Social Progress (review) [pp. 209-211]

Social Progress.
loss to the world. The liberty of this particular
nation is entombed; but a light burns over its
grave, strong and quenchless as the sun, which
will lighten the nations to freedom through all ages.
What she hath sown in tears, she will reap in joy;
and though her heroes may rot, unburied, on her
battle-fields, yet their avenging ashes, far as the
winds can bear them through the world, among all
its subjugated nations, will become the precious
seed of rebellion and deliverance. This particular
experiment has failed; but, taking it in all its connections, civilization and human liberty have suffered
no discomfiture. A new and glorious chapter has
there been opened in the moral history of man. A
mighty sentiment has been developed on the field
of carnage,-the sentiment of Liberty;-its worth,
its power, its glory. This is the great truth which
that nation was born to realize in her sublime and
melancholy history. To reproduce it, to give it an
imperishable form, and make it glorious in the eyes
of men,-this was her mission; and she hath filfilled it even to the letter. She hath written that
truth in her blood, and hung the record out on high.
Ere the characters can fade, the eye of history catcheth the inscription; and she transferreth it to her immortal page, to be a witness through all time and
to all people, of the value of that freedom, for
which a nation wasted its blood and gave up its
life."
In considering more particularly the means by
which society is to be reclaimed, the lecturer admits that the perfection of the useful arts, intellectual cultivation, political freedom, and systems of
law and government, may have great influence;
but that they are inefficient of themselves, and only
available when made the instruments of a higher
and mightier principle. In illustrating the inefficacy of mere forms of government, without virtue
and morality, he cites the oft-quoted history of the
first French revolution. That it has lost none of
its original features by his epitome, will appear in
the following vivid passages:
"Henry IV had publicly declared that he held
himself ameneable to two sovereigns-God and the
laws. But the French people began their reform
by renouncing allegiance to both. The spirit of
resistance was tempered up with no reverence for
religion. Not only was it barren of all those sentiments which are the peculiar fruit of Christianity,
but it scorned that natural and devout reliance,
common even among barbarous nations, upon Hims
who is the God of battles, and who holds in His
hand the destinies of all people. Clubs were formed
in every part of the Empire for the propagation of
Atheism; and more than twenty thousand persons,
including those of the highest literary distinction,
were employed, hour by hour, in exterminating all
sense of moral obligation, and every sentiment of
private and public virtue. They proceeded throughout, upon the principle, that Christianity and re
publicanism could not subsist together. This frightful doctrine they wro ught ev er y where into the
national mind; expecting to hold its terrible volcanic power in check, and control it to their purpose,
by such devices as a representative convention;
skilful operations of finance; a political establishment on the theory of natural right; and more absurd than all, a national oath, to be renewed by all
Frenchmen every Iourth year of the new calendar,' to live free or die.' Infatuated men! what
virtue did you expect from your' national oath,'
after you had thus extirpated every sentiment and
every principle that could give it solemnity or
sanction?
;' But that nothing might be wanting to make
this experiment complete and final, and to show
that it was made by the whole nation in its corporate capacity, the government, by a solemn act,
renounced its allegiance to Heaven, and established impiety by law. It decreed, that all religious signs, whether in public or in private places,
which might serve to remind the people of their
ancient faith, should be annihilated. It voted death
an eternal sleep. It abolished funerals; and decreed that all deceased persons should be buried
like the carcasses of brutes, without ceremony or
religious service. It abolished the Sabbath; and
gave up all churches and places of worship to
plunder. It ordered the Bible to be publicly burnt
by the common hangman; and, as if to extirpate
the very memory of Scripture history, it instituted
a new calendar, in which the divisions of time
should be marked by no reference to the.Christian
era, or to Christian institutions.
" The world stood aghast at such a bold and
shameless desecration of every thing pure, and
venerable, and holy. Men's hearts failed them
through fear; and they waited for the event in
fixed astonishment, as they wait for the avalanche,
or the earthquake. Those who managed the vessel of state had thrown chart and compass overboard, and madly put out on the sea of revolution.
They had hailed the rising sun of liberty with joy:
but now, that the ocean swelled, and the air darkened, with what terror did they behold his broad
blood-red dis'c, climb a sky black with tempests,
and sounding with loud thunders from side to side!
It has not been left to us to record the horrors and
crimes of that eventful period; when Paris, the seat
210
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of art and elegance and fashion, became a great
slaughter-house, and the throne and the altar floated
away in blood from their foundations;-when one
executioner had tired with his horrid work of
chopping off human heads, another was called to
stand in his place;-and another,-and another.
No love was left. Every man was an assassin;
and the murderer of to-day, while his hand was yet
upon the axe, was marked the victim for to-morrow. And thus the Republic, drunk with blood,
vomited forth crime, and staggered on under her