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 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
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 BR~1700 .P7313 18BU 
 Pressens e, Edmond de, 1824 
 
 1891. 
 Contemporary portraits 
 
 
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CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS: 
 
 THIERS, STRAUSS COMPARED WITH VOLTAIRE, 
 
 ARNAUD DE HARIEGE, DUPANLOUP, 
 
 ADOLPHE MONOD, VINET, 
 
 VERNY, ROBERTSON. 
 
 / BY 
 
 E. DE^PRESSENSE, D.D., 
 
 Author of 
 
 jesus christ; his times, life and work," "the early years of 
 christianity," etc. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 ANNIE HARWOOD HOLMDEN. 
 
 $frfo gork: 
 
 A. I). F. RANDOLPH & Co., 
 
 900, BROADWAY. 
 
 MDCCCLXXX. 
 
UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, CHILWORTH AND LONDON. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THIERS 3 
 
 THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL ... 39 
 
 STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE 79 
 
 THE CULTURKAMPF IN GERMANY 103 
 
 ARNAUD DE L'ARIEGE 125 
 
 DUPANLOUP, BISHOP OF ORLEANS 1 39 
 
 ADOLPHE MONOD 149 
 
 ALEXANDRE VINET * 233 
 
 VERNY AND ROBERTSON 283 
 
*ff0PERTY Of 
 
 RECOCT 1880 
 
 THSOLOGICi 
 
 v * «" * * v * fW * * * 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE book now offered to English readers is in 
 great part a collection of articles that have ap- 
 peared at intervals in various French journals and 
 reviews. 
 
 The first part of the volume is devoted to subjects 
 of general interest ; especially to a study of the 
 Catholic crisis, as represented in some of the most 
 eminent men of the Catholic Church. A careful 
 consideration of the facts advanced seems to me to 
 lead to two conclusions : first, that the course pursued 
 by the Ultramontanes is one fraught with danger to 
 our social interests ; and secondly, that it is both un- 
 justifiable and unwise to attempt to combat Ultra- 
 montanism with its own weapons. It seemed to me 
 opportune to draw attention to the testimony of a 
 competent German writer — M. GefTcken — as to the 
 inanity of the results of the Prussian " Culturkampf," 
 though directed by the first political genius of the 
 age, and the strongest will the world has ever known. 
 
 The second part of the book brings before the 
 reader three eminent representatives of French Evan- 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 gelical Protestantism and one great English preacher. 
 It will be observed that I have laid more stress in 
 these papers on the necessity of a theological refor- 
 mation than on ecclesiastical questions, though I am 
 fully alive to the importance of the latter. It is my 
 growing conviction that Protestantism has greatly 
 suffered of late years from a too exclusive absorption 
 in questions of organisation, to the neglect of deeper 
 and more essential principles. In order to regain its 
 hold of the mind of the age, the Church must come 
 back to the study of these fundamental truths, in the 
 same spirit of free inquiry and devout earnestness 
 which characterised Adolphe Monod and Vinet, Verny 
 and Robertson. 
 
 E. DE PRESSENSE. 
 Paris, November, 1879. 
 
THIERS. 
 
THIERS. 
 
 A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH, DRAWN FROM RECENT 
 WRITINGS AND PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS.* 
 
 I. 
 
 IN 182 1 two young men left their native province 
 and came to Paris. They were sons of Provence, 
 that sunny land which has given so many eminent 
 men to France since the days of Mirabeau. They 
 had just completed their law studies, and one of 
 them had been crowned by the Academy of Aix, 
 for his panegyric on Vauven argues. Both, however, 
 were poor and unknown. The closest friendship 
 bound them together. They took up their lodgings 
 
 1 No complete biography has as yet appeared of this great 
 French statesman. M. Jules Simon has published a graphic 
 and very remarkable account of his presidency under the title, 
 " Le Gouvernement de M. Thiers ; " but the history of the prin- 
 cipal founder of the French Republic is confounded with the 
 annals of the parliamentary history of France. The speeches 
 of M. Thiers from 1831 to 1836 have been recently published 
 by M. Calmon. For the latter part of his career we draw 
 largely on our personal recollections. We are indebted also to 
 the "Souvenirs" of M. Seignior, in which many conversations 
 of M. Thiers have been preserved. 
 
4 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 in two adjoining garrets in a miserable quarter of the 
 city, and at once applied themselves to a great lite- 
 rary task. By a strange coincidence, both had chosen 
 the same subject, the history of the French Revolu- 
 tion, — a subject of dramatic and thrilling interest, 
 stirring men's minds to enthusiasm or hatred, and a 
 very firebrand of discord at a period when Old and 
 New France were at desperate warfare. 
 
 These two young men both bore names destined to 
 become illustrious. They were Thiers and Mignet. 
 Thiers, born in 1797, was twenty-four years of age. 
 The bond of affection which united them was most 
 close and tender, and remained unbroken through life. 
 Mignet) c'est mon frhe ! we once heard M. Thiers 
 exclaim. In all the critical moments of Thiers' 
 eventful career, especially in all times of trial and 
 danger, Mignet was sure to be at his side, supporting 
 him with a sympathy as manly as it was tender. 
 Neither of the two had any anticipation in 1821 of 
 the fame and fortune awaiting them. Mignet little 
 guessed that he would be one of the great masters of 
 history, one of the most widely read and deeply 
 respected of thoughtful writers, and that, while keep- 
 ing aloof from active political life, in which he never 
 sought preferment, he would exert an incomparable 
 influence through the world of letters. Still less did 
 Thiers anticipate that he would hold the helm of his 
 country through one of those stormy crises, in which 
 the safety of a nation may depend on a single man. 
 
THIERS. 5 
 
 Thiers belonged to the petty bourgeoisie of Mar- 
 seilles, although by his mother's side he was related 
 to the illustrious poet, Andre Chenier, who was 
 dragged to the scaffold under the Reign of Terror in 
 1794, for having defended true liberty against anarchy 
 and crime. Thiers was, indeed, a worthy representative 
 of those middle classes which had played so important 
 a part in 1789, and which were fully resolved not to 
 allow themselves to be robbed of the liberties won by 
 their fathers. He belonged, body and soul, to the 
 Revolution, and it was for the better defence of its 
 cause that he began to write its history. While 
 Mignet, with a restrained nervous force reminding us 
 of Tacitus, drew the general picture of the Revolution 
 in bold, masterly outlines, Thiers described it in a 
 full, detailed narrative, remarkable rather for clearness 
 than for brilliancy. His men and events pass before 
 us under a strong light rather than in relief, but all 
 his descriptions are characterised by that air of move- 
 ment and life, which mere study never produces, and 
 which is to a literary work what the quick pulsing 
 blood is to the human body. Finance, administra- 
 tion, the plan of a campaign, a discussion in parlia- 
 ment, all become animated under his pen. Hence 
 every one of the ten volumes of this rapid but com- 
 plete history, obtained at once an enormous circula- 
 tion ; and the young author, who had at first sheltered 
 his humble name under that of a well-known pub- 
 lisher, soon made himself known to the public, and 
 
6 CONTEMPORA R Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 was raised at once to fame and competence. This 
 popularity was also no doubt partly owing to the fact 
 that his book appealed throughout to the passions of 
 the great Liberal public, which was exasperated by 
 the policy of the clerical Right, then in power. The 
 sole aim of this party was to nullify the most positive 
 results of the Revolution, and their first step was to 
 do violence to it and to belie it. It would be absurd 
 to demand the calm and cool impartiality of a judge, 
 from the historian who is touching on a past so 
 recent and so hotly contested, and who is himself 
 engaged in the same life and death struggle. Never- 
 theless, the young writer does really glorify only the 
 men of 1789, or the great generals who defended the 
 soil of France against the invader. The sanguinary 
 demagogy is sternly denounced by him, though he 
 has been accused of restraining his severity till the hour 
 of retribution and of defeat had come. He has been 
 also accused of fatalism. This is an exaggeration. 
 He was uniformly the man of action rather than of 
 theory ; and, while never belying his liberal convic- 
 tions, he took fuller cognisance of circumstances than 
 of principles. In this respect he differs from all the 
 great theorists of the Restoration, who, like Royer 
 Collard and the Due de Broglie, attached the first im- 
 portance to theories, and were never satisfied till they 
 had reduced their practice to the form of maxims. 
 
 Thiers' energies were not exhausted by the writing 
 of his great work. He threw himself at the same 
 
THIERS. 7 
 
 time, with all his sparkling vivacity and remarkable 
 fluency, into the daily press. He rose at once to 
 the first rank among journalists, not only on ac- 
 count of his brilliance as a writer, but also from 
 his aptitude in apprehending and making himself 
 master of all questions of art, finance, diplomacy and 
 administration. He found also an unfailing source 
 of inspiration in his sincere devotion to the Liberal 
 cause. Passion is a great muse, especially when it is 
 nurtured in the glowing atmosphere of public opinion, 
 when it is in harmony with the general spirit of a 
 period, and when it has to deal with blind and obsti- 
 nate opposition. From 1823 to 1830, if we except 
 the short interval of the Martignac Ministry, the 
 Government of France was in the hands of the party of 
 the Emigrants, whose one desire was to erase the grand 
 year 1789 from the annals of history. Supported by 
 a bigoted clerical party, whose services it repaid by 
 most dangerous immunities, the Government of the 
 day was tending to restore the fatal union between 
 the throne and the altar. Charles X. was the true 
 king of the Emigration. As Royer Collard said in 
 1830, he always remained Count of Artois, of the old 
 Court of Versailles, — a foolish fanatic, capable of risk- 
 ing everything for his imaginary divine right, but 
 incapable of sustaining his temerity by wise measures. 
 To usurp absolute power in spite of his oaths to 
 the contrary, appeared to him simply claiming that 
 which was his due, and he looked to heaven for sue- 
 
8 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 cess in attempts which another must have felt to be 
 criminal, just as the mystic folds his arms and awaits 
 the effect of his prayers. He only needed to have for 
 his minister a fanatic like the Prince de Polignac, in 
 order to bring the old French monarchy to ruin ; 
 especially as, in an age of such intellectual fertility as 
 a nation but rarely enjoys, all the great minds of 
 France were arrayed against him. 
 
 No one dealt more effectual blows at the counter 
 revolution than M. Thiers, who had just established 
 the National, a journal of his own, in which he car- 
 ried on the most brilliant polemical campaign France 
 has ever witnessed. Those who knew him at that 
 time describe him as exerting an irresistible attrac- 
 tion. This little man, with the flexible face, the glance 
 quick and keen as lightning, the inexhaustible flow of 
 brilliant speech, produced the effect of one of those 
 creatures of air and flame, to which Voltaire has been 
 likened. Only he was no comedian seeking to keep 
 the world amused ; he was the soldier of a great cause, 
 and patriotism of the truest type was his ruling 
 principle. 
 
 II. 
 
 Thiers took a very influential part in the Revolu- 
 tion of 1830. After joining in the famous protest of 
 the journalists against the decrees of the 17th of July 
 which suspended, or rather violated, the charter, he 
 was made the messenger of the Liberal party to the 
 
THIERS. 9 
 
 Duke of Orleans, inviting him to become the substitute 
 of the king by divine right, and to inaugurate a new 
 monarchy, the monarchical form of government being 
 at that time deemed better for France than a republic. 
 From this period Thiers rose rapidly into prominence. 
 He was at once elected to the Chamber of Deputies, 
 was then made Secretary of State for Finance, and 
 afterwards successively Minister of Commerce, of the 
 Interior, and of Foreign Affairs. During the first 
 period of the July dynasty he was the zealous de- 
 fender of the Government against all enemies, whether 
 they came from the Right, in Vendee, like the unfor- 
 tunate Duchesse de Berry, who attempted to play the 
 part of another Mary Stuart under very untoward 
 circumstances, or whether they issued from the haunts 
 of the secret societies, always rife with demagogic 
 conspiracies. Thiers vigorously maintained the law 
 of the land. He has been very unjustly reproached 
 with having carried repression to the length of mas- 
 sacre. All that he did was to have the barriers of the 
 insurgents carried by the bayonet As a practical 
 man, influenced more by facts than by theories, he 
 subordinated his Liberal principles to the exigencies 
 of the struggle against misrule. After Fieschi's 
 attempt upon the life of King Louis Philippe, he 
 accepted, indeed he initiated, severe legislative mea- 
 sures against the press and unauthorised societies. 
 When he took the direction of foreign affairs, he made 
 strenuous endeavours to secure for France a more 
 
io CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 influential position than that with which the Conser- 
 vative party of the time was satisfied. During his 
 first ministry he urged direct intervention in Spain, 
 in favour of constitutional royalty. In 1840 he was 
 not deterred by the prospect of a general war, from 
 breaking with the Quadruple Alliance, for the benefit 
 of the Viceroy of Egypt, whom he wished to make 
 the supporter of French power in the East. 
 
 This temerity cost him his portfolio, which he was 
 obliged to hand over to his great rival Guizot, who 
 carried out with dazzling effect the policy of peace at 
 any price, and of strict Conservatism. This narrow 
 policy went so far as to refuse the smallest reforms, 
 especially in the electoral law, which made the 
 government of the country the monopoly of an oli- 
 garchy of proprietors, around which surged on all 
 sides the rising tide of democracy. M. Thiers was, 
 during the whole of this period, the recognised leader 
 of the Opposition, steadily demanding a more liberal 
 policy at home, and a more manly attitude abroad. 
 In truth, he was the only real Conservative, for it was 
 not possible for the Government of Louis Philippe 
 long to withstand the Liberal aspirations of the na- 
 tion, reinforced as they were by the material pros- 
 perity enjoyed by the country, or successfully to 
 oppose the movement of emancipation which was 
 going on in neighbouring lands, especially in Italy. 
 La France sennuie, said Lamartine, in one of his 
 famous speeches. 
 
THIERS. II 
 
 It was perilous for the Government of July, 1830, 
 to stand thus isolated, fenced in by a narrow official- 
 ism, while public spirit was in a state of agitation on 
 every hand. It was like a tree whose roots no longer 
 reached the water, and which withered as it stood. 
 At the very first blow, therefore, it fell to the ground, 
 and the king of the Revolution had to follow into 
 exile the Legitimist king. M. Thiers had spent his 
 strength in the tribune, in warning a blind power. 
 It has been justly said that Louis Philippe and M. 
 Guizot were both incapable of seeing an unwelcome 
 truth. Their illusions lasted to the end. We have 
 heard M. Thiers tell how they came to seek him in 
 the night of the 23rd February, the night which pre- 
 ceded the catastrophe. They turned to him as to the 
 only pilot who could save the ship. When he arrived 
 at the Tuileries, the storm which was so soon to burst, 
 was already muttering. The politicians who were to 
 bring him into the presence of Louis Philippe, received 
 him with the entreaty, "Above all things spare the 
 king ! " " Spare him ? " replied Thiers, in a tone of 
 keen impatience ; " he has been spared too much 
 already. Let him know all the truth ! " It was too 
 late. M. Thiers was never unjust to King Louis 
 Philippe. He often spoke of him, fully recognising 
 his merits, and his philanthropy worthy of a son of the 
 eighteenth century; but blaming his obstinacy and 
 too lawyerly subtlety. He blamed him also for having 
 always attempted to govern, when he ought to have 
 
1 2 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 been contented with reigning ; and for having sought 
 to substitute personal rule for a thoroughly parlia- 
 mentary administration. 
 
 Odilon Barrot, one of the leaders of the Left, 
 chosen at the last moment on the morning of the 
 24th of February, as Minister with M. Thiers, would 
 humorously relate how, when he wished to remon- 
 strate from the boulevard with one of the leaders of 
 the barricade, the man said to him : " Idiot ! don't 
 you see that the king is making game of us and of you 
 too ? " " And he was right," said Odilon Barrot. 
 M. Thiers was not so severe. He felt, however, that 
 Louis Philippe had himself made the abyss into which 
 his throne was falling. Yet Thiers was not at this 
 time by any means an extreme Liberal. He would 
 have been satisfied with an extension of the electoral 
 right, stopping very far short of universal suffrage, 
 and with a somewhat extended liberty of the press. 
 He was still an ardent adherent of the system of cen- 
 tralisation, which the Revolution had bequeathed to 
 the Empire, and which the Empire had carried to its 
 extreme issues. " Europe envies us this," he said. 
 To which the Liberals of the De Tocqneville school 
 replied : " If that is true, why does she not adopt 
 it ? " 
 
 Thiers' admiration for Napoleon I. is well known. 
 To him he devoted his second great historical work, 
 in which he displays, in yet larger measure and ma- 
 turity, all the eminent qualities of his earlier writings 
 
THIERS. 13 
 
 — clearness, graphic power, lucid arrangement and 
 exposition of military and financial operations. He 
 was completely fascinated by the genius of the 
 most marvellous man of modern times. In conver- 
 sation he constantly alluded to Napoleon, but occa- 
 sionally he could pronounce severe judgment upon 
 him. It is said that one day, on one of his journeys, 
 wearied with the senseless raptures over Napoleon I. 
 in which some young man was indulging, thinking 
 thus to please M. Thiers, he interrupted him, saying : 
 " You do not know, then, that Napoleon was a scoun- 
 drel ? " It was a sally which he would not have 
 seriously maintained, but it sufficed to prove that 
 he had taken the moral measure of his hero. He 
 spoke of him with severity in his last volumes, for he 
 came to see what disasters had been entailed upon 
 France, by this stupendous genius unrestrained by 
 law or conscience. 
 
 From this time M. Thiers took his place among the 
 leading orators of the French tribune. He was not 
 at first successful. He used to relate with glee that, 
 on the point of delivering one of his early speeches, 
 he was deeply agitated. " What ! " said the sardonic 
 Royer Collard, " you moved in this way ? Just look 
 at those heads yonder ! " and he pointed him to his 
 hearers. It has been wrongly said that M. Thiers 
 attempted at first the sustained style of the great 
 orator. This is altogether a mistake. From the re- 
 ports of his first speeches, which M. Calmon has just 
 
i 4 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 reprinted, with an exhaustive commentary, it is evi- 
 dent that M. Thiers adopted at once a style of his 
 own, simple, familiar, full of natural humour and 
 freshness. Of this style he was a master, and it was 
 without effort that he afterwards rose to higher 
 flights. His great speeches were always inspired by 
 great themes. He never made any attempt to be 
 great ; greatness, as it were, came to him. He could 
 not be compared to any of his rivals in the Chamber 
 of Deputies. He had nothing of the rigid exactness 
 and concentrated force of Guizot, who disguised a 
 policy often timid and paltry beneath magnificent 
 forms of speech. Berryer, of whom at the time of 
 his first appearance Royer Collard said, Ce n'est pas 
 tin talent ; cest line ptiissance (" this is not one of 
 your men of talent ; this man is a power "), made the 
 most striking contrast to Thiers by his magnificent 
 stature, the rich quality of his voice, his expressive 
 gesture, and the passion and brilliancy of his 
 language. The eloquence of Lamartine reminded 
 one of those fairies of the fable, whose mouths 
 dropped pearls, while his thought was none the less 
 deep and full, and in political matters he seemed 
 endowed with all but prophetic prescience. Thiers 
 laboured under many external disadvantages ; his 
 height was below the average ; his gesticulation rapid 
 and abrupt ; his voice shrill. He gave no play to 
 imagination in his speeches, and yet no one exercised 
 a stronger influence over a debate. He flooded it, as 
 
THIERS. 15 
 
 it were, with light by a mode of statement which left 
 nothing undefined or obscure, and which brought 
 the driest details of finance or administration within 
 the comprehension of all. The calm exposition ended 
 by kindling into a glow. Underlying the fluent ver- 
 biage was a closely woven texture of reasoning and 
 fact. The whole was animated by what the French 
 call esprit. A striking point, a well-told anecdote, 
 sustained the interest. And then the life pulsed 
 through his speeches as through his books. The 
 audience had no resistance to offer to this orator 
 who placed himself on their own level ; they were 
 charmed, fascinated, carried away, often convinced. 
 
 III. 
 
 The Republic of 1848 surpassed all M. Thiers' 
 anticipations. He was in theory a Monarchist : con- 
 stitutional royalty was, in his view, the government 
 best adapted for a great country. Universal suffrage 
 seemed to him an extravagance. It must be admitted 
 that its sudden adoption might appear to the men of 
 1850 a leap in the dark. The Republic of 1848 was 
 not like that of 1870. It had not been preceded by 
 fearful disasters, by the dismemberment of France. 
 The duty of rallying around it did not appear so 
 imperious as it did subsequently, to all those who put 
 their country above their political preferences. We 
 believe, nevertheless, that if M. Thiers had carried 
 
1 6 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 out then the policy which he did adopt afterwards, 
 the shame and disaster of the second Empire might 
 have been avoided. In the National Assembly of 
 1848, as in the Legislative Assembly, he was one of 
 the leaders of the reaction of the Right. He helped 
 to secure the election of Louis Napoleon as President 
 of the Republic, without any presentiment of his 
 becoming the future Emperor. He imagined that he 
 would be able to control him by his own superior 
 mental power. He did not know that this phlegmatic 
 believer in his star, would be ready to send him to 
 prison or into exile, in order to make himself master 
 of France, and that the most able parliamentary dis- 
 course would have no more weight with him than his 
 oath, in hindering him from usurpation. This was 
 the great political mistake of Thiers' life, into which 
 he was led by a patriotic dread of the perils of 
 socialism. Associated for the time with men of the 
 Right in granting to the Catholic Church dangerous 
 privileges, which he supposed to be the only safe- 
 guards for social order, he helped to hand over, 
 in great part public instruction to the clergy. He 
 thus became the powerful ally of the Abbe Dupan- 
 loup (just about to be made Bishop of Orleans), who 
 was the prime mover of the commission which pro- 
 duced that fatal legislation. The future bishop little 
 dreamed then that he would become one of Thiers' 
 most determined opponents. 
 
 Thiers was also at this time one of the promoters 
 
THIERS. 17 
 
 of the great change in the electoral law, which was 
 almost equivalent to the suppression of universal 
 suffrage. Prince Napoleon, who was already medita- 
 ting his coup d'etat, strongly approved of this measure. 
 He laughed in his sleeve — he who laughed but seldom 
 — as he thought how easily he could get the upper 
 hand of an Assembly which had lost credit with the 
 people. He reserved it to himself to restore to them 
 universal suffrage, as a gift of his joyous accession. 
 Thus, when on the eve of the crime of the 2nd of 
 December, Thiers, foreseeing too late what was im- 
 pending, besought the Assembly to forget its divisions 
 for the sake of imperilled parliamentary liberty, his 
 agitated, impassioned pleadings (which ring in my 
 ears to-day) found no echo from the Left ; and a few 
 days later, when the agent of police came to seize him 
 in his bed, and send him off to the frontier, he learned 
 how dear it costs to place confidence in men who are 
 fatalists about their own fortunes, and who deem 
 themselves entitled, as the fulfillers of destiny, to wrest 
 the laws to their own advantage. 
 
 IV. 
 
 During the early years of the Empire, M. Thiers 
 remained in retirement, and completed his history of 
 the Consulate and of the First Empire. From 1852 
 to 1862 a leaden pall seemed to hang over France. 
 With a fettered press, a tribune almost voiceless, or 
 
 3 
 
1 8 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 at least without an echo, since the reproduction in 
 full of the legislative debates was forbidden, public 
 opinion had no longer any organ. The Empire 
 strove to lull it to sleep by encouraging material 
 interests, and seeking to develop the wealth of the 
 nation, though not without recourse to the artifices 
 familiar to speculative adventurers, the condottieri of 
 the Bourse, those great thieves who are not incarcer- 
 ated simply because they filch their millions, but 
 who, if they carried on the same operations for small 
 sums, would not escape judicial prosecution. 
 
 The Crimean war and the war in Italy lent some 
 eclat to the new regime. They were unavailing, how- 
 ever, to arrest the fatal consequences which must 
 necessarily flow from its principle. Personal govern- 
 ment, capricious and changeable as the will or the 
 health of a man, must needs share in the weaknesses 
 of the sovereign. Napoleon III. was the most dan- 
 gerous autocrat who could govern a great country. 
 Capable of a kind of generosity, he altogether ignored 
 the distinction between good and evil. It could not 
 be said that he was immoral ; he knew no morality. 
 The sworn enemy of liberal institutions, he had kept 
 from his youth, as a carbonaro, a certain revolutionary 
 or socialist bent which impelled him to flatter the 
 democratic instinct, and to support himself by the 
 masses against the cultivated classes. In this, how- 
 ever, he was but following the traditions of Caesarism. 
 In his foreign policy he aimed only at theatrical 
 
THIERS. 19 
 
 effects ; he wished to astonish the world, and to con- 
 tinue the Napoleonic legend, though he could not 
 make the slightest pretension to the genius of the 
 head of his race. He threw his heart only into the 
 Italian cause ; to this he subordinated everything ex- 
 cept his wild dreams of greatness, which took form 
 now in the establishment of a great Catholic Empire 
 in Mexico, now in the restoration of Poland by means 
 of a Congress, the mere proposal of which made 
 Prussia his enemy for ever. 
 
 These dreams, which cost very dear to the country, 
 prevented his paying any attention to the spoliations 
 which were threatening Denmark, and securing to 
 himself the alliance of England. He thus took the 
 most effectual means of clearing the way for the 
 ambitious schemes of Prussia. He was the very man 
 predestined to be the miserable dupe of so skilful a 
 player as Bismarck. The latter, after deluding Napo- 
 leon with vain promises, drove him into such a corner 
 after Sadowa, that he might have declared war upon 
 him at any moment, while appearing all the while to 
 be himself the offended party. 
 
 From i860 it became evident that it was a terrible 
 thing for France to bear Caesar and his fortune, and 
 that the vessel of the State might well founder or go 
 to pieces under such a load. Public opinion awoke 
 under the goad of apprehension. M. Thiers, who had 
 been nominated deputy for Paris in the elections of 
 1863, became the leader of the Opposition. Every 
 
20 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS, 
 
 one of his speeches was like the blow of a heavy bat- 
 tering ram upon the citadel of Napoleonic despotism. 
 He completely demolished its system of internal 
 policy by his great speech on the principles of true 
 liberty; he cast a pitiless light upon the confusion 
 and extravagance of its finance, and rose to an almost 
 prophetic height, when he attempted to show the 
 abyss into which its foreign policy was dragging the 
 country. His eloquence on this occasion, without 
 losing anything of its clearness and homely sim- 
 plicity, assumed a new dignity and breadth. The 
 effect produced by him on the public mind at this 
 time was very great, and he was supported by such 
 orators as Jules Favre, Jules Simon, and Berryer. 
 In vain did the Empire rear itself like a Colossus, 
 armed with all the material resources of the country ; 
 it tottered visibly before this handful of men, who had 
 only right upon their side. The words of Thiers 
 were but a light, impalpable breath upon the lips, 
 but before that breath the giant faltered. Never was 
 there a clearer instance of the influence of purely 
 moral force. 
 
 On one point, however, Thiers had separated from 
 his colleagues in the Opposition. He supported, with 
 all his strength, the cause of the temporal power of 
 the papacy, in the first instance, undoubtedly, because 
 he knew that the one-time conspirator of the Papal 
 States (now Emperor), was intensely opposed to it ; 
 and secondly, because the pontifical sovereignty was 
 
THIERS. 21 
 
 connected in his mind with that concordatory union 
 between Church and State, which he had extolled in his 
 history of the Consulate and the Empire. This was 
 one of the weak points of his political theory. Him- 
 self a believer in the spiritual, and very far removed 
 from anything like irreverence with regard to religion, 
 he nevertheless considered it primarily, from a social 
 point of view, as an instrument, if not of government, 
 at least of maintaining public peace and morality, 
 provided it was under the control of the civil power. 
 The Concordat, concluded by Napoleon I. with Pius 
 VII., seemed to him one of the grandest acts of the 
 First Consul. And yet none knew better than he, 
 that this so-called pacification had led to the most 
 fierce and perilous conflicts between the two powers. 
 
 M. Thiers never regarded the relations of Church 
 and State in any other than a political light. One 
 day, in the President's palace at Versailles, we heard 
 him make the following remark in reference to 
 Henry IV. : " Was there ever anything more ad- 
 mirable than the sight of this great king, giving peace 
 to France by the Edict of Nantes, while himself turn- 
 ing Catholic ? And the best of all is, that while 
 turning Catholic, he still remained Protestant!" 
 
 It is evident that Thiers speaks of religion, or 
 rather of the establishment of religion in modern 
 Europe, much as Cicero might have spoken in his 
 Tusculans. The convictions of the individual were 
 lost sight of by him in the interests of the com- 
 
22 CONTEMPORA R Y FOR TRA ITS. 
 
 munity. The eloquence and zeal which he displayed 
 in maintaining the cause of the temporal power 
 were keenly appreciated by Pope Pius IX. M. 
 Thiers used to tell a very good story which shows 
 that the great Infallible could unbend on occasion, 
 and that beneath the stole of the ardent devotee 
 there still lingered something of the acute Italian 
 diplomatist. 
 
 " What gratitude do we not owe to M. Thiers," he 
 said one day to a French visitor, after one of the 
 illustrious orator's great speeches in support of the 
 papal cause. " We have only one thing more to 
 wish for him — that he were himself a believer in 
 Catholic doctrines. And yet," he went on, after a 
 short silence, " if he had faith, he might perhaps 
 do me less service." 
 
 Thiers was, in truth, destitute of the Catholic faith; 
 and he sometimes found his client of Rome very 
 embarrassing. At the time of the affair of little 
 Mortara, the young Jew, who was stolen away from 
 his parents to be baptized by force in a Roman 
 Convent, he said to a vehement prelate who was 
 defending the crime in the name of God : " How dare 
 you bring the name of God into such a scandalous 
 affair ? If, in order to be a Christian, it is necessary 
 to convert souls by force, then God is no Christian, 
 for He has not yet suppressed the Queen of England, 
 who is the powerful protector of what you regard as 
 most dangerous heresy." 
 
THIERS. 23 
 
 M. Thiers would not, indeed, have ventured from 
 the tribune of the legislative body, on such open 
 criticism of one of the maddest acts of the papacy in 
 modern times. He only expressed himself thus freely 
 in his own salon. None but those who heard him 
 there could fully appreciate the remarkable versa- 
 tility and fruitfulness of his mind. There, surrounded 
 by reproductions of the masterpieces of painting and 
 sculpture, he discoursed on all subjects, from the 
 fine arts, of which he was a passionate admirer, to the 
 most abstruse questions of home and foreign policy, 
 which he illumined by the vivid flashes of his wit. 
 In happy sallies, in tons mots y in piquant anecdotes, 
 he was inexhaustible. Standing in the chimney 
 corner, he would go over his recollections, in which 
 all the contemporary men of note figured in turn. 
 He never assumed anything ; his bonJwmie was 
 charming and full of kindliness. 
 
 Every evening his salon was open to all the 
 eminent men of the country and of the age. It was 
 a great European rendezvous. The most distinguished 
 members of the corps diplomatique deemed it an 
 honour to resort there frequently. At midnight, 
 when the circle had drawn closer, the old man still 
 dazzled his intimate friends by the brilliancy of his 
 conversation. This salon of Place St. Georges was 
 a veritable political power under the Empire. 
 
 We all know what supreme efforts M. Thiers put 
 forth, from love of his country, to save the Empire 
 
24 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 from its last fatal error. The war against Prussia 
 seemed to him from the first, the most criminal folly. 
 Those who were present at the famous session of 
 July 15th, 1870, will never forget the spectacle of the 
 great citizen exhausting himself in opposition to a 
 furious Assembly, in the attempt to save his country 
 from a mad act, the disastrous issues of which he too 
 clearly foresaw. Railed at by the band of Bona- 
 partists, who tried to stifle his voice in their passion- 
 ate eagerness for this war, since their only hope was 
 to drown reviving liberty in blood, he fought to the 
 end. One of his friends found him, when the sitting 
 was over, bathed in tears. He had obeyed the 
 dictates of the purest patriotism. He knew, more- 
 over, more than he could tell. Two days later he 
 avowed, in a circle of intimate friends, his certain 
 knowledge that the military preparations of France 
 were inadequate to the struggle. When the first 
 disasters followed one another with the rapidity of 
 lightning, the Empress herself felt constrained to 
 have recourse to him to save the nation in distress. 
 It was too late. He tried, however, after Sedan, to 
 get the Government of National Defence nominated 
 by the Legislative body, so that it might not appear 
 revolutionary. Two days after the movement of the 
 4th of September, he complained bitterly of the 
 vacillation of that middle party, which in the follow- 
 ing years was to do so much mischief to France by 
 its indecision and intrigues. Immediately on the 
 
THIERS. 25 
 
 accession of the new power which had swept away 
 the Empire, M. Thiers accepted unhesitatingly the 
 painful mission of seeking an alliance for his unhappy 
 country. Nothing could be more disheartening than 
 his unavailing quest throughout Europe ; but nothing 
 reflects more honour on his memory. 
 
 V. 
 
 We shall pass briefly over the latter part of the life N 
 of the great citizen, for it is fresh in the recollection of 
 all. We shall confine ourselves chiefly to that which 
 is least generally known. Brilliant as had been the 
 career of M. Thiers hitherto as an orator and a states- 
 man, it now assumed a new element of greatness. 
 Nominated to the National Assembly by twenty-three 
 Departments, he was designated by France herself to 
 guide her destinies in her hour of supreme peril. 
 Whatever might be the divisions of the National As- 
 sembly on questions of government, all must yield to 
 the exigencies of public safety. The situation was a 
 terrible one. A third of the country was desolated 
 by the horrors of a most cruel invasion. An army 
 of three hundred thousand men was held captive in 
 Germany ; another army was scattered over Switzer- 
 land. The army of the National Defence, which had 
 saved the honour of the country by its resistance, 
 was disorganised. Peace with the foreigner must be 
 treated for with the knife to the throat ; while at 
 
26 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 home the spirit of faction was muttering threaten- 
 ingly, especially in Paris itself, the working population 
 of which had been completely unhinged by their 
 brave endurance of five months of siege. The name 
 of M. Thiers was forced upon the Parliament. His 
 first task was to conclude peace with an enemy of 
 unbounded resources, who knew to what a condition 
 unhappy France was reduced. It was, indeed, as we 
 have heard M. Thiers relate, a time of terrible 
 struggle, in which he tried to contest with Germany 
 the possession of a strip of frontier, and, among 
 other places, of that town of Belfort, without which the 
 country would have been left open, and incapable of 
 defending itself against the most formidable aggres- 
 sions. It was a drama of history. Bismarck appeared 
 at first inexorable. In order the better to defend him- 
 self against the patriotic determination of M. Thiers, 
 he called in the Prussian staff, with its illustrious 
 chief, Von Moltke, and finally the king himself. 
 There was one moment when M. Thiers declared 
 that he should withdraw, and that he preferred even 
 the most desperate struggle to a treaty which left the 
 sword of Germany in the side of France. He suc- 
 ceeded, however, in saving Belfort, and signed with 
 bitter mortification the treaty for that mutilation of 
 his country which he had done all in his power to 
 avert by his resistance to the most insane of wars. 
 
 Strangely enough, the two combatants in this 
 very unequal diplomatic contest, judged each other 
 
THIERS. 27 
 
 favourably. M. Thiers appreciated in M. Bismarck 
 the political artist, so to speak. He admired his 
 genius, the abrupt simplicity of his language, his only 
 tactics being an almost cynical frankness. Bismarck 
 had too much perception not to enjoy the most 
 remarkable talker of his time. It is said that at 
 their first interview at Versailles, in discussing the 
 preliminaries of an armistice in October, 1870, he 
 said suddenly to M. Thiers, " Let us return to civilisa- 
 tion." He wished to resume one of the unrestrained 
 conversations of former times. The representative of 
 conquered France was not in a mood to divert his 
 terrible interlocutor. Bismarck, seeing that M. Thiers 
 was worn out and exhausted, urged him to rest upon 
 his own couch, and himself covered him with a 
 mantle. He remained unyielding, however, on all 
 the great points at issue. France had to cede Alsace 
 and Lorraine, and to consent to a ransom of four 
 milliards. 
 
 The treaty being concluded, M. Thiers had next to 
 get it accepted by the Assembly, and then to carry 
 it out. We must refer the reader to M. Jules Simon's 
 book for all that relates to the great financial opera- 
 tion, by which M. Thiers contrived to redeem and 
 to free the territory of France without bringing about 
 any monetary and financial crisis. He was more 
 proud of this than of any other achievement of his 
 life, and never wearied of talking of it. 
 
 Hardly had the peace been signed when Paris had 
 
28 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 to be rescued from the most formidable insurrection 
 of modern times. The war against the Commune 
 was conducted with as much prudence as vigour, and 
 if there were some terrible acts of reprisal in the first 
 moments of victory, when the incendiary fires kindled 
 by brigands were still raging, when the blood of the 
 hostages was reeking around, and when from more 
 than one house in the faubourgs shots were fired on 
 the soldiers, the Government must not be held re- 
 sponsible for these deeds of vengeance. It passed no 
 condemnations en masse, and M. Thiers was always 
 for measures of humanity. 
 
 The political question began from this time to pre- 
 sent itself in all its gravity to the National Assembly. 
 The majority of that Assembly was Royalist, and it had 
 hoped to find an instrument to carry out its views in 
 the head of the executive power, formerly so bitter 
 against the Republic. His old Orleanist friends, who 
 had recognised him as their head in the struggle 
 against the Empire, had no doubt of his support. He 
 began by declaring that he believed it to be his duty, 
 and the duty of all, to adjourn the question of the 
 form of government. In his memorable speech of 
 the 17th of February, 1871, he said : "Can there be 
 any one here who will dare to discuss learnedly the 
 articles of the Constitution, while our prisoners are 
 dying miserably in distant countries, or while our 
 people at home, themselves perishing of hunger, are 
 obliged to give to foreign soldiers their last remaining 
 
THIERS, 29 
 
 morsel of bread ? When we have lifted from the 
 earth where he lies prostrate, the noble wounded 
 soldier whom we call France ; when we have bound 
 up his wounds, and revived his fainting strength ; 
 when he has come to himself and finds he can again 
 breathe freely, then, indeed, it will be time for him 
 to see how he shall live. Then when, under the 
 Government of the Republic, we have effected our 
 reconstitution, we shall have some ground to go upon 
 in deciding our future destinies." 
 
 M. Thiers had already arrived at his own decision, 
 and there are few of his public acts which deserve 
 more grateful recognition, than the promptitude with 
 which he sacrificed his own political preferences, and 
 threw himself heartily into the cause of the Re- 
 public. He gave a very conclusive reason for this 
 adherence to the Republic, when counselling all good 
 citizens to take the same course. " There is but one 
 throne," he said, " and there are three men who wish 
 to sit upon it, which is impossible ! " 
 
 This witty sally was unanswerable, and the reason 
 given was undoubtedly that which forced an Assembly, 
 very anti - republican in its majority, to found the 
 Republic. For it was not enough to be simply a 
 Monarchist. The choice had to be made between 
 Legitimists, Orleanists, and Bonapartists, and thus 
 the Monarchical majority became a house divided 
 against itself. It could only agree in the attempt to 
 undermine the power of M. Thiers. It could not pre- 
 
30 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 vail against him so long as the territory was not 
 liberated, but it never ceased to place difficulties in 
 his way, and to hinder his work of reparation, entail- 
 ing upon him arduous conflicts in Parliament, at the 
 very time when he was bearing the burden of the 
 liberation and reconstitution of the country. No one 
 has described better than M. Simon what was at this 
 time the life of M. Thiers. He says : " M. Thiers had 
 to do with everything. All despatches passed under 
 his eyes. He endeavoured to watch, minute by minute, 
 the state of France and of Europe. During all the 
 struggle with the Commune, he was seen every day 
 at the foremost posts. His soul was absorbed in the 
 triple conflict with the Commune, the German Chan- 
 cellor, and the Assembly. By his strength of will and 
 his remarkable penetration, he proved himself ade- 
 quate to all. He was thoroughly master of himself, 
 and could keep a cheerful face while his mind was 
 oppressed with the heaviest weight of business. He 
 could never have stood the incessant strain and de- 
 mand upon him but for this natural light-heartedness, 
 which enabled him rapidly to recover calmness and 
 vivacity. He was, indeed, a rare man, as great and 
 as attractive in the intimacy of private life as in his 
 public career." 1 
 
 It must be admitted that M. Thiers was often mis- 
 taken in his views of foreign policy ; that he was too 
 
 1 " Le Gouvernement de M. Thiers," vol. ii. p. 241. 
 
THIERS. 31 
 
 averse to the great reforms which were needful for 
 restoring a country that had been so despoiled ; that 
 he was too faithful to the system of protection in the 
 matter of imposts, and too much attached to the 
 old organisation of the army. In fact, he was un- 
 willing for any change in this direction, especially in 
 the law for recruiting the army. 
 
 But what are his errors in comparison to the vast 
 services he rendered to the nation ? Nor was it on 
 account of those errors that he was overthrown on 
 the 24th of May, for they were shared by most of his 
 adversaries. That which they could not forgive him 
 was his ever-increasingly hearty recognition of the 
 Republic, on which he had thrown great eclat by his 
 Presidential message of November, 1872. That day 
 his fall was decided. His enemies only waited till 
 the liberation of the territory should be complete. 
 
 The very day after the Assembly had voted that 
 M. Thiers had deserved well of his country, the 
 coalition was inaugurated which led to the famous 
 and scandalous transactions of the 24th of May. 
 History has not on record a more flagrant act of in- 
 gratitude. Its results strangely balked the hopes of 
 its authors, for they had the effect of giving to the 
 Republican party, the cohesion and caution to which 
 it owed its success three years later. Never had M. 
 Thiers risen to such a height of eloquence as in the 
 proud speech which preceded the final vote. Two 
 days later some friends came to bring him the ex- 
 
32 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 pression of their admiration and sympathy in that 
 Presidential palace of Versailles, all solitary and 
 deserted, from which the liberator of the territory of 
 France, the saviour of the country, was being driven 
 out, as it were, by the impatient hatred of those 
 enemies of the Republic whose impotence would 
 bring its own Nemesis. 
 
 Thiers was even greater in retirement than in 
 power. He remained the respected leader of the Re- 
 publican party. It was to him men looked for the 
 decisive word in critical moments. Even from the 
 grave his voice made itself heard in his electoral 
 manifesto against the coalition of the 16th of May, 
 published after his death. He worked up to 
 the last hour of life. He fell at his post on the 
 battle-field, spending his last breath for his beloved 
 country. 
 
 France showed the extent of her gratitude at the 
 funeral of the great citizen. Thousands of men with 
 tearful faces gathered around his bier, and repressed 
 their indignation under unworthy provocations, in 
 order to do honour to his memory by a last act of 
 patriotic self-restraint. 
 
 There is something almost overwhelming in the 
 retrospect of M. Thiers' indefatigable activity through 
 his long life, and of all that has resulted from it. No 
 one understood better how to make good use of time. 
 He rose every day at five. When he was in power, 
 he would take the morning hours, when he was sure 
 
THIERS. 33 
 
 not to be disturbed, for the preparation of his 
 speeches, or for the more important affairs of home 
 or foreign policy. He gave audiences at the most 
 unlikely hours. 
 
 After his return to private life, he devoted himself 
 uninterruptedly till noon, to his labours as a writer. 
 In the afternoon he went to the Chamber, and regu- 
 larly took a siesta from six to eight in the evening. 
 After dinner with his guests, he would hold a recep- 
 tion till midnight, always standing, always animated, 
 sparkling with wit, affable and unassuming. Gracious 
 and kindly to all, he was particularly affectionate to 
 his friends, and never forgot an act of friendship or 
 devotion to himself or to his cause. He bore no 
 malice against his enemies ; he now and then gave 
 a witty thrust at them, more or less cutting, but he 
 knew how to forget the gravest wrongs. At the time 
 of the nomination of the seventy-five irremovable 
 senators to the National Assembly, there was an un- 
 derstanding between the Left and the Extreme Right 
 which detested the Orleanists even more than the 
 Republicans. One of the senators of this party had 
 distinguished himself by his abusive speeches against 
 M. Thiers. " Thiers will never give me his vote," he 
 said to one of his friends. Thiers sent word to him 
 that he might count upon his vote. " The next day," 
 said the old President of the Republic, " I saw this 
 same senator coming to me with a smile which was 
 almost as affectionate as an embrace." 
 
34 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 " Well, yes," I said to him, " I will vote for you ; 
 you see I am capable of anything." This fine irony 
 was all his revenge. 
 
 One cannot sufficiently admire the energy dis- 
 played by this old man, in appearance so frail. His 
 features had nothing remarkable in themselves, but 
 his sensitive, intellectual face became irresistibly at- 
 tractive in conversation. 
 
 He will live in history as the Thiers of the great 
 days of blood and anguish, those days when he stood 
 forth as the saviour of his country in distress. This is 
 the Thiers whom we have represented with rare power 
 in the admirable portrait by Bonnat. This is the 
 Thiers who was named with acclamation by the ma- 
 jority of the Chamber of Deputies in the month of 
 June, 1877, when one of the most maladroit Ministers 
 of the 1 6th of May had the impertinence to pay homage 
 to the Monarchists of the National Assembly, for the 
 liberation of the territory. More than three hundred 
 deputies sprang to their feet as one man, and pointing 
 to the illustrious old patriot, exclaimed : " There sits 
 the liberator of France ! " No one could look on dry- 
 eyed at such a scene. Thiers himself shed tears. 
 Such an hour outweighs much calumny. 
 
 One of M. Thiers' last labours was the great philo- 
 sophical work on which he had been long engaged. 
 He constantly spoke of it in conversation. His aim 
 was to oppose with all his energy the school of materi- 
 alistic transformation, which banishes God alike from 
 
THIERS. 35 
 
 nature and history. It was to refute this, which ap- 
 peared to him the most noxious error, that he entered 
 on an extensive study of the natural sciences, gather- 
 ing around him their most eminent representatives. 
 He did not himself rise above deism. Full of 
 respect for the religion of Christ, he yet did not cross 
 the barrier which divides theism from supernatural 
 religion. But his faith in God was full and strong, and 
 in his preparations for its defence, he showed what 
 importance he attached to it. There is something 
 grand in this absorption of the mind of the great 
 statesman, at the close of life, in such a theme. 
 
 The memory of Thiers remains dear and sacred to 
 all who had the happiness and honour of his friend- 
 ship. His name is inscribed in letters of gold on 
 the annals of his country — that country which he 
 so passionately loved, so courageously warned of its 
 danger, so faithfully served and so gloriously saved. 
 
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN 
 COUNCIL. 
 
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE 
 VATICAN COUNCIL. 
 
 THE signal triumph achieved by Ultramontanism 
 at the Vatican Council was no sudden success. 
 It was the denoument of a cunningly contrived 
 policy which had been at work from the beginning of 
 the century. Of the importance of the end attained 
 there can be no doubt; and we shall find much of 
 interest in tracing the steps which led up to it. ) 
 
 Cardinal Consalvi said one day to Niebuhr, refer- 
 ring to the designs of the Roman Curia, " The desired 
 result is not to be reached directly by way of the 
 Corso ; it can only be arrived at by oblique paths." 
 The able counsellor of Pius VII. characterised in 
 these words the proceedings of the Curia up to 
 the time of Pius IX. During the last twenty years, 
 it has been able to cast aside concealment and 
 finesse, and to advance boldly by the Corso, as 
 by a new Appian way. Recent documents throw 
 a clear light upon these tactics of the leaders of 
 the Ultramontane party in both phases — first that 
 of intrigue, and next of bold and triumphant advance. 
 The excellent book published by M. Friedrich, of 
 
40 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 Munich, the eminent disciple of Dollinger, on the 
 history of the preparation of the Council, places 
 within our reach abundant and reliable sources of 
 information, by means of which we may trace the 
 progress of one of the most astonishing enterprises 
 of the papacy, one which has succeeded in trans- 
 forming, in less than a century, the spirit and the 
 institutions of a Church distinguished above all others 
 for its Conservatism. 1 
 
 This is the climax of the drama of the age, for the 
 close of the century will be occupied with conflicts 
 between the Church and the State, arising out of this 
 dangerous triumph. The death of Pius IX., after he 
 had accomplished this great work, was but an unim- 
 portant incident. It is of great moment for the 
 representatives of modern society to know the 
 adversary they have to contend with. No power has 
 understood better than the Roman Curia how to 
 bend to the necessities of the time, without renounc- 
 ing its principle, and how to make itself all things to 
 all men, while remaining really unchanged. At one 
 time it appears as the avowed ally of the ancien 
 regime, the moving genius of the Holy Alliance ; at 
 
 1 " Geschichte des Vatikanischen Konzils," by J. Friedrich. 
 See also " L'Etat Moderne et PEglise Catholique en Alle- 
 magne," by Ernest Stroehlin ; also M. Geffcken's able work, 
 " Staat und Kirche in ihrem Verhaltniss entwickelt." 3 I have 
 made use of many other works referring to the Council, which 
 I need not enumerate. 
 
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 41 
 
 another it apparently espouses democracy, adopts its 
 methods and maxims, and learns to assail the Revo- 
 lution with its own weapons. Now the Roman party 
 is humble, pliant — serpit humi ; it twines round its 
 foe rather than strikes at it, because it feels itself sus- 
 pected and detested ; again it commands, threatens, 
 inflames popular passion, or lets itself be borne 
 along by the strong waves of an insensate reaction. 
 Patiens quia ceturnns. If its webs break away from 
 one point, it immediately gathers up the broken 
 threads and fastens them elsewhere. The State is far 
 less wary ; after resisting vehemently the encroach- 
 ments of the Church, it allows itself to be diverted 
 and surprised. Its adversary never slumbers or 
 sleeps ; it takes advantage of an unguarded moment 
 on the part of a Minister, to slip into the nomination 
 papers of a bishop, an equivocal clause infringing the 
 civil rights. The reader needs to have before his 
 eyes a comprehensive picture, or a powerful resume of 
 all the proceedings of the ecclesiastical policy, in 
 order to form any idea of the subtlety with which all 
 has been contrived to ensure success. 
 
 I. 
 
 At the close of the eighteenth century, the Catholic 
 Church was in great part freed from Ultramontane 
 influences. In the principal countries of Europe the 
 civil power had offered a steady opposition to it, and 
 
42 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 one Pope had even gone so far as to condemn the 
 Society of Jesus. That society had found itself com- 
 pelled to quit France, though it had endeavoured to 
 bend before the storm. There were even a certain 
 number of its members who, hoping to save their 
 order, gave their adherence to the declaration of 1682. 
 It is said that the unhappy signataries affected not to 
 read the document which was presented to them, and 
 asked with an air of indifference, " if there was any- 
 thing more to sign." " Yes," was the answer, " there 
 is still the Koran, but we have not a copy at hand." 
 Nothing could show more clearly how thoroughly 
 humiliated were these defenders to the death of the 
 Holy See. Expelled from France and Spain, their 
 system was completely broken up in Austria and in 
 Italy by Joseph II., who established not only the in- 
 dependence but the autocracy of the State in religious 
 matters. The old French clergy, on emerging from 
 the vortex of the Revolution, had not become Ultra- 
 montane, though they had nobly resisted the schism 
 organised by the civil constitution of the clergy. 
 They remained, for the most part, attached to that 
 modified Gallicanism which gave them a peculiar 
 character, since its close connection with the old 
 royal family and the old noblesse was not compatible 
 with the abandonment of the maxims of Old France. 
 We have all known representatives and descendants 
 of this distinguished body of the clergy, whom mis- 
 fortune and persecution had only purified and ennobled. 
 
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 43 
 
 There was about them an air of priestly gravity, and 
 of dignity without arrogance, which marked them out 
 from all their brethren. They bore no resemblance 
 to the new generation, so degraded by servitude that 
 they do not shrink from sullying with sacrilegious 
 fingers the sacred memory of Bossuet. We have clear 
 proof of the predominance of Gallican ideas in the 
 Catholic Church forty years ago, in the language used 
 in 1829 by the Vicars Apostolic of Great Britain, 
 before the great Parliamentary Commission charged 
 with preparing the abolition of the laws restricting 
 their liberties. They affirmed upon oath "that the 
 infallibility of the Pope is not an article of faith." I 
 The doctrine of infallibility was, indeed, positively 
 denied in the catechisms and theological manuals in 
 use at that time. 
 
 It is, then, a fact capable of proof, that the prevail- 
 ing doctrine of European Catholicism at the com- 
 mencement of the century, was not Ultramontanism. 
 We remember the resistance offered to it by the 
 Government of the Restoration, in spite of the dan- 
 gerous favours lavished by that Government on the 
 Church. Half a century has barely passed away, 
 and all is changed ; the preponderating influence is 
 everywhere in the hands of the Roman party. It is 
 important for us to understand how this change has 
 been effected, and to see by what a series of efforts, 
 
 1 " The Vatican Decrees/' &c, by W. E. Gladstone, p. 36. 
 
44 CONTEMPORAR Y PORTRAITS. 
 
 and by what pressure on public opinion, the Roman 
 Curia has attained its ends. 
 
 We have to observe, first of all, that it found facili- 
 ties not hitherto enjoyed, in the state of men's minds 
 at the close of the French Revolution. By the mere 
 fact that the civil power had not only renounced its 
 role of protector of the Church, but had also lifted up 
 its arm against it in violent and unjust persecutions, 
 the Church was led to seek the support of the Holy 
 See. It had no longer to deal with an orthodox 
 royalty which was always ready to defend it, and to 
 bestow endless favours in return for its submission. 
 Now that the old institutions had fallen, all their 
 abuses were forgotten ; a veil of poetry was thrown 
 over their ruins. The soul, wearied with so many 
 shocks, and with the tears and blood of the days of 
 the Revolution, turned with relief to the past, and 
 idealised it. Thus arose that romantic school, en- 
 amoured of everything mediaeval, which made the 
 fortune of the Genie dn Christianisme, and which 
 under Schlegel and Gorres founded the Munich 
 School, which exercised a great influence over an 
 emasculated generation, and created a strong reaction 
 against the liberal idea of the modern State. 
 
 The Roman Curia was not satisfied with these 
 general influences favourable to its views. It had a 
 definite plan, and its skill was exercised in bringing 
 every influence to bear upon it. It knew how to take 
 advantage of circumstances, and how to call them 
 
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 45 
 
 forth. Its action was twofold — by turns political and 
 moral ; sometimes the Roman Curia would negotiate 
 with the powers ; sometimes it would endeavour to 
 create an opinion favourable to itself. 
 
 The Concordats which have been concluded in our 
 time between the Holy See and the various Govern- 
 ments, have almost always been used by the papacy 
 to secure great and important advantages ; for, as 
 they were negotiated generally with powers having 
 but a slight acquaintance with ecclesiastical affairs, 
 and averse, either from pride or from jealousy of their 
 own authority, from consulting the national episcopate, 
 the papacy took large advantage of their ignorance. 
 This statement may perhaps seem surprising, at a 
 time when the Concordat is regarded in France as 
 the great bulwark against the encroachments of the 
 clergy ; but the explanation of this is that the Con- 
 cordat is generally confounded with the legislation 
 of Germinal Year X., which the First Consul drew up 
 entirely by himself, without having consulted the Holy 
 Father on this postscriptum, in which he embodied 
 all his own views, with very little regard to the 
 spiritual independence. To this he put his signature. 
 The Pope had only consented to the Concordat, and 
 the few concessions which he had made touching 
 the unity of religion and the temporalities of the 
 Church, were largely counterbalanced by the right 
 he had obtained for the first time, of dismissing 
 bishops — a right altogether at variance with the an- 
 
46 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 cient constitution of the Church, which was based 
 upon the Divine institution of the episcopate. It 
 was the First Consul who had urged him to reduce 
 the number of the dioceses. He showed himself by 
 this act a strange disciple of Bossuet, whose name 
 was perpetually on his lips. " It was the author of 
 the Concordat," said Lamennais in 1819, "who made 
 the Pope the supreme head of the pastoral order, and 
 the source of the jurisdiction of the Church." The 
 Concordat concluded with the King of Prussia in 
 1812, secured enormous advantages to the Court of 
 Rome ; the Concordats signed in 1865 by the 
 Grand Duke of Baden and the King of Wiirtemburg 
 went so far in this direction that they were met with 
 invincible opposition in the parliaments of the two 
 countries. 
 
 The Roman Curia has had to treat not only with 
 princes, but with that modern democracy which can 
 but excite its antipathy. Its great art has been to 
 derive advantage from it even while condemning it, by 
 turning to its own account the liberal institutions 
 which had triumphed in spite of papal resistance. 
 
 The papacy formally anathematised these institu- 
 tions in principle, as when Gregory XVI. condemned, 
 in the Encyclical of 1833, the doctrines of" L'Avenir" 
 as presented by Lamennais, their fervid apostle ; but 
 it deemed it well afterwards to observe a prudent 
 silence, in order that its champions might secure to 
 themselves again, under the broad shield of liberty, 
 
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 47 
 
 immunities which they could no longer hold as 
 privileges. It was quite willing that its partisans 
 should assume for a time the garb of sincere Liberals, 
 since this gave more potency to their claims. Ultra- 
 montanism, under their advocacy, appeared shorn of 
 all that could be antipathetic to the modern mind, 
 and was represented as the guarantee of religious 
 liberty, in opposition to the injurious pretensions of 
 the State. We know with what noble eloquence and 
 courageous loyality, Lacordaire and Montalembert 
 played their part, the former in his white Dominican 
 robe at Notre Dame, the latter from the tribune of 
 the Chamber of Peers. The result of this brilliant 
 campaign was the too famous law of 185 1, giving 
 liberty of teaching, which introduced the episcopate 
 into the Superior Council of Public Instruction, handed 
 over' in great part primary education to the religious 
 bodies, and practically removed the barriers to the 
 re-establishment of the religious orders, foremost 
 among whom came the Jesuits. 
 
 After the establishment of the Second Empire all 
 was changed. The Ultramontane party, which until 
 then had appeared united in its Liberal demonstra- 
 tions, suddenly broke up into two factions at deadly 
 warfare with each other. On the one hand were 
 the Ultramontane Liberals, who continued to seek to 
 reconcile Catholicism with modern liberties ; on the 
 other hand was a phalanx of Ultramontanes, the 
 sworn enemies of all liberties except their own. 
 
48 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 These, after hailing with acclamation the Dictator- 
 ship of December 2nd, shook off the dust of their 
 feet against the whole social system created by the 
 Revolution. For a long time Liberal Catholicism 
 remained in the ascendant. It had in its favour the 
 services it had rendered, and the patriotic attitude it 
 had assumed towards the personal power. It was 
 none the less doomed to defeat ; for by exalting the 
 authority of the Pope it had sealed its own sentence. 
 When Montalembert ventured to vindicate religious 
 liberty at the Congress of Malines, as a principle, and 
 not merely as a concession to the exigencies of the 
 times, the Encyclical of 1864 and the Syllabus were 
 brought to bear upon him and upon his school, with 
 all their crushing weight. 
 
 Ultramontanism had its reckoning with the Liberals 
 of its party, after making use of them for its own 
 purposes. Montalembert and Lacordaire both died, 
 bitterly lamenting that all the devotion, zeal and 
 talent they had expended in the cause of religion, 
 had only ended in the destruction of liberty. They 
 had been made tools of by a hand stronger than their 
 own. 
 
 We know with what consummate art the Belgian 
 Ultramontanes contrived to use liberty as a means of 
 securing to themselves all the posts of power, till the 
 time came when they could turn round and say: 
 " The house is ours ; it is for you to begone." 
 
 They were powerfully aided in their work by the 
 
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 49 
 
 sincere Liberals among them who represented the 
 school of " L'Avenir." Nowhere have these tactics 
 been more successfully employed than in Germany. 
 Wise and moderate views had gained a great as- 
 cendancy there at the commencement of the cen- 
 tury, owing to the remarkable development of true 
 scientific culture in some of the universities, beyond 
 the narrow precincts of the seminaries. Bishops like 
 Dalberg of Mayence and Wissemberg of Constance, 
 there represented the tradition of the great Gallican 
 Councils. Thoughtful statesmen imbued with the 
 modern spirit, like Count Montgelas, the able Bava- 
 rian Minister, had firmly maintained the rights of the 
 State. It had been difficult to assail their position in 
 ordinary times ; the formidable agitation which broke 
 out in 1848 presented a more favourable opportunity 
 for successfully urging the claims of Ultramontanism. 
 The heads of the party did not hesitate a moment 
 to throw themselves into the democratic movement 
 which led to the Frankfort Parliament. There they 
 made common cause with the advanced Left, asking, 
 as the people's representatives, the entire separation of 
 the Church from the State, and endeavouring to place 
 the liberties which alone they had at heart, under the 
 shelter of the general liberties claimed by the demo- 
 crats. They hoped thus to checkmate the State, and 
 to secure the interests of religion. " Let the civil 
 power," said the Archbishop of Cologne to his clergy, 
 " still lend us its support, but not fetter us any further 
 
 5 
 
50 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 in the fulfilment of our mission. Let us have no more 
 placets, no more appeals against abuses, no more 
 nominations to benefices, no more lay schools." A 
 petition, to which were affixed more than 300,000 
 signatures, besought the Frankfort Parliament to 
 put the Church again under the common law. The 
 orators of the party got themselves applauded by the 
 most advanced members, and secured by a large 
 majority the all but absolute liberty of the Church, as 
 one of the fundamental articles of the constitution of 
 the Empire. It is true that they could not prevent 
 the Parliament from secularising the schools and 
 rendering civil marriage obligatory ; hence the Roman 
 party faced round with incredible rapidity ; and while 
 claiming to keep what they had gained, took advan- 
 tage of the reaction that had set in in Bavaria, to 
 demand from the Congress of Wiirzburg the recension 
 of the few clauses favourable to the civil power, that 
 had been passed at Frankfort. The Roman party 
 has never ceased from that time to play the same 
 double game in every one of the German States. 
 
 In vain at an assembly convoked at Durlach, in the 
 Grand Duchy of Baden, to resist these encroach- 
 ments, did the celebrated Hausser, a man equally 
 distinguished as a historian and a politician, denounce 
 the Ultramontane proceedings in the following 
 words : M I know too well that the liberty of the 
 Church is the illusive watchword beneath which 
 lies the daring determination to drag back the 
 
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 51 
 
 State, if possible, into its former state of servitude. 
 Ultramontane liberty is not liberty for the State, but 
 the subordination of the State to the Church." In 
 spite of all this, the extreme party continued its 
 noisy, hypocritical demonstrations in favour of demo- 
 cracy. In the very same Duchy of Baden, in 1869, 
 it gave its hand to the most advanced democrats, and 
 clamoured with them for immediate universal suf- 
 frage, as the inalienable right of the people. " The 
 needs of the age," said Canon Lasker, " are in accord- 
 ance with the designs of Providence." " Society will 
 never be saved," exclaims another fanatic of the 
 same party, " but by the alliance of Christianity with 
 democracy." 
 
 The same tactics were pursued in Wiirtemburg, 
 with this difference — that, at the very moment when 
 the Ultramontanes were making a compact with the 
 Republicans, they were also practising secretly with 
 the opposite party. All their sympathies were really 
 in this direction, for while they flattered the democracy, 
 they hated it at heart, and utterly repudiated its 
 essential principle, which is that sovereignty is con- 
 ferred by the people, instead of having its seat on the 
 cloudy heights of a divine right. 
 
 The proceedings of the Ultramontanes in Switzer- 
 land in 1848 form one of the most curious episodes of 
 this crusade. They had chosen the canton of Lucerne 
 as their battle-field ; their chief aim was to obtain 
 from the Great Council the reintegration of the 
 
5 2 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 Jesuits, in order that the instruction of the people 
 might be handed over to them. The task was a diffi- 
 cult one, for they had not only to contend with local 
 obstacles, but also to enter into conflict with most of 
 the confederated cantons. Tn relation to the incidents 
 of this struggle, we have documentary authority which 
 cannot be disputed, namely, the report of the ecclesi- 
 astical condition of Switzerland presented by Bishop 
 Luchet, the Pope's envoy extraordinary. From this 
 we learn that Ultramontane fanaticism would not 
 bow even to the sovereignty of the Holy Father, 
 when it received from Rome counsels of prudence and 
 moderation. It was by unscrupulously stirring up 
 the popular passions that the friends of the Jesuits, 
 headed by Councillor Leu (who was afterwards assas- 
 sinated), obtained a favourable vote from the Great 
 Council, with this modifying clause — that the State 
 reserved to itself the right of inspecting the schools ; a 
 condition nullified at the same time that it was given 
 by a secret clause, in which the reverend fathers de- 
 clared that they could not in any way infringe the 
 rules of their order. The ratification of the people 
 was secured by means of a succession of open-air 
 meetings, at which the new leaguers gave impassioned 
 harangues, blending threats of hell with inflammatory 
 appeals tc the populace. The episcopate had not 
 power to resist, and was forced to yield to the pressure 
 of misguided popular opinion. The attitude of the 
 Protestant cantons presaged a fearful civil war. The 
 
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 53 
 
 venerable Metternich counselled adjournment ; the 
 Nuncios of Lucerne and of Paris gave the same 
 advice, which was confirmed by the Court of Rome. 
 The Ultramontane agitators ventured to intercept the 
 warnings of the Holy Father. The Nuncio of Lucerne 
 could not restrain his indignation when he heard 
 Father Roth, the superior of the Jesuits in the canton, 
 declare that civil war did not terrify him. " What ! " 
 exclaimed the Roman prelate. " The Church bids us 
 ask in its prayers to be delivered from famine, from 
 pestilence, and from war, and here is a priest who 
 clamours for war ! " War did, in fact, break out — that 
 impious war which pitted against each other Protes- 
 tant and Catholic Switzerland. If it was promptly 
 brought to an end, thanks to the clever manoeuvres 
 of an able and humane general, it was nevertheless 
 a great crime, for which those fanatics are responsible 
 who made the crucifix a firebrand to kindle civil dis- 
 order. 
 
 The war of the Sunderbund showed to what lengths 
 this blending of fanaticism with democracy might 
 lead, creating a new order of Jacobins, who could don 
 the bonnet rouge without doffing the frock. 
 
 II. 
 
 The Ultramontane school was not content with 
 turning the general liberties to the account of its own 
 policy. When it failed to wring from the modern 
 
54 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 governments the concessions it desired, it made use 
 of the democratic element in another way. It bor- 
 rowed democratic methods of propagandism, when it 
 no longer thought it necessary to swell the ravings of 
 militant radicalism. In old Europe the Ultramon- 
 tane school endeavoured to win over the minds of 
 men, by learned or subtle dissertations ; it flung dusty 
 folios at the heads of its adversaries, and only the 
 erudite could take part in the discussion. But in our 
 day, doctrines the most hostile to modern society, are 
 defended with the lightest weapons by daring inno- 
 vators. The dust of the school is shaken off; and St. 
 Thomas, broken up into small portions and presented 
 in the form of popular pamphlets, is made singularly 
 light reading. While heartily abusing the liberty of 
 the press — which in ex-cathedra parlance is called a 
 pest — the Ultramontanes nevertheless make large use 
 of this powerful lever of public opinion. Ultramon- 
 tanism has its irritating, sardonic press, ever ready to 
 propagate scandal, seasoning its very theological trea- 
 tises with the coarsest allusions, and endeavouring to 
 crush its adversaries by the pitiless ridicule poured upon 
 them. These proceedings have called forth earnest 
 protests on the part of thoughtful men, who deem 
 that religious discussion should be carried on seriously, 
 and at the very least honestly. Bishops, and the 
 learned and eloquent guardians of the traditions of 
 the dignity and high culture of the Church, have at- 
 tempted to stem the torrent, but in vain ; they have 
 
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 55 
 
 only had to retreat, bespattered with foam, and having 
 drawn down upon themselves the displeasure of Rome. 
 Lacordaire wrote to Madame Swetchine : " I am 
 willing to take my place at the feet of the successors 
 of the apostles, but not at the feet of a band of scof- 
 fers, who bring everything to the tribunal of their 
 satirical talent." Alas ! the Ultramontane press ren- 
 dered greater services to the school which sought to 
 bring all into a common bondage, than did a noble 
 spirit like Lacordaire, of whom Lambruschini once 
 said : " He is another Lamennais." All possible en- 
 couragement from high quarters was given to this 
 rabid journalism, of which all noble minds among the 
 Catholics were heartily ashamed, and which was a dis- 
 grace to our common humanity. Words of approbation 
 were followed by papal briefs. The Civilta Cattolica, 
 the organ of the Society of Jesus, was formally re- 
 cognised in a Roman congregation. An agency for 
 Catholic journals was founded in Rome, and more 
 than two hundred daily and weekly papers were em- 
 ployed to disseminate sound doctrine and to dictate to 
 the dioceses. Ultramontane journalism has created a 
 sort of third order of a new kind. Laymen in short 
 frocks, and with their sleeves tucked up, are seen enter- 
 ing like pugilists into ecclesiastical discussions, and 
 laying down the law for the bishops, whose remon- 
 strances receive no reply. Mgr. Dupanloup wasted his 
 eloquence on this subject. The tribunes of the altar 
 carried the day against the prelates, for they used all 
 
56 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 the means which current polemics put within their 
 reach, to overthrow those whom they could not con- 
 vince. It must not be forgotten that the programme 
 of the last Council was prepared in the offices of the 
 Civilta Cattolica, and propagated by the Ultramon- 
 tane press, which exerted an irresistible influence over 
 public opinion. 
 
 One of the great engines of democratic propa- 
 gandism is association, which is practised on a large 
 scale, and fostered by noisy meetings. Congresses of 
 all sorts have been much facilitated by the multi- 
 plication of rapid modes of communication. The 
 school which is most averse to modern progress has 
 not disdained to use these inventions of the devil, and 
 has utilised them to its own advantage, perhaps more 
 largely than any other party. There is no more 
 effectual means of producing an agitation, and of 
 overcoming inconvenient objections, especially those 
 which are based on science or conscience, than these 
 irregular gatherings, in which the voting is not deter- 
 mined by any fixed rule. It is quite easy to work up 
 assemblies like these to a white heat, to an almost 
 delirious fanaticism, and then to make use of them to 
 bring pressure to bear on the regular authorities of the 
 Church. This was attempted by the Ultramontane 
 party in Switzerland and in Germany. The famous 
 Association, known as the " Pius Verein," founded at 
 Mayence, and recognised by Pius IX. in 1849, without 
 any previous sanction from the German episcopate, 
 
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 57 
 
 at once raised the standard of the Ultramontane 
 crusade. Under the direction of laymen, as fanatic 
 as they were ignorant, and without any competence 
 to resolve questions of dogma or of discipline, it yet 
 exerted a widespread and fatal influence. Assem- 
 bling at regular periods in the great Catholic centres 
 of Germany, it was not inactive in the interval ; 
 and by its local associations for works of charity, 
 for teaching, for the cultivation of religious art, 
 and the dissemination through the press of right 
 views, it cast around the Church a network so close, 
 that it was impossible to break it. The intimidated 
 bishops were obliged, though often reluctantly, to 
 submit to its will, and thus it created an irresistible 
 current of opinion in support of its favourite doctrines. 
 Enlightened and wise men, like Hirscher, remon- 
 strated in vain against these irregular, incompetent 
 assemblies, which set at nought all constituted authori- 
 ties in their gross adulation of the papacy, and were 
 enemies alike of science and of true piety. Was it 
 not their avowed design to form an international 
 federation, which should cast at the feet of the Holy 
 See the Churches of all countries, confounding them 
 in one common servility ? The voice of the great 
 publicist was wasted on the desert air. The great 
 jubilee of Boniface, which was celebrated with extra- 
 ordinary pomp at Mayence, on the 14th December, 
 1854, raised the agitation to a climax. Switzerland, 
 in its turn, had its " Pius Verein." At the same time 
 
58 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 France was preparing to found Theological Commit- 
 tees, and to multiply their congresses, which have 
 become, as we know, an important feature in the 
 Ultramontane organisation. 
 
 The Catholic Working Men's Clubs, the object of 
 which is more political than religious, are a power- 
 ful weapon in the hands of the same party for attack- 
 ing modern society, which it would fain (to use the 
 language of one of its lay leaders) conduct to a civil 
 
 burial. 
 
 III. 
 
 Hitherto we have been looking only at the volun- 
 teers of Ultramontanism, its irregular forces which 
 have succeeded in leading on the regular army. It is 
 time now that we turned to the authorised heads of 
 the Ultramontane school, who are no other than the 
 heads of the Catholic hierarchy itself in its own 
 metropolis. These were impatient to be no longer a 
 school of disputed authority, but to become the Church 
 itself, and so advance their pretensions as irrefragable 
 claims. Hence their one object was to secure the pro- 
 clamation of the dogma of infallibility. Until this was 
 done their edifice lacked its keystone. In reality, that 
 which they aimed at was the abolition of all liberty, 
 of every right and privilege which could counter- 
 balance or control the central power. For this 
 purpose it was necessary to sacrifice all secondary 
 authority for the benefit of the papacy, to destroy 
 the last vestiges of national Churches, and especially 
 
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 59 
 
 to reduce the episcopate to an entirely subordinate 
 position. 
 
 There could be no better way of doing this than a 
 return to the old, sure method of despots who under- 
 stood their business — the method which the Caesars 
 had so cunningly used in Rome, in sacrificing the patri- 
 cians to the plebs. Modern Ultramontanism closely 
 followed their example, not scorning to have recourse 
 to the low but effective policy described in the famous 
 words: " Pcuiem et circensesr We would be very 
 careful not to seem to say anything against the bread 
 of charity ; that is sacred, if only it be broken to all 
 the hungry, and not made the price for which they 
 are to sell their consciences. As to the circenses — the 
 great representations which appeal to the eye — have 
 they not been lavishly provided for the Catholic 
 masses, in those pilgrimages to miraculous caves, in 
 which the fervour of the devotees is fed by fanatic 
 hymns, and by feverish legends of virgins who see 
 visions and utter infantile oracles? The character 
 thus impressed during the last few years on popular 
 devotion has done much to develop Ultramontane 
 fanaticism. There would almost seem to arise from 
 the lips of this fanatic host, the materialistic prayer of 
 ancient Israel to Moses : " Make us gods to go before 
 us." The tangible divinity thus sought has been 
 given in the form of the infallible Pope. But a mere 
 popular movement would not suffice for his deification. 
 It was needful that the old institutions should be 
 
60 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 abolished, in order that an all-absorbing centralisation 
 should be set up. Until our day, Catholicism, while 
 preserving its unity, had still granted a certain 
 latitude to national Churches. They had their general 
 assemblies or Councils, their liturgy, and an episco- 
 pate which reconciled subordination to the papacy, 
 with a measure of independence and an authority that 
 made itself felt and respected. Now all this is changed. 
 We cannot follow out in detail the steps taken 
 by the Roman policy to reach this important result, 
 which is equivalent to nothing less than a revo- 
 lution in the institutions of the Church. The Curia 
 contrived to substitute in all the countries of Europe, 
 mere provincial Councils for the old national Councils 
 which have everywhere fallen into disuse. It was 
 very easy to over-rule these provincial Councils and 
 to lead them to vote in the desired direction, all 
 the more that a special congregation was constituted 
 at Rome for the purpose, which took upon itself to 
 arrange the business of these Councils, and even to 
 modify their resolutions, so that they were made, 
 without their own consent, to acquiesce in the opinion 
 of the infallible pontiff. It is easy to arrive at an 
 understanding in a dialogue, in which the interlocutor 
 and the respondent are one and the same. The 
 Roman Curia was equally successful on the question 
 of liturgies. This was of the utmost importance to it, 
 for it would be impossible to exaggerate the influence 
 of liturgies, which give to piety its popular form, sur- 
 
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 61 
 
 rounding it with a moral atmosphere which it is 
 unable to resist. In France the Roman Curia was 
 ably served by the celebrated Dom Gueranger, to 
 whom we owe the restoration of the Benedictine 
 order. Pius IX. devoted his Encyclical of 1853 to this 
 cause, which he rightly had at heart, and the Curia has 
 recently succeeded, in spite of prolonged resistance, 
 in substituting everywhere the Roman liturgy for the 
 beautiful liturgy of the Church of France, which was 
 not defaced by the ridiculous fables of Italian bigotry. 
 Lacordaire said bitterly of this daring attempt, even 
 before it had succeeded : "It is a cruel insult to a 
 Church which has never severed itself from the general 
 community." 
 
 After gaining a complete ascendancy over the 
 episcopal assemblies, it was not difficult to bring the 
 bishops separately into submission. This was quickly 
 done. The Roman party exalted to the clouds the 
 prelates who boldly resisted the civil power, even 
 when their conduct was most reckless and ill advised. 
 When their extravagancies drew down the just 
 vengeance of the State, they were proclaimed mar- 
 tyrs. The famous Archbishop of Cologne, Mgr. Von 
 Droste-Vischering, who compelled the Prussian Go- 
 vernment to deviate from its long course of toleration, 
 by his unjustifiable resistance to every measure of 
 conciliation in the case of mixed marriages, and by 
 his irritating demeanour, was placed on a par with 
 the first Christian confessors of the faith. Archbishop 
 
62 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 Vicari, of Fribourg, was declared in his lifetime 
 worthy of canonisation, for having disturbed the 
 Grand Duchy of Baden by his imprudent proceed- 
 ings. To violate the laws of the State is a merit in 
 the eyes of the Roman party. Woe to the bishop who 
 does not bend under the yoke, and who dares to offer 
 any opposition to the fiat of the Curia. The illus- 
 trious Wissemberg knew something of this in his 
 diocese of Constance, where he had secured universal 
 respect by his toleration, his piety, his learning, and 
 his noble liberality. His nomination as bishop was 
 not confirmed ; he died after having had the sorrow 
 of seeing his diocese broken up, in order that Catholic 
 Switzerland might be freed from an influence so 
 much dreaded as his. Subsequently the liberal and 
 learned school of Munich was loaded with outrages. 
 Cardinal Andrea, for having desired to prolong his 
 stay there, was severely condemned in a pontifical 
 brief, which declared that the Pope had the power of 
 governing directly all the dioceses. The Archbishop 
 of Paris, Mgr. Darboy, complained to Rome of the 
 denunciations to which he was subjected by his sub- 
 ordinates ; he was even obliged in one case to adopt 
 a measure of very mild discipline. The Holy See 
 openly censured him, thus humbling him before all 
 his clergy. The Bishops of Marseilles and of Chalon 
 were severely blamed for showing some Gallican pro- 
 clivities. The papacy made it evident on every 
 opportunity, that it intended to have at the head of 
 
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 63 
 
 the dioceses, not bishops, but mere ecclesiastical pre- 
 fects, whose office was simply to transmit the papal 
 behests. 
 
 The Ultramontane party looks with suspicion on 
 men of science. It never rested till it had thrown 
 discredit on the teaching of theology in the German 
 Universities. What it required was the hotbed of a 
 seminary closed against general culture, and it had 
 no confidence in any colleges which were not under 
 its own special supervision. Hence every effort 
 was made to induce young men preparing for the 
 clerical office, to attend the famous Roman College, 
 which it supplemented by the Germanic College, in 
 which the same doctrines were instilled. " Distrust 
 learned men," said one of the leaders of Ultramontan- 
 ism. Nor was it deemed enough to seek to inspire 
 distrust ; scholars were condemned when, without 
 going beyond the bounds of orthodoxy, they mani- 
 fested some independence of spirit, like Dr. Hermes 
 at Cologne, and Dr. Dollinger at Munich. All that 
 was foreign to the scholarship of mediaeval times, all 
 that revealed some development of the philosophic 
 spirit, though it might be in the service of accepted 
 truths, was regarded as dangerous. Ignorance became 
 increasingly a title to favour, and to the old theological 
 virtues was added a new virtue, which consisted in 
 ignorance of theology. How many fine intellects 
 may have groaned and suffered under this cruel pres- 
 sure ! How many noble hearts may have bled in 
 
64 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 secret, as they saw the babblings of ignorance accepted 
 as the wisdom of God, and all original development 
 of religious thought, in an age of research like this, 
 repressed by a petty and jealous authority ! The true 
 martyrs of our time are not the imprudent agitators 
 who, under a government so moderate as that of 
 Germany before its Prussian unification, were pun- 
 ished for having disturbed civil order by their fana- 
 ticism ; they are such men as Gratry, Lacordaire, 
 Dollinger, Haefel, all misunderstood by the Church to 
 which they were devoted, all regarded with suspicion, 
 if not treated with severity, because they would not 
 cringe with the ignorant multitude, or with the men 
 of servile soul in high positions who only rise by 
 flattery. Theirs was a very poignant suffering, more 
 than once involuntarily betrayed. 
 
 It was not enough to depreciate the science of the 
 day ; it was needful also to efface from the documents 
 of the past, everything that was at variance with the 
 new doctrine, the triumph of which the papal party was 
 bent on securing. The scribes of the Curia had always 
 shown singular audacity in forging documents in sup- 
 port of their favourite theories. The False Decretals 
 had shown how far they would venture in this sort of 
 historic fraud. Much was said at the time of the Council, 
 of their manipulations of the Roman Breviary, in the 
 attempt to efface from the original text the name 
 of Pope Honorius, who was there distinctly described 
 as a heretic. It was on this occasion that Father 
 
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 65 
 
 Gratry denounced, with such eloquent indignation, this 
 interpolating and mendacious school, exclaiming, 
 " Indiget Deus mendacio vestro ! This habit of using 
 a dishonest apology, is one of the causes of our deca- 
 dence in modern times. So soon as mankind per- 
 ceives in an apostle the faintest trace of cunning or 
 duplicity, it turns away disgusted. Is not the time 
 then come, in this age of publicity, in which everything 
 is known and spread abroad, to reject with scorn the 
 frauds, interpolations, and mutilations, which liars 
 and falsifiers of documents — our most cruel enemies 
 — have introduced into the archives of the Church ? 
 I have been long before I could bring myself to 
 believe in the existence among us, of this apology 
 of ignorance, of blindness, of dubious or even of bad 
 faith, which seeks an end in the goodness and truth 
 of which it believes, but in order to reach it has 
 recourse to fraud and to the fabrication of false docu- 
 ments." " We shall be told that Father Gratry made 
 his submission to the Council. We admit it ; but has 
 he therefore retracted his severe diatribe against the 
 school of interpolation and historic falsehood ? He 
 never thought that the infallibility of the Holy Father 
 implied the impeccability of Roman scribes. Friederich 
 gives overwhelming evidence of the manipulations to 
 which they have subjected, not only the old writers, 
 whom the congregation of the Index assumed the 
 
 Letter to the Bishop of Mechlin, by Father Gratry, p. 160. 
 6 
 
66 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 right to correct, but also catechisms and theological 
 manuals long in use, even those which bore the 
 authors' names, like that of Bailly. No scruple has 
 been shown in substituting for declarations of a de- 
 cided Gallican character, some of the most daring 
 formularies of Ultramontanism. 
 
 The attempt at interpolation and falsification is, 
 however, a very futile one ; there still remain too large 
 a number of passages which cannot be so manipulated. 
 Nor is it possible to efface the general tradition of the 
 Church, and all the imperishable monuments of its 
 glorious past. The great book of history cannot be 
 completely falsified. If we adhere to the old notion 
 of dogmatic authority, as formulated by Vincent de 
 Lerins, according to which a doctrine is only to be 
 regarded as true if it has been believed always, every- 
 where, and by every one in the Church — ab omnibus, 
 ubiqiie et semper — then the favourite doctrines of the 
 Roman party are doomed, for not one of them can 
 claim universal assent. Further, if all depends on 
 the verification of tradition, the Councils assume very 
 grave importance, since they alone are capable of 
 verifying it by means of the bishops, who are, as it 
 were, the witnesses of the universal Church, to declare 
 that which has been the object of its constant faith. 
 The Roman system crumbles to its base, if we 
 admit the theory of tradition now under discussion ; 
 but this was unquestionably the raison d'etre of 
 general Councils in the past. Hence the Roman 
 
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 67 
 
 party has endeavoured, with consummate art and 
 with extraordinary subtlety, to remove this idea. 
 Two French Ultramontane theologians — Donnet and 
 Gousset — had already prepared the way for the 
 new theory, by placing on a par with tradition, as 
 a criterion of the truth of a doctrine, the unanimity 
 of the bishops of the day. This unanimity is all the 
 more easy to secure since the silence of the episcopate 
 is taken for consent, and every brief which is not pro- 
 tested is regarded as accepted. It was the Jesuit 
 Perrone, the classic theologian of the present Curia, 
 who had the honour of inventing a formula destined 
 to be so useful. According to him, we must be on 
 our guard against supposing that tradition is only to 
 be found in the positive texts of Scripture, or of the 
 Fathers ; it may also be implicitly contained therein. 
 A few vague indications suffice to denote it, especially 
 if we do not neglect the spontaneous manifestations 
 of religious feeling in the worship, the liturgy, and 
 the literature of asceticism. An isolated contradiction 
 proves nothing, for it is to the general sentiment of 
 the Church that our appeal must be made. And where 
 does this general sentiment express itself more forcibly 
 than in the unanimous testimony of the living Church? 
 Under the influence of the Divine Spirit it raises 
 from obscurity some doctrine which had lain, as it 
 were, buried in the tradition. By bringing it to light, 
 the living Church proves at the same time its an- 
 tiquity, so that we are saved from all the difficulties 
 
68 CONTEMPORAR Y PORTRAITS. 
 
 that a critical examination of the text might present. 
 Thus is fulfilled the desire of Cardinal Manning, that 
 the Council should shake off the trammels of history. 
 It may indeed be said that history is cast aside by 
 this new definition of tradition, which gives carte 
 blanche to all the wildest innovations, provided they 
 secure the assent of a servile episcopate. In truth, this 
 theory of tradition was the most revolutionary system 
 imaginable, for it gave unlimited scope to an arbitrary 
 dogmatism. This assent of the bench of bishops was 
 nothing else than universal suffrage without inde- 
 pendence, carried on in the dark by an absolute 
 power, intoxicated with the incense of idolatry. Thus 
 the vaulting ambition of the hierarchy has overleaped 
 itself, and it has become the mere stepping-stone of 
 an autocracy. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Throughout the whole skilful policy of the Roman 
 Curia, we recognise the influence of that famous 
 school which, for three centuries, has contrived to 
 combine the most rigid principles of absolute autho- 
 rity, with the utmost suppleness in the adaptation 
 of means to ends. The Jesuit has governed the 
 Church for more than half a century. He would 
 not, however, left to himself, have so rapidly attained 
 his end, but he had the good fortune to find the very 
 Pope he needed to strike the great blow ; and from 
 that time it has been no longer necessary for him^to 
 
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 69 
 
 advance, as Consalvi said, by oblique paths. He can 
 march boldly, with head erect, along the Corso. 
 
 We would speak with the utmost respect of the 
 old Pope who played the principal part in this 
 triumphant campaign of Ultramontanism. Fully 
 convinced of his mission, he believed himself called 
 to be the instrument of God to assure the triumph 
 of His cause, by consecrating, in his own person, 
 papal infallibility. Rising above all narrow and 
 petty ambition, animated by an enthusiasm which 
 recognised no obstacle and could brook no delay, he 
 regarded his own elevation as a duty, and treated as 
 impious rebellion all resistance to his deification. 
 That which in another would have been fanatic pride, 
 was in him the fervour of piety. Ignorant of theology, 
 he was not stumbled by any historic difficulties de- 
 rived from the tradition of the early Church. The 
 prudence which calculates the perils of an immediate 
 decision would have seemed to him the abandonment 
 of his faith in God — that is, in himself ; for he never 
 ceased to regard himself as the organ of absolute 
 truth. His virtues, worthy of all respect, the majesty 
 of his language rising sometimes almost to an inspired 
 tone, his noble countenance beneath snowy locks — all 
 these things combined to increase his ascendancy. 
 Pius IX. was all the more ardent in his opposition to 
 modern ideas, because at the commencement of his 
 reign he had given them some encouragement. It 
 seemed as if in him the liberal Catholicism of Lacor- 
 
70 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 daire and Montalembert had received the tiara, and 
 men thought that the reconciliation between the 
 Church and the laity would soon be accomplished. 
 But from the time of his exile in Gaeta, Pius IX. 
 belonged unreservedly to the extreme party, and the 
 Jesuits whom he had expelled were henceforth his 
 counsellors and guides. He became more and more 
 convinced of his Divine mission. The Civilta Catto- 
 lica recalled complacently the predictions uttered with 
 regard to him by Anna Maria Taigi, a holy woman 
 universally revered in Rome, who declared before her 
 death that he would be the Pope chosen to restore 
 the Church. The Virgin of La Salette, whose appari- 
 tion was declared at Rome to be genuine, proclaimed 
 the new dogma. The growing idolatry of which Pius 
 IX. was the object, made him believe that he could 
 venture anything. Had not his name been put in the 
 place of the name of God in a hymn, to the great in- 
 dignation of Mgr. Dupanloup ? A French Cardinal had 
 called him "the incarnation of the authority of Christ." 
 The Civilta Cattolica went so far as to declare that 
 the Word thought through him. He heard himself 
 proclaimed Divine till he believed it, and did not fear 
 to be identified with Christ. La tradition c'est moi, 
 he said to those who had the indiscretion to appeal to 
 history. In such a state of mind, he could not hesi- 
 tate to employ decisive means to arrive at the defini- 
 tion of the new dogma. His long reign enabled him 
 to remodel almost entirely the College of Cardinals 
 
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 71 
 
 and the Bench of Bishops, by nominating only de- 
 clared adherents of the Ultramontane school. His 
 briefs and sermons were powerful weapons against 
 his opponents, who were intimidated by his prestige 
 and authority. The Encyclical and the Syllabus 
 of 1864 were the manifesto of triumphant Ultra- 
 montanism. It had already won one decisive victory 
 in the great episcopal Assembly of 1854, which 
 issued the proclamation of the Immaculate Concep- 
 tion. If M. Thiers could say after the review of 
 Satory in January, 185 1, L Empire est fait \ it might 
 be said with equal truth, after this important act of 
 the Council, that infallibility had gained the day. 
 What was wanting to the elevation of the Holy Father 
 above all Councils, when once he had been able with- 
 out a Council, by a simple consultation with the 
 bishops, to create a new dogma ? This new dogma 
 had done more than deify the Virgin ; it had made a 
 God upon earth. The Ultramontane party took ad- 
 vantage of this unexampled innovation, and deduced 
 from the thing done, the right to do it. The great 
 assembly of bishops convoked at Rome in 1864, 
 hailed the Holy Father in language of such ardent 
 adoration, that it lacked nothing but the precision of a 
 formulary. In i860, at the time of the celebration of 
 the. centenary of the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. 
 Paul, the bishops responded in still larger numbers 
 to the appeal of the Holy Father, who, after thanking 
 them for having shown by their presence in Rome 
 
72 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 their filial subordination to the Holy See, announced 
 to them the approaching Council. The address, 
 which was drawn up in their name, and which passed 
 without protestation, because it was imagined to be a 
 matter of no consequence, since the address was not 
 a doctrinal one, was dictated by devotees of the 
 papacy, and contained homage, barely disguised under 
 oratorical paraphrases, of the infallible Pope. * 
 
 Even before they quitted Rome the bull convoking 
 the Council was issued. The Roman Curia was care- 
 ful to choose as advisers, only theologians, already 
 pledged to extreme Ultramontane views, and for 
 the most part obscure individuals. It refused the 
 titulary bishops the right of being represented in 
 Council, while it opened the doors to a thousand 
 bishops of the Propaganda who had no dioceses. 
 These docile creatures of the papacy assured it before- 
 hand of a majority. 
 
 One is amazed, after such preliminaries, at the 
 illusions by which the opponents of the new dogma 
 still calmed their apprehensions. Those who had 
 the good fortune to be at Rome in 1869, will never 
 forget the extraordinary agitation of mind prevailing 
 on the eve of the Vatican Council ; it was more like 
 the excitement in one of our political clubs at the 
 opening of a critical session of parliament. The 
 salons in which Ultramontane principles did not hold 
 undisputed sway, re-echoed with animated discussions 
 and passionate protestations against the extreme 
 
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 73 
 
 party, which they hoped yet to be able to restrain. 
 We well remember the boldness of certain declarations, 
 which would now greatly astonish those who then 
 made them, and who have since done all in their power 
 to obliterate them. " If the Council turns out badly, 
 we will agitate for another," said a distinguished repre- 
 sentative of the Catholic aristocracy, one evening in 
 a large company. The women were not the least 
 ardent supporters of the Left, in this Vatican 
 Assembly, which had all the semblance of a real 
 ecclesiastical parliament The opposition had on 
 its side men of science and distinction, who had 
 rendered incomparable service to the Church, the 
 very elite of the episcopate throughout the world. 
 Its manifesto was contained in the last charge of 
 the Bishop of Orleans, and in the resolution of the 
 German bishops assembled at Fulda, to enter a pru- 
 dent protest against the proclamation of the new 
 dogma. The leading men among the German 
 bishops appeared in the Roman sa/ons. There was 
 seen the noble face of Cardinal Schwartzenberg, 
 who, having concluded the Austrian Concordat, had 
 vowed never to do anything of the kind again. The 
 Hungarian bishops, distinguished for their courage 
 and eloquence, excited much curious interest. Catho- 
 lic England had only sent extreme Ultramontanes 
 to sit in the Council. It had, however, in Rome one 
 of the most generous representatives of liberal Catho- 
 licism — Lord Acton — whom Mr. Gladstone had just 
 
74 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 raised to the peerage. He displayed great activity 
 in the service of his cause, and was very hopeful, if 
 not of securing its triumph, at least of averting a 
 decisive defeat. All these hopes were vain ; the 
 whole opposition was to fail miserably, without having 
 succeeded in coming even to a serious encounter ; for, 
 as the Jesuit Perrone has said very candidly, " All was 
 ready, and nothing was wanting but the solemn pro- 
 clamation of July 1 8, 1870." 
 
 Must we suppose that the proclamation of the new 
 dogma will really be accepted by Catholicism as a 
 final solution ? We think not. We know that 
 beneath the unreal appearance of unity, there are 
 many consciences suffering and protesting in silence. 
 There have been submissions, which have cost the 
 lives of the noble thinkers who bowed beneath the arm 
 of authority, because they were not ripe for the final 
 decision which would have severed them from their 
 Church. We are not building the smallest hope of a 
 religious renovation upon the new Pope. He may be 
 more moderate than Pius IX. in the form of his lan- 
 guage and in his political attitude ; but he cannot 
 repudiate the heritage which has been transmitted to 
 him. The fall of the temporal power will also have 
 for a long time, the immediate effect of exalting 
 Ultramontanism, as the destruction of the temple at 
 Jerusalem enflamed Jewish fanaticism, which clung 
 all the more closely to its religious idea, as that, in a 
 manner, lost ground. If the extreme school should 
 
THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE VATICAN COUNCIL. 75 
 
 continue its development among the Catholics of to- 
 day, it will in the end so isolate itself from modern 
 society, that it will become a mere sect, considerable 
 indeed in numbers, but cut off from the general life 
 of modern humanity, resembling rather the Brahmin- 
 ism of India, which lives on solitary and irate, in view 
 of a country renovated by civilisation. We believe, 
 however, that in time the loss of the temporal power 
 will have the effect of making it easier for hidden 
 differences to manifest themselves, and thus in the 
 end will hasten on the religious crisis which is brood- 
 ing in silence to-day. 
 
 May governments not forget that they could not 
 more surely strengthen Qltramontanism than by 
 applying its own principles for its persecution. Every 
 step beyond the legitimate defence of the rights ot 
 the State, will only involve the civil power in an 
 interminable struggle, in which it must always fight 
 at a disadvantage. Prussia and Switzerland know 
 something of this. Let us keep the Catholic Church 
 strictly within its own domain. Left to itself, it can- 
 not escape that internal conflict which will either end 
 in its transformation, or in the application of the 
 extreme principles of Ultramontanism to modern 
 society. Having reached this point, it will inevitably 
 fall a prey to the avenging spirit of error born of its 
 excesses, the unfailing Nemesis which tracks man- 
 kind upon its devious way. 
 
STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. 
 
STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. 
 
 A COMPARISON. 
 
 GERMANY has for the last few years devoted 
 much attention to Voltaire. At the close of 
 the eighteenth century its preference was for Rous- 
 seau, whose sentimental deism was thoroughly in 
 harmony with the tendencies of German thought at 
 the time, as expressed in the noble poetry of Schiller. 
 At the present day Voltaire is in the ascendant. 
 Goethe is known to have regarded him as represent- 
 ing the true type of the French mind. Dubois, 
 Raymond, Grimm, Rosenkranz, have all recently 
 offered criticisms of his literary and scientific work 
 under various aspects. And lastly, the great master 
 of the critical school, Strauss, has reared a monument 
 to his memory, in the six lectures dedicated to the 
 Princess Alice — a work in which he has displayed all 
 his analytical talent and polemical acumen. It is 
 at once obvious that Strauss did not intend this 
 to be a mere literary study. This biography of Vol- 
 taire was a valuable weapon for him in the war to 
 the death, which he had declared against the old 
 
80 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 ideas of religion and philosophy. He found that 
 there was still much use to be made of his glorious 
 predecessor. It seems to us very interesting to 
 examine this judgment of Voltaire pronounced by 
 Strauss, and to show how far the two writers differ 
 from each other, while both appearing to serve the 
 same cause ; how much generosity is hidden under the 
 keen raillery of the older writer, in contrast to the 
 implacable bitterness of the author of the " Leben 
 Jesu." 
 
 We are fortunate enough to possess the philoso- 
 phical testament of Strauss in his book, " Der alte 
 und der neue Glaube." Only a few months ago there 
 appeared as an introduction to a complete edition of 
 his works, his literary autobiography, in which he 
 gives us his own account of the development of his 
 views. 
 
 Lastly, the very comprehensive work on " Strauss 
 and his Times," l published by Hausrath, supplies us 
 with many valuable documents. We are thus in a 
 position to draw a parallel, which is not merely fanci- 
 ful, between these two great controversialists, since 
 the sources of information about Voltaire are ample. 
 The work of M. Desnoiresterres, on the Life and 
 Times of Voltaire, is almost exhaustive. We shall not 
 attempt to decide the comparative merits of the great 
 
 1 David Friedrich Strauss, gesammelte Schriften, &c. Bonn. 
 D. F. Strauss und die Theologie seiner Zeit. Von Dr. A. Hausrath, 
 Heidelberg. 1876. 
 
STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. 81 
 
 works of two such prolific writers, but merely endea- 
 vour to arrive at the leading thought of each. This 
 will supply the key to the difference of the times in 
 which they lived, and will enable us to appreciate the 
 change that has passed over religious and philo- 
 sophical controversy during the last century. 
 
 We have already said that Strauss loves and lauds 
 in Voltaire that which, in his view, forms the unity of 
 his life and of his work, namely, his vehement hostility 
 to the religion of the past. He delights to picture 
 him polishing his weapons for the attack, immediately 
 on quitting the Jesuit college, where he had learnt to 
 use them skilfully, if not in the defence of the faith ; 
 next putting a still keener edge to his wit in the 
 society of the " Temple ; " then, in his exile in 
 London (whither his first escapades had driven him), 
 imbibing from contact with English philosophy, that 
 sincere but superficial deism which ever afterwards 
 characterised him ; and finally, returning matured, 
 but with his youthful ardour unchilled, to engage 
 along the whole line in what he calls the good war- 
 fare. All means subserve his ends : poetry, simple or 
 severe, the pamphlet or the ode, science or history, 
 all are engaged in a great pantomime, in which the 
 actors utter the thoughts of their author, and reflect 
 his genius and passion. Through all his restless wan- 
 derings over Europe, to-day the guest in a castle, to- 
 morrow in an inn ; passing from Nancy to Potsdam, 
 from Potsdam to Geneva, and finally to Ferney, 
 
 7 
 
82 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 which becomes the holy city of the encyclopaedists, 
 he does not cease for a day to obey his ruling pas- 
 sion. It might be said that zeal for his cause con- 
 sumed him. He himself gives us the epitome of his 
 whole literary life in these daring words : " I am 
 weary of hearing it said that a dozen men sufficed to 
 establish Christianity. I long to show that one man 
 is enough to destroy it." 
 
 Voltaire is not satisfied with giving currency to his 
 ideas by his writings, which circulate all the more 
 rapidly because they are proscribed, and have thus the 
 inimitable flavour of forbidden fruit. He perpetually 
 fans the zeal of those whom he calls his brethren ; and 
 his vast correspondence travels all over Europe ani- 
 mating and directing the conflict. He wrote as many 
 letters as Calvin, who was also a great army leader. 
 Both lives display the same ardent, universal activity. 
 
 With Voltaire passion does not exclude policy, and 
 if he covets the apostolate, it is for the power it 
 bestows, not for the martyr's palm. " I am a warm 
 friend of truth," he writes to D'Alembert, " but none 
 at all of martyrdom." It is true that martyrdom was 
 no metaphor in the eighteenth century, and that the 
 Parliament which had the writings of the philoso- 
 phers burnt in the Place de Greve, was armed with 
 dangerous powers against their persons. Voltaire 
 did all that he could to escape perils which were not 
 imaginary ; he knew the Bastille, for he had lived in 
 it. He first entered on a course of clever coquetry 
 
STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. 83 
 
 with the great ones of the world. In spite of the 
 fascination of his graceful wit, he had small success 
 with Louis XV., who must have been a prey to in- 
 curable ennui, since even Voltaire could not laugh him 
 out of it. His indolent egoism shrank instinctively 
 from this great agitator of ideas, and he felt vaguely 
 that under his influence, the deluge which was to 
 sweep away the old world might be hastened on so 
 as to come in his days, after which everything was 
 indifferent to him. The incomparable flatterer was 
 more successful with Madame de Pompadour, and he 
 might have safely counted on her protection but for 
 the demon of epigram, which he could not resist. 
 This weakness of his was so well known that some 
 one wittily said that, in signing a compact with 
 Voltaire, there should always be a provisional clause, 
 "save and excepting his vagaries." The precaution was 
 especially necessary in those unwritten compacts on 
 which social relations rest. If nothing came to dis- 
 turb the friendship which he always showed for the 
 great Catherine, it was because he was never brought 
 into too close contact with his idol, and the delicate 
 incense which he burned to her always rose clear into 
 the air, from a safe distance. We know how stormy 
 were his relations with Frederic II. Strauss, as a 
 good subject of the German Empire, and observ- 
 ing his oath of fidelity even in historical retrospect, 
 lays most of the blame on the French philosopher. 
 Nothing could be more unjust. Undoubtedly Fre- 
 
84 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 deric was thoroughly enamoured of the spirit of 
 Voltaire ; but how tyrannical, and at times even 
 cruel, this passion was ! How we feel always, as his 
 victim said, that even in his sportive moods, the claw 
 of the leopard was ready to rend him. He wished to 
 make Voltaire a brilliant plaything, the first buffoon 
 of a literary court, heavily paid, and to be dismissed 
 at pleasure. He forgot that the buffoon was a rational 
 being, the intellectual monarch of his age, and that 
 he also had his claws, which could leave inefface- 
 able scars. " He is a terrible interlocutor," said Vol- 
 taire again, " who commands hundreds of thousands 
 of men." Doubtless Voltaire had his faults ; he was 
 somewhat of a marplot in delicate matters ; he did 
 not sufficiently consider the susceptibilities of his 
 formidable host ; he pierced his friends with his 
 keenest darts. But Strauss forgets the actual treason 
 of which Frederic was guilty, when in order to bind 
 Voltaire to himself by an enforced exile, he com- 
 municated to. the French authorities a compromising 
 paper of Voltaire's, which had been entrusted to him 
 under seal of secresy. 
 
 In relation to the affair at Frankfort, the German 
 writer also shows shameless partiality. The odious 
 prosecution was, according to Strauss, a mere blunder 
 chargeable to the stupidity of underlings. But he 
 cannot erase those words of the Prussian Minister to 
 the most brutal of these agents : " Fear nothing ; all 
 has been done by order of the king." 
 
STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. 85 
 
 Nevertheless Frederic remains a great prince. His 
 correspondence with Voltaire at the time of his most 
 cruel reverses, when Voltaire asks him to intervene to 
 make peace, redounds to the honour of both. They 
 never ceased to have the liveliest relish for one 
 another, while at the same time always on the verge 
 of hatred. Let us admit, lastly, that Voltaire, in his 
 correspondence with Frederic, understood how to 
 keep up the dignity of a man of letters, and that his 
 prudence had its limits. Strauss is fully in sympathy 
 with him when he sees him displaying the craft of an 
 old pupil of the Jesuits, in order to track his enemies. 
 His grand device was perpetually to disavow the 
 authorship of writings which were incontestably his 
 own. " So soon as there is the slightest danger," he 
 wrote to D'Alembert, " I implore you to warn me of 
 it, that I may disavow the work in the public papers, 
 with my accustomed candour and innocence." 
 
 When he was bent on forcing an entrance into the 
 French Academy, he did not hesitate to take the 
 following pledge : " If ever a page has been printed in 
 my name, which could scandalise the priest of my 
 parish, I am ready to tear it to pieces in his pre- 
 sence." Contemptible as this craft and disingenu- 
 ousness seem to us, we must feel a still stronger 
 indignation against that detestable system, which 
 degraded thought by making it dangerous to give free 
 expression to it. 
 
 We can make no allowance, however, for Voltaire's 
 
86 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 spurious acts of devotion. When he cajoles the Holy 
 Father into accepting the dedication of " Mahomet " to 
 himself, this preliminary of infallibility only excites a 
 laugh. But we feel very differently when we see the 
 author of the " Dictionnaire Philosophique " partaking 
 of the Communion. Strauss is very little shocked 
 at this. He is, indeed, quite an advocate of mental 
 reservations when they are useful. Before the brilliant 
 success of his " Leben Jesu," when he was a country 
 pastor, he quieted the scruples of his friend Moerklin, 
 who found it somewhat embarrassing to clothe pan- 
 theism in Scripture phraseology, and to preach to the 
 peasants of Wurtemburg the new faith under the 
 name of the old Bible. One of Strauss' favourite 
 heroes is Reimarius, whose biography he has written 
 with his usual ability. This father of rationalism had 
 given expression to his views in an anonymous manu- 
 script which was only published after his death. In 
 the meantime he appeared every Sunday with his 
 white cravat, and in the costume of an ecclesiastical 
 inspector, to listen with devout attention to orthodox 
 sermons, at which he was laughing in his sleeve. 
 Strauss is not at all offended at this excessive cau- 
 tion. His opinion is that " free-thinkers should avoid 
 taking part in religious ceremonies, as far as they can 
 do so without detriment to themselves and those who 
 belong to them." This prudent morality reminds us 
 of a famous saying about the angelic silence of the 
 priest-philosophers who continue to perform mass. 
 
STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. 87 
 
 One would hardly have expected to see the angels 
 under such circumstances. To me it seems that the 
 dignity of thought is much better represented by 
 Pascal's saying : " Never have the saints been silent." 
 
 Strauss himself has been under no temptation to 
 use such subterfuges. He has lived in a time of free 
 thought and free speech, at least on all matters re- 
 lating to metaphysics and criticism. This freedom is 
 only restricted when politicians attempt to meddle 
 with religion. The well-known caution given by the 
 Lausanne magistrate to Voltaire, is still applicable 
 in the middle of the nineteenth century. " It is a 
 hundred times less dangerous," he said, " to attack 
 the Holy Trinity than to criticise our authorities 
 at Berne," or as we might say to-day, at Berlin 
 and elsewhere. Strauss has observed this caution. 
 Nothing could equal his theological radicalism except 
 his political conservatism. 
 
 His " Leben Jesu " was allowed to circulate without 
 interference, in spite of the grave attack it made upon 
 the old beliefs ; for, as Edgar Quinet has shrewdly 
 observed, Strauss, in this famous book, only acted the 
 part of Anthony, drawing back Caesar's robe to reveal 
 all the thrusts that had been made upon him ; he only 
 rent the veil beneath which, for more than half a 
 century, German criticism had been striking at his- 
 toric Christianity. For the first moment considerable 
 excitement was created by the marvellous clearness 
 of the exposition, and the art with which the writer 
 
88 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRA ITS. 
 
 brought into prominence the contradictions of the 
 sacred narratives. At this time he was still righting 
 under the banner of Hegelian idealism ; but gradually 
 his thoughts emerged from this cloud which only 
 veiled the great void. He ended by using to that 
 God, who was a mere idea, the same language in 
 which Voltaire had made Spinaye address his imper- 
 sonal deity : " Between ourselves, I really believe you 
 have no existence." The most absolute atheism is 
 the issue of the new faith. After having formulated 
 it, the old doctor intones his "Nunc Dimittis." His 
 version of Simeon's song may be given thus : " O 
 great All ! O vast Nature, from which I have 
 driven out the Divine ! Now mayest thou let thy 
 servant depart in peace, for I have left nothing more 
 to be destroyed." But he was mistaken. Positivism 
 reproaches him, not without bitterness, for that 
 chimera of the great All, which still has some sem- 
 blance of the Absolute. This is a point very far 
 beyond the deism of Voltaire. 
 
 It is true that the deism to which he always re- 
 mained faithful will not hold as a system. It is very 
 interesting to read Strauss' estimate of the Voltairean 
 philosophy. He shows at once that it is full of con- 
 tradiction. Voltaire has no definite opinion about 
 moral freedom ; he does not even express himself 
 clearly about the immortality of the soul, though he 
 always believed in it. With his pessimist views of 
 history, which seemed to him a medley of errors, 
 
STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. $g 
 
 follies and misfortunes, he did not know what to 
 make of the God whom he did retain. " The good 
 Oromaze," he said, "who has done all, could not do 
 better." The Almighty Author who had given to the 
 world so faulty a performance would deserve rather 
 to be hissed than worshipped. 
 
 Voltaire gave a true resume of his metaphysics in 
 these words : " For myself, I am sure of nothing. I 
 believe that there is an ■ intelligence, a creative power, 
 a God. I express an opinion to-day ; I doubt of it 
 to-morrow ; the day after I repudiate it. All honest 
 philosophers have confessed to me, when they were 
 warmed with wine, that the great Being has not given 
 to them one particle more evidence than to me." It 
 must be admitted that the mind of Voltaire, keen and 
 supple as it was, was not capable of rising higher than 
 the refinements of a brilliant society, and could not 
 comprehend the grand poetry of the Bible, any more 
 than he could comprehend Shakspeare. He could 
 see nothing but lying or trickery in those great per- 
 turbations of the human conscience, out of which 
 religion has been born. He lacked entirely the true 
 spirit of criticism, which is not content with grasping 
 the superficial and grotesque, but seeks to reach, 
 through these, the underlying verities. In this fea- 
 ture of his mental habit, he was at the very antipodes 
 of the nineteenth century, which has a magic wand to 
 call up the past, whether from the recesses of the 
 pyramids, or from the sacred books to whose hiero- 
 
90 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 glyphics the science of our day has supplied the 
 key. 
 
 How, then, are we to account for the fact that with 
 so meagre a philosophy, Voltaire exerted an influence 
 incomparably greater than that of the learned German 
 doctor, and that in many directions that influence is 
 felt even now ? It is interesting to trace the causes 
 of this superior power, as we follow out the parallel 
 between him and his biographer. 
 
 It is needless to enlarge upon his inimitable style 
 of writing. Strauss' style is also very remarkable, 
 and so luminous is his exposition that on the most 
 abstruse questions of criticism, he casts a flood of 
 light. He understands the art of bookmaking — a 
 rare accomplishment in Germany at the time when he 
 began to write. We often feel a concentrated passion 
 thrilling through his somewhat tame language. But 
 there is no one, even on the other side the Rhine, 
 who would dare to compare him to the French 
 magician. The clearness of Voltaire's style reminds 
 one of a rather low sky, which lights up every object 
 without dazzling the eye. Now humorous, now 
 eloquent, his vivacity never flags. Grimm said of 
 him : " He makes arrows of every kind of wood, bril- 
 liant and rapid in their flight, but with a keen, unerring 
 point. Under his sparkling pen, erudition ceases to be 
 ponderous and becomes full of life. If he cannot sweep 
 the grand chords of the lyre, he can strike on golden 
 medals his favourite maxims, and is unapproachable 
 
STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. 91 
 
 in the lighter order of poetry. He is truly genius 
 incarnate, but not the genius which sounds the 
 depths of things ; rather that which rapidly seizes their 
 contrasts, and brings them out in vivid colours. His 
 power over his age was unequalled, and he swayed 
 it by means of that light and charming sceptre, 
 which was none the less a formidable weapon. Still 
 acting en bon prince, he too often pandered to the taste 
 of his subjects, by indulging in that literary liber- 
 tinism, which was so much esteemed as a spice in the 
 eighteenth century." 
 
 Never could it be more truly said than of Voltaire 
 and Strauss, that the manner is the man. The 
 sparkling vivacity of the former was the result of 
 temperament. He was, as has been said, a creature 
 of air and fire, the most nervous, the most mobile 
 who ever lived ; in spite of his sardonic smile, his 
 soul was all passion. His literary activity was pro- 
 digious. Wherever he was, travelling, or in a 
 wretched inn, at the court of the King of Prussia, in 
 the vortex of Paris, or in the quiet country, he could 
 never restrain the demon of his inspiration or the 
 fervour of the controversialist. "I have found Vol- 
 taire," said one of his visitors, " in bed, and in a high 
 fever, but still writing, always just on the point of begin- 
 ning or finishing either a tragedy or a pamphlet." His 
 hatred was only equalled by his ardent friendship. 
 While he would doom his enemies with pitiless 
 severity to an immortality of ridicule,, he was full of 
 
92 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 goodwill, generosity and tenderness to his friends. 
 Often he would even take pity on the adversary 
 whom he had almost annihilated, and would hold out 
 to him a helping hand. His kindness to the descend- 
 ant of Corneille was truly touching. One can but 
 marvel at his patient forbearance with his intolerable 
 niece, of whom Europe was disposed to say with 
 Frederic : " Cease to weary me with her ! " That 
 which is most admirable in Voltaire is this humanity, 
 ever responsive to any claim of suffering or wrong. 
 His devotion to the family of Calas, to the Sirvens, to 
 the Chevalier de la Barre, redounds to the eternal 
 honour of his memory. He does not stop either to 
 weigh or calculate ; it is the simple love of justice 
 that moves him. He would pretend to have the fever 
 on each anniversary of St. Bartholomew. I do not 
 know if his doctor ever felt his pulse on that day, 
 but I do know that the great crimes of history always 
 made him burn with the fever of a noble indignation. 
 This humanity is entirely wanting in Strauss, as 
 is only too clear from his singular autobiography. 
 He did not, indeed, fall into the same mistakes as 
 Voltaire. Nothing could be more correct than his 
 calm and studious career. His private life is worthy 
 of all esteem. Only on two occasions did he emerge 
 from his study, and the attempt was not successful. 
 The first time it was to compose the libretto of an 
 opera, which brought him into contact with the 
 theatrical world. This libretto cost him very dear, 
 
STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. 93 
 
 by his own confession, for it brought him his wife, a 
 brilliant singer, who could not bring herself to pass 
 inglorious days by the fireside of her studious hus- 
 band, and who at the end of two years left him with 
 two children on his hands. The second time he was 
 tempted out of his seclusion, was to attempt a short 
 passage of political life. In the great fermentation 
 which followed the Revolution of 1848, his country- 
 men sent him to sit in the Chamber of Wurtemburg 
 Deputies, imagining that the author of the " Leben 
 Jesu," whose very name had occasioned a perfect tumult 
 in the canton of Zurich, at the time of his nomination 
 to a chair of theology, must be a Radical of the first 
 water. This Radical went and took his seat at the 
 extreme Right. The electors were hotly indignant. 
 He hastened back into private life as fast as he could, 
 vowing that nothing should tempt him again into the 
 arena of political strife. 
 
 As we read his memoirs we can but be amazed at 
 the narrowness of his spirit. No great cause of 
 humanity excites his interest ; what he is most con- 
 cerned about is his reputation. He analyses his own 
 talents with the most minute care. That he is a great 
 critic, a great savant, cela va de sot, and he does 
 not care to enlarge upon it. He goes much more 
 into detail as to qualities, for which no one would 
 have given him credit but himself. " I have extensive 
 and profound learning," he says, "but have I also 
 imagination, poetry in my nature ? I cannot say that 
 
94 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 I am a poet, and yet . . . ." Playing on his 
 name, which signifies ostrich, he declares frankly that, 
 like that powerful bird, if he has not the great flight 
 of the wings of inspiration, he has the rudiments of 
 wings, which make his progress rapid, and lift him 
 above a prosaic vulgarity. The whole of this part of 
 his autobiography is real comedy. He is far less 
 amusing when, on the occasion of his famous corre- 
 spondence with M. Renan, at the time of the war of 
 1870, he shows himself concerned about nothing but 
 the literary success of his odious apology for the enor- 
 mities of the conquest. In the midst of this terrible 
 drama of history, his main concern is to know whether 
 the roar of the cannon will drown his voice, and he 
 finds with unmixed satisfaction, that the sale of his 
 pamphlet has not suffered very severely from the course 
 of events. There is truly much of the Trissotin in this 
 great scholar. He is wholly destitute of that order of 
 sentiment which we designate by the name of humanity, 
 and which Voltaire so largely possessed. 
 
 The contrast of thought between these two writers 
 is still more marked than that of feeling. However 
 incomplete, and therefore inconsistent, was the deism 
 of Voltaire, it yet gave a place to the idea of justice, 
 while the logical conclusion of the system of German 
 criticism, especially in its later form, was the most 
 daring negation of moral order. Let us be careful, 
 however, not to lead to any misconception about 
 Voltaire. This great iconoclast of religion remained 
 
STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. 95 
 
 in many respects a gentleman of the Chamber. He 
 was little of a democrat who wrote these words : " I 
 make no pretence to enlighten shoemakers and serv- 
 ing-maids ; let us leave this task to the apostles." 
 
 The new earth is for honnites gens, and not for the 
 rabble. It was enough for him that this new earth 
 should be the paradise of persons of mind. His 
 predilection was for a brilliant and tolerant social 
 world, an age of Louis XIV., minus the Revocation 
 of the Edict of Nantes. Here and there in his 
 writings we can perceive some faint desires after 
 social reforms, but nevertheless he was every inch 
 an aristocrat, and had nothing but ridicule for the un- 
 fortunate apostles of democracy, who, like Rous- 
 seau, stood forward as the tribunes of the people, and 
 urged them on to destroy that world of elegance and 
 intellectual refinement, in which the author of the 
 " Mondain " delighted. Hence his furious indigna- 
 tion at the article, " Sur l'inegalite des conditions." 
 " That man," he said of Jean Jaques Rousseau, 
 " tries to resemble Diogenes, and he does not re- 
 semble even Diogenes's dog." 
 
 It is, therefore, not without astonishment, that we 
 see the French Revolution carrying to the Pantheon 
 the coffin of so strange a forerunner. Yet the Revo- 
 lution was right. Voltaire had, in fact, laid the axe to 
 the root of the tree, of which he would fain have pre- 
 served the branches and the flowers. In attacking 
 the religion of the old society, he wounded it at the 
 
96 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 heart, and thus rendered easy the task of those 
 terrible destroyers, who learned their business by 
 reading his books. We are bound, indeed, to admit 
 that the religion which he pursued with such deadly 
 hatred had miserably fallen, since it had been repre- 
 sented in France by a Church at once worldly and 
 intolerant. It persecuted those who did not hold 
 its creed, without itself really believing in it ; and 
 courtly abbes just emerged from the boudoirs of 
 grandes dames, sold their subsidies to the king at each 
 fresh assembly of the clergy, as the price of heavier 
 restrictions to be laid on the Protestants and the 
 philosophers. This was the scandal which Voltaire 
 determined to put down. Unhappily he did not know 
 how to distinguish religion itself from this odious 
 perversion of it. In attempting to destroy every- 
 where the feeling of reverence, he did not root up 
 only the parasitic plant of superstition : he carried 
 away at the same time the very soil into which the 
 moral and religious idea casts its roots. In this 
 deplorable confusion, Voltaire laid profane hands 
 upon everything, despoiling the past of all its 
 grandeur, not sparing even the funeral pile of Joan of 
 Arc. Too often he treated the human soul itself 
 like another Maid of Orleans, delighting to humble it 
 and to trample it in the mire. 
 
 " En deux coups de sa griffe il de'pouille tout nu 
 De l'univers entier le monarque absolu ; 
 II vit que le grand roi lui cachait sous le linge 
 Un corps faible monte* sur des jambes de singe ! " 
 
STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. 97 
 
 We must be careful, however, not to be unjust. It 
 was in his very love to humanity that Voltaire de- 
 graded it. He longed to free it from all the tyrannies 
 which are founded upon so-called divine rights. It is 
 clear that a monkey can never be made a pope, and 
 cannot assume airs of superiority towards other mon- 
 keys, his brethren. This was the fundamental idea 
 of Voltaire, which we are bound to recognise through 
 all the gratuitous libel and licentious buffoonery that 
 overlies it. That against which he fought with all 
 his eloquence and with all his power of satire, was 
 intolerance j and it was this which rendered his 
 arguments so effective against a perverted religion, 
 which was associated with the worst iniquities of the 
 past. 
 
 The toleration which Voltaire demanded was, indeed, 
 a very incomplete thing ; it had no analogy with 
 true freedom of conscience or of worship, as is evident 
 from these significant words : " The wise who do not 
 recognise two powers are the best upholders of the 
 royal authority." His conception of liberty was, 
 nevertheless, very much higher than that of the 
 State religion. And when any form of religion sinks 
 below the general conscience of the age, it is very 
 near its end. When man is superior to the gods who 
 are held up to him, it may be safely predicted that the 
 gods will soon disappear. 
 
 Things have, greatly changed in our day. The 
 great adversary of Christianity at the present time 
 
 8 
 
98 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 is, not Voltaire, but Strauss, and the ideal which he 
 presents is not of a nature to commend itself to the 
 conscience of the age. 
 
 All readers of his book, " Der alte und der neue 
 Glaube," will feel that not many words are needed in 
 order to prove this. It culminates in the materialistic 
 doctrine of transformations, carried to its extreme 
 issues, and boldly applied to human society. Strauss 
 recognises in the world only matter and force. Society 
 belongs to the strong ; his system allows no place 
 either for the right, for mind, or for liberty. 
 
 Tracing back the origin of universal life to one 
 little cellule, he acknowledges no law of progress but 
 that of a desperate struggle for existence. The 
 strong to the front, the weak to the rear ! this is his 
 motto. When Strauss reaches the goal of his de- 
 structive work in philosophy and religion, he pauses 
 before the only mystery which remains to him, 
 namely, that of the sovereignty of royal races. There 
 is no longer any good God, but there is a triumphant 
 Caesar. 
 
 Down on your knees, mortals ! worship without 
 understanding — you, especially, who are the con- 
 quered. Right is no more ; might reigns. If some 
 souls behind the age still urge, in opposition to the 
 omnipotence of the State, the scruples of their re- 
 ligious conscience and its pretended independence, 
 these must be severely dealt with. Strauss expresses 
 on this subject a quite gratuitous anxiety, lest the 
 
STRAUSS AND VOLTAIRE. 99 
 
 Imperial Chancellor should show too gentle a hand 
 in the famous " Culturkampf," of which he is one of 
 the warmest partisans. He says, in concluding, " Some 
 may perhaps bring up in opposition to us the Sermon 
 on the Mount, but this has only to be read cum grano 
 salis, and we are prepared to agree with it." 
 
 The popular interpretation, which would derive 
 from it protection for the weak and lessons of mercy, 
 does very well for the ignorant. But here, also, 
 with Strauss, might not only takes precedence of right, 
 but does away with it. The General of the First 
 Empire, who did not hesitate to turn his cannon 
 upon his own wounded in order to carry a position, 
 is a type of the new civilisation, the chariot of 
 which advances, crushing all that has not strength 
 to resist. 
 
 This philosophy of history is latent in Strauss' last 
 book, and we have seen it unhesitatingly applied in 
 some recent writings by men of his school. Our 
 readers will understand, after this, how it is we prefer 
 Voltaire to Strauss. Happily we are not reduced to 
 either alternative. 
 
 The atheism of the nineteenth century declares 
 itself more and more, as the implacable enemy of 
 justice and liberty, at least in theory. For this reason 
 it cannot exert the same influence as the philo- 
 sophy of the eighteenth century, which was always 
 generous and humane, even when it called in question 
 the idea of God. It is not possible that democracy 
 
ioo CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 should hesitate in its choice, or that it should adopt 
 doctrines which trample under foot all that is just and 
 generous in its designs, by rejecting that spiritualism 
 which is their true inspiration and sanction. 
 
THE CULTURKAMPF IN GERMANY. 
 
THE CULTURKAMPF IN 
 GERMANY. 
 
 ITS PRINCIPLES AND RESULTS. 
 
 THE criticisms of a foreigner are always regarded 
 with suspicion. It is therefore fortunate when 
 the writer can call to his aid entirely impartial 
 testimony. Such testimony we find in the work of 
 M. Geffcken, to which our readers are referred. 1 We 
 are glad, then, to avail ourselves of his light in the 
 picture we desire to draw of the true state of the 
 ecclesiastical controversy in Prussia. 
 
 The author, who is a man of influence in his own 
 country, an eminent lawyer, well acquainted with the 
 present position of European affairs (having been for 
 a long time Minister of the Hanseatic towns in Paris 
 and Berlin), has greatly enlarged on his original 
 design, which was, undoubtedly, to impugn the reli- 
 
 1 " Staat und Kirche in ihren Verhaltnissen geschichtlich 
 entwickelt." By L. Heinrich Geffcken. Berlin, 1875. 
 
104 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 gious policy of Prince Bismarck. The part of the 
 work devoted to this subject occupies but a few pages, 
 which are almost lost in the midst of a long historical 
 dissertation on the relations of Church and State. 
 His book is, in truth, a tract for the times, with a 
 preface, which is a treatise in itself. Possibly he said 
 to himself, as did Louis Paul Courier : " It is danger- 
 ous, particularly in Prussia, to adventure oneself in a 
 sheet or two which may be treated as a pamphlet ; on 
 the principle that a grain of morphia, which would be 
 lost in a copper full of water, would be fatal in a spoon- 
 ful." To this caution on the part of our author, we owe 
 a very complete exposition of the actual relations be- 
 tween the two powers,temporal and spiritual, in Europe, 
 which enables us, while devoting special attention to 
 the facts affecting Germany, to determine also the 
 conditions under which the ecclesiastical controversy 
 must be carried on everywhere, if it is to have any 
 decisive issue at all. That the struggle itself is in- 
 evitable and is gravely aggravated by existing cir- 
 cumstances, has been obvious for several years. 
 
 In the countries which are, as it were, the classic 
 soil of religious liberty, the alarm has been given. 
 The consequences of the late Council, as they have 
 unfolded themselves, have startled and provoked the 
 most decided adherents of State neutrality in matters 
 of religion. Attention has been drawn to the manner 
 in which the President of the United States has 
 denounced the attempt made by the Ultramontanes, 
 
THE CULTURKAMPF IN GERMANY. 105 
 
 to change the unsectarian character of American 
 schools, and to get into their own hands the manage- 
 ment of popular instruction in the districts where 
 they are most numerous. All remember Mr. Glad- 
 stone's emphatic statement of the incompatibility of 
 Ultramontane orthodoxy with a sincere respect for 
 the English Constitution. His powerful treatise 
 produced a great impression upon public opinion at 
 the time. The conclusions drawn by the great orator, 
 though no doubt strictly logical, may be somewhat 
 exaggerated in point of fact, since we must always 
 make allowance for human inconsistency, which comes 
 in to modify all merely theoretical calculations. 
 
 Upon the Continent of Europe, the irreconcilable 
 opposition of the various schools threatens to assume 
 a character of still greater acerbity, after the political 
 changes which have lately taken place. We do not 
 imagine that Italy is about to follow the example of 
 Prussia. Well satisfied to have put an end to the 
 temporal power of the papacy, and to have carried 
 out, without disturbances, the great and difficult 
 operation of adjusting ecclesiastical property, it is in 
 no haste to leave the paths of moderation. The 
 spirit of Cavour still governs it. Liberal Italy has 
 quietly allowed the harmless thunders of the Vatican 
 to roll over her head. She regards with amused" 
 indifference, the crowds of pilgrims passing through 
 her towns from all parts of the world, well knowing 
 that if they shake off against her the dust of their 
 
106 CONTEMPORAR Y PORTRAITS. 
 
 feet, they let fall some of their gold at the same time, 
 and thus help to enrich the cities which their curses 
 are powerless to harm. In France recently the whole 
 aspect of affairs has changed. The Ultramontane 
 party no longer holds in its hand that much-abused 
 instrument — at once so convenient and so dangerous 
 — a docile parliamentary majority. 
 
 The great antithesis between the modern State and 
 Ultramontanism threatens to become a firebrand, 
 scattering strife on every hand. 
 
 The surest way to escape this danger is to lay down 
 clearly the liberal principles which ought to govern 
 the whole debate, and to show, by contemporary 
 history, what it has cost to deviate from them. 
 
 This is the twofold task to which M. Geffcken's 
 book summons us, and we cannot do better than 
 listen to him in his own cause ; for, as an ardent 
 patriot, and no friend to the Ultramontane " Centre," 
 he follows only the leadings of reason and conscience. 
 
 I. 
 
 In order to form a fair judgment of the policy of 
 the various governments of Europe, in the conflict 
 between the Church and the State, we must revert to 
 the fundamental idea of these two great institutions, 
 for everything that is at variance with their true 
 intention produces grave practical mistakes. The 
 State is the representative of the law ; it is the pro- 
 
THE CULTURKAMPF IN GERMANY. 107 
 
 tector of all interests and all liberties, the venerable 
 guardian of the peace of society, bound to favour 
 every possible development of civil life and prosperity. 
 The Church constitutes a higher society, destined to 
 unite souls in the bond of a common faith, to uplift 
 them and train them for a higher life beyond the limits 
 of the earthly. These two organisations are both alike 
 necessary, and are both based upon a divine insti- 
 tution ; but, while neither can dispense with the other, 
 they differ radically in their nature and mode of action. 
 The State requires obedience to the civil law, while 
 the Church would cease to be a spiritual and moral 
 society, if it were to use coercion ; its only authority 
 is over its believing children. As the State is largely 
 interested in the development of the religious influ- 
 ence, for the formation of good citizens, animated 
 with the spirit of justice and of piety, the author 
 deems that it is necessary for the State to enter into 
 positive relations with the Church, and to encourage 
 without controlling it, respecting its independence as 
 the very condition of its influence. We leave to the 
 German publicist, this chimera of the civil union of 
 the two powers in mutual independence. History 
 does not supply us with this philosopher's stone. Its 
 uniform testimony is that in this union, which has 
 neither reason nor moral affinity on its side, the 
 power has always been on the side of the State, unless 
 it was the Church itself which held the sword, as 
 in the times when a triumphant theocracy made the 
 
108 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 civil power a sort of prince consort. With the excep- 
 tion of this error, which, after so many centuries of 
 inextricable confusion of ideas, it is difficult to escape, 
 the respective domains of Church and State are very 
 clearly defined by M. Geffcken. 
 
 In his view three great spiritual revolutions have 
 vindicated in theory this distinction, too often for- 
 gotten in fact. The first of these is Christianity, 
 which put an end to the Jewish theocracy, and re- 
 leased from the old civic thraldom the domain of 
 conscience and of the higher life, which paganism 
 merged wholly in that of the community. The 
 second spiritual power which, according to M. 
 Geffcken, has helped to form the modern State with 
 its constitutional principles, is the Reformation, which, 
 in spite of many inconsistencies, successfully attacked 
 the theocratic idea, and restored the rights of the 
 State, perhaps in a somewhat exaggerated form. 
 The third powerful influence which completed the 
 demolition of the theocratic idea, is the philosophy of 
 the eighteenth century, to which M. Geffcken does 
 not attach sufficient importance. This proved a 
 terribly destructive weapon to the established order 
 of things, and none the less deadly because it was 
 forged of bright and polished steel. It attacked 
 every vestige of the middle ages with an energy 
 of passion and satire, beneath which lay a genuine 
 regard for liberty of conscience. It must be owned 
 that this bold philosophy, in demanding liberty of con- 
 
THE CULTURKAMPF IN GERMANY. 109 
 
 science, had more regard for liberty than for conscience, 
 and thus deprived the latter of its surest foundation ; 
 that it was content with toleration of ideas without 
 seeking toleration of all forms of worship ; that by 
 showing more love than respect for man, and by 
 ignoring his high origin, it failed to cast over his 
 intellect and his soul, the sacred buckler of a truly 
 divine right, which is the only sure defence against all 
 aggression from without. A religious enthusiast like 
 Milton will always be a firmer champion of freedom 
 of conscience, than a great scoffer or sceptic. In spite 
 of all its shortcomings, however, the eighteenth cen- 
 tury gave the final blow to the theocratic idea, and 
 triumphantly vindicated that conception of the lay 
 State, which has taken too strong a hold of the 
 modern mind ever to be again shaken off. 
 
 The part of M. GefTcken's book which is devoted to 
 the French Revolution is of special interest, although 
 many other works on the same subject give more 
 exact information. We cannot too carefully study 
 in our own day the lessons of this great era, in which 
 the true and the false came into violent collision, like 
 torrents of lava flowing from the rent sides of a 
 volcano, which belches forth at once fire and mud. 
 Hardly had liberty of conscience been formally 
 recognised in the declaration of the rights of man, 
 and confirmed by the repeated votes of the Con- 
 tituent Assembly, after receiving the comment of 
 Mirabeau, who gave it its noblest expression ; hardly 
 
1 10 CONTEMPORAR Y PORTRAITS. 
 
 had it triumphed over its natural enemies of the 
 Right, when it received a severe blow in the civil con- 
 stitution of the clergy. The lay and modern State, 
 but just freed from the fetters of theocracy, is at once 
 hurried away in the eagerness of the conflict beyond 
 its true domain. It ceases to be a lay institution 
 when it tries to reform the Church by authority, and 
 to turn the National Assembly into a Council. It 
 does not impugn simply the factious proceedings of 
 the old clergy — this would be within its competence 
 — but it goes farther, and assails doctrines, ideas, 
 beliefs ; and when it seeks to put a constraint upon 
 the religious conscience by the oath which it would 
 exact from the priests, it arouses against itself the 
 most unconquerable of all resisting forces. Having 
 committed this great initial error, it was bound by the 
 implacable logic of history, to fall into other and yet 
 graver mistakes. Engaged in a hopeless conflict, in 
 which it feels from the first it must be defeated, it 
 soon passes on to open persecution, and makes itself 
 gratuitously odious. But the hulks, the scaffold, pro- 
 scription, all are in vain. Exasperated by the feeling 
 of its own impotence, it only provokes a more dan- 
 gerous reaction, driving the Catholic clergy to the 
 feet of the papacy, depriving it of that feeling of 
 nationality which gave it a measure of independence 
 towards Rome, and thus paving the way for that 
 brilliant triumph of Ultramontanism in the nine- 
 teenth century, which Napoleon was powerless either 
 
THE CUL TURKAMPF IN GERMANY. 1 1 1 
 
 to stifle by kindness or to crush by violence, after his 
 quarrel with Pius VII. It is the Revolution which 
 is responsible for all that M. Geffcken describes as 
 Vaticanism, because it fell into the mistake of trying 
 to make Gallicanism compulsory — the sure way to 
 discredit and to weaken it. With regard to religious 
 beliefs, those who are protected by force are always in 
 the end the conquered party, especially when the pro- 
 tection of the one side, implies the persecution of the 
 other. To attack an idea is to strengthen it, to render 
 it more sacred, more powerful, more invincible, even 
 when the idea is associated with the most dangerous 
 errors. This is the great lesson which the French 
 Revolution has to teach us. 
 
 II. 
 
 Passing on to the controversies of our own day 
 between the Church and the State, the author, before 
 turning to his own country, shows us how, in spite of 
 the decisions of the last Council, wise and liberal 
 governments may maintain their rights without vio- 
 lating or suspending those of others, and still avoid 
 great schisms. 
 
 Austria and Italy are held up to us rightly as 
 models in this respect, while Switzerland has given 
 us until quite recently, especially at Geneva and at 
 Berne, the painful spectacle of demagogic radicalism 
 trampling on liberty of conscience, and not shrinking 
 
1 1 2 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 from odious spoliations for the benefit of a State 
 religion, which owed its origin to political bodies, 
 the majority of whose members were either indif- 
 ferentists or enemies to all religion. Happily a Liberal 
 reaction has just set in, and we may hope that it will 
 put an end to the era of persecution. 
 
 With regard to Prussia, M. Geffcken is equally 
 severe on all that curtails religious liberty. He 
 speaks with strong reprehension of the famous 
 May laws of 1873, which not merely guaranteed 
 the rights of the State, but impinged on so many 
 points on those of the Church. That which it con- 
 cerns us especially to learn from so impartial a 
 witness, is the result of this Draconian legislation. 
 M. Geffcken admits at once that it has shown 
 the complete impotence of the persecuting State. 
 This is made evident by the very severity of the 
 laws designed to supplement the legislation of May, 
 1873. M. Geffcken protests with reason against 
 the law which gives the Government the right to 
 banish recalcitrant priests without a trial. "No 
 penalty," he says, " except the penalty of death, is 
 deemed heavier than that which exiles a man from 
 his country, and sends him to wander through the 
 world as a stranger. And to incur this a priest has 
 simply to refuse to disobey the regulations of his 
 Church, which he conscientiously deems incumbent 
 upon him ! Yet this is the law which has been voted 
 by a parliament calling itself Liberal. The seques- 
 
THE CULTURKAMPF IN GERMANY. 113 
 
 tration of ecclesiastical property, the prohibition of 
 voluntary offerings, the imprisonment of several 
 bishops, has had no effect. The Prussian State has 
 only succeeded in arousing the opposition, not only 
 of the clergy but of the laity, of the whole of that 
 Catholic nation of several millions of souls, which 
 backs up its priests and encourages their resistance. 
 It is certain that in the silence even of the tribune, 
 the conflict is being carried on unceasingly, and with- 
 out any prospect of peaceful issue." 
 
 M. Geffcken adds : " A legislation which invades 
 the proper domain of the Church misapprehends the 
 nature of the struggle on which it has entered. The 
 Liberalism, hostile to the Catholic Church, which 
 is celebrating its so-called victories, regards that 
 Church merely as a political adversary, whose dan- 
 gerous organisation it must break up at all costs : 
 it forgets that its strength lies in the religious in- 
 fluence which no law has power to cancel. The 
 May laws are a return to the policy of Joseph II., 
 who sought to make himself master of a domain 
 which the State never could subdue. But where 
 the avowed absolutism of the eighteenth century and 
 the Convention failed, the modern State is not likely 
 to succeed, in an age which boasts of liberty of the 
 press, and of elections. Liberalism is mistaken as 
 to the strength of the State when it thinks it can de- 
 cide all questions by law. The only laws which have 
 a guarantee of permanence are those which really 
 
 9 
 
1 14 CONTEMPORAR Y PORTRAITS. 
 
 fulfil their purpose. The Government may un- 
 questionably go much further in measures of stern 
 repression, but with no better success. In the heat 
 of the conflict it has forgotten that if political passion 
 is strong, religious passion is stronger still. From 
 time to time the Government organs raise the cry 
 of victory, and yet all they have obtained as yet 
 has been the very opposite of what they sought. 
 To the German episcopate, compromised as it no 
 doubt was to some extent, by its submission to the 
 Council, there has been given an opportunity of re- 
 asserting its moral dignity by steadfast resistance to 
 oppression. It was hoped that the inferior clergy 
 might be induced to sever from their leaders, but 
 the contrary result has taken place. There was an 
 attempt to emancipate the laity from the hierarchy, 
 and the effect has been to unite the whole mass of 
 the Catholics in one solid phalanx. It is not pos- 
 sible that the State should continue thus to make 
 war on a third of the population, when it has no 
 means of carrying the day. 
 
 "These deplorable conflicts have other consequences 
 not less serious. They tend more and more to alienate 
 from the Government the whole of the Conservative 
 party ; they bring dishonour on the National Liberal 
 party, by making all its sounding declarations of 
 justice and liberty nothing more than empty phrases; 
 while the leaders of the Socialist party go on pre- 
 paring for their impious war, loudly deriding all these 
 
THE CUL TURKAMPF IN GERMANY. 1 1 5 
 
 inconsistencies, and availing themselves of all the 
 popular elements which are not already enlisted in 
 the Ultramontane cause. As Luther said : ' There 
 is no fighting against opinions by the sword, and 
 error is only overcome by truth. 5 " 
 
 Such testimony as that of M. Gefifcken, coming from 
 a faithful subject of the German Empire, who can- 
 not be accused of sympathy with the foreigner, and 
 who does not belong to the persecuted minority, 
 deserves to be carefully weighed. It tells exactly what 
 are the results of this famous " Culturkampf." The 
 word itself carries the condemnation of that which it 
 represents. The State, in declaring itself to be the 
 defender of modern culture against Ultramontanism, 
 shows that it is not content with defending the law, 
 the public peace, the legislation and constitution of 
 the country, but that it intends to enter into the 
 conflict of doctrines and ideas, to attack principles, to 
 oppose a certain mode of thought, to undertake, in 
 short, a philosophic war, which is nothing else than a 
 religious war. The State is the guardian of the high 
 culture of the nation by its institutions for public 
 instruction ; and, above all, by the practice of a 
 sincere and enlightened Liberalism, which alone per- 
 mits national culture to develop itself freely in the 
 open air, and not in a hot-house. We should pro- 
 nounce the " Culturkampf," then, to be essentially a 
 mistaken and dangerous enterprise, even if we did not 
 know to what excesses and to what futile violence it 
 
1 1 6 CONTEMPORA R Y FOR 7 RAITS. 
 
 leads on the Governments which allow themselves to 
 be involved in it. 
 
 The demonstration of this given by M. Geffcken is 
 as conclusive as it is opportune. It has been supple- 
 mented by the irrefutable evidence of facts. Have we 
 not already seen the Prussian State ready to lay down 
 its arms before the adversary whom it had thought to 
 crush by an exceptional legislation ? Whatever may 
 have been the motives actuating it in this step, it is 
 none the less a confession that it made a false move 
 in its Culturkampf, and the price is a heavy one to 
 pay for assuring a majority on the tariff question. 
 
 III. 
 
 We must hasten to a conclusion. Whatever liberal 
 views might be entertained on questions of this order, 
 it was impossible to doubt that a struggle between 
 the modern State and the Ultramontane Church was 
 inevitable in France. It is of the utmost importance, 
 therefore, to determine what are the true conditions 
 of the question, in order that the contest may not 
 be embittered and rendered interminable. This we 
 shall be most helped to do, by a careful observation 
 of the experiments made elsewhere. To fail in 
 the legitimate exercise of the protective power of 
 the State, would be as dangerous as to be guilty of 
 undue severity, for the weakness of one day might 
 be followed by a violent reaction on the next. The 
 
THE CUL T URKAMPF IN GERMANY. 1 1 J 
 
 duties of the State, as we understand them, consist in 
 keeping up a vigorous defence against everything 
 that menaces its safety, without having recourse to 
 aggression, least of all in matters of opinion and belief, 
 which are always intangible. 
 
 It cannot be denied that the Ultramontane party 
 took large advantage of the favourable position it 
 enjoyed in the last National Assembly, in its attempts 
 to reconstruct the religion of the State for its own 
 advantage. By observing the same wisdom which 
 guided the Chamber of Deputies, in revising, with 
 a studious regard to its principles, the law relating to 
 the liberty of the higher education, it would be pos- 
 sible to correct, without danger, the legislative work 
 of the National Assembly, and slowly but surely to 
 restore the true idea of the modern State as a lay 
 power. We hope, indeed, that recourse may be had 
 to the surest, and at the same time the noblest, of 
 all modes of defence, that which consists in extend- 
 ing the public liberties. The best rampart that can 
 be raised against Ultramontane aggressions, is the full 
 recognition of liberty of worship. At present, only 
 those forms of worship are legal which have received 
 the previous authorisation of the State. This has 
 been simply a convenient way of stifling the free 
 development of religious thought, since a partial 
 administration was always sure to use it in subser- 
 vience to the Ultramontane episcopate. What more 
 excellent way can there be of combating the party of 
 
u8 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 the Syllabus than by giving or extending general 
 liberty, since it has no more deadly enemy than 
 freedom of conscience, which it has ever loaded 
 and honoured with its anathemas ? We hope, then, 
 that our assemblies will hear no more sophistical 
 arguments about the liberty of fathers of families, 
 which ought to be respected, as opposed to the 
 principle which makes primary education compulsory ; 
 and that the law enforcing this will be voted all the 
 more quickly, the more determined is the Ultramon- 
 tane opposition to it. To make primary instruction 
 by law universal, and thus to dissipate the ignorance 
 of our country districts, would be the most effectual 
 means of weakening the cause of Ultramontanism. 
 
 If from this defensive duty of the Legislature, we 
 pass on to the measures to be taken against the 
 positive aggressions made on the State, it is obvious 
 to remark that the first obligation of the Government 
 is to see that the administration is henceforth con- 
 ducted on the strictest principles of religious equality. 
 There is much to be done before this equality will be 
 really restored, in the ordinary conduct of depart- 
 mental affairs. Those open attacks upon the con- 
 stitution of the country, which are too often associated 
 with religious fanaticism, must be severely proscribed. 
 It cannot be suffered that a holy war should be 
 preached anywhere against the State, and against 
 rights guaranteed by law, such as civil and religious 
 liberty. The State must keep a watchful eye on all 
 
THE CULTURKAMPF IN GERMANY. 119 
 
 the great religious societies which have one power- 
 ful interest in common. Here, again, it is bound to 
 exercise the strictest impartiality, and that which is 
 forbidden in democratic gatherings, must not be 
 tolerated in Catholic clubs. It has too often forgotten 
 to use this vigilance and this even-handed severity. 
 
 But here it must stop. Let it be very careful not 
 to interfere with any religious manifestations what- 
 ever, that do not trench on political ground. Let it 
 allow pilgrimages to be multiplied till they wear 
 themselves out ; let it tolerate any manifestations of 
 zeal, however eccentric, so long as they are not made 
 the occasion for fanning political discontent. Let 
 preaching have its full latitude ; let it develop at will 
 its theories of the latest Encyclical, and unfurl the 
 banner of the Syllabus, provided only that it does not 
 pass from theory to application, and does not incrimi- 
 nate any of the laws and institutions of the country. 
 Under this reservation, let the State not trouble 
 itself about the instruction given in the Seminaries, 
 only claiming its right of inspection and control 
 from a social point of view. For while France must 
 be careful to avoid the errors into which Prussia has 
 fallen, and not to make impossible conditions for the 
 admission of her clergy to office, it is nevertheless her 
 duty to keep a watchful eye over all the teaching 
 given in the country, with the simple object of assur- 
 ing herself that nothing is taught which is contrary to 
 the laws and the Constitution. 
 
120 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 It will be clear that such precautions as are here 
 suggested, do not interfere at all with freedom of 
 belief and opinion ; they are not calculated, therefore, 
 to arouse determined opposition. The State does not 
 enter upon a war of ideas ; it does not concern itself, 
 either more or less, with orthodoxy, as in Prussia and 
 Switzerland, where the civil authorities undertake to 
 decide what is the true Catholic doctrine by proscrib- 
 ing the teaching of Ultramontanism. Thus, while still 
 maintaining the right of the State to require reason- 
 able submission to the civil power, as it is determined 
 in the first article of the Declaration of 1682, we are 
 not prepared to admit that it should require the official 
 teaching of the three other articles, which imply the 
 negation of the Ultramontane doctrine, the triumph 
 of which was unhappily assured by the late Council. 
 This would be to fight against ideas and doctrines, 
 a conflict in which victory is always impossible. We 
 plead for the prudent and moderate application of the 
 Concordat, so long as that bastard system continues, 
 which it is equally difficult either to improve or to 
 replace. 
 
 All the prudence in the world must fail, however, 
 if there is not on both sides the exercise of forbear- 
 ance and discretion. It is not possible to take 
 precautions against the freaks of insanity. But we 
 ask : Is there not culpable audacity in defying the 
 public conscience, as many of the representatives 
 of Ultramontanism do, by their vindication of the 
 
THE CULTURKAMPF IN GERMANY. 121 
 
 maxims of religious absolutism ? It might be said, 
 in the eloquent words of one of the most illustrious 
 Catholics of our age, that they treat the Church like 
 one of the wild beasts which are carried about in mena- 
 geries. " Look at it well," they seem to say, " and 
 understand what is its true nature. To-day it is in 
 a cage, made tame and spiritless by its condition ; it 
 has no power at present to harm you ; but see what 
 claws it has, and what tusks, and if ever it gets free 
 you will see what it will do." Is not this a true ver- 
 sion of all the rabid declamations of the defenders of 
 the Syllabus, who, instead of leaving it in the safe 
 obscurity of the sanctuary, drag it into prominence, 
 swear by nothing else, and are eager to reorganise 
 society according to its principles, the first result of 
 which would be the suppression of all liberties, and 
 first of all of liberty of conscience. 
 
 These senseless extravagances are fruitful sources 
 of danger, for they give pretexts to the ultra-Radicals, 
 who have already openly demanded the subordination 
 of the Church. If the days of desperate and deadly 
 struggle between the two powers should ever come 
 again, much of the responsibility would rest on the 
 numerous devotees of Ultramontanism. How can 
 we forget that those who raise the cry that they are 
 martyrs, before even a threat has been breathed 
 against them, are the first to declare that were they 
 only themselves in power, they would soon make 
 martyrs ? It is not enough for the moderate children 
 
1 22 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 of the Church, those who have not been carried away 
 by the furious torrent of this new league, to groan in 
 secret over these excesses of speech and of zeal. At 
 all costs they must restrain them, even if they have 
 to bear the supreme indignity of being called Liberal 
 Catholics. But whether they do their duty or not, 
 ours remains clear : it is to be consistent Liberals, even 
 towards the worst enemies of liberty, respecting error 
 which is merely doctrinal, while never tolerating any 
 direct attack upon the State, and adhering strictly to 
 law. This is at once the surest and the noblest path 
 to victory, while violent measures only frustrate them- 
 selves by giving to the dangerous doctrines at which 
 they are aimed, the advantage of being unjustly perse- 
 cuted. Against such a course let the example of 
 Prussia be a sufficient warning to us. 
 
ARNAUD DE CAR1EGE. 
 
ARNAUD DE LARIEGE. 
 
 NONE of our contemporaries in public life will 
 leave behind a memory more stainless and 
 more justly esteemed, than Arnaud de l'Ariege. He 
 was a man of rare courage, a bold and indomitable 
 defender of our public liberties, ready in the cause 
 of freedom to brave personal danger, to endure exile, 
 and that which is more bitter still, isolation and 
 inaction, while oppression was triumphant. But he 
 was more than this. He represented a class of 
 generous souls whose dream it had been to bring 
 democracy into harmony with the religion of the 
 past, strangely transformed by them into their own 
 image, and whom the failure of this hope filled with 
 an abiding sadness. Like the Rebecca of the Bible, 
 of whom it is said that she bare within her womb 
 two nations, the noble school to which Arnaud de 
 l'Ariege belonged, embraced two brothers, or rather 
 two worlds, which it strove to reconcile. To this 
 impossible task he devoted himself with an energy 
 and zeal which nothing could daunt, and the conflict, 
 which found its counterpart also in his own soul, cost 
 him the keenest anguish. His mental suffering was 
 
126 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 sufficiently indicated by the premature whitening of 
 his hair, and by the fixed expression of melancholy 
 on his fine features. Any one who watched him as 
 he sat silent in his place on the left of the National 
 Assembly, must have felt that he was one of those 
 political anchorites who pursue their own ideal 
 visions through all the hot strife of parties. It is 
 said that when Lamartine entered the Chambers 
 he replied to those who asked him whether he would 
 sit on the right or the left, Au plafond (on the ceiling). 
 Probably it was a ministerial of the day who ori- 
 ginated this story of the great poet. Nor could it 
 be applied without grave injustice to Arnaud de 
 l'Ariege, for, however high might be his ideal, he 
 never hesitated, in the great crises of national history, 
 to take his place boldly on the side of liberty and 
 the right. The Republican Liberal party has had no 
 more honest representative, none more exempt from 
 personal ambition, or more firm in the days of peril. 
 His convictions were so deep that they produced a 
 calm serenity, and no bitter or passionate word was 
 ever known to escape his lips. He would make no 
 compromises on a point of conscience, and his 
 verdict was very severe on those who had no pity 
 on France in her struggle to recover herself. His 
 kindness was at the same time unbounded, but it 
 never degenerated into weakness. He who is a real 
 friend to truth and to mankind, carries his attachment 
 to his cause to such a height of disinterestedness, that 
 
ARNAUD DE VARIEGE. 127 
 
 the mere fluctuations of passion have no power to 
 move him, and the strength of his convictions gives 
 stability to his character. 
 
 Such a man was Arnaud de l'Ariege in his stern 
 endeavour to unite his religious with his democratic 
 faith. Must it be said that he failed in this noble 
 enterprise because, during the later years of his life, 
 he saw the desired reconciliation ever receding before 
 him ? Broadly regarding the question, we think not. 
 In the first place, he saved the honour of religion, 
 by showing himself a great citizen in difficult times, 
 when religion was dishonoured by its most prominent 
 representatives, who gave their benediction and ado- 
 ration to triumphant force. We know nothing more 
 beautiful or more touching than the conduct of 
 Arnaud de l'Ariege at the time of the December coup 
 d'etat. He was not content with showing his senti- 
 ments by associating himself with every attempt 
 made at an organised resistance ; but impressed with 
 the feeling that it became the highest dignitary of 
 the diocese to take up the cause of outraged liberty, 
 he implored the Archbishop to remonstrate with the 
 Emperor in the name of Christian conscience. It 
 was in vain that he exposed his heroic wife and her 
 new-born child to the perils of crossing the barri- 
 cades, the only way by which the proscribed deputy 
 could place his petition in the hands of the Arch- 
 bishop. In spite of all his efforts, the Te Deum was 
 chanted in Notre Dame the following Sunday. 
 
128 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 Yet further disillusionising awaited Arnaud de 
 l'Ariege. He had the sorrow of seeing the little band 
 of Liberal Catholics dwindling day by day. In truth, 
 he had been always in advance of them in the bold- 
 ness and generosity of his views. Lacordaire was not 
 allowed to preach again from the pulpits of the capital, 
 after his impassioned denunciation of the coup d'etat in 
 his sermon at Saint-Roch. Ozanam died before his 
 time, consumed by the fire of indignation in his soul. 
 In the universal repression, nothing was heard but 
 the outrages which the Ultramontanes, who had 
 rallied around the Emperor, heaped on their former 
 friends, who would not acquiesce in saving the Church 
 at the cost of her honour. After the Italian war the 
 Roman question presented itself in all its gravity, and 
 yet further divided the few remaining Liberal Catho- 
 lics. Arnaud de l'Ariege pronounced unhesitatingly 
 against the temporal sovereignty of the Pope. He 
 maintained, by argument and from history, that the 
 Church had everything to lose in becoming a political 
 power of the ancien regime. 
 
 He wrote two important books on this subject : 
 " L'independance du Pape et les droit des Peuples," 
 and " La Papaute Temporelle et la Nationality 
 Italienne." It is almost needless to say that Arnaud 
 de l'Ariege was one of the defeated party in the 
 Vatican Council. He had thrown himself heart and 
 soul into the opposition made to the new dogma by 
 his former friends, among whom he had the joy of 
 
ARNAUD DE L'ARIEGE. 129 
 
 seeing Montalembert. Happily this great man was 
 spared the pain of surviving the defeat of his most 
 cherished convictions. 
 
 The bitterest pang for Arnaud de l'Ariege was in 
 witnessing the total demolition of Liberal Catholicism 
 in France. Huet, the brave disciple of Bordas-Des- 
 moulin, was led by his indignation at the results of 
 the Council to abjure Christianity altogether. Silent 
 acquiescence enwrapped like a shroud all that generous 
 and ardent phalanx which had rallied around Lacor- 
 daire. Arnaud de l'Ariege remained what he had 
 always been — a Christian and a Liberal ; but he felt 
 more than ever isolated, irritated and indignant at the 
 excesses of triumphant Ultramontanism. He could 
 only take refuge in the utterance of the dying Pascal : 
 Ad tribunal tuum, Jesus Christe, appello. 
 
 He did not retract any of his early opinions. 
 These have found their most complete expression in 
 his book, " La Revolution et l£'glise," a book which 
 breathes throughout the spirit of Bordas-Desmoulin, 
 and which is dedicated to the great cause of the 
 reconciliation of religion and liberty. The French 
 Revolution is there represented as the legitimate 
 offspring of Christianity, which reached its highest 
 realisation in the great and lasting reforms then 
 achieved. It is true that Arnaud de l'Ariege dis- 
 engages from the terrible struggles of the Revolution, 
 the new and fruitful principle, which in the dust and 
 heat of the conflict was often lost sight of, and which 
 
 10 
 
1 30 CONTEMPORA R Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 has been strangely misconceived by many who have 
 professed to carry on the same work. This principle, 
 as he understood it, was the entire and absolute 
 separateness of the civil power and religion. Pagan 
 society was based upon the opposite principle. It 
 recognised no right of the individual conscience 
 beyond the control of the State. Primitive Chris- 
 tianity vindicated this liberty of conscience, and the 
 Church, when it again placed religion under State 
 control, returned to the principle of paganism. 
 Hence the French Revolution showed itself more 
 Christian than the Church of the old regime. Arnaud 
 de l'Ariege carried these principles to their furthest 
 issues. He remained always a declared and decided 
 advocate of the separation of Church and State, 
 though he never attempted to press the solution of 
 ,this difficult problem prematurely, nor to lay so heavy 
 a burden on the shoulders of our young Republic. He 
 went so far in the direction of non-interference that 
 there appeared an admirable letter in the Temps 
 from him, earnest Christian as he was, protesting 
 against the vote for public prayers in the National 
 Assembly. He could not bear to see spiritual things, 
 which are purely matters of conscience, put to the 
 vote in parliament. When, immediately after the 
 24th of May, a fanatic majority approved the unquali- 
 fied decree of the Prefect of Lyons, denouncing civil 
 burials, Arnaud de l'Ariege made repeated efforts to 
 gain a hearing ; but he was not allowed to finish his 
 
ARNAUD DE UARIEGE. 131 
 
 eager remonstrance in behalf of that liberty of con- 
 science which formed so important an article in his 
 religious faith. 
 
 Arnaud de l'Ariege only made, to our knowledge, 
 two great speeches in parliament, both in reference to 
 the law for liberty of teaching : the first in the Legis- 
 lative Assembly, on the 14th of February, 1850; the 
 other in the National Assembly, on the 14th of June, 
 1 875. Though thus divided by an interval of a quarter 
 of a century, we find in both speeches the same doc- 
 trines, deeply Christian and daringly Liberal. Both 
 express the same conviction of the necessity of keep- 
 ing the domain of the State distinct from that of 
 religion. There is the same elevation of view, the 
 same perception of what will be the most glorious 
 triumph of the future. 
 
 " It is the part of Christian democracy," said the 
 young Deputy of 1850, "however unworthy may be 
 its organ here, to define clearly and decidedly its view 
 on this question, and to rise above prejudice of every 
 kind — revolutionary prejudice no less than that of 
 the old Conservative parties. The most distinctive 
 and essential feature of the Revolution, is the limita- 
 tion it has placed to the domain of the State. The 
 sovereign to-day has no longer the same rights as 
 before 1789. In the ancient community all the 
 rights of the man were comprehended in those of the 
 citizen. When Christianity had wrought its revolu- 
 tion, the freedom of man was asserted in matters of 
 
132 CONTEMPORAR Y PORTRAITS. 
 
 faith and of religion. It is this freedom which is 
 vindicated in the principle of the separation of the 
 two powers in religious matters." 
 
 From this principle the speaker argued the incom- 
 petence of the State to make any philosophical or 
 religious teaching obligatory, so that he could turn 
 round to the Church and say : " The State recognises 
 the equal rights of all citizens ; there is no Church 
 with which it can treat as one power with another. 
 All religions are free, as are all philosophical opinions. 
 You, members of the Church, are, in the eye of the 
 law, citizens on a par with other citizens ; but in the 
 name of the Church you have no rights. I do not 
 acknowledge you. I declare you to be a usurping 
 power. When the Church intervenes to lend its aid 
 to the State in fulfilling its duty as a government, 
 and in seeking to give education to the people, I de- 
 clare that it goes beyond its rights, and is acting in 
 opposition to the principle which is at the basis of 
 our democratic system." 
 
 The Deputy of 1875, matured by the trials of life, 
 and by the terrible catastrophes that had befallen his 
 country (in connection with which he rendered emi- 
 nent service as mayor of one arrondissement of Paris 
 during the siege), used the same language, when the 
 Right, having formed a fresh coalition, endeavoured 
 to restore and extend the fatal law of 1850 for public 
 instruction. On one point only he speaks somewhat 
 less positively. While still maintaining the incom- 
 
ARNAUD BE IJARIEGE. 133 
 
 petence of the State in matters of philosophy and 
 religion, he admits that there exists, apart from the 
 various creeds and philosophic systems, a certain 
 common stock of moral ideas which form a sufficient 
 basis for government education. He recognises also 
 the exclusive right of the civil power to confer 
 degrees which entitle to the holding of public offices ; 
 but he has not swerved at all from his essential con- 
 victions, as may be seen from the following extracts : 
 " Whoever argues, whether in the name of the nation 
 or of the Church, that there is such a thing as a 
 State doctrine, ignores two great facts in the world's 
 history — first, the great Christian emancipation, and 
 then the great French Revolution, which was the 
 renovation of society. This great emancipation was 
 radical and decisive, just because it gave freedom 
 to the conscience. You men of little faith, whether 
 Christians or Rationalists, if you were really in- 
 fluenced on the one hand by the spirit of the gospel, 
 which is the spirit of liberty and justice, and on 
 the other hand by the spirit of the Revolution, 
 which is the very same, would cease to stand in 
 dread one of the other. We must be careful not 
 to mistake the movements of some excited minds, 
 for anti-religious demonstrations. People are apt to 
 think that the antipathy (often very strong) of the 
 youth of France to the clergy indicates an irrecon- 
 cilable hostility to the Church. 
 
 " Let me ask you to listen to a remarkable piece of 
 
134 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 evidence supplied by contemporary history on this 
 point. In 1840, in the great hall of the Sorbonne, 
 an eminent priest, a professor of sacred elocution, 
 uttered some words which aroused the indignant pro- 
 testations of his hearers. Was it hatred to the priest 
 that stirred their youthful blood ? You shall judge 
 for yourselves. A short time after, the same elocu- 
 cutionary course was taken up by a new professor in 
 the same great amphitheatre of the Sorbonne, before 
 the same youthful auditory ; and the new professor was 
 received with enthusiastic applause. Why this con- 
 trast ? Why did the one arouse a tempest of indig- 
 nation, and the other restore peace and confidence in 
 his hearers ? Both were priests, both eloquent, both 
 illustrious. Because the one — Abbe Dupanloup — 
 had attacked our modern liberties, and the other — 
 M. Cceur — had hailed these noble conquests in the 
 domain of freedom, with the heart of a true patriot. 
 It is this spirit of liberty which must be cherished in 
 the youth of France, if we would elevate, purify, and 
 strengthen the fibre of the nation. It is not by vilify- 
 ing our newly-acquired liberties and signing protests 
 against them, that you will maintain your widespread 
 and powerful influence." 
 
 These words remain as the parliamentary testament 
 of this noble and generous soul. And it shall not be 
 unfulfilled. The religious forms under which he saw 
 in vision the union of the Church with modern liberties, 
 may undergo many changes in the future. What 
 
ARNAUD DE VARIEGE. 135 
 
 matter, if all that was eternally true, Christian, and 
 liberal in his policy is assured of final victory? No 
 truth can ever perish ; and we know no higher truth 
 in relation to social life than that complete enfranchise- 
 ment of the conscience which Arnaud de l'Ariege 
 proclaimed to be at once the first consequence of 
 Christianity, and the essential idea of the French 
 Revolution. This principle will survive all the calcu- 
 lations of parties. Its final triumph is certain, both 
 in religion and politics, and it will then be seen that 
 visionaries like Arnaud de l'Ariege were the really 
 practical men of the future. He has not to wait, 
 however, the vindication of history. Universal respect, 
 blended with sincere affection, on the part of all those 
 who knew him in his public and private life, is the 
 tribute tendered to his memory to-day. 
 
 Arnaud de l'Ariege fought much and suffered 
 much for his convictions in hard and troublous times, 
 without being ever betrayed into personal animosity, 
 and without ever having to retract his position. It 
 was a beautiful life, and in our view not unsuccessful, 
 though he died without having seen the triumph of 
 his cause. 
 
DUPANLOUP, BISHOP OF ORLEANS. 
 
DUPANLOUP, 
 BISHOP OF ORLEANS. 
 
 IN November, 1878, the Church of France lost the 
 most eminent of her bishops. The long career of 
 Mgr. Dupanloup is a sort of epitome of the history of 
 French Catholicism. Born in Savoy in 1802, he early 
 attracted attention by his intelligence and energy, 
 and by the fervour which he carried into all that he 
 undertook. Distinguished as a catechist, and as a 
 pulpit orator, though he never rose to the rank of 
 such men as Lacordaire and Ravignan, he was chiefly 
 remarkable as a teacher of the higher Catholic 
 doctrine. As a leader, he had among his followers 
 eminent and even royal personages, who contributed 
 not a little to extend his influence. He had the 
 honour of reconciling Talleyrand to the Church on 
 his deathbed. His first appearance in public affairs 
 was on the occasion of the famous law for liberty o 
 teaching, which was voted in 1850 by the Legislative 
 Assembly, by means of the coalition of the Catholics 
 with the old supporters of the Orleanist monarchy — 
 two parties who, as Montalembert said, were " cast by a 
 
140 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 common shipwreck upon the same raft." Unhappily, 
 the liberty thus inaugurated was not the true liberty, 
 which belongs equally to all citizens, but only the 
 liberty of the holy Catholic Church, which had as- 
 sumed a preponderating share in the direction of the 
 University, and had contrived to get the popular 
 teaching made over in great part to its religious 
 bodies. Mgr. Dupanloup, who was their Abbe, took 
 an important part in the Commission which framed 
 that too famous law, the fruitful parent of so much 
 evil to France. 
 
 We remember meeting him at this time in one of 
 the tribunes of the Legislative Assembly. It was on 
 the day when M. Thiers had given his support to the 
 clerical party, of which till then he had been such a 
 decided opponent. " This is a great and decisive day 
 for that man," said Mgr. Dupanloup. He little thought 
 that at the close of his career he would be the leader 
 of Thiers' most determined enemies, fighting against 
 that statesman's liberal and truly patriotic policy. 
 
 Abbe Dupanloup was raised soon after this to the 
 see of Orleans. There he revived, as far as he could, 
 the traditions of Joan of Arc, seeking on all occa- 
 sions to combine Catholicism with patriotism. He 
 was made in a short time a member of the French 
 Academy, in recognition of his numerous writings on 
 education, the style of which was impassioned rather 
 than brilliant, as, indeed, were all the productions of his 
 pen. He now entered into his first controversy with 
 
DUPANLOUP, BISHOP OF ORLEANS. 141 
 
 the Ultramontane party, who had attempted to pro- 
 scribe the Greek and Latin classics, on the pretext 
 that their entirely pagan influence was dangerous. 
 Dupanloup, as a member of the Academy, vigo- 
 rously opposed this new invasion of barbarism in the 
 field of literature. He belonged at this time altogether 
 to the school of Liberal Catholics, like Montalembert 
 and Lacordaire, men whose great aim was to reconcile 
 the doctrine of the Church with modern society. Into 
 this endeavour he entered, like them, with very sincere 
 religious enthusiasm. It has been recently reported 
 that in the chapel of the Castle of Montalembert, in 
 Burgundy, the Bishop of Orleans celebrated at this 
 time a solemn mass, which was a sort of vigil of the 
 champions of Liberal Catholicism, on the eve of the 
 conflict. A tablet bearing their names, with the in- 
 scription, " Pro religione et libertate" is still to be seen 
 in the chapel. 
 
 At this very time the Ultramontane party was 
 letting loose all its fury against Liberal Catholicism, 
 under the leadership of Louis Veuillot, the great 
 scoffer of the age. He found a formidable antagonist 
 in the Bishop of Orleans, who replied to the violent 
 articles of the Univers, by charges which were admir- 
 able for their freshness and vigour. He was unques- 
 tionably most successful in these fugitive productions. 
 On one point, however, he agreed with his Ultramon- 
 tane opponents. He was always a defender of the 
 temporal power of the Holy Father, and when he saw 
 
142 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 this menaced by the policy of Napoleon III., he threw 
 all his energy into the contest. With this exception, 
 he spoke and wrote as a Liberal. Great, then, was 
 the astonishment created when, after the appearance 
 of the Encyclical in 1864, which compelled him to 
 abandon all that he had previously held most dear, 
 he published an apology for the Syllabus. The sur- 
 prise would have been greater still if it had been 
 known that M. Dupanloup had done all in his power 
 in Rome, to prevent the publication of this same 
 Syllabus, which he afterwards endeavoured to justify 
 by a softening and modifying interpretation. We 
 have it on the authority of M. Guizot, who was closely 
 allied with Bishop Dupanloup, that the latter spent 
 his utmost strength in unavailing efforts to prevent 
 the Roman Curia from taking so imprudent a step. 
 
 Our perplexity at contradictions like these will 
 be lessened, if we consider how difficult is thorough 
 honesty under a religion of absolute authority, which 
 allows its faithful followers no alternative but feigned 
 or unfeigned submission. From this time M. Du- 
 panloup was far less liberal. Instead of being 
 satisfied with refuting the false doctrines of mate- 
 rialism, he denounced them passionately to the poli- 
 tical bodies then in power, and succeeded by his 
 influence in closing the Academy against M. Littre. 
 
 When, several years later, the author of the great 
 " Dictionnaire de la Langue Francaise" was admitted 
 on the ground of his brilliant literary achievements 
 
DUPANLOUP, BISHOP OF ORLEANS. 143 
 
 Mgr. Dupanloup sent in his resignation, which was 
 never either accepted or withdrawn. 
 
 In spite of the Syllabus, and of his famous com- 
 mentary on it, he was still a Gallican, and watched 
 with displeasure the preparations for proclaiming the 
 dogma of papal infallibility. On the eve of the 
 Council he was among the foremost objectors. In 
 
 1869 he made himself the very leader of the oppo- 
 sition, to the great indignation of the Ultramontanes. 
 His Catholic apologists of to-day draw a veil of 
 prudent silence over this period of his life. It has 
 not been forgotten, however, at Rome, for in resisting 
 the policy of the Society of Jesus, he committed the 
 sin for which there is no forgiveness either in this 
 world or the next. Thus, in spite of his submission, 
 and of the numberless services rendered by him since 
 
 1870 to the Catholic cause, he never obtained the 
 cardinal's hat, which has adorned the heads of the 
 most mediocre men of the French episcopate. Do 
 what he might, he was still a suspected man, and 
 was treated as such by the papal Nuncios in Paris. 
 
 The Nuncio even went so far as to deplore the fall 
 of the Republican Ministry on the 24th of May, be- 
 cause he feared that the direction of ecclesiastical 
 affairs in France would pass to Bishop Dupanloup. 
 And yet, from the time the Bishop took his seat in 
 the National Assembly, he never lost an occasion to 
 serve those who so repelled him. He was the spokes- 
 man in the famous crusade of the bishops in 1871, in 
 
144 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 favour of the temporal power. He took the leading 
 part in the discussion of the laws on public instruc- 
 tion ; especially in that which constituted the new 
 Catholic universities, and gave them the right to con- 
 fer degrees. He did not cease to denounce severely 
 all false doctrines, without being over-careful about 
 the correctness of his quotations. His vehement op- 
 position to the celebration of the Voltaire centenary 
 is in the memory of all. In this instance, as in many 
 others, his zeal carried him beyond all bounds, and 
 made him blind to any but the evil aspects of that 
 extraordinary genius. He had not the fairness either 
 to recognise Voltaire's attempts to secure toleration, 
 or to admit that Christianity was presented to him 
 only under the hideous mask of a persecuting religion, 
 which might well provoke his mockery and scorn. 
 The Bishop of Orleans died on the eve of fresh con- 
 flicts for the advancement of the Church. It is but 
 just to him to say that he never gave his approval to 
 the superstitious vagaries of Ultramontane pietism. 
 
 Mgr. Dupanloup is a fair representative of this 
 troubled period of French Catholicism. He was 
 tormented by self-contradictions, which he never 
 succeeded in reconciling ; and it is this which gives 
 him sometimes an appearance of insincerity. In 
 reality he does not deserve the imputation ; it was 
 his position that was false, not himself. We must 
 remember, moreover, what a passionate nature his 
 was. Passion was expressed in the high colour 
 
DUPANLOUP, BISHOP OF ORLEANS. 145 
 
 of his countenance, in his eager gesture, in his 
 speech, impetuous rather than eloquent, and weighted 
 somewhat with the laboured rhetoric of the schools. 
 Even as an old man he would walk bareheaded 
 to cool the fever in his veins : age itself could 
 not bring him serenity. It cannot be denied that, 
 during his later years, he gravely compromised the 
 cause he held dear by his controversial rancour 
 and vehemence. The journal which breathed his 
 spirit, La Defense Religiense, was one of the worst 
 organs of the clerical reaction. There can be no 
 doubt that it helped to bring about the crisis of the 
 24th of May, for in our day prophecies so accurate 
 and exact only come from behind the scenes. 
 
 But, in spite of all his errors, Mgr. Dupanloup 
 remains a character well deserving our interest, and 
 perhaps our pity. There can be no doubt that he 
 suffered much in the sharp mental conflict between 
 his early liberal convictions and the directly contrary 
 conclusions of the Vatican Council. In the dignity 
 and purity of his private life, Mgr. Dupanloup merits 
 all respect, and during the war he showed admirable 
 courage in his diocese of Orleans, which suffered 
 terribly from the invaders. 
 
 He liked to invite to the representations of Greek 
 tragedies, which were given in his little Seminary, the 
 friends of high classic literature, and sometimes 
 among them men who he knew had very little 
 sympathy with clerical education. His menage was 
 
 11 
 
146 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 simple almost to austerity, his manners frank and 
 cordial. It was easy to talk with him on subjects of 
 literary interest, or on the higher themes of patriotism 
 and Christian spirituality. 
 
 The Catholic journals extol Dupanloup as a great 
 defender of religious liberty. This encomium he 
 merits less than any, for he never defended any but 
 the " liberty of the right." He was the declared 
 enemy of every legal measure that proposed to give 
 liberty of worship. He even went so far as to de- 
 scribe the honest application of this measure to non- 
 Catholics, as subversive of society. 
 
 The Bishop of Orleans was the brilliant represen- 
 tative of Catholic Liberalism, both in its earlier phase 
 of imprudent generosity, and in its later period of 
 retractation and submission. He showed by his 
 example, how great a sacrifice is exacted from its 
 worshippers by the idol of the Vatican. They can- 
 not satisfy it by anything short of an apostasy from 
 Liberalism. The great high priests of Ultramon- 
 tanism are not content even with this apostasy ; 
 they have no forgiveness even for those who repent. 
 This was very evident in the strange funeral oration 
 pronounced by M. Veuillot upon Mgr. Dupanloup. 
 In truth, the one body, the Church, is divided against 
 itself, and the fictitious veil of absolute unity fails to 
 conceal the fact. 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD. 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD. 
 
 THE influence of ideas on the drama of history is 
 in no way circumscribed by the smallness of the 
 theatre in which they are first produced. In truth, 
 they rather prepare the drama than appear themselves 
 as the actors in it. Without falling into the fatalistic 
 and pantheistic idealism of Hegel, we are free to 
 recognise that the movements of thought, or rather of 
 the human soul, are reproduced in the domain of out- 
 ward fact, and that this inner history is not governed 
 by the strict laws of logic, but is enacted with the 
 same freedom as that of the world without. Some- 
 times it is in an upper chamber, as at Jerusalem, 
 sometimes in a monkish cell, as at Wittemberg, that a 
 new era in the history of the human mind takes its 
 rise, like a great river which has its hidden source in 
 some remote mountain region. 
 
 Nothing could well appear more insignificant than 
 the French Protestantism of our day, when compared 
 with the Catholicism of the age, so ardent, sometimes 
 so defiant, always so skilful in swaying the masses 
 of the people. And yet this insignificant minority, 
 
1 50 CONTEMPORAR V FOR TRAITS. 
 
 so long ignored, has enjoyed in this century a very 
 intense and fruitful religious life. The ideas which 
 it has ventilated and helped to put into circula- 
 tion in the intellectual atmosphere of the nineteenth 
 century, are of the highest importance in the present 
 religious crisis, and are such as, when fully developed, 
 must exercise a weighty influence on the mind of the 
 age. 
 
 It must be remembered, moreover, that French 
 Protestantism is a branch of that great moral and 
 intellectual development called the Reformation. 
 This left its impress upon a great portion of Europe 
 and of the world ; it is one of the most powerful 
 factors in the history of modern times. Everything 
 relating to Protestantism must, then, be of the highest 
 interest to all who rise above the prejudice — shall we 
 call it Catholic or Chinese ? — that nothing exists 
 beyond their own intellectual boundaries. I may add 
 that Protestantism does not take away from the 
 French mind, those peculiar gifts of clearness and pre- 
 cision which make it so powerful an instrument in 
 the diffusion of ideas ; often, indeed, it has rather the 
 contrary effect — stimulating to the highest and purest 
 exercise of all the mental powers. Thus the various 
 tendencies which in the present century have agitated 
 the Churches of the Reformation throughout Europe, 
 have acquired in France a degree of definiteness 
 which has accelerated their development, either pro- 
 gressive or retrogressive. The history of French 
 
ADOLPHE MO NOD. 151 
 
 Protestantism has told upon the history of Protestant- 
 ism generally, and hence on the whole history of the 
 age, as we shall presently show. 
 
 If we attempt to characterise the Protestant crisis 
 of the nineteenth century, we shall find that the issues 
 raised are twofold — theological and ecclesiastical. 
 The faith of the Reformation had everywhere felt the 
 influence of the eighteenth century. The stormy 
 wind of negation had swept even over the desert, to 
 which the heroic army of the French Reformation had 
 fled, broken and proscribed. The eighteenth cen- 
 tury had scarcely sunk below the horizon in a bed of 
 clouds crimsoned with blood, when, aroused by such 
 a series of tragic events in the history of the nations, 
 religious feeling re-awoke in a state of strong excite- 
 ment. This re-awakening produced important effects 
 in the Catholic Church, and Protestantism felt its 
 influence in an equal degree. The revival of reli- 
 gion is the characteristic feature of the commence- 
 ment of this century. In Germany it became blended 
 with speculation and mysticism ; in England it drew 
 yet closer the bonds of the narrow orthodoxy of 
 the seventeenth century, but it introduced at the 
 same time a devotional fervour and missionary zeal 
 which gave it a marvellous power of dissemination. 
 When peace re-opened the Continent to the influence 
 of England, Protestantism in the French-speaking 
 countries received the impress of the religious revival 
 in Great Britain. It lost nothing in its transmission 
 
152 C ONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 across the Channel, of either its fervent zeal or its 
 intolerant dogmatism. When it had rallied around 
 its banner an important section of the Protestants, a 
 struggle was inevitable between its converts and the 
 still remaining adherents of a vague and meagre 
 supernaturalism, who, having suffered so much persecu- 
 tion themselves, made tolerance the prime article of 
 their creed. The controversy which thus arose was 
 at once religious and ecclesiastical. It was not enough 
 to establish the just claims of orthodoxy ; it was 
 needful also to vindicate its rights in the Church. 
 This attempt brought to light all the complications of 
 the ecclesiastical problem. 
 
 It is not my intention to retrace the history of 
 French Protestantism in the nineteenth century. I 
 shall only attempt to show, through some of its 
 noblest representatives, the principal phases of the 
 religious revival of our age. After the first days of 
 rapturous fervour, we shall find the earnest spirits of 
 the French revival entering on a path of develop- 
 ment, in which they keep pace more or less closely 
 with the evangelical and liberal school beyond the 
 Rhine. Their first advances in this direction are 
 made with timid steps, in fear lest they should wound 
 sensitive consciences, or do injustice to the absorbing 
 claims of missionary activity. 
 
 Adolphe Monod represents the early phase of the 
 religious revival, with a happy blending of holy aus- 
 terity and brilliant natural endowments. The remark- 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD. 153 
 
 able feature in his life is that he at first espoused, heart 
 and soul, the theology of the religious awakening of the 
 commencement of the century, without, however, falling 
 into its theoretical or practical extravagances. Against 
 these his high moral and intellectual qualities always 
 proved a sufficient safeguard. A change, however, 
 soon became apparent in his theological opinions. 
 This change was as decided as it was moderate, and 
 to the very close of his life we find him becoming 
 more and more liberal and large-hearted. It is inte- 
 resting to trace his growing aspirations after a broader 
 and more enlightened theology, blended as they are 
 always with the most profound and earnest piety. In 
 the great heart of Adolphe Monod strict orthodoxy 
 .was forced to expand under the strong pressure of 
 Christian feeling, as the mould which becomes too 
 strait for it, is broken by the precious metal in a state 
 of fusion. 
 
 In the case of Verny and of Robertson, the crisis 
 by which their doctrinal views were transformed, was 
 more severe and more painful in its character, so that 
 it becomes a study of pathetic interest. In the case 
 of Vinet, it was a gradual process of fuller develop- 
 ment, and his faith flowed on in a quiet and even 
 channel, like a stream no longer shut in between 
 banks too narrow for it. 
 
 We have thus in these three men — all leading 
 spirits — three epochs or phases of the history of the 
 religious revival, which will not have accomplished its 
 
1 54 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 full work in France, till the Church has been made 
 absolutely free by it, both in its doctrine and institu- 
 tions. Not till then will Christianity be able truly to 
 fulfil its mission in a democratic society which feels 
 the want of adequate spiritual guidance. 
 
 I shall attempt nothing more than a sketch of 
 Adolphe Monod, as of Vinet and Verny. We hope 
 that Monod's family, who have already done so much 
 for the publication of his works, will give us the 
 complete biography so much desired by his admirers. 
 
 The materials of this biographical study are de- 
 rived chiefly from Adolphe Monod's own writings. 
 I have also drawn largely on my personal re- 
 collections, for I had the privilege of knowing 
 Adolphe Monod from my childhood, and of being, 
 in later days, honoured with his friendship. I have 
 constantly before me, in memory, his earnest, expres- 
 sive face. How vividly can I recall him in the in- 
 timacy of the home circle, beaming with love, but 
 somewhat reserved and silent ; in the pulpit, with the 
 flashes of his brilliant eloquence lighting up his whole 
 face ; or in the professor's chair, with the calm patience 
 of the master, gravely solicitous for his pupils' good. 
 Last of all, upon his deathbed, when suffering had 
 set its crowning seal upon his pallid brow. In the 
 case of such a preacher, such an apostle, his words 
 give us the man himself, so truly do they express the 
 purity and earnestness of his moral life. The writings 
 he has left enable us to trace his thought, from its 
 
ADOLPHE MO NOD. 155 
 
 very first inspiration, through all its various stages of 
 development, to catch, as it were, the prayer for light 
 that rises from the seeker after truth. Some publi- 
 cations that have long been out of print, such as the 
 addresses delivered by him on his admission to the 
 theological faculty of Montauban, and some occa- 
 sional pamphlets, have supplied us with valuable 
 information. 
 
 Adolphe Monod had not an imposing presence. He 
 was of middle height and his features were irregular ; 
 but they bore the impress of high moral qualities, 
 enhanced by the pervading melancholy peculiar to 
 great minds. His smile, however, illuminated his 
 whole face, and when he was speaking, his eloquence 
 seemed to transfigure him as it does all great masters 
 of the art. His gesture was perfect ; and I have heard 
 no other voice but Berryer's of so harmonious and 
 penetrating a tone. 
 
 Adolphe Monod remains one of the noblest names 
 on the roll of French Protestantism, surpassed by 
 none in the disinterestedness and largeness of heart 
 and mind with which he served the cause of Christ. 
 So high has he been raised by the admiration and 
 gratitude of Christendom, that he may be said to 
 belong to the whole Evangelical Church of our day. 
 If Catholic or free-thinking France had been animated 
 by a more liberal spirit, it would not have been satis- 
 fied with the vague echo of an illustrious name coming 
 to it across the Atlantic ; it would have itself be- 
 
156 CONTEMPORAR V FOR TRAITS. 
 
 stowed upon him literary honours. But these were 
 matters of indifference to him ; his ambition took a 
 higher range. 
 
 I. 
 
 Adolphe Monod was born at Copenhagen, January 
 21, 1802. His father, a native of the Canton de Vaud, 
 was pastor of the French church formed by the Pro- 
 testant refugees after the revocation of the Edict of 
 Nantes. A man of the utmost integrity, as well as 
 a facile and eloquent orator, M. Monod, the father, 
 was held in most affectionate esteem both in Copen- 
 hagen and in Paris, and exercised a wide popular 
 influence. He held the opinions current in the Pro- 
 testant Church of his time both in Geneva and in 
 France. His was a warm and sentient piety, tender 
 and benevolent in spite of its theological rigour, and 
 more adapted to sustain than to enkindle religious 
 life in the soul. He was always tolerant. He did 
 much honour to Protestantism in the great Reformed 
 Church of Paris, in which he exercised a long and 
 valued ministry soon after the establishment of the Re- 
 formed religion by the First Consul. Nothing could be 
 more beautiful than the family life of this patriarch 
 of noble and venerable appearance, surrounded by his 
 twelve children, all strongly attached to each other. 
 Madame Monod (nee De Coninck) was, as her name 
 indicates, a Dane. She was the very type of a Chris- 
 
ADOLPHE MO NOD. 
 
 157 
 
 tian wife and mother, and the light and joy of her 
 family circle. 
 
 Adolphe Monod thus grew up in an atmosphere of 
 purity, of affection, and of truly classic intellectual 
 culture. He learned from his father to speak that 
 correct and luminous language of the best French 
 school, which he was afterwards to turn to such good 
 account. At Geneva, whither he went to enter on his 
 studies in the university, preparatory to the ministry 
 of the gospel, he adopted the theology current at the 
 time, at least in countries where the French tongue 
 was spoken, a theology without depth, and amounting 
 to little more than a vague supernaturalism. It was 
 indefinite alike in its negations and affirmations. The 
 divinity of Christ was ignored rather than denied. It 
 would have been dangerous in France formally to re- 
 pudiate this article of faith. Creeds still existed in 
 the letter but not in the spirit — like the ark without 
 the tables of the covenant. That which had es- 
 pecially dropped out of the religious teaching and 
 piety of the day, was that deep conviction of the 
 the misery and impotence of man, which brings 
 sinners to the foot of the cross, there to receive for- 
 giveness and new life from the sovereign grace of 
 God. Justification by faith had been more than the 
 central doctrine of the Reformation ; it had been its 
 great moral and religious lever. That lever had now 
 ceased to act. Men thought themselves set right with 
 God by the mere practice of human virtue, combined 
 
158 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 with certain exact observances of piety and a sincere 
 veneration for historic Protestantism. 
 
 Adolphe Monod himself subsequently described this 
 attitude of the Reformed Church of France, painting 
 it perhaps in somewhat too strong colours. 
 
 " The doctrine of works," he said, " took possession 
 of our academies, our pulpits, our pastors, our flocks. 
 Our confession of faith was forgotten, our discipline 
 set aside. The voice of the Synods was silent. The 
 spirit of the age, the philosophy of the day, took the 
 place of the spirit of the Bible. Faith was eclipsed, 
 and knowledge hid its face. Since the Bible was to 
 be less consulted than the spirit of the age, what in- 
 ducement was there to study deeply the meaning of 
 the Bible, when slight and superficial studies sufficed 
 to give an initiation into the current philosophy ? 
 Science went out of vogue among our clergy. Instead 
 of preachers like Dumoulin, Dubose, Bailli and Claude, 
 our pulpits were filled with men of no enlightenment 
 of mind. Hence the Reformed Church of France 
 lost all consideration as a Church. As a social, in- 
 dustrial, political, moral body, it was still respected, but 
 as a Church it forfeited all claim to regard. Hence 
 arose among the Catholics, the false notion that the 
 Protestant Church does not believe in Jesus Christ, 
 and unbelieving Catholics were known to wish them- 
 selves Protestants, that they might be deists." 1 
 
 1 " La Destitution d'Adolphe Monod," p. 100. 
 
ADOLPHE MO NOD. 159 
 
 At Geneva, Adolphe Monod was a conscientious 
 student. He carried into his studies the natural 
 vigour of his mind. He traces to this period the 
 commencement of that religious crisis which was to 
 end in his conversion. This result, however, as we 
 shall presently see, was not reached till he went to 
 Naples. His brother Frederic had a considerable 
 share in this great spiritual and intellectual trans- 
 formation. Three distinguished men exerted a 
 decided influence upon him, as he himself tells us in 
 a letter written during his last illness. We quote this 
 as the most reliable source of information on this 
 interesting subject. 
 
 " There are three friends whose names I love to 
 associate, because they were all three at different times 
 greatly helpful to me in my conversion. I wish to 
 testify my gratitude to them to-day, when I am ex- 
 pecting so soon to leave this world and go to the 
 Father, and when all my consolation is derived from 
 the faith they taught me. These three friends are 
 Louis Gaussen, Charles Scholl, 1 and Thomas Erskine. 
 
 "The first produced a gradual impression upon my 
 mind by his benevolent life, by his preaching, and by 
 his devout conversation. The second, with whom I 
 had less prolonged intercourse, presented the gospel to 
 me in a practical aspect so attractive, and at the same 
 time so wise and true, that he won my heart to it. 
 
 1 Charles Scholl was pastor of the French Church in London, 
 and subsequently of the Free Church at Lausanne. 
 
160 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 The third, at Geneva, removed my intellectual pre- 
 judices by showing me the harmony between the 
 gospel and sacred philosophy ; and afterwards, at 
 Naples, he put the finishing touch to the work, in so 
 far as man's influence was concerned, by the example 
 of his perfect peace and tender love towards all men. 
 I shall never forget our walks on the Capo di Monte, 
 nor the tone in which, as we watched the sun going 
 down over the magnificent Bay of Naples, he ex- 
 claimed, 'Truly the light is sweet ; and a pleasant thing 
 it is for the eyes to behold the sun ! ' 
 
 "These three friends, to whom I address these lines, 
 were called by God to exercise over me a joint influ- 
 ence, in which each unwittingly supplied what was 
 lacking in the others. 
 
 " I render first all glory to God, and then I say 
 to them, that my heart glows with love for them, and 
 that I pray God to enrich them with His choicest 
 blessings in life and in death, and to spare them, if it 
 may be so, the furnace of suffering through which 
 His mercy has called me to pass. 
 
 "At the same time I commend myself to their 
 prayers, that they may crown all the good they have 
 already done me, by asking for me grace so that my 
 patience may not fail, but that I may glorify God to 
 the very end, though my sufferings abound more and 
 more." r 
 
 1 This letter has appeared in Erskine's "Correspondence," 
 published in Edinburgh. 
 
ADOLPHE MO NOD. 161 
 
 Erskine, the gentle and profound mystic, of broad 
 and enlightened views, exercised a most beneficial in- 
 fluence over the Christians of his generation. His teach- 
 ing produced a deep impression upon the Duchesse de 
 Broglie, who knew him at this time. He soared far 
 above the rigid orthodoxy of the day, into the pure 
 heights of heaven, opened by the Apostle John to 
 the Christian soul. He tempered the somewhat too 
 severe dogmatism of M. Gaussen, the eminent pastor 
 and professor, especially in reference to the inspi- 
 ration of the Scriptures. Adolphe Monod doubtless 
 owed to him his escape from the irksome fetters of 
 narrow English Evangelicalism. It is clear, how- 
 ever, that it was the experience of his ministry at 
 Naples which led to the decisive changes in his life. 
 He became in 1826 the first pastor of a French 
 colony in that city, and it was when he was called for 
 the first time to fulfil the serious duty of instruct- 
 ing men in religious truth, that he was startled to 
 discover how inadequate were his own convictions. 
 He then passed through the great crisis of his spiritual 
 life. He does not appear to have been diverted for 
 a moment from his earnest quest of truth, by the 
 magical beauty of the land in which his lot was cast, 
 where ancient art lives again in the immortal youth 
 of Italian nature, and under the smile of its un- 
 rivalled sky. Like Paul at Athens, he heeded not, 
 the enchantment of the outward and visible things 
 in the passionate eagerness of his search after the 
 
1 62 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 invisible, and to him as yet almost unknown God, 
 whom he would fain declare to men. He found Him 
 after an agonizing spiritual conflict. There was in- 
 describable bitterness to him in the discovery that all 
 which he had hitherto taken for piety was really 
 worthless in the sight of God. Trembling beneath 
 those thunders of a broken law, under which in after 
 days he so often made his hearers quail, he took his 
 place with the publican and the woman who was a 
 sinner at the feet of Jesus. Faith in a crucified Saviour 
 alone calmed and uplifted him. There is no moral 
 revolution more wonderful than that which is effected 
 when a sincere Pharisee takes his place by the side 
 of the lying publican, smiting, like him, on his breast, 
 and crying, " God be merciful to me a sinner ! " It 
 was a crisis like this which transformed the disciple 
 of Gamaliel into the apostle of a free salvation. 
 
 Adolphe Monod has left no other record of this 
 phase of his life than that which we find in his 
 preaching. Although he never indulges in personal 
 allusions, we find abundant traces of that spiritual 
 tempest which first plunged him into the depths of 
 despair, and then cast him, trembling with joy, upon 
 the Rock. 
 
 In his early discourses on the misery of man and 
 the mercy of God, there is no word about himself; 
 and yet how clearly they reveal that the writer had 
 been passing, like Pascal, through one of those soul- 
 vigils, one of those wrestlings all the night, which 
 
ADOLPHE MO NOD. 163 
 
 leave the combatant, to use Monod's own words, 
 vainqtietir, mats tout meurtri ; tout meurtri, mais 
 vainqueur. 
 
 Can we not catch an echo of the bitterness of soul 
 through which he himself had passed, in this con- 
 cluding passage of his first sermon ? 
 
 " O God ! who humblest only that Thou mayest lift up, who 
 troublest only to calm, who dost shake only to stablish and 
 settle, we bow to the sentence which condemns us. We accept 
 it with penitence and tears. Hide nothing from us of our misery. 
 Shed abroad in our souls Thy pure and searching light, that we 
 may see ourselves as we truly are ! And at such a sight let 
 there rise at once from this whole congregation, a cry of surprise 
 and anguish which shall rend the atmosphere of indifference 
 around us, which shall reach Thy ear and move Thy fatherly 
 compassion towards us, so that, renouncing henceforward all 
 our self-esteem, humbled with a deep humility, believing with a 
 simple faith, we may yield ourselves unreservedly to Thy love, 
 to be raised out of the depth of our misery by the depth of Thy 
 mercy." l 
 
 Where has the writer found those sombre colours 
 in which he depicts the self-condemnation of the 
 sinner, if not in the sacred terrors of conscience ? It 
 might have been said of him still more than of the 
 great Florentine poet, that he had gone down into 
 the lower world, so thrillingly does he describe the 
 ever - deepening horrors awaiting the unconverted, 
 like those enormous cavities sometimes found in a 
 vast abyss, whose gloomy profundities go down into 
 the very bowels of the earth. 2 He confesses to the 
 
 1 Sermon by Adolphe Monod, p. 42. Paris Edit. 18 18. 
 
 2 Sermons, vol. i. p. 377. 
 
1 64 CONTEMPORAR Y PORTRAITS. 
 
 ardent desire he felt for a long time to escape from 
 this doctrine of perdition. He could only bring 
 himself to submit to it, he says, " with bowed head 
 and laying his hand upon his mouth." 
 
 This is not the place for us to inquire whether he 
 did not, in the ardour of his new conversion, go 
 beyond the teaching of the gospel on this important 
 point. We are now only describing the psychological 
 crisis which made a new man of him. We find the 
 same tone of deep experience in his early writings on 
 the work of redemption. 
 
 " The marble of my heart has been broken ! " he exclaims. 
 " O my God ! what love, what love ! And yet I see only its 
 utmost edge. It is an abyss into the depths of which I cannot 
 look. But even in that which I do behold, I discern a love that 
 passes knowledge ; and in those depths which as yet are hidden 
 from me, my soul foreshadows a love which baffles thought, 
 which confounds and absorbs my whole being. Redeemed at 
 such a price I am no more my own, and to Him I give all my 
 heart ! " 
 
 Are we not reminded by words like these of the 
 sublime utterance of Pascal in his hour of holy 
 rapture : " God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob ! 
 . . . Not of the philosophers and learned men. . . . 
 Assurance, assurance, love, joy, peace ! . . . God of 
 Jesus Christ ! . . . " 
 
 II. 
 
 Still thrilling with the emotion of this great 
 spiritual conflict, and glowing with his first love and 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD, 165 
 
 zeal, Adolphe Monod, at hardly twenty - five years 
 of age, was called in 1828 to the pastorate of the 
 great Reformed Church of Lyons. A conflict was 
 inevitable. Beneath an austere demeanour he carried 
 a soul of fire, an indomitable spirit ; and his youth 
 lent both to his convictions and words a tone of 
 somewhat undue positiveness and exaltation. This 
 was only strengthened by the opposition which he 
 encountered, though he never allowed a touch of 
 spleen, or of wounded self-love to give added 
 vehemence to his convictions. 
 
 It may be said that throughout this long con- 
 troversy Adolphe Monod had no thought of himself; 
 that his sole concern was for what he believed to be 
 the cause of truth and sound doctrine. The crisis 
 was hastened and rendered more formidable by his 
 remarkable power as an orator, which made in- 
 difference impossible. 
 
 His eloquence was not only the forcible expression 
 of his holiest convictions, but reflected all the passion- 
 ate ardour of his soul. The incompatibility between 
 the young preacher and his new church was radical 
 and complete. We have no wish to rekindle 
 the smouldering embers of old quarrels ; and we 
 would not forget that the historical events which pro- 
 foundly affected French Protestantism generally at 
 the beginning of the century, pressed with peculiar 
 weight upon the Church of Lyons. M. Martin- 
 Paschoud, the pastor who took the most prominent 
 
1 66 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 part in these stormy controversies, has left a memory 
 which we ourselves cherish with well - deserved re- 
 spect and affection. However widely we may have 
 differed on points of doctrine and ecclesiastical policy, 
 we always found him full of ready and right-minded 
 sympathy on all questions affecting the public welfare. 
 His generosity of heart and mind endeared him to a 
 circle far wider than that of Protestantism. 
 
 We will not dwell on the painful incidents of the 
 internal history of the Church of Lyons, at this 
 already remote period, except so far as is absolutely 
 necessary in order to explain the position taken by 
 Adolphe Monod. It may suffice to say that nowhere 
 was the eclipse of the old reformed faith at this time 
 more complete than among the Protestants of this 
 great city. They were distinguished, like all their 
 co-religionists, for probity and morality ; they be- 
 longed to the higher class of the bourgoisie, and were 
 regarded everywhere with all the consideration due to 
 their character and to their high commercial status. 
 They were accustomed to the most moderate religious 
 teaching, of the order of the Savoyard vicar rather than 
 of Calvin. A correct worldliness had at this time 
 free play. Never had these good folks heard such a 
 thing mentioned as the necessity of repentance, and 
 the worthlessness in God's sight of their good works, 
 which they associated with their almsgivings in the 
 category of virtue. We can easily understand the 
 indignant astonishment with which they heard the first 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD. 167 
 
 sermons of their new pastor. This young man, with 
 the pale brow and the thrilling voice, made a direct 
 assault on all their received ideas, and shook all their 
 prejudices. He began by proclaiming plainly that 
 the virtuous themselves have need of pardon, and he 
 threatened them with the judgments of God no less 
 than the people of evil life on whom they looked down 
 with scorn. He drove their human pride from one 
 hiding-place to another, till at length he denounced it 
 at that very intellectual and moral height at which it 
 felt itself safe, and secure of all the rewards of heaven. 
 The new preacher thus raised very urgent personal 
 questions in an audience accustomed to be left unmo- 
 lested in its calm repose. Thus in his sermon, " Can 
 you die happy?" his powerful arguments disturbed 
 the most easy-going consciences. To these wavering 
 minds, satisfied with a religion of sentiment, which 
 was often nothing more than theism disguised under 
 a traditional outward observance, the earnest disciple 
 of the religious awakening preached the necessity of a 
 clear and definite belief, in his sermon on " Sanctifica- 
 tion by the truth." The offence was aggravated by 
 the unquestionable power and ability of the new 
 preacher, which made it impossible to remain unmoved 
 and lukewarm under his teaching. The opposition was 
 at first vague ; then it took positive shape, and a 
 majority of the Church and of the Consistory decided 
 to request the removal of the obnoxious innovator. 
 We will not go into all the details of this obstinate 
 
168 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 controversy, in which the meekest of men appeared the 
 most intractable, because he felt it a matter of con- 
 science to resist. 1 
 
 He was unquestionably right in his refusal to yield 
 to the solicitations made to him to alter or modify his 
 preaching. To do so would have been to belie his 
 convictions. He was perfectly justified in appealing 
 to the ancient constitution of the Reformed Church 
 to prove that he was no innovator, that he was, in 
 fact, simply recalling the Church to her old tradi- 
 tions as still embodied in her liturgies. He was in- 
 vincible so long as he kept to this position. His 
 speeches in his own defence in the Consistory are 
 models of eloquent argument. Never did a witness 
 of the truth appeal more forcibly to the sacred 
 obligation of confessing the whole truth as he 
 himself believed it. In the Session of the Consistory 
 held April 24, 1827, he said : 
 
 "As a doctor does not choose the remedies most agreeable to 
 his patients, but those most needful, which are also often to the 
 taste the most unpleasant, so I do not choose that which may- 
 please my hearers, who are my patients, but that which may do 
 them good. I am willing to consult the taste of the majority on 
 all points where conscience is not involved, as in my mode of 
 living, in my manner, in my forms of speech, but I cannot be 
 guided in the choice of my principles by the plurality of votes. 
 In matters of principle I have no right of choice at all ; I do 
 not make the truth, for I am not God ; I receive it complete 
 from Him." 2 
 
 1 See " La Destitution d'Adolphe Monod." Paris, 1864. 
 2 Ibid. p. 12. 
 
ADOLPHE MO NOD. 169 
 
 We feel that he was right when he indignantly- 
 refused the assistance of a suffragan, who held 
 opinions different from his own, and whom the 
 Consistory tried to press upon him, on the excuse 
 that his feeble health rendered additional help neces- 
 sary. On this occasion he writes : " I owe it to 
 myself to say that I have not given any of you 
 occasion to esteem me so lightly, as to think I do 
 not believe in my private life that which in public I 
 profess to believe ; that I could give up for any 
 earthly consideration the deep convictions which you 
 know I entertain ; and that I would not rather die at 
 my post than call to my aid a man who would oppose, 
 or who would at the least not seek to cherish in the 
 souls committed to me by God, the principles which 
 I believe, and which I know to be indispensable to 
 their happiness in this world and in that which is to 
 come." 
 
 It was in vain that the Consistory tried various 
 plans to compass its ends. It sent a deputation to 
 Monod to complain that he was propagating prin- 
 ciples dangerous to the morality and peace of the 
 Church. In one of its regular sessions it exhorted 
 him to modify his preaching and his manner of life. 
 He has only one reply to make to all these demands, 
 and we give it in his own noble words : 
 
 " I count neither my glory, my honour, my health, my life dear 
 to me, save as the gifts of God. I am conscious how easy it 
 would be for one so young as I am, and with a naturally warm 
 
1 70 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 temper, to feel personal resentment at the opposition offered to 
 me. But I have constantly sought, and I believe, by the grace 
 of God, I have been able to overcome this temptation. I long to 
 assure you that the deep grief you have caused me, is wholly free 
 from the slightest admixture of bitterness towards any one of 
 you, and that I would willingly devote all that remains to me of 
 health already impaired, if by this sacrifice I could make one of 
 you a partaker of that Divine felicity, the contagion of which 
 you dread ! The Bible has taught me that the life of man has 
 two parts, the one transitory and the other eternal ; and that 
 the importance of the former is lost in that of the latter, as the 
 finite is absorbed by the infinite. It has taught me that the 
 only way to a happy eternity is faith in Jesus Christ. It has 
 taught me further what this faith in Jesus Christ is, as a con- 
 viction, as a state of soul, as a life. It has taught me yet again 
 that it is the will of God that certain men should devote them- 
 selves to the work of leading souls into the faith. I am one of 
 those men, and I thank God for it ; for, next to the privilege of 
 being a Christian, I know none more to be desired than that 
 of being a Christian pastor. Henceforth, all my time, all my 
 power, all that I have, all that I am, belong to the service of 
 God in the gospel ; and it is my constant prayer that I may do 
 nothing which shall not tend to confirm in the faith those who 
 do believe, and to bring into it those who do not." 
 
 The firm tone thus maintained by Monod, with all 
 
 the dignity becoming a faithful witness of the truth, 
 
 only had the effect of irritating the opposition, which 
 
 became also numerically stronger and stronger. We 
 
 can gauge the hopeless distance which separated 
 
 Monod from his ecclesiastical adversaries, by the 
 
 petition put in circulation by them in the Church to 
 
 obtain his removal. It certainly was not wanting in 
 
 naivete. The petitioners complained that a young 
 
 theologian had come among them, if not to destroy, 
 
 at least greatly to disturb, the divine calm which had 
 
ADOLPHE MO NOD. 171 
 
 been enjoyed at Lyons, by exhuming old doctrines, 
 which the good sense and sound reason of man (more 
 advanced now than in the age of the Reformation) 
 had wisely buried in oblivion. It was useless, they 
 went on, to go back to such pernicious teachings, 
 which were contrary alike to the majesty and good- 
 ness of God and to that religion — the most difficult 
 and the noblest of all — the religion of good works. 
 The petitioners therefore asked that the competent 
 authorities would take efficient measures against a 
 religion which renders virtue useless, unless it is asso- 
 ciated with a romantic and indefinable gracious dis- 
 position, which is an offence to human reason, the 
 offspring of the Divine. 
 
 The signataries bitterly reproached the evangelical 
 pastor with the determination shown by him to make 
 proselytes, especially among the Catholics. Each one 
 for himself and God for all, is the universal motto of 
 sceptical latitudinarianism. 
 
 The complaints made bore relation not merely to 
 the substance of Adolphe Monod's preaching, but also 
 to its captivating form, and to the vehemence of his 
 oratory. It is beyond question that he was guilty 
 every Sunday of flagrant offence on the score of 
 eloquence, and might well thus perturb the souls of 
 the lovers of the divine calm. They would only too 
 gladly, as in the days of deacon Paris, have placarded 
 above his pulpit a Consistorial decree to the effect 
 "tfiat it was forbidden by God to work miracles in this 
 
1 72 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 place ;" and that he must confine himself to utter- 
 ances as dull and cold as their own spirits. We can 
 hardly keep back a smile when we see Adolphe Monod 
 attempting to justify his oratorical offences, and half 
 promising to restrain their impetuous ardour by com- 
 mitting his thoughts to paper. He only made this 
 concession, by which it was simply impossible that he 
 or any other born orator could be bound, to show that 
 the one point on which he could not yield a hair's 
 breadth, was the substance of his teaching. 
 
 The Consistory took into consideration the petition 
 against Monod on the 22nd of December, 1829. 
 It made the complaints urged by the petitioners the 
 pretext for asking the obnoxious pastor to resign. 
 This he refused to do. The Consistory dared not yet 
 go so far as to dismiss him, and a sort of truce was 
 concluded without any concession on M. Monod's 
 part. The situation remained none the less intoler- 
 able, and the Consistory tried by all means in its 
 power to show its ill-will, refusing in the report of 
 proceedings to insert his own words, and depriving 
 him of the right of regular religious instruction. 
 
 So far the wrong is entirely on the side of the 
 ecclesiastical authorities. It cannot be denied, how- 
 ever, that from the year 183 1 Adolphe Monod, being 
 pressed beyond endurance, hastened the final rupture 
 by proceedings which would have rendered his con- 
 tinuance impossible, even under the best disposed 
 Government. 
 
ADOLPHE MO NOD. 173 
 
 The interesting report which he gave at the com- 
 mencement of the year, of the state of the Church 
 at Lyons, probably brought matters to a crisis. He 
 rose altogether above local circumstances, and de- 
 scribed with great power the close conflict between 
 Rationalism and the religious Revival then going on 
 throughout France and Switzerland. It is in this 
 masterly paper that we discover what is the weak 
 point of Adolphe Monod's position. He completely 
 confounds the attitude of a State Church composed 
 of heterogeneous elements, with that of a Church of 
 professing Christians, governing itself by principles 
 which it has freely accepted. This confusion is very 
 apparent in the following passage : 
 
 " The Reformed Church of France," said Monod, in a session 
 of the Consistory, " maybe regarded in a twofold aspect : from a 
 religious point of view, as a Christian Church, founded by God 
 and under pledge to God ; and from a civil point of view, as a 
 State Church, under the protection of the Government. From 
 the religious point of view, it is a union of men who believe the 
 principles contained in Holy Scripture. As a State Church, it 
 has a rule to which it is bound by its constitution. That rule is 
 the confession of La Rochelle." 
 
 The preacher concluded from these considerations 
 that he was the sole representative at Lyons of the 
 true Church, and that the State was bound by the con- 
 fession of faith to uphold him. This was clearly a 
 misconception of the character of the modern State, 
 which is essentially a lay institution, and cannot enter 
 into doctrinal discussions. It takes simply a histori- 
 
1 74 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 cal view of the Churches associated with it. It is 
 quite incompetent to interfere in any differences that 
 may arise on points of dogma. Besides, a Church 
 composed of a promiscuous multitude cannot be 
 bound by the letter of its creed, especially when, as 
 was the case with the Reformed Church of France, 
 after the laws of Germinal, it has no ultimate and 
 competent authority on matters of faith. In cases 
 where, as in the Church at Lyons, the majority have 
 become estranged from the old religion, there is no 
 means of compelling them to come back to it. It is 
 very grievous that the faith should be thus abandoned, 
 and a vague historic tradition substituted for it ; but 
 it is impossible to reimpose by force a creed which no 
 longer commands belief. An evangelical preacher 
 confronted with a State Church like that of Lyons 
 has only one alternative ; he must either work on 
 patiently till he can win back the majority to his own 
 faith, or he must take up an entirely independent 
 position and say, " Let who will follow me." 
 
 We do not blame Adolphe Monod for having failed 
 to make these distinctions. Indeed, it would have been 
 scarcely possible for him to make them at a period 
 when the ecclesiastical problem was still undefined. 
 Even half a century later we find the same confusion 
 still prevailing, and involving in inextricable confusion 
 the affairs of the Reformed Church of France, after 
 the Synod of 1872. It is an error that can only be 
 dissipated by stern and repeated lessons of experience, 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD. 175 
 
 and it is far from having vanished, even in our own 
 day. Adolphe Monod had, indeed, already perceived 
 what was the true solution of the problem, for he did 
 not hesitate, in one of his speeches in the Consistory, 
 to express his sympathy with the Free Churches of 
 North America. 
 
 He now felt himself impelled by conscience to a 
 course of action which was, to say the least of it, 
 imprudent. 
 
 On Sunday, March 20, 183 1, the Sunday preceding 
 the great Easter Communion, he was observed to be 
 more pale than usual when he entered the pulpit, and 
 evidently overcome with the feeling of his tremendous 
 responsibility. The subject which he took up was 
 felt by all to be a crucial one. The congregation was 
 astonished to hear him read the words of the insti- 
 tution of the Lord's Supper, although no eucharistic 
 table was spread. His object was, in fact, to guard 
 against unworthy communicants by putting to his 
 hearers this question, in its novelty very startling to 
 them: "Who ought to communicate?" Never had his 
 eloquence risen to such a height of power and holy 
 passion. After recalling the sacred character of the 
 eucharistic table and the barriers by which the disci- 
 pline of the early Church had fenced it, in order to 
 avoid a profanation which was an outrage to Christ, 
 and brought swift condemnation on the head of the 
 guilty communicant, he drew a terrible picture of the 
 irregularities and scandals of the Church of the day 
 
1 76 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 and of his own Church. Then he exclaimed, in 
 accents never forgotten by those who heard them : 
 
 " O Church of my Saviour, thou wast a church beloved of God, 
 a plant of His own right hand planting, and cherished by His 
 care. But the barriers have been thrown down. Those who 
 called themselves by the name of Christ, but who were not of 
 Christ, have sought to be received into Thy bosom, and they have 
 entered in only to ravage and defile. All have become mixed 
 together in hopeless confusion ; and now, in the midst of this 
 motley crowd, without faith and without law, but still calling 
 itself the Church of Christ, there can only be found here and 
 there a few children of God who can scarcely recognise each 
 other, so scattered are they in the midst of the unbelievers and 
 enemies of the Lord. And in regard especially to the Com- 
 munion, this is what has happened. Every one who says ' I am a 
 Christian,' all those who have been baptized, all who attend re- 
 ligious exercises, claim to be members of the Church, and to 
 have a right to the Communion ; as if Church membership 
 meant nothing more than bearing the name of Christ, as if re- 
 generation came by baptismal water and not by the Spirit ; as 
 if a human voice, a certain building, the walls, columns, arches, 
 seats of a place of worship, could convert a sinner ! O lamen- 
 table confusion ! O desecrated body and blood of the Lord ! 
 
 "And shall the table of my Master be always thus profaned ? 
 Shall the days of Communion always be to a faithful minister, 
 days of lamentation, mourning and woe ? For myself, I would 
 rather lay the body of Christ upon a stone, and scatter His blood 
 to the winds, than present them to unbelieving and profane lips. 
 O my God ! Thou knowest that I speak truth. Wilt Thou not 
 arise and take away this scandal from Thy Church ? This is no 
 slight darkness, no trifling error, no small irregularity. It is dire 
 disorder, gross darkness, utter infidelity — infidelity wearing the' 
 name of Christ." I 
 
 Adolphe Monod himself afterwards admitted that 
 he had gone too far in this sermon. To us it appears 
 
 1 Sermons, vol. i. pp. 271-282. 
 
ADOLPHE MO NOD. 
 
 177 
 
 exaggerated only in manner ; it is the exaggeration 
 of a great orator, carried away by his impetuous 
 eloquence and fired with a righteous indignation. 
 
 It will be readily understood, however, that a chal- 
 lenge like this gave terrible offence, though the inten- 
 tion of the author was only to make a strong appeal 
 to conscience. To the vote of censure passed by the 
 Consistory upon the sermon of the 20th of March, 
 Adolphe Monod replied on the 14th of April by a 
 formal proposition to restore in the Church of Lyons 
 the ancient discipline of the Reformed Church of 
 France. This was an implied acknowledgment that 
 the ecclesiastical law of the past needed a fresh sanc- 
 tion on the part of the regular authorities. 
 
 This inconsistency did not strike him. The next 
 day the Consistory replied to him by an order for his 
 dismissal, which, however, could not take effect till 
 it had received ministerial confirmation. Adolphe 
 Monod rendered the confirmation inevitable, in spite 
 of his eloquent written vindication of himself, by his 
 startling proceeding the next Sunday (Whit-Sunday), 
 when, after preaching, he left the pulpit in order not to 
 preside at the communion of the day. It should be 
 added that he had done everything in his power to 
 provide a substitute for himself on this occasion. On 
 the 19th of March, 1832, the royal confirmation was 
 given to his dismissal from office. It must be ad- 
 mitted that no other course was open to the Minister 
 of Public Worship. 
 
 13 
 
1 78 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 We have dwelt at some length on this half-forgotten 
 episode of the internal history of French Protestantism, 
 because it is characteristic at once of the troublous 
 times in which Monod lived, of his own courageous 
 fidelity to the cause of what he believed to be true, 
 and of the remarkable oratorical powers developed 
 by him in these stormy controversies. As soon as he 
 found himself dismissed from the pastorate, he gathered 
 around him his adherents, united himself to a small 
 evangelical Church which had been formed in Lyons, 
 and began to conduct worship in a humble building, 
 very inadequate to the exercise of such gifts as his, 
 which could command the attention of multitudes. 
 
 There are few sacrifices more costly to a great orator 
 than this ; but Adolphe Monod accepted the changed 
 conditions with touching humility. He did not wish 
 to be regarded as the founder of a new Church. 
 He objected to this for two reasons. First, he was 
 fully convinced that the Reformed Church of France 
 was by its constitution evangelical, and that therefore 
 its sons ought not, by founding another Church side 
 by side with it, to proclaim its fall, and to hand over 
 to the Rationalistic school the heritage of their fathers. 
 Second, it was his fixed opinion through life, that on 
 matters of this sort it is wise to be as prudent and 
 moderate, as on the side of evangelical truth it is 
 incumbent to be bold and unflinching. His abiding 
 convictions on this point are expressed briefly in his 
 interesting appeal to the Christians of France and of 
 
ADOLPHE MO NOD. 179 
 
 other lands, on behalf of the Evangelical Church of 
 Lyons. In that appeal he says : " I shall wait; I shall 
 follow the Lord step by step, day by day, acting, as 
 necessity arises, in what appears to me the path indi- 
 cated by Providence. I shall mark out no fixed course 
 beforehand. I shall go straight forward, guiding myself 
 outside the sanctuary (since I have no longer a place 
 within it) by the same principles which I have ever 
 preached." 
 
 It was needful, however, to render habitable this 
 tent, pitched opposite that house of God from which 
 the preacher had been shut out. The Evangelical 
 Church of Lyons was led on to establish, one after 
 another, the institutions essential to a Church which 
 would subsist and develop itself upon the basis of a 
 living faith. The new ministry of Adolphe Monod, 
 begun in poverty, and without any assured means of 
 maintenance, soon became abundantly fruitful. The 
 Evangelical Church of Lyons, for which he always 
 cherished a tender affection, received from him the 
 two special characteristics by which it has been so 
 honourably distinguished, — a large-hearted Chris- 
 tianity which commended it to all believers, and a 
 missionary zeal so active and intense that it brought 
 in large numbers of converts from surrounding Catho- 
 licism. It had a succession of pastors all animated 
 with the spirit of its founder. During this, the most 
 straitened period of his pastoral career, Adolphe 
 Monod found a true helpmeet in his wife, to whom he 
 
180 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 had been married in 1832 ; she entered with hearty 
 sympathy into all the great purposes of his life, shared 
 his activities, comforted him in his sorrows, and light- 
 ened by her hopeful spirit all his hours of depression. 
 He found himself surrounded by a rapidly increasing 
 family, to whom he was the tenderest of fathers, 
 devoting himself specially to the moral education of 
 his children. His home was a beautiful example of 
 what a Christian household may be. I hold in grate- 
 ful memory some of the Sunday evenings I myself 
 spent there, when Monod gathered his young children 
 around him and presented the gospel to them in its 
 most winning and attractive form. 
 
 III. 
 
 In 1836 Adolphe Monod was called to fill the 
 Chair of Morals in the theological faculty of Mon- 
 tauban. Here he found a new sphere of usefulness 
 not less practical in its results, for we can trace the 
 beneficial effects of his training in successive gene- 
 rations of pastors. His influence over the youthful 
 mind was extraordinary. He was a true master, in 
 the noblest sense of the word, kindling in young and 
 eager souls the spark of a higher life, so that they 
 looked up to him reverently as their spiritual father. 
 He had not the transcendant inventive or creative 
 genius which has distinguished some of the great 
 professors of science and philosophy in our day. He 
 has not left any strong impress on theological teach- 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD. 181 
 
 ing ; in truth, peculiarly adapted as was the study of 
 morals to his habits of mind, he at this time only 
 treated it slightly. He had not the leisure necessary 
 to make his mark in Hebrew philology, and it was not 
 till a later period of his life that he fully recognised 
 the requirements of scientific criticism. He had hardly 
 time to sketch out his exegetical course of the New 
 Testament. His teaching was, however, so remarkable 
 for its severe beauty of form, its clearness of exposition, 
 and the spirit pervading it, that it exerted a very 
 wholesome influence over his students. They could 
 not but admire in him the man and the orator. This 
 was the secret of his power over young men. He set 
 before them so lofty a standard of Christian morality 
 that he commanded their respect, and gave them a 
 very high idea of the calling of a Christian and a 
 pastor. 
 
 Though reserved and silent, his unvarying kindness 
 rendered him always accessible to his students, and 
 no master was ever more beloved and respected. His 
 eloquence became constantly more impressive, and 
 riveted his youthful hearers, who were never weary of 
 listening to him. He in his turn devoted to them the 
 noblest efforts of his genius, not only in consecutive 
 homilies on Holy Scripture, such as his expositions of 
 Paul's Epistles to the Ephesians, but also in lectures 
 on sacred oratory and in the great sermons belonging 
 to this period of his life, which were all delivered first 
 at Montauban. He thus formed around him a sort of 
 
1 82 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRA ITS. 
 
 evangelical Port Royal, one of those quiet retreats 
 open to all that is noble and pure, where the love of 
 letters is elevated by the grandeur of the object 
 pursued, where study is blended with prayer, and the 
 consecration of soul lends a sacredness to all the work 
 of preparation. 
 
 It was not my privilege to be one of Adolphe 
 Monod's disciples, but a short stay at Montauban, in 
 1844, gave me a vivid impression of his extraordinary 
 power as a Christian and as an orator. It was im- 
 possible not to be struck with his happy blending of 
 fervour with soberness, of kindness with severity, of 
 brilliant gifts with unfeigned humility, and by his 
 complete absorption in his double work — the care of 
 the Church and the watchful training of its future 
 pastors. Virtue went forth from him, and it seemed 
 as if all who came in contact with him felt its in- 
 fluence. He impressed on them, more or less, his own 
 image. His memory is as living to-day as it was 
 thirty years ago, in the hearts of his disciples. 
 Montauban did not exhaust his activity. He never 
 allowed himself to rest, and almost all his vacations 
 were devoted to preaching tours, which carried the 
 influence of his powerful words into the humblest 
 villages as well as into the great towns of France. 
 His health was, however, always feeble, and his 
 naturally melancholy temperament, though it could 
 not disturb the quiet depths of his faith, often made 
 his work a weariness both to the flesh and the spirit. 
 
ADO LP HE MO NOD. 183 
 
 Before passing on to a fresh stage in Monod's life, 
 let us attempt to describe what he was as a theologian 
 and an orator in this his first manner. His appear- 
 ance in the Protestant pulpit was a marked event. 
 No such eloquence had been heard since the days of 
 Saurin. The desert had been a school of confessors 
 rather than of orators. The preachers who came forth 
 from it on the eve of the French Revolution had well- 
 nigh lost the staunch convictions of their fathers. 
 There was no inspiration in their colourless doctrine, 
 and they borrowed from the First Empire the insipid 
 eloquence of its official literature. There were, no 
 doubt, exceptions to this prevailing mediocrity. A 
 powerful thinker like Samuel Vincent was able to 
 hold the eager attention of his hearers, though he 
 lacked the gift of real eloquence. We have already 
 alluded to the distinguished abilities of the elder 
 Monod. M. Athanase Coquerel the elder, who had 
 become his colleague a few years before the com- 
 mencement of Adolphe Monod's work at Lyons, dis- 
 played during more than half a century a remarkable 
 versatility of talent. He was distinguished for his in- 
 exhaustible verve', his rare faculty of giving freshness 
 to his subject, though without any of the highest gifts 
 either of thought or language. He was a ready and 
 effective speaker, and a careful observer of classic 
 forms. The marked success which attended him 
 through the long career of his ministry is the incon- 
 trovertible proof of his powers as an orator. It was 
 
1 84 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 impossible, however, that the vague belief in the 
 supernatural which prevailed from the beginning of 
 the century, should give as powerful an impetus even 
 to sacred oratory as an earnest evangelical faith. It 
 recognised neither the terrors of condemnation nor the 
 ecstatic joys of pardon. Its optimism made it glide 
 over the surface of things, without discovering beneath 
 the smooth and brittle ice, the abyss into which poor 
 humanity had fallen. Nor did it catch a glimpse of 
 that other abyss of infinite mercy which forms so 
 glorious a contrast. The cross, in ceasing to be the 
 mystery of redeeming love, loses all its supreme 
 beauty. The emotions which appeal most strongly 
 to the soul of man are thus withdrawn. Instead of 
 paradise lost and regained, there remains only a moral 
 idyll. We have a Gessner instead of a Milton. On 
 the other hand, it is not enough to be possessed of an 
 organ of rich and deep-toned harmonies ; it is needful 
 also to have one who can make the music. The 
 beauty of the instrument is nothing without the skil- 
 ful artist. In France, at least, until Adolphe Monod 
 appeared, the Protestant Church had produced wit- 
 nesses, sometimes truly apostolic men like Felix Neff, 
 but no orators in the true sense of the word. Often 
 it was a matter of principle with them to be careless 
 of the forms of speech, either from an idea that time 
 devoted to the cultivation of the beautiful would be 
 so much taken from that earnest appeal to conscience 
 which seemed their supreme work, or from some 
 
ADOLPHE MO NOD. 185 
 
 scruple about allowing the least part to the human 
 element in the work of conversion — a sort of uncon- 
 scious Manicheeism, which is the natural result of a 
 narrow Puritanism. The rigorous orthodoxy with 
 which they satisfied themselves, and which they 
 readily confounded with eternal truth, was ill adapted 
 in its rigid forms to a broad and living exposition. 
 It is true that these defects were redeemed by the 
 ardour and purity of missionary zeal, but they were 
 none the less great obstacles to the exercise of pulpit 
 oratory. Adolphe Monod possessed this gift in the 
 very highest degree. He had, as we have already 
 observed, the outward gifts of the orator — the sonorous 
 voice, the expressive gesture, and, above all, a face 
 which was the true reflection of his pure and ardent 
 soul. His imagination was vivid, his mind clear and 
 strong, and his utterance naturally ready, exact, and 
 powerful. Above all, he had that indescribable faculty 
 in a speaker, of arresting and holding the attention 
 of his hearers, and of imparting to them his own 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 At Geneva he had found a school of oratory on the 
 academic model, which had largely cultivated a dif- 
 fusive style of pulpit rhetoric. This was probably not 
 without its uses for set preaching, but Monod soon 
 cast off that which was artificial and declamatory in 
 its method. His natural gifts received their highest 
 impetus from his new convictions, which had shaken 
 his being to its very centre. These gave him that 
 
1 86 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 concentration of thought and feeling which is the first 
 condition of passion. One great element of his power 
 was his intense earnestness, which his hearers could 
 not but feel, and which gave energy to his every 
 word and gesture. Christianity, as he understood 
 it, revealed to him the tragic and sublime aspect of 
 things human and divine, and the rich poetry of the 
 Hebrew Scriptures supplied him with the glowing 
 colours and images in which he delighted. His 
 imagination revelled in the Bible ; his heart and his 
 head fed upon it. Lastly, his love for the immortal 
 soul, his eager longing to rescue it from itself and 
 from supreme peril, gave to his discourses that 
 pointedness and directness which makes the words 
 sharper than a two-edged sword. 
 
 His highest preparation for work was prayer. This 
 is very evident from his manuscripts, in which we find 
 the thread of thought often broken that his soul may 
 cry out to God in utterances like the following : " O 
 Christ, help me by the blood of Thy cross." 
 
 One of his sermons opens with this prayer, which 
 
 was plainly the secret outpouring of his soul to God : 
 
 " O my God, give me by Thy Spirit to lay down at the foot of 
 the cross of Thy Son, that searching of myself, and that dis- 
 quietude which have overcome me for these three days, to the 
 detriment of my sermon, of my faith, and of Thy glory, and to 
 the scandal of my brethren. As for my sermon, help me to 
 make it not such as I will, but as Thou wilt. Thou hast the 
 secret of helping to do much in a little time. I give myself up 
 to Thee, and begin my work without fear, my eyes being up 
 unto Thee. Enlighten me for the love of Christ." 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD. 187 
 
 Theremin has written a book at once ingenious and 
 true, under the title, " L'Eloquence est une vertu." 
 In it he shows how much even natural eloquence 
 owes to the qualities of the soul. The example of 
 Adolphe Monod is a strong confirmation of his 
 theory. He himself fully realised this co-opera- 
 tion of conscience, and he attached great importance 
 to the moral condition in the preparation of his 
 sermons, even from an artistic point of view ; for in 
 his case the mystical preparation was in no way in- 
 compatible with the other. He was an artist not by 
 temperament only, but as a duty. Is it not a point of 
 conscience to neglect nothing which may give to truth 
 a form worthy of itself, and make it effective and 
 impressive ? 
 
 Surely the feeling of a sacred responsibility will be 
 alone sufficient to prevent the use of declamation and 
 mere meretricious oratory. A true love of souls must 
 forbid the pandering to a false taste by ornate and 
 florid speech, and thus the Christian orator will be 
 saved from one of the worst faults of an age of literary 
 decadence. Even manner, the most purely external 
 adjunct of oratory, cannot escape the influence of the 
 speaker's prevailing tone. On this point Adolphe 
 Monod gave some words of wise counsel in an inau- 
 gural discourse of the faculty of Montauban. Ad- 
 dressing the future pastors, he said : 
 
 " Exercise yourselves without scruple, gentlemen, in the art of 
 speaking and of style, but let it be in a Christian spirit. Let 
 
1 88 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 these be to you always simply a means, not an end. If you 
 make oratory itself the end at which you aim, you are no longer 
 preachers, you are not even orators, you are actors. If you cul- 
 tivate speech as a means of glorifying God and of doing good to 
 men, you fulfil a duty." l 
 
 After dwelling on what was purely technical in 
 style, the professor took up its moral aspect. He 
 said : 
 
 " The fundamental principle which forms the basis of all rules, 
 is that oratory has its seat, not in the lips, but in the feeling and 
 thought, and that it depends less on the voice than on the soul. 
 It is the soul which must speak. This is the condition of all 
 true eloquence. If the success of an actor like Talma depended, 
 as he himself said, on the intensity of his meditation on the 
 dramatic work which he was to render, how much more must 
 this be true of the preacher ? The more deeply he is impressed 
 with the subject he is to advance, the better will he convey it, 
 and the more natural and simple will his manner be. The best 
 method for acquiring that ease and freedom of speech which is 
 without stiffness, effort, or strain, is the heroic faith which leans 
 upon God Himself, and in the greatness of the cause loses sight 
 of the creature. Thus regarded, true elocution is itself a virtue." 
 
 Monod was never willing, however, to dispense with 
 the inspiration that comes from the presence of a 
 large assembly. Hence, after most careful prepara- 
 tion, he almost always preached extempore. He has 
 himself told us that at Lyons it was his practice to 
 preach from notes. The discourse in this, its first 
 form, was afterwards subjected to a severe revision. 
 Each of his sermons, especially during his stay at 
 Montauban, was a complete oratorical treatise em- 
 
 1 Discours de rentree, Nov. 26, 1840. 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD. 189 
 
 bracing some one aspect of Christian doctrine, often 
 clothed in the most brilliant forms, and having all 
 the vivacity of unwritten speech. Hence his sermons 
 were of extraordinary length, such as only his rare 
 gifts could have made acceptable. It was, to use his 
 own expression, preaching with a full orchestra. To 
 us he seems to excel far more in this than in the 
 homiletic style, which he also cultivated very carefully, 
 as may be seen from his sermons on the temptation 
 of Christ, and on the creation. 
 
 Adolphe Monod's preaching is not essentially either 
 exegetical or psychological, although it contains both 
 exegesis and psychology. It is primarily synthetic. 
 Doctrinal exposition hurries on to practical applica- 
 tion. Festinat ad res. He is fond of using striking, 
 sometimes paradoxical expressions, as when he speaks 
 of virtuous sinners, and is apt to conclude each portion 
 of his discourse with an oratorical refrain too often 
 repeated. When he takes up an ethical subject he 
 always comes back to the great doctrine of justifica- 
 tion by faith and of conversion. It is plain that his 
 only aim is to show the impenitent sinner that he is 
 in a position from which he cannot of himself escape. 
 His logic is close and forcible ; but sometimes it is 
 carried to an extreme, and goes beyond the mark, as 
 in the sermon on the fifth commandment, "Thou shalt 
 not kill." The idea of murder carried to this length 
 loses all exactness, and takes in every form of evil, 
 since there is not one which is not deadly to the soul. 
 
1 90 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRA ITS. 
 
 Imagination plays a great part in his preaching, but 
 he mixes on the palette only sacred colours. History 
 and nature are alike regarded through the medium of 
 the Bible, of which Monod makes most skilful use, 
 though he is sometimes too profuse in his allusions to 
 texts less generally known than he supposes. The 
 description of the murder of John the Baptist at the 
 request of the dancing Herodias ; of the anguish of 
 the jailer at Philippi, and of his deliverance after his 
 attempt at suicide ; the touching delineations of the 
 scenes of the passion, and the account of the first 
 apostolic mission, all these remain among the master- 
 pieces of the Christian oratory of our day. Monod 
 does not quote either from the Fathers of the early 
 Church nor from the Reformers, and scarcely ever 
 makes an allusion either to contemporary history or 
 literature. In this respect he presents a strong con- 
 trast to Lacordaire, who was, under his white Domini- 
 can robe, the most modern of French preachers. 
 Adolphe Monod dwells by preference on those im- 
 mortal themes of all Christian eloquence, which alone 
 respond to the cravings of humanity — suffering, sin, 
 death, the eternal hope, the Divine Fatherhood, the 
 mercy of Christ. If, in his treatment of them, he 
 lacks the originality and suggestiveness of Vinet, he 
 handles them with majestic eloquence, with brilliant 
 imagination, and fervid passion. He belongs rather 
 to the school of Bossuet and of Saurin, than of Fenelon 
 and Massillon. 
 
ADO LP HE MO NOD. 191 
 
 His influence on the pulpit oratory of the day was 
 great. It must be acknowledged, however, that his 
 disciples have not always followed him without peril ; 
 for in their imitations they have often caught what 
 was external merely in his great gifts — his striking 
 oratorical modes of speech. In this way they have 
 made grievous failures, like those Austrian generals 
 who were never worse beaten than when they at- 
 tempted to copy the tactics of Napoleon without 
 understanding the secret of their use. 
 
 The early preaching of Adolphe Monod has an 
 authoritative character derived from his views of theo- 
 logy. Both manner and matter were to be, to some 
 extent, modified in the next period of his life. During 
 the first years of his stay at Montauban he remained 
 firmly attached to the orthodoxy of the revival, at 
 least in its main outlines, for he was never one of 
 those who went to the greatest lengths. 1 
 
 While appealing to the ancient confessions of the 
 Reformation era, in confutation of the innovations of 
 Rationalism, he did not hold himself bound to the 
 letter of creeds, which were, after all, of only human 
 origin, and therefore inadequate, and bearing too 
 distinctly the peculiar impress of the age which called 
 them forth. Monod was not a strict Calvinist, nor 
 a millenarian of the English school ; but he had, 
 
 1 The discourses of this early period form the first two volumes of 
 the collection of sermons of Adolphe Monod, under the heading, 
 "Naples — Lyons — Montauban." Paris, 1850-59. 
 
192 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 nevertheless, accepted the leading principles of the 
 orthodoxy of the age, which was in many respects 
 more akin to the scholasticism of the seventeenth 
 than to the theology of the sixteenth century. He 
 held it in high estimation, because it was under 
 this rigid form that the everlasting gospel had first 
 reached his conscience, and he lent to it the warmth 
 of his own ardent nature. This theology was based 
 upon a wholly inadequate view of authority, very dif- 
 ferent from the broad and living view of the Reformers. 
 Apparently the theologians of the revival were only 
 carrying on the work of the Reformers in appealing 
 as they did to the sovereignty of Scripture. But the 
 seventeenth century had greatly modified their views 
 on this important point, casting into the shade that 
 which was to the Reformers the conclusive proof of 
 the inspiration of the Bible, that testimonium spiritus 
 sancti, which bases the authority of the book on the 
 testimony of the conscience divinely enlightened, and 
 clings to the person of Christ Himself as the great 
 central fact of revelation. The theologians of the 
 seventeenth century and those of the revival, follow- 
 ing in their footsteps, based the authority of the book 
 primarily upon the miraculous, proofs of which they 
 sought now in the fulfilment of prophecy, now in the 
 multiplication of signs and wonders. It was upon this 
 letter of credit that Scripture and revelation were to 
 be accepted, even before the soul had been brought 
 into contact with the truth itself, and primarily with 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD. 193 
 
 the living truth, which is Jesus Christ. The way was 
 from the Scriptures to Christ, not from Christ to the 
 Scriptures. 
 
 In such an apology there is not simply the error 
 of isolating the internal from the external evidence, 
 but also injustice is done to the latter, which has an 
 indispensible historical value in the establishment of 
 the credibility of the facts and documents of reve- 
 lation. When it is thus appealed to as a final authority 
 to cut short all inquiry, it becomes rather an obstacle 
 to conviction than a means of producing it. The 
 authority of Scripture is lowered, and made to appear 
 of the same character as that claimed by the Catholic 
 Church. We are not surprised, therefore, to find in 
 Adolphe Monod's apologetic work, " Lucile," that 
 the enlightened Catholic priest who is charged with 
 the task of establishing the authority of Holy Scrip- 
 ture, does so by arguments almost identical with those 
 which he employs in the second part of the book to 
 vindicate the authority of his Church. 
 
 The same apologetic point of view is presented, with 
 great force of thought and expression, in the sermon 
 on "Belief and Unbelief." It is always by prophecy 
 or miracle — that is, by the supernatural attestation of 
 Divine power — that the preacher silences the doubter. 
 He does, indeed, repeatedly break through the limita- 
 tions of his system, as when, at the commencement of 
 this very sermon, he tells his hearers that the best 
 way to prove to them that the Bible is the sword of 
 
 14 
 
1 94 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 the Spirit is to pierce them through with it ; but 
 there can be no doubt that he was at this time a 
 theologian of the authoritative school. With such 
 views of the authority of Scripture, it was difficult 
 to escape the doctrine of literal inspiration, though 
 Adolphe Monod never gave his formal adherence to 
 the theory of the infallibility of the sacred letter. In 
 his sermon on the " Temptation of Christ," he attaches 
 an exaggerated importance to the written word, to 
 the mere letter of the text. The book is certainly 
 made to play the part which belongs properly only 
 to the truth which is in the book. The casket is 
 made more of than the contents. 
 
 " This quotation," says the preacher, referring to 
 the text cited by Christ, " stops the enemy at once." x 
 The authority of the Bible thus regarded, gives it 
 rather the character of a formulary or Divine credo 
 than a history. The writing which contains the 
 revelation becomes confounded with the revelation 
 itself, and religion assumes an essentially dogmatic 
 character. History has, no doubt, still a place in the 
 system, but it is a subordinate place. Jesus Christ 
 fills an important position, but He is not the very 
 centre, life and substance of the whole. Purity of 
 doctrine is scrupulously guarded, and a hedge of 
 thorns is placed around it, as the ancient law was 
 protected by the synagogue of old. Adolphe Monod 
 never fell into these extremes ; he always presented 
 
 Sermons, vol. ii. p. 177. 
 
ADOLPHE MO NOD. 195 
 
 evangelical truth from a moral point of view ; but it 
 must be admitted that in his early teaching he gave 
 too prominent a place to doctrine in the development 
 of the religious life. This is very evident in his 
 sermon on " Sanctification by the Truth," in which 
 he argues that truth is necessarily the parent of good, 
 and error, even though unwitting, must result in evil, 
 just as in nature every seed, no matter how sown, 
 produces after its kind. 
 
 "Wheat," he says, " sown with or without design, 
 will always produce wheat ; and tares, in like manner, 
 will never bring forth anything but tares. Even 
 so, a doctrine can only yield such fruits of good or 
 evil as are germinally contained within it. Truth, 
 whether acquired with or without moral effort, will 
 always bear its happy fruit — sanctification ; so that 
 in order to express the moral condition of a soul, we 
 have not to ascertain in what way truth or error has 
 gained a lodgment within it, but which of the two 
 reigns within." 
 
 Revelation is thus regarded too much in the light 
 of a mathematical proposition, which appeals to the 
 intellect alone. It would be unjust to press this con- 
 clusion too far in the case of Adolphe Monod, for the 
 fervour of his genius constantly carried him beyond 
 the narrow bounds of his system. At the close of the 
 same sermon from which we have just quoted, we find 
 the following glowing panegyric on the heroism of 
 the modern missionary : 
 
1 96 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 " 1 have seen the young missionary tear himself from the 
 weeping embrace of a mother, and make the only sacrifice that 
 could be greater than hers ; I have seen the mother, bidding 
 back her tears, sustain and encourage him when his heart 
 seemed ready to fail in the prospect of the parting. And I 
 have seen the same mother again, weeping over his death ; but 
 not at his grave. His grave — if he has one — is in the far East, 
 and he has been borne to it, perhaps, by some faithful Hindoos, 
 anxious to return to the lifeless body the same faithful care 
 which he had bestowed upon their souls. His is the forgotten 
 grave of an unknown martyr in a land of strangers, unwatered 
 by a mother's tears ; and the only sound which will break its 
 stillness will be, perhaps, the tumult of some barbarous and 
 bloody rite, to do away with which he gave his life." 
 
 This peroration is in itself the refutation of the 
 general tenor of the sermon, for this martyr-mission- 
 ary might have gone forth from the Roman College, 
 instead of from one of the orthodox societies of 
 Paris or Basle. Adolphe Monod would not have 
 waited to know his creed before rendering tribute to 
 his heroic self-devotion, thus showing that above 
 orthodoxy there is the faith which moves in a higher 
 sphere. This faith does not necessarily remove all 
 intellectual doubts ; these may still exist, but they 
 affect only the form or formulary of truth, not its 
 essence, which is a life, a person, to be apprehended 
 by the heart and conscience, which is, in a word, Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 We need not dwell on Adolphe Monod's early 
 view of the doctrine of redemption. This was 
 entirely in harmony with the prevailing teaching of 
 the Revival, and erred, as it appears to us, by exag- 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD. 197 
 
 gerating the judicial aspect of the question, regarding 
 the cross as a sort of Divine retaliation, the actual 
 condemnation of the Son by the Father. 
 
 Monod never changed his views on this point. 
 They became firmly associated with his conception 
 of the justice of God, while he failed, as we think, 
 to recognise how mercy tempers justice. These two 
 attributes became, in his treatment of them, conflict- 
 ing hypostases, instead of blending in the unity of a 
 holy love. Hence he was led to insist on the suffering 
 of the cross as being really infinite, and exhausting 
 all the moral agony of hell. Even this view^ how- 
 ever, was inadequate, since the element of the endless 
 duration of suffering was necessarily omitted. From 
 the same premises Monod was led to accept the 
 final and hopeless doom of those who die impenitent, 
 — a doctrine affirmed with a certainty which is not 
 justified either by the letter of Scripture or by the 
 competence of the finite mind to judge of eternal 
 issues. 
 
 Eternal punishment is a constantly recurring topic 
 in Monod's early sermons, and he rises to even un- 
 wonted fervour when he touches on this awful theme, 
 though he never attempts, by harrowing descriptions 
 of the anguish of the doomed, to excite mere nervous 
 terror. We are bound to respect his faithfulness to 
 convictions which must have been intensely pain- 
 ful to his generous heart. "Those who heard him 
 tremble still," said Michelet. He himself was the 
 
1 98 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 first to tremble — to tremble for the immortal souls 
 whom he yearned to save from the abyss. It was to 
 arouse them from their deathful sleep that he sounded 
 again and again that awful alarm bell, at the tones of 
 which the most indifferent cheeks grow pale. In 
 truth, Monod made use of all the narrow dogmatisms 
 of the Revival, to startle out of its crass indifference 
 and worldliness a generation which had been lulled 
 into a false security by the facile, sentimental Protes- 
 tantism of the nineteenth century, crying " Peace ! 
 Peace ! " when there was no peace. 
 
 To the doctrine of justifying faith Monod gave 
 powerful affirmation, not pausing like Vinet to dis- 
 cover the synthesis which brings St. James into 
 harmony with St. Paul, and shows how sanctifkation 
 springs from justification, like the oak from the 
 acorn. He always maintained a clear distinction 
 between grace and free will, not trying to reconcile 
 them lest he should weaken the force of either. 
 
 No preacher ever made more direct and telling 
 appeals to man's power of choice. In a word, 
 Adolphe Monod, in this his first period, is the faith- 
 ful exponent of the current orthodoxy of the re- 
 ligious Revival, while avoiding the extravagancies 
 which here and there defaced it. 
 
 In the fervid eloquence of his preaching, however, 
 it is easy to trace, even at this period, the elements 
 of a broader and fuller conception of Christian truth. 
 It could not be otherwise in a heart and mind cast 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD. 199 
 
 in so generous a mould. It would be easy to multiply 
 passages from Monod's early sermons, which point to 
 a greater freedom in dealing with Scripture, and a 
 less exaggerated estimate of the importance of mere 
 doctrinal beliefs, than is consistent with his systematic 
 creed. But we must always bear in mind that a 
 religious system is to be judged, not by its recog- 
 nition of this or that isolated fact, but by its general 
 tone and spirit, by that which Spinoza calls the vin- 
 culum substances. Now it is indisputable that the pre- 
 vailing tone and spirit of Adolphe Monod's teaching 
 in the earlier part of his career was such as we have 
 described. It is equally certain that in later years his 
 theology underwent a very real change, though his 
 faith remained the same. In tracing the causes, both 
 external and internal, which contributed to this re- 
 sult, we shall have to go back to the history of his 
 life. 
 
 IV. 
 
 We left Adolphe Monod commencing at Mon- 
 tauban that professorial career in which he was so 
 useful. The sermons which he published in the early 
 part of his course exhibit no change of opinion. His 
 apologetic work, " Lucile," is, on the contrary, the 
 fullest expression of his early views. 
 
 This book was written in 1840, in the form of letters. 
 It was suggested by facts in real life, and we ourselves 
 were personally acquainted with the characters repre- 
 
200 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 sented. The substratum of fact was, however, soon 
 transformed and enriched by the hand of the artist. 
 No publication of Adolphe Monod's was more success- 
 ful than this. The ease and animation of the letters 
 and dialogues, the beauty of the language, the close 
 and lucid reasoning, the high tone and simple, earnest 
 piety which characterise it throughout, all combine to 
 make " Lucile " a cJtef d'ceuvre. It presents the grand 
 arguments which never grow old, as well as those 
 which were adapted only to a form of thought now 
 passed away. 
 
 As an apologist, Adolphe Monod belongs to the 
 English school. He not only ignores the great and 
 immortal apology of the Alexandrine fathers, but 
 he pays too little attention to Pascal, who in the 
 seventeenth century restored the psychological, without 
 derogating from the value of the historical evidence 
 of Christianity. 
 
 In " Lucile " the whole weight of the demonstra- 
 tion is made to rest upon the authority of Scripture, 
 as vindicated by outward signs, rather than by the 
 witness of the Spirit of God. Much more stress is 
 laid upon miracle and prophecies than upon the 
 person of Jesus Christ. This is its weak point. 
 
 At the very time when " Lucile " appeared, Vinet 
 was taking up and carrying on the work of the great 
 thinker of Port Royal. The influence of Vinet's 
 writings did more than anything else to enlarge 
 Adolphe Monod's theological views. Monod was a 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD. 201 
 
 diligent reader of the religious journal, " Le Semeur," 
 though but rarely a contributor to it, and he could 
 not but be struck with the wealth and depth of 
 thought which characterised all the articles, literary 
 and theological, of the Lausanne professor. Just as 
 we can trace through every line of the Epistle of 
 Peter the influence of Paul, his junior in the aposto- 
 late, so Adolphe Monod became, perhaps uncon- 
 sciously to himself, deeply imbued in mature life 
 with the spirit of Vinet. 
 
 He was no copyist, and in the writings of the two 
 men we find scarcely two expressions in common ; 
 but the assimilation of thought was deep and real. 
 
 Adolphe Monod's duties as a theological pro- 
 fessor became also a means of enlarging his views. 
 It was not possible for him, with his keenness of 
 insight and uprightness of conscience, to carry on a 
 course of sacred criticism, without becoming conscious 
 of many difficulties in the way of that theory of literal 
 inspiration, which he had accepted without thorough 
 investigation. If the whole edifice of Christian con- 
 viction is to be based upon the authority of the 
 Scriptures as demonstrated by miracles, the verbal 
 infallibility of the canon is an indispensable condition. 
 Failing this, recourse must be had to some other 
 criterion — to historical evidence, on the one hand, 
 which guarantees only that which is indubitably 
 authentic ; and, on the other hand, to the witness of 
 the Spirit, which testifies first to Christ Himself — the 
 
202 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 centre and soul of revelation — and through Him to 
 the Book, of which He is the Alpha and Omega. 
 
 Literal inspiration, and an indisputable canon — 
 these are the two pillars of the strict orthodoxy of 
 the Revival, which on these two points differed widely 
 from the Reformation of the sixteenth century. The 
 question at issue between this orthodoxy and the 
 liberal evangelical school is, whether the higher 
 authority belongs to Jesus Christ or to the Book, 
 provided always that the authenticity of the record be 
 established by competent historical evidence. With 
 however much of prudent reticence Adolphe Monod 
 entered on his course of sacred criticism, it could not 
 fail to modify — at first, perhaps, unconsciously to him- 
 self — his views of revelation. On his young hearers, 
 less fettered than himself by a traditional faith, the 
 effect was very manifest. There can be little doubt 
 that they were somewhat unsettled by the critical 
 problems which now presented themselves for the 
 first time to their minds, and it was in all probability 
 the desire to find some basis for their convictions 
 which could never be shaken, that led Adolphe 
 Monod to recast his apology, and with it, to some 
 extent, his theology. It would be erroneous to suppose 
 that there was anything like a violent rupture between 
 the first and the second period of his intellectual 
 life. The transition was a very gradual one, wrought 
 without observation in the quiet domain of his own 
 thoughts. The change must have been more marked 
 
ADO LP HE MO NOD. 203 
 
 if he had ever professed the Calvinism of the Scotch 
 Churches, or the doctrine of plenary inspiration 
 taught by the venerable Gaussen. But he had never 
 gone to extremes ; and it is only by a careful perusal 
 of the sermons preached after his removal to Paris, 
 that we discover how completely he had changed his 
 standpoint. 
 
 He was called to be suffragan in the great Church 
 at Paris in the year 1847. We shall presently speak 
 of the important ministry he there accomplished. 
 For the present we shall continue to trace the 
 development of his theological views. From his very 
 first sermon it was clear that these had undergone a 
 change. He was most careful, however, not to put 
 anything in a way which might be likely to cause a 
 division among evangelical Protestants ; hence he 
 avoided giving anything like a polemical turn to 
 the expression of his new convictions. The great 
 purport of his preaching was, moreover, still the same. 
 He proclaimed restoration for lost man by the 
 redemption of Christ, justification by faith, a salva- 
 tion full and free. His convictions of the holiness of 
 God's law, of His claims, and of the desperate condi- 
 tion to which man was reduced by sin, were as strong 
 as ever. This was the vital truth of the orthodoxy of 
 the Revival, and this gave force to its reaction against 
 the frivolous optimism which had crept into the 
 Protestant Church. Adolphe Monod, so far from 
 derogating at all from the holy austerity of the 
 
204 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 Revival, gave most emphatic vindication to it in his 
 later sermons. If he no longer dwelt so largely upon 
 eternal punishment, if towards the close of his life 
 he recognised the scriptural truth, that the secret 
 things (of eternity) belong to the Lord our God, he 
 did not therefore lower the standard of holy living. 
 Thus in one of his latest sermons we find him 
 exclaiming : " Far be it from us to preach a salvation 
 in which the glory of God should be sacrificed. Let 
 His holy law first be vindicated, and then, if it may 
 be so, let my salvation be secured." 1 
 
 In the following passage we trace the bond of 
 union between the two phases of his faith : " O 
 Cross! O blood of the Holy One shed for my sins ! 
 O bitter sacrifice of a spotless victim ! O scene, 
 which justifies alike the sinner in the eye of a holy 
 law, and the God who can be just, and yet the 
 Justifier ! O thrice blessed cross, my whole soul flees 
 to thee. It yearned for thee before it knew thee : 
 with what ardour shall it not embrace thee, now thou 
 art known!" 
 
 These closing words introduce us to the new world 
 
 1 " Doctrine Chre'tienne," Ouatre Discours. Paris, 1869. 
 11 Discours sur l'GEuvre du Fils," p. 167. The works of Adolphe 
 Monod dating from this period are, in addition to these doctrinal 
 discourses : Vol. III. of his Sermons, Paris 1859, containing his 
 sermon," La Parole vivante;"" St. Paul;" Cinq Discours, 1862-63. 
 Some single sermons of great value ; among others, "Nathanael," 
 " Les grandes ames," " Explication de l'Epitre aux Ephe'siens." 
 Paris, 1867. 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD. 205 
 
 in which for some years Adolphe Monod's thoughts 
 had begun to move. He says that he was yearning 
 for the cross before he knew it. What is this but an 
 acknowledgment that the gospel, of which the cross 
 is the foundation and the top-stone, appeals to the 
 deepest instincts of the soul and conscience, and 
 derives its highest title to our acceptance, not from 
 miracle or prophecy, but from its response to our 
 universal human needs ? 
 
 This is the point on which he dwells with so much 
 emphasis in the second period of his preaching. He 
 delights to show the harmony existing between con- 
 science and the gospel, and appeals constantly to 
 Tertullian's testimonium animce nahiraliter Chris- 
 tiana, and to the apologies of Clement of Alexan- 
 dria, of Pascal, and of Vinet, in support of his views. 
 
 We should like to quote, just as they stand, his 
 two admirable sermons upon Nathanael and " Les 
 grandes ames." The thoughts themselves are only 
 new in his perception of them, but they come out 
 with fresh brilliancy under his treatment, and show 
 how his own mind had been expanding. In his 
 sermon on Nathanael he says : 
 
 " All upright hearts belong to Jesus ; He claims them from the 
 first, and disposes of them as of that which is His own, and 
 which sooner or later must come to Him. The faithfulness of 
 Nathanael to the light he had received, placed him in a position 
 to receive the greater light, which as yet he lacked. It only 
 needed that he should be brought into the presence of Christ 
 to recognise in Him that which he sought. The true moral 
 
206 CONTEMPORA R Y FOR TRA ITS. 
 
 measure of every man is not the measure of light he possesses, 
 but his faithfulness to that which he has. Between an upright 
 heart and Christ there is, if I may so speak, such an affinity, 
 such an attraction, that if they were as far apart as the ends of 
 the earth, they would find some means of drawing near to each 
 other, or if they could not find a way, they would make one. 
 The parched earth has not more need of the rain from heaven, 
 than the weary and heavy-laden sinner has need of Christ. 
 This utter need makes him recognise, even afar off, the power 
 that is coming to his aid. This was what he had been seeking, 
 longing for, yearning after ; and had he not found it, he must 
 have invented it." l 
 
 The sermon on "Les grandes ames," is even more 
 daring in its use of the purely moral apology. In it 
 Monod says : 
 
 " The more truly great a soul is, the more will it be prepared, 
 all other things being equal, to receive Jesus Christ. There is 
 no soul which has not in it the elements of greatness, since all 
 were made by God, and made in His own image. It is only 
 the petty in us that is against Jesus Christ ; all that is great in 
 us is on His side." 2 
 
 Then, taking up one by one each separate faculty of 
 man — the reason, the heart, the conscience, the ima- 
 gination — he shows that in all these regions "the 
 current that bears us away from Jesus Christ is 
 superficial, troubled, polluted ; while that which draws 
 us to Him is deep, quiet and pure." 
 
 Christianity thus comes to us not so much in the 
 form of a doctrine as of a person ; it is embodied and 
 personified in Jesus Christ. Revelation, therefore, 
 
 1 Sermon on Nathanael. 
 2 " Les grandes ames," pp. 42, 43. 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD. 207 
 
 assumes a different aspect. Adolphe Monod, under 
 the influence of his earlier convictions, was wont to 
 present revelation as essentially a doctrine contained 
 in a book, and his apology was directed to establish- 
 ing against all opposition the authority of the Book. 
 But from this time we find him giving the first place, 
 not to the doctrine or the book which contains it, 
 but to the person of Christ ; and both doctrine and 
 book, so far from being depreciated, become illu- 
 minated with a new and clearer light. The authority 
 of the Book, being derived from the authority of 
 Him who, as Luther says, is greater than the Book, 
 is established on a stronger basis. It is in his ser- 
 mon on the living Word that he gives fullest expres- 
 sion to these views. He begins by distinguishing 
 between the written and the living Word, while 
 recognising that historically we only arrive at the 
 latter through the former. He unhesitatingly places 
 the living above the written and spoken Word. 
 
 " The one explains the thought of God, the other reproduces 
 God Himself. ' He who hath seen Christ hath seen God.' The 
 life means the entire being, and the preacher of the living per- 
 son of Jesus Christ, alone gives us the whole truth. No written 
 language, not even the Word of God itself, can express all. 
 There must always remain between the lines, gaps which mere 
 words cannot supply, which the life alone can fill. The life 
 means unity — the harmonious blending of even opposite 
 elements. The preaching of the living person of Christ is the 
 only means of satisfying all needs, even the most diverse, by 
 virtue of the elasticity peculiar to life." x 
 
 1 " La Parole vivante," pp. 9, 27. 
 
208 CONTEMPORA R Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 It follows from this distinction between the living 
 and the written Word, that the latter derives its 
 dignity, its grandeur, and consequently the best proof 
 of its Divine character, from Jesus Christ. Incessit 
 patuit Deus. There is no need, then, to follow the 
 devious course of the old apology, which led from the 
 Book to Christ, laboriously demonstrating the autho- 
 rity of the Bible from miracles and prophecies, which 
 the sceptical are always ready to call in question. 
 We must reverse the process, and lead from Christ to 
 the Book. 
 
 Adolphe Monod says, in a passage which shows 
 how far his views had advanced since he wrote 
 " Lucile : " 
 
 " With reference to the Divine authority of Scripture, we may 
 no doubt maintain it on the ground of those prophecies, 
 miracles and facts which bring irresistible conviction to the 
 upright mind ; but I would rather turn from all this, and appeal 
 directly to Jesus Christ Himself. Did He not strengthen 
 Himself by the written Word? Did He not recognise the 
 inspiration of the prophets and guarantee that of the apostles ? 
 And was He not without error and without sin — those two 
 immovable poles of the human conscience ? Believe in Christ 
 as His own witness. Bring your hearer into the presence of 
 Christ, the Holy One. You have not to lead him from the 
 Bible to Jesus ; rather try to lead him from Jesus to the Bible." 1 
 
 From these premises Monod naturally derived an 
 enlarged conception of inspiration, thought it appears 
 to us that he did not go far enough in this direction. 
 
 1 " La Parole vivante," pp. 30, 44. 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD. 209 
 
 We cannot agree with him when he says, as in the 
 passage just given, that Christ, by His quotations from 
 the Old Testament, solved the gravest problems of 
 sacred criticism. Still more must we differ from him 
 when he maintains that there was the very same 
 transfusion of the human with the Divine in Holy 
 Scripture as in the person of Christ. We cannot 
 admit that the human element in the written Word 
 had the same absolute perfection as in the living 
 Word. Monod had himself completely abandoned 
 the idea of the plenary inspiration of Scripture. He 
 thought it a proof of littleness to attach importance 
 to slight differences between the narratives of the 
 sacred writers, or to the real or supposed historic 
 impossibility of a figure or a date. He evidently 
 admits that there may be such historical inaccuracies 
 or slight deviations in the narrative, even though 
 he adds that the inconsistency is, perhaps, only super- 
 ficial. He thus abandons the theory of exact literal 
 inspiration, which admits of no concession. "The 
 devout soul rises above all these petty details, and 
 will not make its faith dependent on the correctness 
 of a copyist, or on the solution of some question of 
 criticism ; it comes straight into the presence of 
 Christ Himself." ' In truth, the Book itself is not 
 simply a book, a mere collection of inspired oracles ; 
 it is an organ instinct with the religious and moral 
 life of the writers. This view is expressed with the 
 greatest clearness and force in the sermons on 
 
210 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 St. Paul. " Inspired words," says Monod, " break 
 forth from the troubled soul of the apostle, like light- 
 ning from the heavily-charged thunder-cloud. Great 
 agonisings of souls precede his sublimest revelations." 
 He had himself been pierced through and through 
 by the sword of the law ; he had himself trembled 
 beneath the thunder of Sinai, before he launched his 
 thunderbolts against Pharisaism. Hence the import- 
 ance attaching to the spiritual history of the great 
 apostle, who was to be fitted by his own deep ex- 
 perience to become the living, personal organ of 
 revelation. Adolphe Monod expresses his idea in 
 the following striking words : " The organs of revela- 
 tion are regarded by the vulgar as the spoilt children 
 of inspiration, while in truth they are its martyrs. 
 Blessed js the fire which comes from heaven ; but woe 
 to the cloud charged with its transmission to earth, 
 whether it bears pent within its bosom the sacred 
 burden, or rends itself that the celestial fire may 
 break forth." r 
 
 Monod was so strongly impressed with the import- 
 ance of his new views, that he did not hesitate to 
 insist on them as opposed to the views of the narrower 
 Evangelicals. Deep as was his respect for the re- 
 ligious Revival, he was bold to affirm that its piety 
 was of too dogmatic a character in its teaching, and 
 had dealt the much with the externals of religion ; 
 
 1 Sermon on St. Paul, p. 53. 
 
ADOLPHE MO NOD. 211 
 
 that it had been too much a matter of creeds, while 
 the secret springs of the life had too often remained 
 untouched. 
 
 Adolphe Monod was quite conscious of the change 
 that had come over his views since his first religious 
 awakening. He looked upon it as a painful but 
 necessary process through which not the individual 
 Christian alone, but the Church of the future must be 
 called to pass. 
 
 The task devolving upon that Church would be 
 to give greater breadth to Christian doctrine, while 
 still holding fast the divine folly of the cross ; and 
 to develop gradually true catholicity by means of 
 the Evangelical Alliance, of which he was one of 
 the founders, and in which he rejoiced as one of the 
 grandest facts of the Christianity of the day, and 
 by giving the preponderance to the great central 
 truth over all that was particular and subordinate, 
 uniting all hearts in a common worship of the Christ 
 of God. It was in order to build up this Church of 
 the future, and to free it from the trammels by which 
 it is at present fettered, that Adolphe Monod laboured 
 to rally round the Living Truth a valiant and believing 
 people of God, aspiring after this new land of promise, 
 consumed with the desire to enter upon it, and pre- 
 paring themselves for that holy warfare by which 
 alone it could be won. Before this people of God he 
 sets as a model the great conqueror of the apostolic 
 age, St. Paul — that apostle of intrepid courage 
 
2 1 2 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 towards men, but of deep self-abasement before God. 
 In St. Paul's tears of pity, of tenderness, and of humi- 
 liation, he finds the secret of his success. How far 
 removed is all this from the rapid awakenings, easy 
 conversions, sudden sanctifications, incessant congratu- 
 lations by which many characterise the apostolic era. 
 The alleluias rise out of the groanings which cannot 
 be uttered : the soil out of which a new and glorious 
 harvest is to grow, must be watered by nothing less 
 than the tears of a St. Paul. 
 
 It is peculiarly interesting to watch the growth and 
 progress of a soul so upright, a conscience so tender, 
 as that of Adolphe Monod from the beginning of that 
 religious revival of which he was one of the finest 
 fruits. It seemed as if he, the great preacher, the 
 eminent Christian, had only to lead the way in 
 the course on which he had entered, in order to 
 accomplish, under the most favourable conditions, a 
 theological renovation which would satisfy the legiti- 
 mate aspirations and meet the requirements of the 
 most enlightened minds. Unhappily the ecclesias- 
 tical crisis intervened to hinder this happy con- 
 summation. It remains for us to see what part 
 Adolphe Monod took in it during the remaining 
 years of his life. 
 
 V. 
 
 Adolphe Monod had been hardly a year in 
 Paris when the ecclesiastical controversy, which for 
 
ADOLPHE MO NOD. 213 
 
 a time had slumbered, broke forth with renewed 
 vehemence. It is not our purpose here to enter at 
 any length into the merits of the question. Let it 
 suffice to say that the internal condition of French 
 Protestantism had greatly changed since Adolphe 
 Monod was dismissed from the Church at Lyons. 
 Its organisation had not improved. The glorious 
 institutions of its early days had no longer any 
 existence except in its historical archives. The 
 Councils of the Church were always self-elected, the 
 members being taken from the list of the wealthy 
 Protestants. There could scarcely be, I imagine, in 
 any Church a mode of proceeding more contrary to 
 the spirit of Christianity. It was the survival in 
 the religious world of the famous list of notables of 
 the First Empire, and altogether alien to the spirit of 
 the Divine Founder of the religion of the poor. 
 
 Meanwhile true religion had been making rapid 
 progress. The number of the Evangelicals was every 
 day increasing. They had set on foot noble mission 
 works at home and abroad, and their moral influence 
 was spreading far and wide. The question of the 
 separation of the Church from the State was forced 
 upon men's minds by the foundation of the Free 
 Church of Scotland, by a similar creation in French 
 Switzerland, and by the powerful polemics of Vinet, 
 sustained by the principal organ of Protestant thought, 
 " Le Semeur." All these causes acting together had 
 shaken the old prejudices in favour of national 
 
214 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 Churches. An important section of the Evangelical 
 party was tending, almost unconsciously to itself, 
 towards the enfranchisement of the Church. It was 
 logically led to this in its anxiety to restore synodical 
 government and the unity of the faith. It was soon 
 brought to perceive that this was utterly chimerical 
 under the union of Church and State in the 
 nineteenth century, because it was impossible for 
 the State to swerve from the principle of absolute 
 neutrality in matters of religion, and to espouse the 
 cause of the Evangelical party. 
 
 At the head of this movement was one of the most 
 respected and beloved pastors of the Reformed 
 Church of Paris, the brother of Adolphe Monod, and 
 the chief editor of the " Archives du christianisme." 
 Frederic Monod exerted a great influence over the 
 French Protestantism of his day. United to his 
 brother by the tenderest affection, he was yet of a 
 very different temperament. One of the most gene- 
 rous, faithful, true-hearted of men, he had neither the 
 oratorical nor the theological culture of Adolphe 
 Monod. He remained inflexibly orthodox, but he 
 had so much largeness of heart that he never fell into 
 the narrowness and injustice too often associated with 
 severe orthodoxy. His was a fresh and noble soul ; 
 his cheerfulness seemed the exuberance of moral 
 health. A man of indefatigable activity and sound 
 judgment, he took a prominent part in the direction 
 of Christian effort. He was one of the leaders of the 
 
ADOLPHE MO NOD. 215 
 
 religious revival in Paris. He was to show subse- 
 quently how far he could carry the spirit of self- 
 sacrifice at the call of what seemed to him duty. His 
 memory is still held dear, and is venerated not only 
 by those who, like ourselves, from our very cradle 
 loved him as a father, but by all Evangelical Pro- 
 testants. 
 
 Frederic Monod had long been urging in his 
 journal the necessity of reconstituting the Church 
 upon its true basis, when after the Revolution of 
 1848, an unofficial synod was called in Paris to pre- 
 pare a scheme of reorganisation, which was to be 
 submitted to the government of the Republic. 
 Frederic Monod, supported by Count Agenor de 
 Gasparin — whose name is associated with all that is 
 most noble and chivalrous in our day — urged the 
 synod to make a profession of evangelical faith the 
 basis of the ecclesiastical constitution^ since without 
 this there could be no Church. -The synod could not 
 pass such a vote without creating schism, and splitting 
 the Protestant body in two. It passed to the order 
 of the day on the proposition of M. Monod and M. de 
 Gasparin. These two brethren, who might have 
 resigned themselves even to that which seemed to 
 them the worst of disorders, when it arose out of the 
 unhappy circumstances of the time, did not feel that 
 they could accept the prolongation of doctrinal 
 anarchy as ratified by the vote of the Church. MM. 
 Monod and Gasparin and several of their colleagues 
 
2 1 6 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 sent in their resignation. Shortly after Frederic 
 Monod left his pulpit in the Oratoire, to commence 
 a new ministry in a humble building, without any 
 guarantee for his own support. He carried with him 
 into this difficult and precarious position the esteem 
 of all right-hearted people. The union of the inde- 
 pendent Evangelical Churches was founded in conse- 
 quence of his secession. Poor and despised, -they 
 have maintained since then a painful existence. 
 Theirs will always be the honour of having led the 
 way in the direction in which every Church which 
 has a regard at once for evangelical truth and for its 
 own dignity, is now tending, as one attempt after 
 another at an adequate and equitable organisation in 
 union with the State is found to fail. The synod of 
 1872 was the last effort in this direction. 
 
 Adolphe Monod did not see it his duty to follow 
 his brother in his secession. He is equally entitled to 
 our respect for a decision which was not in reality 
 more easy to him. There was no contradiction 
 between his decision of September, 1848, and his 
 conduct in Lyons in 1832. Eighteen years earlier he 
 had been equally averse to secession, and had allowed 
 himself to be dismissed rather than quit his post in 
 the Established Church. He held then, as in 1848, 
 that it was not for the servant of the Church to take 
 the initiative in a question of this kind. His motives 
 are clearly explained in his pamphlet, " Pourquoi je 
 reste dans l'eglise etablie." He vindicates his 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD. 217 
 
 preference for what he calls the path of spirituality 
 over the path of secession. Spirituality in the eccle- 
 siastical domain seems to him to consist in patient 
 continuance in Christian activity in the midst of a 
 defective organisation, till, by a simple process of 
 growth, the chrysalis form should be cast aside and 
 the new life spring into new developments. He 
 did not feel it to be obligatory upon him, or in 
 accordance with the will of God, to leave the 
 Established Church, unless the authorities interfered 
 with him in the performance of his pastoral duties. 
 We cannot but respect his motives, for they were 
 prompted by his deep Christian conscientiousness. 
 We are fully convinced that Adolphe Monod, and 
 those who shared his determination, contributed also 
 in their way to prepare the Church of the future. 
 Indeed, he always held fast the true principle of a 
 Church, and with all his breadth and toleration, never 
 accepted the system of a heterogeneous Church, 
 having no bond of cohesion but the State budget, 
 open to all comers, and guided, like a flock of sheep, 
 by the crook of its spiritual leaders, who can never 
 be, in the Protestant Church, other than a bastard 
 priesthood. On the one hand, he showed himself 
 entirely free from all ecclesiastical superstition. He 
 even went so far as to declare not only that Jesus had 
 never given His signature to any ecclesiastical organi- 
 sation, but that He had not even formed a Church, 
 strictly so called ; that all He did was simply to unite 
 
2 1 8 CONTEMPORA R Y FOR TRA ITS. 
 
 His disciples by a purely spiritual bond, by instilling 
 into their hearts those principles of truth and holi- 
 ness which He knew must win their way, and 
 gradually renew the whole face of civil and religious 
 society. 1 On the other hand, Monod accepted, almost 
 in its integrity, the ecclesiastical theory of the se- 
 cessionists, and the new Churches appeared to him to 
 be hurrying on the separation of Church and State, 
 which, as he frankly acknowledged, " would, in the 
 existing state of society, be a blessing from God, if it 
 came in God's time." 2 
 
 It is in the definition of God's time that we differ 
 from him. The pressure of outward circumstances 
 is not the only sign by which we recognise the will of 
 God. He has assigned a larger part than this to 
 human liberty, and great reforms have been courageous 
 attempts to break the old fetters, which will not give 
 way at the mere groaning of the captives. Paul was 
 obliged to snap with a strong hand the cable which 
 bound the young Church to the shores of Judaism ; 
 and it was only when this had been done that the 
 sails of the vessel filled with the wind which was to 
 bear it onward. All the reforming zeal of the ardent 
 controversialist, the courageous innovator of the first 
 Christian century, is passed over in silence in the 
 grand sermons devoted by Adolphe Monod to his 
 life teaching. He also failed to do full justice to the 
 
 111 Pourquoi je demeure," &c, p. 75. " Ibid. p. 8. 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD. 219 
 
 holy boldness of the Reformers. Spirituality must 
 not be confounded with all-enduring patience, where 
 the interests and order of the Church of Christ are 
 involved. There is a yet higher spirituality, which 
 consists in the courage to sacrifice immediate and 
 visible success in religious matters, to a future which 
 may seem uncertain. 
 
 We do not mean by these remarks to imply any 
 blame to Adolphe Monod for the course on which he 
 decided in the sight of God and for the benefit of His 
 Church. His heart was not narrowed in its sympathies 
 even by the controversies which sometimes grew 
 sharp and hot. He never shared at all in that absurd 
 bigotry which will only recognise the Reformed 
 Church of France in one particular form of it, and 
 which speaks sentimentally of the holy traditions of 
 the Fathers when it is referring only to the laws of 
 Germinal year X. The decision of Adolphe Monod 
 cost him all the more, since it placed him in oppo- 
 sition to the brother whom he tenderly loved. He 
 aptly expressed the feelings with which his heart 
 was full, when he compared this passing difference to 
 that which separated for a time Paul and Barnabas. 
 
 " At the very time," he says, " when Barnabas was embark- 
 ing for the island of Cyprus, I see Paul going up to him, grasping 
 him by the hand, and bidding him God-speed ; and by and by 
 Barnabas stands on the deck of the ship, following in thought 
 his beloved brother Paul as he goes again on foot through Syria 
 visiting the Churches ; and as he asks that the grace of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ may be with him, his eyes fill with tears at the 
 
220 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 recollection of their joint labours in the past. Yet a few years, 
 and we find Paul and Barnabas together again, tenderly united 
 in faith and works. Perhaps the present separation between us 
 and our brothers who go out from us, may also be but for a 
 time. Assuredly neither the Church in which we remain, nor 
 the Church which is being founded side by side with ours, 
 answers fully the conditions of that Church of the future to 
 which we all look forward, and towards which we are all hasten- 
 ing. But who knows whether both the one and the other may 
 not help to prepare its way." x 
 
 We share these aspirations. Whether our eyes 
 may see it or not, the blessed day will come when 
 the Reformed Church, having prepared itself for the 
 beneficent reign of liberty, as it has already begun to 
 do since it has ceased to seek to secure its ends by 
 means of State intervention, will renew the most 
 glorious traditions of its past history, and will realise 
 that ideal of fidelity, of breadth and of independence, 
 which is our standard, as it was that of Adolphe 
 Monod. 
 
 VI. 
 
 In 1849 Adolphe Monod was appointed pastor, and 
 he devoted himself unsparingly to a task which was 
 soon to exhaust his strength. His was a grand 
 ministry. His preaching exercised an ever-increasing 
 influence, and he devoted more and more care to it. 
 Perhaps it cost him a greater mental effort, after he had 
 accepted the possibility of moulding a new theology, 
 
 1 " Pourquoi je demeure/' &c, p. 89. 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD. 221 
 
 within limits, however, which he never allowed himself 
 to pass. He could not henceforth bring his influence 
 to bear in one direction only ; he saw more and more 
 clearly that truth had two poles. His sermons at 
 this period sometimes betray this new complication, 
 which was, in truth, an expansion of his views. The 
 plan of his preaching is less methodical, his language 
 less positive, but the preacher has made great ad- 
 vances in the psychological and apologetic treatment 
 of his subject. He is more real, more modern, more 
 in harmony with the age. In passages, too, we find 
 all his old fire and brilliancy, as in the sermons, " If 
 any Man thirst ; " " Give Me thine Heart ; " " Mary 
 Magdalen ; " " Too Late," and others. 
 
 In his sermon on " Exclusiveness " Monod com- 
 pares the fervent faith, which cannot acquiesce in any 
 violence done to the truth, to the real mother in the 
 judgment of Solomon, whose mother's heart cries out 
 against the sword lifted to divide her child, while the 
 pretended mother, like the half-sceptical latitudina- 
 rianism of our day, stands by unmoved. The illus- 
 tration is a very happy one. We have already drawn 
 attention to the admirable course of sermons on St. 
 Paul. 
 
 Pastoral duties occupied a large share of Adolphe 
 Monod's time, especially the religious instruction of 
 the young. He was resorted to by catechumens from 
 all parts of France. This was one of his most im- 
 portant spheres of usefulness, and the results of the 
 
222 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 influence thus exerted are still felt in numbers of 
 homes. The whole of evangelical Protestantism 
 came to look to him more and more as its leader and 
 model. His reputation spread far beyond his own 
 country. He visited England more than once, and 
 addressed large assemblies in English, with which he 
 was thoroughly familiar. He occupied a place of 
 honour in the first great CEcumenical Assembly of 
 the Evangelical Alliance held in London in July, 185 1. 
 The object was one which called forth all the sym- 
 pathies of his large and loving heart, and we heard 
 him speak in Exeter Hall on this occasion in a way 
 worthy of himself. 
 
 It was in 1854 that he felt the first germs of the 
 malady which was rapidly to undermine his strength. 
 He went on working, however, till he was utterly 
 spent. After a long rest during the summer months, 
 he resumed preaching ; but the effort cost him such 
 intense suffering that he could only continue it at 
 irregular intervals. On Whit-Sunday, in the month of 
 June, 1855, he preached for the last time. The sermon 
 is still unpublished, but we have seen the notes of it. 
 It is the song of the reaper binding up his sheaves. 
 Never was his enfeebled voice more thrilling in its 
 tones ; never did his thought take a loftier range ; never 
 did his piety seem more deep and tender. The text he 
 had chosen was that glorious promise of Christ, " If 
 any man drink of this water, he shall thirst again : 
 but whosoever shall drink of the water that I shall 
 
ADOLPHE MO NOD. 
 
 223 
 
 give him shall never thirst ; but the water that I 
 shall give him shall be in him a well of water spring- 
 ing up into everlasting life." * It is easy to imagine 
 how the preacher would use the comparison between 
 the fleeting and uncertain joys of the world, and that 
 infinite, inexhaustible well of life which the Divine 
 Spirit opens in the soul. 
 
 "Worldly happiness," he exclaimed, "the happiness that 
 comes from a certain amount of wealth, and from no other ; 
 from a certain disposition of body and mind, and no other ; 
 from some one creature, and no other ; at a certain time, and 
 no other ; from youth, not from age ; from health, not from 
 sickness ; from fortune, not from poverty ; from summer, not 
 from winter ; from sunshine, not from rain — let us hear no more 
 of happiness like this. We have been in pursuit of this happi- 
 ness long enough, and it has left us panting and disappointed, 
 and all the more miserable the higher our hopes had been 
 raised. But here is a source of happiness that can satisfy us 
 always, perfectly, for ever. There is no craving so large that 
 this is not enough for it, or so deep that this cannot fill it to 
 overflowing ; no aspiration after holiness so high that this does 
 not rise above it, none so deep-seated that this does not go 
 below it. It is God Himself giving Himself in the form of man 
 to man." 
 
 In this sermon Adolphe Monod makes free use of 
 that vein of mysticism which for many years had 
 given graphic force to his words. It is touching to 
 read the closing passage, in which he refers so calmly 
 to himself and his sufferings. 
 
 "Happy people," he says, "to whom God has been pleased 
 to give the kingdom, do not lose courage. Only believe, and 
 you shall see the glory of God. In the Holy Spirit we have 
 
 1 John iv. 13, 14. 
 
224 CONTEMPORAR V PORTRAITS. 
 
 infinite resources, and resources which may be made more 
 abundant by the cutting off of every other supply. Yes, God 
 the Holy Spirit within us can make us even more happy by the 
 loss of earthly joy, more strong by the loss of our own strength, 
 more holy by the ever-deepening sense of our low and lost estate. 
 For myself, whom my failing health compels to bid you again 
 farewell, perhaps for many months, I have much need to rest in 
 this comforting doctrine. Broken down and enfeebled as I am, 
 I yet believe that there remains a spiritual ministry for me to 
 exercise, more fruitful, perhaps, than any that has preceded it, 
 and for which God is preparing me by trial. Yes, my faithful 
 friends in Christ, I have this confidence— that this sickness is 
 for the glory of God, and that, whether I recover or not, it will 
 enable me to do the will of God more perfectly. This will be 
 the subject of my prayers during my painful absence from you, 
 and it is this that I would have you ask in your prayers for me. 
 Our very preaching needs to be renewed by the Holy Ghost. 
 It is He who will enable us to pass from the preaching of the 
 lip to the preaching of the life, from the word of teaching to the 
 word of possession, from the word which sets forth the truth, 
 to the word which makes us one with Him who is the truth and 
 the life." 
 
 These were the novissima verba of the preacher. 
 
 We shall not dwell at any length on the last suffer- 
 ings of Adolphe Monod. All are familiar with his 
 own touching memorials of them. His "Adieux" form 
 part of that treasury of Christian mysticism in which 
 the afflicted seek holy examples and efficient consola- 
 tion. They contain the last exhortations of the dying 
 pastor, who every Sunday gathered around his bed a 
 little circle of friends, among whom all denominations 
 were represented, and partook with them of the Holy 
 Communion, as a renewed proof of that evangelical 
 catholicity of which he had been so faithful an apostle. 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD. 225 
 
 "When the Lord's Supper was distributed," we read in the In- 
 troduction to the " Adieux," "M. Monod would speak in accents 
 of such quiet serenity, of such deep and tender love for those 
 whom he was exhorting, sometimes even of such power and 
 thrilling eloquence, as those who were used to hear him at other 
 times can partly imagine, but only those who were present in 
 those solemn hours of a closing life, can really understand. All 
 such cherish the recollection as among the purest and holiest 
 memories of their life. ' My life is my ministry,' he said, ' and 
 I will exercise it till my latest breath.' " 1 
 
 His face, pale and emaciated by suffering, was ra- 
 diant with hope and immortality ; the divine flame 
 shone through the frail earthly tenement. In these 
 last testamentary words the preacher summed up his 
 teaching, and cast it sometimes into a more exact 
 form than he had used for many years. He endea- 
 voured to concentrate his belief in a few pregnant 
 statements, without detracting anything from that 
 mysticism which had of late characterised his preach- 
 ing. The importance which he attaches to the Living 
 Word is in no way abated, though he dwells more 
 upon the written word. The exhortations which have 
 been published in a connected form under the title, 
 " Les Adieux d'un Mourant," are peculiarly touching. 
 I extract from them the following sentences : 
 
 " O the unutterable sweetness of the rest that we find at the 
 foot of the Cross ! Let us grasp the Cross, preach the Cross, 
 die clasping it in our arms, die proclaiming it to the world, and 
 death will be the beginning of our life. Let none rest till he has 
 found rest at the foot of the Cross of his Saviour God, though he 
 
 1 " Adieux," p. 34. 
 16 
 
226 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 may be driven to it by windy storms and tempests, and may 
 sink rom mere exhaustion into that place which he will never 
 wish to leave again." T 
 
 A very short time before his death he composed a 
 hymn on the resurrection, which expresses with manly 
 vigour the steadfastness of his hope. He was too 
 purely an orator to be a poet in the special sense of 
 that word, although his language was richly poetical, 
 as is all eloquence worthy of the name. His hymn on 
 Christian gratitude has become classic in our language. 
 We quote one verse : 
 
 " Que ne puis-je, 6 mon Dieu, Dieu de ma delivrance, 
 Remplir de ta louange et la terre et les cieux, 
 Les prendre pour tdmoins de ma reconnaissance, 
 Et dire au monde entier combien je suis heureux." 
 
 The hymn on the resurrection is a translation into 
 verse of an admirable sermon, which we remember 
 hearing Adolphe Monod preach at Easter 1844, in 
 the Reformed Church of Marseilles. It had at the 
 time all the character of an extempore address. The 
 idea is very beautiful. The inhabitants of the spirit 
 world, devils and angels, are represented bending over 
 the open sepulchre of Christ, and expressing their 
 feelings about His victory. 
 
 The humble Christian, groaning upon his bed of 
 pain, echoes the anthems of the angels. 
 
 " Ma faible voix s'unit a ce concert immense, 
 Et tout en moi, Seigneur, t'adore et te benit ; 
 
 1 " Adieux," pp. 60-66. 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD. 227 
 
 Ame, esprit, cceur, vers toi tout mon etre s'elance, 
 Et de joie et d'amour ma chair meme fremit. 
 
 Pour lutter dans les maux, dans les cris, dans les larmes, 
 Je ne suis que langueur, faiblesse et lachete ; 
 Mais lave dans ton sang, et couvert de tes armes, 
 Je puis tout en Jesus, mort et ressuscite." l 
 
 The 30th of March was the last Sunday which 
 Adolphe Monod passed upon earth. He had chosen 
 for the subject of his address the love of God, and 
 took as his text Psalm c. 
 
 " I have only strength enough left," he said, " to dwell upon the 
 love of God. God has loved us : this is the whole doctrine of 
 the gospel. Let us love God ; this is the whole of its morality. 
 Hardly knowing if I can make you hear me, I gather up my 
 little remaining strength, that we may call together upon the 
 eternal and infinite love of God. O God, who art love, who hast 
 done, art doing, wilt do nothing to us but in love, how can I 
 thank Thee enough, as I see around me these brethren whom 
 love has gathered here by my bed of sickness, of suffering, and 
 of what else Thou alone canst know. I have rejoiced in their 
 love. To whom was ever more love shown? Therefore, my 
 God, I thank Thee, and I thank Thee still more, if it is possible, 
 for Thy love which has so much afflicted but so much sustained 
 me ; and I confess before these my friends that Thou hast never 
 let me want for help, though I have often failed in faith and 
 patience ; and that I am far from having yet attained to that 
 perfect patience for which I long. But Thou, Thou hast been 
 to me all goodness, and while life or strength remain I will never 
 cease to praise Thee before my brethren." 
 
 1 " JCsus-Christ ressuscitant des morts. Dec. 1855. Souvenir 
 aux amis qui prient pour moi." — Sold for the benefit of the 
 Evangelical Church of Lyons. 
 
228 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 After enumerating with deep emotion the many 
 tokens of that sovereign love which had been ever 
 around him, his broken voice faltered out his last 
 hymn of praise to Christ, his life, his all, " with whom," 
 he said, " I am about to enter the everlasting mansions, 
 
 We two are so joined, 
 He'll not be in glory and leave me behind.' " 
 
 In one last effort of brotherly love, he brings to the 
 foot of the Cross, all the sufferings and sorrows of his 
 brethren, bearing them with tender compassion on his 
 heart. " I am suffering greatly," he said at last ; " my 
 joy and my hymn of praise are much dulled by these 
 sufferings, and by the constant exhaustion ; but Thou, 
 Lord, hast sustained me till now, and I have this con- 
 fidence, that my prayers and those of my family will 
 obtain for me patience to the end." His last utterance 
 to his friends was praise and benediction ; "Grace and 
 peace be with you all now and for ever." 
 
 I shall never forget the impression which this prayer 
 of the dying man produced on one of the most emi- 
 nent and excellent representatives of the highest cul- 
 ture of our day in France, M. de Remusat, whom I 
 induced to read it at a time when he was plunged in 
 sudden and overwhelming sorrow. It struck him as 
 one of the grandest utterances of that Christian faith 
 which he respected, without being prepared to accept 
 its mysteries. 
 
ADOLPHE MONOD. 229 
 
 The last week of Adolphe Monod's life was devoted 
 to tender leave-takings with his own family. We 
 will not lift the veil of this sacred sorrow, though to 
 do so might show how exquisite Is the blending of 
 human affection with Christian devotion, and how far 
 more heroic than stoicism. 
 
 On Saturday, April 6th, he fell asleep in Jesus, and 
 the Tuesday following he was borne to the grave 
 amid the tears of his flock and the deep sorrow of the 
 whole Protestant Church, every section of which was 
 represented at his funeral. No words could express 
 the affection, respect, and gratitude testified by the 
 survivors. 
 
 In his last sermon but one, preached in the church 
 of the Oratoire, during the winter of 1855, when he 
 was already so weakened by illness that he was 
 doubtful whether he would be able to finish his ser- 
 mon, Adolphe Monod had described, in powerful 
 language, the poverty and lowness of our religious 
 life. Then in a tone of intense earnestness, which 
 seems to ring in my ears still, he said : " It must be 
 known when I am gone that I was not satisfied with 
 a Christianity like this, even when I was in the body." 
 Thus he expressed the deep yearning of his soul after 
 that Church of the future, which was ever increasingly 
 the object of his desires and of his efforts. We find 
 united in him a happy assurance of faith with a 
 yearning so intense as to become almost an agony 
 after the highest ideal of truth and holiness, or rather, 
 
230 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 after the fuller realisation of the type of perfectness 
 given in Jesus Christ. We cannot but be struck with 
 the same blending of ecstatic joy and unutterable 
 sadness in St. Paul, in Pascal, and in all great Chris- 
 tian souls. Love, when it is true and deep, touches 
 both extremes, supremely happy in the possession of 
 its God, yet grieved not to apprehend Him more fully 
 and to glorify Him more, and deeply wounded by the 
 rebellion and perversity of sinners. 
 
 Such was the joy bequeathed to the Church by the 
 Man of Sorrows — a joy tempered with the tears of 
 love, but bright with its heavenly radiance. It was 
 his Christ-likeness in this respect which made Adolphe 
 Monod one of the grandest Christians of our genera- 
 tion, and one of the most powerful witnesses of the 
 everlasting gospel. 
 
ALEXANDRE VI NET. 
 
ALEXANDRE VINET7 
 
 WE live in an age of restless, almost feverish 
 activity, yet in an age which, by a sort of 
 paradox, seems more disposed than any other to the 
 contemplation of the phenomena of the inward and 
 spiritual life. It abounds in biographies of this order. 
 We are no longer amused, even in France, with 
 memoirs which treat human life purely as a comedy, 
 drawing back the curtain only to throw an ironical 
 light on all the foibles and paltry disguises of the 
 actors. This style, once so peculiarly French in its 
 fascination and in its heartlessness, has almost passed 
 away from our literature. Beside the great parlia- 
 mentary memoirs, which hand down to posterity the 
 eloquence of the tribune, and the authors of which 
 studiously avoid all familiarity as unworthy the dig- 
 nity of their subject, we have an abundance of pri- 
 vate memoirs which, by means of correspondence and 
 
 1 "Alexandre Vinet. Histoirede saVie et de ses Ouvrages," 
 par E. Rambert. 
 
234 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 autobiographic journals, give us an insight into the 
 hidden life of our contemporaries. With their help 
 we are enabled to penetrate to those soul-depths from 
 which we are often told that eternal questions are in 
 our day excluded, but which we find to be more pro- 
 foundly exercised than ever before, over the solution 
 of spiritual problems. " Les Lettres du Pere Lacor- 
 daire a Madame Swetchine," " Les Recits d'une Sceur," 
 the letters of the two Amperes ; the later volumes of 
 the " Correspondance de Lamartine," the " Biographie 
 du Pere Gratry," and (belonging to a different order) 
 the "Autobiography of Stuart Mill" — all these re- 
 markable works bring us into the very midst of what 
 I may call the spiritual drama; the conflict perpetu- 
 ally renewed in our day, between liberal aspirations 
 and positive dogmas, or, it may be, between the thesis 
 of philosophy and the unsatisfied yearning of the 
 heart and conscience. 
 
 The life of Vinet, which is before us now, forms 
 a very important addition to this spiritual history of 
 our age, bringing before us one of its most powerful 
 minds, and allowing us to learn from himself how his 
 genius was formed and developed. M. Rambert, the 
 biographer of Vinet, simply gives us the connecting 
 thread between the extracts from his correspondence 
 or his private notes ; his aim is to allow Vinet on all 
 subjects to speak for himself. He has executed his 
 task in a manner worthy of one of the most distin- 
 guished writers of French Switzerland, a land to which 
 
ALEXANDRE VINET. 235 
 
 we are indebted for so many remarkable works. We 
 recognise with hearty admiration the studious self- 
 repression which has thrown all the light on to the 
 great central figure of his picture. He has thus the 
 rare merit of bringing before us a living likeness, in 
 no respect overdrawn. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve was the first to call the attention of 
 France to the genius of Vinet, for whom he never 
 ceased to testify the highest admiration. M. Scherer 
 also wrote a very warm and appreciative notice of 
 Vinet, in which the keen sagacity of the critic was 
 tempered by the affection and deferential sympathy 
 of a personal friend. M. Astie, a French professor at 
 Lausanne, published, under the title " Esprit de Vinet," 
 a very admirable collection of his opinions on the 
 various subjects which had come before him. Pre- 
 sented in this form, and apart from their proper sur- 
 roundings, the ideas may seem somewhat overcrowded, 
 the sheaf almost too heavy with the ripe golden grain. 
 The collection is, nevertheless, a very valuable one, and 
 it called forth several fresh studies of Vinet, notably 
 that of M. -Saint Rene Taillandier in the Revue des 
 Deux Mondes. 
 
 M. Rambert's work appears to us exhaustive, so 
 abundant were the sources of information open to 
 him. It gives us the portrait of Vinet drawn by his 
 own hand, without any thought of the public eye, in 
 presence of which it is almost impossible not to atti- 
 tudinise a little. Our endeavour will be to reproduce 
 
236 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 this noble spiritual presence by the aid of M. Ram- 
 bert's book and of our own personal recollections, for 
 it was our inestimable privilege to be for three years 
 a diligent listener to Vinet, and to enjoy a close 
 friendship with the Pascal of the Reformed Church. 
 
 This is the name that most fitly describes him, 
 whether we consider the breadth of his religious sym- 
 pathies, his character as a writer, his unflinching 
 sincerity, or that trait of melancholy which is com- 
 mon to all great Christian souls. We may add that 
 Vinet, like Pascal — of whom he was the most faithful 
 interpreter — graduated in the stern school of sickness, 
 and that it was while contending with an incurable 
 bodily malady that he accomplished his vast intellec- 
 tual labours. His whole spirit, soul, and body were 
 tried and purified in the crucible of constant suffering. 
 But Vinet was a son of the Reformation, not a 
 timorous disciple of Port Royal. His glance was not 
 more penetrating than that of Pascal, but his hori- 
 zon was wider, his spirit more unfettered. He is 
 thoroughly the man of his age, passing through its 
 storm and tempest. His faith is controlled by a 
 critical spirit : though fixed in its principle, it does 
 not shrink from a testing examination, and cannot 
 rest satisfied with an assurance based only on ex- 
 ternal authority, which it rejects as false and illusive. 
 His intellect never laid upon itself any monkish 
 fetters ; it remained thoroughly and broadly human. 
 In fine, Vinet was one of the grandest and truest 
 
ALEXANDRE VINET. 237 
 
 Liberals of our time, and religious liberty in its 
 fullest expression has had no more determined and 
 powerful defender. It may be asked, perhaps, why 
 such a man was not better known in his generation ? 
 Sainte-Beuve excited a surprise not unmixed with 
 irony, when he dedicated to Vinet one of his most 
 beautiful literary sketches. He was accused of sacri- 
 ficing to unknown gods. It is easy to explain the 
 semi-obscurity in which Vinet has remained as re- 
 gards France. In the first place, he preferred to be 
 in the background ; he was as studious in hiding him- 
 self from the public gaze as others are in courting it. 
 This large-minded man was an ascetic, and this union 
 of the most exalted liberalism, altogether free from 
 any sectarian prejudice, with an austerity almost 
 without parallel towards himself, is not the least of his 
 idiosyncrasies. These significant words were found 
 inscribed on the memorandum-book which contained 
 his most private meditations : " The love of glory is 
 the dangerous neighbour of the love of truth ; the 
 one loses all that the other gains." Vinet loved the 
 truth, and not glory. Hence, his unfeigned contempt 
 for everything which would have made him prominent, 
 and his repeated refusal of positions in which he might 
 have become a central luminary. 
 
 Distance from Paris is a very grave disadvantage in 
 the eyes of the dispensers of fame. They are ready to 
 say, like the Rabbis in the temple, " Can any good 
 thing come out of Nazareth ? " They look with con- 
 
238 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 tempt on all that transpires outside that centre of 
 science and civilisation in which they reign as kings. 
 Thus, however important the discussions that may 
 arise in small and remote countries like Switzerland, 
 they are regarded as insignificant by superficial minds 
 because of the narrow limits of the arena in which 
 they are first agitated. And yet the fire kindled by 
 this tiny spark has sometimes spread through all 
 Europe, and made an era in the destiny of nations. 
 
 The discussion of religious liberty raised the same 
 questions in French Switzerland which Mirabeau had 
 argued from the tribune of the Constituent Assembly, 
 and which subsequently set all the four corners of 
 Europe in a blaze. This must be borne in mind as 
 we read the detailed account of those discussions in 
 which Vinet took so large a part. That which seems 
 at first sight a quarrel about trifles, will be found to 
 involve really the issues of the great controversy 
 between the authority of the State and liberty of 
 conscience, which has come to a crisis in our own day. 
 We must remember also that Vinet belonged to the 
 religion of the minority, which is another reason for 
 his being left in the shade, M. Guizot said one day, 
 in his great voice, to a young Protestant writer : " Sir, 
 you were born in a corner ; try to get out of it." 
 This Vinet never attempted to do. But from that 
 obscure corner of Switzerland, which Parisians re- 
 garded so slightingly, he exercised a deep and wide 
 influence over the great Protestant nations which, in 
 
ALEXANDRE VI NET. 239 
 
 the nineteenth century, have carried their civilisation 
 and culture to so high a point. Among these nations 
 he is still recognised to-day as an intellectual king, 
 and it will be the worse for France if she fails to pay 
 homage to his just claims. 
 
 Balzac, in his famous quarrel with Sainte-Beuve, 
 rallied the author of the " Portraits Litteraires " with 
 a satirical laugh, on the tribute he had paid to so 
 obscure a man as Vinet. The laugh may well be 
 turned by posterity against himself, for ignoring a 
 man of world-wide fame. 
 
 France is beginning to appreciate truly this great 
 Christian Liberal. His teaching is destined to win 
 its widening way, and to leave a deep furrow even in 
 our light soil, for it responds to all the higher aspira- 
 tions of the national life, political, religious and 
 philosophical. France could find no better counsellor 
 than Vinet in her efforts to conclude that great alli- 
 ance between religion and liberty in the fullest sense, 
 without which French democracy will fail to stand, 
 and religion will lose its empire over the souls of free 
 men. 
 
 We shall endeavour to reproduce, with the aid of 
 M. Rambert's book, the leading features in the life 
 and work of this remarkable man, 
 
 I. 
 
 Vinet was born at Ouchy, near Lausanne, in 1797, 
 and died at Montreux in 1847, in the full maturity of 
 
240 CONTEMPORA RY POR TRA ITS. 
 
 his powerful faculties. His outward life was singularly 
 uneventful. He travelled but rarely, and then only 
 for the sake of health, and as rapidly as possible. 
 " Not being able to travel in person," he wrote to a 
 friend, " I allow my imagination to travel. The only 
 true liberty is in a state of dependence frankly 
 accepted." This is Vinet in his true character — the 
 captive of duty, but with the free mind which spreads 
 its wings in all the realms of thought. Though he 
 scarcely ever left his study, his life was full of varied 
 and lively interest. His unpretending little room 
 reminds us of Rembrandt's picture in the Louvre, of 
 the philosopher resting his tired head upon his hand, 
 after a long day of mental toil. The bare walls are 
 draped with the glory of the sunset, but the face of 
 the old man kindles with a yet more unearthly bright- 
 ness. We feel that these four walls enclose that 
 which is mightiest upon earth ; thoughts which can 
 flood the world with renovating light. Within this 
 humble dwelling a Descartes may utter his " Cogito, 
 ergo sum" or a Pascal may open a new kingdom of 
 thought to the wondering world. Here greater battles 
 may be fought, and grander victories won, than any 
 immortalised in history ; for here those great prin- 
 ciples may be evolved which shall afterwards be pro- 
 claimed from the forum, and embodied in the progress 
 of nations. It matters little, then, that Vinet passed 
 his days in almost unbroken obscurity. There were, 
 nevertheless, marked eras in his intellectual and moral 
 
ALEXANDRE VINET. 241 
 
 life, which have left their impress upon the religious 
 history of the age. 
 
 Vinet was not cradled in luxury. On the contrary, 
 the family were often in straitened circumstances. 
 His father belonged to the petty bourgeoisie of 
 French Switzerland, and could with difficulty provide 
 bread for his household. He was a man of the old 
 school, hard-working and incapable of self-indulgence, 
 concealing a warm heart beneath a somewhat rigid 
 and rough exterior. Vinet found in him a wise coun- 
 sellor, who presented life to him under a rather stern 
 aspect, but who always exhibited towards him, in his 
 own way, the greatest affection. Like the father of 
 Schleiermacher, the great founder of the German 
 theology of the nineteenth century, the elder Vinet 
 was uneasy at the first signs of intellectual indepen- 
 dence in his son. Accustomed himself to adhere 
 rigidly to rules, he could not understand any deviation 
 in religion from the beaten track. The tenderness 
 of Vinet's mother tempered this severity, which was 
 doubtless, on the whole, salutary in its effect, for -the 
 best school of liberty is the stern discipline which 
 teaches us to govern ourselves. 
 
 After a thorough course of literary and theological 
 study at Lausanne, Vinet was called to the pro- 
 fessorship of the French language at Basle. He had 
 long shown a strong interest in French literature. 
 It is said that at seventeen years of age he could not 
 read the " Cid " aloud without bursting into tears. 
 
 17 
 
242 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 He delighted in giving a poetical form to his im- 
 pressions ; they flowed at first in light and easy 
 strains, like the amenities of youth, then in more 
 powerful verses, which burst spontaneously from a 
 heart deeply exercised with the mysteries of life. 
 Vinet was never a poet in the sense of one who could 
 only give true expressions to his thoughts in the form 
 of rhythm ; but he had, nevertheless, a deeply poetic 
 soul. Not only did he keenly enjoy the masterpieces 
 of poetry, but he had recourse to poetic forms in the 
 supreme moments of his life. The deepest sorrows of 
 his heart found expression in verse ; and whatever these 
 productions may lack of aesthetic beauty, they bear the 
 unmistakable impress of deep and genuine feeling. 
 
 Vinet married early, and the union was one of rare 
 congeniality and helpfulness. His home was early 
 visited with domestic affliction. His son suffered in 
 a way which painfully separated him from home ties ; 
 his daughter was cut off in the flower of her youth ; 
 he himself was the victim of a disease which rarely 
 allowed him a day's respite. Death visited his home 
 with repeated strokes. Yet all these trials only 
 wrung from his wounded heart this cry of sublime 
 acquiescence, uttered at the grave of his daughter : 
 
 " Sous ton ciseau, divin sculpteur de l'ame, 
 Que mon bonheur vole en eclats ! 
 
 Mourir c'est naitre ; 
 D'un nouvel etre, 
 C'est jour a jour se revetir." 
 
ALEXANDRE VINET. 243 
 
 We should give a wrong impression if we led the 
 reader to suppose that Vinet knew and understood 
 only the sorrowful side of life. He had an Intense 
 appreciation of the joys of friendship and affection ,; 
 he had an enthusiasm for the beautiful, whether in 
 the world of letters or in the sublime and tender 
 forms of nature. Still the prevailing tone of his 
 mind was one of sadness. In truth, the sufferings 
 of the outward life were slight compared with the 
 poignant anguish often endured in the struggle with 
 himself. From each renewed conflict he came forth, 
 indeed, more victorious, his heart increasingly weaned 
 from vanity and selfishness, and set upon the service 
 of truth, justice, humanity, of every good cause which 
 could commend the gospel to men. But he took too 
 serious a view of life, and was too sincere in his deal- 
 ings with himself, not to be more saddened by his 
 failures than gladdened by the measure of success 
 achieved. Leading himself a life of rare purity and 
 nobleness, he was ever abased in the dust, because of 
 the evil he saw in his own heart, and in the world 
 around him. He wept tears, now of repentance, now 
 of compassion. These were not tears wrung from 
 him by the fear of punishment, for he believed firmly 
 in the infinite love which comes to pardon and restore 
 all. They expressed rather his unutterable yearning 
 after perfection, and his deep compassion for all the 
 hungry souls around him, and most of all for the 
 souls that did not hunger, but were satisfied with the 
 
244 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 ashes of a low and miserable life. Firm, too, as was 
 his faith, it had not been accepted on slight grounds. 
 As he himself tells us, he reached it through a sea of 
 speculation, often having to contend hard for the faith 
 with those " insolent doubts" which would arise in his 
 heart. From these struggles of soul and spirit, he 
 came forth sore wounded, but victorious, to use the 
 expression of one of his honoured brothers in arms — 
 Adolphe Monod. 
 
 Protestantism, like Catholicism, has its facile ad- 
 herents ; but we do not find upon this path of easy 
 devotion the footprints of those great Christians, whose 
 souls have apprehended the true ideal of the Christian 
 life, and who refuse to be comforted because of the 
 depth of human woe. These bear upon their hearts, 
 not only their own sorrows, but the burden of an 
 unhappy race ; and from the days of St. Paul to those 
 of Pascal and Vinet, these men have been climbing 
 the hill of sorrow, with their eyes ever fixed upon the 
 cross which crowns its summit. They know that this 
 is the symbol of the great victory ; hence their joy. 
 But they know also through what bitter anguish the 
 victory was won ; hence their sympathetic sorrow. 
 Vinet wrote one day in his journal, when he was sad- 
 dened by the discovery of a base deception : " This is 
 evil ; but in another way it is very good. It is a 
 thorn of the crown." The crown was on his brow, but 
 it was a crown of thorns. Vinet's Christianity was 
 altogether of this lofty type. 
 
ALEXANDRE VI NET. 245 
 
 It was at Basle, in the year 1820, that he passed 
 through the decisive crisis of his spiritual life. The 
 Protestant Churches of the Continent began at that 
 time to feel the reaction of what was called in Eng- 
 land the great Revival. M. de Remusat, in a very 
 able article on Wesley, written with all his character- 
 istic clearness of insight and breadth of view, brings 
 out the significance of the movement which, at the 
 close of the eighteenth century, profoundly stirred 
 Great Britain, and startled it out of the state of reli- 
 gious lethargy and formalism into which it had sunk 
 under the enervating influence of the age. Wesley 
 and Whitfield spoke like the apostles of old — with 
 tongues of fire. Like the first missionaries of the new 
 faith, they went through the country from north to 
 south and from east to west, gathering vast multi- 
 tudes by the force and charm of their eloquence, and 
 setting before them the living gospel instead of the 
 cold and colourless deism to which they had become 
 accustomed. These two extraordinary men as truly 
 made the England of the nineteenth century, as the 
 Roundheads made that of the seventeenth. The ter- 
 rible ordeal of war through which the country was 
 passing gave point and appropriateness to the stern 
 message of the preachers. When peace came the 
 movement spread over the continent of Europe, 
 where Protestantism had assumed too much the type 
 of the Savoyard Vicar, and had been content if it 
 found in the pulpit a man in a black vestment, and 
 
246 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 saying what was expected of him. All this was 
 changed when the apostles of English Evangelicalism 
 lifted up their voice in France and Switzerland. Un- 
 happily they cast these great truths into too narrow 
 a mould. In the reaction against the spirit of world- 
 liness, they were led into an exaggerated Puritanism, 
 which allowed little scope for the higher culture. 
 
 Vinet was first struck with the asperities of this 
 extreme dogmatism, which presented in great promi- 
 nence the most sombre features of Calvinism. But 
 when 1 he saw the adherents of the religious revival 
 bravely enduring in Switzerland a persecution which 
 was as odious as it was petty, he learnt to respect them ; 
 and it was in defending them that he first became 
 the unflinching advocate of liberty of conscience. He 
 soon came to recognise that they were right on more 
 than one point ; that they were not mistaken in pro- 
 claiming the necessity of a moral and spiritual re- 
 generation, and in protesting against a Christianity of 
 mere routine, which was satisfied with a supernatu- 
 ralism devoid of mystery,, and which made mere 
 virtue the substitute for holiness. Vinet received the 
 spiritual impulse which he needed from this imperfect 
 Methodism, though it was never able to hold his 
 generous spirit captive in its narrow formulas. He 
 formed his own belief, and always remained profoundly 
 human, while holding fast the essential principles of 
 revealed truth. We shall see that he acted the part of a 
 true reformer in the lofty sphere of religious thought. 
 
ALEXANDRE VINET. 247 
 
 Vinet devoted the best years of his early life to the 
 humble office of teacher of French, which he had ac- 
 cepted at Basle. He was as conscientious in the 
 fulfilment of this duty as of all others ; hence it was 
 during these years he acquired that extensive literary 
 erudition which made him afterwards a consummate 
 critic. To this period of his career we owe his 
 " Chrestomatie " — the best work of its kind, not only 
 in the selection of pieces, but in the biographical and 
 literary notices which precede them, and still more in 
 the eloquent and exact resume of French literature 
 which Sainte-Beuve regarded as above all praise. 
 Vinet was, as we have just said, mixed up at this 
 period, in those struggles for religious liberty which 
 were inevitable when a retrograde legislation was 
 brought into collision with the first aggressive move- 
 ments of the new religious zeal. The articles written 
 by Vinet on this subject, and afterwards collected in 
 a volume, are still as pointed and powerful as ever, for 
 the very same questions which are discussed in them 
 are still pressing for a solution from the democracy of 
 our day. This is especially the case in Switzerland, 
 where a false demagogy seems aiming to show how it 
 could be the worst of all tyrannies. It was at Basle 
 also that Vinet wrote his " Memoire sur la liberte des 
 cultes," to which the Society of Christian Morals at 
 Paris gave the prize, at the warm recommendation of 
 M. Guizot. In this work Vinet displays the maturity 
 of his powers in the complete mastery of thought and 
 
248 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 style. It is a full, fervent, high-toned pleading for 
 liberty of conscience, on the ground of respect for the 
 human soul and for God, who alone has the right to 
 command in matters of religion. 
 
 After the Revolution of 1830, the periodical Le 
 Semenr was started. It was a sort of Protestant 
 Globe, and was conducted with singular ability and 
 firmness by M. Henri Lutteroth. It became at once 
 the organ of the highest liberal and Christian culture 
 of French Protestantism, and gave a fresh impetus to 
 Vinet's mental development. His contributions to it 
 were constant, and of the most various order. In it 
 he published his very able literary articles on all 
 the great works of the day — articles which placed 
 him in the first rank of literary critics. In it he 
 steadily carried on his campaign in favour of reli- 
 gious liberty, and published his " Etudes Apolo- 
 ■ getiques," which are perhaps the most able of all his 
 works. He also often preached through its pages, 
 and it thus became the medium of circulating his 
 thoughtful and powerful sermons through all the 
 Protestant Churches of the Old and the New World. 
 
 Appointed Professor of Literature in the Academy 
 of Basle, he expanded his course by adding to it a 
 series of public lectures on French Moralists, which 
 remain a standard work. His reputation increased 
 daily, though he himself would do nothing to court 
 publicity, and steadily refused the invitations that 
 constantly came to him from all parts of Switzerland 
 
ALEXANDRE VINE 7. 249 
 
 and France. The reason he gave for these refusals 
 was " his incapacity for, and unworthiness of the prof- 
 fered honour." 
 
 At the close of his stay in Basle, Vinet had become 
 a close and exact thinker, and complete master of the 
 fine and subtle harmonies of language. Few writers 
 have ever shown such versatility of thought. This 
 appears, not only in his expositions, but in his very 
 turns of expression, and in his original application of 
 metaphors derived from nature, art, and science. His 
 style is not, of course, faultless : it is sometimes over- 
 laden ; the lines of reasoning are lost in the too 
 ample development ; the plan is wanting in sym- 
 metry ; the images do not always correspond. In 
 many respects Vinet reminds us of Clement of Alex- 
 andria, not only in his breadth of view, but also in 
 his manner, at once erudite and brilliant, of express- 
 ing his ideas. The great apologist of the third cen- 
 tury called his writings " stromata," or " tapestries." 
 This was a true description of his rather elaborate 
 style, in which, like threads of many colours inter- 
 woven in one close fabric, we find the blended results 
 of the most varied culture. I know no writer who, in 
 this respect, more resembles him than Vinet. All 
 this brilliance of language was the reflection of the 
 ardent soul within. His writings are always full of 
 feeling. Indeed, it may be truly said that the moral 
 tone dominates to a degree very rare even the form 
 in which his thoughts are conveyed. 
 
250 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 His motto, whenever he took pen in hand, was this : 
 " Let us write in the best manner possible." The 
 following is found among the jottings in his memo- 
 randum book : " Responsibility of a writer, even when 
 no fame attends his publications. He has sown, and 
 that which he has sown will germinate in silence, and, 
 whether he sleep or wake, will become a principle, 
 an affection, a habit of mind in his readers." 
 
 In 1837 Vinet was called to Lausanne as Professor 
 of Practical Theology, a branch which comprehends 
 the oratorical art as applied to the pulpit, and what 
 may be called pastoral morality — not easily distin- 
 guished from simple Christian morality, where there 
 is no recognition of a narrow clericalism. It was not 
 without regret that he quitted the town where his 
 laborious youth had been passed in the midst of 
 growing sympathies, and where he had the advantage 
 of combining, to an unusual degree, the science of 
 Germany with the culture of France. He returned 
 to his native place at a time very favourable for his 
 work. The political quarrels of the past seemed to 
 have ended in a durable amnesty. Democracy in 
 Lausanne was becoming established on a sound 
 liberal basis, under a just Government, which was 
 very desirous of promoting the intellectual develop- 
 ment of the country. 
 
 The Academy of Lausanne was distinguished for 
 the welcome it gave to illustrious foreigners. Mis- 
 ckiewitz, the great poet of partitioned Poland, held 
 
ALEXANDRE VI NET. 251 
 
 the Latin professorship. Melegari, an exile from Parma 
 (afterwards a senator of the Italian kingdom, and its 
 minister at Berne), filled the chair of Political Economy 
 with an erudition equal to his popularity. Lastly, 
 Sainte-Beuve had accepted the invitation to give 
 there, in a course of public lectures, the first outlines 
 of his " History of Port Royal." For the rest, Lau- 
 sanne could supply its own requirements. M. Mon- 
 nard, formerly a contributor to the Globe, and the 
 intimate friend of Thiers and Mignet, gave instruction 
 in French literature. M. Juste Ollivier, the national 
 poet, was Professor of History. M. Charles Secretan, 
 one of the most brilliant representatives of the younger 
 generation, which could count in its ranks such poets 
 as Frederic Monneron, and such able and eloquent 
 writers as Adolphe Lebre (first known to fame through 
 his writings in the Revue des Deux Mondes), was 
 about to commence the philosophical course, in which 
 he endeavoured to show the harmony between the 
 gospel and free speculation, and supplemented 
 Vinet's work in the track opened by Schilling. . The 
 theological faculty at that time commanded the ser- 
 vices of M. Herzog, who afterwards published his 
 great theological Encyclopaedia ; and of M. Samuel 
 Chappuis, one of the most eminent of living Protes- 
 tants, whose noble and cultivated intellect was always 
 devoted to the service of what he regarded as the 
 cause of truth. Unfortunately he had a rooted aver- 
 sion to appearing in print, and thus his invaluable 
 
252 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 labours have been preserved to us only through the 
 memoranda of his students. 
 
 Lausanne was for many years an intellectual centre 
 not inferior to any of the German Universities. It 
 diffused an atmosphere of liberty, and of faith broad 
 and human, in the best sense of the word. The 
 society of Lausanne had long enjoyed a reputation 
 for intellectual taste ; in the eighteenth century it 
 was characterised by a mental frivolity, largely to be 
 traced, no doubt, to Voltaire's sojourn there. At the 
 commencement of this century Mesdames de Char- 
 riere and de Montolieu continued this tradition of 
 brilliant and racy conversation, while Gibbon raised 
 the tone by his solid erudition. Coppet, also, was 
 not far off, and Lausanne would catch at least the 
 echo of the Decameron of French esprit, presided 
 over by the illustrious exile, Madame de Stael. 
 The society of Lausanne, no doubt, underwent a 
 considerable change under the influence of the re- 
 ligious revival, but it still maintained its literary 
 reputation. The greater seriousness of its tone took 
 nothing from its breadth, and the salons in . which 
 Vinet and Sainte-Beuve appeared had no cause to 
 envy the brilliant reunions of Paris. If conversation 
 ranged over a narrower area, it was more solidly 
 thoughtful, and great intellectual and moral questions 
 were discussed under all their aspects, with an ex- 
 haustive thoroughness which gave a peculiar value to 
 the results reached. These were years of extraor- 
 
ALEXANDRE VINET. 253 
 
 dinary growth and fruitfulness in the spiritual history 
 of Switzerland, and the memory of them lingers like 
 a vision of sunset Alps towering above the blue 
 Geneva lake. 
 
 The most abiding influence was that of Vinet, who 
 was compelled by the prolonged absence of M. Mon- 
 nard to add a course of literature to his theological 
 lectures. After his death most of his lectures were 
 printed. Among those most worthy of note we may 
 mention his history of the Christian pulpit, Catholic 
 and Protestant ; his lectures on the rules of preach- 
 ing — a course of sacred oratory, teaching how to 
 dispense with rhetoric in the vulgar sense of the 
 word ; and his lectures on the gospel ministry. In 
 addition to these we have his entire literary course ; 
 his essay on Pascal, his studies of the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries, and of the great French writers 
 of the day, beginning with Madame de Stael and 
 Chateaubriand, to whom he devoted an entire course. 
 
 I have listened to many great masters, but I never 
 heard any who surpassed Vinet. Sainte-Beuve has 
 paid a noble tribute to his teaching, and to that purely 
 moral beauty which impressed him so vividly after 
 the false glitter and glamour of pagan and papal 
 Rome. I shall never forget how I felt on hearing 
 him for the first time. I intended only to devote a 
 few months to his course of instructions ; but when I 
 had once entered upon it, in 1842, I felt myself fixed 
 there for the whole of my student years. Such an 
 
254 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 opportunity does not come twice in a lifetime. I 
 never knew any teaching so suggestive as Vinet's, 
 any which so surely communicated to heart and 
 mind the living spark, without which all mere learning 
 is comparatively vain. To inspire is more than to 
 instruct. The teaching which imparts, not only in- 
 creased knowledge, but the key of science, and above 
 all the love of truth, and the method of laying hold of 
 it, is the true training of the mind. 
 
 When Vinet entered the lecture-room he generally 
 looked languid and exhausted. His great height 
 gave him a sort of awkwardness, and his features, 
 sharply cut but not classic, gave no indication of the 
 treasure within. But after a few minutes all was 
 changed, and there was singular aptness in Madame 
 de Montolieu's shrewd remark, after meeting him one 
 day, while he was quite young, at the house of another 
 professor. She asked, " Who is that ugly man who 
 becomes beautiful when he speaks?" His thoughts 
 seemed to play over his face like a long pent-up fire, 
 kindling it to light and warmth. In his deep and 
 sonorous voice he poured forth a constant stream of 
 original ideas, in language which was the luminous 
 reflection of his thoughts. He threw his whole soul 
 into his teaching. No student of his ever came out 
 of the lecture-room with heart unmoved. All carried 
 away, not simply the recollection of eloquent words, 
 but a new impulse in the life. His last course, which 
 he was unable to finish, was on the practical philo- 
 
ALEXANDRE VINET 25$ 
 
 sophy of Christianity. It has come down to us only 
 in a fragmentary form. Had it been completed it 
 would have been truly his " Genie du Christianisme." 
 All who heard it are unanimous in saying that his 
 genius was never more powerfully displayed. His 
 death prevented its being prepared for publication, 
 and thus we have lost a book of which our age might 
 have been justly proud, and in which the author was 
 prepared, as it were, to bind his sheaves. 
 
 The relations of Vinet with Sainte-Beuve, which 
 commenced at Lausanne, were from the first those 
 of intimate friendship. The great critic received 
 from Vinet an impression which never wore away. 
 It is calumny to say that Sainte-Beuve only watched 
 with an amused curiosity the travail of this great 
 soul, amid severely simple surroundings which re- 
 minded him of Port Royal. That such a representa- 
 tion does him injustice is evident from the letter 
 which Sainte-Beuve wrote to Vinet after his return 
 to Paris. 
 
 " I imagine," he writes, " that one of the great 
 attractions of Paris, and indeed the only one which 
 makes it worth while to live here, is that here you 
 are in a good position for watching the comedy. But 
 the worst of it is this comedy itself, in which you 
 have always to look on, never to act, and have to 
 accept this low world as a show, not as a field of 
 labour. All this is so different at Lausanne. That is 
 what moved my envy in a certain visit in the shade 
 
256 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 of the cathedral, where I saw a whole life of study, 
 of sacrifice, of humble unremitting activity. Life 
 here is all dissipation ; men do a thousand things, 
 
 and never the one important thing Your 
 
 letter touched and gratified me ; but I have never 
 any words in which to acknowledge your praises, feel- 
 ing myself so unworthy of them, for I have sunk into 
 a state of purely intellectual criticism, and am a sor- 
 rowful witness of the death of my own heart. I judge 
 myself, and remain calm, cold, indifferent. I am a 
 dead man, and can look upon myself as dead without 
 being moved. Alas ! there are causes for this, deep 
 
 and of long standing But here I am speaking 
 
 to you like a father confessor. Reason sheds cold 
 rays over this cemetery like a dead moon ! " 
 
 The confession is significant. Sainte-Beuve is in 
 this letter a far less flippant man than he chose to 
 appear afterwards. 
 
 The letter shows also that Vinet was not afraid to 
 go below the surface in his relations even with such 
 men as Sainte-Beuve ; he went straight to the soul. 
 M. Rambert gives us a short correspondence between 
 Vinet and Chateaubriand, in which the great ennuye 
 poet who, to use his own expression, " yawned out his 
 life," tells the story of his disenchantment with a heart- 
 aching bitterness. When a man has become sceptical 
 to such a degree, in relation to all things human and 
 earthly, he is not likely to have much faith in eternal 
 things ; for faith in the higher would fling its reflec- 
 
■ ALEXANDRE VINET. 257 
 
 tion over the lower world. It is beautiful to see with 
 what a delicate touch Vinet endeavours to staunch 
 the wounds of the old Rene. This sort of solicitude 
 seems strange, and perhaps a little indiscreet, to polite 
 society. With Vinet it is inseparable from the strong 
 and pitiful love of mankind which is the animating 
 principle of his life. He thought, moreover, that it 
 was degrading to our relations with one another to 
 avoid touching on the things that concern us' most 
 deeply — the great questions of the soul — and to treat 
 Christianity as if it were a dead friend whose name is 
 not to be mentioned for fear of re-awakening bitter 
 regrets. This feeling he expresses very fully in his 
 book, " La Manifestation des Convictions Religieuses," 
 which, like his " Memoire sur la Liberte des Cultes,". 
 was written in connection with a meeting of the So- 
 ciety of Christian Morals. He begins by maintaining 
 that it is the duty of every sincere and thoughtful man 
 to show his convictions, and that for the honour of the 
 truth. He then describes, in some of the finest pages 
 he ever wrote, the sufferings through which the truth 
 has been triumphantly vindicated, and concludes that 
 every hindrance to its free progress ought to be 
 removed. He is thus led, in the second part of his 
 book, to develop his favourite theory of the sepa- 
 ration of Church and State. The same train of 
 thought runs through his work on the origin of 
 Socialism, which, in his view, has its root in the un- 
 due subordination of the individual to the State— 
 
 18 
 
258 CONTEMPORAR V POR TRAITS. 
 
 an error never more fatal than in the domain of 
 religion. 
 
 The events which were transpiring at the time in 
 the Canton de Vaud were well calculated to strengthen 
 his convictions. The Revolution of 1845, though ac- 
 complished without bloodshed, was none the less 
 lamentable in its results. It raised to power a clamor- 
 ous and despotic demagogy which laid forcible hands 
 upon the Academy and the Church, in the attempt to 
 make the Church the victim of its caprices. It en- 
 countered a determined resistance, which does honour 
 to the Christian conscience. A considerable portion 
 of the clergy broke with a government which sought 
 to make use of it merely as an electoral agent. A 
 free and self-supporting Church was founded in a few 
 days. It encountered at first a sharp persecution. 
 Religious liberty was grossly violated. Vinet, who 
 had been obliged to resign his office as Professor of 
 Theology, and who had been soon after deprived of his 
 chair of Literature, vigorously took up the defence of 
 the new Church, which he had helped to organise. 
 He gave several lectures in the theological faculty, 
 which had just been founded outside the Establish- 
 ment, but sickness soon laid him on a bed of pain 
 from which he rose no more. He never ceased to 
 write while life remained, and his last breath was 
 spent in the cause of that religious and theological 
 liberty for which he had so strenuously laboured. He 
 died in the month of May, 1847, before he had reached 
 
ALEXANDRE VINET. 259 
 
 his fiftieth year. The sorrow which his death spread 
 throughout Switzerland and in all the Protestant 
 Churches was too deep for words. His coffin, covered 
 with flowers, was borne by his weeping disciples to 
 the cemetery of Clarens. There he sleeps in the midst 
 of that natural beauty which he so dearly loved. The 
 spot is marked by a modest tombstone, on which are 
 engraved the words : " They that turn many to right- 
 eousness shall shine as the stars for ever and ever." 
 
 The great consolation to his friends was that, 
 though his voice would be heard no more, his thoughts 
 would live on with an ever-widening influence for 
 good. 
 
 It remains for us now to follow out the various lines 
 of thought which he illuminated with his powerful 
 genius. 
 
 * Let me preface the review of the general tendency 
 and leading characteristics of Vinet's teaching with a 
 personal reminiscence. A few months before his 
 death I had an interview with him which I shall 
 never forget. I had heard him in the morning 
 deliver one of his most impressive sermons in a lower 
 room of the Castle of Chatelard, where the worship of 
 the Free Church was held under the pressure of the 
 persecution raised against it. The reformed worship 
 became more austerely simple than ever, in this its 
 enforced banishment from its regular places of wor- 
 ship. On this occasion there was neither pulpit nor 
 organ, but the preacher was in his very happiest vein. 
 
260 C0N7EMP0RAR Y POR TRA1 TS. 
 
 There was a wealth of thought in the sermon worthy 
 of Pascal himself, and an entire absence of the rhetori- 
 cal, though the fire within would now and then reveal 
 itself in flashes of eloquence. The subject was the 
 sublime friendship which God seeks with the human 
 soul, in which He thus honourably recognises His own 
 image and the expression of His glory. As I was 
 walking with Vinet the same evening to Chatelard, 
 through the woods of Clarens, then pierced by shafts 
 of quiet moonlight, he resumed the train of thought 
 which had filled his mind in the morning. He dwelt 
 with peculiar emphasis on the greatness which Christi- 
 anity confers on human nature, and on that sort of 
 baseness which impels man to reject this glory of 
 humanity by which he becomes a partaker of the divine 
 life. As one of the fathers has well said : " Christ 
 became man to accustom us to become like God." 
 This last conversation with my revered master has 
 always lived in my memory as the most perfect 
 expression of his inner life. The thought contained 
 in the words just quoted ran as a connecting link, 
 not only through all his teaching, both as a preacher 
 and an apologist, but through all his labours as a 
 literary critic and a liberal journalist, giving singular 
 power and unity to his whole work. Vinet accepted 
 it as a fundamental principle that the human soul is 
 veritably the offspring of God, and bears His image 
 even in its fallen and degraded condition ; while in 
 Christianity, so far from being absorbed and lost in 
 
ALEXANDRE VINET. 261 
 
 the infinite, it is restored to its true self. The super- 
 natural in the gospel, thus regarded, is the restoration 
 of the truly natural, freed from all that has polluted 
 and falsified it. A man who has not experienced this 
 renovating influence is like the shipwrecked mariner, 
 whom Plato describes so vividly, covered with slime 
 and crawling sea foam. Christianity frees him from 
 all this defilement. The Christian alone is the com- 
 plete man. 
 
 This is a doctrine widely different from the 
 splendida vitia of St. Augustine, from his systematic 
 disparagement of human nature apart from faith. In 
 Vinet's view, even fallen man is a being of a noble 
 race. " Upon the heights of human nature," he says, 
 in the introductory lecture to the practical philosophy 
 of Christianity, " we find the ruins of an altar." Con- 
 science bears witness to the divine presence in a man ; 
 this is the source at once of his greatness and of his 
 misery. Between this innate sense of the divine and 
 Christ, there is a pre-established harmony. " Con- 
 science," says Vinet, " is only the abiding and inefface- 
 able impress of a powerful hand, which having once 
 held us has now let us go — or rather, out of which an 
 enemy's power has dragged us. The hand is gone ; 
 the mark of its pressure remains." The human soul 
 bears in its secret depths an inscription written, as it 
 were, in that invisible ink which only the fire reveals. 
 The gospel is the fire, and by its light we read the 
 divine characters traced on our own souls. Vinet has 
 
262 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRA ITS. 
 
 embodied the same idea, which is the key to his whole 
 religious teaching, in the following striking image : 
 
 "We call to mind," he says, "the usages of ancient hospi- 
 tality. Before parting from a stranger, the father of the family 
 was wont to break a clay seal, on which certain characters were 
 impressed, and giving one half to his guest, he kept the other 
 himself. After the lapse of years, these two fragments being 
 brought together again would recognise each other, so to speak, 
 and would be a medium of recognition between the two men 
 who held them, and by the evidence they bore to the relations 
 of former days, would become the basis of new ones. Thus is 
 it in the book of our soul: the lines there begun find their 
 divine complement ; thus our soul does not, properly speaking, 
 discover the truth, but may be rather said to recognise it. The 
 gospel is believed when it has ceased to be to us an external, 
 and has become an internal truth, when it has become a fact 
 in our consciousness. Christianity is conscience raised to its 
 highest exercise." 
 
 Upon this purely moral basis Vinet constructs the 
 edifice of theology. So far from explaining away the 
 supernatural to a mere rationalistic idealism, he shows 
 how truly it is in harmony with the deep instincts of 
 the soul. The divine humanity of Christ, and His 
 voluntary sacrifice of Himself, are represented as the 
 supreme satisfaction of the demands of conscience, 
 which craves to find itself once more perfectly united 
 to God, through the redeeming sacrifice. 
 
 Vinet's conception of religion was thus altogether 
 distinct from a dry scholasticism, in which a closely- 
 linked chain of doctrines fetters the mind without 
 influencing the heart. Christianity is not essentially 
 either a formulary or a code. It is a grand fact, or 
 
ALEXANDRE VINET. 263 
 
 to speak more truly, it is a living person, truth incar- 
 nate. Christ, when He came to take His place 
 among men, came to His own. It was vain to shut 
 the door against Him ; He is at home in the human 
 heart, because it was made for Him. When it comes 
 to itself it recognises this, and welcomes the truth of 
 God which stoops to dwell with him, as Adam wel- 
 comed Eve, saying : " This is now bone of my bone 
 and flesh of my flesh." 
 
 We can well understand that in a system like this, 
 doctrine and morality are inseparable, even as the 
 two meet together in the person of Christ and in the 
 cross of Calvary. The greatest, the most amazing 
 of all doctrines is that doctrine of the cross, which 
 reconciles earth and heaven ; and the highest morality 
 is that very act of redemption which is the supreme 
 sacrifice. Faith accepts both the doctrine and the 
 morality. The Christian soul believes in Christ by 
 uniting itself to Him, and learning from Him the 
 secret of self-devotion. Thus that great controversy 
 of faith and works, which has so sharply divided 
 Christendom, is solved by being brought before a 
 higher tribunal, where the two parties so long at 
 enmity are reconciled. Faith appropriates the whole 
 Christ by a moral act which engages all the energies 
 of the soul, and renders it more and more conformed 
 to His image, which stands forth radiant with the 
 light of heaven against the dark background of the 
 cross. It was in bringing out this aspect of the truth 
 
264 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 that Vinet accomplished his most important work as 
 a Reformer of the faith. He did much to render it 
 less narrow and more human, while he never fell into 
 the error of confounding it with a rationalistic philo- 
 sophy. No one was ever more deeply conscious of 
 the wounds of humanity, and no one ever more faith- 
 fully interpreted the cry of the soul after the sovereign 
 and divine remedy. He carried on and extended the 
 work of Pascal, whose so-called scepticism was in 
 reality only the passionate avowal of the insufficiency 
 of a purely intellectual and doctrinal religion, or of a 
 rigidly Cartesian philosophy. 
 
 Having thus laid down the premises of the great 
 Christian thinker, it will be easy to deduce from them 
 the broad and consistent liberalism which character- 
 ised all his writings. 
 
 Vinet had first of all a firm belief in moral liberty 
 in its highest application, I mean in the relations of 
 man to God. The negation of liberty always seemed 
 to him emphatically the error. He was thus led to 
 modify considerably the implacable idea of the Divine 
 sovereignty to which such prominence is given in 
 Calvinism, and from which, with an apparent in- 
 consistency, it has deduced the doctrine of civil 
 and religious liberty. The inconsistency is only on 
 the surface, however, for the very doctrine which 
 humbles man before the supreme majesty of God, vin- 
 dicates his dignity in relation to all inferior powers, 
 and especially to the hierarchy. The Calvinistic 
 
ALEXANDRE VI NET. 265 
 
 dogma of predestination was, perhaps naturally, 
 evolved in the reaction of the sixteenth century, 
 and adopted as a controversial weapon, but it is, 
 nevertheless, a dangerous exaggeration which has too 
 long been a clog on the progress of the Reformation. 
 It is well for us to realise that these questions, which 
 seem to deal with purely abstract matters, have their 
 counterpart in history, and that, in fact, they have to 
 a great extent shaped it. Looking back to Luther's 
 first protests, we should be ready to say, "A mere 
 monkish quarrel." But this monkish quarrel inaugu- 
 rated the greatest and most formidable schism in 
 Europe. 
 
 " Only a theological dispute," some may be ready 
 to say, referring to the discussions on grace and free- 
 will. And yet we have but to read the history of 
 Holland and of the Anglo-Saxon peoples, or " Les 
 Provinciales" of Pascal, in order to see how import- 
 ant has been the bearing of these problems on the 
 history of the modern world. Vinet, in conjunction 
 with some of the most eminent divines of Germany, 
 proclaimed that great reconciliation between human 
 liberty and Divine sovereignty, which opens a new 
 career to the Reformation. He used this happy 
 phrase to convey his meaning : " Grace is a divine 
 eloquence, which carries man's free-will captive by 
 persuasion." 
 
 Principles like these strike at the root of all 
 external authority in matters of religion. It is very 
 
266 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 evident that if man has in his conscience a sufficient 
 criterion of truth, if he is by his very nature in 
 harmony with it, truth cannot be forced upon him 
 under any pretext, by a power outside himself. 
 What necessity can there be for constraint, where 
 there is already affinity and latent sympathy ? Un- 
 doubtedly the conscience is often dulled by evil 
 passions ; it needs to have these hindrances removed, 
 and to be itself aroused from its stupor, but this is a 
 moral act. Hence the intervention of the will in the 
 formation of the belief, not to enforce the blind 
 acceptance of that which the intellect repudiates, not 
 to annul or suspend the operation of the rational 
 faculties, but to raise man above all that would lead 
 him into exile, all that would hinder the pursuit of 
 his true ideal, and would prevent his recognising 
 the supreme embodiment of good presented in 
 the gospel. 
 
 Vinet was thus led to sap the very foundations of 
 that system of external authority, which celebrated not 
 long ago its most decisive and dangerous victory. It 
 must not be supposed that he would leave Christian 
 thought to drift without an anchor or a helm. On 
 the contrary, the authority for which he pleads is all 
 the more powerful because it is voluntarily accepted. 
 The magnetic needle does not need to be turned to 
 the pole by force, it tends towards it by a necessity of 
 its nature, and thus becomes the mariner's guide. So 
 it is with the soul ; it has a tendency towards the pole 
 
ALEXANDRE VINET. 267 
 
 of truth, all the more sure because it is spontaneous, 
 and a tendency, which once recognised, it feels itself 
 bound religiously to obey. It is not true, then, to say 
 that it is left to drift over the wide ocean of thought. 
 Conscience is its compass ; and truth accepted, its polar 
 star. Vinet gives the fullest and most correct state- 
 ment of his views on the false authority, as opposed 
 to the true, in his work on Pascal. 
 
 He does not repudiate this false authority under 
 one form only ; he denounces it as unsparingly in 
 his own communion as elsewhere. He is as im- 
 patient of the yoke of an intolerant orthodoxy, as of 
 that of the hierarchy. He would have the Christian 
 thinker free himself from all merely human tradition, 
 and form his own faith from immediate contact with 
 the truth at its very source. The honest seeker will 
 not find the truth embodied in the form of a syste- 
 matic creed even in the Bible itself, which speaks with 
 supreme authority on matters of faith. It was not 
 the purpose of God to spare man the wholesome effort 
 of seeking for and eliciting the truth for himself. 
 This conception of religious truth and of the method 
 of its attainment, altogether excludes those arbitrary 
 solutions, and that imperious insistance upon certain 
 formulas of faith, which would crush all opposition, as 
 resistance to lawful authority to be summarily dealt 
 with. Such denunciations may become a Bossuet, as 
 the proud representative of a power, the sacred titles 
 of which he deems none can dispute. The Christian 
 
268 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 apology, in this view of it, is the armed guard of the 
 sanctuary, the office of which is to stamp out all re- 
 bellion. Doubt is, on this theory, a refractory subject, 
 to be curbed by authority, not to be convinced by 
 reason. It needs to be rebuked from the pulpit, in 
 such tones as a master might use to an intractable 
 scholar. This proud assumption of authority runs 
 through all the lofty eloquence of the French pulpit 
 in the seventeenth century, which achieved at that time 
 some of its most magnificent effects. 
 
 Vinet's teaching is in striking contrast to all this. He 
 is a brother, stretching out a hand to his brethren in 
 distress. Himself, so lately battling with the same 
 stormy winds, he is full of sympathy with his strug- 
 gling brethren, and longs to lead them into the port 
 of peace. Is he not, indeed, still a seeker after truth, 
 like themselves ? for who can boast that he has at- 
 tained to absolute truth, unless he be under the same 
 illusion as the child who deems that he can grasp the 
 ocean in the hollow of his hand ? In the introduction 
 to the first volume of his sermons, Vinet thus explains 
 his position : " As one conscious of his own weak- 
 ness, I address myself to the weak. I have thought 
 that those, who are still in the infancy of their faith, 
 want some one who, placing himself at their stand- 
 point, should speak to them less as a preacher than as 
 a man who is himself but a few steps in advance of 
 them, and who is anxious to use for their benefit the 
 slight advantage this may give him." 
 
ALEXANDRE VI NET. 269 
 
 To us it seems that, in an age like ours, this is the 
 safest and most effective method of teaching. We 
 are reminded of Corneille's beautiful line — 
 
 Desarme d^clairs ta divine eloquence. 
 
 The lightning dazzles rather than enlightens. 
 No pomp of sacerdotalism carries half so much weight 
 as the frankly human utterance of an honest and 
 earnest heart. Do we not learn this lesson from the 
 life of the Great Master, who left the seat of Moses in 
 the temple to the scribes and Pharisees, while He 
 taught by the well of Sychem, in the streets of Galilean 
 villages, or from the deck of the fishermen's boat ? 
 
 Vinet's breadth of view gave him a noble vantage- 
 ground as a literary critic. He looked upon literature 
 as the most genuine expression, not only of social 
 conditions, but of the human heart. The secret of the 
 power of literature is, that it embodies in a tangible 
 form, that which is essentially the mind of the age. 
 It is the revelation, all the more reliable because it is 
 often unwitting, of the psychological condition of the 
 generation which produces it. Vinet always regarded 
 it in this light. Hence his criticism was never slight 
 or superficial, but always conscientious and exact. 
 He never entered on the study of great writers, simply 
 with a view to finding proofs in support of his own 
 beliefs. Literature, thus treated, becomes only a 
 series of texts for one endless sermon. No one had a 
 keener relish than Vinet for the pure beauties of litera- 
 
270 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 ture, and he delighted in kindling the same enthusiasm 
 in others. With a few strokes of his powerful pen, he 
 would characterise our great writers, but he always 
 recognised the man in the author. He never ridiculed. 
 We always feel that he approaches a fellow-man with 
 respect ; and when he finds that which is unworthy, 
 he treats it not as a satirist, but as a good physician, 
 anxious to relieve, if possible, the ills which grieve his 
 compassionate heart. His studies of the nineteenth 
 century are among the finest pages of the moral history 
 of our era, into which he had a singularly clear insight. 
 Vinet was not so absorbed in the conflict of ideas 
 as to become indifferent to the not less ardent contro- 
 versy which was agitating the political world at the 
 same time. He was a staunch Liberal on every ques- 
 tion. It was impossible that he should be otherwise, 
 with his views of the destiny of man. Believing, as 
 he did, that man was called to fulfil in the free exer- 
 cise of his highest faculties, a truly divine vocation, 
 he could not admit that he was subject to any other 
 yoke than that of the protecting law of liberty, which 
 is the true guardian of peace and order in the State. 
 The more exalted the origin and destiny of man, the 
 surer basis is there for his rights as a member of society. 
 A sacred buckler is over him, and any wrong done to 
 him is sacrilege. Hence Vinet's deep love for liberty. 
 Speaking of it in a letter to a friend, he says : " As 
 long as I live, my heart will beat true to the cause of 
 freedom." 
 
ALEXANDRE VINET. 271 
 
 " Even though liberty were fraught with all imagin- 
 able perils," he says again ; " while slavery promised 
 all peace and tranquillity, I would still prefer liberty, 
 for liberty is life, and slavery death. We are well 
 aware that in many minds this word liberty awakens 
 all sorts of misgivings, that in some ears it sounds like 
 the trumpet blast of civil discord. But surely such 
 fear is weakness. Has any word ever been more 
 abused ? But in this it only shares the fate of all holy 
 and sublime things. From the very beginning of the 
 world, the conflict has been going on between slavery 
 and liberty. The sixty centuries of its history have 
 been but one long day of battle. The history of liberty 
 has been assured ever since the great Leader of man- 
 kind placed Himself at the head of this sacred battalion, 
 which gains strength by the blows which it receives 
 even more than by those which it gives." 
 
 Vinet thus always kept in view the close connection 
 between liberty in its outward manifestations and its 
 sacred source. " Liberty has need," he said, " of a 
 religious basis." He shared De Tocqueville's convic- 
 tion : " The man who does not believe, is of necessity 
 a slave." That which filled him with the keenest 
 apprehension for France, which he dearly loved, was 
 the fact that the tree of its liberal Constitution, with 
 all its fresh and luxuriant foliage, had no deep roots. 
 This state of things wrung from him a cry of alarm. 
 "Only think," he exclaimed, "of so much liberty, and 
 no beliefs ! " 
 
272 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 We have mentioned De Tocqueville. Vinet was in 
 full accord with this great and noble man, who was 
 one of the first, after Benjamin Constant, to repudiate 
 the proceedings of the Revolutionists, refusing to 
 follow the school of Rousseau, and to identify liberty 
 with the sovereignty of the people. He maintained 
 that despotism was not lightened by being exercised 
 by many tyrants instead of one, and that it made not 
 the slightest difference whether the rights of the 
 individual were crushed by a giant with a single club, 
 or by a Briareus with a hundred arms. The character- 
 istic of true liberalism is that it limits the power of 
 the State with a view to the protection of individual 
 liberties, and makes the State the legal guardian of 
 the rights of the citizen. France owes much to De 
 Tocqueville, for his efforts in the cause of decentral- 
 isation, — a cause which has unhappily been forsaken 
 of late by its former defenders. Vinet did equally 
 effective service in the same direction, by enforcing a 
 religious respect for the individual. It is just because 
 man is a moral being that every individual has an 
 infinite value, and that it can never be lawful to sacri- 
 fice him for the public cause, as if he were a mere 
 integral part of a great whole. It was under the. 
 influence of this broad and enlightened liberalism 
 that Vinet, on the eve of the Revolution of 1848 
 (which he did not live to see), attacked the principle 
 of Socialism, with characteristic acumen and vigour. 
 
 While Vinet was thus the champion of all liberties, 
 
ALEXANDRE VI NET. 273 
 
 he was the indefatigable and incomparable advocate 
 of religious liberty, carried to its furthest consequences. 
 Tc tb : s subject he devoted some of his noblest works 
 — his " Memoire " of 1823, his volume on "La mani- 
 festation des Convictions religieuses," and a constant 
 succession of pamphlets and articles, called forth by 
 the current polemics of a little democracy, which had 
 small regard for the rights of conscience. In this 
 cause also, he served under the same banner as De 
 Tocqueville, and had soon such eminent allies as MM. 
 De Laboulaye and Jules Simon. No one did more 
 than Vinet to uplift that noble standard which, un- 
 happily, even now — eighty years after the French 
 Revolution, and three centuries after the Reformation 
 — rallies around it so few followers on the Continent 
 of Europe. 
 
 There are two bases on which liberty of conscience 
 may be philosophically maintained. The first is the 
 impossibility of establishing religious truths by direct 
 evidence, which takes away from the State all right to 
 impose or to defend them by force ; the second is 
 respect for conscience, on the ground of God's exclu- 
 sive right of control over it. We accept both lines of 
 argument. We hold that religious and philosophical 
 truth cannot be established by direct evidence — a 
 statement which Vinet, who laid such stress upon the 
 moral character of faith, would certainly not have 
 disputed. It was on the second ground, however, that 
 he mainly took his stand, in opposing stedfastly all 
 
 19 
 
274 CONTEMPORAR V POR 7 RAITS. 
 
 coercion in matters of religion, as the most odious 
 abuse of power. In his view, there was no worse 
 offence against God than the attempt to interpose the 
 rude hand of the State between Him and the human 
 soul. He says : " It is impossible, on any hypothesis 
 whatever, to conceive the slightest relation between 
 political science and the science of the Infinite, between 
 politics and the faith of the heart, between the police 
 and the conscience. The sacred realm of conscience 
 is the unassailable stronghold of individual rights, — 
 rights which belong to every man absolutely and 
 undividedly, and for which he is accountable to God 
 alone. Lest any should mistake his meaning, and 
 confound him with the defenders of the illusory liberty 
 for the right, Verny adds : " Liberty of conscience 
 is not merely the competence to decide between one 
 religion and another ; it is also essentially the right 
 not to accept any." 
 
 This, then, was Vinet's motto — liberty for all men, 
 under all circumstances ; liberty not only for the 
 faithful, but for the unbelieving — nay, even for the 
 great contemners of conscience. Let those incon- 
 sistent Liberals, who are tempted to excuse the 
 attacks made on the Ultramontanes in Prussia and in 
 Switzerland, reflect on the following noble words : 
 " If ever toleration can find a worthy occasion for its 
 exercise, it is in relation to the intolerant." 
 
 Vinet did not rest satisfied with generous theories : 
 he desired to see the recognition of liberty in practice, 
 
ALEXANDRE VINET. 275 
 
 as well as in principle. Religious liberty was in- 
 separable, in his view, from liberty of worship and 
 of outward profession, under the single condition of 
 respect for the laws and for public order. He went 
 even further — he desired to see the independence of 
 worship secured by the separation of the Church 
 from the State. It was not enough for him that the 
 Church should not persecute ; he was equally averse 
 to its position as the protector of religion, for, by 
 such protection, it acquires a privilege, and casts its 
 gold or its sword into that scale of the sanctuary, 
 which ought not to be turned by any but the highest 
 moral considerations. To expect religious liberty in 
 a State which has an established religion of its own, 
 is a chimera. The Church is an association of souls, 
 based upon individual convictions freely arrived at. 
 Such an association cannot lawfully identify itself with 
 the State, which is a purely civil institution, in which 
 all citizens have equal rights by birth. From such an 
 unholy alliance one of two results must follow : either 
 the Church will become a mere external organisation, 
 within whose easy enclosure souls will be lulled into 
 a false security ; or it will be a refractory force, always 
 at issue with the State, and compromised in the purity 
 of its character alike by success or failure. 
 
 It may be objected that Vinet went too far in his 
 depreciation of the State, and failed to recognise 
 sufficiently its high vocation as the representative of 
 law. All we ask of the State is that it should bear 
 
276 CONTEMPORAR Y PORTRAITS. 
 
 in mind this its noble function, and refuse to lend 
 itself to the violation of the most sacred form of law 
 — that which is enshrined in the human conscience. 
 The State will never be further from atheism than 
 while scrupulously fulfilling its secular duties : it is 
 really atheistic when it presumes to put itself in the 
 place which belongs to God alone, in the government 
 of souls. 
 
 Even if we admit, however, that Vinet may have 
 taken an inadequate view of the high functions of the 
 State, we must still regard as truly sublime his elo- 
 quent vindication of the great cause of spiritual 
 independence, which Mirabeau had already illumined 
 with some of the lightning flashes of his genius, as 
 when he said "religion is no more national than 
 conscience." 
 
 In our estimation, Vinet has no rival among his 
 contemporaries in the vindication of these principles, 
 unless it be Lamartine. We recall his noble utter- 
 ances on the subject of the Concordat, and his irre- 
 pressible indignation at the very thought of a religion 
 placed under the control of any imperial power what- 
 soever, or of a sovereign democracy. The separation 
 of the Church and State would be, as he deemed, the 
 fitting consummation of what he called the religious 
 phase of the French Revolution. Vinet, De Toc- 
 queville, Lamartine — these are names which impart a 
 truer than any mere heraldic dignity to a great idea, 
 which the superficial and bigoted adherents of routine 
 
ALEXANDRE VINET. 277 
 
 regard as among the abominations of a rabid Radi- 
 calism. 
 
 It is now more than thirty years since the great 
 thinker of Lausanne died, and how amply has the 
 course of events during that period fulfilled his fore- 
 cast. Those tendencies to absolutism in religion and 
 politics, which he never ceased to denounce, have 
 been carried in every direction to their furthest issues. 
 As we see how deeply men's minds have been troubled 
 by the insolent pretensions of those who would force 
 upon the Church a fictitious unity, we feel the full 
 value of Vinet's motto : " Liberty is the one way to 
 unity." What an unrestricted application he himself 
 gave to this principle, we may judge from the follow- 
 ing words : " Protestantism," he says, " is with me 
 only a starting-point ; my religion lies beyond it. I 
 may, as a Protestant, hold Catholic opinions ; and who 
 knows whether I do so or not ? That which I repu- 
 diate, utterly, is the right of any human power to 
 control my beliefs." 
 
 How grandly does this exalted liberalism of 
 Vinet's, based upon the purest religion, contrast with 
 the social theories which the materialistic school 
 deduces from its philosophical principles — theories 
 which daringly apply to humanity the doctrine of the 
 survival of the fittest, and declare with a cynical in- 
 difference that the weak must give place to the 
 strong. Was not Vinet right when he said that 
 materialism throws all its weight into the scale of 
 
278 CONTEMFORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 tyranny ? The world has never yet seen any des- 
 potism so terrible as that which would hold it in its 
 grasp, if these deadly systems, to which some of the 
 most distinguished psychologists of the day lend the 
 support of their genius, were ever to become dominant 
 in the minds of men. Let us fully realise our 
 position. We are lost if Christian spirituality does 
 not win the day ; and it will only win it if it is faith- 
 ful to those principles of broad and honest liberalism 
 which Vinet consistently advocated. We are sick at 
 heart of those ostentatious appeals to liberal prin- 
 ciples, made by the worst enemies of liberty, when 
 they are anxious to secure a vantage-ground for 
 trampling it under foot. They have taken the surest 
 means to dishonour their cause, and, more than that, 
 to bring discredit on the idea of religion, of which 
 they are the unworthy representatives. Religion loses 
 all its force and dignity when it is dissociated from 
 the idea of freedom. 
 
 Vinet has left a noble heritage to be entered upon 
 by this generation. To give full liberty to religion, 
 and to restrict the authority of the State to its proper 
 civil sphere — this was the object of his unrelaxing 
 efforts. 
 
 We are fully convinced that no other solution of 
 the ecclesiastical problem is possible, and that till this 
 is accepted, we shall see the perpetual renewal of those 
 disastrous and dangerous struggles for exclusive 
 power and privilege to persecute, which are equally 
 
ALEXANDRE VINET. 279 
 
 dishonouring to the Churches and prejudicial to the 
 State. 
 
 There are few writers who can be studied with 
 more advantage at the present time than Vinet. We 
 are thankful to M. Rambert for bringing before us 
 this type of a lofty and liberal Christianity, which 
 vindicates the gospel from many of the calumnies 
 cast upon it, by showing what it is in its true spirit, 
 in contrast to those miserable travesties which are 
 often presented to us in its name. 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 
 
 " Ces questions, coupables amusements des esprits legers, inson- 
 dables douleurs des dmes profondes" (Verny. Sermons, p. 
 
 358). 
 
 THE names of Verny and Robertson recall two 
 of the most remarkable representatives of the 
 Church of our day, both removed by death in the 
 fulness of their manhood, after passing through a 
 crisis in their spiritual life, in which they only achieved 
 the victory after a long and painful struggle. Both 
 started from the most rigid orthodoxy ; but they soon 
 grew ill at ease in a vesture which was too narrow for 
 their spirits. The questions of the day pressed upon 
 them, and having been taught to confound theology 
 with religion, or rather a particular theology with the 
 very essence of Christianity, they thought they had 
 lost their faith, when they could no longer hold fast this 
 form of sound words. The anguish of mind which 
 both suffered at this crisis of their mental history 
 shows how dearly they loved the truth. To them it 
 
284 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 was no mere theory to be held or dropped, but the 
 very gist of life, without which existence would be 
 aimless and worthless. They were among the trem- 
 bling seekers after truth ; but their quest was pursued 
 all the more sorrowfully because they had to begin it 
 afresh after having once already, as they had sup- 
 posed, found and grasped the hidden treasure. This 
 it was which made their position peculiarly painful. 
 But their ultimate success was certain, for they used 
 the means by which alone a full assurance of truth can 
 be finally reached. They did not treat the grave 
 doubt which had arisen in their hearts as a demon to 
 be exorcised, nor did they try to banish it by an 
 unintelligent surrender of reason to authority. They 
 had too much respect for truth to hold it so cheap. 
 They were careful, however, not to allow the doubt to 
 extend to their moral and religious life ; they held 
 fast those immutable convictions of right and wrong 
 to which conscience appeals. These supplied a fixed 
 point on which the lever of inquiry might rest. Above 
 all, they held constant fellowship with the living God, 
 the source of all purity and light. They thus escaped 
 that moral scepticism which is a disease of heart and 
 brain, smiting both with sterility, and against which 
 conscience raises its accusing voice. Both Verny and 
 Robertson, as we shall see, came out from the spiritual 
 conflict with their faith purified and enlarged, and 
 established upon a more solid basis. 
 
 I am far from saying that either had arrived at the 
 
VERN Y AND R OBER TSOJV. 285 
 
 complete apprehension of Christian truth. I shall 
 have to draw attention to more than one point on 
 which their creed appears to me deficient ; but it bears 
 the unquestionable impress of the gospel of Christ, 
 and, in many respects, it is peculiarly adapted to the 
 wants of our generation. Nothing is likely to be of 
 more use in the present day than the example of men 
 like these. All the disciples of Christ are not re- 
 quired to pass through the same experiences. There 
 are many who never know any other conflict than 
 that against sin ; once born into the new life, doubts 
 no more arise in their hearts. Their convictions are 
 solid and genuine, based upon their personal experi- 
 ence of the truth. There is a cast of mind to which 
 doubt is impossible, and which instinctively ignores 
 all the problems of religious thought. We admit that 
 such a spiritual attitude is perfectly legitimate : all we 
 ask is that it should not be exacted of all Christians, 
 and that a happy, natural disposition should not be 
 confounded with faith. We must recognise the exist- 
 ence also of minds of another order, more disposed by 
 habit and constitution to the analysis of ideas and 
 doctrines, and which, while they bow in reverence 
 before the cross, want to test the firm foundations of 
 their faith. To such minds there must come painful 
 crises of self-questioning in times like ours, when so 
 many difficult problems constantly present them- 
 selves, and when, in the great heritage of thought 
 received from past generations, we are called upon to 
 
286 CONTEMPORAR Y PORTRAITS. 
 
 distinguish between what is eternal truth and what is 
 merely human tradition. Let it be observed, more- 
 over, that this cannot be accomplished, as in the times 
 of the Reformation, by one of those great religious 
 movements which destroy by replacing, and the nega- 
 tions of which are but as it were the keen point of 
 powerful affirmations. The fire, which burns up the 
 straw and the stubble, mixed with the true material in 
 the Christian building, comes straight from heaven, 
 and it begins by kindling a new and intense life in 
 the believing soul. 
 
 There has been nothing of this sort in our day. 
 The change in theology, which our generation has wit- 
 nessed, has been wrought by a spirit of inquiry, rather 
 subtle than fervent, and working under a cold and 
 cloudy sky. It is a spirit in harmony with the age ; but 
 one which is full of danger to the Christian life. Hence 
 the permanent interest that attaches for us to the 
 spiritual history of such men as Verny and Robertson. 
 In them we see true faith coming forth victorious from 
 the agonising conflict with doubt. From them we 
 learn that inquiry does not necessarily result in the 
 frivolous negations of Rationalism, which are the bane 
 of our modern Protestantism. That which strikes us, 
 indeed, in this so-called liberalism, is not so much the 
 poverty of its results, as that self-satisfaction which it 
 displays so ostentatiously, in the midst of the ever- 
 widening religious and theological desert which it 
 creates around itself. We find no trace of that spirit 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 287 
 
 of earnest inquiry which is ever characteristic of the 
 ardent lovers of truth. The calm complacency of the 
 Rationalistic school has no parallel, unless it be in 
 that of a certain orthodox school, which believes it 
 has comprehended the inexhaustible treasure of reve- 
 lation in a few well-defined formularies. The evolu- 
 tions of the young theological Left remind us of the 
 feats of brilliant skaters. They go curvetting and 
 gliding over the brittle surface, beneath which lie 
 depths of which they never think — the deep mysteries 
 of heaven and hell, of human sin and of Divine love. 
 Verny and Robertson were utter strangers to this 
 smiling and superficial theology, neither on the other 
 hand did they make shipwreck upon the barren rock 
 of universal doubt. In reading theirwritings — those of 
 Robertson especially — I am reminded of the impres- 
 sive, sternly mournful pages in which M. Scherer has 
 related the tragic story of Montaigu, a type easy to 
 recognise, and nobler a hundred times than the blatant 
 triflers of one section of the theological Left. The 
 adaptation of the monologue of Faust to our present 
 circumstances is very pathetic. 
 
 Robertson has described, in terms not less eloquent, 
 the night of anguish in which the faith he had held 
 as a mere tradition, slipped from him. Only he goes 
 on to tell us how he again found Christ. He was not 
 satisfied, like Faust and Montaigu, with listening to 
 the Easter bells, and yielding to a mere reverie of 
 poetic sadness. He heard, at the same time, a deeper 
 
288 CONTEMFORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 tone, the voice of conscience, which he never allowed 
 to be stifled by his intellectual doubts. He heard, 
 too, in the depths of his heart, another voice, yet more 
 sublime and tender, the voice of the God of the 
 gospel ; and thus he came out of the struggle with a 
 yet firmer grasp of those beliefs, which are the safe- 
 guards of the moral, no less than of the religious life. 
 In his biography we have the description, not only of 
 the night of windy storm and tempest, but also of the 
 faithful star which guided him into the port of peace. 
 
 I. 
 
 The volume of Verny's Sermons brings vividly 
 before us the thinker and the preacher, but no written 
 words can do full justice to his peculiar genius, to 
 that versatility and freshness of mind which lent such 
 a charm to his unstudied intercourse with his friends. 
 In such free conversation, he poured forth the 
 treasures of his knowledge, and the still richer 
 treasures of his own heart and mind, with a readiness 
 and richness of utterance rarely equalled. His was 
 an ardent and highly sensitive nature. His eyes 
 would fill with tears under the influence of some 
 strong emotion, when a moment before he had been 
 indulging in bright, humorous sallies, sometimes not 
 unmixed with a touch of irony. The reason why he 
 did not write more was no doubt this, that he was 
 never wholly himself, pen in hand. In his pulpit 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 289 
 
 preparations, he was obliged to adopt a very exact 
 method, lest he should be carried away by his con- 
 stant habit of rapid, impulsive improvisation. He 
 had to keep within rigid bounds, those floods of im- 
 petuous eloquence which were always ready to burst 
 forth. Hence the fine aroma of his genius can never 
 be fully appreciated by those who know him only 
 through his writings. The pious urn, in which his 
 remains are presented to us to-day, contains only the 
 cold ashes of his powerful intellect. This is, however, 
 no mean memorial, and we are deeply grateful to the 
 family of the author for this valuable contribution to 
 our religious literature. 
 
 The short biographical notice with which the 
 Sermons are prefaced, gives us the principal phases 
 of Verny's life, especially in its moral and religious 
 aspect. He began at the bar. His dedication to the 
 ministry was the result of his own well-considered 
 choice, and not a career pre-determined for him by 
 his family. He always carefully avoided any assump- 
 tion of the clerical, either in speech or manner, and 
 was never betrayed into anything like religious cant. 
 The knowledge he gained of life and of men, in his 
 legal apprenticeship, was the best preparation possible 
 for the ministry. Most of the leading preachers 
 among the Catholic clergy have been engaged in 
 some civil career before entering the seminary, and 
 have thus acquired a manliness which education in a 
 clerical hot-house can never give. 
 
 20 
 
290 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 It was at Mulhouse, when acting as Principal of the 
 College in that town, that Verny became a new man. 
 He says himself: "It was Vinet who removed the 
 cataract from my eyes." He could not have come 
 under a healthier influence, or one more adapted to 
 his noble and vigorous nature. 
 
 Vinet remained through life his most dear and 
 venerated friend. We understand that the corres- 
 pondence between these great men has been pre- 
 served. We may hope that it will one day be 
 published, for what could be more rich in interest 
 than the interchange of two such minds on the 
 highest themes of thought and feeling. 
 
 At this time, about the year 1834, no difference of 
 opinion had yet arisen to overshadow the dawn of the 
 religious awakening in Protestant France. It is easy 
 to trace in the early writings of Vinet a fresh current 
 of thought, distinct from the prevailing orthodoxy; 
 but this current was then like the Rhone in the Lake 
 of Geneva, a distinct, but not as yet divergent, stream. 
 Verny, therefore, could be at this time a disciple of 
 Vinet, without any marked dissidence from the then 
 prevailing mode of thought. 
 
 On his nomination to the pastorate of the Lutheran 
 Church of Paris, he at once took his place among the 
 excellent men who were at that time the leaders of 
 the orthodox religious movement, and he contended, 
 side by side with them, against the mitigated Ra- 
 tionalism which still widely prevailed. He appears 
 
VERNY AND R OBER TSON. 29 1 
 
 even to have preached emphatically the particular 
 doctrine of his Church as to the Lord's Supper, 
 although he was never an advocate of the rigid ex- 
 clusiveness which characterised it subsequently, espe- 
 cially in Alsace. A contributor to the periodical, the 
 " Semeur," x and closely associated with Vinet, who 
 conducted it with so much judgment and generous 
 large-heartedness, he was entirely free from the sec- 
 tarian spirit which can see nothing beyond its own 
 narrow sphere, and looks suspiciously on everything 
 that will not fall in with its petty theories. 
 
 A crisis in Verny's life, however, was approaching — 
 a crisis rendered inevitable by the intellectual and re- 
 ligious atmosphere of the day in which he lived. 
 
 In our time we are disposed to look on the religious 
 revival through a softening haze of distance, which 
 gives it an unreal breadth of horizon. We do it more 
 simple justice when we recognise it as it actually was, 
 in all its rough but vigorous originality. The services 
 rendered by it are so great, that we can afford to 
 acknowledge that it was narrow and incomplete, with- 
 out lessening its claim to our devout thankfulness. 
 To say that its theology was well-considered, that it 
 had a due regard for the liberty of Christian thought, 
 that it adequately recognised the claims of science, 
 would be to put fiction in the place of history. There 
 
 In reference to the " Semeur," see remarks in the Article 
 on Vinet. 
 
292 CONTEMPORA R Y FOR TRA ITS. 
 
 has been a disposition recently to resent the assertion, 
 that the theology of the revival is identical with that 
 of the seventeenth century. What, then, are the dif- 
 ferences between the two ? The current notions of 
 that period as to verbal inspiration, expiation, and 
 many other points, are much more nearly allied to the 
 Confession of Dort than of Rochelle. This theology 
 is purely and simply the almost literal translation of 
 the English theology of the commencement of the 
 present century, and this, in its turn, is the legitimate 
 offspring of the narrow dogmatism of the seventeenth. 
 Undoubtedly, from a moral point of view, the differ- 
 ence was great ; a Divine fire of enthusiasm and of 
 charity glowed through this meagre theology ; but in 
 order to recognise the actual progress of the revival 
 since the time of the Swiss Consensus, we must draw a 
 distinction between theology and faith, which the fore- 
 most representatives of the revival resolutely dis- 
 allowed. In the fervour of their belief and the nar- 
 rowness of their knowledge, they could not conceive 
 of a possible history of doctrine. To them it seemed 
 that the orthodoxy of the day had been the invariable 
 belief of all true Christians, and that " the good sound 
 doctrine " had been professed on all points by Chris- 
 tian antiquity ; that it had been re-discovered intact 
 by the Reformers, and brought into full relief in all its 
 integrity by the fathers of the revival. I appeal, in 
 support of this statement, to the writings of the ve- 
 nerable Gaussen, and to the course of argument con- 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 293 
 
 stantly adopted in the " Archives du Christianisme," 
 conducted by the venerated Frederic Monod, whose 
 name is identified in our warmest memories with the 
 purest disinterestedness, the most sincere faith, and 
 courageous candour. I appeal, yet further, to the pro- 
 tests of the elder M. Bost, whose powerful vindication 
 of the distinction between theology and religion was 
 not a mere fighting the air. Neither the " Semeur" nor 
 Vinet himself had as yet taken sufficiently firm ground 
 against this dangerous tendency of the time, the effect 
 of which was to confound eternal truth with transitory 
 forms, the human system with the Divine substance. 
 It was an error fraught with manifold perils, for it 
 compromised eternal things in the variations of theo- 
 logical formularies ; and it held fast, as the seamless 
 vesture of Christianity, a worn and patchwork robe, 
 altogether unworthy and inadequate to enfold its 
 spirit of immortal youth. 
 
 I lay stress upon this point, because it explains, not 
 only the spiritual crisis through which Verny passed, 
 but also the particular form of his new theology, with 
 its merits and defects. Always eager after knowledge, 
 he kept himself well up in all the movements of re- 
 ligious thought, and especially followed carefully the 
 discussions of German theology. Here all questions 
 were boldly approached, and the argument called forth 
 by Strauss' " Leben Jesu," brought to the front the most 
 widely differing views. The evangelical School, led 
 by men like Neander and Nitzch, brought forward, 
 
294 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 under the banner of evangelicalism, ideas which would 
 have been regarded as of very questionable orthodoxy 
 on the French side of the Rhine. There was no pass- 
 ing with impunity in that day the terrible Styx, which 
 divided the peaceful shores of uncontested beliefs 
 from the stormy strand of daring speculation. It was 
 not without a sharp wrench, that faith was separated 
 from its formula. It seemed, indeed, at one time, 
 as if faith itself must be uprooted in the process. So 
 it was with Verny. The conflict in his case was sharp 
 and agonising. How could it be otherwise, in a nature 
 so strong as his, to which truth was no mere matter 
 of curious speculation, but the great aim and end of 
 life ? To him, to lose Christ was to lose all that 
 gave strength and joy to his spiritual being — his ideal, 
 his hope. What was his agony when it seemed to 
 him that this heavenly Friend, this Divine brother, was 
 slipping from his embrace, was growing dim to him 
 in clouds of bewildering thought ? The burden of 
 his ministry aggravated his distress. He felt com- 
 pelled to give it up for a time, for he was not made of 
 the same stuff as those Savoyard vicars, who go on 
 with a mass in which they no longer believe, and 
 babble through a creed which they have ceased to 
 accept. This sublime duplicity had not yet been in- 
 troduced into the category of cardinal virtues. Verny, 
 himself, tells us how he found his way into the light 
 out of this dense darkness. He held fast to the sacred 
 convictions of his moral nature, and never ceased for 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 295 
 
 an instant to wait upon God. We may quote part of 
 a letter, written by him from Germany, as a report 
 from the field of battle. It is easy to predict from it 
 the victory that was at hand. 
 
 "The grace of God," he writes to his wife, "is with 
 me. I have not ceased to pray ; I pray still. And 
 I hope — I know — that through all this doubt and 
 anxiety, I shall reach light and peace. This struggle 
 is for my good, and I cannot doubt that the goodness 
 of God has yet happy days in store for me in His 
 service. I am not trying to constrain myself to 
 become a Methodist again, nolens volens, to please 
 my friends. No ; I desire to be sincere before God 
 and man. To profess again the strictly orthodox views 
 would be, I feel, to act a lie. By meditation and by 
 the study of Scripture, I must endeavour to frame a 
 theology, which I can bring before God with the 
 approval of my conscience. This is a painful and 
 difficult task ; but I will not shrink from it. I desire 
 above all things to be sincere and true. 
 
 " I most assuredly shall not, through fear of offend- 
 ing such and such person, hold myself bound by an 
 orthodoxy which in me would be hypocritical. But 
 I shall hold fast with all my strength, that which 
 God has given and confirmed to me: faith in Himself, 
 in His grace, His mercy, His love which pardons all 
 sin and heals all wounds. There is, I feel it, some- 
 thing above ourselves ; there is an eye that sees, an 
 ear that hears, a mercy which pities and brings relief 
 
296 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 to perplexed and anguished hearts. I feel so deeply, 
 I see so clearly, that out of God is no peace, no joy, 
 no true life. All misery, all trouble, all bitterness 
 come from seeking satisfaction apart from Him. I 
 must renounce self utterly, must make a complete 
 surrender of my own will, my own glory, and only 
 live in Him. Then all will be well." 
 
 We find the reflection of this great spiritual crisis 
 in Verny's life, in a funeral sermon preached by him 
 for one of his dearest friends, who was prematurely 
 cut off just as he was entering on a brilliant literary 
 career. This friend was Adolphe Lebre, so well 
 described by Vinet in the letter of introduction sent 
 by him to Verny. " I have never known," says 
 Vinet, " a more sincere and devoted lover of truth. 
 He has the mind of a philosopher, and the heart ol 
 a Christian." We ourselves, who had the privilege 
 of his intimacy, know how well deserved was this 
 encomium. Lebre lives in our memory as one of the 
 purest and most elevated of thinkers. To him too 
 the darkness came, and, less happy than others, he 
 never saw the light again till it dawned upon him in 
 the eternal morning beyond the grave. He died 
 before his beliefs had recovered their equilibrium. A 
 too vivid imagination added much to his actual 
 sufferings, and a terrible disease carried him off in a 
 few days. 
 
 Never, however, did his heart swerve from his 
 loyalty to Christ. An extract from an unpublished 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 297 
 
 letter, written by Lebre himself, will best bring him 
 before the reader. His intimacy with Verny, at this 
 period of his life, gives to the following passages a 
 real bearing upon the subject before us. They are 
 not a digression, for they throw much light upon the 
 spiritual attitude of the two friends at this crisis, and 
 they help us to understand perfectly the manner in 
 which Verny spoke at the grave of Lebre. 
 
 " You doubt," writes Lebre to a young student. "I 
 do not wonder at it. It is impossible in our day to 
 go fairly into scientific questions without encountering 
 doubt. We are in a transition period. A reformation 
 much more broad and deep than that of the sixteenth 
 century is in preparation. Catholicism and Protes- 
 tantism will perish in it : a new era is at hand for the 
 whole world. That kind of doubt which redoubles 
 its watchfulness in obedience, its ardour in prayer, 
 and which is full of holy aspirations, is alone of God ; 
 the other kind of doubt leads to license of the will, 
 to sinful self indulgence ; it degrades the soul and 
 does the work of sin and death. It destroys the 
 past, and it would blot out the future, if God allowed 
 it to triumph. The doubt which comes from God 
 works sorrow, but it works also life. It destroys 
 nothing in the past, but that which is imperfect and 
 transitory. It gives life to all that deserves to live. 
 It rends the soul, but it lifts it higher and makes it 
 greater, for it springs from new and loftier aspirations. 
 You doubt : this is a reason to be all the more 
 
?98 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 submissive to conscience, to obey it more strictly, to 
 strengthen the soul in the love of good and the 
 hatred of evil, to watch over it with holy trembling. 
 When doubt attempts to enter the domain of con- 
 science, to attack foully the eternal principles of right ; 
 or when you discover that the metaphysical scep- 
 ticism will in the end shake your moral convictions 
 and dull your conscience ; whenever, in a word, doubt 
 would urge you to a less high, pure, and noble 
 practice ; when it would weaken your love for the right 
 or your power to do it ; when it would make you 
 indulgent to your own selfishness, and exempt you 
 from sacrifice and self-devotion — then, be sure, it con- 
 ceals a mortal error. Reject it ! Listen to nothing 
 that would lower you : it cannot be the light of truth. 
 And if your selfish, carnal, evil heart finds a secret 
 pleasure in it, take alarm and resolve to flee from it 
 Seek the truth with your whole heart, and you will 
 find it. Begin by making it a law to obey that which 
 you know to be right, to hold evil in abhorrence, to 
 follow in everything the voice of duty. 
 
 " In scepticism the conscience is often very dull, but 
 obey all that still remains clear. Follow your gene- 
 rous instincts, all high and noble desires. Make it 
 your aim to become manly in the true sense of the 
 word. I mean, try above all things to do right, to 
 deny self and live for others. Lastly, do not stifle, 
 by an evil, petty, miserably distracted or dissipated 
 life, the light that yet remains within you. Follow 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 299 
 
 its leadings, and from day to day they will grow- 
 clearer and stronger. Be faithful also to prayer. You 
 will feel the need of this in order to resist temptation. 
 You ought to feel the need of this help also in that 
 search after truth which is at once so difficult and so 
 simple ; in which the upright heart always succeeds, 
 while the heart that is not honest goes ever further 
 and further astray. Pray according to your faith ; 
 God will hear you. Say to Him, as did one of those 
 mighty Christians who passed through a long period 
 of doubt before he could grasp the truth for which he 
 longed : ' My God, whatever Thou art, enlighten me ; 
 make Thyself known to me. Give me to seek Thee 
 and to desire Thee. Give me to live aright.' The 
 light came little by little, and at length he believed. 
 Oh ! dear soul, if with sincerity and perseverance you 
 will do this, I shall rest calmly about you. I do not 
 know when you will see your prayer answered ; but I 
 have this certainty, that it will be answered. You 
 are, perhaps, alarmed at this way, but you shall not 
 walk in it alone. Whenever we have a sincere desire 
 after God, He is with us ; He aids, He sustains us. 
 Why should we fear the difficulties of the road ? We 
 have the most helpful, the most faithful of friends, who 
 knows all our weakness, who pities it, who sends us 
 inward peace and joy of conscience to strengthen us, 
 who measures out the work of each day as we are 
 able to bear it. He has towards us a heart full of 
 love, tenderer than a mother's. As soon as we set 
 
300 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 out on our way back to the Father's house, He runs 
 to meet His prodigal child. The faintest sigh of the 
 soul that is seeking Him is more precious to Him than 
 the persevering efforts of the self-righteous. He is 
 full of goodness, of strength, of pity, of gentleness, of 
 all tender mercies. He is only severe to those who 
 have no desire after that which is good. Let us trust 
 in God to help us in the good fight, and He will give 
 us the strength in which we shall conquer. You feel 
 melancholy, perhaps, at the thought of a Christian 
 life. It seems to us sometimes as if it were sacrificing 
 our youth. But what an illusion ! It is only Chris- 
 tianity which can give the true youth, for it alone 
 gives the true love. Oh, what a power does it give of 
 sacrifice ; what a passion of devotion ; what an ac- 
 quaintance with the infinite ; what worship of all that 
 is noble, generous, elevated, pure ; what a life of 
 the heart, what a glorious expansion of our whole 
 soul, what an impulse to our hopes which rise im- 
 mense, eternal ! The joys and festivities of our youth 
 are but the image of the joys and festivities of the 
 Christian life ; that is the true, immortal youth, the 
 other is but a transitory shadow. So far from drying 
 up the fountains of the spring, Jesus Christ opens in 
 the heart that receives Him wells of living water. 
 All that is noble and beautiful, the fire of the heart 
 and of the imagination, devotion, poetry — all are puri- 
 fied and ennobled by love. The sinful pleasures of 
 youth religion does proscribe ; but these you will not 
 
VERNY AND R OBER TSON. 30 1 
 
 regret. The youth which we have by nature soon 
 withers ; beneath it lurks a secret decrepitude, some 
 seed of death, some lie ; it is but an imperfect figure 
 of the true youth. That is the true youth which love 
 gives — the infinite love of God and of our brothers. It 
 does not fade ; it is renewed every morning ; it bears 
 each day flowers of heavenly beauty ; and when the 
 body totters and the mind fails, the soul remains ever 
 young — because it loves. Selfishness under all its 
 forms, — the absence of self-devotion, the pettiness 
 of a life which makes enjoyment its aim, rather than 
 duty ; the neglect of our generous instincts ; pleasures, 
 even the highest, such as the pursuit of study, when 
 they make us forget that our great concern is not to 
 live for ourselves ; everything that takes away the 
 sense of the solemnity of life ; everything that shuts 
 us up within ourselves, and makes us the captives of 
 self-indulgence, not to speak of those excesses and 
 sins which are reproved of all : selfishness, in a word, 
 under whatever name, is old age and death. Ah ! 
 I have proved only too well that age creeps quickly 
 on, where there is unfaithfulness to the nobler instincts ; 
 but thanks to Christianity, all that narrows the heart, 
 all that dries it up and takes from it its freshness, its 
 elasticity and generous warmth, is resisted, and in the 
 end fully overcome. For myself, I feel I owe it to 
 Christianity alone that I am still young ; without it 
 I should have fallen by this time low indeed." 
 
 The reader will now easily understand how the 
 
302 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 death of Lebre called forth from Verny one of the 
 noblest efforts of his eloquence. He touches the 
 bleeding wounds of the soul that has passed away 
 with a tender sympathy, learnt in the same school of 
 suffering, through which he himself had recently been 
 brought. 
 
 "And now, why should I be silent," says the 
 preacher, " on the subject which is in all our thoughts 
 to-day, and which, by the side of this grave, may well 
 appear supremely important ? This faith became 
 beclouded. You know the demands, the doubts, the 
 conflicts of our age : it would be childish to pretend 
 to ignore them ; it would be untrue to deny their 
 influence and weight. More than one of the historical 
 pillars on which Christianity rested has been shaken ; 
 more than one of the formularies, under which till now 
 it has passed current in the world, has failed to stand 
 the stern ordeal of philosophic thought, or to verify 
 itself by the standard of a true exegesis. We must 
 go even further. I say, that more than one legitimate 
 cry of unsatisfied spiritual need rises in our day, to 
 which our old systems seem to make no response, to 
 which our old institutions have neither succour nor 
 sympathy to offer. Who will dare to pronounce a 
 sentence of sweeping condemnation on all these 
 aspirations and efforts ? Who will dare to say that 
 all these movements, without distinction, are sinful in 
 their origin, that the love of truth, of the truth of God 
 and of His kingdom, has no place in them ? that they 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 303 
 
 are not signs of the times, signs precursive of a new 
 spiritual advent of the Lord ? These questions, which 
 superficial minds treat as trifles, but which present to 
 deeper thinkers mysteries, the depths of which they 
 try in vain to sound, laid hold of the mind of Lebre 
 in the course of his studies. He doubted. Yes ; but 
 with a sincere doubt. His doubts were not the mere 
 exercise of reason, proud and cold ; nor were they 
 the sophistries of a heart impatient of the holy law 
 of God, and eager to give free course to its passions. 
 They were the agonising cry of his soul after a purer, 
 more powerful, more efficacious light. He doubted. 
 Yes ; but his doubt was a hunger and thirst after 
 righteousness. It was but a fortnight yesterday that 
 he poured out for the last time, to the friend who now 
 renders him this parting service of love, the sorrows of 
 his soul ; and how can I better sum up those con- 
 fidences, or should I rather say those unutterable 
 groanings of his spirit, than in the words of the 
 Psalmist : ' As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, 
 so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul 
 thirsteth for God, for the living God. When shall I 
 come and appear before God ? ' He doubted. Yes ; 
 but his doubt has received the consecration of suffering 
 and death. His nights of toil, the turmoil of his brain, 
 the tumultuous agitation of his heart, had been long 
 spending his strength. None remained to contend 
 with his last sickness, and he sank under it. 
 
 " Is doubt like this still to be called doubt ? It is 
 
304 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 faith, my friends ; the faith of those who pray, ' Lord, 
 I believe ; help thou mine unbelief.' Here, then, for 
 my own consolation and yours, let me give my testi- 
 mony that the faith of our friend, while shaken in 
 some of its expressions, forms, and applications, still 
 remained stedfast in its secret depths. The great 
 travail of his soul was to find a form more in harmony 
 with his deep faith. The grace of God which had 
 received him, set its seal upon him, and to the very 
 end Lebre bore that ineffaceable impress. He loved. 
 Love was the life of his heart ; love to God and man 
 — the love which forgets and renounces self. Is not 
 love like this the fruit and the witness of the truth ? 
 St. Augustine says : ' If love is not desired with all 
 the strength of the soul, it is absolutely impossible to 
 be found ; but, when it is sought in a manner worthy 
 of it, it can never be missed by those who love it. It 
 is love which desires, love which seeks, love which 
 knocks at the door, love which reveals — love, finally, 
 which abides in that wh h is revealed.' Such love 
 dwelt in the heart of our friend ; it was in this loving 
 spirit that he yearned after and sought the truth, and 
 had he lived, this same love would have crowned his 
 search with success. And that love — never did I 
 express the hope with a more joyful confidence — that 
 love has now drawn back the veil that hid the truth 
 from him, and has satisfied the thirst of his soul." 
 
 Verny could apply to himself that which he said of 
 Lebre. Only in his case, the light came more quickly. 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 305 
 
 Though still somewhat overcast, like all earthly 
 brightness, it yet shone clearly enough for him to live 
 and die by, and even to fulfil his work as a preacher. 
 
 We find in all Verny's sermons from this time, a 
 more categorical affirmation of the great facts of 
 revelation. The belief in the supernatural he re- 
 tained unimpaired; indeed, it enters into his very 
 conception of Christianity as a religion of liberty. This 
 is admirably expressed in his sermons on the religion 
 of nature, and the religion of the Spirit. We may cite 
 the following passage : 
 
 " We said just now, in speaking of the personality 
 of God and of His absolute freedom in the work of 
 creation — this is essential. In the same way, we would 
 say here of the eternal pre-existence of the Saviour, 
 and His absolute freedom in the work of redemption — 
 this is essential ; for if sin is indeed the effect of such a 
 bondage as we have been describing ; if, as the Scrip- 
 ture affirms, and, as our deepest experience teaches us, 
 it is transmitted and perpetuated by a fatal law ; if 
 every sinful action, being itself the result of ante- 
 cedent sin, becomes in its turn the cause of fresh 
 transgression ; if every generation of mankind, being 
 conceived and born in sin, conceives and gives birth 
 in its turn to another sinful generation ; and if the 
 Saviour came to break this chain, He could not be 
 Himself a mere link in it. In order to grasp it with a 
 powerful hand, and to break it in the midst, He must 
 occupy a position outside of the common race of man, 
 
 21 
 
306 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 and must draw His strength from a higher source. If 
 He is to heal the diseased tree of humanity, He must 
 not be Himself one of its branches, though the 
 strongest and fairest, for the worm is at the root of 
 all. He must not be an out-growth of humanity and 
 of history ; He must not be borne along without any 
 volition of His own on the stream of time, with those 
 floods that sweep away the generations of mankind. 
 He must not be, like one of us, born without choice of 
 our own in a certain age, by the conditions of which 
 our lot is determined. 
 
 " No ! He must make a new beginning; He must 
 be the Head and Father of a new humanity, a new 
 history. He must be, as St. Paul says, ' the second 
 Adam.' He must needs come freely, because He 
 would, and solely because He would." 
 
 It is clear that Verny does not regard the super- 
 natural or the miraculous as the mere scaffolding of 
 the Christian building. It is, in his view, of the very 
 essence of Christianity, which, being a religion of 
 redemption, implies a sovereign manifestation of 
 Divine freedom, in order to break, as he says, the iron 
 chain of sin and its consequences. After such a 
 declaration, the Radical School of theology must 
 renounce all claim to Verny as in any degree be- 
 longing to it, since its cardinal doctrine is the nega- 
 tion of the supernatural. 
 
 Verny's sermon on " La Religion des Faibles," gives 
 us the ground of this firm belief in the supernatural. 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 
 
 307 
 
 He regards humanity as verily poor, blind, and naked. 
 Evil is not a mere phase, it is a mortal sickness of the 
 soul ; and his heart cries out for pardon and restoration. 
 Jesus Christ is not to him, therefore, simply the model 
 of perfection, the bringer-in of the true religion. He 
 is also Himself the object of that religion, the Son of 
 God who has brought life anew to the world ; in a 
 word, He is the Saviour. Verny speaks of Him with 
 holy emotion, with ardent enthusiasm, in tones of 
 adoration, in which we seem to catch the deep utter- 
 ance of his heart rather than any formal ascription of 
 praise. His sermons have the true ring of evangelical 
 piety. They are in harmony with the great chorus of 
 the Church universal. 
 
 On one point Verny's preaching seems to me 
 inadequate. It would, indeed, ill become me to con- 
 demn him by the standard of traditional orthodoxy 
 on the doctrine of redemption. It does appear to me, 
 however, that he did not sufficiently recognise how 
 completely the relation of humanity to God has been 
 changed by the sacrifice of the cross. He regards it 
 rather as a sublime and overwhelming proof of the love 
 of God, than as the redemption of our souls. He 
 says : " It was to the life that man had lost by his own 
 fault, in which he could not reinstate himself by his 
 own efforts, for which he had no longer either will or 
 desire, that God in His mercy would recall him. For 
 this purpose it was that He sent to men the Son of His 
 love, the Son who is one with the Father, and who, 
 
308 CONTEMPORAR V FOR TRAITS. 
 
 like the Father, has within Himself the fulness of the 
 Divine life. He sent Him that men, seeing Him, 
 might be re-awakened to think of, and aim to fulfil 
 their original destiny ; that, as they beheld His obedi- 
 ence in suffering, even to the death of the cross, 
 His participation in all the sorrows of sinful humanity, 
 they might have in Him a certain pledge that, in spite 
 of their transgressions, they were not for ever excluded 
 from their ancient heritage. Finally, that by accepting 
 this pledge, embracing Christ, cleaving to Him, 
 entering into communion with Him by faith, they 
 might be brought back into fellowship with the 
 Father and with the life of the Father." 
 
 It would be unfair to take this passage as a 
 summary of Verny's views, or to look in a sermon 
 for the exactness of a theological formulary. 
 
 The deficiency, to which we have alluded, is one 
 which Verny would very probably have supplied, had 
 he treated exhaustively that great subject which has 
 called forth so much discussion in more recent times. 
 It cannot be denied, however, that he went too far in 
 his reaction against the tendency to confound religion 
 with theology. He was abundantly justified when 
 he appealed to the history of religious thought, in our 
 own time alone, as conclusive against such a system, 
 and asked whether the partisans of an implacable 
 orthodoxy would put out of the Church such men as 
 Neander and Nitzch. He was equally right in his 
 protest against the claim to identify the doctrine with 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 309 
 
 the life, as if piety had but one side, and as if there 
 might not be blessed incongruities, so that a Chris- 
 tian heart might be beating where we should little 
 have expected it. 
 
 We fully endorse the saying, quoted by him in his 
 sermon at the Pastoral Conferences in Paris, in the 
 year 1846 : "There is a faith which saves, but there 
 is no dogmatism which saves." He failed, however, 
 to define with sufficient distinctness, apart from all 
 human systems, what is that saving faith which is the 
 essence of Christianity. He calls it the life of God — 
 life eternal. This is true ; but that life requires cer- 
 tain conditions, without which it vanishes away. It 
 is based upon positive facts ; its essential feature is a 
 great miracle, wrought by the Son of God who " died 
 for our sins, and rose again for our justification." 
 These facts and miracles are the foundation of Verny's 
 preaching — they are its constant theme. Why not 
 lay it down, then, as a settled point, that these are 
 above all dogmatisms and systems ; that they belong 
 not to theology, but to religion ? " I know well, in- 
 deed," said Verny, " that there is a point at which we 
 must stop. He who believes not that life is come 
 into the world in Jesus Christ ; he who thinks he can 
 go to the Father otherwise than by the Son ; in a 
 word, he who confesses not Jesus Christ, the Son of 
 the living God, is not a Christian. But this point we 
 cannot yet fix ; we are still too much in the strife of 
 words and of parties." I think that, even at that 
 
310 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 time, it was possible to define this capital point of 
 Christianity, and that practically Verny did so in all 
 his preaching. Might he not still say to-day that we 
 are in the midst of disputes of words and parties, when 
 an entire section of the Protestant Church maintains 
 that Jesus, instead of being " the way, the truth, and 
 the life," is only a pattern, a teacher ; the type, and 
 not the object of religious worship ? Verny would 
 have maintained to-day, as he did twenty years ago, 
 the claims of religious science and its legitimate 
 rights ; but he would also have said, as we say, that 
 Christian theology implies Christianity, and that 
 Christianity, without the supernatural element, which 
 it has so stedfastly affirmed, has lost all its specific 
 character. The counsels of broad comprehension which 
 Verny gave in 1843, as the sovereign remedy for 
 the divisions of the Protestant Churches, would 
 have quite another significance in an age when the 
 very foundations of the most elementary faith are 
 overthrown. Even at that time they were exagger- 
 ated ; but, to do them justice, we must bear in mind 
 the exaggerations in the opposite direction, which had 
 to be refuted before it was possible to make any pro- 
 gress whatever in the study of theology. 
 
 I do not question that it was his anxiety to secure 
 the largest possible liberty to Christian thought, 
 which made Verny, for a time, the determined oppo- 
 nent of the great principle of the severance of Church 
 and State. He was afraid of premature action at a 
 
VERNY AND R OBER TSON. 3 1 1 
 
 time when men's minds were so unsettled. He 
 preferred to keep the boundaries of the Church 
 still undefined, and to receive into it a mixed mul- 
 titude, whom he hoped to leaven gradually by the 
 influence of true teaching, rather than by a strict 
 definition of doctrines to separate the heterogeneous 
 elements. On this point he was mistaken, as the 
 course of events only too clearly proved. But his 
 great mind was not long held in the bonds of a preju- 
 dice unworthy of it. The course taken by events in 
 1848 led him to abandon his theory of national 
 religions, though he did not see it his duty to break 
 with the Church to which he belonged. This he him- 
 self stated to me in unmistakable terms. He showed 
 himself uniformly one of the most faithful and 
 ardent defenders of religious liberty. The indepen- 
 dence of the Church in relation to the civil authority 
 was with him a fundamental principle. I remember 
 well the hot indignation with which he stigmatised 
 the famous decrees which, in 1852, gave to the estab- 
 lished Protestant Church a new organisation, about 
 which it had not been properly consulted. " No one 
 is satisfied," he said to me, " except those who think of 
 nothing but eating and drinking." These words had, in 
 truth, a wider application than to the recent arbitrary 
 decision in ecclesiastical matters ; they characterised 
 the entire system and prevailing state of mind in a 
 country worn-out with repeated struggles for liberty, 
 and ready to seek repose in a state of sluggish ac- 
 
312 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 quiescence. Verny denounced, in terms of un- 
 measured reproach, the promoters of the re-organisa- 
 tion of the Church by means of the civil power. 
 " Even in Russia," he said, " if a poor cure had pre- 
 pared in the dark such a clandestine blow, he would 
 have been overwhelmed with indignant protestations." 
 The vehement orator was careful to add, that he meant 
 nothing personal, but the dart remained none the less 
 rankling in the wound. 
 
 Verny has not anywhere given a full exposition of 
 his theological views. Apart from the distinction 
 between theology and religion, between dogmatism 
 and faith, on which he constantly insists, he contents 
 himself with a broad and admirable exposition of the 
 great truths of the faith, dwelling largely upon the 
 spirituality and high morality of the gospel, and 
 combating Pharisaism under all its disguises. Freedom 
 of action in God and in man is one of the points to 
 which he attaches most importance, in an age in- 
 clined to a pantheistic philosophy. He never repre- 
 sents pardon as the sum of salvation. To him, 
 salvation is the coming back to, and possessing God. 
 He is consumed with this holy longing ; and it is at 
 the foot of the cross that he finds the ever-flowing 
 spring of eternal life. There is an intense earnestness 
 about all his words. He believes firmly in the funda- 
 mental harmony between the needs of the soul and 
 the gospel — a harmony constantly broken by sin, but 
 restored by Jesus Christ. His noble sermon, " La 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 313 
 
 prophetie de la conscience," is a model of sound 
 apology. It breathes the very spirit of Pascal and 
 Vinet. His views on inspiration are remarkable for 
 their breadth, yet they do not detract anything from 
 the authority of Scripture, which, like that of the 
 Divine Master has nothing in common with the 
 pretensions of the Scribes and Pharisees. 
 
 It would be difficult to speak too strongly of Verny's 
 merits as a preacher, though he never rose to the very 
 highest rank of pulpit oratory. His was not the 
 splendid and impassioned eloquenceof AdolpheMonod, 
 nor the inexhaustible fulness of Vinet ; but his qualities 
 were nevertheless of rare eminence. His language, 
 without being too ornate, was always brilliant and 
 full of life, altogether free from conventionalism, and 
 characterised by a strong and manly simplicity. In 
 his sermons we find instruction and edification admir- 
 ably combined. The thinker was faithfully mirrored 
 in the preacher. All his sermons, though free from 
 technical formalities, were based upon a solid exegesis, 
 the thoughts being linked closely together by a 
 natural chain of argument. But over this substantial 
 framework was spread a strong and brilliant fabric 
 dexterously wrought of many colours. This is the 
 secret of all true preaching. The preacher must 
 come into close contact with his subject, grasping it 
 with all his force, or he will be sure to fall into endless 
 and wearisome repetitions, and into meditations which 
 are such in name only. Preaching, which is mediocre 
 
3 H CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 through the mere negligence of the preacher, is painful 
 enough to hear; but it becomes a solemn mockery 
 when the special sanction of the Holy Spirit is 
 invoked upon it. It is generally under this form of 
 an appeal to direct inspiration, that indolence grants 
 itself a plenary indulgence. It ought to be well aware, 
 that only a few good souls accept the same view of it, 
 and that it is answerable before God for all the ennui 
 which becomes thus associated with holy things. 
 
 The sermons of Verny, which have been published 
 collectively, are perhaps rather edifying than consoling. 
 They rarely appeal to the feelings. The sorrows of the 
 heart — those only excepted which arise out of the 
 earnest search after truth — are allowed little place 
 in them. Must we gather that the great preacher 
 was disposed to take his stand among the optimists of 
 the Church ? Nothing could be farther from the truth. 
 If the minor key is seldom heard in these sermons, 
 this is accounted for by the choice of subjects. No 
 one had more earnest aspirations than Verny after 
 the realisation of that high ideal of holiness and love, 
 which Christianity holds up before us. All who were 
 present at the Pastoral Conferences in Paris, in the 
 year 185 1, can bear witness to this. Verny proposed 
 as the subject for discussion: "The interval which 
 exists between the gospel law and the Christian life of 
 our days." Never in the pulpit or elsewhere did I hear 
 him speak with more power than on this occasion. 
 It was more than eloquence, it was a sublime out- 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 3 r 5 
 
 pouring of the Christian conscience. He rebuked 
 with terrible irony, not sparing himself, all our incon- 
 sistencies, our moral cowardice, the poverty of our 
 dwarfed, cautious, worldly piety, which has nothing of 
 the grandeur of self-sacrifice, which has forgotten what 
 heroism with its divine follies means. He showed 
 how fatally easy it is to speak of the cross, to exalt it 
 without knowing what it is to bear it ; and to enlarge 
 in a facile way on the austere morality, the very essence 
 of which is the offering up of selfish ease. He asked 
 where are now to be found those extraordinary voca- 
 tions, which reveal the Spirit of God moving over the 
 sluggish waters of our existence, and preventing our 
 religious life from becoming a mere routine. He dwelt 
 upon the great duties of Christians towards the poor, 
 the sacred legacy of Christ to the Church, which she 
 has not truly accepted till she has emptied herself to 
 clothe the naked and to feed the hungry. I can only 
 reproduce in cold outline, that which Verny poured 
 forth with burning eloquence that day, when the depths 
 of his spirit were stirred within him. No sermon 
 ever touched me so much, or made me feel more self- 
 condemned. Nor did I ever see that assembly, com- 
 posed of such various elements, so moved as by one 
 impulse, and lifted for the moment to such a height 
 as to lose sight of its habitual differences. To all who 
 were present this was a moment never to be forgotten. 
 All Verny's great qualities as a Christian and as a 
 pastor, are conspicuous in his last sermon preached 
 
3 1 6 CONTEMPORA R Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 before the higher Consistory at Strasburg. It was 
 never finished, for he died in the pulpit like a valiant 
 soldier standing in the breach. With what breadth 
 of view he described the Church, which he regarded 
 not as some magical institution, existing apart from the 
 living faith of its members, but as a holy society of 
 men, united by the same faith, hope and love, that 
 they might have a fellowship of feeling and of action, 
 of repentance and worship, of joy and sorrow ; but, 
 above all, that they might carry on the work of 
 salvation among their fellowmen. With deep feeling 
 he dwelt on the motive which urges all Christians to 
 activity, the same compassion which " made the eye of 
 Jesus fill with tears, whenever He thought of the 
 multitudes scattered abroad as sheep having no shep- 
 herd." "If ever," he went on, "the Church should 
 descend to the level of a popular institution, instead 
 of being an argument in favour of the truth of God, it 
 would become a hindrance to the power of the gospel. 
 Instead of forcing men to cry, ' See how these Chris- 
 tians love one another,' it would lead them to 
 exclaim, ' See how worldly and carnal they have 
 become ! " : I know few passages finer than those in 
 which Verny dwells on the good and the evil which 
 may be the hidden motives of our religious activity. 
 He shows us the evil spirit that may be disguised 
 beneath " the doctor's hood, or the pastoral vestment ; 
 that may creep into the academic desk, whether 
 orthodox or heterodox — a spirit sometimes sombre, 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 317 
 
 sometimes sardonic, petrifying holy things in cut 
 and dried formularies, or seasoning them with insipid 
 pleasantries. This spirit mounts the pulpit stair 
 behind the preacher, and whispers in his ear to say 
 nothing that may startle his hearers, to play on their 
 feelings rather than on their conscience, to preach to 
 please men rather than God." It was just as the 
 preacher was describing, in living characters, the good 
 spirit — the spirit of love, of faith, of devotedness ; the 
 spirit which makes us realise the kingdom of God 
 upon earth, in humiliation, in poverty, in oppression, 
 it may be, but with the certainty that by-and-by we 
 shall realise it in the excellent glory, the eternal 
 blessedness of the presence of Christ in heaven — it 
 was at this moment that he fell as if struck by light- 
 ning, caught away from those who loved him, from 
 the Church, from his sphere of invaluable service, by 
 that sovereign and mysterious will, which teaches us 
 by such providences, that God is not dependent even 
 on His most faithful servants. 
 
 We may well believe that had Verny lived, he 
 would have been led, without abandoning his true 
 liberality, to take a more decided attitude in relation 
 to the negative school of our day, which is as daring 
 in speculative, as it is cautious in practical matters. 
 He would have rejoiced in the noble efforts of the 
 Lutheran Church in the sphere of practical activity 
 and philanthropy, while he could never have approved 
 that rigid adherence to old confessions which would 
 
3 1 8 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRA ITS. 
 
 make the Reformation a lifeless mummy, instead of a 
 principle of progress and perpetual rejuvenescence 
 — that is to say, a Reformation continually carried on. 
 
 II. 
 
 The life of Robertson presents the same features of 
 spiritual conflict as that of Verny, only intensified by 
 the greater force and fervour of his nature. The in- 
 fluence of Robertson increases every day ; he stands 
 acknowledged as one of the greatest minds of the 
 age, and as the happy exponent of its best aspira- 
 tions. His theology is not exempt from the imper- 
 fections of a transition period. It should rather be 
 regarded as representing in its noblest phase an era 
 of deep religious agitation. Robertson's was one of 
 those intense and ardent souls which seem to bring 
 to a focus all the scattered rays in the surrounding 
 atmosphere. By this concentrated light we learn to 
 read not only the man, but the age ; hence the pecu- 
 liar interest attaching to such lives. The biography 
 of Robertson by Mr. Brooke opens to us a delightful 
 study of character. It is rich in extracts from the 
 correspondence of the great preacher, and reveals 
 throughout the heart and hand of a true friend. We 
 shall endeavour to characterise first the man, and then 
 his style and method as a writer and preacher. 
 
 Frederick Robertson was born in London, on 
 February 3rd, 18 16. His early wish was to follow his 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 319 
 
 father's profession, and enter the army. This was 
 more than a mere childish fancy for a red coat. 
 His energetic nature made him eager for a course 
 of manly activity and noble peril. His desire 
 was on the point of being fulfilled, for his com- 
 mission as a cavalry officer reached him a few days 
 after he had entered at Oxford. This step had been 
 taken by him, not only in obedience to the will of his 
 father, but also under a higher impulse, which coin- 
 cided with deep religious impressions. The sacrifice, 
 however, was very great ; and he retained through 
 life a deep and settled regret that he had not been 
 able to follow his first choice. His University course 
 was not brilliant. His individuality was too strongly 
 marked for him to reap the fruits of rapid culture ; 
 he came slowly to maturity. Depth is usually incom- 
 patible with brilliant facility at the decisive age of 
 moral and intellectual development. He appears, 
 however, to have profited largely by the noble clas- 
 sical studies which are the glory of England. To 
 these he owed the strength and vigour of his style. 
 Plato, the poet of metaphysics, the philosopher of the 
 ideal, and Aristotle, the incomparable analyst and 
 master of severe dialectics, were his favourite classic 
 authors. The influence of both is traceable in his 
 sermons, in which a subtle psychology is clothed 
 in images of singular beauty. At Oxford he led a 
 very secluded and serious life. His piety was deep 
 and fervent ; but he had not as yet formed any theo- 
 
320 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 logical opinions of his own. He had accepted with- 
 out questioning the current doctrines of English 
 evangelicalism, and preached them with scrupulous 
 fidelity during the early years of his ministry at 
 Winchester. It was under this form that eternal 
 truth had been first apprehended by him, and he had 
 not as yet separated the form from the substance. 
 We shall see how severe was the struggle in which he 
 at length shook off the yoke of strict orthodoxy. In 
 order to understand aright this crisis in his life, we 
 must take a rapid survey of that English evangeli- 
 calism which exerted at the time so great an influ- 
 ence, and won such wide and, to a large extent, well 
 deserved respect. When, in connection with the 
 peculiar views of this religious party, we consider the 
 intellectual and moral idiosyncrasies of Robertson, we 
 shall easily understand how inevitable was the re- 
 version of feeling and opinion which cost him so 
 much suffering. 
 
 English evangelicalism was born of the great re- 
 awakening of faith and piety which, at the close of 
 the last century, shook off the lethargy of the Church, 
 and told with powerful effect upon the prevailing 
 infidelity of the age. The severe struggle against 
 Napoleon, in which England was engaged for so 
 many years, had also an influence favourable to the 
 revival of serious religion. The impulse thus given 
 produced magnificent results. The great evangelical 
 and missionary societies, among which the British 
 
VERNY AND R OBER TSON. 32 1 
 
 and Foreign Bible Society occupies the first rank, 
 were founded within a few years, and wrought won- 
 ders, not the least of which was the inexhaustible 
 generosity by which these noble efforts were sus- 
 tained. Unhappily, this great progressive movement 
 took a practical direction only, and was not accom- 
 panied, as in the Reformation of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, by a deep and powerful impetus in the domain 
 of thought. Hence it led, in the main at least, to a 
 lamentable theological narrowness, which only in- 
 creased as the first fervour of the Revival died 
 away. 
 
 It would be unjust to bring home this charge in- 
 discriminately to all the eminent men who lent their 
 support to the cause of evangelicalism. We could 
 easily refer to writings issuing from that school 
 which breathe a more liberal spirit, to preachers and 
 influential laymen, who were distinguished for a wise 
 and healthy tolerance of diversity. But, while we 
 would carefully guard against the injustice of passing 
 a sweeping condemnation without exception, it can- 
 not be denied that the prevailing doctrinal type in 
 what was called the Low Church (for we speak of this 
 only) was singularly cramped and meagre. It bor- 
 rowed all that was most dogmatic in the confessions 
 of the Reformation period, without reproducing the 
 logical vigour and theological breadth of the sixteenth 
 century. The Low Church theology took cognisance 
 only of immediate practical results, and made no pro- 
 
322 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 vision for the demands of speculative or contemn 
 plative minds. 
 
 It was like the over-busy Martha, unable to com- 
 prehend the pre-occupied Mary, who sat at the 
 Master's feet and heard His word. Hence the severe 
 judgment passed by orthodox England upon Protest- 
 ant Germany, which she always suspected of heresy, 
 and whose science and philosophy awakened scruples 
 and suspicions, even before they had led to any dan- 
 gerous result. Simple faith, said the English evan- 
 gelicals, did not concern itself with all these things. 
 It was content with the good, sound doctrine which 
 it had received in the religious Revival, and was 
 absorbed in its propagation. This good and sound 
 doctrine unquestionably contained the essential truths 
 of Christianity: hence it was accompanied with a 
 sincere earnestness, and did a vast amount of good, 
 as we ourselves should be the first to own. But it 
 presented these truths under a very imperfect and 
 inadequate form, and it made the mistake of con- 
 founding this form with the gospel itself. It went on, 
 therefore, to proscribe all free inquiry which did not 
 coincide in its results with the credo of the Church. 
 Hence it formed a Church which was, on a small scale, 
 a garbled copy of the Church of Rome, claiming in- 
 fallibility in fact, though not in name, and equally 
 ready with its excommunications and denunciations. 
 This credo, of which there was no recognised formu- 
 lary, but which formed the basis of all the utterances 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 323 
 
 of the Low Church party, may be described in a few 
 words. 
 
 The plenary and literal inspiration of Scripture ; 
 expiation by the sufferings of the Son of God, en- 
 during all the pains of hell in our stead ; the imputa- 
 tion, purely external, of the sacrifice of the cross by a 
 faith doctrinal rather than mystical ; Sabbatarianism 
 of the strictest type ; and, as the top-stone of the sys- 
 tem, the predestination of a small number of elect 
 souls, and the often morbid development of millenna- 
 rian views — this was the framework of evangeli- 
 calism, animated and warmed, for the most part, 
 by a noble piety, but always and everywhere insisted 
 upon as the Alpha and Omega of Christianity. 
 
 To deviate from this was to break with the great 
 tradition of orthodoxy, which, it was asserted, had 
 been handed down from the earliest ages of Christi- 
 anity. That which the evangelicals preached was 
 emphatically salvation by a doctrine. Heaven must 
 be seen through this narrow loophole, or the soul was 
 declared to be in darkness, alienated from the divine 
 life, and an object of distrust and suspicion. 
 
 The evangelical school was, we repeat, admirable in 
 its practical Christianity; it cannot fail to command our 
 respect as we watch its operation in country parishes, 
 or among men and women animated with the purest 
 zeal in winning souls for Christ, and indefatigable in 
 their efforts to relieve the sufferings of their fellow- 
 men. Far be it from us to pronounce s^uch sweeping 
 
324 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS, 
 
 condemnation upon the evangelicals as they are ever 
 ready to pronounce upon others. But we need not 
 extend the same forbearance to the violent and bitter 
 organs of this school in the religious press, nor can we 
 justify in any degree those intolerant polemics which 
 merely denounce all that in any way runs counter to 
 their prejudices ; or approve the clamour raised in 
 excited religious meetings, where the remonstrances 
 of conscience are drowned in party cries. It is neces- 
 sary for us to note this harsh and haughty attitude 
 assumed by some of the leaders of the party, in order 
 that we may do justice to the reaction provoked by 
 it. Their ignorance was on a par with their vehe- 
 mence. One of the most eminent representatives of 
 strict English orthodoxy, was one day branding in 
 the most severe terms the whole modern theology of 
 Germany, in the presence of the illustrious Tholuck. 
 He quietly asked if the speaker was acquainted with 
 German theology except by hearsay. The reply was 
 a frank avowal that he knew nothing of that which he 
 so severely condemned, and a confession of the un- 
 fairness of such a judgment. A similar act of humili- 
 ation would well become the columns of the Record 
 and many another blatant organ of the same opinions. 
 It will be easily understood how this blending of 
 intolerance and ignorance on the highest and most 
 legitimate themes of Christian thought, would be 
 likely to exasperate beyond measure young and 
 generous minds, to make them impatient of all human 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 325 
 
 systems, and disgusted with the odium theologicum 
 which would vent its spleen in such narrow judgments. 
 If we now look at Robertson as he was when he 
 entered on the clerical office, we shall see at once 
 that it could not be long before the ties which bound 
 him to the evangelical party would be broken. He 
 had accepted the first system of vital Christianity 
 which presented itself to him, but he had accepted it, 
 as a whole, without careful examination. He had 
 simply laid hold of the saving truths which it con- 
 tained. The germ of a higher spiritual development 
 was already implanted within him. His mind, 
 enamoured of Plato and Aristotle, took a speculative 
 turn, and he necessarily applied this powerful ana- 
 lytical instrument to traditional beliefs. His fondness 
 for speculative and metaphysical studies might have 
 become a snare to him, if the moral principle had not 
 been at the same time so vigorous. It was this which 
 soon made the narrowness of orthodoxy intolerable to 
 him. On the day of his consecration (July 12, 1840) 
 all present noticed how pale and trembling he was. 
 His was not one of those self-satisfied natures, which 
 lightly take up the burden of the ministry, with the 
 formulary on their lips that divine grace is all-suf- 
 ficient. It is, indeed, all-sufficient, but only where 
 the whole heart is surrendered to its influence. " Cor 
 meurn sicut immolatum tibi offei'o? This, which was 
 Calvin's motto, might truly be said to be Robertson's 
 also.. He writes at this period : " Every day con- 
 
326 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 vinces me more and more that there is one thing, and 
 but one, on earth worth living for — and that is, to do 
 God's work and gradually grow in conformity to His 
 image, by mortification, and self-denial, and prayer." l 
 
 Robertson knew the secret sorrows of soul conflict, 
 and he adopted voluntarily ascetic habits of life as a 
 process of self-discipline. We find in his journal the 
 following prayer, in which all others centred : " Bring 
 into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. 
 Take what I cannot give — my heart, body, thoughts, 
 time, abilities, money, health, strength, nights, days, 
 youth, age — and spend them in Thy service, O my 
 crucified Master, Redeemer, God ! Oh, let not these 
 be mere words ! Whom have I in heaven but Thee ? 
 And there is none upon earth that I desire in com- 
 parison of Thee. My heart is athirst for God, for the 
 living God. When shall I come and appear before 
 God? "2 
 
 It was in this spirit that he passed the first year of his 
 ministry, devoting himself unreservedly to the duties 
 of his office. The consciousness of his shortcomings, 
 in view of the ideal he had set before himself, was 
 often so overpowering that he longed to die, though 
 he was deeply beloved by his flock, especially by 
 the humbler and poorer portion, to whom he chiefly 
 devoted himself. His deep melancholy struck Dr. 
 Malan, in an interview which Robertson had with him 
 
 1 " Life and Letters," vol. i. p. 6i. s Ibid. p. 66. 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 327 
 
 at Geneva, when he was compelled to travel on the 
 continent for the sake of his health. This eloquent 
 apostle of the assurance of salvation in the juridical 
 sense, said to him : " My dear brother, you will have a 
 sorrowful life and a sorrowful ministry." " It may be 
 so," Robertson writes ; " but present peace is of but 
 little consequence. If we sin we must be miserable ; 
 but if we be God's own, that misery will not last long: 
 misery for sin is better worth having than peace." 1 
 
 From Winchester, Robertson removed to Chelten- 
 ham, in January, 1841. His great gifts as an orator, 
 of which we shall presently speak more fully, now 
 began to attract much attention. He was never am- 
 bitious of a facile popularity, and rebuked unsparingly 
 the worldliness of a fashionable resort. 
 
 " It gave me pleasure," he writes, "to hear that what 
 I said on Sunday had been felt, not that it had been 
 admired." We find in his papers a sort of pledge 
 made with himself, which gives us a glimpse into the 
 deep earnestness of his soul, and shows also that his 
 theological views were already beginning to waver. 
 
 "Resolves. To speak less of self and think less. To 
 try to despise the principle of the day — ' every man his 
 own trumpeter ' — and to feel it a degradation to speak 
 of my own doings as a poor braggart. To be systematic 
 in visiting, and to make myself master of some system 
 of questions for ascertaining the state of the poor. 
 
 1 " Life and Letters," vol. i. pp. 82, 83. 
 
328 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 To aim at more concentration of thought. To per- 
 form rigorously the examen of conscience. To try 
 to fix my thoughts in prayer without distraction. To 
 listen to conscience, instead of, as Pilate did, to intel- 
 lect. To try to fix attention on Christ, rather than on 
 tJie doc trifles of Christ."* 
 
 From this time, the humanity of Christ fills a pro- 
 minent place in Robertson's meditations. We feel 
 that the icy veil of a traditional scholasticism has 
 fallen, and he has come face to face with the living 
 Saviour. We find these significant words in a letter 
 to an afflicted friend : 
 
 " I feel that sympathy from man, in sorrow such as 
 yours, is almost mockery. None can feel it, and cer- 
 tainly none soothe it, except the man Christ Jesus, 
 whose infinite bosom echoes back every throb of yours. 
 To my own heart, that marvellous fact of God enduing 
 Himself with a human soul of sympathy is the most 
 precious, and the one I could least afford to part with, 
 of all the invigorating doctrines which everlasting 
 truth contains. That Christ feels now what we feel — 
 our risen, ascended Lord — and that He can impart 
 to us in our fearful wrestlings all the blessedness of 
 His sympathy, is a truth which, to my soul, stands 
 almost without a second. I do pray that in all its 
 fulness this may be yours — a truth to rest and live 
 upon." 2 
 
 1 " Life and Letters," vol. i. p. ioo. 2 Ibid. p. 102. 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 329 
 
 Words like these show how far removed was 
 Robertson's faith from the barren dogmatism in which 
 Jesus only occupies a chapter or a paragraph in the 
 development of the system. A ray of fresh light has 
 fallen, kindling to a glow the cold metaphysics of the 
 Councils of the fourth century. This inspiration of 
 the heart bears within it the germ of a new and fuller 
 theology ; but Robertson will only come to apprehend 
 this through much anguish of soul. 
 
 The paltry and irritating discussions in relation to 
 the Puseyite movement, which agitated the religious 
 world of Cheltenham, did much to hasten his enfran- 
 chisement from the fetters of party. On a subject of 
 this kind, narrowness and bigotry find full scope ; 
 and it is then seen how much pettiness and malice 
 may lurk under a piety otherwise sincere. Everything 
 seems legitimate in what is called the good cause. 
 Slander may use its tongue unrebuked, when those 
 who are to be injured are the enemies of the Lord. 
 The noble banner of the gospel is trailed in the dust. 
 Religious discussion in a small town generally leads 
 to gossip and ends in bitter personalities. Each in- 
 dividual is classed and labelled by the spirit of party, 
 and the transition is fatally easy from the infinitely 
 great to the infinitely small. We can well imagine 
 what a noble mind would feel in this stifling atmo- 
 sphere, and with what deep disgust a man like Robert- 
 son would listen to the miserable squabbles on a subject 
 which, however important in itself, has been so de- 
 
\i 
 
 330 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 graded by the littleness of its advocates, as to be hope- 
 lessly compromised. Robertson's biographer says : 
 " His conception of Christianity, as the religion of just 
 and loving tolerance, and of Christ, as the King of men 
 through the power of meekness, made him draw back 
 with horror from the violent and blind denunciation 
 which the 'religious' agitators and the 'religious' papers 
 of the extreme portion of the evangelical party in- 
 dulged in under the cloak of Christianity. ' They tell 
 lies,' he said, ' in the name of God ; others tell them 
 in the name of the devil — that is the only difference.' " J 
 
 Under this impression he detached himself gradually 
 from the Recordite party, a step to which he was also 
 impelled by his recent theological studies, into which 
 he had entered with a new spirit of free inquiry. 
 With his ardent and conscientious nature this inquiry 
 could not be carried on without much anguish of soul. 
 There came a moment when his faith seemed to be 
 crumbling to the very base. Happily the rock — his 
 moral life — escaped unharmed. Feeling that he could 
 not preach in such a state of mind, he sought leave 
 of absence, and it was among the mountains of the 
 Tyrol that the darkest hours of his spiritual history 
 were passed. He has described to us, as none other 
 could, this terrible phase of his experience; We will 
 give it in his own words : 
 
 " It is an awful moment when the soul begins to 
 
 1 "Life and Letters," vol. i. p. 108. 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 331 
 
 find that the props on which it has blindly rested so 
 long are, many of them, rotten, and begins to suspect 
 them all ; when it begins to feel the nothingness of 
 the many traditionary opinions which have been 
 received with implicit confidence, and in that horrible 
 insecurity begins also to doubt whether there be any- 
 thing to believe at all. It is an awful hour — let him 
 who has passed through it say how awful — when this 
 life has lost its meaning, and seems shrivelled into a 
 span ; when the grave appears to be the end of all, 
 human goodness nothing but a name, and the sky 
 above this universe a dead expanse, black with the 
 void from which God Himself has disappeared. In 
 that fearful loneliness of spirit, when those who should 
 have been his friends and counsellors only frown upon 
 his misgivings, and profanely bid him stifle doubts, 
 which for aught he knows may arise from the fountain 
 of truth itself; to extinguish, as a glare from hell, that 
 which, for aught he knows, may be light from heaven, 
 and everything seems wrapped in hideous uncertainty, 
 I know but one way in which a man may come forth 
 from his agony scatheless ; it is by holding fast to those 
 things which are certain still — the grand, simple land- 
 marks of morality. In the darkest hour through 
 which a human soul can pass, whatever else is doubt- 
 ful, this at least is certain. If there be no God and 
 no future state, yet even then it is better to be 
 generous than selfish, better to be chaste than licen- 
 tious, better to be true than false, better to be brave 
 
332 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 than to be a coward. Blessed beyond all earthly 
 blessedness is the man who, in the tempestuous 
 darkness of the soul, has dared to hold fast to these 
 venerable landmarks. Thrice blessed, because his 
 night shall pass into clear, bright day. I appeal to 
 the recollection of any man who has passed through 
 that hour of agony, and stood upon the rock at last, 
 the surges stilled below him, and the last cloud drifted 
 from the sky above, with a faith, and hope, and trust 
 no longer traditional, but of his own — a trust which 
 neither earth nor hell shall shake thenceforth for 
 ever." x 
 
 Robertson had chosen the true method for recover- 
 ing a genuine faith. By holding fast those moral 
 certainties which we have no right ever to allow to be 
 shaken, he kept in his hands the indestructible cable 
 which would raise him again out of the abyss. It 
 mattered little that the vessel in which he had till 
 then sailed, went to pieces in the storm ; the ship- 
 wrecked mariner came safe to land. Had he once 
 been untrue to conscience, he would have perished 
 miserably, for he would have let go the rope — the one 
 means of escape. When we have once lost the sense 
 of a certainty within which can never be shaken, 
 the soul has nothing to hold by, and is drifted hither 
 and thither on the desert strand, like seaweed without 
 root. So long as conscience asserts itself, we have an 
 
 1 " Life and Letters," vol. i. pp. hi, 112. 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 333 
 
 inward witness for the divine, and when the divine 
 is again presented to us we are able to grasp it. 
 Robertson often dwelt on this thought, so fully veri- 
 fied in his own experience. Writing from Heidelberg 
 to a friend, he says : " Some things I am certain of; 
 and these are my Ursacken, which cannot be taken 
 away from me. I have got so far as this : moral 
 goodness and moral beauty are realities, lying at the 
 basis and beneath all forms of the best religious 
 expressions. They are no dream, and they are not 
 mere utilitarian conveniences. That suspicion was an 
 agony once. It is passing away. After finding little- 
 ness where I expected nobleness, and impurity where 
 I thought there was spotlessness, again and again I 
 despaired of the reality of goodness. But in all that 
 struggle I am thankful to say the bewilderment never 
 told upon my conduct." l 
 
 Robertson was not content with keeping a firm 
 hold of the axioms of conscience. He boldly faced 
 the investigation of the questions which troubled 
 him and, like Verny, he went to Germany. Timid 
 believers seek to stifle doubt by a practical exercise 
 of faith, and flee scientific inquiry as they would the 
 plague. They do not see that in this way they put 
 unbelief in the place of doubt ; for the man who is 
 afraid of his own thoughts, and dares not look scien- 
 tific objections in the face, is an unbeliever. It is by 
 
 1 " Life and Letters," vol. i. p. 121. 
 
\J 
 
 334 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 the strangest perversion that the stultification of the 
 mind can be mistaken for sanctification, and that the 
 abnegation of intelligence can be supposed to be a 
 Christian virtue. There are pious ignorant people ; 
 but ignorance is not in itself pious. It is an outrage 
 to Christianity to make it appear that it cannot bear 
 the free air, and still less the stormy wind, of heaven 
 to blow on it. Christianity is the stalwart oak, which 
 can give ample shelter to all the birds of heaven, and 
 must not be treated like the tender exotic of the hot- 
 house. The fear of German theology, so often ex- 
 pressed in the camp of extreme orthodoxy, is not a 
 scruple of faith, but a leaven of unbelief and a 
 cowardly distrust of the truth. 
 
 Robertson's stay in Heidelberg did him good. He 
 came back confirmed, not indeed in his attachment to 
 evangelicalism, but in his Christian convictions. In 
 the absolute holiness of Jesus Christ he found more 
 and more the perfect realisation of the ideal of his 
 conscience. Thus he became himself again, and his 
 religious character acquired the strength and settled- 
 ness which belong only to a man who has thoroughly 
 tested his beliefs. His closer acquaintance with 
 Germany — the classic ground of Christian learning — 
 was of much advantage to him. There he found, side 
 by side with the representatives of the boldly specu- 
 lative school, which made the negation of conscience 
 their starting-point, another school, full of religious 
 vigour combined with a large-hearted liberality, pre- 
 
VERNY AND ROBER TSON. 335 
 
 pared to treat religious questions without any bias of 
 party, aiming in the midst of much obscurity at a 
 salutary reformation of evangelical theology, and ! 
 anxious above all things to introduce a moral ele- | 
 ment into religious speculation. This was the very 
 thing which Robertson sought — the eternal substance 
 of Christianity under an enlarged form. He might | 
 then abandon the formularies which were so painful 
 to him, and recognise that they were human and 
 transitory. It was no longer necessary to shut his 
 eyes in order not to see fatal objections. These 
 objections only applied to a particular theology, and 
 did not affect the essence of Christianity. Great as 
 was the light which the young preacher thus received 
 at Heidelberg, he did not commit himself to any 
 school. He was not to be, like many others, the mere 
 translator of Germany ; he was to represent the 
 aspirations of modern theology in his own way, and 
 in harmony with the needs of his own country. 
 
 On his return to England, he was appointed pastor 
 of the church of St. Ebbe's, Oxford. He was now 
 a married man and the father of a family, and the 
 slender income of his parish was insufficient for their 
 maintenance. He feared, too, that in this position he 
 would be obliged to mix himself up, more than he 
 wished, with the ecclesiastical squabbles overPuseyism ; 
 and it was his great desire not to be in any way a 
 party man. We cannot but regret, however, that he 
 did not continue to preach in that seat of learning. 
 
336 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 He was singularly adapted for preaching and teaching 
 in a University town, though he always fulfilled his 
 humbler pastoral duties with unflagging devotion. 
 Perhaps he might have found more helpers in this 
 learned city, and his life might not have been short- 
 ened, as it was, by excessive toil. He made his mark 
 at Oxford as everywhere else, though his stay there 
 was so short ; and he was deeply regretted when he 
 left St. Ebbe's for Trinity Chapel, Brighton. Here 
 he reached his highest development, both of genius 
 and character. Here also he endured the bitterest 
 experience of moral isolation. A secret presentiment 
 warned him of the trials which awaited him. Never- 
 theless, he felt it his duty not to refuse the reiterated 
 invitations, and in the year 1847 ne too k U P ^ ls 
 residence at Brighton. 
 
 He found much to sustain and compensate him 
 under the manifold trials of his life, in the splendid 
 site of the town. He was a passionate lover of 
 nature ; the view of the sea and its solemn sound 
 were to him sources of exquisite delight, which he 
 describes in his own marvellous language. Robertson 
 reached at this period the full maturity of his moral 
 ]/ and intellectual nature. His correspondence, and the 
 recollections of his friends, help us to appreciate to 
 some extent the wealth of his mental resources and 
 his powerful originality. x 
 
 1 See especially chap. vii. vol. i. of the " Life and Letters." 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 337 
 
 He belonged to the order of minds which have an 
 intuition so intense and keen that it amounts to 
 positive suffering. The poetic faculty is, in such 
 natures, a sort of clairvoyance ; it is like faith, the 
 vivid realisation of things unseen, only it does not 
 deal exclusively with the invisible things of eternity. 
 It apprehends that which lies hidden beneath super- 
 ficial semblances, and sees, unveiled, those elements 
 of the awful and the sublime which underlie all life, 
 but which vulgar minds never recognise except in 
 those sudden convulsions when the subterranean 
 fire bursts forth, so to speak, in molten lava. Such 
 sensitiveness brings exquisite suffering to those 
 who are endued with it ; if it intensifies the joys, 
 it adds a double poignancy to all the sorrows of 
 life. 
 
 Men in whom imagination predominates over the 
 moral life, generally find a sort of selfish consolation 
 in the mere rendering of their vivid impressions in 
 eloquent and poetic forms. Literary glory and the 
 delights of art amply compensate them for the pain of 
 a too exquisite sensibility. But it is not so with those 
 to whom the moral life is everything, and who live for 
 God. In their case, the God-like compassion which 
 they feel for their fellow-creatures, is painfully inten- 
 sified by the vividness with which they realise all their 
 difficulties and perplexities. This is the secret of the 
 sublime melancholy of Pascal, and of the strong relief 
 in which all the figures, especially those of a sorrowful 
 
 23 
 
338 CONTEMPORARY POR**^ J"* 
 
 cast, stand out on his powerful pages. Robertson 
 belongs wholly to the same order of mind. His 
 fervid language seems the outpouring of a heart con- 
 sumed with a holy fire ; it was his nature to realise 
 the difficulties of others with an intensity that became 
 an agony to himself. 
 
 " My misfortune or happiness," he says, " is power 
 of sympathy. I can feel with the Brahmin, the 
 Pantheist, the Stoic, the Platonist, the Transcend- 
 entalist, perhaps the Epicurean. I can suffer with 
 I the Tractarian tenderly shinking from the gulf 
 blackening before him ... I can also agonise with 
 the infidels, &c." i 
 
 This temperament was at once the bane of his life 
 and the source of his power as a writer and speaker. 
 It made him realise, in all their bitterness, the suffer- 
 ings of humanity ; it gave a terrible poignancy to all 
 his mental struggles, and magnified the misconcep- 
 tions and unjust judgments passed upon him into 
 actual torture to his over- wrought sensitiveness. His 
 sufferings were unquestionably morbidly acute, and 
 brought his life to an untimely close. Every sermon 
 that he preached cost him some of his heart's best 
 blood. But the anguish was not unrelieved. We 
 should do injustice to Robertson's nature and school 
 of thought, if we did not recognise that, with his ever- 
 growing faith and deepening love, the sacred joys of 
 
 1 " Life and Letters," vol. i. p. 183. 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 339 
 
 his heart and mind were such as meaner souls can 
 never know. And surely, even in our day, there are 
 many who would still make Achilles' choice, and deem 
 it better to live much in the highest sense than to 
 live long. 
 
 Robertson's strong feelings did not expend them- 
 selves merely in sympathy. Cowardice, hypocrisy, vice 
 of any kind, stirred him to vehement indignation, 
 and his language when rebuking them burst forth, to 
 use his own expression, like liquid fire. He could also 
 exercise at times a severe self-repression. He was 
 one of those strong men who regard effusiveness as a 
 sign of weakness. A pressure of the hand and a look 
 convey more to such than any sentimental demon- 
 strations by speech or action. It was this power of 
 repression which gave such strength and simplicity to 
 Robertson's style, and such concentration of thought, 
 illumined by the flashes of a vivid imagination. He 
 had always a horror of mere excitement, as so easily 
 mistaken for the reality of piety and devotion. He 
 knew that Christianity was like a marvellous musical 
 instrument, which can be made to give forth exquisite 
 harmonies under the touch of the skilful player ; but 
 he felt, too, how easy it is to practise self-deception 
 under such influences, and to talk much of Christian 
 heroism without bringing it to bear on the daily life. 
 There is an illusive poetry of the cross. It is far 
 more easy to sing about it than to carry it. Robert- 
 son was fully alive to this danger. He knew but too 
 
X 
 
 340 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 well that preaching, however tender and forcible, was 
 but as a tinkling cymbal, unless it reached the springs 
 of the life. He says : 
 
 " Nothing is more dangerous than the command 
 of a pen which can write correct sentiments, such as 
 might befit a martyr or an angel. And the danger is, 
 that the confusion between a commonplace life and 
 that of an angel or a martyr is hopeless. For, when 
 the same sublimities proceed from both, who is to con- 
 vince us that we are not beatified martyrs or holy 
 angels? . . . How dare I talk of sacrifice? And how 
 little there is of it in my life! one perpetual succession 
 of enjoyments ! It has often struck me that Christ 
 never suffered sentimentalisms to pass without a 
 matter-of-fact testing of what they were worth and of 
 what they meant." l 
 
 Robertson dreaded the intoxication of success, and 
 had a horror of becoming a fashionable preacher. 
 
 "If you knew," he wrote to a friend, "how sick at 
 heart I am with the whole work of parle-ment, talkee, 
 palaver, or whatever else it is called ; how lightly I hold 
 the 'gift of the gab ;' how grand and divine the realm 
 of silence seems to me in comparison ; how humiliated 
 and degraded to the dust I have felt in perceiving 
 myself quietly taken by gods and men for the popular 
 preacher of a fashionable watering-place ; how slight 
 the power seems to me to be given by it of winning 
 
 L f " Life and Letters," vol. ii. p. 194. 
 
VERNY A ND ROBER TSON. 34 1 
 
 souls ; and how sternly I have kept my tongue 
 from saying a syllable or a sentence, in pulpit or on 
 platform, because it would be popular." l 
 
 This asceticism, which was such a safeguard to a 
 brilliant nature like Robertson's, was perfectly com- 
 patible with great breadth of general culture. He 
 delighted in all that was noble and true in art and 
 literature, as well as in nature, connected himself 
 with every great social and political movement of the 
 age, and indulged the high ambition of bringing 
 every thought into captivity to the obedience of 
 Christ. In his correspondence we find him passing 
 from a fine description of a sunset at sea, to a subtle 
 analysis of a drama of Shakespeare or a poem of 
 Wordsworth ; taking up questions of popular educa- 
 tion or philosophy, but ever reverting to his great 
 theme, the truths of Christian theology and ethics. 
 Unity underlies all the variety — one spirit runs through 
 all his thoughts. He is not the austere representative 
 of a mummified tradition, or of clerical authority ; he 
 does not play the farce of an imperturbable assurance ; 
 but his influence is all the greater, because it is derived 
 purely from his moral qualities. 
 
 His correspondence gives us in his own words the 
 broad outlines of his too brief ministry at Brighton. 
 He devoted himself by preference to the humbler 
 members of his church, thus he became the cherished 
 
 " Life and Letters," vol. i. p. 196. 
 
342 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 friend of the poor and the suffering. He had too clear 
 an insight into the conditions of the age not to under- 
 stand that the social question was one of supreme 
 importance, and that the practical solution of it must 
 be sought primarily in the better education of the 
 working classes. The Revolution of 1848, which 
 occurred soon after his settlement at Brighton, con- 
 firmed him in his wise and generous determination to 
 devote himself unsparingly to the cause of popular 
 education. He took a very active part in the founda- 
 tion of a Working Men's Institute with a library 
 and public lectures, and by this means he exercised a 
 most happy influence over the artisans of the town, 
 with whom, however, he never hesitated to break a 
 lance when necessary. He vigorously opposed the 
 attempt to introduce bad books into the library. 
 
 Robertson greatly offended the Tories by speaking 
 with what they considered an irreverent candour of 
 the beginnings of royalty, in a course of expositions of 
 the Book of Samuel. It might well be supposed that 
 he would have little sympathy with the narrow Con- 
 servatism which, at the critical times of the nation's 
 history, fell into a state of imbecile terror and had 
 nothing but resistance to offer to aspirations however 
 legitimate. Of this futile policy Robertson wrote : 
 
 "What has ever made democracy dangerous but 
 Conservatism ? The French Revolution ! Socialism ! 
 Why, men seem to forget that these things come out 
 of Toryism, which forced the people into madness ! 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 343 
 
 What makes rivers and canals overflow ? The deep 
 channel cut ever deeper, or the dam put across by- 
 wise people to stop them ? " I 
 
 Robertson was repeatedly accused of Socialism : he 
 scorned to refute the foolish calumny. Nothing could 
 be more opposed to the general tenor of his teaching 
 than Utopian schemes, the very basis of which was 
 the extinction of individuality and the suppression of 
 liberty. He was none the less anxious to bring the 
 various classes of society nearer to each other, by the 
 operation of that true practical charity, the first prin- 
 ciple of which is respect for the poor. 
 
 " I knew a young lady," he says, " who used to go 
 
 down to and lecture the poor people upon their 
 
 dirt and uncomfortable habits and houses, and — hear 
 it heaven and earth ! — they did not repent of their evil 
 ways, and reform at the voice of that angelic visita- 
 tion ! It is just possible that, never having seen clean- 
 liness or comfort, they did not know what she wanted 
 them to aim at or how to begin. Mrs. Fry would 
 have bought them a bit of soap, and washed a child's 
 fingers with her own hands as a specimen, and drawn 
 out a little set of rules, and paraded the family once 
 a week, half in fun, half good-humoured ly, to see that 
 her orders were obeyed ; and she would have gone on 
 for a year, and if at the end of a year she saw a little 
 dawn of improvement, she would have thanked God 
 
 1 " Life and Letters," vol. i. p. 150. 
 
(J 
 
 344 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRA ITS. 
 
 and taken courage. But fine young ladies think that 
 an elegant cut of a riding-whip through the air in the 
 last Belgravian fashion is to electrify a Celtic village, 
 and convert a whole population of savages to civilised 
 tastes and English habits. The patient drudgery 
 which does God's work, however, is not learned in 
 Belgrave Square. Well, the aristocracy of the next 
 world will be the Frys, the Chisholms, and the people 
 who do not care for being smart, and are not afraid, 
 like their Master, to ' lay their hands' upon the 
 wretches whom they would rescue." l 
 
 Socialism was not, however, the main charge brought 
 against Robertson. His bold and uncompromising 
 preaching came into constant collision with the 
 opinions of the current orthodoxy, though he never 
 went beyond the categorical statement of his views. 
 Thus, while vast crowds still thronged to hear him, he 
 was painfully conscious of moral isolation ; and as 
 time went on this feeling became increasingly bitter 
 and hard to bear. 
 
 " Of one thing," he writes, " I have become distinctly 
 conscious — that my motto for life, my whole heart's 
 expression is, "None but Christ ; ' not in the (so-called) 
 evangelical sense, which I take to be the sickliest cant 
 that has appeared since the Pharisees bare record to 
 the gracious words which He spake, and then tried to 
 cast Him headlong from the hill at Nazareth ; but in 
 
 1 " Life and Letters," vol. ii. p. 154. 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON . 345 
 
 a deeper, real sense — the mind of Christ ; to feel as 
 He felt ; to judge the world and to estimate the 
 world's maxims, as He judged and estimated. This 
 is the one thing worth living for. To realise that, is 
 to feel ' None but Christ.' But then, in proportion as 
 a man does that he is stripping himself of garment 
 after garment, till his soul becomes naked of that 
 which once seemed part of himself. He is not only 
 giving up prejudice after prejudice, but also renouncing 
 sympathy after sympathy with friends whose smile 
 and approbation were once his life, till he begins to 
 suspect that he will be very soon alone with Christ. 
 More awful than I can express. To believe that and 
 still press on, is what I mean by the sentence ' None 
 but Christ.' I do not know that I can express all I 
 mean, but sometimes it is to me a sense almost 
 insupportable of silence and stillness and solitariness." 1 
 
 These sentiments are expressed with a force, bor- 
 dering on coarseness, in the following words : 
 
 " In proportion as I adore Christ (and I do think 
 my whole soul thrills and trembles at the thought of 
 Him, when I understand, or fancy I understand Him, 
 and feel my own heart acquiescing in His life and 
 views of life and God, and acknowledging them to be 
 revelations), exactly in that proportion do I abhor 
 evangelicalism. I feel more at brotherhood with a 
 deranged, mistaken, maddened, sinful Chartist, than I 
 
 1 "Life and Letters," vol. i. p. 154. 
 
346 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 do with that religious world which has broken popery 
 into a hundred thousand fragments, and made every 
 fragment an entire, new, infallible Pope, dealing out 
 quietly and cold-bloodedly the flames of the next 
 world upon all heretics who dispute their dictum, in 
 compensation for the loss of the power which their 
 ancestor by spiritual descent pleasingly exercised, of 
 dispensing the flames of this world. Luckily, the 
 hope remains that they are not plenipotentiaries of 
 the place with which they seem so familiar. More 
 and more, day by day, one's soul feels itself alone with 
 God, and resolved to listen for His voice alone in the 
 deeps of the spirit." l Robertson was manifestly 
 unjust in thus implicating the whole of a great reli- 
 gious party in the blame which really attached only to 
 some of its leaders. But upon these the rebuke falls 
 with no undue severity. 
 
 The incidents in Robertson's life are few and un- 
 important ; its dramatic interest lies in the inward 
 conflict, which was incessantly renewed. However 
 keenly wounded in his deepest affections, he made 
 no sign of suffering ; his soul was too proud, too 
 noble to betray its secret anguish. His sermons give 
 scarcely any indication of the conflicts within ; few 
 could guess how deeply agitated was the soul that 
 could express itself with such quiet strength. Yet 
 even' word was perfectly sincere ; the calmness was 
 
 1 "Life and Letters," vol. i. p. 158. 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 347 
 
 no mere mask, it was a manly self-conquest. He 
 was like the young Spartan who kept a quiet face 
 while the wild beast was gnawing at his vitals, and 
 would have deemed it dishonour to betray his agony. 
 The publication of Robertson's life was, therefore, a 
 revelation to the readers of his sermons. It showed 
 how much every sermon had cost him. It is a most 
 interesting study to place the sermons side by side 
 with his private correspondence. This we shall 
 attempt to do before pronouncing our final opinion 
 upon him as a theologian and a preacher. 
 
 Some of the organs of an implacable bigotry, which 
 persecuted him with their unfair representations of 
 his teaching, called forth from him repeated outbursts 
 of indignation. Of one of these periodicals he said : 
 
 " The Record has done me the honour to abuse 
 me for some time past ; for which I thank them 
 gratefully. God forbid they should ever praise me ! 
 One article alone contained four unscrupulous lies 
 about me, on no better evidence than that some one 
 had told them who had been told by somebody 
 else. They shall have no disclaimer from me. If 
 the Record can put a man down, the sooner he is 
 put down the better. . . . The evangelicalism, so 
 called, of the Record, is an emasculated one, snarling 
 at all that is better than itself, cowardly, lying, and 
 slanderous. It is not worth while to stop your horse 
 and castigate it, for it will be off yelping, and come 
 back to snarl. An evangelical clergyman admitted 
 
348 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 some proof I had given him of the Record's cowardice 
 and dishonesty, but said : ' Well, in spite of that, I 
 like it, because it upholds the truth, and is a great 
 witness for religion.' ' So,' said I, ' is that the creed of 
 evangelicalism ? A man may be a liar, a coward, 
 and slanderous, and still uphold the truth ! " J 
 
 The attacks against Robertson became more and 
 more numerous. He would often be visited in his 
 study on Monday by persons with long, alarmed 
 faces, who seemed, however, well satisfied with them- 
 selves for having been so shocked. These benevolent 
 censors found exquisite consolation in expressing 
 their fears for him with many ominous shakings of 
 the head. Sometimes his patience failed under the 
 ordeal, especially when he felt that the attack was as 
 malicious as it was ignorant. One Monday morning 
 a solemn gentleman introduced himself as having been 
 of great service to young clergymen. He arraigned 
 the sermon he had heard in Trinity Chapel the day 
 before : spoke of the dangerous views and the im- 
 petuosity of young men ; offered himself as a weekly 
 monitor, and enumerated, in conclusion, the perils and 
 inconveniences to which popular preachers were sub- 
 ject. Mr. Robertson, who had remained silent, at last 
 rose. " Really, Sir," he said sternly, " the only incon- 
 venience I have experienced in being what you are 
 pleased to call me, a popular preacher, is intrusion, 
 
 1 " Life and Letters," vol. ii. p. 128. 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 349 
 
 like the present." And he bowed his censor out of 
 the room. He had recognised instinctively in his 
 visitor the malice prepense of an implacable bigotry. 
 
 The lady theologians who pronounce sentences 
 against which there is no appeal, and who promulgate 
 with touching eagerness, the decrees of excommuni- 
 cation issued in orthodox circles, greatly annoyed and 
 wearied Robertson. They were always accusing him 
 of neology, a convenient and elastic word to be used 
 by those ignorant persons who regard science as the 
 smoke of the abyss. He was also accused of German 
 theology, and this was a grave cause of suspicion to 
 those who were strongly inclined to believe that truth 
 is English and the devil German. These absurdities 
 were of no real importance, but they set on foot mis- 
 representations which had the painful effect of aliena- 
 ting from Robertson many upright and pious souls, for 
 whom, in spite of the unintentional injustice, he still 
 retained a deep love and respect. The sense of moral 
 isolation is always peculiarly painful to men of Robert- 
 son's temperament ; and he felt it in even an exagger- 
 ated degree. He learnt great lessons, however, in this 
 severe school. His sermons on the kingdom of truth, 
 and on the Loneliness of Christ, give us, in a matured 
 form, the fruit of these bitter but salutary expe- 
 riences. Though he did not know Vinet, he vindi- 
 cated with an eloquence almost equal to that of the 
 author of " Les convictions religieuses," the inalien- 
 able claims of truth, and its purely moral power, which 
 
350 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 does not derive its support from might or authority 
 or from mere force of argument, but which appeals 
 to the heart and conscience, and requires to be 
 received with uprightness and with the resolve to 
 bring the life into agreement with the doctrine. 
 Robertson, in his sermon on the scepticism of Pilate, 
 truly represents false authority as a principle of doubt. 
 He says : 
 
 " Fanaticism and scepticism — these are the two 
 results which come from all claims to infallibility and 
 all prohibition of inquiry. They make bigots of the 
 feeble-minded who cannot think ; cowardly bigots, 
 who, at the bidding of their priests or ministers, swell 
 the ferocious cry which forces a government, or a 
 judge, or a bishop, to persecute some opinion which 
 they fear and hate ; turning private opinion into civil 
 crime : and they make sceptics of the acute intellects 
 which, like Pilate, see. through their fallacies, and, like 
 Pilate too, dare not publish their misgivings. 
 
 " And it matters not in what form that claim to in- 
 fallibility is made ; whether in the clear consistent 
 way in which Rome asserts it, or whether in the in- 
 consistent way in which churchmen make it for 
 their church, or religious bodies for their favourite 
 opinions ; wherever penalties attach to a conscientious 
 conviction, be they penalties of the rack and flame, or 
 the penalties of being suspected, and avoided, and 
 slandered, and the slur of heresy affixed to the name, 
 till all men count him dangerous, lest they too should 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 351 
 
 be put out of the synagogue — and let every man who 
 is engaged in persecuting any opinion ponder it — 
 these two things must follow, you make fanatics, and 
 you make sceptics ; believers you cannot make." I 
 
 In his sermon on the Loneliness cf Christ, the bitter 
 anguish of a loving heart, when it feels itself alone in 
 the midst of its fellows, is described with a power and 
 pathos which rise to the height of true poetry : 
 
 " It is a solemn thing, doubtless, to be apart from 
 men, and to feel eternity rushing by like an arrowy 
 river. But the solitude of Christ was the solitude of 
 a crowd. In that single human bosom dwelt the 
 thought which was to be the germ of the world's 
 life : a thought unshared, misunderstood, or rejected. 
 Can we not feel the grandeur of those words, when 
 the Man, reposing in His solitary strength, felt the 
 last shadow of perfect isolation pass across his soul : 
 1 My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me ' ? " 2 
 
 Robertson describes no less impressively the in- 
 effable joy found even in solitude by the soul, when it 
 can exclaim : " Yet I am not alone, for the Father is 
 with me." He characterised very happily his peculiar 
 mission in its noble and in its painful aspect, perhaps, 
 also, in its incompleteness, when he said : 
 
 " I believe the path in which I work is the true pass 
 across the mountains, though the thought and the 
 hand of the master engineer are wanting to make it a 
 
 1 " Sermons," First Series, pp. 298, 299. 
 
 2 Ibid. pp. 229, 230. 
 
352 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 road broad and safe for the people and the multitude 
 to travel in." l 
 
 Such was he indeed — the one to go first down a 
 steep and slippery descent, a pioneer in the path of 
 progress. He was never to know the joy of march- 
 ing on with the great body of the army to the thrilling 
 strains of martial music. The danger to one in such 
 a position is that of becoming self-absorbed and es- 
 tranged from sympathy with his fellows — a mischief 
 far more serious than that of being excommunicated 
 by a narrow party spirit. Robertson escaped this 
 greater evil, and retained through life a generous 
 breadth of heart and mind. 
 
 " It is really time, now," he wrote, " after eighteen 
 centuries, that we should get some better conception 
 than we have of what Christianity is. If we could but 
 comprehend the manifested Life of God, Christ in His 
 earthly career, how He looked on things, and felt and 
 thought, what He hated and what He pitied, we might 
 have some chance of agreement. As it is, I suppose 
 we shall go on biting and devouring one another, and 
 thinking — alas ! for the mockery ! — that we have real- 
 ised a kingdom of God upon earth. To understand the 
 life and spirit of Christ appears to me to be the only 
 chance of remedy ; but we have got doctrines about 
 Christ instead of Christ ; and we call the bad meta- 
 physics of evangelicalism the gospel, and the tem- 
 
 1 "Life and Letters/' vol. ii. p. 185. 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 353 
 
 porary, transitory forms of Tractarianism the Church. 
 To know Him, the power of His resurrection, and the 
 fellowship of His sufferings, that is all in all ; and if 
 the death and life of Christ are working in a man, he 
 is our brother, whether Tractarian or Evangelical, if 
 we could but believe that very simple proposition." r 
 
 We find this idea dwelt upon at length in the ser- 
 mon on the Dispensation of the Spirit. Starting from 
 the same standpoint as Vinet in his noble discourse 
 on the invisible Christ, Robertson says : 
 
 " The outward humanity is. to disappear, that the 
 inward union may be complete. . . . For this reason 
 the ascension was necessary before Pentecost could 
 come. The Spirit was not given, we are told, because 
 Jesus was not yet glorified. It was necessary for the 
 Son to disappear as an outward authority, in order that 
 He might reappear as an inward principle of life. 
 Our salvation is no longer God manifested in a 'Christ 
 without us, but as a Christ within us, the hope of glory.' 
 . . . The operation of this Spirit of God creates a 
 living unity — spiritual not formal ; not sameness, but 
 manifoldness. There may be a unity shown in identity 
 of form, but it is a lifeless unity. There is a sameness 
 on the seabeach — that unity which the ocean waves 
 have produced, by curling and forcibly destroying the 
 angularities of individual form, so that every stone 
 presents the same monotony of aspect. There is no life 
 
 1 " Life and Letters," vol. ii. p. 186. 
 24 
 
354 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRA ITS. 
 
 in such unity as this. But as soon as you arrive at a 
 unity that is living, the form becomes more complex, 
 and you search in vain for uniformity. What is the 
 unity of the human body ? Is it not this ? The unity 
 of a living consciousness, which marvellously animates 
 every separate atom of the frame, and reduces each to 
 the performance of a function fitted to the welfare of 
 the whole — its own, not another's : so that the inner 
 spirit can say of the remotest and in form most unlike 
 member, ' That, too, is myself ? ' " x 
 
 We will now pass rapidly in review some of the 
 collateral labours of Robertson's ministry not directly 
 connected with his theological work. It is very inte- 
 resting to see how, while never neglecting his proper 
 vocation, he threw himself into the great general in- 
 terests of the day. We have already spoken of his 
 influence among the poorer classes, and of the part 
 taken by him in founding the Working Men's Institute 
 at Brighton. For the benefit of this institution he 
 gave a very admirable lecture on the influence of 
 poetry upon the people. When called to preach at 
 the Assizes, he showed how much thought he had 
 given to this important phase of our social life. His 
 remarks on punishment were altogether free from that 
 maudlin sentimentality which fails to recognise the 
 majesty and wholesome severity of law. We are sur- 
 prised, however, to find him approving the punishment 
 
 1 " Sermons," Third Series, pp. 30, 40. 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 355 
 
 of death. It was before the Assizes that he preached 
 his very fine sermon on the Kingdom of Truth, in 
 which he brings face to face the prevaricating judge 
 and the Divine prisoner. At the time of the political 
 elections, Robertson, who belonged heart and soul to 
 the Liberal party, preached a sermon on the election 
 of the Apostle Matthias. He carefully abstained, as 
 he was bound to do in the pulpit, from any allusion to 
 his private opinion ; but he used the opportunity given 
 him by the excited feelings of the moment, to define 
 very distinctly the principle of Gospel morality, which 
 ought to guide citizens in the fulfilment of so impor- 
 tant and delicate a duty. He never hesitated to give 
 variety to his sermons by drawing largely upon the 
 literary and historical culture of the time. His ser- 
 mons on the Romans, the Greeks, and the Barbarians, 
 regarded in their relations to primitive Christianity, 
 are of extreme interest. His sermon on the Religion 
 of India is no less remarkable ; it is a sort of apolo- 
 getic history, more in the nature of a lecture than of a 
 sermon, but animated throughout by the power of a 
 living faith. 
 
 The sermons in which he takes up the great charac- 
 ters of Old and New Testament history, are richly 
 poetical. He draws the moral features of his heroes 
 with a firm and faithful touch ; and, contrary to the 
 usual practice of his countrymen in their religious 
 literature, he gives the true historical setting, paint- 
 ing in the background in solid and sober colours. 
 
35^ CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 He treats with equal depth and originality all the 
 main points of Christian morality. Among his best 
 known sermons are those on " The Power of Sorrow," 
 " Sensual and Spiritual Excitement," " Purity," " Unity 
 and Peace," " Christian Casuistry," " The Law of Chris- 
 tian Conscience," "The Lawful and Unlawful Use of 
 Law," " The Irreparable Past." 
 
 The very choice of subjects like these was itself an 
 innovation. As a specimen of the richly poetical 
 form which his thought often assumed in these dis- 
 courses, which were studies of sacred history and 
 morality rather than of theology, we may quote the 
 following passages from his sermon on Jacob's 
 Wrestling. The method of treatment is most sug- 
 gestive. Robertson says : 
 
 " Putting aside the form of this narrative, and look- 
 ing into the heart and meaning of it, it will become 
 apparent that we have before us the record of an 
 inward, spiritual struggle, as real now in the nine- 
 teenth century as then ; as real in every earnest man 
 as it was in the history of Jacob. 
 
 " We take these points : 
 
 " i. The nameless secret of existence. 
 
 " 2. The revelation of that secret to the soul. 
 
 " I observe that this desire of Jacob was not the one 
 we should naturally have expected on such an occa- 
 sion. He is alone — his past fault is coming retribu- 
 tively on a guilty conscience — he dreads the meeting 
 with his brother. His soul is agonised with that ; 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 357 
 
 and that we naturally expect will be the subject and 
 the burden of his prayer. No such thing ! Not a 
 word about Esau : not a word about personal danger 
 at all. All that is banished completely for the time, 
 and deeper thoughts are grappling with his soul. To 
 get safe through to-morrow ? No, no, no ! To be 
 blessed by God — to know Him, and what He is — that 
 is the battle of Jacob's soul from sunset till the dawn 
 of day. 
 
 " And this is our struggle — the struggle. Let any 
 true man go down into the deeps of his own being, 
 and answer us — what is the cry that comes from 
 the most real part of his nature ? Is it the cry for 
 daily bread ? Jacob asked for that in his first com- 
 muning with God — preservation, safety. Is it even 
 this — to be forgiven our sins ? Jacob had a sin to be 
 forgiven ; and in that most solemn moment of his 
 existence he did not say a syllable about it. Or is it 
 this — ' Hallowed be thy name ' ? No, my brethren. 
 Out of our frail and yet sublime humanity, the 
 demand that rises in the earthlier hours of our religion 
 may be this — ' Save my soul ; ' but, in the most un- 
 earthly moments, it is this — ' Tell me thy name.' 
 We move through a world of mystery ; and the 
 deepest question is : What is the being that is ever 
 near, sometimes felt, never seen — that which has 
 haunted us from childhood with a dream of some- 
 thing surpassingly fair, which has never yet been 
 realised — that which sweeps through the soul at times 
 
358 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 as a desolation, like the blast from the wings of the 
 Angel of Death, leaving us stricken and silent in our 
 loneliness — that which has touched us in our tenderest 
 point, and the flesh has quivered with agony, and our 
 mortal affections have shrivelled up in pain — that 
 which comes to us in aspirations of nobleness, and 
 conceptions of superhuman excellence ? Shall we 
 say It or He ? What is It ? Who is He ? Those 
 anticipations of Immortality and God — what are 
 they ? Are they the mere throbbings of my own 
 heart, heard and mistaken for a living something 
 beside me ? Are they the sound of my own wishes, 
 echoing through the vast void of nothingness ? or 
 shall I call them God, Father, Spirit, Love ? A 
 living Being within me or outside me ? Tell me Thy 
 Name, Thou awful mystery of loveliness ! This is the 
 struggle of all earnest life. 
 
 " We come now to the revelation of the Mystery. 
 
 " It was revealed by awe. Very significantly are we 
 told that the Divine antagonist seemed, as it were, 
 anxious to depart as the day was about to dawn ; 
 and that Jacob held Him more convulsively fast, as 
 if aware that the daylight was likely to rob him of 
 his anticipated blessing, in which there seems con- 
 cealed a very deep truth. God is approached more 
 nearly in that which is indefinite than in that which 
 is definite and distinct. He is felt in awe, and 
 wonder and worship, rather than in clear conceptions. 
 There is a sense in which darkness has more of God 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 359 
 
 than light has. He dwells in the thick darkness. 
 Moments of tender, vague mystery often bring dis- 
 tinctly the feeling of His presence. When day 
 breaks and distinctness comes, the Divine has evapo- 
 rated from the soul like morning dew. In sorrow, 
 haunted by uncertain presentiments, we feel the 
 infinite around us. The gloom disperses, the world's 
 joy comes again, and it seems as if God were 
 gone — the Being who had touched us with a wither- 
 ing hand, and wrestled with us, yet whose presence, 
 even when most terrible, was more blessed than His 
 absence. It is true, even literally, that the darkness 
 reveals God. Every morning God draws the curtains 
 of the garish light across His eternity, and we lose 
 the Infinite. We look down on earth instead of up 
 to heaven ; on a narrower and more contracted spec- 
 tacle — that which is examined by the microscope 
 when the telescope is laid aside — smallness, instead 
 of vastness. ' Man goeth forth to his work and to 
 his labour until the evening ; ' and in the dust and 
 pettiness of life we seem to cease to behold Him : 
 then at night He undraws the curtain again, and we 
 see how much of God and eternity the bright distinct 
 day has hidden from us. Yes, in solitary, silent, 
 vague darkness, the Awful One is near. 
 
 " This morning, my young brethren, we endeavoured 
 to act on this belief — we met in stillness, before the full 
 broad glare of day had rested on our world. Your 
 first communion implored His blessing in the hour 
 
360 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 which seems so peculiarly His. Before the dull and 
 deadening and earthward influences of the world had 
 dried up the dew of fresh morning feeling, you tried 
 to fortify your souls with a sense of His presence. 
 This night, before to-morrow's light shall dawn, pray 
 that He will not depart until He has left upon your 
 hearts the blessing of a strength which shall be yours 
 through the garish day, and through dry, scorching 
 life, even to the close of your day." l 
 
 We have quoted so much at length from this 
 sermon, because it exhibits at once the strength and 
 the weakness of Robertson's preaching ; we shall 
 speak more particularly of both in our summary of 
 his character and work. 
 
 He took part, as we have said, in all the great theo- 
 logical controversies of his time. Catholicism was 
 already beginning to assert a strange ascendancy 
 over the aristocratic classes in England. This fact 
 was not to be got rid of by the cry, " No Popery," 
 raised on all hands by the orthodox of every shade. 
 Robertson rightly felt that this tendency to return to 
 a discarded form of religion, could only be accounted 
 for by the existence of unsatisfied religious needs, 
 and that it was of far more importance to discover 
 what these were, and to try to meet them, than to in- 
 dulge in embittering controversy. The only argu- 
 ment which really carries conviction, is that which 
 
 1 "Jacob's Wrestling," Sermons, First Series. 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 361 
 
 takes away from error the admixture of truth by 
 which it lives, and thus allows it no raisoji d'etre. 
 This course Robertson pursued with a rare power of 
 intuition, which saved him from the unfairness of 
 party spirit, as is shown by his liberality with respect 
 to Ireland. He declared boldly that the bill for 
 Catholic Emancipation had put an end to a monstrous 
 system, and desired to see it carried out to its fullest 
 issues, since he held that it was only by religious 
 liberty and equality that Ireland could ever be 
 really attached to England, and an effectual barrier 
 be raised against Ultramontanism. 1 
 
 On the other hand, he makes no concession what- 
 ever to the Catholic system. How radical was his 
 disapproval of its principles appears in the following 
 passage from a letter to a friend, who was tempted to 
 forsake the Church of liberty and of the Spirit for the 
 Church of external authority : 
 
 " Do you believe in God ? Dare you not trust 
 yourself like a child to Him ? Oh, what is your 
 baptism worth if it has not taught you that blessed 
 central truth of all — that He is your Father? Dare 
 you so stifle His voice in your soul, which comes in 
 the simple rushings of earnest thought, and then call 
 it conscience ? Are you sure that you may not be 
 shutting out a ray from Heaven, although you fear that 
 it is a meteor from Hell ? . . . I tried no arguments 
 
 1 " Life and Letters," vol. ii. p. 141. 
 
362 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 against Romanism, for I feel that Romanism is only 
 an infinitely small and sensualistic embodiment of 
 truths — a living human form shrunk into a mummy, 
 with every feature there hideously like life, especially 
 when it, by force applied from without, by wires or 
 galvanism, moves humanly. . . . God made the soul 
 to correspond with truth. Truth is its own evidence, 
 as the lightning flash is, as the blessed sunlight is. 
 .... Alas ! alas ! you do not believe that you have a 
 soul — you do not believe in God — you do not believe 
 that His Spirit can find your soul — you believe in the 
 dial, and not in the sun — you are not alone with 
 Christ — you do not feel the solitary yet humbling 
 grandeur of being in this vast universe alone, as He 
 was, with your Father. His life is not the pattern of 
 your life, and His divine humanity is not the inter- 
 pretation of the mysteries of your solitary being. You 
 cannot walk the valley of the shadow of death fear- 
 lessly, as David did, because 'Thou art with me.' 
 
 You must have a crowd of and a number of other 
 
 good men by some hundred thousands to assure you 
 that you are not alone. All this universe is God's 
 blessed sacrament, the channel of His Spirit to your 
 soul, whereof He has selected two things as types of 
 all the rest : the commonest of all elements, water, and 
 the commonest of all meals, a supper, and you cannot 
 find Him except in seven ! Too many or else too 
 few ; but even in that protest against the Protestant 
 limitation of grace to two channels I recognise a truth, 
 only distorted and petrified as usual. 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 363 
 
 " Oh, be brave and wait ! These are dark days — 
 lonely days — and our unbelieving impatience cannot 
 bear to wait, but must rashly and by impetuous steps 
 of our own, plunge after the ignis fatuus of light. 
 Peace at once ! Light at once ! I cannot wait my 
 time and I will not ! I do not say all this as one who 
 is utterly unable to comprehend 'the delusion of 
 people who cannot be content with the sound and 
 excellent principles of our incomparable liturgy.' I 
 only comprehend too well the struggles and the 
 agonies of a soul that craves light and cannot find it. 
 And as to our ' incomparable Church/ why it does 
 not require a prophetic spirit to see that in ten years 
 more she must be in fragments, out of which fragments 
 God will re-construct something for which I am con- 
 tent to wait, in accordance with His usual plan, which 
 is to be for ever evolving fresh forms of life out of dis- 
 solution and decay. If not in my time, why then I 
 still wait. I am alone now, and shall be till I die, and 
 I am not afraid to be alone in the majesty of darkness 
 which His presence peoples with a crowd. I ask now 
 no sympathy but His. If He should vouchsafe to 
 give me more I shall accept it gratefully ; but I am 
 content to do without it, as many of His best and 
 bravest must do now. Why cannot you live with 
 Him ? . . . I have no superstitious evangelical horror 
 of Romanism, but — Alas ! alas ! for the substitution 
 of an artificial created conscience for the sound and 
 healthy one of humanity, whose tides are distinct and 
 
364 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 unmistakable in their noble music, like those of 
 Nature's ocean in its irresistible swell ! " 
 
 Vinet justly said that the special doctrines of 
 Catholicism are like the buoys which mark the spot 
 where some precious cargo has been swallowed up by 
 the sea ; a man must dive very deep to discover the 
 treasure. Robertson did so dive. Thus, both in his 
 letters and sermons, he shows that the adoration of 
 the Virgin, who is but the personification of the 
 tenderness and compassion of Christianity, gained 
 ground after the metaphysics of the fourth century 
 had thrown a veil over the true humanity of Jesus 
 Christ. 1 The multiplication of sacraments, which is 
 erroneous if we regard them as ecclesiastical institu- 
 tions, yet expresses the very legitimate desire to set 
 an impress of sacredness upon the entire life. The 
 idea of apostolical succession conceals a sublime truth 
 — namely, that there ought to be, as it were, an un- 
 broken lineage of prophets and heroic saints through 
 all the ages. Luther is the true successor of St. 
 Paul.* 
 
 Much excitement had been caused throughout 
 England by the petitions for the opening of the 
 Crystal Palace on Sunday, the only day when the 
 
 1 " Life and Letters," vol. ii. pp. 23, 24. See " The Glory of the 
 Virgin Mother," Sermons, Second Series, p. 229. 
 
 2 " Life and Letters," vol. ii. pp. 161, 162. 
 
FERNY AND ROBERTSON. 365 
 
 working classes could visit it. A vast array of pe- 
 titions on the other side was sent up from all parts 
 of the country. Robertson, though opposed to the 
 opening, did not feel it his duty to take part in this 
 movement ; because it seemed to him to be based on 
 an entirely Jewish Sabbatarianism. According to his 
 custom, he preached on the subject, and established 
 with singular logical clearness the true principles on 
 this important question ; showing that the legal dis- 
 tinction between one day and another had been 
 abolished by Christianity, but that nevertheless the 
 observance of Sunday meets the wants of the Chris- 
 tian soul and of the Church. Writing to one of his 
 opponents, he says : " Historically the Lord's day was 
 not a transference of the Jewish Sabbath at all from 
 one day to another. St. Paul, in Rom. xvi. 5, 6, 
 speaks of a religious non-observance of the Sabbath." 1 
 He showed further that it is possible to imagine 
 a state of mind and soul in which the thought of God 
 should have so thoroughly permeated the life that 
 there would be no longer any necessity for setting 
 apart one particular day for worship. It must be 
 admitted, however, that this is a height of spirituality 
 most rarely attained, and that no one who comes 
 short of it has any right to deprive himself of a means 
 of grace essential to the well-being of his soul, and 
 to the maintenance of piety in the world. He wrote 
 
 1 " Life and Letters," vol. ii. p. 112, 
 
366 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 again to a friend : " I must reverse all my conceptions 
 of Christianity — which is the mind of Christ — before 
 I can believe the Evangelico-Judaic theory ; which is 
 
 that Mr. may, without infringement of the Fourth 
 
 Commandment, drive his carriage to church twice 
 every Sunday, but a poor man may not drive his 
 cart; that the two or three hours spent in the evening 
 by a noble lord over his venison, champagne, dessert, 
 and coffee, are no desecration of the command ; but 
 the same number spent by an artisan over cheese and 
 beer in a tea-garden will bring down God's judgment 
 on the land. It is worse than absurd. It is the very 
 spirit of Pharisaism, which our Lord rebuked so 
 sternly." l He insists strongly, nevertheless, on the 
 benefit of the Sunday, and declares that no one who 
 loves his country could consent to encourage the 
 regular and public violation of that day. He cannot 
 approve, however, of legislative measures, taken in 
 the name of a patched-up Judaism, to restrict the 
 liberty of souls. Any one who knows England can 
 understand what indignation words like these would 
 excite. 
 
 Another question arose, on which the conflict of 
 opinion ran no less high. I refer to the Gorham case. 
 It is well known that Mr. Gorham, as a clergyman of 
 the Church of England, had taught doctrines alto- 
 gether opposed to the notion of baptismal regenera- 
 
 r " Life and Letters," vol. ii. p. 113. 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON, 367 
 
 tion. A sharp discussion arose, which led to legal 
 proceedings. The futility of such measures, where 
 questions of doctrine are concerned, was soon made 
 evident. The Court of Queen's Bench gave a decision 
 which settled nothing, but which inclined decidedly 
 to the side of baptismal regeneration. Robertson, in 
 his correspondence, and in his two sermons on the 
 subject, took an intermediate position. He could not 
 sanction the superstitious idea which attributes to the 
 material element a magical virtue over the soul, but 
 neither could he accept the strict notion of Calvinism, 
 that baptism receives its value only from conversion. 
 According to Robertson, baptism does not make but 
 declares us sons of God ; recognising in the redeemed 
 of Christ this Divine adoption. It is the proclama- 
 tion of pre-existing rights, just as the ceremony of 
 coronation does not confer the royal dignity, but 
 declares it to the world. 
 
 Robertson showed himself, in relation to this ques- 
 tion, the almost bitter enemy of all religious forms 
 which are based upon an individual profession of / 
 faith. This injustice arises from a leading defect in 1 
 his theology. He had too much confidence in human 
 nature as it is, and did not sufficiently recognise its 
 fallen state, and the radical change wrought in it by 
 sin. Of this we shall have to speak further when we 
 come to analyse his theology, so faithfully reflected in 
 his preaching. 
 
368 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 III. 
 
 There were three theological questions which chiefly 
 exercised Robertson's mind. 
 
 1. The method of arriving at certainty on matters 
 of religion, a problem inseparable from the question 
 of inspiration. 
 
 2. The true idea of redemption and expiation. 
 
 3. The nature of Jesus Christ, and His relation to 
 the Father. 
 
 On all these points he repudiated the exaggerations 
 of current theology, but he also failed to hold the 
 even balance of truth, and was carried by the strength 
 of his reaction against what seemed to him the errors 
 of orthodoxy, too far in the opposite direction. 
 
 In relation to the first question — certainty in mat- 
 ters of religion — his teaching was as far removed as 
 possible from anything like Rationalism. The ten- 
 dency of ultra-orthodoxy is, in truth, more rational- 
 istic than such a faith as Robertson's. That school 
 does, in fact, regard revelation rather as the commu- 
 nication of certain mysteries about God, than as the 
 living manifestation of Him in a Divine history, find- 
 ing its centre in the person of Jesus Christ. It seeks 
 an intellectual rather than a moral adherence, and 
 attaches paramount importance to doctrines, the 
 authority of which it establishes on the ground of an 
 inspired book and of attested miracle. I know, in- 
 deed, that it seeks to correct this latent Rationalism 
 
 - 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 369 
 
 by forbidding inquiry, and insisting on the blind ac- 
 ceptance of orthodox dicta ; but the fact remains that 
 with a certain orthodox party revelation is regarded 
 as essentially a system of doctrine. 
 
 Robertson starts from quite other premises. He 
 differs both from the Jew, who requires a sign, and 
 the Greek, who seeks after wisdom. In other words, 
 he does not derive his faith from sight ; either the 
 sight of the eyes or that of the reasoning mind. It 
 is something both higher and deeper. It is the com- 
 munication of the Divine Spirit to the spiritual and 
 higher nature in man. He says, " If there has been 
 a single principle which I have taught more emphati- 
 cally than any other, it is that not by reason — mean- 
 ing by reason the understanding — but by the spirit — 
 that is, the heart, trained in meekness and love by 
 God's Spirit — truth can be judged of at all. I hold 
 that the attempt to rest Christianity upon miracles 
 and fulfilments of prophecy is essentially the vilest 
 rationalism ; as if the trained intellect of a lawyer, 
 which can investigate evidence, were that to . which 
 is trusted the soul's salvation ; or, as if the evidence 
 of the senses were more sure than the intuitions 
 of the spirit, to which spiritual truths almost alone 
 appeal." l 
 
 One of his finest sermons is devoted to this subject 
 — the sermon on " God's Revelation of Heaven." We 
 
 1 " Life and Letters," vol. ii. p. 149. 
 25 
 
370 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 quote his own beautiful language on the verse, " Eye 
 hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered 
 into the heart of man to conceive, the things which 
 God hath prepared for them that love him." 
 
 " There is a life of mere sensation. The degree ot 
 its enjoyment depends upon fineness of organisation. 
 The pleasures of sense arise from the vibration of a 
 nerve, or the thrilling of a muscle — nothing higher. 
 
 "The highest pleasure of sensation comes through 
 the eye. She ranks above all the rest of the senses 
 in dignity. He whose eye is so refined by discipline 
 that he can repose with pleasure upon the serene 
 outline of beautiful form, has reached the purest of 
 the sensational raptures. 
 
 "Now the Corinthians could appreciate this. Theirs 
 was the land of beauty. They read the apostle's 
 letter, surrounded by the purest conceptions of art. 
 In the orders of architecture, the most richly graceful 
 of all columnar forms receives its name from Corinth. 
 And yet it was to [these men, living in the very midst 
 of the chastely beautiful, upon whom the apostle 
 emphatically urged, ' Eye hath not seen the things 
 which God hath prepared for them that love him.' 
 
 "Let us not depreciate what God has given. There 
 is a rapture in gazing on this wondrous world. There 
 is a joy in contemplating the manifold forms in which 
 the All Beautiful has concealed His essence, — the 
 living garment in which the Invisible has robed His 
 mysterious loveliness. In every aspect of Nature 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 371 
 
 there is joy ; whether it be the purity of virgin 
 morning, or the sombre gray of a day of clouds, or 
 the solemn pomp and majesty of night; whether it be 
 the chaste lines of the crystal, or the waving outline of 
 distant hills, tremulously visible through dim vapours ; 
 the minute petals of the fringed daisy, or the over- 
 hanging form of mysterious forests. It is a pure 
 delight to see, 
 
 " But all this is bounded. The eye can only reach 
 the finite beautiful. It does not scan * the King in 
 his beauty, nor the land that is very far off.' . . . 
 
 " No scientific analysis can discover the truths of 
 God. Science cannot give a revelation. Science 
 proceeds upon observation. It submits everything to 
 the experience of the senses. Its law, expounded by 
 its great lawgiver, is, that if you would ascertain its 
 truth you must see, feel, taste. Experiment is the 
 test of truth. Now, you cannot by searching find 
 out the Almighty to perfection, nor a single one of 
 the blessed truths He has to communicate. . . . 
 
 " Eternal truth is not reached by hearsay — 'Ear hath 
 not heard the things which God hath prepared for 
 them that love him.' 
 
 " No revelation can be adequately given by the 
 address of man to man, whether by writing or orally, 
 even if he be put into the possession of the truth 
 itself. For all such revelations must be made through 
 words ; and words are but counters — the coins of 
 intellectual exchange. There is as little resemblance 
 
372 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 between the silver coin and the bread it purchases, as 
 between the word and the thing it stands for. Looking 
 at the coin, the form of the loaf does not suggest 
 itself. Listening to the word, you do not perceive 
 the idea for which it stands, unless you are already in 
 possession of it. . . . 
 
 " Now see what a hearsay religion is. There are 
 men who believe on authority. Their minister believes 
 all this Christianity true : therefore so do they. He 
 calls this doctrine essential : they echo it. Some 
 thousands of years ago men communed with God ; 
 they have heard this and are content it should be so. 
 They have heard with the hearing of the ear that 
 God is love — that the ways of holiness are ways of 
 pleasantness, and all her paths peace. But a hearsay 
 belief saves not. The Corinthian philosophers heard 
 Paul— the Pharisees heard Christ. How much did 
 the ear convey ? To thousands exactly nothing. 
 He alone believes truth who feels it. He alone has a 
 religion whose soul knows by experience that to 
 serve God and know Him is the richest treasure. 
 And unless truth come to you, not in word only, but 
 in power besides — authoritative because true, not true 
 because authoritative — there has been no real revela- 
 tion made to you from God. Truth is not discover- 
 able by the heart — 'neither have entered into the heart 
 of man the things which God hath prepared for them 
 that love him.* 
 
 " The heart. Two things we refer to this source : 
 the power of imagining, and the power of loving. 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 373 
 
 " Imagination is distinct from the mere dry faculty 
 of reasoning. Imagination is creative — it is an 
 immediate intuition; not a logical analysis — we call 
 it popularly a kind of inspiration. Now imagination 
 is a power of the heart — great thoughts originate 
 from a large heart — a man must have a heart or he 
 never could create. 
 
 " It is a grand thing when, in the stillness of the 
 soul, thought bursts into flame and the intuitive vision 
 comes like an inspiration ; when breathing thoughts 
 clothe themselves in burning words, winged as it were 
 with lightning — or when a great law of the universe 
 reveals itself to the mind of genius, and where all 
 was darkness, his single word bids light be, and all 
 is order where chaos and confusion were before. Or 
 when the truths of human nature shape themselves 
 forth in the creative fancies of one, like the myriad- 
 minded poet, and you recognise the rare power of 
 heart which sympathises with and can reproduce all 
 that is found in man. 
 
 "But all this is nothing more than what the material 
 man can achieve. The most ethereal creations of 
 fantastic fancy were shaped by a mind that could 
 read the life of Christ, and then blaspheme the 
 adorable. . . . 
 
 "There is more in the heart of man — it has the 
 power of affection. The highest moment known on 
 earth by the merely natural, is that in which the 
 mysterious union of heart with heart is felt 
 
374 CONTEMPORAR Y PORTRAITS. 
 
 This is the purest, serenest ecstasy of the merely 
 human — more blessed than any sight that can be 
 presented to the eye, or any sound that can be 
 given to the ear : more sublime than the sublimest 
 dream ever conceived by genius in its most gifted 
 hour, when the freest way was given to the shaping 
 spirit of imagination. 
 
 "This has entered into the heart of man, yet this is 
 of the lower still. It attains not to the things pre- 
 pared by God — it dimly shadows them. Human love 
 is but the faint type of that surpassing blessedness 
 which belongs to those who love God. 
 
 " We pass therefore to the Nature and Laws of 
 Revelation. . . . 
 
 "Now the Spirit of God lies touching, as it were, the 
 soul of man — ever around and near. On the out- 
 side of earth man stands with the boundless heaven 
 above him: nothing between him and space — space 
 around him and above him — the confines of the sky 
 touching him. So is the spirit of man to the Spirit 
 of the Ever Near. They mingle. In every man this 
 is true. The spiritual in him, by which he might 
 become a recipient of God, may be dulled, deadened 
 by a life of sense, but in this world never lost. All 
 men are not spiritual men ; but all have spiritual 
 sensibilities which might awake. All that is wanted 
 is to become conscious of the nearness of God. God 
 has placed men here to feel after Him if haply they 
 may find Him, albeit He be not far from any one of 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 375 
 
 them. Our souls float in the immeasurable ocean of 
 Spirit. God lies around us : at any moment we may 
 be conscious of the contact. 
 
 " The conditio?i upon which this Self-Revelation of 
 the Spirit is made to man, is love. These things are 
 1 prepared for them that love Him,' or, which is the 
 same thing, revealed to those who have the mind of 
 Christ." 1 
 
 It appears to us that Robertson does not sufficiently 
 recognise the direct, special, mystical operation of the 
 Spirit of God in illuminating the soul. He relies 
 too much on the original relations of man with God, 
 and overlooks to some extent the necessity for the 
 reparative work of redeeming love. This is the 
 defect that runs through all his teaching. We would 
 guard against being misunderstood. He very dis- 
 tinctly recognises the miraculous, and in the sermon 
 on the doubt of Thomas, lays special emphasis on the 
 fact that the resurrection of Christ alone put to flight 
 the persistent doubt of humanity as to the future 
 life. 
 
 With regard to the divine authority of the Scrip- 
 tures, he repudiated strongly the idea of verbal 
 inspiration. He insisted that the co-existence of the 
 human element with the divine was indispensable 
 in Holy Scripture, and showed what difficulties 
 would have been presented by a revelation couched 
 
 1 " God's Revelation of Heaven." Sermons. First Series. 
 
376 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 in the language of exact science, at a time when such 
 a mode of representation would necessarily have been 
 regarded as erroneous. His sermon on inspiration is 
 not a theological dissertation ; it dwells chiefly on 
 the practical and positive aspect of the question, 
 showing how everything in Scripture tends towards 
 Christ, and how all receives from Him its sacred 
 evidence and its beneficent authority. He dwells 
 with fervid eloquence on the universal and incom- 
 parable power of the Bible. 
 
 " The Jews," he says, " have been for eighteen 
 hundred years a byword and a reproach. . . . Yet 
 the words which came from Israel's prophets have 
 been the life-blood of the world's devotions. And the 
 teachers, the psalmists, the prophets, and the law- 
 givers of this despised nation spoke out truths that 
 have struck the key-note of the heart of man ; and 
 this not because they were of Jewish, but just because 
 they were of universal application. 
 
 "This collection of books has been to the world what 
 no other book has ever been to a nation. States have 
 been founded on its principles. Kings rule by a 
 compact based on it. Men hold the Bible in their 
 hands when they prepare to give solemn evidence 
 affecting life, death, or property ; the sick man is 
 almost afraid to die unless the Book be within reach 
 of his hands ; the battle-ship goes into action with 
 one on board whose office is to expound it ; its 
 prayers, its psalms are the language which we use 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 377- 
 
 when we speak to God ; eighteen centuries have 
 found no holier, no diviner language. If ever there 
 has been a prayer or a hymn enshrined in the heart 
 of a nation, you are sure to find its basis in the Bible. 
 The very translation of it has fixed language and 
 settled the idioms of speech. Germany and England 
 speak as they speak because the Bible was translated. 
 It has made the most illiterate peasant more familiar 
 with the history, customs, and geography of ancient 
 Palestine than with the locality of his own country. 
 Men who know nothing of the Grampians, of Snow- 
 don, or of Skiddaw, are at home in Zion, the lake of 
 Gennesareth, or among the rills of Carmel. People 
 who know little about London, know by heart the 
 places in Jerusalem where those blessed feet trod 
 which were nailed to the cross. Men who know 
 nothing of the architecture of a Christian cathedral, 
 can yet tell you all about the pattern of the Holy 
 Temple. Even this shows us the influence of the 
 Bible. The orator holds a thousand men for half an 
 hour breathless — a thousand men as one listening to 
 his single word. But this word of God has held a 
 thousand nations for thrice a thousand years spell- 
 bound ; held them by an abiding power, even the 
 universality of its truth ; and we feel it to be no 
 more a collection of books, but the Book." J 
 
 The doctrine of expiation was an absorbing subject 
 
 1 " Sermon on Inspiration." First Series, pp. 302, 303. 
 
378 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 of thought with Robertson, as is evident both from 
 his correspondence and his sermons. It must be 
 admitted that this was a subject very imperfectly 
 treated in the current literature of the religious revival 
 in England. Salvation was represented as the pay- 
 ment of an infinite debt by infinite suffering. I need 
 not repeat the observations already made in reference 
 to this view. It is idle to attempt to defend the 
 dangerous exaggerations of the evangelical school. 
 In order to justify this great religious movement, its 
 champions appeal to the writings of its most mode- 
 rate theologians, much in the same way that the more 
 elevated minds among the Catholics quote Bossuet's 
 " Exposition de la Foi." But in judging of the dis- 
 tinctive and characteristic principles of a theology, 
 we must test it, not by the writings of wise and able 
 men, who present it softened, modified, all but trans- 
 figured through the medium of their own genius, but 
 by its effects on the preaching and current literature 
 of the day, and on the religious life of the people. It 
 is certain that the popular doctrine of expiation, in 
 circles where evangelical views predominated, was as 
 we have described it. It taught that the Divine 
 anger was appeased by the momentary damnation of 
 Christ. Faith was simply the acceptance of a purely 
 external imputation. This it was that chafed and 
 irritated a conscience like that of Robertson, and led 
 him into an exaggerated reaction against his early 
 convictions. In one of his letters he says : " It 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 379 
 
 appears to me that Protestantism throws upon the 
 intellect the work of healing, which can only be per- 
 formed by the heart. It comes with its parchment, 
 signed, sealed, and delivered, making over heaven to 
 you by a legal bond, gives its receipt in full, makes a 
 debtor and creditor account, clears up the whole by a 
 most business-like arrangement : 
 
 Cr. Dr. 
 
 Infinite. Infinite. 
 
 "And when this Shylock-like affair, with its scales 
 and weights, is concluded, it bids you be sure that the 
 most rigorous justice and the most wanton cruelty 
 can want no more. Whereupon selfishness shrewdly 
 casts up the account and says : ' Audited, I am safe!' 
 Nay, it even has a gratitude to Him who has borne 
 the pain instead ; a very low kind of affection ; the 
 same, differing only in degree, which young Peel felt 
 for Byron, when he volunteered to accept half the 
 blows which a young tyrant was administering. The 
 love which is only gratitude for escape from pain is a 
 very poor love. It does not open the heart wide, and 
 accordingly, basing his hopes only on a quid pro quo, a 
 sinner's penitence is half selfish, and has rarely in it 
 any of that glorious abandon which, whether wisely 
 directed or not, has so marked the Roman penitence, 
 and which we explain away by saying, it is work done 
 to win heaven by merit. The Protestant penitent, if 
 the system succeeds, repents in his arm-chair, and does 
 no noble deed such as boundless love could alone 
 
380 CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 inspire. He reforms, and is very glad that broken- 
 hearted remorse is distrust of God, becomes a prosaic 
 Pharisee, and patronises missionary societies, and is 
 all safe, which is the one great point in his religion." l 
 
 In these strong utterances we must make allow- 
 ance for Robertson's peculiar temperament. This 
 is clearly not a calm and impartial judgment ; it is 
 a passionate outburst of indignation against the most 
 obnoxious aspect of the extreme orthodox school. In 
 another letter he says : " The difference between my 
 views and those of the current orthodoxy does not lie 
 in the question of the atonement — we agree in this — 
 but in the question zvhat in that atonement was the 
 element that satisfied God ? They say pain. I say, 
 because I think the Scriptures say so, the surrender 
 of self-will, as is clearly and distinctly asserted in 
 John x. 17, and also in Hebrews x. 5, 6, 7, 10, where 
 the distinction is drawn between the sacrifices of 
 blood and suffering, which were mere butchery, and 
 the sacrifice which atones, in this special point; that 
 one is moral, an act of will ; the other immoral, 
 merely physical, and therefore worthless." 2 
 
 Robertson frequently treated this great subject in 
 his sermons. We find the fullest expression of his 
 views in the sermon entitled, " Caiaphas' View of 
 Vicarious Sacrifice." He takes as his text the 
 
 1 " Life and Letters," vol. i. pp. 304, 305. 
 
 2 " Life and Letters," vol. ii. p. 139. 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 381 
 
 remarkable words, " Ye know nothing at all ; nor 
 consider that it is expedient that one man should 
 die for the people, that the whole nation perish not. 
 And this spake he not of himself, etc." 
 
 The preacher shows that there is a false and 
 perverted sense of these words, and it is in this sense 
 that Caiaphas uses them; while they have at the 
 same time a true and Divine meaning, which is that 
 accepted by St. John. We would gladly quote the 
 whole of this remarkable sermon, one of the most 
 original and powerful which Robertson ever preached, 
 but space forbids. We may cite one passage, in 
 which he describes the spirit of Caiaphas and of all 
 the men of his school. 
 
 " The first falsity in the human statement of the 
 truth of vicarious sacrifice is its injustice. Some one 
 said, The accused is innocent. The reply was, Better 
 that one should die than many. ' It is expedient 
 for us that one man should die for the people, and 
 that the whole nation perish not.' It was simply 
 with Caiaphas a question of numbers : the unjust 
 expediency of wresting the law a little to do much 
 apparent good. The reply to that question was plain. 
 Expediency cannot obliterate right and wrong. Ex- 
 pediency may choose the best possible when the 
 conceivable best is not attainable ; but in right and 
 wrong there is no better and best. Thou shalt not 
 do wrong. Thou must not : you may not tell a lie to 
 save life. Better that the whole Jewish nation should 
 
382 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 perish than that a Jewish legislature should steep its 
 hand in the blood of one innocent. It is not expedient 
 to do injustice. . . . 
 
 " No man would justify the parent, pursued in his 
 chariot by wolves over Siberian snows, who throws 
 out one of his children to the pack that the rest may 
 escape while their fangs are buried in their victim. 
 You feel at once expediency has no place here. Life 
 is a trifle compared with law. Better that all should 
 perish by a visitation of God than that they should be 
 saved by one murder. 
 
 " I do not deny that this aspect has been given to 
 the sacrifice of Christ. It has been represented as if 
 the majesty of Law demanded a victim ; and so as 
 it glutted its insatiate thirst, one victim would do as 
 well as another — the fairer and the more innocent the 
 better. It has been exhibited as if Eternal Love 
 resolved in fury to strike, and so, as He had His blow, 
 it mattered not whether it fell on the whole world or 
 on the precious head of His own chosen Son. 
 
 " Unitarianism has represented the scriptural view 
 in this way ; or rather, perhaps, we should say, it has 
 been so represented to Unitarians ; and from a view 
 so horrible no wonder if Unitarianism has recoiled. 
 But it is not our fault if some blind defenders of the 
 truth have converted the self-devotion of Love into a 
 Brahminical sacrifice. If the work of redemption be 
 defended from parallels drawn from the most atrocious 
 records and principles of heathenism, let not the 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 383 
 
 fault be laid upon the Bible. We disclaim that as 
 well as they. It makes God a Caiaphas — it makes 
 Him adopt the words of Caiaphas in the sense of 
 Caiaphas. It represents Him in terms which better 
 describe the ungoverned rage of Saul, missing his 
 stroke at David, who has offended, and in disap- 
 pointed fury dashing his javelin at his own son 
 Jonathan. 
 
 " You must not represent the atonement as depend- 
 ing on the justice of unrighteous expediency. 
 
 "This side of viewing the truth was the side of 
 selfishness. It was not even the calm resolve of men 
 balancing whether it be better for one to die or many ; 
 but whether it is better that He or we should perish. 
 It is conceivable, in the case supposed above, that a 
 parent in the horrible dilemma should be enough 
 bewildered to resolve to sacrifice one rather than lose 
 all ; but it is not conceivable that the doubt in his 
 mind should be this, Shall / and the rest perish, or 
 this one ? — yet this was the spirit in which the party 
 of Caiaphas spoke. The Romans will come and take 
 away our place and our nation. 
 
 "And this spirit, too, is in human nature. The 
 records of antiquity are full of it. If a fleet could not 
 sail, it was assumed that the deities were offended. 
 The purest and tenderest maiden of the royal house- 
 hold was selected to bleed upon the altar : and when 
 the sharp knife passed to her innocent heart, this was 
 the feeling in the bosom of those stern and unrelent- 
 
384 CONTEMPORARY PORTRAITS. 
 
 ing warriors — of the blood and of the stock of Caia- 
 phas — better she should suffer than we. 
 
 " This maybe the way in which the sacrifice of Christ 
 is regarded by us. There is a kind of acquiescence in 
 the atonement which is purely selfish. The more 
 bloody the representation of the character of God, the 
 greater, of course, the satisfaction in feeling sheltered 
 from it. The more Wrath instead of Love is believed 
 to be the Divine name, the more may a man find joy 
 in believing that he is safe. It is the theory of the 
 Siberian story : the innocent has glutted the wolves, 
 and we may pursue our journey in safety. Christ has 
 suffered, and I am safe. He bare the agony, I take 
 the reward. I may now live with impunity ; and, of 
 course, it is very easy to call acquiescence in that 
 arrangement humility, and to take credit for the 
 abnegation of self-righteousness ; but whoever can 
 acquiesce in that thought chiefly in reference to per- 
 sonal safety, and, without desiring to share the Re- 
 deemer's cross, aspire to enjoy the comforts and 
 benefits of the Redeemer's sacrifice, has but some- 
 thing of the spirit of Caiaphas after all, the spirit 
 which contentedly sacrifices another for self — selfish- 
 ness assuming the form of wisdom. 
 
 " We pass now to the prophetic or hidden spirit, in 
 which these words are true. I observe, first, that 
 vicarious sacrifice is the Law of Being. . . . 
 
 " The Highest Man recognised that law, and joyfully 
 embraced it as the law of His existence. It was the 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 385 
 
 consciousness of His surrender to that as God's will, 
 and the voluntariness of the act, which made it sacri- 
 fice. Hear Him : ' No man taketh my life from me : 
 I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take 
 it up again.' 'This commandment have I received 
 from my Father.' . . . 
 
 " We go beyond this, however. It was not merely a 
 sacrifice, it was a sacrifice for sin. ' His soul was 
 made an offering for sin.' Neither was it only a 
 sacrifice for sin — it was a sacrifice for the world's 
 sin. . . . 
 
 " Let no man say that Christ bore the wrath of God. 
 Let no man say that God was angry with His Son. 
 We are sometimes told of a mysterious anguish which 
 Christ endured, the consequence of divine wrath, the 
 sufferings of a heart laden with the conscience of the 
 world's transgressions, which He was bearing as if 
 they were His own sins. Do not add to the Bible 
 what is not in the Bible. The Redeemer's conscience 
 was not bewildered to feel that as His own, which was 
 not His own. He suffered no wrath of God. Twice 
 came the voice from heaven, ' This is my beloved 
 Son in whom I am well pleased! There was seen an 
 angel strengthening Him. Nay, even to the last, 
 never did the consciousness of purity and the Father's 
 love forsake Him. ' Father, into thy hands I com- 
 mend my spirit.' 
 
 " Christ came into collision with the world's evil, and 
 He bore the penalty of that daring. . . . 
 
 26 
 
386 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 " The Redeemer bore imputed sin. He bore the 
 penalty of others' sin. He was punished. Did He 
 bear the anger of the Most High ? Was His the hell 
 of an accusing conscience ? In the name of Him who 
 is God, not Caiaphas, never. . . . 
 
 " The second idea which it behoves us to master is 
 the world's sin. The Apostle John always viewed 'sin 
 as a great connected principle ; One ; a .single world- 
 spirit — exactly as the electricity with which the uni- 
 verse is charged is indivisible, imponderable, one, so 
 that you cannot separate it from the great ocean of fluid. 
 The electric spark that slumbers in the dewdrop is 
 part of the flood which struck the oak. Had that spark 
 not been there, it could be demonstrated that: the 
 whole previous constitution of the universe might have 
 been different, and the oak not have been struck. . . . 
 
 " To conclude. Estimate rightly the death of Christ. 
 It was not simply the world's example — it was the 
 world's Sacrifice. He died not merely as a martyr to 
 the truth. His death is the world's life. Ask ye 
 what life is ? Life is not exemption from penalty. 
 Salvation is not escape from suffering and punish- 
 ment. The Redeemer suffered punishment ; but the 
 Redeemer's soul had blessedness in the very midst of 
 punishment. Life is elevation of soul — nobleness — 
 divine character. The spirit of Caiaphas was death : 
 to receive all, and give nothing : to sacrifice others to 
 himself. The spirit of God was life : to give and not 
 receive : to be sacrificed and not to sacrifice. Hear 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON, 387 
 
 Him again : ' He that loseth his life, the same shall 
 find it.' That is life: the spirit of losing all for love's 
 sake. That is the soul's life, which alone is blessed- 
 ness and heaven. By realising that ideal of humanity, 
 Christ furnished the life which we appropriate to our- 
 selves only when we enter into His spirit. 
 
 " Listen ! Only by renouncing sin is His death to 
 sin yours — only by quitting it are you free from the 
 guilt of His blood — only by voluntary acceptance of 
 the law of the cross, self-surrender to the will of God, 
 and self-devotion to the good of others as the law 
 of your being, do you enter into that present and 
 future heaven, which is the purchase of His vicarious 
 sacrifice." l 
 
 Robertson is admirable in his attacks upon the 
 hard, judicial theory of the atonement ; but his 
 exposition of his own system gives a very inade- 
 quate view of the work of redemption. From this it 
 would appear that Christ saves us simply by realising 
 in His own person the ideal of humanity, and by the 
 holy constraining influence of His love upon the 
 heart. I find no place in such a system for re- 
 demption, properly so called — for that agonising 
 travail of soul, in which Christ bore upon His heart 
 the sin of the world. His obedience is not sufficiently 
 represented as a reparation of the revolt of the first 
 Adam. 
 
 Robertson rightly repudiated the horrible idea of 
 
 1 "Caiaphas' View of Vicarious Sacrifice." Sermons, First Series. 
 
388 CONTEMPORA R Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 the direct curse of the Father resting upon the Son, 
 but passes over in silence the mysterious desertion, 
 the anguish of soul which the Master endured, and in 
 which He realised through his perfect sympathy with 
 us, all the bitterness of our sin, and recognised God's 
 righteous anger against it. Robertson represents the 
 work of Christ as the initiation of a course of repara- 
 tive effort rather than as the one unique work which it is 
 ours simply to assimilate by a living faith. That such 
 was really his view appears from another sermon on 
 the same subject, in which the principal virtue of the 
 cross is made to be that it sets before us an ideal of 
 perfection, and fills us with an ardent desire to be con- 
 formed to it. Using a beautiful figure, he compares 
 fallen man brought into contemplation of the sublime 
 sacrifice of the cross, to Correggio standing before a 
 canvas of Raphael's and exclaiming, " And I, too, am 
 a painter ! " This is one aspect of the truth ; but we 
 must not forget that while thus re-creating in the soul 
 the divine ideal, the cross at the same time recalls to 
 us the depth of our spiritual degradation, the impo- 
 tence of our own efforts after goodness, and awakens 
 the yearning for pardon and deliverance. But for 
 this hope which it holds out, it would only aggravate 
 our misery by setting before us an ideal for ever un- 
 attainable, and revealing to us with pitiless clearness 
 the moral depths to which we have fallen. 
 
 Eloquent as Robertson is in the description of 
 human suffering, he does not sufficiently recognise 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 389 
 
 the infirmity and hopeless weakness of fallen man. 
 Hence, while he rightly rejects that notion of prayer 
 which regards it as a purely external and magical 
 influence, a sort of Aladdin's lamp, capable of pro- 
 curing for us whatever we desire, he too much dis- 
 regards its character as a positive making request to 
 God. His sermon on the prayer in Gethsemane 
 contains many great and helpful thoughts on the 
 necessity of bringing our mind into harmony with the 
 mind of God, and submitting our will to His. But 
 even this is a grace which we need to obtain, like every 
 other. Prayer has an effect not only upon ourselves, 
 but upon God. It is an active power. The cry of 
 the poor beggar craving help from Christ is not an 
 illusion. In order to receive, we must ask ; for 
 asking is at once the acknowledgment of our own 
 emptiness and of the fulness of God. In relation to 
 this subject, as to all others, there is a very valuable 
 element of freshness and suggestiveness in Robertson, 
 which only needs to be supplemented. All that he 
 has written or said on justification by faith contains 
 important truth. We have seen, in his sermon on 
 Caiaphas, how he protests against such a notion of 
 salvation as would imply that Christ had died for us, 
 to save us from the necessity of crucifying ourselves. 
 Like Vinet, he maintains the closest connection 
 between sanctification and justification. God sees 
 the development of the germ in the germ itself, as 
 he sees the great river Thames, which bears on its 
 
/ 
 
 39Q CONTEMPORAR Y POR TRAITS. 
 
 bosom the mighty ships of the Atlantic and Indian 
 Oceans, in the tiny scarcely perceptible rivulet from 
 which it springs. 
 
 Robertson's attention was more deeply fixed upon 
 the person than upon the work of Christ. No dis- 
 ciple ever loved the Master with a more fervent love ; 
 his language rises into poetry at the very mention of 
 His name. He lives by His life ; he is never weary 
 of meditating on His perfections ; he truly worships 
 Him. He has therefore nothing in common with the 
 Unitarian school. All his thoughts and feelings he 
 refers to Ghrist ; through Him he seeks constant 
 access to the Father. Christ is the centre of his 
 religious life. On every page of his writings we find 
 expressions which implicitly recognise the unique 
 relation existing between the Son and the Father, 
 and the eternal divinity of Jesus Christ. It is upon 
 His humanity, however, that he dwells most fully. 
 This is to him no fiction, but a grand reality. He 
 holds that Christ passed through the moral conflict 
 without even the shadow of sin resting upon Him ; 
 but He does not admit that He possessed any 
 peculiar inherent virtue, which rendered him unas- 
 sailable by the same temptations to which we are 
 exposed. Robertson expressed with characteristic 
 vigour the legitimate necessity felt by the theology 
 of the day, to escape from the metaphysical docetism 
 which substituted a rigid Byzantine Christ for the 
 living Son of Man. His sermon on the childhood of 
 
VERXY AND R OBER TSO.V. 39 1 
 
 Christ, on His loneliness and His sympathy, bring out 
 this aspect of truth with peculiar beauty. We may 
 quote, as expressing his deepest and most sacred 
 convictions, part of a letter to a friend on this subject. 
 He says : 
 
 " Unquestionably, the belief in the divinity of 
 Christ is waning among us. They who hold it have 
 petrified it into a theological dogma without life or 
 warmth, and thoughtful men are more and more 
 beginning to put it aside. How are we then to get 
 back this belief in the Son of God ? By authority, or 
 by the old way of persecution ? The time for these 
 has passed. The other way is to begin at the begin- 
 ning. Begin as the Bible begins, with Christ the Son 
 of Man. Begin with Him as God's character revealed 
 under the limitations of humanity. Lay the founda- 
 tions of a higher faith deeply in the belief of His 
 humanity. See Him as He was. Breathe His Spirit. 
 After that, try to comprehend His life. Enter into 
 His childhood. Feel with Him when He looked 
 round about Him in anger ; when He vindicated the 
 crushed woman from the powerless venom of her 
 ferocious accusers ; when He stood alone in the 
 solitary majesty of truth in Pilate's judgment-hall ; 
 when the light of the Roman soldiers' torches flashed 
 on Kedron in the dark night, and He knew that 
 watching was too late ; when His heart-strings gave 
 way upon the cross. Walk with Him through the 
 marriage-feast. See how the sick and weary came 
 
392 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 to Him instinctively ; how men, when they saw Him, 
 felt their sin, they knew not why, and fell at His feet ; 
 how guilt unconsciously revealed itself, and all that 
 was good in men was drawn out, and they became 
 higher than themselves in His presence. Realise this. 
 Live with Him until He becomes a living thought — 
 ever present — and you will find a reverence growing 
 up which compares with nothing else in human feel- 
 ing. You will feel that a slighting word spoken of 
 Him wounds with a dart more sharp than personal 
 insult. You will feel that to bow at the name of 
 Jesus is no form at will of others, but a relief and 
 welcome. And if it should ever chance that, finding 
 yourself thrown upon your own self, and cut off from 
 sects — suspected, in quest of a truth which no man 
 gives — then that wondrous sense of strength and 
 friendship comes — the being alone with Christ, with 
 the strength of a manlier independence. Slowly, 
 then, this almost insensibly merges into adoration. 
 Now what is it to adore Christ ? To call Him God ? 
 to say, Lord, Lord ? No. Adoration is the mightiest 
 love the soul can give — call it by what name you will. 
 Many a Unitarian, as Channing, has adored, calling it 
 only admiration ; and many an orthodox Christian, 
 calling Christ God with most accurate theology, has 
 given Him only a cool intellectual homage." ■ 
 
 Much exception was taken to Robertson's warm 
 admiration for Channing. But the extract just given 
 
 1 "Life and Letters," vol. ii. pp. 170, 171. 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 
 
 393 
 
 shows that he knew how to distinguish between Chan- 
 ning's feelings as a man, and the opinions of his party. 
 
 In Robertson's conception of the incarnation, the 
 dogma of the two natures was altogether dropped. 
 He believed firmly that it was possible for the human 
 to become divine ; or, rather, he recognised the 
 divine in the primeval idea of humanity, which finds 
 its eternal realisation in Christ. 
 
 In his sermon on the Trinity he fully develops 
 these views, which are shared, as we know, by an 
 important section of contemporary theologians, and 
 which, if we except their tendency to exaggeration, 
 can claim in their support the teaching of the second 
 and third centuries. We would not venture to say 
 that Robertson did not approach too daringly the 
 mysteries of the Divine Being, when he said that 
 before the world was there already existed in the 
 mind of God that which we may call the humanity of 
 Deity, that which the scripture calls the Word, 
 the Son, the express image of the Father. In his 
 sermon on the Trinity we read : " The Unitarian 
 maintains a divine humanity — a blessed, blessed 
 truth. There is a truth more blessed still — the 
 humanity of Deity. Before the world was, there was 
 that in the mind of God which we may call the 
 humanity of His divinity. It is called in scripture 
 the Word ; the Son ; the Form of God. It is in 
 virtue of this that we have a right to attribute to 
 Him our own feelings ; it is in virtue of this that 
 
394 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 scripture speaks of His wisdom, His justice, His 
 love. It is through this humanity in the mind of 
 God, if I may dare so to speak of Deity, that a 
 revelation became possible to man. It was the 
 Word that was made flesh ; it was the Word that 
 manifested itself to man. It is in virtue of the con • 
 nection between God and man that God made man 
 in His own image ; that through a long line of prophets 
 the human truth of God could be made known to 
 man, till it came forth developed most entirely and 
 at large in the incarnation of the Redeemer." J 
 
 Robertson seems to have anticipated the ideas 
 worked out by Beyschlag in his paper before the 
 Kirchentag of Altenburg, which gave rise to so much 
 stormy discussion. It must be admitted, however, 
 that he never called in question, as did the German 
 theologian, the eternal pre-existence of the Word. 
 It is true that he speaks of the obscurity of the 
 doctrine of the Trinity, and of the impossibility of 
 attaching an exact and definite meaning to our 
 common language, when it is used in relation to those 
 unfathomable depths, which we cannot comprehend 
 within our narrow formulas. We may well say in 
 relation to subjects like these, as the apostle said, "We 
 see through a glass darkly." Robertson gave ex- 
 aggerated expression to his real belief when, in the 
 Sermon on Absolution, he said that man has the 
 
 1 " Sermon on the Trinity." Third Series, p. 56. 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 395 
 
 power as man to forgive sins, because he is the 
 representative of God, and because of the essential 
 harmony existing between the human and the divine 
 nature. This is unquestionably an exaggeration 
 amounting to error. It is the Father who has been 
 offended by the prodigal son ; and in this sense the 
 Pharisees were right when they said, " Who can forgive 
 sins but God only ?" Their error lay in their failing 
 to recognise in Christ the true representative of God. 
 
 Here, again, we notice the same deficiency to which 
 we have already referred in Robertson's teaching. 
 The idea of moral perfection throws into the back- 
 ground the idea of pardon. The religion he presents 
 to us is rather that of a realised ideal than that of 
 redemption and restoration. 
 
 Such a doctrine does not meet the conditions of 
 our weakness ; it is too high for us ; we cannot attain 
 to it. The love of God has stooped lower than 
 Robertson thought. Robertson treats us as strong 
 men ; God knows that we are but feeble children. It 
 is well to have a strong and rapid steed to bear us 
 over the rough places on the way, but first of all the 
 poor traveller, sick and sore wounded, needs some one 
 to stoop and lift him up and to bind up his wounds 
 like the good Samaritan. 
 
 It will not, I hope, appear hypercritical, if I still 
 further take exception to Robertson's too persistent 
 avoidance of all beaten tracks. There are sacred 
 resting-places for the Christian soul which ought not 
 
396 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 to be neglected ; there are rudiments of the faith 
 which cannot with impunity be passed over in silence, 
 however familiar they may be supposed to be. 
 Robertson constantly contents himself with alluding 
 to the fundamental points of Christian teaching 
 without expounding them. This is a mistake. At other 
 times he falls into the error of a too minute and 
 subtle analysis. But with these exceptions, we know 
 no writer more genial, none more nervous, none 
 whose words are more stimulating to thought and 
 reflection. He had a fertile and graceful imagination. 
 His illustrations are original, and altogether free from 
 conventionality. We never find in his pages that 
 profusion of familiar metaphors — flowers, stars, storms, 
 cataracts — which are the hackneyed properties of a 
 meretricious rhetoric. Anglo - Saxon imagery, from 
 the time of Shakspeare, has been distinguished by 
 a vigorous realism, clear in colour, firm in outline. 
 Few writers have understood its use better than 
 Robertson. His delivery did full justice to his elo- 
 quence. He gave free expression to the results of his 
 profound and careful study. His striking face, 
 resonant voice, restrained but vigorous action, and 
 above all, that strong tension of his whole being which 
 made every word instinct with his own deepest life — 
 all this tended to produce an ineffaceable impression 
 upon his hearers. But in such spending the life soon 
 exhausts itself, especially when the soul of the 
 preacher is all the while the scene of a long wrestling 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 397 
 
 like Jacob's, from which he comes forth again and 
 again wounded though victorious. 
 
 Beside the volumes of sermons, Robertson has left 
 behind a series of expositions of the epistles to the 
 Corinthians, a reminiscence of those consecutive 
 studies of various portions of Scripture which he 
 was accustomed to give in his Sunday afternoon 
 service. This mode of teaching seems to us peculiarly 
 admirable, giving as it does a full and comprehensive 
 view of the real intention of the sacred writers, instead 
 of breaking up passages of scripture into disjointed 
 fragments, of which the preacher may be often tempted 
 to make a fanciful and unreal application. 
 
 We observe in this volume on the Corinthians the 
 same defects and the same merits as in the other 
 sermons. The form in which the truth is presented 
 is in this case more simple, though always original 
 and suggestive. His meditations on the resurrection 
 are of peculiar depth and beauty. 
 
 Robertson's physical strength began to decline 
 rapidly in the summer of 1853. He suffered from an 
 irritation of the brain which produced terrible exhaus- 
 tion. Rest seemed for the time to restore him, but 
 the respite was very short. It was found necessary 
 for him to have a curate ; the candidate whom 
 Robertson preferred was refused to him by his 
 ecclesiastical superior, on the ground of unfounded 
 charges against him. Robertson was fully determined 
 not to accept any other, for he felt that in doing so he 
 
398 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 should seem to lend credence to the calumnies 
 unjustly circulated against a good man. 
 
 This controversy, in which Robertson showed the 
 rare nobility of his character, was not terminated at 
 the time of his death, and no doubt hastened his end 
 by deferring the help he absolutely needed, and thus 
 aggravating his bodily suffering by mental distress. 
 He died August 15th, 1853. His last words were, 
 " Let me rest. I must die. Let God do His work." 
 
 He was followed to the grave by the deep regrets 
 of His church, especially of the younger portion, 
 whose hearts he had completely gained, and of the 
 poor, to whom he had ever been a faithful friend. 
 Robertson left behind him an unsullied memory, and 
 an influence which has been increasing year by year, 
 as his published sermons have won their way in all 
 the thoughtful Christian homes of England. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 We have seen in the case of both Verny and 
 Robertson, how deep and severe the mental conflict 
 may be in our day, even in the case of those who hold 
 fast their faith in Christ. The severity of the struggle 
 has in no way abated in the years that have elapsed 
 since their death. Both in England and France souls 
 are deeply agitated by religious questions, as is mani- 
 fest from the reaction in the direction of Catholicism, 
 and from the development of that lofty Christian 
 
VERNY AND ROBERTSON. 399 
 
 stoicism, of which " Ecce Homo " is at once the noblest 
 and most brilliant expression. 
 
 It would be childish to shut our eyes to the fact 
 that that which constitutes the danger of these 
 theories, which are acquiring such an ascendancy in 
 our day, is the inadequacy of the orthodox creeds. 
 We draw from this only one conclusion — that it is 
 essential that we should press forward, in the fullest 
 exercise of faith and of freedom, the development of 
 our theology. It is not for us to slumber calmly 
 while the problems of the age are placed before us for 
 solution. All those who have obtained for themselves 
 the answer to the question, " What must I do to be 
 saved ? " all who are living by the life of Christ, have 
 found for themselves a sure abiding place. But they 
 are not to fall asleep in it ; rather are they bound to 
 unite their efforts to give satisfaction to the spiritual 
 needs of other souls, and primarily to the legitimate 
 aspiration after a closer union of the religious with 
 the moral element. In this way they will be saved 
 from falling into exaggerations, which are the sure 
 indication of some spiritual unsoundness. 
 
 We believe firmly in a Church of the future, which, 
 unlike ancient Rome, shall gather into itself the good 
 elements of all existing Churches, which shall give us 
 in worship true adoration without the forms of 
 idolatry, and in doctrine moral vigour and definite- 
 ness of teaching without an arid dogmatism. 
 
 Upon this lofty height will meet the pilgrims who 
 
400 CONTEMPORAR Y FOR TRAITS. 
 
 have climbed the hill by many paths. And still behind 
 this summit there will rise another, and again another 
 and another loftier still, till we shall have reached 
 the mountains radiant with the eternal sunlight of 
 perfect love, on which we shall know as we are known. 
 So the search after fuller truth, with all the diversi- 
 ties that it brings with it, must recommence after 
 each great fusion of thought and feeling wrought 
 under some mighty impetus in the religious life. 
 This is the law of history, and we freely accept it ; for 
 after all, what we seek is only to arrive at a fuller 
 knowledge of ourselves, and a fuller apprehension of 
 the truth we have already grasped. He who has 
 Christ has in Him all things. Let us not misin- 
 terpret the struggles and turmoils of these periods of 
 transition. I can think of no more fitting conclusion 
 to these studies of earnest lives than words used by the 
 noble Lebre, whose death drew such an eloquent tribute 
 from the heart of Verny. It is a quarter of a century 
 since he wrote the words, and yet they are more 
 appropriate to-day than ever: "Those in whose souls 
 the great travail of the future is being carried on 
 ought to seek solitude as did the ancient prophets, 
 but like them, also, they ought to fill the solitude with 
 their prayers, and to walk with bowed souls before 
 God. It is theirs with deep humility and holy fervour 
 to seek the help of God for themselves and for the 
 whole world." 
 
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