Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1853-1862, 1855-05-20
Sfliis.tflIareous,
NapOlean Bonaparte'S views of the Divinit!
of Christ

vi GuIlSi.
We extract the following from Harpers Mag
azine, and commend it to our readers as the best
| Sunday reading they can select: .7,q .3;,.
The conversation at St. Helena very frequently
turned upon the subject of religion One day Ma
polean was speaking of the Divinity of Christ Gen
! Bertrand said: rsN t-z
al cannot conceive, Sire, how great man like
you can believe that the Supreme Being ever ex-
| hibited himself to men under human form, with
a body, a face, mouth, and eyes. Let Jesus be
whatever you please-the highest intelligence the
purest heart the most profound legislator, and, in all
respects, the most singular being that has ever ex-
isted / grant it. Sill be was simply a man who
taught his disciples, and deluded credulous people,
as did Orpheus, Confucius, Brahma. Jesus caused
himself to be adored because bis predecessors, Iris
and Osiris Jupiter and Juno had proudly made
themselves objects of worship. The ascendency of
| the gods and the heroes of fables. If Jesus has
impassioned and attached to his chariot the multi
tude--if he has revolutionized the world see in
| that only the power Of genius and the action of
commanding spirit, which vanquishes the world
as so many conquerors have done-Alexander,
Cesar, you, Sire, and Mohammed with a sword"
Napolean replied; b.. tss ---s -as
81 know men, and tell you that Jesus Chist
is not man. Superficial minds see resemblance
between Christ and the founders of empires and
not exist. There is between Christianity and
whatever other religion, the distance of infnity.
''We can say to the authors of every other relig-
ion, You are neither gods nor the agents of the
Deity. You are but missionaries Of falsehood,
moulded from the same clay with the rest of NOR
tails You are made with all the passions and vi
ces inseparable from them. Your temples and your
priests proclaim your origin Such will be the
judgment, the cry of conscience, of whoever exam
ines the gods and the temples of paganism.
"Paganism was never accepted, as truth, by the
wise men of Greece; neither by Socrates, Pytha
goras, Plato, Anaxagoras, or Pericles. On the
other side the ofest itellects since the advent of
Christianity, have had faith, living faith, prac-
tcal faith, in the mysteries and the doctrines of
the gospel; not only Bossuet and Fenelon, who
preachers, but Deseartes and Newton, Leibnitz
and Pascal, Corneille and Racine, Charemagre
and Louis XIV,
"Paganism is the work of man. One can here
read but our imbecility. What do these gods so
boastful, know more than other mortals? these
legislators, Greek or Roman, this Numa, this Ly-
curgus, these priests Of India or of Memphis. this
Cunfucius, this Mohammed? Absolutely nothing
They have made perfect chaos of morals There
is not one among them all who has said anything
new in reference to future destiny, to the SOUL
to the essence of God, to the creation Enter the
sanctuaries Of paganism. You there find perfect
chaos, thousand contradictions war between the
gods, the immobiity of sculpture the division and
the rending of unity, the parceing out of the di-
vine attributes mutated or denied in their es-
sence the sophism of ignorance and presumption,
polluted fetes, impurity and abomination adored,
all sorts of corruption fostering in the thick shades
with the rotten wood, the idol, and his priest
Does this honor God, or docs it dishonor him? Are
these religions and these gods to be compared with
Christianity?
"As for me, | say no. l summon entire Oym-
pus to my tribunal. Judge the gods, but am far
from prostrating myself before their vain images
The gods, the legislators of India and China, of
Rome and of Athens, have nothing which can over
awe them. Not that am unjust to theml No.
appreciate them, because l know their value, Un-
deniably princes, whose existence is fixed in the
memory as an image of order and of power, as the
ideal of force and beauty such princes were no or
dinary men. .--.. .
Il see in Lycurgus, Numa, Mahommed onlp leg
islators who, having the first rank in the State
have sought the best solution of the social prob
lor,. huf IL -:
They themselves have never raised their profess
ion so high. As for me- recognize the gods and
these great men as beings like myself. They have
performed lofty part in their times, as have DONE
Nothing announces them divine. On the contra
ry, there are numerous resemblances between them
and myself; foibles and errors which ally them to
me and to humanity.
at is not so with Christ. Every thing in him
astonishes me. Hi spirit overawes me, and his
will conlounds me. Between him and whoever else
in the world there is no possible term of compar-
ison. He is truly being by himself His ideas
and his sentiments, the truths which he announces,
his manner of convincing, are not explained either
by human organization or by the nature of things.
"His birth, and the history of his life; the pro-
fundity of his doctrine, which grapples the might
lest difficulties, and which is of those difficulties
the most admirable solution; his gospel his appa-
rition his empire, his march across the ages and
the realms-everything is, for me prodigy, a mys-
terry insolube, which plunges me into reverie from
which l cannot escape-a mystery which is there
before my eyes-a mystery which l can neither
deny nor explain, Here see nothing human.
"The nearer l approach, the more carefully ex-
anime, everything is above me-everything re-
mains grand, Of grandeur which overpowers His
religion is revelation from an intelligence. which
certainly is not that of man. There is profound
originality, which has created a series of words
and of maxims before unknown. Jesus borrowed
nothing from our sciences. One can absolutely see
nowhere, but in him alone the imitation or the ex-
ample of his life. He is not philosopher since
he advances by miracles, and from the commence
ment his disciples worshipped him. He persuades
them far more by an appeal to the heart than by
any displays of method and of logic. Neither did
he impose upon them any preliminary studies, or
any knowledge of letters. All his religion con-
sists in believing. - .- -....
ain fact the sciences and philosonbv avail moth