Hatred of God’s Word

In an attempt to vent their hatred of God’s Word, Bibles, prayer books and hymnbooks were destroyed in massive bonfires. Citizens were forbidden to keep the Lord’s Day. Nevertheless, on November 22, 1793 all clergy who had renounced their duties were guaranteed their pensions.

Revocation of the Edict of Nantes

Samuel Smiles has written,

When they were suppressed or banished, there was an end of their industrial undertakings. The further growth of a prosperous middle class was prevented; and the misgovernment of the ruling class, being unchecked, the mass of the working class were first left idle, then naked and starving.

Carlyle expressed the utter emptiness the Libertine spirit effected upon the French people. He said it left them "emptiness of pocket, of stomach, of head, and of heart." 8

The Naked and the Starving

The soldiers who before them had been commissioned to hunt down the Huguenots who attended worship the government had not authorized were now commissioned to guard market places where food was exposed to the starving.

According to Smiles, "The great body of the people had become reduced to absolute destitution. They had no possession whatever but their misery." 9 And, the Bishop of Chartres told the king that in his diocese the people browsed like sheep filling their stomachs with grass.

It is reported that in Paris alone there were 20,000 beggars prowling about in rags. 10 As early as 1789, crowds were seen hovering about the Royal Palace "spectral-looking" and delirious with hunger.

Foulon, a member of the king’s council, on being told the plight of the people said, "Wait till I am minister: I will make them eat hay; my horses eat it." 11 When the hungry mob heard of his words, they laid hold upon him and first hanged him, and then carried his head through the streets, his mouth filled with hay.

The starving rose to burn the chateaus of the nobles. They burned their crops and destroyed their title deeds. On several occasions, church bells were tolled to summon all the people to share in the work of destruction. In the Madonnais and Beaujolais alone, 72 chateaus were wrecked, and then burned. The Conflagration spread through Dauphiny, Alsace and the Lyonnaise—the very quarter from which only a century before, the Calvinists had been so fiercely driven out.

Where the Huguenots had pursued industry, the now starving and infuriated peasants reeking with revenge worked havoc upon their lords. Their rulers had taught them all too well the use of "the dungeon, fire and sword."

Dr. Thomas Arnold wrote,

Murder

Paris would have nothing to do with the God of Grace who had sent His Son that sin, guilt, and shame would be atoned. They had instead risen to fill the streets and doorways with the bodies of Protestants. Now, the tables were turned his men and women were seen with axes, and with blood to their elbows, their bodies bent as they hacked away at the wounded. The streets of Paris ran with blood.

In Paris, Marat called for "800 gallows in convenient rows to hang the enemies of the people." 13 He declared he would not rest satisfied with anything less than 200,000 heads of the aristocracy.

In Nantes, where the famous Edict of Toleration was first proclaimed, and afterwards revoked, the guillotine was worked until the headsman sank exhausted. To hasten the destruction of life, a general fusillade followed in the plains of Mauve that made victims of men, women and even children.

Neither Nancy, nor Lyons, nor Rouen, nor Bordeaux, nor Montauban escaped the cruelties they had inflicted upon the Huguenots a century before.

In order to prevent the priests and the nobles from escaping, the same measures were adopted by the Revolutionary Convention that Louis XIV had employed to prevent the escape of the Calvinists. The borders were strictly guarded. All roads leading out of France were patrolled. Severe laws were passed prohibiting emigration. Those people fortunate enough to escape made their way into Switzerland or Germany or crossed the Channel into England.

The Murder of the King and Queen

The murderous outrages of Louis XIV had sown barbarism to the winds, and now Louis XVI and his Queen, Marie Antoinette, felt the whirlwind. A mob of starving men and women burst into the palace at Versailles shouting, "Bread! Bread!" They insisted the king and queen accompany them to Paris.

Like the Huguenots before them, the royal family tried to escape across the border into Germany, but the king’s own highway was closed to him, and fugitives were led back to Paris and to "Madame Guillotine."

The king attempted to address a few words to his subjects but the drums were ordered beaten in order to drown his voice. The last time a similar scene had occurred in France was when Fulcran Rey, a young Huguenot pastor, had opened his mouth to publicly confess his faith, and the drummers posted about the scaffold had been ordered to beat, thus leaving his dying speech unheard. The murder of the preacher was at last avenged.

The Feast of Reason

Faith in God had all but vanished. France had accepted situation ethics. Religion, represented by the degenerate priesthood fell into contempt and the reign of materialism and atheism rose on the tide. Of old, the prophet Isaiah has written, "The wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt: there is no peace saith my God to the wicked. (Isaiah 57:20,21)

On November 10, 1793, the Revolutionary government in Paris, In celebration of the abolition of religion, instituted the Feast of Reason. It was held in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in which a temple of philosophy had been erected. Mademoiselle Maillard, an opera singer, was carried through the streets in a Sedan Chair, in the attire of a Greek. She was carried to the National Convention where she was proclaimed the "Goddess of Reason." Then, the revelers once again carried her to the Cathedral where hymns were sung to Reason.

There remained no element in the state or church to give stability to society. There was no moral weight among any class of citizens. Consequently, the people swept away both God and king.

"We think we are justified", said Samuel Smiles,

Dr. Thomas Arnold on "France"

In the last paragraphs in his Diary, and which he entered the year before his death, Dr. Thomas Arnold wrote,

Application

Are there no lessons to learn here? Can no applications be drawn? Does History afford no warnings to men and nations?

There are some alarming analogies to be made between the French Revolution of 1789 and the direction America’s Ship of State is steering. Observe just a few.

1^st, Consider the growing contempt for godliness in our land. American life has been inundated with philosophic Rationalism that has been advanced by the reputed intelligentsia to take the place of Religion.

For instance, Baptists have historically rejected the Lutheran notion that paintings and sculptures are "helps" in worship, but it is ominous when civil libertarians chisel away at every vestige of religion in American life, even to the abolishing of public displays of nativity scenes.

2nd, Witness the encroachments of the State by seizing from the church the records of marriages, births, and deaths. Marriage is a Divinely ordained institution, yet since the Civil War, the State has perpetrated upon American life the state-approved marriage license. The result has been a stinging blow to society’s most fundamental unit

--the home. Witness the proliferation of divorce and immorality. God has not authorized the State to dissolve what He has joined together.

Fidelity in marriage is disregarded. Motherhood is considered with contempt.

3^rd, Be Warned! How silent have the pulpits become in America! Woe be unto us if God is no longer with us!

4th, Mark how religious days are being renamed. Thanksgiving Day, for instance, has in recent years become known as "Turkey Day", while "the Lord’s Day" has become as important for business as any other weekday.

5th, Have you considered the appalling ignorance of our publicly educated, government-approved children?

6th, Consider the low ebb of morality is the Church in our day. Scandals involving the like of Jim and Tammy Baker and Oral Roberts may very well result in the untaught, misguided, and morally perverse rising to burn our churches, and to butcher our children.

7th, Think, What is the purpose behind the United States Federal Government issuing churches "Federal I.D. Numbers" unless it be to soon demand an "oath of allegiance" to public policy, or to suffer the confiscation of church properties --probably by taxation.

8^th, Consider that while the laboring class in these United States may not be exiled from our shores, yet they are being hunted, and drowned, and hanged, and burned, and skinned by the evils of a graduated income tax --a tax that becomes more oppressive to each succeeding generation. If God does not send a Revival that will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and cause Americans once again to love mercy, and to do justly, and to walk humbly with God --then we will witness a bloodbath in our lifetime that will make the French Revolution appear to be a minor disagreement.

-Footnotes

1 Samuel Smiles, Character. New York: William Allison Company. (no date), p. 72.

2 Samuel Smiles, The Huguenots: Their Settlements, Churches, and Industries in England and Ireland. Fourth Edition. London: John Murray, 1870. p.

3 Ibid. p. 338.

4 Ibid. p. 335.

5 Ibid. pp. 341-342.

6 Ibid. p. 342.

7 Ibid. p. 341.

8 Ibid. p. 335.

9 Ibid. p. 338.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Samuel Smiles, Duty. Chicago: Belford, Clarke and Co., 1888. p. 102 note.

13 Smiles, Huguenots. p. 339.

14 Smiles, Character. p. 40, note.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. Edited by Samuel Jackson. Vol. IV of 15 vols. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House. Copyright 1977.

Smiles, Samuel. Character. New York: William Allison Co., (no date)

Smiles, Samuel. Duty. Chicago: Belford, Clarke and Co., Copyright 1888.

Smiles, Samuel. The Huguenots: Their Settlements, Churches and Industries in England and Ireland. Fourth Edition. London: John Murray, 1870.

A TIME FOR SACKCLOTH

"William Carey’s old stone Baptist Church building England was recently bulldozed and a Hindu Temple built in its place. This was the building in which he preached and prayed, wept and waited for God to send him to India. He went. More recently, India came to England.

* "Mosques are sprouting on the shores of the North Sea.

This trend is being experienced in America as well. Each year this nation receives a prodigious number of immigrants who not only have no concept of religious freedom, but who are missionaries who come from heathen lands with the intention of converting America to heathen darkness.

(The facts quoted above are taken from the bulletin published by Grace Fellowship of Delray Beach, Florida, Charles Carrin, pastor. While we are not sympathetic to Pastor Carrin’s Charismatic theology, we believe him to be a brother in Christ.)

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