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Christ, and struggling with a heroism, a skill, a success worthy of all admiration, against the fearful odds they have to contend with.

This study of the two adverse hosts will enable us to forecast, under God's good 'providence, the destiny of the kingdom of St. Louis at the close of the nineteenth and the opening of the twentieth century of the Christian era.

I.

Should any reader be startled by the heading of this article, or be disposed to question the anti-Christian character of the warfare made on the entire social order in France by the men of 1789, and which their successors are determined to carry on to ultimate and complete victory in 1889, then let him peruse the facts which we here submit to his judgment.

De Tocqueville, whose earlier works betrayed the influence of the false liberalism prevailing among his contemporaries, formed, in the light of his riper experience, a truer estimate of things. We may trust to his having studied conscientiously and judged fairly the principles and tendencies dominant in France a hundred years ago.

"One of the first steps taken by the French Revolution," he says in his latest work, l'Ancien Régime et la Revolution, “was to assail the Church, and, among the passions sprung from that revolution, the first which blazed forth and the last to be extinguished was the anti-religious passion. Napoleon, who had been able to put down the liberal genius of the French Revolution, vainly endeavored to conquer its anti-Christian genius. Even in our own times we have known men who thought they atoned for their servility toward the lowest agents of the political power by their insolence toward God; and who, while giving up whatever was most liberal, most noble, and most elevating in the doctrines of the Revolution, fancied that they were true to its spirit because they persisted in being unbelievers."

That the anti-Christian passion, which was, indeed, "the first to blaze forth" at the beginning of the Revolution, was also the "last to be extinguished," or ever extinguished at all, we shall see presently. It is only stating what is simple historical truth when we say that this intense passion, after having exhausted its fierceness during the last twelve years of the eighteenth century in destruction, bloodshed and persecution, slumbered on, like the flames of Etna, with occasional outbursts, till the great eruption in 1880-81, under the Ferry-Bert ministry. And to this outbreak of the unsparing and devastating "dechristianizing" spirit has succeeded a fresh and no less violent eruption in 1888, which is itself only VOL. XIII.-33

prophetic of something still more fearful during the centennial celebration of next year.

President Grévy and his unscrupulous son-in-law, Daniel Wilson, were, in all conscience, sufficiently devoted to such republicanism as European Freemasons are capable of understanding or tolerating. But, like Gambetta, who was cut off by a decree of the occult force governing France at present, poor old Grévy had still some lingering traditional reverence for the social order and institutions of the past. The dishonest speculations in which his son-in-law indulged were only a pretext for rudely unseating the President. And in his place was chosen a man whose very name and well-known principles are a guarantee that he will do his utmost to complete in 1889 the revolutionary work begun in 1789.

Then the very ministry which has just come into power, the Floquet-Lockroy ministry, are, like the President of the Republic himself, the avowed heirs of the anti-Christian conspirators in the States-General of 1789, who destroyed the ancient constitution of France, and, for a time at least, utterly overturned the entire social order created there by Christianity. What their ancestors and predecessors did not succeed in accomplishing permanently, they are now resolved and pledged to do: to blot out from France, once and for all time, the very last remnants of all religious institutions; to pluck up by the roots, from the mind, the heart, the public and private life of France, the faith in Christ the Redeemer, the belief in God and in the life to come.

They are pledged to do this. The very conclusion of the first ministerial programme was a solemn promise to the extreme radicals and revolutionists in both houses of Parliament that the policy of the Government should be "to steer (the vessel of State) ever more and more in the direction of the Left," that is, the revolutionary party.

There can be thus no possibility of mistaking the one great and immediate purpose of these revolutionists,-namely, to carry forward the anti-Christian and anti-social revolution, begun a century ago, to the extremities contemplated by the Jacobins of that period and sworn to by those of to-day.

Leo XIII., in that magnificent Encyclical, Humanum genus, described the great conspiracy against Christian civilization entered into in the days of our great-grandfathers by Illuminism and Masonry. As was said of Voltaire, the mouthpiece and tool of these conspirators, who died on the eve of the French Revolution, that "he did not live to see the widespread destruction his principles and his disciples had wrought"; so we may say of the conspirators and Jacobins of 1788: "They have not lived to see what

we see; but they are the authors of the mighty changes we behold."

Let us now study the plan of campaign just adopted by the Republican Union, composed of all the avowed revolutionists, socialists and communists inside and outside of the French Parliament.

On the evening of May 23d, 1888, there met by appointment at the Grand Orient, in the Rue Cadet, 430 Freemasons, senators, members of the Chamber of Deputies, of the Paris Municipal Council, and other leading political personages. The initiative in calling this meeting was taken by M. Clémenceau, the acknowledged leader of the extreme Radical Left, by M. Jefferin, the standard bearer of the Socialists, and by M. Ranc, the spokesman of the Opportunists or Gambetta Republicans.

The meeting resolved itself into what is henceforth to become historical as La Société des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen. In their preliminary declaration, after saying that their immediate object is to defeat the "Boulanger adventure, so humiliating for the country," they affirm that they also are in favor of a revision of the Constitution. "We are the sons of the French Revolution," they say; "we are the admirers of this Revolution, not as considered at any one of its phases, but of the entire movement forward of a free people who undertook to solve every problem, and would have succeeded therein had they not been stopped in their march. We are, therefore, determined to make use of every means in order to prevent a Cæsaristic reaction to throw our country back for the third time.

"A revision of the Constitution is needed; but it must be a Republican revision, not the Bonapartist revision, demanded as an expedient by those who have set on foot the new plebiscitary movement for the sole purpose of establishing a one-man power.

"But this revision alone is not sufficient. We must take up where it stopped the national movement of the French Revolution, and become its continuators."

We italicize this pregnant sentence to fix attention on the real aim of the men who are now all-powerful in France, and are likely to so continue for some years to come. We shall see presently what is the precise nature of the "interrupted work" which the revolutionary heirs of 1789-99 undertake to carry forward to its ultimate perfection. Only let the reader not be deceived by the fine words he is about to read: freedom and right and conscience mean for us American freemen things entirely different from what is in the mind and in the heart of a French radical and revolutionist.

"We must protect," they continue, "individual liberties and

public liberties, the liberties pertaining to the propagation of doctrines, to the press, to meetings, to associating, all guaranteed under the republican system.

"We must carry on the development of the Republic in its entireness, that is, to realize progressively all the constitutional, political and social reforms thereby implied.

"To the threatened attempts to set up a dictatorship we must oppose the maintenance of the rights of manhood and citizenship proclaimed by the Revolution.

"Such is our purpose.

"We find an instrument for effecting it in our Republican tradition, in the restoration of the great political associations which, by grouping together all the democratic forces of Paris and the departments, were the stimulating energy of the Revolutionary assemblies.

"We hereby found the Society of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.

"Its object is to defend the Republic by combating without mercy every attempt in favor of reaction or a dictatorship."

Then the by-laws of the Society were read by M. Clémenceau, and three representative men delivered addresses, two of whom were leading members of the Paris Municipal Council, known to be Autonomists or Communards.

As one of the most influential of the morning journals remarks, "thus is created a vast organization destined to spread all over France."

The permanent executive committee of twenty-nine members, appointed to act in the name of the new society, foreshadows, unless we are much mistaken, one of the most powerful and energetic instruments ever devised by Jacobinism.

Now let us see what is to be the "animating and governing spirit," of this formidable organization. As, during the last few months, efforts have been made by M. Laguerre, the chief supporter of General Boulanger, to enlist in favor of the latter, not only the Masonic lodge of which M. Laguerre is the head, but as many as possible of the countless lodges covering France like a net-work, counter efforts have been made to secure for the Floquet ministry the support of French Masonry; and how far M. Floquet or his friends have succeeded in this we shall now see.

Some days before, and in advance of the important meeting above referred to, the heads of the principal Masonic lodges of Paris and its neighborhood met at the Grand Orient and decided to hold, in Paris, on Sunday, June 3d, at 2 P.M., a congress of French Masons. This assemblage is also called together for the ostensible purpose of counteracting the Boulanger movement.

One of the organs of the sect, Le Mot d'Odre, publishes an editorial on the subject, with the heading, "The Masonic Action," which deserves to be attentively read by all who still cherish any affection for the Christian social order under which their forefathers lived.

"This awakening, this transformation of Freemasonry," so the editor writes, “which, after the night of the Napoleonic empire, had some difficulty in coming into the light of day, had been preceded by an interior movement which, although not much observed in its details, is not the less real in its main results. For some time previously Freemasonry manifested a tendency toward freeing itself from traditional customs, respectable indeed in themselves, but repellent to a number of serious-minded men,—a tendency to aim at something higher than the appearing to be a mysterious society with a fantastic ritual and fearful ceremonies. . . .

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We all know at present that besides doing away with these ridiculous forms of initiation, etc., French Masonry abjured everything which bore any trace of a religious ceremonial, anything that could bear the construction of a belief in God.

'Freemasonry," the article goes on to say, "is, therefore, no longer that excessively traditionalistic institution in the eyes of some people, that somewhat laughable institution to the mind of others. An outsider could no longer embarrass a Mason by asking for a little curaçoa mixed up in the Hiram bitters, since the cup of bitterness is alone generally presented to adepts in our day.

"We are organizing a great Masonic congress for the first Sunday of June in Paris. It will be an imposing manifestation, not only by its numbers, but because, as a republican demonstration, it will make a great noise throughout the country. The very numerous adhesions to the policy of M. Floquet's ministry, sent in by the Lodges from all parts of France, can leave no room for doubting as to what spirit will preside over this congress.

"Masonic action is, just at this moment, one of the surest and most lawful means of defending ourselves and to prepare for truly republican elections. Let us not permit this weapon to rust or to get ruined by contempt, or ridicule, or ignorance."

Placed side by side with these open declarations, the circular recently issued by the Grand Orient of Italy, and calling on all the Italian Lodges to take at once the most energetic action for combating by the ballot-box and by every available means of influence religious institutions in Italy and every man who dares to uphold them, and you will perceive that there is to be concerted action on both sides of the Alps in carrying out the plan of campaign

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