LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO 
 
 .
 
 THE SOUL OF FRANCE
 
 <y 

 
 THE 
 SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 BY 
 
 "GESTA DEI PER FRANCOS" 
 
 GUIBERT DE NOGKNT 
 
 History of the Crusaders (Xlth Century) 
 
 MORGAN ftf SCOTT L TD 
 
 12, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS 
 LONDON, E.G. MCMXVI
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE aim of this book is to afford the 
 English reader a cursory view of the 
 spiritual history of France. Few historians 
 concern themselves mainly with the Soul of 
 nations ; wars and dynasties are foremost in their 
 works. The names of two or three great 
 military men, and of one or two genial writers 
 or artists : that is all that the man in the street 
 knows of any people beside his own. That is 
 particularly the case, we believe, with regard to 
 the mutual acquaintance of those two near 
 neighbours, the English and the French. And 
 this explains how it is that, since the beginning 
 of this War, France has been the wonder of 
 the world, by the quality of her moral fibre, 
 and her unexpected power of endurance in trials 
 more severe than she has known for centuries. 
 
 These pages will show that France has ever 
 been a chivalrous defender of ideals, ever athirst 
 for something higher and better. Her very
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 restlessness, with which she is often reproached, 
 is her glory. And the reason of this nobility 
 of mind, as will appear in these pages, is that, 
 being the earliest evangelized race in existence, 
 France carries in her very Soul, from her birth 
 as a nation, those immortal principles which 
 are expressed in her motto : Libert^ galiU, 
 Fraternitt, words drawn from the Gospel 
 itself. How different from the blasphemous 
 maxim of German theorists : MIGHT is RIGHT ! 
 
 The author has tried to show that this early 
 deposit of Christian truth has never ceased to 
 be present and active in the mental and moral 
 constitution of France, giving rise to many so- 
 called " Heresies," none more beneficial than 
 that of the Huguenots, which prepared the great 
 Revolution, and, to a large extent, made France 
 what it is to-day the bulwark of the world's 
 liberties. 
 
 The book concludes with a few instances of 
 the greatness of soul manifested during the War, 
 and with a fervent hope and prayer that, by 
 a return to the pure evangelic springs, to CHRIST 
 Himself, apart from man-made Churches, France 
 may still more become a benefactress of the 
 world, in time of Peace, as she is now in War. 
 
 R. SAILLENS.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY ...... i 
 
 II. THE BIRTH OF THE FRENCH SOUL . . .14 
 
 III. THE REFORMATION AND THE HOLY SCRIPTURES . 32 
 
 IV. THE REVOCATION . . . . .52 
 V. THE SOUL OF FRANCE ON THE GALLEYS . . 63 
 
 VI. A GREAT SOUL : CLAUDE BROUSSON . . 75 
 
 VII. THE JANSENISTS . . . . .92 
 
 VIII. THE GALLICANS . . . . .109 
 
 IX. SOME OF THE GREAT WRITERS WHO SHAPED 
 THE SOUL OF FRANCE (SEVENTEENTH AND 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES) . . .119 
 
 X. THE REVOLUTION. THE EMPIRE . . .132 
 
 XL THE REVIVAL OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY . 141 
 
 XII. SOME PREACHERS OF THE REVIVAL . . .156 
 
 XIII. SOME FRUITS OF THE REVIVAL . . .168 
 
 XIV. THE SECOND EMPIRE, AND AFTER. ARMAND- 
 
 DELILLE, M'ALL AND OTHER WORKERS. SOME 
 LEADERS OF FRENCH THOUGHT . 182
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 XV. BEFORE THE GREAT WAR . . . .197 
 
 XVI. THE SOUL OF FRANCE DURING THE WAR . 213 
 
 XVII. THE WOMEN OF FRANCE .... 230 
 
 XVIII. IN THE TRENCHES ..... 239 
 
 XIX. CONCLUSION . . . . . .255 
 
 APPENDIX A. FROM FRANCE OF TO-DAY. BY 
 M. BETHAM-EDWARDS . . . .26 
 
 APPENDIX B . . . . . . 265 
 
 APPENDIX C . . . . . .268 
 
 INDEX OF NAMES . . . . .271
 
 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 NATIONS HAVE A SOUL. This means, 
 simply, that a great current of spirit, 
 thought and ideals, an undefinable oneness 
 of mind, underlie the many and often con- 
 flicting elements which enter into the spiritual 
 making of a nation. Life, under its real unity, 
 is ever complex. Every living thing is made 
 up of a host of separate beings, each having 
 its own motions and obeying its own laws, yet 
 all forming together a wonderful harmony. The 
 same principle holds good with regard to those 
 collective bodies which we call a family, a city, an 
 empire, a church ; yea, with regard to mankind 
 as a whole. All these collectivities have both a 
 singular and a plural life ; they have a real exist- 
 ence of their own, submitted to the laws of birth, 
 growth and decay, which rule every being, and 
 each includes millions of separate existences, 
 without absorbing them. Every one of those
 
 2 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 collectivities has a consciousness, a temperament, 
 a responsibility ; each has passions, greatnesses, 
 infirmities . . . each has a soul. 
 
 How the many may be contained in the one, 
 and yet retain their individuality, is one of the 
 great mysteries of this mysterious world of ours. 
 But, though no psychological research shall ever 
 be able to give a full explanation of it, that fact 
 is one of the most evident. It is plainly recog- 
 nized in the Scriptures, which, in this as in every 
 case, prove themselves to be in full accord with 
 the laws of nature. 
 
 Indeed, to a casual reader, the Old Testament 
 seems hardly to recognize any form of human life 
 but the collective. Throughout its pages, the 
 solidarity of the race seems to far outweigh the 
 responsibility of the individual. The interests 
 and destinies of the family, of the tribe, of the 
 nation, are supreme ; the units which compose 
 them are of secondary importance. The Old 
 Testament is essentially the history of a nation to 
 which promises of collective blessing have been 
 made, and threats of collective punishment in 
 case of failure to keep the law of God are con- 
 stantly repeated. However, it is very remarkable 
 that, in the Old Testament, the individual is far 
 from being altogether overlooked. It is on the 
 faith or failure of individuals that the destinies 
 of the race depend : the woe of mankind as a 
 corporate whole is shown to be the result of the 
 fall of one man, Adam ; the blessing which rests
 
 INTRODUCTORY 3 
 
 on Abraham's posterity is shown to be the result 
 of the patriarch's faith. Thus, in the Old Testa- 
 ment, these two sides of human life, the in- 
 dividual and the collective, are never separated. 
 And more and more, as the Book draws to its 
 close, the responsibilities, the rights and the 
 duties of the individual are strongly asserted ; 
 the prophets herald the coming of a day when 
 man shall be free from the trammels of the race. 
 But even then, they acknowledge that their nation 
 has a collective account to render to God, and 
 they foretell national disaster as the consequence 
 of national sin. 
 
 The New Testament puts the emphasis on 
 the Individual. The real soul of man is the 
 individual soul, on whom alone rests the awful 
 responsibility of accepting or rejecting eternal 
 life. That alone is immortal. But, just as it 
 would be untrue to say that the Individual has 
 no place in the Old Testament, so it would be 
 quite inaccurate to affirm that the New Testament 
 does away entirely with national and racial 
 solidarity. 
 
 On this point, the attitude and teaching of 
 our Lord are most illuminating. He came to 
 "His own" His possessions, His family, His 
 race and His own received Him not. He was 
 sent, according to His own words, "to the lost 
 sheep of the House of Israel." Thus He made 
 a sharp distinction between the Jewish people 
 and the other races of the world, distinctly
 
 4 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 acknowledging that, as a people, the Jews had 
 a mission which belonged to no other nation : 
 " Salvation is of the Jews." True, He often 
 proclaimed the universalist character of the new 
 and spiritual kingdom He was inaugurating, yet 
 it was from His own people alone that He chose 
 the twelve apostles who were to be the pro- 
 pagators of that Kingdom. He addressed Him- 
 self to His temporal nation, thus recognizing 
 and emphasizing its national soul : " O Jerusalem, 
 Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and 
 stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often 
 would I have gathered thy children together, 
 even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her 
 wings, and ye would not\" Here, the reader 
 will notice how the individual and the collective 
 are, as it were, blended together, Jesus speaking 
 first in the singular, as if all Jerusalem, through- 
 out all the ages, had been one will, one conscience, 
 one soul and then, ending in the plural, thus 
 showing the existence of separate wills, souls 
 and consciences, each accountable for itself. 
 
 The reader will remember how the Lord 
 addressed Himself in the same manner to smaller 
 cities, Capernaum, Bethsaida, Chorazin, com- 
 paring them with Tyre, Sidon, Sodom, and 
 threatening them with collective destruction. 1 
 And yet, a few lines further, He appeals how 
 lovingly ! to the individuals : " Come unto me, 
 all ye that labour and are heavy laden ! . . ." 
 
 1 Matt. xi. 20-24.
 
 INTRODUCTORY 5 
 
 Thus showing that while the citizens of Caper- 
 naum, as such, must share in the doom of their 
 city, yet each of them separately may be saved, 
 by coming to Him. 
 
 It is very remarkable that the New Testament 
 records no case of the conversion to God of a 
 whole nation, or even of a city, town or village. 
 As to the national revivals which are recorded 
 in the Old Testament, these were superficial, 
 and ended in failure. The whole teaching of 
 the Bible tends to emphasize the paramount 
 value of the individual soul ; while it takes due 
 account of the tremendous importance of heredity, 
 education and environment, it shows that, in spite 
 of all these, the Individual, by God's grace, can 
 be saved. Indeed, it shows that there is no 
 eternal salvation, as there is no eternal existence, 
 apart from the individual. 
 
 We have dwelt at some length on these con- 
 siderations because, as it seems to us, the success 
 of missionary and evangelistic effort depends, 
 in a large measure, on a proper understanding 
 of God's intentions and attitude with regard 
 to man. 
 
 There is a certain conception of man which 
 makes the nation (or State) to be everything, 
 and the individual nothing. According to that 
 doctrine, no individual conscience has any right 
 to stand against the collective ; no religious faith 
 should be tolerated which is not the national 
 faith. It was the doctrine of Judaism, in common
 
 6 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 with all the religions of the past. It is the 
 essence of Roman and Eastern Catholicism, and 
 it vitiates to a large extent any amount of truth 
 which these Churches possess. In fact, any 
 Church that adopts the principle of national 
 as against individual religion, in so far annuls 
 the virtue of her spiritual teaching, however 
 orthodox it may be. For while she thinks she 
 is serving God, in reality she practically sup- 
 presses God's chief handiwork : man. It was 
 that doctrine which caused torrents of innocent 
 blood to be shed throughout the Middle Ages ; 
 and even the Reformers did not get rid of it 
 altogether. It is far from being dead yet, and 
 we may live to see the revival of a nationalist 
 conception of religion, which will bring back 
 religious persecution again. Meanwhile, there is 
 much in the teaching and the tendencies of 
 Socialism which works in the same spirit, towards 
 the same end, viz. the suppression of the In- 
 dividual on the altar of the Collectivity. It is 
 that spirit which has prevailed in Germany, and 
 has made her what she is to-day : a menace to 
 the liberties of the whole world. 
 
 At the other extreme, there are those who do 
 not take a sufficient account of the national soul. 
 They have come to God by a certain way, and 
 insist on every one, even of a different nationality 
 from themselves, coming exactly by the same 
 process. How often have the best intentions 
 been frustrated, in France and elsewhere, and
 
 INTRODUCTORY 7 
 
 much expense of time and money made useless, 
 by a want of adaptation, on the part of the 
 workers, to the idiosyncrasies of the peoples 
 among which their lot was cast ! 
 
 It might be objected that the Gospel needs no 
 adaptation, God having intended it to be His 
 revelation to all men, irrespective of race. And 
 this is absolutely, beautifully true. The unique 
 faculty of the Gospel to adapt itself to all men is 
 perhaps the greatest proof at all events it is one 
 of the strongest of its Divine origin. But it is 
 not the message, it is the messenger, that needs 
 adaptation. A careful study of the Acts and the 
 Epistles will show how the early preachers of the 
 Gospel, and especially that most wonderful of 
 missionaries, Paul, took pains to understand the 
 soul of the nations to which they were sent 
 Read, for instance, Paul's discourse to the 
 Athenians. 1 How different is that speech from 
 those delivered by the same speaker in the 
 synagogues to his fellow-countrymen, though in 
 both cases it was the same truth that was preached, 
 with the same purpose in view ! Or again, read 
 the Prologue of St. John's Gospel : What a 
 marvellous adaptation to the Greek modes of 
 thought and expression and this, from one who 
 had been a plain fisherman on the Lake of Galilee ! 
 Surely this is one of the greatest miracles of 
 history that Jewish preachers and writers should 
 thus have been enabled to penetrate and to under- 
 
 1 Acts xvii.
 
 8 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 stand the minds of the various races to which 
 they addressed themselves. This could not have 
 been a natural gift, for we know how narrow- 
 minded, how provincial and prejudiced against all 
 foreigners the apostles were, in common with 
 the rest of the Jews, before their conversion, yea, 
 and even for a long time after. Nothing, there- 
 fore, can account for that gift, except Divine 
 inspiration, which endowed them with that super- 
 natural Love which is the highest form of wisdom. 
 
 A man endowed with the Spirit of God will 
 not underestimate the value of the national soul. 
 He will try to hear in its traditions, in its folk- 
 lore, literature and religious superstitions, whatever 
 there may have been left of the first revelations 
 of God to Man, whatever there may be of yearn- 
 ings towards God, through the action of that 
 mysterious Breath which, to-day as ever before, 
 "moves upon the face of the waters." He will 
 spend time, thought, prayer and study in trying 
 sympathetically to understand the people among 
 whom he is working. 
 
 There is a certain aloofness which, under the 
 pretence of spiritual-mindedness, is nothing but 
 a subtle form of pride. Salvation comes only 
 through Incarnation. The Son of God became 
 the Son of Man, a Jew of the tribe of Judah and 
 of the family of David. He had to come down 
 from Eternity into Time, from heaven to earth, 
 in order to save us. And although as members 
 of Christ's mystical Body we belong to another
 
 INTRODUCTORY 9 
 
 world, and are seated with Him, by faith, in the 
 heavenly places, yet it has pleased God that we 
 should remain members of Adam's race, citizens of 
 our respective nations, and that, as He did Him- 
 self when He was on earth, we should sympathize 
 with the multitudes, see them with our hearts and 
 minds as well as with our eyes, so as to share His 
 compassion for them. 
 
 The Gospel was at first preached by foreigners, 
 and it must continue to be so wherever it comes 
 as a new doctrine. But those foreigners would 
 never have succeeded, had they attempted to set 
 the souls of their hearers against the soul of their 
 nation. The Gospel does not contradict true 
 nature, but rises above it. It illuminates the soul 
 of a people ; it gives sense and value to its aspira- 
 tions ; it ennobles its ideals ; it tends to destroy 
 its vulgarities. A French Christian, or a British, 
 or a Russian, or of whatever nationality, will 
 understand his people better, and will have a far 
 more intelligent patriotism, than he had before he 
 was a Christian. No nation can afford to do 
 without the purifying and elevating element con- 
 stituted by its Christian citizens, provided that 
 their Christianity is genuine, and is neither im- 
 posed on them nor imposed by them. 
 
 One of our most precious remembrances is the 
 occasion which was granted us, more than forty 
 years ago, to hear the great missionary, Robert 
 Moffat, who was then over eighty years of age. 
 He was speaking somewhere in the East of
 
 lo THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 London of his work among his beloved Bechu- 
 anas. How he grew eloquent on the qualities 
 and virtues of the people among whom he had 
 spent the larger part of his life ! As he described 
 them, one could not help admiring them and 
 admiring him most of all. Here was the true 
 missionary, the man who had taken the trouble to 
 search, under a heap of superstitions and pagan 
 horrors, for whatever remnant there might be of 
 God's image on the souls of his black friends ; 
 and he had succeeded. " They are truly my 
 people," said he in conclusion ; "here in England 
 I am in exile, and I wish I could return and 
 breathe my last among them." The same love 
 for the soul of Africa was a trait of the great son- 
 in-law of Moffat, Livingstone ; and it was most 
 noticeable in another great missionary, our own 
 Frangois Coillard, the apostle of the Barotse. 
 
 One of the relieving facts of the present terrible 
 situation, is that France and England are closely 
 allied. Together they stand for better and for 
 worse, welded so closely together by the fires of 
 peril and sacred enthusiasm, that we may hope it 
 is for ever. Through this War, indeed, a new 
 patriotism has arisen a patriotism of ideals 
 rather than of territories. We are fighting for the 
 same interests, which are those of humanity, in 
 common with noble little Belgium and mystical 
 Russia. Such an union would have been im- 
 possible but for the fact that our nations have 
 kindred souls. Far down the ages a Light has
 
 INTRODUCTORY 1 1 
 
 come to our forefathers which has never been 
 quenched, though at times it shone but dimly. 
 Our nations are one by their Christian civiliza- 
 tion, and it is most important that they should be 
 made aware of the fact. Oh that they would to- 
 gether go back to their origin, and seal their alliance 
 by giving up, on both sides, all that has marred 
 true Christianity in their midst ! 
 
 Long before the War broke out, long before 
 the diplomats of our two countries had invented 
 and rendered of popular use the two words 
 " Entente Cordiale," the Evangelical Christians 
 on both sides of the Channel had practised the 
 Entente. But our hope is, that when this War 
 is over the Christians of the two nations will 
 come together in a more systematic way ; that, 
 notwithstanding the barrier of language, they 
 will associate even more closely than before, each 
 borrowing from the other according to the gifts 
 imparted to each. W T hat a powerful combination 
 this would be, under the uniting influence of the 
 Holy Spirit English stolidity, liberality and 
 practicalness, joined to French imagination, 
 enthusiasm and clear logic all bound together 
 for the same end, to free the world from all 
 bondage, superstition and infidelity, not by the 
 sword, but by the preaching of the Grace of God ! 
 But in order to bring about this glorious state of 
 things, we must take pains to know each other's 
 soul. 
 
 An English author who seems to have done so,
 
 12 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 writes thus : " Just as the niceties and intricacies 
 of French speech are only mastered by long- 
 continued unfettered intercourse, so the subtle 
 composition of French character and social life 
 demand the most intimate acquaintance to be 
 properly understood. Of first importance is the 
 knowledge of the people. . . . Thoroughly to 
 understand a nation we must mix with those who 
 chiefly constitute it. ... The small official, the 
 peasant proprietor, the artisan, of these is the 
 nation made, by these its future history is shaped." 
 And we may add, that to understand a nation, 
 there must be an intelligent acquaintance with its 
 past history, especially with the moral and religious 
 aspect of it. 
 
 France is the oldest civilized country of Europe. 
 She has known many changes, she has passed 
 through many fires. Prudent and reserved, 
 though good-natured, she does not open to every 
 casual passer-by her innermost soul. She must 
 be won by intelligent love, respectful and patient ; 
 and she well deserves it. 
 
 When M. Guizot, the great statesman who, in 
 the early years of Queen Victoria, was sent by 
 the Government of King Louis-Philippe as 
 ambassador to England, and who became after- 
 wards, till the close of Louis-Philippe's reign, the 
 Prime Minister of France a Protestant by birth 
 and a staunch Evangelical by personal conviction 
 when M. Guizot was on the point of death, his 
 
 1 M. Betham-Edwards, France of To-day.
 
 INTRODUCTORY 13 
 
 last words to his family gathered around his bed 
 were these : " Mes enfants, la France est un grand 
 pays; il vaut la peine de la bien servir." (" My 
 children, France is a great country, it is worth 
 while to serve her well.")
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE BIRTH OF THE FRENCH SOUL 
 
 ONE good result, at least, of the tremendous 
 struggle for life in which we are now 
 engaged, will be that the world will have a better 
 knowledge of, and a greater respect for, the true 
 soul of France, than it had before. 
 
 This does not mean simply that our enemies 
 are discovering that they had underestimated the 
 strength of our national fibre, but also that our 
 friends themselves will have to revise some of 
 their opinions concerning us. 
 
 France has been commonly represented as a 
 light-headed, light-hearted nation, whose ruling 
 passion was the love of pleasure ; and the admi- 
 ration of some people for her on that account was 
 more humiliating than the stern rebuke others 
 thought fit to inflict upon us. 
 
 But few did recognize that, along with the 
 artistic and optimistic temperament which marks 
 our race, and which accounts to some extent for 
 some of our glaring defects, there is in our 
 constitution a stubborn quality of resistance, a 
 disposition to hold on and to endure, a patience 
 born of the sufferings of long ages. The French
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE FRENCH SOUL 15 
 
 are a nation of hard-working, hard-saving peas- 
 ants, attached to their fields, which have been 
 the property of their fathers centuries before the 
 great Revolution a property grievously taxed 
 and perpetually contested till the glorious days of 
 freedom but which their owners tilled, improved 
 and defended against foreign invaders, as well as 
 against encroaching lords and tyrannical officials, 
 in numberless wars, through fifteen centuries. 
 There is a tragic element in French history ; 
 there is iron in our blood, and it has been a 
 surprise to many to discover that this country is 
 yet very far, thank God, from having become so 
 anaemic as some prophets had surmised. 
 
 It is one of the common mistakes made by our 
 visitors to judge of France by Paris, and of Paris 
 by the midnight gaiety of some of its boulevards. 
 In reality, France is an agricultural nation, as 
 England is an industrial one. Comparatively, 
 France is the country which has fewest large 
 cities. On a population of forty millions in round 
 numbers, not more than one-fourth live in towns, 
 mostly small ; the remainder dwell in villages, 
 hamlets or farms. Of thirteen million families, 
 nine millions are free-holders. Their houses may 
 be small, ancient and rickety, but they belong to 
 them, in many cases, from time immemorial. 
 Old furniture is not a myth ; many are the well- 
 to-do peasants, or even the common labourers, 
 who sleep in the bed on which they were born, 
 and on which they expect to die.
 
 1 6 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 All this accounts to a large extent for the 
 conservativeness of the French, which is real and 
 deep, even though they have a love for outward 
 changes which do not touch the root of things. 
 This also accounts for the quality of the patriotism 
 which is now so magnificently evident. Patriot- 
 ism is derived from Patria, that which comes from 
 the fathers. In fighting for France, every man 
 feels that he is defending his own hearthstone. 
 
 If it be true that the education of a child begins 
 or should begin an hundred years before its 
 birth, it is truer still that the soul of a nation has 
 been formed and educated through the long years 
 of her history. In order to understand France, 
 one should, therefore, know a little of her religious 
 and moral struggles in the past. Much of this 
 work will be devoted to tracing that history ; there 
 is none more interesting. 
 
 The Gospel was brought to our shores at a 
 very early date. At the time when St. Paul was 
 visiting Rome, and perhaps Spain, Marseilles 
 had already existed for five hundred years as a 
 Greek colony, and there were such colonies 
 further inland : Aries was one. How soon did 
 those cities, then under Roman yoke, hear the 
 Good News? There is evidence that a brisk 
 trade was being carried on, in those times, 
 between Greece and Asia Minor on the one hand, 
 and the western shores of the Mediterranean on 
 the other. No doubt some converts to the new
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE FRENCH SOUL 17 
 
 faith, hailing from Corinth or Smyrna, visited 
 Marseilles very soon after the beginning of the 
 Christian era. 
 
 There are in Provence and Languedoc very 
 ancient legends, which poetry and art have made 
 beautiful, telling of the landing, after a miraculous 
 journey in an open boat without rudder or sail, of 
 the Bethany family : Martha, Mary and Lazarus, 
 with their negro servant Sara, Mary Magdalene and 
 some other saints. Marseilles boasts of a crypt in 
 which Lazarus is supposed to have lived, preached 
 and baptized. In the mountains, north of that 
 great city, is shown " la Sainte Baume " (the Holy 
 Cave) where the Magdalene is said to have 
 retired in pious seclusion. Martha's supposed 
 grave is shown and greatly venerated in the 
 crypt of a church at Tarascon, which is eight 
 hundred years old. These legends are so 
 deeply rooted in Southern France, that people 
 who have retained very little faith are still 
 attached to them ; they form part, as it were, 
 of the national heirloom. The great Proven- 
 $al poet, Fre'de'ric Mistral, has given them new 
 life by embedding them in his celebrated 
 Mireille. 
 
 The legends should be discarded ; but the fact 
 remains that Gaul was very early evangelized. 
 Aries possesses a most interesting Christian 
 cemetery 1'Allde des Alyscamps with sarco- 
 phagi on both sides of the road, as on the Appian 
 Way in Rome. There can be no doubt that, as
 
 1 8 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 early as the year 150 A.D., there were large 
 Christian communities in Vienne and in Lyons. 
 The names of Irenaeus and Pothinus belong to 
 history : they were the first bishops of Lyons, 
 having come there from Smyrna, where Irenaeus 
 had sat at the feet of Polycarp, who himself had 
 been a disciple of St. John. The letter of the 
 Church of Lyons addressed to the Church of 
 Smyrna (which was, evidently, the mother- 
 church) giving an account of the martyrdom of 
 a large number of believers in the year 177, 
 is still most captivating and wholesome read- 
 ing, and its authenticity has never been ques- 
 tioned. 
 
 The whole of the Rhone valley, up to Lyons, 
 is sacred ground. I never see the swift waters 
 of the noble river, as they hurry down between 
 so many ancient cities, without thinking of the 
 thousands who, in those early days, were baptized 
 in those waters, with which, later on, the blood of 
 so many of them was to be mixed. That valley 
 was the highway by which the Gospel, still free 
 from the accretions of subsequent ages, penetrated 
 into the heart of that which was then a heathen 
 land, whose natives had added to their own idols 
 those of their conquerors, the Romans, and of 
 the Greek traders and artists who dwelt among 
 them. 
 
 After these early events, history becomes 
 clouded, as legends have grown over it and 
 defaced it. However, it seems certain that, by
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE FRENCH SOUL 19 
 
 M f '' 
 
 the close of the fifth century, the whole of the 
 land now called France had become Christian, 
 at least, nominally. Clovis, chieftain of the 
 Franks and the first real King of France, pro- 
 fessed Christianity at the instigation of his wife, 
 Clotilde, and, together with his lords, was baptized 
 in the city of Reims in 496. 
 
 In France, as everywhere else, the period of 
 the Middle Ages was one of ignorance, brutal- 
 ity, superstition and clerical domination. The 
 causes of this are many. The Church of the 
 Emperors could hardly be the same as the Church 
 of the Christ. When the force of the sovereigns 
 was employed for the propagation of Christianity, 
 Christianity in its true sense ceased to exist. 
 Moreover, horde upon horde of barbarians from 
 the forests of Germany, and from the unknown 
 depths of the north and east of Europe, invaded 
 the Roman Empire, and ruined the reign of law 
 and civilization. The Church became the only 
 power which could withstand the cruelty and 
 savagery of those invaders ; even in her degener- 
 ate state she was a moral force, and she conquered 
 the conquerors (though in a very superficial 
 manner). She thus became the protector of the 
 weak and the hope of the downtrodden. But, 
 when such protection became less necessary, the 
 clergy kept their hold on the people and main- 
 tained it by superstitious fears ; they were greatly 
 helped in this by the lords and kings, who bought 
 the allegiance of the Church and, in many cases,
 
 20 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 . her connivance with their evil deeds, by grants of 
 land and increase of power. 
 
 In all these things, France was no exception 
 among the nations newly formed out of the ruins 
 of the Roman Empire. And yet there was, 
 and has ever been, a remarkable difference. 
 Though called the eldest daughter of the Church, 
 because she was the first Western organized 
 country to embrace Christianity, France was 
 never as utterly submissive to Rome as other 
 nations have been. Owing, no doubt, to the 
 fact that she had received the Gospel in a purer 
 form, a spirit of revolt against priestly rule has 
 ever remained present with her, and it is there 
 still. 
 
 In fact, it is one of the marvels of history that, 
 while the Evangelical doctrine has been so utterly 
 deformed as to be unrecognizable in the rites 
 and superstitions which, for the masses of the 
 people, represent the Christian religion, yet a 
 latent Evangelism has never ceased to exist, 
 and from time to time has made itself manifest 
 by outbursts of light which have astonished and 
 filled with fear the holders of ecclesiastical power. 
 This has been the case in every nation submitted 
 to papal rule, but nowhere more so than in 
 France. There is no country where so-called 
 " heresies " which really means the protests of 
 the dimly awakened popular conscience against 
 the errors and sins of the dominating Church 
 have been so numerous, so constant, and on the
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE FRENCH SOUL 21 
 
 whole so successful, as France during the Middle 
 Ages. 
 
 We shall not attempt to give a full enumeration 
 of them, far less to describe them, as our ac- 
 quaintance with the tenets of the "heretics" has 
 to be derived, almost exclusively, from the biased 
 accounts of the priests and monks who were 
 their judges. Some of those heretics seem to 
 have had a faint knowledge of the fundamental 
 truths of the Gospel, and a true experience of 
 grace. That seems to have been the case with 
 Pierre de Bruys and his disciple Henri de 
 Lausanne, who both lived in the twelfth century. 
 At one time the whole of the south country was 
 practically severed from Rome. Under the 
 liberal government of the counts of Toulouse, 
 an almost complete liberty of conscience pre- 
 vailed in the vast and happy province called 
 Languedoc, which rendered a nominal allegiance 
 to the kings of France. The Albigenses were 
 in great numbers there, and wielded great in- 
 fluence, the counts of Toulouse having them- 
 selves embraced their creed, which seems to 
 have been a form of Gnosticism. There is little 
 doubt that, in the atmosphere of freedom which 
 prevailed in that region of France, a great number 
 of people held the truth of the Gospel, without 
 the doubtful elements which the various sects of 
 Albigenses or Cathares had added to it. 
 
 However that may be, Rome could not long 
 tolerate the existence of such a powerful religious
 
 22 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 movement. At the instigation of Pope Innocent 
 in., the King of France undertook an expedition 
 which was called a crusade, and was put under 
 the command of one of the most sanguinary men 
 of history, Simon de Montfort (1209). It ended 
 in the extermination of the Albigenses. The 
 reader will remember how, when the city of 
 Be*ziers, which was one of the main strongholds 
 of the heretics, was taken by storm, the order 
 being given to smite all the inhabitants with the 
 edge of the sword, some one remonstrated with 
 the fierce commander, arguing that there might 
 be some true Catholics among them : " Kill them 
 all," said he, " God will find out His own ! " 
 
 It is probable, though difficult to ascertain, 
 that many fugitives from the rich cities of Albi, 
 Toulouse, Narbonne and from the fertile plains 
 of Languedoc, fled to the near mountains of 
 Ce*vennes, and to the Alps, then sparsely popu- 
 lated, where they settled and were left alone on 
 account of their outward submission to Rome, 
 and also of the difficulty of hunting them. In the 
 seclusion of their mountain fastnesses, these 
 settlers kept a spirit of independence which 
 found its way out when the Reformation of the 
 sixteenth century took place. This would ex- 
 plain how it is that Protestantism has taken a 
 firm hold, which it has kept to this day, of a 
 large portion of the southern slope of the 
 CeVennes, while the northern has remained 
 staunchly Catholic.
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE FRENCH SOUL 23 
 
 No disciple of Christ can afford to ignore the 
 name of Pierre Valdo, the rich merchant of 
 Lyons who, in the twelfth century, was con- 
 verted to God by the action of the Holy Spirit 
 upon his soul, and by the sudden death of one 
 of his friends. He gave away his goods to the 
 poor, after having provided for his wife and his 
 two daughters, and became a humble servant 
 of God, his special concern being to make known 
 the Scriptures to the people, for which purpose 
 he associated with two clerks, who made a transla- 
 tion of the New Testament in the vulgar tongue, 
 which has not come down to us. He founded a 
 community which is known in history as the Poor 
 Men of Lyons ; the object of its members being 
 to live as nearly as possible up to the standard 
 of the primitive Church. 
 
 Valdo and his companions soon became the 
 objects of clerical hatred and persecution, and 
 were ultimately compelled to flee to the neighbour- 
 ing villages, then further, to the Alpine valleys, 
 where they converted the natives, and formed 
 with them that noble community known as the 
 Waldenses (Vaudois), now a branch of the great 
 Reformed family, but which is certainly the oldest 
 Evangelical Church in Europe. 
 
 May not the rapid progress of Pierre Valdo's 
 " heresy " in and around Lyons be somewhat 
 accounted for by the fact that the embers of 
 true Christianity had not absolutely died out in 
 that old city, in which the memory of Pothinus
 
 24 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 and Irenaeus had never been obliterated, in spite 
 of the darkness of the times ? At all events, 
 the awakening which took place under Pierre 
 Valdo was a forerunner of the Reformation, and 
 prepared the city, as in England Wycliff and his 
 preachers prepared the way, for the great move- 
 ment of the sixteenth century. 
 
 Another notable fact is that the ecclesiastical 
 tribunal called the Holy Inquisition, which came 
 into existence during the Middle Ages for the 
 avowed purpose of destroying heresies a tribunal 
 which still sits at the Vatican, though it has not 
 the same means to do harm which it had in 
 those days the Holy Inquisition was never able 
 to establish itself on French soil. Other religious 
 tribunals there were, bigoted and cruel enough, 
 but none so cruel as the Inquisition. The fact 
 is that, neither the kings, however superstitious 
 some of them were, nor the courts of the realm, 
 nor even the bishops themselves, and far less 
 the people, were ever disposed to give to the 
 papal militia those excessive prerogatives which 
 they had acquired in other countries. A long 
 and interesting account could be written of the 
 perpetual feuds between the French Crown and 
 the Roman See, from the early Capetian kings 
 to St. Louis, Philippe-le-Bel, Louis XL, 
 Fra^ois i. and even Louis xiv., who had a 
 quarrel with the Pope almost at the same time 
 as when he signed the Revocation of the Edict 
 of Nantes. The causes of these conflicts were
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE FRENCH SOUL 25 
 
 largely temporal ; it was the question, mainly, 
 of who should have the last word in the election 
 of bishops. But one cannot help believing that 
 the dissenting spirit which is so evident in the 
 annals of France was a product of that latent 
 Evangelism of which we have already spoken. 
 
 The same cause which made France so rich in 
 "heretics" made her also rich in saints. By 
 that word we do not mean the host of obscure 
 recluses whose legendary lives are the only 
 mental food permitted to the inmates of con- 
 vents ; but we mean really consecrated men and 
 women, who, while they remained externally 
 attached to the hierarchy of Rome, were at heart 
 (though perhaps they did not know it) dissenters 
 from the spirit of vainglory which characterized 
 the higher clergy. The names of Martin de 
 Tours, Bernard de Clairvaux, Jean Gerson (who 
 was supposed, for a long time, to have written 
 the famous De Imitatione Ckristi) and a number 
 of others, testify that the lamp of truth, though 
 dim, never ceased to burn in France, till the 
 bright morning of the Reformation dispelled the 
 gloom. 1 
 
 1 Much could be said here concerning that expression of the 
 religious soul of France which has been improperly called 
 " Gothic " architecture ; a form of art by which this and other 
 countries were embellished with those magnificent poems in stone, 
 the cathedrals of Paris, Amiens, Reims, Bourges, and many other 
 places in France, and of Canterbury, Lincoln, Salisbury, etc., in 
 England. It is a remarkable fact that no "Gothic" church exists 
 in Rome itself, and there are very few in Italy. Thus, the Ogival 
 architecture, born in France, attests in its own language the
 
 26 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 It would be impossible to write on the soul of 
 France without giving more than a passing notice 
 of that wonderful figure which, more than any 
 single individual, impersonated the common 
 people of this country, and may be called, indeed, 
 the very Soul of France. I refer to Jeanne 
 d'Arc (Joan of Arc, as the English call her). 
 A woman, no, a child, for she was not twenty 
 when her task was fully done and she suffered 
 her martyr death. 
 
 A shepherdess, born on the frontier of Lorraine 
 at the beginning of the fifteenth century, her 
 young heart was deeply moved by the sight of 
 " the great pity there was in the kingdom of 
 France," as she quaintly expressed herself, on 
 account of the desolating wars which had lasted 
 for nearly a century, wars not only with 
 England, whose kings, claiming French descent, 
 proclaimed themselves kings of France, but also 
 between the rival factions of the French nobility. 
 She saw visions, she heard voices from Heaven 
 calling upon her to go and deliver her country. 
 She attributed those voices to her favourite 
 
 peculiar and lofty character of French Christianity from the 
 twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. The universalist and idealist 
 character of the French soul in those centuries is also made 
 evident by the fact that the Crusades that noble, though clumsy, 
 effort to unite all Christendom in a great sacred enterprise 
 originated in France. The first Crusade was proclaimed at the 
 Council of Clermont by a French Pope, Urban n., and preached 
 far and wide by the fiery monk, Peter the Hermit. Out of this 
 movement there arose the order of Knighthood (Chevalerie), a 
 generous attempt to put warriors under Christian restraints,
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE FRENCH SOUL 27 
 
 saints ; but the fact that she had heard them re- 
 mained in her inmost consciousness till her death ; 
 and it would be difficult to explain, if Heaven had 
 nothing to do in the case, the wonderful success 
 of the young heroine. Overcoming the very 
 natural opposition of her father, mother and 
 friends, she finally succeeded in winning the con- 
 fidence of an old nobleman, who gave her a horse 
 and authorized her to go with some devoted com- 
 panions, with whom she travelled across the 
 whole of France in order to see the king 
 indolent and easy-going Charles vn. at Chinon 
 on the Loire, where he was gaily spending his 
 time while his kingdom was, so to speak, running 
 through his fingers. 
 
 How she put new resolution in the hearts of 
 the king and his lieges ; how, after due examina- 
 tion of her character and orthodoxy by the priests 
 of the king's court, she was given the command 
 of an army ; how, without ever shedding herself 
 a drop of blood, she led her soldiers to victory, 
 compelled the English to raise the siege of 
 Orleans, took the king to Reims to be anointed 
 (in that same beautiful cathedral which German 
 shells have so wantonly damaged) ; how she 
 stirred up the hearts of the people wherever she 
 went, revealing France to herself, making, at last, 
 the voice of the common people speak louder 
 than the wretched and criminal ambitions of the 
 great lords ; how she created, indeed, a national 
 consciousness, without which there never coulcl
 
 28 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 have been any real patriotism among the people ; 
 all this would take a long time to recount. 
 But, when one reflects that it was all achieved in 
 the space of a single year by a poor peasant girl 
 not out of her teens, one can hardly hesitate to 
 acknowledge that Jeanne's claim to have been 
 directed from above was legitimate, and thus 
 is justified the motto long inscribed on our 
 scutcheon : Dieu protege la France. 
 
 The most thrilling part, however, of Jeanne's 
 history is not that which concerns her military 
 prowess, so soon brought to an end by the 
 treachery of a French lord, who, having taken 
 her captive, sold her to her enemies. It is that 
 part which is taken up by her trial before an 
 ecclesiastical court at Rouen, presided over by a 
 Romish bishop, Cauchon a trial which ended 
 in her being burned alive on the market-place of 
 Rouen, on 3oth May 1431. For this crime, the 
 French and the English have to share the re- 
 proach of posterity. Happily, they are to-day 
 redeeming that old evil deed of theirs, by sharing 
 the risks and the glory of defending the eternal 
 rights of nations, for which Jeanne d'Arc suffered 
 and died with such wonderful heroism, five 
 hundred years ago. 1 
 
 1 " Yoked in knowledge and remorse now we come to rest, 
 Laughing at old villainies that Time has turned to jest ; 
 Pardoning old necessity no pardon can efface 
 That undying sin we shared in Rouen market-place." 
 
 (Rudyard Kipling, " France ).
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE FRENCH SOUL 29 
 
 In the course of that trial, Jeanne revealed 
 what was the true soul of France in her time, 
 what were the real feelings of the ignorant but 
 shrewd French peasantry with regard to religion 
 and the Church. 
 
 She was a good Catholic, of course. What 
 else could she have been at the time she lived ? 
 She believed in the Church, her sacraments, her 
 clergy, her saints. . . . 
 
 And yet she was a dissenter. And this is the 
 peculiarity of her case. She set her own con- 
 science as the ultimate judge of her inward 
 motions. She held the spiritual, inward author- 
 ity to be superior to the highest powers of the 
 Church. When the bishop and the priests 
 endeavoured to persuade her that her " voices " 
 could not have come from God, since the Church 
 had not sanctioned them, she maintained with 
 indomitable energy she, a country-girl of nine- 
 teen, facing the most formidable array of doctors 
 and priests, with the scaffold looming in the 
 distance ! that she knew Heaven had spoken 
 to her. Neither threats nor allurements could 
 wrench from her an act of full surrender to the 
 Church on that cardinal point. When they re- 
 minded her that she owed obedience to the Pope 
 and to the bishops, who were the voices of God 
 to her, she replied : " Yes, our Lord God served 
 first ! " 1 And when they told her that, should 
 she persevere in her refractory attitude, she would 
 
 1 " Notre Sire Dieu premier servi 1 "
 
 30 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 be excommunicated which she was at the end 
 and even deprived of the privilege of attending 
 Mass, she made this revolutionary answer, in 
 which, if the reader will ponder over it a little, 
 the whole Reformation is contained in seed : 
 " God may enable me to hear it without you." 
 Finally, when, bound to the stake and the flames 
 already ascending, she could hope no more for 
 any intervention of angels or saints to rescue her 
 (which, poor child, she seems to have expected 
 almost to the last hour), she devoutly kissed the 
 rude cross that an English soldier had made for 
 her with two sticks, and murmured the sweet 
 name, Jesus (no other, mark you : neither Mary, 
 Joseph, nor any of her patron saints !), and then 
 breathed her last. 
 
 This strange mixture of Romish superstition 
 and spiritual independence, which would have 
 been surprising enough in a man of some educa- 
 tion and theological training, appears as simply 
 marvellous in the case of a poor girl who had 
 never learned to read, and knew nothing but her 
 Pater Noster. It throws a flood of light on the 
 real religion of the common people of France in 
 the Middle Ages. Here, again, we find the 
 evidence of that hidden Evangelism which we 
 have noticed before, and which, by the action of 
 the Divine Spirit, has been preserved throughout 
 the centuries down to our very times. The 
 existence of that element in the moral constitution 
 of the French people explains, to a great extent,
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE FRENCH SOUL 31 
 
 many facts of its history : the sudden and wonder- 
 ful rise of the Reformation, the idealism which 
 has marked the great Revolution, and, finally, 
 the chivalrous and, one may say, Christian spirit 
 which animates the French nation at this time, 
 enabling her to resist so tenaciously, in the 
 defence of Justice and Liberty. 
 
 And so, Jeanne d'Arc was, and she remains, 
 the symbolical impersonification of the French 
 soul. 
 
 The French Catholics claim her as the national 
 saint ; and, indeed, she was a true Catholic in 
 her creed and practices, and a true saint by her 
 simple faith and her pure life. 
 
 The French Protestants claim her as a fore- 
 runner of the Reformation ; and, indeed, hers was 
 the spirit of Huss who had died a few years 
 before her a spirit of holy rebellion against 
 spiritual tyranny. 
 
 Modern France, liberal and republican, claims 
 her as the founder of national democracy, and so 
 she was, rising above king and nobles, and 
 giving to the oppressed peoples the first glimpse 
 of their own existence, of their common interests 
 and ideals ; the first revelation of the power 
 which lay in them. 
 
 Pure and generous, delicate and dignified, 
 courageous and modest, a true heroine and a 
 gentle maid, a devoted lover of Jesus where 
 could we find a nobler, holier figure, than Jeanne 
 d'Arc, to impersonate the soul of France ?
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE REFORMATION AND THE HOLY 
 SCRIPTURES 
 
 IT is not within our scope to give a history of 
 the French Reformation. Our purpose is 
 simply to trace the golden thread which unites to- 
 gether the spiritual movements which have taken 
 place in this country at various times ; to show, 
 as far as we can, that those movements, though 
 many, varied and apparently unconnected, have 
 sprung from the same source, the Gospel, under 
 the influence of the Spirit of God, ever brooding 
 over the soul of France. 
 
 Our quest is not an idle one. If it be demon- 
 strated that the Spirit of God has never ceased to 
 be at work in France, even in her darkest days, 
 keeping alive the flickering light of the truth 
 against the tremendous efforts of error and perse- 
 cution, and bringing forth, now and then, some 
 exceptionally beautiful Christian lives, we may 
 conclude that God has a merciful purpose, yet to 
 be realized, on behalf of this beloved land. The 
 light which has been miraculously preserved must, 
 some day or other, blaze out radiantly. 
 
 This is the hope which has burned in the
 
 REFORMATION AND HOLY SCRIPTURES 33 
 
 hearts of some of us for many years, and for 
 which our fathers in the faith holy men of God 
 whose names are unknown, but whose record is 
 on high have lived and died. Yes, remembering 
 God's gracious dealings with France throughout 
 so many centuries, we are hoping and believing 
 that she will yet astonish the world by the 
 miracles of grace which will be wrought in her 
 midst. And that hope is, perhaps, very near its 
 fulfilment, for never was the soul of France 
 stirred with nobler ideals than at this time of war 
 and of unprecedented distress. 1 
 
 Some one I think it was Amiel, the pessi- 
 mistic philosopher has said that every nation 
 has " a fundamental paradox." Nothing is truer 
 than this. There are in every race of men yea, 
 in every individual two different tendencies 
 which, at times, may seem to work harmoniously 
 together, but at other times are desperately at 
 
 1 In the course of this and the following chapters we shall 
 have to allude to the internal troubles caused, centuries ago, in this 
 country, as in many other lands, by the difference in religious 
 beliefs, or rather, by the spirit of religious independence, which 
 was the outcome of the Reformation. The days of intolerance 
 are now happily over ; a spirit, not of toleration merely, but of 
 mutual respect, has been reigning for many years. Moreover, the 
 present war has brought together all patriotic citizens in a sacred 
 union, above all political or religious differences. We wish, for our 
 small part, to strengthen that union, by showing that Protestant 
 Frenchmen have at all times served well their country, which they 
 passionately loved ; and by emphasizing the fact that those among 
 them who have been most earnest in their faith, have also been 
 most loyal, and have largely contributed, by their public and 
 private qualities, to the making of the soul of France as it appears 
 to-day before the world. 
 
 3
 
 34 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 war. This opposition accounts for the tragedy 
 of life everywhere and in every land. The Bible 
 describes it in two very simple words : the flesh 
 and the spirit. These may take various forms 
 according to time, education, temperament, 
 climate, etc., but there is no exception to the rule. 
 Were the flesh to rule supreme, we should all be 
 animals ; were the spirit to have the mastery, we 
 should all be saints. 
 
 The French soul, of course, has her " funda- 
 mental paradox." On the one hand, one notices 
 in her a light-heartedness, a fondness for pleasure 
 and enjoyment which at times amounts to frivol- 
 ity ; on the other hand, there is a passionate love 
 for the Ideal, a longing for Truth, Beauty and 
 Perfection, which will, at times, cause heroes and 
 martyrs to abound. The first tendency is re- 
 sponsible for the practical materialism which 
 seemed so prevalent a few years ago ; the second, 
 for those outbursts of devotion and sacrifice 
 which have surprised the world from time to 
 time, and never more than in the present war. 1 
 
 Never was that opposition more manifest in 
 
 1 Perhaps the reader will inquire which, in the present writer's 
 opinion, is the "fundamental paradox" of the English tempera- 
 ment. May I say, with due regard for British sensitiveness, that 
 what strikes most a Frenchman is the opposition between a 
 certain matter-of-fact practicalness, and the deep and genuine 
 religious bent of the British mind ? A city merchant seems quite 
 another man, viewed on the Exchange, than he appears to be in 
 his church pew on Sundays. Nor have we any right to suspect 
 his sincerity : he is himself in both cases ; only, as in every one 
 of us, there are two selves in him,
 
 REFORMATION AND HOLY SCRIPTURES 35 
 
 France than during that eventful sixteenth century 
 which saw the Renaissance and the Reformation. 
 At first, the two seemed to be almost one, and 
 helped each other mightily. But soon the con- 
 trast appeared ; indeed, it became so marked, 
 that war between the two became inevitable. 
 
 Two names may be mentioned as representing 
 the first of those tendencies : Montaigne, the 
 philosopher of agnosticism (though the word had 
 not yet been coined), whose easy-going philo- 
 sophy covered a deep distress of mind, and was 
 all contained in that interrogation : " Que 
 sais-je ? " (What do I know ?) ; and Rabelais, the 
 cynical but witty and genial priest who, in the 
 great awakening of the French mind which 
 characterized his time, solved all questions very 
 much in the same way as the Greek philosopher 
 quoted by St. Paul : " Let us eat and drink ; for 
 to-morrow we die" (i Cor. xv. 32). Both were 
 men of genius ; and even they, profane as they 
 were, could not but have glimpses of the true 
 light, as some passages of their writings testify. 
 But theirs was the spirit of compromise, fear of 
 man, and, above all, love of the present world, as 
 was the case with the great doctor of Rotterdam, 
 Erasmus, who came so near to be a great Re- 
 former, but failed for want of moral courage and 
 deep religious experience. 
 
 The names of the men who, one may truthfully 
 affirm, represented at that time the nobler side 
 of the French soul, are those of Lefevre d'Etaples,
 
 36 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 Calvin, Farel, Coligny. A host of others might 
 be added ; but these were the greater lights, 
 amidst a galaxy of choice spirits. 
 
 The influence of those Frenchmen, of John 
 Calvin especially, has been world-wide and still con- 
 tinues. The cause for which they worked, fought 
 and died has not succeeded in the country of 
 their birth so much as they had hoped, though it 
 has succeeded far more than could appear on the 
 surface, but it has been victorious in many lands. 
 It has deeply impressed the mental, moral and 
 spiritual constitution of a large part of Europe : 
 England, Scotland, Holland, Switzerland, Hun- 
 gary and large portions of Germany ; it has been 
 the creative power which brought to existence 
 the American Commonwealth, and even now is 
 the main force that rules it. Even Roman 
 Catholicism, as appears evident by its inner 
 history, has been compelled to reform itself in 
 some of its most crying practices, by the tre- 
 mendous effect of the search-lights which the 
 Reformation brought upon it. 
 
 And it is the pride (a most pardonable one) of 
 the French Reformed, that their Reformation 
 owed nothing to foreign influence. Rather, it 
 has been the other way. Whatever debts our 
 Churches may have contracted towards those of 
 other lands in the following centuries, debts 
 which we shall never decline to acknowledge 
 gratefully, it must be recognized that the French 
 gave to them, in the sixteenth century, the first
 
 REFORMATION AND HOLY SCRIPTURES 37 
 
 capital on which their spiritual fortunes have been 
 built. 
 
 This is a most important point. Reduced as 
 we have been through the vicissitudes of the past 
 to a comparatively small number, we are often 
 looked upon by some of our countrymen, and not 
 always by the most ignorant of them, as being the 
 disciples of a foreign religion. Nothing can be 
 more untrue, and there are few things that are 
 more harmful than this lie. 
 
 The first translators of the Scriptures in 
 French, Lefevre d'Etaples and Robert Olive"tan, 
 this latter, first on the originals, were French 
 scholars. Calvin wrote his Institutes in Latin, 
 then in French ; and this was the first work of 
 any great importance to have been written in the 
 common language of the people ; for, up to that 
 time, scholars would have thought it beneath 
 them to write learned treatises in another tongue 
 than the Latin. And the Institutes of Calvin is 
 considered by literary authorities who care not 
 for his doctrine, as the first great monument in 
 French, the one book which has done most to 
 bring our language, which was still unshaped and 
 unfixed, to the rank of a systematized and cultured 
 tongue. 
 
 We can do no better here than to translate a 
 few lines from a contemporary litterateur, M. 
 Emile Faguet, member of 1'Acade'mie Fran9aise, 
 who has just died, all too early for French letters, 
 which he adorned. M. Faguet was not a Pro-
 
 38 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 testant, but he was an impartial critic, greatly 
 respected by all parties : 
 
 " Protestantism is said by some to be an im- 
 portation from Germany, an importation which, 
 consequently, will ever retain the stamp of its 
 foreign origin. Nothing can be more false. 
 Protestantism is French, or, if you prefer it, 
 French Protestantism is French, of French origin. 
 There has been a French Reformation, which 
 owed nothing to the German nor to the English 
 ones, and which has preceded both. There was a 
 Lefevre d'Etaples before Calvin, before Luther, 
 before Knox. . . . 
 
 " And I need not say that, as far as Calvinism 
 is concerned, it is purely French, not only because 
 it was a Frenchman, Calvin, who created it, but 
 also because all the co-workers of Calvin in 
 Geneva nine out of ten, if you like were 
 Frenchmen. Protestant Geneva is a French re- 
 ligious colony. There has not been an importa- 
 tion from Geneva to France, but an exportation 
 from France to Switzerland. There is nothing 
 more French, more 'old French,' than the Pro- 
 testantism of France." 
 
 The following lines of the article we are quoting 
 are worth underlining : 
 
 " The French Protestants are so really French 
 that truly they have been the salt of France. . . . 
 We must acknowledge that, except for political 
 circumstances, all who, in the sixteenth century, 
 had in their hearts a vivid religious and moral
 
 REFORMATION AND HOLY SCRIPTURES 39 
 
 sentiment, all who had an ideal, became Protes- 
 tants. We must acknowledge this, without 
 bargaining in the least. 
 
 " If, as seems undisputable to me, Protestantism 
 has been the means of accomplishing in France 
 the Catholic reform, has brought about Gallican- 
 ism and Jansenism, it may be truly said that 
 Protestantism has well deserved of France ; and, 
 at all events, one must see that it has been so 
 mingled with French history, that it must be 
 acknowledged as French, as Old French, as French 
 as it is possible to be. 
 
 " Add to this that the Protestants are the oldest 
 French Republicans. The monarchy in fighting 
 them, did not make a mistake ; for the St. 
 Bartholomew was a crime, but not at all an 
 error. ..." 
 
 The testimony of the distinguished writer might 
 be strengthened by many quotations from his- 
 torians such as Michelet, Quinet and others. 
 Indeed, it is the voice of Truth itself. 1 
 
 1 At the back of the church of the Oratoire, in the heart of Paris, 
 facing the Louvre on the Rue de Rivoli, there stands the marble 
 statue of Gaspard de Coligny. He is represented standing, his 
 hand upon the hilt of his sword, in a pensive attitude. An open 
 Bible shows these words, so descriptive of the man : "He held 
 fast, as seeing Him who is invisible." Two beautiful figures, repre- 
 senting Religion and Country, are seated at his feet. Admiral 
 Coligny was the type of the Huguenot statesman and general. 
 Loyal to his earthly king, and passionately patriotic, he never 
 allowed anything to weaken his faith and allegiance to the Christ 
 of the Bible. His prudence, caution and wonderful endurance, 
 along with his indomitable courage and hopefulness in the midst 
 of the most adverse circumstances, show him to have belonged to
 
 40 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 The best proof that the soul of France was, in 
 those days, so linked with the Reformation as to 
 be one with it, is found in the wonderful influence 
 which the Scriptures, published in the language 
 of the people, exerted on the whole nation. 
 Indeed, long before then, as we have already 
 shown, as far back as the twelfth century, the 
 Scriptures had been the instrument of a powerful 
 and wide-spread movement towards primitive 
 Christianity. After the twelfth century the dis- 
 semination of the Holy Book seems to have been 
 carried on with continued zeal. In the National 
 Library, Paris, there are sixty translations, either 
 in part or in full, of the Bible, all of these dating 
 from the thirteenth and fourteenth century alone. 
 But when we come to the sixteenth, just after 
 the discovery of the printing-press, we are amazed 
 to find that the Bible has become the most popular 
 of books in France. 
 
 The honour of having been foremost in this 
 great work belongs to a man who was of a most 
 retiring disposition, and who, like Simeon of old, 
 
 the same race which now produces such men as those who com- 
 mand our armies. Coligny was one of the first to fall under the 
 poignards of the assassins on St. Bartholomew's night, August 
 24, 1572. His son-in-law, Tdligny, was also murdered, and the 
 young widow, Coligny's only child, escaped to Holland, where, a few 
 years afterwards, she married William the Silent, the founder of 
 the Netherlands Commonwealth. The present Queen of Holland 
 is the direct descendant of Louise de Coligny. It should never be 
 forgotten that Coligny's monument was erected as the result of the 
 persevering and most unwearied efforts of that late great preacher, 
 Eugene Bersier. So long as that statue stands, it will be impos- 
 sible to question the patriotism of the French Protestants.
 
 41 
 
 heralded the coming of a day in which he was not 
 permitted to enter fully. His name was Lefevre 
 d'Etaples, born in 1435, only four years after the 
 death of Jeanne d'Arc, and sixteen years after 
 that of John Huss. He became one of the great 
 humanists of his time, and a devout student of the 
 Scriptures. In 1512 he published a Latin trans- 
 lation of Paul's Epistles from the Greek, with a 
 commentary. In 1523 his French New Testa- 
 ment was printed. Nine months after its first 
 publication, that New Testament had gone 
 through four editions. In one of his Prefaces 
 the good man wrote : 
 
 " The time will soon come when Christ will be 
 preached purely and without admixture of human 
 traditions, which is not the case now. O Gospel ! 
 Fountain that springs unto eternal life, when wilt 
 thou reign in all thy purity ? When will Christ 
 be all and in all ? When will the one study, the 
 one comfort, the one desire of every one be the 
 knowledge and the universal progress of the 
 Gospel ? When will all be firmly persuaded, as 
 our fathers were, that the primitive Church, 
 clothed in martyrs' blood, had understood that to 
 know nothing but the Gospel, is to know every- 
 thing?" 1 
 
 "From 1509 to 1541," says M. Lortsch, "there 
 appeared thirty-six editions of the Scriptures 
 
 1 This quotation and much in this chapter is borrowed from the 
 excellent work by Pasteur D. Lortsch, Histoire de la Bible en 
 France.
 
 42 THE SOUL OP FRANCE 
 
 translated by Lefevre ; one of Paul's Epistles (in 
 Latin) ; one of the Pentateuch ; six of the Psalter ; 
 twenty-three of the New Testament, two of the 
 Old, three of the whole Bible ; other editions 
 followed." 
 
 Robert Olive" tan was a cousin of Jean Calvin, 
 whom he initiated in the Reformation. " That, 
 by itself," says Professor Emile Doumergue, 
 "would deserve for him our imperishable grati- 
 tude." He was the first to write a complete 
 translation of the Bible from the original tongues. 
 
 It is most remarkable that Olive" tan's translation 
 was prepared at the request, and printed at the 
 expense, of the Waldensian Church of the Alps, 
 which, as the reader remembers, was a fruit of the 
 labours of Pierre Valdo. That same translation 
 was the basis of Ostervald's work, which, with 
 frequent revisions and alterations, is the most 
 largely used in the French churches to-day. If 
 this be not true apostolic succession, where shall 
 we find it ? 
 
 The book found its way everywhere. It was 
 devoutly read by Marguerite de Navarre, sister 
 of Francis I., and by the king himself. A non- 
 Protestant writer, M. Lenient, says : " Side by 
 side with the preachers, the invincible army of 
 the colporteurs was organized. A missionary of 
 a new sort, the colporteur followed the course of 
 the Rhine. . . . On the French side, he stopped 
 first at Lyons, first stage of the Reformation ; 
 thence he radiated into Burgundy and Cham-
 
 43 
 
 pagne, right to the gates of Paris. By the long 
 valley where the ashes of Cabrieres and Me'rindol 
 were still smoking, 1 he entered into the heart of 
 the southern country, in the CeVennes gorges, in 
 the cities of Nimes and Montpellier. Indefatig- 
 able, tramping with his knapsack on his back, or 
 ambling by the side of his mule, he entered castles, 
 hostels, cottages, an apostle and a preacher all in 
 one, selling and expounding the Word of God, 
 alluring the ignorant, as well as the clever, by the 
 attraction of the engravings, and also by the 
 forbidden character of his books. That clandes- 
 tine propaganda was immensely effective." 
 
 Even members of the nobility and men of 
 culture became colporteurs in order to scatter the 
 Word of God. " They did not think," says M. 
 Matthieu Lelievre, " that they were derogating 
 in burdening their shoulders with the knapsack. 
 There were shoemakers, but also gentlemen, 
 among the colporteurs. Faith and zeal made all 
 social conditions equal." 
 
 "Scholars and noblemen," says Calvin, "dis- 
 guise themselves as colporteurs, and under shadow 
 of selling their goods, offer to all faithful the 
 weapons needed for the holy fight of faith. They 
 go all over the kingdom, selling and explaining 
 
 1 Cabrieres and Merindol, two villages of Provence which had 
 been settled by Waldenses who had fled there for refuge, and 
 which were utterly destroyed and their inhabitants murdered by 
 the sanguinary Baron d'Oppede. These villages, however, were 
 rebuilt, and are even now inhabited by a majority of Protestant 
 people.
 
 44 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 the Gospel." It should be remembered that any 
 one caught at this contraband work was doomed 
 to death. In 1528, twelve noblemen of the 
 diocese of ChambeVy were beheaded for having 
 thus scattered the Scriptures. " Nevertheless," 
 wrote the bishop after their execution, "there is 
 no lack of babblers who go on reading those 
 books, and who will not sell them for any amount 
 of money." Merle-d'Aubign^ mentions Queen 
 Marguerite de Navarre among the propagators of 
 the book. " Having fled from palaces and cities 
 where the persecuting spirit of Rome and of the 
 Parliament 1 was raging, she applied herself in- 
 tensely to give a new impulse to the Evangelical 
 movement in the South. Her activity was tire- 
 less. She sent colporteurs who insinuated them- 
 selves in houses, and who, under pretext of 
 selling jewels to the ladies, offered them New 
 Testaments printed in fine type, with red linings, 
 bound in calf and gilded on the edges. The sight 
 of those fine books incited them to read them." 
 
 Some of those colporteurs were wealthy, as for 
 instance Etienne de la Forge, who lived in Rue 
 Saint- Martin, Paris. He was a friend of Calvin 
 and Farel. He printed the Gospel at his own 
 expense, and distributed it among the poor, whom 
 he helped also with his alms. He was hanged, 
 and his body burnt, in 1534. 
 
 1 This name should not mislead the English reader. The French 
 Parliaments, or Parlements, of which there was one in most large 
 cities, were courts of justice, not representative assemblies.
 
 REFORMATION AND HOLY SCRIPTURES 45 
 
 One must refrain from quoting much more, 
 though the subject is most thrilling for lovers of 
 the Bible, as I hope my readers are, or will begin 
 to be. For what book has ever created such 
 enthusiasm ? We must be permitted another 
 quotation, which we borrow from M. Matthieu 
 Lelievre : l 
 
 "In the city of Avignon, which belonged to 
 the Pope, the Bible was not better treated. . . . 
 One day, after dinner, some prelates were idling 
 about in the company of women of doubtful 
 character. After having purchased for them 
 some pictures and portraits which Crespin calls 
 'dishonest,' their attention was attracted by the 
 window of a small merchant, who had recently 
 settled in Avignon ; he had exposed for sale 
 some Latin and French Bibles. The prelates 
 expressed their astonishment : ' Who has made 
 you so bold,' they said to him, ' as to advertise 
 such goods in this city ? Do you not know that 
 those books are forbidden ? ' The bookseller, 
 without losing his balance, replied, ' Is not the 
 Holy Bible as good, at least, as those pretty 
 images and pictures you have bought for these 
 ladies?' He had hardly spoken, when the 
 Bishop of Aix, who was one of the prelates 
 thus taken to task, cried out : ' I am willing to 
 lose my share of Paradise if this man be not a 
 Lutheran ! ' He was not making a mistake in 
 
 1 Portraits et Rtcits Huguenots, par Matthieu Lelievre (pp. 
 274-282).
 
 46 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 concluding that where the Bible and moral purity 
 were together, there was true evidence of Pro- 
 testantism. . . . The poor man was at once 
 arrested and sent to prison. 
 
 " On the next day he was brought before the 
 judges, in the presence of the bishops, and 
 questioned. Among his words were these : ' You 
 of Avignon, are you alone in all Christendom to 
 be in dread of the Testament of our Heavenly 
 Father? And why will you forbid that the 
 instrument and authentic letters of God's salva- 
 tion should be everywhere published and heard ? 
 Will you prevent that which Jesus Christ has 
 given power to His holy apostles to publish in 
 every tongue, so that the Holy Gospel should 
 be taught to every creature ? Why do you not 
 forbid, rather, those books and pictures which 
 are dishonest, or even blasphemous, and which 
 incite men to evil deeds and despite of 
 God?' 
 
 " The indomitable fidelity of the bookseller, his 
 refusal to make amends to the prelates, to whom 
 he declared that they were priests of Bacchus and 
 Venus rather than true shepherds of the Church 
 of Christ, sealed his doom; he was sent to the 
 stake on the same day. And, in order to make 
 quite plain the cause of his condemnation, two 
 Bibles were hung to his neck, one in front and 
 one behind. 'These,' says quaint Crespin, 'were 
 not false ensigns, for truly the poor bookseller 
 had the Word of God in his heart and in his
 
 REFORMATION AND HOLY SCRIPTURES 47 
 
 mouth, and he never ceased, on the road to the 
 scaffold and on the dying spot, to exhort and 
 admonish the people to read Holy Scriptures, so 
 that several were moved to inquire after the 
 truth.' " 1 
 
 From such facts as this (and it would be easy to 
 quote scores of such) may we not rightly infer 
 that the soul of France was in those days power- 
 fully influenced by the Gospel ? For, with due 
 regard to the baptism of the Spirit which those 
 martyrs had received, and which enabled them to 
 face everything, do not their assurance and bold- 
 ness, their confident appeals to the people against 
 their judges, show that they felt the heart of the 
 democracy to be with them ? 
 
 Yes, the heart of the people, at least in the 
 villages and smaller towns, was with them. But 
 not the hearts of the kings of the Valois family, 
 who reigned for nearly the whole of that century : 
 Francois I., the best of the number gay and 
 careless, chivalrous and generous ; Henri 11., 
 bigoted and immoral (how often those two quali- 
 ties appear together in men of that time !), 
 the husband of Catherine de Me"dicis, that un- 
 scrupulous and heartless woman whose memory 
 has gone down to posterity as that of a Jezebel ; 
 and their three sons who reigned successively, 
 none of them having any issue, Frangois n., the 
 boy-husband of Mary, Queen of Scots ; Charles ix., 
 
 1 Crespirfs Histoire des Martyrs. Crespin's book is for the 
 French Reformation what Knox's is for the English.
 
 48 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 who was responsible, with his mother, for the 
 St. Bartholomew massacre ; and, lastly, the in- 
 famous Henri in., who perished by the hand of 
 a fanatical monk, leaving the throne to his next 
 of kin, his remote cousin, Henri de Bourbon, 
 king of Navarre, who, at the time of Henri m.'s 
 death, was a Huguenot. 
 
 It has been the evil fortune of France that, at 
 the most pregnant period of her history, she was 
 ruled by an unworthy woman and her nefarious 
 sons. And yet, such was the power of the new 
 currents of life which then ran through Europe, 
 that a short time before the St. Bartholomew, 
 over two thousand Reformed communities had 
 been formed throughout France, almost twice as 
 many as there are to-day, though the population 
 was not one-half of what it is now. One-fourth, 
 perhaps, of the whole kingdom had become 
 Evangelical. The Psalms, translated into 
 French verse by the Court poet, Cldment Marot, 
 were sung to popular tunes, and might be heard 
 everywhere. Catherine de Me'dicis herself seems, 
 at one time, to have contemplated the necessity, in 
 order to keep her power, of granting full liberty to 
 the new faith. For she had to contend with a 
 strong party, more bigoted than herself, headed 
 by the Duke of Guise, and which, under the name 
 of the Holy League, and with the support of 
 Philip of Spain, aimed at no less than the over- 
 throw of the reigning family. It must be said 
 that the Paris populace was on the side of the
 
 REFORMATION AND HOLY SCRIPTURES 49 
 
 Ligueurs, and was savagely opposed to the 
 Evangelical faith. 
 
 It was in order to overcome that opposition, 
 and to pacify the country, that Henri of Navarre, 
 now become Henri iv., recanted from the Re- 
 formed religion, which he had professed at one 
 time with great zeal, though never with that 
 spiritual devotion which had been so marked in 
 his mother, Jeanne d'Albret. He remained, not- 
 withstanding his conversion, obnoxious to the 
 extreme Catholic party, and died by a Jesuit's 
 poignard in 1610. He had given the Edict of 
 toleration which is so celebrated in history as the 
 Edict of Nantes (1598), by which Protestants, 
 though not on equality with the Catholics, ob- 
 tained the right to worship under certain 
 restrictions. This the clergy could not for- 
 give. The Edict was never strictly observed, 
 and after long and numerous violations, was 
 finally abolished or revoked by King Louis xiv. 
 in 1685. 
 
 The recantation of King Henri iv. set an 
 example to a large number of lords and noblemen, 
 lawyers and upper-class merchants, who had 
 joined the new faith in the hope that it might 
 become that of the majority, but could not resolve 
 themselves into being the followers of a defeated 
 cause. Thus the Reformed Churches, which at 
 the beginning had numbered among their ad- 
 herents some of the highest names of the land, 
 were gradually reduced, with a few fine exceptions, 
 4
 
 50 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 to the peasantry and the common people. Even 
 then, however, the Evangelical cause remained 
 very important, both as to numbers and as to 
 moral and social influence. 
 
 And then began a screwing process. Year 
 after year the few liberties guaranteed by the 
 Edict of Nantes were reduced ; persecutions on 
 the slightest pretext were set up at the constant 
 instigation of the clergy ; many Reformed places 
 of worship were pulled down ; non-Catholics were 
 allowed to live on mere sufferance. Yet they 
 were the real soul of France, for the morality of 
 the nation would have sunk very low but for the 
 influence of the two millions of law-abiding, God- 
 fearing Huguenots. 
 
 These persecutions increased in such a manner 
 that the long-suffering people * finally resorted to 
 arms. Many have blamed them for this ; but 
 whatever view is entertained, the fact remains 
 that both in England and in France, as well as in 
 other countries, the present religious liberties are 
 the result of the revolt of the people against 
 tyrannical powers. Perhaps it would have been 
 more heroic to suffer and to die without resist- 
 ance ; but one must remember that all Huguenots 
 had not necessarily been "born again." Only 
 regenerate men could raise themselves to such 
 sublime heights. As for the others, " Let him 
 judge them who can, let him condemn who dares." 
 
 1 A proverbial saying of that period was : " Patience de 
 Huguenot."
 
 REFORMATION AND HOLY SCRIPTURES 51 
 
 It must be remembered, too, that the notion of 
 separation between Church and State, between 
 the temporal and the spiritual, is wholly modern. 
 The Huguenots, like the English Puritans, were 
 imbued with the spirit and ideas of Old Testa- 
 ment theocracy. They had some good and great 
 preachers, such as Claude, Daille", Jurieu, Basnage; 
 but the wooing note was rare in the sermons of 
 that time. They preached the law with greater 
 zest than the Gospel. To be a loyal Protestant 
 was, by the so-called " faithful," considered the 
 main thing. They had the fear of God, more than 
 the spirit of joyous Christian liberty. 
 
 Such as they were, none were better than they 
 in their time, and they were the salt of the earth.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE REVOCATION 
 
 WE now come to the greatest catastrophe 
 that ever befell the soul of France, and 
 in which she was well-nigh wounded to death : 
 we refer to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. 
 
 If the reader ever has the opportunity, in 
 happier times, to visit the royal castle of Fon- 
 tainebleau, so romantically situated in the heart 
 of the beautiful forest of that name, let him linger 
 a while in the small and dark sitting-room which 
 was Madame de Maintenon's private apartment. 
 Here, on October 17, 1685, Louis xiv. by a 
 stroke of his pen gave the greatest blow to the 
 fortunes of France that she had ever suffered. 
 And at the same time he signed, all unconsciously, 
 the death-warrant of his own dynasty, when 
 signing the Revocation, mainly, but not wholly, 
 at the instigation of his morganatic wife, Jeanne 
 d'Aubigne", Marquise de Maintenon. 
 
 It is dramatic to realize that this woman had 
 been born and brought up in the Reformed faith. 
 Her grandfather was the celebrated poet and 
 soldier, Agrippa d'Aubigne", one of the noblest 
 
 characters of France and of the Reformation. 
 
 52
 
 THE REVOCATION 53 
 
 But her father lived and died in ignoble fashion. 
 There are few instances in feminine history of 
 fortunes similar to those of Jeanne d'Aubigne", 
 who, from being the widow of a cripple, Scarron, 
 rose by intrigue and complacency with Madame 
 de Montespan, whose illegitimate children were 
 confided to her care, to be, finally, the secret 
 spouse of Louis xiv. and his occult adviser, 
 especially in religious affairs. 
 
 As already intimated, the Revocation had 
 in reality begun long before this fateful date. 
 On the slightest pretexts, ministers had been 
 fined and imprisoned ; in later years, places of 
 worship had been pulled down. Large sums of 
 money had been shamelessly spent in buying so- 
 called "conversions." The Dragonnades had 
 begun in 1681. 
 
 Here appears the utter immorality of the whole- 
 sale so-called conversion of hundreds of thousands 
 by physical compulsion. This has contributed 
 more than anything else to the deterioration of 
 the popular conscience in all countries where this 
 compulsion has been practised ; and to that 
 indifference in religious matters which prevailed 
 in the two following centuries. The Church was 
 the great teacher of unbelief, by the very fact that 
 she lowered religion to the level of a temporal, 
 political interest. 
 
 God sometimes allows evil to have its full 
 course. The execrable policy nearly succeeded. 
 French Protestantism was not altogether stamped
 
 54 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 out, but it ceased to be a growing and influential 
 cause in its native land, while it became a factor 
 of progress and prosperity in many lands. 
 
 Given a Wesley or a Whiteneld to set ablaze 
 the true Gospel spirit in their midst, the two 
 millions of Reformed Christians who existed in 
 France before the Revocation (on a total popula- 
 tion of almost twenty millions) might have shaped 
 the history of France in a quite different way. 
 Who can tell what mistakes might have been 
 spared to this noble country ; what bloody ex- 
 periments, such as the Reign of Terror, she might 
 have escaped ? And what a part she would have 
 played in the greater work of the world's evangel- 
 ization ! As to this, however, there is still reason 
 to hope. We have a sort of intuition that a new 
 Gospel day is about to rise for France, and that 
 her greatest achievements as a civilizing power 
 have only begun. 
 
 The light was nearly quenched, but not alto- 
 gether. True, the majority of the Huguenots 
 sullenly submitted to what seemed the inevitable ; 
 those, especially, who lived in cities, or held large 
 property. Nearly all the nobility which, so far, 
 had held fast, gave way ; so did the financiers, 
 the State functionaries, the lawyers. So did, alas ! 
 a number of ministers. Of the latter, those who 
 did not apostatize fled with their families to more 
 hospitable lands, especially to Holland, which 
 became, before and after the Revocation, the 
 great " refuge," as the native Church was
 
 THE REVOCATION 55 
 
 Calvinistic, and therefore more congenial to the 
 refugees than either the Lutheran Church or the 
 Church of England. Many also indeed, tens of 
 thousands fled to Switzerland. The population 
 of Geneva, for instance, increased by one-fourth 
 on account of the influx of the emigrants. Large 
 numbers settled in London and also in Kent. 
 Canterbury was full of them. The walls of the 
 crypt in Canterbury Cathedral still testify to the 
 presence, at that time, of the weavers' looms 
 which, for want of room elsewhere, had been set 
 up in those gloomy recesses. To this day French 
 services are held in that same crypt. 
 
 Some went as far as the Cape of Good Hope, 
 where they mixed with the Dutch settlers, giving 
 rise to the sturdy race of the Boers. 
 
 Imagine a country deprived at once of the 
 thirtieth part of its population (as nearly as one 
 is able to guess), and that not the refuse, but the 
 best, morally and materially ! First in commerce, 
 in agriculture, in arts ; first in learning ; above all, 
 first in right-thinking and right-living : such were 
 the Huguenots. " The consequences (of the 
 Revocation) were shocking. The general level 
 of public morality seemed to become lower. The 
 mutual control of the two parties having ceased 
 to exist, hypocrisy became more needful ; the 
 hidden evils of conduct became apparent. This 
 immense inheritance of people who, while still alive, 
 were treated as dead, became a prey. The king 
 was throwing it through the windows ; people.
 
 56 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 rushed to pick it up. Ignoble scene. What 
 remained, for a whole century, was the existence 
 of a people of outcasts (not much more than one 
 million) living under the terror, under the law 
 of suspects." 1 
 
 It is not in the scope of this work to give 
 lengthy details of the sufferings of those French- 
 men who, for conscience' sake, abandoned their 
 country, selling their property for a mere song 
 to be more precise, giving a house for a horse on 
 which to place their little ones ; paying enormous 
 sums to the guides who undertook to pass them 
 through the frontiers, emigration being for- 
 bidden, or spending days and nights in exposure 
 on the Channel, aboard some little craft manned 
 by oarsmen. But what joy, mingled with sorrow, 
 when at last they reached the friendly shore ! 
 They had to learn a foreign speech ; to get 
 accustomed to new and, to them, strange ways 
 of living ; to find their pittance by all sorts of 
 occupations ; they who had been in affluence and 
 were looked up to by their countrymen, had now 
 to eat the bread of exile, always so hard and 
 bitter. . . . But all was forgotten in the newly- 
 found privilege of worshipping God freely, of 
 associating with their brethren without fear of 
 molestation, of being able to rear and train their 
 children in their own beloved faith. And many 
 of them lived in the hope, which was not to be 
 
 1 J. Michelet, Louis Xiv, et la, Revocation de FEdit de Nantes, 
 Preface.
 
 THE REVOCATION 57 
 
 realized, of seeing France open her arms to them, 
 bidding them to return. . . . 
 
 The number of those who were able to flee has 
 been variously estimated. It can hardly have 
 been less than half a million, and probably was 
 more. Whole cities were depopulated, and also 
 districts. 1 
 
 As a sample of the sort of men these exiles 
 were, we shall quote the following story from 
 the book recently published by Pasteur Matthieu 
 Lelievre : 2 
 
 " Nothing is more touching than the tale of 
 that good middle-class man (his name was Jean 
 Nissolle, of Ganges), who left everything, goods 
 and family, and went into exile in order to keep 
 faithful to his God ; he reminds us of Christian, 
 
 1 We cannot, without emotion, even after many years, recall a 
 visit to the United States, and the reception which on that occa- 
 sion was offered to us, as one of a deputation from France, in the 
 city of Washington. As we were standing by the host, shaking 
 hands with the kind visitors, the flower of the Churches and of 
 the Christian society of the Capitol city, they would, one after 
 another, whisper with a smile : " I have come from Huguenot 
 ancestry " ; and they gave us the names of those ancestors who, 
 two hundred years before, had arrived, in most cases, penniless, 
 in that land of refuge. In the course of the same trip, after a 
 lecture to college students in some little town of Virginia, an old 
 gentleman who had been invited to attend, approached us : " Sir, 
 said he, " we are proud to have in this neighbourhood a number 
 of old Huguenot families. They are the best people to be found 
 in this country. When any one of their young men asks for one 
 of our daughters in marriage, we need not make inquiries as to his 
 moral character ; his Huguenot blood answers for him ; there has 
 never been a case when it was not all right ! " 
 
 2 De la Revocation d la Revolution, p. 145.
 
 58 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 the hero of Bunyan, fleeing from the City of 
 Destruction without heeding the entreaties of his 
 wife, children and friends. 
 
 " His wife and relatives, who, when the 
 dragoons had arrived, had been promptly running 
 to sign the act of abjuration, tried to persuade 
 him to do as they had done. They urged on 
 him that his flight would leave without any 
 consolation the sick whom he was in the habit 
 of visiting ; that it was merely a matter of form, 
 which would satisfy the priest, who would not 
 require any further act of catholicity. Shaken 
 for a moment, he fell on his knees to ask for 
 God's counsel. ' The good God, he says, heard 
 me at once. He filled my heart with a true and 
 solid joy ; He caused me to taste the sweetest 
 tokens of His love and grace ; He strengthened 
 my faith, revived my hope, and so fortified my 
 resolve to suffer anything rather than to forsake 
 His holy religion, that the most dreadful ordeals 
 could not have shaken me. Thus it is ever 
 that God makes Himself felt and found by those 
 who seek Him with all their hearts.' 
 
 " One cannot read without emotion the account 
 of the numerous deliverances of which he was 
 the object. In the midst of perils of every kind, 
 his only recourse was in God, and he supported 
 his soul by prayer. ' God, says he, kept me 
 company to the end, and led me as by the hand.' 
 He arrived in Geneva on Thursday, May 15, 
 1678, just in time to attenc} service in the.
 
 THE REVOCATION 59 
 
 cathedral of St. Peter (which, ever since the 
 Reformation, has been used for Protestant 
 worship). ' It was then that my soul was trans- 
 ported with joy and ravishments which can neither 
 be expressed nor even understood, except by 
 those to whom God has granted the same grace. 
 I thanked that great God with all my heart 
 for the peculiar help with which He had favoured 
 me, in bringing me to a land where one could 
 serve Him without fear and in perfect freedom.' ' 
 
 What became of his wife and friends we do 
 not know. How literal in this case and in 
 thousands of others was the obedience to our 
 Lord's command, which only redeemed souls, 
 filled with supernatural power, could thus carry 
 out : "He that loveth father or mother more 
 than Me is not worthy of Me ; and he that loveth 
 son or daughter more than Me is not worthy 
 of Me." 
 
 But what of those who remained ? Most of 
 them recanted outwardly, while secretly retaining 
 their attachment to the Bible; some attending 
 forbidden meetings in the dead of night, and 
 hoping and praying for better times. Those 
 better times came indeed, but only a hundred 
 years afterwards, at the Revolution of 1789. 
 Many, in the first generation, contrived to lead, 
 as it were, two lives, Protestants at heart, Romish 
 in outward performance. But the second genera- 
 tion, and still more the third, were for ever 
 estranged from the Gospel. Some even became
 
 60 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 strict Romanists. As to the great bulk, they 
 fell into scepticism. Some of the most brilliant 
 philosophers and litterateurs of the eighteenth 
 century, such as Jean- Jacques Rousseau and 
 Beaumarchais, had Protestant fathers. Among 
 the Court ladies who gave to the Re"gence its 
 reputation for corrupt elegance, were the daughters 
 of some of those noblemen who had bought the 
 maintenance of their estates and honours at the 
 cost of their consciences. 
 
 One should have expected that the highest 
 and apparently spiritually-minded authorities of 
 the Church, Bossuet and Fe"nelon, for instance, 
 would have protested against the shallowness 
 and insincerity of the pretended "conversions." 
 But while they did something towards instructing 
 their unwilling penitents, they did not blame the 
 means which had been used to bring them to 
 the fold. There is no doubt that the strong and 
 tenacious hold that infidelity had on the French 
 mind during the eighteenth and nineteenth 
 centuries, was the direct outcome of this violation 
 of conscience. How can the Church, even to- 
 day, complain with fairness of the abandonment 
 of religion by the masses ? She herself is to 
 blame ; she desecrated the human soul, by exact- 
 ing spiritual obedience through the fear of physical 
 punishment. 
 
 Let it not be supposed, however, that the 
 Revocation annihilated the soul of France, or 
 that it emigrated to foreign lands, If many left
 
 THE REVOCATION 61 
 
 the country, and if many more committed a sort 
 of spiritual suicide, a remnant, a glorious remnant, 
 refused either to emigrate or recant. And al- 
 though their number was small, and their station 
 in life for the most part lowly, yet it is not an 
 exaggeration to say that their fidelity to God, to 
 Christ and to the Bible saved the French Church, 
 and even saved France. 
 
 After the ministers had fled to Holland and 
 other foreign parts, God raised up men of the 
 people, labourers and mechanics, who gathered 
 with their brethren in secret places by night, 
 and, as well as they could, filled the duties which 
 the departed ministers had left vacant. In the 
 south especially, where Huguenots were far more 
 numerous than in other parts of the country, 
 these meetings were frequent and largely attended ; 
 sometimes two or three thousand people, or more, 
 would assemble in a secluded spot an open space 
 in the forest, a deep ravine, a large cave, or some 
 mountain top, from which it could be easy to 
 see the soldiers at a long distance. There they 
 would sing their psalms and pray with passionate 
 tears ; then listen how intently ! to the im- 
 promptu exhortations of their brethren, some of 
 whom had real gifts of oratory and a deep 
 knowledge of the Bible. In those services the 
 "preachers of the wilderness," as they were 
 called, never failed to pray for the king. The 
 most pathetic expressions of loyalty to him who 
 had stolen their children from them, issued from
 
 62 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 the mouths of those heroic confessors of the 
 faith. 
 
 The penalties for attending those meetings 
 were death by the rope for the preachers, and 
 for the laymen, galleys for life. The women and 
 girls were sentenced to perpetual imprisonment.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE SOUL OF FRANCE ON THE GALLEYS 
 
 IF the soul of a nation lies in what is best in 
 that nation, if, according to our Lord's 
 declaration, the real possessors of the earth are 
 the meek, those who suffer for righteousness' 
 sake, then it is true, as Michelet has perceived it, 
 " that all true nobility, all true morality, had been 
 driven to the galleys and found there its refuge." 
 
 It is to be regretted that the remembrance of 
 our martyrs has been allowed to grow dim in our 
 Churches and in our young people's societies. 
 The younger members of our families have been 
 allowed to feed their imaginations with shallow 
 stories, while they remained in deep ignorance 
 as to the great and noble lives of their spiritual 
 ancestors. What tales of adventure and heroism 
 might we find in all literature, more thrilling than 
 the true records of those who, in France, in 
 England and elsewhere, have suffered for Christ's 
 sake ? 
 
 A better acquaintance with those sacred 
 memories would greatly benefit the Christian 
 Church of our day. While the Roman and 
 Greek Churches hold up constantly before their
 
 64 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 followers the glories and merits of their " saints," 
 so many of whom were spurious, we have fallen 
 into neglect and disregard of our own. We 
 know full well that no martyr, however sublime, 
 should take our eyes away from the solitary 
 splendour of the Cross of Christ. But is there 
 not the danger of falling into the other extreme ? 
 Is not the "cloud of witnesses " set before us in 
 the Scriptures that we, by their example, should 
 be better able to " look unto Jesus " ? 
 
 A great mistake of modern Christianity, as it 
 seems to us, has been to try to induce men to 
 come to Christ mainly by the attractions of 
 prosperity and temporal blessing. It is true that, 
 generally speaking, the Gospel brings to a man 
 whose life has become clean, temporal advantages 
 which are denied to those who live in gross sin. 
 But the present war is bringing out one of the 
 most mysterious laws of our nature, viz. that 
 suffering for a great cause is a source of austere 
 joy, and even of exultation ; and that men will be 
 attracted by the very risks and losses to be in- 
 curred, more than by motives of interest, when 
 fighting for some worthy object. May it not be 
 that one of the reasons which account for the 
 sense of staleness which has attached to much of 
 present day " piety," has been, that there is very 
 little cross-bearing attached to it ? 
 
 After all, while it is true that saints are not to 
 be worshipped, it is true also that real worship 
 is inseparable from " the communion of saints " ;
 
 ON THE GALLEYS 65 
 
 nor should we limit that communion to the 
 saints on earth only. The genuine saints, 
 those who lived in the early centuries, are the 
 common property of all Christendom ; they 
 belong to us also. And we have, besides, the 
 martyrs that Rome has made. In the annals of 
 early persecutions there are few characters that 
 outpass in beauty such men as Latimer, Cranmer, 
 Ridley, or Anne du Bourg, Coligny, Claude 
 Brousson, though we do not put the word 
 "saint" before their names. And what of those 
 of whom we shall now speak, the galley-slaves, 
 with whom, truly, was the real soul of France ? 
 
 The number of the men who were sent to the 
 galleys because they refused to renounce "the 
 heresy of Luther and Calvin " must have reached 
 2500. Of these, the names of 2224 have been 
 found. The last of these " convicts for the faith " 
 were freed in the year 1775, only fourteen years 
 before the great Revolution. 
 
 In every case the sentence was for life. Other 
 galley-slaves (galdriens, in French) were not all 
 detained till their death. Many of them served 
 for a limited number of years, the others even 
 the rogues and murderers of the worst type 
 might be pardoned for good behaviour, especially 
 in battle. It was the rule to liberate those who 
 had been severely wounded in action. But the 
 rule was never applied in the case of Huguenots. 
 Once chained to their oar and to their bench, 
 they had to live and die there, unless they con- 
 5
 
 66 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 sented to recant. And that was made very easy 
 for them : if they only took off their bonnets 
 while Mass was being said on the ship, that was 
 considered as an act of conformity, and very little 
 more was required. The number who availed 
 themselves of such facilities was small. Most 
 of the confessors died in the galley-hospital 
 at Marseilles, the port which was the main head- 
 quarters of the Royal Navy in that time. 
 
 The galleys were war-vessels manned by oars- 
 men. Two hundred and fifty of them were 
 usually needed for one galley. Each oar was 
 served by six convicts. They were bound to 
 their benches by a chain riveted to one of their 
 legs. There they remained, night and day, 
 summer or winter. When the galley was in 
 motion, the work of the oars, each of which was 
 fifty feet long, was extremely exhausting ; and at 
 the least sign of weakening the petty officers, or 
 comites, who had the oversight of the gang, 
 struck with a rope, or an ox-nerve, the bare 
 backs of the gaUriens. In time of war, in 
 attack or retreat, blows were dealt liberally to 
 stimulate the unhappy convicts. Though they 
 were non-combatants, they were more exposed 
 than others to the artillery of the enemy. 
 
 Death on the scaffold would have been a 
 lighter sentence than this slow dying. Think of 
 this : Men of culture, many of them, and in every 
 case men of superior morality, having to spend 
 their lives in the roughest of occupations, and in
 
 ON THE GALLEYS 67 
 
 the utter absence of every comfort, without any 
 privacy, constantly exposed to the insults of their 
 tormentors and to the gibes of their companions, 
 who, though chained to the same infamous bench, 
 were courting the favour of the Romish authori- 
 ties and chaplains by adding new sufferings to 
 those of their Huguenot comrades. 
 
 In order to get to those floating hells, the 
 newly sentenced convicts had to travel through 
 the country on foot, in gangs or chatnes, tramp- 
 ing day after day, sometimes for weeks and even 
 months, according to the distance they had to 
 cover from the place of their condemnation to 
 the port of Marseilles. 
 
 "Jean Marteilhe, who travelled thus from 
 Dunkirk to Marseilles by way of Le Havre, gives 
 (in his Memoirs) painfully realistic details of the 
 cruel treatment to which he and his companions 
 were subjected. He says that he suffered more 
 during that long journey than during the twelve 
 years he spent on the galleys. That which, 
 perhaps, was even more painful than the endless 
 marching through France, was the night halts in 
 damp and infectious dungeons, or on the hard 
 soil, or in filthy stables. Nothing equals the 
 horror of his description of the depot of La 
 Tournelle, in Paris, where ' the chain ' was pro- 
 visionally stationed (until it was made complete). 
 
 " Louis de Marolles, a distinguished nobleman, 
 a magistrate and king's counsellor, a true and 
 humble servant of Christ, tried to flee from
 
 68 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 France at the Revocation, but was arrested near 
 Strasbourg, taken to Chalons, and there sen- 
 tenced, on March 9, 1686, 'to serve for life on 
 the king's galleys.' The sentence was confirmed 
 by the higher courts in Paris. The magistrates, 
 pitying one of their own fraternity, tried to induce 
 their prisoner to recant, or, at least, to consent to 
 spend a few months under the tuition of the 
 celebrated Bishop of Meaux, Bossuet, hoping that 
 the honour of being catechized by the most illus- 
 trious bishop of France would win him. But he 
 replied that no one could ever induce him to alter 
 his convictions. . . . 
 
 " When all hope to convert him had to be 
 given up, he was treated most rigorously. The 
 governor of the Tournelle prison, where he was 
 sent to await the departure of the 'chain,' had 
 merely fettered him by the foot, but an express 
 order from the king came, that the iron collar 
 should be put round his neck. ' I am expecting 
 from God's mercy,' he wrote to his sister-in-law, 
 ' strength and constancy to suffer for His glory 
 and for my salvation. Do not grieve on my 
 account ; I am happier than you think.' In a 
 letter which he wrote at the same time to the 
 Protestant minister, Jurieu, he thus concluded the 
 account of his sufferings : ' This, sir, is the sum 
 of my misery, or, to speak more truly, of my 
 glory, for I give thanks to God every day for the 
 honour He vouchsafes to me, not esteeming me 
 unworthy to suffer for His Name's sake.'
 
 ON THE GALLEYS 69 
 
 "In another letter he wrote : ' I can tell you 
 with sincerity that the prisons and dark cells 
 which I have endured for more than six months, 
 and the chain which I now wear round my neck, 
 far from shaking the holy resolve which God has 
 put into my heart, have only made it firmer. I 
 have sought God, in this time of my sufferings, 
 in a way very different than I did during my 
 worldly prosperity, and I can say that He has 
 permitted me to find Him. 1 He has agreeably 
 communicated Himself to me by the sweetness 
 of His consolations. In the midst of the transi- 
 tory afflictions which I am undergoing by His 
 good pleasure, He has caused me to taste the 
 true and solid blessings. The ills I am threatened 
 with do not frighten me : if they be violent, I 
 shall not be able to bear them very long, and 
 thus a Christian death will put a happy ending to 
 them ; and if they are bearable, I shall have 
 occasion to bless God on that account, and He 
 will continue His sweetness and benignity to 
 me. . . .' 
 
 "When the chain was leaving Paris, a great 
 many people went to see it start. Among them, 
 1 new converts ' might be seen, who, with eyes 
 full of tears, looked on their suffering brethren, 
 
 1 This seems to imply that, before he was a sufferer for Christ's 
 sake, Marolles had been a true Huguenot with the fear of God in 
 his heart, but without the full realization of His grace. In some 
 cases, Huguenots have testified that their sufferings were the 
 means of bringing them into complete assurance of salvation. 
 R. S.
 
 who had been more faithful than themselves. ' A 
 great many people of the Reformed faith,' says 
 Marteilhe, ' stood in the streets through which 
 the chain was passing, and in spite of our archers' 
 rough rebukes, threw themselves upon us and 
 embraced us. ... These good people, of whom 
 many were of distinction, shouted to us : Be of 
 good courage, dear confessors of the truth ; suffer 
 with fortitude for so good a cause, while we, 
 without ceasing, shall pray to God that He may 
 give you grace to endure your hard sufferings, 
 and other words to the same effect, most comfort- 
 ing to us.' 
 
 " The admirable constancy of Louis de Marolles 
 brought even a Roman Catholic to embrace the 
 faith which produced such heroism. Piercing 
 through the crowd when the chain was leaving the 
 prison, he came to him and hugged him, en- 
 couraging him and offering him his purse. A 
 while after, the man gave glory to God, and 
 emigrated to London with his family in order to 
 profess the truth. 
 
 "As they walked through the cities, the 
 galdriens sometimes received alms from the 
 passers-by. Jean Chapel, a lay-preacher, says : 
 4 We were marched through the streets of 
 Bordeaux to gather charities. My comrades 
 sang litanies, but I sang Psalms, with full voice. 
 The Jesuit priests who accompanied us forbade 
 me instantly, but, nevertheless, I sang on. . . .' 
 
 " The old Baron de Montbeton (of an illustrious
 
 ON THE GALLEYS 71 
 
 family), sentenced in 1687, celebrated his convict's 
 chain in verse : 
 
 " ' Some charitable ladies, he says, filled with 
 sorrow as they saw me bound to ninety and nine 
 convicts, were bathing my irons with their tears. 
 To comfort them I said : 
 
 " How blessed is the chain 
 That binds me to my God ! 
 There's no sorrow nor pain 
 But will at the Great Day 
 To sweet pleasure be changed. 
 O happy destiny 
 Which fulfills my desire ! " l 
 
 The ladies said to me : "How happy you 
 are ! Your fetters do not seem heavy to you. 
 We should like to share your happiness ! " 
 
 "Thus," says M. Lelievre, from whose interest- 
 ing book we have borrowed these facts, "did our 
 fathers go to the galleys, singing and praising 
 God under blows which made their backs sore. 
 They were seen on the high roads of France 
 wearing the red jacket of convicts and the cap 
 of perpetual slavery, mixed with the lament- 
 able procession of criminals whom society had 
 ejected. By their solemn demeanour and the 
 
 1 " Be'nie soit la chaine 
 
 Qui m'attache a mon Dieu. 
 Je n'ai douleur ni peine 
 Qui, dans le Sacre Lieu, 
 Ne soit un jour change'e 
 En douceurs et plaisirs. 
 He reuse destinee, 
 Tu combles mes desirs ! "
 
 72 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 serenity of their looks, people recognized them 
 at once, and said : ' These are the Huguenots ! ' 
 which meant, in the mouths of some : ' These are 
 the reprobates, worthy of all tortures,' but in the 
 mouths of others : ' These are good people, martyrs 
 for conscience' sake, and worthier than their 
 persecutors.' That spectacle, renewed year after 
 year for three-quarters of a century, finally raised 
 up public indignation against a political regime 
 and against a Church which were authors or 
 accomplices of such infamous actions. The chain, 
 tramping slowly through towns and country, 
 exhibiting the good and the wicked bound to- 
 gether in such horrible promiscuity, hastened, 
 probably, far more than the writings of the philoso- 
 phers, that movement of minds and consciences 
 which gave rise to the French Revolution." 
 
 Let us now turn to the Huguenot women. 
 
 About twenty miles from the city of Nimes, 
 three miles from the Mediterranean shore, stands 
 the old town of Aigues-Mortes, so called on 
 account of the unhealthy swamps which sur- 
 rounded it up to recent times. The city was 
 built under King Louis ix. (Saint Louis) in the 
 thirteenth century. The King took ship from 
 the neighbouring harbour when he went on his 
 last crusade. But the walls of Aigues-Mortes 
 have never seen fight or siege, and stand to-day 
 just the same as they were in the days of chivalry, 
 a perfect specimen of mediaeval fortifications which
 
 ON THE GALLEYS 73 
 
 experts and artists come from great distances to 
 study and to admire. 
 
 There, in a huge tower which bore the pro- 
 phetic name of Tour de Constance, many holy 
 women have been imprisoned. Marie Durand, 
 the sister of a martyred minister, lived thirty- 
 six years in this dungeon, and was set at liberty 
 at last, in 1768, by the generosity of the Prince 
 de Beauvau, governor of the province. When 
 he came to inspect the prison, he was moved to 
 pity by the sight of the poor women who had 
 been so long buried alive under those dark 
 vaults, and he ordered that they should all be 
 at once released, without waiting for the king's 
 permission, which, probably, would have been 
 refused. 1 
 
 In the middle of the large circular room which 
 was occupied by the Huguenot women a room 
 the walls of which are fifteen feet thick, and 
 which is lighted only by narrow embrasures 
 there is, on the floor, an inscription which 
 evidently was engraved on the hard stone by a 
 weak and unpractised hand. The inscription 
 is scarcely readable, and to see it one has to 
 kneel down and to have a candle lighted, even 
 if it be on a fine summer day. This inscription 
 consists of a single word : Rtsister (Resist). It 
 is supposed that one of the women carved it, 
 
 1 The last execution of Protestant ministers took place in that 
 same year, 1768, at Toulouse, just twenty-one years before the 
 outbreak of the Revolution.
 
 ?4 THE SOUL OF PRANCE 
 
 perhaps with a needle (the tracing is so faint), 
 in order that her sisters might look at it after 
 she was gone, and thus be strengthened in their 
 resolve to endure. 
 
 Resist! Has not this motto of the holy 
 Huguenot women become the password of our 
 soldiers at Verdun to-day ? Is it not fair to say 
 that this one word expresses, more than any 
 single one we might choose, the real soul of 
 France ?
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 A GREAT SOUL: CLAUDE BROUSSON 
 
 IT is difficult to tear oneself away from those 
 terrible times, and from the admirable souls 
 who adorned the doctrines of the Gospel by their 
 fidelity and patience in suffering. 
 
 I want to set up before my readers one of the 
 finest characters that ever lived : a man who had 
 in him the fire of an apostle, and a love for God 
 which only the Holy Spirit could have produced ; 
 a man who worked only a few years, but, in 
 that short time, may be said to have saved 
 Evangelical Christianity in France ; and, by so 
 doing, though he never knew how great his 
 work was, really saved France herself: Claude 
 Brousson. 
 
 Claude Brousson was born in 1647, in the city 
 of Nimes, of godly parents, belonging to the 
 middle-class. From early infancy God had 
 given him devout feelings, and the love of His 
 Word, which, he says, he read most carefully. 
 After having finished good studies at Nimes he 
 passed the degree of Doctor at Law, and 
 practised as a barrister before the Cour mi-partie 
 of Castres. (The mi-partie courts were tribunals 
 
 75
 
 76 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 instituted by the Edict of Nantes for the purpose 
 of settling litigation between subjects belonging 
 to the two religions ; they were the only courts in 
 which Protestant magistrates might sit.) From 
 Castres, the court was removed, first to Castel- 
 naudary, and finally to Toulouse. During his 
 twenty years' practice, Brousson showed himself 
 a disinterested friend of the poor, and a fearless 
 defender of the Evangelical cause, which, year 
 after year, was being assailed and undermined by 
 the crafty policy of the King's ministers, until 
 the final blow came. 
 
 Having come to see that all legal efforts to main- 
 tain the right of public worship for the Reformed 
 were vain, Brousson and his friends resorted to 
 audacious measures. Sixteen laymen six of 
 whom represented Languedoc, and ten the 
 CeVennes, Vivarais and Dauphine" assembled 
 secretly at Toulouse, in Brousson's house. That 
 city being then the most Catholic of France, they 
 supposed rightly that their adversaries would 
 never suspect them of such rashness. Brousson 
 had only recently refused a councillor's seat in the 
 Toulouse Parliament a most distinguished and 
 lucrative position which had been offered to him 
 if he would "conform." 
 
 These sixteen men drew up a resolution which 
 it is worth while to read. It shows the courage 
 of the Huguenots, and also the depth of their 
 spiritual life. It bears the date of May 1683. 
 
 " i. All the ' faithful ' (this means all the
 
 A GREAT SOUL: CLAUDE BROUSSON 77 
 
 regular communicants) are exhorted to be con- 
 verted sincerely to God ; that is to say, they 
 should manifest in future, purity, sobriety, 
 modesty, humility, good faith, equity, love, piety 
 and zeal for the glory of God. 
 
 " 2. To this end, they shall diligently seek the 
 help of the Holy Spirit ... by reading and 
 constant meditation of the Scriptures. 
 
 " 3. The churches which have been interdicted 
 (i.e. those that had been pronounced as unlawful 
 by the Courts, under various pretexts) shall 
 reassemble on June 27, and even before, if 
 possible, to render to God worship and homage, 
 to sing His praises, and to implore His mercy ; 
 to provoke one another to godliness, to receive 
 Divine instruction, comforts and blessings ; to 
 celebrate the sacraments and to solemnize 
 marriages. 
 
 "4. There shall be no demonstrations on the 
 streets, no meetings on the ruins of our demolished 
 church-buildings. The meetings will take place 
 quietly in private houses (in those towns where 
 the meeting-houses have been pulled down) or 
 in gardens, woods and fields. 
 
 " 5. If our meetings, be they as secret as possible, 
 come to the notice of the King's court, be it 
 known that we have been prompted by our zeal 
 for the glory of God, and that our action corre- 
 sponds with a respectful request which we shall 
 send to the King, protesting that we are ready to 
 suffer every thing so that we may render to our
 
 78 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 great God the solemn worship which is due to 
 Him. That request to be sent on the above- 
 named day, June 27. 
 
 " 6. On Sunday, July 4, all the churches shall, 
 by God's grace, keep a solemn fast. 
 
 "7. In places where there are no ministers, 
 others shall be called from the neighbourhood ; 
 and where none shall be available, the elders or 
 deacons shall read the Word of God, prayers and 
 sermons." 1 
 
 Before they separated, the sixteen " Directors " 
 wrote, as mentioned above, a request to the 
 King, in which, with perfect moderation of tone, 
 they firmly maintained that Protestants found 
 themselves unable to reconcile his order with 
 the Divine commands, and that, therefore, there 
 was no alternative for them but to obey God 
 rather than the King. " Our meetings, Sire, do 
 not touch the fidelity which your suppliants owe 
 to your Majesty ; they are ready to sacrifice their 
 goods and their lives for your Majesty's service. 
 The same religion which compels them to 
 assemble in order to glorify God, teaches them 
 also that they can never free themselves, for 
 any reason whatever, from that loyalty which is 
 due to your Majesty by all his subjects. . . . 
 If the poor people (meaning the Huguenots) 
 are to be so unfortunate as to find no pity with 
 their august monarch, for whom they will ever 
 
 1 Haag, France protestante. There are other but less important 
 articles in that Declaration.
 
 A GREAT SOUL: CLAUDE BROUSSON 79 
 
 entertain a sincere and respectful love, a marked 
 veneration and an inviolable fidelity, they protest 
 in the face of heaven and earth that, with the 
 grace of God, in the interest of Whom they are 
 exposing themselves to so many disgraces, they 
 will continue to glorify Him in spite of the most 
 terrible calamities." 
 
 Does not this language show forth the true 
 heroism of faith ? 
 
 These Huguenots were not Republicans, though 
 their principles led (without their being well aware 
 of it) to fullest political liberty. Their expressions 
 jar with our modern language. But, dutiful 
 subjects though they were, even to the point of 
 exaggeration, one domain remained inviolate, 
 even by the King, though they acknowledged 
 him to be the master of their bodies. They 
 were Radicals on that single question : soul 
 liberty. 
 
 Claude Brousson was not an Oliver Cromwell ; 
 nor were the circumstances the same as in the 
 case of the English Puritans. But we cannot 
 believe that the stand which those " sixteen " took 
 on behalf of God's rights, against the greatest 
 potentate of their time, has been useless, nor that 
 their intense love for their country and their 
 passionate desire to see their nation led in the 
 ways of righteousness, have availed nothing. 
 
 The resolution of the sixteen of Toulouse 
 was partly carried out. In various places the 
 Huguenots assembled peacefully, as prescribed ;
 
 8o THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 at one of those meetings the local priest (cure") 
 was present, and honestly declared to the bishop 
 of Nlmes that "the minister had said nothing 
 which he himself could not have been responsible 
 for." But, in some parts, the Catholics took 
 alarm, and had recourse to arms. The result 
 was, in Dauphine* especially, a small civil war, in 
 which Brousson took no part. Finally, he con- 
 trived to make his escape to Switzerland, where 
 he heard that he had been condemned and even 
 hanged in effigy on July 3, 1684. A number of 
 executions of ministers and people followed, 
 which, alas ! were not all in effigy. 
 
 At Lausanne, where he had settled with his 
 wife and child, Brousson was internally eaten up 
 by the love of God's cause in France. His time 
 was spent, poor as he was, in writing letters on 
 behalf of the suffering churches, addressed to their 
 fellow-believers in other lands, and also letters to 
 the Romish clergy, showing them the purity of 
 the Reformed faith; these he sent by post to all 
 the priests and bishops of France whose names 
 he could procure. When, at last, the long- 
 expected blow fell, he was appointed as a mem- 
 ber of the Relief Committee which the foreign 
 churches entrusted with the care of the Huguenot 
 refugees ; he went in that capacity to Holland, in 
 order to seek protection and support for his un- 
 fortunate brethren. That mission took him six 
 months to fulfil, after which he returned to 
 Lausanne, and there resumed his task of writing.
 
 A GREAT SOUL: CLAUDE BROUSSON 81 
 
 Seven thousand individual packets of letters were 
 posted by him in the course of the years 1687 
 and 1688. 
 
 He also felt compelled to write to the French 
 pastors who had sought a refuge in Protestant 
 countries, admonishing them in rather severe 
 terms to return to their perishing flocks. It is 
 difficult for us who are enjoying full religious 
 liberty to judge the motives of those Reformed 
 ministers by far the majority who had emi- 
 grated. Had they remained, they would have 
 had to face death every day, in districts often full 
 of spies, and where hiding was well-nigh impos- 
 sible. In some cases, too, the laity were not very 
 anxious to retain among them a man whose 
 presence under their roof, if discovered, would 
 be sufficient to ruin them and to send them 
 to perpetual slavery. The ministers, therefore, 
 might find good excuses for having sought refuge 
 in other lands. But, on the other hand, the first 
 effects of the Revocation were somewhat abated 
 after two or three years ; the " new converts," as 
 they were called, had begun to look about them, 
 and cautiously returned to their worship. Even 
 in Paris there were Protestant meetings known 
 and tolerated by the police for a while, at the 
 back of a shop in Rue Monsieur le Prince. These 
 facts, in Brousson's view, made the ministers' 
 return more imperative. 
 
 "You should, my most honoured brethren," he 
 wrote, " consider whether your retirement is per- 
 6
 
 82 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 fectly justified with regard to your flocks. It is 
 true that, by suffering exile for the faith's sake, 
 you have become confessors ; in this you have 
 shown that you are among the faithful ones who 
 have left all for the Gospel. But as you are not 
 only believers, but also pastors, you should consider 
 whether you are fulfilling all the duties of your 
 holy calling. ... I am aware that nearly all who 
 were committed to your care have renounced the 
 truth. But you know, honoured brethren, that 
 it is persecution, and the terror which it spread 
 over their minds, which drew from their lips a 
 recantation which was against their own hearts. . . . 
 Now the storm is somewhat abated, and you may 
 hear every day that God is calling out other 
 preachers (lay preachers) to bring back the poor 
 wandering sheep. . . . The very fact that our 
 brethren are forbidden to leave France must 
 induce you to see that the God whose Providence 
 conducts everything, will not have His candlestick 
 removed from that Kingdom. . . . The peril is 
 great, but death is not absolutely inevitable. The 
 danger was not smaller at the beginning of the 
 Reformation, when, for the space of forty years, 
 so many preachers were burnt alive. The good 
 shepherd gives His life for his flock." 
 
 Yes, noble soul, you were right. God will not 
 have His candlestick removed from this country. 
 
 A few ministers, touched by these entreaties, 
 which a writer qualifies as being "tenderly piti- 
 less," returned. But the larger number refused.
 
 A GREAT SOUL: CLAUDE BROUSSON 83 
 
 They had found shelter in Holland, England and 
 elsewhere ; in many cases they had been able to 
 gather new flocks in those countries ; no doubt 
 many stayed behind with a good conscience, 
 clearly convinced that God needed them where 
 He had sent them. Still, all allowances being 
 made, it remained a great pity that so many 
 thousands of so-called "new converts" were not 
 able to find, at the hour of their greatest spiritual 
 need, the help which might have rescued them 
 from their apostasy. 
 
 One of those who most keenly felt the sting of 
 Brousson's remonstrances, finally apostrophized 
 him: "Why do you not go yourself?" To 
 which he meekly answered : 
 
 " I could wish that God had granted me, with 
 the talent I have already received from His grace, 
 the one which you yourselves have ; for I should 
 like to use them both. ... I can assure you, my 
 dear brethren, that I am in great perplexity. . . . 
 May He make His will known to me." 
 
 Such a man as that could not hesitate very 
 long : of the two paths opened before him, he 
 was sure to choose the harder one. By frequent 
 fasts and long seasons of prayer he prepared him- 
 self for his apostolate, and, leaving his family 
 behind, he left Lausanne on July 22, 1689, for 
 the CeVennes, where he safely arrived. 
 
 One of the first things he did was to draw up 
 the " Confession of Faith of the Preachers of the 
 Desert," which he sent to the King's Court, and
 
 84 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 also to the clergy. He quietly went on visiting, 
 preaching in secret and writing tracts. His study 
 was sometimes a cave or a wood ; he always 
 carried with him a small wooden board, which he 
 used as a writing-desk. We could quote from 
 his writings, but enough has been given already 
 to show the spirit of the man. 
 
 Yet this indefatigable worker was only a lay- 
 man. As a lawyer, he was of good education, 
 but he had never studied theology. According 
 to the discipline of his Church, it would not have 
 been right for him to administer the sacraments 
 unless he was ordained ; and so it was that, on a 
 winter day of that year 1689, finding himself, 
 with a few brethren, on the summit of one of the 
 snow-clad mountains, in a small sheepfold which 
 had been his retreat for a time, the brethren 
 unanimously besought him to receive ordination, 
 to preach to them and to give them the Lord's 
 Supper. "Brother" Vivens, one of the few 
 ordained ministers who had remained, joined with 
 them in their entreaties. A few days later, on 
 Christmas Day, Vivens ordained him. 
 
 Soon afterwards a real man - chase began. 
 Henceforth Brousson was compelled to live in 
 the woods and caves, scarcely daring to come out 
 in open day. He often slept on straw, dunghills, 
 faggots, under the trees, in bushes, in clefts of 
 rocks, on the hard ground. 
 
 He found great peace in the communion of his 
 God. . . . "But above all," he says, "one cannot
 
 A GREAT SOUL: CLAUDE BROUSSON 85 
 
 express all the comfort he has felt in the holy 
 gatherings, especially when he was called upon 
 to administer the Lord's Supper. Every time he 
 realized a most remarkable experience : Notwith- 
 standing the host of enemies who were waging a 
 relentless war against him, as soon as he opened 
 his mouth in the meetings to call upon the Name 
 of the Lord, to sing His praise or to preach His 
 Word, he was usually as peaceful in mind as if he 
 had been in a land of liberty. He enjoyed the 
 same quietude of spirit whenever he took up his 
 pen for the furtherance of the Kingdom of God 
 and the comfort of His desolate Church." 
 
 M. Lelievre remarks that " during the memor- 
 able years of the first period of Brousson's minis- 
 try in France (1689-93), tne awakening of the 
 CeVennes and lower Languedoc had a character 
 of earnestness and a spiritual depth which did not 
 reach the same power during the years which 
 followed. The influence of Brousson's firm and 
 fervent piety explains that superiority. He im- 
 pressed on the Huguenot soul his own sweet 
 mystical devotion, and took away that rather dry 
 intellectualism which marked the preaching of the 
 seventeenth century." 
 
 This is how Brousson would proceed when he 
 had to restore " apostates " : 
 
 " When the sermon was over, the preacher 
 asked whether there was any one among his 
 hearers wishing to be reconciled to God and 
 His Church, and to re-enter the communion of
 
 86 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 saints. . . . Then, any who were so minded came 
 forward and knelt before the preacher, who 
 began to remonstrate with them and showed 
 them how enormous was the sin they had com- 
 mitted in forsaking Christ. That being done, 
 they were asked to say whether they did repent, 
 and would henceforth live and die in the Reformed 
 faith, in spite of the allurements and threats of 
 the world ; whether they heartily renounced the 
 errors of the Church of Rome, the Mass and all 
 thereto appertaining. . . . (This was done with 
 much detail.) They had to answer Yes to all these 
 questions, each individually. After this, they 
 had to promise not to attend Mass any more, and 
 to take great care not to pollute themselves with 
 Babylon, either by marriage or in other ways ; 
 nor to allow their children to be trained in it, but, 
 on the contrary, to instruct them in the principles 
 of our religion. Each having duly promised, the 
 minister then proclaimed the remission of their 
 sins, saying : ' In the name and authority of Jesus 
 Christ, and as a faithful minister of His Word, I 
 declare to you the remission of all your sins, and 
 that there is now no condemnation for you, since 
 you are in Jesus Christ.' Then followed a prayer 
 on their behalf." 
 
 " My soul," wrote a man to his children who 
 had succeeded in escaping to foreign parts " my 
 soul is thrilled with joy and divine love, as I feel 
 compelled to write to you of my happiness. The 
 6th ins{. was the happy day of my conversion.
 
 A GREAT SOUL: CLAUDE BROUSSON 87 
 
 On that day I heard the voice of God through 
 one of His ambassadors (Brousson), who explained 
 to us these words : ' I sleep, but my heart 
 waketh : it is the voice of my Beloved that 
 knocketh ' (Song of Sol. v. 2). Kneeling on the 
 ground, but our souls rising up to Heaven, we 
 heard, first, the Ten Commandments, then the 
 Prayer for Confession of sins ; and, in the same 
 attitude, we sang with hushed voices the first part 
 of the fifth Psalm, after which came the exposi- 
 tion of the Divine words I have quoted, and, lastly, 
 our participation in the Holy Supper. 
 
 " Forty-two of us were admitted in that manner, 
 the rest of the flock having been received back 
 at previous gatherings. The number of com- 
 municants was about two hundred and fifty, men 
 and women. 
 
 " Tell our former pastor, M. Modens, that 
 nearly half of his flock are now restored, and 
 by God's grace the rest will soon follow. The 
 churches at Uzes, Nimes, Sommieres, etc., have 
 all received the same blessing and are now re- 
 stored. Our foes may say and do what they will, 
 the Holy Spirit has had mercy on us and has 
 reconquered our souls." 
 
 This interesting account shows that the revival 
 which took place by the instrumentality of Claude 
 Brousson was both extensive and genuinely 
 spiritual. In spite of the persecutions, the larger 
 Evangelical communities were fast being reorgan- 
 ized. The wholesale abjurations which had been
 
 88 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 extorted from those poor people eight years 
 before were now repented of. Even after this 
 there were still many backsliders ; but the larger 
 number remained faithful, and, as Brousson had 
 predicted, " the candlestick was not entirely 
 removed." 
 
 Relentlessly hunted down, often escaping his 
 pursuers by the merest chance (humanly speaking) 
 having some of his friends from time to time 
 captured and hanged Claude Brousson, after 
 four years of this strenuous life, felt the need of a 
 little rest. His wife and son, whom he had not 
 seen during all that time, had remained in 
 Lausanne, where they lived in poverty. He 
 returned to them, and joined them safely, in 
 December 1693. 
 
 Keep the dates in mind. Just one hundred 
 years afterwards, 1789, saw the fall of the 
 Bastille, which put an end for ever to autocratic 
 government and clerical tyranny, or, at least, to 
 the worst forms of it ; 1 793 saw the barbarous 
 executions of nobles, priests, king and queen, by 
 the fury of a rabble which could never have been 
 so uncontrollable, if there had been in France, at 
 that time, a larger number of men of Claude 
 Brousson's character. 
 
 From Lausanne, Brousson and his family went 
 to Holland, and thence to England ; but they did 
 not long remain in Great Britain : he was called 
 to The Hague to be one of the chaplains of the 
 Court. This was one of the highest posts, and a
 
 A GREAT SOUL: CLAUDE BROUSSON 89 
 
 well remunerated one. The good servant might 
 easily have believed that his Master, pitying his 
 weariness for Brousson was physically weak 
 gave him now an opportunity to recuperate, and 
 allowed him to spend his last days in studious 
 peace. Not so. The Divine appeal was ever 
 ringing in his ears. 
 
 There are men whom God appoints to crosses 
 and martyrdoms, and who, like Paul, mysteriously 
 warned of it, feel a sort of holy impatience so long 
 as they are not treading the thorny path which 
 has been traced for them. Brousson was one of 
 those men. Perhaps he felt out of place at the 
 Dutch Court, and did not think himself qualified 
 to preach before princes, though he certainly was 
 eloquent. The call of the poor sheep whom he 
 had left shepherdless haunted him. After four 
 months of chaplaincy, he left wife and child once 
 more, and re-entered France, in the middle of 
 September 1695. 
 
 Brousson spent a whole year visiting the 
 scattered remnant in the north and west of 
 France. In Normandy he preached thirty-five 
 times in a single month, and at two of those 
 services, which usually lasted three hours, he 
 received as many as four hundred communicants. 
 Then he passed into Burgundy ; but, detected 
 and pursued, he just managed to escape to 
 Switzerland, whence he returned to Holland. 
 
 A few months afterwards the holy pioneer, 
 unable to restrain himself, started once more for
 
 90 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 the land of peril (August 14, 1697). This time 
 he parted from his beloved wife and son never to 
 see them any more. The price on his head was 
 raised : six hundred louis d'or (about five hundred 
 pounds sterling) was to be paid to any one who 
 might succeed in capturing him, or help to do so, 
 dead or alive. Spies, militia, dragoons, all were 
 set at his heels. He escaped almost miraculously 
 a number of times. Finally, while hiding in Pau, 
 he was betrayed, and they arrested him at Oloron, 
 on the Spanish frontier, whither he had fled with 
 his host when it had been discovered that a spy 
 had denounced them. 
 
 Brought to Montpellier to be tried, Brousson 
 appeared before his judges on November 4, 1698. 
 He defended himself with great moderation. 
 Then he knelt down and prayed for the judges, 
 who were much moved ; but they could not dis- 
 obey the King's orders, and they sentenced him to 
 suffer death. 
 
 How the spots on which great scenes have 
 been enacted take hold of our soul when we 
 happen to visit them ! If ever the reader finds 
 himself in the city of Montpellier, formerly so 
 well known to English tourists, let him find his 
 way to the Esplanade du Peyrou, a magnificent 
 terrace which offers one of the grandest views to 
 be seen anywhere, and let him say to himself: 
 " Here, right in view of those CeVennes hills, 
 where the testimony of Christ is still alive, 
 thanks to the faithfulness of the Huguenot
 
 A GREAT SOUL: CLAUDE BROUSSON 91 
 
 martyrs, here scores of them have been done 
 to death, and Claude Brousson was the greatest 
 of them." Let the visitor then offer up a prayer 
 on behalf of that city, where a number of true 
 disciples of Christ are still keeping bright the 
 lamp of the Gospel, and on behalf of France, 
 where, you remember, Claude Brousson prophe- 
 sied that the candlestick would never cease to 
 shine. 
 
 Do you wish to know how this holy man went 
 to his God ? 
 
 The scaffold was surrounded by a crowd which 
 was estimated at ten thousand people. As soon 
 as Brousson appeared, drums began to beat, lest 
 he should address the multitude. When he came 
 to the scaffold, he knelt down and entrusted his 
 soul to God. He was to be broken alive on the 
 wheel ; but Baville, moved perhaps by a sort of 
 respect for this " criminal " so much out of the 
 common, had secretly given orders that he should 
 be strangled first. The priest who accompanied 
 him to the last tried even then to persuade him 
 to die in the Catholic faith ; but he replied with 
 great meekness : " May God Almighty reward 
 you, sir, for your great chanty towards me, and 
 grant that you and I together may see His face 
 in Paradise." These were his last words.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 THE JANSENISTS 
 
 THOUGH the name of Brousson has not 
 become, as it deserved to be, a house- 
 hold name in France, yet the influence of that 
 heroic man on the French soul was by no 
 means a negligible quantity. It was to his short 
 ministry, followed by that of Antoine Court, 
 that the maintenance and revival of the Reformed 
 faith in this country were mainly due. His life 
 was full of "spirit and power." 
 
 Supposing Protestantism had entirely disap- 
 peared at the Revocation, as it seemed only too 
 likely it would, what would the consequences 
 have been ? 
 
 We care not for a mere name, nor for lifeless 
 traditions. A dead Protestantism might as well 
 disappear, to make room for some new form of 
 spiritual life. But it was made manifest, through 
 Brousson's labours, and those of Antoine Court, 
 Paul Rabaut and others, that the French 
 Christians called Protestants were not all dead ; 
 and it has been made evident by subsequent 
 history that the spiritual life and doctrine of these 
 persecuted people was one of the most precious
 
 THE JANSENISTS 93 
 
 assets of France's real wealth. For Protestantism 
 stands for a Gospel addressed to all, and which 
 all equally may understand and apply to them- 
 selves : it stands for the liberty of the soul, the 
 equality of men before God and the universal 
 fraternity of those whom Christ has redeemed. 
 Even if we were only concerned with the in- 
 terests of France as a temporal nation, still it 
 would be right to affirm that the maintenance of 
 Protestantism has been providential. Its influ- 
 ence has brought into being, or at all events has 
 mightily helped, directly or indirectly, every social, 
 moral and religious reform in France for the last 
 two centuries. 
 
 In 1715, another man was raised up, Antoine 
 Court, who, after the disorders of the Camisard 
 War, and while persecution was still severe, 
 applied himself with relentless energy to reorgan- 
 izing the discipline and administration of the 
 churches which Brousson had spiritually revived. 
 The work of Antoine Court was beneficial, and it 
 was called for ; it prevented some excesses which 
 might have caused the ruin of the churches ; for 
 in the absence of regular ministers, " prophetism " 
 had been on the increase. This was a sort of 
 illuminism, due partly to the state of mental 
 excitement which the constant jeopardy of their 
 lives created among the poor people. There had 
 been, no doubt, cases of true prophetic gifts, but 
 that which had been genuine had become a 
 dangerous bias, or routine, and it was time some-
 
 94 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 thing was done to stop it. It seems clear, how- 
 ever, that Antoine Court was somewhat too 
 stringent. In his anxiety to restore discipline 
 and order, he did not make a sufficient distinction 
 between the absurdities of prophetism and the 
 legitimate use of lay-preaching, which has done so 
 much in England to advance the cause of Christ. 
 We must remember, however, that Antoine 
 Court had been born under the reign of a king 
 who was the very embodiment of etiquette, the 
 monarch who built Versailles cold, majestic, 
 unnatural Versailles, with its rigid symmetry, its 
 gardens all straight and square, the very trees 
 themselves being forced to grow according to an 
 artificial fashion. This worship of the stately and 
 classical appears in all the works of the time : in 
 art, literature, religion. The Court, living away 
 from Paris, in the sumptuous palace lavishly 
 built to the glory of the great king, ceased to 
 speak the language of the people, and an elegant 
 French took its place so that, even to the present 
 day, the polite, literary language is very different 
 from that of everyday life. From Bossuet 
 down, the sermons of that time lack simplicity, 
 if they do not want in grandeur. The great 
 refugee preacher, Saurin, who filled for many 
 years the largest church at The Hague, was no 
 exception to the rule ; down to the humblest of 
 the Wilderness preachers, all seemed to have 
 caught the disease. Every one at that time 
 seems to have worn a powdered wig and to have
 
 THE JANSENISTS 95 
 
 walked on stilts. It needed the Revolution to 
 break down this unnaturalness ; and it needed a 
 new revival as we shall presently see to intro- 
 duce a spirit of greater simplicity into French 
 Protestant preaching. 
 
 The great, abiding work of Antoine Court 
 was the restoration of the Synods, or General 
 Assemblies, and the foundation, at Lausanne, of 
 a Theological Seminary, which sent year after 
 year new ministers to "the Churches under the 
 Cross," as they called themselves. That school 
 existed until the beginning of the nineteenth 
 century, when it was transferred to Montauban, 
 its present locale. " Strange school of death," 
 says Michelet, " which relentlessly sent out new 
 martyrs and fed the scaffold." 
 
 While the Reformed Christians were either 
 in exile or compelled to hide themselves in the 
 fastnesses and solitudes of the mountains, the 
 Spirit of God was at work among the Catholics 
 themselves, and the cardinal truths of the Gospel 
 were being brought to light by men who abhorred 
 the name of Huguenots, and yet had uncon- 
 sciously imbibed their distinctive doctrines. We 
 are referring to that great spiritual movement 
 which is known in history as Jansenism. 
 
 Janse"nius, a learned and godly doctor of the 
 Louvain University, became bishop of Ypres in 
 the early part of the seventeenth century. Ypres, 
 Louvain, how those names sound strangely to-day ! 
 What has become, under the barbarians' shells, of
 
 96 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 the quiet retreats where the good bishop wrote 
 his famous book, Augustinust In that book, 
 which he wrote in co-operation with the not less 
 celebrated Abbe" de Saint-Cyran, Janse"nius vigor- 
 ously defended, against the Jesuit doctors, what 
 are known as the Doctrines of Grace, as they 
 were expounded by the great Father of the fifth 
 century, St. Augustine. Calvin had done the 
 same less than a century before ; indeed, it may 
 be said that Calvinism is identified with those 
 doctrines, which were very strictly professed by 
 the Reformed in Holland. Though Janse"nius 
 stoutly contended that he was free from "the 
 errors of Calvin," it is hard to see where the 
 difference lies, especially on the doctrine of Pre- 
 destination. 
 
 Jansdnius' book, which was a huge work, 
 would probably have passed unobserved by the 
 general public, as it was abstruse and written in 
 Latin. But it found excellent expositors, or rather 
 translators and defenders, in the persons, first, of 
 Saint-Cyran, who had contributed to its making, 
 and who was a man of great spiritual insight and 
 power, and a real disciple of Jesus Christ, not- 
 withstanding his exaggerated austerity and his 
 severity towards his penitents ; then, of the 
 remarkable family of the Arnaulds, men and 
 women. One of them was called the "grand" 
 Arnauld, on account of his rare qualities as de- 
 bater, of his tremendous energy, and of his still 
 greater prolixity as a writer. . . . The Arnaulds
 
 THE JANSENISTS 97 
 
 had Huguenot blood in their veins ; their grand- 
 father had only escaped the massacre of St. 
 Bartholomew by the protection of Queen Cather- 
 ine de Me"dicis, who had a special regard for him. 
 This Huguenot descent goes far to explain the 
 stubbornness of that family against their oppo- 
 nents, soon become their persecutors. 
 
 Associated with the Arnauld family by marriage 
 ties, there was another family, the Le Maitre, also 
 of Huguenot descent. One of them, Le Maitre 
 de Sacy, 1 became the translator of the Bible a 
 translation which, till a few years ago, was the 
 most accurate of Catholic versions, and is the 
 only one that the British and Foreign Bible 
 Society have felt justified in issuing for the use of 
 such Catholics as are prejudiced against Protestant 
 versions. 
 
 Jansenius died before the dispute began, but it 
 was carried on by the above-named writers. The 
 contention between the Jesuits and the Jansenists 
 was mainly on a point of great importance. The 
 Jesuits, by three of their most influential doctors, 
 had formulated an easy sort of doctrine which, in 
 the judgment of their opponents, greatly tended 
 to materialize religion : they maintained " that the 
 more one is deprived of grace, the more one 
 should boldly approach Christ in the Eucharist ; 
 and that those who are full of self and much 
 attached to the world, do well to communicate 
 frequently." Arnauld maintained, on the con- 
 
 1 Sacy is an anagram of Isaac. 
 7
 
 98 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 trary, "by the authority of the Fathers and of 
 tradition " (but why not by that of the Scriptures 
 alone?), "that an internal conversion should take 
 place before the external ; that true repentance 
 must be required from the sinner before admitting 
 him to confession ; a contrite heart, with love to 
 God, before absolution should be given him ; and 
 that true penitence should be practised and ful- 
 filled before he was admitted to communion. . . . 
 That it was a sacrilege to seek in the sacraments 
 a superstitious, a ceremonial, and, as it were, a 
 mechanical remedy, without having first made 
 some real advance in spiritual health." This 
 but for the Fathers and tradition being invoked 
 rather than the Scriptures was truly Protestant 
 doctrine. Jansenism was an attempt to eradicate 
 superstition and formalism, and to bring back 
 spirituality into the Church. This noble move- 
 ment was doomed to fail, for a Church that must 
 at all costs keep the multitudes within her pale, 
 must for that reason connive more or less with 
 the formalism and externalism which is the only 
 religion the masses are willing to profess. But it 
 was a great thing to dare to oppose the Jesuits, 
 when the king sided with them, as did also the 
 highest ecclesiastical authorities, including the 
 Pope himself. 
 
 In spite of the protests of the Jansenists, who, 
 the more they opposed the Jesuits the more they 
 wanted to affirm their Catholic orthodoxy, Jan- 
 senism was a sort of compromise between
 
 THE JANSENISTS 99 
 
 Romanism and Protestantism, and had more of 
 the latter than of the former. It was Catholic 
 by its belief in the Real Presence and in the 
 Sacraments. "It maintained, in spite of the 
 Holy See itself, 1 the pretension of remaining faith- 
 ful to Rome and to the central Church. For 
 that reason it needed St. Augustine, a Father 
 and a doctor nearer to us than St. Paul. That 
 is what I call the cannon-ball which Jansenism 
 dragged along, and to which it was chained from 
 its origin. It lost all its force of rapidity and 
 youth. . . . Please think of this : the Methodist 
 missionary goes out with his Bible, with the 
 Gospel and Epistles ; he needs nothing more to 
 stir him. The Jesuit missionary goes out with 
 his breviary ; he needs nothing more to keep 
 himself up and to prompt him to prayer ; the 
 care of settling dogmas and all theological dis- 
 cussions and definitions he refers to Rome ; he 
 does not constantly burden himself with it. But 
 the Jansenist, who is a Biblical Christian while 
 he styles himself a Catholic, who believes in 
 St. Paul but needs to have him demonstrated 
 by a Doctor of Divinity or by one of the Fathers 
 in order to prove to the other Catholics that he 
 has the true tradition, the Jansenist finds himself 
 burdened and checked at every point. There- 
 
 1 The above is extracted from the great standard work of 
 Sainte-Beuve, Port Royal. Sainte-Beuve, a Catholic, writes as 
 the Catholics do : " Methodists " with him means Protestant pro- 
 pagandists of all denominations. "The Bible" means the Old 
 Testament only.
 
 ioo THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 fore, what Methodism under its various forms in 
 England, America, Switzerland, etc., has been 
 and is still, Jansenism could never have become. 
 Too many fetters hindered it. It never was 
 but half emancipated at home ; it could not go 
 very far. It had to carry with it all St. 
 Augustine along with St. Paul : that was too 
 heavy a burden." 
 
 How clear this statement of the great critic, 
 who lacked nothing, it seems, but a keen con- 
 science, to become a disciple of Christ ! These 
 words of his apply to many religious schools 
 besides the Jansenist. 
 
 There was, however, one great redeeming 
 point in Jansenism, one which causes us to love 
 it with intense sympathy. It proclaimed free 
 grace, justification by faith, and by faith in Christ 
 alone. This accounts for the readiness with 
 which it was received at first, mainly by the 
 upper class, or rather by the thoughtful and 
 learned people of its time. It was the means of 
 numerous and thorough conversions some of 
 the most noticeable being those of the daughters 
 of Arnauld, and of the nuns of the Port- Royal 
 monastery, the abbess of which, " Mother 
 Angdique," was one of those gifted daughters. 
 
 But the most remarkable of those changed 
 lives, the most illustrious convert of Jansenism, 
 was a man who stood though unconsciously to 
 him among the men of genius then so numerous 
 in France, as a king among his courtiers ; the
 
 THE JANSENISTS 101 
 
 man who, perhaps, deserves the very first place 
 among Frenchmen of all times : Blaise Pascal, 
 the great mathematician, writer and philosopher ; 
 Pascal, who wrote the famous Provinciates, the 
 strongest indictment against Jesuit casuistry that 
 was ever written, and has made it impossible for 
 Jesuits ever to be popular in France, the very 
 name having become obnoxious to a degree 
 which can hardly be realized ; and who also 
 wrote les Penstes (Thoughts), a unique book of 
 Christian apologetics, which speaks to-day to 
 mind and heart as clearly and finally as in the 
 day when it first appeared. 
 
 Janse*nius, Saint-Cyran, Pascal, Arnauld, Le 
 Maitre, Hamon, Quesnel, these men, leaders of 
 many souls, took hold of Christ in a way that fills 
 the heart with gratitude and wonder. They 
 lived in the hope that the Church of Rome would 
 recognize them as her true sons, and break away 
 from the Jesuits. Adverse to schism, they flattered 
 themselves to the last with the illusion that they 
 were in full accord with the true mind of the Roman 
 See ; that the Popes who, one after the other, 
 condemned them, had been misinformed. They, 
 however, had from time to time glimpses of the 
 real state of the case. Thus Saint-Cyran, speak- 
 ing of the Court of Rome, which, in his mind, he 
 tried to separate from the Church of Rome (all 
 the Reformers at first have entertained the same 
 illusion, down to our own times) : " They go too 
 far," said he, "we shall have to show them their
 
 102 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 duty." His biographer, himself a Jansenist, says 
 that those words were spoken out of zeal for the 
 truth, and by a certain internal prompting which 
 seemed to come from God Himself. And he 
 adds : " By this, one is able to judge of what he 
 would have done had he seen the sequel." 
 
 But he did not, nor did Pascal. They both 
 died as dutiful Catholics ; but had they lived a 
 few years more, there is reason to believe that 
 a new secession from Rome would have taken 
 place under their leadership. Pascal, after publish- 
 ing his first Provincial Letters, wrote these 
 ominous words : "If my letters are condemned 
 in Rome, what I have condemned in them 
 (meaning the Jesuits' casuistry and their semi- 
 Pelagianism) is condemned in heaven : ' Ad tuum, 
 Domine Jesu, tribunal appello ' (At Thy tribunal, 
 Lord Jesus, I appeal)." Men who speak thus 
 may think themselves what they like ; they are 
 protesters, and practically outside the Romish 
 pale. 
 
 The great weakness of the Jansenist party, 
 besides its almost sickly fear of schism, was its 
 lack of sympathy with the common people ; not 
 that it was deficient in charity, but it was slow to 
 adapt itself to the mentality of the masses. The 
 Jansenists were wonderful controversialists, but 
 few of them had the evangelistic spirit. The 
 great Arnauld wrote so many polemical books, 
 that there is probably no man alive (and perhaps 
 there never was one) who has read them all.
 
 THE JANSENISTS 103 
 
 But among these books there is not one meant 
 for the peasants or the working-men. Saint- 
 Cyran's Spiritual Letters are very good reading, 
 but only for the educated. Heavy and ponder- 
 ous, such are the general characteristics of the 
 writings to which Port-Royal has given its name, 
 as it was under the shadow of the ancient monas- 
 tery that the good and learned men wrote and 
 prayed. The one great exception to the heavi- 
 ness of those writers but what a brilliant one ! 
 was Pascal. 1 
 
 The Jansenists loved God, Christ, the Church, 
 their fellow-men ; but their extreme views on 
 Predestination inclined them to seek the secluded 
 life more than the missionary's career. Here is 
 a case in point. 
 
 One of their most distinguished converts was 
 M. Antoine Le Maltre, eldest of a remarkable 
 family. Antoine Le Maitre was the most famous 
 barrister of his time. His eloquence made any 
 
 1 Another exception was Jean Racine, who is considered by 
 some as the greatest of French poets. He was certainly, after 
 Corneille, the greatest writer of tragedies. After his conversion, 
 which was the fruit of his Jansenist education, he gave up 
 theatrical work altogether, and confined himself to religious 
 poetry. Some of his hymns are found to-day in our Protestant 
 collections, with some by Pierre Corneille. He was induced, how- 
 ever, by Madame de Maintenon's entreaties, to write two plays 
 taken from Scripture : Esther and Athalie. These are considered 
 the finest of his works, and are the only plays on the French stage 
 which are entirely free from any love plot. They were composed 
 for the use of young ladies of noble birth many of them daughters 
 of Protestant families for whom Madame de Maintenon had 
 founded the Institute of Saint-Cyr.
 
 104 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 case appear interesting, and he seldom lost one. 
 When he was announced to speak at the Bar, 
 the preachers themselves, if they had sermons to 
 preach at the same hour, would postpone the 
 service, for they well knew that most of their 
 ordinary hearers would desert them to go to the 
 court. 
 
 Antoine Le Maitre was converted at the age 
 of twenty-eight, mainly by the instrumentality of 
 Saint-Cyran. At the request of his spiritual 
 adviser, he continued in his avocation for a few 
 months, notwithstanding his thirst for silence and 
 seclusion. But his court pleadings were lifeless ; 
 he did not put heart in them any more. He 
 says that, while addressing the Court, he often 
 looked at the crucifix above the judge's seat, 
 and felt intensely how empty was his oratorical 
 fame, how nothing mattered except the love of 
 Christ. As soon as Saint-Cyran permitted him 
 to do so, he retired to a small house, which his 
 devoted mother had built on purpose for him, for 
 his brother and for two or three other solitaires, 
 near the monastery of Port- Royal, Paris. There 
 he devoted his whole time though a layman, 
 and too humble to seek Holy Orders to prayer, 
 penance, study of the Scriptures and of the 
 Fathers, and sometimes writing. The genuine- 
 ness and thoroughness of his conversion cannot 
 be controverted ; but one feels a great pity that 
 such a wonderful gift of speech should have been 
 entirely sacrificed, while the masses of Paris and
 
 THE JANSENISTS 105 
 
 of France were starving for want of the pure 
 Gospel. Le Maitre died in 1658, leaving behind 
 him the sweet perfume of a truly consecrated life. 
 
 In one thing, at least, the Jansenists were not 
 deficient. They took great care of the education 
 of the young, and founded schools which were 
 unequalled for the moral tone of the teachers. 
 It was as pupil in one of these schools that Jean 
 Racine received the impressions which years 
 afterwards were the means of leading him to a 
 really consecrated life. 
 
 We have only touched on the history of 
 Jansenism. A whole chapter might be profitably 
 devoted to a description of Port- Royal, with its 
 two houses, one in Paris and one in the country, 
 near Versailles (it was called Port- Royal des 
 Champs), where a number of truly Christian 
 women, led by the celebrated Mere Angdlique, 
 daughter of the great Arnauld, and by Jacqueline 
 Pascal, sister of the Christian philosopher, prayed 
 and fought spiritual battles, endured persecution 
 for what they believed to be the truth, till their 
 houses were confiscated or destroyed by order 
 of the king. The motto of Ange"lique Arnauld 
 describes the Jansenists' doctrine and spirit more 
 than many words could : " Mourir a tout, 
 s'attendre a tout " (Die to everything, be ready 
 for anything). 
 
 Jansenism has been defeated by persecution. 
 There are few Jansenists left to-day : the Arch- 
 bishop of Utrecht is considered at the head of
 
 lt>6 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 what remains of it, and a few priests are still 
 ordained by him from time to time. But if, as a 
 party, they have failed to bring about a refor- 
 mation of the Church, their spirit is still alive. 
 Rome has become more and more Ultramontane, 
 and is bound by her very principle to remain so. 
 But the movements which we have been trying 
 to describe, all too briefly, have left such a mark 
 on the French soul, that come what may, it will 
 never be possible for Jesuitism to rule France. 
 
 Before we take leave of the Jansenists, let us 
 return to Blaise Pascal. We should like to give 
 our readers an idea of what he was, by trying 
 most difficult thing to translate a short page of 
 his writings his confession of faith : 
 
 " I love poverty, because He loved it. I love 
 possessions, because they procure the means 
 wherewith to assist the miserable. I keep faith 
 with every one. I do not return evil to those 
 who do evil to me ; but I wish them such a 
 condition as mine, when one does not receive 
 from men either evil or good. I try to be just, 
 truthful, sincere and faithful towards all, and I 
 have a tenderness of heart for those whom God 
 has joined to me more intimately ; and whether I 
 am alone or in the view of all men, I do all my 
 actions in the sight of God who shall judge them, 
 and to whom I have devoted them all. 
 
 " Such are my sentiments, and I bless every 
 day of my life my Redeemer Who has put them 
 into me, and Who, of a man full of weaknesses,
 
 THE JANSENISTS 107 
 
 miseries, covetousness, pride and ambition, has 
 made a man free from all those evils by the 
 strength of His grace, to which all glory is due 
 on that account, as of me there is nothing but 
 wretchedness and error." l 
 
 Pascal was of poor health all his life, and no 
 doubt increased his infirmities by the austerities 
 to which he addicted himself, not so much to 
 earn merit, as to enjoy closer fellowship, as he 
 thought, with the sufferings of Christ. He died 
 at the early age of thirty-nine, in the full peace 
 of God. 
 
 It is not too much to say that the influence of 
 his writings has been immeasurable. It checked 
 the progress of Jesuitism, and developed in the 
 thoughts and consciences of many men and women 
 an element of spirituality which, though not 
 altogether absent before him, was in great danger 
 of disappearing altogether under the flood of 
 materialistic legends and devotions. He was the 
 layman's theologian, and satisfied to a great 
 extent that intense craving for a religion at once 
 mystical and rational which is peculiar, perhaps, 
 to the French mind. He counteracted to a large 
 extent the baneful effects that the infidelity of 
 Voltaire and his associates was to produce in the 
 following century. 
 
 Reader, whenever you come to Paris again, 
 rest yourself for a while in the garden that sur- 
 
 1 See, in Appendix B, some Thoughts of Pascal which we have 
 tried to render into English.
 
 108 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 rounds the Tour St. Jacques, that beautiful 
 mediaeval tower, standing in the centre of the city, 
 which is all that is left of Pascal's parish church. 
 There, in the shadow of the arch, you will see 
 the statue of a man whose action upon the soul 
 of France has been very great. His Church has 
 not made a saint of him : he was too independent 
 of her to obtain canonization. But he was a true 
 saint, and one of the score of holy men whose 
 genius and example belong to all Christendom : 
 Blaise Pascal.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 THE GALLICANS 
 
 WE have, so far, admired many beautiful 
 characters, men and women whose in- 
 fluence on the soul of France has been elevating 
 and ennobling : saints of the Middle Ages, re- 
 formers and martyrs, Jansenists, all have a right 
 to our gratitude, inasmuch as, notwithstanding 
 many errors and the narrowness of their views on 
 some points, they stood for the same cause, the 
 rights of the human soul, and of the truth as 
 revealed in Scripture. 
 
 It must not be overlooked, however, that the 
 Church from which they dissented was the 
 Gallican Church, i.e. the Catholic Church of 
 France a Church very different in some respects 
 from the Ultramontane, or Roman Catholic 
 Church. The Gallican Church was, of course, 
 only a part of the system of which the Pope was, 
 and is, the recognized head ; but it never ceased 
 to maintain that the Bishop of Rome was only 
 primus inter pares, the first among his peers, 
 and that he had no authority apart from the 
 oecumenical councils. The dogma of the In- 
 fallibility of the Pope, promulgated by the Vatican 
 
 109
 
 no THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 Council in 1870, has put an end to the Gallican 
 Church. As a Gallican writer says : it has been 
 the starting-point of a new religion which the 
 old Church of France knew not. 
 
 Erroneous systems live only by the amount of 
 truth contained in them. The presence of one 
 true principle in a false creed, or of a good man 
 on the side of a wrong cause, helps to keep that 
 creed and that cause alive. 
 
 It is admitted by nearly all historians that one 
 of the effects of the Reformation was to compel 
 the Catholic Church to an internal reform. The 
 Council of Trent worked a change for the better, 
 if not in the doctrines, at least in the morals and 
 discipline of the clergy. Nowhere was this 
 change more marked than in France. 
 
 For instance, in the writings of Francois de 
 Sales, the greatest enemy of Protestant Geneva, 
 there are precious grains of Gospel wheat. He 
 had a sense of the Divine realities, and was, with 
 all his intolerance, a true disciple of Christ. 
 Rome made a saint of him, as of his associate, 
 Madame de Chantal, founder of the Augustine 
 Sisterhood. 
 
 Another man living in that period, and who 
 also has been canonized, deserves more than a 
 passing mention, for his action on the people 
 has been, and is still, very great : Vincent de 
 Paul. Born in 1576, he died in 1660. His long 
 life was spent in evangelistic and charitable work ; 
 he was the founder of many beneficent institutions
 
 THE GALLICANS in 
 
 which are still in existence, and which have done 
 more than can be imagined for the maintenance 
 of religion in this country. 
 
 Vincent de Paul, as a young priest, went on 
 some missionary errand in the course of which 
 he was captured by a Mahommedan pirate, and 
 sold as a slave in Algiers. His master was an 
 Italian renegade. Vincent undertook to bring 
 him back to Christianity, and he succeeded ; 
 both, seeking their safety in flight, managed to 
 reach the coasts of France. 
 
 The motto of Vincent de Paul was : " Rien ne 
 me plait qu'en Je'sus-Christ" (Nothing pleases me 
 but in Jesus Christ). Beautiful words, which all the 
 "heretics" we have named would most willingly 
 have adopted ! How is it that men whose 
 only passion was Christ Pascal and the Jansen- 
 ists, Brousson and the persecuted Huguenots, 
 Vincent de Paul and his Catholic associates all 
 of good faith and men of prayer, should have 
 lived and died so far apart from one another ? 
 
 Vincent de Paul founded an order of popular 
 mission-preachers, called the Lazarists, an insti- 
 tution which helped mightily to maintain the 
 common people under the rule of the Church, but 
 also supplied a frightful need for the people in the 
 villages specially. To him also is due the founda- 
 tion of the order of the Sceurs de Charitt (Sisters 
 of Mercy), an order very different from most, 
 in that its members do not take perpetual vows, 
 but only annual ones. The order was created
 
 H2 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 for the purpose of assisting the poor, the aged 
 and the foundlings, for whom, till Vincent de 
 Paul took pity on them, no provision had been 
 made. Though there has been, and there is still, 
 much bigotry connected with these institutions, 
 they have done good, by illustrating the practical 
 character of Christianity. "The daughters of 
 St. Vincent," as they are sometimes called, or 
 "the Little Grey Sisters," are the most popular 
 representatives of the Church among the people ; 
 they are never scoffed at, even by the most 
 advanced free-thinkers, and they are winning new 
 laurels to themselves and to their founder in the 
 Hospitals and at the Front to-day. 
 
 We must also mention a good priest who, in 
 those days, was the nearest approach to a revival 
 preacher that Rome has probably ever produced. 
 His name was Father Bridaine (1701-67). Gifted 
 with wonderful, though rough, eloquence, he seems 
 to have been burning with a true love for souls. 
 He preached no less than two hundred and fifty- 
 six missions throughout all parts of France except 
 the north : a mission would, I suppose, last two 
 or three weeks at least. Wherever he went, 
 crowds pressed round him, though his preaching 
 was most terrifying. His principal subjects were, 
 the Danger of delaying Conversion ; the Death 
 of the Impenitent ; Heaven and Hell ; his picture 
 of the doom that awaits the wicked greatly 
 affected his hearers everywhere. In a century 
 of moral decadence, he was a sort of John the
 
 THE GALLICANS 113 
 
 Baptist. The Court came to hear him, at the 
 Lent season, in the church of Saint-Sulpice, 
 Paris. One of the sermons he preached on that 
 occasion remains in French literature as a classic, 
 a model of impassioned and rugged eloquence. 
 
 There are two or three other names to be 
 mentioned, names of men of greater prestige, 
 and whom it would be impossible to ignore in a 
 review of the spiritual forces which have made 
 the soul of France what it is. 
 
 Bossuet (born in Dijon, 1627, died in Paris, 
 1704) was probably the most eloquent French- 
 man who ever lived ; and that is saying much, 
 for eloquence has ever been a common gift in 
 this country. As a young priest he " preached a 
 mission " at Metz, where Protestants abounded, 
 and this led him to study Reformed doctrine, 
 which he assailed on many occasions, though, 
 no doubt, it helped to make him the strong 
 Gallican he was. For ten years preceptor of 
 the Dauphin (the king's eldest son), he wrote 
 for his instruction several religious works. He 
 became Bishop of Meaux, and his eloquence won 
 for him the glorious surname of the Eagle of 
 Meaux. 
 
 Bossuet's preaching was essentially doctrinal. 
 He used to say that, if people believed the truth, 
 they would live well. The true life, in his view, 
 was the fruit of the true faith. He preached 
 before the king numberless times, and on such 
 occasions delivered his great funeral orations on 
 8
 
 H4 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 princes, princesses and great men of the time. 
 His preaching was orthodox, and not very much 
 burdened with Roman peculiarities : one finds 
 little in his sermons concerning purgatory, or 
 Mary, or the saints. The Cross is there, but 
 somewhat veiled by the sacramental idea and 
 the doctrine of merit. 
 
 But Bossuet's beneficial action on his time was 
 his resistance to the encroachments of the Pope 
 on the liberties of the Gallican Church. Indeed, 
 the views of Bossuet and the French bishops, 
 who in majority sided with him in the assembly 
 of 1682, where the celebrated Gallican Declara- 
 tion was voted, were not very widely different 
 from those of the extreme English High Church 
 of to-day. The Declaration emphasized three 
 main points : 
 
 1. The temporal independence of the kings 
 in regard to the Holy See. 
 
 2. The final authority remaining with the 
 Church, expressing herself in a General Council ; 
 not with the Pope, who has no personal in- 
 fallibility. 
 
 3. The Pope, while he is the first bishop of 
 Christendom, is essentially the equal of the other 
 bishops, who are, as well as he, the direct 
 successors of the apostles. 
 
 These points and the staunch opposition of 
 Bossuet to the Jesuits and their casuistry a 
 point on which he thoroughly agreed with Pascal 
 and the Jansenists constituted a sort of Catholi-
 
 THE GALLICANS 115 
 
 cism very different from that of to-day. Were 
 Bossuet living in our time, and did he maintain 
 the views which he so powerfully advocated, 
 he would certainly incur excommunication. To 
 deny the Pope's infallibility and to invest the 
 supreme authority in the Councils, was to be, 
 in principle, a Dissenter, though Bossuet would 
 have shuddered at the very idea. He wrote a 
 clever book on The Variations of Protestantism ; 
 but what book would he write to-day on the 
 variations of Rome, if he had lived to see them ? 
 
 The worship of external unity has been, and 
 is still, one of the chief obstacles, if not the 
 chiefest, to the spiritual enfranchisement of many 
 earnest souls, who, while they cannot help perceiv- 
 ing that the teachings and practices of the Church 
 are not in accord with the Scriptures, consider 
 it as the sin of sins to break the unity of what 
 is still, in their belief, the true body of Christ. 
 This trait is found everywhere, more or less, 
 where Rome has held her sway ; but it is a 
 very peculiar feature of what is called, perhaps 
 inaccurately, the " Latin " races. The nations 
 which arose after the fall of the Roman Empire, 
 and whose laws are based upon the Roman, 
 have a tendency to excessive centralization, which 
 leads to despotism and to the annihilation of the 
 individual. Nonconformity is the worse form of 
 sin for those who have been bred in that spirit. 
 The Church's doctrine in the matter of schism 
 is, that no one, having been baptized, has any
 
 n6 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 right to sever himself from the Church. For, 
 according to that view, there is only one baptism, 
 as there is only one Church : the heretic, there- 
 fore, is, in virtue of his baptism, a member of 
 the Church he cannot renounce that quality, do 
 what he may. But as he is a wayward member, 
 the Church's duty is to bring him back by all 
 possible means, even, if needs be, by corporal 
 punishment. Her very love for her stray children 
 compels the Church to chastise them, even unto 
 death ! 
 
 It must be said, however, on behalf of Bossuet, 
 that he never ceased to plead for moderation and 
 patience towards the erring Protestants. 1 
 
 Fe"nelon, the Swan of Cambrai, was also one of 
 the leading characters of that wonderful seven- 
 teenth century, which has been, for France at least, 
 the religious century par excellence. He also had 
 charge of a Royal child, the Due de Bourgogne, 
 who, like his father, the Dauphin, died before the 
 old king. Louis xiv., great ravisher of other 
 people's children, was heavily visited by death in 
 his offspring ; and it seems that France lost much 
 in the death of the young prince, who had shown 
 himself to be worthy of the crown. 
 
 Fe'nelon's poetical and mystical turn of mind 
 led him very far ; almost to the point of becoming 
 
 1 We can only mention the public discussion which Bossuet held 
 with the celebrated minister of Charenton, Jean Claude, a man of 
 extraordinary power as a debater, a discussion which, as usual, 
 was claimed as a victory by both sides.
 
 THE GALLICANS 117 
 
 a heretic by sharing the views of Madame 
 Guyon, that strange woman whom it is so difficult 
 to analyse ; a woman who, while a sincere lover 
 of Christ, wrote of the Divine mysteries more in 
 the style of human passion than of chastened and 
 spiritual devotion. It is to the credit of Bossuet 
 that he firmly opposed Madame Guyon's danger- 
 ous "Quietism," and compelled Fe*nelon to with- 
 draw his support from these doctrines, though 
 his retractation was reluctant, and not quite 
 sincere. Strange to say, Fenelon, though a 
 mystic, approved heartily of the Revocation. 
 
 The other eminent preachers of that period, 
 which was so fertile in religious gifts, were 
 Massillon, Bourdaloue, Fle'chier. Their tone 
 was lofty ; the matter of their sermons was 
 spiritual and, as we noticed in the case of Bossuet, 
 strangely free from distinctive Romish doctrines. 
 That conversions resulted from their preaching 
 is not surprising, though those conversions could 
 never develop into the full assurance of faith and 
 salvation which follows the preaching of the pure 
 Gospel. 
 
 These great preachers have, more or less, 
 influenced the French Catholic pulpit to this day. 
 The preaching of such men as Lacordaire, Gratry, 
 Hyacinthe (before he left Rome), Perraud, Didon, 
 free from the superstitions of Lourdes, la Salette 
 and the Sacred Heart, which have so materialized 
 the Catholic Church in our time, was a modern 
 echo of the seventeenth-century preachers, and a
 
 n8 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 proof that the Reformation had powerfully in- 
 fluenced the very Church that persecuted it. 
 
 For we have no hesitation in ascribing to this 
 cause the elevation of the Catholic pulpit in those 
 days and afterwards (at least in the case of the 
 men we have named though we must not forget 
 that there were, at the same time, innumerable 
 friars and ignorant priests whose teaching was 
 very different from that of those men). Gallican- 
 ism, in fact, was an attempt to defeat the 
 "heretics" by using their own weapons, and it 
 resulted in preventing, to a large degree, French 
 Roman Catholicism from becoming a religion of 
 mere superstitions, as it was in Spain and Italy, 
 and as it would fast become in France at present 
 were the baneful influence of Ultramontanism to 
 be unchecked.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 SOME OF THE GREAT WRITERS WHO SHAPED 
 THE SOUL OF FRANCE (SEVENTEENTH 
 AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES) 
 
 WHILE great preachers filled the Royal 
 chapel of Versailles and the cathedrals 
 of France with their eloquence, which, however, 
 did not check the declension of morals at Court 
 or in the upper classes, what was the spiritual 
 state of the people ? 
 
 The proscription of hundreds of thousands of 
 the best Frenchmen was even then taking place, 
 while other thousands had been compelled to a 
 sullen acceptance of a creed which they secretly 
 abhorred. The Jansenists were also, and at the 
 same time, being persecuted, though not so cruelly 
 as the Huguenots. Such object-lessons could not 
 but have a baneful influence on the common 
 people. The sight of so many noblemen and 
 ladies abjectly giving up their faith in order to 
 retain their titles, their lands and the king's 
 favour ; the ease with which some did it, and 
 the connivance of the Church at their hypocrisy 
 a.11 this must have been very effective in breeding
 
 120 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 scepticism among the working classes. What 
 can be the value of a religion when it can be 
 bartered away so easily for mere temporal 
 advantages ? 
 
 Of course, the natural heart of man found its 
 satisfaction in this. The masses are ever pagan, 
 even in the most enlightened countries, and it 
 does not need much effort to induce them to put 
 off the restraints of religion. In the seventeenth 
 century, infidelity could not openly show itself; 
 but the spirit of Montaigne and Rabelais still 
 existed. Moliere brought the narrow and hypo- 
 critical bigotry of his time before the footlights, 
 in his celebrated Tartufe, the impersonification 
 of Jesuitical craftiness. All Paris laughed, and 
 so did the king himself, though it was not with- 
 out difficulty and emendations that Moliere 
 succeeded in bringing out his play, which was 
 the protest of common sense and honesty against 
 the travesty of religion. 
 
 But the man who may be considered as the 
 mouthpiece and true representative of the people 
 of France at that time, and perhaps for all times 
 since, was Jean de Lafontaine. 
 
 Lafontaine was no polemist. A careless, 
 selfish, good-natured poet, he was temperate in 
 all things, even in the gratification of his weak- 
 nesses, which he did not take the trouble to 
 conceal. Conforming outwardly to the religious 
 and social customs, he had really little concern for 
 anything or any one in this world or out of it,
 
 SOME OF THE GREAT WRITERS 121 
 
 He was, in a word, an epicure. Some of his 
 writings had a decidedly immoral character ; but 
 his fame has been established by his Fables, 
 which he wrote when he was over forty-five 
 years of age. 
 
 It may astonish the reader to learn that, for 
 two centuries and more, those Fables have been 
 the most popular book in French literature, the 
 chief mental food of the French people. During 
 the nineteenth century, and even now, every child 
 at school has learned by heart some of the Fables 
 de Lafontaine. What the stories of the Bible 
 have been for English children, these have been 
 for ours. And there are few writings that have 
 done so much quietly to destroy as far as it 
 might be the respect for official authority as this 
 little collection of fables has done. 
 
 Each of the Fables is a masterpiece in itself; 
 a miniature, most carefully drawn, in which the 
 figures are, really, men disguised as animals. 
 The Lion, the Wolf and the Fox, the Deer, the 
 Hare and the Rabbit, the Raven, the Stork and 
 the Cicada, and many others, are the personages 
 of this never-ending comedy, and every one of 
 them is but the type of some human character. 
 It is impossible to render in any foreign language 
 these little poems, the composition of which 
 required an immense amount of work though 
 they run so easily. Their subtle philosophy is 
 wholly pagan. The real king of the Fables is 
 not the Lion, neither is it the Lamb you may be
 
 122 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 sure that Lafontaine never dreamed that the 
 Lamb should be the king. It is the Fox. 
 
 Lafontaine touches every problem without 
 going deeply into any ; he is a veiled cynic, and 
 nothing ruffles him. He has for the Fox's 
 villainies nothing but a smile and a shrug of 
 the shoulders ; he never laughs very loud, and 
 he never weeps. The morality of those Fables 
 may be summed up in few words : " Let us save 
 ourselves from trouble and worry by all means, 
 except by downright rascality." The higher 
 words of the human language, Immortality, Purity, 
 Heroism, Self-Sacrifice, are not even implied in 
 the Fables. Lafontaine does not deny spiritual 
 values, he simply ignores them. The resume" of 
 Lafontaine's wisdom is, worship of self; a wor- 
 ship without pomp, but nevertheless a worship. 
 
 How is it that a nation whose temperament is 
 essentially heroic, where devotion to the higher 
 interests has had such, and so many, noble repre- 
 sentatives how is it that France has taken such 
 a fancy for Lafontaine ? The only reply can be 
 this : the common people saw in the Fables a 
 protest against the arbitrariness of the govern- 
 ment, against the official hypocrisy of the Court ; a 
 protest a very mild one against the sophisti- 
 cated splendours of Versailles, which were tainted 
 with the blood of a nation ; a call to a more 
 simple way of living, in the name of nature and 
 common sense. There was great need of such a 
 call. It would be hard to exaggerate the harm
 
 SOME OF THE GREAT WRITERS 123 
 
 both moral and social caused by the excessive 
 centralization of our national life around the 
 person of the monarch, living in a stately palace 
 away from his capital, the rumours of which 
 never reached him. The two long reigns of 
 Louis xiv. and Louis xv., covering together a 
 period of one hundred and thirty-one years (1643- 
 1774), destroyed the old provincial liberties as 
 well as the religious ones, turning France into a 
 lean body with a tremendously big head ; giving 
 to the people a false notion of living, and the 
 scandalous example of immorality enthroned. 
 The Fables of Lafontaine were the first and 
 almost imperceptible breath of that revolutionary 
 storm which was inevitable, and which, blind as 
 it was in some of its manifestations, was on the 
 whole salutary. 
 
 In the impossibility, at the time when Lafon- 
 taine was living, of dissenting openly from the 
 king in matters of religion and politics, the 
 nation took the only way which remained open 
 to her, unless she consented to a complete suicide 
 the way that Lafontaine had selected : anger 
 was impotent, tears were useless ; there was, 
 therefore, no alternative but to smile. The 
 smile was a sort of compromise, a supreme mani- 
 festation of independence, from a nation that 
 might be forced to comply with her tyrant's 
 fancies, but wanted to show that she was not, 
 after all, imposed upon. 
 
 Lafontaine redeemed his somewhat disgraceful
 
 124 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 life by the courageous stand he took on the side 
 of his benefactor, Fouquet. He seems to have 
 turned to God in genuine repentance two years 
 before his death, which occurred in 1695. 
 
 Just a year before, a child was born who was 
 to become the greatest scourge that ever befell 
 Roman Catholicism in France, and perhaps in 
 the whole world : Voltaire. What was the smile 
 of Lafontaine compared with the terrible laughter 
 which was to follow it a laughter which shook 
 the very foundations of the old world, pulled 
 down, with a crash, a number of crumbling edi- 
 fices, even the Royal throne itself, and threatened, 
 as it seemed, the very existence of Christianity ? 
 
 Voltaire and his friends (for such a man could 
 not be an isolated unit) were the inevitable pro- 
 ducts of all that had gone before, and which we 
 have tried to sketch faithfully. A political and 
 religious system which had put a premium on 
 hypocrisy could only foster, in a country natur- 
 ally given to outspokenness, and whose very 
 name suggests frankness, a tremendous revolt 
 in which, as in all similar movements, the good 
 and the bad would be, for a time, swept away 
 together. When Voltaire uttered his blasphem- 
 ous cry : " Ecrasons 1'infame ! " (Let us crush the 
 infamous one !), he was not, probably, singling out 
 the Romish Church, but aiming at every form of 
 revealed religion. At the same time it must be 
 remembered that he had received his education 
 at a Jesuit college, and that he had breathed, in
 
 SOME OF THE GREAT WRITERS 125 
 
 his early days, the polluted atmosphere of the 
 Re'gence. Voltaire, in his young days, was 
 exiled for a small offence, and spent three years 
 in England. But England was then at its lowest 
 ebb, morally and religiously. There he formed 
 acquaintance with Locke, Lord Shaftesbury, 
 Lord Chesterfield, Bolingbroke. He does not 
 appear to have met with a single Christian of 
 note. It was the time when Woolston was pub- 
 lishing his Discourses denying the Divinity of 
 Christ, in which he was openly supported by a 
 number of leading gentlemen. Voltaire's impres- 
 sions of England at that time were thus expressed 
 in a letter: "There is no room in this country for 
 any religion, whether revealed or not." The days 
 of Wesley and Whitefield were at hand, but they 
 had not yet arrived. 
 
 England, however, had a double advantage 
 over France : the first one was, that the Church 
 of England, low as she was then, was not a perse- 
 cutor. The Anglicans might drive the Methodists 
 out of their pulpits, but they could not prevent 
 them from preaching in the open air or in build- 
 ings of their own. In France, a Wesley or a 
 Whitefield would have been hanged. 
 
 The second advantage of England over France 
 at that time, was that the Bible was a free posses- 
 sion of the people, while it had been denied to us. 
 
 Voltaire and his confederates had no real perse- 
 cution to fear. The Church of Rome has often 
 caused the death of men who served the Christ
 
 126 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 whom she professed to love, but did not serve 
 Him in her own way ; and at the same time she 
 had treasures of forbearance for those children of 
 hers, such as Voltaire, who trampled under their 
 feet the very blood of Christ. To this day, how- 
 ever small and unostentatious an Evangelical 
 community may be, Rome will have no peace 
 until it has been put out of existence, if she can 
 bring it about ; while infidel societies may flourish 
 without causing her much disquietude. A simple 
 Bible colporteur puts her in dread far more than 
 does the most eloquent lecturer on atheism. The 
 present Pope, Benedict xv., in a speech solemnly 
 delivered at the Vatican on behalf of some 
 Catholic Society, violently denounced the scandal 
 of Protestant propaganda in the city of Rome ; 
 while he has not yet, to our knowledge, taken the 
 trouble to denounce the free-thinking clubs and 
 associations which abound in the Eternal City. 
 
 We do not intend to dwell on the writings of 
 Voltaire and his associates, the Encyclopaedists. 
 All of them have become obsolete. As to the 
 life of this extraordinary man, it manifested the 
 immense pride which was the mainspring of all 
 his doings. Though born a commoner, Voltaire 
 was an aristocrat to the core ; nor was he over 
 nice as to the means of raising himself. He 
 fawned on the great, from whom he suffered in- 
 dignities which a real gentleman could never 
 have accepted ; he became the guest, the domestic 
 philosopher, of that greatest of Hohenzollerns,
 
 SOME OF THE GREAT WRITERS 127 
 
 Frederick n., with whom he vied in levity and 
 blasphemy. The one trait which somewhat re- 
 lieves the unpleasant picture of Voltaire's long 
 life, was his plea for religious toleration, and 
 especially his generous intervention on behalf of 
 the unfortunate Galas family. 1 
 
 The question which most concerns us is this : 
 How was it that Voltaire's shallow infidelity took 
 such a hold of the French mind, and, to a large 
 extent, of the whole of Europe, England ex- 
 cepted ? The main reason is, no doubt, that a 
 reaction against the system of blind and com- 
 pulsory belief which prevailed everywhere, but 
 especially in France, at that period, was inevitable, 
 necessary and, on the whole, beneficial, though 
 its extreme forms were greatly to be deplored. 
 " He that soweth the wind shall reap the whirl- 
 wind." Voltaire's sarcasms would have had much 
 less power, if indeed there had been a Voltaire, 
 had the French Reformation been allowed full 
 development. Thriving Christian communities, 
 made up of regenerate men and women leading 
 
 1 Jean Galas, a wealthy Huguenot merchant living in the city of 
 Toulouse, was falsely accused of the murder of one of his sons, 
 who was found hanged in the house. The reason alleged was that 
 the son had, against his father's will, become a Roman Catholic, 
 which was true. It was shown afterwards that he had committed 
 suicide. Galas was arrested, tried and condemned, notwithstand- 
 ing his solemn protests and his unsullied reputation. He was 
 executed. But Voltaire took up the case, convinced public opinion 
 of the innocence of the father and compelled the unwilling judges 
 to acknowledge their awful error, caused by their bigoted pre- 
 judices. The memory of Galas was officially rehabilitated. This 
 judicial crime stirred at the time all Europe.
 
 128 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 noble and devoted lives would have been an 
 apology of Christianity which could not have been 
 easily gainsaid, and instead of falling on the ears 
 of an ignorant people, Voltaire's ingenious falla- 
 cies would have been met by a host of learned 
 and enlightened men, who would have made short 
 work of them. 
 
 In the failure of the Churches both Catholic 
 and Protestant to check Voltaire's influence by 
 the power of the Spirit, one is thankful that 
 Voltaire was met, and vigorously contradicted, by 
 a man who was his equal in genius, though he 
 did not attain in his lifetime to the degree of 
 popularity enjoyed by Voltaire. That man was 
 Jean- Jacques Rousseau. As retiring and reserved 
 as Voltaire was loud and self-glorious, Rousseau 
 was a far deeper mind, with a sense of life and 
 death, a serious view of the universe and of God, 
 which were wholly absent from Voltaire's mental 
 constitution. 
 
 Rousseau was the first of a large number of 
 men who have contributed to mould the soul of 
 France as it is to-day. 
 
 Born in Geneva (1712) from an old French 
 Protestant family who had emigrated there as 
 early as 1555 on account of the persecutions, he 
 had something of the stolidity of purpose which 
 characterized the Huguenots. His education, 
 however, was sadly neglected, owing to his 
 father's carelessness. Protestant piety in Geneva 
 was at a low ebb ; the Church was almost wholly
 
 SOME OF THE GREAT WRITERS 129 
 
 given up to formalism, and the preaching of the 
 ministers was devoid of spiritual power. 
 
 Rousseau had a most checkered life, and the 
 first part of it was not very creditable. He was 
 induced to become a Catholic by a woman, much 
 older than himself, who was the evil genius of his 
 youth. Years after, he solemnly re-entered the 
 Protestant Church of Geneva, and even signed 
 the orthodox formulary which was still the law of 
 the Church. But all through those variations he 
 was simply a deist. His deism, however, as 
 expressed in his celebrated and eloquent Confes- 
 sion de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard, was intensely 
 religious. While Voltaire seems to have entirely 
 lacked that mystic sense by which even an unre- 
 generate soul is able to perceive, at least dimly, 
 some spiritual realities, Rousseau was full of 
 respect for the unseen. 
 
 Rousseau's religion if it may be called by that 
 name started with a most bewitching fallacy : 
 the natural goodness of man. His was the 
 religion of nature. Leave the child to himself, 
 do not prejudice his mind with false notions, keep 
 him free from the corrupting and lying influences 
 of society, lead him gently on the path of natural 
 development, and all will be well with him. Con- 
 science is the only revelation of God that is 
 needed, and the only one which has been given 
 to us. Rousseau professed a strong antagonism 
 towards the conventionalities and vulgarities of 
 the aristocratic world ; long before the modern 
 9
 
 130 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 reformers, he advocated the simple life, a return 
 to mother Nature. 
 
 Yet this natural religion did not quite satisfy 
 Rousseau. He had glimpses of the higher 
 truths. Every one knows that page of his in 
 which he extols the beauty of the Scriptures : 
 " The simplicity of the Gospels fills me with 
 wonder, their holiness speaks to my heart. Look 
 at all the books of the philosophers, with all their 
 pomp ; how insignificant they are compared with 
 this ! Is it possible that a book at once so sublime 
 and so simple, should be the work of man ? Is it 
 possible that He whose history it contains should 
 be only a man ? Is that the tone of an ambitious 
 sectary? What sweetness ! What purity in His 
 life, what winning grace in His teachings, what 
 elevation in His maxims ! Shall we say that the 
 Gospel history has been invented at pleasure ? 
 My friend, it is not thus that inventions are made ; 
 and the facts of Socrates of which no one doubts, 
 are less attested than those of Jesus Christ. . . . 
 If the life and death of Socrates are of a sage, 
 the life and death of Jesus Christ are of a God." 
 
 What a miraculous power there is in Divine 
 truth ! Persecuted, smothered, and for the time 
 being reduced to silence, it can never be entirely 
 suppressed. If its rightful interpreters fail in 
 their duty, God will put its praises in the mouths 
 of unwilling witnesses. While the Huguenot 
 martyrs were slowly dying on the galleys ; while 
 the successors of Brousson : Antoine Court and
 
 SOME OF THE GREAT WRITERS 131 
 
 Paul Rabaut, were preaching the Gospel at the 
 risk of their lives in the CeVennes ; while the 
 Church of Rome, now deprived of its most illus- 
 trious preachers, had fallen to the ignominy of 
 having a Cardinal Dubois on the seat of Cambrai, 
 which had been so worthily and so brilliantly 
 occupied by Fdnelon ; and while Voltaire was 
 holding up the Bible to the ridicule of the world, 
 prophesying the near extinction of the religion 
 based on that Book, a writer was allowed to rise, 
 one of the most eloquent and harmonious that 
 ever adorned French letters ; and though an 
 unbeliever, that writer was compelled, by a higher 
 power than king or pope, to acknowledge and to 
 admire the supernatural beauty of the Book which 
 Voltaire was deriding, and which the Church had 
 kept from the people. Thus Rousseau's influence 
 prevented the total wreck of the French soul. 
 Voltaire was the destroyer of a world ; Rousseau, 
 in his Central Social, laid the foundations of a 
 new one. He may be called the father of the 
 French Revolution.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 THE REVOLUTION. THE EMPIRE 
 
 THE Revolution of 1789, which inaugurated 
 a new era for France and Europe, and put 
 an end for ever to the autocratic power of kings 
 and to the intolerance of priests, issued from a 
 number of causes ; but the spirit that animated the 
 French nation at the beginning of that tremen- 
 dous crisis was that of Rousseau, "the citizen of 
 Geneva," as he was fond of calling himself. He 
 and Voltaire died the same year (1778), when the 
 first trepidations of the coming catastrophe were 
 beginning to be felt. 
 
 There was such a candour, such a fervour, in 
 the minds and hearts of the French people when 
 the dawn of liberty shone upon them ; there was 
 such an enthusiasm for the higher values of life 
 Right, Equality, Brotherhood that it seemed 
 as if a breath of heaven had passed over the 
 land. 
 
 Remember, for instance, that famous night of 
 August 4, 1789, when the nobles and the pre- 
 lates seemed to be drunk with the holy intoxica- 
 tion of sacrifice, vying with one another in
 
 THE REVOLUTION. THE EMPIRE 133 
 
 bringing up to the light, in the great National 
 Assembly, all abuses, privileges, benefices and 
 tithes which had been theirs from time immemorial, 
 and giving them up, of their own will, going even 
 so far in true radical French fashion as to 
 renounce their titles lords, barons, counts, dukes 
 in a frenzy of equality. . . . This extraordinary 
 disinterestedness did not last long, in the case of 
 some ; but did it not testify that a spirit higher 
 than their own was, at that moment, brooding 
 over the members of the august Assembly ? 
 
 Just a little before the beginning of the Revolu- 
 tion, Benjamin Franklin had lived in Paris, where 
 he had been greatly lionized as the representative 
 of the newly-founded United States. Franklin 
 was an Anglo-Saxon edition of Rousseau, with 
 more good sense, but with less genius. The in- 
 fluence of the new-born democratic Republic, and 
 of Franklin especially, blended with that of 
 Rousseau, greatly contributed to the formation of 
 the soul of France at that time, as is evidenced 
 by the Declaration des Droits de IHomme et du 
 Citoyen (Declaration of the Rights of Man and of 
 the Citizen) which was voted by the Assemble 
 Constituante in that same year, 1789. That 
 Declaration was inspired by the American De- 
 claration of Independence, though by no means a 
 translation of it. Both have their distinct feat- 
 ures, embodying the mental constitution of the 
 two nations, the oldest and the youngest of the 
 civilized world ; yet both these documents are
 
 134 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 manifestly issued from the same source, and are 
 the charts of a Christian democratic civilization. 1 
 
 Of course, there was not enough genuine 
 Christianity in all this to create a new people, in 
 the Gospel sense of the term. The great central 
 principle of the Gospel, " Ye must be born 
 again," was ignored by Rousseau, Franklin, the 
 French and American legislators ; nor would 
 it have been possible and right to incorporate 
 it in the new Constitutions. In its very essence 
 the Gospel eludes any attempt to frame it into 
 national laws. When, therefore, we speak of any 
 nation as being "Christian," we must qualify the 
 term. It can only mean this : that there have 
 been at work, in that nation, a number of truly 
 regenerate individuals, who, by the influence of 
 their lives, words and deeds, have so modified 
 the mentality and morality of their non-regenerate 
 fellow-citizens that these have, of themselves, 
 adopted rules of conduct distinctly borrowed from 
 Christianity. According to that definition, it may 
 be affirmed that the French Revolution, at its 
 origin, was the effort of a Christian nation to 
 realize its ideals. 
 
 It is indeed touching to see these people re- 
 joicing in their newly-found Fraternity, celebrat- 
 ing it by great festivals on the Champ de Mars, 2 
 
 1 It would not be right to omit the name of a man who had a 
 great influence on Rousseau and his contemporaries : Montesquieu, 
 author of the celebrated work, f Esprit des Lots, which Voltaire 
 opposed. The book appeared in 1748, and had numberless editions. 
 
 2 La Fe'te de la Federation (July 14, 1790).
 
 THE REVOLUTION. THE EMPIRE 135 
 
 and even taking their meals together in the 
 streets during the summer season, so that Paris 
 was, during the halcyon days of the Republic 
 (1792), a big family, full of mutual kindness, good 
 humour and patriotic effervescence. One may 
 smile at the naivet^ of such manifestations, and 
 yet he must be very hardened against the charm 
 of such sincerity and simplicity of heart, who 
 does not realize that there was in those days 
 something like a breeze from Galilee passing 
 through the narrow streets of Paris and of the 
 other cities of France. 
 
 Had there been a spirit of evangelism among 
 the Protestants of that time ; had a new Farel 
 arisen to take advantage of the absolute liberty 
 of speech which then reigned, to stand at street 
 corners and to proclaim the grace of God, what 
 miracles might have taken place ! But Pro- 
 testantism, so long persecuted, was but the 
 shadow of itself. Geneva, the head and heart of 
 the Reformed Churches, was governed by an 
 intellectual and cold orthodoxy, which was gradu- 
 ally being superseded by a theistic system of 
 philosophy, savouring more of Rousseau than of 
 Calvin. 
 
 In France there were few faithful preachers 
 left. The most illustrious was Paul Rabaut, 
 pastor at Nimes. For fifty years this sturdy 
 Huguenot maintained the Gospel testimony, not 
 only in that city, but throughout a large section 
 of the South. He preached in the open air,
 
 136 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 near Nimes, in a large quarry still to be seen, to 
 several thousands of people, the authorities, in 
 the latter part of the eighteenth century, having 
 become more lenient, although Rabaut's life 
 was often in peril. The good man lived long 
 enough to see at last the Edict of Toleration 
 granted by the good King Louis xvi., in 1787. 
 When the Revolution broke out, two sons of 
 Rabaut, both ministers like their father, but with 
 less of Huguenot fire, were elected as Repre- 
 sentatives of the people of the first Assemble 
 Nationale. The elder, Rabaut Saint- Etienne, 
 being elected President of the Assembly, wrote 
 to his old father, the long-persecuted preacher, 
 this beautiful message : " My father, the President 
 of the National Assembly is at your feet." But 
 poor Rabaut Saint-Etienne was beheaded during 
 the Reign of Terror (1793), and the stricken 
 father died shortly afterwards. The second son, 
 Rabaut Pommier, escaped the perils of those 
 tragic days ; he lived to be one of the first 
 Protestant pastors of the restored Church of Paris, 
 and died in 1820. 
 
 There was another godly pastor, Jean Gachon, 
 a minister in the CeVennes, whose soul was 
 burning with the pure flame of God's Spirit, 
 having received much blessing from his contact 
 with the Moravian Brethren, disciples of the 
 celebrated Count von Zinzendorf. No doubt 
 Paul Rabaut and Jean Gachon were not alone. 
 However, during the Revolutionary period the
 
 THE REVOLUTION. THE EMPIRE 137 
 
 light of the Gospel did not shine brightly. The 
 Roman Catholic Church, long a persecutor, was 
 in her turn persecuted. The Jansenists had been 
 almost annihilated. 1 
 
 For a short time Paris and some cities of France 
 gave themselves up to a foolish worship, that of 
 the goddess Reason. During that period it was 
 not safe to profess any sort of religious faith. 
 A people which had long been compelled to yield 
 blind obedience to an exacting priesthood, now 
 took its mad revenge : thousands of priests, and 
 most of the ministers that were left, were con- 
 strained under pain of death to bring their sacred 
 insigns vestments, chalices, etc. on the altars 
 of Reason, declaring that they renounced all 
 superstition, and promising to teach the people 
 nothing which was contrary to Reason. Happily, 
 that madness did not last. 
 
 1 The scope of this work forbids us to enter into the discussion 
 of the action of the early Republican Government with regard to 
 the Church. Wishing to control the interference of the Pope, 
 the Assembly voted a " Civil Constitution of the Clergy," which 
 made sacerdotal functions elective, thus republicanizing the 
 Church itself. The larger part of the clergy refused to take the 
 oath of allegiance to this new Constitution, which Rome had 
 denounced as schismatic. The result was that for a few years 
 there were two Catholic Churches, and two clergy. The one, 
 persecuted, was in communion with the Pope ; the other, enjoying 
 the use of the churches and cathedrals, and supported by the 
 State, was schismatic. These had little following, though some 
 good men were among them. This led to a sort of religious war, 
 and mightily helped the revolt of Vendee. It was evidently a 
 mistake to try and reform the Church by law ; and it was a 
 remnant of the old spirit of intolerance which has been the bane of 
 the world.
 
 138 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 Nor did the new religion which a member of 
 the Republican Directoire, Lare~ veillere- Lepaux, 
 instituted under the high - sounding name of 
 Theophilanlhropy, a religion which solely con- 
 sisted in a cold deism and a code of morals. For 
 this new worship, LareVeillere obtained official 
 recognition and the free use of all sacred build- 
 ings. But the people were refractory ; it was 
 difficult to entice them to attend the drowsy 
 sermons of the " theophilanthropic " lecturers. 
 It is said that the father of this new Church was 
 complaining before a witty friend of his, Talley- 
 rand, a man who had been a Romish bishop, but 
 had given up all faith of the want of success of 
 his doctrine. "Well," said Talleyrand, "I will 
 tell you what you should do, if you want your 
 religion to succeed : go, be crucified and buried, 
 then rise up again : I promise you, if you do that, 
 a very large following." 
 
 On coming to power, Napoleon found France 
 without any external religion. The masses 
 seemed practically detached from all forms of 
 worship ; but, deep down in the soul of France, 
 there were principles, the force of which had 
 manifested itself at the beginning of the Revolu- 
 tion ; and now that the cyclone was over, calm 
 reflection, and also a sense of having been 
 deceived by the loud promises of the unbelieving 
 leaders of the Republic, were inducing the people 
 back to their old religious beliefs. Napoleon 
 realized that a nation could not live long without
 
 THE REVOLUTION. THE EMPIRE 139 
 
 the moral restraint and support that Christianity 
 alone affords. But what sort of Christianity 
 should it be ? He is reported to have said that 
 he had found France so detached from all re- 
 ligious traditions, that she would have followed 
 him had he chosen to make her Protestant. But 
 Protestantism is averse to autocratic government, 
 and Napoleon was an autocrat. He, therefore 
 (and no doubt for other reasons also, some of a 
 more intimate nature), chose to restore Roman 
 Catholicism as the national religion. 
 
 Despotic in this as in everything else, he forced 
 on the Pope, Pius VIL, a Concordat which greatly 
 checked the power of the Church. All ecclesi- 
 astical property, which had been confiscated by 
 the Revolution, was to remain in the State's 
 hands ; tithes to remain abolished ; the clergy to 
 be supported by the State as functionaries with 
 regular stipends ; all appointments of bishops to 
 be made jointly by the Emperor and the Pope ; 
 the clergy to give an oath of allegiance to the 
 sovereign. The Protestant Churches had also 
 their Concordat : the pastors were to be elected 
 by the consistories, under the confirming power 
 of the Emperor ; the temples, or Protestant 
 meeting-houses, were to be erected with State 
 funds, and the pastors to receive a salary from 
 the same. No general meetings, Synods, or 
 Councils were to be held without the Emperor's 
 consent. In fact, the Churches, both Catholic and 
 Protestant, were fettered with chains of gold.
 
 140 THE SOUL OP PRANCE 
 
 The new regime was accepted almost unani- 
 mously by all parties. There was not enough 
 spirituality among the small Protestant remnant 
 to perceive that the official protection of the State 
 was going to be nearly as fatal to the life and 
 progress of the Churches as persecution had been. 
 From being outlaws, the ministers had suddenly 
 become functionaries of the Empire, men of social 
 importance, on an equal footing with the Romish 
 clergy. We must remember that, except in 
 England and in the newly-founded United States, 
 there were at that time no Free Churches of any 
 account anywhere. The Reformed Churches of 
 France, therefore (or, as they now came to be 
 called, the Reformed Church, in the singular), 
 were not sinning against their own principles in 
 accepting the Concordat. These principles 
 were wrong, as we sincerely believe, but the time 
 had not yet come for a movement towards full 
 religious emancipation.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE REVIVAL OF THE NINETEENTH 
 CENTURY 
 
 WHEN, at last, the bloody clouds of the 
 long wars had been blown away, after 
 the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era, the effort 
 of the two kings, brothers of Louis xvi., who suc- 
 ceeded one another on the throne of France, 
 Louis xvin. and Charles x. was to re-establish 
 the old order of things, especially with regard to 
 religion. 
 
 The monastic orders, among them the Jesuits, 
 swarmed back, and numerous " missions " were 
 set on foot throughout the land in order to "re- 
 Christianize " it. But there was little spirituality 
 in that effort, which aimed at political results 
 more than at spiritual fruits. Nor were the 
 means employed very spiritual. The wearing of 
 blessed medals, scapularies and crucifixes ; the 
 worship of saints' relics spurious or genuine ; 
 the recital ad nauseam of Paters and Aves ; the 
 creation of all sorts of devotions which had been 
 entirely ignored by the great Gallican bishops 
 and preachers gave to these "missions" a
 
 142 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 materialistic character intensely repugnant to the 
 French soul. 
 
 The worship of Mary as the Mother of God 
 and the all-powerful Mediatrix, became the 
 prominent feature of the new religion. Pilgrim- 
 ages and other superstitions flourished among a 
 certain class of people ; but the " bourgeoisie," as 
 well as the intelligent working men, disgusted at 
 these exhibitions of a crude faith, the preachers 
 of which threatened their political liberties so 
 dearly bought, turned again to Voltairianism, 
 which was never so popular as in those days. 1 
 
 The moral element, which is ever foremost in 
 a genuine Christian revival, was secondary in this 
 effort to restore faith in the hearts of the people. 
 Repentance is not a Romish word ; penitence is 
 the substitute for it, and the difference of meaning 
 is obvious. Repentance is the birth of a new 
 life. Penitence is the patching up of an old 
 one. This expresses accurately the difference 
 between a Catholic revival and an Evangelical 
 one. 
 
 As a memento of those missions, by which 
 every town and village was supposed to have 
 returned wholesale to God and to the Church, 
 stone or iron crosses were erected with great 
 pomp at the entrance of each town, or at cross- 
 roads. There they are still, monuments of the 
 Jesuits' attempt to recover France in the early 
 
 1 Gallicanism, however, was not altogether dead. Some Jen- 
 lightened Catholics favoured the work of the Bible Societies.
 
 REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 143 
 
 part of the nineteenth century ; monuments, also, 
 of the liberalism of the Republic, which has re- 
 spected those emblems. 
 
 The reaction which then took place was led by 
 a few writers of great value : Joseph de Maistre, 
 the resolute champion of absolutism both in 
 religion and in politics ; Chateaubriand, a brilliant 
 but shallow mind ; Lamennais, at first a defender 
 of the Romish faith, but who finally broke away 
 from Rome and died unreconciled to her he 
 had a great influence over the masses. 
 
 Victor Hugo began his public career at that 
 time, and his youthful lyre was Catholic ; but 
 later on he greatly modified his views. Indeed, 
 the splendid poetry of Victor Hugo throughout 
 his long life (1802-84) may be considered as 
 the faithful echo of the nation's mind. He 
 changed with the times, and, apparently, did so 
 with perfect good faith. There never was a 
 writer who took such a hold of the French people 
 as did Victor Hugo. He gave a voice a most 
 eloquent one to those incomplete, but genuine, 
 elements of Christianity that have never ceased 
 to exist in the subconsciousness of the French 
 soul. The great principle of the Gospel the 
 sacrifice of self for the sake of others comes out 
 again and again in his productions, in Les 
 Misdrables, for instance, or in that charming, one 
 may say Evangelic poem, les Pauvres Gens. The 
 latest spirit of Victor Hugo was that of Rousseau. 
 Four lines of his, written under a crucifix, have
 
 144 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 been and are still among the most familiar of all 
 French verse : 
 
 " Vous qui pleurez, venez a ce Dieu, car II pleure. 
 
 Vous qui souffrez, venez a Lui, car II gue"rit. 
 
 Vous qui tremblez, venez a Lui, car II sourit. 
 
 Vous qui passez, venez a Lui, car II demeure ! " l 
 
 The sense of sin, the need of repentance in the 
 Gospel sense of the word, and the atoning value 
 of the blood of Christ all this is lacking in Victor 
 Hugo's religion ; and the same may be said of 
 the writings of Chateaubriand and of Lamartine. 
 The latter, however, went much deeper than any 
 of the other two, in adoration and a true sense of 
 God. 
 
 Be"ranger and his Chansons, which in their 
 simplicity of style remind one of Lafontaine, had 
 a very great influence in those days on the popular 
 mind. He was a liberal and a deist. 
 
 While these great minds, and many others, 
 filled the world with new-found harmony, the 
 Protestant Churches of France were in a sad state. 
 There were few ministers who had a real know- 
 ledge and personal experience of grace. The 
 long period of war had entirely separated the 
 French Reformed from their brethren in other 
 lands. There had been no Bibles printed, and 
 the scarcity of the Word of God was not even 
 
 1 " You weeping ones, come to this God, for He weeps. 
 You suffering ones, come to Him, for He heals. 
 You trembling ones, come to Him, for He smiles. 
 You passing ones, come to Him, for He abides."
 
 REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 145 
 
 realized, so few were those who hungered for it. 
 Outwardly, things were not much better. The 
 Concordat had given official recognition, and 
 freedom to assemble in their own buildings ; 
 but there was no liberty, had men wished to use 
 it, for evangelistic effort. If, perchance, some 
 Roman Catholic joined them, both the new 
 convert and the minister who had received him 
 in his church were liable to prosecution. There 
 were very few books or tracts of any kind. 
 
 The Theological Seminary which Antoine Court 
 had established at Lausanne in 1720, had been 
 transferred to Montauban in 1808. It had about 
 sixty students, but the teaching given in it was 
 of the poorest sort, and the truths of the Gospel 
 were almost entirely ignored. 
 
 There were, however, a few ministers who had 
 the Divine life in them : Lissignol of Montpellier, 
 Chabrand of Toulouse, Gachon, whom we have 
 already noticed, Marzials of Montauban and 
 some others. And there was a host in himself 
 Oberlin, the pastor of Ban-de-la-Roche, in 
 Alsace, then a French province, and soon, we 
 hope, to be one again. 
 
 Oberlin's zeal, his success as a pioneer of the 
 Gospel and of civilization in a district which was 
 only half-civilized when he came to it all this 
 is well known. Such a man even if he had 
 been the only one of his stamp, which was not 
 the case would have sufficed to show that the 
 Spirit of God had not altogether deserted France.
 
 146 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 He died at the advanced age of eighty-six, on 
 June i, 1826, having worked for sixty years 
 amidst extraordinary difficulties and under the 
 most varied political regimes, leaving behind him 
 a transformed parish, and a remembrance which 
 is fragrant still throughout the whole world. 
 
 Oberlin was the first correspondent of the 
 British and Foreign Bible Society in France, 
 as far back as 1 804, the very year of the Society's 
 birth. Oberlin's influence was a great factor in 
 the awakening of the churches in Alsace. That 
 province had become French in 1648 by the 
 Treaty of Westphalia (Strasbourg remained a free 
 city till 1681). The treaty stipulated that the 
 religion of the people would be respected. In 
 consequence, the Revocation of the Edict of 
 Nantes was not enforced in Alsace ; and this 
 liberal policy went far to deepen the patriotic 
 feelings of the Alsatian people toward France 
 feelings which were greatly strengthened at the 
 time of the Revolution, the Alsatians being among 
 its heartiest supporters. It must not be forgotten 
 that the " Marseillaise," in spite of its name, came 
 into existence in Strasbourg, being composed in 
 that city and sung for the first time by its author, 
 Rouget de Lisle, in the drawing-room of Dietrich, 
 Mayor of Strasbourg, in April 1792. In 1798 
 the free city of Mulhouse, of her own will, joined 
 herself to the French Republic. Since that time 
 Alsace has played a conspicuous part in the 
 history of France.
 
 REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 147 
 
 The Alsatian Churches mainly of the Lutheran 
 persuasion, with a good number of the Reformed 
 were under the spell of German theology. But 
 from time to time men of faith appeared among 
 them : Houber, Oberlin's predecessor at the 
 Ban-de-la-Roche, had been one ; but Oberlin was 
 the greatest of all. 
 
 A few years after Napoleon had given a Con- 
 cordat to the Reformed Churches, the Lutherans 
 in Alsace, as in Paris and other parts of France, 
 such as le Pays de Montbe'liard, which had been 
 recently incorporated, were also officially recog- 
 nized. God gave to their Church in Paris some 
 excellent Evangelical preachers, such as Louis 
 Meyer, and, more recently, George Appia and 
 Pierre Dieterlen. Another son of Alsace and a 
 disciple of Oberlin was Tommy Fallot, who has 
 done a noble work in this country as pastor and 
 social reformer. One should like to mention many 
 other names worthy to be known. That of the 
 celebrated Baron Cuvier, the great naturalist, 
 cannot be passed over. He was a faithful member 
 of the Lutheran Church. No one can overestimate 
 the contribution of the Alsatians to the spiritual, 
 moral and social life of France during the Nine- 
 teenth Century, perhaps even more during the 
 latter part of it, after the war of 1870, which 
 compelled some of the best families to leave their 
 country and to settle down in other parts of 
 France. 
 
 Although the spiritual life of the Established
 
 148 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 Protestant Churches,both Reformed and Lutheran, 
 all over the country was very poor, there were, 
 here and there, Christians who had the true light, 
 and who met together for prayer and Bible study 
 without severing their connection with the main 
 Church. Some Moravian evangelists, in the 
 latter part of the eighteenth century, had begun 
 this good work. At Nlmes, when the Methodists 
 began their labours in 1821, they found meetings 
 of the Moravian type which had existed long 
 before the Revolution, and had been maintained 
 even during its darkest days. 1 
 
 It could not therefore be said that the truth 
 had no representatives in France. Considering 
 how long and severe had been the persecutions, 
 immediately succeeded by the tumult of the 
 Revolution and the twenty-five years of war ; 
 considering also that, for nearly a century, there 
 had reigned an atmosphere of infidelity, all the 
 more insidious for the young people because it 
 was the only form of liberalism which they knew 
 (for Protestantism itself was not free from a 
 spirit of intolerance in the countries where it 
 ruled) may we not say that the preservation 
 of even a small amount of true spiritual life in 
 this country was nothing short of a miracle ? 2 
 
 1 See Appendix C, on the ministry of Jean de Labadie. 
 
 * It is right that mention should be made here of a remarkable 
 group of about two hundred people, who cannot be better described 
 than by the name of French Quakers ; for, while they had no 
 knowledge of the existence of the English " Society of Friends," 
 they held practically the same views. They were to be found in
 
 REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 149 
 
 But now the time had come for that gracious 
 visitation of God's Spirit which was second only 
 to that of the Reformation days : the great French 
 Revival of the nineteenth century. The initiator 
 of that movement was a Scotsman, Robert 
 Haldane. 
 
 Scotland owed much to France, which by 
 means of Calvin's teaching had made John Knox 
 what he was, and had given our Northern friends 
 that form of Church government which is so 
 dear to them, Presbyterianism. It was fit, there- 
 fore, that Scotland should send back to France 
 something of what she had received from her ; 
 and she did so, when she sent us, for a few 
 short years, one of the two Haldanes. 
 
 Robert Haldane, a wealthy landowner and a 
 naval officer, was converted after six years spent 
 at sea. He and his brother James became 
 evangelists whom God used mightily in their 
 own country. James was ordained, but Robert 
 remained a layman : would to God there were 
 many such ! He took the greatest interest in 
 the defence of Biblical truth, and became an 
 able and deeply instructed teacher. Above all, 
 
 villages near the city of Nimes, and were, probably, a remnant of 
 those " prophets " which had arisen in the absence of regular 
 ministers at the time of the Revocation, and whom Antoine Court 
 had vigorously put down. The French Quakers, still few in 
 number but faithful and steadfast, have since linked themselves 
 with their English brethren. From their small community 
 excellent Christians have risen, whose services to the cause of 
 Christ cannot be overestimated,
 
 ISO THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 he was burning with love for his Saviour, and 
 for the souls He came to redeem. 
 
 In 1816, being about fifty years of age, he 
 was led, partly through some disappointments 
 he had experienced in Scotland, to seek oppor- 
 tunities of serving the Master on the Continent, 
 now for the first time, after so many years of 
 war, opened to British travellers. 
 
 He first came to Paris, but found there no 
 opening. However, he followed the advice of 
 a friend and went to Geneva, which was still 
 the bulwark of French Protestantism. 
 
 " On my arrival," he says, " I called on the 
 late M. Moulinie*, and conversed with him on the 
 Gospel. He was very kind, but appearing to 
 acquiesce in all that I advanced, discussion on 
 any point was out of the question, and no 
 progress was made. . . . I, however, again visited 
 M. Moulinie". . . . From all I could learn from 
 him, Geneva was involved in the most deplorable 
 darkness. It was ... an unbroken field of 
 labour, with a fallen Church. Calvin, once its 
 chiefest boast and ornament, with his doctrines 
 and works, had been set aside and forgotten, 
 while the pastors and professors were in general 
 Arians or Socinians. Some exceptions among 
 them there were, including M. Moulinie*, who 
 held the divinity of our Lord Jesus, and, I believe, 
 loved and served Him according to their light ; 
 but . . . they preached neither law nor Gospel 
 fully. ... A small prayer-meeting had for some
 
 REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 151 
 
 time been held, in consequence, I believe, of a 
 visit of Madame de Kriidener to Geneva ; and 
 by one belonging to it I was told that, sensible 
 of their want of knowledge, they had prayed that 
 an instructor should be sent to them, and that 
 their prayer, they now believed, was answered." 
 
 And so it was. Haldane did not then fully 
 know to what extent his visit had been Divinely 
 prepared. 
 
 Some two or three years before, a number of 
 godly young men, students of theology, had 
 formed among themselves a society for prayer 
 and mutual exhortation, much opposed by the 
 "Venerable Compagnie " of the pastors. These 
 young men's awakening was due, not only to the 
 visit of the celebrated Baroness de Kriidener, the 
 mystic friend of Tsar Alexander i., but also, and 
 even more, to the group of Moravian Brethren 
 who, though much reduced in numbers, had 
 never ceased to meet in Geneva. 1 
 
 Haldane was on the point of leaving Geneva, 
 finding, as he thought, no opening there, when a 
 casual conversation he had with a young man led 
 him to decide on remaining. And for a year or 
 more he held Bible-readings with those theo- 
 logical students whose hearts God had already 
 touched, but whose ignorance with regard to the 
 saving truths of the Gospel was appalling. The 
 
 1 We have noticed above (p. 148) that a similar group had also 
 persisted in the city of Nimes. No one can overestimate the debt 
 of Christendom to the Moravian Brethren?
 
 152 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 names of some of those godly young men have 
 become household words among Evangelical 
 Christians in France and in other lands. They 
 are those of Merle-d'Aubigne", the author of the 
 classical History of the Reformation ; Fre'de'ric 
 Monod, who became one of the leading pastors 
 of France and the chief founder of the Free 
 Churches ; * Bonifas, a future theologian of 
 great ability and consecration ; Guers, who, 
 living in Geneva all his life, became one of the 
 chief instruments of the Revival in that city. 
 Two young ministers, though already ordained 
 and in charge of parishes round Geneva, received 
 from Haldane the fulness of light they needed ; 
 both became mighty workers for Christ, and a 
 blessing to the Church universal ; their names 
 were, Louis Gaussen, author of Theopneustia, and 
 Ce*sar Malan, of whom we shall speak again later 
 on. Two other names must also be mentioned, 
 of men who became the leading evangelists of 
 France, though both were Swiss : Henri Pyt and 
 Ami Bost. 
 
 The three main characteristics of Haldane's 
 Revival, as it has sometimes been called, were 
 these : ( i ) it gave a paramount emphasis to the 
 necessity of a personal knowledge and experience 
 of grace ; (2) it maintained the absolute authority 
 and Divine inspiration of the Bible ; (3) it was a 
 return to Calvinistic doctrine, against Pelagianism 
 
 1 He was the father of Pasteur Theodore Monod, whose name is 
 so well known in connection with the early Keswick movement,
 
 REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 153 
 
 and Arminianism. Haldane was an orthodox of 
 the first water ; but his orthodoxy was blended 
 with love and life. 
 
 The subject of Haldane's teaching during that 
 eventful year was the Epistle to the Romans. 
 Twice a week the young men sat around the 
 table in the Scottish gentleman's drawing-room, 
 while he was carefully opening to them the 
 mysteries of redeeming grace. His French being 
 imperfect, one of the students served as inter- 
 preter. The study was followed by a time for 
 answering questions, and was concluded with 
 prayer. The intelligent listeners to those 
 lectures all testified in after years that they had 
 been enlightened by them, both in heart and 
 mind, in a manner that was scarcely short of a 
 revelation. No wonder that the infidel professors 
 of the University were angry with the Scots- 
 man, and that one of them, Chenneviere, went 
 even so far as to watch from a distance the door 
 of Haldane's house, to spy the students who went 
 to the lectures. 
 
 A few years later, another Scotsman, Erskine, 
 was the means of bringing to conversion a young 
 minister who became the greatest of French 
 preachers, and who might have rivalled Bossuet 
 himself had he preached in cathedrals ; his name 
 was Adolphe Monod, younger brother of Fre*de*ric, 
 and who also had been a student of the Geneva 
 Faculty of Theology. 
 
 When Haldane had finished his work in
 
 154 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 Geneva, he went to Montauban, the seat of 
 another theological seminary, where he arrived 
 in July 1817. 
 
 " At the time of Mr. Haldane's arrival at 
 Montauban " (says his biographer) l " the Dean 
 of the Faculty was the distinguished M. Daniel 
 Encontre, who, up to the year 1814, had been 
 president of the Faculty of Sciences of Mont- 
 pellier. M. Encontre held a high place as a 
 man of science, and, next to Laplace, was then 
 considered the most distinguished mathematician 
 in France. " I have seen," said the celebrated 
 Fourcroy, " two or three men in France his 
 equals in intellect, I have never yet seen his 
 superior." In theology, Mr. Haldane found him 
 to be a strong Arminian, and very indistinct in 
 his apprehensions of truth ; but the philosopher 
 soon learned to regard the talents, as well as the 
 piety, of his new acquaintance with profound re- 
 spect. Confident in his own powers and great 
 attainments, M. Encontre was usually somewhat 
 dogmatic in the assertion of his philosophic views, 
 and impatient of contradiction ; and it was re- 
 marked that the only person before whom he 
 ever seemed disposed to bow was Robert Haldane. 
 They had many conversations together on the 
 way of salvation, and there was obviously a great 
 struggle in his mind between the truths of the 
 Gospel and the arrogance of a proud philosophy. 
 
 1 The lives of Robert Haldane of Airthrey, and of his brother, 
 by Alexander Haldane, Esq.
 
 REVIVAL OF NINETEENTH CENTURY 155 
 
 " O science ! science ! " he would sometimes ex- 
 claim, as if he felt the painfulness of the contest. 
 ... But the victory was not doubtful, and when 
 he finally took leave of his friends to go for 
 change of air to Montpellier, M. Encontre who 
 was then in a feeble, and, as it proved, a dying 
 state, grasped Mr. Haldane's hand and said with 
 emotion : " Je suis un grand pe"cheur, mais j'ai un 
 grand Re"pondant ! " (I am a great sinner, but I 
 have a great Surety). 
 
 "... The strong public testimony which he 
 latterly bore to his Scottish friend, and the value 
 he set on his writings, was another token that 
 their intercourse had not been without fruit. 
 After recommending to the students the Evi- 
 dences of Christianity, Dr. Bogue's Essay on 
 the Authority of the New Testament, which had 
 been translated into French, and is said to have 
 been used by Napoleon at St. Helena, and 
 noticing Paley, he added : " Read also, as soon 
 as possible, that admirable work which the learned 
 Robert Haldane, of Edinburgh, now residing at 
 Montauban, is about to publish a man who 
 seems to have consecrated his whole time and 
 labour and watchings, and, in a certain sense, all 
 his property, to the Church of the Lord."
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 SOME PREACHERS OF THE REVIVAL 
 
 LET us return to Geneva, and to the 
 awakened students whom Haldane had 
 left there, entrusting them to the care of God. 
 Just as he was leaving the city another British 
 Christian was entering it, Mr. Drummond. The 
 newcomer was an instrument in strengthening 
 the faith of the new converts, and in guiding 
 them through difficult passages, for opposition 
 was very keen, and became increasingly so, until 
 the young Christians felt reluctantly compelled to 
 leave the old Established Church and to form a 
 new one, the first Free Church ever established in 
 French-speaking countries. That Church be- 
 came a centre of life, from which went forth 
 some gifted men who, for zeal, endurance and 
 disinterestedness, may stand comparison with 
 the early preachers of the Reformation. As they 
 were the pioneers of the French Revival, it is 
 well that we should give them more than a 
 passing mention. 
 
 Foremost among them was Henri Pyt. He 
 laboured, sent by the Geneva Church, first among 
 the peasants and miners of the North of France,
 
 SOME PREACHERS OF THE REVIVAL 157 
 
 where he discovered a nucleus of Christians, 
 mostly converts from Romanism, who spent their 
 evenings in reading the Bible, of which one of 
 them happened to possess a copy. 
 
 Leaving the North after most fruitful labours, 
 Pyt visited the centre of France, founding a 
 church, which is still extant, in a village near the 
 old cathedral city of Chartres, named Gaubert. 
 Thence he was led to Bayonne, and worked 
 there with much success, reviving those ancient 
 Be"arn churches which had been so flourishing 
 in early Reformation days. Finally, he settled in 
 Paris, and spent himself there on all the com- 
 mittees and Christian undertakings that the 
 new Evangelism was speedily bringing into 
 existence; there he fell, in 1835, all too early, 
 used up by his apostolic zeal, at the age of 
 forty-one. 
 
 Ami Bost, friend and brother-in-law of Pyt, 
 was also a fruit of Haldane's labours. Full of 
 ability, gifted with an artistic temperament and 
 an untiring zeal, he did not, perhaps, equal his 
 friend in that serenity of mind and solidity of 
 character which made Pyt a model missionary. 
 But his work was owned of God. He wrote 
 religious musical compositions of value. He was 
 the father of a number of gifted sons, the foremost 
 of whom was John, founder of the well-known 
 Laforce Institutions, in which over five hundred 
 persons, including orphans and all sorts of in- 
 curables, are mercifully cared for. Ami Bost
 
 158 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 died at his son's residence, Laforce, in 1875, at 
 the ripe age of seventy-eight. 
 
 Another young Swiss whose name will ever 
 be remembered by the grateful Protestants of 
 France, was Fe*lix Neff. He was not one of 
 Haldane's converts : at the time of the Lectures 
 on Romans he was a lad of eighteen, and a 
 soldier in the small army of the Geneva Re- 
 public. At nineteen he was a sergeant. The 
 son of a godly mother, he was not without 
 spiritual cravings, as was testified by his oft- 
 repeated prayer at that time : " O God, whoever 
 Thou art, reveal Thy truth to me, show Thyself 
 to my soul." He began to read the Bible, and 
 was soon in deep conviction of sin, from which he 
 was delivered by reading a little book of Thomas 
 Wilcocks, translated into French, Le miel dfaou- 
 lant du rocker, probably given him by Haldane's 
 friends, whose society he joined in 1819, soon 
 afterwards leaving the military service to become 
 an evangelist. 
 
 He began his labours in Geneva, but soon 
 came to France and devoted himself to the 
 evangelization of the mountainous districts of the 
 I sere and the Drome, on the western side of 
 the Alps. His short life was all spent in that 
 region ; first at Grenoble, then at Mens, and 
 finally in the rugged and almost unapproachable 
 district known as les Hautes-Alpes, where the 
 remnant of the French Waldenses had found a 
 refuge some centuries before. There were there
 
 SOME PREACHERS OF THE REVIVAL 159 
 
 several parishes utterly abandoned, and needing 
 not only the Gospel, but even the elementary 
 notions of civilized life. " The wretchedness and 
 squalor of these mountaineers then defied de- 
 scription. Many houses had neither chimneys 
 nor windows ; the whole family lived in the 
 stable, at least during the winter, which at those 
 altitudes lasts seven months, when the sun is 
 hardly visible on account of the huge mountains 
 that surround the villages ; and the stable was 
 cleaned out only once a year ! Food and 
 raiment were no better. Bread was baked once 
 a year, and soaked in water in order to be 
 rendered eatable. No doctor lived there. The 
 manners and customs had become savage : gam- 
 bling, wife-beating, debauchery, were common 
 practices. These descendants of the martyrs 
 had, indeed, fallen very low." 
 
 Neff applied himself with unsparing energy and 
 patient faith, born of love, to the work of rescuing 
 these miserable people. We can barely sum up 
 the multitude of his efforts. He preached from 
 house to house, Sundays and week-days, ever 
 travelling over his immense parish, which was 
 more than sixty miles long, with bad roads and 
 no conveyances, deprived of the most elementary 
 comforts, and even, sometimes, of bare necessaries. 1 
 
 1 We personally remember an old gentleman, who, in his youth, 
 had been one of Neff's parishioners, and had been converted by 
 him. What a vivid, loving memory he had kept of the young 
 missionary ! " Half a dozen of us, young fellows, felt much 
 attached to Neff, and went with him through the snows, from one
 
 1 60 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 We cannot follow Neff in his heroic labours. 
 He permanently transformed that country, 
 materially and spiritually, in the course of a 
 five years' ministry, which ended with his life 
 after a very painful illness, the result of the 
 hardships he had endured. He died in 1829, 
 at the age of thirty-one. 
 
 Ce"sar Malan, who, while a minister of the 
 Geneva State Church, had been wonderfully 
 affected by Haldane's ministry, became a 
 preacher of great power. A strong Calvinist 
 and Presbyterian, he was an evangelist of great 
 ability, and gave many years of his long life to 
 preaching the Gospel in France, even while he 
 held the pastorate of a church in Geneva. He 
 was the great hymnologist of the Revival. Up 
 to that time, only the Psalms and a few solemn 
 hymns, written in the eighteenth century by 
 B^n^dict Pictet, were sung in churches. Malan's 
 
 village to another, just to keep him company. But, though we 
 loved the man, our hearts were utterly unconcerned about his 
 message. One Sunday night, Neff had been preaching all day 
 long at different places ; it was his last service for the day ; and, 
 as he was proceeding with his sermon, all at once he bent over 
 the table towards us, with his pale, tired face, and said, his eyes 
 filling with tears : ' Dear, dear friends, you know all about it, I 
 wish you would give yourselves to Christ ! ' His longing for our 
 salvation, the love that burned so evidently in his heart towards us 
 it was THAT which broke our resistance. We, too, began to 
 cry, and the evening was not over but every one of us had yielded 
 to the Spirit." My old friend, while thus recounting what had 
 happened fifty years before, was all aglow. He had become a 
 rich merchant ; but the dew of NefPs love was still fresh on his 
 soul.
 
 SOME PREACHERS OF THE REVIVAL 161 
 
 hymns, les Chants de Sion, had a great success, 
 and many are in use still. 1 
 
 Just after Haldane's fruitful visit to Geneva 
 and Montauban, another British Christian came 
 over to this country, whose labours in France 
 have been wonderfully blessed. His name was 
 Charles Cook, and he was sent to us by the 
 English Methodist Conference. 
 
 The Conference had tried before to evangelize 
 France ; even as far back as the Revolutionary 
 period, and on several occasions afterwards, she 
 had sent excellent men, two of whom du 
 Pontavice and de Kerpezdron were French 
 noblemen who, having emigrated to England 
 after the fall of the Monarchy, had found the truth 
 of the Gospel, and had returned to France, under 
 Napoleon's reign, as missionaries. But these 
 efforts could only be tentative. It was not till 
 October 1818, with the arrival of Charles Cook at 
 Caen, that Methodist work in France really began. 
 
 " Charles Cook, to the vigour of youth, joined 
 great prudence. He had deep piety, knowledge 
 of men, business capacities, great reserve, and 
 firmness of mind, which was tempered by reflexion 
 and circumspection. ... His conscience was so 
 upright, so deep was his faith, so respectable his 
 character, and so burning his zeal, that he soon 
 
 1 It was through Malan's ministry, while on a visit to England, 
 that Charlotte Elliott was converted to God. She wrote many 
 hymns, among them the well-known " Just as I am," which was 
 translated into French (Tel que je suis. . . .) 
 II
 
 1 62 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 acquired great authority." So spoke of him one 
 of our most distinguished writers, de Felice. 
 
 Few months sufficed him to acquire such a 
 practical knowledge of French, that he was able 
 to write a French sermon as quickly as an English 
 one. Welcomed by the Reformed pastor of Caen, 
 he evangelized the country around, where there 
 were a few Protestant parishes in the midst of an 
 intensely bigoted Catholic population. But the 
 labours of Charles Cook were not destined to be 
 limited to Normandy. With his friend, Pasteur 
 Rollin of Caen, he visited the South of France, in 
 1819, and in the course of the journey made the 
 acquaintance of all the godly ministers of that 
 region, who gave him a hearty welcome, Calvinists 
 though they were. " Do you preach," asked 
 Lissignol, "justification by faith?" "Yes," 
 replied Cook, "we do it with as much force and 
 clearness as any other religious body." "All 
 right, then," said Lissignol; "that, to me, is the 
 essential point ; whoever is right there, cannot fall 
 into very great errors on other points. I shall be 
 very glad to have the help of your missionaries." 
 
 Methodism was thus introduced into France, 
 not, at first, as a new denomination, but as a 
 Society within the old Protestant Church, which 
 it intended to revive. 
 
 Cook multiplied his efforts, travelling inces- 
 santly, his centre being at Caveirac, near Nimes. 
 Those efforts were greatly owned of God. 
 Through him and his associates, Methodism has
 
 SOME PREACHERS OF THE REVIVAL 163 
 
 done a great work in the country. The Methodist 
 fire, allied with the spiritual forces which had been 
 revived by Haldane, gave rise to what may truly 
 be called a new French Protestantism. But the 
 Methodists could not long retain their position of 
 mere helpers of the Established Church. They 
 were led by the force of circumstances, and in 
 some cases were constrained by the opposition 
 of those they had wished to help, to form separate 
 congregations, in the South, in Normandy, in the 
 East of France, and in Paris. Their work has 
 been, and is still, excellent under that form ; but 
 one may question whether their main efficiency 
 has not been in fostering everywhere a spirit of 
 true Evangelism, by emphasizing the necessity of 
 personal conversion, which was the distinctive 
 note of early Methodist preaching. 1 
 
 1 English though he was, Charles Cook so identified himself 
 with France that he married a French lady, the daughter of Pasteur 
 Marzials of Montauban, a friend of Robert Haldane. That was, 
 at the same time, practising the Entente Cordiale and the 
 Evangelical Alliance before those things were even spoken of. 
 His distinguished sons were French, and laboured with honour 
 and success in the same cause as their father, whose name is used 
 even to-day as a nickname for those who profess true faith. In the 
 region round about Nimes, to be a couyue, means to be a real 
 Christian. 
 
 Emile Cook specialized in Sunday-school work ; he gave a great 
 impetus to it in France, if he did not originate it. At the time of 
 our writing, a son of Emile, a grandson of Charles, is chaplain to 
 the French forces in Morocco, and a great-grandson is a soldier 
 at the Front. 
 
 French Methodism has received much help from the Channel 
 Islands. Several honoured families of pastors and evangelists 
 came from there, and have become quite French.
 
 1 64 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 As a river which separates into numerous 
 channels, the French Evangelical movement ex- 
 panded and branched off in various directions 
 in the first half of the nineteenth century. It is 
 sometimes difficult to know how some of these 
 secondary movements commenced. Baptist views, 
 for instance, have been of long standing in this 
 country. As far back as the twelfth century, 
 Pierre de Bruys was opposing the baptism of 
 infants ; in the seventeenth, Jean de Labadie 
 came to hold similar views, but he had, in 
 France, no permanent followers. Haldane was a 
 "baptized believer," though never connected with 
 Baptist churches, and adverse to the formation 
 of a new denomination : his aim had been simply 
 to revive the old Church. Pyt, Guers, Porchat 
 and a number of Geneva missionaries were also 
 immersed on profession of their faith. It is 
 ascertained that Pyt met, in the North, a group 
 of converted people who, previously to his visit, 
 had adopted Baptist views, and remained faithful 
 to them. 
 
 The Baptist cause was established in France, 
 about the year 1832, by some devoted American 
 missionaries, who did not stay very long, and 
 who left some Frenchmen in charge, under the 
 auspices of the American Baptist Missionary 
 Union. 
 
 J. B. Cretin was the principal pioneer of that 
 cause in the North of France ; and it has been 
 our privilege to gather from him much informa-
 
 SOME PREACHERS OF THE REVIVAL 165 
 
 tion as to the difficulties of evangelistic work in 
 those early days. However, he succeeded in 
 establishing new churches, formed mostly of 
 Roman Catholic converts, and in bringing to 
 Christ several families whose sons have been in 
 the Gospel ministry for many years. Cretin's 
 recollections of Henri Pyt, whom he had often 
 heard in his youth, were most interesting. What 
 a set of consecrated people were the "children of 
 the Revival," as the Christians of that period 
 have been called ! Puritanic in the extreme, they 
 had a holy fear of anything that savoured of 
 worldliness ; women and girls would not allow 
 themselves the simplest ornament, the most 
 innocent jewel. Their recreations consisted in 
 singing Malan's hymns, then newly written. Nor 
 were those northern Christians peculiar in that 
 respect. The same characteristic was shared by 
 all the congregations of "revived" Protestants; 
 and in the CeVennes one finds still, though 
 somewhat mollified, the same stern other-worldli- 
 ness among the people who profess a spiritual 
 Christianity. 
 
 Another spiritual movement of no mean value 
 was originated by an Englishman of great 
 linguistic and theological ability, amounting 
 almost to genius, J. N. Darby ; a man who 
 might have done a much more efficient work 
 had he adopted a more fraternal attitude toward 
 other Christians. As it is, Plymouth Brethren 
 (or Darbyistes, as they were called in France and
 
 1 66 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 in Switzerland) have been, and are still, a great 
 force. They are very numerous among the 
 Protestants of the South especially in the depart- 
 ment of the Haute- Loire and the Ardeche ; 
 their gatherings, never advertised, are found in 
 very many parts of France and French Switzer- 
 land. Their main contribution to the Church 
 universal has been, the emphasis laid by them on 
 the priestly character of every Christian, on the 
 universal priesthood of the believers in Christ. 
 Their attachment to the Bible is praiseworthy. 
 But they lacked very much, until recently, in 
 brotherliness towards other Christians, and in 
 evangelistic zeal. One is happy to find that there 
 has been of late a marked change in that respect. 
 A section of these Brethren are broad in their 
 sympathies, and are nobly spending themselves 
 for the salvation of souls. 
 
 One may, perhaps, wonder that, writing on such 
 a big subject as "the Soul of France," we should 
 give so much importance to these small, and in 
 appearance ineffective, Protestant "sects." Our 
 reply will be that their influence is far greater 
 than their mere numbers would imply. Just as 
 Protestantism, though it is a very small portion of 
 the French people, has been, and is still, an 
 essential part of the national life, in the same 
 manner these small dissenting bodies to which 
 should be added the Free Churches properly so 
 called, which were founded later on are, in many 
 respects, essential to the very life of Protestantism.
 
 SOME PREACHERS OF THE REVIVAL 167 
 
 The Churches issued from the Reformation must 
 ever progress or perish ; there must be among 
 them a constant search for more light, more 
 power, more life ; and there must be in contra- 
 distinction from the Romish system a full liberty 
 of soul, a holy emulation, a healthy individualism. 
 Protestantism has never fared well except in 
 liberty, in variety of views and of forms of 
 worship. It is a remarkable thing that, while 
 these new denominations were very small com- 
 pared with the old Reformed Church, they 
 helped to revive her, and furnished a very large 
 proportion of the evangelists and missionaries 
 which have laboured in France or on the foreign 
 field. 
 
 True believers are the salt of the earth. A 
 single consecrated life, in a village or small town, 
 has often been the means of forming a new com- 
 munity of Christians. To-day, in the trenches, 
 the testimony of one solitary Christian soldier will 
 influence the conduct and moral attitude of a 
 whole company. The presence of a few Evan- 
 gelicals, belonging, perhaps, to one of those 
 insignificant "sects" of which we have spoken, 
 among the Roman Catholic masses, tends to 
 destroy bigotry and prejudice, to create a desire 
 for the truth, and even to bring to Christ some 
 who, externally, will never leave the Romish 
 Church, thus introducing within that Church it- 
 self a spirit which checks, more than perhaps we 
 are aware, the intolerance of that great institution.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 SOME FRUITS OF THE REVIVAL 
 
 THE reign of the Bourbon kings terminated 
 with a crash. France had paid too dearly 
 for her liberties to permit a return of old-time 
 autocracy, which was the aim of King Charles x. 
 and his ill-advised ministers. Louis-Philippe i., of 
 the Orleans family, was elected King of the 
 French (not King of France, as his predecessors 
 had been), with the tricolour flag back again. 1 
 Words and symbols are of great importance in 
 this country, so essentially idealistic. 
 
 Louis-Philippe's reign lasted from 1830 to 1848. 
 At its beginning, there was great hope among the 
 lovers of the Gospel in France. The king owed 
 his elevation to the triumph of the liberal party. 
 The future queen, wife of the king's eldest son, 
 the Due d'Orle"ans, was a Protestant, and a true 
 disciple of Christ. One of the king's ministers, 
 and for a long time the head of the Cabinet, 
 M. Guizot, was a Huguenot and a firm believer 
 in the Bible. Born in Nimes from a father who 
 had been guillotined under the Terror, and from 
 ancestors who had suffered for their faith, Guizot 
 
 1 The flag of the Bourbon monarchy was pure white, with golden 
 lilies. 
 
 1 68
 
 SOME FRUITS OF THE REVIVAL 169 
 
 had been carefully brought up by an intelligent 
 and pious mother, and his early days had been 
 spent in Geneva. Under Napoleon and the 
 Bourbons, he had made a name for himself in 
 literature and politics, and his high character had 
 won him universal respect. Having become a 
 Minister of Public Instruction, he gave to France 
 her first regular system of primary schools, a very 
 great step forward. One of the reading books 
 provided for those schools was the New Testa- 
 ment : it was the first time in our history that the 
 Divine book was thus officially recognized. 
 
 That period was full of mental and spiritual 
 fermentation. The country was eager to develop 
 and to apply the principles of 1789. Within the 
 Church of Rome the old Gallican spirit was 
 reasserting itself. Men like Lamennais, Montal- 
 embert, Lacordaire (the eloquent Benedictine 
 preacher), Ozanam, and many others, were trying 
 to reconcile the Church with the aspirations of 
 modern France a task which has been under- 
 taken again and again, but has always proved 
 delusive, and ever will. It has tempted, and is 
 still tempting, the noblest Catholic Christians. 
 But there are only two alternatives for such men : 
 either to leave the Church, as did finally Lamen- 
 nais, then, long afterwards, Hyacinthe Loyson, 
 and in our times Loisy and a host of others ; or to 
 submit, as did Lacordaire, and as the Modernists 
 have all, with broken hearts, been compelled to do. 
 
 At that time a society was founded in Paris
 
 1 70 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 for the purpose of bringing together in Christian 
 fellowship and social work some of the most dis- 
 tinguished Catholics and Protestants. Its name 
 was Socittd de la Morale Chrttienne. Its main 
 originator was a gentleman, M. Casimir Rostan, 
 a member of the Consular Service, in which 
 capacity he had lived in the United States. He 
 had found there the light of the Gospel, and from 
 a careless sort of Catholic had become a Protes- 
 tant and a Baptist. Returning to France, he 
 employed himself in the progress of Evangelical 
 Christianity, and in " the rapprochement " of all 
 true believers. Some of the highest names 
 such as the Due de Broglie, whose wife was the 
 daughter of the celebrated Madame de Stae'l and 
 the granddaughter of Necker (the Protestant 
 Minister of Finance of unfortunate Louis xvi.) 
 belonged to the Society. Some members of the 
 Romish clergy cordially associated with their 
 Protestant brethren ; but the Society was short- 
 lived. The Pope pronounced his veto, and la 
 Morale Chre'tienne disappeared. 1 
 
 1 The pathetic failure of such efforts contains a lesson which 
 many warm-hearted Evangelicals find it hard to learn, namely, 
 that Rome is unapproachable except by the door of unconditional 
 surrender. Here is another case in point ; though we are antici- 
 pating, as this last experiment was made in 1866 : 
 
 Pasteur E. Pe"tavel of Switzerland took the initiative of founding 
 a society for the purpose of producing a translation of the Bible 
 which might be accepted by Catholics and Protestants alike. He 
 was heartily supported by the Abbe" Etienne Blanc of la Madeleine, 
 and by a Jewish Hebrew scholar, M. Le*vy Bing. Once again, 
 some of the greatest names are found on the list of members :
 
 SOME FRUITS OP THE REVIVAL 171 
 
 If the union of Rome with the Evangelicals 
 was impossible, the latter did not find much 
 difficulty in uniting among themselves for their 
 common objects. The great Revival, begun in 
 1816, brought to existence a number of institutions 
 and societies to which very few have been added 
 since thus demonstrating the practical value of a 
 revived faith. Pages might be filled with the bare 
 enumeration of the ecclesiastical, benevolent and 
 evangelistic organizations which came to life 
 between the years 1820 and 1850, when the 
 Revival may be said to have given its full 
 measure. Orphanages, Homes of Refuge for the 
 aged and invalids, Hospitals, Deaconesses' Insti- 
 tutes, Primary and Secondary Schools, and very 
 specially the Socittd des Missions Evangdliques of 
 Paris, which boldly undertook work, first in South 
 Africa (Basutoland), and the Tahiti Islands, later 
 on in Senegal, in Madagascar, on the Zambezi and 
 on the Congo. 1 Several Evangelization Societies 
 were also founded at that time : one in Geneva, 
 
 Prince Louis-Lucien Bonaparte, Comte de Montalembert, Prince 
 Albert de Broglie, the historian Ame'de'e Thierry, Father Gratry, 
 Abb6 Loyson (brother of Hyacinthe), a number of leading pastors, 
 among whom MM. Edmond de Pressense and Theodore Monod. 
 . . . Large and influential meetings 'were held, in which some 
 important declarations were made. Abbd Loyson hailed the day 
 coming when the unity of the Church could be fully realized, and 
 expressed a veiled blame of the persecutions of the past. His 
 speech, however, brought upon him the severity of his superiors, 
 and its publication was forbidden. And, in the year following, the 
 Society was dissolved on account of the retirement of all its 
 Catholic members. 
 
 1 The first missionary, Casalis, was a convert of Henri Pyt.
 
 172 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 destined mainly to work in France, and one in 
 Paris, both independent of any particular denom- 
 ination ; also, Home Mission Societies of the 
 Reformed and Lutheran Churches ; the Paris 
 Tract Society ; the Religious Book Society of 
 Toulouse, founded by three wealthy and devoted 
 brothers, MM. Courtois ; and, first in order of time 
 (in 1818), a Paris Bible Society, which, later on, 
 divided on doctrinal matters, so that there are 
 now two French Bible Societies. Such are some 
 of the activities which sprang up during that 
 eventful period, under the impulse of some of the 
 men we have named, to whom must be added 
 Mark Wilks, an English Christian of wonderful 
 executive ability, Admiral Verhuell, Comte de 
 Laborde, Comte A. de Gasparin, Baron de Stae'l, 
 P. A. Stapfer and many others. 
 
 This was, indeed, the golden age of French 
 Evangelism. The Reformation was, at last, 
 allowed to bear its fruits, and the Churches so 
 long cramped by public oppression were able, 
 under the influence of the Spirit of God, to 
 acquire those faculties without which they could 
 not have prospered. Later on, Young Men's 
 Christian Associations, and later still, Young 
 Women's, were founded. 
 
 Remember that all these institutions had, and 
 have still, to be supported by a very limited num- 
 ber of people. There were then, including children, 
 at the utmost, one million Protestants in France 
 (Alsace had not yet been wrenched from us).
 
 SOME FRUITS OF THE REVIVAL 173 
 
 Of these, how many might be said to have ex- 
 perienced the saving power of Christ, and to 
 have a practical share in the great work we have 
 just mentioned ? Perhaps one-tenth ; certainly 
 not more. And yet, though the loss of Alsace 
 has left us still more reduced, those institutions 
 have not suffered. Out of the six hundred 
 thousand Protestants of France to-day, it is 
 difficult to know how many are Evangelical, and 
 of these how many are truly converted ; and 
 these are doing the largest part of what is needed 
 for the support of their churches now all dis- 
 established and of their institutions, with some 
 help from outside. 
 
 These points need to be emphasized, as the 
 Revival of the nineteenth century has sometimes 
 been represented as having been narrowly 
 dogmatic, barren of social works, devoid of a 
 truly humane spirit, and so taken up with the 
 salvation of souls that it had no regard for the 
 temporal needs and sufferings of this poor world 
 of ours. It is most significant that, though a 
 large number of ministers and parishes at that 
 time belonged to the " liberal " or Rationalist 
 party, there are few benevolent institutions 
 among us which do not owe their existence 
 to the Evangelicals alone. In recent times, 
 liberalism, under the influence of German 
 Higher Criticism, has asserted itself with new 
 vigour ; and one of its grievances against the 
 old-fashioned Evangelicals was, that they did not
 
 174 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 give themselves enough to the solution of the 
 great social problems of the day. Yet, as a 
 matter of fact, nearly all Temperance and social 
 work has been started and is supported by the 
 Evangelicals. 
 
 Among all these activities which marked the 
 renascence of French Evangelism, none can be 
 compared for efficiency with the work of the 
 Bible Societies. The two French ones liberally 
 provide Protestant homes and Sunday schools 
 with the Scriptures they need, and their service 
 cannot be overestimated. But for work outside our 
 churches, for spreading the Word of God among 
 the masses, we are indebted pre-eminently to that 
 greatest and most important of all Evangelistic 
 agencies, the British and Foreign Bible Society. 
 
 The colporteurs of the British and Foreign 
 Bible Society (and those of the Society of 
 Geneva) have done a work in France which, 
 when the Eternal Light shall reveal all things, will 
 probably appear as having yielded more real 
 fruit than any other form of Christian propaganda. 
 Words fly, but writings remain ; how true this is 
 when the " Writings " are Divine ! During the 
 last hundred years or so, through colportage and 
 other agencies, from fourteen to fifteen million 
 copies of the Word of God had been scattered 
 through France before the War. Since the War 
 began, the distribution of Gospels to the soldiers 
 and their families has reached an enormous 
 figure ; besides the Bible Society, another English
 
 SOME FRUITS OF THE REVIVAL 175 
 
 agency, the Scripture Gift Association, has been 
 able to distribute a million copies of the Gospels 
 and a large number of Testaments. 1 
 
 There is scarcely a village of any importance 
 where, at some time or other, a humble bearer 
 of the Good News has not penetrated. In a 
 number of cases, congregations of converted 
 Christians have been the outcome of this apos- 
 tolic form of evangelization. In many other 
 instances, men and women have been converted 
 to God, and have rejoiced in their salvation, while 
 they had not light enough to enter into full liberty. 2 
 
 But what is, perhaps, even more gratifying, is 
 the undeniable effect that the circulating of the 
 Bible has had upon Roman Catholicism itself. 
 Priests dare no more, except very rarely, make 
 bonfires of the Scriptures ; indeed, some of the 
 younger clergy read the Bible, and there have been 
 cases, of late, where the priests have advised the 
 people to buy the New Testament. Intolerance is 
 
 1 Pasteur D. Lortsch, the Paris agent of the British and Foreign 
 Bible Society, gives me the following figures : Volumes sold by 
 the Society's colporteurs, from the beginning of the Society's 
 activity in France to the close of 1914 : six millions and a half. 
 With all other agencies, volumes sold or given away during the 
 same period : 14,267,441. As we were preparing this for the press, 
 there occurred the unexpected and lamented death of our beloved 
 friend, Pasteur D. Lortsch, than whom no one was more qualified 
 for the great work he had on hand. His books : La Bible dans le 
 Monde, and, very specially, Histoire de la Bible en France, will 
 remain as religious classics. 
 
 2 " Wherever Protestantism has done propaganda work, the Bible 
 colporteur has generally preceded, sooner or later, the pastor" 
 (Uni-vers, a Catholic paper, February 8, 1911).
 
 176 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 abhorrent to the French soul. Clericalism is one 
 of the most hated words of the language. All this, 
 in a large measure, is due to Evangelical influence. 
 
 The popularity of the Scriptures among the 
 French of to-day may be illustrated by the case 
 of Henri Lasserre and his translation of the 
 Gospels. Henri Lasserre, an officer in the army, 
 was healed of an eye disease by the intercession, 
 as he believed, of the Virgin ; in consequence of 
 which he devoted his life to religious work. 
 Being a scholar and a beautiful writer, he brought 
 out a translation of the Four Gospels, which was 
 printed in expensive style, each copy being sold 
 at four francs (35. 3d.). The book was issued in 
 1887, with the Pope's approbation; more than a 
 hundred thousand copies being sold in the course 
 of a few months. The Church had not foreseen 
 such a wonderful success. It was alarming. The 
 Pope's approbation was withdrawn, and although 
 Henri Lasserre went to Rome and remained there 
 a long time, soliciting a reversal of the decision, 
 his book has never been permitted any more. 
 
 Another attempt of the same sort took place in 
 1894: such is the Divine attraction which the 
 Scriptures exert over successive generations. A 
 translation of the whole Bible, from the originals 
 (with the Apocrypha and Notes), by Abbe* 
 Crampon, was published ; it reached rapidly a very 
 large circulation. The translation is correct, and 
 the Notes are surprisingly moderate. This version 
 is still allowed by the ecclesiastical authorities.
 
 SOME FRUITS OP THE REVIVAL 177 
 
 The policy of Rome with regard to the Scrip- 
 tures has ever been equivocal. To forbid them 
 absolutely would be scandalous, especially in the 
 opinion of British and American Catholics, which 
 has to be taken account of. On the other hand, 
 to favour their being read by the laity indis- 
 criminately, would be dangerous. Rome takes a 
 middle course. She allows what she cannot 
 prevent. It may be that, in proportion as modern 
 Protestantism is under-valuing the Bible, under 
 the influence of Higher Criticism, Rome's tactics 
 will be more and more to pose as the defender of 
 the Book. But in her heart of hearts there is 
 nothing Rome fears so much as true Evangelical 
 Christianity, as represented by the simple colpor- 
 teur with a Bible in his hand. 
 
 The Revival, coming at a time of liberalism and 
 progress, such as, on the whole, was the reign of 
 Louis- Philippe (identical with the first part of 
 what English people call the Victorian era), was, 
 indeed, a great blessing to France. It was the 
 time when Paris, which at the beginning of the 
 century had only two Protestant places of wor- 
 ship, had now twenty or more, in which some of 
 the best and most Evangelical preachers that 
 France ever possessed could be heard (though 
 there were also Rationalist ones). 
 
 Adolphe Monod was a star of the first magnitude; 
 a man of such eloquence that, two hours before 
 the time appointed for his preaching, a queue was 
 formed at the gates of the Oratoire. He had 
 
 12
 
 1 78 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 been converted, while in the ministry, at Naples ; 
 had been deposed from his office as pastor of the 
 Lyons Church on account of his orthodoxy : 
 this was the occasion of the foundation of a large 
 and flourishing Free Church in that city. Later 
 on, Adolphe Monod had been called to the 
 largest Protestant Church of Paris. He died in 
 1856, after a long and painful illness, during 
 which he preached every Sunday morning from 
 his death-bed to his family and a few private 
 friends. Those sermons, Les Adieux cC Adolphe 
 Monod, were published after his death, and are 
 full of the marrow of Scripture. 
 
 Comte Age*nor de Gasparin, a member of the 
 House of Deputies, was a staunch Evangelical 
 and an eloquent Christian lecturer. 
 
 Napoleon Roussel and Philippe Boucher stood 
 in the front rank as evangelists, as a little later 
 did Le"on Pilatte. Roussel was, besides, an un- 
 rivalled pamphlet writer, and Pilatte a clever 
 debater and journalist. 
 
 The man, however, who exerted perhaps the 
 greatest influence on the French Protestant 
 Churches an influence which extended far be- 
 yond and reached the intellectual world of that 
 time was one who was born, lived and died in 
 Switzerland : Alexandre Vinet. 
 
 Alexandre Vinet was the luminous and genial 
 advocate of Christian individualism. With inex- 
 orable logic and wonderful felicity of expression, 
 he showed, in numerous books, sermons and
 
 SOME FRUITS OF THE REVIVAL 179 
 
 magazine articles, that the soul of the Gospel, 
 and therefore of true Reformed doctrine, was 
 personal responsibility to God, implying freedom 
 with regard to tradition and national custom in 
 matters of religion. Vinet's influence was im- 
 mense. He came at the proper time, and did a 
 work which was most necessary. He brought 
 back French Protestantism, at least in a large 
 measure, to the principles of spontaneity, liberty 
 and spirituality which had reigned at the be- 
 ginning of the Reformation. Vinet reached an 
 dlite through the periodical le Semeur, and 
 through his books, which are still being read 
 and republished. A devout Evangelical, though 
 broader on some points than some of his strict 
 orthodox friends, Vinet's religion was based more 
 on the internal evidence than on external autho- 
 rity, and in that respect, too, he was a forerunner. 
 Sainte-Beuve, the great French critic and the 
 celebrated author of Port-Royal, was for a time, 
 while living at Lausanne, under the spell of Vinet, 
 for whom he professed a great admiration. 
 
 The beginning of Louis-Philippe's reign had 
 been full of promise ; but gradually the conserva- 
 tive spirit asserted itself. Evangelical propaganda 
 was made more and more difficult ; in some cases 
 the evangelists were fined and even imprisoned. 
 
 It should not be supposed that the Revival and 
 its doctrines had won their way in such a manner 
 as to annihilate Rationalism. While Adolphe 
 and Fre"de"ric Monod, Grandpierre and others in
 
 1 8o THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 the Reformed Church, Louis Meyer in the 
 Lutheran Church, were holding up the true 
 standards of faith, men like Athanase Coquerel, 
 Martin-Paschoud and others, were advocating the 
 so-called " liberal " views ; and it must be sorrow- 
 fully acknowledged that the majority of the 
 French Protestants was on their side. 
 
 This was made evident when, in 1848, the 
 Reformed Churches held their first Synod since 
 persecution times. The Synod refused even to 
 consider the question of a Confession of Faith, 
 with the result that a number of leaders, foremost 
 among whom were Frdde"ric Monod and de Gas- 
 parin, seceded from the old historic body to found 
 an Union of Free Churches based on orthodox 
 doctrine and Presbyterian policy. That Union 
 completed the number of Churches which now 
 exist in this country, each having its special 
 gift, and therefore each having its special 
 mission. The Union of Free Churches was 
 never very large, but it has been, perhaps, at 
 least at its beginning, more influential than any 
 other Protestant body, as it was made up of an 
 tlite who had left the Established Church for 
 weighty conscientious motives. 
 
 While French Protestantism was thus coming 
 to life again for the very conflicts between 
 Evangelicals and liberals were a sign of vitality 
 there were, in the Roman Catholic Church, 
 men of spirituality and great power ; Father 
 Lacordaire was preaching at Notre- Dame, with
 
 SOME FRUITS OF THE REVIVAL 181 
 
 wonderful success, a Gospel which, though care- 
 fully guarded of what might have given offence to 
 his superiors, was largely free from Romish super- 
 stition, and had in it sufficient truth to create a 
 new life in men's hearts. Father Gratry, an ad- 
 mirable soul, whose conversion to God from utter 
 religious indifference had been deep and complete, 
 was the chaplain of the great Ecole Normale, the 
 highest school of France, from which so much 
 genius has emerged from time to time. Both 
 these men and many others then, as since 
 worked and prayed in the sincere hope of recon- 
 ciling their Church with modern aspirations ; they 
 lived long enough to find out that their hope 
 was illusory. Lacordaire and Montalembert died 
 before the meeting of the Vatican Council, but 
 Gratry did not ; and being under the necessity 
 of submitting to the new dogma of the Infalli- 
 bility of the Pope against which he had power- 
 fully written, or of leaving the Church he 
 submitted, though with a broken heart. 1 
 
 1 There are few moral tragedies more pathetic than this. It is 
 easy enough to blame men who, having seen the purer light, have 
 not had the courage to follow it. But it should never be for- 
 gotten that the " Church " has been everything to them ; most of 
 them have arrived at the truth which they possess through some 
 good man, or book, which came to them with the stamp of the 
 Church. These men believe in the Church as being the body of 
 Christ, the universal, miraculous society which is the embodiment 
 of truth. The Protestant Churches are bewildering to them : 
 which of them is the true one ? It needs thought and prayer and 
 prolonged Bible study to understand the nature of the true Church, 
 and to free oneself from that worship of external unity which is the 
 great drawback to spiritual progress.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE, AND AFTER. ARMAND- 
 DELILLE, M'ALL AND OTHER WORKERS. 
 SOME LEADERS OF FRENCH THOUGHT 
 
 AFTER the shortlived effort to restore the 
 Republic (1848-52) came that period 
 known as the Second Empire (185270). 
 
 In the early part of Napoleon m.'s reign no 
 evangelistic work could be carried on without 
 molestation. No public meetings of any sort 
 could be held. No political newspaper or 
 magazine could be published without deposit of 
 a large sum as a guarantee for the payment of 
 the heavy fines to which the Press was subjected 
 for the smallest offences against Government. 1 
 
 That reign, which was to end in a catastrophe, 
 was marked by great financial prosperity, born of 
 the new developments of commerce, of the build- 
 ing of railways and harbours and of the progress 
 of industry and applied science. As a consequence, 
 that period saw the rise of an inordinate love of 
 
 1 A friend, now entered into rest, had in his possession a letter 
 from the PreTet de Police of that time, thus worded : " Sir, in 
 reply to your request to be allowed to hold meetings in your house 
 for the purpose of reading the Bible, I have the honour to inform 
 you that your request cannot be granted."
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE, AND AFTER 183 
 
 pleasure, a wonderful development of the theat- 
 rical mania, and especially of the low comedy, 
 the music-hall, and the cafe", which became a 
 luxurious and attractive place. It was the be- 
 ginning of the publican's reign ; then absinthe 
 made its apparition a liquor more deadly than 
 all the others combined. Our forefathers had 
 been renowned for the moderation of their habits ; 
 but now drinking to excess became far more 
 common. To the shame of the Imperial regime, 
 it must be said that, while it stifled every free 
 voice, it did almost nothing to prevent the 
 physical and mental intoxication of the French 
 people. 
 
 It was a time when one could sing any lewd 
 song which pleased him, but ran the risk of fine 
 and imprisonment for whistling the " Marseillaise" ; 
 the time when Paris became what it had not 
 been before the centre of cosmopolitan scandal. 
 
 The Government was supported by the Church, 
 and supported the Church : a French garrison was 
 maintaining the Pope's temporal power at Rome. 
 
 Two writers had a great influence over the 
 French soul at that time. The first was Ernest 
 Renan, a Breton who had been educated for the 
 priesthood, but, on the threshold of the irrevocable 
 vows had the moral courage to withdraw, and 
 sharing no more the faith of the Church, lived 
 and died outside her pale, though he ever spoke 
 of her with a sort of sentimental respect. A 
 master of French prose and a great Hebrew
 
 1 84 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 scholar, he consecrated his long life, with studious 
 and untiring energy, to the undermining of 
 Christianity, not in the spirit of Voltaire, but, on 
 the contrary, with mystical reverence, borrowed 
 from his Celtic origin and his clerical training. 
 His influence on the half-educated bourgeoisie, 
 and on the intelligent working men, was immense, 
 especially with his celebrated Life of Jesus. The 
 Church of Rome fulminated against him ; but 
 she did not acknowledge that she was his great 
 accomplice, by having withheld from the people 
 that authentic life of Jesus the Gospel an 
 acquaintance with which would have been the 
 best antidote against Kenan's subtle infidelity. 
 One good result, however, of this attack, was 
 that many were induced to read the New Testa- 
 ment and to interest themselves in the greatest 
 question of life. 
 
 The other man whose writings did most to 
 foster infidelity in France during the same period 
 was an Englishman, Charles Darwin. Perhaps 
 it may be said that Darwin's theory of Evolution 
 has done more to undermine Christianity, whether 
 in France or in any other country, than all the 
 blasphemies of the eighteenth century. To many 
 it appeared as if modern science had rendered 
 the case of a supernatural religion hopeless. 
 Even Christians were bewildered, and many tried 
 to find some basis of agreement between the 
 Bible and Darwinism. The reign of that theory 
 (which Darwin himself does not seem to have
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE, AND AFTER 185 
 
 formulated with the imperious dogmatism that 
 followed ; nor did he intend that it should be 
 made to imply the denial of God's direct action 
 on His world) has been long and baneful ; 
 happily it is now on the wane, having been found 
 experimentally wanting. 
 
 Charles Darwin was, to his last days, we 
 believe, a subscriber to Christian missions. 
 
 Hippolyte Taine was a French philosopher 
 of that age, whose philosophy proceeded from 
 the spirit of Evolutionism. All the facts of life, 
 to him, were explained by the laws of race and 
 environment ; the brain of man was the generator 
 of thought, which was merely a product, as sugar 
 turns into alcohol. But it is a remarkable fact 
 that Taine, in his latter days, was wont to take 
 his daughter to a Protestant church near his 
 home, to have her instructed in the Catechism, 
 he himself being present at the lessons ; and he 
 willed that his funeral should be conducted by 
 the minister of that church, M. Roger Hollard. 
 
 As to Renan, he died in his unbelief. His 
 grandson, Ernest Psichari (whose father, M. Jean 
 Psichari, shared Renan's views), has just been 
 killed in the War. This young man was a 
 brilliant writer, full of promise. Brought up 
 in the doctrines of his illustrious grandfather, 
 he deliberately rejected them when he came 
 of age, and became a convinced and devout 
 Roman Catholic : such are the mysterious re- 
 vanches which God sometimes takes, under our
 
 1 86 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 very eyes, upon His adversaries. Ernest Psichari 
 has written novels which are a sort of auto- 
 biography, Christian in tone and in spirit, though 
 decidedly Romish. 
 
 Though the Imperial regime was adverse to 
 Evangelical progress, yet the days of Renan were 
 also those of such men as Edmond de Pressense", 
 the gifted preacher, lecturer and historian, whose 
 father, Victor, converted from Romanism, had 
 been a most devoted agent of the Bible Society's 
 work in France. Edmond de Pressense" was 
 the able and enthusiastic disciple and ex- 
 ponent of Vinet's theology, and of Free Church 
 principles ; but, above all, the representative of 
 an enlightened, modern and yet orthodox, 
 Christianity, 1 which he expounded to crowded 
 congregations in the famous "Chapelle Taitbout." 
 His younger colleague, Eugene Bersier, sur- 
 passed him, perhaps, in eloquence, but their 
 gifts were so different that there could be no 
 clashing. Some of the most influential people 
 flocked round the Taitbout pulpit at that time. 
 
 In 1869 a little more liberty was allowed, public 
 opinion becoming ominously impatient. It was 
 then that the Rev. H. Grattan-Guinness came to 
 Paris, and started some evangelistic services in 
 Protestant places of worship, a work in which 
 he was mightily helped by a good and brilliantly 
 
 1 His orthodoxy was, however, somewhat "broader" than that 
 of the men of the Revival. But he held fast to the supernatural 
 Character of the Bible and of Christ.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE, AND AFTER 187 
 
 gifted man, Pasteur Armand-Delille, who soon 
 assumed the full responsibility of it, and also by 
 some leading ministers, such as Pasteur Bersier. 
 The principal meetings were held in the English 
 Congregational Chapel, then situated in the Rue 
 Royale, a few steps from the great church of la 
 Madeleine. It was perhaps the first time since 
 the Reformation that an effort was made to reach 
 the man in the street. The Rue Royale meetings 
 were greatly blessed. Every afternoon Pasteur 
 Armand-Delille and his voluntary helpers Paris 
 pastors and preachers of all denominations would 
 give short addresses, pointing out the way of 
 salvation to hearers of all sorts and conditions, 
 who had been invited by a colporteur standing at 
 the outside door with bills in his hands. Nothing 
 could excel the skill and gift of adaptability 
 exhibited by M. Armand-Delille as he viewed 
 some newcomer, and at once framed his thoughts 
 and his words to suit his or her mentality. The 
 meeting might begin with half a dozen hearers, 
 until the little chapel was nearly full of people 
 who, for the most part, were strangers to the 
 preacher, and to the truths he taught. The work 
 went on during the war, and was continued until 
 the Rue Royale building was taken down. Then 
 M. Armand-Delille concentrated his activity on 
 a Mission to the Bereaved, until he was compelled 
 by failing strength to retire. A number of 
 genuine converts were the result of the Rue 
 Royale meetings, one of them being a young
 
 1 88 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 Jewish writer who is now, and has been for 
 many years, an evangelist, pastor and journalist 
 of great fidelity and ability, and has taken charge 
 of the Mission aux Affligds (Mission to the 
 Bereaved). His name is Pasteur M. Hirsch. 
 
 Then came the war, and, in the course of it, 
 the downfall of the Empire. 
 
 All that could be done in besieged Paris to 
 maintain the Gospel testimony was accomplished 
 by a noble set of Evangelical men and women. 
 Pasteurs de Pressense' and Bersier were foremost 
 in their untiring labours, whether for the temporal 
 or the spiritual relief of the people. To this great 
 period of their lives these ministers of the Gospel 
 owed the popularity they enjoyed, both being 
 made afterwards Knights of the Legion d'Honneur 
 by the Republican Government on account of 
 their services during the siege. M. de Pressense* 
 was elected a member of the National Assembly, 
 and afterwards of the Senate, where he never 
 lost an occasion of pleading in the loftiest terms, 
 which won for him the respect of his colleagues 
 of all parties, the cause of Christianity, also that of 
 Liberty, two things which, in his heart, were one. 1 
 
 As soon as the war and the Commune were 
 over while there was a sort of revival among 
 the Catholics, which took the shape of a solemn 
 consecration of France to the Blessed Heart a 
 
 1 M. de Pressense" and other. Protestant pastors issued a courage- 
 ous protest against the execution, by the Commune, of the Arch- 
 bishop of Paris, and a number of priests and hostages.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE, AND AFTER 189 
 
 spirit of awakening came over the Evangelical 
 Churches. A new society came into existence 
 la Mission Inttrieure, and it is still at work, its 
 centre being at Marseilles for the purpose of 
 making the Gospel known by voice and pen. 
 
 An English lady, Miss Blundell, whose know- 
 ledge of French was perfect, was employed by 
 some members of the Society of Friends in 
 editing illustrated Gospel magazines for the young 
 and the old ; a large shop was opened in the 
 centre of Paris, at these Friends' expense, for the 
 sale and distribution of the Scriptures, tracts and 
 good literature. 
 
 A Dutch young lady, converted, we believe, in 
 England, Mademoiselle de Broen, began a mission 
 in Belleville, which had been the headquarters of 
 the Commune. 
 
 About the same time (end of 1871) Professor 
 Rosseeuw Saint- Hilaire, of the College de France, 
 went to the large cities lecturing, with the moral 
 authority which his title gave him, on " What 
 France needs to-day." Professor Saint- Hilaire 
 was an historian of no mean reputation, and, 
 withal, one of the most simple-minded Christians 
 we have ever known. We remember attending 
 those lectures of his, given by municipal permission 
 in one of the finest city buildings of Lyons, before 
 crowded assemblies. 1 
 
 1 Rosseeuw Saint-Hilaire had been a Roman Catholic, and was 
 led to Christ, after a great trial, by the simple testimony of a 
 Christian cobbler.
 
 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 In the same city of Lyons (the reader will 
 pardon these personal reminiscences) there came, 
 in the summer of 1871, in company with Miss 
 Blundell, a working man, Mr. Eck, who had been 
 converted by the instrumentality of M. Armand- 
 Delille, in Paris. He and his wife came to assist 
 Miss Blundell in her mission of scattering good 
 Christian literature. But Eck was more than an 
 ordinary worker ; he had a wonderful gift of 
 oratory, which, though untutored and perhaps 
 for that very reason was very arresting. But 
 he had more than that : a spark of the Divine 
 fire had lit up his soul. Through that man's 
 preaching, a number of young people twenty 
 of them, perhaps were led to decision for 
 Christ, and among them the present writer. 
 The winter of that year remains in our memory 
 as a season of wonderful blessing, and as a 
 demonstration of the fact that France is as 
 responsive as any other country to the call of 
 the Saviour, and to the action of the Holy 
 Spirit. 
 
 The young Lyons converts began at once to 
 work for Christ. A number of Sunday schools 
 for boys and girls (called, in imitation of those in 
 England, Ragged Sunday schools and, indeed, 
 they well deserved the name !) were founded by 
 them in various parts of the city, and as many as 
 six hundred scholars were soon gathered from 
 the streets. We have mentioned this incident 
 to show what resources there were, and there
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE, AND AFTER 191 
 
 are still, in the Protestant Churches of France, 
 when visited by the Holy Spirit. 1 
 
 The effort which was destined to become the 
 most popular and beneficial, was started by an 
 English Nonconformist minister, R. W. M'All. 
 
 The history of the " M'All Mission," as it soon 
 came to be called, has been often told ; we shall 
 only give a brief account of its origin. 
 
 In August 1871, just a few months after the 
 defeat of the Commune, the Rev. R. W. M'All, 
 then about fifty years of age, and his wife, were 
 visiting Paris as tourists. They spent only four 
 days in the French capital, and while going the 
 usual round of sight-seeing, gave away religious 
 tracts in French, which they had brought over 
 with them from England. " The eager reception 
 of those tracts," said Mr. M'All later, "first im- 
 pressed us. At that period the populace, fresh 
 from heart-rending disasters, seemed specially 
 responsive to any manifestation of kind feeling. 
 We would not leave the city until we had taken 
 
 1 The following reminiscence will show what the spirit of the 
 leaders of the new Republic was. In view of a Christmas fete to be 
 given to their Sunday schools, one of the youthful Christian workers 
 applied to the Mayor of Lyons for the free use of one of the municipal 
 halls, which could hold two thousand people. The Mayor granted it 
 at once. He was informed, however, by the applicants, that the fe"te 
 would have a religious character ; hymns would be sung, addresses 
 given and prayers offered. To which the magistrate replied : 
 " What is that to me ? All citizens' benevolent associations have 
 the same right. Let the Catholics apply, if they wish ; I shall give 
 them the same favourable reception." That mayor was M. Barodet, 
 who, later on, became a Radical member of the Chamber of 
 Deputies.
 
 192 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 tracts into the heart of the artisan districts 
 Belleville. We contrived to meet the workmen 
 as they returned homeward at night." 
 
 " The tracts," writes Mrs. M'All, "were given 
 on the way and in the little shops on the Boulevard 
 de la Villette and the large restaurant at the foot 
 of the Rue de Belleville. I cannot forget the 
 perfect behaviour of the young waiter, how he 
 took me round to some of the tables, omitting 
 others, conducting me back to Mr. M'All, whom 
 I found the centre of an eager group outside." 
 
 Mrs. M'All, a gentle, refined lady with a great 
 gift for music, which proved later of such value, 
 was as brave and devoted as her husband. Let 
 us hear Mr. M'All again : 
 
 " One intelligent man, who could speak a little 
 English, stood forward and asked if I were not 
 a Christian minister. . . . ' Sir, I have something 
 to tell you,' said he. 'Throughout this whole 
 district, containing tens of thousands of workmen, 
 we cannot accept an imposed religion. But if any 
 one would come to teach us religion of another 
 kind, a religion of freedom and reality, many of 
 us are ready for it.' We heard them saying as 
 we moved away : ' Bons Anglais ! Bons An- 
 glais ! ' " l 
 
 How strange are the ways by which God leads 
 His servants ! That a French workman speaking 
 
 1 Robert Whit taker M'All, founder of the M'All Mission. A 
 Fragment by himself; A souvenir by his wife. London : The 
 Religious Tract Society, 1896, pp. 135-136.
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE, AND AFTER 193 
 
 English (a rare bird) should be on the spot just 
 when Mr. and Mrs. M'All were giving away 
 their last tracts, on the night before their return 
 to England, and that he should speak as he did, 
 was, indeed, a providential indication. It was 
 the voice of a suffering people, it was the bleed- 
 ing soul of France crying out, as the Macedonian 
 in Paul's vision: "Come over and help us!" 
 After a little time of hesitation and consultation, 
 Mr. and Mrs. M'All, who had returned to their 
 country, resolved to "come over." 
 
 Their first beginnings were of the humblest 
 kind. A shop was hired in Belleville, furnished 
 with a hundred chairs or so, some lamps, a cheap 
 harmonium ; an invitation was then issued, asking 
 all the neighbours to come to "a free reading- 
 room, where hymns will be sung and selected 
 pieces be read. Some English friends will give 
 you a hearty welcome." 
 
 From the first night (Jan. 17, 1872) the work 
 grew wonderfully fast. In the course of a few 
 years, twenty-five meeting-places (all of the 
 primitive type) were in operation in Paris, and 
 a large number in the larger provincial towns. 
 The work goes on still, with somewhat modified 
 methods, under a committee, now supported 
 largely by American Christians as well as by 
 English friends. Mr. M'All (later on, Dr. M'All) 
 died in 1892, and Mrs. M'All a few years after- 
 wards. Their works do follow them. 
 
 The success of the M'All Mission was due, 
 13
 
 194 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 first of all, to the fact that it came at the pro- 
 pitious hour. The people had been made ready 
 for the Gospel by the dire afflictions which they 
 had endured. Another reason was the strong 
 personality of the founder. M'All gave himself 
 wholly, one would almost say passionately, to this 
 work. His qualities as organizer and leader 
 were of the highest. He knew the value of the 
 personal element in such enterprises, and he 
 made a point of giving to each of those poor men 
 and women, who came from the first in large 
 numbers to his meetings, the feeling that they 
 were personally welcome. He would have a 
 smile and a shake of the hand for every one of 
 them as they passed out of the room. 
 
 Another cause of success was the absence of 
 any " ecclesiasticism " about his meetings. Those 
 shops had no appearance to be churches or 
 chapels, and this was the real innovation. 
 Simplicity, elasticity, constant good humour 
 those were the characteristics of the meetings. 
 Gentlemen who came with a long and high-flown 
 discourse on the unpretending platforms of the 
 M'All meetings, found little favour either with 
 the hearers or with the leader himself. 
 
 But the main reason of the success was, that 
 it was the Gospel, and nothing else, the full 
 Gospel, that Mr. M'All gave to the people. We 
 do not remember listening to a single address by 
 himself, or by one of the regular helpers, in 
 which the way of salvation was not plainly in-
 
 THE SECOND EMPIRE, AND AFTER 195 
 
 dicated. In this as in any other country, success 
 will ever attend the faithful, warm-hearted pre- 
 sentation of the love of God as exhibited in the 
 Cross of Calvary. 
 
 No one is able to say how far, and how much, 
 the M'All Mission, and the other agencies which 
 sprang up about the same time, 1 have reached 
 the soul of France and influenced her. But this 
 is sure : a large number of individual souls 
 thousands of them have been brought to God ; 
 hundreds of homes have been transformed ; a few 
 Christian Churches have come into existence, 
 and many have been quickened and spiritualized 
 by the instrumentality of these enterprises. 
 
 The Salvation Army came later on the field ; 
 but it would deserve a long notice, for it has been 
 the means of much blessing. Emphasizing the 
 great doctrine of personal conversion, it has 
 brought many souls to Christ, especially among 
 our Southern Protestants. Some Christian 
 workers and ministers of various denominations 
 were the fruit of the Salvation Army's labours. 
 And in France, as everywhere else, its social 
 work is worthy of all praise. 
 
 A movement which had a great influence on 
 French Protestantism and its evangelistic and 
 missionary activities, was that which is known 
 
 1 It was the privilege of the writer to found, in 1888, a Mission 
 in Marseilles, Cannes, Nice and Corsica on lines similar to those 
 of the M'All Mission, with which it was merged in 1883. The 
 Marseilles and Nice branches are still in existence.
 
 196 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 as the Oxford Revival in 1874-75, an d which 
 gave rise to the Keswick Convention. A large 
 number of French and Swiss Christians attended 
 the Oxford meetings, and returned with new fire 
 in their hearts. Pasteur Theodore Monod, 
 especially, was the instrument of much blessing 
 in France at that time. His thorough, wonder- 
 ful acquaintance with English, made him as 
 welcome on British platforms as in French 
 pulpits, and he had a masterly gift of adapting 
 to French minds the exposition of the doctrines 
 which had been emphasized at Oxford. The 
 movement was a needed reaction against cold 
 intellectualism and lifeless religious profession. 
 It insisted on the possibility, the duty and the 
 joy of being fully consecrated to God. The 
 influence of that movement, which at that time 
 was very great, is far from being spent. Had 
 not German theology made such strides among 
 the younger members of the Evangelical ministry, 
 this revival might have wholly transformed our 
 Churches, and made them what they must 
 become, if they are destined to have a general, 
 deep and lasting action upon the soul of France.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 BEFORE THE GREAT WAR 
 
 AS we come to the period in which the largest 
 part of our lives has been spent, we find a 
 difficulty in selecting, among the events of which 
 we have all been witnesses, those of real import 
 and meaning, which may indicate what, during 
 that period, was the true soul of France. It 
 needs the set-back of history to give to facts 
 their relative value ; and the danger, for con- 
 temporary writers, is, either that they unduly 
 magnify some men and some happenings, or that 
 they should fail to give them their due. 
 
 For a long time during those years, material- 
 istic theories of life ruled the world of literature 
 and of thought, manifesting their baneful effects 
 on the people by an increase in the consumption 
 of alcohol and by other social evils. The same 
 tendencies were prevalent, more or less, in other 
 civilized countries ; Paris was not worse than 
 London, New York or Berlin. Indeed, as the 
 world grows old, there seems to develop an 
 internationalism of evil, a sort of sameness and 
 uniformity in the ways of living and sinning, in 
 the passion for pleasure, in the worship of
 
 198 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 Mammon and of the flesh. That internationalism 
 has been powerless to prevent the dreadful War 
 in which we are now engaged. There is only one 
 form of internationalism that might have saved us 
 from this catastrophe : the worship in spirit and 
 in truth of the one Master, Jesus Christ. But the 
 world has rejected Him, and is bound to suffer, 
 till all the nations are prepared to acknowledge 
 Him as their King otherwise than in mere 
 formality. 
 
 However, the Spirit of God has not deserted 
 this world yet, even though it has repeatedly and 
 wilfully grieved Him. In France, the action of 
 that Spirit has been evident on many occasions 
 in the course of the last forty years, and it has 
 revealed the presence in our moral constitution as 
 a people of that Evangelical ferment which was 
 deposited there at the beginning of our history, 
 and has asserted itself, as we have seen, at 
 various periods of our national life. 
 
 One of those occasions was the extraordinary 
 agitation caused by the condemnation of Alfred 
 Dreyfus, a Jewish captain employed at the War 
 Office, in 1894. We shall only allude to it, as 
 the facts are so well known. France at that 
 time, and for several years afterwards, was divided 
 into two parties : those who believed that Dreyfus 
 had been justly sentenced, and those who believed 
 in his innocence. It may be affirmed that both 
 parties acted in good faith, and were equally 
 desirous of having the truth proclaimed, except a
 
 BEFORE THE GREAT WAR 199 
 
 few men, unhappily influential ones, whose opinions 
 were biased by political motives. Every one 
 remembers the noble stand which, at much risk, 
 Colonel Picquart, Senator Scheurer-Kestner, 
 Bernard Lazare, Emile Zola and many others 
 took on the side of justice ; and how the whole 
 country with the few exceptions above alluded 
 to changed its mind when Dreyfus' innocence 
 was made plain before the highest judges of the 
 land. 
 
 The occasion was one of those which reveal 
 the innermost spirit of a people. Subtle and 
 powerful voices kept on repeating that the country 
 would be morally weakened if it were made 
 evident that a mistake had been made ; that 
 it was far better " that one man should die for the 
 people, and that the nation perish not " (John 
 xi. 50). But this Caiaphas language was rejected 
 with abhorrence by the people. The life of that 
 Jew, or rather his right to a fair trial, in short the 
 moral question involved in the case, appeared 
 of greater importance than even the apparent 
 interests of the country. By a sort of intuition, 
 which we have no hesitation to attribute to Divine 
 intervention, the people saw that national salvation 
 depended essentially on national righteousness. 
 
 Another event of great importance perhaps 
 the most significant of those which have taken 
 place since the Revolution of 1789 has been the 
 law of Separation of the Churches from the State. 
 This was another manifestation of that idealist
 
 200 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 and logical spirit which is peculiar to the French 
 race. It was the natural and inevitable outcome 
 of the Republican principles proclaimed over a 
 century before, but which had never been fully 
 carried out. It is to be noted that the French 
 Republic was the first European State to take 
 such a radical step. Its example was followed, a 
 little later on, by the small, but progressive, canton 
 of Geneva. 
 
 The Bill was passed in December 1905, soon 
 after the " Dreyfus case " had come to its con- 
 clusion, and there was evidently a relation 
 between these two events. The Church had 
 made the great mistake of throwing her influence 
 with the reactionary party that which was most 
 opposed to the revision of the Dreyfus trial. 
 When the case came out in its true light, the 
 Church came in for a great share of the indigna- 
 tion which fell upon those who had strenuously 
 opposed justice. The stain is on her still ; and 
 the saddest result of this was, that the distrust of 
 the people with regard to the Church became in 
 many minds a dislike for religion itself. 
 
 But it should not be supposed that the Bill of 
 Separation was passed by our Parliament in a 
 spirit of irreligious fanaticism. The first article 
 is thus worded : 
 
 " The Republic secures liberty of conscience, 
 and guarantees the free exercise of cults, under 
 the sole restrictions edicted below, in the interest 
 of public order."
 
 BEFORE THE GREAT WAR 201 
 
 The restrictions are liberal and just ; there is no 
 country in the world where the exercise of religious 
 rights is freer than in France. And one of the 
 great reasons which make the great bulk of 
 Evangelical French Christians prefer a Republican 
 form of government to any other, is, that the 
 Republic is the only regime which has carried out in 
 its legislation those principles of soul-liberty which, 
 to us, are essentially connected with true religion. 
 
 As to the Romish Church, she certainly has no 
 reason for complaining. Indeed, the Pope has 
 now more authority on the French Catholics than 
 he ever had before. He alone appoints the 
 bishops, the Government having nothing to do 
 with these appointments ; and the bishops, in 
 their turn, appoint the parish priests. Practically, 
 the Pope is the sole lessee of the thousands of 
 sacred buildings which, though they are national or 
 municipal property, are unconditionally and freely 
 given to the Church for her services, and are to 
 remain in her keeping for ever, even though, in 
 any parish, the majority of the Roman Catholic 
 population should desire a change in the forms of 
 worship. This is entailing the future ; in fact, it 
 binds yet unborn populations to the profession of 
 the Romish faith, or deprives them, in case of 
 change, of the use of those buildings which their 
 forefathers erected many centuries ago, in a time 
 when some of the doctrines and practices of the 
 Church were very different from what they are 
 to-day.
 
 202 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 If some religious orders have been disbanded 
 and their property taken over by the State, it 
 is simply because they deliberately refused to 
 submit their rules and by-laws to State regis- 
 tration, and to accept a perfectly legitimate 
 amount of State control. 
 
 A consequence of the Separation, which cer- 
 tainly was unforeseen by legislators, has been 
 a recrudescence of religious life and zeal among 
 the bond-fide Catholics of France. In some 
 parts of the country specially round Paris new 
 churches have been built. The clergy do not 
 recruit themselves so easily as before ; but it may 
 be inferred from many facts that the younger 
 priests are, at least many of them, actuated by 
 high spiritual motives. While a large number of 
 the population have dropped the support and 
 assistance which they may have formerly given to 
 the Church, and only hold to it by the christening 
 of their children and the burial of their dead, 
 others have been stirred up to greater liberality 
 and zeal. The spiritual interests of the Church 
 have certainly not suffered from the present 
 situation. 
 
 In fact, there has never been a time, since the 
 sixteenth century, in which the religious question 
 was more agitated in this country, than in that 
 which immediately preceded the War. The gross 
 materialism which had asserted itself during the 
 preceding period, and which is so adverse to the 
 French mind, was replaced by a new burst of
 
 BEFORE THE GREAT WAR 203 
 
 idealism. Philosophers of great intellectual power, 
 such as M. Bergson and M. Boutroux, led the 
 students of our Universities on to the salubrious 
 heights of spiritual reality, to conceptions of the 
 universe and of man very different from those of 
 Agnosticism or of mere Evolutionism. 
 
 Several conversions to Christianity were par- 
 ticularly striking. Ferdinand Brunetiere, the lead- 
 ing critic of our time, and Fran9ois Coppde, one of 
 our most popular poets, both testified to having 
 undergone a thorough change in their beliefs and 
 in their lives, and died in full communion with 
 the Church. And this is one of the most 
 astounding facts of present-day experience. We 
 are constantly told that unless our Christianity 
 gets rid of the supernatural, or, at least, of those 
 parts of the supernatural which are most objected 
 to by modern science : the Inspiration of the 
 Bible, the Virgin Birth and the physical Resurrec- 
 tion of Christ being amongst the things we are 
 thus required to abandon ; we are told, I say, 
 that unless these " myths " are left out of our 
 creed, there is no hope of seeing our generation 
 turn to God. And here we are confronted with 
 a movement which leads some of our most in- 
 tellectual men, such as those named above to 
 whose names many more might be added not only 
 to religious belief in the abstract, but to distinct, 
 positive acceptance of those beliefs which science 
 would find it hardest to swallow, including the 
 Infallibility of a man the Pope, the genuine-
 
 204 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 ness of the miracles ascribed to the saints or 
 the saints' relics and the apparitions of the Vir- 
 gin at Lourdes ! If it has been possible for 
 former unbelievers like Brunetiere to accept the 
 supernatural which the Church imposes on her 
 members, and to do so without committing in- 
 tellectual suicide, why should we, Evangelicals, 
 be afraid to stand by the Biblical supernatural, 
 which is essential to the very existence of Chris- 
 tianity ? l 
 
 It was our privilege to have some personal 
 acquaintance with a man who, during the course 
 of the few years which preceded the War, had 
 begun to make his mark in the literary world, and 
 was fast becoming one of the spiritual leaders of 
 the young generation. His name was Charles 
 Pe*guy. Born of peasant stock, he had been 
 brought up by a good, simple-hearted Catholic 
 mother, but in the course of his studies at the 
 Ecole Normale had become a free-thinker. When 
 the Dreyfus struggle began, he threw himself 
 
 1 This is the testimony of Frangois Coppe'e : " During weeks and 
 months spent in bed and in my room, I have lived with the Gospel, 
 and little by little each line of the Holy Book has become living for 
 me, and has affirmed its truth. Yes, in every word of the Gospel I 
 have seen truth shine like a star. I have felt its throbs in my 
 heart. How could I henceforth refuse to believe in miracles and 
 mysteries, when such a deep and mysterious transformation has 
 just been wrought in me ? For my soul was blind to the light of 
 faith, and now it sees it in all its splendour ; it was deaf to God's 
 Word, and now it hears it in its persuasive suavity ; it was para- 
 lysed by indifference, and now it takes its flight to heaven ; and the 
 impure demons which troubled and possessed it, have been for ever 
 cast out ! "
 
 BEFORE THE GREAT WAR 205 
 
 heart and soul into it, and the pamphlets he wrote 
 at that time began his reputation. He was on 
 the Dreyfus side, naturally. But when the battle 
 had been won, Pe*guy was soon disgusted with 
 the way in which some of his former associates 
 took advantage of that victory for themselves or 
 for their political ends. Pe*guy was one of those 
 men who seldom agree with the majority ; he was 
 born to be one of those noble " fools " who are 
 given to the world from time to time to make it 
 ashamed of its selfishness. 
 
 It was then that Pe*guy returned to his mother's 
 faith. Not blindly, however ; he was too con- 
 scientious for that. Somehow, he was satisfied 
 that the Church's creed could be accepted by 
 an intellectual, well-informed mind. He had a 
 special devotion for that great figure which we 
 have tried to sketch, Jeanne d'Arc, and much of 
 his latter work was devoted to the glory of the 
 heroine, in whom he saw the symbolical repre- 
 sentation of France herself. It would be difficult 
 to translate Peguy's writings ; even in French 
 the beauty of his style does not appear at first, 
 and is, to an ordinary reader, marred by incessant 
 and (apparently though not truly) idle repeti- 
 tions. Some of his pages would strike any 
 Christian reader by the intense love for Christ, 
 and the understanding of God's heart, which they 
 reveal. 
 
 After reading one of his books, we felt moved 
 to go and interview him in a friendly spirit.
 
 206 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 Finding him in the small office which was so 
 easily opened to any visitor, we asked him 
 if what he wrote was merely inspired by the 
 perception of the literary beauty of the Gospel, 
 or whether he really believed in it as historical 
 and God-given. Looking us in the face, he 
 replied at once : "I believe the Gospel as a true 
 Christian does. I have returned to God through 
 the way which naturally opened to me. I had 
 been brought up in the Catholic faith ; I came to 
 God by that way. Had I been born a Protestant, 
 I should probably have come your way. I have 
 many friends among the Protestants, and I feel 
 we are one in that which really matters." There 
 was no time, and this was not the occasion, to 
 discuss matters more thoroughly ; but we went 
 away from that visit with the deep impression 
 that this was, indeed, a true Nathanael, a sincere 
 lover of Christ, whom God might use for great 
 things in our country. 
 
 Charles Pe*guy was a lieutenant of the Reserve ; 
 he was killed in the battle of the Marne. 
 But others have caught his spirit. God grant 
 that, from among them, there may arise the men 
 who will be the leaders of the new France, as she 
 emerges, victorious and purified, from her present 
 baptism of blood ! 
 
 Charles Pe"guy might have been described as 
 an orthodox Modernist. Modernism, in its 
 various forms, has appeared in other countries 
 besides France; in Italy, Murri, Fogazzaro ; in
 
 BEFORE THE GREAT WAR 207 
 
 England, Father Tyrrell and many others, have 
 been trying to bring the Church and the people 
 together, to adapt the Church to the needs and 
 aspirations of our age. France has perhaps con- 
 tributed to this effort more largely than any other 
 nation. And here, as everywhere else, the gener- 
 ous attempt has proved will ever prove illusive 
 and completely unsuccessful. 
 
 The Modernist starts with an idea which in 
 itself is already heretical. He believes that any 
 outside advice, counsel or entreaty may legiti- 
 mately be offered to, and have a beneficial effect 
 on, the Supreme Authority which rules the Church. 
 The real fact is, that the Pope, if he is infallible, 
 must receive his counsels from God direct, and only 
 from Him, and has nothing to receive from men 
 except their allegiance and their blind obedi- 
 ence. To think that a man lay or clerical 
 may have more light than the Pope on any 
 subject is, implicitly, to be a Protestant. Every 
 effort to "modernize" the Church, therefore, 
 is doomed to failure. Even though the Church 
 may, in the course of time, skilfully concede 
 some points, she will never pardon those who 
 have presumed to see farther ahead than her- 
 self. 
 
 Some Modernists have tried to introduce in 
 orthodox theology the methods and conclusions of 
 the Critical School : thus, M. Loisy. No wonder 
 that he has met with the Pope's non possumus, 
 and finally, having to choose between Rationalism
 
 208 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 and Religion, has given up the Christian faith 
 altogether. 
 
 But there have been other forms of Modernism 
 which appeal much more to our sympathies. 
 These have been attempts to introduce a demo- 
 cratic and Evangelical spirit into the Church's 
 methods, without in the least touching on her 
 theological tenets. But even this is heresy ; for 
 the Pope must be looked upon by true Catholics as 
 infallible in matters of policy as well as in matters 
 of doctrine; whenever it is necessary that he should 
 be led by the Holy Spirit, he cannot fail to be 
 Divinely inspired. No initiative, in any matter 
 which concerns the well-being of the Church, can 
 come from the rank and file of the faithful. Here 
 is a case which will illustrate this assertion : 
 
 M. Marc Sangnier, a wealthy layman, founded, 
 some twenty years ago, a Catholic Young Men's 
 Society, called Le Sillon (The Furrow). His 
 purpose was to reconcile the democracy with the 
 Church. Le Sillon made a large use of the 
 Press, and held many popular meetings. Sang- 
 nier himself, an eloquent speaker, wrote and 
 spoke ceaselessly on Christian apologetics, and on 
 social questions viewed from the Christian stand- 
 point ; and he did so with remarkable success. 
 He gave a clear and uncompromising testimony 
 to Jesus Christ, and, once at least, in a very large 
 and unruly meeting, testified of his love for Him 
 in a way that gladdened the hearts of some 
 Christians who were in the audience. He threw
 
 BEFORE THE GREAT WAR 209 
 
 his energy, his means, his whole time, into this holy 
 crusade, in which he enlisted a large number of 
 young men of the educated class, professors of 
 the University among them, their aim being to 
 bring about a Catholic revival on liberal lines. 
 A few bishops blessed Le Sillon, which went on 
 for a few years increasing in efficiency, covering the 
 whole country with a net-work of organizations. 
 Then came an order from high quarters, intima- 
 ting to the Sillonists that their immediate duty 
 was to disband. No real explanation was given, 
 and no real objection was offered. Such is the 
 tremendous discipline of the Church of Rome : 
 Marc Sangnier dismissed his Society, and nothing 
 has been heard of it in the newspapers ever since. 
 
 It would be tedious to give the mere names of 
 the priests and laymen who have made similar 
 attempts. The story of their disappointments 
 would be long and wearisome. But these men 
 deserve our respect. Defeated, they have had 
 God's approval, for it was His Spirit that moved 
 them, though they have not had the courage or 
 the needed light to follow that Spirit to the end. 
 At all events they are a demonstration of the 
 fact that God has not forsaken this world of 
 ours ; He is working in the hearts and minds of 
 some, at least ; and the holy unrest which is 
 thus created is a far better sign than the stag- 
 nation of former days. 
 
 But it is sad to notice that, in every case, these 
 worthy men have submitted to the papal condem- 
 14
 
 210 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 nation, and have retracted. Very few among 
 them have thought of leaving the Church of 
 Rome to join another. To them she is THE 
 Church, whatever their consciences may disap- 
 prove in her. Submission to the Pope, as God's 
 Vicar on earth, is for them the supreme Christian 
 virtue ; and all the more so if that submission be 
 offered with the heart, without the mind, or even 
 the conscience, being fully satisfied. This is a 
 mistake, indeed, and a very grievous one. It sets 
 a human authority in the place of the Word of God. 
 It amounts to spiritual suicide. But that suicide is, 
 in their estimation, the sacrifice of self ; and as such 
 it deserves our respect, and even our admiration. 
 
 As to the Protestant Churches, the Separation 
 from the State has been, on the whole, greatly 
 beneficial to them. It has been a stimulant to 
 liberality, and the people have well responded to 
 the call. No parish of any importance has really 
 suffered. All the institutions and missions have 
 been maintained ; the financial question, before 
 the War broke out, was coming to its happy 
 solution. The War, of course, has created new 
 and great difficulties, but even these have nothing 
 fatal in them, at least for the present. 
 
 Before the Separation, the two sections of 
 the Reformed Church orthodox and liberal 
 although separated in some things, had still much 
 in common. Their separation was then made 
 more complete. The majority of the pastors are 
 now on the Evangelical side.
 
 BEFORE THE GREAT WAR 211 
 
 But the Evangelical Churches themselves 
 needed a Divine impulse, for orthodoxy is not 
 life though we hold that Doctrine and Life are 
 in close relation one to another. That impulse 
 has come, to a certain degree, from the Welsh 
 Revival which took place in 1905, just at the 
 time when the Bill of Separation was being dis- 
 cussed in our Chamber of Deputies. 
 
 We would not magnify unduly the influence 
 which the Welsh Revival had on our Churches. 
 That influence has been far from general, and it 
 has not gone so deep as might have been desired. 
 Other influences, too, have been at work, some 
 beneficial, some adverse to spirituality. But the 
 fact remains, that some of us have received an 
 impulse at those wonderful meetings which made, 
 as it were, the whole of Wales blaze in the sight 
 of the world, in that year 1905. And through 
 the men who brought some of that fire from 
 Wales, evangelistic campaigns have been con- 
 ducted, in places where no such thing had ever been 
 witnessed ; conversions have taken place in many 
 towns and villages ; Conventions of Christian 
 people have been organized, both in France and 
 Switzerland, at which hundreds and even thousands 
 are attending year after year, each time receiving 
 new light and new grace. We mention these things 
 with some reticence, as we know the danger of 
 spoiling a good work by speaking too much about 
 it. Our hope, however, and even our confident 
 expectation, is that God will revive the old Evan-
 
 212 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 gelical Churches of France, some of which have 
 already yielded much joy to their spiritual leaders 
 by the way in which they have responded to the 
 Divine call. 
 
 All this was before the War. But these 
 Missions and Conventions, and the blessing at- 
 tending them, are still going on. The War has 
 given them a new raison d'etre, and it is a great 
 comfort to us, in the midst of so much sorrow, to 
 see the work of the Lord prospering.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 THE SOUL OF FRANCE DURING THE WAR 
 
 SINCE this War had to come, we must thank 
 God that it came at a time of moral pre- 
 paredness : when France was beginning to re- 
 cover her soul, and when her intellectual leaders 
 were in a healthier spiritual state than had been 
 the case in the previous period. 
 
 Not that there was, apparently, much progress 
 in public or private morality. France was then 
 right in the midst of one of those fashionable 
 scandals of which she has by no means a 
 monopoly, but which she does not know how to 
 hush down properly. As to the masses, the new 
 movement had not yet reached them, at least to 
 any appreciable degree. But there were signs of 
 weariness among the people, a thirst for better 
 things, which made us hopeful. 
 
 Then it was that the War broke out. 
 
 " From the beginning of the War, in every one 
 of her actions," says Mr. Charles Sarolea, " in 
 her reverses as in her successes, France has 
 given the lie to her enemies. She has justified 
 those who loved her and believed in her. She 
 has disconcerted and amazed her critics. Those
 
 214 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 critics in their surprise and in their eagerness to 
 explain away their previous false judgments are 
 speaking to-day of a ' New Spirit,' of a dramatic 
 transformation of the French character. They 
 tell us that the War has breathed a new soul into 
 the people. But that explanation of the critics 
 is as superficial as were their former blunders. 
 What we are to-day observing in France is not 
 something new, it is something very old and 
 familiar." 1 
 
 This testimony is perfectly accurate, and the 
 reason which has prompted us to write this book, 
 so largely given up to the history of the French 
 soul, was that we wanted to demonstrate to our 
 English-speaking friends, in Europe and in 
 America, the truth of the above statement. To 
 understand the magnificent conduct of this nation 
 in her present trial, one must go back to her 
 very birth, at which God Himself was present, 
 and one must follow her through the long ages, 
 in the course of which God has never deserted 
 her. 
 
 The necessary task we have thus tried to 
 perform makes it impossible for us to treat of 
 the War, viewed from the spiritual standpoint, 
 so fully as the subject would require. In the 
 last chapters of the present book we shall touch 
 briefly on the main points of this immense and 
 most thrilling subject. 
 
 1 Charles Sarolea, The French Renascence, p. 71 (in English and 
 French).
 
 DURING THE WAR 215 
 
 In the first place, the War has vividly brought 
 out the idealistic temperament of our race. 
 
 From the highest to the lowest, the whole 
 people have understood, at once, the spiritual 
 nature of this War. It has not needed much 
 explanation to show to the most ignorant that 
 we are fighting in the interests of international 
 justice. All have responded to the call ; the 
 number of deserters has been wonderfully small. 
 Some whose lives had been far from satisfactory 
 have seen in this war an opportunity to redeem 
 their characters, and the nobility of their souls 
 has reappeared. There were, alas ! too many 
 men addicted to strong drink just before the War ; 
 but, during the memorable first week of August, 
 drunken men were not to be found. It was our 
 lot to travel through France, from north to 
 south, during that week ; we saw hundreds of 
 trains loaded with men starting for the frontier. 
 Among those hundreds of thousands we did 
 not notice a single drunken one. There was 
 no bragging, no loud singing. A sort of religious- 
 ness seemed to pervade the whole of France, and 
 to float over those regiments, all brand-new 
 equipped, which sternly moved towards the 
 north-east . . . while the enemy was breaking 
 through Belgium ! 
 
 Here are a few lines from an author whom we 
 have already quoted, M. Emile Faguet, Member 
 of 1' Academic Frangaise. They appeared in one 
 of the Paris papers, Excelsior, from which we
 
 216 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 have culled them. Our translation will render 
 but imperfectly the vivacity of the writer's 
 inimitable style. But it will give an idea, at 
 all events, of the spirit which has prevailed in 
 the French Press since the War, and which still 
 exists among all classes. 
 
 "'Moi' (SELF) 
 
 " I speak of one who has disappeared. The 
 national war, the national peril, the national 
 resistance, almost as their first effect, and soon 
 as their full effect, have caused Self to disappear. 
 
 " How he used to occupy us, and to preoccupy 
 us ! And how we were pleased with him, at 
 heart, though he sometimes tortured us, that big 
 Self ! Let us confess it : we scarcely thought 
 of anything but him ! . . . He had dominion over 
 us, he was our tyrant. 
 
 "He was a worse tyrant for the very reason 
 that we treated him as a good one, and thought 
 that his tyranny was legitimate. . . . We would 
 say to him : ' You ask too much ! ' And we 
 smiled slyly at his exigencies. We would say 
 to him inwardly : ' You are enslaving me, but 
 go on ! ' He held us with silk cords ; and that 
 slavery, though oppressive, was pleasant as a 
 caress. We were ready to do almost anything 
 for that enchanting despot. . . . 
 
 "O war, O dangers, O murders, O sufferings, 
 ye are awful and cursed ; and yet you have 
 this on your side, that you renovate our souls,
 
 DURING THE WAR 217 
 
 sweeping over them with a healthy and purifying 
 breath. In every soul you kill the Self, and 
 replace it by the All. . . . M1 
 
 One of the most beautiful traits of this period 
 of our national life, is the understanding which 
 has been established between all political, religious 
 and social parties under the name of " Union 
 Sacre*e." One of the leaders of the Socialistic 
 party, M. Gustave Herve*, formerly one of the 
 most violent polemists in the daily Press, has 
 now adopted a new and surprisingly moderate 
 tone. This is an extract from one of his articles : 
 
 " The great cataclysm has revealed to us that, 
 in every country, there is something stronger 
 than class competition, and that is, the solidarity 
 of all classes. . . . 
 
 " Do you think that, when the storm is over, 
 we should not be ridiculous (grotesque] if we 
 came again to our International Congresses with 
 the old saw of class competition ? Why, the 
 dead would rise out of their graves to remind 
 us that, in the sublime hour of sacrifice, the 
 bourgeois and the workmen of each country stood 
 side by side, facing death, to defend the common 
 fatherland. 
 
 1 We quote these lines, knowing full well that Self is not going 
 to be killed, even by this War. It requires more than that to do it. 
 It required the death of Christ on the Cross ; and Self will 
 continue to live in protean forms as long as men do not, by 
 repentance and faith, nail it with their own hands to that Cross. 
 But the above, nevertheless, shows that something is now at work 
 in the hearts of men which was not there before.
 
 21 8 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 " Socialism, when it shall emerge from the 
 storm, shall certainly not deny the class problem, 
 but instead of calling on the proletariat alone to 
 build on earth the city of justice, it will appeal 
 to all men of good will who love liberty, 
 equality, and fraternity, without any class dis- 
 tinction." 
 
 These generous words are all the more piquant 
 for having appeared in a daily paper, much read 
 by the working men, whose title was La Guerre 
 Sociale (Social War), a title which has now been 
 given up, the new one being La Victoire. If 
 the above quotation represents the true spirit 
 of the Socialists, it will certainly be easy for us 
 to meet them. 
 
 Such quotations might be multiplied. That 
 such should be the tone of the daily Press, is the 
 token of a spiritual change, for which we should 
 be devoutly thankful. 
 
 " The souls of to-day," writes M. Gaston 
 Deschamps, a distinguished litterateur, in Le 
 Temps, "are hungeringand thirsting after certitude. 
 They are ready to respond to the mysterious 
 genius who will know how to draw from deep 
 and refreshing springs the spiritual comfort which 
 we need." But has not the "mysterious genius" 
 appeared already ? Why should we wait for 
 another than the Christ, who speaks to us in 
 the Gospels and from His Cross? 
 
 Here is another quotation. These words are 
 taken from M. Paul Bourget, of the Acade"mie
 
 DURING THE WAR 219 
 
 Fran9aise, writing in the Echo de Paris, one of 
 the most widely - circulated papers of France. 
 M. Bourget goes deeper still : 
 
 " I should fail in my duty if I did not em- 
 phasize the paramount importance which the 
 religious problem is assuming among us at the 
 present hour. France suffers ; and, as every 
 suffering human creature, she wants God, because 
 she wants to know that suffering has a mean- 
 ing " 
 
 One of the most influential papers published in 
 the provinces, La De"pche de Toulouse, read by 
 hundreds of thousands, had been known hitherto 
 as the mouthpiece of Infidelity ; its tone, when 
 treating of religion and morals, was often .most 
 outrageous. 
 
 But, in recent articles, La Ddpfahe^ acknow- 
 ledges that we need a sort of conversion. 
 
 " We have proclaimed the Rights of Man, but 
 have not liberated ourselves from our worst 
 tyrants. Those tyrants," the writer says, are 
 " our prejudices." And he goes on, in the follow- 
 ing article, to exalt the mentality of the American 
 Puritans : 
 
 "New England," says he, "was founded by 
 Puritans, men whose moral independence had 
 been too vigorous to adapt itself (to the old 
 world prejudices). Individual morality thus 
 
 1 These articles have been quoted and analysed by Professor E. 
 Doumergue in a religious journal, Le Christianismc au xx Sticle 
 (May 18, 1916).
 
 220 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 became so rigorous, so precise and constraining, 
 that there was no need for the State to enforce 
 morals. . . . 
 
 "It was on that solid Puritanic nucleus that 
 the strata of successive races of emigrants were 
 deposited. The American State, being the 
 convergence of individual rights and ethics, was 
 thus endowed with a morality. It was bound to 
 the Right, and from the Right received its con- 
 straining power." 
 
 And the article concludes : 
 
 "In Anglo-Saxon countries, political doctrines 
 were framed by men of theology, and were inspired 
 by humanitarian principles." 
 
 Thus, this stout defender of Free Thought now 
 recognizes that religious beliefs (what he calls 
 theology) are at the basis of Anglo-Saxon, and 
 specially of early American, politics ; that these 
 beliefs have been the inspiration of the Declaration 
 of Independence, from which has sprung the 
 Declaration of the Rights of Man, and that we 
 need a national conversion on similar lines. 
 
 Does all this signify that we are in the midst of 
 a religious revival, or, at least, on the eve of one ? 
 
 The facts do not yet warrant such a conclusion. 
 That the religiousness of a large portion of the 
 people, who hitherto had not shown much leaning 
 on that side, has been stirred up, there is no 
 doubt. That the believing Catholics and Pro- 
 testants have become more fervent, more deeply 
 attached to their several Churches, is more evident
 
 DURING THE WAR 221 
 
 still. That some of our national evils such as 
 alcoholism are grappled with more earnestly 
 than ever before, and that there is, on the whole, 
 a moral progress, seems clear also. 
 
 On the other hand, a religious revival could 
 hardly be expected where there is only a small 
 and shallow knowledge of true religion. Most 
 of the men who are now in the trenches have 
 been brought up in utter ignorance of the Gospel, 
 and a large number have, from infancy, imbibed 
 a feeling of distrust towards "the Church" and 
 her ministers. They are now living in abnormal 
 conditions, away from home and its salutary 
 restraints. They have a growing familiarity with 
 danger, and with the awful scenes of death. All 
 this somewhat hardens them against the calls of 
 conscience. Nevertheless, the revival will come, 
 we firmly believe it ; but it will be, it can only be, 
 by the faithful, wide and clear presentation of the 
 claims of Christ. The soul of France is stirred ; 
 her heart is softened ; the moral atmosphere is 
 clearer than it has been for a long time. Whence 
 shall come the men God-inspired and God- 
 strengthened who shall be the prophets of these 
 tragic times ? 
 
 I should like to reproduce here parts of a most 
 interesting letter, addressed to me by an officer 
 who was, in his student days, while in Paris, 
 converted from Roman Catholicism, or rather from 
 Agnosticism ; and who, before the War, was in 
 the Colonial Civil Service :
 
 222 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 " You ask me whether I think that this War 
 will bring about a renaissance of religion. For 
 each of us the field of observation being so limited, 
 the answer to your question is difficult to give. An 
 intense propaganda seems to be carried on by the 
 Catholics more, perhaps, by lay people than even 
 by the clergy. But I do not believe this propa- 
 ganda aims at purely religious ends ; other aims are 
 being pursued. Never have I so well understood 
 as since the War the expression of Catholicism* 
 pratiquant (active Catholicism) which M. C16- 
 menceau is fond of using. . . . They are eager 
 to persuade us that a Catholic, as such, is 
 necessarily more patriotic than a non-Catholic. 
 But the Pope's attitude of neutrality gives a rude 
 shock to that pretension. 
 
 "Another very clumsy and dangerous method 
 is being used : it has been repeated over and 
 over again, that this War is a punishment from 
 Heaven, by which France is atoning for her sins, 
 that she may return to God. But it is easy to 
 understand that ' the sins of France,' in the 
 language of these people, are the very things 
 which, in part, constitute her greatness : her demo- 
 cratic spirit showing itself in her representative 
 institutions, liberty of conscience, development of 
 popular instruction, etc. Of such sins, there is no 
 need for us to repent. 
 
 " The propaganda thus carried on is often 
 indiscreet and childish. Devout Romish souls are 
 dominated by their faith in the opus operatum,
 
 DURING THE WAR 223 
 
 while in the Evangelical Churches the one thing 
 which is, or should be, aimed at, is a change of 
 the heart. Among the Catholics, a great result 
 is believed to have been reached when some one 
 consents to submit to a sacrament, or to wear ' a 
 pious article ' (pbjet de pittJ), such as a medal 
 or a crucifix. That is considered as a conversion. 
 And yet, such external acts have seldom a true 
 religious value. . . . 
 
 "... This War is a hard trial. It stirs every- 
 thing in us. Sacrifice is near at hand, and 
 danger, and death. Some minds feel the need of 
 clinging to something. Others, more saturated 
 with Catholic teaching, are dominated by the 
 terrors of sin, judgment, purgatory, hell. . . . Oh, 
 if one could, at this moment, cause these poor 
 frightened people to hear the voice that spoke to 
 the prophet of old, Habakkuk : ' The just shall 
 live by faith,' or if Paul could come and say to 
 them : ' Being justified by faith, we have peace 
 with God ' ! 
 
 " For many, God is a gigantic Colonel, armed 
 with a formidable right to punish, and who must 
 be pacified. . . . They go to the only door they 
 know. Inevitably, they confound Christianity 
 with one of its historical manifestations. They 
 go to confession, they take the sacrament, and 
 they derive a sort of quietude from these acts. . . . 
 But as soon as the danger is past, their terrors 
 vanish. . . . Will there remain anything of this 
 feeling ? And that which may remain of it, will
 
 224 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 it have a religious value ? Fear is not religious ; 
 trust and love only are so. ... 
 
 " I question whether, when peace and quiet are 
 restored, we shall not have to fear an explosion of 
 materialism. . . . 
 
 "In what I see around me, therefore, I fail to 
 perceive the necessary elements of a religious 
 renaissance, because it seems to me that there is 
 nothing to prepare it. War alone, war by itself, 
 with its butchery and its atrocities, cannot be a 
 factor of morality. War is, without question, the 
 worst of all evils. 
 
 " After the War there will be an opportunity to 
 resume the good fight for the Truth. We should 
 aim at making the Gospel better known, and its 
 fundamental principles better understood. French 
 Protestantism, which is so active and so zealous, 
 should not allow itself to be paralysed by the 
 smallness of the number of its adherents. As to 
 the Church of Rome, she should, according to 
 the words of the Abbe" de Tourville, 'resolve to 
 make her own Protestantism.' ' 
 
 I almost entirely agree with my correspondent, 
 whose good opinion of French Protestantism, 
 coming from one who was not originally one of us, 
 is most comforting. But I think we should not 
 wait till after the War " to resume our good fight." 
 Now is the acceptable time. Everything depends, 
 as my esteemed friend well says, on how the 
 Gospel shall be presented to the people. The 
 soil is being deeply furrowed ; but ploughing, by
 
 DURING THE WAR 225 
 
 itself, yields no harvest. There must be broad- 
 cast sowing. May God give us the right kind of 
 sowers those who will go in the true spirit, and 
 with the living seed ! 
 
 That the spirit of Christianity, which was at 
 work so early and .so persistently in our history, 
 is not altogether absent from the soul of France, 
 although the Gospel itself has come to be so little 
 known by the vast majority of the people, is evident 
 by the traits of devotion and disinterestedness 
 which now abound, and which cannot be credited 
 to mere natural nobility, for the stamp of Christli- 
 ness is upon them. Take this as an instance : 
 
 A wounded soldier lay dying consequent upon 
 loss of blood. There was in the same hospital a 
 young Breton, far less severely wounded. Hearing 
 the surgeon express the hope that the man might 
 be saved by the operation known as transfusion of 
 blood, if only some one could be found willing to 
 give some of his blood to save the dying one, the 
 Breton soldier said " Take mine ! " 
 
 The doctor explained to him that the operation 
 would be painful, and attended with risks for the 
 two patients. But the fine fellow persisted, " Take 
 my blood for the comrade ! " said he. 
 
 The operation was performed successfully. In 
 due time the two soldiers, side by side, began to 
 recover apace. That they felt attached to each 
 other rescuer and rescued needs not to be 
 said. 
 
 15
 
 226 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 A few days afterwards, the kind Red Cross 
 ladies who had the care of the hospital, having 
 made inquiries as to the Breton's family affairs, 
 and having discovered that he was married, the 
 father of several children, and a poor labourer in 
 civil life, put their purses together, and one of 
 them approached the good fellow's bed with five 
 hundred francs in her hands : 
 
 "My dear boy, we all feel a great admiration 
 for your devotion to your comrade, and we have 
 decided to offer you a slight token of our regard. 
 Will you take this ? " 
 
 The Breton was greatly troubled. Five hundred 
 francs was a goodly sum. Moreover, he did not 
 want to hurt the feelings of those kind ladies. 
 There was a struggle within him. Finally, he 
 broke out : 
 
 " Madam, I thank you very much indeed. You 
 make too much of a small matter, and I do not 
 want to appear ungrateful. But I must tell you 
 how I feel. I cannot accept that money. I gave 
 my blood. I did not sell it." 
 
 Such a lofty notion of sacrifice is not earth-born. 
 It comes from God. Men who feel and act as 
 this man did, are not far from the Kingdom of 
 Heaven, though something more is required before 
 they can enter it : they need to be brought face 
 to face with Him who gave His blood for them, 
 and who, long before the brave Breton soldier 
 uttered those words of his, had said : " I lay down 
 My life for the sheep. No one taketh it away
 
 DURING THE WAR 227 
 
 from Me, but I lay it down of Myself . . . and I 
 give unto them eternal life." 
 
 The following dramatic incident will show how 
 easy in some cases is the entrance of the Divine 
 Word in hearts that had never known it. It is 
 told in a letter written by a young soldier, member 
 of one of our French Y.M.C. A.'s : 
 
 " I have been wounded in the following circum- 
 stances. My sergeant, my corporal, and myself 
 had been ordered to dig a shaft and a gallery six 
 metres long, in order to blow up a German trench. 
 Our work was almost finished when, coming up 
 on the surface, I noticed that our trench was 
 completely empty. All our comrades, on the 
 enemy's approach, had been compelled to flee. I 
 hastened to go down and advise my two friends 
 of this flight. We decided to go on with our 
 work until it was quite done. 
 
 " When we were about to finish, three formid- 
 able detonations told us that we were shut out from 
 the rest of the world. The enemy had thrown 
 three bombs into our shaft ; our exit, therefore, 
 was impossible ; we were walled up in the gallery. 
 
 " We were reduced to two : the corporal had 
 been killed by the fall of earth. We then decided, 
 the sergeant and myself, to tie ourselves to one 
 another with a bit of rope. . . . 
 
 " For myself, I had a strong impression that 
 we should die where we were, and I felt a greater 
 desire than ever to get nearer to my God. I
 
 228 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 opened my New Testament, which I always 
 carried in my pocket, and by the help of a small 
 bit of candle, which I had kept, I began to read 
 aloud some comforting passages. 
 
 " My comrade surprised at first finally came 
 near me, and I went on reading aloud for ten 
 minutes or so. He was powerfully interested, 
 and we left reading reluctantly, being now without 
 light. 
 
 " We had to remain thus over two hours. 
 Then a formidable noise was heard, and by a 
 chance which I call miraculous, I found myself 
 lying on the surface. 
 
 " The enemy, blowing up our trench, had at 
 the same time blown up our gallery. Though I 
 felt some injury, caused by my fall, I pulled the 
 rope to find my comrade. The poor fellow was 
 yelling, his eyes had been burned. I quieted him 
 the best I could, and though I was losing blood, 
 on account of a wound made by a stone in my 
 thigh, I groped with my comrade till, after a 
 short while, we were taken up by a moving 
 ambulance. 
 
 " Alas ! my poor friend is blind. But I have 
 learned that while they were operating on him, 
 under the influence of chloroform he was talking 
 about the Gospel, and kept on repeating : ' God 
 has loved us.' " 
 
 This young sergeant, hearing the Gospel for 
 the first time in his life while buried alive with
 
 DURING THE WAR 229 
 
 the Christian soldier, was so impressed by this, 
 his first contact with the living Christ, that, while 
 between life and death, he kept on repeating the 
 sweet words of Divine love! Is not this inci- 
 dent an indication of what the Gospel will be to 
 thousands, and perhaps to millions, of our people, 
 if only they have the opportunity to hear it ?
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 THE WOMEN OF FRANCE 
 
 THE part played by woman in this War 
 is immense ; nowhere more so than in 
 France. Indeed, a long chapter might be written 
 on the role of the French woman in the history of 
 her nation, on the part she has had in the forma- 
 tion and development of the national character, 
 on what she is in the home and in daily life, and 
 now in the tragedy of war. 
 
 Have you ever given more than a passing 
 glance to that figure engraved by Roty on the 
 silver coins of the Republic, and reproduced on 
 our postage stamps? It is that of a woman, her 
 hair undone and her garments floating about her, 
 with a sack of corn held in front of her by her left 
 hand, while her right hand is scattering the seed 
 against the wind! 
 
 Whether the artist meant it or not, that figure 
 is a fitting emblem, not only of the French Re- 
 public, but of the French woman. 
 
 Sowing against the wind! Hoping against hope ! 
 Ever at work, never discouraged. Preparing and 
 saving the future, even while the present is in 
 deadly peril.
 
 THE WOMEN OF FRANCE 231 
 
 The French woman is a wonderful being, whom 
 our foreign friends have seldom understood. 
 But she does not mind it much. Her husband 
 and her sons love her, with a love full of rever- 
 ence. She is inferior to none of them. She feels 
 equal to all emergencies ; as long as her men will 
 stand, she will. And, in many cases, they will 
 stand because she will. 
 
 In the average French woman, heart and head 
 keep an even balance. She has the feminine 
 graces, and she has virile qualities. Her husband 
 will agree that she is the better man of the two ; 
 and he will say it, not in a flippant way, but 
 because he feels it is true. 
 
 In the unending misery of the long, weary 
 centuries, woman has often saved France. 
 "Never forget, Frenchmen," says Michelet, "that 
 your country was born of a woman, of her blood 
 and her tears." But it is not merely of Jeanne 
 d'Arc that we are thinking. We think of the 
 host of obscure and sublime women, before and 
 after her, up and down the generations and 
 throughout the whole land ; of the peasant woman 
 who, when her husband was taken away to the 
 wars, tilled the fields in his stead ; and when the 
 last horse or the last donkey had been stolen from 
 her, managed (she is doing it now), with the help 
 of her boy, yet too young to go fighting, to get a 
 harvest from her land somehow. Plucky house- 
 wife ! When there was nothing left in the cup- 
 board, not a crust, not a bit of meat, and no
 
 232 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 money ; when her vegetable garden had been 
 laid waste by the depredating hordes of marauders; 
 when worse still she had to flee from under 
 her own roof and seek refuge with her young 
 in the woods or the caves, she then discovered, 
 by the genius born of necessity, eatables that had 
 never been known. Some wild grasses that con- 
 tained nourishment, some mushrooms ; and those 
 frogs and snails, the mention of which provokes 
 merriment among such as do not realize that these 
 were the last and successful resource of some poor 
 mother, when she did not know where to find 
 food for her perishing family. 
 
 Far more than the pleasant aspect of the land, 
 and the mildness of the climate, it was the 
 character of the French woman, and the tender- 
 ness of the home-life in France, that won for our 
 country that adjective, the oldest we find in 
 history coupled with its name : la douce France. 
 Chivalry was born in France. Woman reigned 
 here when she was a slave everywhere else. If 
 the degree of Christian civilization reached by a 
 people is to be gauged by the amount of respect 
 accorded by it to women, France was certainly, 
 in those days, the most Christian of nations. 
 
 Changes there have been, not all for the better. 
 But now, as before, the French wife and mother 
 is worthy of the respect of her husband and of 
 her sons, and she gets it. Woman's influence is 
 greater here than anywhere else, and her moral 
 character can be favourably compared with that
 
 THE WOMEN OF FRANCE 233 
 
 of her sisters in other lands. Her frivolity soon 
 wears out, and gives place to those sterling 
 virtues, shift and thrift, which she carries even 
 to the point of their becoming faults. But how 
 could we be hard on her ? She has in her veins 
 the blood of generations of women who have 
 known untold hardships, and saving has become, 
 in our womanhood, a kind of second nature. 
 
 Where the Christian faith has taken deepest 
 root, though mixed with superstitions in 
 Brittany, for instance, or, in fact, in every part 
 of rural France the behaviour and dress of the 
 women are extremely sober and austere. In the 
 Huguenot districts, down in that South of France 
 where one would expect, under such clear skies, 
 much lightness of deportment and gaiety of 
 manners, about the only colour that was to be 
 seen in church a few years ago was black. Any 
 woman who began to wear it, wore it to her 
 last days. Widowhood lasted all life. A little 
 " worldliness " has come in of late ; but so little of 
 it, indeed, that English or American women would 
 be amazed at the severity of the Protestant 
 women's adjustment, and no doubt would not 
 easily accept for themselves such Puritanic 
 fashions. 
 
 In matters of religion, here as in all countries, 
 women are conservative. There are many cities 
 and villages where, before the War, the churches 
 had been absolutely deserted by the men ; boys, 
 after their " first Communion," would have thought
 
 234 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 it a degradation to attend Mass or sermon. The 
 same spirit reigned among Protestants, in some 
 parishes at least. We have known some where 
 not a single man would darken the door of the 
 church. Strangely enough, those same men 
 would not have wished their wives and daughters 
 to share their religious indifference. It was the 
 proper thing for the women folk to go to church, 
 the men being content to wait outside or in the 
 neighbouring cafe's until, the service being over, they 
 might take them back to the farm in their carts. 
 
 But for the women, religion at all events the 
 external manifestation of it would have died out 
 in some parts of France. 
 
 The War has wrought a change, not so marked 
 as we should desire, but nevertheless a change for 
 which we should be thankful. 
 
 During the first months of this tragic period, 
 men returned in large numbers to the churches. 
 Catholics and Protestants were alike under a deep 
 impression. The movement, however, seems 
 now to be on the wane. One may find several 
 reasons for this ; but we cannot help thinking 
 that the main cause of this relapse is that in 
 many cases the men did not find in the services 
 that for which they were unconsciously craving. It 
 requires a peculiar sort of preaching to touch and 
 to win hearts that have been so long shut to 
 Divine influences. 
 
 The Christian women, however, had done a 
 greater work than appeared on the surface.
 
 THE WOMEN OF FRANCE 235 
 
 Their patient fidelity had not been in vain. They 
 had taught their boys something of God and 
 Christ, so far as they had been able. And we 
 hear now and then of men dying, on the battlefield 
 or in the hospital, who had seemed utterly careless 
 of these themes, but who, with their last breath, 
 have uttered the saving words which their mothers 
 had taught them in childhood not so many 
 years ago, poor boys ! 
 
 Though it is impossible here to treat the sub- 
 ject in all its fulness, we must at least allude to 
 the practical capacities of women as exemplified 
 in this War. In the absence of thousands of 
 shopkeepers, the wives are carrying on business 
 as usual. But for the pluck of these women the 
 economic crisis, which is severe enough, would be 
 far worse. 
 
 About five hundred Protestant ministers are in 
 the Army 1 a few as chaplains, but by far the 
 larger number in the rank and file. A number 
 of ministers' wives, of several denominations and 
 schools of thought, have courageously taken up 
 their husbands' work, and are preaching on Sun- 
 days, teaching the Catechism, visiting the sick 
 (which they did before) and even conducting 
 funerals. The line is drawn, we believe, at the 
 administration of the sacraments. 
 
 1 There are about ten thousand priests under the colours. 
 Beautiful and touching stories have been told of many of them. 
 The behaviour of both ministers and priests is, generally speak- 
 ing, worthy of all praise.
 
 236 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 Red Cross, hospital and relief work is every- 
 where in the hands of the women. To speak 
 worthily of this, would require a volume. God 
 reward the noble women who wear themselves 
 out in this blessed work ! But what matches the 
 beauty of such a letter as this written by a 
 mother to her son, who was leaving home for the 
 Front ? We translate it, carefully respecting the 
 second person of the singular, which gives added 
 sweetness to family intimacy : 
 
 " MY DEAREST CHILD, I am almost dumb in 
 thy presence, as I am afraid to break down while 
 speaking, and thus to weaken thy courage, of 
 which I am so proud ! 
 
 " However, my heart is very full, and I would 
 not let thee go without thy having at least 
 an echo of all that vibrates in my heart for 
 thee. . . . 
 
 " Go, my dear child, to duty and sacrifice. 
 Thou shalt take away with thee my smile and my 
 blessing. 
 
 " Be brave, submissive, patient, in spite of all 
 trials : it is for our France ! Be not spareful of 
 thy strength on her behalf. 
 
 " But, in the measure of the possible, be 
 prudent. Do not trifle with health and life ; it 
 is for us I ask this of thee. 
 
 " Be kind to thy comrades, devoted to thy 
 chiefs, merciful to the disabled enemy : it is a 
 humane duty.
 
 THE WOMEN OF FRANCE 237 
 
 " Remember God, to Whom I am going to 
 pray so much on thy behalf! He alone is the 
 righteous Judge ; and His mercy is granted to 
 whomsoever seeks Him honestly. If I knew thee 
 to be in His full grace, with the faith and purity 
 of thy first Communion, my heart would be less 
 broken in saying au revoir, because that au 
 revoir would, whatever may happen, remain as 
 my cloudless hope. 
 
 " Keep this, my dear child, as the will of my 
 motherly tenderness. Keep it near thy heart, 
 and in the hour of solitude thou wilt find the kiss 
 which I put here. 
 
 " Yes, at this solemn hour I bless thee from 
 my deepest soul, and I ask thee, as I have asked 
 God at thy birth, as I shall ever ask Him, that 
 thou be faithful to the motto which has been 
 mine from my youth up, through my whole 
 life : Patrie, Famille, Devoir (Country, Family, 
 Duty). 
 
 " Thy mother, who loves thee so much." 
 
 That letter was written by a Roman Catholic ; 
 but it is wonderfully free from anything specifi- 
 cally Roman. And that is a fair sample of the 
 sort of religion which is professed by thousands, 
 by millions of our people. 
 
 Let us conclude with another woman's letter. 
 This was written to us by a young widow, a 
 peasant woman, living on a farm, away near the 
 eastern frontier :
 
 238 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 " Farm of ... 
 
 " DEAR FRIENDS, In this home, where we two, 
 my sister and I, had married two brothers, we 
 have had the sorrow to lose them both one, 
 on March 15, by a bullet in the forehead; the 
 other, on June 10, by a shell. We have known 
 hours of dark despair ; only the love of God has 
 appeased and comforted us. We mean to be 
 valiant and strong to bring up in the right way 
 our three little boys, the eldest of whom is six 
 years old. That task, our beloved husbands 
 have dictated to us in terms which are, for us, 
 the greatest human comfort, and we shall not 
 fail in it ... CATHERINE ..." 
 
 God bless the two widows and the three little 
 boys ! God bless the womanhood and the boy- 
 hood of France !
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 IN THE TRENCHES 
 
 IT has often happened that a great catastrophe 
 has been heralded by some tragic event of 
 lesser magnitude which had no relation with 
 what was to follow, but seemed to be permitted 
 by God as a premonition. Such has been the 
 case with this War. The Titanic disaster had 
 happened not long before the War broke out ; 
 and it had been a warning to the whole world, 
 showing the vanity of human science, wisdom 
 and wealth. 
 
 There has never been, to our knowledge, an 
 event that has more impressed the French people 
 than this. What peculiarly appealed to them 
 was the wonderful ending : that crowd of people 
 mostly rich and worldly singing, as the ship 
 went down, the hymn which will ever be known as 
 the " Titanic hymn": " Nearer, my God, to Thee." 
 
 The hymn had been translated into French, 
 by the present writer, thirty years ago, and had 
 only been sung in Protestant churches and 
 mission halls. But after the Titanic disaster 
 some enterprising publishers unearthed it, and 
 it was printed and sold, by the hundreds of 
 
 239
 
 240 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 thousands, at street corners, in Paris and in the 
 provinces. For a short while there was not a 
 more popular song than this : 
 
 " Plus prs de Toi, mon Dieu, plus prs de Toi ! " 
 
 The "Titanic hymn" is now sung in many 
 trenches. Here are one or two incidents con- 
 nected with it : 
 
 In a letter written by a Christian sergeant, it is 
 related how, in October 1915, his battalion re- 
 ceived orders to storm a bridge which was held by 
 the Germans. They obeyed ; thirty-two men 
 were killed, and the bridge was not yet taken. 
 " At four in the morning," he says, " my com- 
 pany was ordered to prepare for a bawnnette 
 attack at six. The order was one which one 
 never hears without a shudder, as one knows that 
 a large number will be missing after the fight. 
 The company was assembled in a trench about 
 250 metres from the bridge. My lieutenant, an 
 infidel, came to me at about half-past five and 
 says : ' Won't you sing us the Titanic ? ' 
 
 " A few days before, when I had sung it, he 
 had smiled. Was it the depression caused by 
 this terrible night, the nearness of danger? 
 Since then my lieutenant (now my captain) has 
 never smiled at my religious talks. . . . As for 
 the bridge, we have taken it without any loss ; 
 the enemy, finding the position unsafe, had left it 
 at about five o'clock." 
 
 The same friend writes :
 
 IN THE TRENCHES 241 
 
 "One of my most pleasant emotions in the 
 course of the last ten months : I was returning on 
 a very dark night to our first line of trenches ; 
 I had to cross a thick wood, about a mile in 
 length. It was sad, sad, and chilly. . . . All at 
 once I hear a voice singing : 
 
 ' Plus haut, plus haut, c'est le cri de ma foi ! ' 
 
 (first line of ' Nearer, my God, to Thee ! '). I 
 stopped ; it is useless to tell you how moved I was. 
 The singer, I found out on the morrow, was one 
 of our Salvation Army friends." 
 
 Another man, unknown to the one we have 
 just quoted, tells a very similar story : 
 
 " We were in a trench, resting, when suddenly 
 shells began to fall like hail a few yards from our 
 shelter. The situation was a perilous one. . . . 
 We looked at each other, and I was asking the 
 Lord to protect us : a Parisian, an atheist with 
 whom I had often talked for hours about the 
 Gospel, singing to him ' Nearer, my God, to Thee,' 
 of which, though he was anti-religious, he had 
 learned two verses with pleasure, said to me : 
 
 1 P , now is the time to sing the Titanic hymn 
 
 which you have taught me. Start it, I shall do 
 my part.' And in a most impressive silence I 
 sang with him that beautiful hymn. 
 
 " I could scarcely sing ; I felt like crying. . . . 
 
 " No one was hurt. Not one of our comrades 
 tried to scoff. ..." 
 
 I have taken, almost at random, from an 
 16
 
 242 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 inexhaustible supply, the following letters and 
 incidents, which will speak for themselves. There 
 is a great variety in them ; but they all tend to 
 show that French souls are not shut to the 
 Divine voice, which is heard, in the midst of this 
 tremendous storm, with all its tenderness more, 
 perhaps, than in times of peace. 
 
 Here is a letter from a young priest, addressed 
 to his two sisters, who are nuns : 
 
 " God. Souls. France? 
 
 " My dearest little Edith, my dearest little 
 Alice, if this letter reaches you, it will be because 
 the good God will have accepted the sacrifice which, 
 for a long time, I have made of my life to Him. 
 
 " Indeed my prayer has ever been : ' My 
 God, fulfil in me Your holy will. If I may be 
 enabled to live, faithful to Your grace, united with 
 You notwithstanding all allurements, temptations 
 and trials ; if I may even become better and 
 holier through those things, I lovingly accept to 
 live, whatever may be the crosses I shall have to 
 bear. But if, by giving way to my weakness, I 
 were to become in advancing years less of a 
 priest, understanding less the Cross, seeking my- 
 self and working for myself instead of working 
 for souls, that is, for God then take me to 
 Yourself at once, so that, at least, You may get 
 
 1 Priests and Religious usually put three names at the top of 
 their letters : Jesus. Mary. Joseph. This young priest has 
 chosen another trinity of names.
 
 IN THE TRENCHES 243 
 
 through my death that which I should have 
 lacked courage to offer You through my life : a 
 little good done to souls, a little love and glory 
 for Yourself.' 
 
 "... Pray that my death may obtain from 
 God what I ask of Him. . . . My God, I offer 
 You my poor blood, that Your Kingdom may 
 come, and Your will be done. Establish Your 
 reign on all souls ! " 
 
 Let us now read part of a letter from a Protes- 
 tant chaplain at the Front : 
 
 "... What joys there are in the task ! I 
 return from our services moved, enthusiastic, 
 breathing with open breast the hope of a mag- 
 nificent future. . . . Our meetings are most 
 impressive : real Revival meetings they are ! 
 The Gospel seems to have acquired a new 
 savour ; the heads bow of themselves under the 
 voice of prayer, and our dear old hymns take a 
 new meaning. I should like you to hear our 
 heroes sing, ' I need Thee every Hour,' or, ' Safe 
 in the Arms of Jesus' (translated into French). 
 We cry and we sing, our voices mingle with 
 our tears as we think of the absent ones. We 
 live hours of intense and heavenly communion. 
 When the service is over, we take the addresses 
 of new men, and we distribute Gospels we 
 never have enough ! 
 
 " We are at a moment of indescribable pre- 
 paredness. A student said to me : ' I pray all
 
 244 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 day long in the trenches ! ' Another : ' I had 
 wandered away from God ; but if I am 
 spared. . . . ' Even the apaches (hooligans) 
 say : ' If we escape death, our way of living 
 will be different ! ' And, to wind up, mark the 
 peculiar savour of these words, spoken by men 
 who, in civil life, are common labourers : ' This 
 War will teach us to behave better with our 
 women folk." 1 
 
 This, from a young fellow, twenty-three years 
 old, to his mother : 
 
 " Oh dear maman, those bragging, worldly 
 fellows who in time of peace seem to defy every- 
 thing, ridiculing the Gospel and those who try to 
 follow it -one should see them in battle ! They 
 are easily recognizable : the most cowardly of us 
 all ! " 
 
 The young fellow has been killed. The officer 
 who wrote to his parents said : " Your son has 
 fallen as a brave man ; he was always faithful to 
 his duty, and his example has been very bene- 
 ficial to his comrades." 
 
 Here is a letter from a non-commissioned 
 artillery officer : 
 
 " DEAR MR. , Thanks for the leaflets. I 
 
 am all right, and am afraid of nothing. The Lord 
 is my Shepherd. ... I am asking of you a small 
 service no, a big one : will you send me a New 
 Testament? When I left Poitiers, I took with
 
 IN THE TRENCHES 245 
 
 me my old comrade, my Bible ; but it has gone 
 through weather of all sorts I am still using it. 
 What comfort, what courage it has given me, and 
 to my men also ! 
 
 " One day we were in battery, I in the midst 
 of my drivers and horses, behind a ruined farm. 
 Iron fell on every side; I was not without fear 
 for all those young men ; they were saying to 
 me : ' Chief, we are not screwed here, we might 
 get away. . . . ! ' I replied : ' Boys, here or 
 elsewhere you are in the Master's hands. I do 
 not know whether you are Catholics or Protes- 
 tants, or nothing at all ; but let him who feels 
 small in the presence of Death come near me. 
 I shall read to you from an old book, as old as 
 the world, and it will make you comfortable.' 
 
 " I read, I talked, I prayed. I made a short 
 speech in which I did not say all I wanted, but 
 God prompted me. How they were changed ! 
 Bright eyes, smiles, confidence, trust, joy. . . . 
 God kept us safe. All kinds of missiles fell 
 around us ; we did not move, and no one was 
 hurt. Our little corner was the only one un- 
 touched. Our God, how strong He is, how great, 
 how He helps ! . . . The same thing has 
 happened often. ..." 
 
 This striking letter, from a second lieutenant 
 of the Reserve : 
 
 "VERY DEAR SIR, Most likely these lines are 
 the last I shall write to you. We have received
 
 246 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 confirmation that our Division, with the help of 
 reinforcements, will lead an attack on positions 
 which have been defying us for the last two 
 months and a half ; to-morrow we shall be thrown 
 on some German trenches on a crest in front of 
 us, and which are protected by an unending net 
 of wires. This means that a great number of 
 those who will leave the trench will be lying 
 dead on the bank to-morrow evening. . . . To- 
 morrow will be the last day of many of us. 
 
 "As we were reading the fighting orders, a 
 sense of consternation might be read on many 
 faces. . . . For me, head of the first section of 
 the leading company, I must be first to jump 
 out of the trench, my men following me ; I shall 
 be the first target ; I must not entertain illusions : 
 to-morrow, probably, I shall have ceased to live. 
 
 " And yet, the first moments of nervosity being 
 over, I never felt more calm and trustful. I 
 know I shall go to my Saviour and my God. 
 I have written: 'ceased to live/ no, I shall 
 begin to live, or rather, I shall continue to live 
 that spiritual life which God grants to His 
 children here below. 
 
 "In the face of death, my sense of sin has 
 become poignant. What realities these : death, 
 judgment, eternity, sin ! I never felt myself so 
 wretched and despicable ; never did I more 
 realize the tragic reality of sin. If I did not 
 possess the certitude of the pardon which is 
 promised to those who have repented and be-
 
 IN THE TRENCHES 247 
 
 lieved, I should feel choked with remorse, and 
 in awful anguish. And even now I discover 
 new depths of sin in me ; faults which I thought 
 to be light, or which I would not confess to 
 myself, now reveal themselves to me. How 
 many inconsistent actions of lightness and vanity, 
 how much harm done and good neglected, how 
 many evil thoughts ! I still cry to God, whose 
 compassions are infinite, to forgive me ; and I 
 jealously appropriate the promise : ' The blood 
 of Jesus cleanseth us from all sin.' 
 
 " I have just had a very earnest talk with my 
 men. I did not hide from them that the hour 
 was grave, that they were perhaps on the eve 
 of crossing that passage which is called Death ; 
 and, offering them the Gospel message, I ex- 
 horted them to get right with God. I tried to 
 show them their fallen and sinful state ; the 
 need of reconciliation to God, their Father and 
 Judge ; and I told them of the sacrifice of Jesus, 
 the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of 
 the world. ' You are lost, I said to them, and 
 your consciences testify to this. Believe on 
 Jesus Christ crucified, and you shall be as white 
 as snow, and eternal life will be yours.' I quoted 
 John iii. 16 to them, and I prayed with them; 
 they repeated the words after me : ' We are 
 sinners ; we repent, and we accept for ourselves 
 the sacrifice of Thy Son Who died to redeem 
 us, the salvation that comes through Him.' I 
 had urged them before to get right with God :
 
 248 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 ' If to-morrow/ said I, ' you were to appear before 
 Him, let not that be your first interview with 
 Him ; have one even to-night, to make the next 
 one safe.' 
 
 " I spoke to them a long time. They seemed 
 to understand. Many approved and thanked me. 
 Oh, what a joy, if God should grant me the favour, 
 of which I am unworthy, to meet above one of 
 those souls, one which I may have brought to 
 Him! . . . 
 
 " I must leave you. Good-bye, then, or rather, 
 au revoir \ Oh, what a sweet hope, to meet over 
 there we the redeemed of the Lord, for ever ! 
 
 "With my best wishes for you all, and to you, 
 my father in the Spirit, all my affection and 
 gratitude." 
 
 The reader will be glad to know that the 
 assault was not given, as had been expected. 
 The young officer has seen many dangers since, 
 but he is still alive, and has been promoted. He 
 is now a captain, and as faithful a witness of 
 Christ as ever he was. 
 
 The Bible, to many of our soldiers, has become 
 a Book of priceless value. Here are one or two 
 examples : 
 
 " It is not only the guns' and rifles' report which 
 I hear, but also the Divine words in my heart. 
 These words are passages of my dear Bible on 
 which my soul meditates. In the terribly 
 painful moments I have to go through, God, by
 
 IN THE TRENCHES 249 
 
 means of the Bible, gives me strength ; nay, 
 more, joy. 'Joyful against all odds' (quand 
 mme) would be my motto. I have my dear 
 Bible in my kit. It is now rather worn out : 
 rain, especially, has spoiled it. But never mind ; 
 I have it, I shall not give it up. When I read, 
 I seem to realize the presence of the friends who 
 are praying far away." 1 
 
 Speaking of our dear Christian boys, Professor 
 Allier adds: "They do not seek God in their 
 hearts only. They have with them the Book of 
 His compassions and of His promises. A great 
 number of our soldiers have asked as Christmas 
 presents copies of the Gospel, or some portions, to 
 give away to their comrades." 
 
 A young pastor, who is a non-commissioned 
 cavalry officer, writes : 
 
 " I have given away many Gospel portions 
 and New Testaments ; but I did not know what 
 results there might have been. A few days ago 
 one of our men, returning from furlough, said 
 to me: 'Just as I was returning from home, 
 about fifty metres from the house, I found I had 
 forgotten my little book. I returned quickly for 
 it, and put it in my kit. I love to read it ; for 
 when I have the blues (literally, when I have 
 the cockroach), reading that Book cures me." 
 
 1 Quoted by Professor Raoul Allier, in his admirable lecture : 
 Avec nos fils sous la Mitraille. Professor Allier's son has been 
 killed in the war.
 
 250 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 The pastor adds: "The man was something 
 of a sluggard before ; now he does his service 
 very well." 
 
 A chaplain writes : 
 
 " My friend, Gunner B , has come to me 
 
 radiant to-night. His first word was : ' I am 
 happy ! I have seen a comrade of a neighbouring 
 section reading a Gospel portion, Luke. As I 
 told him that I possess the New Testament 
 complete, he replied : " I have been reading this 
 little book for some time, and as I am reading, 
 I feel it does me good ; it enlightens me more 
 and more." 
 
 " B , indeed, had noticed for some time the 
 
 earnestness of .this comrade of his. Not only 
 did he abstain from light talk, but there were 
 signs of reflection and conscientiousness. 
 
 " The man told B that, having been brought 
 
 up a Catholic, he had given up all religion, having 
 been shocked by the evil example of a bad 'shep- 
 herd ' (meaning a priest). Now, he was specially 
 interested in the Sermon on the Mount, Matt. v. 
 39-44. These verses were those he read most. He 
 was anxious to attend some Evangelical service." 
 
 This is written by a Christian lady, a relative 
 of ours : 
 
 " I have just received a letter from a soldier at 
 the Front whose name was unknown to me. But 
 on reading the first lines, I remembered who it was.
 
 IN THE TRENCHES 251 
 
 " A workman had come to my house, over 
 three years ago, to make some repairs. It is 
 my habit to give a Gospel, or some tract, to 
 unknown people who thus come to me to do 
 work. 
 
 " That man had refused the Gospel I had 
 offered him. He said he knew what it was, 
 because his parents had attended the M'All 
 meetings, and himself as a child had attended the 
 M'All Sunday-school. But, he added, he would 
 not hear any more of this ; he believed in nothing 
 at all since his daughter's death, for 'if God 
 were what He is said to be, He would not have 
 taken away his child.' ' 
 
 And now here is the letter, written by that 
 man to the kind lady whose words he had coldly 
 and stubbornly refused to hear : 
 
 " MADAM, I shall let you know who I am in 
 a few lines. I am one who, I am certain of it, 
 has caused much pain to you ; for, having been 
 sent to your home to do some repairs, you spoke 
 to me about God, and I replied that I would not 
 know about Him; I had just lost my little girl, 
 and I told you that if there was a God, as you 
 said, He would not have deprived me of that 
 little one, whom I loved as a father only can. . . . 
 
 " To-day, dear Madam, I come to beg your 
 pardon for those words, as I have already begged 
 God's, like the Prodigal Son ; and I think He 
 has not refused me, but has forgiven me, for I
 
 252 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 believe those words of Jesus Christ written in the 
 Bible. 
 
 " We are now at rest, at the back, for a few 
 days, coming from a part where lately it was 
 pretty hot. 
 
 " As I was on watch-duty in a village where I 
 had for my shelter a house which the poor people 
 had been compelled to leave, I found there what 
 I had asked for in my prayers, a Gospel of St. 
 John a little book like those I got, when a child, 
 in the M'All meetings. 
 
 " I cannot tell you how happy I have been to 
 read again those good words of the Lord ! 
 
 " Therefore, now, if you forgive me, I shall be 
 glad to receive the Gospel of Luke. I should be 
 so happy to be able to read the New Testament ! 
 It will remind me of the time of my happiness, 
 when I believed in the Kingdom of Heaven. . . . 
 A repentant sinner. Yours devotedly, A. O." 
 
 A few days afterwards, the man acknowledges 
 the New Testament sent him, and he says : " I 
 am thirsting to hear some one speak to me of 
 God and our Lord, for here I am forlorn and 
 lonely. . . ." 
 
 The brave fellow goes on to give an account of 
 a wonderful deliverance, which, in his new-born 
 faith, he has no hesitation to attribute to the Good 
 Shepherd's care over him. 
 
 Of those who have died in a conscious, strong, 
 joyful assurance of faith, the number is already
 
 IN THE TRENCHES 253 
 
 very large. We shall not give many details 
 concerning them, as the list, most likely, is not 
 closed yet, alas! and it is better to wait till the 
 end in order to prepare, if God will, a record of 
 them all, so far as that will be possible. Some of 
 our best friends, some beloved ministers of the 
 Gospel, have fallen nobly, and their dying testi- 
 mony will ever be remembered. Dear Agulhon, 
 dear de Richemond . . . and others . . . and 
 others. . . . 
 
 Here is one, the last which has come to our 
 knowledge. 
 
 " G. T , aged 24, Mtdaille Militaire and 
 
 Croix de guerre with palms (the highest military 
 distinctions), grievously wounded near Verdun, 
 died from his wounds, a few days afterwards, in 
 an ambulance. That soldier has died a true 
 Christian death. Here are his last words to a 
 friend who visited him : 
 
 "'Tell my parents I have made the sacrifice 
 of my life. Jesus Christ is my Saviour. The 
 will of God be accomplished in all things. I 
 commit myself to His hands with full confidence ; 
 I know the way that leads to life.' He was, 
 says the chaplain who writes this, a Sunday- 
 school teacher and a member of the Y.M.C.A. 
 of St. Jean-du-Gard (his native place). The 
 commander of his battalion wrote to the head 
 surgeon of the ambulance to ask for some details 
 on the end of that ' model soldier ' (those were his
 
 254 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 words). And the same officer asked that, in 
 his name, a wreath should be laid on the grave, 
 with this inscription : ' To Private T. His com- 
 mander and friend.' ' 
 
 Such is the greatness, such is the power, of 
 Christian living and Christian dying. Who 
 knows but that this officer will, after the War, 
 become a witness for Christ in the place of the 
 young man so gloriously fallen ?
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 WE had purposed in this last chapter to 
 draw conclusions from the past and 
 present, and to try a forecast of what the near 
 future will be. 
 
 But we confess that the task seems to be, at 
 least, premature. 
 
 That we have faith in the destinies of our 
 nation, and that we believe that a turning towards 
 God will take place among us, has been seen 
 clearly enough throughout these pages. How 
 and when will these things be fulfilled, and what 
 will be God's method to bring them to pass ? All 
 that, no one can foretell. We are quite sure that 
 no spiritual movement will have real and per- 
 manent value which will not give the first place 
 to the work of redemption accomplished on 
 Calvary, to the written Word of God as the only 
 source of redemptive truth, and to the Holy Spirit 
 as the life-giving, life-propagating power. There 
 will be no genuine religious revival which will not re- 
 spect to the fullest extent the individual conscience. 
 
 We shall therefore conclude with this, the 
 fervent expression of our hope and trust. And 
 
 255
 
 256 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 we would embody our sentiments in a Prayer 
 which has been burning in our hearts ever since 
 the beginning of this War. We beg our Christian 
 readers to join with us, if not in the words, at 
 least in the spirit of it : 
 
 Almighty God, Creator of heaven and earth, 
 " Who hast made of one every nation of men 
 for to dwell on all the face of the earth, having 
 determined their appointed seasons and the 
 bounds of their habitation, that they should seek 
 God, if haply they might feel after Him, and find 
 Him, though He is not very far from each one 
 of us," We humbly come to Thee in the name 
 of Thy Son Jesus Christ, with our prayer and 
 supplication on behalf of this, our country, which 
 we love, and which Thou lovest also, the fair 
 country of France. 
 
 The love we bear to her comes from Thee, O 
 God, for Thou hast made us flesh of her flesh and 
 bones of her bones. Such a love had Thine own 
 Son, Jesus Christ, when He was on earth, for His 
 temporal people. It cannot therefore be contrary 
 to Thy holy will that, in a spirit of submission, 
 we should, at this time of her greatest sorrow, 
 trial and peril, pray for our own race. 
 
 Thou knowest all things, and that, in our hearts, 
 we hate no one. We know that Thou, O Father, 
 lovest all men. We crave Thy grace, which will 
 enable us to love even our enemies. Forgive 
 those, so numerous among them, who know not
 
 CONCLUSION 257 
 
 what they do. As for the guilty, the criminal 
 men, whose pride and covetousness have brought 
 this scourge upon the world, bring them through 
 suffering to humility, true repentance and death to 
 self. We fight against them in the cause of Justice 
 and Liberty, but we do not curse them. Give us 
 victory over them, for our cause is Thine. Crush 
 the powers of evil. Punish the cruel evil-doers. 
 O Lord, save France ! 
 
 In great and manifold ways, Thou didst show 
 Thy goodness to her in the past. Thou gavest 
 to this race a pleasant land to dwell in, and Thou 
 didst endow her with many natural qualities. 
 Her very name speaks of openness of mind and 
 of sincerity. At the very beginning of her history 
 Thou didst send to her faithful men from afar, 
 who gave a true testimony concerning Thyself 
 and Thy Son. They scattered the precious seed 
 of Eternal Life which they had brought with them, 
 Thine own Gospel. That seed has never ceased 
 to bring forth fruit to Thy glory in this land ; and 
 it has even been carried, at various times, from this 
 to other countries. And yet, O God, our fathers 
 have often sinned, not only against Thy law, but 
 against Thy grace. Yes, our fathers have sinned, 
 and we, their children, have sinned also, grievously 
 and repeatedly. Those of us who, by Thy grace, 
 have been brought to believe in Thy free salva- 
 tion, have sinned even more grievously than the 
 others, because we had more light than they. 
 We have yielded to Thee but a half-hearted 
 17
 
 258 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 service. We have neglected Thy Word, and 
 often allowed it to be despised in our midst. We 
 have lost sight of the precious Blood by which 
 alone men can be saved. 
 
 Notwithstanding all our shortcomings and the 
 sins of our fathers, O Lord, for Jesu's sake, save 
 France ! 
 
 Remember the faith, the courage, and the 
 sufferings of those thousands of our countrymen, 
 true disciples of Jesus, who, in obscurity and 
 ignorance, in patience and humility, toiled, wept, 
 prayed and testified, generation after generation, 
 ever hoping to see the country of their birth 
 mightily blessed by a visitation of Thy Holy 
 Spirit ! 
 
 Remember the Martyrs, whose blood was so 
 freely shed in the early ages of France's history, 
 and at other times ; remember, O Lord, their 
 dying petitions on behalf of this land which 
 they loved so wonderfully (and is so loved still 
 by those who have been born in it) that death 
 upon her soil was sweeter to them than life in 
 exile ! 
 
 For the sake of those witnesses, Thou Who 
 hast promised to hear and answer the prayer of 
 humble faith, O Lord, save France ! 
 
 We know full well that there is only one people 
 to which Thou hast promised immortality : the 
 people which Thou art gathering out from all 
 nations, tribes and tongues ; a people of men who 
 are born "not of blood, nor of the will of the
 
 CONCLUSION 259 
 
 flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." And 
 it is because we desire with a desire which, we 
 believe, cometh from Thee that our nation 
 should bring her full tribute of saints to the great 
 crowd of heaven, that we earnestly pray for her 
 temporal deliverance at this time. How could 
 her beautiful language be worthily resounding 
 with Thy praises in the great concert which is to 
 be, unless millions of French voices had been 
 trained to sing them ? Many have already joined 
 the celestial Choir ; but there are not enough yet. 
 We beseech Thee, O God, to give more redeemed 
 souls to Thy Son, from this country of ours ! 
 Give time to Thy Spirit, that He may raise up 
 new witnesses for this suffering generation! He 
 is already at work, bringing forth some out of 
 those bloody trenches where they have seen 
 Death in the face, and also Thine own great Love 
 in the face of Jesus Christ. Let many preachers 
 of righteousness and salvation arise, as it were, 
 from those ghastly tombs ! Let there be a time 
 of spring, of sweet heavenly breezes, after this 
 murderous season ! 
 
 See, O Lord, the courage and nobility of our 
 soldiers. Though many of them know Thee not, 
 and though their deeds, heroic as they are, cannot 
 secure for them that eternal life which only comes 
 through the death and resurrection of Thy Son, ac- 
 cepted by souls touched with repentance, yet their 
 moral greatness marks them as Thine offspring. 
 Spare their lives, save their souls. Give victory
 
 260 THE SOUL OF FRANCE 
 
 to their valiant efforts. Were not the cause for 
 which they are fighting and laying down their 
 lives a righteous one, we should not dare thus to 
 pray. But we believe, in our heart of hearts, 
 that the cause of our Allies and our own is just. 
 We again plead, O God, for victory, not for our 
 own glory, but for Thine ! 
 
 We pray for our generals and our statesmen. 
 Direct their decisions ; be Thou present in their 
 councils. Let there be many among them who, 
 realizing their own personal weakness, will cry 
 out to Thee, perhaps for the first time in their 
 lives. Reveal Thyself to them who are Thy 
 ministers, to whom Thou hast entrusted the 
 sword of justice. Show them that they, also, 
 need Thy mercy. Grant that France and her 
 Allies may be led by men of influence and 
 authority who shall not be ashamed to confess 
 Thy Name ! 
 
 Thou hearest the sobs of the widows, the cries 
 of the orphans ; Thou seest the stricken fathers 
 and mothers. Most merciful Father, help us, 
 that we may speak to them in Thy Name ; and 
 do Thou open their hearts to Thy words of 
 salvation and comfort. Grant that, while treading 
 this thorny path with bleeding feet, thousands, 
 yea, millions, may be drawn to the Cross of Thy 
 dear Son, there to lay at once their sins and their 
 sorrows. Where sin hath abounded, with all its 
 deadly fruits, let Thy grace abound more exceed- 
 ingly. Let the miracles of Thy Love outpass the
 
 CONCLUSION 261 
 
 awful wonders of hell, which we are now 
 witnessing. 
 
 Thou art not in the great and strong wind, nor 
 in the earthquake, nor in the fire, though Thou 
 hast allowed those things. Grant, O Lord, that 
 we may soon hear the gentle sound of stillness, 
 the Voice of Thy Love, which is the fulness of 
 Thy revelation ! Come over this sinful, wretched 
 and dying world ! 
 
 And as this country, which has suffered so 
 much in the past, is now suffering so much, O 
 God, have pity on our motherland ! The world 
 needs her testimony, when she shall have received 
 the fulness of Thy light. For the sake of Christ 
 our Lord, O God our Father, save France!
 
 APPENDIX A 
 
 FROM FRANCE OF TO-DAY 
 
 BY M. BETHAM-EDWARDS 
 
 "^ I ^HE department of the Card offers an 
 J. anomaly pleasing to English observers 
 and progressists generally. Here and here alone 
 throughout the length and breadth of France are 
 found villages without a Catholic church, villages 
 that have held fast to Protestantism and the 
 right of private judgment from time immemorial. 
 Nor is it among the meek and lowly that the 
 more enlightened doctrine has chiefly prevailed. 1 
 
 " In higher places the Protestant element is 
 overwhelming. Alike moral and material, spir- 
 itual and intellectual forces are here arrayed 
 against intolerance and superstition. Were the 
 same spectacle witnessed elsewhere, and the 
 Card no phenomenon on the French map, we 
 might draw good augurs for the future. Half a 
 dozen departments Protestant to the core, and 
 
 1 The author should have qualified this statement. Many of the 
 
 11 meek and lowly " belong to our churches. 
 
 263
 
 264 APPENDIX A 
 
 Boulangism were impossible, Lourdes a survival 
 to blush at, the cloistered convent out of date as 
 an auto-da-ft, France saved by the remnant. 
 We must be thankful to find one such department 
 out of the eighty-six. . . . One quarter of the 
 entire population of the department is Protestant, 
 none other showing a comparable muster. . . . 
 It is my firm belief that there is a great future for 
 Protestantism in France, were only some Wesley 
 to arise, capable of leading the movement." 
 
 The Card is not the only department with a 
 large proportion of born Protestants, though none 
 has so large a one. The departments of the 
 Lozere and the Ardeche, north of the Gard, have 
 mountainous districts almost wholly Protestant. 
 The same is the case with the Drome, on the left 
 side of the Rhone ; also with the Tarn, the 
 Dordogne, the Ariege and the Basses-Pyr^n^es, 
 in the south-west ; and the Deux-Sevres and the 
 Charente, in the west. 
 
 In the eastern region, near the Swiss frontier, 
 there are large Protestant communities in the 
 departments of the Doubs, the Haute-Saone and 
 Belfort, forming together what was in olden times 
 the Pays de Montbtliard. In Alsace, of course, 
 Protestants form a considerable part of the 
 population.
 
 H 
 
 APPENDIX B 
 
 ERE are a few "Thoughts" of Pascal, 
 taken at random : 
 
 To make of a man a saint, it requires grace to 
 do it ; and he who doubts it does not know what 
 a saint is, or a man. 
 
 Man is not worthy of God, but he is not in- 
 capable of being made worthy of Him. 
 
 It is unworthy of God to join Himself to man 
 in his misery ; but it is not unworthy of God to 
 lift him out of his misery. 
 
 We know God only through Jesus Christ. 
 Without such a Mediator, all communication with 
 God is removed ; through Jesus Christ we know 
 God. All who have pretended to know and to 
 prove God apart from Jesus Christ had only 
 impotent proofs. While, to prove Jesus Christ, 
 we have the prophecies, which are proofs that are 
 solid and palpable. 
 
 Not only do we know God only through Jesus
 
 266 APPENDIX B 
 
 Christ, but through Him alone do we know our- 
 selves. Life and death, also, we know only 
 through Him. Apart from Him, we know not 
 what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor 
 ourselves. 
 
 Thus, apart from the Scriptures, whose sole 
 object is Christ, we know nothing, and see nothing 
 but obscurity and confusion in the nature of God 
 and in Nature itself. 
 
 Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but 
 he is a thinking reed. There is no need that the 
 whole universe should arm itself to crush him : a 
 vapour, a drop of water, will suffice to kill him. 
 But though the universe crush him, yet man 
 remains nobler than that which kills him, for he 
 knows that he dies ; but the advantage that the 
 universe has over him, the universe knows it not. 
 
 All our dignity therefore consists in thought. 
 It is on that we must depend, and not on space 
 and duration, which we could not fill. Let us 
 therefore strive to think well : that is the 
 principle of true morality. 
 
 What a chimera is man ! What novelty, what 
 monstrosity, what chaos, what object of contra- 
 diction, what prodigious being ! Judge of all 
 things, silly worm of the ground ; depository of 
 truth, cesspool of uncertainty and error ; glory 
 and refuse of the universe.
 
 APPENDIX B 267 
 
 Know ye therefore, O superb, what a paradox 
 you are for your own self. Humble yourself, 
 impotent Reason ! Hold your peace, silly nature ! 
 Learn that man passes man infinitely, and hear 
 from your Master your true condition, of which ye 
 know nothing. Listen to God ! 
 
 The Thoughts is not a book, but a collection of 
 fragments, originally written on scraps of paper, 
 some almost illegible. They have been patiently 
 deciphered and put into some sort of order, by 
 scores of patient scholars, in the course of the 
 two past centuries. In the intention of Pascal, 
 these were the mere material, not complete 
 nor in its definitive form, which was to be 
 used for his great work on Christian Evidences, 
 based on the natural constitution of Man, the 
 testimony of Scriptures and the person and work 
 of Jesus Christ. The Thoughts may be compared 
 to a large assemblage of quarried stones which 
 have yet to be put each in its proper place ; 
 but one is able to discern something, at least, of 
 the beauty of the temple which those fragments 
 were destined to constitute, when properly put 
 together.
 
 APPENDIX C 
 
 JEAN DE LAB ADI E, a Frenchman, born in 
 1610, was a priest, and a canon of the Cathe- 
 dral of Amiens. He joined the Jesuits. Early im- 
 pressed by the lack of reality in Church services, 
 he started small gatherings of earnest believers, 
 for the purpose of reading the Scriptures in 
 French, of praying together, and even of celebra- 
 ting the Lord's Supper in apostolic fashion. 
 
 Such unheard-of innovations could not be 
 tolerated. Driven away from the Church, 
 Labadie joined the Jansenists, but only for a time, 
 and finally came over to the Reformed faith. 
 Even then, that noble spirit, who probably was 
 looked upon as mad by many good people of his 
 time, was not wholly satisfied. The formalism of 
 the professing Church was not in keeping with what 
 he conceived to be the spirit of primitive Christi- 
 anity. Compelled to leave France in 1659, he went 
 to Geneva, and produced there such a powerful 
 impression that the Consistory besought him to 
 become one of the regular preachers of the Word. 
 
 He began his ministry by vehement appeals to 
 
 268
 
 APPENDIX C 269 
 
 repentance, urging a change of life on the multi- 
 tudes that crowded the churches to hear him. 
 
 Among his hearers, for a whole year, was P. J. 
 Spener, who was deeply impressed by Labadie. 
 And Spener, as is well known, became the 
 founder of the Pietist movement, out of which 
 sprang the Moravian Revival, which, in its 
 turn, was the means of John Wesley's entrance 
 into the full light of the Gospel. Thus, by a true 
 apostolical succession, the English Evangelical 
 uprising of the eighteenth century originated in 
 the earnest preaching and methods of Jean de 
 Labadie. 
 
 The good man was not satisfied with his public 
 ministrations : he held "private exercises" in his 
 house, or in those of his friends. The police 
 reported that Labadie " asked those who attended, 
 to kneel down at the Lord's Prayer, and to stand 
 up at the Creed." Think of that ! 
 
 Labadie left Geneva in 1666 for Holland, 
 where he adopted views very similar to those of 
 the Baptists of our own time.
 
 INDEX OF NAMES 
 
 The Soul of France has been fostered by men and women of many 
 Nationalities ; and it is round their names that the interest gathers 
 throusrhoTtt the book. 
 
 Albret, Jeanne d', Queen of 
 
 Navarre, 49. 
 Alexander I., Czar of Russia, 
 
 'Si- 
 
 Allier, Professor Raoul, 249. 
 Amiel, 33. 
 
 Angelique, Mere, 100, 105. 
 Appia, Pasteur Georges, 147. 
 Armand-Delille, Pasteur, 187, 188, 
 
 190. 
 Arnauld, the family, 96, 97, 101, 
 
 105. 
 
 Barodet, Mayor of Lyons, 191. 
 Basnage, Pasteur, 51. 
 Baville, Lamoignon de, 91. 
 Beaumarchais, Caron de, 60. 
 Beauvau, Prince de, 73. 
 Benedict xv., Pope, 126. 
 Beranger, 144. 
 Bergson, Professor, 203. 
 Bernard de Clairvaux, 25. 
 Bersier, Pasteur Eugene, 186-8. 
 Betham-Edwards, M., 12, 263, 264. 
 Bethany, the family of, 17. 
 Bing, Le"vy, 170. 
 Blanc, Abbe Etienne, 170. 
 Blundell, Miss S. P., 188. 
 Bolingbroke, 125. 
 Bonaparte, Prince Louis-Lucien, 
 
 171. 
 
 Bonifas, Professor, 152. 
 Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, 113-7. 
 Bost, Ami, 152, 157. 
 Bost, John, 158. 
 Boucher, Pasteur Philippe, 178. 
 Bourdaloue, Father, 117. 
 
 Bourg, Anne du, one of the early 
 martyrs of the Reformation, 65. 
 
 Bourget, Paul, de 1' Academic 
 Fran9aise, 218, 219. 
 
 Boutroux, Emile, Professor of the 
 Sorbonne, 203. 
 
 Bridaine, Father, 112. 
 
 Broen, Miss de, 188. 
 
 Broglie, Due de, 170. 
 
 Broglie, Prince Albert de, 171. 
 
 Brousson, Claude, 65, 75 passim, 
 
 93- 
 
 Brunetiere, Ferdinand, 203. 
 Bruys, Pierre de, 21, 164. 
 
 Galas, Jean, 127. 
 
 Calvin, Jean, 35-8, 43. 
 
 Casalis, first missionary to Basuto- 
 
 land, 171. 
 
 Cauchon, Bishop, 28. 
 Chabrand, Pasteur, 145. 
 Chantal, Madame Jeanne de, no. 
 Chapel, Jean, 70. 
 Charles vn., King of France, 27. 
 Charles IX., King of France, 48. 
 Charles x., King of France, 141, 
 
 1 68. 
 
 Chateaubriand, 143. 
 Chenneviere, Professor, 153. 
 Chesterfield, Lord, 125. 
 Claude, Pasteur Jean, 51. 
 Clemenceau, Georges, 222. 
 Clovis I., first King of France, 19. 
 Coligny, Admiral Gaspard de, 35, 
 
 39, 65. 
 
 Cook, Charles, 161-3. 
 Cook, Pasteur Emile, 163. 
 
 271
 
 272 
 
 INDEX OF NAMES 
 
 Coppe, Fran9ois, 203, 204. 
 Coquerel, Pasteur Athanase, 1 80. 
 Corneille, Pierre, 103. 
 Court, Antoine, 92-4, 130. 
 Courtois, the brothers, 172. 
 Crampon, Abb, 176. 
 Cranmer, 65. 
 
 Cretin, Pasteur J. B., 164, 165. 
 Cuvier, Baron, 147. 
 
 Daille, Pasteur, 51. 
 Darby, J. N., 165. 
 Darwin, Charles, 184, 185. 
 Deschamps, Gaston, 218. 
 Didon, Father, 117. 
 Dieterlen, Pasteur Pierre, 147. 
 Dietrich, Mayor of Strasbourg, 146. 
 Doumergue, Professor Emile, 42, 
 
 219. 
 
 Dreyfus, Captain Alfred, 198, 199. 
 Drummond, 156. 
 Dubois, Cardinal, 131. 
 Durand, Marie, 73. 
 
 Eck, 1 80. 
 
 Elliott, Charlotte, 161. 
 
 Encontre, Professor Daniel, 154. 
 
 Erasmus, 35. 
 
 Erskine, 153. 
 
 Faguet, Emile, de 1'Academie 
 
 Fran9aise, 37, 215-7. 
 Fallot, Pasteur Tommy, 147. 
 Farel, Guillaume, Reformer, 35. 
 Felice, de, 162. 
 Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambrai, 
 
 60, 116, 117, 131. 
 Flechier, Bishop of Nimes, 117. 
 Fogazzaro, 206. 
 Forge, Etienne de la, 44. 
 Fouquet, Intendant, 124. 
 Fourcroy, 154. 
 Fran9ois de Sales, 1 10. 
 Franfois I. , King of France, 47. 
 Fra^ois II., King of France, 47. 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 133, 134. 
 Frederick II., 127. 
 
 Gachon, Pasteur Jean, 136, 145. 
 Gasparin, Comte Agenor de, 172, 
 
 178, 1 80. 
 
 Gaussen, Pasteur Louis, 152. 
 Gerson, Jean, 25. 
 
 Grandpierre, Pasteur, 179. 
 Gratry, Father, 117, 171, 181. 
 Grattan-Guinness, H., senior, 186. 
 Guers, 152-64. 
 Guise, Due de, 48. 
 Guizot, 12, 13, 1 68. 
 Guyon, Madame, 117. 
 
 Haag, the Brothers, 78. 
 
 Haldane, James, 149. 
 
 Haldane, Robert, 149-55, 1 &Z- 
 
 Hamon, 101. 
 
 Henri de Lausanne, 21. 
 
 Henri III., King of France, 48. 
 
 Henri IV., King of France, 48, 49. 
 
 Herv6, Gustave, 217. 
 
 Hugo, Victor, 143 
 
 Innocent ni., Pope, 22. 
 Irenaeus, 18. 
 
 Jansenius, 95, 96. 
 
 Jeanne d'Arc, 26-31, 205, 231. 
 
 Jurieu, Pasteur, 51. 
 
 Knox, John, 149. 
 Kriidener, Madame de, 151. 
 
 Labadie, Jean de, 148, 164, 268, 
 
 269. 
 
 Laborde, Comte de, 172. 
 Lacordaire, Father, 117, 169, 180. 
 Lafontaine, Jean de, 120-3, 144. 
 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 144. 
 Lamennais, Abb de, 169. 
 Laplace, 154. 
 Lareveillere-Lepaux, 138. 
 Lasserre, Henri, 176. 
 Latimer, 65. 
 Lazare, Bernard, 199. 
 Lefevre d'Etaples, 35, 41. 
 Lelievre, Pasteur Matthieu, 43, 45, 
 
 57, 85. 
 
 Le Maitre, Antoine, 103-5. 
 Le Maitre de Sacy, 97. 
 Lenient, 42. 
 
 Lissignol, Pasteur, 145, 162. 
 Locke, 125. 
 Loisy, Abbe, 169, 207. 
 Lortsch, Pasteur Daniel, 41, 175. 
 Louis ix. (Saint Louis), King of 
 
 France, 24, 72. 
 Louis XL, King of France, 24.
 
 INDEX OF NAMES 
 
 273 
 
 Louis XIV., King of France, 24, 
 
 52, S3- 
 
 Louis xvi., King of France, 136. 
 Louis xviii., King of France, 141. 
 Louis- Philippe I., 168, 177. 
 Loyson, Abbe, 171. 
 Loyson, Father Hyacinthe, 117, 
 
 169. 
 
 M'All, Rev. and Mrs. R. W., 
 
 191-4. 
 
 Maintenon, Madame de, 50, 103. 
 Maistre, Joseph de, 143. 
 Malan, Csar, 152, 160. 
 Marguerite de Navarre, 44. 
 Marolles, Louis de, 67. 
 Marot, Clement, 48. 
 Marteilhe, Jean, 67. 
 Martin de Tours, 25. 
 Martin-Paschoud, Pasteur, 180. 
 Mary Stuart, 47. 
 Marzials, Pasteur, 145. 
 Massillon, Bishop of Clermont, 1 17. 
 M6dicis, Queen Catherine de, 47, 
 
 48, 97- 
 Merle-d'Aubigne, Professor, 44, 
 
 152. 
 
 Meyer, Pasteur Louis, 147, 180. 
 Michelet, Jules, 39, 56, 63, 95, 231. 
 Mistral, Frederic, 17. 
 Moliere, J. B. Poquelin de, 120. 
 Monod, Adolphe, 153, 177, 178. 
 Monod, Frederic, 152, 180. 
 Monod, Theodore, 152, 171, 196. 
 Montaigne, 35. 
 Montalembert, Comte de, 169, 171, 
 
 181. 
 
 Montbeton, Baron de, 70, 71. 
 Montespan, Marquise de, 53. 
 Montesquieu, 134. 
 Montfort, Simon de, 22. 
 Moulini6, Pasteur, 150. 
 Murri, 206. 
 
 Napoleon I., 138, 139. 
 Napoleon in., 182. 
 Neff, Felix, 158, 159. 
 Nissolle, Jean, 57. 
 
 Oberlin, 145, 146. 
 Olive"tan, Robert, 37, 42. 
 Ostervald, 42. 
 Ozanam, 169. 
 
 18 
 
 Pascal, Blaise, 101, 102, 106-8, 
 
 265-7. 
 
 Pe"guy, Charles, 204-6. 
 Perraud, Abb6, 117. 
 Petavel, Pasteur E., 170. 
 Peter the Hermit, 26. 
 Philip II. of Spain, 48. 
 Philippe-le-Bel, King of France, 
 
 24. 
 
 Picquart, Colonel, 199. 
 Pius vii., Pope, 139. 
 Polycarp, 18. 
 Pothinus, 1 8. 
 Pressense, Pasteur Edmond de, 171, 
 
 186, 188. 
 
 Psichari, Ernest, 185. 
 Pyt, Henri, 152, 156, 157, 164. 
 
 Quesnel, Abbe, 101. 
 Quinet, Edgar, 39. 
 
 Rabaut, Paul, 92, 131, 135, 136. 
 
 Rabaut, Pommier, 136. 
 
 Rabaut, St. Etienne, 136. 
 
 Rabelais, 35. 
 
 Racine, Jean, 103. 
 
 Renan, Ernest, 183. 
 
 Ridley, 65. 
 
 Rollin, Pasteur, 162. 
 
 Rosseeuw St. Hilaire, Professor, 
 
 189. 
 
 Rostan, Casimir, 170. 
 Roty, 230. 
 
 Rouget de 1'Isle, 146. 
 Rousseau, Jean -Jacques, 60, 128, 
 
 129-32, 143. 
 Roussel, Napoleon, 178. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve de 1'Academie Fran- 
 
 caise, 99, 179. 
 Saint-Cyran, Abbe de, 96, 101, 
 
 103, 104. 
 
 Sangnier, Marc, 208, 209. 
 Sarolea, Charles, 213. 
 Saurin, Pasteur, 94. 
 Scarron, 53. 
 Scheurer-Kestner, 199. 
 Shaftesbury, Lord, 125. 
 Stael, Baron de, 172. 
 Stapfer, P. A., 172. 
 
 Taine, Hippolyte, 185. 
 Talleyrand, 138.
 
 274 
 
 INDEX OF NAMES 
 
 Tligny, Comte de, 40. 
 Thierry, Amedee, 171. 
 Tyrrell, Father, 208. 
 
 Urban n., Pope, 26. 
 
 Valdo, Pierre, 23, 24, 42. 
 
 Verhuell, Admiral, 172. 
 
 Vincent de Paul, St., no, 
 
 in. 
 Vinet, Alexandre, 178, 179. 
 
 Vivens, 84. 
 Voltaire, 124, 126. 
 
 Wesley, 54, 125. 
 Whitefield, 54 125. 
 Wilks, Mark, 172. 
 William the Silent, 40. 
 Woolston, 125. 
 Wyclif, 24. 
 
 Zinzendorf, Count von, 136. 
 Zola, Emile, 199. 
 
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 Half-tone Illustrations. Cloth Boards, 3s. 6d. net. 
 This is a fascinating specimen of the historical romance at its best, 
 the romance which infuses energetic life into the dry facts of 
 history. The plot is worked out with rare dramatic effectiveness, 
 and throughout it runs a beautiful love story. 
 
 LONDON: MORGAN & SCOTT LTD. 
 
 12, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, E.G.
 
 FOR TEACHERS AND OTHERS 
 
 Stories of the Kingdom : 
 
 REASON Addresses to Children 
 
 By the REV. WILL REASON, M.A. 
 
 Cloth Boards, 2s. net. 
 
 "It will awaken a picturesque interest in the wonderful 
 
 ' Stories ' of the Son of Man, and lead the children to a 
 
 more definite search for the Pearl of great price." 
 
 Methodist Times. 
 
 Sunday Talks with Boys and Girls 
 
 GEORGE E. By GEORGE E. MORGAN, M.A. 
 
 MORGAN Cloth Boards, 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 Mr. Morgan knows how to win the confidence of young 
 people. And in this series of "Talks " he enforces lessons in 
 a way which is calculated to make a lasting impression upon 
 the minds of his youthful audience. Ministers and others 
 will value the work as suggesting Topics for their weekly 
 addresses to the young. 
 
 The Last Likeness : 
 
 And other Addresses to Children 
 
 D. MACRAE By D. MACRAE STEWART, Chaplain to the A.I.F. 
 
 STEWART Cloth Boards, 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 Here is a series of Fifty-two Gospel Talks to Children 
 penned by a master-hand. The Addresses are brief, a 
 feature appreciated by the young ; but they are pointed, 
 and cannot fail to drive home the truth intended in each 
 case to be conveyed. 
 
 God's Whispers : 
 
 A Series of Nature Studies 
 
 WYLIE 
 
 By the REV. W. S. HERBERT WYLIE, M.A. 
 Cloth Boards, 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 A delightful series of Studies by one who in observing the 
 works of Nature is alert for the still small voice of Nature's 
 God. Preachers and workers among young people will here 
 find material for many Addresses and Illustrations. 
 
 LONDON: MORGAN & SCOTT LTD. 
 
 12, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, E.G.
 
 A 000 690 529 3
 
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