SAMUEL: Saul,
did you obey God? SAUL: I did not suppose such a command
[156] was positive. I thought that goodness was the first attribute of
the Supreme Being, and that a compassionate heart could not displease
him. SAMUEL: You are mistaken, unbeliever. God reproves you, your
sceptre will pass into other hands.
Perhaps no writer has ever roused more hatred in Christendom than
Voltaire. He was looked on as a sort of anti-Christ. That was natural;
his attacks were so tremendously effective at the time. But he has been
sometimes decried on the ground that he only demolished and made no
effort to build up where he had pulled down. This is a narrow complaint.
It might be replied that when a sewer is spreading plague in a town, we
cannot wait to remove it till we have a new system of drains, and it may
fairly be said that religion as practised in contemporary France was a
poisonous sewer. But the true answer is that knowledge, and therefore
civilization, are advanced by criticism and negation, as well as by
construction and positive discovery. When a man has the talent to attack
with effect falsehood, prejudice, and imposture, it is his duty, if
there are any social duties, to use it.
For constructive thinking we must go to the other great leader of French
thought,
[157] Rousseau, who contributed to the growth of freedom in a different
way. He was a deist, but his deism, unlike that of Voltaire, was
religious and emotional.
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