THE HEAVENLY FATHER.

Lectures on Modern Atheism.

BY

ERNEST NAVILLE,

CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE (ACADEMY OF THE MORAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCES), LATE PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH

By HENRY DOWNTON, M.A.,

ENGLISH CHAPLAIN AT GENEVA.

—"To this deplorable error I desire to oppose faith in God as it has been given to the world by the Gospel—faith in the HEAVENLY FATHER."

Author's Letter to Professor Faraday (v. p. 193).

BOSTON:
WILLIAM V. SPENCER
1867.

CAMBRIDGE:
PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON.

CONTENTS

• [PREFACE.]
• [NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR.]
• [LECTURE I.]
  • Our Idea of God
• [LECTURE II.]
  • Life without God
  • [Part I.]——The Individual
  • [Part II.]——Society
• [LECTURE III.]
  • The Revival Of Atheism
• [LECTURE IV.]
  • Nature
• [LECTURE V.]
  • Humanity
• [LECTURE VI.]
  • The Creator
• [LECTURE VII.]
  • The Father

PREFACE.

These Lectures, in their original form, were delivered at Geneva, and afterwards at Lausanne, before two auditories which together numbered about two thousand five hundred men. A Swiss Review published considerable portions of them, which had been taken down in short-hand, and on reading these portions, several persons, belonging to different countries, conceived the idea of translating the work when completed by the Author, and corrected for publication. Proof-sheets were accordingly sent to the translators as they came from the press: and thus this volume will appear pretty nearly at the same time in several of the languages of Europe.

The hearty kindness with which my fellow-countrymen received my words has been to me both a delight and an encouragement. The expressions of sympathy which have reached me from abroad allow me to hope that these pages, notwithstanding the deficiencies and imperfections of which I am keenly sensible, reflect some few of the rays of the truth which God has deposited on the earth, thereby to unite in the same faith and hope men of every tongue and every nation.

ERNEST NAVILLE.

Geneva, May, 1865.

NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR.

The appearance of this translation so long after that of the original work is in contradiction to the foregoing statement of the Author, that it would appear at nearly the same time with it. The delay has been due to causes beyond the translator's control—in part to the difficulty of revising the press at so great a distance from the place of publication, the translator being resident at Geneva. This latter circumstance causes an exception in another particular as regards this translation, the proposal to translate the Lectures having been made to the Author, and kindly accepted by him, during the course of their delivery at Geneva.

The mere statement by the Author of the numbers, large as they were, of those who formed the auditories, can give but a small idea of the enthusiasm with which they were received by the crowds which thronged to hear them, and which were composed of all classes of persons, from the most distinguished savant to the intelligent artisan.

It is not to be expected that the Lectures when read, even in the original, and still less in a translation, can produce the vivid impression which they made on those, who, with the translator, had the privilege of hearing them delivered,—the Author having few rivals, on the Continent or elsewhere, in the graces of polished eloquence; but the subjects treated are, it is to be feared, of increasing importance, not abroad only, but in England; and in fact one Lecture, the fourth, is in a large measure occupied with forms of atheism which owe their chief support to English authors. In that Lecture the Author shows that the spiritual origin of man cannot "be put out of sight beneath details of physiology and researches of natural history," and that these not only "cannot settle," but "cannot so much as touch the question."

The same Lecture is occupied in part by a practical refutation of the prejudice against religion drawn from the irreligious character of many men of science. The Author's subject has led him in the present work to confine his illustrations on this head to the question of natural religion: but the translator will avow that a main motive with him to undertake the labor of this translation has been the wish to prove, in the instance of the distinguished Author himself, that men of incontestable eminence as metaphysical philosophers may hold and profess boldly their faith in doctrines, which many who affect to guide the religious opinions of our youth would teach them to despise as the heritage of narrow minds, and to cast away as incompatible with the highest intellectual cultivation. Such doctrines are those of the fall and ruin of man by nature, the necessity for Divine agency in his recovery, his need of propitiation by the sacrifice of the God-Man—l'Homme-Dieu. These truths are explicitly stated by the Author in his former course of lectures—La Vie Eternelle,[1] in which, while discoursing eloquently on that eternal life which is the portion of the righteous, he does not shrink from declaring his belief in its awful counterpart, the eternal condemnation of the wicked.

"The offence of the Cross" has not "ceased," and many finding that these are the opinions of this Author, will perhaps lay down his book as unworthy of their attention: yet the editor, biographer, and expositor of the great French thinker, Maine de Biran, will not need introduction to the intellectual magnates of our own or of any country. The translator will be thankful, if some of those,—the youth more especially,—of his own country, who have been dazzled by the glare of false science, shall find in this work a help to the reassuring of their faith, while they learn in a fresh example that there are men quite competent to deal with the profoundest problems which can exercise our thoughts, who at the same time have come to a conviction,—compatible as they believe with principles of the clearest reason,—of the truth of those very doctrines which form the substance of evangelical Christianity. In saying this, the translator is far from claiming the Author as belonging to the same school of theology with himself: but differing with him on some important points, he has yet believed that this volume is calculated to be of much use in the present condition of religious thought in England, and in this hope and prayer he commends it to the blessing of Him, whose being and attributes, as our God and Father in Jesus Christ, are therein asserted and defended.

Geneva, November, 1865.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] A translation of this work, by an English lady, has been published by Mr. Dalton, 28, Cockspur street.

LECTURE I.

OUR IDEA OF GOD.

(At Geneva, 17th Nov. 1863.—At Lausanne, 11th Jan. 1864.)

Gentlemen,

Some five-and-twenty or thirty years ago, a German writer published a piece of verse which began in this way: "Our hearts are oppressed with the emotions of a pious sadness, at the thought of the ancient Jehovah who is preparing to die." The verses were a dirge upon the death of the living God; and the author, like a well educated son of the nineteenth century, bestowed a few poetic tears upon the obsequies of the Eternal.

I was young when these strange words met my eyes, and they produced in me a kind of painful bewilderment, which has, I think, for ever engraven them in my memory. Since then, I have had occasion to learn by many tokens that this fact was not at all an exceptional one, but that men of influence, famous schools, important tendencies of the modern mind, are agreed in proclaiming that the time of religion is over, of religion in all its forms, of religion in the largest sense of the word. Beneath the social disturbances of the day, beneath the discussions of science, beneath the anxiety of some and the sadness of others, beneath the ironical and more or less insulting joy of a few, we read at the foundation of many intellectual manifestations of our time these gloomy words: "Henceforth no more God for humanity!" What may well send a shudder of fright through society—more than threatening war, more than possible revolution, more than the plots which may be hatching in the dark against the security of persons or of property—is, the number, the importance, and the extent of the efforts which are making in our days to extinguish in men's souls their faith in the living God.

This fear, Gentlemen, I should wish to communicate to you, but I should wish also to confine it within its just limits. Religion (I take this term in its most general acceptation) is not, as many say that it is, either dead or dying. I want no other proof of this than the pains which so many people are taking to kill it. It is often those who say that it is dead, or falling rapidly into dissolution, who apply themselves to this work. They are too generous, no doubt, to make a violent attack upon a corpse; and it is easy to understand, judging by the intensity of their exertions, that in their own opinion they have something else to do than to give a finishing stroke to the dying.

Present circumstances are serious, not for religion itself, which cannot be imperilled, but for minds which run the risk of losing their balance and their support. Let it be observed, however, that when it is said that we are living in extraordinary times, that we are passing through an unequalled crisis, that the like of what we see was never seen before, and so on, we must always regard conclusions of this nature with distrust. Our personal interest in the circumstances which immediately surround us produces on them for us the magnifying effect of a microscope: and our principal reason for thinking that our epoch is more extraordinary than others, is for the most part that we are living in our own epoch, and have not lived in others. A mind attentive to this fact, and so placed upon its guard against all tendency to exaggeration, will easily perceive that religious thought has in former times passed through shocks as profound and as dangerous as those of which we are witnesses. Still the crisis is a real one. Taking into account its extent in our days, we may say that it is new for the generation to which we belong; and it is worthy of close consideration. To-day, as an introduction to this grave subject, I should wish first to determine as precisely as possible what is our idea of God; to inquire next from what sources we derive it; and lastly to point out, as clearly as I may, the limits and the nature of the discussion to which I invite you.

In asking what sense we must give to the word "God," I am not going to propose to you a metaphysical definition, or any system of my own: I am inquiring what is in fact the idea of God in the bosom of modern society, in the souls which live by this idea, in the hearts of which it constitutes the joy, in the consciences of which it is the support.

When our thoughts rise above nature and humanity to that invisible Being whom we speak of as God, what is it which passes in our souls? They fear, they hope, they pray, they offer thanksgiving. If a man finds himself in one of those desperate positions in which all human help fails, he turns towards Heaven, and says, My God! If we are witnesses of one of those instances of revolting injustice which stir the conscience in its profoundest depths, and which could not on earth meet with adequate punishment, we think within ourselves,—There is a Judge on high! If we are reproved by our own conscience, the voice of that conscience, which disturbs and sometimes torments us, reminds us that though we may be shut out from all human view, there is no less an Eye which sees us, and a just award awaiting us. Thus it is (I am seeking to establish facts) that the thought of God operates, so to speak, in the souls of those who believe in Him. If you look for the meaning common to all these manifestations of man's heart, what do you find? Fear, hope, thanksgiving, prayer. To whom is all this addressed? To a Power intelligent and free, which knows us, and is able to act upon our destinies. This is the idea which is found at the basis of all religions; not only of the religion of the only God, but of the most degraded forms of idolatrous worship. All religion rests upon the sentiment of one or more invisible Powers, superior to nature and to humanity.

When philosophical curiosity is awakened, it disengages from the general sentiment of power the definite idea of the cause which becomes the explanation of the phenomena. The reason of man, by virtue of its very constitution, finds a need of conceiving of an absolute cause which escapes by its eternity the lapse of time, and by its infinite character the bounds of limited existences; a principle, the necessary being of which depends on no other; in a word a unique cause, establishing by its unity the universal harmony. So, when reason meets with the idea of the sole and Almighty Creator, it attaches itself to it as the only thought which accounts to it for the world and for itself.

The Creator is, first of all, He whose glory the heavens declare, while the earth makes known the work of His hands. He is the Mighty One and the Wise, whose will has given being to nature, and who directs at once the chorus of stars in the depths of the heavens, and the drop of vital moisture in the herb which we tread under foot.

If, after having looked around, we turn our regard in upon ourselves, we then discover other heavens, spiritual heavens, in which shine, like stars of the first magnitude, those objects which cause the heart of man to beat, so long as he is not self-degraded: truth, goodness, beauty. Now we feel that we are made for this higher world. Material enjoyments may enchain our will; we may, in the indulgence of unworthy passions, pursue what in its essence is only evil, error, and deformity; but, if all the rays of our true nature are not extinguished, a voice issues from the depth of our souls and protests against our debasement. Our aspirations toward these spiritual excellences are unlimited. Our thought sets out on its course: have we solved one question? immediately new questions arise, which press, no less than the former, for an answer. Our conscience speaks: have we come in a certain degree to realize what is right and good? immediately conscience demands of us still more. Is our feeling for beauty awakened? Well, sirs, when an artist is satisfied with the work of his hands, do you not know at once what to think of him? Do you not know that that man will never do any thing great, who does not see shining in his horizon an ideal which stamps as imperfect all that he has been able to realize? The voice which urges us on through life from the cradle to the grave, and which, without allowing us a moment's pause, is ever crying—Forward! forward! this voice is not more imperious than the noble instinct which, in the view of beauty, of truth, of good, is also saying to us—Forward! forward! and, with the American poet, Excelsior! higher, ever higher! Many of you know that instinct familiar to the climbers of the Alps,[2] as they are called, who, arrived at one summit, have no rest so long as there remains a loftier height in view. Such is our destiny; but the last peak is veiled in shining clouds which conceal it from our sight. Perfection,—this is the point to which our nature aspires; but it is the ladder of Jacob: we see the foot which rests upon the earth; the summit hides itself from our feeble view amidst the splendors of the infinite.

These objects of our highest desires—beauty in its supreme manifestation, absolute holiness, infinite truth—are united in one and the same thought—God! The attributes of the spiritual are never in us but as borrowed attributes; they dwell naturally in Him who is their source. God is the truth, not only because He knows all things, but because He is the very object of our thoughts; because, when we study the universe, we do but spell out some few of the laws which He has imposed on things; because, to know truth is never any thing else than to know the creation or the Creator, the world or its eternal Cause. God it is who must be Himself the satisfaction of that craving of the conscience which urges us towards holiness. If we had arrived at the highest degree of virtue, what should we have done? We should have realized the plan which He has proposed to spiritual creatures in their freedom, at the same time that He is directing the stars in their courses by that other word which they accomplish without having heard it. God is the eternal source of beauty. He it is who has shed grace upon our valleys, and majesty upon our mountains; and He, again, it is (I quote St. Augustine) who acts within the souls of artists, those great artists, who, urged unceasingly towards the regions of the ideal, feel themselves drawn onwards towards a divine world.

God then above all is He who is,—the Absolute, the Infinite, the Eternal,—in the ever mysterious depths of His own essence. In His relation to the world, He is the cause; in His relation to the lofty aspirations of the soul, He is the ideal. He is the ideal, because being the absolute cause, He is the unique source, at the same time that He is the object, of our aspirations: He is the absolute cause, because being He who is, in His supreme unity, nothing could have existence except by the act of His power. We are able already to recognize here, in passing, the source at which are fed the most serious aberrations of religious thought. Are truth, holiness, beauty considered separately from the real and infinite Spirit in which is found their reason for existing? We see thus appear philosophies noble in their commencement, but which soon descend a fatal slope. The divine, so-called, is spoken of still; but the divine is an abstraction, and apart from God has no real existence. If truth, beauty, holiness are not the attributes of an eternal mind, but the simple expression of the tendencies of our soul, man may render at first a sort of worship to these lofty manifestations of his own nature; but logic, inexorable logic, forces him soon to dismiss the divine to the region of chimeras. These rays are extinguished together with their luminous centre; the soul loses the secret of its destinies, and, in the measureless grief which possesses it, it proclaims at length that all is vanity. We shall have, in the sequel, to be witnesses together of this sorrowful spectacle.

Such is the basis of our idea of God: we must now discover its summit. Before the thought of this Sovereign Being, by whose Will are all things, and who is without cause and without beginning, our soul is overwhelmed. We are so feeble! the thought of absolute power crushes us. Creatures of a day, how should we understand the Eternal? Frail as we are, and evil, we tremble at the idea of holiness. But milder accents, as you know, have been heard upon the earth: This Sovereign God—He loves us. In proportion as this idea gains possession of our understanding, in the same proportion our soul has glimpses of the paths of peace. He loves us, and we take courage. He hears us, and prayer rises to Him with the hope of being heard. He governs all, and we confide in His Providence. When your gaze is directed towards the depths of the sky, does it never happen to you to remain in a manner terrified, as you contemplate those worlds which without end are added to other worlds? As you fix your thoughts upon the immeasurable abysses of the firmament,—as you say to yourselves that how far soever you put back the boundary of the skies, if the universe ended there, then the universe, with its suns and its groups of stars, would still be but a solitary lamp, shining as a point in the midst of the limitless darkness,—have you never experienced a sort of mysterious fright and giddiness? At such a time turn your eyes upon nearer objects. He who has made the heavens with their immensity, is He who makes the corn to spring forth for your sustenance, who clothes the fields with the flowers which rejoice your sight, who gives you the fresh breath of morning, and the calm of a lovely evening: it is He, without whose permission nothing occurs, who watches over you and over those you love. Possess yourselves thoroughly with this thought of love, then lift once more your eyes to the sky, and from every star, and from the worlds which are lost in the furthest depths of space, shall fall upon your brow, no longer clouded, a ray of love and of peace. Then with a feeling of sweet affiance you will adopt as your own those words of an ancient prophet: "Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, or whither shall I flee from Thy Presence? If I ascend up into heaven, Thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, Thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me:"[3] then you will understand those grand and sweet words of Saint Augustine, some of the most beautiful that ever fell from the lips of a man: "Are you afraid of God? Run to His arms!"

Thus our idea of God is completed,—the idea of Him whom, in a feeling of filial confidence, we name the Father, and whom we call the Heavenly Father, while we adore that absolute holiness, of which the pure brightness of the firmament is for us the visible and magnificent symbol. Goodness is the secret of the universe; goodness it is which has directed power, and placed wisdom at its service.

My object is not to teach this idea, but to defend it: it is not, I say, to teach it, for we all possess it. There is no one here who has not received his portion of the sacred deposit. This sacred idea may be veiled by our sorrows, perverted by our errors, obscured by our faults; but, however thick be the layer of ashes heaped together in the depth of our souls—look closely: the sacred spark is not extinguished, and a favorable breath may still rekindle the flame.

We have considered the essential elements of which our idea of God is composed. And whence comes this idea? What is its historical origin? I do not ask what is the historical origin of religion, for religion does not take its rise in history; it is met with everywhere and always in humanity. Those who deny this are compelled to "search in the darkness for some obscure example known only to themselves, as if all natural inclinations were destroyed by the corruption of a people, and as if, as soon as there are any monsters, the species were no longer any thing."[4] The consciousness of a world superior to the domain of experience is one of the attributes characteristic of our nature. "If there had ever been, or if there still anywhere existed, a people entirely destitute of religion, it would be in consequence of an exceptional downfall which would be tantamount to a lapse into animality."[5] I am not therefore inquiring after the origin of the idea and sentiment of the Deity, in a general sense, but after the origin of the idea of the only and Almighty Creator as we possess it. In fact, if religion is universal, distinct knowledge of the Creator is not so.

Our own past strikes its roots into the historic soil which, in the matter of creeds, is known by the name of paganism or idolatry. At first sight what do we find in the opinions of that ancient world? No trace of the divine unity. Adoration is dispersed over a thousand different beings. Not only are the heavenly bodies adored and the powers of nature, but men, animals, and inanimate objects. The feeling of the holiness of God is not less wanting, it would seem, than the idea of His unity. Religion serves as a pretext for the unchaining of human passions. This is the case unfortunately with religion in general, and the true religion is no exception to the rule: but what characterizes paganism is that in its case religion, by its own proper nature, favors the development of immorality. Celebrated shrines become the dens of a prostitution which forms part of the homage rendered to the gods; the religious rites of ancient Asia, and those of Greece which fell under their influence, are notorious for their lewdness. The temples of false deities, too often defiled by debauchery, are too often also dishonored by frightful sacrifices. The ancient civilization of Mexico was elegant and even refined in some respects; but the altars were stained, every year, with the blood of thousands of human beings; and the votaries of this sanguinary worship devoured, in solemn banquets, the quivering limbs of the victims. Let us not look for examples too far removed from the civilization which has produced our own. In the Greek and Roman world, the stories of the gods were not very edifying, as every one knows: the worship of Bacchus gave no encouragement to temperance, and the festivals of Venus were not a school of chastity. It would be easy, by bringing together facts of this sort, to form a picture full of sombre coloring, and to conclude that our idea of God, the idea of the only and holy God, does not proceed from the impure sources of idolatry. The proceeding would be brief and convenient; but such an estimation of the facts, false because incomplete, would destroy the value of the conclusion. In pagan antiquity, in fact, the abominations of which I have just reminded you did not by themselves make up religious tradition. Side by side with a current of darkness and impurity, we meet with a current of pure ideas and of strong gleams of the day.

Almost all the pagans seem to have had a glimpse of the Divine unity over the multiplicity of their idols, and of the rays of the Divine holiness across the saturnalia of their Olympi. It was a Greek who wrote these words: "Nothing is accomplished on the earth without Thee, O God, save the deeds which the wicked perpetrate in their folly."[6] It was in a theatre at Athens that the chorus of a tragedy sang, more than two thousand years ago: "May destiny aid me to preserve unsullied the purity of my words and of all my actions, according to those sublime laws which, brought forth in the celestial heights, have Heaven alone for their father, to which the race of mortal men did not give birth, and which oblivion shall never entomb. In them is a supreme God, and one who waxes not old."[7] It would be easy to multiply quotations of this order, and to show you in the documents of Grecian and Roman civilization numerous traces of the knowledge of the only and holy God. Listen now to a voice which has come forth actually from the recesses of the sepulchre: it reaches us from ancient Egypt.

In Egypt, as you know, the degradation of the religious idea was in popular practice complete. But, under the confused accents of superstition, the science of our age is succeeding in catching from afar the vibrations of a sublime utterance. In the coffins of a large number of mummies have been discovered rolls of papyrus containing a sacred text which is called the Book of the Dead. Here is the translation of some fragments which appear to date from a very remote epoch. It is God who speaks: "I am the Most Holy, the Creator of all that replenishes the earth, and of the earth itself, the habitation of mortals. I am the Prince of the infinite ages. I am the great and mighty God, the Most High, shining in the midst of the careering stars and of the armies which praise me above thy head.... It is I who chastise and who judge the evil-doers, and the persecutors of godly men. I discover and confound the liars.... I am the all-seeing Judge and Avenger ... the guardian of my laws in the land of righteousness."[8]

These words are found mingled, in the text from which I extract them, with allusions to inferior deities; and it must be acknowledged that the translation of the ancient documents of Egypt is still uncertain enough. Still this uncertainty does not appear to extend to the general sense and bearing of the recent discoveries of our savants. Myself a simple learner from the masters of the science, I can only point out to you the result of their studies. Now, this is what the masters tell us as to the actual state of mythological studies. Traces are found almost everywhere, in the midst of idolatrous superstitions, of a religion comparatively pure, and often stamped with a lofty morality. Paganism is not a simple fact: it offers to view in the same bed two currents, the one pure and the other impure. What is the relation between these two currents? A passage in a writer of the Latin Church throws a vivid light upon their actual relation in practical life. It is thus that Lactantius expresses himself: "When man (the pagan) finds himself in adversity, then it is that he has recourse to God (to the only God). If the horrors of war threaten him, if there appear a contagious disease, a drought, a tempest, then he has recourse to God.... If he is overtaken by a storm at sea, and is in danger of perishing, immediately he calls upon God; if he finds himself in any urgent peril, he has recourse to God.... Thus men bethink themselves of God when they are in trouble; but as soon as the danger is past, and they are no longer in any fear, we see them return with joy to the temples of the false gods, make to them libations, and offer sacrifices to them."[9] This is a striking picture of the workings of man's heart in all ages; for, as our author observes, "God is never so much forgotten of men as when they are quietly enjoying the favors and blessings which He sends them."[10] As regards our special object, this page reveals in a very instructive manner the religious condition of heathen antiquity. The thought of the sovereign God was stifled without being extinguished; it awoke beneath the pressure of anguish; but ordinary life, the life of every day, belonged to the easy worship of idols.

It may now be asked what is the historical relation between the two currents of paganism of which we have just established the actual relation in practical life. Did humanity begin with a coarse fetichism, and thence rise by slow degrees to higher conceptions? Do the traces of a comparatively pure monotheism first show themselves in the most recent periods of idolatry? Contemporary science inclines more and more to answer in the negative. It is in the most ancient historical ground (allow me these geological terms) that the laborious investigators of the past meet with the most elevated ideas of religion. Cut to the ground a young and vigorous beech-tree, and come back a few years afterwards: in place of the tree cut down you will find coppice-wood; the sap which nourished a single trunk has been divided amongst a multitude of shoots. This comparison expresses well enough the opinion which tends to prevail amongst our savants on the subject of the historical development of religions. The idea of the only God is at the root,—it is primitive; polytheism is derivative. A forgotten, and as it were slumbering, monotheism exists beneath the worship of idols; it is the concealed trunk which supports them, but the idols have absorbed all the sap. The ancient God (allow me once more a comparison) is like a sovereign confined in the interior of his palace: he is but seldom thought of, and only on great occasions; his ministers alone act, entertain requests, and receive the real homage.

The proposition of the historical priority of monotheism is very important, and is not universally admitted. It will therefore be necessary to show you, by a few quotations at least, that I am not speaking rashly. One of the most accredited mythologists of our time, Professor Grimm, of Berlin, writes as follows: "The monotheistic form appears to be the more ancient, and that out of which antiquity in its infancy formed polytheism.... All mythologies lead us to this conclusion."[11] Among the French savants devoted to the study of ancient Egypt, the Vicomte de Rongé stands in the foremost rank. This is what he tells us: "In Egypt the supreme God was called the one God, living indeed, He who made all that exists, who created other beings. He is the Generator existing alone who made the heaven and created the earth." The writer informs us that these ideas are often found reproduced "in writings the date of which is anterior to Moses, and many of which formed part of the most ancient sacred hymns;" then he comes to this conclusion: "Egypt, in possession of an admirable fund of doctrines respecting the essence of God, and the immortality of the soul, did not for all that defile herself the less by the most degrading superstitions; we have in her, sufficiently summed up, the religious history of all antiquity."[12] As regards the civilization which flourished in India, M. Adolphe Pictet, in his learned researches on the subject of the primitive Aryas, arrives, in what concerns the religious idea, at the following conclusion: "To sum up: primitive monotheism of a character more or less vague, passing gradually into a polytheism still simple, such appears to have been the religion of the ancient Aryas."[13] One of our fellow-countrymen, who cultivates with equal modesty and perseverance the study of religious antiquities, has procured the greater part of the recent works published on these subjects in France, Germany, and England. He has read them, pen in hand, and, at my urgent request, he has kindly allowed me to look over his notes which have been long accumulating. I find the following sentence in the manuscripts which he has shown me: "The general impression of all the most distinguished mythologists of the present day is, that monotheism is at the foundation of all pagan mythology."

The savants, I repeat, do not unanimously accept these conclusions: savants, like other men, are rarely unanimous. It is enough for my purpose to have shown that it is not merely the grand tradition guaranteed by the Christian faith, but also the most distinctly marked current of contemporary science, which tells us that God shone upon the cradle of our species. The august Form was veiled, and idolatry with its train of shameful rites shows itself in history as the result of a fall which calls for a restoration, rather than as the point of departure of a continued progress.

The august Form was veiled. Who has lifted the veil? Not the priests of the idols. We meet in the history of paganism with movements of reformation, or, at the very least, of religious transformation: Buddhism is a memorable example of this; but it is not a return towards the pure traditions of India or of Egypt which has caused us to know the God whom we adore. Has the veil been lifted by reflection, that is to say by the labors of philosophers? Philosophy has rendered splendid services to the world. It has combated the abominations of idolatry; it has recognized in nature the proofs of an intelligent design; it has discerned in the reason the deeply felt need of unity; it has indicated in the conscience the sense of good, and shown its characteristics; it has contemplated the radiant image of the supreme beauty—still it is not philosophy which has restored for humanity the idea of God. Its lights mingled with darkness remained widely scattered, and without any focus powerful enough to give them strength for enlightening the world. To seek God, and consequently to know Him already in a certain measure; but to remain always before the altar of a God glimpsed only by an élite of sages, and continuing for the multitudes the unknown God: such was the wisdom of the ancients. It prepared the soil; but it did not deposit in it the germ from which the idea of the Creator was to spring forth living and strong, to overshadow with its branches all the nations of the earth. And when this idea appeared in all its splendor, and began the conquest of the universe, the ancient philosophy, which had separated itself from heathen forms of worship, and had covered them with its contempt, contracted an alliance with its old adversaries. It accepted the wildest interpretations of the common superstitions, in order to be able to league itself with the crowd in one and the same conflict with the new power which had just appeared in the world. And this sums up in brief compass the whole history of philosophy in the first period of our era.

The monotheism of the moderns does not proceed historically from paganism; it was prepared by the ancient philosophy, without being produced by it. Whence comes it then? On this head there exists no serious difference of opinion. Our knowledge of God is the result of a traditional idea, handed down from generation to generation in a well-defined current of history. Much obscurity still rests upon man's earliest religious history, but the truth which I am pointing out to you is solidly and clearly established. Pass, in thought, over the terrestrial globe. All the superstitions of which history preserves the remembrance are practised at this day, either in Asia or in Africa, or in the isles of the Ocean. The most ridiculous and ferocious rites are practised still in the light of the same sun which gilds, as he sets, the spires and domes of our churches. At this very day, there are nations upon the earth which prostrate themselves before animals, or which adore sacred trees. At this very day, perhaps at this hour in which I am addressing you, human victims are bound by the priests of idols; before you have left this room, their blood will have defiled the altars of false deities. At this very day, numerous nations, which have neither wanted time for self-development, nor any of the resources of civilization, nor clever poets, nor profound philosophers, belong to the religion of the Brahmins, or are instructed in the legends which serve as a mask to the pernicious doctrines of Buddha. Where do we meet with the clear idea of the Creator? In a unique tradition which proceeds from the Jews, which Christians have diffused, and which Mahomet corrupted. God is known, with that solid and general knowledge which founds a settled doctrine and a form of worship, under the influence of this tradition and nowhere else. We assert this as a simple fact of contemporary history; and there is scarcely any fact in history better established.

The light comes to us from the Gospel. This light did not appear as a sudden and absolutely new illumination. It had cast pale gleams on the soul of the heathen in their search after the unknown God; it had shone apart upon that strange and glorious people which bears the name of Israel. Israel had preserved the primitive light encompassed by temporary safe-guards. It was the flame of a lamp, too feeble to live in the open air, and which remained shut up in a vase, until the moment when it should have become strong enough to shine forth from its shattered envelope upon the world. The worship of Jehovah is a local worship; but this worship, localized for a time, is addressed to the only and sovereign God. To every nation which says to Israel as Athaliah to Joash:

I have my God to serve—serve thou thine own,[14]

Israel replies with Joash:

Nay, Madam, but my God is God alone;

Him must thou fear: thy God is nought—a dream![15]

Israel does not affirm merely that the God of Israel is the only true God, but affirms moreover that the time will come when all the earth will acknowledge Him for the only and universal Lord. A grand thought, a grand hope, is in the soul of this people, and assures it that all nations shall one day look to Jerusalem. Its prophets threaten, warn, denounce chastisements, predict terrible catastrophes; but in the midst of their severer utterances breaks forth ever and again the song of future triumph:

Uplift, Jerusalem, thy queenly brow:

Light of the nations, and their glory, thou![16]

Thus is preserved in the ancient world the knowledge of God amongst an exceptional people, amidst the darkness of idolatry and the glimmerings of an imperfect wisdom. And not only is it preserved, but it shines with a brightness more and more vivid and pure. The conception of sovereignty which constitutes its foundation, is crowned as it advances by the conception of love. At length He appears by whom the universal Father was to be known of all.

Have you not remarked the surprising simplicity with which Jesus speaks of His work? He speaks of the universe and of the future as a lawful proprietor speaks of his property. The field in which the Word shall be sown is the world. He introduces that worship in spirit and in truth before which all barriers shall fall. He knows that humanity belongs to Him; and when He foretells His peaceful conquest, one knows not which predominates in His words, simplicity or grandeur. Now this predicted work has been done, is being done, and will be done. No one entertains any serious doubt of this. The idea of God, as it exists amongst Christian peoples, bears on its brow the certain sign of victory.

In many respects, we are passing through the world in times which are not extraordinary, and among things little worthy of lasting record. Still great events are being accomplished before our eyes. The ancient East is shaken to its foundations. The work of foreign missions is taken up again with fresh energy. Ships, as they leave the shores of Europe, carry with them,—together with those who travel for purposes of commerce, or from curiosity, or as soldiers,—those new crusaders who exclaim: God wills it! and are ready to march to their death in order to proclaim the God of life to nations plunged in darkness. The advances of industry, the developments of commerce, the calculations of ambition, all conspire to diffuse spiritual light over the globe. These are noble spectacles, revealing clearly the traces of a superior design, which the mighty of this world are accomplishing, even by the craft and violence of their policy: they are the manifest instruments of a Will to which oftentimes they are insensible. The knowledge of God is extending; and while it is extending, it is enriching itself with its own conquests. Just as it absorbed the living sap of the doctrines of the Greeks, so it is strengthening itself with the doctrines of the ancient East and of old Egypt, which an indefatigable science is bringing again to light. Christian thought is growing, not by receiving any foreign impulse from without, but like a vigorous tree, whose roots traverse new layers of a fertile soil. All truth comes naturally to the centre of truth as to its rallying-point; and to the universal prayer must be gathered all the pure accents gone astray in the superstitious invocations which rise from the banks of the Ganges or from the burning regions of Africa. The day will come, when our planet, in its revolutions about the sun, shall receive on no point of its surface the rays of the orb of day, without sending back, over the ruins of idol-temples for ever overthrown, a song of thanksgiving to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, become through Jesus Christ the God of all mankind.

We know now whence comes our idea of God: it is Christian in its origin. It proceeds from this source, not only for those who call themselves Christians, but for all those who, in the bosom of modern society, believe sincerely and seriously in God. But little study and reflection is required for the acknowledgment that the doctrines of our deists are the product of a reason which has been evangelized without their own knowledge. They have not invented, but have received the thought, which constitutes the support of their life. A mind of ordinary cultivation is free henceforward from all danger of falling into the artless error of J.J. Rousseau, when he pretended that even though he had been born in a desert island and had never known a human being, he would have been able to draw up the confession of faith of the Vicaire Savoyard. The habit of historical research has dispelled these illusions. A French writer, distinguished for solid erudition, wrote not long ago: "The civilized world has received from Judea the foundations of its faith. It has learned of it these two things which pagan antiquity never knew—holiness and charity; for all holiness is derived from belief in a personal, spiritual God, Creator of the universe; and all charity from the doctrine of human brotherhood!"[17] Religion, in its most general sense, is found wherever there are men; but distinct knowledge of the Heavenly Father is the fruit of that word which comes to us from the borders of the Jordan,—a word in which all the true elements of ancient wisdom are found to have mutually drawn together, and strengthened each other. In the very heart of our civilization, those men of mind who succeed in freeing themselves in good earnest from the influence of this word come, oftener than not, to throw off all belief in the real and true God, if they have strength of mind enough properly to understand themselves.

How is it that the full idea of the Creator,—an idea which true philosophers have sought after in all periods of history, and of which they have had, so to speak, glimpses and presentiments,—how is it that this idea is a living one only under the influence of the tradition which, proceeding originally from Abraham and Moses, has been continued by Jesus Christ? It is not impossible to point out the spiritual causes of this great historical phenomenon. Faith in God, in order to maintain itself in presence of the difficulties which rise in our minds, and—to come at once to the core of the question—the idea of the love of God, in order to maintain itself in presence of evil and of the power of evil on the earth, has need of resources which the Christian belief alone possesses. The knowledge of the Heavenly Father is essentially connected with the Gospel: this is the historical fact. This fact is accounted for by the existence of an organic bond between all the great Christian doctrines: this is my deliberate conviction. I frankly declare here my own opinions: to do so is for me a matter almost of honor and good faith; but I declare them, without desiring to lay any stress upon them in these lectures. My present object is to consider the idea of God by itself. I isolate it for my own purposes from Christian truth taken as a whole, but without making the separation in my thoughts. The thesis which I propose to maintain is common to all Christians, that is quite clear; but further; in a perfectly general sense, and in a merely abstract point of view, it is a proposition maintained equally by the disciples of Mahomet; it is maintained by J.J. Rousseau and the spiritualist philosophers who reproduce his thoughts. It is clear in fact that just as Jesus Christ is the corner-stone of all Christian doctrine, so God is the foundation common to all religions.

Before concluding this lecture I desire to answer a question which may have suggested itself to some amongst you. What are we about when we take up a Christian idea in order to defend it by reasoning? Are we occupied about religion or philosophy? Are we treading upon the ground of faith, or on the ground of reason? Are we in the domain of tradition, or in that of free inquiry? I have no great love, Gentlemen, for hedges and enclosures. I know very well, better, perhaps, than many amongst you, because I have longer reflected on the subject, what are the differences which separate studies specially religious, from philosophical inquiries. But when the question relates to God, to the universal cause, we find ourselves at the common root of religion and philosophy, and distinctions, which exist elsewhere, disappear. Besides, these distinctions are never so absolute as they are thought to be. You will understand this if you pay attention to these two considerations: there is no such thing as pure thought disengaged from every traditional element: there is no such thing as tradition received in a manner purely passive, and disengaged from all exercise of the reflective faculties.

You think you are employed about philosophy when you shut yourself up in your own individual thoughts. A mistake! The most powerful genius of modern times failed in this enterprise. Descartes conceived the project of forgetting all that he had known, and of producing a system of doctrine which should come forth from his brain as Minerva sprang all armed from the brain of Jupiter. Now-a-days a mere schoolboy, if he has been well taught, ought to be able to prove that Descartes was mistaken, because the current of tradition entered his mind together with the words of the language. It is not so easy as we may suppose to break the ties by which God has bound us all together in mutual dependence. Man speaks, he only thinks by means of speech, and speech is a river which takes its rise in the very beginnings of history, and brings down to the existing generation the tribute of all the waters of the past. No one can isolate himself from the current, and place himself outside the intellectual society of his fellows. We have more light than we had on this subject, and the attempt of Descartes, which was of old the happy audacity of genius, could in our days be nothing but the foolish presumption of ignorance.

As for the purely passive reception of tradition, this may be conceived when only unimportant legends are in question, or doctrines which occupy the mind only as matters of curiosity; but when life is at stake, and the interests of our whole existence, the mind labors upon the ideas which it receives. Religion is only living in any soul when all the faculties have come into exercise; and faith, by its own proper nature, seeks to understand. The distinction between traditional data therefore and pure philosophy is far from being so real or so extensive as it is commonly thought to be. But for lack of time, I might undertake to prove to you more at length that the labor of individual thought upon the common tradition is the absolute and permanent law of development for the human mind.

We have to steer between two extreme and contrary pretensions. What shall we say to those theologians who deny all power to man's reason, and consider the understanding as a receiver which does nothing but receive the liquid which is poured into it? to those theologians who, not content with despising Aristotle and Plato, think themselves obliged to vilify Socrates and calumniate Regulus? We will tell them that they depart from the grand Christian tradition, of which they believe themselves par excellence the representatives. We will add that they outrage their Master by seeming to believe that in order to exalt Him it is necessary to calumniate humanity. Again, what shall we say to those philosophers, who do not wish for truth except when they have succeeded in educing it by themselves? to those philosophers who draw a little circle about their own personal thought, and say: If truth discovers itself outside this circle we have no wish to see it; and who boast that they only are free, because they have abandoned the common beliefs? We will tell them that they are deceiving themselves by taking for their own personal thought the débris of the tradition of the human race. We will add that their pretended independence is a veritable slavery. A strange sort of liberty that, which should forbid those who affect it to accept a faith which appeared to them to be true, because they were not the inventors of it. Listen to this wise reflection of a contemporary writer: "Philosophy allows us to range ourselves on the side of Platonism: why should it not also allow us to range ourselves on the side of the Christian faith, if there it is that we find wisdom and immutable truth? The choice ought to seem as free and as worthy of respect on the one side as on the other; and philosophy which claims liberty for itself, is least of all warranted in refusing it to others."[18] To be free, is to look for truth wherever it may be found, and it is to obey truth wherever we meet with it. When the question therefore relates to God, or to the soul and its eternal destinies,—to the man who asks me, Are you occupied with religion or philosophy? I have only one answer to give: I am a man, and I am seeking truth.

A final consideration will perhaps put these thoughts in a more striking light. If you think the most important of the discussions of our day to be that between natural and revealed religion, between deism and the Gospel, you have not well discerned the signs of the times. The fundamental discussion is now between men who believe in God, in the soul, and in truth, and men, who, denying truth, deny at the same time the soul and God. When these high problems are in question, periodicals and other publications, which have the widest circulation, and which gain admission into every household, bring us too often the works of writers without convictions, eager to spread amongst others the doubt which has devoured their own beliefs. They have received entire, and without losing an obole of it, the heritage of the Greek Sophists. They involve in fact in the same proscription Socrates and Jesus Christ, Paul of Tarsus and Plato of Athens: they have no more respect for the opinions of Descartes and Leibnitz than for those of Pascal and Bossuet. The great question of the day is to know whether our desire of truth is a chimæra; whether our effort to reach the divine world is a spring into the empty void. When the question relates to God, inasmuch as He is the basis of reason no less than the object of faith, all the barriers which exist elsewhere disappear: to defend faith is to defend reason; to defend reason is to defend faith. The unbridled audacity of those who deny fundamental truths is bringing ancient adversaries, for a moment at least, to fight beneath the same flag. What they would rob us of, is not merely this or that article of a definite creed, but all faith whatever in Divine Providence, every hope which goes beyond the tomb, every look directed towards a world superior to our present destinies. But take courage. This flame lighted on the earth, and which is evermore directed towards heaven, has passed safely through rougher storms than those which now threaten it; it has shone brightly in thicker darkness than that in which men are laboring so hard to enshroud it. It is not going to be extinguished, be very sure, before the affected indifference of a few wits of our day, and the haughty disdain of a few contemporary journalists.

In a word, Gentlemen,—to take the idea of God as it has been handed down to us, and to study its relation to the reason, the heart, and the conscience of man,—this is my proposed method of proceeding. To show you that this idea is truth, because it satisfies the conscience, the heart, and the reason—this is the object I have in view. Of this object I am sure you feel the importance: nevertheless, and that we may be more alive to it still, I propose to you to sound with me the abysses of sorrow and darkness which are involved in those terrible words—"without God in the world."

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Aux grimpeurs des Alpes.

[3] Psalm cxxxix. 7-10.

[4] J.J. Rousseau.

[5] Les Origines Indo-Européennes, by Adolphe Pictet, ii. 651.

[6] Cleanthes, Hymn to Jupiter.

[7] Sophocles, Œdipus R.

[8] Handbuch der gesammten ägyptischen Alterthumskunde, von Dr. Max Uhlemann. Leipzig, 1857.

[9] Institutions divines, ii. 1.

[10] Id.

[11] Deutsche Mythol. Third edition, page lxiv.

[12] Annales de philosophie chrétienne, t. 59, p. 228.r.

[13] Les Origines Indo-Européennes, ii. 720.

[14] J'ai mon Dieu que je sers, vous servirez le vôtre.

[15]

Il faut craindre le mien;

Lui seul est Dieu, Madame, et le vôtre n'est rien.

[16]

Lève, Jérusalem, lève ta tête altière!

Les peuples à l'envi marchent à ta lumière.

[17] Etudes Orientales, par Adolphe Franck, p. 427.

[18] Barthélemy St. Hilaire, in the Séances et travaux de l'Académie des sciences morales et politiques, lxx., p. 134.

LECTURE II.

LIFE WITHOUT GOD.

(At Geneva, 20th Nov. 1863.—At Lausanne, 13th Jan. 1864.)

Gentlemen,

I propose to examine to-day what are the consequences for human life of the total suppression of the idea of God. This suppression is the result of atheism properly so called: it is also the result of scepticism raised into a system. The soul which doubts, but which seeks, regrets, hopes, is not wholly separated from God. It gives Him a large share in its life, inasmuch as the desire which it feels to meet with Him, and the sadness which it experiences at not contemplating Him in a full light, become the principal facts of its existence. But doubt adopted as a doctrine realizes in its own way, equally with atheism properly so called, life without God, the mournful subject of our present study.

Having God, the spiritual life has a firm base and an invincible hope. The vapors of earth may indeed for a moment obscure the sky. One while fogs hang about the ground; another while clouds send forth the thunder-bolt; but, above the regions of darkness and of tempest, the eye of faith contemplates the eternal azure in its unchanging calm. Life has its sorrows for all; but it is not only endurable, it is blessed, when in view of the instability of all things, in view of evil, of injustice, and of suffering, there can breathe from the depths of the soul to the eternal, the Holy One, the Comforter, those words of patience in life and of joy in death: My God! Take God away, and life is decapitated. Even this comparison is not sufficient; life, rather, becomes like to a man who should have lost at once both his head and his heart. The immense subject which opens before us falls into an easy and natural division: we will fix our attention successively upon the individual and upon society.

PART I.

THE INDIVIDUAL.

Man thinks, he feels, and he wills: these are the three great functions of the spiritual life. Let us inquire what, without God, would become, first, of thought, which is the instrument of all knowledge; next; of the conscience, which is the law of the will; then of the heart, which is the organ of the feelings. We will begin with thought.

Let us go back to the origin of modern philosophy. The labors of Descartes will make us acquainted, under the form clearest for us, with a current of lofty thoughts which does honor to ancient civilization, and which has come down to us through the writings of Plato and St. Augustine. We have seen that Descartes deceived himself, when he thought to separate himself altogether from tradition, and forgot the while how intimately men's minds are bound together in a common possession of truth. He was mistaken, because he confounded the idea, natural to the human mind, of an infinite reason, with the full idea of the Creator; so attributing to the efforts of his own philosophy that gift of truth which he had received from the Christian tradition. But, having so far recognized his error, listen now to this great man, and judge if he were again mistaken in those thoughts of his which I am about to reproduce to you.

Descartes strives hard to doubt of all things, persuaded that truth will resist his efforts, and come forth triumphant from the trial. He doubts of what he has heard in the schools: his masters may have led him into error. He doubts of the evidence of his senses: his senses deceive him in the visions of the night; what if he were always dreaming, and if his waking hours were but another sleep with other dreams! He will doubt even of the certainty of reason: what if the reason were a warped and broken instrument? Reason is only worth what its cause may be worth. If man is the child of chance, his thoughts may be vain. If man is the creature of a wicked and cunning being, the light of reason may be only an ignis fatuus kindled by a malicious and mocking spirit. Here is a soul plunged in the lowest abysses of doubt; but it is a manly soul which seeks in doubt a trial for truth, and not a comfortable pillow on which slothfully to repose. How does Descartes upraise himself? By a thought known to every one, and which was already found in St. Augustine: "Cogito, ergo sum. I think, therefore I am." Deceive me who will; if I am deceived, I exist. Here is a certainty protected from all assault: I am. But what a poor certainty is this! What does it avail me to have rescued my existence from the abysses of universal doubt, if above the deep waters which have swallowed up all belief floats only this naked and mortifying truth: I am; but I exist only perhaps to be the sport of errors without end. The first step therefore taken by the philosopher would be a fruitless one if it were not followed by a second. An eye is open, and says: I see; but it must have a warrant that the light by which it sees is not a fantastic brightness. No, replies Descartes; reason sees a true light; and this is how he proves it: I am, I know myself; that is certain. I know myself as a limited and imperfect being; that again is certain. I conceive then infinity and perfection; that is not less certain; for I should not have the idea of a limit if I did not conceive of infinity, and the word imperfect would have no meaning for me, if I could not imagine perfection, of which imperfection is but the negation. Starting from this point, the philosopher proves by a series of reasonings that the conception of perfection by our minds demonstrates the real existence of that perfection: God is. He adds, that the existence of God is more certain than the most certain of all the theorems of geometry. You will observe, Gentlemen, that the man who speaks in this way is one of the greatest geometricians that ever lived. He has found God, he has found the light. Reason does not deceive, when it is faithful to its own laws: the senses do not deceive, when they are exercised according to the rules of the understanding. Error is a malady; it is not the radical condition of our nature; it is not without limits and without remedy, for the final cause of our being is God, that is to say truth and goodness.

From everlasting God was true,

For ever good and just will be,

says one of our old psalms. Faith in the veracity of God—such is the ground of the assurance of believers; such is also the foundation on which has been raised the greatest of modern philosophies. Without the knowledge of God and faith in his goodness, man remains plunged in irremediable doubt, possessing only this single, poor, and frightful certainty: I am; and I exist perhaps only to be eternally deceived.

But, it has been said, and it needed no great cleverness to say it—What a strange way is this of reasoning! Here is a man who first proves that God is, by means of his reason; and then proves that his reason is good because God is. His reason demonstrates God to him, and God demonstrates his reason to him: it is an argument of which any schoolboy can at once see the fallacy; it is manifestly a vicious circle. This has been said again and again by persons who have neglected a sufficiently simple consideration. The error is apparently a gross one; is it not likely that the argument has been misunderstood? Ought we not to look very closely at it, before declaring that one of the most lucid minds that have ever appeared in the world left at the basis of his doctrine a fault of logic which any schoolboy can discover? Self-sufficient levity of spirit is not the best means of penetrating the thought of leading minds; and it very often happens to us to fail of understanding because we have failed in respect.

Let us examine with serious attention, not the very words of Descartes, as an historian might do, but the course of thought of which Descartes is one of the most illustrious representatives.

To recognize in the reason traces of God, and to show that in faith in God consists the only warrant of the reason, is not to argue in a vicious circle, because, in this way of proceeding, what we are employed in is not reasoning, but analysis; we are establishing a fact in order to ascertain what that fact implies and supposes. This fact is the natural faith which man has in his own reason, when his reason reveals to him the immediate light of evidence, or the mediate light of certainty. Now, when man confides in his reason, it is not in his individual reason that he confides, for he has no doubt that what is evident for him is so also for others. If, tossed by a tempest, he were thrown upon an island of savages, he would not think that those savages, when they came to reflect, would be able to discover that the axioms of our geometry are false, or to make elements of logic which would contradict our own. We believe in a general reason, everywhere and always the same, and in which the reason of each individual participates. We believe therefore that there is a principle of truth which exists in itself, a reason which is eternal and everywhere present; in other words, we believe in God considered as the source of the universal intelligence. To believe in one's reason, is to believe in God, in this sense: the fact of the confidence which we place in our own faculty of thought, supposes a concealed faith in eternal truth. This is the analysis of which I was speaking. It is a circle if you please, but it is a circle of light, outside of which there is, as we shall see by and by, nothing but darkness and hard contradictions.

You deny the existence of God. On what ground do you rest this denial? On the ground of your reason. You believe then that your reason is good, you believe it very good, since you do not hesitate to trust it, while you undertake to prove false the fundamental instincts of human nature. But you would not venture to say that this reason which you believe in with a faith so firm is your own separate reason merely, your personal and exclusive property. You believe in the universal reason; you believe in God, considered at least as the source of the understanding. The man therefore who denies God, affirms Him in a certain sense at the same time that he denies Him. He denies Him in his words, in the external form of his thought; he affirms Him in reality, as the Supreme Intelligence, by the very trust which he places in his own thought. Our understanding is only the reflected ray of the Divine verity. Therefore it is that Descartes, as soon as he has laid the first foundations of his system, interrupts the chain of his reasonings to trace these lines: "Here I think it highly meet to pause for a while in contemplation of this all-perfect God, to ponder deliberately his marvellous attributes, to consider, admire, and adore the incomparable beauty of that immense light, at least so far as the strength of my mind, which remains in a manner dazzled by it, shall allow me to do so."[19] Thus it is that while descending into the depths of the understanding, the philosopher who is supposed to be absorbed in pure abstractions, discovers all at once a sublime brightness, and exclaims with the ancient patriarch: "The Lord is in this place, and I knew it not!"[20] God is everywhere; He is in the heights of heaven, He is in the depths of thought. Remember those celebrated words of Lord Chancellor Bacon: "A little knowledge inclineth the mind to atheism, but a further acquaintance therewith bringeth it back to religion."

God is not demonstrated, in the ordinary sense which we attach to the word demonstrate;[21] He is pointed out[22] as the source of all light. The attempt to demonstrate God as anything else is demonstrated, by descending, that is, from higher principles until the object in view is arrived at—this attempt implies a contradiction. God is in fact the first principle, the foundation of all principles, the principle beyond which there is nothing. We may describe the process by which the human mind rises to this supreme idea; but to wish to demonstrate God by mounting higher than Himself in order to look for a point of departure—this is literally to wish to light up the sun. If the sun of intelligences is extinguished, reason sets out on its way vaguely enlightened still with the remains of the light which it has reflected; but it is not long ere it is stumbling in darkness. Then it is that—be not deceived about it!—the doubts which Descartes called up by an act of his own will do in good earnest invade the soul. We possess a natural certainty, which does not suppose a clear view of God; we reason without thinking distinctly of the principles on which we reason, just as, when we are in a hurry, we take the shortest cut without thinking of the axiom of geometry which prescribes the straight line. But if we pass from the natural order of our thoughts into the domain of science, if we ask—what is it which guarantees to me the value of my reason? then the question is put, and many perish in the passage which separates natural faith from the domain of science,—that dangerous passage where doubt spreads out its perfidious fogs and its deceitful marshes. The moment the question is started of the worth of reason, and all the schools of scepticism do start it, our answer must be—God; and we must find light in this answer, or see thought invaded in its totality by an irremediable doubt. Then men come to ask themselves if all be not a lie; and they speak of the universal vanity, without making the reserve of Ecclesiastes.[23] There are more souls ill of this malady than are supposed to be so. Many begin by setting up proudly against God what they call the rights of reason, and by and by we see this reason, which has revolted against its Principle, vacillate, doubt of itself, and at last, losing itself in a bitter irony, wrap itself, with all beside, in the shroud of a universal scorn.

Without God reason is extinguished. What, in like case, will happen to the conscience? The conscience is a reality. I will say willingly in the style of the prophets: Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, ere I deny conscience, and disparage the sacred name of duty! Yes, conscience is a reality; but God is in it: He it is who gives to it its necessary basis and its indispensable support. The conscience is the august voice of the Master of the universe. God has given us the light of the understanding that we may see and comprehend some portions of the works which He has created without us: a work there is for which He would have us to be fellow-workers with Him. The heaven of stars is a spectacle for the eyes of the body, a grander spectacle still for the contemplation of the mind which has understood their wondrous mechanism. We admire them; but if the stars failed to attract our admiration, no one of them on that account would cease to trace its orbit. There is another heaven, a heaven of loving stars and free, the sight of which is one day to fill us with rapture, and the realization of which is to be the work of our love and of our will. Before we contemplate it we must make it; this is our high and awful privilege. The plan of the spiritual heavens is deposited in the soul, and the utterances of the conscience reveal it to the will. It is a law of justice and of love. This law is evermore violated, because it is proposed to liberty, and liberty rebels: it subsists evermore, because it is the work of the Almighty. Humanity, in its strange destiny, has never ceased to outrage the rule which it acknowledges, and to pronounce upon its own acts a ceaseless condemnation. The laws which are investigated by the physical sciences are the plan of the Creator realized in nature: the law proposed to liberty is the plan of the Creator to be realized by the community of minds. Such is the explanation of the conscience: God is its solid foundation.

Duty and God, morality and religion, are inseparable principles; all the efforts of a false philosophy have never succeeded, and never will succeed, in disjoining them. Men will never be prevented from believing that God is holy, and that His will is binding upon them: they will never be prevented from believing that holiness is divine, and that the will of God reveals itself in the admonitions of the conscience. Therefore the progress of religion and the progress of morality are closely united; the morality of a people depends above all on the idea which it forms to itself of God. The conscience, in fact, at the same time that it is real and permanent in its bases, is variable in the degrees of its light. It is enlightened or obscured, according as the man's religious conceptions are pure or corrupted; and, on the other hand, when the religious worship is degraded beyond a certain limit by error and the passions, the conscience protests, and by its protest purifies the religious conceptions. It has often been said, that in the onward march of humanity, morality is separated from faith, and comes at last to rest upon its own bases. It is a notion of the eighteenth century, which, although its root has been cut, is still throwing out shoots in our time. The attempt has been made to support this theory by the great name of Socrates. It is affirmed that the sage of Athens, breaking the bond which connects the earth with heaven, separated duty from its primitive source. Listen: Placed in the alternative of either renouncing his mission or dying, it is thus that Socrates addresses his judges: "Athenians, I honor you and I love you, but I will obey the Deity rather than you. My whole occupation is to persuade you, young and old, that before the care of the body and of riches, before every other care, is that of the soul and of its improvement. Know that this it is which the Deity prescribes to me, and I am persuaded that there can be nothing more advantageous to the republic than my zeal to fulfil the behest of the Deity."[24] Does the man who speaks in this way appear to you to have wished to break the link which connects morality with religion? He separates himself from the established religion; he pursues with his biting raillery shameful objects of worship; his conscience protests. But, while it protests, it attaches itself immediately to a higher and holier idea of that God, of whose perfections the sage of Athens had succeeded in obtaining a glimpse.

God then is the explanation of the conscience: He is moreover its support. It has need in sooth to be supported,—that voice which speaks within us; because it is unceasingly contradicted and denied. The spectacle which the world presents is not an edifying one; the facts which are taking place on the earth are not all of a nature to maintain the steadfastness of the moral feeling. Let us imagine an example, a striking example, such as it would be easy to find realized on a small scale in more commonplace events. A peaceable population, menaced in its most sacred rights, has taken up arms in the simplest and most legitimate self-defence. I do not allow my thoughts to rest upon the soldiers who are advancing to oppress it—mere instruments as they are in the hands of their leaders—but upon the leaders themselves. One of these, without the least necessity, with a calculating coolness, to which he sacrifices all the feelings of a man, or under the sway of one of those ferocious instincts which at times gain the mastery over the soul, gives up a town, a village, to all the horrors of slaughter, pillage, and fire. The blood of the victims will scarcely, perhaps, have grown cold, the last gleams of the fire will not yet be extinct, when this man shall be receiving the praises of his superiors. Men will laud the bravery and daring of his exploit; his sovereign will place upon his breast a brilliant cross, the august sign of the world's redemption; he will return to his country amidst the acclamations of the multitude, and drink in with delight the shouts of triumph which greet him as he moves on his way. For such things as these, is there to be no penalty but troublesome recollections which may sometimes be banished, and a few timid protests soon hushed by the loud voice of success? Verily there are perpetrated beneath the sun acts which cry aloud for vengeance. Have you never felt it—that mighty cry—rising from your own bosom, at the sight of some odious crime, or on reading such and such a page of history? And it must be so; it must be that the cry for vengeance will rise, until the soul has learnt to transform imprecation into prayer, and the desire for justice into supplication for the guilty. But if, in the presence of crime, we were forced to believe that there will never be either vengeance or pardon, the mainspring of the moral life would be broken, and humanity would at length exclaim, like Brutus in the plains of Philippi:—"Virtue! thou art but a name!"

The conscience is a reality; but its voice is troublesome, and the captious arguments which go to deny its value find support in the evil tendencies of our nature. If it has no faith in eternal justice it runs the risk of being blunted by contact with the world. So doubt takes place, doubt still deeper and more agonizing than that which bears upon the processes of the understanding. The questions which arise are such as these:—"This voice of duty—whence comes it? and what would it have? May not conscience be a prejudice, the result of education and of habit? It has little power, it seems, for it is braved with impunity. Many say that it is a factitious power from which one comes at last to deliver one's self by resisting it. Am I not the dupe of an illusion? I am losing joys which others allow themselves. Barriers encompass me on every hand, for there are for me prohibited actions, unwholesome beauties, culpable feelings. Others are free, and make a larger use of life in all directions. What if I too made trial of liberty!" Here lies the temptation. When the soul aspires to become larger than conscience and more tolerant than duty, it is not far from a fall. The honest woman will be tempted to repine at the liberty of the courtesan, and the man who is bound by his word will become capable of looking with envy on the liberty of the liar. Then come terrible experiences which teach at length that the unbinding of the passions is the hardest of slaveries, and that, in the struggle between inclination and duty, it is liberty which oppresses and law which sets free. Happy then is he who, feeling himself to be sinking in gloomy waters, cries to that God who is able to rescue him from the abyss, and strengthens his shaken conscience by replacing it on its solid foundation. "God speaks and reigns. All rebellion is transient in its nature; justice will at length be done. Justice may be slow in the eyes of the creature of a day, seeing that He who shall dispense it has eternity at his disposal." But if God be not a refuge for us from men and from the world, if, when we see all that is passing around us, we cannot cast a look beyond and above the earth, men may lose their faith in duty. And this faith is lost in fact. If there are not dead consciences, there are consciences at any rate singularly sunk in sleep. There are men for whom goodness, truth, justice, honor, seem to be a coinage of which they make use because it is current, but without for themselves attaching to it any value. These pieces of money have no longer in their eyes any visible impression, because the conception of the almighty and just God is the impression which determines duty and guarantees its value.

When the necessary alliance of moral order with religious thought is denied, the reality of conscience is opposed to what are called theological hypotheses always open to discussion. It is seen well enough that men may doubt of God, but it is supposed to be impossible to doubt of conscience. This is an illusion of generous minds. Those who would keep this illusion must not open the pages of the history of philosophy where the negation of duty does not occupy less space than the negation of God; they must not cast their eyes too much about them; they must also take care not to open the most widely circulated books, and the most fashionable periodicals: otherwise, as we shall see, they would not be long in finding out that this morality which they would fain have superior to all attacks, is perhaps what of all things is most attacked now-a-days, and that that conscience which it is impossible to deny is in fact the object of denials the most audacious on the part of a few of the present favorites of fame. The voice of duty is heard no doubt even when God does not come distinctly into mind; but when the questions are clearly put, if God is denied, conscience grows dim, and comes at last to be extinguished. This obscuration does not take place all at once: the potter's wheel goes on turning for a while, says an old Hindoo poem, after that the foot of the artisan is withdrawn from it. But the darkening takes place gradually with time: such at least is the general rule. There are exceptional men who seem to escape this law, and to bear in their bosom a God veiled from their own consciousness. Such men may be found, and even in considerable numbers, in a time like ours, when doubt is, in many cases, a prejudice which current opinion deposits on the surface of minds without penetrating them deeply. There are men all whose convictions have fallen into ruins, while their conscience continues standing like an isolated column, sole remaining witness of a demolished building. The meeting with these heroes of virtue inspires a mingled feeling of astonishment and respect. They are verily miracles of that divine goodness of which they are unable to pronounce the name. If there is a man on earth who ought to fall on both knees and shed burning tears of gratitude, it is the man who believes himself an atheist, and who has received from Providence so keen a taste for what is noble and pure, so strong an aversion for evil, that his sense of duty remains firm even when it has lost all its supports. But the exception does not make the rule; and that which is realized in the case of a few is not realized long, and for all. You know those crusts of snow which are formed over the crevasses of our glaciers. These slight bridges are able to bear one person who remains suspended over the abyss, but let several attempt to pass together,—the frail support gives way, and the rash adventurers fall together into the gulf. Such is the destiny of those schools of philosophy in which the notion of God disappears, and of those civilizations in which the sense of God is extinguished; they fall into dark regions where the light of goodness shines no longer.

After the mind and conscience, it remains for us to speak of the heart. Man, an intelligent and free being, has in his reason an instrument of knowledge, and in his conscience a rule for his will. But man is not sufficient for himself, and cannot live upon his own resources. If you inquire what the word heart expresses, in its most general acceptation, you will find that it always expresses a tendency of the soul to look, out of itself, in things or persons, for the support and nourishment of its individual life. Does the question concern the relations of man with his fellows? The heart is the organ of communication of one soul with another, for receiving, or for giving, or for giving and receiving at the same time, in the enjoyment of the blessing of a mutual affection. The heart is in each of us what those marks are upon the scattered stones of a building in course of construction which indicate that they are to be united one to another. The philosopher suffices for himself, the stoics used to say; the heart is the negation of this haughty maxim. From the heart proceeds love, that son of abundance and of poverty, to speak with Plato, that needy one ever on the search for his lost heritage. Love has wings, said again the wisdom of the Greeks, wings which essay to carry him ever higher. Let us extricate the thought which is involved in these graceful figures: Our desires have no limits, and indefinite desires can be satisfied only by meeting with an infinite Being who can be an inexhaustible source of happiness, an eternal object of love. "Our heart is made for love," said Saint Augustine, the great Christian disciple of Plato: "therefore it is unquiet till it finds repose in God." From this unrest proceed all our miseries. Men do not always succeed in contenting themselves with a petty prosaic happiness, a dull and paltry well-being, and in stifling the while the grand instincts of our nature. If then the heart lives, and fails of its due object; if it does not meet with the supreme term of its repose, its indefinite aspirations attach themselves to objects which cannot satisfy them, and thence arise stupendous aberrations. With some, it is the pursuit of sensual gratifications; they rush with a kind of fury into the passions of their lower nature. With others it is the ardent pursuit of riches, power, fame,—feelings which are always crying more: More! and never: Enough. And the after-taste from the fruitless search after happiness in the paths of ambition and vanity is not less bitter perhaps than the after-taste from sensual enjoyments. Listen to the confession of a man whose works, full as they are of beauties, are disfigured by so many impure allusions, that the author appears to have indulged, more than most others, in the giddy follies and culpable pleasures of life:

If, tired of mocking dreams, my restless heart

Returns to take its fill of waking joy,

Full soon I loathe the pleasures which impart

No true delight, but kill me, while they cloy.[25]

Here are the accents of a true confession. These are moreover truths of daily experience. I have seen—and which of you could not render similar testimony?—I have seen the sick man, deprived of all the ordinary avocations and amusements of life, and with pain for his constant companion, I have seen him find joy in the thought of his God, and feeding, without satiety, on this bread of contentment. I have seen the face of the blind lighted up by a living faith, and radiant with a light of peace, for him sweeter and brighter than the rays of the sun. But where God is wanting, and all connection is broken with the source of joy, there you shall see the richest of the rich, the most prosperous among the ambitious, the man of fame whose renown is most widely extended,—you shall see these men carrying the heavy burden of discontent. Their brow, unillumined by the celestial ray, is furrowed by the lines of sadness. If you meet them in a moment of candor, these rich, ambitious, and famous men will tell you with a sigh: "All this does not satisfy; we are but pursuing chimeras." Still they continue to run after these chimeras. They cry Vanity! Vanity! and they do not cease to pursue vanity. They flee from themselves: if they retired within themselves, they would find there ennui, inexorable ennui, which is but the sense of that place which God should fill left void in the depth of the soul. For the deceived heart, life becomes a bitter comedy. Those who do not succeed in blinding themselves by the dust of thoughtless folly, end oftentimes by wrapping themselves in disdain as with a cloak; they seek a sad and solitary satisfaction in the greatness of their contempt for life. But neither does this satisfy: disdain is not a beverage, and contempt is not food.

Such are the destinies of the heart, to which God is wanting. But I hope, Gentlemen, that you have here some remonstrances to offer. I have just spoken of the pleasures of sense, of pride, of vanity, and I have made no allusion to those affections in which the heart manifests its highest qualities. Shall we forget the joys of pure love? the domestic hearth? friendship? country? Do not fear that, having given myself up to a fit of misanthropy, I am come hither to blaspheme the true happinesses of life. But do the affections of earth offer us sufficient guarantees? We have need of the infinite to answer to the immensity of our desires; in the presence of those we love, have we no need of the Eternal that we may lean our hearts on Him? Will not all human love become a source of torment, if we have no faith in the love of Him who will stamp holy affections with the seal of His own eternity?

A single question will suffice to enlighten us on this head. Do you know the feeling of anxiety? We all know it, though in different degrees. Epidemical disease may appear. The cholera has started on its course; it has left the interior of Asia, and is approaching. The report is current that neighboring cities have begun to feel its ravages. Those we love—in a month, in a week, where will they be? War is declared. We hear of preparations for death; the sovereigns of Europe apply themselves to calculations which seem to portend torrents of blood. If war breaks out, that brother, that son, who will have to take up arms, that daughter who will one day perhaps find herself at the mercy of an unbridled soldiery——. But let us not look for examples so far away. Have you no dear one in a distant land of whom you are expecting tidings? And those who are near you! To-morrow, to-day, now perhaps, while you are listening to me, a fatal malady is discovering its first symptoms——. Have you received the hard lessons of death? If you see children playing, full of ruddy and joyous health, does it happen to none of you to think of another child, once the joy of your fireside, now lying beneath the sod? Does it never happen to you, by a sinister presentiment, to see features you love to gaze on convulsed with agony or pale in death? And yet you must either see the death of your beloved ones, or they must lay you in the earth; for every life ends with the tomb, and we do but walk over graves. When the soul has been thus wounded by anxiety, for this poisoned wound there is one remedy, but only one: "God reigns!" Nothing happens without the permission of His goodness. And of all those who are dear to us, we can say: "Father, to Thy hands I commit them." If we are without this trust, we shall only escape torment by levity. Without God our mind is sick; our conscience and our heart are sick also, and in a way more grievous still.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Méditation troisième, at the end.

[20] Gen. xxviii. 16.

[21] Démontrer.

[22] "On le montre."

[23] "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.... Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man." (Eccles. i. and xii.)

[24] Apology.

[25]

Si mon cœur, fatigué du rêve qui l'obsède,

A la réalité revient pour s'assouvir,

Au fond des vains plaisirs que j'appelle à mon aide,

Je trouve un tel dégoût que je me sens mourir.

PART II.

SOCIETY.

We have just studied what life without God would be for the individual. Let us now direct our attention to those collections of human beings which form societies. We shall not speak here of the relations of civil with ecclesiastical authorities,—a complex question, the solution of which must vary with times, places, and circumstances. Let us only remark that the distinction between the temporal and spiritual order of things is one of the foundations of modern civilization. This distinction is based upon those great words which, eighteen hundred years ago, separated the domain of God from the domain of Cæsar. Religion considered as a function of civil life; dogma supported by the word of a monarch or the vote of a body politic; the formula of that dogma imposed forcibly by a government on the lips of the governed—these are débris of paganism which have been struggling for centuries against the restraints of Christian thought.[26] The religious convictions of individuals do not belong to the State; religious sentiments are not amenable to human tribunals; and it would be hard to say whether it is the spiritual or the temporal order of things which suffers most from the confusion of these distinct domains. Religion should have its own proper life, and its special representatives; civil life ought to be set free from all tyranny exercised in the name of dogma; but religion is not the less on that account, by the influence which it exerts over the consciences of men, the necessary bond and strength of human society.

"You would sooner build a city in the air," said Plutarch, "than cause a State to subsist without religion." Some have contested in modern times this opinion of ancient wisdom. The philosophy of the last century, as we have said already, wished to separate duty from the idea of God. It pretended to give as the only foundation for society a civil morality, the rules and sanction of which were to be found upon earth. The men of blood who for a short time governed France, gave once as the order of the day—Terror and all the virtues: this was a terrible application of this theory. Virtue rested on a decree of political power, and, for want of the judgment of God, the guillotine was the sanction of its precepts. Healthier views begin now to prevail in the schools of philosophy. One of the members of the Institut de France, M. Franck, has lately published a volume on the history of ancient civilization,[27] with the express intention of showing that the conception which a people has of God is the true root of its social organization. According to the worth of the religious idea is that of the civil constitution. Before M. Franck, twenty years ago, a man of the very highest distinction as a public lecturer, indicated this movement of modern thought. M. Edgard Quinet, in his Lyons course, taught that the religious idea is the very substance of civilization, and the generating principle of political constitutions. He announced "a history of civilization by the monuments of human thought," and added: "Religion above all is the pillar of fire which goes before the nations in their march across the ages; it shall serve us as a guide."[28] Benjamin Constant exhibits in the variation of his opinions the transition from the stand-point of the last century to that of the present. He had at first conceived of his work upon religion as a monument raised to atheism, he ends by seeking in religious sentiments the condition necessary to the existence of civilized societies.[29] Here is a real progress; and this progress brings us back to the thought above quoted from Plutarch. In fact, take away the idea of God, and the first consequence will be that you will sacrifice all the conquests of modern civilization; the next, that you will soon have rendered impossible the existence of any society whatever. I am going to ask your close attention to these two points successively.

History does not offer to our view an uninterrupted progress, as certain optimists suppose; still less does it present the spectacle of an ever-increasing deterioration, as misanthropes affirm; and lastly, it is not true, as we hear it said sometimes, that all epochs are alike, as good one as another. There are times better than those which follow them; and there are epochs less degraded than those which precede them. Human societies fall and rise again; their march exhibits windings and retrograde steps, because that march is under the influence of created liberty; but when their destinies are regarded at one view, it is clearly seen that they are advancing to a determined end, because while man is in restless agitation, God is leading him on. The conquests of modern civilization are great and sacred realities. What are these conquests? Let us not stay at the surface of things, but go to the foundation. Societies fallen into a condition of barbarism have for their motto the famous saying of a Gallic chief: Woe to the vanquished! In institutions, as in manners, the triumph of force characterizes barbarous times. The right of the strongest is the twofold negation of justice and of love; and what characterizes civilization, issuing from the barbarous condition, the fragments of which it so long trails after it, is the establishment of that justice which founds States, and, upon the basis of justice, the development of the benevolence which renders communities happy. These are the two essential conditions of social progress. These conditions are necessary even to the progress of industry and of material welfare.

Modern civilization,—that, namely, which we so designate, while we relegate, so to speak, into the past the contemporaneous societies of the vast East,—modern civilization possesses a power unknown to antiquity. Justice has a foundation in the conscience, benevolence has natural roots in the heart; but a moment has been when justice and love appeared in the world with new brightness, like rays disengaged from clouds. Modern civilization was then deposited on the earth in a powerful germ, of which nothing was any more to arrest the growth. That moment was when the idea of God appeared in its fulness: modern civilization was born of the Gospel. The knowledge of God strengthens justice, and the thought of the common Father develops benevolence. These theses are well known; let us confine ourselves to a few rapid illustrations.

There exists an institution in which has been embodied the negation of social justice—Slavery. Slavery is at length disappearing before our eyes from the bosom of Christendom; and its final retreat is doing honor to Russia, and bathing America in blood. This is perhaps the greatest of the events which the annals of history will inscribe on the page of the nineteenth century. Now slavery was, in the past, an almost universal institution. The finest intellects of Greece devoted a portion of their labors to its justification. Rome, at the most brilliant period of its civilization, caused slaves to kill one another, in savage spectacles intended to delight the populace, or during sumptuous banquets for the amusement of wealthy debauchees![30] How has slavery disappeared little by little! How has man been rediscovered beneath that living thing of which was made, one while an instrument of labor, and another while the sport of execrable passions? Inquire into this history. You will find the reason and the heart making their protests heard in antiquity, but without becoming efficacious. One day all is changed, and the foundations of slavery begin to shake. At that memorable epoch you will meet with a written document, the first in which is shown in its germ the great social fact which was about to have birth. It is not an emperor's decree, it is not the vote of a body politic, it is a letter a few lines long written by a prisoner to one of his friends. The substance of this letter was: "I send thee back thy slave; but in the name of God I beg of thee to receive him as thy brother; think of the common Master who is in heaven." This letter was addressed—"To Philemon;" the name of the writer was Paul. It is the first charter of slave emancipation. Ponder this fact, Gentlemen: contemplate the ancient institution of slavery shaken to its foundations, without being the object of any direct attack, by the breath of a new spirit. You will then understand how historians can tell us that the relations of states, belligerent rights, civil laws, political institutions, all these things of which the Gospel has never spoken, have been, and are being still, every day transformed by the slow action of the Gospel. God has appeared; justice is marching in His train.

Justice is the foundation of society; but without the spirit of love, justice remains crippled, and never reaches its perfection. Justice maintains the rights of each; love seeks to realize the communication of advantages among all. Justice overthrows the artificial barriers raised between men by force and guile; love softens natural inequalities and causes them to turn to the general good. Need I tell you that the knowledge of God is a light of which the brightest ray is love to men? Benevolence, that feeling natural to our hearts, is strengthened, extended, transfigured, by becoming charity;—charity, that union of the soul with the Heavenly Father, which descends again to earth in loving communion between all His children. The soul separated from God may be conscious of strong affections: but study well the character of a virtue which is nourished from purely human sources; you will see that it may for the most part be expressed in these terms—"To love one's friends heartily, and to hate one's enemies with a generous hatred; to esteem the honest and to despise the vicious." But that virtue which loves the vicious while it hates the vice, that virtue which will avenge itself only by overcoming evil with good, that virtue which, while it draws closer the bonds of private affections, makes a friend of every man, that virtue which we call divine, by a natural impulse of our heart—what is the source from which it flows? The following fact will sufficiently answer the question. On the façade of one the hospitals of the Christian world, are read these Latin words, the brief energy of which our language cannot render: Deo in pauperibus, "This edifice is consecrated to God in the person of the poor." Here is the secret of charity: it discerns the Divine image deposited in every human soul. But do not mistake here: we cannot love, with a love natural and direct, the rags of squalid poverty, the brands of vice, the languors and sores of sickness; but let God manifest Himself, and our eyes are opened. The beauty of souls breaks forth to our view beneath the wasting of the haggard frame, and from under the filth of vice. We love those immortal creatures fallen and degraded; a sacred desire possesses us to restore them to their true destination. Has an artist discovered in a mass of rubbish, under vulgar appearances, a product of the marvellous chisel of the Greeks? He sets himself, with a zeal full of respect, to free the noble statue from the impurities which defile it. Every soul of man is the work of art Divine, and every charitable heart is an artist who desires to labor at its restoration. Henceforward we can understand that love of suffering and of poverty, that passion for the galleys and the hospital, which have at times thrown Christians into extravagances which our age has no reason to dread. God in the poor man, God in the sick man, God in the vicious man and the criminal; this, I repeat, is the grand secret of charity. Charity passes from the heart of men and from individual practice into social customs and institutions. Charity it is which, by degrees, takes from law its needless rigors, and from justice its useless tortures; which substitutes the prison in which it is sought to reform the guilty for the galley, which completes the corruption of the criminal; it is charity that opens public asylums for all forms of suffering; and that will realize, up to the limits of what is possible, all the hopes of philanthropy. If God ceases to be present to the mind and conscience of men, justice and love lose their power. Without the powerful action of justice and of love, society would descend again, by the ways of corruption, towards the struggles of barbarism. Observe, study well, all that is going on around us. Does our civilization appear to you sufficiently solid to give you the idea that it can henceforth dispense with the foundations on which it has reposed hitherto?

The sentiments of justice and of benevolence which form the double basis of the progress of society, suppose a more general sentiment which is their common support—the sentiment of humanity. The idea that man has a value in himself, that he is, in virtue of his quality as man, independently of the places which he inhabits and of the position which he occupies in the world, an object of justice and of love;—this idea includes in itself all the moral part of civilization. Social progress is only the recognition, ever more and more explicit, of the value of one soul, of the rights of one conscience. Now, the idea of humanity has the closest possible connection with the knowledge of God, considered as the Father of the human race. Ancient wisdom, superior to the worship of idols, had gained a glimpse of the fact that the philosopher is a citizen of the universe; and that famous line of Terence: "I am a man, and I reckon nothing human foreign to me," excited, it is said, the applause of the Roman spectators. But these were mere gleams, extinguished soon by the general current of thought. It was the pale dawn of the idea of humanity. Whence came the day?

I will limit the question by defining it. The idea of humanity is the idea of the worth and consequently of the rights of each individual man. It is the idea of liberty; not of liberty interpreted by passion and selfishness as the inauguration of the license which violates right, but of liberty interpreted by reason and conscience as the limit which the action of each man encounters in the right of his neighbor. We are not speaking here of the equality of political rights, which is not always a guarantee of veritable liberty. We are speaking of a social condition such that man, in the exercise of his faculties, in the manifestation of his thoughts, in his efforts for the causes which he loves, so long as he does not violate the rights of others, does not meet with an arbitrary power to arrest him. Still farther to limit our subject, we shall speak of the most important manifestation of that liberty—liberty of conscience, of which religious liberty is the most ordinary and most complete manifestation. This is only one of the points of the subject, but it is a point which in reality supposes and includes all the rest. This liberty—whence does it come?

It does not come from paganism. Paganism, with its national religions, could only produce fanaticism or doubt. Each people having its own particular religion, to exterminate the foreigner was to serve the cause of the gods of the country. A war-cry descended from the Olympus of each several nation—that Olympus which the gods quitted, in case of need, to take part in the quarrels of men. Did reason perceive the nothingness of these national divinities? Then scepticism appeared. The idea of the supreme God being unsettled with all, and wholly obscured for the crowd, when men ceased to believe in the gods of the nation, they lost all belief whatsoever. For this cause doubt prevailed so widely at the decline of the ancient world. Those pantheons in which all religions were received, welcomed, protected, are the ever-memorable temples of scepticism. Now you know what voice made itself heard, when the ancient civilization was enfeebled by the spirit of doubt: "Henceforth there is neither Greek nor barbarian, bond nor free. Ye are all brethren, and for all there is one God, and one truth:" here behold the root of scepticism severed. And the same voice added: "This only God is the lawful Owner of His creatures; and when you presume to do violence to the consciences which belong to Him, you know not by what spirit you are animated:" here behold the fountain of fanaticism dried up. God is acknowledged; He is the Master of souls: faith founds liberty.

The Witness to universal truth appears before Rome as represented by a deputy of Cæsar. He is a fanatic, says the Roman; then he goes his way, and leaves Him to be put to death. But ere long, a dull hoarse murmur of the nations, extending through all the length and breadth of the mighty empire, gives token that He who was dead is alive again, and is speaking to the general conscience. Then Rome starts from her sleep; Rome; the politic tolerant Rome, sheds rivers of blood. Her tolerance allowed men to believe everything, but on condition that they believed seriously in nothing. Rome was directed by the sure instinct of despotism. She did not fear the gods of the Pantheon, because she could always place above them the statue of the Emperor: whereas what was now in question was, while leaving to Cæsar the things which were Cæsar's, to place a Sovereign above the Emperor, and to raise a legislation above the legislation of the empire. Therefore the Roman city determined to give a death-blow to Christianity,—to the idea of universal truth, because if that idea gained entrance into the understanding, the cause of the liberty of souls was gained. So it was that indifference became ferocious, and that doubt led back to fanaticism.

I have told you whence liberty does not come; but whence comes it? Whence comes liberty? Ask any scholar of the Lyceums of France; he will answer you, without hesitation: Liberty comes from the French revolution!—No doubt, whispers an older comrade in his ear; but do not forget the philosophy of the eighteenth century which developed the principles which the revolution put in practice.—That is all very well, a Protestant will say; but let us consider the grand fact of the Reformation: it is from the sixteenth century that liberty has its date.—Well and good, adds an historian; but do you not know that the Germans were they who poured a generous and free blood into the impoverished blood of the men who had been fashioned by the slavery of the empire? I contest nothing, and I am not sufficiently well-informed to pronounce with confidence upon the action of all these historic causes. But this I venture to affirm,—that if any one thinks to fix definitely the hour when liberty was born in history, he is mistaken: for it has no other date than that of the human conscience, and I will say with M. Lamartine:

Give me the freedom which that hour had birth,

With the free soul, when first in conscious worth

The just man braved the stronger![31]

Liberty had birth the first time that, urged by his fellow men to acts which wounded his conscience, a man, relying upon God, felt himself stronger than the world. That Socrates had not studied, I fancy, in the school of the Encyclopedists, and was no German either, that I know of, who said to the judges of Athens, with death in prospect: "It is better to obey God than men." And when those words were repeated by the Apostles of the universal truth, the death of Socrates, that noble death which has justly gained for him the admiration of the universe, was reproduced in thousands and thousands of instances. Children, women, young girls, old men, perished in tortures to attest the rights of conscience; and the blood of martyrs, that seed of Christians, as a father of the Church called it,[32] was not less a seed of liberty. Liberty was not born in history; but if you wish to fix a date to its grandest outburst, you have it here; there is no other which can be compared with it.

Some of you are thinking perhaps, without saying so, that I am maintaining a hard paradox. To look for the source of liberty of conscience in religion, is not this to forget that the Christian Church has often marked its passage in history by a long track of blood rendered visible by the funereal light of the stake? I forget nothing, Sirs, and I beg of you not to forget anything either. There are three remarks which I commend to your attention.

It must not be forgotten that the Gospel first obtained extensive success when Roman society was in the lowest state of corruption, and that its representatives were but too much affected by the evils which it was their mission to combat.

It must not be forgotten that there came afterwards hordes of barbarians who in a certain sense renovated the worn-out society, but who poured over the new leaven a coarse paste hard to penetrate.

It must not be forgotten, lastly, that if a cause might legitimately be condemned for the faults of its defenders, there are none, no, not a single one, which could remain erect before the tribunal which so should give judgment. Every cause in this world is more or less compromised by its representatives; but there are bad principles, which produce evil by their own development, and there are good principles which man abuses, but which by their very nature always end by raising a protest against the abuse. It is in the light of this indisputable truth that we are about to enter upon a discussion of which you will appreciate the full importance.

Sceptical writers affirm that toleration has its origin in the weakening of faith; and, drawing the consequence of their affirmation, they recommend the diffusion of the spirit of doubt as the best means of promoting liberty of conscience. We have here the old argument which would suppress the use to get rid of the abuse. Persecutions are made in the name of religion; let us get rid of faith, and we shall have peace. Prisons have been built and the stake has been set up in the name of God: let us get rid of God, and we shall have toleration. Observe well the bearing of this mode of argument. Let us get rid of fire, and we shall have no more conflagrations; let us get rid of water, and no more people will be drowned. No doubt,—but humanity will perish of drought and of cold.

Let us examine this subject seriously: it is well worth our while. If toleration proceeds from the enfeebling of religious belief, we ought among various nations to meet with toleration in an inverse proportion to the degree of their faith. This is a question then of history. Let us study facts. Recollecting first of all that ancient Rome did not draw forth a germ of liberty from its scepticism, let us throw a glance over existing communities.

Sweden is far behind England in regard to liberty of conscience. Is it that religious convictions are weaker in England than in Sweden? Has the religious liberty which Great Britain practises sprung from indifference? Is it not rather that that land produces an energetic race, and that it has been so often drenched with the blood of the followers of different forms of worship, that that blood cried at length to heaven, and that the conscience of the people heard it? There is more religious liberty in France than in Spain. Is it the case that the true cause of the intolerance of the Spanish people is a more lively and more general faith than that of the French? That is not so certain.

Switzerland is one of the countries in which is enjoyed the greatest liberty of opinion. Is Switzerland a land of indifference? Was not the comparative firmness of its citizens' convictions remarked during the conflicts of the last century? Do not the United States bear in large characters upon their banner this inscription: liberty of conscience? America is not distinguished as a country without religion; on the contrary, it is blamed for the excursiveness of its faith, for the multiplicity and sometimes for the extravagance of its sects. Was it a sceptic that taught the inhabitants of the New World to respect religious convictions? Assuredly not! William Penn was shut up in the Tower of London for the crime of free thought. Set free from prison, he crossed the ocean. While intolerance was reigning still on both shores of the Atlantic, he founded in Pennsylvania a place of refuge for all proscribed opinions; and the germ has been fruitful. In vain I pass from old Europe to young America; I look, I observe, and I do not see that liberty is developed in proportion to the scepticism and the incredulity of nations. I seem, on the contrary, to see that there is perhaps most liberty where there is most real faith.

Some may dispute the validity of these conclusions by remarking that the condition of communities is a complex phenomenon depending upon divers causes. Let us simplify the question. Is it not, it will be said, the literary representatives of the spirit of doubt who have demanded and founded toleration? Is it not.... But it is not necessary for my supposed questioner to go on. If he is a Frenchman, he will name Voltaire. No doubt, freedom of opinion has been claimed by sceptics. They have served a good cause; let us know how to rejoice in the fact, and not to be unmindful of what there may have been in their work of noble impulses and generous inspirations. Let us remark however that every proscribed opinion puts forth a natural claim to the liberty of which it is deprived. But it is one thing to claim for one's-self a liberty one would gladly make use of to oppress others, and it is another thing to demand liberty seriously and for all. There was, as I am glad to believe, a certain natural generosity in the motives which led Voltaire to consecrate to noble causes a pen so often sold to evil. Still it is impossible not to suspect that if that apostle of toleration had had a principality under his own sway, the fact of thinking differently from the master would very soon have figured among the number of delinquencies.

The patriarch of Ferney wrote in favor of toleration; some friends of religious indifference have pleaded the cause of liberty of conscience: the fact is certain. But other writers, animated by a living faith, have also demanded liberty for all: the fact is not less certain. Some years ago, at nearly the same epoch, the Père Lacordaire and our own Alexander Vinet consecrated to this noble cause, the former the attractive brilliancy of his eloquence, the latter all the fineness of his delicate analyses. The friends of Lacordaire are gathering up the vibrations of that striking utterance which proclaimed: "Liberty slays not God."[33] Let us gather up also the good words, which, uttered on the borders of our lake, have gained entrance far and near into many hearts. I should like to take such and such a Parisian journalist, bring him into our midst, and get him to acquaint himself thoroughly with the results of our experience; I should like to conduct him to the cemetery of Clarens, place him by the tomb of Vinet, and tell him what that man was.—If, as he returned to his home, my journalist did not leave behind him at the French frontier, as contraband merchandise, all that he would have seen and learnt in our country, he would perhaps understand that the surest road by which to arrive at respect for the consciences of others is not indifference, but firmness of faith, in humility of heart, and largeness of thought. All the writers who have devoted their pen to the defence of the rights of the human soul have not therefore been sceptics. Without continuing this discussion of proper names, let us settle what is here the true place of writers. Before there are men who demand liberty and digest the theory of it, there must be other men who take it, and who suffer for having taken it. If liberty is consolidated with speech and pen, it is founded with tears and blood; and the sceptical apostles of toleration conveniently usurp the place of the martyrs of conviction. "What we want," rightly observes a revolutionary writer, "is free men, rather than liberators of humanity."[34]

In fact, liberty comes to us above all from those who have suffered for it. Its living springs are in the spirit of faith, and not, as they teach us, in the spirit of indifference. It is easy to understand, that where no one believes, the liberty to believe would not be claimed by any one.

Let us now endeavor to penetrate below facts, in order to bring back the discussion to sure principles. Let us ask what, in regard to liberty of conscience, are the natural consequences of faith, and the natural consequences of scepticism.

Faith does appear, at first sight, a source of intolerance. The man who believes, reckons himself in possession of the right in regard to truth, and to God; he has nothing to respect in error. Thus it is that belief naturally engenders persecution. This reasoning is specious, all the more as it is supported by numerous and terrible examples; but let us look at things more closely. Place yourselves face to face with any one of your convictions, no matter which; I hope there is no one of you so unfortunate as not to have any. Suppose that it were desired to impose upon you by force even the conviction which you have. Suppose that an officer of police came to say to you, pronouncing at the same time the words which best expressed your own thoughts: "you are commanded so to believe." What would happen? If you had never had a doubt of your faith, you would be tempted to doubt it, the moment any human power presumed to impose it upon you. The feeling of oppression would produce in your conscience a strong inclination to revolt. Let us analyze this feeling. You feel that it is words, not convictions, which are imposed by force; you feel that declarations extorted by fear from lying lips are an outrage to truth. You feel, in a word, that your belief is the right of God over you, and not the right of your neighbor. Men respect God's right over the souls of their fellow-men, in proportion as they are intelligent in their own faith. The fanaticism which would impose words by force is not an ardent but a blind faith. In order to bring it back into the paths of liberty, it is enough to restore to it its sight.

The establishment of the Christian religion furnishes a great example in support of our thesis. The Christians, when persecuted by the empire, had never allowed themselves to reply to the violence of power by the violence of rebellion. There came, however, and soon enough, a time when they were sufficiently numerous to defend themselves, and had withal the consciousness of their strength; but they had no will to conquer the world, except by the arms of martyrdom, and heroism, and obedience. This was not the case during a few years only, it is the history of three centuries, an ever-memorable page of human annals, in which all ages will be able to learn what are the true weapons of truth. Christendom, too often forgetful of its origin, has in later times allowed the fury of persecution to cloak itself under a pretended regard for sacred interests; but the remedy has proceeded from the very evil. The Christian conscience has protested, in the name of the Gospel, against the crimes of which the Gospel was the pretext, and the passions of men the cause. "We must bewail the misery and error of our time," already St. Hilary was exclaiming, in the fourth century. "Men are thinking that God has need of the protection of men.... The Church is uttering threats of banishment and imprisonment, and desiring to compel belief by force,—the Church, which itself acquired strength in exile and in prisons!"

True faith, then, possesses a principle by which it protests against abuses which it is sought to cloak under its name, and this protest comes at last to make itself heard. Faith suppressed, the passions will remain, for in order to be a saint, it is not enough to be a sceptic. The passions will look for other pretexts. Will not the spirit of doubt offer them such pretexts?

It seems at first sight that doubt must promote toleration, since it does not allow any importance to be attached to opinions. This is a specious conclusion, similar to that which placed in belief the source of intolerant passions. Let us once more reflect a little. The first effect of doubt is certainly to dispose the mind to leave a free course to all opinions; but disdain is not the way to respect, and only respect can give solid bases to the spirit of liberty. Believers are in the eyes of the sceptic weak-minded persons, whom he treats at first with a gentle and patronizing compassion. But these weak minds grow obstinate; the sceptic perceives that they do not bend before his superiority, and dare perhaps to consider themselves as his equals. Then irritation arises, and, beneath the velvet paw, one feels the piercing of the claw. The sceptic has in fact a dogma; he has but one, but one he has after all—the negation of truth. The faith of others is a protest against that single dogma on which he has concentrated all the powers of his conviction. He is passionately in earnest for this negation; he feels himself the representative of an idea, of which he must secure the triumph. Now come such surmisings as these: "Here are men who think themselves the depositaries of truth! These pretended believers—may they not be hypocrites?" Place men so disposed in positions of power; let them be the masters of society; what will follow? Beliefs are a cause of disturbances: what seemed at first an innocent weakness, takes then the character of a dangerous madness. For the politician, the temptation to extirpate this madness is not far off. "What if we were to get rid of this troublesome source of agitation! If we declared that the conscience of individuals belongs to the sovereign, what repose we should have in the State! If we proclaimed the true modern dogma, namely, that there is no dogma; if silencing, in short, fanatics who are behind their age, we decreed that every belief is a crime and every manifestation of faith a revolt, what quiet in society!" The incline is slippery, and what shall hold back the sceptic who is descending it?

Faith carries with it the remedy for fanaticism, but where shall be found the remedy for the fanaticism of doubt? In the claims of God? God is but a word, or a worthless hypothesis. In respect for the convictions of others? All conviction is but weakness and folly. All this, be well assured, gives much matter for reflection. When I hear some men who call themselves liberal, tracing the ideal of the society which they desire, the bare imagination of their triumph frightens me, for I can understand that that society would enjoy the liberty of the Roman empire, and the toleration of the Cæsars.

Such are the consequences of scepticism for the leaders of a people. What will those consequences be for the people themselves? The spirit of indifference paralyzes the sources of generous sentiments, and ends in the same results as the spirit of cowardice. And do you not know the part which cowardice has played in history? If I may venture to call up here the most mournful recollections of modern times, do you not know that during the Reign of Terror, two or three hundred scoundrels instituted public massacres in the Capital of France, in the midst of a population shuddering with fright, but who let things go? Now the characteristic of indifference is the letting things go. If fanaticism has something to do with persecution, indifference has a great deal to do with it. The crimes which minds paralyzed by doubt allow to be perpetrated have besides a sadder character than those which are perpetrated by passions, which, wild and erring though they be, have a certain nobleness in their origin. If I must be bound to the stake, I had rather burn with the blind assent of a fanatical crowd, than in the presence of an indifferent populace who came to look on. For just as sceptics find all doctrines equally good, so they find all spectacles equally instructive and curious.[35]

I have felt it necessary to insist on these considerations. Direct attacks upon religious truth are perhaps less dangerous than the efforts by which modern infidelity endeavors to estrange us from God, by persuading us that doubt is the guarantee of liberty, and that belief rivets the chains of bondage. Many consciences are disturbed by these affirmations. It concerns us therefore to know that God is the great Liberator of souls, and that forgetfulness of God is the road to slavery. The faith which seeks to propagate itself by force inflicts upon itself the harshest of contradictions. The spirit of doubt, in order to become the spirit of violence, has only to transform itself according to the laws of its proper nature.

And now to sum up. One of the noblest spectacles that earth can show, is that of a community animated with a true and profound faith, in which each man, using his best efforts to communicate his convictions to his brethren, respects the while that which belongs to God in the inviolable asylum of the conscience of others. But woe to the society formed by sophists, in which opinion, benumbed by doubt and indifference, arouses itself only to devote to hatred or to contempt every firm and noble conviction!

To unsettle the idea of God, is to dry up its source the stream of the veritable progress of modern society; it is to attack the foundations of liberty, justice, and love. The material conquests of civilization would serve thenceforward only to hasten the decomposition of the social body. The pure idea of God is the true cause of the great progress of the modern era; religion, in its generality, is, as Plutarch has told us, the necessary condition to the very existence of society. This is what remains for us to prove.

"How sacred is the society of citizens," said Cicero, "when the immortal gods are interposed between them as judges and as witnesses."[36] Let us raise still higher this lofty thought, and say: "How sacred is human society, when, beneath the eye of the common Father, the inequalities of life are accepted with patience and softened by love; when the poor and the rich, as they meet together, remember that the Lord is the Maker of them both; when a hope of immortality alleviates present evils, and when the consciousness of a common dignity reduces to their true value the passing differences of life!" Take away from human society God as mediator, and the hopes founded in God as a source of consolation, and what would you have remaining? The struggle of the poor against the rich, the envy of the ignorant directed against the man who has knowledge, the dullard's low jealousy of superior intelligence, hatred of all superiority, and, by an almost inevitable reaction, the obstinate defence of all abuses,—in one word, war—war admitting neither of remedy nor truce. Such is the most apparent danger which now threatens society.

When I consider these facts with attention, I am astonished every day that society subsists at all, that the burning lava of unruly passions does not oftener make large fissures in the social soil, and overflow in devastating torrents, bearing away at once palace and cottage, field and workshop. This standing danger is drawing anxious attention, and we hear the old adage repeated: "There must be a religion for the people." There are men who wish to give the people a religion which they themselves do not possess, acting like a man who, at once poor and ostentatious, should give alms with counterfeit money. And what result do they attain? We must have a religion for the people, say the politicians, that they may secure the ends they have in view, and conduct at their own pleasure the herds at their disposal. We must have a religion for the people, say the rich, in order to keep peaceably their property and their incomes. We must have a religion for the people, say the savants, in order to remain quiet in their studies, or in their academic chairs. What are they doing—these men without God, who wish to preserve a faith for the use of the people? These savants,—they say, and print it, that religion is an error necessary for the multitudes who are incapable of rising to philosophy. Where is it that they say it, and print it? Is it in drawing-rooms with closed doors? Is it within the walls of Universities, or in scientific publications which are out of the reach of the masses? No. They say it in political journals, in reviews read by all the world; they print it at full in books which are sold by thousands of copies. Their words are spreading like a deleterious miasma through all classes of society. Thoughtless men! (I am unwilling to suppose a cool calculation on their part of money or of fame which should oblige me to say—heartless men), thoughtless men! they do not see the inevitable consequences of their own proceeding. The people hear and understand. The intellectual barriers between the different classes of society are gradually becoming lower: this is one of the clearest of the ways of Providence in our time. Do you believe that the people will long consent to hear it said that they only live on errors, but that those errors are necessary for them? Do you not see that they are about to rise, and answer, in the sentiment of their own dignity, that they will no longer be deceived, and that they intend to deliver themselves also from superstition? Then, all restraining barriers removed, passions will have free course; and believe me, the rising floods will not respect those quiet haunts of study in which they will have had one of their springs. The proof of this has been seen before. Some men of the last century wished to destroy religion amongst decent folk, but not for the rabble: they are Voltaire's words, who had too much good sense to be an atheist, but whose pale deism is sometimes scarcely distinguishable from the negation of God. "Your Majesty," thus he wrote to his friend the King of Prussia, in January, 1757, "will render an eternal service to the human race, by destroying that infamous superstition, I do not say amongst the rabble, which is not worthy to be enlightened, and to which all yokes are suitable, but amongst honest people." A religion was necessary for the people; but Voltaire and the King of Prussia, the German barons, the French marquises, and the ladies who received their homage, could do without it.

Voltaire died before eating of the fruit of his works; and Alfred de Musset could only address to him his vengeful apostrophe at his tomb:

Sleep'st thou content, and does thy hideous smile

Still flit, Voltaire, above thy fleshless bones?[37]

Voltaire was dead; but many of his friends and disciples were able to meditate, in the prisons of the Terror and as they mounted the steps of the scaffold, on the nature of the terrible game which they had played—and lost.

So it fares with men of letters who have no God, but who would have a religion for the people. Other men there are who would have a religion for the people, being themselves the while without restraint, because they are without religious convictions. They abandon themselves to the ardent pursuit of riches, excitements, worldly pleasures. These are they who have made a fortune by disgraceful means, perhaps the public sale of their consciences, and who by their luxurious extravagance overwhelm the honest and economical working-man. These are the courtesans who parade in broad daylight the splendid rewards of their own infamy. Let not such deceive themselves! The people see these things; they form their judgment of them, and if they give way to the bad instincts which are in us all, where God is not in the heart to restrain them, to their hatred is added contempt. If they are forcibly kept back from realizing their cherished hopes, they adjourn them, but without renouncing them.

Put away all belief in God, and you will see the action and reaction of human passions forming, as it were, a mass of opposite electricities, and preparing the thunder-peal and the furies of the tempest. Then appear those disorganized societies which are terrified at their own dissolution, until a strong man comes, and, taking advantage of this very terror, takes and chastises these societies, as one chastises an unruly child. It is a story at once old and new, because, in proportion as God withdraws from human society, in that same proportion the power of the sword replaces the empire of the conscience. There must be a religion for the people! Yes, Sirs, but for that people, wide as humanity, which includes us all.

If the existence of God is denied, man falls into despair, and society into dissolution. What then is my inference? That atheism is false. Such a mode of arguing produces an outcry. "A matter of sentiment!" men exclaim. "You would build up a doctrine according to your own fancy! You do not discuss the question calmly, but appeal to interests and prejudices: you quit the domain of science, which takes cognizance only of facts and reasoning." Such expressions are common enough to make it worth while to study their value. Of course, science must not be an instrument of our caprice. We are bound to search for truth; and we are unfaithful to our obligations if we try to establish doctrines which serve our passions, or favor our interests, or flatter our tastes and our prejudices. But the conscience, the heart, the conditions of the existence of human society, are neither prejudices nor personal interests; they are eternal and living realities. We speak of the conscience, of the heart, of society, and they answer us: "We do not believe that there are true sciences in that domain; we only wish for facts." Occasionally we hear naturalists speak in this way. We only wish for facts! Then our thoughts, our feelings, our conscience are not facts! The man who will give the closest observation to the steps of a fly, or to a caterpillar's method of crawling, has not a moment's attention to give to the impulses of the heart, to the rules of duty, to the struggles of the will; and when addressed on the subject of these realities of the soul, the most certain of all realities, he will reply: "That is no business of mine, I want nothing but facts." Let us pass from this aberration, and listen for a moment to other objectors.

We do not deny, it is often said, the reality of our feelings. Man desires happiness, and seeks it in religious belief; but this is an order of things which science cannot take account of. Science has only truth for its object, and owes its own existence wholly to the reason. If it happens to science to give pain to the heart or to the conscience, no conclusion can thence be drawn against the certainty of its results. "There is no commoner, and at the same time faultier, way of reasoning, than that of objecting to a philosophical hypothesis the injury it may do to morals and to religion. When an opinion leads to absurdity, it is certainly false; but it is not certain that it is false because it entails dangerous consequences."[38] So wrote the patriarch of modern sceptics, the Scotchman Hume. The lesson has been well learnt; it is repeated to us, without end, in the columns of the leading journals of France, and in the pages of the Revue des deux Mondes. The adversaries of spiritual beliefs have changed their tactics. In the last century, they replied to minds alarmed for the consequences of their work: "Truth can never do harm."—"Truth can never do harm," retorted J.J. Rousseau: "I believe it as you do, and this it is that proves to me that your doctrines are not truth." The argument is conclusive. So the adversary has taken up another position; and he says at this day:—"Our doctrines do perhaps pain the heart, and wound the conscience, but this is no reason why they should be false: moral goodness, utility, happiness, are not signs by which we may know what is true."

Philosophy, Gentlemen, has always assumed to be the universal explanation of things, and you will agree that it is on her part a humiliating avowal, that she is enclosed, namely, in a circle of pure reason, and leaves out of view, as being unable to give any account of them, the great realities which are called moral goodness and happiness. One might ask what are the bases of that science which disavows, without emotion, the most active powers of human nature. One might ask whether those who so speak, understand well the meaning of their own words; and inquire also what is the method which they employ, and the result at which they aim. One might ask whether these philosophers are not like astronomers who should say: "Here are our calculations. It matters nothing to us whether the stars in their observed course do or do not agree with them. Science is sovereign; it is amenable only to its own laws, and visible realities cannot be objections in the way of its calculations." Let us leave these preliminary remarks, and let us come to the core of the controversy.

They set the reason on one side, the conscience and heart upon the other, as an anatomist separates the organic portions of a corpse, and they say: Truth belongs only to the reason; the conscience and the heart have no admission into science. Listen to the following express declaration of the weightiest, perhaps, of French contemporary philosophers: "The God of the pure reason is the only true God; the God of the imagination, the God of the feelings, the God of the conscience, are only idols!"[39] It is impossible to accept this arbitrary division of the divine attributes. There is but one and the same God, the Substance of truth, the inexhaustible Source of beauty, the supreme Law of the wills created to accomplish the designs of His mercy. The conscience, the heart, the reason rise equally towards Him, following the triple ray which descends from His eternity upon our transitory existence. We cannot therefore seriously admit that God of the pure reason, separated from the God of the conscience and of the heart. Still let us endeavor to make this concession, for argument's sake, to our philosopher. Let us suppose that the reason has a God to itself, a God for the metaphysicians who is not the God of the vulgar. Before we immolate upon His altar the conscience and the heart, it is worth our while to examine whether the statue of the God of the reason rests upon a solid pedestal. Here are the theses which are proposed to us: "It is impossible for our feelings to supply any light for science. Truth may be gloomy, and despair may gain its cause. Virtue may be wrong, and immorality may be the true. Reason alone judges of that which is." I answer: Human nature has always eagerly followed after happiness. Human nature has always acknowledged, even while violating it, a rule of duty. The heart is not an accident, the conscience is not a prejudice: they are, and by the same right as the reason, constituent elements of our spiritual existence. If there exist an irreconcilable antagonism between science and life; if the heart, in its fundamental and universal aspirations, is the victim of an illusion, if the conscience in its clearest admonitions is only a teacher of error, what is our position? In what I am now saying, Gentlemen, I am not appealing to your feelings; the business is to follow, with calm attention, a piece of exact reasoning. If the heart deceives us, if the voice of duty leads us astray, the disorder is at the very core of our being; our nature is ill constructed. If our nature is ill constructed, what warrants to us our reason? Nothing. What assures us that our axioms are good, and that our reasonings have any value? Nothing. The life of the soul cannot be arbitrarily cloven in twain; it must be held for good in all its constituent elements, or enveloped wholly and entirely in the shades of doubt. If the heart and conscience deceive us, then reason may lead us astray, and the very idea of truth disappears. God is the light of the spiritual world. We prove His existence by showing that without Him all returns to darkness. This demonstration is as good as another.

FOOTNOTES:

[26] Christian States have given the force of law to institutions, such, for instance, as monogamy, which date their origin from the Gospel records. Here we have the normal development of civilization: religious faith enlightens the general conscience, and reveals to it the true conditions of social progress. In this order of things, it is not a question of beliefs, but of acts imposed in the name of the interests of society. The state may take account of the religious beliefs of its subjects, and enter into such relations as may seem to it convenient with the ecclesiastical authorities: this is the basis of the system of concordats, a system which has nothing in it contrary to first principles, so long as liberty is maintained. But the establishment of national religions, decreed by the temporal power and varying in different states, manifestly supposes a foundation of scepticism. For the idea of truth, one and universal in itself, is substituted the idea of decisions obligatory for those only who are under the jurisdiction of a definite political body. If the State, without pretending to decree dogma, receives it from the hands of the Church, and imposes it upon its subjects, it seems at first that the temporal power has placed itself at the service of the Church, but that the idea of truth is preserved. But when the question is studied more closely, it is seen that this is not the case, and that the state usurps in fact, in this combination, the attributes of the spiritual power. In fact, before protecting the true religion, it is necessary to ascertain which it is; and in order to ascertain the true religion, the political power must constitute itself judge of religious truth. So we come back, by a détour, to the conception of national religions. The Emperor of Russia and the Emperor of Austria will inquire respectively which is the only true religion, to the exclusive maintenance of which they are to consecrate their temporal power. To the same question they will give two different replies; and each nation will have its own form of worship, just as each nation has its own ruler.

[27] Etudes orientales, 1861.

[28] Unité morale des peuples modernes,—a lecture delivered at Lyons, 10 April, 1839. This lecture is inserted after the Génie des Religions in the complete works of the author.

[29] Franck, Philosophie du droit ecclésiastique, pages 117 and 118.

[30] Schmidt, Essai historique sur la Société civile dans le monde romain. Bk. 1. ch. 3.

[31]

La liberté que j'aime est née avec notre âme

Le jour où le plus juste a bravé le plus fort.

[32] Tertullian.

[33] Le Père Lacordaire, by the Comte de Montalembert, p. 25.

[34] De l'autre rive, by Iscander (in Russian). Iscander is the pseudonyme of M. Herzen.

[35] "The man of thought knows that the world only belongs to him as a subject of study, and, even if he could reform it, perhaps he would find it so curious as it is that he would not have the courage to do so."—Ernest Renan, preface to Etudes d'histoire religieuse, 1857. The author has manifested better sentiments in 1859, in the preface to his Essais de morale et de critique.

[36] De Legibus, ii. 7.

[37]

Dors-tu content, Voltaire, et ton hideux sourire

Voltige-t-il encor sur tes os décharnés?

[38] Hume, Essay VIII. On liberty and necessity. [Not having access to the original, I re-translate the French translation.—Tr.]

[39] Vacherot, La metaphysique et la science. Preface, p. xxix.

LECTURE III.

THE REVIVAL OF ATHEISM.

(At Geneva, 24th Nov. 1863.—At Lausanne, 18th Jan. 1864.)

Gentlemen,

The subject of the present Lecture will be—The revival of Atheism. And I do not employ the word 'atheism'—a term which has been so greatly abused—without mature reflection. When Socrates opposed the idea of the holy God to the impure idols of paganism; when he dethroned Jupiter and his train in order to celebrate "the supreme God, who made and who guides the world, who maintains the works of creation in the flower of youth, and in a vigor always new,"[40] they accused Socrates of being an atheist. Descartes, the great geometrician who proclaimed the existence of God more certain than any theorem of geometry, has been denounced as an atheist. When men began to forsake the temples of idols in order to worship the unknown God who had just manifested Himself to the world, the Christians were accused of atheism because they refused to bow down to wood and stone. Such abuses might dispose one to renounce the use of the word. Besides, when a word has been for a long time the signal of persecution and the forerunner of death, one hesitates to employ it. In an age when atheists were burned, generous minds would use their best efforts to prove that men suspected of atheism had not denied God, because they would not have been understood had they attempted to say—"They have denied God perhaps, but that is no reason for killing them." Thence arose the sophistical apologies for certain doctrines, apologies made with a good intention, but which trouble the sincerity of history. These are the brands of servitude, which must disappear where liberty prevails. We are able now to call things by their proper names, for there exist no longer for atheism either stakes or prisons. In affirming that certain writers, some of whom are just now the favorites of fame, are shaking the foundations of all religion, one exposes no one to severities which have disappeared from our manners, one only exposes oneself to the being taxed with intolerance and fanaticism. But candor is here a duty. If this duty were not fulfilled, liberty of thought would no longer be anything else than liberty of negation; and, while truth was oppressed, error alone would be set free.

Let us settle clearly the terms of this discussion. It is often asserted that an atheist does not exist. Does this mean that the lips which deny God, always in some way contradict themselves? Does it mean that every soul bears witness to God, perhaps unconsciously to itself, either by a secret hope, or by a secret dread? This is true, as I think; but we are speaking here of doctrines and not of men. It is true again that the negation of the Creator allows of the existence, in certain philosophies, of generous ideas and elevated conceptions. Such men, while they put God out of existence, desire to keep the true, the beautiful, the good; they hope to preserve the rays, while they extinguish the luminous centre from which they proceed. Such systems always tend to produce the deadly fruits pointed out in my last lecture; but men devoted to the severe labors of the intellect often escape, by a noble inconsistency, the natural results of their theories. Therefore, in the inquiry on which we are about to enter, the term 'atheism' implies, with regard to persons, neither reproach nor contempt. It simply indicates a doctrine, the doctrine which denies God. This denial takes place in two ways: It is affirmed that nature, that is to say matter, force devoid of intelligence and of will, is the sole origin of things; or, the reality is acknowledged of those marks which raise mind above nature, but it is affirmed that humanity is the highest point of the universe, and that above it there is nothing. Such are the two forms of atheism.

Perhaps you expect here the explanation of a doctrine which is often described as holding a sort of middle place between the negation and the affirmation of God, namely, pantheism. Pantheism, in the true sense of that word, is a system according to which God is all, and the universe nothing. This extraordinary thesis is met with in India. A Greek, Parmenides, has vigorously sustained it. We have in it a kind of sublime infatuation. In presence of the one and eternal Being thought collapses in bewilderment; and thenceforward it experiences for all that is manifold and transitory a disdain which passes into negation. In the domain of experience, all is limited, temporary, imperfect; and reason seeks the perfect, the eternal, the infinite. The doctrine of creation alone explains how the universe subsists in presence of its first cause. In ignorance of this doctrine, some bold thinkers have cut the knot which they could not untie. They have declared that reason alone is right, and that experience is wrong: the world does not exist, it is but an illusion of the mind. Whence proceeds this illusion? If perfection alone exists, how comes that imperfect mind to exist which deceives itself in believing in the reality of the world? To this question the system has no answer. Such is true pantheism; but it is not to dangers so noble that most minds run the risk of succumbing. What is commonly understood by pantheism is the deification of the universe. The idea of God is not directly denied, but it undergoes a transformation which destroys it. God is no longer the eternal and Almighty Spirit, the Creator; but the unconscious principle, the substance of things, the whole. The universe alone exists; above it there is nothing; but the universe is infinite, eternal, divine. The higher wants of the reason, mingling with the data derived from experience, form an imposing and confused image, which, while it beguiles the imagination, perverts the understanding, deceives the heart, and places the conscience in peril. In a philosophical point of view, it is a contradiction of thought, which seeks the Infinite Being, and, being unable to discover Him, gives the character of infinity to realities bounded by experience. In a religious point of view, it is an aberration of the heart, which preserves the sentiment of adoration, but perverts it by dispersing it over the universe. "Pantheism," says M. Jules Simon, "is only the learned form of atheism; the universe deified is a universe without God."[41] From the moment that the reason endeavors to see distinctly, pantheism vanishes like a deceitful glare. Atheism disengages itself from the cloak which was concealing its true nature, and the mind remains in presence of nature only, or of humanity only. We will proceed to take a rapid glance at some few of the countries of Europe, in order to discover and point out in them the traces of this melancholy doctrine. Let us begin with France.

In the year 1844, just twenty years ago, some French writers, representing the philosophy, in some measure official, of the time, united to publish a Dictionnaire des sciences philosophiques. M. Franck, the director of this useful and laborious enterprise, said in the preface to the work: "Atheism has well nigh completely disappeared from philosophy; the progress of a sound psychology will render its return for ever impossible." In speaking thus, he expressed the thoughts and hopes of the school of which he remains one of the most estimable representatives. A generous impulse was animating a group of intelligent and learned young men. Their hope was to translate Christianity into a purely rational doctrine, to purify religious notions without destroying them, and, while endowing humanity with a vigorous scientific culture, to leave to it its lofty hopes. The object in view was to establish a philosophy founded upon a serious faith in God; and to this philosophy was promised the progressive and pacific conquest of the human race.[42] Twenty years have passed, and things bear quite another aspect. To language expressive of security have succeeded the accents of anxiety and words of alarm. The cause which was proclaimed victorious is defended at this day like a besieged city. You will remark however,—that I may not leave you beyond measure discouraged by the facts of which I have to tell you,—you will remark, I say, that it is the efforts attempted in the cause of good which have helped to set me on the track of evil; it has often been the defence which has fixed my attention upon the attack.

The materialism of the last century seems to have maintained a strong hold upon one part of the Paris school of medicine. We do find in France a good many physicians who, like Boerhave, render homage to religion, and a good many physiologists who, like the great Haller, are ready to defend beliefs of the spiritual order;[43] but, among men specially devoted to the study of matter, many succumb to the temptation of refusing to recognize anything as real which does not come under the experience of the senses. This however is not one of the points which offer themselves most strikingly for our examination. The atheistic manifestations of the socialist schools have more novelty, and perhaps more importance.

Man is naturally a social being. Good and evil have their primitive seat in the heart of individuals, but good and evil are transferred into institutions of which the influence is morally beneficial or pernicious. If socialism consists in recognizing the importance of social institutions, in cherishing ideas of progress and hopes of reform, I trust that we are all socialists. Do we desire progress by the ever wider diffusion of justice and love? From the moment that, across the conscience whereon divine rays are falling, we have descried the eternal centre of light, we understand that God is the most implacable enemy of abuses. How is it then that atheism sometimes manifests itself in attempts at social reform? We may explain it, without so much as pointing out the influence, but too real, of the faults committed by the representatives of religion. Faith is a principle of action; it is, as history testifies, the grand source of the progress of human society; but faith is also a principle of patience. The brow of every believer is more or less illumined by the rays of His peace who is patient because He is eternal. Eager to effect good to the utmost extent of his ability, he accomplishes his work with that calm activity to which are reserved durable victories. In the impossible (for if the word impossible is not French, it is human) the believer recognizes one of the manifestations of the supreme Will, and immortal hope enables him to support the evils which he does not succeed in destroying. But this is not enough for impatient reformers. Ignorant of the profound sources of evil, they think that institutions can do everything, and that a change of laws would suffice to reform men's hearts; they believe that the organization of society alone hinders the realization of good and of happiness. The resignation of believers appears to them a stupid lethargy, and in their patient expectation of a judgment to come they see only an obstacle to the immediate triumph of justice on the earth. What if the nations were persuaded that there is nothing to be looked for beyond the present life, so that all that is to be done is to make to ourselves a paradise as soon as may be here below! If they were persuaded that all appeal to the Judge in heaven is a chimerical hope, with what ardor would they throw themselves into schemes of revolution! Thus it is that certain political innovators are led to seek in the negation of God one of their means of action.

Two views, therefore, essentially diverse, govern the labors of the renovators of society. The one class desire to realize, in an ever larger measure, justice and love; religious convictions are the strongest support of their work. The other class would uproot from men's minds every principle of faith, in order the more readily to obtain the realization of their theories. These two classes of men seem at times to be fighting all together in the mêlée of opinions. They meet, as, in the doubtful glimmer of the dawn, might meet together laborious workmen who are anticipating the daylight, and evil-doers who are fleeing from the sun.

In order to form a just estimate of the labors of the socialist schools, it would be necessary to make a bold and straightforward inquiry into the object of their studies, and to discern, in the midst of mad-brained and guilty dreams, whatever flashes of light might disclose some prophetic vision of the future. This is no task of ours. It is enough for us to remark that in France, as also in the other countries of Europe, the negation of God discovers itself in this order of ideas. It discovers itself at one time by an idolatry of humanity, at another by a materialistic enthusiasm for corporeal indulgences. Disregarding the sensual imaginations which disgrace the works of Fourrier, let us turn our attention elsewhere.

M. Vacherot, a sober philosopher, of high intellectual power and elevated sentiment, has lately published, unhappily, twelve hundred pages destined to maintain the thesis that God does not exist.[44] Man conceives the idea of perfection, and not finding that perfection realized either in the world or in himself, he rises to the conception of a real and perfect being: such is the usual process of metaphysical reasoning. For M. Vacherot, reality and perfection mutually exclude one another; this is one of his fundamental theses. This thesis does but interpret the result of our experience, by refusing us the right to raise ourselves higher. The world with which we are acquainted is imperfect; therefore—say Plato, Saint Augustine, and Descartes—the perfection of which we have the idea is realized in a Being superior to the world. The world with which we are acquainted is imperfect, therefore there is a contradiction between the ideal and the real, says M. Vacherot, who makes thus of the general result of experience the absolute rule of truth. To say therefore of God that He is perfect, is to affirm that He does not exist, inasmuch as the ideal is never realized. Thought thus finds itself placed in a situation at once odd and violent. If God is perfect, He does not exist. If God exists, He is not perfect. The respect which we owe to the Being of beings forbids us to believe in Him; to affirm His existence would be to do outrage to His perfection. The author of this theory renders a worship to that ideal which does not exist, and towards which he affirms nevertheless that the world is gravitating by the law of progress. This worship is of too abstract a nature to secure many adherents; it can only become popular by taking another shape, and it does so in this way: We conceive of that perfection which in itself does not exist; it exists therefore in our thought. Since the world, by the law of progress, is tending towards perfection, the world has for its end and law a thought of the human mind. The human mind therefore is the summit of the universe, and it is it that we must adore. We are here out of the region of pure abstraction, and arrive at the doctrines of the Positivist school.

The Positive philosophy, so called because it wishes to have done with chimeras, was founded in France, a few years ago, by Auguste Comte. M. Littré is at present one of its principal representatives. This writer, says M. Sainte-Beuve, is one of those who are endeavoring "to set humanity free from illusions, from vague disputes, from vain solutions, from deceitful idols and powers."[45] Let us say the same thing in simpler terms: M. Littré professes the doctrines of a school which ignores the Creator in nature, and Providence in history. To ascertain phenomena, and acquaint ourselves with the law which governs them, such, say the positivists, is the limit of all our knowledge. As for the origin of things and their destination, that is an affair of individual fancy. "Each one may be allowed to represent such matters to himself as he likes; there is nothing to hinder the man who finds a pleasure in doing so from dreaming upon that past and that future."[46]

"In spite of some appearances to the contrary," says M. Littré, "the positive philosophy does not accept atheism."[47] Why? Because atheism pretends to give an explanation of the universe, and that after a fashion is still theology. Minds "veritably emancipated" profess to know nothing whatever on questions which go beyond actual experience. They do not deny God, they eliminate Him from the thoughts. The attempt is a bold one, but it fails; men do not succeed in emancipating themselves from the laws of reason. The very writer whom I have just quoted is himself a proof of this, for he absolutely proscribes every statement of a metaphysical nature, and then, three pages farther on, in the very treatise in which he makes this proscription, he speaks of the "eternal motive powers of a boundless universe."[48] Boundless! eternal! What thoughts are these? Behold the instincts of the reason coming to light! behold all the divine attributes appearing! Adoration is withdrawn from God, and it is given to the universe at large. What is it which, in the universe regarded as a whole, will become the direct object of worship? Another positivist, M. de Lombrail, will tell us, in a work reviewed by Auguste Comte: "Man," he says, "has always adored humanity." Here, we learn, is the true foundation of all religions, and the brief summary of their history. This humanity-god has been long adored under a veil which disguised it from the eyes of its worshippers; but the time is come when the sage ought to recognize the object of his worship and give it its true name.[49]

The positivist school, then, professes a complete scepticism with regard to whatever is not included in the domain of experience. But its foot slips, and it falls into the negation of God, from which it rises again by means of a humanitarian atheism. All these marks are met with again in the works of the critical school.

The critics group themselves about M. Renan. The praises which they lavished a while ago on a bad book by that author seem at least to allow us to point him out as their chief. They derive their name from studies in history and archæology, with which we here have nothing to do. They are regarded as forming a philosophical and religious school, and it is in that connection that they claim our attention. Their influence is incontestable, and still, notwithstanding, their doctrinal value is nothing. They form merely a literary branch of the positivist school engrafted upon the eclecticism of M. Cousin. We find in their writings the pretension to limit science to the experimental study of nature and to humanity. We afterwards find there the pretension to understand and to accept all doctrines alike. Beyond this, nothing. The critics bestow particular attention on the phenomena of religion, of art, and of philosophy; but this interest is purely historical. Nothing is more curious than the successive forms of human beliefs; but the period of beliefs is over. Religious faith no longer subsists except in minds which are behind the age; and philosophy, upheld in a final swoon by Hegel and Hamilton, has just yielded its last breath in the arms of M. Cousin: so M. Renan informs us.[50] To choose a side between the defenders of the idea of God and its opponents; to choose between Plato and Epicurus, between Origen and Celsus, between Descartes and Hobbes, between Leibnitz and Spinoza, would be to make one's self the Don Quixote of thought. An honest man may find amusement in reading the Amadis of Gaul; the Knight of la Manche went mad through putting faith in the adventures of that hero. A like fate befalls those minds which are simple enough to believe still, in the midst of the nineteenth century, in the brave chimeras of former days. Let us study history, let us study nature; beyond that we do not know, and we never shall know, anything. Our fashionable men of letters develop their thesis with so much assurance; they lavish upon believers so many expressions of amiable disdain; they appear so sure of being the interpreters of the mind of the age, that they seem ready to repeat to young people dazzled by their success, the lesson which Gilbert had expressed in these terms:

Between ourselves—you own a God, I fear!

Beware lest in your verse the fact appear:

Dread the wits' laughter, friend, and know your betters:

Our grandsires might have worn those old-world fetters;

But in our days! Come, you must learn respect,—

Content your age to follow, not direct.[51]

To believe in God would be vulgar; to deny the existence of God would be a want of taste; the divine world must remain as a subject for poetry. So our critics speak. Their direct affirmation is scepticism. But they follow the destinies of the positivist school; they do not succeed in maintaining their balance between the affirmation and negation of God. Alfred de Musset has described this position of the soul, and its inevitable issue. Must I hope in God? Must I reject all faith and all hope?

Between these paths how difficult the choice!

Ah! might I find some smoother, easier way.

"None such exists," whispers a secret voice,

"God is, or is not—own, or slight, His sway."

In sooth, I think so: troubled souls in turn

By each extreme are tossed and harassed sore:

They are but atheists, who feel no concern;

If once they doubted they would sleep no more.[52]

The indifference of the critical philosophers is in fact only a transparent veil to atheistical doctrines. Faith in God the Creator is in their eyes a superstition; this is their only settled dogma. In other respects they indulge in theses the most contradictory. Most generally they deify man, declaring that there is no other God than the idea of humanity, no other infinite than the indefinite character of the aspirations of our own soul. At other times they proclaim an undisguised materialism, and look for the explanation of all things in atoms and in the law which governs them. They make to themselves a two-faced idol, one of these faces being called nature, and the other humanity. What strangely increases the confusion is that all the terms of language change meaning as employed by their pen. They speak of God, of duty, of religion, of immortality; their pages seem sometimes to be extracted from mystical writings; but these sacred words have for them a totally different meaning than for the ordinary run of their readers. Their God is not a Being, their religion is not a worship, their duty is not a law, their immortality is not the hope of a world to come. Amidst these equivocations and contradictions thought is blunted, and the sinews of the intellect are unstrung. The public, bewitched by talent and captivated by success, is deluged with writings which have the same effect as the talk of a frivolous man, or the showy tattle of a woman of the world. They give an agreeable exercise to the mind, without ever allowing it to form either a precise idea or a settled judgment.

Many are the clouds then on the intellectual horizon of France. Glance over the recent productions of French philosophy, and you will have no difficulty in recognizing the gravity of the situation. Works are multiplying with the object of defending the existence of God, Providence, the immortality of the soul: dams are being raised against the rising flood of atheism.[53] And here is a fact still more significant, namely, that the historians of ideas, whether they are recurring to the most remote antiquity, or are passing in review the worst errors of modern days, cannot meet with the negation of God, without having their eyes thus turned to Paris, and their attention directed to contemporary productions.[54]

I hence infer, that atheism is raising its head in France, and there presenting itself under two forms. Materialism is appearing principally as an heritage from the last century. The new, or rather renewed, doctrine is the adoration of man by man. We are now going to cross the Rhine.

A powerful thinker, Hegel, had supreme sway in the last movement of speculative thought in Germany. Hegel's system of doctrine is enveloped in clouds. It is so ambiguous in regard to the questions which most directly concern the conscience and human interests, that it has been pretended to deduce from it, on the one hand a Christian theology, and on the other a sheer atheism. There is a story, whether a true one or not I cannot say, that this philosopher when near his end uttered the following words: "I have only had one disciple who has understood me—and he has misunderstood me." A man distinguished in metaphysical research by taste, genius, and science, and who has, in that respect, devoted particular attention to Germany, M. Charles Secrétan, writes with reference to the fundamental principle of the entire Hegelian system: "If you ask me how I understand the matter, I will give you no answer; I do not understand it at all, and I do not believe that any one has ever understood it."[55] You will excuse me, Gentlemen, from here undertaking the scientific study of so difficult a system. It will be enough for us to render the darkness visible, that is to say, to understand well what it is which the doctrine of the Berlin Professor, in a certain sense, renders incomprehensible.

The foundation of his theory is that the universe is explained by an eternal idea, an idea which exists by itself, without appertaining to any mind. The Hegelians say that the existence of an infinite Mind is an inadmissible conception. They reject this mystery, and prefer to it the palpable absurdity of an idea which exists in itself, without being the act of an intelligence. This idea-God we have already encountered in the writings of M. Vacherot. We shall find it again more than once as we go on. In Germany, as in France, the theory only becomes popular by undergoing a transformation. The eternal idea manifests itself in the mind of man, and exists nowhere else. Above this idea there is nothing. Man is therefore the summit of things; it is he who must be adored. And thus it is in fact that Hegel has been understood. In the spring of 1850, Henri Heine wrote as follows in the Gazette d'Augsbourg: "I begin to feel that I am not precisely a biped deity, as Professor Hegel declared to me that I was twenty-five years ago." The deification of man: such is the popular translation of the philosophy of the idea. Would you have a further proof of this? The following anecdote was current in my youth, when German idealism was at the height of its popularity. A student going to call on one of his fellow-students, found him stretched on his bed, or his sofa, and exhibiting all the signs of an ecstatic contemplation. "Why, what are you doing there?" inquired the visitor. "I am adoring myself," replied the young adept in philosophy.

I am not examining the doctrines of Hegel with reference to the history of metaphysics, and within the precincts of the school in which it occupies a large place and demands the most serious attention; I am tracing the influence of those doctrines on the public mind at large. This influence is visible in the most disastrous consequences of atheism. "It certainly is not the Hegelian school alone," says M. Saint-Réné Taillandier, "which has produced all the moral miseries of the nineteenth century, all those unbridled desires, all those revolts of matter in a fury;[56] but it sums them all up in its formulæ, it gives them, by its scientific way of representing them, a pernicious authority, it multiplies them by an execrable propaganda."[57]

It was through Feuerbach principally that the evolution was to be brought about which has led the Hegelian system, severely idealistic in its commencement, to favor at length the revolts of matter run mad. And this evolution is only natural after all. If the universe is the development of an idea, and not the work of an intelligent Will, all is necessary in the world, for the development of an idea is a matter of destiny. Where all is necessary, all is legitimate: the desires of the flesh as well as the laws of thought and of conscience. But, from the moment that the flesh is emancipated, it aims at absolute empire, and ends by obtaining it: this is matter of fact. Feuerbach has put atheism into a definite shape, and disengaged it from all obscurity. There exists no other infinite than the infinite in our thoughts; above us there exists nothing; no law which binds us, no power which governs us: the work of modern science is to set man free from God, for God is an idol. But man thus set free from all bonds and from all duty is not, for Feuerbach, the individual, but humanity. The individual owes himself to his species; "the true sage will make no more silly and fantastic sacrifices, but he will never refuse sacrifices which are really serviceable to humanity."[58]

Here then is still a bond, a religion, and sacrifices; the emancipation is incomplete. What is this humanity to which man owes himself? An abstraction, an idol still, an idol to be overthrown if he would obtain perfect independence. Listen to the German Stirmer, deducing from the doctrine its extreme consequences: "Perish the people," he exclaims, "perish Germany, perish all the nations of Europe; and let man, rid of all bonds, delivered from the last phantoms of religion, recover at length his full independence!"[59] All the mists of abstraction have now disappeared: here we are on ground which is hideously clear. Humanity is no longer in question, but the worship of self; it is the complete enfranchisement of selfishness.

While the proud idealism of the Germans was thus, by its own weight, descending into the level flats of thought, a political movement was agitating Germany. Simple-minded poets were celebrating atheism with an enthusiasm which seemed sincere; and, at the same time, men who are not simple-minded, journalists and demagogues, were laying hold of the irreligion as a lever with which to make a breach in the social edifice. In the year 1845, the attention of the Swiss authorities was drawn to certain secret societies, composed of Germans, and having for their object a revolution in Germany, but which had established their basis of operations on the Swiss territory. The inquiries of the police issued in the discovery of twenty-seven clubs bound together by secret correspondence. Working-men were induced on various pretexts to attend meetings, of which the real object was only gradually disclosed to them. If they were reckoned worthy, they were initiated into the plan of a social reform, the basis of which was atheism.[60] One of the principal agents in this work of proselytism, Guillaume Marr, exclaimed: "Faith in a personal and living God is the origin and the fundamental cause of our miserable social condition." And he deduced as follows the practical consequence of his theory: "The idea of God is the key-stone of the arch of a tottering civilization; let us destroy it. The true road to liberty, to equality, and to happiness, is atheism. No safety on earth, so long as man holds on by a thread to heaven.—Let nothing henceforward shackle the spontaneity of the human mind. Let us teach man that there is no other God than himself, that he is the Alpha and the Omega of all things, the superior being, and the most real reality." We have still to explain the nature of this spontaneity, free from every shackle. One of the editors of the journal conducted by Marr discloses it by quoting some verses in which Henri Heine expresses the wish to see great vices, bloody and colossal crimes, provided he may be delivered from a worthy-citizen virtue, and an honest-merchant morality![61] A little later, a journal of German Switzerland asserted, that in order to set free man's natural instincts and propensities, it is indispensable to destroy the idea of God.[62]

These, I am well aware, are the screams of a savage madness. But after all, and be this as it may, Marr was publishing his journal at Lausanne in 1845, and in 1848 he was named representative of the people, by a considerable majority, in one of the largest cities of Germany. And this was by no means an isolated fact. Atheism showed itself in the ephemeral parliament of Frankfort as a sort of party, of which M. Vogt, says the Revue des Deux Mondes, was the great orator.[63]

The German revolution was put down by the bayonet, but the doctrines of which it had revealed the existence, left vestiges for a long time in the country of the terror which they had inspired. Alarm was felt for the various interests threatened, and noble souls were stirred with compassion by the conviction forced upon them of the spiritual miseries of their brethren. A powerful reaction took place, as well in the religious as the philosophical world. This reaction has produced salutary results; but the object is not fully attained. Open the journals and the reviews, and you will learn that Germany is, in these days, the principal centre of materialism. It is unhappily so rich in this respect, that it can afford to engage in exportation, and to furnish professors of the school to other countries of Europe.

Doctor Büchner has published, under the title of Force and Matter, a small volume which has rapidly reached a seventh edition, and has lately been translated into French.[64] Materialism is there set forth with perfect arrogance, or, to speak more moderately, with perfect audacity. The author pretends to confine himself strictly within the domain of experience, and it is wonderful with what haughtiness he proscribes the researches of philosophy. It would seem therefore that the question of the nature of things ought to remain outside the circle of his studies. Nevertheless, he declares matter to be eternal and the universe infinite. I ask you how long it would be necessary to have lived in order to pronounce matter eternal in the name of experience; and what journeys it would have been necessary to make, before ascertaining by means of observation that the universe is infinite. We shall have occasion to recur to this subject. Meanwhile we may be very sure that experience supplies no system of metaphysics, and that materialism is a metaphysical system as strongly marked as any. When its adepts cry out, Away with philosophy! they mean by that simply: We will have no good philosophy, that we may be free to make bad philosophy of our own without rivalry. A proceeding which reminds one of certain demagogues who cry with all their might, Down with tyrants! and who thus succeed in making out of the fear of the tyranny of others the solid foundation of their own despotism.

We find then in Germany, first of all the doctrine of the idea set forth with éclat by Hegel, then atheism mixed up with political notions and projects, and lastly materialism. The elements are the same as in France, but exhibit themselves in a different order. This diversity suggests some observations worth your attention.

France, setting out with the materialism of the eighteenth century, rose to that adoration of man which characterizes at the present day the greater part of its atheistical manifestations. German atheism, having as its starting-point an abstract idealism of which the adoration of man was the result, has descended to the levels of materialism.[65] We may inquire into the theory of these facts, and say why materialism rises to the adoration of man by a natural movement; and why, also by a natural movement, the adoration of man descends again to materialism.

Materialism infers from its principles the denial of any future to man, and not only any future, but any true value, any real existence. We are nothing but an agglomeration of molecules, ready to separate without leaving any trace of ever having been together. Is not this a thing to be said sadly, as the saddest thing in the world? Why then are the apostles of matter nearly always assuming the loftiest tone, and uttering shouts of triumph? It is that they feel themselves free, emancipated from that terror which has made the gods,

. . . that brood of idle fear

Fine nothings worshipped,—why, doth not appear;

The gods—whom man made, and who made not man.[66]

Emancipation! Such is the watchword of materialism. Listen, for example, to the conclusion of Baron d'Holbach's System of Nature: "Break the chains," says he, "which are binding men. Send back those gods who are afflicting them to those imaginary regions from whence fear first drew them forth. Inspire with courage the intelligent being; give him energy; let him dare at length to love himself, to esteem himself, to feel his own dignity; let him dare to emancipate himself, let him be happy and free." Strange accents these, at the close of a large philosophical treatise intended to prove that there is nothing in the universe but matter. Whence proceeds the dignity of that fragment of matter which calls itself man? Understand well what passes in the mind of these philosophers. In proportion as man lowers his own origin, in the same proportion,—if he does not wish to make himself a brute, in order to live as do the animals,—he exalts himself in an inevitable sentiment of pride. In vain does he give out that the material frame is everything; he feels that thought is more than the material frame; and he accords to himself the first place in the universe. The materialist ignores the Eternal Mind in order to emancipate himself; and whatever he may say, his real deity is not the atom, but himself. The encyclopedists, sons of an age which yielded at once to noble influences and to guilty seductions, united the worship of progress to a degrading philosophy. Consider with what a feeling of pride they lowered man, and you will understand why eternal nature gave place to sacred humanity. When France had fallen into the delirium of irreligion, it was not a little dust in an earthen vase which was offered for public adoration, but they led in procession through the streets of Paris a woman who was called the goddess Reason.

So it was that materialism ended in the adoration of man. Let us endeavor to understand how the adoration of man turns again to materialism. The mind endowed with intelligence and will is more elevated in the scale of being than inert bodies. This is for us an evident truth. Could one demonstrate it by reasoning? I do not know; but in contesting it, we should contradict the plainest evidence. Reason is superior to matter. If, with the school which extends from Pythagoras to Saint Augustine, and from Saint Augustine to Descartes, we connect reason with God as its principle, the grand science of metaphysics is founded. But if reason does not rise to God, what will happen? This reason, which proclaims itself superior to matter, is not, as we have said already, the individual thought of Francis, Peter, or John. If an individual presented himself as being reason itself, the absolute reason, and said, "I am the truth," it would be necessary to take one of three courses. If we thought that he spoke truly, and if we received his testimony, it would be necessary to worship him, for he would be God. If it were feared that he spoke truly, and those who so feared were unwilling to acknowledge his rule, it would be necessary for them to kill him in order to endeavor to kill the truth. If it were thought that he spoke falsely, it would be necessary to watch him, and the moment he committed an act dangerous for society, to shut him up, for he would be a madman. But the philosophers make no such pretension. The reason of which they speak is the reason common to all, a reason which is not that of an individual, but that of which all rational individuals partake. This common, universal, eternal reason,—where and how does it exist? Reason manifests itself by ideas, and ideas are the acts of minds. To imagine an idea without a mind of which it is the act, is the same thing as to imagine a movement without a body of which it is also the act, in a different sense. Take away bodies, and there is no more movement. Take away intelligences, and there are no more ideas. The philosopher who speaks of an idea which is not the idea of an intelligence, utters words which have no meaning. The reason which is not that of any created individual remains therefore absolutely inconceivable without the eternal Spirit, or God. Idealism is based upon this impossible conception. Thus it is that thought, trying in vain to maintain itself in this abstract domain, ends by holding as chimerical the world of ideas in which it has met with nothing to which to cling. It is seized with giddiness and falls. Whither does it fall? To the ground. It is always thither one falls. Wearied with its efforts to find footing on shifting clouds, the human mind comes back to the positive by a violent reaction. Here is the secret of that haughty and derisive materialism of certain modern Germans, who jeer and scoff at the lofty pretensions of philosophy. So it was that Hegel brought upon the scene Doctor Büchner and his fellows.

The great conflict of the spiritual world is not, as it is often said to be, the combat of idealism against materialism. Idealism begins well, and we must not refuse to acknowledge the services which it has rendered to the cause of truth. But philosophy must follow the road traced out in an ancient adage: Ab exterioribus ad interiora, ab interioribus ad superiora.[67] If the mind does not go to the end of this royal road; if idealism, having surmounted the fascinations of the senses, remains in ideas, without ascending to the supreme Mind, the worship of matter and the worship of the idea call mutually one to another, and revolve in a fatal circle. The struggle between these two forms of atheism reminds one of those duels, in which, after having satisfied honor, the adversaries breakfast together, and gather strength to combat, in case of need, a common enemy. The great combat which forms the main subject of the history of ideas is the combat between belief in God and an atheistical philosophy. Whether atheism admits for its first principle an atom without a Creator, or a reason without an Eternal Mind, is a fact very important for the history of philosophy, but the importance of which is small enough in regard to the interests of humanity.

We passed the Rhine in order to penetrate into Germany, let us now cross the British Channel, and observe what is going on in England.

England, at the close of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, was the principal centre of irreligion. France gave the patent of European circulation to ideas which proceeded in part from this foreign source. An active propaganda for the diffusion of impious and immoral writings had been established in Great Britain. A strong reaction set in, and, dating from the year 1698, we see formed various societies having for their object the diffusion of good books and respectable journals.[68] These efforts were crowned with success. England, by its zeal in the work of Missions, by its sacrifices for the diffusion of the Holy Scriptures, and by its respect for the Lord's-day,[69] assumed[70] the characteristic marks of a Christian nation. Grand measures adopted in the interests of liberty and humanity, placed it at the same time at the head of a seriously philanthropic civilization; but as Père Gratry has remarked, "more than in any other people, there are in the English people the old man and the new."[71] The strange contrasts which are presented by the political action of this double-people are found also in the productions of its thought, in which, while the spirit of piety is displayed full of life, the spirit of irreligion is also manifested with terrible energy. A book is instanced, of materialistic tendency,[72] published in 1828, of which a popular edition was printed with a view to extend the opinions which it advocated. There was sold of this edition, in a short time, more than eighty thousand copies. A thoughtful writer, Mr. Pearson, mentions a statistical statement, according to which English publications, openly atheistical, reached, in the year 1851, a total of six hundred and forty thousand copies.[73]

If we pass from the current literature to scientific publications, we shall meet with facts of the same order. The Hegelianism and the scepticism of the critical school are creeping into the works of some theologians. The theories of positivism, reduced to shape in France, have passed the channel, and have obtained in England more attention perhaps than in the country of their origin. They have been adopted by a distinguished author, Mr. Stuart Mill; and a female writer, Miss Martineau, has set them forth, in her mother-tongue, for the use of her fellow-countrymen.[74] Positivism is even in vogue, and has become "fashionable" amongst certain literary and intellectual circles in Great Britain.[75]

In less elevated regions of the intellectual world of England, an organized sect commends itself to our attention. This sect has given to its system of doctrine the name of Secularism. It has a social object—the destruction of the Established Church and the existing political order. It has a philosophy, the purport and bearing of which we will inquire of Mr. Holyoake. The following is the answer of the chief of the secularists:—"All that concerns the origin and end of things, God and the immortal soul, is absolutely impenetrable for the human mind. The existence of God, in particular, must be referred to the number of abstract questions, with the ticket not determined. It is probable, however, that the nature which we know, must be the God whom we inquire after. What is called atheism is found in suspension in our theory."[76] The practical consequence of these views is, that all day-dreams relating to another world must be put aside, and we must manage so as to live to the best advantage possible in the present life.[77] Hence the name of the system. Secularism teaches its disciples to have nothing to do with religion in any shape, that they may confine themselves strictly to the present life. It is an attempt of which the express object is to realize life without God.

These doctrines formed the subject of public discussions, in London in 1853, and at Glasgow in 1854. The meeting at Glasgow numbered, it is said, more than three thousand persons.[78] The sect employs as its means of action open-air speeches, the publication of books and journals,[79] and assemblies for giving information and holding debates in lecture-rooms. There are five of these lecture-rooms in London. I have seen the programme, for 1864, of the meetings held at No. 12, Cleveland Street, under the direction of Messrs. Holyoake and J. Clark. There are, every Sunday,—a discourse at eleven o'clock, a discussion at three o'clock, a lecture at seven o'clock. The programme invites all free-thinkers to attend these meetings. Some of the assemblies are public; for others a small entrance fee is demanded. London is the principal centre of the association; but it has branches all over the country, and it numbers in Great Britain twenty-one lecture-rooms, particularly at Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, and Edinburgh.[80] Secularism naturally seeks to magnify, as much as may be, its own importance; and it is not to the declarations of its apostles that we must refer in order to estimate the extent and influence of its action. At the same time the existence of a society, the avowed object of which is the diffusion of practical atheism, cannot be regarded with indifference. At the present moment the affairs of the sect would not appear to be flourishing. A year ago a secularist orator had delivered a vehement speech in favor of virtue. Just as he had resumed his seat, a policeman entered the room and took him into custody. A few days afterwards the Times informed its readers that the orator of virtue had just been condemned for theft to twelve months' hard labor.[81] In the Secular World of the 1st January, 1864, Mr. Holyoake complains that a great many mauvais sujets seem to seek in secularism a kind of cheap religion. He declares that he is going to use energetic efforts to purify the sect, and seems to intimate that he shall retire if his efforts fail. Let us leave him to wrestle against the invasion of the orators of virtue, and let us pass from England into Italy.

While Italy is seeking to deliver itself from the bayonets of Austria, it is threatened with subjection to the influence of the most pernicious German doctrines. After having bent, like nearly all Europe, in the eighteenth century, beneath the blast of sensualism, Italy made a noble effort to renew more generous traditions. Two eminent men, Rosmini and Gioberti, the second especially, succeeded in exciting in the youth of Italy a passionate interest in doctrines in which liberty and vigor of thought were united with the confidence of faith. This intellectual movement preceded and prepared a national movement, the course of which has been precipitated by the intrigues of politics and the intervention of the arms of the foreigner. At the present time the influence of Rosmini and of Gioberti is on the decline. Hegelianism is being installed with a certain éclat in the university of Naples. Nothing warrants us in hoping that this system will not produce upon the shores of the Mediterranean the same depravation of philosophic thought which it has produced in Germany. In the ancient university of Pisa, M. Auguste Conti, a brave defender of Christian philosophy, steadfastly maintains the union of religion and of speculative inquiry,[82] and the centre of Italy is less affected perhaps than the extremities of the Peninsula by the spirit of infidelity. But as we go further north, we encounter in the writings of Ferrari the utterance of a gloomy scepticism, and in those of Ausonio Franchi, formerly a journalist at Turin, and now a Professor at Milan, the manifestations of an almost undisguised atheism. Ausonio Franchi, or rather the man who assumes that pseudonyme, is an ex-priest, who, "while maintaining severely the rule of good morals and the dignity of life,"[83] has turned with violent animosity against his former faith. He exerts some influence over the youth of Italy, and has met with warm admirers in England and Germany. Franchi's profession of faith reduces itself to these very simple terms:—"The world is what it is, and it is because it is; any other reason whatever of its essence and of its existence can be nothing but a sophism or an illusion."[84] All inquiry into the origin of things is a pure chimera, and we must therefore limit ourselves to the experience of the present life, and look for nothing beyond it. The author treats with sufficient disdain arguments which satisfied Descartes, Newton, and Leibnitz. It has seemed to me that his understanding, a little obscured by passion, misconceives the true purport of the reasonings which it rejects, and by thus impairing their force, assumes to itself the right to despise them.

The religious negations of Ausonio Franchi do not stop at Christian dogma. He denies all value to those higher aspirations of the human soul which constitute reason, in the philosophical meaning of the term. Now, this radical negation of the reason is what those Italians who do not scruple to practise it denominate Rationalism. And this very unwarrantable use of a word is in fact only a particular case of a general phenomenon. To criticise, means to examine the thoughts which present themselves to the mind in order to distinguish error from truth. The Frenchmen, who call themselves the critics, are men who require that the intellect shall make itself the impartial mirror of ideas, but shall renounce the while all discrimination between truth and error. The term scepticism, in its primary signification, contains the idea of inquiring, of examining; and they give the name of sceptics to the philosophers who declare that there is nothing to discover, and consequently nothing to examine, or to search for! One is a free-thinker only on the express condition of renouncing all such free exercise of thought as might lead to the acceptance of beliefs generally received. This is verily the carnival of language, and the bal masqué of words. These corruptions of the meaning of terms are highly instructive. Doctrines contrary to the laws of human nature bear witness in this way to a secret shame in producing themselves under their true colors. Just as hypocrisy is an homage which vice pays to virtue, so these barbarisms are an homage which error pays to truth.

To return to Italy: that beautiful and noble country has not escaped the revival of atheism. The intoxication of a new liberty, and the political struggles in which the Papacy is at present engaged, will favor for a time, it may be feared, the development of evil doctrines.[85] But the lively genius of the Italians will not be long in attaching itself again to the grand traditions of its past history; and the inhabitants of the land, whose soil was trodden by Pythagoras and Saint Augustine, will not link themselves with doctrines which always run those who hold them aground sooner or later upon the sad and gloomy shores of a vulgar empiricism.

We have not leisure, Gentlemen, to extend our study to all parts of the globe, and besides, there are countries with regard to which information would fail me. Therefore I say nothing of Holland, where we should have, as I know, distressing facts to record. The silence imposed on Spain upon the subjects which we are discussing would render the study of that country a difficult one. I am wanting in data regarding America. Let us conclude our survey by a few words about Russia.

If we are warranted in making general assertions in speaking of that immense empire, we may say that the Russian people, taken as a whole, is good and pious, badly instructed, and often the victim of ignorance or of superstition, but disposed to open its heart to elevated and pure influences. The clergy is ignorant, though with honorable and even brilliant exceptions. It is too much cut off from general society, and consigned to a sort of caste, of which it would be most desirable to break down the barriers, in order to allow the influence of the representatives of religion to extend itself more freely. The young nobles, and the university students in general, are, in too large a proportion, imbued with irreligious principles. Various atheistical writings, those of Feuerbach amongst others, have been translated into Russian, printed abroad, and furtively introduced into the empire. M. Herzen, a well-known writer, has published, under the pseudonyme of Iscander, a work full of talent, but in which come plainly into view the worst tendencies of our time.[86] In his eyes, life is itself its own end and cause. Faith in God is the portion of the ignorant crowd, and atheism, like all the high truths of science, like the differential calculus and the laws of physics, is the exclusive possession of the philosophical few. When Robespierre declared atheism aristocratic, he was right in this sense, for atheism is above the reach of the vulgar; but when he concluded that atheism was false, he made a great mistake. This error, which led him to establish the worship of the Supreme Being, was one of the causes of his fall. When he began to follow in the wake of the conservatives, as a necessary consequence he would lose his power.[87] The writings of Iscander have exerted a veritable influence in Russia. M. Herzen appears to have lost much of his repute, by the exaggerated and outrageous course he has taken in politics; but it is to be feared that the traces of his action are not altogether effaced.

The Russian Empire has been for a long time, in the eyes of the West, only an immense garrison; but now for some years past it has been taking rank among the number of intellectual powers, and nowhere in Europe is the ascending march of civilization displaying itself by signs so striking. The summons to liberty of so many millions of men, which has just been accomplished by the generous initiative of the ruling power, and with the consent of the nation, testifies that that vast social body is animated by the spirit of life and of progress. But in the solemn phase through which she is passing, Russia is exposed to a great danger. She is running the risk of substituting for a national development, drawn from the grand springs of human nature, a factitious civilization, in which would figure together the fashions of Paris, the morals of the coulisses of the Opera, and the most irreligious doctrines of the West. May God preserve her!

We have passed in review some of the symptoms of the revival of atheism, and it is impossible not to acknowledge the gravity of the facts which we have established. What must especially awaken solicitude is, that the irreligious manifestations of thought have assumed such a character of generality, that the sorrowful astonishment which they ought to produce in us is blunted by habit. Fashionable reviews, (I allude especially to the French-speaking public), widely-circulated journals which take good care not to violate propriety, and which could not with impunity offend the interests or prejudices of the social class from which their subscribers are recruited, are able to entertain without danger, and without exciting energetic protestations, the productions of an open, or scarcely disguised, atheism. Here are ample reasons for thoughtfulness; but this thoughtfulness must not be mingled with fear. We have to do with a challenge the very audacity of which inspires me with confidence, rather than with dread. In fact all the productions of irreligious philosophy rest on one and the same thought, the common watchword, of the secularism of the English, of the rationalism of the Italians, of the positivism of the French, and which may even be recognized, with a little attention, under the haughty formulas which bear the name of Hegel. And the thought is this: The earth is enough for us, away with heaven; man suffices for himself, away with God; reality suffices for us, away with chimeras! Wisdom consists in contenting ourselves with the world as it is. It is attempted ridiculously enough to place this wisdom under the patronage of the luminaries of our age. We are bidden, forsooth, to see in the negation of the real and living God, a conflict of progress with routine, of science with a blind tradition, of the modern mind with superannuated ideas.[88] We know of old this defiance hurled against the aspirations of the heart, the conscience, and the reason. We know the destined issue of this ancient revolt of the intellect against the laws of its own nature. There were atheists in Palestine in the days when the Psalmist exclaimed, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God."[89] There were atheists at Rome when Cicero wrote,[90] that the opinion which recognizes gods appeared to him to come nearest to the resemblance of truth. A poet of the thirteenth century has expressed in a Latin verse the thoughts which are in vogue among a great many of our contemporaries: "He dares nothing great, who believes that there are gods."[91] There were atheists in the seventeenth century, when Descartes exerted himself to confound them, and they reckoned themselves the fine spirits of their time.[92] And who, again, does not know that in the eighteenth century atheism marched with head aloft, and filled the world with its clamors. The attempt to do without God has nothing modern about it, it is met with at all epochs. The means employed now-a-days to attain this end have nothing new about them. Atheism exhibits itself in history with the characters of a chronic malady, the outbreaks of which are transient crises. The moment the negation is blazoned openly, humanity protests. Why? Because man will never be persuaded to content himself with the earth, and with what the earth can give him: his nature absolutely forbids it. When we compare the reality with the desires of our souls, we can all say with the aged patriarch Jacob: "Few and evil have been the days of my pilgrimage;"[93] we can all say with Lamartine:

Though all the good desired of man

In one sole heart should overflow,

Death, bounding still his mortal span,

Would turn the cup of joy to woe.[94]

And it is not the heart only which is concerned here; without God man remains inexplicable to his own reason. The spiritual creature of the Almighty, free by the act of creation, and capable of falling into slavery by rebellion,—he understands his nature and his destiny; but it is in vain that the apostles of matter and the worshippers of humanity harangue him in turn to explain to him his own existence. Man is too great to be the child of the dust; man is too miserable to be the divine summit of the universe. "If he exalts himself, I abase him; if he abases himself, I exalt him; and I contradict him continually, until he understands at last that he is an incomprehensible monster."[95]

"The proper study of mankind is man;" and man remains an enigma for man, if he do not rise to God. So it is that our very nature is a living protest against atheism, and never allows its triumphs to be either general, or of long duration. A solid limit is thus set to our wanderings; and, to the errors of the understanding, as to the tides of the ocean, the Master of things has said, "Ye shall go no further." Therefore atheists may become famous, but, destitute of the ray which renders truly illustrious, humanity refuses them the aureole with which it encircles the brows of its benefactors. This aureole it reserves for the sages which lead it to God, for the artists which reveal to it some of the rays of the immortal light, for all those who remind it of the titles of its dignity, the pledges of its future, the sacred laws of the realm of spirits. Humanity desires to live; and to live it must believe; for it must believe in order to love and to act. Atheism is a crisis in a disease, a passing swoon over which the vital forces of nature triumph. Now the vital forces of humanity are neither extinct nor stupefied in our time. The world of literature is sick, and grievously sick in some of its departments; but even there again are manifesting themselves noble and powerful reactions. Then look in other directions. Contemplate the religious movement of society at large, the wide efforts making in the domain of active beneficence, the progressive conquests of civilization, the awakening of conscience on many subjects:—I could easily instance numerous facts in proof of what I advance, and say to you:

Know, by these speaking signs, a God to-day

As yesterday the same—the same for aye: