nce from the roof of his old
age. The unwearied activity of his mind was never checked for a moment.
He carried his gaiety even to genius, and under that pleasantry of his
whole life we may perceive a grave power of perseverance and
conviction. Such was the character of this great man. The enlightened
serenity of his mind concealed the depth of its workings: under the joke
and laugh his constancy of purpose was hardly sufficiently recognised.
He suffered all with a laugh, and was willing to endure all, even in
absence from his native land, in his lost friendships, in his refused
fame, in his blighted name, in his memory accursed. He took all--bore
all--for the sake of the triumph of the independence of human reason.
Devotion does not change its worth in changing its cause, and this was
his virtue in the eyes of posterity. He was not the truth, but he was
its precursor, and walked in advance of it.

One thing was wanting to him--the love of a God. He saw him in mind, and
he detested those phantoms which ages of darkness had taken for him, and
adored in his stead. He rent away with rage those clouds which prevent
the divine idea from beaming purely on mankind; but his weakness was
rather hatred against error, than faith in the Divinity. The sentiment
of religion, that sublime _resume_ of human thought; that reason, which,
enlightened by enthusiasm, mounts to God as a flame, and unites itself
with him in the unity of the creation with the Creator, of the ray with
the focus--this, Voltaire never felt in his soul. Thence sprung the
results of his philosophy; it created neither morals, nor worship, nor
charity; it only decomposed--destroyed. Negative, cold, corrosive,
sneering, it operated like poison--it froze--it killed--it never gave
life. Thus, it never produced--even against the errors it assailed,
which were but the human alloy of a divine idea--the whole effect it
should have elicited. It made sceptics, instead of believers. The
theocratic reaction was prompt and universal, as it ought to have been.
Impiety clears the soul of its consecrated errors, but does not fill the
heart of man. Impiety alone will never ruin a human worship: a faith
destroyed must be replaced by a faith. It is not given to irreligion to
destroy a religion on earth. There is but a religion more enlightened
which can really triumph over a religion fallen into contempt, by
replacing it. The earth cannot remain without an altar, and God alone is
stro