Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/188

his sincere piety and his discreet and respectful ignorance. We were all as nothing in presence of thy invisible majesty, to whom we gave the heavens as a canopy and the earth as a footstool. The times are now changed, and we behold thee weakened and dethroned. Thy name, once the sum and substance of all wisdom, the only sanction of the judge, the sole authority of the priest, the hope of the poor, the refuge of the repenting sinner,—this incommunicable name has now become an object of execration and contempt, and will be henceforth despised by all men. For God is but folly and timidity; God is but hypocrisy and deceit; God is but tyranny and misery; God is evil. So long as humanity lies prostrate before an altar the slave of kings and priests, it will continue condemned. While one man receives, in the name of God, the homage of other men, society will continue to be founded on perjury, and peace and love will be banished from the earth. Withdraw from me, O Jehovah; for henceforth, freed from the fear of God, and having attained true wisdom, I swear, with uplifted hand to heaven, that thou art only the tormentor of my reason and the specter of my conscience."

It is he who has said it: God is the specter of his conscience. No one can deny God without condemning himself; no one can fly from God without flying from himself. This unhappy being, although yet on earth, is already in hell; those violent and impotent muscular contractions, that morose frenzy, that insensate wrath, that furious and tempestuous rage, are in truth the contractions, the frenzy, the wrath, and the rage of the reprobate. Without charity and without faith, he has lost even that last good of man—hope. And yet, when