VI.
In treating of the internal condition of Protestantism, we shall make mention, as we have done when speaking of the preceding periods, less of opinions considered in themselves, than of the men who were their most distinguished representatives.
When the peace of 1815 had allayed the storms which had shaken thrones and nations, the popular mind experienced a calm approaching to the void. The illusions of glory, the dreams of distant conquests vanished. There was now leisure to breathe, to think of oneself, and the want of something, upon which to fix the mind, was experienced. One class turned itself to the cultivation of the sciences, literature, social questions, historical studies, or to industrial works; another, much less numerous, sought from religious belief a satisfaction of the wants of their conscience and their heart.
The freedom once more permitted of making ideas known, facilitated and gave life to this religious movement: not that faith is unable to grow beneath outward oppression, for we may see splendid examples to the contrary in the history of Protestantism; but the independence of thought and action is the true atmosphere of spiritual existence.
Finally, the return to religious subjects was strengthened by the relations that were re-established between the Protestants of France and those of other countries. The Reformation had, for half a century, inspired great works, and founded great associations; it had despatched its missionaries to the extremities of the globe, and distributed the Bible in every human tongue by millions of copies. When French Protestantism was brought into contact with these noble aspirations of Christian life, it learned to know its duties better, and to fulfil them with greater fidelity.
Many pious souls resumed the ancient faith of the Reformed churches, and displayed in acts of religion and proselytism, an energy, a zeal, and an ardour of which later generations had lost the tradition. This change was not always well understood, not only by the masses, but by men of superior intelligence, and provoked painful dissensions. The names of Methodist and Rationalist, the one borrowed from Germany, the other from England, became party cries.
These divisions just began to appear when Protestant France lost a man, who, having inherited the doctrines taught in the churches of the desert, yet having abstained from the new conflicts, might have given a lofty and powerful impulse to theological studies, from the position he occupied in the faculty of Montauban. His faith, his learning, and his worth, entitle him to a place in this history.
M. Daniel Encontre was born at Nismes in 1762. His father, who had been one of the pastors of the desert, was only able to bestow upon his education the rare opportunities of leisure afforded by a wandering and restless life. But the young Encontre did more by himself than others would have done under the most able masters. “In him was again witnessed the phenomenon, which had been in former times so much admired in the youth of Pascal. Debarred from the privilege of studying mathematics, he divined them. Before the age of nineteen, without books, obliged to work in secret and by stealth, his power of genius was such that he succeeded in penetrating so far into the science as to reach the infinitesimal calculus, the object of his astonishing aspiration. He cultivated at the same time, and with the same energy, under the eyes, and with his father’s consent, the study of the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin languages; and his success was so surprising, particularly in the two last, that they were soon as familiar to him as his mother tongue.”[144]
He went to the academies of Lausanne and Geneva to finish his studies, and exhibited there so much superiority, that his fellow-students compared him to their most skilful professors. His religious convictions were not without their troubles and storms; but he returned to the faith by the avenue of doubt, and rested in it more firmly.
On his return to France, Encontre preached the Gospel to the desert flocks. His success in preaching was, however, small, because he was deficient in those physical qualities, without which the best discourses do not engage [the attention of] the multitude. His stature was small, his voice husky, his action more hasty than imposing. An extinction of voice intervened to decide the question with his conscience; and he quitted the pulpit of the house of worship for the chair of the academies.
The Revolution, which deprived so many of their lives, did not leave his existence undisturbed. He sought an asylum at Montpellier, where, says the biographer whom we have quoted, “he was reduced, in order to earn his bread, to give lessons in stone-cutting to master masons and workmen. He who was worthy of teaching by the side of a Lagrange, a Laharpe, or a Fourcroy, thought himself even fortunate in being able to procure employment in the quarries.” Nor did he forget, in these times of proscription, that he was the minister of Jesus Christ, and at the peril of his life he celebrated baptisms, blessed marriages, gave religious instruction, and supported the piety of the faithful at Montpellier and in its neighbourhood.
At the opening of the central schools, he presented himself to contest for the chair of literature. Another candidate, fearing the rivalry of M. Encontre, besought him to withdraw, which he immediately did, and offered himself successfully for the chair of pure mathematics. It was only such a man, who could do such an act: his encyclopædical mind, equally versed in literature, the sciences, and theology, was profound and original in all. The celebrated Fourcroy has said of him, “I have seen in France two or three heads that might be compared with his, but I have never found one that was superior.”
Appointed dean of the faculty of sciences at Montpellier, he exercised a legitimate ascendancy, and enriched the collections of the learned societies with many excellent papers. A career, as peaceful as it was honourable, lay before him, when the voice of the Reformed churches called him, in 1814, to the professorship of theology of Montauban. M. Encontre sacrificed everything to a vocation pointed out to him under the austere image of duty, and only expressed his fear that he should be found unequal to his new task—a modesty equalled only by his genius.
On his arrival at Montauban, where the double functions of professor and dean had been confided to him, he imparted firmness to the professorship of theology by the solidity of his doctrine, the extent of his learning, and the authority of his character. All acknowledged that he had a right to exact much from every one, since he exacted more from himself.
Unhappily his strength was soon exhausted by the labours of his office; yet although suffering and ill, he continued to consecrate the remainder of his expiring life. Seeing that his end was near, he proceeded to Montpellier, where the ashes of his first wife and daughter reposed, and died there on the 16th of September, 1818. “There is only one voice in the Protestant church of France as to the irreparable loss it has sustained,” said the editor of the Archives of Christianity, on the announcement of this sorrowful news.
M. Daniel Encontre engaged himself upon philosophical and religious subjects in some sketches which obtained deserved success. His letter to M. Combe-d’Ounous on Plato, and his dissertation upon the true system of the world compared with the Mosaic relation, prove that he made profound researches upon questions, which have in all ages most deeply interested the human mind.
However, French Protestantism strove to found some new institutions. The general meeting of the Bible Society of France was convoked on the 6th of December, 1819. We quote the following observation from the president’s speech, which has an historical value: “According to our by-laws and the government authorization, the Bible Society of Paris consists solely of Protestants. It appears, and we ought not to complain of it, that the government has thus invited the Reformed to make each other’s acquaintance to edify one another, and to become more exemplary, by intercommunication.” Such, in effect, was, next to the essential motive of religious faith, one of the principal objects of the members of the Bible Society under the Restoration; namely, that of offering to the Protestants scattered over the face of the kingdom, without any common organization, a central rallying-point around which they might assemble for reciprocal assistance, an advantage of vital importance when considered with reference to the intrigues and encroachments of the clerical party.
Other associations were successively established: The Religious Tract Society, in 1822; and The Society for the Encouragement of Primary Instruction among the Protestants of France, in 1829. Each of these institutions contributed its share in fortifying and extending the empire of Christian piety.
Among the men, who laboured to found these societies, displaying as much intelligence as devotion, the Baron Auguste de Staël should be named.
He was the grandson of Necker, the son of Madame de Staël and the brother of the Duchess de Broglie. The Protestant churches welcomed in him one of those pious laymen, so useful in former times, who united political influence with a Christian spirit; and they were glad, allowing for the difference of time and circumstances, to salute him as the future Duplessis-Mornay, or the Wilberforce of the French Reformation.
Born at Coppet, in the canton of Vaud, in 1790, he received his first religious lessons from the venerable pastor Cellerier. His biographer says: “We do not doubt that M. de Staël owed a great part of his just ideas on religion, and of the excellent sentiments he so early displayed, to his connection and intimacy with this tried and faithful minister; and we can confidently affirm that the scholar ever entertained the liveliest and most tender remembrance of his teacher.”[145]
The part he took in the establishment of the Bible Society helped to develop his pious tendencies. Having accepted the task of drawing up the Reports of the Committee, and of going from house to house to exhort the faithful to make sacrifices for the dissemination of the Scriptures, he learned better to appreciate the holy books himself.
During a visit to England in the spring of 1822, he became acquainted with Wilberforce and other eminent Christians, whose words and examples strengthened his sentiments of piety. The Letters upon England, which he published in 1825, give but an imperfect idea of the observations he collected upon this subject; for the author confined himself to a treatise upon the religion and the Christian communions of Great Britain in a volume which he was not able to complete.
M. de Staël applied his zeal and efforts to several labours that might be called mixed, because, although evangelical faith lay at the base, their object was temporal improvement. We may mention among them the foundation of Savings-banks, popular elementary instruction, and the abolition of the slave-trade.
No one has forgotten the shudder of indignation which he excited at a general meeting of the Society of Christian Morality, when he exhibited the instruments of torture used in that abominable traffic. He did more. “From hall to hall, from office to office, from palace to palace,” says one of his biographers, “we saw him display these hideous proofs of the most atrocious cruelty and lust of gain. He brought before the notice of the princes and princesses of the royal family, these machines invented by the spirit of evil, and he explained to them their bloody use. He showed them to the peers of the realm in their places in the legislative assembly, and to all the friends of humanity in the public meetings of the benevolent societies.... We may, without hesitation, assert, that it is to his generous efforts we owe the cessation of the evil, and the change manifested in the system of government and in the legislature on this subject.”
The sympathies of M. de Staël were extended to all classes of the oppressed, and he defended the victims of an intolerant law in the Canton of Vaud. His writings, his letters, his solicitations, moved every right-thinking conscience, and if he did not succeed in procuring the repeal of this mischievous law, he succeeded in having it more mildly applied.
His character offered a rare mixture of earnestness and caution, of zeal and moderation. So great was his integrity, that it frequently prevented him from speaking to the extent of his religious convictions, from the fear of overstepping them. No one understood better than himself how difficult it is, in the midst of social affairs and relations, to make one’s life conform unerringly to the precepts of the Gospel. “This want of harmony between his life and his religion,” says the editor of his works, “was an insupportable load, under which he languished, and his very physiognomy bore the impress of this mental anguish. But by degrees his mind was calmed by the Christian faith, at once so consoling and so pure, which, without detracting from the beauty of the moral type which should be the object of our endeavours, teaches us to turn our eyes from our own misery to fix them upon that one divine, holy, and just Being, who has accomplished everything for us.”
The Baron de Staël died at the Château de Coppet, on the 17th of November, 1827, when only thirty-seven years of age.
The attention and the labours of the pious were also directed, during the Restoration, towards the scattered Protestants, who were threatened with the loss of their religious belief and habits, by the distance of their dwellings from regular pastoral action. The greatest of these new Evangelists was undoubtedly Félix Neff, who was born at Geneva, in 1798. Although a stranger to the Reformed churches of our country by his birthplace, he belongs to them by his missionary career; for it is in Dauphiny, more than elsewhere, that he spread the seeds of the Gospel, and he has been justly called the Oberlin of the Upper Alps.
Neff was not covetous of glory, and it is probable that the idea of a distinguished name never presented itself to his mind, when he went to expound the Bible in the huts of the poor mountaineers. Yet no name of the French Reformation in our day has been so famous as his: numerous original writings and a host of translations have been published concerning his life. In the heart of Germany, in the most distant valleys of Scotland, on the borders of the Orinoco and the Ohio, the name of Félix Neff is pronounced, and thousands of voices will re-echo, “He was a mighty servant of the Lord.”
In his youth he was fond of reading Plutarch and Rousseau; he studied mathematics and the natural sciences, and distinguished himself by the manliness of his character, as much as by the powers of his mind. Enrolled at seventeen years of age in the artillery of Geneva, his approach to the principles of Christianity was slow; but when he had once embraced them, he never quitted them. He immediately quitted the military service, and travelled through several of the Swiss cantons, preaching the Gospel from place to place. Thence he entered the department of Isère, and in 1823 went to the Upper Alps.
There, in the deep gorges, or upon peaks covered with eternal snow, dwells a population which, it is said, dates back by its symbols and its religious creed, to the primitive Christians of the Gauls. They form a link, not only with the disciples of Pierre Valdo, but with the apostolate of Irenæus, the second bishop of Lyons.
These Christians of Dauphiny, exposed to cruel persecutions, and continually straitened as the authority of Rome gradually more closely encircled them, had taken refuge from rock to rock, from mountain height to height, as far as the extreme limit where man can exist in the rarefied air. They had carried with them their Bible, their confessions of faith, and that firm piety, which welcomes the most terrible tortures in preference to apostasy. When the Reformation appeared, they saluted it as a sister of their ancient communion, and joined the churches of Dauphiny and Provence.
Neff discovered in the valleys of Fressinières and Queyras, at Triève, Lacombe, Dormillouse, villages hung upon the precipitous slopes of the Alps, the remnants of this faithful race. Without schools, without fixed pastors or regular religious service, they were left to live upon their pious recollections rather than upon a personal and active faith. Neff, by God’s help, restored this to them; and, a missionary at the same time of civilization and Christianity, he became their schoolmaster, and their instructor in agriculture, engineering, and surveying; the first in the field to labour, the last to quit the offices of prayer, he devoted himself wholly to this people whom he served.
Three years and a half passed in these pursuits of fraternal love. Félix Neff sheltered his head now under the roof of one cabin, now under another, never sleeping three nights following in the same resting-place. His parish was fifteen leagues in length, and comprised twelve annexed districts. He visited them in winter and summer alike, wading through the snow knee-deep, taking long circuitous routes to pass the glaciers, eating the black bread of the inhabitants, preaching in the barns, and opening schools in the stables. Such devotion was not permitted to be fruitless. The mountaineers of the Alps awoke at the voice of the apostle. “The rocks, nay, the very glaciers,” he wrote, “all seemed animated, and presented a smiling aspect; the savage country became agreeable and dear to me from the moment its inhabitants were my brethren.”
But his health, however robust, gave way beneath the burthen, and in this sublime contest between charity and physical suffering, his frame broke down. Félix Neff was compelled to quit the Alps to behold them no more; he died in the month of April, 1829, in his native town.
He has left but few writings—one or two fragments of sermons, some pious meditations, and letters, which have been collected and printed. He was rather a man of action than of study, and he might have addressed to the writers on religion the saying of a great citizen of antiquity to a philosopher: “That which you speak, I do.”
However rich Protestant literature may have been under the Restoration, if judged by the number of its works, it is poor in original books of any value. Translations and reprints were numerous. English authors figure principally in the first category: Bogue, Chalmers, Paley, Thomas Scott, Erskine, Milner, Miss Kennedy, and others. In the second we meet with the works of Nardin, Saurin, Court, Duplessis-Mornay, Dumoulin, Claude, and Drelincourt. The Mémoire of M. Alexandre Vinet in favour of religious liberty, the Vues sur le Protestantisme en France of M. Samuel Vincent, and the Musée des Protestants célèbres, an unfinished work, are distinguished by different kinds of merit from the mass of the forgotten books of that period.