The Christian church and society in 1861.

Front matter

Bo. .GftSfc

UXITED STATES OF AMERICA. 1

AND SOCIETY IN 1861.

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

I. "Why this was weitten .... 1

II. The Christian Chuech . . . . 6

Chapter I. Why This Was Written

I had no intention of writing what I now publish. Two personal incidents have imposed this duty on me.

On the 20th of April last, when presiding at the public meeting of the Society for the Encouragement of Elementary Education amongst the Protestants of France, I said : — "A lamentable perturbation infects and afflicts a considerable portion of the great and general Christian Church. I say, a lamentable perturbation ; and by this phrase I express, and am

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2 "WHY THIS WAS TTRITTEX.

anxious to convey, ray individual sentiment. Whatever may be our disagreements, and even our separations, we are all Christians, and the brethren of all who avow the Christian faith. The security, the dignity, the liberty of all Christian Churches, closely concern Christianity in its extended sense. Christianity at large suffers when the leading Churches suffer; the entire Christian edifice feels :ke blows directed, in these days, against any of the prominent buildings of which it is cornr. : ?ed. Under such trials, the whole of the great Christian Church demands our sympathy."

These word- have been very differently received and interpreted. Many Catholics have warmly thanked me for using them. Many Protestants have vehemently blamed and expressed unea-iness at them. Some of my most intimate no- onamongst the latter, have spoken of them with affectionate regret.

Three months before, on the 24th of January, 1861. when receiving, as president of the French Academy. Father Lacordaire. who had been elected a member. I had been led to advert to the even:- which agitate Italy, and used these words : — •* We have, for nearly half a century, beheld Italy in prey

WHY THIS WAS WRITTEN. 3

to commotions, invasions, and disorders resembling those which display themselves there at this moment ; but then, at least, they appeared in their true character and features. A man who enjoyed much popular reputation, and whom the Liberals designated their chosen publicist,* when speaking of these and many other similar facts, qualified them as ' the spirit of usurpation and conquest,' and, under that title, wrote a work in their con-^ demnation. Have the same facts ceased to deserve the same name ? Have they changed their nature because it is no longer France who openly accomplishes them on her own account, and appropriates the fruits to herself? Or, rather, have these violences become lawful because to-day they are exercised in the name of democracy, and in virtue of what is called its will ? "

A man of note in Italy, lately commissioner of King Victor Emmanuel in Tuscany, and now a deputy to the Italian parliament, M. Boncompagni, has done me the honour to address a letter to me in the a Bibliotheque Universelle " of Grenoaf, announcing others, and in which, with much moderation and

* Mr. Benjamin Constant, f No. 40, April 20th, 1861, pp. 555-601. B 2

4 WHY THIS WAS WMTTEK

propriety, he disputes what I said before the Academy, and presents, under a totally different light, the events of which Italy is the theatre, their causes, their bearing, and their character.

I do not propose to enter, either with my Proteston: friends or my honourable Italian correspondent, into a direct discussion of their claims and complaints. I have argued much throughout my life : but argument was then with me a necessity ; eal action. I sought for immediate results, and we all endured the salutary weigh} :: the responsibility which that position imposes. When we speak to es ;_. other — not face to face, and in expectation of the adhesion we desire to obtain or the check we may be compelled to undergo — but from a distance. ar_ the freedom of : ditnde : when in place of having to decide, by a pressing debate, positive resolutions, we have only to criticise, at leisure, id-:- and " I attach Hide value to controversv. : a not in-

clined to embark in it. It is a tournament in which minds may be displayed, not a combat in which destinies are at stake. Self-loves excite and stimulate themselves in such contests, each according to its bent ; while vanity is gratified, and triumphs much more than truth. But if I abstain from controversv

WHY THIS WAS WRITTEN. 5

with them. I feel too much respect for the religious anxieties of the Protestants and the patriotic demands of the Italians not to hold both as of the utmost importance, before the public and in communion with my own soul. I wish to answer by a clear and complete exposition of my idea : and I :his reply equally to them and to myself. I neither hope nor pretend to lead all to my own opinion : but I am most anxious to be understood by all. The moment, moreover, appears to me opportune. The religious and the Italian question strongly occupy men's niinds, while facts present, for the moment, an interval of respite and repose. The sudden death of the eminent statesman who he]d in his bold and skilful hands the thread of Italian events, has. if not arrested, at least slackened their course. Since the decease of M. de Cavour. the opposing parties watch each other, and wait with anxiety: nothing is renounced, but the attack is suspended, If my words contain truth, and truth seasonably uttered, the more it appears alone, calm, and disconnected from personal debate, the greater will be its chances of a favourable reception.

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Chap. II. The Christian Church

It is of the entire Christian Church that I think. It is to the whole Christian Church that I address my words.

Is it that I attach no importance to the dissensions and ruptures which have destroyed unity in the Christian Church, and that, in my eyes, there is no essential difference between Catholics and Protestants, Lutherans and Calvinists, members .of the Church of England and Dissenters, simply because they are all Christians ?

Or can it be that I believe in a reconciliation, in a fusion which would re-establish amongst Christians religious unity, and that I pursue this object ?

Neither the one nor the other.

I am a Protestant from conviction and by descent. While teaching me justice, sympathetic justice, towards all Christians, the experience of life and the study of history have confirmed me in the Church in which I was born. Without entering into questions of religious dogma, which would here be out of place, I feel convinced that, in spite of the commotions it has excited and the faults it has committed, the Eeformation of the sixteenth century has rendered two immense services to the modern world : it has reanimated Christian faith, even as regards its adversaries ; it has impressed on European society, voluntarily or forcibly, a decisive movement towards liberty.

I do not believe that a fusion of the different Christian communities, and the religious union of the Christian world are possible events, for they would be neither sincere nor permanent. In spiritual order, I estimate as lightly the deceitful unity of the transaction as the constrained unity of the persecution. When God created man reflecting and free, he did not surrender to him the power of decision as to what was or was not truth; but he made variety of convictions his condition on earth, as he gave him diversity of liberty as his right. The human race is devoted to toil and struggle in the search after truth ; not destined to repose in the bosom of truth.

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Nevertheless, I persist in using the expression, — the Christian Church. Whatever may have been, and may still continue to be, our schisms and contests, our prejudices and aversions — Catholics or Protestants, Episcopalians or Presbyterians, national Churches or independent sects — I would say that, indifferent as well as zealous believers, we have all one common religious origin ; we have all learned the same history, and have received from our parents, our teachers, and our associates, from the experience of life, and from the lessons of the school, the same impressions ; we have thence contracted certain ideas and simultaneous sentiments, present and powerful in our souls, even without our own consciousness. This civilisation, which under different forms and in unequal degrees has developed itself amongst all the nations of Europe, and which is in progress of subduing the world, is essentially Christian. Despite its intestine discords, the religious association which has held, and still holds in the history of human nature, such an important place, is, and will continue to be, — the Christian Church. We all call ourselves, now and ever, — ■ Christendom. In this term there is a moral and social unity which resists all differences, survives all contests, and binds all Christians together, whether they assemble to join in prayer, to debate on the conditions of salvation, or to quarrel for superiority.

He who attaches not a high value to this paramount tie, and who, while professing Christianity, forgets Christendom, is ignorant of the great fact of our history, neglects a most important duty, and exposes his own cause, to-day, to a weighty peril.

Chap. III. Eeal Dangers Of The Christian Church

While Catholicism is menaced in its external establishment, ail Christianity is exposed, in its foundation and essence, to attacks still more serious and dangers still more urgent.

It belongs to intellectual order that such dangers should exhibit themselves. It is not against the Christian religion as a social institution — it is against the Christian faith itself that these attacks are directed. Materialists, pantheists, rationalists, historical critics, and sceptics, each with their own appropriate weapons, aim distinct, but simultaneous and continued, blov^s against dogmatic Christianity.

These blows are by no means new. Many times before, especially from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, Christianity has been exposed to and has effectively resisted them. It has had its days of strength and weakness, of zeal and languor, of bril-

KEAL DAGGERS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 11

liancy and decline. It has defended itself alternately by the power of tradition and transformation, and, above all, by its natural and innate virtue. It has stood erect through all changes of fortune ; it has survived innumerable wars. It will equally survive, I feel convinced, the war which is waged against it in the present day. But the evil of the war is great, even when the issue cannot be fatal. The minds of men suffer, society suffers, from the blows which Christianity receives, from its apparent weaknesses and from its wounds, although the latter are not mortal. It will not perish ; but it requires to be well acquainted with its dangers, to face them boldly, and to combine all its strength to subdue them.

Amongst its adversaries there are some who invite this combination, and who, with a remnant of pious solicitude, feel uneasy at their own attacks. I read in an Essay by M. Edmund Scherer, entitled The Crisis of Protestantism*, the following paragraph : " They imagine that all difficulties are solved, and believe that they catch a glimpse of the religious future of humanity, in a species of Christian rationalism, or of rational Christianity, which, without

* Published in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 15th May, 1861, p. 423.

12 EEAL DAXGERS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

excluding ardour, would leave to thought its full liberty. For my own part, I desire nothing better ; but I cannot refrain from asking, with some anxiety, whether Christian rationalism is indeed a religion. Is what remains in the crucible after the operation of analysis, really the essence of positive dogmas, or merely a caput mortuitm ? Does Christianity, rendered transparent to the mind, conformable to reason and conscience, still retain its inherent virtue ? Does it not resemble deism, and has it not the same meagreness and sterility ? Does not the power exercised by creeds reside in dogmatic formulas and in miraculous legends, as much as in their essentially religious contents ? Is there not always something of superstition in true piety, and can true piety entirely dispense with those popular metaphysics, with that brilliant mythology, which is sought to be expelled from it ? The elements which you attempt to separate from religion, are they not the alloy without which the precious metal becomes unsuited to the rough practice of life ? Finally, when critical censure has rejected the marvellous as useless, and tenets as irrational ; when the religious sentiment on the one hand, and exacting reason on the other, shall have penetrated faith and transformed it by

REAL DANGERS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 13

assimilation ; when no authority shall be recognised beyond that of individual conviction ; when man, in a word, having torn asunder all veils and pierced through all mysteries, shall contemplate, face to face, the Grod he seeks after, will he not find that this Grod is nothing more than man himself — a personification of the conscience and reason of humanity ? And will not religion, under the pretext of becoming more religious, cease to exist altogether ?"

Another Protestant minister, a man of distinguished ability, and sincere in spirit, M, Colani, has recently said, " I also entertain opinions and ideas which, acquired in the midst of the struggles of thought, have become singularly precious to me. Without doubt, I wish to see them shared by my brethren, and I feel even capable of sacrifices to expand them around me. Nevertheless, if it depended on my will to see them suddenly adopted by all the members of our church, I declare before Grod that I should restrain myself. For I distinguish between the Grospel and my opinions on the Grospel. The word of Christ, which is spirit and life, is suited to all ; it satisfies every intelligence, the highest as well as the least cultivated, the simplest and the most sublime ; it answers to every state of the soul ;

14 REAL DANGERS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

it is eternally true, because it addresses itself even to the substance of our nature. My ideas, my opinions on the Grospel, I believe to be sound ; but something tells me that they are imperfect, incomplete ; that they are applicable to a particular state of mind; that experience will modify them; that if they satisfy me now, the time approaches when they will cease to do so entirely; and that, consequently, they can only really satisfy those who are in the same state with myself at this moment ; those who have the same tendencies, and the same intellectual wants. 5 '*

In contemplating the honest anxiety which accompanies such an animated attack, I feel a sentiment of melancholy esteem for the aggressors, and of confidence in the cause assailed. It thus appears that the rationalists and sceptics themselves question the conclusive merit of their reasoning, and of their doubts; they labour, as they say, to rationalize the Christian religion, and they tremble, lest in the effort the very essence of the religion should perish !

I have no desire to quote here other names ; but I feel persuaded that amongst the materialists, pantheists, and historical critics, those who are serious

* Le Lien, Number for the 4th of May, 1861.

KEAL DAGGERS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 15

and sincere, and undoubtedly many are so, would exhibit the same uneasiness if we could read their hearts.

Whence does this uneasiness proceed ? Why such disquiet in so many elevated minds, in the midst of their own work ? It is that, according to the fine expression of Montesquieu, they accomplish much more than they have undertaken or desired ? Under the blows they aim against the dogmas of Christianity the whole religious structure is shaken, the entire social edifice totters ; the empire, the very essence of religion, disappears ; the human soul feels itself disinherited, and ready to expire with its faith.

I wish to probe and expose to light the deadly wounds inflicted on the Christian Church by these attacks, at once timid and violent, of its various adversaries, — the wounds in which the evil dwells and concentrates. There are two that take the lead.

Chap. IV. Of The Supernatural

All the attacks of which Christianity is at the present day the object, however they may differ in their nature and degree, proceed from one point and tend to the same end, — a denial of the supernatural in the destinies of man and of the world, the abolition of the miraculous element in the Christian religion, as in every other, in its history as in its dogmas.

Materialists, pantheists, rationalists, sceptics, scholastic critics, some openly, others with reserve, all think and speak under the dominion of this idea, — that the world and man, moral and physical nature, are uniformly governed by general, permanent, and necessary laws, the course of which no special will has ever interfered with, or ever will interfere with, to suspend or modify.

I do not here propose to discuss at full length this question which forms the basis of all religion; I merely wish to submit to the declared enemies of supernatural agency two observations, or, to speak more correctly, two facts, which, according to my idea, decide the point.

It is upon a natural belief in the supernatural, on an innate instinct of the supernatural, that all religion is founded. I do not say all idea of religion, but all positive, practical, powerful, durable, and popular religion. In all places, under all climates, in all epochs of history, under all degrees of civilization, man carries within himself this sentiment, I should rather say this pre-sentiment, that the world he looks upon, the order in the bosom of which he lives, the facts which succeed each other regularly and constantly around him do not comprise, within themselves, everything ; in vain does he make from day to day, in this vast whole, discoveries and conquests ; in vain does he observe and learnedly verify the permanent laws which preside there ; his imagination does not confine itself within this universe submitted to his science ; the spectacle fails to satisfy his soul, which plunges beyond it ; it seeks and obtains a glimpse of something else ; it desires, both for the universe and itself, other destinies and another master.

Voltaire has said that u beyond all these heavens the Grod of the heavens dwells ;" and the God who is beyond all the heavens is not nature personified, he is the supernatural in person. It is to him that religions are addressed ; it is to place man in relation with him that they are founded. Without the instinctive faith of men in the supernatural, without their spontaneous and invincible impulse towards the supernatural, religion could not exist.

Man is the only being in this lower world that prays. Amongst his moral instincts, there is none more natural, universal, and unconquerable than that of prayer. The child inclines to it with eager docility. The old man returns to it as to a refuge from decay and loneliness. Prayer ascends spontaneously from the infant mouth which can scarcely murmur the name of Grod, and from the dying lips which no longer retain strength to utter it.

Amongst all nations, whether eminent or obscure, civilized or barbarous, we meet, at every step, acts and forms of invocation. Wherever human beings exist, under particular circumstances, at specified hours, under the empire of certain impressions of the soul, eyes are raised, hands are joined together, knees are bent, to supplicate or to return thanks, to adore or to appease, with extasy or apprehension, publicly or in the recesses of the heart ; man ever turns to prayer as a last relief, to fill up the voids in his soul, or to enable him to bear the burdens of his destiny; when all resources fail, he seeks in prayer a support for his weakness, consolation for his distress, and hope for his enduring constancy.

Xo one denies the moral and innate value of prayer, independently of its efficacy in its immediate object. From the act of praying alone, the soul derives relief, tranquillity, and strength : it experiences, in turning towards God, that feeling of a return to health and repose which expands over the body when it passes from a heavy and stormy air to a serene and pure atmosphere. God comes in aid of those who implore Him before they can know and without their knowing that he has listened to their supplication.

Will He listen to them ? What is the external and conclusive efficacy of prayer ? Herein lies the mystery, the impenetrable mystery, of the designs and actions of God on all his creatures. We know that, whether in reference to our external or internal life, it is not we alone who regulate it according to our own thoughts and wishes. All the names that

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20 OF THE SUPERXATUEAL.

we apply to that portion of our destiny which comes not from ourselves. — chance, fortune, star, nature, fatality — are nothing more than veils thrown over our ignorant impiety. When we speak thus, we refuse to see God where he is. Beyond the narrow sphere within which the power and actions of man are restrained, it is God who reigns and acts. There is in the natural and universal action of prayer a natural and universal faith in this permanent and ever free action of God over man and his destiny. K We are labourers with God/ 1 says St. Paul, labourers with God. both in the work of the general destinies of the human race and in that of our individual destiny, present and future. This is what prayer reveals to lis on the tie which unites man to God ; but here our light pauses : •'•' God's ways are not our ways :" we walk in them without knowing them : to believe without beholding, and to pray without foreknowing, is the condition which God has prescribed to man in this world, with respect to all that exceeds its limits. Faith and a religious life consist in the conviction and acceptance of this supernatural arrangement.

In this sense. ML Edmond Scherer is right when he doubts whether " rationalistic Christianitv is or ever can be a religion." And why has M. Jules Simon, who bows before Grod with such heartfelt respect, entitled his book Natural Religion ? He ought rather to have called it Religious Philosophy. Philosophy pursues and reaches some of the grand ideas on which religion founds itself: but by the nature of its proceedings, and the limits of its domain^Ki^lias never founded, and never can found, a religion. To speak exactly, there is no such thing as natural religion; for as soon as you abolish the supernatural, religion also disappears.

No one will attempt to deny that this instinctive belief in the supernatural, the source of religion, may be, and often is also, the source of an infinity of errors and superstitions; and that they, in their turn, are productive of many evils. In this, as in all other cases, it is the condition of man that good and evil mingle incessantly in his destinies and works, as in himself; but it does not follow from this inevitable mixture that our prevailing instincts are irrational, and bewilder while they exalt us. Whatever may be our wanderings under this excitement, it is certain that the supernatural belongs to the natural faith of man, and forms the sine qua

C 3 non condition,, the true object, the very essence of religion.

I come now to a second pointy or I ought rather to say, a second fact, which demands, as I think, the full attention of the adversaries of the supernatural.

It is admitted, and proved by science, that our globe has not always been in the state in which it is at present ; that at various and undetermined epochs it has undergone revolutions and transformations which have changed its face, its physical system, its population ; that man, in particular, has not always existed upon it, and that in several of the successive conditions through which it has passed, it was impossible that he could have existed.

How, then, did he arrive there ? • By what means and through what power has the human race commenced upon earth ?

There can be but two explanations of man's origin : either he has been produced by the proper and innate labour of the natural forces of matter, or he is the work of a supernatural power, external to and superior to matter. His appearance here below requires one of two causes — spontaneous generation or creation.

OF THE SUPERXATUEAL. 23

But even admitting, what for my own part I distinctly deny, spontaneous generation, this mode of origin could not produce, and never could have produced anything but infant beings in the first hour and first state of commencing life. No one, I believe, has ever said, or is likely to say that, by virtue of spontaneous generation, man, or rather man and woman, the human pair, could have emanated or ever did emanate at once from the bosom of matter entirely formed and grown, in full possession of their stature, their strength, and all their faculties, as Greek paganism has made Minerva spring from the brain of Jupiter.

It is, nevertheless, under this condition alone that, in appearing for the first time on earth, man could have lived or established himself there, or have founded the human race. Let us figure to ourselves the first born man in a state of early infancy, living but inert, unintelligent, helpless, incapable of supplying his own wants, trembling and moaning, with no mother to hear or nourish him. Yet this is the only first man which the system of spontaneous generation can supply.

Evidently, then, the other origin of the human race is alone admissible, and alone possible. The

c 4 supernatural fact of creation only can explain the first appearance of man in this lower world.

Those, therefore, who deny and abolish the supernatural, abolish with the same blow all true religion ; and vainly do they triumph over the supernatural agency so frequently introduced into our world and history; they are compelled to pause before the supernatural cradle of humanity, unable to deliver man from it without the hand of Grod.

Chap. V. The Two Gods

In addition to direct and declared war against the supernatural, another evil assails the Christian religion in its very heart.

Paganism, under all its forms, whether cosmological or mythological, mystical or poetical, has this essential and common characteristic — that it is man himself who becomes or makes Grod. We find in paganism the vague idea of a primitive and supreme deity, concealed afar off in the depths of the universe ; but the Grod or gods who are really the object of religion, who live in relation with man — the Grod or gods who are reverenced and implored, are nothing more than personifications of man or of nature ; human heroes, or great human faculties and passions ; the active forces of the universe elevated to the Divine condition and to the honours of religious worship. In all these religions, the real and living G-od or gods who

26 THE TWO GODS.

preside over the destinies of man and of the world, are of natural origin and human creation.

It is, on the contrary, the inherent and fundamental feature of Christianity in its biblical cradle and throughout all its history, that Grod does not in any manner appear there through the medium of man or nature. The Grod of the Jews and Christians is neither a personification of the forces of nature, of the faculties or passions of man, or of the heroes of the human race. He has created both man and nature ; he existed before them, and retains an essentially distinct and independent being. He is the original, only, and eternal Grod, self-subsistent, and at the same time active, present in all all times and places, governing and maintaining all that he has created, and to whom alone the faith and worship of his creatures is addressed. This is the true Grod.

If this were the suitable place, I could readily show all that this inherent and fundamental characteristic of biblical and Christian religion comprises ; as the monuments of that religion declare, and as its followers believe, it is Grod himself who is therein revealed, who speaks and acts, who creates and governs the world. But I only desire at present to

THE TTTO GODS. 27

confront the two principles — the two Grods, if I may be allowed so to express myself — in which are included the double religious history of humanity : on the one side idolatry, on the other Christianity.

This is the point we have now reached, and whither the wind of the age impels us. No attempt is made to bring us back to any specific form of the idolatry which elevated into Grod the heroes of the human race, the great faculties of man, or the forces of nature ; but we are called upon to abandon the Grod of the Bible and the Grospel — the' original, independent, personal, and distinct Deity, the creator of man and of the world ; and we are, at the same time, required to accept for all religion an abstract Grod who is also an idol of human invention, for he is no other than man and the world confounded and erected into Grod by a science which believes itself profound, and would fain not be considered impious. In place of Christianity, its history and dogmas, those grand solutions of our destiny and sublime hopes of our nature, they offer to us pantheism, scepticism, and the embarrassments of human learning.