CXVII.—­OPINION OF A CELEBRATED THEOLOGIAN.

Did not a famous theologian recognize the absurdity of admitting the existence of a God and arresting His course?  “To us,” he said, “who believe through faith in a true God, an individual substance, there ought to be no trouble in believing everything else.  This first mystery, which is no small matter of itself, once admitted, our reason can not suffer violence in admitting all the rest.  As for myself, it is no more trouble to accept a million of things that I do not understand, than to believe the first one.”

Is there anything more contradictory, more impossible, or more mysterious, than the creation of matter by an immaterial Being, who Himself immutable, causes the continual changes that we see in the world?  Is there anything more incompatible with all the ideas of common sense than to believe that a good, wise, equitable, and powerful Being presides over nature and directs Himself the movements of a world which is filled with follies, miseries, crimes, and disorders, which He could have foreseen, and by a single word could have prevented or made to disappear?  Finally, as soon as we admit a Being so contradictory as the theological God, what right have we to refuse to accept the most improbable fables, the most astonishing miracles, the most profound mysteries?

CXVIII.—­THE DEIST’S GOD IS NO LESS CONTRADICTORY, NO LESS FANCIFUL, THAN THE THEOLOGIAN’S GOD.

The theist exclaims, “Be careful not to worship the ferocious and strange God of theology; mine is much wiser and better; He is the Father of men; He is the mildest of Sovereigns; it is He who fills the universe with His benefactions!” But I will tell him, do you not see that everything in this world contradicts the good qualities which you attribute to your God?  In the numerous family of this mild Father I see but unfortunate ones.  Under the empire of this just Sovereign I see crime victorious and virtue in distress.  Among these benefactions, which you boast of, and which your enthusiasm alone sees, I see a multitude of evils of all kinds, upon which you obstinately close your eyes.

Compelled to acknowledge that your good God, in contradiction with Himself, distributes with the same hand good and evil, you will find yourself obliged, in order to justify Him, to send me, as the priests would, to the other life.  Invent, then, another God than the one of theology, because your God is as contradictory as its God is.  A good God who does evil or who permits it to be done, a God full of equity and in an empire where innocence is so often oppressed; a perfect God who produces but imperfect and wretched works; such a God and His conduct, are they not as great mysteries as that of the incarnation?  You blush, you say, for your fellow beings who are persuaded that the God of the universe could change Himself into a man and die upon a cross in a corner of Asia.  You consider the ineffable mystery of the Trinity very absurd Nothing appears more ridiculous to you than a God who changes Himself into bread and who is eaten every day in a thousand different places.