Fleeting Light.(Voltaire in Exile)(Book Review) From: First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and PublicLife | Date: January 1, 2005| Author: Valiunas, Algis | COPYRIGHT 2005 Institute on Religion and Public Life. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

VOLTAIRE IN EXILE By IAN DAVIDSON Grove 326pp. $24.

IF A PERSON OF FAITH troubles to think of Voltaire (1694-1778) at all these days, it is most likely as the village atheist: shoveling scorn in Candide on Leibniz's sunny theodicy that proclaims this the best of all possible worlds, flinging verbal abuse and perhaps the occasional dead cat at passing clerics, making sport of biblical literalists and indeed of believers in any religion of the revealed word. To many Englis...