Pascal's Pensees Part 34

488

... But it is impossible that G.o.d should ever be the end, if He is not the beginning. We lift our eyes on high, but lean upon the sand; and the earth will dissolve, and we shall fall whilst looking at the heavens.

489

If there is one sole source of everything, there is one sole end of everything; everything through Him, everything for Him. The true religion, then, must teach us to worship Him only, and to love Him only.

But as we find ourselves unable to worship what we know not, and to love any other object but ourselves, the religion which instructs us in these duties must instruct us also of this inability, and teach us also the remedies for it. It teaches us that by one man all was lost, and the bond broken between G.o.d and us, and that by one man the bond is renewed.

We are born so averse to this love of G.o.d, and it is so necessary that we must be born guilty, or G.o.d would be unjust.

490

Men, not being accustomed to form merit, but only to recompense it where they find it formed, judge of G.o.d by themselves.

491

The true religion must have as a characteristic the obligation to love G.o.d. This is very just, and yet no other religion has commanded this; ours has done so. It must also be aware of human l.u.s.t and weakness; ours is so. It must have adduced remedies for this; one is prayer. No other religion has asked of G.o.d to love and follow Him.

492

He who hates not in himself his self-love, and that instinct which leads him to make himself G.o.d, is indeed blinded. Who does not see that there is nothing so opposed to justice and truth? For it is false that we deserve this, and it is unfair and impossible to attain it, since all demand the same thing. It is, then, a manifest injustice which is innate in us, of which we cannot get rid, and of which we must get rid.

Yet no religion has indicated that this was a sin; or that we were born in it; or that we were obliged to resist it; or has thought of giving us remedies for it.

493

The true religion teaches our duties; our weaknesses, pride, and l.u.s.t; and the remedies, humility and mortification.

494

The true religion must teach greatness and misery; must lead to the esteem and contempt of self, to love and to hate.

495

If it is an extraordinary blindness to live without investigating what we are, it is a terrible one to live an evil life, while believing in G.o.d.

496

Experience makes us see an enormous difference between piety and goodness.

497

_Against those who, trusting to the mercy of G.o.d, live heedlessly, without doing good works._--As the two sources of our sins are pride and sloth, G.o.d has revealed to us two of His attributes to cure them, mercy and justice. The property of justice is to humble pride, however holy may be our works, _et non intres in judicium_,[183] etc.; and the property of mercy is to combat sloth by exhorting to good works, according to that pa.s.sage: "The goodness of G.o.d leadeth to repentance,"[184] and that other of the Ninevites: "Let us do penance to see if peradventure He will pity us."[185] And thus mercy is so far from authorising slackness, that it is on the contrary the quality which formally attacks it; so that instead of saying, "If there were no mercy in G.o.d we should have to make every kind of effort after virtue," we must say, on the contrary, that it is because there is mercy in G.o.d, that we must make every kind of effort.

498

It is true there is difficulty in entering into G.o.dliness. But this difficulty does not arise from the religion which begins in us, but from the irreligion which is still there. If our senses were not opposed to penitence, and if our corruption were not opposed to the purity of G.o.d, there would be nothing in this painful to us. We suffer only in proportion as the vice which is natural to us resists supernatural grace. Our heart feels torn asunder between these opposed efforts. But it would be very unfair to impute this violence to G.o.d, who is drawing us on, instead of to the world, which is holding us back. It is as a child, which a mother tears from the arms of robbers, in the pain it suffers, should love the loving and legitimate violence of her who procures its liberty, and detest only the impetuous and tyrannical violence of those who detain it unjustly. The most cruel war which G.o.d can make with men in this life is to leave them without that war which He came to bring. "I came to send war,"[186] He says, "and to teach them of this war. I came to bring fire and the sword."[187] Before Him the world lived in this false peace.

499

_External works._--There is nothing so perilous as what pleases G.o.d and man. For those states, which please G.o.d and man, have one property which pleases G.o.d, and another which pleases men; as the greatness of Saint Teresa. What pleased G.o.d was her deep humility in the midst of her revelations; what pleased men was her light. And so we torment ourselves to imitate her discourses, thinking to imitate her conditions, and not so much to love what G.o.d loves, and to put ourselves in the state which G.o.d loves.

It is better not to fast, and thereby humbled, than to fast and be self-satisfied therewith. The Pharisee and the Publican.[188]

What use will memory be to me, if it can alike hurt and help me, and all depends upon the blessing of G.o.d, who gives only to things done for Him, according to His rules and in His ways, the manner being as important as the thing, and perhaps more; since G.o.d can bring forth good out of evil, and without G.o.d we bring forth evil out of good?

500

The meaning of the words, good and evil.

501

First step: to be blamed for doing evil, and praised for doing good.

Second step: to be neither praised, nor blamed.

502

Abraham[189] took nothing for himself, but only for his servants. So the righteous man takes for himself nothing of the world, nor the applause of the world, but only for his pa.s.sions, which he uses as their master, saying to the one, "Go," and to another, "Come." _Sub te erit appet.i.tus tuus._[190] The pa.s.sions thus subdued are virtues. Even G.o.d attributes to Himself avarice, jealousy, anger; and these are virtues as well as kindness, pity, constancy, which are also pa.s.sions. We must employ them as slaves, and, leaving to them their food, prevent the soul from taking any of it. For, when the pa.s.sions become masters, they are vices; and they give their nutriment to the soul, and the soul nourishes itself upon it, and is poisoned.

503

Philosophers have consecrated the vices by placing them in G.o.d Himself.

Christians have consecrated the virtues.

504

The just man acts by faith in the least things; when he reproves his servants, he desires their conversion by the Spirit of G.o.d, and prays G.o.d to correct them; and he expects as much from G.o.d as from his own reproofs, and prays G.o.d to bless his corrections. And so in all his other actions he proceeds with the Spirit of G.o.d; and his actions deceive us by reason of the ... or suspension of the Spirit of G.o.d in him; and he repents in his affliction.

505

All things can be deadly to us, even the things made to serve us; as in nature walls can kill us, and stairs can kill us, if we do not walk circ.u.mspectly.