ge
such a war against God and His holy word as the world had never witnessed.
The worship of the Deity was abolished by the National Assembly. Bibles
were collected and publicly burned with every possible manifestation of
scorn.

The law of God was trampled under foot. The institutions of the Bible were
abolished. The weekly rest-day was set aside, and in its stead every tenth
day was devoted to reveling and blasphemy. Baptism and the communion were
prohibited. And announcements posted conspicuously over the burial-places
declared death to be an eternal sleep.

The fear of God was said to be so far from the beginning of wisdom that it
was the beginning of folly. All religious worship was prohibited, except
that of liberty and the country. The "constitutional bishop of Paris was
brought forward to play the principal part in the most impudent and
scandalous farce ever acted in the face of a national representation....
He was brought forward in full procession, to declare to the Convention
that the religion which he had taught so many years was, in every respect,
a piece of priestcraft, which had no foundation either in history or
sacred truth. He disowned, in solemn and explicit terms, the existence of
the Deity to whose worship he had been consecrated, and devoted himself in
future to the homage of liberty, equality, virtue, and morality. He then
laid on the table his episcopal decorations, and received a fraternal
embrace from the president of the Convention. Several apostate priests
followed the example of this prelate."(399)

"And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make
merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets
tormented them that dwelt on the earth." Infidel France had silenced the
reproving voice of God's two witnesses. The Word of truth lay dead in her
streets, and those who hated the restrictions and requirements of God's
law were jubilant. Men publicly defied the King of heaven. Like the
sinners of old, they cried, "How doth God know? and is there knowledge in
the Most High?"(400)

With blasphemous boldness almost beyond belief, one of the priests of the
new order said: "God, if You exist, avenge Your injured name. I bid You
defiance! You remain silent; You dare not launch Your thunders. Who after
this will believe in Your existence?"(401) What an echo is this of the
Pharaoh's demand: "Who is Jehovah, that I should obey His voice?" "I know
not Jehovah!"