FRENCH RELIGIOUSNESS AND M. RENAN.
TREpopularity of M. Renan's Vie de Jesus in France is very great Mand very sudden. Already four large editions have been exhausted, and everywhere the fifth is on sale. In the common country town, far from the influence of Paris, in places such as Abbeville and Lisieux, there are copies in the meanest bookshop. Crowds of answers, most of them by the Roman Catholic clergy are advertised. The " Evangile selon Renan," as one of them calls it, is the most frequent topic of intellectual conversation. When men talk of theology they talk of M. Renan Dr. John- son would have said :—" Sir, this is fame ;" we may say, "at least this is influence." If the Vie de Jesus had nothing in it which was remarkable, and we have shown that it has much, the eagerness with which it has been received at the centre of European thought would in itself demand attention.
The first cause of this remarkable popularity is unquestionably the perfection of M. Renan's style. A Frenchman, above all things, demands good prose, and he will not read bad prose. As an Englishman of business will not look at an account of figures unless it is stated in what he consideui the business- like shape, so a Frenchman will not read a piece of intellectual writing unless it is what he calls Lien redige, unlesa it is reduced into a simple, lucid, and attractive style. A badly written book in France is of necessity a stillborn book. A writer who wrote in France, like Bishop Butler or like the late Mr. Austin in England, could never hope for real influence; we pardon unattractive expression for the sake of solid thought ; perhaps we are not sufficiently sensitive to the merits of style ; but a Frenchman in this particula; is exacting and rigid. It is true that this eagerness after good writing creates much writing which has good words and no thought ; it is true that the popular style in France has considerable defects; it is true that it is too epigram- matic and cuts up large facts into little sentences ; it is true that a French writer avoids complexities which are real, and do not admit of easy explanation ; it is certain that he cares to be brilliant more than he cares to be just. But after every allowance is made it will remain true that more good prose is written in France than is written anywhere else ; that every year sends forth some specimens of a fine style which it would not be easy to rival in any other literature ; that the ordinary Frenchman has a tact in, and a taste for, nicely fitting words that no other modern people claim or share. A book which has a great run in France must have, with whatever defects, many literary merits. These M. Renan's book undoubtedly has. Much of them will evaporate in translation, for there is a delicacy of statement, and especially a delicacy of ambiguity, which no translator will ever preserve. But even in a disenchanting translation the magic of the composition will be a little felt, and in the original the unwilling are bound by it as if by a spell. M. Renan has the first requisite of a French writer—he can write.
But it would be literary pedantry to suppose that mere excellence of style, however great, would give to any book that quick and
potent popularity which the Vie de Jesus possesses. Unless a writer have something fascinating to say, no charm of words will
carry the reader through a voliune. We may read one page for expression merely, as we eat a bonbon or two ; but we soon tire. It is impossible to doubt that M. Renan's treatise is suited to the sentiments, opinions, and habits of many Frenchmen.
The present state of French belief is, as M. Comte remarked, disorganized. A Frenchman has generally some vague, some floating, some unsolidified religion ofihis own, but the only point on which he has a very definite and precise conviction is that priests are not to be listened to. "I do not, Sir, believe as my wife believes," a great English poet once said ; and most Frenchmen would say so, and have little else very exact upon religion to say. Catholicism they reject, as it were, from experience ; a sort of religiosity they preserve ;—but a precise new creed to substitute for the precise old creed they have not, and:scarcely hope to have. Mr. Arnold, in his report on French education, illustrates this remark by an anecdote which would give even an undue idea of the disorganized state of French thought. "In what condition is the moral and religious instruction in your school?" one of M. Guizet's inspectors asked a schoolmaster ; "Je n'enseigne pas ccs Mises Ri !" That such a phrase could be used by a recognized teacher of little children is a significant indication of the loose state of ordinary thought. As far, indeed, as this anecdote gives an impression of formed irreligion or immorality it is a libel on Frenchmen ; but as far as it indicates the vague laxity of their creed it is not a libel. They have religious:feelings ; but as far as precise pro- positions go their intellects are to let.
For minds such as these a book such as M. Renan's has, and must have, a singular interest. They wish, above most things, to adjust their mental position as respects Christianity ; they consider Catholicism to be an incredible legend, but they have no substitute to offer for it. They have no theory; they cannot say what Christianity is, whence it comes, and whither it goes. They want, too, a theory in some sense suitable to the age. In the eighteenth century men could be satisfied to impute the great religions of the world to craft, fraud, and imposture ; but they cannot be so now. In France especially history has been studied, and ;its results have become generally known. It is understood that fraud did not create faith, though it may sometimes modify and determine the embodiments of faith. Such a mode of studying history as M. Guizot's, though it may not be familiar to the mass of men at first hand,—though M. Guizot's;books may be too stately and too dull for universal perusal,—yet at second hand has generated a reveren- tial treatment of history. Frenchmen now desire a religious dis- belief; and it is this which M. Renan gives them. He is sceptical in history, but he is religious in feeling.
The solution, too, of the problem which M. Renan proposes seems to be an easy one. A little study would show that it contains insuperable difficulties ; but a casual reader may take it as it comes. He can glide upon the limpid stream, and not see the rocks below. The French are not hard readers ; they have no taste for research, they accumulate particular facts neither on old history nor on foreign countries at present. They are a people of in- tellectual curiosi ty, but there is no work in them. There is no diffused taste in France for a student's life ; England is not more practical in her way than France in hers. Ordinary persons in France wish to read a pleasant summary of German criticism, and this M. Renan gives them. In England such a treatise excites among ordinary persons at once a bitter repugnance. It proposes to destroy the Book which we know better than any book. But the French do not feel so. One of M. Renan's adversaries—one among the most bitter of them—observes naively, "After all this book may have a good effect, it may make us read the Scriptures." The difference between the familiarity with the Bible in France and the familiarity with it in England is written on the face of the two literatures. Every allusion to it in England is pointed, correct, and popular ; in France, not long ago, a distinguished writer spoke of the "beautiful mq of Chateaubriand," "Thou shall not live by bread alone." We must remember that M. Renan's book was written for and that it is read by a clever nation, which knows the Genie de Christianisme better than it knows the Gospels.
For the same reason, the French are not sensitive to one of M. Renan's peculiarities—his sentimentality. M. Renan holds that if St. John wrote the Gospel which bears his name, it must have been when he was old, and did not remember what happened. His mode of expressing that opinion is, "If the son of Zebedee really traced these pages, he had certainly forgotten the Lake of Gene- sareth, and the charming conversations (lea charmants entretiens) which he had heard upon its banks." He speaks as if of a ffirtation.
But it is not only in these secondary respects that M. Renan's book is congenial to the tastes and to the habits of many French- men ; not only are they sensitive to its accessory merits and in-
sensible to its accessory defects, but the back-bone of it, the very essence of M. Renan's conception, is suitable to such minds as theirs in such circumstances as theirs. We cannot hope to bring home to Protestant Englishmen the exclusiveness with which Frenchmen associate Christianity and Catholicism, but a curious instance of it has lately occurred in reference to a person whose writings have attracted much attention among literary persona in England. M. Sainte-Beuve, after describing a life of letters at Paris, certainly not extremely sceptical, not exceedingly different from the life of literary men in all countries, says of Maurice de Guerin that his family had the satisfaction of seeing him again become a Christian. He means that he again became a Catholic. He, like most Frenchmen, scarcely thinks of an intermediate state. It never occurs to him that there is any other form of Chris- tianity, any real variety of it effectually competing for human belief except Catholicism. French Protestantism is, in a great degree, like English dissent. It has no influence on people of the world. You know that Lord Palmerston—you know that a Belgravian lady, may either of them be subject to change ; but you know that neither of them will become an Independent dissenter. That form of religion is made for people who do not belong to the world, who are ignorant of the things of the world. Just so with French Protestantism. It is a thing apart, a creed for worthy and narrow persons, a creed not competing for intellects which the world has enlivened. And if it is natural for most Frenchmen to judge so, it is even more natural for M. Renan. He was a seminarist; he was to have been a Catholic priest. As Catholicism is the form of religion to which he was born, and which he tried to believe, he naturally thinks it the principal form.
If we examine M. Renan's view of the origin of Christianity we shall find that it has a close analogy to the present working of Catho- licism. Like most other writers, he takes into the remote past, which he has not seen, the familiar present which he has seen. It is not, indeed, easy to reduce M. Renan's conception of the first Christianity to a sentence or two without either seeming vague or seeming blasphemous. His opinions are so different from those of most Englishmen, that when tangibly and precisely presented most Englishmen are revolted by them. Still, their essence is this. He believes that Christianity was first disseminated by the unde- finable attraction of Jesus, by his winning and subduing person- ality; but he believes also that this personality was aided by an unfounded belief in the approaching end of the world, and by an unfounded belief that He himself was in some special sense a king and prophet. The announcement that the world would break up enabled Him to preach a life apart, to found a separate sect with an impracticable morality ; His announcement of His own place in the future kingdom enabled Him to govern that sect, to speak with authority as to that morality. The charm of His person was, says M. Renan, aided by the power of His errors. He advertised Himself by mistake and exaggeration, and He ruled by a magic of fascination. Now, if this is a very bad description of the first Christianity, it is a very good description of one aspect of existing Catholicism. It advertises itself by its bold pretension it says it is a king, a prophet, a supernatural agency ; it can bind. and loose ; it has authority to speak ; it has a lesson to teach ; it teaches an unearthly morality; it tells men not to form ties in the world, not to go out of the world, not to be comfortable and rich, but to be poor and holy ; to live as saints in convents, not to live as. men in the world. This is a lesson which eager men learn readily, which imaginative men love to hear. It gets rid of the tameness of life, of the poorness of human duties, of the petty definiteness of ordinary existence. A superhuman morality will always be ae- ceptable to aspiring youth ; they will run to hear it, they will long to obey and practise it. Catholicism advertises for men with spiritual ambition, and she bids higher than any other creed. We need not show at length her imaginative attraction ; all the world knows that, and has known it for ages. She rules many men and innumerable women by a magic attraction which is scarcely expli- cable to those who do not feel it. She, too, advertises by her errors.,. and charms by her undefinable essence. M. Renan's Christ, if we look into it, is only a reduced copy of the Christianity of the Catholicism of the church of his boyhood. He fancies that Jesus ruled as he saw her rule, that He erred as she erred, that He charmed as she charmed.
Frenchmen who, like M. Renan, in fact, identify Christianity with Catholicism are not, therefore, unlikely to be attracted by his theory. It rests on the facts which they know, and it neglects all the facts which they do not know. It says, in substance, "Jesus charmed the women of his time as the priests charm the women of your time," and this is the very theory which Frenchmen woukl most readily appreciate and most easily believe.
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