During the reign of the Emperor Julian commenced a persecution, perhaps
more dangerous than violence itself, which consisted in loading the
Christians with disgrace and contempt. Julian began his hostility by
plundering the churches; he then forbade the faithful to teach or to
study the liberal arts and sciences. Sensible, however, of the important
advantages of the institutions of Christianity, the emperor determined
to establish hospitals and monasteries, and after the example of the
gospel system to combine morality with religion; he ordered a kind of
sermons to be delivered in the pagan temples....
From the time of Julian to that of Luther, the Church, flourishing in
full vigor, had no occasion for apologists; but when the Western schism
took place, with new enemies arose new defenders. It cannot be denied
that at first the Protestants had the superiority, at least in regard to
forms, as Montesquieu has remarked. Erasmus himself was weak when
opposed to Luther, and Theodore Beza had a captivating manner of
writing, in which his opponents were too often deficient....
It is natural for schism to lead to infidelity, and for heresy to
engender atheism. Bayle and Spinoza arose after Calvin, and they found
in Clarke and Leibnitz men of sufficient talents to refute their
sophistry. Abbadie wrote an apology for religion, remarkable for method
and sound argument. Unfortunately his style is feeble, though his ideas
are not destitute of brilliancy. "If the ancient philosophers," observes
Abbadie, "adored the Virtues, their worship was only a beautiful species
of idolatry."
While the Church was yet enjoying her triumph, Voltaire renewed the
persecution of Julian. He possessed the baneful art of making infidelity
fashionable among a capricious but amiable people. Every species of
self-love was pressed into this insensate league. Religion was attacked
with every kind of weapon, from the pamphlet to the folio, from the
epigram to the sophism. No sooner did a religious book appear than the
author was overwhelmed with ridicule, while works which Voltaire was the
first to laugh at among his friends were extolled to the skies. Such was
his superiority over his disciples that he sometimes could not forbear
diverting himself with their irreligious enthusiasm. Meanwhile the
destructive system continued to spread throughout France. It was first
adopted in those provincial academies, each of which was a focus of bad
taste and faction. Women of fashion and grave philosophers alike read
lectures on infidelity. It was at length concluded that Christianity was
no better than a barbarous system, and that its fall could not happen
too soon for the liberty of mankind, the promotion of knowledge, the
improvement of the arts, and the general comfort of life.
To say nothing of the abyss into which we were plunged by this aversion
to the religion of the gospel, its immediate consequence was a return,
more affected than sincere, to that mythology of Greece and Rome to
which all the wonders of antiquity were ascribed. People were not
ashamed to regret that worship which had transformed mankind into a herd
of madmen, monsters of indecency, or ferocious beasts. This could not
fail to inspire contempt for the writers of the age of Louis XIV., who
however had reached the high perfection which distinguished them only by
being religious. If no one ventured to oppose them face to face, on
account of their firmly established reputation, they were nevertheless
attacked in a thousand indirect ways. It was asserted that they were
unbelievers _in their hearts_; or at least that they would have been
much greater characters had they lived _in our times_. Every author
blessed his good fortune for having been born in the glorious age of the
Diderots and d'Alemberts, in that age when all the attainments of the
human mind were ranged in alphabetical order in the 'Encyclopedie,' that
Babel of the sciences and of reason....
It was therefore necessary to prove that on the contrary the Christian
religion, of all the religions that ever existed, is the most humane,
the most favorable to liberty and to the arts and sciences; that the
modern world is indebted to it for every improvement from agriculture to
the abstract sciences, from the hospitals for the reception of the
unfortunate to the temples reared by the Michael Angelos and embellished
by the Raphaels. It was necessary to prove that nothing is more divine
than its morality, nothing more lovely and more sublime than its tenets,
its doctrine, and its worship; that it encourages genius, corrects the
taste, develops the virtuous passions, imparts energy to the ideas,
presents noble images to the writer, and perfect models to the artist;
that there is no disgrace in being believers with Newton and Bossuet,
with Pascal and Racine. In a word, it was necessary to summon all the
charms of the imagination and all the interests of the heart to the
assistance of that religion against which they had been set in array.
The reader may now have a clear view of the object of our work. All
other kinds of apologies are exhausted, and perhaps they would be
useless at the present day. Who would now sit down to read a work
professedly theological? Possibly a few sincere Christians who are
already convinced. But, it may be asked, May there not be some danger in
considering religion in a merely human point of view? Why so? Does our
religion shrink from the light? Surely one great proof of its divine
origin is, that it will bear the test of the fullest and severest
scrutiny of reason. Would you have us always open to the reproach of
enveloping our tenets in sacred obscurity, lest their falsehood should
be detected? Will Christianity be the less true for appearing the more
beautiful? Let us banish our weak apprehensions; let us not, by an
excess of religion, leave religion to perish. We no longer live in those
times when you might say, "Believe without inquiring." People _will_
inquire in spite of us; and our timid silence, in heightening the
triumph of the infidel, will diminish the number of believers.
It is time that the world should know to what all those charges of
absurdity, vulgarity, and meanness, that are daily alleged against
Christianity, may be reduced. It is time to demonstrate that instead of
debasing the ideas, it encourages the soul to take the most daring
flights, and is capable of enchanting the imagination as divinely as the
deities of Homer and Virgil. Our arguments will at least have this
advantage, that they will be intelligible to the world at large and will
require nothing but common-sense to determine their weight and strength.
In works of this kind authors neglect, perhaps rather too much, to speak
the language of their readers. It is necessary to be a scholar with a
scholar, and a poet with a poet. The Almighty does not forbid us to
tread the flowery path, if it serves to lead the wanderer once more to
him; nor is it always by the steep and rugged mountain that the lost
sheep finds its way back to the fold.
We think that this mode of considering Christianity displays
associations of ideas which are but imperfectly known. Sublime in the
antiquity of its recollections, which go back to the creation of the
world; ineffable in its mysteries, adorable in its sacraments,
interesting in its history, celestial in its morality, rich and
attractive in its ceremonial,--it is fraught with every species of
beauty. Would you follow it in poetry? Tasso, Milton, Corneille, Racine,
Voltaire, will depict to you its miraculous effects. In belles-lettres,
in oratory, history, and philosophy, what have not Bossuet, Fenelon,
Massillon, Bourdaloue, Bacon, Pascal, Euler, Newton, Leibnitz, produced
by its inspiration! In the arts, what masterpieces! If you examine it in
its worship, what ideas are suggested by its antique Gothic churches,
its admirable prayers, its impressive ceremonies! Among its clergy,
behold all those scholars who have handed down to you the languages and
the works of Greece and Rome; all those anchorets of Thebais; all those
asylums for the unfortunate; all those missionaries to China, to Canada,
to Paraguay; not forgetting the military orders whence chivalry derived
its origin. Everything has been engaged in our cause--the manners of our
ancestors, the pictures of days of yore, poetry, even romances
themselves. We have called smiles from the cradle, and tears from the
tomb. Sometimes, with the Maronite monk, we dwell on the summits of
Carmel and Lebanon; at others we watch with the Daughter of Charity at
the bedside of the sick. Here two American lovers summon us into the
recesses of their deserts; there we listen to the sighs of the virgin in
the solitude of the cloister. Homer takes his place by Milton, and
Virgil beside Tasso; the ruins of Athens and of Memphis form contrasts
with the ruins of Christian monuments, and the tombs of Ossian with our
rural churchyards. At St. Denis we visit the ashes of kings; and when
our subject requires us to treat of the existence of God, we seek our
proofs in the wonders of Nature alone. In short, we endeavor to strike
the heart of the infidel in every possible way; but we dare not flatter
ourselves that we possess the miraculous rod of religion which caused
living streams to burst from the flinty rock.