possible to have this persuasion. Those who call themselves
skeptics in regard to the fundamental points of religion, are generally
but idle and lazy men, who are incapable of examining them.

CXXIV.--REVELATION REFUTED.

In all parts of the world, we are assured that God revealed Himself.
What did He teach men? Does He prove to them evidently that He exists?
Does He tell them where He resides? Does He teach them what He is, or of
what His essence consists? Does He explain to them clearly His
intentions and His plan? What He says of this plan, does it agree with
the effects which we see? No! He informs us only that "He is the One
that is," [I am that I am, saith the Lord] that He is an invincible God,
that His ways are ineffable, that He becomes furious as soon as one has
the temerity to penetrate His decrees, or to consult reason in order to
judge of Him or His works. Does the revealed conduct of God correspond
with the magnificent ideas which are given to us of His wisdom,
goodness, justice, of His omnipotence? Not at all; in every revelation
this conduct shows a partial, capricious being, at least, good to His
favorite people, an enemy to all others. If He condescends to show
Himself to some men, He takes care to keep all the others in invincible
ignorance of His divine intentions. Does not every special revelation
announce an unjust, partial, and malicious God?

Are the revealed wishes of a God capable of striking us by the sublime
reason or the wisdom which they contain? Do they tend to the happiness
of the people to whom Divinity has declared them? Examining the Divine
wishes, I find in them, in all countries, but whimsical ordinances,
ridiculous precepts, ceremonies of which we do not understand the aim,
puerile practices, principles of conduct unworthy of the Monarch of
Nature, offerings, sacrifices, expiations, useful, in fact, to the
ministers of God, but very onerous to the rest of mankind. I find also,
that they often have a tendency to render men unsocial, disdainful,
intolerant, quarrelsome, unjust, inhuman toward all those who have not
received either the same revelations as they, or the same ordinances, or
the same favors from Heaven.

CXXV.--WHERE, THEN, IS THE PROOF THAT GOD DID EVER SHOW HIMSELF TO MEN OR
SPEAK TO THEM?

Are the precepts of morality as announced by Divinity truly Divine, or
superior to those which every rational man could imagine? They are
Divine only because it is im