you

know

own passions. You wish to obtain faith, but not the way to it. You wish to be cured of infidelity, and you ask for the remedy. Learn it, then, from those who have been, what you are, and who now have no doubt. They know the way for which you are seeking, and they are healed of a disease for which you seek a cure. Follow their course, then, from its beginning. Imitate, at least, their outward actions, and if you cannot yet realize their internal feelings, quit, at all events, those vain pursuits, in which you have been hitherto entirely engrossed.

Ah, say you, I could soon renounce these pleasures, if I had faith; and I answer you would soon have faith, if you would renounce those pleasures. It is for you to begin. If I could, I would give you faith, but I cannot; and consequently, I cannot prove the sincerity of your assertion; but you can abandon your pleasures, and thus make experiment of the truth of mine.

A. This argument delights me.

B. If so, if this argument pleases you, and appears weighty, know also that it comes from a man, who, both before and afterwards, went on his kness before Him who is infinite, and without parts, and to whom he has himself entirely submitted, with prayer, that he would also subject you to himself for your good, and his glory; and that thus Omnipotence might bless his weakness.*

We

We ought not to misconceive our own nature. are body as well as spirit; and hence demonstration is not the only channel of persuasion. How few things are capable of demonstration! Such proof, too, only convinces the understanding: custom gives the most conclusive proof, for it influences the senses, and by

* In the translation by Mr. Craig, no part of this Chapter appears in the form of a dialogue. But there is a very obvi ous interlocution between Pascal and an unbeliever. I have therefore seen fit to publish this Chapter according to the plan of a late Paris edition.

A. E.

them, the judgment is carried along without being aware of it. Who has proved the coming of the morrow, or the fact of our own death; And yet what is more universally believed? It is then custom which persuades us. Custom makes so many Turks and Pagans. Custom makes artisans and soldiers, &c. True, we must not begin here to search for truth, but we may have recourse to it when we have found out where the truth lies, in order to endue ourselves more thoroughly with that belief, which otherwise would fade. For to have the series of proofs incessantly before the mind, is more than we are equal to. We must acquire a more easy method of belief; that of habit, which, without violence, without art, and without argument, inclines all our powers to this belief, so that the mind glides into it naturally. It is not enough to believe only by the strength of rational conviction, while the senses incline us to believe the contrary. Our two powers must go forth together; the understanding, led by those reasonings which it suffices to have examined thoroughly once: the affections, by habit, which keeps them perpetually from wandering.

CHAPTER VIII.

MARKS OF THE TRUE RELIGION..

TRUE religion should be marked by the obligation to love God. This is essentially right; and yet no religion but the Christian has ever enjoined it.

True religion ought also to recognize the depraved appetite of man, and his utter inability to become virtuous by his own endeavors. It should have pointed out the proper remedies for this evil, of which prayer is the principal. Our religion has done all this; and no other has ever taught to ask of God the power to love and serve him.

2. Another feature of true religion, would be the

knowledge of our nature. For the true knowledge of our nature, of its true happiness, of true virtue, and true religion, are things essentially united. It should also recognize both the greatness and the meanness. of man; together with their respective causes. What religion, but the Christian, has ever exhibited knowledge such as this?

3. Other religions, as the pagan idolatries, are more popular; their main force lies in external forms: but then they are ill suited to sensible men; whilst a religion, purely intellectual, would be more adapted to men of sense, but it would not do for the multitude. Christianity alone adapts itself to all. It wisely blends outward forms, and inward feelings. It raises the common people to abstract thought; and at the same time, abases the pride of the most intellectual,, to the performance of outward duties; and it is never complete, but in the union of these two results. For it is necessary that the people understand the spirit of the letter, and that the learned submit their spirit to the letter, in the compliance with external forms.

4. Even reason teaches us that we deserve to be hated; yet no religion, but the Christian, requires us to hate ourselves. No other religion, therefore, can be received by those who know themselves to be worthy of nothing but hatred.

No other religion but the Christian, has admitted that man is the most excellent of all visible creatures, and, at the same time, the most miserable. Some religions which have rightly estimated man's real worth, have censured, as mean and ungrateful, the low opinion which men naturally entertain of their own condition. Others, well knowing the depth of his degradation, have exposed, as ridiculously vain, those notions of grandeur which are natural to men.

No other religion but ours has taught that man is born in sin: no sect of philosophers ever taught this ; therefore no sect has ever spoken the truth.

5. God is evidently withdrawn from us, and every religion, therefore, which does not teach this, is

false; and every religion which does not teach the reason of this, is wanting in the most important point. of instruction. Our religion does both.

That religion, which consists in the belief of man's fall from a state of glory and communication with God, into a state of sorrow, humiliation, and alienation from God, and of his subsequent restoration by a Messiah, has always been in the world. All things else have passed away, but this, for which all other things exist, remains. For God, in his wisdom, designing to form to himself a holy people, whom he would separate from all other nations, deliver from their enemies, and lead to a place of rest, did promise that he would do this, and that he would come himself into the world to do it; and did foretel by his prophets, the very time and manner of his coming. In the mean while, to confirm the hope of his elect through all ages, he continually exhibited this aid to them in types and fig ures, and never left them without some evident assurances of his power and willingness to save. For immediately after the creation, Adam was made the witness to his truth, and the depository of the promise of.a Savior to be born of the seed of the woman. And though men at a period so near to their creation could not have altogether forgotten their origin, their fall, and the divine promise of a Redeemer; yet since the world in its very infancy was overrun with every kind of corruption and violence, God was pleased to raise up holy men, as Enoch, Lamech, and others, who, with faith and patience, waited for that Saviour who had been promised from the beginning of the world. At the last, God sent Noah, who was permitted to experience the malignant wickedness of man in its highest degree; and then God saved him, when he drowned the whole world, by a miracle, which testified, at once, the power of God to save the world, and his willingness to do it, and to raise up to the woman the seed which He had promised. This miracle, then, sufficed to confirm the hope of mankind: and when the memory of it was still fresh in their minds, God re

newed his promises to Abraham, who dwelt in the midst of idolaters, and opened to him the mystery of the Messiah that was to come. In the days of Isaac and Jacob, the idolatrous abomination was spread over the whole earth; yet these holy men lived in faith, and when Jacob on his death-bed, blest his children, he exclaimed with an extatic joy, that interrupted his prophetic discourse, "I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord."

The Egyptians were a people infected with idolatry and magic; and even the people of God were drawn aside by their example. Yet Moses and others were permitted to see him who was to them in visible, and they adored him, and had respect unto the eternal blessings, which he was preparing for them.

The Greeks and Romans have bowed down to fictitious deities. The poets have invented different systems of theology. Philosophers have split into a thousand different sects; yet were there always in one small spot, and that the land of Judea, some chosen men who foretold the coming of that Messiah, whom no one else regarded.

At length, in the fulness of time, that Messiah came; and ever since, in the midst of heresies and schisms, the revolution of empires, and the perpetual change to which all other things are subject, the same church which adores him, who has never been without his chosen worshippers, still subsists without interruption or decay. And, what must be owned to be unparalleled, wonderful and altogether Divine, this religion, which has ever continued, has subsisted in the face of perpetual opposition. A thousand times has it been on the very verge of total ruin; and as often as it has been so reduced, God has relieved it, by some extraordinary interposition of his power. This is a most wonderful feature of its history, that it should have been so maintained, and that too, even without any unconscious submission or compromise to the will of tyrannical men.

6. Civil states would infallibly perish, if their laws