or it endowed the supreme power with the father's
excellence of compassion, and presented for our reverence and
gratitude and devotion a figure who drew from men the highest love for
the God whom they had not seen, along with the warmest pity and love
for their brethren whom they had seen.

The Savoyard Vicar's own position to Christianity was one of
reverential scepticism. "The holiness of the gospel," he said, "is an
argument that speaks to my heart and to which I should even be sorry
to find a good answer. Look at the books of the philosophers with all
their pomp; how puny they are by the side of that! Is there here the
tone of an enthusiast or an ambitious sectary? What gentleness, what
purity, in his manners, what touching grace in his teaching, what
loftiness in his maxims! Assuredly there was something more than human
in such teaching, such a character, such a life, such a death. If the
life and death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and death
of Jesus are those of a god. Shall we say that the history of the
gospels is invented at pleasure? My friend, that is not the fashion of
invention; and the facts about Socrates are less attested than the
facts about Christ.[345] Yet with all that, this same gospel abounds
in things incredible, which are repugnant to reason, and which it is
impossible for any sensible man to conceive or admit. What are we to
do in the midst of all these contradictions? To be ever modest and
circumspect, my son; to respect in silence what one can neither reject
nor understand, and to make one's self lowly before the great being
who alone knows the truth."[346]

"I regard all particular religions as so many salutary institutions,
which prescribe in every country a uniform manner of honouring God by
public worship. I believe them all good, so long as men serve God
fittingly in them. The essential worship is the worship of the heart.
God never rejects this homage, under whatever form it be offered to
him. In other days I used to say mass with the levity which in time
infects even the gravest things, when we do them too often. Since
acquiring my new principles I celebrate it with more veneration; I am
overwhelmed by the majesty of the Supreme Being, by his presence, by
the insufficiency of the human mind, which conceives so little what
pertains to its author. When I approach the moment of consecration, I
collect myself for performing the act with all the feelings required
by the churc