Meditations On The Actual State Of The Christian Religion.
First Meditation.
The Awakening Of Christianity In France In The Nineteenth Century.
In 1797, La Réveillière-Lépeaux, one of the five Directors who then constituted the government of France, having just read to that class of the Institut [Footnote 1] of which he was a member a memorial respecting Theophilanthropism, and the forms suitable for this new worship, consulted Talleyrand upon the subject; the latter replied, "I have but a single observation to make: Jesus Christ, to found his religion, suffered himself to be crucified, and he rose again. You should try to do as much."
[Footnote 1: The class of moral and political sciences.]
Nor was it long before events justified the ironical counsel. In 1802, hardly four years afterward, Theophilanthropism and its apostle, the dream and the dreamer, had disappeared from the stage where they had been powerless in influence, barren in consequence. The strong hand of Napoleon again solemnly set up in France the religion of Christ crucified and Christ risen, and in that same year the brilliant genius of Chateaubriand again placed before the eyes of his countrymen the beauties of Christianity. The great politician and the great writer bowed each of them before the Cross; the Cross was the point from which each started—the one to reconstruct the Christian Church in France, the other to prove how capable a Christian writer is of charming French society and of stirring its emotions.
In these days, and in some parts of Christendom, the Concordat and the "Génie du Christianisme," the one as a political institution, the other as a literary production, have lost something of their vogue. Catholics, zealous and sincere, criticise severely the defects of the Concordat; they regard it as sometimes incomplete, sometimes tyrannical: they reproach it with assailing the rights of religious society, of paralyzing its influence, and restricting its liberty. Some go so far as to express wishes for the separation of Church and State, and for their entire independence of each other, the only certain guarantee to either, they affirm, of a real moral influence. Protestants, equally zealous and sincere, entertain the same opinions and the same wishes. Not contented with this, the latter have gone further, and acted; they have separated themselves from the Protestant Church recognized by the State, and have founded independent Churches, self-governing and self-sufficing; nor have they demanded anything from the State but the liberty that is every citizen's due. In a work recently published, [Footnote 2] a pastor of one of these Churches, a man distinguished both by the elevation of his mind and the generosity of his sentiments, M. Edmond de Pressensé, has gone still farther.