nlike
India's, and the aggressive fanatic, the mortal enemy of theologians and
ecclesiastics, who stands glorified by Renan's malice as "_le grand
maitre en ironie_." I myself haven't any doubt that the greater part of
this venom (and no less of _esprit_) got itself into the concept of the
Master only as a result of the excited nature of Christian propaganda:
we all know the unscrupulousness of sectarians when they set out to turn
their leader into an _apologia_ for themselves. When the early
Christians had need of an adroit, contentious, pugnacious and
maliciously subtle theologian to tackle other theologians, they
_created_ a "god" that met that need, just as they put into his mouth
without hesitation certain ideas that were necessary to them but that
were utterly at odds with the Gospels--"the second coming," "the last
judgment," all sorts of expectations and promises, current at the
time.--

32.

I can only repeat that I set myself against all efforts to intrude the
fanatic into the figure of the Saviour: the very word _imperieux_, used
by Renan, is alone enough to _annul_ the type. What the "glad tidings"
tell us is simply that there are no more contradictions; the kingdom of
heaven belongs to _children_; the faith that is voiced here is no more
an embattled faith--it is at hand, it has been from the beginning, it is
a sort of recrudescent childishness of the spirit. The physiologists, at
all events, are familiar with such a delayed and incomplete puberty in
the living organism, the result of degeneration. A faith of this sort is
not furious, it does not denounce, it does not defend itself: it does
not come with "the sword"--it does not realize how it will one day set
man against man. It does not manifest itself either by miracles, or by
rewards and promises, or by "scriptures": it is itself, first and last,
its own miracle, its own reward, its own promise, its own "kingdom of
God." This faith does not formulate itself--it simply _lives_, and so
guards itself against formulae. To be sure, the accident of environment,
of educational background gives prominence to concepts of a certain
sort: in primitive Christianity one finds _only_ concepts of a
Judaeo-Semitic character (--that of eating and drinking at the last
supper belongs to this category--an idea which, like everything else
Jewish, has been badly mauled by the church). But let us be careful not
to see in all this anything more than symbolical language, se