[Transcriber's note: This production is based on
https://archive.org/details/meditationsonact00guiz/page/n6.]
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Meditations
Actual State Of Christianity,
And On The Attacks
Which Are Now Being Made Upon It.
By M. Guizot.
Translated Under The Superintendence
Of The Author
New York:
Charles Scribner & Co.,
654 Broadway.
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{3}
Preface.
When I published, two years ago, the first series of these
_Meditations_, the series which had for its object the
essence of Christianity, "that is to say, the natural problems to
which Christianity is the answer, the fundamental dogmas by which
it solves those problems, and the supernatural facts upon which
those dogmas repose," I indicated the general plan of the work
which I so commenced, and the order into which its different
parts would be distributed.
"Next to the essence of the Christian Religion," I said in my
Preface, "comes its history; and this will be the subject of a
second series of _Meditations_, in which I shall examine the
authenticity of the Scriptures; the primary causes of the
foundation of Christianity;
{4}
Christian faith, as it has always existed throughout its
different ages and in spite of all its vicissitudes; the great
religious crisis in the sixteenth century, which divided the
Church and Europe between Romanism and Protestantism; finally,
those antichristian crises which, at different epochs and in
different countries, have set in question and imperiled
Christianity itself, but which dangers it has ever surmounted.
The third series of _Meditations_ will be consecrated to the
study of the actual state of the Christian religion, its internal
and external condition. I shall retrace the regeneration of
Christianity which occurred among us at the commencement of the
nineteenth century, both in the Church of Rome and in the
Protestant Churches; the impulse imparted to it at the same epoch
by the Spiritualistic Philosophy that then began again to
flourish, and the movement in the contrary direction which showed
itself very remarkably soon afterward in the resurrection of
Materialism, of Pantheism, of Skepticism, and in works of
historical criticism.
{5}
I shall attempt to determine the idea, and consequently, in my
opinion, the fundamental error of these different systems, the
avowed and active enemies of Christianity. Finally, in the fourth
series of these _Meditations_, I shall endeavor to
discriminate and to characterize the future destiny of the
Christian religion, and to indicate by what course it is called
upon to conquer completely, and to sway morally, this little
corner of the universe, termed by us our earth, in which unfold
themselves the designs and power of God, just as, doubtless, they
do in an infinity of worlds unknown to us."
Still adhering in its entirety to the plan which I thus proposed,
I nevertheless now invert the order. I publish the
_Meditations_ concerning the actual state of Christianity
before those which propose for their object its history. I am
struck by two circumstances in the actual state of opinions upon
religious questions. On the one side, the sentiments contrary to
or favorable to Christianity are defining themselves each day
with greater precision.
{6}
Beliefs become firmer beliefs; opinions hostile to them receive
fuller developments. On the other side, vacillating minds are
occupying themselves more and more with the struggle to which
they are witnesses: minds, earnest at once and sincere, feel the
disturbing influence of the doctrines hostile to Christianity;
many again are uneasy at these doctrines, many demand a refuge
from them, without finding it or daring to seek it in the
essential facts and principles of the Christian faith. Between
the adversaries of Christianity and its defenders the discussion
grows each day in importance and gravity; and with it also grows
the perplexity in the minds of the spectators. By setting in full
light this actual state of the Christian religion, by comparing
the forces at its disposal with those of the systems that it
combats, I proceed thither where the emergency is the greatest; I
betake myself at once to the very field of battle. I shall
afterward resume the history of Christianity from its first
establishment down to our own time, and then finally consider the
prospect open to it in the future.
{7}
I regard with very complicated feelings, with feelings of great
perplexity, the actual state of my country; its intellectual and
moral state as well as its social and its political state. I have
a mind full at once of confidence and of disquietude, of hope and
of alarm. Whether for good or for evil, the crisis in which the
civilized world is plunged is infinitely more serious than our
fathers predicted it would be; more so than even we, who are
already experiencing from it the most different consequences,
believe it ourselves to be. Sublime truths, excellent principles,
are intrinsically blended with ideas essentially false and
perverse. A noble work of progress, a hideous work of
destruction, are in operation simultaneously in men's opinions
and in society. Humanity never so floated between heaven and the
abyss. It is especially when I regard the generation now
advancing, when I hear what they affirm, when I gather a hint of
what they desire and hope for, it is especially then that I feel
at once sympathy and anxiety.
{8}
Sentiments of propriety and of generosity abound in those young
hearts; they reject, when once convinced of their justice,
neither the ideas which they before did not admit, nor the curb
to which by the inspiration of the divine law even human ambition
does not refuse to submit; but by a strange and deplorable
amalgam, good instincts and evil tendencies exist in them
simultaneously; ideas the least reconcilable clash together, and
persist in them at the same time. The Truth does not rid them of
the error; a light indeed shines upon them, but out of a chaotic
darkness which that light has not the power to dissipate.
In the presence of this condition of men's minds, under the
impulse of the sentiment which it inspires, I publish this second
series of _Meditations_.
{9}
In touching upon the great questions at present under debate in
the philosophical world, in expressing my opinion concerning
Rationalism, Positivism, Pantheism, Materialism, Skepticism, I
have not for a moment pretended to discuss these different
systems completely and scientifically. Although I am convinced
that they are no more in a condition to support any profound
examination of severe reason than to stand the first regard of
common sense, the object which I propose to myself is to indicate
only their radical and incurable vice. This is no treatise of
Metaphysics; it is only an appeal addressed to upright and
independent minds; an appeal made to induce them to subject
science to the test of the human conscience, and to regard with
distrust systems, which, in the name of a pretended scientific
truth, would, between the intellectual order and the moral order,
between the thought and the life of man, destroy the harmony
established by the law of God.
Guizot.
Val-Richer, _April_, 1866.
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Contents.
Page
Preface 3
I. The Awakening Of Christianity In
France In The Nineteenth Century 13
II. Spiritualism 218
III. Rationalism 245
IV. Positivism 267
V. Pantheism 310
VI. Materialism 330
VII. Skepticism 350
VIII. Impiety, Recklessness, And Perplexity 369
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{13}
Meditations On The Actual State Of
The Christian Religion.
First Meditation.
The Awakening Of Christianity In
France In The Nineteenth Century.
In 1797, La Réveillière-Lépeaux, one of the five Directors who
then constituted the government of France, having just read to
that class of the Institut [Footnote 1] of which he was a member
a memorial respecting Theophilanthropism, and the forms suitable
for this new worship, consulted Talleyrand upon the subject; the
latter replied, "I have but a single observation to make: Jesus
Christ, to found his religion, suffered himself to be crucified,
and he rose again. You should try to do as much."
[Footnote 1: The class of moral and political sciences.]
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Nor was it long before events justified the ironical counsel. In
1802, hardly four years afterward, Theophilanthropism and its
apostle, the dream and the dreamer, had disappeared from the
stage where they had been powerless in influence, barren in
consequence. The strong hand of Napoleon again solemnly set up in
France the religion of Christ crucified and Christ risen, and in
that same year the brilliant genius of Chateaubriand again placed
before the eyes of his countrymen the beauties of Christianity.
The great politician and the great writer bowed each of them
before the Cross; the Cross was the point from which each
started--the one to reconstruct the Christian Church in France,
the other to prove how capable a Christian writer is of charming
French society and of stirring its emotions.
{15}
In these days, and in some parts of Christendom, the Concordat
and the "Génie du Christianisme," the one as a political
institution, the other as a literary production, have lost
something of their vogue. Catholics, zealous and sincere,
criticise severely the defects of the Concordat; they regard it
as sometimes incomplete, sometimes tyrannical: they reproach it
with assailing the rights of religious society, of paralyzing its
influence, and restricting its liberty. Some go so far as to
express wishes for the separation of Church and State, and for
their entire independence of each other, the only certain
guarantee to either, they affirm, of a real moral influence.
Protestants, equally zealous and sincere, entertain the same
opinions and the same wishes. Not contented with this, the latter
have gone further, and acted; they have separated themselves from
the Protestant Church recognized by the State, and have founded
independent Churches, self-governing and self-sufficing; nor have
they demanded anything from the State but the liberty that is
every citizen's due.
{16}
In a work recently published, [Footnote 2] a pastor of one of
these Churches, a man distinguished both by the elevation of his
mind and the generosity of his sentiments, M. Edmond de
Pressensé, has gone still farther.
[Footnote 2: L'Église et la Revolution française,
histoire des relations de l'Église et de l'État,
de 1789-1802. 8vo. 1864.]
Not content with defending the principle of the separation of
Church and State, he has endeavored to prove that, in 1802, the
Concordat was, on the part of Napoleon, simply an act of tyranny
and ambition; that it was, as far as Christianity is concerned,
an untoward incident; and that if the Christian Church, at the
time spontaneously regenerating itself, had been left free and
uncontrolled, it would have risen by its own proper strength, and
would have grown in influence and in faith far more than the
Concordat has permitted it to do. I am far from proposing to
discuss here, as a general proposition, the system of separation
of Church and State, or its worth in a religious or social point
of view;
{17}
such a system I do not regard as the ideal of religious society:
the co-existence, I would rather say the competition, of Churches
recognized by the State and of Dissenting Churches independently
constituting themselves and self-sufficing, is, in my opinion,
the system most in conformity with the nature of things, and most
favorable to the solidity and general efficiency of religion.
That is a question rather of epoch, time, manners, and social
condition than of principle. But, however this may be, I hold it
as certain that, in 1802, the Concordat was, on the part of
Napoleon, far more an act of superior sagacity than of arbitrary
power, and that it was for the Christian religion in France an
event as salutary as necessary. After the anarchy and the orgies
of the Revolution, nothing but the solemn recognition of
Christianity by the State could have given satisfaction to the
public sentiment, and insured to the religion of Christ the
dignity and the stability, the recovery of which was so essential
to its influence.
{18}
Nothing is more liable to error than an attempt to appreciate,
with reference to present circumstances and the actual condition
of men's minds, what was possible and good sixty years ago; and I
am convinced, that in spite of his zeal for the separation of
Church and State, M. Edmond de Pressensé, had he lived in 1802,
would have been as little satisfied as France herself with a
Christian Church restored in accordance with the plan of the Abbe
Grégoire, The Concordat was a mixed and imperfect measure,
subject to grave objections, and the source of numberless
difficulties; but, taken altogether, the measure was grand and
salutary; it gave at once to the Christian movement a sanction
and an impulse that no other scheme would have been capable of
imparting.
M. de Chateaubriand and the "Génie du Christianisme" are entitled
to the same justice. I am ready, with regard to both book and
author, to concede the truth of all the objections and of all the
defects that the severest critic may be able or may wish to
detect; their grand and salutary action will not be the less a
living fact.
{19}
It is with books as it is with men; it is by their qualities,
whatever their faults, that they command position and exercise
sway, and wherever superior qualities are discernible, their
efficacy remains in spite of any faults, in spite of any defects,
by which they may be accompanied. Notwithstanding its
imperfections in a religious and literary point of view, the
"Génie du Christianisme" was in both these respects a performance
at the same time remarkable and powerful: it strongly moved men's
minds, it gave a fresh impulse to men's imaginations, it
reanimated and placed in their proper rank the traditions and the
early impressions of Christianity. No criticism, however
legitimate, can ever deprive that work of the place that it at
once assumed in the religious and the literary history of its
time and country.
{20}
Neither the Concordat nor the "Génie du Christianisme" was, in
1802, the result of a spirit of blind and barren reaction.
Napoleon and Chateaubriand were both, of them hardy innovators.
At the side of the ancient religion which he re-established,
Napoleon firmly maintained also the liberty of conscience,
whether in matters of worship or philosophy. At the very instant
when the Concordat was proclaimed and the "Génie du
Christianisme" was published, the learned physiologist, Cabanis,
also published his treatise on the relations of man's physical
and moral nature, a work which characterized man as a mere
machine. And in recalling France to an admiration of the beauties
of Christian literature, Chateaubriand imaged them to her in
forms of language so novel and so original, that many among the
severe guardians of the French language treated him as an
outrageous and barbarous writer. A new era opened at this epoch
in France for religion and for literature.
{21}
Christianity and systems opposed to Christianity, Roman
Catholicism, Protestantism, and Philosophy, a taste for classics,
and a tendency to romanticism, unfolded themselves
simultaneously, surprised to be living together, and at the same
time encountering one another as ardent combatants.
I have no design to retrace here their contests nor to constitute
myself their judge. Let but a great arena be thrown open, and the
crowd rushes in, carrying with it its confusion and its buzz.
Happily, the tumult is not of long duration. In this mighty
movement of men's minds in France at the commencement of the
nineteenth century I occupy myself with a single grand fact--the
Awakening of Christianity, its different characteristics, its
different results. The crisis itself had illustrious witnesses. I
will interrogate these alone.
After Napoleon and Chateaubriand, the first whom I meet with are
two Catholic writers, who have left behind them great and
deserved reputations. M. de Bonald and M. de Maistre hoisted the
banner of Christianity valiantly, and at an early date.
{22}
But their ideas and their writings were rather political than
religious: the exigencies of public order occupied their
attention far more than those of man's soul, and their works were
rather attacks upon the French Revolution than a defense of the
faith of Christians. By a coincidence very remarkable, although
at the same time very natural, the first production of each--"The
Theory of Power," by M. de Bonald, and the "Considerations on
France," by M. de Maistre--was published at the same moment, in
1796, and each in a foreign land, where the authors were living
as emigrants. In the first ardor of the reaction, and with the
impassioned and vague feelings that it suggested, each wrote
against the Revolution that shook the world and wrecked his own
fortunes. Potent intelligences both, profound moralists, eminent
writers; but their philosophy is a philosophy of circumstance and
of party. Their theories they use as arms; their books as a
discharge.
{23}
M. de Bonald is a lofty-minded original thinker, but subtle, too,
and complex; disposed to content himself with verbal combinations
and distinctions, and sparing no labor to contrive his vast web
of arguments proper to entrap the unwary adversary. M. de
Maistre, on the contrary, blasts him with the absoluteness of his
assertion, the poignancy of his irony, the rude eloquence of his
invectives. He is a powerful, a charming extemporizer. Both of
them excel in seizing and presenting in a striking manner one
great side, but only one of the great sides, in questions or
measures. They see not these in their variety and in their
entirety. Combatants approved--the one tenacious, the other
impetuous--they both committed two grave faults: they instituted
a closer bond between statesmanship and religion than is proper
or suitable to either; they could not discover any other remedy
for anarchy than absolutism. In the natural and never-ending
conflict of the two great forces whose co-existence imparts vital
energy to human society--authority and liberty--they declared for
the former alone, thus ignoring the right of thought, the spirit
of our times, and the general course of Christian civilization.
{24}
When attacked in her essence, Religion should be defended as she
was founded, in herself and for herself, setting aside every
political consideration, and in the name alone of the problems
which lay siege to man's soul, and of the relations of man's soul
with God. "Render unto Cesar the things which are Cesar's, and
unto God the things that are God's," said Jesus to the Pharisees
when they sought to embarrass and to compromise him politically.
Thus did Jesus himself define the proper and paramount
characteristic of his work. He did not come to destroy or to
found any government; he came to feed, to regulate, and to save
the human soul, leaving to time and to the natural efficacy of
events the development of the social consequence of his religious
faith and of his religious law. M. de Bonald and M. de Maistre
joined too often together God and Cesar.
{25}
They thought too much of Cesar while defending God. In doing this
they changed and compromised the character of that great
movement, the Awakening of Christianity, which their conduct
otherwise provoked and served. [Footnote 3]
[Footnote 3: "The dead move quick," says the poet Burger in
his ballad of Leonora. The men and the books I record died at
a period already distant from us; and in spite of their fame
that abides, they are probably little known to the generation
at present in possession of the stage. I regard it,
therefore, as not improper for me to mention below the titles
of their principal works, of which I have in the text sought
to determine the true character.
Those of M. de Bonald are:
1. La Théorie du pouvoir politique et religieux. 3 vols. 8vo.
Constance: 1796.
2. La Législation. primitive. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris: 1821.
3. L'Essai sur le divorce. 1 vol. 8vo. Paris.
4. Les Recherches philosophique. 2 vols. 8vo. 1818 and 1826.
5. Les Mélanges littéraires et politiques. 2 vols. 8vo.
6. Pensées et discours. 2 vols. 8vo.
All these writings, with some others, have been collected in
the complete edition of the works of M. de Bonald, in seven
volumes. 8vo. Paris: 1854.
The principal works of M. de Maistre are:
1. Considerations sur la France. 1 vol. 8vo. 1796.
2. Essai sur le principe générateur des constitutions
politiques et des autres institutions humaines. 1 vol. 8vo.
1810.
3. Du Pape. 2 vols. 8vo. 1819.]
4. De l'Église gallicane dans son rapport avec le souverain
pontife. 8vo. 1821.
5. Examen de la philosophic de Bacon. 2 vols. 8vo. 1836.
6. Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg. 2 vols. 8vo.
7. Lettres et opuscules inédits. 2 vols. 8vo. 1851.
8. Mémoires politiques et correspondance du comte de
Maistre, publiés par M. Albert Blanc. 2 vols. 8vo. 1858.
{26}
After these two great writers, another great writer, (shall I
term him Catholic?) the Abbé de la Mennais, placed himself upon
the same path, but to arrive at a very different issue. He, too,
made authority alone the basis of man's faith and of human
society; but seeking to ascertain the sign which distinguishes
legitimate authority, and which entitles it to unarguing
submission, he fixed this sign in the general and traditional
assent of mankind. "The common consent or authority,
_there_," said he, "we find the natural rule of our
judgment; and what but folly can reject that rule, and listen to
its own reason in preference to the reason of all? ... The search
for certitude is the search for a reason not liable to error at
all, that is, for a reason that is infallible.
{27}
Now this infallible reason must necessarily be either the reason
of each individual or the reason of all men; in fact, of human
reason. It is not the reason of each individual, for men
contradict one another, and nothing frequently is more discordant
and more contradictory than their judgments; therefore it is the
reason of all." [Footnote 4]
[Footnote 4: Essai sur l'indifférence en matiére de religion,
t. ii, p. 59. Défense de l'Essai sur l'indifférence, chap. x,
pp. 133-148.]
In holding this language in his very first work, the Abbé de la
Mennais was already forgetting that he was a Christian and a
Catholic. When a man demands here below an infallible authority,
he must not seek it from any human source. The reason of all?
(That is, the reason of the majority of men in all the ages of
the world, for the reason of _all_ is a fallacy.) What is
such reason, but the sovereignty of superior numbers in the
spiritual order? Having fixed his principle, the Abbé de la
Mennais kept it in sight everywhere. After having established an
infallible authority in the name of the reason of all, he
proclaimed the absolute sovereignty in the name of universal
suffrage.
{28}
But this apostle of universal reason was at the same time the
proudest worshiper of his own reason. Under the pressure of
events without, and of an ardent controversy, a transformation
took place in him, marked at once by its logical deductions and
its moral inconsistency: he changed his camp without changing his
principles; in the attempt to lead the supreme authority of his
Church to admit his principles he had failed; and from that
instant the very spirit of revolt that he had so severely rebuked
broke loose in his soul and in his writings, finding expression
at one time in an indignation full of hatred leveled at the
powerful, the rich, and the fortunate ones of the world; at
another time in a tender sympathy for the miseries of humanity.
The "Words of a Believer" are the eloquent outburst of this
tumult in his soul. Plunged in the chaos of sentiments the most
contradictory, and yet claiming to be always consistent with
himself, the champion of authority became in the State the most
baited of democrats, and in the Church the haughtiest of rebels.
{29}
It is not without sorrow that I thus express my unreserved
opinion of a man of superior talent--mind lofty, soul intense; a
man in the sequel profoundly sad himself, although haughty in his
very fall. One cannot read in their stormy succession the
numerous writings of the Abbé de la Mennais without recognizing
in them traces, I will not say of his intellectual
perplexities--his pride did not feel them--but of the sufferings
of his soul, whether for good or for evil. A noble nature, but
full of exaggeration in his opinions, of fanatical arrogance, and
of angry asperity in his polemics. One title to our gratitude
remains to the Abbé de la Mennais--he thundered to purpose
against the gross and vulgar forgetfulness of the great moral
interests of humanity. His essay on indifference in religious
questions inflicted a rude blow upon that vice of the time, and
recalled men's souls to regions above.
{30}
And thus it was that he, too, rendered service to the great
movement and awakening of Christians in the nineteenth century,
and that he merits his place in that movement although he
deserted it. [Footnote 5]
[Footnote 5: The principal works of the Abbé de la Mennais
are:
1. L'Essai sur l'indifférence en matière de religion, avec la
défense de l'Essai. 5 vols. 8vo. The first volume appeared in
1817.
2. De la Religion considérée dans ses rapports avec l'ordre
civil et politique. 1 vol. 8vo. 1825.
3. Les Paroles d'un Croyant. 8vo. 1834.
4. Les Affaires de Rome. 8vo. 1836.
5. Esquisse d'une philosophic. 4 vols. 8vo. 1841-1846. All
his works, including numerous pamphlets and articles
published in religious and political journals, have been
collected in two editions: one in 12 vols. 8vo., 1836-1837;
the other in 11 vols. 8vo., 1844 and following years. Besides
the above, there are his Posthumous Works, 2 vols. 8vo.,
1856, and his Correspondence, 2 vols. 8vo., 1858.]
At the same time that great minds were thus at work in order to
restore to the belief in Christianity and the belief in
Catholicism its honor and its authority, another influence was
operating in the same direction, with less notoriety but no less
effect.
{31}
The Jesuits were re-establishing themselves in France--were
founding houses of education and noviciates for their order--were
opening chapels, preaching, teaching, careless of the existence
in France of laws proscribing them; occupying themselves solely
with fulfilling what they regarded as a duty, and a duty, too,
springing from a right believed by them to be superior to the
laws. That duty for them was to uphold the Church of Rome; that
right was the right of preaching and teaching, according to the
faith of the Church. The Jesuits have also been considered and
represented as politicians in the garb of monks, rather than
genuine members of the monastic orders. Often, in effect, in
their acts and in their words, they have appeared as politicians,
and politicians, too, with a certain indulgence for the world and
the world's masters; but, at bottom, they have been and they are
essentially monastic--an order perhaps the most ardent of all,
for they are of all orders the order most completely devoted to
the cause of religious authority.
{32}
There are commonplaces that have to be continually repeated, so
apt are men to forget them. In religions society, as well as in
civil society, there are two great moral forces--Authority and
Liberty; these coexist of necessity--have dominion turn by turn,
and have alternately their heroes and their martyrs. Regarded
either with respect to its political or religious constitution,
society cannot long dispense with either Authority or with
Liberty; and each of these two forces is liable to abuse its
influence, and to lose it by the very abuse.
When Authority has had a long dominion, and its abuse too has
been long, a reaction occurs: Liberty has her revenge; but in her
turn is prone to compromise her interests by abuses and by
excess. It is the history of all human society; facts prove it
quite as much as common sense foretells it. In the bosom of this
general fact it is the peculiar character, as it is the glory, of
Christianity that it has fully accepted these two rival forces;
and the one in the face of the other--authority and
liberty--both of divine origin.
{33}
Christianity has constantly accounted them for such as they
are--the one the revealed law of God, the other the innate right of
man, whom God created free and responsible. The history of the
Jews is only that of the intimate and continued relations between
God as sovereign and man as free agent; God uttering and giving
the law, man using his liberty at one time to fulfill, at another
to reject, the law of God. When the great day of humanity dawned
and Jesus came, it was in liberty's name, and in claiming the
right of the soul to obey the divine law according to its
convictions, that Christianity engaged in its primitive struggle
of three centuries. Under this banner, too, it conquered, and
under it religious society and civil society combined without
becoming identical. The tempestuous and painful fecundity of the
middle ages succeeded to the tyrannical unity of the Roman
empire, so sterile in result.
{34}
Hence principles the most inconsistent, issues the most
contradictory--the power of religion and the power of the
state--popes and kings now supporting, now combating each other's
ambitious purposes, and thwarting each other's measures, without
any regard to law or right; liberty sometimes suffering cruelly
by their alliance, sometimes happily profiting by their
dissensions; on some occasions popes, on others monarchs
protecting liberty against their reciprocal pretensions and
excesses. Spiritual and temporal princes still wavered in their
maxims and in their policy, and did not during the middle ages
systematically and on all occasions form coalitions, of which
liberty was to pay the cost. Liberty, on the contrary, continued
to subsist and to grow in the midst of their rivalries and of her
own sufferings. But these rivalries and these sufferings produced
a chaos which recurred incessantly, and became ever more and more
intolerable, precisely on account of the progress still made, and
which no effort could stifle.
{35}
The great body of Christians at last demanded some issue from
this chaos; then those who wielded the religious power and the
civil power, now separately, now in concert, endeavored to
satisfy the craving of the world; and by their councils,
pragmatic sanctions, encyclical letters and concordats, sought to
reform the abuses and the grievances which, as men loudly
proclaimed, existed, if not in the Church itself, at least in the
relations of the Church with the State. Whether from want of
wisdom, virtue, courage, or sagacity in their authors, or from
their measures being too superficial, or meeting with too much
opposition, those attempts failed; and the reform that was to
have proceeded from Authority herself remained without
accomplishment. Then came the reform by insurrection, in the name
of Faith and Liberty; and as happens in similar crises, whether
of the Church or the State, the supreme authority of Romanism was
attacked, not only in its abuses and its vices, but in its
principle and its very existence.
{36}
Rome then committed the fault almost always committed by Power
when seriously menaced--it defended itself by pushing its
principle and its right to the extreme, without holding account
of any other principle or of any other right. In the name of
Unity and Infallibility in matters of faith, the supreme power in
the Church of Rome allied itself with the absolute power in the
State, and supported the latter in its resistance to liberty.
Under the inspiration of their founder and hero, Loyola, whose
genius was that of a fanatic and a mystic, but who was adroit in
organizing and realizing his design, the order of the Jesuits
sprung into existence. This order was born of this war and for
this war--a chosen troop, charged in the name of the faith to be
the uncompromising defenders of authority in Church and in State.
{37}
Since that epoch three centuries have passed, and the fourth is
in its turn sweeping by us; neither times nor chances have been
wanting to causes to produce their effects, nor to men to
accomplish their designs; principles and events have received
their development over a vast space; and in the light of heaven
the different systems have been put to the test of successes and
of reverses. Absolutism has had its triumphs and its victories;
more than once the faults of its adversaries have played into its
hands, and it has found able and glorious champions. It has not
succeeded in arresting the course of a civilization full of
liberty and yet still greedy to have more. It has taken its place
in the midst of liberty as a temporary necessity, never as a
preponderating tendency. More than this, even in the epochs when
its influence was its height, and its splendor the greatest,
Absolutism has often served the cause hostile to its own. Louis
XIV. seconded the movement of mind and the people's progress;
Napoleon sowed in every direction the germs of social advancement
or innovation.
{38}
And now, even there, where liberty does not exist, Absolutism
does not avow itself; it furls its banner, and admits
institutions contrary to its principles, reserving to itself the
right to elude, or to render them powerless. Experience has
pronounced its judgment; whatever the problems that the future
will have to solve, or the trials which the future will have to
encounter, the cause of Absolutism is a lost cause throughout
Christendom.
At the commencement of this century, the Jesuits, unfortunately
for them, and yet very naturally, were regarded as devoted to
that cause. After having served it in the eighteenth century,
they had been the first victims of its decline; the papal and the
monarchical sovereignty had sacrificed them to the new opinions,
just as mariners in a tempest throw overboard their heavy
ordnance. When the nineteenth century opened, all was greatly
changed; the Revolution was not only victorious, but earnestly
engaged in conciliating parties by disavowing and making amends
for its excesses. After the commission of so many follies and
crimes in the pursuit of liberty, France submitted once more with
the greatest satisfaction to the voice of authority.
{39}
How would they then reconstruct that French policy that had been
at once so overthrown and so regenerated? By what means would
they conciliate new and ancient ideas, new and ancient interests?
Upon what terms would Authority and Liberty consent to be
reconciled, and to live henceforth side by side--Authority
soaring triumphant after her fall, Liberty embarrassed with her
recent excesses; and yet both of them more than ever necessary to
society, if society was to be healthy and strong? This was
evidently the vital question of the new century. God placed its
solution at first in the hands of Napoleon, the crown and the
scourge of the Revolution, the most remarkable example at once of
reaction and of progress recorded in the history of the world.
{40}
In this condition, so new to France, the situation of the Jesuits
was embarrassing and perilous. Napoleon was again re-establishing
the Church of Rome, and at the same time enforcing the maxims of
Absolutism--a double title to their sympathy. On the other hand,
he was consolidating the Revolution, and maintaining and putting
into practice some of its essential principles, among others,
that of freedom of conscience. Napoleon arrogated also to himself
the right of dictating and acting as master in the Church as in
the State, at Rome as at Paris; he was neither a serious believer
in the faith of Christ nor a sure friend of the Papacy. In this
twofold aspect, the Jesuits could not but regard him with
distrust. The distrust was mutual: for if Napoleon was for the
Jesuits a too faithful and too ambitious heir of the Revolution,
the Jesuits were for him Catholics too independent and too
devoted to their Church and to its chief. As far back as 1804,
their establishments, scarcely disguised under different names,
had been a source of disquietude to Napoleon.
{41}
He directed them to be closed, enforced the laws which denied to
religious corporations an independent existence, and founded the
University, which at the same time he invested with the privilege
of teaching. This system was not abolished at the Restoration.
The Jesuits then entered into the simultaneous possession of two
forces novel to them--the one sprang from the support of power,
the other was derived from the progress of liberty. They had the
favor of the court, and might wield as their own arms, and in
their own interests, the liberal principles that were dear to the
people. A position excellent, had they known how to restrict
themselves to their religious mission, keep aloof from political
contests, and devote themselves exclusively to the task of
awakening the faith of Christians, and arousing them to a
Christian life! Their action upon the soul might have extended
their influence beyond their peculiar sphere to the world
without. Had they not then a striking instance of such an
influence even in their own order?
{42}
To what cause, thirty years ago, did the Père Ravignan owe the
respect and moral authority with which he was surrounded, not
only by members of his own Church, but by men not remarkable for
their faith? Far less to his talent as an orator, than to the
thorough sincerity and disinterestedness of his religious
character. He was a believer, a pious Christian, and a stranger
to every mental reservation; neither was he a partisan, but
solely occupied with the service of God, of his Church, and of
his order, at the same time that he was propagating the faith and
enforcing piety. He declared himself aloud a Jesuit, but the
declaration excited no distrust even in his adversaries. If his
order had imitated his example, it would have obtained a similar
success. Nor was the instance new. In the seventeenth century, at
the court of Louis XIV., Bourdaloue displayed the same virtues as
the Père Ravignan in our own days; and, in all certitude, did
more honor and rendered more service to his Church and order than
had ever been done or rendered by Père la Chaise.
{43}
I shall not attempt to examine how far the Jesuits in effect were
really engaged, or what was the degree of their direct agency in
the intrigues of the retrograde party who were seeking to
repossess themselves of the relics of the ancient institutions,
in the idle hope of reconstructing the social edifice upon those
ruined foundations. I am convinced that France felt at this epoch
far too much alarm for this party and its allies, Jesuits or no
Jesuits, just as the Monarchy itself felt too much apprehension
of the Revolutionists. No graver fault can be committed by
nations or by governments than to give way to fears out of
proportion with the dangers which they encounter. France had no
reason under the Restoration to dread either the triumph of
Theocracy or of Absolutism; and yet she was alarmed at both, and
the people persisted in believing that the Jesuits were serving
this double cause--that of the ancient régime of the Papacy, and
of the ancient régime of the Monarchy.
{44}
The Jesuits had then to struggle at once against the ideas and
the passions of modern society, and the traditions and maxims of
ancient France herself; they had for adversaries, the laity, the
bar, and the liberals, respectively represented by M. de
Montlosier, M. Benjamin Constant, and M. Dupin. The odds against
them were too great; even the Monarchy itself, however well
disposed toward them, was carried away by the movement which
attacked them, and Charles X. did not think his own position
strong enough to dispense with treating them, by his ordonnances
of the 21st June, 1828, as Napoleon had done by his decree of the
22d June, 1804. Throughout this whole period the conduct of the
Jesuits was feebler than their cause. Sworn and devoted to the
defense of Authority, they had not foresight enough to perceive
by what means and on what conditions Authority might raise and
consolidate itself.
{45}
Haunted by the traditions of past times, and having the history
of their own order continually before their minds, they no longer
regarded the future boldly or confidently; they failed to
appreciate justly the present; they did not believe sufficiently
in the power of Christ's faith, and they believed too implicitly
in the efficiency of worldly policy. By this vulgar blunder they
compromised, in the case of many Christians, the full effect of
that great stirring movement of Christianity, at the very time
that, with respect to others, they aided it materially.
The Revolution of 1830 inflicted a rude blow upon these
retrograde tendencies, and a new element started up in the bosom
of the Church of Rome. In the midst of the grand manifestation
and progress of liberty now realizing itself in the State,
Catholics, genuine and ardent too, conceived the hope of turning
both to the profit of the Church of Rome, and of at last setting
Catholicism at peace and in harmony with the new social
institutions of France.
{46}
Then the group, I will not say the party, formed itself of men at
once generous and hardy, who did not hesitate to declare
themselves Ultramontanists, like the Père de Ravignan, Liberals
like M. de la Fayette. It consisted of priests and laymen, of men
of mature years and men in the spring-time of life--the Abbé
Lacordaire, Abbe Gerbet, M. de Montalembert, and M. de Coux: I
confine myself to the names that at the outset gleamed on their
banners. They founded an _agency_ for the defense of the
liberties of religion, and a journal, the _Avenir_, to
develop its principles and its constitution. But the association
was born under an unlucky star; for its little army had for its
declared chief, and the object of its passionate reverence, the
Abbe de la Mennais. In the more intimate and unrestricted
relations of life this great man appears to have exercised
extraordinarily attractive power over his friends and disciples.
{47}
Cited jointly with him on the 31st January, 1831, before the Cour
d'Assises of Paris to answer for the appearance of two articles
in the _Avenir_, the Abbé Lacordaire said, "I stand here
near the man who began the reconciliation of Catholicism with the
world. Let me tell him how affected I am by the part that God has
made for me in giving me him as my master and my father. Suffer
these words of filial piety to penetrate to the heart of one so
long misunderstood; suffer me to exclaim with the poet:
"L'amitié d'un grand homme est un bienfait des dieux."
[Footnote 6]
[Footnote 6: "A great man's friendship, blessed gift of
Heaven."]
The Abbé Lacordaire had soon to feel the danger and to repel with
sorrow the yoke of this seductive friendship. The errors and the
evil passions of the Abbé de la Mennais were not long in
exploding; his was a mind lofty and powerful, but without grasp,
without foresight, without moderation, and without equity;
incapable of discerning the different sides of a subject and of
embracing all the elements of the problem demanding solution, he
was a haughty slave to the truth that he served but partially,
and the somber enemy of every one who wounded his pride by
contesting his opinions.
{48}
He gave to the _Avenir_ a character at once democratic and
theocratic, imperious and revolutionary. All the ideas contrary
to his own, all the institutions, all the governments, that stood
in his way, were attacked by him with a degree of vehemence,
insult, and menace never surpassed by any political partisan,
however violent. The maxims of the Gallican Church were, to cite
his words, "an object of disgust and horror; opinions as odious
as they were base, which, while rendering even the conscience the
accomplice of tyranny, make servility a duty and brute force an
independent and just right." He demanded the separation of Church
and State as a necessity absolute and urgent; "for," said he, "we
regard as abolished and of no effect every particular law which
contradicts the Charter, and is incompatible with the liberties
that _it_ proclaims.
{49}
In the event of such law, we believe that it becomes immediately
and without delay the duty of government to come to an
understanding with the pope, and to rescind the Concordat, which
lost all the means of being executed from the instant when, thank
God, the Catholic religion ceased to be a state religion." Four
months had scarcely elapsed since the birth of the government of
July, and because the liberty of teaching promised by the Charter
of 1830 was not already in vigor, the Abbé de la Mennais said to
the Catholics: "Whence comes the oppression that weighs upon us?
Either, in what concerns us, the government cannot or it will not
keep its promises. If it cannot, what is this mockery of a
sovereignty, this miserable phantom of government, and what have
we to do with it? It is as far as we are concerned as if it were
_not_, and nothing remains to us but to forget it, and seek
our safety in ourselves.
{50}
Let us proclaim aloud who the powers are that are hostile to us;
whose servants seek only to satisfy blindly their thirst for
persecution." What attacks leveled at a government were ever more
precipitate, more violent, and showed a less just appreciation of
facts? What revolutionary party ever proclaimed with greater
audacity disobedience to the laws, and insurrection as the first
of rights and of duties?
Side by side with these violent and insulting invectives leveled
at the government of France, the _Avenir_ placed a
declaration of respect and submission to the chief of the Church
of Rome: "We profess," it said, "the most complete obedience to
the authority of the Vicar of Jesus Christ. We will not have
other faith than his faith, other doctrine than his doctrine. All
that he approves we approve, all that he condemns we condemn, and
without the shadow of a reservation; we, each of us, submit to
the judgment of the Holy See all our past, all our future
writings, of what nature soever they may be." Here, at least, the
revolutionary spirit seemed absent, or, at all events, was in a
hurry to disavow itself.
{51}