the advantage of certainty, then we should do nothing in religion; for religion is not a matter of certainty. But how many things we do uncertainly, as sea-voyages, battles, &c. I say then, that we should do nothing at all, for nothing is certain. There is more of certainty in religion, than in the hope that we shall see the morrow; for it is not certain that we shall see the morrow. But it is possible, that we may not see tomorrow.* And this cannot be affirmed of religion.It is not certain that religion is; but who will dare to say, that it is certainly possible that it is not. Now when we labor for to-morrow, and upon an uncertainty, reason justifies us.†

108. The inventions of men progressively improve from age to age. The goodness and the wickedness of men in general remains the same.

109. A man must acquire a habit of more philosophic speculation and thought on what he sees, and form his judgment of things by that, while he speaks generally to others in more popular language.

111. Casual circumstances give rise to thoughts, and take them away again; there is no art of creating or preserving them.

112. You think that the church should not judge of the inward man, because this belongs only to God; nor of the outward man, because God judges of the heart; and thus, destroying all power of discriminating human character, you retain within the church the most dissolute of men, and men who so manifestly disgrace it, that even the synagogues of the Jews, and the sects of philosophers would have rejected them as worthless, and consigned them to abhorrence.

* That is, we know of possible events by which this might be the case.

The term certainty, as often used by Pascal, seems to have reference to mathematical demonstration. A. E.

The thought 110, is not found in the MSS. but only in the edition of Condorcet, an authority certainly not to be followed.

113. Whoever will, may now be made a priest, as in the days of Jeroboam.

114. The multitude which is not brought to act as unity, is confusion. That unity which has not its ori

gin in the multitude, is tyranny.

115. Men consult only the ear, for want of the heart. 116. We should be able to say in every dialogue or discourse, to those who are offended at it, "Of what can you complain ?”

117. Children are alarmed at the face which they have themselves disguised; but how is it, that he who is so weak, as an infant, is so bold in maturer years? Alas, his weakness has only changed its subject!

118. It is alike incomprehensible that God is, and that he is not; that the soul is in the body, and that we have no soul; that the world is, or is not created; that there is, or is not such a thing as original sin.

119. The statements of Atheists ought to be perfectly clear of doubt. Now it is not perfectly clear, that the soul is material.

120. Unbelievers the most credulous! They believe the miracles of Vespasian, that they may not believe the miracles of Moses.

On the Philosophy of Descartes.*

We may say generally, the world is made by figure and motion, for that is true; to say what figure and motion, and to specify the composition of the machine, is perfectly ridiculous; for it is useless, questionable, and laborious. But, if it be all true, the whole of the philosophy is not worth an hour's thought.

* A French philosopher, who died in 1650. His "doctrine of vortices," by which he explained many of the phenomena of the heavenly bodies, was completely exploded by Newton. A. E.

CHAPTER XXII.

THOUGHTS ON DEATH, EXTRACTED FROM A LETTER OF M. PASCAL, ON THE OCCASION OF THE DEATH OF HIS FATHER.

WHEN We are in affliction, owing to the death of some friend whom we loved, or some other misfortune that has happened to us, we ought not to seek for consolation in ourselves, nor in our fellow-creatures, nor in any created thing; we should seek it in God only. And the reason is, that creatures are not the primary cause of those occurrences which we call evils. But that the providence of God being the true and sole cause of them, the arbiter and the sovereign, we ought, undoubtedly, to have recourse directly to their source, and ascend even to their origin, to obtain satisfactory alleviation. For, if we follow this precept, and consider this afflicting bereavement, not as the result of chance, nor as a fatal necessity of our nature, nor as the sport of those elements and atoms of which man is formed (for God has not abandoned his elect to the risk of caprice or chance) but as the indispensable, inevitable, just, and holy result of a decree of the providence of God, to be executed in the fulness of time; and, in fact, that all which happens has been eternally present and pre-ordained in God; if, I say, by the teachings of grace we consider this casualty, not in itself, and independently of God, but viewed independently of self, and as in the will of God, and in the justice of his decree, and the order of his Providence; which is, in fact, the true cause, without which it could not have happened, by which alone it has happened, and happened in the precise manner in which it has; we should adore in humble silence the inaccessible elevation of His secrecy; we should venerate the holiness of His decrees; we should bless the course of His providence; and, uniting our will to

the very will of God, we should desire with Him, in Him, and for Him, those very things which He has wished in us, and for us, from all eternity.

2. There is no consolation but in truth. Unquestionably there is nothing in Socrates or Seneca which can soothe or comfort us on these occasions. They were under the error, which, in blinding the first man, blinded all the rest. They have all conceived death to be natural to man; and all the discourses that they have founded upon this false principle, are so vain and so wanting in solidity, that they have only served to shew, by their utter uselessness, how very feeble man is, since the loftiest productions of the greatest minds are so mean and puerile.

Let

It is not so with Jesus Christ; it is not so with the canonical Scriptures. The truth is set forth there: and consolation is associated with it, as infallibly as that truth itself is infallibly separated from error. us regard death then, by the light of that truth which the Holy Spirit teaches. We have there a most advantageous means of knowing that really and truly death is the penalty of sin, appointed to man as the desert of crime, and necessary to man for his escape from corruption that it is the only means of delivering the soul from the motions of sin in the members, from which the saints are never entirely free, while they live in this world. We know that life, and the life of Christians especially, is a continued sacrifice, which can only be terminated by death. We know that Jesus Christ, when he came into this world, considered himself, and offered himself to God as a sacrifice, and as a real victim; that his birth, his life, his death, resurrection and ascension, and his sitting at the right hand of the Father, are but one and the same sacrifice. We know that what took place in Jesus Christ, must occur also in all his members.

Let us consider life then as a sacrifice, and that the accidents of life make no impression on the Christian mind, but as they interrupt or carry on this sacrifice. Let us call nothing evil but that which constitutes the

victim due to God a victim offered to the devil; but let us call that really good, which renders the victim due in Adam to the devil, a victim sacrificed to God; and by this rule, let us examine death.

For this purpose we must have recourse to the person of Jesus Christ: for as God regards men only in the person of the mediator, Jesus Christ, men also should only regard either others, or themselves, mediately through him.

If we do not avail ourselves of this mediation, we shall find in ourselves nothing but real miseries or abominable evils. But if we learn to look at every thing through Jesus Christ, we shall always obtain comfort, satisfaction, and instruction.

Let us look at death then through Christ, and not without him. Without Christ it is horrible, detestable; it is the abhorence of human nature. In Jesus Christ it is very different; it is lovely, holy, and the joy of the faithful., All trial is sweet in Jesus Christ, even death. He suffered and died to sanctify death and suffering; and as God and man, he has been all that is great and noble, and all that is abject, in order to consecrate in himself all things, except sin, and to the model of all conditions of life.

In order to know what death is, and what it is in Jesus Christ, we should ascertain what place it holds in his one eternal sacrifice; and with a view to this, observe that the principal part of a sacrifice is the death of the victim. The offering and the consecration which precede it, are preliminary steps, but the actual sacrifice is death, in which the creature, by the surrender of its life, renders to God all the homage of which it is capable, making itself nothing before the eyes of His majesty, and adoring that Sovereign Being which exists essentially and alone. It is true that there is yet another step after the death of the victim, which is God's acceptance of the sacrifice, and which is referred to in the Scripture, as Gen. viii. 21. And God smelled a sweet savour. This certainly crowns the offering; but this is more an act of God towards creature,