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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



under Louis XIII. in 1629, they were a constant 

 element of national insecurity ; while in particu- 

 lar their exploits during their brief tide of suc- 

 cess in 1562 amply account for, though they do 

 not excuse, the St. Bartholomew ten years later, 

 and help to explain the slightness of the impres- 

 sion which their creed has produced on their 

 nation. 



It is still France which supplies the chief ex- 

 ample of anti-patriotism, only that now the Ultra- 

 montane school, not the Huguenot, is mainly in 

 fault. There is not only a profound conscious- 

 ness that the clerical party is intriguing against 

 the republic with every other political section by 

 turns, because it believes that Legitimists, Bona- 

 partists, and even Orleanists, would make larger 

 concessions to its demands, but there is an equal- 

 ly deep-seated belief that the disastrous war with 

 Prussia was mainly due to clerical pressure at the 

 Tuileries. And though there can be no reasonable 

 doubt that the clergy were just as infected with 

 chauvinisme as the rest of France, believing in the 

 invincibility of the army, and viewing the campaign 

 as a mere pleasure-excursion to end triumphantly 

 at Berlin within a few weeks, yet the conviction 

 that they were ready to plunge the country into 

 the cost and suffering which even the most rapid 

 and successful war must entail on victors as well 

 as on vanquished, and that for purely professional 

 and sectarian objects, will not be readily laid 

 aside. Apart from this direct charge of anti- 

 patriotism — which is also alleged in Germany, 

 but with far less tangible evidence, and has 

 formed the plea for the retrograde and intolerant 

 Falk legislation — there is the minor count of un- 

 patriotism, contained in almost the terms of the 

 objection to Christianity we are here considering! 

 namely, that while the clericals themselves are 

 superfluously active in politics, their best pupils, 

 the very choicest of their flock, are trained into 

 a dreamy, speculative, ascetic, and unpractical 

 condition, which, while making them the ready 

 dupes of every new vision, and devotees of every 

 fresh cult, completely unfits them for the useful 

 discharge of the ordinary duties of citizens. This 

 indictment is strengthened by the acquiescence 

 expressed in it by Cardinal Vitelleschi, as set 

 forth in " Pomponio Leto." There may be a 

 demurrer put in here with some cogency, to the 

 effect that, even if it be so, the French clergy are 

 merely copying the example of the state, whose 

 principle, ever since the days of Richelieu, has 

 been the centralization of authority, the multipli- 

 cation of government officials, the discourage- 

 ment of local action, and the exclusion, so far as 



possible, of every one, not a member of the bu- 

 reaucracy, from participation in the conduct of 

 affairs, except by voting to order at elections. It 

 is only a question of which master is to prescribe 

 the course of action, the hierarchy or the ministry 

 of the interior, for the principle is the same. 

 That is true enough, and no doubt shows that 

 one kind of paternal government is nearly as 

 mischievous as another is checking true patriot- 

 ism, by refusing the opportunity of political edu- 

 cation, but it leaves the charge against Christian- 

 ity just where it was, merely joining another 

 name in the indictment. 



The plea, of course, is not a refutation, and 

 indeed, so far as Ultramontanism is taken as the 

 equivalent of Christianity, is a defiant acknowl- 

 edgment of the charge. The true vindication is 

 quite different, and may be very simply stated. 



It is this : Y\"herever we find the unpatriotic 

 spirit, or the anti-patriotic spirit, prevalent, and 

 in any degree traceable to religious influence, it 

 will be found due to a fundamental misconcep- 

 tion of the main function of Christianity. That 

 function, as declared again and again in the most 

 emphatic terms in the Gospels, and somewhat 

 less vividly, but yet with no lack of emphasis, in 

 the Epistles, is the regeneration of society; the 

 diminution of sin, ignorance, and suffering, par- 

 ticularly the first, in the world ; the introduction 

 of a new and higher moral code ; the supply of 

 fresh and vigorous principles of personal and 

 social action ; the transformation, in short, which 

 is expressed in the Apocalypse by the words, 

 " The kingdoms of this world are become the 

 kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ." Now, 

 this process, even if advertised at the first by 

 miracle, was carried on, so far as it has yet been 

 carried, by intermediate agencies of an ordinary, 

 and on the whole commonplace nature, involv- 

 ing much forethought and diligence on the part 

 of those engaged in it. Wherever it has been 

 kept steadily in view, the amelioration of man- 

 kind has gone with it, and patriotism has been 

 reconciled with universal humanism by the com- 

 mon-sense principle that as a man's first social 

 duties are to those of his own immediate house- 

 hold and family, then to his closest neighbors 

 and connections, and so on in a gradually-widen- 

 ing circle, so the bounds of his native land are, 

 as a general rule, the natural limits of his efforts, 

 because differences of language, custom, and 

 temperament, must make him less useful in a 

 foreign country; though such instances as John 

 Howard teach us that no hard-and-fast line of 

 demarkation can be laid down to restrict philan- 



