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There is no Church that
claims from British Christians a more warm and lively interest than the
Protestant Church of France. It is not merely the charm of old
associations and the bond of spiritual kindred that united the Protestants
of France and Geneva, in the sixteenth century, with that of Scotland, and
with the most earnest and evangelical party in the English Reformation;
but it is, moreover, its own exciting and picturesque story, its roll of
martyrs, of "whom the world was not worthy," and whose blood has been the
seed of ever new life, through all its oppressions and persecutions, the
learning and eloquence of its clergy, and the beauty and activity of its
practical philanthropy, that combine to make it interesting, and to draw
our sympathies cordially around it. With so much to attract us towards
French Protestantism, and so much of affinity of Christian doctrine and
enterprise between us, we are far from being well informed as to its
present state and movements; the rapid increase that during the last
thirty years has taken place in the number of its adherents, of its
churches, its schools, its literary, missionary, and charitable agencies.
The following pages, founded upon a carefully informed pamphlet of M. Grandpierre, [Rapport sur la situation intériure du Protestantisme en
France, par J. H. Grandpierre, pasteur de l'Eglise Réformée de Paris.
1858.] well known as one of the pastors connected with the Oratoire in
Paris, deserve, and will amply reward, in this point of view, the
attention of our readers.
At the date of the Edict of
Nantes, the 22d October 1685, when Louis XIV., by a fatal blow, destroyed
at once the civil rights and the religious privileges of his Protestant
subjects, they numbered 800 churches and 640 clergy. The vast amount of
peaceful industry and advancing civilisation represented by these figures
was then, most disastrously for France, broken up, almost at the very time
that the great Revolution was about to secure Protestant liberty and
political progress to our own country.
In 1808,—six years after
the promulgation of the law of the 10th Germinal, as it was called, (the
8th April 1802,) restored the legal existence of the Protestant
worship,—there was in the whole of France only 190 Reformed churches, and
about 190 clergy. Thus in the course of somewhat more than a century's
persecution, upwards of three-fourths of the Protestants may be said to
have been expelled or to have disappeared from the soil of France.
Thirteen years later, the
Protestant Annual, published in 1821, registered the names of 255 clergy
and a nearly equal number of churches. An increase of sixty-five churches
and ministers had taken place in this time. Seven years later, statistics
were published which shewed a corresponding increase. The clergy had risen
to nearly 300, while 400 places of worship had sprung up, with nearly as
many schools.
But it is in the thirty years that have elapsed since then that the most
astonishing and rapid increase has been manifested. The Protestant Annual
of 1857 reckons that there are now in France 105 consistories, comprising
972 churches, with upwards of a thousand schools, under the direction of
601 clergy. During this period, then, the number of Protestant churches in
Prance have more than trebled. Such an increase can scarcely be paralleled
even by our own Scottish Protestantism, with all the singular and exciting
causes which have given it development during the last quarter of a
century.
This remarkable progress of
Protestantism in France will be best seen, perhaps, by a single example.
Thirty years ago there were in Paris only three Protestant clergy, with
one assistant clergyman, and two churches, with one in the suburbs. There
are at this moment six fully endowed clergy, one of these being an
assistant, with seven auxiliary clergy; and in the suburbs four churches,
with a corresponding number of pastors. That is to say, in all there are
in Paris at present eighteen clergy in place of five, and sixteen places
of worship instead of three, in 1830, connected with the Reformed Church
of France.
But this by no means
represents the full increase ; for in the same space of time that old
branch of French Protestantism which adheres to the Confession of Augsburg
has made a corresponding advancement. While, in 1830, it had only in the
capital a single place of worship, with three pastors, it has now in
Paris, and in the suburbs together, ten places of worship, and nine clergy
instead of three. In addition to both these forms of Protestantism, which
are recognised and supported by the State, there have sprung up during the
same period a vigorous Protestant dissent in France; and in Paris alone,
while there was in 1825 only a single dissenting Protestant church, there
are now in the same city a dozen such places of worship, with eleven or
twelve ministers. The Protestant clergy in Paris, therefore, during the
last thirty years, have increased from nine to thirty-nine, or more than
quadrupled, and the places of Protestant worship augmented in more than
the same proportion.
It may be interesting to
some of our readers to classify the different forms of Protestant dissent
in France. This dissent has arisen in no small degree from intercourse
with some of the most active of our British Dissenting Churches ; and its
several divisions take their name and character a good deal from this
circumstance. It falls into three main divisions—
1. The Union of Evangelical
Churches of France, formed in 1850, which embraces, with certain offshoots
from the Established Reformed church, the most of the independent churches
which have sprung up in France during the last half-century. These
churches have, as their bond of union, a common confession of faith, and
biennial synods. There are certain points, however, such as the
constitution of the Church, the question of baptism, and the terms of
communion, on which they agree to differ.
2. The Wesleyan Methodist
Churches, which support about fifty preachers, seven evangelists, and
thirty-six places of worship, and reckon about thirteen hundred members.
3. The Baptist Churches, of
which there are about ten, employing six or seven clergy, several of whom
are supported by the Society of American Baptist Missions.
Then there are several
evangelical churches, such as those of Lyons and Orthes, which do not
attach themselves to any of the above denominations.
Summing up, then, all the
elements of French Protestantism, there may be fairly reckoned at the
present day in France 1000 Protestant clergy, with 1500 or 1600 places of
worship, and nearly 1800 schools. During fifty years of comparative
liberty, French Protestantism has more than recovered the position which
it occupied when the Edict of Nantes shattered and overturned its
prosperity.
But it shews a feature of
progress still more encouraging than this mere numerical advancement.
Forty years ago French Protestantism was not only emerging from external
ruin, but from the decay of its internal life. Of its three hundred clergy
at that time, one might have counted on their fingers, says M. Grandpierre,
the few who faithfully and courageously preached the doctrines of the
Cross. The misfortune of the times, the poverty of the clergy, the want of
popular interest and choice in their appointment, combined with the
general laxity of Christian principle which followed the long dead-ness of
the eighteenth century, had ended in such a deplorable result. But at the
present time it can be safely affirmed that more than one-half of the
Protestant clergy in France are orthodox in their creed, while many even
of those who are latitudinarian in their doctrinal opinions are animated
by a far higher spirit of religious culture and of pious earnestness than
can be said to have characterised the rationalist clergy of the beginning
of the century. There is a living evangelical feeling widely diffused
throughout French Protestantism, a feeling which is rapidly spreading and
increasing among the younger clergy, even where they do not adhere to the
old dogmatic symbols. Works evincing a reviving theological learning of
the best kind are frequently appearing; the preaching is at once eloquent
and faithful; the pastorate enlightened, laborious, and self-denying; and
the astonishing progress which, on all hands, it is making, even in the
face of renewed attempts at interference, if not persecution, is only the
natural consequence of the higher life everywhere animating it, and
carrying it triumphantly forward.
In our next notice we shall
record the progress made by its theological schools, and its numerous
literary, missionary, and charitable agencies. |
