[96] Oratio de Scepticismo, Hodiernis Theologis Caute Vitando, quam habuit Johannes Jacobus Van Oosterzee Theologis Doctor: Roterodami, 1863.
[97] La Crise Religieuse en Hollande, p. 200.
[98] Christian Work, Sept. 1863, and July and August, 1864.
CHAPTER XVI.
FRANCE: RATIONALISM IN THE PROTESTANT CHURCH—THE CRITICAL SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY.
Some French clergymen, who were sojourning in Berlin in 1842, asked Neander, "What ought to be done to arouse the Protestants of France to thinking upon theological subjects?" "Give yourselves no trouble on that score," replied the professor; "Theology will yet have its good day among you. You have in France the soil in which true theology loves to germinate and grow—I mean Christian life. This has brought you your great theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it is sure to do the same thing in the nineteenth." The present century has not yet run two-thirds of its course, and yet the prophecy has been literally fulfilled.
The spectacle presented to-day in France is highly interesting. The period of indifference has already terminated. The first step toward new vitality has therefore been taken. French theology is displaying an animation and seriousness which may well excite the notice of the whole civilized world. The great minds are bestowing upon sacred subjects an attention nowhere surpassed in vigor and acuteness. Important religious questions are taking their place beside political themes, and the circle of theological readers and thinkers is constantly enlarging. Each class is deeply engaged in the discussion of all the new phases of opinion. Every man chooses his party, cherishes his own convictions, and preaches them boldly. The traveler who may make only a brief stay in Paris will find the representatives of all the professions spending the whole evening in the criticism of the last books from the Liberal Party, and of the rejoinders of their orthodox opponents. Now, for the first time since the seventeenth century, a state of general religious inquiry and earnestness exists. It is not difficult to interpret this quickening of national thought on theological questions. It means that France will have no small share in the decision of the great points at issue between evangelical believers and their critical, destructive antagonists.
A half century ago the Reformed and Lutheran churches were sunk in skeptical formalism. They were divided into two parties, neither of which possessed spirit enough to defend its position, or grace enough to ask God for his blessing. One adhered to the cold Supernaturalism of the eighteenth century, the other to a system of philosophical Deism. The reduced state of piety was largely due to the oppression suffered at the hand of the state. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which deprived Protestants of both religious and civil liberty, occurred in October, 1685, and it was not until 1808 that the law of the 18th Germinal once more recognized their rights, and placed Catholicism and Protestantism on an equal basis. The whole interval was marked by a stagnation of fearful character. At the time of the Revocation, the Reformed church had eight hundred edifices and six hundred and forty pastors, but when the restoration occurred it had but one hundred and ninety churches and the same number of pastors.