Contemporary portraits : Thiers, Strauss compared with Voltaire, Arnaud de l'Ariège, Dupanloup, Adolphe Monod, Vinet, Verny, Robertson

I

PRINCETON, N. J.

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Pressens e, Edmond de, 1824

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Contemporary portraits

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CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS:

THIERS, STRAUSS COMPARED WITH VOLTAIRE,

ARNAUD DE HARIEGE, DUPANLOUP,

ADOLPHE MONOD, VINET,

VERNY, ROBERTSON.

/ BY

E. DE^PRESSENSE, D.D.,

Author of

jesus christ; his times, life and work," "the early years of
christianity," etc.

TRANSLATED BY

ANNIE HARWOOD HOLMDEN.

$frfo gork:

A. I). F. RANDOLPH & Co.,

900, BROADWAY.

MDCCCLXXX.

UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, CHILWORTH AND LONDON.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

THIERS 3

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL ... 39

STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE 79

THE CULTURKAMPF IN GERMANY 103

ARNAUD DE L'ARIEGE 125

DUPANLOUP, BISHOP OF ORLEANS 1 39

ADOLPHE MONOD 149

ALEXANDRE VINET * 233

VERNY AND ROBERTSON 283

*ff0PERTY Of

RECOCT 1880

THSOLOGICi

v * «" * * v * fW * * *

PREFACE.

THE book now offered to English readers is in
great part a collection of articles that have ap-
peared at intervals in various French journals and
reviews.

The first part of the volume is devoted to subjects
of general interest ; especially to a study of the
Catholic crisis, as represented in some of the most
eminent men of the Catholic Church. A careful
consideration of the facts advanced seems to me to
lead to two conclusions : first, that the course pursued
by the Ultramontanes is one fraught with danger to
our social interests ; and secondly, that it is both un-
justifiable and unwise to attempt to combat Ultra-
montanism with its own weapons. It seemed to me
opportune to draw attention to the testimony of a
competent German writer — M. GefTcken — as to the
inanity of the results of the Prussian " Culturkampf,"
though directed by the first political genius of the
age, and the strongest will the world has ever known.

The second part of the book brings before the
reader three eminent representatives of French Evan-

viii PREFACE.

gelical Protestantism and one great English preacher.
It will be observed that I have laid more stress in
these papers on the necessity of a theological refor-
mation than on ecclesiastical questions, though I am
fully alive to the importance of the latter. It is my
growing conviction that Protestantism has greatly
suffered of late years from a too exclusive absorption
in questions of organisation, to the neglect of deeper
and more essential principles. In order to regain its
hold of the mind of the age, the Church must come
back to the study of these fundamental truths, in the
same spirit of free inquiry and devout earnestness
which characterised Adolphe Monod and Vinet, Verny
and Robertson.

E. DE PRESSENSE.
Paris, November, 1879.

THIERS.

THIERS.

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH, DRAWN FROM RECENT
WRITINGS AND PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS.*

I.

IN 182 1 two young men left their native province
and came to Paris. They were sons of Provence,
that sunny land which has given so many eminent
men to France since the days of Mirabeau. They
had just completed their law studies, and one of
them had been crowned by the Academy of Aix,
for his panegyric on Vauven argues. Both, however,
were poor and unknown. The closest friendship
bound them together. They took up their lodgings

1 No complete biography has as yet appeared of this great
French statesman. M. Jules Simon has published a graphic
and very remarkable account of his presidency under the title,
" Le Gouvernement de M. Thiers ; " but the history of the prin-
cipal founder of the French Republic is confounded with the
annals of the parliamentary history of France. The speeches
of M. Thiers from 1831 to 1836 have been recently published
by M. Calmon. For the latter part of his career we draw
largely on our personal recollections. We are indebted also to
the "Souvenirs" of M. Seignior, in which many conversations
of M. Thiers have been preserved.

4 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

in two adjoining garrets in a miserable quarter of the
city, and at once applied themselves to a great lite-
rary task. By a strange coincidence, both had chosen
the same subject, the history of the French Revolu-
tion,— a subject of dramatic and thrilling interest,
stirring men's minds to enthusiasm or hatred, and a
very firebrand of discord at a period when Old and
New France were at desperate warfare.

These two young men both bore names destined to
become illustrious. They were Thiers and Mignet.
Thiers, born in 1797, was twenty-four years of age.
The bond of affection which united them was most
close and tender, and remained unbroken through life.
Mignet) c'est mon frhe ! we once heard M. Thiers
exclaim. In all the critical moments of Thiers'
eventful career, especially in all times of trial and
danger, Mignet was sure to be at his side, supporting
him with a sympathy as manly as it was tender.
Neither of the two had any anticipation in 1821 of
the fame and fortune awaiting them. Mignet little
guessed that he would be one of the great masters of
history, one of the most widely read and deeply
respected of thoughtful writers, and that, while keep-
ing aloof from active political life, in which he never
sought preferment, he would exert an incomparable
influence through the world of letters. Still less did
Thiers anticipate that he would hold the helm of his
country through one of those stormy crises, in which
the safety of a nation may depend on a single man.

THIERS. 5

Thiers belonged to the petty bourgeoisie of Mar-
seilles, although by his mother's side he was related
to the illustrious poet, Andre Chenier, who was
dragged to the scaffold under the Reign of Terror in
1794, for having defended true liberty against anarchy
and crime. Thiers was, indeed, a worthy representative
of those middle classes which had played so important
a part in 1789, and which were fully resolved not to
allow themselves to be robbed of the liberties won by
their fathers. He belonged, body and soul, to the
Revolution, and it was for the better defence of its
cause that he began to write its history. While
Mignet, with a restrained nervous force reminding us
of Tacitus, drew the general picture of the Revolution
in bold, masterly outlines, Thiers described it in a
full, detailed narrative, remarkable rather for clearness
than for brilliancy. His men and events pass before
us under a strong light rather than in relief, but all
his descriptions are characterised by that air of move-
ment and life, which mere study never produces, and
which is to a literary work what the quick pulsing
blood is to the human body. Finance, administra-
tion, the plan of a campaign, a discussion in parlia-
ment, all become animated under his pen. Hence
every one of the ten volumes of this rapid but com-
plete history, obtained at once an enormous circula-
tion ; and the young author, who had at first sheltered
his humble name under that of a well-known pub-
lisher, soon made himself known to the public, and

6 CONTEMPORA R Y FOR TRAITS.

was raised at once to fame and competence. This
popularity was also no doubt partly owing to the fact
that his book appealed throughout to the passions of
the great Liberal public, which was exasperated by
the policy of the clerical Right, then in power. The
sole aim of this party was to nullify the most positive
results of the Revolution, and their first step was to
do violence to it and to belie it. It would be absurd
to demand the calm and cool impartiality of a judge,
from the historian who is touching on a past so
recent and so hotly contested, and who is himself
engaged in the same life and death struggle. Never-
theless, the young writer does really glorify only the
men of 1789, or the great generals who defended the
soil of France against the invader. The sanguinary
demagogy is sternly denounced by him, though he
has been accused of restraining his severity till the hour
of retribution and of defeat had come. He has been
also accused of fatalism. This is an exaggeration.
He was uniformly the man of action rather than of
theory ; and, while never belying his liberal convic-
tions, he took fuller cognisance of circumstances than
of principles. In this respect he differs from all the
great theorists of the Restoration, who, like Royer
Collard and the Due de Broglie, attached the first im-
portance to theories, and were never satisfied till they
had reduced their practice to the form of maxims.

Thiers' energies were not exhausted by the writing
of his great work. He threw himself at the same

THIERS. 7

time, with all his sparkling vivacity and remarkable
fluency, into the daily press. He rose at once to
the first rank among journalists, not only on ac-
count of his brilliance as a writer, but also from
his aptitude in apprehending and making himself
master of all questions of art, finance, diplomacy and
administration. He found also an unfailing source
of inspiration in his sincere devotion to the Liberal
cause. Passion is a great muse, especially when it is
nurtured in the glowing atmosphere of public opinion,
when it is in harmony with the general spirit of a
period, and when it has to deal with blind and obsti-
nate opposition. From 1823 to 1830, if we except
the short interval of the Martignac Ministry, the
Government of France was in the hands of the party of
the Emigrants, whose one desire was to erase the grand
year 1789 from the annals of history. Supported by
a bigoted clerical party, whose services it repaid by
most dangerous immunities, the Government of the
day was tending to restore the fatal union between
the throne and the altar. Charles X. was the true
king of the Emigration. As Royer Collard said in
1830, he always remained Count of Artois, of the old
Court of Versailles, — a foolish fanatic, capable of risk-
ing everything for his imaginary divine right, but
incapable of sustaining his temerity by wise measures.
To usurp absolute power in spite of his oaths to
the contrary, appeared to him simply claiming that
which was his due, and he looked to heaven for sue-

8 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

cess in attempts which another must have felt to be
criminal, just as the mystic folds his arms and awaits
the effect of his prayers. He only needed to have for
his minister a fanatic like the Prince de Polignac, in
order to bring the old French monarchy to ruin ;
especially as, in an age of such intellectual fertility as
a nation but rarely enjoys, all the great minds of
France were arrayed against him.

No one dealt more effectual blows at the counter
revolution than M. Thiers, who had just established
the National, a journal of his own, in which he car-
ried on the most brilliant polemical campaign France
has ever witnessed. Those who knew him at that
time describe him as exerting an irresistible attrac-
tion. This little man, with the flexible face, the glance
quick and keen as lightning, the inexhaustible flow of
brilliant speech, produced the effect of one of those
creatures of air and flame, to which Voltaire has been
likened. Only he was no comedian seeking to keep
the world amused ; he was the soldier of a great cause,
and patriotism of the truest type was his ruling
principle.

II.

Thiers took a very influential part in the Revolu-
tion of 1830. After joining in the famous protest of
the journalists against the decrees of the 17th of July
which suspended, or rather violated, the charter, he
was made the messenger of the Liberal party to the

THIERS. 9

Duke of Orleans, inviting him to become the substitute
of the king by divine right, and to inaugurate a new
monarchy, the monarchical form of government being
at that time deemed better for France than a republic.
From this period Thiers rose rapidly into prominence.
He was at once elected to the Chamber of Deputies,
was then made Secretary of State for Finance, and
afterwards successively Minister of Commerce, of the
Interior, and of Foreign Affairs. During the first
period of the July dynasty he was the zealous de-
fender of the Government against all enemies, whether
they came from the Right, in Vendee, like the unfor-
tunate Duchesse de Berry, who attempted to play the
part of another Mary Stuart under very untoward
circumstances, or whether they issued from the haunts
of the secret societies, always rife with demagogic
conspiracies. Thiers vigorously maintained the law
of the land. He has been very unjustly reproached
with having carried repression to the length of mas-
sacre. All that he did was to have the barriers of the
insurgents carried by the bayonet As a practical
man, influenced more by facts than by theories, he
subordinated his Liberal principles to the exigencies
of the struggle against misrule. After Fieschi's
attempt upon the life of King Louis Philippe, he
accepted, indeed he initiated, severe legislative mea-
sures against the press and unauthorised societies.
When he took the direction of foreign affairs, he made
strenuous endeavours to secure for France a more

io CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

influential position than that with which the Conser-
vative party of the time was satisfied. During his
first ministry he urged direct intervention in Spain,
in favour of constitutional royalty. In 1840 he was
not deterred by the prospect of a general war, from
breaking with the Quadruple Alliance, for the benefit
of the Viceroy of Egypt, whom he wished to make
the supporter of French power in the East.

This temerity cost him his portfolio, which he was
obliged to hand over to his great rival Guizot, who
carried out with dazzling effect the policy of peace at
any price, and of strict Conservatism. This narrow
policy went so far as to refuse the smallest reforms,
especially in the electoral law, which made the
government of the country the monopoly of an oli-
garchy of proprietors, around which surged on all
sides the rising tide of democracy. M. Thiers was,
during the whole of this period, the recognised leader
of the Opposition, steadily demanding a more liberal
policy at home, and a more manly attitude abroad.
In truth, he was the only real Conservative, for it was
not possible for the Government of Louis Philippe
long to withstand the Liberal aspirations of the na-
tion, reinforced as they were by the material pros-
perity enjoyed by the country, or successfully to
oppose the movement of emancipation which was
going on in neighbouring lands, especially in Italy.
La France sennuie, said Lamartine, in one of his
famous speeches.

THIERS. II

It was perilous for the Government of July, 1830,
to stand thus isolated, fenced in by a narrow official-
ism, while public spirit was in a state of agitation on
every hand. It was like a tree whose roots no longer
reached the water, and which withered as it stood.
At the very first blow, therefore, it fell to the ground,
and the king of the Revolution had to follow into
exile the Legitimist king. M. Thiers had spent his
strength in the tribune, in warning a blind power.
It has been justly said that Louis Philippe and M.
Guizot were both incapable of seeing an unwelcome
truth. Their illusions lasted to the end. We have
heard M. Thiers tell how they came to seek him in
the night of the 23rd February, the night which pre-
ceded the catastrophe. They turned to him as to the
only pilot who could save the ship. When he arrived
at the Tuileries, the storm which was so soon to burst,
was already muttering. The politicians who were to
bring him into the presence of Louis Philippe, received
him with the entreaty, "Above all things spare the
king ! " " Spare him ? " replied Thiers, in a tone of
keen impatience ; " he has been spared too much
already. Let him know all the truth ! " It was too
late. M. Thiers was never unjust to King Louis
Philippe. He often spoke of him, fully recognising
his merits, and his philanthropy worthy of a son of the
eighteenth century; but blaming his obstinacy and
too lawyerly subtlety. He blamed him also for having
always attempted to govern, when he ought to have

1 2 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

been contented with reigning ; and for having sought
to substitute personal rule for a thoroughly parlia-
mentary administration.

Odilon Barrot, one of the leaders of the Left,
chosen at the last moment on the morning of the
24th of February, as Minister with M. Thiers, would
humorously relate how, when he wished to remon-
strate from the boulevard with one of the leaders of
the barricade, the man said to him : " Idiot ! don't
you see that the king is making game of us and of you
too ? " " And he was right," said Odilon Barrot.
M. Thiers was not so severe. He felt, however, that
Louis Philippe had himself made the abyss into which
his throne was falling. Yet Thiers was not at this
time by any means an extreme Liberal. He would
have been satisfied with an extension of the electoral
right, stopping very far short of universal suffrage,
and with a somewhat extended liberty of the press.
He was still an ardent adherent of the system of cen-
tralisation, which the Revolution had bequeathed to
the Empire, and which the Empire had carried to its
extreme issues. " Europe envies us this," he said.
To which the Liberals of the De Tocqneville school
replied : " If that is true, why does she not adopt
it ? "

Thiers' admiration for Napoleon I. is well known.
To him he devoted his second great historical work,
in which he displays, in yet larger measure and ma-
turity, all the eminent qualities of his earlier writings

THIERS. 13

— clearness, graphic power, lucid arrangement and
exposition of military and financial operations. He
was completely fascinated by the genius of the
most marvellous man of modern times. In conver-
sation he constantly alluded to Napoleon, but occa-
sionally he could pronounce severe judgment upon
him. It is said that one day, on one of his journeys,
wearied with the senseless raptures over Napoleon I.
in which some young man was indulging, thinking
thus to please M. Thiers, he interrupted him, saying :
" You do not know, then, that Napoleon was a scoun-
drel ? " It was a sally which he would not have
seriously maintained, but it sufficed to prove that
he had taken the moral measure of his hero. He
spoke of him with severity in his last volumes, for he
came to see what disasters had been entailed upon
France, by this stupendous genius unrestrained by
law or conscience.

From this time M. Thiers took his place among the
leading orators of the French tribune. He was not
at first successful. He used to relate with glee that,
on the point of delivering one of his early speeches,
he was deeply agitated. " What ! " said the sardonic
Royer Collard, " you moved in this way ? Just look
at those heads yonder ! " and he pointed him to his
hearers. It has been wrongly said that M. Thiers
attempted at first the sustained style of the great
orator. This is altogether a mistake. From the re-
ports of his first speeches, which M. Calmon has just

i4 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

reprinted, with an exhaustive commentary, it is evi-
dent that M. Thiers adopted at once a style of his
own, simple, familiar, full of natural humour and
freshness. Of this style he was a master, and it was
without effort that he afterwards rose to higher
flights. His great speeches were always inspired by
great themes. He never made any attempt to be
great ; greatness, as it were, came to him. He could
not be compared to any of his rivals in the Chamber
of Deputies. He had nothing of the rigid exactness
and concentrated force of Guizot, who disguised a
policy often timid and paltry beneath magnificent
forms of speech. Berryer, of whom at the time of
his first appearance Royer Collard said, Ce n'est pas
tin talent ; cest line ptiissance (" this is not one of
your men of talent ; this man is a power "), made the
most striking contrast to Thiers by his magnificent
stature, the rich quality of his voice, his expressive
gesture, and the passion and brilliancy of his
language. The eloquence of Lamartine reminded
one of those fairies of the fable, whose mouths
dropped pearls, while his thought was none the less
deep and full, and in political matters he seemed
endowed with all but prophetic prescience. Thiers
laboured under many external disadvantages ; his
height was below the average ; his gesticulation rapid
and abrupt ; his voice shrill. He gave no play to
imagination in his speeches, and yet no one exercised
a stronger influence over a debate. He flooded it, as

THIERS. 15

it were, with light by a mode of statement which left
nothing undefined or obscure, and which brought
the driest details of finance or administration within
the comprehension of all. The calm exposition ended
by kindling into a glow. Underlying the fluent ver-
biage was a closely woven texture of reasoning and
fact. The whole was animated by what the French
call esprit. A striking point, a well-told anecdote,
sustained the interest. And then the life pulsed
through his speeches as through his books. The
audience had no resistance to offer to this orator
who placed himself on their own level ; they were
charmed, fascinated, carried away, often convinced.

III.

The Republic of 1848 surpassed all M. Thiers'
anticipations. He was in theory a Monarchist : con-
stitutional royalty was, in his view, the government
best adapted for a great country. Universal suffrage
seemed to him an extravagance. It must be admitted
that its sudden adoption might appear to the men of
1850 a leap in the dark. The Republic of 1848 was
not like that of 1870. It had not been preceded by
fearful disasters, by the dismemberment of France.
The duty of rallying around it did not appear so
imperious as it did subsequently, to all those who put
their country above their political preferences. We
believe, nevertheless, that if M. Thiers had carried

1 6 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

out then the policy which he did adopt afterwards,
the shame and disaster of the second Empire might
have been avoided. In the National Assembly of
1848, as in the Legislative Assembly, he was one of
the leaders of the reaction of the Right. He helped
to secure the election of Louis Napoleon as President
of the Republic, without any presentiment of his
becoming the future Emperor. He imagined that he
would be able to control him by his own superior
mental power. He did not know that this phlegmatic
believer in his star, would be ready to send him to
prison or into exile, in order to make himself master
of France, and that the most able parliamentary dis-
course would have no more weight with him than his
oath, in hindering him from usurpation. This was
the great political mistake of Thiers' life, into which
he was led by a patriotic dread of the perils of
socialism. Associated for the time with men of the
Right in granting to the Catholic Church dangerous
privileges, which he supposed to be the only safe-
guards for social order, he helped to hand over,
in great part public instruction to the clergy. He
thus became the powerful ally of the Abbe Dupan-
loup (just about to be made Bishop of Orleans), who
was the prime mover of the commission which pro-
duced that fatal legislation. The future bishop little
dreamed then that he would become one of Thiers'
most determined opponents.

Thiers was also at this time one of the promoters

THIERS. 17

of the great change in the electoral law, which was
almost equivalent to the suppression of universal
suffrage. Prince Napoleon, who was already medita-
ting his coup d'etat, strongly approved of this measure.
He laughed in his sleeve — he who laughed but seldom
— as he thought how easily he could get the upper
hand of an Assembly which had lost credit with the
people. He reserved it to himself to restore to them
universal suffrage, as a gift of his joyous accession.
Thus, when on the eve of the crime of the 2nd of
December, Thiers, foreseeing too late what was im-
pending, besought the Assembly to forget its divisions
for the sake of imperilled parliamentary liberty, his
agitated, impassioned pleadings (which ring in my
ears to-day) found no echo from the Left ; and a few
days later, when the agent of police came to seize him
in his bed, and send him off to the frontier, he learned
how dear it costs to place confidence in men who are
fatalists about their own fortunes, and who deem
themselves entitled, as the fulfillers of destiny, to wrest
the laws to their own advantage.

IV.

During the early years of the Empire, M. Thiers
remained in retirement, and completed his history of
the Consulate and of the First Empire. From 1852
to 1862 a leaden pall seemed to hang over France.
With a fettered press, a tribune almost voiceless, or

3

1 8 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

at least without an echo, since the reproduction in
full of the legislative debates was forbidden, public
opinion had no longer any organ. The Empire
strove to lull it to sleep by encouraging material
interests, and seeking to develop the wealth of the
nation, though not without recourse to the artifices
familiar to speculative adventurers, the condottieri of
the Bourse, those great thieves who are not incarcer-
ated simply because they filch their millions, but
who, if they carried on the same operations for small
sums, would not escape judicial prosecution.

The Crimean war and the war in Italy lent some
eclat to the new regime. They were unavailing, how-
ever, to arrest the fatal consequences which must
necessarily flow from its principle. Personal govern-
ment, capricious and changeable as the will or the
health of a man, must needs share in the weaknesses
of the sovereign. Napoleon III. was the most dan-
gerous autocrat who could govern a great country.
Capable of a kind of generosity, he altogether ignored
the distinction between good and evil. It could not
be said that he was immoral ; he knew no morality.
The sworn enemy of liberal institutions, he had kept
from his youth, as a carbonaro, a certain revolutionary
or socialist bent which impelled him to flatter the
democratic instinct, and to support himself by the
masses against the cultivated classes. In this, how-
ever, he was but following the traditions of Caesarism.
In his foreign policy he aimed only at theatrical

THIERS. 19

effects ; he wished to astonish the world, and to con-
tinue the Napoleonic legend, though he could not
make the slightest pretension to the genius of the
head of his race. He threw his heart only into the
Italian cause ; to this he subordinated everything ex-
cept his wild dreams of greatness, which took form
now in the establishment of a great Catholic Empire
in Mexico, now in the restoration of Poland by means
of a Congress, the mere proposal of which made
Prussia his enemy for ever.

These dreams, which cost very dear to the country,
prevented his paying any attention to the spoliations
which were threatening Denmark, and securing to
himself the alliance of England. He thus took the
most effectual means of clearing the way for the
ambitious schemes of Prussia. He was the very man
predestined to be the miserable dupe of so skilful a
player as Bismarck. The latter, after deluding Napo-
leon with vain promises, drove him into such a corner
after Sadowa, that he might have declared war upon
him at any moment, while appearing all the while to
be himself the offended party.

From i860 it became evident that it was a terrible
thing for France to bear Caesar and his fortune, and
that the vessel of the State might well founder or go
to pieces under such a load. Public opinion awoke
under the goad of apprehension. M. Thiers, who had
been nominated deputy for Paris in the elections of
1863, became the leader of the Opposition. Every

20 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS,

one of his speeches was like the blow of a heavy bat-
tering ram upon the citadel of Napoleonic despotism.
He completely demolished its system of internal
policy by his great speech on the principles of true
liberty; he cast a pitiless light upon the confusion
and extravagance of its finance, and rose to an almost
prophetic height, when he attempted to show the
abyss into which its foreign policy was dragging the
country. His eloquence on this occasion, without
losing anything of its clearness and homely sim-
plicity, assumed a new dignity and breadth. The
effect produced by him on the public mind at this
time was very great, and he was supported by such
orators as Jules Favre, Jules Simon, and Berryer.
In vain did the Empire rear itself like a Colossus,
armed with all the material resources of the country ;
it tottered visibly before this handful of men, who had
only right upon their side. The words of Thiers
were but a light, impalpable breath upon the lips,
but before that breath the giant faltered. Never was
there a clearer instance of the influence of purely
moral force.

On one point, however, Thiers had separated from
his colleagues in the Opposition. He supported, with
all his strength, the cause of the temporal power of
the papacy, in the first instance, undoubtedly, because
he knew that the one-time conspirator of the Papal
States (now Emperor), was intensely opposed to it ;
and secondly, because the pontifical sovereignty was

THIERS. 21

connected in his mind with that concordatory union
between Church and State, which he had extolled in his
history of the Consulate and the Empire. This was
one of the weak points of his political theory. Him-
self a believer in the spiritual, and very far removed
from anything like irreverence with regard to religion,
he nevertheless considered it primarily, from a social
point of view, as an instrument, if not of government,
at least of maintaining public peace and morality,
provided it was under the control of the civil power.
The Concordat, concluded by Napoleon I. with Pius
VII., seemed to him one of the grandest acts of the
First Consul. And yet none knew better than he,
that this so-called pacification had led to the most
fierce and perilous conflicts between the two powers.

M. Thiers never regarded the relations of Church
and State in any other than a political light. One
day, in the President's palace at Versailles, we heard
him make the following remark in reference to
Henry IV. : " Was there ever anything more ad-
mirable than the sight of this great king, giving peace
to France by the Edict of Nantes, while himself turn-
ing Catholic ? And the best of all is, that while
turning Catholic, he still remained Protestant!"

It is evident that Thiers speaks of religion, or
rather of the establishment of religion in modern
Europe, much as Cicero might have spoken in his
Tusculans. The convictions of the individual were
lost sight of by him in the interests of the com-

22 CONTEMPORA R Y FOR TRA ITS.

munity. The eloquence and zeal which he displayed
in maintaining the cause of the temporal power
were keenly appreciated by Pope Pius IX. M.
Thiers used to tell a very good story which shows
that the great Infallible could unbend on occasion,
and that beneath the stole of the ardent devotee
there still lingered something of the acute Italian
diplomatist.

" What gratitude do we not owe to M. Thiers," he
said one day to a French visitor, after one of the
illustrious orator's great speeches in support of the
papal cause. " We have only one thing more to
wish for him — that he were himself a believer in
Catholic doctrines. And yet," he went on, after a
short silence, " if he had faith, he might perhaps
do me less service."

Thiers was, in truth, destitute of the Catholic faith;
and he sometimes found his client of Rome very
embarrassing. At the time of the affair of little
Mortara, the young Jew, who was stolen away from
his parents to be baptized by force in a Roman
Convent, he said to a vehement prelate who was
defending the crime in the name of God : " How dare
you bring the name of God into such a scandalous
affair ? If, in order to be a Christian, it is necessary
to convert souls by force, then God is no Christian,
for He has not yet suppressed the Queen of England,
who is the powerful protector of what you regard as
most dangerous heresy."

THIERS. 23

M. Thiers would not, indeed, have ventured from
the tribune of the legislative body, on such open
criticism of one of the maddest acts of the papacy in
modern times. He only expressed himself thus freely
in his own salon. None but those who heard him
there could fully appreciate the remarkable versa-
tility and fruitfulness of his mind. There, surrounded
by reproductions of the masterpieces of painting and
sculpture, he discoursed on all subjects, from the
fine arts, of which he was a passionate admirer, to the
most abstruse questions of home and foreign policy,
which he illumined by the vivid flashes of his wit.
In happy sallies, in tons motsy in piquant anecdotes,
he was inexhaustible. Standing in the chimney
corner, he would go over his recollections, in which
all the contemporary men of note figured in turn.
He never assumed anything ; his bonJwmie was
charming and full of kindliness.

Every evening his salon was open to all the
eminent men of the country and of the age. It was
a great European rendezvous. The most distinguished
members of the corps diplomatique deemed it an
honour to resort there frequently. At midnight,
when the circle had drawn closer, the old man still
dazzled his intimate friends by the brilliancy of his
conversation. This salon of Place St. Georges was
a veritable political power under the Empire.

We all know what supreme efforts M. Thiers put
forth, from love of his country, to save the Empire

24 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

from its last fatal error. The war against Prussia
seemed to him from the first, the most criminal folly.
Those who were present at the famous session of
July 15th, 1870, will never forget the spectacle of the
great citizen exhausting himself in opposition to a
furious Assembly, in the attempt to save his country
from a mad act, the disastrous issues of which he too
clearly foresaw. Railed at by the band of Bona-
partists, who tried to stifle his voice in their passion-
ate eagerness for this war, since their only hope was
to drown reviving liberty in blood, he fought to the
end. One of his friends found him, when the sitting
was over, bathed in tears. He had obeyed the
dictates of the purest patriotism. He knew, more-
over, more than he could tell. Two days later he
avowed, in a circle of intimate friends, his certain
knowledge that the military preparations of France
were inadequate to the struggle. When the first
disasters followed one another with the rapidity of
lightning, the Empress herself felt constrained to
have recourse to him to save the nation in distress.
It was too late. He tried, however, after Sedan, to
get the Government of National Defence nominated
by the Legislative body, so that it might not appear
revolutionary. Two days after the movement of the
4th of September, he complained bitterly of the
vacillation of that middle party, which in the follow-
ing years was to do so much mischief to France by
its indecision and intrigues. Immediately on the

THIERS. 25

accession of the new power which had swept away
the Empire, M. Thiers accepted unhesitatingly the
painful mission of seeking an alliance for his unhappy
country. Nothing could be more disheartening than
his unavailing quest throughout Europe ; but nothing
reflects more honour on his memory.

V.

We shall pass briefly over the latter part of the life N
of the great citizen, for it is fresh in the recollection of
all. We shall confine ourselves chiefly to that which
is least generally known. Brilliant as had been the
career of M. Thiers hitherto as an orator and a states-
man, it now assumed a new element of greatness.
Nominated to the National Assembly by twenty-three
Departments, he was designated by France herself to
guide her destinies in her hour of supreme peril.
Whatever might be the divisions of the National As-
sembly on questions of government, all must yield to
the exigencies of public safety. The situation was a
terrible one. A third of the country was desolated
by the horrors of a most cruel invasion. An army
of three hundred thousand men was held captive in
Germany ; another army was scattered over Switzer-
land. The army of the National Defence, which had
saved the honour of the country by its resistance,
was disorganised. Peace with the foreigner must be
treated for with the knife to the throat ; while at

26 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

home the spirit of faction was muttering threaten-
ingly, especially in Paris itself, the working population
of which had been completely unhinged by their
brave endurance of five months of siege. The name
of M. Thiers was forced upon the Parliament. His
first task was to conclude peace with an enemy of
unbounded resources, who knew to what a condition
unhappy France was reduced. It was, indeed, as we
have heard M. Thiers relate, a time of terrible
struggle, in which he tried to contest with Germany
the possession of a strip of frontier, and, among
other places, of that town of Belfort, without which the
country would have been left open, and incapable of
defending itself against the most formidable aggres-
sions. It was a drama of history. Bismarck appeared
at first inexorable. In order the better to defend him-
self against the patriotic determination of M. Thiers,
he called in the Prussian staff, with its illustrious
chief, Von Moltke, and finally the king himself.
There was one moment when M. Thiers declared
that he should withdraw, and that he preferred even
the most desperate struggle to a treaty which left the
sword of Germany in the side of France. He suc-
ceeded, however, in saving Belfort, and signed with
bitter mortification the treaty for that mutilation of
his country which he had done all in his power to
avert by his resistance to the most insane of wars.

Strangely enough, the two combatants in this
very unequal diplomatic contest, judged each other

THIERS. 27

favourably. M. Thiers appreciated in M. Bismarck
the political artist, so to speak. He admired his
genius, the abrupt simplicity of his language, his only
tactics being an almost cynical frankness. Bismarck
had too much perception not to enjoy the most
remarkable talker of his time. It is said that at
their first interview at Versailles, in discussing the
preliminaries of an armistice in October, 1870, he
said suddenly to M. Thiers, " Let us return to civilisa-
tion." He wished to resume one of the unrestrained
conversations of former times. The representative of
conquered France was not in a mood to divert his
terrible interlocutor. Bismarck, seeing that M. Thiers
was worn out and exhausted, urged him to rest upon
his own couch, and himself covered him with a
mantle. He remained unyielding, however, on all
the great points at issue. France had to cede Alsace
and Lorraine, and to consent to a ransom of four
milliards.

The treaty being concluded, M. Thiers had next to
get it accepted by the Assembly, and then to carry
it out. We must refer the reader to M. Jules Simon's
book for all that relates to the great financial opera-
tion, by which M. Thiers contrived to redeem and
to free the territory of France without bringing about
any monetary and financial crisis. He was more
proud of this than of any other achievement of his
life, and never wearied of talking of it.

Hardly had the peace been signed when Paris had

28 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

to be rescued from the most formidable insurrection
of modern times. The war against the Commune
was conducted with as much prudence as vigour, and
if there were some terrible acts of reprisal in the first
moments of victory, when the incendiary fires kindled
by brigands were still raging, when the blood of the
hostages was reeking around, and when from more
than one house in the faubourgs shots were fired on
the soldiers, the Government must not be held re-
sponsible for these deeds of vengeance. It passed no
condemnations en masse, and M. Thiers was always
for measures of humanity.

The political question began from this time to pre-
sent itself in all its gravity to the National Assembly.
The majority of that Assembly was Royalist, and it had
hoped to find an instrument to carry out its views in
the head of the executive power, formerly so bitter
against the Republic. His old Orleanist friends, who
had recognised him as their head in the struggle
against the Empire, had no doubt of his support. He
began by declaring that he believed it to be his duty,
and the duty of all, to adjourn the question of the
form of government. In his memorable speech of
the 17th of February, 1871, he said : "Can there be
any one here who will dare to discuss learnedly the
articles of the Constitution, while our prisoners are
dying miserably in distant countries, or while our
people at home, themselves perishing of hunger, are
obliged to give to foreign soldiers their last remaining

THIERS, 29

morsel of bread ? When we have lifted from the
earth where he lies prostrate, the noble wounded
soldier whom we call France ; when we have bound
up his wounds, and revived his fainting strength ;
when he has come to himself and finds he can again
breathe freely, then, indeed, it will be time for him
to see how he shall live. Then when, under the
Government of the Republic, we have effected our
reconstitution, we shall have some ground to go upon
in deciding our future destinies."

M. Thiers had already arrived at his own decision,
and there are few of his public acts which deserve
more grateful recognition, than the promptitude with
which he sacrificed his own political preferences, and
threw himself heartily into the cause of the Re-
public. He gave a very conclusive reason for this
adherence to the Republic, when counselling all good
citizens to take the same course. " There is but one
throne," he said, " and there are three men who wish
to sit upon it, which is impossible ! "

This witty sally was unanswerable, and the reason
given was undoubtedly that which forced an Assembly,
very anti - republican in its majority, to found the
Republic. For it was not enough to be simply a
Monarchist. The choice had to be made between
Legitimists, Orleanists, and Bonapartists, and thus
the Monarchical majority became a house divided
against itself. It could only agree in the attempt to
undermine the power of M. Thiers. It could not pre-

30 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

vail against him so long as the territory was not
liberated, but it never ceased to place difficulties in
his way, and to hinder his work of reparation, entail-
ing upon him arduous conflicts in Parliament, at the
very time when he was bearing the burden of the
liberation and reconstitution of the country. No one
has described better than M. Simon what was at this
time the life of M. Thiers. He says : " M. Thiers had
to do with everything. All despatches passed under
his eyes. He endeavoured to watch, minute by minute,
the state of France and of Europe. During all the
struggle with the Commune, he was seen every day
at the foremost posts. His soul was absorbed in the
triple conflict with the Commune, the German Chan-
cellor, and the Assembly. By his strength of will and
his remarkable penetration, he proved himself ade-
quate to all. He was thoroughly master of himself,
and could keep a cheerful face while his mind was
oppressed with the heaviest weight of business. He
could never have stood the incessant strain and de-
mand upon him but for this natural light-heartedness,
which enabled him rapidly to recover calmness and
vivacity. He was, indeed, a rare man, as great and
as attractive in the intimacy of private life as in his
public career." 1

It must be admitted that M. Thiers was often mis-
taken in his views of foreign policy ; that he was too

1 " Le Gouvernement de M. Thiers," vol. ii. p. 241.

THIERS. 31

averse to the great reforms which were needful for
restoring a country that had been so despoiled ; that
he was too faithful to the system of protection in the
matter of imposts, and too much attached to the
old organisation of the army. In fact, he was un-
willing for any change in this direction, especially in
the law for recruiting the army.

But what are his errors in comparison to the vast
services he rendered to the nation ? Nor was it on
account of those errors that he was overthrown on
the 24th of May, for they were shared by most of his
adversaries. That which they could not forgive him
was his ever-increasingly hearty recognition of the
Republic, on which he had thrown great eclat by his
Presidential message of November, 1872. That day
his fall was decided. His enemies only waited till
the liberation of the territory should be complete.

The very day after the Assembly had voted that
M. Thiers had deserved well of his country, the
coalition was inaugurated which led to the famous
and scandalous transactions of the 24th of May.
History has not on record a more flagrant act of in-
gratitude. Its results strangely balked the hopes of
its authors, for they had the effect of giving to the
Republican party, the cohesion and caution to which
it owed its success three years later. Never had M.
Thiers risen to such a height of eloquence as in the
proud speech which preceded the final vote. Two
days later some friends came to bring him the ex-

32 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

pression of their admiration and sympathy in that
Presidential palace of Versailles, all solitary and
deserted, from which the liberator of the territory of
France, the saviour of the country, was being driven
out, as it were, by the impatient hatred of those
enemies of the Republic whose impotence would
bring its own Nemesis.

Thiers was even greater in retirement than in
power. He remained the respected leader of the Re-
publican party. It was to him men looked for the
decisive word in critical moments. Even from the
grave his voice made itself heard in his electoral
manifesto against the coalition of the 16th of May,
published after his death. He worked up to
the last hour of life. He fell at his post on the
battle-field, spending his last breath for his beloved
country.

France showed the extent of her gratitude at the
funeral of the great citizen. Thousands of men with
tearful faces gathered around his bier, and repressed
their indignation under unworthy provocations, in
order to do honour to his memory by a last act of
patriotic self-restraint.

There is something almost overwhelming in the
retrospect of M. Thiers' indefatigable activity through
his long life, and of all that has resulted from it. No
one understood better how to make good use of time.
He rose every day at five. When he was in power,
he would take the morning hours, when he was sure

THIERS. 33

not to be disturbed, for the preparation of his
speeches, or for the more important affairs of home
or foreign policy. He gave audiences at the most
unlikely hours.

After his return to private life, he devoted himself
uninterruptedly till noon, to his labours as a writer.
In the afternoon he went to the Chamber, and regu-
larly took a siesta from six to eight in the evening.
After dinner with his guests, he would hold a recep-
tion till midnight, always standing, always animated,
sparkling with wit, affable and unassuming. Gracious
and kindly to all, he was particularly affectionate to
his friends, and never forgot an act of friendship or
devotion to himself or to his cause. He bore no
malice against his enemies ; he now and then gave
a witty thrust at them, more or less cutting, but he
knew how to forget the gravest wrongs. At the time
of the nomination of the seventy-five irremovable
senators to the National Assembly, there was an un-
derstanding between the Left and the Extreme Right
which detested the Orleanists even more than the
Republicans. One of the senators of this party had
distinguished himself by his abusive speeches against
M. Thiers. " Thiers will never give me his vote," he
said to one of his friends. Thiers sent word to him
that he might count upon his vote. " The next day,"
said the old President of the Republic, " I saw this
same senator coming to me with a smile which was
almost as affectionate as an embrace."

34 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

" Well, yes," I said to him, " I will vote for you ;
you see I am capable of anything." This fine irony
was all his revenge.

One cannot sufficiently admire the energy dis-
played by this old man, in appearance so frail. His
features had nothing remarkable in themselves, but
his sensitive, intellectual face became irresistibly at-
tractive in conversation.

He will live in history as the Thiers of the great
days of blood and anguish, those days when he stood
forth as the saviour of his country in distress. This is
the Thiers whom we have represented with rare power
in the admirable portrait by Bonnat. This is the
Thiers who was named with acclamation by the ma-
jority of the Chamber of Deputies in the month of
June, 1877, when one of the most maladroit Ministers
of the 1 6th of May had the impertinence to pay homage
to the Monarchists of the National Assembly, for the
liberation of the territory. More than three hundred
deputies sprang to their feet as one man, and pointing
to the illustrious old patriot, exclaimed : " There sits
the liberator of France ! " No one could look on dry-
eyed at such a scene. Thiers himself shed tears.
Such an hour outweighs much calumny.

One of M. Thiers' last labours was the great philo-
sophical work on which he had been long engaged.
He constantly spoke of it in conversation. His aim
was to oppose with all his energy the school of materi-
alistic transformation, which banishes God alike from

THIERS. 35

nature and history. It was to refute this, which ap-
peared to him the most noxious error, that he entered
on an extensive study of the natural sciences, gather-
ing around him their most eminent representatives.
He did not himself rise above deism. Full of
respect for the religion of Christ, he yet did not cross
the barrier which divides theism from supernatural
religion. But his faith in God was full and strong, and
in his preparations for its defence, he showed what
importance he attached to it. There is something
grand in this absorption of the mind of the great
statesman, at the close of life, in such a theme.

The memory of Thiers remains dear and sacred to
all who had the happiness and honour of his friend-
ship. His name is inscribed in letters of gold on
the annals of his country — that country which he
so passionately loved, so courageously warned of its
danger, so faithfully served and so gloriously saved.

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN
COUNCIL.

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE
VATICAN COUNCIL.

THE signal triumph achieved by Ultramontanism
at the Vatican Council was no sudden success.
It was the denoument of a cunningly contrived
policy which had been at work from the beginning of
the century. Of the importance of the end attained
there can be no doubt; and we shall find much of
interest in tracing the steps which led up to it. )

Cardinal Consalvi said one day to Niebuhr, refer-
ring to the designs of the Roman Curia, " The desired
result is not to be reached directly by way of the
Corso ; it can only be arrived at by oblique paths."
The able counsellor of Pius VII. characterised in
these words the proceedings of the Curia up to
the time of Pius IX. During the last twenty years,
it has been able to cast aside concealment and
finesse, and to advance boldly by the Corso, as
by a new Appian way. Recent documents throw
a clear light upon these tactics of the leaders of
the Ultramontane party in both phases — first that
of intrigue, and next of bold and triumphant advance.
The excellent book published by M. Friedrich, of

40 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

Munich, the eminent disciple of Dollinger, on the
history of the preparation of the Council, places
within our reach abundant and reliable sources of
information, by means of which we may trace the
progress of one of the most astonishing enterprises
of the papacy, one which has succeeded in trans-
forming, in less than a century, the spirit and the
institutions of a Church distinguished above all others
for its Conservatism.1

This is the climax of the drama of the age, for the
close of the century will be occupied with conflicts
between the Church and the State, arising out of this
dangerous triumph. The death of Pius IX., after he
had accomplished this great work, was but an unim-
portant incident. It is of great moment for the
representatives of modern society to know the
adversary they have to contend with. No power has
understood better than the Roman Curia how to
bend to the necessities of the time, without renounc-
ing its principle, and how to make itself all things to
all men, while remaining really unchanged. At one
time it appears as the avowed ally of the ancien
regime, the moving genius of the Holy Alliance ; at

1 " Geschichte des Vatikanischen Konzils," by J. Friedrich.
See also " L'Etat Moderne et PEglise Catholique en Alle-
magne," by Ernest Stroehlin ; also M. Geffcken's able work,
" Staat und Kirche in ihrem Verhaltniss entwickelt."3 I have
made use of many other works referring to the Council, which
I need not enumerate.

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 41

another it apparently espouses democracy, adopts its
methods and maxims, and learns to assail the Revo-
lution with its own weapons. Now the Roman party
is humble, pliant — serpit humi ; it twines round its
foe rather than strikes at it, because it feels itself sus-
pected and detested ; again it commands, threatens,
inflames popular passion, or lets itself be borne
along by the strong waves of an insensate reaction.
Patiens quia ceturnns. If its webs break away from
one point, it immediately gathers up the broken
threads and fastens them elsewhere. The State is far
less wary ; after resisting vehemently the encroach-
ments of the Church, it allows itself to be diverted
and surprised. Its adversary never slumbers or
sleeps ; it takes advantage of an unguarded moment
on the part of a Minister, to slip into the nomination
papers of a bishop, an equivocal clause infringing the
civil rights. The reader needs to have before his
eyes a comprehensive picture, or a powerful resume of
all the proceedings of the ecclesiastical policy, in
order to form any idea of the subtlety with which all
has been contrived to ensure success.

I.

At the close of the eighteenth century, the Catholic
Church was in great part freed from Ultramontane
influences. In the principal countries of Europe the
civil power had offered a steady opposition to it, and

42 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

one Pope had even gone so far as to condemn the
Society of Jesus. That society had found itself com-
pelled to quit France, though it had endeavoured to
bend before the storm. There were even a certain
number of its members who, hoping to save their
order, gave their adherence to the declaration of 1682.
It is said that the unhappy signataries affected not to
read the document which was presented to them, and
asked with an air of indifference, " if there was any-
thing more to sign." " Yes," was the answer, " there
is still the Koran, but we have not a copy at hand."
Nothing could show more clearly how thoroughly
humiliated were these defenders to the death of the
Holy See. Expelled from France and Spain, their
system was completely broken up in Austria and in
Italy by Joseph II., who established not only the in-
dependence but the autocracy of the State in religious
matters. The old French clergy, on emerging from
the vortex of the Revolution, had not become Ultra-
montane, though they had nobly resisted the schism
organised by the civil constitution of the clergy.
They remained, for the most part, attached to that
modified Gallicanism which gave them a peculiar
character, since its close connection with the old
royal family and the old noblesse was not compatible
with the abandonment of the maxims of Old France.
We have all known representatives and descendants
of this distinguished body of the clergy, whom mis-
fortune and persecution had only purified and ennobled.

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 43

There was about them an air of priestly gravity, and
of dignity without arrogance, which marked them out
from all their brethren. They bore no resemblance
to the new generation, so degraded by servitude that
they do not shrink from sullying with sacrilegious
fingers the sacred memory of Bossuet. We have clear
proof of the predominance of Gallican ideas in the
Catholic Church forty years ago, in the language used
in 1829 by the Vicars Apostolic of Great Britain,
before the great Parliamentary Commission charged
with preparing the abolition of the laws restricting
their liberties. They affirmed upon oath "that the
infallibility of the Pope is not an article of faith." I
The doctrine of infallibility was, indeed, positively
denied in the catechisms and theological manuals in
use at that time.

It is, then, a fact capable of proof, that the prevail-
ing doctrine of European Catholicism at the com-
mencement of the century, was not Ultramontanism.
We remember the resistance offered to it by the
Government of the Restoration, in spite of the dan-
gerous favours lavished by that Government on the
Church. Half a century has barely passed away,
and all is changed ; the preponderating influence is
everywhere in the hands of the Roman party. It is
important for us to understand how this change has
been effected, and to see by what a series of efforts,

1 " The Vatican Decrees/' &c, by W. E. Gladstone, p. 36.

44 CONTEMPORAR Y PORTRAITS.

and by what pressure on public opinion, the Roman
Curia has attained its ends.

We have to observe, first of all, that it found facili-
ties not hitherto enjoyed, in the state of men's minds
at the close of the French Revolution. By the mere
fact that the civil power had not only renounced its
role of protector of the Church, but had also lifted up
its arm against it in violent and unjust persecutions,
the Church was led to seek the support of the Holy
See. It had no longer to deal with an orthodox
royalty which was always ready to defend it, and to
bestow endless favours in return for its submission.
Now that the old institutions had fallen, all their
abuses were forgotten ; a veil of poetry was thrown
over their ruins. The soul, wearied with so many
shocks, and with the tears and blood of the days of
the Revolution, turned with relief to the past, and
idealised it. Thus arose that romantic school, en-
amoured of everything mediaeval, which made the
fortune of the Genie dn Christianisme, and which
under Schlegel and Gorres founded the Munich
School, which exercised a great influence over an
emasculated generation, and created a strong reaction
against the liberal idea of the modern State.

The Roman Curia was not satisfied with these
general influences favourable to its views. It had a
definite plan, and its skill was exercised in bringing
every influence to bear upon it. It knew how to take
advantage of circumstances, and how to call them

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 45

forth. Its action was twofold — by turns political and
moral ; sometimes the Roman Curia would negotiate
with the powers ; sometimes it would endeavour to
create an opinion favourable to itself.

The Concordats which have been concluded in our
time between the Holy See and the various Govern-
ments, have almost always been used by the papacy
to secure great and important advantages ; for, as
they were negotiated generally with powers having
but a slight acquaintance with ecclesiastical affairs,
and averse, either from pride or from jealousy of their
own authority, from consulting the national episcopate,
the papacy took large advantage of their ignorance.
This statement may perhaps seem surprising, at a
time when the Concordat is regarded in France as
the great bulwark against the encroachments of the
clergy ; but the explanation of this is that the Con-
cordat is generally confounded with the legislation
of Germinal Year X., which the First Consul drew up
entirely by himself, without having consulted the Holy
Father on this postscriptum, in which he embodied
all his own views, with very little regard to the
spiritual independence. To this he put his signature.
The Pope had only consented to the Concordat, and
the few concessions which he had made touching
the unity of religion and the temporalities of the
Church, were largely counterbalanced by the right
he had obtained for the first time, of dismissing
bishops — a right altogether at variance with the an-

46 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

cient constitution of the Church, which was based
upon the Divine institution of the episcopate. It
was the First Consul who had urged him to reduce
the number of the dioceses. He showed himself by
this act a strange disciple of Bossuet, whose name
was perpetually on his lips. " It was the author of
the Concordat," said Lamennais in 1819, "who made
the Pope the supreme head of the pastoral order, and
the source of the jurisdiction of the Church." The
Concordat concluded with the King of Prussia in
1812, secured enormous advantages to the Court of
Rome ; the Concordats signed in 1865 by the
Grand Duke of Baden and the King of Wiirtemburg
went so far in this direction that they were met with
invincible opposition in the parliaments of the two
countries.

The Roman Curia has had to treat not only with
princes, but with that modern democracy which can
but excite its antipathy. Its great art has been to
derive advantage from it even while condemning it, by
turning to its own account the liberal institutions
which had triumphed in spite of papal resistance.

The papacy formally anathematised these institu-
tions in principle, as when Gregory XVI. condemned,
in the Encyclical of 1833, the doctrines of" L'Avenir"
as presented by Lamennais, their fervid apostle ; but
it deemed it well afterwards to observe a prudent
silence, in order that its champions might secure to
themselves again, under the broad shield of liberty,

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 47

immunities which they could no longer hold as
privileges. It was quite willing that its partisans
should assume for a time the garb of sincere Liberals,
since this gave more potency to their claims. Ultra-
montanism, under their advocacy, appeared shorn of
all that could be antipathetic to the modern mind,
and was represented as the guarantee of religious
liberty, in opposition to the injurious pretensions of
the State. We know with what noble eloquence and
courageous loyality, Lacordaire and Montalembert
played their part, the former in his white Dominican
robe at Notre Dame, the latter from the tribune of
the Chamber of Peers. The result of this brilliant
campaign was the too famous law of 185 1, giving
liberty of teaching, which introduced the episcopate
into the Superior Council of Public Instruction, handed
over' in great part primary education to the religious
bodies, and practically removed the barriers to the
re-establishment of the religious orders, foremost
among whom came the Jesuits.

After the establishment of the Second Empire all
was changed. The Ultramontane party, which until
then had appeared united in its Liberal demonstra-
tions, suddenly broke up into two factions at deadly
warfare with each other. On the one hand were
the Ultramontane Liberals, who continued to seek to
reconcile Catholicism with modern liberties ; on the
other hand was a phalanx of Ultramontanes, the
sworn enemies of all liberties except their own.

48 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

These, after hailing with acclamation the Dictator-
ship of December 2nd, shook off the dust of their
feet against the whole social system created by the
Revolution. For a long time Liberal Catholicism
remained in the ascendant. It had in its favour the
services it had rendered, and the patriotic attitude it
had assumed towards the personal power. It was
none the less doomed to defeat ; for by exalting the
authority of the Pope it had sealed its own sentence.
When Montalembert ventured to vindicate religious
liberty at the Congress of Malines, as a principle, and
not merely as a concession to the exigencies of the
times, the Encyclical of 1864 and the Syllabus were
brought to bear upon him and upon his school, with
all their crushing weight.

Ultramontanism had its reckoning with the Liberals
of its party, after making use of them for its own
purposes. Montalembert and Lacordaire both died,
bitterly lamenting that all the devotion, zeal and
talent they had expended in the cause of religion,
had only ended in the destruction of liberty. They
had been made tools of by a hand stronger than their
own.

We know with what consummate art the Belgian
Ultramontanes contrived to use liberty as a means of
securing to themselves all the posts of power, till the
time came when they could turn round and say:
" The house is ours ; it is for you to begone."

They were powerfully aided in their work by the

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 49

sincere Liberals among them who represented the
school of " L'Avenir." Nowhere have these tactics
been more successfully employed than in Germany.
Wise and moderate views had gained a great as-
cendancy there at the commencement of the cen-
tury, owing to the remarkable development of true
scientific culture in some of the universities, beyond
the narrow precincts of the seminaries. Bishops like
Dalberg of Mayence and Wissemberg of Constance,
there represented the tradition of the great Gallican
Councils. Thoughtful statesmen imbued with the
modern spirit, like Count Montgelas, the able Bava-
rian Minister, had firmly maintained the rights of the
State. It had been difficult to assail their position in
ordinary times ; the formidable agitation which broke
out in 1848 presented a more favourable opportunity
for successfully urging the claims of Ultramontanism.
The heads of the party did not hesitate a moment
to throw themselves into the democratic movement
which led to the Frankfort Parliament. There they
made common cause with the advanced Left, asking,
as the people's representatives, the entire separation of
the Church from the State, and endeavouring to place
the liberties which alone they had at heart, under the
shelter of the general liberties claimed by the demo-
crats. They hoped thus to checkmate the State, and
to secure the interests of religion. " Let the civil
power," said the Archbishop of Cologne to his clergy,
" still lend us its support, but not fetter us any further

5

50 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

in the fulfilment of our mission. Let us have no more
placets, no more appeals against abuses, no more
nominations to benefices, no more lay schools." A
petition, to which were affixed more than 300,000
signatures, besought the Frankfort Parliament to
put the Church again under the common law. The
orators of the party got themselves applauded by the
most advanced members, and secured by a large
majority the all but absolute liberty of the Church, as
one of the fundamental articles of the constitution of
the Empire. It is true that they could not prevent
the Parliament from secularising the schools and
rendering civil marriage obligatory ; hence the Roman
party faced round with incredible rapidity ; and while
claiming to keep what they had gained, took advan-
tage of the reaction that had set in in Bavaria, to
demand from the Congress of Wiirzburg the recension
of the few clauses favourable to the civil power, that
had been passed at Frankfort. The Roman party
has never ceased from that time to play the same
double game in every one of the German States.

In vain at an assembly convoked at Durlach, in the
Grand Duchy of Baden, to resist these encroach-
ments, did the celebrated Hausser, a man equally
distinguished as a historian and a politician, denounce
the Ultramontane proceedings in the following
words : M I know too well that the liberty of the
Church is the illusive watchword beneath which
lies the daring determination to drag back the

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 51

State, if possible, into its former state of servitude.
Ultramontane liberty is not liberty for the State, but
the subordination of the State to the Church." In
spite of all this, the extreme party continued its
noisy, hypocritical demonstrations in favour of demo-
cracy. In the very same Duchy of Baden, in 1869,
it gave its hand to the most advanced democrats, and
clamoured with them for immediate universal suf-
frage, as the inalienable right of the people. " The
needs of the age," said Canon Lasker, " are in accord-
ance with the designs of Providence." " Society will
never be saved," exclaims another fanatic of the
same party, " but by the alliance of Christianity with
democracy."

The same tactics were pursued in Wiirtemburg,
with this difference — that, at the very moment when
the Ultramontanes were making a compact with the
Republicans, they were also practising secretly with
the opposite party. All their sympathies were really
in this direction, for while they flattered the democracy,
they hated it at heart, and utterly repudiated its
essential principle, which is that sovereignty is con-
ferred by the people, instead of having its seat on the
cloudy heights of a divine right.

The proceedings of the Ultramontanes in Switzer-
land in 1848 form one of the most curious episodes of
this crusade. They had chosen the canton of Lucerne
as their battle-field ; their chief aim was to obtain
from the Great Council the reintegration of the

5 2 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

Jesuits, in order that the instruction of the people
might be handed over to them. The task was a diffi-
cult one, for they had not only to contend with local
obstacles, but also to enter into conflict with most of
the confederated cantons. Tn relation to the incidents
of this struggle, we have documentary authority which
cannot be disputed, namely, the report of the ecclesi-
astical condition of Switzerland presented by Bishop
Luchet, the Pope's envoy extraordinary. From this
we learn that Ultramontane fanaticism would not
bow even to the sovereignty of the Holy Father,
when it received from Rome counsels of prudence and
moderation. It was by unscrupulously stirring up
the popular passions that the friends of the Jesuits,
headed by Councillor Leu (who was afterwards assas-
sinated), obtained a favourable vote from the Great
Council, with this modifying clause — that the State
reserved to itself the right of inspecting the schools ; a
condition nullified at the same time that it was given
by a secret clause, in which the reverend fathers de-
clared that they could not in any way infringe the
rules of their order. The ratification of the people
was secured by means of a succession of open-air
meetings, at which the new leaguers gave impassioned
harangues, blending threats of hell with inflammatory
appeals tc the populace. The episcopate had not
power to resist, and was forced to yield to the pressure
of misguided popular opinion. The attitude of the
Protestant cantons presaged a fearful civil war. The

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 53

venerable Metternich counselled adjournment ; the
Nuncios of Lucerne and of Paris gave the same
advice, which was confirmed by the Court of Rome.
The Ultramontane agitators ventured to intercept the
warnings of the Holy Father. The Nuncio of Lucerne
could not restrain his indignation when he heard
Father Roth, the superior of the Jesuits in the canton,
declare that civil war did not terrify him. " What ! "
exclaimed the Roman prelate. " The Church bids us
ask in its prayers to be delivered from famine, from
pestilence, and from war, and here is a priest who
clamours for war ! " War did, in fact, break out — that
impious war which pitted against each other Protes-
tant and Catholic Switzerland. If it was promptly
brought to an end, thanks to the clever manoeuvres
of an able and humane general, it was nevertheless
a great crime, for which those fanatics are responsible
who made the crucifix a firebrand to kindle civil dis-
order.

The war of the Sunderbund showed to what lengths
this blending of fanaticism with democracy might
lead, creating a new order of Jacobins, who could don
the bonnet rouge without doffing the frock.

II.

The Ultramontane school was not content with
turning the general liberties to the account of its own
policy. When it failed to wring from the modern

54 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

governments the concessions it desired, it made use
of the democratic element in another way. It bor-
rowed democratic methods of propagandism, when it
no longer thought it necessary to swell the ravings of
militant radicalism. In old Europe the Ultramon-
tane school endeavoured to win over the minds of
men, by learned or subtle dissertations ; it flung dusty
folios at the heads of its adversaries, and only the
erudite could take part in the discussion. But in our
day, doctrines the most hostile to modern society, are
defended with the lightest weapons by daring inno-
vators. The dust of the school is shaken off; and St.
Thomas, broken up into small portions and presented
in the form of popular pamphlets, is made singularly
light reading. While heartily abusing the liberty of
the press — which in ex-cathedra parlance is called a
pest — the Ultramontanes nevertheless make large use
of this powerful lever of public opinion. Ultramon-
tanism has its irritating, sardonic press, ever ready to
propagate scandal, seasoning its very theological trea-
tises with the coarsest allusions, and endeavouring to
crush its adversaries by the pitiless ridicule poured upon
them. These proceedings have called forth earnest
protests on the part of thoughtful men, who deem
that religious discussion should be carried on seriously,
and at the very least honestly. Bishops, and the
learned and eloquent guardians of the traditions of
the dignity and high culture of the Church, have at-
tempted to stem the torrent, but in vain ; they have

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 55

only had to retreat, bespattered with foam, and having
drawn down upon themselves the displeasure of Rome.
Lacordaire wrote to Madame Swetchine : " I am
willing to take my place at the feet of the successors
of the apostles, but not at the feet of a band of scof-
fers, who bring everything to the tribunal of their
satirical talent." Alas ! the Ultramontane press ren-
dered greater services to the school which sought to
bring all into a common bondage, than did a noble
spirit like Lacordaire, of whom Lambruschini once
said : " He is another Lamennais." All possible en-
couragement from high quarters was given to this
rabid journalism, of which all noble minds among the
Catholics were heartily ashamed, and which was a dis-
grace to our common humanity. Words of approbation
were followed by papal briefs. The Civilta Cattolica,
the organ of the Society of Jesus, was formally re-
cognised in a Roman congregation. An agency for
Catholic journals was founded in Rome, and more
than two hundred daily and weekly papers were em-
ployed to disseminate sound doctrine and to dictate to
the dioceses. Ultramontane journalism has created a
sort of third order of a new kind. Laymen in short
frocks, and with their sleeves tucked up, are seen enter-
ing like pugilists into ecclesiastical discussions, and
laying down the law for the bishops, whose remon-
strances receive no reply. Mgr. Dupanloup wasted his
eloquence on this subject. The tribunes of the altar
carried the day against the prelates, for they used all

56 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

the means which current polemics put within their
reach, to overthrow those whom they could not con-
vince. It must not be forgotten that the programme
of the last Council was prepared in the offices of the
Civilta Cattolica, and propagated by the Ultramon-
tane press, which exerted an irresistible influence over
public opinion.

One of the great engines of democratic propa-
gandism is association, which is practised on a large
scale, and fostered by noisy meetings. Congresses of
all sorts have been much facilitated by the multi-
plication of rapid modes of communication. The
school which is most averse to modern progress has
not disdained to use these inventions of the devil, and
has utilised them to its own advantage, perhaps more
largely than any other party. There is no more
effectual means of producing an agitation, and of
overcoming inconvenient objections, especially those
which are based on science or conscience, than these
irregular gatherings, in which the voting is not deter-
mined by any fixed rule. It is quite easy to work up
assemblies like these to a white heat, to an almost
delirious fanaticism, and then to make use of them to
bring pressure to bear on the regular authorities of the
Church. This was attempted by the Ultramontane
party in Switzerland and in Germany. The famous
Association, known as the " Pius Verein," founded at
Mayence, and recognised by Pius IX. in 1849, without
any previous sanction from the German episcopate,

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 57

at once raised the standard of the Ultramontane
crusade. Under the direction of laymen, as fanatic
as they were ignorant, and without any competence
to resolve questions of dogma or of discipline, it yet
exerted a widespread and fatal influence. Assem-
bling at regular periods in the great Catholic centres
of Germany, it was not inactive in the interval ;
and by its local associations for works of charity,
for teaching, for the cultivation of religious art,
and the dissemination through the press of right
views, it cast around the Church a network so close,
that it was impossible to break it. The intimidated
bishops were obliged, though often reluctantly, to
submit to its will, and thus it created an irresistible
current of opinion in support of its favourite doctrines.
Enlightened and wise men, like Hirscher, remon-
strated in vain against these irregular, incompetent
assemblies, which set at nought all constituted authori-
ties in their gross adulation of the papacy, and were
enemies alike of science and of true piety. Was it
not their avowed design to form an international
federation, which should cast at the feet of the Holy
See the Churches of all countries, confounding them
in one common servility ? The voice of the great
publicist was wasted on the desert air. The great
jubilee of Boniface, which was celebrated with extra-
ordinary pomp at Mayence, on the 14th December,
1854, raised the agitation to a climax. Switzerland,
in its turn, had its " Pius Verein." At the same time

58 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

France was preparing to found Theological Commit-
tees, and to multiply their congresses, which have
become, as we know, an important feature in the
Ultramontane organisation.

The Catholic Working Men's Clubs, the object of
which is more political than religious, are a power-
ful weapon in the hands of the same party for attack-
ing modern society, which it would fain (to use the
language of one of its lay leaders) conduct to a civil

burial.

III.

Hitherto we have been looking only at the volun-
teers of Ultramontanism, its irregular forces which
have succeeded in leading on the regular army. It is
time now that we turned to the authorised heads of
the Ultramontane school, who are no other than the
heads of the Catholic hierarchy itself in its own
metropolis. These were impatient to be no longer a
school of disputed authority, but to become the Church
itself, and so advance their pretensions as irrefragable
claims. Hence their one object was to secure the pro-
clamation of the dogma of infallibility. Until this was
done their edifice lacked its keystone. In reality, that
which they aimed at was the abolition of all liberty,
of every right and privilege which could counter-
balance or control the central power. For this
purpose it was necessary to sacrifice all secondary
authority for the benefit of the papacy, to destroy
the last vestiges of national Churches, and especially

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 59

to reduce the episcopate to an entirely subordinate
position.

There could be no better way of doing this than a
return to the old, sure method of despots who under-
stood their business — the method which the Caesars
had so cunningly used in Rome, in sacrificing the patri-
cians to the plebs. Modern Ultramontanism closely
followed their example, not scorning to have recourse
to the low but effective policy described in the famous
words: " Pcuiem et circensesr We would be very
careful not to seem to say anything against the bread
of charity ; that is sacred, if only it be broken to all
the hungry, and not made the price for which they
are to sell their consciences. As to the circenses — the
great representations which appeal to the eye — have
they not been lavishly provided for the Catholic
masses, in those pilgrimages to miraculous caves, in
which the fervour of the devotees is fed by fanatic
hymns, and by feverish legends of virgins who see
visions and utter infantile oracles? The character
thus impressed during the last few years on popular
devotion has done much to develop Ultramontane
fanaticism. There would almost seem to arise from
the lips of this fanatic host, the materialistic prayer of
ancient Israel to Moses : " Make us gods to go before
us." The tangible divinity thus sought has been
given in the form of the infallible Pope. But a mere
popular movement would not suffice for his deification.
It was needful that the old institutions should be

60 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

abolished, in order that an all-absorbing centralisation
should be set up. Until our day, Catholicism, while
preserving its unity, had still granted a certain
latitude to national Churches. They had their general
assemblies or Councils, their liturgy, and an episco-
pate which reconciled subordination to the papacy,
with a measure of independence and an authority that
made itself felt and respected. Now all this is changed.
We cannot follow out in detail the steps taken
by the Roman policy to reach this important result,
which is equivalent to nothing less than a revo-
lution in the institutions of the Church. The Curia
contrived to substitute in all the countries of Europe,
mere provincial Councils for the old national Councils
which have everywhere fallen into disuse. It was
very easy to over-rule these provincial Councils and
to lead them to vote in the desired direction, all
the more that a special congregation was constituted
at Rome for the purpose, which took upon itself to
arrange the business of these Councils, and even to
modify their resolutions, so that they were made,
without their own consent, to acquiesce in the opinion
of the infallible pontiff. It is easy to arrive at an
understanding in a dialogue, in which the interlocutor
and the respondent are one and the same. The
Roman Curia was equally successful on the question
of liturgies. This was of the utmost importance to it,
for it would be impossible to exaggerate the influence
of liturgies, which give to piety its popular form, sur-

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 61

rounding it with a moral atmosphere which it is
unable to resist. In France the Roman Curia was
ably served by the celebrated Dom Gueranger, to
whom we owe the restoration of the Benedictine
order. Pius IX. devoted his Encyclical of 1853 to this
cause, which he rightly had at heart, and the Curia has
recently succeeded, in spite of prolonged resistance,
in substituting everywhere the Roman liturgy for the
beautiful liturgy of the Church of France, which was
not defaced by the ridiculous fables of Italian bigotry.
Lacordaire said bitterly of this daring attempt, even
before it had succeeded : "It is a cruel insult to a
Church which has never severed itself from the general
community."

After gaining a complete ascendancy over the
episcopal assemblies, it was not difficult to bring the
bishops separately into submission. This was quickly
done. The Roman party exalted to the clouds the
prelates who boldly resisted the civil power, even
when their conduct was most reckless and ill advised.
When their extravagancies drew down the just
vengeance of the State, they were proclaimed mar-
tyrs. The famous Archbishop of Cologne, Mgr. Von
Droste-Vischering, who compelled the Prussian Go-
vernment to deviate from its long course of toleration,
by his unjustifiable resistance to every measure of
conciliation in the case of mixed marriages, and by
his irritating demeanour, was placed on a par with
the first Christian confessors of the faith. Archbishop

62 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

Vicari, of Fribourg, was declared in his lifetime
worthy of canonisation, for having disturbed the
Grand Duchy of Baden by his imprudent proceed-
ings. To violate the laws of the State is a merit in
the eyes of the Roman party. Woe to the bishop who
does not bend under the yoke, and who dares to offer
any opposition to the fiat of the Curia. The illus-
trious Wissemberg knew something of this in his
diocese of Constance, where he had secured universal
respect by his toleration, his piety, his learning, and
his noble liberality. His nomination as bishop was
not confirmed ; he died after having had the sorrow
of seeing his diocese broken up, in order that Catholic
Switzerland might be freed from an influence so
much dreaded as his. Subsequently the liberal and
learned school of Munich was loaded with outrages.
Cardinal Andrea, for having desired to prolong his
stay there, was severely condemned in a pontifical
brief, which declared that the Pope had the power of
governing directly all the dioceses. The Archbishop
of Paris, Mgr. Darboy, complained to Rome of the
denunciations to which he was subjected by his sub-
ordinates ; he was even obliged in one case to adopt
a measure of very mild discipline. The Holy See
openly censured him, thus humbling him before all
his clergy. The Bishops of Marseilles and of Chalon
were severely blamed for showing some Gallican pro-
clivities. The papacy made it evident on every
opportunity, that it intended to have at the head of

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 63

the dioceses, not bishops, but mere ecclesiastical pre-
fects, whose office was simply to transmit the papal
behests.

The Ultramontane party looks with suspicion on
men of science. It never rested till it had thrown
discredit on the teaching of theology in the German
Universities. What it required was the hotbed of a
seminary closed against general culture, and it had
no confidence in any colleges which were not under
its own special supervision. Hence every effort
was made to induce young men preparing for the
clerical office, to attend the famous Roman College,
which it supplemented by the Germanic College, in
which the same doctrines were instilled. " Distrust
learned men," said one of the leaders of Ultramontan-
ism. Nor was it deemed enough to seek to inspire
distrust ; scholars were condemned when, without
going beyond the bounds of orthodoxy, they mani-
fested some independence of spirit, like Dr. Hermes
at Cologne, and Dr. Dollinger at Munich. All that
was foreign to the scholarship of mediaeval times, all
that revealed some development of the philosophic
spirit, though it might be in the service of accepted
truths, was regarded as dangerous. Ignorance became
increasingly a title to favour, and to the old theological
virtues was added a new virtue, which consisted in
ignorance of theology. How many fine intellects
may have groaned and suffered under this cruel pres-
sure ! How many noble hearts may have bled in

64 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

secret, as they saw the babblings of ignorance accepted
as the wisdom of God, and all original development
of religious thought, in an age of research like this,
repressed by a petty and jealous authority ! The true
martyrs of our time are not the imprudent agitators
who, under a government so moderate as that of
Germany before its Prussian unification, were pun-
ished for having disturbed civil order by their fana-
ticism ; they are such men as Gratry, Lacordaire,
Dollinger, Haefel, all misunderstood by the Church to
which they were devoted, all regarded with suspicion,
if not treated with severity, because they would not
cringe with the ignorant multitude, or with the men
of servile soul in high positions who only rise by
flattery. Theirs was a very poignant suffering, more
than once involuntarily betrayed.

It was not enough to depreciate the science of the
day ; it was needful also to efface from the documents
of the past, everything that was at variance with the
new doctrine, the triumph of which the papal party was
bent on securing. The scribes of the Curia had always
shown singular audacity in forging documents in sup-
port of their favourite theories. The False Decretals
had shown how far they would venture in this sort of
historic fraud. Much was said at the time of the Council,
of their manipulations of the Roman Breviary, in the
attempt to efface from the original text the name
of Pope Honorius, who was there distinctly described
as a heretic. It was on this occasion that Father

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 65

Gratry denounced, with such eloquent indignation, this
interpolating and mendacious school, exclaiming,
" Indiget Deus mendacio vestro ! This habit of using
a dishonest apology, is one of the causes of our deca-
dence in modern times. So soon as mankind per-
ceives in an apostle the faintest trace of cunning or
duplicity, it turns away disgusted. Is not the time
then come, in this age of publicity, in which everything
is known and spread abroad, to reject with scorn the
frauds, interpolations, and mutilations, which liars
and falsifiers of documents — our most cruel enemies
— have introduced into the archives of the Church ?
I have been long before I could bring myself to
believe in the existence among us, of this apology
of ignorance, of blindness, of dubious or even of bad
faith, which seeks an end in the goodness and truth
of which it believes, but in order to reach it has
recourse to fraud and to the fabrication of false docu-
ments." " We shall be told that Father Gratry made
his submission to the Council. We admit it ; but has
he therefore retracted his severe diatribe against the
school of interpolation and historic falsehood ? He
never thought that the infallibility of the Holy Father
implied the impeccability of Roman scribes. Friederich
gives overwhelming evidence of the manipulations to
which they have subjected, not only the old writers,
whom the congregation of the Index assumed the

Letter to the Bishop of Mechlin, by Father Gratry, p. 160.
6

66 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

right to correct, but also catechisms and theological
manuals long in use, even those which bore the
authors' names, like that of Bailly. No scruple has
been shown in substituting for declarations of a de-
cided Gallican character, some of the most daring
formularies of Ultramontanism.

The attempt at interpolation and falsification is,
however, a very futile one ; there still remain too large
a number of passages which cannot be so manipulated.
Nor is it possible to efface the general tradition of the
Church, and all the imperishable monuments of its
glorious past. The great book of history cannot be
completely falsified. If we adhere to the old notion
of dogmatic authority, as formulated by Vincent de
Lerins, according to which a doctrine is only to be
regarded as true if it has been believed always, every-
where, and by every one in the Church — ab omnibus,
ubiqiie et semper — then the favourite doctrines of the
Roman party are doomed, for not one of them can
claim universal assent. Further, if all depends on
the verification of tradition, the Councils assume very
grave importance, since they alone are capable of
verifying it by means of the bishops, who are, as it
were, the witnesses of the universal Church, to declare
that which has been the object of its constant faith.
The Roman system crumbles to its base, if we
admit the theory of tradition now under discussion ;
but this was unquestionably the raison d'etre of
general Councils in the past. Hence the Roman

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 67

party has endeavoured, with consummate art and
with extraordinary subtlety, to remove this idea.
Two French Ultramontane theologians — Donnet and
Gousset — had already prepared the way for the
new theory, by placing on a par with tradition, as
a criterion of the truth of a doctrine, the unanimity
of the bishops of the day. This unanimity is all the
more easy to secure since the silence of the episcopate
is taken for consent, and every brief which is not pro-
tested is regarded as accepted. It was the Jesuit
Perrone, the classic theologian of the present Curia,
who had the honour of inventing a formula destined
to be so useful. According to him, we must be on
our guard against supposing that tradition is only to
be found in the positive texts of Scripture, or of the
Fathers ; it may also be implicitly contained therein.
A few vague indications suffice to denote it, especially
if we do not neglect the spontaneous manifestations
of religious feeling in the worship, the liturgy, and
the literature of asceticism. An isolated contradiction
proves nothing, for it is to the general sentiment of
the Church that our appeal must be made. And where
does this general sentiment express itself more forcibly
than in the unanimous testimony of the living Church?
Under the influence of the Divine Spirit it raises
from obscurity some doctrine which had lain, as it
were, buried in the tradition. By bringing it to light,
the living Church proves at the same time its an-
tiquity, so that we are saved from all the difficulties

68 CONTEMPORAR Y PORTRAITS.

that a critical examination of the text might present.
Thus is fulfilled the desire of Cardinal Manning, that
the Council should shake off the trammels of history.
It may indeed be said that history is cast aside by
this new definition of tradition, which gives carte
blanche to all the wildest innovations, provided they
secure the assent of a servile episcopate. In truth, this
theory of tradition was the most revolutionary system
imaginable, for it gave unlimited scope to an arbitrary
dogmatism. This assent of the bench of bishops was
nothing else than universal suffrage without inde-
pendence, carried on in the dark by an absolute
power, intoxicated with the incense of idolatry. Thus
the vaulting ambition of the hierarchy has overleaped
itself, and it has become the mere stepping-stone of
an autocracy.

IV.

Throughout the whole skilful policy of the Roman
Curia, we recognise the influence of that famous
school which, for three centuries, has contrived to
combine the most rigid principles of absolute autho-
rity, with the utmost suppleness in the adaptation
of means to ends. The Jesuit has governed the
Church for more than half a century. He would
not, however, left to himself, have so rapidly attained
his end, but he had the good fortune to find the very
Pope he needed to strike the great blow ; and from
that time it has been no longer necessary for him^to

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 69

advance, as Consalvi said, by oblique paths. He can
march boldly, with head erect, along the Corso.

We would speak with the utmost respect of the
old Pope who played the principal part in this
triumphant campaign of Ultramontanism. Fully
convinced of his mission, he believed himself called
to be the instrument of God to assure the triumph
of His cause, by consecrating, in his own person,
papal infallibility. Rising above all narrow and
petty ambition, animated by an enthusiasm which
recognised no obstacle and could brook no delay, he
regarded his own elevation as a duty, and treated as
impious rebellion all resistance to his deification.
That which in another would have been fanatic pride,
was in him the fervour of piety. Ignorant of theology,
he was not stumbled by any historic difficulties de-
rived from the tradition of the early Church. The
prudence which calculates the perils of an immediate
decision would have seemed to him the abandonment
of his faith in God — that is, in himself ; for he never
ceased to regard himself as the organ of absolute
truth. His virtues, worthy of all respect, the majesty
of his language rising sometimes almost to an inspired
tone, his noble countenance beneath snowy locks — all
these things combined to increase his ascendancy.
Pius IX. was all the more ardent in his opposition to
modern ideas, because at the commencement of his
reign he had given them some encouragement. It
seemed as if in him the liberal Catholicism of Lacor-

70 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

daire and Montalembert had received the tiara, and
men thought that the reconciliation between the
Church and the laity would soon be accomplished.
But from the time of his exile in Gaeta, Pius IX.
belonged unreservedly to the extreme party, and the
Jesuits whom he had expelled were henceforth his
counsellors and guides. He became more and more
convinced of his Divine mission. The Civilta Catto-
lica recalled complacently the predictions uttered with
regard to him by Anna Maria Taigi, a holy woman
universally revered in Rome, who declared before her
death that he would be the Pope chosen to restore
the Church. The Virgin of La Salette, whose appari-
tion was declared at Rome to be genuine, proclaimed
the new dogma. The growing idolatry of which Pius
IX. was the object, made him believe that he could
venture anything. Had not his name been put in the
place of the name of God in a hymn, to the great in-
dignation of Mgr. Dupanloup ? A French Cardinal had
called him "the incarnation of the authority of Christ."
The Civilta Cattolica went so far as to declare that
the Word thought through him. He heard himself
proclaimed Divine till he believed it, and did not fear
to be identified with Christ. La tradition c'est moi,
he said to those who had the indiscretion to appeal to
history. In such a state of mind, he could not hesi-
tate to employ decisive means to arrive at the defini-
tion of the new dogma. His long reign enabled him
to remodel almost entirely the College of Cardinals

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 71

and the Bench of Bishops, by nominating only de-
clared adherents of the Ultramontane school. His
briefs and sermons were powerful weapons against
his opponents, who were intimidated by his prestige
and authority. The Encyclical and the Syllabus
of 1864 were the manifesto of triumphant Ultra-
montanism. It had already won one decisive victory
in the great episcopal Assembly of 1854, which
issued the proclamation of the Immaculate Concep-
tion. If M. Thiers could say after the review of
Satory in January, 185 1, L Empire est fait \ it might
be said with equal truth, after this important act of
the Council, that infallibility had gained the day.
What was wanting to the elevation of the Holy Father
above all Councils, when once he had been able with-
out a Council, by a simple consultation with the
bishops, to create a new dogma ? This new dogma
had done more than deify the Virgin ; it had made a
God upon earth. The Ultramontane party took ad-
vantage of this unexampled innovation, and deduced
from the thing done, the right to do it. The great
assembly of bishops convoked at Rome in 1864,
hailed the Holy Father in language of such ardent
adoration, that it lacked nothing but the precision of a
formulary. In i860, at the time of the celebration of
the. centenary of the martyrdom of St. Peter and St.
Paul, the bishops responded in still larger numbers
to the appeal of the Holy Father, who, after thanking
them for having shown by their presence in Rome

72 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

their filial subordination to the Holy See, announced
to them the approaching Council. The address,
which was drawn up in their name, and which passed
without protestation, because it was imagined to be a
matter of no consequence, since the address was not
a doctrinal one, was dictated by devotees of the
papacy, and contained homage, barely disguised under
oratorical paraphrases, of the infallible Pope. *

Even before they quitted Rome the bull convoking
the Council was issued. The Roman Curia was care-
ful to choose as advisers, only theologians, already
pledged to extreme Ultramontane views, and for
the most part obscure individuals. It refused the
titulary bishops the right of being represented in
Council, while it opened the doors to a thousand
bishops of the Propaganda who had no dioceses.
These docile creatures of the papacy assured it before-
hand of a majority.

One is amazed, after such preliminaries, at the
illusions by which the opponents of the new dogma
still calmed their apprehensions. Those who had
the good fortune to be at Rome in 1869, will never
forget the extraordinary agitation of mind prevailing
on the eve of the Vatican Council ; it was more like
the excitement in one of our political clubs at the
opening of a critical session of parliament. The
salons in which Ultramontane principles did not hold
undisputed sway, re-echoed with animated discussions
and passionate protestations against the extreme

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 73

party, which they hoped yet to be able to restrain.
We well remember the boldness of certain declarations,
which would now greatly astonish those who then
made them, and who have since done all in their power
to obliterate them. " If the Council turns out badly,
we will agitate for another," said a distinguished repre-
sentative of the Catholic aristocracy, one evening in
a large company. The women were not the least
ardent supporters of the Left, in this Vatican
Assembly, which had all the semblance of a real
ecclesiastical parliament The opposition had on
its side men of science and distinction, who had
rendered incomparable service to the Church, the
very elite of the episcopate throughout the world.
Its manifesto was contained in the last charge of
the Bishop of Orleans, and in the resolution of the
German bishops assembled at Fulda, to enter a pru-
dent protest against the proclamation of the new
dogma. The leading men among the German
bishops appeared in the Roman sa/ons. There was
seen the noble face of Cardinal Schwartzenberg,
who, having concluded the Austrian Concordat, had
vowed never to do anything of the kind again. The
Hungarian bishops, distinguished for their courage
and eloquence, excited much curious interest. Catho-
lic England had only sent extreme Ultramontanes
to sit in the Council. It had, however, in Rome one
of the most generous representatives of liberal Catho-
licism— Lord Acton — whom Mr. Gladstone had just

74 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

raised to the peerage. He displayed great activity
in the service of his cause, and was very hopeful, if
not of securing its triumph, at least of averting a
decisive defeat. All these hopes were vain ; the
whole opposition was to fail miserably, without having
succeeded in coming even to a serious encounter ; for,
as the Jesuit Perrone has said very candidly, " All was
ready, and nothing was wanting but the solemn pro-
clamation of July 1 8, 1870."

Must we suppose that the proclamation of the new
dogma will really be accepted by Catholicism as a
final solution ? We think not. We know that
beneath the unreal appearance of unity, there are
many consciences suffering and protesting in silence.
There have been submissions, which have cost the
lives of the noble thinkers who bowed beneath the arm
of authority, because they were not ripe for the final
decision which would have severed them from their
Church. We are not building the smallest hope of a
religious renovation upon the new Pope. He may be
more moderate than Pius IX. in the form of his lan-
guage and in his political attitude ; but he cannot
repudiate the heritage which has been transmitted to
him. The fall of the temporal power will also have
for a long time, the immediate effect of exalting
Ultramontanism, as the destruction of the temple at
Jerusalem enflamed Jewish fanaticism, which clung
all the more closely to its religious idea, as that, in a
manner, lost ground. If the extreme school should

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 75

continue its development among the Catholics of to-
day, it will in the end so isolate itself from modern
society, that it will become a mere sect, considerable
indeed in numbers, but cut off from the general life
of modern humanity, resembling rather the Brahmin-
ism of India, which lives on solitary and irate, in view
of a country renovated by civilisation. We believe,
however, that in time the loss of the temporal power
will have the effect of making it easier for hidden
differences to manifest themselves, and thus in the
end will hasten on the religious crisis which is brood-
ing in silence to-day.

May governments not forget that they could not
more surely strengthen Qltramontanism than by
applying its own principles for its persecution. Every
step beyond the legitimate defence of the rights ot
the State, will only involve the civil power in an
interminable struggle, in which it must always fight
at a disadvantage. Prussia and Switzerland know
something of this. Let us keep the Catholic Church
strictly within its own domain. Left to itself, it can-
not escape that internal conflict which will either end
in its transformation, or in the application of the
extreme principles of Ultramontanism to modern
society. Having reached this point, it will inevitably
fall a prey to the avenging spirit of error born of its
excesses, the unfailing Nemesis which tracks man-
kind upon its devious way.

STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE.

STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE.

A COMPARISON.

GERMANY has for the last few years devoted
much attention to Voltaire. At the close of
the eighteenth century its preference was for Rous-
seau, whose sentimental deism was thoroughly in
harmony with the tendencies of German thought at
the time, as expressed in the noble poetry of Schiller.
At the present day Voltaire is in the ascendant.
Goethe is known to have regarded him as represent-
ing the true type of the French mind. Dubois,
Raymond, Grimm, Rosenkranz, have all recently
offered criticisms of his literary and scientific work
under various aspects. And lastly, the great master
of the critical school, Strauss, has reared a monument
to his memory, in the six lectures dedicated to the
Princess Alice — a work in which he has displayed all
his analytical talent and polemical acumen. It is
at once obvious that Strauss did not intend this
to be a mere literary study. This biography of Vol-
taire was a valuable weapon for him in the war to
the death, which he had declared against the old

80 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

ideas of religion and philosophy. He found that
there was still much use to be made of his glorious
predecessor. It seems to us very interesting to
examine this judgment of Voltaire pronounced by
Strauss, and to show how far the two writers differ
from each other, while both appearing to serve the
same cause ; how much generosity is hidden under the
keen raillery of the older writer, in contrast to the
implacable bitterness of the author of the " Leben
Jesu."

We are fortunate enough to possess the philoso-
phical testament of Strauss in his book, " Der alte
und der neue Glaube." Only a few months ago there
appeared as an introduction to a complete edition of
his works, his literary autobiography, in which he
gives us his own account of the development of his
views.

Lastly, the very comprehensive work on " Strauss
and his Times," l published by Hausrath, supplies us
with many valuable documents. We are thus in a
position to draw a parallel, which is not merely fanci-
ful, between these two great controversialists, since
the sources of information about Voltaire are ample.
The work of M. Desnoiresterres, on the Life and
Times of Voltaire, is almost exhaustive. We shall not
attempt to decide the comparative merits of the great

1 David Friedrich Strauss, gesammelte Schriften, &c. Bonn.
D. F. Strauss und die Theologie seiner Zeit. Von Dr. A. Hausrath,
Heidelberg. 1876.

STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. 81

works of two such prolific writers, but merely endea-
vour to arrive at the leading thought of each. This
will supply the key to the difference of the times in
which they lived, and will enable us to appreciate the
change that has passed over religious and philo-
sophical controversy during the last century.

We have already said that Strauss loves and lauds
in Voltaire that which, in his view, forms the unity of
his life and of his work, namely, his vehement hostility
to the religion of the past. He delights to picture
him polishing his weapons for the attack, immediately
on quitting the Jesuit college, where he had learnt to
use them skilfully, if not in the defence of the faith ;
next putting a still keener edge to his wit in the
society of the " Temple ; " then, in his exile in
London (whither his first escapades had driven him),
imbibing from contact with English philosophy, that
sincere but superficial deism which ever afterwards
characterised him ; and finally, returning matured,
but with his youthful ardour unchilled, to engage
along the whole line in what he calls the good war-
fare. All means subserve his ends : poetry, simple or
severe, the pamphlet or the ode, science or history,
all are engaged in a great pantomime, in which the
actors utter the thoughts of their author, and reflect
his genius and passion. Through all his restless wan-
derings over Europe, to-day the guest in a castle, to-
morrow in an inn ; passing from Nancy to Potsdam,
from Potsdam to Geneva, and finally to Ferney,

7

82 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

which becomes the holy city of the encyclopaedists,
he does not cease for a day to obey his ruling pas-
sion. It might be said that zeal for his cause con-
sumed him. He himself gives us the epitome of his
whole literary life in these daring words : " I am
weary of hearing it said that a dozen men sufficed to
establish Christianity. I long to show that one man
is enough to destroy it."

Voltaire is not satisfied with giving currency to his
ideas by his writings, which circulate all the more
rapidly because they are proscribed, and have thus the
inimitable flavour of forbidden fruit. He perpetually
fans the zeal of those whom he calls his brethren ; and
his vast correspondence travels all over Europe ani-
mating and directing the conflict. He wrote as many
letters as Calvin, who was also a great army leader.
Both lives display the same ardent, universal activity.

With Voltaire passion does not exclude policy, and
if he covets the apostolate, it is for the power it
bestows, not for the martyr's palm. " I am a warm
friend of truth," he writes to D'Alembert, " but none
at all of martyrdom." It is true that martyrdom was
no metaphor in the eighteenth century, and that the
Parliament which had the writings of the philoso-
phers burnt in the Place de Greve, was armed with
dangerous powers against their persons. Voltaire
did all that he could to escape perils which were not
imaginary ; he knew the Bastille, for he had lived in
it. He first entered on a course of clever coquetry

STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. 83

with the great ones of the world. In spite of the
fascination of his graceful wit, he had small success
with Louis XV., who must have been a prey to in-
curable ennui, since even Voltaire could not laugh him
out of it. His indolent egoism shrank instinctively
from this great agitator of ideas, and he felt vaguely
that under his influence, the deluge which was to
sweep away the old world might be hastened on so
as to come in his days, after which everything was
indifferent to him. The incomparable flatterer was
more successful with Madame de Pompadour, and he
might have safely counted on her protection but for
the demon of epigram, which he could not resist.
This weakness of his was so well known that some
one wittily said that, in signing a compact with
Voltaire, there should always be a provisional clause,
"save and excepting his vagaries." The precaution was
especially necessary in those unwritten compacts on
which social relations rest. If nothing came to dis-
turb the friendship which he always showed for the
great Catherine, it was because he was never brought
into too close contact with his idol, and the delicate
incense which he burned to her always rose clear into
the air, from a safe distance. We know how stormy
were his relations with Frederic II. Strauss, as a
good subject of the German Empire, and observ-
ing his oath of fidelity even in historical retrospect,
lays most of the blame on the French philosopher.
Nothing could be more unjust. Undoubtedly Fre-

84 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

deric was thoroughly enamoured of the spirit of
Voltaire ; but how tyrannical, and at times even
cruel, this passion was ! How we feel always, as his
victim said, that even in his sportive moods, the claw
of the leopard was ready to rend him. He wished to
make Voltaire a brilliant plaything, the first buffoon
of a literary court, heavily paid, and to be dismissed
at pleasure. He forgot that the buffoon was a rational
being, the intellectual monarch of his age, and that
he also had his claws, which could leave inefface-
able scars. " He is a terrible interlocutor," said Vol-
taire again, " who commands hundreds of thousands
of men." Doubtless Voltaire had his faults ; he was
somewhat of a marplot in delicate matters ; he did
not sufficiently consider the susceptibilities of his
formidable host ; he pierced his friends with his
keenest darts. But Strauss forgets the actual treason
of which Frederic was guilty, when in order to bind
Voltaire to himself by an enforced exile, he com-
municated to. the French authorities a compromising
paper of Voltaire's, which had been entrusted to him
under seal of secresy.

In relation to the affair at Frankfort, the German
writer also shows shameless partiality. The odious
prosecution was, according to Strauss, a mere blunder
chargeable to the stupidity of underlings. But he
cannot erase those words of the Prussian Minister to
the most brutal of these agents : " Fear nothing ; all
has been done by order of the king."

STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. 85

Nevertheless Frederic remains a great prince. His
correspondence with Voltaire at the time of his most
cruel reverses, when Voltaire asks him to intervene to
make peace, redounds to the honour of both. They
never ceased to have the liveliest relish for one
another, while at the same time always on the verge
of hatred. Let us admit, lastly, that Voltaire, in his
correspondence with Frederic, understood how to
keep up the dignity of a man of letters, and that his
prudence had its limits. Strauss is fully in sympathy
with him when he sees him displaying the craft of an
old pupil of the Jesuits, in order to track his enemies.
His grand device was perpetually to disavow the
authorship of writings which were incontestably his
own. " So soon as there is the slightest danger," he
wrote to D'Alembert, " I implore you to warn me of
it, that I may disavow the work in the public papers,
with my accustomed candour and innocence."

When he was bent on forcing an entrance into the
French Academy, he did not hesitate to take the
following pledge : " If ever a page has been printed in
my name, which could scandalise the priest of my
parish, I am ready to tear it to pieces in his pre-
sence." Contemptible as this craft and disingenu-
ousness seem to us, we must feel a still stronger
indignation against that detestable system, which
degraded thought by making it dangerous to give free
expression to it.

We can make no allowance, however, for Voltaire's

86 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

spurious acts of devotion. When he cajoles the Holy
Father into accepting the dedication of " Mahomet " to
himself, this preliminary of infallibility only excites a
laugh. But we feel very differently when we see the
author of the " Dictionnaire Philosophique " partaking
of the Communion. Strauss is very little shocked
at this. He is, indeed, quite an advocate of mental
reservations when they are useful. Before the brilliant
success of his " Leben Jesu," when he was a country
pastor, he quieted the scruples of his friend Moerklin,
who found it somewhat embarrassing to clothe pan-
theism in Scripture phraseology, and to preach to the
peasants of Wurtemburg the new faith under the
name of the old Bible. One of Strauss' favourite
heroes is Reimarius, whose biography he has written
with his usual ability. This father of rationalism had
given expression to his views in an anonymous manu-
script which was only published after his death. In
the meantime he appeared every Sunday with his
white cravat, and in the costume of an ecclesiastical
inspector, to listen with devout attention to orthodox
sermons, at which he was laughing in his sleeve.
Strauss is not at all offended at this excessive cau-
tion. His opinion is that " free-thinkers should avoid
taking part in religious ceremonies, as far as they can
do so without detriment to themselves and those who
belong to them." This prudent morality reminds us
of a famous saying about the angelic silence of the
priest-philosophers who continue to perform mass.

STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. 87

One would hardly have expected to see the angels
under such circumstances. To me it seems that the
dignity of thought is much better represented by
Pascal's saying : " Never have the saints been silent."

Strauss himself has been under no temptation to
use such subterfuges. He has lived in a time of free
thought and free speech, at least on all matters re-
lating to metaphysics and criticism. This freedom is
only restricted when politicians attempt to meddle
with religion. The well-known caution given by the
Lausanne magistrate to Voltaire, is still applicable
in the middle of the nineteenth century. " It is a
hundred times less dangerous," he said, " to attack
the Holy Trinity than to criticise our authorities
at Berne," or as we might say to-day, at Berlin
and elsewhere. Strauss has observed this caution.
Nothing could equal his theological radicalism except
his political conservatism.

His " Leben Jesu " was allowed to circulate without
interference, in spite of the grave attack it made upon
the old beliefs ; for, as Edgar Quinet has shrewdly
observed, Strauss, in this famous book, only acted the
part of Anthony, drawing back Caesar's robe to reveal
all the thrusts that had been made upon him ; he only
rent the veil beneath which, for more than half a
century, German criticism had been striking at his-
toric Christianity. For the first moment considerable
excitement was created by the marvellous clearness
of the exposition, and the art with which the writer

88 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRA ITS.

brought into prominence the contradictions of the
sacred narratives. At this time he was still righting
under the banner of Hegelian idealism ; but gradually
his thoughts emerged from this cloud which only
veiled the great void. He ended by using to that
God, who was a mere idea, the same language in
which Voltaire had made Spinaye address his imper-
sonal deity : " Between ourselves, I really believe you
have no existence." The most absolute atheism is
the issue of the new faith. After having formulated
it, the old doctor intones his "Nunc Dimittis." His
version of Simeon's song may be given thus : " O
great All ! O vast Nature, from which I have
driven out the Divine ! Now mayest thou let thy
servant depart in peace, for I have left nothing more
to be destroyed." But he was mistaken. Positivism
reproaches him, not without bitterness, for that
chimera of the great All, which still has some sem-
blance of the Absolute. This is a point very far
beyond the deism of Voltaire.

It is true that the deism to which he always re-
mained faithful will not hold as a system. It is very
interesting to read Strauss' estimate of the Voltairean
philosophy. He shows at once that it is full of con-
tradiction. Voltaire has no definite opinion about
moral freedom ; he does not even express himself
clearly about the immortality of the soul, though he
always believed in it. With his pessimist views of
history, which seemed to him a medley of errors,

STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. $g

follies and misfortunes, he did not know what to
make of the God whom he did retain. " The good
Oromaze," he said, "who has done all, could not do
better." The Almighty Author who had given to the
world so faulty a performance would deserve rather
to be hissed than worshipped.

Voltaire gave a true resume of his metaphysics in
these words : " For myself, I am sure of nothing. I
believe that there is an ■ intelligence, a creative power,
a God. I express an opinion to-day ; I doubt of it
to-morrow ; the day after I repudiate it. All honest
philosophers have confessed to me, when they were
warmed with wine, that the great Being has not given
to them one particle more evidence than to me." It
must be admitted that the mind of Voltaire, keen and
supple as it was, was not capable of rising higher than
the refinements of a brilliant society, and could not
comprehend the grand poetry of the Bible, any more
than he could comprehend Shakspeare. He could
see nothing but lying or trickery in those great per-
turbations of the human conscience, out of which
religion has been born. He lacked entirely the true
spirit of criticism, which is not content with grasping
the superficial and grotesque, but seeks to reach,
through these, the underlying verities. In this fea-
ture of his mental habit, he was at the very antipodes
of the nineteenth century, which has a magic wand to
call up the past, whether from the recesses of the
pyramids, or from the sacred books to whose hiero-

90 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

glyphics the science of our day has supplied the
key.

How, then, are we to account for the fact that with
so meagre a philosophy, Voltaire exerted an influence
incomparably greater than that of the learned German
doctor, and that in many directions that influence is
felt even now ? It is interesting to trace the causes
of this superior power, as we follow out the parallel
between him and his biographer.

It is needless to enlarge upon his inimitable style
of writing. Strauss' style is also very remarkable,
and so luminous is his exposition that on the most
abstruse questions of criticism, he casts a flood of
light. He understands the art of bookmaking — a
rare accomplishment in Germany at the time when he
began to write. We often feel a concentrated passion
thrilling through his somewhat tame language. But
there is no one, even on the other side the Rhine,
who would dare to compare him to the French
magician. The clearness of Voltaire's style reminds
one of a rather low sky, which lights up every object
without dazzling the eye. Now humorous, now
eloquent, his vivacity never flags. Grimm said of
him : " He makes arrows of every kind of wood, bril-
liant and rapid in their flight, but with a keen, unerring
point. Under his sparkling pen, erudition ceases to be
ponderous and becomes full of life. If he cannot sweep
the grand chords of the lyre, he can strike on golden
medals his favourite maxims, and is unapproachable

STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. 91

in the lighter order of poetry. He is truly genius
incarnate, but not the genius which sounds the
depths of things ; rather that which rapidly seizes their
contrasts, and brings them out in vivid colours. His
power over his age was unequalled, and he swayed
it by means of that light and charming sceptre,
which was none the less a formidable weapon. Still
acting en bon prince, he too often pandered to the taste
of his subjects, by indulging in that literary liber-
tinism, which was so much esteemed as a spice in the
eighteenth century."

Never could it be more truly said than of Voltaire
and Strauss, that the manner is the man. The
sparkling vivacity of the former was the result of
temperament. He was, as has been said, a creature
of air and fire, the most nervous, the most mobile
who ever lived ; in spite of his sardonic smile, his
soul was all passion. His literary activity was pro-
digious. Wherever he was, travelling, or in a
wretched inn, at the court of the King of Prussia, in
the vortex of Paris, or in the quiet country, he could
never restrain the demon of his inspiration or the
fervour of the controversialist. "I have found Vol-
taire," said one of his visitors, " in bed, and in a high
fever, but still writing, always just on the point of begin-
ning or finishing either a tragedy or a pamphlet." His
hatred was only equalled by his ardent friendship.
While he would doom his enemies with pitiless
severity to an immortality of ridicule,, he was full of

92 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

goodwill, generosity and tenderness to his friends.
Often he would even take pity on the adversary
whom he had almost annihilated, and would hold out
to him a helping hand. His kindness to the descend-
ant of Corneille was truly touching. One can but
marvel at his patient forbearance with his intolerable
niece, of whom Europe was disposed to say with
Frederic : " Cease to weary me with her ! " That
which is most admirable in Voltaire is this humanity,
ever responsive to any claim of suffering or wrong.
His devotion to the family of Calas, to the Sirvens, to
the Chevalier de la Barre, redounds to the eternal
honour of his memory. He does not stop either to
weigh or calculate ; it is the simple love of justice
that moves him. He would pretend to have the fever
on each anniversary of St. Bartholomew. I do not
know if his doctor ever felt his pulse on that day,
but I do know that the great crimes of history always
made him burn with the fever of a noble indignation.
This humanity is entirely wanting in Strauss, as
is only too clear from his singular autobiography.
He did not, indeed, fall into the same mistakes as
Voltaire. Nothing could be more correct than his
calm and studious career. His private life is worthy
of all esteem. Only on two occasions did he emerge
from his study, and the attempt was not successful.
The first time it was to compose the libretto of an
opera, which brought him into contact with the
theatrical world. This libretto cost him very dear,

STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. 93

by his own confession, for it brought him his wife, a
brilliant singer, who could not bring herself to pass
inglorious days by the fireside of her studious hus-
band, and who at the end of two years left him with
two children on his hands. The second time he was
tempted out of his seclusion, was to attempt a short
passage of political life. In the great fermentation
which followed the Revolution of 1848, his country-
men sent him to sit in the Chamber of Wurtemburg
Deputies, imagining that the author of the " Leben
Jesu," whose very name had occasioned a perfect tumult
in the canton of Zurich, at the time of his nomination
to a chair of theology, must be a Radical of the first
water. This Radical went and took his seat at the
extreme Right. The electors were hotly indignant.
He hastened back into private life as fast as he could,
vowing that nothing should tempt him again into the
arena of political strife.

As we read his memoirs we can but be amazed at
the narrowness of his spirit. No great cause of
humanity excites his interest ; what he is most con-
cerned about is his reputation. He analyses his own
talents with the most minute care. That he is a great
critic, a great savant, cela va de sot, and he does
not care to enlarge upon it. He goes much more
into detail as to qualities, for which no one would
have given him credit but himself. " I have extensive
and profound learning," he says, "but have I also
imagination, poetry in my nature ? I cannot say that

94 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

I am a poet, and yet . . . ." Playing on his
name, which signifies ostrich, he declares frankly that,
like that powerful bird, if he has not the great flight
of the wings of inspiration, he has the rudiments of
wings, which make his progress rapid, and lift him
above a prosaic vulgarity. The whole of this part of
his autobiography is real comedy. He is far less
amusing when, on the occasion of his famous corre-
spondence with M. Renan, at the time of the war of
1870, he shows himself concerned about nothing but
the literary success of his odious apology for the enor-
mities of the conquest. In the midst of this terrible
drama of history, his main concern is to know whether
the roar of the cannon will drown his voice, and he
finds with unmixed satisfaction, that the sale of his
pamphlet has not suffered very severely from the course
of events. There is truly much of the Trissotin in this
great scholar. He is wholly destitute of that order of
sentiment which we designate by the name of humanity,
and which Voltaire so largely possessed.

The contrast of thought between these two writers
is still more marked than that of feeling. However
incomplete, and therefore inconsistent, was the deism
of Voltaire, it yet gave a place to the idea of justice,
while the logical conclusion of the system of German
criticism, especially in its later form, was the most
daring negation of moral order. Let us be careful,
however, not to lead to any misconception about
Voltaire. This great iconoclast of religion remained

STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. 95

in many respects a gentleman of the Chamber. He
was little of a democrat who wrote these words : " I
make no pretence to enlighten shoemakers and serv-
ing-maids ; let us leave this task to the apostles."

The new earth is for honnites gens, and not for the
rabble. It was enough for him that this new earth
should be the paradise of persons of mind. His
predilection was for a brilliant and tolerant social
world, an age of Louis XIV., minus the Revocation
of the Edict of Nantes. Here and there in his
writings we can perceive some faint desires after
social reforms, but nevertheless he was every inch
an aristocrat, and had nothing but ridicule for the un-
fortunate apostles of democracy, who, like Rous-
seau, stood forward as the tribunes of the people, and
urged them on to destroy that world of elegance and
intellectual refinement, in which the author of the
" Mondain " delighted. Hence his furious indigna-
tion at the article, " Sur l'inegalite des conditions."
" That man," he said of Jean Jaques Rousseau,
" tries to resemble Diogenes, and he does not re-
semble even Diogenes's dog."

It is, therefore, not without astonishment, that we
see the French Revolution carrying to the Pantheon
the coffin of so strange a forerunner. Yet the Revo-
lution was right. Voltaire had, in fact, laid the axe to
the root of the tree, of which he would fain have pre-
served the branches and the flowers. In attacking
the religion of the old society, he wounded it at the

96 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

heart, and thus rendered easy the task of those
terrible destroyers, who learned their business by
reading his books. We are bound, indeed, to admit
that the religion which he pursued with such deadly
hatred had miserably fallen, since it had been repre-
sented in France by a Church at once worldly and
intolerant. It persecuted those who did not hold
its creed, without itself really believing in it ; and
courtly abbes just emerged from the boudoirs of
grandes dames, sold their subsidies to the king at each
fresh assembly of the clergy, as the price of heavier
restrictions to be laid on the Protestants and the
philosophers. This was the scandal which Voltaire
determined to put down. Unhappily he did not know
how to distinguish religion itself from this odious
perversion of it. In attempting to destroy every-
where the feeling of reverence, he did not root up
only the parasitic plant of superstition : he carried
away at the same time the very soil into which the
moral and religious idea casts its roots. In this
deplorable confusion, Voltaire laid profane hands
upon everything, despoiling the past of all its
grandeur, not sparing even the funeral pile of Joan of
Arc. Too often he treated the human soul itself
like another Maid of Orleans, delighting to humble it
and to trample it in the mire.

" En deux coups de sa griffe il de'pouille tout nu
De l'univers entier le monarque absolu ;
II vit que le grand roi lui cachait sous le linge
Un corps faible monte* sur des jambes de singe ! "

STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. 97

We must be careful, however, not to be unjust. It
was in his very love to humanity that Voltaire de-
graded it. He longed to free it from all the tyrannies
which are founded upon so-called divine rights. It is
clear that a monkey can never be made a pope, and
cannot assume airs of superiority towards other mon-
keys, his brethren. This was the fundamental idea
of Voltaire, which we are bound to recognise through
all the gratuitous libel and licentious buffoonery that
overlies it. That against which he fought with all
his eloquence and with all his power of satire, was
intolerance j and it was this which rendered his
arguments so effective against a perverted religion,
which was associated with the worst iniquities of the
past.

The toleration which Voltaire demanded was, indeed,
a very incomplete thing ; it had no analogy with
true freedom of conscience or of worship, as is evident
from these significant words : " The wise who do not
recognise two powers are the best upholders of the
royal authority." His conception of liberty was,
nevertheless, very much higher than that of the
State religion. And when any form of religion sinks
below the general conscience of the age, it is very
near its end. When man is superior to the gods who
are held up to him, it may be safely predicted that the
gods will soon disappear.

Things have, greatly changed in our day. The
great adversary of Christianity at the present time

8

98 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

is, not Voltaire, but Strauss, and the ideal which he
presents is not of a nature to commend itself to the
conscience of the age.

All readers of his book, " Der alte und der neue
Glaube," will feel that not many words are needed in
order to prove this. It culminates in the materialistic
doctrine of transformations, carried to its extreme
issues, and boldly applied to human society. Strauss
recognises in the world only matter and force. Society
belongs to the strong ; his system allows no place
either for the right, for mind, or for liberty.

Tracing back the origin of universal life to one
little cellule, he acknowledges no law of progress but
that of a desperate struggle for existence. The
strong to the front, the weak to the rear ! this is his
motto. When Strauss reaches the goal of his de-
structive work in philosophy and religion, he pauses
before the only mystery which remains to him,
namely, that of the sovereignty of royal races. There
is no longer any good God, but there is a triumphant
Caesar.

Down on your knees, mortals ! worship without
understanding — you, especially, who are the con-
quered. Right is no more ; might reigns. If some
souls behind the age still urge, in opposition to the
omnipotence of the State, the scruples of their re-
ligious conscience and its pretended independence,
these must be severely dealt with. Strauss expresses
on this subject a quite gratuitous anxiety, lest the

STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. 99

Imperial Chancellor should show too gentle a hand
in the famous " Culturkampf," of which he is one of
the warmest partisans. He says, in concluding, " Some
may perhaps bring up in opposition to us the Sermon
on the Mount, but this has only to be read cum grano
salis, and we are prepared to agree with it."

The popular interpretation, which would derive
from it protection for the weak and lessons of mercy,
does very well for the ignorant. But here, also,
with Strauss, might not only takes precedence of right,
but does away with it. The General of the First
Empire, who did not hesitate to turn his cannon
upon his own wounded in order to carry a position,
is a type of the new civilisation, the chariot of
which advances, crushing all that has not strength
to resist.

This philosophy of history is latent in Strauss' last
book, and we have seen it unhesitatingly applied in
some recent writings by men of his school. Our
readers will understand, after this, how it is we prefer
Voltaire to Strauss. Happily we are not reduced to
either alternative.

The atheism of the nineteenth century declares
itself more and more, as the implacable enemy of
justice and liberty, at least in theory. For this reason
it cannot exert the same influence as the philo-
sophy of the eighteenth century, which was always
generous and humane, even when it called in question
the idea of God. It is not possible that democracy

ioo CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

should hesitate in its choice, or that it should adopt
doctrines which trample under foot all that is just and
generous in its designs, by rejecting that spiritualism
which is their true inspiration and sanction.

THE CULTURKAMPF IN GERMANY.

THE CULTURKAMPF IN
GERMANY.

ITS PRINCIPLES AND RESULTS.

THE criticisms of a foreigner are always regarded
with suspicion. It is therefore fortunate when
the writer can call to his aid entirely impartial
testimony. Such testimony we find in the work of
M. Geffcken, to which our readers are referred.1 We
are glad, then, to avail ourselves of his light in the
picture we desire to draw of the true state of the
ecclesiastical controversy in Prussia.

The author, who is a man of influence in his own
country, an eminent lawyer, well acquainted with the
present position of European affairs (having been for
a long time Minister of the Hanseatic towns in Paris
and Berlin), has greatly enlarged on his original
design, which was, undoubtedly, to impugn the reli-

1 " Staat und Kirche in ihren Verhaltnissen geschichtlich
entwickelt." By L. Heinrich Geffcken. Berlin, 1875.

104 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

gious policy of Prince Bismarck. The part of the
work devoted to this subject occupies but a few pages,
which are almost lost in the midst of a long historical
dissertation on the relations of Church and State.
His book is, in truth, a tract for the times, with a
preface, which is a treatise in itself. Possibly he said
to himself, as did Louis Paul Courier : " It is danger-
ous, particularly in Prussia, to adventure oneself in a
sheet or two which may be treated as a pamphlet ; on
the principle that a grain of morphia, which would be
lost in a copper full of water, would be fatal in a spoon-
ful." To this caution on the part of our author, we owe
a very complete exposition of the actual relations be-
tween the two powers,temporal and spiritual, in Europe,
which enables us, while devoting special attention to
the facts affecting Germany, to determine also the
conditions under which the ecclesiastical controversy
must be carried on everywhere, if it is to have any
decisive issue at all. That the struggle itself is in-
evitable and is gravely aggravated by existing cir-
cumstances, has been obvious for several years.

In the countries which are, as it were, the classic
soil of religious liberty, the alarm has been given.
The consequences of the late Council, as they have
unfolded themselves, have startled and provoked the
most decided adherents of State neutrality in matters
of religion. Attention has been drawn to the manner
in which the President of the United States has
denounced the attempt made by the Ultramontanes,

THE CULTURKAMPF IN GERMANY. 105

to change the unsectarian character of American
schools, and to get into their own hands the manage-
ment of popular instruction in the districts where
they are most numerous. All remember Mr. Glad-
stone's emphatic statement of the incompatibility of
Ultramontane orthodoxy with a sincere respect for
the English Constitution. His powerful treatise
produced a great impression upon public opinion at
the time. The conclusions drawn by the great orator,
though no doubt strictly logical, may be somewhat
exaggerated in point of fact, since we must always
make allowance for human inconsistency, which comes
in to modify all merely theoretical calculations.

Upon the Continent of Europe, the irreconcilable
opposition of the various schools threatens to assume
a character of still greater acerbity, after the political
changes which have lately taken place. We do not
imagine that Italy is about to follow the example of
Prussia. Well satisfied to have put an end to the
temporal power of the papacy, and to have carried
out, without disturbances, the great and difficult
operation of adjusting ecclesiastical property, it is in
no haste to leave the paths of moderation. The
spirit of Cavour still governs it. Liberal Italy has
quietly allowed the harmless thunders of the Vatican
to roll over her head. She regards with amused"
indifference, the crowds of pilgrims passing through
her towns from all parts of the world, well knowing
that if they shake off against her the dust of their

106 CONTEMPORAR Y PORTRAITS.

feet, they let fall some of their gold at the same time,
and thus help to enrich the cities which their curses
are powerless to harm. In France recently the whole
aspect of affairs has changed. The Ultramontane
party no longer holds in its hand that much-abused
instrument — at once so convenient and so dangerous
— a docile parliamentary majority.

The great antithesis between the modern State and
Ultramontanism threatens to become a firebrand,
scattering strife on every hand.

The surest way to escape this danger is to lay down
clearly the liberal principles which ought to govern
the whole debate, and to show, by contemporary
history, what it has cost to deviate from them.

This is the twofold task to which M. Geffcken's
book summons us, and we cannot do better than
listen to him in his own cause ; for, as an ardent
patriot, and no friend to the Ultramontane " Centre,"
he follows only the leadings of reason and conscience.

I.

In order to form a fair judgment of the policy of
the various governments of Europe, in the conflict
between the Church and the State, we must revert to
the fundamental idea of these two great institutions,
for everything that is at variance with their true
intention produces grave practical mistakes. The
State is the representative of the law ; it is the pro-

THE CULTURKAMPF IN GERMANY. 107

tector of all interests and all liberties, the venerable
guardian of the peace of society, bound to favour
every possible development of civil life and prosperity.
The Church constitutes a higher society, destined to
unite souls in the bond of a common faith, to uplift
them and train them for a higher life beyond the limits
of the earthly. These two organisations are both alike
necessary, and are both based upon a divine insti-
tution ; but, while neither can dispense with the other,
they differ radically in their nature and mode of action.
The State requires obedience to the civil law, while
the Church would cease to be a spiritual and moral
society, if it were to use coercion ; its only authority
is over its believing children. As the State is largely
interested in the development of the religious influ-
ence, for the formation of good citizens, animated
with the spirit of justice and of piety, the author
deems that it is necessary for the State to enter into
positive relations with the Church, and to encourage
without controlling it, respecting its independence as
the very condition of its influence. We leave to the
German publicist, this chimera of the civil union of
the two powers in mutual independence. History
does not supply us with this philosopher's stone. Its
uniform testimony is that in this union, which has
neither reason nor moral affinity on its side, the
power has always been on the side of the State, unless
it was the Church itself which held the sword, as
in the times when a triumphant theocracy made the

108 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

civil power a sort of prince consort. With the excep-
tion of this error, which, after so many centuries of
inextricable confusion of ideas, it is difficult to escape,
the respective domains of Church and State are very
clearly defined by M. Geffcken.

In his view three great spiritual revolutions have
vindicated in theory this distinction, too often for-
gotten in fact. The first of these is Christianity,
which put an end to the Jewish theocracy, and re-
leased from the old civic thraldom the domain of
conscience and of the higher life, which paganism
merged wholly in that of the community. The
second spiritual power which, according to M.
Geffcken, has helped to form the modern State with
its constitutional principles, is the Reformation, which,
in spite of many inconsistencies, successfully attacked
the theocratic idea, and restored the rights of the
State, perhaps in a somewhat exaggerated form.
The third powerful influence which completed the
demolition of the theocratic idea, is the philosophy of
the eighteenth century, to which M. Geffcken does
not attach sufficient importance. This proved a
terribly destructive weapon to the established order
of things, and none the less deadly because it was
forged of bright and polished steel. It attacked
every vestige of the middle ages with an energy
of passion and satire, beneath which lay a genuine
regard for liberty of conscience. It must be owned
that this bold philosophy, in demanding liberty of con-

THE CULTURKAMPF IN GERMANY. 109

science, had more regard for liberty than for conscience,
and thus deprived the latter of its surest foundation ;
that it was content with toleration of ideas without
seeking toleration of all forms of worship ; that by
showing more love than respect for man, and by
ignoring his high origin, it failed to cast over his
intellect and his soul, the sacred buckler of a truly
divine right, which is the only sure defence against all
aggression from without. A religious enthusiast like
Milton will always be a firmer champion of freedom
of conscience, than a great scoffer or sceptic. In spite
of all its shortcomings, however, the eighteenth cen-
tury gave the final blow to the theocratic idea, and
triumphantly vindicated that conception of the lay
State, which has taken too strong a hold of the
modern mind ever to be again shaken off.

The part of M. GefTcken's book which is devoted to
the French Revolution is of special interest, although
many other works on the same subject give more
exact information. We cannot too carefully study
in our own day the lessons of this great era, in which
the true and the false came into violent collision, like
torrents of lava flowing from the rent sides of a
volcano, which belches forth at once fire and mud.
Hardly had liberty of conscience been formally
recognised in the declaration of the rights of man,
and confirmed by the repeated votes of the Con-
tituent Assembly, after receiving the comment of
Mirabeau, who gave it its noblest expression ; hardly

1 10 CONTEMPORAR Y PORTRAITS.

had it triumphed over its natural enemies of the
Right, when it received a severe blow in the civil con-
stitution of the clergy. The lay and modern State,
but just freed from the fetters of theocracy, is at once
hurried away in the eagerness of the conflict beyond
its true domain. It ceases to be a lay institution
when it tries to reform the Church by authority, and
to turn the National Assembly into a Council. It
does not impugn simply the factious proceedings of
the old clergy — this would be within its competence
— but it goes farther, and assails doctrines, ideas,
beliefs ; and when it seeks to put a constraint upon
the religious conscience by the oath which it would
exact from the priests, it arouses against itself the
most unconquerable of all resisting forces. Having
committed this great initial error, it was bound by the
implacable logic of history, to fall into other and yet
graver mistakes. Engaged in a hopeless conflict, in
which it feels from the first it must be defeated, it
soon passes on to open persecution, and makes itself
gratuitously odious. But the hulks, the scaffold, pro-
scription, all are in vain. Exasperated by the feeling
of its own impotence, it only provokes a more dan-
gerous reaction, driving the Catholic clergy to the
feet of the papacy, depriving it of that feeling of
nationality which gave it a measure of independence
towards Rome, and thus paving the way for that
brilliant triumph of Ultramontanism in the nine-
teenth century, which Napoleon was powerless either

THE CUL TURKAMPF IN GERMANY. 1 1 1

to stifle by kindness or to crush by violence, after his
quarrel with Pius VII. It is the Revolution which
is responsible for all that M. Geffcken describes as
Vaticanism, because it fell into the mistake of trying
to make Gallicanism compulsory — the sure way to
discredit and to weaken it. With regard to religious
beliefs, those who are protected by force are always in
the end the conquered party, especially when the pro-
tection of the one side, implies the persecution of the
other. To attack an idea is to strengthen it, to render
it more sacred, more powerful, more invincible, even
when the idea is associated with the most dangerous
errors. This is the great lesson which the French
Revolution has to teach us.

II.

Passing on to the controversies of our own day
between the Church and the State, the author, before
turning to his own country, shows us how, in spite of
the decisions of the last Council, wise and liberal
governments may maintain their rights without vio-
lating or suspending those of others, and still avoid
great schisms.

Austria and Italy are held up to us rightly as
models in this respect, while Switzerland has given
us until quite recently, especially at Geneva and at
Berne, the painful spectacle of demagogic radicalism
trampling on liberty of conscience, and not shrinking

1 1 2 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

from odious spoliations for the benefit of a State
religion, which owed its origin to political bodies,
the majority of whose members were either indif-
ferentists or enemies to all religion. Happily a Liberal
reaction has just set in, and we may hope that it will
put an end to the era of persecution.

With regard to Prussia, M. Geffcken is equally
severe on all that curtails religious liberty. He
speaks with strong reprehension of the famous
May laws of 1873, which not merely guaranteed
the rights of the State, but impinged on so many
points on those of the Church. That which it con-
cerns us especially to learn from so impartial a
witness, is the result of this Draconian legislation.
M. Geffcken admits at once that it has shown
the complete impotence of the persecuting State.
This is made evident by the very severity of the
laws designed to supplement the legislation of May,
1873. M. Geffcken protests with reason against
the law which gives the Government the right to
banish recalcitrant priests without a trial. "No
penalty," he says, " except the penalty of death, is
deemed heavier than that which exiles a man from
his country, and sends him to wander through the
world as a stranger. And to incur this a priest has
simply to refuse to disobey the regulations of his
Church, which he conscientiously deems incumbent
upon him ! Yet this is the law which has been voted
by a parliament calling itself Liberal. The seques-

THE CULTURKAMPF IN GERMANY. 113

tration of ecclesiastical property, the prohibition of
voluntary offerings, the imprisonment of several
bishops, has had no effect. The Prussian State has
only succeeded in arousing the opposition, not only
of the clergy but of the laity, of the whole of that
Catholic nation of several millions of souls, which
backs up its priests and encourages their resistance.
It is certain that in the silence even of the tribune,
the conflict is being carried on unceasingly, and with-
out any prospect of peaceful issue."

M. Geffcken adds : " A legislation which invades
the proper domain of the Church misapprehends the
nature of the struggle on which it has entered. The
Liberalism, hostile to the Catholic Church, which
is celebrating its so-called victories, regards that
Church merely as a political adversary, whose dan-
gerous organisation it must break up at all costs :
it forgets that its strength lies in the religious in-
fluence which no law has power to cancel. The
May laws are a return to the policy of Joseph II.,
who sought to make himself master of a domain
which the State never could subdue. But where
the avowed absolutism of the eighteenth century and
the Convention failed, the modern State is not likely
to succeed, in an age which boasts of liberty of the
press, and of elections. Liberalism is mistaken as
to the strength of the State when it thinks it can de-
cide all questions by law. The only laws which have
a guarantee of permanence are those which really

9

1 14 CONTEMPORAR Y PORTRAITS.

fulfil their purpose. The Government may un-
questionably go much further in measures of stern
repression, but with no better success. In the heat
of the conflict it has forgotten that if political passion
is strong, religious passion is stronger still. From
time to time the Government organs raise the cry
of victory, and yet all they have obtained as yet
has been the very opposite of what they sought.
To the German episcopate, compromised as it no
doubt was to some extent, by its submission to the
Council, there has been given an opportunity of re-
asserting its moral dignity by steadfast resistance to
oppression. It was hoped that the inferior clergy
might be induced to sever from their leaders, but
the contrary result has taken place. There was an
attempt to emancipate the laity from the hierarchy,
and the effect has been to unite the whole mass of
the Catholics in one solid phalanx. It is not pos-
sible that the State should continue thus to make
war on a third of the population, when it has no
means of carrying the day.

"These deplorable conflicts have other consequences
not less serious. They tend more and more to alienate
from the Government the whole of the Conservative
party ; they bring dishonour on the National Liberal
party, by making all its sounding declarations of
justice and liberty nothing more than empty phrases;
while the leaders of the Socialist party go on pre-
paring for their impious war, loudly deriding all these

THE CUL TURKAMPF IN GERMANY. 1 1 5

inconsistencies, and availing themselves of all the
popular elements which are not already enlisted in
the Ultramontane cause. As Luther said : ' There
is no fighting against opinions by the sword, and
error is only overcome by truth.5 "

Such testimony as that of M. Gefifcken, coming from
a faithful subject of the German Empire, who can-
not be accused of sympathy with the foreigner, and
who does not belong to the persecuted minority,
deserves to be carefully weighed. It tells exactly what
are the results of this famous " Culturkampf." The
word itself carries the condemnation of that which it
represents. The State, in declaring itself to be the
defender of modern culture against Ultramontanism,
shows that it is not content with defending the law,
the public peace, the legislation and constitution of
the country, but that it intends to enter into the
conflict of doctrines and ideas, to attack principles, to
oppose a certain mode of thought, to undertake, in
short, a philosophic war, which is nothing else than a
religious war. The State is the guardian of the high
culture of the nation by its institutions for public
instruction ; and, above all, by the practice of a
sincere and enlightened Liberalism, which alone per-
mits national culture to develop itself freely in the
open air, and not in a hot-house. We should pro-
nounce the " Culturkampf," then, to be essentially a
mistaken and dangerous enterprise, even if we did not
know to what excesses and to what futile violence it

1 1 6 CONTEMPORA R Y FOR 7 RAITS.

leads on the Governments which allow themselves to
be involved in it.

The demonstration of this given by M. Geffcken is
as conclusive as it is opportune. It has been supple-
mented by the irrefutable evidence of facts. Have we
not already seen the Prussian State ready to lay down
its arms before the adversary whom it had thought to
crush by an exceptional legislation ? Whatever may
have been the motives actuating it in this step, it is
none the less a confession that it made a false move
in its Culturkampf, and the price is a heavy one to
pay for assuring a majority on the tariff question.

III.

We must hasten to a conclusion. Whatever liberal
views might be entertained on questions of this order,
it was impossible to doubt that a struggle between
the modern State and the Ultramontane Church was
inevitable in France. It is of the utmost importance,
therefore, to determine what are the true conditions
of the question, in order that the contest may not
be embittered and rendered interminable. This we
shall be most helped to do, by a careful observation
of the experiments made elsewhere. To fail in
the legitimate exercise of the protective power of
the State, would be as dangerous as to be guilty of
undue severity, for the weakness of one day might
be followed by a violent reaction on the next. The

THE CUL T URKAMPF IN GERMANY. 1 1 J

duties of the State, as we understand them, consist in
keeping up a vigorous defence against everything
that menaces its safety, without having recourse to
aggression, least of all in matters of opinion and belief,
which are always intangible.

It cannot be denied that the Ultramontane party
took large advantage of the favourable position it
enjoyed in the last National Assembly, in its attempts
to reconstruct the religion of the State for its own
advantage. By observing the same wisdom which
guided the Chamber of Deputies, in revising, with
a studious regard to its principles, the law relating to
the liberty of the higher education, it would be pos-
sible to correct, without danger, the legislative work
of the National Assembly, and slowly but surely to
restore the true idea of the modern State as a lay
power. We hope, indeed, that recourse may be had
to the surest, and at the same time the noblest, of
all modes of defence, that which consists in extend-
ing the public liberties. The best rampart that can
be raised against Ultramontane aggressions, is the full
recognition of liberty of worship. At present, only
those forms of worship are legal which have received
the previous authorisation of the State. This has
been simply a convenient way of stifling the free
development of religious thought, since a partial
administration was always sure to use it in subser-
vience to the Ultramontane episcopate. What more
excellent way can there be of combating the party of

u8 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

the Syllabus than by giving or extending general
liberty, since it has no more deadly enemy than
freedom of conscience, which it has ever loaded
and honoured with its anathemas ? We hope, then,
that our assemblies will hear no more sophistical
arguments about the liberty of fathers of families,
which ought to be respected, as opposed to the
principle which makes primary education compulsory ;
and that the law enforcing this will be voted all the
more quickly, the more determined is the Ultramon-
tane opposition to it. To make primary instruction
by law universal, and thus to dissipate the ignorance
of our country districts, would be the most effectual
means of weakening the cause of Ultramontanism.

If from this defensive duty of the Legislature, we
pass on to the measures to be taken against the
positive aggressions made on the State, it is obvious
to remark that the first obligation of the Government
is to see that the administration is henceforth con-
ducted on the strictest principles of religious equality.
There is much to be done before this equality will be
really restored, in the ordinary conduct of depart-
mental affairs. Those open attacks upon the con-
stitution of the country, which are too often associated
with religious fanaticism, must be severely proscribed.
It cannot be suffered that a holy war should be
preached anywhere against the State, and against
rights guaranteed by law, such as civil and religious
liberty. The State must keep a watchful eye on all

THE CULTURKAMPF IN GERMANY. 119

the great religious societies which have one power-
ful interest in common. Here, again, it is bound to
exercise the strictest impartiality, and that which is
forbidden in democratic gatherings, must not be
tolerated in Catholic clubs. It has too often forgotten
to use this vigilance and this even-handed severity.

But here it must stop. Let it be very careful not
to interfere with any religious manifestations what-
ever, that do not trench on political ground. Let it
allow pilgrimages to be multiplied till they wear
themselves out ; let it tolerate any manifestations of
zeal, however eccentric, so long as they are not made
the occasion for fanning political discontent. Let
preaching have its full latitude ; let it develop at will
its theories of the latest Encyclical, and unfurl the
banner of the Syllabus, provided only that it does not
pass from theory to application, and does not incrimi-
nate any of the laws and institutions of the country.
Under this reservation, let the State not trouble
itself about the instruction given in the Seminaries,
only claiming its right of inspection and control
from a social point of view. For while France must
be careful to avoid the errors into which Prussia has
fallen, and not to make impossible conditions for the
admission of her clergy to office, it is nevertheless her
duty to keep a watchful eye over all the teaching
given in the country, with the simple object of assur-
ing herself that nothing is taught which is contrary to
the laws and the Constitution.

120 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

It will be clear that such precautions as are here
suggested, do not interfere at all with freedom of
belief and opinion ; they are not calculated, therefore,
to arouse determined opposition. The State does not
enter upon a war of ideas ; it does not concern itself,
either more or less, with orthodoxy, as in Prussia and
Switzerland, where the civil authorities undertake to
decide what is the true Catholic doctrine by proscrib-
ing the teaching of Ultramontanism. Thus, while still
maintaining the right of the State to require reason-
able submission to the civil power, as it is determined
in the first article of the Declaration of 1682, we are
not prepared to admit that it should require the official
teaching of the three other articles, which imply the
negation of the Ultramontane doctrine, the triumph
of which was unhappily assured by the late Council.
This would be to fight against ideas and doctrines,
a conflict in which victory is always impossible. We
plead for the prudent and moderate application of the
Concordat, so long as that bastard system continues,
which it is equally difficult either to improve or to
replace.

All the prudence in the world must fail, however,
if there is not on both sides the exercise of forbear-
ance and discretion. It is not possible to take
precautions against the freaks of insanity. But we
ask : Is there not culpable audacity in defying the
public conscience, as many of the representatives
of Ultramontanism do, by their vindication of the

THE CULTURKAMPF IN GERMANY. 121

maxims of religious absolutism ? It might be said,
in the eloquent words of one of the most illustrious
Catholics of our age, that they treat the Church like
one of the wild beasts which are carried about in mena-
geries. " Look at it well," they seem to say, " and
understand what is its true nature. To-day it is in
a cage, made tame and spiritless by its condition ; it
has no power at present to harm you ; but see what
claws it has, and what tusks, and if ever it gets free
you will see what it will do." Is not this a true ver-
sion of all the rabid declamations of the defenders of
the Syllabus, who, instead of leaving it in the safe
obscurity of the sanctuary, drag it into prominence,
swear by nothing else, and are eager to reorganise
society according to its principles, the first result of
which would be the suppression of all liberties, and
first of all of liberty of conscience.

These senseless extravagances are fruitful sources
of danger, for they give pretexts to the ultra-Radicals,
who have already openly demanded the subordination
of the Church. If the days of desperate and deadly
struggle between the two powers should ever come
again, much of the responsibility would rest on the
numerous devotees of Ultramontanism. How can
we forget that those who raise the cry that they are
martyrs, before even a threat has been breathed
against them, are the first to declare that were they
only themselves in power, they would soon make
martyrs ? It is not enough for the moderate children

1 22 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

of the Church, those who have not been carried away
by the furious torrent of this new league, to groan in
secret over these excesses of speech and of zeal. At
all costs they must restrain them, even if they have
to bear the supreme indignity of being called Liberal
Catholics. But whether they do their duty or not,
ours remains clear : it is to be consistent Liberals, even
towards the worst enemies of liberty, respecting error
which is merely doctrinal, while never tolerating any
direct attack upon the State, and adhering strictly to
law. This is at once the surest and the noblest path
to victory, while violent measures only frustrate them-
selves by giving to the dangerous doctrines at which
they are aimed, the advantage of being unjustly perse-
cuted. Against such a course let the example of
Prussia be a sufficient warning to us.

ARNAUD DE CAR1EGE.

ARNAUD DE LARIEGE.

NONE of our contemporaries in public life will
leave behind a memory more stainless and
more justly esteemed, than Arnaud de l'Ariege. He
was a man of rare courage, a bold and indomitable
defender of our public liberties, ready in the cause
of freedom to brave personal danger, to endure exile,
and that which is more bitter still, isolation and
inaction, while oppression was triumphant. But he
was more than this. He represented a class of
generous souls whose dream it had been to bring
democracy into harmony with the religion of the
past, strangely transformed by them into their own
image, and whom the failure of this hope filled with
an abiding sadness. Like the Rebecca of the Bible,
of whom it is said that she bare within her womb
two nations, the noble school to which Arnaud de
l'Ariege belonged, embraced two brothers, or rather
two worlds, which it strove to reconcile. To this
impossible task he devoted himself with an energy
and zeal which nothing could daunt, and the conflict,
which found its counterpart also in his own soul, cost
him the keenest anguish. His mental suffering was

126 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

sufficiently indicated by the premature whitening of
his hair, and by the fixed expression of melancholy
on his fine features. Any one who watched him as
he sat silent in his place on the left of the National
Assembly, must have felt that he was one of those
political anchorites who pursue their own ideal
visions through all the hot strife of parties. It is
said that when Lamartine entered the Chambers
he replied to those who asked him whether he would
sit on the right or the left, Au plafond (on the ceiling).
Probably it was a ministerial of the day who ori-
ginated this story of the great poet. Nor could it
be applied without grave injustice to Arnaud de
l'Ariege, for, however high might be his ideal, he
never hesitated, in the great crises of national history,
to take his place boldly on the side of liberty and
the right. The Republican Liberal party has had no
more honest representative, none more exempt from
personal ambition, or more firm in the days of peril.
His convictions were so deep that they produced a
calm serenity, and no bitter or passionate word was
ever known to escape his lips. He would make no
compromises on a point of conscience, and his
verdict was very severe on those who had no pity
on France in her struggle to recover herself. His
kindness was at the same time unbounded, but it
never degenerated into weakness. He who is a real
friend to truth and to mankind, carries his attachment
to his cause to such a height of disinterestedness, that

ARNAUD DE VARIEGE. 127

the mere fluctuations of passion have no power to
move him, and the strength of his convictions gives
stability to his character.

Such a man was Arnaud de l'Ariege in his stern
endeavour to unite his religious with his democratic
faith. Must it be said that he failed in this noble
enterprise because, during the later years of his life,
he saw the desired reconciliation ever receding before
him ? Broadly regarding the question, we think not.
In the first place, he saved the honour of religion,
by showing himself a great citizen in difficult times,
when religion was dishonoured by its most prominent
representatives, who gave their benediction and ado-
ration to triumphant force. We know nothing more
beautiful or more touching than the conduct of
Arnaud de l'Ariege at the time of the December coup
d'etat. He was not content with showing his senti-
ments by associating himself with every attempt
made at an organised resistance ; but impressed with
the feeling that it became the highest dignitary of
the diocese to take up the cause of outraged liberty,
he implored the Archbishop to remonstrate with the
Emperor in the name of Christian conscience. It
was in vain that he exposed his heroic wife and her
new-born child to the perils of crossing the barri-
cades, the only way by which the proscribed deputy
could place his petition in the hands of the Arch-
bishop. In spite of all his efforts, the Te Deum was
chanted in Notre Dame the following Sunday.

128 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

Yet further disillusionising awaited Arnaud de
l'Ariege. He had the sorrow of seeing the little band
of Liberal Catholics dwindling day by day. In truth,
he had been always in advance of them in the bold-
ness and generosity of his views. Lacordaire was not
allowed to preach again from the pulpits of the capital,
after his impassioned denunciation of the coup d'etat in
his sermon at Saint-Roch. Ozanam died before his
time, consumed by the fire of indignation in his soul.
In the universal repression, nothing was heard but
the outrages which the Ultramontanes, who had
rallied around the Emperor, heaped on their former
friends, who would not acquiesce in saving the Church
at the cost of her honour. After the Italian war the
Roman question presented itself in all its gravity, and
yet further divided the few remaining Liberal Catho-
lics. Arnaud de l'Ariege pronounced unhesitatingly
against the temporal sovereignty of the Pope. He
maintained, by argument and from history, that the
Church had everything to lose in becoming a political
power of the ancien regime.

He wrote two important books on this subject :
" L'independance du Pape et les droit des Peuples,"
and " La Papaute Temporelle et la Nationality
Italienne." It is almost needless to say that Arnaud
de l'Ariege was one of the defeated party in the
Vatican Council. He had thrown himself heart and
soul into the opposition made to the new dogma by
his former friends, among whom he had the joy of

ARNAUD DE L'ARIEGE. 129

seeing Montalembert. Happily this great man was
spared the pain of surviving the defeat of his most
cherished convictions.

The bitterest pang for Arnaud de l'Ariege was in
witnessing the total demolition of Liberal Catholicism
in France. Huet, the brave disciple of Bordas-Des-
moulin, was led by his indignation at the results of
the Council to abjure Christianity altogether. Silent
acquiescence enwrapped like a shroud all that generous
and ardent phalanx which had rallied around Lacor-
daire. Arnaud de l'Ariege remained what he had
always been — a Christian and a Liberal ; but he felt
more than ever isolated, irritated and indignant at the
excesses of triumphant Ultramontanism. He could
only take refuge in the utterance of the dying Pascal :
Ad tribunal tuum, Jesus Christe, appello.

He did not retract any of his early opinions.
These have found their most complete expression in
his book, " La Revolution et l£'glise," a book which
breathes throughout the spirit of Bordas-Desmoulin,
and which is dedicated to the great cause of the
reconciliation of religion and liberty. The French
Revolution is there represented as the legitimate
offspring of Christianity, which reached its highest
realisation in the great and lasting reforms then
achieved. It is true that Arnaud de l'Ariege dis-
engages from the terrible struggles of the Revolution,
the new and fruitful principle, which in the dust and
heat of the conflict was often lost sight of, and which

10

1 30 CONTEMPORA R Y FOR TRAITS.

has been strangely misconceived by many who have
professed to carry on the same work. This principle,
as he understood it, was the entire and absolute
separateness of the civil power and religion. Pagan
society was based upon the opposite principle. It
recognised no right of the individual conscience
beyond the control of the State. Primitive Chris-
tianity vindicated this liberty of conscience, and the
Church, when it again placed religion under State
control, returned to the principle of paganism.
Hence the French Revolution showed itself more
Christian than the Church of the old regime. Arnaud
de l'Ariege carried these principles to their furthest
issues. He remained always a declared and decided
advocate of the separation of Church and State,
though he never attempted to press the solution of
,this difficult problem prematurely, nor to lay so heavy
a burden on the shoulders of our young Republic. He
went so far in the direction of non-interference that
there appeared an admirable letter in the Temps
from him, earnest Christian as he was, protesting
against the vote for public prayers in the National
Assembly. He could not bear to see spiritual things,
which are purely matters of conscience, put to the
vote in parliament. When, immediately after the
24th of May, a fanatic majority approved the unquali-
fied decree of the Prefect of Lyons, denouncing civil
burials, Arnaud de l'Ariege made repeated efforts to
gain a hearing ; but he was not allowed to finish his

ARNAUD DE UARIEGE. 131

eager remonstrance in behalf of that liberty of con-
science which formed so important an article in his
religious faith.

Arnaud de l'Ariege only made, to our knowledge,
two great speeches in parliament, both in reference to
the law for liberty of teaching : the first in the Legis-
lative Assembly, on the 14th of February, 1850; the
other in the National Assembly, on the 14th of June,
1 875. Though thus divided by an interval of a quarter
of a century, we find in both speeches the same doc-
trines, deeply Christian and daringly Liberal. Both
express the same conviction of the necessity of keep-
ing the domain of the State distinct from that of
religion. There is the same elevation of view, the
same perception of what will be the most glorious
triumph of the future.

" It is the part of Christian democracy," said the
young Deputy of 1850, "however unworthy may be
its organ here, to define clearly and decidedly its view
on this question, and to rise above prejudice of every
kind — revolutionary prejudice no less than that of
the old Conservative parties. The most distinctive
and essential feature of the Revolution, is the limita-
tion it has placed to the domain of the State. The
sovereign to-day has no longer the same rights as
before 1789. In the ancient community all the
rights of the man were comprehended in those of the
citizen. When Christianity had wrought its revolu-
tion, the freedom of man was asserted in matters of

132 CONTEMPORAR Y PORTRAITS.

faith and of religion. It is this freedom which is
vindicated in the principle of the separation of the
two powers in religious matters."

From this principle the speaker argued the incom-
petence of the State to make any philosophical or
religious teaching obligatory, so that he could turn
round to the Church and say : " The State recognises
the equal rights of all citizens ; there is no Church
with which it can treat as one power with another.
All religions are free, as are all philosophical opinions.
You, members of the Church, are, in the eye of the
law, citizens on a par with other citizens ; but in the
name of the Church you have no rights. I do not
acknowledge you. I declare you to be a usurping
power. When the Church intervenes to lend its aid
to the State in fulfilling its duty as a government,
and in seeking to give education to the people, I de-
clare that it goes beyond its rights, and is acting in
opposition to the principle which is at the basis of
our democratic system."

The Deputy of 1875, matured by the trials of life,
and by the terrible catastrophes that had befallen his
country (in connection with which he rendered emi-
nent service as mayor of one arrondissement of Paris
during the siege), used the same language, when the
Right, having formed a fresh coalition, endeavoured
to restore and extend the fatal law of 1850 for public
instruction. On one point only he speaks somewhat
less positively. While still maintaining the incom-

ARNAUD BE IJARIEGE. 133

petence of the State in matters of philosophy and
religion, he admits that there exists, apart from the
various creeds and philosophic systems, a certain
common stock of moral ideas which form a sufficient
basis for government education. He recognises also
the exclusive right of the civil power to confer
degrees which entitle to the holding of public offices ;
but he has not swerved at all from his essential con-
victions, as may be seen from the following extracts :
" Whoever argues, whether in the name of the nation
or of the Church, that there is such a thing as a
State doctrine, ignores two great facts in the world's
history — first, the great Christian emancipation, and
then the great French Revolution, which was the
renovation of society. This great emancipation was
radical and decisive, just because it gave freedom
to the conscience. You men of little faith, whether
Christians or Rationalists, if you were really in-
fluenced on the one hand by the spirit of the gospel,
which is the spirit of liberty and justice, and on
the other hand by the spirit of the Revolution,
which is the very same, would cease to stand in
dread one of the other. We must be careful not
to mistake the movements of some excited minds,
for anti-religious demonstrations. People are apt to
think that the antipathy (often very strong) of the
youth of France to the clergy indicates an irrecon-
cilable hostility to the Church.

" Let me ask you to listen to a remarkable piece of

134 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

evidence supplied by contemporary history on this
point. In 1840, in the great hall of the Sorbonne,
an eminent priest, a professor of sacred elocution,
uttered some words which aroused the indignant pro-
testations of his hearers. Was it hatred to the priest
that stirred their youthful blood ? You shall judge
for yourselves. A short time after, the same elocu-
cutionary course was taken up by a new professor in
the same great amphitheatre of the Sorbonne, before
the same youthful auditory ; and the new professor was
received with enthusiastic applause. Why this con-
trast ? Why did the one arouse a tempest of indig-
nation, and the other restore peace and confidence in
his hearers ? Both were priests, both eloquent, both
illustrious. Because the one — Abbe Dupanloup —
had attacked our modern liberties, and the other —
M. Cceur — had hailed these noble conquests in the
domain of freedom, with the heart of a true patriot.
It is this spirit of liberty which must be cherished in
the youth of France, if we would elevate, purify, and
strengthen the fibre of the nation. It is not by vilify-
ing our newly-acquired liberties and signing protests
against them, that you will maintain your widespread
and powerful influence."

These words remain as the parliamentary testament
of this noble and generous soul. And it shall not be
unfulfilled. The religious forms under which he saw
in vision the union of the Church with modern liberties,
may undergo many changes in the future. What

ARNAUD DE VARIEGE. 135

matter, if all that was eternally true, Christian, and
liberal in his policy is assured of final victory? No
truth can ever perish ; and we know no higher truth
in relation to social life than that complete enfranchise-
ment of the conscience which Arnaud de l'Ariege
proclaimed to be at once the first consequence of
Christianity, and the essential idea of the French
Revolution. This principle will survive all the calcu-
lations of parties. Its final triumph is certain, both
in religion and politics, and it will then be seen that
visionaries like Arnaud de l'Ariege were the really
practical men of the future. He has not to wait,
however, the vindication of history. Universal respect,
blended with sincere affection, on the part of all those
who knew him in his public and private life, is the
tribute tendered to his memory to-day.

Arnaud de l'Ariege fought much and suffered
much for his convictions in hard and troublous times,
without being ever betrayed into personal animosity,
and without ever having to retract his position. It
was a beautiful life, and in our view not unsuccessful,
though he died without having seen the triumph of
his cause.

DUPANLOUP, BISHOP OF ORLEANS.

DUPANLOUP,
BISHOP OF ORLEANS.

IN November, 1878, the Church of France lost the
most eminent of her bishops. The long career of
Mgr. Dupanloup is a sort of epitome of the history of
French Catholicism. Born in Savoy in 1802, he early
attracted attention by his intelligence and energy,
and by the fervour which he carried into all that he
undertook. Distinguished as a catechist, and as a
pulpit orator, though he never rose to the rank of
such men as Lacordaire and Ravignan, he was chiefly
remarkable as a teacher of the higher Catholic
doctrine. As a leader, he had among his followers
eminent and even royal personages, who contributed
not a little to extend his influence. He had the
honour of reconciling Talleyrand to the Church on
his deathbed. His first appearance in public affairs
was on the occasion of the famous law for liberty o
teaching, which was voted in 1850 by the Legislative
Assembly, by means of the coalition of the Catholics
with the old supporters of the Orleanist monarchy —
two parties who, as Montalembert said, were " cast by a

140 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

common shipwreck upon the same raft." Unhappily,
the liberty thus inaugurated was not the true liberty,
which belongs equally to all citizens, but only the
liberty of the holy Catholic Church, which had as-
sumed a preponderating share in the direction of the
University, and had contrived to get the popular
teaching made over in great part to its religious
bodies. Mgr. Dupanloup, who was their Abbe, took
an important part in the Commission which framed
that too famous law, the fruitful parent of so much
evil to France.

We remember meeting him at this time in one of
the tribunes of the Legislative Assembly. It was on
the day when M. Thiers had given his support to the
clerical party, of which till then he had been such a
decided opponent. " This is a great and decisive day
for that man," said Mgr. Dupanloup. He little thought
that at the close of his career he would be the leader
of Thiers' most determined enemies, fighting against
that statesman's liberal and truly patriotic policy.

Abbe Dupanloup was raised soon after this to the
see of Orleans. There he revived, as far as he could,
the traditions of Joan of Arc, seeking on all occa-
sions to combine Catholicism with patriotism. He
was made in a short time a member of the French
Academy, in recognition of his numerous writings on
education, the style of which was impassioned rather
than brilliant, as, indeed, were all the productions of his
pen. He now entered into his first controversy with

DUPANLOUP, BISHOP OF ORLEANS. 141

the Ultramontane party, who had attempted to pro-
scribe the Greek and Latin classics, on the pretext
that their entirely pagan influence was dangerous.
Dupanloup, as a member of the Academy, vigo-
rously opposed this new invasion of barbarism in the
field of literature. He belonged at this time altogether
to the school of Liberal Catholics, like Montalembert
and Lacordaire, men whose great aim was to reconcile
the doctrine of the Church with modern society. Into
this endeavour he entered, like them, with very sincere
religious enthusiasm. It has been recently reported
that in the chapel of the Castle of Montalembert, in
Burgundy, the Bishop of Orleans celebrated at this
time a solemn mass, which was a sort of vigil of the
champions of Liberal Catholicism, on the eve of the
conflict. A tablet bearing their names, with the in-
scription, " Pro religione et libertate" is still to be seen
in the chapel.

At this very time the Ultramontane party was
letting loose all its fury against Liberal Catholicism,
under the leadership of Louis Veuillot, the great
scoffer of the age. He found a formidable antagonist
in the Bishop of Orleans, who replied to the violent
articles of the Univers, by charges which were admir-
able for their freshness and vigour. He was unques-
tionably most successful in these fugitive productions.
On one point, however, he agreed with his Ultramon-
tane opponents. He was always a defender of the
temporal power of the Holy Father, and when he saw

142 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

this menaced by the policy of Napoleon III., he threw
all his energy into the contest. With this exception,
he spoke and wrote as a Liberal. Great, then, was
the astonishment created when, after the appearance
of the Encyclical in 1864, which compelled him to
abandon all that he had previously held most dear,
he published an apology for the Syllabus. The sur-
prise would have been greater still if it had been
known that M. Dupanloup had done all in his power
in Rome, to prevent the publication of this same
Syllabus, which he afterwards endeavoured to justify
by a softening and modifying interpretation. We
have it on the authority of M. Guizot, who was closely
allied with Bishop Dupanloup, that the latter spent
his utmost strength in unavailing efforts to prevent
the Roman Curia from taking so imprudent a step.

Our perplexity at contradictions like these will
be lessened, if we consider how difficult is thorough
honesty under a religion of absolute authority, which
allows its faithful followers no alternative but feigned
or unfeigned submission. From this time M. Du-
panloup was far less liberal. Instead of being
satisfied with refuting the false doctrines of mate-
rialism, he denounced them passionately to the poli-
tical bodies then in power, and succeeded by his
influence in closing the Academy against M. Littre.

When, several years later, the author of the great
" Dictionnaire de la Langue Francaise" was admitted
on the ground of his brilliant literary achievements

DUPANLOUP, BISHOP OF ORLEANS. 143

Mgr. Dupanloup sent in his resignation, which was
never either accepted or withdrawn.

In spite of the Syllabus, and of his famous com-
mentary on it, he was still a Gallican, and watched
with displeasure the preparations for proclaiming the
dogma of papal infallibility. On the eve of the
Council he was among the foremost objectors. In

1869 he made himself the very leader of the oppo-
sition, to the great indignation of the Ultramontanes.
His Catholic apologists of to-day draw a veil of
prudent silence over this period of his life. It has
not been forgotten, however, at Rome, for in resisting
the policy of the Society of Jesus, he committed the
sin for which there is no forgiveness either in this
world or the next. Thus, in spite of his submission,
and of the numberless services rendered by him since

1870 to the Catholic cause, he never obtained the
cardinal's hat, which has adorned the heads of the
most mediocre men of the French episcopate. Do
what he might, he was still a suspected man, and
was treated as such by the papal Nuncios in Paris.

The Nuncio even went so far as to deplore the fall
of the Republican Ministry on the 24th of May, be-
cause he feared that the direction of ecclesiastical
affairs in France would pass to Bishop Dupanloup.
And yet, from the time the Bishop took his seat in
the National Assembly, he never lost an occasion to
serve those who so repelled him. He was the spokes-
man in the famous crusade of the bishops in 1871, in

144 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

favour of the temporal power. He took the leading
part in the discussion of the laws on public instruc-
tion ; especially in that which constituted the new
Catholic universities, and gave them the right to con-
fer degrees. He did not cease to denounce severely
all false doctrines, without being over-careful about
the correctness of his quotations. His vehement op-
position to the celebration of the Voltaire centenary
is in the memory of all. In this instance, as in many
others, his zeal carried him beyond all bounds, and
made him blind to any but the evil aspects of that
extraordinary genius. He had not the fairness either
to recognise Voltaire's attempts to secure toleration,
or to admit that Christianity was presented to him
only under the hideous mask of a persecuting religion,
which might well provoke his mockery and scorn.
The Bishop of Orleans died on the eve of fresh con-
flicts for the advancement of the Church. It is but
just to him to say that he never gave his approval to
the superstitious vagaries of Ultramontane pietism.

Mgr. Dupanloup is a fair representative of this
troubled period of French Catholicism. He was
tormented by self-contradictions, which he never
succeeded in reconciling ; and it is this which gives
him sometimes an appearance of insincerity. In
reality he does not deserve the imputation ; it was
his position that was false, not himself. We must
remember, moreover, what a passionate nature his
was. Passion was expressed in the high colour

DUPANLOUP, BISHOP OF ORLEANS. 145

of his countenance, in his eager gesture, in his
speech, impetuous rather than eloquent, and weighted
somewhat with the laboured rhetoric of the schools.
Even as an old man he would walk bareheaded
to cool the fever in his veins : age itself could
not bring him serenity. It cannot be denied that,
during his later years, he gravely compromised the
cause he held dear by his controversial rancour
and vehemence. The journal which breathed his
spirit, La Defense Religiense, was one of the worst
organs of the clerical reaction. There can be no
doubt that it helped to bring about the crisis of the
24th of May, for in our day prophecies so accurate
and exact only come from behind the scenes.

But, in spite of all his errors, Mgr. Dupanloup
remains a character well deserving our interest, and
perhaps our pity. There can be no doubt that he
suffered much in the sharp mental conflict between
his early liberal convictions and the directly contrary
conclusions of the Vatican Council. In the dignity
and purity of his private life, Mgr. Dupanloup merits
all respect, and during the war he showed admirable
courage in his diocese of Orleans, which suffered
terribly from the invaders.

He liked to invite to the representations of Greek
tragedies, which were given in his little Seminary, the
friends of high classic literature, and sometimes
among them men who he knew had very little
sympathy with clerical education. His menage was

11

146 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

simple almost to austerity, his manners frank and
cordial. It was easy to talk with him on subjects of
literary interest, or on the higher themes of patriotism
and Christian spirituality.

The Catholic journals extol Dupanloup as a great
defender of religious liberty. This encomium he
merits less than any, for he never defended any but
the " liberty of the right." He was the declared
enemy of every legal measure that proposed to give
liberty of worship. He even went so far as to de-
scribe the honest application of this measure to non-
Catholics, as subversive of society.

The Bishop of Orleans was the brilliant represen-
tative of Catholic Liberalism, both in its earlier phase
of imprudent generosity, and in its later period of
retractation and submission. He showed by his
example, how great a sacrifice is exacted from its
worshippers by the idol of the Vatican. They can-
not satisfy it by anything short of an apostasy from
Liberalism. The great high priests of Ultramon-
tanism are not content even with this apostasy ;
they have no forgiveness even for those who repent.
This was very evident in the strange funeral oration
pronounced by M. Veuillot upon Mgr. Dupanloup.
In truth, the one body, the Church, is divided against
itself, and the fictitious veil of absolute unity fails to
conceal the fact.

ADOLPHE MONOD.

ADOLPHE MONOD.

THE influence of ideas on the drama of history is
in no way circumscribed by the smallness of the
theatre in which they are first produced. In truth,
they rather prepare the drama than appear themselves
as the actors in it. Without falling into the fatalistic
and pantheistic idealism of Hegel, we are free to
recognise that the movements of thought, or rather of
the human soul, are reproduced in the domain of out-
ward fact, and that this inner history is not governed
by the strict laws of logic, but is enacted with the
same freedom as that of the world without. Some-
times it is in an upper chamber, as at Jerusalem,
sometimes in a monkish cell, as at Wittemberg, that a
new era in the history of the human mind takes its
rise, like a great river which has its hidden source in
some remote mountain region.

Nothing could well appear more insignificant than
the French Protestantism of our day, when compared
with the Catholicism of the age, so ardent, sometimes
so defiant, always so skilful in swaying the masses
of the people. And yet this insignificant minority,

1 50 CONTEMPORAR V FOR TRAITS.

so long ignored, has enjoyed in this century a very
intense and fruitful religious life. The ideas which
it has ventilated and helped to put into circula-
tion in the intellectual atmosphere of the nineteenth
century, are of the highest importance in the present
religious crisis, and are such as, when fully developed,
must exercise a weighty influence on the mind of the
age.

It must be remembered, moreover, that French
Protestantism is a branch of that great moral and
intellectual development called the Reformation.
This left its impress upon a great portion of Europe
and of the world ; it is one of the most powerful
factors in the history of modern times. Everything
relating to Protestantism must, then, be of the highest
interest to all who rise above the prejudice — shall we
call it Catholic or Chinese ? — that nothing exists
beyond their own intellectual boundaries. I may add
that Protestantism does not take away from the
French mind, those peculiar gifts of clearness and pre-
cision which make it so powerful an instrument in
the diffusion of ideas ; often, indeed, it has rather the
contrary effect — stimulating to the highest and purest
exercise of all the mental powers. Thus the various
tendencies which in the present century have agitated
the Churches of the Reformation throughout Europe,
have acquired in France a degree of definiteness
which has accelerated their development, either pro-
gressive or retrogressive. The history of French

ADOLPHE MO NOD. 151

Protestantism has told upon the history of Protestant-
ism generally, and hence on the whole history of the
age, as we shall presently show.

If we attempt to characterise the Protestant crisis
of the nineteenth century, we shall find that the issues
raised are twofold — theological and ecclesiastical.
The faith of the Reformation had everywhere felt the
influence of the eighteenth century. The stormy
wind of negation had swept even over the desert, to
which the heroic army of the French Reformation had
fled, broken and proscribed. The eighteenth cen-
tury had scarcely sunk below the horizon in a bed of
clouds crimsoned with blood, when, aroused by such
a series of tragic events in the history of the nations,
religious feeling re-awoke in a state of strong excite-
ment. This re-awakening produced important effects
in the Catholic Church, and Protestantism felt its
influence in an equal degree. The revival of reli-
gion is the characteristic feature of the commence-
ment of this century. In Germany it became blended
with speculation and mysticism ; in England it drew
yet closer the bonds of the narrow orthodoxy of
the seventeenth century, but it introduced at the
same time a devotional fervour and missionary zeal
which gave it a marvellous power of dissemination.
When peace re-opened the Continent to the influence
of England, Protestantism in the French-speaking
countries received the impress of the religious revival
in Great Britain. It lost nothing in its transmission

152 C ONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

across the Channel, of either its fervent zeal or its
intolerant dogmatism. When it had rallied around
its banner an important section of the Protestants, a
struggle was inevitable between its converts and the
still remaining adherents of a vague and meagre
supernaturalism, who, having suffered so much persecu-
tion themselves, made tolerance the prime article of
their creed. The controversy which thus arose was
at once religious and ecclesiastical. It was not enough
to establish the just claims of orthodoxy ; it was
needful also to vindicate its rights in the Church.
This attempt brought to light all the complications of
the ecclesiastical problem.

It is not my intention to retrace the history of
French Protestantism in the nineteenth century. I
shall only attempt to show, through some of its
noblest representatives, the principal phases of the
religious revival of our age. After the first days of
rapturous fervour, we shall find the earnest spirits of
the French revival entering on a path of develop-
ment, in which they keep pace more or less closely
with the evangelical and liberal school beyond the
Rhine. Their first advances in this direction are
made with timid steps, in fear lest they should wound
sensitive consciences, or do injustice to the absorbing
claims of missionary activity.

Adolphe Monod represents the early phase of the
religious revival, with a happy blending of holy aus-
terity and brilliant natural endowments. The remark-

ADOLPHE MONOD. 153

able feature in his life is that he at first espoused, heart
and soul, the theology of the religious awakening of the
commencement of the century, without, however, falling
into its theoretical or practical extravagances. Against
these his high moral and intellectual qualities always
proved a sufficient safeguard. A change, however,
soon became apparent in his theological opinions.
This change was as decided as it was moderate, and
to the very close of his life we find him becoming
more and more liberal and large-hearted. It is inte-
resting to trace his growing aspirations after a broader
and more enlightened theology, blended as they are
always with the most profound and earnest piety. In
the great heart of Adolphe Monod strict orthodoxy
.was forced to expand under the strong pressure of
Christian feeling, as the mould which becomes too
strait for it, is broken by the precious metal in a state
of fusion.

In the case of Verny and of Robertson, the crisis
by which their doctrinal views were transformed, was
more severe and more painful in its character, so that
it becomes a study of pathetic interest. In the case
of Vinet, it was a gradual process of fuller develop-
ment, and his faith flowed on in a quiet and even
channel, like a stream no longer shut in between
banks too narrow for it.

We have thus in these three men — all leading
spirits — three epochs or phases of the history of the
religious revival, which will not have accomplished its

1 54 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

full work in France, till the Church has been made
absolutely free by it, both in its doctrine and institu-
tions. Not till then will Christianity be able truly to
fulfil its mission in a democratic society which feels
the want of adequate spiritual guidance.

I shall attempt nothing more than a sketch of
Adolphe Monod, as of Vinet and Verny. We hope
that Monod's family, who have already done so much
for the publication of his works, will give us the
complete biography so much desired by his admirers.

The materials of this biographical study are de-
rived chiefly from Adolphe Monod's own writings.
I have also drawn largely on my personal re-
collections, for I had the privilege of knowing
Adolphe Monod from my childhood, and of being,
in later days, honoured with his friendship. I have
constantly before me, in memory, his earnest, expres-
sive face. How vividly can I recall him in the in-
timacy of the home circle, beaming with love, but
somewhat reserved and silent ; in the pulpit, with the
flashes of his brilliant eloquence lighting up his whole
face ; or in the professor's chair, with the calm patience
of the master, gravely solicitous for his pupils' good.
Last of all, upon his deathbed, when suffering had
set its crowning seal upon his pallid brow. In the
case of such a preacher, such an apostle, his words
give us the man himself, so truly do they express the
purity and earnestness of his moral life. The writings
he has left enable us to trace his thought, from its

ADOLPHE MO NOD. 155

very first inspiration, through all its various stages of
development, to catch, as it were, the prayer for light
that rises from the seeker after truth. Some publi-
cations that have long been out of print, such as the
addresses delivered by him on his admission to the
theological faculty of Montauban, and some occa-
sional pamphlets, have supplied us with valuable
information.

Adolphe Monod had not an imposing presence. He
was of middle height and his features were irregular ;
but they bore the impress of high moral qualities,
enhanced by the pervading melancholy peculiar to
great minds. His smile, however, illuminated his
whole face, and when he was speaking, his eloquence
seemed to transfigure him as it does all great masters
of the art. His gesture was perfect ; and I have heard
no other voice but Berryer's of so harmonious and
penetrating a tone.

Adolphe Monod remains one of the noblest names
on the roll of French Protestantism, surpassed by
none in the disinterestedness and largeness of heart
and mind with which he served the cause of Christ.
So high has he been raised by the admiration and
gratitude of Christendom, that he may be said to
belong to the whole Evangelical Church of our day.
If Catholic or free-thinking France had been animated
by a more liberal spirit, it would not have been satis-
fied with the vague echo of an illustrious name coming
to it across the Atlantic ; it would have itself be-

156 CONTEMPORAR V FOR TRAITS.

stowed upon him literary honours. But these were
matters of indifference to him ; his ambition took a
higher range.

I.

Adolphe Monod was born at Copenhagen, January
21, 1802. His father, a native of the Canton de Vaud,
was pastor of the French church formed by the Pro-
testant refugees after the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes. A man of the utmost integrity, as well as
a facile and eloquent orator, M. Monod, the father,
was held in most affectionate esteem both in Copen-
hagen and in Paris, and exercised a wide popular
influence. He held the opinions current in the Pro-
testant Church of his time both in Geneva and in
France. His was a warm and sentient piety, tender
and benevolent in spite of its theological rigour, and
more adapted to sustain than to enkindle religious
life in the soul. He was always tolerant. He did
much honour to Protestantism in the great Reformed
Church of Paris, in which he exercised a long and
valued ministry soon after the establishment of the Re-
formed religion by the First Consul. Nothing could be
more beautiful than the family life of this patriarch
of noble and venerable appearance, surrounded by his
twelve children, all strongly attached to each other.
Madame Monod (nee De Coninck) was, as her name
indicates, a Dane. She was the very type of a Chris-

ADOLPHE MO NOD.

157

tian wife and mother, and the light and joy of her
family circle.

Adolphe Monod thus grew up in an atmosphere of
purity, of affection, and of truly classic intellectual
culture. He learned from his father to speak that
correct and luminous language of the best French
school, which he was afterwards to turn to such good
account. At Geneva, whither he went to enter on his
studies in the university, preparatory to the ministry
of the gospel, he adopted the theology current at the
time, at least in countries where the French tongue
was spoken, a theology without depth, and amounting
to little more than a vague supernaturalism. It was
indefinite alike in its negations and affirmations. The
divinity of Christ was ignored rather than denied. It
would have been dangerous in France formally to re-
pudiate this article of faith. Creeds still existed in
the letter but not in the spirit — like the ark without
the tables of the covenant. That which had es-
pecially dropped out of the religious teaching and
piety of the day, was that deep conviction of the
the misery and impotence of man, which brings
sinners to the foot of the cross, there to receive for-
giveness and new life from the sovereign grace of
God. Justification by faith had been more than the
central doctrine of the Reformation ; it had been its
great moral and religious lever. That lever had now
ceased to act. Men thought themselves set right with
God by the mere practice of human virtue, combined

158 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

with certain exact observances of piety and a sincere
veneration for historic Protestantism.

Adolphe Monod himself subsequently described this
attitude of the Reformed Church of France, painting
it perhaps in somewhat too strong colours.

" The doctrine of works," he said, " took possession
of our academies, our pulpits, our pastors, our flocks.
Our confession of faith was forgotten, our discipline
set aside. The voice of the Synods was silent. The
spirit of the age, the philosophy of the day, took the
place of the spirit of the Bible. Faith was eclipsed,
and knowledge hid its face. Since the Bible was to
be less consulted than the spirit of the age, what in-
ducement was there to study deeply the meaning of
the Bible, when slight and superficial studies sufficed
to give an initiation into the current philosophy ?
Science went out of vogue among our clergy. Instead
of preachers like Dumoulin, Dubose, Bailli and Claude,
our pulpits were filled with men of no enlightenment
of mind. Hence the Reformed Church of France
lost all consideration as a Church. As a social, in-
dustrial, political, moral body, it was still respected, but
as a Church it forfeited all claim to regard. Hence
arose among the Catholics, the false notion that the
Protestant Church does not believe in Jesus Christ,
and unbelieving Catholics were known to wish them-
selves Protestants, that they might be deists."1

1 " La Destitution d'Adolphe Monod," p. 100.

ADOLPHE MO NOD. 159

At Geneva, Adolphe Monod was a conscientious
student. He carried into his studies the natural
vigour of his mind. He traces to this period the
commencement of that religious crisis which was to
end in his conversion. This result, however, as we
shall presently see, was not reached till he went to
Naples. His brother Frederic had a considerable
share in this great spiritual and intellectual trans-
formation. Three distinguished men exerted a
decided influence upon him, as he himself tells us in
a letter written during his last illness. We quote this
as the most reliable source of information on this
interesting subject.

" There are three friends whose names I love to
associate, because they were all three at different times
greatly helpful to me in my conversion. I wish to
testify my gratitude to them to-day, when I am ex-
pecting so soon to leave this world and go to the
Father, and when all my consolation is derived from
the faith they taught me. These three friends are
Louis Gaussen, Charles Scholl,1 and Thomas Erskine.

"The first produced a gradual impression upon my
mind by his benevolent life, by his preaching, and by
his devout conversation. The second, with whom I
had less prolonged intercourse, presented the gospel to
me in a practical aspect so attractive, and at the same
time so wise and true, that he won my heart to it.

1 Charles Scholl was pastor of the French Church in London,
and subsequently of the Free Church at Lausanne.

160 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

The third, at Geneva, removed my intellectual pre-
judices by showing me the harmony between the
gospel and sacred philosophy ; and afterwards, at
Naples, he put the finishing touch to the work, in so
far as man's influence was concerned, by the example
of his perfect peace and tender love towards all men.
I shall never forget our walks on the Capo di Monte,
nor the tone in which, as we watched the sun going
down over the magnificent Bay of Naples, he ex-
claimed, 'Truly the light is sweet ; and a pleasant thing
it is for the eyes to behold the sun ! '

"These three friends, to whom I address these lines,
were called by God to exercise over me a joint influ-
ence, in which each unwittingly supplied what was
lacking in the others.

" I render first all glory to God, and then I say
to them, that my heart glows with love for them, and
that I pray God to enrich them with His choicest
blessings in life and in death, and to spare them, if it
may be so, the furnace of suffering through which
His mercy has called me to pass.

"At the same time I commend myself to their
prayers, that they may crown all the good they have
already done me, by asking for me grace so that my
patience may not fail, but that I may glorify God to
the very end, though my sufferings abound more and
more." r

1 This letter has appeared in Erskine's "Correspondence,"
published in Edinburgh.

ADOLPHE MO NOD. 161

Erskine, the gentle and profound mystic, of broad
and enlightened views, exercised a most beneficial in-
fluence over the Christians of his generation. His teach-
ing produced a deep impression upon the Duchesse de
Broglie, who knew him at this time. He soared far
above the rigid orthodoxy of the day, into the pure
heights of heaven, opened by the Apostle John to
the Christian soul. He tempered the somewhat too
severe dogmatism of M. Gaussen, the eminent pastor
and professor, especially in reference to the inspi-
ration of the Scriptures. Adolphe Monod doubtless
owed to him his escape from the irksome fetters of
narrow English Evangelicalism. It is clear, how-
ever, that it was the experience of his ministry at
Naples which led to the decisive changes in his life.
He became in 1826 the first pastor of a French
colony in that city, and it was when he was called for
the first time to fulfil the serious duty of instruct-
ing men in religious truth, that he was startled to
discover how inadequate were his own convictions.
He then passed through the great crisis of his spiritual
life. He does not appear to have been diverted for
a moment from his earnest quest of truth, by the
magical beauty of the land in which his lot was cast,
where ancient art lives again in the immortal youth
of Italian nature, and under the smile of its un-
rivalled sky. Like Paul at Athens, he heeded not,
the enchantment of the outward and visible things
in the passionate eagerness of his search after the

1 62 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

invisible, and to him as yet almost unknown God,
whom he would fain declare to men. He found Him
after an agonizing spiritual conflict. There was in-
describable bitterness to him in the discovery that all
which he had hitherto taken for piety was really
worthless in the sight of God. Trembling beneath
those thunders of a broken law, under which in after
days he so often made his hearers quail, he took his
place with the publican and the woman who was a
sinner at the feet of Jesus. Faith in a crucified Saviour
alone calmed and uplifted him. There is no moral
revolution more wonderful than that which is effected
when a sincere Pharisee takes his place by the side
of the lying publican, smiting, like him, on his breast,
and crying, " God be merciful to me a sinner ! " It
was a crisis like this which transformed the disciple
of Gamaliel into the apostle of a free salvation.

Adolphe Monod has left no other record of this
phase of his life than that which we find in his
preaching. Although he never indulges in personal
allusions, we find abundant traces of that spiritual
tempest which first plunged him into the depths of
despair, and then cast him, trembling with joy, upon
the Rock.

In his early discourses on the misery of man and
the mercy of God, there is no word about himself;
and yet how clearly they reveal that the writer had
been passing, like Pascal, through one of those soul-
vigils, one of those wrestlings all the night, which

ADOLPHE MO NOD. 163

leave the combatant, to use Monod's own words,
vainqtietir, mats tout meurtri ; tout meurtri, mais
vainqueur.

Can we not catch an echo of the bitterness of soul
through which he himself had passed, in this con-
cluding passage of his first sermon ?

" O God ! who humblest only that Thou mayest lift up, who
troublest only to calm, who dost shake only to stablish and
settle, we bow to the sentence which condemns us. We accept
it with penitence and tears. Hide nothing from us of our misery.
Shed abroad in our souls Thy pure and searching light, that we
may see ourselves as we truly are ! And at such a sight let
there rise at once from this whole congregation, a cry of surprise
and anguish which shall rend the atmosphere of indifference
around us, which shall reach Thy ear and move Thy fatherly
compassion towards us, so that, renouncing henceforward all
our self-esteem, humbled with a deep humility, believing with a
simple faith, we may yield ourselves unreservedly to Thy love,
to be raised out of the depth of our misery by the depth of Thy
mercy." l

Where has the writer found those sombre colours
in which he depicts the self-condemnation of the
sinner, if not in the sacred terrors of conscience ? It
might have been said of him still more than of the
great Florentine poet, that he had gone down into
the lower world, so thrillingly does he describe the
ever - deepening horrors awaiting the unconverted,
like those enormous cavities sometimes found in a
vast abyss, whose gloomy profundities go down into
the very bowels of the earth. 2 He confesses to the

1 Sermon by Adolphe Monod, p. 42. Paris Edit. 18 18.

2 Sermons, vol. i. p. 377.

1 64 CONTEMPORAR Y PORTRAITS.

ardent desire he felt for a long time to escape from
this doctrine of perdition. He could only bring
himself to submit to it, he says, " with bowed head
and laying his hand upon his mouth."

This is not the place for us to inquire whether he
did not, in the ardour of his new conversion, go
beyond the teaching of the gospel on this important
point. We are now only describing the psychological
crisis which made a new man of him. We find the
same tone of deep experience in his early writings on
the work of redemption.

" The marble of my heart has been broken ! " he exclaims.
" O my God ! what love, what love ! And yet I see only its
utmost edge. It is an abyss into the depths of which I cannot
look. But even in that which I do behold, I discern a love that
passes knowledge ; and in those depths which as yet are hidden
from me, my soul foreshadows a love which baffles thought,
which confounds and absorbs my whole being. Redeemed at
such a price I am no more my own, and to Him I give all my
heart ! "

Are we not reminded by words like these of the
sublime utterance of Pascal in his hour of holy
rapture : " God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob !
. . . Not of the philosophers and learned men. . . .
Assurance, assurance, love, joy, peace ! . . . God of
Jesus Christ ! . . . "

II.

Still thrilling with the emotion of this great
spiritual conflict, and glowing with his first love and

ADOLPHE MONOD, 165

zeal, Adolphe Monod, at hardly twenty - five years
of age, was called in 1828 to the pastorate of the
great Reformed Church of Lyons. A conflict was
inevitable. Beneath an austere demeanour he carried
a soul of fire, an indomitable spirit ; and his youth
lent both to his convictions and words a tone of
somewhat undue positiveness and exaltation. This
was only strengthened by the opposition which he
encountered, though he never allowed a touch of
spleen, or of wounded self-love to give added
vehemence to his convictions.

It may be said that throughout this long con-
troversy Adolphe Monod had no thought of himself;
that his sole concern was for what he believed to be
the cause of truth and sound doctrine. The crisis
was hastened and rendered more formidable by his
remarkable power as an orator, which made in-
difference impossible.

His eloquence was not only the forcible expression
of his holiest convictions, but reflected all the passion-
ate ardour of his soul. The incompatibility between
the young preacher and his new church was radical
and complete. We have no wish to rekindle
the smouldering embers of old quarrels ; and we
would not forget that the historical events which pro-
foundly affected French Protestantism generally at
the beginning of the century, pressed with peculiar
weight upon the Church of Lyons. M. Martin-
Paschoud, the pastor who took the most prominent

1 66 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

part in these stormy controversies, has left a memory
which we ourselves cherish with well - deserved re-
spect and affection. However widely we may have
differed on points of doctrine and ecclesiastical policy,
we always found him full of ready and right-minded
sympathy on all questions affecting the public welfare.
His generosity of heart and mind endeared him to a
circle far wider than that of Protestantism.

We will not dwell on the painful incidents of the
internal history of the Church of Lyons, at this
already remote period, except so far as is absolutely
necessary in order to explain the position taken by
Adolphe Monod. It may suffice to say that nowhere
was the eclipse of the old reformed faith at this time
more complete than among the Protestants of this
great city. They were distinguished, like all their
co-religionists, for probity and morality ; they be-
longed to the higher class of the bourgoisie, and were
regarded everywhere with all the consideration due to
their character and to their high commercial status.
They were accustomed to the most moderate religious
teaching, of the order of the Savoyard vicar rather than
of Calvin. A correct worldliness had at this time
free play. Never had these good folks heard such a
thing mentioned as the necessity of repentance, and
the worthlessness in God's sight of their good works,
which they associated with their almsgivings in the
category of virtue. We can easily understand the
indignant astonishment with which they heard the first

ADOLPHE MONOD. 167

sermons of their new pastor. This young man, with
the pale brow and the thrilling voice, made a direct
assault on all their received ideas, and shook all their
prejudices. He began by proclaiming plainly that
the virtuous themselves have need of pardon, and he
threatened them with the judgments of God no less
than the people of evil life on whom they looked down
with scorn. He drove their human pride from one
hiding-place to another, till at length he denounced it
at that very intellectual and moral height at which it
felt itself safe, and secure of all the rewards of heaven.
The new preacher thus raised very urgent personal
questions in an audience accustomed to be left unmo-
lested in its calm repose. Thus in his sermon, " Can
you die happy?" his powerful arguments disturbed
the most easy-going consciences. To these wavering
minds, satisfied with a religion of sentiment, which
was often nothing more than theism disguised under
a traditional outward observance, the earnest disciple
of the religious awakening preached the necessity of a
clear and definite belief, in his sermon on " Sanctifica-
tion by the truth." The offence was aggravated by
the unquestionable power and ability of the new
preacher, which made it impossible to remain unmoved
and lukewarm under his teaching. The opposition was
at first vague ; then it took positive shape, and a
majority of the Church and of the Consistory decided
to request the removal of the obnoxious innovator.
We will not go into all the details of this obstinate

168 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

controversy, in which the meekest of men appeared the
most intractable, because he felt it a matter of con-
science to resist.1

He was unquestionably right in his refusal to yield
to the solicitations made to him to alter or modify his
preaching. To do so would have been to belie his
convictions. He was perfectly justified in appealing
to the ancient constitution of the Reformed Church
to prove that he was no innovator, that he was, in
fact, simply recalling the Church to her old tradi-
tions as still embodied in her liturgies. He was in-
vincible so long as he kept to this position. His
speeches in his own defence in the Consistory are
models of eloquent argument. Never did a witness
of the truth appeal more forcibly to the sacred
obligation of confessing the whole truth as he
himself believed it. In the Session of the Consistory
held April 24, 1827, he said :

"As a doctor does not choose the remedies most agreeable to
his patients, but those most needful, which are also often to the
taste the most unpleasant, so I do not choose that which may-
please my hearers, who are my patients, but that which may do
them good. I am willing to consult the taste of the majority on
all points where conscience is not involved, as in my mode of
living, in my manner, in my forms of speech, but I cannot be
guided in the choice of my principles by the plurality of votes.
In matters of principle I have no right of choice at all ; I do
not make the truth, for I am not God ; I receive it complete
from Him."2

1 See " La Destitution d'Adolphe Monod." Paris, 1864.
2 Ibid. p. 12.

ADOLPHE MO NOD. 169

We feel that he was right when he indignantly-
refused the assistance of a suffragan, who held
opinions different from his own, and whom the
Consistory tried to press upon him, on the excuse
that his feeble health rendered additional help neces-
sary. On this occasion he writes : " I owe it to
myself to say that I have not given any of you
occasion to esteem me so lightly, as to think I do
not believe in my private life that which in public I
profess to believe ; that I could give up for any
earthly consideration the deep convictions which you
know I entertain ; and that I would not rather die at
my post than call to my aid a man who would oppose,
or who would at the least not seek to cherish in the
souls committed to me by God, the principles which
I believe, and which I know to be indispensable to
their happiness in this world and in that which is to
come."

It was in vain that the Consistory tried various
plans to compass its ends. It sent a deputation to
Monod to complain that he was propagating prin-
ciples dangerous to the morality and peace of the
Church. In one of its regular sessions it exhorted
him to modify his preaching and his manner of life.
He has only one reply to make to all these demands,
and we give it in his own noble words :

" I count neither my glory, my honour, my health, my life dear
to me, save as the gifts of God. I am conscious how easy it
would be for one so young as I am, and with a naturally warm

1 70 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

temper, to feel personal resentment at the opposition offered to
me. But I have constantly sought, and I believe, by the grace
of God, I have been able to overcome this temptation. I long to
assure you that the deep grief you have caused me, is wholly free
from the slightest admixture of bitterness towards any one of
you, and that I would willingly devote all that remains to me of
health already impaired, if by this sacrifice I could make one of
you a partaker of that Divine felicity, the contagion of which
you dread ! The Bible has taught me that the life of man has
two parts, the one transitory and the other eternal ; and that
the importance of the former is lost in that of the latter, as the
finite is absorbed by the infinite. It has taught me that the
only way to a happy eternity is faith in Jesus Christ. It has
taught me further what this faith in Jesus Christ is, as a con-
viction, as a state of soul, as a life. It has taught me yet again
that it is the will of God that certain men should devote them-
selves to the work of leading souls into the faith. I am one of
those men, and I thank God for it ; for, next to the privilege of
being a Christian, I know none more to be desired than that
of being a Christian pastor. Henceforth, all my time, all my
power, all that I have, all that I am, belong to the service of
God in the gospel ; and it is my constant prayer that I may do
nothing which shall not tend to confirm in the faith those who
do believe, and to bring into it those who do not."

The firm tone thus maintained by Monod, with all

the dignity becoming a faithful witness of the truth,

only had the effect of irritating the opposition, which

became also numerically stronger and stronger. We

can gauge the hopeless distance which separated

Monod from his ecclesiastical adversaries, by the

petition put in circulation by them in the Church to

obtain his removal. It certainly was not wanting in

naivete. The petitioners complained that a young

theologian had come among them, if not to destroy,

at least greatly to disturb, the divine calm which had

ADOLPHE MO NOD. 171

been enjoyed at Lyons, by exhuming old doctrines,
which the good sense and sound reason of man (more
advanced now than in the age of the Reformation)
had wisely buried in oblivion. It was useless, they
went on, to go back to such pernicious teachings,
which were contrary alike to the majesty and good-
ness of God and to that religion — the most difficult
and the noblest of all — the religion of good works.
The petitioners therefore asked that the competent
authorities would take efficient measures against a
religion which renders virtue useless, unless it is asso-
ciated with a romantic and indefinable gracious dis-
position, which is an offence to human reason, the
offspring of the Divine.

The signataries bitterly reproached the evangelical
pastor with the determination shown by him to make
proselytes, especially among the Catholics. Each one
for himself and God for all, is the universal motto of
sceptical latitudinarianism.

The complaints made bore relation not merely to
the substance of Adolphe Monod's preaching, but also
to its captivating form, and to the vehemence of his
oratory. It is beyond question that he was guilty
every Sunday of flagrant offence on the score of
eloquence, and might well thus perturb the souls of
the lovers of the divine calm. They would only too
gladly, as in the days of deacon Paris, have placarded
above his pulpit a Consistorial decree to the effect
"tfiat it was forbidden by God to work miracles in this

1 72 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

place ;" and that he must confine himself to utter-
ances as dull and cold as their own spirits. We can
hardly keep back a smile when we see Adolphe Monod
attempting to justify his oratorical offences, and half
promising to restrain their impetuous ardour by com-
mitting his thoughts to paper. He only made this
concession, by which it was simply impossible that he
or any other born orator could be bound, to show that
the one point on which he could not yield a hair's
breadth, was the substance of his teaching.

The Consistory took into consideration the petition
against Monod on the 22nd of December, 1829.
It made the complaints urged by the petitioners the
pretext for asking the obnoxious pastor to resign.
This he refused to do. The Consistory dared not yet
go so far as to dismiss him, and a sort of truce was
concluded without any concession on M. Monod's
part. The situation remained none the less intoler-
able, and the Consistory tried by all means in its
power to show its ill-will, refusing in the report of
proceedings to insert his own words, and depriving
him of the right of regular religious instruction.

So far the wrong is entirely on the side of the
ecclesiastical authorities. It cannot be denied, how-
ever, that from the year 183 1 Adolphe Monod, being
pressed beyond endurance, hastened the final rupture
by proceedings which would have rendered his con-
tinuance impossible, even under the best disposed
Government.

ADOLPHE MO NOD. 173

The interesting report which he gave at the com-
mencement of the year, of the state of the Church
at Lyons, probably brought matters to a crisis. He
rose altogether above local circumstances, and de-
scribed with great power the close conflict between
Rationalism and the religious Revival then going on
throughout France and Switzerland. It is in this
masterly paper that we discover what is the weak
point of Adolphe Monod's position. He completely
confounds the attitude of a State Church composed
of heterogeneous elements, with that of a Church of
professing Christians, governing itself by principles
which it has freely accepted. This confusion is very
apparent in the following passage :

" The Reformed Church of France," said Monod, in a session
of the Consistory, " maybe regarded in a twofold aspect : from a
religious point of view, as a Christian Church, founded by God
and under pledge to God ; and from a civil point of view, as a
State Church, under the protection of the Government. From
the religious point of view, it is a union of men who believe the
principles contained in Holy Scripture. As a State Church, it
has a rule to which it is bound by its constitution. That rule is
the confession of La Rochelle."

The preacher concluded from these considerations
that he was the sole representative at Lyons of the
true Church, and that the State was bound by the con-
fession of faith to uphold him. This was clearly a
misconception of the character of the modern State,
which is essentially a lay institution, and cannot enter
into doctrinal discussions. It takes simply a histori-

1 74 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

cal view of the Churches associated with it. It is
quite incompetent to interfere in any differences that
may arise on points of dogma. Besides, a Church
composed of a promiscuous multitude cannot be
bound by the letter of its creed, especially when, as
was the case with the Reformed Church of France,
after the laws of Germinal, it has no ultimate and
competent authority on matters of faith. In cases
where, as in the Church at Lyons, the majority have
become estranged from the old religion, there is no
means of compelling them to come back to it. It is
very grievous that the faith should be thus abandoned,
and a vague historic tradition substituted for it ; but
it is impossible to reimpose by force a creed which no
longer commands belief. An evangelical preacher
confronted with a State Church like that of Lyons
has only one alternative ; he must either work on
patiently till he can win back the majority to his own
faith, or he must take up an entirely independent
position and say, " Let who will follow me."

We do not blame Adolphe Monod for having failed
to make these distinctions. Indeed, it would have been
scarcely possible for him to make them at a period
when the ecclesiastical problem was still undefined.
Even half a century later we find the same confusion
still prevailing, and involving in inextricable confusion
the affairs of the Reformed Church of France, after
the Synod of 1872. It is an error that can only be
dissipated by stern and repeated lessons of experience,

ADOLPHE MONOD. 175

and it is far from having vanished, even in our own
day. Adolphe Monod had, indeed, already perceived
what was the true solution of the problem, for he did
not hesitate, in one of his speeches in the Consistory,
to express his sympathy with the Free Churches of
North America.

He now felt himself impelled by conscience to a
course of action which was, to say the least of it,
imprudent.

On Sunday, March 20, 183 1, the Sunday preceding
the great Easter Communion, he was observed to be
more pale than usual when he entered the pulpit, and
evidently overcome with the feeling of his tremendous
responsibility. The subject which he took up was
felt by all to be a crucial one. The congregation was
astonished to hear him read the words of the insti-
tution of the Lord's Supper, although no eucharistic
table was spread. His object was, in fact, to guard
against unworthy communicants by putting to his
hearers this question, in its novelty very startling to
them: "Who ought to communicate?" Never had his
eloquence risen to such a height of power and holy
passion. After recalling the sacred character of the
eucharistic table and the barriers by which the disci-
pline of the early Church had fenced it, in order to
avoid a profanation which was an outrage to Christ,
and brought swift condemnation on the head of the
guilty communicant, he drew a terrible picture of the
irregularities and scandals of the Church of the day

1 76 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

and of his own Church. Then he exclaimed, in
accents never forgotten by those who heard them :

" O Church of my Saviour, thou wast a church beloved of God,
a plant of His own right hand planting, and cherished by His
care. But the barriers have been thrown down. Those who
called themselves by the name of Christ, but who were not of
Christ, have sought to be received into Thy bosom, and they have
entered in only to ravage and defile. All have become mixed
together in hopeless confusion ; and now, in the midst of this
motley crowd, without faith and without law, but still calling
itself the Church of Christ, there can only be found here and
there a few children of God who can scarcely recognise each
other, so scattered are they in the midst of the unbelievers and
enemies of the Lord. And in regard especially to the Com-
munion, this is what has happened. Every one who says ' I am a
Christian,' all those who have been baptized, all who attend re-
ligious exercises, claim to be members of the Church, and to
have a right to the Communion ; as if Church membership
meant nothing more than bearing the name of Christ, as if re-
generation came by baptismal water and not by the Spirit ; as
if a human voice, a certain building, the walls, columns, arches,
seats of a place of worship, could convert a sinner ! O lamen-
table confusion ! O desecrated body and blood of the Lord !

"And shall the table of my Master be always thus profaned ?
Shall the days of Communion always be to a faithful minister,
days of lamentation, mourning and woe ? For myself, I would
rather lay the body of Christ upon a stone, and scatter His blood
to the winds, than present them to unbelieving and profane lips.
O my God ! Thou knowest that I speak truth. Wilt Thou not
arise and take away this scandal from Thy Church ? This is no
slight darkness, no trifling error, no small irregularity. It is dire
disorder, gross darkness, utter infidelity — infidelity wearing the'
name of Christ." I

Adolphe Monod himself afterwards admitted that
he had gone too far in this sermon. To us it appears

1 Sermons, vol. i. pp. 271-282.

ADOLPHE MO NOD.

177

exaggerated only in manner ; it is the exaggeration
of a great orator, carried away by his impetuous
eloquence and fired with a righteous indignation.

It will be readily understood, however, that a chal-
lenge like this gave terrible offence, though the inten-
tion of the author was only to make a strong appeal
to conscience. To the vote of censure passed by the
Consistory upon the sermon of the 20th of March,
Adolphe Monod replied on the 14th of April by a
formal proposition to restore in the Church of Lyons
the ancient discipline of the Reformed Church of
France. This was an implied acknowledgment that
the ecclesiastical law of the past needed a fresh sanc-
tion on the part of the regular authorities.

This inconsistency did not strike him. The next
day the Consistory replied to him by an order for his
dismissal, which, however, could not take effect till
it had received ministerial confirmation. Adolphe
Monod rendered the confirmation inevitable, in spite
of his eloquent written vindication of himself, by his
startling proceeding the next Sunday (Whit-Sunday),
when, after preaching, he left the pulpit in order not to
preside at the communion of the day. It should be
added that he had done everything in his power to
provide a substitute for himself on this occasion. On
the 19th of March, 1832, the royal confirmation was
given to his dismissal from office. It must be ad-
mitted that no other course was open to the Minister
of Public Worship.

13

1 78 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

We have dwelt at some length on this half-forgotten
episode of the internal history of French Protestantism,
because it is characteristic at once of the troublous
times in which Monod lived, of his own courageous
fidelity to the cause of what he believed to be true,
and of the remarkable oratorical powers developed
by him in these stormy controversies. As soon as he
found himself dismissed from the pastorate, he gathered
around him his adherents, united himself to a small
evangelical Church which had been formed in Lyons,
and began to conduct worship in a humble building,
very inadequate to the exercise of such gifts as his,
which could command the attention of multitudes.

There are few sacrifices more costly to a great orator
than this ; but Adolphe Monod accepted the changed
conditions with touching humility. He did not wish
to be regarded as the founder of a new Church.
He objected to this for two reasons. First, he was
fully convinced that the Reformed Church of France
was by its constitution evangelical, and that therefore
its sons ought not, by founding another Church side
by side with it, to proclaim its fall, and to hand over
to the Rationalistic school the heritage of their fathers.
Second, it was his fixed opinion through life, that on
matters of this sort it is wise to be as prudent and
moderate, as on the side of evangelical truth it is
incumbent to be bold and unflinching. His abiding
convictions on this point are expressed briefly in his
interesting appeal to the Christians of France and of

ADOLPHE MO NOD. 179

other lands, on behalf of the Evangelical Church of
Lyons. In that appeal he says : " I shall wait; I shall
follow the Lord step by step, day by day, acting, as
necessity arises, in what appears to me the path indi-
cated by Providence. I shall mark out no fixed course
beforehand. I shall go straight forward, guiding myself
outside the sanctuary (since I have no longer a place
within it) by the same principles which I have ever
preached."

It was needful, however, to render habitable this
tent, pitched opposite that house of God from which
the preacher had been shut out. The Evangelical
Church of Lyons was led on to establish, one after
another, the institutions essential to a Church which
would subsist and develop itself upon the basis of a
living faith. The new ministry of Adolphe Monod,
begun in poverty, and without any assured means of
maintenance, soon became abundantly fruitful. The
Evangelical Church of Lyons, for which he always
cherished a tender affection, received from him the
two special characteristics by which it has been so
honourably distinguished, — a large-hearted Chris-
tianity which commended it to all believers, and a
missionary zeal so active and intense that it brought
in large numbers of converts from surrounding Catho-
licism. It had a succession of pastors all animated
with the spirit of its founder. During this, the most
straitened period of his pastoral career, Adolphe
Monod found a true helpmeet in his wife, to whom he

180 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

had been married in 1832 ; she entered with hearty
sympathy into all the great purposes of his life, shared
his activities, comforted him in his sorrows, and light-
ened by her hopeful spirit all his hours of depression.
He found himself surrounded by a rapidly increasing
family, to whom he was the tenderest of fathers,
devoting himself specially to the moral education of
his children. His home was a beautiful example of
what a Christian household may be. I hold in grate-
ful memory some of the Sunday evenings I myself
spent there, when Monod gathered his young children
around him and presented the gospel to them in its
most winning and attractive form.

III.

In 1836 Adolphe Monod was called to fill the
Chair of Morals in the theological faculty of Mon-
tauban. Here he found a new sphere of usefulness
not less practical in its results, for we can trace the
beneficial effects of his training in successive gene-
rations of pastors. His influence over the youthful
mind was extraordinary. He was a true master, in
the noblest sense of the word, kindling in young and
eager souls the spark of a higher life, so that they
looked up to him reverently as their spiritual father.
He had not the transcendant inventive or creative
genius which has distinguished some of the great
professors of science and philosophy in our day. He
has not left any strong impress on theological teach-

ADOLPHE MONOD. 181

ing ; in truth, peculiarly adapted as was the study of
morals to his habits of mind, he at this time only
treated it slightly. He had not the leisure necessary
to make his mark in Hebrew philology, and it was not
till a later period of his life that he fully recognised
the requirements of scientific criticism. He had hardly
time to sketch out his exegetical course of the New
Testament. His teaching was, however, so remarkable
for its severe beauty of form, its clearness of exposition,
and the spirit pervading it, that it exerted a very
wholesome influence over his students. They could
not but admire in him the man and the orator. This
was the secret of his power over young men. He set
before them so lofty a standard of Christian morality
that he commanded their respect, and gave them a
very high idea of the calling of a Christian and a
pastor.

Though reserved and silent, his unvarying kindness
rendered him always accessible to his students, and
no master was ever more beloved and respected. His
eloquence became constantly more impressive, and
riveted his youthful hearers, who were never weary of
listening to him. He in his turn devoted to them the
noblest efforts of his genius, not only in consecutive
homilies on Holy Scripture, such as his expositions of
Paul's Epistles to the Ephesians, but also in lectures
on sacred oratory and in the great sermons belonging
to this period of his life, which were all delivered first
at Montauban. He thus formed around him a sort of

1 82 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRA ITS.

evangelical Port Royal, one of those quiet retreats
open to all that is noble and pure, where the love of
letters is elevated by the grandeur of the object
pursued, where study is blended with prayer, and the
consecration of soul lends a sacredness to all the work
of preparation.

It was not my privilege to be one of Adolphe
Monod's disciples, but a short stay at Montauban, in
1844, gave me a vivid impression of his extraordinary
power as a Christian and as an orator. It was im-
possible not to be struck with his happy blending of
fervour with soberness, of kindness with severity, of
brilliant gifts with unfeigned humility, and by his
complete absorption in his double work — the care of
the Church and the watchful training of its future
pastors. Virtue went forth from him, and it seemed
as if all who came in contact with him felt its in-
fluence. He impressed on them, more or less, his own
image. His memory is as living to-day as it was
thirty years ago, in the hearts of his disciples.
Montauban did not exhaust his activity. He never
allowed himself to rest, and almost all his vacations
were devoted to preaching tours, which carried the
influence of his powerful words into the humblest
villages as well as into the great towns of France.
His health was, however, always feeble, and his
naturally melancholy temperament, though it could
not disturb the quiet depths of his faith, often made
his work a weariness both to the flesh and the spirit.

ADO LP HE MO NOD. 183

Before passing on to a fresh stage in Monod's life,
let us attempt to describe what he was as a theologian
and an orator in this his first manner. His appear-
ance in the Protestant pulpit was a marked event.
No such eloquence had been heard since the days of
Saurin. The desert had been a school of confessors
rather than of orators. The preachers who came forth
from it on the eve of the French Revolution had well-
nigh lost the staunch convictions of their fathers.
There was no inspiration in their colourless doctrine,
and they borrowed from the First Empire the insipid
eloquence of its official literature. There were, no
doubt, exceptions to this prevailing mediocrity. A
powerful thinker like Samuel Vincent was able to
hold the eager attention of his hearers, though he
lacked the gift of real eloquence. We have already
alluded to the distinguished abilities of the elder
Monod. M. Athanase Coquerel the elder, who had
become his colleague a few years before the com-
mencement of Adolphe Monod's work at Lyons, dis-
played during more than half a century a remarkable
versatility of talent. He was distinguished for his in-
exhaustible verve', his rare faculty of giving freshness
to his subject, though without any of the highest gifts
either of thought or language. He was a ready and
effective speaker, and a careful observer of classic
forms. The marked success which attended him
through the long career of his ministry is the incon-
trovertible proof of his powers as an orator. It was

1 84 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

impossible, however, that the vague belief in the
supernatural which prevailed from the beginning of
the century, should give as powerful an impetus even
to sacred oratory as an earnest evangelical faith. It
recognised neither the terrors of condemnation nor the
ecstatic joys of pardon. Its optimism made it glide
over the surface of things, without discovering beneath
the smooth and brittle ice, the abyss into which poor
humanity had fallen. Nor did it catch a glimpse of
that other abyss of infinite mercy which forms so
glorious a contrast. The cross, in ceasing to be the
mystery of redeeming love, loses all its supreme
beauty. The emotions which appeal most strongly
to the soul of man are thus withdrawn. Instead of
paradise lost and regained, there remains only a moral
idyll. We have a Gessner instead of a Milton. On
the other hand, it is not enough to be possessed of an
organ of rich and deep-toned harmonies ; it is needful
also to have one who can make the music. The
beauty of the instrument is nothing without the skil-
ful artist. In France, at least, until Adolphe Monod
appeared, the Protestant Church had produced wit-
nesses, sometimes truly apostolic men like Felix Neff,
but no orators in the true sense of the word. Often
it was a matter of principle with them to be careless
of the forms of speech, either from an idea that time
devoted to the cultivation of the beautiful would be
so much taken from that earnest appeal to conscience
which seemed their supreme work, or from some

ADOLPHE MO NOD. 185

scruple about allowing the least part to the human
element in the work of conversion — a sort of uncon-
scious Manicheeism, which is the natural result of a
narrow Puritanism. The rigorous orthodoxy with
which they satisfied themselves, and which they
readily confounded with eternal truth, was ill adapted
in its rigid forms to a broad and living exposition.
It is true that these defects were redeemed by the
ardour and purity of missionary zeal, but they were
none the less great obstacles to the exercise of pulpit
oratory. Adolphe Monod possessed this gift in the
very highest degree. He had, as we have already
observed, the outward gifts of the orator — the sonorous
voice, the expressive gesture, and, above all, a face
which was the true reflection of his pure and ardent
soul. His imagination was vivid, his mind clear and
strong, and his utterance naturally ready, exact, and
powerful. Above all, he had that indescribable faculty
in a speaker, of arresting and holding the attention
of his hearers, and of imparting to them his own
enthusiasm.

At Geneva he had found a school of oratory on the
academic model, which had largely cultivated a dif-
fusive style of pulpit rhetoric. This was probably not
without its uses for set preaching, but Monod soon
cast off that which was artificial and declamatory in
its method. His natural gifts received their highest
impetus from his new convictions, which had shaken
his being to its very centre. These gave him that

1 86 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

concentration of thought and feeling which is the first
condition of passion. One great element of his power
was his intense earnestness, which his hearers could
not but feel, and which gave energy to his every
word and gesture. Christianity, as he understood
it, revealed to him the tragic and sublime aspect of
things human and divine, and the rich poetry of the
Hebrew Scriptures supplied him with the glowing
colours and images in which he delighted. His
imagination revelled in the Bible ; his heart and his
head fed upon it. Lastly, his love for the immortal
soul, his eager longing to rescue it from itself and
from supreme peril, gave to his discourses that
pointedness and directness which makes the words
sharper than a two-edged sword.

His highest preparation for work was prayer. This
is very evident from his manuscripts, in which we find
the thread of thought often broken that his soul may
cry out to God in utterances like the following : " O
Christ, help me by the blood of Thy cross."

One of his sermons opens with this prayer, which

was plainly the secret outpouring of his soul to God :

" O my God, give me by Thy Spirit to lay down at the foot of
the cross of Thy Son, that searching of myself, and that dis-
quietude which have overcome me for these three days, to the
detriment of my sermon, of my faith, and of Thy glory, and to
the scandal of my brethren. As for my sermon, help me to
make it not such as I will, but as Thou wilt. Thou hast the
secret of helping to do much in a little time. I give myself up
to Thee, and begin my work without fear, my eyes being up
unto Thee. Enlighten me for the love of Christ."

ADOLPHE MONOD. 187

Theremin has written a book at once ingenious and
true, under the title, " L'Eloquence est une vertu."
In it he shows how much even natural eloquence
owes to the qualities of the soul. The example of
Adolphe Monod is a strong confirmation of his
theory. He himself fully realised this co-opera-
tion of conscience, and he attached great importance
to the moral condition in the preparation of his
sermons, even from an artistic point of view ; for in
his case the mystical preparation was in no way in-
compatible with the other. He was an artist not by
temperament only, but as a duty. Is it not a point of
conscience to neglect nothing which may give to truth
a form worthy of itself, and make it effective and
impressive ?

Surely the feeling of a sacred responsibility will be
alone sufficient to prevent the use of declamation and
mere meretricious oratory. A true love of souls must
forbid the pandering to a false taste by ornate and
florid speech, and thus the Christian orator will be
saved from one of the worst faults of an age of literary
decadence. Even manner, the most purely external
adjunct of oratory, cannot escape the influence of the
speaker's prevailing tone. On this point Adolphe
Monod gave some words of wise counsel in an inau-
gural discourse of the faculty of Montauban. Ad-
dressing the future pastors, he said :

" Exercise yourselves without scruple, gentlemen, in the art of
speaking and of style, but let it be in a Christian spirit. Let

1 88 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

these be to you always simply a means, not an end. If you
make oratory itself the end at which you aim, you are no longer
preachers, you are not even orators, you are actors. If you cul-
tivate speech as a means of glorifying God and of doing good to
men, you fulfil a duty." l

After dwelling on what was purely technical in
style, the professor took up its moral aspect. He
said :

" The fundamental principle which forms the basis of all rules,
is that oratory has its seat, not in the lips, but in the feeling and
thought, and that it depends less on the voice than on the soul.
It is the soul which must speak. This is the condition of all
true eloquence. If the success of an actor like Talma depended,
as he himself said, on the intensity of his meditation on the
dramatic work which he was to render, how much more must
this be true of the preacher ? The more deeply he is impressed
with the subject he is to advance, the better will he convey it,
and the more natural and simple will his manner be. The best
method for acquiring that ease and freedom of speech which is
without stiffness, effort, or strain, is the heroic faith which leans
upon God Himself, and in the greatness of the cause loses sight
of the creature. Thus regarded, true elocution is itself a virtue."

Monod was never willing, however, to dispense with
the inspiration that comes from the presence of a
large assembly. Hence, after most careful prepara-
tion, he almost always preached extempore. He has
himself told us that at Lyons it was his practice to
preach from notes. The discourse in this, its first
form, was afterwards subjected to a severe revision.
Each of his sermons, especially during his stay at
Montauban, was a complete oratorical treatise em-

1 Discours de rentree, Nov. 26, 1840.

ADOLPHE MONOD. 189

bracing some one aspect of Christian doctrine, often
clothed in the most brilliant forms, and having all
the vivacity of unwritten speech. Hence his sermons
were of extraordinary length, such as only his rare
gifts could have made acceptable. It was, to use his
own expression, preaching with a full orchestra. To
us he seems to excel far more in this than in the
homiletic style, which he also cultivated very carefully,
as may be seen from his sermons on the temptation
of Christ, and on the creation.

Adolphe Monod's preaching is not essentially either
exegetical or psychological, although it contains both
exegesis and psychology. It is primarily synthetic.
Doctrinal exposition hurries on to practical applica-
tion. Festinat ad res. He is fond of using striking,
sometimes paradoxical expressions, as when he speaks
of virtuous sinners, and is apt to conclude each portion
of his discourse with an oratorical refrain too often
repeated. When he takes up an ethical subject he
always comes back to the great doctrine of justifica-
tion by faith and of conversion. It is plain that his
only aim is to show the impenitent sinner that he is
in a position from which he cannot of himself escape.
His logic is close and forcible ; but sometimes it is
carried to an extreme, and goes beyond the mark, as
in the sermon on the fifth commandment, "Thou shalt
not kill." The idea of murder carried to this length
loses all exactness, and takes in every form of evil,
since there is not one which is not deadly to the soul.

1 90 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRA ITS.

Imagination plays a great part in his preaching, but
he mixes on the palette only sacred colours. History
and nature are alike regarded through the medium of
the Bible, of which Monod makes most skilful use,
though he is sometimes too profuse in his allusions to
texts less generally known than he supposes. The
description of the murder of John the Baptist at the
request of the dancing Herodias ; of the anguish of
the jailer at Philippi, and of his deliverance after his
attempt at suicide ; the touching delineations of the
scenes of the passion, and the account of the first
apostolic mission, all these remain among the master-
pieces of the Christian oratory of our day. Monod
does not quote either from the Fathers of the early
Church nor from the Reformers, and scarcely ever
makes an allusion either to contemporary history or
literature. In this respect he presents a strong con-
trast to Lacordaire, who was, under his white Domini-
can robe, the most modern of French preachers.
Adolphe Monod dwells by preference on those im-
mortal themes of all Christian eloquence, which alone
respond to the cravings of humanity — suffering, sin,
death, the eternal hope, the Divine Fatherhood, the
mercy of Christ. If, in his treatment of them, he
lacks the originality and suggestiveness of Vinet, he
handles them with majestic eloquence, with brilliant
imagination, and fervid passion. He belongs rather
to the school of Bossuet and of Saurin, than of Fenelon
and Massillon.

ADO LP HE MO NOD. 191

His influence on the pulpit oratory of the day was
great. It must be acknowledged, however, that his
disciples have not always followed him without peril ;
for in their imitations they have often caught what
was external merely in his great gifts — his striking
oratorical modes of speech. In this way they have
made grievous failures, like those Austrian generals
who were never worse beaten than when they at-
tempted to copy the tactics of Napoleon without
understanding the secret of their use.

The early preaching of Adolphe Monod has an
authoritative character derived from his views of theo-
logy. Both manner and matter were to be, to some
extent, modified in the next period of his life. During
the first years of his stay at Montauban he remained
firmly attached to the orthodoxy of the revival, at
least in its main outlines, for he was never one of
those who went to the greatest lengths.1

While appealing to the ancient confessions of the
Reformation era, in confutation of the innovations of
Rationalism, he did not hold himself bound to the
letter of creeds, which were, after all, of only human
origin, and therefore inadequate, and bearing too
distinctly the peculiar impress of the age which called
them forth. Monod was not a strict Calvinist, nor
a millenarian of the English school ; but he had,

1 The discourses of this early period form the first two volumes of
the collection of sermons of Adolphe Monod, under the heading,
"Naples — Lyons — Montauban." Paris, 1850-59.

192 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

nevertheless, accepted the leading principles of the
orthodoxy of the age, which was in many respects
more akin to the scholasticism of the seventeenth
than to the theology of the sixteenth century. He
held it in high estimation, because it was under
this rigid form that the everlasting gospel had first
reached his conscience, and he lent to it the warmth
of his own ardent nature. This theology was based
upon a wholly inadequate view of authority, very dif-
ferent from the broad and living view of the Reformers.
Apparently the theologians of the revival were only
carrying on the work of the Reformers in appealing
as they did to the sovereignty of Scripture. But the
seventeenth century had greatly modified their views
on this important point, casting into the shade that
which was to the Reformers the conclusive proof of
the inspiration of the Bible, that testimonium spiritus
sancti, which bases the authority of the book on the
testimony of the conscience divinely enlightened, and
clings to the person of Christ Himself as the great
central fact of revelation. The theologians of the
seventeenth century and those of the revival, follow-
ing in their footsteps, based the authority of the book
primarily upon the miraculous, proofs of which they
sought now in the fulfilment of prophecy, now in the
multiplication of signs and wonders. It was upon this
letter of credit that Scripture and revelation were to
be accepted, even before the soul had been brought
into contact with the truth itself, and primarily with

ADOLPHE MONOD. 193

the living truth, which is Jesus Christ. The way was
from the Scriptures to Christ, not from Christ to the
Scriptures.

In such an apology there is not simply the error
of isolating the internal from the external evidence,
but also injustice is done to the latter, which has an
indispensible historical value in the establishment of
the credibility of the facts and documents of reve-
lation. When it is thus appealed to as a final authority
to cut short all inquiry, it becomes rather an obstacle
to conviction than a means of producing it. The
authority of Scripture is lowered, and made to appear
of the same character as that claimed by the Catholic
Church. We are not surprised, therefore, to find in
Adolphe Monod's apologetic work, " Lucile," that
the enlightened Catholic priest who is charged with
the task of establishing the authority of Holy Scrip-
ture, does so by arguments almost identical with those
which he employs in the second part of the book to
vindicate the authority of his Church.

The same apologetic point of view is presented, with
great force of thought and expression, in the sermon
on "Belief and Unbelief." It is always by prophecy
or miracle — that is, by the supernatural attestation of
Divine power — that the preacher silences the doubter.
He does, indeed, repeatedly break through the limita-
tions of his system, as when, at the commencement of
this very sermon, he tells his hearers that the best
way to prove to them that the Bible is the sword of

14

1 94 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

the Spirit is to pierce them through with it ; but
there can be no doubt that he was at this time a
theologian of the authoritative school. With such
views of the authority of Scripture, it was difficult
to escape the doctrine of literal inspiration, though
Adolphe Monod never gave his formal adherence to
the theory of the infallibility of the sacred letter. In
his sermon on the " Temptation of Christ," he attaches
an exaggerated importance to the written word, to
the mere letter of the text. The book is certainly
made to play the part which belongs properly only
to the truth which is in the book. The casket is
made more of than the contents.

" This quotation," says the preacher, referring to
the text cited by Christ, " stops the enemy at once." x
The authority of the Bible thus regarded, gives it
rather the character of a formulary or Divine credo
than a history. The writing which contains the
revelation becomes confounded with the revelation
itself, and religion assumes an essentially dogmatic
character. History has, no doubt, still a place in the
system, but it is a subordinate place. Jesus Christ
fills an important position, but He is not the very
centre, life and substance of the whole. Purity of
doctrine is scrupulously guarded, and a hedge of
thorns is placed around it, as the ancient law was
protected by the synagogue of old. Adolphe Monod
never fell into these extremes ; he always presented

Sermons, vol. ii. p. 177.

ADOLPHE MO NOD. 195

evangelical truth from a moral point of view ; but it
must be admitted that in his early teaching he gave
too prominent a place to doctrine in the development
of the religious life. This is very evident in his
sermon on " Sanctification by the Truth," in which
he argues that truth is necessarily the parent of good,
and error, even though unwitting, must result in evil,
just as in nature every seed, no matter how sown,
produces after its kind.

"Wheat," he says, " sown with or without design,
will always produce wheat ; and tares, in like manner,
will never bring forth anything but tares. Even
so, a doctrine can only yield such fruits of good or
evil as are germinally contained within it. Truth,
whether acquired with or without moral effort, will
always bear its happy fruit — sanctification ; so that
in order to express the moral condition of a soul, we
have not to ascertain in what way truth or error has
gained a lodgment within it, but which of the two
reigns within."

Revelation is thus regarded too much in the light
of a mathematical proposition, which appeals to the
intellect alone. It would be unjust to press this con-
clusion too far in the case of Adolphe Monod, for the
fervour of his genius constantly carried him beyond
the narrow bounds of his system. At the close of the
same sermon from which we have just quoted, we find
the following glowing panegyric on the heroism of
the modern missionary :

1 96 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

" 1 have seen the young missionary tear himself from the
weeping embrace of a mother, and make the only sacrifice that
could be greater than hers ; I have seen the mother, bidding
back her tears, sustain and encourage him when his heart
seemed ready to fail in the prospect of the parting. And I
have seen the same mother again, weeping over his death ; but
not at his grave. His grave — if he has one — is in the far East,
and he has been borne to it, perhaps, by some faithful Hindoos,
anxious to return to the lifeless body the same faithful care
which he had bestowed upon their souls. His is the forgotten
grave of an unknown martyr in a land of strangers, unwatered
by a mother's tears ; and the only sound which will break its
stillness will be, perhaps, the tumult of some barbarous and
bloody rite, to do away with which he gave his life."

This peroration is in itself the refutation of the
general tenor of the sermon, for this martyr-mission-
ary might have gone forth from the Roman College,
instead of from one of the orthodox societies of
Paris or Basle. Adolphe Monod would not have
waited to know his creed before rendering tribute to
his heroic self-devotion, thus showing that above
orthodoxy there is the faith which moves in a higher
sphere. This faith does not necessarily remove all
intellectual doubts ; these may still exist, but they
affect only the form or formulary of truth, not its
essence, which is a life, a person, to be apprehended
by the heart and conscience, which is, in a word, Jesus
Christ.

We need not dwell on Adolphe Monod's early
view of the doctrine of redemption. This was
entirely in harmony with the prevailing teaching of
the Revival, and erred, as it appears to us, by exag-

ADOLPHE MONOD. 197

gerating the judicial aspect of the question, regarding
the cross as a sort of Divine retaliation, the actual
condemnation of the Son by the Father.

Monod never changed his views on this point.
They became firmly associated with his conception
of the justice of God, while he failed, as we think,
to recognise how mercy tempers justice. These two
attributes became, in his treatment of them, conflict-
ing hypostases, instead of blending in the unity of a
holy love. Hence he was led to insist on the suffering
of the cross as being really infinite, and exhausting
all the moral agony of hell. Even this view^ how-
ever, was inadequate, since the element of the endless
duration of suffering was necessarily omitted. From
the same premises Monod was led to accept the
final and hopeless doom of those who die impenitent,
— a doctrine affirmed with a certainty which is not
justified either by the letter of Scripture or by the
competence of the finite mind to judge of eternal
issues.

Eternal punishment is a constantly recurring topic
in Monod's early sermons, and he rises to even un-
wonted fervour when he touches on this awful theme,
though he never attempts, by harrowing descriptions
of the anguish of the doomed, to excite mere nervous
terror. We are bound to respect his faithfulness to
convictions which must have been intensely pain-
ful to his generous heart. "Those who heard him
tremble still," said Michelet. He himself was the

1 98 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

first to tremble — to tremble for the immortal souls
whom he yearned to save from the abyss. It was to
arouse them from their deathful sleep that he sounded
again and again that awful alarm bell, at the tones of
which the most indifferent cheeks grow pale. In
truth, Monod made use of all the narrow dogmatisms
of the Revival, to startle out of its crass indifference
and worldliness a generation which had been lulled
into a false security by the facile, sentimental Protes-
tantism of the nineteenth century, crying " Peace !
Peace ! " when there was no peace.

To the doctrine of justifying faith Monod gave
powerful affirmation, not pausing like Vinet to dis-
cover the synthesis which brings St. James into
harmony with St. Paul, and shows how sanctifkation
springs from justification, like the oak from the
acorn. He always maintained a clear distinction
between grace and free will, not trying to reconcile
them lest he should weaken the force of either.

No preacher ever made more direct and telling
appeals to man's power of choice. In a word,
Adolphe Monod, in this his first period, is the faith-
ful exponent of the current orthodoxy of the re-
ligious Revival, while avoiding the extravagancies
which here and there defaced it.

In the fervid eloquence of his preaching, however,
it is easy to trace, even at this period, the elements
of a broader and fuller conception of Christian truth.
It could not be otherwise in a heart and mind cast

ADOLPHE MONOD. 199

in so generous a mould. It would be easy to multiply
passages from Monod's early sermons, which point to
a greater freedom in dealing with Scripture, and a
less exaggerated estimate of the importance of mere
doctrinal beliefs, than is consistent with his systematic
creed. But we must always bear in mind that a
religious system is to be judged, not by its recog-
nition of this or that isolated fact, but by its general
tone and spirit, by that which Spinoza calls the vin-
culum substances. Now it is indisputable that the pre-
vailing tone and spirit of Adolphe Monod's teaching
in the earlier part of his career was such as we have
described. It is equally certain that in later years his
theology underwent a very real change, though his
faith remained the same. In tracing the causes, both
external and internal, which contributed to this re-
sult, we shall have to go back to the history of his
life.

IV.

We left Adolphe Monod commencing at Mon-
tauban that professorial career in which he was so
useful. The sermons which he published in the early
part of his course exhibit no change of opinion. His
apologetic work, " Lucile," is, on the contrary, the
fullest expression of his early views.

This book was written in 1840, in the form of letters.
It was suggested by facts in real life, and we ourselves
were personally acquainted with the characters repre-

200 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

sented. The substratum of fact was, however, soon
transformed and enriched by the hand of the artist.
No publication of Adolphe Monod's was more success-
ful than this. The ease and animation of the letters
and dialogues, the beauty of the language, the close
and lucid reasoning, the high tone and simple, earnest
piety which characterise it throughout, all combine to
make " Lucile " a cJtef d'ceuvre. It presents the grand
arguments which never grow old, as well as those
which were adapted only to a form of thought now
passed away.

As an apologist, Adolphe Monod belongs to the
English school. He not only ignores the great and
immortal apology of the Alexandrine fathers, but
he pays too little attention to Pascal, who in the
seventeenth century restored the psychological, without
derogating from the value of the historical evidence
of Christianity.

In " Lucile " the whole weight of the demonstra-
tion is made to rest upon the authority of Scripture,
as vindicated by outward signs, rather than by the
witness of the Spirit of God. Much more stress is
laid upon miracle and prophecies than upon the
person of Jesus Christ. This is its weak point.

At the very time when " Lucile " appeared, Vinet
was taking up and carrying on the work of the great
thinker of Port Royal. The influence of Vinet's
writings did more than anything else to enlarge
Adolphe Monod's theological views. Monod was a

ADOLPHE MONOD. 201

diligent reader of the religious journal, " Le Semeur,"
though but rarely a contributor to it, and he could
not but be struck with the wealth and depth of
thought which characterised all the articles, literary
and theological, of the Lausanne professor. Just as
we can trace through every line of the Epistle of
Peter the influence of Paul, his junior in the aposto-
late, so Adolphe Monod became, perhaps uncon-
sciously to himself, deeply imbued in mature life
with the spirit of Vinet.

He was no copyist, and in the writings of the two
men we find scarcely two expressions in common ;
but the assimilation of thought was deep and real.

Adolphe Monod's duties as a theological pro-
fessor became also a means of enlarging his views.
It was not possible for him, with his keenness of
insight and uprightness of conscience, to carry on a
course of sacred criticism, without becoming conscious
of many difficulties in the way of that theory of literal
inspiration, which he had accepted without thorough
investigation. If the whole edifice of Christian con-
viction is to be based upon the authority of the
Scriptures as demonstrated by miracles, the verbal
infallibility of the canon is an indispensable condition.
Failing this, recourse must be had to some other
criterion — to historical evidence, on the one hand,
which guarantees only that which is indubitably
authentic ; and, on the other hand, to the witness of
the Spirit, which testifies first to Christ Himself — the

202 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

centre and soul of revelation — and through Him to
the Book, of which He is the Alpha and Omega.

Literal inspiration, and an indisputable canon —
these are the two pillars of the strict orthodoxy of
the Revival, which on these two points differed widely
from the Reformation of the sixteenth century. The
question at issue between this orthodoxy and the
liberal evangelical school is, whether the higher
authority belongs to Jesus Christ or to the Book,
provided always that the authenticity of the record be
established by competent historical evidence. With
however much of prudent reticence Adolphe Monod
entered on his course of sacred criticism, it could not
fail to modify — at first, perhaps, unconsciously to him-
self— his views of revelation. On his young hearers,
less fettered than himself by a traditional faith, the
effect was very manifest. There can be little doubt
that they were somewhat unsettled by the critical
problems which now presented themselves for the
first time to their minds, and it was in all probability
the desire to find some basis for their convictions
which could never be shaken, that led Adolphe
Monod to recast his apology, and with it, to some
extent, his theology. It would be erroneous to suppose
that there was anything like a violent rupture between
the first and the second period of his intellectual
life. The transition was a very gradual one, wrought
without observation in the quiet domain of his own
thoughts. The change must have been more marked

ADO LP HE MO NOD. 203

if he had ever professed the Calvinism of the Scotch
Churches, or the doctrine of plenary inspiration
taught by the venerable Gaussen. But he had never
gone to extremes ; and it is only by a careful perusal
of the sermons preached after his removal to Paris,
that we discover how completely he had changed his
standpoint.

He was called to be suffragan in the great Church
at Paris in the year 1847. We shall presently speak
of the important ministry he there accomplished.
For the present we shall continue to trace the
development of his theological views. From his very
first sermon it was clear that these had undergone a
change. He was most careful, however, not to put
anything in a way which might be likely to cause a
division among evangelical Protestants ; hence he
avoided giving anything like a polemical turn to
the expression of his new convictions. The great
purport of his preaching was, moreover, still the same.
He proclaimed restoration for lost man by the
redemption of Christ, justification by faith, a salva-
tion full and free. His convictions of the holiness of
God's law, of His claims, and of the desperate condi-
tion to which man was reduced by sin, were as strong
as ever. This was the vital truth of the orthodoxy of
the Revival, and this gave force to its reaction against
the frivolous optimism which had crept into the
Protestant Church. Adolphe Monod, so far from
derogating at all from the holy austerity of the

204 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

Revival, gave most emphatic vindication to it in his
later sermons. If he no longer dwelt so largely upon
eternal punishment, if towards the close of his life
he recognised the scriptural truth, that the secret
things (of eternity) belong to the Lord our God, he
did not therefore lower the standard of holy living.
Thus in one of his latest sermons we find him
exclaiming : " Far be it from us to preach a salvation
in which the glory of God should be sacrificed. Let
His holy law first be vindicated, and then, if it may
be so, let my salvation be secured."1

In the following passage we trace the bond of
union between the two phases of his faith : " O
Cross! O blood of the Holy One shed for my sins !
O bitter sacrifice of a spotless victim ! O scene,
which justifies alike the sinner in the eye of a holy
law, and the God who can be just, and yet the
Justifier ! O thrice blessed cross, my whole soul flees
to thee. It yearned for thee before it knew thee :
with what ardour shall it not embrace thee, now thou
art known!"

These closing words introduce us to the new world

1 " Doctrine Chre'tienne," Ouatre Discours. Paris, 1869.
11 Discours sur l'GEuvre du Fils," p. 167. The works of Adolphe
Monod dating from this period are, in addition to these doctrinal
discourses : Vol. III. of his Sermons, Paris 1859, containing his
sermon," La Parole vivante;"" St. Paul;" Cinq Discours, 1862-63.
Some single sermons of great value ; among others, "Nathanael,"
" Les grandes ames," " Explication de l'Epitre aux Ephe'siens."
Paris, 1867.

ADOLPHE MONOD. 205

in which for some years Adolphe Monod's thoughts
had begun to move. He says that he was yearning
for the cross before he knew it. What is this but an
acknowledgment that the gospel, of which the cross
is the foundation and the top-stone, appeals to the
deepest instincts of the soul and conscience, and
derives its highest title to our acceptance, not from
miracle or prophecy, but from its response to our
universal human needs ?

This is the point on which he dwells with so much
emphasis in the second period of his preaching. He
delights to show the harmony existing between con-
science and the gospel, and appeals constantly to
Tertullian's testimonium animce nahiraliter Chris-
tiana, and to the apologies of Clement of Alexan-
dria, of Pascal, and of Vinet, in support of his views.

We should like to quote, just as they stand, his
two admirable sermons upon Nathanael and " Les
grandes ames." The thoughts themselves are only
new in his perception of them, but they come out
with fresh brilliancy under his treatment, and show
how his own mind had been expanding. In his
sermon on Nathanael he says :

" All upright hearts belong to Jesus ; He claims them from the
first, and disposes of them as of that which is His own, and
which sooner or later must come to Him. The faithfulness of
Nathanael to the light he had received, placed him in a position
to receive the greater light, which as yet he lacked. It only
needed that he should be brought into the presence of Christ
to recognise in Him that which he sought. The true moral

206 CONTEMPORA R Y FOR TRA ITS.

measure of every man is not the measure of light he possesses,
but his faithfulness to that which he has. Between an upright
heart and Christ there is, if I may so speak, such an affinity,
such an attraction, that if they were as far apart as the ends of
the earth, they would find some means of drawing near to each
other, or if they could not find a way, they would make one.
The parched earth has not more need of the rain from heaven,
than the weary and heavy-laden sinner has need of Christ.
This utter need makes him recognise, even afar off, the power
that is coming to his aid. This was what he had been seeking,
longing for, yearning after ; and had he not found it, he must
have invented it." l

The sermon on "Les grandes ames," is even more
daring in its use of the purely moral apology. In it
Monod says :

" The more truly great a soul is, the more will it be prepared,
all other things being equal, to receive Jesus Christ. There is
no soul which has not in it the elements of greatness, since all
were made by God, and made in His own image. It is only
the petty in us that is against Jesus Christ ; all that is great in
us is on His side." 2

Then, taking up one by one each separate faculty of
man — the reason, the heart, the conscience, the ima-
gination— he shows that in all these regions "the
current that bears us away from Jesus Christ is
superficial, troubled, polluted ; while that which draws
us to Him is deep, quiet and pure."

Christianity thus comes to us not so much in the
form of a doctrine as of a person ; it is embodied and
personified in Jesus Christ. Revelation, therefore,

1 Sermon on Nathanael.
2 " Les grandes ames," pp. 42, 43.

ADOLPHE MONOD. 207

assumes a different aspect. Adolphe Monod, under
the influence of his earlier convictions, was wont to
present revelation as essentially a doctrine contained
in a book, and his apology was directed to establish-
ing against all opposition the authority of the Book.
But from this time we find him giving the first place,
not to the doctrine or the book which contains it,
but to the person of Christ ; and both doctrine and
book, so far from being depreciated, become illu-
minated with a new and clearer light. The authority
of the Book, being derived from the authority of
Him who, as Luther says, is greater than the Book,
is established on a stronger basis. It is in his ser-
mon on the living Word that he gives fullest expres-
sion to these views. He begins by distinguishing
between the written and the living Word, while
recognising that historically we only arrive at the
latter through the former. He unhesitatingly places
the living above the written and spoken Word.

" The one explains the thought of God, the other reproduces
God Himself. ' He who hath seen Christ hath seen God.' The
life means the entire being, and the preacher of the living per-
son of Jesus Christ, alone gives us the whole truth. No written
language, not even the Word of God itself, can express all.
There must always remain between the lines, gaps which mere
words cannot supply, which the life alone can fill. The life
means unity — the harmonious blending of even opposite
elements. The preaching of the living person of Christ is the
only means of satisfying all needs, even the most diverse, by
virtue of the elasticity peculiar to life." x

1 " La Parole vivante," pp. 9, 27.

208 CONTEMPORA R Y FOR TRAITS.

It follows from this distinction between the living
and the written Word, that the latter derives its
dignity, its grandeur, and consequently the best proof
of its Divine character, from Jesus Christ. Incessit
patuit Deus. There is no need, then, to follow the
devious course of the old apology, which led from the
Book to Christ, laboriously demonstrating the autho-
rity of the Bible from miracles and prophecies, which
the sceptical are always ready to call in question.
We must reverse the process, and lead from Christ to
the Book.

Adolphe Monod says, in a passage which shows
how far his views had advanced since he wrote
" Lucile : "

" With reference to the Divine authority of Scripture, we may
no doubt maintain it on the ground of those prophecies,
miracles and facts which bring irresistible conviction to the
upright mind ; but I would rather turn from all this, and appeal
directly to Jesus Christ Himself. Did He not strengthen
Himself by the written Word? Did He not recognise the
inspiration of the prophets and guarantee that of the apostles ?
And was He not without error and without sin — those two
immovable poles of the human conscience ? Believe in Christ
as His own witness. Bring your hearer into the presence of
Christ, the Holy One. You have not to lead him from the
Bible to Jesus ; rather try to lead him from Jesus to the Bible."1

From these premises Monod naturally derived an
enlarged conception of inspiration, thought it appears
to us that he did not go far enough in this direction.

1 " La Parole vivante," pp. 30, 44.

ADOLPHE MONOD. 209

We cannot agree with him when he says, as in the
passage just given, that Christ, by His quotations from
the Old Testament, solved the gravest problems of
sacred criticism. Still more must we differ from him
when he maintains that there was the very same
transfusion of the human with the Divine in Holy
Scripture as in the person of Christ. We cannot
admit that the human element in the written Word
had the same absolute perfection as in the living
Word. Monod had himself completely abandoned
the idea of the plenary inspiration of Scripture. He
thought it a proof of littleness to attach importance
to slight differences between the narratives of the
sacred writers, or to the real or supposed historic
impossibility of a figure or a date. He evidently
admits that there may be such historical inaccuracies
or slight deviations in the narrative, even though
he adds that the inconsistency is, perhaps, only super-
ficial. He thus abandons the theory of exact literal
inspiration, which admits of no concession. "The
devout soul rises above all these petty details, and
will not make its faith dependent on the correctness
of a copyist, or on the solution of some question of
criticism ; it comes straight into the presence of
Christ Himself." ' In truth, the Book itself is not
simply a book, a mere collection of inspired oracles ;
it is an organ instinct with the religious and moral
life of the writers. This view is expressed with the
greatest clearness and force in the sermons on

210 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

St. Paul. " Inspired words," says Monod, " break
forth from the troubled soul of the apostle, like light-
ning from the heavily-charged thunder-cloud. Great
agonisings of souls precede his sublimest revelations."
He had himself been pierced through and through
by the sword of the law ; he had himself trembled
beneath the thunder of Sinai, before he launched his
thunderbolts against Pharisaism. Hence the import-
ance attaching to the spiritual history of the great
apostle, who was to be fitted by his own deep ex-
perience to become the living, personal organ of
revelation. Adolphe Monod expresses his idea in
the following striking words : " The organs of revela-
tion are regarded by the vulgar as the spoilt children
of inspiration, while in truth they are its martyrs.
Blessed js the fire which comes from heaven ; but woe
to the cloud charged with its transmission to earth,
whether it bears pent within its bosom the sacred
burden, or rends itself that the celestial fire may
break forth." r

Monod was so strongly impressed with the import-
ance of his new views, that he did not hesitate to
insist on them as opposed to the views of the narrower
Evangelicals. Deep as was his respect for the re-
ligious Revival, he was bold to affirm that its piety
was of too dogmatic a character in its teaching, and
had dealt the much with the externals of religion ;

1 Sermon on St. Paul, p. 53.

ADOLPHE MO NOD. 211

that it had been too much a matter of creeds, while
the secret springs of the life had too often remained
untouched.

Adolphe Monod was quite conscious of the change
that had come over his views since his first religious
awakening. He looked upon it as a painful but
necessary process through which not the individual
Christian alone, but the Church of the future must be
called to pass.

The task devolving upon that Church would be
to give greater breadth to Christian doctrine, while
still holding fast the divine folly of the cross ; and
to develop gradually true catholicity by means of
the Evangelical Alliance, of which he was one of
the founders, and in which he rejoiced as one of the
grandest facts of the Christianity of the day, and
by giving the preponderance to the great central
truth over all that was particular and subordinate,
uniting all hearts in a common worship of the Christ
of God. It was in order to build up this Church of
the future, and to free it from the trammels by which
it is at present fettered, that Adolphe Monod laboured
to rally round the Living Truth a valiant and believing
people of God, aspiring after this new land of promise,
consumed with the desire to enter upon it, and pre-
paring themselves for that holy warfare by which
alone it could be won. Before this people of God he
sets as a model the great conqueror of the apostolic
age, St. Paul — that apostle of intrepid courage

2 1 2 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

towards men, but of deep self-abasement before God.
In St. Paul's tears of pity, of tenderness, and of humi-
liation, he finds the secret of his success. How far
removed is all this from the rapid awakenings, easy
conversions, sudden sanctifications, incessant congratu-
lations by which many characterise the apostolic era.
The alleluias rise out of the groanings which cannot
be uttered : the soil out of which a new and glorious
harvest is to grow, must be watered by nothing less
than the tears of a St. Paul.

It is peculiarly interesting to watch the growth and
progress of a soul so upright, a conscience so tender,
as that of Adolphe Monod from the beginning of that
religious revival of which he was one of the finest
fruits. It seemed as if he, the great preacher, the
eminent Christian, had only to lead the way in
the course on which he had entered, in order to
accomplish, under the most favourable conditions, a
theological renovation which would satisfy the legiti-
mate aspirations and meet the requirements of the
most enlightened minds. Unhappily the ecclesias-
tical crisis intervened to hinder this happy con-
summation. It remains for us to see what part
Adolphe Monod took in it during the remaining
years of his life.

V.

Adolphe Monod had been hardly a year in
Paris when the ecclesiastical controversy, which for

ADOLPHE MO NOD. 213

a time had slumbered, broke forth with renewed
vehemence. It is not our purpose here to enter at
any length into the merits of the question. Let it
suffice to say that the internal condition of French
Protestantism had greatly changed since Adolphe
Monod was dismissed from the Church at Lyons.
Its organisation had not improved. The glorious
institutions of its early days had no longer any
existence except in its historical archives. The
Councils of the Church were always self-elected, the
members being taken from the list of the wealthy
Protestants. There could scarcely be, I imagine, in
any Church a mode of proceeding more contrary to
the spirit of Christianity. It was the survival in
the religious world of the famous list of notables of
the First Empire, and altogether alien to the spirit of
the Divine Founder of the religion of the poor.

Meanwhile true religion had been making rapid
progress. The number of the Evangelicals was every
day increasing. They had set on foot noble mission
works at home and abroad, and their moral influence
was spreading far and wide. The question of the
separation of the Church from the State was forced
upon men's minds by the foundation of the Free
Church of Scotland, by a similar creation in French
Switzerland, and by the powerful polemics of Vinet,
sustained by the principal organ of Protestant thought,
" Le Semeur." All these causes acting together had
shaken the old prejudices in favour of national

214 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

Churches. An important section of the Evangelical
party was tending, almost unconsciously to itself,
towards the enfranchisement of the Church. It was
logically led to this in its anxiety to restore synodical
government and the unity of the faith. It was soon
brought to perceive that this was utterly chimerical
under the union of Church and State in the
nineteenth century, because it was impossible for
the State to swerve from the principle of absolute
neutrality in matters of religion, and to espouse the
cause of the Evangelical party.

At the head of this movement was one of the most
respected and beloved pastors of the Reformed
Church of Paris, the brother of Adolphe Monod, and
the chief editor of the " Archives du christianisme."
Frederic Monod exerted a great influence over the
French Protestantism of his day. United to his
brother by the tenderest affection, he was yet of a
very different temperament. One of the most gene-
rous, faithful, true-hearted of men, he had neither the
oratorical nor the theological culture of Adolphe
Monod. He remained inflexibly orthodox, but he
had so much largeness of heart that he never fell into
the narrowness and injustice too often associated with
severe orthodoxy. His was a fresh and noble soul ;
his cheerfulness seemed the exuberance of moral
health. A man of indefatigable activity and sound
judgment, he took a prominent part in the direction
of Christian effort. He was one of the leaders of the

ADOLPHE MO NOD. 215

religious revival in Paris. He was to show subse-
quently how far he could carry the spirit of self-
sacrifice at the call of what seemed to him duty. His
memory is still held dear, and is venerated not only
by those who, like ourselves, from our very cradle
loved him as a father, but by all Evangelical Pro-
testants.

Frederic Monod had long been urging in his
journal the necessity of reconstituting the Church
upon its true basis, when after the Revolution of
1848, an unofficial synod was called in Paris to pre-
pare a scheme of reorganisation, which was to be
submitted to the government of the Republic.
Frederic Monod, supported by Count Agenor de
Gasparin — whose name is associated with all that is
most noble and chivalrous in our day — urged the
synod to make a profession of evangelical faith the
basis of the ecclesiastical constitution^ since without
this there could be no Church. -The synod could not
pass such a vote without creating schism, and splitting
the Protestant body in two. It passed to the order
of the day on the proposition of M. Monod and M. de
Gasparin. These two brethren, who might have
resigned themselves even to that which seemed to
them the worst of disorders, when it arose out of the
unhappy circumstances of the time, did not feel that
they could accept the prolongation of doctrinal
anarchy as ratified by the vote of the Church. MM.
Monod and Gasparin and several of their colleagues

2 1 6 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

sent in their resignation. Shortly after Frederic
Monod left his pulpit in the Oratoire, to commence
a new ministry in a humble building, without any
guarantee for his own support. He carried with him
into this difficult and precarious position the esteem
of all right-hearted people. The union of the inde-
pendent Evangelical Churches was founded in conse-
quence of his secession. Poor and despised, -they
have maintained since then a painful existence.
Theirs will always be the honour of having led the
way in the direction in which every Church which
has a regard at once for evangelical truth and for its
own dignity, is now tending, as one attempt after
another at an adequate and equitable organisation in
union with the State is found to fail. The synod of
1872 was the last effort in this direction.

Adolphe Monod did not see it his duty to follow
his brother in his secession. He is equally entitled to
our respect for a decision which was not in reality
more easy to him. There was no contradiction
between his decision of September, 1848, and his
conduct in Lyons in 1832. Eighteen years earlier he
had been equally averse to secession, and had allowed
himself to be dismissed rather than quit his post in
the Established Church. He held then, as in 1848,
that it was not for the servant of the Church to take
the initiative in a question of this kind. His motives
are clearly explained in his pamphlet, " Pourquoi je
reste dans l'eglise etablie." He vindicates his

ADOLPHE MONOD. 217

preference for what he calls the path of spirituality
over the path of secession. Spirituality in the eccle-
siastical domain seems to him to consist in patient
continuance in Christian activity in the midst of a
defective organisation, till, by a simple process of
growth, the chrysalis form should be cast aside and
the new life spring into new developments. He
did not feel it to be obligatory upon him, or in
accordance with the will of God, to leave the
Established Church, unless the authorities interfered
with him in the performance of his pastoral duties.
We cannot but respect his motives, for they were
prompted by his deep Christian conscientiousness.
We are fully convinced that Adolphe Monod, and
those who shared his determination, contributed also
in their way to prepare the Church of the future.
Indeed, he always held fast the true principle of a
Church, and with all his breadth and toleration, never
accepted the system of a heterogeneous Church,
having no bond of cohesion but the State budget,
open to all comers, and guided, like a flock of sheep,
by the crook of its spiritual leaders, who can never
be, in the Protestant Church, other than a bastard
priesthood. On the one hand, he showed himself
entirely free from all ecclesiastical superstition. He
even went so far as to declare not only that Jesus had
never given His signature to any ecclesiastical organi-
sation, but that He had not even formed a Church,
strictly so called ; that all He did was simply to unite

2 1 8 CONTEMPORA R Y FOR TRA ITS.

His disciples by a purely spiritual bond, by instilling
into their hearts those principles of truth and holi-
ness which He knew must win their way, and
gradually renew the whole face of civil and religious
society.1 On the other hand, Monod accepted, almost
in its integrity, the ecclesiastical theory of the se-
cessionists, and the new Churches appeared to him to
be hurrying on the separation of Church and State,
which, as he frankly acknowledged, " would, in the
existing state of society, be a blessing from God, if it
came in God's time."2

It is in the definition of God's time that we differ
from him. The pressure of outward circumstances
is not the only sign by which we recognise the will of
God. He has assigned a larger part than this to
human liberty, and great reforms have been courageous
attempts to break the old fetters, which will not give
way at the mere groaning of the captives. Paul was
obliged to snap with a strong hand the cable which
bound the young Church to the shores of Judaism ;
and it was only when this had been done that the
sails of the vessel filled with the wind which was to
bear it onward. All the reforming zeal of the ardent
controversialist, the courageous innovator of the first
Christian century, is passed over in silence in the
grand sermons devoted by Adolphe Monod to his
life teaching. He also failed to do full justice to the

111 Pourquoi je demeure," &c, p. 75. " Ibid. p. 8.

ADOLPHE MONOD. 219

holy boldness of the Reformers. Spirituality must
not be confounded with all-enduring patience, where
the interests and order of the Church of Christ are
involved. There is a yet higher spirituality, which
consists in the courage to sacrifice immediate and
visible success in religious matters, to a future which
may seem uncertain.

We do not mean by these remarks to imply any
blame to Adolphe Monod for the course on which he
decided in the sight of God and for the benefit of His
Church. His heart was not narrowed in its sympathies
even by the controversies which sometimes grew
sharp and hot. He never shared at all in that absurd
bigotry which will only recognise the Reformed
Church of France in one particular form of it, and
which speaks sentimentally of the holy traditions of
the Fathers when it is referring only to the laws of
Germinal year X. The decision of Adolphe Monod
cost him all the more, since it placed him in oppo-
sition to the brother whom he tenderly loved. He
aptly expressed the feelings with which his heart
was full, when he compared this passing difference to
that which separated for a time Paul and Barnabas.

" At the very time," he says, " when Barnabas was embark-
ing for the island of Cyprus, I see Paul going up to him, grasping
him by the hand, and bidding him God-speed ; and by and by
Barnabas stands on the deck of the ship, following in thought
his beloved brother Paul as he goes again on foot through Syria
visiting the Churches ; and as he asks that the grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ may be with him, his eyes fill with tears at the

220 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

recollection of their joint labours in the past. Yet a few years,
and we find Paul and Barnabas together again, tenderly united
in faith and works. Perhaps the present separation between us
and our brothers who go out from us, may also be but for a
time. Assuredly neither the Church in which we remain, nor
the Church which is being founded side by side with ours,
answers fully the conditions of that Church of the future to
which we all look forward, and towards which we are all hasten-
ing. But who knows whether both the one and the other may
not help to prepare its way." x

We share these aspirations. Whether our eyes
may see it or not, the blessed day will come when
the Reformed Church, having prepared itself for the
beneficent reign of liberty, as it has already begun to
do since it has ceased to seek to secure its ends by
means of State intervention, will renew the most
glorious traditions of its past history, and will realise
that ideal of fidelity, of breadth and of independence,
which is our standard, as it was that of Adolphe
Monod.

VI.

In 1849 Adolphe Monod was appointed pastor, and
he devoted himself unsparingly to a task which was
soon to exhaust his strength. His was a grand
ministry. His preaching exercised an ever-increasing
influence, and he devoted more and more care to it.
Perhaps it cost him a greater mental effort, after he had
accepted the possibility of moulding a new theology,

1 " Pourquoi je demeure/' &c, p. 89.

ADOLPHE MONOD. 221

within limits, however, which he never allowed himself
to pass. He could not henceforth bring his influence
to bear in one direction only ; he saw more and more
clearly that truth had two poles. His sermons at
this period sometimes betray this new complication,
which was, in truth, an expansion of his views. The
plan of his preaching is less methodical, his language
less positive, but the preacher has made great ad-
vances in the psychological and apologetic treatment
of his subject. He is more real, more modern, more
in harmony with the age. In passages, too, we find
all his old fire and brilliancy, as in the sermons, " If
any Man thirst ; " " Give Me thine Heart ; " " Mary
Magdalen ; " " Too Late," and others.

In his sermon on " Exclusiveness " Monod com-
pares the fervent faith, which cannot acquiesce in any
violence done to the truth, to the real mother in the
judgment of Solomon, whose mother's heart cries out
against the sword lifted to divide her child, while the
pretended mother, like the half-sceptical latitudina-
rianism of our day, stands by unmoved. The illus-
tration is a very happy one. We have already drawn
attention to the admirable course of sermons on St.
Paul.

Pastoral duties occupied a large share of Adolphe
Monod's time, especially the religious instruction of
the young. He was resorted to by catechumens from
all parts of France. This was one of his most im-
portant spheres of usefulness, and the results of the

222 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

influence thus exerted are still felt in numbers of
homes. The whole of evangelical Protestantism
came to look to him more and more as its leader and
model. His reputation spread far beyond his own
country. He visited England more than once, and
addressed large assemblies in English, with which he
was thoroughly familiar. He occupied a place of
honour in the first great CEcumenical Assembly of
the Evangelical Alliance held in London in July, 185 1.
The object was one which called forth all the sym-
pathies of his large and loving heart, and we heard
him speak in Exeter Hall on this occasion in a way
worthy of himself.

It was in 1854 that he felt the first germs of the
malady which was rapidly to undermine his strength.
He went on working, however, till he was utterly
spent. After a long rest during the summer months,
he resumed preaching ; but the effort cost him such
intense suffering that he could only continue it at
irregular intervals. On Whit-Sunday, in the month of
June, 1855, he preached for the last time. The sermon
is still unpublished, but we have seen the notes of it.
It is the song of the reaper binding up his sheaves.
Never was his enfeebled voice more thrilling in its
tones ; never did his thought take a loftier range ; never
did his piety seem more deep and tender. The text he
had chosen was that glorious promise of Christ, " If
any man drink of this water, he shall thirst again :
but whosoever shall drink of the water that I shall

ADOLPHE MO NOD.

223

give him shall never thirst ; but the water that I
shall give him shall be in him a well of water spring-
ing up into everlasting life." * It is easy to imagine
how the preacher would use the comparison between
the fleeting and uncertain joys of the world, and that
infinite, inexhaustible well of life which the Divine
Spirit opens in the soul.

"Worldly happiness," he exclaimed, "the happiness that
comes from a certain amount of wealth, and from no other ;
from a certain disposition of body and mind, and no other ;
from some one creature, and no other ; at a certain time, and
no other ; from youth, not from age ; from health, not from
sickness ; from fortune, not from poverty ; from summer, not
from winter ; from sunshine, not from rain — let us hear no more
of happiness like this. We have been in pursuit of this happi-
ness long enough, and it has left us panting and disappointed,
and all the more miserable the higher our hopes had been
raised. But here is a source of happiness that can satisfy us
always, perfectly, for ever. There is no craving so large that
this is not enough for it, or so deep that this cannot fill it to
overflowing ; no aspiration after holiness so high that this does
not rise above it, none so deep-seated that this does not go
below it. It is God Himself giving Himself in the form of man
to man."

In this sermon Adolphe Monod makes free use of
that vein of mysticism which for many years had
given graphic force to his words. It is touching to
read the closing passage, in which he refers so calmly
to himself and his sufferings.

"Happy people," he says, "to whom God has been pleased
to give the kingdom, do not lose courage. Only believe, and
you shall see the glory of God. In the Holy Spirit we have

1 John iv. 13, 14.

224 CONTEMPORAR V PORTRAITS.

infinite resources, and resources which may be made more
abundant by the cutting off of every other supply. Yes, God
the Holy Spirit within us can make us even more happy by the
loss of earthly joy, more strong by the loss of our own strength,
more holy by the ever-deepening sense of our low and lost estate.
For myself, whom my failing health compels to bid you again
farewell, perhaps for many months, I have much need to rest in
this comforting doctrine. Broken down and enfeebled as I am,
I yet believe that there remains a spiritual ministry for me to
exercise, more fruitful, perhaps, than any that has preceded it,
and for which God is preparing me by trial. Yes, my faithful
friends in Christ, I have this confidence— that this sickness is
for the glory of God, and that, whether I recover or not, it will
enable me to do the will of God more perfectly. This will be
the subject of my prayers during my painful absence from you,
and it is this that I would have you ask in your prayers for me.
Our very preaching needs to be renewed by the Holy Ghost.
It is He who will enable us to pass from the preaching of the
lip to the preaching of the life, from the word of teaching to the
word of possession, from the word which sets forth the truth,
to the word which makes us one with Him who is the truth and
the life."

These were the novissima verba of the preacher.

We shall not dwell at any length on the last suffer-
ings of Adolphe Monod. All are familiar with his
own touching memorials of them. His "Adieux" form
part of that treasury of Christian mysticism in which
the afflicted seek holy examples and efficient consola-
tion. They contain the last exhortations of the dying
pastor, who every Sunday gathered around his bed a
little circle of friends, among whom all denominations
were represented, and partook with them of the Holy
Communion, as a renewed proof of that evangelical
catholicity of which he had been so faithful an apostle.

ADOLPHE MONOD. 225

"When the Lord's Supper was distributed," we read in the In-
troduction to the " Adieux," "M. Monod would speak in accents
of such quiet serenity, of such deep and tender love for those
whom he was exhorting, sometimes even of such power and
thrilling eloquence, as those who were used to hear him at other
times can partly imagine, but only those who were present in
those solemn hours of a closing life, can really understand. All
such cherish the recollection as among the purest and holiest
memories of their life. ' My life is my ministry,' he said, ' and
I will exercise it till my latest breath.' "1

His face, pale and emaciated by suffering, was ra-
diant with hope and immortality ; the divine flame
shone through the frail earthly tenement. In these
last testamentary words the preacher summed up his
teaching, and cast it sometimes into a more exact
form than he had used for many years. He endea-
voured to concentrate his belief in a few pregnant
statements, without detracting anything from that
mysticism which had of late characterised his preach-
ing. The importance which he attaches to the Living
Word is in no way abated, though he dwells more
upon the written word. The exhortations which have
been published in a connected form under the title,
" Les Adieux d'un Mourant," are peculiarly touching.
I extract from them the following sentences :

" O the unutterable sweetness of the rest that we find at the
foot of the Cross ! Let us grasp the Cross, preach the Cross,
die clasping it in our arms, die proclaiming it to the world, and
death will be the beginning of our life. Let none rest till he has
found rest at the foot of the Cross of his Saviour God, though he

1 " Adieux," p. 34.
16

226 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

may be driven to it by windy storms and tempests, and may
sink rom mere exhaustion into that place which he will never
wish to leave again." T

A very short time before his death he composed a
hymn on the resurrection, which expresses with manly
vigour the steadfastness of his hope. He was too
purely an orator to be a poet in the special sense of
that word, although his language was richly poetical,
as is all eloquence worthy of the name. His hymn on
Christian gratitude has become classic in our language.
We quote one verse :

" Que ne puis-je, 6 mon Dieu, Dieu de ma delivrance,
Remplir de ta louange et la terre et les cieux,
Les prendre pour tdmoins de ma reconnaissance,
Et dire au monde entier combien je suis heureux."

The hymn on the resurrection is a translation into
verse of an admirable sermon, which we remember
hearing Adolphe Monod preach at Easter 1844, in
the Reformed Church of Marseilles. It had at the
time all the character of an extempore address. The
idea is very beautiful. The inhabitants of the spirit
world, devils and angels, are represented bending over
the open sepulchre of Christ, and expressing their
feelings about His victory.

The humble Christian, groaning upon his bed of
pain, echoes the anthems of the angels.

" Ma faible voix s'unit a ce concert immense,
Et tout en moi, Seigneur, t'adore et te benit ;

1 " Adieux," pp. 60-66.

ADOLPHE MONOD. 227

Ame, esprit, cceur, vers toi tout mon etre s'elance,
Et de joie et d'amour ma chair meme fremit.

Pour lutter dans les maux, dans les cris, dans les larmes,
Je ne suis que langueur, faiblesse et lachete ;
Mais lave dans ton sang, et couvert de tes armes,
Je puis tout en Jesus, mort et ressuscite." l

The 30th of March was the last Sunday which
Adolphe Monod passed upon earth. He had chosen
for the subject of his address the love of God, and
took as his text Psalm c.

" I have only strength enough left," he said, " to dwell upon the
love of God. God has loved us : this is the whole doctrine of
the gospel. Let us love God ; this is the whole of its morality.
Hardly knowing if I can make you hear me, I gather up my
little remaining strength, that we may call together upon the
eternal and infinite love of God. O God, who art love, who hast
done, art doing, wilt do nothing to us but in love, how can I
thank Thee enough, as I see around me these brethren whom
love has gathered here by my bed of sickness, of suffering, and
of what else Thou alone canst know. I have rejoiced in their
love. To whom was ever more love shown? Therefore, my
God, I thank Thee, and I thank Thee still more, if it is possible,
for Thy love which has so much afflicted but so much sustained
me ; and I confess before these my friends that Thou hast never
let me want for help, though I have often failed in faith and
patience ; and that I am far from having yet attained to that
perfect patience for which I long. But Thou, Thou hast been
to me all goodness, and while life or strength remain I will never
cease to praise Thee before my brethren."

1 " JCsus-Christ ressuscitant des morts. Dec. 1855. Souvenir
aux amis qui prient pour moi." — Sold for the benefit of the
Evangelical Church of Lyons.

228 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

After enumerating with deep emotion the many
tokens of that sovereign love which had been ever
around him, his broken voice faltered out his last
hymn of praise to Christ, his life, his all, " with whom,"
he said, " I am about to enter the everlasting mansions,

We two are so joined,
He'll not be in glory and leave me behind.' "

In one last effort of brotherly love, he brings to the
foot of the Cross, all the sufferings and sorrows of his
brethren, bearing them with tender compassion on his
heart. " I am suffering greatly," he said at last ; " my
joy and my hymn of praise are much dulled by these
sufferings, and by the constant exhaustion ; but Thou,
Lord, hast sustained me till now, and I have this con-
fidence, that my prayers and those of my family will
obtain for me patience to the end." His last utterance
to his friends was praise and benediction ; "Grace and
peace be with you all now and for ever."

I shall never forget the impression which this prayer
of the dying man produced on one of the most emi-
nent and excellent representatives of the highest cul-
ture of our day in France, M. de Remusat, whom I
induced to read it at a time when he was plunged in
sudden and overwhelming sorrow. It struck him as
one of the grandest utterances of that Christian faith
which he respected, without being prepared to accept
its mysteries.

ADOLPHE MONOD. 229

The last week of Adolphe Monod's life was devoted
to tender leave-takings with his own family. We
will not lift the veil of this sacred sorrow, though to
do so might show how exquisite Is the blending of
human affection with Christian devotion, and how far
more heroic than stoicism.

On Saturday, April 6th, he fell asleep in Jesus, and
the Tuesday following he was borne to the grave
amid the tears of his flock and the deep sorrow of the
whole Protestant Church, every section of which was
represented at his funeral. No words could express
the affection, respect, and gratitude testified by the
survivors.

In his last sermon but one, preached in the church
of the Oratoire, during the winter of 1855, when he
was already so weakened by illness that he was
doubtful whether he would be able to finish his ser-
mon, Adolphe Monod had described, in powerful
language, the poverty and lowness of our religious
life. Then in a tone of intense earnestness, which
seems to ring in my ears still, he said : " It must be
known when I am gone that I was not satisfied with
a Christianity like this, even when I was in the body."
Thus he expressed the deep yearning of his soul after
that Church of the future, which was ever increasingly
the object of his desires and of his efforts. We find
united in him a happy assurance of faith with a
yearning so intense as to become almost an agony
after the highest ideal of truth and holiness, or rather,

230 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

after the fuller realisation of the type of perfectness
given in Jesus Christ. We cannot but be struck with
the same blending of ecstatic joy and unutterable
sadness in St. Paul, in Pascal, and in all great Chris-
tian souls. Love, when it is true and deep, touches
both extremes, supremely happy in the possession of
its God, yet grieved not to apprehend Him more fully
and to glorify Him more, and deeply wounded by the
rebellion and perversity of sinners.

Such was the joy bequeathed to the Church by the
Man of Sorrows — a joy tempered with the tears of
love, but bright with its heavenly radiance. It was
his Christ-likeness in this respect which made Adolphe
Monod one of the grandest Christians of our genera-
tion, and one of the most powerful witnesses of the
everlasting gospel.

ALEXANDRE VI NET.

ALEXANDRE VINET7

WE live in an age of restless, almost feverish
activity, yet in an age which, by a sort of
paradox, seems more disposed than any other to the
contemplation of the phenomena of the inward and
spiritual life. It abounds in biographies of this order.
We are no longer amused, even in France, with
memoirs which treat human life purely as a comedy,
drawing back the curtain only to throw an ironical
light on all the foibles and paltry disguises of the
actors. This style, once so peculiarly French in its
fascination and in its heartlessness, has almost passed
away from our literature. Beside the great parlia-
mentary memoirs, which hand down to posterity the
eloquence of the tribune, and the authors of which
studiously avoid all familiarity as unworthy the dig-
nity of their subject, we have an abundance of pri-
vate memoirs which, by means of correspondence and

1 "Alexandre Vinet. Histoirede saVie et de ses Ouvrages,"
par E. Rambert.

234 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

autobiographic journals, give us an insight into the
hidden life of our contemporaries. With their help
we are enabled to penetrate to those soul-depths from
which we are often told that eternal questions are in
our day excluded, but which we find to be more pro-
foundly exercised than ever before, over the solution
of spiritual problems. " Les Lettres du Pere Lacor-
daire a Madame Swetchine," " Les Recits d'une Sceur,"
the letters of the two Amperes ; the later volumes of
the " Correspondance de Lamartine," the " Biographie
du Pere Gratry," and (belonging to a different order)
the "Autobiography of Stuart Mill" — all these re-
markable works bring us into the very midst of what
I may call the spiritual drama; the conflict perpetu-
ally renewed in our day, between liberal aspirations
and positive dogmas, or, it may be, between the thesis
of philosophy and the unsatisfied yearning of the
heart and conscience.

The life of Vinet, which is before us now, forms
a very important addition to this spiritual history of
our age, bringing before us one of its most powerful
minds, and allowing us to learn from himself how his
genius was formed and developed. M. Rambert, the
biographer of Vinet, simply gives us the connecting
thread between the extracts from his correspondence
or his private notes ; his aim is to allow Vinet on all
subjects to speak for himself. He has executed his
task in a manner worthy of one of the most distin-
guished writers of French Switzerland, a land to which

ALEXANDRE VINET. 235

we are indebted for so many remarkable works. We
recognise with hearty admiration the studious self-
repression which has thrown all the light on to the
great central figure of his picture. He has thus the
rare merit of bringing before us a living likeness, in
no respect overdrawn.

Sainte-Beuve was the first to call the attention of
France to the genius of Vinet, for whom he never
ceased to testify the highest admiration. M. Scherer
also wrote a very warm and appreciative notice of
Vinet, in which the keen sagacity of the critic was
tempered by the affection and deferential sympathy
of a personal friend. M. Astie, a French professor at
Lausanne, published, under the title " Esprit de Vinet,"
a very admirable collection of his opinions on the
various subjects which had come before him. Pre-
sented in this form, and apart from their proper sur-
roundings, the ideas may seem somewhat overcrowded,
the sheaf almost too heavy with the ripe golden grain.
The collection is, nevertheless, a very valuable one, and
it called forth several fresh studies of Vinet, notably
that of M. -Saint Rene Taillandier in the Revue des
Deux Mondes.

M. Rambert's work appears to us exhaustive, so
abundant were the sources of information open to
him. It gives us the portrait of Vinet drawn by his
own hand, without any thought of the public eye, in
presence of which it is almost impossible not to atti-
tudinise a little. Our endeavour will be to reproduce

236 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

this noble spiritual presence by the aid of M. Ram-
bert's book and of our own personal recollections, for
it was our inestimable privilege to be for three years
a diligent listener to Vinet, and to enjoy a close
friendship with the Pascal of the Reformed Church.

This is the name that most fitly describes him,
whether we consider the breadth of his religious sym-
pathies, his character as a writer, his unflinching
sincerity, or that trait of melancholy which is com-
mon to all great Christian souls. We may add that
Vinet, like Pascal — of whom he was the most faithful
interpreter — graduated in the stern school of sickness,
and that it was while contending with an incurable
bodily malady that he accomplished his vast intellec-
tual labours. His whole spirit, soul, and body were
tried and purified in the crucible of constant suffering.
But Vinet was a son of the Reformation, not a
timorous disciple of Port Royal. His glance was not
more penetrating than that of Pascal, but his hori-
zon was wider, his spirit more unfettered. He is
thoroughly the man of his age, passing through its
storm and tempest. His faith is controlled by a
critical spirit : though fixed in its principle, it does
not shrink from a testing examination, and cannot
rest satisfied with an assurance based only on ex-
ternal authority, which it rejects as false and illusive.
His intellect never laid upon itself any monkish
fetters ; it remained thoroughly and broadly human.
In fine, Vinet was one of the grandest and truest

ALEXANDRE VINET. 237

Liberals of our time, and religious liberty in its
fullest expression has had no more determined and
powerful defender. It may be asked, perhaps, why
such a man was not better known in his generation ?
Sainte-Beuve excited a surprise not unmixed with
irony, when he dedicated to Vinet one of his most
beautiful literary sketches. He was accused of sacri-
ficing to unknown gods. It is easy to explain the
semi-obscurity in which Vinet has remained as re-
gards France. In the first place, he preferred to be
in the background ; he was as studious in hiding him-
self from the public gaze as others are in courting it.
This large-minded man was an ascetic, and this union
of the most exalted liberalism, altogether free from
any sectarian prejudice, with an austerity almost
without parallel towards himself, is not the least of his
idiosyncrasies. These significant words were found
inscribed on the memorandum-book which contained
his most private meditations : " The love of glory is
the dangerous neighbour of the love of truth ; the
one loses all that the other gains." Vinet loved the
truth, and not glory. Hence, his unfeigned contempt
for everything which would have made him prominent,
and his repeated refusal of positions in which he might
have become a central luminary.

Distance from Paris is a very grave disadvantage in
the eyes of the dispensers of fame. They are ready to
say, like the Rabbis in the temple, " Can any good
thing come out of Nazareth ? " They look with con-

238 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

tempt on all that transpires outside that centre of
science and civilisation in which they reign as kings.
Thus, however important the discussions that may
arise in small and remote countries like Switzerland,
they are regarded as insignificant by superficial minds
because of the narrow limits of the arena in which
they are first agitated. And yet the fire kindled by
this tiny spark has sometimes spread through all
Europe, and made an era in the destiny of nations.

The discussion of religious liberty raised the same
questions in French Switzerland which Mirabeau had
argued from the tribune of the Constituent Assembly,
and which subsequently set all the four corners of
Europe in a blaze. This must be borne in mind as
we read the detailed account of those discussions in
which Vinet took so large a part. That which seems
at first sight a quarrel about trifles, will be found to
involve really the issues of the great controversy
between the authority of the State and liberty of
conscience, which has come to a crisis in our own day.
We must remember also that Vinet belonged to the
religion of the minority, which is another reason for
his being left in the shade, M. Guizot said one day,
in his great voice, to a young Protestant writer : " Sir,
you were born in a corner ; try to get out of it."
This Vinet never attempted to do. But from that
obscure corner of Switzerland, which Parisians re-
garded so slightingly, he exercised a deep and wide
influence over the great Protestant nations which, in

ALEXANDRE VI NET. 239

the nineteenth century, have carried their civilisation
and culture to so high a point. Among these nations
he is still recognised to-day as an intellectual king,
and it will be the worse for France if she fails to pay
homage to his just claims.

Balzac, in his famous quarrel with Sainte-Beuve,
rallied the author of the " Portraits Litteraires " with
a satirical laugh, on the tribute he had paid to so
obscure a man as Vinet. The laugh may well be
turned by posterity against himself, for ignoring a
man of world-wide fame.

France is beginning to appreciate truly this great
Christian Liberal. His teaching is destined to win
its widening way, and to leave a deep furrow even in
our light soil, for it responds to all the higher aspira-
tions of the national life, political, religious and
philosophical. France could find no better counsellor
than Vinet in her efforts to conclude that great alli-
ance between religion and liberty in the fullest sense,
without which French democracy will fail to stand,
and religion will lose its empire over the souls of free
men.

We shall endeavour to reproduce, with the aid of
M. Rambert's book, the leading features in the life
and work of this remarkable man,

I.

Vinet was born at Ouchy, near Lausanne, in 1797,
and died at Montreux in 1847, in the full maturity of

240 CONTEMPORA RY POR TRA ITS.

his powerful faculties. His outward life was singularly
uneventful. He travelled but rarely, and then only
for the sake of health, and as rapidly as possible.
" Not being able to travel in person," he wrote to a
friend, " I allow my imagination to travel. The only
true liberty is in a state of dependence frankly
accepted." This is Vinet in his true character — the
captive of duty, but with the free mind which spreads
its wings in all the realms of thought. Though he
scarcely ever left his study, his life was full of varied
and lively interest. His unpretending little room
reminds us of Rembrandt's picture in the Louvre, of
the philosopher resting his tired head upon his hand,
after a long day of mental toil. The bare walls are
draped with the glory of the sunset, but the face of
the old man kindles with a yet more unearthly bright-
ness. We feel that these four walls enclose that
which is mightiest upon earth ; thoughts which can
flood the world with renovating light. Within this
humble dwelling a Descartes may utter his " Cogito,
ergo sum" or a Pascal may open a new kingdom of
thought to the wondering world. Here greater battles
may be fought, and grander victories won, than any
immortalised in history ; for here those great prin-
ciples may be evolved which shall afterwards be pro-
claimed from the forum, and embodied in the progress
of nations. It matters little, then, that Vinet passed
his days in almost unbroken obscurity. There were,
nevertheless, marked eras in his intellectual and moral

ALEXANDRE VINET. 241

life, which have left their impress upon the religious
history of the age.

Vinet was not cradled in luxury. On the contrary,
the family were often in straitened circumstances.
His father belonged to the petty bourgeoisie of
French Switzerland, and could with difficulty provide
bread for his household. He was a man of the old
school, hard-working and incapable of self-indulgence,
concealing a warm heart beneath a somewhat rigid
and rough exterior. Vinet found in him a wise coun-
sellor, who presented life to him under a rather stern
aspect, but who always exhibited towards him, in his
own way, the greatest affection. Like the father of
Schleiermacher, the great founder of the German
theology of the nineteenth century, the elder Vinet
was uneasy at the first signs of intellectual indepen-
dence in his son. Accustomed himself to adhere
rigidly to rules, he could not understand any deviation
in religion from the beaten track. The tenderness
of Vinet's mother tempered this severity, which was
doubtless, on the whole, salutary in its effect, for -the
best school of liberty is the stern discipline which
teaches us to govern ourselves.

After a thorough course of literary and theological
study at Lausanne, Vinet was called to the pro-
fessorship of the French language at Basle. He had
long shown a strong interest in French literature.
It is said that at seventeen years of age he could not
read the " Cid " aloud without bursting into tears.

17

242 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

He delighted in giving a poetical form to his im-
pressions ; they flowed at first in light and easy
strains, like the amenities of youth, then in more
powerful verses, which burst spontaneously from a
heart deeply exercised with the mysteries of life.
Vinet was never a poet in the sense of one who could
only give true expressions to his thoughts in the form
of rhythm ; but he had, nevertheless, a deeply poetic
soul. Not only did he keenly enjoy the masterpieces
of poetry, but he had recourse to poetic forms in the
supreme moments of his life. The deepest sorrows of
his heart found expression in verse ; and whatever these
productions may lack of aesthetic beauty, they bear the
unmistakable impress of deep and genuine feeling.

Vinet married early, and the union was one of rare
congeniality and helpfulness. His home was early
visited with domestic affliction. His son suffered in
a way which painfully separated him from home ties ;
his daughter was cut off in the flower of her youth ;
he himself was the victim of a disease which rarely
allowed him a day's respite. Death visited his home
with repeated strokes. Yet all these trials only
wrung from his wounded heart this cry of sublime
acquiescence, uttered at the grave of his daughter :

" Sous ton ciseau, divin sculpteur de l'ame,
Que mon bonheur vole en eclats !

Mourir c'est naitre ;
D'un nouvel etre,
C'est jour a jour se revetir."

ALEXANDRE VINET. 243

We should give a wrong impression if we led the
reader to suppose that Vinet knew and understood
only the sorrowful side of life. He had an Intense
appreciation of the joys of friendship and affection ,;
he had an enthusiasm for the beautiful, whether in
the world of letters or in the sublime and tender
forms of nature. Still the prevailing tone of his
mind was one of sadness. In truth, the sufferings
of the outward life were slight compared with the
poignant anguish often endured in the struggle with
himself. From each renewed conflict he came forth,
indeed, more victorious, his heart increasingly weaned
from vanity and selfishness, and set upon the service
of truth, justice, humanity, of every good cause which
could commend the gospel to men. But he took too
serious a view of life, and was too sincere in his deal-
ings with himself, not to be more saddened by his
failures than gladdened by the measure of success
achieved. Leading himself a life of rare purity and
nobleness, he was ever abased in the dust, because of
the evil he saw in his own heart, and in the world
around him. He wept tears, now of repentance, now
of compassion. These were not tears wrung from
him by the fear of punishment, for he believed firmly
in the infinite love which comes to pardon and restore
all. They expressed rather his unutterable yearning
after perfection, and his deep compassion for all the
hungry souls around him, and most of all for the
souls that did not hunger, but were satisfied with the

244 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

ashes of a low and miserable life. Firm, too, as was
his faith, it had not been accepted on slight grounds.
As he himself tells us, he reached it through a sea of
speculation, often having to contend hard for the faith
with those " insolent doubts" which would arise in his
heart. From these struggles of soul and spirit, he
came forth sore wounded, but victorious, to use the
expression of one of his honoured brothers in arms —
Adolphe Monod.

Protestantism, like Catholicism, has its facile ad-
herents ; but we do not find upon this path of easy
devotion the footprints of those great Christians, whose
souls have apprehended the true ideal of the Christian
life, and who refuse to be comforted because of the
depth of human woe. These bear upon their hearts,
not only their own sorrows, but the burden of an
unhappy race ; and from the days of St. Paul to those
of Pascal and Vinet, these men have been climbing
the hill of sorrow, with their eyes ever fixed upon the
cross which crowns its summit. They know that this
is the symbol of the great victory ; hence their joy.
But they know also through what bitter anguish the
victory was won ; hence their sympathetic sorrow.
Vinet wrote one day in his journal, when he was sad-
dened by the discovery of a base deception : " This is
evil ; but in another way it is very good. It is a
thorn of the crown." The crown was on his brow, but
it was a crown of thorns. Vinet's Christianity was
altogether of this lofty type.

ALEXANDRE VI NET. 245

It was at Basle, in the year 1820, that he passed
through the decisive crisis of his spiritual life. The
Protestant Churches of the Continent began at that
time to feel the reaction of what was called in Eng-
land the great Revival. M. de Remusat, in a very
able article on Wesley, written with all his character-
istic clearness of insight and breadth of view, brings
out the significance of the movement which, at the
close of the eighteenth century, profoundly stirred
Great Britain, and startled it out of the state of reli-
gious lethargy and formalism into which it had sunk
under the enervating influence of the age. Wesley
and Whitfield spoke like the apostles of old — with
tongues of fire. Like the first missionaries of the new
faith, they went through the country from north to
south and from east to west, gathering vast multi-
tudes by the force and charm of their eloquence, and
setting before them the living gospel instead of the
cold and colourless deism to which they had become
accustomed. These two extraordinary men as truly
made the England of the nineteenth century, as the
Roundheads made that of the seventeenth. The ter-
rible ordeal of war through which the country was
passing gave point and appropriateness to the stern
message of the preachers. When peace came the
movement spread over the continent of Europe,
where Protestantism had assumed too much the type
of the Savoyard Vicar, and had been content if it
found in the pulpit a man in a black vestment, and

246 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

saying what was expected of him. All this was
changed when the apostles of English Evangelicalism
lifted up their voice in France and Switzerland. Un-
happily they cast these great truths into too narrow
a mould. In the reaction against the spirit of world-
liness, they were led into an exaggerated Puritanism,
which allowed little scope for the higher culture.

Vinet was first struck with the asperities of this
extreme dogmatism, which presented in great promi-
nence the most sombre features of Calvinism. But
when1 he saw the adherents of the religious revival
bravely enduring in Switzerland a persecution which
was as odious as it was petty, he learnt to respect them ;
and it was in defending them that he first became
the unflinching advocate of liberty of conscience. He
soon came to recognise that they were right on more
than one point ; that they were not mistaken in pro-
claiming the necessity of a moral and spiritual re-
generation, and in protesting against a Christianity of
mere routine, which was satisfied with a supernatu-
ralism devoid of mystery,, and which made mere
virtue the substitute for holiness. Vinet received the
spiritual impulse which he needed from this imperfect
Methodism, though it was never able to hold his
generous spirit captive in its narrow formulas. He
formed his own belief, and always remained profoundly
human, while holding fast the essential principles of
revealed truth. We shall see that he acted the part of a
true reformer in the lofty sphere of religious thought.

ALEXANDRE VINET. 247

Vinet devoted the best years of his early life to the
humble office of teacher of French, which he had ac-
cepted at Basle. He was as conscientious in the
fulfilment of this duty as of all others ; hence it was
during these years he acquired that extensive literary
erudition which made him afterwards a consummate
critic. To this period of his career we owe his
" Chrestomatie " — the best work of its kind, not only
in the selection of pieces, but in the biographical and
literary notices which precede them, and still more in
the eloquent and exact resume of French literature
which Sainte-Beuve regarded as above all praise.
Vinet was, as we have just said, mixed up at this
period, in those struggles for religious liberty which
were inevitable when a retrograde legislation was
brought into collision with the first aggressive move-
ments of the new religious zeal. The articles written
by Vinet on this subject, and afterwards collected in
a volume, are still as pointed and powerful as ever, for
the very same questions which are discussed in them
are still pressing for a solution from the democracy of
our day. This is especially the case in Switzerland,
where a false demagogy seems aiming to show how it
could be the worst of all tyrannies. It was at Basle
also that Vinet wrote his " Memoire sur la liberte des
cultes," to which the Society of Christian Morals at
Paris gave the prize, at the warm recommendation of
M. Guizot. In this work Vinet displays the maturity
of his powers in the complete mastery of thought and

248 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

style. It is a full, fervent, high-toned pleading for
liberty of conscience, on the ground of respect for the
human soul and for God, who alone has the right to
command in matters of religion.

After the Revolution of 1830, the periodical Le
Semenr was started. It was a sort of Protestant
Globe, and was conducted with singular ability and
firmness by M. Henri Lutteroth. It became at once
the organ of the highest liberal and Christian culture
of French Protestantism, and gave a fresh impetus to
Vinet's mental development. His contributions to it
were constant, and of the most various order. In it
he published his very able literary articles on all
the great works of the day — articles which placed
him in the first rank of literary critics. In it he
steadily carried on his campaign in favour of reli-
gious liberty, and published his " Etudes Apolo-
■ getiques," which are perhaps the most able of all his
works. He also often preached through its pages,
and it thus became the medium of circulating his
thoughtful and powerful sermons through all the
Protestant Churches of the Old and the New World.

Appointed Professor of Literature in the Academy
of Basle, he expanded his course by adding to it a
series of public lectures on French Moralists, which
remain a standard work. His reputation increased
daily, though he himself would do nothing to court
publicity, and steadily refused the invitations that
constantly came to him from all parts of Switzerland

ALEXANDRE VINE 7. 249

and France. The reason he gave for these refusals
was " his incapacity for, and unworthiness of the prof-
fered honour."

At the close of his stay in Basle, Vinet had become
a close and exact thinker, and complete master of the
fine and subtle harmonies of language. Few writers
have ever shown such versatility of thought. This
appears, not only in his expositions, but in his very
turns of expression, and in his original application of
metaphors derived from nature, art, and science. His
style is not, of course, faultless : it is sometimes over-
laden ; the lines of reasoning are lost in the too
ample development ; the plan is wanting in sym-
metry ; the images do not always correspond. In
many respects Vinet reminds us of Clement of Alex-
andria, not only in his breadth of view, but also in
his manner, at once erudite and brilliant, of express-
ing his ideas. The great apologist of the third cen-
tury called his writings " stromata," or " tapestries."
This was a true description of his rather elaborate
style, in which, like threads of many colours inter-
woven in one close fabric, we find the blended results
of the most varied culture. I know no writer who, in
this respect, more resembles him than Vinet. All
this brilliance of language was the reflection of the
ardent soul within. His writings are always full of
feeling. Indeed, it may be truly said that the moral
tone dominates to a degree very rare even the form
in which his thoughts are conveyed.

250 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

His motto, whenever he took pen in hand, was this :
" Let us write in the best manner possible." The
following is found among the jottings in his memo-
randum book : " Responsibility of a writer, even when
no fame attends his publications. He has sown, and
that which he has sown will germinate in silence, and,
whether he sleep or wake, will become a principle,
an affection, a habit of mind in his readers."

In 1837 Vinet was called to Lausanne as Professor
of Practical Theology, a branch which comprehends
the oratorical art as applied to the pulpit, and what
may be called pastoral morality — not easily distin-
guished from simple Christian morality, where there
is no recognition of a narrow clericalism. It was not
without regret that he quitted the town where his
laborious youth had been passed in the midst of
growing sympathies, and where he had the advantage
of combining, to an unusual degree, the science of
Germany with the culture of France. He returned
to his native place at a time very favourable for his
work. The political quarrels of the past seemed to
have ended in a durable amnesty. Democracy in
Lausanne was becoming established on a sound
liberal basis, under a just Government, which was
very desirous of promoting the intellectual develop-
ment of the country.

The Academy of Lausanne was distinguished for
the welcome it gave to illustrious foreigners. Mis-
ckiewitz, the great poet of partitioned Poland, held

ALEXANDRE VI NET. 251

the Latin professorship. Melegari, an exile from Parma
(afterwards a senator of the Italian kingdom, and its
minister at Berne), filled the chair of Political Economy
with an erudition equal to his popularity. Lastly,
Sainte-Beuve had accepted the invitation to give
there, in a course of public lectures, the first outlines
of his " History of Port Royal." For the rest, Lau-
sanne could supply its own requirements. M. Mon-
nard, formerly a contributor to the Globe, and the
intimate friend of Thiers and Mignet, gave instruction
in French literature. M. Juste Ollivier, the national
poet, was Professor of History. M. Charles Secretan,
one of the most brilliant representatives of the younger
generation, which could count in its ranks such poets
as Frederic Monneron, and such able and eloquent
writers as Adolphe Lebre (first known to fame through
his writings in the Revue des Deux Mondes), was
about to commence the philosophical course, in which
he endeavoured to show the harmony between the
gospel and free speculation, and supplemented
Vinet's work in the track opened by Schilling. . The
theological faculty at that time commanded the ser-
vices of M. Herzog, who afterwards published his
great theological Encyclopaedia ; and of M. Samuel
Chappuis, one of the most eminent of living Protes-
tants, whose noble and cultivated intellect was always
devoted to the service of what he regarded as the
cause of truth. Unfortunately he had a rooted aver-
sion to appearing in print, and thus his invaluable

252 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

labours have been preserved to us only through the
memoranda of his students.

Lausanne was for many years an intellectual centre
not inferior to any of the German Universities. It
diffused an atmosphere of liberty, and of faith broad
and human, in the best sense of the word. The
society of Lausanne had long enjoyed a reputation
for intellectual taste ; in the eighteenth century it
was characterised by a mental frivolity, largely to be
traced, no doubt, to Voltaire's sojourn there. At the
commencement of this century Mesdames de Char-
riere and de Montolieu continued this tradition of
brilliant and racy conversation, while Gibbon raised
the tone by his solid erudition. Coppet, also, was
not far off, and Lausanne would catch at least the
echo of the Decameron of French esprit, presided
over by the illustrious exile, Madame de Stael.
The society of Lausanne, no doubt, underwent a
considerable change under the influence of the re-
ligious revival, but it still maintained its literary
reputation. The greater seriousness of its tone took
nothing from its breadth, and the salons in . which
Vinet and Sainte-Beuve appeared had no cause to
envy the brilliant reunions of Paris. If conversation
ranged over a narrower area, it was more solidly
thoughtful, and great intellectual and moral questions
were discussed under all their aspects, with an ex-
haustive thoroughness which gave a peculiar value to
the results reached. These were years of extraor-

ALEXANDRE VINET. 253

dinary growth and fruitfulness in the spiritual history
of Switzerland, and the memory of them lingers like
a vision of sunset Alps towering above the blue
Geneva lake.

The most abiding influence was that of Vinet, who
was compelled by the prolonged absence of M. Mon-
nard to add a course of literature to his theological
lectures. After his death most of his lectures were
printed. Among those most worthy of note we may
mention his history of the Christian pulpit, Catholic
and Protestant ; his lectures on the rules of preach-
ing— a course of sacred oratory, teaching how to
dispense with rhetoric in the vulgar sense of the
word ; and his lectures on the gospel ministry. In
addition to these we have his entire literary course ;
his essay on Pascal, his studies of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, and of the great French writers
of the day, beginning with Madame de Stael and
Chateaubriand, to whom he devoted an entire course.

I have listened to many great masters, but I never
heard any who surpassed Vinet. Sainte-Beuve has
paid a noble tribute to his teaching, and to that purely
moral beauty which impressed him so vividly after
the false glitter and glamour of pagan and papal
Rome. I shall never forget how I felt on hearing
him for the first time. I intended only to devote a
few months to his course of instructions ; but when I
had once entered upon it, in 1842, I felt myself fixed
there for the whole of my student years. Such an

254 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

opportunity does not come twice in a lifetime. I
never knew any teaching so suggestive as Vinet's,
any which so surely communicated to heart and
mind the living spark, without which all mere learning
is comparatively vain. To inspire is more than to
instruct. The teaching which imparts, not only in-
creased knowledge, but the key of science, and above
all the love of truth, and the method of laying hold of
it, is the true training of the mind.

When Vinet entered the lecture-room he generally
looked languid and exhausted. His great height
gave him a sort of awkwardness, and his features,
sharply cut but not classic, gave no indication of the
treasure within. But after a few minutes all was
changed, and there was singular aptness in Madame
de Montolieu's shrewd remark, after meeting him one
day, while he was quite young, at the house of another
professor. She asked, " Who is that ugly man who
becomes beautiful when he speaks?" His thoughts
seemed to play over his face like a long pent-up fire,
kindling it to light and warmth. In his deep and
sonorous voice he poured forth a constant stream of
original ideas, in language which was the luminous
reflection of his thoughts. He threw his whole soul
into his teaching. No student of his ever came out
of the lecture-room with heart unmoved. All carried
away, not simply the recollection of eloquent words,
but a new impulse in the life. His last course, which
he was unable to finish, was on the practical philo-

ALEXANDRE VINET 25$

sophy of Christianity. It has come down to us only
in a fragmentary form. Had it been completed it
would have been truly his " Genie du Christianisme."
All who heard it are unanimous in saying that his
genius was never more powerfully displayed. His
death prevented its being prepared for publication,
and thus we have lost a book of which our age might
have been justly proud, and in which the author was
prepared, as it were, to bind his sheaves.

The relations of Vinet with Sainte-Beuve, which
commenced at Lausanne, were from the first those
of intimate friendship. The great critic received
from Vinet an impression which never wore away.
It is calumny to say that Sainte-Beuve only watched
with an amused curiosity the travail of this great
soul, amid severely simple surroundings which re-
minded him of Port Royal. That such a representa-
tion does him injustice is evident from the letter
which Sainte-Beuve wrote to Vinet after his return
to Paris.

" I imagine," he writes, " that one of the great
attractions of Paris, and indeed the only one which
makes it worth while to live here, is that here you
are in a good position for watching the comedy. But
the worst of it is this comedy itself, in which you
have always to look on, never to act, and have to
accept this low world as a show, not as a field of
labour. All this is so different at Lausanne. That is
what moved my envy in a certain visit in the shade

256 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

of the cathedral, where I saw a whole life of study,
of sacrifice, of humble unremitting activity. Life
here is all dissipation ; men do a thousand things,

and never the one important thing Your

letter touched and gratified me ; but I have never
any words in which to acknowledge your praises, feel-
ing myself so unworthy of them, for I have sunk into
a state of purely intellectual criticism, and am a sor-
rowful witness of the death of my own heart. I judge
myself, and remain calm, cold, indifferent. I am a
dead man, and can look upon myself as dead without
being moved. Alas ! there are causes for this, deep

and of long standing But here I am speaking

to you like a father confessor. Reason sheds cold
rays over this cemetery like a dead moon ! "

The confession is significant. Sainte-Beuve is in
this letter a far less flippant man than he chose to
appear afterwards.

The letter shows also that Vinet was not afraid to
go below the surface in his relations even with such
men as Sainte-Beuve ; he went straight to the soul.
M. Rambert gives us a short correspondence between
Vinet and Chateaubriand, in which the great ennuye
poet who, to use his own expression, " yawned out his
life," tells the story of his disenchantment with a heart-
aching bitterness. When a man has become sceptical
to such a degree, in relation to all things human and
earthly, he is not likely to have much faith in eternal
things ; for faith in the higher would fling its reflec-

■ ALEXANDRE VINET. 257

tion over the lower world. It is beautiful to see with
what a delicate touch Vinet endeavours to staunch
the wounds of the old Rene. This sort of solicitude
seems strange, and perhaps a little indiscreet, to polite
society. With Vinet it is inseparable from the strong
and pitiful love of mankind which is the animating
principle of his life. He thought, moreover, that it
was degrading to our relations with one another to
avoid touching on the things that concern us' most
deeply — the great questions of the soul — and to treat
Christianity as if it were a dead friend whose name is
not to be mentioned for fear of re-awakening bitter
regrets. This feeling he expresses very fully in his
book, " La Manifestation des Convictions Religieuses,"
which, like his " Memoire sur la Liberte des Cultes,".
was written in connection with a meeting of the So-
ciety of Christian Morals. He begins by maintaining
that it is the duty of every sincere and thoughtful man
to show his convictions, and that for the honour of the
truth. He then describes, in some of the finest pages
he ever wrote, the sufferings through which the truth
has been triumphantly vindicated, and concludes that
every hindrance to its free progress ought to be
removed. He is thus led, in the second part of his
book, to develop his favourite theory of the sepa-
ration of Church and State. The same train of
thought runs through his work on the origin of
Socialism, which, in his view, has its root in the un-
due subordination of the individual to the State—

18

258 CONTEMPORAR V POR TRAITS.

an error never more fatal than in the domain of
religion.

The events which were transpiring at the time in
the Canton de Vaud were well calculated to strengthen
his convictions. The Revolution of 1845, though ac-
complished without bloodshed, was none the less
lamentable in its results. It raised to power a clamor-
ous and despotic demagogy which laid forcible hands
upon the Academy and the Church, in the attempt to
make the Church the victim of its caprices. It en-
countered a determined resistance, which does honour
to the Christian conscience. A considerable portion
of the clergy broke with a government which sought
to make use of it merely as an electoral agent. A
free and self-supporting Church was founded in a few
days. It encountered at first a sharp persecution.
Religious liberty was grossly violated. Vinet, who
had been obliged to resign his office as Professor of
Theology, and who had been soon after deprived of his
chair of Literature, vigorously took up the defence of
the new Church, which he had helped to organise.
He gave several lectures in the theological faculty,
which had just been founded outside the Establish-
ment, but sickness soon laid him on a bed of pain
from which he rose no more. He never ceased to
write while life remained, and his last breath was
spent in the cause of that religious and theological
liberty for which he had so strenuously laboured. He
died in the month of May, 1847, before he had reached

ALEXANDRE VINET. 259

his fiftieth year. The sorrow which his death spread
throughout Switzerland and in all the Protestant
Churches was too deep for words. His coffin, covered
with flowers, was borne by his weeping disciples to
the cemetery of Clarens. There he sleeps in the midst
of that natural beauty which he so dearly loved. The
spot is marked by a modest tombstone, on which are
engraved the words : " They that turn many to right-
eousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever."

The great consolation to his friends was that,
though his voice would be heard no more, his thoughts
would live on with an ever-widening influence for
good.

It remains for us now to follow out the various lines
of thought which he illuminated with his powerful
genius.

* Let me preface the review of the general tendency
and leading characteristics of Vinet's teaching with a
personal reminiscence. A few months before his
death I had an interview with him which I shall
never forget. I had heard him in the morning
deliver one of his most impressive sermons in a lower
room of the Castle of Chatelard, where the worship of
the Free Church was held under the pressure of the
persecution raised against it. The reformed worship
became more austerely simple than ever, in this its
enforced banishment from its regular places of wor-
ship. On this occasion there was neither pulpit nor
organ, but the preacher was in his very happiest vein.

260 C0N7EMP0RAR Y POR TRA1 TS.

There was a wealth of thought in the sermon worthy
of Pascal himself, and an entire absence of the rhetori-
cal, though the fire within would now and then reveal
itself in flashes of eloquence. The subject was the
sublime friendship which God seeks with the human
soul, in which He thus honourably recognises His own
image and the expression of His glory. As I was
walking with Vinet the same evening to Chatelard,
through the woods of Clarens, then pierced by shafts
of quiet moonlight, he resumed the train of thought
which had filled his mind in the morning. He dwelt
with peculiar emphasis on the greatness which Christi-
anity confers on human nature, and on that sort of
baseness which impels man to reject this glory of
humanity by which he becomes a partaker of the divine
life. As one of the fathers has well said : " Christ
became man to accustom us to become like God."
This last conversation with my revered master has
always lived in my memory as the most perfect
expression of his inner life. The thought contained
in the words just quoted ran as a connecting link,
not only through all his teaching, both as a preacher
and an apologist, but through all his labours as a
literary critic and a liberal journalist, giving singular
power and unity to his whole work. Vinet accepted
it as a fundamental principle that the human soul is
veritably the offspring of God, and bears His image
even in its fallen and degraded condition ; while in
Christianity, so far from being absorbed and lost in

ALEXANDRE VINET. 261

the infinite, it is restored to its true self. The super-
natural in the gospel, thus regarded, is the restoration
of the truly natural, freed from all that has polluted
and falsified it. A man who has not experienced this
renovating influence is like the shipwrecked mariner,
whom Plato describes so vividly, covered with slime
and crawling sea foam. Christianity frees him from
all this defilement. The Christian alone is the com-
plete man.

This is a doctrine widely different from the
splendida vitia of St. Augustine, from his systematic
disparagement of human nature apart from faith. In
Vinet's view, even fallen man is a being of a noble
race. " Upon the heights of human nature," he says,
in the introductory lecture to the practical philosophy
of Christianity, " we find the ruins of an altar." Con-
science bears witness to the divine presence in a man ;
this is the source at once of his greatness and of his
misery. Between this innate sense of the divine and
Christ, there is a pre-established harmony. " Con-
science," says Vinet, " is only the abiding and inefface-
able impress of a powerful hand, which having once
held us has now let us go — or rather, out of which an
enemy's power has dragged us. The hand is gone ;
the mark of its pressure remains." The human soul
bears in its secret depths an inscription written, as it
were, in that invisible ink which only the fire reveals.
The gospel is the fire, and by its light we read the
divine characters traced on our own souls. Vinet has

262 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRA ITS.

embodied the same idea, which is the key to his whole
religious teaching, in the following striking image :

"We call to mind," he says, "the usages of ancient hospi-
tality. Before parting from a stranger, the father of the family
was wont to break a clay seal, on which certain characters were
impressed, and giving one half to his guest, he kept the other
himself. After the lapse of years, these two fragments being
brought together again would recognise each other, so to speak,
and would be a medium of recognition between the two men
who held them, and by the evidence they bore to the relations
of former days, would become the basis of new ones. Thus is
it in the book of our soul: the lines there begun find their
divine complement ; thus our soul does not, properly speaking,
discover the truth, but may be rather said to recognise it. The
gospel is believed when it has ceased to be to us an external,
and has become an internal truth, when it has become a fact
in our consciousness. Christianity is conscience raised to its
highest exercise."

Upon this purely moral basis Vinet constructs the
edifice of theology. So far from explaining away the
supernatural to a mere rationalistic idealism, he shows
how truly it is in harmony with the deep instincts of
the soul. The divine humanity of Christ, and His
voluntary sacrifice of Himself, are represented as the
supreme satisfaction of the demands of conscience,
which craves to find itself once more perfectly united
to God, through the redeeming sacrifice.

Vinet's conception of religion was thus altogether
distinct from a dry scholasticism, in which a closely-
linked chain of doctrines fetters the mind without
influencing the heart. Christianity is not essentially
either a formulary or a code. It is a grand fact, or

ALEXANDRE VINET. 263

to speak more truly, it is a living person, truth incar-
nate. Christ, when He came to take His place
among men, came to His own. It was vain to shut
the door against Him ; He is at home in the human
heart, because it was made for Him. When it comes
to itself it recognises this, and welcomes the truth of
God which stoops to dwell with him, as Adam wel-
comed Eve, saying : " This is now bone of my bone
and flesh of my flesh."

We can well understand that in a system like this,
doctrine and morality are inseparable, even as the
two meet together in the person of Christ and in the
cross of Calvary. The greatest, the most amazing
of all doctrines is that doctrine of the cross, which
reconciles earth and heaven ; and the highest morality
is that very act of redemption which is the supreme
sacrifice. Faith accepts both the doctrine and the
morality. The Christian soul believes in Christ by
uniting itself to Him, and learning from Him the
secret of self-devotion. Thus that great controversy
of faith and works, which has so sharply divided
Christendom, is solved by being brought before a
higher tribunal, where the two parties so long at
enmity are reconciled. Faith appropriates the whole
Christ by a moral act which engages all the energies
of the soul, and renders it more and more conformed
to His image, which stands forth radiant with the
light of heaven against the dark background of the
cross. It was in bringing out this aspect of the truth

264 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

that Vinet accomplished his most important work as
a Reformer of the faith. He did much to render it
less narrow and more human, while he never fell into
the error of confounding it with a rationalistic philo-
sophy. No one was ever more deeply conscious of
the wounds of humanity, and no one ever more faith-
fully interpreted the cry of the soul after the sovereign
and divine remedy. He carried on and extended the
work of Pascal, whose so-called scepticism was in
reality only the passionate avowal of the insufficiency
of a purely intellectual and doctrinal religion, or of a
rigidly Cartesian philosophy.

Having thus laid down the premises of the great
Christian thinker, it will be easy to deduce from them
the broad and consistent liberalism which character-
ised all his writings.

Vinet had first of all a firm belief in moral liberty
in its highest application, I mean in the relations of
man to God. The negation of liberty always seemed
to him emphatically the error. He was thus led to
modify considerably the implacable idea of the Divine
sovereignty to which such prominence is given in
Calvinism, and from which, with an apparent in-
consistency, it has deduced the doctrine of civil
and religious liberty. The inconsistency is only on
the surface, however, for the very doctrine which
humbles man before the supreme majesty of God, vin-
dicates his dignity in relation to all inferior powers,
and especially to the hierarchy. The Calvinistic

ALEXANDRE VI NET. 265

dogma of predestination was, perhaps naturally,
evolved in the reaction of the sixteenth century,
and adopted as a controversial weapon, but it is,
nevertheless, a dangerous exaggeration which has too
long been a clog on the progress of the Reformation.
It is well for us to realise that these questions, which
seem to deal with purely abstract matters, have their
counterpart in history, and that, in fact, they have to
a great extent shaped it. Looking back to Luther's
first protests, we should be ready to say, "A mere
monkish quarrel." But this monkish quarrel inaugu-
rated the greatest and most formidable schism in
Europe.

" Only a theological dispute," some may be ready
to say, referring to the discussions on grace and free-
will. And yet we have but to read the history of
Holland and of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, or " Les
Provinciales" of Pascal, in order to see how import-
ant has been the bearing of these problems on the
history of the modern world. Vinet, in conjunction
with some of the most eminent divines of Germany,
proclaimed that great reconciliation between human
liberty and Divine sovereignty, which opens a new
career to the Reformation. He used this happy
phrase to convey his meaning : " Grace is a divine
eloquence, which carries man's free-will captive by
persuasion."

Principles like these strike at the root of all
external authority in matters of religion. It is very

266 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

evident that if man has in his conscience a sufficient
criterion of truth, if he is by his very nature in
harmony with it, truth cannot be forced upon him
under any pretext, by a power outside himself.
What necessity can there be for constraint, where
there is already affinity and latent sympathy ? Un-
doubtedly the conscience is often dulled by evil
passions ; it needs to have these hindrances removed,
and to be itself aroused from its stupor, but this is a
moral act. Hence the intervention of the will in the
formation of the belief, not to enforce the blind
acceptance of that which the intellect repudiates, not
to annul or suspend the operation of the rational
faculties, but to raise man above all that would lead
him into exile, all that would hinder the pursuit of
his true ideal, and would prevent his recognising
the supreme embodiment of good presented in
the gospel.

Vinet was thus led to sap the very foundations of
that system of external authority, which celebrated not
long ago its most decisive and dangerous victory. It
must not be supposed that he would leave Christian
thought to drift without an anchor or a helm. On
the contrary, the authority for which he pleads is all
the more powerful because it is voluntarily accepted.
The magnetic needle does not need to be turned to
the pole by force, it tends towards it by a necessity of
its nature, and thus becomes the mariner's guide. So
it is with the soul ; it has a tendency towards the pole

ALEXANDRE VINET. 267

of truth, all the more sure because it is spontaneous,
and a tendency, which once recognised, it feels itself
bound religiously to obey. It is not true, then, to say
that it is left to drift over the wide ocean of thought.
Conscience is its compass ; and truth accepted, its polar
star. Vinet gives the fullest and most correct state-
ment of his views on the false authority, as opposed
to the true, in his work on Pascal.

He does not repudiate this false authority under
one form only ; he denounces it as unsparingly in
his own communion as elsewhere. He is as im-
patient of the yoke of an intolerant orthodoxy, as of
that of the hierarchy. He would have the Christian
thinker free himself from all merely human tradition,
and form his own faith from immediate contact with
the truth at its very source. The honest seeker will
not find the truth embodied in the form of a syste-
matic creed even in the Bible itself, which speaks with
supreme authority on matters of faith. It was not
the purpose of God to spare man the wholesome effort
of seeking for and eliciting the truth for himself.
This conception of religious truth and of the method
of its attainment, altogether excludes those arbitrary
solutions, and that imperious insistance upon certain
formulas of faith, which would crush all opposition, as
resistance to lawful authority to be summarily dealt
with. Such denunciations may become a Bossuet, as
the proud representative of a power, the sacred titles
of which he deems none can dispute. The Christian

268 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

apology, in this view of it, is the armed guard of the
sanctuary, the office of which is to stamp out all re-
bellion. Doubt is, on this theory, a refractory subject,
to be curbed by authority, not to be convinced by
reason. It needs to be rebuked from the pulpit, in
such tones as a master might use to an intractable
scholar. This proud assumption of authority runs
through all the lofty eloquence of the French pulpit
in the seventeenth century, which achieved at that time
some of its most magnificent effects.

Vinet's teaching is in striking contrast to all this. He
is a brother, stretching out a hand to his brethren in
distress. Himself, so lately battling with the same
stormy winds, he is full of sympathy with his strug-
gling brethren, and longs to lead them into the port
of peace. Is he not, indeed, still a seeker after truth,
like themselves ? for who can boast that he has at-
tained to absolute truth, unless he be under the same
illusion as the child who deems that he can grasp the
ocean in the hollow of his hand ? In the introduction
to the first volume of his sermons, Vinet thus explains
his position : " As one conscious of his own weak-
ness, I address myself to the weak. I have thought
that those, who are still in the infancy of their faith,
want some one who, placing himself at their stand-
point, should speak to them less as a preacher than as
a man who is himself but a few steps in advance of
them, and who is anxious to use for their benefit the
slight advantage this may give him."

ALEXANDRE VI NET. 269

To us it seems that, in an age like ours, this is the
safest and most effective method of teaching. We
are reminded of Corneille's beautiful line —

Desarme d^clairs ta divine eloquence.

The lightning dazzles rather than enlightens.
No pomp of sacerdotalism carries half so much weight
as the frankly human utterance of an honest and
earnest heart. Do we not learn this lesson from the
life of the Great Master, who left the seat of Moses in
the temple to the scribes and Pharisees, while He
taught by the well of Sychem, in the streets of Galilean
villages, or from the deck of the fishermen's boat ?

Vinet's breadth of view gave him a noble vantage-
ground as a literary critic. He looked upon literature
as the most genuine expression, not only of social
conditions, but of the human heart. The secret of the
power of literature is, that it embodies in a tangible
form, that which is essentially the mind of the age.
It is the revelation, all the more reliable because it is
often unwitting, of the psychological condition of the
generation which produces it. Vinet always regarded
it in this light. Hence his criticism was never slight
or superficial, but always conscientious and exact.
He never entered on the study of great writers, simply
with a view to finding proofs in support of his own
beliefs. Literature, thus treated, becomes only a
series of texts for one endless sermon. No one had a
keener relish than Vinet for the pure beauties of litera-

270 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

ture, and he delighted in kindling the same enthusiasm
in others. With a few strokes of his powerful pen, he
would characterise our great writers, but he always
recognised the man in the author. He never ridiculed.
We always feel that he approaches a fellow-man with
respect ; and when he finds that which is unworthy,
he treats it not as a satirist, but as a good physician,
anxious to relieve, if possible, the ills which grieve his
compassionate heart. His studies of the nineteenth
century are among the finest pages of the moral history
of our era, into which he had a singularly clear insight.
Vinet was not so absorbed in the conflict of ideas
as to become indifferent to the not less ardent contro-
versy which was agitating the political world at the
same time. He was a staunch Liberal on every ques-
tion. It was impossible that he should be otherwise,
with his views of the destiny of man. Believing, as
he did, that man was called to fulfil in the free exer-
cise of his highest faculties, a truly divine vocation,
he could not admit that he was subject to any other
yoke than that of the protecting law of liberty, which
is the true guardian of peace and order in the State.
The more exalted the origin and destiny of man, the
surer basis is there for his rights as a member of society.
A sacred buckler is over him, and any wrong done to
him is sacrilege. Hence Vinet's deep love for liberty.
Speaking of it in a letter to a friend, he says : " As
long as I live, my heart will beat true to the cause of
freedom."

ALEXANDRE VINET. 271

" Even though liberty were fraught with all imagin-
able perils," he says again ; " while slavery promised
all peace and tranquillity, I would still prefer liberty,
for liberty is life, and slavery death. We are well
aware that in many minds this word liberty awakens
all sorts of misgivings, that in some ears it sounds like
the trumpet blast of civil discord. But surely such
fear is weakness. Has any word ever been more
abused ? But in this it only shares the fate of all holy
and sublime things. From the very beginning of the
world, the conflict has been going on between slavery
and liberty. The sixty centuries of its history have
been but one long day of battle. The history of liberty
has been assured ever since the great Leader of man-
kind placed Himself at the head of this sacred battalion,
which gains strength by the blows which it receives
even more than by those which it gives."

Vinet thus always kept in view the close connection
between liberty in its outward manifestations and its
sacred source. " Liberty has need," he said, " of a
religious basis." He shared De Tocqueville's convic-
tion : " The man who does not believe, is of necessity
a slave." That which filled him with the keenest
apprehension for France, which he dearly loved, was
the fact that the tree of its liberal Constitution, with
all its fresh and luxuriant foliage, had no deep roots.
This state of things wrung from him a cry of alarm.
"Only think," he exclaimed, "of so much liberty, and
no beliefs ! "

272 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

We have mentioned De Tocqueville. Vinet was in
full accord with this great and noble man, who was
one of the first, after Benjamin Constant, to repudiate
the proceedings of the Revolutionists, refusing to
follow the school of Rousseau, and to identify liberty
with the sovereignty of the people. He maintained
that despotism was not lightened by being exercised
by many tyrants instead of one, and that it made not
the slightest difference whether the rights of the
individual were crushed by a giant with a single club,
or by a Briareus with a hundred arms. The character-
istic of true liberalism is that it limits the power of
the State with a view to the protection of individual
liberties, and makes the State the legal guardian of
the rights of the citizen. France owes much to De
Tocqueville, for his efforts in the cause of decentral-
isation,— a cause which has unhappily been forsaken
of late by its former defenders. Vinet did equally
effective service in the same direction, by enforcing a
religious respect for the individual. It is just because
man is a moral being that every individual has an
infinite value, and that it can never be lawful to sacri-
fice him for the public cause, as if he were a mere
integral part of a great whole. It was under the.
influence of this broad and enlightened liberalism
that Vinet, on the eve of the Revolution of 1848
(which he did not live to see), attacked the principle
of Socialism, with characteristic acumen and vigour.

While Vinet was thus the champion of all liberties,

ALEXANDRE VI NET. 273

he was the indefatigable and incomparable advocate
of religious liberty, carried to its furthest consequences.
Tc tb:s subject he devoted some of his noblest works
— his " Memoire " of 1823, his volume on "La mani-
festation des Convictions religieuses," and a constant
succession of pamphlets and articles, called forth by
the current polemics of a little democracy, which had
small regard for the rights of conscience. In this
cause also, he served under the same banner as De
Tocqueville, and had soon such eminent allies as MM.
De Laboulaye and Jules Simon. No one did more
than Vinet to uplift that noble standard which, un-
happily, even now — eighty years after the French
Revolution, and three centuries after the Reformation
— rallies around it so few followers on the Continent
of Europe.

There are two bases on which liberty of conscience
may be philosophically maintained. The first is the
impossibility of establishing religious truths by direct
evidence, which takes away from the State all right to
impose or to defend them by force ; the second is
respect for conscience, on the ground of God's exclu-
sive right of control over it. We accept both lines of
argument. We hold that religious and philosophical
truth cannot be established by direct evidence — a
statement which Vinet, who laid such stress upon the
moral character of faith, would certainly not have
disputed. It was on the second ground, however, that
he mainly took his stand, in opposing stedfastly all

19

274 CONTEMPORAR V POR 7 RAITS.

coercion in matters of religion, as the most odious
abuse of power. In his view, there was no worse
offence against God than the attempt to interpose the
rude hand of the State between Him and the human
soul. He says : " It is impossible, on any hypothesis
whatever, to conceive the slightest relation between
political science and the science of the Infinite, between
politics and the faith of the heart, between the police
and the conscience. The sacred realm of conscience
is the unassailable stronghold of individual rights, —
rights which belong to every man absolutely and
undividedly, and for which he is accountable to God
alone. Lest any should mistake his meaning, and
confound him with the defenders of the illusory liberty
for the right, Verny adds : " Liberty of conscience
is not merely the competence to decide between one
religion and another ; it is also essentially the right
not to accept any."

This, then, was Vinet's motto — liberty for all men,
under all circumstances ; liberty not only for the
faithful, but for the unbelieving — nay, even for the
great contemners of conscience. Let those incon-
sistent Liberals, who are tempted to excuse the
attacks made on the Ultramontanes in Prussia and in
Switzerland, reflect on the following noble words :
" If ever toleration can find a worthy occasion for its
exercise, it is in relation to the intolerant."

Vinet did not rest satisfied with generous theories :
he desired to see the recognition of liberty in practice,

ALEXANDRE VINET. 275

as well as in principle. Religious liberty was in-
separable, in his view, from liberty of worship and
of outward profession, under the single condition of
respect for the laws and for public order. He went
even further — he desired to see the independence of
worship secured by the separation of the Church
from the State. It was not enough for him that the
Church should not persecute ; he was equally averse
to its position as the protector of religion, for, by
such protection, it acquires a privilege, and casts its
gold or its sword into that scale of the sanctuary,
which ought not to be turned by any but the highest
moral considerations. To expect religious liberty in
a State which has an established religion of its own,
is a chimera. The Church is an association of souls,
based upon individual convictions freely arrived at.
Such an association cannot lawfully identify itself with
the State, which is a purely civil institution, in which
all citizens have equal rights by birth. From such an
unholy alliance one of two results must follow : either
the Church will become a mere external organisation,
within whose easy enclosure souls will be lulled into
a false security ; or it will be a refractory force, always
at issue with the State, and compromised in the purity
of its character alike by success or failure.

It may be objected that Vinet went too far in his
depreciation of the State, and failed to recognise
sufficiently its high vocation as the representative of
law. All we ask of the State is that it should bear

276 CONTEMPORAR Y PORTRAITS.

in mind this its noble function, and refuse to lend
itself to the violation of the most sacred form of law
— that which is enshrined in the human conscience.
The State will never be further from atheism than
while scrupulously fulfilling its secular duties : it is
really atheistic when it presumes to put itself in the
place which belongs to God alone, in the government
of souls.

Even if we admit, however, that Vinet may have
taken an inadequate view of the high functions of the
State, we must still regard as truly sublime his elo-
quent vindication of the great cause of spiritual
independence, which Mirabeau had already illumined
with some of the lightning flashes of his genius, as
when he said "religion is no more national than
conscience."

In our estimation, Vinet has no rival among his
contemporaries in the vindication of these principles,
unless it be Lamartine. We recall his noble utter-
ances on the subject of the Concordat, and his irre-
pressible indignation at the very thought of a religion
placed under the control of any imperial power what-
soever, or of a sovereign democracy. The separation
of the Church and State would be, as he deemed, the
fitting consummation of what he called the religious
phase of the French Revolution. Vinet, De Toc-
queville, Lamartine — these are names which impart a
truer than any mere heraldic dignity to a great idea,
which the superficial and bigoted adherents of routine

ALEXANDRE VINET. 277

regard as among the abominations of a rabid Radi-
calism.

It is now more than thirty years since the great
thinker of Lausanne died, and how amply has the
course of events during that period fulfilled his fore-
cast. Those tendencies to absolutism in religion and
politics, which he never ceased to denounce, have
been carried in every direction to their furthest issues.
As we see how deeply men's minds have been troubled
by the insolent pretensions of those who would force
upon the Church a fictitious unity, we feel the full
value of Vinet's motto : " Liberty is the one way to
unity." What an unrestricted application he himself
gave to this principle, we may judge from the follow-
ing words : " Protestantism," he says, " is with me
only a starting-point ; my religion lies beyond it. I
may, as a Protestant, hold Catholic opinions ; and who
knows whether I do so or not ? That which I repu-
diate, utterly, is the right of any human power to
control my beliefs."

How grandly does this exalted liberalism of
Vinet's, based upon the purest religion, contrast with
the social theories which the materialistic school
deduces from its philosophical principles — theories
which daringly apply to humanity the doctrine of the
survival of the fittest, and declare with a cynical in-
difference that the weak must give place to the
strong. Was not Vinet right when he said that
materialism throws all its weight into the scale of

278 CONTEMFORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

tyranny ? The world has never yet seen any des-
potism so terrible as that which would hold it in its
grasp, if these deadly systems, to which some of the
most distinguished psychologists of the day lend the
support of their genius, were ever to become dominant
in the minds of men. Let us fully realise our
position. We are lost if Christian spirituality does
not win the day ; and it will only win it if it is faith-
ful to those principles of broad and honest liberalism
which Vinet consistently advocated. We are sick at
heart of those ostentatious appeals to liberal prin-
ciples, made by the worst enemies of liberty, when
they are anxious to secure a vantage-ground for
trampling it under foot. They have taken the surest
means to dishonour their cause, and, more than that,
to bring discredit on the idea of religion, of which
they are the unworthy representatives. Religion loses
all its force and dignity when it is dissociated from
the idea of freedom.

Vinet has left a noble heritage to be entered upon
by this generation. To give full liberty to religion,
and to restrict the authority of the State to its proper
civil sphere — this was the object of his unrelaxing
efforts.

We are fully convinced that no other solution of
the ecclesiastical problem is possible, and that till this
is accepted, we shall see the perpetual renewal of those
disastrous and dangerous struggles for exclusive
power and privilege to persecute, which are equally

ALEXANDRE VINET. 279

dishonouring to the Churches and prejudicial to the
State.

There are few writers who can be studied with
more advantage at the present time than Vinet. We
are thankful to M. Rambert for bringing before us
this type of a lofty and liberal Christianity, which
vindicates the gospel from many of the calumnies
cast upon it, by showing what it is in its true spirit,
in contrast to those miserable travesties which are
often presented to us in its name.

VERNY AND ROBERTSON.

VERNY AND ROBERTSON.

" Ces questions, coupables amusements des esprits legers, inson-
dables douleurs des dmes profondes" (Verny. Sermons, p.

358).

THE names of Verny and Robertson recall two
of the most remarkable representatives of the
Church of our day, both removed by death in the
fulness of their manhood, after passing through a
crisis in their spiritual life, in which they only achieved
the victory after a long and painful struggle. Both
started from the most rigid orthodoxy ; but they soon
grew ill at ease in a vesture which was too narrow for
their spirits. The questions of the day pressed upon
them, and having been taught to confound theology
with religion, or rather a particular theology with the
very essence of Christianity, they thought they had
lost their faith, when they could no longer hold fast this
form of sound words. The anguish of mind which
both suffered at this crisis of their mental history
shows how dearly they loved the truth. To them it

284 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

was no mere theory to be held or dropped, but the
very gist of life, without which existence would be
aimless and worthless. They were among the trem-
bling seekers after truth ; but their quest was pursued
all the more sorrowfully because they had to begin it
afresh after having once already, as they had sup-
posed, found and grasped the hidden treasure. This
it was which made their position peculiarly painful.
But their ultimate success was certain, for they used
the means by which alone a full assurance of truth can
be finally reached. They did not treat the grave
doubt which had arisen in their hearts as a demon to
be exorcised, nor did they try to banish it by an
unintelligent surrender of reason to authority. They
had too much respect for truth to hold it so cheap.
They were careful, however, not to allow the doubt to
extend to their moral and religious life ; they held
fast those immutable convictions of right and wrong
to which conscience appeals. These supplied a fixed
point on which the lever of inquiry might rest. Above
all, they held constant fellowship with the living God,
the source of all purity and light. They thus escaped
that moral scepticism which is a disease of heart and
brain, smiting both with sterility, and against which
conscience raises its accusing voice. Both Verny and
Robertson, as we shall see, came out from the spiritual
conflict with their faith purified and enlarged, and
established upon a more solid basis.

I am far from saying that either had arrived at the

VERN Y AND R OBER TSOJV. 285

complete apprehension of Christian truth. I shall
have to draw attention to more than one point on
which their creed appears to me deficient ; but it bears
the unquestionable impress of the gospel of Christ,
and, in many respects, it is peculiarly adapted to the
wants of our generation. Nothing is likely to be of
more use in the present day than the example of men
like these. All the disciples of Christ are not re-
quired to pass through the same experiences. There
are many who never know any other conflict than
that against sin ; once born into the new life, doubts
no more arise in their hearts. Their convictions are
solid and genuine, based upon their personal experi-
ence of the truth. There is a cast of mind to which
doubt is impossible, and which instinctively ignores
all the problems of religious thought. We admit that
such a spiritual attitude is perfectly legitimate : all we
ask is that it should not be exacted of all Christians,
and that a happy, natural disposition should not be
confounded with faith. We must recognise the exist-
ence also of minds of another order, more disposed by
habit and constitution to the analysis of ideas and
doctrines, and which, while they bow in reverence
before the cross, want to test the firm foundations of
their faith. To such minds there must come painful
crises of self-questioning in times like ours, when so
many difficult problems constantly present them-
selves, and when, in the great heritage of thought
received from past generations, we are called upon to

286 CONTEMPORAR Y PORTRAITS.

distinguish between what is eternal truth and what is
merely human tradition. Let it be observed, more-
over, that this cannot be accomplished, as in the times
of the Reformation, by one of those great religious
movements which destroy by replacing, and the nega-
tions of which are but as it were the keen point of
powerful affirmations. The fire, which burns up the
straw and the stubble, mixed with the true material in
the Christian building, comes straight from heaven,
and it begins by kindling a new and intense life in
the believing soul.

There has been nothing of this sort in our day.
The change in theology, which our generation has wit-
nessed, has been wrought by a spirit of inquiry, rather
subtle than fervent, and working under a cold and
cloudy sky. It is a spirit in harmony with the age ; but
one which is full of danger to the Christian life. Hence
the permanent interest that attaches for us to the
spiritual history of such men as Verny and Robertson.
In them we see true faith coming forth victorious from
the agonising conflict with doubt. From them we
learn that inquiry does not necessarily result in the
frivolous negations of Rationalism, which are the bane
of our modern Protestantism. That which strikes us,
indeed, in this so-called liberalism, is not so much the
poverty of its results, as that self-satisfaction which it
displays so ostentatiously, in the midst of the ever-
widening religious and theological desert which it
creates around itself. We find no trace of that spirit

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 287

of earnest inquiry which is ever characteristic of the
ardent lovers of truth. The calm complacency of the
Rationalistic school has no parallel, unless it be in
that of a certain orthodox school, which believes it
has comprehended the inexhaustible treasure of reve-
lation in a few well-defined formularies. The evolu-
tions of the young theological Left remind us of the
feats of brilliant skaters. They go curvetting and
gliding over the brittle surface, beneath which lie
depths of which they never think — the deep mysteries
of heaven and hell, of human sin and of Divine love.
Verny and Robertson were utter strangers to this
smiling and superficial theology, neither on the other
hand did they make shipwreck upon the barren rock
of universal doubt. In reading theirwritings — those of
Robertson especially — I am reminded of the impres-
sive, sternly mournful pages in which M. Scherer has
related the tragic story of Montaigu, a type easy to
recognise, and nobler a hundred times than the blatant
triflers of one section of the theological Left. The
adaptation of the monologue of Faust to our present
circumstances is very pathetic.

Robertson has described, in terms not less eloquent,
the night of anguish in which the faith he had held
as a mere tradition, slipped from him. Only he goes
on to tell us how he again found Christ. He was not
satisfied, like Faust and Montaigu, with listening to
the Easter bells, and yielding to a mere reverie of
poetic sadness. He heard, at the same time, a deeper

288 CONTEMFORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

tone, the voice of conscience, which he never allowed
to be stifled by his intellectual doubts. He heard,
too, in the depths of his heart, another voice, yet more
sublime and tender, the voice of the God of the
gospel ; and thus he came out of the struggle with a
yet firmer grasp of those beliefs, which are the safe-
guards of the moral, no less than of the religious life.
In his biography we have the description, not only of
the night of windy storm and tempest, but also of the
faithful star which guided him into the port of peace.

I.

The volume of Verny's Sermons brings vividly
before us the thinker and the preacher, but no written
words can do full justice to his peculiar genius, to
that versatility and freshness of mind which lent such
a charm to his unstudied intercourse with his friends.
In such free conversation, he poured forth the
treasures of his knowledge, and the still richer
treasures of his own heart and mind, with a readiness
and richness of utterance rarely equalled. His was
an ardent and highly sensitive nature. His eyes
would fill with tears under the influence of some
strong emotion, when a moment before he had been
indulging in bright, humorous sallies, sometimes not
unmixed with a touch of irony. The reason why he
did not write more was no doubt this, that he was
never wholly himself, pen in hand. In his pulpit

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 289

preparations, he was obliged to adopt a very exact
method, lest he should be carried away by his con-
stant habit of rapid, impulsive improvisation. He
had to keep within rigid bounds, those floods of im-
petuous eloquence which were always ready to burst
forth. Hence the fine aroma of his genius can never
be fully appreciated by those who know him only
through his writings. The pious urn, in which his
remains are presented to us to-day, contains only the
cold ashes of his powerful intellect. This is, however,
no mean memorial, and we are deeply grateful to the
family of the author for this valuable contribution to
our religious literature.

The short biographical notice with which the
Sermons are prefaced, gives us the principal phases
of Verny's life, especially in its moral and religious
aspect. He began at the bar. His dedication to the
ministry was the result of his own well-considered
choice, and not a career pre-determined for him by
his family. He always carefully avoided any assump-
tion of the clerical, either in speech or manner, and
was never betrayed into anything like religious cant.
The knowledge he gained of life and of men, in his
legal apprenticeship, was the best preparation possible
for the ministry. Most of the leading preachers
among the Catholic clergy have been engaged in
some civil career before entering the seminary, and
have thus acquired a manliness which education in a
clerical hot-house can never give.

20

290 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

It was at Mulhouse, when acting as Principal of the
College in that town, that Verny became a new man.
He says himself: "It was Vinet who removed the
cataract from my eyes." He could not have come
under a healthier influence, or one more adapted to
his noble and vigorous nature.

Vinet remained through life his most dear and
venerated friend. We understand that the corres-
pondence between these great men has been pre-
served. We may hope that it will one day be
published, for what could be more rich in interest
than the interchange of two such minds on the
highest themes of thought and feeling.

At this time, about the year 1834, no difference of
opinion had yet arisen to overshadow the dawn of the
religious awakening in Protestant France. It is easy
to trace in the early writings of Vinet a fresh current
of thought, distinct from the prevailing orthodoxy;
but this current was then like the Rhone in the Lake
of Geneva, a distinct, but not as yet divergent, stream.
Verny, therefore, could be at this time a disciple of
Vinet, without any marked dissidence from the then
prevailing mode of thought.

On his nomination to the pastorate of the Lutheran
Church of Paris, he at once took his place among the
excellent men who were at that time the leaders of
the orthodox religious movement, and he contended,
side by side with them, against the mitigated Ra-
tionalism which still widely prevailed. He appears

VERNY AND R OBER TSON. 29 1

even to have preached emphatically the particular
doctrine of his Church as to the Lord's Supper,
although he was never an advocate of the rigid ex-
clusiveness which characterised it subsequently, espe-
cially in Alsace. A contributor to the periodical, the
" Semeur," x and closely associated with Vinet, who
conducted it with so much judgment and generous
large-heartedness, he was entirely free from the sec-
tarian spirit which can see nothing beyond its own
narrow sphere, and looks suspiciously on everything
that will not fall in with its petty theories.

A crisis in Verny's life, however, was approaching —
a crisis rendered inevitable by the intellectual and re-
ligious atmosphere of the day in which he lived.

In our time we are disposed to look on the religious
revival through a softening haze of distance, which
gives it an unreal breadth of horizon. We do it more
simple justice when we recognise it as it actually was,
in all its rough but vigorous originality. The services
rendered by it are so great, that we can afford to
acknowledge that it was narrow and incomplete, with-
out lessening its claim to our devout thankfulness.
To say that its theology was well-considered, that it
had a due regard for the liberty of Christian thought,
that it adequately recognised the claims of science,
would be to put fiction in the place of history. There

In reference to the " Semeur," see remarks in the Article
on Vinet.

292 CONTEMPORA R Y FOR TRA ITS.

has been a disposition recently to resent the assertion,
that the theology of the revival is identical with that
of the seventeenth century. What, then, are the dif-
ferences between the two ? The current notions of
that period as to verbal inspiration, expiation, and
many other points, are much more nearly allied to the
Confession of Dort than of Rochelle. This theology
is purely and simply the almost literal translation of
the English theology of the commencement of the
present century, and this, in its turn, is the legitimate
offspring of the narrow dogmatism of the seventeenth.
Undoubtedly, from a moral point of view, the differ-
ence was great ; a Divine fire of enthusiasm and of
charity glowed through this meagre theology ; but in
order to recognise the actual progress of the revival
since the time of the Swiss Consensus, we must draw a
distinction between theology and faith, which the fore-
most representatives of the revival resolutely dis-
allowed. In the fervour of their belief and the nar-
rowness of their knowledge, they could not conceive
of a possible history of doctrine. To them it seemed
that the orthodoxy of the day had been the invariable
belief of all true Christians, and that " the good sound
doctrine " had been professed on all points by Chris-
tian antiquity ; that it had been re-discovered intact
by the Reformers, and brought into full relief in all its
integrity by the fathers of the revival. I appeal, in
support of this statement, to the writings of the ve-
nerable Gaussen, and to the course of argument con-

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 293

stantly adopted in the " Archives du Christianisme,"
conducted by the venerated Frederic Monod, whose
name is identified in our warmest memories with the
purest disinterestedness, the most sincere faith, and
courageous candour. I appeal, yet further, to the pro-
tests of the elder M. Bost, whose powerful vindication
of the distinction between theology and religion was
not a mere fighting the air. Neither the " Semeur" nor
Vinet himself had as yet taken sufficiently firm ground
against this dangerous tendency of the time, the effect
of which was to confound eternal truth with transitory
forms, the human system with the Divine substance.
It was an error fraught with manifold perils, for it
compromised eternal things in the variations of theo-
logical formularies ; and it held fast, as the seamless
vesture of Christianity, a worn and patchwork robe,
altogether unworthy and inadequate to enfold its
spirit of immortal youth.

I lay stress upon this point, because it explains, not
only the spiritual crisis through which Verny passed,
but also the particular form of his new theology, with
its merits and defects. Always eager after knowledge,
he kept himself well up in all the movements of re-
ligious thought, and especially followed carefully the
discussions of German theology. Here all questions
were boldly approached, and the argument called forth
by Strauss' " Leben Jesu," brought to the front the most
widely differing views. The evangelical School, led
by men like Neander and Nitzch, brought forward,

294 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

under the banner of evangelicalism, ideas which would
have been regarded as of very questionable orthodoxy
on the French side of the Rhine. There was no pass-
ing with impunity in that day the terrible Styx, which
divided the peaceful shores of uncontested beliefs
from the stormy strand of daring speculation. It was
not without a sharp wrench, that faith was separated
from its formula. It seemed, indeed, at one time,
as if faith itself must be uprooted in the process. So
it was with Verny. The conflict in his case was sharp
and agonising. How could it be otherwise, in a nature
so strong as his, to which truth was no mere matter
of curious speculation, but the great aim and end of
life ? To him, to lose Christ was to lose all that
gave strength and joy to his spiritual being — his ideal,
his hope. What was his agony when it seemed to
him that this heavenly Friend, this Divine brother, was
slipping from his embrace, was growing dim to him
in clouds of bewildering thought ? The burden of
his ministry aggravated his distress. He felt com-
pelled to give it up for a time, for he was not made of
the same stuff as those Savoyard vicars, who go on
with a mass in which they no longer believe, and
babble through a creed which they have ceased to
accept. This sublime duplicity had not yet been in-
troduced into the category of cardinal virtues. Verny,
himself, tells us how he found his way into the light
out of this dense darkness. He held fast to the sacred
convictions of his moral nature, and never ceased for

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 295

an instant to wait upon God. We may quote part of
a letter, written by him from Germany, as a report
from the field of battle. It is easy to predict from it
the victory that was at hand.

"The grace of God," he writes to his wife, "is with
me. I have not ceased to pray ; I pray still. And
I hope — I know — that through all this doubt and
anxiety, I shall reach light and peace. This struggle
is for my good, and I cannot doubt that the goodness
of God has yet happy days in store for me in His
service. I am not trying to constrain myself to
become a Methodist again, nolens volens, to please
my friends. No ; I desire to be sincere before God
and man. To profess again the strictly orthodox views
would be, I feel, to act a lie. By meditation and by
the study of Scripture, I must endeavour to frame a
theology, which I can bring before God with the
approval of my conscience. This is a painful and
difficult task ; but I will not shrink from it. I desire
above all things to be sincere and true.

" I most assuredly shall not, through fear of offend-
ing such and such person, hold myself bound by an
orthodoxy which in me would be hypocritical. But
I shall hold fast with all my strength, that which
God has given and confirmed to me: faith in Himself,
in His grace, His mercy, His love which pardons all
sin and heals all wounds. There is, I feel it, some-
thing above ourselves ; there is an eye that sees, an
ear that hears, a mercy which pities and brings relief

296 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

to perplexed and anguished hearts. I feel so deeply,
I see so clearly, that out of God is no peace, no joy,
no true life. All misery, all trouble, all bitterness
come from seeking satisfaction apart from Him. I
must renounce self utterly, must make a complete
surrender of my own will, my own glory, and only
live in Him. Then all will be well."

We find the reflection of this great spiritual crisis
in Verny's life, in a funeral sermon preached by him
for one of his dearest friends, who was prematurely
cut off just as he was entering on a brilliant literary
career. This friend was Adolphe Lebre, so well
described by Vinet in the letter of introduction sent
by him to Verny. " I have never known," says
Vinet, " a more sincere and devoted lover of truth.
He has the mind of a philosopher, and the heart ol
a Christian." We ourselves, who had the privilege
of his intimacy, know how well deserved was this
encomium. Lebre lives in our memory as one of the
purest and most elevated of thinkers. To him too
the darkness came, and, less happy than others, he
never saw the light again till it dawned upon him in
the eternal morning beyond the grave. He died
before his beliefs had recovered their equilibrium. A
too vivid imagination added much to his actual
sufferings, and a terrible disease carried him off in a
few days.

Never, however, did his heart swerve from his
loyalty to Christ. An extract from an unpublished

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 297

letter, written by Lebre himself, will best bring him
before the reader. His intimacy with Verny, at this
period of his life, gives to the following passages a
real bearing upon the subject before us. They are
not a digression, for they throw much light upon the
spiritual attitude of the two friends at this crisis, and
they help us to understand perfectly the manner in
which Verny spoke at the grave of Lebre.

" You doubt," writes Lebre to a young student. "I
do not wonder at it. It is impossible in our day to
go fairly into scientific questions without encountering
doubt. We are in a transition period. A reformation
much more broad and deep than that of the sixteenth
century is in preparation. Catholicism and Protes-
tantism will perish in it : a new era is at hand for the
whole world. That kind of doubt which redoubles
its watchfulness in obedience, its ardour in prayer,
and which is full of holy aspirations, is alone of God ;
the other kind of doubt leads to license of the will,
to sinful self indulgence ; it degrades the soul and
does the work of sin and death. It destroys the
past, and it would blot out the future, if God allowed
it to triumph. The doubt which comes from God
works sorrow, but it works also life. It destroys
nothing in the past, but that which is imperfect and
transitory. It gives life to all that deserves to live.
It rends the soul, but it lifts it higher and makes it
greater, for it springs from new and loftier aspirations.
You doubt : this is a reason to be all the more

?98 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

submissive to conscience, to obey it more strictly, to
strengthen the soul in the love of good and the
hatred of evil, to watch over it with holy trembling.
When doubt attempts to enter the domain of con-
science, to attack foully the eternal principles of right ;
or when you discover that the metaphysical scep-
ticism will in the end shake your moral convictions
and dull your conscience ; whenever, in a word, doubt
would urge you to a less high, pure, and noble
practice ; when it would weaken your love for the right
or your power to do it ; when it would make you
indulgent to your own selfishness, and exempt you
from sacrifice and self-devotion — then, be sure, it con-
ceals a mortal error. Reject it ! Listen to nothing
that would lower you : it cannot be the light of truth.
And if your selfish, carnal, evil heart finds a secret
pleasure in it, take alarm and resolve to flee from it
Seek the truth with your whole heart, and you will
find it. Begin by making it a law to obey that which
you know to be right, to hold evil in abhorrence, to
follow in everything the voice of duty.

" In scepticism the conscience is often very dull, but
obey all that still remains clear. Follow your gene-
rous instincts, all high and noble desires. Make it
your aim to become manly in the true sense of the
word. I mean, try above all things to do right, to
deny self and live for others. Lastly, do not stifle,
by an evil, petty, miserably distracted or dissipated
life, the light that yet remains within you. Follow

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 299

its leadings, and from day to day they will grow-
clearer and stronger. Be faithful also to prayer. You
will feel the need of this in order to resist temptation.
You ought to feel the need of this help also in that
search after truth which is at once so difficult and so
simple ; in which the upright heart always succeeds,
while the heart that is not honest goes ever further
and further astray. Pray according to your faith ;
God will hear you. Say to Him, as did one of those
mighty Christians who passed through a long period
of doubt before he could grasp the truth for which he
longed : ' My God, whatever Thou art, enlighten me ;
make Thyself known to me. Give me to seek Thee
and to desire Thee. Give me to live aright.' The
light came little by little, and at length he believed.
Oh ! dear soul, if with sincerity and perseverance you
will do this, I shall rest calmly about you. I do not
know when you will see your prayer answered ; but I
have this certainty, that it will be answered. You
are, perhaps, alarmed at this way, but you shall not
walk in it alone. Whenever we have a sincere desire
after God, He is with us ; He aids, He sustains us.
Why should we fear the difficulties of the road ? We
have the most helpful, the most faithful of friends, who
knows all our weakness, who pities it, who sends us
inward peace and joy of conscience to strengthen us,
who measures out the work of each day as we are
able to bear it. He has towards us a heart full of
love, tenderer than a mother's. As soon as we set

300 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

out on our way back to the Father's house, He runs
to meet His prodigal child. The faintest sigh of the
soul that is seeking Him is more precious to Him than
the persevering efforts of the self-righteous. He is
full of goodness, of strength, of pity, of gentleness, of
all tender mercies. He is only severe to those who
have no desire after that which is good. Let us trust
in God to help us in the good fight, and He will give
us the strength in which we shall conquer. You feel
melancholy, perhaps, at the thought of a Christian
life. It seems to us sometimes as if it were sacrificing
our youth. But what an illusion ! It is only Chris-
tianity which can give the true youth, for it alone
gives the true love. Oh, what a power does it give of
sacrifice ; what a passion of devotion ; what an ac-
quaintance with the infinite ; what worship of all that
is noble, generous, elevated, pure ; what a life of
the heart, what a glorious expansion of our whole
soul, what an impulse to our hopes which rise im-
mense, eternal ! The joys and festivities of our youth
are but the image of the joys and festivities of the
Christian life ; that is the true, immortal youth, the
other is but a transitory shadow. So far from drying
up the fountains of the spring, Jesus Christ opens in
the heart that receives Him wells of living water.
All that is noble and beautiful, the fire of the heart
and of the imagination, devotion, poetry — all are puri-
fied and ennobled by love. The sinful pleasures of
youth religion does proscribe ; but these you will not

VERNY AND R OBER TSON. 30 1

regret. The youth which we have by nature soon
withers ; beneath it lurks a secret decrepitude, some
seed of death, some lie ; it is but an imperfect figure
of the true youth. That is the true youth which love
gives — the infinite love of God and of our brothers. It
does not fade ; it is renewed every morning ; it bears
each day flowers of heavenly beauty ; and when the
body totters and the mind fails, the soul remains ever
young — because it loves. Selfishness under all its
forms, — the absence of self-devotion, the pettiness
of a life which makes enjoyment its aim, rather than
duty ; the neglect of our generous instincts ; pleasures,
even the highest, such as the pursuit of study, when
they make us forget that our great concern is not to
live for ourselves ; everything that takes away the
sense of the solemnity of life ; everything that shuts
us up within ourselves, and makes us the captives of
self-indulgence, not to speak of those excesses and
sins which are reproved of all : selfishness, in a word,
under whatever name, is old age and death. Ah !
I have proved only too well that age creeps quickly
on, where there is unfaithfulness to the nobler instincts ;
but thanks to Christianity, all that narrows the heart,
all that dries it up and takes from it its freshness, its
elasticity and generous warmth, is resisted, and in the
end fully overcome. For myself, I feel I owe it to
Christianity alone that I am still young ; without it
I should have fallen by this time low indeed."

The reader will now easily understand how the

302 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

death of Lebre called forth from Verny one of the
noblest efforts of his eloquence. He touches the
bleeding wounds of the soul that has passed away
with a tender sympathy, learnt in the same school of
suffering, through which he himself had recently been
brought.

"And now, why should I be silent," says the
preacher, " on the subject which is in all our thoughts
to-day, and which, by the side of this grave, may well
appear supremely important ? This faith became
beclouded. You know the demands, the doubts, the
conflicts of our age : it would be childish to pretend
to ignore them ; it would be untrue to deny their
influence and weight. More than one of the historical
pillars on which Christianity rested has been shaken ;
more than one of the formularies, under which till now
it has passed current in the world, has failed to stand
the stern ordeal of philosophic thought, or to verify
itself by the standard of a true exegesis. We must
go even further. I say, that more than one legitimate
cry of unsatisfied spiritual need rises in our day, to
which our old systems seem to make no response, to
which our old institutions have neither succour nor
sympathy to offer. Who will dare to pronounce a
sentence of sweeping condemnation on all these
aspirations and efforts ? Who will dare to say that
all these movements, without distinction, are sinful in
their origin, that the love of truth, of the truth of God
and of His kingdom, has no place in them ? that they

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 303

are not signs of the times, signs precursive of a new
spiritual advent of the Lord ? These questions, which
superficial minds treat as trifles, but which present to
deeper thinkers mysteries, the depths of which they
try in vain to sound, laid hold of the mind of Lebre
in the course of his studies. He doubted. Yes ; but
with a sincere doubt. His doubts were not the mere
exercise of reason, proud and cold ; nor were they
the sophistries of a heart impatient of the holy law
of God, and eager to give free course to its passions.
They were the agonising cry of his soul after a purer,
more powerful, more efficacious light. He doubted.
Yes ; but his doubt was a hunger and thirst after
righteousness. It was but a fortnight yesterday that
he poured out for the last time, to the friend who now
renders him this parting service of love, the sorrows of
his soul ; and how can I better sum up those con-
fidences, or should I rather say those unutterable
groanings of his spirit, than in the words of the
Psalmist : ' As the hart panteth after the water-brooks,
so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul
thirsteth for God, for the living God. When shall I
come and appear before God ? ' He doubted. Yes ;
but his doubt has received the consecration of suffering
and death. His nights of toil, the turmoil of his brain,
the tumultuous agitation of his heart, had been long
spending his strength. None remained to contend
with his last sickness, and he sank under it.

" Is doubt like this still to be called doubt ? It is

304 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

faith, my friends ; the faith of those who pray, ' Lord,
I believe ; help thou mine unbelief.' Here, then, for
my own consolation and yours, let me give my testi-
mony that the faith of our friend, while shaken in
some of its expressions, forms, and applications, still
remained stedfast in its secret depths. The great
travail of his soul was to find a form more in harmony
with his deep faith. The grace of God which had
received him, set its seal upon him, and to the very
end Lebre bore that ineffaceable impress. He loved.
Love was the life of his heart ; love to God and man
— the love which forgets and renounces self. Is not
love like this the fruit and the witness of the truth ?
St. Augustine says : ' If love is not desired with all
the strength of the soul, it is absolutely impossible to
be found ; but, when it is sought in a manner worthy
of it, it can never be missed by those who love it. It
is love which desires, love which seeks, love which
knocks at the door, love which reveals — love, finally,
which abides in that wh h is revealed.' Such love
dwelt in the heart of our friend ; it was in this loving
spirit that he yearned after and sought the truth, and
had he lived, this same love would have crowned his
search with success. And that love — never did I
express the hope with a more joyful confidence — that
love has now drawn back the veil that hid the truth
from him, and has satisfied the thirst of his soul."

Verny could apply to himself that which he said of
Lebre. Only in his case, the light came more quickly.

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 305

Though still somewhat overcast, like all earthly
brightness, it yet shone clearly enough for him to live
and die by, and even to fulfil his work as a preacher.

We find in all Verny's sermons from this time, a
more categorical affirmation of the great facts of
revelation. The belief in the supernatural he re-
tained unimpaired; indeed, it enters into his very
conception of Christianity as a religion of liberty. This
is admirably expressed in his sermons on the religion
of nature, and the religion of the Spirit. We may cite
the following passage :

" We said just now, in speaking of the personality
of God and of His absolute freedom in the work of
creation — this is essential. In the same way, we would
say here of the eternal pre-existence of the Saviour,
and His absolute freedom in the work of redemption —
this is essential ; for if sin is indeed the effect of such a
bondage as we have been describing ; if, as the Scrip-
ture affirms, and, as our deepest experience teaches us,
it is transmitted and perpetuated by a fatal law ; if
every sinful action, being itself the result of ante-
cedent sin, becomes in its turn the cause of fresh
transgression ; if every generation of mankind, being
conceived and born in sin, conceives and gives birth
in its turn to another sinful generation ; and if the
Saviour came to break this chain, He could not be
Himself a mere link in it. In order to grasp it with a
powerful hand, and to break it in the midst, He must
occupy a position outside of the common race of man,

21

306 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

and must draw His strength from a higher source. If
He is to heal the diseased tree of humanity, He must
not be Himself one of its branches, though the
strongest and fairest, for the worm is at the root of
all. He must not be an out-growth of humanity and
of history ; He must not be borne along without any
volition of His own on the stream of time, with those
floods that sweep away the generations of mankind.
He must not be, like one of us, born without choice of
our own in a certain age, by the conditions of which
our lot is determined.

" No ! He must make a new beginning; He must
be the Head and Father of a new humanity, a new
history. He must be, as St. Paul says, ' the second
Adam.' He must needs come freely, because He
would, and solely because He would."

It is clear that Verny does not regard the super-
natural or the miraculous as the mere scaffolding of
the Christian building. It is, in his view, of the very
essence of Christianity, which, being a religion of
redemption, implies a sovereign manifestation of
Divine freedom, in order to break, as he says, the iron
chain of sin and its consequences. After such a
declaration, the Radical School of theology must
renounce all claim to Verny as in any degree be-
longing to it, since its cardinal doctrine is the nega-
tion of the supernatural.

Verny's sermon on " La Religion des Faibles," gives
us the ground of this firm belief in the supernatural.

VERNY AND ROBERTSON.

307

He regards humanity as verily poor, blind, and naked.
Evil is not a mere phase, it is a mortal sickness of the
soul ; and his heart cries out for pardon and restoration.
Jesus Christ is not to him, therefore, simply the model
of perfection, the bringer-in of the true religion. He
is also Himself the object of that religion, the Son of
God who has brought life anew to the world ; in a
word, He is the Saviour. Verny speaks of Him with
holy emotion, with ardent enthusiasm, in tones of
adoration, in which we seem to catch the deep utter-
ance of his heart rather than any formal ascription of
praise. His sermons have the true ring of evangelical
piety. They are in harmony with the great chorus of
the Church universal.

On one point Verny's preaching seems to me
inadequate. It would, indeed, ill become me to con-
demn him by the standard of traditional orthodoxy
on the doctrine of redemption. It does appear to me,
however, that he did not sufficiently recognise how
completely the relation of humanity to God has been
changed by the sacrifice of the cross. He regards it
rather as a sublime and overwhelming proof of the love
of God, than as the redemption of our souls. He
says : " It was to the life that man had lost by his own
fault, in which he could not reinstate himself by his
own efforts, for which he had no longer either will or
desire, that God in His mercy would recall him. For
this purpose it was that He sent to men the Son of His
love, the Son who is one with the Father, and who,

308 CONTEMPORAR V FOR TRAITS.

like the Father, has within Himself the fulness of the
Divine life. He sent Him that men, seeing Him,
might be re-awakened to think of, and aim to fulfil
their original destiny ; that, as they beheld His obedi-
ence in suffering, even to the death of the cross,
His participation in all the sorrows of sinful humanity,
they might have in Him a certain pledge that, in spite
of their transgressions, they were not for ever excluded
from their ancient heritage. Finally, that by accepting
this pledge, embracing Christ, cleaving to Him,
entering into communion with Him by faith, they
might be brought back into fellowship with the
Father and with the life of the Father."

It would be unfair to take this passage as a
summary of Verny's views, or to look in a sermon
for the exactness of a theological formulary.

The deficiency, to which we have alluded, is one
which Verny would very probably have supplied, had
he treated exhaustively that great subject which has
called forth so much discussion in more recent times.
It cannot be denied, however, that he went too far in
his reaction against the tendency to confound religion
with theology. He was abundantly justified when
he appealed to the history of religious thought, in our
own time alone, as conclusive against such a system,
and asked whether the partisans of an implacable
orthodoxy would put out of the Church such men as
Neander and Nitzch. He was equally right in his
protest against the claim to identify the doctrine with

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 309

the life, as if piety had but one side, and as if there
might not be blessed incongruities, so that a Chris-
tian heart might be beating where we should little
have expected it.

We fully endorse the saying, quoted by him in his
sermon at the Pastoral Conferences in Paris, in the
year 1846 : "There is a faith which saves, but there
is no dogmatism which saves." He failed, however,
to define with sufficient distinctness, apart from all
human systems, what is that saving faith which is the
essence of Christianity. He calls it the life of God —
life eternal. This is true ; but that life requires cer-
tain conditions, without which it vanishes away. It
is based upon positive facts ; its essential feature is a
great miracle, wrought by the Son of God who " died
for our sins, and rose again for our justification."
These facts and miracles are the foundation of Verny's
preaching — they are its constant theme. Why not
lay it down, then, as a settled point, that these are
above all dogmatisms and systems ; that they belong
not to theology, but to religion ? " I know well, in-
deed," said Verny, " that there is a point at which we
must stop. He who believes not that life is come
into the world in Jesus Christ ; he who thinks he can
go to the Father otherwise than by the Son ; in a
word, he who confesses not Jesus Christ, the Son of
the living God, is not a Christian. But this point we
cannot yet fix ; we are still too much in the strife of
words and of parties." I think that, even at that

310 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

time, it was possible to define this capital point of
Christianity, and that practically Verny did so in all
his preaching. Might he not still say to-day that we
are in the midst of disputes of words and parties, when
an entire section of the Protestant Church maintains
that Jesus, instead of being " the way, the truth, and
the life," is only a pattern, a teacher ; the type, and
not the object of religious worship ? Verny would
have maintained to-day, as he did twenty years ago,
the claims of religious science and its legitimate
rights ; but he would also have said, as we say, that
Christian theology implies Christianity, and that
Christianity, without the supernatural element, which
it has so stedfastly affirmed, has lost all its specific
character. The counsels of broad comprehension which
Verny gave in 1843, as the sovereign remedy for
the divisions of the Protestant Churches, would
have quite another significance in an age when the
very foundations of the most elementary faith are
overthrown. Even at that time they were exagger-
ated ; but, to do them justice, we must bear in mind
the exaggerations in the opposite direction, which had
to be refuted before it was possible to make any pro-
gress whatever in the study of theology.

I do not question that it was his anxiety to secure
the largest possible liberty to Christian thought,
which made Verny, for a time, the determined oppo-
nent of the great principle of the severance of Church
and State. He was afraid of premature action at a

VERNY AND R OBER TSON. 3 1 1

time when men's minds were so unsettled. He
preferred to keep the boundaries of the Church
still undefined, and to receive into it a mixed mul-
titude, whom he hoped to leaven gradually by the
influence of true teaching, rather than by a strict
definition of doctrines to separate the heterogeneous
elements. On this point he was mistaken, as the
course of events only too clearly proved. But his
great mind was not long held in the bonds of a preju-
dice unworthy of it. The course taken by events in
1848 led him to abandon his theory of national
religions, though he did not see it his duty to break
with the Church to which he belonged. This he him-
self stated to me in unmistakable terms. He showed
himself uniformly one of the most faithful and
ardent defenders of religious liberty. The indepen-
dence of the Church in relation to the civil authority
was with him a fundamental principle. I remember
well the hot indignation with which he stigmatised
the famous decrees which, in 1852, gave to the estab-
lished Protestant Church a new organisation, about
which it had not been properly consulted. " No one
is satisfied," he said to me, " except those who think of
nothing but eating and drinking." These words had, in
truth, a wider application than to the recent arbitrary
decision in ecclesiastical matters ; they characterised
the entire system and prevailing state of mind in a
country worn-out with repeated struggles for liberty,
and ready to seek repose in a state of sluggish ac-

312 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

quiescence. Verny denounced, in terms of un-
measured reproach, the promoters of the re-organisa-
tion of the Church by means of the civil power.
" Even in Russia," he said, " if a poor cure had pre-
pared in the dark such a clandestine blow, he would
have been overwhelmed with indignant protestations."
The vehement orator was careful to add, that he meant
nothing personal, but the dart remained none the less
rankling in the wound.

Verny has not anywhere given a full exposition of
his theological views. Apart from the distinction
between theology and religion, between dogmatism
and faith, on which he constantly insists, he contents
himself with a broad and admirable exposition of the
great truths of the faith, dwelling largely upon the
spirituality and high morality of the gospel, and
combating Pharisaism under all its disguises. Freedom
of action in God and in man is one of the points to
which he attaches most importance, in an age in-
clined to a pantheistic philosophy. He never repre-
sents pardon as the sum of salvation. To him,
salvation is the coming back to, and possessing God.
He is consumed with this holy longing ; and it is at
the foot of the cross that he finds the ever-flowing
spring of eternal life. There is an intense earnestness
about all his words. He believes firmly in the funda-
mental harmony between the needs of the soul and
the gospel — a harmony constantly broken by sin, but
restored by Jesus Christ. His noble sermon, " La

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 313

prophetie de la conscience," is a model of sound
apology. It breathes the very spirit of Pascal and
Vinet. His views on inspiration are remarkable for
their breadth, yet they do not detract anything from
the authority of Scripture, which, like that of the
Divine Master has nothing in common with the
pretensions of the Scribes and Pharisees.

It would be difficult to speak too strongly of Verny's
merits as a preacher, though he never rose to the very
highest rank of pulpit oratory. His was not the
splendid and impassioned eloquenceof AdolpheMonod,
nor the inexhaustible fulness of Vinet ; but his qualities
were nevertheless of rare eminence. His language,
without being too ornate, was always brilliant and
full of life, altogether free from conventionalism, and
characterised by a strong and manly simplicity. In
his sermons we find instruction and edification admir-
ably combined. The thinker was faithfully mirrored
in the preacher. All his sermons, though free from
technical formalities, were based upon a solid exegesis,
the thoughts being linked closely together by a
natural chain of argument. But over this substantial
framework was spread a strong and brilliant fabric
dexterously wrought of many colours. This is the
secret of all true preaching. The preacher must
come into close contact with his subject, grasping it
with all his force, or he will be sure to fall into endless
and wearisome repetitions, and into meditations which
are such in name only. Preaching, which is mediocre

3 H CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

through the mere negligence of the preacher, is painful
enough to hear; but it becomes a solemn mockery
when the special sanction of the Holy Spirit is
invoked upon it. It is generally under this form of
an appeal to direct inspiration, that indolence grants
itself a plenary indulgence. It ought to be well aware,
that only a few good souls accept the same view of it,
and that it is answerable before God for all the ennui
which becomes thus associated with holy things.

The sermons of Verny, which have been published
collectively, are perhaps rather edifying than consoling.
They rarely appeal to the feelings. The sorrows of the
heart — those only excepted which arise out of the
earnest search after truth — are allowed little place
in them. Must we gather that the great preacher
was disposed to take his stand among the optimists of
the Church ? Nothing could be farther from the truth.
If the minor key is seldom heard in these sermons,
this is accounted for by the choice of subjects. No
one had more earnest aspirations than Verny after
the realisation of that high ideal of holiness and love,
which Christianity holds up before us. All who were
present at the Pastoral Conferences in Paris, in the
year 185 1, can bear witness to this. Verny proposed
as the subject for discussion: "The interval which
exists between the gospel law and the Christian life of
our days." Never in the pulpit or elsewhere did I hear
him speak with more power than on this occasion.
It was more than eloquence, it was a sublime out-

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 3r5

pouring of the Christian conscience. He rebuked
with terrible irony, not sparing himself, all our incon-
sistencies, our moral cowardice, the poverty of our
dwarfed, cautious, worldly piety, which has nothing of
the grandeur of self-sacrifice, which has forgotten what
heroism with its divine follies means. He showed
how fatally easy it is to speak of the cross, to exalt it
without knowing what it is to bear it ; and to enlarge
in a facile way on the austere morality, the very essence
of which is the offering up of selfish ease. He asked
where are now to be found those extraordinary voca-
tions, which reveal the Spirit of God moving over the
sluggish waters of our existence, and preventing our
religious life from becoming a mere routine. He dwelt
upon the great duties of Christians towards the poor,
the sacred legacy of Christ to the Church, which she
has not truly accepted till she has emptied herself to
clothe the naked and to feed the hungry. I can only
reproduce in cold outline, that which Verny poured
forth with burning eloquence that day, when the depths
of his spirit were stirred within him. No sermon
ever touched me so much, or made me feel more self-
condemned. Nor did I ever see that assembly, com-
posed of such various elements, so moved as by one
impulse, and lifted for the moment to such a height
as to lose sight of its habitual differences. To all who
were present this was a moment never to be forgotten.
All Verny's great qualities as a Christian and as a
pastor, are conspicuous in his last sermon preached

3 1 6 CONTEMPORA R Y FOR TRAITS.

before the higher Consistory at Strasburg. It was
never finished, for he died in the pulpit like a valiant
soldier standing in the breach. With what breadth
of view he described the Church, which he regarded
not as some magical institution, existing apart from the
living faith of its members, but as a holy society of
men, united by the same faith, hope and love, that
they might have a fellowship of feeling and of action,
of repentance and worship, of joy and sorrow ; but,
above all, that they might carry on the work of
salvation among their fellowmen. With deep feeling
he dwelt on the motive which urges all Christians to
activity, the same compassion which " made the eye of
Jesus fill with tears, whenever He thought of the
multitudes scattered abroad as sheep having no shep-
herd." "If ever," he went on, "the Church should
descend to the level of a popular institution, instead
of being an argument in favour of the truth of God, it
would become a hindrance to the power of the gospel.
Instead of forcing men to cry, ' See how these Chris-
tians love one another,' it would lead them to
exclaim, ' See how worldly and carnal they have
become ! ": I know few passages finer than those in
which Verny dwells on the good and the evil which
may be the hidden motives of our religious activity.
He shows us the evil spirit that may be disguised
beneath " the doctor's hood, or the pastoral vestment ;
that may creep into the academic desk, whether
orthodox or heterodox — a spirit sometimes sombre,

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 317

sometimes sardonic, petrifying holy things in cut
and dried formularies, or seasoning them with insipid
pleasantries. This spirit mounts the pulpit stair
behind the preacher, and whispers in his ear to say
nothing that may startle his hearers, to play on their
feelings rather than on their conscience, to preach to
please men rather than God." It was just as the
preacher was describing, in living characters, the good
spirit — the spirit of love, of faith, of devotedness ; the
spirit which makes us realise the kingdom of God
upon earth, in humiliation, in poverty, in oppression,
it may be, but with the certainty that by-and-by we
shall realise it in the excellent glory, the eternal
blessedness of the presence of Christ in heaven — it
was at this moment that he fell as if struck by light-
ning, caught away from those who loved him, from
the Church, from his sphere of invaluable service, by
that sovereign and mysterious will, which teaches us
by such providences, that God is not dependent even
on His most faithful servants.

We may well believe that had Verny lived, he
would have been led, without abandoning his true
liberality, to take a more decided attitude in relation
to the negative school of our day, which is as daring
in speculative, as it is cautious in practical matters.
He would have rejoiced in the noble efforts of the
Lutheran Church in the sphere of practical activity
and philanthropy, while he could never have approved
that rigid adherence to old confessions which would

3 1 8 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRA ITS.

make the Reformation a lifeless mummy, instead of a
principle of progress and perpetual rejuvenescence
— that is to say, a Reformation continually carried on.

II.

The life of Robertson presents the same features of
spiritual conflict as that of Verny, only intensified by
the greater force and fervour of his nature. The in-
fluence of Robertson increases every day ; he stands
acknowledged as one of the greatest minds of the
age, and as the happy exponent of its best aspira-
tions. His theology is not exempt from the imper-
fections of a transition period. It should rather be
regarded as representing in its noblest phase an era
of deep religious agitation. Robertson's was one of
those intense and ardent souls which seem to bring
to a focus all the scattered rays in the surrounding
atmosphere. By this concentrated light we learn to
read not only the man, but the age ; hence the pecu-
liar interest attaching to such lives. The biography
of Robertson by Mr. Brooke opens to us a delightful
study of character. It is rich in extracts from the
correspondence of the great preacher, and reveals
throughout the heart and hand of a true friend. We
shall endeavour to characterise first the man, and then
his style and method as a writer and preacher.

Frederick Robertson was born in London, on
February 3rd, 18 16. His early wish was to follow his

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 319

father's profession, and enter the army. This was
more than a mere childish fancy for a red coat.
His energetic nature made him eager for a course
of manly activity and noble peril. His desire
was on the point of being fulfilled, for his com-
mission as a cavalry officer reached him a few days
after he had entered at Oxford. This step had been
taken by him, not only in obedience to the will of his
father, but also under a higher impulse, which coin-
cided with deep religious impressions. The sacrifice,
however, was very great ; and he retained through
life a deep and settled regret that he had not been
able to follow his first choice. His University course
was not brilliant. His individuality was too strongly
marked for him to reap the fruits of rapid culture ;
he came slowly to maturity. Depth is usually incom-
patible with brilliant facility at the decisive age of
moral and intellectual development. He appears,
however, to have profited largely by the noble clas-
sical studies which are the glory of England. To
these he owed the strength and vigour of his style.
Plato, the poet of metaphysics, the philosopher of the
ideal, and Aristotle, the incomparable analyst and
master of severe dialectics, were his favourite classic
authors. The influence of both is traceable in his
sermons, in which a subtle psychology is clothed
in images of singular beauty. At Oxford he led a
very secluded and serious life. His piety was deep
and fervent ; but he had not as yet formed any theo-

320 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

logical opinions of his own. He had accepted with-
out questioning the current doctrines of English
evangelicalism, and preached them with scrupulous
fidelity during the early years of his ministry at
Winchester. It was under this form that eternal
truth had been first apprehended by him, and he had
not as yet separated the form from the substance.
We shall see how severe was the struggle in which he
at length shook off the yoke of strict orthodoxy. In
order to understand aright this crisis in his life, we
must take a rapid survey of that English evangeli-
calism which exerted at the time so great an influ-
ence, and won such wide and, to a large extent, well
deserved respect. When, in connection with the
peculiar views of this religious party, we consider the
intellectual and moral idiosyncrasies of Robertson, we
shall easily understand how inevitable was the re-
version of feeling and opinion which cost him so
much suffering.

English evangelicalism was born of the great re-
awakening of faith and piety which, at the close of
the last century, shook off the lethargy of the Church,
and told with powerful effect upon the prevailing
infidelity of the age. The severe struggle against
Napoleon, in which England was engaged for so
many years, had also an influence favourable to the
revival of serious religion. The impulse thus given
produced magnificent results. The great evangelical
and missionary societies, among which the British

VERNY AND R OBER TSON. 32 1

and Foreign Bible Society occupies the first rank,
were founded within a few years, and wrought won-
ders, not the least of which was the inexhaustible
generosity by which these noble efforts were sus-
tained. Unhappily, this great progressive movement
took a practical direction only, and was not accom-
panied, as in the Reformation of the sixteenth cen-
tury, by a deep and powerful impetus in the domain
of thought. Hence it led, in the main at least, to a
lamentable theological narrowness, which only in-
creased as the first fervour of the Revival died
away.

It would be unjust to bring home this charge in-
discriminately to all the eminent men who lent their
support to the cause of evangelicalism. We could
easily refer to writings issuing from that school
which breathe a more liberal spirit, to preachers and
influential laymen, who were distinguished for a wise
and healthy tolerance of diversity. But, while we
would carefully guard against the injustice of passing
a sweeping condemnation without exception, it can-
not be denied that the prevailing doctrinal type in
what was called the Low Church (for we speak of this
only) was singularly cramped and meagre. It bor-
rowed all that was most dogmatic in the confessions
of the Reformation period, without reproducing the
logical vigour and theological breadth of the sixteenth
century. The Low Church theology took cognisance
only of immediate practical results, and made no pro-

322 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

vision for the demands of speculative or contemn
plative minds.

It was like the over-busy Martha, unable to com-
prehend the pre-occupied Mary, who sat at the
Master's feet and heard His word. Hence the severe
judgment passed by orthodox England upon Protest-
ant Germany, which she always suspected of heresy,
and whose science and philosophy awakened scruples
and suspicions, even before they had led to any dan-
gerous result. Simple faith, said the English evan-
gelicals, did not concern itself with all these things.
It was content with the good, sound doctrine which
it had received in the religious Revival, and was
absorbed in its propagation. This good and sound
doctrine unquestionably contained the essential truths
of Christianity: hence it was accompanied with a
sincere earnestness, and did a vast amount of good,
as we ourselves should be the first to own. But it
presented these truths under a very imperfect and
inadequate form, and it made the mistake of con-
founding this form with the gospel itself. It went on,
therefore, to proscribe all free inquiry which did not
coincide in its results with the credo of the Church.
Hence it formed a Church which was, on a small scale,
a garbled copy of the Church of Rome, claiming in-
fallibility in fact, though not in name, and equally
ready with its excommunications and denunciations.
This credo, of which there was no recognised formu-
lary, but which formed the basis of all the utterances

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 323

of the Low Church party, may be described in a few
words.

The plenary and literal inspiration of Scripture ;
expiation by the sufferings of the Son of God, en-
during all the pains of hell in our stead ; the imputa-
tion, purely external, of the sacrifice of the cross by a
faith doctrinal rather than mystical ; Sabbatarianism
of the strictest type ; and, as the top-stone of the sys-
tem, the predestination of a small number of elect
souls, and the often morbid development of millenna-
rian views — this was the framework of evangeli-
calism, animated and warmed, for the most part,
by a noble piety, but always and everywhere insisted
upon as the Alpha and Omega of Christianity.

To deviate from this was to break with the great
tradition of orthodoxy, which, it was asserted, had
been handed down from the earliest ages of Christi-
anity. That which the evangelicals preached was
emphatically salvation by a doctrine. Heaven must
be seen through this narrow loophole, or the soul was
declared to be in darkness, alienated from the divine
life, and an object of distrust and suspicion.

The evangelical school was, we repeat, admirable in
its practical Christianity; it cannot fail to command our
respect as we watch its operation in country parishes,
or among men and women animated with the purest
zeal in winning souls for Christ, and indefatigable in
their efforts to relieve the sufferings of their fellow-
men. Far be it from us to pronounce s^uch sweeping

324 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS,

condemnation upon the evangelicals as they are ever
ready to pronounce upon others. But we need not
extend the same forbearance to the violent and bitter
organs of this school in the religious press, nor can we
justify in any degree those intolerant polemics which
merely denounce all that in any way runs counter to
their prejudices ; or approve the clamour raised in
excited religious meetings, where the remonstrances
of conscience are drowned in party cries. It is neces-
sary for us to note this harsh and haughty attitude
assumed by some of the leaders of the party, in order
that we may do justice to the reaction provoked by
it. Their ignorance was on a par with their vehe-
mence. One of the most eminent representatives of
strict English orthodoxy, was one day branding in
the most severe terms the whole modern theology of
Germany, in the presence of the illustrious Tholuck.
He quietly asked if the speaker was acquainted with
German theology except by hearsay. The reply was
a frank avowal that he knew nothing of that which he
so severely condemned, and a confession of the un-
fairness of such a judgment. A similar act of humili-
ation would well become the columns of the Record
and many another blatant organ of the same opinions.
It will be easily understood how this blending of
intolerance and ignorance on the highest and most
legitimate themes of Christian thought, would be
likely to exasperate beyond measure young and
generous minds, to make them impatient of all human

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 325

systems, and disgusted with the odium theologicum
which would vent its spleen in such narrow judgments.
If we now look at Robertson as he was when he
entered on the clerical office, we shall see at once
that it could not be long before the ties which bound
him to the evangelical party would be broken. He
had accepted the first system of vital Christianity
which presented itself to him, but he had accepted it,
as a whole, without careful examination. He had
simply laid hold of the saving truths which it con-
tained. The germ of a higher spiritual development
was already implanted within him. His mind,
enamoured of Plato and Aristotle, took a speculative
turn, and he necessarily applied this powerful ana-
lytical instrument to traditional beliefs. His fondness
for speculative and metaphysical studies might have
become a snare to him, if the moral principle had not
been at the same time so vigorous. It was this which
soon made the narrowness of orthodoxy intolerable to
him. On the day of his consecration (July 12, 1840)
all present noticed how pale and trembling he was.
His was not one of those self-satisfied natures, which
lightly take up the burden of the ministry, with the
formulary on their lips that divine grace is all-suf-
ficient. It is, indeed, all-sufficient, but only where
the whole heart is surrendered to its influence. " Cor
meurn sicut immolatum tibi offei'o? This, which was
Calvin's motto, might truly be said to be Robertson's
also.. He writes at this period : " Every day con-

326 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

vinces me more and more that there is one thing, and
but one, on earth worth living for — and that is, to do
God's work and gradually grow in conformity to His
image, by mortification, and self-denial, and prayer." l

Robertson knew the secret sorrows of soul conflict,
and he adopted voluntarily ascetic habits of life as a
process of self-discipline. We find in his journal the
following prayer, in which all others centred : " Bring
into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.
Take what I cannot give — my heart, body, thoughts,
time, abilities, money, health, strength, nights, days,
youth, age — and spend them in Thy service, O my
crucified Master, Redeemer, God ! Oh, let not these
be mere words ! Whom have I in heaven but Thee ?
And there is none upon earth that I desire in com-
parison of Thee. My heart is athirst for God, for the
living God. When shall I come and appear before
God? "2

It was in this spirit that he passed the first year of his
ministry, devoting himself unreservedly to the duties
of his office. The consciousness of his shortcomings,
in view of the ideal he had set before himself, was
often so overpowering that he longed to die, though
he was deeply beloved by his flock, especially by
the humbler and poorer portion, to whom he chiefly
devoted himself. His deep melancholy struck Dr.
Malan, in an interview which Robertson had with him

1 " Life and Letters," vol. i. p. 6i. s Ibid. p. 66.

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 327

at Geneva, when he was compelled to travel on the
continent for the sake of his health. This eloquent
apostle of the assurance of salvation in the juridical
sense, said to him : " My dear brother, you will have a
sorrowful life and a sorrowful ministry." " It may be
so," Robertson writes ; " but present peace is of but
little consequence. If we sin we must be miserable ;
but if we be God's own, that misery will not last long:
misery for sin is better worth having than peace."1

From Winchester, Robertson removed to Chelten-
ham, in January, 1841. His great gifts as an orator,
of which we shall presently speak more fully, now
began to attract much attention. He was never am-
bitious of a facile popularity, and rebuked unsparingly
the worldliness of a fashionable resort.

" It gave me pleasure," he writes, "to hear that what
I said on Sunday had been felt, not that it had been
admired." We find in his papers a sort of pledge
made with himself, which gives us a glimpse into the
deep earnestness of his soul, and shows also that his
theological views were already beginning to waver.

"Resolves. To speak less of self and think less. To
try to despise the principle of the day — ' every man his
own trumpeter ' — and to feel it a degradation to speak
of my own doings as a poor braggart. To be systematic
in visiting, and to make myself master of some system
of questions for ascertaining the state of the poor.

1 " Life and Letters," vol. i. pp. 82, 83.

328 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

To aim at more concentration of thought. To per-
form rigorously the examen of conscience. To try
to fix my thoughts in prayer without distraction. To
listen to conscience, instead of, as Pilate did, to intel-
lect. To try to fix attention on Christ, rather than on
tJie doc trifles of Christ."*

From this time, the humanity of Christ fills a pro-
minent place in Robertson's meditations. We feel
that the icy veil of a traditional scholasticism has
fallen, and he has come face to face with the living
Saviour. We find these significant words in a letter
to an afflicted friend :

" I feel that sympathy from man, in sorrow such as
yours, is almost mockery. None can feel it, and cer-
tainly none soothe it, except the man Christ Jesus,
whose infinite bosom echoes back every throb of yours.
To my own heart, that marvellous fact of God enduing
Himself with a human soul of sympathy is the most
precious, and the one I could least afford to part with,
of all the invigorating doctrines which everlasting
truth contains. That Christ feels now what we feel —
our risen, ascended Lord — and that He can impart
to us in our fearful wrestlings all the blessedness of
His sympathy, is a truth which, to my soul, stands
almost without a second. I do pray that in all its
fulness this may be yours — a truth to rest and live
upon."2

1 " Life and Letters," vol. i. p. ioo. 2 Ibid. p. 102.

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 329

Words like these show how far removed was
Robertson's faith from the barren dogmatism in which
Jesus only occupies a chapter or a paragraph in the
development of the system. A ray of fresh light has
fallen, kindling to a glow the cold metaphysics of the
Councils of the fourth century. This inspiration of
the heart bears within it the germ of a new and fuller
theology ; but Robertson will only come to apprehend
this through much anguish of soul.

The paltry and irritating discussions in relation to
the Puseyite movement, which agitated the religious
world of Cheltenham, did much to hasten his enfran-
chisement from the fetters of party. On a subject of
this kind, narrowness and bigotry find full scope ;
and it is then seen how much pettiness and malice
may lurk under a piety otherwise sincere. Everything
seems legitimate in what is called the good cause.
Slander may use its tongue unrebuked, when those
who are to be injured are the enemies of the Lord.
The noble banner of the gospel is trailed in the dust.
Religious discussion in a small town generally leads
to gossip and ends in bitter personalities. Each in-
dividual is classed and labelled by the spirit of party,
and the transition is fatally easy from the infinitely
great to the infinitely small. We can well imagine
what a noble mind would feel in this stifling atmo-
sphere, and with what deep disgust a man like Robert-
son would listen to the miserable squabbles on a subject
which, however important in itself, has been so de-

\i

330 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

graded by the littleness of its advocates, as to be hope-
lessly compromised. Robertson's biographer says :
" His conception of Christianity, as the religion of just
and loving tolerance, and of Christ, as the King of men
through the power of meekness, made him draw back
with horror from the violent and blind denunciation
which the 'religious' agitators and the 'religious' papers
of the extreme portion of the evangelical party in-
dulged in under the cloak of Christianity. ' They tell
lies,' he said, ' in the name of God ; others tell them
in the name of the devil — that is the only difference.' "J

Under this impression he detached himself gradually
from the Recordite party, a step to which he was also
impelled by his recent theological studies, into which
he had entered with a new spirit of free inquiry.
With his ardent and conscientious nature this inquiry
could not be carried on without much anguish of soul.
There came a moment when his faith seemed to be
crumbling to the very base. Happily the rock — his
moral life — escaped unharmed. Feeling that he could
not preach in such a state of mind, he sought leave
of absence, and it was among the mountains of the
Tyrol that the darkest hours of his spiritual history
were passed. He has described to us, as none other
could, this terrible phase of his experience; We will
give it in his own words :

" It is an awful moment when the soul begins to

1 "Life and Letters," vol. i. p. 108.

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 331

find that the props on which it has blindly rested so
long are, many of them, rotten, and begins to suspect
them all ; when it begins to feel the nothingness of
the many traditionary opinions which have been
received with implicit confidence, and in that horrible
insecurity begins also to doubt whether there be any-
thing to believe at all. It is an awful hour — let him
who has passed through it say how awful — when this
life has lost its meaning, and seems shrivelled into a
span ; when the grave appears to be the end of all,
human goodness nothing but a name, and the sky
above this universe a dead expanse, black with the
void from which God Himself has disappeared. In
that fearful loneliness of spirit, when those who should
have been his friends and counsellors only frown upon
his misgivings, and profanely bid him stifle doubts,
which for aught he knows may arise from the fountain
of truth itself; to extinguish, as a glare from hell, that
which, for aught he knows, may be light from heaven,
and everything seems wrapped in hideous uncertainty,
I know but one way in which a man may come forth
from his agony scatheless ; it is by holding fast to those
things which are certain still — the grand, simple land-
marks of morality. In the darkest hour through
which a human soul can pass, whatever else is doubt-
ful, this at least is certain. If there be no God and
no future state, yet even then it is better to be
generous than selfish, better to be chaste than licen-
tious, better to be true than false, better to be brave

332 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

than to be a coward. Blessed beyond all earthly
blessedness is the man who, in the tempestuous
darkness of the soul, has dared to hold fast to these
venerable landmarks. Thrice blessed, because his
night shall pass into clear, bright day. I appeal to
the recollection of any man who has passed through
that hour of agony, and stood upon the rock at last,
the surges stilled below him, and the last cloud drifted
from the sky above, with a faith, and hope, and trust
no longer traditional, but of his own — a trust which
neither earth nor hell shall shake thenceforth for
ever." x

Robertson had chosen the true method for recover-
ing a genuine faith. By holding fast those moral
certainties which we have no right ever to allow to be
shaken, he kept in his hands the indestructible cable
which would raise him again out of the abyss. It
mattered little that the vessel in which he had till
then sailed, went to pieces in the storm ; the ship-
wrecked mariner came safe to land. Had he once
been untrue to conscience, he would have perished
miserably, for he would have let go the rope — the one
means of escape. When we have once lost the sense
of a certainty within which can never be shaken,
the soul has nothing to hold by, and is drifted hither
and thither on the desert strand, like seaweed without
root. So long as conscience asserts itself, we have an

1 " Life and Letters," vol. i. pp. hi, 112.

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 333

inward witness for the divine, and when the divine
is again presented to us we are able to grasp it.
Robertson often dwelt on this thought, so fully veri-
fied in his own experience. Writing from Heidelberg
to a friend, he says : " Some things I am certain of;
and these are my Ursacken, which cannot be taken
away from me. I have got so far as this : moral
goodness and moral beauty are realities, lying at the
basis and beneath all forms of the best religious
expressions. They are no dream, and they are not
mere utilitarian conveniences. That suspicion was an
agony once. It is passing away. After finding little-
ness where I expected nobleness, and impurity where
I thought there was spotlessness, again and again I
despaired of the reality of goodness. But in all that
struggle I am thankful to say the bewilderment never
told upon my conduct." l

Robertson was not content with keeping a firm
hold of the axioms of conscience. He boldly faced
the investigation of the questions which troubled
him and, like Verny, he went to Germany. Timid
believers seek to stifle doubt by a practical exercise
of faith, and flee scientific inquiry as they would the
plague. They do not see that in this way they put
unbelief in the place of doubt ; for the man who is
afraid of his own thoughts, and dares not look scien-
tific objections in the face, is an unbeliever. It is by

1 " Life and Letters," vol. i. p. 121.

\J

334 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

the strangest perversion that the stultification of the
mind can be mistaken for sanctification, and that the
abnegation of intelligence can be supposed to be a
Christian virtue. There are pious ignorant people ;
but ignorance is not in itself pious. It is an outrage
to Christianity to make it appear that it cannot bear
the free air, and still less the stormy wind, of heaven
to blow on it. Christianity is the stalwart oak, which
can give ample shelter to all the birds of heaven, and
must not be treated like the tender exotic of the hot-
house. The fear of German theology, so often ex-
pressed in the camp of extreme orthodoxy, is not a
scruple of faith, but a leaven of unbelief and a
cowardly distrust of the truth.

Robertson's stay in Heidelberg did him good. He
came back confirmed, not indeed in his attachment to
evangelicalism, but in his Christian convictions. In
the absolute holiness of Jesus Christ he found more
and more the perfect realisation of the ideal of his
conscience. Thus he became himself again, and his
religious character acquired the strength and settled-
ness which belong only to a man who has thoroughly
tested his beliefs. His closer acquaintance with
Germany — the classic ground of Christian learning —
was of much advantage to him. There he found, side
by side with the representatives of the boldly specu-
lative school, which made the negation of conscience
their starting-point, another school, full of religious
vigour combined with a large-hearted liberality, pre-

VERNY AND ROBER TSON. 335

pared to treat religious questions without any bias of
party, aiming in the midst of much obscurity at a
salutary reformation of evangelical theology, and !
anxious above all things to introduce a moral ele- |
ment into religious speculation. This was the very
thing which Robertson sought — the eternal substance
of Christianity under an enlarged form. He might |
then abandon the formularies which were so painful
to him, and recognise that they were human and
transitory. It was no longer necessary to shut his
eyes in order not to see fatal objections. These
objections only applied to a particular theology, and
did not affect the essence of Christianity. Great as
was the light which the young preacher thus received
at Heidelberg, he did not commit himself to any
school. He was not to be, like many others, the mere
translator of Germany ; he was to represent the
aspirations of modern theology in his own way, and
in harmony with the needs of his own country.

On his return to England, he was appointed pastor
of the church of St. Ebbe's, Oxford. He was now
a married man and the father of a family, and the
slender income of his parish was insufficient for their
maintenance. He feared, too, that in this position he
would be obliged to mix himself up, more than he
wished, with the ecclesiastical squabbles overPuseyism ;
and it was his great desire not to be in any way a
party man. We cannot but regret, however, that he
did not continue to preach in that seat of learning.

336 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

He was singularly adapted for preaching and teaching
in a University town, though he always fulfilled his
humbler pastoral duties with unflagging devotion.
Perhaps he might have found more helpers in this
learned city, and his life might not have been short-
ened, as it was, by excessive toil. He made his mark
at Oxford as everywhere else, though his stay there
was so short ; and he was deeply regretted when he
left St. Ebbe's for Trinity Chapel, Brighton. Here
he reached his highest development, both of genius
and character. Here also he endured the bitterest
experience of moral isolation. A secret presentiment
warned him of the trials which awaited him. Never-
theless, he felt it his duty not to refuse the reiterated
invitations, and in the year 1847 ne took UP ^ls
residence at Brighton.

He found much to sustain and compensate him
under the manifold trials of his life, in the splendid
site of the town. He was a passionate lover of
nature ; the view of the sea and its solemn sound
were to him sources of exquisite delight, which he
describes in his own marvellous language. Robertson
reached at this period the full maturity of his moral
]/ and intellectual nature. His correspondence, and the
recollections of his friends, help us to appreciate to
some extent the wealth of his mental resources and
his powerful originality. x

1 See especially chap. vii. vol. i. of the " Life and Letters."

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 337

He belonged to the order of minds which have an
intuition so intense and keen that it amounts to
positive suffering. The poetic faculty is, in such
natures, a sort of clairvoyance ; it is like faith, the
vivid realisation of things unseen, only it does not
deal exclusively with the invisible things of eternity.
It apprehends that which lies hidden beneath super-
ficial semblances, and sees, unveiled, those elements
of the awful and the sublime which underlie all life,
but which vulgar minds never recognise except in
those sudden convulsions when the subterranean
fire bursts forth, so to speak, in molten lava. Such
sensitiveness brings exquisite suffering to those
who are endued with it ; if it intensifies the joys,
it adds a double poignancy to all the sorrows of
life.

Men in whom imagination predominates over the
moral life, generally find a sort of selfish consolation
in the mere rendering of their vivid impressions in
eloquent and poetic forms. Literary glory and the
delights of art amply compensate them for the pain of
a too exquisite sensibility. But it is not so with those
to whom the moral life is everything, and who live for
God. In their case, the God-like compassion which
they feel for their fellow-creatures, is painfully inten-
sified by the vividness with which they realise all their
difficulties and perplexities. This is the secret of the
sublime melancholy of Pascal, and of the strong relief
in which all the figures, especially those of a sorrowful

23

338 CONTEMPORARY POR**^ J"*

cast, stand out on his powerful pages. Robertson
belongs wholly to the same order of mind. His
fervid language seems the outpouring of a heart con-
sumed with a holy fire ; it was his nature to realise
the difficulties of others with an intensity that became
an agony to himself.

" My misfortune or happiness," he says, " is power
of sympathy. I can feel with the Brahmin, the
Pantheist, the Stoic, the Platonist, the Transcend-
entalist, perhaps the Epicurean. I can suffer with
I the Tractarian tenderly shinking from the gulf
blackening before him ... I can also agonise with
the infidels, &c." i

This temperament was at once the bane of his life
and the source of his power as a writer and speaker.
It made him realise, in all their bitterness, the suffer-
ings of humanity ; it gave a terrible poignancy to all
his mental struggles, and magnified the misconcep-
tions and unjust judgments passed upon him into
actual torture to his over- wrought sensitiveness. His
sufferings were unquestionably morbidly acute, and
brought his life to an untimely close. Every sermon
that he preached cost him some of his heart's best
blood. But the anguish was not unrelieved. We
should do injustice to Robertson's nature and school
of thought, if we did not recognise that, with his ever-
growing faith and deepening love, the sacred joys of

1 " Life and Letters," vol. i. p. 183.

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 339

his heart and mind were such as meaner souls can
never know. And surely, even in our day, there are
many who would still make Achilles' choice, and deem
it better to live much in the highest sense than to
live long.

Robertson's strong feelings did not expend them-
selves merely in sympathy. Cowardice, hypocrisy, vice
of any kind, stirred him to vehement indignation,
and his language when rebuking them burst forth, to
use his own expression, like liquid fire. He could also
exercise at times a severe self-repression. He was
one of those strong men who regard effusiveness as a
sign of weakness. A pressure of the hand and a look
convey more to such than any sentimental demon-
strations by speech or action. It was this power of
repression which gave such strength and simplicity to
Robertson's style, and such concentration of thought,
illumined by the flashes of a vivid imagination. He
had always a horror of mere excitement, as so easily
mistaken for the reality of piety and devotion. He
knew that Christianity was like a marvellous musical
instrument, which can be made to give forth exquisite
harmonies under the touch of the skilful player ; but
he felt, too, how easy it is to practise self-deception
under such influences, and to talk much of Christian
heroism without bringing it to bear on the daily life.
There is an illusive poetry of the cross. It is far
more easy to sing about it than to carry it. Robert-
son was fully alive to this danger. He knew but too

X

340 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

well that preaching, however tender and forcible, was
but as a tinkling cymbal, unless it reached the springs
of the life. He says :

" Nothing is more dangerous than the command
of a pen which can write correct sentiments, such as
might befit a martyr or an angel. And the danger is,
that the confusion between a commonplace life and
that of an angel or a martyr is hopeless. For, when
the same sublimities proceed from both, who is to con-
vince us that we are not beatified martyrs or holy
angels? . . . How dare I talk of sacrifice? And how
little there is of it in my life! one perpetual succession
of enjoyments ! It has often struck me that Christ
never suffered sentimentalisms to pass without a
matter-of-fact testing of what they were worth and of
what they meant." l

Robertson dreaded the intoxication of success, and
had a horror of becoming a fashionable preacher.

"If you knew," he wrote to a friend, "how sick at
heart I am with the whole work of parle-ment, talkee,
palaver, or whatever else it is called ; how lightly I hold
the 'gift of the gab ;' how grand and divine the realm
of silence seems to me in comparison ; how humiliated
and degraded to the dust I have felt in perceiving
myself quietly taken by gods and men for the popular
preacher of a fashionable watering-place ; how slight
the power seems to me to be given by it of winning

Lf " Life and Letters," vol. ii. p. 194.

VERNY A ND ROBER TSON. 34 1

souls ; and how sternly I have kept my tongue
from saying a syllable or a sentence, in pulpit or on
platform, because it would be popular." l

This asceticism, which was such a safeguard to a
brilliant nature like Robertson's, was perfectly com-
patible with great breadth of general culture. He
delighted in all that was noble and true in art and
literature, as well as in nature, connected himself
with every great social and political movement of the
age, and indulged the high ambition of bringing
every thought into captivity to the obedience of
Christ. In his correspondence we find him passing
from a fine description of a sunset at sea, to a subtle
analysis of a drama of Shakespeare or a poem of
Wordsworth ; taking up questions of popular educa-
tion or philosophy, but ever reverting to his great
theme, the truths of Christian theology and ethics.
Unity underlies all the variety — one spirit runs through
all his thoughts. He is not the austere representative
of a mummified tradition, or of clerical authority ; he
does not play the farce of an imperturbable assurance ;
but his influence is all the greater, because it is derived
purely from his moral qualities.

His correspondence gives us in his own words the
broad outlines of his too brief ministry at Brighton.
He devoted himself by preference to the humbler
members of his church, thus he became the cherished

" Life and Letters," vol. i. p. 196.

342 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

friend of the poor and the suffering. He had too clear
an insight into the conditions of the age not to under-
stand that the social question was one of supreme
importance, and that the practical solution of it must
be sought primarily in the better education of the
working classes. The Revolution of 1848, which
occurred soon after his settlement at Brighton, con-
firmed him in his wise and generous determination to
devote himself unsparingly to the cause of popular
education. He took a very active part in the founda-
tion of a Working Men's Institute with a library
and public lectures, and by this means he exercised a
most happy influence over the artisans of the town,
with whom, however, he never hesitated to break a
lance when necessary. He vigorously opposed the
attempt to introduce bad books into the library.

Robertson greatly offended the Tories by speaking
with what they considered an irreverent candour of
the beginnings of royalty, in a course of expositions of
the Book of Samuel. It might well be supposed that
he would have little sympathy with the narrow Con-
servatism which, at the critical times of the nation's
history, fell into a state of imbecile terror and had
nothing but resistance to offer to aspirations however
legitimate. Of this futile policy Robertson wrote :

"What has ever made democracy dangerous but
Conservatism ? The French Revolution ! Socialism !
Why, men seem to forget that these things come out
of Toryism, which forced the people into madness !

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 343

What makes rivers and canals overflow ? The deep
channel cut ever deeper, or the dam put across by-
wise people to stop them ? " I

Robertson was repeatedly accused of Socialism : he
scorned to refute the foolish calumny. Nothing could
be more opposed to the general tenor of his teaching
than Utopian schemes, the very basis of which was
the extinction of individuality and the suppression of
liberty. He was none the less anxious to bring the
various classes of society nearer to each other, by the
operation of that true practical charity, the first prin-
ciple of which is respect for the poor.

" I knew a young lady," he says, " who used to go

down to and lecture the poor people upon their

dirt and uncomfortable habits and houses, and — hear
it heaven and earth ! — they did not repent of their evil
ways, and reform at the voice of that angelic visita-
tion ! It is just possible that, never having seen clean-
liness or comfort, they did not know what she wanted
them to aim at or how to begin. Mrs. Fry would
have bought them a bit of soap, and washed a child's
fingers with her own hands as a specimen, and drawn
out a little set of rules, and paraded the family once
a week, half in fun, half good-humoured ly, to see that
her orders were obeyed ; and she would have gone on
for a year, and if at the end of a year she saw a little
dawn of improvement, she would have thanked God

1 " Life and Letters," vol. i. p. 150.

(J

344 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRA ITS.

and taken courage. But fine young ladies think that
an elegant cut of a riding-whip through the air in the
last Belgravian fashion is to electrify a Celtic village,
and convert a whole population of savages to civilised
tastes and English habits. The patient drudgery
which does God's work, however, is not learned in
Belgrave Square. Well, the aristocracy of the next
world will be the Frys, the Chisholms, and the people
who do not care for being smart, and are not afraid,
like their Master, to ' lay their hands' upon the
wretches whom they would rescue." l

Socialism was not, however, the main charge brought
against Robertson. His bold and uncompromising
preaching came into constant collision with the
opinions of the current orthodoxy, though he never
went beyond the categorical statement of his views.
Thus, while vast crowds still thronged to hear him, he
was painfully conscious of moral isolation ; and as
time went on this feeling became increasingly bitter
and hard to bear.

" Of one thing," he writes, " I have become distinctly
conscious — that my motto for life, my whole heart's
expression is, "None but Christ ; ' not in the (so-called)
evangelical sense, which I take to be the sickliest cant
that has appeared since the Pharisees bare record to
the gracious words which He spake, and then tried to
cast Him headlong from the hill at Nazareth ; but in

1 " Life and Letters," vol. ii. p. 154.

VERNY AND ROBERTSON . 345

a deeper, real sense — the mind of Christ ; to feel as
He felt ; to judge the world and to estimate the
world's maxims, as He judged and estimated. This
is the one thing worth living for. To realise that, is
to feel ' None but Christ.' But then, in proportion as
a man does that he is stripping himself of garment
after garment, till his soul becomes naked of that
which once seemed part of himself. He is not only
giving up prejudice after prejudice, but also renouncing
sympathy after sympathy with friends whose smile
and approbation were once his life, till he begins to
suspect that he will be very soon alone with Christ.
More awful than I can express. To believe that and
still press on, is what I mean by the sentence ' None
but Christ.' I do not know that I can express all I
mean, but sometimes it is to me a sense almost
insupportable of silence and stillness and solitariness."1

These sentiments are expressed with a force, bor-
dering on coarseness, in the following words :

" In proportion as I adore Christ (and I do think
my whole soul thrills and trembles at the thought of
Him, when I understand, or fancy I understand Him,
and feel my own heart acquiescing in His life and
views of life and God, and acknowledging them to be
revelations), exactly in that proportion do I abhor
evangelicalism. I feel more at brotherhood with a
deranged, mistaken, maddened, sinful Chartist, than I

1 "Life and Letters," vol. i. p. 154.

346 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

do with that religious world which has broken popery
into a hundred thousand fragments, and made every
fragment an entire, new, infallible Pope, dealing out
quietly and cold-bloodedly the flames of the next
world upon all heretics who dispute their dictum, in
compensation for the loss of the power which their
ancestor by spiritual descent pleasingly exercised, of
dispensing the flames of this world. Luckily, the
hope remains that they are not plenipotentiaries of
the place with which they seem so familiar. More
and more, day by day, one's soul feels itself alone with
God, and resolved to listen for His voice alone in the
deeps of the spirit." l Robertson was manifestly
unjust in thus implicating the whole of a great reli-
gious party in the blame which really attached only to
some of its leaders. But upon these the rebuke falls
with no undue severity.

The incidents in Robertson's life are few and un-
important ; its dramatic interest lies in the inward
conflict, which was incessantly renewed. However
keenly wounded in his deepest affections, he made
no sign of suffering ; his soul was too proud, too
noble to betray its secret anguish. His sermons give
scarcely any indication of the conflicts within ; few
could guess how deeply agitated was the soul that
could express itself with such quiet strength. Yet
even' word was perfectly sincere ; the calmness was

1 "Life and Letters," vol. i. p. 158.

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 347

no mere mask, it was a manly self-conquest. He
was like the young Spartan who kept a quiet face
while the wild beast was gnawing at his vitals, and
would have deemed it dishonour to betray his agony.
The publication of Robertson's life was, therefore, a
revelation to the readers of his sermons. It showed
how much every sermon had cost him. It is a most
interesting study to place the sermons side by side
with his private correspondence. This we shall
attempt to do before pronouncing our final opinion
upon him as a theologian and a preacher.

Some of the organs of an implacable bigotry, which
persecuted him with their unfair representations of
his teaching, called forth from him repeated outbursts
of indignation. Of one of these periodicals he said :

" The Record has done me the honour to abuse
me for some time past ; for which I thank them
gratefully. God forbid they should ever praise me !
One article alone contained four unscrupulous lies
about me, on no better evidence than that some one
had told them who had been told by somebody
else. They shall have no disclaimer from me. If
the Record can put a man down, the sooner he is
put down the better. . . . The evangelicalism, so
called, of the Record, is an emasculated one, snarling
at all that is better than itself, cowardly, lying, and
slanderous. It is not worth while to stop your horse
and castigate it, for it will be off yelping, and come
back to snarl. An evangelical clergyman admitted

348 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

some proof I had given him of the Record's cowardice
and dishonesty, but said : ' Well, in spite of that, I
like it, because it upholds the truth, and is a great
witness for religion.' ' So,' said I, ' is that the creed of
evangelicalism ? A man may be a liar, a coward,
and slanderous, and still uphold the truth ! " J

The attacks against Robertson became more and
more numerous. He would often be visited in his
study on Monday by persons with long, alarmed
faces, who seemed, however, well satisfied with them-
selves for having been so shocked. These benevolent
censors found exquisite consolation in expressing
their fears for him with many ominous shakings of
the head. Sometimes his patience failed under the
ordeal, especially when he felt that the attack was as
malicious as it was ignorant. One Monday morning
a solemn gentleman introduced himself as having been
of great service to young clergymen. He arraigned
the sermon he had heard in Trinity Chapel the day
before : spoke of the dangerous views and the im-
petuosity of young men ; offered himself as a weekly
monitor, and enumerated, in conclusion, the perils and
inconveniences to which popular preachers were sub-
ject. Mr. Robertson, who had remained silent, at last
rose. " Really, Sir," he said sternly, " the only incon-
venience I have experienced in being what you are
pleased to call me, a popular preacher, is intrusion,

1 " Life and Letters," vol. ii. p. 128.

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 349

like the present." And he bowed his censor out of
the room. He had recognised instinctively in his
visitor the malice prepense of an implacable bigotry.

The lady theologians who pronounce sentences
against which there is no appeal, and who promulgate
with touching eagerness, the decrees of excommuni-
cation issued in orthodox circles, greatly annoyed and
wearied Robertson. They were always accusing him
of neology, a convenient and elastic word to be used
by those ignorant persons who regard science as the
smoke of the abyss. He was also accused of German
theology, and this was a grave cause of suspicion to
those who were strongly inclined to believe that truth
is English and the devil German. These absurdities
were of no real importance, but they set on foot mis-
representations which had the painful effect of aliena-
ting from Robertson many upright and pious souls, for
whom, in spite of the unintentional injustice, he still
retained a deep love and respect. The sense of moral
isolation is always peculiarly painful to men of Robert-
son's temperament ; and he felt it in even an exagger-
ated degree. He learnt great lessons, however, in this
severe school. His sermons on the kingdom of truth,
and on the Loneliness of Christ, give us, in a matured
form, the fruit of these bitter but salutary expe-
riences. Though he did not know Vinet, he vindi-
cated with an eloquence almost equal to that of the
author of " Les convictions religieuses," the inalien-
able claims of truth, and its purely moral power, which

350 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

does not derive its support from might or authority
or from mere force of argument, but which appeals
to the heart and conscience, and requires to be
received with uprightness and with the resolve to
bring the life into agreement with the doctrine.
Robertson, in his sermon on the scepticism of Pilate,
truly represents false authority as a principle of doubt.
He says :

" Fanaticism and scepticism — these are the two
results which come from all claims to infallibility and
all prohibition of inquiry. They make bigots of the
feeble-minded who cannot think ; cowardly bigots,
who, at the bidding of their priests or ministers, swell
the ferocious cry which forces a government, or a
judge, or a bishop, to persecute some opinion which
they fear and hate ; turning private opinion into civil
crime : and they make sceptics of the acute intellects
which, like Pilate, see. through their fallacies, and, like
Pilate too, dare not publish their misgivings.

" And it matters not in what form that claim to in-
fallibility is made ; whether in the clear consistent
way in which Rome asserts it, or whether in the in-
consistent way in which churchmen make it for
their church, or religious bodies for their favourite
opinions ; wherever penalties attach to a conscientious
conviction, be they penalties of the rack and flame, or
the penalties of being suspected, and avoided, and
slandered, and the slur of heresy affixed to the name,
till all men count him dangerous, lest they too should

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 351

be put out of the synagogue — and let every man who
is engaged in persecuting any opinion ponder it —
these two things must follow, you make fanatics, and
you make sceptics ; believers you cannot make." I

In his sermon on the Loneliness cf Christ, the bitter
anguish of a loving heart, when it feels itself alone in
the midst of its fellows, is described with a power and
pathos which rise to the height of true poetry :

" It is a solemn thing, doubtless, to be apart from
men, and to feel eternity rushing by like an arrowy
river. But the solitude of Christ was the solitude of
a crowd. In that single human bosom dwelt the
thought which was to be the germ of the world's
life : a thought unshared, misunderstood, or rejected.
Can we not feel the grandeur of those words, when
the Man, reposing in His solitary strength, felt the
last shadow of perfect isolation pass across his soul :
1 My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me ' ? " 2

Robertson describes no less impressively the in-
effable joy found even in solitude by the soul, when it
can exclaim : " Yet I am not alone, for the Father is
with me." He characterised very happily his peculiar
mission in its noble and in its painful aspect, perhaps,
also, in its incompleteness, when he said :

" I believe the path in which I work is the true pass
across the mountains, though the thought and the
hand of the master engineer are wanting to make it a

1 " Sermons," First Series, pp. 298, 299.

2 Ibid. pp. 229, 230.

352 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

road broad and safe for the people and the multitude
to travel in." l

Such was he indeed — the one to go first down a
steep and slippery descent, a pioneer in the path of
progress. He was never to know the joy of march-
ing on with the great body of the army to the thrilling
strains of martial music. The danger to one in such
a position is that of becoming self-absorbed and es-
tranged from sympathy with his fellows — a mischief
far more serious than that of being excommunicated
by a narrow party spirit. Robertson escaped this
greater evil, and retained through life a generous
breadth of heart and mind.

" It is really time, now," he wrote, " after eighteen
centuries, that we should get some better conception
than we have of what Christianity is. If we could but
comprehend the manifested Life of God, Christ in His
earthly career, how He looked on things, and felt and
thought, what He hated and what He pitied, we might
have some chance of agreement. As it is, I suppose
we shall go on biting and devouring one another, and
thinking — alas ! for the mockery ! — that we have real-
ised a kingdom of God upon earth. To understand the
life and spirit of Christ appears to me to be the only
chance of remedy ; but we have got doctrines about
Christ instead of Christ ; and we call the bad meta-
physics of evangelicalism the gospel, and the tem-

1 "Life and Letters/' vol. ii. p. 185.

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 353

porary, transitory forms of Tractarianism the Church.
To know Him, the power of His resurrection, and the
fellowship of His sufferings, that is all in all ; and if
the death and life of Christ are working in a man, he
is our brother, whether Tractarian or Evangelical, if
we could but believe that very simple proposition." r

We find this idea dwelt upon at length in the ser-
mon on the Dispensation of the Spirit. Starting from
the same standpoint as Vinet in his noble discourse
on the invisible Christ, Robertson says :

" The outward humanity is. to disappear, that the
inward union may be complete. . . . For this reason
the ascension was necessary before Pentecost could
come. The Spirit was not given, we are told, because
Jesus was not yet glorified. It was necessary for the
Son to disappear as an outward authority, in order that
He might reappear as an inward principle of life.
Our salvation is no longer God manifested in a 'Christ
without us, but as a Christ within us, the hope of glory.'
. . . The operation of this Spirit of God creates a
living unity — spiritual not formal ; not sameness, but
manifoldness. There may be a unity shown in identity
of form, but it is a lifeless unity. There is a sameness
on the seabeach — that unity which the ocean waves
have produced, by curling and forcibly destroying the
angularities of individual form, so that every stone
presents the same monotony of aspect. There is no life

1 " Life and Letters," vol. ii. p. 186.
24

354 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRA ITS.

in such unity as this. But as soon as you arrive at a
unity that is living, the form becomes more complex,
and you search in vain for uniformity. What is the
unity of the human body ? Is it not this ? The unity
of a living consciousness, which marvellously animates
every separate atom of the frame, and reduces each to
the performance of a function fitted to the welfare of
the whole — its own, not another's : so that the inner
spirit can say of the remotest and in form most unlike
member, ' That, too, is myself ? ' "x

We will now pass rapidly in review some of the
collateral labours of Robertson's ministry not directly
connected with his theological work. It is very inte-
resting to see how, while never neglecting his proper
vocation, he threw himself into the great general in-
terests of the day. We have already spoken of his
influence among the poorer classes, and of the part
taken by him in founding the Working Men's Institute
at Brighton. For the benefit of this institution he
gave a very admirable lecture on the influence of
poetry upon the people. When called to preach at
the Assizes, he showed how much thought he had
given to this important phase of our social life. His
remarks on punishment were altogether free from that
maudlin sentimentality which fails to recognise the
majesty and wholesome severity of law. We are sur-
prised, however, to find him approving the punishment

1 " Sermons," Third Series, pp. 30, 40.

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 355

of death. It was before the Assizes that he preached
his very fine sermon on the Kingdom of Truth, in
which he brings face to face the prevaricating judge
and the Divine prisoner. At the time of the political
elections, Robertson, who belonged heart and soul to
the Liberal party, preached a sermon on the election
of the Apostle Matthias. He carefully abstained, as
he was bound to do in the pulpit, from any allusion to
his private opinion ; but he used the opportunity given
him by the excited feelings of the moment, to define
very distinctly the principle of Gospel morality, which
ought to guide citizens in the fulfilment of so impor-
tant and delicate a duty. He never hesitated to give
variety to his sermons by drawing largely upon the
literary and historical culture of the time. His ser-
mons on the Romans, the Greeks, and the Barbarians,
regarded in their relations to primitive Christianity,
are of extreme interest. His sermon on the Religion
of India is no less remarkable ; it is a sort of apolo-
getic history, more in the nature of a lecture than of a
sermon, but animated throughout by the power of a
living faith.

The sermons in which he takes up the great charac-
ters of Old and New Testament history, are richly
poetical. He draws the moral features of his heroes
with a firm and faithful touch ; and, contrary to the
usual practice of his countrymen in their religious
literature, he gives the true historical setting, paint-
ing in the background in solid and sober colours.

35^ CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

He treats with equal depth and originality all the
main points of Christian morality. Among his best
known sermons are those on " The Power of Sorrow,"
" Sensual and Spiritual Excitement," " Purity," " Unity
and Peace," " Christian Casuistry," " The Law of Chris-
tian Conscience," "The Lawful and Unlawful Use of
Law," " The Irreparable Past."

The very choice of subjects like these was itself an
innovation. As a specimen of the richly poetical
form which his thought often assumed in these dis-
courses, which were studies of sacred history and
morality rather than of theology, we may quote the
following passages from his sermon on Jacob's
Wrestling. The method of treatment is most sug-
gestive. Robertson says :

" Putting aside the form of this narrative, and look-
ing into the heart and meaning of it, it will become
apparent that we have before us the record of an
inward, spiritual struggle, as real now in the nine-
teenth century as then ; as real in every earnest man
as it was in the history of Jacob.

" We take these points :

" i. The nameless secret of existence.

" 2. The revelation of that secret to the soul.

" I observe that this desire of Jacob was not the one
we should naturally have expected on such an occa-
sion. He is alone — his past fault is coming retribu-
tively on a guilty conscience — he dreads the meeting
with his brother. His soul is agonised with that ;

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 357

and that we naturally expect will be the subject and
the burden of his prayer. No such thing ! Not a
word about Esau : not a word about personal danger
at all. All that is banished completely for the time,
and deeper thoughts are grappling with his soul. To
get safe through to-morrow ? No, no, no ! To be
blessed by God — to know Him, and what He is — that
is the battle of Jacob's soul from sunset till the dawn
of day.

" And this is our struggle — the struggle. Let any
true man go down into the deeps of his own being,
and answer us — what is the cry that comes from
the most real part of his nature ? Is it the cry for
daily bread ? Jacob asked for that in his first com-
muning with God — preservation, safety. Is it even
this — to be forgiven our sins ? Jacob had a sin to be
forgiven ; and in that most solemn moment of his
existence he did not say a syllable about it. Or is it
this — ' Hallowed be thy name ' ? No, my brethren.
Out of our frail and yet sublime humanity, the
demand that rises in the earthlier hours of our religion
may be this — ' Save my soul ; ' but, in the most un-
earthly moments, it is this — ' Tell me thy name.'
We move through a world of mystery ; and the
deepest question is : What is the being that is ever
near, sometimes felt, never seen — that which has
haunted us from childhood with a dream of some-
thing surpassingly fair, which has never yet been
realised — that which sweeps through the soul at times

358 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

as a desolation, like the blast from the wings of the
Angel of Death, leaving us stricken and silent in our
loneliness — that which has touched us in our tenderest
point, and the flesh has quivered with agony, and our
mortal affections have shrivelled up in pain — that
which comes to us in aspirations of nobleness, and
conceptions of superhuman excellence ? Shall we
say It or He ? What is It ? Who is He ? Those
anticipations of Immortality and God — what are
they ? Are they the mere throbbings of my own
heart, heard and mistaken for a living something
beside me ? Are they the sound of my own wishes,
echoing through the vast void of nothingness ? or
shall I call them God, Father, Spirit, Love ? A
living Being within me or outside me ? Tell me Thy
Name, Thou awful mystery of loveliness ! This is the
struggle of all earnest life.

" We come now to the revelation of the Mystery.

" It was revealed by awe. Very significantly are we
told that the Divine antagonist seemed, as it were,
anxious to depart as the day was about to dawn ;
and that Jacob held Him more convulsively fast, as
if aware that the daylight was likely to rob him of
his anticipated blessing, in which there seems con-
cealed a very deep truth. God is approached more
nearly in that which is indefinite than in that which
is definite and distinct. He is felt in awe, and
wonder and worship, rather than in clear conceptions.
There is a sense in which darkness has more of God

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 359

than light has. He dwells in the thick darkness.
Moments of tender, vague mystery often bring dis-
tinctly the feeling of His presence. When day
breaks and distinctness comes, the Divine has evapo-
rated from the soul like morning dew. In sorrow,
haunted by uncertain presentiments, we feel the
infinite around us. The gloom disperses, the world's
joy comes again, and it seems as if God were
gone — the Being who had touched us with a wither-
ing hand, and wrestled with us, yet whose presence,
even when most terrible, was more blessed than His
absence. It is true, even literally, that the darkness
reveals God. Every morning God draws the curtains
of the garish light across His eternity, and we lose
the Infinite. We look down on earth instead of up
to heaven ; on a narrower and more contracted spec-
tacle— that which is examined by the microscope
when the telescope is laid aside — smallness, instead
of vastness. ' Man goeth forth to his work and to
his labour until the evening ; ' and in the dust and
pettiness of life we seem to cease to behold Him :
then at night He undraws the curtain again, and we
see how much of God and eternity the bright distinct
day has hidden from us. Yes, in solitary, silent,
vague darkness, the Awful One is near.

" This morning, my young brethren, we endeavoured
to act on this belief — we met in stillness, before the full
broad glare of day had rested on our world. Your
first communion implored His blessing in the hour

360 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

which seems so peculiarly His. Before the dull and
deadening and earthward influences of the world had
dried up the dew of fresh morning feeling, you tried
to fortify your souls with a sense of His presence.
This night, before to-morrow's light shall dawn, pray
that He will not depart until He has left upon your
hearts the blessing of a strength which shall be yours
through the garish day, and through dry, scorching
life, even to the close of your day." l

We have quoted so much at length from this
sermon, because it exhibits at once the strength and
the weakness of Robertson's preaching ; we shall
speak more particularly of both in our summary of
his character and work.

He took part, as we have said, in all the great theo-
logical controversies of his time. Catholicism was
already beginning to assert a strange ascendancy
over the aristocratic classes in England. This fact
was not to be got rid of by the cry, " No Popery,"
raised on all hands by the orthodox of every shade.
Robertson rightly felt that this tendency to return to
a discarded form of religion, could only be accounted
for by the existence of unsatisfied religious needs,
and that it was of far more importance to discover
what these were, and to try to meet them, than to in-
dulge in embittering controversy. The only argu-
ment which really carries conviction, is that which

1 "Jacob's Wrestling," Sermons, First Series.

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 361

takes away from error the admixture of truth by
which it lives, and thus allows it no raisoji d'etre.
This course Robertson pursued with a rare power of
intuition, which saved him from the unfairness of
party spirit, as is shown by his liberality with respect
to Ireland. He declared boldly that the bill for
Catholic Emancipation had put an end to a monstrous
system, and desired to see it carried out to its fullest
issues, since he held that it was only by religious
liberty and equality that Ireland could ever be
really attached to England, and an effectual barrier
be raised against Ultramontanism.1

On the other hand, he makes no concession what-
ever to the Catholic system. How radical was his
disapproval of its principles appears in the following
passage from a letter to a friend, who was tempted to
forsake the Church of liberty and of the Spirit for the
Church of external authority :

" Do you believe in God ? Dare you not trust
yourself like a child to Him ? Oh, what is your
baptism worth if it has not taught you that blessed
central truth of all — that He is your Father? Dare
you so stifle His voice in your soul, which comes in
the simple rushings of earnest thought, and then call
it conscience ? Are you sure that you may not be
shutting out a ray from Heaven, although you fear that
it is a meteor from Hell ? . . . I tried no arguments

1 " Life and Letters," vol. ii. p. 141.

362 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

against Romanism, for I feel that Romanism is only
an infinitely small and sensualistic embodiment of
truths — a living human form shrunk into a mummy,
with every feature there hideously like life, especially
when it, by force applied from without, by wires or
galvanism, moves humanly. . . . God made the soul
to correspond with truth. Truth is its own evidence,
as the lightning flash is, as the blessed sunlight is.
.... Alas ! alas ! you do not believe that you have a
soul — you do not believe in God — you do not believe
that His Spirit can find your soul — you believe in the
dial, and not in the sun — you are not alone with
Christ — you do not feel the solitary yet humbling
grandeur of being in this vast universe alone, as He
was, with your Father. His life is not the pattern of
your life, and His divine humanity is not the inter-
pretation of the mysteries of your solitary being. You
cannot walk the valley of the shadow of death fear-
lessly, as David did, because 'Thou art with me.'

You must have a crowd of and a number of other

good men by some hundred thousands to assure you
that you are not alone. All this universe is God's
blessed sacrament, the channel of His Spirit to your
soul, whereof He has selected two things as types of
all the rest : the commonest of all elements, water, and
the commonest of all meals, a supper, and you cannot
find Him except in seven ! Too many or else too
few ; but even in that protest against the Protestant
limitation of grace to two channels I recognise a truth,
only distorted and petrified as usual.

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 363

" Oh, be brave and wait ! These are dark days —
lonely days — and our unbelieving impatience cannot
bear to wait, but must rashly and by impetuous steps
of our own, plunge after the ignis fatuus of light.
Peace at once ! Light at once ! I cannot wait my
time and I will not ! I do not say all this as one who
is utterly unable to comprehend 'the delusion of
people who cannot be content with the sound and
excellent principles of our incomparable liturgy.' I
only comprehend too well the struggles and the
agonies of a soul that craves light and cannot find it.
And as to our ' incomparable Church/ why it does
not require a prophetic spirit to see that in ten years
more she must be in fragments, out of which fragments
God will re-construct something for which I am con-
tent to wait, in accordance with His usual plan, which
is to be for ever evolving fresh forms of life out of dis-
solution and decay. If not in my time, why then I
still wait. I am alone now, and shall be till I die, and
I am not afraid to be alone in the majesty of darkness
which His presence peoples with a crowd. I ask now
no sympathy but His. If He should vouchsafe to
give me more I shall accept it gratefully ; but I am
content to do without it, as many of His best and
bravest must do now. Why cannot you live with
Him ? . . . I have no superstitious evangelical horror
of Romanism, but — Alas ! alas ! for the substitution
of an artificial created conscience for the sound and
healthy one of humanity, whose tides are distinct and

364 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

unmistakable in their noble music, like those of
Nature's ocean in its irresistible swell ! "

Vinet justly said that the special doctrines of
Catholicism are like the buoys which mark the spot
where some precious cargo has been swallowed up by
the sea ; a man must dive very deep to discover the
treasure. Robertson did so dive. Thus, both in his
letters and sermons, he shows that the adoration of
the Virgin, who is but the personification of the
tenderness and compassion of Christianity, gained
ground after the metaphysics of the fourth century
had thrown a veil over the true humanity of Jesus
Christ.1 The multiplication of sacraments, which is
erroneous if we regard them as ecclesiastical institu-
tions, yet expresses the very legitimate desire to set
an impress of sacredness upon the entire life. The
idea of apostolical succession conceals a sublime truth
— namely, that there ought to be, as it were, an un-
broken lineage of prophets and heroic saints through
all the ages. Luther is the true successor of St.
Paul.*

Much excitement had been caused throughout
England by the petitions for the opening of the
Crystal Palace on Sunday, the only day when the

1 " Life and Letters," vol. ii. pp. 23, 24. See " The Glory of the
Virgin Mother," Sermons, Second Series, p. 229.

2 " Life and Letters," vol. ii. pp. 161, 162.

FERNY AND ROBERTSON. 365

working classes could visit it. A vast array of pe-
titions on the other side was sent up from all parts
of the country. Robertson, though opposed to the
opening, did not feel it his duty to take part in this
movement ; because it seemed to him to be based on
an entirely Jewish Sabbatarianism. According to his
custom, he preached on the subject, and established
with singular logical clearness the true principles on
this important question ; showing that the legal dis-
tinction between one day and another had been
abolished by Christianity, but that nevertheless the
observance of Sunday meets the wants of the Chris-
tian soul and of the Church. Writing to one of his
opponents, he says : " Historically the Lord's day was
not a transference of the Jewish Sabbath at all from
one day to another. St. Paul, in Rom. xvi. 5, 6,
speaks of a religious non-observance of the Sabbath."1
He showed further that it is possible to imagine
a state of mind and soul in which the thought of God
should have so thoroughly permeated the life that
there would be no longer any necessity for setting
apart one particular day for worship. It must be
admitted, however, that this is a height of spirituality
most rarely attained, and that no one who comes
short of it has any right to deprive himself of a means
of grace essential to the well-being of his soul, and
to the maintenance of piety in the world. He wrote

1 " Life and Letters," vol. ii. p. 112,

366 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

again to a friend : " I must reverse all my conceptions
of Christianity — which is the mind of Christ — before
I can believe the Evangelico-Judaic theory ; which is

that Mr. may, without infringement of the Fourth

Commandment, drive his carriage to church twice
every Sunday, but a poor man may not drive his
cart; that the two or three hours spent in the evening
by a noble lord over his venison, champagne, dessert,
and coffee, are no desecration of the command ; but
the same number spent by an artisan over cheese and
beer in a tea-garden will bring down God's judgment
on the land. It is worse than absurd. It is the very
spirit of Pharisaism, which our Lord rebuked so
sternly." l He insists strongly, nevertheless, on the
benefit of the Sunday, and declares that no one who
loves his country could consent to encourage the
regular and public violation of that day. He cannot
approve, however, of legislative measures, taken in
the name of a patched-up Judaism, to restrict the
liberty of souls. Any one who knows England can
understand what indignation words like these would
excite.

Another question arose, on which the conflict of
opinion ran no less high. I refer to the Gorham case.
It is well known that Mr. Gorham, as a clergyman of
the Church of England, had taught doctrines alto-
gether opposed to the notion of baptismal regenera-

r" Life and Letters," vol. ii. p. 113.

VERNY AND ROBERTSON, 367

tion. A sharp discussion arose, which led to legal
proceedings. The futility of such measures, where
questions of doctrine are concerned, was soon made
evident. The Court of Queen's Bench gave a decision
which settled nothing, but which inclined decidedly
to the side of baptismal regeneration. Robertson, in
his correspondence, and in his two sermons on the
subject, took an intermediate position. He could not
sanction the superstitious idea which attributes to the
material element a magical virtue over the soul, but
neither could he accept the strict notion of Calvinism,
that baptism receives its value only from conversion.
According to Robertson, baptism does not make but
declares us sons of God ; recognising in the redeemed
of Christ this Divine adoption. It is the proclama-
tion of pre-existing rights, just as the ceremony of
coronation does not confer the royal dignity, but
declares it to the world.

Robertson showed himself, in relation to this ques-
tion, the almost bitter enemy of all religious forms
which are based upon an individual profession of /
faith. This injustice arises from a leading defect in 1
his theology. He had too much confidence in human
nature as it is, and did not sufficiently recognise its
fallen state, and the radical change wrought in it by
sin. Of this we shall have to speak further when we
come to analyse his theology, so faithfully reflected in
his preaching.

368 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

III.

There were three theological questions which chiefly
exercised Robertson's mind.

1. The method of arriving at certainty on matters
of religion, a problem inseparable from the question
of inspiration.

2. The true idea of redemption and expiation.

3. The nature of Jesus Christ, and His relation to
the Father.

On all these points he repudiated the exaggerations
of current theology, but he also failed to hold the
even balance of truth, and was carried by the strength
of his reaction against what seemed to him the errors
of orthodoxy, too far in the opposite direction.

In relation to the first question — certainty in mat-
ters of religion — his teaching was as far removed as
possible from anything like Rationalism. The ten-
dency of ultra-orthodoxy is, in truth, more rational-
istic than such a faith as Robertson's. That school
does, in fact, regard revelation rather as the commu-
nication of certain mysteries about God, than as the
living manifestation of Him in a Divine history, find-
ing its centre in the person of Jesus Christ. It seeks
an intellectual rather than a moral adherence, and
attaches paramount importance to doctrines, the
authority of which it establishes on the ground of an
inspired book and of attested miracle. I know, in-
deed, that it seeks to correct this latent Rationalism

-

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 369

by forbidding inquiry, and insisting on the blind ac-
ceptance of orthodox dicta ; but the fact remains that
with a certain orthodox party revelation is regarded
as essentially a system of doctrine.

Robertson starts from quite other premises. He
differs both from the Jew, who requires a sign, and
the Greek, who seeks after wisdom. In other words,
he does not derive his faith from sight ; either the
sight of the eyes or that of the reasoning mind. It
is something both higher and deeper. It is the com-
munication of the Divine Spirit to the spiritual and
higher nature in man. He says, " If there has been
a single principle which I have taught more emphati-
cally than any other, it is that not by reason — mean-
ing by reason the understanding — but by the spirit —
that is, the heart, trained in meekness and love by
God's Spirit — truth can be judged of at all. I hold
that the attempt to rest Christianity upon miracles
and fulfilments of prophecy is essentially the vilest
rationalism ; as if the trained intellect of a lawyer,
which can investigate evidence, were that to . which
is trusted the soul's salvation ; or, as if the evidence
of the senses were more sure than the intuitions
of the spirit, to which spiritual truths almost alone
appeal." l

One of his finest sermons is devoted to this subject
— the sermon on " God's Revelation of Heaven." We

1 " Life and Letters," vol. ii. p. 149.
25

370 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

quote his own beautiful language on the verse, " Eye
hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered
into the heart of man to conceive, the things which
God hath prepared for them that love him."

" There is a life of mere sensation. The degree ot
its enjoyment depends upon fineness of organisation.
The pleasures of sense arise from the vibration of a
nerve, or the thrilling of a muscle — nothing higher.

"The highest pleasure of sensation comes through
the eye. She ranks above all the rest of the senses
in dignity. He whose eye is so refined by discipline
that he can repose with pleasure upon the serene
outline of beautiful form, has reached the purest of
the sensational raptures.

"Now the Corinthians could appreciate this. Theirs
was the land of beauty. They read the apostle's
letter, surrounded by the purest conceptions of art.
In the orders of architecture, the most richly graceful
of all columnar forms receives its name from Corinth.
And yet it was to [these men, living in the very midst
of the chastely beautiful, upon whom the apostle
emphatically urged, ' Eye hath not seen the things
which God hath prepared for them that love him.'

"Let us not depreciate what God has given. There
is a rapture in gazing on this wondrous world. There
is a joy in contemplating the manifold forms in which
the All Beautiful has concealed His essence, — the
living garment in which the Invisible has robed His
mysterious loveliness. In every aspect of Nature

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 371

there is joy ; whether it be the purity of virgin
morning, or the sombre gray of a day of clouds, or
the solemn pomp and majesty of night; whether it be
the chaste lines of the crystal, or the waving outline of
distant hills, tremulously visible through dim vapours ;
the minute petals of the fringed daisy, or the over-
hanging form of mysterious forests. It is a pure
delight to see,

" But all this is bounded. The eye can only reach
the finite beautiful. It does not scan * the King in
his beauty, nor the land that is very far off.' . . .

" No scientific analysis can discover the truths of
God. Science cannot give a revelation. Science
proceeds upon observation. It submits everything to
the experience of the senses. Its law, expounded by
its great lawgiver, is, that if you would ascertain its
truth you must see, feel, taste. Experiment is the
test of truth. Now, you cannot by searching find
out the Almighty to perfection, nor a single one of
the blessed truths He has to communicate. . . .

" Eternal truth is not reached by hearsay — 'Ear hath
not heard the things which God hath prepared for
them that love him.'

" No revelation can be adequately given by the
address of man to man, whether by writing or orally,
even if he be put into the possession of the truth
itself. For all such revelations must be made through
words ; and words are but counters — the coins of
intellectual exchange. There is as little resemblance

372 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

between the silver coin and the bread it purchases, as
between the word and the thing it stands for. Looking
at the coin, the form of the loaf does not suggest
itself. Listening to the word, you do not perceive
the idea for which it stands, unless you are already in
possession of it. . . .

" Now see what a hearsay religion is. There are
men who believe on authority. Their minister believes
all this Christianity true : therefore so do they. He
calls this doctrine essential : they echo it. Some
thousands of years ago men communed with God ;
they have heard this and are content it should be so.
They have heard with the hearing of the ear that
God is love — that the ways of holiness are ways of
pleasantness, and all her paths peace. But a hearsay
belief saves not. The Corinthian philosophers heard
Paul— the Pharisees heard Christ. How much did
the ear convey ? To thousands exactly nothing.
He alone believes truth who feels it. He alone has a
religion whose soul knows by experience that to
serve God and know Him is the richest treasure.
And unless truth come to you, not in word only, but
in power besides — authoritative because true, not true
because authoritative — there has been no real revela-
tion made to you from God. Truth is not discover-
able by the heart — 'neither have entered into the heart
of man the things which God hath prepared for them
that love him.*

" The heart. Two things we refer to this source :
the power of imagining, and the power of loving.

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 373

" Imagination is distinct from the mere dry faculty
of reasoning. Imagination is creative — it is an
immediate intuition; not a logical analysis — we call
it popularly a kind of inspiration. Now imagination
is a power of the heart — great thoughts originate
from a large heart — a man must have a heart or he
never could create.

" It is a grand thing when, in the stillness of the
soul, thought bursts into flame and the intuitive vision
comes like an inspiration ; when breathing thoughts
clothe themselves in burning words, winged as it were
with lightning — or when a great law of the universe
reveals itself to the mind of genius, and where all
was darkness, his single word bids light be, and all
is order where chaos and confusion were before. Or
when the truths of human nature shape themselves
forth in the creative fancies of one, like the myriad-
minded poet, and you recognise the rare power of
heart which sympathises with and can reproduce all
that is found in man.

"But all this is nothing more than what the material
man can achieve. The most ethereal creations of
fantastic fancy were shaped by a mind that could
read the life of Christ, and then blaspheme the
adorable. . . .

"There is more in the heart of man — it has the
power of affection. The highest moment known on
earth by the merely natural, is that in which the
mysterious union of heart with heart is felt

374 CONTEMPORAR Y PORTRAITS.

This is the purest, serenest ecstasy of the merely
human — more blessed than any sight that can be
presented to the eye, or any sound that can be
given to the ear : more sublime than the sublimest
dream ever conceived by genius in its most gifted
hour, when the freest way was given to the shaping
spirit of imagination.

"This has entered into the heart of man, yet this is
of the lower still. It attains not to the things pre-
pared by God — it dimly shadows them. Human love
is but the faint type of that surpassing blessedness
which belongs to those who love God.

" We pass therefore to the Nature and Laws of
Revelation. . . .

"Now the Spirit of God lies touching, as it were, the
soul of man — ever around and near. On the out-
side of earth man stands with the boundless heaven
above him: nothing between him and space — space
around him and above him — the confines of the sky
touching him. So is the spirit of man to the Spirit
of the Ever Near. They mingle. In every man this
is true. The spiritual in him, by which he might
become a recipient of God, may be dulled, deadened
by a life of sense, but in this world never lost. All
men are not spiritual men ; but all have spiritual
sensibilities which might awake. All that is wanted
is to become conscious of the nearness of God. God
has placed men here to feel after Him if haply they
may find Him, albeit He be not far from any one of

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 375

them. Our souls float in the immeasurable ocean of
Spirit. God lies around us : at any moment we may
be conscious of the contact.

" The conditio?i upon which this Self-Revelation of
the Spirit is made to man, is love. These things are
1 prepared for them that love Him,' or, which is the
same thing, revealed to those who have the mind of
Christ." 1

It appears to us that Robertson does not sufficiently
recognise the direct, special, mystical operation of the
Spirit of God in illuminating the soul. He relies
too much on the original relations of man with God,
and overlooks to some extent the necessity for the
reparative work of redeeming love. This is the
defect that runs through all his teaching. We would
guard against being misunderstood. He very dis-
tinctly recognises the miraculous, and in the sermon
on the doubt of Thomas, lays special emphasis on the
fact that the resurrection of Christ alone put to flight
the persistent doubt of humanity as to the future
life.

With regard to the divine authority of the Scrip-
tures, he repudiated strongly the idea of verbal
inspiration. He insisted that the co-existence of the
human element with the divine was indispensable
in Holy Scripture, and showed what difficulties
would have been presented by a revelation couched

1 " God's Revelation of Heaven." Sermons. First Series.

376 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

in the language of exact science, at a time when such
a mode of representation would necessarily have been
regarded as erroneous. His sermon on inspiration is
not a theological dissertation ; it dwells chiefly on
the practical and positive aspect of the question,
showing how everything in Scripture tends towards
Christ, and how all receives from Him its sacred
evidence and its beneficent authority. He dwells
with fervid eloquence on the universal and incom-
parable power of the Bible.

" The Jews," he says, " have been for eighteen
hundred years a byword and a reproach. . . . Yet
the words which came from Israel's prophets have
been the life-blood of the world's devotions. And the
teachers, the psalmists, the prophets, and the law-
givers of this despised nation spoke out truths that
have struck the key-note of the heart of man ; and
this not because they were of Jewish, but just because
they were of universal application.

"This collection of books has been to the world what
no other book has ever been to a nation. States have
been founded on its principles. Kings rule by a
compact based on it. Men hold the Bible in their
hands when they prepare to give solemn evidence
affecting life, death, or property ; the sick man is
almost afraid to die unless the Book be within reach
of his hands ; the battle-ship goes into action with
one on board whose office is to expound it ; its
prayers, its psalms are the language which we use

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 377-

when we speak to God ; eighteen centuries have
found no holier, no diviner language. If ever there
has been a prayer or a hymn enshrined in the heart
of a nation, you are sure to find its basis in the Bible.
The very translation of it has fixed language and
settled the idioms of speech. Germany and England
speak as they speak because the Bible was translated.
It has made the most illiterate peasant more familiar
with the history, customs, and geography of ancient
Palestine than with the locality of his own country.
Men who know nothing of the Grampians, of Snow-
don, or of Skiddaw, are at home in Zion, the lake of
Gennesareth, or among the rills of Carmel. People
who know little about London, know by heart the
places in Jerusalem where those blessed feet trod
which were nailed to the cross. Men who know
nothing of the architecture of a Christian cathedral,
can yet tell you all about the pattern of the Holy
Temple. Even this shows us the influence of the
Bible. The orator holds a thousand men for half an
hour breathless — a thousand men as one listening to
his single word. But this word of God has held a
thousand nations for thrice a thousand years spell-
bound ; held them by an abiding power, even the
universality of its truth ; and we feel it to be no
more a collection of books, but the Book." J

The doctrine of expiation was an absorbing subject

1 " Sermon on Inspiration." First Series, pp. 302, 303.

378 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

of thought with Robertson, as is evident both from
his correspondence and his sermons. It must be
admitted that this was a subject very imperfectly
treated in the current literature of the religious revival
in England. Salvation was represented as the pay-
ment of an infinite debt by infinite suffering. I need
not repeat the observations already made in reference
to this view. It is idle to attempt to defend the
dangerous exaggerations of the evangelical school.
In order to justify this great religious movement, its
champions appeal to the writings of its most mode-
rate theologians, much in the same way that the more
elevated minds among the Catholics quote Bossuet's
" Exposition de la Foi." But in judging of the dis-
tinctive and characteristic principles of a theology,
we must test it, not by the writings of wise and able
men, who present it softened, modified, all but trans-
figured through the medium of their own genius, but
by its effects on the preaching and current literature
of the day, and on the religious life of the people. It
is certain that the popular doctrine of expiation, in
circles where evangelical views predominated, was as
we have described it. It taught that the Divine
anger was appeased by the momentary damnation of
Christ. Faith was simply the acceptance of a purely
external imputation. This it was that chafed and
irritated a conscience like that of Robertson, and led
him into an exaggerated reaction against his early
convictions. In one of his letters he says : " It

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 379

appears to me that Protestantism throws upon the
intellect the work of healing, which can only be per-
formed by the heart. It comes with its parchment,
signed, sealed, and delivered, making over heaven to
you by a legal bond, gives its receipt in full, makes a
debtor and creditor account, clears up the whole by a
most business-like arrangement :

Cr. Dr.

Infinite. Infinite.

"And when this Shylock-like affair, with its scales
and weights, is concluded, it bids you be sure that the
most rigorous justice and the most wanton cruelty
can want no more. Whereupon selfishness shrewdly
casts up the account and says : ' Audited, I am safe!'
Nay, it even has a gratitude to Him who has borne
the pain instead ; a very low kind of affection ; the
same, differing only in degree, which young Peel felt
for Byron, when he volunteered to accept half the
blows which a young tyrant was administering. The
love which is only gratitude for escape from pain is a
very poor love. It does not open the heart wide, and
accordingly, basing his hopes only on a quid pro quo, a
sinner's penitence is half selfish, and has rarely in it
any of that glorious abandon which, whether wisely
directed or not, has so marked the Roman penitence,
and which we explain away by saying, it is work done
to win heaven by merit. The Protestant penitent, if
the system succeeds, repents in his arm-chair, and does
no noble deed such as boundless love could alone

380 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

inspire. He reforms, and is very glad that broken-
hearted remorse is distrust of God, becomes a prosaic
Pharisee, and patronises missionary societies, and is
all safe, which is the one great point in his religion." l

In these strong utterances we must make allow-
ance for Robertson's peculiar temperament. This
is clearly not a calm and impartial judgment ; it is
a passionate outburst of indignation against the most
obnoxious aspect of the extreme orthodox school. In
another letter he says : " The difference between my
views and those of the current orthodoxy does not lie
in the question of the atonement — we agree in this —
but in the question zvhat in that atonement was the
element that satisfied God ? They say pain. I say,
because I think the Scriptures say so, the surrender
of self-will, as is clearly and distinctly asserted in
John x. 17, and also in Hebrews x. 5, 6, 7, 10, where
the distinction is drawn between the sacrifices of
blood and suffering, which were mere butchery, and
the sacrifice which atones, in this special point; that
one is moral, an act of will ; the other immoral,
merely physical, and therefore worthless." 2

Robertson frequently treated this great subject in
his sermons. We find the fullest expression of his
views in the sermon entitled, " Caiaphas' View of
Vicarious Sacrifice." He takes as his text the

1 " Life and Letters," vol. i. pp. 304, 305.

2 " Life and Letters," vol. ii. p. 139.

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 381

remarkable words, " Ye know nothing at all ; nor
consider that it is expedient that one man should
die for the people, that the whole nation perish not.
And this spake he not of himself, etc."

The preacher shows that there is a false and
perverted sense of these words, and it is in this sense
that Caiaphas uses them; while they have at the
same time a true and Divine meaning, which is that
accepted by St. John. We would gladly quote the
whole of this remarkable sermon, one of the most
original and powerful which Robertson ever preached,
but space forbids. We may cite one passage, in
which he describes the spirit of Caiaphas and of all
the men of his school.

" The first falsity in the human statement of the
truth of vicarious sacrifice is its injustice. Some one
said, The accused is innocent. The reply was, Better
that one should die than many. ' It is expedient
for us that one man should die for the people, and
that the whole nation perish not.' It was simply
with Caiaphas a question of numbers : the unjust
expediency of wresting the law a little to do much
apparent good. The reply to that question was plain.
Expediency cannot obliterate right and wrong. Ex-
pediency may choose the best possible when the
conceivable best is not attainable ; but in right and
wrong there is no better and best. Thou shalt not
do wrong. Thou must not : you may not tell a lie to
save life. Better that the whole Jewish nation should

382 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

perish than that a Jewish legislature should steep its
hand in the blood of one innocent. It is not expedient
to do injustice. . . .

" No man would justify the parent, pursued in his
chariot by wolves over Siberian snows, who throws
out one of his children to the pack that the rest may
escape while their fangs are buried in their victim.
You feel at once expediency has no place here. Life
is a trifle compared with law. Better that all should
perish by a visitation of God than that they should be
saved by one murder.

" I do not deny that this aspect has been given to
the sacrifice of Christ. It has been represented as if
the majesty of Law demanded a victim ; and so as
it glutted its insatiate thirst, one victim would do as
well as another — the fairer and the more innocent the
better. It has been exhibited as if Eternal Love
resolved in fury to strike, and so, as He had His blow,
it mattered not whether it fell on the whole world or
on the precious head of His own chosen Son.

" Unitarianism has represented the scriptural view
in this way ; or rather, perhaps, we should say, it has
been so represented to Unitarians ; and from a view
so horrible no wonder if Unitarianism has recoiled.
But it is not our fault if some blind defenders of the
truth have converted the self-devotion of Love into a
Brahminical sacrifice. If the work of redemption be
defended from parallels drawn from the most atrocious
records and principles of heathenism, let not the

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 383

fault be laid upon the Bible. We disclaim that as
well as they. It makes God a Caiaphas — it makes
Him adopt the words of Caiaphas in the sense of
Caiaphas. It represents Him in terms which better
describe the ungoverned rage of Saul, missing his
stroke at David, who has offended, and in disap-
pointed fury dashing his javelin at his own son
Jonathan.

" You must not represent the atonement as depend-
ing on the justice of unrighteous expediency.

"This side of viewing the truth was the side of
selfishness. It was not even the calm resolve of men
balancing whether it be better for one to die or many ;
but whether it is better that He or we should perish.
It is conceivable, in the case supposed above, that a
parent in the horrible dilemma should be enough
bewildered to resolve to sacrifice one rather than lose
all ; but it is not conceivable that the doubt in his
mind should be this, Shall / and the rest perish, or
this one ? — yet this was the spirit in which the party
of Caiaphas spoke. The Romans will come and take
away our place and our nation.

"And this spirit, too, is in human nature. The
records of antiquity are full of it. If a fleet could not
sail, it was assumed that the deities were offended.
The purest and tenderest maiden of the royal house-
hold was selected to bleed upon the altar : and when
the sharp knife passed to her innocent heart, this was
the feeling in the bosom of those stern and unrelent-

384 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS.

ing warriors — of the blood and of the stock of Caia-
phas — better she should suffer than we.

" This maybe the way in which the sacrifice of Christ
is regarded by us. There is a kind of acquiescence in
the atonement which is purely selfish. The more
bloody the representation of the character of God, the
greater, of course, the satisfaction in feeling sheltered
from it. The more Wrath instead of Love is believed
to be the Divine name, the more may a man find joy
in believing that he is safe. It is the theory of the
Siberian story : the innocent has glutted the wolves,
and we may pursue our journey in safety. Christ has
suffered, and I am safe. He bare the agony, I take
the reward. I may now live with impunity ; and, of
course, it is very easy to call acquiescence in that
arrangement humility, and to take credit for the
abnegation of self-righteousness ; but whoever can
acquiesce in that thought chiefly in reference to per-
sonal safety, and, without desiring to share the Re-
deemer's cross, aspire to enjoy the comforts and
benefits of the Redeemer's sacrifice, has but some-
thing of the spirit of Caiaphas after all, the spirit
which contentedly sacrifices another for self — selfish-
ness assuming the form of wisdom.

" We pass now to the prophetic or hidden spirit, in
which these words are true. I observe, first, that
vicarious sacrifice is the Law of Being. . . .

" The Highest Man recognised that law, and joyfully
embraced it as the law of His existence. It was the

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 385

consciousness of His surrender to that as God's will,
and the voluntariness of the act, which made it sacri-
fice. Hear Him : ' No man taketh my life from me :
I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take
it up again.' 'This commandment have I received
from my Father.' . . .

" We go beyond this, however. It was not merely a
sacrifice, it was a sacrifice for sin. ' His soul was
made an offering for sin.' Neither was it only a
sacrifice for sin — it was a sacrifice for the world's
sin. . . .

" Let no man say that Christ bore the wrath of God.
Let no man say that God was angry with His Son.
We are sometimes told of a mysterious anguish which
Christ endured, the consequence of divine wrath, the
sufferings of a heart laden with the conscience of the
world's transgressions, which He was bearing as if
they were His own sins. Do not add to the Bible
what is not in the Bible. The Redeemer's conscience
was not bewildered to feel that as His own, which was
not His own. He suffered no wrath of God. Twice
came the voice from heaven, ' This is my beloved
Son in whom I am well pleased! There was seen an
angel strengthening Him. Nay, even to the last,
never did the consciousness of purity and the Father's
love forsake Him. ' Father, into thy hands I com-
mend my spirit.'

" Christ came into collision with the world's evil, and
He bore the penalty of that daring. . . .

26

386 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

" The Redeemer bore imputed sin. He bore the
penalty of others' sin. He was punished. Did He
bear the anger of the Most High ? Was His the hell
of an accusing conscience ? In the name of Him who
is God, not Caiaphas, never. . . .

" The second idea which it behoves us to master is
the world's sin. The Apostle John always viewed 'sin
as a great connected principle ; One ; a .single world-
spirit — exactly as the electricity with which the uni-
verse is charged is indivisible, imponderable, one, so
that you cannot separate it from the great ocean of fluid.
The electric spark that slumbers in the dewdrop is
part of the flood which struck the oak. Had that spark
not been there, it could be demonstrated that: the
whole previous constitution of the universe might have
been different, and the oak not have been struck. . . .

" To conclude. Estimate rightly the death of Christ.
It was not simply the world's example — it was the
world's Sacrifice. He died not merely as a martyr to
the truth. His death is the world's life. Ask ye
what life is ? Life is not exemption from penalty.
Salvation is not escape from suffering and punish-
ment. The Redeemer suffered punishment ; but the
Redeemer's soul had blessedness in the very midst of
punishment. Life is elevation of soul — nobleness —
divine character. The spirit of Caiaphas was death :
to receive all, and give nothing : to sacrifice others to
himself. The spirit of God was life : to give and not
receive : to be sacrificed and not to sacrifice. Hear

VERNY AND ROBERTSON, 387

Him again : ' He that loseth his life, the same shall
find it.' That is life: the spirit of losing all for love's
sake. That is the soul's life, which alone is blessed-
ness and heaven. By realising that ideal of humanity,
Christ furnished the life which we appropriate to our-
selves only when we enter into His spirit.

" Listen ! Only by renouncing sin is His death to
sin yours — only by quitting it are you free from the
guilt of His blood — only by voluntary acceptance of
the law of the cross, self-surrender to the will of God,
and self-devotion to the good of others as the law
of your being, do you enter into that present and
future heaven, which is the purchase of His vicarious
sacrifice." l

Robertson is admirable in his attacks upon the
hard, judicial theory of the atonement ; but his
exposition of his own system gives a very inade-
quate view of the work of redemption. From this it
would appear that Christ saves us simply by realising
in His own person the ideal of humanity, and by the
holy constraining influence of His love upon the
heart. I find no place in such a system for re-
demption, properly so called — for that agonising
travail of soul, in which Christ bore upon His heart
the sin of the world. His obedience is not sufficiently
represented as a reparation of the revolt of the first
Adam.

Robertson rightly repudiated the horrible idea of

1 "Caiaphas' View of Vicarious Sacrifice." Sermons, First Series.

388 CONTEMPORA R Y FOR TRAITS.

the direct curse of the Father resting upon the Son,
but passes over in silence the mysterious desertion,
the anguish of soul which the Master endured, and in
which He realised through his perfect sympathy with
us, all the bitterness of our sin, and recognised God's
righteous anger against it. Robertson represents the
work of Christ as the initiation of a course of repara-
tive effort rather than as the one unique work which it is
ours simply to assimilate by a living faith. That such
was really his view appears from another sermon on
the same subject, in which the principal virtue of the
cross is made to be that it sets before us an ideal of
perfection, and fills us with an ardent desire to be con-
formed to it. Using a beautiful figure, he compares
fallen man brought into contemplation of the sublime
sacrifice of the cross, to Correggio standing before a
canvas of Raphael's and exclaiming, " And I, too, am
a painter ! " This is one aspect of the truth ; but we
must not forget that while thus re-creating in the soul
the divine ideal, the cross at the same time recalls to
us the depth of our spiritual degradation, the impo-
tence of our own efforts after goodness, and awakens
the yearning for pardon and deliverance. But for
this hope which it holds out, it would only aggravate
our misery by setting before us an ideal for ever un-
attainable, and revealing to us with pitiless clearness
the moral depths to which we have fallen.

Eloquent as Robertson is in the description of
human suffering, he does not sufficiently recognise

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 389

the infirmity and hopeless weakness of fallen man.
Hence, while he rightly rejects that notion of prayer
which regards it as a purely external and magical
influence, a sort of Aladdin's lamp, capable of pro-
curing for us whatever we desire, he too much dis-
regards its character as a positive making request to
God. His sermon on the prayer in Gethsemane
contains many great and helpful thoughts on the
necessity of bringing our mind into harmony with the
mind of God, and submitting our will to His. But
even this is a grace which we need to obtain, like every
other. Prayer has an effect not only upon ourselves,
but upon God. It is an active power. The cry of
the poor beggar craving help from Christ is not an
illusion. In order to receive, we must ask ; for
asking is at once the acknowledgment of our own
emptiness and of the fulness of God. In relation to
this subject, as to all others, there is a very valuable
element of freshness and suggestiveness in Robertson,
which only needs to be supplemented. All that he
has written or said on justification by faith contains
important truth. We have seen, in his sermon on
Caiaphas, how he protests against such a notion of
salvation as would imply that Christ had died for us,
to save us from the necessity of crucifying ourselves.
Like Vinet, he maintains the closest connection
between sanctification and justification. God sees
the development of the germ in the germ itself, as
he sees the great river Thames, which bears on its

/

39Q CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS.

bosom the mighty ships of the Atlantic and Indian
Oceans, in the tiny scarcely perceptible rivulet from
which it springs.

Robertson's attention was more deeply fixed upon
the person than upon the work of Christ. No dis-
ciple ever loved the Master with a more fervent love ;
his language rises into poetry at the very mention of
His name. He lives by His life ; he is never weary
of meditating on His perfections ; he truly worships
Him. He has therefore nothing in common with the
Unitarian school. All his thoughts and feelings he
refers to Ghrist ; through Him he seeks constant
access to the Father. Christ is the centre of his
religious life. On every page of his writings we find
expressions which implicitly recognise the unique
relation existing between the Son and the Father,
and the eternal divinity of Jesus Christ. It is upon
His humanity, however, that he dwells most fully.
This is to him no fiction, but a grand reality. He
holds that Christ passed through the moral conflict
without even the shadow of sin resting upon Him ;
but He does not admit that He possessed any
peculiar inherent virtue, which rendered him unas-
sailable by the same temptations to which we are
exposed. Robertson expressed with characteristic
vigour the legitimate necessity felt by the theology
of the day, to escape from the metaphysical docetism
which substituted a rigid Byzantine Christ for the
living Son of Man. His sermon on the childhood of

VERXY AND R OBER TSO.V. 39 1

Christ, on His loneliness and His sympathy, bring out
this aspect of truth with peculiar beauty. We may
quote, as expressing his deepest and most sacred
convictions, part of a letter to a friend on this subject.
He says :

" Unquestionably, the belief in the divinity of
Christ is waning among us. They who hold it have
petrified it into a theological dogma without life or
warmth, and thoughtful men are more and more
beginning to put it aside. How are we then to get
back this belief in the Son of God ? By authority, or
by the old way of persecution ? The time for these
has passed. The other way is to begin at the begin-
ning. Begin as the Bible begins, with Christ the Son
of Man. Begin with Him as God's character revealed
under the limitations of humanity. Lay the founda-
tions of a higher faith deeply in the belief of His
humanity. See Him as He was. Breathe His Spirit.
After that, try to comprehend His life. Enter into
His childhood. Feel with Him when He looked
round about Him in anger ; when He vindicated the
crushed woman from the powerless venom of her
ferocious accusers ; when He stood alone in the
solitary majesty of truth in Pilate's judgment-hall ;
when the light of the Roman soldiers' torches flashed
on Kedron in the dark night, and He knew that
watching was too late ; when His heart-strings gave
way upon the cross. Walk with Him through the
marriage-feast. See how the sick and weary came

392 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

to Him instinctively ; how men, when they saw Him,
felt their sin, they knew not why, and fell at His feet ;
how guilt unconsciously revealed itself, and all that
was good in men was drawn out, and they became
higher than themselves in His presence. Realise this.
Live with Him until He becomes a living thought —
ever present — and you will find a reverence growing
up which compares with nothing else in human feel-
ing. You will feel that a slighting word spoken of
Him wounds with a dart more sharp than personal
insult. You will feel that to bow at the name of
Jesus is no form at will of others, but a relief and
welcome. And if it should ever chance that, finding
yourself thrown upon your own self, and cut off from
sects — suspected, in quest of a truth which no man
gives — then that wondrous sense of strength and
friendship comes — the being alone with Christ, with
the strength of a manlier independence. Slowly,
then, this almost insensibly merges into adoration.
Now what is it to adore Christ ? To call Him God ?
to say, Lord, Lord ? No. Adoration is the mightiest
love the soul can give — call it by what name you will.
Many a Unitarian, as Channing, has adored, calling it
only admiration ; and many an orthodox Christian,
calling Christ God with most accurate theology, has
given Him only a cool intellectual homage." ■

Much exception was taken to Robertson's warm
admiration for Channing. But the extract just given

1 "Life and Letters," vol. ii. pp. 170, 171.

VERNY AND ROBERTSON.

393

shows that he knew how to distinguish between Chan-
ning's feelings as a man, and the opinions of his party.

In Robertson's conception of the incarnation, the
dogma of the two natures was altogether dropped.
He believed firmly that it was possible for the human
to become divine ; or, rather, he recognised the
divine in the primeval idea of humanity, which finds
its eternal realisation in Christ.

In his sermon on the Trinity he fully develops
these views, which are shared, as we know, by an
important section of contemporary theologians, and
which, if we except their tendency to exaggeration,
can claim in their support the teaching of the second
and third centuries. We would not venture to say
that Robertson did not approach too daringly the
mysteries of the Divine Being, when he said that
before the world was there already existed in the
mind of God that which we may call the humanity of
Deity, that which the scripture calls the Word,
the Son, the express image of the Father. In his
sermon on the Trinity we read : " The Unitarian
maintains a divine humanity — a blessed, blessed
truth. There is a truth more blessed still — the
humanity of Deity. Before the world was, there was
that in the mind of God which we may call the
humanity of His divinity. It is called in scripture
the Word ; the Son ; the Form of God. It is in
virtue of this that we have a right to attribute to
Him our own feelings ; it is in virtue of this that

394 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

scripture speaks of His wisdom, His justice, His
love. It is through this humanity in the mind of
God, if I may dare so to speak of Deity, that a
revelation became possible to man. It was the
Word that was made flesh ; it was the Word that
manifested itself to man. It is in virtue of the con •
nection between God and man that God made man
in His own image ; that through a long line of prophets
the human truth of God could be made known to
man, till it came forth developed most entirely and
at large in the incarnation of the Redeemer." J

Robertson seems to have anticipated the ideas
worked out by Beyschlag in his paper before the
Kirchentag of Altenburg, which gave rise to so much
stormy discussion. It must be admitted, however,
that he never called in question, as did the German
theologian, the eternal pre-existence of the Word.
It is true that he speaks of the obscurity of the
doctrine of the Trinity, and of the impossibility of
attaching an exact and definite meaning to our
common language, when it is used in relation to those
unfathomable depths, which we cannot comprehend
within our narrow formulas. We may well say in
relation to subjects like these, as the apostle said, "We
see through a glass darkly." Robertson gave ex-
aggerated expression to his real belief when, in the
Sermon on Absolution, he said that man has the

1 " Sermon on the Trinity." Third Series, p. 56.

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 395

power as man to forgive sins, because he is the
representative of God, and because of the essential
harmony existing between the human and the divine
nature. This is unquestionably an exaggeration
amounting to error. It is the Father who has been
offended by the prodigal son ; and in this sense the
Pharisees were right when they said, " Who can forgive
sins but God only ?" Their error lay in their failing
to recognise in Christ the true representative of God.

Here, again, we notice the same deficiency to which
we have already referred in Robertson's teaching.
The idea of moral perfection throws into the back-
ground the idea of pardon. The religion he presents
to us is rather that of a realised ideal than that of
redemption and restoration.

Such a doctrine does not meet the conditions of
our weakness ; it is too high for us ; we cannot attain
to it. The love of God has stooped lower than
Robertson thought. Robertson treats us as strong
men ; God knows that we are but feeble children. It
is well to have a strong and rapid steed to bear us
over the rough places on the way, but first of all the
poor traveller, sick and sore wounded, needs some one
to stoop and lift him up and to bind up his wounds
like the good Samaritan.

It will not, I hope, appear hypercritical, if I still
further take exception to Robertson's too persistent
avoidance of all beaten tracks. There are sacred
resting-places for the Christian soul which ought not

396 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

to be neglected ; there are rudiments of the faith
which cannot with impunity be passed over in silence,
however familiar they may be supposed to be.
Robertson constantly contents himself with alluding
to the fundamental points of Christian teaching
without expounding them. This is a mistake. At other
times he falls into the error of a too minute and
subtle analysis. But with these exceptions, we know
no writer more genial, none more nervous, none
whose words are more stimulating to thought and
reflection. He had a fertile and graceful imagination.
His illustrations are original, and altogether free from
conventionality. We never find in his pages that
profusion of familiar metaphors — flowers, stars, storms,
cataracts — which are the hackneyed properties of a
meretricious rhetoric. Anglo - Saxon imagery, from
the time of Shakspeare, has been distinguished by
a vigorous realism, clear in colour, firm in outline.
Few writers have understood its use better than
Robertson. His delivery did full justice to his elo-
quence. He gave free expression to the results of his
profound and careful study. His striking face,
resonant voice, restrained but vigorous action, and
above all, that strong tension of his whole being which
made every word instinct with his own deepest life —
all this tended to produce an ineffaceable impression
upon his hearers. But in such spending the life soon
exhausts itself, especially when the soul of the
preacher is all the while the scene of a long wrestling

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 397

like Jacob's, from which he comes forth again and
again wounded though victorious.

Beside the volumes of sermons, Robertson has left
behind a series of expositions of the epistles to the
Corinthians, a reminiscence of those consecutive
studies of various portions of Scripture which he
was accustomed to give in his Sunday afternoon
service. This mode of teaching seems to us peculiarly
admirable, giving as it does a full and comprehensive
view of the real intention of the sacred writers, instead
of breaking up passages of scripture into disjointed
fragments, of which the preacher may be often tempted
to make a fanciful and unreal application.

We observe in this volume on the Corinthians the
same defects and the same merits as in the other
sermons. The form in which the truth is presented
is in this case more simple, though always original
and suggestive. His meditations on the resurrection
are of peculiar depth and beauty.

Robertson's physical strength began to decline
rapidly in the summer of 1853. He suffered from an
irritation of the brain which produced terrible exhaus-
tion. Rest seemed for the time to restore him, but
the respite was very short. It was found necessary
for him to have a curate ; the candidate whom
Robertson preferred was refused to him by his
ecclesiastical superior, on the ground of unfounded
charges against him. Robertson was fully determined
not to accept any other, for he felt that in doing so he

398 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

should seem to lend credence to the calumnies
unjustly circulated against a good man.

This controversy, in which Robertson showed the
rare nobility of his character, was not terminated at
the time of his death, and no doubt hastened his end
by deferring the help he absolutely needed, and thus
aggravating his bodily suffering by mental distress.
He died August 15th, 1853. His last words were,
" Let me rest. I must die. Let God do His work."

He was followed to the grave by the deep regrets
of His church, especially of the younger portion,
whose hearts he had completely gained, and of the
poor, to whom he had ever been a faithful friend.
Robertson left behind him an unsullied memory, and
an influence which has been increasing year by year,
as his published sermons have won their way in all
the thoughtful Christian homes of England.

CONCLUSION.

We have seen in the case of both Verny and
Robertson, how deep and severe the mental conflict
may be in our day, even in the case of those who hold
fast their faith in Christ. The severity of the struggle
has in no way abated in the years that have elapsed
since their death. Both in England and France souls
are deeply agitated by religious questions, as is mani-
fest from the reaction in the direction of Catholicism,
and from the development of that lofty Christian

VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 399

stoicism, of which " Ecce Homo " is at once the noblest
and most brilliant expression.

It would be childish to shut our eyes to the fact
that that which constitutes the danger of these
theories, which are acquiring such an ascendancy in
our day, is the inadequacy of the orthodox creeds.
We draw from this only one conclusion — that it is
essential that we should press forward, in the fullest
exercise of faith and of freedom, the development of
our theology. It is not for us to slumber calmly
while the problems of the age are placed before us for
solution. All those who have obtained for themselves
the answer to the question, " What must I do to be
saved ? " all who are living by the life of Christ, have
found for themselves a sure abiding place. But they
are not to fall asleep in it ; rather are they bound to
unite their efforts to give satisfaction to the spiritual
needs of other souls, and primarily to the legitimate
aspiration after a closer union of the religious with
the moral element. In this way they will be saved
from falling into exaggerations, which are the sure
indication of some spiritual unsoundness.

We believe firmly in a Church of the future, which,
unlike ancient Rome, shall gather into itself the good
elements of all existing Churches, which shall give us
in worship true adoration without the forms of
idolatry, and in doctrine moral vigour and definite-
ness of teaching without an arid dogmatism.

Upon this lofty height will meet the pilgrims who

400 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS.

have climbed the hill by many paths. And still behind
this summit there will rise another, and again another
and another loftier still, till we shall have reached
the mountains radiant with the eternal sunlight of
perfect love, on which we shall know as we are known.
So the search after fuller truth, with all the diversi-
ties that it brings with it, must recommence after
each great fusion of thought and feeling wrought
under some mighty impetus in the religious life.
This is the law of history, and we freely accept it ; for
after all, what we seek is only to arrive at a fuller
knowledge of ourselves, and a fuller apprehension of
the truth we have already grasped. He who has
Christ has in Him all things. Let us not misin-
terpret the struggles and turmoils of these periods of
transition. I can think of no more fitting conclusion
to these studies of earnest lives than words used by the
noble Lebre, whose death drew such an eloquent tribute
from the heart of Verny. It is a quarter of a century
since he wrote the words, and yet they are more
appropriate to-day than ever: "Those in whose souls
the great travail of the future is being carried on
ought to seek solitude as did the ancient prophets,
but like them, also, they ought to fill the solitude with
their prayers, and to walk with bowed souls before
God. It is theirs with deep humility and holy fervour
to seek the help of God for themselves and for the
whole world."

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