HYACINTHE LOYSON ON PAGANISM IN FRANCE.
The religious question, says Father Hyacinthe, whatever may be said or done, is the reigning question of our epoch. It is more and more evident, he adds, to any one who has the slightest perspicacity, that the question which France and the Republic have to solve under penalty of death—and of a death not far distant—is precisely the religious question. “Paganism in Paris” is the title he gives to his noteworthy article in the last Nineteenth Century. The paganism which, with admirable insight, he analyzes and depicts, is twofold. It is the paganism of superstition and the paganism of infidelity,—that of Ultramontanism and that of Rationalism. The one is the intellectual paganism, or “rather the irreligious, I should almost say the impious, paganism—for it is that which suppresses religion. The other paganism is the superstitious paganism, which distorts religion.” Paganism, he says, is vast; it stretches from the African fetichism to the pantheism of Brahmins and the atheism of the Buddhists, for atheism itself has its religion. The essence of paganism is defined in the words of Bossuet: “Everything is God except God himself!” The two schools in France, which at the present time carry all before them, which would fain grasp all methods of teaching, and gain control of all private and social life, are, he says, that of Materialism and of Positivism. He does not hesitate to tell these schools that they, in fact, are the embodiment of paganism in the sense of the substitution of man for God; the constant substitution of the finite for the Infinite, the creature for the Creator. He admits that it may be a comparatively pure paganism, “for, indeed, there could be no other within a Christian society.” As to the paganism of Ultramontanism, it has taken the form of two idols, one male, the other female ; the male idol is the pope, the female idol the Virgin Mary. The moral paganism is that which places some man, as in the modern Romish confessional, between the conscience and God. This he characterizes as “a fundamental immorality.” All it desires of man is this one thing: to abdicate all direct relations with supreme reason, with absolute justice, with God, and to place between the personal soul and these, a priest—that Italian priest who is called the pope. Between these two contrasting, yet closely related, paganisms, France seems forced to choose. The question which, with profound and touching earnestness, Father Hyacinthe urges is: Will they choose between these, or will they reject both? Will they kneel before the pope, or stray in the midst of their dreams, tottering in the midst of their doubts? They feel, he says, that a choice must be made, and they know not how to make it. “Weak souls, the majority, hesitate till on the point of death.” To these two paganisms he pleads with wonderful earnestness, “Let us reply with a restored Christianity. Ah! this is what must be done.” Speaking for himself, he says: “I shall not be like those who seek only immediate success. I shall not be like those who stop before duty and sacrifice, saying to themselves, ‘If I go further I shall not be followed. I shall march alone, if I am to be alone!’” The great malady which to-day afflicts the thought and life of Paris, of France, the ever-eloquent Hyacinthe rightly discerns and vividly portrays; that he knows how, practically, to prescribe for the remedy of the disease may be doubted. Those connected with the remarkable McAll mission in Paris, may understand that better than he. But how obvious it is that France is about to be a field for Christian missions, of pre-eminent interest and promise.—The Advance.