No revelation
regarding this is given him. Man is submitted at his origin to a
preestablished necessity, to an absolute and irresistible order.
That this order may be realized, man must discover it; that it
may exist, he must have divined it. This labor of invention
might be abridged; no one, either in heaven or on earth, will
come to man's aid; no one will instruct him. Humanity, for
hundreds of centuries, will devour its generations; it will
exhaust itself in blood and mire, without the God whom it
worships coming once to illuminate its reason and abridge its
time of trial. Where is divine action here? Where is
Providence?
"IF GOD DID NOT EXIST,"--it is Voltaire, the enemy of religions,
who says so,--"IT WOULD BE NECESSARY TO INVENT HIM." Why?
"Because," adds the same Voltaire, "if I were dealing with an
atheist prince whose interest it might be to have me pounded in a
mortar, I am very sure that I should be pounded." Strange
aberration of a great mind! And if you were dealing with a pious
prince, whose confessor, speaking in the name of God, should
command that you be burned alive, would you not be very sure of
being burned also? Do you forget, then, anti-Christ, the
Inquisition, and the Saint Bartholomew, and the stakes of Vanini
and Bruno, and the tortures of Galileo, and the martyrdom of so
many free thinkers? Do not try to distinguish here between use
and abuse: for I should reply to you that from a mystical and
supernatural principle, from a principle which embraces
everything, which explains everything, which justifies
everything, such as the idea of God, all consequences are
legitimate, and that the zeal of the believer is the sole judge
of their propriety.
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