The Waldensian Church in the valleys of Piedmont/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII.
The Emancipated Church.
Preparations for emancipation, and Charles Albert’s final grant of an equality of civil rights and religious toleration to his Vaudois subjects.
BEFORE entering on a new period of the Vaudois Church, and one of vital improvement and gradual progress, it will be advisable to take a survey of the condition—material, mental, and spiritual—in which the dawning century found her children. Modern historians, as well as still existing witnesses, agree in deploring it as one of lukewarmness, declension, and deterioration. The stir of politics, the spread of revolutionary principles, the idolatry of military power embodied in the dominant hero of the day, in whose army many of the Vaudois youth were enrolled, naturally exercised an influence over the manners and desires of the hitherto unambitious Waldenses. And there
was another cause, whose consequences were still more Page:The Waldensian Church in the valleys of Piedmont.djvu/247 Page:The Waldensian Church in the valleys of Piedmont.djvu/248 
WALDENSIAN COLLEGE AND CHURCH, LA TOUR.