My brethren, religion is the secret voice of God speaking to men.
It ought to unite men, not divide them; hence every religion that
belongs to one people only is false. Ours is, in principle, that of
the whole universe; for we worship a supreme being as all nations do,
we practise the justice which all nations teach, and we reject all
the untruths with which the nations reproach each other. At one with
them in the principle which unites them, we differ from them in the
things about which they are in conflict.
The point on which all men of all times agree must be the centre of
truth, and the points on which they all differ must be standards
of falsehood. Religion must conform to morality, and, like it, be
universal; hence every religion whose dogmas offend against morality
is certainly false. It is under this twofold aspect of perversity
and falseness that we will, in this discourse, examine the books of
the Hebrews and of those who have succeeded them. Let us first see
if these books conform to morality; we shall then see if they have
any shade of probability. The first two points will deal with the Old
Testament; the third will discuss the New.
_First Point_
You know, my brethren, what horror fell on us when we read together
the writings of the Hebrews, confining our attention to those
features which offend against purity, charity, good faith, justice,
and reason--features which one not only finds in every chapter, but,
unhappily, one finds consecrated in them.
First, to say nothing of the extravagant injustice which they
venture to ascribe to the supreme being, in endowing a serpent with
speech in order to seduce a woman and her innocent posterity, let
us run over in succession all the historical horrors which outrage
nature and good sense. One of the patriarchs, Lot, the nephew of
Abraham, receives in his house two angels disguised as pilgrims; the
inhabitants of Sodom entertain impure desires of these angels; Lot,
who had two daughters promised in marriage, offers to abandon them
to the people instead of the two strangers. These young women must
have been strangely familiar with evil ways, since the first thing
they do after the destruction of their town by a rain of fire, and
after their mother has been changed into a pillar of salt, is to
intoxicate their father on two consecutive nights, in order to sleep
with him in succession. It is an imitation of the ancient Arabic
legend of Cyniras and Myrrha. But in this more decent legend Myrrha
is punished for her crime, while the daughters of Lot are rewarded
with what is, in Jewish eyes, the greatest and dearest blessing: they
become the mothers of a numerous posterity.
We will not insist on the falsehood of Isaac, the father of the just,
who says that his wife is his sister; whether he was merely repeating
the falsehood of Abraham, or Abraham was really guilty of taking his
sister to wife. But let us dwell for a moment on the patriarch Jacob,
who is offered to us as a model man. He compels his brother, who is
dying of hunger, to give up his birthright for a dish of lentils. He
afterwards deceives his aged father on his death-bed. After deceiving
his father, he deceives and robs his father-in-law Laban. Not content
with wedding two sisters, he lies with all his servants; and God
blesses this licentiousness and trickery. Who are the children of
such a father? His daughter Dinah pleases a prince of Sichem, and
it is probable that she loves the prince, since she lies with him.
The prince asks her in marriage, and she is promised on condition
that he and all his people are circumcised. The prince accepts the
condition; but as soon as he and his people undergo this painful
operation--which, nevertheless, leaves them strong enough to defend
themselves--Jacob’s family murder all the men of Sichem and enslave
their women and children.
We have in our infancy heard the story of Pelopæus. This incestuous
abomination is repeated in Judah, the patriarch and father of the
first tribe. He lies with his daughter-in-law, and then wishes to
have her killed. The book declares that then Joseph, a child of this
vagabond family, is sold into Egypt, and that, foreigner as he is,
he is made first minister as a reward for explaining a dream. What a
first minister he was, compelling a whole nation to enslave itself,
during a time of famine, to obtain food! What magistrate among us
would, in time of famine, dare to propose so abominable a bargain,
and what nation would accept it? Let us not stay to examine how
seventy members of the family of Joseph, who settled in Egypt, could
in two hundred and fifteen years increase to six hundred thousand
fighting men, without counting the women, old men, and children,
which would make a total of more than two millions. Let us not
discuss how it is that the text has four hundred and thirty years,
when the same text has given two hundred and fifteen. The infinite
number of contradictions, which are the seal of imposture, is not
the point which we are considering. Let us likewise pass over the
ridiculous prodigies of Moses and of Pharaoh’s magicians, and all the
miracles wrought to give the Jewish people a wretched bit of poor
country, which they afterwards purchase by blood and crime, instead
of giving them the fertile soil of Egypt, where they were. Let us
confine ourselves to the frightful iniquity of their ways.
Their God had made a thief of Jacob, and he now makes thieves of the
entire people. He orders his people to steal and take away with them
all the gold and silver vessels and utensils of the Egyptians. Behold
these wretches, to the number of six hundred thousand fighting men,
instead of taking up arms like men of spirit, flying like brigands
led by their God. If their God had wished to give them a good
country, he might have given them Egypt. He does not, however; he
leads them into a desert. They might have fled by the shortest route,
yet they go far out of their way to cross the Red Sea dry-foot. After
this fine miracle Moses’ own brother makes them another god, and this
god is a calf. To punish his brother Moses commands certain priests
to kill their sons, brothers, and fathers; and they kill twenty-three
thousand Jews, who let themselves be slain like cattle.
After this butchery it is not surprising to hear that this abominable
people sacrifices human victims to its god, whom it calls Adonai,
borrowing the name of Adonis from the Phœnicians. The twenty-ninth
verse of chapter xxvii. of _Leviticus_ expressly forbids the
redemption of those who are destined for sacrifice, and it is in
virtue of this cannibalistic law that Jephthah, some time afterwards,
offers up his own daughter.
It was not enough to slay twenty-three thousand men for a calf; we
have again twenty-four thousand sacrificed for having intercourse
with idolatrous women. It is, my brethren, a worthy prelude and
example of persecution on the ground of religion.
This people advances in the deserts and rocks of Palestine. Here is
your splendid country, God says to them. Slay all the inhabitants,
kill all the male infants, make an end of their married women, keep
the young girls for yourselves. All this is carried out to the
letter, according to the Hebrew books; and we should shudder at the
account, if the text did not add that the Jews found in the camp
of the Midianites 675,000 sheep, 62,000 cattle, 61,000 asses, and
32,000 girls. Happily, the absurdity undoes the barbarism. Once
more, however, I am not concerned here with what is ridiculous and
impossible; I select only what is execrable. Having passed the Jordan
dry-shod, as they crossed the sea, we find our people in the promised
land.
The first person to let in this holy people, by an act of treachery,
is Rahab, a strange character for God to associate with himself.
He levels the walls of Jericho at the sound of the trumpet; the
holy people enters the town--to which it had no right, on its own
confession--and slays the men, women, and children. Let us pass over
the other carnages, the crucifixion of kings, the supposed wars
against the giants of Gaza and Ascalon, and the murder of those who
could not pronounce the word “Shibboleth.”
Listen to this fine story.
A Levite, with his wife, arrives on his ass at Gibeah, in the tribe
of Benjamin. Some of the Benjamites, who are bent on committing
the sin of sodomy with the Levite, turn their brutality upon the
woman, who dies of the violence. Were the culprits punished? Not
at all. The eleven tribes slaughtered the whole tribe of Benjamin;
only six hundred men escaped. But the eleven tribes are afterwards
sorry to see a tribe perish, and, to restore it, they exterminate
the inhabitants of one of their own towns in order to take from it
six hundred girls, whom they give to the six hundred Benjamites who
survive to perpetuate this splendid race.
How many crimes committed in the name of the Lord! We will give
only that of the man of God (Ehud). The Jews, having come so far to
conquer, are subject to the Philistines. In spite of the Lord, they
have sworn obedience to King Eglon. A holy Jew, named Ehud, asks
permission to speak in private with the king on the part of God. The
king does not fail to grant the audience. Ehud assassinates him,
and his example has been used many times by Christians to betray,
destroy, or massacre so many sovereigns.
At length this chosen nation, which had thus been directed by God
himself, desires to have a king; which greatly displeases the priest
Samuel. The first Jewish king renews the custom of immolating men.
Saul prudently enjoined that his soldiers should not eat on the day
they fought the Philistines, to give them more vigour; he swore to
the Lord that he would immolate to him any man who ate. Happily, the
people were wiser than he; they would not suffer the king’s son to
be sacrificed for eating a little honey. But listen, my brethren, to
this most detestable, yet most consecrated, act. It is said that Saul
takes prisoner a king of the country, named Agag. He did not kill his
prisoner; he acted as is usual in humane and civilised nations. What
happened? The Lord is angry, and Samuel, priest of the Lord, says to
Saul: “You are reprobate for having spared a king who surrendered to
you.” And the priestly butcher at once cuts Agag into pieces. What
would you say, my brethren, if, when the Emperor Charles V. had a
French king in his hands, his chaplain came and said to him: “You
are damned for not killing Francis I.,” and proceeded to cut the
French king to pieces before the eyes of the emperor?
What will you say of the holy King David, the king who found favour
in the eyes of the God of the Jews, and merited to be an ancestor
of the Messiah? This good king is at first a brigand, capturing and
pillaging all he finds. Among others, he despoils a rich man named
Nabal, marries his wife, and flies to King Achish. During the night
he descends upon the villages of King Achish, his benefactor, with
fire and sword. He slaughters men, women, and children, says the
sacred text, lest there be any one left to take the news. When he is
made king he ravishes the wife of Uriah, and has the husband put to
death; and it is from this adulterous homicide that the Messiah--God
himself--descends. What blasphemy! This David, who thus becomes an
ancestor of God as a reward of his horrible crime, is punished for
the one good and wise action which he did. There is no good and
prudent prince who ought not to know the number of his people, as
the shepherd should know the number of his flock. David has them
enumerated--though we are not told what the number was--and for
making this wise and useful enumeration a prophet comes from God to
give him the choice of war, pestilence, or famine.
Let us not linger, my dear brethren, over the numberless barbarities
of the kings of Judah and Israel--their murders and outrages, mixed
up always with ridiculous stories; though even the ridiculous in
them is always bloody, and not even the prophet Elisha is free from
barbarism. This worthy devotee has forty children devoured by bears
because the innocent youngsters had called him “bald.” Let us leave
this atrocious nation in the Babylonian captivity and in its bondage
to the Romans, with all the fine promises of their god Adonis or
Adonai, who had so often promised the Jews the sovereignty of the
earth. In fine, under the wise government of the Romans, a king is
born to the Hebrews. You know, my brethren, who this king, _shilo_,
or Messiah is; it is he who, after being at first numbered among
the prophets without a mission, who, though not priests, made a
profession of inspiration, was, after some centuries, regarded as a
god. We need go no farther; let us see on what pretexts, what facts,
what miracles, what prophecies--in a word, on what foundation, this
disgusting and abominable history is based.
_Second Point_
O God, if thou thyself didst descend upon the earth, and didst
command me to believe this tissue of murders, thefts, assassinations,
and incests committed by thy order and in thy name, I should say to
thee: No; thy sanctity cannot ask me to acquiesce in these horrible
things that outrage thee. Thou seekest, no doubt, to try me.
How, then, my virtuous and enlightened hearers, could we accept this
frightful story on the wretched evidence which is offered in support
of it?
Run briefly over the books that have been falsely attributed to
Moses. I say falsely, since it is not possible for Moses to have
written about things that happened long after his time. None of us
would believe that the memoirs of William, Prince of Orange, were
written with his own hand if there were allusions in these memoirs
to things that happened after his death. Let us see what is narrated
in the name of Moses. First, God created the light, which he calls
“day”; then the darkness, which he calls “night,” and it was the
first day. Thus there were days before the sun was made.
On the sixth day God makes man and woman; but the author, forgetting
that woman has been made already, afterwards derives her from one of
Adam’s ribs. Adam and Eve are put in a garden from which four rivers
issue; and of these rivers there are two, the Euphrates and the
Nile, which have their sources a thousand miles from each other. The
serpent then spoke like a man; it was the most cunning of animals.
It persuades the woman to eat an apple, and so has her driven from
paradise. The human race increases, and the children of God fall in
love with the daughters of men. There were giants on the earth, and
God was sorry that he had made man. He determined to exterminate him
by a flood; but wished to save Noah, and ordered him to make a vessel
of poplar wood, three hundred cubits in length. Into this vessel were
to be brought seven pairs of all the clean animals, and two pairs of
the unclean. It was necessary to feed them during the ten months that
the water covered the earth. You can imagine what would be needed to
feed fourteen elephants, fourteen camels, fourteen buffaloes, and
as many horses, asses, deer, serpents, ostriches--in a word, more
than two thousand species.[62] You will ask me whence came the water
to cover the whole earth and rise fifteen cubits above the highest
mountains? The text replies that it came from the cataracts of
heaven. Heaven knows where these cataracts are. After the deluge God
enters into an alliance with Noah and with all the animals; and in
confirmation of this alliance he institutes the rainbow.
Those who wrote these things were not, as you perceive, great
physicists. However, here is Noah with a religion given to him by
God, and this religion is neither Jewish nor Christian. The posterity
of Noah seeks to build a tower that shall reach to heaven. A fine
enterprise! But God fears it, and causes the workers suddenly to
speak several different tongues, and they disperse. The whole is
written in this ancient oriental vein.
A rain of fire converts towns into a lake; Lot’s wife is changed into
a salt statue; Jacob fights all night with an angel, and is hurt in
the leg; Joseph, sold as a slave into Egypt, is made first minister
because he explains a dream. Seventy members of the family settle in
Egypt, and in two hundred and fifteen years, as we saw, multiply into
two millions. It is these two million Hebrews who fly from Egypt, and
go the longest way in order to have the pleasure of crossing the sea
dry-shod.
But there is nothing surprising about this miracle. Pharaoh’s
magicians performed some very fine miracles. Like Moses, they changed
a rod into a serpent, which is a very simple matter. When Moses
changed water into blood, they did the same. When he brought frogs
into existence, they imitated him. But they were beaten when it came
to the plague of lice; on that subject the Jews knew more than other
nations.
In the end Adonai causes the death of each first-born in Egypt in
order to allow his people to leave in peace. The sea divides to let
them pass; it was the least that could be done on such an occasion.
The remainer is on the same level. The people cry out in the desert.
Some of the husbands complain of their wives; at once a water is
found which causes any woman who has forfeited her honour to swell
and burst. They have neither bread nor paste; quails and manna are
rained on them. Their garments last forty years, and grow with the
children. Apparently clothes descend from heaven for the new-born
children.
A prophet of the district seeks to curse the people, but his ass
opposes the project, together with an angel, and the ass speaks very
reasonably and at great length to the prophet.
When they attack a town, the walls fall at the sound of trumpets;
just as Amphion built walls to the sound of the flute. But the
finest miracle is when five Amorite kings--that is to say, five
village sheiks--attempt to oppose the ravages of Joshua. They are
not merely vanquished and cut to pieces, but the Lord sends a great
rain of stones upon the fugitives. Even that is not enough. A few
escape, and, in order to give the Israelites time to pursue them,
nature suspends its eternal laws. The sun halts at Gibeon, and the
moon at Aijalon. We do not quite understand how the moon comes in,
but the books of Joshua leave no room for doubt as to the fact. Now
let us pass to other miracles, and go on to Samson, who is depicted
as a famous plunderer, a friend of God. Samson routs a thousand
Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, because he is not shaved, and
ties by the tails three hundred foxes which he found in a certain
place.
There is hardly a page that does not contain similar stories. In one
place it is the shade of Samuel appearing in response to the voice
of a witch; in another it is the shadow on a sun-dial (assuming that
these miserable folk had sun-dials) receding ten degrees at the
prayer of Hezekiah, who prudently asks for this sign. God gives him
the alternatives of advancing or retarding the hour, and Dr. Hezekiah
thinks that it is not difficult to put the shadow on, but very
difficult to put it back.
Elias rises to heaven in a fiery chariot; children sing in a fiery
furnace. I should never come to an end if I wished to enter into all
the details of the unheard-of extravagances that swarm in this book.
Never was common-sense assailed with such indecency and fury.
Such is, from one end to the other, the Old Testament, the father
of the New, a father who disavows his child and regards it as a
rebellious bastard; for the Jews, faithful to the law of Moses,
regard with detestation the Christianity that has been reared on the
ruins of their law. The Christians, however, have with great subtlety
sought to justify the New Testament by the Old. The two religions
thus fight each other with the same weapons; they invoke the same
prophets and appeal to the same predictions.
Will the ages to come, which will have seen the passing of these
follies, yet may, unhappily, witness the rise of others not less
unworthy of God and men, believe that Judaism and Christianity
based their claims on such foundations and such prophecies? What
prophecies! Listen. The prophet Isaiah is summoned by Ahaz, king
of Judah, to make certain predictions to him, in the vain and
superstitious manner of the East. These prophets were, as you know,
men who earned more or less of a living by divination; there were
many like them in Europe in the last century, especially among the
common people. King Ahaz, besieged in Jerusalem by Shalmaneser, who
had taken Samaria, demanded of the soothsayer a prophecy and a sign.
Isaiah said to him: This is the sign:
“A girl will conceive, and will bear a child who shall be called
Emmanuel. He shall eat butter and honey until the day when he shall
reject evil and choose good; and before this child is of age, the
land which thou detestest shall be forsaken by its two kings; and the
Lord shall hiss for the flies that are on the banks of the streams of
Egypt and Assyria; and the Lord will take a razor, and shave the King
of Assyria; he will shave his head and the hair of his feet.”
After this splendid prophecy, recorded in _Isaiah_, but of which
there is not a word in _Kings_, the prophet orders him first to
write on a large roll, which they hasten to seal. He urges the king
to press to the plunder of his enemies, and then ensures the birth
of the predicted child. Instead of calling it Emmanuel, however, he
gives it the name of Maher Salabas. This, my brethren, is the passage
which Christians have distorted in favour of their Christ; this is
the prophecy that set up Christianity. The girl to whom the prophet
ascribes a child is incontestably the Virgin Mary.[63] Maher Salabas
is Jesus Christ. As to the butter and honey, I am unaware what it
means. Each soothsayer promises the Jews deliverance when they are
captive; and this deliverance is, according to the Christians,
the heavenly Jerusalem, and the Church of our time. Prophecy is
everything with the Jews; with the Christians miracle is everything,
and all the prophecies are figures of Jesus Christ.
Here, my brethren, is one of these fine and striking prophecies. The
great prophet Ezekiel sees a wind from the north, and four animals,
and wheels of chrysolite full of eyes; and the Lord says to him:
“Rise, eat a book, and then depart.”
The Lord orders him to sleep three hundred and ninety days on the
left side, and then forty on the right side. The Lord binds him with
cords; he was certainly a man that needed binding. What follows in
Ezekiel is very distasteful.
But we need not waste our time in assailing all the disgusting and
abominable dreams which are the subject of controversy between the
Jews and Christians. We will be content to deplore the most pitiful
blindness that has ever darkened the mind of man. Let us hope that
this blindness will pass like so many others, and let us proceed to
the New Testament, a worthy sequel to what has gone before.
_Third Point_
Vain was it that the Jews were a little more enlightened in the time
of Augustus than in the barbaric ages of which we have spoken. Vainly
did the Jews begin to recognise the immortality of the soul, a dogma
unknown to Moses, and the idea of God rewarding the just after death
and punishing the wicked, a dogma equally unknown to Moses. Reason
none the less penetrated this miserable people, from whom issued the
Christian religion, which has proved the source of so many divisions,
civil wars, and crimes; which has caused so much blood to flow; and
which is broken into so many sects in the corner of the earth where
it rules.
There were at all times among the Jews people of the lowest order,
who made prophecies in order to distinguish themselves from the
populace. We deal here with the one who has become best known, and
has been turned into a god; we give a brief account of his career, as
it is described in the books called the gospels. We need not seek to
determine when these books were written; it is evident that they were
written after the fall of Jerusalem. You know how absurdly the four
authors contradict each other. It is a demonstrative proof that they
are wrong. We do not, however, need many proofs to demolish this
miserable structure. We will be content with a short and faithful
account.
In the first place, Jesus is described as a descendant of Abraham and
David, and the writer Matthew counts forty-two generations in two
thousand years. In his list, however, we find only forty-one, and
in the genealogical tree which he borrows from _Kings_ he blunders
clumsily in making Josiah the father of Jechoniah.
Luke also gives a genealogy, but he assigns forty-nine generations
after Abraham, and they are entirely different generations. To
complete the absurdity, these generations belong to Joseph, and the
evangelists assure us that Jesus was not the son of Joseph. Would one
be received in a German chapter on such proofs of nobility? Yet there
is question here of the son of God, and God himself is the author of
the book!
Matthew says that when Jesus, King of the Jews, was born in a stable
in the town of Bethlehem, three magi or kings saw his star in the
east, and followed it, until it halted over Bethlehem; and that King
Herod, hearing these things, caused all the children under two years
of age to be put to death. Could any horror be more ridiculous?
Matthew adds that the father and mother took the child into Egypt,
and remained there until the death of Herod. Luke says precisely the
contrary; he observes that Joseph and Mary remained peacefully at
Bethlehem for six weeks, then went to Jerusalem, and from there to
Nazareth; and that they went every year to Jerusalem.
The evangelists contradict each other in regard to the time of
the life of Jesus, his miracles, the night of the supper, and the
day of his death--in a word, in regard to nearly all the facts.
There were forty-nine gospels composed by the Christians of the
first few centuries, and these were still more flagrant in their
contradictions. In the end, the four which we have were selected.
Even if they were in harmony, what folly, what misery, what puerile
and odious things they contain!
The first adventure of Jesus, son of God, is to be taken up by the
devil; the devil, who makes no appearance in the books of Moses,
plays a great part in the gospels. The devil, then, takes God up a
mountain in the desert. From there he shows him all the kingdoms of
the earth. Where is this mountain from which one can see so many
lands? We do not know.
John records that Jesus goes to a marriage-feast, and changes water
into wine; and that he drives from the precincts of the temple those
who were selling the animals of the sacrifices ordered in the Jewish
law.
All diseases were at that time regarded as possession by the devil,
and Jesus makes it the mission of his apostles to expel devils. As
he goes along, he delivers one who was possessed by a legion of
devils, and he makes these devils enter a herd of swine, which cast
themselves into the sea of Tiberias. We may suppose that the owners
of the swine, who were not Jews apparently, were not pleased with
this comedy. He heals a blind man, and the blind man sees men as if
they were trees. He wishes to eat figs in winter, and, not finding
any on a tree, he curses the tree and causes it to wither; the text
prudently adds: “For it was not the season of figs.”
He is transformed during the night, and causes Moses and Elias to
appear. Do the stories of romancers even approach these absurdities?
At length, after constantly insulting the Pharisees, calling them
“races of vipers,” “whitened sepulchres,” etc., he is handed over by
them to justice, and executed with two thieves; and the historians
are bold enough to tell us that at his death the earth was darkened
at midday, and at a time of full moon. As if every writer of the time
would not have mentioned so strange a miracle.
After that it is a small matter to make him rise from the dead and
predict the end of the world; which, however, has not happened.
The sect of Jesus lingers in concealment; fanaticism increases.
At first they dare not make a god of this man, but they soon take
courage. Some Platonic metaphysic amalgamates with the Nazaræan sect,
and Jesus becomes the logos, the word of God, then consubstantial
with God his father. The Trinity is invented; and, in order to have
it accepted, the first gospels are falsified.
A passage is added in regard to this truth, and the historian
Josephus is falsified and made to speak of Jesus, though Josephus is
too serious an historian to mention such a man. They go so far as
to forge sibylline books. In a word, there is no kind of trickery,
fraud, and imposture that the Nazaræans do not adopt. At the end of
three years they succeeded in having Jesus recognised as a god. Not
content with this extravagance, they go so far as to locate their god
in a bit of paste. While their god is eaten by mice and digested,
they hold that there is no such thing as bread in the host; that God
has, at the word of a man, put himself in the place of the bread. All
kinds of superstitions flood the Church; plunder is predominant in
it; indulgences, benefices, and all kinds of spiritual things are put
up for sale.
The sect splits into a multitude of sects; age after age they fight
and slaughter each other. At every dispute kings and princes are
massacred.
Such, my dear brethren, is the fruit of the tree of the Cross, the
power that has been declared divine.
For this they have dared to bring God upon the earth; to commit
Europe for ages to murder and brigandage. It is true that our fathers
have in part shaken off this frightful yoke, and rid themselves of
some errors and superstitions. But how imperfect they have left
the work! Everything tells us that it is time to complete it; to
destroy utterly the idol of which we have as yet broken only a finger
or two. Numbers of theologians have already embraced Socinianism
(Unitarianism), which comes near to the worship of one God, freed
from superstition. England, Germany, and the provinces of France are
full of wise doctors, who ask only the opportunity to break away.
There are great numbers in other countries. Why persist in teaching
what we do not believe, and make ourselves guilty before God of this
great sin?
We are told that the people need mysteries, and must be deceived.
My brethren, dare any one commit this outrage on humanity? Have not
our fathers already taken from the people their transubstantiation,
auricular confession, indulgences, exorcisms, false miracles, and
ridiculous statues? Are not the people accustomed to the deprivation
of this food of superstition? We must have the courage to go a few
steps farther. The people are not so weak of mind as is thought;
they will easily admit a wise and simple cult of one God, such as
was professed, it is said, by Abraham and Noah, and by all the sages
of antiquity, and as is found among the educated people of China.
We seek not to despoil the clergy of what the liberality of their
followers has given them; we wish them, since most of them secretly
laugh at the untruths they teach, to join us in preaching the truth.
Let them observe that, while they now offend and dishonour the
Deity, they would, if they follow us, glorify him. What incalculable
good would be done by that happy change? Princes and magistrates
would be better obeyed, the people would be tranquil, the spirit
of division and hatred would be expelled. They would offer to God,
in peace, the first fruits of their work. There would assuredly be
more righteousness on the earth, for many weak-minded folk who hear
contempt expressed daily for the Christian superstition, and know
that it is ridiculed by the priests themselves, thoughtlessly imagine
that there is no such thing as religion, and abandon themselves to
excesses. But when they learn that the Christian sect is really only
a perversion of natural religion; when reason, freed from its chains,
teaches the people that there is but one God; that this God is the
common parent of all men, who are brothers; that, as brothers, they
must be good and just to each other, and practise every virtue; that
God, being good and just, must reward virtue and punish crime; then
assuredly, my brethren, men will gain in righteousness as they lose
in superstition.
We begin by giving this example in secret, and we trust that it will
be followed in public.
May the great God who hears me--a God who certainly could not be born
of a girl, nor die on a gibbet, nor be eaten in a morsel of paste,
nor have inspired this book with its contradictions, follies, and
horrors--may this God, creator of all worlds, have pity on the sect
of the Christians who blaspheme him. May he bring them to the holy
and natural religion, and shower his blessing on the efforts we make
to have him worshipped. Amen.