Page:Novalis Schriften - Volume 2.djvu/34

★ 24 ★ to have settled especially on an extraordinary picture or a gravesite. People from all parts of the world flocked there with beauteous offerings and brought back heavenly gifts: Peace of the soul and health of the body. This powerful, peacemaking society industriously sought to make all people partake of this beautiful faith and sent its associates to all parts of the world, to proclaim the gospel of live everywhere and to make the kingdom of heaven the only kingdom in this world. With righteousness, the head of the church wisely opposed the irreverent training of human faculties at the expense of sacred purpose, and untimely dangerous discoveries in the domain of knowledge. So he prevented the bold thinkers from publicly claiming that the earth was an insignificant wandering star, because he knew well that along with losing respect for their place of residence and their earthly fatherland they would also lose respect for their heavenly home and their cultural heritage, that they would prefer limited knowledge to infinite belief, and would take for granted all that is great and wonderful and to regard it as the dead functioning of laws. All the wise and venerable people gathered at his court. All treasures flowed thither, the destroyed Jerusalem had avenged itself, and Rome itself was Jerusalem, the holy residence of the divine government on earth. Princes laid their disputes before the father of Christendom, their crowns and glory willingly at his feet, yes, they considered it a honor as members of this noble guild to conclude the evening of their lives in divine contemplations between lonely monastery walls. How benevolent, how appropriate to the inner nature of people, this government, this institution was,