No; the question between the world and ourselves is not whether the miracles and mysteries of Christianity are believed, but whether the morality of the Gospel is practised. {130} That is the real question at issue. So true is this, that scholars and honest men will not hesitate to say frankly:--"The matter is not one of argument; only retrench from your religion several small commandments of God and the Church, which we need not specify, and then we will be on your side." That is the secret of unbelief. It is not faith that is wanting, but the courage to do what is right. How, then, are we to get rid of those preachers who are always taken up with unbelievers? How delivered from those endless sermons addressed to unbelievers? They do us much harm and very little good. The whole thing, besides being ill-judged, is a mistake. By incessantly speaking to men about unbelief, we may end in making them unbelievers; just as we may make a dolt of a man by dint of telling him that he has no sense. Besides, what a blow it is to Christianity to give the people to understand that a notable portion of a great nation has seriously contested its Divine origin! Is not this to suggest the temptation that they too should become unbelievers, since, by so doing, they would be in so numerous and goodly a company? Instead of such a course, begin by telling your audience--but in the accents of profound conviction--that there is not one unbeliever among them; that they all have faith; that they believe as you do; that they are better than they judge themselves to be; that not every one who wishes it can become an unbeliever; that Jesus Christ is too eminent in history and in the world to be regarded, in earnest, as a mere man: ... tell them this, and you will do them good, and, besides, you will be telling the truth. {131} They all believe, but their faith is imperfect, wounded. So true is this, that Voltaire himself, as all the world knows, could not rid himself entirely of his faith, all Voltaire that he was. ... What! Voltaire, with all his wit, and, if you will, his genius, Voltaire, with his demon pride, his satanic hatred of Christ, his half century of blasphemies,--Voltaire, the head of the most redoubtable cohort of enemies that Christianity ever had,--even he could not wholly divest himself of his belief; and yet it is pretended that our pigmies of the nineteenth century, with their limited knowledge and petty malice, are able to stifle their faith when that giant of impiety was unable to strangle his in his eagle's clutch! ...