Mark's.
When he came out of the Tower of St. Mark's, he went to Constantinople;
he had audience of the mufti; and spoke to him in these terms:
"Your religion, although it has some good points, such as worship of the
great Being, and the necessity of being just and charitable, is
otherwise nothing but a rehash of Judaism and a tedious collection of
fairy tales. If the archangel Gabriel had brought the leaves of the
Koran to Mahomet from some planet, all Arabia would have seen Gabriel
come down: nobody saw him; therefore Mahomet was a brazen impostor who
deceived imbeciles."
Hardly had he pronounced these words than he was impaled. Nevertheless
he had always been right, and had always had reason on his side.
_RELIGION_
I meditated last night; I was absorbed in the contemplation of nature; I
admired the immensity, the course, the harmony of these infinite globes
which the vulgar do not know how to admire.
I admired still more the intelligence which directs these vast forces. I
said to myself: "One must be blind not to be dazzled by this spectacle;
one must be stupid not to recognize the author of it; one must be mad
not to worship Him. What tribute of worship should I render Him? Should
not this tribute be the same in the whole of space, since it is the same
supreme power which reigns equally in all space? Should not a thinking
being who dwells in a star in the Milky Way offer Him the same homage as
the thinking being on this little globe where we are? Light is uniform
for the star Sirius and for us; moral philosophy must be uniform.
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