[49] Among the Hindus, Tapas, that is to say fire, the ardour of devotion, and of voluntary renouncement, signified in the beginning simply the incantation intended to constrain the Devas to obedience, and to deprive them of a part of their power. Out of a crude conception has grown an extremely refined one. See Manuel de l’Histoire des religions, par C. P. Tiele, p. 19 (translated by Maurice Vernes).
[50] Ribot, de l’Hérédité, 364; Moreau de Tours, Psych. morbide, 259.
[51] M. Franck, Des rapports de la religion et de l’État.
[52] It is easy to understand the high ecclesiastical authorities in the Catholic Church, who maintain as an article of faith the right to repress error. Recollect the well-known pages in which St. Augustine speaks of what good effects he had observed to result from the employment of constraint in religious matters. “A great many of those who have been brought back into the Church by force confess themselves to be greatly rejoiced at having been delivered from their former errors, who, however, by I know not what force of custom, would never have thought of changing for the better if the fear of the law had not put them in mind of the truth. Good precepts and wholesome fear must go together so that not only the light of truth may drive away the gloom of error, but that charity may break the bonds of bad custom, so that we may rejoice over the salvation of the many.... It is written: ‘Bid them to enter in.’ ... God Himself did not spare his son, but delivered Him for our sake to the executioners.” Schiller makes the great inquisitor in Don Carlos say the same thing. See St. Augustine, Epist. cxiii. 17, 5—St. Paul, Ephes., vi. 5, 6, 9. Lastly, recollect also the reasoned decision of the doctors and councils. “Human government,” said St. Thomas, “is derived from divine government and should imitate it. Now although God is all-powerful and infinitely good, He nevertheless permits in the universe that He has made the existence of evils which He could prevent; He permits them for fear that in suppressing them more than equivalent goods might be suppressed incidentally along with them and greater evils provoked in their stead. The same is true in human government; rulers naturally tolerate certain evils for fear of putting an obstacle in the way of certain goods, or of causing greater evils, as St. Augustine said in the treatise on Order. It is thus that infidels, though they sin in their rites, may be tolerated, either because of some good coming from them, or to avoid some evil. The Jews observe their rites, in which formerly the truth of the faith that we hold was prefigured; the result is advantageous in this, that we have the testimony of our enemies in favour of our faith, and that the object of our faith is, so to speak, shown in a reflected image. As for the worship of the other unbelievers, which is opposed in every way to truth and is entirely useless, it would merit no tolerance if it were not to avoid some evil, such as the scandal or the trouble which might result from the suppression of this worship; or again as an impediment to the salvation of those who, under cover of this species of tolerance, come little by little into the faith. It is for that reason that the Church has occasionally tolerated even the worship of heretics, and heathens, when the number of infidels was great.” (Summa theol., 2 a; q. x, a. II.) One readily perceives the nature of tolerance in that sense. It does not in the least recognize the right of those who are the object of it: if it does not maltreat them, it is simply to avoid a greater evil, or rather because its power is too small, and the number of infidels is too large.
A professor of theology at the Sorbonne has recently contested the charge of Catholic intolerance. (M. Alfred Fouillée had just spoken of it in his Social Science.) He did so for reasons that may be cited as further proof. “Neither to-day, nor ever, in any epoch of its history, has the Catholic Church intended to impose acceptance of the truth by violence. All great theologians have taught that the act of faith is a voluntary act, which presupposes an illumination of the mind; but they have also taught that constraint may favour this illumination, and in especial may preserve others from a bad example, from a contagious darkness. The Christian Church has had no need of the sword to evangelize the nations; if it has shed blood in its triumph, it has been its own.” Has it, then, not shed the blood of others? If one counts all the murders committed by intolerance in the name of absolute dogma, in every country in the world; if one could measure all the bloodshed; if one could gather together all the dead bodies—would the pile not mount higher than the spires of the cathedrals and the domes of the temples, where man still goes, with unalterable fervour, to invoke and bless the “God of Love”? Faith in a God who talks and acts, who has a history of His own, His Bible, His prophet and His priest, will always end by being intolerant. By adoring a jealous and vengeful God, one becomes in the end His accomplice. One tacitly approves all the crimes committed in His name and often (if one believes the Holy Scriptures) commanded by Him. One endeavours to forget these things when they are too stained with blood and filth. The monuments of such bloody scenes have been razed, and the places to which the strongest memories are attached have been purified and transformed: the partisans of certain dogmas need to wash their hearts also in lustral water.
[53] See A. Fouillée, Systèmes de morale contemporains.
[54] M. Goblet d’Alviella, Evolution religieuse contemporaine.
[55] Mr. Seeley, in his work entitled Natural Religion (1882), takes pains to establish that of the three elements which compose the religious idea—the love of truth or science, the sentiment of beauty or art, the notion of duty or morals—it is the last only that can to-day be reconciled with Christianity.
[56] Besides Mr. Matthew Arnold, consult M. L. Ménard, Sources du dogme Chrétien (Critique religieuse, janvier, 1879.)
[57] See M. L. Ménard, ibid. (Crit. relig., 1879.)