15. The Bible And The French Revolution. 279
France presented also the characteristic 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 than the degradation of marriage.... Sophie Arnoult, an actress [ 271 ] famous for the witty things she said, described the republican marriage as‘ the sacrament of adultery.’” 395
“ 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 Reforma-
395 Scott, Vol. I, ch. 17.