to this boasted morality of the man-God of the Christians, His disciples in this lower world are, like Tantalus, tormented with burning thirst, which they are not permitted to quench.  Do not such morals give us a wonderful idea of nature’s Author?  If He has, as we are assured, created everything for the use of His creatures, by what strange caprice does He forbid the use of the good things which He has created for them?  Is the pleasure which man constantly desires but a snare that God has maliciously laid in his path to entrap him?

CLXI.—­THE MORALS OF THE GOSPEL ARE IMPRACTICABLE.

The votaries of Christ would like to make us regard as a miracle the establishment of their religion, which is in every respect contrary to nature, opposed to all the inclinations of the heart, an enemy to physical pleasures.  But the austerity of a doctrine has a tendency to render it more wonderful to the ignorant.  The same reason which makes us respect, as Divine and supernatural, inconceivable mysteries, causes us to admire, as Divine and supernatural, a morality impracticable and beyond the power of man.  To admire morals and to practice them, are two very different things.  All the Christians continually admire the morals of the Gospel, but it is practiced but by a small number of saints; admired by people who themselves avoid imitating their conduct, under the pretext that they are lacking either the power or the grace.

The whole universe is infected more or less with a religious morality which is founded upon the opinion that to please the Deity it is necessary to render one’s self unhappy upon earth.  We see in all parts of our globe penitents, hermits, fakirs, fanatics, who seem to have studied profoundly the means of tormenting themselves for the glory of a Being whose goodness they all agree in celebrating.  Religion, by its essence, is the enemy of joy and of the welfare of men.  “Blessed are those who suffer!” Woe to those who have abundance and joy!  These are the rare revelations which Christianity teaches!

CLXII.—­A SOCIETY OF SAINTS WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE.

In what consists the saint of all religions?  It is a man who prays, fasts, who torments himself, who avoids the world, who, like an owl, is pleased but in solitude, who abstains from all pleasure, who seems frightened at every object which turns him a moment from his fanatical meditations.  Is this virtue?  Is a being of this stamp of any use to himself or to others?  Would not society be dissolved, and would not men retrograde into barbarism, if each one should be fool enough to wish to be a saint?