When Villefort tells Monte Cristo \u201cyou have unquestionably some ambition,\u201d Monte Cristo responds, \u201cI, too, as happens to every man once in his life, have been taken by Satan into the highest mountain in the earth, and when there he showed me all the kingdoms of the earth, and as he said before, so said he to me, \u2018Child of earth, what wouldst thou have to make thee adore me?\u2019 I reflected long, for a gnawing ambition\u00a0 had long preyed upon me, and then I replied, \u2018Listen,\u2014I have always heard tell of Providence, and yet I have never seen him, nor anything that resembles him, or which can make me believe that he exists.\u00a0 I wish to be Providence myself, for I feel that the most beautiful, noblest, most sublime thing in the world, is to recompense and punish.\u2019 Satan bowed his head and groaned. \u2018You mistake,\u2019 he said; \u2018Providence does exist, only you have never seen him, because the child of God is as invisible as the parent. You have seen nothing that resembles him, because he works by secret springs and moves by hidden ways. All I can do for you is make you one of the agents of that Providence.\u2019 The bargain was concluded. I may sacrifice my soul, but what matters it?\u201d added Monte Cristo. \u201cIf the thing were to do again, I would again do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
(The Count of Monte Cristo<\/a>, p. 664)<\/p>\n Although I enjoyed this book, there were several passages that I found very troubling, and this was the most significant.Monte Cristo fancies himself an agent of Providence (see additional passage below), yet he himself says that is the result of an arrangement with Satan.<\/p>\n His comment below that God had endowed him with a fortune “to work out his own great designs” sounds\u00a0providential in isolation, but his designs were actually taking revenge on those who had wronged him\u2014and God says “Vengeance is mine” (Rom. 12:19).<\/p>\n I don’t expect that all classic literature will conform 100% to Scripture.\u00a0 Monte Cristo’s insistence on revenge wouldn’t trouble me as much if he (and author Dumas) didn’t identify him as an agent of Providence.\u00a0 That changes the entire dynamic.\u00a0 I really wonder what Dumas was thinking.<\/p>\n This is another of those difficult passages on which I would welcome discussion.\u00a0 Many of you have read this book and enjoyed it.\u00a0 What did you think about this aspect?<\/p>\n Mary Jo<\/p>\n Monte Cristo later tells\u00a0Merc\u00e9d\u00e8s:\u00a0“Still I was but an agent, led on by an invisible and offended Deity, who chose not to withhold the fatal blow that I was destined to hurl. I take that God to witness, at whose feet I have prostrated myself daily for the last ten years, that I would have sacrificed my life for you, and, with my life, the projects that were indissolubly linked with it. But\u2014and I say it with some pride, Merc\u00e9d\u00e8s\u2014God required me, and I lived. Examine the past and the present, and endeavour to pierce futurity, and then say whether I am not a Divine instrument. The most dreadful misfortunes, the most frightful sufferings, the abandonment of all those who loved me, the persecution of those who did not know me, formed the trials of my youth; when suddenly, from captivity, solitude, misery, I was restored to light and liberty, and became the possessor of a fortune so brilliant, so unbounded, so unheard-of, that I must have been blind not to be conscious that God had endowed me with it to work out his own great designs. From that time I viewed this fortune as confided to me for a particular purpose. Not a thought was given to a life which you once, Merc\u00e9d\u00e8s, had the power to render blissful,\u2014not one hour of peaceful calm was mine, but I felt myself driven on like an exterminating angel. Like those adventurous captains about to embark on some enterprise full of danger, I laid in my provisions, I loaded my arms, I collected every means of attack and defence; I in\/ured my body to the most violent exercises, my soul to the bitterest trials; I taught my arm to slay, my eyes to behold excruciating sufferings, and my mouth to smile at the most horrid spectacles. From good-natured, confiding, and forgiving, I became revengeful, cunning, and wicked, or rather immovable as fate. Then I launched out into the path that was opened to me; I overcame every obstacle and reached the goal. But woe to those who met me in my career.\u201d<\/p>\n The Count of Monte Cristo<\/a>, pages 1417-1419)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Villefort tells Monte Cristo \u201cyou have unquestionably some ambition,\u201d Monte Cristo responds, \u201cI, too, as happens to every man once in his life, have been taken by Satan into the highest mountain in the earth, and when there he showed me all the kingdoms of the earth, and as he said before, so said … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eclectic-bibliophile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}