which is by no means part of the peculiar nature of religion. When
the need for worship is supposed to exist only on one side, the
subjective side, this has the invariable effect of one-sidedness,
and 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. [226] 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;
[227] 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,
but because it has of itself a beneficial influence on man, because
it refreshes the sufferer; on account of this excellent quality they
pay it divine honours.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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