RELIGIOUS REVIVAL
‘Réveil’ is Swiss for Revivalism. The movement was the Genevan analogue
of our Wesleyan Methodism, though it did not begin till more than
five-and-twenty years after John Wesley’s death. The originator of it
was the Scotch evangelist, Robert Haldane. He came to Geneva, made the
acquaintance of the theological students, and was surprised and shocked.
‘Had they been trained,’ he writes, ‘in the schools of Socrates or
Plato, and enjoyed no other means of instruction, they could scarcely
have been more ignorant of the doctrines of the Gospel. To the
Bible and its contents their studies had never been directed. After
some conversation, they became convinced of their ignorance of the
Scriptures, and of the way of salvation, and exceedingly desirous of
information.’
The young men fell into a habit of dropping in upon Mr. Haldane, at all
hours of the day and night, to talk over the mysteries of revealed
religion. He decided to organize his efforts for their evangelization,
take them in classes three nights a week, and expound the Epistle to
the Romans. His influence over them was the more remarkable because
he was, at first, obliged to converse with them by means of an
interpreter. And he had remarkable men among his pupils: Adolphe Monod,
of Paris; Félix Neff, the Alpine missionary; and Merle d’Aubigné, the
historian of the Reformation. A friend, too old to be his pupil, and
already of his way of thinking, was Cæsar Malan, the hymnodist.
[Illustration: THE HEAD OF LAKE ANNECY HTE. SAVOIE]
The movement thus inaugurated was, it may be presumed, neither wholly
good nor wholly bad. No doubt it was well for the old-fashioned
Calvinists to be shaken out of their old-fashioned formalism, and
taught to regard religion, not as the placid and docile acceptance of
a theological code, but as the special experience of the individual
soul. The history of religion is the history of such reactions against
formalism; and, on the whole, they make for progress. But revivalists,
being only human after all, have, like other people, their besetting
sins. They are prone to hypocrisy, to spiritual pride, to sour
austerity, to the passing of uncharitable judgments on their
neighbours, and to the unwarranted assumption of the right to cast the
first stone at sinners.
These vices of the revivalists attracted the attention of that
section of young Geneva which was not absorbed in the contemplation
of their virtues. They disliked to see them stand at the corners of
the market-place and, for a pretence, make long prayers. They took the
same line towards them as was taken towards Calvin and Farel by those
earlier Friends of Liberty who demanded permission to ‘live as they
chose without reference to what was said by the preachers’; and they
chiefly expressed themselves in verse. They formed a club--the Caveau
Genevois; and though the waters of oblivion have swept over most of
their writings, they were the choice spirits of the Geneva of their
time, and one of them has left us a graphic word-picture of their
meetings:
‘Our gathering, to which every member was expected to contribute a
new song or a new air, took place irregularly, and in various places.
Sometimes we met on the beautiful banks of our lake, at Cologny, on the
terrace of the Hotel du Lion d’Or. We used to come home arm-in-arm,
larking and singing, good friends and jolly fellows, ready to begin
again those charming scenes which politics never troubled, and in
which music, poetry, and joy--those crowns of harmony and loyal
friendship--reigned alone.’
And one at least of their songs still lives--the song written by J. F.
Chaponnière, which opens thus:
‘Qu’il est beau ce mandement
De monsieur le grand Vicaire;
Sa pastorale, vraiment
A tout bon dévot doit plaire,
Car il dit à son troupeau:
“S’il est du mal sur la terre,
_C’est la faute de Voltaire,
C’est la faute de Rousseau_.”’