Christian Ethics. Volume II.—Pure Ethics.

SECTION LXXVIII.

The revelation of the divine will to the moral subject, as given in the rational self-consciousness, is the conscience. This is not an originally ready power, but, as given at first only in germ, it must be developed,—stands in need of culture, primarily by God himself, and, in all after the first generation. by the already morally-matured spirit of men; and with its further moral development it constantly becomes more definite, more clear and more rich in contents. Now, as sin separates man from God and from the knowledge of Him, and also damagingly affects the moral training received from others, it is clear that the conscience has its full purity and power only in a sinless state.—As relating to the moral life-manifestations, the conscience appears as a morally-judging power, and as such it is either in harmony with the 100particular manner of action—in which case it awakens a joyous feeling of approval,—or it is in antagonism therewith, and in this case it awakens a painful feeling of disapproval; and either feeling prompts to a corresponding course of action. As the conscience is a revelation of the moral law as the divine will, hence it never exists without a God-consciousness,—it is itself, in fact, one of the phases of this consciousness, and is per se of a religious character, and is inexplicable from the mere world-consciousness. In its germ it is a primitive and not a derived power, and in this sense it is already presupposed on the entrance of the positive divine revelation. The actual acceptance of this revelation is of itself already a moral act which presupposes the conscience; but the latter is excited to activity and to full development only by the positive revelation. Conscience is essentially an integral part of man’s God-likeness,—is, like rationality in general, a divine life-power imparted to the creature.

The conscience is in its essence, not different from the God-consciousness, but is only the bearing of the God-consciousness upon the moral; as relating to the good, it relates also to God, for none is good but God alone [Matt. xix, 17]; and God is the criterion of all good, for the good is the God-answering; a conscience which is not a God-consciousness is a perverted, an unanchored one. As the conscience is an inner revelation of God to man, we place its discussion in this section, although it is an essential element of the moral subject.—The manners of conceiving of the conscience differ very widely; it is, in turn, regarded either as a cognizing consciousness, or as a feeling, or as an instinctive impulse; and consequently it is sought for in all the different spheres of the soul-life; it is indeed true that the conscience cannot be real without embracing in itself all three of these spheres; and hence the word may be used in all three significations. In 101the expression: “Conscience says to me,” or “it approves this and rejects that,” it is conceived of as a cognizing, judging consciousness; but we also speak of a joyous, or a chastising conscience; and again we say: “conscience compels me to this act or deters me from it.” The question, however, is: which of the three phases is the primitive, the fundamental one? which constitutes the essence of the conscience? According to what we have previously said as to the relation of feeling and willing to the cognizing consciousness, it follows very plainly that the essence of the conscience is to be found in that which its name directly expresses in various languages, namely, a being-certain, hence a certain knowing, a cognizing consciousness; in the New Testament the term συνείδησις—(from σύνοιδα, conscious sum, strictly: “I am a fellow-knower,” and in a higher sense: “I know with God,” in whom all knowledge centers),—an associate knowing with God, in virtue of his indwelling in rational creatures, is used of the conscience, both in so far as it leads to the good (αγαθή συνείδησις, or καλή or καθαρά), and in so far as, by reproving, it punishes evil [John viii, 9]; and the same word is used also directly in the sense of religious consciousness, presenting the conscience as a consciousness of the divine will [1 Peter ii, 19; Rom. xiii, 5; Heb. ix, 9]. The conscience, as differing from the enlightening influence of the Holy Spirit [Rom. ix, 1], is a power inherent in the essence of man per se, see Rom. ii, 14, 15; in this passage the λογισμοί are not the conscience, but the reflections that spring from the conscience, which itself is the “work of the law written in the hearts,” that is, the consciousness of the contents, of the requirements of the moral law; Paul is not speaking here of the true and perfect conscience, but of the natural conscience of sinful man; the essential features of the true conscience, however, still lurk in the disordered one; and this essential character appears here evidently as a consciousness of the moral. In the Old Testament the conscience is designated by the word heart, לֵבָב [Job xxvii, 6].

The conscience is not a mere simple knowing, it is an utterance of the practical reason, a direct judging of moral thoughts and actions, an approving or condemning witness as to the moral conduct of man [2 Cor. i, 12; v, 11; Rom. xiv, 22; Acts xxiii, 1; 102xxiv, 16; 2 Tim. i, 3; 1 Peter iii, 16; Heb. xiii, 18]. Such a judging presupposes the consciousness of a moral law, according to which the decisions are made; and this consciousness is the inner essence of conscience itself. The conscience is a judging power, for the reason that it is per se a consciousness of the law as the divine will; it utters itself discriminating and deciding (κρινών) because it is mindful of the eternal ground of the holy,—because it is the inner essence of the divine image as coming to self-consciousness; this latter is the essence of the conscience, the judging is its active manifestation.—The conscience can be awakened, cultivated, and refined by human instruction, but not generated; it is a perpetual witnessing of God as to himself and his holy will in the rational spirit of man, and for this simple reason it is not within the control of man, but is a power above him; it may be silenced temporarily, and led astray in its particular utterance as a discriminating power, but it can never be eradicated nor definitively perverted. It is not the person, strictly speaking, who has the conscience, but it is the conscience that has the person; it dwells indeed in the individual personality, but it is not itself of subjective character, since it is of divine quality; it does not express my personal peculiarity, but the holy will of God in regard to me. Conscience is the fact of the divine morality in man antecedent to all human morality; it is the germ proper of man’s God-likeness,—the God-likeness itself as bearing relation to free conduct, in so far as this consciousness constitutes a part of the essence of rationality. Without this divine germ of the moral in man, morality would be impossible—as impossible as is seeing without eyesight, no matter how much light there might be, or instruction without previously existing rationality as a basis. A convicting by argumentation is possible only when there is antecedently existing in the subject some certain knowledge wherewith the new truth shall agree. What axioms are in mathematics, that is the conscience in the moral sphere. He who does not recognize the axioms, and hence has, as it were, no mathematical conscience, is beyond the reach of instruction. He alone can become rational and moral, and live so, who is so already in the original structure of his being; and this deepest ground of moral rationality is in fact the conscience. 103He in whom the witness of the holy God does not witness for the holy, cannot be moral; but such an abandoned one there cannot be in the entire creation of God, for to none has he “left himself without witness.” A man may become ungodly, may be unconscientious, and yet not be free from the power of conscience; he may deprive himself of his eyes, but not of his reason, and consequently not of his conscience. For this simple reason, every sin is a fall of man from his own proper nature, an unfaithfulness toward himself. Conscience rests on the. discrimination of the personal creature and its will from the personal God and his will; it finds its universal expression in the words of the Lord: “Not my will but thine be done.” Whoever supposes himself to act from necessity, or merely according to his own individual will, for him the idea of the conscience is obscured; the irreligious are necessarily unconscientious. It is for the simple reason that it is not the individual ego, but the divine, that speaks in the conscience, that there can be a reproving, an evil, conscience, in which the difference of this twofold ego appears in an irreducible antithesis. But this voice of the divine ego does not first come to the consciousness of the individual ego, from without; rather does every external revelation presuppose already this inner one; there must echo out from within man something kindred to the outer revelation, in order to its being recognized and accepted as divine. Even as Adam at the first sight of, the woman recognized at once that she was flesh of his flesh, so recognizes man immediately on the utterance of the divine will by special revelation that this is spirit of that spirit which dwells and speaks within him,—not, however, as his individual ego, but as distinct from it, and as having uncontested right to rule over it.

The first manifestation of conscience in the Scriptures appears in the words wherein Eve opposes the temptation: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said: ye shall not eat of it.” Here Eve distinguishes the command, as the divine will, from her own will; which latter, however, she afterward carries out; but this adversely judging conscience presupposes a previous first activity of the same, namely, the recognition of the divine command as 104obligating. The command itself spoke in fact, primarily, only to the understanding; the recognition of it as divine, as a legitimate determining authority for the individual will, the receiving of it into the heart, and the willingness to conform the individual volitions to it,—all this is not a matter of the cognizing understanding, nor in general of the individual spirit as such, but of that divine element in man which responds to the divine command—the conscience; and in the very first utterance of this power, it shows itself primarily, indeed as a consciousness, but then straightway also as a feeling of love as toward the congenial, the right, and as a willingness arising from this consciousness and this love.

The cognizing activity of the conscience relates primarily and directly only to the God-pleasing, and not also to the God-repugnant; for the former is real, but not the latter, and all true and real cognition relates to something real. Hence the second phase of conscience, that where men’s “eyes are opened” and they “know the good and the evil,” does not belong to the primative and pure conscience, but is a manifestation of the conscience as already in antagonism to the moral actuality of man. As primarily relating to the Godlike, and hence as attended by a feeling of approbation, the conscience has originally nothing to do with fear of punishment, but is on the contrary an expression of peace with God; fear presupposes already a disturbed harmony and a knowledge of good and evil; hence in the Scriptures we find conscience expressly distinguished from fear. [Rom. xiii, 5.]

According to Rothe, conscience is the divine activity in its passive form, that is, it is the soul’s self-activity as being determined by the body, or, in general, by material nature, and, in the final instance, by the divine self-activity, or, in general, by God himself,—that is, it is instinctive impulse as religious. In his opinion conscience lies not on the side of the self-consciousness, but on that of the self-activity, and relates not to conceptions and to the understanding, but to volitions and to actions. Conscience has essentially an individual character,—is of subjective, not of objective, nature; hence it is not correct to speak of a tribunal of conscience. “The conscience of another has not the least binding force for me, but only my own; when an appeal is made to conscience, 105there all further discussion is cut off, there all objective arguments become powerless; whatever is a matter of conscience to me is to me a sanctum sanctorum which none dare violate”—not even for objective reasons; nor does my conscience bind any one else. Conscience is essentially a religious instinct-impulse; and as being an activity of God in man under the form of an instinctive impulse, and hence also a sensuously perceptible one, it is attended by sensuously-somatic phases of feeling. Now every instinct-impulse is either positive or negative, hence conscience is either approbative or disapprobative; as disapprobative it is religious aversion,—an instinctive impulse toward the counterworking of the sin (hence stings of conscience); as approbative it is the religious appetite. Rothe takes occasion here to complain seriously of the hitherto prevalent confusion of phraseology on this subject,—namely, in view of the fact that conscience is treated of, sometimes as a propension, sometimes as a moral feeling, sometimes as a religious feeling, sometimes as such and such an instinct-impulse, or as such and such a sense; in this, however, he is manifestly unjustifiable; it is to no good purpose to quarrel with language which is, in fact, often profounder and truer than the boldest theoretical systems: No one has a right arbitrarily to define ideas contrarily to the general consciousness, and then to find fault with language because it does not harmonize with the definitions. In the present case we find language perfectly justifiable in making so wide a use of the term conscience, inasmuch as all the above phases are in fact embraced in it, though indeed not in equal degrees. The strange notion that conscience rests on a determination of the personal soul by the material body, so that by implication a rational spirit without a material body would not have any conscience, we pass over in silence, and make only the following observations. Should we admit that conscience relates to volition and action, it does not follow from this that it is not per se, and primarily, a consciousness; thought in fact may influence volition; and the necessary presupposition of every volition is a thought; but an unconscious instinct-impulse is neither religious nor moral, but irrational. The fact is, conscience lies most strictly on the side of the self-consciousness; otherwise an evil conscience 106could not contain a self-accusation. That the conscience is of subjective nature is only in so far correct as it constitutes an integral element of rational personality; but it is entirely incorrect in Rothe to reduce it to a mere individually-subjective phenomenon, and entirely to deprive it of objective character. If conscience is to be at all of a rational character, it must have a general, and hence also an objective significancy. That which is merely subjective has not the least moral significancy, rather is it the opposite of the moral; what is holy for me must be also holy per se and before God, and what is holy before God must be holy for all moral creatures. My conscience is true only in so far as it is an expression of the moral idea; but the moral idea is not of a merely subjective nature. For every Christian, it is a matter of conscience to follow Christ; this holds good in general as well as in particular, and not simply for me as such and such a particular person. The more the conscience bears a merely subjective character, the more defective it is; in a normal condition of humanity all moral consciences would necessarily be essentially concordant, inasmuch as there is only one God and only one divine will, and inasmuch as conscience is the expression of this will. Rothe comes himself into violent contradiction with his assertions, in that he makes conscience to be determined by a divine activity; for this divine activity must be objective to the subject; and, as of a holy character, it certainly does not determine each individual to a different decision: and a little farther on Rothe himself takes this position: that the conscience as an activity of God in man, has a direct and unconditional authority, and from which man cannot in any manner escape; that arguments avail nothing as against conscience,—that perfectly convincing arguments may be urged and yet the conscience remain unmoved; that consequently conscience is also infallible, that it never deceives and is incapable of being bribed; and that though we may blind ourselves as to its decision, yet it is itself not to be deceived. These positions, so utterly extreme and so contrary to all experience, are manifestly irreconcilable with his previous position, namely, that conscience, being entirely devoid of objective character, is a mere subjective phenomenon; for in the notion of an authority 107in conscience, and especially of an unconditional one, it is manifestly implied that the subject is subordinate thereto.⁹⁹Rothe appears to have become dissatisfied with this exposition of the conscience. In his revised edition (Theol. Ethik, 2 Auf., 1867, § 177, Anm. 3) he carries his dissatisfaction with the term conscience so far as entirely to exclude it from his work. He declares the word as “scientifically inadmissible,” inasmuch as it is devoid of “accurately determined logical contents;”—it is but a popular expression for the collective moral nature of man.—Translator.—According to Schenkel (Dogmatik, 1858, I, 135 sqq.) the conscience is a special faculty of the human soul, or rather that one of its organs which has to do with religious functions, whereas the reason and the will do not relate directly to God but to the world; this conscience, in which the God-consciousness is primarily and immediately given, is at the same time also the ethical central-organ. What is to be gained by this freak of fancy it is difficult to determine. When men thus arbitrarily, and contrary to prevalent usage, limit the notion of the reason and the will, it is of course an easy matter to discover new faculties of the soul and new organs of the same; but whether anything important is gained thereby, and whether the supposed epoch-making new discovery will meet with much favor, we may seriously doubt.—Trendelenburg shows much more circumspection and acumen in considering conscience as the reaction and pro-action of the total God-centered man against the man as partial, especially against the self-seeking part of himself (Naturrecht, 1860, § 39).

II.—THE ESSENCE OF THE MORAL LAW AS THE DIVINE WILL.

SECTION LXXIX.

The essence of the moral law as the divine will cannot be deduced from the nature of man alone, but essentially only from the idea of God as ruling righteously in his creation.—(a) As morality rests on freedom, and as freedom consists in the fact that a man chooses, by a personal independent volition, a 108particular mode of action among several possible ones, hence every moral action is at the same time the leaving undone of a possible contrary action. The moral law is therefore per se always twofold; it is command and prohibition at the same time, and consequently there is in fact no essential difference whether the law appears in the one or in the other form; and as the moral life of man is a continuous one, hence he must at every moment of time be fulfilling a divine law; a mere non-doing would be a negation of the moral. It is in consequence of the freedom of choice, and not in consequence of sinfulness, that the divine law bears the form of a “should.”

Every presentation of the moral law from the stand-point of man alone, that is, purely from the nature of man, without deriving it from God, is anti-religious, and can never include the whole truth of the moral idea. And in precise proportion as we conceive more highly of the moral nature of man from that stand-point, we render unavoidable his Pantheistic exaltation into the highest realization of God himself—the putting of man in the place of the personal God. We cannot possibly understand the moral law save as the divine purpose in regard to free creatures, and we can base it on the nature of man only in so far as we recognize in and through this nature the divine creative will, the fulfillment of which lies in the realized moral perfection of man.

The fact that any particular action is morally good, necessarily implies as possible a contrary, or non-good one; and the commanding of the former is per se a prohibiting of the latter; every command directly implies the prohibition of the contrary form of action. Now it might seem as if the converse did not hold good, namely, that a prohibition does not imply at the same time also a command; the laws: thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, seems to require simply a non-doing. This, however, would be possible only on condition that a mere non-doing were in general a 109moral possibility. But as life is strictly continuous in all of its stages, and as even a momentary real cessation of life is death, hence least of all can the highest form of life, the moral life, be a non-living, a simple non-doing, without thereby turning into the contrary, namely, into spiritual and moral death. As the human spirit, even in the deepest sleep as conditioned by the weariness of the body, is never idle, but keeps up an activity in remembered or unremembered dreaming, so also the highest form of spirit life, the moral life, is never interrupted by a pure inactivity. Hence a prohibition that should include in itself no contents of a positive character, no command, could not be of a moral nature. The moral non-doing of a morally prohibited action is in and of itself necessarily the doing of the contrary. Hence, Luther, in his elucidation of the Commandments, is strictly right in never leaving them in the form of a simple “thou shalt not;” but in uniformly deducing from them a very positive “thou shalt.” The law: “thou shalt not kill,” though in form a simple prohibition, nevertheless directly implies the enjoining of all that man, in his intercourse with others, ought to do as contrasting with the disposition that leads to murder; we should not only not kill our neighbor, but we should help and succor him in all his bodily perils;—a mere non-doing in the face of such perils would be a direct violation of the law. If man is not to commit adultery, then must he, in the conjugal relation, not only not do any thing that stimulates and nurtures an adulterous disposition, but he must do the contrary thereof; that is, he must live purely and chastely in words and acts, and love and honor his own consort.

Nevertheless it is not indifferent as to which of the two forms the moral law assumes; the difference, however, lies not in the essence, but in the practical educative adaptation. As the essence, the end, of the moral life is not negative but has positive contents, the true and perfect form of the law is in fact that of the express command; “thou shalt” is higher than “thou shalt not.” But for man while as yet undeveloped to moral maturity, the form of prohibition is the more obvious and simple, since, on the one hand, it brings his moral liberty of choice more clearly to his consciousness, and, with the exclusion of the immoral, opens to him the whole 110field of the discretionary, and since, on the other, it establishes protecting limits for the field within which he is to train himself up to moral maturity, to a consciousness of the good. With the child, education always begins in the prohibiting of what conflicts with its well-being; God’s first law to man was a free throwing-open of the field of the discretionary in connection with a limiting prohibition [Gen. ii, 16, 17], whereas the real command appears primarily only in the general form of a blessing, as expressive of the goal of moral effort, the good [Gen. i, 28]. While the Mosaic Commandments bear predominately the character of prohibition, Christ sums up the moral contents of the divine law in the form of a positive command: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself;” and at the same time Christ declares that this command embraces the whole ancient law. Hence, while the essence of the divine law continues ever the same, the revelation of it gradually advances from the predominantly prohibitory form to that of the positive command.

As both forms of the divine law present a duty to the free will of man, they both bear the expression of a command, a “should.” This is the form assumed by nearly all laws, from the first one given to Adam to the perfect laws of Christ. Since the time of Schleiermacher, however, many take offense at this “should,” and strive to banish it, at least, from the pure moral law. In Schleiermacher’s Philosophical Ethics, this rejection of the “should” is entirely consequential; for here the moral is quite as necessarily-determined a phenomenon of the universe as is the natural, and for freedom of will there is no place whatever; consequently ethics has no other task than simply to describe that which takes place from necessity, but not to present laws under the form of requirements, of duty. Rothe follows this view only up to a certain point; he rejects the form of the “should” only for sinless man, as indeed also one cannot apply the idea of “should” to God; only for sinful man can the moral appear as a duty (Eth. I, Auf., § 817). As relating to God this is doubtless correct, inasmuch as God’s freedom is not human liberty of choice, and as it absolutely excludes the possibility of sinning, and since God is absolutely his own law. But as 111relating to free creatures, even though they be as yet perfectly sinless, it is erroneous,—at least unless we are to regard the moral perfection of the same as a cessation of all freedom of choice and likewise of all moral duty. As long as man does not cease to propose to himself moral ends, and freely to aim to reach them, so long will duty as yet continue. This form of the law would be unsuitable for perfect man only when it should be conceived of as something uncongenial to man, as some sort of oppressive yoke, which, however, is by no means the case. The as yet unrealized state of a freely-to-be-attained goal always implies a “should.” It is only from some such misconception as if the “should” implied something foreign and burdensome to man, that we can explain why even Harless limits the application of this word to the fallen state (Christl. Ethik, 6 Auf., p. 80 sqq.). There is, however, no shadow of censure in the form “thou shouldst;” in fact, there is for the free will no other form of law conceivable than that of the “should.” Without a distinguishing of the divine will from that of the subject, no real conscious morality is possible; and simply this distinguishing and nothing more—not an antagonism of estrangement—is contained in the idea of the “should.” It is in this idea in fact that morality and piety find their unity, the moral being conceived as the divine will [Deut. x, 12; Micah vi, 8]. The child that does the good for the reason that it knows that it is the will of its parents that it should do so, stands morally higher than the one that does it without a consciousness of its duty; the former, but not the latter, is able to offer resistance to temptation; for temptation is overcome only by the thought of the divine will, or of duty. A command does not presuppose a contrary inclination, but only the possibility of sin, that is, it presupposes freedom of will. In denying to man while as yet in a sinless state all consciousness of the divine law, and supposing him to act simply from a direct impulse of love, we not only contradict the express declaration of the Scriptures as to a revelation of the divine will to primitive man, but we also render the fall into sin an impossibility.

112

SECTION LXXX.

(b) Whatever is morally good is God’s will, and is hence also moral law; and this law has, as God’s will, an unconditional claim,—presents itself always as a requirement from which there is no escape, and cannot possibly be construed into a mere counsel the non-fulfillment of which would not be a sin, and the voluntary fulfillment of which would constitute a supererogatory merit. The moral goal of every human being is moral perfection, and all that conducts thereto is for every such being an absolute duty, that is, it is God’s will and law concerning him. No one can do more good than is required of him; for the human will cannot be better than the divine, and God’s law is not less good than God’s will. That which in the Scriptures has the appearance of real moral counsel is simply a conditional law, the fulfillment of which becomes a duty to the individual only under certain, not universally-existing, circumstances; but wherever it does become a duty, there it is so absolutely, and hence its non-fulfillment is a violation of duty; and wherever it does not become a duty there its fulfillment has no merit.

Here, for the first time, we meet an antagonism of moral views between the different Christian churches; and it is a far-reaching one; and from this point on, in our attempt to construct a system of Christian ethics, and not simply of the ethical views of this or that church, we must seek for the essence of Christianity, not merely in those generalities which are common to all particular churches, but, wherever two views are in irreconcilable antagonism, we must necessarily decide for that one which is of a really Christian character, and cannot regard both as equally legitimate. And although. the question in this connection is nearly always, as to counsels 113to redeemed Christians, still it properly belongs in this place, since in fact unfallen man would be, even much more than the redeemed, in a condition to obtain a higher merit than is strictly required.

On a superficial examination it might seem that by the dogma as to the evangelical counsels (consilia as distinguished from praecepta) the moral requirements were advanced higher than the generally-sufficient degrees of morality; the fact is, however, the very opposite. The notion that there is some good which is not also a duty, can only be obtained by lowering the moral requirement from that of the highest possible moral perfection to an inferior requirement; and a supererogatory merit becomes possible only where the idea of the good embraces more than the moral requirement. The Protestant church, however, holds fast the view that all real good is absolutely a duty, and hence that man is obligated to do all the good within his power,—that he should unconditionally strive for the highest possible perfection. The Protestant view as to the moral requirement stands therefore higher than the opposing view. The Protestant church rejects the notion of moral counsels, and of the meritoriousness of their fulfillment, for the reason that it regards their contents as not absolutely good, as not per se moral, but as only good under certain not universally-existing circumstances, but as absolutely commanded when those circumstances do exist. That which is good in a particular conjuncture is, when that case arises, an absolute duty, and not a mere discretionary and non-obligating counsel. The saying of Christ [Luke xvii, 10]: “When ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say: we are unprofitable servants,”—which is not designed to disparage the worth of true morality, but simply to lead man to humility by reminding him of his sinful state, and of his redemption by grace alone,—is, however, applied by the theologians of the Romish church to the doctrine of the evangelical counsels, in that they say that man should in fact not remain a mere unprofitable servant, but should be a child of God, as indeed also Christ was not an unprofitable servant; and even some Protestant exegetes try to escape this inference simply by referring the works here in question not to Christian morality, but merely to the Mosaic law. We regard both 114the inference, and this mode of escaping it as inadmissible. It is indeed true, man should not be simply an unprofitable servant but a child of God; but from this very fact it follows that that which morally conditions this filial relation to God, must also be a positive moral requirement and duty, and not a mere counsel, which we may leave unfulfilled and yet not fail in doing all that is actually required of us; man is in fact absolutely bound to become a child of God. Now as a limitation of these words of Christ to the Mosaic law is not justified by the context, seeing that just previously (verses 5, 6) the question had been as to the power of faith, hence their true scope is, we think, as follows: man, even though redeemed but not yet free from sin, is unable by his dutiful works to acquire merit before God in such a sense as that he could claim of God the blessedness of the children of God as a reward due, and which God would be required by his justice to grant, but on the contrary he can regard this blessedness only as a gracious gift conferred upon him in virtue of his faith in the compassionate love of God in Christ. To the works owed, it is not other non-owed and hence supererogatory works that are compared, but faith, which, though indeed also a moral requirement, yet differs essentially from works properly so called (comp. verse 19; “thy faith hath made the whole”). Christ’s utterance, therefore, teaches clearly the very opposite of sanctification by works as prevailing in the Romish church.

The Romish church finds further support for its supererogatory good works,—which consist essentially in intensified self-denial, that is, in voluntary celibacy, poverty, obedience to man-devised rules, solitary life, etc.,—in those texts of the New Testament which seem to present celibacy and voluntary poverty as a higher morality not to be expected of all Christians. To the rich young man, who, as he himself affirmed, had kept all the commandments, Christ says [Matt. xix, 21]: “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast,—and give to the poor, and then thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come and follow me.” Now, it is argued, the moral law does not in fact require of all men the giving up of their possessions, and yet this young man had fulfilled all the commands which Christ mentions to him; hence this giving-up was over and 115above these commands. This is a very unfortunate inference, for surely a morality which does not lead to the perfection of man, can hardly be pure and required by God; and in the case of this young man the giving-up of his riches was the condition of his perfection, and hence, as we hold, an unconditional requirement, in case he really desired to attain to the highest good. The young man in declining the requirement failed, as Christ says, to have part in the kingdom of heaven; all his presumed fulfillment of the law was insufficient. Now this is in plain antagonism to the Romish doctrine, according to which the fulfillment of the law, even without obedience to the counsels, is amply sufficient to a participation in the kingdom of heaven, whereas the supererogatory works simply serve to a more speedy attainment thereof, or to a higher degree of blessedness. Hence those who refuse to admit that certain particular actions become a duty only under particular and not universally-existing relations, but that when these do exist, then they become in fact a positive requirement, would have no other alternative left, than to regard the requirement made of the rich young man as a general duty for all Christians. We can distinguish universally-valid commands from conditional ones, not, however, moral commands from mere counsels. Also the conditional commands are, when the particular conjuncture arrives, of absolute obligation, and not to fulfill them is disobedience to God’s command; whereas, in the Romish view, the non-fulfillment of the counsels does not incur the least moral blame.—When Paul says of himself [1 Cor. ix, 12-18] that he has denied himself many things to which he had a right, that he has labored without charge, etc., the Romanists here find a supererogatory work to which the Apostle was not obligated. Paul, however, declares expressly that he so acted in order “not to abuse his power [liberty] in the Gospel.” Now if the taking advantage of his discretionary power, under these particular circumstances, would have been a misuse of his liberty, then the course of action adopted by the apostle was evidently simply his duty, and by no means a supererogatory work.—But the greatest emphasis is placed on the utterances of Christ and of St. Paul as to abstaining from marriage: “All cannot receive this saying, but they to whom it is given” [Matt. xix, 11]. 116Now, that those who do not receive the saying can be believing Christians who attain to the kingdom of God, although not to that higher stage of salvation which is conditioned on supererogatory works as Romanists understand it, is not only not said, but, to the contrary, it is said that the self-chastening in question is done “for the kingdom of heaven’s sake,” and hence plainly in the sense that the same is a condition of attaining to the kingdom of heaven. But the opera supererogationis of which one is found here, are not regarded as a condition to participation in the kingdom of heaven. When Paul [1 Cor. vii] commends to Christians to abstain from marriage, this is certainly not offered as a universally-applying command, but manifestly as a mere counsel (comp. verse 12), not, however, in such a sense as that individuals may disregard it at perfect pleasure and without moral detriment. On the contrary, the apostle expressly gives the ground of his advice: “I suppose that this is good (καλόν) for the present distress;” “such (as marry) shall have trouble in the flesh; but I spare you.” From this it follows that where such a “present distress” does not exist, or where there is full moral power and readiness to endure the worldly trials, there the advisableness of celibacy no longer applies. In general the principle is valid: “If thou marry thou hast not sinned” (verse 28); but in every definite case the duty becomes definite also. Where there is such a pressure of “distress,” and where higher duties are to be fulfilled, and there is not sufficient power to bear the worldly trials without danger to faithfulness, there to marry is not only not a mere non-sinning, and abstaining from marriage a good counsel, but the former is a positive sin, and the latter a duty. And wherever any one, in view of these particular circumstances does remain unmarried, he does not thereby acquire a higher, a supererogatory desert, but he simply fulfills his duty. Such a supererogatory desert is moreover directly excluded by the fact that the apostle proposed by freedom from marriage to preserve the Christians, in that time of distress, from temporal “trouble;” now he who renounces an otherwise legitimate privilege in order to be spared from worldly trouble, cannot possible lay claim to a special higher desert and to a special recompense for the same. In fact, we can readily conceive of cases to the 117contrary, where the greater desert would consist precisely in the assumption of these trials by marrying, and where therefore to marry would be a duty.

According to the Romish doctrine there is a difference between God’s holy will and his moral law; the former has not an unconditional validity, but is, in relation to man in the sphere of higher moral perfection, simply a wish the fulfillment of which would indeed be pleasing to God, but with the non-fulfillment of which He will nevertheless be satisfied. Bellarmin says, apropos to Matt. xxii, 36: “He who loves God with his whole heart, is not bound to do all that God counsels, but only what He commands,”—an assertion that must appear to an evangelical conscience as a reversal of the moral consciousness. Hirscher, in his earlier writings, defended this doctrine thus: “Love is a command given to all without exception, whereas a specific degree of love is not commanded; rather is love, when once really existing, left to its own nature; it in fact presses forward of its own prompting, and it is inconsistent with its inner nature that the rude hand of a command should impose upon it that which it will always freely bring forth from its own heart; hence love is in general an absolute duty, not, however, a specific higher degree of love; the absence of the higher degree does not involve also an absence of righteousness in general, but only a certain higher range of the moral affections; so was it with the rich young man in the Gospel.” Now, all this is manifest sophistry. It is true the degree of love cannot, for every particular case, be stated in a particular legal formula, still, however, this degree is an absolute duty; it simply depends on the spiritual and moral culture of the individual, but is in no case left to individual caprice. Whoever loves God or Christ, or father, mother, or consort less than his moral culture enables him to do, simply commits sin; and he who loves with all the capacity of his soul does not do any thing supererogatory, but simply his bounden duty; and it is nearer the truth to say that all will have to accuse themselves of loving too little, than that any single soul may boast of loving God more than with the “whole heart and soul and strength.” (In the fifth edition of his Moral, II, p. 328 sqq., Hirscher so tones down the above teaching that only a mere shadow of it remains.) 118The Romish doctrine, in making perfection dependent on the fulfillment of the counsels, implies thereby that God’s will, as expressed in the moral law, is not that man should be perfect, but it is on the contrary rather an individual courage transcending the mere will of God, that leads him out beyond the moral goal set for him by God himself.¹⁰¹⁰See, for the Romish view, Thom. Aqu., Summa, II, 1, qu. 108, 4; Bellarmini, De Controv. Fid. II. 2, De Monachis, c. 7 sqq.—For the opposite view: Joh. Gerhard, Loci Th., Loc. 17 (De Evang.) c. 15; M. Chemnitius, Loci, De Diser. Praecept. et Cons.

SECTION LXXXI.

(c) While, on the one hand, there is no form of action which could be to the subject, in any given moment, morally indifferent, that is, neither in harmony nor in disharmony with the divine will, neither good nor evil, still, on the other hand, no definitely-framed form of law embraces within itself the total contents of the moral life-sphere; for as every law has only contents of a general character, while the moral activity itself is always of an individual character, so that the moral actions of different men that fall under the same moral law offer a great diversity, hence the moral law does not sustain to the actions that answer to it precisely the same relation as an idea to its direct realization and manifestation; the particular moral action is not the simple, pure expression and copy of the moral law itself, but it always contains something which does not arise from the law, but from the individual peculiarity. The law as appropriated by the person is fulfilled only in such a manner as expresses also the peculiarity of the person. Every moral action contains therefore two elements: a general ideal one, the moral law, and a particular and inure real one, the personal element,—119which latter, as the expression of the personally peculiar character, has also its perfect legitimacy. God’s moral will is not that men should be mere impersonal, absolutely similar expressions of the moral law, but that the latter should come to its realization only as appropriated by the particular personality. This personally peculiar element that inheres in every actual moral action cannot be embraced in any general legal formula, inasmuch as in its nature it is in fact not general, but a pure expression of individual personality. Every real moral activity is therefore the product of a twofold freedom: of that which subordinates the individual personality to the law, and of that which does not merge the personality into a mere abstract idea, but preserves it in its legitimate peculiarity, and which is to a certain extent a law unto itself.

By this notion of the right of personality Christian Ethics differs from all non-Christian systems, not excepting those of the Greeks, notwithstanding that the latter lay such great stress on the freedom of the person; and this feature is of wide-reaching significance. The decided rejection of the notion that there may be morally-indifferent actions and conditions, and the emphasizing the rights of personal individuality, are very essential to a true understanding of the moral. By insisting disproportionately on the former, we leave too little room for the peculiarity of the moral personality, and make it necessary that for every particular action there should be also a special law; this leads inevitably to a legal bondage hostile alike to all vital individuality, and to the essence of personal freedom. This is the stand-point of Chinese and of Talmudic ethics, and to a certain extent, of the casuistics of some Romish moralists. On the other hand, if we insist too exclusively on the peculiarity of the person, we incur the danger of trespassing on the unconditional validity of the law, to the profit of the fortuitous caprice of the subject,—somewhat as recently in the period of the so-called “geniuses” 120and of the genius-less freethinkers who followed them, all morality was made to consist in the uncurbed development of the fortuitous peculiarity of the individual, to which peculiarity every thing was freely allowed provided only that it was “genial.” The only true course is, in harmony with the general Christian consciousness, to hold fast to both of these elements.

At each and every particular point of time, the moral activity and the moral state are either good or evil, either in harmony with the moral idea or not so. Although in the same action there may be different phases which have morally different characters, and which place good and evil in close proximity, still these contrary elements never coalesce into a moral neutrum, into a morally-indefinite fluctuating between good and evil—a moral indifference. An individual may indeed be morally undecided, neither cold nor warm; this indecision, however, is not of a morally-indifferent character, but is itself evil. There may be different degrees of good or evil, but not an action that is neither good nor evil. This will become self-evident if we fix our mind on the fundamental idea of good and evil as that which answers to, or does not answer to, the divine will; between these two a third is absolutely inconceivable, just as in mathematics there is no medium between a correct and a false result, or in a clearly presented legal case no medium between yes and no. The bride who cannot answer “yes” to the question as to her willingness to the marriage, says thereby, in fact, “no;” and whoever does not at any given moment say “yes” to God’s never neutral will, simply rejects it. The essentially self-contradictory assumption of a morally-indifferent middle-sphere between good and evil, is in itself anti-moral; and every immoral person is only too ready to transfer all his immorality, in so far as he cannot explain it into good, into this pretended sphere of the morally indifferent.

And yet this so widely prevalent tendency to assume that there is a morally-indifferent sphere of action, is based on an actual, though falsely interpreted, presentiment of the true relations in the case. The fact is, every feature in correct moral action is not directly and specifically determined by the moral law, but a very essential phase of such action, has another 121source than the general law; nor is the truly moral man simply a mere expression of the moral law, but, as differing from other equally moral men, he is entitled as a person to have and retain his special peculiarity. This phase of the moral life appears at once, and very clearly, in that which lies at the basis of all moral society—wedlock-love. Love, and, more specifically, conjugal love, is a moral command; but the fact that this love fixes itself exclusively and continuously upon precisely this particular person, is a personally-peculiar shaping of the moral law; no law can prescribe what particular person shall be the object of my conjugal love; and the personal element is here so manifestly legitimate that the eliminating of it—the indulging in love, not to a particular personally-chosen person, but to the other sex in general—results in “free” love, the very quintessence of immorality and vulgarity. Wherever moral theories ignore the rights of personality, there the tendency is very strong to base marriage, not on personal choice, but on the choice of the State, as in ancient Peru. Now, what is true of conjugal love is true also, though not always in such striking consequences, of all moral activity. When two equally moral persons do the same thing, fulfill the same law, it is, after all, not the same action; nor indeed should it be; what is right and good in one person may, in that particular form, be even wrong in another, notwithstanding that the moral law is the same for all. Paul employs his moral activity in a different manner from that of Peter and James; in fact, in the living communion of Christians there is presented not only a great diversity of spiritual “gifts,” but also of personally-moral idiosyncrasies; even in the purely spiritual sphere there are manifold gifts, but only one Lord. The normal difference of moral life-tendency as seen in the sons of Adam, and which must have occasioned as great a difference in the fulfilling of the moral commands as it did in the manner of offering worship, presents a type of the manifold moral diversities into which the moral law is shaped by peculiarities of personality.

The virtualization of the personal element is not to be understood as a something conflicting with the divine law; on the contrary, it is in fact the divine will that the peculiarity of the personality be preserved. If, at first thought. it should 122seem questionable to place along-side of the universally-valid law another essentially variable element, lest thereby the unconditional validity of the law be infringed upon and negatived, let it be observed, in the first place, that the personal peculiarity finds in the moral law both its limits and its moral criterion, so that consequently it can never come into antagonism with the same, but that, nevertheless, there is, within the scope of the personal spiritual life, a field into which the law, because of its general character, does not dictatingly enter. So long as the moral consciousness is not yet truly mature, there is, indeed, in the personal element of the moral, a peril for the moral life, inasmuch as the law cannot give specific directions for every special case. Hence in the Old Testament God complemented his earlier legislation by special revelations of his will through priestly and prophetic inspiration; now, however, since the Spirit of God is poured out upon all men, there is no longer any need of this extraordinary revelation of the divine will in individual cases, for now the human personality, having come into possession of the truth, has also become “free indeed,”—is so imbued with the divine law that, in loving and acting as prompted by its divinely purified heart, it fulfills the divine law in the very fact of developing its personality; and, in fulfilling the law, it preserves also at the same time its personal peculiarity,—as, for example, in a happy marriage there is no longer any antagonism between the fulfilling of the will of the one party by the other, and the acting-out by each of his own personal peculiarity, but, on the contrary, in each of the two elements the other is already implied. And the moral unripeness of individual persons, that necessarily still exists even in a normal condition of humanity, is complemented to full moral safety by the spirit of the moral community,—as in fact this thought is vitally embodied in every true Christian church-communion.

SECTION LXXXII.

The sphere of the personally-peculiar element is that of the discretionary or the allowed. That particular action which is neither commanded nor forbidden in general by any moral law is an allowed 123action; this circumstance does not, however, by any means make it of a morally-indifferent character; on the contrary, the morally-allowed belongs per se to the morally-good in so far as the development of personal individuality is per se legitimate and good. The idea of the allowed relates therefore less to the moral activity per se and in general, than rather to the peculiar manner in which an end that is per se good, that is, correspondent to the moral law, is realized in particular, by virtue of the personal peculiarity of the actor; and the same moral law may be fulfilled in many ways, the moral quality of which, however, is conditioned in each particular case by the said peculiarity. There is nothing that is allowed under all circumstances; and all that is allowed, and all so-called indifferents (adiaphora) are in each particular case either good or evil, but never morally neutral, notwithstanding that such actions may be per se, that is, generally considered, morally undetermined, and neither commanded nor forbidden. The moral quality lies not so much in the action objectively considered, as in the disposition from which it springs and by which it is attended.—The sphere of the allowed is different for every stage of the moral development and for each particular circle of life. The farther the moral development of the person has progressed, that is, the more the moral law has become identified with his personality, so much. the higher will also be the rights of his personal individuality, so much the higher the morally-personal freedom, and consequently so much the wider also the sphere of the allowed; to the pure all things are pure. Free movement within the sphere of the allowed is therefore essential to a truly moral life, and conditions 124the all-sided development thereof; this movement is per se good, and it is in itself a good, the significance and compass of which increase with the moral development of the subject. Herein lies the contrast of the Christian freedom of the Gospel to the bondage of the law.

This is one of the most important and, at the same time, most difficult points in ethical science, and both for the same reason, namely, from the necessity of giving play to personal freedom, and of doing this without infringing on the unconditionally-valid moral law; and in exact proportion as a system of ethics embraces the idea of personal freedom, will it also be able to embrace the idea of the allowed. As in express laws—commands and prohibitions—God manifests himself as holy, so in the concession of the allowed he shows himself as loving. As in the fulfilling of the command and in the observing of the prohibition, man becomes conscious of his moral freedom, so, within the sphere of the allowed, this freedom becomes to him an enjoyment. Now, as freedom of will is not a mere antecedent condition of all morality, but also itself a moral good, and as every good is per se an enjoyment, hence free-created beings have also a moral claim upon the legitimate enjoyment of freedom,—not simply of freedom as subject to definite commands, but also of freedom as entitled to free choice in various directions,—that is, they have discretionary power to free activity; this constitutes in fact the divinely conceded sphere of the allowed, wherein mainly the personally-peculiar element of the moral comes to virtualization.

The very first moral direction, or rather blessing, that was given to man, contains implicitly the notion of the allowed or discretionary: “Replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea,” etc. This is really not so much a command as a blessing,—it proposes a moral goal, a good. But in this good that is to be sought after, namely, dominion over nature, there is at the same time implied a command to realize this supremacy of the rational spirit through moral activity. But within this command there lies also a discretionary field. The particular manner how man is 125to realize this dominion, is not expressed in the command, but is left to his free personal self-determination—in so far as he does not thereby come into collision with other moral commands. Thus, man may use animals for his own purposes, may domesticate them, train them, force them to help him. and use them for his nourishment; but as to what choice of them he shall make, and as to what kind of service he shall exact of them, this is left to his discretion,—here he may act freely, here he has the full enjoyment of his freedom. For unfallen man there was no need of narrower limits; but when depravity gained the upper hand these limits were drawn closer, and the Mosaic law gives very specific and narrower bounds within which man, as no longer morally stable, was to exercise his freedom upon nature.—The first definite command of God presents at once, along-side of the expressed command, also the allowed: “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat;” whatever he may choose of the other trees is per se good; the choice he shall make is not prescribed; simply a boundary is set, beyond which begins evil. Now, we cannot say that this choosing within the given limits is of a morally-indifferent character; rather is such choice, as the realization of a good, itself morally good; and this goodness, consists in the simple fact that every choice is good, and that the choice of the one is not better and not worse than the choice of the other. To infer from this that the single objects of the choice are morally indifferent, would be to overlook the fact that the moral element does not lie in the object, but in the choosing person, and that the latter exercises his morality precisely in the fact of freely choosing in accordance with the peculiarity of his personality; not to choose at all would be to despise the divine gift, and hence immoral.

In the state of innocence the sphere of the allowed was, notwithstanding the indispensable educative limitation, wider than it was subsequently in the state of sin, not, however, because men were then morally more contracted, but because they were morally purer. In consequence of redemption from the power of sin, the now sanctified personality becomes also freer, and the sphere of the allowed is enlarged; 126herein lies one of the most essential differences between Old Testament and New Testament ethics. The moral itself receives, in contrast to the specifically and particularizingly prescribing ancient law, a more general form, and the whole law and the prophets are summed up in one short command: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbor as thyself.” The sanctified personality acts within the limits of the law with more freedom; the boundaries of the allowed, as established for the state of sin, are thrown more into the back-ground; the laws as to the Sabbath and as to meats and other similar prescriptions, are thrown into a freer form by the personality as made free in Christ. Instead of the limiting laws regulating the use of “meats,” and other material objects in general, and which were framed with reference to the sinful impurity of man, Christ gives the broad principle: “Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man, but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man” [Matt. xv, 11]; and Paul expresses this in a still more general form: “Every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving” [1 Tim. iv, 4]; and elsewhere [Titus i, 15] he states the thought in its highest exaltation: “Unto the pure all things are pure;” that is, the higher the morality rises, so much the wider becomes also the sphere of the allowed, and hence of freedom; and upon him who is morally perfect, who is inwardly fully identified with the divine will, there is no longer imposed any degree whatever of outwardly-legal limitation to the employment of his freedom; for whatever he can love, that God loves also, and his sanctified personality cannot choose any thing that would be offensive to God,—and such a person is again invested with his original full right of dominion over nature, with his full right of free choice; and whatever he does of free choice, that he does to the glory of God [1 Cor. x, 31].

The words of Paul [1 Cor. vii, 28] may serve as a further illustration of the notion of the allowed: “If thou marry, thou hast not sinned;” whereas on this very occasion the apostle dissuaded from marriage. The Christian has a right to marriage; whether, however, under circumstances that would otherwise morally admit of it, he put into execution this 127right, does not depend on any particular legal prescription, but on his own untrammeled personal choice. Paul had discretionary “power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles” [1 Cor. ix, 5]; but he did not do so; all have the “power to eat and to drink” [verse 4], but our choice is, within particular limits, left free. Ananias was at liberty to keep his field or not [Acts v, 4]; what he did was of his own election; it was not a moral law, but solely his personal choice that determined his conduct. [Comp. 1 Cor. vi, 12; x, 23; Rom. xiv, 1 sqq.; xv, 1 sqq.; Matt. xii, 3, 4.]

The sphere of the allowed is the more special theater of personal freedom, as distinguished from mere moral freedom. In obedience to the commanding law I am indeed free, but this freedom is nevertheless a controlled one; it is true, I can will and act otherwise than the law wills, but I dare not; and if I in fact do so, then I violate the law, then I am an enemy of God; I have the liberty but not the right so to act. Commanded duty has consequently, notwithstanding the liberty on which it rests, always still a certain constraint in it; and though in the mere literal fulfillment of the law, man becomes conscious of his freedom, yet he does not come to a proper and full enjoyment thereof. If God’s law actually entered, prescribing and prohibiting, into all the details of individual action, without, by some concessions, allowing play-ground for discretionary action, then, though man would indeed have the privilege of freely obeying or disobeying at each particular moment, nevertheless he would feel the law as a burden upon him; and Paul was very apt in expression when he spoke of the preparatory law of the Old Covenant as a chastening-master. For the simple reason that the essence of man is freedom or self-determination, it is natural for him to aspire to become also fully conscious of this freedom,—to put it into exercise in so far as consistent with his moral obedience,—and hence he needs a free field wherein he may act with real freedom, without having his actions in every respect prescribed to him, without being strictly bound by the law,—where, in a word, he may say: I may choose this, but I do not need to choose it; and whether I choose this or that depends entirely on my personal self-determination, and that too without detriment to my moral duty.

128

The sphere of the allowed stands in the same relation to that of the express law as play to earnest activity. Play also is an element essential to the full development of youthful moral life. With the child, play is of high moral significancy, as it is thereby that it learns to comprehend, to exercise, and to enjoy its full personal freedom. In learning and working the child is also free; but however good and zealous of work it may be, it is nevertheless conscious at the same time of being controlled by an objective law to which it must adapt itself; the other and equally legitimate phase of its life, that of personal freedom and self-determination, is revealed to it in its purest form only in play; and the child, even the morally-good one, finds so great a delight in play, for the simple reason that it thereby comes to the enjoyment of its personal freedom; and the essence of its enjoyment lies in the simple fact that in its playful activity and feats it is free lord of its own volitions and movements; and those children become spiritually dull whose plays are strictly watched over by tutorial intermeddling. Playing is freedom, however, only in form, and is without definite contents; hence it is essentially only a transition-occupation appropriate to the age of childhood. The sphere of the allowed in general, is the wider and positive-grown extension of that play. Here belongs recreation after labor, as in contrast to the positive fulfilling of the law; recreation is per se morally good and its essence consists in freedom; that I select precisely this path for a promenade, or busy myself thus or thus, is neither prescribed to me by any law, nor is that which I do not select forbidden. It is entirely erroneous to say that man must be totally swallowed up in his calling, that he has a definite duty to fulfill at every moment; this would be a moral slavery. The sphere of personal liberty has also its own good right, and for the plain reason that man is not merely an obligated member of the whole, but also a free individuality. Recreation per se is therefore by no means of a morally indifferent character, but the particular mode of its realization is discretionary, and the moral law is not, at this point, of a detailed particularizing character, but it simply hovers protectingly on the outskirts, and wards against abuses,—even as a prudent educator simply exercises a protecting oversight over the 129child’s play, but does not prescribe the details. Man is indeed moral at every moment of his existence, and should at each moment be and act morally right. but every thing that he does is nevertheless not a direct expression of some moral formula, on the contrary there is a share therein that belongs, and rightly too, to personal free choice,—just as, in regard to his clothing, a sensible man, though in the main following the prevalent mode, will nevertheless reserve the privilege of deviating therefrom whenever it better suits his personal individuality.—Even as a fish in the water, though indeed swimming according to the natural laws of gravitation and motion, yet, within the scope of these laws, disports itself at pleasure, and exhibits precisely in this free motion the traits which distinguish it from the unfree plant, so also does man, within the limits and conditions of the moral law, comport himself freely on the field of the allowed, and in so doing manifests the characteristics of the free child of God as in contrast to servitude under a chastening law.

Schleiermacher (Werke III, 2, 418 sqq.) denies the admissibility of the notion of actions that are merely allowed. We have, in his opinion, no time for that which claims to be, not duty, but simply allowed, not morally necessary, but only morally possible; every performance of such an action implies a definite willingness to act otherwise than from moral motives,—which is immoral; the idea of the allowed belongs not to ethics but to civil law. This we concede in so far as Schleiermacher speaks of such actions as are held to be neither in conformity nor in disconformity to duty, that is morally indifferent, but this is by no means the true idea of the allowed. However, we do not admit the existence of such a class of actions; but in morally-good actions there is a phase which is not determined by the law itself, and which constitutes the allowed.—Rothe (Ethik, 1 Auf. § 819) finds the idea of the allowed in the fact that particular forms of action cannot be referred with certainty to a particular legal formula, so that consequently their moral worth cannot be estimated thereby beyond a doubt. The reason of this may lie in the incompleteness of the law; hence the allowed has a larger scope in the minority-period and with children; but as the law becomes more definite and perfect, the sphere of the 130allowed grows narrower; the more fully man is as vet without positive law, so much the more numerous are the actions that are allowed to him; but there arrives a turning-point in the development where the relation again changes, and for the reason that, then. the law begins to retire into the background and to become progressively simpler, so that the sphere of the allowed becomes again more extensive. With this view of Rothe we cannot coincide. According to it the sphere of the allowed rests only on a lack of the law, and it would. be more properly termed the sphere of the morally doubtful. Adam, however, to whom the allowed was at once presented in connection with the commanded and the prohibited, could not possibly be in doubt as to what would be moral for him; and the divine word placed before him with perfect definiteness the sphere within which he was allowed entire freedom of action. And it is utterly erroneous to say that in childhood the sphere of the allowed is wider than in maturer years. The fact that many a thing is allowed to the child which does not become it in later years, is not a proof that it has a wider liberty, but only that at this period the allowed lies in a different circle, and one that answers to the childish understanding; on the contrary, the fact undoubtedly is, that to the child more things by far are not allowed which are allowed to the man, than conversely; and every wider stage of development brings to the youth a consciousness of an increased freedom of self-determination, although, on the other hand, it is true that the more earnest demands that are made by the growing positiveness of the life-work, exclude much of the earlier childish liberty. But that there comes again afterward a turning-point when a contrary relation begins, cannot be substantiated, and moreover it conflicts directly with the idea of a constantly progressive development toward moral maturity.—With a similar tendency, Stahl (Rechts-philos. II, 1, 112) transfers the allowed beyond the sphere of the ethical proper, as being in its fulfillment morally indifferent, and into the sphere of satisfaction, that is, of earthly enjoyment; hence he infers consistently enough, that the sphere of the merely allowed must constantly decrease as morality advances, and that satisfaction is ultimately to be sought only in that which is at the same time a fulfilling of 131the moral law,—as, for example, in the exercise of benevolence, etc. Christian Friedrich Schmid arrives at the same conclusion (Sittenl., p. 450 sqq.). According to this view the sphere of the allowed would amount in fact but to a sphere of the non-allowed, and would be simply a temporary concession to moral immaturity and weakness. This seems to us incorrect. For a truly rational man, there can be no other satisfaction than a moral one; whatever he does and receives, he does and receives in faith and love and with thanksgiving, and in virtue of this thankfulness every truly allowable enjoyment becomes invested with a moral character. Stahl appeals to the fact that, with the progress of moral development, many a thing that is otherwise allowed must be renounced; but this is only in appearance a greater limitation; for though it is true that mature man no longer allows himself many of the pleasures of his unripe youth, yet he has in their stead other and wider fields of the allowed which are denied to youth. The greater freedom of the Christian as compared with the law-observer of the Old Testament, is perfectly evident. It is true, many things were allowed to the Jew, which, because of the higher morality introduced, are no longer allowed to the Christian, such as the putting away of wives, and retaliation [Matt. v, 31 sqq.], so that it might seem as if the sphere of the allowed, and hence of personal freedom, were really more narrowly limited in Christianity than in Judaism. However, when we reflect upon the above-cited declarations of Paul as to the contrast of Christian freedom to the yoke of the law, the matter will doubtless appear in reality very differently. Many things were not indeed morally allowed to the Jews, but only tolerated in them, because of their hardness of heart; the whole significancy of the moral law was not yet exacted of them, just as in children many a thing is tolerated and overlooked because of their more limited moral knowledge, which in riper persons would be regarded as improper and blameworthy, without implying, however, that that which is tolerated is actually admitted as allowable. The fact is, that as the moral consciousness grows in clearness, the compass of duties grows wider also, so that many a thing that was not previously a moral requirement now becomes really such. This does not, however, render the 132sphere of the allowed narrower, but in fact wider, inasmuch as every duty admits also of a variety of ways of fulfillment, and consequently also a diversity of ways of virtualizing our personal peculiarities. Thus, the fact that consorts may no longer discard each other, though at first sight a seeming limitation of the sphere of the allowed, yet really greatly exalts the moral personality of both parties; they have by far a higher right in each other,—may require more of each other, may more strongly emphasize the right of their moral personality, may each allow to the other, and to himself toward the other, more than would be proper were marriage merely an easily-dissolved contract,—even as the son of the house is freer and may allow himself more liberty than the servant, and for the simple reason that the former is more indissolubly united with the house than the latter;—the closer and firmer the bond, so much the greater mutual trust and confidence, so much wider also the sphere of the allowed.

Writers often admit two different species of the allowed: the one is allowed because of the meagerness of the moral knowledge, as with the child; the other, conversely, because of the advanced state of the moral maturity. This difference, however, is by no means a real one; and, when expressed in this form, the idea of the allowed has no longer any unity, but involves a direct antagonism. Rather do both of these forms of the allowed fall under the one notion of the rights of the personal peculiarity. Many things are, for the peculiar nature of the child, morally good, which are not so for a riper person, and for the simple reason that the unsuspecting child, in doing that which would be improper in those of riper years, “thinketh no evil,” and because the sentiment holds good also of unconscious innocence, that “to the pure all things are pure.” And the case is essentially the same with him who is morally matured; simply the form is different. When man has come, through moral growth, into a state of conscious innocence, then also to him, as being pure, many a thing is pure which would be impure to the sinful.

133

SECTION LXXXIII.

In so far as the moral law is made into a moral possession of the person, that is, a constituent element of his personally-moral nature, it becomes to him a moral principle, a life-rule or maxim; without moral principles there is no real morality. As in this union with the personal peculiarity the moral law itself enters into this peculiarity, hence though it is in fact the same always and for all men, still the life-rules that grow out of this law, among different persons and nations and under different conditions in life, must evidently also be relatively different. The correct shaping of the moral law into life-rules correspondent to the peculiarity of persons and circumstances, constitutes the principal work of practical wisdom.—A disregarding of the rights of the personal peculiarity in the moral life, and the exclusive application of general and definitely-expressed laws as direct rules of life, result in a servitude to a legal yoke (rigorism) which is incapable of producing any truly personal morality, and has no justification save as a temporary disciplinary process in a state of depravity.

The law is not of man, but solely of God; life-rules each person makes for himself, not, however, independently of the law, but as based on it, though peculiarly modified by his moral personality. The life-rule or maxim is the law as incarnated, as having become subjective; in it man has appropriated the law as a personal possession,—has merged it into his flesh and blood. My life-rule, even in so far as it is perfectly correct, is valid in this definite form only for me, and it may legitimately enough be widely different at different life-stages and under different circumstances. The manifoldness of life-rules contributes to the esthetic richness of the 134collective life of the race; in them the moral idea, though essentially one, yet shapes itself into a variegated diversity, just as the light of day, though in itself essentially colorless, is reflected back from flowers in a thousand varying tints. It is true, the giving scope here for freedom of will involves also a possibility of immoral self-determination; and it is also true that sin, in consequence of its essential deceptiveness, seeks almost always to hide itself under the cloak of pretendedly legitimate life-rules, and thereby attains to its seductive power, and that the free personal shaping of the moral law into life-rules is possible without danger, only as proceeding from pure and sanctified human nature, so that consequently the severe discipline of the tutorial law appears as peculiarly appropriate for the divine training of mankind before the full realization of redemption; but wherever morality is to become perfect, that is, free, there the law itself must become an inner freely-appropriated one,—must be received into the personality as its essential possession, and not as a foreign element, but as one that has coalesced with its essence; and this essence is a personally-peculiar one. Even as natural nutriment does not nourish in its natural crudeness, but only in so far as it is received and really appropriated into the natural organism and into its peculiarity, so is it also with the moral law. From the possible danger of subordinating the unconditional validity of the divine law to individual caprice, there does not follow a condemnation of the personally-peculiar molding of the law, but only the requirement that morality be based not on merely unconscious or obscure feelings or impulses, but upon a positive clear consciousness of God’s will and of one’s own moral condition. The non-governing of one’s self, the yielding of one’s self to immediate natural impulses, the giving rein to the spiritual and sensuous proclivities that already exist irrespective of a knowledge of the divine will, is per se, even where sin does not yet exist as a power of evil, immoral. Moral life-wisdom is not an acquisition attained to in unserious play; and slavish submission to an all-specifying, rigorous law is easier than the free, moral developing of life-rules on the basis of the more general moral law. The less ripe the moral personality, so much the more dictating must be the objective character of the law, so 135much the more severe must be its discipline [Gal. iii, 24]; and the riper the moral nature of the person becomes, so much the more freely and independently may and should he shape the law into life-rules for himself.

It creates confusion to confound the moral law with personal life-rules; it inevitably leads either to legal bondage or to moral laxity. The Scriptures contain not only moral laws, but also life-rules for particular, not generally existing life-relations, and the regarding these latter as general moral commands or counsels has sometimes led Christian ethics into error. When the apostle recommends celibacy because of the “present distress” [1 Cor. vii,] he gives simply a life-rule for particular, expressly-stated circumstances; and, in order to prevent all misunderstanding, he says, in relation to the unmarried: “I have no commandment of the Lord” [verse 25]. By this, Paul does not mean that he establishes on his own authority a new command without reference to any divine law, but only that this specific life-rule is not itself a divine law, but rather simply a rule of conduct applying the divine law to particular circumstances. The law on which it is based, however, is not: “Thou shalt not marry,” but: Care for the things that belong to the Lord, and not for the things that belong to the world [see verses 32, 34]. Monasticism made of this life-rule an objective law or counsel. The instructions of Christ to the apostles, when sent out to prepare the way for himself [Matt. x, 9 sqq.]: “Provide neither gold nor silver nor brass in your purses,” etc., are not given as a moral rule to the moral man in general, but to the apostles for this specific mission. But the mendicant orders made of this also an objective law. When Christ required of the rich young man to sell all that he had and give it to the poor, it is perfectly evident that this was simply a specific injunction for this particular person, seeing that neither Christ nor the apostles required in all cases, or in any manner, the giving up of possessions, notwithstanding their strong emphasizing of the duty of charity [Acts v, 4; 1 Tim. vi, 17 sqq.; 2 Cor. viii, 1 sqq.]. The monastic vow of poverty is a perverted application of this injunction. To the same category belong the rules of propriety for women, as given in 1 Cor. xi, 5, 10 sqq., and in part evidently also the resolution of the Apostolic Council [Acts xv, 20, 29]. In all such rules either the assigned or the directly implied reference to particular, but not generally existing and permanent relations and circumstances, distinguishes them very readily from general moral laws, the characteristic of which is to be valid absolutely and always.

SECTION LXXXIV.

The moral law as (by virtue of the particular form into which it is thrown by the peculiarity of the moral person) requiring its realization in a particular case, is moral duty; duty is, therefore, the law as coming to actual application in moral action through the moral life-rules into which it has been shaped by appropriation into the moral person,—that is, it is the law as realizing itself under the form of life-rules, in other words, it is the law as shaping itself in and for a particular person under particular circumstances, and as becoming in him a determining and actuating power. I fulfill the law in that I do my duty. The duties that spring from the same law are different for different men and for different circumstances.—As, therefore, duty is the product of two elements, the moral law and the peculiarity of the person, and as the moral laws collectively, though existing under the form of a plurality, must yet of necessity constitute a concordant whole, hence, if we leave out of view the actuality of sin, a conflict of different duties with each other (collision of duties) is utterly impossible. The distinction of conditional and unconditional duties is not correct, and rests on a confounding of the notions of law and duty.

The moral person does not directly and strictly fulfill the law, but simply his duty. Even ordinary speech indicates the difference; we do not say, “my law,” but always, “my duty.” The law per se is general and above man; duty is always 137special and personal. No one person can do the duty of another; and what is duty for me, may be a violation of duty for another. The law alone is directly prescribed; to what particular form of action this law, as appropriated into my personality, determines or obligates me, is not directly expressed in the law, but is the result of a moral judgment in view of my special moral peculiarity and circumstances. We cannot, therefore, with propriety institute a contrast between conditional and unconditional duties. The condition is already implied in the relation of the fulfillment of the law to the fulfillment of duty; what I may not or cannot now do, is simply not my duty; at another time, however, this same form of action may become my duty. Any and every duty may, with as much propriety, be called conditional as unconditional; in its becoming a duty it is always conditional; whenever, however, it actually presents itself, there can no longer be any question of conditionality. Whoever is in a condition to rescue a person from imminent life-peril, has the unconditional duty of doing so; whoever cannot do so, has no duty whatever in the matter; between these two positions there is no third one possible. With like propriety we may say also that the law is at the same time conditional and unconditional, but in a converse relation; in its essence it is unconditional, in the manner of its fulfillment it is always conditional. The law, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” is in its moral contents unconditional; every human being is an object of this love, but how this love is to be exercised, in what manner it is actually to manifest itself in actions, that is, to what definite duties it shall lead, this depends on manifold conditions not contained in the law itself; to one’s husband or wife, or to parents, one owes a very different love from that due to friends, and the very same sacrificing love will manifest itself very differently toward the moral and toward the immoral.

When the law is presented in the general form of command or prohibition, the manners in which the manifold relations of life make it the duty of different persons to fulfill it are so different, that there may even arise an appearance of contradiction. The fact is, however, that for a real conflict (collision) of duties (a subject which has from of old been a favorite and 138much discussed one among moralists) there is in a normal state of humanity no possible place. Moral laws cannot come into conflict with each other, otherwise the idea of the moral, and the moral order of the universe itself, would be undermined; and there is just as little ground for a conflict between duties, seeing that their conditionment is in fact based in part on the personal peculiarity and special circumstances of the subjects. The personal peculiarity of a sinful man may indeed come into conflict with the moral law; but in so far as this is the case it forms no legitimate element in the construction of the notion of duty; rather will it become our duty in many respects to counteract this element. But all legitimate personal peculiarity is itself formed in harmony with the moral idea, and hence cannot come into conflict therewith. For an irreconcilable collision of duties there is, therefore, nowhere any manner of possibility.

The idea of duty is often otherwise understood than as here presented. Duty is frequently declared to be the divine law itself. Now if by this is meant, that which God requires of us in each particular case, and that too of each individual in particular, then it would be correct,—this, however, is not expressed by the term “law;” but if it means, that duty and the divine law are identical, then it is incorrect. More definite is the statement, that duty is the manner of action which conforms to or harmonizes with the law. The Kantian school explains duty as that which, according to the law, should take place, or which, by virtue of a law, is practically necessary, or which answers to an obligation,—obligation being understood as the necessity of an action in consequence of a moral law. All these statements are inadequate, inasmuch as the personal peculiarity is left out of the account, so that consequently no difference whatever is made between duty and law; and as to how obligation differs from duty we are utterly unable to see. Schleiermacher in his System (§ 112 sqq.) defines duty as “the form of conduct in which the activity of the reason is at the same time special, as directed upon the particular, and also general, as directed upon the totality,” or, the law of the free self-determination of the individual in relation to the common moral life-task of the race, or, the formula for the guidance of rationality in single actions in 139the realizing of the highest good. That these, in the main, correct statements, are still too indefinite, is shown even by their numerousness. Similarly, but more definitely, Rothe explains duty as that definite form of action which is required by the moral law as under the form impressed upon it by the individual instance.

SECTION LXXXV.

To duty on the part of the moral subject, corresponds right on the part of the law. My duty is to fulfill the right of the moral law, that is, the right of God to, or his claim upon, me. The substance of dutiful action is therefore justice or right, and the product of this action is the right, i. e., the realized claim. Hence dutiful action is per se right-doing. Duty and right call for each other,—are but two phases of the same thing; to every right there corresponds a duty, and conversely,—simply the subjects are different; every duty is the expression of a right; another’s right in regard to me is for me a duty, and to the fulfillment of another’s duty in regard to me I have a right; the two ideas are absolutely correlative and co-extensive. In virtue of duty I accomplish the moral, for the law has a right, a claim, upon me; in virtue of right the moral is accomplished upon me; in the fulfilling of duty I keep the law; in my accomplishing of the right the law keeps me. The fulfilling of my duty obtains for me a right to, or claim upon, the moral law in so far as this law is an element of universal order, namely, the right to be a real, living, and hence free, member of the moral whole,—in other words, a. moral claim on the just recompense of God. There is, morally, no other right of an individual than such as is conditioned by a corresponding fulfillment of duty on his part; 140rights without duties would be a reversing of moral world-order. God has an absolutely unlimited right because he is absolutely holy, and man, as related to God, is under absolute obligations. All right has therefore its basis in God’s right and in God’s love. Hence in the Scriptures the notion of duty is nearly always presented as an indebtedness,—as the right of God to man, as what man owes to God. God’s righteousness has a right to righteousness in man, and hence righteousness is man’s duty; those who fulfill their duty are therefore the righteous.

As duty is not merely of a subjective character, a mere utterance of the individual consciousness, but the law as appropriated by the person, so also, and equally emphatically, is right also not a mere subjective something with no better basis than a merely fortuitous power of the individual. Every right of the individual is a special expression of the right of the whole, and is valid only in so far as this individual is in moral harmony with the whole. Whoever by undutiful conduct dissolves his union with the moral whole, loses thereby, in like measure, his right to or claim upon the whole. Duty and right are both an expression of the moral; the former is the moral as subjective obligation, the latter is the moral as objective requirement; both manifest the essence of the moral as an essential law of collective being. The individual has duties and rights only as in vital union with the whole. I have duties and rights, not in virtue of being a mere individual, but in virtue of the fact that the totality of being bears a moral character. From this it follows at once, that there can be true duties and rights only where the morality of the whole is based, not merely on the morality of the individual persons,—which would be a mere arguing in a circle,—but where it is based on the holiness of the personality of God. I can keep and fulfill the law only when the law keeps and fulfills me; I can do my duty only when I therein recognize a right or claim of the moral whole, and hence of the holy God, upon me. An impersonal whole has no right to, nor 141claim upon, the personal spirit; from such a servitude Christianity has definitively emancipated human thought; nor has one man, as upon his fellow, any other right or claim than such as he derives from God; that is, he has it only by the grace of God; that man has per se a right upon his fellow, irrespective of God, is an un-Christian view; “Be not ye the servants of men” [1 Cor. vii, 23]; this is Christian right and Christian freedom.

In such a moral world-order where duty and right are absolutely correlative, where right extends as far as duty, and duty as far as right, every one receives strictly his own right—his due. The dutiful man has a right upon the moral whole,—a right to have his personality respected,—and it is thus that the moral law, the moral world-order, realizes itself on man; it upholds in a just and honorable position him who has upheld it. He who gives honor to God, to him God gives also his honor. Also he who violates duty receives his right; every punishment is the fulfilling of the right of God and of the collective universe upon the individual; the criminal has a right to the punishment; when the criminal comes to his right mind he demands himself his own punishment, and a child that is not totally perverted finds a moral tranquillization in suffering the punishment it deserves,—it even calls for it.

The notion that the fulfillment of moral duty acquires for man a claim upon the moral order of the world, and hence upon God, is emphatically rejected by Schwarz (Eth. I, p. 199), who even declares such a view as blasphemous; God alone, he holds, is the absolutely-entitled One; man has, as toward God, simply duties, but no rights; God only can have claims upon us, not we upon God. And he appeals for support to Rom. ix, 20; xi, 35 sqq.; Job ix, 12; Luke xvii, 10. The first two passages, however, relate to the impossibility of fathoming the eternal divine counsel, and declare any doubt as to God’s holiness and righteousness as unjustifiable; moreover all of them relate exclusively to the condition of sinfulness, in which we of course concede, in harmony with Scripture, that all salvation rests exclusively on the undeserved and compassionate mercy of God. We are now speaking, however, of man as not yet under sin, of the moral life in its unclouded purity, and here the matter stands very differently. If God’s 142righteousness is not a mere empty figure of speech, it must form the basis of a moral right; we cannot doubt that God rewards each according to his moral conduct; and when a truly moral creature receives from God a just reward [Rom. ii, 6, 7, 13], this is not a mere compassionating gift, but it is justice, and the creature has, in virtue of his righteousness, a claim upon such a reward. It is indeed a gracious gift of the Creator, that he has made the creature thus noble, that it is permitted to bear in itself God’s own image; but that God regards and treats the creature that has become positively holy, in view of and in reference to that fact, is simply justice. As the sinner receives but his right when the divine punishment falls upon him, so also the sinless creature receives but his right when he is an object of the divine pleasure. To think otherwise on this point would be to overthrow our notion of a holy and just God. The Scriptures express very distinctly this thought of the right of the moral person upon God, even in circumstances where, because of sin, there can no longer be any question of a right strictly speaking,—so that, then, it is in fact a pure grace that God, notwithstanding this, yet concedes to man such rights. Of the justifying faith of Abraham, Paul says, “To him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt” [Rom. iv, 4]; if therefore man should really and truly fulfill the law of God, then his reward would fall to him in due course of justice. The inference of the apostle, as to the worth of faith for sinful man, would not have the least basis should we presume to regard this declaration of his as per se meaningless and impossible; and this holds good in the fullest sense of man as untouched by sin, as also it is true of the Son of man. The true and real fulfilling of the law has in fact eternal life as its just reward [Matt. xix, 17]; the only question is, as to whether in fact any person perfectly fulfills the law as Christ did. The doctrine of grace for the redeemed is not interfered with by that of a claim of the moral man upon God, but receives in fact thereby its proper foundation. In the idea of the Covenant which God made with the Patriarchs, and as to which he himself says: “I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn to David my servant: Thy seed will I establish forever,” etc., there is contained also the idea of a right upon God as graciously 143conceded even to sinful man, provided he should obey the voice of God and keep his commandments [Psa. lxxxix, 4; Exod. ii, 24; xix, 5; Deut. vii, 8, 9, 12; ix, 5]. That God should make such a covenant, is pure grace; but now that He, the truthful One, has made it, it follows that those who keep it acquire thereby a right to its fulfillment on the part of God; and hence the pious of the Old Covenant make appeal in their petitions to the promises of God [Gen. xxxii, 12; Exod. xxxii, 13; Deut. ix, 26 sqq.]. The great emphasis which the Scriptures place upon the thought of the covenant of God with man, which is, in fact, more than a promise, implies very clearly that here the moral character of God, as well as that of man, is essentially involved. We need only separate from the idea of a right all that the sinful heart has associated therewith, all that is presumptuous and self-seeking, and it will no longer have the least feature that could give offense to the most reverential mind. The Scriptures present the thought of duty as intimately connected with the idea of right; and this involves, in fact, the profoundest conception of the moral. Here, all dutiful living, on the part of man, is a right of God upon him (מִשְׁפָּט), a paying of his debt to God,—it is ὁφειλή,—and man is debtor to God and to the brethren [Rom. i, 14; viii, 12; Luke xvii, 10; comp. 1 Cor. vii, 22]; and God’s laws are an expression of the rights of God [Lev. xviii, 4, 5; xix, 37; xxv, 18; Deut. vii, 12; xxxiii, 10; Psa. xix, 10; 1, 16; cv, 45; cxix, 5 sqq.; Isa. xxvi, 9; and others]. By virtue of his moral nature, of the likeness of God that was impressed upon him, man becomes in turn a debtor,—is under obligation to bring this nature into realization, to fulfill the claim or right of God upon him; and he who fulfills this right is consequently just or righteous; “He hath showed thee, O man, what is good (the moral law); and what doth the Lord require of thee (as duty) but to do justly (the right) and to love mercy?” [Micah vi, 8; comp. Deut. x, 12, 13]. Thus, as it appears, the Scriptures present rather the objective phase of the moral, the right of God and of the divine law upon man; whereas the moralists of recent times, especially since Kant, devote their attention rather to its subjective phase, as duty.

In the manner of viewing the relations between right and 144duty there often prevails some confusion; right is often confounded with discretionary power, whereas, in fact, the former is more than the latter, and contains an actual requirement; or, right is regarded as the mere possibility or liberty to act. Furthermore a great difference is frequently made between right and the right, the two being taken as capable of excluding each other, so that I may have a right and yet its execution be not right. This, in so far as the question is as to moral right, is manifestly absurd. It is true, according to civil law, I may have a so-called right in the exercising of which I shall do wrong; but of such civil right we are not here speaking; in the sphere of morality I can never have a right to what is wrong, and I can never exercise a right without doing the right. I have a right only in so far as the moral law takes me under the protection of the moral order of the universe; I have a right upon another in so far as he has a moral duty to fulfill toward me; I have right conduct in so far as I myself realize the moral law; and this I do in fact when I do not throw away my own moral right, but maintain it intact. Whenever I have a moral right, then is it also right to realize it.

145

CHAPTER III.

THE OBJECT OF THE MORAL ACTIVITY.

SECTION LXXXVI.

As the moral is the free realizing of the good, and as the good itself is the inner law and nature of the divinely-created All, hence, in every moral activity, man comes into relation to this All, and this All—as well as also God himself—becomes in its entire existence, so far as within the scope of man, an object of the moral activity, namely, either in that as a good it is brought into unity with the moral person, or appropriated by the same,—or in that, as material capable of being modified, it is formed by the moral activity.

I. The moral life relates primarily always to God. God can be an object of the morally-pious activity only in so far as he is conceived of as a personal spirit; to an impersonal God there can be no moral relation. This moral activity is not a mere receiving, but it is a real acting, namely, in that man not only turns himself toward God, but in that he also turns God toward himself; the good that is realized by this activity becomes actual, however, not in God, but in us, in that it brings us into communion with God, so that consequently all pious activity is at the same time a moral producing for ourselves.—As God upholds, and rules in, all creatures, hence all moral activity without exception stands in relation 146to God, and all realizing of the good works communion with God. All that is moral is also pious, and all that is pious is also moral. Hence all duties are also duties to God, and religious duties do not stand along-side of other duties, but they include them in themselves.

Every view is defective which excludes from the moral life any thing whatever that comes into the life-sphere of man. This is precisely that which distinguishes rational creatures from the irrational, namely, that the latter have always simply a quite definite and restricted scope for their life-manifestation, while every thing else is indifferent to them, and as good as not existing, whereas rational creatures have an interest in all that exists, and bring it into some manner of relation to themselves. Perfect indifference to the world is Indian, but not Christian, wisdom; God is indifferent to nothing, and for this reason moral man, the image of God, is so also. The collective All and God himself constitute the life-sphere of the moral. Because of the inner unity of all things, every moral act not only reverberates in the whole universe, and there is joy among the angels in heaven over one sinner that repents, but this act itself acts upon the All, for all that is good and all that is capable of good belong together in one great unity. The declaration: “Whether life, or death, or things present or things to come—all are yours” [1 Cor. iii, 22], holds good in its fullest sense of the moral life, although indeed our moral bearing toward the different forms of existence is correspondingly different; to nature the moral spirit is related as dominating, to God as obeying.

The conceiving of God himself as an object of the moral activity is a fundamental point in Christian ethics. It is true the heathen also required reverence toward the gods, but this exercise of piety did not rise to a dominating power over the entire moral life. In recent times it has become a favorite view to regard the moral as not relating to God at all, but only to man, or indeed also to nature; it is even said that God cannot be an object of the moral activity, seeing that because of his unapproachable sublimity he must be inaccessible 147to all human influence. Evidently, with this view of the matter, prayer is narrowed down to a mere pious exercise without any other possible efficacy than to benefit the person so exercising; it would be more consequential, however, for those who think thus to follow Kant, and discard prayer altogether as empty and meaningless. It does not come within our scope to answer here the question, how the answering of prayer is reconcilable with the eternally-immutable nature of God, but we simply accept from dogmatics the unquestionably Scriptural principle, that God actually does hear and answer prayer, that prayer and its answering are not a delusion, but that proper prayer really and truly conditions the answering of the petitions, and that consequently it has a positive influence on the bearing of God toward man. True prayer is impossible so soon as I entertain the opinion that it has no effect, that the gracious turning of God toward me is not in some way conditioned thereby. This does not imply that God comes into any manner of dependence on man; whatever he does is eternally self-determined, but it is determined in view of the moral bearing of man as divinely gifted with rational freedom. In this sense, prayer is really a moral activity in relation to God, and God is a real object of the same. Prayer is the beginning and the end of all moral activity. The sentiment: “Pray and work,” holds good of all and every moral life; the two do not stand beside each other, but consist only in and with each other.

God, as living and personal, cannot sustain a relation of indifference to human conduct. If we can speak in any proper sense of a displeasure of God at sin, of a wrath of God against sin, then must also, conversely, the pleasure of God in the moral conduct of man be of a real character, and hence, in some manner, conditioned by said conduct. The moral activity as relating to God is per se necessarily pious; but to presume, for this reason, to exclude it from the sphere of the moral, would be very inconsistent; for in fact it takes place with freedom, and with moral consciousness and with moral purpose, and it is frequently, in the Scriptures, expressly required as a duty; and all duties are moral. But, on the other hand, all duties are also pious, inasmuch as morality is always in very close association with piety (§ 55), 148and no duty can in fact be truly fulfilled without being regarded as an expression of the divine will, and hence without pious submission to that will. We therefore must reject the view that there are no moral duties toward God, and no moral influencing of God; if there are sins against God, as, for example, blasphemy, then there must also be duties toward Him,—and we must, further, reject the view that the duties toward God constitute a special group entirely distinct from the others, so that in fact the duties toward man might be fulfilled without at the same time also fulfilling those toward God.

The distribution of the subject-matter of ethics into duties toward God, duties toward one’s self and duties toward other men, was formerly very usual; it was, however, only partially correct. God fills, in fact, heaven and earth, and the statement of Christ that whatever “ye have done unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” [Matt. xxv, 40], is of course true also in relation to God. It might, however, be said that, while it is true that all other duties imply in themselves also a fulfillment of duty toward God, yet that the converse is not true, so that consequently the duties of piety might be considered by themselves, seeing that in fact in the duty of worshiping God no other duty is directly implied. This is, however, only seemingly so; for in every duty toward God, I fulfill also directly at the same time a duty toward myself: I cannot possibly love and honor God without exalting myself into communion with Him; whatever man does to the honor of God is at the same time a self-transfiguration; he cannot praise God as his Father without confirming himself as the child of God. Moreover he can do this only in so far as he, at the same time, divests himself of illegitimate self-love; and only that one can be in communion with God, who likewise enters into communion with the God-fearing. The fulfilling of our moral duties toward God implies consequently in itself, really and directly at the same time also, the fulfilling of our duties toward those who are beloved of God. Hence, the moral relation to God is the central spring of all other moral life, and our duties toward God do not stand co-ordinate with and apart from our other duties.

149

SECTION LXXXVII.

II. The moral activity as strengthened by its moral relation to God, that is, by communion with Him, comes now, and only in consequence of this strengthening, into a truly moral relation to the created,—comprehending both the moral person himself and also the, to him, objective world.

(1) The moral person is his own object. Man is morally to form, to cultivate himself—to make his personal peculiar reality a product of his moral activity. Man is what he is as a person solely in virtue of moral activity; without this activity he remains in spiritual unculture, and is essentially impersonal. Hence man is, in so far, an object of his own moral activity, as he has not yet attained to his ultimate perfection,—in so far as he is a cultivable and, as yet, relatively incompleted being, that is, in so far as there is yet a difference between his ideal and his reality. Man is to form himself into a good entity, that is, into a personal reality that is in full harmony with God, with itself and with the All, in so far as this is good.

The possibility of man’s bearing a moral relation to himself rests on the nature of rational self-consciousness, wherein man becomes in fact an object to himself. If man were from the very start absolutely perfect and complete, he would still be, even then, an object of his own moral activity, only however under its conserving, but not under its formative, phase. Progressive development is implied in the very nature of the created spirit, and there is no stage of temporal life conceivable where man would not have a still higher perfection to attain to, and further moral culture to work out.—All self-forming, unless kept in harmony with God, becomes necessarily anti-moral. Man can, it is true, develop himself in harmony with himself without being in harmony with God, 150—this is, however, a culture of self into the diabolical; and if he forms himself merely in harmony with the world, he becomes an immoral worldling, and if in this worldliness he leaves self-harmony out of the question, then he becomes simply characterless.

(a) The spirit is an object of the moral activity in virtue of its being per se merely the possibility of its real development into a rational spirit,—the germ of itself,—and because it does not develop itself into its full reality by inner nature-necessity, but by freedom. Man has, in virtue of his very constitution, the task of forming himself into the full reality and truth of spiritual being, namely, in respect both to his knowing, to his feeling, and to his willing,—that is, into the perfect image of God. The soul-life of brutes shapes itself by inner nature-necessity; brutes have no need of education; man, however, without education and without moral self-culture would sink below the brute, and for the evident reason that he would thus fall into complete self-antagonism; his freedom would become unbridled barbarity. Spirit lives only by continuous development; where it is not morally trained, it pines away and degenerates. What Christ says of the received talents [Matt. xxv, 14 sqq.] is especially true also of the moral culture of the spirit.

(b) The body is an object of the moral activity in so far as it is the necessary organ of the spirit in its relation to the world. It is not from the very start an absolutely subserving and perfectly spirit-imbued organ (§ 65, 66), nor does it become such by purely natural development, but it is trained into such only by the rightful dominating of the rational spirit over it. The merely natural development of the spirit forms not as yet a spirit’s-body, but only an unspiritual animal body. Even as in the features of the countenance, spiritual unculture and spiritual refinement are almost always visibly expressed, so is also the body in its entire being subject to the refining influence of the moral spirit; and this influence ought not to be of a merely mediate and unintended character, as resulting from the unconsciously-ruling potency of the spiritual life in the body, but in fact also of an immediate character. The good that inheres in the body is to be faithfully preserved,—the germs of higher perfection to be developed. 151Whatever is originally given in the body, whether as actuality or as capacity, is a legitimate possession of the spirit and should not be lightly esteemed. To despise the body is to dishonor the Creator. It should not be honored, however, as merely corporeal, but as subserving the spirit in its rational life-work,—not as an end in itself, but as an end for the spirit. “Glorify God in your body;” this moral precept, the apostle bases on the fact that this body is “a temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own” [1 Cor. vi, 19, 20]. The body is not a mere nature-object, but a holy temple of a sanctified spirit,—bears the consecration of a sacred destination; man has not discretionary power over it, as over a mere nature-object,—not merely as over an unconditional possession, but as over a good intrusted to him by God, and belonging to God, and for which he must give account to God.

SECTION LXXXVIII.

(2) The external world as an object of the moral activity,—the widest and almost endlessly diversified field of this activity,—is—(a) the world of rational beings,—primarily and chiefly the world of humanity. To the moral person other persons stand, on the one hand, in the relation of similarity, in virtue of the common possession of a rational nature, and, on the other, in the relation of difference, in so far as each individual is an independent moral person with a special peculiarity; and it is the part of the moral activity at once to respect, to acknowledge, to preserve, and to promote both these features, and to bring them into reciprocal harmony. A human being never becomes, for the person acting upon it, a merely dependent rightless object, but in all cases continues to be a personality that is to be respected in its legitimate peculiarity, and hence it should never become an unfree and as it were impersonal 152creation of another, but it is an object for the moral activity only so far as it is itself at the same time recognized and treated as a moral subject. The moral bearing of man to his fellows rests essentially on the thought of the inner, and not merely conceived, but also real, unity of the human race, which finds its whole truth only in the thought of the common origin of all men from a first-created primitive individual.

Here also Christian morality comes into striking antagonism to all non-Christian morality. The thought of mankind as a homogeneous whole of which each individual is a legitimate rightful member, is peculiar to Christianity; the heathen know only nations and compatriots but not humanity and man; even the free Greek and the Roman make the distinction both in fact and in law between persons and slaves; the slave is only a thing, not a moral personality. All acting upon others which aims simply to exert an influence upon them without also receiving an influence from them, is immoral. Even the immature child necessarily exerts some influence upon its educator; and when Christ presented a child to his disciples as a moral pattern [Matt. xviii, 3, 4], this is not to be regarded as holding good simply in a loose sense and for the morally immature, on the contrary it is the moral essence of the child, its God-likeness, that is, in fact, a true mirror of the moral even for the relatively mature educator, and that has a right to his respect. That person is a pernicious educator who has never experienced a real moral influence upon himself from the child,—who has never recognized in the soul of the child the features of the image of God, nor been impressed with respect for child-naïveté; and it is the acme of meanness not to respect and sacredly to protect child-innocence.

The moral conceiving of man as an object of the moral activity, presupposes that we have in fact to do with real true men, men who are not only similar to us, but who are bound to us as members of one body. To creatures which, while belonging to the zoological order bimana, and while differing from the ape by the formation of the skull and of the feet and 153by an erect walk, yet should have been from of old distinguished, both in their origin and also in their spiritually-inferior nature, from the so-called “nobler” race of the whites, we could not come into the same moral relation as to those who are our brethren. The question as to the origin of the different races of men has a deep moral significancy, and is of fundamental importance for ethics. The natural science of the present day, which has become largely infected with a spirit-denying materialism, is well known to have until quite recently declared it as a fully-established fact that the various physically-differing races of men are of different origin, and cannot have descended from a single primitive race; and there are not a few persons, in other respects favorable to the Christian faith, who recognize these pretended “results of modern science” as really such, and regard them as beyond question. It is not here the place to examine the scientific worth of these so-esteemed results; we have to do with the question here only in its moral significancy. We merely remark in passing, that we must absolutely deny to an experimental science—and this is the pretended source of said results—the right to decide upon matters that lie beyond all experience. Such science can simply affirm what is, or is not, but it cannot decide what cannot possibly be. “Empirical” natural science may be justifiable in saying, that so far as experience goes, a white person is never born of a negro, nor a negro of a white person, though even this is not uncontested, but it has no scientific ground for inferring, that, consequently, it can also never have been otherwise. Inferences of this kind, illegitimate even according to the simplest rules of logic, are overturned almost daily by the mere progress of science. Moreover, it is not unworthy of remark that the position: “as it is in the life of nature now, so must it always have been” is applied to the question before us by the very same persons who cannot admit that the human race could have otherwise originated than through some extraordinarily potent nature-process—through human germs, forsooth, that were cast from the sea upon the shore,—and who in reply to the question: why then this interesting nature-process has not repeated itself also in our own day, or at least during the historical period in general? immediately exclaim, that nature 154has declined in her generative power. On the whole, therefore, and in view of the fact that the latest “progress” of this particular wing of natural science takes ground in direct antagonism to the above pretended unassailable “results,” namely, in regarding man as an advanced development of the ape (Darwin), we may without the least anxiety spare ourselves the trouble of refuting the above-mentioned earlier view, and abandon this “modern” science to its own further self-dissolution.

Christianity has from the beginning had a clear consciousness of the moral significancy of the original unity of the human race. Though God had undoubtedly the power to create thousands of men in the different parts of the earth, instead of one, as he did in fact do in the case of plants and animals, nevertheless it must be for good reasons that in the Scriptures the whole human race is assumed to have sprung from a single stock [Gen. i, 27, 28; ii, 18; iii, 20]. There is involved here an antagonism of the natural and the spiritual stand-points, and that too in a moral respect. According to naturalism the unity of the world is a merely conceived something,—in reality it is a product of a presupposed multiplicity of single existences; and also the good, which in its nature is a manifestation-form of unity, is not an element fundamental and presupposed in every single existence, but it is simply a consequence—a product of the active individual; the good is ever to be without ever and truly being. According to the Christian system, however, the real unity and the real good are every-where the first, the fundamental, while multiplicity is only of a derived character. Here the moral is simply and solely the following of God as the absolutely good One, a free manifestation of a unity with God which in fact, however, originally existed,—which had not first to be realized, but only revealed, witnessed, and freely virtualized. Man is able to be moral only because, in his nature, he is already at one with God. So is it also in his moral relation to mankind; the unity of the total sum of individual men is not first to be created out of an original multiplicity, and to be constituted as an entirely new something, but it is simply (and this is the origin and the reason of this plurality) to be freely and morally witnessed and confirmed. Humanity is to 155become morally one, for the reason that in their origin they are already one; love to mankind is simply fidelity to the nature of man as existing from the beginning. This view is in diametrical antagonism to naturalistic ethics; and hence Paul presented it very prominently, at Athens, as the peculiarly-Christian view in contrast to heathenism [Acts xvii, 26; comp. Rom. v, 12, sqq.]; the latter estranges humanity into an original diversity; the former attributes all hostile antagonisms to the workings of sin.

The very natural and in fact morally legitimate feeling, that blood-relatives stand to us in a closer relation of duty than entire strangers, contains a profound truth. It calls forth really a very different and morally more potent feeling, when we know that even the degenerated negro is of our own blood, our brother, sprang from one father, than if we should assume that he is originally, and by nature, of a spiritually and corporeally inferior species [August., De Civ. Dei., xii, 21]. That which forms no unessential part of the world-historical honor of Christianity, namely, that it has made slavery morally impossible, has been again absolutely put into question by the teachings of naturalism; and it is scientifically as well as morally a signal indication of inconsideration, and especially so on the part of theologians, to declare the decision of the question as to the original unity of the human race as a mere non-essential matter. By the assumption that there were originally different races, the slavery-system is not only excused, but it is directly justified. In fact man has not only not the duty, but he has not the right to break down the original and naturally-constituted differences of spiritual existence. But the moral influencing of the degenerate races consists essentially in raising the actually lower-standing individuals of the colored races to the height of the whites,—in placing them both, in spiritually-moral respects, on an equal footing, in making of the colored races our true and proper brothers, in doing away, in fact, with whatever places them actually below the whites. But the effort to do this would be, in the eyes of the above-mentioned teaching, a simple presumption, a transgression of the limits prescribed to us by nature herself; according to it, the negro is destined by his primitive and manifestly inferior peculiarity, to service under 156the higher race, and it would be a criminal interference with the ordinances of nature to wish to change this. That which has hitherto passed for the greatest stain upon a perverted Christian civilization, the re-establishment of slavery, can find no more desirable an apology than these results of a perverted science; and it is a standing and entirely consequential opinion among even the most liberal-thinking champions of this tendency, that negroes are in fact but half-men and should remain such.

SECTION LXXXIX.

(b) External nature as an object of the moral activity is such not merely in its single manifestations, but also in its totality. On the one hand, nature exists not for itself but for the rational spirit for man; on the other, it is, as a work of divine creation, a good thing, and hence has rights in and of itself:—(1) Nature is by origin and essence destined to be dominated by the rational spirit as God’s image,—to be formed by the spirit into its organ and for its service. As nature is not per se moral, hence man’s moral relation to it does not consist in his receiving from it a direct moral influence, though indeed he does receive from it a mediate moral influence through the contemplation of the image of God as manifesting itself therein, but in his acting morally upon it. For the single individual, this action is always limited to a narrow theater, but for humanity it extends to all terrestrial nature. As the body is related to the individual spirit, so is nature related to humanity in general; nature’s destination is to be perfectly subservient to man and to be exalted in the service of his rational destination.—(2) But this dominating of nature is essentially conditioned on the truly moral and hence rational self-culture of man, in virtue of which nature is not to be subjected 157to the whims of irrational caprice; for, as God’s work, nature has claims upon man; it is legitimately an object for human activity only in so far as main subordinates himself to the divine will, whose peculiarity it is not to destroy but to preserve.

The relation of nature to the rational spirit is neither that of an object absolutely different from and foreign to it, seeing that both are the work of one creative spirit, nor that of a power entitled to dominate over the same; this would be a reversing of the moral order of the world; for that which is per se higher and rational should not be enslaved under that which is inferior and irrational. If, therefore, nature and spirit exist for each other, and if they are to constitute an intimate unity, then the only relation possible is, that the spirit shall be the dominating power over nature,—the power that forms and molds it. And if in reality the relation is in many respects now actually otherwise, still this should not lead us astray in conceiving of the true relation between them in a sinless state. The rational consciousness of all nations has at least some presentiment of the proper relation. Even as in all forms of superstition a more or less clear expression is given to a presentiment, though indeed misapplied, of a corresponding deeper truth that lies beyond the grasp of the superficial understanding, so also has the notion of magic, so widely prevalent throughout heathendom, its roots in a presentiment of the true relation of reason to nature.¹¹¹¹See the author’s Gesch. des Heidentums, i, 141, and his Deutscher Volksaberglaube, 1860. It is but the childishly perverted thought, that the spirit should not be enslaved under unspiritual nature,—that its true destination is to cause nature to subserve it in its own purposes. When Christ, in his character of Son of man, exerts his mastery over nature, and by his miraculous deeds counterworks the sufferings that have sprung from the enslavement of sinful humanity under nature, and when he promises like power also to his disciples on condition of faith [Matt. xvii, 20; Mark xvi, 17, 18; Luke x, 19; xvii, 6; John xiv, 12], he simply indicates, though primarily only in a typical manner, the true goal of human development 158in its relation to nature. The miracle does not play feats with nature, it simply dominates it,—subjects it not to the irrational caprice of the individual will, but to the rational will of man as in union with God; and it is a rational demand of the rational will, to be free from all fetters that lie outside of the rational will,—to be. untrammeled in its activities by sufferings that spring from bondage to spirit-hostile nature.

Nevertheless nature is not to be considered as mere material for the active spirit, and absolutely without rights of its own; it has a right to be respected, because of the rationality that is impressed upon it. From the face of nature the Spirit of the Creator beams forth upon us with striking evidence; here also there is holy ground which man should not tread with unwashed feet. That is not a moral bearing toward nature which forgets the image of God that is stamped upon it, and which, in the zeal of shaping and enjoying it, perceives not that also natural objects, even while as yet untouched by the plastic hand of man, proclaim the glory of God. The Hindoo’s dread-reverencing of natural objects, though indeed oblivious of the Creator, has yet a positive presentiment of the divine in the works of the, to him, unknown God.

159

CHAPTER IV.

THE MORAL MOTIVE.

SECTION XC.

EVERY motive to action is primarily a feeling; but feeling springs from a consciousness. And feeling is such motive under both of its forms of manifestation, as feeling of satisfaction or of dissatisfaction, and hence of pleasure or of displeasure. The feeling of displeasure is to be assumed as existing to a certain degree also in a state of strictly normal life-development, namely, in so far as man, before reaching his last stage of perfection, has always a consciousness, that as yet something is lacking to him to which he is yet to attain. This is not pain, but yet it is a feeling of want.

Any view is contrary to the nature of the soul-life which assumes any other soul activity, as, for example, cognition, as the most immediate motive of the moral. Thought per se contains nothing that moves the will; but thought is in fact never absolutely alone, is never a merely inert possession, but it excites at once and necessarily a feeling, and then, through this feeling, the will. I feel myself in some way affected by the perceived or conceived, more or less agreeably or disagreeably, according as it is in harmony with, or in contradiction to, my present state. An entire indifference is here impossible, though indeed the shades of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure may be very different,—impossible for the reason that that which I receive into myself sensuously or spiritually, must necessarily come into some sort of relation to my present corporeal or spiritual reality, and for the reason that this relation 160must always be either one of harmony or disharmony. It is true indeed that the different phases of a received impression may have different bearings, and hence the feeling that arises from them may be of a complex character; nevertheless in this complexity the elements of the pleasant and the unpleasant remain always distinct,—do not coalesce together into a feeling of total indifference, just as every object that is taken for nutriment is either strengthening or weakening to the body, but cannot be absolutely indifferent. Now, every feeling stirs up also straightway the will, and hence activity in general; in case it is a pleasant feeling we desire to possess its object, either by preserving it or by appropriating it; in case the feeling is unpleasant we seek to get rid of it. In this double-movement all action is embraced, and hence also all that is moral; and this movement itself rests absolutely on an antecedent feeling. Thought, it is true, is the foundation of the moral, but it is only the feeling excited thereby that is the motive proper of action. Only he can will the good who has pleasure in the law of the Lord [Rom. vii, 22; Psa. i, 2; cxii, 1].—When the thought of something not yet existing, but which may be realized by my action, awakens in me a feeling of pleasure, this is in fact the thought of a good, which, by virtue of this feeling, becomes an intention, which differs from a resolution in the fact that the latter relates not to the good itself but to the means of realizing it. While, however, an intention refers to a good, a purpose refers to the good. I purpose to become a perfect man; I have an intention of mastering a science; I form a resolution or determination to study. But a thought becomes to me a purpose only by the accession thereto of the feeling of love; in a resolution the will stands forth a little more actively.

It might, now, seem that while in the condition of the primitive sinless goodness of human nature, there would be place for feelings of pleasure, that is, of happiness, yet there would not be occasion for the feeling of displeasure. This would be only then correct when man’s original perfection should be conceived of, contrary to the very idea of life in general, as a state of completion. But all capability of development implies a certain lack, though not a fault, nor a non-good; and every consciousness of a lack awakens the feeling of a want, 161which, though it is not a pain, and does not destroy inward happiness, is yet also not the pleasurable feeling of complete satisfaction. That even he who is perfectly constituted, and who remains in this perfection, should still have bodily and spiritual wants, which are per se necessarily attended with a certain, though indeed only momentary, feeling of displeasure, is implied in the very nature of the creature and of its development.

SECTION XCI.

Feeling as relating to the object that excites it, is, as a feeling of pleasure, love, and, as a feeling of displeasure, hatred. Between these two there is no third, although both may exist in different degrees and even in association with each other. Hence love is the feeling of pleasure which springs from the consciousness of the harmony of a real or conceived object with the actual state of the subject, together with a desire to preserve and to perfect this harmony, and hence also to preserve the being and essence of this object. Hatred is the feeling of displeasure which springs from the consciousness of an irreconcilable antagonism between the object and the subject, together with a desire to destroy this antagonism in the object, even should this involve the destruction itself of that object. In a normal moral condition of things where all that exists is good, love alone has a real object, while hatred has only a possible one.—Love is essentially of a preserving character, hatred is essentially of a negating, destroying character; as, however, all moral action aims to create a reality by continuous development, hence preserving love is necessarily at the same time also promotive of the being and nature of the beloved object, and negating hatred is at the same time a confirming of the opposite of the bated object. Hence love works in order 162to be able to love always; hatred works ill order to destroy itself; love lives in order to be eternal; hatred lives in order to come to an end; only that hatred can be endless whose object is eternal—namely, Satanic hatred. As moral hatred is necessarily an effort to destroy the antagonism of existence, that is, to re-establish its harmony, hence it is in essence the same thing as love. Hatred is per se as moral as love,—is but its necessary reverse phase. There is no moral love without hatred, and no moral hatred without love; pure hatred without love would be simply Satanic hatred. As moral hatred is in its essence love, hence the actual motive of all moral activity is love.

“Love is the fulfilling of the law” [πλήρωμα, Rom. xiii, 10]; in this formula the Christian idea of the moral motive is very definitely expressed; love leads to the fulfillment of the law; it is the rich fullness in which all law is included. Without love there is no morality; and where love is, there morality is truly free, for love develops itself into all forms of the moral. Hence Christ, after the example of the Old Testament [Deut. vi, 5; x, 12; xi, 13], sums up the whole law in the one precept of love to God and to our neighbor [Matt. xxii, 37; Luke x, 27]; “This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments” [1 John v, 3]; love is not and cannot be a mere inert feeling, but it is by its very nature active, it produces that which its subject loves,—brings about the full and free harmony of the person and his life with God. Whoever assigns any other motive for morality than love, knows nothing of the moral. But love tends by its essential nature to a unity of the diverse,—seeks not its own mere isolated being. Mere self-love to the exclusion of love to others is not love at all, but only immoral self-seeking; it is indeed a motive to action, but to anti-moral action; Even that which appears in the animal world as an unconscious symbol of moral virtue, is based on love, and is an expression thereof. There is no form of moral activity conceivable which would not be an expression of love 163[1 Cor. xvi, 14].—The moral love of the divine is, per se and necessarily, also hatred against that which is ungodly. But as the ungodly is primarily not real but only conceivable, and as this thought itself becomes really vital only through the reality of sin, it does not come here properly within our scope.

Love is taken here primarily as not yet a virtue or a disposition, but as a simple feeling occasioned by a consciousness of harmony or of disharmony. The love that is required as the fulfilling of the law is more than mere feeling, though indeed it has feeling as its basis and essence. And yet the love here in question is not a mere feeling of pleasure, not a mere impressed state of the heart, but it contains in itself at the same time a power prompting to an active relation to the beloved object. All love has for its object a something that is good, and hence, as relating to the subject, a good (§ 51), and it evidences the existence of this good by the outgoing and recognizing life-movement of the subject toward it,—by the effort of the subject toward the object in order to preserve or intensify its unity, its harmony therewith. Now as all existences are created for each other and destined to a self-harmonious life, hence love is the primitive feeling of all rational creatures,—the direct witness of the goodness of existence, an echo of that first witness of the Creator as to his created work, and hence also the innermost vitality of the moral life, the purpose and essence of which is in fact, harmony, or the good. Directed toward the good, and hence the divine, love has for itself the pledge of eternity; whereas moral hatred, as directed against all non-good, that is, anti-divine, has, in virtue of its negating nature, for its purpose, the destroying of its object and of itself with it. Peace is the goal of love and also of hatred,—is an essential phase of the highest good itself.

SECTION XCII.

If love is the motive to all moral action, and consequently also the necessary presupposition thereof; hence there must also be an ante-moral love, one that is per se not yet moral but which simply leads to the moral. In man’s originally-possessed, though not as 164yet developed, God-likeness, there is in fact implied an original love antecedent to all moral volition,—an immediate love of the created spirit for the Creator as revealing himself to it, and for the surrounding universe as proclaiming the Creator’s love. This direct and not morally-acquired love is, however, not an unfreely-operating, compelling instinctive impulse, but receives the character of moral freedom through the simultaneously awakening consciousness of personal independence and of the therein-contained love of the person to himself, so that in virtue of this twofold primitive love, which offers the possibility of an antagonism as well as of a harmony, man is invited to a free self-determination.

If the feeling of love is a directly excited one, and, as such, the presupposition of the moral activity to which it leads, it would seem as if moral freedom were actually precluded. For this feeling is as yet involuntary and unfree; and love and hatred produce, directly, a desire or a rejection. On the other hand, we cannot possibly exclude love from the sphere of the moral, and make of it a mere antecedent condition of the same; for according to the Christian consciousness at least, man is morally responsible for his love and his hatred; love is an object of duty, and is required by Christ as the essence of all fulfillment of the law. This seems like an irreconcilable contradiction.

In the first place, it is unavoidably necessary to admit that there is an ante-moral love. Brutes even have love, and are thereby impelled to activity; also the child at its mother’s breast feels and manifests love. This is not a love springing from free conscious volition,—not a moral love,—but a purely natural love, which forms, however, the necessary antecedent condition of all development to morality. Primitive man must also have had such a love, inasmuch as without this a life of God’s image is not conceivable. Created in harmony with God and with the All, he must have had also a direct feeling of this harmony, must have felt happy in his existence and in 165his Paradise-world; and in this feeling of happiness he must also have loved that whereby it was produced in him; there met him on every hand the image of divine love, of the harmony of the universe, and he must have felt and loved it; and when God revealed himself to him as the loving Father, then must man have experienced also toward Him a feeling of harmony and love. But all this love is as yet simply a directly-excited one,—is not freely produced by moral activity, and is consequently not yet a moral love, though it indeed conducts to moral activity and thereby to a transformation of itself into moral love. If now this first ante-moral love of man for God and his work were the sole love really existing in man, then evidently the action answering to it, and hence also to the will of God, would flow out of it so immediately and necessarily that the possibility of a contrary self-determination would be scarcely conceivable, so that though indeed moral freedom in general would not be thereby destroyed, yet liberty of choice would actually and essentially be precluded. Man would not stand in free self-determination between the choice of the good and the evil, but he would be overpoweringly driven by an inner potent impulse to a choice of the good. Now, though this would in fact render conceivable an absolutely sinless development, still it would render all the more inconceivable the possibility of a determination to the sinful.

But the matter assumes a very different aspect when we take into account the equally natural and immediate ante-moral impulse of self-love. This must, in fact, also be regarded as ante-moral, for the reason that it is the involuntary natural expression of soul-life in general, and hence exists also unconsciously among brutes. The fact that with man it is conscious, and constitutes a phase of rational self-consciousness, does not make it per se moral, but simply renders it capable of being formed into a moral quality. While now in the case of the brute the unconscious self-love can never become really evil, the self-love of man is, by virtue of the higher independence of the free spirit, only in a possible harmony with the love to God and the universe, but should come into real harmony therewith. Self-love is per se good,—is by no means the same as self-seeking or selfishness; Christ himself represents 166self-love as morally right, and as the measure for our love to our neighbor [Matt. xxii, 39; Luke x, 27; comp. Rom. xiii, 9; Gal. v, 14; James ii, 8; Eph. v, 28, 29, 33; 1 Sam. xviii, 1, 3]; but the goodness of this love consists not in an antecedently-established harmony with the love to God and the world, but simply in its liberty to confirm this harmony spontaneously. The love of God and the love of self are both equally primitive, and are per se not in antagonism with each other in the least, but yet they are different from each other and relatively independent of each other. In this mutual independence of these two forms of love there is afforded opportunity for the freedom of human choice. Man is called freely to confirm the harmony of his self-love and his divine love, and that too not by suppressing the one or the other, nor by making his love of God dependent on his self-love, but in fact by making his self-love dependent on his love of God,—by freely subordinating it thereto. As soon as the divine command was given to him, man was at once conscious that there was a difference between his self-love and his love to God, but also, at the same time, that it was his duty to develop this difference, not into antagonism but into harmony. The one (logically) possible mis-choice, of suppressing the per se legitimate self-love by disproportionate exaltation of the love to God, was impossible in fact, inasmuch as the love to God necessarily involves in itself all possible good, and hence also the proper love of self, for God preserves that which He himself has willed; so that consequently there remained possible only the other mis-choice (which was therefore morally forbidden), namely, of subordinating the love of God to self-love, instead of preserving the latter in its true character through its proper subordination to the former. If simply the love of God had been primitive in man, then a choice of the ungodly would have been impossible; if simply self-love had been primitive in him, then a choice of the good, of submission to the divine will, would have been equally impossible, and man would have been in the one case irresponsible for the good, and in the other for the evil—without desert and without guilt. But by virtue of the fact that the love to God and the love of self are alike primitive, as the ante-moral germ of the moral, it follows that man is fully responsible for the confirmation 167or the disturbance of the harmony of this twofold love; for this determination was not already involved in the constitution of man, but was proposed as a moral task to his free will. The mere love to God would have made man good but not free, the mere self-love would have made him seemingly free but not good; the twofold love made him free for choosing the good, but also free for the possible choice of the evil,—which, under these circumstances, assumed, in consequence of the equally real original love to God, the form of infidelity to God, of a punishable sin. The case is quite similar with the moral culture of the child. The child, as soon as self-conscious, has love for its mother, and also a per se strictly legitimate love for play; when the will of the mother calls the child from its play, it becomes conscious of the difference of the two forms of love; it knows also that it can prefer its love for play, and leave the will of the mother unheeded. It must by a morally-free choice, make a decision,—must subordinate the one love to the other; if it chooses obedience, then in thus choosing, and thus only, it feels itself truly free. If there had been no difference of a twofold love, the child would have had no choice; it would have just as unfreely, and without a consciousness of the good or a right to praise, followed its mother, as, on the other supposition, it would have unfreely and without a consciousness of the evil or a desert of blame, preferred its play. It is only such cases of choice, of moral self-determination, that bring the child’s morality to development and to maturity.—It would be very erroneous to consider self-love as per se evil, and as a natural germ of the evil; the fact is, it simply offers-not per se, however, but in its normal difference from the love to God—the possibility of evil, but equally so also the possibility of moral good in general. It is only in the consciously-wrought free subordination of self-love to the divine love, that the latter as well as the former becomes moral. There can be no question of a “must” in the determination, whether in the one direction or in the other, but only of a “should” and a “should not.”

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SECTION XCIII.

The primitive love of man to God and his works becomes moral only, when, with consciousness and free recognition, it is confirmed by the self-loving spirit, and when the love to God is made to control the love of self, that is, when this twofold love becomes a striving of the self-love to put itself into harmony with all love, through free self-subordination to the love for God. Love as moral, and as consciously striving toward its object, becomes disposition. Hence for all further development of the moral life, a moral disposition is the necessary antecedent condition; and it is such in its twofold form, as the affirming disposition of love, and, with reference to evil, as the negating disposition of hatred. It is only as disposition, but not as ante-moral natural lobe, that love is an object of the divine law, a moral requirement, whereas the ante-moral love is simply an element of the good that is conferred in creation itself. Hence, as moral motive, love is also the basis of the moral in the fullest sense of the word, the life-inspiring germ of all other moral activity.

By the fact that love becomes a moral duty, it does not cease to be a moral motive. Man, as, awakened to moral consciousness, is to have no other motive of his moral activity than one which he has himself morally constituted,—not a merely natural ante-moral love, but love as a disposition. Many are led to deny that love is at all an object of the divine law, from the simple fact that they reduce it to a mere involuntary feeling. Also Rothe affirms that we cannot command to love, but only to learn to love. This is very nearly a distinction without a difference; for if we can command to learn, and this learning has a necessary result, then evidently in commanding the learning we also command the result. The notion that man is per se, and irrespective of his moral 169depravity, not master of his own heart,—that he cannot dominate his proclivities. his love or his repugnance,—simply destroys his moral responsibility. If man cannot control his love and his hatred, and bring about in himself moral love, but must allow himself to be ruled by blind inclinations, then is he no longer a moral creature, but simply a dangerous sort of animal. If marriages are contracted only from “irresistible inclination” and dissolved because of “irresistible aversion,” then they lie outside of the sphere of morality. Christian morality does not indeed require that marriages shall continue to exist despite the pretended “irresistible aversion;” on the contrary, it denies fundamentally that the notion of such an ungovernable aversion is to be admitted, inasmuch as it makes man morally responsible for his love and his hatred. It would not only be a monstrous but also an absurd theory of morals which should admit, on the one hand, that we are not at all master of our love and our aversion,—that love cannot be commanded as a duty,—and yet, on the other hand, should require that man should not act according to his love or aversion, but according to requirements of the moral law that have no connection therewith; he who has not love cannot practice love without hypocrisy; but that he has it not is his own fault. Christian ethics requires not to proclaim love in our deeds where there is no love, for it cannot require falseness; but it requires us to have love for all, and, for that reason also to practice it. The Scriptures declare unequivocally that love, the motive of all moral action, is also a duty commanded by the moral law; the law “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” [Lev. xix, 18; Matt, xxii, 39; Mark xii, 31] is called a “royal law,” that is, a law that dominates all others [James ii, 8; comp. Gal. v, 14; Col, iii, 14; 1 Tim. i, 5; 1 John iii, 11 sqq.; iv, 7 sqq.].

SECTION XCIV.

As morality is the free fulfilling of the divine will, hence moral love is primarily always love to God, and the love to created things is moral only in so far as it springs from the love to God,—considers created things as the work of God, and loves them in him. 170The God-consciousness, as developed into a moral love of God, is piety (εὐσέβεια); hence all morality rests on piety. All non-pious love is immoral, and hence also all love to the creature as such, taken in itself without connection and interpenetration with the divine love. But all love to God rests on our consciousness of God’s love to us; love is produced only by love; all moral love is, in its essence, reciprocal love; a non-loving creature can be loved only in so far as God’s love is reflected to us from it; and for this very reason moral love to persons seeks indeed their love in return, but does not need it.

As rational thought finds the unity of its thought-world only in the thought of God, so also moral love finds its rest and its unity only in love to God; it is not content with the semblance thereof but only with the truth; and all things have their truth only in their relation to God. As that love is higher, truer, and mightier which loves, in a person, not merely the earthly but also the soul, so is that love higher, truer, and mightier which loves in man, not merely the creature but also the image of God, and, through it, God himself. Love is the more genuine the higher its object; he who sees in creatures the trace of God, and loves God in them, he alone loves with the whole might of love. The proper love to the creature rests on the consciousness that “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” [1 Cor. x, 26]; this does not lower the creature in the eyes of the love, but elevates both its worth and the love for it. Thus also Christ presents the precept of love to God as “the first and great commandment;” and “the second is like unto it,” that is, it is already implied in it, though it does not absolutely coincide with it,—it is in fact the reflection of our love to God back upon our neighbor; our love for our neighbor is erroneous, when it does not rest upon love to God. Hence Christ says: “He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me” [Matt. x, 37]. To the natural man this sounds hard and severe; but from a Christian stand-point, nay, even from a religious 171stand-point in general, no other view is possible than in fact, that a love for the creature without the higher divine love, or with one that prevails over the latter, is sinful. By this relation of all love to the love of God, this love is preserved also from one-sided narrowness,—clings not, in irrational caprice, to isolated objects,—but extends itself to all that is created, though indeed different degrees of such love are possible, from the fact of the differing peculiarity of the object and of the loving person.

This true mutual relation of our love to the creature and our love to God, appears still more striking when we attentively consider the relation of human love to the divine love. As human thinking is only a reflection of the divine thought, so also is human love only a reflection of the divine love. All that is true and good in the copy is enkindled by the true and the good of the prototype; “He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love” [1 John iv, 8]. Man could not love God, and hence could not love morally at all, were he not loved of God. God’s love is a love of grace; man’s love is a love of gratitude,—the answering love of a child. Love cannot love any thing else but love [Psa. ciii, 1 sqq.; Col. iii, 17; 1 Thess. v, 18; 1 John iv, 11, 19]. For this reason there is no pain so great as where love remains unrequited. But to the pious heart it is not unrequited; such a heart finds the love which it seeks; Christ says: whatsoever “ye have done unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me;” and where, against the loving one, the heart of man coldly closes itself, there the love of God comes in its place.

SECTION XCV.

While our love to created things is either simply a love to the inferior, or to the equal, or to the merely relatively higher, and hence always meets its object with a consciousness of its own independent power and of an individual personal right, our love to God is, as directed to One that is absolutely superior to all that is human, always associated with a consciousness of our own impotency as in contrast to the infinite 172holy power of the Beloved, and hence is a love of fear. Love to God is essentially God-fearing; there is, however, no moral fear of God without also love to God. Mere fear alone is not a moral motive, for only love is this.

In all love to a created object our moral action is complementive and promotive of the being and life of the same; we render to it in our love a real service, and obtain for ourselves a claim upon its grateful, answering love. But God’s being and life cannot be complemented and heightened by our love; we cannot render to him a real service for which he would be under obligation to us [Job xli, 2; Rom. xi, 35]. Our love to God consists only with the consciousness that we receive every thing from God, and God nothing from us,—that our entire being and life stand absolutely in his power. Such a consciousness includes necessarily the feeling of fear—not fear of a mere power operating without reference to moral action, but of a righteous God who opposes all that is unholy; and in this sense Christ himself makes a regard for the penal judgments of God a motive for moral action [Matt. v, 22, 25 sqq.; xxv, 45, 46]. Fear of God in the absence of love is, in fact, by no means irrational; rather is it, wherever such love is lacking, the natural expression of the antagonism between the unholy nature of the person and the holy God, but such fear is not a moral motive. It presupposes the antagonism which the moral denies; and it cannot do away with it, for it is love alone that harmonizes. That nevertheless this slavish fear is of moral significancy for the state of sinfulness, we shall subsequently see. For the unfallen state, mere fear has neither reason nor possibility, for mere fear is, in its essence, hatred,—hatred against the more powerful being with whom we are not united by love.

Mere love, however, without fear, as toward God, is not truthful, for that would be only a love of familiarity as with our equal. He who is conscious of his moral freedom, must also be conscious, as often as he makes use of this moral freedom, that God opposes his holy power to its misuse. The feeling which springs out of such a consciousness is not contrary 173to love, nor is it yet love itself, but it is genuine moral fear. Hence this moral awe of God, the true reverence for God, is the beginning of all wisdom and the condition of all morality [Deut. v, 29; vi, 2; x, 20; Prov. i, 7; viii, 13; ix, 10; xv, 33; xvi, 6; Psa. cxi, 10; cxii, 7; Job xxviii, 28; 2 Cor. vii, 1]. Only those who fear the Lord trust in the Lord [Psa. cxv, 11]; for only the holy God gives surety for his love and truthfulness; not to fear God involves being godless [Prov. i, 29; Rom. iii, 18], and piety is synonymous with the fear of God (φόβος Θεοῦ) [Acts ix, 13; Eph. v, 21; 2 Cor. vii, 1]. The reference is not to this pious dread of the holy God, but to that mere servile fear which is at bottom hatred, when St. John says: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear; because fear hath torment (κόλασιν ἔχει, is a feeling of estrangement from God, of unblessedness); he that feareth is not made perfect in love” [1 John iv, 18]. The true fear of God is closely allied to the love of God [Deut. x, 12].

SECTION XCVI.

Where the love to God is true God-fearing, there it is also a firm trusting in God. Trusting is the reverse side of this fearing. Man-fearing is devoid of trust; God-fearing is per se also God-trusting. In relation to all that is evil, I fear God, who will bring it to naught and me with it; in relation to all that is good, I trust God, who will not permit me to come to naught, but will gloriously accomplish that which I begin in his name. God-fearing love is full of confidence in the results of its moral strivings; because it fears God, it has no reason to fear any power that is hostile to God. Certain of its victory, and certain that it works in God and for God, and hence that it accomplishes divine and imperishable work, it becomes enthusiasm, which is the highest and truest moral motive, and the only sufficient power where there is involved a moral working for general interests 174that transcend all temporal individual interests,—where the temporal happiness of the person must be sacrificed to a moral principle,—which, however, is conceivable only where sin is dominant.

Trusting in God is faith, love, and hope at the same time; primarily, however, it is not a result of moral self-culture. but it is simply the germ of that threefold life that is antecedent to all actual moral life. As the awakening consciousness of the child expresses itself in an, as yet, obscure trust to its mother, so is it with man’s first life-relation to God. Man attains a trust not simply through faith and through love, but faith and love are per se, and of necessity, trust already; and hence trust is a necessary antecedent condition of all moral life. Trust relates to the idea of an end; the mere desire of an end is not a sufficient motive to inspire moral effort toward it; it may be a hopeless, and hence an inactive, desire; doubting Peter sinks in the waves; it is only an unshaken trust that confirms courage and awakens strength [Psa. xviii, 31 sqq.; xxvii, 14; xxxiv, 9; xxxvii, 3 sqq.; lxii, 6 sqq.; lxxxiv, 13; Prov. xvi, 20, and elsewhere].—There is no enthusiasm for evil,—at furthest only a Satanic pleasure in evil, but this pleasure is attended with fear and malice, but not enthusiasm. Man as sinful may err as to what is good or evil, and he may therefore have enthusiasm for a folly, but only from the fact that he takes it for something good and noble. Nor can the merely individual and temporal awaken enthusiasm; nothing but the ideal can do this,—that which is, or is conceived of as, absolutely valid, as eternal truth, and hence of divine significancy, in a word that in the victory and permanent endurance of which the person has entire confidence. For that which is merely individual or useful I may indeed have energy or passion, but not enthusiasm. Only the absolutely good, the divine, is free from all doubt. Doubt is death to enthusiasm; without faith it is not possible morally to battle for the divine. Without enthusiasm there can be but a cold, calculating working for temporal ends, but no effort for the divine and eternal; hence whatever is not of faith is sin, for it is non-moral, whereas man ought constantly to be moral. The apostles had indeed, during Christ’s earthly 175life, a warm love for their Master, so that they were ready even to die with him [John xi, 16], but they had enthusiasm only after the pouring out of the Holy Ghost.

SECTION XCVII.

As love springs from the consciousness of the harmony of the person with his object, and as the feeling of such a harmony is the feeling of happiness, hence all love is per se also happiness, and its striving is necessarily a striving for happiness. As, however, love does not seek its own, but finds its bliss alone in that of the beloved, it is clear that this striving for happiness, as based on moral love, is in nowise self-seeking and narrow-hearted, but, on the contrary, a proper motive of moral activity,—only, however, in so far as it is in unison with the right love, and does not appear as something different from it,—not as the first and fundamental element, but only as a derived one; but it becomes an immoral motive in so far as it is an expression of mere self love (Eudemonism).—The tendency to the good, which is produced by moral activity, becomes in turn itself a higher motive to the moral.

The question as to the morality of happiness-seeking as a moral motive, cannot be answered without a more definite characterization. The “eudemonistic” view proper, that of the Epicureans, is evidently immoral, as it rests on mere self-love. Heathen ethics could oppose to this self-seeking happiness-principle nothing other than the notion that virtue should be sought after for its own sake. If there was here a seeming subordinating of the person to a general moral idea, still, because of the inner untruthfulness of the position, it could not possibly be otherwise than that in fact, even in the strictest Stoicism, the mere proud self-consciousness of the individual should be, after all, the influencing motive proper. The thought of love as the true moral motive was entirely wanting 176to heathen ethics,—is peculiar to Christianity. The Christian idea of love harmonizes the legitimate self-love with submission to the moral law. In loving God, man loves also himself as a child of God, and in fulfilling his duty he at the same time realizes his happiness. The love to God and to His creatures is, on the one hand, a feeling of happiness, and, on the other, a motive to moral activity. The old controversy about the happiness-principle, which has in recent times been revived, especially by the school of Kant, receives its proper solution only in the Christian view, namely, in that, while Christianity recognizes in the proper seeking for happiness a strictly moral motive, it also exalts the character of this seeking by the love in which alone it bases it. It is therefore a very one-sided illiberality in Rationalists to reproach Old Testament ethics with “Eudemonism.” It is true, the Old Testament recognizes the seeking after happiness as a proper motive in the fulfilling of the law: “That it may go well with thee and with thy children after thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth” [Deut. iv, 40; Exod. xx, 12; Deut. v, 16; xxix, 33; Psa. xxxvii, 37; cxxii, 6, etc.]; the formula “Blessed is he that,” etc., [Psa. i, 1; ii, 12; xxxiv, 8; xl, 4, etc.] and other similar ones, are very frequently given as an encouragement to moral obedience; but also Christ himself and the apostles expressly present such a motive: “Do this and thou shalt live” [Luke x, 28; comp. Matt. xix, 16, 17, 28, 29; vi, 19, 20; Mark x, 21; Luke xii, 33; John iii, 36; Eph. vi, 3; Rom. ii, 7; 1 Tim. iv, 88; vi, 19]; the “crown” of life is promised as a reward to fidelity [1 Cor. ix, 25; 2 Tim. iv, 8; 1 Peter v, 4; James i, 12; Rev. ii, 10]; but neither the Old nor the New Testament separate this striving for happiness from the love to God and our neighbor in which, in fact, both Covenants find the true motive to moral action. There is, in reality, no essential antagonism between love and the striving after happiness; but the latter is directly implied in the former, and is, in the nature of the case, inseparable from it. Christianity knows no other happiness than love to God in the consciousness of being loved by him.

All moral activity has necessarily a permanent result in the person himself; it makes the moral his possession and property,—forms more and more his moral character, and hence creates a 177tendency to, and a readiness in, moral acting. I his moral possession, as a result of moral activity—virtue—becomes in turn itself, as an active power, a motive force to moral life, so that by his moral activity man constantly increases the actuating power of the same. Of this readiness or skill in moral acting we will have occasion to speak hereafter; we merely remark here, that by virtue of acting morally the originally as yet undetermined freedom of choice receives a determined character,—takes up into itself the morally good as such. The moral develops itself into a constantly increasing power,—renews itself on a progressively larger scale in the organic circulation of life. The good becomes to the moral man, as it were, a second nature, which, in turn, works out of itself by virtue of its own power; it is no longer simply something objective to him, nor merely a natural quality conferred upon him, but it is a vital possession, and hence an actuating power within him.

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CHAPTER V.

THE MORAL ACTIVITY.

SECTION XCVIII.

LOVE works the accomplishment of the lovingly-willed end; the moral motive and the accomplishing of the end belong, therefore, morally, inseparably together. The moral element lies neither exclusively in the motive, nor exclusively in the action; neither exclusively in the intention or end, nor exclusively in the means to the end, but in the unity of both. A good end does not sanctify the means, nor do good means sanctify the end, but a good end is accomplished morally only by good means; all end which actually can be realized by immoral means, is itself immoral.

As the moral is a free realizing of a rational end, the question naturally rises, wherein the moral element properly lies, namely, whether in the end and in the motive? or in the means to the end, that is, in the acts that lead to the realization of the end? or whether in both at the same time,—that is, whether we are to judge of an act exclusively from the intention, or exclusively from the action itself, or in fact from both together? The first of these queries has been answered affirmatively by the Jesuits—though this is not peculiar to them, but is involved more or less in all perverted moralizing, especially in that of worldly society at large; outside of the sphere of Christian earnestness there prevails every-where in fact a tendency to distinguish between the morality of the end and that of the means.

179

From the very idea of the moral it follows necessarily that the conscious end, and hence the intention, occupies with good right the chief place in determining the moral judgment, and that consequently only that action can be good which aims at a good end—one in harmony with the moral order of the world. Whatever accomplishes such an end must consequently be in harmony with the moral order of the world, and hence be itself good; when therefore the axiom: “The end sanctifies the means” is understood to mean “that the means which answer to a really good end are necessarily also good,” then it is entirely unobjectionable; it becomes false only when either the end is only seemingly good, or the means only seemingly appropriate, or where it is assumed that the means, that is, the actions, are per se morally indifferent, and receive a moral character only from the intention. As, however, all free action falls within the sphere of the moral order of the world, and as the reality that is produced by this action is either in harmony or in disharmony with this order, hence also the action, per se and irrespectively of its end, is either good or bad,—though indeed, in order to its full moral appreciation, its end also must be taken into the account. He who sets a house on fire from negligence may have had no evil intention, but he is punished nevertheless, and justly so, for his action was per se evil, and might have been avoided by him. If we suppose instead of an absolutely good end, that is, such a one as is a part of the highest good, simply particular ends, the goodness of which consists only in their subordination to the order of the whole, then the axiom: “The end sanctifies the means,” is false, in so far as the end or means do not consist with the order of the whole. He who burns down a house in order to drive the rats out of it attains indeed his end, but at the same time he destroys the super-ordinate end of the house. The question becomes difficult only when bearing upon moral action in a sinful world, in which evil, and hence the infliction of evils for punishment, for discipline and defense, has a legitimate place. But of this we can only speak further on.

Moral action, as flowing from love, may be considered from two points of view: first, in itself, according to its inner differences, that is, moral action as such; secondly, 180in relation to the different moral objects in virtue of the differences of which the moral action itself assumes a different form.

SUBDIVISION FIRST.

THE MORAL ACTIVITY PER SE IN ITS INNER DIFFERENCES.

SECTION XCIX.

As moral action always seeks to effect a harmony between the acting person and the moral object, hence it stands in relation, on the one hand, to the former as its starting-point, and, on the other, to the latter as the goal aimed at by the life-movement. This harmony can consequently be effected in a twofold manner,—either in that the object becomes for the subject, or the subject for the object, that is, either by appropriation or by formation. As, however, every entity, in so far as it is good, has a right in and of itself, hence it has such a right also as bearing upon the morally active person, so that neither the appropriating nor the forming is without some degree of limitation, but both must respect this right of the object. The two forms of moral action have therefore, as a necessary limit, a third form of moral bearing, namely, a bearing by which the moral object is preserved in its rights,—moral sparing.

This third form of the moral bearing, which, as an activity of the will, has of course a moral character, has been very largely ignored in ethics, or at least left in the back-ground, and it is even severely criticised in its defenders, and yet it is a sphere of very essential duties, duties which can be classed into other spheres only by manifest violence, and which yet consist, in fact, neither in appropriation nor in formation. 181When I check my foot in order not wantonly to crush an ant that is crossing my path, this is in fact a moral self-limitation, but it cannot be properly classed as moral forming, seeing that the end of this action is very evidently the to-be-spared animal, and not the acting person. But every moral action without exception is also a moral self-forming, a self-cultivating, without, however, that this self-culture should always appear as the end proper. Without the proper respecting of the duty of sparing, appropriation and formation would become violence. But the moral motive of all right action, namely, love, implies in its very nature also the exercising of preservative sparing; man cannot love an object, and yet not seek to preserve it in the beloved peculiarity of its being. Sparing is not of a mere negative character, a mere limiting of another action, but it is essentially different from all other action; it is of a negative character only in form but not in contents. When I do not severely reproach a person who is inwardly and deeply ashamed and humiliated because of his sin, but tenderly spare him, this is not a mere non-doing of that which I might do, not a mere limiting of my punitive activity, but it is the very opposite of this. There results here from the moral motive, that is, love, not a positive acting upon the other, but a restraining of such action; and if I thereby heap coals of fire upon the head of an enemy, and thus profit him morally, still this is not a real influential forming on my part, but a giving place for the moral self-forming of the other; my sparing procedure here is indeed mediately a forming, as, on the other hand, it is also a self-mastering; per se however, it is an action different from both. When, in the sphere of the freedom of rational creatures, God restrains his immediate action in order to preserve them in their freedom,—when God spared Cain, and, after the flood, promised henceforth to spare living creatures as a whole [Gen. iv, 15; viii, 21; ix, 11 sqq.],—this is simply a divine example of moral sparing. To spare is often more difficult morally than to appropriate or to influence, for in the latter cases the person has a lively consciousness of self, and stands forth prominently with his own rights and his enjoyment of activity; but, in sparing, it is the right of the object that stands in the foreground, and the actor must recognize and respect this 182right, and must morally overcome his personal will and his pleasure in self-assertion. Sparing is the preservative, the “conservative,” phase of the moral life, and its carrying-out presupposes greater moral maturity than the exercise of the appropriating or forming activities; for the youthful zeal of the morally immature spirit, its practice is exceedingly difficult; not to crush the bruised reed, nor to quench the smoking wick [Matt. xii, 20], is more difficult, and involves a higher moral wisdom, than to destroy or to create anew.—As the sparing procedure is logically the most immediate course of conduct, and rather a withholding than an express acting, hence it is more appropriate to treat of it first.

I. MORAL SPARING.

SECTION C.

Moral sparing is a self-limiting of personal action in the interest of the rights of the object; the latter is neither appropriated nor formed by the person, but simply let alone in its peculiar being and nature. The duty of sparing rests upon the right of every natural or spiritual and historical entity to its existence and its peculiarity, in so far as these are good, and hence upon love to the object as being good,—consequently, in the final instance, upon a pious world theory, upon love to God. The entity is spared because it bears in itself the impress of the Eternal,—is an expression of the will of God; hence sparing is moral only in so far as it relates to the good and the divine ill existence, and not to that which by virtue of its ungodly nature should be an object of moral hatred.—The higher the perfection of an object, so much the higher is also its right to moral sparing; the less the perfection, the more the object falls within the sphere of appropriation and 183formation. The highest object of moral sparing among created things is man, and whatever exists through and for him; but, above all, his moral personality itself, and hence also his honor. God himself cannot indeed be an object of moral sparing in the strict sense of the word, but lie is such, however, in the forms of his revelation in time, and in all that symbolically represents him.

An indiscriminate sparing would be simply spiritual and moral sloth or indifference, and hence immoral. The sparing of the anti-godly is a sinning against God, is the withholding of moral love. An evil existence has indeed also, in so far as any good still inheres in it, a right to be spared,—only, however, in that which it has of good. The right to be spared is not, of course, in the case of finite existences, of an unlimited and unconditional character, and in the case of nature-objects it is much more limited than with personal beings, though indeed it never sinks entirely to zero. It is true, nature is destined to service under the dominion of the rational spirit, and, in so far as it reaches this destination, man has in fact a right to pass beyond the limits of mere sparing restraint, and actively to lay hold on the very existence of nature, transforming and appropriating it. Where the right of the personal spirit is not recognized, where God is conceived of as a mere nature-entity, there pious morality manifests itself in a wide-reaching sparing of natural objects, far beyond the measure of what is required of us; so is it with the Brahmins and the Buddhists; and, especially in the case of the former, this over-delicate sparing of natural objects is associated with a cruel un-sparingness toward themselves.

As the duty of sparing rests on the right of each particular being to its own peculiarity, hence this duty as well as this right rise in scope in proportion to the degree of the individual perfection. That which is absolutely perfect bears the character of eternity and unchangeableness, and though it may indeed be spiritually appropriated, yet it cannot in any respect be formed or changed. In the process of education, the dictating influence upon the child falls into the background 184in proportion as the child grows toward moral maturity. Lifeless matter has no claim to sparing. When the Brahmin does not allow himself causelessly to crush the least earth-clod, this is simply because he regards it as the sacred body of Brahma. Plants have a better claim to be spared than inorganic objects, and the more so the higher their organization, and especially as they stand in a closer relation to man; to injure fruit-trees and other edible vegetation, without cause, is regarded as sinful even by uncultured tribes. The more an object enters into the sphere of man’s spiritual life, the more it bears the impress of the spirit, constituting, as it were, a sort of larger corporeality for man, so much the higher is its claim upon sparing. This is especially the case with the human body itself, as the organ of the spirit, as a “temple of the Holy Ghost;” in the next rank stand all such natural objects as hold a relation to the spiritual life, and which are mementos of important events and of spiritual effort in general,—every thing, in fine, that has been actually produced by the human spirit, and the more so in proportion as it is of a spiritualized character,—and hence, especially, all products of industry and art. But the highest right to sparing is possessed by the personal spirit itself in its personal peculiarity; to assail the honor of another is to wound his moral being; the higher the moral culture and maturity of a person, the higher is also his right to moral sparing; by sin this right is necessarily largely forfeited.

While the heathen idol falls, of course, within the sphere of human sparing, the eternal and almighty God stands beyond the scope of this activity. Nevertheless there are sacred duties which express, in a certain sense, a sparing of the divine; the name of God and his honor are to be held sacred; and whatever is a symbol of the divine, or is a reminder of God’s presence, has an especial claim to moral sparing; even uncultured tribes practice a reverential sparing in regard to all that is sacred or stands in relation to the divine in contradistinction to the worldly and the profane. From the simple fact of the sparing of whatever stands in real, or even in symbolical, relation to God, it is very evident, of how great significancy is piety for morality. The pious mind finds God’s being and providence in all things and in all life, and whatever 185is not hostile to God is, for it, sacred and an object of pious sparing. The higher the piety of the person, so much the higher becomes the worth, and hence also the right, of all existence, in so far as this existence is good. He who is impious has no reverence for created things,—no tenderness toward them. Not to spare that which has a right to sparing, is moral rudeness. The immoral and the impious are uniformly rude and coarse; they have indeed fear but no awe.

Sparing is, as a non-doing, only then moral when it is a conscious and freely-willed withholding of a real out-going action, that is, when it is an inner activity, a moral self-controlling out of respect for another’s right, and when it is in real harmony with moral forming and appropriating, so as not in any manner to interfere therewith,—that is, when it is the virtualizing of the real rights of the moral object. The formable or cultivable object has, however, just as good a right to be formed as it has to be spared. In so far as sparing is a mere non-influencing of the objective entity, it is not yet moral, and may even also be evil. The spiritually indolent declines even this form of activity, not, however, from love to the object, but from mere selfishness. Only that sparing is morally good which rests on love to the object, and which therefore implies a conscious self-limitation and self-controlling, and which is, consequently, only in outer form, but not in inner essence, a mere non-doing; mere non-doing would be per se sinful, inasmuch as the moral life must always be active, and it is only the seeming non-doing which, however, is an inner-doing, that can be moral. True moral sparing is, in relation to beings that are. formable and in need of formation, uniformly also a formative influence, namely, in that it gives proper play for legitimate self-forming on the part of the object. A tyrannical education that extends its tutorial dictation into all the minute details, produces not a moral character but only servile-mindedness. All right education must also practice, in the interest of the training of moral freedom, a wise sparing,—must allow the child the possibility of determining itself independently, and of thereby maturing itself toward moral freedom. As the sparing of a growing plant is at the same time also a furthering of it, so also, and even in a higher degree, is this true of sparing as exercised toward rational 186beings; the pardoning of an offense exercises frequently a very fruitful influence on the moral development of him who is pardoned.

II. MORAL APPROPRIATING.

SECTION CI.

In the appropriating activity man effects his unity with the objective entity, by taking it up into himself,—by uniting it with himself, by making it an element of his own nature. This moral activity differs both in regard to what element of the object is appropriated by the actor, and in regard to how this takes place.

(a) According to what element of the object is appropriated, the appropriating is either natural or spiritual; the latter is the more comprehensive, and extends itself to all objective existence,—also to God.—Natural appropriation relates as well to the existence and preservation of the individual person as to the existence and preservation of the species, and is the necessary condition of both. In both respects, therefore, man is bound to nature and stimulated by natural instinct, and although in this respect he is freer than the brute, and all the freer the higher his personality is developed, nevertheless in respect to the preservation of the existence of the subject, this freedom is still always of a limited character, and the law of nature is, in many respects, stronger than the will, though, however, not so potent as to force the will to the immoral.

All natural existence is at the same time also of spiritual significance,—is a realized thought, the expression of an idea. But as, on the other hand, not every spiritual entity is connected 187with a natural one, hence spiritual appropriating is of greater compass and higher significancy than the merely natural. The higher moral worth of the former appears also from this, that it preserves the objective existence in its reality, whereas natural appropriation more or less destroys it. With the increase of moral and spiritual growth, natural appropriation constantly gives place more and more to the spiritual; with the child the former predominates; but what is normal in the child becomes immoral in mature age.

In natural appropriation there is manifested a real and normal limitation of free self-determination. When hunger predominates, the spiritual forces subside, and at last it becomes even mightier than the free determinations of the will. Nevertheless this power of nature over the will is neither unlimited nor absolutely definitive, but the moral will is capable of asserting its autonomy against it. It may indeed enfeeble the bodily force and therewith also the spiritual, but it cannot absolutely determine the will. Christ cried out indeed on the cross: “I thirst;” but when hungering in the desert he resisted the temptation. The fact that from grief or despair persons have starved themselves to death, proves at least that the will is capable of being stronger than nature, even under its most overpowering phases. He who in the last desperation of famine lays hold on human life to satiate his hunger [Lev. xxvi, 29] commits a crime even in the eyes of human law, and the violence of hunger forms no excuse. That also in this respect a great difference is to be made between man as unfallen and man as enslaved to sin, we have already observed.

SECTION CII.

Natural appropriating per se is not yet a moral activity, but it is extra-moral, and therefore when it appears in and of itself as the substance and chief-end of life, it is immoral. It becomes morally good only when it is the expression of an under-lying spiritual appropriating, that is, when it does not rest on mere sensuous impulse, but on conscious love, not so much to the sensuous object per se as rather to God who 188lovingly gives it to us. This implies further that, with a moral person, the natural appropriating should never predominate over the spiritual,—that not the attendant sensuous enjoyment per se should be regarded as the essential and proper object of effort, but rather the rational God-willed end of the sensuous, so that consequently the sensuous enjoyment should be aimed at only in so far as the moral purpose admits of it.

There is per se forbidden to man, irrespective of his sinfulness, no natural temperate sensuous appropriating; this is plainly seen in the account of Paradise and in the example and deed of Christ at the wedding of Cana. Thankfulness to God sanctifies even the sensuous appropriation of his gifts [1 Tim. iv, 3-5]. The Christian custom of saying grace at meals, after the example of Christ [Matt. xiv, 19; xv, 36], which prevailed also generally in the ancient church [Acts xxvii, 35; Tert. Apol., 39], has a high moral significancy; it rescues the natural enjoyment from the stage of mere sensuousness,—elevates it into the sphere of the moral. As even in the opinion of worldly society the significancy of social repasts consists not in the sensuous enjoyment, but in the intellectual entertainment and interchange of sentiment, so according to Christian morals the significancy of all sensuous appropriation consists in its relation to God,—in the appropriating of the divine in and through the bread and wine of daily food. “Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God” [1 Cor. x, 30, 31]. But man does not give God the glory when he forgets Him and finds pleasure merely in the sensuous. God neither forbids nor begrudges to man the enjoyment of the sensuous, but he forbids a beastly merging of one’s self into it. He who forgets the Giver in the gift sinks below the sphere of the moral and even of the human. The world at large is not fond of grace-saying, and yet even the heathen made his libations to the gods at his repasts. Even Schleiermacher (Christl. Sitte, Beil., p. 33) found in the just-cited words of Paul simply an assumption of the animal element—food-taking189—“into the sphere of social pleasure,” “in order to chasten mere sensuous desire,” and he is unable to discover any significancy in the saying of grace.

The observing of moderation in natural appropriation, the regarding it as a mere means to the rational end of preserving the individual as well as the species, is not merely a moral preserving of the person but also of the object,—is a doing of justice toward the object. He who is temperate simply, e. g., in order not to injure his health, is not yet moral, but only self-seeking. Appropriation finds its measure in the moral duty of sparing. All natural appropriating is more or less a destroying of the objective entity; and, as the latter has per se a right to sparing, it follows that the limit of appropriation is not a merely subjective one. The nightingale-tongue pies of the Roman epicures are not mentioned with detestation simply because they are a mere immoderation, but because they involved an injustice against the right of nature to be spared. And many modern table-luxuries are not of a much more innocent character.

In sexual appropriation the moral is conditioned not merely, as in the use of natural objects, on thankful love to God as the giver, but—inasmuch as the object appropriated is itself a moral personality—also on personal love to the same. Without this love the person of the object would be treated as a mere impersonality, as a mere nature-object, and its validity as a personal moral spirit ignored. Upon this moral recognition of the personality Scripture lays great emphasis. “Adam knew Eve, his wife;” the same expression (יָדַע) is very frequently used of wedlock communion, also on the part of the woman [Gen. xix, 8; Num. xxxi, 17]. This is usually explained as a mere euphemism, but it is in fact the appropriate expression to the essence of the matter. The persons mutually recognize each other as personalities bound to each other in full reciprocal possession,—recognize, each, himself in the other and the other in himself—recognize the complete belonging of each to the other in virtue of a mutual love which precludes every thing that is strange or disuniting, so that consequently the two constitute truly one soul and one flesh. The expression to “know,” to recognize, refers therefore primarily solely to legitimate wedlock cohabitation, 190and was applied only subsequently and improperly also to sinful.

Sexual appropriation also is in part a destruction, a despoiling of the person, which finds a compensation only in the fact that the one person belongs to the other as an inalienable possession—that both persons are united to an indissoluble life in common. Hence the commerce of the sexes without marriage is self-profanation; and virginity is esteemed among all, not absolutely barbarous nations as an inviolable treasure to which only that one has a right who is united in his whole personality to the person of the virgin. And even within the limits of marriage each party has a right to sparing, and should not be degraded into a mere object of sensuous pleasure; also here there is a measure that is conditioned on the end, and the transgressing of which is a dishonoring, a degrading. of the consort.

SECTION CIII.

2.—Spiritual appropriation relates to all objective existence, nature included, and takes up the spiritual contents thereof into the being of the self-conscious subject,—makes it its personal possession. The moral subject enlarges thus its own spiritual being,—receives the universe as well as God into itself,—forms for itself an inner world which, as a copy of the real world, realizes under its subjective phase the moral end, namely, the effecting of the harmony of existence.

In spiritual appropriation, as the far richer field of this activity, the appropriated object is in no wise destroyed, but on the contrary preserved, nay, brought to its higher truth, namely, in that its spiritual contents not only exist per se, but also exist for the spirit, and have now in the spirit a continued existence even after the object itself outwardly perishes. That which has become a part of history and science has thereby attained to imperishableness. That which externally perishes, the natural existence, is the inferior, the less essential; that which is capable of becoming a possession of the 191immortal spirit is, in fact, the higher,—the essence, the idea, the spiritual contents of existence. In virtue of their spiritual contents even natural objects receive a sort of immortality by being appropriated by the rational spirit; in a still higher degree is this true of the facts of history. Spiritual appropriation is related to natural appropriation as the spirit to the body; the latter must therefore always be subordinate to the former,—must absolutely serve it.—As all nature is created not only by spirit but also for spirit, and as whatever is spiritually created is likewise for the spirit, hence it is but justice to both natural and historical existence,—but a simple right of the same upon the rational spirit,—that it be appropriated by the latter, and it is a perfectly moral requirement that spiritual appropriating be made an essential part of the moral activity. Only savages know nothing of history, of the permanent preservation of the transitory. The preservation of that which belongs to the spirit, that which has been appropriated by it, is the earliest evidence of the spiritual, the historical character of a people,—of human culture. The most ancient historical nations of heathendom, the Chinese and the Egyptians, place their chief interest in the preserving of transpired events; the Egyptians sought to rescue from perishing even the bodies of men, as the tabernacles of the spirit,—sought to appropriate them to history. The art of writing has as its original purpose, not mutual personal intercourse, but history,—was committed not to perishable leaves but to the rock; and also the most ancient products of architectural skill were consecrated, not to purposes of dwellings, but to purposes of history.

SECTION CIV.

(b) The difference of spiritual appropriation in respect to how it takes place, appears, on the one hand, in this, that the appropriating person is active as a rational spirit in general,—as at one with all other rational spirits, and hence in such a manner as that the appropriation might be made in like manner by any other spirit,—general appropriation; and, on the other, in this, that the person is active as a single 192personality for himself,—appropriates the object to himself as an individual, makes it his exclusive possession,—particular appropriation.—(1) General (universal) appropriation is cognizing or learning. The object is indeed received by the individual spirit and into it, not, however, as its exclusive possession; on the contrary, in this receiving, the person divests himself at the same time of his isolated character,—has the appropriated not as a mere particular possession for himself, but as a possession of the rational spirit in general,—as universally-valid. The so appropriated spiritual possession is truth; now truth has the destination and tendency to become a common possession. Learning or cognizing is therefore moral: (a) in that it seeks to appropriate to itself the real spiritual contents of existence, that is, seeks after truth; (b) in that it makes of truth, not a personal isolated enjoyment, but strives to communicate it to others.

All learning is spiritual appropriating, but not all spiritual appropriating is general; we here consider spiritual appropriation under another phase than in the preceding section. Where the love of sensuous enjoyment prevails to a sinful extent, there the love of truth declines. The desire of knowledge is a characteristic of the moral spirit. Man, as called to dominion over nature, is also called to the spiritual appropriating of the same, and of all existence. The striving after truth is a seal of man’s God-likeness. Even as to God every thing is open, and all truth is known, so also is man only then truly a spirit when he strives after truth and seeks cognoscitively to appropriate to himself all things. This is a legitimate striving after possession,—after the possession of an inner world, a true copy of the real one; and it is among the most essential sources of the bliss of the perfected, that they know the truth and constantly appropriate to themselves cognoscitively more of it. The acquiring of the truth is a becoming 193free from the limits of a merely individual existence,—a divesting ourselves of the mere state of nature, an assuming of a more general character, an entering into the life and essence of the self-concordant All, an appropriating of the objective outgoings of spirit in general. “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free,” says Christ to such as shall continue in his word [John viii, 32]. Even as light breaks down the isolation of individual being, and throws up a bridge to that which is outwardly separated from it, thus causing all separate objects to exist in some sort for each other, so the knowledge of truth frees man from the bonds of a merely isolated being, opens for him the totality of existence as his life-sphere,—throws a unifying bond around deity and the totality of his creatures. As no life of the earth is without light, so also is there no life of the spirit without the knowledge of truth; and it is not this or that truth that makes man free, rational, and blessed, but the truth; and the Spirit of the Lord strives to lead his disciples into all truth. Whoever seeks to set limits to the moral thirst for truth, whoever declares any truth as indifferent or unworthy of effort, he resists the outgoings of the spirit of truth. Moreover, there is no particular truth which stands isolated and for itself, and does not first receive its validity from the truth which springs from the eternal Spirit of God; and he who thinks to satisfy the thirst of the soul for truth with certain separate morsels of truths from the sphere of the finite and transitory, knows not the truth but only falsehood.

All true knowing is of such a nature that every other rational spirit can and must know in precisely the same manner, and hence has a significance beyond the possession of the individual,—is general appropriation. Hence, as moral, it is also directly connected with a tendency to make that which is appropriated by the individual person a general possession of all rational beings. The moral man cannot wish to retain the truth for himself alone, but the truth which has become his possession impels him, by virtue of its general character, freely to communicate it to others [Luke ii, 17; 1 John i, 1 sqq.]. The duty of secret-keeping has a validity and significancy only on the supposition of predominant sinfulness,—is inconceivable save on the presupposition of sin; and the weakness 194of being unable to keep a secret springs, in some sort at least, from a correct feeling of that which ought to be. Goodhearted persons are usually poor secret-keepers; and for innocence there is no secret. The truth, like light, cannot hide itself; it is only with designing effort that either can be concealed. Truth, morally considered, belongs not to the mere understanding but to the heart; and with that of which the heart is full, the mouth overflows [Luke vi, 45]. He to whom the truth belongs, belongs also himself to the truth,—must also bear witness of the truth. “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard,” said Peter and John in the presence of the chief council [Acts iv, 20], and they only express the inner moral necessity of such a witnessing of obtained truth. Whoever feels nothing of such an inner impulsion to witnessing either possesses not the truth, or the truth possesses not him. With the witnessing of the truth it is in some sense as it is with the first ante-moral love; the person may indeed resist the inner impulse, but if he does not do so then his immediate love of the truth will spontaneously induce him to witness for it without any need of a special effort of the will. “Ye also will bear witness (as well as the Holy Ghost), because ye have been with me from the beginning,” says the Lord to his disciples [John xv, 27]; this is not an injunction but a promise; they will not be able to do otherwise; the truth is stronger than the command. Hence he who is of the truth needs no longer the law; for the truth impels him to bear witness of itself through his life.

SECTION CV.

(2). Particular (individual) appropriating is enjoying. Here the object exists solely for me in so far as I am an individual being,—becomes my special possession. In enjoyment I do not, as in cognizing, have the object purely as such, but I have it as it stands in accord with my peculiarity, as it has become an element of my own being. In enjoyment I have, therefore, always also myself as in some way affected by the object; hence the sphere of enjoyment is essentially 195feeling, namely, the feeling of pleasure. Enjoyment is either sensuous or spiritual; the former is never moral per se, but only with and in the latter.—As the personal spirit has an independent right, in and of itself, and as true enjoyment rests on love to the object, and consequently is a virtualization of this love, hence enjoyment is also a moral right, and therefore also relatively a duty. The morality of enjoyment consists primarily in a conscious and complete subordinating of merely sensuous enjoyment to spiritual; and furthermore in the fact that it be always a pure expression of moral love, and hence also of thankfulness, and that it rest on joy in God,—that it stand in proper harmony with the formative activity; and also in the fact that, by virtue of the agreeable feeling manifested in it, it awake also communicative love, namely, the tendency to extend the enjoyment to others.—The highest enjoyment consists in the consciousness of the filial relation to God, that is, in the perfect appropriation of life-communion with God; and in fact to the child of God, only that is a real enjoyment, in which also God has pleasure. In association with this enjoyment of the filial relation to God, every other enjoyment is sanctified.

In learning, or cognizing, I throw into the back-ground my isolated individuality,—let the truth, as general, rule over me; my mere isolated being has no validity; in enjoying, on the contrary, I come with my separate individuality into the fore-ground; the object per se has no validity; in learning I have myself only as a member of the whole, but in enjoying I have myself as an individuality distinct from the whole. Hence enjoyment, as of such and such a form, is not communicable; de gustibus non est disputandum. Whatever one rational person cognizes as true, that must be cognized by all as true; but that which is an enjoyment for one is not necessarily 196such for another. All enjoyment is love, and the highest earthly love is conjugal and maternal love; but this love which is at the same time the highest earthly enjoyment, belongs to this or that particular person,—is by no means personally-communicable; a child can be loved by no one else as it is by its mother. As knowledge naturally impels to communication, so enjoyment, on the contrary, impels rather to isolation; the pleasure-seeker would fain have every thing for himself; if he seeks society, it is only in so far as society becomes to him an object of enjoyment. Enjoyment readily gives rise to jealousy, whereas knowledge tends to a liberal imparting of the acquired truth; even maternal love knows jealousy.

Christian morality begrudges not enjoyment to man, not even the sensuous, for “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” [1 Cor. x, 6; Psa. xxiv, 1; comp. Gen. ii, 9]. The pious reference of all enjoyment to God as the Giver of all good, and thankful love to him, render even sensuous enjoyment moral, in so far as it is sought in the divinely-ordained manner,—spiritualize it, in fact, by the heart-disposition of the subject, and place the joy proper in the spiritual associations of the sensuous. So soon as sensuous enjoyment is sought purely for itself, apart from the spiritual and from love to God, it becomes at once immoral, seeing that it then interrupts (§ 102) the spiritual life, which by its very nature is continuous; of the relation of enjoyment to forming, we will speak hereafter.

The communication of enjoyment,—a constituent element of its morality,—springs not from the essence of the same, but from love to man in general. It can only take place in so far as thereby the essence of the enjoyment is not affected; the enjoyment that lies in the family-life can never be made a common possession; and the fact that in the case of a few rude tribes, hospitality is extended to a communicating even of marital rights,¹²¹²Tertull.: Apolog., c. 39; Wuttke: Gesch. d. Heident., i, p. 177. is evidence simply of a perversion of the moral. Manifestly, however, wedlock-happiness and that of the family in general require, in order to their being moral, that they be communicated to others, not, however, as a direct enjoyment, but through hospitality,—through the throwing open of the family to friendly intercourse, through the permitting 197of others to share in the inner peace of the domestic life. Hence there is not lacking a moral back-ground for the custom of reserving the higher sensuous enjoyment of repasts for hospitable occasions, in which the spiritual intercourse, and hence spiritual enjoyment, occupies the fore-ground, while the sensuous enjoyment appears only as an attendant in the back-ground. The idea of Paradise is the epitome of the entire circle of true enjoyments,—it is not a mere crude or childish fancy-creation, but the very truth itself. Christian morality is not averse to enjoyment; it favors man’s taking delight in this world of reality. But Paradise exists only where man is in filial communion with the divine Father,—where love to God sanctifies all earthly enjoyment. “The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy, in the Holy Ghost” [Rom. xiv, 17]. Christianity knows no other joy than joy in the Lord; “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice” [Phil. iv, 4]. He who rejoices in the Lord, takes true delight in all that comes from the Lord [Deut. xxvi, 11]. To man as sinful many enjoyments are forbidden, because he is able to enjoy them only sinfully; to the pure the sphere of morally-pure enjoyment is much wider and richer [Titus i, 15]. The child of God has enjoyment in every thing, and every thing is to him a moral enjoyment, save alone the violation of God’s law; to him the world is a paradise, for it is God’s, as is also himself; and he loves not the world without God, but only in God and with God. The blessedness of the children of God, the unspeakable enjoyment of true heart-devotion in fervent prayer, in which man knows himself at one with his God, and rests in the peace of God, is not a subject for scientific synthesis and analytical description; it belongs to the sphere of the inner life, and needs to be experienced rather than described; the world knows nothing thereof.

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III. MORAL FORMING.

SECTION CVI.

Moral forming works the harmony of existence, in that thereby man impresses upon objective existence the peculiarity of his own spirit,—makes it an expression thereof, that is, spiritually shapes it. The object is destroyed not in its existence, but only in its isolation and peculiarity,—receives the peculiarity of the acting spirit, is imbued with, and thus bound to, it. Forming is morally good not when it is an impressing of the merely individual and as yet not morally-rational spirit upon the object (for this would be injustice to the object, a non-sparing of its legitimate being), but when it is an impressing of the spirit as moral, as rational and as in harmony with God, that is, when the object itself is formed toward a complete harmony with the morally-rational collective spirit. Moral forming must therefore always be associated with moral sparing, and all the more so the higher the spiritual significance and worth of the object that is to be formed. As related to the moral spirit, therefore, all moral forming is an educating, which latter is never an absolutely all-determining forming, but a forming that respects the rights of the personality that is to be formed.

The outward-going formative activity can neither be arbitrary and purposeless, nor a mere destroying of that which exists, but must have a rational end and a right of its own. In view of the wants of the moral activity, therefore, created existence cannot be, primarily, at once and definitively completed and perfected, though indeed it is good, but it stands in the presence of the activity of the rational spirit as formable material to which man, as active, has a right, and the final completion of 199which is an end for human activity. It is only through forming that man makes the objective world his own, namely, in that he impresses upon it his stamp, and makes it by moral activity into a likeness of himself, and therefore into his own possession. “Do your own business (πράσσειν τὰ ἴδια) and work with your own hands” [1 Thess. iv, 11]; man really possesses nothing as his own but that which he has produced by working and forming; and it is not a curse but an original moral law of the universe, that the true existence of man, bodily as well as spiritually-moral, is conditioned on formative working, on labor. Even the first man was not placed in Paradise simply to enjoy its delights, simply to appropriate to himself, naturally and spiritually, that which already existed, but he was to cultivate the garden [Gen. ii, 15]. Man is called to dominion over nature, to be a creator of a spiritual World; this is both a wide and also a privileging and obligating field for the moral. The play of the child is a forming; that of the brute has no objective significancy; and wherever by virtue of an instinct, the brute exercises a formative activity, there we are simply presented with a natural symbol of the moral, as in the case of the bee, the ant, etc.

Forming, as compared to sparing and appropriating, appears at once as the higher, and generally more difficult, form of activity; sparing is a mere checking of the outward-going activity; appropriating, according to its kind, either annihilates the objective existence, or leaves its substance untouched; but forming interferes positively with the existence and peculiarity of the object. There is need here, on the one hand, of a considerate respecting of the right of the object to its own peculiarity, so that the forming may not become an unjust perverting and destroying, and, on the other hand, of a proper and clear consciousness of the rational purpose of the transforming. Appropriating begins earlier in the spiritual development of man than forming; the latter always presupposes some degree of moral maturity; forming as exercised by an immature spirit is a destroying. The formative activity of the child appears as a rending-asunder of whatever falls into its hand; the historical activity of savage or half-civilized tribes, bears also this childish character. Unripe youth have also, as relating to society and the state and to historical reality 200in general, great pleasure in destruction; and the revolutionary spirit of boisterous young men is only a higher degree of the destructive proclivity of the child; but on the supposition of the attainment of higher spiritual maturity, that which is innocent in the child becomes a culpable lack of judgment. Moral forming must necessarily always have also a preserving phase, inasmuch as in all that which is to be formed there is also something that has a right to existence, and hence a claim upon sparing; and an education which ignores this right in the pupil, is violent and therefore immoral.

SECTION CVII.

Moral forming differs likewise in two respects. (a) According to that which is formed in the object, it is either a sensuously-natural or a spiritual forming.—1. Natural forming is a shaping of nature-material for the human spirit by virtue of the mastery of the spirit over nature, to the end either of practical utility or of a manifesting of spirit in art-work. Nature, as created, is indeed per se good and perfect, but it becomes a true home for, a true organ of, the spirit and of history, only by becoming imbued with spirit. Natural forming is moral and rational only in so far as it is the sensuous expressing of a spiritual forming.

All dominating is necessarily a forming, inasmuch as the dominated is more or less an expression of the will of the dominating power. A natural entity can bear this expression only in virtue of being shaped by man and at the same time for man. In natural forming the difference between man, as a moral creature, and the brute, becomes at once plainly visible. The activity of the brute is predominantly a sensuous appropriating; that of man is predominantly a forming, and indeed primarily a sensuously-natural forming. The appropriating of nature is primarily permitted by God to man, and is limited by a prohibition only in one respect; the forming of nature is enjoined upon him [Gen. i, 28; ii, 15]. The mere letting 201alone of even a Paradisaical nature in its given condition, is for man per se immoral; he is called to form it into a home for himself by his personal activity.—But man cannot morally accomplish a natural forming save on the condition that there exists already in him an antecedent moral forming. The artist cannot create a work of art unless it has already been spiritually formed in his soul; and each and every object that is shaped, is to be, in its entire purpose, not a mere solitary something existing for itself, but rather one of the stones of a greater and essentially-spiritual structure,—the structure of history. Man shapes nature not for its own sake but for humanity, namely, into a home for man’s spiritual life, into an expression of historical reality,—which is essentially the product of spiritual forming. Hence natural forming has always the purpose simply of serving the spiritual, even as the nourishment and development of the body take place not in the interest of the body, but of the spirit.

SECTION CVIII.

Spiritual forming relates to the spiritual essence of the object, and hence predominantly to the conscious spirit; it is a communicating of the spiritual possession of the subject to the object, a shaping of the object according to the rational idea of the subject, a putting of the former into harmony with the moral person of the latter. Each man has the duty of helping spiritually to form every other one who comes into spiritual relation with him, that is, of communicating to him his own moral nature, of revealing himself to him; this holds good even of the as yet morally immature in relation to the morally mature. All morally-spiritual communicating is a forming, and all spiritual forming is a communicating. Communicating is, however, only then a moral forming, when the communicating spirit itself stands in harmony with God, is itself morally good, and when its motive is love.

202

Also spiritual forming extends in a certain sense to nature-objects, in so far as these are not a mere sensuous existence, but have also spiritual contents. The training and ennobling of domestic animals is not a sensuous but a relatively-spiritual forming, inasmuch as their inner nature is raised to a higher plane. The chief sphere of spiritual forming is, however, the personal spirit. Man has neither the right nor the liberty to develop himself as a mere isolated individual,—he cannot develop himself morally save when in spiritual life-relation with the moral community; and each stands with every other in such a moral relation. And this relation is a mutual forming and appropriating, at the same time. Man is formed only by appropriating to himself spiritual elements, that is, in that another spirit reveals itself to him. Forming cannot take place morally by the imbuing of thoughts and sentiments that are foreign to the subject himself into the spirit that is to be educated, for this would be deception, and would not establish a spiritual communion; it can be done only by a self-revelation of the moral spirit. Only the morally-formed spirit can itself form; the immoral spirit can only pervert, and can do this successfully only when it affects morality. However, it is not necessary that the formative spirit should be already mature; also the child exerts a formative influence upon its elders.—In the condition of sinlessness the formative activity has no need of art or of a calculated plan; mere self-manifestation exercises a formative influence directly and of itself. All artfully-planned manners of influencing are evidence of lost purity, and cannot, however cunningly contrived, exert the power of the moral reality. The moral spirit lets its light shine before men that they may see its good works, and this light directly illumines and enlightens the spirit of others. This self-revelation, however, would be immoral, that is, hollow and empty, were it to spring from self-complacency instead of from love to others. It is love alone that divests this letting one’s light shine of an appearance of parade. Loving souls hide themselves not from each other; true love impels to a full and genuine self-communication; and moral love has nothing that it would gladly or necessarily conceal.

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SECTION CIX.

(b) According to the manner in which the objective entity is formatively influenced, we have to distinguish between particular and general forming.

1. Particular forming forms single objects for the service of the earthly wants of single or several persons, that is, for use for temporal ends. It is therefore labor, in the proper and narrower sense of the word. Labor relates not merely to natural matter, but also to the individual spirit, in so far as the latter is to be formed for the temporal earthly life, and hence is spiritual as well as natural forming.

All utility relates to the particular; that which is for the common utility is simply that which is useful for many particular persons. When the Rationalistic school spoke of the “common utility” of religion, it manifested simply very bad taste; religion is thus placed on a par, e. g., with a public fountain or an advertising sheet. Labor concerns the individual; works for the common utility, such as roads or canals, look not to the good of humanity as a whole, as a unity, but to the many individual persons whom they are to benefit; for him who does not use them, they have no significancy and are perhaps even offensive. Their utility and enjoyment fall to the individual as such, but not in virtue of his being a man, a rational spirit. In a work of art, however, one has pleasure precisely in his character of rational spirituality; although from another stand-point this work is of no “use” to him whatever. That which is to exalt the heart must be more than labor. Products of labor may indeed excite a general and rational interest, as, for example, a machine or other superior fruits of skill; here, however, it is not the work itself that is admired, but the art to which the handicraft has been exalted,—the spiritual power of invention, that is, the power of spirit,—not the utility, but the beauty or ingenuity,—not the merely individual element, but the spiritual, which, as such, bears upon itself the stamp of general significancy 204and validity. The actual work on a machine is performed not by the ingenious inventor, the master, but by the manual laborer; and in that which this laborer executes there is little else to admire than the industry, but nothing of a general interest. The end of a work of art is not, to be used by the individual, but to be enjoyed and admired universally; and it is properly regarded as a sign of spiritual unculture when a particular age takes delight only in the merely useful, in mere labor, and not also in that which transcends labor, namely, in art,—when the age does not also exalt labor into art. In the time of Rationalistic illuminism many “useless” art-structures of the Middle Ages, magnificent castles and churches, were converted into magazines and factories,—art was turned into a hand-maid of labor; this was certainly very “useful,” but it was at the same time also an evidence of shameful unculture. The spirit of mere utility is but little removed from barbarism.

Labor is not mere manual toil. Common usage is perfectly right when it speaks also, and not merely in the stricter sense of the word, of spiritual, intellectual, labor, and of intellectual laborers, in distinction from a higher spiritual and intellectual activity. The highest results to which the spirit can attain are not effected by labor; the delicate, etherial image which delights our astonished gaze was not painfully wrought out by the sweat of the multitude, but sprang forth at once from the brain of genius; but, as distinguished from this ideal activity of the spirit, there is another which is entitled to be called work in the strict sense of the word, and which consists in a strictly-particular forming. All spiritual activity which looks to the mere benefit of individuals is labor; thus, we speak of the labor of pupils, of official labors, etc. The pupil labors in order, by the appropriation of particular scientific material, to form himself as an individual for a calling in life; the teacher labors upon the pupil for the same end. All spiritual forming which looks to success in the world, to obtaining a position in it, is labor; hence also we may speak of a scientific industry; there is an immense difference between science as manual labor, and science as an art. When the learner, however, elevates himself to a more ideal activity,—when, inspired with enthusiasm for the true 205and the good, he soars above the merely particular, or when the teacher seeks to awaken an enthusiasm of this character in him, then the activity ceases to be labor and becomes a higher kind of forming. It is true, we sometimes speak, though in a less strict sense, of a laboring in the sphere of purely spiritual things, as, for example, in that of religion and of active love [Rom. xvi, 6, 12; 1 Thess. i, 3; Heb. vi, 10; 1 Cor. xv, 58; 2 Cor. vi, 5; xi, 27; Rev. ii, 2, 3; xiv, 13]; Paul says, “I labored more abundantly than they all” [1 Cor. xv, 10], and the pastor and the messenger of the Word may speak of their labor on souls [1 Cor. xvi, 16; 2 Cor. x, 15; xi, 23; 1 Thess. iii, 5; v, 12; 1 Tim. v, 17]; however, in this essentially figuratively-used expression [see John iv, 38; 1 Cor. iii, 8] reference is had not to the activity per se, but to the trouble in overcoming obstacles (hence the words κόπος and κοπιά) which lie not in the matter itself, but in other circumstances, such as the enmity of sinful men, the feebleness of the actor himself, etc.

SECTION CX.

2. General forming forms the object for a general, that is, a rational end,—not merely for a particular need, for temporal utility. but for the rational and moral spirit in general,—forms it for rational enjoyment, for moral approbation, i. e. into a beautiful and good product,—is artistic forming, in the largest sense of the word. It may be a sensuous as well as a spiritual forming. The natural entity receives a spiritual form,—becomes an expression, an image, of the rational spirit, an expression of harmony in general,—a work of art. The spiritual entity is formed into an essentially God-answering, truly rational character, into a beautiful soul, into a child of God. Religious and ideal culture in general differs essentially from education for a worldly calling,—aims not to make man into a “useful” and serviceable being, but into one in whom both God and men have pleasure, 206and who has himself pleasure in God and in all that is divine and beautiful,—seeks not to mold him into a merely isolated being, a mere citizen, a mere professional man, but seeks to bring to development that which is purely and truly human in him,—seeks to make the merely natural person into an image of the moral spirit, into a true image of God, into an expression of the truth. All that which is created by general forming is art-work; and when this forming, as distinguished from professional working, creates a science, then this science becomes itself a work of art. Hence, no general forming is possible without moral enthusiasm, that is, without being imbued with and prompted by a universal spirit which divests itself of all individual narrowness, and of all selfishness, and aspires to a universal divine ideal (§ 96).—A special phase of general forming constitutes the typical or symbolical activity, under which falls also the morally becoming.

The fruit which is aimed at in mere work is only for the benefit of the individual; works of art, and the beautiful and good in general, are for the spiritual enjoyment of rational man as such. Also the angels must rejoice in heaven, not only over a sinner who repents, but also over all that is truly beautiful. Man forms himself into a useful, a skillful, a learned member of society by labor and pains-taking, but into a beautiful soul only by enthusiasm; this is indeed not the beautiful soul as improvised by sentimental novelists, but the soul that is beautiful in the eyes of God and of all of God’s children,—the child-soul of a child of God, full of love and enthusiasm,—the soul of him who is pure of heart, and which inwardly beholds God, because God looks upon it with pleasure. Hence the Scriptures look upon the higher artistic endowment as a special gift from God [Exod. xxxi, 3, 6; xxxvi, 1, 2].

Art in its deepest ground and essence is religious, as in fact 207historically it is a birth of religion; this holds good. without exception of all nations. No religion is without art, without an ideal embodying of the highest ideas. Architecture, plastic art and song, among all nations, have sprung from religion, and are the subservient attendants of religion [Exod. xxxi, 2 sqq.; xxxv, 1 sqq.]; and it required all the ungenial one-sidedness and bald reflective tendency of Zwingli to banish art from the Church,—a wrong against Christian humanity which has, at least in some degree, been disavowed in most of the branches of the Reformed Church. Even worldly art, in so far as it has not, untrue to its essential nature, entered into the service of sin, is closely related to religion. It also elevates man above the merely individual and sensuously-natural; and, itself a birth of enthusiasm, it awakens also in man enthusiasm for the beautiful and the noble,—for that which raises him out of his isolation and self-seeking, and up to that which finds response in all moral souls. Love to art banishes rudeness,—makes the heart receptive also for the morally beautiful and divine. Hence the culture of art is so important an element in education and in the life of nations. But for this reason also art becomes such a demon-power, when, forgetting its nobility, it stoops to the role of pandering to corrupt pleasure, and when, instead of inspiring enthusiasm for the truly beautiful, it only aims to intoxicate and seduce by lustful appeals to the senses. Wherever there is a healthful religious life, there art and religion stand in intimate and mutual relations. Where faith is alive in the heart, there it utters itself in “psalms and spiritual songs,” there it celebrates the glory of its God in a becoming ornamentation of his altars and courts [Exod. xxxv, 21 sqq.], and wherever true art prevails there it consecrates the most beautiful of its products to the honor of God. Religion created for the Greeks poets and artists, and the poets and artists created for the Greeks their gods; and however much there may have been of heathen error in these creations, still this much at least is here exemplified, namely, that the divine makes its nearest approaches to man in the words, the songs and the works of artistic inspiration. The prophets of the Ancient Covenant were also unable to bring down to the plane of mere simple prose, the visions which they had spiritually 208beholden; and also the Prophet of the New Covenant publishes his visions under the drapery of boldly-constructed symbols. He who finds fault with this knows neither art nor religion.

General moral forming does not necessarily take place directly and immediately; as relating to the free spirit, it consists essentially in the fact that, by the moral activity of the subject, the object is so incited and inspired as to bring about self-development through his own spontaneity and strength. In this consists the true art of education and governing, namely, in that the guiding power hides itself in some respect from the spirit that is to be molded,—does not permit its influence upon it to appear as a limiting, overpowering force, but rather simply gives scope for free and independent self-development. This does not take place, however, by a simple “letting alone” of the one who is to be guided, but by the fact that the moral and rational consciousness is quickened and strengthened in him,—that he is brought to feel and know himself, not as a mere non-obligated individual, but as a personality inspired by a holy and moral spirit,—that a moral disposition and an ideal enthusiasm become in him an actuating power, which in turn itself forms him to a higher development and perfection.

There is an important sphere of moral activity, namely, symbolical forming—to which belongs also the practicing of the becoming,—which can be understood only from the stand-point of general artistic forming;—a sphere of stumbling and offense to all champions of the merely prosaically useful. The morally-good, is not simply to become real, but the real is also to be an expression, a manifestation of the morally-good,—is to bear witness in its entire outward appearance to an inner ideal quality, and every single good is to show itself not merely as per se good, but is also to point to a higher good beyond itself. Even as in nature, the good, as a regulated means to an end, is associated with a beauty more significant than the mere fitness for an end,—even as the flower not merely possesses the fructifying organs and the delicate tissues that protect them, but also, in its graceful form, its hues and its fragrance, delights man, and, as a symbol of the eternally beautiful, reminds him of divine love and of the glory of God,209—even as the birds of song not only nourish themselves and propagate their race, but also praise the goodness of the Creator in strains that touch the heart,—even as God not only causes the sun to shine and to awaken life, and the clouds to drop rain, but also paints on the skies the color-resplendent bow as a pledge of his faithfulness and grace,—in a word, as God himself decks his creation with such grandeur that the heavens proclaim his glory, and with such beauty that the understanding is incapable adequately to comprehend it, but only the adoring heart to feel and love it,—so also man, as God-like, not only forms that which is useful for the temporal life, but also that which, as a significant sign, points to a higher good,—forms reality into a type of the true and good,—creates the poetry of reality. Every artistic product is such a sign or symbol, but all symbolical forming is not properly artistic in the stricter sense, though it is indeed poetical. The clothing of man is not simply for a protection against the weather, but also largely a suggestive expression of the inner life; all adornment as well as cleanliness has a spiritual suggestiveness. For him who knows not this symbolical, poetical phase of the moral, a very important and essential part of morality remains incomprehensible. A large portion of the moral precepts of the Scriptures look not to a direct and simple realization of a good, but to the expressive suggesting of a moral element not directly contained in the matter itself,—have a symbolical character; and lightly to esteem this phase of things is an indication of moral obtuseness. Doubtless it was not very “useful” when Mary, the sister of Lazarus, took a pound of pure and costly ointment and anointed the Lord’s feet; and the harsh reproof of Judas was perfectly well-grounded from the stand-point of mere utilitarianism, but the Lord judged very differently from Judas [John xii, 3 sqq.; comp. Mark xiv, 3 sqq.]. To this category belong almost all the precepts of the Old Testament in regard to the clean and the unclean, to food and clothing,—in which case the object of the forming is man himself,—and also in regard to the form of worship and whatever is therewith connected, such as circumcision, etc., as well as in regard to agriculture [Lev. xix, 19; Deut. xxii, 9, 10] and to the treatment of animals [Exod. xxi, 28, 29, 32; xxiii, 19; Lev. xx, 15, 16].

210

The becoming is the outward, beautiful or symbolical form of the moral,—in a certain sense its esthetic phase. To celebrate the Lord’s day in the spiritual-exalting of the heart to God, is a moral duty; to give expression to the celebration by sacred art and by a worthy outward appearance, is becoming. The ungodly world is prone to substitute in the place of the moral substance an outwardly and externally gracious form—the becoming; the suggestion: “That is not becoming,” is with the irreligious world of much more weight than: “It is sinful.” The outward form may indeed be hypocritically assumed in the absence of the substance, but he who holds fast to the moral substance, must observe also the form; he only is morally-cultured who not only observes the substance of the general precepts, but also aims at the morally-becoming; and this is in fact a general and artistic forming on the part of the moral activity. The becoming stands not along-side of the moral precept, but is essentially contained in it, as, in fact, without it man remains coarse and rude. Almost all of the above-mentioned precepts of the Old Testament are precepts of the becoming, and the New Testament also lays great stress on the becoming [1 Cor. xi, 4 sqq.; 1 Tim. ii, 9, and others].

SECTION CXI.

Appropriating and forming are, in a right moral development, ever in association with each other, and that too all the closer the higher their character. No spiritual appropriating is without spiritual self-forming, and no forming of an objective entity is without a spiritual appropriating of the thing formed; and in fact the forming of one’s own spirit is per se necessarily an appropriating. The measure of appropriating and especially of enjoying stands in all right development, always in strict relation to the measure of the forming; and the two modes of forming are associated not only with each other, but also with the two modes of appropriating, as are in turn the latter with each other.

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The fruit of labor and still more the work of art, are the property of the laborer and the artist; they call it their own; they have appropriated it to themselves in the very process of producing it. The outward-directed activity turns thus about and flows back into the acting person. In forming an objective entity, man forms his own self; he has the work not merely as his own, as a copy of his thought, but he is also himself spiritually and morally promoted both by the working and by the work. All forming is self-forming; and inasmuch as man stands to his fellows in a spiritual relation,—reveals himself to them through his culture,—hence all self-forming is directly also in turn a forming of others.—All particular forming, all work, should as moral include in itself also at the same time an element of general forming; without this the laborer falls into spiritual and moral deterioration. When the laborer unites the useful with the beautiful,—gives to his work a graceful form,—when song accompanies the work, when the heart mounts up from the work that serves a temporal end, toward the Eternal One, and thus puts into earnest practice the precept: “Pray and labor,” then the particular forming is exalted and transfigured by the general. The more isolated, the more limited, the work is, so much the more preponderates the merely useful phase of it; hence no work is so dangerous, nay, so detrimental, to the harmoniously-moral culture of man as the spiritless mechanism of factory-work; and white slavery works here often much more ruinously than the black. The uninterrupted monotony of the narrow routine of the work paralyzes the spirit and subverts morality.

Furthermore, all forming is not only a general appropriating, formative of the subject himself, in that he recognizes the product of his influence, but also a particular appropriating, in that he enjoys it. The divine prototype of this is seen in the account of creation, where we read that God looked upon all that he had made, and found that it was very good. All moral work, and still more, all general forming, are, in and of themselves, also enjoyment, and that too the highest and purest enjoyment, even as in the above utterance of the Creator his own bliss was implicitly expressed also. But also the sensuous enjoyment that is not directly included 212in the formative activity itself, is nevertheless, in virtue of the moral order of the world, associated with it. Adam was first to dress and care for the garden, and thereafter to eat of its fruits [Gen. ii, 15, 16]. “If any one will not work, neither should he eat” [2 Thess. iii, 10]; this is a morally unassailable principle; and where the practice is otherwise, there the social relations are corrupt; and the grudge of the suffering laborer against the luxurious idler has a very just foundation. In proportion to the degree of productive activity, rises or falls the moral right to enjoyment in general, and to personal position in society. Hence the admonition: Let each labor to produce with his own hands something good [Eph. iv, 28; comp. Acts xx, 34, 35; 1 Thess. iv, 11; ii, 9].

SECTION CXII.

Inasmuch as man becomes perfect only through the perfect all-sided development of all his life-phases, and as ally exclusive realization and culture of one, or simply some, of them works a disturbance of the inner harmony, hence every person should, in so far as his circumstances admit of it, realize every form of moral appropriation and moral culture. He who allows his life to be devoted exclusively to particular forming and appropriating,—to toil and enjoyment, has fallen out of moral harmony, and is consequently immoral. General, and hence, essentially, religious, forming must attend the work hand in hand; and the ordination of the Sabbath along-side of the days of labor has not simply a religious, but essentially also a moral significancy. Moral resting from labor is a rising to ideal self-culture, an exalting of the temporally-particular into the eternal, the holy, the general, the divine; the celebrating of the Sabbath is the higher and moral transfiguring of the temporal prosaic individual life by the poesy of the ideal and the infinite.

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In particular forming man merges himself into objective existence; primarily he has not the object in his own possession, but the object possesses him; hence the danger, especially in a state of sinfulness, that the person lose himself in his labor,—that, as in sensuous enjoyment, he passively surrender himself to the creature [Eccles. vi, 7, in the Hebrew text]. Man should, however, hold fast to himself and to his Creator,—should withdraw himself from his absorption in finite things, collect himself in spiritual repose,—should obtain fresh moral strength for the particular forming of industry, in the general forming which springs of enthusiasm. Even as God, though merging himself into the world while creating it, yet did not lose and forget himself in it, but returned to himself and to his infinite self-sufficiency, and ever retains himself in eternal unchangeable majesty above all that is created, so also is it a moral requirement that man, in his creating of the finite and particular, should not forget himself as a personality gifted with eternal destinies; it is for man’s sake that the Sabbath was made [Mark ii, 27]. It is very suggestive that in the Scriptures the repose of God after creation is made the prototype and basis for the celebration of the Sabbath [Gen. ii, 3; Exod. xx, 8 sqq. ]. It is thereby implied that it is our innermost God-likeness that calls for the rest of the Sabbath,—the truly rational, religiously-moral essence of man, and not the mere natural need of repose and enjoyment. That which is with God only two phases of his eternal life itself, and not an alternation in time, namely, creative action and self-possession, this falls, in the case of the finite spirit, at least partially, into such an alternation,—into labor and Sabbath-rest. God blessed the Sabbath day; there rests upon its observance an especial, an extraordinary benediction, an impartation of heavenly goods, even as the blessing upon labor is primarily only an importation of temporal goods. The Sabbath has not merely a negative significancy, is not a mere interruption of labor, but it has a very rich positive significancy,—it is the giving free scope to the higher, time-transcending nature of the rational God-like spirit, the re-attaching of the spirit that had been immersed by labor into the temporal, to the imperishable and to the divine. Where God is conceived of as swallowed up in nature, as with the Chinese and in the unbelief of our own 214day, there exists no Sabbath; there is to be found only a discretionary alternation of labor and sensuous enjoyment. The celebration of the Sabbath belongs to morality per se, and does not depend on the fact of the state of redemption from sinfulness; but where sin is as yet a dominant power there its observance is necessarily less free, legally more strict, than where the freedom of the children of God prevails.

From the fact that all moral working is attended also with a general forming, it follows manifestly that, for him who is truly morally free, the antithesis of Sabbath-rest and labor is not of an absolute character,—that every day and all labor have also their Sabbath consecration, and that, on the other hand, also the Sabbath does not absolutely exclude all work. It is perfectly clear, however, that, in general, only such works consist with the observance of the Sabbath as express a general formative activity,—as bear an artistic character in the noblest sense of the word. In this category belong those healings of the sick by which the Lord incurred the reproach of Sabbath-breaking. Such works are not labor, but, as a restoring of the disturbed order of the universe, ate of general and spiritual significancy.

SUBDIVISION SECOND.

THE MORAL ACTIVITY IN ITS DIFFERENCES AS RELATING TO ITS DIFFERENT OBJECTS.—I. IN RELATION TO GOD.

SECTION CXIII.

As God sustains to man an essentially active and creative, but not a receptive, relation, hence in the strict sense of the word he is an object only of moral appropriating.

(a) The moral appropriating of God is directly at the same time also the highest moral self-forming of the moral person, and contains two necessarily associated 215elements: first, that God becomes for us, and secondly, that we become for God; that is, that, on the one hand, we take up into our moral consciousness the ever present divine, and that, on the other, we elevate our moral consciousness to God,—form it into the divine life; the former is faith, the latter is worship; neither can exist without the other. Believing is the lovingly-willed and lovingly-willing, that is, the pious recognizing of God as lovingly revealing himself to us as our Lord and our Father, and to whom we are obligated to unconditional obedience and submissive love,—it is the self-consciousness of man as having come to its rational truth, namely, in that man regards himself no more as a mere isolated individual, but thinks of himself constantly and strictly in his relations to God.

As believing is essentially the particular appropriating of God, so the knowing, the cognizing of Him is the general appropriating; and hence the striving for this knowledge is a high moral duty; this duty is fulfilled not without believing, but only through and in virtue of the same,—is a spiritual receiving and a true appropriating of the divine revelation imparted to us through the channel of faith, in regard to the nature, power, and will of God. The correct knowledge of God is not the antecedent condition, but the goal of the moral striving, and hence without it there can be no perfection of morality.

God is indeed per se already present in every creature; but in order that he shall be truly present for man, that is, in a manner called for by his rational nature, it is necessary that man shall freely appropriate to himself this presence of God. I possess rationally only that which I rationally and morally appropriate. All appropriating, and hence all faith, pre-supposes 216a difference, and at the same time a mutual life-relation between its subject and its object; what I already am, in and of myself, that I cannot appropriate to myself. That the appropriating of God is a moral act, arises from the fact that man may fully admit his difference from, and yet not heartily recognize his life-relation to, God,—may cling to himself as independent of God, may sinfully aspire even to become like God. It is a moral activity when man raises his self-consciousness, which is primarily merely individual, into a truly rational one, and conceives of himself not merely as an isolated being, but as conditioned by God, that is, as created by and obligated to God; it is only this religious self-consciousness that is moral, and this is in fact faith. Faith is not a mere regarding as true, not a mere religious knowledge, or a mere objective consciousness, but it is a morally-conditioned believing, a willing, and hence a loving, recognition; in faith we will to have God and a consciousness of him in us, and we desire this consciousness as divine, that is, as a full and true life-force, and hence as operative, as realizing the divine. The notion of faith combines, therefore, loving and willing with knowing,—is not identical with one of the three, but is the unity of them,—is not an affair of the mere understanding but of the heart (§ 53). Faith is the thankful reflection of the divine love; he who is loved by God, turns himself lovingly toward the loving One. Without the love of God to man there would be no love of man to God; man believes because he becomes conscious of the divine love; he who would only recognize received love, but not reciprocated it with his heart, is immoral; a mere recognition of God without heart-faith is sinful.

“Faith is the substance (the sure confidence) of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” [Heb. xi, 1]; it is not a confidence of that which falls within the immediate scope of experience, but of that which lies beyond it, not of that which already exists in realization but of that which is yet, in virtue of faith, to be realized into fact, though indeed it already exists in germ. The really complete life-communion with God, the full appropriating of the divine, is at first only an object of hope,—can be really brought about only through faith; and faith lays hold, in full confidence of success, upon 217the divine as lovingly revealing itself to it. Faith stands, therefore, not by the side of knowledge, as if not including this within itself, nor yet below it, as if it were but a lower degree thereof, and would cease with the increase of knowledge, but in fact above it, inasmuch as it is a loving knowing, a lovingly-willed and lovingly-willing knowing of God, so that consequently it includes within itself both feeling and willing as essential constituent elements. Believing leads to knowing, but also precedes actual knowing, and hence is not conditioned thereon.

As particular appropriating, believing or faith is, so to speak, an enjoying of the divine,—belongs essentially to the personality itself, and is therefore not communicable, whereas knowing may, on the presupposition of faith, be communicated by instruction. In the entire sphere of the religious life, believing precedes knowing, for without faith God would no more exist for us than would sensuous objects without our senses; believing includes, it is true, some degree of knowing, but is not per se complete knowing. And for the simple reason that believing includes knowing as an essential element, it is a moral requirement to bring our knowing to its highest possible perfection, and thereby also to heighten and strengthen faith. The divine revelation as received by faith becomes real knowledge by a proper spiritual merging of ourselves into it, by a full appropriating of its contents into our entire spiritually-transformed being, so that the knowing becomes thus a powerful moral motive to the loving of God and to obedience to his will [Psa. lxiii, 7 sqq.; Jer. xxix, 13, 14; John viii, 32; Acts xvii, 27; Col. i, 11; Eph. i, 17, 18]. The knowledge of God consists not merely in the, as yet, only imperfectly attainable [1 Cor. xiii, 9, 10; 2 Cor. v, 7; Isa. lv, 8, 9] knowledge of God’s being [Rom. i, 19, 20], but also of the divine will as to us [Col. i, 9, 10; Eph. v, 15-17] and of the divine providential activity in nature and in human life, and of the holy purpose of his world-government. Though indeed a proper and ripe knowledge of God leads to a higher perfection of the moral life, still knowledge is not, as faith, the antecedent condition of the moral in general; for only he can know the truth of God who is pure of heart [Matt. v, 8].

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SECTION CXIV.

The second phase of the moral appropriating of God is, that man becomes for God,—that he exalts himself toward God by a moral act in order to unite God actually, and not simply in inner recognition, with himself,—in order to permit the divine activity to be influential upon him; this is in fact the worshiping of God, which is at once a religious and a moral, and hence a holy, activity. The worship of God is either purely spiritual and at the same time affirmative, namely, in that man puts himself spiritually into direct relation with God,—rises to God in pious devotion, which is prayer,—or it is of a rather virtual and at the same time more negative character, namely, a free moral turning away from the ungodly and the unholy,—sacrifice. These two phases of the worshiping of God belong inseparably together; there is no prayer without sacrifice, and no sacrifice without prayer.

Faith is the purely inward phase of the moral appropriating of the divine,—the woman-like self-opening of the soul for the in-shining of the divine light; in this receiving, the person remains strictly in and with himself. Worshiping is more objective; the person goes forth out of himself,—lets his own light beam forth toward the divine original light, even as the flame of the sacrifice, when once kindled by the heavenly fire, mounts up toward heaven again. All worshiping of God presupposes faith, though it is itself more than faith. When man has by faith received the divine into himself, and imbued himself therewith, he still yet distinguishes himself as a creature from God,—puts himself into moral relation to God, raises himself by a moral action to God as to one different from himself; and this is the worshiping of God. To the pure mystic all worship falls away, for he loses sight of the distinction between the Infinite and the finite.

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Worship is the immediate actual outgoing of faith; it is a religious activity which aims at making the already naturally-existing communion of God with us into a consciously-willed communion of ourselves with God; it is a sacred activity as distinguished from the worldly or profane,—from that which deals only with temporal things. In a normal moral condition of humanity, all activity whatever would bear a sacred character, and the distinction between the sacred and the “profane” could only assume the form of a conditional outward difference of a temporally-alternating occupation with earthly things, on the one hand, and with eternal interests on the other; with labor and with the Sabbath-rest of the soul during the continuance of the earthly life, and that, too, only in so far as consistent with the fact that all earthly occupation is constantly exalted and sanctified by a positive and conscious relation to the eternal. Our sacred activity relates either immediately to God,—is a purely affirmative uniting of the human to the divine; or it relates only mediately to God, but immediately to the ungodly, namely, in that by refusing the ungodly, it sets up a barrier against it,—turns the heart away from the evil, and toward God. These two features can never be separated; prayer without sacrifice, without a rejecting of the ungodly both within and without us, is morally impossible; in exalting ourselves to God in prayer we at the same time distinguish the divine from the anti-divine, and withdraw ourselves from the latter; we cannot truly pray without at the same time renouncing the worldly,—without giving up, without sacrificing, the pretentious emptiness of finite things.

SECTION CXV.

1. Prayer, as resting on faith in the personal God, is the free moral uniting of the believing heart with God, in such a manner that the moral personality is in fact not lost, but, on the contrary, exalted in and by God; it is the free and conscious recognizing that God knows all our thoughts, and the joyful wish that such be the case; it exalts our natural communion with God into a spiritual and moral one, the being 220of God in man into a being of man in God. As it is alone in this being at one with God that the true life of the rational spirit consists, hence in the moral man, at least a prayerful disposition, if not express praying in words, must be strictly unceasing. Prayer has only then moral worth when it really springs of a praying heart, and hence, when it is offered with devotion; and as it unites the person with the Father of all men, hence it leads to a communion of prayer, and the higher form of prayer is therefore social prayer.

In prayer man enters into personal communion with God, and in loving confidence expressly communicates to him as the All-knowing One, his pious thinking, feeling, and willing; only that which is pious can be communicated to God; a consciously unpious prayer is blasphemy. Prayer is absolutely conditioned on a believing recognition of the divine omniscience; it is not, therefore, so much a means of making our thoughts known to God,—for God knows our thoughts from afar, and of what we have need before we ask therefor,—as rather an expression of our belief that God knows, and our joyful willingness that he should know thereof. A prayer that should spring from the thought that God himself needed it in order to know our inward state, would be per se impious and in self-contradiction; but every thought and every act that we are not willing that God should know, and that we would hide from him, is impious, and the degree of our piety is measured by the degree in which we have the desire that all our acts and thoughts should be known of God. The intermission of prayer does not shut out our inner life from the divine knowledge, it simply shuts out the divine blessing from us. Prayer reveals not our being to the divine knowledge, but it reveals the divine all-knowing presence to us,—brings not God down to us, but elevates us to God; it is for us the means of uniting ourselves truly with God, inasmuch as thereby not only is God, as the Omnipresent One, with us, but also we, by a religiously-moral act of will, are with God; and 221only when God is himself with us, not merely naturally and without our desire, but upon our express prayer and seeking therefor, are we in real saving life-communion with him. Without prayer there can be only a natural, but not a moral and spiritual communion with God; and this merely natural communion is, on the supposition that it rises no higher, in antagonism to the essence of a moral creature, and hence leads to the casting off of man by God. For him who cannot pray, God’s presence is judicial and condemnatory. As in prayer man exalts himself to the highest object of the moral activity, so is prayer also the highest moral act; and all other moral action receives its moral worth solely from its relation to this,—solely as morally consecrated by prayer.

In prayer, man gives utterance to his highest moral privileges and to his free personality, inasmuch as thereby, with full and joyful freedom, he wills, recognizes and heightens that which already existed without prayer, though indeed only in an immediate, natural ante-moral manner, but which could not so remain without turning into antagonism and unblessedness, namely, the divine omnipresent domination. Only to those who desire it is God’s presence a blessing, and only by those who love is the loving communion of God experienced; “draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you” [James iv, 8; comp. Psa. cxlv, 18, 19]. It is the sublime significancy of prayer that it brings into prominence man’s great and high destination, that it brings to expression his free personal relation to God, that it heightens man’s consciousness of his true moral nature in relation to God; and as all morality depends on our relation to God, prayer is, in fact, the very life-blood of morality. The true freedom, and hence also the true morality of man, manifests itself not in his arbitrarily choosing that which is fleeting or baseless, but in the fact that with conscious free-will and glad assent he recognizes and confirms that which lies in the holy constitution of the world itself. To the limited natural understanding, prayer seems useless and therefore irrational; for this understanding is not capable of comprehending the spiritual. It is true, God causes his sun to rise upon the good and the evil, gives rain to the just and the unjust, furnishes food to man and beast,—in a word, He “gives to all 222men their daily bread” even without prayer; but the significancy of such prayer is the fact of our recognizing Him as the Giver of all, of our receiving his gifts with thankfulness. That God’s presence and gifts be not only about us but also for us, that they become a blessing to us, a bond of love between God and us, a living fountain of godly-mindedness,—that they be not foreign to us, not in antagonism to us, but in fact our own and in harmony with us,—that God’s being in us be also our being in God,—all this is the fruit of prayer.

Prayer is so intimately connected with the morally-religious life that it appears, under some form, even among those nations where, because of the relative ignoring of the personality of God, it has almost lost all shadow of meaning, as, for example, in India. Greek and Roman philosophers often introduce their disquisitions with prayers (Socrates, Plato); the Romans prayed on occasion of all important state-events, on the election of magistrates, the enactment of laws, etc. Of course in heathen prayer there could never exist the proper earnestness, inasmuch as the idea of God was always imperfect; no heathen could ever pray as could a pious Israelite. The first real opposing of prayer, if we except the frivolous Epicureans, was on the part of Maximus of Tyre, a Platonist of the second century after Christ; it was also opposed by Rousseau, though for very superficial reasons (because the order of the universe could not be changed by individual wishes), and, with astonishing lack of insight by Kant, who even finds in the Lord’s Prayer, as given by Christ, a very clear suggestion to substitute in the place of all prayer simply a determination to lead a good life (Relig. innerh., etc., 1794, p. 302). In Pantheism the rejection of prayer as absurd, is a matter of course.—The Scriptures present prayer as one of the most essential moral requirements [Psa. cxlv, 18, 19; Matt. vii, 7; Mark xi, 24; James i, 5 sqq.; 1 Tim. ii, 1-3; Eph vi, 18]. The injunction to pray without ceasing [Luke xviii, 1-7; 1 Thess. v, 17; Rom. xii, 12; Col. iv, 2; 1 Tim. ii, 8; comp. Psa. lxiii, 7] implies the constant aspiring of our heart to God as to Him whose will alone is our law, and who gives his blessing to whatever is done in his name.—Where sin is not yet dominant, any other than a devotional prayer is inconceivable. 223Devotion in prayer is not merely the absence of distraction, but it is the praying out of a true, earnest and upright heart-disposition. Devotion cannot be required as a special duty, for it is necessarily included in the very idea of prayer; the Scriptures simply allude to the earnestness of prayer, and to the liability of self-deception in well-meant prayer [Isa. xxix, 13; Psa. cxlv, 18; Matt. xv, 8; vi, 5-7; James v, 16].

It is not as a merely moral, but as a religious, activity that prayer leads to communion, for religion is essentially socializing, not directly, however, but in virtue of the communion which it establishes with God. Mere individual prayer has its proper justification as bearing on the personal relation to God; it is in fact the primary and most obvious form [Matt. vi, 6]; but prayer attains to its highest, though never exclusive, character as the single-hearted prayer of the believing communion or church-society. And this not simply because such prayer hightens the feeling of the unitedness of the faithful, but because, in virtue of the throwing off of personal isolation and of its flowing out of the holy spirit which pervades the society, it has a guarantee of greater purity, and consequently the promise of special blessing [Matt. xviii, 20; Acts ii, 42; Eph. v, 19; Col. iii, 16].—Christ himself gives the moral pattern of prayer; he prayed out of the full consciousness of life-communion with God, and consequently with full confidence of being answered [Heb. v, 7]; he prayed often in solitude [Matt. xiv, 23; xxvi, 36, 42; Mark vi, 32; Luke vi, 12; ix, 28], and often in the presence of others [Matt. xxvi, 39; John xi, 41 sqq.], and in communion with his disciples [John xvii, 1 sqq.].

SECTION CXVI.

All prayer is primarily, either expressly or in virtue of its necessary presuppositions, a confession, a recognition of God as the unconditional Lord, and as the all-knowing, all powerful and all-loving Father. In as far as in it we are always conscious of ourselves as loved by God, prayer is at the same time also thanksgiving. In so far as in prayer we have respect 224not only to the past and present, but also to the goal of moral effort, the realization of which we regard as not in our own power independently of God, nor yet in an unfree nature-necessity, but in the will of God as co-operating with us, prayer becomes petition—the climax of the inner religiously-moral life, wherein the true filial relation of man to God finds its expression; and as the moral end is of a rational, and hence not merely individual, character, consequently the petition is essentially also intercession—the highest religious expression of our love to man. As only the all-embracing wisdom of God is capable of fully seeing the appropriateness of earthly things and relations to the attainment of the highest good, hence the petition for earthly goods, though per se entirely legitimate, can never be more than of a humbly conditional character; and there is no petition other than that for the per se unquestionably eternal good, that has no other condition than the willing, believing obedience of the subject. The promise of answering is based on the condition of believing and of humble confidence.

Prayer is per se a recognition of God,—it is adoration and confession both to God as the all-ruling One, and also before God as the all-knowing and holy One. In this recognizing confession itself, there is involved a thanksgiving, which consequently is included, though it may be but implicitly, in every prayer; in the Lord’s Prayer it lies in the very address. All thanksgiving [1 Sam. ii; Psa. cvi, 1; Rom. xv, 6; 1 Tim. iv, 4, 5; Phil. iv, 6; Col. iii, 17; iv, 2] is at the same time a petition for the bestowal of the good for which it is offered; and the petition is, in virtue of the soul-uniting filial relation to God, necessarily also intercession for others and for the whole kingdom of God [Matt. vi, 10; John xvii, 9 sqq.; Eph i, 16; vi, 18; 1 Tim. ii, 1-3; Col. i, 9; 225iv, 3; Phil. i, 4; James v, 16; Heb. xiii, 18]. So long as prayer remains of a merely individual character, it comes short of true prayer,—rests not yet on a consciousness of the filial relation to God, for this consciousness is inconsistent with self-seeking exclusiveness; the children of God have their home only in the kingdom of God.

Prayer as petition is the profoundest enigma for the merely wordly finitely-occupied understanding; for the religious heart, however, it is the beginning and the center of the spiritual life. He who cannot offer petitions to God is not of God. All intellectual doubts as to the nature and efficacy of petitioning prayer, have as their back-ground a doubt of the personality of God, although they may assume to be a vindication of the eternal order of the world. A God who cannot answer petitions is not a personal spirit, but only an unconscious nature-force. In the believing petition the Scriptures promise answers [Psa. 1, 15; x, 17; xxii, 4, 5; xxxiv, 15; lxii, 1 sqq.; lxv, 2; xciv, 9; cii, 17; cxlv, 18, 19; Prov. xv, 8; Isa. lxv, 24; Matt. vii, 7; xviii, 19; xxi, 22; John ix, 31; xvi, 23, 24; 1 John iii, 22; v, 14; James i, 5; iv, 8; v, 13-18; 1 Pet. iii, 12]; to the impious and foolish petition they refuse it [Job xxvii, 9; xxxv, 13; Psa. lxvi, 18; Prov. xv, 8, 29; xxviii, 9; Isa. i, 15; John ix, 31; James iv, 3, and others]; and confident faith in an answer is itself the condition of the answer [Mark xi, 24; James i, 6, 7]. As the fuller development of the subject belongs to dogmatics, we here subjoin but a few general observations. The answering of prayer is not unconditional; it is conditioned, on the one hand, on the loving wisdom of God, which is higher than that of man [Eph. iii, 20], and, on the other, on the prayer-spirit of him who prays. And the answer is not a merely seeming one, so that prayer would be superfluous, but the answer is given on the basis and in virtue of the prayer [Luke xi, 5-13; xviii, 1 sqq.,—the lesson of which is, that if earnest prayer is effectual even with unloving men, how much more is it so with the all-loving One who gladly hears such petitions; Gen. xviii, 23 sqq.; Exod. xxxii, 9 sqq.; Num. xiv, 13 sqq., 20; xvi, 20 sqq.; Isa. xxxviii]. Prayer does not change the eternal counsel of God; this counsel is itself not unconditional, but it is determined by the all-knowing One in view of the free conduct 226of his creatures; and, consequently, one element of it is, that prayer is eternally destined to be answered. Every pious prayer is answered, although only in the manner most wholesome to him who offers it, and hence not always in the special manner in which the answer is expected [2 Cor. xii, 8, 9.] If man deceives himself as to the sought good, still he receives the good,—not, however, the false one which he had in mind, but the true one which he had in heart. Hence no believing prayer, in so far as it relates to earthly goods, can be or should be more than a conditional petition, and the manner of the fulfillment must be submitted to the wisdom of God. If even Christ prays in this conditional manner to the Father [Matt. xxvi, 39, 42; Luke xxii, 42], by how much more should man so pray, whose knowledge is so limited; true faith is in fact a confidence that God knows best what serves for our peace, and brings it about; childlikeness and humble confidence give power and truth to prayer [Rom. viii, 15; Gal. iv, 6]. Under this condition, prayer for particular earthly goods is not only allowed to man, but is also willed by God and with promise of answering [Matt. vi, 11; vii, 7 sqq.; Phil. iv, 5, 6; Eph. vi, 18; James v, 14 sqq.]; and the confidence of obtaining the object sought, even in such special petitions rises to confident assurance wherever the prayer goes forth from a complete life-communion with God, and in the, power of the Holy Ghost,—wherever it is prayer “in spirit and in truth” [John iv, 24; Rom. viii, 26, 27; Gal. iv, 6; Eph. vi, 18; comp. John xiv, 13; xvi, 23]; for, the more complete the union of the pious heart with God, so much the more does it partake of the illuminating power of God, and God’s knowledge of the future begets in him who partakes of God’s Spirit a presentiment of the divine counsel in regard to him; and the presentiment rises to a prayerful longing, an unshaken faith; and the true petition to a prophecy. The fulfillment of the petition is felt by anticipation in the prayer itself; he who truly prays is a prophet; and God is the fulfiller of the prophecy, because he is the author of the counsel. Here also Christ himself furnishes the pattern: “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me,” etc. [John xi, 41]; his prayer related to what he had already prophetically beholden and predicted [verses 11, 23]. The primary and most essential 227element of true prayer is, of course, the petition for the filial relation to God and for the coming of the kingdom of God [Matt. vi, 10, 12; John xvii, 15; Luke xi, 13]. Man should beware, however, of sinning in prayer itself; but by self-seeking narrowness he does this; to pray in the spirit of God, is to pray for the kingdom of God. Model prayers are the Lord’s Prayer and the high-priestly prayer of Christ.

As God’s eternal decree to answer prayer is conditioned on the actuality of the prayer, hence prayer is not simply moral appropriation, but also, though not in a direct and strict sense, moral forming, seeing that, though indeed not God himself, yet in fact the particular temporal manifestation of his world-government, is conditioned on prayer. God’s essence is indeed not subject to change; his doing and acting in the world, however, are, in virtue of his righteous love, conditioned on the free conduct of his rational creatures, and hence also on prayer. The real forming, however, which is directly connected with prayer relates to the personal religiously-moral being of the subject. The blessing efficacy of prayer beams back from God upon the offerer, namely, in that in virtue of the prayer not only his being in God comes more vividly to his consciousness, and has a more efficacious influence, but also God’s being in him comes to a higher reality. Faith in prayer and in the answering of prayer, heighten the divine life of the children of God.

SECTION CXVII.

2. The negating and rather virtual phase of the service of God, is the actual or symbolical manifesting of the real or conditional vanity of earthly things and relations, as contrasted with God or with the God-loving, pious state of the heart, namely, in sacrifice, the essence of which is self-denial or renunciation. In the unfallen state of man sacrifice consists essentially simply in a free giving-up of that which is naturally pleasurable, out of regard to the divine will and far the sake of the higher good, the moral end; 228hence it consists in the subordinating and giving up of earthly desire. The appropriating of the divine requires the rejection of all that is ungodly, and therein the person accomplishes, at the same time, a high moral culture of himself.

As contrasted with the highest good and with God, every thing finite appears as relatively empty and void; the actual manifesting of this nullity, out of love to the divine, is sacrifice,—a notion that is fundamental to all religions, and that constitutes the focal point of all religious life, and which is still recognizable even in the most utter perversions of the truth.¹³¹³See Wuttke’s Gesch. des Heident. I, pp. 127 sqq., 268 sqq., 311; II, pp. 64, 343 sqq, 547 sqq. There is no love without sacrifice; the higher the love, so much the higher the readiness to sacrifice for the sake of the beloved; sacrifice is the test of love; maternal love sacrifices repose and enjoyment for the sake of the child; this is not figurative language,—the sacrifice is real and true. As God’s highest love expresses itself in the giving up of his Son, so man’s love to God is manifested in the sacrificing of that to the enjoyment of which man has in general a right. As, however, in the sinless state of humanity, there would exist no really untrue and vain object from which man would have actually to turn away in moral abhorrence, but only a merely relatively such, namely, the merely natural and transitory as in contradistinction to the spiritual, hence in this case sacrifice would not consist in the destruction of an entity, but in the renunciation of an enjoyment, an abstaining from the merely worldly. In the interest of his spiritual freedom, of his moral growth, man is not to give himself over to nature, but must by obedience renounce some degree of the enjoyment of nature and of his personal discretion. He is to sacrifice whatever tempts him from God, whatever binds him to the merely natural or to the non-divine; also of unfallen man it was required that he should realize his spiritual freedom by the free renunciation of a merely natural enjoyment. Christ’s fasting in the wilderness was not a part of his atoning self-sacrifice, and yet it was a sacrifice on the part of the Son of 229man, even as was also required of unfallen man. In yielding himself to enjoyment without moral discrimination, man loses hold on the spiritual; lie must renounce in order to be free. In the unfallen state sacrifice has essentially an educative end and a symbolical form. God certainly did not forbid man to eat of the designated tree because it was a bad tree, for to sinless beings there could be nothing evil in the entire circle of God-made nature; but in his educative wisdom, God required of man a sacrifice, for the simple reason that no moral life is possible without self-restraint, no religious life without sacrifice. Man stands in the presence of nature and God, both are good; but nature is a created object and may not be placed on an equal footing with God. When man enjoys nature for its own sake and without reference to God, he sins; for he ought to belong, not to nature, but to God. Hence he should recognize, and manifest in moral acts, the truth that nature per se is not the true being and the true goal of moral aspiration, namely, the highest good, but only a means to this end. Hence his moral relation to nature and to the sensuous, is, as in contrast to his relation to God, of a negative character. This “no” in regard to nature, man pronounces morally when he subordinates his relation to nature to his higher relation to God, when he says to sensuous desire: “Thou mayest not, shalt not absorb and dominate my thinking and willing;” he must freely hold in check the merely sensuous, for the sake of the spiritual,—must restrain himself from the former in order that he may possess and perfect himself as a moral spirit, and that he may rise to spiritual-mindedness.

It is the antagonism of the spirit to the flesh that lies at the basis of sacrifice; in the interest of the spiritual, the spirit sacrifices the fleshly. Also man as normal and not yet sinful, had to crucify his flesh with the affections and lusts thereof [Gal. v, 24], although this flesh and its desires were not yet immoral; but to have sought the flesh as an end, as a good, would have been sinful; and God put upon him a requirement of abnegation in order that he might recognize and actually learn this fact,—that he might break away from the merely sensuous, and develop in himself the image of God. Simple obedience to this requirement, without a why or wherefore, was the purest and best of sacrifices. This Paradisaical germ 230of all sacrifice is, therefore, self-denial in obedience to God, a renouncing not a destroying, a giving up, out of love to the spirit, of that which is dear to the flesh; and this idea pervades all forms of sacrifice, even the emphatic sin-offering; only that which is dear to man can be to him a sacrifice; and because of the simple fact that the first man would not bring the light sacrifice required of him, it became necessary for him afterward to make severer ones; and from the hour of the fall and thenceforth the morally-religious consciousness of humanity finds satisfaction only in a series of progressively more violent and more terrible sacrifices, culminating in the offering of human victims, and that too not merely among the rude, but even among the most civilized of gentile nations.

In the idea of sacrifice it is always implied that that which the person gives up is per se good and right, that primarily lie has a right to its enjoyment, but that he gives it up for the sake of a higher end; to give up that which is per se bad, is not to sacrifice; the offering that was presented to Jehovah had to be pure and spotless; and the worth of the sacrifice rises with the worth of the object offered. Thus, sensuous enjoyment is per se good, but it must be restrained and limited, and often refused, in order that not it but the rational spirit may be the master. But man has also to bring, in the interest of the moral, purely spiritual sacrifices. It was not the sensuous per se that was the temptation to Eve, but the representation made to her that the tree would render her “wise;” it was her duty, as it is the duty of man in general, to renounce the desire of obtaining from the creature that wisdom which only God can impart—which can be learned only in believing obedience to God.

The sacrifice that was required of unfallen man implied in its renunciation at the same time, a confession, namely, to God as the highest good and the highest love, and this again implied thankfulness for the love received in communion with God. Inasmuch as every good gift is from God hence the thank-offering of the believer can only be symbolical, expressive of his readiness to give up in the interest of the eternal even that which is dearest of all to him, in the consciousness that in the communion with God 231for whom it is given up, the real and true life is in fact preserved; in the presence of God none is to appear empty [Exod. xxiii, 15; xxxiv, 20].

Sacrifice appears in the Old Testament in its more definite form as early as in the case of Cain and Abel; we find no indication of its express institution by God; and we might therefore regard it as an immediate and natural expression of the religious consciousness; however, a positive divine prescription is the more probable. It is certainly not probable that sacrifice was first made from a consciousness of guilt; the offerings of Cain and Abel, consisting of the products of the field and of the flock, seem rather to be thank-offerings than sin-offerings; Abel’s bloody offering is expressly designated [Gen. iv, 4] by the word minchah (present, gift) by which are subsequently designated the bloodless thank-offerings in contradistinction to the bloody, and, for the most part, atoning offerings, namely, the sebachim; the offering of Noah appears expressly as a thank-offering [viii, 20] The burning up of the material of the sacrifice signifies the renunciation and the eradication of the earthly desires of him who sacrifices; the pure heavenward-mounting sacrificial flame symbolizes the exaltation of the heart from the earthly to the heavenly,—the union with God. Thus sacrifice becomes a symbol of the alliance of man with God; and in the case of Noah and the patriarchs, a sign of the Covenant, and hence also a sign of the union of the Israelites who escaped from Egypt, into one people [Exod. iii, 12]. And, therefore, subsequently in the fully-developed sacrificial service of a sinful people, the essence of the sacrifice was in fact not placed in the outward rite, but in the submission of the heart, in the renunciation of an earthly self-seeking mind, in the complete giving up of all earthly love for God’s sake [Gen. xxii, 16]; obedience is better than [outward] sacrifice; God-pleasing sacrifices are a broken spirit and a contrite heart, and “to do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice” [1 Sam. xv, 22; Psa. xl, 6; 1, 8-15; li, 16, 17, 18; Hos. vi, 6; Eccl. iv, 17; Prov. xxi, 3, 27; Isa. i, 11; Jer. vi, 20; comp. Matt. ix, 13; xii, 7; Mark xii, 33]. In the case of the very first sacrifices God warns man against the error of supposing that the essence of the sacrifice lies in the outward 232act; Abel’s offering He graciously accepts, that of Cain He disregards. Sacrifice is an appropriating of the divine, inasmuch as in the turning away from the non-divine there is necessarily implied a turning to the divine.

SECTION CXVIII.

The moral sparing of the divine, has direct reference not to God himself; but to the forms under which He is revealed. Every thing whereby God becomes for us is sacred as distinguished from merely created objects per se. In the unfallen state of humanity all created objects are at the same time also sacred, namely, in so far as they are considered an expression of the divine will; and whatever is sacred is in the highest degree an object of moral sparing,—should be treated as sacred. This sparing springs from moral humility,—is an express respecting of the sacred in virtue of a holy awe, springing from a lively consciousness, on the one hand, of the divine glory even in the humbler forms of its manifestation, and, on the other, of our own existence as a limited one and as resting solely on divine grace. The objects of this sacred awe, and hence of moral sparing, are both the immediate, full and actual self-revelations of God, and also all mediating instrumentalities of His revelation and communication, as well as also every thing that relates to the reverencing of God on the part of man.

The distinction between the sacred and the non-sacred is, for the unfallen state, of a merely conditional character; it is in fact, simply the same thing considered under two phases; in all things we can behold both the created and the Creator. He who is truly pious sees himself every-where surrounded by the sacred,—he prays to God not merely in the 233temple of Jerusalem, or on Mount Gerizim, but every-where in spirit and in truth. Now, in so far as objects that are imbued with the divine are temporal and finite, they are capable of being abused and desecrated,—hence the moral duty of sparing. The direction of God to Moses on occasion of the revelation in the burning bush [Exod. iii, 5], suggests the proper moral bearing of man; he must put away from himself all that bears upon itself the character of the common, the unholy, the dross of earth. The duty of sparing, as relating to the sacred, is not. a mere non-doing, but, like every other form of this duty, it is a self-restraining out of regard to the higher right of the sacred object; a sparing from mere indifference would be sinful.

The objects of this sparing are: (1) The immediate personal revelations of God himself. Here there is no room for a mere passive bearing; here the mere non-doing, the mere not respecting the divine presence, is an offending of God himself; and moral sparing passes over at once into adoring reverence; here the declaration of Christ holds good: “He that is not for me is against me;” the not-concerning ourselves about God is a dishonoring of God.—(2) God’s revelation and self-communication through his Word should be recognized as absolutely sacred, and distinguished in every respect from whatever is merely human and natural; it is disesteemed and dishonored by doubt, unbelief, and disobedience, and by trifling or irreverent use, by ridicule or neglect; the divine Word as sacred is to be treated entirely differently from the merely human; it calls for unconditional faith and reverent submission.—(3) The name of God [Exod. iii, 14] and other symbolical designations of God must be treated with sacred awe and sparing,—may not be associated with the common and thus subjected to irreverent use, may not be misused in sport, or frivolity, or for deception [Exod. xx, 7; Lev. xix, 12; xxii, 32; Matt. vi, 9]. A name is not a mere empty sound; it is the body of a thought; and as the human body is not an object of indifference for the spirit, and as to dishonor it is to insult the spirit, so also is a misusing of the divine name a dishonoring of God himself. In the awe of the Jews as to the pronouncing of the name of Jehovah, there lay a deep moral significancy, though indeed this peculiarity 234rendered also possible an outward evasion of the command itself. That the precept to revere God’s name appears as one of the chief commandments of the Mosaic law, evinces its high moral importance. Where there exists reverential love, there the name of the beloved will not be desecrated by triflingness and frivolous sport. And what is true of the name is also true of all symbols of God, as, for example, in the Ancient Covenant, of the covering of the ark of the Covenant (the mercy-seat), of the pillar of fire, etc. In a more general sense every form of sin is a dishonoring of the name and image of God, inasmuch as man himself bears God’s name and image in himself, and should therefore spare and respect these in his own person [comp. Rom. ii, 24]; and all morality may be summed up in the keeping sacred of the divine image in ourselves,—as expressed by Jehovah: “Ye shall sanctify yourselves and be holy, for I am holy” [Lev. xi, 44], or in the words of Peter: “Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts” [1 Pet. iii, 15].—(4) The human organs of divine revelation, the prophets and the called heralds of the divine Word in general, have a moral right to reverential sparing, though this sparing refers essentially not to them as men, but to God in whose name they speak. [Psa. cv, 15; Matt. x, 40, 41; comp. xi, 49-51; 1 Thes. v, 12, 13; Heb. xiii, 17]; the persecuting and killing of the prophets is frequently spoken of in Scripture as among the most heinous of offenses. Also in a sinless development of humanity all those would be regarded in the light of prophets of God, who, having attained to higher spiritual knowledge, should bear witness of divine truth; they would stand not strictly on an equal footing with those whom they should teach and train; and their recognition as divine messengers would beget a greater willingness to give heed to them. Wherever there is a really moral communion, there the ministers of God are honored; not to respect them is a sign of deep moral declension; but the deepest degradation of all is where they themselves do not respect their calling. No prophet of God was ever without moral self-denial and constant humiliation before God,—without the deeply felt consciousness of Moses: “Who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh, and bring forth the children 235of Israel out of Egypt?”—but also no prophet of God was ever without the sacred right to be recognized and respected as God’s messenger, provided only that he be found faithful.—(5) All that relates to the worshiping of God,—the holy seasons, places, and things, are, as sacred, to be distinguished from the non-sacred, and to be honored accordingly, and not to be placed on an equal footing with that which serves only temporal, individual ends. The Sabbath is to be treated quite otherwise than the day of labor; it has a right to be respected, for it is God’s day, set apart to his special service. Its celebration by actual divine worship is only one of its phases, the other is its being sacredly spared. Every thing is to be avoided on the Sabbath which disturbs the devout frame of the soul,—attracts it back to the merely earthly and sensuous, impresses upon it a mere every-day character. lie who does not honor the day of the Lord, honors also not the Lord of the day. Holy places and things, being consecrated to heavenly purposes, should not be profaned to worldly entertainment and to merely temporal uses. Though we do not recognize any mystic power in a special consecration, yet we hold fast to the principle that holy places and things belong exclusively to the service of the Lord. God himself ordained, in the Old Testament, particular sacred things and a special consecration of them [Exod. xxv, sqq.; xxx, 22 sqq.]. Even as the “burning bush” [Exod. iii, 5] and the mount of legislation and the holy of holies in the temple were separated from all that was not sacred, so also is it with every place that is dedicated to the holy One [Lev. xix, 30]. The significancy of this setting apart, and the importance of this respecting of the sacred, increase with the actuality of sin.

Note. God cannot of course be an object of moral forming in the strict sense of the word. Though prayer is in fact a moral influencing of God, inasmuch as it finds hearing, still no change is thereby wrought in God, and that which is realized by the efficacy of prayer is not so much in God as in us and in the world. But in a remote sense we may speak of a forming of the divine, namely, in so far as God is expressed in sacred symbols and in sacred art, and in so far as, by our witnessings for God, the knowledge and love of God are implanted 236in the souls of men; all this, however, is in reality simply a forming of the finite and the human into an image of God, and not a forming of God himself.

II. THE MORAL ACTIVITY, IN RELATION TO THE MORAL PERSON HIMSELF.

SECTION CXIX.

(a) The duty of moral sparing is here the preserving of one’s own existence and of its normal peculiarity and development, as prompted by a consciousness of the divine will, and hence also the warding off of all therewith-conflicting and disturbing or destroying influences on the part of nature or of the spiritual world. To this end it is necessary that in all things the true relation of the body, as a serving power, to the rational spirit, as the dominating power, be preserved, and that the image of God, which though originally inherent in man. is yet in need of fuller development, be preserved pure even in its corporeally-symbolical manifestation.

The moral sparing of one’s self is the higher moral application of a law that pervades the entire totality of being. That which is cohesion in a nature-body, and the law of gravitation in the natural world in general, and the instinct of self-defense and of self-preservation in the animal world, becomes with man a moral duty. When man seeks to preserve himself, to ward off injury and death, out of mere natural instinct, his action is not yet moral; it becomes moral only when it springs from a consciousness that it is God’s will,—that God has pleasure in our existence as his own creative work, that He has a purpose in us which we are morally to fulfill. Of a duty of self-destruction there can never be any possibility; and for a duty of entire self-sacrifice, of the giving up of life for the sake of a higher end, there is, in a state of sinlessness, 237also no possibility; otherwise the divine government would be in anarchy. God who gave existence to man wills also its preservation,—has willed it as a moral end, and not simply as a means to an end. Death is simply the wages of sin, and not a condition of virtue, save alone where on account of sin there is need of a sacrifice.

In a sinless state the duty of self-sparing is of easy fulfillment, partly for the reason that it corresponds to a natural law immanent in all living creatures, and partly because disturbing influences are conceivable only where they are occasioned by the fault of man himself,—for example, when he presumptuously exposes himself to such natural influences as he is not yet able to resist,—which is in fact possible seeing that, also for the unfallen state, the complete mastery over nature is presented as a condition yet to be attained to by moral effort. Also from the influence of spiritual beings an injuring of the moral person is possible, so long as the rational creature has not as yet attained to its ultimate perfection, so that here also there is place for the duty of watchfulness, in order that the diverse personalities that are as yet in process of development may not act hinderingly upon each other. And this duty of sparing watchfulness is still more increased when the moral person stands no longer in the presence of simply sin-free beings, but is assaulted by spiritual temptation, as in the case of Adam and Eve; here the duty of self-preserving sparing assumes at once the form of a positive warding off.—In the Scriptures the duty of sparing one’s self, even in relation to the corporeal life, is presented as per se strictly valid; “no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church” [Eph. v, 29]. Man is also to exercise this duty of sparing in view of his own possible sinning; in protecting his moral innocence, man protects also the image of God as created in him.

SECTION CXX.

(b) Moral appropriating is, as regards the moral person himself, directly at the same time also a moral forming of the person into a progressively more perfect expression of the moral idea,—into a personally-238peculiar realization of the moral end; and in proportion as the moral person appropriates to itself its own self, puts itself into possession of itself, it accomplishes upon itself also a moral forming.

(1) Not the body is to appropriate to itself the spirit, but the spirit is progressively more and more to appropriate to itself the body, and to form it, and thereby also to form itself; hence the spirit alone is the appropriating factor, and the body is simply to be appropriated and formed. Even as nature stands to God in a twofold relation, namely, in that, on the one hand, God accomplishes his will in it, makes it good, and, on the other, reveals himself through it, makes it into his image, into an object of beauty, so also has the body in relation to the spirit the twofold destination of being its organ and its image; the former it becomes essentially by particular forming, the latter by general forming (§§ 109, 110).

(a) The body is formed and appropriated to itself by the spirit as its true absolutely subservient organ, in that (1) it is strengthened and rendered apt in accomplishing every service for the rational will, through the mediating and carrying out of all appropriating and forming action of the rational spirit as bearing upon the external world; (2) in that, in its sensuous impulses, it is held under the discipline of the spirit, and is never allowed to have an independent right for itself; in both these respects realizes itself the complete domination of the spirit over the body.

It is characteristic of the true moral nature of man, that he is capable, not merely, as is the case with the brute, of appropriating and forming external objects, but also himself. The brute is formed by nature, not by itself, and it appropriates 239to itself only nature, but not itself; but man in his first-given condition does not as yet really have himself, but must first learn to possess himself,—must attain to moral ownership of himself.

Man virtualizes his god-likeness primarily in this, that he glorifies God even in his body as the temple of the Holy Ghost [1 Cor. vi, 19, 20], and that he presents this body to God as a living, holy, and well-pleasing sacrifice [Rom. xii, 1.] The preliminary manifold dependence of the spirit on the body, and through the body also on external nature, is to be overcome and changed into spiritual freedom; the spirit is itself to make the body truly its own body, to appropriate it to itself as a moral possession, to form it into the perfect organ of the spirit,—in a certain sense, to create it spiritually. The original foreignness of the body to the spirit is to be overcome; its as yet partially-actual independence is to be broken; the body is to be thoroughly permeated by the spirit, and all that is merely objective and unfree in it, to be done away with. The dominion of the spirit over nature, which is set before it as a moral goal, is to realize itself first on its own nature, that is, on the body. That this is a moral task is plainly indicated by nature itself. The brute is much earlier self-supporting and mature than man, and needs no training in order to attain to its greatest skill; all the skill that man attains to he has to get by learning, to acquire by moral effort; and all learning is an appropriating through consciousness; man must in some manner first comprehend his body, before he can really form it and take it under his control; he who is spiritually dull usually remains also physically clumsy; man as coming from the hands of nature is the most helpless and most unskillful of creatures; all that he ever becomes is by the spirit,—by free moral activity; that his nascent life is much more helpless than that of any of the animals, is simply an incident of his high moral dignity. That which he has from nature is indeed good, but if it remains as mere unspiritualized, undominated nature, then it becomes for him evil,—becomes something of which he is to be ashamed. This rendering the body skillful is a personally-particular forming—a working of the spirit upon the body; thereby the spirit forms the body into its own true possession; it aspires to have it 240for itself, to have it entirely in its control. Herein consists also the true particular appropriating, the enjoying, of the body; man enjoys it when he has it fully in his power. This is the secret of the rich enjoyment of young persons, when, in free corporeal movement, in skillful playing, in skating, in rhythmical muscular action, etc., they feel themselves masters over their bodies; it is the consciousness of freedom, of acquired mastery; for, all consciousness of mastery is a feeling of happiness, and that, too, a per se legitimate one.

Man is to form and appropriate to himself his body in two respects; for as a spirit lie stands to the outer world in the double relation of receiving and of influencing,—through the senses and through the organs of motion. The cultivation of the senses is more an appropriating than a real forming; the senses must first be brought under the control of the spirit; the seaman and the huntsman have not always a really sharper natural eye than others, but their seeing is more skilled,—they see many objects from which others may indeed receive exactly the same light-impressions, but yet not actually perceive them, for the reason that they overlook them; seeing is an art, and many, though with open eyes, see comparatively little. An uncultured person hears, in a beautiful piece of music, little more than confused sounds, for the reason that he does not know how to hear. It is a moral duty of man to develop his senses to perfection, fully to appropriate them to himself, for they were given to him by God as channels through which to appropriate to himself the outer world; and it is unthankfulness to God for man to be willing to see and hear little or nothing in God’s nature,—for him to have no open eyes for the glory of God as resplendent in creation, and no ear for the beautiful harmonies of nature and art. Rudeness and unculture are sinful in every respect, and hence also in respect to the senses.

The appropriating training of the organs of motion to vigorous skillfulness, not merely as a pleasure but also as a duty, is brought about under normal circumstances not so much by calculating art as by spontaneous natural activity; and it takes place chiefly during youth. While it was an error of many former educators entirely to neglect the training of the body to skillfulness and grace, still, on the other 241hand, there is danger of overestimating the worth of regulated gymnastics. The unnatural physical life of our city populations may render necessary a systematic process of corporeal exercise, notwithstanding its manifold unesthetic and even repulsive joint-wrenchings; but where the young people can have scope for indulging in more natural and frolicksome muscular recreation, regular gymnastics are doubtless quite superfluous; the learned cramming of overcrowded schools needs them indeed as a sanitary complement, but it is dangerous to substitute mere medicine for daily bread. It is a morbid condition of society, when that to which nature itself prompts us has to be made a school-requirement.

The complete subordinating of the sensuous impulses to the discipline of the spirit, that is, the training of the body by the spirit to temperateness in respect to all sensuous enjoyments, and to such activity as is necessary to its being a proper organ for the spirit, is also, at the same time, an appropriating and a forming; the members are to be formed into “instruments of righteousness unto God” [Rom. vi, 12, 13]. Paul represents the complete dependence of the body on the moral spirit as a dependence, not on the merely individual spirit, but on the spirit as morally subordinating itself to God. Man, as consecrated to God, is not to permit the per se legitimate caring for his body to become a fostering of the sensuous desires [Rom. xiii, 13, 14], but is strictly to subordinate the nurturing of the body and the indulgence in sensuous enjoyments to the rational purposes of the moral spirit, so that they shall simply be means for the spirit and never ends, in themselves [Luke xxi, 34; Rom. xiv, 17; Eph. v, 18; 1 Thess. v, 6; 1 Tim. iii, 2; Tit. ii, 1 sqq.; 1 Pet. iv, 7, 8]. Temperateness, however, does not imply the taking of the least possible quantity of food and drink, nor indeed indifference to the sensuous pleasures of the table; this would in fact be unthankfulness toward the goodness of God who has prepared for us also this pleasure; it does, however, require the observance of that measure which is conditioned on the needs and health of the body, and on the properly understood social relations of the person. Excessive indulgence is not only a degradation of the person himself, but also uncharitableness toward the destitute.

242

SECTION CXXI.

(b) The body is to be formed into an image or symbol of the rational spirit,—to become a revelation of the spirit in the external world; that is, it is to be shaped into an object of beauty, into a spiritualized expression of the moral personality. This takes place: (1) immediately,—in that the body, without the express and conscious activity of the person, is formed into a true expression of the morally-cultured spirit; (2) mediately,—in that the body, which though per se possessing the highest nature-beauty, is yet not to remain in simply that state, is formed by means of a spiritually-expressive characterizing adornment into an expression of artistic beauty,—into a symbolical expression not merely of the spiritual in general, but also of the personally-moral character in particular,—and in that, with moral carefulness, it is kept free from whatever would present it in the light of an object that is disesteemed or given over to natural unfreedom, and cast off by the spirit,—the virtue of cleanliness. Adornment, both under its positive and its negative phase, is a moral duty, not merely out of regard to others, as the true moral presentation and revelation of self to others, but also out of regard to the moral person himself.

The natural perfection of the body is not yet the true,—is to be exalted from natural beauty to spiritual. As the spirit (exists primarily only in a germinal form, hence the body cannot, from the very beginning, bear the full impress of the same; the spiritual expression of the body is at first not that of the personally-formed, but only of the as yet impersonal, spirit in general. The expression of the countenance becomes really spiritual, truly beautiful, only by and through a personal character-development, which is, in turn, reflected back 243from this personal peculiarity. The spirit must already have behind it a moral history, before it comes to expression in the features. A general beauty without character, is meaningless; a personally-spiritual beauty is winning and magnetic. The body becomes truly beautiful only through the complete appropriating of the same by, and for, the spirit; and the true secret of beauty consists in a genuine spiritual and moral culture. Where falseness has not yet gained firm foothold, there the countenance is the mirror of the soul; and, for the skilled look, even disguising falseness is transparent. There lies at the basis of “physiognomics” a deep truth; but this truth is not expressible in definite words and lines. It is not by mere chance that for certain historic personalities, such as those of Christ and the more prominent of the apostles, certain very definite forms and casts of countenance have found their place in Christian art, and by which every one recognizes them at first glance. The true character-expression of the cultured body is, in some sense, spirit-imbued,—is sensuous and supersensuous at the same time; neither words, nor outlines, nor even the photographic pencil of nature, is capable of reproducing it, but only the spirit-guided hand of the artist; spirit is recognized and grasped only by spirit; no photograph of a spiritual, character-imbued face attains to the fidelity of an artistic portrait. In a sinless state, the beauty of the spirit would necessarily reveal itself in beauty of body. So also must it have been in the case of Christ,—and the erroneous notion that for a time prevailed in the early church, to the effect that in Christ there had been no physical comeliness, was soon dissipated by the correct consciousness of Christian art. The heavenly soul of Christ must have depicted itself in his countenance [comp. Psa. xlv, 3]; and the reason why the children approached Him with glad confidence and shouted: “Hosanna!” is doubtless because of a direct impression which Christ’s person made upon them; children have a wonderful capacity for reading character in the external appearance. Female vanity, in laying such great stress on corporeal beauty, is guilty simply of applying to sinfully-perverted reality, the thought, that is correct for the unfallen state of humanity, namely, that beauty of body is evidence of a beautiful soul. The moral task in relation to this culture of bodily 244expression, is, happily, not an immediate intentional forming of the body, but rather the moral forming of the soul, which then, in turn, of itself impresses itself on the body.

The ornamentation of the body, including the exclusion of all uncleanliness, is a very important moral duty, and one that is very definitely emphasized in the Scriptures. On the subject of nudity and clothing, there has been, both from the moral and from the artistic stand-point, much disputing. Greek art, in its golden age, represented some of the gods nude; at a later period, when it had stooped to the service of worldliness rather than of religion, it expressed itself predominantly in the nude. Still, however, only such gods appear nude as represent a certain degree of moral and spiritual unripeness or sensuousness; Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, appear almost always draped; for spiritually-developed and historical characters, also among human beings, nudity was an artistic impossibility. This suggests the true law in the case. Nudity represents merely the naturally-beautiful, not the spiritually-beautiful, merely the human in general, not the personal in particular,—is that which is alike in all persons, not that in which they spiritually differ. That portion of the body which does not express the merely general, that is, the countenance, is, in fact, uniformly left free of clothing. The very sense for the morally-spiritual gives even a stronger expression to the personal through the medium itself of clothing. Who could bear the thought of a nude Caesar or Homer! Christian art rejected the nude, for the good reason that it had spiritual characters to represent. Moreover, mere nudity is artistically beautiful only in the form of lust-repellent, colorless sculpture; in painting it becomes licentious and, therefore, un-beautiful. It is a very false opinion, that clothing really conceals beauty; clothing, as an expression of the spiritual, as a free artistic creation, is in fact the higher beauty. This appears very clearly when man is represented not as an individual, but in groups; a bathing-place, swarming with nude figures, presents assuredly no beautiful spectacle, even if they were so many Apollos; precisely where man appears in his higher truth, namely, in society, there a beautiful scene is presented only by the help of diversified, character-expressive clothing. It is true, clothing is beautiful only where it is really expressive 245of a character, whether of the nation or of the person. The slavish copying after journals of fashion, is evidence of a want of sense and of character, and of a lack of esthetic perception.

Clothing did not first become necessary because of sin. The Biblical account implies only, that it became necessary prematurely, and for another than its normal reason,—namely, before the development of personal character had led to its invention as an adornment. The sin of the first pair effected only that the hitherto-innocent consorts felt, now, shame in each other’s presence, and that clothing, the proper object of which is ornamentation, was turned into a garb of penance. Clothing was not the very first want of persons living as yet in the most primitive simplicity; nor was yet its lack the characteristic trait of the Paradisaical state; clothing would have become a moral requirement also in the unfallen state so soon as man had grown into families, and the riper character of parents appeared in the presence of children [comp. Gen. ix, 21 sqq.] The nudity of savages is not innocence, but shameless rudeness.

Animals do not decorate themselves, they are decorated already; man exalts himself above the animal by ingenious decoration. The tawdry ornamentation of savages exemplifies this, under a rude form; with them, the mere changing of the natural form is regarded as a beautifying; the notion of ornamentation is conceived under an essentially negative form; the unnatural itself is regarded as beautiful. There is a higher significance in the hunter’s hanging about himself the skins of the bear or lion;—this is to him essentially a decoration of honor, a sign of his courage. Thus also, in the simpler forms of civilized life, it is an honor for a woman personally to weave and to prepare her own clothing and that of the family; it is natural for man to display his work, the fruit of his skill; but he also loves to manifest his spiritual idiosyncrasy under an esthetic form in the ornamentation of the body. Clothing and ornamentation in general, when of a normal character, manifest, in part, the general element, the natural peculiarity, and, in part, the personal peculiarity; hence in the style of the clothing we can to a certain extent recognize the personal character; the distinction between male and 246female clothing among all civilized nations has a deep moral ground [comp. Deut. xxii, 5]; and just as, on the one hand, it is usually foolish and vain for an individual to break entirely with a general national custom, so, on the other, it is evidence of spiritual imbecility to make one’s entire outward appearance a piece of mere imitation, without personal peculiarity.

The Scriptures attach some importance to a befitting adornment, especially in its moral significancy. Jehovah himself prescribes a worthy garb for those who officiate in his worship [Exod. xxviii and xxxix; Num. xv, 38 sqq.]; a holy adornment becomes those who offer worship to the Lord [Psa. xxix, 2; comp. Exod. xix, 10; Ezek. xxiv, 17]. When Christ in his parable [Matt. xxii, 2 sqq.] characterizes the not putting on of the wedding-garment as a serious fault, he manifestly does more than allude to a mere worthless custom [comp. Gen. xli, 14]; and the apostle does not consider it unimportant to commend to the societies a becoming adornment [1 Tim. ii, 9, 10].

That cleanliness of body and of clothing is regarded not only in the Old Testament [Exod. xix, 10; xxix, 4; Lev. viii, 66; Num. viii, 6 sqq.; xxxi, 21 sqq.; comp. Prov. xxxi, 25], but also in all the higher heathen religions and in Islamism, as an important moral and religious duty, so that in fact a large part of the worship consists in washings, with direct symbolical reference to moral purification,—is a plain indication of the deep moral significancy of bodily purity. The sanitary interest is here merely incidental; the essential point is the outward expressing of the spiritual. Man is to bear, in his entire inner nature, as well as in his outward manifestation, a spiritually-moral impress,—is to be, in all respects, an expression of free self-determination, is to have upon himself nothing which has attached itself to him merely outwardly or fortuitously, as something belonging not to him, but to an extraneous nature-body,—is to be a purely spiritual creation. Uncleanliness is the expression of unfree nature,—of a dependent, passive belonging to mere outward nature, an evidence of self-abandonment, self-disesteem and dishonor, and is regarded among all cultivated nations as a symbol and actual indication of sin; it has never been any thing other than isolated spiritual perversions of humanity who have found an especial 247wisdom and greatness of soul in an open display of uncleanliness. Sensual pleasure-seeking, riotousness and moral degradation usually lead to corporeal filthiness; and it is a very wise principle of education in the case of the morally abandoned, and in missions among rude tribes, to place a very high value on bodily cleanliness. The precepts as to cleansing, in the Old Testament, are based on this ground; Christianity expressly declares carefulness about outward cleanliness as a virtue intimately connected with religion [Matt. vi, 17; comp. John xiii, 4 sqq.].

To the gracefulness and beauty of the physique, belongs also that manner of movement or bearing which answers to the spiritual character, to beauty of soul; the cultivation of skillfulness of movement leads directly to the culture of esthetical motion. The beauty of movement consists in the fact that it expresses the perfect mastery of the soul over the body, and thus presents, in the body, not merely the organ of the will, but also, through the element of the beautiful, an image of the self-harmonious spirit,—in youth an expression of heart-gladness, in age that of earnest dignity. The dance is esthetic only in youth, in the mature it is repulsive.

SECTION CXXII.

(2) Moral appropriating and forming, as bearing upon the spirit itself, that is, the moral striving of the spirit to have and to possess itself as its own moral product, takes place through conscious, free activity, although indeed in the unconscious nature of the personal spirit there exists an impulse ill that direction. In so far as man is a rational spirit he has before him his own self as a moral task,—is to form himself into a moral personality, into a character; all non-advancement is here retrogression. This appropriating and forming relates to the spirit both as cognizing, as feeling, and as willing, and looks to the harmony of these three phases of the spirit-life.

It is only when the spirit makes itself into its own possession,248—forms itself into a truly rational spirit, that it is a moral spirit. He who is only a product of other spirits, who allows himself passively to be molded merely by the spirit that for the time being prevails in society, is, even when this spirit is a good one, not yet morally mature, but is in moral nonage; he is not yet a person, not yet a character. What Christ says [Matt. xxv, 14 sqq.] of putting to use the talents received, holds good also of the moral endowments of man; he dare not leave them idle, but must put them to moral usury,—must mold himself by spiritual appropriation into richer self-possession. He who “has not,”—who leaves idle his received talent, who makes it not into a vital possession,—does not retain it even as an unproductive power, but loses what he already has, and for the simple reason that it is a general law that a life-power, if unawakened into activity, dies away and perishes; it is only in virtue of a vital progressive development that the spiritual can be preserved,—even as water is saved from stagnation only by motion. The state of innocence cannot be preserved by mere non-doing; moral indolence would let even the trees of life in Paradise wither away. By the leaving idle of that which is destined to development, man sinks to moral dullness and insensibility; the spiritual condition of savages is a manifestation of the consequences of burying the received talent.

The culture of self by the appropriation of truth, that is, the forming of self to knowledge and wisdom, is presented in the Scriptures as one of the highest moral duties, and it is inadmissible to limit this appropriation to merely religious and moral truth, though of course this is the principal thing (§ 104). God actually directed the first man to the acquirement of knowledge by the fact of his referring him to the objective world about him (§ 60), and in the fact that He made known himself and his will to him. But the knowledge of good and evil was forbidden to man, for the reason that a real knowledge of the latter was possible only by its realization; he was indeed to know what he should not do, but not to know of a real evil, and only a real entity can be truly known; but the woman sought after a wisdom [Gen. iii, 6] apart from true wisdom, and consequently fell.

Feeling is primarily of an immediate, involuntary character; 249but man is not to be under the power of unfree feelings; he is rational only when he develops his feelings into moral ones,—brings them under the control of his rational knowledge and of his moral volitions. There is absolutely no place in the human mind or heart for any thing that is not morally willed or conditioned. Hence it is a moral duty to cultivate our feelings into moral integrity, so that they may never incur the liability of being reproached by the moral consciousness,—never, even involuntarily, entertain envy, and the like. In the ante-sinful state such feelings of course do not yet exist; but non-moral feelings become very soon sinful ones unless they become developed. And even the, as yet, uncorrupted feelings are primarily still in a crude state and in need of culture. The feeling of delight, and hence of happiness, rises with the increase of culture; the first human beings could not be so happy in their first days as they could have been after further moral development. They too were liable to have morally false feelings. It is true there was as yet nothing immoral before their eyes which could have become an object of immoral delight; but they had, before them, themselves as in need of further development; hence if they had felt perfectly contented in this state of need, instead of thirsting after a higher perfection, this feeling would have been immoral. On the other hand, they were capable of feeling displeasure at the divine,—as in fact actually occurred in view of the divine prohibition. And the pleasure which Eve felt in the words of the tempter was already decidedly immoral, seeing that it implied a will not to follow the will of God, and was essentially the fall itself.

But feeling must be formed not merely as to its quality, but also as to its degree of liveliness. If only the more prominent phases of good and evil make an impression upon us, while the less prominent ones pass before us unnoticed, then our moral feeling is obscure and obtuse. The fact that feeling, like the bodily senses, is affected at first only by the stronger impressions, implies of itself the duty of making it sensitive—sensitive even for the most delicate features of the godly or the ungodly. And this can be brought about only by a constantly increasing growth in knowledge,—by an attending to whatever takes place within and without us; we must prove 250all things and hold fast to the best, the good, and that too not merely as knowledge but also as the possession of our heart, as our delight and joy.—Our feelings, as moral, stand not outside of, but also under our will. The notion that the heart cannot be commanded, is absolutely immoral,—is an assertion of man’s irresponsibility. Natural feeling does indeed precede the will, but moral feeling is, under one phase, determined by the moral will [§ 93]. It is not left to the hearts of children whether they will or can love their parents, they are bound to love them; and the same is true of wedlock-love, of our love to our calling, to our rulers, to our country. The first promptings of feeling are as yet extra-moral, but in that by this first excitation the will becomes free and is set into activity, it then in turn directs its activity also upon the feelings and the affections.

That willing is in harmony with knowing and feeling, is primarily strictly natural; in man, however, as distinguished from the much earlier self-possessing animal, this agreement is primarily only approximative; the will must be exercised in order to be sure of itself; man must first learn how to use it. There is need of a moral will in order that the will nay become moral. This has all the appearance of a vicious circle, but it is not; the fact is, I must in general, and as a principle, have a will always to follow the truth, in order that, in particular, I may actually form my individual will morally, and make it subject to recognized truth. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak; this is relatively true also in a normal development of mankind; this flesh is, however, not merely sensuousness, but also the spirit itself, the will, in so far as it has not as yet become veritably free. The will of the spirit must become something which it is not, as yet, from the very start,—truly free; and it is free only when that feebleness, which is primarily merely a sort of clumsiness, is overcome,—when the spirit is not only in general willing to do God’s will, but also shows in each particular case the same unwavering willingness. That which, in a state of sinfulness, becomes a self-conflicting double will [Rom. vii, 15 sqq.], exists also in the ante-sinful state, at least in so far as to constitute a difference between the will as purely individual and the will as truly rational, God-consecrated, and self-denying. The former 251is not to be done away with, but to be harmoniously subordinated to the latter; the will must be so formed as that we can say at every moment: I will, and yet not I, but God who dwells in me. The will should not be a willful will, but must be molded into an obedient one,—into obedience to the divine will, which, in virtue of our love to God, becomes at one with our own will. In obeying, man distinguishes indeed his own will from God’s will, but he subordinates his will, not lothfully but in loving willingness, to the lovingly-appropriated divine will,—transfigures the former, more and more, by his love of the latter, so that finally there are no longer two wills, but only one,—and that, not in virtue of any destruction, but simply in virtue of love, not by violence but through freedom,—by following the example of Christ in the constant practice of the principle: “Not my will, but thine be done” [Luke xxii, 42; Matt. vi, 10; John v, 30; Psa. xl, 8; Jer. vii, 23; Matt. vii, 21; xii, 50; 1 John ii, 17; Heb. xiii, 21]. Every moral will must say with Christ: “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me” [John iv, 34]; obedience is the food of the soul,—forms and strengthens the will to an increasingly freer and holier manner of willing. Only those are the children of God who are led by the spirit of God,—who permit themselves freely to be guided by Him, who will only in and through Him [Rom. viii, 14].

Hence also in the forming of the will we have to distinguish between the quality and the degree. A will may in fact be good in quality, may aim at the good and detest the evil, and yet be lacking in strength and in steadfastness,—may shrink before difficulties; it may begin well and yet not bring to perfection; good resolutions do not necessarily imply a truly good will; in fact, the road to hell is said to be paved with good resolutions. He who has a good will only at first, but does not really carry out any thing, is as yet unfree in his will,—has it not under his control, and is yet a moral minor; he does not actually will at every particular conjuncture that which he wills in general. Hence it is man’s duty to place his will entirely under the dominion of moral reason, to mold it to freedom, in order that in particular cases it may not offer resistance to good resolutions in general,—in a word, that a will of the flesh may not oppose itself to the will of the spirit.

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III. THE MORAL ACTIVITY AS RELATING TO OTHER PERSONS.

SECTION CXXIII.

(a) The moral sparing of others consists in a real recognition of their moral personality, and hence of their personal independence, freedom, and honor.

(α) Man’s personal independence and freedom, which are the expression of his morally rational essence, may be limited by others only in the interest of higher moral ends, namely, either in order to train the as yet morally and spiritually immature toward real freedom, or in the moral interests of the moral whole or society.—(β) The personal honor of our fellow-man is preserved when we recognize and treat him as a morally-rational being called to God-likeness and God-sonship, and hence as capable of, and entitled to, moral communion with us,—when we do nothing toward him which is inconsistent therewith,—which would stigmatize him as non-moral, or, undeservedly, as immoral and irrational; this is the duty of respecting our neighbor, and as implied therein of respecting the personal dignity of man in general,—the duty of sparing and protecting the good name of our neighbor.—(γ) From these two duties follows the duty of a sparing respect for whatever appertains to our neighbor,—belongs to him as a possession, is his property in the broadest sense of the word, that is, whatever he has a right to call his own,—and hence a positive avoidance of all action whereby it would be damaged or alienated from our neighbor.

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Even as our personal morality does not consist in undisciplined arbitrary discretion, but in the controlling our own will by the will of God, so also there is no moral influencing of our fellow-man without a limiting of his individual will, of his individual liberty, and that too in the very interest of his higher personal freedom. The child cannot be educated without that in many respects limits be set to its, as yet, unripe, unintelligent will; in the person of the educator it is confronted with the principles of moral order under which it is to bow its individual will; it is in fact an essential part of the duty of sparing the personality of the child, that it be not allowed to grow up in rudeness. As the child is related to its parents, so is the individual person to the moral whole. He whose calling it is to govern, must confine the liberty of the individual within the order of the whole,—must in some measure limit it in order that all may become truly free; in an organized moral community it is each member’s duty to co-operate in the realization of moral order, and hence to hold within bounds both his own will and the will of others. Hence the moral sparing of others is never of an unconditional character, but finds a limit in the duty of moral culture; but within this limit the duty of sparing becomes all the more imperative. The limiting may never be such as to reduce the object to a mere will-less creature of arbitrary discretion; the right of the object of education or guidance to be an independent moral personality with a moral purpose of its own, may never be ignored. He who is as yet morally a minor may never be treated as if he were always to remain such,—never as a mere means to an end,—but he must be treated as having an end in himself. A slavish education is sinful; despotic government is immoral, whether exercised by a single individual or by a minority-crushing majority. Whatever apology may be made for slavery in a sinful world, in the sphere of pure morality it is absolutely anti-moral.

The sparing and respecting of the personal honor of others, appears among the chief commands in the Old Testament [Exod. xx, 16; Lev. xix, 16], and is presented also in the Gospel as one of the most essential of duties [Matt. v, 21, 22]. My neighbor has upon me a claim to respect for his honor, for his good name. Man is not a mere isolated unit, but a vital 254member of a moral whole; the personal honor, the good name, of each is the moral bond which holds together the community; he who has lost respect in society stands outside of the scope of its common-life,—is a broken-off leaf soon to wither away.—The sparing of the possessions of others [Exod. xx, 15, 17; Lev. xix, 35, 36; Deut. xxv, 13 sqq.; xxvii, 17; 1 Thess. iv, 6] is only a special phase of the sparing of the person of others. In his property man creates for and about himself a little world which as the product of his labor, belongs to him, which he calls his earnings, and for which he has consequently a moral right to recognition and respect on the part of others.

SECTION CXXIV.

(b) The moral appropriating and the forming of others are, in virtue of the mutual moral relation of men to each other, always associated together in a normal state of things,—each being and involving at the same time also the other; and both take place at the same time in the moral act of love. In active love toward his neighbor, man brings about also love toward himself, for the beloved person becomes united to, and appropriated by, him who loves; the active love of one’s neighbor is therefore an appropriating and a forming at the same time, both in respect to the neighbor and in respect to the loving person himself. The exercise of love breaks down the antithesis of individual persons, but at the same time respects their moral rights and moral independence.

It is noteworthy that in the Scriptures we never read of the love of mankind, but always of the love of neighbor; [Matt. vi, 14, 15 is only a seeming exception to this, as here “men” stand in contrast to God]. Christ’s love to us is indeed called love to man or to the brethren, but never love to neighbor; but our love to man in general, and not merely to our Christian 255brethren, is always called love to neighbor. In this very circumstance the moral relation of men to each other is directly indicated. My fellow-man does not stand before me as a mere isolated individual, but as one who, by God’s will, is near to me,—who belongs to me for my full love, belongs to me so intimately that there ought to be nothing strange or uncongenial between him and me. In love, my neighbor becomes mine, and I his; hence love is a mutual appropriating; and by the fact that I thereby enlarge both my life-sphere and his own, it is at the same time a mutual forming. Love seeks not merely the welfare of the other, but also his love. In the act of love I form the other, in that I impart myself to him as loving, and that too in my moral character; I rejoice him and exalt his moral life, in that I stimulate him to reciprocal love. At the same time also I exercise a formative influence on myself, in that by this communion I am myself exalted and promoted in my spiritually-moral existence,—in that I spiritually appropriate to myself an other spiritual being.

The law of love is presented by Christ as the highest of all commands, and love of neighbor as the substance of all moral duties toward our fellow-man [Matt. xxii, 39, 40; John xiii, 34, 35; xv, 12, 17; comp. Rom. xii, 10; xiii, 8-10; Gal. v, 14; Eph. v, 2; 1 Thess. iv, 9; 1 Cor. xiii, 1 sqq.; 1 Pet. i, 22; iv, 8; 1 John iii, 11; James ii, 8; Heb. xiii, 1]. All fulfilling of duty toward our neighbor is an exercise of love; when not so it is but deception; that which springs not of love, is not only morally worthless, but also immoral, because counterfeit. Love is the test of true God-sonship [1 John iv, 12, 13], “for love is of God, and every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God” [1 John iv, 7]; human love is thankful reciprocation for that love which first loved us,—is true religion [James i, 27]; and love to God must necessarily manifest itself also in love to the beloved of God [1 John iv, 20, 21; v, 1, 2]. The precept of love to neighbor is presented even in the Old Testament as a chief duty [Lev. xix, 18], and is expressly extended to non-Israelites [verse 34; Deut. x, 19; Micah vi, 8; Zech. vii, 9]; what a contrast this forms to the boasted “humanitarianism” of the Greeks to whom every non-Greek was a right-less barbarian! 256Thou shalt love thy neighbor “as thyself;” this is not a mere comparison of two parallel forms of love,—both are at bottom but one love; a truly moral love of one’s self as a moral personality, necessarily manifests itself also as love to other moral persons through whom in fact one’s own rational being is heightened; true love of neighbor is also at the same time true self-love. This holds good even of the false love of neighbor; every one seeks, in some form, friendship and love, and feels himself unhappy in isolation; hence our Lord says: “If ye love [only] them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the Publicans the same?” [Matt. v, 46, 47; comp. Luke vi, 32]. If now even a false love of neighbor is at the same time a love of self, how much more so is the true love of neighbor!—not however, of course, in such a sense as that I love my neighbor only for my own sake, for that would be self-seeking, but in the sense that I love my neighbor for God’s sake, and in this love of God exalt at the same time my own moral life, and find in the love of neighbor true moral enjoyment.

The symbolical expression of mutual union in love is bodily touching, especially the giving of the hand [2 Kings x, 15; Gal. ii, 9], and in a higher form the kiss, which evinces a more intimate equality of love the more it is reciprocal; the kiss on the forehead or cheek is rather the sign of a condescending and more distant love, the kissing of the hand that of a reverential love, the kissing of the feet that of a humbly submissive love [Luke vii, 38; Isa. xlix, 23], the kiss on the lips that of a mutual, confidential, intimate love, and hence especially expressive also of sexual love. In the Scriptures the kiss appears as the sign of love between parents and children [Gen. xxvii, 26, 27; xxxi, 28, 55; xlviii, 10; l, 1; Exod. xviii, 7; Ruth i, 9; 1 Kings xix, 20; Luke xv, 20], between brothers and sisters and relatives [Gen. xxix, 11, 13; xxxiii, 4; xlv, 15; Exod. vi, 27; Ruth i, 14], between friends [1 Sam. xx, 41], as an expression of homage [1 Sam. x, 1; Psa. ii, 12; Luke vii, 38], and as an expression of love in other respects [2 Sam. xx, 9; Matt. xxvi, 48 sqq.; Luke vii, 45; Acts xx, 37]; hence it is also a symbol of reconciliation [Gen. xxxiii, 4; 2 Sam. xiv, 33: Luke xv, 20]; and the fraternal kiss was, in the early church, a general custom 257[Rom. xvi, 16; 1 Cor. xvi, 20; 2 Cor. xiii, 12; 1 Thess. v, 26; 1 Pet. v, 14.]

SECTION CXXV.

Active love is a self-impartation of the subject to the object,—an imparting of what is one’s own to another in order to exalt his life. Hence it manifests itself in service-rendering, in benefiting; all moral community-life is a reciprocal service of love; every act of love is a sacrifice. Sympathizing love imparts every thing which is dear to it:—(a) It imparts its own spiritual possessions in order thereby to promote the spiritual life and the spiritual possessions of the other, and this, in virtue of an honest and truthful self-communication. To this communication corresponds, on the part of the object, the answering and accepting love of confidence, that is, a willingness to let himself be formed by the appropriation of the spiritually-communicating love of his fellow,—a being receptive for self-revealing truthfulness. (b) Love imparts also its material possessions, and is hence a devoting of our personal productive forces to the aid of the needy, in the fulfillment of the duties of charity and personal assistance. In imparting and devoting itself, love acquires a right to the reciprocating love of the other,—to thankfulness in heart and act.

Love imparts lovingly to the beloved that which itself loves; only that in which I myself have pleasure, can I lovingly impart; for this reason every true act of love is a sacrifice, and a sacrifice that is not hesitatingly and stumblingly brought; love makes it easy; but every sacrifice must be made to God; only he who practices love for God’s sake brings a proper offering. To do good and to communicate is expressly declared in the Scriptures as a God-pleasing sacrifice [Heb. xiii, 16]. The mite of the poor, when offered in 258love, avails more than the rich gift of the thoughtless spendthrift; in fact he who does not morally love his legitimately-obtained possessions, cannot in the nature of things make therefrom a sacrifice.

Christ gives as the determining rule for our conduct toward our neighbor the general formula: “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets” [Matt. vii, 12]. Hence true self-love is the pattern and measure of love to neighbor; our own rational striving shows us what is the striving of others, and ought to put itself into harmony with the latter; that which I would acquire for myself as a right upon others, ought first to be a duty toward them. By this rule Christ implies, at the same time, that love begets answering love, and hence reverts back upon him who exercises it. This is a practical life-rule in answer to the question: flow shall I exercise love in each and every particular case? and it gives as the answer: Just as I should wish that it should be done to myself,—a very safe rule, provided always that my own moral consciousness in general is not beclouded, so that I should no longer know what would really serve to my peace. The precious is purchased only by the precious,—love only by love. All love seeks to serve; love of neighbor is ministering love. “Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister, and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant, even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” [Matt. xx, 26 sqq.]. Christ’s love, the highest pattern, is itself the highest love-service, and has brought the greatest sacrifice; all love to God is a service of God; all neighbor-love is a God-serving in the service of the neighbor. “Let no man seek what is his own, but every man what is another’s” [1 Cor. x, 24]; love to self must not become a separating of ourselves from others, nor a self-seeking using of them; self-seeking must be sacrificed in order to attain to true self-love in the love of neighbor. “Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive” [Acts xx, 35]; giving makes happier in the very love-act itself, and, though a sacrificing, is yet at the same time a receiving, an enkindling of reciprocal love, an imitating of 259God and of Christ who out of love gave all; it is more blessed than receiving,—not that we are simply to give acts of love, and not also thankfully to receive them,—for he who cannot, out of love, receive, is unable also to give out of love, and he who, because of pride, will not receive, gives in fact only out of pride; but that kind of receiving is not blessed and does not render blessed, which is not willing also to give, but only to have, and in which the person regards only the bestowment as such, and not the love which makes it,—inclines only to possess the gift, but not to recognize the love and to reciprocate it in love. The moral person receives also gladly, out of love, from love, not however for the sake of the gift but for the sake of the giver,—desires indeed to receive love, but only for the reason that he himself loves. The giving of presents is a universally recognized sign of love, even where the moral consciousness appears under its rudest forms [Gen. xii, 16; xlv, 17 sqq.]; there is no love which does not seek to impart itself,—which would not gladly offer liberally, for the delight and enjoyment of the other, that in which the loving one himself has delight and enjoyment, and thus prove itself genuine by sacrifice [Gen. xxiv, 22, 53; xxxii, 13 sqq.; xlii, 25; xliii, 11; xlv, 22 sqq.; 1 Sam. ix, 7 sqq.; xviii, 4; Prov. xviii, 16]. Among certain rude tribes it is customary for friends to interchange names, as is, in fact, the case with one of the parties, even now, in Christian marriage; this is also a love-offering.

Communicating love imparts indeed all that it has, but it does not give away all; the spiritual possession grows in imparting itself. The communicating of one’s own spiritual possessions is the exercise of truthfulness. The rational spirit has, in virtue of its own duty of spiritual appropriating, an absolute right to truthfulness in the self-communications of. others, though indeed not an unconditional right to the communication of all that is known by others. Love admits of no falseness; and though there may be things in the life, even of the righteous, especially inner states, which may not and should not be communicated indiscriminately to every one,—for example, to the as yet morally immature,—still, this silence is essentially different from falsifying. In the Scriptures truthfulness is based on love; “speak every man truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another” [Eph. iv, 25], that is, because we are united as vital organs to a single moral body,—belong to each other, should he transparent to each other. “To this end,” says Christ, “was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth” [John xviii, 37]; this is true of Christ also in his character of Son of man, and hence also of all men; now Christ came into the world out of love, and out of love he bore witness to the truth. Truth is the good, the divine, as relating to spiritual communicating. Whatever exists is for the personal spirit, and each personal spirit exists for all other personal spirits,—must be perfectly transparent to them, in so far as sin throws into it no shadow, in order that spirit in general, the essential nature of which is to unite the separated, may attain to the truth [Matt. v, 37; comp. Job xxvii, 4; Zech. viii, 16; Psa. xv, 2; xxxiv, 14; Rev. xiv, 5]. Where sin is not yet predominant, but love prevails, there truthfulness is easy and natural; it becomes difficult only where sin predominates.

The formative influencing of others through the living-out of a moral character is to be regarded simply as a phase of the truthfulness of loving self-communication, and not as constituting a special duty of giving a good example [Matt. v, 14-16; Rom. xiv, 19; xv, 2; Phil. ii, 15; iii, 17; Titus ii, 7; 1 Pet. ii, 9, 12, 15; comp. 1 Cor. iv, 16; xi, 1; Phil. iv, 9; 2 Thess. iii, 7]. No one may wish to be moral in order to appear moral; that would be downright hypocrisy; but also no one should desire to conceal that which in his character is truly moral; this would likewise be untruth. But in order to the formative influencing of others through moral self-manifestation, it is of course not enough simply to be inactive, simply as it were to let one’s self be contemplated, but there is requisite, in view of the diverse characters that are to be influenced, a selection of special manners of self-communication; as bearing upon children the manner must be other than with the morally mature; from this, however, it does not follow that this self-impartation is to sink to a mere self-complacent display of self,—an intentional presentation of self as a moral pattern, in any respect whatever. This would be, even in a saint, a violation of becoming humility,—a tempting of hearts from Him who alone is the perfect type of holiness.

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Spiritual self-communicating, even when perfectly truthful, is not per se of a moral character, for, in view of the limitedness of men as individual persons, it is in fact a direct necessity; for this reason, perfect solitude is so great a torment; the recluse endures his freely-chosen solitude solely because he is engaged in a continuous spiritual self-communicating, namely, to God in prayer; a non-praying, unpious solitary would either be suffering the severest punishment or would be spiritually deranged. Self-impartation may even be sinful, as in purposeless, thoughtless gossip; it becomes moral only when it is a practicing of love. Loving self-communication seeks not its own but that which is another’s. Falsehood is hatred, is lovelessness; where true love is there falsehood is impossible; hence the deep pain occasioned by falseness on the part of the beloved one.

From the fact that truthfulness is an expression of love, it is entitled to answering love from the other party, to a ready welcoming, to confidence. It is true, confidence in men is generally presented in the Scriptures as deceiving [Psa. cxviii, 8; Jer. xvii, 5, 6, etc.]; here, however, the question is only as to an unpious confidence which builds not upon God but upon man, and of the state of sinfulness in general. But where sin is not yet in the mastery, there mutual confidence is the necessary antecedent condition of all moral communion, and a necessary out-going of love. Distrust paralyzes love. The truthful have a moral right to confidence in their word; confidence is the reverse side of truthfulness. Even as Christ uniformly required faith and confidence in himself, because he was the Truth, so may every one who is of the Truth lay claim to confidence; hence confidence is not a discretionary state of the mind, but a moral act. The little child that was proposed to the disciples as a moral type, is such also in respect to trust and confidence.

The more outward form of self-imparting through service-rendering [Gen. xxiv, 18 sqq.; xxxiii, 12, 15; Exod. ii, 17; Deut. xxii, 1 sqq.; Matt. xxi, 3; John xii, 2; xiii, 4 sqq.; Acts xxviii, 2; Gal. v, 13; 1 Pet. iv, 10; Heb. vi, 10; xiii, 16, etc.] which, on the supposition of a state of sinfulness, includes in itself also beneficence, is not as yet in the unfallen state a showing of pity, for misery does not exist save in a state of 262sin; but there is always need of mutual assistance so long as the last degree of perfection is not yet reached, and hence there is always also the duty of helping, through the imparting of our own forces and means,—of mutually complementing our possessions which largely vary according to the personal peculiarity of the possessors.

Love is in its very nature communion-forming,—calls for the love of the other. And unreciprocated love presupposes sin. Love gives itself over, but it does not give itself away; it desires to find itself again in the beloved, even as light never shines without being reflected. The loving reflection of love, namely, love as the fruit of love, is thankfulness. He to whom thankfulness or unthankfulness is indifferent, has no love; even the Lord himself wept over Jerusalem when it spurned his love. The warmer the love, so much the more sensitively is felt the chill of thanklessness; only a taking refuge in the love of God can assuage this pang. But only he is entitled to thankfulness whose love is itself humble thanks to the loving God; without this the pretended right is simply presumptuous self-seeking. The moral worth of thankfulness and the despicableness of thanklessness are recognized even among the rudest tribes, as in fact even in brutes thankfulness is manifested by brightened looks; and hence Christ represents this duty as valid even among the heathen,—as instinctively commending itself to the natural consciousness, and as also practiced by man in his natural state [Matt. v, 46; Luke vi, 32, 33; comp. Exod. ii, 20; Josh. vi, 22 sqq.; 1 Sam. xv, 6; 2 Kings v, 16, 23; Ruth ii, 10 sqq.; Luke xvii, 16; Acts xxiv, 3]. But only love has a right to thankfulness; a benefit which does not flow from love, which merely seeks thankfulness, does not deserve thankfulness, for it is inwardly false.

SECTION CXXVI.

At an equal stage of spiritually-moral maturity, men are related to each other as mutually-forming and appropriating each other to a like degree; but the more there is a difference in this maturity, so much the more predominates on the part of the 263morally higher-developed the formative influencing, and on the part of others the appropriating. However, the right and duty of formative influencing on the part of the morally less-developed never sinks to zero;—even the as yet morally immature inevitably exert a measure of moral influence upon the morally higher-developed and upon the totality of society.

A complete moral equalization of all men as to their moral influencing of others would be an irrational reversing of all moral order, a dissolving of all historical life into unorganized individual units. Children never sustain to their parents a relation of perfect equality; their relation to them is always rather appropriating than formative; the resistance of children to the higher moral validity of the parents is regarded among almost all nations as a flagrant outrage, and reverence for age as a high virtue. But society at large is a moral whole, and here also the higher-advanced have and exercise naturally a guiding and an educative influencing-activity over and upon the others, and the totality has a higher validity than the individual. The higher-developed moral individual sustains to the morally-immature the right and duty of educative influencing; a perfectly holy man would enjoy per se a right to spiritually-moral dominion; and for this good reason, and not simply in virtue of his being the Son of God, is Christ our legitimate Lord. Nevertheless the right and duty of moral forming