Читать книгу Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XI.—April, 1851—Vol. II. - Various - Страница 10

I know – I sigh when I think of it – that hitherto the French people have been the least religious of all the nations of Europe. Is it because the idea of God – which arises from all the evidences of Nature, and from the depths of reflection, being the profoundest and weightiest idea of which human intelligence is capable – and the French mind being the most rapid, but the most superficial, the lightest, the most unreflective of all European races – this mind has not the force and severity necessary to carry far and long the greatest conception of the human understanding?

Is it because our governments have always taken upon themselves to think for us, to believe for us, and to pray for us? Is it because we are and have been a military people, a soldier-nation, led by kings, heroes, ambitious men, from battlefield to battlefield, making conquests, and never keeping them, ravaging, dazzling, charming, and corrupting Europe; and bringing home the manners, vices, bravery, lightness, and impiety of the camp to the fireside of the people?

I know not, but certain it is that the nation has an immense progress to make in serious thought if she wishes to remain free. If we look at the characters, compared as regards religious sentiment, of the great nations of Europe, America, even Asia, the advantage is not for us. The great men of other countries live and die on the scene of history, looking up to heaven; our great men appear to live and die, forgetting completely the only idea for which it is worth living and dying – they live and die looking at the spectator, or, at most, at posterity.

Open the history of America, the history of England, and the history of France; read the great lives, the great deaths, the great martyrdoms, the great words at the hour when the ruling thought of life reveals itself in the last words of the dying – and compare.

Washington and Franklin fought, spoke, suffered, ascended, and descended in their political life of popularity in the ingratitude of glory, in the contempt of their fellow-citizens – always in the name of God, for whom they acted; and the liberator of America died, confiding to God the liberty of the people and his own soul.

Sidney, the young martyr of a patriotism, guilty of nothing but impatience, and who died to expiate his country's dream of liberty, said to his jailer – "I rejoice that I die innocent toward the king, but a victim, resigned to the King on High, to whom all life is due."

The Republicans of Cromwell only sought the way of God, even in the blood of battles. Their politics were their faith – their reign a prayer – their death a psalm. One hears, sees, feels, that God was in all the movements of these great people.

But cross the sea, traverse La Mancha, come to our times, open our annals, and listen to the last words of the great political actors of the drama of our liberty. One would think that God was eclipsed from the soul, that His name was unknown in the language. History will have the air of an atheist, when she recounts to posterity these annihilations, rather than deaths, of celebrated men in the greatest year of France! The victims only have a God; the tribunes and lictors have none.

Look at Mirabeau on the bed of death – "Crown me with flowers," said he; "intoxicate me with perfumes. Let me die to the sound of delicious music" – not a word of God or of his soul. Sensual philosopher, he desired only supreme sensualism, a last voluptuousness in his agony. Contemplate Madame Roland, the strong-hearted woman of the Revolution, on the cart that conveyed her to death. She looked contemptuously on the besotted people who killed their prophets and sibyls. Not a glance toward heaven! Only one word for the earth she was quitting – "Oh, Liberty!"

Approach the dungeon door of the Girondins. Their last night is a banquet; the only hymn, the Marseillaise!

Follow Camille Desmoulins to his execution. A cool and indecent pleasantry at the trial, and a long imprecation on the road to the guillotine, were the two last thoughts of this dying man on his way to the last tribunal.

Hear Danton on the platform of the scaffold, at the distance of a line from God and eternity. "I have had a good time of it; let me go to sleep." Then to the executioner, "you will show my head to the people – it is worth the trouble!" His faith, annihilation; his last sigh, vanity. Behold the Frenchman of this latter age!

What must one think of the religious sentiment of a free people whose great figures seem thus to march in procession to annihilation, and to whom that terrible minister – death – itself recalls neither the threatenings nor promises of God!

The republic of these men without a God has quickly been stranded. The liberty, won by so much heroism and so much genius, has not found in France a conscience to shelter it, a God to avenge it, a people to defend it against that atheism which has been called glory. All ended in a soldier and some apostate republicans travestied into courtiers. An atheistic republicanism can not be heroic. When you terrify it, it bends; when you would buy it, it sells itself. It would be very foolish to immolate itself. Who would take any heed? the people ungrateful and God non-existent! So finish atheist revolutions! —Bien Publique.

[From Dickens's Household Words.]