The duration of religions has always been dependent on human need for them. Christianity has been a blessing for suffering humanity... it has been providential, divine, holy. Eternal praise is due to the symbol of that suffering God, the Saviour with the crown of horns, the crucified Christ, whose blood was as a healing balm that flowed into the wounds of humanity.
I believe in progress; I believe that happiness is the goal of humanity, and I cherish a higher idea of the Divine Being than those pious folk who suppose that man was created only to suffer. Even here on earth I would strive, through the blessings of free political and industrial institutions, to bring about that reign of felicity which, in the opinion of the pious, is to be postponed till heaven is reached after the day of Judgment. The one expectation is perhaps as vain as the other; there may be no resurrection of humanity either in a political or in a religious sense. Mankind, it may be, is doomed to eternal misery; the nations are perhaps under a perpetual curse, condemned to be trodden under foot by despots, to be made the instruments of their accomplices ... [continues »]

Heinrich Heine

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