his different controversies, and especially in his controversy
with the Consistory of Lyons, he had shown rudeness, impatience,
and want of foresight; he had been too precipitate in enforcing
his faith by arguments, and too much disposed to undervalue the
obstacles in its way. Thanks to his genuine sincerity and the
natural elevation of his character, time, experience, and success
had given at once breadth and suppleness to his thought. Faith
had generated modesty, and hope patience. Contrary to the
ordinary bias of men, his liberalism had increased in the same
measure as his strength. As an act of duty he made in 1848 an
avowal of the state of his mind in this respect. "The age," he
said, "reproaches us with '_exclusisme_,' (exclusiveness,) a
new word expressly invented to denote its favorite charge; for
false ideas the age has only the resource of a barbarous
phraseology. This '_exclusisme_' is the sole thing which the
age cannot tolerate in matters of doctrine: it is prepared, it
says to itself, to take everything within its pale except the
'exclusives.'
{195}
Thus they demand from us only one change in the profession of our
faith; they call upon us to substitute for our usual prefatory
formula, 'This is the truth,' the words, 'This is my opinion.'
And if they, in claiming such qualification of language, limited
their demand to things which, in spite of any relative
importance, do not constitute the substance of the faith and of
the life of a Christian, we should do what they require; perhaps
I should rather say, we do it already, as brother should do to
brother, and in the interest of truth itself. It is one of the
distinctive features of the awakening of Christians in our epoch,
that charitably sparing in the absolute dogmatism of which the
sixteenth century was prodigal, they make dogmas of only a small
number of fundamental doctrines. And even of these they strive to
contract the circle, until having reached the vital forces, the
very heart, so to say, of truth, they sum it up in one single
name, Jesus Christ, and in one single word, grace.
{196}
Whoever is of that faith, whatever name he bears elsewhere, and
whatever place he occupies in the Universal Church--Lutheran,
Anglican, Methodist, Moravian, Baptist, nay, Roman Catholic, or
Greek Catholic, we receive that man as a brother in Christ Jesus;
and not we only, but the whole contemporary Evangelical Church,
with certain exceptions becoming every day rarer, and arising
from a narrow or sectarian pietism. Hence the 'Evangelical
Alliance,' formed in our own time of more than twenty Protestant
denominations, the prelude only to another evangelical alliance
which will exclude none who rely upon the sole merits of Jesus
Christ, the Saviour and Lord of all.
"Our '_exclusisme_,' besides, has not for its objects
individuals but doctrines. Absolute affirmation is legitimate
when the object is to define the faith, which is the promise of
salvation, for God has clearly revealed it in his word; but when
the object is to mark the individuals who possess that saving
faith, similar affirmation could not be used without temerity;
for God has nowhere revealed to us either the internal state of
any man, or the final lot reserved for him.
{197}
_We_ exclude no man, _we_ judge no man, alive or dead;
the judgment of the quick and of the dead belongs to God alone.
Doubtless we estimate, according to our ability, the spiritual
condition of a man by his works, as we do a tree by its fruits;
Jesus himself invites us to do so. Doubtless, when we see a man
living and dying in the works of the faith, we hope for him, and
our hope may grow even to a firm assurance; and when, on the
contrary, we see a man living and dying in the works of
incredulity, we have a feeling of anxiety for him--a feeling as
painful as it is mysterious. But, after all, neither in the first
case nor in the second, and still less in the second than the
first, are we authorized to pronounce any personal judgment; and
but for the paradoxical turn of the expression, I would willingly
adopt the language of the devout Bunyan: Three things would
astonish me in heaven; first, not to see there certain persons
whom I expect to see there; secondly, to see there those I do not
expect to see there; and thirdly, which would surprise me most,
to see myself there.'" [Footnote 30]
[Footnote 30: Sermon sur l'Exclusisme, ou l'unité de la foi,
in the Recueil des Sermons de M. Adolphe Monod. 3me série, t.
ii, pp. 386-390. Paris, 1860. The sermons of M. Adolphe Monod
have been collected and published in four vols. 8vo. Paris,
1856-1860. He also wrote several small works, among others:
1. Lucile, ou la lecture de la Bible. 1841.
2. La Destitution d'Adolphe Monod, récit inédit, rédigé par
luimême. 1864.
3. Récit des conférences qui ont eu lieu en 1834, entre
quelques Catholiques Remains et M. Adolphe Monod. Paris,
1860.
4. Les adieux d'Adolphe Monod à ses amis et à l'église.
Paris, 1856.]
{198}
A piety so profound, and at the same time so modest and so large,
expressed with an eloquence which combined an impassioned
earnestness of language with an impassioned earnestness of
conviction, could not fail to exercise great influence. As a
preacher, M. Adolphe Monod was powerful.
{199}
He had acquired, not by careful and cold observation, but by an
assiduous and conscientious study of the Gospels and of himself,
a remarkable knowledge of human nature, of its strength and of
its weakness, of its deficiencies and of its aspirations. He laid
siege, so to speak, to the souls of men, and he pressed the siege
ardently and with skill; he assailed all their gates, and pursued
them to their innermost defenses, keeping constantly displayed
the banner of Christ, and inspiring them with the perfect
confidence that he was urging them to take _their_ stand,
too, beneath it, not from any human motive, or any desire of
glory to himself, but from a serious desire for their souls'
welfare, and from it alone. Thus did he gain over to his Divine
Master the hearts disposed to receive him, strongly shake the
purpose of those not confirmed in their rebellion, and leave
astonished and intimidated those whom he did not bring over. As
pastor also his influence was extraordinary; his life was the
reflection and the commentary upon his preaching.
{200}
He applied first to his own case the precepts of his faith, and
the conclusions therefrom logically deducible. As he said nothing
that he did not think, so he thought nothing that he did not
practice; and without being readily impressionable, like that of
M. Vinet, his zeal was expansive, and his piety gave him no rest
from the task of diffusing by example and precept the faith and
the practice of Christianity. Attacked by a painful and incurable
illness, which at last condemned him to immobility, he did not
suffer it to render him inactive and useless. Every Sunday during
the last six months of his life, his family, some pastors his
colleagues, and as many attached friends as his chamber could
receive, gathered around his bed, and his zeal surmounted his
pain. He addressed to them, to use his very words, "sometimes the
regret of a dying man, sometimes the results of his own
experiences of faith and of life." The devout assemblage was
again convoked, at his expressed wish, for the 6th April, 1856.
{201}
But that day, before the hour fixed for the assembly had arrived,
God took to him his servant, granting the wish expressed in his
own often repeated prayer, "Let my life only terminate with my
ministry, and my ministry only with my life." [Footnote 31]
[Footnote 31: These are the words inserted in a publication
bearing the title "Les adieux d'Adolphe Monod à sa famille et
a l'église," in which the last exhortations and conversations
of this dying Christian have been piously collected. P. viii.
Paris, 1856.]
Eighteen months before the decease of M. Adolphe Monod, an
eminent pastor of the Lutheran Church of Paris, his friend and
fellow-laborer in the work of Christianity, M. Edouard Verny,
died suddenly in the Evangelical Chair at Strasbourg, while
preaching upon the words addressed by the Apostles to the
Christians of Antioch, "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to
us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these _necessary_
things," words not less liberal than pious, and faithfully
expressing the sentiments of the Christian orator, who died while
commenting upon them.
{202}
The mind of M. Verny was naturally liberal and independent; his
intellectual career had commenced with philosophical studies, and
he had retained a strong bias in favor of the progress of
thought. This did not, however, prevent him from promptly and
calmly appreciating the opinions which he did not share. Without
possessing either the impassioned style or the power of M.
Adolphe Monod, he was not less devoted to the cause of
Christianity; and he convinced those by the charms of his manner,
into whose minds M. Monod entered by force and as a conqueror.
[Footnote 32]
[Footnote 32: Although M. Verny had long preached, and had
often written in religious reviews and journals, and
particularly in the "Semeur," very few monuments remain of
his ideas and of his talents. The principal are:
1. A sermon "Upon the Unity of the Church," preached in the
church of Bolbec in 1854.
2. Two sermons, one "Upon the Prayer of the Canaanite Woman;"
the other "Upon Repentance;" preached at Paris in 1843 and
1846.
3. The sermon "Sur l'Ouverture solennelle de la session du
Consistoire supérieur de l'Église de la Confession
d'Augsbourg," preached at Strasbourg on the 19th of October,
1854: while preaching which M. Verny died in the pulpit.
4. An "Essai sur les droits de la science," inserted in the
"Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie Chrétienne," published
at Strasbourg by M. Colani. Vol. ix, pp. 208-248. 1854. This
essay was to have been followed by an "Essai sur les devoirs
de la foi," of which the sudden death of M. Verny prevented
the completion.]
{203}
Although the Protestant Church of France thereby sustained an
immense loss, it had a striking and salutary spectacle also
presented to it by the end of these two servants of Christ, the
one dying suddenly, in the plenitude of his strength, at the very
moment when from his pulpit he was maintaining with distinguished
ability the doctrines of his Master; the other, from his bed,
gathering with pain what of breath remained to him in this world,
to pour once more a flood of faith into the souls of his
auditors.
Such lives, such deaths, could not remain sterile of result;
under their influence the Christian faith was relumed; it again
spread itself among the Protestants of France. Nor was this that
arid cold faith which men accept to acquit their consciences, and
to rid themselves of a trouble and a scruple; nor that vague and
dreamy faith which feasts rather upon its own emotions, than
nourishes itself with the truths which are the voice of God.
{204}
A Christian's faith is neither an act of prudent submission nor a
paroxysm of mystic fervor. Conviction and sentiment, the firm
adhesion of the mind, and the filial love of the heart, meet in
that faith in essential and intimate union. It is the light
coming from on high, and bringing down with it the genial
principles of vital warmth and fecundity; out of which, like
salubrious waters from a pure source, flow freely and in
abundance the works of human charity. I have lying before me a
list of the different charities to which Christianity has in our
own days since the reaction given birth in the Protestant Church
of France. [Footnote 33]
[Footnote 33: Exposé des oeuvres de la charité protestante en
France, par H. de Triqueti, membre du conseil presbytéral et
du diaconat de l'Église réformée de Paris. 18mo. 1863.]
{205}
I see there manifold associations, enterprises supposing a long
duration of existence, unremitting efforts for the moral
development of men; for the bodily solace of their earthly
condition; for the propagation and the defense of freedom of
opinion in religious matters; for the support and diffusion of
the faith itself: all these objects, at once so various and so
analogous, are being laboriously worked out both by the
independent Protestant Churches, and by the Protestant Church
established from the State. M. Edmond de Pressensé and M. Eugène
Bersier devote their talents and their zeal to the same forms of
Christian belief as were advocated by M. Alexandre Vinet and M.
Adolphe Monod. In spite of the free divergence of sentiment and
the diversity of ecclesiastical government in French
Protestantism, we may observe in its bosom a progress of
Christian Faith, a progress in works of Christian Charity, a
progress in Christian Science, and a progress in Christian
Influence.
{206}
I use the same terms employed by me in speaking of the
contemporary Catholic Church of Rome, because I find before me
similar facts. These facts do not announce the reconciliation of
the two Churches--profound differences of opinion continue to
separate them; but these facts are, in both Churches, signs of
the Awakening of Christianity.
---------------------------------------
III. Awakening Of Christianity In France.
But the world has not changed since God at its creation delivered
it up to the disputes of mankind; nor have the diversity and
conflict of ideas and of passions ever ceased to be the condition
of humanity. By the side of the movement of Christianity to which
I refer, a movement in the contrary direction is manifesting
itself, and is pursuing its course. Christianity at its Awakening
is challenged to ruder combats. Philosophy refuses to its
fundamental dogmas the marks and the rights of rational truth.
{207}
An erudite criticism contests its historical evidence. The
natural sciences proclaim that they do not require its aid to
account for man and for the world. It is affirmed as a principle,
and maintained in learned societies, that morality is entirely
independent of religion. Man in his aspirations for liberty, that
generous passion of the age, retains a profound resentment for
the chains and the sufferings which, under pretext of
Christianity, human conscience and human thought have so long
been made to endure. The influence of these bitter reminiscences
is manifesting itself in the different Christian Churches under
various forms, and with different effects. Many liberals so dread
the prospect of the Church of Rome obtaining power over civil
society that they hardly accord to this Church the rights of
common liberty; or, if they do so at all, they do it reluctantly
and little by little.
{208}
Among the Protestants, some push the pretensions of liberty so
far as to insist that in religious society a community of faith
should count for nothing; that a man should be entitled to remain
a member of a Church, and even to remain its minister, although
he profess respecting the essential facts and dogmas of the
Church the most contradictory opinions, and opinions the
strangest to its traditions and its texts. With respect to Roman
Catholics, the dominant question is that of liberty. Are the
liberties of civil society to be accorded to the Church? Are
those of the Church to be allowed to remain intact in the bosom
of the State? In Protestantism, on the other hand, the complete
liberty of religion in the midst of civil society, the right of
every individual to avow his belief, and to solemnize his own
forms of worship--these are all privileges already acquired, and
contested as little by any orthodox believer as by any
freethinker. The questions really here agitated are questions of
faith and of discipline. Are a common faith and a uniform
internal discipline essential to the Church? Here is the debate.
{209}
But above all these special questions and these different
situations of the various Christian Churches rise, for Romanist
and Protestant alike, the general question and the common
situation; it is Christianity itself which is engaged in the
contest, and its awakening spirit confronts the antichristian
movement.
Let us not delude ourselves as to the character, the force, or
the danger of this antichristian movement. It is not merely a
feverish excitability in men's minds, a simple revolutionary
crisis in the religious order. No; we have here earnest
convictions at work, and the prospect of a long war. Impatience
of an ancient yoke, a spirit of reaction, a love of innovation,
frivolous instincts not a few, as well as evil impulses, may
claim a share--and a large share--in the attacks of which
Christianity is in these days the object; but what gives to these
attacks their most formidable character is a sentiment far more
serious, one that has made heroes and martyrs, the love of truth
at all risk and in despite of consequence, for the sake of truth
and for its sake alone.
{210}
The feeling that makes man thirst for truth is an honor to human
nature. If he fancies that he has found that truth, man abandons
himself with transport to the satisfaction of his cravings, and
does not scruple to drink even to intoxication at this pure
source. But here he is incurring a great danger: man is not
merely an intelligence whose vocation during his brief transit
through this world confines him only to study and science: he is
an active, responsible being; a being engaged in a life full of
labors, with a future life before him full of mystery; a laborer
in a career having a particular interest for himself, and yet
forming part of a general scheme, of the design of which he has
but imperfect glimpses. Very incomplete and very imperfect is
that man's state of intellectual action, who restricts himself to
that which appears to him to be scientific truth, who does not,
at the same time, submit his thought to all the tests to which he
is himself subject, and who does not examine whether that thought
be in harmony with the laws of his nature--whether it respect or
transgress the limits imposed upon his means of knowledge.
{211}
The danger of falling into error becomes greater in proportion as
this incomplete and imperfect state of his mind is in itself a
noble state, a state that satisfies noble impulses, and procures
noble means of enjoyment. The most eminent among the actual
adversaries of Christianity believe themselves the interpreters
and the defenders of truth; some of philosophical truth; others
of historical truth, others again of the truth of the facts and
laws of the physical world. They are all proud of belonging to
the department of pure science, and of making of scientific truth
the sole object, the sole rule of their labors; but they are also
all forgetful of some conditions--nay, the most indispensable
ones--to which science is bound to conform; some tests--and the
most legitimate ones--to which science is obliged to submit.
{212}
They claim, too, the honor of bearing the banner of a grand and
noble cause, the cause of Liberty. That Christianity alone
restored to man, as man, and for no other reason, his rights to
liberty, is a fact that the comparative histories of the world,
whether Christian or Pagan, place beyond all doubt; for confront
these two histories, and name the nations among whom the idea of
the dignity of man's liberty became a general idea, powerful in
influence and fruitful in consequence! Another fact equally
historic and certain is, that Christianity knew how to adapt
itself, and did readily adapt itself, to the different states of
society, and the different forms of government; that it set
itself up and maintained its rank in republics as well as
monarchies, under constitutional regimes as well as in
despotisms, in the midst of democratical as well as
aristocratical institutions; and, beyond doubt, it was not in
free states that it displayed least vigor, or met with the
smallest success.
{213}
These two great facts are nowadays lost sight of. Christianity is
accused of being hostile to Liberty and incompatible with the
spirit of modern societies; and this is, indeed, the chief charge
laid to its score. True it is, that the charge is not without
deriving countenance from the history of Europe in modern times;
worldly interests, selfish passions, events complex and obscure,
in which moral order and social order have been compromised, have
as it were suspended in certain countries the liberal action of
Christianity, and enlisted momentarily the cause of Liberty under
a banner not Christian. The error is profound, but transient; the
traditional influences of ages will resume their empire, the
grand events their course; Christ's religion and man's liberty
will once more remember that each stands in need of the other,
and that their alliance in the bosom of order is their natural
and necessary condition. That they do misunderstand each other
occasions the most serious crisis at this moment in modern
society.
{214}
Here, too, is the gravest peril which the Christian religion has
in our days to surmount. Appreciate the force of the two
sentiments to which I just now referred, the love of science and
the love of liberty; understand through what phases of
degeneration and of deceptive transformation those sentiments
may, in the ardor of pursuit and of combat, have to pass; reckon
up, if reckon you can, all the false ideas, the chimerical hopes,
which they may suggest; and then add to the amount, and as their
consequences, the immoral and anarchical passions which may make
those sentiments their pretext and their tools; and in doing
this, you will find that you have passed in review the forces of
that enemy now waging an implacable war against Christianity,
although a war to which Christianity is called upon to put an
end.
{215}
I do not in any respect underrate the forces of that army. I
disparage no more their quality than their numbers. To maintain
the combat worthily and efficaciously we should, at the onset,
accord to our adversaries the whole amount of their merits as
well as of their strength, and then attack them in their
strongest entrenchments. I have charged the enemies of
Christianity with puerile presumptuousness when they refuse to
see the energy and the progress of the awakening of Christianity.
It is of infinite importance to Christians, on their side, not to
be blind to the ardor and the effects which that Antichristian
demonstration is producing, of which their Faith and their Church
are the aim. I am firmly convinced that in this war Christianity
will conquer; but it will leave its enemies with arms still in
their hands. It will no more gain over them any complete or
definitive victory than it will be able to conclude with them any
serious or durable peace. In the actual state of men's minds and
of society, the struggle will go on between the followers and the
opponents of Christianity; the two armies will continue to deploy
their forces in the face each of the other; and that of the
Christians, in order to defend and to extend its domain, will be
incessantly called upon to watch and to combat the movements of
its enemy.
{216}
While combating them it will be also obliged to comply with the
terms that truth exacts, and the conditions that liberty imposes.
From these exigencies and these conditions Christianity has
nothing to dread--that is, if it accepts them boldly, and in its
turn imposes them upon its enemies. Let man's science, labors,
and systems be submitted to the same tests, and handled with the
same freedom of examination, as are being applied to the
foundations and the doctrines of Christian faith; this is all
that Christians are entitled to, all that they need to demand.
Thus far I have explained the actual state of the Christian
religion in France, the sources of its strength and of its
weakness, its awakening and its perils. It is my intention now to
examine the actual state of those doctrines and systems which
repudiate, or which more or less deny and combat Christianity.
{217}
When I have passed the hostile army in review, I will once more
confront Christianity with its adversaries, and endeavor to
distinguish, by contrasting them, on which side the truth is, on
which side the right, and on which side the hope of future
success.
---------------------------------------
{218}
Second Meditation.
Spiritualism.