224

How I hate these follies of not believing in the Eucharist, etc.!  If the
Gospel be true, if Jesus Christ be God, what difficulty is there?

225

Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.

226

Infidels, who profess to follow reason, ought to be exceedingly strong in reason.  What say they then?  “Do we not see,” say they, “that the brutes live and die like men, and Turks like Christians?  They have their ceremonies, their prophets, their doctors, their saints, their monks, like us,” etc. (Is this contrary to Scripture?  Does it not say all this?)

If you care but little to know the truth, here is enough of it to leave you in repose.  But if you desire with all your heart to know it, it is not enough; look at it in detail.  This would be sufficient for a question in philosophy; but not here, where it concerns your all.  And yet, after a trifling reflection of this kind, we go to amuse ourselves, etc.  Let us inquire of this same religion whether it does not give a reason for this obscurity; perhaps it will teach it to us.

227

Order by dialogues.—­What ought I to do?  I see only darkness everywhere.  Shall I believe I am nothing?  Shall I believe I am God?

“All things change and succeed each other.”  You are mistaken; there is ...

228

Objection of atheists:  “But we have no light.”

229

This is what I see and what troubles me.  I look on all sides, and I see only darkness everywhere.  Nature presents to me nothing which is not matter of doubt and concern.  If I saw nothing there which revealed a Divinity, I would come to a negative conclusion; if I saw everywhere the signs of a Creator, I would remain peacefully in faith.  But, seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied; wherefore I have a hundred time wished that if a God maintains nature, she should testify to Him unequivocally, and that, if the signs she gives are deceptive, she should suppress them altogether; that she should say everything or nothing, that I might see which cause I ought to follow.  Whereas in my present state, ignorant of what I am or of what I ought to do, I know neither my condition nor my duty.  My heart inclines wholly to know where is the true good, in order to follow it; nothing would be too dear to me for eternity.

I envy those whom I see living in the faith with such carelessness, and who make such a bad use of a gift of which it seems to me I would make such a different use.

230

It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that He should not exist; that the soul should be joined to the body, and that we should have no soul; that the world should be created, and that it should not be created, etc.; that original sin should be, and that it should not be.