Chapter 15 : 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, popery 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. 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 [266]

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 [the true church] shall

they tread under foot 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

with the establishment of the papacy in A. D. 538, and would

therefore terminate in 1798. 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

[267] 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 prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore

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. 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 [268]

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 lightly regard 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.

[269] 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 high-handed 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 obey his voice to let Israel

go? I know not Jehovah, neither will I let Israel go.” [Exodus 5:2.]

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 of 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

European nations, uplift their united voice to deny the most solemn [270]

truth which man’s soul receives, and renounce unanimously the

belief and worship of the Deity.” “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.”

France presented also the characteristic 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 licentiousness of France, as it is 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 a state

of mere civil contract of a transitory character, which any two persons

might engage in and cast loose at pleasure.... If fiends had set

themselves at work to discover a mode of most effectually destroying

whatever is venerable, graceful, or permanent in domestic life, and

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 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.’”

“Where also our Lord was crucified.” This specification of the [271]

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,

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 mountain-side

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 assassins.” 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 mountain-side or the forest,

where they had been accustomed to assemble, it was not unusual

[272] 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 a vast,

gloomy wilderness.” These atrocities were not committed during the

Dark Ages, but in that brilliant era “when science was cultivated,

and letters flourished; when the divines of the court and the capital

were learned and eloquent men, who greatly affected the graces of

meekness and charity.”

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. The great bell of the palace, 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.

Satan, in the person of the Roman zealots, led the van. 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 extended to all

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.

“The pope, Gregory XIII., received the news of the fate of the

Huguenots with unbounded joy. The wish of his heart had been

gratified, and Charles IX, was now his favorite son. Rome rang [273]

with rejoicings. The guns of the castle of St. Angelo gave forth a

joyous salute; the bells sounded from every tower; bonfires blazed

throughout the night; and Gregory, attended by his cardinals and

priests, led the magnificent procession to the church of St. Louis,

where the cardinal of Lorraine chanted a Te Deum. The cry of the

dying host in France was gentle harmony to the court of Rome. A

medal was struck to commemorate the glorious massacre; a picture,

which still exists in the Vatican, was painted, representing the chief

events of St. Bartholomew. The pope, eager to show his gratitude

to Charles for his dutiful conduct, sent him the Golden Rose; and

from the pulpits of Rome eloquent preachers celebrated Charles,

Catherine, and the Guises as the new founders of the papal church.”

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 upon the Bible as the world

had never witnessed. The Word of God was prohibited by the national

assembly. Bibles were collected and publicly burned with

every possible manifestation of scorn. The law of God was trampled

under foot. The institutions of the Bible were abolished. The

weekly rest-day was set aside, and in its stead every tenth day was

[274] 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 enacted 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 in 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.”

“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?” What

an echo is this of the Pharaoh’s demand: “Who is Jehovah, that I [275]

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 hand 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.”

Said the orator who introduced the worship of reason: “Legislative

fanaticism has lost its hold; it has given place to reason.

We have left its temples; they are regenerated. Today an immense

multitude are assembled under its gothic roofs, which, for the first

time, will re-echo the voice of truth. There the French will celebrate

[276] the true worship, that of Liberty and Reason. There we will form

new vows for the prosperity of the armies of the Republic; there we

will abandon the worship of inanimate idols for that of Reason—this

animated image, the masterpiece of creation.”

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, veil of Reason.”

“The goddess, after being embraced by the president, was

mounted on a magnificent car, and conducted, amidst an immense

crowd, to the cathedral of Notre Dame, to take the place of the Deity.

Then she was elevated on the high altar, and received the adoration

of all present.”

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

the Bible. And “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

the breviaries of 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.’”

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.

A writer, speaking of the horrors of the Revolution, says: “Those

excesses are in truth to be charged upon the throne and the church.”

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

[277] 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 1523: “This mania [Protestantism] will

not only destroy religion, but all principalities, nobilities, laws, orders,

and ranks besides.” A few years later a papist dignitary warned

the king, “If you wish to preserve your sovereign rights intact; if

you wish to keep the nations submitted to you in tranquillity, manfully

defend the Catholic faith, and subdue all its enemies by your

arms.” 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.”

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.” [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 [278]

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 intel236

ligence, the arts, the industry, the order, in which, as a rule, they

pre-eminently excelled, to enrich the land 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

[279] to the stake; no more patriotism to be chased into banishment.” 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 ev- [280]

ery 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 fellowsubjects

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.”

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!”

[281] 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 thousand-fold 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 [282]

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 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 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 [283]

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.”

“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

[284] 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 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 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.” In the short space

of ten years, millions 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 [285]

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 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 Romish 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 prohibited the Bible, wicked men and

spirits of darkness exulted in their attainment of the object so long

[286] 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 8:11-13.] 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 spake the wise man:

“The wicked shall fall by his own wickedness.” “Though a sinner

do evil an 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.” [Ecclesiastes 8:11-13.]

“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 decree which prohibited the Bible passed the French Assembly. [287]

Three years and a half later a resolution rescinding the decree, and

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 this once cause them to

know, I will cause them to know mine hand and my might; and they

shall know that my name is Jehovah.” [Jeremiah 16:21.]

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 more than two hundred languages and dialects. By the efforts

of Bible societies, since 1804, more than 187,000,000 copies of the

Bible have been circulated.

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

[288] and experimental religion. The devoted Carey, who in 1793 became

the first English missionary to India, kindled anew the flame of

missionary effort in England. In America, twenty years later, the

zeal of a society of students, among whom was Adoniram Judson,

resulted in the formation of the American Board of Foreign Missions,

under whose auspices Judson went as a missionary from the United

States to Burmah. From this time the work of foreign missions

attained an unprecedented growth.

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.” A century

has 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 forever 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