RELIGIOUS NOTIONS OF NAPOLEON

In contrast with members of the oligarchy, who threw all moral restraints to the winds, Napoleon towers above them.  Take any grounds-administrative, strategical, religious, domestic-he was preeminent above his contemporaries.  On religious grounds alone, those thoughts of his which have been recorded not only disclose the insight of a man of affairs, but reveal the thinking mind of a deeply religious being.  His conversations with Gourgaud on religious subjects, some of which are quoted in Lord Rosebery’s admirable book, “The Last Phase,” are so contradictory that they cannot be taken as authentic beliefs.  It greatly depended to whom he was talking as to the line he took.

It is evident that the Emperor took a delight in arguing with and contradicting the devout Catholic for sheer intellectual exercise.  At one time he declares to his refractory companion, “If I had to choose a religion, I would worship the sun, because the sun gives to all things life and fertility.”  At another time he torments the Count, after tying him into a knot and exposing his superficial knowledge, by saying that “the Mohammedan religion is the finest of all.”  But when his mind seriously dwells on sacred things, he declares “that religion lends sanctity to everything.”  “The remission of sins is a beautiful idea.”  “It makes the Christian religion so attractive that it will never perish.  No one can say ’I do not believe and I never shall believe.’”

Montholon is more to the writer’s liking than Gourgaud, even though Gourgaud’s authenticity is backed by Lord Rosebery, and we shall see later what he says about his Emperor’s religious beliefs.  It was he who endeavoured to mitigate his master’s mental and physical sufferings, and it was he whom he desired should close his eyes in death when the nefarious assassination had been completed.  It was he, too, who got himself locked up in the fortress of Ham for seven years by adhering steadfastly to the cause of the great exile’s nephew.  Gourgaud was loyal and devoted on a sort of sliding scale, which led him to do great injustice to the stricken hero.  Montholon’s devotion was consistent and abiding under all circumstances, while Gourgaud’s fluctuated with his moods.

None of Napoleon’s companions in exile were admitted to such close intimacy with the illustrious warrior-statesman as was Count Montholon, not even Bertrand or Marchand.  It was he who had won confidence by the most amazing attachment that one human being could give to another, and it was natural that the big soul of Napoleon should respond to what amounted to fanatical fidelity.  He was the beloved companion of the Emperor for six years, and during the last forty-two nights of his life he was with him in the death-chamber, and at his request he kept vigil and witnessed, his spirit pass away.

It was to him, when the shadow of death was hovering round the smitten rock, that Napoleon conveyed his most sacred thoughts, domestic, civil, and religious.  He made him one of his executors, bequeathed to him a fortune, entrusted him with the custody of precious documents, and to his dying day the recipient of such flattering confidences never betrayed by word or act the faith that was reposed in him, nor did he ever falter in his devotion to the martyr’s cause.  It is from him we have handed down the famous constitution drawn up by Napoleon for his son, which is pregnant with democratic wisdom and flows with the genius of statesmanship.  We get, too, a vivid knowledge of the religious side of Napoleon’s versatile character.  His talks and dictations on this controversial subject are unorthodox if you like, but nevertheless religious; copious in thought and trenchant in vocabulary, they disclose the magic of a well-stored inspired mind.  He indulges in neither puerilities nor conventionalities.  He is a vigorous student of the Bible and the Koran; he knows his subject, and speaks his reasonings without reservation, and in the end we see the vision of the omnipotent God fixed in an enduring belief.

In the first clause of his will he declares:  “I die in the Apostolic Roman religion, in the bosom of which I was born more than fifty years since.”  If any other proof were needed that he believed in the divinity of Jesus Christ, this avowed declaration on the eve of the great transformation may be confirmed by the fact that the cardinal doctrine of the Roman religion centres in the divinity of Christ.  Again, in the course of his public and private duties, you frequently come across passages in his letters and official documents such as “May God have you in His holy keeping.”  It may be said that this is a mere form or figure of speech but then unbelievers do not use such phrases.

We find in everyday life a lack of courage to do justice and be generous to one another.  But surely, in the interest of political, historical, and personal rectitude, the dying man’s message to the world should absolve him from having his lucid, succinct conversations jargoned into a tattered tedium.  It is either a perversion of understanding or a misanthropic egoism that can twist Napoleon’s discourses on religious topics into meaning that he ever was seriously thinking of giving preference to the worship of the sun, or contemplating becoming a follower of Mohammed, or that he ever showed real evidences of being an unbeliever in the God of his race.

He praised many of the virtues of the Mohammedan religion, such as honesty, cleanliness, temperance, and devoutness, and denounced with scathing sarcasm, not Christ, but professing Christians whose conduct towards himself was beneath the dignity of the pagan.  But this in no way detracts from his admiration of the genuine follower of Christ.  He says that “religious ideas have more influence than certain narrow-minded philosophers are willing to believe; they are capable of rendering great services to humanity.”  Again, he says that “the Christian religion is the religion of a civilised people; it is entirely spiritual, and the reward which Jesus Christ promises to the elect is that they shall see God face to face; and its whole tendency is to subdue the passions; it offers nothing to excite them.”

There were frequently heated arguments on religion between Napoleon and members of his suite during the dreary hours at Longwood, and on one of these occasions he, Montholon, and Antommarchi are the debaters.  To the former he suddenly flashed out:  “I know men well, and I tell you that Jesus Christ was not a man”; then he curtly attacks the pretentious doctor by informing him that “aspiring to be an atheist does not make a man one.”

Dr. Alexander Mair published in the Expositor, some twenty years ago, a critical study of the authenticity of the declarations imputed to Napoleon when at St. Helena on the subject of the Christian religion, from which I make the following extract:-

“One evening at St. Helena,” says M. Beauterne, “the conversation was animated.  The subject treated of was an exalted one; it was the divinity of Jesus Christ.  Napoleon defended the truth of this doctrine with the arguments and eloquence of a man of genius, with something also of the native faith of the Corsican and the Italian.  To the objections of one of the interlocutors, who seemed to see in the Saviour but a sage, an illustrious philosopher, a great man, the Emperor replied:-

“’I know men, and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man.

“’Superficial minds may see some resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires, the conquerors, and the gods of other religions.  That resemblance does not exist.

“’I see in Lycurgus, Numa, Confucius, and Mahomet merely legislators; but nothing which reveals the Deity.  On the contrary, I see numerous relations between them and myself.  I make out resemblances, weaknesses, and common errors which assimilate them to myself and humanity.  Their faculties are those which I possess.  But it is different with Christ.  Everything about Him astonishes me; His spirit surprises me, and His will confounds me.  Between Him and anything of this world there is no possible comparison.  He is really a Being apart.

“’The nearer I approach Him and the more clearly I examine Him, the more everything seems above me; everything continues great with a greatness that crushes me.

“’His religion is a secret belonging to Himself alone, and proceeds from an intelligence which assuredly is not the intelligence of man.  There is in Him a profound originality which creates a series of sayings and maxims hitherto unknown.

“’Christ expects everything from His death.  Is that the invention of a man?  On the contrary, it is a strange course of procedure, a superhuman confidence, an inexplicable reality.  In every other existence than that of Christ, what imperfections, what changes!  I defy you to cite any existence, other than that of Christ, exempt from the least vacillation, free from all such blemishes and changes.  From the first day to the last He is the same, always the same, majestic and simple, infinitely severe, and infinitely gentle.

“’How the horizon of His empire extends, and prolongs itself into infinitude!  Christ reigns beyond life and beyond death.  The past and the future are alike to Him; the kingdom of the truth has, and in effect can have, no other limit than the false.  Jesus has taken possession of the human race; He has made of it a single nationality, the nationality of upright men, whom He calls to a perfect life.

“’The existence of Christ from beginning to end is a tissue entirely mysterious, I admit; but that mystery meets difficulties which are in all existences.  Reject it, the world is an enigma; accept it, and we have an admirable solution of the history of man.

“’Christ speaks, and henceforth generations belong to Him by bonds more close, more intimate than those of blood, by a union more sacred, more imperious than any other union beside.  He kindles the flame of a love which kills out the love of self and prevails over every other love.  Without contradiction, the greatest miracle of Christ is the reign of love.  All who believe in Him sincerely feel this love, wonderful, supernatural, supreme.  It is a phenomenon inexplicable, impossible to reason and the power of man; a sacred fire given to the earth by this new Prometheus, of which Time, the great destroyer, can neither exhaust the force nor terminate the duration.  That is what I wonder at most of all, for I often think about it; and it is that which absolutely proves to me the divinity of Christ!’

“Here the Emperor’s voice assumed a peculiar accent of ironical melancholy and of profound sadness:  ’Yes, our existence has shone with all the splendour of the crown and sovereignty; and yours, Montholon, Bertrand, reflected that splendour, as the dome of the Invalides, gilded by us, reflects the rays of the sun.  But reverses have come; the gold is effaced little by little.  The rain of misfortunes and outrages with which we are deluged every day carries away the last particles; we are only lead, gentlemen, and soon we shall be but dust.  Such is the destiny of great men; such is the near destiny of the great Napoleon.

“’What an abyss between my profound misery and the eternal reign of Christ, proclaimed, worshipped, beloved, adored, living throughout the whole universe!  Is that to die?  Is it not rather to live?’”

A more beautiful panegyric on the divinity of Christ has never been pronounced.  The thrilling and convincing conclusions evolved from the mind of a great reader, a great thinker-a man, in fact, who had studied and knew the human side of life, and could describe it with flawless accuracy-are a complete refutation of the opinions expressed either from prejudice or personal and political motives.  Napoleon conversed about religion with other men in a critical way, not always with orthodox reverence, but certainly with the conviction that he had a thorough knowledge of every phase of the subject.  Perhaps he derived pleasure from showing that he did not accept the popular doctrine unreservedly.

His unorthodox view of the Catholic religion is shown by the fact that in 1797 he endeavoured to get Pius VI. to suppress the Inquisition throughout Europe.  The Pope, in his reply, addressing the General as his “very dear son,” urges him to abandon the idea and assures him that the charges made against the Holy Office are false.  He further says that the Inquisition is not tyrannical, and that sooner than remove the Holy Office he would part with a province.  Napoleon for a time gave way, and it was not until 1808 that he issued a decree suppressing the institution in France and confiscating its property.  This incident is another proof of Napoleon’s humane attitude towards his people and his abhorrence of religious intolerance.

The basis for such an attitude towards an accepted institution of the Roman Catholic Church was Napoleon’s belief that “Faith is beyond the reach of the law and the most sacred property of man, for which he has no right to account to any mortal if there is nothing in it contrary to social order.”

Unquestionably he had pride in impressing his auditors with the vastness of his information, acquired by reading and study.  He had, moreover, a kind of childlike vanity in making men feel that he was not only extraordinary, but greatly their superior, even when they got him to talk on their own subjects.  This habit was especially pronounced at St. Helena.

But this in no way impairs the evidences of his spiritual character.  One of his first acts when his authority was established in France was to face the most hostile declamation against the Concordat, but believing that no good government could be assured without religion, he carried his convictions through in spite of it being a reversion of one of the cardinal doctrines of the Revolution, and there is abundance of proof that when he was faced with the last great problem, he accepted it without a sign of superstitious dread, believing in the immortality of the soul which should reveal all things.