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.
VII.
The Protestants took no active part, as Protestants, in the Revolution of 1830; but they generally hailed its occurrence with joy, because it brought them new pledges of security for the free exercise of their worship. We have witnessed how their vexations, annoyances, and exclusions were multiplied towards the end of the reign of Charles X.; and if their political rights, consecrated by the Charter, had fallen beneath the ordinances of July, to what perilous attacks might not religious liberty, which rested upon the same foundation, have been exposed? Many persons believed [that it would have been so exposed]; and without crediting the reports circulated at the time among the popular masses concerning projects of persecution against the Protestants, it is probable that their position would have been greatly aggravated.
This explains the satisfaction which they exhibited at the news of the three days’ victory. Yet this contentment was calm, reserved, and without the least thought of reprisals, and perfect harmony between the two Churches was nowhere disturbed, except at Nismes, where it seems as if the religious communions must always experience the consequences of political events.
The Protestants were not the aggressors. Far from this; for in the very first days of the month of August, an appeal to union was published, having the full adhesion of all the respectable portion of the community, without distinction of creed, and the pastors went from family to family, everywhere recommending forgetfulness of the crimes of 1815. Their voice was listened to. A multitude of Protestant workmen, accompanied by a great number of (Roman) Catholics, entered the public square, pronouncing words of reconciliation, and formed a procession that marched round the city, uttering cries of Vive l’union! Vive la paix! (Long live union! Long live peace!)
But some rioters of the lowest class of the people, led partly by fanaticism, and partly, perhaps, by the dread of the account that justice might require of them for their past excesses, returned to Nismes, on the 15th of August, with suspicious-looking strangers, after having sought a refuge at Beaucaire, and their presence was the occasion of unfortunate collisions. Happily several companies of courageous countrymen came down from Vaunage, and intimidated this seditious band. On the side of the (Roman) Catholics two were killed and six wounded, and on the side of the Protestants six were killed and twenty-eight wounded. The last had therefore furnished three or four times more victims than they had made; the French Reformation had been accustomed to suffer in this way for three hundred years past.