Chapter XXX: Book V (3)

No one has forgotten the shudder of indignation which he excited at a general meeting of the _Society of Christian Morality_, when he exhibited the instruments of torture used in that abominable traffic. He did more. “From hall to hall, from office to office, from palace to palace,” says one of his biographers, “we saw him display these hideous proofs of the most atrocious cruelty and lust of gain. He brought before the notice of the princes and princesses of the royal family, these machines invented by the spirit of evil, and he explained to them their bloody use. He showed them to the peers of the realm in their places in the legislative assembly, and to all the friends of humanity in the public meetings of the benevolent societies.... We may, without hesitation, assert, that it is to his generous efforts we owe the cessation of the evil, and the change manifested in the system of government and in the legislature on this subject.”

The sympathies of M. de Staël were extended to all classes of the oppressed, and he defended the victims of an intolerant law in the Canton of Vaud. His writings, his letters, his solicitations, moved every right-thinking conscience, and if he did not succeed in procuring the repeal of this mischievous law, he succeeded in having it more mildly applied.

His character offered a rare mixture of earnestness and caution, of zeal and moderation. So great was his integrity, that it frequently prevented him from speaking to the extent of his religious convictions, from the fear of overstepping them. No one understood better than himself how difficult it is, in the midst of social affairs and relations, to make one’s life conform unerringly to the precepts of the Gospel. “This want of harmony between his life and his religion,” says the editor of his works, “was an insupportable load, under which he languished, and his very physiognomy bore the impress of this mental anguish. But by degrees his mind was calmed by the Christian faith, at once so consoling and so pure, which, without detracting from the beauty of the moral type which should be the object of our endeavours, teaches us to turn our eyes from our own misery to fix them upon that one divine, holy, and just Being, who has accomplished everything for us.”

The Baron de Staël died at the Château de Coppet, on the 17th of November, 1827, when only thirty-seven years of age.

The attention and the labours of the pious were also directed, during the Restoration, towards the scattered Protestants, who were threatened with the loss of their religious belief and habits, by the distance of their dwellings from regular pastoral action. The greatest of these new Evangelists was undoubtedly Félix Neff, who was born at Geneva, in 1798. Although a stranger to the Reformed churches of our country by his birthplace, he belongs to them by his missionary career; for it is in Dauphiny, more than elsewhere, that he spread the seeds of the Gospel, and he has been justly called the Oberlin of the Upper Alps.

Neff was not covetous of glory, and it is probable that the idea of a distinguished name never presented itself to his mind, when he went to expound the Bible in the huts of the poor mountaineers. Yet no name of the French Reformation in our day has been so famous as his: numerous original writings and a host of translations have been published concerning his life. In the heart of Germany, in the most distant valleys of Scotland, on the borders of the Orinoco and the Ohio, the name of Félix Neff is pronounced, and thousands of voices will re-echo, “He was a mighty servant of the Lord.”

In his youth he was fond of reading Plutarch and Rousseau; he studied mathematics and the natural sciences, and distinguished himself by the manliness of his character, as much as by the powers of his mind. Enrolled at seventeen years of age in the artillery of Geneva, his approach to the principles of Christianity was slow; but when he had once embraced them, he never quitted them. He immediately quitted the military service, and travelled through several of the Swiss cantons, preaching the Gospel from place to place. Thence he entered the department of Isère, and in 1823 went to the Upper Alps.

There, in the deep gorges, or upon peaks covered with eternal snow, dwells a population which, it is said, dates back by its symbols and its religious creed, to the primitive Christians of the Gauls. They form a link, not only with the disciples of Pierre Valdo, but with the apostolate of Irenæus, the second bishop of Lyons.

These Christians of Dauphiny, exposed to cruel persecutions, and continually straitened as the authority of Rome gradually more closely encircled them, had taken refuge from rock to rock, from mountain height to height, as far as the extreme limit where man can exist in the rarefied air. They had carried with them their Bible, their confessions of faith, and that firm piety, which welcomes the most terrible tortures in preference to apostasy. When the Reformation appeared, they saluted it as a sister of their ancient communion, and joined the churches of Dauphiny and Provence.

Neff discovered in the valleys of Fressinières and Queyras, at Triève, Lacombe, Dormillouse, villages hung upon the precipitous slopes of the Alps, the remnants of this faithful race. Without schools, without fixed pastors or regular religious service, they were left to live upon their pious recollections rather than upon a personal and active faith. Neff, by God’s help, restored this to them; and, a missionary at the same time of civilization and Christianity, he became their schoolmaster, and their instructor in agriculture, engineering, and surveying; the first in the field to labour, the last to quit the offices of prayer, he devoted himself wholly to this people whom he served.

Three years and a half passed in these pursuits of fraternal love. Félix Neff sheltered his head now under the roof of one cabin, now under another, never sleeping three nights following in the same resting-place. His parish was fifteen leagues in length, and comprised twelve annexed districts. He visited them in winter and summer alike, wading through the snow knee-deep, taking long circuitous routes to pass the glaciers, eating the black bread of the inhabitants, preaching in the barns, and opening schools in the stables. Such devotion was not permitted to be fruitless. The mountaineers of the Alps awoke at the voice of the apostle. “The rocks, nay, the very glaciers,” he wrote, “all seemed animated, and presented a smiling aspect; the savage country became agreeable and dear to me from the moment its inhabitants were my brethren.”

But his health, however robust, gave way beneath the burthen, and in this sublime contest between charity and physical suffering, his frame broke down. Félix Neff was compelled to quit the Alps to behold them no more; he died in the month of April, 1829, in his native town.

He has left but few writings—one or two fragments of sermons, some pious meditations, and letters, which have been collected and printed. He was rather a man of action than of study, and he might have addressed to the writers on religion the saying of a great citizen of antiquity to a philosopher: “That which you speak, I do.”

However rich Protestant literature may have been under the Restoration, if judged by the number of its works, it is poor in original books of any value. Translations and reprints were numerous. English authors figure principally in the first category: Bogue, Chalmers, Paley, Thomas Scott, Erskine, Milner, Miss Kennedy, and others. In the second we meet with the works of Nardin, Saurin, Court, Duplessis-Mornay, Dumoulin, Claude, and Drelincourt. The _Mémoire_ of M. Alexandre Vinet in favour of religious liberty, the _Vues sur le Protestantisme en France_ of M. Samuel Vincent, and the _Musée des Protestants célèbres_, an unfinished work, are distinguished by different kinds of merit from the mass of the forgotten books of that period.

VII.

The Protestants took no active part, as Protestants, in the Revolution of 1830; but they generally hailed its occurrence with joy, because it brought them new pledges of security for the free exercise of their worship. We have witnessed how their vexations, annoyances, and exclusions were multiplied towards the end of the reign of Charles X.; and if their political rights, consecrated by the Charter, had fallen beneath the ordinances of July, to what perilous attacks might not religious liberty, which rested upon the same foundation, have been exposed? Many persons believed [that it would have been so exposed]; and without crediting the reports circulated at the time among the popular masses concerning projects of persecution against the Protestants, it is probable that their position would have been greatly aggravated.

This explains the satisfaction which they exhibited at the news of the three days’ victory. Yet this contentment was calm, reserved, and without the least thought of reprisals, and perfect harmony between the two Churches was nowhere disturbed, except at Nismes, where it seems as if the religious communions must always experience the consequences of political events.

The Protestants were not the aggressors. Far from this; for in the very first days of the month of August, an appeal to union was published, having the full adhesion of all the respectable portion of the community, without distinction of creed, and the pastors went from family to family, everywhere recommending forgetfulness of the crimes of 1815. Their voice was listened to. A multitude of Protestant workmen, accompanied by a great number of (Roman) Catholics, entered the public square, pronouncing words of reconciliation, and formed a procession that marched round the city, uttering cries of _Vive l’union!_ _Vive la paix!_ (Long live union! Long live peace!)

But some rioters of the lowest class of the people, led partly by fanaticism, and partly, perhaps, by the dread of the account that justice might require of them for their past excesses, returned to Nismes, on the 15th of August, with suspicious-looking strangers, after having sought a refuge at Beaucaire, and their presence was the occasion of unfortunate collisions. Happily several companies of courageous countrymen came down from Vaunage, and intimidated this seditious band. On the side of the (Roman) Catholics two were killed and six wounded, and on the side of the Protestants six were killed and twenty-eight wounded. The last had therefore furnished three or four times more victims than they had made; the French Reformation had been accustomed to suffer in this way for three hundred years past.

In revising the Charter, the Chamber of Deputies abrogated the 6th article, upon the religion of the state, and re-adopted the terms of the _Concordat_ upon the religion of the majority of the French. In doing this, there was much less desire to give satisfaction to Protestantism than to the opinion excited against the usurpation of the clerical power. M. Dupin explained this very clearly in his report. “The expressions of the 6th article,” he said, “have awakened impudent pretensions to an exclusive domination, as much opposed to religion as to the freedom of conscience and the peace of the kingdom. A threefold interest demands the erasure of terms which, without adding anything to what religion will always possess of the holy and venerable in our eyes, had become the source of many errors, and, finally, caused the disgrace of the reigning family, and brought the state to the brink of ruin.”

Two months afterwards, M. Dupin, then procurator-general at the Court of Cassation, who has since maintained different opinions, demanded true conditions of religious liberty. The question was still the same; namely, whether it required the permission of the authorities or a simple preliminary declaration, before opening a new place of worship and forming regular assemblies of Protestants in communes, where none had ever before existed. It was the important question of a preventative or a repressive _régime_, of censorship or of liberty, of the arbitrary intervention of power in religious matters, or of the independence of believers.

M. Dupin also said, respecting the affair of the Protestants of Levergies (and his words are still worthy of quotation), “He who wills the end, wills the means. What avails a proclaimed liberty, if the means of its enjoyment be denied? What! The free exercise of worship is permitted, and at the same time there is a prohibition to exercise it in every place! The exercise is to be interdicted in the streets and public squares: that would shock other creeds. And when its exercise is asked for in any special edifice, it is forbidden! Such liberty is a mockery! What is the obligation thus imposed of obtaining permission to celebrate one’s worship, but tantamount to the preliminary censorship applied to the freedom of the press?... In the actual condition of our constitutional legislation, I can conceive that the administrative authority has a right to keep a watch upon the exercise of worship, as upon every other kind of assembly; a right to inquire into and punish offences arising out of this exercise, and by this very fact the utility of a preliminary declaration to prepare the authorities. But I can admit neither the peremptory right of refusal, nor the silence equivalent to this refusal, as a lawful means of preventing citizens from exercising their religious worship with full liberty. This liberty is not subject to preliminary authorization; it is not subordinated to optional permission any more for those, who are not Catholics, than for those who are so.” (October, 1830.)

The external condition of the French Reformation seemed therefore more favourable than it had ever been, and we may read in the Protestant journals of the day how full of hope they were. There were to be no longer any direct or indirect inequality between the two communions, or obstacles of any kind to the manifestation of the Reformed faith! There was thenceforth to be an end to the necessity of waiting about the antechamber of priest-led prefects to solicit their authorization in ecclesiastical matters, or about the office of a minister, governed by political calculations! The ill-will of a mayor or a royal procurator was not to be any longer sufficient to dissolve religious meetings, and the tribunals would not punish the prayers of a few peaceable men out-numbering the perilous figure of twenty persons, as if they were crimes! We shall soon see how completely their expectations were deceived.

Many Protestants thought that the occasion was propitious for demanding the alteration of the law of the 18th Germinal. It appeared to them that a government sprung from the triumph of liberal ideas could not, without self-contradiction, maintain a law which had been inspired by an excessive reaction against all liberty. Complaints and petitions to this effect were presented to the ministers of Louis Philippe; but they were thrown aside. If the popular origin of the government were a means, it was also an obstacle. The new power, conscious of its weakness and want of solidity, would not increase the difficulties of its position by meddling with the ecclesiastical questions, and it adopted as a rule of conduct in these matters, to make no change unless under absolute necessity.

Perhaps it would have been [a matter] of more easy settlement, had the question been one of mere Protestantism. To grant better laws to a small minority, ought to have given little umbrage. But behind the Protestant community were the (Roman) Catholics, with a discontented clergy, secretly hostile, and hating the organic articles even more than the consistories. If anything were granted to the former, nothing could be refused to the latter; and expediency forbade the aggravation of the troubles of the State by those of the Church.

The government, therefore, refused to make the least change in the law. Whereupon another question presented itself. Leaving the organic articles intact, was it not possible to have deduced more liberal applications from them, and to have given a less dependent position to Protestantism? The intervention of the legislative bodies was not necessary in this case; the discussion might be carried on with closed doors; the consistories and the minister of public worship might arrange everything, and a simple royal ordinance would suffice. Several consistories insisted upon this point; pastoral conferences drew up programmes for the administration of the Reformed churches; the government itself nominated a commission to prepare the draft of the ordinance, and there was finally a prospect of something favourable to the Reformed.

Expectation was again deceived. The new regulation drawn up by this commission, instead of extending liberty, seemed to restrict it to still narrower limits than before; and the minister of public worship encountered the most energetic opposition from the consistories, when he consulted them upon it. The government ceased to do any more, and the _régime_ of 1802 remained in its entirety.

In other respects, according to the genius of the middle classes, who directed public affairs at this time, the material, or pecuniary side of the situation of the Reformed churches, not only suffered no attack, but was sensibly ameliorated. The majority of the pastors received augmented allowances, new places were created, and funds for building places of worship and opening schools were granted with liberality. All this is mentioned with gratitude. Nothing was refused that money can accomplish for the development of a religious communion.

It must also be said in honour of Louis Philippe’s government, that it never sought to mix itself up with the internal questions of the churches, when its intervention was not sought by the churches themselves. If it decreed the removal of some pastors, and did other acts which ought not to depend upon the decision of the civil power, it was unwillingly, and after long delays [that it did so]. Protestantism might have been much more free under this reign, if it had seriously striven to become so.

But beyond the official region, barriers and fetters of all kinds soon reappeared, as in the reign of Charles X.; sometimes, indeed, there seemed to be a stronger desire to offer obstruction, and scarcely was one cause of litigation on account of religion settled, before another sprung up.

After the Revolution, the most zealous of the Protestants judged that the moment had arrived for multiplying their labours of proselytism. Considered from the point of view of liberty and the equality of creeds, this was their right; and considered from that of their personal convictions, it was their duty. When proselytism employs such means only as are peaceful and authorized by universal morality, no human power can legitimately interdict it.

Circumstances appeared favourable. Public opinion was deeply hostile to the clerical party; it accused them of having deceived the conscience of an aged king to make him violate his oath, and overthrow the liberties of the nation. The external signs of (Roman) Catholicism fell in every direction before the popular cry; the churches were deserted, and the priests felt so well the discredit in which they stood, that for several years they kept themselves aloof, never showing themselves except when absolutely obliged, never raising a dispute, uttering a word, or asking anything but to be forgotten at the foot of their altars.

This was not all. Philosophical systems and social theories were boldly propounded to the country under the sacred name of religion, and were preached with great applause. Saint Simonism, among others, had its journals, its public meetings, its worship, its hierarchy, its missionaries, its committees of propagandism: we mention the fact without contesting the right: the Saint Simonians were entitled to liberty, to as much liberty as the Reformed and the (Roman) Catholics, of gaining proselytes by the channel of persuasion.

It may be easily imagined that the fervent members of the Protestant faith would not consent to be shut up in their places of worship, while antichristian and vicious doctrines, in their eyes, were openly propagated. Conscience imposed upon them the imperious and holy obligation of addressing themselves immediately both to the deserters from the (Roman) Catholic church—an immense multitude, wandering hither and thither without spiritual guides—and to the disciples of the schools, who had, as it appeared to them, but the empty appearance of a religion. It was not so much an idea of aggression against (Roman) Catholicism as a testimony of sympathy for the souls which had no longer religious belief of any kind.

They had also another object in view, of secondary consequence to the religious conscience, but still important,—this was to strengthen order, threatened by the political revolutions. These Protestants believed that a vague spiritualism could not imbue a free people with those morals which must sustain the noble burthen of the laws, and that this required a strong and positive faith, the faith, which they themselves possessed.

Hence the origin, for a part of French Protestantism, of a whole series of publications, associations, and Christian institutions, in the general sense of this word. A journal, rearing alone the standard of the Gospel, the _Sower_, appeared in the month of September, 1831. Chapels, unsalaried by the State, were opened about the same time at Paris and elsewhere. In 1833 an _evangelical society_ was established, with the intention of announcing to all indifferently, what they held to be the essential truths of Christianity. We might mention some other institutions conceived in the same spirit.

These labours were not trammelled in the beginning. But the (Roman) Catholic clergy having gradually recovered their strength, the government thought it expedient to make approaches to them, and endeavoured to conciliate them by favours of a nature alien to the establishment of 1830. It is not our duty to examine whether the government of Louis Philippe did not lose more than it gained by this policy. What it is important for us to say is, that it impeded the work of proselytism according to the measure of its relations with the sacerdotal body.

Considering certain acts and prosecutions, it might even have been supposed, that there was something passing analogous to what had been seen in former times. All the historians have remarked that Henry IV., on his advent to the throne, and Louis XIV., when he had disputed with the Holy See, redoubled their severity against the Protestants, because they felt it incumbent upon them to wipe away the suspicion of heresy. The same cause, in its due proportion, and allowing for the great difference of the periods, produced similar effects under the reign of Louis Philippe. This prince had to dissipate the distrust of the priests, to win their sympathies; and in one sense, he dreaded more than ever Charles X. had done, giving Protestants a free field, because the clergy would have been more prompt in accusing him of connivance with them. The marriage of the heir to the crown with a Protestant prince (a descendant, it is said, of Admiral Coligny), instead of improving matters, made them worse.

Things were now carried farther than instituting suits against those, who opened new places of worship, than invoking the restrictive articles of the penal code against them, as under the Restoration, and applying the dispositions of the law of 1834 respecting associations, although the minister of justice and public worship had solemnly promised the Chambers not to turn them against religious societies; but even the right of controversy, that was exercised under the _régime_ of the Edict of Nantes, was called in question, and a certain prefectorial order actually assumed to fix—as in the time of Charles IX. and Catherine de Medicis—the number of persons authorized to participate in the Protestant religion. Even more, legally constituted Protestantism had to maintain contests to preserve the right of visiting its own members in the hospitals, prisons, and other public establishments; and the authorities proceeded sometimes so far as to impose arbitrary bounds to preaching among the scattered Protestants.

These iniquitous proceedings, which it would be just to attribute more particularly to subordinate and ignorant functionaries, provoked energetic remonstrances. A society was formed, under the name of the general interests of French Protestantism, to protect the freedom and equality of creeds. All the pastors of Paris, without exception, complained of the conduct of the civil power. The national tribunal resounded with these grievances. Some eminent men of the Protestant communion, MM. Pelet de la Lozère, François Delessert, and Agénor de Gasparin, were the medium of communication; the Opposition supported them, and the minister promised that the Reformed should be more justly treated.

He kept his word in some respects. Legal Protestantism might accomplish its mission among its people, without as well as within; but evangelical proselytism met with never-ceasing obstacles until the end of the royalty of 1830. It is sad to say, that not a single government in France, whatever may have been its origin, has yet known how to sanction the practical exercise of religious liberty in its full extent. We may be unbelievers, but we are not yet free to proclaim our faith, or to celebrate our worship according to our consciences.

Notwithstanding the resistance of the government, the Reformed doctrine gained ground in many places. A certain number of (Roman) Catholics, and even some priests, embraced Protestantism. New churches were added to the old ones, some attaching themselves to the established organization, others preserving an independent position. Yet the importance of these successes must not be exaggerated. In our times the vital forces of the people seem to be absorbed by political pre-occupations and material interests, and it must be confessed that the great majority of Frenchmen have too little faith to change their religion.

The attempt at proselytism on either side would, as a natural consequence, increase the ardour of controversy. This argumentative warfare was in effect carried on without cessation; and we might cite a long list of writings upon matters disputed between the two communions, from 1830 to 1848. Some of these publications are dressed in a popular form that has gained them numerous readers.

The same epoch affords examples, from time to time, of an odious intolerance; but they were only private and isolated acts. These were the abduction of young girls, refusal of burial in the communal cemetery, profanation of tombs, sequestration of the sick, accusations against several agents of the evangelical societies. The hand of the priests and the nuns was often suspected, and in certain cases was detected with incontrovertible evidence. The responsibility of these acts must fall only upon some fanatical and ignorant individuals. The respectable people of the (Roman) Catholic communion were indignant at them, and the judiciary or administrative authority protected the rights of the minority, although it deserves the reproach of pursuing and punishing the true criminals too leniently.

The last years of the reign of Louis Philippe were disturbed by an affair which deeply moved the Protestants of France, although it was connected in a very indirect manner with their relations to the State. The armed invasion of the island of Tahiti revealed to the world the extreme complaisance of the government for the clerical party, and at the same time the danger of subordinating the temporal power to the maxims of the Romish church. This attack upon the rights of nations narrowly escaped rupturing the alliance with England, compromised the name of France before all civilized nations, sensibly augmented the strength of the opposition, and threw the ministry into difficulties of embarrassment, from which it was never able to recover itself A lesson so severe and so grave ought not to be lost!

VIII.

The internal situation of the Protestants under the royalty of July, will one day furnish the historian with abundant subjects of research and reflection.

Two questions in which, if we consider them attentively, all the others concentred, were particularly debated—the question of the confessions of faith, and that of the separation of Church and State.

Ought the churches of the Reformation to have a written and obligatory confession upon the fundamental articles of faith? Or ought they to propound the Bible alone as the rule of faith and teaching? Historically considered, the question would soon be decided, since French Protestantism has existed under the _régime_ of a dogmatic formulary from the year 1559 until 1802. But this fact, however important, could resolve nothing; for the Reformation does not declare itself immutable, and has constantly retained the right of altering its mode of organization, upon the sole condition of respecting the sovereign authority of the Scriptures.

The vehement and often resumed polemical controversy that resulted from this discussion had already begun before 1830; it was renewed under Louis Philippe, and has not yet terminated. Partisans and adversaries of the confessions of faith alike invoke the testimony of the Bible; but the former are above all things anxious for the interest of unity of doctrine, the latter for the right of examination and freedom. The first do not understand how there can be a church in the true acceptation of the term, when the pulpit is open to contradictory teachings; the second are equally ignorant how Protestantism can be subjected to a rule that no longer allows every one to form his belief for himself, Bible in hand.

Perhaps, if we were to probe this debate somewhat more deeply, we should find that these differences of opinion depend still more upon the manner of understanding the Gospel than of confessing it. The defenders of written creeds see essential points where their adversaries distinguish only simple shades, and that which is the whole of Christianity for the one, is for the others nothing more than a particular and fallible interpretation.

Two men, who have wielded a legitimate influence, MM. Stapfer and Samuel Vincent, maintained opposite theses in this controversy.

M. Philippe Albert Stapfer, a native of Berne, had become a Frenchman by long residence in the country, and by his constant sympathies for the Protestants of France. He brought them what they had long wanted since the seventeenth century,—theological learning, drawn from the best sources of Christian antiquity and the Reformation.

A part of his career was employed in important political and diplomatic affairs. Appointed minister of public instruction and worship in his own country, at the period when the Directory had erected Switzerland into a Unitarian republic, M. Stapfer displayed great zeal for the intellectual development of the people, and a generous courage against the pretensions of the foreigner. Afterwards called to fill the post of ambassador to Buonaparte, he defended as long as possible, and with noble firmness, the independence of the Swiss cantons against the growing exactions of the conqueror of Marengo.

These laborious negotiations did not prevent him from devoting long hours to study. He followed with attentive eye the learned theology and the philosophy of Germany in all their scientific evolutions, and he prescribed it to himself as a duty even in his waning years, to keep pace with modern ideas.

Eminent by his learning, M. Stapfer was not less distinguished for his faith. These two great forces of human existence afforded mutual assistance to this elevated person. Unfortunately he has written but little; his weak health did not permit him to remain long at the desk. Some sketches and a few discourses constitute the greater part of his works. They have been collected in two volumes, with a biographical notice by M. Vinet, in the form of an apology, which has been given to the world with the affection of respect, and with an unusual discernment.

M. Stapfer devoted himself most earnestly to the labours of the principal associations of Protestantism. He had great moral influence in these societies. His clear mind, elevated views, benevolent character, firmness on important occasions, nobility of sentiment and intention, all endued his words with an authority to which it was honourable to submit. This faithful servant of the Gospel died on the 27th of March, 1840.

M. Samuel Vincent was born at Nismes in 1787; he was the son and grandson of pastors of the desert, and had derived from his paternal traditions, a profound attachment to the Reformed communion, cemented with the blood of martyrs, and which has withstood so many storms. One may differ from the ideas, which this learned pastor entertained upon some articles of dogma and discipline; but no one can dispute his firm and invariable desire to bring the scattered members of the great body of the French Reformation together, and to instil into it, with the divine blessing, new seeds of life. M. Vincent faithfully reproduced the expression, the tendencies, and the character of the Protestants of the south, who have shown so much steadfastness and heroism in the days of persecution, and who had already, towards the end of the sixteenth century, distinguished themselves from the Protestants of the north.

After completing his studies at Geneva, he was appointed to the ministry of the Reformed church at Nismes, like his father and grandfather. He won distinction by the variety of his acquirements, the urbanity of his private life, and his zeal in exciting a useful activity around him. He was a man of meditation and impulse, ever ready most freely to dispense the valuable thoughts which he had gathered, and willingly surrendered to others the honour of the initiative, which he had given them.

From 1820 to 1824 he published, in the form of a periodical collection, _Mélanges de Religion, de Morale, et de Critique_, with the particular object of initiating the French pastors in the movement of German theology during the last eighty years. The task was ungrateful. It was in a manner necessary to create his auditory before he could instruct them, and M. Vincent had occasion to convince himself that it is sometimes more difficult to inspire the taste for science, than to communicate science itself.

When M. de Lamennais attacked Protestantism with all the vehemence of his genius, the pastor of Nismes answered him by his _Observations sur la Voie d’Autorité appliquée à la Religion_. Less skilful as a writer than his illustrious adversary, he maintained a better cause and defended it by more solid arguments. It is to be regretted that M. de Lamennais should have assumed a disdainful superiority in his reply, forgetting that in such a debate, victory is not won by haughtiness of language, but by soundness of reasoning.

We have already had occasion to cite the _Views upon Protestantism in France_, a work in which M. Vincent has embodied his reflections upon the principal questions of doctrine and ecclesiastical organization. This book bears evidence of a strong and independent mind, and yet the author does not appear to have displayed all the powers which he possesses; it is the first effort of a great intellect and a generous heart.

M. Vincent died on the 10th of July, 1837; (Roman) Catholics and Protestants joined in following to his last resting-place [the remains of] a man, who had reflected honour at once upon Protestantism and his country.

The second question, agitated among the Protestants after 1830, concerned, as we have said, the separation of Church and State. The Revolution of 1789 made a distinction between the temporal and the spiritual [powers]. It confined the priest to his proper domain, the magistrate to his, and it separated the citizen from the believer. But is it right to go to this extent? Ought the State to regard the Church or the churches, as no more than private societies, free institutions, which exist under the common right of protection by conforming to the general laws, and without receiving any salary for their ministers? Or ought the State to treat with these institutions, to confer upon them an official character by its alliance, and to place them, with reference to other associations, in a privileged position? The question is one of vast importance; it involves the entire notions of Church and State, and the manner of resolving it affects the gravest problems of religion and politics. It is not difficult to understand that men of equal enlightenment, sincerity, and piety, may adopt entirely different opinions in this controversy. It has engaged (Roman) Catholicism as well as Protestantism. MM. de Lamennais and de Lamartine have both pronounced for the complete separation of the two powers. The same thesis has been maintained in the Protestant communion by a thinker of the highest order, whose name deserves a place among the greatest—M. Vinet, who, although not belonging to the French Reformation either by birth, or by way of naturalization or domicile, has written for it, and influenced it, and therefore a few lines concerning him will not be out of place.

M. Alexandre Vinet was born in a village of the canton of Vaud. He was educated at Lausanne, and while still young filled the chair of literature in the University of Basle. This was a happy position for a mind like his; for, placed upon the frontier of the two principal civilizations of the continent, he could take from either what was most excellent, stamping it at the same time with the seal of that manly independence which is instinctively acquired in the most ancient republic of Europe. He received learning from Germany, precision of judgment and language from France, the sentiment of liberty from his own country, the faith that purifies and corrects everything from the Gospel; and out of these different elements his eminently original genius composed an harmonious whole, which it is more easy to name than to describe.

As a critic, few writers of the present day have equalled, and none have surpassed him, at least in the essential conditions of the art. He loved to discover and vindicate the beauties of literary works rather than to point out their defects, and one might occasionally wonder at the praises, with which he sometimes dignified mediocre writings, were it not that he naturally delighted in the good and the beautiful, and that wherever he encountered the palest image of these [features], he made it lustrous by the contact of his own intellect. M. Vinet lauded in others, without knowing it, the merits that he had imparted to them.

His style has been appreciated in these terms by M. Sainte Beuve, one of the most competent judges that could be named on such a subject: “He possesses” [says M. Sainte Beuve] “an originality which reproduces and condenses the qualities of French Switzerland in the most happy manner, and at the same time his language is generally excellent, of Attic turn, and redolent with choicest flowers.... If I might venture to express my actual thought, I should say that, after M. Daunou for the ancient school, after M. Villemain for the modern, he is, in my judgment, of all French writers, the one who has best analyzed the models, sifted and deciphered the language, fathomed its limits and its centre, and noted its various and veritable acceptations.”[146]

As a preacher, he broke through the old forms of the sermon, and identified himself with the auditor of the nineteenth century, without quitting by one step the territory of Christianity, or rather by shielding so much the more efficaciously the principle of unity in the Gospel that he made just concessions to that of diversity. “There was in his oratory,” says an author, “something characteristically innate and powerful.... At first he sought to restrain himself, but the tone soon rose; his speech became more rapid; his sonorous voice elicited in every accent the emotion of which it was full, and the care he took to keep himself out of consideration, to disappear behind the truths he announced, only served to render talents so pure, so true, and so original, more prominent.”[147] As a Christian, he belonged to the family of Pascal by the penetration and the profundity of his thought, and to the family of Fénélon by the mild and simple candour of his faith. One thing surpassed even his piety and genius—humility. How could a man be so completely ignorant of the qualities of his own heart, who discerned those of others so well? It is that he judged others by his heart, and himself with his conscience. He had all the complaisance of charity for them, and all the severity of the ideal for himself.

M. Alexandre Vinet rendered his soul to God on the 4th of May, 1847. He left many disciples, but he has not up to the present time had a successor.

The Protestant press was enriched with several works of real merit during the reign of Louis Philippe. The history of the Reformation has been treated with remarkable talent. The pulpit reckoned many excellent models. Periodical literature was not without worth; and if France has given little heed to these labours, it is perhaps less the fault of the Protestant preachers and writers than of hereditary prejudices, that still weigh upon Protestantism itself in France.

Many benevolent institutions were established during this period, and supported by voluntary contributions. Orphans, the aged, the sick, children destitute of instruction, those whom justice has condemned, and other unfortunates besides, became the object of an active and liberal solicitude, and afforded their testimony in behalf of that Protestantism, which is depreciated only by those, who do not understand it.

The religious societies, properly speaking, continued their labours, and received considerable additions to their funds. The Bible, disseminated by the hand of _colporteurs_, as in the beginning of the French Reformation, spread light and life in every direction. The scattered Protestants were appealed to, gathered together, and instructed. The Evangelical Society increased every year the number of its agents. The Missionary Society sent zealous servants of the Gospel to the south of Africa, who carried to the wild tribes who peopled it, the most useful arts of civilized nations, together with the promises of the Christian faith.

Among those, who exhibited the greatest zeal and devotion for the conversion of the heathen, the name of Admiral Ver-Huell must not be forgotten.

A native of Holland, he had become a Frenchman by his great military services, and by the letters of naturalization which rewarded them. At the camp of Boulogne he was intrusted with the organization of the Batavian fleet, and gave striking proofs of cool intrepidity, intelligence, and bravery, in several encounters. He led a _corps-d’armée_ through the English fleet, that poured upon his squadron the projectiles of nine hundred guns. This heroic act gave entire confidence to the hundred and sixty thousand men collected upon the borders of the ocean.

Napoleon entertained the highest esteem for Admiral Ver-Huell, and it was to his keeping that he desired to intrust his person and his fortunes after the disaster of Waterloo, so that he might escape to America. This was refused to the Admiral for some frivolous reason. “If this charge had been confided to Ver-Huell, as I had been promised,” said the prisoner of St. Helena, “I believe we should have succeeded.”

Admiral Ver-Huell was made a minister of state, an ambassador, and a peer of France; but we will pass over his political career: his religious life alone belongs to this work. The celebrated sailor was one of the most active members of all the religious societies, which he aided with his purse, his example, and the authority of his name. He particularly took a paternal interest in the children of the Missionary House, and watched them with affectionate eye in their distant and perilous apostolate.

He was president of the Missionary Society, and the anniversary of the general meetings was always welcomed by him with pleasure. “What pure and simple joy beamed in his countenance,” says a writer well acquainted with him, “when the deputations from the auxiliary societies, or some friend of missions, assured the committee of their sympathy for the work, and congratulated him with Christian thankfulness. How truly and deeply felt was the speech that he was accustomed to deliver at the opening of the session. Eighteen times in twenty-three years did he fill the chair at the general meeting, and on every occasion he delivered an address, which bore the impress of his pious heart and energetic soul....

“When a friend entered his house, his face, that we had never once seen clouded, suddenly lighted up. His look brightened, his voice assumed a peculiar accent of mildness; in every demonstration of his friendship one felt at the same time the frank heartiness of the sailor, the dignity of the general, the polish of the man of the world, the simplicity and truth of the Christian.... Goodness pervaded all his sentiments, his character, his whole life; it was part and parcel of himself; it was himself; a goodness simple, candid, affectionate, cordial; a goodness inexhaustible in its source and effects; a goodness disinterested in its principle and persevering in its fruits; a goodness that never suspected evil, and would not believe it either in men or things.”[148]

Admiral Ver-Huell was snatched from his friends and the Church the 25th of October, 1845, at the age of sixty-nine.

Some further facts in the internal movement of the Reformed communion might be mentioned, such as the establishment of separate flocks, the Wesleyans, Baptists, and dissenters of several denominations. But they were only local manifestations of no great extent, which, although offering examples of living faith and pious devotion among themselves, did not influence the general condition of French Protestantism.

IX.

We have now reached the end of our task. The Revolution of 1848 has as yet exercised no considerable action upon the Reformed communion, taken as a whole. If during the past three years the Protestants of France have held assemblies whereat new projects of ecclesiastical organization have been framed, nothing has as yet been actually accomplished.

The provisional government, pre-engaged with so many other matters, did not touch religious affairs. It only passed a decree declaring that all citizens detained in prison for acts relating to the free exercise of their religion, should be immediately set at liberty, and that all fines which they had been condemned to pay, should be remitted. This was a homage rendered, as the preamble expressed, to the most precious and the most sacred of all liberties.

The only question at the same time religious and political, which was discussed after the Revolution by the press and in the popular assemblies, respected the separation of Church and State. A placard posted on the walls of Paris, on the 24th of February, demanded as the wish of the people, absolute liberty of conscience, and complete independence of the two powers. It was known that M. de Lamartine, then at the summit of popularity, approved of this system, and M. de Lamennais maintained it with the utmost energy in his new journal, _Le Peuple Constituant_.

Those of the Protestants who were in favour of the principle of independence, formed a _society for the application of Christianity to social questions_, and published a placard declaring that—“It is unjust to compel a citizen to contribute to the expense of a worship, which he does not follow. That the support of religious creeds should no longer be borne by the public exchequer, but that every one should be left to provide for the form of worship he shall have freely chosen.... Thus, religious creeds would be propagated by those who accepted them, and there would be no more privileged religions. Thus, the State would no longer have its attention engaged by questions full of embarrassment or danger. Thus, the budget would be relieved to the extent of more than forty millions of francs. Thus, in short, the whole French people would be as free and equal in religious matters, as they are [were] in political matters.”

Nothing was impossible in the midst of the universal confusion of minds and institutions. The defenders of the communions officially recognised were kept in a state of anxious expectation, ready to submit to separation if it were pronounced by the Constituent Assembly, but showing their preference for the maintenance of the union of Church and State.

Some delegates of the Reformed churches assembled spontaneously at Paris, in the month of May, 1848. They had been in a manner convoked by the common necessities and apprehensions. There was no regularity in the origin of their mandates; some had been appointed by universal suffrage, others by the consistories, or even by the presidents of the consistories. Nor was there any proportion in the representation: certain churches, in the neighbourhood of Paris, reckoned five or six delegates for a single consistorial circuit; while on the other hand, some churches had only sent one deputy for three or four consistories. There, lastly, was no uniformity in the powers of the delegates: some were authorized to enter fully into a discussion of ecclesiastical questions, and others were not. Such an assembly could only prepare the way for a body more regularly chosen by the members of legal Protestantism.

The meeting first debated the question of the relations between Church and State, and the great majority were in favour of preserving the alliance, reserving expressly the dignity and liberty of the Church. An electoral regulation was then framed for the formation of an assembly, which might consider the affairs of the communion, with an established title.

This new assembly commenced its session on the 11th of September, 1848. The members were elected by suffrage of two degrees, the body of the flocks having chosen the electors intrusted with the appointment of the delegates. Each of the ninety-two consistorial churches was invited to nominate an ecclesiastical or a lay deputy. Only three consistories abstained, beside the two theological facilities of Montauban and Strasbourg, which sent no representatives. The number of members present at the assembly was not more than from seventy to eighty. It was, for the rest, an entirely non-official assembly. It received no authority from any legal text; the government did not recognise it, and the churches were quite free to accept its resolutions or to reject them.

Long and serious questions were agitated regarding the confessions of faith. Finally, the assembly decided, almost unanimously, that in accordance with the wish of the generality of the churches, it would not touch upon dogmatical subjects, and that the question should be deferred until a more opportune time. An address was drawn up, in which the majority expressed its common belief, without resolving the controverted points of doctrine in one sense or another.

Some of the members protested against this decision, and withdrew. They have since formed, with the independent congregations already in being, a new religious society, under the name of the _Union of the Evangelical Churches of France_. Their particular synod was opened on the 20th of August, 1849, and drew up a profession of faith, and an ecclesiastical constitution for the flocks it represented.

Having avoided the questions of dogma, the general assembly of September discussed a scheme of organization for a legal establishment. Universal suffrage, under certain restrictions, lay at the base of the plan; the individual church was reconstituted as an essential element of the Presbyterian system; the institution of the general consistories was preserved, but made subordinate to the particular synods; finally, as the centre and crown of the ecclesiastical edifice, there was to be a general synod, which should meet at regular intervals.

The minister of public worship, to whom this project was communicated, applied to the churches for their opinions upon it. The consistories, while they were unanimous in asking for important modifications in the law of the 18th Germinal, did not agree upon the articles of the new plan of organization, and it is uncertain whether it will become the object of a legislative measure.

While Protestantism endeavoured to modify its internal government and its relations to the civil authority, the national assembly discussed the constitution. It adopted the two following articles: “Every one professes his religion freely, and receives from the State an equal protection for the exercise of his creed. The ministers of creeds actually recognised by the law, and of those which shall be recognised in future, have a right to receive support from the State.”

It will be remarked that the (Roman) Catholic religion is no longer named in the fundamental law. Not only has it ceased to be the State religion, but it has not even preserved the distinction given to it in the _Concordat_ of Napoleon, and the Charter of 1830, namely, that of being the religion of the majority of the French people. There is no privilege, then, for (Roman) Catholicism; but a full, perfect, and absolute equality among all the recognised creeds, in such a manner that the constitution would be violated if the government granted to the Romish church any pre-eminence whatsoever. It has exhausted three centuries of efforts and struggles to gain the inscription of this great rule of justice upon the laws, and perhaps it has to be still better learned and applied by the manners of the people. A nation educated in (Roman) Catholicism practises with greater difficulty than any other, the complete equality of religious communions.

It is to be further observed, that this equality exists only for the creeds which are, or shall be recognised by the State. The advocates of the system of separation have not been satisfied with it, and the question of the suppression of the budget for the creeds continues to be mooted by some organs of the religious and political press. It is a problem for the future to resolve.