§ I.

There were once many atheists among the Christians; they are now much fewer. It at first appears to be a paradox, but examination proves it to be a truth, that theology often threw men’s minds into atheism, until philosophy at length drew them out of it. It must indeed have been pardonable to doubt of the Divinity, when His only announcers disputed on His nature. Nearly all the first Fathers of the Church made God corporeal, and others, after them, giving Him no extent, lodged Him in a part of heaven. According to some, He had created the world in Time; while, according to others, He had created Time itself. Some gave Him a Son like to Himself; others would not grant that the Son was like to the Father. It was also disputed in what way a third person proceeded from the other two.

It was agitated whether the Son had been, while on earth, composed of two persons. So that the question undesignedly became, whether there were five persons in the Divinity — three in heaven and two for Jesus Christ upon earth; or four persons, reckoning Christ upon earth as only one; or three persons, considering Christ only as God. There were disputes about His mother, His descent into hell and into limbo; the manner in which the body of the God-man was eaten, and the blood of the God-man was drunk; on grace; on the saints, and a thousand other matters. When the confidants of the Divinity were seen so much at variance among themselves anathematizing one another from age to age, but all agreeing in an immoderate thirst for riches and grandeur — while, on the other hand, were beheld the prodigious number of crimes and miseries which afflicted the earth, and of which many were caused by the very disputes of these teachers of souls — it must be confessed that it was allowable for rational men to doubt the existence of a being so strangely announced, and for men of sense to imagine that a God, who could of His own free will make so many beings miserable, did not exist.

Suppose, for example, a natural philosopher of the fifteenth century reading these words in “St. Thomas’s Dream”: “Virtus c?li, loco spermatis, sufficit cum elementis et putrefactione ad generationem animalium imperfectorum.” “The virtue of heaven instead of seed is sufficient, with the elements and putrefaction, for the generation of imperfect animals.” Our philosopher would reason thus: “If corruption suffices with the elements to produce unformed animals, it would appear that a little more corruption, with a little more heat, would also produce animals more complete. The virtue of heaven is here no other than the virtue of nature. I shall then think, with Epicurus and St. Thomas, that men may have sprung from the slime of the earth and the rays of the sun — a noble origin, too, for beings so wretched and so wicked. Why should I admit a creating God, presented to me under so many contradictory and revolting aspects?” But at length physics arose, and with them philosophy. Then it was clearly discovered that the mud of the Nile produced not a single insect, nor a single ear of corn, and men were found to acknowledge throughout, germs, relations, means, and an astonishing correspondence among all beings. The particles of light have been followed, which go from the sun to enlighten the globe and the ring of Saturn, at the distance of three hundred millions of leagues; then, coming to the earth, form two opposite angles in the eye of the minutest insect, and paint all nature on its retina. A philosopher was given to the world who discovered the simple and sublime laws by which the celestial globes move in the immensity of space. Thus the work of the universe, now that it is better known, bespeaks a workman, and so many never-varying laws announce a law-giver. Sound philosophy, therefore, has destroyed atheism, to which obscure theology furnished weapons of defence.

But one resource was left for the small number of difficult minds, which, being more forcibly struck by the pretended injustices of a Supreme Being than by his wisdom, were obstinate in denying this first mover. Nature has existed from all eternity; everything in nature is in motion, therefore everything in it continually changes. And if everything is forever changing, all possible combinations must take place; therefore the present combinations of all things may have been the effect of this eternal motion and change alone. Take six dice, and it is 46,655 to one that you do not throw six times six. But still there is that one chance in 46,656. So, in the infinity of ages, any one of the infinite number of combinations, as that of the present arrangement of the universe, is not impossible.

Minds, otherwise rational, have been misled by these arguments; but they have not considered that there is infinity against them, and that there certainly is not infinity against the existence of God. They should, moreover, consider that if everything were changing, the smallest things could not remain unchanged, as they have so long done. They have at least no reason to advance why new species are not formed every day. On the contrary, it is very probable that a powerful hand, superior to these continual changes, keeps all species within the bounds it has prescribed them. Thus the philosopher, who acknowledges a God, has a number of probabilities on his side, while the atheist has only doubts.

It is evident that in morals it is much better to acknowledge a God than not to admit one. It is certainly to the interest of all men that there should be a Divinity to punish what human justice cannot repress; but it is also clear that it were better to acknowledge no God than to worship a barbarous one, and offer Him human victims, as so many nations have done.

We have one striking example, which places this truth beyond a doubt. The Jews, under Moses, had no idea of the immortality of the soul, nor of a future state. Their lawgiver announced to them, from God, only rewards and punishments purely temporal; they, therefore, had only this life to provide for. Moses commands the Levites to kill twenty-three thousand of their brethren for having had a golden or gilded calf. On another occasion twenty-four thousand of them are massacred for having had commerce with the young women of the country; and twelve thousand are struck dead because some few of them had wished to support the ark, which was near falling. It may, with perfect reverence for the decrees of Providence, be affirmed, humanly speaking, that it would have been much better for these fifty-nine thousand men, who believed in no future state, to have been absolute atheists and have lived, than to have been massacred in the name of the God whom they acknowledged.

It is quite certain that atheism is not taught in the schools of the learned of China, but many of those learned men are atheists, for they are indifferent philosophers. Now it would undoubtedly be better to live with them at Pekin, enjoying the mildness of their manners and their laws, than to be at Goa, liable to groan in irons, in the prisons of the inquisition, until brought out in a brimstone-colored garment, variegated with devils, to perish in the flames.

They who have maintained that a society of atheists may exist have then been right, for it is laws that form society, and these atheists, being moreover philosophers, may lead a very wise and happy life under the shade of those laws. They will certainly live in society more easily than superstitious fanatics. People one town with Epicureans such as Simonides, Protagoras, Des Barreux, Spinoza; and another with Jansenists and Molinists. In which do you think there will be the most quarrels and tumults? Atheism, considering it only with relation to this life, would be very dangerous among a ferocious people, and false ideas of the Divinity would be no less pernicious. Most of the great men of this world live as if they were atheists. Every man who has lived with his eyes open knows that the knowledge of a God, His presence, and His justice, has not the slightest influence over the wars, the treaties, the objects of ambition, interest or pleasure, in the pursuit of which they are wholly occupied. Yet we do not see that they grossly violate the rules established in society. It is much more agreeable to pass our lives among them than among the superstitious and fanatical. I do, it is true, expect more justice from one who believes in a God than from one who has no such belief; but from the superstitious I look only for bitterness and persecution. Atheism and fanaticism are two monsters which may tear society in pieces; but the atheist preserves his reason, which checks his propensity to mischief, while the fanatic is under the influence of a madness which is constantly urging him on.
§ II.