Still, faith, an avidity for believing, a passionate attachment to a faith in spite of its absurdity, has been the cause of the corruptions of religion; of the profane use which priests have made of all the religious passions, and of the universal opposition of men to conform their religion to the developement of the human mind.

If we should trace, in like manner, all the other affections and passions implanted in man, and necessary to his preservation, we should perceive that they all, after having impelled him towards his immediate and corporeal good, elevate him to a supreme and infinite good; that all, as his views extend, and his mind is developed, lead him to the contemplation of God; God, supremely good, all powerful, all wise; God, who is spirit and truth.

These passions, then, these preserving affections, which first introduced the mind of man to the knowledge of superior powers, taught him that these powers were intelligent, and at last, when one great light shone before him, led him to resolve these great intelligences into one, every where present. These affections then have directed him in the worship he owes to superior beings, or rather to the Supreme Being. Man was led by his natural faculties to the divine perfections. By them he attained the knowledge of omnipotence, omniscience, and unlimited goodness. The perfection of the object of his worship, prompted him to aspire after perfection for himself. If he would be worthy of God, he must strive to resemble him. Thus the moral proceeded directly from the religious principle; gross, certainly, in proportion to the ignorance of man, but always founded on the desire, the necessity of assimilation to the object of worship, in order to deserve his favor. This primitive alliance of morals and religion always, and from a necessary association of ideas, exists in the heart of man, notwithstanding the efforts that have been made to divorce them, by those who in all ages have tampered with religion.

A sentiment thus profound, universal, and inherent in the nature of man, has commended itself to the ambitious, as particularly suited to subserve their purposes; and religion, originally pure, has been corrupted by the priest, that he might turn it to his own advantage. He is not satisfied with the generous passions, which have given him birth; he enlists in his favor all those evil passions, which also have their germ in the human

heart, and, by their aid, has made of the universal bond of the human race, a standard of discord, and a cause of persecution. Religion, in its relation to man, ought always to be progressive. It should continually give him clearer views of truth, as he becomes more capable of comprehending it, and purify and perfect itself with the progress of light and civilization. Now this progress must destroy the influence of the priest, since it supposes the inferiority of the present to the future teacher. Thus the priest is every where compelled to arrest the march of religion, or rather to make it retrograde. To effect this, he makes it consist essentially in dogma and faith, not in love and perfectibility, or morals.

Dogma is the explanation which the priest of every religion gives of that which is least known to us; of that, in the spiritual world, which is incomprehensible, and of which we can only have presentiments. According to the degree of light diffused in the world at the epoch when a religion is formed, these dogmas may be a theogony and cosmogony more or less gross; or they may be true and revealed notions of the Divinity, but always transmitted by human language, consequently incomplete and obscure; or they are mysteries, represented by contradictory words, which may be submitted to, but cannot be admitted into the mind, because we can only believe what we can comprehend.

M. Benjamin Constant has denominated religious forms, all that part of religion which is diverse among different people, whilst the religious sentiment is every where the same. These words express imperfectly our idea, or, at least, we shall go farther than he, and say boldly that religion is not dogma. It consists in man's relation to God, and not in the notion that he forms of God, or in the words by which he expresses it. Religion is a sentiment, and not a science. It is composed of the expression of the love and gratitude of the creature to the Creator, and of the efforts he makes to conform himself to his will; not of the opinion he conceives of the essence of God, or of the words by which he essays the description of what human words cannot describe, nor human intelligence conceive. It is evident that our conceptions of the nature of the Divine Being must be imperfect, and in proportion to our finite intelligence; and this conception must vary with each individual according to the measure of his faculties. If we express by words our belief

concerning that which is incomprehensible in the Divinity, we may all repeat the same words, but the sense of these words will be to each one as different as one human mind is different from another. Our theology, that is, our knowledge of God, or, to express ourselves more exactly, our language concerning God, (notre parler sur Dieu,) is the measure of our knowledge, or our ignorance, in comparing ourselves with others. It does not depend on us; it can neither offend God, nor please him.

It is then a religious, as well as a charitable sentiment, that makes us respect the faith of a man of another sect, however different it may be from our own. For whatever may be the degree of his ignorance or barbarism, whatever errors may veil his understanding, his homage is addressed to God, and it is the God of the universe who receives it, by whatever name it is offered to him. The poor savage perceives the agency of a God in the thunder which threatens him, in the rain which fertilizes his field, in the fever that abates his strength, and in the medicinal bark that restores him. He seeks this God. He fancies he finds him in his cabin, or in the surrounding forest. He may imagine his presence in an unhewn stone, a tree, or a bird. His error is certainly gross; but when he prays, he thinks of the Invisible Being, or of the being whose agency is invisible, more powerful than man, who rewards and punishes, and whose protection he implores. But there is but one such being. A little farther, he finds another idol. He adores him also, for he believes him endowed with another portion of invisible power. One has ripened his harvests, another has multiplied his game. One protects the borders of his river, another threatens in the roar of the waterfall. He does not yet know that it is the same Being whom he finds every where. One hand comes out of the cloud to bless him, another sustains him in his adversity. One chastises, another heals him. His eye is not yet clear enough to perceive, through the cloud, the Being with a hundred hands, who follows him every where. His gratitude stops at the hands he sees or imagines. Still the Being who has put them all in operation, will accept the homage, which, with all these mistakes, and under various names, is addressed alone to him. It is God, whom the savage adores under these gross symbols, that our priests have named his fetiches. It was God, that the Greek and Roman worshipped, even while each of his attributes was to them a person of the Divinity. It is

the same God that we all adore; Jews, Moossulmans, and Christians; for there is none other.

For the same reason that, as a Christian, I reject the personification of infinite power, on which polytheism is founded, I have rejected, as a protestant, the mysteries of Catholicism. But let us look a little farther. Perhaps we shall find, that we only differ in words, whilst we are united by a religious worship, which we offer with a common feeling to the same being. The catholic priest tells me the Divinity is present in the consecrated host. I believe it; for he is omnipresent. But, No!" replies he, it is the Divinity himself, changed into this substance; our eyes see him; all our senses perceive him on this altar.' Does he then deny that God is omnipresent? Oh no! It is a part of the system he teaches, that God is at the same time in substance upon all the altars where this mystery is accomplished, and that at the same time his presence fills the universe. I do not understand him, it is true; but there is nothing in his belief that shocks me. It relates to the different degrees of intensity of the presence of the Divinity, if I may thus express myself, which is beyond my intelligence, but does not confound it.

Among the protestants, there are those who are called Unitarians, because, though they admit the divine mission of Christ, they do not admit his divinity. We know what disturbances have been caused in the church by this controversy, from the origin of Christianity. It is nevertheless a dispute in words. Do the Trinitarians acknowledge three independent Gods, who may be opposed to each other? No, certainly not. Do they believe that man can please one, and displease another? Not at all. The same attributes, the same goodness, the same omnipotence, the same omnipresence, are the developement of this consubstantiality which the Orthodox inculcate. Words may distinguish the different persons of the Trinity; but the mind always confounds them in the adoration addressed to the God of the Christian. The Trinitarian gives him three names; I give him but one. He has fixed opinions upon the independence of the different attributes of the Infinite Being, which he names divine persons, which I do not comprehend, and conse quently ought not to dispute. But what does it signify to me, that he calls him now Jesus, and now the Holy Ghost, whilst I always call him God? Do I not know, that, by whatever name he is addressed, the Supreme Being equally listens to us all?

If I am not offended that the Germans call him Gott, the Spaniards Dios, why am I offended, that the name of Christ should be given to the Master of the World? Will this being of unlimited goodness repel the homage, which is offered to him by another name than that which it pleases me to give him?

Till now I have reasoned as if others were in the wrong. Perhaps I am myself in error. I am perhaps blind, not to perceive the Divinity in Christ, in the sacrament, in the various manifestations that other people have adopted. But of what consequence is this? Do I therefore withhold my homage? Do I not pray to Him as God, whom I have not invoked in the sacrament, or in Christ? Is it not always to him that my worship is addressed, though I may not use the same words, or the same symbols? Have I carried my vows to another God; to the rival of the Master of the Universe? In this supposition there would indeed be blasphemy. This would bring the Divinity down to the level of the kings of the earth. This admits division of power, enmity, and revolt against the Being of beings. These are the shadows of polytheism, which still keep alive intolerance. The more religion is spiritualized, and elevated to the idea of one only God, of perfect goodness, all powerful, and omnipresent; the more it teaches us the vanity of the words about which we dispute, and the more it shows us the accordance of all men who are seeking the Being of beings.

Perhaps it may be said, that I annihilate the faith to which the apostles of Christianity have attached so great an importance. Faith is a word, of which the sense varies. When it designates a virtue, it is to me equivalent to confidence. It expresses the union (l'ensemble) of that fear, love, and hope, which have reallied man to the Divinity. It cannot mean the knowledge of that which man is not capable of knowing. But faith, it may be said, is exercised upon the history of revelation. No. The history of revelation belongs to history. It must, like all other histories, submit to the laws of criticism. It requires profound research, vast erudition, the habit of judging of truths, and of weighing testimony. It depends on such a knowledge of man as will explain the origin of opinions; on the knowledge of language, by which the errors of translators may be rectified; and on traditions, taken and compared at their source. in fine, a science, and one of the most vast and complicated that are accessible to man. Religion, the homage of the creature