HEINRICH HEINE - Repositories

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Christian champion, on the merits of
their respective faiths. In the strain
of the Jew all the fierceness of the old
Hebrew genius, all its rigid defiant
Monotheism, appear: —
" Our God has not died like a poor
innocent lamb for mankind; he is no
gushing philanthropist, no declaimer.
"Our God is not love, caressing is
not his line; but he is a God of thunder,
and he is a God of revenge.
"The lightnings of his wrath strike
inexorably every sinner, and the sins of
the fathers are often visited upon their
remote posterity.
" Our God, he is alive, and in his
hall of heaven he goes on existing
away, throughout all the eternities.
" Our God, too, is a God in robust
health, no myth, pale and thin as sacrificial
wafers, or as shadows by Cocytus.
" Our God is strong. In his hand he
upholds sun, moon, and stars; thrones
break, nations reel to and fro, when he
knits his forehead.
" Our God loves music, the voice of
the harp and the song of feasting; but
the sound of church-bells he hates, as
he hates the grunting of pigs."
Nor must Heine's sweetest note be
unheard, — his plaintive note, his note
of melancholy. Here is a strain which
came from him as he lay, in the winter
night, on his "mattress-grave" at
Paris, and let his thoughts wander
home to Germany, "the great child,