Читать книгу Meditations on the Actual State of Christianity, and on the Attacks Which Are Now Being Made Upon It - Guizot François - Страница 6

Table of Contents

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.]

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.

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. 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; 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

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.

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. 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? 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.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

I am persuaded that, in holding this language, the Abbé de la Mennais was sincere. When an exclusive idea or passion sways a man's mind, nothing is more unknown to him than his own future conduct; he knows even less what he will do than what he is doing. The Abbé de la Mennais no more suspected in 1831 what he would say and what he would do a few years later, than the most violent leaders of the French Revolution suspected in 1789 what they would be and what they would do in 1793. The court at Rome was clearer-sighted than its fanatical champion; it had been under the influence of the charm of the first works and of the first successes of the Abbé de la Mennais. It had not, however, failed to perceive what pernicious and dangerous seed might thence germinate. The Avenir occasioned it profound disquietude; the principles and the yearnings of modern society found therein a too ready acceptance; the régime which had governed France since 1830 was too much the object of its attacks; it demanded too much liberty, and made too much noise in doing so; for beneath that noise, and in the shadow of that liberty, fermented the anarchical doctrines and tendencies which in all cases and places it is the aim and the policy of the court of Rome to contest. Thus the Avenir and its writers placed her in a position full of embarrassment; Rome was anxious neither in any way to ignore the services that they had rendered and that they might continue to render her, nor to lose sight of the perils that they made her incur; Rome desired to preserve silence respecting these writers—neither to avow nor disavow them—and to leave it to time to terminate their transport and their errors. The Abbé de la Mennais did not, however, permit this expectant policy; he insisted absolutely that the papacy, by pronouncing upon his doctrines and upon his attitude, should publicly either give him her support or withdraw it from him. All the world knows of the journey which he undertook in 1831 to Rome to obtain this result, and of his stay there in company with the Abbé Lacordaire and M. de Montalembert, "three obscure Christians"—to use the words of the Abbé de la Mennais—men who thought themselves called, according to the expression of the Abbé Lacordaire before the Cour d'Assises at Paris, "to reconcile Catholicism with the world." The Pope (Gregory XVI.) judged otherwise, and by his encyclical of the 15th August, 1832, with regret, but at the same time with as much decision as to the substantial matters before him as tenderness to the three pilgrims personally, condemned the Avenir, its doctrines, and its tendencies. On the instant, with the concurrence of their friends, they declared, all three, (10th September, 1832,) that, respectfully submitting themselves to the authority of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, they abandoned the lists in which they had faithfully combated during the past two years; that, in consequence, the Avenir, which had been provisionally suspended ever since the 15th November previously, would no longer appear, and that the General Agency for the Defense of Religious Liberty was dissolved.

As the first declaration of the writers of the Avenir, after their acquittal by the Cour d'Assises at Paris, had been sincere, so was also the declaration sincere which was published by them immediately after their condemnation by the papacy; but they promised more than they could perform. When a deep social wound has been laid bare, and measures on a large scale have been adopted to cure it, it is no longer in the power of any individual to keep that wound secret, or to stifle the hope of a remedy. How many times in the course of this century has not the papacy, and have not the ardent champions of liberty, condemned and combated the efforts made to reconcile Catholicism with modern civilization, and to cause the Church to accept the liberties of civil society, and the State to recognize the rights of the Church? How often has the Church by its censures signalized such efforts as impious and suicidal? What wit, what eloquence, have not been displayed by the Liberals to declare their vanity, their worthlessness? To what reproaches, invectives, and sarcasms have not their advocates had to submit? But no ecclesiastical censure, no wrath of religion, no mockery of liberalism has arrested the march of this great idea. It has made, and it continues every day to force, its way in spite of condemnations, attacks, and obstacles of every description. Why? For paramount reasons, impossible to be lost sight of. For Christianity and modern civilization confront each other; there exists in the public a profound and irrepressible feeling of their reciprocal right and strength—a profound and irrepressible feeling that their disagreement is an immense evil for society and for men's souls; that neither the new civil liberties nor the ancient forms of belief and influences of Christianity can ever perish; that, necessary, both of them, to nations and to individuals, they are both of them destined to live, and consequently to live together. When and in what manner will this feeling realize its object, and when will the ancient Church and modern civilization have solved the problem of their mutual pacification? No one can at this moment pronounce; but in all certitude, the problem will not for that cease to weigh upon the world, or the world to strive at its solution. Even the men who, in a spirit of pious submission or in a paroxysm of sadness and discouragement might wish, after having attempted it, to renounce the work, could never remain inactive before a necessity becoming more and more urgent; they doubtless would not be long before they returned to the lists from which they might have consented to withdraw.

And this is what happened to the three eminent men who had made so precipitate a journey to Rome, and had importuned her at an inconvenient moment, summoning her at once to solve the momentous questions they had raised. They returned from Rome with the intention of submitting to the decision of the Pope; but slumber to such souls was impossible, and it was not long before men saw them, the three, resuming, although by the most contrary paths, all the activity of their minds and of their lives. The Abbé de la Mennais threw himself with impetuosity into the revolt—a revolt radical against the Church and against the State; furiously demanding from the populace and from revolutions the success which he could not obtain in the bosom of order, and in concert with the authority previously so ardently defended by him. Far from following in his new and violent course, the Abbé Lacordaire and M. de Montalembert separated from him, and returned each to his natural and tranquil position; the one to that of a simple priest, almoner of the convent of the Visitation, and preacher in the chapel of the College Stanislas; the other to that of a young and brilliant political orator, already a favorite in the chamber of Peers, although its members did not always think or vote with him. Both remained Romanists at heart; they zealously shared in the great movement of Christianity, now roused from her slumber, but without ceasing to be Liberals in their Catholicism, or without arresting their efforts to reconcile the Church with the régime of liberty.

The position of each, and the genius of each, determined the share that he took in the duties, and the place that he selected for the field of his action. The Abbé Lacordaire, from the pulpit of Notre Dame, developed, or rather let me say, painted, in all their splendor, the truths, the beauties, the moral and social excellences of the Christian Faith and of the Catholic Church. M. de Montalembert, in the house of Peers and in literature, was the ardent and indefatigable champion of the Church, of its maxims, and of its rights. To neither was there any lack of success any more than any lack of talent and of zeal. A numerous auditory, young and old, from the salons and from the schools, believers and freethinkers, flocked round the Abbé Lacordaire, all feeling the attraction, and almost all the charm; many among them yielding to the persuasion of that eloquence so fresh and vivid, and abundant, and unlooked for—impetuous without rudeness, hardy yet graceful, natural even where there was temerity of thought or of expression, and repairing or vailing these faults by the enchantment of candor and of originality. Different, but not inferior, were the merits and the successes of M. de Montalembert. He was a combatant young too, a fearless Christian, both in the political arena and in society; and he carried with him in his polemics to the service of the State a sincerity of passion, a rich and mobile eloquence, piquant strokes of wit, an outpouring of indignant conviction, all of which deeply stirred the emotions of his auditors, whether friends or adversaries, and left in the mind of calm spectators an impression of approving satisfaction, however frequently a shock might be given to their feelings of moderation and of fairness. In the "Conferences" of the Abbé Lacordaire it cannot be denied that many failings and many omissions are observable; although expressed clearly and with vivacity, his thought was often superficial; there was in turn a singular mixture of precipitate enthusiasm and of discretion, the former displaying itself in his exordiums, the latter at the close of his discourses. He announced courageously his opinions, but accompanied them by more reservations than are usually expected from one of his Church and party: thus at the same time, that throughout all his discourses, and in their general character, he showed himself the friend of religious liberty, he hesitated sometimes even when the occasion required him to proclaim its fundamental principle and to rebuke its violations. On his side, M. de Montalembert gave himself up entirely to the impression and the combat of the moment; in his legitimate ardor for free instruction, the then chosen object of his public life, he held obstacles, however real, of no account; he ignored the time necessary for its final triumph, as well as the real progress, although partial, which it had obtained, from the co-operation or the sufferance of the government of 1830; and in his uncompromising defense of the Church, he was more violent against the members of the executive government than his own sentiments and his real political views would, in moments of cool reflection, have permitted him to be. The Abbé Lacordaire did not sound sufficiently the sources of his opinions; M. de Montalembert did not properly measure his attacks. But in spite of their shortcomings and of our own, of their faults and of our own, in all the struggles that grew out of religious questions between us, they rendered constantly faithful and powerful services to their cause, which, notwithstanding our dissentiments on other points, was really the cause of Christ's Faith awaking to new birth and life on the bosom of Liberty.

It is not without well reflecting that I term that our cause. When religious liberty reigns in a State, it is a great and a too common error to believe that the statesmen charged with its government have no religious belief whatever; that they are careless in matters of faith because they embrace and advocate the cause of liberty of conscience. The soul does not abdicate the right to its proper and intimate life, because it respects in other souls the rights of that same life; and nothing is more logical or more legitimate than to sustain with fervor the principle of freedom of conscience, and yet to be at the same time a true and an earnest Christian.

I have not here to make a profession of faith for others; but I affirm that, from 1830 to 1848, the Prince whom I had the honor to serve, and the Cabinets to which I had the honor to belong, not only always had at heart the maintenance, however difficult, of the principle of religious liberty, but that they always felicitated themselves upon the progress made by the Christian Faith, even when the manner of that progress was for them a source of serious embarrassment. In 1841 we were placed, in this respect, in a most trying position. Great was the general astonishment, and violent were the attacks made upon us, when, with a devotedness to Catholicism even bolder than had been his conferences at Notre Dame, the Abbé Lacordaire returned from Rome a monk, and a monk of an order which has left more somber memories behind it than any other, that of St. Dominic. This is not the place to examine what the utility may be in our days to the Catholic Church of the monastic orders, or to inquire whether the services they are capable of rendering the Church outweigh the objections and the feelings of repulsion and uneasiness which they arouse. No well-read man can deny their having, in seasons of chaotic confusion, effectually served the cause, not only of the Christian Faith, but of civilization, of science, and even of liberty.

The condition of society and of the human mind is now very different, and the monastic orders cannot take the same position or produce the same effects. But whatever we may think of the opportuneness of their reconstruction, of the right there can be no doubt. Under a system sanctioning freedom of conscience and free institutions, associations for religious purposes cannot be worse treated than those for purposes of industry, commerce, or literature. The State is required to exercise upon combinations of every kind a certain degree of surveillance; but doubtless the union of souls and of lives under one rule and in one costume, with a view to eternal interests, is not a juster cause for disquietude than a union of purses and of labor for the purpose of economizing both, with a view to worldly interests. In 1829, some young Catholic Liberals, MM. de Carné, de Cazalès, de Champagny, de Montalembert, Foisset de Meaux, Henri Gouraud, founded a periodical, Le Correspondant, devoted to the reconciliation of Catholicism with the free social institutions of the age. The Correspondant had been suspended in 1835, but reappeared in 1843, under the editorship of M. Charles Lenormant, one of those friends I have lost who retain in my memory the place they occupied in my life. In conducting this work, he kept ever in view the principles in which it had originated, and among other positions, he defended in 1845, with the frank intrepidity both of a Catholic and of a Liberal, the rights of those religious associations which were at the time the object of violent debate. [Footnote 7]

[Footnote 7: Des associations religieuses dans le catholicisme; de leur esprit, de leur histoire et de leur avenir; par Charles Lenormant, de l'Institut. Paris: 1845.]

The cabinet abstained from all measures of repression, and left the new monks freely to their chances of success or failure. Twenty-five years have since elapsed; the Père Lacordaire mounted once more, in his costume as a Dominican, his pulpit in Notre-Dame; he resuscitated in France an order forgotten, or the object of dread only; and to what trouble or embarrassment, I ask, to what complaints even, has this resuscitation led? To what pretensions of ambition have these monks laid claim? what turbulent disposition have they manifested? They have paced meekly along our streets; they have preached eloquently in our churches; they have founded some houses of education; they have made use of their rights as freemen, without offering in any way to infringe the liberty of any other class of citizens. More than all this: the sincerity of their sentiments and language has been put to the proof; the Père Lacordaire resumed, as a Dominican, at Paris, at Toulouse, at Nancy, at Bordeaux, the conferences and the preaching that had rendered him popular as a simple priest; they became, perhaps, more liberal even than they had been originally. When the tempest of 1848 had given birth, in the imaginations of all men, to every kind of dream, and had opened to every ambition every career, the Père Lacordaire was returned by the popular suffrage as Deputy to the Constituent Assembly. For a moment he thought a new era opening for his Church—perhaps for himself. In this arena, upon which the passions of party were unchained amid the general darkness resting upon society, he soon discovered that the priest and monk of our day was not in his proper place; he withdrew from it to resume, in his modest retreat at Sorèze, his true mission as a Christian teacher. He afterward issued from it, but for a moment only, to express in the French Academy his faith as a Catholic, and his confidence in the democratic principles of modern times. Such are the peaceable, such the only results among us, of the re-establishment of the order of the Dominicans and of the glory of its restorer.

Its only results? Not so; if the work of the Père Lacordaire did not exercise any important influence upon the laity, it was attended with fruitful and salutary effects in the Church of Rome itself. Like him, other priests had the courage to brave the prejudices of the age respecting the religious orders; like him, others refused to suffer themselves to be subjugated by the alarms felt by most members of their Church at the names of Science and of Liberty; and like him, they scrupled not to devote themselves to a common life and a common rule, "to work together," according to their own expressions, "to secure the triumph of Christian truth, and its triumph by means of Philosophy and Science." Thus was re-established, under the direction of the pious curate of Saint-Roch, the Père Pététot, the congregation of the Oratoire—that learned and modest society that gave to France Malebranche and Massillon, and of which Bossuet said, two centuries ago: "The immense love for the Church of the Cardinal de Bérulle inspired him with the design of forming a company, to which he desired to give no other spirit than the very spirit of the Church, no other rule than its canons, no other superiors than its bishops, no other goods than its charity, no other solemn vows than those of baptism and the priesthood. … There, to form true priests, they lead them to the fountain of truth; they have always in their hands the sacred volume, to search there unceasingly its literal sense by study, its spirit by prayer, its depth of meaning by retreat from the world, and its end by charity—the termination of everything and the treasure of Christianity—'Christiani nominis thesaurus,' as Tertullian terms it." [Footnote 8]

[Footnote 8: Bossuet, Oraison funèbre du père Bourgoing, delivered in 1662, vol. viii, p. 271.]

Dating its restoration from only thirteen years ago, the new congregation of the Oratoire is still not numerous, and remains little known; it is poor, and it desires to remain so; it has need of extension and of support, but at the very outset of its new career it proved itself faithful to its origin and worthy of the words of Bossuet. One of its founders, the Père Gratry, took his place at once in the first rank of the Christian apologists, moralists, and writers of the day: he is a man at once animated and gentle, full of his peculiar ideas and sentiments, which he carries to an enthusiastic height, but without pride and without jealousy, and ardently propagating them by his books, his lectures, and his conversation. These are all distinguished by eloquent appeals to human sympathies, touching even where they do not convince, and leaving the mind always in emotion at the prospects which they open. Another member of the new Oratoire, the Père Valvoger, has given a succinct account, in a learned work, ("Introduction historique et critique aux livres du Nouveau Testament,") of the Researches and Evidences of Christianity, by the principal foreign theologians. Under the strong influence of the opinions of its first founders, and at the same time comprehending the mind and the requirements of France at the present day, the rising congregation of the Oratoire does not evade examination or discussion; it respects science, and in the religious truths which it teaches, and its relations with the souls that it summons to believe, it does not shrink from accepting fearlessly the terms and the forms of liberty.

In the midst of this great movement of men's minds in matters of religion, what has been done since the opening of this century by the chiefs of the Catholic Church of France, by their bishops and by the clergy, called, by their alliance with the State and by their own rights, to assume the education and the Christian direction of the human soul?

They were at first and especially occupied with the real resuscitation of that Christian religion, now returning to French society, to its rank there and to its mission, but returning as exiles return—ill provided, disorganized, and to a home that seems no home. To render back to France, now Catholic, churches for its worship, priests for its churches, seminaries to form its priests, pupils to people those seminaries; to assure also to the edifice thus rising from its ruins the time for its proper establishment and consolidation—such, under the first empire, was the dominant thought, almost the exclusive thought, of the Episcopacy, of the clergy instituted by the Concordat. A work great and difficult, for which neither materials nor workmen were at hand, and which required for its accomplishment strong support and a long period of repose. The clergy of this epoch have been justly reproached with their uniform obsequiousness to the Emperor Napoleon. No doubt it was a shameful spectacle, in 1811, which those docile bishops afforded, when they assembled in council and were never weary of lavishing caresses upon the despot who had not only stripped the chief of their Church, Pius VII., of his dominions, but was then detaining him a prisoner at Savona, denying his natural counselors, the cardinals, all access to him, refusing him even a secretary to write his letters, and charging an officer of the gendarmerie to watch by day and by night all his movements. Only a single fact explains and somewhat excuses the pusillanimity of the clergy when confronted with this tyranny: these bishops had seen Christianity proscribed, its churches closed, profaned, demolished, its priests hunted and massacred, their flocks left without any worship, any guide, any consolation. The chance of the recurrence of such events filled them with horror. Who could affirm that there was no such chance, and that the reality of the eve was not the possibility of the morrow? With such causes of apprehension a good priest might feel his conscience profoundly troubled; and a timid priest might regard his weakness as justified. What sacrifices were not permissible, nay, even imperative, to prevent such disasters?

Still, the violent measures of Napoleon did not fail to encounter, sometimes rebukes, and occasionally resistance, on the part of the clergy; it was not only that some prelates [Footnote 9] in the council, with more courage than moderation, censured his conduct toward the Pope: the council itself—forgetting at last, in its anxiety to vindicate the honor of the whole body, its long habit of obsequiousness—voted an address to the Emperor, an act of independence which occasioned its abrupt dissolution.

[Footnote 9: Among others M. d'Avian, Archbishop of Bordeaux, M. de Boulogne, Bishop of Troyes, and M. de Broglie, Bishop of Gaud.]