If religion was necessary to all men, it ought to be intelligible to all men.  If this religion was the most important thing for them, the goodness of God, it seems, ought to make it for them the clearest, the most evident, and the best demonstrated of all things.  Is it not astonishing to see that this matter, so essential to the salvation of mortals, is precisely the one which they understand the least, and about which, during so many centuries, their doctors have disputed the most?  Never have priests, of even the same sect, come to an agreement among themselves about the manner of understanding the wishes of a God who has truly revealed Himself to them.  The world which we inhabit can be compared to a public place, in whose different parts several charlatans are placed, each one straining himself to attract customers by depreciating the remedies offered by his competitors.  Each stand has its purchasers, who are persuaded that their empiric alone possesses the good remedies; notwithstanding the continual use which they make of them, they do not perceive that they are no better, or that they are just as sick as those who run after the charlatans of another stand.  Devotion is a disease of the imagination, contracted in infancy; the devotee is a hypochondriac, who increases his disease by the use of remedies.  The wise man takes none of it; he follows a good regimen and leaves the rest to nature.

CXVI.—­ALL RELIGIONS ARE RIDICULED BY THOSE OF OPPOSITE THOUGH EQUALLY INSANE BELIEF.

Nothing appears more ridiculous in the eyes of a sensible man than for one denomination to criticize another whose creed is equally foolish.  A Christian thinks that the Koran, the Divine revelation announced by Mohammed, is but a tissue of impertinent dreams and impostures injurious to Divinity.  The Mohammedan, on his side, treats the Christian as an idolater and a dog; he sees but absurdities in his religion; he imagines he has the right to conquer his country and force him, sword in hand, to accept the faith of his Divine prophet; he believes especially that nothing is more impious or more unreasonable than to worship a man or to believe in the Trinity.  The Protestant Christian, who without scruple worships a man, and who believes firmly in the inconceivable mystery of the Trinity, ridicules the Catholic Christian because the latter believes in the mystery of the transubstantiation.  He treats him as a fool, as ungodly and idolatrous, because he kneels to worship the bread in which he believes he sees the God of the universe.  All the Christian denominations agree in considering as folly the incarnation of the God of the Indies, Vishnu.  They contend that the only true incarnation is that of Jesus, Son of the God of the universe and of the wife of a carpenter.  The theist, who calls himself a votary of natural religion, is satisfied to acknowledge a God of whom he has no conception; indulges himself in jesting upon other mysteries taught by all the religions of the world.