This theoretic contradiction must necessarily manifest itself

practically. Necessarily; for in Christianity love is tainted by faith,

it is not free, it is not apprehended truly. A love which is limited

by faith is an untrue love. [220] Love knows no law but itself; it is

divine through itself; it needs not the sanction of faith; it is its

own basis. The love which is bound by faith is a narrow-hearted, false

love, contradicting the idea of love, i.e., self-contradictory,--a love

which has only a semblance of holiness, for it hides in itself the

hatred that belongs to faith; it is only benevolent so long as faith

is not injured. Hence, in this contradiction with itself, in order

to retain the semblance of love, it falls into the most diabolical

sophisms, as we see in Augustine's apology for the persecution of

heretics. Love is limited by faith; hence it does not regard even

the uncharitable actions which faith suggests as in contradiction

with itself; it interprets the deeds of hatred which are committed

for the sake of faith as deeds of love. And it necessarily falls

into such contradictions, because the limitation of love by faith is

itself a contradiction. If it once is subjected to this limitation,

it has given up its own judgment, its inherent measure and criterion,

its self-subsistence; it is delivered up without power of resistance

to the promptings of faith.

Here we have again an example, that much which is not found in the

letter of the Bible, is nevertheless there in principle. We find the

same contradictions in the Bible as in Augustine, as in Catholicism

generally; only that in the latter they are definitely declared,

they are developed into a conspicuous, and therefore revolting

existence. The Bible curses through faith, blesses through love. But

the only love it knows is a love founded on faith. Thus here already

it is a love which curses, an unreliable love, a love which gives

me no guarantee that it will not turn into hatred; for if I do not

acknowledge the articles of faith, I am out of the sphere of love, a

child of hell, an object of anathema, of the anger of God, to whom the

existence of unbelievers is a vexation, a thorn in the eye. Christian

love has not overcome hell, because it has not overcome faith. Love

is in itself unbelieving, faith unloving. And love is unbelieving

because it knows nothing more divine than itself, because it believes

only in itself as absolute truth.

Christian love is already signalised as a particular, limited love, by

the very epithet, Christian. But love is in its nature universal. So

long as Christian love does not renounce its qualification of

Christian, does not make love, simply, its highest law, so long is it a

love which is injurious to the sense of truth, for the very office of

love is to abolish the distinction between Christianity and so-called

heathenism;--so long is it a love which by its particularity is in

contradiction with the nature of love, an abnormal, loveless love,

which has therefore long been justly an object of sarcasm. True love is

sufficient to itself; it needs no special title, no authority. Love is

the universal law of intelligence and Nature;--it is nothing else than

the realisation of the unity of the species through the medium of moral

sentiment. To found this love on the name of a person, is only possible

by the association of superstitious ideas, either of a religious or

speculative character. For with superstition is always associated

particularism, and with particularism, fanaticism. Love can only be

founded on the unity of the species, the unity of intelligence--on

the nature of mankind; then only is it a well-grounded love, safe

in its principle, guaranteed, free, for it is fed by the original

source of love, out of which the love of Christ himself arose. The

love of Christ was itself a derived love. He loved us not out of

himself, by virtue of his own authority, but by virtue of our common

human nature. A love which is based on his person is a particular,

exclusive love, which extends only so far as the acknowledgment of

this person extends, a love which does not rest on the proper ground

of love. Are we to love each other because Christ loved us? Such

love would be an affected, imitative love. Can we truly love each

other only if we love Christ? Is Christ the cause of love? Is he not

rather the apostle of love? Is not the ground of his love the unity

of human nature? Shall I love Christ more than mankind? Is not such

love a chimerical love? Can I step beyond the idea of the species? Can

I love anything higher than humanity? What ennobled Christ was love;

whatever qualities he had, he held in fealty to love; he was not the

proprietor of love, as he is represented to be in all superstitious

conceptions. The idea of love is an independent idea; I do not first

deduce it from the life of Christ; on the contrary, I revere that

life only because I find it accordant with the law, the idea of love.

This is already proved historically by the fact that the idea of love

was by no means first introduced into the consciousness of mankind with

and by Christianity,--is by no means peculiarly Christian. The horrors

of the Roman Empire present themselves with striking significance

in company with the appearance of this idea. The empire of policy

which united men after a manner corresponding with its own idea, was

coming to its necessary end. Political unity is a unity of force. The

despotism of Rome must turn in upon itself, destroy itself. But

it was precisely through this catastrophe of political existence

that man released himself entirely from the heart-stifling toils

of politics. In the place of Rome appeared the idea of humanity;

to the idea of dominion succeeded the idea of love. Even the Jews,

by imbibing the principle of humanity contained in Greek culture, had

by this time mollified their malignant religious separatism. Philo

celebrates love as the highest virtue. The extinction of national

differences lay in the idea of humanity itself. Thinking minds had

very early overstepped the civil and political separation of man

from man. Aristotle distinguishes the man from the slave, and places

the slave, as a man, on a level with his master, uniting them in

friendship. Epictetus, the slave, was a Stoic; Antoninus, the emperor,

was a Stoic also: thus did philosophy unite men. The Stoics taught

[221] that man was not born for his own sake, but for the sake of

others, i.e., for love: a principle which implies infinitely more

than the celebrated dictum of the Emperor Antoninus, which enjoined

the love of enemies. The practical principle of the Stoics is so

far the principle of love. The world is to them one city, men its

citizens. Seneca, in the sublimest sayings, extols love, clemency,

humanity, especially towards slaves. Thus political rigour and

patriotic narrowness were on the wane.

Christianity was a peculiar manifestation of these human tendencies;--a

popular, consequently a religious, and certainly a most intense

manifestation of this new principle of love. That which elsewhere

made itself apparent in the process of culture, expressed itself

here as religious feeling, as a matter of faith. Christianity thus

reduced a general unity to a particular one, it made love collateral

to faith; and by this means it placed itself in contradiction with

universal love. The unity was not referred to its true origin. National

differences indeed disappeared; but in their place difference of faith,

the opposition of Christian and un-Christian, more vehement than a

national antagonism, and also more malignant, made its appearance

in history.

All love founded on a special historical phenomenon contradicts,

as has been said, the nature of love, which endures no limits,

which triumphs over all particularity. Man is to be loved for man's

sake. Man is an object of love because he is an end in himself,

because he is a rational and loving being. This is the law of the

species, the law of the intelligence. Love should be immediate,

undetermined by anything else than its object;--nay, only as such

is it love. But if I interpose between my fellow-man and myself

the idea of an individuality, in whom the idea of the species is

supposed to be already realised, I annihilate the very soul of love,

I disturb the unity by the idea of a third external to us; for in that

case my fellow-man is an object of love to me only on account of his

resemblance or relation to this model, not for his own sake. Here all

the contradictions reappear which we have in the personality of God,

where the idea of the personality by itself, without regard to the

qualities which render it worthy of love and reverence, fixes itself

in the consciousness and feelings. Love is the subjective reality of

the species, as reason is its objective reality. In love, in reason,

the need of an intermediate person disappears. Christ is nothing

but an image, under which the unity of the species has impressed

itself on the popular consciousness. Christ loved men: he wished to

bless and unite them all without distinction of sex, age, rank, or

nationality. Christ is the love of mankind to itself embodied in an

image--in accordance with the nature of religion as we have developed

it--or contemplated as a person, but a person who (we mean, of course,

as a religious object) has only the significance of an image, who is

only ideal. For this reason love is pronounced to be the characteristic

mark of the disciples. But love, as has been said, is nothing else than

the active proof, the realisation of the unity of the race, through the

medium of the moral disposition. The species is not an abstraction;

it exists in feeling, in the moral sentiment, in the energy of

love. It is the species which infuses love into me. A loving heart

is the heart of the species throbbing in the individual. Thus Christ,

as the consciousness of love, is the consciousness of the species. We

are all one in Christ. Christ is the consciousness of our identity. He

therefore who loves man for the sake of man, who rises to the love of

the species, to universal love, adequate to the nature of the species,

[222] he is a Christian, is Christ himself. He does what Christ did,

what made Christ Christ. Thus, where there arises the consciousness

of the species as a species, the idea of humanity as a whole, Christ

disappears, without, however, his true nature disappearing; for he

was the substitute for the consciousness of the species, the image

under which it was made present to the people, and became the law of

the popular life.

CHAPTER XXVII.

CONCLUDING APPLICATION.

In the contradiction between Faith and Love which has just been

exhibited, we see the practical, palpable ground of necessity that

we should raise ourselves above Christianity, above the peculiar

stand-point of all religion. We have shown that the substance and

object of religion is altogether human; we have shown that divine

wisdom is human wisdom; that the secret of theology is anthropology;

that the absolute mind is the so-called finite subjective mind. But

religion is not conscious that its elements are human; on the contrary,

it places itself in opposition to the human, or at least it does

not admit that its elements are human. The necessary turning-point of

history is therefore the open confession, that the consciousness of God

is nothing else than the consciousness of the species; that man can

and should raise himself only above the limits of his individuality,

and not above the laws, the positive essential conditions of his

species; that there is no other essence which man can think, dream of,

imagine, feel, believe in, wish for, love and adore as the absolute,

than the essence of human nature itself. [223]

Our relation to religion is therefore not a merely negative, but a

critical one; we only separate the true from the false;--though we

grant that the truth thus separated from falsehood is a new truth,

essentially different from the old. Religion is the first form

of self-consciousness. Religions are sacred because they are the

traditions of the primitive self-consciousness. But that which in

religion holds the first place--namely, God--is, as we have shown,

in itself and according to truth, the second, for it is only the

nature of man regarded objectively; and that which to religion is the

second--namely, man--must therefore be constituted and declared the

first. Love to man must be no derivative love; it must be original. If

human nature is the highest nature to man, then practically also the

highest and first law must be the love of man to man. Homo homini Deus

est:--this is the great practical principle:--this is the axis on which

revolves the history of the world. The relations of child and parent,

of husband and wife, of brother and friend--in general, of man to

man--in short, all the moral relations are per se religious. Life as

a whole is, in its essential, substantial relations, throughout of a

divine nature. Its religious consecration is not first conferred by

the blessing of the priest. But the pretension of religion is that

it can hallow an object by its essentially external co-operation;

it thereby assumes to be itself the only holy power; besides itself

it knows only earthly, ungodly relations; hence it comes forward in

order to consecrate them and make them holy.

But marriage--we mean, of course, marriage as the free bond of love

[224]--is sacred in itself, by the very nature of the union which is

therein effected. That alone is a religious marriage, which is a true

marriage, which corresponds to the essence of marriage--of love. And

so it is with all moral relations. Then only are they moral,--then

only are they enjoyed in a moral spirit, when they are regarded as

sacred in themselves. True friendship exists only when the boundaries

of friendship are preserved with religious conscientiousness, with

the same conscientiousness with which the believer watches over the

dignity of his God. Let friendship be sacred to thee, property sacred,

marriage sacred,--sacred the well-being of every man; but let them

be sacred in and by themselves.

In Christianity the moral laws are regarded as the commandments

of God; morality is even made the criterion of piety; but ethics

have nevertheless a subordinate rank, they have not in themselves a

religious significance. This belongs only to faith. Above morality

hovers God, as a being distinct from man, a being to whom the

best is due, while the remnants only fall to the share of man. All

those dispositions which ought to be devoted to life, to man--all

the best powers of humanity, are lavished on the being who wants

nothing. The real cause is converted into an impersonal means, a

merely conceptional, imaginary cause usurps the place of the true

one. Man thanks God for those benefits which have been rendered to

him even at the cost of sacrifice by his fellow-man. The gratitude

which he expresses to his benefactor is only ostensible; it is

paid, not to him, but to God. He is thankful, grateful to God,

but unthankful to man. [225] Thus is the moral sentiment subverted

into religion! Thus does man sacrifice man to God! The bloody human

sacrifice is in fact only a rude, material expression of the inmost

secret of religion. Where bloody human sacrifices are offered to God,

such sacrifices are regarded as the highest thing, physical existence

as the chief good. For this reason life is sacrificed to God, and it

is so on extraordinary occasions; the supposition being that this is

the way to show him the greatest honour. If Christianity no longer, at

least in our day, offers bloody sacrifices to its God, this arises, to

say nothing of other reasons, from the fact that physical existence is

no longer regarded as the highest good. Hence the soul, the emotions

are now offered to God, because these are held to be something

higher. But the common case is, that in religion man sacrifices some

duty towards man--such as that of respecting the life of his fellow,

of being grateful to him--to a religious obligation,--sacrifices

his relation to man to his relation to God. The Christians, by

the idea that God is without wants, and that he is only an object

of pure adoration, have certainly done away with many pernicious

conceptions. But this freedom from wants is only a metaphysical idea,

which is by no means part of the peculiar nature of religion. When

the need for worship is supposed to exist only on one side, the

subjective side, this has the invariable effect of one-sidedness,

and leaves the religious emotions cold; hence, if not in express

words, yet in fact, there must be attributed to God a condition

corresponding to the subjective need, the need of the worshipper, in

order to establish reciprocity. [226] All the positive definitions

of religion are based on reciprocity. The religious man thinks of

God because God thinks of him; he loves God because God has first

loved him. God is jealous of man; religion is jealous of morality;

[227] it sucks away the best forces of morality; it renders to man

only the things that are man's, but to God the things that are God's;

and to him is rendered true, living emotion,--the heart.

When in times in which peculiar sanctity was attached to religion,

we find marriage, property, and civil law respected, this has not

its foundation in religion, but in the original, natural sense of

morality and right, to which the true social relations are sacred

as such. He to whom the Right is not holy for its own sake will

never be made to feel it sacred by religion. Property did not become

sacred because it was regarded as a divine institution, but it was

regarded as a divine institution because it was felt to be in itself

sacred. Love is not holy because it is a predicate of God, but it is

a predicate of God because it is in itself divine. The heathens do

not worship the light or the fountain because it is a gift of God,

but because it has of itself a beneficial influence on man, because

it refreshes the sufferer; on account of this excellent quality they

pay it divine honours.

Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever the right is made

dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous

things can be justified and established. I can found morality on

theology only when I myself have already defined the Divine Being by

means of morality. In the contrary case, I have no criterion of the

moral and immoral, but merely an unmoral, arbitrary basis, from which I

may deduce anything I please. Thus, if I would found morality on God,

I must first of all place it in God: for Morality, Right, in short,

all substantial relations, have their only basis in themselves, can

only have a real foundation--such as truth demands--when they are thus

based. To place anything in God, or to derive anything from God, is

nothing more than to withdraw it from the test of reason, to institute

it as indubitable, unassailable, sacred, without rendering an account

why. Hence self-delusion, if not wicked, insidious design, is at the

root of all efforts to establish morality, right, on theology. Where

we are in earnest about the right we need no incitement or support

from above. We need no Christian rule of political right: we need only

one which is rational, just, human. The right, the true, the good,

has always its ground of sacredness in itself, in its quality. Where

man is in earnest about ethics, they have in themselves the validity

of a divine power. If morality has no foundation in itself, there is

no inherent necessity for morality; morality is then surrendered to

the groundless arbitrariness of religion.

Thus the work of the self-conscious reason in relation to religion

is simply to destroy an illusion:--an illusion, however, which is

by no means indifferent, but which, on the contrary, is profoundly

injurious in its effect on mankind; which deprives man as well of the

power of real life as of the genuine sense of truth and virtue; for

even love, in itself the deepest, truest emotion, becomes by means

of religiousness merely ostensible, illusory, since religious love

gives itself to man only for God's sake, so that it is given only in

appearance to man, but in reality to God.

And we need only, as we have shown, invert the religious

relations--regard that as an end which religion supposes to be a

means--exalt that into the primary which in religion is subordinate,

the accessory, the condition,--at once we have destroyed the illusion,

and the unclouded light of truth streams in upon us. The sacraments

of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, which are the characteristic symbols

of the Christian religion, may serve to confirm and exhibit this truth.

The Water of Baptism is to religion only the means by which the Holy

Spirit imparts itself to man. But by this conception it is placed

in contradiction with reason, with the truth of things. On the one

hand, there is virtue in the objective, natural quality of water;

on the other, there is none, but it is a merely arbitrary medium of

divine grace and omnipotence. We free ourselves from these and other

irreconcilable contradictions, we give a true significance to Baptism,

only by regarding it as a symbol of the value of water itself. Baptism

should represent to us the wonderful but natural effect of water on

man. Water has, in fact, not merely physical effects, but also, and

as a result of these, moral and intellectual effects on man. Water

not only cleanses man from bodily impurities, but in water the scales

fall from his eyes: he sees, he thinks more clearly; he feels himself

freer; water extinguishes the fire of appetite. How many saints have

had recourse to the natural qualities of water in order to overcome

the assaults of the devil! What was denied by Grace has been granted

by Nature. Water plays a part not only in dietetics, but also in moral

and mental discipline. To purify oneself, to bathe, is the first,

though the lowest of virtues. [228] In the stream of water the fever of

selfishness is allayed. Water is the readiest means of making friends

with Nature. The bath is a sort of chemical process, in which our

individuality is resolved into the objective life of Nature. The man

rising from the water is a new, a regenerate man. The doctrine that

morality can do nothing without means of grace has a valid meaning if,

in place of imaginary, supernatural means of grace, we substitute

natural means. Moral feeling can effect nothing without Nature; it

must ally itself with the simplest natural means. The profoundest

secrets lie in common everyday things, such as supranaturalistic

religion and speculation ignore, thus sacrificing real mysteries

to imaginary, illusory ones; as here, for example, the real power

of water is sacrificed to an imaginary one. Water is the simplest

means of grace or healing for the maladies of the soul as well as of

the body. But water is effectual only where its use is constant and

regular. Baptism, as a single act, is either an altogether useless

and unmeaning institution, or, if real effects are attributed to it,

a superstitious one. But it is a rational, a venerable institution,

if it is understood to typify and celebrate the moral and physical

curative virtues of water.

But the sacrament of water required a supplement. Water, as a universal

element of life, reminds us of our origin from Nature, an origin

which we have in common with plants and animals. In Baptism we bow

to the power of a pure Nature-force; water is the element of natural

equality and freedom, the mirror of the golden age. But we men are

distinguished from the plants and animals, which together with the

inorganic kingdom we comprehend under the common name of Nature;--we

are distinguished from Nature. Hence we must celebrate our distinction,

our specific difference. The symbols of this our difference are bread

and wine. Bread and wine are, as to their materials, products of

Nature; as to their form, products of man. If in water we declare:

Man can do nothing without Nature; by bread and wine we declare:

Nature needs man, as man needs Nature. In water, human mental activity

is nullified; in bread and wine it attains self-satisfaction. Bread

and wine are supernatural products,--in the only valid and true sense,

the sense which is not in contradiction with reason and Nature. If in

water we adore the pure force of Nature, in bread and wine we adore

the supernatural power of mind, of consciousness, of man. Hence this

sacrament is only for man matured into consciousness; while baptism is

imparted to infants. But we at the same time celebrate here the true

relation of mind to Nature: Nature gives the material, mind gives the

form. The sacrament of Baptism inspires us with thankfulness towards

Nature, the sacrament of bread and wine with thankfulness towards

man. Bread and wine typify to us the truth that Man is the true God

and Saviour of man.

Eating and drinking is the mystery of the Lord's Supper;--eating

and drinking is, in fact, in itself a religious act; at least, ought

to be so. [229] Think, therefore, with every morsel of bread which

relieves thee from the pain of hunger, with every draught of wine

which cheers thy heart, of the God who confers these beneficent gifts

upon thee,--think of man! But in thy gratitude towards man forget not

gratitude towards holy Nature! Forget not that wine is the blood of

plants, and flour the flesh of plants, which are sacrificed for thy

well-being! Forget not that the plant typifies to thee the essence of

Nature, which lovingly surrenders itself for thy enjoyment! Therefore

forget not the gratitude which thou owest to the natural qualities of

bread and wine! And if thou art inclined to smile that I call eating

and drinking religious acts, because they are common everyday acts, and

are therefore performed by multitudes without thought, without emotion;

reflect, that the Lord's Supper is to multitudes a thoughtless,

emotionless act, because it takes place often; and, for the sake of

comprehending the religious significance of bread and wine, place

thyself in a position where the daily act is unnaturally, violently

interrupted. Hunger and thirst destroy not only the physical but also

the mental and moral powers of man; they rob him of his humanity--of

understanding, of consciousness. Oh! if thou shouldst ever experience

such want, how wouldst thou bless and praise the natural qualities of

bread and wine, which restore to thee thy humanity, thy intellect! It

needs only that the ordinary course of things be interrupted in order

to vindicate to common things an uncommon significance, to life,

as such, a religious import. Therefore let bread be sacred for us,

let wine be sacred, and also let water be sacred! Amen.

APPENDIX.

EXPLANATIONS--REMARKS--ILLUSTRATIVE CITATIONS.

§ 1.

Man has his highest being, his God, in himself; not in himself as an

individual, but in his essential nature, his species. No individual

is an adequate representation of his species, but only the human

individual is conscious of the distinction between the species and

the individual; in the sense of this distinction lies the root of

religion. The yearning of man after something above himself is nothing

else than the longing after the perfect type of his nature, the

yearning to be free from himself, i.e., from the limits and defects

of his individuality. Individuality is the self-conditionating,

the self-limitation of the species. Thus man has cognisance of

nothing above himself, of nothing beyond the nature of humanity;

but to the individual man this nature presents itself under the

form of an individual man. Thus, for example, the child sees the

nature of man above itself in the form of its parents, the pupil

in the form of his tutor. But all feelings which man experiences

towards a superior man, nay, in general, all moral feelings which

man has towards man, are of a religious nature. [230] Man feels

nothing towards God which he does not also feel towards man. Homo

homini deus est. Want teaches prayer; but in misfortune, in sorrow,

man kneels to entreat help of man also. Feeling makes God a man, but

for the same reason it makes man a God. How often in deep emotion,

which alone speaks genuine truth, man exclaims to man: Thou art,

thou hast been my redeemer, my saviour, my protecting spirit, my

God! We feel awe, reverence, humility, devout admiration, in thinking

of a truly great, noble man; we feel ourselves worthless, we sink

into nothing, even in the presence of human greatness. The purely,

truly human emotions are religious; but for that reason the religious

emotions are purely human: the only difference is, that the religious

emotions are vague, indefinite; but even this is only the case when

the object of them is indefinite. Where God is positively defined,

is the object of positive religion, there God is also the object

of positive, definite human feelings, the object of fear and love,

and therefore he is a positively human being; for there is nothing

more in God than what lies in feeling. If in the heart there is fear

and terror, in God there is anger; if in the heart there is joy, hope,

confidence, in God there is love. Fear makes itself objective in anger;

joy in love, in mercy. "As it is with me in my heart, so is it with

God." "As my heart is, so is God."--Luther (Th. i. p. 72). But a

merciful and angry God--Deus vere irascitur (Melancthon)--is a God

no longer distinguishable from the human feelings and nature. Thus

even in religion man bows before the nature of man under the form

of a personal human being; religion itself expressly declares--and

all anthropomorphisms declare this in opposition to Pantheism.--quod

supra nos nihil ad nos; that is, a God who inspires us with no human

emotions, who does not reflect our own emotions, in a word, who is

not a man,--such a God is nothing to us, has no interest for us,

does not concern us. (See the passages cited in this work from Luther.)

Religion has thus no dispositions and emotions which are peculiar

to itself; what it claims as belonging exclusively to its object,

are simply the same dispositions and emotions that man experiences

either in relation to himself (as, for example, to his conscience),

or to his fellow-man, or to Nature. You must not fear men, but God;

you must not love man,--i.e., not truly, for his own sake,--but God;

you must not humble yourselves before human greatness, but only before

the Lord; not believe and confide in man, but only in God. Hence

comes the danger of worshipping false gods in distinction from the

true God. Hence the "jealousy" of God. "Ego Jehova, Deus tuus, Deus

sum zelotypus. Ut zelotypus vir dicitur, qui rivalem pati nequit:

sic Deus socium in cultu, quem ab hominibus postulat, ferre non

potest." (Clericus, Comment. in Exod. c. 20, v. 5.) Jealousy arises

because a being preferred and loved by me directs to another the

feelings and dispositions which I claim for myself. But how could I be

jealous if the impressions and emotions which I excite in the beloved

being were altogether peculiar and apart, were essentially different

from the impressions which another can make on him? If, therefore,

the emotions of religion were objectively, essentially different

from those which lie out of religion, there would be no possibility

of idolatry in man or of jealousy in God. As the flute has another

sound to me than the trumpet, and I cannot confound the impressions

produced by the former with the impressions produced by the latter;

so I could not transfer to a natural or human being the emotions of

religion, if the object of religion, God, were specifically different

from the natural or human being, and consequently the impressions

which he produced on me were specific, peculiar.

§ 2.

Feeling alone is the object of feeling. Feeling is sympathy; feeling

arises only in the love of man to man. Sensations man has in isolation;

feelings only in community. Only in sympathy does sensation rise into

feeling. Feeling is æsthetic, human sensation; only what is human is

the object of feeling. In feeling man is related to his fellow-man as

to himself; he is alive to the sorrows, the joys of another as his

own. Thus only by communication does man rise above merely egoistic

sensation into feeling;--participated sensation is feeling. He who

has no need of participating has no feeling. But what does the hand,

the kiss, the glance, the voice, the tone, the word--as the expression

of emotion--impart? Emotion. The very same thing which, pronounced or

performed without the appropriate tone, without emotion, is only an

object of indifferent perception, becomes, when uttered or performed

with emotion, an object of feeling. To feel is to have a sense of

sensations, to have emotion in the perception of emotion. Hence the

brutes rise to feeling only in the sexual relation, and therefore

only transiently; for here the being experiences sensation not in

relation to itself taken alone, or to an object without sensation,

but to a being having like emotions with itself,--not to another as a

distinct object, but to an object which in species is identical. Hence

Nature is an object of feeling to me only when I regard it as a being

akin to me and in sympathy with me.

It is clear from what has been said, that only where in truth, if not

according to the subjective conception, the distinction between the

divine and human being is abolished, is the objective existence of God,

the existence of God as an objective, distinct being, abolished:--only

there, I say, is religion made a mere matter of feeling, or conversely,

feeling the chief point in religion. The last refuge of theology

therefore is feeling. God is renounced by the understanding; he has

no longer the dignity of a real object, of a reality which imposes

itself on the understanding; hence he is transferred to feeling;

in feeling his existence is thought to be secure. And doubtless this

is the safest refuge; for to make feeling the essence of religion is

nothing else than to make feeling the essence of God. And as certainly

as I exist, so certainly does my feeling exist; and as certainly as

my feeling exists, so certainly does my God exist. The certainty of

God is here nothing else than the self-certainty of human feeling, the

yearning after God is the yearning after unlimited, uninterrupted, pure

feeling. In life the feelings are interrupted; they collapse; they are

followed by a state of void, of insensibility. The religious problem,

therefore, is to give fixity to feeling in spite of the vicissitudes of

life, and to separate it from repugnant disturbances and limitations:

God himself is nothing else than undisturbed, uninterrupted feeling,

feeling for which there exists no limits, no opposite. If God were

a being distinct from thy feeling, he would be known to thee in some

other way than simply in feeling; but just because thou perceivest him

only by feeling, he exists only in feeling--he is himself only feeling.

§ 3.

God is man's highest feeling of self, freed from all contrarieties

or disagreeables. God is the highest being; therefore, to feel God is

the highest feeling. But is not the highest feeling also the highest

feeling of self? So long as I have not had the feeling of the highest,

so long I have not exhausted my capacity of feeling, so long I do

not yet fully know the nature of feeling. What, then, is an object to

me in my feeling of the highest being? Nothing else than the highest

nature of my power of feeling. So much as a man can feel, so much is

(his) God. But the highest degree of the power of feeling is also the

highest degree of the feeling of self. In the feeling of the low I feel

myself lowered, in the feeling of the high I feel myself exalted. The

feeling of self and feeling are inseparable, otherwise feeling would

not belong to myself. Thus God, as an object of feeling, or what is

the same thing, the feeling of God, is nothing else than man's highest

feeling of self. But God is the freest, or rather the absolutely

only free being; thus God is man's highest feeling of freedom. How

couldst thou be conscious of the highest being as freedom, or freedom

as the highest being, if thou didst not feel thyself free? But when

dost thou feel thyself free? When thou feelest God. To feel God is

to feel oneself free. For example, thou feelest desire, passion, the

conditions of time and place, as limits. What thou feelest as a limit

thou strugglest against, thou breakest loose from, thou deniest. The

consciousness of a limit, as such, is already an anathema, a sentence

of condemnation pronounced on this limit, for it is an oppressive,

disagreeable, negative consciousness. Only the feeling of the good,

of the positive, is itself good and positive--is joy. Joy alone

is feeling in its element, its paradise, because it is unrestricted

activity. The sense of pain in an organ is nothing else than the sense

of a disturbed, obstructed, thwarted activity; in a word, the sense

of something abnormal, anomalous. Hence thou strivest to escape from

the sense of limitation into unlimited feeling. By means of the will,

or the imagination, thou negativest limits, and thus obtainest the

feeling of freedom. This feeling of freedom is God. God is exalted

above desire and passion, above the limits of space and time. But

this exaltation is thy own exaltation above that which appears to

thee as a limit. Does not this exaltation of the divine being exalt

thee? How could it do so, if it were external to thee? No; God is

an exalted being only for him who himself has exalted thoughts and

feelings. Hence the exaltation of the divine being varies according to

that which different men or nations perceive as a limitation to the

feeling of self, and which they consequently negative or eliminate

from their ideal.

§ 4.

The distinction between the "heathen," or philosophic, and the

Christian God--the non-human, or pantheistic, and the human, personal

God--reduces itself only to the distinction between the understanding

or reason and the heart or feelings. Reason is the self-consciousness

of the species, as such; feeling is the self-consciousness of

individuality; the reason has relation to existences, as things;

the heart to existences, as persons. I am is an expression of the

heart; I think, of the reason. Cogito, ergo sum? No! Sentio, ergo

sum. Feeling only is my existence; thinking is my non-existence,

the negation of my individuality, the positing of the species; reason

is the annihilation of personality. To think is an act of spiritual

marriage. Only beings of the same species understand each other;

the impulse to communicate thought is the intellectual impulse of

sex. Reason is cold, because its maxim is, audiatur et altera pars,

because it does not interest itself in man alone; but the heart is

a partisan of man. Reason loves all impartiality, but the heart only

what is like itself. It is true that the heart has pity also on the

brutes, but only because it sees in the brute something more than the

brute. The heart loves only what it identifies with itself. It says:

Whatsoever thou dost to this being, thou dost to me. The heart loves

only itself; does not get beyond itself, beyond man. The superhuman

God is nothing else than the supernatural heart; the heart does not

give us the idea of another, of a being different from ourselves. "For

the heart, Nature is an echo, in which it hears only itself. Emotion,

in the excess of its happiness, transfers itself to external things. It

is the love which can withhold itself from no existence, which gives

itself forth to all; but it only recognises as existing that which

it knows to have emotion." [231] Reason, on the contrary, has pity

on animals, not because it finds itself in them, or identifies them

with man, but because it recognises them as beings distinct from man,

not existing simply for the sake of man, but also as having rights

of their own. The heart sacrifices the species to the individual,

the reason sacrifices the individual to the species. The man without

feeling has no home, no private hearth. Feeling, the heart, is the

domestic life; the reason is the res publica of man. Reason is the

truth of Nature, the heart is the truth of man. To speak popularly,

reason is the God of Nature, the heart the God of man;--a distinction

however which, drawn thus sharply, is, like the others, only admissible

in antithesis. Everything which man wishes, but which reason, which

Nature denies, the heart bestows. God, immortality, freedom, in the

supranaturalistic sense, exist only in the heart. The heart is itself

the existence of God, the existence of immortality. Satisfy yourselves

with this existence! You do not understand your heart; therein lies

the evil. You desire a real, external, objective immortality, a God

out of yourselves. Here is the source of delusion.

But as the heart releases man from the limits, even the essential

limits of Nature; reason, on the other hand, releases Nature from

the limits of external finiteness. It is true that Nature is the

light and measure of reason;--a truth which is opposed to abstract

Idealism. Only what is naturally true is logically true; what has no

basis in Nature has no basis at all. That which is not a physical

law is not a metaphysical law. Every true law in metaphysics can

and must be verified physically. But at the same time reason is

also the light of Nature;--and this truth is the barrier against

crude materialism. Reason is the nature of things come fully to

itself, re-established in its entireness. Reason divests things of

the disguises and transformations which they have undergone in the

conflict and agitation of the external world, and reduces them to

their true character. Most, indeed nearly all, crystals--to give

an obvious illustration--appear in Nature under a form altogether

different from their fundamental one; nay, many crystals never have

appeared in their fundamental form. Nevertheless, the mineralogical

reason has discovered that fundamental form. Hence nothing is more

foolish than to place Nature in opposition to reason, as an essence in

itself incomprehensible to reason. If reason reduces transformations

and disguises to their fundamental forms, does it not effect that which

lies in the idea of Nature itself, but which, prior to the operation of

reason, could not be effected on account of external hindrances? What

else then does reason do than remove external disturbances, influences,

and obstructions, so as to present a thing as it ought to be, to make

the existence correspond to the idea; for the fundamental form is

the idea of the crystal. Another popular example. Granite consists of

mica, quartz, and feldspar. But frequently other kinds of stone are

mingled with it. If we had no other guide and tutor than the senses,

we should without hesitation reckon as constituent parts of granite

all the kinds of stone which we ever find in combination with it;

we should say yes to everything the senses told us, and so never

come to the true idea of granite. But reason says to the credulous

senses: Quod non. It discriminates; it distinguishes the essential

from the accidental elements. Reason is the midwife of Nature;

it explains, enlightens, rectifies and completes Nature. Now that

which separates the essential from the non-essential, the necessary

from the accidental, what is proper to a thing from what is foreign,

which restores what has been violently sundered to unity, and what has

been forcibly united to freedom,--is not this divine? Is not such an

agency as this the agency of the highest, of divine love? And how would

it be possible that reason should exhibit the pure nature of things,

the original text of the universe, if it were not itself the purest,

most original essence? But reason has no partiality for this or that

species of things. It embraces with equal interest the whole universe;

it interests itself in all things and beings without distinction,

without exception;--it bestows the same attention on the worm which

human egoism tramples under its feet, as on man, as on the sun in

the firmament. Reason is thus the all-embracing, all-compassionating

being, the love of the universe to itself. To reason alone belongs

the great work of the resurrection and restoration of all things

and beings--universal redemption and reconciliation. Not even the

unreasoning animal, the speechless plant, the unsentient stone,

shall be excluded from this universal festival. But how would it be

possible that reason should interest itself in all beings without

exception, if reason were not itself universal and unlimited in its

nature? Is a limited nature compatible with unlimited interest, or an

unlimited interest with a limited nature? By what dost thou recognise

the limitation of a being but by the limitation of his interest? As

far as the interest extends, so far extends the nature. The desire of

knowledge is infinite; reason then is infinite. Reason is the highest

species of being;--hence it includes all species in the sphere of

knowledge. Reason cannot content itself in the individual; it has

its adequate existence only when it has the species for its object,

and the species not as it has already developed itself in the past and

present, but as it will develop itself in the unknown future. In the

activity of reason I feel a distinction between myself and reason in

me; this distinction is the limit of the individuality; in feeling I

am conscious of no distinction between myself and feeling; and with

this absence of distinction there is an absence also of the sense of

limitation. Hence it arises that to so many men reason appears finite,

and only feeling infinite. And, in fact, feeling, the heart of man

as a rational being, is as infinite, as universal as reason; since

man only truly perceives and understands that for which he has feeling.

Thus reason is the essence of Nature and Man, released from

non-essential limits, in their identity; it is the universal being,

the universal God. The heart, considered in its difference from the

reason, is the private God of man; the personal God is the heart of

man, emancipated from the limits or laws of Nature. [232]

§ 5.

Nature, the world, has no value, no interest for Christians. The

Christian thinks only of himself and the salvation of his soul. "A

te incipiat cogitatio tua et in te finiatur, nec frustra in alia

distendaris, te neglecto. Praeter salutem tuam nihil cogites. De

inter. Domo. (Among the spurious writings of St. Bernard.) Si

te vigilanter homo attendas, mirum est, si ad aliud unquam

intendas.--Divus Bernardus. (Tract. de XII grad. humil. et

sup.).... Orbe sit sol major, an pedis unius latitudine

metiatur? alieno ex lumine an propriis luceat fulgoribus luna? quae

neque scire compendium, neque ignorare detrimentum est ullum.... Res

vestra in ancipiti sita est: salus dico animarum vestrarum.--Arnobius

(adv. gentes, l. ii. c. 61). Quaero igitur ad quam rem scientia

referenda sit; si ad causas rerum naturalium, quae beatitudo erit mihi

proposita, si sciero unde Nilus oriatur, vel quicquid de coelo Physici

delirant?--Lactantius (Instit. div. l. iii. c. 8). Etiam curiosi

esse prohibemur.... Sunt enim qui desertis virtutibus et nescientes

quid sit Deus ... magnum aliquid se agere putant, si universam istam

corporis molem, quam mundum nuncupamus, curiosissime intentissimeque

perquirant.... Reprimat igitur se anima ab hujusmodi vanae cognitionis

cupiditate, si se castam Deo servare disposuit. Tali enim amore

plerumque decipitur, ut (aut) nihil putet esse nisi corpus.--Augustinus

(de Mor. Eccl. cath. l. i. c. 21). De terrae quoque vel qualitate

vel positione tractare, nihil prosit ad spem futuri, cum satis sit

ad scientiam, quod scripturarum divinarum series comprehendit,

quod Deus suspendit terram in nihilo.--Ambrosius (Hexaemeron,

l. i. c. 6). Longe utique praestantius est, nosse resurrecturam carnem

ac sine fine victuram, quam quidquid in ea medici, scrutando discere

potuerunt.--Augustinus (de Anima et ejus orig. l. iv. c. 10)." "Let

natural science alone.... It is enough that thou knowest fire is hot,

water cold and moist.... Know how thou oughtest to treat thy field,

thy cow, thy house and child--that is enough of natural science

for thee. Think how thou mayest learn Christ, who will show thee

thyself, who thou art, and what is thy capability. Thus wilt thou

learn God and thyself, which no natural master or natural science

ever taught."--Luther (Th. xiii. p. 264).

Such quotations as these, which might be multiplied indefinitely,

show clearly enough that true, religious Christianity has within

it no principle of scientific and material culture, no motive to

it. The practical end and object of Christians is solely heaven,

i.e., the realised salvation of the soul. The theoretical end and

object of Christians is solely God, as the being identical with

the salvation of the soul. He who knows God knows all things; and

as God is infinitely more than the world, so theology is infinitely

more than the knowledge of the world. Theology makes happy, for its

object is personified happiness. Infelix homo, qui scit illa omnia

(created things) te autem nescit, Beatus autem qui te scit, etiam si

illa nesciat.--Augustin (Confess. l. v. c. 4). Who then would, who

could exchange the blessed Divine Being for the unblessed worthless

things of this world? It is true that God reveals himself in Nature,

but only vaguely, dimly, only in his most general attributes;

himself, his true personal nature, he reveals only in religion,

in Christianity. The knowledge of God through Nature is heathenism;

the knowledge of God through himself, through Christ, in whom dwelt

the fulness of the Godhead bodily, is Christianity. What interest,

therefore, should Christians have in occupying themselves with

material, natural things? Occupation with Nature, culture in general,

presupposes, or, at least, infallibly produces, a heathenish, mundane,

anti-theological, anti-supranaturalistic sentiment and belief. Hence

the culture of modern Christian nations is so little to be derived

from Christianity, that it is only to be explained by the negation of

Christianity, a negation which certainly was, in the first instance,

only practical. It is indeed necessary to distinguish between what

the Christians were as Christians and what they were as heathens,

as natural men, and thus between that which they have said and done

in agreement, and that which they have said and done in contradiction

with their faith. (See on this subject the author's P. Bayle.)

How frivolous, therefore, are modern Christians when they deck

themselves in the arts and sciences of modern nations as products

of Christianity! How striking is the contrast in this respect

between these modern boasters and the Christians of older times! The

latter knew of no other Christianity than that which is contained

in the Christian faith, in faith in Christ; they did not reckon

the treasures and riches, the arts and sciences of this world as

part of Christianity. In all these points, they rather conceded the

pre-eminence to the ancient heathens, the Greeks and Romans. "Why

dost thou not also wonder, Erasmus, that from the beginning of the

world there have always been among the heathens higher, rarer people,

of greater, more exalted understanding, more excellent diligence and

skill in all arts, than among Christians or the people of God? Christ

himself says that the children of this world are wiser than the

children of light. Yea, who among the Christians could we compare

for understanding or application to Cicero (to say nothing of the

Greeks, Demosthenes and others)?"--Luther (Th. xix. p. 37). Quid

igitur nos antecellimus? Num ingenio, doctrina, morum moderatione

illos superamus? Nequaquam. Sed vera Dei agnitione, invocatione et

celebratione præstamus.--Melancthonis (et al. Declam. Th. iii. de

vera invocat. Dei).

§ 6.

In religion man has in view himself alone, or, in regarding himself as

the object of God, as the end of the divine activity, he is an object

to himself, his own end and aim. The mystery of the incarnation is

the mystery of the love of God to man, and the mystery of the love

of God to man is the love of man to himself. God suffers--suffers for

me--this is the highest self-enjoyment, the highest self-certainty of

human feeling. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten

Son."--John iii. 16. "If God be for us, who can be against us? He

that spared not his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how shall

he not with him also freely give us all things?"--Rom. viii. 31,

32. "God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were

yet sinners, Christ died for us."--Rom. v. 8. "The life which I now

live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved

me, and gave himself for me."--Gal. ii. 20. See also Titus iii. 4;

Heb. ii. 11. "Credimus in unum Deum patrem ... et in unum Dominum

Jesum Christum filium Dei ... Deum ex Deo ... qui propter nos homines

et propter nostram salutem descendit et incarnatus et homo factus

est passus."--Fides Nicaenae Synodi. "Servator ... ex praeexcellenti

in homines charitate non despexit carnis humanae imbecillitatem,

sed ea indutus ad communem venit hominum salutem."--Clemens

Alex. (Stromata, l. vii. ed. Wirceb. 1779). "Christianos autem

haec universa docent, providentiam esse, maxime vero divinissimum et

propter excellentiam amoris erga homines incredibilissimum providentiae

opus, dei incarnatio, quae propter nos facta est."--Gregorii Nysseni

(Philosophiae, l. viii. de Provid. c. i. 1512. B. Rhenanus. Jo. Cono

interp.) "Venit siquidem universitatis creator et Dominus: venit

ad homines, venit propter homines, venit homo."--Divus Bernardus

Clarev. (de Adventu Domini, Basil, 1552). "Videte, Fratres, quantum se

humiliavit propter homines Deus.... Unde non se ipse homo despiciat,

propter quem utique ista subire dignatus est Deus."--Augustinus

(Sermones ad pop. S. 371, c. 3). "O homo propter quem Deus factus est

homo, aliquid magnum te credere debes." (S. 380, c. 2). "Quis de se

desperet pro quo tam humilis esse voluit Filius Dei?" Id. (de Agone

Chr. c. 11). "Quis potest odire hominem cujus naturam et similitudinem

videt in humanitate Dei? Revera qui odit illum, odit Deum."--(Manuale,

c. 26. Among the spurious writings of Augustine.) "Plus nos amat

Deus quam filium pater.... Propter nos filio non pepercit. Et quid

plus addo? et hoc filio justo et hoc filio unigenito et hoc filio

Deo. Et quid dici amplius potest? et hoc pro nobis, i.e. pro malis,

etc."--Salvianus (de gubernatione Dei. Rittershusius, 1611, pp. 126,

127). "Quid enim mentes nostras tantum erigit et ab immortalitatis

desperatione liberat, quam quod tanti nos fecit Deus, ut Dei

filius ... dignatus nostrum inire consortium mala nostra moriendo

perferret."--Petrus Lomb. (lib. iii. dist. 20, c. 1). "Attamen si

illa quae miseriam nescit, misericordia non praecessisset, ad hanc

cujus mater est miseria, non accessisset."--D. Bernardus (Tract. de

XII. gradibus hum. et sup.) "Ecce omnia tua sunt, quae habeo et

unde tibi servio. Verum tamen vice versa tu magis mihi servis, quam

ego tibi. Ecce coelum et terra quae in ministerium hominis creasti,

praesto sunt et faciunt quotidie quaecunque mandasti. Et hoc parum

est: quin etiam Angelos in ministerium hominis ordinasti. Transcendit

autem omnia, quia tu ipse homini servire dignatus es et te ipsum

daturum ei promisisti."--Thomas à Kempis (de Imit. l. iii. c. 10). "Ego

omnipotens et altissimus, qui cuncta creavi ex nihilo me homini propter

te humiliter subjeci.... Pepercit tibi oculus meus, quia pretiosa

fuit anima tua in conspectu meo" (ibid. c. 13). "Fili ego descendi

de coelo pro salute tua, suscepi tuas miserias, non necessitate,

sed charitate trahente" (ibid. c. 18). "Si consilium rei tantae

spectamus, quod totum pertinet, ut s. litterae demonstrant. ad salutem

generis humani, quid potest esse dignius Deo, quam illa tanta hujus

salutis cura, et ut ita dicamus, tantus in ea re sumptus?... Itaque

Jesus Christus ipse cum omnibus Apostolis ... in hoc mysterio Filii

Dei en sarki phanerothentos angelis hominibusque patefactam esse

dicunt magnitudinem sapientis bonitatis divinae."--J. A. Ernesti

(Dignit. et verit. inc. Filii Dei asserta. Opusc. Theol. Lipsiae,

1773, pp. 404, 405. How feeble, how spiritless compared with the

expressions of the ancient faith!) "Propter me Christus suscepit

meas infirmitates, mei corporis subiit passiones, pro me peccatum

h. e. pro omni homine, pro me maledictum factus est, etc. Ille flevit,

ne tu homo diu fleres. Ille injurias passus est, ne tu injuriam tuam

doleres."--Ambrosius (de fide ad Gratianum, l. ii. c. 4). "God is

not against us men. For if God had been against us and hostile to us,

he would not assuredly have taken the poor wretched human nature on

himself." "How highly our Lord God has honoured us, that he has caused

his own Son to become man! How could he have made himself nearer to

us?"--Luther (Th. xvi. pp. 533, 574). "It is to be remarked that he

(Stephen) is said to have seen not God himself but the man Christ,

whose nature is the dearest and likest and most consoling to man,

for a man would rather see a man than an angel or any other creature,

especially in trouble."--Id. (Th. xiii. p. 170). "It is not thy

kingly rule which draws hearts to thee, O wonderful heart!--but

thy having become a man in the fulness of time, and thy walk upon

the earth, full of weariness." "Though thou guidest the sceptre of

the starry realm, thou art still our brother; flesh and blood never

disowns itself." "The most powerful charm that melts my heart is

that my Lord died on the cross for me." "That it is which moves me;

I love thee for thy love, that thou, the creator, the supreme prince,

becamest the Lamb of God for me." "Thanks be to thee, dear Lamb of God,

with thousands of sinners' tears; thou didst die for me on the cross

and didst seek me with yearning." "Thy blood it is which has made

me give myself up to thee, else I had never thought of thee through

my whole life." "If thou hadst not laid hold upon me, I should never

have gone to seek thee." "O how sweetly the soul feeds on the passion

of Jesus! Shame and joy are stirred, O thou son of God and of man,

when in spirit we see thee so willingly go to death on the cross for

us, and each thinks: for me." "The Father takes us under his care,

the Son washes us with his blood, the Holy Spirit is always labouring

that he may guide and teach us." "Ah! King, great at all times, but

never greater than in the blood-stained robe of the martyr." "My

friend is to me and I to him as the Cherubim over the mercy-seat:

we look at each other continually. He seeks repose in my heart, and

I ever hasten towards his: he wishes to be in my soul, and I in the

wound in his side." These quotations are taken from the Moravian

hymn-book (Gesangbuch der Evangelischen Brüdergemeine. Gnadau,

1824). We see clearly enough from the examples above given, that

the deepest mystery of the Christian religion resolves itself into

the mystery of human self-love, but that religious self-love is

distinguished from natural in this, that it changes the active into

the passive. It is true that the more profound, mystical religious

sentiment abhors such naked, undisguised egoism as is exhibited in

the Herrnhut hymns; it does not in God expressly have reference to

itself; it rather forgets, denies itself, demands an unselfish,

disinterested love of God, contemplates God in relation to God,

not to itself. "Causa diligendi Deum, Deus est. Modus sine modo

diligere.... Qui Domino confitetur, non quoniam sibi bonus est, sed

quoniam bonus est, hic vere diligit Deum propter Deum et non propter

seipsum. Te enim quodammodo perdere, tanquam qui non sis et omnino non

sentire te ipsum et a temetipso exinaniri et pene annullari, coelestis

est conversationis, non humanae affectionis" (thus the ideal of love,

which, however, is first realised in heaven).--Bernhardus, Tract. de

dilig. Deo (ad Haymericum). But this free, unselfish love is only the

culmination of religious enthusiasm, in which the subject is merged

in the object. As soon as the distinction presents itself--and it

necessarily does so--so soon does the subject have reference to itself

as the object of God. And even apart from this: the religious subject

denies its ego, its personality, only because it has the enjoyment of

blissful personality in God--God per se the realised salvation of the

soul, God the highest self-contentment, the highest rapture of human

feeling. Hence the saying: "Qui Deum non diligit, seipsum non diligit."

§ 7.

Because God suffers man must suffer. The Christian religion is

the religion of suffering. "Videlicet vestigia Salvatoris sequimur

in theatris. Tale nobis scilicet Christus reliquit exemplum, quem

flerisse legimus, risisse non legimus."--Salvianus (l. c. l. vi. §

181). "Christianorum ergo est pressuram pati in hoc saeculo et

lugere, quorum est aeterna vita."--Origenes (Explan. in Ep. Pauli

ad Rom. l. ii. c. ii. interp. Hieronymo). "Nemo vitam aeternam,

incorruptibilem, immortalemque desiderat, nisi eum vitae hujus

temporalis, corruptibilis, mortalisque poeniteat.... Quid ergo cupimus,

nisi ita non esse ut nunc sumus? Et quid ingemiscimus, nisi poenitendo,

quia ita summus?"--Augustinus (Sermones ad pop. S. 351, c. 3). "Si

quidem aliquid melius et utilius saluti hominum quam pati fuisset,

Christus utique verbo et exemplo ostendisset.... Quoniam per multas

tribulationes oportet nos intrare in regnum Dei."--Thomas à Kempis

(de Imit. l. ii. c. 12). When, however, the Christian religion

is designated as the religion of suffering, this of course

applies only to the Christianity of the "mistaken" Christians

of old times. Protestantism, in its very beginning, denied the

sufferings of Christ as constituting a principle of morality. It is

precisely the distinction between Catholicism and Protestantism,

in relation to this subject, that the latter, out of self-regard,

attached itself only to the merits of Christ, while the former,

out of sympathy, attached itself to his sufferings. "Formerly in

Popery the sufferings of the Lord were so preached, that it was

only pointed out how his example should be imitated. After that,

the time was filled up with the sufferings and sorrows of Mary,

and the compassion with which Christ and his mother were bewailed;

and the only aim was how to make it piteous, and move the people

to compassion and tears, and he who could do this well was held the

best preacher for Passion-Week. But we preach the Lord's sufferings

as the Holy Scripture teaches us.... Christ suffered for the praise

and glory of God ... but to me, and thee, and all of us, he suffered

in order to bring redemption and blessedness.... The cause and

end of the sufferings of Christ is comprised in this--he suffered

for us. This honour is to be given to no other suffering."--Luther

(Th. xvi. p. 182). "Lamb! I weep only for joy over thy suffering;

the suffering was thine, but thy merit is mine!" "I know of no joys

but those which come from thy sufferings." "It remains ever in my

mind that it cost thee thy blood to redeem me." "O my Immanuel! how

sweet is it to my soul when thou permittest me to enjoy the outpouring

of thy blood." "Sinners are glad at heart that they have a Saviour

... it is wondrously beautiful to them to see Jesus on the Cross"

(Moravian hymn-book). It is therefore not to be wondered at if

Christians of the present day decline to know anything more of the

sufferings of Christ. It is they, forsooth, who have first made out

what true Christianity is--they rely solely on the divine word of the

Holy Scriptures. And the Bible, as every one knows, has the valuable

quality that everything may be found in it which it is desired to

find. What once stood there, of course now stands there no longer. The

principle of stability has long vanished from the Bible. Divine

revelation is as changing as human opinion. Tempora mutantur.

§ 8.

The mystery of the Trinity is the mystery of participated, social

life--the mystery of I and thou. "Unum Deum esse confitemur. Non sic

unum Deum, quasi solitarium, nec eundem, qui ipse sibi pater, sit

ipse filius, sed patrem verum, qui genuit filium verum, i.e. Deum

ex Deo ... non creatum, sed genitum."--Concil. Chalced. (Carranza

Summa, 1559. p. 139). "Si quis quod scriptum est: Faciamus hominem,

non patrem ad filium dicere, sed ipsum ad semetipsum asserit dixisse

Deum, anathema sit."--Concil. Syrmiense (ibid. p. 68). "Jubet

autem his verbis: Faciamus hominem, prodeat herba. Ex quibus

apparet, Deum cum aliquo sibi proximo sermones his de rebus

conserere. Necesse est igitur aliquem ei adfuisse, cum quo

universa condens, colloquium miscebat."--Athanasius (Contra Gentes

Orat. Ath. Opp. Parisiis, 1627, Th. i. p. 51). "Professio enim

consortii sustulit intelligentiam singularitatis, quod consortium

aliquid nec potest esse sibi ipsi solitario, neque rursum solitudo

solitarii recipit: faciamus.... Non solitario convenit dicere:

faciamus et nostram."--Petrus Lomb. (l. i. dist. 2, c. 3, e.). The

Protestants explain the passage in the same way. "Quod profecto

aliter intelligi nequit, quam inter ipsas trinitatis personas

quandam de creando homine institutam fuisse consultationem."--Buddeus

(comp. Inst. Theol. dog. cur. J. G. Walch. l. ii. c. i. § 45). "'Let

us make' is the word of a deliberative council. And from these words

it necessarily follows again, that in the Godhead there must be more

than one person.... For the little word 'us' indicates that he who

there speaks is not alone, though the Jews make the text ridiculous

by saying that there is a way of speaking thus, even where there is

only one person."--Luther (Th. i. p. 19). Not only consultations,

but compacts take place between the chief persons in the Trinity,

precisely as in human society. "Nihil aliud superest, quam ut consensum

quemdam patris ac filii adeoque quoddam velut pactum (in relation,

namely, to the redemption of men) inde concludamus."--Buddeus

(Comp. l. iv. c. i. § 4, note 2). And as the essential bond of the

Divine Persons is love, the Trinity is the heavenly type of the closest

bond of love--marriage. "Nunc Filium Dei ... precemur, ut spiritu

sancto suo, qui nexus est et vinculum mutui amoris inter aeternum

patrem ac filium, sponsi et sponsæ pectora conglutinet."--Or. de

Conjugio (Declam. Melancth. Th. iii. p. 453).

The distinctions in the Divine essence of the Trinity are

natural, physical distinctions. "Jam de proprietatibus personarum

videamus.... Et est proprium solius patris, non quod non est

natus ipse, sed quod unum filium genuerit, propriumque solius

filii, non quod ipse non genuit, sed quod de patris essentia

natus est."--Hylarius in l. iii. de Trinitate. "Nos filii Dei

sumus, sed non talis hic filius. Hic enim verus et proprius

est filius origine, non adoptione, veritate, non nuncupatione,

nativitate, non creatione."--Petrus L. (l. i. dist. 26, cc. 2,

4). "Quodsi dum eum aeternum confitemur, profitemur ipsum Filium

ex Patre, quomodo is, qui genitus est, genitoris frater esse

poterit?... Non enim ex aliquo principio praeexistente Pater et

Filius procreati sunt, ut fratres existimari queant, sed Pater

principium Filii et genitor est: et Pater Pater est neque ullius

Filius fuit, et Filius Filius est et non frater."--Athanasius

(Contra Arianos. Orat. II. Ed. c. T. i. p. 320). "Qui (Deus)

cum in rebus quae nascuntur in tempore, sua bonitate effecerit,

ut suae substantiae prolem quaelibet res gignat, sicut homo gignit

hominem, non alterius naturae, sed ejus cujus ipse est, vide quam

impie dicatur ipse non gennisse id quod ipse est."--Augustinus

(Ep. 170, § 6. ed. Antwp. 1700). "Ut igitur in natura hominum filium

dicimus genitum de substantia patris, similem patri: ita secunda

persona Filius dicitur, quia de substantia Patris natus est et

ejus est imago."--Melancthon (Loci praecipui Theol. Witebergae,

1595, p. 30). "As a corporeal son has his flesh and blood and

nature from his father, so also the Son of God, born of the

Father, has his divine nature from the Father of Eternity."--Luther

(Th. ix. p. 408). H. A. Roel, a theologian of the school of Descartes

and Coccejus, had advanced this thesis: "Filium Dei, Secundam Deitatis

personam improprie dici genitam." This was immediately opposed by

his colleague, Camp. Vitringa, who declared it an unheard-of thesis,

and maintained: "Generationem Filii Dei ab aeterno propriissime

enunciari." Other theologians also contended against Roel, and

declared: "Generationem in Deo esse maxime veram et propriam."--(Acta

Erudit. Supplem. T. i. S. vii. p. 377, etc.). That in the Bible

also the Filius Dei signifies a real son is unequivocally implied in

this passage: "God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten

Son." If the love of God, which this passage insists upon, is to be

regarded as a truth, then the Son also must be a truth, and, in plain

language, a physical truth. On this lies the emphasis that God gave

his own Son for us--in this alone the proof of his great love. Hence

the Herrnhut hymn-book correctly apprehends the sense of the Bible

when it says of "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is also

our Father:" "His Son is not too dear. No! he gives him up for me,

that he may save me from the eternal fire by his dear blood. Thou

hast so loved the world that thy heart consents to give up the Son,

thy joy and life, to suffering and death."

God is a threefold being, a trinity of persons, means: God is not

only a metaphysical, abstract, spiritual, but a physical being. The

central point of the Trinity is the Son, for the Father is Father only

through the Son; but the mystery of the generation of the Son is the

mystery of physical nature. The Son is the need of sensuousness,

or of the heart, satisfied in God; for all wishes of the heart,

even the wish for a personal God and for heavenly felicity,

are sensuous wishes;--the heart is essentially materialistic, it

contents itself only with an object which is seen and felt. This is

especially evident in the conception that the Son, even in the midst

of the Divine Trinity, has the human body as an essential, permanent

attribute. Ambrosius: "Scriptum est Ephes. i.: Secundum carnem igitur

omnia ipsi subjecta traduntur." Chrysostomus: "Christum secundum carnem

pater jussit a cunctis angelis adorari." Theodoretus: "Corpus Dominicum

surrexit quidem a mortuis, divina glorificata gloria ... corpus

tamen est et habet, quam prius habuit, circumscriptionem." (See

Concordienbuchs-anhang. "Zeugnisse der h. Schrift und Altväter von

Christo," and Petrus L. l. iii. dist. 10, cc. 1, 2. See also on this

subject Luther, Th. xix. pp. 464-468.) In accordance with this the

United Brethren say: "I will ever embrace thee in love and faith,

until, when at length my lips are pale in death, I shall see thee

bodily." "Thy eyes, thy mouth, the body wounded for us, on which we

so firmly rely,--all that I shall behold."

Hence the Son of God is the darling of the human heart, the bridegroom

of the soul, the object of a formal, personal love. "O Domine Jesu,

si adeo sunt dulces istae lachrymae, quae ex memoria et desiderio tui

excitantur, quam dulce erit gaudium, quod ex manifesta tui visione

capietur? Si adeo dulce est flere pro te, quam dulce erit gaudere de

te. Sed quid hujusmodi secreta colloquia proferimus in publicum? Cur

ineffabiles et innarrabiles affectus communibus verbis conamur

exprimere? Inexperti talia non intelligunt. Zelotypus est sponsus

iste.... Delicatus est sponsus iste."--Scala Claustralium (sive de modo

orandi. Among the spurious writings of St. Bernard). "Luge propter

amorem Jesu Christi, sponsi tui, quosque eum videre possis."--(De

modo bene vivendi. Sermo x. id.) "Adspectum Christi, qui adhuc

inadspectabilis et absens amorem nostrum meruit et exercuit,

frequentius scripturae commemorant. Joh. xiv. 3; 1 Joh. iii. 1;

1 Pet. i. 8; 1 Thess. iv. 17. Ac quis non jucundum credat videre

corpus illud, cujus velut instrumento usus est filius Dei ad

expianda peccata, et absentem tandem amicum salutare?"--Doederlein

(Inst. Theol. Chr. l. ii. P. ii. C. ii. Sect. ii. § 302. Obs. 3). "Quod

oculis corporis Christum visuri simus, dubio caret."--J. Fr. Buddeus

(Comp. Inst. Theol. Dogm. l. ii. c. iii. § 10).

The distinction between God with the Son, or the sensuous God, and God

without the Son, or God divested of sensuousness, is nothing further

than the distinction between the mystical and the rational man. The

rational man lives and thinks; with him life is the complement of

thought, and thought the complement of life, both theoretically,

inasmuch as he convinces himself of the reality of sensuousness through

the reason itself, and practically, inasmuch as he combines activity

of life with activity of thought. That which I have in life, I do not

need to posit beyond life, in spirit, in metaphysical existence, in

God; love, friendship, perception, the world in general, give me what

thought does not, cannot give me, nor ought to give me. Therefore I

dismiss the needs of the heart from the sphere of thought, that reason

may not be clouded by desires;--in the demarcation of activities

consists the wisdom of life and thought;--I do not need a God who

supplies by a mystical, imaginary physicalness or sensuousness

the absence of the real. My heart is satisfied before I enter into

intellectual activity; hence my thought is cold, indifferent, abstract,

i.e., free, in relation to the heart, which oversteps its limits,

and improperly mixes itself with the affairs of the reason. Thus I

do not think in order to satisfy my heart, but to satisfy my reason,

which is not satisfied by the heart; I think only in the interest

of reason, from pure desire of knowledge, I seek in God only the

contentment of the pure, unmixed intelligence. Necessarily, therefore,

the God of the rational thinker is another than the God of the heart,

which in thought, in reason, only seeks its own satisfaction. And

this is the aim of the mystic, who cannot endure the luminous fire

of discriminating and limiting criticism; for his mind is always

beclouded by the vapours which rise from the unextinguished ardour

of his feelings. He never attains to abstract, i.e., disinterested,

free thought, and for that reason he never attains to the perception

of things in their naturalness, truth, and reality.

One more remark concerning the Trinity. The older theologians said

that the essential attributes of God as God were made manifest by

the light of natural reason. But how is it that reason can know the

Divine Being, unless it be because the Divine Being is nothing else

than the objective nature of the intelligence itself? Of the Trinity,

on the other hand, they said that it could only be known through

revelation. Why not through reason; because it contradicts reason,

i.e., because it does not express a want of the reason, but a sensuous,

emotional want. In general, the proposition that an idea springs from

revelation means no more than that it has come to us by the way of

tradition. The dogmas of religion have arisen at certain times out

of definite wants, under definite relations and conceptions; for this

reason, to the men of a later time, in which these relations, wants,

conceptions, have disappeared, they are something unintelligible,

incomprehensible, only traditional, i.e., revealed. The antithesis

of revelation and reason reduces itself only to the antithesis of

history and reason, only to this, that mankind at a given time is no

longer capable of that which at another time it was quite capable of;

just as the individual man does not unfold his powers at all times

indifferently, but only in moments of special appeal from without or

incitement from within. Thus the works of genius arise only under

altogether special inward and outward conditions which cannot thus

coincide more than once; they are apax legomena. "Einmal ist alles

wahre nur." The true is born but once. Hence a man's own works often

appear to him in later years quite strange and incomprehensible. He no

longer knows how he produced them or could produce them, i.e., he can

no longer explain them out of himself, still less reproduce them. And

just as it would be folly if, in riper years, because the productions

of our youth have become strange and inexplicable to us in their tenor

and origin, we were to refer them to a special inspiration from above;

so it is folly, because the doctrines and ideas of a past age are

no longer recognised by the reason of a subsequent age, to claim for

them a supra- and extra-human, i.e., an imaginary, illusory origin.

§ 9.

The creation out of nothing expresses the non-divineness,

non-essentiality, i.e., the nothingness of the world.

That is created which once did not exist, which some time will

exist no longer, to which, therefore, it is possible not to exist,

which we can think of as not existing, in a word, which has not its

existence in itself, is not necessary. "Cum enim res producantur ex suo

non-esse, possunt ergo absolute non-esse, adeoque implicat, quod non

sunt necessariæ."--Duns Scotus (ap. Rixner, B. ii. p. 78). But only

necessary existence is existence. If I am not necessary, do not feel

myself necessary, I feel that it is all one whether I exist or not,

that thus my existence is worthless, nothing. "I am nothing," and "I

am not necessary," is fundamentally the same thing. "Creatio non est

motus, sed simplicis divinae voluntatis vocatio ad esse eorum, quae

antea nihil fuerunt et secundum se ipsa et nihil sunt et ex nihilo

sunt."--Albertus M. (de. Mirab. Scient. Dei P. ii. Tr. i. Qu. 4,

Art. 5, memb. ii.) But the position that the world is not necessary,

has no other bearing than to prove that the extra- and supra-mundane

being (i.e., in fact, the human being) is the only necessary, only

real being. Since the one is non-essential and temporal, the other is

necessarily the essential, existent, eternal. The creation is the proof

that God is, that he is exclusively true and real. "Sanctus Dominus

Deus omnipotens in principio, quod est in te, in sapientia tua, quae

nata est de substantia tua, fecisti aliquid et de nihilo. Fecisti enim

coelum et terram non de te, nam esset aequale unigenito tuo, ac per hoc

et tibi, et nullo modo justum esset, ut aequale tibi esset, quod in te

non esset. Et aliud praeter te non erat, unde faceres ea Deus.... Et

ideo de nihilo fecisti coelum et terram."--Augustinus (Confessionum

l. xii c. 7). "Vere enim ipse est, quia incommutabilis est. Omnis enim

mutatio facit non esse quod erat.... Ei ergo qui summe est, non potest

esse contrarium nisi quod non est.--Si solus ipse incommutabilis, omnia

quae fecit, quia ex nihilo id est ex eo quod omnino non est--fecit,

mutabilia sunt."--Augustin (de nat. boni adv. Manich. cc. 1,

19). "Creatura in nullo debet parificari Deo, si autem non habuisset

initium durationis et esse, in hoc parificaretur Deo."--(Albertus

M. l. c. Quaest. incidens 1). The positive, the essential in the

world is not that which makes it a world, which distinguishes it from

God--this is precisely its finiteness and nothingness--but rather that

in it which is not itself, which is God. "All creatures are a pure

nothing ... they have no essential existence, for their existence

hangs on the presence of God. If God turned himself away a moment,

they would fall to nothing."--(Predigten vor. u. zu. Tauleri Zeiten,

ed. c. p. 29. See also Augustine, e.g. Confess. l. vii. c. 11). This

is quite correctly said from the standpoint of religion, for God

is the principle of existence, the being of the world, though he

is represented as a personal being distinct from the world. The

world lasts so long as God wills. The world is transient, but man

eternal. "Quamdiu vult, omnia ejus virtute manent atque consistunt,

et finis eorum in Dei voluntatem recurrit, et ejus arbitrio

resolvuntur."--Ambrosius (Hexaemeron. l. i. c. 5). "Spiritus

enim a Deo creati nunquam esse desinunt.... Corpora coelestia

tam diu conservantur, quamdiu Deus ea vult permanere."--Buddeus

(Comp. l. ii. c. ii. § 47). "The dear God does not alone create,

but what he creates he keeps with his own being, until he wills that

it shall be no longer. For the time will come when the sun, moon,

and stars shall be no more."--Luther (Th. ix. s. 418). "The end will

come sooner than we think."--Id. (Th. xi. s. 536). By means of the

creation out of nothing man gives himself the certainty that the world

is nothing, is powerless against man. "We have a Lord who is greater

than the whole world; we have a Lord so powerful, that when he only

speaks all things are born.... Wherefore should we fear, since he is

favourable to us?"--Id. (Th. vi. p. 293). Identical with the belief in

the creation out of nothing is the belief in the eternal life of man,

in the victory over death, the last constraint which nature imposes

on man--in the resurrection of the dead. "Six thousand years ago

the world was nothing; and who has made the world?... The same God

and Creator can also awake thee from the dead; he will do it, and

can do it."--Id. (Th. xi. p. 426. See also 421, &c.) "We Christians

are greater and more than all creatures, not in or by ourselves, but

through the gift of God in Christ, against whom the world is nothing,

and can do nothing."--Id. (Th. xi. p. 377).

§ 10.

The Creation in the Israelitish religion has only a particular,

egoistic aim and purport. The Israelitish religion is the religion of

the most narrow-hearted egoism. Even the later Israelites, scattered

throughout the world, persecuted and oppressed, adhered with immovable

firmness to the egoistic faith of their forefathers. "Every Israelitish

soul by itself is, in the eyes of the blessed God, dearer and more

precious than all the souls of a whole nation besides." "The Israelites

are among the nations what the heart is among the members." "The end

in the creation of the world was Israel alone. The world was created

for the sake of the Israelites; they are the fruit, other nations

are their husks." "All the heathens are nothing for him (God); but

for the Israelites God has a use.... They adore and bless the name

of the holy and blessed God every day, therefore they are numbered

every hour, and made as (numerous as) the grains of corn." "If the

Israelites were not, there would fall no rain on the world, and the sun

would not rise but for their sakes." "He (God) is our kinsman, and we

are his kindred.... No power or angel is akin to us, for the Lord's

portion is his people" (Deut. xxxii. 9). "He who rises up against

an Israelite (to injure him), does the same thing as if he rose up

against God." "If anyone smite an Israelite on the cheek, it is the

same as if he smote the cheek of the divine majesty."--Eisenmengers

(Entdecktes Judenthum, T. i. Kap. 14). The Christians blamed the

Jews for this arrogance, but only because the kingdom of God was

taken from them and transferred to the Christians. Accordingly,

we find the same thoughts and sentiments in the Christians as in

the Israelites. "Know that God so takes thee unto himself that

thy enemies are his enemies."--Luther (T. vi. p. 99). "It is the

Christians for whose sake God spares the whole world.... The Father

makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on

the just and on the unjust. Yet this happens only for the sake of the

pious and thankful." (T. xvi. p. 506.) "He who despises me despises

God." (T. xi. p. 538.) "God suffers, and is despised and persecuted,

in us." (T. iv. p. 577.) Such declarations as these are, I should

think, argumenta ad hominem for the identity of God and man.

§ 11.

The idea of Providence is the religious consciousness of man's

distinction from the brutes, from Nature in general. "Doth God take

care for oxen?" (1 Cor. ix. 9.) "Nunquid curae est Deo bobus? inquit

Paulus. Ad nos ea cura dirigitur, non ad boves, equos, asinos, qui

in usum nostrum sunt conditi."--J. L. Vivis Val. (de Veritate Fidei

Chr. Bas. 1544, p. 108). "Providentia Dei in omnibus aliis creaturis

respicit ad hominem tanquam ad metam suam. Multis passeribus vos pluris

estis. Matth. x. 31. Propter peccatum hominis natura subjecta est

vanitati. Rom. viii. 20."--M. Chemnitii (Loci theol. Francof. 1608,

P. i. p. 312). "Nunquid enim cura est Deo de bobus? Et sicut non

est cura Deo de bobus, ita nec de aliis irrationalibus. Dicit tamen

scriptura (Sapient. vi.) quia ipsi cura est de omnibus. Providentiam

ergo et curam universaliter de cunctis, quae condidit, habet.... Sed

specialem providentiam atque curam habet de rationalibus."--Petrus

L. (l. i. dist. 39, c. 3). Here we have again an example how Christian

sophistry is a product of Christian faith, especially of faith in the

Bible as the word of God. First we read that God cares not for oxen;

then that God cares for everything, and therefore for oxen. That is

a contradiction; but the word of God must not contradict itself. How

does faith escape from this contradiction? By distinguishing between a

general and a special providence. But general providence is illusory,

is in truth no providence. Only special providence is providence in

the sense of religion.

General providence--the providence which extends itself equally to

irrational and rational beings, which makes no distinction between

man and the lilies of the field or the fowls of the air, is nothing

else than the idea of Nature--an idea which man may have without

religion. The religious consciousness admits this when it says:

he who denies providence abolishes religion, places man on a level

with the brutes;--thus declaring that the providence in which the

brutes have a share is in truth no providence. Providence partakes of

the character of its object; hence the providence which has plants

and animals for its object is in accordance with the qualities and

relations of plants and animals. Providence is nothing else than

the inward nature of a thing; this inward nature is its genius,

its guardian spirit--the necessity of its existence. The higher,

the more precious a being is,--the more ground of existence it has,

the more necessary it is, the less is it open to annihilation. Every

being is necessary only through that by which it is distinguished

from other beings; its specific difference is the ground of its

existence. So man is necessary only through that by which he is

distinguished from the brutes; hence providence is nothing else

than man's consciousness of the necessity of his existence, of the

distinction between his nature and that of other beings; consequently

that alone is the true providence in which this specific difference

of man becomes an object to him. But this providence is special,

i.e., the providence of love, for only love interests itself in

what is special to a being. Providence without love is a conception

without basis, without reality. The truth of providence is love. God

loves men, not brutes, not plants; for only for man's sake does he

perform extraordinary deeds, deeds of love--miracles. Where there

is no community there is no love. But what bond can be supposed to

unite brutes, or natural things in general, with God? God does not

recognise himself in them, for they do not recognise him;--where I

find nothing of myself, how can I love? "God who thus promises, does

not speak with asses and oxen, as Paul says: Doth God take care for

oxen? but with rational creatures made in his likeness, that they may

live for ever with him." Luther (Th. ii. s. 156). God is first with

himself in man; in man first begins religion, providence; for the

latter is not something different from the former, on the contrary,

religion is itself the providence of man. He who loses religion, i.e.,

faith in himself, faith in man, in the infinite significance of his

being, in the necessity of his existence, loses providence. He alone is

forsaken who forsakes himself; he alone is lost who despairs; he alone

is without God who is without faith, i.e., without courage. Wherein

does religion place the true proof of providence? in the phenomena

of Nature, as they are objects to us out of religion,--in astronomy,

in physics, in natural history? No! In those appearances which are

objects of religion, of faith only, which express only the faith

of religion in itself, i.e., in the truth and reality of man,--in

the religious events, means, and institutions which God has ordained

exclusively for the salvation of man, in a word, in miracles; for the

means of grace, the sacraments, belong to the class of providential

miracles. "Quamquam autem haec consideratio universae naturae nos

admonet de Deo ... tamen nos referamus initio mentem et oculos ad

omnia testimonia, in quibus se Deus ecclesiae patefecit ad eductionem

ex Aegypto, ad vocem sonantem in Sinai, ad Christum resuscitantem

mortuos et resuscitatum, etc.... Ideo semper defixae sint mentes

in horum testimoniorum cogitationem et his confirmatae articulum de

Creatione meditentur, deinde considerent etiam vestigia Dei impressae

naturae."--Melancthon (Loci de Creat. p. 62, ed. cit.). "Mirentur

alii creationem, mihi magis libet mirari redemptionem. Mirabile est,

quod caro nostra et ossa nostra a Deo nobis sunt formata, mirabilius

adhuc est, quod ipse Deus caro de carne nostra et os de ossibus nostris

fieri voluit."--J. Gerhard (Med. s. M. 15). "The heathens know God

no further than that he is a Creator."--Luther (T. ii. p. 327). That

providence has only man for its essential object is evident from this,

that to religious faith all things and beings are created for the sake

of man. "We are lords not only of birds, but of all living creatures,

and all things are given for our service, and are created only for

our sake."--Luther (T. ix. p. 281). But if things are created only

for the sake of man, they are also preserved only for the sake of

man. And if things are mere instruments of man, they stand under

the protection of no law, they are, in relation to man, without

rights. This outlawing of things explains miracle.

The negation of providence is the negation of God. "Qui ergo

providentiam tollit, totum Dei substantiam tollit et quid dicit

nisi Deum non esse?... Si non curat humana, sive nesciens, cessat

omnis causa pietatis, cum sit spes nulla salutis."--Joa. Trithemius

(Tract. de Provid. Dei). "Nam qui nihil aspici a Deo affirmant prope

est ut cui adspectum adimunt, etiam substantiam tollant."--Salvianus

(l. c. l. iv.). "Aristotle almost falls into the opinion that

God--though he does not expressly name him a fool--is such a one that

he knows nothing of our affairs, nothing of our designs, understands,

sees, regards nothing but himself.... But what is such a God or Lord

to us? of what use is he to us?"--Luther (in Walch's Philos. Lexikon,

art. Vorsehung). Providence is therefore the most undeniable, striking

proof that in religion, in the nature of God himself, man is occupied

only with himself, that the mystery of theology is anthropology, that

the substance, the content of the infinite being, is the "finite"

being. "God sees men," means: in God man sees only himself; "God

cares for man," means: a God who is not active is no real God. But

there is no activity without an object: it is the object which first

converts activity from a mere power into real activity. This object is

man. If man did not exist, God would have no cause for activity. Thus

man is the motive principle, the soul of God. A God who does not see

and hear man, who has not man in himself, is blind and deaf, i.e.,

inert, empty, unsubstantial. Thus the fulness of the divine nature

is the fulness of the human; thus the Godhead of God is humanity. I

for myself, is the comfortless mystery of epicureanism, stoicism,

pantheism; God for me, this is the consolatory mystery of religion,

of Christianity. Is man for God's sake, or God for man's? It is true

that in religion man exists for God's sake, but only because God

exists for man's sake. I am for God because God is for me.

Providence is identical with miraculous power, supernaturalistic

freedom from Nature, the dominion of arbitrariness over law. "Etsi

(sc. Deus) sustentat naturam, tamen contra ordinem jussit aliquando

Solem regredi, etc.... Ut igitur invocatio vere fieri possit,

cogitemus Deum sic adesse suo opificio, non, ut Stoici fingunt,

alligatum secundis causis, sed sustentantem naturam et multa suo

liberrimo consilio moderantem.... Multa facit prima causa praeter

secundas, quia est agens liberum."--Melancthon (Loci de Causâ

Peccati, pp. 82, 83, ed. cit.) "Scriptura vero tradit, Deum in

actione providentiae esse agens liberum, qui ut plurimum quidem

ordinem sui operis servet, illi tamen ordini non sit alligatus,

sed 1) quicquid facit per causas secundas, illud possit etiam sine

illis per se solum facere 2) quod ex causis secundis possit alium

effectum producere, quam ipsarum dispositio et natura ferat 3)

quod positis ausis secundis in actu, Deus tamen effectum possit

impedire, mutare, mitigare, exasperare.... Non igitur est connexio

causarum Stoica in actionibus providentiae Dei."--M. Chemnitius

(l. c. pp. 316, 317). "Liberrime Deus imperat naturae--Naturam saluti

hominum attemperat propter Ecclesiam.... Omnino tribuendus est Deo hic

honos, quod possit et velit opitulari nobis, etiam cum a tota natura

destituimur, contra seriem omnium secundarum causarum.... Et multa

accidunt plurimis hominibus, in quibus mirandi eventus fateri eos

cogunt, se a Deo sine causis secundis servatos esse."--C. Peucerus

(de Praecip. Divinat. gen. Servestae, 1591, p. 44). "Ille tamen qui

omnium est conditor, nullis instrumentis indiget. Nam si id continuo

fit, quicquid ipse vult, velle illius erit author atque instrumentum;

nec magis ad haec regenda astris indiget, quam cum luto aperuit

oculos coeci, sicut refert historia Evangelica. Lutum enim magis

videbatur obturaturum oculos, quam aperturum. Sed ipse ostendere nobis

voluit omnem naturam esse sibi instrumentum ad quidvis, quantumcunque

alienum."--J. L. Vives (l. c. 102). "How is this to be reconciled? The

air gives food and nourishment, and here stones or rocks flow with

water; it is a marvellous gift. And it is also strange and marvellous

that corn grows out of the earth. Who has this art and this power? God

has it, who can do such unnatural things, that we may thence imagine

what sort of a God he is and what sort of power he has, that we may

not be terrified at him nor despair, but firmly believe and trust him,

that he can make the leather in the pocket into gold, and can make dust

into corn on the earth, and the air a cellar for me full of wine. He

is to be trusted, as having such great power, and we may know that we

have a God who can perform these deeds of skill, and that around him

it rains and snows with miraculous works."--Luther (T. iii. p. 594).

The omnipotence of Providence is the omnipotence of human feeling

releasing itself from all conditions and laws of Nature. This

omnipotence is realised by prayer. Prayer is Almighty. "The prayer

of faith shall save the sick.... The effectual fervent prayer of a

righteous man availeth much. Elias was a man subject to like passions

as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain; and it

rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And

he prayed again, and the heavens gave rain and the earth brought forth

her fruit."--James v. 15-18. "If ye have faith and doubt not, ye shall

not only do this which is done to the fig-tree, but also if ye shall

say unto this mountain, Be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea,

it shall be done, and all things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer,

believing, ye shall receive."--Matt. xxi. 21, 22. That under this

mountain which the power of faith is to overcome are to be understood

not only very difficult things--res difficillimae, as the exegetists

say, who explain this passage as a proverbial, hyperbolical mode of

speech among the Jews, but rather things which according to Nature and

reason are impossible, is proved by the case of the instantaneously

withered fig-tree, to which the passage in question refers. Here

indubitably is declared the omnipotence of prayer, of faith, before

which the power of Nature vanishes into nothing. "Mutanturquoque

ad preces ea quae ex naturae causis erant sequutura, quemadmodum

in Ezechia contigit, rege Juda, cui, quod naturales causarum

progressus mortem minabantur, dictum est a propheta Dei: Morieris

et non vives; sed is decursus naturae ad regis preces mutatus est et

mutaturum se Deus praeviderat."--J. L. Vives (l. c. p. 132). "Saepe

fatorum saevitiam lenit Deus, placatus piorum votis."--Melancthon

(Epist. Sim. Grynaeo). "Cedit natura rerum precibus Moysi. Eliae,

Elisaei, Jesaiae et omnium piorum, sicut Christus inquit Matt. 21:

Omnia quae petetis, credentes accipietis."--Id. (Loci de Creat. p. 64,

ed. cit.). Celsus calls on the Christians to aid the Emperor and not to

decline military service. Whereupon Origen answers. "Precibus nostris

profligantes omnes bellorum excitatores daemonas et perturbatores

pacis ac foederum plus conferimus regibus, quam qui arma gestant pro

Republica."--Origenes (adv. Celsum. S. Glenio int. l. viii.). Human

need is the necessity of the Divine Will. In prayer man is the active,

the determining, God the passive, the determined. God does the will of

man. "God does the will of those that fear him, and he gives his will

up to ours.... For the text says clearly enough, that Lot was not to

stay in all the plain, but to escape to the mountain. But this his

wish God changes, because Lot fears him and prays to him." "And we

have other testimonies in the Scriptures which prove that God allows

himself to be turned and subjects his will to our wish." "Thus it was

according to the regular order of God's power that the sun should

maintain its revolution and wonted course; but when Joshua in his

need called on the Lord and commanded the sun that it should stand

still, it stood still at Joshua's word. How great a miracle this was,

ask the astronomers."--Luther (T. ii. p. 226). "Lord, I am here and

there in great need and danger of body and soul, and therefore want

thy help and comfort. Item: I must have this and that; therefore I

entreat thee that thou give it me." "He who so prays and perseveres

unabashed does right, and our Lord God is well pleased with him,

for he is not so squeamish as we men."--Id. (T. xvi. p. 150).

§ 12.