Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XII CHURCHES The Churches and the French spirit, the Churches and the French State, the Churches and the French people—religious questions in the France of to-day may thus be roughly summed up. The hold of the Churches upon the French spirit has seldom been mystical. Religion outside the Churches has seldom had much hold upon the French spirit. The great religious movements of modern Europe have not sprung from France. The Huguenots were and remain a small minority in the nation. The Jansen- ists, almost the only French religious mystics for centuries, hovered perilously near heresy and were stamped out. They were Roman Catholic Puritans, and the French spirit asks for a human religion. The French spirit, being above all human, wants a human religion, not a transcendental, superhuman or inhuman religion, but a religion that makes allowances and allows compromises, an accommodating religion; a perhaps not deeply religious religion. The want comes not from hypocrisy, but from sincerity. It is the Anglo-Saxon religious spirit that is tryingto fly anywhere out of the world and trying to believe that it can and does. The French spirit can not forget that it inhabits a frame with feet of clay. It calls a religion sincere that says the flesh is weak; the other religious spirit calls condoning hypocritical. Which is the more sincere? The French spirit is certainly sincere. It posits humanity first of all and assumes that religion shall not be a way out of humanity but shall make the best of humanity. It wants a workable religion; hence no religion has had or has as much hold over the French nation as the Roman Catholic. Carrying on the same reasons, the French spirit prefers an organized, politic and tried religion. If you need a religion, there is no point in rebellion; ...