h
heaven; man suffices for himself, away with God; reality suffices for
us, away with chimeras! Wisdom consists in contenting ourselves with the
world as it is. It is attempted ridiculously enough to place this wisdom
under the patronage of the luminaries of our age. We are bidden,
forsooth, to see in the negation of the real and living God, a conflict
of progress with routine, of science with a blind tradition, of the
modern mind with superannuated ideas.[88] We know of old this defiance
hurled against the aspirations of the heart, the conscience, and the
reason. We know the destined issue of this ancient revolt of the
intellect against the laws of its own nature. There were atheists in
Palestine in the days when the Psalmist exclaimed, "The fool hath said
in his heart, There is no God."[89] There were atheists at Rome when
Cicero wrote,[90] that the opinion which recognizes gods appeared to him
to come nearest to the resemblance of truth. A poet of the thirteenth
century has expressed in a Latin verse the thoughts which are in vogue
among a great many of our contemporaries: "He dares nothing great, who
believes that there are gods."[91] There were atheists in the
seventeenth century, when Descartes exerted himself to confound them,
and they reckoned themselves the fine spirits of their time.[92] And
who, again, does not know that in the eighteenth century atheism
marched with head aloft, and filled the world with its clamors. The
attempt to do without God has nothing modern about it, it is met with at
all epochs. The means employed now-a-days to attain this end have
nothing new about them. Atheism exhibits itself in history with the
characters of a chronic malady, the outbreaks of which are transient
crises. The moment the negation is blazoned openly, humanity protests.
Why? Because man will never be persuaded to content himself with the
earth, and with what the earth can give him: his nature absolutely
forbids it. When we compare the reality with the desires of our souls,
we can all say with the aged patriarch Jacob: "Few and evil have been
the days of my pilgrimage;"[93] we can all say with Lamartine:

Though all the good desired of man
In one sole heart should overflow,
Death, bounding still his mortal span,
Would turn the cup of joy to woe.[94]

And it is not the heart only which is concerned here; without God man
remains inexplicable to his own reason. The spiritual creature of the