This system was continued, with more sincerity on the part of
government, under the dynasty of the Restoration. But the interested
favors of the Court, for the higher clergy of a particular worship,
irritated the minds of the populace against the priesthood.
The more it lavished power and human dignities upon priestly
superiors, the more the mind of the People turned from the religious
sentiment. Each favor of royal authority to the privileged Church cast
thousands of souls into Atheism.
The Revolution of July suppressed the religion of the State: it was a
progress towards the religion of conscience. But it favored the
religion of the majority; it still leaned towards the supremacy of
numbers in matters of faith. However, from the moment the State
religion was suppressed, the religion of conscience gained ground in
men's hearts. From 1830 to this day, every intelligent observer gladly
acknowledges an immense progress in the religious sentiment in
France.--Why? Because the suppression of the official religion of the
State was a progress in the liberty of conscience, and all progress in
liberty of conscience is a progress of human thought toward the idea
of God. Go farther still, and complete liberty will destroy Atheism in
the People!
But the evil done was immense. The cynicism of Diderot, materialism,
scepticism, revolutionary impiety, the false and hypocritical piety
of the empire, the concordat, the restoration of an imperial religion,
and of an official and dynastic God by Napoleon, the tendency of the
two Bourbon reigns to reconstruct a political church, everlastingly
endowed with a monopoly of goods and of souls,--and, finally, the
industrialism of the reign of Louis Philippe, turning every thought to
trade, to manual labor, to worldly wealth, and making gold the true
and only God of the century;--all this has borne its fruits.
Look at these fruits at the present day, and say, if practical Atheism
does not devour the souls of this People. But let us proceed.