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Chapter Fifteen
The Bible
and the French Revolution
In the sixteenth century the Reformation, presenting
an open Bible to the people, had sought admission to all
the countries of Europe. Some nations welcomed it with
gladness, as a messenger of Heaven. In other lands the
papacy succeeded to a great extent in preventing its entrance;
and the light of Bible knowledge, with its elevating
influences, was almost wholly excluded. In one country,
though the light found entrance, it was not comprehended
by the darkness. For centuries, truth and error struggled for
the mastery. At last the evil triumphed, and the truth of
Heaven was thrust out. “This is the condemnation, that
light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather
than light.”
John 3:19. The nation was left to reap the
results of the course which she had chosen. The restraint of
God’s Spirit was removed from a people that had despised
the gift of His grace. Evil was permitted to come to maturity.
And all the world saw the fruit of willful rejection of the
light.
The war against the Bible, carried forward for so many
centuries in France, culminated in the scenes of the Revolution.
That terrible outbreaking was but the legitimate result
of Rome’s suppression of the Scriptures. (See
Appendix.)
It presented the most striking illustration which the world
has ever witnessed of the working out of the papal policy—
an illustration of the results to which for more than a thousand
years the teaching of the Roman Church had been
tending.
The suppression of the Scriptures during the period of
papal supremacy was foretold by the prophets; and the
Revelator points also to the terrible results that were to accrue
especially to France from the domination of the “man of sin.”
Said the angel of the Lord: “The holy city shall they tread
underfoot forty and two months. And I will give power unto
My two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two
hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. . . . And
when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that
ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against
them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And their
dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which
spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord
was crucified. . . . 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. And after three days and a half the Spirit
of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon
their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.”
Revelation 11:2-11.
The periods here mentioned—“forty and two months,”
and “a thousand two hundred and threescore days” —are the
same, alike representing the time in which the church of
Christ was to suffer oppression from Rome. The 1260 years
of papal supremacy began in A.D. 538, and would therefore
terminate in 1798. (See Appendix note for page 54.) At that
time a French army entered Rome and made the pope a
prisoner, and he died in exile. Though a new pope was soon
afterward elected, the papal hierarchy has never since been
able to wield the power which it before possessed.
The persecution of the church did not continue throughout
the entire period of the 1260 years. God in mercy to His
people cut short the time of their fiery trial. In foretelling the
“great tribulation” to befall the church, the Saviour said:
“Except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be
saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.”
Matthew 24:22. Through the influence of the Reformation
the persecution was brought to an end prior to 1798.
Concerning the two witnesses the prophet declares further:
“These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks
standing before the God of the earth.” “Thy word,” said the
psalmist, “is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.”
Revelation 11:4;
Psalm 119:105. The two witnesses represent
the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testament. Both are
important testimonies to the origin and perpetuity of the law
of God. Both are witnesses also to the plan of salvation. The
types, sacrifices, and prophecies of the Old Testament point
forward to a Saviour to come. The Gospels and Epistles of
the New Testament tell of a Saviour who has come in the
exact manner foretold by type and prophecy.
“They shall prophecy a thousand two hundred and three-score
days, clothed in sackcloth.” During the greater part of
this period, God’s witnesses remained in a state of obscurity.
The papal power sought to hide from the people the word of
truth, and set before them false witnesses to contradict its
testimony. (See
Appendix.) When the Bible was proscribed
by religious and secular authority; when its testimony was
perverted, and every effort made that men and demons
could invent to turn the minds of the people from it; when
those who dared proclaim its sacred truths were hunted,
betrayed, tortured, buried in dungeon cells, martyred for
their faith, or compelled to flee to mountain fastnesses, and
to dens and caves of the earth—then the faithful witnesses
prophesied in sackcloth. Yet they continued their testimony
throughout the entire period of 1260 years. In the darkest
times there were faithful men who loved God’s word and
were jealous for His honor. To these loyal servants were
given wisdom, power, and authority to declare His truth
during the whole of this time.
“And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of
their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man
will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed.”
Revelation
11:5. Men cannot with impunity trample upon the word of
God. The meaning of this fearful denunciation is set forth
in the closing chapter of the Revelation: “I testify unto every
man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book,
If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto
him the plagues that are written in this book: and if any
man shall take away from the words of the book of this
prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of
life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are
written in this book.”
Revelation 22:18, 19.
Such are the warnings which God has given to guard men
against changing in any manner that which He has revealed
or commanded. These solemn denunciations apply to all
who by their influence lead men to regard lightly the law
of God. They should cause those to fear and tremble who
flippantly declare it a matter of little consequence whether
we obey God’s law or not. All who exalt their own opinions
above divine revelation, all who would change the plain
meaning of Scripture to suit their own convenience, or for
the sake of conforming to the world, are taking upon themselves
a fearful responsibility. The written word, the law
of God, will measure the character of every man and condemn
all whom this unerring test shall declare wanting.
“When they shall have finished [are finishing] their testimony.”
The period when the two witnesses were to prophesy
clothed in sackcloth, ended in 1798. As they were approaching
the termination of their work in obscurity, war was to
be made upon them by the power represented as “the beast
that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit.” In many of the
nations of Europe the powers that ruled in church and state
had for centuries been controlled by Satan through the
medium of the papacy. But here is brought to view a new
manifestation of satanic power.
It had been Rome’s policy, under a profession of reverence
for the Bible, to keep it locked up in an unknown tongue
and hidden away from the people. Under her rule the witnesses
prophesied “clothed in sackcloth.” But another power
—the beast from the bottomless pit—was to arise to make
open, avowed war upon the word of God.
“The great city” in whose streets the witnesses are slain,
and where their dead bodies lie, is “spiritually” Egypt. Of
all nations presented in Bible history, Egypt most boldly
denied the existence of the living God and resisted His
commands. No monarch ever ventured upon more open and
highhanded rebellion against the authority of Heaven than
did the king of Egypt. When the message was brought him
by Moses, in the name of the Lord, Pharaoh proudly
answered: “Who is Jehovah, that I should hearken unto His
voice to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah, and moreover
I will not let Israel go.”
Exodus 5:2, A.R.V. This is atheism,
and the nation represented by Egypt would give voice to a
similar denial of the claims of the living God and would
manifest a like spirit of unbelief and defiance. “The great
city” is also compared, “spiritually,” to Sodom. The
corruption of Sodom in breaking the law of God was especially
manifested in licentiousness. And this sin was also to be a
pre-eminent characteristic of the nation that should fulfill
the specifications of this scripture.
According to the words of the prophet, then, a little before
the year 1798 some power of satanic origin and character
would rise to make war upon the Bible. And in the land
where the testimony of God’s two witnesses should thus be
silenced, there would be manifest the atheism of the Pharaoh
and the licentiousness of Sodom.
This prophecy has received a most exact and striking
fulfillment in the history of France. During the Revolution, in
1793, “the world for the first time heard an assembly of men,
born and educated in civilization, and assuming the right to
govern one of the finest of the European nations, uplift their
united voice to deny the most solemn truth which man’s soul
receives, and renounce unanimously the belief and worship
of a Deity.” —Sir Walter Scott, Life of Napoleon, vol. 1, ch.
17. “France is the only nation in the world concerning which
the authentic record survives, that as a nation she lifted her
hand in open rebellion against the Author of the universe.
Plenty of blasphemers, plenty of infidels, there have been,
and still continue to be, in England, Germany, Spain, and
elsewhere; but France stands apart in the world’s history as
the single state which, by the decree of her Legislative
Assembly, pronounced that there was no God, and of which
the entire population of the capital, and a vast majority
elsewhere, women as well as men, danced and sang with joy
in accepting the announcement.” —Blackwood’s Magazine,
November, 1870.
France presented also the characteristics which especially
distinguished Sodom. During the Revolution there was
manifest a state of moral debasement 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 assurance 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
that the degradation of marriage. . . . Sophie Arnoult, an
actress famous for the witty things she said, described the
republican marriage as ‘the sacrament of adultery.’” —Scott,
vol. 1, ch. 17.
“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 God, 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 nobles, highborn
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 lifelong
slavery in the galleys. The purest, the most refined, and the
most intelligent of the French were chained, in horrible
torture, amidst robbers and assassins. (See Wylie, b. 22, ch.
6.) 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 assemble, 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 ax, the fagot,
“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.” —Ibid., b. 22, ch. 7.
But blackest in the black catalogue of crime, most horrible
among the fiendish deeds of all the dreadful centuries, was
the St. Bartholomew Massacre. 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 massacre 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 sex was respected. Neither the innocent babe nor the
man of gray hairs was spared. Noble 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 massacre 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;
and 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
massacre, and in the Vatican may still be seen three frescoes
of Vasari, describing the attack upon the admiral, the king
in council plotting the massacre, and the massacre itself.
Gregory sent Charles the Golden Rose; and four months
after the massacre, . . . 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 God and
St. Louis.’” —Henry White, The Massacre of St. Bartholomew,
ch. 14, par. 34.
The same master spirit that urged on the St. Bartholomew
Massacre 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 God and His holy word as the world had never
witnessed. The worship of the Deity was abolished by the
National Assembly. Bibles were collected and publicly burned
with every possible manifestation of scorn. The law of God
was trampled underfoot. The institutions 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 God was said to be so far from the beginning
of wisdom that it was the beginning of folly. All religious
worship was prohibited, except that of liberty and the
country. The “constitutional bishop of Paris was brought forward
to play the principal 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 worship 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.” —Scott, vol. 1, ch. 17.
“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 God’s two witnesses. The word of truth lay dead in her
streets, and those who hated the restrictions and requirements
of God’s law were jubilant. Men publicly defied the King
of heaven. Like the sinners of old, they cried: “How doth
God know? and is there knowledge in the Most High?”
Psalm 73:11.
With blasphemous boldness almost beyond belief, one of
the priests of the new order said: “God, 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?” —Lacretelle, History, vol. 11, p.
309; in Sir Archibald Alison, History of Europe, vol. 1,
ch. 10. 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 God.”
Psalm
14:1. And the Lord declares concerning the perverters of the
truth: “Their folly shall be manifest unto all.”
2 Timothy
3:9. After France had renounced the worship of the living
God, “the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity,” it was
only a little time till she descended to degrading idolatry, by
the worship of the Goddess of Reason, in the person of a
profligate woman. And this in the representative assembly
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 municipal
body entered in solemn procession, singing a hymn in praise
of liberty, and escorting, as the object of their future worship,
a veiled female, whom they termed the Goddess 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 worshiped, the National Convention of France
rendered public homage.
“This impious and ridiculous mummery had a certain
fashion; and the installation of the Goddess 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.” —Scott, vol. 1, ch. 17.
Said the orator who introduced the worship 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 assembled beneath those gothic
vaults, which, for the first time, re-echoed the truth. There
the French have celebrated the only true worship, —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.” —M. A. Thiers, History of
the French Revolution, vol. 2, pp. 370, 371.
When the goddess was brought into the Convention, the
orator took her by the hand, and turning to the assembly
said: “Mortals, cease to tremble before the powerless thunders
of a God whom your fears have created. Henceforth
acknowledge no divinity but Reason. I offer you its noblest
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 goddess, 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.” —Alison,
vol. 1, ch. 10.
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 municipality,
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.” —Journal of
Paris, 1793, No. 318. Quoted in Buchez-Roux, Collection of
Parliamentary History, vol. 30, pp. 200, 201.
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. (See
Appendix.) 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
bondslaves of ignorance, vice, and superstition. 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
principalities, nobility, laws, orders, and ranks besides.” —G. de Felice, History of the Protestants of France, b. 1, ch. 2,
par. 8. 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.” —D’Aubigne,
History of the Reformation in Europe in the Time of Calvin,
b. 2, ch. 36. 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
nobles, and maintain the laws, that the sword of persecution
was first unsheathed in France.” —Wylie, b. 13, ch. 4.
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 cornerstone of a nation’s prosperity. “Righteousness
exalteth a nation.” Thereby “the throne is established.”
Proverbs 14:34;
16:12. “The work of righteousness shall be
peace;” and the effect, “quietness and assurance forever.”
Isaiah 32:17. He who obeys the divine law will most truly
respect and obey the laws of his country. He who fears God
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
the 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 analytic 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 encompassed 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.” —Wylie,
b. 13, ch. 20. And the Revolution, with all its horrors, was
the dire result.
“With the flight of the Huguenots a general decline settled
upon France. Flourishing manufacturing cities fell into
decay; fertile districts returned to their native wildness;
intellectual dullness 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 noble 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 nobles, and
the laboring classes 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 classes, who
were heavily taxed by the civil authorities and by the clergy.
“The pleasure of the nobles 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 noble 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 entitled by law or custom to all the
appointments of the state. The privileged classes numbered
a hundred and fifty thousand, and for their gratification
millions were condemned to hopeless and degrading lives.”
(See
Appendix.)
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 class, the state financially embarrassed
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
classes, 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 farsighted 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 superstition, 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 masses 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 god they knew was the god 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 God 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 associates cast aside God’s word
altogether and spread everywhere the poison of infidelity.
Rome had ground down the people under her iron heel; and
now the masses, 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 nobles 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 avenge 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 God’s law were cast aside, it was found that
the laws of man were inadequate to hold in check the
powerful tides of human passion; 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
today was suspected, condemned, tomorrow. Violence and
lust held undisputed sway.
King, clergy, and nobles 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
masses, swayed by the fury of their passions. “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.” (See
Appendix.)
“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 ship; when the gutters
ran foaming with blood into the Seine. . . . While the daily
wagonloads 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 grapeshot. 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 sex 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.” (See
Appendix.)
In the short space of ten years, multitudes 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
workmanship of God, 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 God, 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
illustration of the results of liberty.
When error in one garb has been detected, Satan only
masks it in a different disguise, and multitudes 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 God’s law, he urged them to regard
all religion as a cheat, and the Bible as 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 God.
“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.”
Isaiah 48:18, 22;
Proverbs 1:33.
Atheists, infidels, and apostates oppose and denounce
God’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 God are bidden to read it in the history of nations.
When Satan wrought through the Roman Church to lead
men away from obedience, his agency was concealed, and his
work was so disguised that the degradation and misery which
resulted were not seen to be the fruit of transgression. And
his power was so far counteracted by the working of the
Spirit of God that his purposes were prevented from reaching
their full fruition. The people did not trace the effect to its
cause and discover the source of their miseries. But in the
Revolution the law of God was openly set aside by the
National Council. And in the Reign of Terror which followed,
the working of cause and effect could be seen by all.
When France publicly rejected God and set aside the
Bible, wicked men and spirits of darkness exulted in their
attainment of the object so long desired—a kingdom free
from the restraints of the law of God. Because sentence
against an evil work was not speedily executed, therefore the
heart of the sons of men was “fully set in them to do evil.”
Ecclesiastes 8:11. But the transgression of a just and righteous
law must inevitably result in misery and ruin. Though not
visited at once with judgments, the wickedness of men was
nevertheless surely working out their doom. Centuries of
apostasy and crime had been treasuring up wrath against the
day of retribution; and when their iniquity was full, the
despisers of God learned too late that it is a fearful thing to
have worn out the divine patience. The restraining Spirit of
God, which imposes a check upon the cruel power of Satan,
was in a great measure removed, and he whose only delight
is the wretchedness of men was permitted to work his will.
Those who had chosen the service of rebellion were left to
reap its fruits until the land was filled with crimes too
horrible for pen to trace. From devastated provinces and ruined
cities a terrible cry was heard—a cry of bitterest anguish.
France was shaken as if by an earthquake. Religion, law,
social order, the family, the state, and the church—all were
smitten down by the impious hand that had been lifted
against the law of God. Truly spoke the wise man: “The
wicked shall fall by his own wickedness.” “Though a sinner
do evil a hundred times, and his days be prolonged, yet surely
I know that it shall be well with them that fear God, which
fear before Him: but it shall not be well with the wicked.”
Proverbs 11:5;
Ecclesiastes 8:12, 13. “They hated knowledge,
and did not choose the fear of the Lord;” “therefore shall
they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with
their own devices.”
Proverbs 1:29, 31.
God’s faithful witnesses, slain by the blasphemous power
that “ascendeth out of the bottomless pit,” were not long to
remain silent. “After three days and a half the Spirit of life
from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet;
and great fear fell upon them which saw them.”
Revelation
11:11. It was in 1793 that the decrees which abolished the
Christian religion and set aside the Bible passed the French
Assembly. Three years and a half later a resolution rescinding
these decrees, thus granting toleration to the Scriptures,
was adopted by the same body. The world stood aghast at
the enormity of guilt which had resulted from a rejection
of the Sacred Oracles, and men recognized the necessity of
faith in God and His word as the foundation of virtue and
morality. Saith the Lord: “Whom hast thou reproached
and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted thy
voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? even against the Holy
One of Israel,”
Isaiah 37:23. “Therefore, behold, I will cause
them to know, this once will I cause them to know My hand
and My might; and they shall know that My name is
Jehovah.”
Jeremiah 16:21, A.R.V.
Concerning the two witnesses the prophet declares
further: “And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto
them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in
a cloud; and their enemies beheld them.”
Revelation 11:12.
Since France made war upon God’s two witnesses, they have
been honored as never before. In 1804 the British and
Foreign Bible Society was organized. This was followed by
similar organizations, with numerous branches, upon the
continent of Europe. In 1816 the American Bible Society was
founded. When the British Society was formed, the Bible
had been printed and circulated in fifty tongues. It has since
been translated into many hundreds of languages and dialects.
(See
Appendix.)
For the fifty years preceding 1792, little attention was
given to the work of foreign missions. No new societies were
formed, and there were but few churches that made any
effort for the spread of Christianity in heathen lands. But
toward the close of the eighteenth century a great change
took place. Men became dissatisfied with the results of
rationalism and realized the necessity of divine revelation
and experimental religion. From this time the work of
foreign missions attained an unprecedented growth. (See
Appendix.)
The improvements in printing have given an impetus to
the work of circulating the Bible. The increased facilities
for communication between different countries, the breaking
down of ancient barriers of prejudice and national exclusiveness,
and the loss of secular power by the pontiff of Rome
have opened the way for the entrance of the word of God.
For some years the Bible has been sold without restraint in
the streets of Rome, and it has now been carried to every part
of the habitable globe.
The infidel Voltaire once boastingly said: “I am weary of
hearing people repeat that twelve men established the Christian
religion. I will prove that one man may suffice to overthrow
it.” Generations have passed since his death. Millions
have joined in the war upon the Bible. But it is so far from
being destroyed, that where there were a hundred in Voltaire’s
time, there are now ten thousand, yes, a hundred
thousand copies of the book of God. In the words of an early
Reformer concerning the Christian church, “The Bible is
an anvil that has worn out many hammers.” Saith the
Lord: “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper;
and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment
thou shalt condemn.”
Isaiah 54:17.
“The word of our God shall stand forever.” “All His
commandments are sure. They stand fast for ever and ever,
and are done in truth and uprightness.”
Isaiah 40:8;
Psalm 111:7, 8. Whatever is built upon the authority of man will
be overthrown; but that which is founded upon the rock
of God’s immutable word shall stand forever.
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