Thursday, 12 Mars, 2015
Verse of the Day: «Par lesquelles
nous sont données les grandes et précieuses promesses, afin que par elles vous
soyez faits participants de la nature divine, étant échappés de la corruption
qui règne dans le monde par la convoitise.» 2 Pierre 1.4
Quote of the Day: “A fanatic is one who can't change
his mind and won't change the subject.”—Winston Churchill
«Un fanatique est
quelqu’un qui ne veut pas changer d’avis et qui ne veut pas changer de sujet.»—Winston
Churchill
French Fun Fact:
Nicknamed “city of lights,” lights actually refers to the number of
intellectuals who live there. (
confessedtravelholic.com)
What’s Really
Happening Over Here:
Weather – Heavy
Fog, Precip. 0%
Temperature – 46⁰F,
high of 61⁰
News – Superstar
French chef accused of 'harassment' (
thelocal.fr)
A Day In the Life:
Completely non-intellectual observation: a soccer ball in
France is like milk and toilet paper in a college dorm. If someone knows you
have it, you won’t have it. So if you are stretching or warming up or
something, make sure you hide your ball, because they WILL be asking you for
it. Also, make sure you stay busy, because they will also be asking you if you
want to come play with them, which is no better than indoor soccer at Liberty –
the players might be good, but you’re ACL probably won’t be by the time you’re
done. So (in my opinion), it’s best just to not join in.
Okay, now some stuff I had to use my brain to write.
It is common practice among non-believers to use the
existence of slavery to question the existence of God. How can a just God allow
such unjust activity? How can an all-powerful God be considered fair when I
live in, enjoy, and often take for granted the freedom that my ancestors spent
their entire lives longing for? It is not wrong to ask such questions. If God
is all powerful, it stands to reason that He could have done more to stop
slavery in America than a bloody civil war. But here is where our reasoning is
faulty: He could do no more! He paid the ultimate price for all sin: every
terrorist attack, every bombing, every Columbine, every Sandy Hook; every
shackle. Nay, if we wish to search for a scapegoat, we need look no further
than the mirror. Sin has corrupted His
world, and it has corrupted us. This is our fault. He did not plan for slavery
to happen, but with enough avarice and justification, we are capable of
frightening crimes. The only thing we can do is accept His sacrifice and
forgiveness.
And be different.
On the Festival of
the Supreme Being
“Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794) was one of the leaders
and orators of the French Revolution of 1789, best known for his involvement in
the Reign of Terror that followed.
As a young man, he studied law and had a reputation for
honesty and compassion. He sought to abolish the death penalty and refused to
pronounce a required death sentence after becoming a judge.
 |
| Robespierre 3D reconstruction based on death mask made after his execution |
But as the revolution approached, Robespierre became head of
the powerful Jacobin Club, a radical group advocating exile or death for
France's nobility. In 1792, after Paris mobs stormed the palace of the
Tuileries and dethroned King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, Robespierre
helped organize the new revolutionary governing body, the Commune of Paris.
Robespierre now developed great love for power along with a
reputation for intolerance, self-righteousness and cruelty.
He used his considerable oratory skills to successfully
demand the execution of the king and queen, saying Louis XVI "must die
that the country may live." In January 1793, the king was executed,
followed ten months later by the queen.
The Committee of Public Safety then took over the rule of
France and began a three year Reign of Terror during which it brutally put down
royalist uprisings, conducted wholesale murder of families with royal ancestry
and sent thousands to the guillotines without proper trials.
At one point during the Reign of Terror, Robespierre sent an
atheist, Jacques-Rene Hebert, to the guillotine after Hebert had closed the
Catholic churches and started pagan-style worship of the goddess of Reason.
Robespierre then introduced the Reign of Virtue and the Festival of the Supreme
Being, from which the speech below is taken.
Not long after this speech, Robespierre himself was arrested
by his political enemies. A rescue attempt followed, during which part of his
jaw was shot off. On July 28, 1794, Robespierre and 19 of his comrades were
guillotined. After his death, the Reign of Terror subsided, with Robespierre
subsequently blamed for much of its horrors.”—
The History Place
The day forever fortunate has
arrived, which the French people have consecrated to the Supreme Being. Never
has the world which He created offered to Him a spectacle so worthy of His
notice. He has seen reigning on the earth tyranny, crime, and imposture. He
sees at this moment a whole nation, grappling with all the oppressions of the
human race, suspend the course of its heroic labors to elevate its thoughts and
vows toward the great Being who has given it the mission it has undertaken and
the strength to accomplish it.
Is it not He whose immortal hand,
engraving on the heart of man the code of justice and equality, has written
there the death sentence of tyrants? Is it not He who, from the beginning of
time, decreed for all the ages and for all peoples liberty, good faith, and
justice?
He did not create kings to devour
the human race. He did not create priests to harness us, like vile animals, to
the chariots of kings and to give to the world examples of baseness, pride,
perfidy, avarice, debauchery, and falsehood. He created the universe to
proclaim His power. He created men to help each other, to love each other
mutually, and to attain to happiness by the way of virtue.
It is He who implanted in the
breast of the triumphant oppressor remorse and terror, and in the heart of the
oppressed and innocent calmness and fortitude. It is He who impels the just man
to hate the evil one, and the evil man to respect the just one. It is He who
adorns with modesty the brow of beauty, to make it yet more beautiful. It is He
who makes the mother's heart beat with tenderness and joy. It is He who bathes
with delicious tears the eyes of the son pressed to the bosom of his mother. It
is He who silences the most imperious and tender passions before the sublime
love of the fatherland. It is He who has covered nature with charms, riches,
and majesty. All that is good is His work, or is Himself. Evil belongs to the
depraved man who oppresses his fellow man or suffers him to be oppressed.
The Author of Nature has bound all
mortals by a boundless chain of love and happiness. Perish the tyrants who have
dared to break it!
Republican Frenchmen, it is yours
to purify the earth which they have soiled, and to recall to it the justice
that they have banished! Liberty and virtue together came from the breast of
Divinity. Neither can abide with mankind without the other.
O generous People, would you
triumph over all your enemies? Practice justice, and render the Divinity the
only worship worthy of Him. O People, let us deliver ourselves today, under His
auspices, to the just transports of a pure festivity. Tomorrow we shall return
to the combat with vice and tyrants. We shall give to the world the example of
republican virtues. And that will be to honor Him still.
The monster which the genius of
kings had vomited over France has gone back into nothingness. May all the
crimes and all the misfortunes of the world disappear with it! Armed in turn
with the daggers of fanaticism and the poisons of atheism, kings have always
conspired to assassinate humanity. If they are able no longer to disfigure
Divinity by superstition, to associate it with their crimes, they try to banish
it from the earth, so that they may reign there alone with crime.
O People, fear no more their
sacrilegious plots! They can no more snatch the world from the breast of its
Author than remorse from their own hearts. Unfortunate ones, uplift your eyes
toward heaven! Heroes of the fatherland, your generous devotion is not a
brilliant madness. If the satellites of tyranny can assassinate you, it is not
in their power entirely to destroy you. Man, whoever thou mayest be, thou canst
still conceive high thoughts for thyself. Thou canst bind thy fleeting life to
God, and to immortality. Let nature seize again all her splendor, and wisdom
all her empire! The Supreme Being has not been annihilated.
It is wisdom above all that our
guilty enemies would drive from the republic. To wisdom alone it is given to
strengthen the prosperity of empires. It is for her to guarantee to us the
rewards of our courage. Let us associate wisdom, then, with all our
enterprises. Let us be grave and discreet in all our deliberations, as men who
are providing for the interests of the world. Let us be ardent and obstinate in
our anger against conspiring tyrants, imperturbable in dangers, patient in
labors, terrible in striking back, modest and vigilant in successes. Let us be
generous toward the good, compassionate with the unfortunate, inexorable with
the evil, just toward every one. Let us not count on an unmixed prosperity, and
on triumphs without attacks, nor on all that depends on fortune or the
perversity of others. Sole, but infallible guarantors of our independence, let
us crush the impious league of kings by the grandeur of our character, even
more than by the strength of our arms.
Frenchmen, you war against kings;
you are therefore worthy to honor Divinity. Being of Beings, Author of Nature,
the brutalized slave, the vile instrument of despotism, the perfidious and
cruel aristocrat, outrages Thee by his very invocation of Thy name. But the
defenders of liberty can give themselves up to Thee, and rest with confidence
upon Thy paternal bosom. Being of Beings, we need not offer to Thee unjust
prayers. Thou knowest Thy creatures, proceeding from Thy hands. Their needs do
not escape Thy notice, more than their secret thoughts. Hatred of bad faith and
tyranny burns in our hearts, with love of justice and the fatherland. Our blood
flows for the cause of humanity. Behold our prayer. Behold our sacrifices.
Behold the worship we offer Thee.
