France—About the year 1875 it was estimated that there were about 20,00,000 of Protestants in France. The great majority of these belong to what is called the French Reformed Protestant Church nearly equally divided between what are called the Orthodox and the Liberals. There does not seem to have been any continuous Unitarian Movement. Stephen Dolet, born at Orleans in 1309, was burnt alive at Paris for his Unitarian opinions in 1346, The Methodist Movement in France has had the effect of making more orthodox the orthodox party and the translation of Dr. Channing’s works in French has tended to liberalize and make more Unitarian the opposite party. The writings of Theo. Parker, Renan and the rationalists of Germany have widened this breach. M. Guizol and his party called a general synod of the Reformed Church of France in 1872 but it failed to bring the great parties to any common basis of belief. The English and the American Unitarians have long been in friendly relations and much fellowship with the Liberals.
Any how we fail as yet to discover any continuous and organized attempt at Church life as distinct from the ancient and medieval established churches of Catholicism and Protestantism in France. Perhaps the specific French temper of mind may have been responsible for this lack of systematic attempt at somesort of a separate Liberal Religions Church in that country. We must therefore satisfy ourselves by quoting a few observations from the learned address delivered before the International Liberal Religious Council at London in 1901 by Rev. Ernest Fontanes of Paris:—
“The increasing attention given to social questions has produced among the younger orthodox Clergy an expansion of view which neither past ecclesiastical conflicts nor critical efforts succeeded in achieving. Just as missionaries whom contact with non-civilized races has convinced of the necessity of stripping the Gospel of its dry dogmatic husk, discovering its powerlessness to feed the spiritual life, so those who are desirous of reaching the multitudes who wander like sheep without a shepherd, and to whom too long a stone has been offered instead of bread, have been led inevitably to relegate to the museum of antiquities many formulas and practices and to concentrate their efforts and their propaganda upon the inner moral nature of men. Then again the number of lapsed clergy goes on increasing and the motives of these lapses are highly praiseworthy”
“We cannot report any conversion of the intellectual glasses to Protestantism, nor even to Theism, but it is quite evident that the positivist systems with their exclusively determinist philosophy have lost their prestige and there audacity."
"The abstract Psychology of Eclecticism stands condemned! but on the other hand no one imagines that a man can be entirely accounted for in a chemical retort….. MM. Renonvier and Pillon, starting out from an agnosticism more or less vague, have ended by establishing in the name of the moral consciousness personal Theism. It cannot be exactly said that they have created a fallowing, but their neuroticism has rallied to them the sympathies of all those who are concerned, to uphold the dignity of human personality. It is allowable also to expect from, the Peoples' Universities, our equivalent to the University Extension Movement in England, an expansion of thought and initiation into the moral problems which prepare the ground for the germination and fructification of the spiritual life and its aspirations.”
