FIFTH LECTURE.

Object of the lecture-Religion is a principle of association -Constraint is not of the essence of government-Conditions of the legitimacy of a government: 1. The power must be in the hands of the most worthy; 2. The liberty of the governed must be respected-The church being a corporation, and not a caste, fulfilled the first of these conditions-Of the various methods of nomination and election that existed therein-It wanted the other condition, on account of the illegitimate extension of authority, and on account of the abusive employment of force-Movement and liberty of spirit in the bosom of the church-Relations of the church with princes-The independence of spiritual power laid down as a principle-Pretensions and efforts of the church to usurp the tem poral power.

WE have examined the nature and influence of the feudal system; it is with the Christian church, from the fifth to the twelfth century, that we are now to occupy ourselves: I say, with the church; and I have already laid this emphasis, because it is not with Christianity properly speaking, with Christianity as a religious system, but with the church as an ecclesiastical society, with the Christian clergy, that I propose to engage your attention.

In the fifth century, this society was almost completely organized; not that it has not since then undergone many and important changes; but we may say that, at that time, the church, considered as a corporation, as a government of Christian people, had attained a complete and independent existence.

One glance is enough to show us an immense difference between the state of the church and that of the other elements of European civilization in the fifth century. I have mentioned, as the fundamental elements of our civilization, the

The

municipal and feudal systems, royalty, and the church. municipal system, in the fifth century, was no more than the wreck of the Roman empire, a shadow without life or determinate form. The feudal system had not yet issued from the chaos. Royalty existed only in name. All the civil elements of modern society were either in decay or infancy. The church alone was, at the same time, young and constituted; it alone had acquired a definite form, and preserved all the vigour of early age; it alone possessed, at once, movement and order, energy and regularity, that is to say, the two great means of influence. Is it not, let me ask you, by moral life, by internal movement, on the one hand, and by order and discipline on the other, that institutions take possession of society? The church, moreover, had mooted all the great questions which interest man; it busied itself with all the problems of his nature, and with all the chances of his destiny. Thus its influence upon modern civilization has been very great, greater, perhaps, than even its most ardent adversaries, or its most zealous defenders have supposed. Occupied with rendering it services, or with combating it, they have regarded it only in a polemical point of view, and have therefore, I conceive, been unable either to judge it with equity, or to measure it in all its extent.

The Christian church in the fifth century presents itself as an independent and constituted society, interposed between the masters of the world, the sovereigns, the possessors of the temporal power on the one hand, and the people on the other, serving as a bond between them, and influencing all.

In order completely to know and comprehend its action, we must therefore consider it under three aspects: first of all we must regard it in itself, make an estimate of what it was, of its internal constitution, of the principles which predominated in it, and of its nature; we must then examine it in its relation to the temporal sovereignties, kings, lords, and others; lastly, in its relations to the people. And when from this triple examination we shall have deduced a complete picture of the church, of its principles, its situation, and the influence which it necessarily exercised, we shall verify our assertions by an appeal to history; we shall find out whether the facts and events, properly so called, from the fifth to the twelfth century, are in harmony with the results to which we have

been led by the study of the nature of the church, and of its relations, both with the masters of the world and with the people.

First of all, let us occupy ourselves with the church in itself, with its internal condition, and its nature.

The first fact which strikes us, and perhaps the most important, is its very existence, the existence of a religious government, of a clergy, of an ecclesiastical corporation, of a priesthood, of a religion in the sacerdotal state.

With many enlightened men, these very words, a body of priesthood, a religious government, appear to determine the question. They think that a religion which ends in a body of priests, a legally constituted clergy, in short, a governed religion, must be, taking all things together, more injurious than useful. In their opinion, religion is a purely individual relation of man to God; and that whenever the relation loses this character, whenever an external authority comes between the individual and the object of religious creeds, -namely, God-religion is deteriorated, and society in danger.

We cannot dispense with an examination of this question. In order to ascertain what has been the influence of the Christian church, we must know what ought to be, by the very nature of the institution, the influence of a church and of a clergy. In order to appreciate this influence, we must find out, first of all, whether religion is, in truth, purely individual, whether it does not provoke and give birth to something more than merely a private relation between each man and God; or whether it necessarily becomes a source of new relations between men, from which a religious society and a government of that society necessarily flow.

If we reduce religion to the religious sentiment properly so called, to that sentiment which is very real, though somewhat vague and uncertain as to its object, and which we can scarcely characterize otherwise than by naming it,―to this sentiment which addresses itself sometimes to external nature, sometimes to the innermost recesses of the soul, to-day to poetry, to-morrow to the mysteries of the future, which, in a word, wanders everywhere, seeking everywhere to satisfy itself, and fixing itself nowhere,-if we reduce religion to this sentiment, it seems evident to me that it should remain purely individual. Such a sentiment may provoke a momentary

association between men; it can, it even ought to take pleasure in sympathy, nourishing and strengthening itself thereby. But by reason of its fluctuating and doubtful character, it refuses to become the principle of a permanent and extensive association, to adapt itself to any system of precepts, practices, and forms; in short, to give birth to a religious society and government.

But either I deceive myself strangely, or this religious sentiment is not the complete expression of the religious nature of man. Religion, I conceive, is a different thing, and much more than this.

In human nature and in human destiny there are problems of which the solution lies beyond this world, which are connected with a class of things foreign to the visible world, and which inveterately torment the soul of man, who is fixedly intent upon solving them. The solution of these problems, creeds, dogmas, which contain that solution, or, at least, flatter themselves that they do, these constitute the first object and the first source of religion.

Another path leads men to religion. To those among you who have prosecuted somewhat extended philosophical studies, it is, I conceive, sufficiently evident at present that morality exists independently of religious ideas; that the distinction of moral good and evil, the obligation to shun the evil, and to do the good, are laws, which, like the laws of logic, man discovers in his own nature, and which have their principle in himself, as they have their application in his actual life. But these facts being decided, the independence of morality being admitted, a question arises in the human mind-Whence comes morality? To what does it lead? Is this obligation to do good, which subsists of itself, an isolated. fact, without author and aim? Does it not conceal from, or rather, does it not reveal to man a destiny which is beyond this world? This is a spontaneous and inevitable question, by which morality, in its turn, leads man to the door of religion, and discovers to him a sphere from which he had not borrowed morality.

Thus, in the problems of our nature, upon one hand, and in the necessity of discovering a sanction, origin, and aim for morality, on the other, we find assured and fruitful sources of religion, which thus presents itself under aspects very different

from that of a mere instrument, as it has been described; it presents itself as a collection-1st, of doctrines called forth by problems which man discovers within himself; and, of precepts which correspond to those doctrines, and give to natural morality a meaning and a sanction; 3rd, of promises which address themselves to the hopes of humanity in the future. This is what truly constitutes religion; this is what it is at bottom, and not a mere form of sensibility, a flight of the imagination, a species of poetry.

Reduced in this manner to its true elements and to its essence, religion no longer appears as a purely individual fact, but as a powerful and fruitful principle of association. Consider it as a system of creeds and dogmas: truth belongs to no one; it is universal, absolute; men must seek and profess it in common. Consider the precepts that associate themselves with doctrines: an obligatory law for one is such for all; it must be promulgated, it must bring all men under its empire. It is the same with the promises made by religion in the name of its creeds and precepts: they must be spread abroad, and all men must be called to gather the fruits of them. From the essential elements of religion, then, you see that the religious society is born; indeed, it flows therefrom so infallibly that the word which expresses the most energetic social sentiment, the most imperious necessity of propagating ideas and extending a society, is the word proselytism, a word which applies above all to religious creeds, and, indeed, seems to be almost exclusively consecrated to them.

The religious society being once born, when a certain number of men become united in common religious creeds, under the law of common religious precepts, and in common religious hopes, that society must have a government. There is no society which can survive a week, an hour, without a government. At the very instant in which the society forms itself, and even by the very fact of its formation, it calls a government, which proclaims the common truth, the bond of the society, and promulgates and supports the precepts which originate in that truth. The necessity for a power, for a government over the religious society, as over every other, is implied in the fact of the existence of that society. And not only is government necessary, but it naturally forms