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 leaves the religious emotions cold; hence, if not in express words, yet in fact, there must be attributed to God a condition corresponding to the subjective need, the need of the worshipper, in order to establish reciprocity. All the positive definitions of religion are based on reciprocity. The religious man thinks of God, because God thinks of him; he loves God, because God has first loved him. God is jealous of man; religion is jealous of morality; it sucks away the best forces of morality; it renders to man only the things that are man’s, but to God the things that are God’s; and to Him is rendered true, living emotion,—the heart.

When in times in which peculiar sanctity was attached to religion, we find marriage, property, and civil law respected, this has not its foundation in religion, but in the original, natural sense of morality and right, to which the true social relations are sacred as such. He to whom the Right is not holy for its own sake, will never be made to feel it sacred by religion. Property did not become sacred because it was regarded as a divine institution; but it was regarded as a divine institution because it was felt to be in itself sacred. Love is not holy, because it is a predicate of God, but it is a predicate of God because it is in itself divine. The heathens do not worship the light or the fountain, because it is a gift of God,