Chapter 15 - The Bible and the French Revolution

The Bible and the French Revolution
In the sixteenth century the Reformation, presenting an open Bible
to the people, had sought admission to all the countries of Europe.
Some nations welcomed it with gladness, as a messenger of Heaven. In
other lands the papacy succeeded to a great extent in preventing its entrance;
and the light of Bible knowledge, with its elevating influences,
was almost wholly excluded. In one country, though the light found
entrance, it was not comprehended by the darkness. For centuries,
truth and error struggled for the mastery. At last the evil triumphed,
and the truth of Heaven was thrust out. “This is the condemnation,
that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than
light.” John 3:19. The nation was left to reap the results of the course
which she had chosen. The restraint of God’s Spirit was removed from
a people that had despised the gift of His grace. Evil was permitted to
come to maturity. And all the world saw the fruit of willful rejection
of the light.
The war against the Bible, carried forward for so many centuries
in France, culminated in the scenes of the Revolution. That terrible
outbreaking was but the legitimate result of Rome’s suppression of the
Scriptures. (See Appendix.) It presented the most striking illustration
which the world has ever witnessed of the working out of the papal
policy—an illustration of the results to which for more than a thousand [266]
years the teaching of the Roman Church had been tending.
The suppression of the Scriptures during the period of papal
supremacy was foretold by the prophets; and the Revelator points
also to the terrible results that were to accrue especially to France from
the domination of the “man of sin.”
Said the angel of the Lord: “The holy city shall they tread underfoot
forty and two months. And I will give power unto My two
witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore
days, clothed in sackcloth.... And when they shall have finished
their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall
make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And
221
222 The Great Controversy
their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually
is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified....
And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make
merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets
tormented them that dwelt on the earth. And after three days and a
half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon
their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them.” Revelation
11:2-11.
The periods here mentioned—“forty and two months,” and “a thousand
two hundred and threescore days”—are the same, alike representing
the time in which the church of Christ was to suffer oppression
from Rome. The 1260 years of papal supremacy began in A.D. 538,
and would therefore terminate in 1798. (See Appendix note for page
54.) At that time a French army entered Rome and made the pope a
prisoner, and he died in exile. Though a new pope was soon afterward
elected, the papal hierarchy has never since been able to wield the
power which it before possessed.
The persecution of the church did not continue throughout the
entire period of the 1260 years. God in mercy to His people cut short
[267] the time of their fiery trial. In foretelling the “great tribulation” to
befall the church, the Saviour said: “Except those days should be
shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those
days shall be shortened.” Matthew 24:22. Through the influence of the
Reformation the persecution was brought to an end prior to 1798.
Concerning the two witnesses the prophet declares further: “These
are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the
God of the earth.” “Thy word,” said the psalmist, “is a lamp unto
my feet, and a light unto my path.” Revelation 11:4; Psalm 119:105.
The two witnesses represent the Scriptures of the Old and the New
Testament. Both are important testimonies to the origin and perpetuity
of the law of God. Both are witnesses also to the plan of salvation. The
types, sacrifices, and prophecies of the Old Testament point forward
to a Saviour to come. The Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament
tell of a Saviour who has come in the exact manner foretold by type
and prophecy.
“They shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and three-score
days, clothed in sackcloth.” During the greater part of this period,
God’s witnesses remained in a state of obscurity. The papal power
Bible and the French Revolution 223
sought to hide from the people the word of truth, and set before them
false witnesses to contradict its testimony. (See Appendix.) When
the Bible was proscribed by religious and secular authority; when its
testimony was perverted, and every effort made that men and demons
could invent to turn the minds of the people from it; when those
who dared proclaim its sacred truths were hunted, betrayed, tortured,
buried in dungeon cells, martyred for their faith, or compelled to flee
to mountain fastnesses, and to dens and caves of the earth—then the
faithful witnesses prophesied in sackcloth. Yet they continued their
testimony throughout the entire period of 1260 years. In the darkest
times there were faithful men who loved God’s word and were jealous
for His honor. To these loyal servants were given wisdom, power, and [268]
authority to declare His truth during the whole of this time.
“And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth,
and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must
in this manner be killed.” Revelation 11:5. Men cannot with impunity
trample upon the word of God. The meaning of this fearful denunciation
is set forth in the closing chapter of the Revelation: “I testify unto
every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any
man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues
that are written in this book: and if any man shall take away from the
words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out
of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which
are written in this book.” Revelation 22:18, 19.
Such are the warnings which God has given to guard men against
changing in any manner that which He has revealed or commanded.
These solemn denunciations apply to all who by their influence lead
men to regard lightly the law of God. They should cause those to fear
and tremble who flippantly declare it a matter of little consequence
whether we obey God’s law or not. All who exalt their own opinions
above divine revelation, all who would change the plain meaning of
Scripture to suit their own convenience, or for the sake of conforming
to the world, are taking upon themselves a fearful responsibility. The
written word, the law of God, will measure the character of every man
and condemn all whom this unerring test shall declare wanting.
“When they shall have finished [are finishing] their testimony.” The
period when the two witnesses were to prophesy clothed in sackcloth,
ended in 1798. As they were approaching the termination of their work
224 The Great Controversy
in obscurity, war was to be made upon them by the power represented
as “the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit.” In many of the
nations of Europe the powers that ruled in church and state had for
[269] centuries been controlled by Satan through the medium of the papacy.
But here is brought to view a new manifestation of satanic power.
It had been Rome’s policy, under a profession of reverence for the
Bible, to keep it locked up in an unknown tongue and hidden away
from the people. Under her rule the witnesses prophesied “clothed in
sackcloth.” But another power—the beast from the bottomless pit—
was to arise to make open, avowed war upon the word of God.
“The great city” in whose streets the witnesses are slain, and where
their dead bodies lie, is “spiritually” Egypt. Of all nations presented
in Bible history, Egypt most boldly denied the existence of the living
God and resisted His commands. No monarch ever ventured upon
more open and highhanded rebellion against the authority of Heaven
than did the king of Egypt. When the message was brought him by
Moses, in the name of the Lord, Pharaoh proudly answered: “Who is
Jehovah, that I should hearken unto His voice to let Israel go? I know
not Jehovah, and moreover I will not let Israel go.” Exodus 5:2, A.R.V.
This is atheism, and the nation represented by Egypt would give voice
to a similar denial of the claims of the living God and would manifest a
like spirit of unbelief and defiance. “The great city” is also compared,
“spiritually,” to Sodom. The corruption of Sodom in breaking the law
of God was especially manifested in licentiousness. And this sin was
also to be a pre-eminent characteristic of the nation that should fulfill
the specifications of this scripture.
According to the words of the prophet, then, a little before the year
1798 some power of satanic origin and character would rise to make
war upon the Bible. And in the land where the testimony of God’s
two witnesses should thus be silenced, there would be manifest the
atheism of the Pharaoh and the licentiousness of Sodom.
This prophecy has received a most exact and striking fulfillment
in the history of France. During the Revolution, in 1793, “the world
[270] for the first time heard an assembly of men, born and educated in
civilization, and assuming the right to govern one of the finest of the
European nations, uplift their united voice to deny the most solemn
truth which man’s soul receives, and renounce unanimously the belief
and worship of a Deity.”—Sir Walter Scott, Life of Napoleon, vol. 1,
Bible and the French Revolution 225
ch. 17. “France is the only nation in the world concerning which the
authentic record survives, that as a nation she lifted her hand in open
rebellion against the Author of the universe. Plenty of blasphemers,
plenty of infidels, there have been, and still continue to be, in England,
Germany, Spain, and elsewhere; but France stands apart in the world’s
history as the single state which, by the decree of her Legislative
Assembly, pronounced that there was no God, and of which the entire
population of the capital, and a vast majority elsewhere, women as well
as men, danced and sang with joy in accepting the announcement.”—
Blackwood’s Magazine, November, 1870.
France presented also the characteristics which especially distinguished
Sodom. During the Revolution there was manifest a state
of moral debasement and corruption similar to that which brought
destruction upon the cities of the plain. And the historian presents
together the atheism and the licentiousness of France, as given in
the prophecy: “Intimately connected with these laws affecting religion,
was that which reduced the union of marriage—the most sacred
engagement which human beings can form, and the permanence of
which leads most strongly to the consolidation of society—to the state
of a mere civil contract of a transitory character, which any two persons
might engage in and cast loose at pleasure.... If fiends had set
themselves to work to discover a mode of most effectually destroying
whatever is venerable, graceful, or permanent in domestic life, and
of obtaining at the same time an assurance that the mischief which it
was their object to create should be perpetuated from one generation
to another, they could not have invented a more effectual plan that
the degradation of marriage.... Sophie Arnoult, an actress famous for [271]
the witty things she said, described the republican marriage as ‘the
sacrament of adultery.’”—Scott, vol. 1, ch. 17.
“Where also our Lord was crucified.” This specification of the
prophecy was also fulfilled by France. In no land had the spirit of
enmity against Christ been more strikingly displayed. In no country
had the truth encountered more bitter and cruel opposition. In the
persecution which France had visited upon the confessors of the gospel,
she had crucified Christ in the person of His disciples.
Century after century the blood of the saints had been shed. While
the Waldenses laid down their lives upon the mountains of Piedmont
“for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ,” similar
226 The Great Controversy
witness to the truth had been borne by their brethren, the Albigenses
of France. In the days of the Reformation its disciples had been put to
death with horrible tortures. King and nobles, highborn women and
delicate maidens, the pride and chivalry of the nation, had feasted their
eyes upon the agonies of the martyrs of Jesus. The brave Huguenots,
battling for those rights which the human heart holds most sacred, had
poured out their blood on many a hard-fought field. The Protestants
were counted as outlaws, a price was set upon their heads, and they
were hunted down like wild beasts.
The “Church in the Desert,” the few descendants of the ancient
Christians that still lingered in France in the eighteenth century, hiding
away in the mountains of the south, still cherished the faith of their
fathers. As they ventured to meet by night on mountainside or lonely
moor, they were chased by dragoons and dragged away to lifelong
slavery in the galleys. The purest, the most refined, and the most intelligent
of the French were chained, in horrible torture, amidst robbers
and assassins. (See Wylie, b. 22, ch. 6.) Others, more mercifully dealt
with, were shot down in cold blood, as, unarmed and helpless, they
[272] fell upon their knees in prayer. Hundreds of aged men, defenseless
women, and innocent children were left dead upon the earth at their
place of meeting. In traversing the mountainside or the forest, where
they had been accustomed to assemble, it was not unusual to find “at
every four paces, dead bodies dotting the sward, and corpses hanging
suspended from the trees.” Their country, laid waste with the sword,
the ax, the fagot, “was converted into one vast, gloomy wilderness.”
“These atrocities were enacted ... in no dark age, but in the brilliant
era of Louis XIV. Science was then cultivated, letters flourished, the
divines of the court and of the capital were learned and eloquent men,
and greatly affected the graces of meekness and charity.”—Ibid., b. 22,
ch. 7.
But blackest in the black catalogue of crime, most horrible
among the fiendish deeds of all the dreadful centuries, was the St.
Bartholomew Massacre. The world still recalls with shuddering horror
the scenes of that most cowardly and cruel onslaught. The king of
France, urged on by Romish priests and prelates, lent his sanction to
the dreadful work. A bell, tolling at dead of night, was a signal for the
slaughter. Protestants by thousands, sleeping quietly in their homes,
Bible and the French Revolution 227
trusting to the plighted honor of their king, were dragged forth without
a warning and murdered in cold blood.
As Christ was the invisible leader of His people from Egyptian
bondage, so was Satan the unseen leader of his subjects in this horrible
work of multiplying martyrs. For seven days the massacre was continued
in Paris, the first three with inconceivable fury. And it was not
confined to the city itself, but by special order of the king was extended
to all the provinces and towns where Protestants were found. Neither
age nor sex was respected. Neither the innocent babe nor the man
of gray hairs was spared. Noble and peasant, old and young, mother
and child, were cut down together. Throughout France the butchery
continued for two months. Seventy thousand of the very flower of the
nation perished.
“When the news of the massacre reached Rome, the exultation [273]
among the clergy knew no bounds. The cardinal of Lorraine rewarded
the messenger with a thousand crowns; the cannon of St. Angelo
thundered forth a joyous salute; and bells rang out from every steeple;
bonfires turned night into day; and Gregory XIII, attended by the
cardinals and other ecclesiastical dignitaries, went in long procession
to the church of St. Louis, where the cardinal of Lorraine chanted a Te
Deum.... A medal was struck to commemorate the massacre, and in
the Vatican may still be seen three frescoes of Vasari, describing the
attack upon the admiral, the king in council plotting the massacre, and
the massacre itself. Gregory sent Charles the Golden Rose; and four
months after the massacre, ... he listened complacently to the sermon
of a French priest, ... who spoke of ‘that day so full of happiness and
joy, when the most holy father received the news, and went in solemn
state to render thanks to God and St. Louis.’”—Henry White, The
Massacre of St. Bartholomew, ch. 14, par. 34.
The same master spirit that urged on the St. Bartholomew Massacre
led also in the scenes of the Revolution. Jesus Christ was declared
to be an impostor, and the rallying cry of the French infidels was,
“Crush the Wretch,” meaning Christ. Heaven-daring blasphemy and
abominable wickedness went hand in hand, and the basest of men,
the most abandoned monsters of cruelty and vice, were most highly
exalted. In all this, supreme homage was paid to Satan; while Christ,
in His characteristics of truth, purity, and unselfish love, was crucified.
228 The Great Controversy
“The beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war
against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.” The atheistical
power that ruled in France during the Revolution and the Reign of
Terror, did wage such a war against God and His holy word as the
world had never witnessed. The worship of the Deity was abolished
by the National Assembly. Bibles were collected and publicly burned
[274] with every possible manifestation of scorn. The law of God was
trampled underfoot. The institutions of the Bible were abolished. The
weekly rest day was set aside, and in its stead every tenth day was
devoted to reveling and blasphemy. Baptism and the Communion were
prohibited. And announcements posted conspicuously over the burial
places declared death to be an eternal sleep.
The fear of God was said to be so far from the beginning of wisdom
that it was the beginning of folly. All religious worship was
prohibited, except that of liberty and the country. The “constitutional
bishop of Paris was brought forward to play the principal part in the
most impudent and scandalous farce ever acted in the face of a national
representation.... He was brought forward in full procession,
to declare to the Convention that the religion which he had taught so
many years was, in every respect, a piece of priestcraft, which had no
foundation either in history or sacred truth. He disowned, in solemn
and explicit terms, the existence of the Deity to whose worship he
had been consecrated, and devoted himself in future to the homage
of liberty, equality, virtue, and morality. He then laid on the table
his episcopal decorations, and received a fraternal embrace from the
president of the Convention. Several apostate priests followed the
example of this prelate.”—Scott, vol. 1, ch. 17.
“And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and
make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two
prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth.” Infidel France had
silenced the reproving voice of God’s two witnesses. The word of
truth lay dead in her streets, and those who hated the restrictions and
requirements of God’s law were jubilant. Men publicly defied the
King of heaven. Like the sinners of old, they cried: “How doth God
know? and is there knowledge in the Most High?” Psalm 73:11.
With blasphemous boldness almost beyond belief, one of the priests
of the new order said: “God, if You exist, avenge Your injured name.
I bid You defiance! You remain silent; You dare not launch Your
Bible and the French Revolution 229
thunders. Who after this will believe in Your existence?”—Lacretelle, [275]
History 11:309; in Sir Archibald Alison, History of Europe, vol. 1, ch.
10. What an echo is this of the Pharaoh’s demand: “Who is Jehovah,
that I should obey His voice?” “I know not Jehovah!”
“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” Psalm 14:1. And
the Lord declares concerning the perverters of the truth: “Their folly
shall be manifest unto all.” 2 Timothy 3:9. After France had renounced
the worship of the living God, “the high and lofty One that inhabiteth
eternity,” it was only a little time till she descended to degrading
idolatry, by the worship of the Goddess of Reason, in the person of
a profligate woman. And this in the representative assembly of the
nation, and by its highest civil and legislative authorities! Says the historian:
“One of the ceremonies of this insane time stands unrivaled for
absurdity combined with impiety. The doors of the Convention were
thrown open to a band of musicians, preceded by whom, the members
of the municipal body entered in solemn procession, singing a hymn
in praise of liberty, and escorting, as the object of their future worship,
a veiled female, whom they termed the Goddess of Reason. Being
brought within the bar, she was unveiled with great form, and placed
on the right of the president, when she was generally recognized as
a dancing girl of the opera.... To this person, as the fittest representative
of that reason whom they worshiped, the National Convention of
France rendered public homage.
“This impious and ridiculous mummery had a certain fashion; and
the installation of the Goddess of Reason was renewed and imitated
throughout the nation, in such places where the inhabitants desired to
show themselves equal to all the heights of the Revolution.”—Scott,
vol. 1, ch. 17.
Said the orator who introduced the worship of Reason: “Legislators!
Fanaticism has given way to reason. Its bleared eyes could not
endure the brilliancy of the light. This day an immense concourse
has assembled beneath those gothic vaults, which, for the first time,
re-echoed the truth. There the French have celebrated the only true [276]
worship,—that of Liberty, that of Reason. There we have formed
wishes for the prosperity of the arms of the Republic. There we have
abandoned inanimate idols for Reason, for that animated image, the
masterpiece of nature.”—M. A. Thiers, History of the French Revolution,
vol. 2, pp. 370, 371.
230 The Great Controversy
When the goddess was brought into the Convention, the orator
took her by the hand, and turning to the assembly said: “Mortals, cease
to tremble before the powerless thunders of a God whom your fears
have created. Henceforth acknowledge no divinity but Reason. I offer
you its noblest and purest image; if you must have idols, sacrifice only
to such as this.... Fall before the august Senate of Freedom, oh! Veil
of Reason!”
“The goddess, after being embraced by the president, was mounted
on a magnificent car, and conducted, amid an immense crowd, to
the cathedral of Notre Dame, to take the place of the Deity. There
she was elevated on the high altar, and received the adoration of all
present.”—Alison, vol. 1, ch. 10.
This was followed, not long afterward, by the public burning of
the Bible. On one occasion “the Popular Society of the Museum”
entered the hall of the municipality, exclaiming, “Vive la Raison!” and
carrying on the top of a pole the half-burned remains of several books,
among others breviaries, missals, and the Old and New Testaments,
which “expiated in a great fire,” said the president, “all the fooleries
which they have made the human race commit.”—Journal of Paris,
1793, No. 318. Quoted in Buchez-Roux, Collection of Parliamentary
History, vol. 30, pp. 200, 201.
It was popery that had begun the work which atheism was completing.
The policy of Rome had wrought out those conditions, social,
political, and religious, that were hurrying France on to ruin. Writers,
in referring to the horrors of the Revolution, say that these excesses are
to be charged upon the throne and the church. (See Appendix.) In strict
justice they are to be charged upon the church. Popery had poisoned
[277] the minds of kings against the Reformation, as an enemy to the crown,
an element of discord that would be fatal to the peace and harmony of
the nation. It was the genius of Rome that by this means inspired the
direst cruelty and the most galling oppression which proceeded from
the throne.
The spirit of liberty went with the Bible. Wherever the gospel was
received, the minds of the people were awakened. They began to cast
off the shackles that had held them bondslaves of ignorance, vice, and
superstition. They began to think and act as men. Monarchs saw it and
trembled for their despotism.
Bible and the French Revolution 231
Rome was not slow to inflame their jealous fears. Said the pope to
the regent of France in 1525: “This mania [Protestantism] will not only
confound and destroy religion, but all principalities, nobility, laws,
orders, and ranks besides.”—G. de Felice, History of the Protestants
of France, b. 1, ch. 2, par. 8. A few years later a papal nuncio warned
the king: “Sire, be not deceived. The Protestants will upset all civil
as well as religious order.... The throne is in as much danger as the
altar.... The introduction of a new religion must necessarily introduce a
new government.”—D’Aubigne, History of the Reformation in Europe
in the Time of Calvin, b. 2, ch. 36. And theologians appealed to
the prejudices of the people by declaring that the Protestant doctrine
“entices men away to novelties and folly; it robs the king of the devoted
affection of his subjects, and devastates both church and state.” Thus
Rome succeeded in arraying France against the Reformation. “It was
to uphold the throne, preserve the nobles, and maintain the laws, that
the sword of persecution was first unsheathed in France.”—Wylie, b.
13, ch. 4.
Little did the rulers of the land foresee the results of that fateful
policy. The teaching of the Bible would have implanted in the minds
and hearts of the people those principles of justice, temperance, truth,
equity, and benevolence which are the very cornerstone of a nation’s
prosperity. “Righteousness exalteth a nation.” Thereby “the throne
is established.” Proverbs 14:34; 16:12. “The work of righteousness [278]
shall be peace;” and the effect, “quietness and assurance forever.”
Isaiah 32:17. He who obeys the divine law will most truly respect
and obey the laws of his country. He who fears God will honor the
king in the exercise of all just and legitimate authority. But unhappy
France prohibited the Bible and banned its disciples. Century after
century, men of principle and integrity, men of intellectual acuteness
and moral strength, who had the courage to avow their convictions
and the faith to suffer for the truth—for centuries these men toiled as
slaves in the galleys, perished at the stake, or rotted in dungeon cells.
Thousands upon thousands found safety in flight; and this continued
for two hundred and fifty years after the opening of the Reformation.
“Scarcely was there a generation of Frenchmen during the long
period that did not witness the disciples of the gospel fleeing before the
insane fury of the persecutor, and carrying with them the intelligence,
the arts, the industry, the order, in which, as a rule, they pre-eminently
232 The Great Controversy
excelled, to enrich the lands in which they found an asylum. And in
proportion as they replenished other countries with these good gifts, did
they empty their own of them. If all that was now driven away had been
retained in France; if, during these three hundred years, the industrial
skill of the exiles had been cultivating her soil; if, during these three
hundred years, their artistic bent had been improving her manufactures;
if, during these three hundred years, their creative genius and analytic
power had been enriching her literature and cultivating her science;
if their wisdom had been guiding her councils, their bravery fighting
her battles, their equity framing her laws, and the religion of the Bible
strengthening the intellect and governing the conscience of her people,
what a glory would at this day have encompassed France! What a
great, prosperous, and happy country—a pattern to the nations—would
[279] she have been!
“But a blind and inexorable bigotry chased from her soil every
teacher of virtue, every champion of order, every honest defender of
the throne; it said to the men who would have made their country a
‘renown and glory’ in the earth, Choose which you will have, a stake
or exile. At last the ruin of the state was complete; there remained no
more conscience to be proscribed; no more religion to be dragged to
the stake; no more patriotism to be chased into banishment.”—Wylie,
b. 13, ch. 20. And the Revolution, with all its horrors, was the dire
result.
“With the flight of the Huguenots a general decline settled upon
France. Flourishing manufacturing cities fell into decay; fertile districts
returned to their native wildness; intellectual dullness and moral
declension succeeded a period of unwonted progress. Paris became
one vast almshouse, and it is estimated that, at the breaking out of the
Revolution, two hundred thousand paupers claimed charity from the
hands of the king. The Jesuits alone flourished in the decaying nation,
and ruled with dreadful tyranny over churches and schools, the prisons
and the galleys.”
The gospel would have brought to France the solution of those
political and social problems that baffled the skill of her clergy, her
king, and her legislators, and finally plunged the nation into anarchy
and ruin. But under the domination of Rome the people had lost the
Saviour’s blessed lessons of self-sacrifice and unselfish love. They had
been led away from the practice of self-denial for the good of others.
Bible and the French Revolution 233
The rich had found no rebuke for their oppression of the poor, the poor
no help for their servitude and degradation. The selfishness of the
wealthy and powerful grew more and more apparent and oppressive.
For centuries the greed and profligacy of the noble resulted in grinding
extortion toward the peasant. The rich wronged the poor, and the poor
hated the rich.
In many provinces the estates were held by the nobles, and the
laboring classes were only tenants; they were at the mercy of their [280]
landlords and were forced to submit to their exorbitant demands. The
burden of supporting both the church and the state fell upon the middle
and lower classes, who were heavily taxed by the civil authorities and
by the clergy. “The pleasure of the nobles was considered the supreme
law; the farmers and the peasants might starve, for aught their oppressors
cared.... The people were compelled at every turn to consult the
exclusive interest of the landlord. The lives of the agricultural laborers
were lives of incessant work and unrelieved misery; their complaints, if
they ever dared to complain, were treated with insolent contempt. The
courts of justice would always listen to a noble as against a peasant;
bribes were notoriously accepted by the judges; and the merest caprice
of the aristocracy had the force of law, by virtue of this system of
universal corruption. Of the taxes wrung from the commonalty, by
the secular magnates on the one hand, and the clergy on the other,
not half ever found its way into the royal or episcopal treasury; the
rest was squandered in profligate self-indulgence. And the men who
thus impoverished their fellow subjects were themselves exempt from
taxation, and entitled by law or custom to all the appointments of the
state. The privileged classes numbered a hundred and fifty thousand,
and for their gratification millions were condemned to hopeless and
degrading lives.” (See Appendix.)
The court was given up to luxury and profligacy. There was little
confidence existing between the people and the rulers. Suspicion fastened
upon all the measures of the government as designing and selfish.
For more than half a century before the time of the Revolution the
throne was occupied by Louis XV, who, even in those evil times, was
distinguished as an indolent, frivolous, and sensual monarch. With a
depraved and cruel aristocracy and an impoverished and ignorant lower
class, the state financially embarrassed and the people exasperated,
it needed no prophet’s eye to foresee a terrible impending outbreak.
234 The Great Controversy
To the warnings of his counselors the king was accustomed to reply:
“Try to [281] make things go on as long as I am likely to live; after my death
it may be as it will.” It was in vain that the necessity of reform was
urged. He saw the evils, but had neither the courage nor the power to
meet them. The doom awaiting France was but too truly pictured in
his indolent and selfish answer, “After me, the deluge!”
By working upon the jealousy of the kings and the ruling classes,
Rome had influenced them to keep the people in bondage, well knowing
that the state would thus be weakened, and purposing by this means
to fasten both rulers and people in her thrall. With farsighted policy she
perceived that in order to enslave men effectually, the shackles must
be bound upon their souls; that the surest way to prevent them from
escaping their bondage was to render them incapable of freedom. A
thousandfold more terrible than the physical suffering which resulted
from her policy, was the moral degradation. Deprived of the Bible,
and abandoned to the teachings of bigotry and selfishness, the people
were shrouded in ignorance and superstition, and sunken in vice, so
that they were wholly unfitted for self-government.
But the outworking of all this was widely different from what
Rome had purposed. Instead of holding the masses in a blind submission
to her dogmas, her work resulted in making them infidels and
revolutionists. Romanism they despised as priestcraft. They beheld the
clergy as a party to their oppression. The only god they knew was the
god of Rome; her teaching was their only religion. They regarded her
greed and cruelty as the legitimate fruit of the Bible, and they would
have none of it.
Rome had misrepresented the character of God and perverted His
requirements, and now men rejected both the Bible and its Author.
She had required a blind faith in her dogmas, under the pretended
sanction of the Scriptures. In the reaction, Voltaire and his associates
cast aside God’s word altogether and spread everywhere the poison
of infidelity. Rome had ground down the people under her iron heel;
[282] and now the masses, degraded and brutalized, in their recoil from
her tyranny, cast off all restraint. Enraged at the glittering cheat to
which they had so long paid homage, they rejected truth and falsehood
together; and mistaking license for liberty, the slaves of vice exulted
in their imagined freedom.
Bible and the French Revolution 235
At the opening of the Revolution, by a concession of the king, the
people were granted a representation exceeding that of the nobles and
the clergy combined. Thus the balance of power was in their hands; but
they were not prepared to use it with wisdom and moderation. Eager
to redress the wrongs they had suffered, they determined to undertake
the reconstruction of society. An outraged populace, whose minds
were filled with bitter and long-treasured memories of wrong, resolved
to revolutionize the state of misery that had grown unbearable and
to avenge themselves upon those whom they regarded as the authors
of their sufferings. The oppressed wrought out the lesson they had
learned under tyranny and became the oppressors of those who had
oppressed them.
Unhappy France reaped in blood the harvest she had sown. Terrible
were the results of her submission to the controlling power of Rome.
Where France, under the influence of Romanism, had set up the first
stake at the opening of the Reformation, there the Revolution set
up its first guillotine. On the very spot where the first martyrs to
the Protestant faith were burned in the sixteenth century, the first
victims were guillotined in the eighteenth. In repelling the gospel,
which would have brought her healing, France had opened the door to
infidelity and ruin. When the restraints of God’s law were cast aside,
it was found that the laws of man were inadequate to hold in check the
powerful tides of human passion; and the nation swept on to revolt and
anarchy. The war against the Bible inaugurated an era which stands in
the world’s history as the Reign of Terror. Peace and happiness were
banished from the homes and hearts of men. No one was secure. He
who triumphed today was suspected, condemned, tomorrow. Violence
and lust held undisputed sway. [283]
King, clergy, and nobles were compelled to submit to the atrocities
of an excited and maddened people. Their thirst for vengeance was
only stimulated by the execution of the king; and those who had decreed
his death soon followed him to the scaffold. A general slaughter
of all suspected of hostility to the Revolution was determined. The
prisons were crowded, at one time containing more than two hundred
thousand captives. The cities of the kingdom were filled with scenes
of horror. One party of revolutionists was against another party, and
France became a vast field for contending masses, swayed by the fury
of their passions. “In Paris one tumult succeeded another, and the
236 The Great Controversy
citizens were divided into a medley of factions, that seemed intent on
nothing but mutual extermination.” And to add to the general misery,
the nation became involved in a prolonged and devastating war with
the great powers of Europe. “The country was nearly bankrupt, the
armies were clamoring for arrears of pay, the Parisians were starving,
the provinces were laid waste by brigands, and civilization was almost
extinguished in anarchy and license.”
All too well the people had learned the lessons of cruelty and
torture which Rome had so diligently taught. A day of retribution at
last had come. It was not now the disciples of Jesus that were thrust
into dungeons and dragged to the stake. Long ago these had perished
or been driven into exile. Unsparing Rome now felt the deadly power
of those whom she had trained to delight in deeds of blood. “The
example of persecution which the clergy of France had exhibited for
so many ages, was now retorted upon them with signal vigor. The
scaffolds ran red with the blood of the priests. The galleys and the
prisons, once crowded with Huguenots, were now filled with their
persecutors. Chained to the bench and toiling at the oar, the Roman
Catholic clergy experienced all those woes which their church had so
[284] freely inflicted on the gentle heretics.” (See Appendix.)
“Then came those days when the most barbarous of all codes was
administered by the most barbarous of all tribunals; when no man
could greet his neighbors or say his prayers ... without danger of
committing a capital crime; when spies lurked in every corner; when
the guillotine was long and hard at work every morning; when the
jails were filled as close as the holds of a slave ship; when the gutters
ran foaming with blood into the Seine.... While the daily wagonloads
of victims were carried to their doom through the streets of Paris,
the proconsuls, whom the sovereign committee had sent forth to the
departments, reveled in an extravagance of cruelty unknown even in
the capital. The knife of the deadly machine rose and fell too slow
for their work of slaughter. Long rows of captives were mowed down
with grapeshot. Holes were made in the bottom of crowded barges.
Lyons was turned into a desert. At Arras even the cruel mercy of a
speedy death was denied to the prisoners. All down the Loire, from
Saumur to the sea, great flocks of crows and kites feasted on naked
corpses, twined together in hideous embraces. No mercy was shown
to sex or age. The number of young lads and of girls of seventeen who
Bible and the French Revolution 237
were murdered by that execrable government, is to be reckoned by
hundreds. Babies torn from the breast were tossed from pike to pike
along the Jacobin ranks.” (See Appendix.) In the short space of ten
years, multitudes of human beings perished.
All this was as Satan would have it. This was what for ages he had
been working to secure. His policy is deception from first to last, and
his steadfast purpose is to bring woe and wretchedness upon men, to
deface and defile the workmanship of God, to mar the divine purposes
of benevolence and love, and thus cause grief in heaven. Then by his
deceptive arts he blinds the minds of men, and leads them to throw
back the blame of his work upon God, as if all this misery were the
result of the Creator’s plan. In like manner, when those who have [285]
been degraded and brutalized through his cruel power achieve their
freedom, he urges them on to excesses and atrocities. Then this picture
of unbridled license is pointed out by tyrants and oppressors as an
illustration of the results of liberty.
When error in one garb has been detected, Satan only masks it in a
different disguise, and multitudes receive it as eagerly as at the first.
When the people found Romanism to be a deception, and he could not
through this agency lead them to transgression of God’s law, he urged
them to regard all religion as a cheat, and the Bible as a fable; and,
casting aside the divine statutes, they gave themselves up to unbridled
iniquity.
The fatal error which wrought such woe for the inhabitants of
France was the ignoring of this one great truth: that true freedom
lies within the proscriptions of the law of God. “O that thou hadst
hearkened to My commandments! then had thy peace been as a river,
and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea.” “There is no peace,
saith the Lord, unto the wicked.” “But whoso hearkeneth unto Me shall
dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.” Isaiah 48:18, 22;
Proverbs 1:33.
Atheists, infidels, and apostates oppose and denounce God’s law;
but the results of their influence prove that the well-being of man is
bound up with his obedience of the divine statutes. Those who will
not read the lesson from the book of God are bidden to read it in the
history of nations.
When Satan wrought through the Roman Church to lead men
away from obedience, his agency was concealed, and his work was
238 The Great Controversy
so disguised that the degradation and misery which resulted were
not seen to be the fruit of transgression. And his power was so far
counteracted by the working of the Spirit of God that his purposes
were prevented from reaching their full fruition. The people did not
trace the effect to its cause and discover the source of their miseries.
[286] But in the Revolution the law of God was openly set aside by the
National Council. And in the Reign of Terror which followed, the
working of cause and effect could be seen by all.
When France publicly rejected God and set aside the Bible, wicked
men and spirits of darkness exulted in their attainment of the object so
long desired—a kingdom free from the restraints of the law of God.
Because sentence against an evil work was not speedily executed,
therefore the heart of the sons of men was “fully set in them to do
evil.” Ecclesiastes 8:11. But the transgression of a just and righteous
law must inevitably result in misery and ruin. Though not visited at
once with judgments, the wickedness of men was nevertheless surely
working out their doom. Centuries of apostasy and crime had been
treasuring up wrath against the day of retribution; and when their
iniquity was full, the despisers of God learned too late that it is a
fearful thing to have worn out the divine patience. The restraining
Spirit of God, which imposes a check upon the cruel power of Satan,
was in a great measure removed, and he whose only delight is the
wretchedness of men was permitted to work his will. Those who had
chosen the service of rebellion were left to reap its fruits until the land
was filled with crimes too horrible for pen to trace. From devastated
provinces and ruined cities a terrible cry was heard—a cry of bitterest
anguish. France was shaken as if by an earthquake. Religion, law,
social order, the family, the state, and the church—all were smitten
down by the impious hand that had been lifted against the law of
God. Truly spoke the wise man: “The wicked shall fall by his own
wickedness.” “Though a sinner do evil a hundred times, and his days
be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear
God, which fear before Him: but it shall not be well with the wicked.”
Proverbs 11:5; Ecclesiastes 8:12, 13. “They hated knowledge, and did
not choose the fear of the Lord;” “therefore shall they eat of the fruit
of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.” Proverbs 1:29,
[287] 31.
Bible and the French Revolution 239
God’s faithful witnesses, slain by the blasphemous power that “ascendeth
out of the bottomless pit,” were not long to remain silent.
“After three days and a half the Spirit of life from God entered into
them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them
which saw them.” Revelation 11:11. It was in 1793 that the decrees
which abolished the Christian religion and set aside the Bible passed
the French Assembly. Three years and a half later a resolution rescinding
these decrees, thus granting toleration to the Scriptures, was
adopted by the same body. The world stood aghast at the enormity
of guilt which had resulted from a rejection of the Sacred Oracles,
and men recognized the necessity of faith in God and His word as the
foundation of virtue and morality. Saith the Lord: “Whom hast thou
reproached and blasphemed? and against whom hast thou exalted thy
voice, and lifted up thine eyes on high? even against the Holy One of
Israel,” Isaiah 37:23. “Therefore, behold, I will cause them to know,
this once will I cause them to know My hand and My might; and they
shall know that My name is Jehovah.” Jeremiah 16:21, A.R.V.
Concerning the two witnesses the prophet declares further: “And
they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up
hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies
beheld them.” Revelation 11:12. Since France made war upon God’s
two witnesses, they have been honored as never before. In 1804 the
British and Foreign Bible Society was organized. This was followed by
similar organizations, with numerous branches, upon the continent of
Europe. In 1816 the American Bible Society was founded. When the
British Society was formed, the Bible had been printed and circulated
in fifty tongues. It has since been translated into many hundreds of
languages and dialects. (See Appendix.)
For the fifty years preceding 1792, little attention was given to
the work of foreign missions. No new societies were formed, and
there were but few churches that made any effort for the spread of [288]
Christianity in heathen lands. But toward the close of the eighteenth
century a great change took place. Men became dissatisfied with the
results of rationalism and realized the necessity of divine revelation
and experimental religion. From this time the work of foreign missions
attained an unprecedented growth. (See Appendix.)
The improvements in printing have given an impetus to the work
of circulating the Bible. The increased facilities for communication
240 The Great Controversy
between different countries, the breaking down of ancient barriers of
prejudice and national exclusiveness, and the loss of secular power by
the pontiff of Rome have opened the way for the entrance of the word
of God. For some years the Bible has been sold without restraint in
the streets of Rome, and it has now been carried to every part of the
habitable globe.
The infidel Voltaire once boastingly said: “I am weary of hearing
people repeat that twelve men established the Christian religion. I
will prove that one man may suffice to overthrow it.” Generations
have passed since his death. Millions have joined in the war upon
the Bible. But it is so far from being destroyed, that where there
were a hundred in Voltaire’s time, there are now ten thousand, yes,
a hundred thousand copies of the book of God. In the words of an
early Reformer concerning the Christian church, “The Bible is an anvil
that has worn out many hammers.” Saith the Lord: “No weapon that
is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise
against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn.” Isaiah 54:17.
“The word of our God shall stand forever.” “All His commandments
are sure. They stand fast for ever and ever, and are done in truth and
uprightness.” Isaiah 40:8; Psalm 111:7, 8. Whatever is built upon the
authority of man will be overthrown; but that which is founded upon
[289] the rock of God’s immutable word shall stand forever.