es not this sublime morality tend to render virtue
despicable? According to this boasted morality of the man-God of the
Christians, His disciples in this lower world are, like Tantalus,
tormented with burning thirst, which they are not permitted to quench.
Do not such morals give us a wonderful idea of nature's Author? If He
has, as we are assured, created everything for the use of His creatures,
by what strange caprice does He forbid the use of the good things which
He has created for them? Is the pleasure which man constantly desires
but a snare that God has maliciously laid in his path to entrap him?

CLXI.--THE MORALS OF THE GOSPEL ARE IMPRACTICABLE.

The votaries of Christ would like to make us regard as a miracle the
establishment of their religion, which is in every respect contrary to
nature, opposed to all the inclinations of the heart, an enemy to
physical pleasures. But the austerity of a doctrine has a tendency to
render it more wonderful to the ignorant. The same reason which makes us
respect, as Divine and supernatural, inconceivable mysteries, causes us
to admire, as Divine and supernatural, a morality impracticable and
beyond the power of man. To admire morals and to practice them, are two
very different things. All the Christians continually admire the morals
of the Gospel, but it is practiced but by a small number of saints;
admired by people who themselves avoid imitating their conduct, under
the pretext that they are lacking either the power or the grace.

The whole universe is infected more or less with a religious morality
which is founded upon the opinion that to please the Deity it is
necessary to render one's self unhappy upon earth. We see in all parts
of our globe penitents, hermits, fakirs, fanatics, who seem to have
studied profoundly the means of tormenting themselves for the glory of a
Being whose goodness they all agree in celebrating. Religion, by its
essence, is the enemy of joy and of the welfare of men. "Blessed are
those who suffer!" Woe to those who have abundance and joy! These are
the rare revelations which Christianity teaches!

CLXII.--A SOCIETY OF SAINTS WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE.

In what consists the saint of all religions? It is a man who prays,
fasts, who torments himself, who avoids the world, who, like an owl, is
pleased but in solitude, who abstains from all pleasure, who seems
frightened at every object which turns him a moment from his fanatical
meditations.