Atheist Juvenile Secret Society in France
By L. A. S.
FRANCE has been largely atheistic since the days of the French Revolution. Previously to that time France was Roman Catholic. The false conceptions of God and of righteousness which were imposed upon the people by the papal religion, were mainly responsible for the atheism which swept over France. And this truth belongs not alone to history; the process is still going on in the country to-day. According to the London Daily Mail there exists in France an extraordinary juvenile secret society which is said to have over two million members, all of them boys from fourteen to twenty years of age, and most of them pupils in the Catholic schools. A description of the society says:— They call themselves “Brothers of the Coast,” and each of them is tattooed with the two letters, A. D., which signify Anti-Dieu. Thus the society is distinctly atheistic. The brothers are pledged never to do obeisance to the consecrated host upon the altar; never to go voluntarily to confession, or, if compelled to go, then to treat the ceremony with ridicule; never to receive the communion unless constrained by parents; never to observe fast days unless obliged, and then to take the first opportunity to gorge themselves on the same day. These young atheists, so it is said, are so thoroughly organized, and so resolute in co-operating against their teachers when they think there is reason to do so, that they enjoy in many schools a practical control over the discipline. There would be far less atheism in all parts of the world if it were not for the false views of God and of Christianity which the devil through his human agents continually imposes upon the people. It is the work of the Christian to counteract this deceptive work of the archenemy by making manifest in his own life the true attributes of the divine character. L. A. S.