_Love the Lord thy God with all thy strength, and thy neighbour as
thyself._
This, according to the God and Legislator of the Christians, is the sum
of their duties. Yet we see it is impossible for Christians to love that
severe and capricious God whom they worship. On the other hand, we see
them eternally busied in tormenting, persecuting, and destroying their
neighbours and brethren.
To find an explanation of these contradictions, it is sufficient to cast
our eyes upon the God which the Christians inherited from the Jews.
Not contented with the shocking colours in which he was painted, the
Christians have still more disfigured his portrait. The Legislator of
the Hebrews speaks only of the transient punishments of this life; the
Christian represents his God as pouring out unbounded vengeance to all
eternity. In one word, Christian fanaticism feeds itself with the idea
of an hell, where its God, transformed into a ferocious executioner, as
unjust as implacable, shall bathe himself in the tears of his wretched
creatures, and perpetuate their existence, to render them eternally
miserable. There, clothed in vengeance, he shall mock at the torments
of sinners, and listen with rapture to the groans with which they shall
make the brazen roofs of their prisons resound; not the smallest hope of
some distant termination of their pains shall give them an interval of
imaginary relief.
The Christians in adopting the terrible God of the Jews, have sublimed
his cruelty. They represent him as the most capricious, wicked, and
cruel tyrant which the human mind can conceive, and suppose him to treat
his subjects with a barbarity and injustice truly worthy of a demon. In
order to be convinced of this truth, let us contemplate, for a moment,
a picture of the Jewish mythology, adopted and rendered still more
extravagant by the Christians.