he
guillotine;--those are the last thoughts of this dying man, about to
appear on high!

Listen to Danton, upon the platform of the scaffold, one step from God
and immortality:--"I have enjoyed much; let me go to sleep," he
says;--then, to the executioner, "You will show my head to the
People; it is worth while!" Annihilation for a confession of faith;
vanity for his last sigh: such is the Frenchman of these latter days!

What do you think of the religious sentiment of a free People, whose
great characters seem to walk thus in procession to annihilation; and
die, without even death, that terrible minister, recalling to their
minds the fear or the promises of God?

Thus the Republic,--which had no future,--reared by these men, and
mere parties, was quickly overthrown in blood. Liberty, achieved by so
much heroism and genius, did not find in France a conscience to
shelter it, a God to avenge it, a People to defend it, against that
other Atheism called Glory! All was finished by a soldier, and by the
apostacy of republicans travestied into courtiers! And what could you
expect? Republican Atheism has no reason to be heroic. If it is
terrified, it yields. Would one buy it, it sells itself; it would be
most foolish to sacrifice itself. Who would mourn for it?--the People
are ungrateful, and God does not exist.

Thus end atheistic revolutions!

XIX.

If you wish that this revolution should not have the same end, beware
of abject Materialism, degrading Sensualism, gross Socialism, of
besotted Communism; of all these doctrines of flesh and blood, of meat
and drink, of hunger and thirst, of wages and traffic, which these
corruptors of the soul of the People preach to you, exclusively, as
the sole thought, the sole hope, as the only duty, and only end of
man! They will soon make you slaves of ease, serfs of your desires.

Are you willing to have inscribed on the tomb of our French race, as
on that of the _Sybarites_, this epitaph: "This People ate and drank
well, while they browsed upon the earth?" No! You desire that History
should write thus: "This People worshipped well, served God and
humanity well,--in thought, in philosophy, in religion, in literature,
in arts, in arms, in labor, in liberty, in their Aristocracies, in
their Democracies, in their Monarchies, and their Republics! This
nation was the spiritual laborer, the conqueror of truth; the disciple
of the highest God, in all the ways of civilization,--an