e they? They
are a group of men who, during the eighteenth century, associated
themselves together for the production of a great work to be the
repository of all human knowledge,--in one word, of an encyclopaedia. The
project was a laudable one; and the motive to it was laudable--in part.
For there was mixture of motive in the case. In part, the motive was
simple desire to advance the cause of human enlightenment; in part,
however, the motive was desire to undermine Christianity. This latter
end the encyclopaedist collaborators may have thought to be an
indispensable means subsidiary to the former end. They probably did
think so--with such imperfect sincerity as is possible to those who set
themselves, consciously or unconsciously, against God. The fact is,
that the Encyclopaedists came at length to be nearly as much occupied in
extinguishing Christianity, as in promoting public enlightenment. They
went about this their task of destroying, in a way as effective as has
ever been devised for accomplishing a similar work. They gave a vicious
turn of insinuation against Christianity to as many articles as
possible. In the most unexpected places, throughout the entire work,
pitfalls were laid of anti-Christian implication, awaiting the unwary
feet of the reader. You were nowhere sure of your ground. The world has
never before seen, it has never seen since, an example of propagandism
altogether so adroit and so alert. It is not too much to say further,
that history can supply few instances of propagandism so successful. The
Encyclopaedists might almost be said to have given the human mind a fresh
start and a new orbit. The fresh start is, perhaps, spent; the new orbit
has at length, to a great extent, returned upon the old; but it holds
true, nevertheless, that the Encyclopaedists of France were for a time,
and that not a short time, a prodigious force of impulsion and direction
to the Occidental mind. It ought to be added that the aim of the
Encyclopaedists was political also, not less than religious. In truth,
religion and politics, Church and State, in their day, and in France,
were much the same thing. The "Encyclopaedia" was as revolutionary in
politics as it was atheistic in religion.

The leader in this movement of insurrectionary thought was Denis
Diderot. Diderot (1713-1784) was born to be an encyclopaedist, and a
captain of encyclopaedists. Force inexhaustible, and inexhaustible
willingness to give out force; unappe