The Prose Writings of Heinrich HeineHeine, Heinrich
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The Prose Writings of Heinrich Heine
Heine, Heinrich
Heine, Heinrich, 1797-1856 -- Translations into English
dealing in money and merchandise, they were condemned by law to be rich,
hated, and murdered. Such murders, it is true, were in these days
committed under the mantle of religion, and the cry was, "We must kill
those who once killed our God." How strange! The very people who had
given the world a God, and whose whole life was inspired by the worship
of God, were stigmatised as deicides! The bloody parody of such madness
was witnessed at the outbreak of the revolution in San Domingo, where a
negro mob devastated the plantations with murder and fire, led by a
negro fanatic who carried an immense crucifix, amid bloodthirsty cries
of "The whites killed Christ; let us slay all whites!"
Yes, to the Jews the world is indebted for its God and His word. They
rescued the Bible from the bankruptcy of the Roman empire, and preserved
the precious volume intact during all the wild tumults of the migration
of races, until Protestantism came to seek it and translated it into the
language of the land and spread it broadcast over the whole world. This
extensive circulation of the Bible has produced the most beneficent
fruits, and continues to do so to this very day. The propaganda of the
Bible Society have fulfilled a providential mission, which will bring
forth quite different results from those anticipated by the pious
gentlemen of the British Christian Missionary Society. They expect to
elevate a petty, narrow dogma to supremacy, and to monopolise heaven as
they do the sea, making it a British Church domain--and see, without
knowing it, they are demanding the overthrow of all Protestant sects;
for, as they all draw their life from the Bible, when the knowledge of
the Bible becomes universal, all sectarian distinctions will be
obliterated.
While by tricks of trade, smuggling, and commerce the British gain
footholds in many lands, with them they bring the Bible, that grand
democracy wherein each man shall not only be king in his own house, but
also bishop. They are demanding, they are founding, the great kingdom of
the spirit, the kingdom of the religious emotions, and the love of
humanity, of purity, of true morality, which cannot be taught by
dogmatic formulas, but by parable and example, such as are contained in
that beautiful, sacred, educational book for young and old--the Bible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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