If history informs me that the first apostles, founders or reformers of religions, performed great miracles, history teaches me also that these reforming apostles and their adherents have been usually despised, persecuted, and put to death as disturbers of the peace of nations. I am then tempted to believe that they have not performed the miracles attributed to them. Finally, these miracles should have procured to them a great number of disciples among those who witnessed them, who ought to have prevented the performers from being maltreated. My incredulity increases if I am told that the performers of miracles have been cruelly tormented or slain. How can we believe that missionaries, protected by a God, invested with His Divine Power, and enjoying the gift of miracles, could not perform the simple miracle of escaping from the cruelty of their persecutors?
Persecutions themselves are considered as a convincing proof in favor of the religion of those who have suffered them; but a religion which boasts of having caused the death of many martyrs, and which informs us that its founders have suffered for its extension unheard-of torments, can not be the religion of a benevolent, equitable, and Almighty God. A good God would not permit that men charged with revealing His will should be misused. An omnipotent God desiring to found a religion, would have employed simpler and less fatal means for His most faithful servants. To say that God desired that His religion should be sealed by blood, is to say that this God is weak, unjust, ungrateful, and sanguinary, and that He sacrifices unworthily His missionaries to the interests of His ambition.
CXXXIII.—THE FANATICISM OF THE MARTYRS, THE INTERESTED ZEAL OF MISSIONARIES, PROVE IN NOWISE THE TRUTH OF RELIGION.
To die for a religion does not prove it true or Divine; this proves at most that we suppose it to be so. An enthusiast in dying proves nothing but that religious fanaticism is often stronger than the love of life. An impostor can sometimes die with courage; he makes then, as is said, "a virtue of necessity." We are often surprised and affected at the sight of the generous courage and the disinterested zeal which have led missionaries to preach their doctrine at the risk even of suffering the most rigorous torments. We draw from this love, which is exhibited for the salvation of men, deductions favorable to the religion which they have proclaimed; but in truth this disinterestedness is only apparent. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained!" A missionary seeks fortune by the aid of his doctrine; he knows that if he has the good fortune to retail his commodity, he will become the absolute master of those who accept him as their guide; he is sure to become the object of their care, of their respect, of their veneration; he has every reason to believe that he will be abundantly provided for. These are the true motives which kindle the zeal and the charity of so many preachers and missionaries who travel all over the world.
To die for an opinion, proves no more the truth or the soundness of this opinion than to die in a battle proves the right of the prince, for whose benefit so many people are foolish enough to sacrifice themselves. The courage of a martyr, animated by the idea of Paradise, is not any more supernatural than the courage of a warrior, inspired with the idea of glory or held to duty by the fear of disgrace. What difference do we find between an Iroquois who sings while he is burned by a slow fire, and the martyr St. Lawrence, who while upon the gridiron insults his tyrant?
The preachers of a new doctrine succumb because they are not the strongest; the apostles usually practice a perilous business, whose consequences they can foresee; their courageous death does not prove any more the truth of their principles or their own sincerity, than the violent death of an ambitious man or a brigand proves that they had the right to trouble society, or that they believed themselves authorized to do it. A missionary's profession has been always flattering to his ambition, and has enabled him to subsist at the expense of the common people; these advantages have been sufficient to make him forget the dangers which are connected with it.
CXXXIV.—THEOLOGY MAKES OF ITS GOD AN ENEMY OF COMMON SENSE AND OF ENLIGHTENMENT.
You tell us, O theologians! that "what is folly in the eyes of men, is wisdom before God, who is pleased to confound the wisdom of the wise." But do you not pretend that human wisdom is a gift from Heaven? In telling us that this wisdom displeases God, is but folly in His eyes, and that He wishes to confound it, you proclaim that your God is but the friend of unenlightened people, and that He makes to sensible people a fatal gift, for which this perfidious Tyrant promises to punish them cruelly some day. Is it not very strange that we can not be the friend of your God but by declaring ourselves the enemy of reason and common sense?