But These Revolutions, Needlessly Terrible As They Have
Been, Still Have Accomplished Something; Without Them France Might
Have Died Away Into What Spain Is.
As it is, progress has been made,
though at a fearful sacrifice.
No country has been swept cleaner of
aristocratic institutions, and the old bastiles and prisons of a past
tyranny. The aspiration for democratic freedom has been so thoroughly
sown in France, that it never will be rooted up again. How to get it,
and how to _keep_ it when it is got, they do not yet clearly see;
but they will never rest till they learn. There is a liberty of
thought and of speech in France which the tongue-tied state of the
press cannot indicate. Could France receive the Bible - could it be
put into the hands of all the common people - _that_ might help
her. And France is receiving the Bible. Spite of all efforts to the
contrary, the curiosity of the popular mind has been awakened; the
yearnings of the popular heart are turning towards it; and therein lie
my best hopes for France.
One thing more I would say. Since I have been here, I have made the
French and continental mode of keeping Sunday a matter of calm,
dispassionate inquiry and observation. I have tried to divest myself
of the prejudices - if you so please to call them - of my New England
education - to look at the matter sympathetically, in the French or
continental point of view, and see whether I have any occasion to
revise the opinions in which I had been educated. I fully appreciate
all the agreeableness, the joyousness, and vivacity of a day of
recreation and social freedom, spent in visiting picture galleries and
public grounds, in social _reunions_ and rural excursions. I am
far from judging harshly of the piety of those who have been educated
in these views and practices. But, viewing the subject merely in
relation to things of this life, I am met by one very striking fact:
there is not a single nation, possessed of a popular form of
government, which has not our Puritan theory of the Sabbath.
Protestant Switzerland, England, Scotland, and America cover the whole
ground of popular freedom; and in all these this idea of the Sabbath
prevails with a distinctness about equal to the degree of liberty. Nor
do I think this result an accidental one. If we notice that the
Lutheran branch of the reformation did not have this element, and the
Calvinistic branch, which spread over England and America, did have
it, and compare the influence of these two in sustaining popular
rights, we shall be struck with the obvious inference.
Now, there are things in our mode of keeping the Sabbath which have a
direct tendency to sustain popular government; for the very element of
a popular government must be self-control in the individual. There
must be enough intensity of individual self-control to make up for the
lack of an extraneous pressure from government.
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