heart, it is everywhere and it is nowhere....

35.

This "bearer of glad tidings" died as he lived and _taught_--_not_ to
"save mankind," but to show mankind how to live. It was a _way of life_
that he bequeathed to man: his demeanour before the judges, before the
officers, before his accusers--his demeanour on the _cross_. He does not
resist; he does not defend his rights; he makes no effort to ward off
the most extreme penalty--more, _he invites it_.... And he prays,
suffers and loves _with_ those, _in_ those, who do him evil.... _Not_ to
defend one's self, _not_ to show anger, _not_ to lay blames.... On the
contrary, to submit even to the Evil One--to _love_ him....

36.

--We free spirits--we are the first to have the necessary prerequisite
to understanding what nineteen centuries have misunderstood--that
instinct and passion for integrity which makes war upon the "holy lie"
even more than upon all other lies.... Mankind was unspeakably far from
our benevolent and cautious neutrality, from that discipline of the
spirit which alone makes possible the solution of such strange and
subtle things: what men always sought, with shameless egoism, was their
_own_ advantage therein; they created the _church_ out of denial of the
Gospels....

Whoever sought for signs of an ironical divinity's hand in the great
drama of existence would find no small indication thereof in the
_stupendous question-mark_ that is called Christianity. That mankind
should be on its knees before the very antithesis of what was the
origin, the meaning and the _law_ of the Gospels--that in the concept of
the "church" the very things should be pronounced holy that the "bearer
of glad tidings" regards as _beneath_ him and _behind_ him--it would be
impossible to surpass this as a grand example of _world-historical
irony_--

37.

--Our age is proud of its historical sense: how, then, could it delude
itself into believing that the _crude fable of the wonder-worker and
Saviour_ constituted the beginnings of Christianity--and that everything
spiritual and symbolical in it only came later? Quite to the contrary,
the whole history of Christianity--from the death on the cross
onward--is the history of a progressively clumsier misunderstanding of
an _original_ symbolism. With every extension of Christianity among
larger and ruder masses, even less capable of grasping the principles
that gave birth to it, the need arose to make it more and more _vul