Читать книгу The Essential Works of Robert G. Ingersoll - Robert Green Ingersoll - Страница 178

Most of the Christians in his day kept their religion not for every day use but for disaster, as ships carry life boats to be used only in the stress of storm.

Voltaire believed in the religion of humanity—of good and generous deeds. For many centuries the church had painted virtue so ugly, sour and cold, that vice was regarded as beautiful. Voltaire taught the beauty of the useful, the hatefulness and hideousness of superstition.

He was not the greatest of poets, or of dramatists, but he was the greatest man of his time, the greatest friend of freedom and the deadliest foe of superstition.

He did more to break the chains of superstition—to drive the phantoms of fear from the heart and brain, to destroy the authority of the church and to give liberty to the world than any other of the sons of men. In the highest, the holiest sense he was the most profoundly religious man of his time.