The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan Part 19

France presented also the characteristic which especially distinguished Sodom. During the Revolution there was manifest a state of moral debas.e.m.e.nt and corruption similar to that which brought destruction upon the cities of the plain. And the historian presents together the atheism and the licentiousness of France, as given in the prophecy: "Intimately connected with these laws affecting religion, was that which reduced the union of marriage-the most sacred engagement which human beings can form, and the permanence of which leads most strongly to the consolidation of society-to the state of a mere civil contract of a transitory character, which any two persons might engage in and cast loose at pleasure.... If fiends had set themselves to work to discover a mode of most effectually destroying whatever is venerable, graceful, or permanent in domestic life, and of obtaining at the same time an a.s.surance that the mischief which it was their object to create should be perpetuated from one generation to another, they could not have invented a more effectual plan than the degradation of marriage.... Sophie Arnoult, an actress famous for the witty things she said, described the republican marriage as 'the sacrament of adultery.' "(395)

"Where also our Lord was crucified." This specification of the prophecy was also fulfilled by France. In no land had the spirit of enmity against Christ been more strikingly displayed. In no country had the truth encountered more bitter and cruel opposition. In the persecution which France had visited upon the confessors of the gospel, she had crucified Christ in the person of His disciples.

Century after century the blood of the saints had been shed. While the Waldenses laid down their lives upon the mountains of Piedmont "for the word of G.o.d, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ," similar witness to the truth had been borne by their brethren, the Albigenses of France. In the days of the Reformation, its disciples had been put to death with horrible tortures. King and n.o.bles, high-born women and delicate maidens, the pride and chivalry of the nation, had feasted their eyes upon the agonies of the martyrs of Jesus. The brave Huguenots, battling for those rights which the human heart holds most sacred, had poured out their blood on many a hard-fought field. The Protestants were counted as outlaws, a price was set upon their heads, and they were hunted down like wild beasts.

The "Church in the Desert," the few descendants of the ancient Christians that still lingered in France in the eighteenth century, hiding away in the mountains of the south, still cherished the faith of their fathers. As they ventured to meet by night on mountainside or lonely moor, they were chased by dragoons, and dragged away to life-long slavery in the galleys.

The purest, the most refined, and the most intelligent of the French, were chained, in horrible torture, amidst robbers and a.s.sa.s.sins.(396) Others, more mercifully dealt with, were shot down in cold blood, as, unarmed and helpless, they fell upon their knees in prayer. Hundreds of aged men, defenseless women, and innocent children were left dead upon the earth at their place of meeting. In traversing the mountainside or the forest, where they had been accustomed to a.s.semble, it was not unusual to find "at every four paces, dead bodies dotting the sward, and corpses hanging suspended from the trees." Their country, laid waste with the sword, the axe, the f.a.got, "was converted into one vast, gloomy wilderness." "These atrocities were enacted ... in no dark age, but in the brilliant era of Louis XIV. Science was then cultivated, letters flourished, the divines of the court and of the capital were learned and eloquent men, and greatly affected the graces of meekness and charity."(397)

But blackest in the black catalogue of crime, most horrible among the fiendish deeds of all the dreadful centuries, was the St. Bartholomew Ma.s.sacre. The world still recalls with shuddering horror the scenes of that most cowardly and cruel onslaught. The king of France, urged on by Romish priests and prelates, lent his sanction to the dreadful work. A bell, tolling at dead of night, was a signal for the slaughter.

Protestants by thousands, sleeping quietly in their homes, trusting to the plighted honor of their king, were dragged forth without a warning, and murdered in cold blood.

As Christ was the invisible leader of His people from Egyptian bondage, so was Satan the unseen leader of his subjects in this horrible work of multiplying martyrs. For seven days the ma.s.sacre was continued in Paris, the first three with inconceivable fury. And it was not confined to the city itself, but by special order of the king, was extended to all the provinces and towns where Protestants were found. Neither age nor s.e.x was respected. Neither the innocent babe nor the man of gray hairs was spared.

n.o.ble and peasant, old and young, mother and child, were cut down together. Throughout France the butchery continued for two months. Seventy thousand of the very flower of the nation perished.

"When the news of the ma.s.sacre reached Rome, the exultation among the clergy knew no bounds. The cardinal of Lorraine rewarded the messenger with a thousand crowns; the cannon of St. Angelo thundered forth a joyous salute; the bells rang out from every steeple; bonfires turned night into day; and Gregory XIII., attended by the cardinals and other ecclesiastical dignitaries, went in long procession to the church of St. Louis, where the cardinal of Lorraine chanted a _Te Deum_.... A medal was struck to commemorate the ma.s.sacre, and in the Vatican may still be seen three frescoes of Vasari, describing the attack upon the admiral, the king in council plotting the ma.s.sacre, and the ma.s.sacre itself. Gregory sent Charles the Golden Rose; and four months after the ma.s.sacre, ... he listened complacently to the sermon of a French priest, ... who spoke of 'that day so full of happiness and joy, when the most holy father received the news, and went in solemn state to render thanks to G.o.d and St.

Louis.' "(398)

The same master-spirit that urged on the St. Bartholomew Ma.s.sacre led also in the scenes of the Revolution. Jesus Christ was declared to be an impostor, and the rallying cry of the French infidels was, "Crush the Wretch," meaning Christ. Heaven-daring blasphemy and abominable wickedness went hand in hand, and the basest of men, the most abandoned monsters of cruelty and vice, were most highly exalted. In all this, supreme homage was paid to Satan; while Christ, in His characteristics of truth, purity, and unselfish love, was crucified.

"The beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them." The atheistical power that ruled in France during the Revolution and the Reign of Terror, did wage such a war against G.o.d and His holy word as the world had never witnessed.

The wors.h.i.+p of the Deity was abolished by the National a.s.sembly. Bibles were collected and publicly burned with every possible manifestation of scorn.

The law of G.o.d was trampled under foot. The inst.i.tutions of the Bible were abolished. The weekly rest-day was set aside, and in its stead every tenth day was devoted to reveling and blasphemy. Baptism and the communion were prohibited. And announcements posted conspicuously over the burial-places declared death to be an eternal sleep.

The fear of G.o.d was said to be so far from the beginning of wisdom that it was the beginning of folly. All religious wors.h.i.+p was prohibited, except that of liberty and the country. The "const.i.tutional bishop of Paris was brought forward to play the princ.i.p.al part in the most impudent and scandalous farce ever acted in the face of a national representation....

He was brought forward in full procession, to declare to the Convention that the religion which he had taught so many years was, in every respect, a piece of priestcraft, which had no foundation either in history or sacred truth. He disowned, in solemn and explicit terms, the existence of the Deity to whose wors.h.i.+p he had been consecrated, and devoted himself in future to the homage of liberty, equality, virtue, and morality. He then laid on the table his episcopal decorations, and received a fraternal embrace from the president of the Convention. Several apostate priests followed the example of this prelate."(399)

"And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth." Infidel France had silenced the reproving voice of G.o.d's two witnesses. The Word of truth lay dead in her streets, and those who hated the restrictions and requirements of G.o.d's law were jubilant. Men publicly defied the King of heaven. Like the sinners of old, they cried, "How doth G.o.d know? and is there knowledge in the Most High?"(400)

With blasphemous boldness almost beyond belief, one of the priests of the new order said: "G.o.d, if You exist, avenge Your injured name. I bid You defiance! You remain silent; You dare not launch Your thunders. Who after this will believe in Your existence?"(401) What an echo is this of the Pharaoh's demand: "Who is Jehovah, that I should obey His voice?" "I know not Jehovah!"

"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no G.o.d."(402) And the Lord declares concerning the perverters of the truth, "Their folly shall be manifest unto all."(403) After France had renounced the wors.h.i.+p of the living G.o.d, "the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity," it was only a little time till she descended to degrading idolatry, by the wors.h.i.+p of the G.o.ddess of Reason, in the person of a profligate woman. And this in the representative a.s.sembly of the nation, and by its highest civil and legislative authorities! Says the historian: "One of the ceremonies of this insane time stands unrivaled for absurdity combined with impiety. The doors of the Convention were thrown open to a band of musicians, preceded by whom, the members of the munic.i.p.al body entered in solemn procession, singing a hymn in praise of liberty, and escorting, as the object of their future wors.h.i.+p, a veiled female, whom they termed the G.o.ddess of Reason.

Being brought within the bar, she was unveiled with great form, and placed on the right of the president, when she was generally recognized as a dancing girl of the opera.... To this person, as the fittest representative of that reason whom they wors.h.i.+ped, the National Convention of France rendered public homage.

"This impious and ridiculous mummery had a certain fas.h.i.+on; and the installation of the G.o.ddess of Reason was renewed and imitated throughout the nation, in such places where the inhabitants desired to show themselves equal to all the heights of the Revolution."(404)

Said the orator who introduced the wors.h.i.+p of Reason: "Legislators!

Fanaticism has given way to reason. Its bleared eyes could not endure the brilliancy of the light. This day an immense concourse has a.s.sembled beneath those gothic vaults, which, for the first time, re-echoed the truth. There the French have celebrated the only true wors.h.i.+p,-that of Liberty, that of Reason. There we have formed wishes for the prosperity of the arms of the Republic. There we have abandoned inanimate idols for Reason, for that animated image, the masterpiece of nature."(405)

When the G.o.ddess was brought into the Convention, the orator took her by the hand, and turning to the a.s.sembly said: "Mortals, cease to tremble before the powerless thunders of a G.o.d whom your fears have created.

Henceforth acknowledge no divinity but Reason. I offer you its n.o.blest and purest image; if you must have idols, sacrifice only to such as this....

Fall before the august Senate of Freedom, oh! Veil of Reason!...

"The G.o.ddess, after being embraced by the president, was mounted on a magnificent car, and conducted, amid an immense crowd, to the cathedral of Notre Dame, to take the place of the Deity. There she was elevated on the high altar, and received the adoration of all present."(406)

This was followed, not long afterward, by the public burning of the Bible.

On one occasion "the Popular Society of the Museum" entered the hall of the munic.i.p.ality, exclaiming, "_Vive la Raison!_" and carrying on the top of a pole the half-burned remains of several books, among others breviaries, missals, and the Old and New Testaments, which "expiated in a great fire," said the president, "all the fooleries which they have made the human race commit."(407)

It was popery that had begun the work which atheism was completing. The policy of Rome had wrought out those conditions, social, political, and religious, that were hurrying France on to ruin. Writers, in referring to the horrors of the Revolution, say that these excesses are to be charged upon the throne and the church.(408) In strict justice they are to be charged upon the church. Popery had poisoned the minds of kings against the Reformation, as an enemy to the crown, an element of discord that would be fatal to the peace and harmony of the nation. It was the genius of Rome that by this means inspired the direst cruelty and the most galling oppression which proceeded from the throne.

The spirit of liberty went with the Bible. Wherever the gospel was received, the minds of the people were awakened. They began to cast off the shackles that had held them bond-slaves of ignorance, vice, and superst.i.tion. They began to think and act as men. Monarchs saw it, and trembled for their despotism.

Rome was not slow to inflame their jealous fears. Said the pope to the regent of France in 1525: "This mania [Protestantism] will not only confound and destroy religion, but all princ.i.p.alities, n.o.bility, laws, orders, and ranks besides."(409) A few years later a papal nuncio warned the king: "Sire, be not deceived. The Protestants will upset all civil as well as religious order.... The throne is in as much danger as the altar.... The introduction of a new religion must necessarily introduce a new government."(410) And theologians appealed to the prejudices of the people by declaring that the Protestant doctrine "entices men away to novelties and folly; it robs the king of the devoted affection of his subjects, and devastates both church and state." Thus Rome succeeded in arraying France against the Reformation. "It was to uphold the throne, preserve the n.o.bles, and maintain the laws, that the sword of persecution was first unsheathed in France."(411)

Little did the rulers of the land foresee the results of that fateful policy. The teaching of the Bible would have implanted in the minds and hearts of the people those principles of justice, temperance, truth, equity, and benevolence which are the very corner-stone of a nation's prosperity. "Righteousness exalteth a nation." Thereby "the throne is established."(412) "The work of righteousness shall be peace;" and the effect "quietness and a.s.surance forever."(413) He who obeys the divine law will most truly respect and obey the laws of his country. He who fears G.o.d will honor the king in the exercise of all just and legitimate authority.

But unhappy France prohibited the Bible, and banned its disciples. Century after century, men of principle and integrity, men of intellectual acuteness and moral strength, who had the courage to avow their convictions, and the faith to suffer for the truth,-for centuries these men toiled as slaves in the galleys, perished at the stake, or rotted in dungeon cells. Thousands upon thousands found safety in flight; and this continued for two hundred and fifty years after the opening of the Reformation.

"Scarcely was there a generation of Frenchmen during that long period that did not witness the disciples of the gospel fleeing before the insane fury of the persecutor, and carrying with them the intelligence, the arts, the industry, the order, in which, as a rule, they pre-eminently excelled, to enrich the lands in which they found an asylum. And in proportion as they replenished other countries with these good gifts, did they empty their own of them. If all that was now driven away had been retained in France; if, during these three hundred years, the industrial skill of the exiles had been cultivating her soil; if, during these three hundred years, their artistic bent had been improving her manufactures; if, during these three hundred years, their creative genius and a.n.a.lytic power had been enriching her literature and cultivating her science; if their wisdom had been guiding her councils, their bravery fighting her battles, their equity framing her laws, and the religion of the Bible strengthening the intellect and governing the conscience of her people, what a glory would at this day have encompa.s.sed France! What a great, prosperous, and happy country-a pattern to the nations-would she have been!

"But a blind and inexorable bigotry chased from her soil every teacher of virtue, every champion of order, every honest defender of the throne; it said to the men who would have made their country a 'renown and glory' in the earth, Choose which you will have, a stake or exile. At last the ruin of the state was complete; there remained no more conscience to be proscribed; no more religion to be dragged to the stake; no more patriotism to be chased into banishment."(414) And the Revolution, with all its horrors, was the dire result.

"With the flight of the Huguenots a general decline settled upon France.

Flouris.h.i.+ng manufacturing cities fell into decay; fertile districts returned to their native wildness; intellectual dulness and moral declension succeeded a period of unwonted progress. Paris became one vast almshouse, and it is estimated that, at the breaking out of the Revolution, two hundred thousand paupers claimed charity from the hands of the king. The Jesuits alone flourished in the decaying nation, and ruled with dreadful tyranny over churches and schools, the prisons and the galleys."

The gospel would have brought to France the solution of those political and social problems that baffled the skill of her clergy, her king, and her legislators, and finally plunged the nation into anarchy and ruin. But under the domination of Rome the people had lost the Saviour's blessed lessons of self-sacrifice and unselfish love. They had been led away from the practice of self-denial for the good of others. The rich had found no rebuke for their oppression of the poor, the poor no help for their servitude and degradation. The selfishness of the wealthy and powerful grew more and more apparent and oppressive. For centuries the greed and profligacy of the n.o.ble resulted in grinding extortion toward the peasant.

The rich wronged the poor, and the poor hated the rich.

In many provinces the estates were held by the n.o.bles, and the laboring cla.s.ses were only tenants; they were at the mercy of their landlords, and were forced to submit to their exorbitant demands. The burden of supporting both the church and the state fell upon the middle and lower cla.s.ses, who were heavily taxed by the civil authorities and by the clergy. "The pleasure of the n.o.bles was considered the supreme law; the farmers and the peasants might starve, for aught their oppressors cared.... The people were compelled at every turn to consult the exclusive interest of the landlord. The lives of the agricultural laborers were lives of incessant work and unrelieved misery; their complaints, if they ever dared to complain, were treated with insolent contempt. The courts of justice would always listen to a n.o.ble as against a peasant; bribes were notoriously accepted by the judges; and the merest caprice of the aristocracy had the force of law, by virtue of this system of universal corruption. Of the taxes wrung from the commonalty, by the secular magnates on the one hand, and the clergy on the other, not half ever found its way into the royal or episcopal treasury; the rest was squandered in profligate self-indulgence. And the men who thus impoverished their fellow-subjects were themselves exempt from taxation, and ent.i.tled by law or custom to all the appointments of the state. The privileged cla.s.ses numbered a hundred and fifty thousand, and for their gratification millions were condemned to hopeless and degrading lives."(415)

The court was given up to luxury and profligacy. There was little confidence existing between the people and the rulers. Suspicion fastened upon all the measures of the government, as designing and selfish. For more than half a century before the time of the Revolution, the throne was occupied by Louis XV., who, even in those evil times, was distinguished as an indolent, frivolous, and sensual monarch. With a depraved and cruel aristocracy and an impoverished and ignorant lower cla.s.s, the state financially embarra.s.sed, and the people exasperated, it needed no prophet's eye to foresee a terrible impending outbreak. To the warnings of his counselors the king was accustomed to reply, "Try to make things go on as long as I am likely to live; after my death it may be as it will." It was in vain that the necessity of reform was urged. He saw the evils, but had neither the courage nor the power to meet them. The doom awaiting France was but too truly pictured in his indolent and selfish answer,-"After me, the deluge!"

By working upon the jealousy of the kings and the ruling cla.s.ses, Rome had influenced them to keep the people in bondage, well knowing that the state would thus be weakened, and purposing by this means to fasten both rulers and people in her thrall. With far-sighted policy she perceived that in order to enslave men effectually, the shackles must be bound upon their souls; that the surest way to prevent them from escaping their bondage was to render them incapable of freedom. A thousandfold more terrible than the physical suffering which resulted from her policy, was the moral degradation. Deprived of the Bible, and abandoned to the teachings of bigotry and selfishness, the people were shrouded in ignorance and superst.i.tion, and sunken in vice, so that they were wholly unfitted for self-government.

But the outworking of all this was widely different from what Rome had purposed. Instead of holding the ma.s.ses in a blind submission to her dogmas, her work resulted in making them infidels and revolutionists.

Romanism they despised as priestcraft. They beheld the clergy as a party to their oppression. The only G.o.d they knew was the G.o.d of Rome; her teaching was their only religion. They regarded her greed and cruelty as the legitimate fruit of the Bible, and they would have none of it.

Rome had misrepresented the character of G.o.d, and perverted His requirements, and now men rejected both the Bible and its Author. She had required a blind faith in her dogmas, under the pretended sanction of the Scriptures. In the reaction, Voltaire and his a.s.sociates cast aside G.o.d's word altogether, and spread everywhere the poison of infidelity. Rome had ground down the people under her iron heel; and now the ma.s.ses, degraded and brutalized, in their recoil from her tyranny, cast off all restraint.

Enraged at the glittering cheat to which they had so long paid homage, they rejected truth and falsehood together; and mistaking license for liberty, the slaves of vice exulted in their imagined freedom.

At the opening of the Revolution, by a concession of the king, the people were granted a representation exceeding that of the n.o.bles and the clergy combined. Thus the balance of power was in their hands; but they were not prepared to use it with wisdom and moderation. Eager to redress the wrongs they had suffered, they determined to undertake the reconstruction of society. An outraged populace, whose minds were filled with bitter and long-treasured memories of wrong, resolved to revolutionize the state of misery that had grown unbearable, and to revenge themselves upon those whom they regarded as the authors of their sufferings. The oppressed wrought out the lesson they had learned under tyranny, and became the oppressors of those who had oppressed them.

Unhappy France reaped in blood the harvest she had sown. Terrible were the results of her submission to the controlling power of Rome. Where France, under the influence of Romanism, had set up the first stake at the opening of the Reformation, there the Revolution set up its first guillotine. On the very spot where the first martyrs to the Protestant faith were burned in the sixteenth century, the first victims were guillotined in the eighteenth. In repelling the gospel, which would have brought her healing, France had opened the door to infidelity and ruin. When the restraints of G.o.d's law were cast aside, it was found that the laws of man were inadequate to hold in check the powerful tides of human pa.s.sion; and the nation swept on to revolt and anarchy. The war against the Bible inaugurated an era which stands in the world's history as "The Reign of Terror." Peace and happiness were banished from the homes and hearts of men. No one was secure. He who triumphed to-day was suspected, condemned, to-morrow. Violence and l.u.s.t held undisputed sway.

King, clergy, and n.o.bles were compelled to submit to the atrocities of an excited and maddened people. Their thirst for vengeance was only stimulated by the execution of the king; and those who had decreed his death, soon followed him to the scaffold. A general slaughter of all suspected of hostility to the Revolution was determined. The prisons were crowded, at one time containing more than two hundred thousand captives.

The cities of the kingdom were filled with scenes of horror. One party of revolutionists was against another party, and France became a vast field for contending ma.s.ses, swayed by the fury of their pa.s.sions. "In Paris one tumult succeeded another, and the citizens were divided into a medley of factions, that seemed intent on nothing but mutual extermination." And to add to the general misery, the nation became involved in a prolonged and devastating war with the great powers of Europe. "The country was nearly bankrupt, the armies were clamoring for arrears of pay, the Parisians were starving, the provinces were laid waste by brigands, and civilization was almost extinguished in anarchy and license."

All too well the people had learned the lessons of cruelty and torture which Rome had so diligently taught. A day of retribution at last had come. It was not now the disciples of Jesus that were thrust into dungeons and dragged to the stake. Long ago these had perished or been driven into exile. Unsparing Rome now felt the deadly power of those whom she had trained to delight in deeds of blood. "The example of persecution which the clergy of France had exhibited for so many ages, was now retorted upon them with signal vigor. The scaffolds ran red with the blood of the priests. The galleys and the prisons, once crowded with Huguenots, were now filled with their persecutors. Chained to the bench and toiling at the oar, the Roman Catholic clergy experienced all those woes which their church had so freely inflicted on the gentle heretics."(416)

"Then came those days when the most barbarous of all codes was administered by the most barbarous of all tribunals; when no man could greet his neighbors or say his prayers ... without danger of committing a capital crime; when spies lurked in every corner; when the guillotine was long and hard at work every morning; when the jails were filled as close as the holds of a slave-s.h.i.+p; when the gutters ran foaming with blood into the Seine.... While the daily wagon-loads of victims were carried to their doom through the streets of Paris, the proconsuls, whom the sovereign committee had sent forth to the departments, reveled in an extravagance of cruelty unknown even in the capital. The knife of the deadly machine rose and fell too slow for their work of slaughter. Long rows of captives were mowed down with grape-shot. Holes were made in the bottom of crowded barges. Lyons was turned into a desert. At Arras even the cruel mercy of a speedy death was denied to the prisoners. All down the Loire, from Saumur to the sea, great flocks of crows and kites feasted on naked corpses, twined together in hideous embraces. No mercy was shown to s.e.x or age. The number of young lads and of girls of seventeen who were murdered by that execrable government, is to be reckoned by hundreds. Babies torn from the breast were tossed from pike to pike along the Jacobin ranks."(417) In the short s.p.a.ce of ten years, mult.i.tudes of human beings perished.

All this was as Satan would have it. This was what for ages he had been working to secure. His policy is deception from first to last, and his steadfast purpose is to bring woe and wretchedness upon men, to deface and defile the workmans.h.i.+p of G.o.d, to mar the divine purposes of benevolence and love, and thus cause grief in heaven. Then by his deceptive arts he blinds the minds of men, and leads them to throw back the blame of his work upon G.o.d, as if all this misery were the result of the Creator's plan. In like manner, when those who have been degraded and brutalized through his cruel power achieve their freedom, he urges them on to excesses and atrocities. Then this picture of unbridled license is pointed out by tyrants and oppressors as an ill.u.s.tration of the results of liberty.

When error in one garb has been detected, Satan only masks it in a different disguise, and mult.i.tudes receive it as eagerly as at the first.

When the people found Romanism to be a deception, and he could not through this agency lead them to transgression of G.o.d's law, he urged them to regard all religion as a cheat, and the Bible a fable; and casting aside the divine statutes, they gave themselves up to unbridled iniquity.

The fatal error which wrought such woe for the inhabitants of France was the ignoring of this one great truth: that true freedom lies within the proscriptions of the law of G.o.d. "O that thou hadst hearkened to My commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea." "There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked." "But whoso hearkeneth unto Me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil."(418)

Atheists, infidels, and apostates oppose and denounce G.o.d's law; but the results of their influence prove that the well-being of man is bound up with his obedience of the divine statutes. Those who will not read the lesson from the book of G.o.d, are bidden to read it in the history of nations.