The "kingdom of heaven" is a state of the heart--not something to come "beyond the world" or "after death." The whole idea of natural death is _absent_ from the Gospels: death is not a bridge, not a passing; it is absent because it belongs to a quite different, a merely apparent world, useful only as a symbol. The "hour of death" is _not_ a Christian idea--"hours," time, the physical life and its crises have no existence for the bearer of "glad tidings."... The "kingdom of God" is not something that men wait for: it had no yesterday and no day after tomorrow, it is not going to come at a "millennium"--it is an experience of the heart, it is everywhere and it is nowhere.... 35. This "bearer of glad tidings" died as he lived and _taught_--_not_ to "save mankind," but to show mankind how to live. It was a _way of life_ that he bequeathed to man: his demeanour before the judges, before the officers, before his accusers--his demeanour on the _cross_. He does not resist; he does not defend his rights; he makes no effort to ward off the most extreme penalty--more, _he invites it_.... And he prays, suffers and loves _with_ those, _in_ those, who do him evil.... _Not_ to defend one's self, _not_ to show anger, _not_ to lay blames.... On the contrary, to submit even to the Evil One--to _love_ him.... 36. --We free spirits--we are the first to have the necessary prerequisite to understanding what nineteen centuries have misunderstood--that instinct and passion for integrity which makes war upon the "holy lie" even more than upon all other lies.... Mankind was unspeakably far from our benevolent and cautious neutrality, from that discipline of the spirit which alone makes possible the solution of such strange and subtle things: what men always sought, with shameless egoism, was their _own_ advantage therein; they created the _church_ out of denial of the Gospels.... Whoever sought for signs of an ironical divinity's hand in the great drama of existence would find no small indication thereof in the _stupendous question-mark_ that is called Christianity. That mankind should be on its knees before the very antithesis of what was the origin, the meaning and the _law_ of the Gospels--that in the concept of the "church" the very things should be pronounced holy that the "bearer of glad tidings" regards as _beneath_ him and _behind_ him--it would be impossible to surpass this as a grand example of _world-historical irony_-- 37.