uplift their united voice to deny the most solemn truth which man ' s soul receives , and renounce unanimously the belief and worship of a Deity ." --Sir Walter Scott , Life of Napoleon , vol . 1 , ch . 17 .
" France is the only nation in the world concerning which the authentic record survives , that as a nation she lifted her hand in open rebellion against the Author of the universe . Plenty of blasphemers , plenty of infidels , there have been , and still continue to be , in England , Germany , Spain , and elsewhere ; but France stands apart in the world ' s history as the single state which , by the decree of her Legislative Assembly , pronounced that there was no God , and of which the entire population of the capital , and a vast majority elsewhere , women as well as men , danced and sang with joy in accepting the announcement ." -- Blackwood ' s Magazine , November , 1870 .
France presented also the characteristics which especially distinguished Sodom . During the Revolution there was manifest a state of moral debasement and corruption similar to that which brought destruction upon the cities of the plain . And the historian presents together the atheism and the licentiousness of France , as given in the prophecy : " Intimately connected with these laws affecting religion , was that which reduced the union of marriage--the most sacred engagement which human beings can form , and the permanence of which leads most strongly to the consolidation of society--to the state of a mere civil contract of a transitory character , which any two persons might engage in and cast loose at pleasure . . . . If fiends had set themselves to work to discover a mode of most effectually destroying whatever is venerable , graceful , or permanent in domestic life , and of obtaining at the same time an assurance that the mischief which it was their object to create should be perpetuated from one generation to another , they could not have invented a more effectual plan that the degradation of marriage . . . . Sophie Arnoult , an actress famous for the witty things she said , described the republican marriage as ' the sacrament of adultery .'" --Scott , vol . 1 , ch . 17 .
" Where also our Lord was crucified ." This specification of the prophecy was also fulfilled by France . In no land had the spirit of enmity against Christ been more strikingly displayed . In no country had the truth encountered more bitter and cruel opposition . In the persecution which France had visited upon the confessors of the gospel , she had crucified Christ in the person of His disciples . Century after century the blood of the saints had been shed . While the Waldenses laid down their lives upon the mountains of Piedmont " for the word of God , and for the testimony of Jesus Christ ," similar witness to the truth had been borne by their brethren , the Albigenses of France . In the days of the Reformation its disciples had been put to death with horrible tortures . King and nobles , highborn women and delicate maidens , the pride and chivalry of the nation , had feasted their eyes upon the agonies of the martyrs of Jesus . The brave Huguenots , battling for those rights which the human heart holds most sacred , had poured out their blood on many a hard-fought field . The Protestants were counted as outlaws , a price was set upon their heads , and they were hunted down like wild beasts .
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