Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/232

248 for Christian science and the church, by a liberal, true, evangelical Protestan t ism, which does not content itself with a negative stand-point against Catholicism, but opens itself to a full recognition of whatever truth and excellence it contains, and at the same time, following the example of A. Vinet, it takes up the most important productions of co n temporary literature and examines them, not from a narrow churchman's point of view, but from one of true, evangelical knowledge.

Time and space fail me to say more of the growing life of this congregation, but it appears to me to have a great future life before it. And if it be true that the present condition of France bears evidence of a secret, inward disease; and if it be true, as I have heard it wittily said, that this is the result of the reformation driven inwards, (la reformation rentrée,) then it may be predicted with certainty, that the re-establishment of its health depends upon this reformation again coming to the surface, with all its affluent result of vitality in domestic life, schools, the church, and the state.

I know that a great deal is done at the present time, even in the Catholic Church, at Paris, for the education and care of children; nay, indeed, we may have various things to say on this subject, at a later period. But no one can misjudge me when I have more hope of the education of a church which leads the child to Christ Jesus, and inculcates his own responsibility to God and his own conscience, than of that which, in the first place, leads him to the Virgin Mary, and teaches a blind obedience to the Catholic church, or to