Page:Essence of Christianity (1854).djvu/187

 sense which this word had in Christianity,—not as a moral, inward need, not, if I may so express myself, as a metaphysical, i.e., an essential need, which man can experience only where he does not separate difference of sex from himself, but on the contrary regards it as belonging to his inmost nature. Hence marriage is not holy in Christianity; at least it is so only apparently, illusively; for the natural principle of marriage, which is the love of the sexes,—however civil marriage may in endless instances contradict this,—is in Christianity an unholy thing, and excluded from heaven. But that which man excludes from heaven, he excludes from his true nature. Heaven is his treasure-casket. Believe not in what he establishes on earth, what he permits and sanctions here: here he must accommodate himself; here many things come athwart him which do not fit into his system; here he shuns thy glance, for he finds himself among strangers who intimidate him. But watch for him when he throws off his incognito, and shows himself in his true dignity, his heavenly state. In heaven he speaks as he thinks; there thou hearest his true opinion. Where his heaven is, there is his heart,—heaven is his heart laid open. Heaven is nothing but the idea of the true, the good, the valid,—of that which ought to be; earth, nothing but the idea of the untrue, the unlawful, of that which ought not to be. The Christian excludes from heaven the life of the species: there the species ceases, there dwell only pure sexless individuals, “spirits;” there absolute subjectivity reigns:—thus the Christian excludes the life of the species from his