The
Creator of heaven and earth becomes the manager of a petty scheme
of salvation; the living God descends from His throne to make way
for the law. The law thrusts itself in everywhere; it commands
and blocks up the access to heaven; it regulates and sets limits
to the understanding of the divine working on earth. As far as it
can, it takes the soul out of religion and spoils morality. It
demands a service of God, which, though revealed, may yet with truth
be called a self-chosen and unnatural one, the sense and use of which
are apparent neither to the understanding nor the heart. The labour
is done for the sake of the exercise; it does no one any good, and
rejoices neither God nor man. It has no inner aim after which it
spontaneously strives and which it hopes to attain by itself, but
only an outward one, namely, the reward attached to it, which
might as well be attached to other and possibly even more curious
conditions. The ideal is a negative one, to keep one's self from
sin, not a positive one, to do good upon the earth; the morality
is one which scarcely requires for its exercise the existence of
fellow-creatures.
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