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The pupil of Cæsar could certainly not neglect the aid of the spiritual hierarchy, which was all that remained of the old Roman grandeur. Added to this was his keen instinct for reality, which led him to scorn such whipped-up creeds as Robespierre's Supreme Being and that amazing hybrid, Theophilanthropy, offspring of the Goddess of Reason and La Réveillière-Lépeaux.
Then the spirit of persecution took a circuitous way to gain its end: this was to cry down religion and its ministers, to promote theophilanthropy, and enforce the transferring of Sunday to the decade, or tenth day of every republican month.
Having watched their manufacture, rise and fall, he felt the more regard for the faith of his youth, which satisfied one of the most imperious needs of his nature, a craving for certainty. Witness this crushing retort to M. Mathieu: "What is your Theophilanthropy? Oh, don't talk to me of a religion which only takes me for this life, without telling me whence I come or whither I go."
The pupil of Cæsar could certainly not neglect the aid of the spiritual hierarchy, which was all that remained of the old Roman grandeur. Added to this was his keen instinct for reality, which led him to scorn such whipped-up creeds as Robespierre's Supreme Being and that amazing hybrid, Theophilanthropy, offspring of the Goddess of Reason and La Réveillière-Lépeaux.
There was, first of all, the Theophilanthropy of Jean-Baptiste Chemin and Valentine Haüy, representing the faith of those who love man in God, and God in so far as He loves man. The Empire, in persecuting this doctrine, only added to its vitality, for it has hot even yet completely died out.
His religion was not so much as the Theophilanthropy attempted to be introduced by some members of the French Directory: it admitted God in name, and in name did not deny Jesus Christ, but it rejected all mysteries, and reduced religion to mere socialism.
An enthusiast declared that the religion of Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, and Cicero would soon be the religion of the world. A new rationalistic religion was introduced under the name of Theophilanthropy.
He was desirous to find restraints which might curb the passions of the multitude; and he absurdly fancied that he had found them in a religion without evidences or sanction, precepts or example, in a frigid system of Theophilanthropy, supported by nursery tales. Polybius and Arrian have given us authentic accounts of facts; and here their merit ends.
Having watched their manufacture, rise and fall, he felt the more regard for the faith of his youth, which satisfied one of the most imperious needs of his nature, a craving for certainty. Witness this crushing retort to M. Mathieu: "What is your Theophilanthropy? Oh, don't talk to me of a religion which only takes me for this life, without telling me whence I come or whither I go."
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