Tuesday, August 9, 2011

From Blaise Pascal's PENSÉES

Our greatness and wretchedness are so evident that the true religion must necessarily teach us that there is in us some great principle of greatness and some great principle of wretchedness. It must also account for such amazing contradictions. 

To make us happy it must show us that a God exists whom we are bound to love; that our only true bliss is to be in him, and our sole ill to be cut off from him. It must acknowledge that we are full of darkness which prevents us from knowing and loivng him, and so, with out duty obliging us to love God and our sin leading us astray, we are full of unrighteousness. 

It must account to us for the way in which we thus go against God and our own good. It must teach us the cure for our helplessness and the means of obtaining this cure. Let us examine all the religions of the world at that point and let us see whether any but the Christian religion meets it.

PS:  Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was a French mathematician and physicist. Following his 'second conversion in 1654, he left scientific pursuit and devoted himself to writings on religious topic. In honour of his scientific contributions, Pascal is the name given to the SI unit of pressure and to a programming language. Pascal's law, Pascal's triangle and Pascal's Wager too bear his name. His most famous writing is Pensées (Thoughts), and is one of French most eloquent books on prose. It is an examination of Christian religion. He died at 39.

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