What would be the true religion if Christianity did not exist? the
religion in which there were no sects; the religion in which all minds
were necessarily in agreement.
Well, to what dogma do all minds agree? to the worship of a God and to
integrity. All the philosophers of the world who have had a religion
have said in all time--"There is a God, and one must be just." There,
then, is the universal religion established in all time and throughout
mankind.
The point in which they all agree is therefore true, and the systems
through which they differ are therefore false.
"My sect is the best," says a Brahmin to me. But, my friend, if your
sect is good, it is necessary; for if it were not absolutely necessary
you would admit to me that it was useless: if it is absolutely
necessary, it is for all men; how then can it be that all men have not
what is absolutely necessary to them? How is it possible for the rest of
the world to laugh at you and your Brahma?
When Zarathustra, Hermes, Orpheus, Minos and all the great men say--"Let
us worship God, and let us be just," nobody laughs; but everyone hisses
the man who claims that one cannot please God unless when one dies one
is holding a cow's tail, and the man who wants one to have the end of
one's prepuce cut off, and the man who consecrates crocodiles and
onions, and the man who attaches eternal salvation to the dead men's
bones one carries under one's shirt, or to a plenary indulgence which
one buys at Rome for two and a half sous.
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