36.
—We free spirits—we are the first to have the necessary
prerequisite to understanding what nineteen centuries have
misunderstood—that instinct and passion for integrity which makes war
upon the “holy lie” even more than upon all other lies. . .
Mankind was unspeakably far from our benevolent and cautious neutrality,
from that discipline of the spirit which alone makes possible the solution
of such strange and subtle things: what men always sought, with shameless
egoism, was their own advantage therein; they created the church
out of denial of the Gospels. . . .
Whoever sought for signs of an ironical divinity's hand in the great
drama of existence would find no small indication thereof in the stupendous
question-mark that is called Christianity. That mankind should be on its
knees before the very antithesis of what was the origin, the meaning and the
law of the Gospels—that in the concept of the “church”
the very things should be pronounced holy that the “bearer of glad
tidings” regards as beneath him and behind him—it
would be impossible to surpass this as a grand example of world-historical
irony—
