Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1878-07-07
FRAUDULENT CHRISTIANITY.

France has recently celebrated Voltalre
centennial, and Voltaire has been for a CEN
fury mark for the arrows of theologians,
because he denied the truth of christianity.
II was not because Voltaire was an unbe-
liever, however, that his memory was so
grandly celebrated by some of the greatest
living men of genius, but because he was
himself genius of the first order, a man
who made his mark upon society, whose lite
rary power gave him command Of the minds
of men, and whose talents aided to overthrow
a set of errors in church and state that had
favored despotism, oppression and injustice.
He had opened up to human view a prospect
of freedom of opinion and action, such as
had long been frowned down by the, great
and condemned by the church. If the world
is more free in thought and action to-day
than it was a century ago, Voltaire is one of
the advanced writers of his age to whom we
owe much of what constitutes the glory
of the present era. While men of
the first rank in living literature were
celebrating the memory of Voltaire In
Paris, one of the most fashionable churches
there was opened to pray for them as erring
men, and to supphcate heaven to with
hold its wrath from nation that had pro-
duced an opponent of christianity so deter
mined, and to petition that his works may no
longer mislead men and blind them to chris
tan truth. Among those who took pleasure
in honoring the memory of one of the great
est men France has produced were many who
had no sympathy whatever with his opinions
respecting religion. Among those who knelt
at the penItential service, at which Voltaire
and everything connected with him were held
in horror, were many who recognized his
worth as philosopher and knew his value
as a reformer. No sensible man, indeed. will
fail to give the great French author his due IN
those aspects, although they may deplore the
attitude he assumed toward religion. View
ing, then, Voltaire as. at least, an instrument
of good, we may ask why, with SO
much penetration, he failed to see the
excellence of the system that Christ
taught. at the expense of contumely
and death, for the elevation and redemption
of mankind2 The true reply is that Voltaire
never knew Christ's system. He was brought
up in church that forbade the people to
read the book in which that system is set
forth in Christ's own words. The. thing set
before him and every citizen of France in
his day, as religion, was that mingling OF
superstition, ignorance and viciousness that
every reader is acquainted with who has pc
rused the Quentin DstrTodrd of Walter Scott,
or who is acquainted with the character of
Louis XIV and his court, with its kings, mis-
tresses and priests, and its corrupt and profit
gate courtiers-both men and women. Vol
taire saw falsehood, venality, corruption,
adultery, sensualism, dishonesty, indifference
to the poor, cringing and fawning to the rich,
prscticed by the clergy as well as by their
hocks. With all this was zeal for the faith,
jealous attendance at mass, self-scourging,
HASTINGS, appeals to saints and prayers to
virgins. The Lord! Lord!" everywhere;
the fruits" without which none can be a
christian, nowhere. This mingling of sane
timouiousness and guilt, of superstition and
vice, of perverted religion and devilishness,
was - before the eyes of Voltaire and called
christianity. Voltaire was man of incisive
insight, of unerring penetration; shams could
not blind him, nor stately formalities mislead
him-wlth what eyes, then, must he have
gazed upon this mixture of lust and
prayer, piety and fraud, oppression and phari-
seeism, church observance and unbridled
greed, shameless corruption and prosecuting
zeal for God? A great American divine once
said that the man who gazed upon the fires
where priests applied the torch that lighted
the flames which devoured martyrs, and upon
the deeds of inquisitors who made war upon
truth, filed dungeons with grooming and tor
tured victims, made women widows and chill
dren fatherless, and witnessing it, said,
"Ihe religion that does this is a lie;
such deeds never came from God" has
a reverence for the Divine Being the perse-
cutor never knew, and an appreciation of re-
ligion the bigot never felt. In such a case
the deuier has the true, the believer the false
conception of the character of the creator.
and of the teachings of his divine son. So
it was with Voltalre-he had lofty concep- |
tions of the attributes of that being in whom |
he had too much sense and wisdom not to |
believe, and those conceptions taught him ]