subjectivity, is per se the idea of immortality. God is the guarantee of my future existence, because he is already the certainty and reality of my present existence, my salvation, my trust, my shield from the forces of the external world; hence I need not expressly deduce immortality, or prove it as a separate truth, for if I have God, I have immortality also. Thus it was with the more profound Christian mystics; to them the idea of immortality was involved in the idea of God; God was their immortal life,—God himself their subjective blessedness: he was for them, for their consciousness, what he is in himself, that is, in the essence of religion.
Thus it is shown that God is heaven; that the two are identical. It would have been easier to prove the converse, namely, that heaven is the true God of men. As man conceives his heaven, so he conceives his God; the content of his idea of heaven is the content of his idea of God, only that what in God is a mere sketch, a concept, is in heaven depicted and developed in the colours and forms of the senses. Heaven is therefore the key to the deepest mysteries of religion. As heaven is objectively the displayed nature of God, so subjectively it is the most candid declaration of the inmost thoughts and dispositions of religion. For this reason, religions are as various as are the kingdoms of heaven, and there are as many different kingdoms of heaven as there are characteristic differences among men. The Christians themselves have very heterogeneous conceptions of heaven.[1]
The more judicious among them, however, think and say nothing definite about heaven or the future world in general, on the ground that it is inconceivable, that it can only be thought of by us according to the standard of this world, a standard not applicable to the other. All conceptions of heaven here below are, they allege, mere images, whereby man represents to himself that future, the nature of which is unknown to him, but the existence of which is certain. It is just so with God. The existence of God, it is said, is certain; but
- ↑ And their conceptions of God are just as heterogeneous. The pious Germans have a “German God,” the pious Spaniards a Spanish God, the French a French God. The French actually have the proverb: “Le bon Dieu est Français.” In fact polytheism must exist so long as there are various nations. The real God of a people is the point d’honneur of its nationality.
