The Existence of God is a religious essay by Francois de Salignac de La Mothe-Fenelon. An ancestor of the French divine who under the name of Fenelon has made for himself a household name in England as in France, was Bertrand de Salignac, Marquis de la Mothe Fenelon, who in 1572, as ambassador for France, was charged to soften as much as he could the resentment of our Queen Elizabeth when news came of the massacre of St. Bartholomew.

Our Fenelon, claimed in brotherhood by Christians of every denomination, was born nearly eighty years after that time, at the chateau of Fenelon in Perigord, on the 6th of August, 1651. To the world he is Fenelon; he was Francois de Salignac de la Mothe Fenelon to the France of his own time.