[Footnote 2: L'Église et la Revolution française, histoire des relations de l'Église et de l'État, de 1789-1802. 8vo. 1864.]

Not content with defending the principle of the separation of Church and State, he has endeavored to prove that, in 1802, the Concordat was, on the part of Napoleon, simply an act of tyranny and ambition; that it was, as far as Christianity is concerned, an untoward incident; and that if the Christian Church, at the time spontaneously regenerating itself, had been left free and uncontrolled, it would have risen by its own proper strength, and would have grown in influence and in faith far more than the Concordat has permitted it to do. I am far from proposing to discuss here, as a general proposition, the system of separation of Church and State, or its worth in a religious or social point of view; such a system I do not regard as the ideal of religious society: the co-existence, I would rather say the competition, of Churches recognized by the State and of Dissenting Churches independently constituting themselves and self-sufficing, is, in my opinion, the system most in conformity with the nature of things, and most favorable to the solidity and general efficiency of religion. That is a question rather of epoch, time, manners, and social condition than of principle. But, however this may be, I hold it as certain that, in 1802, the Concordat was, on the part of Napoleon, far more an act of superior sagacity than of arbitrary power, and that it was for the Christian religion in France an event as salutary as necessary. After the anarchy and the orgies of the Revolution, nothing but the solemn recognition of Christianity by the State could have given satisfaction to the public sentiment, and insured to the religion of Christ the dignity and the stability, the recovery of which was so essential to its influence. Nothing is more liable to error than an attempt to appreciate, with reference to present circumstances and the actual condition of men's minds, what was possible and good sixty years ago; and I am convinced, that in spite of his zeal for the separation of Church and State, M. Edmond de Pressensé, had he lived in 1802, would have been as little satisfied as France herself with a Christian Church restored in accordance with the plan of the Abbe Grégoire, The Concordat was a mixed and imperfect measure, subject to grave objections, and the source of numberless difficulties; but, taken altogether, the measure was grand and salutary; it gave at once to the Christian movement a sanction and an impulse that no other scheme would have been capable of imparting.

M. de Chateaubriand and the "Génie du Christianisme" are entitled to the same justice. I am ready, with regard to both book and author, to concede the truth of all the objections and of all the defects that the severest critic may be able or may wish to detect; their grand and salutary action will not be the less a living fact. It is with books as it is with men; it is by their qualities, whatever their faults, that they command position and exercise sway, and wherever superior qualities are discernible, their efficacy remains in spite of any faults, in spite of any defects, by which they may be accompanied. Notwithstanding its imperfections in a religious and literary point of view, the "Génie du Christianisme" was in both these respects a performance at the same time remarkable and powerful: it strongly moved men's minds, it gave a fresh impulse to men's imaginations, it reanimated and placed in their proper rank the traditions and the early impressions of Christianity. No criticism, however legitimate, can ever deprive that work of the place that it at once assumed in the religious and the literary history of its time and country. Neither the Concordat nor the "Génie du Christianisme" was, in 1802, the result of a spirit of blind and barren reaction. Napoleon and Chateaubriand were both, of them hardy innovators. At the side of the ancient religion which he re-established, Napoleon firmly maintained also the liberty of conscience, whether in matters of worship or philosophy. At the very instant when the Concordat was proclaimed and the "Génie du Christianisme" was published, the learned physiologist, Cabanis, also published his treatise on the relations of man's physical and moral nature, a work which characterized man as a mere machine. And in recalling France to an admiration of the beauties of Christian literature, Chateaubriand imaged them to her in forms of language so novel and so original, that many among the severe guardians of the French language treated him as an outrageous and barbarous writer. A new era opened at this epoch in France for religion and for literature. Christianity and systems opposed to Christianity, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and Philosophy, a taste for classics, and a tendency to romanticism, unfolded themselves simultaneously, surprised to be living together, and at the same time encountering one another as ardent combatants.

I have no design to retrace here their contests nor to constitute myself their judge. Let but a great arena be thrown open, and the crowd rushes in, carrying with it its confusion and its buzz. Happily, the tumult is not of long duration. In this mighty movement of men's minds in France at the commencement of the nineteenth century I occupy myself with a single grand fact—the Awakening of Christianity, its different characteristics, its different results. The crisis itself had illustrious witnesses. I will interrogate these alone.

After Napoleon and Chateaubriand, the first whom I meet with are two Catholic writers, who have left behind them great and deserved reputations. M. de Bonald and M. de Maistre hoisted the banner of Christianity valiantly, and at an early date. But their ideas and their writings were rather political than religious: the exigencies of public order occupied their attention far more than those of man's soul, and their works were rather attacks upon the French Revolution than a defense of the faith of Christians. By a coincidence very remarkable, although at the same time very natural, the first production of each—"The Theory of Power," by M. de Bonald, and the "Considerations on France," by M. de Maistre—was published at the same moment, in 1796, and each in a foreign land, where the authors were living as emigrants. In the first ardor of the reaction, and with the impassioned and vague feelings that it suggested, each wrote against the Revolution that shook the world and wrecked his own fortunes. Potent intelligences both, profound moralists, eminent writers; but their philosophy is a philosophy of circumstance and of party. Their theories they use as arms; their books as a discharge. M. de Bonald is a lofty-minded original thinker, but subtle, too, and complex; disposed to content himself with verbal combinations and distinctions, and sparing no labor to contrive his vast web of arguments proper to entrap the unwary adversary. M. de Maistre, on the contrary, blasts him with the absoluteness of his assertion, the poignancy of his irony, the rude eloquence of his invectives. He is a powerful, a charming extemporizer. Both of them excel in seizing and presenting in a striking manner one great side, but only one of the great sides, in questions or measures. They see not these in their variety and in their entirety. Combatants approved—the one tenacious, the other impetuous—they both committed two grave faults: they instituted a closer bond between statesmanship and religion than is proper or suitable to either; they could not discover any other remedy for anarchy than absolutism. In the natural and never-ending conflict of the two great forces whose co-existence imparts vital energy to human society—authority and liberty—they declared for the former alone, thus ignoring the right of thought, the spirit of our times, and the general course of Christian civilization. When attacked in her essence, Religion should be defended as she was founded, in herself and for herself, setting aside every political consideration, and in the name alone of the problems which lay siege to man's soul, and of the relations of man's soul with God. "Render unto Cesar the things which are Cesar's, and unto God the things that are God's," said Jesus to the Pharisees when they sought to embarrass and to compromise him politically. Thus did Jesus himself define the proper and paramount characteristic of his work. He did not come to destroy or to found any government; he came to feed, to regulate, and to save the human soul, leaving to time and to the natural efficacy of events the development of the social consequence of his religious faith and of his religious law. M. de Bonald and M. de Maistre joined too often together God and Cesar. They thought too much of Cesar while defending God. In doing this they changed and compromised the character of that great movement, the Awakening of Christianity, which their conduct otherwise provoked and served. [Footnote 3]

[Footnote 3: "The dead move quick," says the poet Burger in his ballad of Leonora. The men and the books I record died at a period already distant from us; and in spite of their fame that abides, they are probably little known to the generation at present in possession of the stage. I regard it, therefore, as not improper for me to mention below the titles of their principal works, of which I have in the text sought to determine the true character.
Those of M. de Bonald are:
1. La Théorie du pouvoir politique et religieux. 3 vols. 8vo. Constance: 1796.
2. La Législation. primitive. 3 vols. 8vo. Paris: 1821.
3. L'Essai sur le divorce. 1 vol. 8vo. Paris.
4. Les Recherches philosophique. 2 vols. 8vo. 1818 and 1826.
5. Les Mélanges littéraires et politiques. 2 vols. 8vo.
6. Pensées et discours. 2 vols. 8vo.
All these writings, with some others, have been collected in the complete edition of the works of M. de Bonald, in seven volumes. 8vo. Paris: 1854.
The principal works of M. de Maistre are:
1. Considerations sur la France. 1 vol. 8vo. 1796.
2. Essai sur le principe générateur des constitutions politiques et des autres institutions humaines. 1 vol. 8vo. 1810.
3. Du Pape. 2 vols. 8vo. 1819.]
4. De l'Église gallicane dans son rapport avec le souverain pontife. 8vo. 1821.
5. Examen de la philosophic de Bacon. 2 vols. 8vo. 1836.
6. Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg. 2 vols. 8vo.
7. Lettres et opuscules inédits. 2 vols. 8vo. 1851.
8. Mémoires politiques et correspondance du comte de Maistre, publiés par M. Albert Blanc. 2 vols. 8vo. 1858.

After these two great writers, another great writer, (shall I term him Catholic?) the Abbé de la Mennais, placed himself upon the same path, but to arrive at a very different issue. He, too, made authority alone the basis of man's faith and of human society; but seeking to ascertain the sign which distinguishes legitimate authority, and which entitles it to unarguing submission, he fixed this sign in the general and traditional assent of mankind. "The common consent or authority, there," said he, "we find the natural rule of our judgment; and what but folly can reject that rule, and listen to its own reason in preference to the reason of all? … The search for certitude is the search for a reason not liable to error at all, that is, for a reason that is infallible. Now this infallible reason must necessarily be either the reason of each individual or the reason of all men; in fact, of human reason. It is not the reason of each individual, for men contradict one another, and nothing frequently is more discordant and more contradictory than their judgments; therefore it is the reason of all." [Footnote 4]

[Footnote 4: Essai sur l'indifférence en matiére de religion, t. ii, p. 59. Défense de l'Essai sur l'indifférence, chap. x, pp. 133-148.]

In holding this language in his very first work, the Abbé de la Mennais was already forgetting that he was a Christian and a Catholic. When a man demands here below an infallible authority, he must not seek it from any human source. The reason of all? (That is, the reason of the majority of men in all the ages of the world, for the reason of all is a fallacy.) What is such reason, but the sovereignty of superior numbers in the spiritual order? Having fixed his principle, the Abbé de la Mennais kept it in sight everywhere. After having established an infallible authority in the name of the reason of all, he proclaimed the absolute sovereignty in the name of universal suffrage. But this apostle of universal reason was at the same time the proudest worshiper of his own reason. Under the pressure of events without, and of an ardent controversy, a transformation took place in him, marked at once by its logical deductions and its moral inconsistency: he changed his camp without changing his principles; in the attempt to lead the supreme authority of his Church to admit his principles he had failed; and from that instant the very spirit of revolt that he had so severely rebuked broke loose in his soul and in his writings, finding expression at one time in an indignation full of hatred leveled at the powerful, the rich, and the fortunate ones of the world; at another time in a tender sympathy for the miseries of humanity. The "Words of a Believer" are the eloquent outburst of this tumult in his soul. Plunged in the chaos of sentiments the most contradictory, and yet claiming to be always consistent with himself, the champion of authority became in the State the most baited of democrats, and in the Church the haughtiest of rebels.