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From a seemingly hopeless state of prostration, religion in France was lifted up by Napoleon, who, for the purposes of his own ambition, deemed it wise to surround his newly acquired dignities with the pomps and ceremonials of Catholic celebrations. The first grand opportunity for religious display was furnished by the pageantry of his coronation, which took place in the cathedral of Notre Dame, upon which occasion the old atheistical warriors who had had shared the fortunes of the emperor, and were now reluctantly compelled to attend the ceremony which seemed their climax, shrugged their shoulders with contempt, murmuring among themselves, "He has set up again in one day what it has taken us many years to overturn." In the restoration of the Church Establishment, the motives of Napoleon may or may not have been of a merely self-interested character: he was at all events the instrument, under Heaven, of rescuing France from avowed heathenism. The poison of scepticism and disbelief had, however, pervaded the great bulk of her population; and not even the reaction of later years, at the present moment in fuller activity than ever, has succeeded in dispelling the baleful venom from the body corporate of the country.

With the return of the old Bourbon dynasty, religion seemed destined to meet with renewed encouragement; yet the event proved that the more her ministers and institutions were protected by the temporal power, the less hold she acquired over the affections of the people. A nation of soldiers, the French never ceased lamenting the loss of the great warrior who had raised their military glory to so hitherto unequalled a pitch; and conceived for the princes whom they deemed forced back upon them by the united bayonets of Europe, the most cordial detestation. With this hatred for their legitimate rulers, the clergy and the interests of religion, upheld perhaps by the restored house with more zeal than discretion, became in a great measure identified; and until the revolution of 1830, the great drawback to the spread of religious feeling was the fancied association of priestly ascendancy with political oppression and degradation. Senseless clamours were raised against the Jesuits,—a nom de guerre under which all were classed, clergy or laity, who sought the re-establishment of faith and morals and the press teemed with new editions of the infidel works of the eighteenth century. The crisis of 1830 ensued; and an event which might superficially be regarded as a second prostration of the Catholic cause, became in fact the harbinger of its revival on the basis of civil and religious liberty. The lawless spirit of outbreak which characterized that curious epoch in French history, manifested itself at first in a manner that seemed fatal to the prospects of the Catholic religion. The new legislature barely acknowledged it as the dominant

creed, the mob of Paris destroyed the old church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois, and with savage fury burnt their archbishop's palace, and destroyed his library. Apostate priests of infamous character became the founders of new sects purporting to adapt themselves to popular feeling, and were permitted to promulgate from the pulpit doctrines the most revolting to religion, morality, and social order. A general spirit of determined resistance to all established authority, whether spiritual or temporal, seemed rife for purposes of permanent disorganisation. This unsettled state of affairs has, however, by the inscrutable providence of GOD, the wisdom of the monarch who has ruled over the destinies of France, and the efflux of time, subsided into an order of things which, if it do not afford any brilliant harvest of present results, contrasts at least advantageously with what has been, and holds forth the hope and promise of much future good. Chastened and purified by the fiery trial of adversity and persecution, the clergy of the Church of France are again models of excellence and efficiency. Her prelates are to a man distinguished for their virtues and attainments; her parochial priesthood for active zeal and practical piety. Ten years ago, the priestly dress exposed its wearer to insult and contempt;-the clergy now walk abroad respected, or, at the least, unnoticed. For some time after the revolution of 1830, religious processions in the streets were either interdicted by authority, or could not take place without subjecting those who participated in them to mob contumely; they are now, in provincial towns at least, tolerated by the local powers, and attended, by the lower part of the population, with respect and devotional decorum. The churches, for many years abandoned, or frequented almost exclusively by women, now present to the eye at the principal Sunday services far more numerous and respectably composed congregations than formerly. In Paris, the labours of celebrated preachers have worked more than the mere ephemeral effects of transient eloquence upon excitable ears, they have reclaimed from vice and infidelity thousands of the rising youth. Confraternities of young men have been formed, to carry out, with all the fervour of the noblest Christian charity, the philanthropic projects of the great St. Vincent of Paul. Scattered over the whole country, the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine are preparing, by the exercise of that most self-denying of all virtues, the patient instruction of illiterate childhood in letters, morals, and religion, a race of men who, before the close of the present century, may redeem in their own persons the long-tarnished character of their country for religious orthodoxy and fervour. Pari passu with those admirable men, the sisters of charity diffuse throughout all the hospitals and charitable establishments of the kingdom the light of their

angelic ministry, breathing into the hardened ears of those whose mortal infirmities they tend and alleviate, the saving truths which restore health to the soul. Not a year passes but that from the parent establishment of the foreign missions in Paris, the French Church sends forth men of truly apostolic mould to the remotest and most benighted regions of heathendom,-not like the well-paid emissaries of the Bible - Society, to traffic with the natives, and secure comfortable habitations and grants of land for themselves and their wives and families,—but to propagate the truth, and bear the cross of Christ; to brave hardships, dangers, and death, and seal with their blood the triumph of their holy cause! Let us be permitted to remark en passant, that not the least of the many glorious attributes of the Catholic Church are the heroism and self-devotion of those among her ministers who thus devote themselves to the conversion of infidels, contrasting with the colonization schemes of the so-called missionaries of Protestant sects. We cannot imagine more accurate types of the two religions than Francis Xavier suffering every privation amidst the burning sands of the Indies, and the soi-disant ex-Jew bishop, with a wife and a whole litter of young children, escorted into Jerusalem by a party of marines! To return, however, to France: In addition to the ordinary services of the Church, throughout the whole country conducted with great regularity and order, separate exercises of worship and devotion extensively prevail in various dioceses, calculated to rekindle dormant piety. Thus the perpetual exposition and adoration of the blessed sacrament is carried out by means of an alphabetical arrangement of parishes, each of which successively relieves the other for forty-eight hours in attending to that solemnity. During the month of May, especially set apart to honour the immaculate Mother of our Redeemer, early masses celebrated in her name at beautifully decked altars, general communions, and nightly meetings for the purpose of singing harmonized canticles in the vernacular tongue, pleasingly and edifyingly diversify the tenour of daily worship. Upon these occasions, the churches are crowded, with the lower orders indeed, but with whom did Christ mostly sojourn on earth?―and during the intervals of singing, familiar expositions of Catholic doctrine are delivered from the pulpit.

Towards the great work of restoring the national religion, the government of the present sovereign of France has not a little contributed, though by prudently imperceptible degrees; and we have the authority of one of the vicars apostolic of England for saying that the now reigning pope has spoken of king Louis Philippe as one of the most valuable friends of the Church. Under his sway, episcopal and other clerical appointments have been judiciously filled up,-a prelate of acknow

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ledged zeal and merit has been sent to preside over the reviving Christianity of North Africa, and the very latest act of interference in ecclesiastical affairs has been the restoration of a high sacerdotal dignity in the person of the cardinal bishop of Arras, who has been appointed grand almoner of France. The present prime minister too, himself a Protestant, has, in the course of the late session, delivered an eloquent speech, the avowed purport of which was to advocate the propriety and expediency of France taking the lead among the Catholic powers of Christendom, and extending to the missionaries of her faith in far distant lands the same protection and encouragement which England affords to those of Protestant error. All these are striking signs of the times, and evince a marked spirit of improvement in the minds both of rulers and governed. But while we gladly accord the meed of approval to much that has been done, we must not shut our eyes to the glaring fact that much more remains to be achieved before France can again pretend to the rank of a thoroughly Christianized country. damning sin-her crying, fearful, and all-corrupting sin-is sabbath desecration. For the puritanical observance of the Sunday we are no advocates; but we do express a most deliberate opinion that a people who in all the dealings of commercial life assimilate the Sunday to every other day of the week, invoke upon their own heads Heaven's most overwhelming judgments! That upon the day of rest set apart by GOD himself, all the shops should be kept open, and all the ordinary business of life transacted in them as usual, is a disgrace alike to the authorities that tolerate, and the public that maintain so infamous a nuisance. No government, legitimist or constitutional, can ever be called either strong or Christian, that dares not put down with the vigorous arm of the law so foul an inroad on all the decorums of Christianity. It is certainly in close conjunction with the besetting and monstrous criminality of Sunday trading, that must be classed the withering indifference manifested by the great bulk of the commercial community in France to all the observances of religion. How are people to go to church, if an impious usage require their attendance behind the counter? Compel them to close their shop-windows, and by and bye the most indifferent will be induced to prefer the house of GOD to the solitude of their back parlours.

We now venture to approach-with great diffidence, however-the subject of certain practices of devotion upon which fashion seems to have set a kind of seal, but which, without impugning their excellence or efficacy, do not appear to us sufficiently intelligible to be recommended ostentatiously at least-to general adoption. We refer to those fraternities, monastic as well as lay, which adopt for their distinguishing name, and attach a mysteriously reverential meaning to, the "Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary." We have listened to sermons exclusively devoted to the illustration of this abstruse subject, fervid and highly wrought exhortations indeed, but which, in attempting to illustrate a fanciful theory, fell very short, in our estimation, of those addresses from the pulpit which confine themselves to the exposition of practical truths. If by the words "sacred heart" be intended the ordinary adoption of that supposition which makes the human heart the

seat of moral sentiments and affections, of course we apply it to our Redeemer, and to his overflowing tenderness and mercy to mankind, with every grateful feeling of thanksgiving and love; but to speak with metaphysical correctness, it is the soul, and no portion of our perishable bodies, which is the true seat of thought. With respect to the glorified person of JESUS Christ, we feel that we cannot err in saying that every portion of his body, from the hairs of his head to the soles of his feet, had a precisely equal claim to inestimable respect. If the advocates of the devotion we are now speaking of, rejoin that they reverence the sacred heart in a merely mystical sense, then we enquire why it is that so many modern pictures of our Saviour and of his Virgin Mother are, to our fancies, damaged and deformed by having inaccurate and disproportioned representations of the human heart depicted in the centre of their breasts? Such seeming conceits are perhaps too anatomical to be edifying, and were utterly unknown to the pencils of those great masters of the middle ages whose life-like representations of the principal events and personages of sacred history adorn the churches and museums of Italy and Belgium. We need no representation of a bleeding heart to enhance our emotions, when standing awe-stricken before Rubens' Descent from the Cross, or Vandyck's Crucifixion !

If our meditations be of Christ, let us follow him in spirit through all the phases of his earthly sojourn, from the manger of Bethlehem to the rock of Calvary! Let us contemplate him by turns receiving the homage of the eastern magi, instructing the elders in the temple, preaching to the multitudes,-working stupendous miracles, tempted, transfigured, betrayed, reviled, crucified, rising from the dead, ascending into heaven! Can we not, under all these and many other aspects, derive comfort and edification from dwelling upon the history of our Redeemer, without resorting to an abstraction which appears to us as irrelevant to the main purposes of religion, as its introduction in painting appears derogatory to the general good effect of a picture.

We have spoken of the present clergy of France as an exemplary and most meritorious race of men. They are so; and if they err at all, it is from excess of zeal,-from a desire to bring men to a standard of strictness and scrupulousness which is incompatible with the temper of the times. They appear to us to segregate themselves too entirely from the community of their fellow-men. In a country like France, for religion to recover lost ground, it were peculiarly desirable that its ministers should cultivate those manners and amenities of the world which regulate our ordinary intercourse, instead of secluding themselves from society, and denouncing the accustomed amusements of mankind with a severity more appropriate to crimes than levities. To reclaim the irreligious bulk of the people, the clergy should mix more with them, and confine themselves to the prohibition of all that is positively wrong, without discovering sinfulness in actions where none need necessarily exist. When a man in a self-accusing spirit takes up the examination of conscience, as it is set forth in many French prayerbooks, and finds in it questions on the downright infraction of the ten commandments, side by side with such an enquiry as "Have you been to balls or plays?" the landmarks of right and wrong become confused

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