What is a mystery?  If I examine the thing closely, I discover very soon that a mystery is nothing but a contradiction, a palpable absurdity, a notorious impossibility, on which theologians wish to compel men to humbly close the eyes; in a word, a mystery is whatever our spiritual guides can not explain to us.

It is advantageous for the ministers of religion that the people should not comprehend what they are taught.  It is impossible for us to examine what we do not comprehend.  Every time that we can not see clearly, we are obliged to be guided.  If religion was comprehensible, priests would not have so many charges here below.

No religion is without mysteries; mystery is its essence; a religion destitute of mysteries would be a contradiction of terms.  The God which serves as a foundation to natural religion, to theism or to deism, is Himself the greatest mystery to a mind wishing to dwell upon Him.

CXII.—­CONTINUATION.

All the revealed religions which we see in the world are filled with mysterious dogmas, unintelligible principles, of incredible miracles, of astonishing tales which seem imagined but to confound reason.  Every religion announces a concealed God, whose essence is a mystery; consequently, it is just as difficult to conceive of His conduct as of the essence of this God Himself.  Divinity has never spoken to us but in an enigmatical and mysterious way in the various religions which have been founded in the different regions of our globe.  It has revealed itself everywhere but to announce mysteries, that is to say, to warn mortals that it designs that they should believe in contradictions, in impossibilities, or in things of which they were incapable of forming any positive idea.

The more mysteries a religion has, the more incredible objects it presents to the mind, the better fitted it is to please the imagination of men, who find in it a continual pasturage to feed upon.  The more obscure a religion is, the more it appears divine, that is to say, in conformity to the nature of an invisible being, of whom we have no idea.

It is the peculiarity of ignorance to prefer the unknown, the concealed, the fabulous, the wonderful, the incredible, even the terrible, to that which is clear, simple, and true.  Truth does not give to the imagination such lively play as fiction, which each one may arrange as he pleases.  The vulgar ask nothing better than to listen to fables; priests and legislators, by inventing religions and forging mysteries from them, have served them to their taste.  In this way they have attracted enthusiasts, women, and the illiterate generally.  Beings of this kind resign easily to reasons which they are incapable of examining; the love of the simple and the true is found but in the small number of those whose imagination is regulated by study and by reflection.  The inhabitants of a village are never more pleased with their pastor than when he mixes a good deal of Latin in his sermon.  Ignorant men always imagine that he who speaks to them of things which they do not understand, is a very wise and learned man.  This is the true principle of the credulity of nations, and of the authority of those who pretend to guide them.