The whole of the Christian _creed_--all Christian "truth," is idle falsehood and deception, and is precisely the reverse of that which was at the bottom of the first Christian movement. All that which in the _ecclesiastical_ sense is Christian, is just exactly what is most radically _anti-Christian_: crowds of things and people appear instead of symbols, history takes the place of eternal facts, it is all forms, rites, and dogmas instead of a "practice" of life. To be really Christian would mean to be absolutely indifferent to dogmas, cults, priests, church, and theology. The practice of Christianity is no more an impossible phantasy than the practice of Buddhism is: it is merely a means to happiness. 160. Jesus goes straight to the point, the "Kingdom of Heaven" in the heart, and He does _not_ find the means in duty to the Jewish Church; He even regards the reality of Judaism (its need to maintain itself) as nothing; He is concerned purely with the _inner_ man. Neither does He make anything of all the coarse forms relating to man's intercourse with God: He is opposed to the whole of the teaching of repentance and atonement; He points out how man ought to live in order to feel himself "deified," and how futile it is on his part to hope to live properly by showing repentance and contrition for his sins. "Sin is of no account" is practically his chief standpoint. Sin, repentance, forgiveness,--all this does not belong to Christianity ... it is Judaism or Paganism which has become mixed up with Christ's teaching. 161. The _Kingdom of Heaven_ is a state of the heart (of children it is written, "for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven"): it has nothing to do with superterrestrial things. The Kingdom of God "cometh," not chronologically or historically, not on a certain day in the calendar; it is not something which one day appears and was not previously there; it is a "change of feeling in the individual," it is something which may come at any time and which may be absent at any time.... 162. _The thief on the cross_;--When the criminal himself, who endures a painful death, declares: "the way this Jesus suffers and dies, without a murmur of revolt or enmity, graciously and resignedly, is the only right way," he assents to the gospel; and by this very fact _he is in Paradise...._ 163. Jesus bids us:--not to resist, either by deeds or in our heart, him who ill-treats us; He bids us admit of no grounds for separating ourselves from our wives; He bids us make no distinction between foreigners and fellow-countrymen, strangers and familiars; He bids us show anger to no one, and treat no one with contempt;--give alms secretly; not to desire to become rich;--not to swear;--not to stand in judgment;--become reconciled with our enemies and forgive offences;--not to worship in public. "Blessedness" is nothing promised: it is here, with us, if we only wish to live and act in a particular way. 164.