Mendelssohn’s arguments remain shockingly relevant to our contemporary world where, in so many places, intolerance is once more murderously in arms. They remain a guiding light because, unlike Voltaire’s strictures on the same subject, they were born from a love of religion, not a contempt for it, and thus take full measure of human psychological needs. ‘Let everyone be permitted to speak as he thinks, to invoke God after his own manner or that of his fathers and seek salvation where he thinks he may find it as long as he does not disturb the public peace and acts honestly according to the
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