Part 5

"Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone," says the Apostle St. James. Christianity has borne abundant fruits since its awakening at the commencement of this century. I have before me the "Manual des Œuvres et institutions de charité de Paris," published in 1862, by order of the archbishop, M. Sibour. {95} Independently of the establishments under the direction of Government, I find in it 107 charitable institutions or associations, of every kind, originated and supported by zealous Christians in the interval between 1820 and 1848. Of these I will only cite some of the principal ones, to establish their character and their progress. In the year 1822 the idea struck two poor servants at Lyons to make the rounds of their parish and collect weekly one sou from each person, in aid of the conversion of infidels. This was the origin of the association called "l'Œuvre de la propagation de la Foi," now under the direction of two councils, composed of members of the clergy and of the laity, having their sittings, one at Lyons, the other at Paris. The report published by this association in June, 1824, showed for the two years, 1823 and 1824, a receipt of 80,000 fr., (3200_l_.) This association received in 1864 the sum of 5,090,041 fr. 48 cent., (203,601_l_. 13_s_. 3½_d_.,) in which amount France alone figures for 3,479,290 fr. 65 cent., (139,171_l_. 12_s_. 6½_d_.,) and it divided 4,658,672 fr. 56 cent. (186,346_l_. 18_s_. 6½_d_.) among five hundred dioceses, and appropriated those funds to the support of the Catholic missionaries in the five parts of the world. {96} It counted from the year 1852, 1,500,000 subscribers, and it distributed 170,000 copies of its "Annals," (Annales de propagation de la Foi,) which form a sequel to the "Lettres édificantes," and keep the Christian world informed of their doings. In May, 1833, eight young men, at the suggestion of Frederic Ozanam, "wishing," said the Perè Lacordaire, "to give one more proof of what Christianity can effect in behalf of the poor, began to ascend to those upper stories which were the hidden haunts of the misery of their quarter. Men saw youths in the flower of their age and fresh from school regularly visiting, without any feeling of repulsion, the most abject habitations, and conveying to their unknown and suffering tenants a passing vision of charity." {97} Twenty years later, in 1853, Ozanam said at Florence, when on his death-bed: "Instead of eight only, at Paris alone we are two thousand strong, and we visit five thousand families, that is to say, about twenty thousand individuals, or a quarter of the poor contained in that great city. The conferences in France alone number five hundred, and we have them too in England, in Spain, Belgium, America, and even in Jerusalem." Nine years afterward, in 1862, when the Government, listening to mistaken counsels, suppressed the General Council of the Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul, and by doing so destroyed the central bond that kept the society together, the latter counted more than 3000 local conferences; it consisted of about 30,000 members, who visited in their homes more than 100,000 indigent families, and had already introduced into the greater part of the principal cities a system which exercised a control over the interests of apprentices and of prisoners. {98} During the course of the same epoch the Sisters of Charity, whose number, a century after their foundation by St. Vincent de Paul, had not exceeded 1500, already reached 18,000, of whom 16,000 were Frenchwomen; and at this moment they are plying throughout the world their works of piety and charity. Another society, "Les petites sœurs des pauvres," was founded in 1845, in imitation of Jeanne Jugan, a poor servant, a native of Brittany, who had been just crowned by the French Academy. This society receives and succors in their establishment nearly 20,000 aged men. Another association, "Les Frères de la doctrine Chrétienne," which had in the year 1844, 468 schools, maintains this year (1865) 920, and the number of the pupils has increased from 198,188 to 335,382. State and ecclesiastical documents attest, that by concurring causes of encouragement on the part of the State, of local subventions and of private donations, ten thousand churches have been, during the last fifty years, built, rebuilt, or suitably adapted for the performance of the services of the Church of Rome. {99} I might cite many similar facts. In all the directions and under all the forms in which piety and charity manifest themselves, faith and liberty, and faith and science have, since the awakening of Christianity and since the cause of religion has been separated from politics, drawn nearer to one another, and faith and its manifestation by charity have made a simultaneous advance and a like progress.

Had the Government of 1830 remained standing; had State and Church each retained reciprocally the same situation and the same attitude, the facts to which I have just alluded might have long remained unobserved. Society does not, any more than individuals, render an account to itself of the intimate relations of its existence, or of the transformations to which these give rise; but Providence has its moments when it suddenly lightens up the stage of the world and reveals to all actors and spectators the import and the effect of what is passing around them. {100} The Revolution of 1848 threw upon the progress of the Catholic Church and its relations with French society since 1830 the clear light of such a revelation.

In this sudden subversion of all things, in the presence of a republic extemporized upon the ruins of three monarchies--the monarchy of glory, the monarchy of tradition, and the monarchy of public opinion--in the midst of this nation, suddenly insurgent and beyond either its aim or expectation sovereign, what became of the Church? What did its ministers? If some of them participated in the current dreams, certainly the majority were full of anguish and alarm; they did not combat the new institutions; they did not pretend to exercise any influence for or against any party; they sought only to purify the Republic by securing in it a place for Religion; they did not stand aloof from the people; they showed themselves, in its great assemblages and in its fêtes, planting the cross of Jesus by the side of the tree of liberty. {101} Never did the Church stand so aloof from politics; never was she more modest in her attitude; never less exacting--I will not say more obsequious, as far as the Government or the public was concerned; never more absorbed with her mission of piety and morality, whatever the Government of France might be, and whoever her masters.

And what in their turn was the conduct of the people toward the Church? I do not mean to say that they confided in her, or showed her much affection. The popular movement in 1848 was no doubt far from being religious; and the ideas, acts, and language which proceeded from it every instant, were well calculated to disturb and sadden the hearts of Christians; but religion and its ministers were in no respect ill treated, insulted, or persecuted; their forms of worship were not interrupted: when they showed themselves out of doors, they were received with respect; and at the sight of a virtuous archbishop mortally wounded in the streets, in the very endeavor to appease the civil war by the exhibition of the cross, a painful stupor seized the people; a pang of remorse and of shame traversed those masses of disbelievers at the sight of a martyr. {102} It was clear that in the interval between 1830 and 1848, although the Christian Church had not aroused in the people either faith or sympathy, that Church had at least won liberty and peace. When the revolutionary fever had subsided, when the Republic had given itself a chief, and was waiting for a master, it was no longer in the street, by popular impressions, but in the Assemblies, and by the constituted authorities, that the great questions of the day were put and were solved. There, too, the progress, which the Catholic Church had made, became immediately evident, and its gains were ascertained. It counted at this moment among its most zealous servants a man new to public affairs, who had entered political life as an adherent of the Legitimist Opposition to the Monarchy of 1830, a man who accepted the Republic, and had acquired in a few days a just renown by his courageous resistance to anarchy. {103} By a choice, fortunate but at the same time unforeseen, M. de Falloux became the Minister of Public Instruction and of Worship in the first cabinet formed by the Prince President of the Republic. The new minister immediately devoted himself to the important measure that the Catholic Church had had in view ever since the year 1830, that is, to the complete establishment, under the sanction of the law, of the principle of liberty of instruction. He proceeded in his task at once with intelligence and boldness. To prepare his project of law, he appointed a numerous commission, and summoned to it the most eminent men, who represented views and interests the most diverse; laymen and ecclesiastics, Romanists, Protestants and philosophers, Republicans, Legitimists, Orleanists and Bonapartists, M. Thiers and the Abbé Dupanloup, M. Cousin and M. de Montalembert, M. Saint Marc Girardin and M. Cochin, M. Cuvier and the Abbé Sibour. [Footnote 12]

[Footnote 12: The following is a complete list of the members of the Commission, as given in the "Moniteur" of the 22d June, 1849: M. Thiers, president; MM. Cousin, St. Marc Girardin, Dubois, the Abbé Dupanloup, Peupin, Janvier, Laurentie, Freslon, Ballaguet, de Montalembert, Fresneau, Poulain de Bossay, Cuvier, Michel, Armand de Melun, Henri de Riancey, Cochin, the Abbé Sibour, Roux-Lavergne, de Montreuil-Housset, and Alexis Chevalier, secretary.]

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M. Thiers was the president of this commission, which sat during five months. It discussed every question respecting the organization of public instruction with a passionate ardor, and, at the same time, with an earnest and sincere desire to conciliate, by their resolutions, all opinions. According to the character of the times and the state of public sentiment, critical and perilous situations precipitate men sometimes to the commission of insane acts of violence, and sometimes keep them within the line of fairness and prudence. The project of law which issued from the commission of M. de Falloux had the merit of prudence. {105} In making mutual concessions, the representatives of the different systems took good care to protest that they did not renounce their peculiar principles--a language which made sometimes their resolutions have the air of a superficial and incoherent compromise; but men could, nevertheless, observe how conspicuous that project was for its large and practical character, and its respect for different rights; and they could also see how the State, the Church, and private establishments were left free to compete in matters of public instruction. When this project was discussed in the Legislative Assembly, M. de Falloux was no longer minister; but the impulse had been given, and his measure was out of danger; his successor, M. de Parien, too, gave it the support which it deserved; and after a discussion which occupied thirty-seven sittings, the Assembly, by a strong majority, passed the law, without introducing any important modification. The Liberty of Instruction was founded.

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Fifteen years have passed, and it subsists. The State, the Church, private institutions founded by laymen or by ecclesiastics, have competed actively during all that period. Religious congregations, Lazarists, Dominicans, Oratorians, Jesuits, have in this struggle displayed all the enthusiasm of faith, all the ardor of reciprocal rivalry. The Jesuits, since the year 1850, have opened twenty colleges for secondary instruction, and have founded at Paris, for courses of study preparatory to the special schools, an establishment whose successes have attracted the attention of the government and of the public; for it sends every year to the Military Schools, the Polytechnic, Naval, or Central, an extraordinary number of successful candidates, who have passed with honor, although the competition has been extensive and the examinations are severe. {107} A great school, founded by the Archbishop of Paris for the higher branches of ecclesiastical study in the ancient house of the Carmelites, has formed priests who, in the public examinations and theses, have proved themselves capable of taking rank by the side of the best pupils of the lay establishment of the "École Normale Supérieure." Everywhere the University has encountered numerous and ardent rivals; and it has been at the same time in its own interior a prey to painful trials. Under the pretext of an interest for studies of a scientific and practical nature, classical and philosophical studies have been displaced and depreciated. At the very moment that the University was losing its privileges beyond, it saw its principles and its organization shaken inside its walls.

Faithful to her convictions and traditions, even while accepting the experiments and the struggles that were forced upon her, the University has surmounted perils from within and rivalries from without; on the one side, little by little, it has returned to its system of a large and solid teaching of the classics; on the other, the level of the studies in its principal establishments has been raised, and the number of its pupils has been ever on the increase. {108} The Lycées counted (in 1850) 19,300; they have now (1865) more than 30,000 pupils. The State has thrown open the career of instruction to the Church, and has at the same time redoubled its own solicitude and success. Liberty of instruction has calmed both the anxieties of the religious party that made them demand it, and those anxieties of the laity which that liberty had inspired. It has given peace to the State and to the Church, at the same time that it has excited their emulation and stimulated their progress.

An incident which made some noise at the time has, under the new regime, shown the force of the Liberal spirit, and proved that, when needed, it would have unforeseen defenders. {109} Under the influence of a blind zeal, a pious ecclesiastic, the Abbé Graume, demanded by what right the literature of pagan antiquity occupied the place it did in public teaching; denounced it as "the devouring canker of modern societies;" and insisted that the Christian classics should replace in our schools the Greek and Latin classics. What was this but to reject one of the great cradles of modern civilization; to condemn the renaissance of literature in the fifteenth century, as well as the religious reform in the sixteenth century; and to close to the minds of rising generations of Christians the general history of the world! This attack upon the system of public instruction which had been in vigor during the last four centuries in all the States of Christendom, met from a part of the Romanists with a sympathetic reception: bishops, eminent for learning, thanked its author; M. Veuillot constituted himself his champion. But in the Catholic Church itself, as well as in the University, the fire of the defense silenced that of the attack; ecclesiastics, as eminent by their piety as by their science, the Bishop of Orleans at their head, proclaimed aloud their sympathy for the comprehensive scheme and the liberal studies which embrace all the fair works of man's intelligence. {110} The Jesuits on this occasion set an example of broad views and common sense; they introduced no modification into the programmes of their colleges; the Pères Cahoux and Daniel demonstrated their propriety, nay, their necessity; and the literature of the Greeks and of the Romans has preserved in the education of Christians the place which it gained in their history by the right of genius and by the splendor of its productions.

Scarcely had this controversy on a literary and moral subject been settled, when questions of far more gravity were raised, and more profoundly agitated Christian society. Christians found themselves attacked simultaneously upon scientific and upon political grounds. Men denied to the Christian Faith its reasonableness and its vital sources--to the Church of Rome its traditional and historical régime, and the temporal power of its chief.

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Two things strike me in this double attack--on the one hand its timidity, yet gravity; on the other, the powerful resistance which it encounters. Nothing is less novel than a denial of the supernatural character of Christianity, and of its primitive facts, of its miracles, of the divinity of its founder. The eighteenth century carried on this war in a far more violent, rude, and iniquitous spirit than the nineteenth century has done. M. Renan, in the attempt to dethrone Jesus, has at least treated him with admiration and respect; not from calculation, I feel assured, but from the natural tone of his mind. In our time, men have instincts and tastes, at once inconsequent and prudent; at the very time when they engage in a deadly struggle they affect to carry thither the cool impartiality of spectators; they flatter themselves that they unite the acumen of the critic to the feeling of the poet. The skeptic shows no disinclination to play the mystic; and the erudite man strives to cover with the vail of fancy the ruin that he makes. {112} Hume was a more stubborn skeptic, and Voltaire an enemy more daring. If I pass from philosophy to politics, and from books to events, I observe the war undergoing a similar transformation. What a contrast between the attacks of the Directory and the Emperor Napoleon the First upon the Papacy, and the circumspect and hesitating treatment of which, in spite of the blows that it receives, the Papacy is in these days the object? Are we to conclude that the general course of events has changed, and that the flood, which for a century whirled Europe along, is arrested and subsiding? Certainly not: there are abundant facts to prove the contrary. Whether regarded as a religious or a political question, whether considered as affecting opinions or interests, the contest between authority and liberty, between faith and incredulity, is carried on more earnestly and more systematically now than ever: principles on each side are pushed to their extreme consequences, and contrasted in a manner never before the case. {113} But experience imposes a restraint upon men even where it does not change them. In the years of internal order which the Empire insured, and in the years of liberty to which the constitutional Monarchy gave the sanction of its laws, the different parties learned to appreciate the obstacles with which they had to contend, and to measure their own strength and that of their opponents: they now know that everything is not possible to them; and necessity has inculcated a certain amount of equity and good sense. The experience of the past, as well as that of each day, convinces them of their inability to insure a complete success to their systems and their designs. Its adversaries thought Christianity expiring; but they soon saw that it was still full of life: while they express their surprise and persevere in their warfare, they admit its practical influence, render homage to its moral value, and strive, although they contest its rights, to appropriate to themselves the inheritance of its blessings. {114} The wind has often blown from the right quarter for Catholic Absolutists during this century; they have enjoyed the favor of more than one master, and more than once they have requited him by devoted services. More than once, also, they have obtained from the supreme head of their Church official declarations, which have been used by them against the Catholic Liberals. The Absolutists, nevertheless, have not succeeded in changing the tendency of Christian societies; they have arrested the course neither of ideas nor events; their defeats have cost them dearer than their victories were worth; and in spite of the obstinate infatuation of parties, I doubt whether they themselves believe in the progress of their cause. And how often has the Papacy itself in our days been insulted and despoiled? Has it not even been vanquished and expelled? {115} Still, in spite of what it has suffered, sometimes from revolutions, sometimes from arbitrary power, it has outlived not only the triumphs of its enemies, but its own impolitic measures: and at this day, assailed by freethinkers in spirituals, by ambitious neighbors in temporals, menaced with abandonment even by its protectors, it is more energetically defended and efficaciously supported than it ever was at the commencement of this century in its reverses. Pius VII. never received such pecuniary contributions as have been forwarded to Pius IX. in his necessities; and if the French bishops were now summoned to a council, their conduct would, beyond doubt, be more dignified and more influential than was that of their predecessors in 1811.

Why such changes in a situation itself in effect unchanged? Whence these hesitating measures, this embarrassed attitude of the adversaries of the Christian faith and of the Christian Church? What cause at the same time gives such boldness and even success to their defenders?

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Each age has its own peculiar and characteristic mission, and one from which it cannot escape; every human being has his share in it, whether he knows it or not. As a consequence of the truths and the errors, of the good and evil, of the triumphs and reverses of the preceding centuries, the nineteenth century has before it a special task, which will employ all its energies, and which will also, I hope, constitute its glory. It has both in the State and in the Church found the two supreme forces that preside over man's life, and over that of society, Authority and Liberty, in violent conflict, in turn intoxicated with victory, or vanquished, ruined. It is the mission of the nineteenth century to make them live together, and live in peace; or at least in an antagonism entailing upon neither any mortal danger. The recognition of, and respect for, authority; the acceptance and guarantee of freedom; these are the imperative necessities which our age is called upon to feel and to satisfy, both in State and Church. {117} Nor does this imply, as is often pretended, any inconsistency or any compromise of principle or any policy of expedients; it is not by inconsistency that great questions are settled, it is not by expedients that we content the cravings of men's souls, or calm the anxieties of human society; for mankind yields genuine submission and feels real confidence only where it believes in the existence of truth and justice. The recognition, veneration, and guarantee of the different rights which co-exist naturally and necessarily in human societies--of the rights, both of individuals and of the State--of the rights of religious society and of civil society--of the rights of little local societies as well as of the grand general society--of the rights of conscience as well as of tradition--of the rights of the future as well as of those of the past--these are the dominant principles of which the nineteenth century has to insure the triumph. {118} Triumphs assured, if Liberals and Christians are both of them determined to accomplish it! Notwithstanding all the violent emotions of party, and of all our differences on intellectual and social subjects, the consciousness of this situation is ever before our minds; and whether we admit it or not, the alliance of the liberal movement with the movement of awakened Christianity, is the grand measure and the grand hope of the day.