here follows a long list of signatures of citizens of Geneva.)

Many persons of Geneva and other parts of Switzerland had waited in anxious suspense for the reply of the Genevese Government to this appeal, and also for its appreciation of the address of the Evangelical Alliance.

The Journal de Genève remarked:—“If we may judge by the past, the Government will give no reply whatever, and the petitioners will be forced to carry their appeal to the Federal Tribunal. The right of meeting is now in Geneva nothing more than a favour to be accorded on the permission of M. Héridier, if it pleases him to grant it, as was done in France under the Second Empire.”

The same journal, of a later date, speaks of certain ideas opposed to Constitutional principles, borrowed from Imperial France by M. Héridier, which are gradually accumulating in 286Switzerland. “The protest of the Evangelical Alliance,” it goes on to say, “is drawn up with great firmness, but also with great moderation, and contains not a single word which could be taken exception to. It is purely defensive; the Governments of Geneva and Neuchâtel are not even mentioned by name. It is simply a question of principles, and an appeal to citizens to uphold those principles.”... “The authors of the appeal of the Evangelical Alliance never doubted for a moment that they would be able, according to custom, to placard their bills on the walls. To their extreme astonishment, the Chief of the Department, after having perused the document, refused the authorization desired; and yet this was not the case of an anonymous placard, but one bearing some of the best known and most honourable names of the City of Geneva, among whom M. Héridier might have observed that of a member of the National Council. It contained nothing insulting, no attack on any one at home or abroad, nothing whatever to cause its suppression in this manner, M. Héridier, however, gave as his reason for its quasi-suppression, ‘You attack us in it, and as the public advertising stations belong to us, we do not permit you to make use of them in order to attack us.’”...

“‘The public advertising stations belong to us!’ says M. Héridier. Who, then, is this ‘us’ who take upon themselves to monopolise in their own interests the walls of houses which abut on the streets by calling them public advertising stations? Is it the Council of State, the police, or the entire radicale autoritaire party which so acts? Is it not simply M. Héridier himself?”... “The right to discuss the public acts of the Government by means of placards has been long enjoyed by the citizens of Geneva. The only right the police has to suppress such is when they contain slanders against private persons, or threats of public disturbance or violence; but never in any other case has this right of public criticism been denied. This, then, is a fresh step in the downward path of arbitrary Government.” “We are now at the summit (says 287another Geneva paper) of this frightful edifice in the law of terrorism, which calls upon the tribunals to punish those who desire to be a little more free than it suits his Majesty M. Héridier to allow them to be. Certainly there is in all this a grotesque side which might excite laughter; but it is we who have to pay the price of this hilarity, we who have to submit to the humiliation of being ruled over by a chief of police who does not even understand his own business. It is too grave a matter for laughter.”^[38]

Evidence has been given in the course of this narrative of the revived faith and zeal of many individuals and of some of the churches of French Switzerland during these troubled times. M. Vernier, a French pastor, visited Neuchâtel subsequently to the division which took place in the Eglise Libre, in the Place d’Armes, and on the invitation of members of that Church, filled for a time the place of the minister who had resigned his office as its pastor. M. Vernier wrote the following from Neuchâtel to a friend in Drôme, the Editor of La Chambre Haute:—

“Dear Brother,—A letter in your last number depicts the future of the evangelisation of our dear Drôme in rather dark colours. It seems to your correspondent that the work of revival would be compromised, if not entirely ruined, by the appearance among us of the Salvation Army. Allow me to express here an entirely different opinion. I have been present in several religious revivals in Switzerland, but none has seemed to me more thorough and more likely to be 288durable than the revival which we now see. Three precious elements are prominent in it—the joy of pardon, an ardent thirst for holiness and constant communion with Christ, and a fervent desire to bring perishing souls to Him. I wish you could have been present when more than two hundred Christians of our neighbourhood were re-baptized by the Holy Spirit, their faces illuminated by the Sun of Righteousness, their hearts filled with love to God and man. It would have shown you that we have no reason to give way to fears and discouragements; but on the contrary, that we have a thousand reasons to praise God. From my heart I pity those who cannot see in the present movement an accomplishment of the prophesy of Joel, which we are told will be fulfilled in the last days. Our theologians may dispute other texts of the Word of God, but it is impossible for them to annihilate this. This promise is now being realised, and we ourselves are witnesses of it. And this is just the moment, unhappily, when several amongst us who are regarded as servants of God have chosen to protest, in season and out of season, against the ministry of women, discouraging to some extent the zeal of God’s servants, and alienating the sympathies of others who might have gone forward in their ranks. In my humble opinion it is neither the work of revival nor of evangelisation which is imperilled—for the Lord has given the word, and great is now the company of the preachers—but that which I think are imperilled are our organisations, our forms, our official rules. The Church of God, that company of faithful people, has never had before it so glorious a future. The true Church does not shut its doors to the servants and handmaids of the Lord, nor command silence to the children who shout Hosannas. On the contrary, it says, ‘Come, ye blessed of the Lord of Hosts, let us rejoice together, for our Redeemer cometh to judge the earth, and to be glorified in his saints.’”^[39]

289In order justly to appreciate the present condition of Switzerland, and the difficulties which the Constitutional party there may have to encounter in the future, we must look a little below the surface of the social life of that country. An intelligent inhabitant of Eastern Switzerland said to me last summer, “the old Swiss stock is dying out, or rather it is being thrust out by the perpetual and increasing influx of foreigners pressing in on every side. What is happening to us is in fact what happens when a country is overrun by an invading and conquering army, the process only being much slower. We are being invaded and gradually superceded by an army of foreigners perpetually immigrating towards this centre. The old traditions are passing away; the old stock is less pure, or dying out, and if it continues in this way we shall soon have no nationality of our own.” At Basle the railway station is periodically crowded with Germans entering Switzerland. Many Germans leave home through their dislike of the conscription, and on account of the present poverty-stricken state of a portion of the population resulting from the dominant influence of the military spirit since the Franco-German war, an influence opposed to industrial prosperity and to liberty. 290From the southern side of the Alps there continues to arrive an unceasing stream of indigent Italians, who form a considerable proportion of the working class in the departments of terrace and bridge builders, road repairers, etc. France, Alsace, Bavaria, and Austrian Hungary contribute also their stragglers, for the most part leaving their country from reasons of discontent, ill-success, or even worse. A calculation has been made with regard to the Canton of Neuchâtel which shows that if the present inundation of foreigners continues for seven years longer at the rate at which it is at present going on, the result will be that in the year 1890, only one-third of the whole population will be natives of the Canton. This state of things must enlist our sympathy and respect for that band of true Swiss leaders of thought and of action, who see with sorrow the good traditions of their country passing into oblivion. The men of 1848, trained to a real strength and nobility of character by the severe discipline of the troubled times which preceded that epoch, are dying out, and there remains now little that is homogeneous amongst the people whom we call Swiss. There is, in fact, little to which to appeal, for those who desire to train the better instincts of the masses. For such a conglomeration of international elements, (and by no means always the best elements of the different nations) there is no national tradition possible, no common principle of action, no past to point to, and, in fact, no knowledge for the most part of the great principles which formerly inspired and guided the men who made the country what it was. It is a problem of great difficulty, and not without danger, which the present generation of the true Swiss have to solve.

That Switzerland has been for some years past socially and politically sick, to a dangerous degree, has been well-known to those who have watched carefully the signs of the times. What is the meaning of the fact of the frequent suicides, the record of which has startled us in recent years, amongst those called to offices of responsibility? Does it arise from a sense of their own unworthiness to fill such offices, or of a 291certain despair in encountering the conflict which conscience tells them is approaching for those called to judge and act publicly in accordance with principles which have been secretly violated in their own inner being and life? Or does it point to a loss of moral faith, of hope, of the sense of human dignity; or perhaps sometimes to a secret and unconquerable feeling of disgust and disappointment in having missed the true aim of life? It is scarcely two years since we heard of the suicide of M. Anderegg, the elect of the people, called to fill the highest place in the Republic—that of President of the Confederation. It was on the eve of the day of his installation when, walking up and down the promenade by the side of the Bernerhoff and Federal Palace, he sat down on a bench, and apparently overcome by some strange and deep melancholy at the thought of what awaited him on the morrow, or perhaps by some thought of pain unshared by any human friend or counsellor, he put a pistol to his head, and blew his brains out. M. Lambelet, President of the Grand Council of the Canton of Neuchâtel, ended his own existence by taking poison. M. Vuithier, his successor, and President of the same Grand Council, a man of wealth and apparently possessing every outward advantage which the world can bestow, disappeared from his home, and after a long search his body was found in the deep waters at the foot of the cascade of the Doubs in the Jura. We recollect, too, Colonel Ott, National Councillor at Berne—the great engineer—who drowned himself in the river at la Matte, at Berne.^[40]

292The Swiss patriot of to-day may thus have serious grounds for sadness or apprehension in considering the actual state of his country, in the centre of Europe, as it is, and surrounded by nations, whose overflowings, so to speak, are continually invading his land. How is anything like nationality to be preserved? The difficulties of this subject have urged some of the best men of Switzerland towards the idea so well enunciated by some of them, that their future hope must lie in international action. Already that country has the honour of having been the cradle of useful, progressive, international ideas, such as the Universal postal system, the Croix Rouge, Arbitration, &c. This fact may indicate perhaps the path of the future. We live in international times. In England, insularly situated as we are, and of a character still exclusive, we are less conscious of this than are the inhabitants of Continental nations. The energy which is wanting to combat the surging tide of demoralising influences partly derived from other lands, which is now invading Switzerland, may be evoked by co-operation with those in other countries who still remain faithful to the highest principles. I do not here in any sense imply a necessity on the part of the constitutional and law-loving portion of the Swiss population to have recourse to external help in the re-establishment of respect for law and for liberty in their own nation. All that is aimed at is that moral force derived from a sense of a community of interests of the highest kind and in the highest degree, among persons of all lands, from the constant interchange of ideas, from the propagation and popularising in many languages of true and living thoughts and principles. Principles are of world-wide application, and those members of the present Cantonal Governments of Switzerland who have shown themselves so unworthy of their great traditions of the past, cannot, even if they would, repel from their soil the steady, silent, irrepressible inroads of the truth, though they may persecute and expel certain individuals of their own or other nationalities who have brought home to their consciences the disagreeable fact of their own degeneracy.

293I cannot conclude the present record without an expression of the grief and dismay with which I have observed, during the past few years, the decay amongst educated—and unhappily amongst Christian—people, both at home and abroad, of the sense of justice. I speak of justice pure and simple, justice in the abstract. The idea of justice in this sense appears to be a thing past the comprehension of many persons. I may illustrate what I mean by the following quotation from the Standard of Feb. 10, 1883. It is a case brought before Lord Granville in a correspondence which passed between the Foreign Office and Messrs. Raphael, Tuck and Son, in reference to the expulsion of their representative from St. Petersburg on the 15th August previously. “Messrs. Raphael and Tuck ask the favour of a definite reply as to whether it was in the power of Her Majesty’s Government to secure a permit for their representative from the Russian Government, such permit authorising him to prosecute his journey southward en route for the Bosphorus, or ‘whether they must abandon all hope of securing for Mr. Marcuse, a British subject, the protection of Her Majesty’s Government, because of his profession of a faith, the disqualification attending which an advanced civilization was supposed to have swept away.’” We have here the astounding fact of a man’s religious opinions publicly suggested as a possible hindrance to the success of his appeal for legal justice from our Government. I may further illustrate my meaning by recalling an incident of my stay in Switzerland during the past summer. In the presence of several jurists and others, who were consulting together concerning the treatment of the Salvation Army in their country, one of these gentlemen said, “if England has begun to deal out legal justice in proportion to her sympathies and antipathies, she has entered upon the fatal, downward path.” Another gentleman said to me, with some indignation, “It is very strange to us to see the utter inaction of your people in England, and of your Government, in the case of so gross an injustice as Miss Booth has suffered. We suppose that this is owing to the absence of sympathy for her religious 294opinions. It is generally felt here that if it had been Mr. Charles Bradlaugh who had suffered such an injustice—or, indeed, a much less one—there would have been no lack of English defenders to come forward on his behalf.” My reply to this was not, perhaps, such as the speaker expected. “You give my countrymen too much credit, Sir—(I was obliged, with much regret, to say). Indeed I do hope that they would have arisen in defence of Mr. Charles Bradlaugh in any case of his having suffered a legal injustice; but I fear that a large party would have been as indifferent to any injustice inflicted on him as at the present a large party is indifferent to an injustice inflicted on Miss Booth, simply for the reason that our people in England have, unhappily, begun to slide into the downward path which has been designated by one of yourselves just now—that of allowing justice to be dealt forth in proportion to their sympathies or antipathies, religious, social, or political.” I was grieved to find that the truth of what I feared had been so quickly appreciated by those Swiss gentlemen, that England has forgotten to some extent the sound traditions by which we were taught to apply to all alike the great principles of justice and of the common law. But, I seem to hear you say, “Such an one being anti-Christian is the enemy of the Cross of Christ, and therefore my enemy! ought I to incur trouble and effort on his behalf in case he were denied justice before the law?” Do I need to remind you—Christian—of the words; “If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink?” Perhaps you assent, however, to that; you would supply his bodily needs, were he in extremities. But hear again;—“Man does not live by bread alone.” Stronger than all bodily needs, deeper even than the love of kindred and country, and of freedom itself, lies buried in the heart of man the desire for justice. The cry for justice is rising on every hand. You must give to your greatest enemy that which his soul craves.

It is especially disastrous that religious and Christian people should have allowed this sense of justice to have 295become enfeebled; for from them above all others the maintenance of the sternest principles in this respect should be expected. I do not like to appeal in addressing Christian people to so low a motive as that of self-interest; yet it is impossible not to remind them that while through an enfeebled sense of justice, and the letting go of the principles of legality, they are allowing wrongs to be inflicted on persons with whose religious opinions they have no sympathy, (they standing by as indifferent spectators); the time may come—nay it assuredly will come—when they themselves will be bereft of the safeguards of justice, in like manner, and on account perhaps of the very opinions which they hold as Christians; and then with what force can they appeal to the great idea of abstract justice, they themselves having cast it under their feet? A lady to whom I had recited recently some details of the outrages against the great principles of justice and law which had been perpetrated in Switzerland, naïvely asked the question: “But had not Miss Booth and her friends done some things in Switzerland which are contrary to good taste—had they not shown themselves wanting in tact in their mode of procedure?” Astonishment prevented my replying. I could only say to myself: “Is it possible that we have come to this, that not only the holding of religious opinions, or the observance of religious practices from which we differ, weakens our sense of responsibility towards our fellow-men in the matter of legality, but that even a want of good taste or of tact is to be a excuse in our eyes for the relaxation of the great principles of justice?” Have we forgotten that still in our own country the law, in theory at least, is so strict, so absolute in its declarations of the inviolability of the person, and the sacredness of individual liberty, that if we dared to touch the person of a criminal on his way to execution or in his prison cell in an insulting or injurious manner, we should be considered ourselves criminal. The person of the lowest felon condemned to death is before the law sacred even to the last moment. It is not for the virtuous nor for the orthodox, nor 296for those who never offend against “good taste,” that the common law guarantees its protection, but for all alike, of whatever character.

To those among us who have studied the history of our own country, the growth and expansion of its liberties, the various attacks upon those liberties, and their re-establishment by the sufferings—even unto death—of those who defended them, the last year’s events in Switzerland have a great significance. We have had the opportunity of observing the acting out before our eyes, on a comparatively small national platform, that which we always knew, from our deep study of those principles, must occur. So much so, that as one violation of liberty took place, we could, almost with certainty, prophecy what the next would be, and in what manner it would come about. We have seen that when the evil passions of men—in all ages and all countries the primary and intimate cause of the destruction of liberty—increase and run riot in the community, political freedom becomes an impossibility. We have seen surging up from underneath the elements which have brought about the ruin of peoples, namely, the wide-spread drunkenness, increasing in all classes of the community, leading to delirium, to the casting off of all self-restraint, and to every murderous and evil impulse;—moral impurity, expressing itself in the grossest forms, the repudiation of family ties, contempt for women, and the acceptance of the public official patronage of organised prostitution. Arising out of this, also, we see political corruption in every department, beginning with the miserable necessity which short-sighted aspirants for office believe themselves to be under, of relying for success on the votes of the most degraded and brutalised amongst the people, bribery in its worst forms, and flatteries of the most disgusting kind interchanged between the vicious and drunken class and their representatives. We have seen Governments chaining up liberty, and giving the reins to license. When the conflict for Governmental offices is surrounded with such a miasma of immoral elements as this, it is not surprising that the best 297men, the true Swiss, those who have not forgotten their past history, should hold back and refuse to enter into such an arena. From this point, those who understand something of the great principles now at war, will watch, with deep anxiety, the efforts made by those persons who constitute the leaven to keep their country from corruption. There is a saying that “unfinished questions have no mercy for the peace of nations.” Swiss citizens are in the presence of a great unfinished question at the present time. Every principle dear to a free people has been violated in their midst. These principles will avenge themselves sooner or later, but through whom, and by what means? There can be no peace in Switzerland while these “unfinished questions” are allowed simply to lapse. They must be fought out to the end.

What is our hope? It is in the revival among the masses of the people of the fear of God, of the belief in the vital truths of Christianity, and of those habits of virtue and self-restraint which grow up as the inevitable fruits of the Spirit of God, in those who are enlightened by it. We have heard it remarked: “It is not surprising to hear of such things happening in Switzerland. Democracy will, of course, always produce such results.” Such judgments are exceedingly childish. He must be a very poor historian or observer of men and principles, who can attribute to the outward forms of government alone all the complicated movements which we see among the mass of men in all lands, the suffering and restlessness, and the rebellion, more or less repressed now, but which is preparing for a future manifestation. The greatest instance in modern history—perhaps in the world’s history—of the horrors of mob rule, the French Revolution, was not the natural outcome of Democracy. The Reign of Terror followed swiftly upon centuries of monarchical rule, aristocratic privileges and the suppression of popular liberties? In Germany and in Russia the same fierce elements are at work;—the same dissatisfaction, the same rebellion against the religion of those who monopolise all earthly advantages. These elements are only restrained for the present by the 298heavy hand of Imperial power. The inward transforming influence which alone can truly restrain, is wanting. It is only a question of time. The longer these elements—call them what you will, Socialism, Nihilism, &c., are violently held in check, without the application of the true remedy, the greater and more terrible will be their ultimate expression. The outward repression having been slight in Switzerland, the overflowings of the evil have come early, and have been more rapid and evident. But under every form of Government there are, more or less, the same elements at work. The only true solution of the problem is to be found in the revival of the true life of the immortal beings who compose this volcanic substratum of humanity. If this judgment of the case is true, in how grave and awful a light must appear the deliberate rejection of influences which tend towards the revival of that spiritual life. The Gadarenes prayed our Lord to depart out of their coasts; Jerusalem would have none of Him; and speedy and swift was the vengeance which fell on those nations who judged themselves unworthy to receive the message of eternal life.

But we hope better things for Switzerland. The following testimony is borne by a correspondent of “Evangelical Christendom” (Nov. 1):—“The appearance of the Salvation Army in Switzerland has brought out the hidden, or smouldering enmity against vital, vivid Christianity as strongly as did Vinet and the Free Church movement in 1845–7, and the visit of the Haldanes and the quickening of religious life and doctrine twenty years before that.... Neuchâtel has the reputation, I believe justly, of being the most pious and gospel-loving city in French-speaking Switzerland, in which the National Church and the Free Church vie with each other (with little exception) as to which shall give the clearest gospel. Yet beneath all those who attend church, chapel, and school, there seems to have lain, in darkness and the shadow of death, one of the most compact masses of unknown or untouched ruffianism, that could be found anywhere. It is well that this be brought to light. It is turning 299serious minds, in all the churches, whatever may be their opinion about the ‘Army,’ towards the undiscovered fields of mission labour that lie beneath their very feet.”

During the publication of this record, the “Bitter Cry of Outcast London” has sounded through the length and breadth of our land, and we are reminded that not from Switzerland alone, or from London alone, there is arising an exceeding bitter cry, and that in the midst of the greatest activity applied to outward reforms, in the matter of dwellings, wages, education, &c., the “heart-leverage,” as it has been called, is still the first and the only efficient remedy.

As watchmen on their watch-towers, as the “King’s remembrancers,” those who have faith in God must cry night and day to Him that He will send forth the Mighty Spirit to “breathe on these slain that they may live.”

The End.

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