Part 9

Upon a single point, the relations of Church and State, his usual comprehensiveness of view and independence of thought appeared to abandon M. Vinet. {183} Justly struck and afflicted by his own experience of the inconveniences of a strict bond between Church and State, disgusted at the servility and falsity which frequently are, sometimes on the part of the State, sometimes on the part of the Church, its results, he concluded that in all cases all alliance between the two conditions of society is radically vicious; and he declared their entire separation a general and absolute principle, the sole reasonable and just system, the sole efficacious guarantee of truth and of liberty in spirituals or temporals. He thus ignored, it appears to me, the natural causes which produce, and the human motives which sanction, a certain alliance between societies civil and ecclesiastical; he ignored also the inestimable advantages which, at certain times and in certain circumstances, each may derive, and has actually derived, from that alliance. In the United States of America, the entire separation of the State and of the different Churches was necessary and salutary, for it was the spontaneous consequence of the condition of men's minds, and of the position of society. {184} In England, in spite of the acts of injustice, and the ills engendered by the intimate union of the state with a Church legally constituted and having exclusive privileges, the coexistence of the Church of England with the freedom, more and more every day complete and recognized, of the Churches of the Dissenters, was for the Christian religion a potent principle of life, of force, and of durability.

And if we go back to the ancient history of Europe, who can doubt that at the fall of the Roman Empire, if the State and the Church had not, although distinct institutions, been allied, the development of Christianity would have been far less energetic, and its conquest of its barbarous conquerors far more problematical? This is, I repeat, a question not of principle, but of time, of place, of circumstance, and of condition of society. A complete separation of Church and State may be good and practicable; it is neither the only good system, nor is it always a practicable system.

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An alliance of the two upon certain fixed terms has its inconveniences and its perils, but its effects may be also very salutary; it may be essential, and does not of necessity exclude religious sincerity or religious liberty. M. Vinet, in discussing the subject, lost sight of the general history of human societies, and attached too much importance to the specious and transient facts which he had before his eyes.

If M. Vinet were now living, he might in his own country behold two fair examples of the good results of the mixed systems which he so absolutely condemned. In the Cantons of the Vaud and of Geneva, after the violent and painful contests to which I have above referred, a dissenting Independent Church was established by the side of a Church recognized and supported by the State. In neither canton was this establishment a temporary expedient, the fruit of a momentary ardor; the Independent Church has consolidated and developed itself; it endures and prospers. Like the Establishment, it has its pastors, its churches, its solemnities, its schools for general and for superior instruction. {186} I have before me facts and figures which prove its vitality and its progress. And not only did the Established Church finally acquiesce in the peaceable existence of the independent Church, it also profited by it, and its salutary influence has been frankly acknowledged by its worthiest pastors. In Switzerland, as in England, Scotland, and Holland, and in our days more easily and more promptly than in ancient times, the existence on the one side of a national Church recognized by the State, has given to the different forms of Christian belief a stability and a dignity which have secured its permanent effects upon succeeding generations; the existence, on the other side, of independent Churches, and the religious emulation between the two establishments, have turned in both to the profit of faith and of piety.

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M. Adolphe Monod seemed, even more than M. Vinet, to promise by natural bent of his character, and by the incidents of his life, to become the champion of an entire separation of Church and State. At the very commencement of his career, he suffered from a Government based upon their connection. Pastor at Lyons, in 1831, of the established Protestant Church, he was dismissed from these functions by the Consistory of that city, as too exacting in his orthodoxy, and as troubling by his exigencies the peace of his Church. He then became the founder and pastor of a small dissenting and independent Church at Lyons. The energy with which he expressed his convictions, and the excellence of his preaching, rapidly spread, and increased his renown for piety. Numerous Protestants manifested the desire to see him once more within the pale of the national Church. He made no objection; a Chair becoming vacant in the Faculty of Montauban, M. Adolphe Monod was nominated, and from 1836 to 1847 he both lectured and preached at Montauban with a commanding ability that made itself felt, not only among the majority of the students, but propagated its influences to a distance among the principal centers of French Protestantism. {188} In 1847 he was summoned to Paris as the suffragan of another pastor, M. Juillerat. Nor did he scruple to accept this secondary and precarious situation. He had full confidence in the divine vocation, and was firmly resolved to proceed to any place where the faith of Christ might demand his services. He had, in the evangelical chair, even more success at Paris than at Lyons and Montauban. When, after the Revolution of 1848, a general assembly of the Reformed Churches of France assembled for the purposes of considering their institutions and discussing points of common interest, a grave question was raised, and became the subject of warm and lengthened debate: Should French Protestants proclaim their ancient Confession of Faith, that of Rochelle, or should they proclaim a confession of new articles; or lastly, should they remain passive and do nothing? some, and particularly their pastor, M. Frederic Monod, elder brother of M. Adolphe Monod, announced their determination to retire from the assembly and from the established Church, unless they adopted a Confession of Faith in accordance with the traditional principles of the Reformation. {189} The inertness of the hesitating and timid assembly was equivalent to a refusal, and they did in effect retire. To the great surprise and great regret of his adversaries, M. Adolphe Monod, although favorable to the principles of the Confession of Faith, did not follow the example by retiring; he even succeeded his brother as titular pastor in the Church of Paris, and published to the world the motives of his conduct. [Footnote 28]

[Footnote 28: In his work entitled, Pourquoi je demeure dans l'Église établie.]

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His motives were good, such as a man of elevated character and energetic purpose might conceive and might avow. In spite of their importance, the questions which concern the organization of the Church and its eternal relations were, in the eyes of M. Adolphe Monod, only secondary considerations, subject in a certain measure to time and to circumstance. For him the question of faith was supreme; and he occupied himself infinitely more with the spiritual state of souls than with ecclesiastical government. To the serious thinker the Christian faith is quite different from any conception or conviction of the understanding; it is a general condition of the whole man; it is the very life of the soul; not merely its actual life, but the source and the guarantee of its future life. The faith in Christ Jesus, the Redeemer, the Saviour, makes the life of a Christian; and the life of a Christian is a preparation for an eternal salvation. With this faith penetrating to his very marrow, and with the intimate persuasion of its consequences, the duty of giving a voice to that faith, and of diffusing it, was the dominant idea, the permanent passion, of M. Adolphe Monod. {191} He had not himself been always firmly settled in his religious convictions; he had been a prey to great moral perplexities, and to attacks of profound melancholy. When he had escaped from these--or rather, to use his own words, "when God had become really the master of his heart"--he had no other thought but that of bringing other souls to the same state, and of rousing them to a faith in Christ, with a view to their eternal salvation. The position which he regarded as of all the most appropriate for himself, was one in which he could most profitably forward this work. When in 1848 the question was thus put to him, and when he had been convinced both by his past observation of the Protestant Church of France during the last twenty years, and by his own experience of it, that the established Church offered to him in his Christian purpose the vastest field of exertion, and the best chance of success, he did not hesitate to remain in it. "I find in the situation," he said, "grave disorders, of which it is my duty to seek unceasingly the reform; but that situation has also its hopeful side. {192} A long development of my ideas would be superfluous; let us confine ourselves to some striking facts. Try and reckon how many orthodox pastors our Church possessed when the reaction began in 1819, and then make a similar calculation for 1849. I do not mean to fix the precise numbers; but is it too much to say, that in the course of a single generation the number of orthodox pastors is ten, fifteen, twenty times perhaps as great? This applies to the clergy, of whom everywhere the immense influence is felt. Among their congregations it is less easy to follows things; but the attentive observer does not fail to mark similar indications. Behold our religious societies: are not the most popular among them those which hoisted most manfully the colors of orthodoxy? And if some are in a languishing condition, is it not because they offered in this respect fewest guarantees? Evidently the first condition of existence for our religious institutions of charity is sound doctrine. {193} My readers, permit me to question you still more closely. Throw your eyes upon the eight or ten families best known to you, beginning with your own, and compare what they are now with what they were in 1819; contrast their occupations, tastes, sacrifices, and intercourse, the modes of education, the books read, friendships formed, and so on; and then declare, thankless ones, if God has allowed you to be without encouragement." [Footnote 29]

[Footnote 29: Pourquoi je demeure dans l'Église établie, par M. Adolphe Monod, pp. 25-32. Paris, 1849.]

M. Adolphe Monod had good reason to draw attention to this general progress of Christianity; but there was another progress also deserving notice, that which he had himself made, and which he was making more and more every day, in the attainment of the true and distinguishing character of a Christian.

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At the commencement of his career as a minister of the Gospel, in his different controversies, and especially in his controversy with the Consistory of Lyons, he had shown rudeness, impatience, and want of foresight; he had been too precipitate in enforcing his faith by arguments, and too much disposed to undervalue the obstacles in its way. Thanks to his genuine sincerity and the natural elevation of his character, time, experience, and success had given at once breadth and suppleness to his thought. Faith had generated modesty, and hope patience. Contrary to the ordinary bias of men, his liberalism had increased in the same measure as his strength. As an act of duty he made in 1848 an avowal of the state of his mind in this respect. "The age," he said, "reproaches us with '_exclusisme_,' (exclusiveness,) a new word expressly invented to denote its favorite charge; for false ideas the age has only the resource of a barbarous phraseology. This '_exclusisme_' is the sole thing which the age cannot tolerate in matters of doctrine: it is prepared, it says to itself, to take everything within its pale except the 'exclusives.' {195} Thus they demand from us only one change in the profession of our faith; they call upon us to substitute for our usual prefatory formula, 'This is the truth,' the words, 'This is my opinion.' And if they, in claiming such qualification of language, limited their demand to things which, in spite of any relative importance, do not constitute the substance of the faith and of the life of a Christian, we should do what they require; perhaps I should rather say, we do it already, as brother should do to brother, and in the interest of truth itself. It is one of the distinctive features of the awakening of Christians in our epoch, that charitably sparing in the absolute dogmatism of which the sixteenth century was prodigal, they make dogmas of only a small number of fundamental doctrines. And even of these they strive to contract the circle, until having reached the vital forces, the very heart, so to say, of truth, they sum it up in one single name, Jesus Christ, and in one single word, grace. {196} Whoever is of that faith, whatever name he bears elsewhere, and whatever place he occupies in the Universal Church--Lutheran, Anglican, Methodist, Moravian, Baptist, nay, Roman Catholic, or Greek Catholic, we receive that man as a brother in Christ Jesus; and not we only, but the whole contemporary Evangelical Church, with certain exceptions becoming every day rarer, and arising from a narrow or sectarian pietism. Hence the 'Evangelical Alliance,' formed in our own time of more than twenty Protestant denominations, the prelude only to another evangelical alliance which will exclude none who rely upon the sole merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour and Lord of all.

"Our '_exclusisme_,' besides, has not for its objects individuals but doctrines. Absolute affirmation is legitimate when the object is to define the faith, which is the promise of salvation, for God has clearly revealed it in his word; but when the object is to mark the individuals who possess that saving faith, similar affirmation could not be used without temerity; for God has nowhere revealed to us either the internal state of any man, or the final lot reserved for him. {197} _We_ exclude no man, _we_ judge no man, alive or dead; the judgment of the quick and of the dead belongs to God alone. Doubtless we estimate, according to our ability, the spiritual condition of a man by his works, as we do a tree by its fruits; Jesus himself invites us to do so. Doubtless, when we see a man living and dying in the works of the faith, we hope for him, and our hope may grow even to a firm assurance; and when, on the contrary, we see a man living and dying in the works of incredulity, we have a feeling of anxiety for him--a feeling as painful as it is mysterious. But, after all, neither in the first case nor in the second, and still less in the second than the first, are we authorized to pronounce any personal judgment; and but for the paradoxical turn of the expression, I would willingly adopt the language of the devout Bunyan: Three things would astonish me in heaven; first, not to see there certain persons whom I expect to see there; secondly, to see there those I do not expect to see there; and thirdly, which would surprise me most, to see myself there.'" [Footnote 30]

[Footnote 30: Sermon sur l'Exclusisme, ou l'unité de la foi, in the Recueil des Sermons de M. Adolphe Monod. 3me série, t. ii, pp. 386-390. Paris, 1860. The sermons of M. Adolphe Monod have been collected and published in four vols. 8vo. Paris, 1856-1860. He also wrote several small works, among others:

1. Lucile, ou la lecture de la Bible. 1841.

2. La Destitution d'Adolphe Monod, récit inédit, rédigé par luimême. 1864.

3. Récit des conférences qui ont eu lieu en 1834, entre quelques Catholiques Remains et M. Adolphe Monod. Paris, 1860.

4. Les adieux d'Adolphe Monod à ses amis et à l'église. Paris, 1856.]

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A piety so profound, and at the same time so modest and so large, expressed with an eloquence which combined an impassioned earnestness of language with an impassioned earnestness of conviction, could not fail to exercise great influence. As a preacher, M. Adolphe Monod was powerful. {199} He had acquired, not by careful and cold observation, but by an assiduous and conscientious study of the Gospels and of himself, a remarkable knowledge of human nature, of its strength and of its weakness, of its deficiencies and of its aspirations. He laid siege, so to speak, to the souls of men, and he pressed the siege ardently and with skill; he assailed all their gates, and pursued them to their innermost defenses, keeping constantly displayed the banner of Christ, and inspiring them with the perfect confidence that he was urging them to take _their_ stand, too, beneath it, not from any human motive, or any desire of glory to himself, but from a serious desire for their souls' welfare, and from it alone. Thus did he gain over to his Divine Master the hearts disposed to receive him, strongly shake the purpose of those not confirmed in their rebellion, and leave astonished and intimidated those whom he did not bring over. As pastor also his influence was extraordinary; his life was the reflection and the commentary upon his preaching. {200} He applied first to his own case the precepts of his faith, and the conclusions therefrom logically deducible. As he said nothing that he did not think, so he thought nothing that he did not practice; and without being readily impressionable, like that of M. Vinet, his zeal was expansive, and his piety gave him no rest from the task of diffusing by example and precept the faith and the practice of Christianity. Attacked by a painful and incurable illness, which at last condemned him to immobility, he did not suffer it to render him inactive and useless. Every Sunday during the last six months of his life, his family, some pastors his colleagues, and as many attached friends as his chamber could receive, gathered around his bed, and his zeal surmounted his pain. He addressed to them, to use his very words, "sometimes the regret of a dying man, sometimes the results of his own experiences of faith and of life." The devout assemblage was again convoked, at his expressed wish, for the 6th April, 1856. {201} But that day, before the hour fixed for the assembly had arrived, God took to him his servant, granting the wish expressed in his own often repeated prayer, "Let my life only terminate with my ministry, and my ministry only with my life." [Footnote 31]

[Footnote 31: These are the words inserted in a publication bearing the title "Les adieux d'Adolphe Monod à sa famille et a l'église," in which the last exhortations and conversations of this dying Christian have been piously collected. P. viii. Paris, 1856.]

Eighteen months before the decease of M. Adolphe Monod, an eminent pastor of the Lutheran Church of Paris, his friend and fellow-laborer in the work of Christianity, M. Edouard Verny, died suddenly in the Evangelical Chair at Strasbourg, while preaching upon the words addressed by the Apostles to the Christians of Antioch, "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these _necessary_ things," words not less liberal than pious, and faithfully expressing the sentiments of the Christian orator, who died while commenting upon them. {202} The mind of M. Verny was naturally liberal and independent; his intellectual career had commenced with philosophical studies, and he had retained a strong bias in favor of the progress of thought. This did not, however, prevent him from promptly and calmly appreciating the opinions which he did not share. Without possessing either the impassioned style or the power of M. Adolphe Monod, he was not less devoted to the cause of Christianity; and he convinced those by the charms of his manner, into whose minds M. Monod entered by force and as a conqueror. [Footnote 32]

[Footnote 32: Although M. Verny had long preached, and had often written in religious reviews and journals, and particularly in the "Semeur," very few monuments remain of his ideas and of his talents. The principal are:

1. A sermon "Upon the Unity of the Church," preached in the church of Bolbec in 1854.

2. Two sermons, one "Upon the Prayer of the Canaanite Woman;" the other "Upon Repentance;" preached at Paris in 1843 and 1846.

3. The sermon "Sur l'Ouverture solennelle de la session du Consistoire supérieur de l'Église de la Confession d'Augsbourg," preached at Strasbourg on the 19th of October, 1854: while preaching which M. Verny died in the pulpit.

4. An "Essai sur les droits de la science," inserted in the "Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie Chrétienne," published at Strasbourg by M. Colani. Vol. ix, pp. 208-248. 1854. This essay was to have been followed by an "Essai sur les devoirs de la foi," of which the sudden death of M. Verny prevented the completion.]

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Although the Protestant Church of France thereby sustained an immense loss, it had a striking and salutary spectacle also presented to it by the end of these two servants of Christ, the one dying suddenly, in the plenitude of his strength, at the very moment when from his pulpit he was maintaining with distinguished ability the doctrines of his Master; the other, from his bed, gathering with pain what of breath remained to him in this world, to pour once more a flood of faith into the souls of his auditors.

Such lives, such deaths, could not remain sterile of result; under their influence the Christian faith was relumed; it again spread itself among the Protestants of France. Nor was this that arid cold faith which men accept to acquit their consciences, and to rid themselves of a trouble and a scruple; nor that vague and dreamy faith which feasts rather upon its own emotions, than nourishes itself with the truths which are the voice of God. {204} A Christian's faith is neither an act of prudent submission nor a paroxysm of mystic fervor. Conviction and sentiment, the firm adhesion of the mind, and the filial love of the heart, meet in that faith in essential and intimate union. It is the light coming from on high, and bringing down with it the genial principles of vital warmth and fecundity; out of which, like salubrious waters from a pure source, flow freely and in abundance the works of human charity. I have lying before me a list of the different charities to which Christianity has in our own days since the reaction given birth in the Protestant Church of France. [Footnote 33]

[Footnote 33: Exposé des oeuvres de la charité protestante en France, par H. de Triqueti, membre du conseil presbytéral et du diaconat de l'Église réformée de Paris. 18mo. 1863.]

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