Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/118

82 nothing of a duty of God to be truthful and clear in his communications to mankind. Noboily has beenmore eloquent than Pascal as regards the “hidden God" and the reasons of his thus hiding Himself; which proves that he, Pascal, could never compose his mind on this lead: but his voice sounds as confident as if he had, some time or other, sat behind the curtain. He scented immorality in the "’’deus absconditus,’’" and felt both ashamed and afraid of admitting this to himself: hence, like one who is afraid, he spoke as loudly as he could.

‘’At the death-bed of Christianity.’’—The really active people are now, at heart, dead to Christianity, and the more moderate and more thoughtful among the intellectual middle-classes only retain a made-up, that is, an oddly simplified Christianity. God who, in his love, ordains everything, as it will finally be best for us : a God who both gives and takes from its our virtue and happiness, so that, on the whole, everything happens as is right and meet, and there is no reason left why we should take life sadly or rail at it; in short, resignation and modesty deified—that is the best and most lifelike residuum of Christianity still extant. Yet we ought to remember that thus Christianity has glided into a mild moralism it is not so much “God, freedom, and immortality," which have remained, but good-will