London
K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd.
1893
| Foreword | vii |
| Preface | xiii |
| First Speech—Defence | 1 |
| Second Speech—The Nature of Religion | 26 |
| Third Speech—The Cultivation of Religion | 119 |
| Fourth Speech—Association in Religion, or Church and Priesthood | 147 |
| Fifth Speech—The Religions | 210 |
| Epilogue | 266 |
| The First Edition | 275 |
| Index | 285 |
IF a book can signal the beginning of an era, then Schleiermacher’s On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers marks the beginning of the era of Protestant Liberal Theology. By normal reckoning that era lasted about one hundred twenty years and came to an end with the publication of Karl Barth’s Romans.
These statements as indications of the historical importance of the Speeches are accurate enough, but they are misleading. Schleiermacher’s conception of religion in general and of Christianity in particular was strikingly “original,” but he appropriated a good many themes that had been articulated before him, especially in the decades most recent to him. Also, of course, it is a mistake to suppose that all Protestant Liberal Theology bears the mark of Schleiermacher, and it is false to suppose that Protestant Liberal Theology came to an end with Barth’s Romans. The generalization, then, is a convenience of historians that rightly highlights the historical importance of the Speeches.
A better way to indicate the importance of this book is to say that it properly belongs to an astonishingly small number of classics in Christian theology. By classic I mean a book that has not only major historical significance of the sort indicated in the opening paragraph but that continues also to stimulate and to form in substantive ways the thinking of some who are preoccupied with the questions of what religion and Christian faith are. The Speeches are the best door into Schleiermacher’s thought, and that thought will likely continue to exercise its power here and there into the distant future. Reading the Speeches is more than an exercise in trying to understand an important moment in the history of Christian theology. It rightly evokes reflection and discussion of the author’s understanding of religion without respect to time.
For both its historical and its continuing contemporary significance it is good that the book is here reprinted in a relatively accessible form. The translation is the one made by British theologian John Oman in 1893. It is a good translation, and it has the advantage of using an English that is more closely related to the rather ornate German that characterizes Schleiermacher’s style in this work. Both Oman’s English and Schleiermacher’s German are different from their present-day counterparts. In following the flow and rhythm of the sentences, the reader’s eye will occasionally stumble over an elaborate construction, a quaint phrase, or an unusual adjective, but the text is penetrable and clear. Most important, it gives us Schleiermacher, and understanding Schleiermacher rewards the effort.
The Schleiermacher it gives us is the young Schleiermacher who, as Reformed (Calvinist) Chaplain at the Charity Hospital in Berlin, a predominately evangelical (Lutheran) city, had sufficient free time to participate actively in the fermenting avant garde culture of that time and place. That avant garde movement was what is called early German Romanticism, and it found its voice in the lively conversations that took place in the salons of wealthy Jewish women. Schleiermacher was introduced to the weekly drawing-room gatherings of Henriette Herz by the young Count Alexander Dohna, with whom Schleiermacher had become friends when not long before he had been tutor to the younger Dohna children at the family estate.
He fit the group. He was brilliant,
witty, and articulate; he had a gift for friendship. He also shared the group’s
reaction against enlightened rationality and detachment and against neo-classical
ideals and an emphasis on proper decorum. (Friedrich Schlegel, who became Schleiermacher’s
close friend, referred to the representatives of the Enlightenment mode as “harmonious
dullards.”) More important, Schleiermacher shared his new friends’ sense of
individuality and their appreciation of the infinite diversity of the world.
He held their view of the human situation as one that can penetrate and understand
neither infinite variety nor infinite unity but that strives to bring both together
in a way that destroys neither pole and acknowledges the limitations of human
finitude. Schleiermacher expresses this view early
Schleiermacher was eagerly welcomed as a participant in the conversations that took place weekly in Henrietta Herz’s home, but he was an enigma to most of the participants. He was a minister of the church, and most of the regulars had intentionally and passionately liberated themselves not only from the church or synagogue but also from religion as such. They were “cultured despisers of religion,” and they could not understand how Schleiermacher could so genuinely share and contribute to their new ways of seeing but be, at the same time, a confirmed Christian and minister of the church.
His closest friends within the
circle decided to resolve the issue by insisting that he write a book. Friedrich
Schlegel contrived the plan. On the morning of Schleiermacher’s twenty-ninth
birthday (November 21, 1797) he was visited by Alexander Dohna, his brother,
Henrietta Herz, Dorothea Viet, the brilliant daughter of the Jewish philosopher
Moses Mendelssohn, who was married to a Berlin banker, and Friedrich Schlegel.
The surprise birthday party was a happy occasion. Schleiermacher made and relished strong friendships, and these people were his best friends. They showered him with gifts and laid out chocolates and pastries they had brought. There was good conversation.
The festivities were interrupted when, on signal from Schlegel, the friends said in unison, “You must write a book.” Schlegel refused to drop the subject until he had wrested a firm promise from Schleiermacher. Schleiermacher did not take promises lightly, but it was nine months before he could put pen to paper. Eight months later, on April 15, 1799, he could write Henrietta Herz that he had given the “final stroke to Religion.”
The book that this stroke brought
to completion is astonishing in at least five respects. First, he presented
an utterly fresh understanding of religion. It was, of course, not without
The person reading this text
for the first time may want to look for these astonishing turns of thought in
three arguments or descriptions Schleiermacher presents. The first is a foretaste
of Schleiermacher’s later lectures on “dialectics,” or philosophy, and is found
in the “First Speech.” The situation of the human being in the world is that
she or he can grasp neither the whole that is “beyond” and “behind” this world
nor the most particular individual elements of this whole. Human life is an
oscillation between these two unreachable poles without access either to ultimate
unity or ultimate diversity. To move too far toward the one is to lose the other,
and vice versa. This situation is the essence of the limitations of human life
within the world. Second (the basic view developed in the “Second Speech”),
religion is neither a knowing nor a doing but something whose occasion or foundation
touches a locus in the human being more fundamental than either knowing or doing.
Schleiermacher describes this locus as “feeling” and the occasion as “a sense
and taste for the Infinite in the finite.” We must understand, however, that
this description is a generalization. Religion as such does not occur, only
determinate forms of religion. Third, human life in the world is essentially
social, and anyone who comes to a determinate sense and taste for the Infinite
in the finite will be impelled to communicate it and to identify with a community or
WHEN Schleiermacher wrote Henrietta Herz that he had given “the final stroke to Religion,” he meant he had finished the book. A good many of his contemporaries and a good many in the intervening years have understood that phrase in a quite different way! Schlegel himself, although he had become “religious” by the time the book was published, had moved in his religiousness to a preoccupation with esoteric matters. He wrote Schleiermacher that his new orientation was occasioned by the Speeches but was different. He himself, he wrote, was moving to the beyond, whereas Schleiermacher, he quite rightly saw, was rooted in the here and now. In a review in his journal, the Athanaeum, Schlegel referred to the stimulating power of the Speeches but criticized its author for being exoteric and for not grasping how the human situation occurs through the separation and reunion of the divine from and with itself. The Idealist philosophers, and especially Hegel and those influenced by Hegel, who built their speculations on the Orphic myth of separation and return, also opposed the conceptualities of Schleiermacher that were originally expressed in this book. On the other side, the Speeches got Schleiermacher in trouble with the church. He was charged with Spinozism, pantheism, and a too-strong challenge to received Christian teaching, and forms of these charges have kept more conservative church theologians at a distance from Schleiermacher in the years since.
It is impossible to say what
effect the Speeches had on the growing body of “cultured despisers of
religion” across Germany, but the book did establish Schleiermacher as a major
Protestant theologian. In time it won for him a teaching post
Schleiermacher has influenced diverse strands of Protestant theology since his time. In the nineteenth century Samuel Taylor Coleridge in England and Horace Bushnell in the United States reflected aspects of Schleiermacher’s thought in their theological work. In the early part of the present century substantive traces of his thought can be found in theologians as different from each other as, for example, Wilhelm Hermann and Rudolf Otto and, in the generation just past, Rudolf Bultmann and Paul Tillich. A major reappropriation of Schleiermacher in our own day, though, of course, using other sources as well, can be seen in the thoroughly impressive constructive theology of Edward Farley. One can predict with confidence that there will be others. Schleiermacher’s theological work that began most imposingly with the Speeches clearly belongs in that relatively small category of theological classics.
One does not fully understand the whole of Schleiermacher by reading the Speeches. The most important text is his comprehensive theological work, The Christian Faith. Moreover, it is true of Schleiermacher, as it is true of anyone who produces a corpus of work over an extended period of time, that he changed in various ways the formulation of his thoughts, developed them more fully, and addressed them to different subjects. Twice, as a matter of fact, he revised the Speeches, in 1806 and 1821, and the reader will certainly want to give careful attention to the explanatory notes added in the 1821 revision, at the end of each Speech. But the revisions of the Speeches do not change its basic conceptions, and although Schleiermacher’s full corpus of work goes far beyond this book, it not only is coherently a piece of the whole but is most certainly the door that opens the way into the thought world of this remarkable theologian.
All the more reason, therefore, to welcome the reprinting of the work in English translation in a form that is readily accessible.
It may be an unexpected and even a marvellous undertaking, that any one should still
venture to demand from the very class that have raised themselves above the
vulgar, and are saturated with the wisdom of the centuries, attention for a
subject so entirely neglected by them. And I confess that I am aware of
nothing that promises any easy success, whether it be in winning for my efforts
your approval, or in the more difficult and more desirable task of instilling
into you my thought and inspiring you for my subject. From of old faith
has not been every man’s affair. At all times but few have discerned religion
itself, while millions, in various ways, have been satisfied to juggle
with its trappings. Now especially the life of cultivated people is far
from anything that might have even a resemblance to religion. Just as
little, I know, do you worship the Deity in sacred retirement, as you visit
the forsaken temples. In your ornamented dwellings, the only sacred things
to be met with are the sage maxims of our wise men, and the splendid compositions
of our poets. Suavity and sociability, art and science have so fully taken
possession of your minds, that no room remains for the eternal and holy Being
that lies beyond the world. I know how well you have succeeded
Might I ask one question? On every subject, however small and unimportant, you would most willingly be taught by those who have devoted to it their lives and their powers. In your desire for knowledge you do not avoid the cottages of the peasant or the workshops of the humble artizans. How then does it come about that, in matters of religion alone, you hold every thing the more dubious when it comes from those who are experts, not only according to their own profession, but by recognition from the state, and from the people? Or can you perhaps, strangely enough, show that they are not more experienced, but maintain and cry up anything rather than religion? Scarcely, my good sirs! Not setting much store on a judgment so baseless I confess, as is right, that I also am a member of this order. I venture, though I run the risk, if you do not give me an attentive hearing, of being reckoned among the great crowd from which you admit so few exceptions.
This is at least
a voluntary confession, for my speech would not readily have betrayed me.
Still less have I any expectations of danger from the praise which my brethren
will bestow on
Why then, as I am fully conscious that in all I have to say to you I entirely belie my profession, should I not acknowledge it like any other accident? Its prepossessions shall in no way hinder us. Neither in asking nor in answering shall the limits it holds sacred be valid between us. As a man I speak to you of the sacred secrets of mankind according to my views—of what was in me as with youthful enthusiasm I sought the unknown, of what since then I have thought and experienced, of the innermost springs of my being which shall for ever remain for me the highest, however I be moved by the changes of time and mankind. I do not speak from any reasoned resolve, nor from hope, nor from fear. Nor is it done from any caprice or accident. Rather it is the pure necessity of my nature; it is a divine call; it is that which determines my position in the world and makes me what I am. Wherefore, even if it were neither fitting nor prudent to speak of religion, there is something which compels me and represses with its heavenly power all those small considerations.
You know how the
Deity, by an immutable law, has compelled Himself to divide His great work even
to infinity. Each definite thing can only be made up by melting together two
opposite activities. Each of His eternal thoughts can only be actualized
in two hostile yet twin forms, one of which cannot exist except by means of
the other. The whole corporeal world, insight into which is the highest aim
of your researches, appears to the best instructed and most
And not only so,
but a common band of consciousness embraces them all, so that though the man
cannot be other than he is, he knows every other person as clearly as himself,
and comprehends perfectly every single manifestation of humanity. Persons,
however, at the extremes of this great series, are
Persons in whom
both tendencies are toned down to an unattractive equilibrium are not rare,
but, in truth, they stand lower than either. For this frequent phenomenon
which so many value highly, we are not indebted to a living union of both impulses,
but both are distorted and smoothed away to a dull mediocrity in which no excess
appears, because all fresh life is wanting. This is the position to which
a false discretion seeks to bring the younger generation. But were the
extremes avoided in no other way, all men would have departed from the right
life and from contemplation of the truth, the higher spirit would have vanished
Wherefore the
Deity at all times sends some here and there, who in a fruitful manner are imbued
with both impulses, either as a direct gift from above, or as the result of
a severe and complete self-training. They are equipped with wonderful
gifts, their way is made even by an almighty indwelling word. They are
interpreters of the Deity and His works, and reconcilers of things that otherwise
would be eternally divided. I mean, in particular, those who unite those
opposing activities, by imprinting in their lives a characteristic form upon
just that common nature of spirit, the shadow of which only appears to most
in empty notions, as an image upon mist. They seek order and connection,
right and fitness, and they find just because they do not lose themselves.
Their impulse is not sighed out in inaudible wishes, but works in them as creative
power. For this power they create and acquire, and not for that degraded
animal sensuality. They do not devour destructively, but, creatively recasting,
they breathe into life and life’s tools a higher spirit, ordering and fashioning
a world that bears the impress of their mind. Earthly things they wisely
control, showing themselves lawgivers and inventors, heroes and compellers of
nature, or, in narrower circles, as good fairies they create and diffuse in
quiet a nobler happiness. By their very existence they prove themselves
ambassadors of God, and mediators between limited man and infinite humanity.
To them the captive under the power of empty notions may look, to perceive in
their works the right object of his own incomprehensible requirements,
and in
Acknowledge, then,
with me, what a priceless gift the appearance of such a person must be when
the higher feeling has risen to inspiration, and can no longer be kept silent,
when every pulse-beat of his spiritual life takes communicable form in word
or figure, so that, despite of his indifference to the presence of others, he
almost unwillingly becomes for others the master of some divine art. This
is the true priest of the highest, for he brings it nearer those who are only
accustomed to lay hold of the finite and the trivial. The heavenly and
eternal he exhibits as an object of enjoyment and agreement, as the sole exhaustless
source of the things towards which their whole endeavour is directed.
In this way he strives to awaken the slumbering germ of a better humanity, to
kindle love for higher things, to change the common life into a nobler, to reconcile
the children of earth with the Heaven that hears them, and to counterbalance
the deep attachment of the age to the baser side. This is the higher priesthood
that announces the inner meaning of all spiritual secrets, and speaks from the
kingdom of God. It is the source of all visions and prophecies, of all
the sacred works of art and inspired
Might it sometime arrive that this office of mediator cease, and a fairer destiny await the priesthood of humanity! Might the time come, which an ancient prophecy describes, when no one should need to be taught of man, for they should all be taught of God! If everywhere the sacred fire burned, fervid prayers would not be needed to call it down from heaven, but only the placid quiet of holy virgins to maintain it. Nor would it burst forth in oft-dreaded flames, but would strive only to communicate equally to all its hidden glow. In quiet, then, each one would illumine himself and others. The communication of holy thoughts and feelings would be an easy interchange, the different beams of this light being now combined and again broken up, now scattered, and again here and there concentrated on single objects. A whispered word would then be understood, where now the clearest expression cannot escape misconception. Men could crowd together into the Holy of Holies who now busy themselves with the rudiments in the outer courts. How much pleasanter it is to exchange with friends and sympathizers completed views, than to go into the wide wilderness with outlines barely sketched! But how far from one another now are those persons between whom such intercourse might take place! They are scattered with as wise an economy among mankind, as the hidden points from which the elastic primordial matter expands on every side are in space. The outer boundaries of their sphere of operations just touch so that there is no void, yet one never meets the other. A wise economy indeed! for all their longing for intercourse and friendliness is thus wholly directed towards those who stand most in need, and they labour the more persistently to provide for themselves the comrades they lack.
To this very power
I now submit, and of this very nature is my call. Permit me to speak of myself. You know that what is
Finally, if I
am thus impelled to speak of religion and to deliver my testimony, to
whom should I turn if not to the sons of Germany? Where else is an audience
for my speech? It is not blind predilection for my native soil or for
my fellows in government and language, that makes me speak thus, but the deep
conviction that you alone are capable, as well as worthy, of having awakened
in you the sense for holy and divine things. Those proud Islanders whom
many unduly honour, know no watchword but gain and enjoyment. Their
zeal for knowledge is only a sham fight, their worldly wisdom a false jewel,
For other reasons I turn from the French. On them, one who honours religion can hardly endure to look, for in every act and almost in every word, they tread its holiest ordinances under foot. The barbarous indifference of the millions of the people, and the witty frivolity with which individual brilliant spirits behold the sublimest fact of history that is not only taking place before their eyes, but has them all in its grasp, and determines every movement of their lives, witnesses clearly enough how little they are capable of a holy awe or a true adoration. What does religion more abhor than the unbridled arrogance with which the rulers of the people bid defiance to the eternal laws of the world? What does it inculcate more strongly than that discreet and lowly moderation of which aught, even the slightest feeling, does not seem to be suggested to them? What is more sacred to it than that lofty Nemesis, of whose most terrible dealings in the intoxication of infatuation they have no understanding? Where varied punishments that formerly only needed to light on single families to fill whole peoples with awe before the heavenly Being and to dedicate to eternal Fate the works of the poets for centuries, are a thousandfold renewed in vain, how ludicrously would a Single lonely voice resound unheard and unnoticed.
Only in my native
land is that happy clime which refuses no fruit entirely. There you find,
though it be only scattered, all that adorns humanity. Somewhere, in individuals at least,
Or will you direct
me to those whom you look down upon as rude and uncultured, as if the
sense for sacred things had passed like an old-fashioned garment to the lower
portion of the people, as if it became them alone to be impressed with belief
and awe of the unseen? You are well disposed towards these, our brethren.
You would have them addressed also, on other higher subjects, on morals, justice
and freedom, that for single moments, at least, their highest endeavours should
be turned towards better things, and an impression of the worth of man be awakened
in them. Let them be addressed at the same time on religion; arouse occasionally
their whole nature; let the holiest impulse, asleep or hidden though it be,
be brought to life; enchant them with single flashes, charmed from the depths
of their hearts; open out of their narrow lives a glimpse into infinity; raise
even for a moment their low sensuality to the high consciousness of human will
and of human existence, and much cannot fail to be won. But, pray you,
do you turn to this class when you wish to unfold the inmost connection and
the highest ground of human powers and actions, when idea and feeling, law and
fact are to be traced to their common source, when you would exhibit the actual
as eternal and necessarily based in the nature of humanity? Is it not
as much as can be looked for if your wise men are understood by the best among
you? Now that is just my present endeavour in regard to religion.
I do not seek to arouse single feelings possibly belonging to it, nor to justify
and defend single conceptions, but I would conduct you into the profoundest
depths whence every feeling and conception receives its form. I would
show you from what human tendency religion proceeds and how it belongs to what is for you highest and dearest. To the roof
Do you seriously expect me to believe that those who daily distress themselves most toilsomely about earthly things have pre-eminent fitness for becoming intimate with heavenly things, those who brood anxiously over the next moment and are fast bound to the nearest objects can extend their vision widest over the world, and that those, who, in the monotonous round of a dull industry have not yet found themselves will discover most clearly the living Deity! Surely you will not maintain that to your shame? You alone, therefore, I can invite, you who are called to leave the common standpoint of mankind, who do not shun the toilsome way into the depths of man’s spirit to find his inmost emotions and see the living worth and connection of his outward works.
Since this became clear to me, I have long found myself in the hesitating mood of one who has lost a precious jewel, and does not dare to examine the last spot where it could be hidden. There was a time when you held it a mark of special courage to cast off partially the restraints of inherited dogma. You still were ready to discuss particular subjects, though it were only to efface one of those notions. Such a figure as religion moving gracefully, adorned in eloquence, still pleased you, if only that you wished to maintain in the gentler sex a certain feeling for sacred things. But that time is long past. Piety is now no more to be spoken of, and even the Graces, with most unwomanly hardness, destroy the tenderest blossoms of the human heart, and I can link the interest I require from you to nothing but your contempt. I will ask you, therefore, just to be well informed and thorough-going in this contempt.
Let us then, I
pray you, examine whence exactly religion has its rise. Is it from some
clear intuition, or from some vague
By all that is sacred, and according to that avowal, something
must be sacred to you, I adjure you, do not neglect
But you will probably say that your idea of the content of religion is from the other view of this spiritual phenomenon. You start with the outside, with the opinions, dogmas and usages, in which every religion is presented. They always return to providence and immortality. For these externals you have sought an inward and original source in vain. Wherefore religion generally can be nothing but an empty pretence which, like a murky and oppressive atmosphere, has enshrouded part of the truth. Doubtless this is your genuine opinion. But if you really consider these two points the sum of religion in all the forms in which it has appeared in history, permit me to ask whether you have rightly observed all these phenomena and have rightly comprehended their common content? If your idea has had its rise in this way you must justify it by instances. If anyone says it is wrong and beside the mark, and if he point out something else in religion not hollow, but having a kernel of excellent quality and extraction, you must first hear and judge before you venture further to despise. Do not grudge, therefore, to listen to what I shall say to those who, from first to last, have more accurately and laboriously adhered to observation of particulars.
You are doubtless
acquainted with the histories of human follies, and have reviewed the various
structures of religious doctrine from the senseless fables of wanton peoples
to the most refined Deism, from the rude superstition of human sacrifice to
the ill-put together fragments of metaphysics and ethics now called purified
Christianity, and you have found them all without rhyme or reason. I am
far from wishing to contradict you. Rather, if you really mean that the most
cultured religious system
If you have only
given attention to these dogmas and opinions, therefore, you do not yet know
religion itself, and what you despise is not it. Why have you not penetrated
deeper to find the kernel of this shell? I am astonished at your voluntary
ignorance, ye easy-going inquirers, and at the all too quiet satisfaction with
which you linger by the first thing presented to you. Why do you not regard
the religious life itself, and first those pious exaltations of the mind in
which all other known activities are set aside
This recommendation to seek rather in those scattered and seemingly undeveloped elements your object that you have not yet found in the developed and the complete to which you have hitherto been directed, cannot surprise you who have more or less busied yourselves with philosophy, and are acquainted with its fortunes. With philosophy, indeed, it should be quite otherwise. From its nature it must strive to fashion itself into the closest connection. That special kind of knowledge is only verified and its communication assured by its completeness, and yet even here you must commence with the scattered and incomplete. Recollect how very few of those who, in a way of their own, have penetrated into the secrets of nature and spirit, viewing and exhibiting their mutual relation and inner harmony in a light of their own, have put forth at once a system of their knowledge. In a finer, if more fragile form, they have communicated their discoveries.
On the contrary,
if you regard the systems in all schools, how often are they mere habitations
and nurseries of the dead letter. With few exceptions, the plastic spirit
of high contemplation is too fleeting and too free for those rigid forms whereby
those who would willingly grasp and retain what is strange, believe they are
best helped. Suppose that anyone held the architects of those great
edifices of philosophy, without distinction, for true philosophers!
Suppose he would learn from them the spirit of their
Consider only with whom those ingenious erections originate, the mutability of which you scorn, the bad proportions of which offend you, and the incongruity of which, with your contemptuous tendency, almost strikes you as absurd. Have they come from the heroes of religion? Name one among those who have brought down any kind of new revelation to us, who has thought it worth his while to occupy himself with such a labour of Sisyphus, beginning with Him who first conceived the idea of the kingdom of God, from which, if from anything in the sphere of religion, a system might have been produced to the new mystics or enthusiasts, as you are accustomed to call them, in whom, perhaps, an original beam of the inner light still shines. You will not blame me if I do not reckon among them the theologians of the letter, who believe the salvation of the world and the light of wisdom are to be found in a new vesture of formulas, or a new arrangement of ingenious proofs. In isolation only the mighty thunder of their speech, announcing that the Deity is revealing Himself through them, is accustomed to be heard when the celestial feelings are unburdened, when the sacred fires must burst forth from the overcharged spirit. Idea and word are simply the necessary and inseparable outcome of the heart, only to be understood by it and along with it. Doctrine is only united to doctrine occasionally to remove misunderstanding or expose unreality.
From many such
combinations those systems were gradually
I ask, therefore, that you turn from everything usually reckoned religion, and fix your regard on the inward emotions and dispositions, as all utterances and acts of inspired men direct. Despite your acquirements, your culture and your prejudices, I hope for good success. At all events, till you have looked from this standpoint without discovering anything real, or having any change of opinion, or enlarging your contemptuous conception, the product of superficial observation, and are still able to hold in ridicule this reaching of the heart towards the Eternal, I will not confess that I have lost. Then, however, I will finally believe that your contempt for religion is in accordance with your nature, and I shall have no more to say.
Yet you need not
fear that I shall betake myself in the end to that common device of representing
how necessary religion is for maintaining justice and order in the world.
Nor shall I remind you of an all-seeing eye, nor of the unspeakable short-sightedness
of human management, nor of the narrow bounds of human power to render help.
Nor shall I say how religion is a faithful friend and useful stay of morality,
how, by its sacred feelings and glorious prospects, it makes the struggle with
self and the perfecting of goodness much easier for weak man. Those who
profess to be the best friends and most zealous defenders do indeed speak in
this way. Which of the two is more degraded in being thus thought of together,
I shall not decide, whether
Though otherwise this wise counsel might be given you, how could I dare to suppose that you play with your consciences a sort of fast and loose game, and could be impelled by something you have hitherto had no cause to respect and love to something else that without it you already honour, and to which you have already devoted yourselves? Or suppose that these Speeches were merely to suggest what you should do for the sake of the people! How could you, who are called to educate others and make them like yourselves, begin by deceiving them, offering them as holy and vitally necessary what is in the highest degree indifferent to yourselves, and which, in your opinion, they can again reject as soon as they have attained your level? I, at least, cannot invite you to a course of action in which I perceive the most ruinous hypocrisy towards the world and towards yourselves. To recommend religion by such means would only increase the contempt to which it is at present exposed. Granted that our civil organizations are still burdened with a very high degree of imperfection and have shown but small power to prevent or abolish injustice, it would still be a culpable abandonment of a weighty matter, a faint-hearted unbelief in the approach of better things, if religion that in itself is not otherwise desirable must be called in.
Answer me this
one question. Could there be a legal constitution resting on piety?
Speaking from your standpoint, law must not even require morality to assure for it the most unlimited jurisdiction in its own territory. It must stand quite alone. Statesmen must make it universal. Now quite apart from the question whether what only exists in so far as it proceeds from the heart can be thus arbitrarily combined, if this general jurisdiction is only possible when religion is combined with law, none but persons skilled to infuse the spirit of religion into the human soul should be statesmen. And in what dark barbarousness of evil times would that land us!
Just as little can morality be in need of religion. A weak, tempted heart must take refuge in the thought of a future world. But it is folly to make a distinction between this world and the next. Religious persons at least know only one. If the desire for happiness is foreign to morality, later happiness can be no more valid than earlier; if it should be quite independent of praise, dread of the Eternal cannot be more valid than dread of a wise man. If morality loses in splendour and stability by every addition, how much more must it lose from something that can never hide its foreign extraction.
All this, however, you have heard of sufficiently from those
who defend the independence and might of the moral law. Yet let me add,
that to wish to transport religion into another sphere that it may serve and
labour is to manifest towards it also great contempt. It is not so ambitious
of conquest as to seek to reign in a foreign kingdom. The power that is
its due, being earned afresh at every moment, satisfies it. Everything
is sacred to it, and above all everything holding with it the same rank in human
nature.
At the last remove, morality and justice also must conduce to some further advantage. It were better that such utilitarians should be submerged in this eternal whirlpool of universal utility, in which everything good is allowed to go down, of which no man that would be anything for himself understands a single sensible word, than that they should venture to come forward as defenders of religion, for of all men they are least skilled to conduct its case. High renown it were for the heavenly to conduct so wretchedly the earthly concerns of man! Great honour for the free and unconcerned to make the conscience of man a little sharper and more alert! For such a purpose religion does not descend from heaven. What is loved and honoured only on account of some extraneous advantage may be needful, but it is not in itself necessary, and a sensible person simply values it according to the end for which it is desired. By this standard, religion would be valueless enough. I, at least, would offer little, for I must confess that I do not believe much in the unjust dealings it would hinder, nor the moral dealings it would produce. If that is all it could do to gain respect, I would have no more to do with its case. To recommend it merely as an accessory is too unimportant. An imaginary praise that vanishes on closer contemplation, cannot avail anything going about with higher pretensions. I maintain that in all better souls piety springs necessarily by itself; that a province of its own in the mind belongs to it, in which it has unlimited sway; that it is worthy to animate most profoundly the noblest and best and to be fully accepted and known by them. That is my contention, and it now behoves you to decide whether it is worth your while to hear me, before you still further strengthen yourselves in your contempt.
You know how the aged Simonides, by long and repeated hesitation, put to silence the person who troubled him with the question, What are the gods? Our question, What is religion? is similar and equally extensive, and I would fain begin with a like hesitation. Naturally I would not mean by ultimate silence, as he did, to leave you in perplexity. But you might attempt something for yourselves; you might give steady and continuous attention to the point about which we are inquiring; you might entirely exclude other thoughts. Do not even conjurors of common spirits demand abstinence from earthly things and solemn stillness, as a preparation, and undistracted, close attention to the place where the apparition is to show itself? How much more should I claim? It is a rare spirit that I am to call forth, which can, only when long regarded with fixed attention, be recognized as the object of your desire. You must have that unbiassed sobriety of judgment that seizes clearly and accurately every outline. Without being misled by old memories or hindered by preconceptions, you must endeavour to understand the object presented simply by itself. Even then it may not win your love, and otherwise I cannot hope for any unanimity about the meaning of religion or any recognition of its worth.
I could wish to exhibit religion
in some well known form, reminding you, by feature, carriage and deportment,
of what here and there at least you have seen in life. Religion, however, as
I wish to show it, which is to say, in
Religion is for you at one time a way of thinking, a faith, a peculiar way of contemplating the world, and of combining what meets us in the world: at another, it is a way of acting, a peculiar desire and love, a special kind of conduct and character. Without this distinction of a theoretical and practical you could hardly think at all, and though both sides belong to religion, you are usually accustomed to give heed chiefly to only one at a time. Wherefore, we shall look closely at religion from both sides.
We commence with religion as a kind of activity.
Activity is twofold, having to do with life and with art. You would ascribe with the poet earnestness to life and cheerfulness to art; or, in some other way, you would contrast them. Separate them you certainly will. For life, duty is the watchword. The moral law shall order it, and virtue shall show itself the ruling power in it, that the individual may be in harmony with the universal order of the world, and may nowhere encroach in a manner to disturb and confuse. This life, you consider, may appear without any discernible trace of art. Rather is it to be attained by rigid rules that have nothing to do with the free and variable precepts of art. Nay, you look upon it almost as a rule that art should be somewhat in the background, and nonessential for those who are strictest in the ordering of life. On the other hand, imagination shall inspire the artist, and genius shall completely sway him. Now imagination and genius are for you quite different from virtue and morality, being capable of existing in the largest measure along with a much more meagre moral endowment. Nay you are inclined, because the prudent power often comes into danger by reason of the fiery power, to relax for the artist somewhat of the strict demands of life.
How now does it stand with piety, in so far as you regard it as a peculiar kind of activity? Has it to do with right living? Is it something good and praiseworthy, yet different from morality, for you will not hold them to be identical? But in that case morality does not exhaust the sphere which it should govern. Another power works alongside of it, and has both right and might to continue working. Or will you perhaps betake yourselves to the position that piety is a virtue, and religion a duty or section of duties? Is religion incorporated into morality and subordinated to it, as a part to the whole? Is it, as some suppose, special duties towards God, and therefore a part of all morality which is the performance of all duties? But, if I have rightly appreciated or accurately reproduced what you say, you do not think so.
You rather seem to say that the pious person has something entirely peculiar, both in his doing and leaving undone, and that morality can be quite moral without therefore being pious.
And how are religion and art related? They can hardly be quite alien, because, from of old, what is greatest in art has had a religious character. When, therefore, you speak of an artist as pious, do you still grant him that relaxation of the strict demands of virtue? Rather he is then subjected, like every other person. But then to make the cases parallel, you must secure that those who devote themselves to life do not remain quite without art. Perhaps this combination gives its peculiar form to religion. With your view, there seems no other possible issue.
Religion then, as a kind of activity, is a mixture of elements that oppose and neutralize each other. Pray is not this rather the utterance of your dislike than your conviction? Such an accidental shaking together, leaving both elements unaltered, does not, even though the most accurate equality be attained, make something specific. But suppose it is otherwise, suppose piety is something which truly fuses both, then it cannot be formed simply by bringing the two together, but must be an original unity. Take care, however, I warn yon, that you do not make such an admission. Were it the case, morality and genius apart would be only fragments of the ruins of religion, or its corpse when it is dead. Religion were then higher than both, the true divine life itself. But, in return for this warning, if you accept it, and discover no other solution, be so good as tell me how your opinion about religion is to be distinguished from nothing? Till then nothing remains for me but to assume that you have not yet, by examination, satisfied yourselves about this side of religion. Perhaps we shall have better fortune with the other side—what is known as the way of thinking, or faith.
You will, I believe, grant
that your knowledge, however many-sided it may appear, falls, as a whole, into
two contrasted
What then, are we to say that
religion is? As before, that it is a mixture—mingled theoretical and practical
knowledge? But this is even less permissible, particularly if, as appears, each
of these two branches of knowledge has its own characteristic mode of procedure.
Such
Wherefore, my friends, belief must be something different from a mixture of opinions about God and the world, and of precepts for one life or for two. Piety cannot be an instinct craving for a mess of metaphysical and ethical crumbs. If it were, you would scarcely oppose it. It would not occur to you to speak of religion as different from your knowledge, however much it might be distant. The strife of the cultured and learned with the pious would simply be the strife of depth and thoroughness with superficiality; it would be the strife of the master with pupils who are to emancipate themselves in due time.
Were you, after all, to take this view, I should like
to plague you with all sorts of Socratic questions, till I compelled many of
you to give a direct answer to the question, whether it is at all possible to
be wise and pious at the same time. I should also wish to submit whether in
Let us be honest with one another.
As we recently agreed, you have no liking for religion. But, in carrying on
an honourable war which is not quite without strain, you would not wish to fight
against such a shadow as that with which we have so far been battling. It must
be something special that could fashion itself so peculiarly in the human heart,
something thinkable, the real nature of which can so be presented as to be spoken
of and argued about, and I consider it very wrong that out of things so disparate
as modes of knowing and modes of acting, you patch together
But that is just what I have already said. Religion never appears quite pure. Its outward form is ever determined by something else. Our task first is to exhibit its true nature, and not to assume off-hand, as you seem to do, that the outward form and the true nature are the same. Does the material world present you with any element in its original purity as a spontaneous product of nature? Must you, therefore, as you have done in the intellectual world, take very gross things for simple? It is the one ceaseless aim of all analysis to present something really simple. So also it is in spiritual things. You can only obtain what is original by producing it, as it were, by a second, an artificial creation in yourselves, and even then it is but for the moment of its production. Pray come to an understanding on the point, for you shall be ceaselessly reminded of it.
But let us go on to the sources
and original writings of religion. To attach them to your sciences of resistance
and of action, of nature and of spirit is an unavoidable necessity, because
they are the sources of your terminology. Furthermore the best preparation for
awaking consciousness for your own higher subject is to study what has already
been more or less scientifically thought. The deepest and highest in a work
is not always either first or last. Did you but know how to read between the
lines! All sacred writings are like these modest books which were formerly in
use in our modest Fatherland. Under
In order to make quite clear to you what is the original and characteristic possession of religion, it resigns, at once, all claims on anything that belongs either to science or morality. Whether it has been borrowed or bestowed it is now returned. What then does your science of being, your natural science, all your theoretical philosophy, in so far as it has to do with the actual world, have for its aim? To know things, I suppose, as they really are; to show the peculiar relations by which each is what it is; to determine for each its place in the Whole, and to distinguish it rightly from all else; to present the whole real world in its mutually conditioned necessity; and to exhibit the oneness of all phenomena with their eternal laws. This is truly beautiful and excellent, and I am not disposed to depreciate. Rather, if this description of mine, so slightly sketched, does not suffice, I will grant the highest and most exhaustive you are able to give.
And yet, however high you go; though you pass from the laws to the Universal Lawgiver, in whom is the unity of all things; though you allege that nature cannot be comprehended without God, I would still maintain that religion has nothing to do with this knowledge, and that, quite apart from it, its nature can be known. Quantity of knowledge is not quantity of piety. Piety can gloriously display itself, both with originality and individuality, in those to whom this kind of knowledge is not original. They may only know it as everybody does, as isolated results known in connection with other things. The pious man must, in a sense, be a wise man, but he will readily admit, even though you somewhat proudly look down upon him, that, in so far as he is pious, he does not hold his knowledge in the same way as you.
Let me interpret in clear words
what most pious persons only guess at and never know how to express. Were you
to set God as the apex of your science as the foundation of all knowing as well
as of all knowledge, they would accord praise and honour, but it would not be
their way of having and knowing God. From their way,
It is true that religion is essentially contemplative. You would never call anyone pious who went about in impervious stupidity, whose sense is not open for the life of the world. But this contemplation is not turned, as your knowledge of nature is, to the existence of a finite thing, combined with and opposed to another finite thing. It has not even, like your knowledge of God—if for once I might use an old expression—to do with the nature of the first cause, in itself and in its relation to every other cause and operation. The contemplation of the pious is the immediate consciousness of the universal existence of all finite things, in and through the Infinite, and of all temporal things in and through the Eternal. Religion is to seek this and find it in all that lives and moves, in all growth and change, in all doing and suffering. It is to have life and to know life in immediate feeling, only as such an existence in the Infinite and Eternal. Where this is found religion is satisfied, where it hides itself there is for her unrest and anguish, extremity and death. Wherefore it is a life in the infinite nature of the Whole, in the One and in the All, in God, having and possessing all things in God, and God in all. Yet religion is not knowledge and science, either of the world or of God. Without being knowledge, it recognizes knowledge and science. In itself it is an affection, a revelation of the Infinite in the finite, God being seen in it and it in God.
Similarly, what is the object
of your ethics, of your science of action? Does it not seek to distinguish precisely
each part of human doing and producing, and at the same time to combine them
into a whole, according to actual relations? But the pious man confesses that,
as pious, he knows nothing about it. He does, indeed, contemplate human action,
but it is not the kind of contemplation from which an ethical system takes its
rise. Only one thing he
It is the same, let me say at
once, with action itself. The artist fashions what is given him to fashion,
by virtue of his special talent. These talents are so different that the one
he possesses another lacks; unless someone, against heaven’s will, would possess
all. But when anyone is praised to you as pious, you are not accustomed to ask
which of these gifts dwell in him by virtue of his piety. The citizen—taking
the word in the sense of the ancients not in its present meagre significance—regulates,
leads, and influences in virtue of his morality. But this is something different
from piety. Piety has also a passive side. While morality always shows itself
as manipulating, as self-controlling, piety appears as a surrender, a submission
to be moved by the Whole that stands over against man. Morality depends, therefore,
entirely on the consciousness of freedom, within the sphere of which all that
it produces falls. Piety, on the contrary, is not at all bound to this side
of life. In the opposite sphere of necessity, where there is no properly individual
action, it is quite as active. Wherefore the two are different. Piety does,
indeed, linger with satisfaction on every action that is from God, and every
activity that reveals the Infinite in the finite, and yet it is not itself this
activity. Only by keeping quite outside the range both of science and of practice
can it maintain its proper sphere and character. Only when piety takes its place
alongside of science and practice, as a necessary,
But pray understand me fairly. I do not mean that one could exist without the other, that, for example, a man might have religion and be pious, and at the same time be immoral. That is impossible. But, in my opinion, it is just as impossible to be moral or scientific without being religious. But have I not said that religion can be had without science? Wherefore, I have myself begun the separation. But remember, I only said piety is not the measure of science. Just as one cannot be truly scientific without being pious, the pious man may not know at all, but he cannot know falsely. His proper nature is not of that subordinate kind, which, according to the old adage that like is only known to like, knows nothing except semblance of reality.
His nature is reality which knows reality, and where it encounters nothing it does not suppose it sees something. And what a precious jewel of science, in my view, is ignorance for those who are captive to semblance. If you have not learned it from my Speeches or discovered it for yourselves, go and learn it from your Socrates. Grant me consistency at least. With ignorance your knowledge will ever be mixed, but the true and proper opposite of knowledge is presumption of knowledge. By piety this presumption is most certainly removed, for with it piety cannot exist.
Such a separation of knowledge
and piety, and of action and piety, do not accuse me of making. You are only
ascribing to me, without my deserving it, your own view and the very confusion,
as common as it is unavoidable, which it has been my chief endeavour to show
you in the mirror of my Speech. Just because you do not acknowledge religion
as the third, knowledge and action are so much apart that you can discover no
unity, but believe
Wherefore, you will find every truly learned man devout
and pious. Where you see science without religion, be sure it is transferred,
learned up from another. It is sickly, if indeed it is not that empty appearance
which serves necessity and is no knowledge at all. And what else do you take
this deduction and weaving together of ideas to be, which neither live nor correspond
to any living thing? Or in ethics,
What, then, shall become of the highest utterance of the speculation of our days, complete rounded idealism, if it do not again sink itself in this unity, if the humility of religion do not suggest to its pride another realism than that which it so boldly and with such perfect right, subordinates to itself? It annihilates the Universe, while it seems to aim at constructing it. It would degrade it to a mere allegory, to a mere phantom of the one-sided limitation of its own empty consciousness. Offer with me reverently a tribute to the manes of the holy, rejected Spinoza. The high World-Spirit pervaded him; the Infinite was his beginning and his end; the Universe was his only and his everlasting love. In holy innocence and in deep humility he beheld himself mirrored in the eternal world, and perceived how he also was its most worthy mirror. He was full of religion, full of the Holy Spirit. Wherefore, he stands there alone and unequalled; master in his art, yet without disciples and without citizenship, sublime above the profane tribe.
Why should I need to show that
the same applies to art? Because, from the same causes, you have here also a
thousand phantoms, delusions, and mistakes. In place of all else I would point
to another example which should be as well known to you all. I would point in
silence—for pain that is new and deep has no words. It is that superb youth,
who has too early fallen asleep, with whom everything his spirit touched became
art. His whole contemplation of the world was forthwith a great poem. Though
he had scarce more than struck the first chords, you must associate him with
the most opulent poets, with those select spirits who are as profound as they
are clear and vivacious. See in him the power of the enthusiasm and the caution
of a pious spirit, and acknowledge that when the philosophers shall become religious
and seek God like Spinoza, and the artists be pious and love Christ like Novalis,
the great resurrection shall be celebrated for both worlds.
But, in order that you may understand
what I mean by this unity and difference of religion, science and art, we shall
endeavour to descend into the inmost sanctuary of life. There, perhaps, we may
find ourselves agreed. There alone you discover the original relation of intuition
and feeling from which alone this identity and difference is to be understood.
But I must direct you to your own selves. You must apprehend a living movement.
You must know how to listen to yourselves before your own consciousness. At
least you must be able to reconstruct from your consciousness your own state.
What you are to notice is the rise of your consciousness and not to reflect
upon something already there. Your thought can only embrace what is sundered.
Wherefore as soon as you have made any given definite activity of your soul
an object of communication or of contemplation, you have already begun to separate.
It is impossible, therefore, to adduce any definite example, for, as soon as
anything is an example, what I
Consider how you delineate an object. Is there not both a stimulation and a determination by the object, at one and the same time, which for one particular moment forms your existence? The more definite your image, the more, in this way, you become the object, and the more you lose yourselves. But just because you can trace the growing preponderance of one side over the other, both must have been one and equal in the first, the original moment that has escaped you. Or sunk in yourselves, you find all that you formerly regarded as a disconnected manifold compacted now indivisibly into the one peculiar content of your being. Yet when you give heed, can you not see as it disappears, the image of an object, from whose influence, from whose magical contact this definite consciousness has proceeded? The more your own state sways you the paler and more unrecognizable your image becomes. The greater your emotion, the more you are absorbed in it, the more your whole nature is concerned to retain for the memory an imperishable trace of what is necessarily fleeting, to carry over to what you may engage in, its colour and impress, and so unite two moments into a duration, the less you observe the object that caused it. But just because it grows pale and vanishes, it must before have been nearer and clearer. Originally it must have been one and the same with your feeling. But, as was said, these are mere traces. Unless you will go back on the first beginning of this consciousness, you can scarcely understand them.
And suppose you cannot? Then
say, weighing it quite generally and originally, what is every act of your life
in itself and without distinction from other acts. What is it merely as act,
as movement? Is it not the coming into being of something for itself, and at
the same time in the Whole? It is an endeavour to return into
Did I venture to compare it,
seeing I cannot describe it, I would say it is fleeting and transparent as the
vapour which the dew breathes on blossom and fruit, it is bashful and tender
as a maiden’s kiss, it is holy and fruitful as a bridal embrace. Nor is it merely
like, it is all this. It is the first contact of the universal life with an
individual. It fills no time and fashions nothing palpable. It is the holy wedlock
of the Universe with the incarnated Reason for a creative, productive embrace.
It is immediate, raised above all error and misunderstanding. You lie directly
on the bosom of the infinite world. In that moment, you are its soul. Through
one part of your nature you feel, as your own, all its powers and its endless
life. In that moment it is your body, you pervade, as your own, its muscles
and members and your thinking and forecasting set its inmost nerves in motion.
In this way every living, original movement in your life is first
And, as it is with intuition
and feeling on the one hand, so it is with knowledge which includes both and
with activity on the other. Through the constant play and mutual influence of
these opposites, your life expands and has its place in time. Both knowledge
and activity are a desire to be identified with the Universe through an object.
If the power of the objects preponderates, if, as intuition or feeling, it enters
and seeks to draw you into the circle of their existence, it is always a knowledge.
If the preponderating power is on your side, so that you give the impress and
reflect yourselves in the objects, it is activity in the narrower sense, external
working. Yet it is only as you are stimulated and determined that you can communicate
yourselves to things. In founding or establishing anything in the world you
are only giving back what that original act of fellowship has wrought in you,
and similarly everything the world fashions in you must be by the same act.
One must
There then you have the three things about which my Speech has so far turned,—perception, feeling and activity, and you now understand what I mean when I say they are not identical and yet are inseparable. Take what belongs to each class and consider it by itself. You will find that those moments in which you exercise power over things and impress yourselves upon them, form what you call your practical, or, in the narrower sense, your moral life; again the contemplative moments, be they few or many, in which things produce themselves in you as intuition, you will doubtless call your scientific life. Now can either series alone form a human life? Would it not be death? If each activity were not stimulated and renewed by the other, would it not be self-consumed? Yet they are not identical. If you would understand your life and speak comprehensibly of it, they must be distinguished. As it stands with these two in respect of one another, it must stand with the third in respect of both. How then are you to name this third, which is the series of feeling? What life will it form? The religious as I think, and as you will not be able to deny, when you have considered it more closely.
The chief point in my Speech
is now uttered. This is the peculiar sphere which I would assign to religion—the
whole of it, and nothing more. Unless you grant it, you must either prefer the
old confusion to clear analysis, or produce something else, I know not what,
new and quite wonderful. Your feeling is piety, in so far as it expresses, in
the manner described, the being and life common to you and to the All. Your
feeling is piety in so far as it is the result of the operation of God in you
by means of the operation of the world upon
you. This series is not
Now that we have some ground beneath us, we are in a
better position to inquire about the source of this confusion. May there not
be some reason for this constant connection of principles and ideas with religion?
In the same way is there not a cause for the connection of action with religion?
Without such an inquiry it would be vain to proceed farther. The misunderstanding
would be confirmed, for you would change what I say into ideas and begin seeking
for principles in them. Whether you will follow my exposition, who can tell?
What now is to hinder that each of the functions of life just indicated should
not be an object for the others? Or does it not rather manifestly belong to
their inner unity and equality that they should in this manner strive to pass
over into one another? So at least it seems to me. Thus, as a feeling person,
you can become an object to yourself and you can contemplate your own feeling.
Nay, you can, as a feeling person, become an object for yourself to operate
upon and more and more to impress your deepest nature upon. Would you now call
the general description of the nature of your feelings that is the product of
this contemplation a principle, and the description of each feeling, an idea,
you are certainly free to do so. And if you call them religious principles and
ideas, you are not in error. But do not
Nor can the description be equal to the thing described. The feeling may dwell in many sound and strong, as for example in almost all women, without ever having been specially a matter of contemplation. Nor may you say religion is lacking, but only knowledge about religion. Furthermore, do not forget what we have already established, that this contemplation presupposes the original activity. It depends entirely upon it. If the ideas and principles are not from reflection on a man’s own feeling, they must be learned by rote and utterly void. Make sure of this, that no man is pious, however perfectly he understands these principles and conceptions, however much he believes he possesses them in clearest consciousness, who cannot show that they have originated in himself and, being the outcome of his own feeling, are peculiar to himself. Do not present him to me as pious, for he is not. His soul is barren in religious matters, and his ideas are merely supposititious children which he has adopted, in the secret feeling of his own weakness. As for those who parade religion and make a boast of it, I always characterize them as unholy and removed from all divine life. One has conceptions of the ordering of the world and formulas to express them, the other has prescriptions whereby to order himself and inner experiences to authenticate them. The one weaves his formulas into a system of faith, and the other spins out of his prescriptions a scheme of salvation. It being observed that neither has any proper standing ground without feeling, strife ensues as to how many conceptions and declarations, how many precepts and exercises, how many emotions and sensations must be accepted in order to conglomerate a sound religion that shall be neither specially cold nor enthusiastic, dry nor shallow. O fools, and slow of heart! They do not know that all this is mere analysis of the religious sense, which they must have made for themselves, if it is to have any meaning.
But if they are not conscious of having anything to analyze, whence have they those ideas and rules? They have memory and imitation, but that they have religion do not believe. They have no ideas of their own from which formulas might be known, so they must learn them by rote, and the feelings which they would have accompanying them are copies, and like all copies, are apt to become caricatures. And out of this dead, corrupt, second-hand stuff, a religion is to be concocted! The members and juices of an organized body can be dissected; but take these elements now and mix them and treat them in every possible way; and will you be able to make heart’s blood of them? Once dead, can it ever again move in a living body? Such restoration of the products of living nature out of its component parts, once divided, passes all human skill, and, just as little, would you succeed with religion, however completely the various kindred elements be given from without. From within, in their original, characteristic form, the emotions of piety must issue. They must be indubitably your own feelings, and not mere stale descriptions of the feelings of others, which could at best issue in a wretched imitation.
Now the religious ideas which
form those systems can and ought to be nothing else than such a description,
for religion cannot and will not originate in the pure impulse to know. What
we feel and are conscious of in religious emotions is not the nature of things,
but their operation upon us. What you may know or believe about the nature of
things is far beneath the sphere of religion. The Universe is ceaselessly active
and at every moment is revealing itself to us. Every form it has produced, everything
to which, from the fulness of its life, it has given a separate existence, every
occurrence scattered from its fertile bosom is an operation of the Universe
upon us. Now religion is to take up into our lives and to submit to be swayed
by them, each of these influences and their consequent emotions, not by themselves
On the other hand, to take what
are meant as descriptions of our feelings for a science of the object, in some
way the revealed product of religion, or to regard it as science and religion
at the same time, necessarily leads to mysticism and vain mythology. For example,
it was religion when the Ancients, abolishing the limitations of time and space,
regarded every special form of life throughout the whole world as the work and
as the kingdom of a being who in this sphere was omnipresent and omnipotent,
because one peculiar way in which the Universe operates was present as a definite
feeling, and they described it after this fashion. It was religion when they
assigned a peculiar name and built a temple to the god to whom they ascribed
any helpful occurrence whereby in an obvious, if accidental, way, the laws of
the world were revealed, because they had comprehended something as a deed of
the Universe, and after their own fashion set forth its connection and peculiar
character. It was religion when they rose above the rude iron age, full of flaws
and inequalities, and sought again the golden age on Olympus in the joyous life
of the gods, because beyond all change and all apparent evil that results only
from the strife of finite forms, they felt the ever-stirring, living and serene
activity of the World and the World-Spirit. But when they drew up marvellous
and complex genealogies of the gods, or when a later faith produced a long series
of emanations and procreations, it was not religion. Even though these things
may have their source in a religious presentation of the relation of the human
and the divine, of the imperfect and the perfect, they were, in themselves,
vain mythology, and, in respect of science, ruinous mysticism. The sum total
of religion is to feel
From all this you will at once
perceive bow the question, whether religion is a system or not, is to be treated.
It admits of an entire negative, and also of a direct affirmative, in a way
that perhaps you scarce expected. Religion is certainly a system, if you mean
that it is formed according to an inward and necessary connection. That the
religious sense of one person is moved in one way, and that of another in another
is not pure accident, as if the emotions formed no whole, as if any emotions
might be caused in the same individual by the same object. Whatever occurs anywhere,
whether among many or few as a peculiar and distinct kind of feeling is in itself
complete, and by its nature necessary. What you find as religious emotions among
Turks or Indians, cannot equally appear among Christians. The essential oneness
of religiousness spreads itself out in a great variety of provinces, and again,
in each
Each form again is a whole and capable of an endless
number of characteristic manifestations. You would not have individuals issue
from the Whole in a finite way, each being at a definite distance from the other,
so that one might be determined, construed and numbered from the others, and
its characteristics be accurately determined in a conception? Were I to compare
religion in this respect with anything it would be with music, which indeed
is otherwise closely connected with it. Music is one great whole; it is a special,
a self-contained revelation of the world. Yet the music of each people is a
whole by itself, which again is divided into different characteristic forms,
till we come to the genius and style of the individual. Each actual instance
of this inner revelation in the individual contains all these unities. Yet while
nothing is possible for a musician, except in and through the unity of the music
of his people, and the unity of music generally, he presents it in the charm
of sound with all the pleasure and joyousness of boundless caprice, according
as his life stirs in him, and the world influences him. In the same way, despite
the necessary elements in its structure, religion is, in its individual manifestations
whereby it displays itself immediately in life, from nothing farther removed
than from all semblance of compulsion or limitation. In life, the necessary
element is taken up, taken up into freedom. Each emotion appears as
It would be impious to demand here something held in constraint, something limited and determined from without. If anything of this kind lies in your conception of system then you must set it quite aside. A system of perceptions and feelings you may yourselves see to be somewhat marvellous. Suppose now you feel something. Is there not at the same time an accompanying feeling or thought—make your own choice—that you would have to feel in accordance with this feeling, and not otherwise were but this or that object, which does not now move you, to be present? But for this immediate association your feeling would be at an end, and a cold calculating and refining would take its place. Wherefore it is plainly an error to assert that it belongs to religion, to be conscious of the connection of its separate manifestations, not only to have it within, and to develope it from within, but to see it described and to comprehend it from without, and it is presumption to consider that, without it, piety is poverty-stricken. The truly pious are not disturbed in the simplicity of their way, for they give little heed to all the so-called religious systems that have been erected in consequence of this view.
Poor enough they are too, far
inferior to the theories about music, defective though they be. Among those
systematizers there is less than anywhere, a devout watching and listening to
discover in their own hearts what they are to describe. They would rather reckon
with symbols, and complete a designation which is about as accidental as the
designation of the stars. It is purely arbitrary and never sufficient, for something
new that should be included, is always being discovered, and a system, anything
permanent and secure, anything corresponding to nature, and not the result of
caprice and tradition, is not to be found in it. The designation, let the forms
of religion be ever so inward and self-dependent, must be from without. Thousands
By taking the opposite course, the marvellous thought has
arisen of a universality of one religion, of one single form which is true,
and in respect of which all others are false. Were it not that misunderstanding
must be guarded against, I would say that it is only by such deducing and connecting,
that such a comparison as true and false, which is not peculiarly appropriate
to religion, has ever been reached. It only applies where we have to This passage also might occasion various misconceptions. First, in respect of the opposition between true
and false religion, I refer to my “Glaubenslehre,” §§ 7 and 8 (2nd edit.). It
is there treated fully, and I would simply add that, in religion, error only
exists by truth and not merely so, but it can be said that every man’s religion
is his highest truth, Error therein would not only be error, it would
be hypocrisy. In religion then everything is immediately true, as nothing is
expressed at any moment of it, except the state of mind of the religious person.
Similarly, all types of religious association are good, for the best in the
existence of each man must be stored up in them. But how little this prejudices
the superiority of one type of faith to another is in part plainly stated and
in part easy to infer. One may be the utterance of a superior state of mind,
or there may be in the religious communion a higher spiritual power and love.
Furthermore, the rejection here of the thought of the universality of any one
religion and the assertion that only in the sum of all religions is the whole
extent of this bias of the mind comprehended, in no way expresses a doubt that
Christianity will be able to extend itself over the whole human race, though
perhaps among many races, this greatest of all religions may suffer important
changes. Just as little did this passage express a wish that other religions
should always continue alongside of Christianity. The influence of Judaism and
Hellenic Heathenism on Christianity was through a long period visible in hostile,
raging commotions. Thus both still appear in Christianity, and therefore in
the history of Christianity have a place. The same thing would happen if Christianity
should annex the territory of all existing great religions. Consequently the
religious sphere would not be enclosed in narrower borders, but all religions
would in a historical way be visible in Christianity. From the connection again
it is clear that I only deny that a religion is universally true in the sense
that everything that exists or has existed outside of it, is not to be called
religion at all. Similarly, what follows is to be understood, about every truly
pious person willingly acknowledging that to other types of religion much belongs
for which the sense fails him. Even if Christianity had supplanted all other
religions, he would not have a sense for all that would thereby be historically
mirrored in Christianity, for just as little then as now would the Christianity
of all Christian people be quite the same. And if no one has an adequate sense
for all that is Christian, there can be none with the sense for all there is
in other religions that may be the germ of some future Christian peculiarity.
You see how immediately this
beautiful modesty, this friendly, attractive forbearance springs from the nature
of religion. How unjustly, therefore, do you reproach religion with loving persecution,
with being malignant,
This miserable love of system I feel that this passage gives a two-fold, grave offence. First I prefer Heathen
Rome, on account of its boundless mixture of religious, to Christian Rome which,
in comparison, I call godless, and that I condemn the expulsion of heretics,
while I myself declare certain views to be heretical, and even seek to systematize
heresy. I begin with the latter as the deeper and more important. It does not
appear to me possible that there can be a sound dogmatic procedure without a
formula of the character of what is Christian, by the application of which it
would be possible, from any point of the line of cleavage, to cut off the ordinates,
and so to describe the extent of Christian conceptions by approximation. It
naturally follows that what lies outside of this extent, and would yet be considered
Christian, is what has long been called in the Christian Church heretical. In
my dogmatics I could not avoid offering such a formula, and I can only wish
to attain my object as fully as possible. But this definition of the subject
has nothing to do with the treatment of persons. That many, while contending
for the defence of their own opinion, may use a heretical expression without
meaning anything heretical, is apparent, and I have declared myself fully on
it in the “Glaubenslehre,” § 22, 3 and note, and § 25, note. On many sides the wish has been expressed in
the Evangelical Church to renew church discipline in a judicious manner that
a Christian congregation may be in a position to withdraw a measure of fellowship
from persons disproving by their lives their Christian disposition. This makes
it specially necessary to obviate the confusion between this proceeding and
the right to pronounce the bann on all we may choose to consider heretics. If
heretics are not also without a Christian disposition, the Evangelical Church
will rather acknowledge that its sole duty towards them is to maintain fellowship
with them that, by mutual understanding, they may the sooner be led into the
right way. If individuals or small societies employ a contrary method and, regardless
of disposition, exclude from their fellowship all who do not agree with them
in the same letter of doctrine, they do not act in an Evangelical spirit, but
assume an authority our church grants to none. And now passing to the second
point, my preference of Heathen to Christian Rome, and my statement that through
tolerance the former was full of gods, and that through persecution of heretics,
the latter was godless. First, the character of the expressions used shows that
this passage bears specially the rhetorical cast of the book. What, however,
is to be taken literally is that the dogmatizing love of system which scorns
to assign its place to difference, but rather excludes all difference, plainly
suppresses, as much as it can, the living knowledge of God, and changes doctrine
into a dead letter. A rule so rigid that it condemns everything of another shade,
crashes out productiveness. As this alone contains living knowledge of God,
the system itself must become dead. This is the history of the Roman Catholic
system in contrast to the Protestant. From this point of view the rise of the
Evangelical Church was simply to rescue its own productiveness from fellowship
with such a rule. My praise of the receptivity of ancient Rome for strange worships
is also to be taken seriously. It involved an acknowledgment of the narrowness
and one-sidedness of each individualized Polytheism, and the desire to free
the religious need from the limits of political forms. Now these two things
were not only praiseworthy in themselves, but were much more favourable to the
spread of Christianity than heresy hunting, however well meant, could ever be
for its establishment and preservation.
Seers of the Infinite have ever
been quiet souls. They abide alone with themselves and the Infinite, or if they
do look around them, grudge to no one who understands the
These charges, therefore, do
not touch religion. They rest upon the confusion between religion and that knowledge
which belongs to theology. It is a knowledge, whatever be its value, and is
to be always distinguished from religion. Just as inapplicable are the charges
you have made in respect of action. Something of this I have already touched
upon, but let us take a general glance at
Lest you should think I am merely
quibbling, consider that religion by itself does not urge men to activity at
all. If you could imagine it implanted in man quite alone, it would produce
neither these nor any other deeds. The man, according to what we have said,
would not act, he would only feel. Wherefore, as you rightly complain, there
have been many most religious men in whom the proper impulses
to action have been wanting, and morality
been too
However different the actions you blame may be, they have this in common, that they all seem to issue immediately from one single impulse. Whether you call this special feeling religious or not, I am far from disagreeing with you when you so constantly blame it. Rather I praise you the more thorough and impartial you are. Blame also, I pray you, not only where the action appears bad, but still more where it has a good appearance. When action follows a single impulse, it falls into an undue dependence and is far too much under the influence of the external objects that work upon this one emotion. Feeling, whatever it be about, if it is not dormant, is naturally violent. It is a commotion, a force to which action should not be subject and from which it should not proceed. Quiet and discretion, the whole impress of our nature should give action birth and character, and this is as much required in common life as in politics and art. But this divergence could only come because the agent did not make his piety sufficiently evident. Wherefore, it would rather appear that, if he had been more pious he would have acted more morally. The whole religious life consists of two elements, that man surrender himself to the Universe and allow himself to be influenced by the side of it that is turned towards him is one part, and that he transplant this contact which is one definite feeling, within, and take it up into the inner unity of his life and being, is the other. The religious life is nothing else than the constant renewal of this proceeding. When, therefore, anyone is stirred, in a definite way, by the World, is it his piety that straightway sets him to such working and acting as bear the traces of commotion and disturb the pure connection of the moral life? Impossible.
On the contrary, his piety invites him to enjoy what he has won, to absorb it, to combine it, to strip it of what is temporal and individual, that it may no more dwell in him as commotion but be quiet, pure and eternal. From this inner unity, action springs of its own accord, as a natural branch of life. As we agreed, activity is a reaction of feeling, but the sum of activity should only be a reaction of the sum of feeling, and single actions should depend on something quite different from momentary feeling. Only when each action is in its own connection and in its proper place, and not when, dependently and slavishly, it corresponds to one emotion, does it exhibit, in a free and characteristic way, the whole inner unity of the spirit.
Consequently your charge does not touch religion. And, if you are speaking of a morbid state of it, you are speaking of what is quite general and is not in any way original to religion nor specially seated in it, and from which consequently nothing is to be concluded against religion in particular. Religion is of course finite, and therefore subject to imperfections, but it must be apparent to you that in a healthy state, man cannot be represented as acting from religion or being driven to action by religion, but piety and morality form each a series by itself and are two different functions of one and the same life. But while man does nothing from religion, he should do everything with religion. Uninterruptedly, like a sacred music, the religious feelings should accompany his active life.
That by this
representation of religion I am neither deceiving you nor myself, you can easily
see, if you observe that each feeling in proportion as it bears the character
of piety, is disposed to withdraw itself into the heart and not break forth
into deeds. Would not a pious person who was right deeply moved find himself
in great perplexity, or even quite fail to understand you, if you asked him
by what particular action he proposed to give expression and vent to his feeling?
They are bad spirits and not good that
There are, however, other actions you often speak of. The distinct purpose of them is to produce religion. Being of no importance for morality, they are not moral, and being of no importance for sense, they are not immoral, but they are nevertheless disastrous, because they accustom man to attach himself to what is void and to value what is worthless. Let them be ever so inane and meaningless, they, far too often, take the place of moral action or hide its absence.
I know what you mean. Spare me the long catalogue of outward disciplines, spiritual exercises, privations, mortifications and the rest. All these things you accuse religion of producing, and yet you cannot overlook the fact that the greatest heroes of religion, the founders and reformers of the church, have regarded them with great indifference. There is a difference, I admit, but I believe that, in this regard also, the subject I defend will justify itself.
First of all, let us understand what we are dealing with.
It is with action as an exercise of feeling, not with any symbolical or significant
action meant to represent feeling. We have already seen how those dogmas and
opinions that would join themselves more closely to
If you would recall that something quite similar is to be found in morality, you would perhaps at once agree with me. Men, as they say, lay down for themselves just such acting upon their own acting, just such exercisings of morals, to the end of self-improvement. It happens that these are sometimes put in place of direct moral action, of goodness and righteousness themselves, but you would not admit that it is through moral men. Men do all kinds of things, accepting them from one and transmitting them to another, though they have no meaning or value for themselves.
These actions are always, however,
to be understood as
For them such exercisings of feeling have a special worth, as if they also had some of the hidden virtue, seeing they can outwardly imitate what, in others, has a deep significance. Consciously or unconsciously, they deceive themselves and others with the appearance of a higher life which they do not really have. Either it is base hypocrisy or wretched superstition, and I willingly expose it to your condemnation. No exercise of this kind is of any value, and we shall reject not only what, regarded by itself, is manifestly void, unnatural and perverted, but all that in this way arises, however specious. Severe mortifications, dull renunciation of the beautiful, empty phrases and usages and charities shall all be reckoned at the same value. Every superstition shall be alike unholy.
But we must never confuse it with the well-meant endeavours of pious souls. The difference is easy to discern. Each religious person fashions his own asceticism according to his need, and looks for no rule outside of himself, while the superstitious person and the hypocrite adhere strictly to the accepted and traditional, and are zealous for it, as for something universal and holy. This zeal is natural, for if they were expected to think out for themselves, their own outward discipline and exercise, their own training of the feelings, having regard to their own personal state, they would be in an evil case, and their inward poverty could be no longer hidden.
The most general, almost preliminary truths have long delayed us. They should have been understood of themselves, but neither you, nor many who would at least wish to be counted among you, understood the relation of religion to the other branches of life. Wherefore, it was necessary to drain off at once the sources of the commonest misconceptions, that they might not afterwards retard us. This having been done to the utmost of my ability, we have now, I hope, firm ground beneath us. We have attached ourselves to that moment, which is never directly observed, but in which all the different phenomena of life fashion themselves together, as in the buds of some plants blossom and fruit are both enclosed. When, therefore, we have asked where now among all it produces is religion chiefly to be sought, we have found only one right and consistent answer. Chiefly where the living contact of man with the world fashions itself as feeling. These feelings are the beautiful and sweet scented flowers of religion, which, after the hidden activity opens, soon fall, but which the divine growth ever anew produces from the fulness of life. A climate of paradise is thus created in which no penuriousness disturbs the development, and no rude surrounding injures the tender lights and fine texture of its flowers. To this I would now conduct you, your vision having been purified and prepared.
First of all, then, follow me
to outward nature, which is to many the first and only temple of the Godhead.
In virtue of its peculiar way of stirring the heart, it is held to be the inmost
sanctuary of religion. At present, however, this outward nature, although it
should be more, is little else than the outer court, for the view with which
you next oppose me is utterly to be repudiated. The fear of the powers which
rule in nature, which spare nothing, which threaten the life and works of man,
is said to give the first feeling of the Infinite, or even to be the sole basis
of religion. Surely in that case you
Let us then consider the matter.
Manifestly the great aim of all industry spent in cultivating the earth is to
destroy the dominion of the powers of nature over man, and to bring all fear
of them to an end. Already a marvellous amount has been done. The lightnings
of Zeus terrify no more since Hephaistus has prepared for us a shield against
them; and Hestia protects what she has won from Poseidon, even against the angriest
blows of his trident; the sons of Ares unite with those of Aesculapius to ward
off the deadly arrows of Apollo. Man is ever learning to resist and to destroy
one of these gods by means of the others, and is preparing soon, as conqueror
and lord, to be but a smiling spectator at this play. Were fear then the ground
of reverence for the powers of nature, by thus mutually destroying one another,
they would gradually appear ordinary and common; for what man has controlled
or attempted to control, he can measure, and what is measurable cannot stand
in awful opposition to him as the Infinite. The objects of religion would thus
be ever more and more unfaithful to it. But, are they? Would not these gods,
conducting themselves towards one another as brethren and kinsfolk, and caring
for man as the youngest son of the same Father, be just as zealously worshipped?
If you are still capable of being filled with reverence for the great powers
of nature, does it depend on your security or insecurity? When you stand under
your lightning conductors, have you, perhaps, a laugh ready wherewith to mock
the thunder? Is not nature protecting and sustaining quite as much an object
of adoration? Or, consider it in this way. Does the great and infinite alone
threaten man’s existence and oppose his working? Does he not also suffer from
much that is small and paltry, which, because it cannot be definitely comprehended
or fashioned into something great, you call accident and the accidental? Has
this ever been made an object of religion and been
But that joy in Nature, which
so many extol, is just as little truly religious. I almost hate to speak of
their doings when they dart off into the great, glorious world to get for themselves
little impressions: how they inspect the delicate markings and tints of flowers,
or gaze at the magic play of colours in the glowing evening sky, and how they
admire the songs of the birds on a beautiful country-side. They are quite full
of admiration and transport, and will have it that no instrument could conjure
forth these sounds and no brush attain this gloss and marking. But suppose we
take their course and subtilize after their fashion! What is it that they do
admire? Rear the plant in a dark cellar, and, if you are successful, you can
rob it of all these beauties, without in the least degree altering its nature.
Suppose the vapour above us somewhat differently disposed; instead of that splendour,
you would have before your eyes one unpleasant grayness, and yet what you are
contemplating would be essentially the same. Once more, try to imagine how the
midday sun, the glare of which you cannot endure,
The next thing to meet us in corporeal nature is its
material boundlessness, the enormous masses which are scattered over illimitable
space and which circulate in measureless orbits. Many hold that the exhaustion
of the imagination, when we try to expand our diminished pictures of them to
their natural size, is the feeling of the greatness and majesty of the Universe.
This arithmetical amazement which, just on account of their ignorance, is easiest
to awake in infants and ignoramuses, you are quite right in
What moves us so wondrously is not the contrast between small and great, but the essence of greatness, the external law in virtue of which size and number in general first arose. Life alone can work on us in a characteristic way, and not what is captive to weight and in so far dead. The religious sense corresponds not to the masses in the outer world, but to their eternal laws. Rise to the height of seeing how these laws equally embrace all things, the greatest and the smallest, the world systems and the mote which floats in the air, and then say whether you are not conscious of the divine unity and the eternal immutability of the world.
By the most constant repetition, some elements in these laws cannot escape even common perception. There is the order in which all movements return in the heavens and on the earth, the recognized coming and going of all organized forces, the perpetual trustworthiness of the rules of mechanics, and the eternal uniformity in the striving of plastic Nature. But, if it is allowable to make a comparison, this regularity gives a less great and lively religious feeling than the sense of law in all difference. Nor should this appear strange to you.
Suppose you are looking at a fragment of a great work of art. In the separate parts of this fragment you perceive beautiful outlines and situations, complete and fully to be understood without anything besides. Would not the fragment then rather appear a work by itself than a part of a greater work, and would you not judge that, if the whole was wrought throughout in this style, it must lack breadth and boldness and all that suggests a great spirit? If a loftier unity is to be suspected, along with the general tendency to order and harmony, there must be here and there situations not fully explicable. Now the world is a work of which you only see a part. Were this part perfectly ordered and complete in itself, we could be conscious of the greatness of the whole only in a limited way.
You see that the irregularity of the world, so often employed against religion, has really a greater value for religion than the order which is first presented to us in our study of the world and which is visible in a smaller part. The perturbations in the course of the stars point to a higher unity and a bolder combination than those we have already discovered in the regularity of their orbits. The anomalies, the idle sports of plastic Nature, compel us to see that she handles her most definite forms with free, nay capricious arbitrariness, with a phantasy the laws of which only a higher standpoint can show.
Wherefore, in the religion of
the Ancients, only inferior
Furthermore, consider how you
are impressed by the universal opposition of life and death. The sustained,
conquering power, whereby every living thing nourishes itself, forcefully awakes
the dead and enters it on a new course by drawing it into its own life. On every
side we find provision prepared for all living, not lying dead, but itself alive
and everywhere being reproduced. With all this multitude of forms of life, and
the enormous mass of material which each uses in turn, there is enough for all.
Thus each completes his course and succumbs to an inward fate and not to outward
want. What a feeling of endless fulness and superabundant riches! How are we
impressed by a universal paternal care and a childlike confidence that without
anxiety plays away sweet life in a full and abundant world! Consider the lilies
of the field, they sow not, neither do they reap, yet your Heavenly Father feedeth
them, wherefore be not anxious. This happy view, this
Already we know something more of the universally distributed forces, the eternal
laws, whereby individual things, that is things which have their souls in themselves
apart, in a more definite boundary, in what we call bodies, are fashioned and
destroyed. See how attraction and repulsion, everywhere and always active, determine
everything; and how all difference and opposition are again resolved into a
higher unity. Only in appearance, can anything finite boast itself of a separate
existence. See how all likeness is concealed by being distributed in a thousand
different shapes. Nothing simple is to be found, but all is skillfully connected
and interwoven. We would see and exhort all who share in the culture of the
age to observe, how, in this sense, the Spirit of the World reveals itself as
visibly, as completely, in small as in great, and we would not stop with such
a consciousness of it as might be had anywhere and from anything. Even without
all the knowledge which has made our century glorious, the World-Spirit showed
itself to the most ancient sages. Not only did they have, by intuition, the
first pure speaking image of the world, but there was kindled in their hearts
a love for nature and a joy in her, that is for us still lovely and pleasing.
Had this but penetrated to the people, who knows what strong and lofty way religion
might have taken from the beginning? At present it has penetrated to all who
would be considered cultured. Through the gradual operation of the fellowship
between knowledge and feeling, they have arrived at the immediate feeling that
there is nothing even in their own nature that is not a work of this Spirit,
an exhibition and application of these laws. In virtue of this feeling, all
that touches their life becomes truly a world, a unity permeated by the Divinity
that fashions it. It is natural, therefore,
But is it so easy to find original
in nature the love and resistance, the unity and peculiarity, whereby it is
a Whole for us? Just because our sense tends in quite another direction, is
there so little truly religious enjoyment of nature. The sense of the Whole
must be first found, chiefly within our own minds, and from thence transferred
to corporeal nature. Wherefore the spirit is for us not only the seat of religion
but its nearest world.
Let me reveal a secret to you that lies almost hidden
in one of the oldest sources of poetry and religion. As long as the first man
was alone with himself and nature, the Deity ruled over him and addressed him
in various ways, but he did not understand and answered nothing. His paradise
was beautiful, the stars shone down on him from a beautiful heaven, but there
awoke in him no sense for the world. Even from within, this sense was not developed.
Still his mind was stirred with longing for a world, and he collected the animal
creation before him, if perhaps out of them a world might be formed. Then the
Deity recognized that the world would be nothing, as long as man was alone.
He created a helpmate for him. At length the deep-toned harmonies awoke in him,
and the world fashioned itself This is only to be taken as an application of the narrative, not as the author’s
own opinion. I believe it can be shown that the narrative necessarily implies
that neither can man come to a consciousness of God, nor can he form general
ideas, until he has gained a consciousness of the species, of his subordination
as an individual in it and his difference from it. And, it appears as clearly,
that neither the consciousness of the Highest Being, nor the endeavour to order
the world for itself can be quite lost to the soul till the consciousness of
the species has quite vanished. I will here also explain two passages not specially
marked in the text. On page 79 humility, formerly given as a natural
form of religious emotion, is spoken of as if it were opposed to an exalted
feeling of personal existence, and contrition, similarly depicted as
natural and essential to piety, as if it must be changed to joyful self-sufficiency.
Now, I do not consider that a contradiction, for I think that all pious emotions
both exalt and debase. Even in Christianity that spreads itself only by awaking
the emotions that debase, penitence is quenched in the consciousness of the
divine forgiveness. The words “satisfy thyself with my mercy,” express just
that very joyful self-sufficiency here meant. The opposite feeling to humility,
the feeling that in each one the whole of humanity lives and works is just the
consciousness to which the Christian of all men should rise. He should feel
that all believers form a living organic whole, wherein not only is each member,
as Paul puts it, indispensable to all the others. But each one presupposes the
characteristic activity of all the others. Further, when it is said that a man
who has thus combined both forms of emotion needs no mediator any more, but
can himself be a mediator for many, this statement is only to be taken in the
limited meaning indicated by earlier expositions, namely, each man has not in
himself the right key for understanding all men. To almost everyone much is
so alien that he can only acknowledge it when he finds it in a form more akin
to himself or linked to something else that has a special value for him. In
this sense, therefore, those who unite the most alien
elements with those most acknowledged, mediate an understanding. Chiefly in
that feeling which is in contrast to humility, the self-consciousness advances
to such transparency and accuracy that the most distant ceases to appear strange
and ceases to repel. But this feeling will be purest when all human limits are
seen in Him from whom all limitation was banished. Hence there is here no derogation
from the higher mediatorship of the Redeemer.
The history of us all is related in this sacred legend. All is present in vain for those who set themselves alone. In order to receive the life of the World-Spirit, and have religion, man must first, in love, and through love, have found humanity. Wherefore, humanity and religion are closely and indissolubly united. A longing for love, ever satisfied and ever again renewed, forthwith becomes religion. Each man embraces most warmly the person in whom the world mirrors itself for him most clearly and purely; he loves most tenderly the person whom he believes combines all he lacks of a complete manhood. Similarly the pious feelings are most holy that express for him existence in the whole of humanity, whether as blessedness in attaining or of need in coming short.
Wherefore, to find the most glorious elements of religion, let us enter upon the territory where you are in your peculiar, your most loved home. Here your inner life had its birth, here you see the goal of all your striving and doing before your eyes, and here you feel the growth of your powers whereby you are evermore conducted towards it. Humanity itself is for you the true universe, and the rest is only added in so far as it is related to it or forms its surroundings. Even for me, this point of view suffices. Yet it has often pained me that, with all your interest in humanity, and with all your zeal for it, you are always in difficulties with it, and divided from it, and pure love cannot become right prominent in you. Each of you in his own way harasses himself to improve it, and to educate it, and what will not come to an issue you finally cast aside in dejection.
I make bold to say, that this also comes from your lack of religion. You wish to work on humanity, and you select men, individuals for contemplation. They displease you vastly. Among the thousand possible causes, unquestionably that which is finest in itself, and which belongs to the best of you, is that you are, in your own way, far too ethical. You take men singly, and you have an ideal of the individual to which no one corresponds. If you would begin with religion, you would have far more success. If you would only attempt to exchange the objects of your working and the objects of your contemplation! Work on individuals, but rise in contemplation, on the wings of religion, to endless, undivided humanity. Seek this humanity in each individual; regard the nature of every person as one revelation of it, and of all that now oppresses you no trace would remain. I at least boast myself of a moral disposition, I know how to value human excellence, and commonness could almost overwhelm me with the unpleasant feeling of contempt, were it not that religion gives me a great and glorious view of all.
Just consider what a consummate
artist the Genius of humanity is. It can make nothing that has not a nature
of its own. As soon as it assays its brush, or sharpens its pencil, there appear
living and significant features. It imagines and fashions countless forms. Millions
wear the costume of the time, and are faithful pictures of its necessities and
its tastes. In others there are memories of the past, or presentiments of a
distant future. Some are most lofty and striking types of the fairest and divinest,
others resemble grotesques produced in the most original and fleeting mood of
a master. The common view, based on a misunderstanding of the sacred words that
there are vessels of honour and vessels of dishonour, is not pious. Only by
comparing details could such an opposition appear to you. You must not contemplate
anything alone, you must rather rejoice in everything in its own place. All
that we can be
Being occupied in the outer court of morality, and there only with elements, caring for details and satisfied with them, and despising high religion, you slander its magnificence by your demands for a lamentable dismemberment. This is sufficient to indicate your need, may you now recognize it and satisfy it! Make search among all the circumstances in which the heavenly order portrays itself, and perhaps some favourite passage of history may be a divine sign to you, whereby you may more easily recognize how real the insignificant is, and how important for the Whole. Then what you regard with coldness or contempt may draw you with love. Or, allow yourselves to be pleased with an old, rejected conception; seek out among the holy men, in whom humanity is pre-eminently revealed, someone to be a mediator between your limited way of thinking, and the eternal laws of the world. And when you have found one who, in a way you understand, by imparting himself, strengthens the weak, and gives life to the dead, traverse humanity, and let all that has hitherto seemed useless and wretched be illuminated by the reflection of this new light.
What would the uniform repetition
of even a highest ideal be? Mankind, time and circumstances excepted, would
be
This oft-bewailed superfluity of the commonest forms of humanity, ever returning unchanged in a thousand copies, does not disturb the pious mind. The Eternal Mind commands that the forms in which individuality is most difficult to discern, should stand closest together, and even the finite mind can see the reason why. And each has something of its own, and no two are identical. In every life there is some moment, like the coruscation of baser metals, when, by the approach of something higher, or by some electric shock, it surpasses itself and stands on the highest pinnacle of its possibilities. For this moment it was created, in this moment it fulfilled its purpose, and, after this moment its exhausted vitality again subsides. To call forth this moment in ordinary souls and to contemplate them during it is a pleasure to be envied, and to those who have not known it, the whole existence of them must appear superfluous and despicable.
Yet the existence of such an
ordinary soul has a double meaning in respect of the Whole. If I arrest in thought
Do I, on the other hand, observe the eternal wheels of humanity in motion, this vast interaction, nothing moved by itself, nothing moving only itself, I am greatly quieted about the other side of your complaint, that reason and soul, sensuality and morality, understanding and blind force appear in such separate masses. Why do you see things singly that are not single and do not work by themselves? The reason of one and the disposition of another have as strong a mutual influence as if they were in one and the same subject. The morality that belongs to this sensuality is set apart from it, and do you suppose its dominion is, on that account, limited? Would the sensuality be better ruled if the morality, without being specially concentrated anywhere, were divided out in small, scarce noticeable portions to each individual? The blind power which is allotted to the great mass, is not, in its operation on the Whole, abandoned to a rude peradventure, but the understanding, concentrated at other points, leads it, without being aware of the fact, and it follows, in invisible bands, quite as unconsciously. The outlines of personality which appear to you so definite, from my standpoint, dissolve. The magic circle of prevailing opinions and infectious feelings surrounds all and plays around all like an atmosphere filled with dissolving and magnetic forces. By the most vital diffusion it smelts all things, even the most distant, into a single activity, the issue of which is to impel those who are really in possession of light and truth to activity, so that some are deeply influenced, and others have at least a superficial illumination, brilliant and deceptive.
In this connection of everything
with the sphere to which it belongs and in which it has significance all is
good and divine, and a fulness of joy and peace is the feeling of those who
allow all things to work upon them in this great connection. But they will also
feel how contemplation isolates single things in single moments. The common
impulse of men, who know nothing of this dependence, is to seize and retain
this and that, to hedge in their Ego and to
From these wanderings through
the whole territory of humanity, pious feeling returns, quickened and educated,
into its own Ego, and there finds all the influences that had streamed upon
it from the most distant regions. If, on returning with the consecration of
intercourse with the world still fresh upon us, we give heed how it is with
us in this feeling, we become conscious that our Ego vanishes, not only into
smallness and insignificance, but into one-sidedness, insufficiency and nothingness.
What lies nearer to mortal man than unaffected humility? And when gradually
our feeling becomes quick and alert to what there is in the path of humanity
that sustains and forwards, and what, on the contrary, must sooner or later
be conquered and destroyed, if it is not recast and transformed, and when from
this law we regard all doings in the world, what is more natural than deep contrition
for all in us that is hostile to human nature, the submissive desire to conciliate
the Deity, and the most earnest longing to put ourselves and all that belongs
to us in safety in that sacred region where alone there is security against
death and destruction? Advancing further, we perceive how the Whole only becomes
clear to us, how we only reach intuition of it and unity with it in fellowship
with others, by the influence of those who have long been freed from dependence
on their own fleeting being, and from the endeavour to expand and isolate it.
How, then, can we avoid a feeling of special
Not by examples which are rare, but by passing through these and similar feelings you discover in yourselves the outlines of the fairest and the basest, the noblest and the most despicable. You not only find at times all the manifold degrees of human powers within you, but when self-love is quite submerged in sympathy, all the countless mixture of human tendencies that you have ever seen in the characters of others appears simply arrested impulses of your own life. There are moments when, despite all distinction of sex, culture, or environment, you think, feel, and act as if you were really this or that person. In your own order, you have actually passed through all those different forms. You are a compendium of humanity. In a certain sense your single nature embraces all human nature. Your Ego, being multiplied and more clearly outlined is in all its smallest and swiftest changes immortalized in the manifestations of human nature. As soon as this is seen, you can love yourselves with a pure and blameless love. Humility, that never forsakes you, has its counterpart in the feeling that the whole of humanity lives and works in you. Even contrition is sweetened to joyful self-sufficiency. This is the completion of religion on this side. It works its way back to the heart, and there finds the Infinite. The man in whom this is accomplished, is no more in need of a mediator for any sort of intuition of humanity. Rather he is himself a mediator for many.
But there is not merely the swinging of feeling between
the world and the individual, in the present moment. Except as something going
on, we cannot comprehend what affects us, and we cannot comprehend ourselves,
except as thus progressively affected. Wherefore, as feeling
What is finest and tenderest
in history, moreover, cannot be communicated scientifically, but can only be
comprehended in the feeling of a religious disposition. The religious mind recognizes
the transmigration of spirits and souls, which to others is but graceful fiction,
as, in more than one sense, a wonderful arrangement of the Universe for comparing
the different periods of humanity according to a sure standard. After a long
period, during which nature could produce nothing similar, some distinguished
individual almost entirely the same returns. But only the seers recognize him,
and it is they who should judge by his works the signs of different times. A
movement of humanity returns exactly like something of which some distant foretime
has left you an image, and you are to recognize from the various causes which
have now produced it, the course of development and the formula of its law.
The genius of some human endowment awakes as from slumber. Here and there rising
and falling, it has already finished its course. Now it appears in a new life
in another place and under different circumstances. Its quicker increase, its
deeper working, its fairer stronger form, indicate how much the climate of humanity
has improved, and how much fitter the soil has grown to nourish nobler plants.
Peoples and generations of mortals appear as all alike necessary for the completeness
of history,
Penetrate further and compare
this partial striving of the individual, the fruit of opposing views, with the
quiet uniform course of the Whole. You will see how the high World-Spirit smilingly
marches past all that furiously opposes him. You will see how dread Nemesis,
never wearied, follows his steps, meting out punishment to the haughty who resist
the gods. Even the stoutest and choicest who have with steadfastness, worthy perhaps of praise and wonder, refused
to bow before the gentle breath of the great Spirit, it mows down with iron
hand. Would you comprehend the proper
Some prominent emotions of religion
connected with nature and humanity, I have now sketched in vague outline. I
have brought you to the limits of your horizon. Here is the end and summit of
religion for all to whom humanity is the whole world. But consider that in your
feeling there is something that despises these bounds, something in virtue of
which you cannot stay where you are. Beyond this point only infinity is to be
looked into. I will not speak of the presentiments which define themselves and
become thoughts which might by subtilty be established, that humanity, being
capable of motion and cultivation, being not only differently manifested in
the individual, but here and there really being different, cannot possibly be
the highest, the sole manifestation of the unity of spirit and matter. As the
individual is only one form of humanity, so humanity may be only one form of
this unity. Beside it many other similar forms may exist, bounding it and standing
over against it. But in our own feeling we all find something similar. The dependence
of our earth, and therefore of the highest unity it has produced, upon other
worlds, has been impressed upon us both by nature and by education. Hence this
ever active
This is sufficient reference to a thing so immeasurably far from you. More would be incomprehensible. Had you only the religion that you could have! Were you but conscious of what you already have! Were you to consider the few religious opinions and feelings that I have so slightly sketched, you would be very far from finding them all strange to you. Something of the same kind you must have had in your thoughts before. But I do not know whether to lack religion quite, or not to understand it, is the greater misfortune. In the latter case also it fails of its purpose, and you impose upon yourselves in addition.
Two things I would specially blame in you. Some things you select and stamp as exclusively religious, other things you withdraw from religion as exclusively moral. Both you apparently do on the same ground. Religion with you is the retribution which alights on all who resist the Spirit of the Whole, it is the hatred everywhere active against haughtiness and audacity, the steady advance of all human things to one goal. You are conscious of the feeling that points to this unfailing progress. After it has been purified from all abuses, you would willingly see it sustained and extended. But you will then have it that this is exclusively religion, and you would exclude other feelings that take their rise from the same operation of the mind in exactly the same way.
How have you come to this torn
off fragment? I will tell you. You do not regard it as religion but as an echo
of moral action, and you simply wish to foist the name upon it, in order to
give religion the last blow. What we have
With all those feelings, love,
humility, joy, and the others that I pictured as the undulation of the mind
between the two points of which the world is one, and your Ego the other, you
deal in another way. The ancients knew what was right. They called them all
piety. For them those feelings were an essential part of religion, the noblest
part. You also recognize them, but you try to persuade yourselves that they
are an essential section of your moral action. You would justify these sentiments
on moral
That it alone removes man from
one-sidedness and narrowness I have already indicated. Now I am in a position
to be more definite. In all activity and working, be it moral or artistic, man
must strive for mastery. But when man becomes quite absorbed, all mastery limits
and chills, and makes one-sided and hard. The mind is directed chiefly to one
point, and this one point cannot satisfy it. Can man, by advancing from one
narrow work to another, really use his whole power? Will not the larger part
be unused, and
To resist this evil would you have those who are too great for one object of human endeavour, unite them all—art, science, life, and any others you may know of? This would simply be your old desire to have humanity complete everywhere, your ever recurring love of uniformity. But is it possible? Those objects, as soon as they are attended to separately, all alike strive to rouse and dominate the mind. Each tendency is directed to a work that should be completed, it has an ideal to be copied, a totality to be embraced. This rivalry of several objects of endeavour can only end by one expelling the others. Nay, even within this one sphere, the more eminent a mastery a man would attain, the more he must restrict himself. But if this preeminence entirely occupy him, and if he lives only to attain it, how shall he duly participate in the world, and how shall his life become a whole? Hence most virtuosos are one-sided and defective, or at least, outside of their own sphere, they sink into an inferior kind of life.
The only remedy is for each man, while he is definitely active in some one department, to allow himself, without definite activity, to be affected by the Infinite. In every species of religious feeling he will then become conscious of all that lies beyond the department which he directly cultivates. The Infinite is near to everyone, for whatever be the object you have chosen for your deliberate technical working, it does not demand much thought to advance from it to find the Universe. In it you discover the rest as precept, or inspiration or revelation. The only way of acquiring what lies outside the direction of the mind we have selected, is to enjoy and comprehend it thus as a whole, not by will as art, but by instinct for the Universe as religion.
Even in the religious form these objects again fall into rivalry. This result of human imperfection causes religion to appear dismembered. Religion takes the form of some peculiar receptivity and taste for art, philosophy or morality, and is consequently often mistaken. Oftener, I say, it appears thus than freed from all participation in one-sidedness than completed, all-embracing. Yet this complete form of religion remains the highest, and it is only by it, that, with satisfactory result, man sets alongside of the finite that he specially concentrates on, an Infinite; alongside of the contracting endeavour for something definite and complete, expansive soaring in the Whole and the Inexhaustible. In this way he restores the balance and harmony of his nature, which would be lost for ever, if, without at the same time having religion, he abandon himself to one object, were it the most beautiful, most splendid. A man’s special calling is the melody of his life, and it remains a simple, meagre series of notes unless religion, with its endlessly rich variety, accompany it with all notes, and raise the simple song to a full-voiced, glorious harmony.
If then this, that I trust I
have indicated clearly enough for you all, is really the nature of religion,
I have already answered the questions, Whence do those dogmas and doctrines
come that many consider the essence of religion? Where do they properly belong?
And how do they stand related to what is essential in religion? They are all
the result of that contemplation of feeling, of that reflection and comparison,
of which we have already spoken. The conceptions that underlie these propositions
are, like your conceptions from experience, nothing but general expressions
for definite feelings. They are not necessary for religion itself, scarcely
even for communicating religion, but reflection requires and creates them. Miracle,
inspiration, revelation, supernatural intimations, much piety can be had without
the need of any one of these conceptions. But when feeling is made the subject
of reflection and comparison they are absolutely
The strife about what event is properly a miracle, and wherein its character properly consists, how much revelation there may be and how far and for what reasons man may properly believe in it, and the manifest endeavour to deny and set aside as much as can be done with decency and consideration, in the foolish notion that philosophy and reason are served thereby, is one of the childish operations of the metaphysicians and moralists in religion. They confuse all points of view and bring religion into discredit, as if it trespassed on the universal validity of scientific and physical conclusions. Pray do not be misled, to the detriment of religion, by their sophistical disputations, nor even by their hypocritical mystery about what they would only too willingly publish. Religion, however loudly it may demand back all those well abused conceptions, leaves your physics untouched, and please God, also your psychology.
What is a miracle? What we call
miracle is everywhere else called sign, indication. Our name, which means a
wonder, refers purely to the mental condition of the observer. It is only in
so far appropriate that a sign, especially when it is nothing besides, must
be fitted to call attention to itself and to the power in it that gives it significance.
Every finite thing, however, is a sign of the Infinite, and so these various
expressions declare the immediate relation of a phenomenon to the Infinite and
the Whole. But does that involve that every event should not have quite as immediate
a relation to the finite and to nature? Miracle is simply the religious name
for event. Every event, even the most natural and usual, becomes a miracle,
as soon as the religious view of it can be the dominant. To me all is miracle.
In your sense the inexplicable and strange alone is miracle, in mine it is no
miracle. The more religious you are, the more miracle would you see everywhere.
All disputing
What is revelation? Every original and new communication of the Universe to man is a revelation, as, for example, every such moment of conscious insight as I have just referred to. Every intuition and every original feeling proceeds from revelation. As revelation lies beyond consciousness, demonstration is not possible, yet we are not merely to assume it generally, but each one knows best himself what is repeated and learned elsewhere, and what is original and new. If nothing original has yet been generated in you, when it does come it will be a revelation for you also, and I counsel you to weigh it well.
What is inspiration? It is simply the general expression for the feeling of true morality and freedom. But do not mistake me. It is not that marvellous and much-praised morality and freedom that accompany and embellish actions with deliberations. It is that action which springs from the heart of man, despite of, or at least, regardless of, all external occasion. In the same measure in which this action is freed from all earthly entanglement, it is felt as divine and referred to God.
What is prophecy? Every religious
anticipation of the other half of a religious event, one half being given, is
prophecy. It was very religious of the ancient Hebrews to measure the divineness
of a prophet, neither by the difficulty of predicting, nor by the greatness
of the subject, but, quite simply, by the issue, for we cannot know from one
What is operation of grace?
You see that all these ideas, in so far as religion requires, or can adopt ideas, are the first and the most essential. They indicate in the most characteristic manner a man’s consciousness of his religion, because they indicate just what necessarily and universally must be in it. The man who does not see miracles of his own from the standpoint from which he contemplates the world, the man in whose heart no revelation of his own arises, when his soul longs to draw in the beauty of the world, and to be permeated by its spirit; the man who does not, in supreme moments, feel, with the most lively assurance, that a divine spirit urges him, and that he speaks and acts from holy inspiration, has no religion. The religious man must, at least, be conscious of his feelings as the immediate product of the Universe; for less would mean nothing. He must recognize something individual in them, something that cannot be imitated, something that guarantees the purity of their origin from his own heart. To be assured of this possession is the true belief.
Belief, on the contrary, usually
so called, which is to accept what another has said or done, or to wish to think
and feel as another has thought and felt, is a hard and base service. So far
is it from being the highest in religion, as is asserted, that it must be rejected
by all who would force their way into the sanctuary of religion. To wish to
have and
Every man, a few choice souls excepted, does, to be sure, require a guide to lead and stimulate, to wake his religious sense from its first slumber, and to give it its first direction. But this you accord to all powers and functions of the human soul, and why not to this one? For your satisfaction, be it said, that here, if anywhere, this tutelage is only a passing state. Hereafter, shall each man see with his own eyes, and shall produce some contribution to the treasures of religion; otherwise, he deserves no place in its kingdom, and receives none. You are right in despising the wretched echoes who derive their religion entirely from another, or depend on a dead writing, swearing by it and proving out of it.
Every sacred writing is in itself a glorious production, a speaking monument from the heroic time of religion, but, through servile reverence, it would become merely a mausoleum, a monument that a great spirit once was there, but is now no more. Did this spirit still live and work, he would look with love, and with a feeling of equality upon his work which yet could only be a weaker impress of himself. Not every person has religion who believes in a sacred writing, but only the man who has a lively and immediate understanding of it, and who, therefore, so far as he himself is concerned, could most easily do without it.
Your very contempt for the poverty
stricken and powerless venerators of religion, in whom, from lack of nourishment,
religion died before ever it came to the birth, convinces me that you have a
talent for religion. The same
I have tried, as best I could, therefore, to show you what religion really is. Have you found anything therein unworthy of you, nay, of the highest human culture? Must you not rather long all the more for that universal union with the world which is only possible through feeling, the more you are separated and isolated by definite culture and individuality? Have you not often felt this holy longing, as something unknown? Become conscious of the call of your deepest nature and follow it, I conjure you. Banish the false shame of a century which should not determine you but should be made and determined by you. Return to what lies so near to you, yes, even to you, the violent separation from which cannot fail to destroy the most beautiful part of your nature.
It appears to me, however, that many among you do not believe that I can here mean to end my present business. How can I have spoken thoroughly of the nature of religion, seeing I have not treated at all of immortality, and of God only a little in passing? Is it not incumbent upon me, most of all, to speak of these two things and to represent to you how unhappy you would be without belief in them? For are not these two things, for most pious people, the very poles and first articles of religion?
But I am not of your opinion.
First of all, I do not believe I have said nothing about immortality and so
little about God. Both, I believe, are in all and in everything that I have
adduced as an element of religion. Had I not
In the second place, just as little do I consider that I have the right to hold the conceptions and doctrines of God and of immortality, as they are usually understood, to be the principal things in religion. Only what in either is feeling and immediate consciousness, can belong to religion. God and immortality, however, as they are found in such doctrines, are ideas. How many among you—possibly most of you—are firmly convinced of one or other or both of those doctrines, without being on that account pious or having religion. As ideas they can have no greater value in religion than ideas generally.
But that you may not think I am afraid to speak a straightforward word on this subject, because it would be dangerous to speak, till some definition of God and existence that has stood its trial, has been brought to light and has been accepted in the German Empire as good and valid; or lest you should, on the other hand, perhaps, believe that I am playing on you a pious fraud and wish, in order to be all things to all men, with seeming indifference to make light of what must be of far greater importance to me than I will confess—lest you should think these things, I shall gladly be questioned and will endeavour to make clear to you that, according to my best conviction, it really is, as I have just now maintained.
Remember in the first place
that any feeling is not an emotion of piety because in it a single object as
such affects as, but only in so far as in it and along with it, it affects us
as revelation of God. It is, therefore, not an individual or finite thing, but
God, in whom alone the particular thing is one and all, that enters our life.
Nor do we stand over against the World and in it at the same time by any one
faculty, but by our whole being. The divine in us, therefore, is immediately
affected and
If you will not admit that this is to have God, and to be conscious of Him, I can neither teach nor direct you farther. How much you may know I do not judge, for it does not at present concern me, but in respect of feeling and sentiment, you would be for me godless. Science, it is true, is extolled as giving an immediate knowledge about God, that is the source of all other knowledge; only we are not now speaking of science, but of religion. This way of knowing about God which most praise and which I also am to laud, is neither the idea of God as the undivided unity and source of all, that is placed by you at the head of all knowledge; nor is it the feeling of God in the heart, of which we boast ourselves. It lags far behind the demands of science, and is for piety something quite subordinate. It is an idea compounded from characteristics, from what are called attributes of God. These attributes correspond to the different ways in which the unity of the individual and the Whole, expresses itself in feeling. Hence I can only say of this idea, what I have said of ideas generally, in reference to religion, that there can be much piety without it, and that it is first formed when piety is made an object of contemplation.
Yet this idea of God, as it
is usually conceived, is different
Nothing seems to me less fitting than for the adherents of the former view to charge with godlessness those who, in dread of this anthropomorphism, take refuge in the other, or for the adherents of this latter view to make the humanness of the idea of God a ground for charging the adherents of the former with idolatry, or for declaring their piety void.
It matters not what conceptions
a man adheres to, he can still be pious. His piety, the divine in his feeling,
may be better than his conception, and his desire to place the essence of piety
in conception, only makes him misunderstand himself. Consider how narrow is
the presentation of God in the one conception, and how dead and rigid in the
other. Neither corresponds to its object, and thus cannot be a proof of piety,
except in so far as it rests on something in the mind, of which it has come
far short. Rightly understood, both present, at least, one element of feeling,
but, without feeling, neither is of any value. Many believe in and accept a
God presented in conception, and yet are nothing less than pious,
As long as man’s whole relation to the world has not arrived at clearness, this feeling is but a vague instinct, the world can appear to him nothing but a confused unity. Nothing of its complexity is definitely distinguishable. It is to him a chaos, uniform in its confusion, without division, order, or law. Apart from what most immediately concerns the subsistence of man, he distinguishes nothing as individual except by arbitrarily cutting it off in time and space. Here you will find but few traces of any conceptions, and you will scarcely discern to which side they incline. You will not set much value on the difference, whether a blind fate, only to be indicated by magic rites, exhibits the character of the Whole, or a being, alive indeed, but without definite characteristics, an idol, a fetich, one, or, if many, only distinguishable by the arbitrarily appointed limits of their sphere.
As we advance, the feeling becomes
more conscious. Circumstances display themselves in their complexity and definiteness.
The multiplicity of the heterogeneous elements and powers, by whose constant
and determined strife, phenomena are determined, becomes more prominent in man’s
consciousness of the world. In the same degree the result of the contemplation
of this feeling changes. The opposite forms of the idea stand more distinctly
apart. Blind fate changes into a higher necessity, in which, though unattainable
and unsearchable, reason and connection rest. Similarly, the idea of a personal
God becomes higher, but at the same time divides and multiplies, each power
and element becomes animate, and gods arise in endless number. They are now
distinguishable by means of the different objects of their activity, and different
inclinations and dispositions. A stronger, fairer life of the Universe in feeling
you must acknowledge is here exhibited. It is most beautiful when this new won
complexity and this innate highest unity are most intimately bound together
in feeling, as for example, among the Greeks, whom you so justly
Let us now mount higher where opposing elements are again united, where existence, by exhibiting itself as totality, as unity in variety, as system, first deserves its name. Is not the man who perceives existence both as one and as all, who stands over against the Whole, and yet is one with it in feeling, to be accounted happier in his religion, let his feeling mirror itself in idea as it may? There as elsewhere then, the manner in which the Deity is present to man in feeling, is decisive of the worth of his religion, not the manner, always inadequate, in which it is copied in idea. Suppose there is someone arrived at this stage, who rejects the idea of a personal God. I will not decide on the justice of the names you are accustomed to apply to him, whether Pantheist or Spinozist. This rejection of the idea of a personal Deity does not decide against the presence of the Deity in his feeling. The ground of such a rejection might be a humble consciousness of the limitation of personal existence, and particularly of personality joined to consciousness. He might stand as high above a worshipper of the twelve gods whom you would rightly name after Lucretius, as a pious person at that stage would be above an idolater.
But we have here the old confusion, the unmistakable
sign of defective culture. Those who are at the same stage, only not at the
same point, are most strongly repudiated. The proper standard of religiousness,
that which announces the stage to which a man has attained, is his sense for
the Deity. But to which idea he will attach himself depends purely on what he
requires it for, and
You will not, I trust, consider it blasphemy or incongruity that such a matter should depend on the direction of the imagination. By imagination I do not mean anything subordinate or confused, but the highest and most original faculty in man. All else in the human mind is simply reflection upon it, and is therefore dependent on it. Imagination in this sense is the free generation of thoughts, whereby you come to a conception of the world; such a conception you cannot receive from without, nor compound from inferences. From this conception you are then impressed with the feeling of omnipotence. The subsequent translation into thought depends on whether one is willing in the consciousness of his own weakness to be lost in the mysterious obscurity, or whether, first of all, seeking definiteness of thought, he cannot think of anything except under the one form given to us, that of consciousness or self-consciousness. Recoil from the obscurity of indefinite thought is the one tendency of the imagination, recoil from the appearance of contradiction in transferring the forms of the finite to the Infinite is the other.
Now cannot the same inwardness of religion be combined with both? Would not a closer consideration show that the two ways of conceiving are not very wide apart? But the pantheistic idea is not to be thought of as death, and no effort is to be spared to surpass in thought the limits of the personal idea.
So much I have thought it necessary
to say, not so much in explanation of my own position, as to prevent you from
thinking that all are despisers of religion who will not accept the personality
of the Highest Being as it is usually set forth. And I am quite convinced that
what has been said will not make the idea of the personality of God more uncertain
for anyone who truly has it; nor will anyone more easily rid himself of the
almost absolute necessity to
The number who would have something
from this God, that is alien to piety, is only too great. He is to give an outward
guarantee of their blessedness and incite them to morality. They want to have
it before their eyes. They would not have God working on man by freedom, but
in the only way in which one free being can work on another, by necessity, by
making himself known either by pain or by pleasure. But this cannot incite us
to morality. Every external incitement is alien to morality, whether it be hope
or fear. To follow it where it concerns morality is unfree, therefore unmoral.
But the Highest Being, particularly when he is thought of as free, cannot wish
to make freedom itself not free, and morality not moral.
This now brings me to the second
point, to immortality. I cannot conceal that in the usual manner of treating
this subject there is still more that seems to me inconsistent with the nature
of piety. I believe I have just shown you in what way each one bears in himself
an unchangeable and
This then is my view of these subjects. The usual conception of God as one single being outside of the world and behind the world is not the beginning and the end of religion. It is only one manner of expressing God, seldom entirely pure and always inadequate. Such an idea may be formed from mixed motives, from the need for such a being to console and help, and such a God may be believed in without piety, at least in my sense, and I think in the true and right sense. If, however, this idea is formed, not arbitrarily, but somehow by the necessity of a man’s way of thinking, if he needs it for the security of his piety, the imperfections of his idea will not cumber him nor contaminate his piety. Yet the true nature of religion is neither this idea nor any other, but immediate consciousness of the Deity as He is found in ourselves and in the world. Similarly the goal and the character of the religious life is not the immortality desired and believed in by many—or what their craving to be too wise about it would suggest—pretended to be believed in by many. It is not the immortality that is outside of time, behind it, or rather after it, and which still is in time. It is the immortality which we can now have in this temporal life; it is the problem in the solution of which we are for ever to be engaged. In the midst of finitude to be one with the Infinite and in every moment to be eternal is the immortality of religion.
As I myself have willingly confessed, the endeavour to make proselytes from unbelievers is deep rooted in the character of religion. Yet that is not what now urges me to speak to you of the cultivation of man for this noble capacity. For this cultivation we believers know of only one means—the free expression and communication of religion. When religion moves in a man with all its native force, when it carries every faculty of his spirit imperiously along in the stream of its impulse, we expect it to penetrate into the hearts of all who live and breathe within its influence. Every corresponding element being stirred by this life-giving power, they should attain a consciousness of their existence, and the attentive ear should be gladdened by an answering note of kindred sound. Where the pious person fails to awake a life like his by the natural expression of his own life, he will despise nobly every strange charm, every exercise of force in the calm conviction that the time has not yet come for anything congenial to appear.
The unsuccessful issue is not
new to any of us. How often have I struck up the music of my religion, seeking
to move the bystanders! Beginning with single soft notes, I have soon been swept
on by youthful impetuosity to the fullest harmony of the religious feelings.
But nothing stirred, nothing answered in the hearers. I have entrusted these
words to a larger and more versatile
Everyone of us misses in himself not a little that belongs to a complete humanity, and many lack much. What wonder, then, if the number in whom religion refuses to develope should be great! Necessarily it must be great, else how could we come to see it in—if I might so say—its incarnate, historical existence, or discern the bounds it sets on all sides to the other capacities of man, or how by them again it is in manifold ways bounded. Or how should we know how far man can anywhere succeed without it, and where it sustains him and forwards him; or guess that, without his knowledge, it is busy in him.
But especially in these times
of universal confusion and upheaval, it is natural that its slumbering spark
should not glow up in many, however lovingly or patiently we tend it, and that,
even in persons in whom under happier circumstances it would have broken through
all obstacles, it is not brought to life. In all human things nothing remains
unshaken. Every man must continually face the possibility of having to abandon
the very belief that determines his place in the world and binds him to the
earthly order of things. And he may find no other, but may sink in the general
whirlpool. One class shun no concentration of their own powers and shout also
towards every side for help, that they may hold fast what they take
Even without leaving his place, every man is so mightily affected by the vehement shaking of all things that, in the universal giddiness, he must be glad to fix his eye steadily enough on any one object, to be able to keep to it and convince himself gradually that something still stands. In such a state of things it would be foolish to expect that many could be fit to cultivate and retain religious feelings which prosper best in quiet. In the midst of this ferment, indeed, the aspect of the moral world is more majestic and noble than ever, and at moments there are hints of more significant traits than ever before in the centuries. Yet who can rescue himself from the universal turmoil? Who can escape the power of narrower interests? Who has calm enough to stand still and steadfastness enough for undisturbed contemplation?
But suppose the happiest times
and suppose the best will not only to arouse by communication the capacity for
religion where it does exist, but, by every possible way, to ingraft and to
impart it. Where, then, is there such a way? All that the activity and art of
one man can do for another is to communicate conceptions to be the basis of
thoughts, and so far to associate them with his own ideas that they may be remembered
at fitting times. But no one can arrive at the point of making others think
what thoughts he will. There is a contrariety that cannot be eliminated from
words, and much less can you get beyond this means and freely produce what inner
activity you will. In short, on the mechanism of the spirit everyone
And such is religion. In the spirit it inhabits it is uninterruptedly active and strong, making everything an object for itself and turning every thought and action into a theme for its heavenly phantasy. Like everything else, then, that should be ever present, ever active in the human soul, it lies far beyond the domain of teaching and imparting. Instruction in religion, meaning that piety itself is teachable, is absurd and unmeaning. Our opinions and doctrines we can indeed communicate, if we have words and our hearers have the comprehending, imagining power of the understanding. But we know very well that those things are only the shadows of our religious emotions, and if our pupils do not share our emotions, even though they do understand the thought, they have no possession that can truly repay their toil. This retreat into oneself, there to perceive oneself, cannot be taught. Even the most inspired person who can see, it matters not before what object he finds himself, the original light of the Universe, cannot by the word of instruction transfer this power and dexterity to another.
There is, indeed, an imitative
talent which in some perhaps we can so far arouse as to make it easy for them,
when sacred feelings are represented in powerful tones, to produce in themselves
somewhat similar emotions. But does that touch their deepest nature? Is it,
in the true sense of the word, religion? If you would compare the
Of course there is in religion
a mastership and a discipleship. But this attachment is no blind imitation.
It is not the master that makes disciples, but he is their master because of
their choice.
I do not, therefore, aim at training either you or others to religion. Nor would I teach you by resolve or rule to train yourselves. I would not leave the sphere of religion—as by doing so I would—but a little longer I would tarry with you within. The Universe itself trains its own observers and admirers, and how that comes to pass we shall now see, as far as it can be seen.
You know how each element of humanity discloses itself by the place it maintains against the others. By this universal strife everything in every man attains a determinate form and size. Now this strife is only sustained by the fellowship of the single elements, by the movement of the Whole. Hence every man and every thing in every man is a work of the Whole. This is the only way in which the pious sense can conceive man. Now I wish to return to the religious limitation of our contemporaries which you praise and I bewail. I wish to regard it in this aspect and to make it clear why we are thus and not otherwise, and what must happen if our limits are to be widened. Would that I could at the same time make you conscious that you also by your being and doing are tools of the Universe, and that your deed, towards quite other things directed, has an influence upon the present state of religion.
Man is born with the religious
capacity as with every other. If only his sense for the profoundest depths of
his own nature is not crushed out, if only all fellowship between himself and
the Primal Source is not quite shut off, religion would, after its own fashion,
infallibly be developed. But in our time, alas! that is exactly what, in very
large measure, does happen. With pain I see daily how the rage for calculating
and explaining suppresses the sense. I see how all things unite to bind man
to the finite, and to a very small portion of the finite,
Who hinders the prosperity of religion? Not you, not the doubters and scoffers. Even though you were all of one mind to have no religion, you would not disturb Nature in her purpose of producing piety from the depths of the soul, for your influence could only later find prepared soil. Nor, as is supposed, do the immoral most hinder the prosperity of religion, for it is quite a different power to which their endeavours are opposed. But the discreet and practical men of to-day are, in the present state of the world, the foes of religion, and their great preponderance is the cause why it plays such a poor and insignificant rôle, for from tender childhood they maltreat man, crushing out his higher aspirations.
With great reverence I regard the longing of young minds for the marvellous and supernatural. Joyfully taking in the motley show of things, they seek at the same time something else to set over against it. They search everywhere for something surpassing the accustomed phenomena and the light play of life. However many earthly objects are presented for their knowing, there seems still another sense unnourished. That is the first stirrings of religion. A secret, inexplicable presentiment urges them past the riches of this world. Every trace of another is welcome to them, and they delight themselves in fictions of unearthly beings. All that it is most evident to them cannot be here, they embrace with that strong and jealous love devoted to objects, the right to which is strongly felt, but cannot be established. True, it is a delusion to seek the Infinite immediately outside of the finite, but is it not natural in those who know but the surface of even the finite and sensuous? Is it not the delusion of whole peoples and whole schools of wisdom?
Were there but guardians of
religion among those who care for the young, how easily could this natural error
be
It were even better if life were left quietly to take its own course. Let it be supposed that the taste for grotesque figures is as natural to the young imagination in religion as in art, and let it be richly satisfied. Have no anxiety when the earnest and sacred mythology, that is considered the very essence of religion, is immediately united with the careless games of childhood. Suppose that the Heavenly Father, the Saviour, the angels are but another kind of fairies and sylphs. In many, perhaps, the foundation may be laid for an insufficient and dead letter. While the images grow pale, the word, as the empty frame in which they have been fixed, may remain hanging. But man, thus treated, would be more left to himself, and a right-thinking, uncorrupted soul that knew how to keep himself free from the titillation of scraping and scheming, would more easily find, in due time, the natural issue from this labyrinth.
Now, on the contrary, that tendency is, from the beginning, forcibly suppressed. Everything mysterious and marvellous is proscribed. Imagination is not to be filled with airy images! It is just as easy to store the memory with real objects and to be preparing for life! Poor young souls, desiring quite other fare, are wearied with moral tales and have to learn how beautiful and necessary it is to be genteel and discreet. The current conceptions of things that they would of themselves have encountered, soon enough, are impressed upon them, as if it were an urgent business that could never be too soon accomplished. Without regard to their real want, there is given them that of which far too soon there will be too much.
In proportion as man must busy
himself in a narrow way with a single object, to rescue the universality
of the sense an impulse awakes in everyone to allow the dominating
But most of all, men are to be taught to analyze and explain. By this explaining they are completely cheated of their sense, for, as it is conducted, it is absolutely opposed to any perceptive sense. Sense of its own accord seeks objects for itself, it advances to meet them and it offers to embrace them. It communicates something to them which distinguishes them as its possession, its work.
It will find and be found. But this explaining knows nothing of this living acquisition, of this illuminating truth, of the true spirit of discovery in childlike intuition. But from first to last, objects are to be transcribed accurately in thought as something simply given. They are, God be thanked, for all men ever the same, and who knows how long already they have been docketed in good order with all their qualities defined. Take them, then, only as life brings them, and understand that and nothing more. But to seek for yourselves and to wish to have living intercourse with things is eccentric and high-flown. It is a vain endeavour, availing nothing in human life, where things are only to be seen and handled as they have already presented themselves.
Fruitful in human life this
endeavour is not, except that, without it, an active life, resting on true inward
culture, is not to be found. The sense strives to comprehend the undivided impress
of something whole; it will perceive what
But all must be used for some excellent purpose, wherefore they dissever and anatomize. This is how they deal with what exists chiefly for the highest satisfaction of the sense, with what, in their despite, is a whole in itself, I mean with all that is art in nature and in the works of man. Before it can operate they annihilate it by explaining it in detail. Having first by decomposition robbed it of its character as art, they would teach and impress this or that lesson from the fragments.
You must grant that this is the practice of our people of understanding, and you must confess that a superabundance of sense is necessary if anything is to escape this hostile treatment. On that account alone the number must be small who are capable of such a contemplation of any object as might awake in them religion.
But this development is still more checked. The utmost
is done to divert the remaining sense from the Universe. Truth and all that
in it is, must be confined in the limits of the civil life. All actions must
bear upon this life, while, again, it is believed that the boasted inner harmony
of man means that everything bears upon his actions and they never think that,
if it is to be a true and free life, the existence of an individual in the state,
even as of the state itself, must have arisen from the Whole. But they are sunk
in blind idolatry of the existing civil life, they are convinced that it affords
material enough for the sense and
That, nevertheless, there are
things which, to some little depth must be explored, is for them a necessary
evil, and that a few are ever to be found who, from unconquerable liking, undertake
it, they thank the gods, and with sacred pity regard them as willing sacrifices.
They most sincerely lament that there are feelings which cannot be tamed by
the external sway of their formulas and precepts, and that in this way many
men are rendered socially unhappy or immoral. People for whom the moral side
of civil life is everything, and whom, though they may step a little beyond
their trade, I reckon also among this class, consider this one of the profoundest
evils of human nature, to be got rid of with all possible speed. The good people
believe that their own activity is everything and exhausts the task of humanity,
and that, if all would do what they do, they would require no sense for anything
except for action. Wherefore they dock everything with their shears, and they
will not suffer a single characteristic phenomenon that might awake a religious
interest to grow. What can be seen and understood from their standpoint is all
they allow, and it is merely a small, barren circle, without science, without
Would that they could but once see that, for anything to be known as an element of the Whole, it must necessarily be contemplated in its characteristic nature and in its fullest completeness! In the Universe it can be nothing except by the totality of its effects and relations. That is the sum and substance, and, to perceive it, every matter must be considered, not from some outside point, but from its own proper centre, which is to say, in its separate existence, its own proper nature. This is to have all points of view for everything, and the opposite is to have one point of view for all, which is the most direct way to leave the Universe behind, to sink in lamentable narrowness and become a serf bound to the spot of earth on which we happen to stand.
In the relations of man to this world there are certain openings into the Infinite, prospects past which all are led that their sense may find its way to the Whole. Immediate feelings of definite content may not be produced by this glimpse, but there may be a general susceptibility to all religious feelings. Those prospects therefore, are wisely blocked up, and in the opening some philosophical caricature is placed as an ill-favoured place is at times covered by some sorry picture.
And if, as happens at times,
the omnipotence of the Universe makes itself manifest in those people of understanding
Themselves, if some ray penetrating falls upon their eyes and their soul cannot
be shielded from some stirring of those emotions, the Infinite is never a goal
to which they fly for rest. It is as a post at the end of a course,
Birth and death fire such points. Before them it is impossible to forget that our own self is completely surrounded by the Infinite. Despite of their frequency, so soon as they touch us more nearly, they always stir a quiet longing and a holy reverence. The measurelessness of sense perception is also a hint at least of a still higher infinity. But nothing would please better those persons of understanding than to be able to use the greatest radius of the system of the worlds, as men now use the meridian of the earth, for measuring and reckoning in common life. And, if the images of life and death do approach them, believe me, however much they may speak of religion, it does not lie so near their hearts as to use the occasion to win some few young people for caution and economy in the use of their powers and for the noble art of lengthening life.
Punished they certainly are. They reach no standpoint from which they might themselves rear, from the foundation, this worldly wisdom in which they trust, but move slavishly and reverently in ancient forms or divert themselves with little improvements. This is the extreme of utilitarianism to which the age with rapid strides is being hurried by worthless scholastic word-wisdom. This new barbarism is a fit counterpart of the old. It is the beautiful fruit of the paternal eudaimonistic politics which has supplanted rude despotism and permeates all departments of life. We have all been affected, and the capacity for religion, not being able to keep pace in its development with other things, has suffered in the early bud.
These men, the crazy buttresses
of a crumbling time, I distinguish from you, even as you would not have yourselves
made equal with them, for they do not despise religion, and they are not to
be called cultured. But they destroy religion as much as they can, and they
train the age
Religion at present can only
be advanced by the strongest resistance to this general tendency, and it cannot
begin except by radical opposition. As everything follows the law of affinity,
sense can only triumph by taking possession of an object on which this kind
of understanding so hostile to it, hangs but loosely. This it will acquire most
easily and with superfluity of free power. Now this object is the inner, not
the outer world. The enlightening psychology, the masterpiece of this kind of
understanding, has at length exhausted itself by extravagance and lost almost
all good name. The calculating understanding has here first vacated the field
and left it open once more for pure observation. A religious man must be reflective,
his sense must be occupied in the contemplation of himself. Being occupied with
the profoundest depths, he abandons meanwhile all external things, intellectual
as well as physical, leaving them to be the great aim of the researches of the
people of understanding. In accordance with this law, the feeling for the Infinite
is most readily developed in persons whose nature keeps them far from that which
is the central point of all the opponents of the universal complete life. Hence
it comes that, from of old, all truly religious characters
Imaginative natures fail in penetrative spirit, in capacity for mastering the essential. A light changing play of beautiful, often charming, but merely fortuitous and entirely subjective combinations, satisfies them and is the highest they can conceive, and a deeper and inner connection presents itself in vain. They are really only seeking the infinity and universality of charming appearances. According as it is viewed this may be less or very much more than their sense can attain, but to appearance they have accommodated themselves, and instead of a healthy and powerful life, they have only disconnected and fleeting emotions. The mind is easily kindled, but it is with a flame as unsteady as it is ready. They have emotions of religion just as they have of art, philosophy and all things great and beautiful—they are attracted by the surface.
To the very nature of the other
class, again, religion pre-eminently belongs. But their sense always remains
turned towards themselves, for, in the present condition of the world, they
do not know how to attain anything beyond, and they soon fail in material for
cultivating their feeling to an independent piety. There is a great and powerful
mysticism, not to be considered by the most frivolous man without reverence
and devotion, which, by its heroic simplicity and proud scorn of the world,
wrings admiration from the most judicious. It does not arise from being sated
and overladen by external influences, but, on every occasion, some secret power
ever drives the man back upon himself, and he finds himself to be the plan and
key of the
Thus, alas! it stands with our party at the present day. They have not learned to open their souls to Nature. Their living relation to it suffers from the clumsy way in which objects are rather indicated than shown, and they have neither sense nor light remaining from their self-contemplation sufficient to penetrate this ancient darkness. Wherefore, in scorn of this evil age, they would fain have nothing to do with its work in them. Their higher feeling is thus untrained and needy, and their true inward fellowship with the world is both confined and sickly. Alone with their sense, they are compelled to circulate eternally in an all too narrow sphere, and, after a sickly life, their religious sense dies, from want of attraction, of indirect weakness.
Another end awaits those whose
sense for the highest turns boldly outwards, seeking there expansion and renovation
for its life. Their disharmony with the age only too clearly appears, for they
suffer a violent death, happy if you will, yet fearful, the suicide of the spirit.
Not knowing how to comprehend the world, the essence and larger sense of which
remains strange to them among the paltry views to which an outward constraint
limits them, they are deceived by confused phenomena, abandoned to unbridled
fancies, and seek the Universe and its traces where they never were. Finally
they unwillingly rend asunder utterly the connection of the inner and the outer,
chase the impotent understanding and end in a holy madness, the source of which
almost no man knows. They are loud screaming but not understood victims of the
general contempt and maltreatment of the heart of man. Only victims,
however, not
This complaint that there are
no permanent, openly recognized representatives of religion among us, is not
to recall my earlier assertions that our age is not less favourable to religion
than any other. The amount of religion in the world is not diminished, but it
is broken up and driven apart by an oppressive force. It reveals itself in small
and fleeting though frequent manifestations that rather exalt the variety of
the Universe and delight the eye of the observer, than produce for itself a
great and sublime impression. I abide by the conviction that there are many
who breathe out the sweetest fragrance of the young life in sacred longing and
love to the Eternal and the Changeless, and who late at least, and perhaps never,
are overcome by the world; that there are none to whom once, at least, the high
World-Spirit has not appeared, casting on them, while they were ashamed for
themselves and blushed at their unworthy limitation, one of those piercing glances
that the downcast eye feels without seeing. By this I abide, and the conscience
of everyone can judge of it. But heroes of religion, holy souls, as they have
been seen, who are entirely permeated by religion which is all in all to them,
are wanting and must be wanting to this generation. And as often as I reflect
on what must happen and what direction our culture must take, if religious men
of a higher type are again to appear as a natural if rare product of their age,
I think that your whole endeavour—whether consciously, you may yourselves decide—is
not a little helpful for a palingenesis of religion. Partly your general working,
partly the endeavours of a narrower circle, partly the sublime ideas of a few
spirits notable among mankind, shall serve this purpose.
The strength and compass, as
well as the purity and clearness of every perception, depend upon the keenness
and
With this regained liberty of
sense, however, a limitation and firm direction of the activity may very well
consist. This is the great demand from contemporaries and posterity, with which
the best among you are coming forward. You are tired of seeing barren, encyclopaedic
versatility. Only by this way of self-limitation have you become what you are, and you know there is no other way to culture. You insist, therefore, that
everyone should seek to become something definite, and follow something with
steadfastness and concentration. No one can perceive the justice of this
Every man knows from his own consciousness three spheres of the sense in which its different manifestations are divided. First there is the interior of the Ego itself; second, the outer world, in so far as it is indefinite and incomplete—call it mass, matter, element, or what you will; the third seems to unite both, the sense turning, in constant change, within and without, and only finding peace in perceiving the absolute unity of both sides, which is the sphere of the individual, of what is complete in itself, of all that is art in nature, and in the works of man. Everyone is not equally at home in all those spheres, but from each there is a way to pious exaltations of the soul which take characteristic form simply according to the variety of the ways in which they have been found.
Study yourselves with unswerving attention, put aside all that is not self, proceed with the sense ever more closely directed to the purely inward. The more you pass by all foreign elements, making your personality appear diminished almost to the vanishing point, the clearer the Universe stands before you, and the more gloriously the terror of annihilating the fleeting is rewarded by the feeling of the eternal.
Look outside again on one of the widely distributed elements of the world. Seek to understand it in itself, and seek it in particular objects, in yourself and everywhere. Traverse again and again your way from centre to circumference, going ever farther afield. You will rediscover everything everywhere, and you will only be able to recognize it in relation to its opposite. Soon everything individual and distinct will have been lost and the Universe be found.
What way now leads from the
third sphere, from the sense for art? Its immediate object is by no means the
Universe itself. It is an individual thing complete in itself and rounded off.
There is satisfaction in each enjoyment, and the mind, peacefully sunk in it,
is not driven to such a progress as would make the single thing gradually disappear
and be replaced by the Universe. Is there nowhere any way, but must this sphere
for ever remain apart, and artists be condemned to be irreligious? Or is there
perhaps some other relation between art and religion? I could wish to leave
the question for your own solution, for to me the inquiry is too difficult and
too strange. But you have used your sense and love for art to good purpose,
and I would willingly leave you to yourselves on your native soil. One of my
thoughts on the matter, however, I would have not to be wish and presentiment
merely but insight and prophecy. But judge for yourselves. If it is true that
there are sudden conversions whereby in men, thinking of nothing less than of
lifting themselves above the finite,
By the first way of finding the Universe, the most abstracted self-contemplation, the most ancient eastern Mysticism, with marvellous boldness that resembled the more recent Idealism among us, linked the infinitely great to the infinitely little and found everything bordering on nothing.
From the contemplation of the
masses and their counterparts, again, every religion, the pattern of which is
the heavens or elemental nature, has manifestly proceeded. The polytheistic
Egypt was long the most perfect nurse of this type of thought. In it we can
at least guess that the purest intuition of the original and real may have walked
in meek tolerance close beside the darkest superstitions and the most senseless
mythology.
And if there is nothing to tell
of a religion originating in art that has ruled peoples and times, it is all
the clearer that the sense for art has never approached those two kinds of religion
without covering them with new beauty and holiness and sweetly mitigating their
original narrowness. Thus the ancient sages and poets, and above all, the artists
of the Greeks, changed the natural religion into fairer, more gladsome form.
In all the mythical representations of the divine Plato and his followers, which
you would acknowledge rather as religious than as scientific, we perceive how
beautifully that mystical self-contemplation mounts to the highest pinnacle
of divineness and humanness. Simply by the ordinary life in the sphere of art
and by a living endeavour, sustained by indwelling power and especially by
At present art serves no religion,
and all is different and worse. Religion and art stand together like kindred
beings, whose inner affinity, though mutually unrecognized and unsuspected,
appears in various ways.
But religion of both types not
only is without the aid of art, but is, in its own state, worse than of old.
The two sources of perception and feeling of the Infinite streamed forth magnificently
upon an age when scientific subtilties, without true principles, had not yet
corrupted by their commonness the purity of the sense, even though neither may
have been rich enough to produce the highest. At present, they are troubled
by the loss of simplicity and the ruinous influence of a conceited and false
insight. How are they to be purified? Whence are they to have power
See then, whether you wish it or not, the goal of your highest endeavours is just the resurrection of religion. By your endeavours this event must be brought to pass, and I celebrate you as, however unintentionally, the rescuers and cherishers of religion. Do not abandon your post and your work till you have unlocked the recesses of knowledge, and, in priestlike humility, have opened the sanctuary of true science. Then all who draw nigh, and the sons of religion among them, will be compensated for what half knowledge and arrogance have made them lose.
Philosophy, exalting man to the consciousness of his reciprocity with the world, teaching him to know himself, not as a separate individual, but as a living, operative member of the Whole, will no longer endure to see the man who steadfastly turns his eye to his own spirit in search of the Universe, pine in poverty and need. The anxious wall of separation is broken down. The outer world is only another inner world. Everything is the reflection of his own spirit, as his spirit is the copy of all things. He can seek himself in this reflection without losing himself or going outside of himself. He can never exhaust himself in contemplation of himself, for in himself everything lies.
Ethics, in its chaste and heavenly beauty, far from jealousy and despotic pride, will hand him at the entrance the heavenly lyre and the magic glass, that he may see in countless forms the earnest quiet image of the spirit ever the same and may accompany it with divine music.
Natural science sets the man
who looks around him to discover the Universe, in the centre of nature, and
no longer suffers him to dissipate himself fruitlessly in the
Can one goddess, then, still linger with her helpful presence? For this, also, time will make us great and rich amends. The greatest work of art has for its material humanity itself, and the Deity directly fashions it. For this work the sense must soon awake in many, for at present, He is working with bold and effective art. And you will be the temple servants when the new forms are set up in the temple of time. Expound the Artist then with force and spirit; explain the earlier works from the later and the later from the earlier. Let the past, the present, and the future surround us with an endless gallery of the sublimest works of art, eternally multiplied by a thousand brilliant mirrors. Let the history of the worlds be ready with rich gratitude to reward religion its first nurse, by awaking true and holy worshippers for eternal might and wisdom. See how, without your aid, the heavenly growth flourishes in the midst of your plantings. It is a witness of the approval of the gods and of the imperishableness of your desert. Neither disturb it nor pluck it up; it is an ornament that adorns, a talisman that protects.
Those of you who are accustomed to regard religion simply as a malady of the soul, usually cherish the idea that if the evil is not to be quite subdued, it is at least more endurable, so long as it only infects individuals here and there. On the other hand, the common danger is increased and everything put in jeopardy by too close association among the patients. So long as they are isolated, judicious treatment, due precautions against infection and a healthy spiritual atmosphere may allay the paroxysms and weaken, if they do not destroy, the virus, but in the other case the only remedy to be relied on is the curative influence of nature. The evil would be accompanied by the most dangerous symptoms and be far more deadly being nursed and heightened by the proximity of the infected. Even a few would then poison the whole atmosphere; the soundest bodies would be infected; all the canals in which the processes of life are carried on would be destroyed; all juices would be decomposed; and, after undergoing such a feverish delirium, the healthy spiritual life and working of whole generations and peoples would be irrecoverably ruined. Hence your opposition to the church, to every institution meant for the communication of religion is always more violent than your opposition to religion itself, and priests, as the supports and specialty active members of such institutions are for you the most hated among men.
But those of you who have a somewhat milder view of religion, regarding it rather as an absurdity than as an absolute distraction, have an equally unfavourable idea of all organizations for fellowship. Slavish surrender of everything characteristic and free, spiritless mechanism and vain usages are, you consider, the inseparable consequences of every such institution. It is the skilful work of persons who with incredible success make great gain from things that are nothing, or which at least every other person could have done equally well.
Were it not that I strive to bring you in this matter to the right standpoint, I would very unwillingly expose my heart to you on such a weighty matter. How many of the perverse efforts and the sad destinies of mankind you ascribe to religion, I do not need to recount. In a thousand utterances of the most esteemed among you it is clear as day. And I will not pause to refute those charges in detail and derive them from other causes. Rather let us subject the whole idea of the church to a new consideration, reconstructing it from the centre outwards, unconcerned about how much is fact and experience.
If there is religion at all, it must be social, for that is the nature of man, and it is quite peculiarly the nature of religion. You must confess that when an individual has produced and wrought out something in his own mind, it is morbid and in the highest degree unnatural to wish to reserve it to himself. He should express it in the indispensable fellowship and mutual dependence of action. And there is also a spiritual nature which he has in common with the rest of his species which demands that he express and communicate all that is in him. The more violently he is moved and the more deeply he is impressed, the stronger that social impulse works. And this is true even if we regard it only as the endeavour to find the feeling in others, and so to be sure that nothing has been encountered that is not human.
You see that this is not a case of endeavouring to make others like ourselves, nor of believing that what is in one man is indispensable for all. It is only the endeavour to become conscious of and to exhibit the true relation of our own life to the common nature of man.
But indisputably the proper subjects for this impulse to communicate are the conscious states and feelings in which originally man feels himself passive. He is urged on to learn whether it may not be an alien and unworthy power that has produced them. Those are the things which mankind from childhood are chiefly engaged in communicating. His ideas, about the origin of which he can have no doubts, he would rather leave in quiet. Still more easily he resolves to reserve his judgments. But of all that enters by the senses and stirs the feelings he will have witnesses and participators. How could he keep to himself the most comprehensive and general influences of the world when they appear to him the greatest and most irresistible? How should he wish to reserve what most strongly drives him out of himself and makes him conscious that he cannot know himself from himself alone? If a religious view become clear to him, or a pious feeling stir his soul, it is rather his first endeavour to direct others to the same subject and if possible transmit the impulse.
The same nature that makes it necessary for the pious person to speak, provides him also with an audience. No element of life, so much as religion, has implanted along with it so vivid a feeling of man’s utter incapacity ever to exhaust it for himself alone. No sooner has he any sense for it than he feels its infinity and his own limits. He is conscious that he grasps but a small part of it, and what he cannot himself reach he will, at least, so far as he is able, know and enjoy from the representations of those who have obtained it. This urges him to give his religion full expression, and, seeking his own perfection, to listen to every note that he can recognize as religious.
Thus mutual communication organizes itself, and speech and hearing are to all alike indispensable.
But the communication of religion
is not like the communication of ideas and perceptions to be sought in books. The
assertion that scripture alone is sufficient to awake piety, seems to have experience
against it, from the sacred writings of all religions down to our books for
edification so widely distributed among a certain class, and the small religious
pamphlets which are the means chiefly used at present for reaching the people.
First in respect of the sacred writings, only those of monotheistic religions
need detain us. The Koran alone has arisen purely as a writing, and it is indisputably
to be looked upon mostly as a manual and repertorium of themes for religious
compositions, a fact quite in accordance with the unoriginal character of this
religion. And the direct, strictly religious influence of the Koran is not to
be esteemed very highly. In the very various Jewish codex, the gnomic books
especially have something of this purely literary character. The historical
section, strictly speaking, has none. The poetical section again in part, as
for example a large number of the Psalms, deals immediately with definite occasions
and was not produced simply for indefinite use, and is, therefore, not scripture
in the strict sense. And who will deny that they produced the effect in this
connection of which their present influence as mere scripture is but a shadow?
The prophetic poetry of the earlier period, was for the most part actually spoken,
and a not insignificant part has been handed down imbedded in history. As this
living traditional power was lost, and the Scriptures became to the Jewish people
a learned study, its direct influence was lost, and it became simply the bearer
of the living utterances linked to it. The New Testament Scriptures also are,
as little as possible, writing in the strict sense of the word. In the historical
books the speeches are the most essential, the history being chiefly to give
them the movement of life. Even in the history of the Passion the words of Christ
are the most sublime and deeply moving parts, and the narrative of pains and
agonies might easily produce only a wrong effect. The Acts of the Apostles alone
seems to be an exception, and to have its place in
the canon chiefly because it is the root of all church history. But just because
it would quite limit the book to this subordinate use, it is repugnant to our
feeling when the speeches are regarded as subsequently concocted, as is the
fashion of other historical books. Our didactic books, being letters, are as
little as possible mere literature, and no one can deny that the influence on
the immediate recipients to whom the whole movement of the time was present,
must have been much greater. We can only dimly, and then only by learned help,
transport ourselves back to those times. Even then, the most vital influence
of those writings for our time is that which was borrowed from the synagogue
that all living religious utterance is linked to them. For that reason only, the reading of the Scriptures
by the laity continues; otherwise, its influence would not entirely vanish,
but it would degenerate into utter vagueness, So vast was the original power
of these productions that even now, after they have become entirely literature,
a fulness of quickening spirit dwells in them, which is the highest testimony
to their divine power; yet the objective side of this influence, the clear understanding,
would soon be null for the private use of the laity, but for that connection
with the learned exposition. It is, therefore, natural that the Catholic Church,
setting little store on preaching, should limit the use of Scripture by the
laity. On the other hand, we, believing we dare not so limit it, must make the
public exposition of Scripture much more prominent in preaching, and it must
always be hurtful to the whole religious life when Scripture is generally made
use of for preaching simply as a motto. The reality of the endeavour to rescue
the contents of the sacred books from the state of being mere literature, appears
from the ready adoption by the most pious Christians of a method that would
be in the highest degree unnatural in a work made throughout purely as a book.
Single detached passages of Scripture, neither chosen by selection nor by memory,
but simply by chance, are used on every occasion, when religious enlightenment
or stimulus is needed. This cannot be defended, as it too easily degenerates
into magical frivolity, yet it is an endeavour to restore to the religious utterances
of holy men a living influence which shall be direct and independent of their
effects as a book. As regards our literature for edification again,
which arises for the most part expressly as books, its great influence
is not to be denied. The countless editions and the continuance of many of them
through a long series of generations speak too clearly. And who does not feel
respect for works that, in addition to their vitality, help to guard a great mass of men from the dangerous whirlwind
of changing doctrine? Yet it will not be denied that the living word and the
religious emotion in a community, have a far higher power than the written letter.
On closer consideration also it will be found that the chief influence of practical
writings rests less in their completeness than in the multitude of forceful,
noble formulas contained, which may embrace many religious moments, and therefore
refresh the memory of many things. They also offer a certain assurance that
one’s own religious emotions are not at variance with the common religious life.
Hence the individual, clever work of this kind seldom rejoices in much success.
This good witness is only given to able and comprehensive practical works. But
the present endeavour of so many well-meaning societies to scatter a multitude
of small religious leaflets among the people, that have no right objective character,
but utter the most subjective inner experiences in the dead letter of a terminology
that neither accords with literary nor religious usage, rests on a deep misunderstanding,
and can scarcely have any other result than to bring church matters, the evil
of which it presupposes, into still deeper degradation. A multitude of men will
be reared who will have manifold hypocrisies, without any actual experience,
or who will fall into sad perplexity because their own religious experiences
do not accord with the pattern set before them. Is the public church life sick
or weak, let each man do his utmost to heal it, but let no man believe it is
to be replaced by a dead letter. That the religious life should issue from the
circulating library seems to me like handing over the great acts of legislation
and executive to irresponsible journals, of which the more numbers and improved
editions the better.
Nor can this intercourse with
the heart of man be carried on in common conversation. Many who have a regard
for religion have upbraided our times, because our manners are such that in
conversation in society and in friendly intercourse, we talk of all weighty
subjects except of God and divine things. In our defence I would say, this is
neither contempt nor indifference, but a very correct instinct. Where mirth
and laughing dwell, and even earnestness must pliantly associate with joke and
witticism, there can be no room for what must ever be attended by holy reserve
and awe. Religious views, pious feelings, and earnest reflections, are not to
be tossed from one to another in such small morsels as the materials of a light
conversation. On sacred subjects it would be rather sacrilegious than fitting
to be ready with an answer to every question and a response to every address.
By way of the light and rapid
exchange of retorts
Would that I could depict to
you the rich, the superabundant life in this city of God, when the citizens
assemble, each full of native force seeking liberty of utterance and full at
the same time of holy desire to apprehend and appropriate what others offer.
When one stands out before the others he is neither justified by office nor
by compact; nor is it pride or ignorance that inspires him with assurance. It
is the free impulse of his spirit, the feeling of heart-felt unanimity and completest
equality, the common abolition of all first and last, of all earthly order.
And this is not a mere simile, but, as such a speech is music without song or melody, there may be a music among the saints that is speech without words, giving most definite and comprehensible expression to the heart.
The muse of harmony, the intimate relation of which to religion has been long known, though acknowledged by few, has from of old laid on the altars of religion the most gorgeous and perfect works of her most devoted scholars. In sacred hymns and choruses to which the words of the poet are but loosely and airily appended, there are breathed out things that definite speech cannot grasp. The melodies of thought and feeling interchange and give mutual support, till all is satiated and full of the sacred and the infinite.
Of such a nature is the influence of religious men upon each other. Thus their natural and eternal union is produced. It is a heavenly bond, the most perfect production of the spiritual nature of man, not to be attained till man, in the highest sense, knows himself. Do not blame them if they value it more highly than the civil union which you place so far above all else, but which nevertheless will not ripen to manly beauty. Compared with that other union, it appears far more forced than free, far more transient than eternal.
But where, in all that I have
said of the congregation of
How then can this be the home of the envy and strife that you consider the natural consequences of all religious associations? I see nothing but unity and, just by means of the social union of the pious, the gentle mingling of all the differences found in religion. I have called your attention to two different types of mind and two different directions in which specially the soul seeks its highest object. Do you mean that from them sects must of necessity arise, and unconstrained fellowship in religion be hindered? In contemplation, where there is severance because we comprehend only in sections, there must be opposition and contradiction, but reflect that life is quite different. In it opposites seek each other and all that is separated in contemplation is mingled. Doubtless persons who most resemble will most strongly attract each other, but they cannot on that account make up a whole by themselves, for there are all degrees of affinity, and with so many transitions there can be no absolute repulsion, no entire separation, even between the remotest elements.
Take any body that by characteristic
power has its own organic structure. Unless you forcibly isolate it by some
mechanical means, it will not be homogeneous and distinct,
The impulse to abstract, in
so far as it proceeds to rigid separation, is a proof of imperfection. The highest
and most cultured always see a universal union, and, in seeing it, establish
it. Every man is only in contact with his neighbour; but on every side and in
every direction he has neighbours and is thus inseparably bound up with the
whole. Mystics and physicists in religion; those to whom the Deity is personal
and those to whom He is not; those who have risen to a systematic view of the
Universe, or those who only see it in its elements or as dim chaos should all
be united. A hand encloses them all and they cannot be quite separated, except
forcibly and arbitrarily. Each separate association is a mobile, integrate part
of the whole, losing itself in vague outlines in the whole, and it must ever
be
The society of the pious, as I have exhibited it and as from its nature it must be, is occupied purely with mutual communication, and subsists only among persons already having religion of some kind. How can it be their business to change the minds of those who already profess to have a definite religion, or to introduce and initiate persons who have none at all? The religion of this society as such is simply the collective religion of all the pious. As each one sees it in others it is infinite, and no single person can fully grasp it, for it is in no one instance a unity, not even when highest and most cultivated. If a man, therefore, has any share in religion, it matters not what, would it not be a mad proceeding for the society to rend from him that which suits his nature, for this element also it should embrace and therefore someone must possess it? And how would they cultivate persons to whom religion generally is still strange? Their heritage, the infinite Whole they cannot communicate to them, and any particular communication must proceed from an individual and not the society. Is there something general, indefinite, something common to all the members that a non-religious person might receive? But you know that nothing in a general and indefinite form can actually be communicated. It must be individual and thoroughly definite, or it is nothing. This undertaking would have no measure and no rule. Besides, how would the society ever think of going beyond itself, seeing the need which gave it birth, the principle of religious association, has no such bearing? Individuals join and become a whole; the whole being satisfied with itself, abides in itself, and has no further endeavour.
Religious effort of this kind,
therefore, is never more It was doubtless serviceable
to establish that the wild mania for proselytizing is nowhere founded
in religion itself. But there seems to be too much here, for mild proselytizing
also, every endeavour to draw from another form to one’s own, every endeavour
to implant religion in souls still without piety, seems to be rejected. Against
the witness of all history, against the clear words of the Founder Himself,
no less than against my own statements in the “Glaubeuslehre,” about the relation
of Christianity to other forms of religion, it appears to be maintained that
the spread of Christianity in the world did not proceed from the pious Christian
sense. But this good endeavour is always in some way connected with the notion,
here uniformly rejected, that salvation, either altogether or in a much higher
degree, is not to be found outside a definite religious communion as it is found
inside. True and false do not seem to be here sufficiently distinguished. If
the assertion that proselytizing work is entirely inadmissible, is a just consequence
of the previously accepted theory of the religious communion, the error must
be sought in the theory. On going back upon it we find what solves the difficulties,
that the spread of our own form of religion is a natural and permissible private
business of the individual. Though there is in the strict sense only one universal
religious communion, in which all the different forms of religion mutually recognize
each other, in which transference of a follower of one form to another seems
to be a wish to impair the whole by destroying its manifoldness, it is manifest
that here also much is naturally destroyed, which can only happen in an inferior
stage of development. Hence it is regarded by the experienced as simply a point
of transition, and it cannot be wrong to accelerate and guide the progress.
Wherefore, the more the adherents of one form of religion are compelled to
regard many other forms simply as such transitions, the more powerfully will
the work of proselytizing organize itself among them. This should most apply to the monotheistic religions
in general, and in the broadest sense to Christianity. And this holds from the
present standpoint, as it is more fully dealt with in the “Glaubenslehre,” as
the issue of a more scientific course of thought. The work of proselytizing
presupposes the one graduated communion. As Paul did in Athens, regarding the
Hellenic idolatry, to assign it a value and obtain a link of connection for
the communication of his own piety, it must always be done. This community of
two forms of religion shows itself at all points wheresoever a like effort at
assimilation is developed. We can therefore say that this is the true distinction
between praiseworthy zeal for conversion that would recognize the faintest traces
of religion and purify and build up a piety already begun, and that wild irreligious
mania for conversion which easily degenerates into persecution. The former begins
with unprejudiced and loving comprehension even of the most imperfect kind of
faith, the latter believes it is exalted above any such endeavour. Further,
it is not to be understood with too painful accuracy that proselytizing can
only be the private business of the individual. The individual stands here opposed
to the all-embracing communion. Hence associations of individuals, nay, a whole
mode of faith can be regarded as individuals. The maxim “nulla salus,” again
has for the great communion of the pious an absolute verity, for without any
piety it can acknowledge no salvation. Only in so far as one religious party
utters it against another, does it work destructively, which is to say, in so
far as a universal communion is denied. Hence it clearly goes along with the
wild mania for conversion. The special truth of this in Christianity is dealt
with in the “Glaubenslehre,” in full agreement with these views.
After all this, you will possibly
say that I seem to be quite at one with you. I have shown what the church ought
to be. Now, by not ascribing to the ideal church any of the qualities which
distinguish the real, I have, almost as strongly as you, condemned its present
form. I assure you, however, I have not spoken of what should be, but of what
is, It was doubtless serviceable
to establish that the wild mania for proselytizing is nowhere founded
in religion itself. But there seems to be too much here, for mild proselytizing
also, every endeavour to draw from another form to one’s own, every endeavour
to implant religion in souls still without piety, seems to be rejected. Against
the witness of all history, against the clear words of the Founder Himself,
no less than against my own statements in the “Glaubeuslehre,” about the relation
of Christianity to other forms of religion, it appears to be maintained that
the spread of Christianity in the world did not proceed from the pious Christian
sense. But this good endeavour is always in some way connected with the notion,
here uniformly rejected, that salvation, either altogether or in a much higher
degree, is not to be found outside a definite religious communion as it is found
inside. True and false do not seem to be here sufficiently distinguished. If
the assertion that proselytizing work is entirely inadmissible, is a just consequence
of the previously accepted theory of the religious communion, the error must
be sought in the theory. On going back upon it we find what solves the difficulties,
that the spread of our own form of religion is a natural and permissible private
business of the individual. Though there is in the strict sense only one universal
religious communion, in which all the different forms of religion mutually recognize
each other, in which transference of a follower of one form to another seems
to be a wish to impair the whole by destroying its manifoldness, it is manifest
that here also much is naturally destroyed, which can only happen in an inferior
stage of development. Hence it is regarded by the experienced as simply a point
of transition, and it cannot be wrong to accelerate and guide the progress.
Wherefore, the more the adherents of one form of religion are compelled to
regard many other forms simply as such transitions, the more powerfully will
the work of proselytizing organize itself among them. This should most apply to the monotheistic religions
in general, and in the broadest sense to Christianity. And this holds from the
present standpoint, as it is more fully dealt with in the “Glaubenslehre,” as
the issue of a more scientific course of thought. The work of proselytizing
presupposes the one graduated communion. As Paul did in Athens, regarding the
Hellenic idolatry, to assign it a value and obtain a link of connection for
the communication of his own piety, it must always be done. This community of
two forms of religion shows itself at all points wheresoever a like effort at
assimilation is developed. We can therefore say that this is the true distinction
between praiseworthy zeal for conversion that would recognize the faintest traces
of religion and purify and build up a piety already begun, and that wild irreligious
mania for conversion which easily degenerates into persecution. The former begins
with unprejudiced and loving comprehension even of the most imperfect kind of
faith, the latter believes it is exalted above any such endeavour. Further,
it is not to be understood with too painful accuracy that proselytizing can
only be the private business of the individual. The individual stands here opposed
to the all-embracing communion. Hence associations of individuals, nay, a whole
mode of faith can be regarded as individuals. The maxim “nulla salus,” again
has for the great communion of the pious an absolute verity, for without any
piety it can acknowledge no salvation. Only in so far as one religious party
utters it against another, does it work destructively, which is to say, in so
far as a universal communion is denied. Hence it clearly goes along with the
wild mania for conversion. The special truth of this in Christianity is dealt
with in the “Glaubenslehre,” in full agreement with these views.
The great association to which
your strictures properly apply, is very far from being a society of religious
men. It is only an association of persons who are but seeking religion, and
it seems to me natural that, in almost every respect, it should be the counterpart
of the true church.
In few words, this is the history
of their religious life and the character of the social inclination that runs
through it. Not religion, but a little sense for it, and a painful, lamentably
fruitless endeavour to reach it, are all that can be ascribed even to the best
of them, even to those who show both spirit and zeal. In the course of their
domestic and civil life, and on the larger scene of which
From frequent repetition, however, of this little shock, a necessity at length arises. The dim something in the mind, always recurring, must finally be made clear. The best means, one would think, would be to take time to observe leisurely and attentively the cause. But it is not a single thing which they might abstract from all else, that works on them. It is all human things, and among them the different relations of their life in other departments. Then, from old habit, their sense will spontaneously turn to those relations and once more the sublime and infinite will, in their eyes, be broken up into single, miserable details. Feeling this, they do not trust themselves, but seek outside help. They would behold in the mirror of another person’s representation that which in direct perception would soon dissolve.
In this
way they seek to reach some higher, more defined consciousness, yet at the end
they misunderstand this whole endeavour. If the utterances of a truly religious
man awake all those memories, if they have received the combined impression
of them, and go away deeply moved, they believe that their need is stilled,
that the leading of their nature has been satisfied, and that they have in them
the power and essence of all those feelings. Yet they have now as formerly,
though it may be in a higher degree, but a fleeting, extraneous manifestation.
Being without knowledge or guess of true religion, they remain subject to this
delusion, and in the vain hope of at length attaining, they repeat a thousand
times the same endeavour, and yet remain where and what they were.
If they advanced, and a spontaneous
and living religion were implanted in them, they would soon not wish any more
to be among those whose one-sidedness and passivity would no longer accord with
their own state. They would at least seek beside them another sphere, where
piety could show itself to others both living and life-giving, and soon they
would wish to live altogether in it and devote to it their exclusive love. Thus
in point of fact the church, as it exists among us, becomes of less consequence
to men the more they increase in religion, and the most pious sever themselves
coldly and proudly. Hardly anything could be clearer than that man is in this
association merely because he is but seeking to be religious, and continues
in it only so long as he has not yet attained. Seeing
that in this passage the view that dominates this whole Speech is here presented
most decisively and compactly, it may be best to say what remains to be said
in explanation and justification of it. The whole matter resolves itself into
the right representation of the relation between the perfectly mutual communication,
here regarded as the true church, and the actually existing religious communion.
The state of this communion is acknowledged to be capable of such an improvement
as is described further on p. 166. This being assumed, the question stands thus:
Should there be in this educational society, besides the priestly work which
only those fully cultured religiously should exercise, a special communion of
such persons corresponding to the idea of the church to which the members of
the visible religious society might, in the measure of their progress, go over?
Now the greatest masters are required for the greatest representations. We have
seen every master, who would have his full effect, requires subordinate artists
and a worthy, an informed, a responsive audience. Further, great masters are
too rare, and too much dispersed to fashion alone this twofold sphere. What
remains for us then but to say that, in corporeal and visible form, such a society
is nowhere to be found on earth. The best of this kind to be actually discovered,
is that improved type of the existing church, those societies in which a skilful
master gathers around him a number of kindred souls whom he fires and fashions.
The more the members of this circle advance and fashion that twofold sphere,
the more such a company is a great presentation of religion. For those who are
the soul of such a presentation, there is the higher fellowship which consists
in mutual intercourse and insight. The other members share in so far as they
succeed in raising themselves to the possibility of such enjoyment of forms
strange to them. The idea of the true church here given is not realized therefore
in one single instance, but, as has been indicated on p. 154, by the peaceful
cosmopolitan union of all existing communions, each being as perfect as possible
after its own manner. This idea, belonging as it does to the completion
of human nature, must be developed more fully in the science of ethics. Two
objections to it, however, may be easily set aside. First, how does this agree
with the call attributed to Christianity in the “Glaubenslehre” to absorb all
other kinds of faith, for were all one, that cosmopolitan union for communicating
and for understanding different faiths would not exist. But this has already
been answered. All naturally existing different characteristics in Christianity
would not disappear, but would always develope itself in a subordinate way,
without injury to its higher unity. At present Christianity exhibits no outward
unity, and the highest we can wish to see is just such a peaceful union of its
various types. We have no reason to believe that it will ever exhibit an outward
unity, but, even if it did, it would still be such a cosmopolitan union. But,
secondly, can it be said that what is here called the true church has ever actually
existed in any one instance? When the Apostles of Christ scattered to preach
the Gospel and break bread in the houses and the schools, they exercised the
priestly office among the laity in the visible church, and when they were by
themselves in the upper-room to praise God and the Lord, what were they but
that true church? In this Speech also it is pointed out not indistinctly (p.
165), that this kind of existence has been always renewed and has never quite
vanished from the true church. And, certainly, if there has ever been any one
instance of the true church it was then. But something was wanting, something
held in this Speech to be essential to the true church, greatness and majesty
of presentation. This consciousness of inadequacy was, humanly speaking, among
the motives for the wider expansion of Christianity. Yet this instance, despite
its short continuance, showed that the imperfect church only springs from the
perfect. But having once disappeared, the enormous expansive power of Christianity
made its reappearance impossible, and the true church can never again be found
except in that cosmopolitan union. The highest spiritual communion of the most perfect
saints is thus conditioned by the communion of the more perfect with the less
perfect. But if this latter communion is of a better type, and can be the only
foundation for the former, does it deserve the reproach that only inquirers
enter it, and only those who are not yet pious stay in it? This may still be
said, only not as a reproach. All who enter, and not only the more receptive
and imperfect, seek some one to inspire and encourage them, but the more advanced
also seek helpers for such a presentation as can be recognized as proceeding
from the spirit of the true church. Through this common
work they seek advancement in outward mastery
as well as inward power and truth. Hence none of the members of the church have
attained, they are only attaining. But if to this combination in its best form,
a combination of the perfect be opposed who seek nothing beyond the joy of contemplation,
because everyone is already what he can be, this can be nothing but just that
cosmopolitan union. In it everyone is valued simply according to his present
state and attainments, and cannot expect to be immediately forwarded in his
own peculiar sphere by contemplating extraneous things. But if the description
of the true church were the immediate association of the more perfect, it would
need to be understood literally of the church triumphant, for only in it can
an absolutely mutual communion that is without inequality and without progress,
be thought of. There, on the contrary, there is only so much of the true church
as there is true life and reproductive development in the existing religious
communions.
But this proceeds from the way
in which the members of the church deal with religion, for suppose it
were possible to think of a one-sided communication and a state of willing passivity
and abnegation in truly religious men, there could not possibly be in their
combined action the utter perversity and ignorance you find in the visible church.
If the members of the church had any understanding of religion, the chief matter
for them would be that the person whom they have made the organ of religion
communicate his clearest, most characteristic views and feelings. But that is
what they would not have, and they rather set limits on all sides to the utterances
of individuality. They desire that he expound to them chiefly ideas, opinions,
dogmas, in short, not the characteristic elements of religion, but the current
reflections about them. Had they any understanding of religion, they would know
from their own feeling that those matters of creeds, though, as I said, essential
to true religious union, can by their nature be nothing but signs that the previously
attained results agree, signs of the return from the most personal impressiveness
to the common centre, the full-voiced refrain after everything has been uttered
with purely individual skill. But of this they Two
reproaches are made here against the present regulation of the church. The former
evil has doubtless caused far more confusion at various times, but the latter
has always given me a painful feeling of the undeveloped state of the society.
I mean the regulation, that for our holiest symbol, the Lord’s supper, though
it is, in most larger communions at least, in the most natural way, the crown
of each service, previous meditation and preparation are required on
each occasion from the participants. Clearly no one will deny that it would
be the finest effect of the whole service, if very many present were attuned
for celebrating this sacred meal. But this fairest blossom of devoutness is
lost. How often, on the other hand, with all previous meditation and preparation,
inward and outward disturbance may enter, and diminish the full blessing. Now
just because of the previous preparation it may not be easy to put off the participation.
Is not this way of doing a speaking proof of how little influence upon the heart
we believe the matter itself to be capable, and how we treat all Christians,
without exception, as unreliable novices? It will be a happy time when we dare
to cast aside this caution and welcome to the table of the Lord everyone whom
a momentary impulse conducts thither. . . . Still more confusion, however, arises
from the other misunderstanding here mentioned, which is that not only do the
clergy among themselves estimate themselves by the standard of a creed, but
the laity also presume to deliver judgment on the clergy by the same standard.
Nay, a right is acknowledged in the congregation to require that their clergy
shall teach them according to the letter of the creed. In other matters, if anything is prepared for
my use I must be allowed, if I will, to determine myself how it shall be prepared,
seeing I alone can rightly judge of my necessity. It is, however, quite otherwise
with doctrine, for, if I am in a position to judge how a doctrine on any subject
is to be set forth if it is to be useful to me, I do not require teaching, but
can myself give it, or at most I require to be reminded. This claim, therefore,
is the more preposterous the sharper the line is drawn between clergy and laity.
Were all on the same level, indeed, it might be easier to suppose an agreement
to abide by a common type. It is also the more absurd the more the teaching
of the clergy is, as, God be thanked, it still is everywhere in the Evangelical
Church a free outpouring of the heart, and the chief worth is not set on the
repetition of fixed formularies as in the Romish or Greek Churches. If the laity,
whether singly as patrons of a church or congregation, or combined as state
officials, or as a congregation, decide what accords with the letter of the
creed, and how far its authority is to apply to the teaching, it is peculiarly
preposterous. The letter of the creed has had its sole origin with the clergy,
who certainly did not wish to be themselves limited by it in their dealings
with the laity. The laity are only through the instruction of the clergy even
in a position to understand the letter of the creed. This preposterousness appears
at its height when the head of a state personally believes he has by his position
justification and qualification for deciding on the creed of another communion,
when he believes he can judge of the relation of the clergy to it and what religious
communications, the religiousness of which is quite strange to him, may tend
to forward its interests. The Chinese Emperor, for example, tolerates Christianity,
but provides through his mandarins that no party swerve from its own creed.
There is, however, one consolation, that on this point there can be nothing
but improvement.
The conclusion is, that their united action has nothing of the character of the higher and freer inspiration that is proper to religion, but has a school-mastering, mechanical nature, which indicates that they merely seek to import religion from without. This they attempt by every means. To that end they are so attached to dead notions, to the results of reflection about religion, and drink them in greedily, that the process that gave them birth may be reversed, and that the ideas may change again to the living emotions and feelings from which they were originally deduced. Thus they employ creeds which are naturally last in religious communication, to stimulate what should properly precede them.
In comparison with the more
glorious association which, in my view, is the only true church, I have spoken
of this larger and widely extended association very disparagingly, as
of something common and mean. This follows from the nature of the case, and
I could not conceal my mind on the subject. I guard myself, however, most solemnly
against any assumption you may cherish, that I agree with the growing wish that
this institution should be utterly destroyed. Though the true church is always
to stand open only to those who already have ripened to a piety of their own,
there must be some bond of union with those who are still seeking. As that is
what this institution should be, it ought, from the nature of the case, to take
its leaders and priests always from the true church.
But indeed the whole pattern
of this institution must be different, and its relation to the true church must
take an entirely different aspect. On this matter I may not be silent. Those
wishes and views of mine are too closely connected with the nature of religious
association, and the
I grant that in this society
a disastrous sectarian spirit exists and must exist. Where religious opinions
are used as methods for attaining religion, they must, seeing a method requires
to be thoroughly definite and finished, be formed into a definite whole.
I grant both; but you will admit
that there is no reproach to religion in general, and there is no proof that
the view of the Universe as system is not the highest stage of religion. I grant
that in this society there is more regard to understanding and believing, to
acting and to perfecting customs than is favourable to a free development of
But here you raise a new objection,
which seems once more to roll back those reproaches upon religion. You would
remind me that I myself have said that the great ecclesiastical society, I mean
this institution for pupils in religion, must take its priests only from the
members of the true church, because in itself the true principle of religiousness
is wanting. How then can those who are perfect in religion, endure so much that
is utterly contrary to the spirit of religion where the have to rule, where
all things obey their voice, and they obey only the voice of religion! Nay,
how do they produce so much that is evil, for to whom does the church owe its
regulations, if not to the priests? Or if things are not as they should be,
and the government of the dependent society has been rent from the members of
the true church, where then is the high spirit that is justly to be expected
in them? Why have they administered so badly their most important province?
Why have they allowed base passions to make that a scourge of humanity, which
in the hands of religion would
Truly, alas! things are not as I maintained they should be. Who would venture to say that all, that even the majority, that even the foremost and notablest of those who for many a day have ruled the great ecclesiastical assembly, have been accomplished in religion or even members of the true church?
Yet do not take what I say in excuse as mere subterfuge. When you attack religion, it is usually in the name of philosophy, and when you upbraid the church, it is usually in the name of the state. You would defend the politicians of every age on the ground that the interference of the church has made so much of their handiwork imperfect and ill-advised. If now, speaking in the name of the religious, I attribute their failure to conduct their business with better success, to the state and to statesmen, will you suspect me of artifice? Yet if you will but hear what I have to say of the true source of this evil, you will not, I hope, be able to deny that I am right.
Every fresh doctrine and revelation,
every fresh view of the Universe that awakes the sense for it on some new side,
may win some minds for religion who by no other way could be introduced into
a higher world. To most of them naturally this particular aspect then remains
for them the centre of religion. They form around their master a school of their
own, a self-existent, distinct part of the true and universal church which yet
only ripens slowly and quietly towards union in spirit with the great whole.
But before this is accomplished, as soon as the new feelings have permeated
and satisfied all their soul, they are usually violently urged by the need to
utter what is in them that they be not consumed of the fire within. Thus everyone
proclaims the new salvation that has arisen for him. Every object suggests the
newly discovered Infinite; every speech turns
And it is those thousands that work the mischief. The youthful zeal of the new saints accepts them as true brethren. What hinders, they say all too rashly, that these also should receive the Holy Ghost? Nay, they themselves believe that they have received, and, in joyous triumph, allow themselves to be conducted into the bosom of the pious society. But the intoxication of the first enthusiasm past, the glowing surface burnt out, they show themselves incapable of enduring and sharing the state allotted to the true believers. Compassionately the saints condescend to them, and, to go to their help, relinquish their own higher and deeper enjoyment. Thus everything takes that imperfect form. This comes to pass without outward causes through the corruption common to all human things. In accordance with that eternal order, the corruption most quickly seizes upon the most fiery and active life, that any section of the true church which might arise in isolation anywhere in the world, might not remain apart from all corruption, but be compelled to participate in it and form a false and degenerate church. In all times, among all peoples, in every religion this has happened.
Yet if things were only left
quietly to themselves, this state could not anywhere long endure. Pour liquids
of various gravities and densities, having small power of mutual attraction,
into a vessel; shake them violently together till they seem to form one liquid,
and you will see, if only you leave it quietly standing, how they will divide
The members of the true church
could, therefore, have remained in undisturbed possession and might have entered
upon their priestly office among them in a new and better appointed form. Every
man would then have gathered around him those who best understood him, who by
his method could be most strongly stirred. Instead of the vast association,
the existence of which you now bewail, a great crowd of smaller, less definite
societies would have arisen. In them men would in all kinds of ways, now here,
now there, have tested religion. They would have been only states to be passed,
preparatory for the time when the sense for religion should awake, and decisive
for those who should be found incapable of being taken hold of in any way.
Hail to those who shall first
be called when, the simple way of nature having failed, the revolutions of human
affairs shall, by a longer, more artificial way, lead in the golden age of religion!
May the gods be propitious to them, and may a rich blessing follow their labours
in their mission to help beginners, and to smooth the way for the babes to the
temple of the Eternal—labours that in our present unfavourable circumstances
yield us such scanty fruit.
Listen to what may possibly
seem an unholy wish that I can hardly suppress. Would that the most distant
As soon as a prince declared a church to be a community with special privileges, a distinguished member of the civil world, the corruption of that church was begun and almost irrevocably decided. And if the society of believing persons, and of persons desiring belief, had not been mixed after a wrong manner, that is always to the detriment of the former, this could not have happened, for otherwise no religious society could ever be large enough to draw the attention of the governor.
Such a constitutional act of political preponderance works on the religious society like the terrible head of Medusa. As soon as it appears everything turns to stone.
Though without connection, everything that is for a moment combined, is now inseparably welded together; accidental elements that might easily have been ejected are now established for ever; drapery and body are made from one block and every unseemly fold is eternal. The greater and spurious society can no more be separated from the higher and smaller. It can neither be divided nor dissolved. It can neither alter its form nor its articles of faith. Its views and usages are all condemned to abide in their existing state.
But that is not all. The members
of the true church the visible church may contain, are forcibly excluded from
all share in its government, and are not in a position to do for it even the
little that might still be done. There is more to govern than they either could
or would do. There are worldly things now to order and manage, and privileges
to maintain and make good. And even though in their domestic and civil affairs,
they did know how to deal with such things, yet cannot they treat matters of
this sort as a concern of’ their priestly office. That is an incongruity that
their sense will not see into and to which they cannot reconcile themselves.
It does not accord with their high and pure idea of religion and religious fellowship.
They cannot understand what they are to make out of houses and lands and riches,
either for the true church to which they belong, or for the larger society which
they should conduct.
But besides all this, persons
are attracted who otherwise would forever have remained without. If it is the
interest of the proud, the ambitious, the covetous, the intriguing to press
into the church, where otherwise they would have felt only the bitterest ennui,
and if they begin to pretend interest and intelligence in holy things to gain
the earthly reward, how can the truly religious escape subjection? And who bears
the blame if unworthy men replace ripe
But in a still more direct way,
the state is the cause why the bond between the true church and the visible
religious society has been loosened. After showing to the church this fatal
kindness, it believed it had a right to its active gratitude, and transferred
to it three of its weightiest commissions. By
this complaint I in nowise meant that the state should not in many and in most
important things rely chiefly on the power of the religious sentiments and on
the agreement of its own interests with their natural working. But I meant that
in so far as it believes it must so rely, it is to be desired that the state
do not interfere in a manner hurtful to the pure effect of these sentiments.
Now this happens without fail, when there is any positive intermeddling. The
state may on the one side assume the religious sentiment of its members and
rejoice confidingly in its working. It then reserves the right to withdraw this
assumption in respect of an individual who does not manifest this working, or
when this deficiency shows itself in a decisive majority of a religious society,
it inquires how far the defect has its root in the principles of the society
and modifies its assumption accordingly. But so long as it has no ground for
withdrawing its trust, it must know that the organization of the society proceeds
from the very sentiment, from which it expects good result, and that in the
nature of the case only those in whom this sentiment is strongest will have
most influence in forming and guiding the society. It must, therefore, leave
the sentiment free to operate, allowing the organization of the society to take
its own course without its guidance. This must continue till the result gives
ground for lessening the state’s confidence If a state has this confidence only in one particular
form of religiousness, it follows this course with the society in which it exists,
and regulates its conduct towards the others by the greatness of its distrust,
varying up to complete intolerance. A state relies on one religious society
and accords it a high degree of independence; another it watches more closely,
and itself decides on its organization. Now in reason this can have no other
ground than that the state gives the latter society less confidence. A marvellous
phenomenon cannot be thought of, as if a state would watch more closely the
religious society to which the sovereign himself belonged and limit it in its
free activity more than any other. This case of confidence in the religious
sentiment is, for our present inquiry, the first point. The second is the opposite
case, when the state looks for no good effect in respect of anything falling
within its own sphere from the religious sentiment of its members. Even then
there seems to be no consistent course, except to allow religion to manifest
itself as an amusement to which the state is indifferent, taking care, as with
other private associations, that no harm arises to the civil community. Applying
this now to education, the matter here in discussion and the matter to which
everything comes back, there seem to be the following consequences. The religious
education of man will never, as such, be the whole education of man. All training
in which the religious society does not, as such, interest itself, as for example
the academic and higher scientific, lies outside of its domain. Perhaps the
church has earlier thought of education than the state. The state will then
say, “I see that you have the institutions for educating the youth, but they
do not suffice me. I will add what fails but will then take them under my guidance.”
If the church dares to speak and understands its own good, it will reply, “Not
so, but for all deficiency make your own institutions and we, as citizens, will
honourably contribute our utmost to their success. Within our special limits,
however, leave us our own to care for ourselves, and only omit from yours that
for which you think ours will suffice.” Does the state, nevertheless, do by
force the contrary, there will be an element in the highest degree undesirable
to the church, and it will feel it an injury even when this gives the doubtful
privilege of a certain influence on many things whereon, by the natural course
of things, it would have none. . . With the teaching of human duties in civil
life, which is nothing but a continuous education of grown-up people, it is
the same. That this is needed by the state admits of no doubt, all the more
if it does not proceed naturally from the public life. The state finds
now that there is teaching of this kind in the exercises and utterances
of the religious society existing in its midst. It willingly resolves to spare
an institution of its own for this object. The religious society is pleased
to render this service to the common good. But the state says, “I will make
use of your teaching, but to make sure that it completely reaches my purpose,
I must prescribe to you what you are not to forget to speak of, and what you
shall recall from history at fixed times, and I must make arrangements to know
that this is actually done.” The church will then, if it dare, certainly say,
“By no means, for there would then be much teaching not belonging to our department,
and in respect of history it is repugnant to us, for example, to recall joyfully
certain days when you were victorious over another state, while our society
in that state must observe a discreet silence, and should rejoice on other days
when you were defeated, and which we again must pass over. Both days are alike
to us, and we must, in our own way, make the same use both of what is to your
honour and to your shame. With this use you may well be content, but for that
special purpose make another arrangement, for we cannot assist.” And if the
state gives no heed to these representations, it injures the personal freedom
of its members where it is holiest and most inviolable. . . . The third matter
here mentioned, the taking of oaths, properly belongs to the second, but is
specially mentioned because of the special manner in which the state brings
the church to its aid. An injury has here also been inflicted. The different
small societies of non-swearers are allowed a simple affirmation instead of
an oath, but the great church, specially favoured by the state, is exhorted
to preach on the sacredness of oaths, and its members must take them in the
prescribed manner or lose all the privileges involved. There may, however, be
many among them who, fearing the plain prohibition of Christ, are troubled in
conscience about swearing, and among the teachers there may also be many who
cannot get over the literal interpretation of those words, and who think it
irreligious to come to the help of the state in such a manner. How can it be
that such an injury to religious freedom should not be felt very painfully?
These fuller explanations, it is to be hoped, will justify the wish expressed
in the text, that the state should employ what is useful to it in the arrangements
of the church only in so far as consists with uninjured freedom.
But I am not yet done with my
indictment. The state pollutes religious fellowship by introducing into its
deepest mysteries its own interests. When the church, in prophetic devoutness,
consecrates the new-born babe to the Deity and to the struggle for the highest,
the state will take the occasion to receive it from the hands of the church
into the list of its protégés. When it gives the stripling its first
kiss of brotherhood, as one who has taken his first glance into the sacred things
of religion, this must also be for the state the evidence of the first stage
of civil independence;
It is very apparent that a society
to which such a thing can happen, which with false humility accepts favours
that can profit it nothing and with cringing readiness takes on burdens that
send it headlong to destruction; which allows itself to be abused by an alien
power, and parts with the liberty and independence which are its birthright,
for a delusion; which abandons its own high and noble aim to follow things that
lie quite outside of its path, cannot be a society of men who have a definite
aim and know exactly what they wish. This glance at the history of the ecclesiastical
society is, I think, the best proof that it is not strictly a society of religious
men. At most it appears that some
Full of sacred pride, the true church would have refused gifts it could not use, well knowing that those who have found the Deity and have a common joy in knowing Him, have in the pure fellowship in which alone they would exhibit and communicate their inmost nature, really nothing in common the possession of which could be protected by worldly power. On earth they require nothing but a speech by which to make themselves understood and a space in which to be together, things requiring no prince’s favour.
But if the true church have nothing to do directly with the profane world, and if there must be a mediating institution whereby to come into a certain contact with it, as it were an atmosphere, both as a medium for purification and for attracting new material, what form must this institution take and how is it to be freed from the corruption it has imbibed? This last question time must answer. Sometime it will certainly be done, but it may be done in a thousand different ways, for, of all sicknesses of man there are various ways of cure. Everything in its place will be tried and have its effect. The goal only I can indicate in order to show you more clearly that here also it has not been religion and its endeavour to which you should have manifested your repugnance.
The fundamental idea of such
an auxiliary institution is to exhibit to persons who in any degree have a sense
for religion, though because it is not yet apparent and conscious, they are
not fit for incorporation into the true church, so much religion as such that
their capacity must necessarily be developed. Let us now see what there is in
the present state of things that hinders this from taking
And assuming that only persons
equally near religion assemble round one master, they may not all be near in
the same way. It is, therefore, most preposterous to wish to limit any pupil
to a single master. There is no one so universally cultured in religion, nor
anyone who can exercise all kinds of influence. No man is in a position to draw
by his representation and speech from all who come before him the hidden gems
of religion to light, for the sphere of religion is far too comprehensive. Remember
the different ways by which men pass from consciousness of the individual and
particular to the Whole and the Infinite: remember that, by this very mode of
transition, a man’s religion assumes its own distinct character. Think
But it is not possible for a man to limit his teaching to what he understands as soon as, in the very same transaction, he must have something else in view. Without question, a priestly man can present his religion with zeal and skill as is fitting, and at the same time remain faithful to some civil business and accomplish it effectively. Why then, if it suits, should not a person, having a call to the priesthood, be at the same time a moral teacher in the service of the state? There is nothing against it. He may do both, only not the one in and through the other; he must not wear both natures at the same time, not accomplish the two concerns by the one action. The state may be satisfied, if it so pleases, with a religious morality, but religion rejects consciously and individually every prophet and priest that moralizes from this point of view. Whosoever would proclaim religion must do it unadulterated.
It is opposed to every sentiment
of honour of a master in That
the state, besides what it confides to the church, must provide an educational
institution of its own, be it for the younger generation or for the less educated
portion of the people, is here regarded as absolutely necessary. This contention
shows the speaker’s decision on the much discussed question of the relation
of state and church to what in the widest sense of the word is called school.
In part the state may continue to rely on the religious associations. Yet it must be content to exercise only a negative
supervision over their institutions. For the rest it is the duty of the state
to arrange and care. Where there is any kind of religious association, that
the awaking of the higher spiritual be not hindered, there is also in the homes
a uniform discipline for taming sensuality, which is in every way useful for
the civil life. But if the state requires a special discipline to produce certain
habits in its citizens suited to the time, it must not come from the church.
The proper feeling of its necessity being universally diffused, the state may
rely on the work of the families, not as elements of the religious but of the
civil society. If this feeling is not sufficiently diffused, the state must
make public provision. All that is academic in education is of this kind, for
it cannot and, being quite foreign to it, should not even appear to proceed
from the church. Further, wherever a system of religious communication exists,
there must be common instruction of the youth in all that bears upon understanding
the religious speech and the creed. This is properly the church parish school.
In Christendom it is for transmitting religious ideas, and among Protestants
for some small understanding at least of the Scriptures. Has the state confidence
that an effective communication of moral ideas and the germs of mental development
will be given at the same time, it may rely on the church school for those objects.
But everything statistical, mathematical, technical and such like is foreign
to the church school. If the ecclesiastical and the civil community are identical,
the ecclesiastical and the civil school may for some good reason be united in
one institution. But the state no more acquires the right thereby to conduct
the ecclesiastical school, than the church to conduct the civil. Finally, every
religious fellowship that has a history requiring, for comprehending its development,
attainments that belong to the sphere of science and learning, needs an institution
to maintain and encourage such attainments. This is the church academy. All
other sciences are foreign to the church. Suppose there exist in the state,
either being maintained by the state or being independent bodies, academies
for general science, and suppose the church has confidence that their methods
are suited to its requirements, it may find it expedient to unite with them
its own special academy. But the expediency must be determined by the church,
and neither by the state nor by the scientific bodies. The church may neither
found a claim on this union to general superintendence of scientific institutions,
nor give up its right to manage its own academy. These are the principles then
on which church and state are to act together or act apart. But to acknowledge
these principles towards one church and not towards
another is the worst possible inconsistency. It must necessarily pain the slighted
church that incurable disagreement should arise between their religious and
their political feeling.
Away too with all that has even
a semblance to rigid union of priest and laity, whether among themselves or
with each other!
Only under such conditions,
can truly priestly souls take charge of seekers for religion. Thus only can
this preparatory association actually lead to religion and make itself worthy
to be regarded as an adjunct and vestibule of the true church, for thus only
it can lose all that in its present state is unholy and irreligious. By universal
freedom of choice, recognition and criticism, the hard and pronounced distinction
between priest and laity will be softened, till the best of the laity come to
stand where the priests are. All that is now held together by the unholy bond
of creeds will be severed.
In regard to this society, you
see, our wishes are identical. What is obnoxious to you opposes us also. Permit
me, however, always to add that this would not have been as it is, if we had
only been left alone to occupy ourselves in our own proper work. Our common
interest is to have the evil removed, but there is little we can do except to
wish and hope. How such a change will take place among us Germans I do not know.
Will it be, as in neighbouring countries, only after a great commotion and then
everywhere at once? Will the state, by an amicable arrangement and without the
death and resurrection of both church and state, break off its unhappy marriage
with the church? Or will it endure that another, more virginal institution arise
alongside of the one that is for ever sold to it?
But till something of this kind do happen, a heavy fate must lie upon all holy souls, who, glowing with religion, would seek to exhibit their most holy things even in the profane world, that something might thereby be accomplished. I will not delude the members of the state privileged order into making much account of what in these circumstances they can accomplish by speech for the dearest wish of their heart. And if many of them believe themselves bound not to be always speaking only of piety, nay, not even frequently to speak chiefly of it and to speak of it alone only on solemn occasions, if they are not to be untrue to their political calling, I know little to say against it.
But this cannot be taken from
them, that they can proclaim by a priestlike life the spirit of religion, and
this may be their consolation and their best reward. In a holy person everything
is significant; in an acknowledged priest of religion everything has a canonical
meaning. They may, therefore, in all their movements exhibit the nature of religion.
Even in the common relations of life nothing
And not content to express the nature of religion, they must also in a similar way destroy the false appearance of it. With childlike ingenuousness, and in the high simplicity of utter unconsciousness, seeing no danger, and feeling no need of courage, they disregard what base prejudices and subtle superstition have surrounded with a spurious glory of sanctity. Unconcerned as the infant Hercules, they let themselves be hissed at from all quarters by the snakes of solemn calumny, being able to crush them quietly in a moment. To this holy service they may devote themselves till better times, and I think that you also will have reverence for this unassuming worth, and will augur well for its influence on men.
But what am I to say to those
to whom you refuse the priestly robe because they have not gone through a definite
course of science in a definite way? Whither shall I direct them with the social
bent of their religion not directed alone to the true church, but also outward
to the world? Having no greater scene in which, in any striking way,
Nay, at the end of our future
culture we expect a time when no other society preparatory for religion except
the pious family life will be required. At present, millions of men and women
of all ranks sigh under a load of mechanical and unworthy labours. The older
generation succumbs discouraged, and, with pardonable inertness, abandons the
younger generation to accident in almost everything, except the necessity straightway
to imitate and learn the same degradation. That is the cause why the youth of
the people do not acquire the free and open glance whereby alone the object
of piety is found. There is no greater hindrance to religion than that we must
be our own slaves, and everyone is a slave who must execute something it ought
to be possible to do by dead force. We hope that by the perfecting of sciences
and arts, those dead forces will be made serviceable to us, and the corporeal
world, and everything of the spiritual that can be regulated, be turned into
an enchanted castle where the god of the earth only needs to utter a magic word
or press a spring, and what he requires
In the grateful feeling that,
when this better time has come, however far off it may still be, the efforts
to which you have devoted your days, shall have contributed somewhat to its
coming, permit me once more to direct your attention to the fair fruit of your
labour. Allow yourselves to be led once more to the exalted fellowship of truly
religious souls. It is dispersed and almost invisible, but its spirit rules
everywhere, even where but few are gathered in the name of the Deity. What is
there in it that should not fill you with admiration and esteem, ye friends
and admirers of the good and beautiful? They are among themselves an academy
of priests. The exhibition of the holy life, which for them is the highest,
is treated by everyone as his art and study, and the Deity out of His endless
riches apportions to each one his own lot. To a universal
If in any other department of life, or in any other school of wisdom, you have found anything nobler than this, impart it to me; mine I have given you.
Man in closest fellowship with the highest must be for you all an object of esteem, nay, of reverence. No one capable of understanding such a state can, when he sees it, withhold this feeling. That is past all doubt. You may despise all whose minds are easily and entirely filled with trivial things, but in vain you attempt to depreciate one who drinks in the greatest for his nourishment. You may love him or hate him, according as he goes with you or against yon in the narrow path of activity and culture, but even the most beautiful feeling of equality you cannot entertain towards a person so far exalted above you. The seeker for the Highest Existence in the world stands above all who have not a like purpose. Your wisest men say that, even against your will, you must honour the virtuous who, in accordance with the laws of the moral nature, endeavour to determine finite concerns by infinite requirements. And were it even possible for you to find some thing ridiculous in virtue itself, because of the contrast between the limited powers and the infinite undertaking, you still could not deny esteem to one whose organs are open to the Universe, who is far from strife and opposition, exalted above all imperfect endeavour, responsive to the Universe and one with it. You cannot despise when you see man in this supreme moment of human existence and the clear beam is reflected in its purity upon you.
But whether the picture of the nature and of the life of religion I have drawn has claimed your esteem I do not inquire. Because of false conceptions and devotion to nonessentials esteem is too often refused, but I am sure of the power of the subject, as soon as it is freed from its distorting drapery. Nor do I ask whether my thoughts on the coherence of this indwelling capacity with all that is sublime and godlike in our nature, have stimulated you to an intenser study of our nature and possibilities. I also pass the question, whether you have taken the higher standpoint I showed you, and have recognized from thence, in that nobler fellowship of spirits, so much misjudged, wherein everyone freely surrenders himself, not regarding the glory of his self-will, nor the exclusive possession of his deepest, most secret individuality, that he may regard himself as a work of the eternal, the all-fashioning World-Spirit, even the holy of holies of fellowship, higher far than any earthly fellowship, holier than the tenderest tie of friendship. In short, I do not ask whether all religion, in its infinity, its divine power, has compelled you to adoration, for I leave the matter itself to work upon you.
At present I have something else to deal with, a new opposition to vanquish. I would, as it were, conduct you to the God that has become flesh; I would show you religion when it has resigned its infinity and appeared, often in sorry form, among men; I would have you discover religion in the religions. Though they are always earthly and impure, the same form of heavenly beauty that I have tried to depict is to be sought in them.
The divisions of the church
and the difference of religion are almost always found together. The connection
seems inseparable. There are as many creeds and confessions as churches and
religious communions. Glancing at this state of things, you might easily believe
that my judgment on the plurality of the church must also be my judgment on
the plurality of religion. You would,
Nor can these different manifestations of religion be mere component parts, differing only in number and size, and forming, when combined, a uniform whole. In that case every one would by natural progress come to be like his neighbour. Such religion as he acquired would change into his own, and become identical with it. The church, this fellowship with all believers which I consider indispensable for every religious man, would be merely provisional. The more successful its work, the quicker would it end—a view of the institution I have never contemplated. I therefore find that multiplicity of the religions is based in the nature of religion.
That no man can perfectly possess
all religion is easy to see. Men are determined in one special way, religion
is endlessly determinable. But it must be equally evident that religion is not
dismembered and scattered in parts by random among men, but that it must organize
itself in manifestations of varying degrees of resemblance. Recall
Wherefore, plurality of religions
is another thing than plurality of the church. The essence of the church is
fellowship. Its limit, therefore, cannot be the uniformity of religious persons.
It is just difference that should be brought into fellowship.
To be satisfied with a mere
general idea of religion would not be worthy of you. Would you then understand
it as
The different existing manifestations of religion you call positive religions. Under this name they have long been the object of a quite pre-eminent hate. Despite of your repugnance to religion generally, you have always borne more easily with what for distinction is called natural religion. You have almost spoken of it with esteem.
I do not hesitate to say at once that from the heart I entirely deny this superiority. For all who have religion at all and profess to love it, it would be the vilest inconsequence to admit it. They would thereby fall into the openest self-contradiction. For my own part, if I only succeeded in recommending to you this natural religion, I would consider that I had lost my pains.
For you, indeed, to whom religion generally is offensive, I have always considered this preference natural. The so-called natural religion is usually so much refined away, and has such metaphysical and moral graces, that little of the peculiar character of religion appears. It understands so well to live in reserve, to restrain and to accommodate itself that it can be put up with anywhere. Every positive religion, on the contrary, has certain strong traits and a very marked physiognomy, so that its every movement, even to the careless glance, proclaims what it really is.
If this is the true ground of
your dislike, you must now rid yourself of it. If you have now, as I hope, a
better estimate of religion, it should be no longer necessary for me to contend
against it. If you see that a peculiar and
But you may not admit this argument. You may transfer all the reproaches you have formerly been accustomed to bestow on religion in general to the single religions. You may maintain that there are always, just in this element that you call positive, the occasion and the justification of those reproaches, and that in consequence the positive religions cannot be as I have sought to represent, the natural manifestations of the true religion. You would show me how, without exception, they are full of what, according to my own statement, is not religion. Consequently, must not a principle of corruption lie deep in their constitution? You will remind me that each one proclaims that it alone is true, and that what is peculiar to it is absolutely the highest. Are they not distinguished from one another by elements they should as much as possible eliminate? In disproving and contending, be it with art and understanding, or with weapons stranger and more unworthy, do they not show themselves quite contrary to the nature of true religion? You would add that, exactly in proportion as you esteem religion and acknowledge its importance, you must take a lively interest in seeing that it everywhere enjoys the greatest freedom to cultivate itself on all sides. You must, therefore, hate keenly those definite religious forms, that hold all their adherents to the same type and the same word, withdraw the freedom to follow their own nature and compress them in unnatural limits. In contrast, you would praise mightily the superiority in all these points of the natural to the positive religions.
Once more I say, I do not deny
that misunderstandings and perversions exist in all religions, and I raise no
objections
And you would find more than remote traces of the Deity. I invite you to study every faith professed by man, every religion that has a name and a character. Though it may long ago have degenerated into a long series of empty customs, into a system of abstract ideas and theories, will you not, when you examine the original elements at the source, find that this dead dross was once the molten outpourings of the inner fire? Is there not in all religions more or less of the true nature of religion, as I have presented it to you? Must not, therefore, each religion be one of the special forms which mankind, in some region of the earth and at some stage of development, has to accept?
I must take care not to attempt
anything systematic or complete, for that would be the study of a life, and
not the business of a discourse. Yet you must not be allowed to wander at hazard
in this endless chaos. That you may not
You will then find that the positive religions are just the definite forms in which religion must exhibit itself—a thing to which your so-called natural religions have no claim. They are only a vague, sorry, poor thought that corresponds to no reality, and you will find that in the positive religions alone a true individual cultivation of the religious capacity is possible. Nor do they, by their nature, injure the freedom of their adherents.
Why have I assumed that religion can only be given fully in a great multitude of forms of the utmost definiteness? Only on grounds that naturally follow from what has been said of the nature of religion. The whole of religion is nothing but the sum of all relations of man to God, apprehended in all the possible ways in which any man can be immediately conscious in his life. In this sense there is but one religion, for it would be but a poverty-stricken and halting life, if all these relations did not exist wherever religion ought to be. Yet all men will not by any means apprehend them in the same way, but quite differently. Now this difference alone is felt and alone can be exhibited while the reduction of all differences is only thought.
You are wrong, therefore, with
your universal religion that is natural to all, for no one will have his own
true and right religion, if it is the same for all. As long as we occupy a place
there must be in these relations of man to the whole a nearer and a farther,
which will necessarily
What determines and distinguishes these individuals, and what, on the other hand, is common to all their component parts, holds them together, and is their principle of adhesion, whereby any given detail is to be adjudged to its own type of religion, are implied in what has been already said. But this view can only be verified by the existing historical religions, and of them it is maintained that all this is different, and that such is not their relation to one another. This we must now examine.
First, a definite quantity of religious matter is not necessarily, in the same degree, a definite form of religion.
This is an entire misunderstanding
of the nature of the different religions. Even among their adherents it is general,
and causes manifold opposite and false judgments. They suppose that because
so many men acknowledge the same religion, they must have the same body of religious
views and feelings. Their fellow-believers must have the same opinions and the
same faith as they have, and this common possession must be the essence of their
religion. The peculiarly characteristic and individual element in a religion
is not easy to find with certainty from instances, but, however general the
idea may be, if you believe that it consists in including a definite sum of
religious intuitions
If now, as I have sought to show, religion needs to be of many types because, of every relation different views are possible, according as it stands related to the rest, how would we be helped by such a compendium of some of them that could define none? If the positive religions were only distinguished by what they exclude, they could certainly not be the individual manifestations we seek. That this is not their character, however, appears from the impossibility of arriving from this point of view at a distinct idea of them.
As they continue to exist apart, such an idea must be possible, for only what commingles in fact is inseparable in idea. It is evident that the different religious perceptions and feelings are not, in a determinate way, awakened by one another or interdependent. Now, as each exists for itself, each can lead, by the most various combinations, to every other. Hence, different religions could not continue long beside one another, if they were not otherwise distinguished. Very soon each would supplement itself into uniformity with all others.
Even in the religion of any
one man, as it is fashioned in the course of life, nothing is more accidental
than the quantity of religious matter that may arrive at consciousness. Some
views may set and others may rise and come to clearness, and his religion in
this respect is ever in flux. Much less can the boundary, which in the individual
is so changeable, be permanent and essential in the religion of several associated
individuals. In the highest degree it must be an unusual and accidental occurrence
that, even
Hence, among those who determine their religion in this way, there is a standing quarrel about essentials and nonessentials. They do not know what is to be laid down as characteristic and necessary, and what to separate as free and accidental; they do not find the point from which the whole can be surveyed; they do not understand the religion in which they live and for which they presume to fight; and they contribute to its degeneration, for, while they are influenced by the whole, they consciously grasp only the detail. Fortunately the instinct they do not understand, guides them better than their understandings, and nature sustains what their false reflections and the doing and striving that flow from them would destroy.
If the character of any special religion is found in a definite quantity of
perceptions and feelings, some subjective and objective connection, binding
exactly these elements together and excluding all others, must be assumed. This
false notion agrees well enough with the way of comparing religious conceptions
that is common but is not agreeable to the spirit of religion. A whole of this
type would not be what we seek to give religion in its whole compass a determinate
shape. It would not be a whole, but an arbitrary section of the whole; it would
not be a religion, it would be a sect. Except by taking the religious experiences
of one single person, and necessarily of only one short period of his life,
as the norm for a society, it could hardly arise. But the forms which history
has produced and which are now actually existing are not wholes of this sort.
All sectarianism, be it speculative, for bringing single intuitions into a philosophical
coherence, or ascetic, for reaching a system and determinate series of feelings,
labours for the utmost uniformity among all who would share the same fragment
of religion. Those who are infected with this mania certainly do not lack activity,
and if they have never
You will see this even more clearly by thinking of the times that gave them birth. You will recall how every positive religion, in its growth and bloom, when its peculiar vigour was most youthful, fresh and evident, did not concentrate and exclude, but expanded and pushed fresh shoots and acquired more religious matter to be wrought up in accordance with its own peculiar nature.
Therefore religions are not fashioned on this false principle. It is not one with their nature, it is a corruption that has crept in from the outside, as hostile to them as to the spirit of religion generally. Their relation to it which is a standing warfare, is another proof that they actually are constituted as individual manifestations of religion should be.
Just as little could the general differences of religion suffice to produce a thoroughly definite individual form. The three ways of being conscious of existence and of its totality, as chaos, system and elemental diversity, so often mentioned, are very far from being so many single and distinct religions. Divide an idea to infinity if you will, you cannot thereby reach an individual. You only get less general ideas which may, as genus and species, embrace a mass of very different individuals. To find the character of individual beings, there must be more than the idea and its attributes. But those three differences in religion are only the usual division according to the current scheme of unity, diversity and totality. They are types of religion but not religious individualities, and the need to seek for this individuality is by no means satisfied by the existence of religion in this threefold way. It is clear as day that there are many distinct manifestations of religion belonging to each type.
Just as little are the personal
and the opposing pantheistic modes of conception two such individual forms.
Perhaps you may seek this further
determination by uniting the two modes of conception with the three modes of
intuition. You would reach narrower sub-divisions, but not a thoroughly definite
and individual whole. Neither naturalism
Let me say then at once, that
the only remaining way
The whole of religion can only
be actually given in the sum of all the forms possible in this sense. It can,
therefore, be exhibited only in an endless series of shapes that are gradually
developed in different points of time and space, and nothing adds to its complete
manifestation that is not found in one of those forms. Where religion is so
moulded that everything is seen and felt in connection with one relation to
the Deity that mediates it or embraces it, it matters not in what place or in
what man it is formed or what relation is selected, it is a strictly positive
religion. In respect of the sum of the religious elements—to use a word that
should again be brought to honour—it is a heresy,
But if, as is to be hoped, we
are agreed that religion can only be exhibited in and by such definite forms,
only those who with their own religion pitch their camp in some
But many perhaps who take an
interest in the affairs of religion may ask with consternation, or some evil-disposed
person may ask with guile, whether every pious person must connect himself with
one of the existing forms of religion. Provisionally, I would say, by no means.
It is only necessary that his religion be developed in himself characteristically
and definitely. That it should resemble any great, largely accepted, existing
form is not equally necessary. I would remind him that I have never spoken of
two or three definite forms, and said that they are to be the only ones. Rather,
they may evermore develope in countless numbers from all points. Whosoever does
not find himself at home in an existing religion, I might almost say whosoever
is not in a position to make it if he had not found it,
In my opinion, then, you will see that the existing forms should not in themselves hinder any man from developing a religion suitable to his own nature and his own religious sense. The question of abiding in one of them or of constructing a religion of one’s own, depends entirely on what relation developes in a man as fundamental feeling and middle-point of all religions.
This is my provisional answer, but if he will hear more I would add that, except by misunderstanding, it would be very difficult to find oneself in such a position. A new revelation is never trivial, and merely personal, but always rests on something great and common. Hence adherents and fellow-believers have never failed the man really called to institute a new religion. Most men, following their nature, will belong to an existing form, and there will be only few whom none suffices.
Yet—and this is my chief point—the authority being the same for all, the many are no less free than the few, and do no less fashion something of their own. If we follow any man’s religious history, we find first dim presentiments which never quite stir the depths of the heart, and, being unrecognized, again disappear. Around every man, especially in earlier days, they doubtless hover. Some hint may awaken them, and they may again vanish without reaching any definite form and betraying aught characteristic. Afterwards it first comes to pass that the sense for the Universe rises once for all into clear consciousness. One man discovers it in one relation, another in another. Hereafter all things are referred to this relation, and so group themselves around it. Such a moment, therefore, in the strictest sense, determines every man’s religion. Now I hope you will not consider a man’s religion less characteristic, less his own, because it lies in a region where already several are collected. In this similarity you are not to find a mechanical influence of custom or birth, but, as you do in other cases, you are to recognize a common determination by higher causes. This agreement is a guarantee of naturalness and truth, and cannot, whether one is first or last, be hurtful to individuality. Though thousands before him and after him referred their religious life to one relation, would it, therefore, be the same in all?
Remember that every definite
form of religion is exhaustless for any one man. In its own way it should
The charge that everyone who
allows himself to be embraced in a positive religion, can only be an imitator
of those who have given it currency and cannot develope himself individually,
is baseless. This judgment no more applies here, than it would to the state
or to society. It seems to us morbid or quixotic for any one to maintain that
he has no room in any existing institution, and that he must exclude himself
from society. We are convinced that every healthy person will, in common with
many, have a great national character. Just because he is rooted in it and influenced
by it, he can develope his individuality with the greatest precision and beauty.
Similarly, in religion only morbid aberration so cuts off a man from
a life in fellowship with those among whom nature has placed him, that he belongs
to no great whole. Somewhere, on a great scale, everyone will find exhibited
or will himself exhibit what for him is the middle-point of religion. To every
such
To take the nearest example, think of Christianity as a definite individual form of the highest order. First there is in our time the well known outward division, so definite and pronounced. Under each section there is then a mass of different views and schools. Each exhibits a characteristic development, and has a founder and adherents, yet the last and most personal development of religiousness remains for each individual, and so much is it one with his nature that no one can fully acquire it but himself. And the more a man, by his whole nature, has a claim to belong to you, ye cultured, the more religion must reach this stage in him, for his higher feeling, gradually developing and uniting with other educated capacities, must be a characteristic product.
Or if, after unknown conception
and rapid birth-pangs of the spirit, the higher feelings develope, to all appearance
suddenly, is not then a characteristic personality born with the religious life?
There is a definite connection with a past, a present and a future. The whole
subsequent religious life is linked in this way to that moment and that state
in which this feeling surprised the soul. It thus maintains its connection with
the earlier, poorer life, and has a natural uniform development. Nay more, in
this initial consciousness there must already be a distinctive character. Only
in a shape and only under circumstances thoroughly definite, could it so suddenly
enter a life already developed. This distinctive character, then, every subsequent
moment displays and is thus the purest expression of the whole nature. The living
spirit of the earth, rending itself from itself as it were, links himself as
a finite thing to one definite moment in the series of organic evolutions and
a new man arises, a peculiar nature. His separate existence is independent of
the mass and objective quality either of his circumstances or his
It is Individual, not by an irreversible limitation to a particular number and selection of feelings and intuitions, not by the quality of the religious matter. This matter all who have the spiritual birth at the same time and in the same religious surroundings have in common. But it is individual by what he can have in common with no man, by the abiding influence of the peculiar circumstances in which his spirit was first greeted and embraced by the Universe, and by the peculiar way in which he conducts his observation and reflection on the same. This character and tone of the first childhood of his religion are borne by the whole subsequent course of his views and feelings, and are never lost, however far he may advance in fellowship with the Eternal Fountainhead.
Every intelligent finite being
announces its spiritual nature and individuality by taking you back to what
I may call a previous marriage in him of the Infinite with the finite, and your
imagination refuses to explain it from any single prior factor, whether caprice
or nature. In the same way you must regard as an individual everyone who can
point to the birthday of his spiritual life and relate a wondrous tale of the
rise of his religion as an immediate operation of the Deity, an influence of
His spirit. He must be characteristic and special, for such an event does not
happen to produce in the kingdom of religion vain repetition.
All this being well considered, it will not be possible for you, I believe, to be in earnest with this complaint against the positive religions. If you still persist in it, it can only be from prejudice, for you are far too careless about the matter to be justified by your own observation. You have never felt the call to attach yourselves to the few religious men you might be able to discover. Though they are ever attractive and worthy enough of love, you have never tried by the microscope of friendship, or even of closer sympathy, to examine more accurately how they are organized both by and for the Universe.
For myself I have diligently
considered them, I have sought out as patiently and studied them with the same
reverent care that you devote to the curiosities of nature, and it has often
occurred to me whether you would not be led to religion simply by giving heed
to the almighty way in which the Deity builds up, from all that has otherwise
been developed in man, that part of the soul in which He specially dwells, manifests
His immediate operation, and mirrors Himself, and thus makes His sanctuary quite
peculiar and distinct, and if you only noticed how He glorifies Himself in it
by the exhaustless variety and opulence of forms. I, at least, am ever anew
astonished at the many notable developments in a region so sparsely peopled
as religion. Men are distinguished by all degrees of receptivity for the charm
of the same object and by the greatest difference of effect, by the variety
of tone produced by the preponderance of one or other type of feeling, by all
sorts of idiosyncrasies of sensitiveness and peculiarity of temperament, and
the religious view of things nevertheless is perpetually prominent. Again I
see how the religious character of a man is often something quite peculiar in
him, strongly marked
Where have I seen all this? In the peculiar sphere of religion, in its individual forms, in the positive religious which you decry as utterly wanting in variety. I have seen it among the heroes and martyrs of a definite faith in a way for which the friends of natural religion are too cold, among enthusiasts for living feeling, in a way they hold as too dangerous, among the worshippers of some new sprung light and individual revelation. There I will show you them, there at all times and among all peoples. Nowhere else are they to be met. No man as a mere single being can come to actual existence. By the very fact of existence he is set in a world, in a definite order of things, and becomes an object among other objects, and a religious man, by attaining his individual life, enters by this very fact into a common life, which is to say into some definite form of religion. The two things are simply one and the same divine act, and cannot be separated. If the original capacity of a man is too weak to reach this highest stage of consciousness, by fashioning itself in a definite way, the stimulus must also be too weak to initiate the process of a characteristic and robust religious life.
And now I have rendered you
my account. It is for you now to tell me how, in respect of development and
individuality, it stands with your boasted natural religions. Show me among
its professors an equally great variety of
Many estimable and strong religious characters, indeed, I have met, whom the adherents of the positive religions, not without wondering at the phenomenon, regard as adherents of natural religion. But on closer view they recognized them as their confrères. Such persons have always swerved somewhat from the original parity of the religion of reason, and have accepted something arbitrary, as it is called, something positive.
But why do those who respect
natural religion at once distrust everyone who introduces any characteristic
feature into his religion? They also would have uniformity, though at the opposite
extreme from sectarianism, the uniformity of indefiniteness. So little is any
special personal cultivation through the positive religions to be thought of,
that its most genuine adherents do not even wish the religion of man to have
any history of its own at all or to commence with any notable event. Too much
there has been already for their taste, moderation being for them the chief
matter in religion, and all who can boast of religious emotions issuing suddenly
from the depths of the heart, come at once into the evil repute of being
I would not say that in making instruction and education everything, natural religion has pre-eminently fallen into the evil of being mixed with metaphysics and morals, nay, of being changed into them: but this at least is clear, that its adherents have not started from any living self-contemplation and allowing nothing to mark their cast of thought, whereby in any characteristic way men might be affected, they have no sure middle-point. The belief in a personal God, more or less anthropomorphic, and in a personal immortality, more or less materialized and sublimated—the two dogmas to which they reduce everything—depends, as they know themselves, on no special way of viewing or comprehending. Hence, any one who joins them is not asked how he came to his faith, but how he can demonstrate it. Thus they assume that he must have reached everything by demonstration. Any other and more definite middle-point you would have difficulty in indicating. The little that their meagre and attenuated religion does contain is of great ambiguity. They have a providence in general, a righteousness in general, a divine education in general. Now it is in this perspective and fore-shortening, now in that, so that the value of everything is perpetually changing. Or if there is any common reference to one point, it is to something alien to religion, such as how to remove obstacles from morality, or sustain the desire for happiness, or something else about which, in ordering the elements of their religion, truly religious men have never asked. Their scanty religious possessions are thereby still more scattered and dispersed.
This natural religion, then,
does not unite its religious
At the highest it is natural religion in the sense in which men used to speak of natural philosophy and natural poetry. The name was applied to such productions as lacked originality, and which, without being clumsy, conscious imitations, were but crude utterances of superficial endowments. The epithet was meant to distinguish them from the works of living, plastic science and art.
The better part found only in
the productions of the religious societies, they do not wait for with longing,
they do not esteem it more highly because they cannot reach it, but they oppose
it with all their might. The essence of natural religion consists almost entirely
in denying everything positive and characteristic in religion and in violent
polemics. It is the worthy product of an age, the hobby of
Hence their resistance to the positive and arbitrary is resistance to the definite and real. If a definite religion may not begin with an original fact, it cannot begin at all. There must be a common ground for selecting some one religious element and placing it at the centre, and this ground can only be a fact. And if a religion is not to be definite it is not a religion at all, for religion is not a name to be applied to loose, unconnected impulses. Recall what the poet says of a state of souls before birth. Suppose someone were to object to come into the world because he would not be this man or that, but a man in general! The polemic of natural religion against the positive is this polemic against life and it is the permanent state of its adherents.
Go back then, if you are in
earnest about beholding religion in its definiteness, from this enlightened
natural religion to those despised positive religions. There everything appears
active, strong and secure, every single intuition has its definite content and
its own relation to the rest, and every feeling has its proper sphere and its
peculiar reference. You find somewhere every modification of
But regard also the human which is to receive the divine. Do not forget that religion bears traces of the culture of every age and of the history of every race of men. Often it must go about in the form of a servant, displaying in its surroundings and in its adorning the poverty of its home and its disciples. You must not overlook how it has often been stunted in its growth from want of room to exercise its powers, and how from childhood it has pined miserably from bad treatment and ill-chosen nourishment.
And if you would comprehend
the whole, do not abide by the various forms of religion that for centuries
have shone and have dominated great peoples, and have been glorified in many
ways by poets and sages. Recollect that what is historically and religiously
most noteworthy is often distributed among but few, and remains hidden to the
common eye.
But when, in this way, you have
wholly and completely within your vision the right object, it will ever remain
a difficult business to discover the spirit of the religions and from
Even with this principle of research as a touchstone, you will be exposed to a thousand errors, for much will meet you to withdraw your eyes from the true path. Above all, I beseech you, never forget the difference between the essence of a religion, in so far as it is a definite form and representation of religion in general and its unity as a school.
Religious men are throughout
historical. That is not their smallest praise, but it is also the source of
great misunderstandings. The moment when they were first filled with that consciousness
which they have made the centre of their religion is always sacred for them.
Without reference to it, they never speak of what for them is characteristic
in religion and of the form to which in themselves it has attained. You can
easily imagine, then, how much more sacred still the moment must be in which
this infinite intuition was first of all set up in the world as the foundation
and centre of one peculiar religion. To it the whole development of this religion
in all generations and individuals is historically linked. Now this sum of the
religion, and the religious culture of a great body of mankind, is
As a consequence nothing is more natural than that this fact should be confused with the fundamental intuition of the religion. This has misled almost everyone and distorted the view of almost all religions. Never forget that the fundamental intuition of a religion must be some intuition of the Infinite in the finite, some one universal religious relation, found in every other religion that would be complete, but in this one only placed in the centre.
I beg you also not to regard
everything found in the heroes of religion or in the sacred sources as religion.
Do not seek in everything the decisive spirit of that religion. Nor do I exclude
trifles merely, or things that on any estimate are foreign to religion, but
things often mistaken for it. Recollect how undesignedly those sources were
prepared, so that it was impossible to provide for the exclusion of everything
not religion. And recall how the authors lived in all sorts of circumstances
in the world, and could not say at every word they wrote, this does not belong
to the faith. When they speak worldly wisdom and morality, or metaphysics and
poetry, therefore, do not at once conclude that it must be forced into religion,
or that in it the character of religion is to be sought. Morality, at least,
should be everywhere only one, and religion which should not be anywhere one,
cannot be distinguished by the differences of morality, which are always something
to be got rid of.
Above all I beg you not to be
misled by the two hostile principles that everywhere, and almost from the earliest
times, have sought to distort and obscure the spirit of
Whether with these precautions you will succeed in discovering the spirit of the religions I do not know. I fear religion is only comprehensible through itself, and that its special architecture and characteristic difference will not become clear till you yourselves belong to some one religion.
How you may succeed in deciphering the rude and undeveloped religions of remote peoples, or in unravelling the manifold, varied religious phenomena lying wrapped up in the beautiful mythologies of Greece and Rome, I care very little. May your gods guide you! But when yon approach the holiest in which the Universe in its highest unity and comprehensiveness is to be perceived, when you would contemplate the different forms of the highest stage of religion which is not foreign or strange, but more or less existent among ourselves, I cannot be indifferent as to whether or not you find the right point of view.
Of one form only I should speak,
for Judaism is long since dead. Those who yet wear its livery are only sitting
lamenting beside the imperishable mummy, bewailing its departure and its sad
legacy. Yet I could still wish to say a word on this type of religion. My reason
is not that it was the forerunner of Christianity. I hate that kind of historical
reference. Each religion has in itself its own eternal necessity, and its beginning
is original. But the
The universal interweaving of
parallelism, therefore, is not an accident, nor the value set on dialogue. All
history, being an abiding interchange between this attraction and this repulsion,
is presented as a colloquy in word and deed between God and man, and what unity
there is, is only from the uniformity of this dealing, and hence the sacredness
of the tradition in which the connection of this great dialogue
Just because of this view, it came to pass that the gift of prophecy was developed in Judaism as in no other religion. Even Christians are, in comparison, mere learners. The whole idea of the religion is in the highest degree childlike. It could only work on a narrow scene, without complications, where the whole being simple, the natural consequences of actions would not be disturbed or hindered. The more the adherents of this religion advanced on the scene of the world and had relations with other peoples, the more difficult did the exhibition of this idea become. Imagination had to anticipate the word which the Almighty would speak, and, abolishing intervening time and space, bring the second part of the same transaction immediately before the eyes. That is the essence of prophecy, and the effort after it was necessarily a prominent feature of Judaism, so long as it was possible to hold fast the fundamental idea and original form of the Jewish religion.
The belief in the Messiah was its highest product, its noblest fruit, but also its last effort. A new sovereign must come to restore Zion, wherein the voice of the Lord was dumb, to its original splendour. By the subjection of the peoples to the old law, the simple course of patriarchal times, broken by the unpeaceful association of peoples, the opposition of their forces, and the difference of their customs, should again become general. This faith has long persisted, and, like a solitary fruit, after all life has vanished, hangs and dries on the withered stem till the rudest season of the year.
The limited point of view allowed
this religion, as a religion, but a short duration. It died, and as its sacred
books were closed, the intercourse of Jehovah with His people was looked upon as ended. The political association
The original intuition of Christianity is more glorious, more sublime, more worthy of adult humanity, penetrates deeper into the spirit of systematic religion and extends itself further over the whole Universe. It is just the intuition of the Universal resistance of finite things to the unity of the Whole, and of the way the Deity treats this resistance. Christianity sees how He reconciles the hostility to Himself, and sets bounds to the ever-increasing alienation by scattering points here and there over the whole that are at once finite and infinite, human and divine. Corruption and redemption, hostility and mediation, are the two indivisibly united, fundamental elements of this type of feeling, and by them the whole form of Christianity and the cast of all the religious matter contained in it are determined. With ever-increasing speed the spiritual world has departed from its perfection and imperishable beauty. All evil, even this that the finite must decay before it has completed the circuit of its existence, is a consequence of the will, of the self-seeking endeavour of the isolated nature that, everywhere rending itself from its connection with the Whole, seeks to be something by itself. Death itself has come on account of sin. The spiritual world, going from bad to worse, is incapable of any production in which the Divine Spirit actually lives. The understanding being darkened has swerved from the truth; the heart is corrupt and has no praise before God; the image of the Infinite in every part of finite nature has gone extinct.
In accordance with this state
of the spiritual world, all dealings of Divine Providence are calculated. They
are never directed to the immediate results for feeling; they do not consider
the happiness or suffering which they
And when man does seek through self-consciousness to enter into fellowship with the unity of the Whole, the finite resists him, and he seeks and does not find and loses what he has found. He is defective, variable and attached to details and non-essentials. He wills rather than gives heed, and his aim vanishes from his eyes. In vain is every revelation. Everything is swallowed up by the earthly sense, everything is swept away by the innate irreligious principle. The Deity finds ever new devices. By His power alone, ever more glorious revelations issue from the bosom of the old. He sets up ever more exalted mediators between Himself and men. In every later ambassador the Deity unites with humanity ever more closely, that men may learn to know the Eternal Being. Yet the ancient complaint that man cannot comprehend what is from the Spirit of God is never taken away.
This is how Christianity most
and best is conscious of God, and of the divine order in religion and history.
It manipulates religion itself as matter for religion. It is thus a higher power
of religion, and this most distinguishes its character and determines its whole
form. Because it presupposes a widely-extended godlessness it is through and
through polemical. It is polemical in its outward communication, for, to make
its deepest nature evident, every corruption must be laid bare, be it in morals
or in thinking. Above all it must expose the hostility to the consciousness
of the Highest Being, which is the irreligious principle itself. Relentlessly
it unmasks every false morality, every
Christianity, moreover, is as
sharply and strongly polemical within its own borders, and in the inmost fellowship
of the saints. Just because religion is nowhere so fully idealized as in Christianity,
through its original postulate, perpetual warfare against all that is actual
in religion is presented as a duty that can never be sufficiently fulfilled.
And just because the ungodly is everywhere operative, because all actuality
together appears unholy, an infinite holiness is the aim of Christianity. Never
content with its attainments, it seeks, even in its purest productions, even
in its holiest feelings, traces of irreligion and of the tendency of all finite
things to turn away from the unity of the
In nature you often see a compound mass, as soon as its chemical powers have overcome outside resistance or reduced it to equilibrium, take to fermenting, and eject one and another element. So it is with Christianity, it turns at last its polemical power against itself. Ever anxious, lest in its struggle with external irreligion it has admitted something alien, or may yet have in itself some principle of corruption, it does not avoid even the fiercest inward commotions to eject the evil.
This is the history of Christianity that is rooted in its very nature. “I am not come to bring peace, but a sword,” the Founder Himself said. His gentle soul could not possibly have meant that He was come to occasion those bloody commotions, so utterly contrary to the spirit of religion, or that wretched strife of words that deals with dead matter which living religion does not admit. But what He did foresee, and in foreseeing command, were those holy wars that spring necessarily from the essence of His teaching, and which, as bitterly as He describes, rend hearts asunder and dissolve the most intimate relations of life.
But not only are the elements
of Christianity themselves subjected to this perpetual sifting; in their unbroken
How the fundamental view in
Christianity, the view to which all others are referred, determines the character
of its feelings is easy to discover. What do you call that feeling of an unsatisfied
longing which is directed towards a great object, and which you are conscious
is infinite? What impresses you on finding the sacred and the profane, the noble
with the common and the mean intimately united? And what is the mood that urges
you at times to assume the universality of this combination, and to search for
it everywhere? With Christians this holy sadness is not occasional, but is the
dominant tone of all their religious feelings. That is the only name which the
language affords me. It accompanies every joy and every pain, every love and
every fear. Nay, in its pride and in its humility it is the ground tone. If
you can reconstruct the depths of a spirit from single features, undisturbed
by foreign elements that have come from who knows where, you will find this
feeling throughout dominant in the
Such is Christianity. Its distortions and manifold corruptions I will not spare, for the corruptibility of every holy thing, as soon as it becomes human, is part of its fundamental view of the world. And I will not go farther into the details of it. Its doings are before you, and I believe I have given you the thread that, guiding you through all anomalies, will make the closest scrutiny possible. From first to last look only at the clearness, the variety, and the richness with which that first idea has been developed.
When, in the mutilated delineations
of His life I contemplate the sacred image of Him who has been the author of
the noblest that there has yet been in religion, it is not the purity of His
moral teaching, which but expressed what all men who have come to consciousness
of their spiritual nature, have with Him in common, and which, neither from
its expression nor its beginning, can have greater value, that I admire; and
it is not the individuality of His character, the close union of high power
with touching gentleness, for every noble, simple spirit must in a special situation
display some traces of a great character. All those things are merely human.
But the truly divine element is the glorious clearness to which the great idea
He came to exhibit attained in His soul. This idea was, that all that is finite
requires a higher mediation to be in accord with the Deity, and that for man
under the power of the finite and particular, and too ready to imagine the divine
itself in this form, salvation is only to be found in redemption. Vain folly
it is to wish to remove the veil that hides the rise of this idea in Him, for
every beginning in religion, as elsewhere, is mysterious. The prying
If all finite things require the mediation of a higher being, if it is not to be ever further removed from the Eternal and be dispersed into the void and transitory, if its union with the Whole is to be sustained and come to consciousness, what mediates must not again require mediation, and cannot be purely finite. It must belong to both sides, participating in the Divine Essence in the same way and in the same sense in which it participates in human nature. But what did He see around Him that was not finite and in need of mediation, and where was aught that could mediate but Himself? “No man knoweth the Father but the Son, and He to whom the Son shall reveal Him.” This consciousness of the singularity of His knowledge of God and of His existence in God, of the original way in which this knowledge was in Him, and of the power thereof to communicate itself and awake religion, was at once the consciousness of His office as mediator and of His divinity.
I would not speak of Him as
standing opposed to the rude power of His foes without hope of longer life,
for that is unspeakably unimportant. But when, forsaken in the thought of being
silenced for ever, without seeing any outward institution for fellowship among
His own actually set up, when in the face of the solemn splendour of
the old corrupt system that had so mightily resisted Him, when surrounded by
all that could inspire awe and demand subjection, by all that, from childhood,
He had been taught to honour, sustained by nothing but that feeling, He uttered
without delay that Yea, the greatest word mortal ever spake, it was the most
glorious apotheosis, and no divinity
With this faith in Himself, who can wonder at His assurance that He was not only a mediator for many, but would leave behind a great school that would derive their religion from His? So certain was He that before it yet existed He appointed symbols for it. This He did in the conviction that they would suffice to bring the band of His disciples to a secure existence. Nay, so sure was He that already He had spoken among His own, with prophetic enthusiasm, of the immortalization of His memory.
Yet He never maintained He was the only mediator, the only one in whom His idea actualized itself. All who attach themselves to Him and form His Church should also be mediators with Him and through Him. And He never made His school equivalent to His religion, as if His idea were to be accepted on account of His person, and not His person on account of His idea. Nay, He would even suffer His mediatorship to be undecided, if only the spirit, the principle from which His religion developed in Himself and others were not blasphemed.
His disciples also were far
from confusing this school with His religion. Pupils of the Baptist, still only
very imperfectly initiated into the nature of Christianity, were, without anything
farther, regarded and treated by the apostles as Christians and reckoned genuine
members of the community. And it should be so still. Everyone who, in his religion,
sets out from the same cardinal point, whether his religion originates from
himself or from another, is, without respect of school, a Christian. It will
naturally follow that when Christ with His whole efficacy is shown him he must
acknowledge Him, who has become historically the centre of all mediation, the
true Founder of redemption and reconciliation.
Nor did Christ say that the religious views and feelings He Himself could communicate, were the whole
extent of
And when, the first bloom of
Christianity being past and it was appearing to rest from its works, those works,
so far as they were contained in the sacred scriptures, were regarded as a finished
codex of religion, it was only brought about by those who took the slumber of
the Spirit for death—religion, as far as they were concerned, being dead. All
who still feel the life of religion in themselves or perceive it in others,
have ever protested against this unchristian proceeding. The sacred scriptures
have, by their native power, become a bible, and forbid no other book to be
or to become a bible. Anything written with like power they would willingly
allow to be associated with themselves. Nay, should not every later utterance
of the whole church, and therefore of the Divine Spirit, append itself confidently,
even though there be ineffaceably in the first fruits of the Spirit a special
holiness and worth?
In accordance with this unlimited
freedom, this essential infinity, then, this leading idea of Christianity of
divine mediating powers has in many ways been developed, and all intuitions
and feelings of the indwelling of the Divine Being in finite nature have within
Christianity been brought to perfection. Thus very soon Holy Scripture in which,
in its own way, divine essence and heavenly power dwelt, was held as a logical
mediator to open for the knowledge of God the finite and corrupt nature of the
understanding, while the Holy Spirit, in a later acceptation of the word, was
an ethical mediator, whereby to draw near to the Deity in action. Nay, a numerous
party of Christians declare themselves ready to acknowledge everyone as a mediating
and divine being who can prove, by a divine life
For why should it be overthrown? The living spirit of it, indeed, slumbers oft and long. It withdraws itself into a torpid state, into the dead shell of the letter, but it ever awakes again as soon as the season in the spiritual world is favourable for its revival and sets its sap in motion. Thus in oft repeated cycle it renews itself in various ways. The fundamental idea of every positive religion, being a component part of the infinite Whole in which all things must be eternal, is in itself eternal and universal, but its whole development, its temporal existence may not, in the same sense, be either universal or eternal. For to put the centre of religion just in that idea, it requires not only a certain mental attitude, but a certain state of mankind. Is this state, in the free play of the universal life, gone, never to return, that relation which, by its worth, made all others dependent on it, can no longer maintain itself in the feeling, and this type of religion can no more endure. This is the case with all childlike religions, as soon as men lose the consciousness of their essential power. They should be collected as monuments of the past and deposited in the magazine of history, for their life is gone, never to return.
Christianity, exalted above them all, more historical and more humble in its glory, has expressly acknowledged this transitoriness of its temporal existence. A time will come, it says, when there shall no more be any mediator, but the Father shall be all in all. But when shall this time come? I, at least, can only believe that it lies beyond all time.
One half of the original intuition of Christianity is the corruptibleness of all that is great and divine in human things. If a time should come when this—I will not say can no more be discovered, but no more obtrudes, when humanity advances so uniformly and peacefully, that only the navigator who calculates its course by the stars knows when it is somewhat driven back on the great ocean it traverses by a passing contrary wind, and the unarmed eye, looking only at what is taking place, can no more directly observe the retrogression of human affairs, I would gladly stand on the ruins of the religion I honour.
The other half of the original Christian faith is that certain brilliant and divine points are the source of every improvement in this corruption and of every new and closer union of the finite with the Deity. Should a time ever come, when the power that draws us to the Highest was so equally distributed among the great body of mankind, that persons more strongly moved should cease to mediate for others, I would fain see it, I would willingly help to level all that exalteth itself. But this equality of all equalities is least possible. Times of corruption await all human things, even though of divine origin. New ambassadors from God will be required with exalted power to draw the recreant to itself and purify the corrupt with heavenly fire, and every such epoch of humanity is a palingenesis of Christianity, and awakes its spirit in a new and more beautiful form.
And if there are always to be Christians, is Christianity, therefore, to be universal and, as the sole type of religion, to rule alone in humanity? It scorns this autocracy.
Every one of its elements it honours enough to be willing to see it the centre of a whole of its own. Not only would it produce in itself variety to infinity, but would willingly see even outside all that it cannot produce from itself. Never forgetting that it has the beat proof of its immortality in its own corruptibleness, in its own often sad history, and ever expecting a redemption from the imperfection that now oppresses it, it willingly sees other and younger, and, if possible, stronger and more beautiful types of religion arise outside of this corruption. It could see them arise close beside it, and issue from all points even from such as appear to it the utmost and most doubtful limits of religion. The religion of religions cannot collect material enough for its pure interest in all things human. As nothing is more irreligious than to demand general unifomity in mankind, so nothing is more unchristian than to seek uniformity in religion.
In all ways the Deity is to
be contemplated and worshipped. Varied types of religion are possible, both
in proximity and in combination, and if it is necessary that every type be actualized
at one time or another, it is to be desired that, at all times, there should
be a dim sense of many religions. The great moments must be few in which all
things agree to ensure to one among them a wide-extended and enduring life,
in which the same view is developed unanimously and irresistibly in a great
body, and many persons are deeply affected by the same impression of the divine.
Yet what may not be looked for from a time that is so manifestly the border
land between two different orders of things? If only the intense crisis were
past, such a moment might arrive. Even now a prophetic soul, such as the fiery
spirits of our time have,
Before parting with you, let me add a word about the conclusion of my Speech. Perhaps you think that it had been better suppressed, because now, after several years, it is apparent that I was wrong in adducing as a proof of the power of the religious sentiment that it was in the act of producing new forms. As nothing of the sort has anywhere come to pass, did I not wrongly presume to guess what they would be? If you think so, you have forgotten that prophecy only deserves its name, in so far, as it is the first fore-runner of the future. It is an indication of what is to be, and in it, to the eyes of the prophet’s kindred, the future is already contained. But the more the thing prophesied is great and comprehensive, and the more the prophesying itself is in the genuine lofty style, the less can the fulfilment be near. As in the far distance the setting sun makes, from the shadows of great objects, vast magic shapes on the grey east, prophecy sets up only in the far distance the shapes of the future which it has fashioned from the past and the present. Wherefore, what I said was in no sense to be to you a sign to prove the truth of my Speech, which should rather be clear to you by itself. I had no wish to prophesy, even if the gift had not been wanting, for it would have availed me nothing to point you to a distant future.
All I wished was partly to demand,
not of you, but of some others, half in irony, whether they could perhaps produce
that of which they appear to boast, and partly I hoped to
From this it follows that, as long as our age endures, nothing disadvantageous to Christianity can come forth, either from the age or from Christianity itself, and from all strife and battle it must issue renewed and glorified. This was my chief purpose, and you can see that I could not have meant to attach myself to some expressions of able and superior men, from which you understand that they wish to re-introduce the Heathenism of Antiquity, or even to create a new mythology, and by it to manufacture a new religion. In my opinion, rather, you can recognize, in the way that everything connected with such an endeavour is void and without result, the power of Christianity.
Above all, it is necessary that you understand what I have said of the fortunes of Christianity. This is not the place to expound and defend or even largely indicate my views, but I shall make a simple explanation that may prevent me from being classed, in the usual way of referring everything to schools and parties, with persons with whom, in this respect at least, I have nothing in common.
From the first there has almost
always been some pronounced antithesis in Christianity. As is natural, it always
has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The hostile elements gradually separate,
the division reaches a climax, and then gradually subsides until it fully disappears
in another antithesis that has meantime been developing. This has marked the
whole history of Christianity, and at present Protestant and Catholic are the
dominant antithesis in
At present there are some who appear to rescue themselves from the Protestant into the Catholic Church. I am not speaking of those who in themselves are nothing and are dazzled like children by glitter and show, or are talked over by monks. But there are some to whom I myself have formerly drawn your attention who are somewhat-able poets and artists who are worthy of honour; and a host of followers, as is the fashion nowadays, has followed them. The reason given is that in Catholicism alone there is religion, and in Protestantism only irreligiousness, a godlessness growing out of Christianity itself. Let that man be honoured by me who ventures on such a step solely on the conviction that he is following his nature. But if his nature is only at home in that form of Christianity, surely traces of this natural constitution will appear in his whole life. It must be capable of proof that his act has only completed outwardly what inwardly and spontaneously was strictly contemporaneous and anterior.
There is another class also
which I would pity and excuse if I cannot honour. With the instinct of the sick,
which at times indeed is marvellously successful but may also be dangerous,
they take this step. Manifestly they are in a state of dismay and weakness.
Avowedly they require external support for a bewildered feeling or some
But the persons to whom I now
refer, are neither one nor other, but, appear to me simply despicable, for they
know not what they wish nor what they do. Is there any sense in what they say?
Do the heroes of the Reformation impress any uncorrupted mind with godlessness
and not with a truly Christian piety? Is Leo X. actually more pious than Lather,
and Loyola’s enthusiasm holier than Zinzendorf’s? And where are we to assign
the greatest productions of modern times in every department of science, if
Protestantism is godlessness and hell? And in the same way that Protestantism
is for them only irreligion, they love in the Roman church not what is in any
way characteristic and essential, but only its corruption—a clear proof that
they know not what they wish. Consider this purely historically, that the papacy
is in no way the essence of the Catholic Church, but its corruption.
What they are really in search
of is idolatry. The Protestant Church, alas! has also to contend with idolatry,
but in a less gorgeous, and therefore less seductive form. And because it is
not pronounced and colossal enough here, they seek it beyond the Alps. For what
is an idol, if not what can be made, touched, and broken with hands, and which
yet, in its perishableness and fragility, is foolishly and perversely set up
to represent the Eternal, not merely in its own place, and according to its
indwelling power and beauty, but as if a temporal thing could be the Eternal,
as if the Eternal could be handled and magically weighed and measured at pleasure.
The highest they seek is this superstition in church and priesthood, sacrament,
absolution, and salvation. But they will accomplish nothing thereby, for it
is a perverse state of things and will show itself in them through increased
perversity. Leaving the
And now one more prophecy of
a different sort, and may you, as I hope, also see its fulfilment. It refers
to the second point I have just touched upon, the persistence of the opposition
of the two parties. Unquestionably many in the Romish Church have rid themselves
of her corruptions. Now it might happen that outwardly also this should take
place, if not everywhere, and in all things, yet in a large measure. Seducers
might then come, threatening the strong, and flattering the weak, persuading
the Protestants that, as this corruption is held by many to be the sole ground
of separation, they should return to the one, indivisible, original church.
Even that is a foolish and perverse project. It may attract and terrify many,
but it will not succeed, for the abolition of this opposition at present would
be the destruction of Christianity. I might challenge the mightiest of the earth
to attempt it. For him everything is a game, and I would allow all power and
guile. Yet I prophesy he would fail and be put to shame, for Germany still exists,
and its invisible power is not weakened. Once more it would take up its calling
with unsuspected power and would be worthy of its ancient heroes and its renowned
descent. It was chiefly appointed to develope this phenomenon, and, to maintain
it, it would rise again with giant force.
Here you have a sign if you require it, and when this miracle comes to pass you will perhaps believe in the living power of religion and of Christianity. But blessed are they by whom it comes to pass, who do not see and yet believe.
IN the first chapter there are many changes, but for the most part merely of single words and phrases. The complimentary passage on us proud Islanders is even stronger in its original form. ‘Religion can only be for us a dead letter, a sacred article in the constitution without any reality, for we are only occupied with fierce defence of national orthodoxy and the maintenance of superstitious attachment to ancient usages, while our pursuit of knowledge is limited to a miserable empiricism.’
P. 16, last par., has lost something of the irony of the Romanticist. “We have systems from all schools, yea, even from schools that are mere habitations and nurseries of the dead letter. The spirit is neither to be confined in academies nor to be poured out into a row of ready heads. It evaporates usually between the first mouth and the first ear.”
On p. 17, foot, beginning
“In isolation,” a somewhat mighty figure has been weakened, doubtless as too
youthfully daring. He is speaking of the work of the true heroes of religion.
“Only single noble thoughts flash through their soul, kindled with celestial
fire. The magic thunder of an enchanting speech accompanied the high phenomenon,
and announced to adoring mortals that the Deity had spoken. An atom impregnated
with heavenly power, fell into their soul, and there assimilated all, and gradually
expanded till it burst like a divine fate in a world whose atmosphere offers
too little resistance, and produced in its last moments one of those heavenly
meteors, one of
The earlier portion of the Second Chapter (pp. 26-66), has been materially altered, a large part of it having been entirely re-cast. The opening passage is little altered, the parallel drawn between the sociality of states and the combining of the mental activities is only verbally different, but it is used to explain that he frequently returns to more childlike times, not from depreciation of the present but in order to discover religion more by itself.
‘Ultimately, metaphysics, morals
and religion have the same object, the Universe. This has led to confusion.
Yet your instinct and opinions are against making religion one with metaphysics,
for you do not admit that it can tread with the same firm step, or with morals,
for there are foully immoral parts in its history. It must, therefore, deal
with the same matter in a different way. “What does your metaphysics do, or,
if you will not have that antiquated, too historical name, your transcendental
philosophy? It classifies the Universe, gives the grounds for what exists, deduces
the necessity of the actual, and spins from itself the reality and the laws
of the world.” Religion, however, has nothing to do with grounds and deductions
and first causes. “And what does your ethics do? It developes from the nature
of man and his relation to the Universe a system of duties, it commands and
prohibits actions with absolute authority. But religion cannot venture to use
the Universe for the deduction of duties, or to contain a code of laws.” The
common idea of religion is that it is a mixture of fragments of metaphysics
and ethics, but it is time this idea was quite annihilated. “The theorists in
religion who seek to know the nature of
“Religion neither seeks like
metaphysics to determine and explain the nature of the Universe, nor like morals
to advance and perfect the Universe by the power of freedom and the divine will
of man. It is neither thinking nor acting, but intuition and feeling. It will
regard the Universe as it is. It is reverent attention and submission, in childlike
passivity, to be stirred and filled by the Universe’s immediate influences.”
To metaphysics, man is the centre of all, the condition of all existence; to
religion, he is, like every other finite thing, but a manifestation of the Universe.
Morals proceeds from the consciousness of freedom and seeks to expand the realm
of freedom to infinity; religion regards man as needing to be what he is, whether
he will or not. Religion, morals and metaphysics are equals, different but complementary.
“To have speculation
“Practice is art, speculation is science, religion is sense and taste for the Infinite.” Without religion, practice cannot get beyond venturesome or traditional forms, and speculation is only a stiff and lean skeleton. “Practice opposes man to the Universe, not having received him as a part of it from the hand of religion. It has, in consequence, miserable uniformity, knows only one ideal and forgets to cultivate man himself. The feeling for infinite and living nature is wanting, whereof the symbol is variety and individuality.” And why has speculation so long given delusions for a system and words for thoughts? From want of religion. “All beginning must be from intuition of the Universe, and if the desire to have intuition of the Infinite is wanting, there is no touchstone and there is need of none, to know whether anything has been rightly thought. Modern Idealism is in need of religion, p. 40.
On intuition of the Universe
my whole Speech hinges. It is the highest formula of religion, determining its
nature and fixing its boundaries. “All intuition proceeds from the influence
of the thing perceived on the person perceiving. The former acts originally
and independently, and the latter receives, combines and apprehends in accordance
with its nature.” Without mechanical or chemical affection of the organs, there
is no perception. “What is perceived is not the nature of things, but their
action upon us, and what is known or believed of this nature is beyond the range
of intuition. The Universe is in unbroken activity, and reveals itself to us
at every moment. Every form, every creature, every occurrence is an action of
the Universe upon
Intuition is always single and distinct. Union and arrangement into a whole are not the business of sense but of abstract thinking. For religion, each intuition and feeling is unconnected and independent, immediate and true by itself. As the Universe can be viewed from an infinite number of points of view, there can be no system. There can no more be a system of intuitions than of the stars. The only system among them is the primitive endeavour to group them in definite but wretched and inappropriate figures. You may sketch the wain on the blue scroll of the worlds, but your neighbour is free to enclose them in quite other outlines. “This infinite chaos, where each point is a world, is the best and highest emblem of religion.” At each different point of the material world you see a new arrangement that leaves no trace of your arbitrary figures, and there are new objects within your ken. No horizon could embrace all, and there could be no eye which nothing could escape. In religion, from each different point of view you will see new intuitions and different groupings of the old. The infinity of speculation is in the endless variety of action and passion between the same limited matter and the mind; the infinity of morals is the impossibility of inward completeness; but religion is not only infinite in these respects, it is infinite on every side, in matter and in form and in way of perception.
The passage (pp. 54-56) follows little altered.
“But to complete the general sketch of religion, recollect
The kind of intuition of the
Universe determines the type of your religion, the strength of feeling, its
degree. The sounder the sense, the more clearly and definitely will each impression
be apprehended; the more ardent the thirst, the more persistent the impulse
to be always and everywhere impressed by the Universe, the more easy, perfect
and dominant will the impressions be. The feelings of religion should possess
us and we should give them expression, but if they urge us to action, we are
in another sphere. If you will still consider it religion, however good the
action, it is only superstition. All actions must be moral, religion accompanying
as a sacred music, “all should be done with religion, nothing from it.” And
even though you do not admit that all actions are moral, the same is true of
those you exclude. The moralist, the politician, the artist must all act with
calmness and discretion, not a possible thing if man is impelled to action by
the violent feelings of religion. Religion, without any other impulse to activity,
rather tends to inactive contemplation. To act
The next matter to understand is intuitions and feelings. For clear consciousness, reflection and utterance they must be considered apart, but the finest spirit of religion is thereby lost. In our original consciousness there are two activities, one controlling and working outwards, and another subservient, sketching and copying. Straightway in the simplest matter the elements divide, one set combines into an image of the object and the other penetrating to the centre of our being, dashes itself upon our original impulses and developes a fleeting feeling. In the same way no creation of the religious sense can escape this fate of division. Yet intuition without feeling is nothing, and feeling without intuition is nothing. There is a mysterious moment in every sense perception, before intuition and feeling divide, when sense and object mingle and are one. “It is fleeting and indescribable, but I wish you could seize it and recognize it again in the higher, the divine religious activity of the spirit.”
This moment is a kiss, an embrace, pp. 43, 44. Without it religion is but a spinning of formulas, pp. 47, 48.
The divine life is like a tender plant, the flowers of which are fertilized in the bud. The holy intuitions and feelings that you can dry and preserve are but the calixes and corollas that soon open and soon fall. But out of them I would now wind a sacred wreath.
First I conduct you to Nature as the outer court. The first intuition of the world and its Spirit is neither from fear of material forces nor from joy at physical beauty. Both had their place in preparing rude peoples, and may yet through art have a higher influence, but these influences naturally diminish with civilization, (p. 64) one god being made to conquer another, and the beauties of the globe being seen to be for universal matter pure delusion. “At a higher stage, perhaps, we shall see that to which here we must submit, ruling universally in all the vault of heaven, and a sacred awe will fill us at the unity and universality of material forces, and we may some time discover with astonishment in this delusion the same Spirit that quickens the Whole.”
After p. 66 the alterations are less extensive.
On p. 93 the section on the idea of God has been re-cast, and some think entirely changed.
‘For me the Deity is only one kind of religious intuition, of which any others there may be, are independent. I do not accept the position, ‘No God, no religion.’
The idea of God may be very different. To most men God is merely the genius of humanity, man being the prototype. To this God mankind is everything, and His disposition and nature are determined by what man takes to be His doings and dealings. But to me mankind is not everything, but an infinitely small part, a fleeting form of the Universe. There may be many beings above humanity, but every race and individual is subordinated to the Universe. Can God in this sense then be anything for me but one type of intuition?
Let us proceed to the highest idea, a Highest Being, a Spirit of the Universe who rules with freedom and understanding. On this idea also religion is not dependent. To have religion is to have an intuition of the Universe, and while this idea of God suits every intuition, a religion without God might still be better than another with God.
The stages of religion depend on the sense, the idea of God on the direction of the imagination. “If your imagination attach itself to the consciousness of freedom so that it cannot think of what originally operates on it, except as a free being, you will personify the Spirit of the Universe and have a God. If it attach itself to understanding, so that you always clearly perceive that freedom has only meaning in the individual and for individuals, then you have a World and no God. You will not I trust consider it blasphemy that the belief in God should depend on the direction of the imagination. You will know that imagination is the highest and most original activity in man, and that all besides is only reflection upon it.” Your imagination creates the world, and you could have no God without the world. “The knowledge of the source of this necessity will not make anyone less certain, nor enable him to escape the almost absolute necessity to have this idea of God. Only as operative can God be in religion, and no one has denied the divine life and action of the Universe. With the God of existence and command religion has nothing to do.”
In the Third Speech, p. 120, “Everyone misses in himself, etc.,” was, till the third edition, “Seeing I myself miss not a little in myself.”
On p. 138 another interesting
personal reference has been toned down. “Were it not impious to wish to be more
than one is, I would wish that I could see as clearly how the sense for art
by itself passes into religion, how despite the rest into which through each
separate enjoyment the spirit sinks, it yet feels itself urged to that progress
which might lead to the Universe. Why are those who have gone this way, such
silent natures? I do not know this sense, it is my most marked limitation, it
is the defect in my nature that I feel most deeply. But I treat it with esteem.
I do not presume to see, but I believe. The possibility of the matter stands
clear before my eyes, only
In the Fourth Speech there are no changes of any consequence.
In the Fifth Speech, the first clause, “Man in closest fellowship with the Highest,” was, “Man in the intuition of the Universe.” That is the key-note of the changes. Intuition of the Universe gives place to relation to God. Thus p. 217, “The whole of all religions is nothing but the sum of all relations of man to God,” replaces a passage that derives the need of an endless mass of religious forms from the number, variety, and independence of intuitions of the Infinite.
Later the additions are more striking than the changes. On p. 224, when he asks whether it is necessary to belong to an existing religion, he replies “By no means,” without any “Provisionally” or any modification as in the paragraph at the top of p. 225. Further additions are, on p. 246 foot, “and that for man under the power of the finite, and particular, and too ready to imagine the divine itself in this form, salvation is only to be found in the redemption”; p. 248, after “Yet He never maintained He was the only mediator,” “the only one in whom His idea actualized itself. All who attach themselves to Him and form His Church should also be mediators with Him and through Him”; further on, on the same page, the reason given why the person who sets out from the same point as Christ is a Christian, “It will naturally follow that they will acknowledge Him,” and p. 249 the last clause in the second paragraph about the first-fruits of the Spirit having special holiness and worth. Page 251, first paragraph. “I at least can only believe,” was “I at least fear.”
ACTS of Apostles, 181.
America, 196, 197, 201, 205.
Ancients, religion of, 49, 65, 69.
Antithesis, xxix., lii., 3, 51, 256, 267.
Aristotle, xxiii.
Art, xxxiii., xlii., lvii., 29, 37,68, 129, 138-141, 142, 146, 180, 283, 284.
Asceticism, 62.
BAPTISM, 160, 200-201.
Berkeley, xxx.
Berlin, xvii., xxi., xxxvii., xlvii., 151.
Birth and death, 131.
Braasch, ix., xl.
Brinkmann, xvi., xvii., xli.
Butler, xxii.
CATHOLICISM, liv., 51, 254, 267-274.
Celibacy, 105.
Charité, the, xxiv.
Chinese Emperor, 194.
Christ, historical, xx., xxxv., liii., 17, 143,187, 245, 262-263; as mediator, xl., liv., 246, 248-249, 258, 263-264, 284; School of, 248.
Christianity, description of, xlv.-xlvi., lii.-liii., 241-253,262; priesthood of, 185; spread of, 108, 187, 188, 272; polemical, 243; catholic in, 261; future of, xl., 265, 267-268, 270.
Church, Apostolic, 192; Catholic, 23, 110, 182, 194, 195, 198, 205, 206, 260, 268; Evangelical or Protestant, 110, 194, 261, 273, 274; Greek, 23, 191, 194, 260, 272; order in, 184; Reformed, xiii., xlix., 1., 189; and State, xlix., lviii., 164-176, 198-205; unity of, xxxiii.; Visible and Invisible, 157-180, 190-193.
Communions, smaller, 196-197, 235, 261.
Conversation, religion in, 150-151, 183.
Conversion, 260.
Clergy, 153, 194, 206.
Creeds, 193-194, 206-207.
Culture, 92.
Deism, xxi., 14.
Dilthey, ix., xxvii., xxxvi.
Divorce, xxxviii.
Dogma, xlii., 87, 195, 238.
Dogmatics, liv., 109, 258.
Drossen, xvii., xx.
EDITIONS of “Speeches,” ix., xxxv., xxxix.-xlvi., li., 275-284.
Education and the church, 199-200, 203-204; of to-day, 136.
Ego, xxvii., 77, 78, 79, 84, 137, 138, 142, 145.
Emotions, 18.
England, religious life in, 9, 23, 197, 271, 275; Episcopal Church of, 197.
Eudaimonists, 116, 117.
Explanations, li.
FAITH implicit, 23.
Fichte, xxvii., xxviii., xxxvii., xlvii., 113.
French, the, 10, 23.
French Revolution, xix., 10, 255.
GERMANY, religious life in, 9, 197, 207, 208, 270, 271, 274.
Glaubenslehre, xliii., li., 105-9, 101-2, 114-5, 117, 145, 186-8, 192.
God, existence of, xxvii., 22, 93-99, 101, 115, 137; Kingdom of, 17, 145; personality of, xl., xliii., 95-99, 116, 222, 256.
Goethe, x., xv., xxiv., xxv.
Grace, 90, 114; moments of, 228, 259.
Greeks, 96, 139.
HALLE, xv.-xvii., xxxix., xlvi., xlvii.,
Harms, xii., 1.
Heathenism, 108, 267.
Herder, xxv.
Heresy, liv., 109-110, 223, 257.
Hierarchists, lviii.
History, xliv., xlvii.
Humanity, 71-78.
Humility, 79, 112.
Hypocrisy, 19.
IDEALISM, 40.
Illumination, The, x., xvi., xix., xxi., xxii., xxxiv., xlii.
Imagination, xxvi., 98, 283.
Imaginative natures, 133-134.
Immortality, 92, 93, 99-101, 117, 118.
Individuality, xxx.
Infinite, seers of, 55.
Inspiration, 89.
Intuition, xliii., 44, 280, 284.
JACOBI, xxiii., xxx.
John, 262.
Judaism, xxxv., liii., 108, 238-241, 260, 261.
KANT and the Illumination, xxi., xxii.; influence of, x., xxii.; study of, xv., xvi., xxiii.; system of, xx., xxvii.-xxviii., 113.
Kantians, 116.
Klopstock, 106, 181.
Kurze Darstellung, lii., 107.
LANDSBERG, xx.
Leibnitz, xxviii.
Leo X., 269
Lessing, xxiv.
Letter, the, 130, 144, 207.
Lipsius, ix. xi., xxxix.-xl., xliii.
Literature of edification, 182-183; mediocre religious, 208.
Liturgy, xlix.-li.
Lord’s Supper, 193.
Loyola, 269.
Lucinda, Confidential Letters on, xxxvi.
Luther, 269.
Marriage, 169, 170, 200-202; mixed, 273.
Mediators, 6, 79, 113.
Messiah, 240.
Methodism, xiv., lvii.
Mind, predominating power in, xxxiii., 27.
Miracle, 88, 89, 113, 114.
Missions, 23, 257.
MOHOMMEDANISM, liii.
Monotheism, liii., 111, 186.
Morals, aim of, xxxi., 261.
Moravians, xiii.-xv., xx., xxvi., xxxiv., xxxv., lvii., 151, 183, 189, 197.
Music, 51, 59, 119, 152, 190.
Musical temperament, lviii.
Mystics, 17, 154.
Mysticism, 133, 139.
Mythology, Heathen, 238, 256, 267; senseless, 139, 163; use of, 106-107, 126.
NAPOLEON, xi., xx., xlvi., xlvii., xlviii., xlix., 270, 273.
Nature, 65-67,282.— laws of, 67-71.
Neander, xi., lvi.
Novalis, xxv., xxvi., 41, 104, 184.
OATHS, 200.
Oratory, Sacred, 172, 203.
PANTHEISM, xl., 24, 97, 115, 116, 222, 256.
Papacy, xxxvi., 269, 273.
Patriotism, xi., xlv., xlvi., 255.
Paul, 112, 115, 186.
Personality, 77.
Peter, 143, 185.
Pietism, lvii., 144-145.
Piety. See “Religion.”
Pious, Society of, 155.
Plato, xxiii., xxviii., xxxii., 118, 139, 284.
Polytheism, xlvi., 102, 110, 111, 139, 256, 257.
Poor, care of, 198.
Presentiment, 83, 225.
Priesthood of Humanity, 8; of Believers, 151, 153, 185.
Priests, 2, 141,153.
Prophecy, 89, 266.
Proselytes, Jewish, 143.
Proselytizing, 187-188.
Protestantism, liv., 51, 195, 254, 267-274.
Pünjer, ix., xxxix.
Purism, xliv.
RATIONALISM, xxi. 257.
Reason, xxviii.
Reformation, l., liv., 268, 272.
Religion as activity, 27-29; aim of, xxxi. artistic conception of, xxxiii.; communication of, 149-152, 158, 190; corruption of, 215-216; definition of, lii., 103; endowments of, 198; and ethics, xxxiii. xliii., 14, 36-42, 141, 261, 262; in the family, 178, 189; as feeling, xxxiii., xxxvi., xlii. 45-50, heroes of, 60, 135, 230, 237, 275; and history, 80-82; impelling to action, 56-59; individuality in, 225, 232, 259; imitation of, 122; its infinity, 54, 82; as knowledge, xxxiii., xliii., 29-31, 35, 36, 38-40; a malady, 147; mastership in, lvii., 123, 172-175; and metaphysics, xxii., xxxii., 14, 34, 102, 141, 276; and morality, xxii. 18, 34, 56-62, 84; representatives of, 135; its rise, 12; and sensuous self-consciousness, 106; social, 148; and the state, xxxiv., 19-21, 24, 37; as a system, 50-56; not teachable, 122; teleological, liii., 145; true and false in, 108, 187; types of, 221.
Religions. Natural, 214, 217, 230, 232, 233, 234, 265; nature of, xxxiv.-xxxv., lviii. 218, 223; plurality of, 212-214, 254; positive, 214-218, 234.
Religious life, rise of, 225-228, 258-260.
Revelation, 89-90.
Ritschl, ix., xl., lvii.
Romantic School, xxiii., xxiv., xxvi., xli., lvii., 275.
Rome, 55, 109-110.
Rule of religious, lviii., 163.
SACK, xx., xxxv., xliii.
Schelling, xxvi. xxix.
Schiller, xxxvi.
Schlegel Friedrich, xii., xxv., xxvi., xxxvi. xxxvii., xxxix., xlv., xlviii.
Schleiermacher, birth, xiv.; death, lv.-lvi.; doubts, xv., 23; estimates of, x.-xii., lvi.-lviii.; marriage, xlviii.; parentage, xiii.-xiv.; personal references, xlii., 8, 9, 283, 284; uncle, xvii.; works of, xii., xix., xxxvii., xxxviii., xxxix., xlvi., xlvii., li., lii.; works on, ix.
Schlobitten, xviii.
Science, aim of, xxxi., 94, 141.
Scriptures, canon of, 249, 264; exposition of, xvi., xxi., xlvii. 182; a logical mediator, 237; monument of heroic time, 91; and piety, 150, 181; not unmixed, 33-34, 237, 277.
Sectarianism, 22, 153, 162, 220, 255.
Sense, 127,136, 154, 159, 164; perception, 42-45.
Socrates, 38, 184.
Spinoza, x., xxiii., xxviii., xliii., 40-41, 104-105.
Spinozism, xxviii., xl., 97, 115.
Steffens, xxvi., xlvi.
Stein, xlviii.
Stourdza, 23.
Strauss, xxxiv., li., lviii.
Supernatural, liii., 125, 257.
Synodal government, xlix., 206.
System, 55, 109, 161, 195, 258.
TASKMASTER, 178-179.
Theology, lii., liv., lviii. ; systems of, 15-18, 40.
UNCULTURED, the, 11.
Understanding, people of, 125, 128-132.
Uniformity, xlix., 74, 231, 278.
Unitarianism, 197.
Universal Lawgiver, 35.
Universe, active, xxix.
Upheaval, times of, 120-121.
Utilitarianism, xxi. 131.
VERSATILITY, 136.
Virtuosos, 86
WILHELM MEISTER, x., xxv.
Women, piety of, 37, 47.
World-Spirit, xxviii., 49, 70, 71, 81, 111, 135, 211; Soul, 111.
ZEUS, 64, 265.
Zinzendorf, 269.
vii viii ix x xi xii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 209 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 265 267 268 269 270 274 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 286 287