e of snow and ice
was not the language of palm and flower. He knew also that there had
been no miracle in language. He knew it was impossible that the story
of the Tower of Babel should be true. That everything in the whole
world had been natural. He was the enemy of alchemy, not only in
language, but in science. One passage from him is enough to show his
philosophy in this regard. He says: "To transmute iron into gold two
things are necessary. First, the annihilation of the iron; second, the
creation of gold." Voltaire was a man of humor, of good nature, of
cheerfulness. He despised with all his heart the philosophy of Calvin,
the creed of the somber, of the severe, of the unnatural. He pitied
those who needed the aid of religion to be honest, to be cheerful. He
had the courage to enjoy the present and the philosophy to bear what
the future might bring. And yet for more than a hundred and fifty
years the Christian world has fought this man and has maligned his
memory. In every christian pulpit his name has been pronounced with
scorn, and every pulpit has been an arsenal of slander. He is one man
of whom no orthodox minister has ever told the truth. He has been
denounced equally by Catholics and Protestants.

Priests and ministers, bishops and exhorters, presiding elders and
popes have filled the world with slanders, with calm calumnies about
Voltaire. I am amazed that ministers will not or cannot tell the truth
about an enemy of the church. As a matter of fact, for more than 1,000
years almost every pulpit has been a mint in which slanders were coined.

For many years this restless man filled Europe with the product of his
brain. Essays, epigrams, epics, comedies, tragedies, histories, poems,
novels, representing every phase and every faculty of the human mind.
At the same time engrossed in business, full of speculation, making
money like a millionaire, busy with the gossip of courts, and even with
the scandals of priests. At the same time alive to all the discoveries
of science and the theories of philosophers, and in this babel never
forgetting for a moment to assail the monster of superstition. Sleeping
and waking he hated the church. With the eyes of Argus he watched, and
with the arms of Briarieius he struck. For sixty years he waged
continuous and unrelenting war, sometimes in the open field, sometimes
striking from the hedges of opportunity, taking care during all this
time to remain independ