[Footnote 26: Essai sur la manifestation des convictions religieuses, p. 85. Premiers discours, pp. 14, 50, 53. Littérature Française, vol. iii, p. 623.]
Whoever indicated with greater distinctness the keystone in the edifice of Christianity, or ever clung to it more closely? M. Vinet occupied himself in turn with freedom of conscience and of man's thought, with the faith of Christ, and with the literature of France. These three subjects became the passions of his life, stirring his soul, though at unequal depths. But of these three only one, the passion for literature, was a source to him of tranquil and unmitigated enjoyment. In his advocacy of man's liberty and of Christianity, M. Vinet had to pass not only through the ordeal of intellectual labors and combats, but through the solicitudes and sorrows of life. The defender of the liberty of forms of worship, crowned as such by the "Societé Français de la Morale Chrétienne," lived to see this liberty attacked in his native Switzerland, at once by popular fury and by civil authority. The fervent promoter of the Christian reaction, beheld one hundred and sixty evangelical pastors of the Canton of the Vaud, his companions in this pious work, forced to quit their "Chairs" in order to preserve their faith. And it was in sickness, and at the approach of death, that M. Vinet had to undergo all this. Neither his faith nor the tranquillity of his soul was disturbed. He continued, to his last hour, to be the active champion of liberty, the faithful servant of Christ, the eloquent admirer and commentator upon French literature, which he followed in all its phases, whether calm or stormy, whether pure or defiled. "After all," so he wrote in 1845, "I am not one of those who despair; God, without any violence to our freedom of action, rather by that freedom itself, conducts us to the unknown shores. The ports at which we land do not all of them afford secure mooring; we know something of that even in this little country. Our progress will be slow, and amid storms; but the circle of universal truth will be completed, and man's sense of moral right and wrong will be improved, at the same time that man's science will be enriched. I should feel horror if I thought that Some One is not at the center of all this movement, holding all its elements in his hand; Some One to whom, whether they know him or do not know him, the aspirations of all creatures ascend in their sorrow, and whom they instinctively salute with the sweet reassuring name of 'Father.'" [Footnote 27]
[Footnote 27: Notice sur M. Alexandra Vinet, par M. E. Souvestre, published in the Magazin Pittoresque de 1848, p. 81.
The principal works of M. Alexandre Vinet are:
1. Traité et Polémique sur la liberté des cultes. 1826, 1852.
2. Discours sur quelques sujets religieux. 1831, 1853.
3. Essais de philosophic et de morale religieuse. 1837.
4. Essai sur la manifestation des convictions religieuses, et sur la séparation de l'Église et de État. 1842, 1858.
5. Études et méditations évangéliques. 1847, 1849, 1851.
6. Études sur Pascal. 1848, 1856.
q 7. Chrestomathie Française, Histoire de la littérature Française au XVIII siècle, et Études sur la littérature Française au XIX siècle. 1829, 1849, 1853, etc.
He wrote, besides, numerous short pieces, and articles in reviews and journals, suggested by topics of the day.]
Upon a single point, the relations of Church and State, his usual comprehensiveness of view and independence of thought appeared to abandon M. Vinet. Justly struck and afflicted by his own experience of the inconveniences of a strict bond between Church and State, disgusted at the servility and falsity which frequently are, sometimes on the part of the State, sometimes on the part of the Church, its results, he concluded that in all cases all alliance between the two conditions of society is radically vicious; and he declared their entire separation a general and absolute principle, the sole reasonable and just system, the sole efficacious guarantee of truth and of liberty in spirituals or temporals. He thus ignored, it appears to me, the natural causes which produce, and the human motives which sanction, a certain alliance between societies civil and ecclesiastical; he ignored also the inestimable advantages which, at certain times and in certain circumstances, each may derive, and has actually derived, from that alliance. In the United States of America, the entire separation of the State and of the different Churches was necessary and salutary, for it was the spontaneous consequence of the condition of men's minds, and of the position of society. In England, in spite of the acts of injustice, and the ills engendered by the intimate union of the state with a Church legally constituted and having exclusive privileges, the coexistence of the Church of England with the freedom, more and more every day complete and recognized, of the Churches of the Dissenters, was for the Christian religion a potent principle of life, of force, and of durability.
And if we go back to the ancient history of Europe, who can doubt that at the fall of the Roman Empire, if the State and the Church had not, although distinct institutions, been allied, the development of Christianity would have been far less energetic, and its conquest of its barbarous conquerors far more problematical? This is, I repeat, a question not of principle, but of time, of place, of circumstance, and of condition of society. A complete separation of Church and State may be good and practicable; it is neither the only good system, nor is it always a practicable system.
An alliance of the two upon certain fixed terms has its inconveniences and its perils, but its effects may be also very salutary; it may be essential, and does not of necessity exclude religious sincerity or religious liberty. M. Vinet, in discussing the subject, lost sight of the general history of human societies, and attached too much importance to the specious and transient facts which he had before his eyes.
If M. Vinet were now living, he might in his own country behold two fair examples of the good results of the mixed systems which he so absolutely condemned. In the Cantons of the Vaud and of Geneva, after the violent and painful contests to which I have above referred, a dissenting Independent Church was established by the side of a Church recognized and supported by the State. In neither canton was this establishment a temporary expedient, the fruit of a momentary ardor; the Independent Church has consolidated and developed itself; it endures and prospers. Like the Establishment, it has its pastors, its churches, its solemnities, its schools for general and for superior instruction. I have before me facts and figures which prove its vitality and its progress. And not only did the Established Church finally acquiesce in the peaceable existence of the independent Church, it also profited by it, and its salutary influence has been frankly acknowledged by its worthiest pastors. In Switzerland, as in England, Scotland, and Holland, and in our days more easily and more promptly than in ancient times, the existence on the one side of a national Church recognized by the State, has given to the different forms of Christian belief a stability and a dignity which have secured its permanent effects upon succeeding generations; the existence, on the other side, of independent Churches, and the religious emulation between the two establishments, have turned in both to the profit of faith and of piety.