Many of the most eminent conforming Prelates and Clergy were arrested, and even individuals, who had the reputation of being particularly devout, were marked as objects of persecution.  A new calendar was devised, which excluded the ancient festivals, and limited public worship to the decade, or tenth day, and all observance of the Sabbath was interdicted.  The prisons were crouded with sufferers in the cause of religion, and all who had not the zeal or the courage of martyrs, abstained from manifesting any attachment to the Christian faith.

While this consternation was yet recent, the Deputies on mission in the departments shut up the churches entirely:  the refuse of low clubs were paid and encouraged to break the windows and destroy the monuments; and these outrages, which, it was previously concerted, should at first assume the appearance of popular tumult, were soon regulated and directed by the mandates of the Convention themselves.  The churches were again opened, an atheistic ritual, and licentious homilies,* were substituted for the proscribed service—­and an absurd and ludicrous imitation of the Greek mythology was exhibited, under the title of the Religion of Reason.—­

     * I have read a discourse pronounced in a church at Paris, on the
     decade, so indecent and profane, that the most humble audience of a
     country-puppet show in England would not have tolerated it.

On the principal church of every town was inscribed, “The Temple of Reason;” and a tutelary goddess was installed with a ceremony equally pedantic, ridiculous, and profane.*

* At Havre, the goddess of Reason was drawn on a car by four cart-horses, and as it was judged necessary, to prevent accidents, that the horses should be conducted by those they were accustomed to, the carters were likewise put in requisition and furnished with cuirasses a l’antique from the theatre.  The men, it seems, being neither martial nor learned, were not au fait at this equipment, and concluding it was only a waistcoat of ceremony, invested themselves with the front behind, and the back part laced before, to the great amusement of the few who were sensible of the mistake.

Yet the philosophers did not on this occasion disdain those adventitious aids, the use of which they had so much declaimed against while they were the auxiliaries of Christianity.*

* Mr. Gibbon reproaches the Christians with their adoption of the allurements of the Greek mythology.—­The Catholics have been more hostilely despoiled by their modern persecutors, and may retort that the religion of reason is a more gross appeal to the senses than the darkest ages of superstition would have ventured on.

Music, processions, and decorations, which had been banished from the ancient worship, were introduced in the new one, and the philosophical reformer, even in the very attempt to establish a religion purely metaphysical, found himself obliged to inculcate it by a gross and material idolatry.*—­