“Who taught the evangelists the qualities of a truly heroic soul, that they should paint it to such perfection in Jesus Christ? Why have they made Him weak in His agony? Did they not know how to describe a death of fortitude? Assuredly; for it is the same St Luke paints St Stephen’s death as so much braver than that of Jesus Christ. They have made Him capable of fear before the necessity of death had come, then entirely calm and brave. But when they show Him in trouble, the trouble comes from Himself; in the face of men He remains unmoved. “The highest achievement of reason is to recognise that there is an infinity of things which surpass its powers. “If we submit everything to reason, our religion would have nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we violate the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous. “There are two extremes—to exclude reason, and to admit only reason. “It is your own consent, and the steady voice of your own reason, and not that of others, which must make you believe. “If antiquity was the rule of faith, the ancients were without a rule. “Let them say what they will, it must be confessed that the Christian religion is something astonishing. ‘That is because you were born in it,’ they say. So far from this, I am on my guard against it on this very account, lest this incline me unduly to it. But though I was born in it, the facts are not the less as I find them.” True to his whole conception of religion as the free choice of the heart and will, Pascal does not find any special difficulty in the fact of so many rejecting Christianity. It is of its very nature that it cannot be forced on any mind. The God of the Gospel can only be reached by faith. To all without faith, or the inner eye to see Him, He is a _Deus absconditus_, “a God who hides himself.” In one of his letters to Mademoiselle de Roannez, he dwells upon this idea, which also continually recurs in his Thoughts:— “If God continually revealed Himself to man, faith would have no value; we could not help believing. If He did not reveal Himself, there could be no such thing as faith. While hiding Himself, He yet reveals Himself to those who are willing to be His servants. . . . All things hide a mystery. All are a veil which conceal God. The Christian must recognise Him in all. . . . There is light enough for those who wish to see, but darkness enough for those who are of an opposite disposition. . . . For God would rather move the will than the intellect. Perfect clearness would cure the one, but injure the other.”