...We may deny his conclusions; we may consider his system of thought preposterous and even pernicious, but we cannot refuse him the respect which is… - Benedictus de Spinoza

Spinoza's naturalist and rationalist project demands that we provide these notions with a proper intellectualist interpretation. Thus, the love of God is simply an awareness of the ultimate natural cause of the joy that accompanies the improvement in one's condition that the highest knowledge brings; to love God is nothing but to understand nature. And the eternity in which one participates is represented solely by the knowledge of eternal truths that makes up a part of the rational person's mind.

Homo liber de nulla re minus, quam de morte cogitat, et ejus sapientia non mortis, sed vitae meditatio est.

Such was Benedict Spinoza — thus he lived and thought. A brave and simple man, earnestly meditating on the deepest subjects that can occupy the human race, he produced a system which will ever remain as one of the most astounding efforts of abstract speculation — a system that has been decried, for nearly two centuries, as the most iniquitous and blasphemous of human invention ; and which has now, within the last sixty years, become the acknowledged parent of a whole nation's philosophy, ranking among its admirers some of the most pious and illustrious intellects of the age. The ribald Atheist turns out, on nearer acquaintance, to be a "God-intoxicated man." The blasphemous Jew becomes a pious, virtuous, and creative thinker. The dissolute heretic becomes a child-like, simple, self-denying and heroic man. We look into his works with calm earnestness, and read there another curious page of human history : the majestic struggle with the mysteries of existence has failed, as it always must fail ; but the struggle demands our warmest admiration, and the man our ardent sympathy. Spinoza stands out from the dim past like a tall beacon, whose shadow is thrown athwart the sea, and whose light will serve to warn the wanderers from the shoals and rocks on which hundreds of their brethren have perished.