--I have just read the _proces-verbal_ of the Conference
of Pastors held on the 15th and 16th of April at Paris. The question of
the supernatural has split the church of France in two. The liberals
insist upon individual right; the orthodox upon the notion of a church.
And it is true indeed that a church is an affirmation, that it subsists
by the positive element in it, by definite belief; the pure critical
element dissolves it. Protestantism is a combination of two factors--the
authority of the Scriptures and free inquiry; as soon as one of these
factors is threatened or disappears, Protestantism disappears; a new
form of Christianity succeeds it, as, for example, the church of the
Brothers of the Holy Ghost, or that of Christian Theism. As far as I am
concerned, I see nothing objectionable in such a result, but I think the
friends of the Protestant church are logical in their refusal to abandon
the apostle's creed, and the individualists are illogical in imagining
that they can keep Protestantism and do away with authority.
It is a question of method which separates the two camps. I am
fundamentally separated from both. As I understand it, Christianity is
above all religions, and religion is not a method, it is a life, a
higher and supernatural life, mystical in its root and practical in its
fruits, a communion with God, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love which
radiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows.
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