everything was misunderstood: the “Kingdom of God” regarded as the last scene of the last act, as a promise! But the Gospel had clearly been the living, the fulfilment, the _reality_ of this “Kingdom of God.” It was precisely a death such as Christ’s that was this “Kingdom of God.” It was only now that all the contempt for the Pharisees and the theologians, and all bitter feelings towards them, were introduced into the character of the Master,—and by this means he himself was converted into a Pharisee and a theologian! On the other hand, the savage veneration of these completely unhinged souls could no longer endure that evangelical right of every man to be the child of God, which Jesus had taught: their revenge consisted in _elevating_ Jesus in a manner devoid of all reason, and in separating him from themselves: just as, formerly, the Jews, with the view of revenging themselves on their enemies, separated themselves from their God, and placed him high above them. The Only God, and the Only Son of God:—both were products of resentment. 41 —And from this time forward an absurd problem rose into prominence: “how _could_ God allow it to happen?” To this question the disordered minds of the small community found a reply which in its absurdity was literally terrifying: God gave his Son as a _sacrifice_ for the forgiveness of sins. Alas! how prompt and sudden was the end of the gospel! Expiatory sacrifice for guilt, and indeed in its most repulsive and barbaric form,—the sacrifice of the _innocent_ for the sins of the guilty! What appalling Paganism!—For Jesus himself had done away with the concept “guilt,”—he denied any gulf between God and man, he _lived_ this unity between God and man, it was this that constituted _his_ “glad tidings.” ... And he did _not_ teach it as a privilege!—Thenceforward there was gradually imported into the type of the Saviour the doctrine of the Last Judgment, and of the “second coming,” the doctrine of sacrificial death, and the doctrine of _Resurrection,_ by means of which the whole concept “blessedness,” the entire and only reality of the gospel, is conjured away—in favour of a state _after_ death!... St Paul, with that rabbinic impudence which characterises all his doings, rationalised this conception, this prostitution of a conception, as follows: “if Christ did not rise from the dead, our faith is vain.”—And, in a trice, the most contemptible of all unrealisable promises, the _impudent_ doctrine of personal immortality, was woven out of the gospel.... St Paul even preached this immortality as a reward. 42