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Show ; FRENCH CHURCH WALKING THE WAY OF THE CROSS. 9 . ... ' Protestant Ministers Xarfative in 'Boston ',Cougregationalist. It was a round dozen of years since I had visited vis-ited France save for a hurried day or two in her j cosmopolitan capital, and yet, because Europe changes so slowly, 1 was not prepared for any wide or deep spiritual renewal among this in some ways conservative people. The French church, indeed, had left a disagreeable impression on my' mind. Such dry-as-dust sermons, worthy of Duns Scotus j himself in their arid scholast icism, with a "spirit as hoary as the pulpits from which they came droning down! Such cold-hearted worship! I recalled it all with a touch almost of disgust. The change leaped upon me unexpected. That ihe French church is passing along the way of the cross all the world knows. Every provincial town is filled with the disconsolate forms of the teaching teach-ing orders, monks and nuns. Men and women, they are cultured, scholarly, lovable, who. to borrow a phrase from Le Petit Parisicn. have been '"kicked out upon the pavement" and into the homes of their peasant brothers and sisters, where they find a giudging welcome and a penury to which they have .been Jong unaccustomed. That thousands more of faithful, pure-hearted, earnest parish priests, are menaced with poverty and even starvation if the government presses on its radical and ill-judged forcing of an evolutionary development toward disestablishment no one can doubt.' 0, the French church is walking the way of the cross' assuredly ! And M. Combes is in a fair way to prove her Annas, An-nas, so bent is he on execution. But the result is O, what if has always been! When the robe of worldly success is stripped from the shoulders of the church, when the lash of persecution per-secution falls, she ever shows beneath that robe the ageh-ss image of the Master. With the terror of the future anel the horror of the present there is observable ob-servable from one end of France to the other a deep spiritual awakening. The old sloth, the old lack of zeal, earnestness and vigor have disappeared; the glow of a new life shines on the face of ihe who!'1 body religious from Normally to Burguuely' and from Burguuely back to Brittany. The way of the cross is leading to a resurrection profound, immeasurable. im-measurable. It showed in the sermons; they were real. The first Sabbath I sat conscience-compelled in ' ihe cathedral at Evrcux. expecting the rattle K( dry hones all over again. But the spirit of God- had passed by and this was life. I know not the preacher's preach-er's name or office. He was young and simply clad; his sermon was from ihe heart of a mail let. that suffice. The subject was confession; and if his insistence in-sistence on the confessional did prove-a Jut unpleasant un-pleasant to Protestant prejudices, the wdiole thing soared. "What good," he cried, '"is it to confess to a priest when your heart is not right foward God? What avails speaking to a man unless your soul is fully bent to serve Lord Jesus Christ '. 0 sometimes." some-times." he added, almost bitterly, "we pricstsv overburdened over-burdened by the hideousness of' your confessions, long to slip clean out, of the way and .leave ;your souls face to face with God. Then you must repent." re-pent." I sat dumfounded. The like I had never heard in a Catholic church. Yet next Sunday, the cardinal cardi-nal of Rheinis took up the same note. A magnificent magnifi-cent picture he made in his clear red rube, frosted over with the gleaming white of lace, set there he-, he-, ncath the bleu glow of those "huge clerstory : windows win-dows in the framework of all that oaring stone, that carved and blackened oak.. .His regular features, fea-tures, halo of snowy hair, huge black' eyes; his wrinkled handsfine as parchment, gripping the pulpit pul-pit edge; even the dull -learn of his great ring anel huge cross made him seem a1 picture by .Xattier rather than a man living in this year of our Lord 1904. However, this man was of today. He spoke to his priests, who sat in ordered rows below' the pulpit, and dealt entirely with the recent'erisis.. He was enhalocd with the spirit of. Christ: .."To their reproaches oppose deeds, not words." he counseled ; "show how glad you are to suffer abuse, hunger; cold and nakedness; nay. if need be. how glad you are o starve anel die in the service of him who!was. pierced for your sake.s.". : . He turned to the people for a moment and his voice rang with eagerness: "You charge us with mistakes. Yes, we have made mistakes,, we. priests, for we are human. But have we not. championed your rights, feel your poor, comforted your dying? Xay, haven't we willingly died in your lazar house since the church first began to preach ihe gospel of the Savior she loves C o - But I have no further space to dwell on this. The main thing isn't the sermon, after all. or eveii the -spirit of the clergy; it is the response from tho people. France is responding. The services .were not only well atleneled. but attended by all ages anel both sexejs. It is a common saying, in Paris. "Women and children go to church;, men don't." Xever was a lie more transparently false. Trusting Trust-ing that 1 was doing goeel service in the cause of truth, I snapped a Sabbath morning audience. Tf the masculinity of that audience' wouldn't mako glad the heart of any X'ew England pastor, with what could he he. satisfied i There were exceptions. Along the valley of the Loire arid at Laon. church-going Avas not so much in evidence. . At the cathedral of Rheims women predfuninatcd. On the other hand. Xotre Dame at Paris was well filled and, by actual reckoning, the men distinctly outnumbered the women.. . When I saw that I thanked God and took courage Furthermore, Fur-thermore, among the .daily worshippers , in thc churches. devout .and himnSle in. their faith. , were many men.' And' the men vere young! ' In France I the young man wears a uniform and the flare of scarlet everywhere lit up the somber pillars and long gray naves tf churches and cathedrals alike. Even the old Huguenot congregation in the "Faubourg "Fau-bourg St. Germain counted three soldiers in its scanty flock the day we worshipped there. Moreover, the whole land today is giving its best into the priesthood. It has been reiterated for decades that the French clergy is gathered from the peasants, o whom even the pitiful pension of a parish priest proves an allurement. That such has been the truth is indubitable. The rough hewn faces, clumsy build anel huge hands of the older fathers still bear a silent but. convincing witness. On this background the younger men and the theo-logues theo-logues stand sharply out. Persecution has raiseel up friends for the church in the house of her enemies ene-mies and T saw numbers of youthful pastors and students with the clear-cut profiles, and long, well-modeled well-modeled hands of the gentler classes. The French arc a nation of scribblers and lampoon lam-poon on every conceivable piece of blank:' wall their vehement convictions. After the first few days I read every one of these with care. Here anel there was a "Long live Combes!" "To the guilotine with our parish priests!" But that was the socialistic sentiment of mill cities. In Paris even, and all over the larger towns and down to the tinv villages it was: "Long live our well-beloved fathers," "The church forever," "Combes is the friend of his Satanic Majesty." "Combes is the friend of the priests, is he? O you hypocrite!" Besides all this there was a mass of doggerel, whose weird jumble of street slang made incomprehensible' to me anything beyond the fact that the church on the cross was shining her way into ihe hearts of the people. J had grown weary of the wayside crosses, the hideous barbarisms of Brittany, the painted monstrosities mon-strosities of Champagne, the ridiculous dolls of Loire Valley. Coming eut from Lacroix. a farming village, near Tours. I stopped suddenly beneath a great cross looming from the wayside. On jt hung a life-size Jesus. Xo garish glare of paint, no clumsy 'cutting of an unskilled tombstone-maker ; it was the Christ of Hofmann. A moderi Jesus, more human than that master of men who guards the portal of Amiens, more tender and loving than the majestic judge, who gazes out from above the rose window at Sens, the crucified Xazarene, th? Son of God who lived a man's life, the suffering Savior of the world was here. As I stoed beneath that gentle, down-droopeel face. I seemed to hear an ageless voice crying across the centuries, "'I am in my church. I lead my church 'ever by the way of the cross to the resurrection, even T, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever, the crucified." cruci-fied." REV. JAMES CHURCH ALYORD. . |