THE GODDESS OF REASON.
THE REIGN OF TERROR.
During the latter part of 1793 the country had virtually delivered itself up to the will of its tyrants. The war against religion had assumed an open and defiant character, under the influence of the guillotine; churches had already lost their sacred significance, and the names of the saints or holy mysteries which they had hitherto borne gave place to profane and often impious titles; the Republican calendar had been formally adopted and enforced upon the nation; everywhere priests were called upon to burn their letters of ordination and to bring to the Convention their crosses, chalices, ciboriums and other objects destined for the Holy Sacrifice. The Archbishop of Paris, the infamous Gobel, entered the hall of the Convention at the head of other constitutional clergy, and there despoiled himself of all insignia of episcopal or priestly office, declaring at the same time that he renounced forever all his rights and duties as a minister of Catholic worship.
THE GODDESS OF REASON.
It was at this time, November 10th, 1793, that the Convention proclaimed the worship of reason, and deified that abstract idea by a sacrilegious ceremony in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, at Paris. An actress was placed upon a throne within the sanctuary of that ancient temple, and received amidst the hymns and maudlin praises of the multitude the adoration of a fallen nation. The example of Paris was imitated in all parts of the country, until the strange spectacle was observed of a whole nation gone mad.
The new worship brought with it renewed hostility to Christianity. Almost every day the Convention was called upon to review processions whose object was to ridicule and cast odium upon the things of God. Bands of Sans-Culottes defiled through the streets, or passed through the Assembly halls, attired in copes, chasubles and dalmatics which they had pillaged from the churches. No limit was put to these exhibitions of horrible sacrilege. In many cases the processions were headed by an ass bearing a mitre upon his head, a chalice upon his back, with a cross hanging from his tail. It seemed as if the Revolution could go no further in its impiety, though men still held their breath waiting anxiously for the next move in the horrible nightmare.
In the midst of the general madness the Revolution turned against its own creatures and denied its own religion. The people had already begun to mock at the absurdity of the worship of reason, and tired of one false god, looked to their leaders to supply them with another. It was at this juncture that Robespierre, the man of blood and crime, suddenly became the apostle of a new cult, which was baptized in the blood of the adorers of reason. The guillotine reaped rich harvests, numbering that year among its victims the apostates, Gobel, Lamourette, Clootz, together with Hebert, Danton, Desmoulins and others.
In the beginning of the year 1794, Robespierre caused the Convention to pass a decree proclaiming the existence of a Supreme Being, and constituting feast days "to recall mankind to the consideration of the divinity and to the dignity of his being." On June 8th, he presided personally as high priest, at the first solemn feast of the new worship. The latter, however, proved even less popular as a religion than its predecessor, and served only to demonstrate how the human heart craves for the worship of God, and will not be satisfied with the human imitations of a religion whose origin is divine.
