One thing was wanting to him--the love of a God. He saw him in mind, and he detested those phantoms which ages of darkness had taken for him, and adored in his stead. He rent away with rage those clouds which prevent the divine idea from beaming purely on mankind; but his weakness was rather hatred against error, than faith in the Divinity. The sentiment of religion, that sublime _résumé_ of human thought; that reason, which, enlightened by enthusiasm, mounts to God as a flame, and unites itself with him in the unity of the creation with the Creator, of the ray with the focus--this, Voltaire never felt in his soul. Thence sprung the results of his philosophy; it created neither morals, nor worship, nor charity; it only decomposed--destroyed. Negative, cold, corrosive, sneering, it operated like poison--it froze--it killed--it never gave life. Thus, it never produced--even against the errors it assailed, which were but the human alloy of a divine idea--the whole effect it should have elicited. It made sceptics, instead of believers. The theocratic reaction was prompt and universal, as it ought to have been. Impiety clears the soul of its consecrated errors, but does not fill the heart of man. Impiety alone will never ruin a human worship: a faith destroyed must be replaced by a faith. It is not given to irreligion to destroy a religion on earth. There is but a religion more enlightened which can really triumph over a religion fallen into contempt, by replacing it. The earth cannot remain without an altar, and God alone is strong enough against God.
It was on the 5th of August, 1791, the first anniversary of the famous night of the 4th of August, 1790, when feudality crumbled to atoms, that the National Assembly commenced the revision of the constitution. It was a solemn and imposing act, was this comprehensive _coup d'oeil_ cast by legislators at the end of their career, over the ruins they had scattered, and the foundations they had laid in their course. But how different at this moment was the disposition of their mind from what they felt in commencing this mighty work! They had begun it with an enthusiasm of the ideal, they now contemplated it with the misgivings and the sadness of reality. The National Assembly was opened amidst the acclamations of a people unanimous in their hopes, and was about to close amidst the clamorous recriminations of all parties.