to the reign of tyrants! May thy holy worship take the place of the worship of those miserable idols whose altars thou hast overthrown! … I believe in a Supreme Being who has created men free and equal, who has formed them to love one another and not to hate one another, who desires to be honoured by the exhibition of virtue, not of fanaticism, and in whose eyes the noblest of worships is the worship of truth and reason. I believe in the approaching fall of all tyrants, in the regeneration of morality, the ever-increasing spread of all the virtues, and the eternal triumph of liberty."
Simultaneously, however, men confessed their faith in other and less innocent ways. The churches were dismantled to serve the purposes of the new religion. Practical reasons made the abolition of Sunday a vital question; ere long suspicion attached to every one who observed it—and in those days it was dangerous to be suspected. The violent attempts made during the rule of the Convention to prevent the observance of Sunday constituted a new species of tyranny, which, although more excusable than the tyranny it superseded, was no less barbarous and unreasonable.
Even under the Directory, when the first symptoms of a reactionary movement in the lower ranks of society were already perceptible, there were, as we are told by a writer of the day, members of Assembly who had nervous attacks if they as much as heard the word "priest"; and the work of destruction was carried on with avidity. "Every man," says Laurent, "who had a drop of revolutionary blood in his veins laboured with feverish enthusiasm at the destruction of Christianity." In official reports the faithful Catholics are described as "weak-minded." A proclamation of the Directory relating to the elections of the year VI. declares that it is necessary to erase from the lists "the unhappy fanatics, who are blinded by credulity, and who might take it into their heads to throw themselves once more at the feet of the priests."
The priests had continued to be the most terrible enemies of the Revolution. The bloody war in La Vendée was to a great extent their work. The horrors perpetrated during this struggle recall those of the Middle Ages. One priest who had sworn allegiance to the constitution was stoned to death by yelling women, and another was torn to pieces, also by women. Before the Republican President, Joubert, was killed, his hands were sawn off. In one town the Royalists buried their revolutionary enemies alive; when the Republican troops arrived they saw arms sticking up out of the ground, the hands clenching the turf.
The revolutionists were soon compelled to acknowledge that their proceedings had had the opposite effect to what they had wished and expected. Significantly enough, the envoys sent to La Vendée were the first to advise complete separation of church from state. In their opinion this was the only means of tranquillising men's minds and restoring the country to peace. As far back as the days of the Legislative Assembly it had been proposed by a priest that the state should cease to subsidise any religion. But men were too excited then to refrain from violent espousal of one side or the other. The revolutionists hoped, as they often said, "to put an end to all sectarianism" by the aid of universal education. They fondly imagined that the era of dogmas was past, that the time had come when, in the words of Jefferson, the American, the miraculous conception of Christ in the womb of a virgin was to be classed along with the miraculous conception of Minerva in the head of Jupiter. In a report drawn up under the Convention we read: "Soon men will only make acquaintance with these foolish dogmas, the offspring of fear and delusion, to despise them. Soon the religion of Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, and Cicero will be the religion of the world." And when, in her Memoirs, Madame Roland has occasion to use the word "catechism," she considers it necessary to explain it for the benefit of posterity. She writes: "So rapidly are things moving now that the readers of this passage will perhaps ask: What was that? I will tell them."
The men of the Revolution had failed to comprehend that the great body of the people, profoundly ignorant, and imbued with ideas and feelings which had been transmitted from generation to generation for centuries, were irresponsive to their appeals, terrified by their acts of violence, and prepared, from old habit, to give themselves over into the hands of the priests again, as soon as opportunity offered. In 1800, in a letter to Bonaparte, General Clarke writes: "Our religious revolution has been a failure. France has become Roman Catholic again. It would take thirty years' liberty of the press to destroy the spiritual power of the Bishop of Rome." He is mistaken only in his computation of thirty years. Three hundred would be more nearly the number required, and even this would only suffice if to liberty of the press were added good, free, and entirely secular education.
It was not the common people alone who had quietly remained faithful to the church. In the upper-class families in the provinces the mother, with her daughters, had generally remained Catholic, since the father, with the Frenchman's natural caution and distrust of free thought, almost invariably, whatever his private opinions might be, regarded religion as a beneficial restraint upon women. The ladies had always embroidered altar-cloths, patronised the priest, given him money for his poor parishioners, attended mass most regularly. Now the celebration of mass was forbidden. The industrious and phlegmatic French peasant, his wife, and his whole household had, until the Revolution came, been accustomed to look up to Monsieur le curé as a species of earthly providence, been accustomed to salute him reverently when he passed, and to ask his advice; he had baptized the children, and from his hands they had received their first sacrament; he had united Jacques to Fanchette in holy matrimony; he had administered the last sacraments to the old mother. No one read in the peasant's house; no one cultivated literature, or philosophy, or music. Every impulse of the soul that rose above the plough-share and the clods which it flung up took the direction of the church. Poor as it might be, it was a festal hall in comparison with the cottar's hovel—and it was a holy place; they knelt in it. Now the church was closed. Any one who has seen the peasants of France or Italy pray, seen the touching devotion which shines from eyes as earnest and as clear as a dog's, can understand what it meant to such people that there was no longer to be mass or priest. And Sunday too! The peasant is opposed to every change the utility of which is not at once apparent to him. Sunday to be done away with! Had any one ever heard the like? Could such an idea have occurred to any one except these gentlemen in Paris? Sunday, which had been kept holy for more than a thousand years—possibly since the creation of the world! God Himself had rested on the seventh day; but now the week was to have ten days, and to be called Décade, a word which conveyed no meaning. Was God, too, to be done away with?
Add to all this the effect upon the younger and as yet undepraved priests. Frayssinous, who, after the Restoration, became so famous as a Catholic vindicator of Christianity, tells how he himself and a friend, also a priest, continued to perform their sacred avocations during the Reign of Terror in spite of all the threats of banishment, and how, in order to prove and strengthen themselves, and familiarise themselves with the death which awaited them if they were discovered, they went in turn to watch the executions on the permanent scaffold of Rodez.
Think of young enthusiasts such as these, or the priests described in Lamartine's Jocelyn, meeting their flocks on Sunday mornings in underground caves, in cold, damp cellars, which might well call to mind the catacombs of the early Christians. The congregation talk of the trials of the church, comfort one another, hear a sermon, receive the holy sacrament, and go their way with tearful eyes and uplifted hearts. The great lady and the simple peasant woman have felt that they are members of one body, as they never felt it when the one occupied the best seat in church while the other sat on the bench at the door.
Even the confiscation of the property of the church turned out to be for the church's good. Many a priest who had been demoralised by good living suddenly found himself reduced to apostolic poverty. If deprivations only roused the wrath of many, they chastened others. The cause for which a man suffers becomes dear to him. The wavering, half-philosophic priest who (as we are told by Barante) was almost ashamed to confess his belief in the doctrines of Christianity, felt his self-esteem increase when the cause which he served was persecuted. In 1801 Bishop Lecoz writes: "The religion which our Saviour founded without the aid of wealth, He will maintain without its aid, which is unworthy of His acceptance. When he called His twelve apostles, to what did He call them? To the enjoyment of riches or of honour? No; to toil, to care, to suffering. If then we, the servants of Jesus Christ,
