Volume Ii Part 8 (2/2)
Then virtue, the suns.h.i.+ne and summer atmosphere of the soul, can contribute her own share of work and add mellowness and sweetness.
92.
DABBLERS IN CHRISTIANITY, NOT CHRISTIANS.-So that is your Christianity!-To annoy humanity you praise ”G.o.d and His Saints,” and again when you want to praise humanity you go so far that G.o.d and His Saints must be annoyed.-I wish you would at least learn Christian manners, as you are so deficient in the civility of the Christian heart.
93.
THE RELIGIOUS AND IRRELIGIOUS IMPRESSION OF NATURE.-A true believer must be to us an object of veneration, but the same holds good of a true, sincere, convinced unbeliever. With men of the latter stamp we are near to the high mountains where mighty rivers have their source, and with believers we are under vigorous, shady, restful trees.
94.
JUDICIAL MURDER.-The two greatest judicial murders(8) in the world's history are, to speak without exaggeration, concealed and well-concealed suicide. In both cases a man _willed_ to die, and in both cases he let his breast be pierced by the sword in the hand of human injustice.
95.
”LOVE.”-The finest artistic conception wherein Christianity had the advantage over other religious systems lay in one word-Love. Hence it became the _lyric_ religion (whereas in its two other creations Semitism bestowed heroico-epical religions upon the world). In the word ”love”
there is so much meaning, so much that stimulates and appeals to memory and hope, that even the meanest intelligence and the coldest heart feel some glimmering of its sense. The cleverest woman and the lowest man think of the comparatively unselfish moments of their whole life, even if with them Eros never soared high: and the vast number of beings who _miss_ love from their parents or children or sweethearts, especially those whose s.e.xual instincts have been refined away, have found their heart's desire in Christianity.
96.
THE FULFILMENT OF CHRISTIANITY.-In Christianity there is also an Epicurean trend of thought, starting from the idea that G.o.d can only demand of man, his creation and his image, what it is possible for man to fulfil, and accordingly that Christian virtue and perfection are attainable and often attained. Now, for instance, the belief in loving one's enemies-even if it is only a belief or fancy, and by no means a psychological reality (a real love)-gives unalloyed happiness, so long as it is genuinely believed. (As to the reason of this, psychologist and Christian might well differ.) Hence earthly life, through the belief, I mean the fancy, that it satisfies not only the injunction to love our enemies, but all the other injunctions of Christianity, and that it has really a.s.similated and embodied in itself the Divine perfection according to the command, ”Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” might actually become a holy life. Thus error can make Christ's promise come true.
97.
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