Page:Essence of Christianity (1854).djvu/77

 indirectly, love of man? If God loves man, is not man, then, the very substance of God? That which I love—is it not my inmost being? Have I a heart when I do not love? No! love only is the heart of man. But what is love without the thing loved? Thus what I love is my heart, the substance of my being, my nature. Why does man grieve—why does he lose pleasure in life, when he has lost the beloved object? Why? because with the beloved object he has lost his heart, the activity of his affections, the principle of life. Thus, if God loves man, man is the heart of God—the welfare of man his deepest anxiety. If man, then, is the object of God, is not man, in God, an object to himself? is not the content of the divine nature the human nature? If God is love, is not the essential content of this love, man? Is not the love of God to man—the basis and central point of religion—the love of man to himself made an object, contemplated as the highest objective truth, as the highest Being to man? Is not then the proposition, “God loves man” an orientalism (religion is essentially oriental), which in plain speech means, the highest is the love of man?

The truth to which, by means of analysis, we have here reduced the mystery of the Incarnation, has also been recognised even in the religious consciousness. Thus Luther, for example, says, “He who can truly conceive such a thing (namely, the incarnation of God) in his heart, should, for the sake of the flesh and blood which sits at the right hand of God, bear love to all flesh and blood here upon the earth, and never more be able to be angry with any man. The gentle manhood of Christ our God, should at a glance fill all hearts with joy, so that never more could an angry, unfriendly thought come therein—yea, every man ought, out of great joy, to be tender to his fellow-man for the sake of that our flesh and blood.” “This is a fact which should move us to great joy and blissful hope, that we are thus honoured above all creatures, even above the angels, so that we can with truth boast,—my own flesh and blood sits at the right hand of God, and reigns over all. Such honour has no creature, not even an angel. This ought to be a furnace that should melt us all into one heart, and should create such a fervour in us men that we should heartily love each other.” But that which in the truth of religion is the essence of the fable, the chief thing, is to the religious consciousness only the moral of the fable, a collateral thing.