Religious motifs : Overview. Search. About religious motifs

God contains among others: The Holy Spirit

See also Allah, Divine light, God's Kingdom, heaven

Description of this motif: "God" is the God of christianity, which in the eyes of Andersen is the God of all people. Andersen's religious were not dogmatic, and he never accepted the dogma of the trinity; God is for Andersen one, and he never speaks of the Holy Ghost. He considered Jesus to be a chosen man.

Example :

(...) he spoke of my plays, and I spoke of his science, and I think we were equally pleased. But I had the better of it, for there was much of what he did that he couldn't explain to me. For instance, a piece of iron that falls through a spiral becomes magnetic. Now why does that happen? The spirit enters it, but where does it come from? It is just as it is with the humans in our world, I think; our Lord lets them fall through the spiral line of time; the spirit enters them, and there then stands a Napoleon, a Luther, or some such person. 'The whole world is a series of miracles,' said the student, 'but we're so used to them that we call them everyday things.'