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in detail this evolution, which seems to mark the opening of the twentieth century as a new era in the history of the French nation. That long interrupted work, though primarily dealing with the religious questions, will take a "second series" of France.

Church and

the form of Eight years

have passed since that book first appeared, yet no week goes by without numerous references to it in the English or French press, which testimony of its lasting utility to students is a more than sufficient recompense for the labour of long years bestowed upon it. In the successive editions, English and French, the original text has not been altered, not even for the vigilant eyes of French critics. One of them, M. Jules Claretie, who became my friend in consequence of the book, though it contains passages to which a veteran Republican could not subscribe, wrote of it that it was, un de ces livres représentatifs qui survivent à l'actualité et résument le caractère d'une nation à une heure de son histoire." It is for the reason indicated

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by the eminent Academician that I have refrained from changing the text in new editions. But it happened that the hour at which I ended my first work marked the close of a national epoch, and the France. of the young century is not the France of the last years of the old. So, if my health. returns, it will need all its restored force for the completion of the new task.

The incomplete narrative in the following pages needs no commentary. To elucidate it an appendix has been added containing the Concordat, the Organic Articles, the Associations Law of 1901, and the Separation Law of 1905. The construction of a newly enacted law is difficult even for a legal expert, and in case I have erred in my summary interpretation of any provisions of the more recent of these statutes, the text will be at hand for those who wish to verify my exposition of them. If any readers have criticisms to offer they will be gratefully received, whether they appear in print or are sent direct to the author.

MAY 16, 1906.

CITY OF NEW YORK,

LECTURE I.

N case it should seem presumptuous for

IN

a layman, who is not attached to either of the religious communities hitherto recognised by the French Government, to lecture on the Church in France, there seems to exist a precedent in the annals of the Royal Institution which may justify my presence here. Just forty-one years ago Cardinal Wiseman was announced to deliver a lecture in this room on the succeeding Saturday, January 27th, 1865. The subject he had chosen was Shakespeare, and the occasion the tercentenary of the poet. Hence, if a Cardinal and Archbishop of the Roman Church might discourse on a national subject so far removed from ecclesiastical atmosphere, perhaps it may be permitted to a layman to speak about that Church at one of the great crises in its history. I should add that the Cardinal Cardinal never

delivered his lecture, for he lay dying the day that he should have stood in this place; and his biographer relates that his last act before he was struck down by his fatal illness was to dictate a portion of it.* It is difficult to imagine an end more edifying, even for a Cardinal Prince of the Church, than to quit life preparing a lecture for the Royal Institution.

It is a rule of this platform that no controversial questions are permitted to be discussed upon it. The present ecclesiastical crisis in France bristles with points of controversy; and although I have sat for so many years upon the cross-benches of life that I may be trusted to treat with impartiality any political or religious thesis, here it is my duty to eschew all questions, arising out of the subject, which divide men's opinions either in France or in this country. That will deprive me of asking. you to consider some of the most interesting phases of the crisis which

* Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman. By WILFRID WARD.

religion is now undergoing in France. The recent recrudescence of anti-clericalism in the French nation; the influence of the Dreyfus affair on that development; the nature and operation of French Freemasonry; the causes of the indifference with which the population regards a revolution the like of which has not taken place for a hundred years--all these topics, most attractive to the student of the philosophy of history, must be passed on one side. The same silence must be observed on another controversial matter which is independent of the relations of Church and State. The criticism of the text of Holy Scripture by certain learned priests of the Roman Catholic Church, of whom the Abbé Loisy is the best known in this country, has called forth much polemic. Of it I will only say that although it is discussed less calmly by French ecclesiastics than our professors of religion are wont to debate cognate subjects, it creates infinitely less interest in France than in England, where in certain circles the Abbé Loisy

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