of his works, the same theory is presented in various forms, but always to the same effect, and often with the same illustrations. This tendency to repeat himself was no doubt the natural consequence of the practical character of his undertaking. As the apostle of a new faith, he was mindful of some at least of the apostolic maxims. He was instant in season and out of season. He taught here a little and there a little, line upon line, and precept upon precept. His His teaching, however, is in substance compact, and if his religious creed, positive and negative, were reduced to the form of propositions, it would have to be thrown into some such form as the following:

It is morally certain, if it is not actually demonstrated, that there is a God.

There is a conflict of evidence as to the moral character of God, but the evidence in favor of his being just and benevolent preponderates so much as to render probable any hypothesis which would justify a belief in it.

The belief in a future state of rewards and punishments is such a hypothesis, which is one evidence in favor of its truth. Moreover it may be said to be physically possible, suggested by facts, highly important if true, and at all events exceedingly useful. It is thus prudent to act on the hypothesis of its truth.

This, in a few words, is the positive side of Voltaire's creed. We do not think that any one who will take the trouble to read his works fairly and candidly will be able to doubt that it was honestly formed and sincerely held. The negative side of his creed relates to the truth of Christianity, and may without injustice be summed up by saying that he held that the gospel history was a contemptible imposture and falsehood from beginning to end; that the four gospels as we have them were forgeries written long after the events which they profess to relate, by persons who knew very little about those events; that the whole of the Old Testament was a collection of fables; that the Jews were amongst the most hateful and contemptible of the human race; that the Bible was full of immoral precepts and of bad examples; that the establishment of Christianity was procured by fraud and

violence, and that it was on the whole a grievous injury to the human race; that it was the cause of endless bloodshed and violence about trifles, and of a chronic distortion of the moral sentiments;-in a word, that it was an enemy to human happiness and virtue, and that until it was finally rejected and replaced by Deism, men would never be happy or good.

We cannot of course examine one by one the different items, positive and negative, of this system, but we will try to show concisely what was their place in Voltaire's mind. As to the positive side of his creed, his belief in God, at least in the latter part of his life, rested entirely on the argument from design, which he regarded as equivalent in force to a demonstration. At an earlier period he seems to have attached weight to Clarke's quasigeometrical argument upon the subject, but he afterward changed his mind about it (compare Traité de Métaphysique, ch. ii. with Le Philosophe Ignorant, ch. xiii. and following). The following passage gives in a very few words the latest form of his opinion: "J'admets cette intelligence suprême sans craindre que jamais on puisse me faire changer d'opinion. Rien n'ébranle en moi cet axiome. tout ouvrage démontre un ouvrier." He expressed this belief in endless forms, ranging from the most solemn to the most farcical, and he proved the sincerity with which he held it, by stating on every occasion, and in the broadest manner, every objection to it to which he could bethink himself; but nevertheless he appears never to have abandoned it, or to have failed to connect it with the other doctrines to which we have referred. The positive side of his religion, which is restated perhaps on a hundred different occasions, is well and shortly summed up in a tract purporting to be a homily on atheism, and professedly preached to a private society of friends in London in 1763. The following extracts convey the pith of it:

"Let us set bounds to our insatiable and useless curiosity; let us attach ourselves to our true interest. Is the supreme artisan who has made the world and ourselves our master? Is he benevolent? Do we owe him gratitude?"

After answering the first question in the

affirmative he goes on to the question of evil :

"Evil deluges the world. What are we to infer from it according to our weak reasonings?"

After discussing and rejecting the alternatives of atheism, manicheism, devil worship, and optimism, he deals thus with the theory of a future life:

"What side then remains for us to take? Must we not take that which was embraced in India, Chaldæa, Egypt, Greece, and Rome by all the sages of antiquity, that of believing that God will make us pass from this unhappy life to a better which will be the development of our nature? For, after all, it is clear that we have gone through different sorts of existences already. We existed before a new disposition of organs formed us in the womb, our being was for nine months very different from what it was before-infancy differs from the condition of an embryo, mature age has nothing in common with infancy-death may introduce us to a different form of existence.

That is only a hope, cry the poor wretches who feel and reason; you send us back to Pandora's box; evil is real, and hope may be an illusion; misfortune and crime besiege the life which we have, and you speak to us of a life which we have not, which perhaps we shall not have, and of which we have no idea."

To this he answers:

"We do not know what it is which thinks in us, and therefore we cannot know whether this unknown being will not survive our body. It is physically possible that there may be in us an indestructible monad, a hidden flame, a particle of divine fire which exists eternally under a variety of forms. I will not say that this is demonstrated, but without wishing to deceive mankind one may say that we have as many reasons to believe as to deny the immortality of the thinking being.

This ancient and general opinion is perhaps the only one which can justify Providence. We must recognize a God who rewards and punishes, or recognize none at all. I do not see that there can be a middle way. Either there is no God, or God is just. We have an idea of justice-we, whose intelligence is so limited. Now can this justice be wanting to the supreme intelligence? We feel how absurd it is to say that God is ignorant, weak, or false. Shall we dare to say that he is cruel? It would be better to keep to fatal necessity, it would be better to admit an inevitable destiny, than to believe in a God who had created a single creature to make it wretched.

"I am told that God's justice is not ours. I should as soon say that the equality of twice two and four is not the same thing to God and to me. What is true is in my eyes as it is in his.

There are not

two ways of being true. The only difference probably is that the supreme intelligence comprehends all truths at once, whilst we drag ourselves slowly toward a few. If there are not two sorts of truth in the same proposition, how can there be two sorts of We can comjustice in the same action? prehend the justice of God only by our own idea of justice. It is as thinking beings that we know justice and injustice. God, who thinks infinitely, must be infinitely just. This doctrine seems to be a

cry of nature to which all the ancient nations listened. There are amongst all nations who use their reason universal opinions which seem to be imprinted by the master of our hearts. Such is the persuasion of the existence of a God and of his merciful justice, such are the first principles of morality the Romans, which have never varied though common to the Chinese, to the Indians, and to our globe has been upset a thousand times." In order to bring this remarkable quotation within limits, we have been obliged to omit a good many side hits at the Jews for not having amongst them the doctrine of a future life, which interfere with the main argument; but the quotation itself gives in a short compass what every page of Voltaire's works shows to have been his sincere belief.

It is difficult, for obvious reasons, to give any equally emphatic specimen of the negative side of Voltaire's speculations, but the following passage sums up his theory of Christianity shortly, and in a manner which, considering the nature of the subject, is perhaps not needlessly offensive. It occurs in a dialogue called Le Diner du Comte Bou lainvilliers:

"The most probable inference, from the chaos of histories of Jesus written against him by the Jews, and in his favor by the Christians, is that he was a well-meaning Jew who wished to get influence with the people like the founders of the Rechabites, the Essenes, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Judaites, the Herodians, the Joannists, the Therapeutæ, and so many other single sects set up in Syria, which was the country of fanaticism. It is probable that, like all those who chose to be the heads of sects, he got some women on his side, that several indiscreet discourses against the magistrates escaped him, and that he was cruelly put to death. Whether he was condemned in the reign of Herod the Great, as the

Talmudists say, or under Herod the Tetrarch, as some of the gospels say, is of very little importance. It is certain that his disciples were very obscure till they had met some platonists in Alexandria who supported the dreams of the Galilæans by the dreams of Plato. The common people of those days were mad about demons, evil spirits, obsessions, possessions, and magic, like savages at the present day. Nearly all illnesses were possessions of bad spirits. The Jews from time immemorial had thought of casting out devils with the root barath put under the nose of the sick, and by certain words attributed to Solomon. Tobit drove away devils by the smell of a broiled fish. This was the origin of the miracles of which the Galilæans boasted.

"The Gentiles were fanatical enough to agree that the Galilæans could work these fine miracles, for they thought they could do so themselves. They believed in magic, like the disciples of Jesus. If a certain number of rich people recovered by natural causes, they were sure to declare that they had been cured of the headache by enchantment. They said to the Christians, You have fine secrets and so have we; you cure by words, so do we; you have no advantage over us.

a

But when the Galilæans, having formed numerous populace, began to preach against the religion of the state; when, after having demanded toleration, they ventured to be intolerant; when they wished to raise their new fanaticism on the ruins of the old fanaticism, then the priests and the Roman magistrates were horrified at them; then they suppressed their audacity. What did the Galilæans do? They forged, as we have seen, a thousand works in their favor; from being dupes they became cheats, they became forgers, they defended themselves by the most unworthy frauds, not being able to employ other arms, until the time when Constantine, who was made emperor by their money, set their religion on the throne. Then the wretches became

sanguinary. I venture to say that, from the

Council of Nice to the sedition of the Cevennes, not a single year has passed in which Christianity has not shed blood."

This extract, short as it is, contains the pith of Voltaire's theory of the history of Christianity. As he says, in another part of the same dialogue, "L'enthousiasme commence, la fourberie achève. Il en est de la religion comme du jeu. On commence par être dupe, on finit par être fripon." It must not be supposed that this general trenchant theory is unsustained by argument. On the contrary, there are to be found in various parts of Voltaire's writings most

of the destructive arguments of the modern antagonists of Christianity. The works both of Strauss and Renan assume to a considerable extent that Voltaire and other writers on the same side in the eighteenth century got the best of the controversy in which they were engaged to the extent, at all events, of disproving the truth of the gospel history. It is needless to describe his arguments at length. They were the standard arguments which always have been and always will be raised against the Bible, and which always have been and always will be encountered by much the same replies. Nothing is more remarkable in religious controversy than the fact that arguments which can scarcely be distinguished from each other appear to produce a totally different effect, and to have a totally different degree of persuasive power in different ages of the world. There is, however, undoubtedly a progress of opinion by which an estimate of the result of controversies comes gradually to be formed amongst competent judges; and after reading volume after volume of objection and reply, all directed to the same points, it is difficult not to indulge a hope, which experience warrants rather better than it may seem to do at first sight, that at last some definite result may be reached, some permanent estimate may be formed of the real value of common ar guments for and against the topics on which men dispute so fiercely. Be this how it may, it is not our intention to say anything on the merits of this momentous controversy, though we may observe in passing that, wherever the truth may lie, and whatever may be the real importance of Voltaire's objections to Christianity, no one in these days can accept as true his account of its origin and establishment. Nothing but passionate personal hatred could have induced him to regard such an explanation as the one quoted above as anything approaching to a competent explanation of the facts. That Christianity produced an immense moral change in the world, that this change was in the main at least an unspeakable blessing to mankind, and that the same is true not only of the morals, and generally speaking of the dogmatic system of Christianity, but also of its ecclesiastical institutions, are prop

ositions which no one in these days would deny, and least of all those who agree most heartily in Voltaire's negative results.

II.--VOLTAIRE'S STYLE.

In substance, Voltaire's charges against Christianity are indentical with those which have been preferred by many other writers, but the style of the attack was peculiarly his own, and has had more to do with the reputation of the attack itself, and with the effect produced by it, than any other circumStance connected with it. Its most

striking peculiarity, and that which immediately presents itself to the mind of every one who has even the slightest and most transient acquaintance with Voltaire, is its audacious wit. The "scoffs" of Voltaire have passed into a sort of proverb. It would be impossible to say how far he really deserved the infamy with which he has usually been almost overwhelmed on this subject, without going at length into the substantial merits of the controversy. It is impossible to criticise him fairly on the supposition that he was altogether wrong in the general views of which he made himself the advocate. It is, indeed, often said, that even if he was right, either on the whole, or at all events in a considerable degree, it was nevertheless a grave offence against common decency, and the ordinary and most sacred feelings of mankind, to discuss such subjects in such a tone. There is a good deal to be said upon this. In the first place, if he was right at all, he was right not merely in renouncing but in hating Christianity, and in seeking by the most effectual practical means to destroy its influence. This was the gist of his antiChristian writings, and it cannot be doubted, that if a doctrine is false, pernicious, and ridiculous in itself, no mode of attack can be so powerful as that of showing it in its true colors. Ridicule is not an unfailing test of truth, but many things are ridiculous, simply because they are not only false, but ab surdly false. In so far, then, as Voltaire's ridicule embodied and pointed

his arguments, in so far as it was substantially no more than a way of contending

that the doctrines which he attacked were incoherent, incredible, and absurd, the charge which ought to be brought against him is that of mistaking the object of his attack, not that of attacking in a wrong way. In other words, he is to blame, not for ridiculing what he did not believe, but for not believing what he ought to have believed. As an instance in which the ridicule embodies a powerful argument we may take a short extract, made as inoffensive as is consistent with showing what we mean, from a strange farce called Saul and David, which is printed amongst Voltaire's works, and to which he alludes several times in his correspondence. In two cases he repudiates it with indignation, though in each case he grounds his repudiation on his fear of the consequences of being regarded as the author, but he refers to it twice in his letters to Madame du Deffant (October 11, 1763, and August 7, 1769) with a sort of complacency which amounts to a half admission. The death-bed of David is

thus described:

David. Ma dernière heure arrive; il faut faire mon testament et pardonner en bon Juif à tous mes ennemis. Salomon, je vous fais roi juif, souvenez-vous d'être clément et doux; ne manquez pas, dès que j'aurai les yeux fermés, d'assassiner mon fils Adonias, quand même il embrasserait les cornes de l'autel.

Salomon. Quelle sagesse! quelle bonté d'âme! Mon père, je n'y manquerai pas sur ma parole.

David. Voyez-vous ce Joab qui m'a servi dans mes guerres, et à qui je dois ma couronne? Je vous prie au nom du Seigneur de le faire assassiner aussi, car il a mis du sang dans mes souliers.

Joab. Comment, monstre! je t'étranglerai de mes mains; va, va, je ferai bien casser ton testament, et ton Salomon verra quel homme je suis.

Salomon. Est-ce tout, mon chèr père? n'avez-vous plus personne à expédier?

David. J'ai la mémoire mauvaise: attendez; il y a encore un certain Seméi qui m'a dit autrefois des sottises; nous nous raccommodâmes; je lui jurai par le Dieu vivant que

je lui pardonnerais; il m'a très-bien servi, il est de mon conseil prive; vous êtes sage, ne manquez pas de le faire tuer en traître. Salomon. Votre, volonté sera exécutée mon cher père.

David. Va, tu seras le plus sage des rois, et le Seigneur te donnera mille femmes pour récompense. Je me meurs! Que je t'embrasse encore! Adieu.

The point about Adonijah is calumnious, for it does not appear from the Old Testament that David had anything to do with his murder, and the point about Shimei is exaggerated. Moreover the logical importance of proving that David died in the commission of the most hideous crimes may be contested. If, however, any one wants to be convinced of that fact, it can hardly be doubted that this performance of Voltaire's is calculated to impress it upon him in a manner not likely to be forgotten. By simply repeating in modern language a story to which we had been accustomed in its archaic dress, its moral character is shown more emphatically than it could be by any quantity of argument. A similar criticism may be made on the whole of Candide. It is not, of course, an answer to Leibnitz, but it is a most effectual way of showing that, if true, Leibnitz's theory is of as little practical importance as the question of the existence of matter. You add nothing to our knowledge, and take nothing from our perplexities, by telling us that the world which we see is the best of all possible worlds. Whether I am to complain of the world, or to complain of the nature of things, and the limits of possibility which prevent the world from being any better than it actually is, is in reality a mere question of words, which may be decided by the taste of the person who uses them.

and harsh forms of speech. They prefer that it should be more or less veiled and invested with the charms of mystery. This is utterly repugnant to the feelings of a different class of minds. There are men in whom the intellect is so much more vigorously developed than the other parts of their nature, and who nevertheless feel what they do feel so deeply, that they cannot trust their own sincerity as to any opinion which they may hold, unless and until they have tried the experiment of reducing it to the barest and least attractive shape, and have ascertained that even in that shape it still appears to them to be true. Something of this temper is to be perceived in several of the great writers of the eighteenth century. Butler, for instance, appears to be continually afraid of being led away by his feelings, and accordingly he never or hardly ever gives full swing to them, or allows himself to express his views unreservedly. No one shows this tendency in so marked a form as Voltaire. He carried it to an extent which has surrounded his name, in the estimation of the great mass of mankind, with what approaches to infamy.

After making whatever allowances are due on these heads, it must be owned that a great part of Voltaire's writings are calculated to excite a feeling of disgust, even in those who are not easily shocked. His love for laughter, of whatever kind, and on whatever subjects, sometimes assumes the character of a St. Vitus's dance. He jokes as if he could not help it. For instance, the essay called Il faut prendre un Parti, great part of which is written in the most serious tone, begins and ends with buffoonery. This is the beginning of it:

Ce n'est pas entre la Russie et la Turquie qu'il s'agit de prendre un parti; car ces deux Etats feront la paix tôt ou tard sans que je m'en mêle.... Je ne prendrai point parti entre les anciens parlements de France et les nouveaux, parce que dans peu d'années il n'en sera plus question, ni entre les anciens et les modernes, parce que ce procès est interminable;... ni entre les opéras bouffons français et les italiens, parce que c'est une affaire de fantaisie. Il ne s'agit ici que d'une petite bagatelle, de savoir s'il y a un Dieu; et c'est ce que je vais examiner très-sérieusement et de très-bonne foi, car cela m'intéresse et Vous aussi.