To the thoughtful and sympathetic observer, France presents a singular spectacle of duality--two camps and two standards are confronting each other, neo-paganism and Christianity. By Christianity I mean, of course, Catholicism, for though there may be good Protestants, who adhere to some of the truths of revealed religion, such a thing as a good pervert French Protestant is a _lusus naturæ_, practically non-existent. It is a notorious fact that Protestants in France as elsewhere in Europe are, as a rule, absolutely indifferent in religious matters since they have ceased to be persecuted, and in many cases they have become the enemies of revealed religion. All civilization, all redemption from barbarism, is fostered and developed around a sanctuary. Consecrated hands have, in every instance, laid the corner stone of the social edifice. The Church, the school-house, the university, the courts of justice--these are the normal steps by which societies, cities, and nations have advanced in the Old World out of barbarism and chaos since the overthrow of the Roman Empire. Of France this is pre-eminently true. Hundreds of villages and towns bear the names of holy missionary monks who built first a cell, and then a monastery around a chapel, which became the centre of a village, that grew in time to be a city. We see the same thing all over Europe and in the British Isles. Gibbon says that the French bishops made the French monarchy as bees construct a honeycomb. Like every institution that bears a religious imprint, this monarchy was long-lived. Those who descant so volubly on the flightiness of the French people, always overturning their government and never satisfied with the one they have, would do well to reflect that the French monarchy lasted some fourteen centuries. When this monarchy was overthrown by the assassination of Louis XVI there was formed a vortex in which were engulfed millions of human lives. Not that I consider a monarchical or any special form of government indispensable to France’s prosperity. There is, however, one essential condition. The generating principle of the French nation was the Catholic Faith. Without it, France would no longer be herself. She would disintegrate interiorly, and dismemberment and decadence would follow. France is still profoundly Catholic, in spite of the prodigious efforts made since the days of Voltaire and Tom Paine by numerous native and alien religious vandals, whose prostituted intellects were garnished from the storehouse of centuries of Christian culture. She will always be this or nothing. For any one who knows France, historically and psychologically, it is preposterous to think of a substitute creed, corresponding to any of the various shreds of Christianity, which do duty for religion under the name of some one or other of the multitudinous Protestant sects.