They worship nothing and acknowledge authority in nothing save in their own spirit. No opposition could be more radical and complete than that between the Renaissance and the anti-worldly religion of the gospel. "I see a vision," Nietzsche says somewhere, "so full of meaning, yet so wonderfully strange Cæsar Borgia become pope! Do you understand?
An anti-worldly religion finds itself in fact in this dilemma: if it remains merely spiritual, developing no material organs, it cannot affect the world; while if it develops organs with which to operate on the world, these organs become a part of the world from which it is trying to wean the individual spirit, so that the moment it is armed for conflict such a religion has two enemies on its hands.
Here the love of God is an anti-worldly estimation of things and persons, a heart set on that kingdom of heaven in which the humble and the meek should be exalted.
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