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           Title: On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers
      Creator(s): Schleiermacher, Friedrich (1768-1834)
   CCEL Subjects: All;
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                                       ON

                                    RELIGION

Speeches to Its
Cultured Despisers

    by

Friedrich
Schleiermacher

  translated with introduction
  by
  John Oman, B.D.

   London
   K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd.
   1893
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CONTENTS

   Foreword                                                         vii
   Preface                                                          xiii
   First Speech--Defence                                            1
   Second Speech--The Nature of Religion                            26
   Third Speech--The Cultivation of Religion                        119
   Fourth Speech--Association in Religion, or Church and Priesthood 147
   Fifth Speech--The Religions                                      210
   Epilogue                                                         266
   The First Edition                                                275
   Index                                                            285
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FOREWORD

  JACK FORSTMAN

   IF a book can signal the beginning of an era, then Schleiermacher's On
   Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers marks the beginning of the
   era of Protestant Liberal Theology. By normal reckoning that era lasted
   about one hundred twenty years and came to an end with the publication
   of Karl Barth's Romans.

   These statements as indications of the historical importance of the
   Speeches are accurate enough, but they are misleading. Schleiermacher's
   conception of religion in general and of Christianity in particular was
   strikingly "original," but he appropriated a good many themes that had
   been articulated before him, especially in the decades most recent to
   him. Also, of course, it is a mistake to suppose that all Protestant
   Liberal Theology bears the mark of Schleiermacher, and it is false to
   suppose that Protestant Liberal Theology came to an end with Barth's
   Romans. The generalization, then, is a convenience of historians that
   rightly highlights the historical importance of the Speeches.

   A better way to indicate the importance of this book is to say that it
   properly belongs to an astonishingly small number of classics in
   Christian theology. By classic I mean a book that has not only major
   historical significance of the sort indicated in the opening paragraph
   but that continues also to stimulate and to form in substantive ways
   the thinking of some who are preoccupied with the questions of what
   religion and Christian faith are. The Speeches are the best door into
   Schleiermacher's thought, and that thought will likely continue to
   exercise its power here and there into the distant future. Reading the
   Speeches is more than an exercise in trying to understand an important
   moment in the history of Christian theology. It rightly evokes
   reflection and discussion of the author's understanding of religion
   without respect to time.

   For both its historical and its continuing contemporary significance it
   is good that the book is here reprinted in a relatively accessible
   form. The translation is the one made by British theologian John Oman
   in 1893. It is a good translation, and it has the advantage of using an
   English that is more closely related to the rather ornate German that
   characterizes Schleiermacher's style in this work. Both Oman's English
   and Schleiermacher's German are different from their present-day
   counterparts. In following the flow and rhythm of the sentences, the
   reader's eye will occasionally stumble over an elaborate construction,
   a quaint phrase, or an unusual adjective, but the text is penetrable
   and clear. Most important, it gives us Schleiermacher, and
   understanding Schleiermacher rewards the effort.

   The Schleiermacher it gives us is the young Schleiermacher who, as
   Reformed (Calvinist) Chaplain at the Charity Hospital in Berlin, a
   predominately evangelical (Lutheran) city, had sufficient free time to
   participate actively in the fermenting avant garde culture of that time
   and place. That avant garde movement was what is called early German
   Romanticism, and it found its voice in the lively conversations that
   took place in the salons of wealthy Jewish women. Schleiermacher was
   introduced to the weekly drawing-room gatherings of Henriette Herz by
   the young Count Alexander Dohna, with whom Schleiermacher had become
   friends when not long before he had been tutor to the younger Dohna
   children at the family estate.

   He fit the group. He was brilliant, witty, and articulate; he had a
   gift for friendship. He also shared the group's reaction against
   enlightened rationality and detachment and against neo-classical ideals
   and an emphasis on proper decorum. (Friedrich Schlegel, who became
   Schleiermacher's close friend, referred to the representatives of the
   Enlightenment mode as "harmonious dullards.") More important,
   Schleiermacher shared his new friends' sense of individuality and their
   appreciation of the infinite diversity of the world. He held their view
   of the human situation as one that can penetrate and understand neither
   infinite variety nor infinite unity but that strives to bring both
   together in a way that destroys neither pole and acknowledges the
   limitations of human finitude. Schleiermacher expresses this view early
   in the First Speech ("Defence"). It is foundational for the development
   of the Speeches, and it remained so in everything he wrote and taught
   throughout his life.

   Schleiermacher was eagerly welcomed as a participant in the
   conversations that took place weekly in Henrietta Herz's home, but he
   was an enigma to most of the participants. He was a minister of the
   church, and most of the regulars had intentionally and passionately
   liberated themselves not only from the church or synagogue but also
   from religion as such. They were "cultured despisers of religion," and
   they could not understand how Schleiermacher could so genuinely share
   and contribute to their new ways of seeing but be, at the same time, a
   confirmed Christian and minister of the church.

   His closest friends within the circle decided to resolve the issue by
   insisting that he write a book. Friedrich Schlegel contrived the plan.
   On the morning of Schleiermacher's twenty-ninth birthday (November 21,
   1797) he was visited by Alexander Dohna, his brother, Henrietta Herz,
   Dorothea Viet, the brilliant daughter of the Jewish philosopher Moses
   Mendelssohn, who was married to a Berlin banker, and Friedrich
   Schlegel. [1]

   The surprise birthday party was a happy occasion. Schleiermacher made
   and relished strong friendships, and these people were his best
   friends. They showered him with gifts and laid out chocolates and
   pastries they had brought. There was good conversation.

   The festivities were interrupted when, on signal from Schlegel, the
   friends said in unison, "You must write a book." Schlegel refused to
   drop the subject until he had wrested a firm promise from
   Schleiermacher. Schleiermacher did not take promises lightly, but it
   was nine months before he could put pen to paper. Eight months later,
   on April 15, 1799, he could write Henrietta Herz that he had given the
   "final stroke to Religion."

   The book that this stroke brought to completion is astonishing in at
   least five respects. First, he presented an utterly fresh understanding
   of religion. It was, of course, not without points of contact in the
   past, but Schleiermacher's presentation stood in bold contrast with the
   views that were prevalent in that time (dogmatic orthodoxy, speculative
   Neology, enlightened "natural religion," and Pietism). Second, he set
   forth a view of religion that was in principle free from reliance on
   authority. Third, he described religion as belonging essentially to the
   human sphere and thus as essentially limited. Truly religious people
   are never able to claim that they possess the truth as such, and in its
   entirety. Fourth, his approach to religion was descriptive and
   analytical. In the fashion of early German Romanticism he tried to
   "display" what actually constitutes religion. Finally, he tried to show
   that religion is inevitably social and thus always has a definite form
   ("positive" religion, as the language of his time put it). In this
   connection he made a case for Christianity that was at least coherent
   with the descriptive analysis he set forth in the earlier part of the
   book.

   The person reading this text for the first time may want to look for
   these astonishing turns of thought in three arguments or descriptions
   Schleiermacher presents. The first is a foretaste of Schleiermacher's
   later lectures on "dialectics," or philosophy, and is found in the
   "First Speech." The situation of the human being in the world is that
   she or he can grasp neither the whole that is "beyond" and "behind"
   this world nor the most particular individual elements of this whole.
   Human life is an oscillation between these two unreachable poles
   without access either to ultimate unity or ultimate diversity. To move
   too far toward the one is to lose the other, and vice versa. This
   situation is the essence of the limitations of human life within the
   world. Second (the basic view developed in the "Second Speech"),
   religion is neither a knowing nor a doing but something whose occasion
   or foundation touches a locus in the human being more fundamental than
   either knowing or doing. Schleiermacher describes this locus as
   "feeling" and the occasion as "a sense and taste for the Infinite in
   the finite." We must understand, however, that this description is a
   generalization. Religion as such does not occur, only determinate forms
   of religion. Third, human life in the world is essentially social, and
   anyone who comes to a determinate sense and taste for the Infinite in
   the finite will be impelled to communicate it and to identify with a
   community or to form a new one. The only way religion can show itself
   is in specific, determinate forms, and in recognition of this condition
   Schleiermacher, finally, makes a case for Christianity. It is not the
   Christianity that finds its essence in knowing (orthodoxy, speculative
   philosophy) or in doing ("natural religion" or Pietism). Schleiermacher
   was convinced that Christianity is rooted in the inner life of the
   people and from that base is productive of new ways of speaking
   (knowing) and a new mode of life (doing). This is the Christianity he
   commended to the "cultured despisers" of religion, and he thought his
   friends were closer to it than they thought.

   WHEN Schleiermacher wrote Henrietta Herz that he had given "the final
   stroke to Religion," he meant he had finished the book. A good many of
   his contemporaries and a good many in the intervening years have
   understood that phrase in a quite different way! Schlegel himself,
   although he had become "religious" by the time the book was published,
   had moved in his religiousness to a preoccupation with esoteric
   matters. He wrote Schleiermacher that his new orientation was
   occasioned by the Speeches but was different. He himself, he wrote, was
   moving to the beyond, whereas Schleiermacher, he quite rightly saw, was
   rooted in the here and now. In a review in his journal, the Athanaeum,
   Schlegel referred to the stimulating power of the Speeches but
   criticized its author for being exoteric and for not grasping how the
   human situation occurs through the separation and reunion of the divine
   from and with itself. The Idealist philosophers, and especially Hegel
   and those influenced by Hegel, who built their speculations on the
   Orphic myth of separation and return, also opposed the conceptualities
   of Schleiermacher that were originally expressed in this book. On the
   other side, the Speeches got Schleiermacher in trouble with the church.
   He was charged with Spinozism, pantheism, and a too-strong challenge to
   received Christian teaching, and forms of these charges have kept more
   conservative church theologians at a distance from Schleiermacher in
   the years since.

   It is impossible to say what effect the Speeches had on the growing
   body of "cultured despisers of religion" across Germany, but the book
   did establish Schleiermacher as a major Protestant theologian. In time
   it won for him a teaching post on the theological faculty at the
   University in Halle, and after that university was closed by the
   Napoleonic occupying forces, his reputation gave him a hand in planning
   for the new University of Berlin where, after its founding, he was
   Professor of Theology and Dean of the Faculty until his death in 1834.

   Schleiermacher has influenced diverse strands of Protestant theology
   since his time. In the nineteenth century Samuel Taylor Coleridge in
   England and Horace Bushnell in the United States reflected aspects of
   Schleiermacher's thought in their theological work. In the early part
   of the present century substantive traces of his thought can be found
   in theologians as different from each other as, for example, Wilhelm
   Hermann and Rudolf Otto and, in the generation just past, Rudolf
   Bultmann and Paul Tillich. A major reappropriation of Schleiermacher in
   our own day, though, of course, using other sources as well, can be
   seen in the thoroughly impressive constructive theology of Edward
   Farley. One can predict with confidence that there will be others.
   Schleiermacher's theological work that began most imposingly with the
   Speeches clearly belongs in that relatively small category of
   theological classics.

   One does not fully understand the whole of Schleiermacher by reading
   the Speeches. The most important text is his comprehensive theological
   work, The Christian Faith. Moreover, it is true of Schleiermacher, as
   it is true of anyone who produces a corpus of work over an extended
   period of time, that he changed in various ways the formulation of his
   thoughts, developed them more fully, and addressed them to different
   subjects. Twice, as a matter of fact, he revised the Speeches, in 1806
   and 1821, and the reader will certainly want to give careful attention
   to the explanatory notes added in the 1821 revision, at the end of each
   Speech. But the revisions of the Speeches do not change its basic
   conceptions, and although Schleiermacher's full corpus of work goes far
   beyond this book, it not only is coherently a piece of the whole but is
   most certainly the door that opens the way into the thought world of
   this remarkable theologian.

   All the more reason, therefore, to welcome the reprinting of the work
   in English translation in a form that is readily accessible.
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   [1] Friedrich Schlegel and Dorothea Viet fell in love, had an affair,
   and after Dorothea's divorce, were married. The affair is the poorly
   disguised subject of Schlegel's "shocking" novel, Lucinde, which
   Schleiermacher defended in a series of letters published by Schlegel.
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                                  ON RELIGION
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FIRST SPEECH

  DEFENCE

   It may be an unexpected and even a marvellous undertaking, that any one
   should still venture to demand from the very class that have raised
   themselves above the vulgar, and are saturated with the wisdom of the
   centuries, attention for a subject so entirely neglected by them. And I
   confess that I am aware of nothing that promises any easy success,
   whether it be in winning for my efforts your approval, or in the more
   difficult and more desirable task of instilling into you my thought and
   inspiring you for my subject. From of old faith has not been every
   man's affair. At all times but few have discerned religion itself,
   while millions, in various ways, have been satisfied to juggle with its
   trappings. Now especially the life of cultivated people is far from
   anything that might have even a resemblance to religion. Just as
   little, I know, do you worship the Deity in sacred retirement, as you
   visit the forsaken temples. In your ornamented dwellings, the only
   sacred things to be met with are the sage maxims of our wise men, and
   the splendid compositions of our poets. Suavity and sociability, art
   and science have so fully taken possession of your minds, that no room
   remains for the eternal and holy Being that lies beyond the world. I
   know how well you have succeeded in making your earthly life so rich
   and varied, that you no longer stand in need of an eternity. Having
   made a universe for yourselves, you are above the need of thinking of
   the Universe that made you. You are agreed, I know, that nothing new,
   nothing convincing can any more be said on this matter, which on every
   side by sages and seers, and I might add by scoffers and priests, has
   been abundantly discussed. To priests, least of all, are you inclined
   to listen. They have long been outcasts for you, and are declared
   unworthy of your trust, because they like best to lodge in the battered
   ruins of their sanctuary and cannot, even there, live without
   disfiguring and destroying it still more. All this I know, and yet,
   divinely swayed by an irresistible necessity within me, I feel myself
   compelled to speak, and cannot take back my invitation that you and
   none else should listen to me.

   Might I ask one question? On every subject, however small and
   unimportant, you would most willingly be taught by those who have
   devoted to it their lives and their powers. In your desire for
   knowledge you do not avoid the cottages of the peasant or the workshops
   of the humble artizans. How then does it come about that, in matters of
   religion alone, you hold every thing the more dubious when it comes
   from those who are experts, not only according to their own profession,
   but by recognition from the state, and from the people? Or can you
   perhaps, strangely enough, show that they are not more experienced, but
   maintain and cry up anything rather than religion? Scarcely, my good
   sirs! Not setting much store on a judgment so baseless I confess, as is
   right, that I also am a member of this order. I venture, though I run
   the risk, if you do not give me an attentive hearing, of being reckoned
   among the great crowd from which you admit so few exceptions.

   This is at least a voluntary confession, for my speech would not
   readily have betrayed me. Still less have I any expectations of danger
   from the praise which my brethren will bestow on this undertaking, for
   my present aim lies almost entirely outside their sphere, and can have
   but small resemblance to what they would most willingly see and hear.
   [2] With the cry of distress, in which most of them join, over the
   downfall of religion I have no sympathy, for I know no age that has
   given religion a better reception than the present. I have nothing to
   do with the conservative and barbarian lamentation whereby they seek to
   rear again the fallen walls and gothic pillars of their Jewish Zion.

   Why then, as I am fully conscious that in all I have to say to you I
   entirely belie my profession, should I not acknowledge it like any
   other accident? Its prepossessions shall in no way hinder us. Neither
   in asking nor in answering shall the limits it holds sacred be valid
   between us. As a man I speak to you of the sacred secrets of mankind
   according to my views--of what was in me as with youthful enthusiasm I
   sought the unknown, of what since then I have thought and experienced,
   of the innermost springs of my being which shall for ever remain for me
   the highest, however I be moved by the changes of time and mankind. I
   do not speak from any reasoned resolve, nor from hope, nor from fear.
   Nor is it done from any caprice or accident. Rather it is the pure
   necessity of my nature; it is a divine call; it is that which
   determines my position in the world and makes me what I am. Wherefore,
   even if it were neither fitting nor prudent to speak of religion, there
   is something which compels me and represses with its heavenly power all
   those small considerations.

   You know how the Deity, by an immutable law, has compelled Himself to
   divide His great work even to infinity. Each definite thing can only be
   made up by melting together two opposite activities. Each of His
   eternal thoughts can only be actualized in two hostile yet twin forms,
   one of which cannot exist except by means of the other. The whole
   corporeal world, insight into which is the highest aim of your
   researches, appears to the best instructed and most contemplative among
   you, simply a never-ending play of opposing forces. Each life is merely
   the uninterrupted manifestation of a perpetually renewed gain and loss,
   as each thing has its determinate existence by uniting and holding fast
   in a special way the opposing forces of Nature. Wherefore the spirit
   also, in so far as it manifests itself in a finite life, must be
   subject to the same law. The human soul, as is shown both by its
   passing actions and its inward characteristics, has its existence
   chiefly in two opposing impulses. Following the one impulse, it strives
   to establish itself as an individual. For increase, no less than
   sustenance, it draws what surrounds it to itself, weaving it into its
   life, and absorbing it into its own being. The other impulse, again, is
   the dread fear to stand alone over against the Whole, the longing to
   surrender oneself and be absorbed in a greater, to be taken hold of and
   determined. All you feel and do that bears on your separate existence,
   all you are accustomed to call enjoyment or possession works for the
   first object. The other is wrought for when you are not directed
   towards the individual life, but seek and retain for yourselves what is
   the same in all and for all the same existence, that in which,
   therefore, you acknowledge in your thinking and acting, law and order,
   necessity and connection, right and fitness. Just as no material thing
   can exist by only one of the forces of corporeal nature, every soul
   shares in the two original tendencies of spiritual nature. At the
   extremes one impulse may preponderate almost to the exclusion of the
   other, but the perfection of the living world consists in this, that
   between these opposite ends all combinations are actually present in
   humanity.

   And not only so, but a common band of consciousness embraces them all,
   so that though the man cannot be other than he is, he knows every other
   person as clearly as himself, and comprehends perfectly every single
   manifestation of humanity. Persons, however, at the extremes of this
   great series, are furthest removed from such a knowledge of the whole.
   The endeavour to appropriate, too little influenced by the opposite
   endeavour, takes the form of insatiable sensuality that is mindful only
   of its individual life, and endeavours only in an earthly way to
   incorporate into it more and more material and to keep itself active
   and strong. Swinging eternally between desire and enjoyment, such
   persons never get beyond consciousness of the individual, and being
   ever busy with mere self-regarding concerns, they are neither able to
   feel nor know the common, the whole being and nature of humanity. To
   persons, on the other hand, too forcibly seized by the opposite
   impulse, who, from defective power of grasp, are incapable of acquiring
   any characteristic, definite culture, the true life of the world must
   just as much remain hidden. It is not granted them to penetrate with
   plastic mind and to fashion something of their own, but their activity
   dissipates itself in a futile game with empty notions. They never make
   a living study of anything, but devote their whole zeal to abstract
   precepts that degrade everything to means, and leave nothing to be an
   end. They consume themselves in mistaken hate against everything that
   comes before them with prosperous force. How are these extremes to be
   brought together, and the long series be made into a closed ring, the
   symbol of eternity and completeness?

   Persons in whom both tendencies are toned down to an unattractive
   equilibrium are not rare, but, in truth, they stand lower than either.
   For this frequent phenomenon which so many value highly, we are not
   indebted to a living union of both impulses, but both are distorted and
   smoothed away to a dull mediocrity in which no excess appears, because
   all fresh life is wanting. This is the position to which a false
   discretion seeks to bring the younger generation. But were the extremes
   avoided in no other way, all men would have departed from the right
   life and from contemplation of the truth, the higher spirit would have
   vanished from the world, and the will of the Deity been entirely
   frustrated. Elements so separated or so reduced to equilibrium would
   disclose little even to men of deep insight, and, for a common eye that
   has no power of insight to give life to the scattered bones, a world so
   peopled would be only a mock mirror that neither reflects their own
   forms nor allows them to see behind it.

   Wherefore the Deity at all times sends some here and there, who in a
   fruitful manner are imbued with both impulses, either as a direct gift
   from above, or as the result of a severe and complete self-training.
   They are equipped with wonderful gifts, their way is made even by an
   almighty indwelling word. They are interpreters of the Deity and His
   works, and reconcilers of things that otherwise would be eternally
   divided. I mean, in particular, those who unite those opposing
   activities, by imprinting in their lives a characteristic form upon
   just that common nature of spirit, the shadow of which only appears to
   most in empty notions, as an image upon mist. They seek order and
   connection, right and fitness, and they find just because they do not
   lose themselves. Their impulse is not sighed out in inaudible wishes,
   but works in them as creative power. For this power they create and
   acquire, and not for that degraded animal sensuality. They do not
   devour destructively, but, creatively recasting, they breathe into life
   and life's tools a higher spirit, ordering and fashioning a world that
   bears the impress of their mind. Earthly things they wisely control,
   showing themselves lawgivers and inventors, heroes and compellers of
   nature, or, in narrower circles, as good fairies they create and
   diffuse in quiet a nobler happiness. By their very existence they prove
   themselves ambassadors of God, and mediators between limited man and
   infinite humanity. To them the captive under the power of empty notions
   may look, to perceive in their works the right object of his own
   incomprehensible requirements, and in their persons the material
   hitherto despised, with which he ought to deal. They interpret to him
   the misunderstood voice of God, and reconcile him to the earth and to
   his place thereon. Far more the earthly and sensual require such
   mediators from whom to learn how much of the highest nature of humanity
   is wanting to their own works and ways. They stand in need of such a
   person to oppose to their base animal enjoyment another enjoyment, the
   object of which is not this thing or that, but the One in All, and All
   in One, an object that knows no other bounds but the world, that the
   spirit has learned to comprehend. He is needed to show to their
   anxious, restless self-love, another self-love whereby man in this
   earthly life and along with it loves the highest and the eternal, and
   to their restless passionate greed a quiet and sure possession.

   Acknowledge, then, with me, what a priceless gift the appearance of
   such a person must be when the higher feeling has risen to inspiration,
   and can no longer be kept silent, when every pulse-beat of his
   spiritual life takes communicable form in word or figure, so that,
   despite of his indifference to the presence of others, he almost
   unwillingly becomes for others the master of some divine art. This is
   the true priest of the highest, for he brings it nearer those who are
   only accustomed to lay hold of the finite and the trivial. The heavenly
   and eternal he exhibits as an object of enjoyment and agreement, as the
   sole exhaustless source of the things towards which their whole
   endeavour is directed. In this way he strives to awaken the slumbering
   germ of a better humanity, to kindle love for higher things, to change
   the common life into a nobler, to reconcile the children of earth with
   the Heaven that hears them, and to counterbalance the deep attachment
   of the age to the baser side. This is the higher priesthood that
   announces the inner meaning of all spiritual secrets, and speaks from
   the kingdom of God. It is the source of all visions and prophecies, of
   all the sacred works of art and inspired speeches that are scattered
   abroad, on the chance of finding some receptive heart where they may
   bring forth fruit.

   Might it sometime arrive that this office of mediator cease, and a
   fairer destiny await the priesthood of humanity! Might the time come,
   which an ancient prophecy describes, when no one should need to be
   taught of man, for they should all be taught of God! If everywhere the
   sacred fire burned, fervid prayers would not be needed to call it down
   from heaven, but only the placid quiet of holy virgins to maintain it.
   Nor would it burst forth in oft-dreaded flames, but would strive only
   to communicate equally to all its hidden glow. In quiet, then, each one
   would illumine himself and others. The communication of holy thoughts
   and feelings would be an easy interchange, the different beams of this
   light being now combined and again broken up, now scattered, and again
   here and there concentrated on single objects. A whispered word would
   then be understood, where now the clearest expression cannot escape
   misconception. Men could crowd together into the Holy of Holies who now
   busy themselves with the rudiments in the outer courts. How much
   pleasanter it is to exchange with friends and sympathizers completed
   views, than to go into the wide wilderness with outlines barely
   sketched! But how far from one another now are those persons between
   whom such intercourse might take place! They are scattered with as wise
   an economy among mankind, as the hidden points from which the elastic
   primordial matter expands on every side are in space. The outer
   boundaries of their sphere of operations just touch so that there is no
   void, yet one never meets the other. A wise economy indeed! for all
   their longing for intercourse and friendliness is thus wholly directed
   towards those who stand most in need, and they labour the more
   persistently to provide for themselves the comrades they lack.

   To this very power I now submit, and of this very nature is my call.
   Permit me to speak of myself. You know that what is spoken at the
   instigation of piety cannot be pride, for piety is always full of
   humility. Piety was the mother's womb, in whose sacred darkness my
   young life was nourished and was prepared for a world still sealed for
   it. In it my spirit breathed ere it had yet found its own place in
   knowledge and experience. It helped me as I began to sift the faith of
   my fathers and to cleanse thought and feeling from the rubbish of
   antiquity. When the God and the immortality of my childhood vanished
   from my doubting eyes it remained to me. [3] Without design of mine it
   guided me into active life. It showed me how, with my endowments and
   defects, I should keep myself holy in an undivided existence, and
   through it alone I have learnt friendship and love. In respect of other
   human excellences, before your judgment-seat, ye wise and understanding
   of the people, I know it is small proof of possession to be able to
   speak of their value. They can be known from description, from
   observation of others, or, as all virtues are known, from the ancient
   and general traditions of their nature. But religion is of such a sort
   and is so rare, that whoever utters anything of it, must necessarily
   have had it, for nowhere could he have heard it. Of all that I praise,
   all that I feel to be the true work of religion, you would find little
   even in the sacred books. To the man who has not himself experienced
   it, it would only be an annoyance and a folly.

   Finally, if I am thus impelled to speak of religion and to deliver my
   testimony, to whom should I turn if not to the sons of Germany? Where
   else is an audience for my speech? It is not blind predilection for my
   native soil or for my fellows in government and language, that makes me
   speak thus, but the deep conviction that you alone are capable, as well
   as worthy, of having awakened in you the sense for holy and divine
   things. Those proud Islanders whom many unduly honour, know no
   watchword but gain and enjoyment. Their zeal for knowledge is only a
   sham fight, their worldly wisdom a false jewel, skilfully and
   deceptively composed, and their sacred freedom itself too often and too
   easily serves self-interest. They are never in earnest with anything
   that goes beyond palpable utility. [4] All knowledge they have robbed
   of life and use only as dead wood to make masts and helms for their
   life's voyage in pursuit of gain. Similarly they know nothing of
   religion, save that all preach devotion to ancient usages and defend
   its institutions, regarding them as a protection wisely cherished by
   the constitution against the natural enemy of the state.

   For other reasons I turn from the French. On them, one who honours
   religion can hardly endure to look, for in every act and almost in
   every word, they tread its holiest ordinances under foot. The barbarous
   indifference of the millions of the people, and the witty frivolity
   with which individual brilliant spirits behold the sublimest fact of
   history that is not only taking place before their eyes, but has them
   all in its grasp, and determines every movement of their lives,
   witnesses clearly enough how little they are capable of a holy awe or a
   true adoration. What does religion more abhor than the unbridled
   arrogance with which the rulers of the people bid defiance to the
   eternal laws of the world? What does it inculcate more strongly than
   that discreet and lowly moderation of which aught, even the slightest
   feeling, does not seem to be suggested to them? What is more sacred to
   it than that lofty Nemesis, of whose most terrible dealings in the
   intoxication of infatuation they have no understanding? Where varied
   punishments that formerly only needed to light on single families to
   fill whole peoples with awe before the heavenly Being and to dedicate
   to eternal Fate the works of the poets for centuries, are a
   thousandfold renewed in vain, how ludicrously would a Single lonely
   voice resound unheard and unnoticed.

   Only in my native land is that happy clime which refuses no fruit
   entirely. There you find, though it be only scattered, all that adorns
   humanity. Somewhere, in individuals at least, in individuals at least,
   all that grows attains its most beautiful form. Neither wise
   moderation, nor quiet contemplation is wanting; there, therefore,
   religion must find a refuge from the coarse barbarism and the cold
   worldly mind of the age.

   Or will you direct me to those whom you look down upon as rude and
   uncultured, as if the sense for sacred things had passed like an
   old-fashioned garment to the lower portion of the people, as if it
   became them alone to be impressed with belief and awe of the unseen?
   You are well disposed towards these, our brethren. You would have them
   addressed also, on other higher subjects, on morals, justice and
   freedom, that for single moments, at least, their highest endeavours
   should be turned towards better things, and an impression of the worth
   of man be awakened in them. Let them be addressed at the same time on
   religion; arouse occasionally their whole nature; let the holiest
   impulse, asleep or hidden though it be, be brought to life; enchant
   them with single flashes, charmed from the depths of their hearts; open
   out of their narrow lives a glimpse into infinity; raise even for a
   moment their low sensuality to the high consciousness of human will and
   of human existence, and much cannot fail to be won. But, pray you, do
   you turn to this class when you wish to unfold the inmost connection
   and the highest ground of human powers and actions, when idea and
   feeling, law and fact are to be traced to their common source, when you
   would exhibit the actual as eternal and necessarily based in the nature
   of humanity? Is it not as much as can be looked for if your wise men
   are understood by the best among you? Now that is just my present
   endeavour in regard to religion. I do not seek to arouse single
   feelings possibly belonging to it, nor to justify and defend single
   conceptions, but I would conduct you into the profoundest depths whence
   every feeling and conception receives its form. I would show you from
   what human tendency religion proceeds and how it belongs to what is for
   you highest and dearest. To the roof of the temple I would lead you
   that you might survey the whole sanctuary and discover its inmost
   secrets.

   Do you seriously expect me to believe that those who daily distress
   themselves most toilsomely about earthly things have pre-eminent
   fitness for becoming intimate with heavenly things, those who brood
   anxiously over the next moment and are fast bound to the nearest
   objects can extend their vision widest over the world, and that those,
   who, in the monotonous round of a dull industry have not yet found
   themselves will discover most clearly the living Deity! Surely you will
   not maintain that to your shame? You alone, therefore, I can invite,
   you who are called to leave the common standpoint of mankind, who do
   not shun the toilsome way into the depths of man's spirit to find his
   inmost emotions and see the living worth and connection of his outward
   works.

   Since this became clear to me, I have long found myself in the
   hesitating mood of one who has lost a precious jewel, and does not dare
   to examine the last spot where it could be hidden. There was a time
   when you held it a mark of special courage to cast off partially the
   restraints of inherited dogma. You still were ready to discuss
   particular subjects, though it were only to efface one of those
   notions. Such a figure as religion moving gracefully, adorned in
   eloquence, still pleased you, if only that you wished to maintain in
   the gentler sex a certain feeling for sacred things. But that time is
   long past. Piety is now no more to be spoken of, and even the Graces,
   with most unwomanly hardness, destroy the tenderest blossoms of the
   human heart, and I can link the interest I require from you to nothing
   but your contempt. I will ask you, therefore, just to be well informed
   and thorough-going in this contempt.

   Let us then, I pray you, examine whence exactly religion has its rise.
   Is it from some clear intuition, or from some vague thought? Is it from
   the different kinds and sects of religion found in history, or from
   some general idea which you have perhaps conceived arbitrarily? Some
   doubtless will profess the latter view. But here as in other things the
   ready judgment may be without ground, the matter being superficially
   considered and no trouble being taken to gain an accurate knowledge.
   Your general idea turns on fear of an eternal being, or, broadly,
   respect for his influence on the occurrences of this life called by you
   providence, on expectation of a future life after this one, called by
   you immortality. These two conceptions which you have rejected, are,
   you consider, in one way or another, the hinges of all religion. But
   say, my dear sirs, how you have found this; for there are two points of
   view from which everything taking place in man or proceeding from him
   may be regarded. Considered from the centre outwards, that is according
   to its inner quality, it is an expression of human nature, based in one
   of its necessary modes of acting or impulses or whatever else you like
   to call it, for I will not now quarrel with your technical language. On
   the contrary, regarded from the outside, according to the definite
   attitude and form it assumes in particular cases, it is a product of
   time and history. From what side have you considered religion that
   great spiritual phenomenon, that you have reached the idea that
   everything called by this name has a common content? You can hardly
   affirm that it is by regarding it from within. If so, my good sirs, you
   would have to admit that these thoughts are at least in some way based
   in human nature. And should you say that as now found they have sprang
   only from misinterpretations or false references of a necessary human
   aim, it would become you to seek in it the true and eternal, and to
   unite your efforts to ours to free human nature from the injustice
   which it always suffers when aught in it is misunderstood or
   misdirected.

   By all that is sacred, and according to that avowal, something must be
   sacred to you, I adjure you, do not neglect this business, that
   mankind, whom with us you honour, do not most justly scorn you for
   forsaking them in a grave matter. If you find from what you hear that
   the business is as good as done, even if it ends otherwise than you
   expect, I venture to reckon on your thanks and approval.

   But you will probably say that your idea of the content of religion is
   from the other view of this spiritual phenomenon. You start with the
   outside, with the opinions, dogmas and usages, in which every religion
   is presented. They always return to providence and immortality. For
   these externals you have sought an inward and original source in vain.
   Wherefore religion generally can be nothing but an empty pretence
   which, like a murky and oppressive atmosphere, has enshrouded part of
   the truth. Doubtless this is your genuine opinion. But if you really
   consider these two points the sum of religion in all the forms in which
   it has appeared in history, permit me to ask whether you have rightly
   observed all these phenomena and have rightly comprehended their common
   content? If your idea has had its rise in this way you must justify it
   by instances. If anyone says it is wrong and beside the mark, and if he
   point out something else in religion not hollow, but having a kernel of
   excellent quality and extraction, you must first hear and judge before
   you venture further to despise. Do not grudge, therefore, to listen to
   what I shall say to those who, from first to last, have more accurately
   and laboriously adhered to observation of particulars.

   You are doubtless acquainted with the histories of human follies, and
   have reviewed the various structures of religious doctrine from the
   senseless fables of wanton peoples to the most refined Deism, from the
   rude superstition of human sacrifice to the ill-put together fragments
   of metaphysics and ethics now called purified Christianity, and you
   have found them all without rhyme or reason. I am far from wishing to
   contradict you. Rather, if you really mean that the most cultured
   religious system is no better than the rudest, if you only perceive
   that the divine cannot lie in a series that ends on both sides in
   something ordinary and despicable, I will gladly spare you the trouble
   of estimating further all that lies between. Possibly they may all
   appear to you transitions and stages towards the final form. Out of the
   hand of its age each comes better polished and carved, till at length
   art has grown equal to that perfect plaything with which our century
   has presented history. But this consummation of doctrines and systems
   is often anything rather than consummation of religion. Nay, not
   infrequently, the progress of the one has not the smallest connection
   with the other. I cannot speak of it without indignation. All who have
   a regard for what issues from within the mind, and who are in earnest
   that every side of man be trained and exhibited, must bewail how the
   high and glorious is often turned from its destination and robbed of
   its freedom in order to be held in despicable bondage by the scholastic
   spirit of a barbarian and cold time. What are all these systems,
   considered in themselves, but the handiwork of the calculating
   understanding, wherein only by mutual limitation each part holds its
   place? What else can they be, these systems of theology, these theories
   of the origin and the end of the world, these analyses of the nature of
   an incomprehensible Being, wherein everything runs to cold argufying,
   and the highest can be treated in the tone of a common controversy? And
   this is certainly--let me appeal to your own feeling--not the character
   of religion.

   If you have only given attention to these dogmas and opinions,
   therefore, you do not yet know religion itself, and what you despise is
   not it. Why have you not penetrated deeper to find the kernel of this
   shell? I am astonished at your voluntary ignorance, ye easy-going
   inquirers, and at the all too quiet satisfaction with which you linger
   by the first thing presented to you. Why do you not regard the
   religious life itself, and first those pious exaltations of the mind in
   which all other known activities are set aside or almost suppressed,
   and the whole soul is dissolved in the immediate feeling of the
   Infinite and Eternal? In such moments the disposition you pretend to
   despise reveals itself in primordial and visible form. He only who has
   studied and truly known man in these emotions can rediscover religion
   in those outward manifestations. He will assuredly perceive something
   more in them than you. Bound up in them all something of that spiritual
   matter lies, without which they could not have arisen. But in the hands
   of those who do not understand how to unbind it, let them break it up
   and examine it as they may, nothing but the cold dead mass remains.

   This recommendation to seek rather in those scattered and seemingly
   undeveloped elements your object that you have not yet found in the
   developed and the complete to which you have hitherto been directed,
   cannot surprise you who have more or less busied yourselves with
   philosophy, and are acquainted with its fortunes. With philosophy,
   indeed, it should be quite otherwise. From its nature it must strive to
   fashion itself into the closest connection. That special kind of
   knowledge is only verified and its communication assured by its
   completeness, and yet even here you must commence with the scattered
   and incomplete. Recollect how very few of those who, in a way of their
   own, have penetrated into the secrets of nature and spirit, viewing and
   exhibiting their mutual relation and inner harmony in a light of their
   own, have put forth at once a system of their knowledge. In a finer, if
   more fragile form, they have communicated their discoveries.

   On the contrary, if you regard the systems in all schools, how often
   are they mere habitations and nurseries of the dead letter. With few
   exceptions, the plastic spirit of high contemplation is too fleeting
   and too free for those rigid forms whereby those who would willingly
   grasp and retain what is strange, believe they are best helped. Suppose
   that anyone held the architects of those great edifices of philosophy,
   without distinction, for true philosophers! Suppose he would learn from
   them the spirit of their research! Would you not advise him thus, "See
   to it, friend, that you have not lighted upon those who merely follow,
   and collect, and rest satisfied with what another has furnished: with
   them you will never find the spirit of that art: to the discoverers you
   must go, on whom it surely rests." To you who seek religion I must give
   the same advice. It is all the more necessary, as religion is as far
   removed, by its whole nature, from all that is systematic as philosophy
   is naturally disposed to it.

   Consider only with whom those ingenious erections originate, the
   mutability of which you scorn, the bad proportions of which offend you,
   and the incongruity of which, with your contemptuous tendency, almost
   strikes you as absurd. Have they come from the heroes of religion? Name
   one among those who have brought down any kind of new revelation to us,
   who has thought it worth his while to occupy himself with such a labour
   of Sisyphus, beginning with Him who first conceived the idea of the
   kingdom of God, from which, if from anything in the sphere of religion,
   a system might have been produced to the new mystics or enthusiasts, as
   you are accustomed to call them, in whom, perhaps, an original beam of
   the inner light still shines. You will not blame me if I do not reckon
   among them the theologians of the letter, who believe the salvation of
   the world and the light of wisdom are to be found in a new vesture of
   formulas, or a new arrangement of ingenious proofs. In isolation only
   the mighty thunder of their speech, announcing that the Deity is
   revealing Himself through them, is accustomed to be heard when the
   celestial feelings are unburdened, when the sacred fires must burst
   forth from the overcharged spirit. Idea and word are simply the
   necessary and inseparable outcome of the heart, only to be understood
   by it and along with it. Doctrine is only united to doctrine
   occasionally to remove misunderstanding or expose unreality.

   From many such combinations those systems were gradually compacted.
   Wherefore, you must not rest satisfied with the repeated oft-broken
   echo of that original sound. You must transport yourselves into the
   interior of a pious soul and seek to understand its inspiration. In the
   very act, you must understand the production of light and heat in a
   soul surrendered to the Universe. [5] Otherwise you learn nothing of
   religion, and it goes with you as with one who should too late bring
   fuel to the fire which the steel has struck from the flint, who finds
   only a cold, insignificant speck of coarse metal with which he can
   kindle nothing any more.

   I ask, therefore, that you turn from everything usually reckoned
   religion, and fix your regard on the inward emotions and dispositions,
   as all utterances and acts of inspired men direct. Despite your
   acquirements, your culture and your prejudices, I hope for good
   success. At all events, till you have looked from this standpoint
   without discovering anything real, or having any change of opinion, or
   enlarging your contemptuous conception, the product of superficial
   observation, and are still able to hold in ridicule this reaching of
   the heart towards the Eternal, I will not confess that I have lost.
   Then, however, I will finally believe that your contempt for religion
   is in accordance with your nature, and I shall have no more to say.

   Yet you need not fear that I shall betake myself in the end to that
   common device of representing how necessary religion is for maintaining
   justice and order in the world. Nor shall I remind you of an all-seeing
   eye, nor of the unspeakable short-sightedness of human management, nor
   of the narrow bounds of human power to render help. Nor shall I say how
   religion is a faithful friend and useful stay of morality, how, by its
   sacred feelings and glorious prospects, it makes the struggle with self
   and the perfecting of goodness much easier for weak man. Those who
   profess to be the best friends and most zealous defenders do indeed
   speak in this way. Which of the two is more degraded in being thus
   thought of together, I shall not decide, whether justice and morality
   which are represented as needing support, or religion which is to
   support them, or even whether it be not you to whom such things are
   said.

   Though otherwise this wise counsel might be given you, how could I dare
   to suppose that you play with your consciences a sort of fast and loose
   game, and could be impelled by something you have hitherto had no cause
   to respect and love to something else that without it you already
   honour, and to which you have already devoted yourselves? Or suppose
   that these Speeches were merely to suggest what you should do for the
   sake of the people! How could you, who are called to educate others and
   make them like yourselves, begin by deceiving them, offering them as
   holy and vitally necessary what is in the highest degree indifferent to
   yourselves, and which, in your opinion, they can again reject as soon
   as they have attained your level? I, at least, cannot invite you to a
   course of action in which I perceive the most ruinous hypocrisy towards
   the world and towards yourselves. To recommend religion by such means
   would only increase the contempt to which it is at present exposed.
   Granted that our civil organizations are still burdened with a very
   high degree of imperfection and have shown but small power to prevent
   or abolish injustice, it would still be a culpable abandonment of a
   weighty matter, a faint-hearted unbelief in the approach of better
   things, if religion that in itself is not otherwise desirable must be
   called in.

   Answer me this one question. Could there be a legal constitution
   resting on piety? [6] Would not the whole idea that you hold so sacred
   vanish as soon as you took such a point of departure? Deal with the
   matter directly, therefore, if it seems to be in such an evil plight.
   Improve the laws, recast the whole constitution, give the state an iron
   band, give it a hundred eyes if it has not got them already. At least
   do not allow those it has to sleep veiled in delusion. If you leave a
   business like this to an intermediary, you have never managed it. Do
   not declare to the disgrace of mankind that your loftiest creation is
   but a parasitic plant that can only nourish itself from strange sap.

   Speaking from your standpoint, law must not even require morality to
   assure for it the most unlimited jurisdiction in its own territory. It
   must stand quite alone. Statesmen must make it universal. Now quite
   apart from the question whether what only exists in so far as it
   proceeds from the heart can be thus arbitrarily combined, if this
   general jurisdiction is only possible when religion is combined with
   law, none but persons skilled to infuse the spirit of religion into the
   human soul should be statesmen. And in what dark barbarousness of evil
   times would that land us!

   Just as little can morality be in need of religion. A weak, tempted
   heart must take refuge in the thought of a future world. But it is
   folly to make a distinction between this world and the next. Religious
   persons at least know only one. If the desire for happiness is foreign
   to morality, later happiness can be no more valid than earlier; if it
   should be quite independent of praise, dread of the Eternal cannot be
   more valid than dread of a wise man. If morality loses in splendour and
   stability by every addition, how much more must it lose from something
   that can never hide its foreign extraction.

   All this, however, you have heard of sufficiently from those who defend
   the independence and might of the moral law. Yet let me add, that to
   wish to transport religion into another sphere that it may serve and
   labour is to manifest towards it also great contempt. It is not so
   ambitious of conquest as to seek to reign in a foreign kingdom. The
   power that is its due, being earned afresh at every moment, satisfies
   it. Everything is sacred to it, and above all everything holding with
   it the same rank in human nature. [7] But it must render a special
   service; it must have an aim; it must show itself useful! What
   degradation! And its defenders should be eager for it!

   At the last remove, morality and justice also must conduce to some
   further advantage. It were better that such utilitarians should be
   submerged in this eternal whirlpool of universal utility, in which
   everything good is allowed to go down, of which no man that would be
   anything for himself understands a single sensible word, than that they
   should venture to come forward as defenders of religion, for of all men
   they are least skilled to conduct its case. High renown it were for the
   heavenly to conduct so wretchedly the earthly concerns of man! Great
   honour for the free and unconcerned to make the conscience of man a
   little sharper and more alert! For such a purpose religion does not
   descend from heaven. What is loved and honoured only on account of some
   extraneous advantage may be needful, but it is not in itself necessary,
   and a sensible person simply values it according to the end for which
   it is desired. By this standard, religion would be valueless enough. I,
   at least, would offer little, for I must confess that I do not believe
   much in the unjust dealings it would hinder, nor the moral dealings it
   would produce. If that is all it could do to gain respect, I would have
   no more to do with its case. To recommend it merely as an accessory is
   too unimportant. An imaginary praise that vanishes on closer
   contemplation, cannot avail anything going about with higher
   pretensions. I maintain that in all better souls piety springs
   necessarily by itself; that a province of its own in the mind belongs
   to it, in which it has unlimited sway; that it is worthy to animate
   most profoundly the noblest and best and to be fully accepted and known
   by them. That is my contention, and it now behoves you to decide
   whether it is worth your while to hear me, before you still further
   strengthen yourselves in your contempt.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [2] Though I had been several years in the ministry when this was
   written, I stood very much alone among my professional brethren, and my
   acquaintance with them was small. What is here rather hinted at than
   uttered was more a distant presentiment than clear knowledge. Longer
   experience, however, and friendly relations have only confirmed the
   judgment, that any deeper insight into the nature of religion
   generally, or any genuinely historical, real way of regarding the
   present state of religion is much too rare among the members of our
   clerical order. We should have fewer complaints of the increase of the
   sectarian spirit and of factious religious associations, if so many of
   the clergy were not without understanding of religious wants and
   emotions. Their stand-point generally is too low. From the same cause
   we have the miserable views so often expressed respecting the means
   necessary for remedying this so-called decay of religion. It is an
   opinion that will probably find little favour, which yet, for the right
   understanding of this passage I cannot hide, that a deeper speculative
   discipline would best remove this evil. Most of the clergy, however,
   and most of those who train them, do not acknowledge this necessity,
   because they foolishly suppose it would render them more unpractical.

   [3] The first conception both of God and immortality, which at a time
   when the soul lives entirely in images is always highly sensuous, does
   not, by any means, always vanish. With most it is gradually purified
   and elevated. The analogy with the human in the conception of the
   Highest Being and the analogy with the earthly still remains the shell
   of the hidden kernel. But those who are early absorbed in a pure
   contemplative endeavour take another way. There is nothing in God, they
   say to themselves, opposed, divided or isolated. Wherefore nothing
   human can be said of Him. Nothing earthly is to be transferred from the
   earthly world that gave it birth in our souls. Both conceptions,
   therefore, in their first forms are found untenable, they become
   incapable of living reproduction and disappear. But this does not
   involve any positive unbelief, not even any positive doubt. The
   childish form vanishes with the known sensuous co-efficient, but the
   unknown greatness remains in the soul, and its reality is apparent in
   the endeavour to connect it with another co-efficient and so to bring
   it to a higher actual consciousness. In this endeavour faith is
   implicit, even when no fully satisfactory solution is reached. The
   unknown greatness, even though it do not appear in any definite result,
   is yet present in all operations of the spirit. The author was,
   therefore, far removed from suggesting that there ever was a time when
   he was an unbeliever or an atheist. Such a misunderstanding could only
   arise in those who have never felt the speculative impulse to
   annihilate anthropomorphism in the conception of the Highest Being, an
   impulse most clearly expressed in the writings of the profoundest
   Christian teachers.

   [4] It is to be remembered that the severe judgment of the English
   people was given at a time when it seemed necessary to protest strongly
   against the prevailing Anglomania. Moreover, the popular interest in
   missions and the spread of the Bible was not then as apparent as it is
   now. Yet I would not on that account retract much from my earlier
   judgment. For one thing the English are well accustomed to organized
   private companies, whereby they unite their individual resources for
   important undertakings. The results obtained in this way are so great
   that persons, caring for nothing but the progress of culture and the
   gain to be made of it, are not excluded from sharing in enterprises
   that have taken their rise with a far smaller number of truly pious
   people, and yet the principle is not weakened. Nor is it to be denied
   that those undertakings are regarded by a great number more from a
   political and mercantile point of view. The pure interest of Christian
   piety does not dominate as appears in this, that the religious needs at
   home have been attended to much later and with much less brilliant
   result. These are merely indications whereby I would express my belief
   that a closer acquaintance with the state of religion in England would
   rather confirm than disprove the above opinion. The same would apply to
   what was said about the scientific spirit. As France and England were
   almost the only countries in which we were interested, and which had
   much influence in Germany, it seemed superfluous to glance elsewhere.
   At present it might not be wrong to say a word on the capacity in the
   Greek Church for such researches. Despite the fine veil cast over it by
   the fascinating panegyrics of a Stourdza, all depth is lost in the
   mechanism of antiquated usages and liturgical forms. In all that is
   most important for a mind aroused to reflection, it still stands far
   behind the Catholic Church.

   [5] A pious spirit, which is here unquestionably the subject of
   discourse, is elsewhere always defined as a soul surrendered to God.
   But here the Universe is put for God and the pantheism of the author is
   undeniable! This is the interpolation, not interpretation of
   superficial and suspicious readers who do not consider that the subject
   here is the production of light and warmth in such a spirit, the
   springing of such pious emotions as pass immediately into religious
   ideas and views (light) and into a temperament of surrender to God
   (warmth). It was therefore desirable to call attention to the way in
   which such emotions take their rise. They arise when a man surrenders
   himself to the Universe, and are only habitual in a spirit in which
   such surrender is habitual. Not only in general, but on each occasion
   we are conscious of God and of His divine power and godhead by the word
   of creation, and not by any one thing taken by itself, but by it only
   in so far as it is embraced in the unity and completeness in which
   alone God is immediately revealed. The further development of this
   subject can be seen in my "Glaubenslehre," §8, 2, and §36, 1, 2.

   [6] That the state would not be a constitution if it rested on piety,
   does not mean that the state so long as it labours under imperfection
   can do without piety, the thing that best supplies all deficiency and
   imperfection. This would only mean, however, that it is politically
   necessary for the citizens to be pious in proportion as they are not
   equally and adequately pervaded by the legal principles of the state.
   Humanly speaking this perfection is not to be looked for, but were it
   once effected the state, in respect of its own particular sphere of
   operation, could dispense with the piety of its members. This appears
   from the fact that in states where constitutionalism has not quite
   triumphed over arbitrariness, the relation of piety between the
   governor and the governed is most prominent and religious institutions
   have most sway. This ceases when the constitution is strengthened,
   unless indeed an institution have some special historical basis. When
   afterwards (page 20) it is said that statesmen must be able to produce
   universally in men the sense of law, it will doubtless appear absurd to
   those who think of the servants of the state. But the word statesman is
   here taken in the sense of the ancient ____V", and it means less that
   he accomplishes something definite in the state, a thing entirely
   accidental, than that he first of all lives in the idea of the state.
   The dark times referred to are the theocratic times. I make this
   reference because Novalis, my very dear friend in other respects,
   wished once more to glorify the theocracy. It is still, however, my
   strong conviction that it is one of the most essential tendencies of
   Christianity to separate completely church and state, and I can just as
   little agree with that glorification of the theocracy as with the
   opposite view that the church should ever more and more be absorbed in
   the state.

   [7] I am not using the privileges of the rhetorical method to say to
   the despisers of religion at the very beginning that piety surpasses
   morality and law. Also I was not concerned in this place to say which
   is first, for, in my opinion, piety and scientific speculation share
   with each other, and the more closely they are conjoined the more both
   advance. The distinction however will be found in my "Glaubenslehre,"
   but here I had to defend the equal rank of morality, law and piety in
   human nature. In so far as the two former do not involve an immediate
   relation of man to the Highest Being, they are inferior to the third,
   but all alike regulate as essentially what is eminent and
   characteristic in human nature. They are functions of human nature not
   to be subordinated to one another, and in so far are equal. Man can
   just as little be thought of without capacity for morality or endeavour
   after government as without capacity for religion.
     __________________________________________________________________

SECOND SPEECH

  THE NATURE OF RELIGION

   You know how the aged Simonides, by long and repeated hesitation, put
   to silence the person who troubled him with the question, What are the
   gods? Our question, What is religion? is similar and equally extensive,
   and I would fain begin with a like hesitation. Naturally I would not
   mean by ultimate silence, as he did, to leave you in perplexity. But
   you might attempt something for yourselves; you might give steady and
   continuous attention to the point about which we are inquiring; you
   might entirely exclude other thoughts. Do not even conjurors of common
   spirits demand abstinence from earthly things and solemn stillness, as
   a preparation, and undistracted, close attention to the place where the
   apparition is to show itself? How much more should I claim? It is a
   rare spirit that I am to call forth, which can, only when long regarded
   with fixed attention, be recognized as the object of your desire. You
   must have that unbiassed sobriety of judgment that seizes clearly and
   accurately every outline. Without being misled by old memories or
   hindered by preconceptions, you must endeavour to understand the object
   presented simply by itself. Even then it may not win your love, and
   otherwise I cannot hope for any unanimity about the meaning of religion
   or any recognition of its worth.

   I could wish to exhibit religion in some well known form, reminding
   you, by feature, carriage and deportment, of what here and there at
   least you have seen in life. Religion, however, as I wish to show it,
   which is to say, in its own original, characteristic form, is not
   accustomed to appear openly, but is only seen in secret by those who
   love it. Not that this applies to religion alone. Nothing that is
   essentially characteristic and peculiar can be quite the same as that
   which openly exhibits and represents it. Speech, for example, is not
   the pure work of science nor morals of intention. Among ourselves at
   the present time this is specially recognized. It belongs to the
   opposition of the new time to the old that no longer is one person one
   thing, but everyone is all things. Just as among civilized peoples, by
   extensive intercourse their characteristic ways of thought no longer
   appear unalloyed, so in the human mind there is such a complete
   sociableness founded, that no special faculty or capacity, however much
   it may be separated for observation, can ever, in separation, produce
   its work. Speaking broadly, one is, in operation, influenced and
   permeated by the ready love and support of the others. The
   predominating power is all you can distinguish. Wherefore every
   activity of the spirit is only to be understood, in so far as a man can
   study it in himself. Seeing you maintain that in this way you do not
   know religion, it is incumbent upon me to warn you against the errors
   that naturally issue from the present state of things. We shall,
   therefore, begin by reviewing the main points in your own position to
   see whether they are right, or whether we may from them reach the
   right.

   Religion is for you at one time a way of thinking, a faith, a peculiar
   way of contemplating the world, and of combining what meets us in the
   world: at another, it is a way of acting, a peculiar desire and love, a
   special kind of conduct and character. Without this distinction of a
   theoretical and practical you could hardly think at all, and though
   both sides belong to religion, you are usually accustomed to give heed
   chiefly to only one at a time. Wherefore, we shall look closely at
   religion from both sides.

   We commence with religion as a kind of activity.

   Activity is twofold, having to do with life and with art. You would
   ascribe with the poet earnestness to life and cheerfulness to art; or,
   in some other way, you would contrast them. Separate them you certainly
   will. For life, duty is the watchword. The moral law shall order it,
   and virtue shall show itself the ruling power in it, that the
   individual may be in harmony with the universal order of the world, and
   may nowhere encroach in a manner to disturb and confuse. This life, you
   consider, may appear without any discernible trace of art. Rather is it
   to be attained by rigid rules that have nothing to do with the free and
   variable precepts of art. Nay, you look upon it almost as a rule that
   art should be somewhat in the background, and nonessential for those
   who are strictest in the ordering of life. On the other hand,
   imagination shall inspire the artist, and genius shall completely sway
   him. Now imagination and genius are for you quite different from virtue
   and morality, being capable of existing in the largest measure along
   with a much more meagre moral endowment. Nay you are inclined, because
   the prudent power often comes into danger by reason of the fiery power,
   to relax for the artist somewhat of the strict demands of life.

   How now does it stand with piety, in so far as you regard it as a
   peculiar kind of activity? Has it to do with right living? Is it
   something good and praiseworthy, yet different from morality, for you
   will not hold them to be identical? But in that case morality does not
   exhaust the sphere which it should govern. Another power works
   alongside of it, and has both right and might to continue working. Or
   will you perhaps betake yourselves to the position that piety is a
   virtue, and religion a duty or section of duties? Is religion
   incorporated into morality and subordinated to it, as a part to the
   whole? Is it, as some suppose, special duties towards God, and
   therefore a part of all morality which is the performance of all
   duties? But, if I have rightly appreciated or accurately reproduced
   what you say, you do not think so.

   You rather seem to say that the pious person has something entirely
   peculiar, both in his doing and leaving undone, and that morality can
   be quite moral without therefore being pious.

   And how are religion and art related? They can hardly be quite alien,
   because, from of old, what is greatest in art has had a religious
   character. When, therefore, you speak of an artist as pious, do you
   still grant him that relaxation of the strict demands of virtue? Rather
   he is then subjected, like every other person. But then to make the
   cases parallel, you must secure that those who devote themselves to
   life do not remain quite without art. Perhaps this combination gives
   its peculiar form to religion. With your view, there seems no other
   possible issue.

   Religion then, as a kind of activity, is a mixture of elements that
   oppose and neutralize each other. Pray is not this rather the utterance
   of your dislike than your conviction? Such an accidental shaking
   together, leaving both elements unaltered, does not, even though the
   most accurate equality be attained, make something specific. But
   suppose it is otherwise, suppose piety is something which truly fuses
   both, then it cannot be formed simply by bringing the two together, but
   must be an original unity. Take care, however, I warn yon, that you do
   not make such an admission. Were it the case, morality and genius apart
   would be only fragments of the ruins of religion, or its corpse when it
   is dead. Religion were then higher than both, the true divine life
   itself. But, in return for this warning, if you accept it, and discover
   no other solution, be so good as tell me how your opinion about
   religion is to be distinguished from nothing? Till then nothing remains
   for me but to assume that you have not yet, by examination, satisfied
   yourselves about this side of religion. Perhaps we shall have better
   fortune with the other side--what is known as the way of thinking, or
   faith.

   You will, I believe, grant that your knowledge, however many-sided it
   may appear, falls, as a whole, into two contrasted sciences. How you
   shall subdivide and name belongs to the controversies of your schools,
   with which at present I am not concerned. Do not, therefore, be too
   critical about my terminology, even though it come from various
   quarters. Let us call the one division physics or metaphysics, applying
   both names indifferently, or indicating sections of the same thing. Let
   the other be ethics or the doctrine of duties or practical philosophy.
   At least we are agreed about the distinction meant. The former
   describes the nature of things, or if that seems too much, how man
   conceives and must conceive of things and of the world as the sum of
   things. The latter science, on the contrary, teaches what man should be
   for the world, and what he should do in it. Now, in so far as religion
   is a way of thinking of something and a knowledge about something, has
   it not the same object as these sciences? What does faith know about
   except the relation of man to God and to the world--God's purpose in
   making him, and the world's power to help or hinder him? Again it
   distinguishes in its own fashion a good action from a bad. Is then
   religion identical with natural science and ethics? You would not
   agree, you would never grant that our faith is as surely founded, or
   stands on the same level of certainty as your scientific knowledge!
   Your accusation against it is just that it does not know how to
   distinguish between the demonstrable and the probable. Similarly, you
   do not forget to remark diligently that very marvellous injunctions
   both to do and leave undone have issued from religion. You may be quite
   right; only do not forget that it has been the same with that which you
   call science. In both spheres you believe you have made improvements
   and are better than your fathers.

   What then, are we to say that religion is? As before, that it is a
   mixture--mingled theoretical and practical knowledge? But this is even
   less permissible, particularly if, as appears, each of these two
   branches of knowledge has its own characteristic mode of procedure.
   Such a mixture of elements that would either counteract or separate,
   could only be made most arbitrarily. The utmost gain to be looked for
   would be to furnish us with another method for putting known results
   into shape for beginners, and for stimulating them to a further study.
   But if that be so, why do you strive against religion? You might, so
   long as beginners are to be found, leave it in peace and security. If
   we presumed to subject you, you might smile at our folly, but, knowing
   for certain that you have left it far behind, and that it is only
   prepared for us by you wiser people, you would be wrong in losing a
   serious word on the matter. But it is not so, I think. Unless I am
   quite mistaken, you have long been labouring to provide the mass of the
   people with just such an epitome of your knowledge. The name is of no
   consequence, whether it be "religion" or "enlightenment" or aught else.
   But there is something different which must first be expelled, or, at
   least, excluded. This something it is that you call belief, and it is
   the object of your hostility, and not an article you would desire to
   extend.

   Wherefore, my friends, belief must be something different from a
   mixture of opinions about God and the world, and of precepts for one
   life or for two. Piety cannot be an instinct craving for a mess of
   metaphysical and ethical crumbs. If it were, you would scarcely oppose
   it. It would not occur to you to speak of religion as different from
   your knowledge, however much it might be distant. The strife of the
   cultured and learned with the pious would simply be the strife of depth
   and thoroughness with superficiality; it would be the strife of the
   master with pupils who are to emancipate themselves in due time.

   Were you, after all, to take this view, I should like to plague you
   with all sorts of Socratic questions, till I compelled many of you to
   give a direct answer to the question, whether it is at all possible to
   be wise and pious at the same time. I should also wish to submit
   whether in other well-known matters you do not acknowledge the
   principle that things similar are to be placed together and particulars
   to be subordinated to generals? Is it that you may joke with the world
   about a serious subject, that in religion only the principle is not
   applied? But let us suppose you are serious. How does it come, then,
   that in religious faith, what, in science, you separate into two
   spheres, is united and so indissolubly bound together that one cannot
   be thought of without the other? The pious man does not believe that
   the right course of action can be determined, except in so far as, at
   the same time, there is knowledge of the relations of man to God; and
   again right action, he holds, is necessary for right knowledge. Suppose
   the binding principle lies in the theoretic side. Why then is a
   practical philosophy set over against a theoretic, and not rather
   regarded as a section? Or suppose the principle is in the practical
   side, the same would apply to a theoretic philosophy. Or both may be
   united, only in a yet higher, an original knowledge. That this highest,
   long-lost unity of knowledge should be religion you cannot believe, for
   you have found it most, and have opposed it most, in those who are
   furthest from science. I will not hold you to any such conclusion, for
   I would not take up a position that I cannot maintain. [8] This,
   however, you may well grant, that, concerning this side of religion,
   you must take time to consider what is its proper significance.

   Let us be honest with one another. As we recently agreed, you have no
   liking for religion. But, in carrying on an honourable war which is not
   quite without strain, you would not wish to fight against such a shadow
   as that with which we have so far been battling. It must be something
   special that could fashion itself so peculiarly in the human heart,
   something thinkable, the real nature of which can so be presented as to
   be spoken of and argued about, and I consider it very wrong that out of
   things so disparate as modes of knowing and modes of acting, you patch
   together an untenable something, and call it religion, and then are so
   needlessly ceremonious with it. Bat you would deny that you have not
   gone to work with straightforwardness. Seeing I have rejected systems,
   commentaries and apologies, you would demand that I unfold all the
   original sources of religion from the beautiful fictions of the Greeks
   to the sacred scriptures of the Christians. Should I not find
   everywhere the nature of the Gods, and the will of the Gods? Is not
   that man everywhere accounted holy and blessed who knows the former,
   and does the latter?

   But that is just what I have already said. Religion never appears quite
   pure. Its outward form is ever determined by something else. Our task
   first is to exhibit its true nature, and not to assume off-hand, as you
   seem to do, that the outward form and the true nature are the same.
   Does the material world present you with any element in its original
   purity as a spontaneous product of nature? Must you, therefore, as you
   have done in the intellectual world, take very gross things for simple?
   It is the one ceaseless aim of all analysis to present something really
   simple. So also it is in spiritual things. You can only obtain what is
   original by producing it, as it were, by a second, an artificial
   creation in yourselves, and even then it is but for the moment of its
   production. Pray come to an understanding on the point, for you shall
   be ceaselessly reminded of it.

   But let us go on to the sources and original writings of religion. To
   attach them to your sciences of resistance and of action, of nature and
   of spirit is an unavoidable necessity, because they are the sources of
   your terminology. Furthermore the best preparation for awaking
   consciousness for your own higher subject is to study what has already
   been more or less scientifically thought. The deepest and highest in a
   work is not always either first or last. Did you but know how to read
   between the lines! All sacred writings are like these modest books
   which were formerly in use in our modest Fatherland. Under a paltry
   heading they treated weighty matters, and, offering but few
   explanations, aimed at the most profound inquiry. Similarly, the sacred
   writings include metaphysical and moral conceptions. Except where they
   are more directly poetic, this seems the beginning and the end. But of
   you it is expected that, seeing through the appearance, you will
   recognize the real intent. It is as when nature gives precious metals
   alloyed with baser substances, and our skill knows how to discover them
   and restore them to their refulgent splendour. The sacred writings were
   not for perfect believers alone, but rather for children in belief, for
   novices, for those who are standing at the entrance and would be
   invited in, and how could they go to work except as I am now doing with
   you? They had to accept what was granted. In it they had to find the
   means for stimulating the new sense they would awake, by giving a
   severe concentration and lofty temper to the mind. Can you not
   recognize, even in the way these moral and metaphysical conceptions are
   treated, in the creative, poetic impulse, though it necessarily works
   in a poor and thankless speech, an endeavour to break through from a
   lower region to a higher? As you can easily see, a communication of
   this sort could be nothing other than poetical or rhetorical. Akin to
   the rhetorical is the dialectic, and what method has from of old been
   more brilliantly or more successfully employed in revealing the higher
   nature, not only of knowledge, but of the deeper feelings? But if the
   vehicle alone satisfies, this end will not be reached. Wherefore, as it
   has become so common to seek metaphysics and ethics chiefly, in the
   sacred writings, and to appraise them accordingly, it seems time to
   approach the matter from the other end, and to begin with the clear cut
   distinction between our faith and your ethics and metaphysics, between
   our piety and what you call morality. This is what I would attain by
   this digression. I wished to throw some light on the conception that is
   dominant among you. That being done, I now return.

   In order to make quite clear to you what is the original and
   characteristic possession of religion, it resigns, at once, all claims
   on anything that belongs either to science or morality. Whether it has
   been borrowed or bestowed it is now returned. What then does your
   science of being, your natural science, all your theoretical
   philosophy, in so far as it has to do with the actual world, have for
   its aim? To know things, I suppose, as they really are; to show the
   peculiar relations by which each is what it is; to determine for each
   its place in the Whole, and to distinguish it rightly from all else; to
   present the whole real world in its mutually conditioned necessity; and
   to exhibit the oneness of all phenomena with their eternal laws. This
   is truly beautiful and excellent, and I am not disposed to depreciate.
   Rather, if this description of mine, so slightly sketched, does not
   suffice, I will grant the highest and most exhaustive you are able to
   give.

   And yet, however high you go; though you pass from the laws to the
   Universal Lawgiver, in whom is the unity of all things; though you
   allege that nature cannot be comprehended without God, I would still
   maintain that religion has nothing to do with this knowledge, and that,
   quite apart from it, its nature can be known. Quantity of knowledge is
   not quantity of piety. Piety can gloriously display itself, both with
   originality and individuality, in those to whom this kind of knowledge
   is not original. They may only know it as everybody does, as isolated
   results known in connection with other things. The pious man must, in a
   sense, be a wise man, but he will readily admit, even though you
   somewhat proudly look down upon him, that, in so far as he is pious, he
   does not hold his knowledge in the same way as you.

   Let me interpret in clear words what most pious persons only guess at
   and never know how to express. Were you to set God as the apex of your
   science as the foundation of all knowing as well as of all knowledge,
   they would accord praise and honour, but it would not be their way of
   having and knowing God. From their way, as they would readily grant,
   and as is easy enough to see, knowledge and science do not proceed.

   It is true that religion is essentially contemplative. You would never
   call anyone pious who went about in impervious stupidity, whose sense
   is not open for the life of the world. But this contemplation is not
   turned, as your knowledge of nature is, to the existence of a finite
   thing, combined with and opposed to another finite thing. It has not
   even, like your knowledge of God--if for once I might use an old
   expression--to do with the nature of the first cause, in itself and in
   its relation to every other cause and operation. The contemplation of
   the pious is the immediate consciousness of the universal existence of
   all finite things, in and through the Infinite, and of all temporal
   things in and through the Eternal. Religion is to seek this and find it
   in all that lives and moves, in all growth and change, in all doing and
   suffering. It is to have life and to know life in immediate feeling,
   only as such an existence in the Infinite and Eternal. Where this is
   found religion is satisfied, where it hides itself there is for her
   unrest and anguish, extremity and death. Wherefore it is a life in the
   infinite nature of the Whole, in the One and in the All, in God, having
   and possessing all things in God, and God in all. Yet religion is not
   knowledge and science, either of the world or of God. Without being
   knowledge, it recognizes knowledge and science. In itself it is an
   affection, a revelation of the Infinite in the finite, God being seen
   in it and it in God.

   Similarly, what is the object of your ethics, of your science of
   action? Does it not seek to distinguish precisely each part of human
   doing and producing, and at the same time to combine them into a whole,
   according to actual relations? But the pious man confesses that, as
   pious, he knows nothing about it. He does, indeed, contemplate human
   action, but it is not the kind of contemplation from which an ethical
   system takes its rise. Only one thing he seeks out and detects, action
   from God, God's activity among men. If your ethics are right, and his
   piety as well, he will not, it is true, acknowledge any action as
   excellent which is not embraced in your system. But to know and to
   construct this system is your business, ye learned, not his. If you
   will not believe, regard the case of women. You ascribe to them
   religion, not only as an adornment, but you demand of them the finest
   feeling for distinguishing the things that excel: do you equally expect
   them to know your ethics as a science?

   It is the same, let me say at once, with action itself. The artist
   fashions what is given him to fashion, by virtue of his special talent.
   These talents are so different that the one he possesses another lacks;
   unless someone, against heaven's will, would possess all. But when
   anyone is praised to you as pious, you are not accustomed to ask which
   of these gifts dwell in him by virtue of his piety. The citizen--taking
   the word in the sense of the ancients not in its present meagre
   significance--regulates, leads, and influences in virtue of his
   morality. But this is something different from piety. Piety has also a
   passive side. While morality always shows itself as manipulating, as
   self-controlling, piety appears as a surrender, a submission to be
   moved by the Whole that stands over against man. Morality depends,
   therefore, entirely on the consciousness of freedom, within the sphere
   of which all that it produces falls. Piety, on the contrary, is not at
   all bound to this side of life. In the opposite sphere of necessity,
   where there is no properly individual action, it is quite as active.
   Wherefore the two are different. Piety does, indeed, linger with
   satisfaction on every action that is from God, and every activity that
   reveals the Infinite in the finite, and yet it is not itself this
   activity. Only by keeping quite outside the range both of science and
   of practice can it maintain its proper sphere and character. Only when
   piety takes its place alongside of science and practice, as a
   necessary, an indispensable third, as their natural counterpart, not
   less in worth and spendour than either, will the common field be
   altogether occupied and human nature on this side complete.

   But pray understand me fairly. I do not mean that one could exist
   without the other, that, for example, a man might have religion and be
   pious, and at the same time be immoral. That is impossible. But, in my
   opinion, it is just as impossible to be moral or scientific without
   being religious. But have I not said that religion can be had without
   science? Wherefore, I have myself begun the separation. But remember, I
   only said piety is not the measure of science. Just as one cannot be
   truly scientific without being pious, the pious man may not know at
   all, but he cannot know falsely. His proper nature is not of that
   subordinate kind, which, according to the old adage that like is only
   known to like, knows nothing except semblance of reality.

   His nature is reality which knows reality, and where it encounters
   nothing it does not suppose it sees something. And what a precious
   jewel of science, in my view, is ignorance for those who are captive to
   semblance. If you have not learned it from my Speeches or discovered it
   for yourselves, go and learn it from your Socrates. Grant me
   consistency at least. With ignorance your knowledge will ever be mixed,
   but the true and proper opposite of knowledge is presumption of
   knowledge. By piety this presumption is most certainly removed, for
   with it piety cannot exist.

   Such a separation of knowledge and piety, and of action and piety, do
   not accuse me of making. You are only ascribing to me, without my
   deserving it, your own view and the very confusion, as common as it is
   unavoidable, which it has been my chief endeavour to show you in the
   mirror of my Speech. Just because you do not acknowledge religion as
   the third, knowledge and action are so much apart that you can discover
   no unity, but believe that right knowing can be had without right
   acting, and vice versa. I hold that is it only in contemplation that
   there is division. There, where it is necessary, you despise it, and
   instead transfer it to life, as if in life itself objects could be
   found independent one of the other. Consequently you have no living
   insight into any of these activities. Each is for you a part, a
   fragment. Because you do not deal with life in a living way, your
   conception bears the stamp of perishableness, and is altogether meagre.
   True science is complete vision; true practice is culture and art
   self-produced; true religion is sense and taste for the Infinite. To
   wish to have true science or true practice without religion, or, to
   imagine it is possessed, is obstinate, arrogant delusion, and culpable
   error. It issues from the unholy sense that would rather have a show of
   possession by cowardly purloining than have secure possession by
   demanding and waiting. What can man accomplish that is worth speaking
   of, either in life or in art, that does not arise in his own self from
   the influence of this sense for the Infinite? Without it, how can
   anyone wish to comprehend the world scientifically, or if, in some
   distinct talent, the knowledge is thrust upon him, how should he wish
   to exercise it? What is all science, if not the existence of things in
   you, in your reason? What is all art and culture if not your existence
   in the things to which you give measure, form and order? And how can
   both come to life in you except in so far as there lives immediately in
   you the eternal unity of Reason and Nature, the universal existence of
   all finite things in the Infinite? [9]

   Wherefore, you will find every truly learned man devout and pious.
   Where you see science without religion, be sure it is transferred,
   learned up from another. It is sickly, if indeed it is not that empty
   appearance which serves necessity and is no knowledge at all. And what
   else do you take this deduction and weaving together of ideas to be,
   which neither live nor correspond to any living thing? Or in ethics,
   what else is this wretched uniformity that thinks it can grasp the
   highest human life in a single dead formula? The former arises because
   there is no fundamental feeling of that living nature which everywhere
   presents variety and individuality, and the latter because the sense
   fails to give infinity to the finite by determining its nature and
   boundaries only from the Infinite. Hence the dominion of the mere
   notion; hence the mechanical erections of your systems instead of an
   organic structure; hence the vain juggling with analytical formulas, in
   which, whether categorical or hypothetical, life will not be fettered.
   Science is not your calling, if you despise religion and fear to
   surrender yourself to reverence and aspiration for the primordial.
   Either science must become as low as your life, or it must be separated
   and stand alone, a division that precludes success. If man is not one
   with the Eternal in the unity of intuition and feeling which is
   immediate, he remains, in the unity of consciousness which is derived,
   for ever apart.

   What, then, shall become of the highest utterance of the speculation of
   our days, complete rounded idealism, if it do not again sink itself in
   this unity, if the humility of religion do not suggest to its pride
   another realism than that which it so boldly and with such perfect
   right, subordinates to itself? It annihilates the Universe, while it
   seems to aim at constructing it. It would degrade it to a mere
   allegory, to a mere phantom of the one-sided limitation of its own
   empty consciousness. Offer with me reverently a tribute to the manes of
   the holy, rejected Spinoza. The high World-Spirit pervaded him; the
   Infinite was his beginning and his end; the Universe was his only and
   his everlasting love. In holy innocence and in deep humility he beheld
   himself mirrored in the eternal world, and perceived how he also was
   its most worthy mirror. He was full of religion, full of the Holy
   Spirit. Wherefore, he stands there alone and unequalled; master in his
   art, yet without disciples and without citizenship, sublime above the
   profane tribe.

   Why should I need to show that the same applies to art? Because, from
   the same causes, you have here also a thousand phantoms, delusions, and
   mistakes. In place of all else I would point to another example which
   should be as well known to you all. I would point in silence--for pain
   that is new and deep has no words. It is that superb youth, who has too
   early fallen asleep, with whom everything his spirit touched became
   art. His whole contemplation of the world was forthwith a great poem.
   Though he had scarce more than struck the first chords, you must
   associate him with the most opulent poets, with those select spirits
   who are as profound as they are clear and vivacious. See in him the
   power of the enthusiasm and the caution of a pious spirit, and
   acknowledge that when the philosophers shall become religious and seek
   God like Spinoza, and the artists be pious and love Christ like
   Novalis, the great resurrection shall be celebrated for both worlds.
   [10]

   But, in order that you may understand what I mean by this unity and
   difference of religion, science and art, we shall endeavour to descend
   into the inmost sanctuary of life. There, perhaps, we may find
   ourselves agreed. There alone you discover the original relation of
   intuition and feeling from which alone this identity and difference is
   to be understood. But I must direct you to your own selves. You must
   apprehend a living movement. You must know how to listen to yourselves
   before your own consciousness. At least you must be able to reconstruct
   from your consciousness your own state. What you are to notice is the
   rise of your consciousness and not to reflect upon something already
   there. Your thought can only embrace what is sundered. Wherefore as
   soon as you have made any given definite activity of your soul an
   object of communication or of contemplation, you have already begun to
   separate. It is impossible, therefore, to adduce any definite example,
   for, as soon as anything is an example, what I wish to indicate is
   already past. Only the faintest trace of the original unity could then
   be shown. Such as it is, however, I will not despise it, as a
   preliminary.

   Consider how you delineate an object. Is there not both a stimulation
   and a determination by the object, at one and the same time, which for
   one particular moment forms your existence? The more definite your
   image, the more, in this way, you become the object, and the more you
   lose yourselves. But just because you can trace the growing
   preponderance of one side over the other, both must have been one and
   equal in the first, the original moment that has escaped you. Or sunk
   in yourselves, you find all that you formerly regarded as a
   disconnected manifold compacted now indivisibly into the one peculiar
   content of your being. Yet when you give heed, can you not see as it
   disappears, the image of an object, from whose influence, from whose
   magical contact this definite consciousness has proceeded? The more
   your own state sways you the paler and more unrecognizable your image
   becomes. The greater your emotion, the more you are absorbed in it, the
   more your whole nature is concerned to retain for the memory an
   imperishable trace of what is necessarily fleeting, to carry over to
   what you may engage in, its colour and impress, and so unite two
   moments into a duration, the less you observe the object that caused
   it. But just because it grows pale and vanishes, it must before have
   been nearer and clearer. Originally it must have been one and the same
   with your feeling. But, as was said, these are mere traces. Unless you
   will go back on the first beginning of this consciousness, you can
   scarcely understand them.

   And suppose you cannot? Then say, weighing it quite generally and
   originally, what is every act of your life in itself and without
   distinction from other acts. What is it merely as act, as movement? Is
   it not the coming into being of something for itself, and at the same
   time in the Whole? It is an endeavour to return into the Whole, and to
   exist for oneself at the same time. These are the links from which the
   whole chain is made. Your whole life is such an existence for self in
   the Whole. How now are you in the Whole? By your senses. And how are
   you for yourselves? By the unity of your self-consciousness, which is
   given chiefly in the possibility of comparing the varying degrees of
   sensation. How both can only rise together, if both together fashion
   every act of life, is easy to see. You become sense and the Whole
   becomes object. Sense and object mingle and unite, then each returns to
   its place, and the object rent from sense is a perception, and you rent
   from the object are for yourselves, a feeling. It is this earlier
   moment I mean, which you always experience yet never experience. The
   phenomenon of your life is just the result of its constant departure
   and return. It is scarcely in time at all, so swiftly it passes; it can
   scarcely be described, so little does it properly exist. Would that I
   could hold it fast and refer to it your commonest as well as your
   highest activities.

   Did I venture to compare it, seeing I cannot describe it, I would say
   it is fleeting and transparent as the vapour which the dew breathes on
   blossom and fruit, it is bashful and tender as a maiden's kiss, it is
   holy and fruitful as a bridal embrace. Nor is it merely like, it is all
   this. It is the first contact of the universal life with an individual.
   It fills no time and fashions nothing palpable. It is the holy wedlock
   of the Universe with the incarnated Reason for a creative, productive
   embrace. It is immediate, raised above all error and misunderstanding.
   You lie directly on the bosom of the infinite world. In that moment,
   you are its soul. Through one part of your nature you feel, as your
   own, all its powers and its endless life. In that moment it is your
   body, you pervade, as your own, its muscles and members and your
   thinking and forecasting set its inmost nerves in motion. In this way
   every living, original movement in your life is first received. Among
   the rest it is the source of every religious emotion. But it is not, as
   I said, even a moment. The incoming of existence to us, by this
   immediate union, at once stops as soon as it reaches consciousness.
   Either the intuition displays itself more vividly and clearly, like the
   figure of the vanishing mistress to the eyes of her lover; or feeling
   issues from your heart and overspreads your whole being, as the blush
   of shame and love over the face of the maiden. At length your
   consciousness is finally determined as one or other, as intuition or
   feeling. Then, even though you have not quite surrendered to this
   division and lost consciousness of your life as a unity, there remains
   nothing but the knowledge that they were originally one, that they
   issued simultaneously from the fundamental relation of your nature.
   Wherefore, it is in this sense true what an ancient sage has taught
   you, that all knowledge is recollection. It is recollection of what is
   outside of all time, and is therefore justly to be placed at the head
   of all temporal things.

   And, as it is with intuition and feeling on the one hand, so it is with
   knowledge which includes both and with activity on the other. Through
   the constant play and mutual influence of these opposites, your life
   expands and has its place in time. Both knowledge and activity are a
   desire to be identified with the Universe through an object. If the
   power of the objects preponderates, if, as intuition or feeling, it
   enters and seeks to draw you into the circle of their existence, it is
   always a knowledge. If the preponderating power is on your side, so
   that you give the impress and reflect yourselves in the objects, it is
   activity in the narrower sense, external working. Yet it is only as you
   are stimulated and determined that you can communicate yourselves to
   things. In founding or establishing anything in the world you are only
   giving back what that original act of fellowship has wrought in you,
   and similarly everything the world fashions in you must be by the same
   act. One must mutually stimulate the other. Only in an interchange of
   knowing and activity can your life consist. A peaceful existence,
   wherein one side did not stimulate the other, would not be your life.
   It would be that from which it first developed, and into which it will
   again disappear.

   There then you have the three things about which my Speech has so far
   turned,--perception, feeling and activity, and you now understand what
   I mean when I say they are not identical and yet are inseparable. Take
   what belongs to each class and consider it by itself. You will find
   that those moments in which you exercise power over things and impress
   yourselves upon them, form what you call your practical, or, in the
   narrower sense, your moral life; again the contemplative moments, be
   they few or many, in which things produce themselves in you as
   intuition, you will doubtless call your scientific life. Now can either
   series alone form a human life? Would it not be death? If each activity
   were not stimulated and renewed by the other, would it not be
   self-consumed? Yet they are not identical. If you would understand your
   life and speak comprehensibly of it, they must be distinguished. As it
   stands with these two in respect of one another, it must stand with the
   third in respect of both. How then are you to name this third, which is
   the series of feeling? What life will it form? The religious as I
   think, and as you will not be able to deny, when you have considered it
   more closely.

   The chief point in my Speech is now uttered. This is the peculiar
   sphere which I would assign to religion--the whole of it, and nothing
   more. Unless you grant it, you must either prefer the old confusion to
   clear analysis, or produce something else, I know not what, new and
   quite wonderful. Your feeling is piety, in so far as it expresses, in
   the manner described, the being and life common to you and to the All.
   Your feeling is piety in so far as it is the result of the operation of
   God in you by means of the operation of the world upon you. This series
   is not made up either of perceptions or of objects of perception,
   either of works or operations or of different spheres of operation, but
   purely of sensations and the influence of all that lives and moves
   around, which accompanies them and conditions them. These feelings are
   exclusively the elements of religion, and none are excluded. There is
   no sensation that is not pious, [11] except it indicate some diseased
   and impaired state of the life, the influence of which will not be
   confined to religion. Wherefore, it follows that ideas and principles
   are all foreign to religion. This truth we here come upon for the
   second time. If ideas and principles are to be anything, they must
   belong to knowledge which is a different department of life from
   religion.

   Now that we have some ground beneath us, we are in a better position to
   inquire about the source of this confusion. May there not be some
   reason for this constant connection of principles and ideas with
   religion? In the same way is there not a cause for the connection of
   action with religion? Without such an inquiry it would be vain to
   proceed farther. The misunderstanding would be confirmed, for you would
   change what I say into ideas and begin seeking for principles in them.
   Whether you will follow my exposition, who can tell? What now is to
   hinder that each of the functions of life just indicated should not be
   an object for the others? Or does it not rather manifestly belong to
   their inner unity and equality that they should in this manner strive
   to pass over into one another? So at least it seems to me. Thus, as a
   feeling person, you can become an object to yourself and you can
   contemplate your own feeling. Nay, you can, as a feeling person, become
   an object for yourself to operate upon and more and more to impress
   your deepest nature upon. Would you now call the general description of
   the nature of your feelings that is the product of this contemplation a
   principle, and the description of each feeling, an idea, you are
   certainly free to do so. And if you call them religious principles and
   ideas, you are not in error. But do not forget that this is scientific
   treatment of religion, knowledge about it, and not religion itself.

   Nor can the description be equal to the thing described. The feeling
   may dwell in many sound and strong, as for example in almost all women,
   without ever having been specially a matter of contemplation. Nor may
   you say religion is lacking, but only knowledge about religion.
   Furthermore, do not forget what we have already established, that this
   contemplation presupposes the original activity. It depends entirely
   upon it. If the ideas and principles are not from reflection on a man's
   own feeling, they must be learned by rote and utterly void. Make sure
   of this, that no man is pious, however perfectly he understands these
   principles and conceptions, however much he believes he possesses them
   in clearest consciousness, who cannot show that they have originated in
   himself and, being the outcome of his own feeling, are peculiar to
   himself. Do not present him to me as pious, for he is not. His soul is
   barren in religious matters, and his ideas are merely supposititious
   children which he has adopted, in the secret feeling of his own
   weakness. As for those who parade religion and make a boast of it, I
   always characterize them as unholy and removed from all divine life.
   One has conceptions of the ordering of the world and formulas to
   express them, the other has prescriptions whereby to order himself and
   inner experiences to authenticate them. The one weaves his formulas
   into a system of faith, and the other spins out of his prescriptions a
   scheme of salvation. It being observed that neither has any proper
   standing ground without feeling, strife ensues as to how many
   conceptions and declarations, how many precepts and exercises, how many
   emotions and sensations must be accepted in order to conglomerate a
   sound religion that shall be neither specially cold nor enthusiastic,
   dry nor shallow. O fools, and slow of heart! They do not know that all
   this is mere analysis of the religious sense, which they must have made
   for themselves, if it is to have any meaning.

   But if they are not conscious of having anything to analyze, whence
   have they those ideas and rules? They have memory and imitation, but
   that they have religion do not believe. They have no ideas of their own
   from which formulas might be known, so they must learn them by rote,
   and the feelings which they would have accompanying them are copies,
   and like all copies, are apt to become caricatures. And out of this
   dead, corrupt, second-hand stuff, a religion is to be concocted! The
   members and juices of an organized body can be dissected; but take
   these elements now and mix them and treat them in every possible way;
   and will you be able to make heart's blood of them? Once dead, can it
   ever again move in a living body? Such restoration of the products of
   living nature out of its component parts, once divided, passes all
   human skill, and, just as little, would you succeed with religion,
   however completely the various kindred elements be given from without.
   From within, in their original, characteristic form, the emotions of
   piety must issue. They must be indubitably your own feelings, and not
   mere stale descriptions of the feelings of others, which could at best
   issue in a wretched imitation.

   Now the religious ideas which form those systems can and ought to be
   nothing else than such a description, for religion cannot and will not
   originate in the pure impulse to know. What we feel and are conscious
   of in religious emotions is not the nature of things, but their
   operation upon us. What you may know or believe about the nature of
   things is far beneath the sphere of religion. The Universe is
   ceaselessly active and at every moment is revealing itself to us. Every
   form it has produced, everything to which, from the fulness of its
   life, it has given a separate existence, every occurrence scattered
   from its fertile bosom is an operation of the Universe upon us. Now
   religion is to take up into our lives and to submit to be swayed by
   them, each of these influences and their consequent emotions, not by
   themselves but as a part of the Whole, not as limited and in opposition
   to other things, but as an exhibition of the Infinite in our life. [12]
   Anything beyond this, any effort to penetrate into the nature and
   substance of things is no longer religion, but seeks to be a science of
   some sort.

   On the other hand, to take what are meant as descriptions of our
   feelings for a science of the object, in some way the revealed product
   of religion, or to regard it as science and religion at the same time,
   necessarily leads to mysticism and vain mythology. For example, it was
   religion when the Ancients, abolishing the limitations of time and
   space, regarded every special form of life throughout the whole world
   as the work and as the kingdom of a being who in this sphere was
   omnipresent and omnipotent, because one peculiar way in which the
   Universe operates was present as a definite feeling, and they described
   it after this fashion. It was religion when they assigned a peculiar
   name and built a temple to the god to whom they ascribed any helpful
   occurrence whereby in an obvious, if accidental, way, the laws of the
   world were revealed, because they had comprehended something as a deed
   of the Universe, and after their own fashion set forth its connection
   and peculiar character. It was religion when they rose above the rude
   iron age, full of flaws and inequalities, and sought again the golden
   age on Olympus in the joyous life of the gods, because beyond all
   change and all apparent evil that results only from the strife of
   finite forms, they felt the ever-stirring, living and serene activity
   of the World and the World-Spirit. But when they drew up marvellous and
   complex genealogies of the gods, or when a later faith produced a long
   series of emanations and procreations, it was not religion. Even though
   these things may have their source in a religious presentation of the
   relation of the human and the divine, of the imperfect and the perfect,
   they were, in themselves, vain mythology, and, in respect of science,
   ruinous mysticism. The sum total of religion is to feel that, in its
   highest unity, all that moves us in feeling is one; to feel that aught
   single and particular is only possible by means of this unity; to feel,
   that is to say, that our being and living is a being and living in and
   through God. But it is not necessary that the Deity should be presented
   as also one distinct object. To many this view is necessary, and to all
   it is welcome, yet it is always hazardous and fruitful in difficulties.
   It is not easy to avoid the appearance of making Him susceptible of
   suffering like other objects. It is only one way of characterizing God,
   and, from the difficulties of it, common speech will probably never rid
   itself. But to treat this objective conception of God just as if it
   were a perception, as if apart from His operation upon us through the
   world the existence of God before the world, and outside of the world,
   though for the world, were either by or in religion exhibited as
   science is, so far as religion is concerned, vain mythology. [13] What
   is only a help for presentation is treated as a reality. It is a
   misunderstanding very easily made, but it is quite outside the peculiar
   territory of religion.

   From all this you will at once perceive bow the question, whether
   religion is a system or not, is to be treated. It admits of an entire
   negative, and also of a direct affirmative, in a way that perhaps you
   scarce expected. Religion is certainly a system, if you mean that it is
   formed according to an inward and necessary connection. That the
   religious sense of one person is moved in one way, and that of another
   in another is not pure accident, as if the emotions formed no whole, as
   if any emotions might be caused in the same individual by the same
   object. Whatever occurs anywhere, whether among many or few as a
   peculiar and distinct kind of feeling is in itself complete, and by its
   nature necessary. What you find as religious emotions among Turks or
   Indians, cannot equally appear among Christians. The essential oneness
   of religiousness spreads itself out in a great variety of provinces,
   and again, in each province it contracts itself, and the narrower and
   smaller the province there is necessarily more excluded as incompatible
   and more included as characteristic. Christianity, for example, is a
   whole in itself, but so is any of the divisions that may at any time
   have appeared in it, down to Protestantism and Catholicism in modern
   times. Finally, the piety of each individual, whereby he is rooted in
   the greater unity, is a whole by itself. It is a rounded whole, based
   on his peculiarity, on what you call his character, of which it forms
   one side. Religion thus fashions itself with endless variety, down even
   to the single personality.

   Each form again is a whole and capable of an endless number of
   characteristic manifestations. You would not have individuals issue
   from the Whole in a finite way, each being at a definite distance from
   the other, so that one might be determined, construed and numbered from
   the others, and its characteristics be accurately determined in a
   conception? Were I to compare religion in this respect with anything it
   would be with music, which indeed is otherwise closely connected with
   it. Music is one great whole; it is a special, a self-contained
   revelation of the world. Yet the music of each people is a whole by
   itself, which again is divided into different characteristic forms,
   till we come to the genius and style of the individual. Each actual
   instance of this inner revelation in the individual contains all these
   unities. Yet while nothing is possible for a musician, except in and
   through the unity of the music of his people, and the unity of music
   generally, he presents it in the charm of sound with all the pleasure
   and joyousness of boundless caprice, according as his life stirs in
   him, and the world influences him. In the same way, despite the
   necessary elements in its structure, religion is, in its individual
   manifestations whereby it displays itself immediately in life, from
   nothing farther removed than from all semblance of compulsion or
   limitation. In life, the necessary element is taken up, taken up into
   freedom. Each emotion appears as the free self-determination of this
   very disposition, and mirrors one passing moment of the world.

   It would be impious to demand here something held in constraint,
   something limited and determined from without. If anything of this kind
   lies in your conception of system then you must set it quite aside. A
   system of perceptions and feelings you may yourselves see to be
   somewhat marvellous. Suppose now you feel something. Is there not at
   the same time an accompanying feeling or thought--make your own
   choice--that you would have to feel in accordance with this feeling,
   and not otherwise were but this or that object, which does not now move
   you, to be present? But for this immediate association your feeling
   would be at an end, and a cold calculating and refining would take its
   place. Wherefore it is plainly an error to assert that it belongs to
   religion, to be conscious of the connection of its separate
   manifestations, not only to have it within, and to develope it from
   within, but to see it described and to comprehend it from without, and
   it is presumption to consider that, without it, piety is
   poverty-stricken. The truly pious are not disturbed in the simplicity
   of their way, for they give little heed to all the so-called religious
   systems that have been erected in consequence of this view.

   Poor enough they are too, far inferior to the theories about music,
   defective though they be. Among those systematizers there is less than
   anywhere, a devout watching and listening to discover in their own
   hearts what they are to describe. They would rather reckon with
   symbols, and complete a designation which is about as accidental as the
   designation of the stars. It is purely arbitrary and never sufficient,
   for something new that should be included, is always being discovered,
   and a system, anything permanent and secure, anything corresponding to
   nature, and not the result of caprice and tradition, is not to be found
   in it. The designation, let the forms of religion be ever so inward and
   self-dependent, must be from without. Thousands might be moved
   religiously in the same way, and yet each, led, not so much by
   disposition, as by external circumstances, might designate his feeling
   by different symbols. [14] Furthermore, those systematizers are less
   anxious to present the details of religion than to subordinate them one
   to the other, and to deduce them from a higher. Nothing is of less
   importance to religion, for it knows nothing of deducing and
   connecting. There is no single fact in it that can be called original
   and chief. Its facts are one and all immediate. Without dependence on
   any other, each exists for itself. True, a special type of religion is
   constituted by one definite kind and manner of feeling, but it is mere
   perversion to call it a principle, and to treat it as if the rest could
   be deduced from it. This distinct form of a religion is found, in the
   same way, in every single element of religion. Each expression of
   feeling bears on it immediately this peculiar impress. It cannot show
   itself without it, nor be comprehended without it. Everything is to be
   found immediately, and not proved from something else. Generals, which
   include particulars, combination and connection belong to another
   sphere, if they rest on reality, or they are merely a work of phantasy
   and caprice. Every man may have his own regulation and his own rubrics.
   What is essential can neither gain nor lose thereby. Consequently, the
   man who truly knows the nature of his religion, will give a very
   subordinate place to all apparent connection of details, and will not
   sacrifice the smallest for the sake of it.

   By taking the opposite course, the marvellous thought has arisen of a
   universality of one religion, of one single form which is true, and in
   respect of which all others are false. Were it not that
   misunderstanding must be guarded against, I would say that it is only
   by such deducing and connecting, that such a comparison as true and
   false, which is not peculiarly appropriate to religion, has ever been
   reached. It only applies where we have to do with ideas. Elsewhere the
   negative laws of your logic are not in place. All is immediately true
   in religion, for except immediately how could anything arise? But that
   only is immediate which has not yet passed through the stage of idea,
   but has grown up purely in the feeling. All that is religious is good,
   for it is only religious as it expresses a common higher life. But the
   whole circumference of religion is infinite, and is not to be
   comprehended under one form, but only under the sum total of all forms.
   [15] It is infinite, not merely because any single religious
   organization has a limited horizon, and, not being able to embrace all,
   cannot believe that there is nothing beyond; but more particularly,
   because everyone is a person by himself, and is only to be moved in his
   own way, so that for everyone the elements of religion have most
   characteristic differences. Religion is infinite, not only because
   something new is ever being produced in time, by the endless relations
   both active and passive between different minds and the same limited
   matter; not only because the capacity for religion is never perfected,
   but is ever being developed anew, is ever being more beautifully
   reproduced, is ever entering deeper into the nature of man; but
   religion is infinite on all sides. As the knowledge of its eternal
   truth and infallibility accompanies knowledge, the consciousness of
   this infinity accompanies religion. It is the very feeling of religion,
   and must therefore accompany everyone that really has religion. He must
   be conscious that his religion is only part of the whole; that about
   the same circumstances there may be views and sentiments quite
   different from his, yet just as pious; and that there may be
   perceptions and feelings belonging to other modifications of religion,
   for which the sense may entirely fail him.

   You see how immediately this beautiful modesty, this friendly,
   attractive forbearance springs from the nature of religion. How
   unjustly, therefore, do you reproach religion with loving persecution,
   with being malignant, with overturning society, and making blood flow
   like water. Blame those who corrupt religion, who flood it with an army
   of formulas and definitions, and seek to cast it into the fetters of a
   so-called system. What is it in religion about which men have
   quarrelled and made parties and kindled wars? About definitions, the
   practical sometimes, the theoretical always, both of which belong
   elsewhere. Philosophy, indeed, seeks to bring those who would know to a
   common knowledge. Yet even philosophy leaves room for variety, and the
   more readily the better it understands itself. But religion does not,
   even once, desire to bring those who believe and feel to one belief and
   one feeling. Its endeavour is to open in those who are not yet capable
   of religious emotions, the sense for the unity of the original source
   of life. But just because each seer is a new priest, a new mediator, a
   new organ, he flees with repugnance the bald uniformity which would
   again destroy this divine abundance.

   This miserable love of system [16] rejects what is strange, often
   without any patient examination of its claims, because, were it to
   receive its place, the closed ranks would be destroyed, and the
   beautiful coherence disturbed. There is the seat of the art and love of
   strife. War must be carried on, and persecution, for by thus relating
   detail to finite detail, one may destroy the other, while, in its
   immediate relation to the Infinite, all stand together in their
   original genuine connection, all is one and all is true. These
   systematizers, therefore, have caused it all. Modern Rome, godless but
   consequent, hurls anathemas and ejects heretics. [17] Ancient Rome,
   truly pious, and, in a high style religious, was hospitable to every
   god. The adherents of the dead letter which religion casts out, have
   filled the world with clamour and turmoil.

   Seers of the Infinite have ever been quiet souls. They abide alone with
   themselves and the Infinite, or if they do look around them, grudge to
   no one who understands the mighty word his own peculiar way. By means
   of this wide vision, this feeling of the Infinite, they are able to
   look beyond their own sphere. There is in religion such a capacity for
   unlimited manysidedness in judgment and in contemplation as is nowhere
   else to be found. I will not except even morality and philosophy, not
   at least so much of them as remains after religion is taken away. Let
   me appeal to your own experience. Does not every other object whereto
   man's thinking and striving are directed, draw around him a narrow
   circle, inside of which all that is highest for him is enclosed, and
   outside of which all appears common and unworthy? The man who only
   thinks methodically, and acts from principle and design, and will
   accomplish this or that in the world, unavoidably circumscribes
   himself, and makes everything that does not forward him an object of
   antipathy. Only when the free impulse of seeing, and of living is
   directed towards the Infinite and goes into the Infinite, is the mind
   set in unbounded liberty. Religion alone rescues it from the heavy
   fetters of opinion and desire. For it, all that is is necessary, all
   that can be is an indispensable image of the Infinite. In this respect,
   it is all worthy of preservation and contemplation, however much, in
   other respects, and in itself, it is to be rejected. To a pious mind
   religion makes everything holy, even unholiness and commonness, whether
   he comprehends it or does not comprehend it, whether it is embraced in
   his system of thought, or lies outside, whether it agrees with his
   peculiar mode of acting or disagrees. Religion is the natural and sworn
   foe of all narrowmindedness, and of all onesidedness.

   These charges, therefore, do not touch religion. They rest upon the
   confusion between religion and that knowledge which belongs to
   theology. It is a knowledge, whatever be its value, and is to be always
   distinguished from religion. Just as inapplicable are the charges you
   have made in respect of action. Something of this I have already
   touched upon, but let us take a general glance at it in order to set it
   entirely aside, and to show you exactly what I mean. Two things must be
   carefully distinguished. In the first place, you charge religion with
   causing not infrequently in the social, civil, and moral life,
   improper, horrible, and even unnatural dealings. I will not demand
   proof that these actions have proceeded from pious men. I will grant it
   provisionally. But in the very utterance of your accusation, you
   separate religion and morality. Do you mean then that religion is
   immorality, or a branch of it? Scarcely, for your war against it would
   then be of quite another sort, and you would have to make success in
   vanquishing religion a test of morality. With the exception of a few
   who have shown themselves almost mad in their mistaken zeal, you have
   not yet taken up this position. Or do you only mean that piety is
   different from morality, indifferent in respect of it, and capable
   therefore of accidentally becoming immoral? Piety and morality can be
   considered apart, and so far they are different. As I have already
   admitted and asserted, the one is based on feeling, the other on
   action. But how, from this opposition do you come to make religion
   responsible for action? Would it not be more correct to say that such
   men were not moral enough, and had they been, they might have been
   quite as pious without harm? If you are seeking progress--as doubtless
   you are--where two faculties that should be equal have become unequal,
   it is not advisable to call back the one in advance. It would be better
   to urge forward the laggard.

   Lest you should think I am merely quibbling, consider that religion by
   itself does not urge men to activity at all. If you could imagine it
   implanted in man quite alone, it would produce neither these nor any
   other deeds. The man, according to what we have said, would not act, he
   would only feel. Wherefore, as you rightly complain, there have been
   many most religious men in whom the proper impulses to action have been
   wanting, and morality been too much in the background, who have retired
   from the world and have betaken themselves in solitude to idle
   contemplation. Religion, when isolated and morbid, is capable of such
   effects, but not of cruel and horrible deeds. In this way, your
   accusation can be turned into praise.

   However different the actions you blame may be, they have this in
   common, that they all seem to issue immediately from one single
   impulse. Whether you call this special feeling religious or not, I am
   far from disagreeing with you when you so constantly blame it. Rather I
   praise you the more thorough and impartial you are. Blame also, I pray
   you, not only where the action appears bad, but still more where it has
   a good appearance. When action follows a single impulse, it falls into
   an undue dependence and is far too much under the influence of the
   external objects that work upon this one emotion. Feeling, whatever it
   be about, if it is not dormant, is naturally violent. It is a
   commotion, a force to which action should not be subject and from which
   it should not proceed. Quiet and discretion, the whole impress of our
   nature should give action birth and character, and this is as much
   required in common life as in politics and art. But this divergence
   could only come because the agent did not make his piety sufficiently
   evident. Wherefore, it would rather appear that, if he had been more
   pious he would have acted more morally. The whole religious life
   consists of two elements, that man surrender himself to the Universe
   and allow himself to be influenced by the side of it that is turned
   towards him is one part, and that he transplant this contact which is
   one definite feeling, within, and take it up into the inner unity of
   his life and being, is the other. The religious life is nothing else
   than the constant renewal of this proceeding. When, therefore, anyone
   is stirred, in a definite way, by the World, is it his piety that
   straightway sets him to such working and acting as bear the traces of
   commotion and disturb the pure connection of the moral life?
   Impossible.

   On the contrary, his piety invites him to enjoy what he has won, to
   absorb it, to combine it, to strip it of what is temporal and
   individual, that it may no more dwell in him as commotion but be quiet,
   pure and eternal. From this inner unity, action springs of its own
   accord, as a natural branch of life. As we agreed, activity is a
   reaction of feeling, but the sum of activity should only be a reaction
   of the sum of feeling, and single actions should depend on something
   quite different from momentary feeling. Only when each action is in its
   own connection and in its proper place, and not when, dependently and
   slavishly, it corresponds to one emotion, does it exhibit, in a free
   and characteristic way, the whole inner unity of the spirit.

   Consequently your charge does not touch religion. And, if you are
   speaking of a morbid state of it, you are speaking of what is quite
   general and is not in any way original to religion nor specially seated
   in it, and from which consequently nothing is to be concluded against
   religion in particular. Religion is of course finite, and therefore
   subject to imperfections, but it must be apparent to you that in a
   healthy state, man cannot be represented as acting from religion or
   being driven to action by religion, but piety and morality form each a
   series by itself and are two different functions of one and the same
   life. But while man does nothing from religion, he should do everything
   with religion. Uninterruptedly, like a sacred music, the religious
   feelings should accompany his active life.

   That by this representation of religion I am neither deceiving you nor
   myself, you can easily see, if you observe that each feeling in
   proportion as it bears the character of piety, is disposed to withdraw
   itself into the heart and not break forth into deeds. Would not a pious
   person who was right deeply moved find himself in great perplexity, or
   even quite fail to understand you, if you asked him by what particular
   action he proposed to give expression and vent to his feeling? They are
   bad spirits and not good that take possession of man, and drive him.
   The legions of angels with which the Father provided His Son, exercised
   no power over Him. They had no call to help Him in any doing or
   forbearing, but they poured serenity and calm into a soul exhausted
   with doing and thinking. For a little, in that moment when His whole
   power was roused for action, these friendly spirits were lost to His
   view, but again they hovered round Him in joyous throng and served Him.
   But why do I direct you to instances and speak in images ? Because by
   starting from the separation which you make between religion and
   morality, and following it closely, we have come back to their
   essential unity in real life. This separation means corruption in the
   one and weakness in the other; and if one is not what it should be,
   neither can be perfect.

   There are, however, other actions you often speak of. The distinct
   purpose of them is to produce religion. Being of no importance for
   morality, they are not moral, and being of no importance for sense,
   they are not immoral, but they are nevertheless disastrous, because
   they accustom man to attach himself to what is void and to value what
   is worthless. Let them be ever so inane and meaningless, they, far too
   often, take the place of moral action or hide its absence.

   I know what you mean. Spare me the long catalogue of outward
   disciplines, spiritual exercises, privations, mortifications and the
   rest. All these things you accuse religion of producing, and yet you
   cannot overlook the fact that the greatest heroes of religion, the
   founders and reformers of the church, have regarded them with great
   indifference. There is a difference, I admit, but I believe that, in
   this regard also, the subject I defend will justify itself.

   First of all, let us understand what we are dealing with. It is with
   action as an exercise of feeling, not with any symbolical or
   significant action meant to represent feeling. We have already seen how
   those dogmas and opinions that would join themselves more closely to
   religion than is fitting, are only designations and descriptions of
   feeling. In short, they are a knowledge about feeling, and in no way an
   immediate knowledge about the operations of the Universe, that gave
   rise to the feeling. We saw also, how it necessarily resulted in evil,
   when they were put in place of the feeling, of the proper and original
   perception. Similarly this conducting and exercising of feeling which
   often turns out so vain and meaningless, is an acting at second-hand.
   Just as that knowledge made feeling an object to be contemplated and
   understood, this acting makes it an object to be operated upon and
   cultivated. What value this kind of activity may have, and whether it
   may not be as unreal as that kind of knowing, I shall not here decide,
   In what sense man can act upon himself and particularly upon his
   feeling is difficult to determine, and needs to be well weighed. Can it
   be the result of a personal resolve, or does it not rather appear to be
   the business of the Whole, and therefore a given product of life? But
   as I said, this does not belong here, and I would rather discuss it
   with the friends of religion than with you. So much, however, is
   certain, and I grant it fully, that few errors are so disastrous as the
   substitution of these disciplinary exercises of feeling for the
   original feeling itself. Only, it is plainly an error into which
   religious men could not fall.

   If you would recall that something quite similar is to be found in
   morality, you would perhaps at once agree with me. Men, as they say,
   lay down for themselves just such acting upon their own acting, just
   such exercisings of morals, to the end of self-improvement. It happens
   that these are sometimes put in place of direct moral action, of
   goodness and righteousness themselves, but you would not admit that it
   is through moral men. Men do all kinds of things, accepting them from
   one and transmitting them to another, though they have no meaning or
   value for themselves.

   These actions are always, however, to be understood as being done to
   rouse, sustain and direct religious feeling. Where the activity is
   self-produced and really has this meaning, it manifestly rests on the
   man's own feeling. A special state of feeling of which the man is
   conscious, is presupposed, a knowledge of his own inner life with its
   weaknesses and inequalities. It presupposes an interest, a higher
   self-love directed to himself, as a morally feeling person, as an
   essential part of the spiritual world. When this love ceases, the
   action also must cease. By supplanting feeling, it abolishes itself,
   and such an error could only arise among those who are in their hearts
   hostile to piety.

   For them such exercisings of feeling have a special worth, as if they
   also had some of the hidden virtue, seeing they can outwardly imitate
   what, in others, has a deep significance. Consciously or unconsciously,
   they deceive themselves and others with the appearance of a higher life
   which they do not really have. Either it is base hypocrisy or wretched
   superstition, and I willingly expose it to your condemnation. No
   exercise of this kind is of any value, and we shall reject not only
   what, regarded by itself, is manifestly void, unnatural and perverted,
   but all that in this way arises, however specious. Severe
   mortifications, dull renunciation of the beautiful, empty phrases and
   usages and charities shall all be reckoned at the same value. Every
   superstition shall be alike unholy.

   But we must never confuse it with the well-meant endeavours of pious
   souls. The difference is easy to discern. Each religious person
   fashions his own asceticism according to his need, and looks for no
   rule outside of himself, while the superstitious person and the
   hypocrite adhere strictly to the accepted and traditional, and are
   zealous for it, as for something universal and holy. This zeal is
   natural, for if they were expected to think out for themselves, their
   own outward discipline and exercise, their own training of the
   feelings, having regard to their own personal state, they would be in
   an evil case, and their inward poverty could be no longer hidden.

   The most general, almost preliminary truths have long delayed us. They
   should have been understood of themselves, but neither you, nor many
   who would at least wish to be counted among you, understood the
   relation of religion to the other branches of life. Wherefore, it was
   necessary to drain off at once the sources of the commonest
   misconceptions, that they might not afterwards retard us. This having
   been done to the utmost of my ability, we have now, I hope, firm ground
   beneath us. We have attached ourselves to that moment, which is never
   directly observed, but in which all the different phenomena of life
   fashion themselves together, as in the buds of some plants blossom and
   fruit are both enclosed. When, therefore, we have asked where now among
   all it produces is religion chiefly to be sought, we have found only
   one right and consistent answer. Chiefly where the living contact of
   man with the world fashions itself as feeling. These feelings are the
   beautiful and sweet scented flowers of religion, which, after the
   hidden activity opens, soon fall, but which the divine growth ever anew
   produces from the fulness of life. A climate of paradise is thus
   created in which no penuriousness disturbs the development, and no rude
   surrounding injures the tender lights and fine texture of its flowers.
   To this I would now conduct you, your vision having been purified and
   prepared.

   First of all, then, follow me to outward nature, which is to many the
   first and only temple of the Godhead. In virtue of its peculiar way of
   stirring the heart, it is held to be the inmost sanctuary of religion.
   At present, however, this outward nature, although it should be more,
   is little else than the outer court, for the view with which you next
   oppose me is utterly to be repudiated. The fear of the powers which
   rule in nature, which spare nothing, which threaten the life and works
   of man, is said to give the first feeling of the Infinite, or even to
   be the sole basis of religion. Surely in that case you must admit that
   if piety came with fear it must go with fear.

   Let us then consider the matter. Manifestly the great aim of all
   industry spent in cultivating the earth is to destroy the dominion of
   the powers of nature over man, and to bring all fear of them to an end.
   Already a marvellous amount has been done. The lightnings of Zeus
   terrify no more since Hephaistus has prepared for us a shield against
   them; and Hestia protects what she has won from Poseidon, even against
   the angriest blows of his trident; the sons of Ares unite with those of
   Aesculapius to ward off the deadly arrows of Apollo. Man is ever
   learning to resist and to destroy one of these gods by means of the
   others, and is preparing soon, as conqueror and lord, to be but a
   smiling spectator at this play. Were fear then the ground of reverence
   for the powers of nature, by thus mutually destroying one another, they
   would gradually appear ordinary and common; for what man has controlled
   or attempted to control, he can measure, and what is measurable cannot
   stand in awful opposition to him as the Infinite. The objects of
   religion would thus be ever more and more unfaithful to it. But, are
   they? Would not these gods, conducting themselves towards one another
   as brethren and kinsfolk, and caring for man as the youngest son of the
   same Father, be just as zealously worshipped? If you are still capable
   of being filled with reverence for the great powers of nature, does it
   depend on your security or insecurity? When you stand under your
   lightning conductors, have you, perhaps, a laugh ready wherewith to
   mock the thunder? Is not nature protecting and sustaining quite as much
   an object of adoration? Or, consider it in this way. Does the great and
   infinite alone threaten man's existence and oppose his working? Does he
   not also suffer from much that is small and paltry, which, because it
   cannot be definitely comprehended or fashioned into something great,
   you call accident and the accidental? Has this ever been made an object
   of religion and been worshipped? If you have such a small conception of
   the Fate of the Ancients, you must have understood little of their
   poetic piety. Under this dread Fate the sustaining powers were as much
   embraced as the destructive. Very different from that slavish fear, to
   banish which was a credit and a virtue, was the holy reverence for
   Fate, the rejection of which, in the best and most cultured times of
   Antiquity, was accounted, among better disposed persons, absolute
   recklessness. [18] Such a sacred reverence I will readily acknowledge
   as the first element of religion, but the fear you mean is not only not
   religion itself, it is not even preparatory or introductory. If it
   should be praised, it must be for urging men, by the desire to be rid
   of it, into earthly fellowship in the state. But piety first begins
   when it is put aside, for the aim of all religion is to love the
   World-Spirit [19] and joyfully to regard his working, and fear is not
   in love.

   But that joy in Nature, which so many extol, is just as little truly
   religious. I almost hate to speak of their doings when they dart off
   into the great, glorious world to get for themselves little
   impressions: how they inspect the delicate markings and tints of
   flowers, or gaze at the magic play of colours in the glowing evening
   sky, and how they admire the songs of the birds on a beautiful
   country-side. They are quite full of admiration and transport, and will
   have it that no instrument could conjure forth these sounds and no
   brush attain this gloss and marking. But suppose we take their course
   and subtilize after their fashion! What is it that they do admire? Rear
   the plant in a dark cellar, and, if you are successful, you can rob it
   of all these beauties, without in the least degree altering its nature.
   Suppose the vapour above us somewhat differently disposed; instead of
   that splendour, you would have before your eyes one unpleasant
   grayness, and yet what you are contemplating would be essentially the
   same. Once more, try to imagine how the midday sun, the glare of which
   you cannot endure, already, appears to the inhabitants of the East the
   glimmering twilight. Is it not manifest, then, when they have not the
   same sensation, that they have gone after a mere void appearance? But
   they do not believe in it merely as an appearance; it is for them
   really true. They are in perplexity between appearance and reality, and
   what is so doubtful cannot be a religious stimulus, and can call forth
   no genuine feeling. Were they children who, without further thinking
   and willing, without comparison and reflection, received the light and
   splendour, their hearts being opened for the world by the soul of the
   world, so that they are stirred to pious feeling by every object; or
   were they sages in whose clear intuition all strife between appearance
   and reality is resolved, and who, therefore, undisturbed by these
   refinements, can again be stirred like children, their joy would be a
   real and pure feeling, a living impulse, a gladly communicative contact
   between them and the world. If you understand this better way, then you
   can say that this also is a necessary and indispensable element of
   religion. But do not present me that empty affected thing that sits so
   loose and is but a wretched mask for their cold, hard refinement, as an
   emotion of piety. In opposing religion, do not ascribe to it what does
   not belong to it. Do not scoff, as if man entered most easily into this
   sanctuary by being debased to fear of the irrational, and by vain
   trifling with transitory show, as if piety were easiest, and most
   becoming to timid, weak, sensitive souls.

   The next thing to meet us in corporeal nature is its material
   boundlessness, the enormous masses which are scattered over illimitable
   space and which circulate in measureless orbits. Many hold that the
   exhaustion of the imagination, when we try to expand our diminished
   pictures of them to their natural size, is the feeling of the greatness
   and majesty of the Universe. This arithmetical amazement which, just on
   account of their ignorance, is easiest to awake in infants and
   ignoramuses, you are quite right in finding somewhat childish and
   worthless. But would those who are accustomed to take this view grant
   us that, when these great orbits had not yet been calculated, when half
   of those worlds were not discovered, nay, when it was not yet known
   that these shining points were worlds, piety, lacking one essential
   element, was necessarily poorer? Just as little can they deny that, in
   so far as it can be conceived--and without that it means nothing for
   us--the infinity of mass and number is only finite and the mind can
   comprehend every infinity of this kind into short formulae, and reckon
   with them, as daily happens. But they would certainly not grant that
   anything of their reverence for the greatness and majesty of the
   Universe is lost through advancing education and skill. As soon,
   however, as we are in a position to compare these units, which are our
   measure of size and motion, with those great world units, this spell of
   number and mass must disappear. As long as this feeling rests on
   difference of mass, it is merely a feeling of personal incapacity,
   which is doubtless a religious feeling, but is not that glorious
   reverence, as exalting as it is humbling, which is the feeling of our
   relation to the Whole. Neither a world operation too great for an
   organization, nor anything beyond it from smallness, can constitute
   this feeling, but it must be just as strong when the operation is equal
   and conformable to our powers.

   What moves us so wondrously is not the contrast between small and
   great, but the essence of greatness, the external law in virtue of
   which size and number in general first arose. Life alone can work on us
   in a characteristic way, and not what is captive to weight and in so
   far dead. The religious sense corresponds not to the masses in the
   outer world, but to their eternal laws. Rise to the height of seeing
   how these laws equally embrace all things, the greatest and the
   smallest, the world systems and the mote which floats in the air, and
   then say whether you are not conscious of the divine unity and the
   eternal immutability of the world.

   By the most constant repetition, some elements in these laws cannot
   escape even common perception. There is the order in which all
   movements return in the heavens and on the earth, the recognized coming
   and going of all organized forces, the perpetual trustworthiness of the
   rules of mechanics, and the eternal uniformity in the striving of
   plastic Nature. But, if it is allowable to make a comparison, this
   regularity gives a less great and lively religious feeling than the
   sense of law in all difference. Nor should this appear strange to you.

   Suppose you are looking at a fragment of a great work of art. In the
   separate parts of this fragment you perceive beautiful outlines and
   situations, complete and fully to be understood without anything
   besides. Would not the fragment then rather appear a work by itself
   than a part of a greater work, and would you not judge that, if the
   whole was wrought throughout in this style, it must lack breadth and
   boldness and all that suggests a great spirit? If a loftier unity is to
   be suspected, along with the general tendency to order and harmony,
   there must be here and there situations not fully explicable. Now the
   world is a work of which you only see a part. Were this part perfectly
   ordered and complete in itself, we could be conscious of the greatness
   of the whole only in a limited way.

   You see that the irregularity of the world, so often employed against
   religion, has really a greater value for religion than the order which
   is first presented to us in our study of the world and which is visible
   in a smaller part. The perturbations in the course of the stars point
   to a higher unity and a bolder combination than those we have already
   discovered in the regularity of their orbits. The anomalies, the idle
   sports of plastic Nature, compel us to see that she handles her most
   definite forms with free, nay capricious arbitrariness, with a phantasy
   the laws of which only a higher standpoint can show.

   Wherefore, in the religion of the Ancients, only inferior divinities
   and ministering virgins had the oversight of all that recurred
   uniformly and had an already discovered order but the exceptions which
   were not understood, the revolutions for which there was no law, were
   the work of the father of the gods. We also have strange, dread,
   mysterious emotions, when the imagination reminds us that there is more
   in nature than we know. They are easy to distinguish from the quiet and
   settled consciousness that everything is involved in the most distant
   combinations of the Whole, that every individual thing is determined by
   the yet unexplored general life. This consciousness is produced by what
   we understand in Nature, but I mean those dim presentiments which are
   the same in all, even though, as is right, only the educated seek to
   elucidate them and change them into a more lively activity of
   perception. In others, being comprehended in ignorance and
   misunderstanding, they grow to a delusion which we call pure
   superstition, under which, however, there manifestly lies a pious
   shudder of which we shall not be ashamed.

   Furthermore, consider how you are impressed by the universal opposition
   of life and death. The sustained, conquering power, whereby every
   living thing nourishes itself, forcefully awakes the dead and enters it
   on a new course by drawing it into its own life. On every side we find
   provision prepared for all living, not lying dead, but itself alive and
   everywhere being reproduced. With all this multitude of forms of life,
   and the enormous mass of material which each uses in turn, there is
   enough for all. Thus each completes his course and succumbs to an
   inward fate and not to outward want. What a feeling of endless fulness
   and superabundant riches! How are we impressed by a universal paternal
   care and a childlike confidence that without anxiety plays away sweet
   life in a full and abundant world! Consider the lilies of the field,
   they sow not, neither do they reap, yet your Heavenly Father feedeth
   them, wherefore be not anxious. This happy view, this serene, easy mind
   was for one of the greatest heroes of religion, the fair profit of a
   very limited and meagre communion with nature. How much more should we
   win who have been permitted by a richer age to go deeper!

   Already we know something more of the universally distributed forces,
   the eternal laws, whereby individual things, that is things which have
   their souls in themselves apart, in a more definite boundary, in what
   we call bodies, are fashioned and destroyed. See how attraction and
   repulsion, everywhere and always active, determine everything; and how
   all difference and opposition are again resolved into a higher unity.
   Only in appearance, can anything finite boast itself of a separate
   existence. See how all likeness is concealed by being distributed in a
   thousand different shapes. Nothing simple is to be found, but all is
   skillfully connected and interwoven. We would see and exhort all who
   share in the culture of the age to observe, how, in this sense, the
   Spirit of the World reveals itself as visibly, as completely, in small
   as in great, and we would not stop with such a consciousness of it as
   might be had anywhere and from anything. Even without all the knowledge
   which has made our century glorious, the World-Spirit showed itself to
   the most ancient sages. Not only did they have, by intuition, the first
   pure speaking image of the world, but there was kindled in their hearts
   a love for nature and a joy in her, that is for us still lovely and
   pleasing. Had this but penetrated to the people, who knows what strong
   and lofty way religion might have taken from the beginning? At present
   it has penetrated to all who would be considered cultured. Through the
   gradual operation of the fellowship between knowledge and feeling, they
   have arrived at the immediate feeling that there is nothing even in
   their own nature that is not a work of this Spirit, an exhibition and
   application of these laws. In virtue of this feeling, all that touches
   their life becomes truly a world, a unity permeated by the Divinity
   that fashions it. It is natural, therefore, that there should be in
   them all, that love and joy, that deep reverence for nature which made
   sacred the art and life of Antiquity, which was the source of that
   wisdom, which we have returned to and are at length beginning to
   commend and glorify by fruits long delayed. Such a feeling of being one
   with nature, of being quite rooted in it, so that in all the changing
   phenomena of life, even in the change between life and death itself, we
   might await all that should befall us with approbation and peace, as
   merely the working out of those eternal laws, would indeed be the germ
   of all the religious feelings furnished by this side of existence.

   But is it so easy to find original in nature the love and resistance,
   the unity and peculiarity, whereby it is a Whole for us? Just because
   our sense tends in quite another direction, is there so little truly
   religious enjoyment of nature. The sense of the Whole must be first
   found, chiefly within our own minds, and from thence transferred to
   corporeal nature. Wherefore the spirit is for us not only the seat of
   religion but its nearest world. [20] The Universe portrays itself in
   the inner life, and then the corporeal is comprehensible from the
   spiritual. If the mind is to produce and sustain religion it must
   operate upon us as a world and as in a world.

   Let me reveal a secret to you that lies almost hidden in one of the
   oldest sources of poetry and religion. As long as the first man was
   alone with himself and nature, the Deity ruled over him and addressed
   him in various ways, but he did not understand and answered nothing.
   His paradise was beautiful, the stars shone down on him from a
   beautiful heaven, but there awoke in him no sense for the world. Even
   from within, this sense was not developed. Still his mind was stirred
   with longing for a world, and he collected the animal creation before
   him, if perhaps out of them a world might be formed. Then the Deity
   recognized that the world would be nothing, as long as man was alone.
   He created a helpmate for him. At length the deep-toned harmonies awoke
   in him, and the world fashioned itself before his eyes. In flesh of his
   flesh, and bone of his bone, he discovered humanity. In this first love
   he had a foretaste of all love's forms and tendencies--in humanity he
   found the world. From this moment he was capable of seeing and hearing
   the voice of the Deity, and even the most insolent transgression of His
   laws did not any more shut him out from intercourse with the Eternal
   Being. [21]

   The history of us all is related in this sacred legend. All is present
   in vain for those who set themselves alone. In order to receive the
   life of the World-Spirit, and have religion, man must first, in love,
   and through love, have found humanity. Wherefore, humanity and religion
   are closely and indissolubly united. A longing for love, ever satisfied
   and ever again renewed, forthwith becomes religion. Each man embraces
   most warmly the person in whom the world mirrors itself for him most
   clearly and purely; he loves most tenderly the person whom he believes
   combines all he lacks of a complete manhood. Similarly the pious
   feelings are most holy that express for him existence in the whole of
   humanity, whether as blessedness in attaining or of need in coming
   short.

   Wherefore, to find the most glorious elements of religion, let us enter
   upon the territory where you are in your peculiar, your most loved
   home. Here your inner life had its birth, here you see the goal of all
   your striving and doing before your eyes, and here you feel the growth
   of your powers whereby you are evermore conducted towards it. Humanity
   itself is for you the true universe, and the rest is only added in so
   far as it is related to it or forms its surroundings. Even for me, this
   point of view suffices. Yet it has often pained me that, with all your
   interest in humanity, and with all your zeal for it, you are always in
   difficulties with it, and divided from it, and pure love cannot become
   right prominent in you. Each of you in his own way harasses himself to
   improve it, and to educate it, and what will not come to an issue you
   finally cast aside in dejection.

   I make bold to say, that this also comes from your lack of religion.
   You wish to work on humanity, and you select men, individuals for
   contemplation. They displease you vastly. Among the thousand possible
   causes, unquestionably that which is finest in itself, and which
   belongs to the best of you, is that you are, in your own way, far too
   ethical. You take men singly, and you have an ideal of the individual
   to which no one corresponds. If you would begin with religion, you
   would have far more success. If you would only attempt to exchange the
   objects of your working and the objects of your contemplation! Work on
   individuals, but rise in contemplation, on the wings of religion, to
   endless, undivided humanity. Seek this humanity in each individual;
   regard the nature of every person as one revelation of it, and of all
   that now oppresses you no trace would remain. I at least boast myself
   of a moral disposition, I know how to value human excellence, and
   commonness could almost overwhelm me with the unpleasant feeling of
   contempt, were it not that religion gives me a great and glorious view
   of all.

   Just consider what a consummate artist the Genius of humanity is. It
   can make nothing that has not a nature of its own. As soon as it assays
   its brush, or sharpens its pencil, there appear living and significant
   features. It imagines and fashions countless forms. Millions wear the
   costume of the time, and are faithful pictures of its necessities and
   its tastes. In others there are memories of the past, or presentiments
   of a distant future. Some are most lofty and striking types of the
   fairest and divinest, others resemble grotesques produced in the most
   original and fleeting mood of a master. The common view, based on a
   misunderstanding of the sacred words that there are vessels of honour
   and vessels of dishonour, is not pious. Only by comparing details could
   such an opposition appear to you. You must not contemplate anything
   alone, you must rather rejoice in everything in its own place. All that
   we can be conscious of at once, all, as it were, that stands on one
   sheet, presents one movement of the complete working of the Whole, and
   belongs, as it were, to one great historical picture. Would you make
   light of the chief groups that give life and affluence to the Whole?
   Should not each heavenly form be glorified in having a thousand others
   that regard it and are related to it, bowing before it? Indeed, there
   is more in this presentation than a mere simile. Eternal humanity is
   unweariedly active, seeking to stop forth from its inward, mysterious
   existence into the light, and to present itself in the most varied way,
   in the fleeting manifestation of the endless life. That is the harmony
   of the Universe, the wondrous and unparalleled unity of that eternal
   work of art.

   Being occupied in the outer court of morality, and there only with
   elements, caring for details and satisfied with them, and despising
   high religion, you slander its magnificence by your demands for a
   lamentable dismemberment. This is sufficient to indicate your need, may
   you now recognize it and satisfy it! Make search among all the
   circumstances in which the heavenly order portrays itself, and perhaps
   some favourite passage of history may be a divine sign to you, whereby
   you may more easily recognize how real the insignificant is, and how
   important for the Whole. Then what you regard with coldness or contempt
   may draw you with love. Or, allow yourselves to be pleased with an old,
   rejected conception; seek out among the holy men, in whom humanity is
   pre-eminently revealed, someone to be a mediator between your limited
   way of thinking, and the eternal laws of the world. And when you have
   found one who, in a way you understand, by imparting himself,
   strengthens the weak, and gives life to the dead, traverse humanity,
   and let all that has hitherto seemed useless and wretched be
   illuminated by the reflection of this new light.

   What would the uniform repetition of even a highest ideal be? Mankind,
   time and circumstances excepted, would be identical. They would be the
   same formula with a different co-efficient. What would it be in
   comparison with the endless variety which humanity does manifest? Take
   any element of humanity, and you will find it in almost every possible
   condition. You will not find it quite by itself, nor quite combined
   with all other elements, but you will find all possible mixtures
   between, in every odd and unusual combination. And if you could think
   of unions you do not see, this gap would be a negative revelation of
   the Universe, an indication that, in the present temperature of the
   world, this mixture is not possible, in the requisite degree. Your
   imagination thus gives you a glimpse beyond the present boundaries of
   humanity, and whether it be only a ray from a vanished past, or an
   involuntary and unconscious prophecy of the future, it is a real higher
   inspiration. And just as this, that seems to come short of the
   requisite infinite variety is not really too little, so what, from your
   standpoint appears superfluous, is not really too much.

   This oft-bewailed superfluity of the commonest forms of humanity, ever
   returning unchanged in a thousand copies, does not disturb the pious
   mind. The Eternal Mind commands that the forms in which individuality
   is most difficult to discern, should stand closest together, and even
   the finite mind can see the reason why. And each has something of its
   own, and no two are identical. In every life there is some moment, like
   the coruscation of baser metals, when, by the approach of something
   higher, or by some electric shock, it surpasses itself and stands on
   the highest pinnacle of its possibilities. For this moment it was
   created, in this moment it fulfilled its purpose, and, after this
   moment its exhausted vitality again subsides. To call forth this moment
   in ordinary souls and to contemplate them during it is a pleasure to be
   envied, and to those who have not known it, the whole existence of them
   must appear superfluous and despicable.

   Yet the existence of such an ordinary soul has a double meaning in
   respect of the Whole. If I arrest in thought the course of that
   unresting machinery whereby all that is human is woven together and
   made interdependent, I see that each individual in his inner nature is
   a necessary complement of a complete intuition of humanity. One shows
   me how any fragment, if only the plastic impulse of the Whole still
   quickens it, can calmly progress, fashioning itself in graceful,
   regular forms; another how, from want of a vivifying and combining
   warmth, the hardness of the earthly material cannot be overcome; while,
   in a third, I see how, in an atmosphere too violently agitated, the
   spirit within is disturbed in its working, so that nothing comes
   clearly and recognizably to light. One appears as the rude and animal
   portion of mankind, stirred only by the first ungainly motions of
   humanity; another is the pure dematerialized spirit that, having been
   separated from all that is base and unworthy, hovers with noiseless
   foot over the earth. But everything between also has a purpose. It
   shows how, in the minute detached phenomena of individual lives, the
   different elements of human nature all appear at every stage and in
   every manner. It is not enough that among this countless multitude
   there are always a few at least who are the distinguished
   representatives of humanity, who strike different melodious chords that
   require no further accompaniment, and no subsequent explication, but
   who, in the one note, charm and satisfy by their harmony the whole
   soul. But even the noblest only presents mankind in one way and in one
   of its movements, and in some sense everyone is a peculiar exhibition
   of humanity and does the same thing, and were a single figure to fail
   in the great picture, it would be impossible to comprehend it
   completely and perfectly. If now every one is so essentially connected
   with that which is the inner kernel of our own life, how can we avoid
   feeling this connection, and embracing all, without distinction of
   disposition or mental capacity, with heartfelt liking and affection?
   That is one meaning that every individual has in respect of the Whole.

   Do I, on the other hand, observe the eternal wheels of humanity in
   motion, this vast interaction, nothing moved by itself, nothing moving
   only itself, I am greatly quieted about the other side of your
   complaint, that reason and soul, sensuality and morality, understanding
   and blind force appear in such separate masses. Why do you see things
   singly that are not single and do not work by themselves? The reason of
   one and the disposition of another have as strong a mutual influence as
   if they were in one and the same subject. The morality that belongs to
   this sensuality is set apart from it, and do you suppose its dominion
   is, on that account, limited? Would the sensuality be better ruled if
   the morality, without being specially concentrated anywhere, were
   divided out in small, scarce noticeable portions to each individual?
   The blind power which is allotted to the great mass, is not, in its
   operation on the Whole, abandoned to a rude peradventure, but the
   understanding, concentrated at other points, leads it, without being
   aware of the fact, and it follows, in invisible bands, quite as
   unconsciously. The outlines of personality which appear to you so
   definite, from my standpoint, dissolve. The magic circle of prevailing
   opinions and infectious feelings surrounds all and plays around all
   like an atmosphere filled with dissolving and magnetic forces. By the
   most vital diffusion it smelts all things, even the most distant, into
   a single activity, the issue of which is to impel those who are really
   in possession of light and truth to activity, so that some are deeply
   influenced, and others have at least a superficial illumination,
   brilliant and deceptive.

   In this connection of everything with the sphere to which it belongs
   and in which it has significance all is good and divine, and a fulness
   of joy and peace is the feeling of those who allow all things to work
   upon them in this great connection. But they will also feel how
   contemplation isolates single things in single moments. The common
   impulse of men, who know nothing of this dependence, is to seize and
   retain this and that, to hedge in their Ego and to surround it with
   manifold outworks. They seek to conduct their own existence according
   to their own self-will and not be disturbed by the eternal current of
   the world. And when we who have an entirely opposite impulse perceive
   how fate necessarily sweeps all this away and how they wound and
   torture themselves in a thousand ways, what is more natural than the
   most heartfelt compassion with all the bitter suffering that must arise
   from this unequal strife, and with all the stripes which awful Nemesis
   deals out on every side?

   From these wanderings through the whole territory of humanity, pious
   feeling returns, quickened and educated, into its own Ego, and there
   finds all the influences that had streamed upon it from the most
   distant regions. If, on returning with the consecration of intercourse
   with the world still fresh upon us, we give heed how it is with us in
   this feeling, we become conscious that our Ego vanishes, not only into
   smallness and insignificance, but into one-sidedness, insufficiency and
   nothingness. What lies nearer to mortal man than unaffected humility?
   And when gradually our feeling becomes quick and alert to what there is
   in the path of humanity that sustains and forwards, and what, on the
   contrary, must sooner or later be conquered and destroyed, if it is not
   recast and transformed, and when from this law we regard all doings in
   the world, what is more natural than deep contrition for all in us that
   is hostile to human nature, the submissive desire to conciliate the
   Deity, and the most earnest longing to put ourselves and all that
   belongs to us in safety in that sacred region where alone there is
   security against death and destruction? Advancing further, we perceive
   how the Whole only becomes clear to us, how we only reach intuition of
   it and unity with it in fellowship with others, by the influence of
   those who have long been freed from dependence on their own fleeting
   being, and from the endeavour to expand and isolate it. How, then, can
   we avoid a feeling of special affinity to those whose actions have
   defended our existence, and happily guided it through threatening
   dangers? Though by us they become conscious of their life in the Whole,
   we honour them as those who, before us, have reached this union.

   Not by examples which are rare, but by passing through these and
   similar feelings you discover in yourselves the outlines of the fairest
   and the basest, the noblest and the most despicable. You not only find
   at times all the manifold degrees of human powers within you, but when
   self-love is quite submerged in sympathy, all the countless mixture of
   human tendencies that you have ever seen in the characters of others
   appears simply arrested impulses of your own life. There are moments
   when, despite all distinction of sex, culture, or environment, you
   think, feel, and act as if you were really this or that person. In your
   own order, you have actually passed through all those different forms.
   You are a compendium of humanity. In a certain sense your single nature
   embraces all human nature. Your Ego, being multiplied and more clearly
   outlined is in all its smallest and swiftest changes immortalized in
   the manifestations of human nature. As soon as this is seen, you can
   love yourselves with a pure and blameless love. Humility, that never
   forsakes you, has its counterpart in the feeling that the whole of
   humanity lives and works in you. Even contrition is sweetened to joyful
   self-sufficiency. This is the completion of religion on this side. It
   works its way back to the heart, and there finds the Infinite. The man
   in whom this is accomplished, is no more in need of a mediator for any
   sort of intuition of humanity. Rather he is himself a mediator for
   many.

   But there is not merely the swinging of feeling between the world and
   the individual, in the present moment. Except as something going on, we
   cannot comprehend what affects us, and we cannot comprehend ourselves,
   except as thus progressively affected. Wherefore, as feeling persons,
   we are ever driven back into the past. The spirit furnishes the chief
   nourishment for our piety, and history immediately and especially is
   for religion the richest source. History is not of value for religion,
   because it hastens or controls in any way the progress of humanity in
   its development, but because it is the greatest and most general
   revelation of the deepest and holiest. In this sense, however, religion
   begins and ends with history. Prophecy and history are for religion the
   same and indistinguishable, and all true history has at first had a
   religious purpose, and has taken its departure from religious ideas.

   What is finest and tenderest in history, moreover, cannot be
   communicated scientifically, but can only be comprehended in the
   feeling of a religious disposition. The religious mind recognizes the
   transmigration of spirits and souls, which to others is but graceful
   fiction, as, in more than one sense, a wonderful arrangement of the
   Universe for comparing the different periods of humanity according to a
   sure standard. After a long period, during which nature could produce
   nothing similar, some distinguished individual almost entirely the same
   returns. But only the seers recognize him, and it is they who should
   judge by his works the signs of different times. A movement of humanity
   returns exactly like something of which some distant foretime has left
   you an image, and you are to recognize from the various causes which
   have now produced it, the course of development and the formula of its
   law. The genius of some human endowment awakes as from slumber. Here
   and there rising and falling, it has already finished its course. Now
   it appears in a new life in another place and under different
   circumstances. Its quicker increase, its deeper working, its fairer
   stronger form, indicate how much the climate of humanity has improved,
   and how much fitter the soil has grown to nourish nobler plants.
   Peoples and generations of mortals appear as all alike necessary for
   the completeness of history, though, like individuals, of different
   worth. Some are estimable and spirited, and work strongly without
   ceasing, permeating space and defying time. Others are common and
   insignificant, fitted only to show some peculiar shade of some single
   form of life. For one moment only they are really living and
   noticeable. One thought they exhibit, one conception they produce, and
   then they hasten towards destruction that the power that produced them
   may be given to something else. As vegetable nature, from the
   destruction of whole species, and from the ruins of whole generations
   of plants, produces and nourishes a new race, so spiritual nature rears
   from the ruins of a glorious and beautiful world of men, a new world
   that draws its first vital strength from elements decomposed and
   wondrously transformed. Being deeply impressed with this sense of a
   universal connection, your glance perhaps passes so often directly from
   least to greatest and greatest to least, going backwards and forwards,
   till through dizziness it can neither distinguish great nor small,
   cause nor effect, preservation nor destruction. This state continues,
   and then that well-known figure of an eternal fate appears. Its
   features bear the impress of this state, being a marvellous mixture of
   obstinate self-will and deep wisdom, of rude unfeeling force and
   heartfelt love, of which first one seizes you and then another, now
   inviting you to impotent defiance and now to childlike submission.

   Penetrate further and compare this partial striving of the individual,
   the fruit of opposing views, with the quiet uniform course of the
   Whole. You will see how the high World-Spirit smilingly marches past
   all that furiously opposes him. You will see how dread Nemesis, never
   wearied, follows his steps, meting out punishment to the haughty who
   resist the gods. Even the stoutest and choicest who have with
   steadfastness, worthy perhaps of praise and wonder, refused to bow
   before the gentle breath of the great Spirit, it mows down with iron
   hand. Would you comprehend the proper character of all changes and of
   all human progress, a feeling resting on history must show you more
   surely than aught else, that living gods rule who hate nothing so much
   as death, and that nothing is to be persecuted and destroyed like this
   first and last foe of the spirit. The rude, the barbarian, the formless
   are to be absorbed and recast. Nothing is to be a dead mass that moves
   only by impact and resists only by unconscious collision; all is to be
   individual, connected, complex, exalted life. Blind instinct,
   unthinking custom, dull obedience, everything lazy and passive, all
   those sad symptoms of the death slumber of freedom and humanity are to
   be abolished. To this the work of the minutes and the centuries is
   directed, it is the great ever advancing work of redemptive love.

   Some prominent emotions of religion connected with nature and humanity,
   I have now sketched in vague outline. I have brought you to the limits
   of your horizon. Here is the end and summit of religion for all to whom
   humanity is the whole world. But consider that in your feeling there is
   something that despises these bounds, something in virtue of which you
   cannot stay where you are. Beyond this point only infinity is to be
   looked into. I will not speak of the presentiments which define
   themselves and become thoughts which might by subtilty be established,
   that humanity, being capable of motion and cultivation, being not only
   differently manifested in the individual, but here and there really
   being different, cannot possibly be the highest, the sole manifestation
   of the unity of spirit and matter. As the individual is only one form
   of humanity, so humanity may be only one form of this unity. Beside it
   many other similar forms may exist, bounding it and standing over
   against it. But in our own feeling we all find something similar. The
   dependence of our earth, and therefore of the highest unity it has
   produced, upon other worlds, has been impressed upon us both by nature
   and by education. Hence this ever active but seldom understood
   presentiment of some other marriage of spirit and matter, visible and
   finite, but above humanity, higher and closer and productive of more
   beautiful forms. But any sketch that could be drawn would be too
   definite. Any echo of the feeling could only be fleeting and vague.
   Hence it is exposed to misconception and is so often taken for folly
   and superstition.

   This is sufficient reference to a thing so immeasurably far from you.
   More would be incomprehensible. Had you only the religion that you
   could have! Were you but conscious of what you already have! Were you
   to consider the few religious opinions and feelings that I have so
   slightly sketched, you would be very far from finding them all strange
   to you. Something of the same kind you must have had in your thoughts
   before. But I do not know whether to lack religion quite, or not to
   understand it, is the greater misfortune. In the latter case also it
   fails of its purpose, and you impose upon yourselves in addition.

   Two things I would specially blame in you. Some things you select and
   stamp as exclusively religious, other things you withdraw from religion
   as exclusively moral. Both you apparently do on the same ground.
   Religion with you is the retribution which alights on all who resist
   the Spirit of the Whole, it is the hatred everywhere active against
   haughtiness and audacity, the steady advance of all human things to one
   goal. You are conscious of the feeling that points to this unfailing
   progress. After it has been purified from all abuses, you would
   willingly see it sustained and extended. But you will then have it that
   this is exclusively religion, and you would exclude other feelings that
   take their rise from the same operation of the mind in exactly the same
   way.

   How have you come to this torn off fragment? I will tell you. You do
   not regard it as religion but as an echo of moral action, and you
   simply wish to foist the name upon it, in order to give religion the
   last blow. What we have agreed to acknowledge as religion does not
   arise exclusively in the moral sphere, not at least in the narrow sense
   in which you understand the word. Feeling knows nothing of such a
   limited predilection. If I direct you specially to the sphere of the
   spirit and to history, it does not follow that the moral world is
   religion's Universe. In your narrow sense of it the moral world would
   produce very few religious emotions. The pious man can detect the
   operation of the World-Spirit in all that belongs to human activity, in
   play and earnest, in smallest things and in greatest. Everywhere he
   perceives enough to move him by the presence of this Spirit and without
   this influence nothing is his own. Therein he finds a divine Nemesis
   that those who, being predominantly ethical or rather legal, would, by
   selecting from religion only the elements suited to this purpose, make
   of it an insignificant appendage to morals, do yet, purify religion as
   they may, irrecoverably corrupt their moral doctrine itself and sow in
   it the seed of new errors. When anyone succumbs in moral action, it
   sounds well to say it is the will of the Eternal, and that what does
   not succeed through us, will sometime, by others, come to pass. But if
   this high assurance belonged to moral action, moral action would be
   dependent on the degree of receptivity for this assurance in each
   person at any moment. Morality cannot include immediately aught of
   feeling without at once having its original power and purity disturbed.

   With all those feelings, love, humility, joy, and the others that I
   pictured as the undulation of the mind between the two points of which
   the world is one, and your Ego the other, you deal in another way. The
   ancients knew what was right. They called them all piety. For them
   those feelings were an essential part of religion, the noblest part.
   You also recognize them, but you try to persuade yourselves that they
   are an essential section of your moral action. You would justify these
   sentiments on moral principles, and assign them their place in your
   moral system. But in vain, for, if you remain true to yourselves, they
   will there neither be desired nor endured. If action proceed directly
   from the emotions of love or affection, it will be insecure and
   thoughtless. Moral action should not proceed from such a momentary
   influence of an outward object. Wherefore your doctrine of morals, when
   it is strict and pure, acknowledges no reverence except for its own
   law. Everything done from pity or gratitude it condemns as impure,
   almost as selfish. It makes light of, almost despises, humility. If you
   talk of contrition it speaks of lost time being needlessly increased.
   Your own feeling must assure you that the immediate object of all these
   sentiments is not action. They are spontaneous functions of your
   deepest and highest life, coming by themselves and ending by
   themselves. [22] Why do you make such an ado, and begging for grace for
   them, where they have no right to be? Be content to consider them
   religion, and then you will not need to demand anything for them except
   their own sure rights, and you will not deceive yourselves with the
   baseless claims which you are disposed to make in their name. Return
   them to religion: the treasure belongs to it alone. As the possessor of
   it, religion is for morality and all else that is an object of human
   doing, not the handmaid, but an indispensable friend and sufficient
   advocate with humanity. This is the rank of religion, as the sum of all
   higher feelings.

   That it alone removes man from one-sidedness and narrowness I have
   already indicated. Now I am in a position to be more definite. In all
   activity and working, be it moral or artistic, man must strive for
   mastery. But when man becomes quite absorbed, all mastery limits and
   chills, and makes one-sided and hard. The mind is directed chiefly to
   one point, and this one point cannot satisfy it. Can man, by advancing
   from one narrow work to another, really use his whole power? Will not
   the larger part be unused, and turn, in consequence, against himself
   and devour him? How many of you go to ruin because you are too great
   for yourselves? A superfluity of power and impulse that never issues in
   any work, because there is no work adequate, drives you aimlessly
   about, and is your destruction.

   To resist this evil would you have those who are too great for one
   object of human endeavour, unite them all--art, science, life, and any
   others you may know of? This would simply be your old desire to have
   humanity complete everywhere, your ever recurring love of uniformity.
   But is it possible? Those objects, as soon as they are attended to
   separately, all alike strive to rouse and dominate the mind. Each
   tendency is directed to a work that should be completed, it has an
   ideal to be copied, a totality to be embraced. This rivalry of several
   objects of endeavour can only end by one expelling the others. Nay,
   even within this one sphere, the more eminent a mastery a man would
   attain, the more he must restrict himself. But if this preeminence
   entirely occupy him, and if he lives only to attain it, how shall he
   duly participate in the world, and how shall his life become a whole?
   Hence most virtuosos are one-sided and defective, or at least, outside
   of their own sphere, they sink into an inferior kind of life.

   The only remedy is for each man, while he is definitely active in some
   one department, to allow himself, without definite activity, to be
   affected by the Infinite. In every species of religious feeling he will
   then become conscious of all that lies beyond the department which he
   directly cultivates. The Infinite is near to everyone, for whatever be
   the object you have chosen for your deliberate technical working, it
   does not demand much thought to advance from it to find the Universe.
   In it you discover the rest as precept, or inspiration or revelation.
   The only way of acquiring what lies outside the direction of the mind
   we have selected, is to enjoy and comprehend it thus as a whole, not by
   will as art, but by instinct for the Universe as religion.

   Even in the religious form these objects again fall into rivalry. This
   result of human imperfection causes religion to appear dismembered.
   Religion takes the form of some peculiar receptivity and taste for art,
   philosophy or morality, and is consequently often mistaken. Oftener, I
   say, it appears thus than freed from all participation in one-sidedness
   than completed, all-embracing. Yet this complete form of religion
   remains the highest, and it is only by it, that, with satisfactory
   result, man sets alongside of the finite that he specially concentrates
   on, an Infinite; alongside of the contracting endeavour for something
   definite and complete, expansive soaring in the Whole and the
   Inexhaustible. In this way he restores the balance and harmony of his
   nature, which would be lost for ever, if, without at the same time
   having religion, he abandon himself to one object, were it the most
   beautiful, most splendid. A man's special calling is the melody of his
   life, and it remains a simple, meagre series of notes unless religion,
   with its endlessly rich variety, accompany it with all notes, and raise
   the simple song to a full-voiced, glorious harmony.

   If then this, that I trust I have indicated clearly enough for you all,
   is really the nature of religion, I have already answered the
   questions, Whence do those dogmas and doctrines come that many consider
   the essence of religion? Where do they properly belong? And how do they
   stand related to what is essential in religion? They are all the result
   of that contemplation of feeling, of that reflection and comparison, of
   which we have already spoken. The conceptions that underlie these
   propositions are, like your conceptions from experience, nothing but
   general expressions for definite feelings. They are not necessary for
   religion itself, scarcely even for communicating religion, but
   reflection requires and creates them. Miracle, inspiration, revelation,
   supernatural intimations, much piety can be had without the need of any
   one of these conceptions. But when feeling is made the subject of
   reflection and comparison they are absolutely unavoidable. In this
   sense all these conceptions do certainly belong to the sphere of
   religion, and indeed belong without condition or the smallest limit to
   their application.

   The strife about what event is properly a miracle, and wherein its
   character properly consists, how much revelation there may be and how
   far and for what reasons man may properly believe in it, and the
   manifest endeavour to deny and set aside as much as can be done with
   decency and consideration, in the foolish notion that philosophy and
   reason are served thereby, is one of the childish operations of the
   metaphysicians and moralists in religion. They confuse all points of
   view and bring religion into discredit, as if it trespassed on the
   universal validity of scientific and physical conclusions. Pray do not
   be misled, to the detriment of religion, by their sophistical
   disputations, nor even by their hypocritical mystery about what they
   would only too willingly publish. Religion, however loudly it may
   demand back all those well abused conceptions, leaves your physics
   untouched, and please God, also your psychology.

   What is a miracle? What we call miracle is everywhere else called sign,
   indication. Our name, which means a wonder, refers purely to the mental
   condition of the observer. It is only in so far appropriate that a
   sign, especially when it is nothing besides, must be fitted to call
   attention to itself and to the power in it that gives it significance.
   Every finite thing, however, is a sign of the Infinite, and so these
   various expressions declare the immediate relation of a phenomenon to
   the Infinite and the Whole. But does that involve that every event
   should not have quite as immediate a relation to the finite and to
   nature? Miracle is simply the religious name for event. Every event,
   even the most natural and usual, becomes a miracle, as soon as the
   religious view of it can be the dominant. To me all is miracle. In your
   sense the inexplicable and strange alone is miracle, in mine it is no
   miracle. The more religious you are, the more miracle would you see
   everywhere. All disputing about single events, as to whether or not
   they are to be called miraculous, gives me a painful impression of the
   poverty and wretchedness of the religious sense of the combatants. One
   party show it by protesting everywhere against miracle, whereby they
   manifest their wish not to see anything of immediate relationship to
   the Infinite and to the Deity. The other party display the same poverty
   by laying stress on this and that. A phenomenon for them must be
   marvellous before they will regard it as a miracle, whereby they simply
   announce that they are bad observers. [23]

   What is revelation? Every original and new communication of the
   Universe to man is a revelation, as, for example, every such moment of
   conscious insight as I have just referred to. Every intuition and every
   original feeling proceeds from revelation. As revelation lies beyond
   consciousness, demonstration is not possible, yet we are not merely to
   assume it generally, but each one knows best himself what is repeated
   and learned elsewhere, and what is original and new. If nothing
   original has yet been generated in you, when it does come it will be a
   revelation for you also, and I counsel you to weigh it well.

   What is inspiration? It is simply the general expression for the
   feeling of true morality and freedom. But do not mistake me. It is not
   that marvellous and much-praised morality and freedom that accompany
   and embellish actions with deliberations. It is that action which
   springs from the heart of man, despite of, or at least, regardless of,
   all external occasion. In the same measure in which this action is
   freed from all earthly entanglement, it is felt as divine and referred
   to God.

   What is prophecy? Every religious anticipation of the other half of a
   religious event, one half being given, is prophecy. It was very
   religious of the ancient Hebrews to measure the divineness of a
   prophet, neither by the difficulty of predicting, nor by the greatness
   of the subject, but, quite simply, by the issue, for we cannot know
   from one thing how complete the feeling is in everything, till we see
   whether the religious aspect of this one special circumstance has been
   rightly comprehended.

   What is operation of grace? [24] Nothing else manifestly than the
   common expression for revelation and inspiration, for interchange
   between the entrance of the world into man, through intuition and
   feeling, and the outgoing of man into the world, through action and
   culture. It includes both, in their originality and in their divine
   character, so that the whole life of the pious simply forms a series of
   operations of divine grace.

   You see that all these ideas, in so far as religion requires, or can
   adopt ideas, are the first and the most essential. They indicate in the
   most characteristic manner a man's consciousness of his religion,
   because they indicate just what necessarily and universally must be in
   it. The man who does not see miracles of his own from the standpoint
   from which he contemplates the world, the man in whose heart no
   revelation of his own arises, when his soul longs to draw in the beauty
   of the world, and to be permeated by its spirit; the man who does not,
   in supreme moments, feel, with the most lively assurance, that a divine
   spirit urges him, and that he speaks and acts from holy inspiration,
   has no religion. The religious man must, at least, be conscious of his
   feelings as the immediate product of the Universe; for less would mean
   nothing. He must recognize something individual in them, something that
   cannot be imitated, something that guarantees the purity of their
   origin from his own heart. To be assured of this possession is the true
   belief.

   Belief, on the contrary, usually so called, which is to accept what
   another has said or done, or to wish to think and feel as another has
   thought and felt, is a hard and base service. So far is it from being
   the highest in religion, as is asserted, that it must be rejected by
   all who would force their way into the sanctuary of religion. To wish
   to have and hold a faith that is an echo, proves that a man is
   incapable of religion; to demand it of others, shows that there is no
   understanding of religion. You wish always to stand on your own feet
   and go your own way, and this worthy intent should not scare you from
   religion. Religion is no slavery, no captivity, least of all for your
   reason. You must belong to yourselves. Indeed, this is an indispensable
   condition of having any part in religion.

   Every man, a few choice souls excepted, does, to be sure, require a
   guide to lead and stimulate, to wake his religious sense from its first
   slumber, and to give it its first direction. But this you accord to all
   powers and functions of the human soul, and why not to this one? For
   your satisfaction, be it said, that here, if anywhere, this tutelage is
   only a passing state. Hereafter, shall each man see with his own eyes,
   and shall produce some contribution to the treasures of religion;
   otherwise, he deserves no place in its kingdom, and receives none. You
   are right in despising the wretched echoes who derive their religion
   entirely from another, or depend on a dead writing, swearing by it and
   proving out of it.

   Every sacred writing is in itself a glorious production, a speaking
   monument from the heroic time of religion, but, through servile
   reverence, it would become merely a mausoleum, a monument that a great
   spirit once was there, but is now no more. Did this spirit still live
   and work, he would look with love, and with a feeling of equality upon
   his work which yet could only be a weaker impress of himself. Not every
   person has religion who believes in a sacred writing, but only the man
   who has a lively and immediate understanding of it, and who, therefore,
   so far as he himself is concerned, could most easily do without it.

   Your very contempt for the poverty stricken and powerless venerators of
   religion, in whom, from lack of nourishment, religion died before ever
   it came to the birth, convinces me that you have a talent for religion.
   The same thing appears from your regard for the persons of all true
   heroes of religion. That you should treat them with shallow scoffing or
   not acknowledge what is great or powerful in them, I would hardly
   ascribe to you. This regard for the persons confirms me in the thought
   that your contempt for the thing rests merely on a misunderstanding,
   and has for its object only the miserable figure which religion takes
   in the great incapable mass, and the abuses which presumptuous leaders
   carry on.

   I have tried, as best I could, therefore, to show you what religion
   really is. Have you found anything therein unworthy of you, nay, of the
   highest human culture? Must you not rather long all the more for that
   universal union with the world which is only possible through feeling,
   the more you are separated and isolated by definite culture and
   individuality? Have you not often felt this holy longing, as something
   unknown? Become conscious of the call of your deepest nature and follow
   it, I conjure you. Banish the false shame of a century which should not
   determine you but should be made and determined by you. Return to what
   lies so near to you, yes, even to you, the violent separation from
   which cannot fail to destroy the most beautiful part of your nature.

   It appears to me, however, that many among you do not believe that I
   can here mean to end my present business. How can I have spoken
   thoroughly of the nature of religion, seeing I have not treated at all
   of immortality, and of God only a little in passing? Is it not
   incumbent upon me, most of all, to speak of these two things and to
   represent to you how unhappy you would be without belief in them? For
   are not these two things, for most pious people, the very poles and
   first articles of religion?

   But I am not of your opinion. First of all, I do not believe I have
   said nothing about immortality and so little about God. Both, I
   believe, are in all and in everything that I have adduced as an element
   of religion. Had I not presupposed God and immortality I could not have
   said what I have said, for, only what is divine and immortal has room
   in which to speak of religion.

   In the second place, just as little do I consider that I have the right
   to hold the conceptions and doctrines of God and of immortality, as
   they are usually understood, to be the principal things in religion.
   Only what in either is feeling and immediate consciousness, can belong
   to religion. God and immortality, however, as they are found in such
   doctrines, are ideas. How many among you--possibly most of you--are
   firmly convinced of one or other or both of those doctrines, without
   being on that account pious or having religion. As ideas they can have
   no greater value in religion than ideas generally.

   But that you may not think I am afraid to speak a straightforward word
   on this subject, because it would be dangerous to speak, till some
   definition of God and existence that has stood its trial, has been
   brought to light and has been accepted in the German Empire as good and
   valid; or lest you should, on the other hand, perhaps, believe that I
   am playing on you a pious fraud and wish, in order to be all things to
   all men, with seeming indifference to make light of what must be of far
   greater importance to me than I will confess--lest you should think
   these things, I shall gladly be questioned and will endeavour to make
   clear to you that, according to my best conviction, it really is, as I
   have just now maintained.

   Remember in the first place that any feeling is not an emotion of piety
   because in it a single object as such affects as, but only in so far as
   in it and along with it, it affects us as revelation of God. It is,
   therefore, not an individual or finite thing, but God, in whom alone
   the particular thing is one and all, that enters our life. Nor do we
   stand over against the World and in it at the same time by any one
   faculty, but by our whole being. The divine in us, therefore, is
   immediately affected and called forth by the feeling. [25] Seeing then
   that I have presented nothing but just this immediate and original
   existence of God in us through feeling, how can anyone say that I have
   depicted a religion without God ? Is not God the highest, the only
   unity? Is it not God alone before whom and in whom all particular
   things disappear? And if you see the world as a Whole, a Universe, can
   you do it otherwise than in God? If not, how could you distinguish the
   highest existence, the original and eternal Being from a temporal and
   derived individual? Otherwise than by the emotions produced in us by
   the world we do not claim to have God in our feeling, and consequently
   I have not said more of Him.

   If you will not admit that this is to have God, and to be conscious of
   Him, I can neither teach nor direct you farther. How much you may know
   I do not judge, for it does not at present concern me, but in respect
   of feeling and sentiment, you would be for me godless. Science, it is
   true, is extolled as giving an immediate knowledge about God, that is
   the source of all other knowledge; only we are not now speaking of
   science, but of religion. This way of knowing about God which most
   praise and which I also am to laud, is neither the idea of God as the
   undivided unity and source of all, that is placed by you at the head of
   all knowledge; nor is it the feeling of God in the heart, of which we
   boast ourselves. It lags far behind the demands of science, and is for
   piety something quite subordinate. It is an idea compounded from
   characteristics, from what are called attributes of God. These
   attributes correspond to the different ways in which the unity of the
   individual and the Whole, expresses itself in feeling. Hence I can only
   say of this idea, what I have said of ideas generally, in reference to
   religion, that there can be much piety without it, and that it is first
   formed when piety is made an object of contemplation.

   Yet this idea of God, as it is usually conceived, is different from the
   other ideas before adduced, for though it seeks to be the highest and
   to stand above all, God, being thought of as too like us, as a thinking
   and willing Person, is drawn down into the region of opposition. It
   therefore appears natural that the more like man God is conceived, the
   more easily another mode of presentation is set over against it. Hence,
   we have an idea of the Highest Being, not as personally thinking and
   willing but exalted above all personality, as the universal,
   productive, connecting necessity of all thought and existence.

   Nothing seems to me less fitting than for the adherents of the former
   view to charge with godlessness those who, in dread of this
   anthropomorphism, take refuge in the other, or for the adherents of
   this latter view to make the humanness of the idea of God a ground for
   charging the adherents of the former with idolatry, or for declaring
   their piety void.

   It matters not what conceptions a man adheres to, he can still be
   pious. His piety, the divine in his feeling, may be better than his
   conception, and his desire to place the essence of piety in conception,
   only makes him misunderstand himself. Consider how narrow is the
   presentation of God in the one conception, and how dead and rigid in
   the other. Neither corresponds to its object, and thus cannot be a
   proof of piety, except in so far as it rests on something in the mind,
   of which it has come far short. Rightly understood, both present, at
   least, one element of feeling, but, without feeling, neither is of any
   value. Many believe in and accept a God presented in conception, and
   yet are nothing less than pious, [26] and in no case is this conception
   the germ from which their piety could ever spring, for it has no life
   in itself. Neither conception is any sign of a perfect or of an
   imperfect religion, but perfection and imperfection depend upon the
   degree of cultivation of the religious sense. As I know of nothing more
   that could bring us to an understanding on this subject of conceptions,
   let us now go on to consider the development of the religious sense.

   As long as man's whole relation to the world has not arrived at
   clearness, this feeling is but a vague instinct, the world can appear
   to him nothing but a confused unity. Nothing of its complexity is
   definitely distinguishable. It is to him a chaos, uniform in its
   confusion, without division, order, or law. Apart from what most
   immediately concerns the subsistence of man, he distinguishes nothing
   as individual except by arbitrarily cutting it off in time and space.
   Here you will find but few traces of any conceptions, and you will
   scarcely discern to which side they incline. You will not set much
   value on the difference, whether a blind fate, only to be indicated by
   magic rites, exhibits the character of the Whole, or a being, alive
   indeed, but without definite characteristics, an idol, a fetich, one,
   or, if many, only distinguishable by the arbitrarily appointed limits
   of their sphere.

   As we advance, the feeling becomes more conscious. Circumstances
   display themselves in their complexity and definiteness. The
   multiplicity of the heterogeneous elements and powers, by whose
   constant and determined strife, phenomena are determined, becomes more
   prominent in man's consciousness of the world. In the same degree the
   result of the contemplation of this feeling changes. The opposite forms
   of the idea stand more distinctly apart. Blind fate changes into a
   higher necessity, in which, though unattainable and unsearchable,
   reason and connection rest. Similarly, the idea of a personal God
   becomes higher, but at the same time divides and multiplies, each power
   and element becomes animate, and gods arise in endless number. They are
   now distinguishable by means of the different objects of their
   activity, and different inclinations and dispositions. A stronger,
   fairer life of the Universe in feeling you must acknowledge is here
   exhibited. It is most beautiful when this new won complexity and this
   innate highest unity are most intimately bound together in feeling, as
   for example, among the Greeks, whom you so justly revere. Both forms
   then unite in reflection, one being of more value for thought, the
   other for art, one showing more of the complexity, the other of the
   unity. But this stage, even without such a union is more perfect than
   the former, especially if the idea of the Highest Being is placed
   rather in the eternal unattainable necessity, than in single gods.

   Let us now mount higher where opposing elements are again united, where
   existence, by exhibiting itself as totality, as unity in variety, as
   system, first deserves its name. Is not the man who perceives existence
   both as one and as all, who stands over against the Whole, and yet is
   one with it in feeling, to be accounted happier in his religion, let
   his feeling mirror itself in idea as it may? There as elsewhere then,
   the manner in which the Deity is present to man in feeling, is decisive
   of the worth of his religion, not the manner, always inadequate, in
   which it is copied in idea. Suppose there is someone arrived at this
   stage, who rejects the idea of a personal God. I will not decide on the
   justice of the names you are accustomed to apply to him, whether
   Pantheist or Spinozist. This rejection of the idea of a personal Deity
   does not decide against the presence of the Deity in his feeling. The
   ground of such a rejection might be a humble consciousness of the
   limitation of personal existence, and particularly of personality
   joined to consciousness. He might stand as high above a worshipper of
   the twelve gods whom you would rightly name after Lucretius, as a pious
   person at that stage would be above an idolater.

   But we have here the old confusion, the unmistakable sign of defective
   culture. Those who are at the same stage, only not at the same point,
   are most strongly repudiated. The proper standard of religiousness,
   that which announces the stage to which a man has attained, is his
   sense for the Deity. But to which idea he will attach himself depends
   purely on what he requires it for, and whether his imagination chiefly
   inclines towards existence and nature or consciousness and thought.

   You will not, I trust, consider it blasphemy or incongruity that such a
   matter should depend on the direction of the imagination. By
   imagination I do not mean anything subordinate or confused, but the
   highest and most original faculty in man. All else in the human mind is
   simply reflection upon it, and is therefore dependent on it.
   Imagination in this sense is the free generation of thoughts, whereby
   you come to a conception of the world; such a conception you cannot
   receive from without, nor compound from inferences. From this
   conception you are then impressed with the feeling of omnipotence. The
   subsequent translation into thought depends on whether one is willing
   in the consciousness of his own weakness to be lost in the mysterious
   obscurity, or whether, first of all, seeking definiteness of thought,
   he cannot think of anything except under the one form given to us, that
   of consciousness or self-consciousness. Recoil from the obscurity of
   indefinite thought is the one tendency of the imagination, recoil from
   the appearance of contradiction in transferring the forms of the finite
   to the Infinite is the other.

   Now cannot the same inwardness of religion be combined with both? Would
   not a closer consideration show that the two ways of conceiving are not
   very wide apart? But the pantheistic idea is not to be thought of as
   death, and no effort is to be spared to surpass in thought the limits
   of the personal idea.

   So much I have thought it necessary to say, not so much in explanation
   of my own position, as to prevent you from thinking that all are
   despisers of religion who will not accept the personality of the
   Highest Being as it is usually set forth. And I am quite convinced that
   what has been said will not make the idea of the personality of God
   more uncertain for anyone who truly has it; nor will anyone more easily
   rid himself of the almost absolute necessity to acquire it, for knowing
   whence this necessity comes. Among truly religious men there have never
   been zealots, enthusiasts, or fanatics for this idea. Even when
   timidity and hesitation about it is called atheism, truly pious persons
   will leave it alone with great tranquillity. Not to have the Deity
   immediately present in one's feeling has always seemed to them more
   irreligious. They would most unwillingly believe that anyone could in
   point of fact be quite without religion. They believe that only those
   who are quite without feeling, and whose nature has become brutish, can
   have no consciousness of the God that is in us and in the world, and of
   the divine life and operation whereby all things consist. But whosoever
   insists, it matters not how many excellent men he excludes, that the
   highest piety consists in confessing that the Highest Being thinks as a
   person and wills outside the world, cannot be far travelled in the
   region of piety. Nay, the profoundest words of the most zealous
   defenders of his own faith must still be strange to him.

   The number who would have something from this God, that is alien to
   piety, is only too great. He is to give an outward guarantee of their
   blessedness and incite them to morality. They want to have it before
   their eyes. They would not have God working on man by freedom, but in
   the only way in which one free being can work on another, by necessity,
   by making himself known either by pain or by pleasure. But this cannot
   incite us to morality. Every external incitement is alien to morality,
   whether it be hope or fear. To follow it where it concerns morality is
   unfree, therefore unmoral. But the Highest Being, particularly when he
   is thought of as free, cannot wish to make freedom itself not free, and
   morality not moral. [27]

   This now brings me to the second point, to immortality. I cannot
   conceal that in the usual manner of treating this subject there is
   still more that seems to me inconsistent with the nature of piety. I
   believe I have just shown you in what way each one bears in himself an
   unchangeable and eternal nature. If our feeling nowhere attaches itself
   to the individual, but if its content is our relation to God wherein
   all that is individual and fleeting disappears, there can be nothing
   fleeting in it, but all must be eternal. In the religious life then we
   may well say we have already offered up and disposed of all that is
   mortal, and that we actually are enjoying immortality. But the
   immortality that most men imagine and their longing for it, seem to me
   irreligious, nay quite opposed to the spirit of piety. Dislike to the
   very aim of religion is the ground of their wish to be immortal. Recall
   bow religion earnestly strives to expand the sharply cut outlines of
   personality. Gradually they are to be lost in the Infinite that we,
   becoming conscious of the Universe, may as much as possible be one with
   it. But men struggle against this aim. They are anxious about their
   personality, and do not wish to overstep the accustomed limit or to be
   anything else but a manifestation of it. The one opportunity that death
   gives them of transcending it, they are very far from wishing to
   embrace. On the contrary, they are concerned as to how they are to
   carry it with them beyond this life, and their utmost endeavour is for
   longer sight and better limbs. But God speaks to them as it stands
   written, Whosoever loses his life for my sake, the same shall keep it,
   and whosoever keeps it, the same shall lose it." The life that they
   would keep is one that cannot be kept. If their concern is with the
   eternity of their single person, why are they not as anxious about what
   it has been as about what it is to be? What does forwards avail when
   they cannot go backwards? They desire an immortality that is no
   immortality. They are not even capable of comprehending it, for who can
   endure the effort to conceive an endless temporal existence? Thereby
   they lose the immortality they could always have, and their mortal life
   in addition, by thoughts that distress and torture them in vain. Would
   they but attempt to surrender their lives from love to God! Would they
   but strive to annihilate their personality and to live in the One and
   in the All! Whosoever has learned to be more than himself, knows that
   he loses little when he loses himself. Only the man who denying himself
   sinks himself in as much of the whole Universe as he can attain, and in
   whose soul a greater and holier longing has arisen, has a right to the
   hopes that death gives. With him alone it is really possible to hold
   further converse about the endlessness to which, through death, we
   infallibly soar. [28]

   This then is my view of these subjects. The usual conception of God as
   one single being outside of the world and behind the world is not the
   beginning and the end of religion. It is only one manner of expressing
   God, seldom entirely pure and always inadequate. Such an idea may be
   formed from mixed motives, from the need for such a being to console
   and help, and such a God may be believed in without piety, at least in
   my sense, and I think in the true and right sense. If, however, this
   idea is formed, not arbitrarily, but somehow by the necessity of a
   man's way of thinking, if he needs it for the security of his piety,
   the imperfections of his idea will not cumber him nor contaminate his
   piety. Yet the true nature of religion is neither this idea nor any
   other, but immediate consciousness of the Deity as He is found in
   ourselves and in the world. Similarly the goal and the character of the
   religious life is not the immortality desired and believed in by
   many--or what their craving to be too wise about it would
   suggest--pretended to be believed in by many. It is not the immortality
   that is outside of time, behind it, or rather after it, and which still
   is in time. It is the immortality which we can now have in this
   temporal life; it is the problem in the solution of which we are for
   ever to be engaged. In the midst of finitude to be one with the
   Infinite and in every moment to be eternal is the immortality of
   religion.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [8] The rhetorical character of this book and the impossibility of
   continuing the subject, had my opinion really been that religion is
   this restored unity of knowledge, would have allowed me to say so by a
   very slight suggestion of irony. My meaning would then have been that I
   would not now press this truth upon my opponents, but that elsewhere
   and in another form I would carry it to a victorious issue. Wherefore
   it seems necessary to guard myself against this interpretation,
   especially as so many theologians seem to maintain at present that
   religion, and not religion generally, but the Christian religion, is
   the highest knowledge. Not only in dignity but in form is it identified
   with metaphysical speculations. It is the most successful and
   pre-eminent, and all speculations that do not reach the same results,
   as for example, if they cannot deduce the Trinity, have failed. The
   assertion of others that the more imperfect, especially the
   Polytheistic religions have no kinship with Christianity is similar. I
   reject both, and in respect of the latter I have sought, in the further
   progress of this book, and in the Introduction to my "Glaubenslehre,"
   to show how all forms of religion, even the most imperfect, are the
   same in kind. In respect of the former position, if a philosopher as
   such will attempt to prove a Trinity in the Highest Being, he does it
   at his risk, and I would maintain that this is not a Christian Trinity
   because, being a speculative idea, it has its origin in another part of
   the soul. Were religion really the highest knowledge, the scientific
   method alone would be suitable for its extension, and religion could be
   acquired by study, a thing not hitherto asserted. Philosophy would be
   the first round in the ladder, the religion of the Christian laity
   would as pistis be an imperfect way of having the highest knowledge,
   and theology as gnosis would be the perfect way and stand at the top,
   and no one of the three stages would be consistent with the other two.
   This I cannot at all accept; therefore I cannot hold religion the
   highest knowledge, or indeed knowledge at all. Wherefore, what the
   Christian layman has in less perfection than the theologian and which
   manifestly is a knowledge is not religion itself, but something
   appended to it.

   [9] In rhetorical exposition generally, strict definitions are
   dispensed with, and descriptions are substituted. This whole speech is
   simply an extended description, mixed with criticism of other
   conceptions, which in my opinion are false. The chief points being
   scattered are of necessity repeated in different places, under
   different expressions. This change of expression presents different
   sides of the matter, and I find it useful even in more scientific
   treatment for avoiding the scrupulosity of too rigid a terminology. In
   this kind of writing it seemed specially appropriate. Wherefore three
   different expressions follow in rapid succession. It is said here of
   religion that through it, the universal existence of all finite things
   in the Infinite lives immediately in us. On page 39 it stands religion
   is sense and taste for the Infinite. Sense may be capacity of
   perception or capacity of sensibility. There it is the latter. In the
   former editions, sensibility and taste stood not quite correctly for
   sense and taste for the Infinite. What I am conscious of or feel, must
   be imagined, and that is what I call the life of the object in me. But
   the Infinite, meaning not something unconditioned, but the infinity of
   existence generally, we cannot be conscious of immediately and through
   itself. It can only be through a finite object, by means of which our
   tendency to postulate and seek a world, leads us from detail and part
   to the All and the Whole. Hence sense for the Infinite and the
   immediate life of the finite in us as it is in the Infinite, are one
   and the same. If then, in the first expression, taste be now added to
   sense, and in the latter expression, the universal existence of all
   finite things in the Infinite be made explicit, both become essentially
   identical. Taste includes liking as well as mere faculty, and it is by
   this liking, this desire to find not merely the finite thing, but to be
   conscious through it of the Infinite, that the pious person finds that
   the existence of the finite in the Infinite is universal. There is a
   similar passage on page 36. The connection shows that the expression
   contemplation is to be taken in the widest sense, not as speculation
   proper, but as all movement of the spirit withdrawn from outward
   activity. What, however, has struck most readers is that the Infinite
   Existence does not appear to be the Highest Being as cause of the World
   but the World itself. I do not think that God can be placed in such a
   relation as cause, and I leave you to say whether the World can be
   conceived as a true All and Whole without God. Therefore I remained
   satisfied with that expression, that I might not decide on the various
   ways of conceiving God and the World as together or as outside of one
   another, which did not fall to be considered here, and could only have
   limited the horizon in a hurtful manner.

   [10] This passage on the departed Novalis was first inserted in the
   second edition. Many I believe will wonder at this juxtaposition, not
   seeing that he is like Spinoza, or that he holds the same conspicuous
   position in art as Spinoza in science. Without destroying the balance
   of the Speech, I could only suggest my reason. There is now another
   reason why I should say no more. During these fifteen years the
   attention to Spinoza, awakened by Jacobi's writings and continued by
   many later influences, which was then somewhat marked, has relaxed.
   Novalis also has again become unknown to many. At that time, however,
   these examples seemed significant and important. Many coquetted in
   insipid poetry with religion, believing they were akin to the profound
   Novalis, just as there were advocates enough of the All in the One
   taken for followers of Spinoza who were equally distant from their
   original. Novalis was cried down as an enthusiastic mystic by the
   prosaic, and Spinoza as godless by the literalists. It was incumbent
   upon me to protest against this view of Spinoza, seeing I would review
   the whole sphere of piety. Something essential would have been wanting
   in the exposition of my views if I had not in some way said that the
   mind and heart of this great man seemed deeply influenced by piety,
   even though it were not Christian piety. The result might have been
   different, had not the Christianity of that time been so distorted and
   obscured by dry formulas and vain subtilties that the divine form could
   not be expected to win the regard of a stranger. This I said in the
   first edition, somewhat youthfully indeed, yet so that I have found
   nothing now needing to be altered, for there was no reason to believe
   that I ascribed the Holy Spirit to Spinoza in the special Christian
   sense of the word. As interpolation instead of interpretation was not
   then so common or so honorable as at present, I believed that a part of
   my work was well done. How was I to expect that, because I ascribed
   piety to Spinoza, I would myself be taken for a Spinozist? Yet I had
   never defended his system, and anything philosophic that was in my book
   was manifestly inconsistent with the characteristics of his views and
   had quite a different basis than the unity of substance. Even Jacobi
   has in his criticism by no means hit upon what is most characteristic.
   When I recovered my astonishment, in revising the second edition, this
   parallel occurred to me. As it was known that Novalis in some points
   had a tendency to Catholicism, I felt sure that, in praising his art, I
   should have his religious aberrations ascribed me as Spinozism had been
   because I praised Spinozas piety. Whether my expectation has deceived
   me I do not yet very well know.

   [11] Even among the few who admit that religion originally is feeling
   stirred in the highest direction, there will be many to whom it will
   appear that I assert too much when I say that all healthy feelings are
   pious, or at least that, in order not to be diseased, they should be
   pious. Even were this granted of all social feelings, it must be shown
   how piety is to be found in all those feelings that unite men for a
   higher or even a more sensuous enjoyment of life. Yet I can retract
   nothing from the universality of the statement and in no way admit that
   it was a rhetorical hyperbole. To take one example, Protestantism can
   only completely and consistently defend the domestic and paternal
   relations of the clergy against the melancholy folly of the peculiar
   holiness of the celibate life, by showing that wedded love and all
   foregoing natural attraction of the sexes are not, in the nature of the
   case, absolutely inconsistent with a pious state. This only happens
   when the feeling is diseased, when there is a tendency in it to the
   rage of Bacchus or the folly of Narcissus. In accordance with this
   analogy I believe that the same could be shown of each department of
   feeling not inconsistent with morality. But, if it be inferred from
   this passage that, as all true human feelings belong to the religious
   sphere, all ideas and principles of every sort are foreign to it, the
   connection seems to show my meaning. Religion itself is to be rigidly
   distinguished from what merely belongs to it. Yet, even those feelings
   which are usually separated from the religious sphere, require ideas
   for their communication and representation, and principles to exhibit
   their due measure. But these principles and ideas do not belong to the
   feelings themselves, and it is similar with the dogmatic and ascetic in
   respect of religion, as is shown more fully further on.

   [12] For understanding my whole view I could desire nothing better than
   that, my readers should compare these Speeches with my "Christliche
   Glaubenslehre." In form they are very different and their points of
   departure lie far apart, yet in matter they are quite parallel. But to
   provide the Speeches for this purpose with a complete commentary was
   impossible, and I must content myself with single references to such
   passages as seem to me capable of appearing contrary or at least of
   lacking agreement. Thus every one perhaps might not find the
   description here given of an action of things upon us underlying all
   religions emotions, in agreement with the declaration which goes
   through the whole "Glaubenalehre," that the essence of the religious
   emotions consists in the feeling of an absolute dependence. The matter
   stands thus. Even there it is admitted that we cannot really have this
   feeling except it is occasioned by the action of single things. But if
   the single things are in their action only single, the sole result is
   definiteness of the sensuous self-consciousness. In the
   "Glaubenslehre," likewise this is postulated as the substratum of
   religious emotion. Yet, let the single thing be great or small, our
   single life reacts against it, and there can be no feeling of
   dependence except fortuitously in so far as the reaction is not equal
   to the action. If, however, the single thing does not work upon us as a
   single thing, but as part of the Whole, it will be, in acting upon us,
   an opening for the Whole. This result will depend entirely on the mood
   and attitude of the mind. But then our reaction will appear to us
   determined by the same cause and in the same way as the action, and
   being over against the Universe, our state must be the feeling of
   entire dependence. And this also shows that however we exhibit the
   World and God they cannot be divided. We do not feel ourselves
   dependent on the Whole in so far as it is an aggregate of mutually
   conditioned parts of which we ourselves are one, but only in so far as
   underneath this coherence there is a unity conditioning all things and
   conditioning our relations to the other parts of the Whole. Only on
   this condition can the single thing be, as it is here put, an
   exhibition of the Infinite, being so comprehended that its opposition
   to all else entirely vanishes.

   [13] By mythology I understand in general a purely ideal subject
   enunciated in historical form. Exactly in accordance with the analogy
   of Polytheistic Mythology, it seems to me that we have a Monotheistic
   and a Christian. For this a dialogue of divine persons, such as is
   found in Klopstock's poems and elsewhere, is not necessary. It is found
   in more rigid didactic form when something is represented as happening
   in the Divine Being, as divine resolves made in respect of something
   that has happened in the world, or again to modify former resolves, not
   to speak of the special divine resolves that give reality to the idea
   that prayer is heard. The representations of many divine attributes
   also have this historical form and are therefore mythological. The
   divine pity for example, as the idea is mostly understood, is only
   something when the divine will that lightens the evil is separated from
   the will that ordained it. Are both regarded as one, then one cannot
   limit the other, but the divine will that decrees the evil, decrees it
   only in a definite measure, and the idea of pity is out of place.
   Similarly, in the idea of the veracity of God, promise and fulfilment
   are separated, and both together exhibit a historical transaction. But
   when the activity that promises, is regarded as the same that
   accomplishes the fulfilment, the conception of divine veracity is
   something only in so far as many divine activities are linked or not to
   one expression of them. In this distinction also a history is told, but
   if the activity that brings to pass and its expression are regarded in
   general as one, there is hardly place for a special idea of the divine
   veracity. The same may be shown in other things. By applying this name
   to them I in nowise blame these representations. Rather I acknowledge
   them as indispensable, for otherwise the subject could not be spoken of
   in such a way that any distinction could be drawn between the more
   correct and less correct. Even in more scientific presentations of
   religion, the use of such mythology has no danger, for there it is
   always incumbent to think away the historical and the time form
   generally. In the sphere of religious poetry and oratory also it is
   indispensable. There we have only to do with the like-minded, and for
   them the chief worth of those presentations is that by them they
   communicate and realize their own religious moods. They naturally at
   once adjust the defective expression. But I blame it as vain mythology
   when this, that is only a help in need, is regarded as exact knowledge,
   and treated as the essence of religion.

   [14] If here the system of marks or attributes which in its completest
   form composes the theological outline is represented rather as being
   determined by outward circumstances than as coming forth of itself from
   the religious capacity, the oft-repeated assertion, so contemptuous of
   all historical sense, that the religious movements which in
   Christianity have determined a great body of the most important ideas,
   were merely accidental and the fruit of entirely alien interests, is
   not to be made. I only wished to recall what is also expounded in my
   "Kurze Darstellung" and in the Introduction to the "Glaubenslehre,"
   that the formation of the idea depends here, as elsewhere, on the
   dominating language, the degree, manner, and quality of its scientific
   development embracing of course the manner and quality of the
   philosophizing. But in respect of religion in and for itself, these are
   only external circumstances. Apart from the universal, divine
   connection of all things, we can say, for example, that if Christianity
   had had a great and preponderating Eastern extension, the Hellenic and
   Western being, on the contrary, kept back, without being essentially
   different, it might have been contained in another type of doctrines.

   [15] This passage also might occasion various misconceptions. First, in
   respect of the opposition between true and false religion, I refer to
   my "Glaubenslehre," §§ 7 and 8 (2nd edit.). It is there treated fully,
   and I would simply add that, in religion, error only exists by truth
   and not merely so, but it can be said that every man's religion is his
   highest truth, Error therein would not only be error, it would be
   hypocrisy. In religion then everything is immediately true, as nothing
   is expressed at any moment of it, except the state of mind of the
   religious person. Similarly, all types of religious association are
   good, for the best in the existence of each man must be stored up in
   them. But how little this prejudices the superiority of one type of
   faith to another is in part plainly stated and in part easy to infer.
   One may be the utterance of a superior state of mind, or there may be
   in the religious communion a higher spiritual power and love.
   Furthermore, the rejection here of the thought of the universality of
   any one religion and the assertion that only in the sum of all
   religions is the whole extent of this bias of the mind comprehended, in
   no way expresses a doubt that Christianity will be able to extend
   itself over the whole human race, though perhaps among many races, this
   greatest of all religions may suffer important changes. Just as little
   did this passage express a wish that other religions should always
   continue alongside of Christianity. The influence of Judaism and
   Hellenic Heathenism on Christianity was through a long period visible
   in hostile, raging commotions. Thus both still appear in Christianity,
   and therefore in the history of Christianity have a place. The same
   thing would happen if Christianity should annex the territory of all
   existing great religions. Consequently the religious sphere would not
   be enclosed in narrower borders, but all religions would in a
   historical way be visible in Christianity. From the connection again it
   is clear that I only deny that a religion is universally true in the
   sense that everything that exists or has existed outside of it, is not
   to be called religion at all. Similarly, what follows is to be
   understood, about every truly pious person willingly acknowledging that
   to other types of religion much belongs for which the sense fails him.
   Even if Christianity had supplanted all other religions, he would not
   have a sense for all that would thereby be historically mirrored in
   Christianity, for just as little then as now would the Christianity of
   all Christian people be quite the same. And if no one has an adequate
   sense for all that is Christian, there can be none with the sense for
   all there is in other religions that may be the germ of some future
   Christian peculiarity.

   [16] There are still Christian divines who reject the whole purpose of
   Christian dogmatics, and there was a far greater number when this
   passage was first written. They believe that Christianity would have
   been a healthier development and would have shown a freer, fairer form
   if no one had ever thought of presenting the Christian conceptions in a
   finished connection. Hence they labour to prune it, to abolish it, as
   much as possible, and to have it acknowledged as merely a collection of
   monographs, as an accidental aggregate of single theses of very unequal
   value. Their good intentions I do not question, but even then, I was
   far removed from agreeing with them. It would be a grave
   misunderstanding to believe that this invective against the mania for
   system makes light of the endeavour to present the Christian faith in
   the closest possible connection. The mania for system is merely a
   morbid degeneration of this praiseworthy and wholesome endeavour. That
   systematic treatment of religious conceptions is the best which, on the
   one side, does not take the conception and the idea for original and
   constitutive, and on the other, that the living mobility of the letter
   be secured, that it may not die and the spirit be drawn to death with
   it. Within the great conformity characteristic difference is not only
   to be endured, it is to be assigned its place. If this were to be taken
   for the chief aim in my presentation of the Christian faith, I would
   fain believe that I am in perfect agreement with myself.

   [17] I feel that this passage gives a two-fold, grave offence. First I
   prefer Heathen Rome, on account of its boundless mixture of religious,
   to Christian Rome which, in comparison, I call godless, and that I
   condemn the expulsion of heretics, while I myself declare certain views
   to be heretical, and even seek to systematize heresy. I begin with the
   latter as the deeper and more important. It does not appear to me
   possible that there can be a sound dogmatic procedure without a formula
   of the character of what is Christian, by the application of which it
   would be possible, from any point of the line of cleavage, to cut off
   the ordinates, and so to describe the extent of Christian conceptions
   by approximation. It naturally follows that what lies outside of this
   extent, and would yet be considered Christian, is what has long been
   called in the Christian Church heretical. In my dogmatics I could not
   avoid offering such a formula, and I can only wish to attain my object
   as fully as possible. But this definition of the subject has nothing to
   do with the treatment of persons. That many, while contending for the
   defence of their own opinion, may use a heretical expression without
   meaning anything heretical, is apparent, and I have declared myself
   fully on it in the "Glaubenslehre," § 22, 3 and note, and § 25, note.
   On many sides the wish has been expressed in the Evangelical Church to
   renew church discipline in a judicious manner that a Christian
   congregation may be in a position to withdraw a measure of fellowship
   from persons disproving by their lives their Christian disposition.
   This makes it specially necessary to obviate the confusion between this
   proceeding and the right to pronounce the bann on all we may choose to
   consider heretics. If heretics are not also without a Christian
   disposition, the Evangelical Church will rather acknowledge that its
   sole duty towards them is to maintain fellowship with them that, by
   mutual understanding, they may the sooner be led into the right way. If
   individuals or small societies employ a contrary method and, regardless
   of disposition, exclude from their fellowship all who do not agree with
   them in the same letter of doctrine, they do not act in an Evangelical
   spirit, but assume an authority our church grants to none. And now
   passing to the second point, my preference of Heathen to Christian
   Rome, and my statement that through tolerance the former was full of
   gods, and that through persecution of heretics, the latter was godless.
   First, the character of the expressions used shows that this passage
   bears specially the rhetorical cast of the book. What, however, is to
   be taken literally is that the dogmatizing love of system which scorns
   to assign its place to difference, but rather excludes all difference,
   plainly suppresses, as much as it can, the living knowledge of God, and
   changes doctrine into a dead letter. A rule so rigid that it condemns
   everything of another shade, crashes out productiveness. As this alone
   contains living knowledge of God, the system itself must become dead.
   This is the history of the Roman Catholic system in contrast to the
   Protestant. From this point of view the rise of the Evangelical Church
   was simply to rescue its own productiveness from fellowship with such a
   rule. My praise of the receptivity of ancient Rome for strange worships
   is also to be taken seriously. It involved an acknowledgment of the
   narrowness and one-sidedness of each individualized Polytheism, and the
   desire to free the religious need from the limits of political forms.
   Now these two things were not only praiseworthy in themselves, but were
   much more favourable to the spread of Christianity than heresy hunting,
   however well meant, could ever be for its establishment and
   preservation.

   [18] In the "Glaubenslehre," also § 8, note 1, I have declared myself
   against the opinion that idolatry, embracing, according to the somewhat
   perspective usage of the Holy Scriptures, all kinds of Polytheism, has
   arisen from fear. There, however, I wished to show that, in essence,
   the lower and the higher stages of religion were alike, which could not
   be if the former arose from fear and the latter did not. There I am
   dealing with the conception that piety generally has had its source in
   fear. Despite the somewhat variable use of deisidaimonia the proof here
   given in general would apply to the particular instance, for it could
   not be said of the Greek and Roman Polytheists that their faith in the
   gods would have been extinct if, in the courageous use of life, they
   had shaken off all fear. Similarly, what is said there may here be
   applied generally, for if fear is not in some way a perversion of love,
   it can only regard its object as malevolent. Where then higher beings
   are not worshipped or rather entreated as bad, the motive cannot be
   fear entirely separated from love. Hence it remains true that in all
   religious from the beginning love is operative, and all growth towards
   perfection is simply a progressive purification of love.

   [19] It should hardly be necessary to justify the use of the expression
   World-Spirit where I wish to indicate the object of pious adoration in
   a way that would include all different forms and stages of religion. In
   particular, I do not believe it can be said with justice that, by this
   choice of expression, I have sacrificed the interests of the most
   perfect form of religion to the inferior. On the contrary, I believe,
   not only that it is a perfectly Christian name for the Highest Being,
   but that the expression could only have arisen on Monotheistic soil,
   and is as free from Jewish Particularism as from the incompleteness of
   the Mohammedan Monotheism which I have attempted to specify in the
   "Glaubenslehre," § 8, 4. No one will confuse it with World-Soul. It
   neither expresses reciprocal action between the World and the Highest
   Being, nor any kind of independence of the World from Him. I believe
   therefore that Christian authors are justified in using the term, even
   though it has not directly proceeded from the special standpoint of
   Christianity.

   [20] In my "Glaubenslehre," the Introduction of which contains the
   outlines of what I take to be the philosophy of religion, and therefore
   has many points of contact with this book, my chief division was into
   what I have called the aesthetic and the teleological form. Here
   another ground of classification seems to be assumed. The peculiar
   world of religion seems to be the mind, regarded as an individual thing
   having one or more things standing over against it--the mind in our
   sphere and at our stage of culture. In the same way on the other side,
   as there indicated, the world of religion may be external nature. Two
   things there rigidly distinguished seem here to be both ascribed to the
   religion of the mind, for whether the active state be referred to the
   passive, or the passive to the active, all religious emotions are
   states of mind. Hence the distinction that is here regarded as the
   higher, is there quite overlooked. By a natural religion, however, I do
   not mean that religious emotions can come to man through contemplation
   of the external world. This contemplation is exalted by speculative
   natural science, which, however, always remains science, and only gives
   rise to religious emotions in proportion as the soul is conscious of
   itself in the contemplation, and therefore again by the mental state.
   In the same way they arise from the immediate relation of nature to our
   life and existence, only in proportion to its effect upon our mood at
   any moment, and therefore, again from the mental state. The
   classification given in the "Glaubenslehre" therefore remains. The
   religious emotions, whether from nature or the historical life, have
   all this two-fold form. If the influence of the contemplation of nature
   is referred to the soul and its activities and its laws, it has a
   teleological or ethical character; if it is referred to nature, it has
   an aesthetic character.

   [21] This is only to be taken as an application of the narrative, not
   as the author's own opinion. I believe it can be shown that the
   narrative necessarily implies that neither can man come to a
   consciousness of God, nor can he form general ideas, until he has
   gained a consciousness of the species, of his subordination as an
   individual in it and his difference from it. And, it appears as
   clearly, that neither the consciousness of the Highest Being, nor the
   endeavour to order the world for itself can be quite lost to the soul
   till the consciousness of the species has quite vanished. I will here
   also explain two passages not specially marked in the text. On page 79
   humility, formerly given as a natural form of religious emotion, is
   spoken of as if it were opposed to an exalted feeling of personal
   existence, and contrition, similarly depicted as natural and essential
   to piety, as if it must be changed to joyful self-sufficiency. Now, I
   do not consider that a contradiction, for I think that all pious
   emotions both exalt and debase. Even in Christianity that spreads
   itself only by awaking the emotions that debase, penitence is quenched
   in the consciousness of the divine forgiveness. The words "satisfy
   thyself with my mercy," express just that very joyful self-sufficiency
   here meant. The opposite feeling to humility, the feeling that in each
   one the whole of humanity lives and works is just the consciousness to
   which the Christian of all men should rise. He should feel that all
   believers form a living organic whole, wherein not only is each member,
   as Paul puts it, indispensable to all the others. But each one
   presupposes the characteristic activity of all the others. Further,
   when it is said that a man who has thus combined both forms of emotion
   needs no mediator any more, but can himself be a mediator for many,
   this statement is only to be taken in the limited meaning indicated by
   earlier expositions, namely, each man has not in himself the right key
   for understanding all men. To almost everyone much is so alien that he
   can only acknowledge it when he finds it in a form more akin to himself
   or linked to something else that has a special value for him. In this
   sense, therefore, those who unite the most alien elements with those
   most acknowledged, mediate an understanding. Chiefly in that feeling
   which is in contrast to humility, the self-consciousness advances to
   such transparency and accuracy that the most distant ceases to appear
   strange and ceases to repel. But this feeling will be purest when all
   human limits are seen in Him from whom all limitation was banished.
   Hence there is here no derogation from the higher mediatorship of the
   Redeemer.

   [22] Without wishing to retract anything from the leading position in
   this Speech, which is that all higher feelings belong to religion, or
   to deny that single actions should not proceed directly from stimulus
   of single feelings, I would say that this passage is specially
   applicable only to the ethics of that time, to Kant and Fichte, and
   particularly Kant. So long as ethics adhered to the imperative method
   so rigidly followed in those systems, feelings could find no place in
   morals, for there could not be a command, thou shalt have this or that
   feeling. Such a system should logically say of them all only what has
   been said of friendship, that man must have no time to begin it or to
   cherish it. But ethics should not be restricted to the narrow
   imperative form. It should assign to these feelings their place in the
   human soul. It should also acknowledge their ethical worth, not as
   something that can or ought to be made for some purpose and for which
   guidance is given in morals, but as a free, natural function of the
   higher life in close connection with the higher maxims and modes of
   acting. Ethics would then so far embrace religion, just as a
   presentation of religion would embrace ethics, yet both would not be on
   that account one and the same.

   [23] The expression here employed that miracle is only the religious
   name for event, and that all that happens is miracle might easily be
   suspected of being a practical denial of the miraculous, for if
   everything is a miracle then nothing is. This stands in close
   connection with the explanations given in the "Glaubenslehre," § 14
   note, § 34, 2, 3 and § 47. If the reference of an event to the Divine
   omnipotence and the contemplation of it in its natural connection do
   not exclude one another but may be parallel, which view is first taken
   depends upon the direction of the attention. Where the bearing of an
   event on our aims most interests us, and the examination of the
   connection goes too much into details, the divine provision will be
   least observed and the course of nature best. But which of the two
   views will most satisfy us depends on the one side, on how certain we
   are that we have grasped the full all meaning of the event, so that we
   can say with some assurance that this is willed of God, and on the
   other how deeply we can penetrate into the natural connection. All this
   is mere subjective difference. Hence it is plainly true that all the
   events that most awake religious attention, and in which at the same
   time the natural connection is most hidden, are most regarded as
   miracle. Yet it is equally true that in themselves and in respect of
   the divine causality all events alike are miracle. As in the
   expositions of the "Glaubenslehre," though absolute miracle is
   rejected, the religious interest in the miraculous is acknowledged and
   guarded, so here I merely seek to exhibit miracle in its purity and to
   remove all foreign ingredients which are more akin to stupid amazement
   than to the joyful anticipation of a higher meaning.

   [24] It is difficult to treat an idea like the effects of grace, which
   is scarcely at all current except in a peculiarly Christian form, in
   such a general way as to embrace everything analogous to be found in
   other religious forms. To it belongs all that distinguishes a human
   being as a special favourite of the gods. Revelation is more
   receptivity, inspiration more productivity. Now both are combined in
   the idea of grace, and pious persons are always characterized by both.
   In what follows, however, the expression entrance of the, world into
   man is substituted for revelation, and the original outgoing of man
   into the world for inspiration. The latter will admit of little doubt,
   for every inspiration must go forth and accomplish something in the
   world, and everything original must be at least occasioned from
   without, and for the most part is regarded as inspiration. The former
   also is in agreement with the preceding explanation of revelation, and
   because here it was necessary to make it general it could not otherwise
   be conceived. Yet it may easily be charged to it that, for the sake of
   the less perfect forms of religion, it puts the Christian in the
   background. But it is not to be overlooked that the idea of the Deity
   does not enter our consciousness except along with the idea of the
   World, and that this entrance is looked upon religiously, not
   speculatively, is shown sufficiently further on.

   [25] By what is said in my "Glaubenslehre," § 3-5, I trust that what is
   here said, and especially the statement that all pious emotions exhibit
   through feeling the immediate presence of God in us, may be set in a
   clearer light. It is hardly necessary to remind you that the existence
   of God generally can only be active, and as there can be no passive
   existence of God, the divine activity upon any object is the divine
   existence in respect of that object. It may, however, require to be
   explained why I represent the unity of our being in contrast to the
   multiplicity of function, as the divine in us. And you may ask why I
   say of this unity that it appears in the emotions of piety, seeing it
   can be shown from other manifestations also that self-consciousness is
   but a single function. In respect of the former the divine in us must
   be that in which the capacity to be conscious of God has its seat. Even
   were the criticisms just, it might still be the divine that is awakened
   in us in the pious emotions, and that is here the main point. For the
   rest, the unity of our being cannot, certainly, appear by itself, for
   it is absolutely inward. Most immediately it appears in the
   self-consciousness, in so far as single references are in the
   background. On the other hand, when references to single things are
   most prominent, the self-consciousness then most appears as a single
   function.

   [26] This exposition also, it is hoped, will be made clearer and at the
   same time be completed by what is said in the "Glaubenslehre,"
   especially in § 8, note 2. As everyone can compare them, it is not
   necessary for me to enter on a defence of myself against the
   supposition--I would not willingly call it accusation--which men whom I
   greatly honour, and some of whom have already gone hence, have drawn
   from this Speech. For myself I am supposed to prefer the impersonal
   form of thinking of the Highest Being, and this has been called now my
   atheism and again my Spinozism. I, however, thought that it is truly
   Christian to seek for piety everywhere, and to acknowledge it under
   every form. I find, at least, that Christ enjoined this upon his
   disciples, and that Paul obeyed not only among the Jews and the
   Proselytes, but among the Heathen at Athens. When I had said in all
   simplicity, that it is still not indifferent whether one does not
   acquire or quite rejects a definite form of representing the Highest
   Being, and thereby obstructs generally the growth of his piety, I did
   not think it necessary to protest further against all consequences. I
   did not remember how often a person going straightforward seems to be
   going to the left to a person going to the right. But none who reflect
   on the little that is said about pantheism will suspect me of any
   materialistic pantheism. And if any one look at it rightly, he will
   find that, on the one side, every one must recognize it as an almost
   absolute necessity for the highest stage of piety to acquire the
   conception of a personal God, and on the other he will recognize the
   essential imperfection in the conception of a personality of the
   Highest Being, nay, how hazardous it is, if it is not most carefully
   kept pure. The conception is necessary whenever one would interpret to
   himself or to others immediate religious emotions, or whenever the
   heart has immediate intercourse with the Highest Being. Yet the
   profoundest of the church fathers have ever sought to purify the idea.
   Were the definite expressions they have used to clear away what is
   human and limited in the form of personality put together, it would be
   as easy to say that they denied personality to God as that they
   ascribed it to Him. As it is so difficult to think of a personality as
   truly infinite and incapable of suffering, a great distinction should
   be drawn between a personal God and a living God. The latter idea alone
   distinguishes from materialistic pantheism and atheistic blind
   necessity. Within that limit any further wavering in respect of
   personality must be left to the representative imagination and the
   dialectic conscience, and where the pious sense exists, they will guard
   each other. Does the former fashion a too human personality, the latter
   restrains by exhibiting the doubtful consequences; does the latter
   limit the representation too much by negative formulas, the former
   knows how to suit it to its need. I was specially concerned to show
   that, if one form of the conception does not in itself exclude all
   piety, the other as little necessarily includes it. How many men are
   there in whose lives piety has little weight and influence, for whom
   this conception of personality is indispensable as a general supplement
   to their chain of causality which on both sides is broken off; and how
   many, on the other band, show the deepest piety who, in what they say
   of the Highest Being, have never rightly developed the idea of
   personality!

   [27] This passage is different from the former edition. Partly the
   statement that morality generally cannot be manipulated, though right
   in the connection, seemed to require closer definition if there was not
   to be misunderstanding; partly the whole view seemed to me only rightly
   completed by the addition that freedom and morality would be endangered
   by the prospect of divine recompense. In the strife on this point,
   especially as it is carried on between the Kantians and the
   Eudaimonists, the great difference between presenting divine recompense
   as an inducement and using it theoretically to explain the order of the
   world has very often been overlooked. The former is an immoral and
   therefore specially an unchristian procedure, and is never employed by
   true heralds of Christianity and has no place in the Scriptures; the
   other is natural and necessary, for it alone shows how the divine law
   extends over the whole nature of man, and so far from causing a rift in
   human nature, it most fully guards its unity. But this explanation will
   be very different in proportion as love of truth and desire of
   knowledge are free from all foreign ingredients. It is hardly to be
   denied that the demands of self-love will most claim arbitrariness for
   the divine recompense, and as arbitrariness can only have its seat in
   personality, it will be accompanied by the narrowest conceptions of the
   divine personality.

   [28] This passage has met very much the same fate as the passage which
   treated of the personality of God. It was also directed against narrow
   and impure conceptions and it has raised the same misunderstandings. I
   am supposed to disparage the hope of immortality in the usual sense of
   the word, representing it as a weakness and contending against it. But
   this was not the place to declare myself in respect of the truth of the
   matter, or to offer the view of it which I, as a Christian, hold. This
   will be found in the second part of my "Glaubenslehre," and both
   passages should supplement each other. There I had only to answer the
   question whether this hope was so essential to a pious direction of the
   mind that the two stood or fell together. What could I do but answer in
   the negative, seeing it is now usually accepted that the people of the
   old Covenant did not, in earlier times, have this hope, and seeing also
   that it is easy to show that, in the state of pious emotion, the soul
   is rather absorbed in the present moment than directed towards the
   future? Only it appears hard that this Speech should deduce not
   doubtfully the hope so widely diffused among the noblest men of a
   restoration of the individual life not again to be interrupted, from
   the lowest stage of self-love, seeing it might as well have been
   ascribed to the interest of love in the beloved objects. All the forms
   under which the hope of immortality can present itself as the highest
   self-consciousness of the spirit being before me, just in contrast to
   the opponents of the faith it seemed to me natural and necessary to
   utter the warning that any particular way of conceiving immortality and
   especially that which has unmistakable traces of a lower interest
   hidden behind it, is not to be confused with the reality. I thus sought
   to prepare for grasping the question, not as it is entirely limited to
   personality or to a self-consciousness chained to single affinities,
   but as it is natural in one in whom personal interest is purified by
   subordination to a self-consciousness that is ennobled by the
   consciousness of the human race and of human nature. On the other side,
   in order to avoid endless and wide-spreading explanations, it was
   necessary to make the opponents of religion observe that there could be
   no religious discussion of this matter except among those who have
   already cultivated in themselves the higher life, given by true piety,
   which is worthy to conquer death. If I am somewhat severe on the
   self-deception of a mean way of thinking and feeling, which is proud
   that it can comprehend immortality and that it is guided by the
   accompanying hope and fear, I can only say in self-defence that there
   is nothing of mere rhetoric in it, but that it has always been with me
   a very strong feeling. I desire no more than that each man, if he would
   test his piety, should see, not merely, as Plato says, that souls
   appear before the judges of the Underworld stripped of all alien
   ornament conferred by the external relations of life, but, laying aside
   these claims to endless existence and considering himself just as he
   is, that he then decide whether these claims are anything more than the
   titles of lands, never possessed and never to be possessed, wherewith
   the great ones of the earth often think they must adorn themselves. If,
   thus stripped, he still find that that eternal life is with him to
   which the end of this Speech points, he will readily understand what I
   am aiming at in my presentation of the Christian faith. Furthermore,
   the parallel between the two ideas of God and immortality in respect of
   the different ways of conception here indicated, is not to be
   overlooked. The most anthropomorphic view of God usually presupposes a
   morally corrupt consciousness, and the same holds of such a conception
   of immortality as pictures the Elysian fields as just a more beautiful
   and wider earth. As there is a great difference between inability to
   think of God as in this way personal and the inability to think of a
   living God at all, so there is between one who does not hold such a
   sensuous conception of immortality and one who does not hope for any
   immortality. As we call everyone pious who believes in a living God, so
   without excluding any kind or manner we would hold the same of those
   who believe in an eternal life of the spirit.
     __________________________________________________________________

THIRD SPEECH

  THE CULTIVATION OF RELIGION

   As I myself have willingly confessed, the endeavour to make proselytes
   from unbelievers is deep rooted in the character of religion. Yet that
   is not what now urges me to speak to you of the cultivation of man for
   this noble capacity. For this cultivation we believers know of only one
   means--the free expression and communication of religion. When religion
   moves in a man with all its native force, when it carries every faculty
   of his spirit imperiously along in the stream of its impulse, we expect
   it to penetrate into the hearts of all who live and breathe within its
   influence. Every corresponding element being stirred by this
   life-giving power, they should attain a consciousness of their
   existence, and the attentive ear should be gladdened by an answering
   note of kindred sound. Where the pious person fails to awake a life
   like his by the natural expression of his own life, he will despise
   nobly every strange charm, every exercise of force in the calm
   conviction that the time has not yet come for anything congenial to
   appear.

   The unsuccessful issue is not new to any of us. How often have I struck
   up the music of my religion, seeking to move the bystanders! Beginning
   with single soft notes, I have soon been swept on by youthful
   impetuosity to the fullest harmony of the religious feelings. But
   nothing stirred, nothing answered in the hearers. I have entrusted
   these words to a larger and more versatile circle, yet from how many,
   despite of those advantages, will they return in sadness without having
   been understood, yea, without having awaked the vaguest suspicion of
   their purpose! And how often, for all who proclaim religion, and for me
   along with them, will this fate which has been appointed us from the
   beginning, be renewed! Yet this shall never distress us. The difficulty
   we know may not otherwise be met, and we shall never be moved from our
   quiet equanimity to attempt in any other fashion to force our way of
   thinking either upon this or the future generation.

   Everyone of us misses in himself not a little that belongs to a
   complete humanity, and many lack much. What wonder, then, if the number
   in whom religion refuses to develope should be great! Necessarily it
   must be great, else how could we come to see it in--if I might so
   say--its incarnate, historical existence, or discern the bounds it sets
   on all sides to the other capacities of man, or how by them again it is
   in manifold ways bounded. Or how should we know how far man can
   anywhere succeed without it, and where it sustains him and forwards
   him; or guess that, without his knowledge, it is busy in him.

   But especially in these times of universal confusion and upheaval, it
   is natural that its slumbering spark should not glow up in many,
   however lovingly or patiently we tend it, and that, even in persons in
   whom under happier circumstances it would have broken through all
   obstacles, it is not brought to life. In all human things nothing
   remains unshaken. Every man must continually face the possibility of
   having to abandon the very belief that determines his place in the
   world and binds him to the earthly order of things. And he may find no
   other, but may sink in the general whirlpool. One class shun no
   concentration of their own powers and shout also towards every side for
   help, that they may hold fast what they take to be the poles of the
   world and of society, of art and of science, which by an indescribable
   destiny, as it were of their own accord, suddenly leap from their
   sockets and allow all that has so long revolved around them to fall;
   the other class, with a like restless zeal, are busy clearing away the
   ruins of fallen centuries, seeking to be the first to settle on the
   fruitful ground that is being formed beneath from the quickly cooling
   lava of the dread volcano.

   Even without leaving his place, every man is so mightily affected by
   the vehement shaking of all things that, in the universal giddiness, he
   must be glad to fix his eye steadily enough on any one object, to be
   able to keep to it and convince himself gradually that something still
   stands. In such a state of things it would be foolish to expect that
   many could be fit to cultivate and retain religious feelings which
   prosper best in quiet. In the midst of this ferment, indeed, the aspect
   of the moral world is more majestic and noble than ever, and at moments
   there are hints of more significant traits than ever before in the
   centuries. Yet who can rescue himself from the universal turmoil? Who
   can escape the power of narrower interests? Who has calm enough to
   stand still and steadfastness enough for undisturbed contemplation?

   But suppose the happiest times and suppose the best will not only to
   arouse by communication the capacity for religion where it does exist,
   but, by every possible way, to ingraft and to impart it. Where, then,
   is there such a way? All that the activity and art of one man can do
   for another is to communicate conceptions to be the basis of thoughts,
   and so far to associate them with his own ideas that they may be
   remembered at fitting times. But no one can arrive at the point of
   making others think what thoughts he will. There is a contrariety that
   cannot be eliminated from words, and much less can you get beyond this
   means and freely produce what inner activity you will. In short, on the
   mechanism of the spirit everyone can, in some measure, work, but into
   its organization, into the sacred workshop of the Universe, no one can
   enter at pleasure. No one can change or disarrange, take from or add
   to. At the most he may, by means of this mechanism, retard the
   development of the spirit. Part of the growth may thus be violently
   mutilated, but nothing can be moulded. From this sanctuary of his
   organization which force cannot enter, all that pertains to the true
   life of man, all that should be an ever alert, operative impulse in
   him, proceeds.

   And such is religion. In the spirit it inhabits it is uninterruptedly
   active and strong, making everything an object for itself and turning
   every thought and action into a theme for its heavenly phantasy. Like
   everything else, then, that should be ever present, ever active in the
   human soul, it lies far beyond the domain of teaching and imparting.
   Instruction in religion, meaning that piety itself is teachable, is
   absurd and unmeaning. Our opinions and doctrines we can indeed
   communicate, if we have words and our hearers have the comprehending,
   imagining power of the understanding. But we know very well that those
   things are only the shadows of our religious emotions, and if our
   pupils do not share our emotions, even though they do understand the
   thought, they have no possession that can truly repay their toil. This
   retreat into oneself, there to perceive oneself, cannot be taught. Even
   the most inspired person who can see, it matters not before what object
   he finds himself, the original light of the Universe, cannot by the
   word of instruction transfer this power and dexterity to another.

   There is, indeed, an imitative talent which in some perhaps we can so
   far arouse as to make it easy for them, when sacred feelings are
   represented in powerful tones, to produce in themselves somewhat
   similar emotions. But does that touch their deepest nature? Is it, in
   the true sense of the word, religion? If you would compare the sense
   for the Universe with the sense for art, you must not compare the
   possessors of a passive religiousness--if you care so to name it--with
   those who, without producing works of art themselves, are responsive to
   everything that has to do with viewing them. The works of art of
   religion are always and everywhere exposed. The whole world is a
   gallery of religious scenes, and every man finds himself in the midst
   of them. Wherefore, you must liken them to persons who cannot be made
   to feel till commentaries and imaginings on works of art are brought as
   medicinal charms for the deadened sense, and who even then only lisp,
   in an ill-understood terminology, some inappropriate words that are not
   their own. So much and no more you can accomplish by mere teaching.
   This is the goal of all conscious educating and exercising in such
   things. Show me one man to whom you have imparted power of judgment,
   the spirit of observation, feeling for art or morality, then will I
   pledge myself to teach religion also.

   Of course there is in religion a mastership and a discipleship. But
   this attachment is no blind imitation. It is not the master that makes
   disciples, but he is their master because of their choice. [29] And if,
   by the utterance of our own religion, religion is awakened in others,
   we cannot retain it in our power or attach it to ourselves. As soon as
   it lives, their religion also is free and goes its own way. On blazing
   up in the soul, the sacred spark spreads to a free and living flame,
   fed by its own atmosphere. More or less it illumines for the soul the
   whole circuit of the world, so that, following his own impulse, he may
   settle far away from the place where first the new life was lit.
   Compelled simply by the feeling of weakness and finitude, by an
   original, inward determination to settle in some definite quarter,
   without being ungrateful to his first guide, he makes choice of that
   climate which suits him best. There he seeks for himself a centre, and
   moving self-limited in his new course, of his own choice and
   spontaneous liking, be calls himself the disciple of him who first
   settled in this dear spot and showed its splendour. [30]

   I do not, therefore, aim at training either you or others to religion.
   Nor would I teach you by resolve or rule to train yourselves. I would
   not leave the sphere of religion--as by doing so I would--but a little
   longer I would tarry with you within. The Universe itself trains its
   own observers and admirers, and how that comes to pass we shall now
   see, as far as it can be seen.

   You know how each element of humanity discloses itself by the place it
   maintains against the others. By this universal strife everything in
   every man attains a determinate form and size. Now this strife is only
   sustained by the fellowship of the single elements, by the movement of
   the Whole. Hence every man and every thing in every man is a work of
   the Whole. This is the only way in which the pious sense can conceive
   man. Now I wish to return to the religious limitation of our
   contemporaries which you praise and I bewail. I wish to regard it in
   this aspect and to make it clear why we are thus and not otherwise, and
   what must happen if our limits are to be widened. Would that I could at
   the same time make you conscious that you also by your being and doing
   are tools of the Universe, and that your deed, towards quite other
   things directed, has an influence upon the present state of religion.

   Man is born with the religious capacity as with every other. If only
   his sense for the profoundest depths of his own nature is not crushed
   out, if only all fellowship between himself and the Primal Source is
   not quite shut off, religion would, after its own fashion, infallibly
   be developed. But in our time, alas! that is exactly what, in very
   large measure, does happen. With pain I see daily how the rage for
   calculating and explaining suppresses the sense. I see how all things
   unite to bind man to the finite, and to a very small portion of the
   finite, that the infinite may as far as possible vanish from his eyes.

   Who hinders the prosperity of religion? Not you, not the doubters and
   scoffers. Even though you were all of one mind to have no religion, you
   would not disturb Nature in her purpose of producing piety from the
   depths of the soul, for your influence could only later find prepared
   soil. Nor, as is supposed, do the immoral most hinder the prosperity of
   religion, for it is quite a different power to which their endeavours
   are opposed. But the discreet and practical men of to-day are, in the
   present state of the world, the foes of religion, and their great
   preponderance is the cause why it plays such a poor and insignificant
   rôle, for from tender childhood they maltreat man, crushing out his
   higher aspirations.

   With great reverence I regard the longing of young minds for the
   marvellous and supernatural. Joyfully taking in the motley show of
   things, they seek at the same time something else to set over against
   it. They search everywhere for something surpassing the accustomed
   phenomena and the light play of life. However many earthly objects are
   presented for their knowing, there seems still another sense
   unnourished. That is the first stirrings of religion. A secret,
   inexplicable presentiment urges them past the riches of this world.
   Every trace of another is welcome to them, and they delight themselves
   in fictions of unearthly beings. All that it is most evident to them
   cannot be here, they embrace with that strong and jealous love devoted
   to objects, the right to which is strongly felt, but cannot be
   established. True, it is a delusion to seek the Infinite immediately
   outside of the finite, but is it not natural in those who know but the
   surface of even the finite and sensuous? Is it not the delusion of
   whole peoples and whole schools of wisdom?

   Were there but guardians of religion among those who care for the
   young, how easily could this natural error be corrected! And, in
   clearer times, how greedily would young souls then abandon themselves
   to the impressions of the Infinite in its omnipresence!

   It were even better if life were left quietly to take its own course.
   Let it be supposed that the taste for grotesque figures is as natural
   to the young imagination in religion as in art, and let it be richly
   satisfied. Have no anxiety when the earnest and sacred mythology, that
   is considered the very essence of religion, is immediately united with
   the careless games of childhood. Suppose that the Heavenly Father, the
   Saviour, the angels are but another kind of fairies and sylphs. In
   many, perhaps, the foundation may be laid for an insufficient and dead
   letter. While the images grow pale, the word, as the empty frame in
   which they have been fixed, may remain hanging. But man, thus treated,
   would be more left to himself, and a right-thinking, uncorrupted soul
   that knew how to keep himself free from the titillation of scraping and
   scheming, would more easily find, in due time, the natural issue from
   this labyrinth.

   Now, on the contrary, that tendency is, from the beginning, forcibly
   suppressed. Everything mysterious and marvellous is proscribed.
   Imagination is not to be filled with airy images! It is just as easy to
   store the memory with real objects and to be preparing for life! Poor
   young souls, desiring quite other fare, are wearied with moral tales
   and have to learn how beautiful and necessary it is to be genteel and
   discreet. The current conceptions of things that they would of
   themselves have encountered, soon enough, are impressed upon them, as
   if it were an urgent business that could never be too soon
   accomplished. Without regard to their real want, there is given them
   that of which far too soon there will be too much.

   In proportion as man must busy himself in a narrow way with a single
   object, to rescue the universality of the sense an impulse awakes in
   everyone to allow the dominating activity and all its kindred to rest,
   and to open all organs to the influence of all impressions. By a secret
   and most helpful sympathy this impulse is strongest when the general
   life reveals itself most clearly in our own breasts and in the
   surrounding world. But to yield to this impulse in comfortable
   inactivity cannot be permitted, for, from the middle-class standpoint,
   it would be laziness and idling. In everything there must be design and
   aim; somewhat has always to be performed, and if the spirit can no more
   serve, the body must be exercised. Work and play, but no quiet,
   submissive contemplation!

   But most of all, men are to be taught to analyze and explain. By this
   explaining they are completely cheated of their sense, for, as it is
   conducted, it is absolutely opposed to any perceptive sense. Sense of
   its own accord seeks objects for itself, it advances to meet them and
   it offers to embrace them. It communicates something to them which
   distinguishes them as its possession, its work.

   It will find and be found. But this explaining knows nothing of this
   living acquisition, of this illuminating truth, of the true spirit of
   discovery in childlike intuition. But from first to last, objects are
   to be transcribed accurately in thought as something simply given. They
   are, God be thanked, for all men ever the same, and who knows how long
   already they have been docketed in good order with all their qualities
   defined. Take them, then, only as life brings them, and understand that
   and nothing more. But to seek for yourselves and to wish to have living
   intercourse with things is eccentric and high-flown. It is a vain
   endeavour, availing nothing in human life, where things are only to be
   seen and handled as they have already presented themselves.

   Fruitful in human life this endeavour is not, except that, without it,
   an active life, resting on true inward culture, is not to be found. The
   sense strives to comprehend the undivided impress of something whole;
   it will perceive what each thing is and how it is; it will know
   everything in its peculiar character. But that is not what they mean by
   understanding. What and how are too remote for them, around whence and
   to what end, they eternally circle. They seek to grasp nothing in and
   for itself, but only in special aspects, and therefore, not as a whole,
   but only piece-meal. To inquire or thoroughly examine whether the
   object they would understand is a whole, would lead them too far. Were
   this their desire, they could hardly escape so utterly without
   religion.

   But all must be used for some excellent purpose, wherefore they
   dissever and anatomize. This is how they deal with what exists chiefly
   for the highest satisfaction of the sense, with what, in their despite,
   is a whole in itself, I mean with all that is art in nature and in the
   works of man. Before it can operate they annihilate it by explaining it
   in detail. Having first by decomposition robbed it of its character as
   art, they would teach and impress this or that lesson from the
   fragments.

   You must grant that this is the practice of our people of
   understanding, and you must confess that a superabundance of sense is
   necessary if anything is to escape this hostile treatment. On that
   account alone the number must be small who are capable of such a
   contemplation of any object as might awake in them religion.

   But this development is still more checked. The utmost is done to
   divert the remaining sense from the Universe. Truth and all that in it
   is, must be confined in the limits of the civil life. All actions must
   bear upon this life, while, again, it is believed that the boasted
   inner harmony of man means that everything bears upon his actions and
   they never think that, if it is to be a true and free life, the
   existence of an individual in the state, even as of the state itself,
   must have arisen from the Whole. But they are sunk in blind idolatry of
   the existing civil life, they are convinced that it affords material
   enough for the sense and displays rich enough pictures. Hence they have
   a right to guard against discontented seeking for something else and
   departure from the natural centre and axis. All emotions and endeavours
   not so directed, are but useless and exhausting exercises, from which,
   by purposeful activity, the soul must as much as possible be
   restrained. Pure love to art, or even to nature itself, is for them an
   extravagance, only to be endured because it is not quite so bad as
   other tendencies, and because many find in it consolation and
   compensation in various ills. Knowledge is sought with a wise and sober
   moderation and never without regard to practical life. The smallest
   thing that has influence in this sphere is not to be neglected, and the
   greatest, just because it goes further, is decried, as if it were mean
   and perverted.

   That, nevertheless, there are things which, to some little depth must
   be explored, is for them a necessary evil, and that a few are ever to
   be found who, from unconquerable liking, undertake it, they thank the
   gods, and with sacred pity regard them as willing sacrifices. They most
   sincerely lament that there are feelings which cannot be tamed by the
   external sway of their formulas and precepts, and that in this way many
   men are rendered socially unhappy or immoral. People for whom the moral
   side of civil life is everything, and whom, though they may step a
   little beyond their trade, I reckon also among this class, consider
   this one of the profoundest evils of human nature, to be got rid of
   with all possible speed. The good people believe that their own
   activity is everything and exhausts the task of humanity, and that, if
   all would do what they do, they would require no sense for anything
   except for action. Wherefore they dock everything with their shears,
   and they will not suffer a single characteristic phenomenon that might
   awake a religious interest to grow. What can be seen and understood
   from their standpoint is all they allow, and it is merely a small,
   barren circle, without science, without morals, without art, without
   love, without spirit, I might almost say without letter. [31] In short,
   it is without anything whereby the world might disclose itself, and yet
   it has many lofty pretensions to the same. They think, indeed, that
   they have the true and real world, and that they are the people who
   grasp and treat all things in their true connection.

   Would that they could but once see that, for anything to be known as an
   element of the Whole, it must necessarily be contemplated in its
   characteristic nature and in its fullest completeness! In the Universe
   it can be nothing except by the totality of its effects and relations.
   That is the sum and substance, and, to perceive it, every matter must
   be considered, not from some outside point, but from its own proper
   centre, which is to say, in its separate existence, its own proper
   nature. This is to have all points of view for everything, and the
   opposite is to have one point of view for all, which is the most direct
   way to leave the Universe behind, to sink in lamentable narrowness and
   become a serf bound to the spot of earth on which we happen to stand.

   In the relations of man to this world there are certain openings into
   the Infinite, prospects past which all are led that their sense may
   find its way to the Whole. Immediate feelings of definite content may
   not be produced by this glimpse, but there may be a general
   susceptibility to all religious feelings. Those prospects therefore,
   are wisely blocked up, and in the opening some philosophical caricature
   is placed as an ill-favoured place is at times covered by some sorry
   picture.

   And if, as happens at times, the omnipotence of the Universe makes
   itself manifest in those people of understanding Themselves, if some
   ray penetrating falls upon their eyes and their soul cannot be shielded
   from some stirring of those emotions, the Infinite is never a goal to
   which they fly for rest. It is as a post at the end of a course, simply
   a point to be rounded, without touching, at the greatest speed, and the
   sooner they can return to their old place the better.

   Birth and death fire such points. Before them it is impossible to
   forget that our own self is completely surrounded by the Infinite.
   Despite of their frequency, so soon as they touch us more nearly, they
   always stir a quiet longing and a holy reverence. The measurelessness
   of sense perception is also a hint at least of a still higher infinity.
   But nothing would please better those persons of understanding than to
   be able to use the greatest radius of the system of the worlds, as men
   now use the meridian of the earth, for measuring and reckoning in
   common life. And, if the images of life and death do approach them,
   believe me, however much they may speak of religion, it does not lie so
   near their hearts as to use the occasion to win some few young people
   for caution and economy in the use of their powers and for the noble
   art of lengthening life.

   Punished they certainly are. They reach no standpoint from which they
   might themselves rear, from the foundation, this worldly wisdom in
   which they trust, but move slavishly and reverently in ancient forms or
   divert themselves with little improvements. This is the extreme of
   utilitarianism to which the age with rapid strides is being hurried by
   worthless scholastic word-wisdom. This new barbarism is a fit
   counterpart of the old. It is the beautiful fruit of the paternal
   eudaimonistic politics which has supplanted rude despotism and
   permeates all departments of life. We have all been affected, and the
   capacity for religion, not being able to keep pace in its development
   with other things, has suffered in the early bud.

   These men, the crazy buttresses of a crumbling time, I distinguish from
   you, even as you would not have yourselves made equal with them, for
   they do not despise religion, and they are not to be called cultured.
   But they destroy religion as much as they can, and they train the age
   and enlighten men, even to transparency, if they had their will. They
   are still the dominating party, and you and we are but a very few.
   Whole towns and countries are educated on their principles. Those again
   who have come through this education, are found in society, in science,
   and in philosophy. Nay, philosophy is their peculiar place of abode.
   And now it is not merely ancient philosophy--using the present highly
   historical classification into ancient new and newest--but the new also
   they have annexed. By their vast influence on every worldly interest
   and the semblance of philanthropy which dazzles the social inclination,
   this way of thinking ever holds religion in subjection, and resists
   every movement whereby its life might anywhere reveal itself with full
   power.

   Religion at present can only be advanced by the strongest resistance to
   this general tendency, and it cannot begin except by radical
   opposition. As everything follows the law of affinity, sense can only
   triumph by taking possession of an object on which this kind of
   understanding so hostile to it, hangs but loosely. This it will acquire
   most easily and with superfluity of free power. Now this object is the
   inner, not the outer world. The enlightening psychology, the
   masterpiece of this kind of understanding, has at length exhausted
   itself by extravagance and lost almost all good name. The calculating
   understanding has here first vacated the field and left it open once
   more for pure observation. A religious man must be reflective, his
   sense must be occupied in the contemplation of himself. Being occupied
   with the profoundest depths, he abandons meanwhile all external things,
   intellectual as well as physical, leaving them to be the great aim of
   the researches of the people of understanding. In accordance with this
   law, the feeling for the Infinite is most readily developed in persons
   whose nature keeps them far from that which is the central point of all
   the opponents of the universal complete life. Hence it comes that, from
   of old, all truly religious characters have had a mystical trait, and
   that all imaginative natures, which are too airy to occupy themselves
   with solid and rigid worldly affairs, have at least some stirrings of
   piety. This is the character of all the religious appearances of our
   time; from those two colours, imagination and mysticism, though in
   various proportions, they are all composed. Appearances I say, because,
   in this state of things, more is scarcely to be expected.

   Imaginative natures fail in penetrative spirit, in capacity for
   mastering the essential. A light changing play of beautiful, often
   charming, but merely fortuitous and entirely subjective combinations,
   satisfies them and is the highest they can conceive, and a deeper and
   inner connection presents itself in vain. They are really only seeking
   the infinity and universality of charming appearances. According as it
   is viewed this may be less or very much more than their sense can
   attain, but to appearance they have accommodated themselves, and
   instead of a healthy and powerful life, they have only disconnected and
   fleeting emotions. The mind is easily kindled, but it is with a flame
   as unsteady as it is ready. They have emotions of religion just as they
   have of art, philosophy and all things great and beautiful--they are
   attracted by the surface.

   To the very nature of the other class, again, religion pre-eminently
   belongs. But their sense always remains turned towards themselves, for,
   in the present condition of the world, they do not know how to attain
   anything beyond, and they soon fail in material for cultivating their
   feeling to an independent piety. There is a great and powerful
   mysticism, not to be considered by the most frivolous man without
   reverence and devotion, which, by its heroic simplicity and proud scorn
   of the world, wrings admiration from the most judicious. It does not
   arise from being sated and overladen by external influences, but, on
   every occasion, some secret power ever drives the man back upon
   himself, and he finds himself to be the plan and key of the Whole.
   Convinced by a great analogy and a daring faith that it is not
   necessary to forsake himself, but that the spirit has enough in itself
   to be conscious of all that could be given from without, by a free
   resolve, he shuts his eyes for ever against all that is not himself.
   Yet this contempt is no ignorance, this closing of the sense no
   incapacity.

   Thus, alas! it stands with our party at the present day. They have not
   learned to open their souls to Nature. Their living relation to it
   suffers from the clumsy way in which objects are rather indicated than
   shown, and they have neither sense nor light remaining from their
   self-contemplation sufficient to penetrate this ancient darkness.
   Wherefore, in scorn of this evil age, they would fain have nothing to
   do with its work in them. Their higher feeling is thus untrained and
   needy, and their true inward fellowship with the world is both confined
   and sickly. Alone with their sense, they are compelled to circulate
   eternally in an all too narrow sphere, and, after a sickly life, their
   religious sense dies, from want of attraction, of indirect weakness.

   Another end awaits those whose sense for the highest turns boldly
   outwards, seeking there expansion and renovation for its life. Their
   disharmony with the age only too clearly appears, for they suffer a
   violent death, happy if you will, yet fearful, the suicide of the
   spirit. Not knowing how to comprehend the world, the essence and larger
   sense of which remains strange to them among the paltry views to which
   an outward constraint limits them, they are deceived by confused
   phenomena, abandoned to unbridled fancies, and seek the Universe and
   its traces where they never were. Finally they unwillingly rend asunder
   utterly the connection of the inner and the outer, chase the impotent
   understanding and end in a holy madness, the source of which almost no
   man knows. They are loud screaming but not understood victims of the
   general contempt and maltreatment of the heart of man. Only victims,
   however, not heroes, for whosoever succumbs, though it be in the final
   test, cannot be reckoned among the recipients of the inmost mysteries.

   This complaint that there are no permanent, openly recognized
   representatives of religion among us, is not to recall my earlier
   assertions that our age is not less favourable to religion than any
   other. The amount of religion in the world is not diminished, but it is
   broken up and driven apart by an oppressive force. It reveals itself in
   small and fleeting though frequent manifestations that rather exalt the
   variety of the Universe and delight the eye of the observer, than
   produce for itself a great and sublime impression. I abide by the
   conviction that there are many who breathe out the sweetest fragrance
   of the young life in sacred longing and love to the Eternal and the
   Changeless, and who late at least, and perhaps never, are overcome by
   the world; that there are none to whom once, at least, the high
   World-Spirit has not appeared, casting on them, while they were ashamed
   for themselves and blushed at their unworthy limitation, one of those
   piercing glances that the downcast eye feels without seeing. By this I
   abide, and the conscience of everyone can judge of it. But heroes of
   religion, holy souls, as they have been seen, who are entirely
   permeated by religion which is all in all to them, are wanting and must
   be wanting to this generation. And as often as I reflect on what must
   happen and what direction our culture must take, if religious men of a
   higher type are again to appear as a natural if rare product of their
   age, I think that your whole endeavour--whether consciously, you may
   yourselves decide--is not a little helpful for a palingenesis of
   religion. Partly your general working, partly the endeavours of a
   narrower circle, partly the sublime ideas of a few spirits notable
   among mankind, shall serve this purpose. [32]

   The strength and compass, as well as the purity and clearness of every
   perception, depend upon the keenness and vigour of the sense. Suppose
   the wisest man without opened senses. He would not be nearer religion
   than the most thoughtless and wanton who only had an open and true
   sense. Here then we must begin. An end must be made to the slavery in
   which the sense of man is held, for the benefit of exercisings of the
   understanding whereby nothing is exercised, of those enlightenments
   that make nothing clear, of those dissectings whereby nothing is
   resolved. This is an end for which you will all labour with united
   powers. It has happened to the improvements in education as to all
   revolutions that have not been begun on the highest principles: things
   have gradually glided back into the old course, and only a few changes
   in externals preserve the memory of what was at first considered a
   marvellously great occurrence. Hence our judicious and practical
   education of to-day is but little distinguished from the ancient
   mechanical article, and that little is neither in spirit nor in
   working. This has not escaped you. It begins to be as detestable to all
   truly cultured people as it is to me. A juster idea of the sacredness
   of childhood and the eternity of inviolable liberty is spreading. Even
   in the first stages of development, it is seen that the manifestations
   of liberty must be expected and inquired for. Soon those barriers shall
   be broken down; the intuitive power will take possession of its whole
   domain, every organ will be opened, and it will be possible for
   objects, in all ways, to affect man.

   With this regained liberty of sense, however, a limitation and firm
   direction of the activity may very well consist. This is the great
   demand from contemporaries and posterity, with which the best among you
   are coming forward. You are tired of seeing barren, encyclopaedic
   versatility. Only by this way of self-limitation have you become what
   you are, and you know there is no other way to culture. You insist,
   therefore, that everyone should seek to become something definite, and
   follow something with steadfastness and concentration. No one can
   perceive the justice of this counsel better than the man who has
   ripened to a certain universality of sense, for he must know that,
   except by separation and limitation, perception would have no objects.
   I rejoice, therefore, at these efforts, and would they had had more
   success. Religion would thereby receive excellent help, for this very
   limitation of effort, if only the sense itself is not limited, all the
   more surely prepares for the sense the way to the Infinite and opens
   again the long interrupted intercourse. Whosoever has seen and known
   much and can then resolve, with his whole might, to do and forward
   something for its own sake, must recognize, if he is not to contradict
   himself, that other things have been made and have a right to existence
   for their own sakes. And when he has succeeded to the utmost in the
   object of his choice, it will least of all escape him at the summit of
   perfection that, without all the rest, this is nothing. This
   recognition of the strange and annihilation of the personal that urge
   themselves everywhere upon a thoughtful man, this seasonably changing
   love and contempt for all that is finite and limited are not possible
   without a dim presentiment of the World and God, and they must call
   forth a more definite longing for the One in the All.

   Every man knows from his own consciousness three spheres of the sense
   in which its different manifestations are divided. First there is the
   interior of the Ego itself; second, the outer world, in so far as it is
   indefinite and incomplete--call it mass, matter, element, or what you
   will; the third seems to unite both, the sense turning, in constant
   change, within and without, and only finding peace in perceiving the
   absolute unity of both sides, which is the sphere of the individual, of
   what is complete in itself, of all that is art in nature, and in the
   works of man. Everyone is not equally at home in all those spheres, but
   from each there is a way to pious exaltations of the soul which take
   characteristic form simply according to the variety of the ways in
   which they have been found.

   Study yourselves with unswerving attention, put aside all that is not
   self, proceed with the sense ever more closely directed to the purely
   inward. The more you pass by all foreign elements, making your
   personality appear diminished almost to the vanishing point, the
   clearer the Universe stands before you, and the more gloriously the
   terror of annihilating the fleeting is rewarded by the feeling of the
   eternal.

   Look outside again on one of the widely distributed elements of the
   world. Seek to understand it in itself, and seek it in particular
   objects, in yourself and everywhere. Traverse again and again your way
   from centre to circumference, going ever farther afield. You will
   rediscover everything everywhere, and you will only be able to
   recognize it in relation to its opposite. Soon everything individual
   and distinct will have been lost and the Universe be found.

   What way now leads from the third sphere, from the sense for art? Its
   immediate object is by no means the Universe itself. It is an
   individual thing complete in itself and rounded off. There is
   satisfaction in each enjoyment, and the mind, peacefully sunk in it, is
   not driven to such a progress as would make the single thing gradually
   disappear and be replaced by the Universe. Is there nowhere any way,
   but must this sphere for ever remain apart, and artists be condemned to
   be irreligious? Or is there perhaps some other relation between art and
   religion? I could wish to leave the question for your own solution, for
   to me the inquiry is too difficult and too strange. But you have used
   your sense and love for art to good purpose, and I would willingly
   leave you to yourselves on your native soil. One of my thoughts on the
   matter, however, I would have not to be wish and presentiment merely
   but insight and prophecy. But judge for yourselves. If it is true that
   there are sudden conversions whereby in men, thinking of nothing less
   than of lifting themselves above the finite, in a moment, as by an
   immediate, inward illumination, the sense for the highest comes forth
   and surprises them by its splendour, I believe that more than anything
   else the sight of a great and sublime work of art can accomplish this
   miracle. And I would believe that, without any gradual approximation
   beforehand, you may perhaps be met by such a beam of your own sun and
   turned to religion.

   By the first way of finding the Universe, the most abstracted
   self-contemplation, the most ancient eastern Mysticism, with marvellous
   boldness that resembled the more recent Idealism among us, linked the
   infinitely great to the infinitely little and found everything
   bordering on nothing.

   From the contemplation of the masses and their counterparts, again,
   every religion, the pattern of which is the heavens or elemental
   nature, has manifestly proceeded. The polytheistic Egypt was long the
   most perfect nurse of this type of thought. In it we can at least guess
   that the purest intuition of the original and real may have walked in
   meek tolerance close beside the darkest superstitions and the most
   senseless mythology. [33]

   And if there is nothing to tell of a religion originating in art that
   has ruled peoples and times, it is all the clearer that the sense for
   art has never approached those two kinds of religion without covering
   them with new beauty and holiness and sweetly mitigating their original
   narrowness. Thus the ancient sages and poets, and above all, the
   artists of the Greeks, changed the natural religion into fairer, more
   gladsome form. In all the mythical representations of the divine Plato
   and his followers, which you would acknowledge rather as religious than
   as scientific, we perceive how beautifully that mystical
   self-contemplation mounts to the highest pinnacle of divineness and
   humanness. Simply by the ordinary life in the sphere of art and by a
   living endeavour, sustained by indwelling power and especially by
   poetic art, he penetrates from one form of religion to the opposite and
   unites both. One can only marvel, therefore, at the beautiful
   self-forgetfulness with which in holy zeal, as a just king that does
   not spare even his too soft-hearted mother, he speaks against art, for,
   where there was no corruption and no misunderstanding produced by
   corruption, the work of art was but a free-will service rendered to the
   imperfect natural religions.

   At present art serves no religion, and all is different and worse.
   Religion and art stand together like kindred beings, whose inner
   affinity, though mutually unrecognized and unsuspected, appears in
   various ways. [34] Like the opposite poles of two magnets, being
   mutually attracted, they are violently agitated but cannot overcome
   their gravity so as to touch and unite. Friendly words and outpourings
   of the heart are ever on their lips, but they are always held back, as
   they cannot find again the right manner and the last reason of their
   thinking and longing. They await a fuller revelation and, suffering and
   sighing under the same load, they see each other enduring, with
   heartfelt liking and deep feeling perhaps, but without the love that
   truly unites. Will this common burden bring about the happy moment of
   their union, or from pure love and joy is there to be as you desire a
   new day for art alone? However it comes, whichever is first set free
   will certainly hasten, with at least a sister's faithfulness, to aid
   the other.

   But religion of both types not only is without the aid of art, but is,
   in its own state, worse than of old. The two sources of perception and
   feeling of the Infinite streamed forth magnificently upon an age when
   scientific subtilties, without true principles, had not yet corrupted
   by their commonness the purity of the sense, even though neither may
   have been rich enough to produce the highest. At present, they are
   troubled by the loss of simplicity and the ruinous influence of a
   conceited and false insight. How are they to be purified? Whence are
   they to have power and fulness for enriching the soil with more than
   ephemeral products? To unite their waters in one channel, is the sole
   means for bringing religion to completion by the way we are now going.
   That would be an event, from the bosom of which, in a new and glorious
   form, religion would soon go to meet better times.

   See then, whether you wish it or not, the goal of your highest
   endeavours is just the resurrection of religion. By your endeavours
   this event must be brought to pass, and I celebrate you as, however
   unintentionally, the rescuers and cherishers of religion. Do not
   abandon your post and your work till you have unlocked the recesses of
   knowledge, and, in priestlike humility, have opened the sanctuary of
   true science. Then all who draw nigh, and the sons of religion among
   them, will be compensated for what half knowledge and arrogance have
   made them lose.

   Philosophy, exalting man to the consciousness of his reciprocity with
   the world, teaching him to know himself, not as a separate individual,
   but as a living, operative member of the Whole, will no longer endure
   to see the man who steadfastly turns his eye to his own spirit in
   search of the Universe, pine in poverty and need. The anxious wall of
   separation is broken down. The outer world is only another inner world.
   Everything is the reflection of his own spirit, as his spirit is the
   copy of all things. He can seek himself in this reflection without
   losing himself or going outside of himself. He can never exhaust
   himself in contemplation of himself, for in himself everything lies.

   Ethics, in its chaste and heavenly beauty, far from jealousy and
   despotic pride, will hand him at the entrance the heavenly lyre and the
   magic glass, that he may see in countless forms the earnest quiet image
   of the spirit ever the same and may accompany it with divine music.

   Natural science sets the man who looks around him to discover the
   Universe, in the centre of nature, and no longer suffers him to
   dissipate himself fruitlessly in the study of small details. He can now
   pursue the play of nature's powers into their most secret recesses,
   from the inaccessible storehouses of energized matter to the artistic
   workshops of the organic life. He measures its might from the bounds of
   world-filled space to the centre of his own Ego, and finds himself
   everywhere in eternal strife and in closest union. He is nature's
   centre and circumference. Delusion is gone and reality won. Sure is his
   glance and clear is his view. Under all disguises he detects it and
   nowhere rests except in the Infinite and the One. Already I see some
   distinguished forms return from the sanctuary after initiation into
   those mysteries, who, having purified and adorned themselves, will come
   forth in priestly robes.

   Can one goddess, then, still linger with her helpful presence? For
   this, also, time will make us great and rich amends. The greatest work
   of art has for its material humanity itself, and the Deity directly
   fashions it. For this work the sense must soon awake in many, for at
   present, He is working with bold and effective art. And you will be the
   temple servants when the new forms are set up in the temple of time.
   Expound the Artist then with force and spirit; explain the earlier
   works from the later and the later from the earlier. Let the past, the
   present, and the future surround us with an endless gallery of the
   sublimest works of art, eternally multiplied by a thousand brilliant
   mirrors. Let the history of the worlds be ready with rich gratitude to
   reward religion its first nurse, by awaking true and holy worshippers
   for eternal might and wisdom. See how, without your aid, the heavenly
   growth flourishes in the midst of your plantings. It is a witness of
   the approval of the gods and of the imperishableness of your desert.
   Neither disturb it nor pluck it up; it is an ornament that adorns, a
   talisman that protects.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [29] This expression appears to contradict the words of Christ which He
   spoke to His disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you."
   Yet the contradiction is only apparent, for on another occasion He
   asked of His disciples whether they also were deceived as others had
   been, whereby He acknowledged that their continuance with Him was a
   free act. Now this is all that is here asserted. In their declaration
   of steadfastness, we can say, that they chose Him anew as their Master,
   with a quicker sense and a riper judgment. Also it would be wrong to
   interpret Christ's words as if they had only special reference to
   certain persons. This would be a particular sense which I would not
   defend. It was not by an original divine impulse common to Him and to
   them, that the kingdom of God was founded. Of subordinate movements in
   religion, such as reform of the church, this may very well be said, but
   it was not thus that Peter, as their representative, recognized Him as
   the profoundest and mightiest. Originally, the emotion was in Him
   alone; in them there was only the capacity for having it awakened. What
   is here said, therefore, entirely agrees with the representation of
   Christ; indeed, his relation to His disciples suggested it. Had not
   Christ set out from the view that every living utterance, however
   individual, can only awake its response in another in a universal way
   and that complete attachment to the individuality of another is always
   a free act, He could not have set His disciples on such a footing of
   equality as to call them brethren and friends.

   [30] What is here said follows naturally from the passage just
   explained. The best example is found in the oldest Christian history,
   in the Proselytes from Heathenism, who forsook the Jews who first woke
   in them the sense of the one Highest Being and went over to
   Christianity. In every time when the religious life is stirred, as
   unquestionably it has begun to be among us since this was written, it
   seems to me specially necessary that all who, either from profession or
   from inward call, exercise a marked religions influence, should rise to
   this freer view, that they may not wonder why so many who have received
   their first impulse from them, should only find their complete rest in
   very different views and sentiments. Let everyone rejoice at waking
   life, for he thereby approves himself an instrument of the Divine
   Spirit, but let none believe that the fashioning of it continues in his
   power.

   [31] Only by this last trait is the picture of the way of thinking here
   described made complete, for these men flee also the letter. As they
   admit a moral, political or religious confession only, in so far as
   everyone can still think what he will, so no practical rules are valid
   except with the proviso of standing exceptions, that everything
   following the principle of absolute utility, should stand completely
   alone, as nothing through nothing for nothing. Some reader of another
   stamp may look askance, however, on an expression that ascribes a
   worth, and indeed no small worth, to the letter, for I make it equal
   with the other qualities here named, and misunderstandings, specially
   struggled against at the present day are thus favoured. I would warn
   him that such a conscious depreciation of what has been set too high
   does not serve truth, but in part produces obstinacy and in part it
   favours reaction. Therefore, we would at all times ascribe a high
   degree of worth to the letter in all earnest things, in so far as it is
   not separate from the spirit and dead. The immediate life in the great
   unities is too closely shut to be entered by the letter, for what
   letter could comprehend, say, the existence of a people? and in the
   individual there are elements too fleeting to be embraced in it, for
   what letter could express the nature of a single individual? But the
   letter is the indispensable selecting discretion, without which we
   could only vibrate giddily between the individual and the great
   classes. By it the chaotic indeterminate crowd is changed into the
   determinate multitude. Nay, in the largest sense the ages are
   distinguished by the letter, and it is the master-piece of the highest
   wisdom to estimate rightly when human things require a new letter. Does
   it appear too early the love for what it is to supplant rejects it? is
   it too late, that giddiness has already begun which it can no more
   exorcise?

   [32] No one will suppose that I regard the manifestations of an
   awakened religious life so frequent, especially in Germany at the
   present time, as the fulfilment of the hope here uttered. That I do not
   regard it in this way, appears clearly enough from what follows, for a
   piety revived by greater openness of sense would be of a different type
   from what we see among as. The impatient uncharitableness of our new
   Pietists that is not content to withdraw from what it dislikes, but
   uses every social relation for defamation to the danger of all free
   spiritual life; their painful listening for special expressions, in
   accordance with which they make one man white and another black; the
   indifference of most of them to all great historical events; the
   aristocratic narrow-mindedness of others; the general dislike of all
   science are not signs of an open sense. Rather they are signs of a
   deep-rooted, morbid state which must be treated with love and also with
   great firmness, if there is not to be more loss to society in general
   than gain to individuals. We will not deny that many of the lower class
   can only be awaked from their stupidity, and of the higher from their
   worldliness, by this acerb kind of piety, yet we would wish and
   earnestly labour that this stage should be for most but a transition to
   a worthier freedom of the spiritual life. This should the more easily
   be accomplished as it is patent enough how easily men who are concerned
   with something quite different from true piety, master this form, and
   how visibly the spirit decays that is long shut up in it.

   [33] In the "Glaubenslehre" religion is divided as predominantly active
   or passive, as concerned with the problem of duty, or absolutely
   dependent on the Whole, as teleological or aesthetical. With this
   division the forms of religion here mentioned would not seem to agree,
   for the most abstracted self-contemplation, or the most objective
   contemplation of the world may be either active or passive. But I am
   not seeking to distinguish here the chief forms of religion, I am
   treating of cultivation of religion by opening of the sense. By this
   cultivation individuals are not introduced into a definite form of
   religion, but everyone is rendered capable of discerning the form that
   best suits him and of determining himself accordingly. Being more
   concerned to show the chief aspects of sense, I naturally make most
   prominent those forms in which one or other is most conspicuous. Yet
   even here it is not meant that subjective reflection has not to do with
   the objectively observing Ego, or objective observation with a world
   that awakes and sustains the spiritual life. Hence it would be vain to
   expect that Christianity be here assigned its place as in the
   "Glaubenslehre" it is placed under the ethical or teleological. Even in
   the Speech itself, it is hinted that that historical sense which is the
   completest union of both directions leads most perfectly to piety. That
   this sense lies quite specially at the foundation of Christianity, in
   which everything comes back to the relation of man to the Kingdom of
   God, requires no proof. It therefore naturally follows that
   Christianity presents a piety nourished as much by contemplation of the
   world, as by self-contemplation, and is best nourished when both are
   most joined. Of course these are subordinate distinctions of
   receptivity and are naturally quite subjective and incapable of
   determining the different forms of Christianity.

   [34] This affinity will hardly be denied now by anyone. Nothing but
   attention to the subject is required to find that, on the one hand, in
   all arts, all great works are religious representations, and that on
   the other, in all religions, Christianity not excepted, hostility to
   art involves barrenness and coldness. In all arts there is a severer,
   more sustained style and a freer and easier. Religious art mostly
   upholds the severer style. When religious objects are handled in the
   light style, the decay of religion is decided and the decay of art
   quickly follows. The lighter style only maintains its true character as
   art so long as it finds its mass and harmony in the severer. The more
   it renounces its connection with the severer style, and therefore with
   religion, the more certainly and irresistibly it degenerates into over
   refinement and the art of flattery. Already this has been often
   repeated in the history of the arts, and in individuals it is being
   repeated at the present day.
     __________________________________________________________________

FOURTH SPEECH

  ASSOCIATION IN RELIGION, OR CHURCH AND PRIESTHOOD

   Those of you who are accustomed to regard religion simply as a malady
   of the soul, usually cherish the idea that if the evil is not to be
   quite subdued, it is at least more endurable, so long as it only
   infects individuals here and there. On the other hand, the common
   danger is increased and everything put in jeopardy by too close
   association among the patients. So long as they are isolated, judicious
   treatment, due precautions against infection and a healthy spiritual
   atmosphere may allay the paroxysms and weaken, if they do not destroy,
   the virus, but in the other case the only remedy to be relied on is the
   curative influence of nature. The evil would be accompanied by the most
   dangerous symptoms and be far more deadly being nursed and heightened
   by the proximity of the infected. Even a few would then poison the
   whole atmosphere; the soundest bodies would be infected; all the canals
   in which the processes of life are carried on would be destroyed; all
   juices would be decomposed; and, after undergoing such a feverish
   delirium, the healthy spiritual life and working of whole generations
   and peoples would be irrecoverably ruined. Hence your opposition to the
   church, to every institution meant for the communication of religion is
   always more violent than your opposition to religion itself, and
   priests, as the supports and specialty active members of such
   institutions are for you the most hated among men.

   But those of you who have a somewhat milder view of religion, regarding
   it rather as an absurdity than as an absolute distraction, have an
   equally unfavourable idea of all organizations for fellowship. Slavish
   surrender of everything characteristic and free, spiritless mechanism
   and vain usages are, you consider, the inseparable consequences of
   every such institution. It is the skilful work of persons who with
   incredible success make great gain from things that are nothing, or
   which at least every other person could have done equally well.

   Were it not that I strive to bring you in this matter to the right
   standpoint, I would very unwillingly expose my heart to you on such a
   weighty matter. How many of the perverse efforts and the sad destinies
   of mankind you ascribe to religion, I do not need to recount. In a
   thousand utterances of the most esteemed among you it is clear as day.
   And I will not pause to refute those charges in detail and derive them
   from other causes. Rather let us subject the whole idea of the church
   to a new consideration, reconstructing it from the centre outwards,
   unconcerned about how much is fact and experience.

   If there is religion at all, it must be social, for that is the nature
   of man, and it is quite peculiarly the nature of religion. You must
   confess that when an individual has produced and wrought out something
   in his own mind, it is morbid and in the highest degree unnatural to
   wish to reserve it to himself. He should express it in the
   indispensable fellowship and mutual dependence of action. And there is
   also a spiritual nature which he has in common with the rest of his
   species which demands that he express and communicate all that is in
   him. The more violently he is moved and the more deeply he is
   impressed, the stronger that social impulse works. And this is true
   even if we regard it only as the endeavour to find the feeling in
   others, and so to be sure that nothing has been encountered that is not
   human.

   You see that this is not a case of endeavouring to make others like
   ourselves, nor of believing that what is in one man is indispensable
   for all. It is only the endeavour to become conscious of and to exhibit
   the true relation of our own life to the common nature of man.

   But indisputably the proper subjects for this impulse to communicate
   are the conscious states and feelings in which originally man feels
   himself passive. He is urged on to learn whether it may not be an alien
   and unworthy power that has produced them. Those are the things which
   mankind from childhood are chiefly engaged in communicating. His ideas,
   about the origin of which he can have no doubts, he would rather leave
   in quiet. Still more easily he resolves to reserve his judgments. But
   of all that enters by the senses and stirs the feelings he will have
   witnesses and participators. How could he keep to himself the most
   comprehensive and general influences of the world when they appear to
   him the greatest and most irresistible? How should he wish to reserve
   what most strongly drives him out of himself and makes him conscious
   that he cannot know himself from himself alone? If a religious view
   become clear to him, or a pious feeling stir his soul, it is rather his
   first endeavour to direct others to the same subject and if possible
   transmit the impulse.

   The same nature that makes it necessary for the pious person to speak,
   provides him also with an audience. No element of life, so much as
   religion, has implanted along with it so vivid a feeling of man's utter
   incapacity ever to exhaust it for himself alone. No sooner has he any
   sense for it than he feels its infinity and his own limits. He is
   conscious that he grasps but a small part of it, and what he cannot
   himself reach he will, at least, so far as he is able, know and enjoy
   from the representations of those who have obtained it. This urges him
   to give his religion full expression, and, seeking his own perfection,
   to listen to every note that he can recognize as religious.

   Thus mutual communication organizes itself, and speech and hearing are
   to all alike indispensable.

   But the communication of religion is not like the communication of
   ideas and perceptions to be sought in books. [35] In this medium, too
   much of the pure impression of the original production is lost. Like
   dark stuffs that absorb the greater part of the rays of light, so
   everything of the pious emotion that the inadequate signs do not
   embrace and give out again, is swallowed up. In the written
   communication of piety, everything needs to be twice or thrice
   repeated, the original medium requiring to be again exhibited, and
   still its effect on men in general in their great unity can only be
   badly copied by multiplied reflection. Only when it is chased from the
   society of the living, religion must hide its varied life in the dead
   letter.

   Nor can this intercourse with the heart of man be carried on in common
   conversation. Many who have a regard for religion have upbraided our
   times, because our manners are such that in conversation in society and
   in friendly intercourse, we talk of all weighty subjects except of God
   and divine things. In our defence I would say, this is neither contempt
   nor indifference, but a very correct instinct. Where mirth and laughing
   dwell, and even earnestness must pliantly associate with joke and
   witticism, there can be no room for what must ever be attended by holy
   reserve and awe. Religious views, pious feelings, and earnest
   reflections, are not to be tossed from one to another in such small
   morsels as the materials of a light conversation. On sacred subjects it
   would be rather sacrilegious than fitting to be ready with an answer to
   every question and a response to every address. [36] Religion,
   therefore, withdraws itself from too wide circles to the more familiar
   conversation of friendship or the dialogue of love, where glance and
   action are clearer than words, and where a solemn silence also is
   understood.

   By way of the light and rapid exchange of retorts common in society
   divine things cannot be treated, but there must be a higher style and
   another kind of society entirely consecrated to religion. On the
   highest subject with which language has to deal, it is fitting that the
   fulness and splendour of human speech be expended. It is not as if
   there were any ornament that religion could not do without, but it
   would be impious and frivolous of its heralds, if they would not
   consecrate everything to it, if they would not collect all they possess
   that is glorious, that religion may, if possible, be presented in all
   power and dignity. Without poetic skill, therefore, religion can only
   be expressed and communicated rhetorically, in all power and skill of
   speech, [37] and in its swiftness and inconstancy the service of every
   art that could aid, is willingly accepted. Hence a person whose heart
   is full of religion, only opens his mouth before an assembly where
   speech so richly equipped might have manifold working.

   Would that I could depict to you the rich, the superabundant life in
   this city of God, when the citizens assemble, each full of native force
   seeking liberty of utterance and full at the same time of holy desire
   to apprehend and appropriate what others offer. When one stands out
   before the others he is neither justified by office nor by compact; nor
   is it pride or ignorance that inspires him with assurance. It is the
   free impulse of his spirit, the feeling of heart-felt unanimity and
   completest equality, the common abolition of all first and last, of all
   earthly order. [38] He comes forward to present to the sympathetic
   contemplation of others his own heart as stirred by God, and, by
   leading them into the region of religion where he is at home, he would
   infect them with his own feeling. He utters divine things and in solemn
   silence the congregation follow his inspired speech. If he unveils a
   hidden wonder, or links with prophetic assurance the future to the
   present, or by new examples confirms old truths, or if his fiery
   imagination enchants him in visions into another part of the world and
   into another order of things, the trained sense of the congregation
   accompanies him throughout. On returning from his wanderings through
   the Kingdom of God into himself, his heart and the hearts of all are
   but the common seat of the same feeling. Let this harmony of view
   announce itself, however softly, then there are sacred mysteries
   discovered and solemnized that are not mere insignificant emblems, but,
   rightly considered, are natural indications of a certain kind of
   consciousness and certain feelings. It is like a loftier choir that in
   its own noble tone answers the voice that calls.

   And this is not a mere simile, but, as such a speech is music without
   song or melody, there may be a music among the saints that is speech
   without words, giving most definite and comprehensible expression to
   the heart.

   The muse of harmony, the intimate relation of which to religion has
   been long known, though acknowledged by few, has from of old laid on
   the altars of religion the most gorgeous and perfect works of her most
   devoted scholars. In sacred hymns and choruses to which the words of
   the poet are but loosely and airily appended, there are breathed out
   things that definite speech cannot grasp. The melodies of thought and
   feeling interchange and give mutual support, till all is satiated and
   full of the sacred and the infinite.

   Of such a nature is the influence of religious men upon each other.
   Thus their natural and eternal union is produced. It is a heavenly
   bond, the most perfect production of the spiritual nature of man, not
   to be attained till man, in the highest sense, knows himself. Do not
   blame them if they value it more highly than the civil union which you
   place so far above all else, but which nevertheless will not ripen to
   manly beauty. Compared with that other union, it appears far more
   forced than free, far more transient than eternal.

   But where, in all that I have said of the congregation of the pious, is
   that distinction between priests and laity to which you are accustomed
   to point as the source of so many evils? You have been deluded; this is
   no distinction of persons, but only of office and function. Every man
   is a priest, in so far as he draws others to himself in the field he
   has made his own and can show himself master in; every man is a layman,
   in so far as he follows the skill and direction of another in the
   religious matters with which he is less familiar. That tyrannical
   aristocracy which you describe as so hateful does not exist, but this
   society is a priestly nation, [39] a complete republic, where each in
   turn is leader and people, following in others the same power that he
   feels in himself and uses for governing others.

   How then can this be the home of the envy and strife that you consider
   the natural consequences of all religious associations? I see nothing
   but unity and, just by means of the social union of the pious, the
   gentle mingling of all the differences found in religion. I have called
   your attention to two different types of mind and two different
   directions in which specially the soul seeks its highest object. Do you
   mean that from them sects must of necessity arise, and unconstrained
   fellowship in religion be hindered? In contemplation, where there is
   severance because we comprehend only in sections, there must be
   opposition and contradiction, but reflect that life is quite different.
   In it opposites seek each other and all that is separated in
   contemplation is mingled. Doubtless persons who most resemble will most
   strongly attract each other, but they cannot on that account make up a
   whole by themselves, for there are all degrees of affinity, and with so
   many transitions there can be no absolute repulsion, no entire
   separation, even between the remotest elements.

   Take any body that by characteristic power has its own organic
   structure. Unless you forcibly isolate it by some mechanical means, it
   will not be homogeneous and distinct, [40] but it will show at the
   extremities transition to the qualities of another body. Pious persons
   at the lower stage have a closer union, yet there are always some among
   them who have a guess of something higher, who, even better than they
   understand themselves, will be understood by a person belonging to a
   more advanced society. There is thus a point of union, though it may
   yet be hidden from them. Again, if persons in whom the one type of mind
   is dominant, draw together, there will be some among them who at least
   understand the two types and, belonging in a certain sense to both, are
   connecting links between two otherwise divided spheres. Thus a person
   better fitted to put himself in religious communion with nature is not,
   in the essentials of religion, opposed to a person who rather finds the
   traces of the Deity in history, and there will never be a dearth of
   those who walk with equal ease on both ways. And if you divide the
   great domain of religion otherwise, you will still return to the same
   point. If unconstrained universality of the sense is the first and
   original condition of religion, and also, as is natural, its ripest
   fruit, you can surely see that, as religion advances and piety is
   purified, the whole religious world must appear as an indivisible
   whole.

   The impulse to abstract, in so far as it proceeds to rigid separation,
   is a proof of imperfection. The highest and most cultured always see a
   universal union, and, in seeing it, establish it. Every man is only in
   contact with his neighbour; but on every side and in every direction he
   has neighbours and is thus inseparably bound up with the whole. Mystics
   and physicists in religion; those to whom the Deity is personal and
   those to whom He is not; those who have risen to a systematic view of
   the Universe, or those who only see it in its elements or as dim chaos
   should all be united. A hand encloses them all and they cannot be quite
   separated, except forcibly and arbitrarily. Each separate association
   is a mobile, integrate part of the whole, losing itself in vague
   outlines in the whole, and it must ever be the better class of members
   who feel this truth. Whence then, if not from pure misunderstanding, is
   the wild mania for converting to single definite forms of religion that
   you denounce, and the awful watchword, "No salvation save with us"?^7

   The society of the pious, as I have exhibited it and as from its nature
   it must be, is occupied purely with mutual communication, and subsists
   only among persons already having religion of some kind. How can it be
   their business to change the minds of those who already profess to have
   a definite religion, or to introduce and initiate persons who have none
   at all? The religion of this society as such is simply the collective
   religion of all the pious. As each one sees it in others it is
   infinite, and no single person can fully grasp it, for it is in no one
   instance a unity, not even when highest and most cultivated. If a man,
   therefore, has any share in religion, it matters not what, would it not
   be a mad proceeding for the society to rend from him that which suits
   his nature, for this element also it should embrace and therefore
   someone must possess it? And how would they cultivate persons to whom
   religion generally is still strange? Their heritage, the infinite Whole
   they cannot communicate to them, and any particular communication must
   proceed from an individual and not the society. Is there something
   general, indefinite, something common to all the members that a
   non-religious person might receive? But you know that nothing in a
   general and indefinite form can actually be communicated. It must be
   individual and thoroughly definite, or it is nothing. This undertaking
   would have no measure and no rule. Besides, how would the society ever
   think of going beyond itself, seeing the need which gave it birth, the
   principle of religious association, has no such bearing? Individuals
   join and become a whole; the whole being satisfied with itself, abides
   in itself, and has no further endeavour.

   Religious effort of this kind, therefore, is never more than a private
   business of individuals, and is, if I might so say, rather in so far as
   a man is outside the church than as he is within. When, impelled by
   sacred feelings, he must withdraw from the circle of religious
   association where the common existence and life in God affords the
   noblest enjoyment, into the lower regions of life, he can still bring
   all that there occupies him into relation with what to his spirit must
   ever remain the highest. [41] On descending among persons limited to
   one earthly aim and effort, he is apt to believe--and let it be
   forgiven him--that, from intercourse with gods and muses, he has been
   transported among a race of rude barbarians. He feels himself a steward
   of religion among unbelievers, a missionary among savages. As an
   Orpheus or Amphion he hopes to win many, by heavenly melody. He
   presents himself among them as a priestly figure, expressing clearly
   and vividly his higher sense in all his doings and in his whole nature.
   And if there be any response, how willingly he nurses those first
   presentiments of religion in a new soul believing it to be a beautiful
   pledge of its growth, even under an alien and inclement sky, and how
   triumphantly he conducts the novice to the exalted assembly! This
   activity for the extension of religion is only the pious longing of the
   stranger for his home, the endeavour to carry his Fatherland with him,
   and find again everywhere its laws and customs which are his higher,
   more beauteous life. The Fatherland itself, blessed and complete in
   itself, knows no such endeavour.

   After all this, you will possibly say that I seem to be quite at one
   with you. I have shown what the church ought to be. Now, by not
   ascribing to the ideal church any of the qualities which distinguish
   the real, I have, almost as strongly as you, condemned its present
   form. I assure you, however, I have not spoken of what should be, but
   of what is, [42] unless, indeed, you deny the existence of what is only
   hindered by the limits of space from appearing to the coarser vision.
   The true church has, in fact, always been thus, and still is, and if
   you cannot see it, the blame is your own, and lies in a tolerably
   palpable misunderstanding. Remember only--to use an old but weighty
   expression--that I have not spoken of the church militant, but of the
   church triumphant, not of the church that fights against what the age
   and the state of man place in its way, but of the church that has
   vanquished all opposition, whose training is complete. I have exhibited
   a society of men who have reached consciousness with their piety, and
   in whom the religious view of life is dominant. As I trust I have
   convinced you that they must be men of some culture and much power, and
   that there can never be but very few of them, you need not seek their
   union where many hundreds, whose song strikes the ear from afar, are
   assembled in great temples. So close together, you well know, men of
   this kind do not stand. Possibly anything of the sort collected in one
   place is only to be found in single, separate communities, excluded
   from the great church. This at least is certain, that all truly
   religious men, as many as there have ever been, have not only had a
   belief, or rather a living feeling of such a union, but have actually
   lived in it, and, at the same time, they have all known how to estimate
   the church, commonly so-called, at about its true value, which is to
   say, not particularly high.

   The great association to which your strictures properly apply, is very
   far from being a society of religious men. It is only an association of
   persons who are but seeking religion, and it seems to me natural that,
   in almost every respect, it should be the counterpart of the true
   church. [43] To make this as clear to you as it is to myself, I must,
   alas! condescend upon a mass of earthly and worldly things, and wind my
   way through a labyrinth of marvellous confusions. It is not done
   without repugnance, but it is necessary, if you are to agree with me.
   Perhaps if I draw your attention to the different forms of religious
   association in the visible and in the true church, you will be
   convinced of my opinion in essentials. After what has been said, you
   will, I hope, agree that in the true religious society all
   communication is mutual. The principle that urges us to give utterance
   to our own experience, is closely connected with what draws us to that
   which is strange, and thus action and reaction are indivisibly united.
   Here, on the contrary, it is quite different. All wish to receive, and
   there is only one who ought to give. In entire passivity, they simply
   suffer the impressions on their organs. So far as they have power over
   themselves, they may aid in receiving, but of reaction on others they
   do not so much as think. [44] Does that not show clearly enough the
   difference in the principles of association? They cannot be spoken of
   as wishing to complete their religion through others, for if they had
   any religion of their own, it would, from the necessity of its nature,
   show itself in some way operative on others. They exercise no reaction
   because they are capable of none; and they can only be incapable
   because they have no religion. Were I to use a figure from
   science--from which, in matters of religion, I most willingly borrow
   expressions--I would say that they are negatively religious, and press
   in great crowds to the few points where they suspect the positive
   principle of religion. Having been charged, however, they again fail in
   capacity to retain. The emotion which could but play around the surface
   very soon disappears. Then they go about in a certain feeling of
   emptiness, till longing awakes once more, and they gradually become
   again negatively electrified.

   In few words, this is the history of their religious life and the
   character of the social inclination that runs through it. Not religion,
   but a little sense for it, and a painful, lamentably fruitless
   endeavour to reach it, are all that can be ascribed even to the best of
   them, even to those who show both spirit and zeal. In the course of
   their domestic and civil life, and on the larger scene of which they
   are spectators, there is much to stir persons with even a small share
   of religious sense. But those emotions remain only a dim presentiment,
   a weak impression on a soft mass, the outlines of which at once become
   vague. Soon everything is swept away by the waves of the active life,
   and is left stranded in the most unfrequented region of the memory,
   where it will soon be entirely overlaid by worldly things.

   From frequent repetition, however, of this little shock, a necessity at
   length arises. The dim something in the mind, always recurring, must
   finally be made clear. The best means, one would think, would be to
   take time to observe leisurely and attentively the cause. But it is not
   a single thing which they might abstract from all else, that works on
   them. It is all human things, and among them the different relations of
   their life in other departments. Then, from old habit, their sense will
   spontaneously turn to those relations and once more the sublime and
   infinite will, in their eyes, be broken up into single, miserable
   details. Feeling this, they do not trust themselves, but seek outside
   help. They would behold in the mirror of another person's
   representation that which in direct perception would soon dissolve.

   In this way they seek to reach some higher, more defined consciousness,
   yet at the end they misunderstand this whole endeavour. If the
   utterances of a truly religious man awake all those memories, if they
   have received the combined impression of them, and go away deeply
   moved, they believe that their need is stilled, that the leading of
   their nature has been satisfied, and that they have in them the power
   and essence of all those feelings. Yet they have now as formerly,
   though it may be in a higher degree, but a fleeting, extraneous
   manifestation. Being without knowledge or guess of true religion, they
   remain subject to this delusion, and in the vain hope of at length
   attaining, they repeat a thousand times the same endeavour, and yet
   remain where and what they were. [45]

   If they advanced, and a spontaneous and living religion were implanted
   in them, they would soon not wish any more to be among those whose
   one-sidedness and passivity would no longer accord with their own
   state. They would at least seek beside them another sphere, where piety
   could show itself to others both living and life-giving, and soon they
   would wish to live altogether in it and devote to it their exclusive
   love. Thus in point of fact the church, as it exists among us, becomes
   of less consequence to men the more they increase in religion, and the
   most pious sever themselves coldly and proudly. Hardly anything could
   be clearer than that man is in this association merely because he is
   but seeking to be religious, and continues in it only so long as he has
   not yet attained. [46]

   But this proceeds from the way in which the members of the church deal
   with religion, for suppose it were possible to think of a one-sided
   communication and a state of willing passivity and abnegation in truly
   religious men, there could not possibly be in their combined action the
   utter perversity and ignorance you find in the visible church. If the
   members of the church had any understanding of religion, the chief
   matter for them would be that the person whom they have made the organ
   of religion communicate his clearest, most characteristic views and
   feelings. But that is what they would not have, and they rather set
   limits on all sides to the utterances of individuality. They desire
   that he expound to them chiefly ideas, opinions, dogmas, in short, not
   the characteristic elements of religion, but the current reflections
   about them. Had they any understanding of religion, they would know
   from their own feeling that those matters of creeds, though, as I said,
   essential to true religious union, can by their nature be nothing but
   signs that the previously attained results agree, signs of the return
   from the most personal impressiveness to the common centre, the
   full-voiced refrain after everything has been uttered with purely
   individual skill. But of this they know nothing. Those matters for them
   exist for themselves and dominate special times. [47]

   The conclusion is, that their united action has nothing of the
   character of the higher and freer inspiration that is proper to
   religion, but has a school-mastering, mechanical nature, which
   indicates that they merely seek to import religion from without. This
   they attempt by every means. To that end they are so attached to dead
   notions, to the results of reflection about religion, and drink them in
   greedily, that the process that gave them birth may be reversed, and
   that the ideas may change again to the living emotions and feelings
   from which they were originally deduced. Thus they employ creeds which
   are naturally last in religious communication, to stimulate what should
   properly precede them.

   In comparison with the more glorious association which, in my view, is
   the only true church, I have spoken of this larger and widely extended
   association very disparagingly, as of something common and mean. This
   follows from the nature of the case, and I could not conceal my mind on
   the subject. I guard myself, however, most solemnly against any
   assumption you may cherish, that I agree with the growing wish that
   this institution should be utterly destroyed. Though the true church is
   always to stand open only to those who already have ripened to a piety
   of their own, there must be some bond of union with those who are still
   seeking. As that is what this institution should be, it ought, from the
   nature of the case, to take its leaders and priests always from the
   true church. [48] Or is religion to be the single human concern in
   which there are to be no institutions for scholars and beginners?

   But indeed the whole pattern of this institution must be different, and
   its relation to the true church must take an entirely different aspect.
   On this matter I may not be silent. Those wishes and views of mine are
   too closely connected with the nature of religious association, and the
   better state of things that I imagine, conduces too much to its
   glorification for me to reserve my notions. By the clear-cut
   distinction we have established, this at least has been gained, that we
   can reflect very calmly on all the abuses that prevail in the
   ecclesiastical society. You must admit that religion, not having
   produced such a church and not exhibiting itself in such a church, must
   be acquitted of every ill it may have wrought and of all participation
   in its evil state. So entirely should it be acquitted that the reproach
   that it might degenerate into it, should not once be made, seeing it
   cannot possibly degenerate where it has never been.

   I grant that in this society a disastrous sectarian spirit exists and
   must exist. Where religious opinions are used as methods for attaining
   religion, they must, seeing a method requires to be thoroughly definite
   and finished, be formed into a definite whole. [49] And where they are
   something that can only be given from without, being accepted on the
   authority of the giver, everyone whose religious speech is of a
   different cast, must be regarded as a disturber of quiet and sure
   progress, for by his very existence and the claims involved, he weakens
   this authority. Nay, I even grant that in the old Polytheism, where
   naturally religion could not be summed up as one, but willingly
   submitted to all division and severance, this sectarian spirit was much
   milder and more peaceable, and that in the otherwise better times of
   systematic religion it first organized itself and displayed its full
   power. Where all believe they have a complete system with a centre, the
   value of details must be vastly greater.

   I grant both; but you will admit that there is no reproach to religion
   in general, and there is no proof that the view of the Universe as
   system is not the highest stage of religion. I grant that in this
   society there is more regard to understanding and believing, to acting
   and to perfecting customs than is favourable to a free development of
   religious perceptions and feelings, and that in consequence, however
   enlightened its teaching be, it borders on some superstition and
   depends on some mythology; but you will admit, that, in that degree,
   its whole nature is distant from true religion. I grant that this
   association can hardly exist without a standing distinction between
   priests and laity as two different religious orders. Whosoever has
   cultivated in himself his feeling to dexterity in some kind of
   presentation, characteristically and completely, cannot possibly
   continue a layman, or conduct himself as if all this were wanting. He
   would be free, nay, bound, either to forsake this society and seek the
   true church, or to allow himself to be sent back by the true church to
   lead as a priest. This, however, remains certain, that this spirit of
   division with all that is unworthy in it and all its evil consequences,
   is not brought about by religion but by the want of religiousness in
   the multitude.

   But here you raise a new objection, which seems once more to roll back
   those reproaches upon religion. You would remind me that I myself have
   said that the great ecclesiastical society, I mean this institution for
   pupils in religion, must take its priests only from the members of the
   true church, because in itself the true principle of religiousness is
   wanting. How then can those who are perfect in religion, endure so much
   that is utterly contrary to the spirit of religion where the have to
   rule, where all things obey their voice, and they obey only the voice
   of religion! Nay, how do they produce so much that is evil, for to whom
   does the church owe its regulations, if not to the priests? Or if
   things are not as they should be, and the government of the dependent
   society has been rent from the members of the true church, where then
   is the high spirit that is justly to be expected in them? Why have they
   administered so badly their most important province? Why have they
   allowed base passions to make that a scourge of humanity, which in the
   hands of religion would have remained a blessing? And yet they are the
   persons whose most joyful and sacred duty, as you confess, is to guide
   those who need their help!

   Truly, alas! things are not as I maintained they should be. Who would
   venture to say that all, that even the majority, that even the foremost
   and notablest of those who for many a day have ruled the great
   ecclesiastical assembly, have been accomplished in religion or even
   members of the true church?

   Yet do not take what I say in excuse as mere subterfuge. When you
   attack religion, it is usually in the name of philosophy, and when you
   upbraid the church, it is usually in the name of the state. You would
   defend the politicians of every age on the ground that the interference
   of the church has made so much of their handiwork imperfect and
   ill-advised. If now, speaking in the name of the religious, I attribute
   their failure to conduct their business with better success, to the
   state and to statesmen, will you suspect me of artifice? Yet if you
   will but hear what I have to say of the true source of this evil, you
   will not, I hope, be able to deny that I am right.

   Every fresh doctrine and revelation, every fresh view of the Universe
   that awakes the sense for it on some new side, may win some minds for
   religion who by no other way could be introduced into a higher world.
   To most of them naturally this particular aspect then remains for them
   the centre of religion. They form around their master a school of their
   own, a self-existent, distinct part of the true and universal church
   which yet only ripens slowly and quietly towards union in spirit with
   the great whole. But before this is accomplished, as soon as the new
   feelings have permeated and satisfied all their soul, they are usually
   violently urged by the need to utter what is in them that they be not
   consumed of the fire within. Thus everyone proclaims the new salvation
   that has arisen for him. Every object suggests the newly discovered
   Infinite; every speech turns into a sketch of their peculiar religious
   views; every counsel, every wish, every friendly word is an inspired
   commendation of the sole way they know to salvation. Whosoever knows
   how religion operates, finds it natural that they all speak, for
   otherwise they would fear that the stones should surpass them. And
   whosoever knows how a new enthusiasm works, finds it natural that this
   living fire should kindle violently around, consume some and warm many,
   and give to thousands the surface imitation merely of a heart-felt
   glow.

   And it is those thousands that work the mischief. The youthful zeal of
   the new saints accepts them as true brethren. What hinders, they say
   all too rashly, that these also should receive the Holy Ghost? Nay,
   they themselves believe that they have received, and, in joyous
   triumph, allow themselves to be conducted into the bosom of the pious
   society. But the intoxication of the first enthusiasm past, the glowing
   surface burnt out, they show themselves incapable of enduring and
   sharing the state allotted to the true believers. Compassionately the
   saints condescend to them, and, to go to their help, relinquish their
   own higher and deeper enjoyment. Thus everything takes that imperfect
   form. This comes to pass without outward causes through the corruption
   common to all human things. In accordance with that eternal order, the
   corruption most quickly seizes upon the most fiery and active life,
   that any section of the true church which might arise in isolation
   anywhere in the world, might not remain apart from all corruption, but
   be compelled to participate in it and form a false and degenerate
   church. In all times, among all peoples, in every religion this has
   happened.

   Yet if things were only left quietly to themselves, this state could
   not anywhere long endure. Pour liquids of various gravities and
   densities, having small power of mutual attraction, into a vessel;
   shake them violently together till they seem to form one liquid, and
   you will see, if only you leave it quietly standing, how they will
   divide and only like associate itself to like. So would it have
   happened here, for it is the natural course of things. The true church
   would quietly have separated itself again to enjoy the higher, more
   intimate fellowship of which the rest are not capable. The bond among
   those that remained would then have been as good as loosed, and their
   natural dulness would then have had to look for something from without
   to determine what should become of them. And they would not have been
   forsaken by the members of the true church. Besides them, who would
   have had the smallest call to care for their state? What attraction
   would be offered to the regard of other men? What were to be won or
   what fame to be obtained from them?

   The members of the true church could, therefore, have remained in
   undisturbed possession and might have entered upon their priestly
   office among them in a new and better appointed form. Every man would
   then have gathered around him those who best understood him, who by his
   method could be most strongly stirred. Instead of the vast association,
   the existence of which you now bewail, a great crowd of smaller, less
   definite societies would have arisen. In them men would in all kinds of
   ways, now here, now there, have tested religion. They would have been
   only states to be passed, preparatory for the time when the sense for
   religion should awake, and decisive for those who should be found
   incapable of being taken hold of in any way. [50]

   Hail to those who shall first be called when, the simple way of nature
   having failed, the revolutions of human affairs shall, by a longer,
   more artificial way, lead in the golden age of religion! May the gods
   be propitious to them, and may a rich blessing follow their labours in
   their mission to help beginners, and to smooth the way for the babes to
   the temple of the Eternal--labours that in our present unfavourable
   circumstances yield us such scanty fruit. [51]

   Listen to what may possibly seem an unholy wish that I can hardly
   suppress. Would that the most distant presentiment of religion had
   forever remained unknown to all heads of states, to all successful and
   skilful politicians! Would that not one of them had ever been seized by
   the power of that infectious enthusiasm! The source of all corruption
   has been, that they did not know how to separate their deepest, most
   personal life from their office and public character. Why must they
   bring their petty vanity and marvellous presumption into the assembly
   of the saints, as if the advantages they have to give were valid
   everywhere without exception? Why must they take back with them into
   their palaces and judgment-halls the reverence due to the servants of
   the sanctuary? Probably you are right in wishing that the hem of a
   priestly garment had never touched the floor of a royal chamber: but
   let us wish that the purple had never kissed the dust on the altar, for
   had this not happened the other would not have followed. Had but no
   prince ever been allowed to enter the temple, till he had put off at
   the gate the most beautiful of his royal ornaments, the rich cornucopia
   of all his favours and tokens of honour! But they have employed it here
   as elsewhere. They have presumed to decorate the simple grandeur of the
   heavenly structure with rags from their earthly splendour, and instead
   of fulfilling holy vows, they have left worldly gifts as offerings to
   the Highest.

   As soon as a prince declared a church to be a community with special
   privileges, a distinguished member of the civil world, the corruption
   of that church was begun and almost irrevocably decided. And if the
   society of believing persons, and of persons desiring belief, had not
   been mixed after a wrong manner, that is always to the detriment of the
   former, this could not have happened, for otherwise no religious
   society could ever be large enough to draw the attention of the
   governor.

   Such a constitutional act of political preponderance works on the
   religious society like the terrible head of Medusa. As soon as it
   appears everything turns to stone.

   Though without connection, everything that is for a moment combined, is
   now inseparably welded together; accidental elements that might easily
   have been ejected are now established for ever; drapery and body are
   made from one block and every unseemly fold is eternal. The greater and
   spurious society can no more be separated from the higher and smaller.
   It can neither be divided nor dissolved. It can neither alter its form
   nor its articles of faith. Its views and usages are all condemned to
   abide in their existing state.

   But that is not all. The members of the true church the visible church
   may contain, are forcibly excluded from all share in its government,
   and are not in a position to do for it even the little that might still
   be done. There is more to govern than they either could or would do.
   There are worldly things now to order and manage, and privileges to
   maintain and make good. And even though in their domestic and civil
   affairs, they did know how to deal with such things, yet cannot they
   treat matters of this sort as a concern of' their priestly office. That
   is an incongruity that their sense will not see into and to which they
   cannot reconcile themselves. It does not accord with their high and
   pure idea of religion and religious fellowship. They cannot understand
   what they are to make out of houses and lands and riches, either for
   the true church to which they belong, or for the larger society which
   they should conduct. [52] By this unnatural state of affairs the
   members of the true church are distracted and perplexed.

   But besides all this, persons are attracted who otherwise would forever
   have remained without. If it is the interest of the proud, the
   ambitious, the covetous, the intriguing to press into the church, where
   otherwise they would have felt only the bitterest ennui, and if they
   begin to pretend interest and intelligence in holy things to gain the
   earthly reward, how can the truly religious escape subjection? And who
   bears the blame if unworthy men replace ripe saints, and if, under
   their supervision, everything creeps in and establishes itself that is
   most contrary to the spirit of religion? Who but the state with its
   ill-considered magnanimity?

   But in a still more direct way, the state is the cause why the bond
   between the true church and the visible religious society has been
   loosened. After showing to the church this fatal kindness, it believed
   it had a right to its active gratitude, and transferred to it three of
   its weightiest commissions. [53] More or less it has committed to the
   church the care and oversight of education. Under the auspices of
   religion and in the form of a congregation, it demands that the people
   be instructed in those duties that cannot be set forth in the form of
   law, that they be stirred up to a truly citizenlike way of thinking,
   and that, by the power of religion, they be made truthful in their
   utterances. As a recompense for those services, it robs it of its
   freedom, as is now to be seen in all parts of the civilized world where
   there is a state and a church. It treats the church as an institution
   of its own appointment and invention--and indeed its faults and abuses
   are almost all its own inventing; and it alone presumes to decide who
   is fit to come forward in this society as exemplar and as priest. And
   do you still charge it to religion that the visible church does not
   consist entirely of pious souls?

   But I am not yet done with my indictment. The state pollutes religious
   fellowship by introducing into its deepest mysteries its own interests.
   When the church, in prophetic devoutness, consecrates the new-born babe
   to the Deity and to the struggle for the highest, the state will take
   the occasion to receive it from the hands of the church into the list
   of its protégés. When it gives the stripling its first kiss of
   brotherhood, as one who has taken his first glance into the sacred
   things of religion, this must also be for the state the evidence of the
   first stage of civil independence; [54] if with pious wishes, it
   consecrates the union of two persons who, as emblems and instruments of
   creative nature, would at the same time consecrate themselves as
   bearers of the higher life, it must also be the state's sanction for
   the civil bond. The state will not even believe that a man has vanished
   from this earthly scene, till the church assures it that it has
   restored his soul to the Infinite and enclosed his dust in the sacred
   bosom of the earth. It shows reverence for religion and an endeavour to
   keep itself perpetually conscious of its own limits, that the state
   bows before religion and before its worshippers when it receives
   anything from the hands of the Infinite, or returns it again, but how
   all this works for the corruption of the religious society is clear
   enough. In all its regulations there is nothing directed to religion
   alone, nothing even in which religion is the chief matter. In the
   sacred speeches and instructions, as well as in the most mysterious and
   symbolical doings, everything has a legal and civil reference, [55]
   everything is perverted from its original form and nature. Hence there
   are many among the leaders of the church who understand nothing of
   religion, but who yet, as servants of the state, are in a position to
   earn great official merit, and there are many among its members who do
   not even wish to seek religion, and who yet have interest enough to
   remain in the church and bear a part in it.

   It is very apparent that a society to which such a thing can happen,
   which with false humility accepts favours that can profit it nothing
   and with cringing readiness takes on burdens that send it headlong to
   destruction; which allows itself to be abused by an alien power, and
   parts with the liberty and independence which are its birthright, for a
   delusion; which abandons its own high and noble aim to follow things
   that lie quite outside of its path, cannot be a society of men who have
   a definite aim and know exactly what they wish. This glance at the
   history of the ecclesiastical society is, I think, the best proof that
   it is not strictly a society of religious men. At most it appears that
   some particles of such a society are mixed in it and are overlaid with
   foreign ingredients. Before the first matter of this boundless
   corruption could have been admitted, the whole must have been in a
   state of morbid fermentation in which the few sound portions soon
   utterly disappeared.

   Full of sacred pride, the true church would have refused gifts it could
   not use, well knowing that those who have found the Deity and have a
   common joy in knowing Him, have in the pure fellowship in which alone
   they would exhibit and communicate their inmost nature, really nothing
   in common the possession of which could be protected by worldly power.
   On earth they require nothing but a speech by which to make themselves
   understood and a space in which to be together, things requiring no
   prince's favour.

   But if the true church have nothing to do directly with the profane
   world, and if there must be a mediating institution whereby to come
   into a certain contact with it, as it were an atmosphere, both as a
   medium for purification and for attracting new material, what form must
   this institution take and how is it to be freed from the corruption it
   has imbibed? This last question time must answer. Sometime it will
   certainly be done, but it may be done in a thousand different ways,
   for, of all sicknesses of man there are various ways of cure.
   Everything in its place will be tried and have its effect. The goal
   only I can indicate in order to show you more clearly that here also it
   has not been religion and its endeavour to which you should have
   manifested your repugnance.

   The fundamental idea of such an auxiliary institution is to exhibit to
   persons who in any degree have a sense for religion, though because it
   is not yet apparent and conscious, they are not fit for incorporation
   into the true church, so much religion as such that their capacity must
   necessarily be developed. Let us now see what there is in the present
   state of things that hinders this from taking place. I will not repeat
   that the state chooses according to its own wishes which are more
   directed to the extraneous matters in the institution, persons to be
   leaders and teachers, and that in the view of the state a man can be a
   highly intelligent educator and a single-minded effective teacher of
   duties to the people without, in the strict sense of the word, being
   religiously affected at all, and that therefore persons whom it reckons
   among its worthiest servants, may easily fail utterly. I will grant
   that everyone it appoints is truly influenced and inspired by piety, if
   you will grant that no artist can communicate his art to a school with
   any success, if there is not among his pupils some equality of
   preliminary knowledge. This is more necessary in respect of our subject
   where the master can do nothing but point out and exhibit, than in art
   where the scholar progresses by exercise and the teacher is chiefly
   useful by criticisms. All his work will be in vain if the same thing is
   not only intelligible to all, but suitable and wholesome. The sacred
   orator must obtain his hearers by a certain similarity of talents and
   cast of mind, and not by rank and file, not as they are counted out to
   him by some ancient distribution, not as their houses adjoin, or as
   they are set down in the police list. [56]

   And assuming that only persons equally near religion assemble round one
   master, they may not all be near in the same way. It is, therefore,
   most preposterous to wish to limit any pupil to a single master. There
   is no one so universally cultured in religion, nor anyone who can
   exercise all kinds of influence. No man is in a position to draw by his
   representation and speech from all who come before him the hidden gems
   of religion to light, for the sphere of religion is far too
   comprehensive. Remember the different ways by which men pass from
   consciousness of the individual and particular to the Whole and the
   Infinite: remember that, by this very mode of transition, a man's
   religion assumes its own distinct character. Think of the various
   influences whereby the Universe affects man, of the thousand single
   perceptions and of the thousand ways of combining them and showing one
   in the light of the other. Reflect, that if religion is actually to
   stir a man's own feeling, he must meet it in the definite form that
   suits his capacity and his point of view. It is, therefore, impossible
   for any master to be all things to all, and to become to every man what
   he needs. No one can be a mystic and a scientist at the same time. He
   cannot be a master in every sacred art whereby religion is expressed,
   initiated at once into prophecies, visions and prayers, into
   presentations from history and from experience and into many other
   things too numerous to mention, all the glorious branches into which
   the crown of the heavenly tree of priestly art is divided. Master and
   disciples, therefore, must, in perfect freedom, be allowed to seek and
   choose what profits them, and no one must in any way be obliged to give
   except that which he possesses and understands.

   But it is not possible for a man to limit his teaching to what he
   understands as soon as, in the very same transaction, he must have
   something else in view. Without question, a priestly man can present
   his religion with zeal and skill as is fitting, and at the same time
   remain faithful to some civil business and accomplish it effectively.
   Why then, if it suits, should not a person, having a call to the
   priesthood, be at the same time a moral teacher in the service of the
   state? There is nothing against it. He may do both, only not the one in
   and through the other; he must not wear both natures at the same time,
   not accomplish the two concerns by the one action. The state may be
   satisfied, if it so pleases, with a religious morality, but religion
   rejects consciously and individually every prophet and priest that
   moralizes from this point of view. Whosoever would proclaim religion
   must do it unadulterated.

   It is opposed to every sentiment of honour of a master in his business,
   and more particularly of a master in religious purity, if a true priest
   has to do with the state on such unworthy and impossible conditions.
   When the state takes other workmen into its pay, whether for the better
   cultivation of their own talents or to attract pupils, it removes from
   them all extraneous business, nay, it makes it incumbent upon them to
   refrain. It recommends them to give themselves chiefly to the special
   section of their art, in which they believe they can accomplish most,
   and then it allows their nature full scope. With the artists of
   religion alone, it does exactly the contrary. They must embrace the
   whole compass of their subject, and it prescribes to them what school
   they shall be of and lays upon them unseemly burdens. It will not even,
   along with attention to its business, grant them leisure for special
   cultivation of some kind of religious presentation which yet is for
   them the chief matter, nor free them from burdensome constraints. Even
   after it has, as in every case it must, set up for itself a school of
   civil duties, [57] it still will not allow them to follow their own
   ways. And yet, though it cannot be unconcerned about the priestly
   works, it employs them neither for use nor for show like other arts and
   sciences! Away then with every such union between church and state!
   [58] That remains my Cato's utterance to the end, or till I see the
   union actually destroyed.

   Away too with all that has even a semblance to rigid union of priest
   and laity, whether among themselves or with each other! [59] Learners
   shall not form bodies, for, even in mechanical trades, it can be seen
   how little that profits. And the priests, I mean as such, shall form no
   brotherhood among themselves. They shall neither divide their work nor
   their knowledge according to corporations, but let each man do his own
   duty without concerning himself about others, or having in this matter
   closer connection with one than with another. Between teacher and
   congregation also, there shall be no firm outward band. According to
   the principles of the true church, the mission of a priest in the world
   is a private business, and the temple should also be a private chamber
   where he lifts up his voice to give utterance to religion. Let there be
   an assembly before him and not a congregation. Let him be a speaker for
   all who will hear, but not a shepherd for a definite flock.

   Only under such conditions, can truly priestly souls take charge of
   seekers for religion. Thus only can this preparatory association
   actually lead to religion and make itself worthy to be regarded as an
   adjunct and vestibule of the true church, for thus only it can lose all
   that in its present state is unholy and irreligious. By universal
   freedom of choice, recognition and criticism, the hard and pronounced
   distinction between priest and laity will be softened, till the best of
   the laity come to stand where the priests are. All that is now held
   together by the unholy bond of creeds will be severed. [60] Let there
   be no point of union of this kind, and let none offer the seekers a
   system making exclusive claim to truth, but let each man offer his
   characteristic, individual presentation. This appears the sole means
   for putting an end to the mischief. It is a poor, if old device,
   capable only of alleviating the evil for a moment, when ancient
   formulas were too oppressive or were too varied to consort in the same
   bonds, to cut up the church by partition of the creed. Like a polypus,
   each piece grows again into a whole, and if the character is contrary
   to the spirit of religion, it is no improvement that several societies
   should bear it. The visible religious society can only be brought
   nearer the universal freedom and majestic unity of the true church by
   becoming a mobile mass, having no distinct outlines, but each part
   being now here, now there, and all peacefully mingling together. The
   hateful sectarian and proselytizing spirit which leads ever farther
   astray from the essentials of religion, can only be extinguished when
   no one, any more, is informed that he belongs to a distinct circle, and
   is for other circles of a different faith.

   In regard to this society, you see, our wishes are identical. What is
   obnoxious to you opposes us also. Permit me, however, always to add
   that this would not have been as it is, if we had only been left alone
   to occupy ourselves in our own proper work. Our common interest is to
   have the evil removed, but there is little we can do except to wish and
   hope. How such a change will take place among us Germans I do not know.
   Will it be, as in neighbouring countries, only after a great commotion
   and then everywhere at once? Will the state, by an amicable arrangement
   and without the death and resurrection of both church and state, break
   off its unhappy marriage with the church? Or will it endure that
   another, more virginal institution arise alongside of the one that is
   for ever sold to it? [61] I do not know.

   But till something of this kind do happen, a heavy fate must lie upon
   all holy souls, who, glowing with religion, would seek to exhibit their
   most holy things even in the profane world, that something might
   thereby be accomplished. I will not delude the members of the state
   privileged order into making much account of what in these
   circumstances they can accomplish by speech for the dearest wish of
   their heart. And if many of them believe themselves bound not to be
   always speaking only of piety, nay, not even frequently to speak
   chiefly of it and to speak of it alone only on solemn occasions, if
   they are not to be untrue to their political calling, I know little to
   say against it.

   But this cannot be taken from them, that they can proclaim by a
   priestlike life the spirit of religion, and this may be their
   consolation and their best reward. In a holy person everything is
   significant; in an acknowledged priest of religion everything has a
   canonical meaning. They may, therefore, in all their movements exhibit
   the nature of religion. Even in the common relations of life nothing
   may be lost of the expression of a pious mind. The holy ardour with
   which they treat everything shows that even in trifles that a profane
   spirit skims over thoughtlessly, the music of noble feelings resounds
   in them. The majestic calm with which they equalize small and great,
   shows that they refer everything to the Unchangeable and in all things
   alike perceive the Deity. The bright serenity with which they pass
   every trace of decay, reveals to all how they live above time and above
   the world. The utmost ease of self-denial indicates how much of the
   limits of personality they have already abolished. The constantly open
   and active sense that neither the rarest nor the commonest escapes,
   shows how unweariedly they seek the Deity and listen for His voice. If
   in this way the whole life and every movement of soul and body is a
   priestlike work of art, the sense for what dwells in them may by this
   dumb speech be awakened in many.

   And not content to express the nature of religion, they must also in a
   similar way destroy the false appearance of it. With childlike
   ingenuousness, and in the high simplicity of utter unconsciousness,
   seeing no danger, and feeling no need of courage, they disregard what
   base prejudices and subtle superstition have surrounded with a spurious
   glory of sanctity. Unconcerned as the infant Hercules, they let
   themselves be hissed at from all quarters by the snakes of solemn
   calumny, being able to crush them quietly in a moment. To this holy
   service they may devote themselves till better times, and I think that
   you also will have reverence for this unassuming worth, and will augur
   well for its influence on men.

   But what am I to say to those to whom you refuse the priestly robe
   because they have not gone through a definite course of science in a
   definite way? Whither shall I direct them with the social bent of their
   religion not directed alone to the true church, but also outward to the
   world? Having no greater scene in which, in any striking way, they
   might appear, they may rest satisfied with the priestly service of
   their household gods. [62] One family can be the most cultured element
   and the truest picture of the Universe. When quietly and securely all
   things work together, all the powers that animate the Infinite are thus
   operative; when all advances in quiet joyousness, the high World-Spirit
   rules in it; when the music of love accompanies all movements, the
   harmony of the spheres resounds, resounds in the smallest space. They
   may construct this sanctuary, order it and cherish it. In pious might
   they may set it up clearly and evidently; with love and spirit they may
   dispose it. By this means many will learn to contemplate the Universe
   in the small, obscure dwelling. It will be a Holy of Holies in which
   many will receive the consecration of religion. This priesthood was the
   first in the holy and infant world, and it will be the last when no
   other is any longer necessary.

   Nay, at the end of our future culture we expect a time when no other
   society preparatory for religion except the pious family life will be
   required. At present, millions of men and women of all ranks sigh under
   a load of mechanical and unworthy labours. The older generation
   succumbs discouraged, and, with pardonable inertness, abandons the
   younger generation to accident in almost everything, except the
   necessity straightway to imitate and learn the same degradation. That
   is the cause why the youth of the people do not acquire the free and
   open glance whereby alone the object of piety is found. There is no
   greater hindrance to religion than that we must be our own slaves, and
   everyone is a slave who must execute something it ought to be possible
   to do by dead force. We hope that by the perfecting of sciences and
   arts, those dead forces will be made serviceable to us, and the
   corporeal world, and everything of the spiritual that can be regulated,
   be turned into an enchanted castle where the god of the earth only
   needs to utter a magic word or press a spring, and what he requires
   will be done. Then for the first time, every man will be free-born;
   then every life will be at once practical and contemplative; the lash
   of the task-master will be lifted over no man; and everyone will have
   peace and leisure for contemplating the world in himself. It is only
   the unfortunate to whom this is wanting, from whose spiritual organs
   all nourishing forces are withdrawn, because their whole being must be
   spent untiringly in mechanical service that need individual, fortunate
   souls to come forward and assemble them about them, to be their eye for
   them, and in a few swift minutes communicate to them the highest
   content of a life. But when the happy time comes and everyone can
   freely exercise and use his sense, at the very first awaking, of the
   higher powers, in sacred youth, under the care of paternal wisdom, all
   who are capable will participate in religion. All communication that is
   not mutual will then cease, and the father, well repaid, will lead the
   stout son, not only into a more joyful world and a lighter life, but
   straightway into the sacred assembly also of the worshippers of the
   Eternal, now increased in number and activity.

   In the grateful feeling that, when this better time has come, however
   far off it may still be, the efforts to which you have devoted your
   days, shall have contributed somewhat to its coming, permit me once
   more to direct your attention to the fair fruit of your labour. Allow
   yourselves to be led once more to the exalted fellowship of truly
   religious souls. It is dispersed and almost invisible, but its spirit
   rules everywhere, even where but few are gathered in the name of the
   Deity. What is there in it that should not fill you with admiration and
   esteem, ye friends and admirers of the good and beautiful? They are
   among themselves an academy of priests. The exhibition of the holy
   life, which for them is the highest, is treated by everyone as his art
   and study, and the Deity out of His endless riches apportions to each
   one his own lot. To a universal sense for everything belonging to the
   sacred sphere of religion, every man joins as artists should, the
   endeavour to perfect himself in some one department. A noble rivalry
   prevails, and a longing to produce something worthy of such an assembly
   makes everyone with faithfulness and diligence master all that belongs
   to his special section. In a pure heart it is preserved, with
   concentrated mind it is arranged, by heavenly art it is moulded and
   perfected. Thus in every way and from every source, acknowledgment and
   praise of the Infinite resound, everyone bringing, with joyous heart,
   the ripest fruit of his thinking and examining, of his comprehending
   and feeling. They are also among themselves a choir of friends.
   Everyone knows that he is both a part and a work of the Universe, in
   him also its divine life and working being revealed. He, therefore,
   regards himself as an object worthy of the attention of others. With
   sacred reserve, yet with a ready openness that all may enter and
   behold, he lays bare everything of the relations of the Universe of
   which he is conscious and what of the elements of humanity takes
   individual shape in him. Why should they hide anything from one
   another? All that is human is holy, for all is divine. Again, they are
   among themselves a band of brothers--or have you perhaps an intenser
   expression for the entire blending of their natures, not in respect of
   existence and working, but in respect of sense and understanding? The
   more everyone approaches the Universe and the more they communicate to
   one another, the more perfectly they all become one. No one has a
   consciousness for himself, each has also that of his neighbour. They
   are no longer men, but mankind also. Going out of themselves and
   triumphing over themselves, they are on the way to true immortality and
   eternity.

   If in any other department of life, or in any other school of wisdom,
   you have found anything nobler than this, impart it to me; mine I have
   given you.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [35] The assertion that scripture alone is sufficient to awake piety,
   seems to have experience against it, from the sacred writings of all
   religions down to our books for edification so widely distributed among
   a certain class, and the small religious pamphlets which are the means
   chiefly used at present for reaching the people. First in respect of
   the sacred writings, only those of monotheistic religions need detain
   us. The Koran alone has arisen purely as a writing, and it is
   indisputably to be looked upon mostly as a manual and repertorium of
   themes for religious compositions, a fact quite in accordance with the
   unoriginal character of this religion. And the direct, strictly
   religious influence of the Koran is not to be esteemed very highly. In
   the very various Jewish codex, the gnomic books especially have
   something of this purely literary character. The historical section,
   strictly speaking, has none. The poetical section again in part, as for
   example a large number of the Psalms, deals immediately with definite
   occasions and was not produced simply for indefinite use, and is,
   therefore, not scripture in the strict sense. And who will deny that
   they produced the effect in this connection of which their present
   influence as mere scripture is but a shadow? The prophetic poetry of
   the earlier period, was for the most part actually spoken, and a not
   insignificant part has been handed down imbedded in history. As this
   living traditional power was lost, and the Scriptures became to the
   Jewish people a learned study, its direct influence was lost, and it
   became simply the bearer of the living utterances linked to it. The New
   Testament Scriptures also are, as little as possible, writing in the
   strict sense of the word. In the historical books the speeches are the
   most essential, the history being chiefly to give them the movement of
   life. Even in the history of the Passion the words of Christ are the
   most sublime and deeply moving parts, and the narrative of pains and
   agonies might easily produce only a wrong effect. The Acts of the
   Apostles alone seems to be an exception, and to have its place in the
   canon chiefly because it is the root of all church history. But just
   because it would quite limit the book to this subordinate use, it is
   repugnant to our feeling when the speeches are regarded as subsequently
   concocted, as is the fashion of other historical books. Our didactic
   books, being letters, are as little as possible mere literature, and no
   one can deny that the influence on the immediate recipients to whom the
   whole movement of the time was present, must have been much greater. We
   can only dimly, and then only by learned help, transport ourselves back
   to those times. Even then, the most vital influence of those writings
   for our time is that which was borrowed from the synagogue that all
   living religious utterance is linked to them. For that reason only, the
   reading of the Scriptures by the laity continues; otherwise, its
   influence would not entirely vanish, but it would degenerate into utter
   vagueness, So vast was the original power of these productions that
   even now, after they have become entirely literature, a fulness of
   quickening spirit dwells in them, which is the highest testimony to
   their divine power; yet the objective side of this influence, the clear
   understanding, would soon be null for the private use of the laity, but
   for that connection with the learned exposition. It is, therefore,
   natural that the Catholic Church, setting little store on preaching,
   should limit the use of Scripture by the laity. On the other hand, we,
   believing we dare not so limit it, must make the public exposition of
   Scripture much more prominent in preaching, and it must always be
   hurtful to the whole religious life when Scripture is generally made
   use of for preaching simply as a motto. The reality of the endeavour to
   rescue the contents of the sacred books from the state of being mere
   literature, appears from the ready adoption by the most pious
   Christians of a method that would be in the highest degree unnatural in
   a work made throughout purely as a book. Single detached passages of
   Scripture, neither chosen by selection nor by memory, but simply by
   chance, are used on every occasion, when religious enlightenment or
   stimulus is needed. This cannot be defended, as it too easily
   degenerates into magical frivolity, yet it is an endeavour to restore
   to the religious utterances of holy men a living influence which shall
   be direct and independent of their effects as a book. As regards our
   literature for edification again, which arises for the most part
   expressly as books, its great influence is not to be denied. The
   countless editions and the continuance of many of them through a long
   series of generations speak too clearly. And who does not feel respect
   for works that, in addition to their vitality, help to guard a great
   mass of men from the dangerous whirlwind of changing doctrine? Yet it
   will not be denied that the living word and the religious emotion in a
   community, have a far higher power than the written letter. On closer
   consideration also it will be found that the chief influence of
   practical writings rests less in their completeness than in the
   multitude of forceful, noble formulas contained, which may embrace many
   religious moments, and therefore refresh the memory of many things.
   They also offer a certain assurance that one's own religious emotions
   are not at variance with the common religious life. Hence the
   individual, clever work of this kind seldom rejoices in much success.
   This good witness is only given to able and comprehensive practical
   works. But the present endeavour of so many well-meaning societies to
   scatter a multitude of small religious leaflets among the people, that
   have no right objective character, but utter the most subjective inner
   experiences in the dead letter of a terminology that neither accords
   with literary nor religious usage, rests on a deep misunderstanding,
   and can scarcely have any other result than to bring church matters,
   the evil of which it presupposes, into still deeper degradation. A
   multitude of men will be reared who will have manifold hypocrisies,
   without any actual experience, or who will fall into sad perplexity
   because their own religious experiences do not accord with the pattern
   set before them. Is the public church life sick or weak, let each man
   do his utmost to heal it, but let no man believe it is to be replaced
   by a dead letter. That the religious life should issue from the
   circulating library seems to me like handing over the great acts of
   legislation and executive to irresponsible journals, of which the more
   numbers and improved editions the better.

   [36] Many perhaps, who formerly cherished the well-meant wish that the
   sociality which had become vain and frivolous should have new life put
   into it by an admixture of the religious element, have already applied
   the proverb to themselves that with time we may easily have too much of
   what earlier we zealously desired. Confusion and trouble enough have
   arisen from treating religious subjects in brilliant circles in the
   form of conversation, in which the personal element too easily
   preponderates. I wrote then from my youthful experiences among the
   Moravians. They had special meetings for the distinct object of
   religious conversation. An absent person of a different mind could not
   there readily be discussed, yet I have never heard anything of real
   life and worth, and I believe I have here quite rightly grasped the
   general principle. Our wish should, therefore, be not so much that in
   our free sociality religious subjects should be treated, as that a
   religious spirit should rule. And this wish will certainly not fail as
   soon as a considerable part of society consists of religious men.

   [37] Since this was written I have had almost thirty years' conduct of
   office, a period within which every man must come as near his ideal as
   he can. A greater contrast between that description, and what I myself
   have accomplished in that time in the domain of religious speech would
   be hard to imagine. Were there really such a difference of theory and
   practice, my only apology would be that, as it was given to Socrates,
   other wisdom being denied, to know that he knew nothing, the higher not
   being granted me, I was content with plain speech rather than strive
   for false ornamentation. Yet it is not quite so. My practice has been
   based on the distinction that is drawn later in this Speech between the
   existing church and the true church. In the former all discourse,
   whatever be its subject-matter, must have a didactic character. The
   speaker would bring something to consciousness in his hearers, which
   indeed he assumes to exist in them, but does not suppose would develop
   of itself in this exact way. Now the more the didactic character
   appears, the less room there is for ornament, and for this purpose a
   blessing undoubtedly rests on unadorned speech. In another religious
   art, the same thing appears. Who would think of taking the pious
   poetry, in all its power and magnificence, that is suited for
   glorifying God in a circle of thoroughly cultured religious men, of
   which we have many splendid examples in our Klopstock and our
   Hardenberg, and making it the standard in collecting a church
   hymn-book?

   [38] It can hardly be necessary for me here to guard myself against
   being misinterpreted, as wishing to banish all order from the assembly
   of the truly pious, and make them like many fanatical sects that
   arrange nothing beforehand for their meetings, but leave everything to
   the moment. On the contrary, the higher the style of religious
   utterance, the more it exhibits an artistically organized unity, the
   more it requires a rigid order. This only is meant that everything
   belonging to civil order must be left outside, and all things must be
   fashioned on the foundation of an original, universal equality. I hold
   this the essential condition of all prosperity in such a fellowship,
   not less in the actually existing church than in the ideal. Every
   fellowship is destroyed by disorder, and an order that is made for
   another society is disorder. If the distinction between priest and
   laity is not to be sharply drawn, how much less is a difference to
   apply among the laity themselves that belongs to a quite different
   sphere. If a member of the congregation, even though outwardly he may
   stand in some relation of guardian to it, assumes the right, because he
   is distinguished in the civil society, to interfere and have priestly
   functions in directing the body and arranging the meetings, any other
   member, however low his station in the civil society, would have the
   same right, and true and fitting order would be at an end.

   [39] Every reader familiar with Scripture, will here think of the
   Apostle Peter, who exhorts all Christians to train themselves into a
   holy priesthood, and assures them all that they are a royal priesthood.
   This is, therefore, a truly Christian expression. The view here set
   forth of the equality of all true members of the religious community,
   so that none are to be made merely recipient and the exclusive right of
   utterance given to one, is also a truly Christian view. Christianity
   has recognized its true goal in that prophetic saying that all should
   be taught of God. Suppose this goal attained by the whole community, so
   that there was no more need to awake religion in others, then, leaving
   out of sight the education of the young, there could be no distinction
   among members, save such as the passing occasion required. If then we
   find in all religious forms, from the earliest antiquity, the
   distinction between priest and laity in force, we are driven to assume,
   either that there was an original difference, a religiously developed
   stock that had joined a rude race and had never succeeded in raising it
   to its own fulness of religious life, or that the religious life had
   developed so unequally in a people that it had become necessary, if it
   were not again to be scattered, to organize the more advanced for more
   effective operation on the rest. In this latter case the more it
   succeeds the more superfluous this organization will become. The
   Christian priesthood is manifestly of this kind. This narrower use of
   the word I never quite justify to myself, for we in the Protestant
   community are quite agreed how far the expression generally can have no
   validity in Christianity. The need for this narrower priesthood only
   gradually made itself felt. This is the more apparent that, at the
   beginning, the apostolic character itself involved no special
   pre-eminence in the community. But this smaller body, chosen from the
   community, came to acquire a position apart from the religious
   enthusiasm of the others, because the history of Christianity and in
   particular the intimate knowledge of original Christianity necessarily
   became an object of science. In this scientific information all had to
   have some share, if their communications were to be in conscious
   agreement with history. This distinction could never disappear till all
   Christians were familiar with this science. Even though this is not to
   be looked for, the validity of this distinction must ever more and more
   be limited to the sphere in which finally alone it can have a reason.

   [40] This assertion, from which I afterwards draw the conclusion that
   the external religious society should be as mobile a body as possible,
   seems to contradict what I have exhaustively developed in the
   Introduction to the "Glaubenslehre," §§ 7-10. Here I say that in
   religious communication there are no entire separations and definite
   boundaries except by a mechanical procedure, that is a procedure which
   is in a certain sense arbitrary and not founded in the nature of the
   matter. There I say that the different pious communions that appear in
   history stand to one another, partly, as stages of development, the
   monotheistic being the highest, and, partly, as different in kind,
   according as the natural or the ethical in human life predominated.
   Further, I distinguish the individual type of common piety, partly
   externally, by its historical origin, and partly internally, as
   characteristic variation of any faith of one stage and one kind. It
   will not suffice to say that in the "Glaubenslehre" communion is
   secondary, and that the primary aim was to discover from their contents
   the characteristic features of the different types of faith,
   particularly of Christianity, for this involves dealing with the
   Christian church as a definitely bounded society. The two passages are
   rather to be harmonized as follows: On the one side, I grant here that
   certain bodies of communion are formed organically, which agrees with
   the assertion in the "Glaubenslehre" that every distinct communion has
   a historical point of departure which dominates the organic
   development. Did this point of departure not also presuppose an inner
   difference, these bodies would only be distinguished by number or by
   size, and the superiority given by favouring circumstances, like the
   fruits of one stem. Were their boundaries to touch they would naturally
   grow together, and could only be again mechanically divided. On the
   other side, in the "Glaubenslehre," an inner difference in the types of
   faith, whereby the communions are divided, is maintained. But it is
   only difference in the subordination and mutual relations of the
   separate parts, which does not involve any greater degree of communion
   than is here represented. The whole attempt there made would be in
   vain, if from one type of faith it were not possible to understand
   another. But if it is understood in its inner nature, its modes of
   externalizing itself, its services must be capable not only of being
   understood by a spectator, but in some degree of being appropriated.
   Persons to whom this is impossible, can in any communion be only the
   uncultured. Now that is simply what is here maintained, that the
   separating impulse, when it makes a hard and fast cleavage, is a proof
   of imperfection. Again, as the uncultured do not alone, but only along
   with the cultured, form the communion, the assertions there made also
   agree with this that the religious communion, though divided and
   organized, would yet in another respect be only one but for mechanical
   interference either of sword or letter. Does it not appear to us
   violent and irreligious, when the members of one communion are
   forbidden to frequent, with a view to edification, the services of
   another? Yet only by such an utterly mechanical procedure could the
   communions be quite separated.

   [41] It was doubtless serviceable to establish that the wild mania for
   proselytizing is nowhere founded in religion itself. But there seems to
   be too much here, for mild proselytizing also, every endeavour to draw
   from another form to one's own, every endeavour to implant religion in
   souls still without piety, seems to be rejected. Against the witness of
   all history, against the clear words of the Founder Himself, no less
   than against my own statements in the "Glaubeuslehre," about the
   relation of Christianity to other forms of religion, it appears to be
   maintained that the spread of Christianity in the world did not proceed
   from the pious Christian sense. But this good endeavour is always in
   some way connected with the notion, here uniformly rejected, that
   salvation, either altogether or in a much higher degree, is not to be
   found outside a definite religious communion as it is found inside.
   True and false do not seem to be here sufficiently distinguished. If
   the assertion that proselytizing work is entirely inadmissible, is a
   just consequence of the previously accepted theory of the religious
   communion, the error must be sought in the theory. On going back upon
   it we find what solves the difficulties, that the spread of our own
   form of religion is a natural and permissible private business of the
   individual. Though there is in the strict sense only one universal
   religious communion, in which all the different forms of religion
   mutually recognize each other, in which transference of a follower of
   one form to another seems to be a wish to impair the whole by
   destroying its manifoldness, it is manifest that here also much is
   naturally destroyed, which can only happen in an inferior stage of
   development. Hence it is regarded by the experienced as simply a point
   of transition, and it cannot be wrong to accelerate and guide the
   progress. Wherefore, the more the adherents of one form of religion are
   compelled to regard many other forms simply as such transitions, the
   more powerfully will the work of proselytizing organize itself among
   them. This should most apply to the monotheistic religions in general,
   and in the broadest sense to Christianity. And this holds from the
   present standpoint, as it is more fully dealt with in the
   "Glaubenslehre," as the issue of a more scientific course of thought.
   The work of proselytizing presupposes the one graduated communion. As
   Paul did in Athens, regarding the Hellenic idolatry, to assign it a
   value and obtain a link of connection for the communication of his own
   piety, it must always be done. This community of two forms of religion
   shows itself at all points wheresoever a like effort at assimilation is
   developed. We can therefore say that this is the true distinction
   between praiseworthy zeal for conversion that would recognize the
   faintest traces of religion and purify and build up a piety already
   begun, and that wild irreligious mania for conversion which easily
   degenerates into persecution. The former begins with unprejudiced and
   loving comprehension even of the most imperfect kind of faith, the
   latter believes it is exalted above any such endeavour. Further, it is
   not to be understood with too painful accuracy that proselytizing can
   only be the private business of the individual. The individual stands
   here opposed to the all-embracing communion. Hence associations of
   individuals, nay, a whole mode of faith can be regarded as individuals.
   The maxim "nulla salus," again has for the great communion of the pious
   an absolute verity, for without any piety it can acknowledge no
   salvation. Only in so far as one religious party utters it against
   another, does it work destructively, which is to say, in so far as a
   universal communion is denied. Hence it clearly goes along with the
   wild mania for conversion. The special truth of this in Christianity is
   dealt with in the "Glaubenslehre," in full agreement with these views.

   [42] It was doubtless serviceable to establish that the wild mania for
   proselytizing is nowhere founded in religion itself. But there seems to
   be too much here, for mild proselytizing also, every endeavour to draw
   from another form to one's own, every endeavour to implant religion in
   souls still without piety, seems to be rejected. Against the witness of
   all history, against the clear words of the Founder Himself, no less
   than against my own statements in the "Glaubeuslehre," about the
   relation of Christianity to other forms of religion, it appears to be
   maintained that the spread of Christianity in the world did not proceed
   from the pious Christian sense. But this good endeavour is always in
   some way connected with the notion, here uniformly rejected, that
   salvation, either altogether or in a much higher degree, is not to be
   found outside a definite religious communion as it is found inside.
   True and false do not seem to be here sufficiently distinguished. If
   the assertion that proselytizing work is entirely inadmissible, is a
   just consequence of the previously accepted theory of the religious
   communion, the error must be sought in the theory. On going back upon
   it we find what solves the difficulties, that the spread of our own
   form of religion is a natural and permissible private business of the
   individual. Though there is in the strict sense only one universal
   religious communion, in which all the different forms of religion
   mutually recognize each other, in which transference of a follower of
   one form to another seems to be a wish to impair the whole by
   destroying its manifoldness, it is manifest that here also much is
   naturally destroyed, which can only happen in an inferior stage of
   development. Hence it is regarded by the experienced as simply a point
   of transition, and it cannot be wrong to accelerate and guide the
   progress. Wherefore, the more the adherents of one form of religion are
   compelled to regard many other forms simply as such transitions, the
   more powerfully will the work of proselytizing organize itself among
   them. This should most apply to the monotheistic religions in general,
   and in the broadest sense to Christianity. And this holds from the
   present standpoint, as it is more fully dealt with in the
   "Glaubenslehre," as the issue of a more scientific course of thought.
   The work of proselytizing presupposes the one graduated communion. As
   Paul did in Athens, regarding the Hellenic idolatry, to assign it a
   value and obtain a link of connection for the communication of his own
   piety, it must always be done. This community of two forms of religion
   shows itself at all points wheresoever a like effort at assimilation is
   developed. We can therefore say that this is the true distinction
   between praiseworthy zeal for conversion that would recognize the
   faintest traces of religion and purify and build up a piety already
   begun, and that wild irreligious mania for conversion which easily
   degenerates into persecution. The former begins with unprejudiced and
   loving comprehension even of the most imperfect kind of faith, the
   latter believes it is exalted above any such endeavour. Further, it is
   not to be understood with too painful accuracy that proselytizing can
   only be the private business of the individual. The individual stands
   here opposed to the all-embracing communion. Hence associations of
   individuals, nay, a whole mode of faith can be regarded as individuals.
   The maxim "nulla salus," again has for the great communion of the pious
   an absolute verity, for without any piety it can acknowledge no
   salvation. Only in so far as one religious party utters it against
   another, does it work destructively, which is to say, in so far as a
   universal communion is denied. Hence it clearly goes along with the
   wild mania for conversion. The special truth of this in Christianity is
   dealt with in the "Glaubenslehre," in full agreement with these views.

   [43] The propensity, found in all great forms of religion, at all
   times, in varying degree and under the most different shapes, to form
   smaller and warmer societies within the great one, rests undeniably on
   the presumption that the great society has fallen into deep corruption.
   This expresses itself in separatism which accepts generally the type of
   doctrine, but will have nothing to do with the regulations of the
   religious society. Manifestly therefore, it must maintain, that the
   regulations of the society are independent of its doctrine, and
   determined by something alien, and that in consequence the members of
   the religious society are in a state of sickness. After what is said
   above about the social nature of piety, no one will believe that I am
   here speaking of separatist piety. On the contrary, it is rather of the
   endeavour to found closer associations more accordant with the idea of
   the true church. But this praise associations only deserve when they
   unfold a rich productiveness in religious communication, not when they
   are founded on a narrow and exclusive letter, and reject the idea of
   one all-embracing communion. Is this the case and productiveness is
   weak or quite fails, the state of sickness is not to be denied. Hence
   among all similar societies the Moravian Brethren, who have at least
   produced a characteristic type of poetry, are always pre-eminent.
   Religious speech also among them has more scope and variety, for,
   besides the general assembly, the community is divided up in various
   ways. A very beautiful scheme at least is not to be denied, and if the
   result is less rich, a deficiency in the cultivation of talent may be
   to blame. In other directions also this society has taken a good and
   praiseworthy course. It has rejected that exclusiveness of the letter
   which keeps the two chief branches of the Protestant Church apart, and
   stands in manifold relations to the whole of this church according as
   occasion offers. In its missionary efforts, moreover, in which it must
   be acknowledged to excel, it has displayed a pure and right tact and a
   happy readiness in reaching the most imperfect states of religion and
   awaking receptiveness for the high spirit of Christianity. Where the
   sense for such closer union is awakened, the contempt of the recognized
   church, in its existing state, is natural. But this contempt is here
   ascribed to all who, in a higher sense, are religious and the next step
   is, that from this state the endeavour must go forth to improve the
   great outward society itself and bring it nearer its natural union with
   the true church.

   [44] This description may very well be quite in accordance with the
   form which our assemblies for divine service, broadly considered,
   showed at that time. In any case it was the result of an immediate
   impression. Yet the consequence that the principle of communion in
   these assemblies is entirely different from what has actually been
   developed, is not to be drawn straightway, but only under the following
   limitations. Further on, page 178, family worship is assigned to
   members of the true church, who do not have the requisite endowments
   for coming forward in personal activity and priestly function in the
   outward religious society, that they may there satisfy their impulse to
   communicate. Now persons who are in this position cannot, despite
   outward appearance, be merely passive and receptive in the assemblies
   of the church. They carry the work of the church further, and their
   activity is actually in the assembly. Thus when public and family
   worship are regarded as one, the whole of the larger assembly appears
   as an active organism. This activity would also have its influence in
   the assembly if several families were to join for a pious purpose, if
   the leader of the assembly had this inner productiveness of its members
   before his mind. Wherefore, the consequence would only be rightly drawn
   where no religious communication had developed itself in domestic life
   and family intercourse, a thing seldom found at that time in our
   country. Further, religious communication is also an art, not
   determined by piety only, but by training also. Hence entire equality
   and reciprocity are not possible. Compare great representations in any
   art. In music, for example, the composer is not the only person, but
   the performers also, from the leading instrument to the most
   subordinate accompanyist. Then there must be the maker of the musical
   instruments, and the audience too, if they are connoisseurs, do not
   merely receive, but each one in his own way also has his work.
   Similarly we must acknowledge that in the assemblies of the church the
   greatest number can only contribute to the representation of the whole
   as accompanying artists. Thus one-sidedness only fully appears when
   such co-operation entirely fails, either the piety doing nothing but
   absorb, or the speaking and working being offered simply from a profane
   artistic sense without religious spirit.

   [45] If this were taken quite exactly, the result would certainly be
   that the visible church would exist only through its own nullity,
   through its incapacity to bring the religious feeling to any high
   degree of keenness. But that it is not to be taken exactly is manifest,
   because otherwise this cold and proud withdrawal from the visible
   church would be praised, in direct contradiction to the previous
   contention that this great religious society is by no means to be
   dissolved. Yet here, as in all similar human things, there are
   gradations, founded in the original constitution of the individual.
   Persons of different grades are directed by nature to one another, but
   it is only a shallow view that one simply affects the other, as if one
   could simply by working on another implant religion in him. Religion is
   original in every man, and stirs in every man. In some, however, it
   keeps pace with the whole individuality of the person, so that, in
   every manifestation of the pious consciousness, this individuality
   appears; in others, again, religion only appears under the form of the
   common feeling. And this may be so even in persons otherwise of marked
   individuality. The religious emotions are linked to the common states
   of things, and find in the common presentation their satisfaction. Were
   persons of more individual emotion now to withdraw from those common
   forms of presentation, both parties would suffer loss. What would
   become of the common presentations unfertilized by individual emotions
   we can see in the ecclesiastical societies in which individuality
   generally is in the background, and all rests on steadfast formulas.
   The Armenian and Greek churches, unless, indeed, the latter be now
   receiving a new impulse, appear to be quite dead, and only to be moved
   mechanically. The individual again, however strong and characteristic
   his life may be, who leaves the common ground, gives over the largest
   range of his consciousness, and, if the true church nowhere shows
   itself in actuality, nothing remains for him but an isolated,
   separatist existence, always decaying from want of a larger
   circulation.

   [46] Seeing that in this passage the view that dominates this whole
   Speech is here presented most decisively and compactly, it may be best
   to say what remains to be said in explanation and justification of it.
   The whole matter resolves itself into the right representation of the
   relation between the perfectly mutual communication, here regarded as
   the true church, and the actually existing religious communion. The
   state of this communion is acknowledged to be capable of such an
   improvement as is described further on p. 166. This being assumed, the
   question stands thus: Should there be in this educational society,
   besides the priestly work which only those fully cultured religiously
   should exercise, a special communion of such persons corresponding to
   the idea of the church to which the members of the visible religious
   society might, in the measure of their progress, go over? Now the
   greatest masters are required for the greatest representations. We have
   seen every master, who would have his full effect, requires subordinate
   artists and a worthy, an informed, a responsive audience. Further,
   great masters are too rare, and too much dispersed to fashion alone
   this twofold sphere. What remains for us then but to say that, in
   corporeal and visible form, such a society is nowhere to be found on
   earth. The best of this kind to be actually discovered, is that
   improved type of the existing church, those societies in which a
   skilful master gathers around him a number of kindred souls whom he
   fires and fashions. The more the members of this circle advance and
   fashion that twofold sphere, the more such a company is a great
   presentation of religion. For those who are the soul of such a
   presentation, there is the higher fellowship which consists in mutual
   intercourse and insight. The other members share in so far as they
   succeed in raising themselves to the possibility of such enjoyment of
   forms strange to them. The idea of the true church here given is not
   realized therefore in one single instance, but, as has been indicated
   on p. 154, by the peaceful cosmopolitan union of all existing
   communions, each being as perfect as possible after its own manner.
   This idea, belonging as it does to the completion of human nature, must
   be developed more fully in the science of ethics. Two objections to it,
   however, may be easily set aside. First, how does this agree with the
   call attributed to Christianity in the "Glaubenslehre" to absorb all
   other kinds of faith, for were all one, that cosmopolitan union for
   communicating and for understanding different faiths would not exist.
   But this has already been answered. All naturally existing different
   characteristics in Christianity would not disappear, but would always
   develope itself in a subordinate way, without injury to its higher
   unity. At present Christianity exhibits no outward unity, and the
   highest we can wish to see is just such a peaceful union of its various
   types. We have no reason to believe that it will ever exhibit an
   outward unity, but, even if it did, it would still be such a
   cosmopolitan union. But, secondly, can it be said that what is here
   called the true church has ever actually existed in any one instance?
   When the Apostles of Christ scattered to preach the Gospel and break
   bread in the houses and the schools, they exercised the priestly office
   among the laity in the visible church, and when they were by themselves
   in the upper-room to praise God and the Lord, what were they but that
   true church? In this Speech also it is pointed out not indistinctly (p.
   165), that this kind of existence has been always renewed and has never
   quite vanished from the true church. And, certainly, if there has ever
   been any one instance of the true church it was then. But something was
   wanting, something held in this Speech to be essential to the true
   church, greatness and majesty of presentation. This consciousness of
   inadequacy was, humanly speaking, among the motives for the wider
   expansion of Christianity. Yet this instance, despite its short
   continuance, showed that the imperfect church only springs from the
   perfect. But having once disappeared, the enormous expansive power of
   Christianity made its reappearance impossible, and the true church can
   never again be found except in that cosmopolitan union. The highest
   spiritual communion of the most perfect saints is thus conditioned by
   the communion of the more perfect with the less perfect. But if this
   latter communion is of a better type, and can be the only foundation
   for the former, does it deserve the reproach that only inquirers enter
   it, and only those who are not yet pious stay in it? This may still be
   said, only not as a reproach. All who enter, and not only the more
   receptive and imperfect, seek some one to inspire and encourage them,
   but the more advanced also seek helpers for such a presentation as can
   be recognized as proceeding from the spirit of the true church. Through
   this common work they seek advancement in outward mastery as well as
   inward power and truth. Hence none of the members of the church have
   attained, they are only attaining. But if to this combination in its
   best form, a combination of the perfect be opposed who seek nothing
   beyond the joy of contemplation, because everyone is already what he
   can be, this can be nothing but just that cosmopolitan union. In it
   everyone is valued simply according to his present state and
   attainments, and cannot expect to be immediately forwarded in his own
   peculiar sphere by contemplating extraneous things. But if the
   description of the true church were the immediate association of the
   more perfect, it would need to be understood literally of the church
   triumphant, for only in it can an absolutely mutual communion that is
   without inequality and without progress, be thought of. There, on the
   contrary, there is only so much of the true church as there is true
   life and reproductive development in the existing religious communions.

   [47] Two reproaches are made here against the present regulation of the
   church. The former evil has doubtless caused far more confusion at
   various times, but the latter has always given me a painful feeling of
   the undeveloped state of the society. I mean the regulation, that for
   our holiest symbol, the Lord's supper, though it is, in most larger
   communions at least, in the most natural way, the crown of each
   service, previous meditation and preparation are required on each
   occasion from the participants. Clearly no one will deny that it would
   be the finest effect of the whole service, if very many present were
   attuned for celebrating this sacred meal. But this fairest blossom of
   devoutness is lost. How often, on the other hand, with all previous
   meditation and preparation, inward and outward disturbance may enter,
   and diminish the full blessing. Now just because of the previous
   preparation it may not be easy to put off the participation. Is not
   this way of doing a speaking proof of how little influence upon the
   heart we believe the matter itself to be capable, and how we treat all
   Christians, without exception, as unreliable novices? It will be a
   happy time when we dare to cast aside this caution and welcome to the
   table of the Lord everyone whom a momentary impulse conducts thither. .
   . . Still more confusion, however, arises from the other
   misunderstanding here mentioned, which is that not only do the clergy
   among themselves estimate themselves by the standard of a creed, but
   the laity also presume to deliver judgment on the clergy by the same
   standard. Nay, a right is acknowledged in the congregation to require
   that their clergy shall teach them according to the letter of the
   creed. In other matters, if anything is prepared for my use I must be
   allowed, if I will, to determine myself how it shall be prepared,
   seeing I alone can rightly judge of my necessity. It is, however, quite
   otherwise with doctrine, for, if I am in a position to judge how a
   doctrine on any subject is to be set forth if it is to be useful to me,
   I do not require teaching, but can myself give it, or at most I require
   to be reminded. This claim, therefore, is the more preposterous the
   sharper the line is drawn between clergy and laity. Were all on the
   same level, indeed, it might be easier to suppose an agreement to abide
   by a common type. It is also the more absurd the more the teaching of
   the clergy is, as, God be thanked, it still is everywhere in the
   Evangelical Church a free outpouring of the heart, and the chief worth
   is not set on the repetition of fixed formularies as in the Romish or
   Greek Churches. If the laity, whether singly as patrons of a church or
   congregation, or combined as state officials, or as a congregation,
   decide what accords with the letter of the creed, and how far its
   authority is to apply to the teaching, it is peculiarly preposterous.
   The letter of the creed has had its sole origin with the clergy, who
   certainly did not wish to be themselves limited by it in their dealings
   with the laity. The laity are only through the instruction of the
   clergy even in a position to understand the letter of the creed. This
   preposterousness appears at its height when the head of a state
   personally believes he has by his position justification and
   qualification for deciding on the creed of another communion, when he
   believes he can judge of the relation of the clergy to it and what
   religious communications, the religiousness of which is quite strange
   to him, may tend to forward its interests. The Chinese Emperor, for
   example, tolerates Christianity, but provides through his mandarins
   that no party swerve from its own creed. There is, however, one
   consolation, that on this point there can be nothing but improvement.

   [48] This state of things is, in many respects, most prominent in the
   Romish and Greek Churches. Nor is it merely because the distinction
   between priest and laity is there most pronounced. The clergy are not
   limited to the duty in the congregations; only for the secular clergy
   is this the chief concern. For the others it is only secondary. First
   of all they are to live in high religious contemplation. The clergy
   thus in their inward association form the true church. The laity are
   simply those who by them have been formed to piety, and who therefore
   stand under continual spiritual guidance, while the highest triumph is
   for some to become capable of reception into that closer sphere of the
   religious life. That the principle of this theory exists in the
   Catholic Church we should have to acknowledge, even though, in other
   respects, the most glaring opposition between the two classes had not
   again appeared. And I do not rest on the imperfect result, on the bad
   state of the clergy, on the irreligious vacuity of the cloister life.
   In that case we could only say at most that the attempt to present the
   true church, separate from those who are only being taught in religion,
   has not succeeded. The chief point is that the failure is based in the
   principle. In practice the clergy and monastics are often deeply
   involved in all worldly matters, but, according to the idea, the
   contemplative life is quite separated from the active, the latter being
   declared quite incompatible with the higher religious stage. Judging
   the consequences from all that has hitherto taken place, it is not to
   be doubted that Protestantism is, in this regard, a return to the right
   way of presenting the true church, and that it bears more also of its
   image.

   [49] A misunderstanding is here easily possible, as if systematic
   theology had its only source in the corruption of religion. Elsewhere I
   have plainly enough declared that, so soon as any religion attains any
   greatness, it must construct for itself a theology, of which system--an
   exhibition of the closest connection of the religious principles and
   dogmas--has been and must remain a natural and essential part. But here
   I speak only of the false interest taken often by the whole church in
   the connection of doctrine. Clearly this is based only on that
   corruption. The system as a whole and in its sections, which can only
   be fully understood in connection with the whole, should remain the
   exclusive possession of those who in this particular respect have had a
   scientific training. It is their concern, because on the one side it
   enables them to scan the whole circumference of possible subjects of
   religious communication and presentation, and to assign each its place,
   and on the other it serves as a critical norm for testing all religious
   utterances by the precise expression, whereby it is easier to discover
   whether anything that cannot be reduced to this expression is mere
   confusion or conceals something contrary to the spirit of the whole. As
   both interests lie quite outside the horizon of all the other members
   of the church, they should not be affected by anything exclusively
   bearing on them. If there is anything in the public or social utterance
   that immediately injures their pious consciousness, they have no need
   of further witness from any system. But if they can be injured by what
   is contained only in scientific terminology, then this is just that
   corruption here shown, whether they have lost themselves in unseemly
   conceit of wisdom, or are called in blind zeal by theological
   disputants to help in crushing some dangerous man. How beautiful would
   it be if theologians would begin the change and warn the laity of all
   kinds against all participation in dogmatic strifes, and point them to
   the good belief that there are pious theologians enough to arrange the
   matter.

   [50] This is easy to correct from the preceding explanations. If what
   is here called the true church has no separate manifestation, neither
   is there, in a literal sense, a passing sojourn in the actually
   existing communion. Exclusiveness alone is passing, so that outside of
   his own communion everyone advanced in piety may be also capable in a
   certain sense of sharing in the cosmopolitan union of all. Similarly
   the word decisive is not to be taken literally as if the incapable
   should be quite outside of all religious fellowship, either being put
   out or keeping out. This the pious neither could nor should do, nor
   even suffer to be done. Since they seek to give their presentations of
   religion the widest and deepest influence, they can let no one depart.
   Still less can they exclude, for an absolute incapacity can never be
   acknowledged. They must always look for a time when an element common
   to all men shall be developed, and for some yet untried art that may
   favour its development. Yet it remains true that the person in whom
   religiousness, in the form nearest and most congenial to him, is
   awakened only after such long and painful effort can hardly attain that
   higher development and free enjoyment.

   [51] A great preference is here exhibited for the smaller communions as
   against the great ecclesiastical institutions. One side only doubtless
   is brought into prominence. This is difficult to avoid, at least in an
   oratorical connection, when attention has to be drawn to an utterly
   neglected or greatly depreciated subject. The preference, however,
   rests on the following reasons. First, on the greater variety that can
   be manifested in the same time and space. In the great bodies either no
   variety is allowed to grow, or it is hidden, or discoverable only by
   close observers. In the religious sphere, moreover, more than anywhere
   else, points of union arise which cannot long continue, but which,
   though fleeting, may produce something strong and characteristic. If
   now only great church institutions exist, these germs are all lost, or
   at least reach no clear and complete organization. The other leading
   reason is, that the smaller ecclesiastical societies, because they
   awake less apprehension, are freer, and are less seldom put in wardship
   by the civil authority. When I first wrote this, America seemed to me a
   marvellously active theatre, where everything took this shape, and
   where, in consequence, I thought that, more than anywhere else, our own
   beloved Fatherland not excepted, the freedom of the religious life and
   of the religious society was assured. Since then the development has
   confirmed the anticipation. Unions are freely made and dissolved. They
   divide themselves. Smaller parts separate from a greater whole, and
   smaller wholes draw together. Thus they seek a centre around which to
   form a greater unity. The freedom of Christian development is so great
   that many communions, as the Unitarian, would appear to us, I believe
   wrongly, outside of Christianity. In such a breaking up of Christianity
   there might be a fear that it would gradually lose its great historical
   form, and its scientific stability come to be quite forgotten. But the
   prospect is better since science has advanced and institutions have
   been founded for the propagation of Christian learning. Only one thing
   is to be lamented--at least so it appears to us from the distance--the
   British spirit has so much taken the upper hand and the German keeps on
   receding. For those free states, therefore, such a German immigration
   as would establish an abiding influence, were to be wished. . . . Now,
   however, that I have been more weaned from the smaller society and have
   grown more into the larger institution I would not speak so decisively.
   In England, for example, it is most evident that it would stand ill
   with Christianity, either if the Episcopal Church were quite dissolved
   and scattered among the smaller societies, or if it absorbed them all
   and existed alone. Similarly we must conclude that if the religious
   life in its whole variety and fulness would develope in the broad
   compass of Christianity, both great institutions and small societies
   must exist together as they have almost always done, so that the
   institution must be resolved into small societies and from them be
   again produced. Disorganizing elements it must surrender to them, and
   from them again it must be enriched and strengthened. After this
   exposition of the matter, no one will ask how this preference for
   smaller religious societies is consistent with a lively participation
   in the union of the two Protestant ecclesiastical societies, that would
   not only make one greater out of two smaller, but manifestly cause the
   smaller at least to disappear. The following alone I would add. The
   difference of doctrine has always appeared to me insignificant, but
   there has manifestly been a difference of spirit between the two
   communions. Without that, such a division could not have arisen from
   motives otherwise so insignificant. This difference has not yet by any
   means quite disappeared. Now this involves one-sidedness on the part of
   both, and the time now appears to be come for a more vigorous effort to
   diminish these limitations by complete combination of differences and
   by friendly proximity. This could better be accomplished by union, by a
   life in freedom more bound and in the bonds more free. Besides, it
   seemed high time to provide that a recurrence of envy between the two
   might not render impossible the strong resistance which is becoming
   necessary against the manifold suspicious endeavours of the Romish
   Church.

   [52] A person who has spoken as urgently as I have done in the fourth
   collection of my sermons for once more making the whole care of the
   poor a business of the ecclesiastical association, appears to know
   quite well to what all property and money endowments might be devoted.
   But even the most extensive care of the poor requires only a secure
   yearly income. Wherefore, if the congregational tie is secure, and the
   spirit that rules in it embraces an active goodwill for this subject,
   this business also can be carried on satisfactorily without any such
   possession. Other things being equal, it will, indeed, be carried on
   better. On the one side all capital can be better used by private
   people, and on the other this possession adds a foreign element to the
   pure character of a congregation and introduces an estimate of its
   members other than the purely religious.

   [53] By this complaint I in nowise meant that the state should not in
   many and in most important things rely chiefly on the power of the
   religious sentiments and on the agreement of its own interests with
   their natural working. But I meant that in so far as it believes it
   must so rely, it is to be desired that the state do not interfere in a
   manner hurtful to the pure effect of these sentiments. Now this happens
   without fail, when there is any positive intermeddling. The state may
   on the one side assume the religious sentiment of its members and
   rejoice confidingly in its working. It then reserves the right to
   withdraw this assumption in respect of an individual who does not
   manifest this working, or when this deficiency shows itself in a
   decisive majority of a religious society, it inquires how far the
   defect has its root in the principles of the society and modifies its
   assumption accordingly. But so long as it has no ground for withdrawing
   its trust, it must know that the organization of the society proceeds
   from the very sentiment, from which it expects good result, and that in
   the nature of the case only those in whom this sentiment is strongest
   will have most influence in forming and guiding the society. It must,
   therefore, leave the sentiment free to operate, allowing the
   organization of the society to take its own course without its
   guidance. This must continue till the result gives ground for lessening
   the state's confidence If a state has this confidence only in one
   particular form of religiousness, it follows this course with the
   society in which it exists, and regulates its conduct towards the
   others by the greatness of its distrust, varying up to complete
   intolerance. A state relies on one religious society and accords it a
   high degree of independence; another it watches more closely, and
   itself decides on its organization. Now in reason this can have no
   other ground than that the state gives the latter society less
   confidence. A marvellous phenomenon cannot be thought of, as if a state
   would watch more closely the religious society to which the sovereign
   himself belonged and limit it in its free activity more than any other.
   This case of confidence in the religious sentiment is, for our present
   inquiry, the first point. The second is the opposite case, when the
   state looks for no good effect in respect of anything falling within
   its own sphere from the religious sentiment of its members. Even then
   there seems to be no consistent course, except to allow religion to
   manifest itself as an amusement to which the state is indifferent,
   taking care, as with other private associations, that no harm arises to
   the civil community. Applying this now to education, the matter here in
   discussion and the matter to which everything comes back, there seem to
   be the following consequences. The religious education of man will
   never, as such, be the whole education of man. All training in which
   the religious society does not, as such, interest itself, as for
   example the academic and higher scientific, lies outside of its domain.
   Perhaps the church has earlier thought of education than the state. The
   state will then say, "I see that you have the institutions for
   educating the youth, but they do not suffice me. I will add what fails
   but will then take them under my guidance." If the church dares to
   speak and understands its own good, it will reply, "Not so, but for all
   deficiency make your own institutions and we, as citizens, will
   honourably contribute our utmost to their success. Within our special
   limits, however, leave us our own to care for ourselves, and only omit
   from yours that for which you think ours will suffice." Does the state,
   nevertheless, do by force the contrary, there will be an element in the
   highest degree undesirable to the church, and it will feel it an injury
   even when this gives the doubtful privilege of a certain influence on
   many things whereon, by the natural course of things, it would have
   none. . . With the teaching of human duties in civil life, which is
   nothing but a continuous education of grown-up people, it is the same.
   That this is needed by the state admits of no doubt, all the more if it
   does not proceed naturally from the public life. The state finds now
   that there is teaching of this kind in the exercises and utterances of
   the religious society existing in its midst. It willingly resolves to
   spare an institution of its own for this object. The religious society
   is pleased to render this service to the common good. But the state
   says, "I will make use of your teaching, but to make sure that it
   completely reaches my purpose, I must prescribe to you what you are not
   to forget to speak of, and what you shall recall from history at fixed
   times, and I must make arrangements to know that this is actually
   done." The church will then, if it dare, certainly say, "By no means,
   for there would then be much teaching not belonging to our department,
   and in respect of history it is repugnant to us, for example, to recall
   joyfully certain days when you were victorious over another state,
   while our society in that state must observe a discreet silence, and
   should rejoice on other days when you were defeated, and which we again
   must pass over. Both days are alike to us, and we must, in our own way,
   make the same use both of what is to your honour and to your shame.
   With this use you may well be content, but for that special purpose
   make another arrangement, for we cannot assist." And if the state gives
   no heed to these representations, it injures the personal freedom of
   its members where it is holiest and most inviolable. . . . The third
   matter here mentioned, the taking of oaths, properly belongs to the
   second, but is specially mentioned because of the special manner in
   which the state brings the church to its aid. An injury has here also
   been inflicted. The different small societies of non-swearers are
   allowed a simple affirmation instead of an oath, but the great church,
   specially favoured by the state, is exhorted to preach on the
   sacredness of oaths, and its members must take them in the prescribed
   manner or lose all the privileges involved. There may, however, be many
   among them who, fearing the plain prohibition of Christ, are troubled
   in conscience about swearing, and among the teachers there may also be
   many who cannot get over the literal interpretation of those words, and
   who think it irreligious to come to the help of the state in such a
   manner. How can it be that such an injury to religious freedom should
   not be felt very painfully? These fuller explanations, it is to be
   hoped, will justify the wish expressed in the text, that the state
   should employ what is useful to it in the arrangements of the church
   only in so far as consists with uninjured freedom.

   [54] Of the three points here lamented, two are only burdensome because
   they witness to the dependence of the church or the state. The sacred
   acts of baptism and solemnization of marriage are made to appear as
   done by the clergy, first of all, as servants of the state, in the name
   of the state. Without question this is one reason why the way they are
   carried out betrays so little of a Christian or indeed of a religious
   character. If inscription in the civil register were a purely civil
   act, no one could regard baptism as merely a legal formality,
   accompanied occasionally by a stately speech. And if the marriage
   contract were first concluded purely civilly, and the blessing of the
   church were purely an act of the members of a congregation, it would
   soon appear that marriages are best where a special value is set on
   this additional outward consecration. But the worst is, the point
   between. An Evangelical Christian state unites many civil
   qualifications with admission to the sacrament. In many instances it
   demands attestations of this act. It acts with the best intention
   towards the youth, seeking to guard them against the religious
   negligence of their parents or guardians. But how much are the
   consciences of pious clergymen burdened; how often must they, quite
   against their conviction, declare religious instruction and closer
   supervision at an end. Even were a great number of baptized Christians
   to remain all their lives without participation in the other sacrament,
   as is the case in North America, it does not appear that this would be
   a misfortune. Rather it would have the advantage that the Christian
   church would not appear responsible for the lives of the grossest men,
   while the strife about the right of exclusion from the congregation
   would be spared. In Protestant Europe only the grossest would be
   outside, for the continued participation in divine service would sooner
   or later supply what they had lost at that time when confirmation
   usually takes place. As in the American free states it might
   furthermore happen with us that the children of Christian parents, who
   set no great store on the fellowship of the church, would remain
   unbaptized. They would then have no link with the church. This might
   well happen, though with us such an anti-Christian zealotism would be
   very rare. But to hinder the real loss that would hence arise, the
   state should not be required to impose baptism by force, but it should
   begin early to protect the freedom of conscience of the children even
   against the parents. These complaints appear plainly capable of remedy,
   but only by a great difference of form in all those concerns that
   relate to the connection of church and state. If the example of the
   free states in the other hemisphere alone were considered, and
   everything in the condition of the church charged as consequences of
   what is here postulated, it would unquestionably be unfair. There are
   these imperfections inseparable from a young and very dissimilar
   population that have been gathered from all quarters, which will be
   thrown off without the necessity of essential change in these matters.

   [55] That in all religious doings the predominance of legal or civil
   relations is a departure from the original nature of the matter,
   especially if it occasions pecuniary transactions between the clergy
   and the members of the congregation, requires no further discussion.
   Yet it appears as if this complaint would never be removed so long as a
   state, as such, confesses its adherence to any one religious society,
   or even if it believes it can require all its members to belong to some
   society. In the former case, if a law declares that only in one church
   is there the greatest fulness of that sentiment which can maintain this
   state and be the fullest security against all its possible foes, it
   would follow that the whole maintenance of the state would be entrusted
   only to the members of this society. In the present state of social
   relations this can only continue as a law where the great body of the
   people belong to that society, the rest being only clients and
   strangers. But even in Catholic countries such a state of matters no
   longer exists, and it does not seem as if, in the present position of
   affairs, a state would easily be able to confess absolute and undivided
   adherence to one religious society. The south European states, which
   have anew proclaimed the Catholic religion to be the religion of the
   state, will not, even though their position is favourable and
   Protestants are only found scattered as clients, be able for many
   generations of tranquillity to adhere without harshness and injustice
   to this system. It is quite different when, without law and in
   consequence of the natural effect of public opinion, all that is
   essential in the government of the state falls to the adherents of one
   society. Such a transaction is not a state's confession, and we must
   wish that it may long continue. But if adherence to one society is now
   a passing state of things, is it a right maxim for the state, without
   deciding which, to require that its citizens belong to some one? Let it
   be granted that irreligious men are neither profitable for the civil
   union, nor to be relied upon. But would they be made religious by being
   compelled to confess adherence to any one religious society? Manifestly
   the only way to make irreligious men really religious is to strengthen
   the influence of religious men upon them as much as possible. For this
   end the state cannot work more effectively than by allowing all the
   religious societies within its domain to operate with the fullest
   freedom. This freedom they will never feel till those intermeddlings
   cease.

   [56] With this exposition, which rests on a very meagre experience, I
   can no longer agree. And first, in respect of capabilities, it appears
   as if the people and the cultured would have a very unequal enjoyment
   of a religious utterance on which, according to the demands made above,
   all the flowers of speech are to be expended. But all true eloquence
   must be popular throughout. It is affectation that chooses either
   expressions or combinations of thought unsuited to the majority, and
   the cultured also must be capable of guidance by a thoroughly popular
   diction. A division of hearers in respect of capacity is not required
   by the nature of the subject, but by the consciousness of imperfection
   in the artists. It is only a different kind of imperfection when one
   man speaks better for the people and another for the higher ranks. But
   in the second place, in respect of mental type, it is indeed not to be
   denied that the differences of the audience must be contained in very
   narrow limits, if a religious utterance is to have a large and happy
   result. But it must be a wrong assumption, that in a multitude united
   in other matters and woven together in a common life, we must have very
   different religious peculiarities, and indeed so marvellously different
   that on the one side they are not strong enough to form a religious
   society of their own, and on the other they are so markedly singular
   that they cannot appropriate a religious utterance of another type.
   Only in great cities could elements so different be brought into a
   small compass, and here every one has an easy choice, selecting the
   presentations of religion that can strengthen and quicken him. But
   suppose the people are considered in relation to the different forms of
   religion afterwards mentioned. It will always be found that in whole
   districts, through many generations, the religious life has been
   prevailingly mystic, or more linked to history, or influenced by
   understanding and reflection. Exceptions are rare, and those who are
   not religious according to the dominant type are less religious
   altogether. If, therefore, the easy selection of the gay world in great
   cities were not troubled by narrow partiality for the ministrants, and
   on the other hand all religious orators strove only after true
   popularity, on this point, at least, our present state would be
   tolerable enough.

   [57] That the state, besides what it confides to the church, must
   provide an educational institution of its own, be it for the younger
   generation or for the less educated portion of the people, is here
   regarded as absolutely necessary. This contention shows the speaker's
   decision on the much discussed question of the relation of state and
   church to what in the widest sense of the word is called school. In
   part the state may continue to rely on the religious associations. Yet
   it must be content to exercise only a negative supervision over their
   institutions. For the rest it is the duty of the state to arrange and
   care. Where there is any kind of religious association, that the
   awaking of the higher spiritual be not hindered, there is also in the
   homes a uniform discipline for taming sensuality, which is in every way
   useful for the civil life. But if the state requires a special
   discipline to produce certain habits in its citizens suited to the
   time, it must not come from the church. The proper feeling of its
   necessity being universally diffused, the state may rely on the work of
   the families, not as elements of the religious but of the civil
   society. If this feeling is not sufficiently diffused, the state must
   make public provision. All that is academic in education is of this
   kind, for it cannot and, being quite foreign to it, should not even
   appear to proceed from the church. Further, wherever a system of
   religious communication exists, there must be common instruction of the
   youth in all that bears upon understanding the religious speech and the
   creed. This is properly the church parish school. In Christendom it is
   for transmitting religious ideas, and among Protestants for some small
   understanding at least of the Scriptures. Has the state confidence that
   an effective communication of moral ideas and the germs of mental
   development will be given at the same time, it may rely on the church
   school for those objects. But everything statistical, mathematical,
   technical and such like is foreign to the church school. If the
   ecclesiastical and the civil community are identical, the
   ecclesiastical and the civil school may for some good reason be united
   in one institution. But the state no more acquires the right thereby to
   conduct the ecclesiastical school, than the church to conduct the
   civil. Finally, every religious fellowship that has a history
   requiring, for comprehending its development, attainments that belong
   to the sphere of science and learning, needs an institution to maintain
   and encourage such attainments. This is the church academy. All other
   sciences are foreign to the church. Suppose there exist in the state,
   either being maintained by the state or being independent bodies,
   academies for general science, and suppose the church has confidence
   that their methods are suited to its requirements, it may find it
   expedient to unite with them its own special academy. But the
   expediency must be determined by the church, and neither by the state
   nor by the scientific bodies. The church may neither found a claim on
   this union to general superintendence of scientific institutions, nor
   give up its right to manage its own academy. These are the principles
   then on which church and state are to act together or act apart. But to
   acknowledge these principles towards one church and not towards another
   is the worst possible inconsistency. It must necessarily pain the
   slighted church that incurable disagreement should arise between their
   religious and their political feeling.

   [58] Well said of every such relation! and in this view I still stand
   firm. Nay, I stand firmer, the more lamentable complications I see
   arising from this dependence of the church on the state. These
   complications were less thought of then, for the only thing of the kind
   so rapidly came to grief on the dominant tendency of the time. Yet it
   is impossible that the church should be without any union with the
   state. That appears even where the church is freest. The least is that
   the state treat the religious societies like any other private society.
   As a general principle of association it takes knowledge of them and
   puts itself in a position to interfere in case they should cherish
   anything prejudicial to the common freedom and safety. With this least,
   however, it is seldom possible to escape, as appears even in North
   America where the church is freest. The freer the churches are the
   easier it happens that some dissolve and some combine. Now even though
   they may have no possessions except the most absolutely necessary means
   for meeting together, there are difficulties of settlement in which the
   state is the natural arranger and umpire. Had this and no other
   relation existed between church and state at the time of the
   Reformation, the present curious position of affairs would not have
   come to pass, that in lands almost entirely Protestant the Catholic
   Church is well endowed and secured, while the Evangelical Church is
   referred to a changeable and often doubtful good will. Every further
   union of church and state should be regarded as a private agreement for
   the time being. The more of these transactions there are the more it
   will seem that a church-communion in one state becomes the church of
   the land, and becomes more divided from its brethren in the faith in
   other states. The less there are, the more a communion, though spread
   over many states, may appear an undivided whole, and the more marked is
   the independence of the church from the state. Within these limits, all
   existing relations are permissible, and it belongs to completeness that
   at some time and place they have all had historical existence. On the
   contrary, what transcends these limits is of evil.

   [59] This rejection of all closer connection among the congregations of
   the same faith and of all religious associations, rests solely on the
   presupposition that every existing church is only a visible appendage
   of the true church. It is, therefore, right, only in so far as the
   presupposition is right. Since I wrote this I have shown myself a
   zealous defender of synodal government which is manifestly included in
   this rejection. In part I have abandoned the presupposition. By
   observation and joyful experience I have reached the conviction that
   truly believing and pious persons exist in adequate number in our
   congregations, and that it is good to strengthen as much as possible
   their influence on the rest. This result naturally flows from
   well-ordered combinations. In part also, life in our time soon conducts
   to the view that every improvement that is to succeed must be ushered
   in from all sides at once. This involves that men should in many
   respects be treated as if they already were what they ought to be.
   Otherwise it would be necessary to wait on and on and no beginning
   would be possible. But according to my view the sole warrant for such
   closer combinations is that the participators are members of the true
   church, in which the distinction between priests and laity is only to
   serve the occasion and cannot be permanent. Wherefore, I could only
   defend a constitution that rested on this equality and any other in the
   Evangelical Church there could never be. Where synodal unions consist
   purely of the clergy, they seem either by the state commission and
   purely consultative, or literary and friendly, rather than
   ecclesiastical, and constitutional. A constitutional priestly
   government becomes only the Catholic Church. The foundation stone of
   that church is the higher personal religious worth of the priests, and
   its first principle that the laity, only by their mediation, enjoy
   their share in the blessings of the church. The last assertion ventured
   in this passage, that there should be no outward bond between teachers
   and congregation, depends still more on the presupposition that the
   congregation still require to be led to religion. This could only be
   done on condition of the most complete spontaneousness. Who is then to
   impose this outward bond? Neither the state nor a corporation of the
   clergy, if this spontaneousness is to exist. The congregations cannot,
   for they cannot judge of those who must first communicate to them the
   ability to judge the worth in question. Hence this bond can only be
   entered on and upheld where the spirit of piety in the congregations
   can be assumed, and where those who can guide and limit this judgment
   are regarded as having come forth from the congregation. Herein are
   contained the principles for determining in different circumstances the
   firmness or the freedom of the bond.

   [60] On the limits of the binding power exercised by creeds, I have
   lately declared myself more fully, though with special reference to the
   Evangelical Church. I here call this bond unholy when it is regarded in
   the ordinary way, and I am still of this opinion. Than unbelief nothing
   is more unholy to the pious. Of unbelief an abundance underlies the
   maxim that teachers of religion, and even teachers of theology, should
   be bound by the letter of a written confession. It is unbelief in the
   power of the common spirit in the church, when men are not convinced
   that alien elements in individuals will not, by the living power of the
   whole, be either assimilated or enveloped and made harmless, but
   believe external force is required to cast it out. It is unbelief in
   the power of the word of Christ and of the Spirit that declares Him,
   when men do not believe that every time has naturally its own fitting
   interpretation and application of it, when they believe we must adhere
   to the production of another age. It can never again befall us that the
   spirit of prophesy should become dumb. The Sacred Scripture itself has
   obtained its position, and will retain it only by the power of free
   belief and not by outward sanction.

   [61] The feeling that ecclesiastical matters as they then existed in
   the greater part of Germany, and still exist, little altered, could not
   continue as they were, has since become much more general and definite.
   Yet how the matter will turn is still not much clearer. This alone can
   be foreseen, that if an Evangelical Church is not soon put in a
   position in which a fresher public spirit can be developed in it, and
   if the restrictive treatment of our universities and our open spiritual
   intercourse is longer continued, the hopes we cherished will be
   fruitless blossom, and the fair dawn of the recent time has only
   betokened storm. Living piety and liberal courage will ever more and
   more disappear from the clerical order. Dominion of the dead letter
   from above and uneasy spiritless sectarianism from below will approach.
   From their collision a whirlwind will arise that will drive many
   helpless souls into the outstretched net of Jesuitism, and deaden and
   weary the great masses to utter indifference. The signs that proclaim
   this are clear enough; but everyone should on every occasion declare
   that he sees them as a testimony against those who heed them not.

   [62] This limitations will seem to many too narrow. A profound and
   extensive cultivation of the mind, and a rich inward experience may
   very well exist where the theological erudition, that is the essential
   condition of the office of church teacher, is wanting. Should such
   gifts be limited in their religious working to the narrow circle of the
   domestic life? Could not and should not such men, even when they cannot
   lead in public religious assemblies, yet work by the living word in
   freer, wider circles? Should not the enormous influence which they can
   obtain through the written word be pointed out to them? To this I have
   a twofold answer. First, all that, as free sociableness, most resembles
   the family connection, links itself naturally to the domestic life. The
   work of exhibiting there the character of a liberal-minded religious
   life is not insignificant. It is a duty hitherto neither sufficiently
   understood nor sufficiently exercised. If it were, there could not
   possibly be such a marked contrast in a great part of Germany,
   particularly among the higher and more refined circles, between the
   interest taken in religious formulas and theological disputes, and the
   domestic and social life in which no trace of a decisive religious
   character appears. Here, then, is a great sphere for the pious sense.
   But larger assemblies, exceeding the limits and the nature of the
   social life, yet not aiming at forming a congregation, in short
   conventicles, are always miserable half and between affairs, that have
   never contributed much to the advancement of religion, but have rather
   produced and cherished what is morbid. Secondly, in respect of
   religious influence by the written word, it would certainly be a great
   evil if the clerical order were to possess a monopoly. Nay, it does not
   seem to me consistent with the spirit of the Evangelical Church, that
   they should exercise a general censorship. But while there should be
   the greatest freedom, it is an entirely different question whether
   everyone should venture to communicate his religious views and
   sentiments in this way; and whether it would be expedient that it
   should happen often is very much to be doubted. The harm from the flood
   of mediocre romances and children's books may very well be compared
   with the harm from the mass of mediocre religious writings. Nay, they
   are manifestly a desecration, which the former are not. Even superior
   talent falls more easily into mediocrity, for what is to have
   attraction and effect is the subjective apprehension of universally
   known objects and relations. Only a high degree of unaffected
   originality, or a true inspiration, coming from the inmost depths of a
   reflective mind, or from the stimulating power of a life, nobly active,
   can succeed. Otherwise there can be nothing but mediocrity. With
   religious songs, indeed, it is different. Among us a large proportion
   of them has been composed by laymen of all classes. Many that a severe
   judge would call only mediocre, have passed into church use, and have
   attained thereby a kind of immortality. Two circumstances assist.
   First, every hymn book has only a very limited sphere, and here much
   may be good that has not all the qualities demanded by absolute
   publicity. Many of those productions would doubtless have long
   perished, and been forgotten, had they required to maintain themselves
   as pure literary works. Secondly, in the public use of hymns so many
   other things assist. The author does not produce the effect alone. He
   is supported by the composer by whom, more or less, everything that has
   the same metre and is known to all has harmony and effect; he is
   supported by the congregation who put their piety into the execution,
   and by the liturgies that assign the work of the poet its right place
   in a larger connection.
     __________________________________________________________________

FIFTH SPEECH

  THE RELIGIONS

   Man in closest fellowship with the highest must be for you all an
   object of esteem, nay, of reverence. No one capable of understanding
   such a state can, when he sees it, withhold this feeling. That is past
   all doubt. You may despise all whose minds are easily and entirely
   filled with trivial things, but in vain you attempt to depreciate one
   who drinks in the greatest for his nourishment. You may love him or
   hate him, according as he goes with you or against yon in the narrow
   path of activity and culture, but even the most beautiful feeling of
   equality you cannot entertain towards a person so far exalted above
   you. The seeker for the Highest Existence in the world stands above all
   who have not a like purpose. Your wisest men say that, even against
   your will, you must honour the virtuous who, in accordance with the
   laws of the moral nature, endeavour to determine finite concerns by
   infinite requirements. And were it even possible for you to find some
   thing ridiculous in virtue itself, because of the contrast between the
   limited powers and the infinite undertaking, you still could not deny
   esteem to one whose organs are open to the Universe, who is far from
   strife and opposition, exalted above all imperfect endeavour,
   responsive to the Universe and one with it. You cannot despise when you
   see man in this supreme moment of human existence and the clear beam is
   reflected in its purity upon you.

   But whether the picture of the nature and of the life of religion I
   have drawn has claimed your esteem I do not inquire. Because of false
   conceptions and devotion to nonessentials esteem is too often refused,
   but I am sure of the power of the subject, as soon as it is freed from
   its distorting drapery. Nor do I ask whether my thoughts on the
   coherence of this indwelling capacity with all that is sublime and
   godlike in our nature, have stimulated you to an intenser study of our
   nature and possibilities. I also pass the question, whether you have
   taken the higher standpoint I showed you, and have recognized from
   thence, in that nobler fellowship of spirits, so much misjudged,
   wherein everyone freely surrenders himself, not regarding the glory of
   his self-will, nor the exclusive possession of his deepest, most secret
   individuality, that he may regard himself as a work of the eternal, the
   all-fashioning World-Spirit, even the holy of holies of fellowship,
   higher far than any earthly fellowship, holier than the tenderest tie
   of friendship. In short, I do not ask whether all religion, in its
   infinity, its divine power, has compelled you to adoration, for I leave
   the matter itself to work upon you.

   At present I have something else to deal with, a new opposition to
   vanquish. I would, as it were, conduct you to the God that has become
   flesh; I would show you religion when it has resigned its infinity and
   appeared, often in sorry form, among men; I would have you discover
   religion in the religions. Though they are always earthly and impure,
   the same form of heavenly beauty that I have tried to depict is to be
   sought in them.

   The divisions of the church and the difference of religion are almost
   always found together. The connection seems inseparable. There are as
   many creeds and confessions as churches and religious communions.
   Glancing at this state of things, you might easily believe that my
   judgment on the plurality of the church must also be my judgment on the
   plurality of religion. You would, however, entirely mistake my opinion.
   I condemned the plurality of the church, but my argument presupposed
   the plurality of religion. I showed from the nature of the case that in
   the church all rigid outline should be lost, that all distinct
   partition should disappear. Not only did I hold that all should be one
   indivisible whole in spirit and sympathy, but that the actual
   connection should have larger development and ever approach the
   highest, the universal unity. Now if there is not everywhere plurality
   of religion, if the most marked difference is not necessary and
   unavoidable, why should the true church need to be one? Is it not that
   everyone in the religion of others may see and share what he cannot
   find in his own? And why should the visible church be only one, if it
   is not that everyone may seek in it religion in the form best fitted to
   awake the germ that lies asleep in him? And if this germ can only be
   fertilized and made to grow by one definite kind of influence, it must
   itself be of a definite kind.

   Nor can these different manifestations of religion be mere component
   parts, differing only in number and size, and forming, when combined, a
   uniform whole. In that case every one would by natural progress come to
   be like his neighbour. Such religion as he acquired would change into
   his own, and become identical with it. The church, this fellowship with
   all believers which I consider indispensable for every religious man,
   would be merely provisional. The more successful its work, the quicker
   would it end--a view of the institution I have never contemplated. I
   therefore find that multiplicity of the religions is based in the
   nature of religion.

   That no man can perfectly possess all religion is easy to see. Men are
   determined in one special way, religion is endlessly determinable. But
   it must be equally evident that religion is not dismembered and
   scattered in parts by random among men, but that it must organize
   itself in manifestations of varying degrees of resemblance. Recall the
   several stages of religion to which I drew your attention. I said that
   the religion of a person, to whom the world reveals itself as a living
   whole, is not a mere continuation of the view of the person who only
   sees the world in its apparently hostile elements. By no amount of
   regarding the Universe as chaotic and discrete can the higher view be
   attained. These differences you may call kinds or degrees of religion,
   but in either case you will have to admit that, as in every similar
   case, the forms in which an infinite force divides itself is usually
   characteristic and different.

   Wherefore, plurality of religions is another thing than plurality of
   the church. The essence of the church is fellowship. Its limit,
   therefore, cannot be the uniformity of religious persons. It is just
   difference that should be brought into fellowship. [63] You are
   manifestly right when you believe that the church can never in
   actuality be completely and uniformly one. The only reason, however, is
   that every society existing in space and time is thereby limited and
   losing in depth what it gains in breadth, falls to pieces. But
   religion, exactly by its multiplicity, assumes the utmost unity of the
   church. This multiplicity is necessary for the complete manifestation
   of religion. It must seek for a definite character, not only in the
   individual but also in the society. Did the society not contain a
   principle to individualize itself, it could have no existence. Hence we
   must assume and we must search for an endless mass of distinct forms.
   Each separate religion claims to be such a distinct form revealing
   religion, and we must see whether it is agreeable to this principle. We
   must make clear to ourselves wherein it is peculiar. Though the
   difference be hidden under strange disguises, though it be distorted,
   not only by the unavoidable influence of the transitory to which the
   enduring has condescended, but also by the unholy hand of sacrilegious
   men, we must find it.

   To be satisfied with a mere general idea of religion would not be
   worthy of you. Would you then understand it as it really exists and
   displays itself, would you comprehend it as an endlessly progressive
   work of the Spirit that reveals Himself in all human history, you must
   abandon the vain and foolish wish that there should only be one
   religion; you must lay aside all repugnance to its multiplicity; as
   candidly as possible you must approach everything that has ever, in the
   changing shapes of humanity, been developed in its advancing career,
   from the ever fruitful bosom of the spiritual life.

   The different existing manifestations of religion you call positive
   religions. Under this name they have long been the object of a quite
   pre-eminent hate. Despite of your repugnance to religion generally, you
   have always borne more easily with what for distinction is called
   natural religion. You have almost spoken of it with esteem.

   I do not hesitate to say at once that from the heart I entirely deny
   this superiority. For all who have religion at all and profess to love
   it, it would be the vilest inconsequence to admit it. They would
   thereby fall into the openest self-contradiction. For my own part, if I
   only succeeded in recommending to you this natural religion, I would
   consider that I had lost my pains.

   For you, indeed, to whom religion generally is offensive, I have always
   considered this preference natural. The so-called natural religion is
   usually so much refined away, and has such metaphysical and moral
   graces, that little of the peculiar character of religion appears. It
   understands so well to live in reserve, to restrain and to accommodate
   itself that it can be put up with anywhere. Every positive religion, on
   the contrary, has certain strong traits and a very marked physiognomy,
   so that its every movement, even to the careless glance, proclaims what
   it really is.

   If this is the true ground of your dislike, you must now rid yourself
   of it. If you have now, as I hope, a better estimate of religion, it
   should be no longer necessary for me to contend against it. If you see
   that a peculiar and noble capacity of man underlies religion, a
   capacity which, of course, must be educated, it cannot be offensive to
   you to regard it in the most definite forms in which it has yet
   appeared. Rather you must the more willingly grant a form your
   attention the more there is developed in it the characteristic and
   distinctive elements of religion.

   But you may not admit this argument. You may transfer all the
   reproaches you have formerly been accustomed to bestow on religion in
   general to the single religions. You may maintain that there are
   always, just in this element that you call positive, the occasion and
   the justification of those reproaches, and that in consequence the
   positive religions cannot be as I have sought to represent, the natural
   manifestations of the true religion. You would show me how, without
   exception, they are full of what, according to my own statement, is not
   religion. Consequently, must not a principle of corruption lie deep in
   their constitution? You will remind me that each one proclaims that it
   alone is true, and that what is peculiar to it is absolutely the
   highest. Are they not distinguished from one another by elements they
   should as much as possible eliminate? In disproving and contending, be
   it with art and understanding, or with weapons stranger and more
   unworthy, do they not show themselves quite contrary to the nature of
   true religion? You would add that, exactly in proportion as you esteem
   religion and acknowledge its importance, you must take a lively
   interest in seeing that it everywhere enjoys the greatest freedom to
   cultivate itself on all sides. You must, therefore, hate keenly those
   definite religious forms, that hold all their adherents to the same
   type and the same word, withdraw the freedom to follow their own nature
   and compress them in unnatural limits. In contrast, you would praise
   mightily the superiority in all these points of the natural to the
   positive religions.

   Once more I say, I do not deny that misunderstandings and perversions
   exist in all religions, and I raise no objections to the dislike with
   which they inspire you. Nay, I acknowledge there is in them all this
   much bewailed degeneration, this divergence into alien territory. The
   diviner religion itself is, the less would I embellish its corruptions,
   or admiringly cherish its excrescences. But forget for once this
   one-sided view and follow me to another. Consider how much of this
   corruption is due to those who have dragged forth religion from the
   depths of the heart into the civil world. Acknowledge that much of it
   is unavoidable as soon as the Infinite, by descending into the sphere
   of time and submitting to the general influence of finite things, takes
   to itself a narrow shell. And however deep-rooted this corruption may
   be, and however much the religions may have suffered thereby, consider
   this also: if the proper religious view of all things is to seek even
   in things apparently common and base every trace of the divine, the
   true and the eternal, and to reverence even the faintest, you cannot
   omit what has the justest claims to be judged religiously.

   And you would find more than remote traces of the Deity. I invite you
   to study every faith professed by man, every religion that has a name
   and a character. Though it may long ago have degenerated into a long
   series of empty customs, into a system of abstract ideas and theories,
   will you not, when you examine the original elements at the source,
   find that this dead dross was once the molten outpourings of the inner
   fire? Is there not in all religions more or less of the true nature of
   religion, as I have presented it to you? Must not, therefore, each
   religion be one of the special forms which mankind, in some region of
   the earth and at some stage of development, has to accept?

   I must take care not to attempt anything systematic or complete, for
   that would be the study of a life, and not the business of a discourse.
   Yet you must not be allowed to wander at hazard in this endless chaos.
   That you may not be misled by the false ideas that prevail; that you
   may estimate by a right standard the true content and essence of any
   religion; that you may have some definite and sure procedure for
   separating the inner from the outer, the native from the borrowed and
   extraneous, and the sacred from the profane, forget the characteristic
   attributes of single religions and seek, from the centre outwards, a
   general view of how the essence of a positive religion is to be
   comprehended and determined.

   You will then find that the positive religions are just the definite
   forms in which religion must exhibit itself--a thing to which your
   so-called natural religions have no claim. They are only a vague,
   sorry, poor thought that corresponds to no reality, and you will find
   that in the positive religions alone a true individual cultivation of
   the religious capacity is possible. Nor do they, by their nature,
   injure the freedom of their adherents.

   Why have I assumed that religion can only be given fully in a great
   multitude of forms of the utmost definiteness? Only on grounds that
   naturally follow from what has been said of the nature of religion. The
   whole of religion is nothing but the sum of all relations of man to
   God, apprehended in all the possible ways in which any man can be
   immediately conscious in his life. In this sense there is but one
   religion, for it would be but a poverty-stricken and halting life, if
   all these relations did not exist wherever religion ought to be. Yet
   all men will not by any means apprehend them in the same way, but quite
   differently. Now this difference alone is felt and alone can be
   exhibited while the reduction of all differences is only thought.

   You are wrong, therefore, with your universal religion that is natural
   to all, for no one will have his own true and right religion, if it is
   the same for all. As long as we occupy a place there must be in these
   relations of man to the whole a nearer and a farther, which will
   necessarily determine each feeling differently in each life. Again, as
   long as we are individuals, every man has greater receptiveness for
   some religious experiences and feelings than for others. In this way
   everything is different. Manifestly then, no single relation can accord
   to every feeling its due. It requires the sum of them. Hence, the whole
   of religion can be present only, when all those different views of
   every relation are actually given. This is not possible, except in an
   endless number of different forms. They must be determined adequately
   by a different principle of reference to the others, and in each the
   same religious element must be characteristically modified. In short,
   they must, be true individuals.

   What determines and distinguishes these individuals, and what, on the
   other hand, is common to all their component parts, holds them
   together, and is their principle of adhesion, whereby any given detail
   is to be adjudged to its own type of religion, are implied in what has
   been already said. But this view can only be verified by the existing
   historical religions, and of them it is maintained that all this is
   different, and that such is not their relation to one another. This we
   must now examine.

   First, a definite quantity of religious matter is not necessarily, in
   the same degree, a definite form of religion.

   This is an entire misunderstanding of the nature of the different
   religions. Even among their adherents it is general, and causes
   manifold opposite and false judgments. They suppose that because so
   many men acknowledge the same religion, they must have the same body of
   religious views and feelings. Their fellow-believers must have the same
   opinions and the same faith as they have, and this common possession
   must be the essence of their religion. The peculiarly characteristic
   and individual element in a religion is not easy to find with certainty
   from instances, but, however general the idea may be, if you believe
   that it consists in including a definite sum of religious intuitions
   and feelings, and that as a consequence the positive religions are
   prejudicial to the freedom of the individual in the development of his
   own religion, you are in error. Single perceptions and feelings are, as
   you know, the elements of religion, and it can never lead to the
   character of any one religion to regard them as a mere heap, tossed
   together without regard to number, kind or purpose.

   If now, as I have sought to show, religion needs to be of many types
   because, of every relation different views are possible, according as
   it stands related to the rest, how would we be helped by such a
   compendium of some of them that could define none? If the positive
   religions were only distinguished by what they exclude, they could
   certainly not be the individual manifestations we seek. That this is
   not their character, however, appears from the impossibility of
   arriving from this point of view at a distinct idea of them.

   As they continue to exist apart, such an idea must be possible, for
   only what commingles in fact is inseparable in idea. It is evident that
   the different religious perceptions and feelings are not, in a
   determinate way, awakened by one another or interdependent. Now, as
   each exists for itself, each can lead, by the most various
   combinations, to every other. Hence, different religions could not
   continue long beside one another, if they were not otherwise
   distinguished. Very soon each would supplement itself into uniformity
   with all others.

   Even in the religion of any one man, as it is fashioned in the course
   of life, nothing is more accidental than the quantity of religious
   matter that may arrive at consciousness. Some views may set and others
   may rise and come to clearness, and his religion in this respect is
   ever in flux. Much less can the boundary, which in the individual is so
   changeable, be permanent and essential in the religion of several
   associated individuals. In the highest degree it must be an unusual and
   accidental occurrence that, even for a little time, several men remain
   in the same circle of perceptions and advance along the same path of
   feeling. [64]

   Hence, among those who determine their religion in this way, there is a
   standing quarrel about essentials and nonessentials. They do not know
   what is to be laid down as characteristic and necessary, and what to
   separate as free and accidental; they do not find the point from which
   the whole can be surveyed; they do not understand the religion in which
   they live and for which they presume to fight; and they contribute to
   its degeneration, for, while they are influenced by the whole, they
   consciously grasp only the detail. Fortunately the instinct they do not
   understand, guides them better than their understandings, and nature
   sustains what their false reflections and the doing and striving that
   flow from them would destroy.

   If the character of any special religion is found in a definite
   quantity of perceptions and feelings, some subjective and objective
   connection, binding exactly these elements together and excluding all
   others, must be assumed. This false notion agrees well enough with the
   way of comparing religious conceptions that is common but is not
   agreeable to the spirit of religion. A whole of this type would not be
   what we seek to give religion in its whole compass a determinate shape.
   It would not be a whole, but an arbitrary section of the whole; it
   would not be a religion, it would be a sect. Except by taking the
   religious experiences of one single person, and necessarily of only one
   short period of his life, as the norm for a society, it could hardly
   arise. But the forms which history has produced and which are now
   actually existing are not wholes of this sort. All sectarianism, be it
   speculative, for bringing single intuitions into a philosophical
   coherence, or ascetic, for reaching a system and determinate series of
   feelings, labours for the utmost uniformity among all who would share
   the same fragment of religion. Those who are infected with this mania
   certainly do not lack activity, and if they have never succeeded in
   reducing any one positive religion to a sect, [65] you will have to
   acknowledge that the positive religions must be formed on another
   principle and must have another character.

   You will see this even more clearly by thinking of the times that gave
   them birth. You will recall how every positive religion, in its growth
   and bloom, when its peculiar vigour was most youthful, fresh and
   evident, did not concentrate and exclude, but expanded and pushed fresh
   shoots and acquired more religious matter to be wrought up in
   accordance with its own peculiar nature.

   Therefore religions are not fashioned on this false principle. It is
   not one with their nature, it is a corruption that has crept in from
   the outside, as hostile to them as to the spirit of religion generally.
   Their relation to it which is a standing warfare, is another proof that
   they actually are constituted as individual manifestations of religion
   should be.

   Just as little could the general differences of religion suffice to
   produce a thoroughly definite individual form. The three ways of being
   conscious of existence and of its totality, as chaos, system and
   elemental diversity, so often mentioned, are very far from being so
   many single and distinct religions. Divide an idea to infinity if you
   will, you cannot thereby reach an individual. You only get less general
   ideas which may, as genus and species, embrace a mass of very different
   individuals. To find the character of individual beings, there must be
   more than the idea and its attributes. But those three differences in
   religion are only the usual division according to the current scheme of
   unity, diversity and totality. They are types of religion but not
   religious individualities, and the need to seek for this individuality
   is by no means satisfied by the existence of religion in this threefold
   way. It is clear as day that there are many distinct manifestations of
   religion belonging to each type.

   Just as little are the personal and the opposing pantheistic modes of
   conception two such individual forms. [66] They go through all three
   types of religion and, for that reason alone, cannot be
   individualities. They are simply another principle of division. Only
   recently we agreed that this antithesis rests simply on a way of
   regarding the religious feeling, and of ascribing to its phenomena a
   common object. Hence the fact that any particular religion inclines
   more to one form of representation and expression than to the other, no
   more determines its individuality than it would its worth and the stage
   of its development. The individual elements of religion are as
   indefinite, and none of the various ways of regarding them are
   realized, because either the one or the other thought accompanies them.
   This may be seen in all purely deistic manifestations of religion.
   Though they desire to be considered quite definite, you will find
   everywhere that all religious feelings, and especially what is most
   dwelt on--all views of the movements of humanity in the individual, of
   the highest unity of mankind, of everything in the mutual relations of
   men that lies beyond each man's good pleasure, are utterly indefinite
   and ambiguous. The personal and the pantheistic conceptions, therefore,
   are only very general forms that may be further determined and
   individualized in various ways.

   Perhaps you may seek this further determination by uniting the two
   modes of conception with the three modes of intuition. You would reach
   narrower sub-divisions, but not a thoroughly definite and individual
   whole. Neither naturalism [67] --meaning perception of the world
   limited to elemental diversity, without the conception of a personal
   consciousness and will in the various elements--nor pantheism, nor
   polytheism, nor deism are single and definite religions, such as we
   seek. They are simply types within which there have been, and there
   will still be, very many genuine individualities developed. [68]

   Let me say then at once, that the only remaining way for a truly
   individual religion to arise is to select some one of the great
   relations of mankind in the world to the Highest Being, and, in a
   definite way, make it the centre and refer to it all the others. In
   respect of the idea of religion, this may appear a merely arbitrary
   proceeding, but, in respect of the peculiarity of the adherents, being
   the natural expression of their character, it is the purest necessity.
   Hereby a distinctive spirit and a common character enter the whole at
   the same time, and the ambiguous and vague reach firm ground. By every
   formation of this kind one of the endless number of different views and
   different arrangements of the single elements, which are all possible
   and all require to be exhibited, is fully realized. Single elements are
   all seen on the one side that is turned towards this central point,
   which makes all the feelings have a common tone and a livelier closer
   interaction.

   The whole of religion can only be actually given in the sum of all the
   forms possible in this sense. It can, therefore, be exhibited only in
   an endless series of shapes that are gradually developed in different
   points of time and space, and nothing adds to its complete
   manifestation that is not found in one of those forms. Where religion
   is so moulded that everything is seen and felt in connection with one
   relation to the Deity that mediates it or embraces it, it matters not
   in what place or in what man it is formed or what relation is selected,
   it is a strictly positive religion. In respect of the sum of the
   religious elements--to use a word that should again be brought to
   honour--it is a heresy, [69] for from many equals one is chosen to be
   head of the rest. In respect, however, of the fellowship of all
   participants and their relation to the founder of their religion who
   first raised this central point to clear consciousness, it is a school
   and a discipleship.

   But if, as is to be hoped, we are agreed that religion can only be
   exhibited in and by such definite forms, only those who with their own
   religion pitch their camp in some such positive form, have any fixed
   abode, and, if I might so say, any well-earned right of citizenship in
   the religious world. They alone can boast of contributing to the
   existence and the progress of the whole, and they alone are in the full
   sense religious persons, on one side belonging by community of type to
   a kindred, on the other being distinguished by persistent and definite
   traits from everyone else.

   But many perhaps who take an interest in the affairs of religion may
   ask with consternation, or some evil-disposed person may ask with
   guile, whether every pious person must connect himself with one of the
   existing forms of religion. Provisionally, I would say, by no means. It
   is only necessary that his religion be developed in himself
   characteristically and definitely. That it should resemble any great,
   largely accepted, existing form is not equally necessary. I would
   remind him that I have never spoken of two or three definite forms, and
   said that they are to be the only ones. Rather, they may evermore
   develope in countless numbers from all points. Whosoever does not find
   himself at home in an existing religion, I might almost say whosoever
   is not in a position to make it if he had not found it, [70] > must
   belong to none but should be held bound to produce a new one for
   himself. Is he alone in it and without disciples, it does not matter.
   Everywhere there are germs that cannot arrive at any more extended
   existence, and the religion of one person may have a definite form and
   organization, and be quite as genuinely a positive religion as if he
   had founded the greatest school.

   In my opinion, then, you will see that the existing forms should not in
   themselves hinder any man from developing a religion suitable to his
   own nature and his own religious sense. The question of abiding in one
   of them or of constructing a religion of one's own, depends entirely on
   what relation developes in a man as fundamental feeling and
   middle-point of all religions.

   This is my provisional answer, but if he will hear more I would add
   that, except by misunderstanding, it would be very difficult to find
   oneself in such a position. A new revelation is never trivial, and
   merely personal, but always rests on something great and common. Hence
   adherents and fellow-believers have never failed the man really called
   to institute a new religion. Most men, following their nature, will
   belong to an existing form, and there will be only few whom none
   suffices.

   Yet--and this is my chief point--the authority being the same for all,
   the many are no less free than the few, and do no less fashion
   something of their own. If we follow any man's religious history, we
   find first dim presentiments which never quite stir the depths of the
   heart, and, being unrecognized, again disappear. Around every man,
   especially in earlier days, they doubtless hover. Some hint may awaken
   them, and they may again vanish without reaching any definite form and
   betraying aught characteristic. Afterwards it first comes to pass that
   the sense for the Universe rises once for all into clear consciousness.
   One man discovers it in one relation, another in another. Hereafter all
   things are referred to this relation, and so group themselves around
   it. Such a moment, therefore, in the strictest sense, determines every
   man's religion. Now I hope you will not consider a man's religion less
   characteristic, less his own, because it lies in a region where already
   several are collected. In this similarity you are not to find a
   mechanical influence of custom or birth, but, as you do in other cases,
   you are to recognize a common determination by higher causes. This
   agreement is a guarantee of naturalness and truth, and cannot, whether
   one is first or last, be hurtful to individuality. Though thousands
   before him and after him referred their religious life to one relation,
   would it, therefore, be the same in all?

   Remember that every definite form of religion is exhaustless for any
   one man. In its own way it should embrace the whole, a thing too great
   for any man. And not only so, but in itself there exist endless
   varieties of cultivation which are, as it were, subordinate types of
   religion. Is there not here work and scope enough for all? I, at least,
   am not aware that any religion had succeeded in so taking possession of
   its territory, and had so determined and exhibited everything therein,
   according to its own spirit, that, in any one professor of
   distinguished gifts and individuality of mind, nothing is wanting to
   perfection. Only to few of our historical religion has it been granted,
   even in the time of their freedom and higher life, to develope rightly
   and perfectly the neighbourhood of the middle-point, and, in even a few
   forms, to give individual impress to the common character. The harvest
   is great but the labourers are few. An infinite field is opened in each
   of those religions, wherein thousands may scatter themselves.
   Uncultivated regions enough present themselves to every one who is
   capable of making and producing something of his own. [71]

   The charge that everyone who allows himself to be embraced in a
   positive religion, can only be an imitator of those who have given it
   currency and cannot develope himself individually, is baseless. This
   judgment no more applies here, than it would to the state or to
   society. It seems to us morbid or quixotic for any one to maintain that
   he has no room in any existing institution, and that he must exclude
   himself from society. We are convinced that every healthy person will,
   in common with many, have a great national character. Just because he
   is rooted in it and influenced by it, he can develope his individuality
   with the greatest precision and beauty. Similarly, in religion only
   morbid aberration so cuts off a man from a life in fellowship with
   those among whom nature has placed him, that he belongs to no great
   whole. Somewhere, on a great scale, everyone will find exhibited or
   will himself exhibit what for him is the middle-point of religion. To
   every such common sphere we ascribe a boundless activity that goes into
   detail, in virtue of which all individual characteristics issue from
   its bosom. Thus understood, the church is with right called the common
   mother of us all.

   To take the nearest example, think of Christianity as a definite
   individual form of the highest order. First there is in our time the
   well known outward division, so definite and pronounced. Under each
   section there is then a mass of different views and schools. Each
   exhibits a characteristic development, and has a founder and adherents,
   yet the last and most personal development of religiousness remains for
   each individual, and so much is it one with his nature that no one can
   fully acquire it but himself. And the more a man, by his whole nature,
   has a claim to belong to you, ye cultured, the more religion must reach
   this stage in him, for his higher feeling, gradually developing and
   uniting with other educated capacities, must be a characteristic
   product.

   Or if, after unknown conception and rapid birth-pangs of the spirit,
   the higher feelings develope, to all appearance suddenly, is not then a
   characteristic personality born with the religious life? There is a
   definite connection with a past, a present and a future. The whole
   subsequent religious life is linked in this way to that moment and that
   state in which this feeling surprised the soul. It thus maintains its
   connection with the earlier, poorer life, and has a natural uniform
   development. Nay more, in this initial consciousness there must already
   be a distinctive character. Only in a shape and only under
   circumstances thoroughly definite, could it so suddenly enter a life
   already developed. This distinctive character, then, every subsequent
   moment displays and is thus the purest expression of the whole nature.
   The living spirit of the earth, rending itself from itself as it were,
   links himself as a finite thing to one definite moment in the series of
   organic evolutions and a new man arises, a peculiar nature. His
   separate existence is independent of the mass and objective quality
   either of his circumstances or his actions. It consists in the peculiar
   unity of the abiding consciousness that is linked to that first moment,
   and in the peculiar relation to it which every later moment preserves.
   Wherefore, in that moment in which in any man a definite consciousness
   of his relation to the highest Being has, as it were, original birth,
   an individual religious life originates.

   It is Individual, not by an irreversible limitation to a particular
   number and selection of feelings and intuitions, not by the quality of
   the religious matter. This matter all who have the spiritual birth at
   the same time and in the same religious surroundings have in common.
   But it is individual by what he can have in common with no man, by the
   abiding influence of the peculiar circumstances in which his spirit was
   first greeted and embraced by the Universe, and by the peculiar way in
   which he conducts his observation and reflection on the same. This
   character and tone of the first childhood of his religion are borne by
   the whole subsequent course of his views and feelings, and are never
   lost, however far he may advance in fellowship with the Eternal
   Fountainhead.

   Every intelligent finite being announces its spiritual nature and
   individuality by taking you back to what I may call a previous marriage
   in him of the Infinite with the finite, and your imagination refuses to
   explain it from any single prior factor, whether caprice or nature. In
   the same way you must regard as an individual everyone who can point to
   the birthday of his spiritual life and relate a wondrous tale of the
   rise of his religion as an immediate operation of the Deity, an
   influence of His spirit. He must be characteristic and special, for
   such an event does not happen to produce in the kingdom of religion
   vain repetition. [72] Everything that originates organically and is
   self-contained can only be explained from itself. If its origin and
   individuality are not regarded as mutually explanatory and identical,
   it can never be quite understood. Thus you can only understand the
   religious person in so far as you know how to discover the whole in the
   notable moment that began his higher life, or from the developed
   manifestation can trace back this uniform character to the first,
   dimmest times of life.

   All this being well considered, it will not be possible for you, I
   believe, to be in earnest with this complaint against the positive
   religions. If you still persist in it, it can only be from prejudice,
   for you are far too careless about the matter to be justified by your
   own observation. You have never felt the call to attach yourselves to
   the few religious men you might be able to discover. Though they are
   ever attractive and worthy enough of love, you have never tried by the
   microscope of friendship, or even of closer sympathy, to examine more
   accurately how they are organized both by and for the Universe.

   For myself I have diligently considered them, I have sought out as
   patiently and studied them with the same reverent care that you devote
   to the curiosities of nature, and it has often occurred to me whether
   you would not be led to religion simply by giving heed to the almighty
   way in which the Deity builds up, from all that has otherwise been
   developed in man, that part of the soul in which He specially dwells,
   manifests His immediate operation, and mirrors Himself, and thus makes
   His sanctuary quite peculiar and distinct, and if you only noticed how
   He glorifies Himself in it by the exhaustless variety and opulence of
   forms. I, at least, am ever anew astonished at the many notable
   developments in a region so sparsely peopled as religion. Men are
   distinguished by all degrees of receptivity for the charm of the same
   object and by the greatest difference of effect, by the variety of tone
   produced by the preponderance of one or other type of feeling, by all
   sorts of idiosyncrasies of sensitiveness and peculiarity of
   temperament, and the religious view of things nevertheless is
   perpetually prominent. Again I see how the religious character of a man
   is often something quite peculiar in him, strongly marked off to the
   common eye from everything else shown in his other endowments. The most
   quiet and sober mind may be capable of the strongest, most passionate
   emotions; a sense most dull to common and earthly things feels deeply
   even to sadness, and sees clearly even to rapture and prophecy; a heart
   most timid in all worldly matters testifies even by martyrdom to the
   world and to the age. And how wonderfully is this religious character
   itself fashioned and composed. Culture and crudeness, capacity and
   limitation, tenderness and hardness are in each, in a peculiar way,
   mixed and interwoven.

   Where have I seen all this? In the peculiar sphere of religion, in its
   individual forms, in the positive religious which you decry as utterly
   wanting in variety. I have seen it among the heroes and martyrs of a
   definite faith in a way for which the friends of natural religion are
   too cold, among enthusiasts for living feeling, in a way they hold as
   too dangerous, among the worshippers of some new sprung light and
   individual revelation. There I will show you them, there at all times
   and among all peoples. Nowhere else are they to be met. No man as a
   mere single being can come to actual existence. By the very fact of
   existence he is set in a world, in a definite order of things, and
   becomes an object among other objects, and a religious man, by
   attaining his individual life, enters by this very fact into a common
   life, which is to say into some definite form of religion. The two
   things are simply one and the same divine act, and cannot be separated.
   If the original capacity of a man is too weak to reach this highest
   stage of consciousness, by fashioning itself in a definite way, the
   stimulus must also be too weak to initiate the process of a
   characteristic and robust religious life.

   And now I have rendered you my account. It is for you now to tell me
   how, in respect of development and individuality, it stands with your
   boasted natural religions. Show me among its professors an equally
   great variety of strongly marked characters. For myself I must confess
   that I have never found among them anything of the sort. Your boast of
   the freedom that this kind of religion gives its adherents to develope
   themselves religiously according to their own sense, seems merely of
   freedom to remain undeveloped, freedom neither to be, nor to see, nor
   to feel anything at all that is definite. Religion plays in their mind
   far too wretched a role. It is as if religion had no pulse, no
   vasculary system, no circulation, and so had no heat, no assimilative
   power. It has no character of its own, no peculiar presentation.
   Everywhere it shows itself dependent upon the cast of a man's morals
   and sensibility. In union with them, or rather meekly following them,
   it moves idly and sparingly, and is only perceptible when it is
   patiently, and, as it were by drops, separated from them.

   Many estimable and strong religious characters, indeed, I have met,
   whom the adherents of the positive religions, not without wondering at
   the phenomenon, regard as adherents of natural religion. But on closer
   view they recognized them as their confrères. Such persons have always
   swerved somewhat from the original parity of the religion of reason,
   and have accepted something arbitrary, as it is called, something
   positive.

   But why do those who respect natural religion at once distrust everyone
   who introduces any characteristic feature into his religion? They also
   would have uniformity, though at the opposite extreme from
   sectarianism, the uniformity of indefiniteness. So little is any
   special personal cultivation through the positive religions to be
   thought of, that its most genuine adherents do not even wish the
   religion of man to have any history of its own at all or to commence
   with any notable event. Too much there has been already for their
   taste, moderation being for them the chief matter in religion, and all
   who can boast of religious emotions issuing suddenly from the depths of
   the heart, come at once into the evil repute of being infected by
   baleful enthusiasm. By little and little men are to become religious,
   just as they become wise and prudent and everything else they should
   be. All must come to them by instruction and education. There must be
   nothing that could be regarded as supernatural or even as singular.

   I would not say that in making instruction and education everything,
   natural religion has pre-eminently fallen into the evil of being mixed
   with metaphysics and morals, nay, of being changed into them: but this
   at least is clear, that its adherents have not started from any living
   self-contemplation and allowing nothing to mark their cast of thought,
   whereby in any characteristic way men might be affected, they have no
   sure middle-point. The belief in a personal God, more or less
   anthropomorphic, and in a personal immortality, more or less
   materialized and sublimated--the two dogmas to which they reduce
   everything--depends, as they know themselves, on no special way of
   viewing or comprehending. Hence, any one who joins them is not asked
   how he came to his faith, but how he can demonstrate it. Thus they
   assume that he must have reached everything by demonstration. Any other
   and more definite middle-point you would have difficulty in indicating.
   The little that their meagre and attenuated religion does contain is of
   great ambiguity. They have a providence in general, a righteousness in
   general, a divine education in general. Now it is in this perspective
   and fore-shortening, now in that, so that the value of everything is
   perpetually changing. Or if there is any common reference to one point,
   it is to something alien to religion, such as how to remove obstacles
   from morality, or sustain the desire for happiness, or something else
   about which, in ordering the elements of their religion, truly
   religious men have never asked. Their scanty religious possessions are
   thereby still more scattered and dispersed.

   This natural religion, then, does not unite its religious elements by
   one definite view and is no definite religious form, no proper
   individual representation of religion. Those who profess it have in its
   territory no definite dwelling, but are strangers whose home, if indeed
   they have any, must be elsewhere. They remind one of the thin and
   dispersed mass said to float between the worlds, which is here
   attracted by one and there by another, but not enough by any to be
   swept into its rotation. Why it exists the gods may know. It must be to
   show that the indefinite also can have a certain existence. Yet it is
   properly only a waiting for existence, to which they can only attain by
   the power of some force stronger and of a different kind from any they
   have been subjected to heretofore. More I cannot ascribe to them than
   the dim presentiments that precede that living consciousness in which
   religious life comes to visibility for man. There are certain dim
   impulses and conceptions that have no coherence with a man's
   individuality and only, as it were, fill up the vacant spaces. They
   originate only in the collective life, and are uniformly the same in
   all. The religion of men of this kind is thus the inarticulate echo of
   the piety around them.

   At the highest it is natural religion in the sense in which men used to
   speak of natural philosophy and natural poetry. The name was applied to
   such productions as lacked originality, and which, without being
   clumsy, conscious imitations, were but crude utterances of superficial
   endowments. The epithet was meant to distinguish them from the works of
   living, plastic science and art.

   The better part found only in the productions of the religious
   societies, they do not wait for with longing, they do not esteem it
   more highly because they cannot reach it, but they oppose it with all
   their might. The essence of natural religion consists almost entirely
   in denying everything positive and characteristic in religion and in
   violent polemics. It is the worthy product of an age, the hobby of
   which was that wretched generality and vain soberness which in
   everything was most hostile to true culture. Two things are hated
   supremely, a commencement in anything extraordinary and
   incomprehensible, and subsequently any suggestion of a school. This
   same corruption you will find in all arts and sciences. Into religion
   also it has forced its way, and its product is this empty formless
   thing. Men would be self-produced and self-taught in religion, and they
   are rude and uncultured, as is common with such persons. For
   characteristic production they have neither power nor will. Every
   definite religion they resist because it is a school, and if they
   should light on anything whereby a religion of their own might be
   fashioned, they would be as violent against it, seeing that from it
   also a school might arise.

   Hence their resistance to the positive and arbitrary is resistance to
   the definite and real. If a definite religion may not begin with an
   original fact, it cannot begin at all. There must be a common ground
   for selecting some one religious element and placing it at the centre,
   and this ground can only be a fact. And if a religion is not to be
   definite it is not a religion at all, for religion is not a name to be
   applied to loose, unconnected impulses. Recall what the poet says of a
   state of souls before birth. Suppose someone were to object to come
   into the world because he would not be this man or that, but a man in
   general! The polemic of natural religion against the positive is this
   polemic against life and it is the permanent state of its adherents.

   Go back then, if you are in earnest about beholding religion in its
   definiteness, from this enlightened natural religion to those despised
   positive religions. There everything appears active, strong and secure,
   every single intuition has its definite content and its own relation to
   the rest, and every feeling has its proper sphere and its peculiar
   reference. You find somewhere every modification of religiousness and
   every mental state in which religion can place men, with each of its
   effects somewhere complete. Common institutions and single utterances
   alike testify that religion is valued almost to forgetfulness of all
   else. The holy zeal with which it is contemplated, communicated and
   enjoyed, and the child-like longing with which new revelations of
   heavenly power are expected, [73] guarantee that no element visible
   from this standpoint shall be overlooked, and that nothing has
   disappeared without leaving a monument. Consider the variety of forms
   in which every single kind of fellowship with the Universe has already
   appeared. Do not be scared either by mysterious darkness or by
   wonderful dazzling grotesque traits. Do not admit the delusion that it
   may all be imagination and romance. Dig ever deeper where your magic
   rod has once pointed, and without fail you will bring forth the
   heavenly stream to the light of day.

   But regard also the human which is to receive the divine. Do not forget
   that religion bears traces of the culture of every age and of the
   history of every race of men. Often it must go about in the form of a
   servant, displaying in its surroundings and in its adorning the poverty
   of its home and its disciples. You must not overlook how it has often
   been stunted in its growth from want of room to exercise its powers,
   and how from childhood it has pined miserably from bad treatment and
   ill-chosen nourishment.

   And if you would comprehend the whole, do not abide by the various
   forms of religion that for centuries have shone and have dominated
   great peoples, and have been glorified in many ways by poets and sages.
   Recollect that what is historically and religiously most noteworthy is
   often distributed among but few, and remains hidden to the common eye.
   [74]

   But when, in this way, you have wholly and completely within your
   vision the right object, it will ever remain a difficult business to
   discover the spirit of the religions and from it to interpret them.
   Once more I warn you not to try to deduce it as an abstraction from the
   elements common to all the adherents. You will wander into a thousand
   vain researches, and come in the end not to the spirit of the religion
   but to a definite quantity of matter. You will remember that no
   religion has quite reached actuality, and that you cannot know it
   until, far removed from seeking it in a narrow space, you are able to
   complete and define it in the way it would develope if its scope had
   been large enough. And as this applies to every positive religion, it
   applies to every period of it and to every subordinate form of it. You
   cannot enough impress it upon yourselves that it all resolves itself
   into finding the fundamental relation. Without that, knowledge of
   details is unavailing, and you have not found it till all details are
   fast bound in one.

   Even with this principle of research as a touchstone, you will be
   exposed to a thousand errors, for much will meet you to withdraw your
   eyes from the true path. Above all, I beseech you, never forget the
   difference between the essence of a religion, in so far as it is a
   definite form and representation of religion in general and its unity
   as a school.

   Religious men are throughout historical. That is not their smallest
   praise, but it is also the source of great misunderstandings. The
   moment when they were first filled with that consciousness which they
   have made the centre of their religion is always sacred for them.
   Without reference to it, they never speak of what for them is
   characteristic in religion and of the form to which in themselves it
   has attained. You can easily imagine, then, how much more sacred still
   the moment must be in which this infinite intuition was first of all
   set up in the world as the foundation and centre of one peculiar
   religion. To it the whole development of this religion in all
   generations and individuals is historically linked. Now this sum of the
   religion, and the religious culture of a great body of mankind, is
   something infinitely greater than a man's own religious life, and the
   little mirror of this religion which he personally exhibits. This fact
   then is glorified in all ways; every ornament of religious art is
   heaped upon it. It is worshipped as the greatest and most blessed
   miracle of the Highest. Men never speak of their religion, nor ever
   exhibit any of its elements except in connection with this fact.

   As a consequence nothing is more natural than that this fact should be
   confused with the fundamental intuition of the religion. This has
   misled almost everyone and distorted the view of almost all religions.
   Never forget that the fundamental intuition of a religion must be some
   intuition of the Infinite in the finite, some one universal religious
   relation, found in every other religion that would be complete, but in
   this one only placed in the centre.

   I beg you also not to regard everything found in the heroes of religion
   or in the sacred sources as religion. Do not seek in everything the
   decisive spirit of that religion. Nor do I exclude trifles merely, or
   things that on any estimate are foreign to religion, but things often
   mistaken for it. Recollect how undesignedly those sources were
   prepared, so that it was impossible to provide for the exclusion of
   everything not religion. And recall how the authors lived in all sorts
   of circumstances in the world, and could not say at every word they
   wrote, this does not belong to the faith. When they speak worldly
   wisdom and morality, or metaphysics and poetry, therefore, do not at
   once conclude that it must be forced into religion, or that in it the
   character of religion is to be sought. Morality, at least, should be
   everywhere only one, and religion which should not be anywhere one,
   cannot be distinguished by the differences of morality, which are
   always something to be got rid of. [75]

   Above all I beg you not to be misled by the two hostile principles that
   everywhere, and almost from the earliest times, have sought to distort
   and obscure the spirit of religion. Some would circumscribe it to a
   single dogma, and exclude everything not fashioned in agreement with
   it, others, from hatred to polemics, or to make religion more agreeable
   to the irreligious, or from misunderstanding and ignorance of the
   matter, or from lack of religious sense, decry everything
   characteristic as dead letter. Guard yourselves from both. With rigid
   systematizers or shallow indifferentists you will not find the spirit
   of a religion. It is found only among those who live in it as their
   element, and ever advance in it without cherishing the folly that they
   embrace it all.

   Whether with these precautions you will succeed in discovering the
   spirit of the religions I do not know. I fear religion is only
   comprehensible through itself, and that its special architecture and
   characteristic difference will not become clear till you yourselves
   belong to some one religion.

   How you may succeed in deciphering the rude and undeveloped religions
   of remote peoples, or in unravelling the manifold, varied religious
   phenomena lying wrapped up in the beautiful mythologies of Greece and
   Rome, I care very little. May your gods guide you! But when yon
   approach the holiest in which the Universe in its highest unity and
   comprehensiveness is to be perceived, when you would contemplate the
   different forms of the highest stage of religion which is not foreign
   or strange, but more or less existent among ourselves, I cannot be
   indifferent as to whether or not you find the right point of view.

   Of one form only I should speak, for Judaism is long since dead. Those
   who yet wear its livery are only sitting lamenting beside the
   imperishable mummy, bewailing its departure and its sad legacy. Yet I
   could still wish to say a word on this type of religion. My reason is
   not that it was the forerunner of Christianity. I hate that kind of
   historical reference. Each religion has in itself its own eternal
   necessity, and its beginning is original. But the beautiful childlike
   character of Judaism charms me. This is so entirely overlaid, and we
   have here such a notable example of the corruption and utter extinction
   of religion in a great body in which it formerly existed, that it will
   well repay a few words. Remove everything political and moral as well,
   so God will, whereby this phenomenon is supposed to be characterized.
   Forget the experiment of joining the state to religion, if I should not
   say to the church; forget that Judaism was, in a certain sense, an
   order founded on an ancient family history and sustained by priests.
   Regard only its strictly religious elements, and then say what is the
   human consciousness of man's position in the Universe and his relation
   to the Eternal that everywhere shines through. Is it anything but a
   relation of universal immediate retribution, of a peculiar reaction of
   the Infinite against every finite thing that can be regarded as
   proceeding from caprice? In this way everything is regarded, growth and
   decay, fortune and misfortune. Even in the human soul freedom and
   caprice interchange with immediate operation of the Deity. All other
   recognized attributes of God express themselves in accordance with this
   principle, and are always regarded in their bearing upon it. The Deity
   is throughout represented as rewarding, punishing, disciplining single
   things in single persons. When the disciples asked Christ, "Who has
   sinned, this man or his parents?" the religious spirit of Judaism
   appeared in its most pronounced form, and his answer: "Think ye that
   these have sinned more than others ?" was his polemic against it.

   The universal interweaving of parallelism, therefore, is not an
   accident, nor the value set on dialogue. All history, being an abiding
   interchange between this attraction and this repulsion, is presented as
   a colloquy in word and deed between God and man, and what unity there
   is, is only from the uniformity of this dealing, and hence the
   sacredness of the tradition in which the connection of this great
   dialogue was contained, the impossibility of attaining religion, except
   through initiation into this connection, and hence also, in later
   times, the strife among the sects about the possession of this
   intercourse.

   Just because of this view, it came to pass that the gift of prophecy
   was developed in Judaism as in no other religion. Even Christians are,
   in comparison, mere learners. The whole idea of the religion is in the
   highest degree childlike. It could only work on a narrow scene, without
   complications, where the whole being simple, the natural consequences
   of actions would not be disturbed or hindered. The more the adherents
   of this religion advanced on the scene of the world and had relations
   with other peoples, the more difficult did the exhibition of this idea
   become. Imagination had to anticipate the word which the Almighty would
   speak, and, abolishing intervening time and space, bring the second
   part of the same transaction immediately before the eyes. That is the
   essence of prophecy, and the effort after it was necessarily a
   prominent feature of Judaism, so long as it was possible to hold fast
   the fundamental idea and original form of the Jewish religion.

   The belief in the Messiah was its highest product, its noblest fruit,
   but also its last effort. A new sovereign must come to restore Zion,
   wherein the voice of the Lord was dumb, to its original splendour. By
   the subjection of the peoples to the old law, the simple course of
   patriarchal times, broken by the unpeaceful association of peoples, the
   opposition of their forces, and the difference of their customs, should
   again become general. This faith has long persisted, and, like a
   solitary fruit, after all life has vanished, hangs and dries on the
   withered stem till the rudest season of the year.

   The limited point of view allowed this religion, as a religion, but a
   short duration. It died, and as its sacred books were closed, the
   intercourse of Jehovah with His people was looked upon as ended. The
   political association linked with it dragged on still longer a feeble
   existence. Till very much later its external part endured, and was that
   unpleasant phenomenon, a mechanical motion from which life and spirit
   have long vanished.

   The original intuition of Christianity is more glorious, more sublime,
   more worthy of adult humanity, penetrates deeper into the spirit of
   systematic religion and extends itself further over the whole Universe.
   It is just the intuition of the Universal resistance of finite things
   to the unity of the Whole, and of the way the Deity treats this
   resistance. Christianity sees how He reconciles the hostility to
   Himself, and sets bounds to the ever-increasing alienation by
   scattering points here and there over the whole that are at once finite
   and infinite, human and divine. Corruption and redemption, hostility
   and mediation, are the two indivisibly united, fundamental elements of
   this type of feeling, and by them the whole form of Christianity and
   the cast of all the religious matter contained in it are determined.
   With ever-increasing speed the spiritual world has departed from its
   perfection and imperishable beauty. All evil, even this that the finite
   must decay before it has completed the circuit of its existence, is a
   consequence of the will, of the self-seeking endeavour of the isolated
   nature that, everywhere rending itself from its connection with the
   Whole, seeks to be something by itself. Death itself has come on
   account of sin. The spiritual world, going from bad to worse, is
   incapable of any production in which the Divine Spirit actually lives.
   The understanding being darkened has swerved from the truth; the heart
   is corrupt and has no praise before God; the image of the Infinite in
   every part of finite nature has gone extinct.

   In accordance with this state of the spiritual world, all dealings of
   Divine Providence are calculated. They are never directed to the
   immediate results for feeling; they do not consider the happiness or
   suffering which they produce; they are not even for hindering or
   forwarding certain actions. They are simply calculated to check
   corruption in the great masses, to destroy, without mercy, what can no
   more be restored, and with new powers to give birth to new creations.
   Wherefore He does signs and wonders that interrupt and shake the course
   of things, and sends ambassadors, with more or less of divine spirit
   indwelling, to pour out divine powers upon men.

   And when man does seek through self-consciousness to enter into
   fellowship with the unity of the Whole, the finite resists him, and he
   seeks and does not find and loses what he has found. He is defective,
   variable and attached to details and non-essentials. He wills rather
   than gives heed, and his aim vanishes from his eyes. In vain is every
   revelation. Everything is swallowed up by the earthly sense, everything
   is swept away by the innate irreligious principle. The Deity finds ever
   new devices. By His power alone, ever more glorious revelations issue
   from the bosom of the old. He sets up ever more exalted mediators
   between Himself and men. In every later ambassador the Deity unites
   with humanity ever more closely, that men may learn to know the Eternal
   Being. Yet the ancient complaint that man cannot comprehend what is
   from the Spirit of God is never taken away.

   This is how Christianity most and best is conscious of God, and of the
   divine order in religion and history. It manipulates religion itself as
   matter for religion. It is thus a higher power of religion, and this
   most distinguishes its character and determines its whole form. Because
   it presupposes a widely-extended godlessness it is through and through
   polemical. It is polemical in its outward communication, for, to make
   its deepest nature evident, every corruption must be laid bare, be it
   in morals or in thinking. Above all it must expose the hostility to the
   consciousness of the Highest Being, which is the irreligious principle
   itself. Relentlessly it unmasks every false morality, every bad
   religion, every unhappy union of both for mutual covering of nakedness.
   Into the inmost secrets of the corrupt heart it presses and illumines,
   with the sacred torch of personal experience, every evil that creeps in
   darkness. Almost its first work on appearing was to destroy the last
   expectation of its pious contemporaries, saying it was irreligious and
   godless to expect any other restoration than restoration to purer
   faiths, to the higher view of things and to eternal life in God. Boldly
   it led the heathen beyond the separation they had made between the
   world of the gods and the world of men. Not to live and move and have
   the being in God is to be entirely ignorant of Him. If this natural
   feeling, this inner consciousness is lost amid a mass of sense
   impressions and desires, no religion has yet entered the narrow sense.
   Everywhere, then, its heralds tore open the whited sepulchres and
   brought the dead bones to light. Had these first heroes of Christianity
   been philosophers, they would have spoken as strongly against the
   corruption of philosophy. They never failed to recognize the outlines
   of the divine image. Behind all distortions and degradations they saw
   hidden the heavenly germ of religion. But as Christians they were
   chiefly concerned with the individual who was far from God and needed a
   mediator.

   Christianity, moreover, is as sharply and strongly polemical within its
   own borders, and in the inmost fellowship of the saints. Just because
   religion is nowhere so fully idealized as in Christianity, through its
   original postulate, perpetual warfare against all that is actual in
   religion is presented as a duty that can never be sufficiently
   fulfilled. And just because the ungodly is everywhere operative,
   because all actuality together appears unholy, an infinite holiness is
   the aim of Christianity. Never content with its attainments, it seeks,
   even in its purest productions, even in its holiest feelings, traces of
   irreligion and of the tendency of all finite things to turn away from
   the unity of the Whole. In the tone of the highest inspiration an
   ancient writer criticizes the religious state of the community; in
   simple openness the great apostles speak of themselves. And this is how
   every man is to walk in the sacred circle. He is not only to be an
   inspired man and a teacher, but in humility he is to present himself
   also to the universal testing. Nor shall anything be spared, not even
   what is most loved and dear; nor shall anything be indolently put
   aside, not even what is most generally acknowledged. Though without it
   be praised as holy and be set up before the world as the essence of
   religion, within it must be subjected to a severe and repeated test.
   Thus impurities are to be removed, and the splendour of the heavenly
   colours to shine more clearly in every pious impulse of the spirit.

   In nature you often see a compound mass, as soon as its chemical powers
   have overcome outside resistance or reduced it to equilibrium, take to
   fermenting, and eject one and another element. So it is with
   Christianity, it turns at last its polemical power against itself. Ever
   anxious, lest in its struggle with external irreligion it has admitted
   something alien, or may yet have in itself some principle of
   corruption, it does not avoid even the fiercest inward commotions to
   eject the evil.

   This is the history of Christianity that is rooted in its very nature.
   "I am not come to bring peace, but a sword," the Founder Himself said.
   His gentle soul could not possibly have meant that He was come to
   occasion those bloody commotions, so utterly contrary to the spirit of
   religion, or that wretched strife of words that deals with dead matter
   which living religion does not admit. But what He did foresee, and in
   foreseeing command, were those holy wars that spring necessarily from
   the essence of His teaching, and which, as bitterly as He describes,
   rend hearts asunder and dissolve the most intimate relations of life.

   But not only are the elements of Christianity themselves subjected to
   this perpetual sifting; in their unbroken existence and life in the
   spirit there is an insatiable longing for ever stricter purification,
   ever richer fulness. Irreligion is thought to dominate every moment in
   which the religious principle is not evident in the mind. Religion has
   no other opposite than just the absence of religious purpose: every
   interruption of religion is irreligion. If the mind is for a moment
   without intuition and feeling of the Infinite, it at once becomes
   conscious of hostility and remoteness. Christianity then demands as
   first and essential that piety be a constant state. It scorns to be
   satisfied, even with the strongest displays of it, as soon as it only
   rules certain portions of the life. Piety should never rest, and there
   should never be anything so absolutely opposed as to be inconsistent
   with it. From all finite things we should see the Infinite. We should
   be in a position to associate religious feelings and views with all
   sentiments, however they may have arisen, and with all actions,
   whatever be their object. That is the true highest aim of mastery in
   Christianity.

   How the fundamental view in Christianity, the view to which all others
   are referred, determines the character of its feelings is easy to
   discover. What do you call that feeling of an unsatisfied longing which
   is directed towards a great object, and which you are conscious is
   infinite? What impresses you on finding the sacred and the profane, the
   noble with the common and the mean intimately united? And what is the
   mood that urges you at times to assume the universality of this
   combination, and to search for it everywhere? With Christians this holy
   sadness is not occasional, but is the dominant tone of all their
   religious feelings. That is the only name which the language affords
   me. It accompanies every joy and every pain, every love and every fear.
   Nay, in its pride and in its humility it is the ground tone. If you can
   reconstruct the depths of a spirit from single features, undisturbed by
   foreign elements that have come from who knows where, you will find
   this feeling throughout dominant in the Founder of Christianity. If a
   writer, who has left but a few leaves in a simple speech is not too
   unimportant for your attention, you will discover this tone in every
   word remaining to us from his bosom friend. [76] And if ever a
   Christian has allowed you to listen in the sanctuary of his soul, you
   have certainly caught just the same tone.

   Such is Christianity. Its distortions and manifold corruptions I will
   not spare, for the corruptibility of every holy thing, as soon as it
   becomes human, is part of its fundamental view of the world. And I will
   not go farther into the details of it. Its doings are before you, and I
   believe I have given you the thread that, guiding you through all
   anomalies, will make the closest scrutiny possible. From first to last
   look only at the clearness, the variety, and the richness with which
   that first idea has been developed.

   When, in the mutilated delineations of His life I contemplate the
   sacred image of Him who has been the author of the noblest that there
   has yet been in religion, it is not the purity of His moral teaching,
   which but expressed what all men who have come to consciousness of
   their spiritual nature, have with Him in common, and which, neither
   from its expression nor its beginning, can have greater value, that I
   admire; and it is not the individuality of His character, the close
   union of high power with touching gentleness, for every noble, simple
   spirit must in a special situation display some traces of a great
   character. All those things are merely human. But the truly divine
   element is the glorious clearness to which the great idea He came to
   exhibit attained in His soul. This idea was, that all that is finite
   requires a higher mediation to be in accord with the Deity, and that
   for man under the power of the finite and particular, and too ready to
   imagine the divine itself in this form, salvation is only to be found
   in redemption. Vain folly it is to wish to remove the veil that hides
   the rise of this idea in Him, for every beginning in religion, as
   elsewhere, is mysterious. The prying sacrilege that has attempted it
   can only distort the divine. He is supposed to have taken His departure
   from the ancient idea of His people, and He only wished to utter its
   abolition which, by declaring Himself to be the Person they expected,
   He did most gloriously accomplish. Let us consider the living sympathy
   for the spiritual world that filled His soul, simply as we find it
   complete in Him.

   If all finite things require the mediation of a higher being, if it is
   not to be ever further removed from the Eternal and be dispersed into
   the void and transitory, if its union with the Whole is to be sustained
   and come to consciousness, what mediates must not again require
   mediation, and cannot be purely finite. It must belong to both sides,
   participating in the Divine Essence in the same way and in the same
   sense in which it participates in human nature. But what did He see
   around Him that was not finite and in need of mediation, and where was
   aught that could mediate but Himself? "No man knoweth the Father but
   the Son, and He to whom the Son shall reveal Him." This consciousness
   of the singularity of His knowledge of God and of His existence in God,
   of the original way in which this knowledge was in Him, and of the
   power thereof to communicate itself and awake religion, was at once the
   consciousness of His office as mediator and of His divinity.

   I would not speak of Him as standing opposed to the rude power of His
   foes without hope of longer life, for that is unspeakably unimportant.
   But when, forsaken in the thought of being silenced for ever, without
   seeing any outward institution for fellowship among His own actually
   set up, when in the face of the solemn splendour of the old corrupt
   system that had so mightily resisted Him, when surrounded by all that
   could inspire awe and demand subjection, by all that, from childhood,
   He had been taught to honour, sustained by nothing but that feeling, He
   uttered without delay that Yea, the greatest word mortal ever spake, it
   was the most glorious apotheosis, and no divinity can be more certain
   than that which He Himself thus proclaimed. [77]

   With this faith in Himself, who can wonder at His assurance that He was
   not only a mediator for many, but would leave behind a great school
   that would derive their religion from His? So certain was He that
   before it yet existed He appointed symbols for it. This He did in the
   conviction that they would suffice to bring the band of His disciples
   to a secure existence. Nay, so sure was He that already He had spoken
   among His own, with prophetic enthusiasm, of the immortalization of His
   memory.

   Yet He never maintained He was the only mediator, the only one in whom
   His idea actualized itself. All who attach themselves to Him and form
   His Church should also be mediators with Him and through Him. And He
   never made His school equivalent to His religion, as if His idea were
   to be accepted on account of His person, and not His person on account
   of His idea. Nay, He would even suffer His mediatorship to be
   undecided, if only the spirit, the principle from which His religion
   developed in Himself and others were not blasphemed.

   His disciples also were far from confusing this school with His
   religion. Pupils of the Baptist, still only very imperfectly initiated
   into the nature of Christianity, were, without anything farther,
   regarded and treated by the apostles as Christians and reckoned genuine
   members of the community. And it should be so still. Everyone who, in
   his religion, sets out from the same cardinal point, whether his
   religion originates from himself or from another, is, without respect
   of school, a Christian. It will naturally follow that when Christ with
   His whole efficacy is shown him he must acknowledge Him, who has become
   historically the centre of all mediation, the true Founder of
   redemption and reconciliation. [78]

   Nor did Christ say that the religious views and feelings He Himself
   could communicate, were the whole extent of the religion that should
   proceed from this ground-feeling. He always pointed to the living truth
   which, though only "taking of His," would come after Him. Similarly
   with His disciples. They never set limits to the Holy Spirit. His
   unbounded freedom and the absolute unity of His revelations are
   everywhere acknowledged by them.

   And when, the first bloom of Christianity being past and it was
   appearing to rest from its works, those works, so far as they were
   contained in the sacred scriptures, were regarded as a finished codex
   of religion, it was only brought about by those who took the slumber of
   the Spirit for death--religion, as far as they were concerned, being
   dead. All who still feel the life of religion in themselves or perceive
   it in others, have ever protested against this unchristian proceeding.
   The sacred scriptures have, by their native power, become a bible, and
   forbid no other book to be or to become a bible. Anything written with
   like power they would willingly allow to be associated with themselves.
   Nay, should not every later utterance of the whole church, and
   therefore of the Divine Spirit, append itself confidently, even though
   there be ineffaceably in the first fruits of the Spirit a special
   holiness and worth? [79]

   In accordance with this unlimited freedom, this essential infinity,
   then, this leading idea of Christianity of divine mediating powers has
   in many ways been developed, and all intuitions and feelings of the
   indwelling of the Divine Being in finite nature have within
   Christianity been brought to perfection. Thus very soon Holy Scripture
   in which, in its own way, divine essence and heavenly power dwelt, was
   held as a logical mediator to open for the knowledge of God the finite
   and corrupt nature of the understanding, while the Holy Spirit, in a
   later acceptation of the word, was an ethical mediator, whereby to draw
   near to the Deity in action. Nay, a numerous party of Christians
   declare themselves ready to acknowledge everyone as a mediating and
   divine being who can prove, by a divine life or any impress of
   divineness, that he has been, for even a small circle, the first
   quickening of the higher sense. To others Christ has remained one and
   all, while others have declared that their mediators have been their
   own selves or some particular thing. Whatever failure there may have
   been in form and matter, the principle is genuinely Christian, so long
   as it is free. Other human situations have, in their relation to the
   central point of Christianity, been expressed by feelings and
   represented by images, of which there is no hint in the speeches of
   Christ or elsewhere in the sacred books. Hereafter there will be more,
   for the whole being of man is not yet by any means embodied in the
   peculiar form of Christianity, but, despite of what is said of its
   speedy, its already accomplished overthrow, Christianity will yet have
   a long history.

   For why should it be overthrown? The living spirit of it, indeed,
   slumbers oft and long. It withdraws itself into a torpid state, into
   the dead shell of the letter, but it ever awakes again as soon as the
   season in the spiritual world is favourable for its revival and sets
   its sap in motion. Thus in oft repeated cycle it renews itself in
   various ways. The fundamental idea of every positive religion, being a
   component part of the infinite Whole in which all things must be
   eternal, is in itself eternal and universal, but its whole development,
   its temporal existence may not, in the same sense, be either universal
   or eternal. For to put the centre of religion just in that idea, it
   requires not only a certain mental attitude, but a certain state of
   mankind. Is this state, in the free play of the universal life, gone,
   never to return, that relation which, by its worth, made all others
   dependent on it, can no longer maintain itself in the feeling, and this
   type of religion can no more endure. This is the case with all
   childlike religions, as soon as men lose the consciousness of their
   essential power. They should be collected as monuments of the past and
   deposited in the magazine of history, for their life is gone, never to
   return.

   Christianity, exalted above them all, more historical and more humble
   in its glory, has expressly acknowledged this transitoriness of its
   temporal existence. A time will come, it says, when there shall no more
   be any mediator, but the Father shall be all in all. But when shall
   this time come? I, at least, can only believe that it lies beyond all
   time.

   One half of the original intuition of Christianity is the
   corruptibleness of all that is great and divine in human things. If a
   time should come when this--I will not say can no more be discovered,
   but no more obtrudes, when humanity advances so uniformly and
   peacefully, that only the navigator who calculates its course by the
   stars knows when it is somewhat driven back on the great ocean it
   traverses by a passing contrary wind, and the unarmed eye, looking only
   at what is taking place, can no more directly observe the retrogression
   of human affairs, I would gladly stand on the ruins of the religion I
   honour.

   The other half of the original Christian faith is that certain
   brilliant and divine points are the source of every improvement in this
   corruption and of every new and closer union of the finite with the
   Deity. Should a time ever come, when the power that draws us to the
   Highest was so equally distributed among the great body of mankind,
   that persons more strongly moved should cease to mediate for others, I
   would fain see it, I would willingly help to level all that exalteth
   itself. But this equality of all equalities is least possible. Times of
   corruption await all human things, even though of divine origin. New
   ambassadors from God will be required with exalted power to draw the
   recreant to itself and purify the corrupt with heavenly fire, and every
   such epoch of humanity is a palingenesis of Christianity, and awakes
   its spirit in a new and more beautiful form.

   And if there are always to be Christians, is Christianity, therefore,
   to be universal and, as the sole type of religion, to rule alone in
   humanity? It scorns this autocracy.

   Every one of its elements it honours enough to be willing to see it the
   centre of a whole of its own. Not only would it produce in itself
   variety to infinity, but would willingly see even outside all that it
   cannot produce from itself. Never forgetting that it has the beat proof
   of its immortality in its own corruptibleness, in its own often sad
   history, and ever expecting a redemption from the imperfection that now
   oppresses it, it willingly sees other and younger, and, if possible,
   stronger and more beautiful types of religion arise outside of this
   corruption. It could see them arise close beside it, and issue from all
   points even from such as appear to it the utmost and most doubtful
   limits of religion. The religion of religions cannot collect material
   enough for its pure interest in all things human. As nothing is more
   irreligious than to demand general unifomity in mankind, so nothing is
   more unchristian than to seek uniformity in religion.

   In all ways the Deity is to be contemplated and worshipped. Varied
   types of religion are possible, both in proximity and in combination,
   and if it is necessary that every type be actualized at one time or
   another, it is to be desired that, at all times, there should be a dim
   sense of many religions. The great moments must be few in which all
   things agree to ensure to one among them a wide-extended and enduring
   life, in which the same view is developed unanimously and irresistibly
   in a great body, and many persons are deeply affected by the same
   impression of the divine. Yet what may not be looked for from a time
   that is so manifestly the border land between two different orders of
   things? If only the intense crisis were past, such a moment might
   arrive. Even now a prophetic soul, such as the fiery spirits of our
   time have, [80] turning its thoughts to creative genius, might perhaps
   indicate the point that is to be for the future generations the centre
   for their fellowship with the Deity. But however it be, and however
   long such a moment may still linger, new developments of religion,
   whether under Christianity or alongside of it, must come and that soon,
   even though for a long time they are only discernible in isolated and
   fleeting manifestations. Out of nothing a new creation always comes
   forth, and in all living men in whom the intellectual life has power
   and fulness, religion is almost nothing. From some one of the countless
   occasions it will be developed in many and take new shape in new
   ground. Were but the time of caution and timidity past! Religion hates
   loneliness, and in youth especially, which for all things is the time
   of love, it wastes away in a consuming longing. When it is developed in
   you, when you are conscious of the first traces of its life, enter at
   once into the one indivisible fellowship of the saints, which embraces
   all religions and in which alone any can prosper. Do you think that
   because the saints are scattered and far apart, you must speak to
   unsanctified ears? You ask what language is secret enough--is it
   speech, writing, deed, or quiet copying of the Spirit? All ways, I
   answer, and you see that I have not shunned the loudest. In them all
   sacred things remain secret and hidden from the profane. They may gnaw
   at the shell as they are able, but to worship the God that is in you,
   do you not refuse us.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [63] As the question of the multiplicity of religion and unity of the
   church, treated in earlier passages, is here expressed in short
   compass, I would take the occasion to add something to the explanations
   of this seemingly paradoxical statement. First, in every type of faith
   it is the narrower brethren who would make the society so exclusive,
   that on the one hand they would absolutely take no part in the
   religious exercises of other types of faith, and would remain in entire
   ignorance of their nature and spirit; and on the other, for the
   slightest deviation, they are ready to found a distinct society. The
   more liberal and noble again seek to have an affectionate appreciation
   of the mind of strange fellow believers, not only as spectators, but as
   far as may be by active participation in the divine services that have
   as their chief purpose the exhibition of this mind. Had this not taken
   place among the members of the two Evangelical churches, there could
   not be, even where they most mingle, any thought now, more than three
   hundred years ago, of union. A Catholic could more easily be edified by
   the whole Evangelical service, in which he would only miss much that in
   another way is made up to him, than a Protestant with the Catholic
   service which, as it exhibits in the most positive way the difference
   between the two types of faith, cannot be the expression of his own.
   Even for a Protestant, however, there is a way of taking part in much,
   by recasting, adjusting, translating in one's own heart, that is not
   indifferentism. Only the Protestant who has done this can boast of
   understanding the Catholic type, and of having guarded his own faith
   when put to the touch-stone of contrast. This leads us to the second
   point. The endeavour to found an all-embracing society is the true and
   blameless principle of tolerance. Though the possibility of such a
   society may be remote if you take it quite away, nothing would remain
   but to regard the different types of religion as an unavoidable evil.
   It is just like the mutual toleration between differently constituted
   states. It continues because intercourse is still possible. When this
   ceases intolerance enters, and a supposed right is assumed to interfere
   in the affairs of other people. This can only be done by an act, by a
   government, taking outward destructive action, and never by reasoning
   or even by plausibility. Only the narrow-minded, however, assume such a
   right. The more liberal seek everywhere to open up intercourse, and to
   make manifest thereby the unity of the human race. Their love to the
   constitution of their Fatherland does not in the least suffer, and in
   religion also true tolerance is far removed from all indifferentism.

   [64] This expression savours strongly of the time when this book was
   written. There was then no great common interest: every man estimated
   his own condition according to his individual circumstances, without
   the smallest trace of public spirit; and the French Revolution itself,
   though already it had largely developed as a historical event, was
   regarded by us in a way thoroughly selfish and in the highest degree
   different and vacillating. Only at a later time, in the days of
   calamity which were the days of glory, did we again learn the power of
   common sentiments, and then the consciousness and the consolation of
   common piety returned. At present the patriotic and the religious
   sentiment may easily be measured by each other. Where empty words,
   instead of the deed looked for, are given in the concerns of the
   Fatherland, piety is also empty, however zealous its pretence; and
   where the interest in the improvement of our condition breaks up into
   morbid factions, piety again degenerates into sectarianism. It appears
   then that a quickening of natural, healthy public spirit contributes
   more to clearness in religion than all critical analysis. As is
   indicated by what follows in the Speech, analysis, wanting this
   impulse, is too apt to become sceptical. When the great social
   interests are weakened, piety is lamed and perplexed. Hence the
   religious societies that have a tendency to obscurity, do well to keep
   clear of all contact with other forms of religion.

   [65] I have made slight changes here, rejecting a capricious play on
   words that I might be more historical. The manifold divisions of one
   and the same type of faith are manifestly not all of equal worth. Such
   as recast the whole in a characteristic way have a natural worth, and
   have a good right to exist. All splits, however, about single points of
   small importance, as most of the separations from the great body of the
   church in the first centuries, owe their existence simply to the
   obstinacy of the minority. While they deviate in one point they may
   not, however, unless kept in breath by persistent polemies, neglect the
   rest. Those only are most called sects, and deserve only a name that
   indicates willing exclusion who absorb themselves in a few devious
   views and allow all the rest to grow strange. Such sects always rest on
   one narrow but forcible personality.

   [66] On the position assigned to this difference I hope I have already
   sufficiently declared myself. This representation, however, of the
   antithesis between the personal and the pantheistic, as going through
   all three stages, gives me an opportunity to explain the matter from
   another side. In the polytheistic stage this antithesis is undeniable,
   only it is less clear as in everything imperfect antitheses are less
   pronounced. Even when all that is known of their history is put
   together, most of the gods of Hellenic mythology have little unity. For
   explanation it is necessary to go back to the rise of their service to
   their different countries and the character of the myths there
   prevalent. The personality being slight, the forms readily become
   symbolical. Many of foreign origin have received native names and are
   quite symbolical, such as the Ephesian Diana, which is a pure
   representation of the universal life, natura naturans, the direct
   opposite of the idea of personality. In the Egyptian and Indian systems
   the basis is either symbolic or hieroglyphic, and there is no
   personality underneath. Such a purely symbolical representation of
   first causes has properly no conscious gods, but is really pantheistic.
   The dramatic or epic representation of the relation of the symbolic or
   hieroglyphic being, however, produces an appearance of personality. The
   two forms of polytheism, the personal and pantheistic, thus appear to
   mingle, but in principle they are easy to distinguish. Analogy would
   show that the same antithesis exists in the chaotic stage or fetichism.
   Here, however, it is more difficult to recognize and exhibit, there
   being but larvae of the gods which only by a later development become
   psychic.

   [67] I include in naturalism all the forms of religion usually known as
   worship of nature. They are all, in the sense given above, impersonally
   polytheistic. The worship of the stars is not an exception. Even the
   worship of the sun is only apparently monotheistic, for a wider
   knowledge of the system of the world must at once reduce it to worship
   of the stars, and, therefore, to polytheism. This departure from common
   usage has the disadvantage that the words naturalist and naturalism are
   employed among us for something quite different. I can only defend
   myself by hoping that every reader who does not think of the ancient
   usage, but of the present connection, will easily understand the
   expression employed and find it appropriate. Still I would have
   refrained, if the manner in which naturalism and rationalism were used
   almost synonymously as the opposite of supernaturalism had not even
   then so much displeased me. Even at that time I had the opinion, to
   which I have since given expression on different occasions, that it
   caused confusion. There is some sense, and more perhaps than is usually
   thought, in opposing reason to revelation, but there is no ground for a
   contrast between nature and revelation. For this antithesis the
   biblical foundation, to which a Christian will always return, entirely
   fails, and the more a matter is discussed from such a standpoint the
   more perplexed it will become.

   [68] The expectation that some polytheistic religions would yet
   develope was not expressed at random. It rested on the view also hinted
   at in the Introduction to my "Glaubenslehre," that many polytheistic
   systems have manifestly arisen from smelting together small idolatrous
   clan religions, and that they are of higher value than their elements.
   As long as races exist that have only a fetich worship such an
   occurrence is possible, and at a time when Christian missions had
   almost gone to sleep, I regarded this as the natural road to
   improvement for the most rude societies. This probability has since
   greatly diminished, and it has grown more likely that they also can be
   taken hold of directly by Christianity.

   [69] At one time the expression heretic was honourable. Among the
   Greeks the schools of the philosophers and physicians, the home of all
   the science and art of the time, were so called. And to come nearer to
   our subject the different dogmatic schools of the Jews also bore among
   the Hellenists the same name. In ecclesiastical language the
   established faith of the church is no longer the orthodox or catholic
   heresy. Yet the exclusive use of the word for what is to be rejected
   does not rest on etymology. Probably it has arisen because with a
   different reference it is used in this bad sense in scripture. Here I
   use it of the positive religions in the sense in which it was used of
   the Hellenic schools, which together contained the whole national
   philosophy. It must be a bad philosophical system indeed that has not
   caught some truly philosophic element, and in some way sought to refer
   to it all other elements. The same holds of the positive religions, and
   we may conclude that if they were all developed there would be
   contained in the sum of them the whole religion of the human race.

   [70] This make is, of course, to be understood with a certain
   limitation. In writing it I lived in the good confidence that every one
   would complete it for himself. For example, it could not be my meaning
   that he alone is a true Christian who could himself have been Christ
   had not Christ already been before him. But this must be admitted, that
   any man is a Christian only in so far as in pre-christian times he
   would among the Jews have held and transmitted the messianic idea, and
   among the heathen been convinced of the insufficiency of sensuous
   idolatry, only in so far as, by the feeling of his need for redemption,
   Christianity had attracted him and drawn him to itself. What follows
   shows clearly enough how little I was serious with the statement that
   some or perhaps many could have the germs of quite new types of
   religion outside of the historical forms, and that it should be their
   duty to bring them to the light.

   [71] Though I hope this passage, in its connection, could not easily be
   misunderstood, I would not leave it without a slight correction of both
   sense and expression. The expression has a certain appearance of giving
   countenance to the idea that it is possible, in the sphere of religion
   to proceed to discovery or by set purpose to produce something.
   Everything that is new, in particular if it is to be true and
   unadulterated, must issue spontaneously, as by inspiration, from the
   heart. This appearance, however, will not deceive those who hold fast
   the expression and the connection of the whole. In the second place,
   the sense appears to be presented too broadly and with too little
   regard to the great difference in various forms of religion. Every
   religion of the highest stage, and especially one that has constructed
   for itself a complete theology, must be in a position to review its
   whole domain. It is the business of systematic theology to draw such a
   map of it, that not only everything that has come to actuality in that
   form of religion finds its place, but that every possible place be
   indicated. And when such a map is looked at, we will not easily find
   any place empty, only some parts better filled, some less. None but
   subordinate forms of religion and smaller sects fail to aim at
   completeness. I have already shown why these sects have a natural
   inclination not to deal with the whole mass of religious matter, and in
   the smaller religious forms individuals may differ too little to be
   able fully to complete one another.

   [72] This book bears throughout the marks of opposition, and those who
   can call up that time will easily see that I am here chiefly defending
   the cause of those who refer the beginning of their religious life to
   one definite moment. Yet this is by no means a mere attempt to reduce
   the opponents of this view to silence, in the good assurance that they
   could not defend themselves. Singularly I have had to defend this
   position against an able man, now long departed, who was a
   distinguished teacher in a religious society I greatly value, and whose
   whole practice really rested on this assumption of definite moments of
   grace. He asked me if I actually believed in such moments and
   considered them necessary, so that a gradual imperceptible growth of
   religious life would not suffice me. He raised an objection from an
   experience that must have struck all attentive readers of the lives of
   men who have been awakened. They have moments when they receive the
   assurance of divine grace, when they are born to a personal, individual
   religious life. But, sooner or later, to most of them times of
   relaxation come, when this certainty is again lost. Moments of
   confirmation must follow, and it may be easily doubted whether the
   first or the second experience is the true commencement. From this
   doubt it follows that the truth is only in the gradual progress which
   the first moment prepared for, and the second and third confirmed. I
   reminded him of what I would here again recall, that I did not consider
   this the only form, but acknowledged also the imperceptible rise and
   growth. The inner truth, however, I held to be the union of both, one
   being more prominent in one case and the other in another. It was,
   however, one thing to postulate such moments and another to require
   that everyone should be able to specify it and have consciousness of
   the time. This idea I have further developed in a sermon. Thus we came
   to agree. To the way, however, in which the matter is here presented as
   an extraordinary moment with each life produced from it necessarily
   quite individual, two objections may be raised. First, even in the
   early times of the church, by the preaching of the apostles, there were
   Christian awakenings in large numbers together, and even yet, at times,
   not only among members of other faiths, but particularly among
   Christians whose piety has succumbed to worldly cares and occupation,
   such awakenings are, as it were, epidemic, and cannot, therefore, be
   regarded as extraordinary. Wherefore, secondly, it is probable that all
   it produces is not extraordinary and individual, more especially as
   these awakenings often appear as reactions against uniform, extensive
   indifference and licentiousness. This conclusion is supported by
   experience. At different times we find, just among those who hold by
   such authentic decisive moments, only one wearisomely uniform type of
   piety and the same, somewhat confused phraseology about the state of
   the soul that is conjoined with it. But this is connected with the
   uncertainty of those moments, and it is not in this sense that I
   contrast a life suddenly awaked with a life gradually developed. In a
   gradual development, the common elements dominate. By their power the
   individual elements are moulded and subordinated. Characteristic
   features are rarer and less pronounced. But the religiousness that
   rests apparently on a moment of awakening has the same character. Even
   those who effect the conversions have usually only one traditional
   type, which, from its very limitation to a few strong formulas, is
   fitted to arouse the indifferent, whether they are callous or have
   suffered defeat. Just because their view requires such a moment, their
   persistent demand actually prepares for it. By the repetition of such
   moments, though only in a quite general and originally passing manner,
   consciousness of personal worthlessness and of divine grace increase
   together, and a religious life is gradually established. This is the
   undeniable blessing that rests on this method. Yet the life adheres
   rigidly to that type, and is consequently careful and troubled and but
   sparingly equipped. If persons having such a history remain modestly in
   their own circle, they are for us worthy comrades. When they are highly
   cultured in an earthly sense and find themselves happy in this stage of
   religion, it is a phenomenon both elevating and humbling. But it is to
   none of those persons I refer here, for they have not developed an
   individual life. The moments I refer to are of quite a different stamp.
   They come to pass only where a religious tendency exists though chaotic
   and indefinite. They are not the result of external influences, rather
   they are prepared for by the ever renewed feeling that everything
   offered from without is precarious and inadequate. By quiet thought and
   aspiration the positive is fashioned from that negative, the inmost
   self is taken hold of by the divine, and then, comprehending itself, it
   more or less suddenly comes forth. These are rare occurrences, but even
   the most careless observer cannot deceive himself into believing that
   he can exhaustively describe them by one general name.

   [73] Of course it is not now revelations outside the circuit of any
   given religion that are here meant. A longing for such revelations
   could not exist in any positive religion, for even its longing must
   naturally bear its own characteristic form. Even the messianic hopes of
   the Jews were not a longing for something beyond Judaism, though they
   were afterwards fulfilled by the appearing of Christ In the measure of
   its vitality every religion has a desire to find in itself something
   divine yet unknown. Hence the historical consistency of any faith that
   is to have an extended influence for a long time is determined by its
   possession of some principle to which everything new may be referred.
   Where this fails unity tends to dissolution. Even if despite this
   principle there should still be divisions the largest sections will
   abide by it. In this sense we can say the strife between the Greek and
   Roman Churches is between the original and the translation, and that
   the strife between them both and the Evangelical Church is between
   scripture and tradition.

   [74] On similar grounds this passage requires a slight explanation. It
   might appear as if the great historical religions were put in the shade
   and the noteworthy sought only in smaller modifications. In the
   political sphere, indeed, we are somewhat accustomed to such a
   procedure. Many constitutions of great peoples appear to us clumsy or
   insignificant, while the form of government of single towns with small
   dominion are admired and studied by historians as masterpieces of
   political art. But it is otherwise in the religious sphere. A strong
   religious life, even if hedged in by narrow forms, sooner or later
   breaks through the limits of nationality. This even Judaism did, and
   nothing in this sphere with character and strength can remain small for
   ever. But I am speaking here especially of what takes place within the
   great forms of religion, particularly Christianity. Here it is quite
   otherwise. What most easily finds an entrance with the multitude
   becomes great and extended, which is usually that mean between extremes
   which is only to be reached by active attention on every side. Now this
   involves to some extent a direction of the attention without, that does
   not encourage an inward and characteristic development. This is the
   dominant character of what in the ancient sense of the word we call
   catholic. As this is chiefly thought of when the character and
   development of Christianity are under discussion, it seemed to me right
   to direct the attention of earnest inquirers away from what impresses
   by its size to what was smaller. But it was less to heretical parties
   that are marked by special partialities than to individuals in the
   greater church who cannot manage to adhere to mediocrity, or if you
   will to circumspection, whereby alone the individual retains a
   distinguished place among the catholic, but who prefer their inward
   freedom, and are not vexed by obscurity.

   [75] It has never seriously been my opinion that the doctrine of ethics
   should everywhere be one and the same. It will suffice, if I here
   adduce what is universally accepted. It appears to me that morality
   never can be everywhere the same, as all times witness that it never
   has been. Its form is essentially speculative, and never can be the
   same till speculation in general is everywhere the same. Of this,
   despite the great fruitfulness of the last centuries in philosophy of
   universal validity, there is not yet any appearance. Nor can its
   content be the same, even if everyone who dealt with ethics set out
   from pure humanity, for he only sees it through the medium of his age
   and his personality. Wherefore, any doctrine of morals of universal
   application can contain only the most general truths in formulas of
   varying worth. Hence the universal application is always rather
   apparent than real. Still the position here maintained is so far right,
   in that ethics applies another standard to these differences than
   religion. It begins by subordinating the individual and therefore the
   characteristic to the general. Only by this subordination does the
   characteristic gain a right to make itself valid. Suppose it possible
   to have as correct or even exactly the same system built on the
   opposite mode of procedure, it would never reach the universal feeling
   and anywhere give it effect. In religion on the contrary, everything
   issues from the individual life, and the more individual the more
   effective, and all common elements arise simply from observing affinity
   and connection. Hence many who are not yet conscious of their
   difference can adhere to one kind of religion. Many, even when they are
   conscious of their difference, if only their apprehension of human
   relations is the same, may, it is true, accept one doctrine of morals,
   yet there may be found among the adherents of one religion such marked
   difference that it is impossible for them to have even a common moral
   doctrine.

   [76] Nothing betrays less sense of the nature of Christianity and of
   the person of Christ Himself than the view that John has mixed much of
   his own with the speeches of Jesus. It even betrays small historical
   sense and understanding of what brings great events in general to pass,
   and of the nature the men must have on whom they are founded. This
   assertion was formerly but a whisper, but after strengthening itself in
   quiet, and providing itself with critical weapons, it makes a bolder
   venture, and now John did not write the gospel at all, but a later
   writer invented this mystic Christ. But we are left to find out for
   ourselves how a Jewish rabbi of philanthropic disposition, somewhat
   Socratic morals, a few miracles, or what others took for miracles, and
   a talent for striking apothegms and parables, a man to whom, according
   to the other evangelists, some follies will have to be forgiven, a man
   who could not have held water to Moses and Mohammed, could have had
   such an effect as to produce a new religion and a new church. But this
   must be fought out in a learned manner, and the friends and adorers of
   the Johannine Son of God are doubtless already girding themselves. The
   sadness of the Christians of which I have spoken can be traced in
   Christ in the other evangelists also, as soon we learn to understand
   them rightly through John. I have said that this sadness is the
   ground-tone in the pride as in the humility of the Christian. It may
   appear that, though it is generally agreed that something exists which
   may be described as pride which is not to be blamed, it is somewhat
   venturesome to call it a Christian state of mind. In the Christian
   disposition, humility is so essential and so predominant, that in this
   sphere it does not appear as if there could be anything resembling
   pride, even though in civil morals we would not blame it. I will not
   shield myself by saying that I have also put fear and love together. As
   love is the mark of the Christian, and perfect love casts out fear, I
   might say that I was thinking of a human, that is an imperfect state of
   things. But my meaning was this. There must be distinguished in the
   Christian his personal consciousness over against Christ from his
   personal consciousness in fellowship with Christ. The former, even
   after the divine spirit of goodness has accomplished much in him, can
   be nothing but humility, but the later, consisting in the acquisition
   of all Christ's perfections, must be of quite the opposite nature. Now
   I know no other term that would express the contrast more strongly. To
   point out this feeling I only need to recall all the glorification of
   the Christian church in our New Testament books. But that even in this
   pride there should be sadness about the still narrow limits in which
   fellowship with Christ is actually felt, is a matter of course.

   [77] It is always dangerous, especially as here before unbelievers, to
   rest faith in Christ on any one thing in Him. Something apparently
   similar may only too readily be compared with it, and its inner and
   essential difference may not be easy to detect. Many an enthusiast has
   thought greatly of himself and died in that faith. How often has an
   error been defended with the firmest conviction at the risk of life!
   Such a rooted error, if indeed the proper object of the faith is not
   the truth to which the error has attached itself, rests only on an
   idiosyncrasy which cannot extend far. But of this self-consciousness of
   Christ, the faith of the whole company of His disciples and the joy of
   all the martyrs of this faith are the reflection. Such a power the
   self-deception of any one soul never exercised. Consider also that this
   claim did not have to do merely with inner phenomena of the
   consciousness about which men could easily deceive themselves nor with
   some prospect in the distant future, which offers free play to fancy.
   Christ had to believe that, under unfavourable circumstances, open and
   easily surveyed, the divine power of this abiding consciousness would
   approve itself. Still the vindication of faith by any one thing is
   always incomplete, and to attempt to plant it thereby in another is
   always hazardous.

   [78] The conclusion of this exposition that, Christ is the centre of
   all mediation, should connect all the details in it and complete what
   appears insufficient. Still I would not have the reader overlook what I
   wish to make prominent. At that time the distinction between the
   teaching of Christ and the teaching about Christ was hailed as a great
   discovery. Even allowing its validity to some extent, the idea of
   mediation must in every way be reckoned the teaching of Christ. Our
   teaching about Christ is nothing but the ratification and application
   of that teaching of Christ as it is fashioned by faith and sealed by
   history. And if I distinguish His school from His religion it is only,
   as the conclusion shows quite clearly, a different consideration of the
   same matter from different points of view. The religion of Christ is
   that the idea of redemption and mediation is the centre of religion.
   The application, so far, however, as the reference of this idea to a
   person was a historical process--and on this reference the whole
   historical existence of the doctrine as well as of the society rests--I
   call, by an expression now generally used, His school. That this was
   for Christ only secondary appears from what is here adduced, and also
   from the fact that at first the kingdom of God, and He who was to come
   was announced, and only afterwards He is spoken of as having come.
   Again, when it is said further back that Christ has become a mediator
   for many, it is to be remembered that Christ Himself said that "He
   would give his life a ransom for many." A particularist meaning is not
   to be drawn from my words, or at least only in accordance with my view
   set forth elsewhere. This is, that the actually experienced relation of
   man to Christ is limited, and ever will be, even when Christianity
   spreads over the whole earth. On the other hand, I acknowledge a purely
   inward and mysterious relation of Christ to human nature generally,
   which is absolutely general and unlimited.

   [79] Many of the members of our church will perhaps consider what is
   here said of the Scriptures to be Catholic, and Catholics will consider
   it hyper-protestant; the constitution of the Scriptures by the church
   not being acknowledged, but the volume being declared not yet finished.
   This is said only in a tentative way, to distinguish clearly the shell
   of the matter from the kernel. If there could be a book from an author
   like Mark or Luke or Jude, with all the marks of authenticity, we would
   hardly agree unanimously to receive it into the canon. Yet it would
   show its native biblical power and be bible in fact. Just this power
   has been the ground for determining the practice of the church, and the
   ecclesiastical deliverance only confirmed it. How imperceptible the
   transition from the canonical to the apocryphal, and both in power and
   purity, how in strength and beauty many productions of the church
   approach the canonical, no Protestant with experience and love of
   history will deny.

   [80] This is not an addition which I now make for the first time. It
   was meant for the second edition, but as it seemed to me too much of a
   challenge I again erased it. Now that those times are past, it can
   stand as a monument of the impression made on me and doubtless on many.
   It was not that the surfeit of a senseless Christianity at that time
   appeared in many as irreligion, for it was to the houour of
   Christianity that they believed that where Christianity was nothing
   religion generally was nothing. But among not a few there was an
   endeavour to provide for natural religion, an external existence, a
   thing already shown in England and France to be a vain endeavour. There
   was also an itch for innovation that, dreaming of a symbolized or
   gnostic Heathenism, of a return to ancient mythologies as of a new
   salvation, rejoiced at the thought of seeing the fanatical Christ
   vanquished by the calm and cheerful Zeus.
     __________________________________________________________________

EPILOGUE

   Before parting with you, let me add a word about the conclusion of my
   Speech. Perhaps you think that it had been better suppressed, because
   now, after several years, it is apparent that I was wrong in adducing
   as a proof of the power of the religious sentiment that it was in the
   act of producing new forms. As nothing of the sort has anywhere come to
   pass, did I not wrongly presume to guess what they would be? If you
   think so, you have forgotten that prophecy only deserves its name, in
   so far, as it is the first fore-runner of the future. It is an
   indication of what is to be, and in it, to the eyes of the prophet's
   kindred, the future is already contained. But the more the thing
   prophesied is great and comprehensive, and the more the prophesying
   itself is in the genuine lofty style, the less can the fulfilment be
   near. As in the far distance the setting sun makes, from the shadows of
   great objects, vast magic shapes on the grey east, prophecy sets up
   only in the far distance the shapes of the future which it has
   fashioned from the past and the present. Wherefore, what I said was in
   no sense to be to you a sign to prove the truth of my Speech, which
   should rather be clear to you by itself. I had no wish to prophesy,
   even if the gift had not been wanting, for it would have availed me
   nothing to point you to a distant future.

   All I wished was partly to demand, not of you, but of some others, half
   in irony, whether they could perhaps produce that of which they appear
   to boast, and partly I hoped to lead you to trace for yourselves the
   course of the fulfilment. I was sure you would there find, what I would
   willingly show you, that, in the very type of religion, which in
   Christianity you so often despise, you are rooted with your whole
   knowing, doing and being. You would see that you cannot get away from
   it, and that you seek in vain to imagine its destruction without the
   annihilation of all that you hold dearest and holiest in the
   world--your whole culture and mode of life, your art and science.

   From this it follows that, as long as our age endures, nothing
   disadvantageous to Christianity can come forth, either from the age or
   from Christianity itself, and from all strife and battle it must issue
   renewed and glorified. This was my chief purpose, and you can see that
   I could not have meant to attach myself to some expressions of able and
   superior men, from which you understand that they wish to re-introduce
   the Heathenism of Antiquity, or even to create a new mythology, and by
   it to manufacture a new religion. In my opinion, rather, you can
   recognize, in the way that everything connected with such an endeavour
   is void and without result, the power of Christianity.

   Above all, it is necessary that you understand what I have said of the
   fortunes of Christianity. This is not the place to expound and defend
   or even largely indicate my views, but I shall make a simple
   explanation that may prevent me from being classed, in the usual way of
   referring everything to schools and parties, with persons with whom, in
   this respect at least, I have nothing in common.

   From the first there has almost always been some pronounced antithesis
   in Christianity. As is natural, it always has a beginning, a middle,
   and an end. The hostile elements gradually separate, the division
   reaches a climax, and then gradually subsides until it fully disappears
   in another antithesis that has meantime been developing. This has
   marked the whole history of Christianity, and at present Protestant and
   Catholic are the dominant antithesis in Western Christendom. In each
   the idea of Christianity has characteristic expression, so that, only
   by conjoining both, can the historical phenomenon of Christianity
   correspond to the idea of Christianity. This antithesis, I say, is
   still in operation and persists. Were I to interpret for you the signs
   of the time, I would say it has reached the turn of the tide, but has
   not appreciably diminished or disappeared. [81] Let no one, therefore,
   be indifferent, but let every man consider to what side he and his
   Christianity belong, and in which church he can lead a religious and
   edifying life. And none who are happy in having a healthy, strong
   nature, and who follow it, can go astray. [82]

   At present there are some who appear to rescue themselves from the
   Protestant into the Catholic Church. I am not speaking of those who in
   themselves are nothing and are dazzled like children by glitter and
   show, or are talked over by monks. But there are some to whom I myself
   have formerly drawn your attention who are somewhat-able poets and
   artists who are worthy of honour; and a host of followers, as is the
   fashion nowadays, has followed them. The reason given is that in
   Catholicism alone there is religion, and in Protestantism only
   irreligiousness, a godlessness growing out of Christianity itself. Let
   that man be honoured by me who ventures on such a step solely on the
   conviction that he is following his nature. But if his nature is only
   at home in that form of Christianity, surely traces of this natural
   constitution will appear in his whole life. It must be capable of proof
   that his act has only completed outwardly what inwardly and
   spontaneously was strictly contemporaneous and anterior.

   There is another class also which I would pity and excuse if I cannot
   honour. With the instinct of the sick, which at times indeed is
   marvellously successful but may also be dangerous, they take this step.
   Manifestly they are in a state of dismay and weakness. Avowedly they
   require external support for a bewildered feeling or some incantations
   to allay anxious dread and bad headache, or they seek an atmosphere in
   which weak organs, being less stimulated, would feel better, as many
   sick people must not seek the free mountain air but the exhalations of
   animals.

   But the persons to whom I now refer, are neither one nor other, but,
   appear to me simply despicable, for they know not what they wish nor
   what they do. Is there any sense in what they say? Do the heroes of the
   Reformation impress any uncorrupted mind with godlessness and not with
   a truly Christian piety? Is Leo X. actually more pious than Lather, and
   Loyola's enthusiasm holier than Zinzendorf's? And where are we to
   assign the greatest productions of modern times in every department of
   science, if Protestantism is godlessness and hell? And in the same way
   that Protestantism is for them only irreligion, they love in the Roman
   church not what is in any way characteristic and essential, but only
   its corruption--a clear proof that they know not what they wish.
   Consider this purely historically, that the papacy is in no way the
   essence of the Catholic Church, but its corruption. [83]

   What they are really in search of is idolatry. The Protestant Church,
   alas! has also to contend with idolatry, but in a less gorgeous, and
   therefore less seductive form. And because it is not pronounced and
   colossal enough here, they seek it beyond the Alps. For what is an
   idol, if not what can be made, touched, and broken with hands, and
   which yet, in its perishableness and fragility, is foolishly and
   perversely set up to represent the Eternal, not merely in its own
   place, and according to its indwelling power and beauty, but as if a
   temporal thing could be the Eternal, as if the Eternal could be handled
   and magically weighed and measured at pleasure. The highest they seek
   is this superstition in church and priesthood, sacrament, absolution,
   and salvation. But they will accomplish nothing thereby, for it is a
   perverse state of things and will show itself in them through increased
   perversity. Leaving the common sphere of culture, they will rush into a
   vain and fruitless activity, and the portion of art that God has lent
   them will turn to foolishness. This, if you will, is a prophecy, the
   fulfilment of which lies near enough to be expected.

   And now one more prophecy of a different sort, and may you, as I hope,
   also see its fulfilment. It refers to the second point I have just
   touched upon, the persistence of the opposition of the two parties.
   Unquestionably many in the Romish Church have rid themselves of her
   corruptions. Now it might happen that outwardly also this should take
   place, if not everywhere, and in all things, yet in a large measure.
   Seducers might then come, threatening the strong, and flattering the
   weak, persuading the Protestants that, as this corruption is held by
   many to be the sole ground of separation, they should return to the
   one, indivisible, original church. Even that is a foolish and perverse
   project. It may attract and terrify many, but it will not succeed, for
   the abolition of this opposition at present would be the destruction of
   Christianity. I might challenge the mightiest of the earth to attempt
   it. For him everything is a game, and I would allow all power and
   guile. Yet I prophesy he would fail and be put to shame, for Germany
   still exists, and its invisible power is not weakened. Once more it
   would take up its calling with unsuspected power and would be worthy of
   its ancient heroes and its renowned descent. It was chiefly appointed
   to develope this phenomenon, and, to maintain it, it would rise again
   with giant force. [84]

   Here you have a sign if you require it, and when this miracle comes to
   pass you will perhaps believe in the living power of religion and of
   Christianity. But blessed are they by whom it comes to pass, who do not
   see and yet believe.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [81] This deliverance will now appear less strange than it did at
   first. At that time, looking from one side, it was easy to believe that
   both churches would unite in unbelief, in indifferentism; from the
   other, that they would soon be two forms of superstition, only
   outwardly and accidentally different. Lately, however, many events have
   not only quickened the consciousness that the opposition still actually
   exists, but have made it very clear what holds the two sections apart.
   We cannot deny that the chief seat of the opposition is in Germany. In
   England, indeed, it is strong enough, but it is more political, in
   France again it plays a very subordinate part. It becomes us Germans
   above all to comprehend it both historically and speculatively. This
   happens, alas! too seldom. We have fallen sadly into impassioned ways.
   If anyone among us would speak of the matter impartially, he will
   certainly be suspected by his brethren as a crypto-catholic, and he
   would be exposed to many importunate and flattering advances from the
   Romanists. Praiseworthy exceptions, when truly thorough-going
   moderation is acknowledged, are very rare. Leaving quite aside,
   therefore, the present state of things, I will indicate, in few words,
   wherein this opposition, regarded from the point of view of its
   historical development, seems to me still to exist. There is in both
   churches an evident disposition to be exclusive, and as far as possible
   to ignore each other. Of this the almost inconceivable ignorance of one
   another's doctrine and usages gives sufficient proof. This disposition
   is natural enough in the mass of men, for each section finds religious
   stimulus and nourishment enough in its own narrow circle, and the other
   section, though but little may be wanting to it, appears, if not as
   impure as members of alien religious to the Jews, at least utterly
   strange. This tendency rules in quiet times. It is only interrupted in
   the mass of men by outbreaks of passion, when one section gains some
   decisive advantage in political matters or, in a large number of single
   cases in private life. As the educated, however, in whom a historical
   consciousness should dwell, ought not to share this lazy exclusiveness,
   neither should they share this hurtful passionateness. Between both
   churches there should be a living influence, even though it should not
   be direct. Quiet contemplation should stir up a keen rivalry in
   whatever in the other section is acknowledged to be good. The contrast
   in the character of both churches involves at least that one is
   receptive of the imperfections that the other more suppresses. May the
   Catholics be edified by seeing that the more prominently the religious
   tendency appears among us, the more any return to any kind of barbarity
   is hindered. And if they would not deceive themselves as though there
   were no difference in this respect between us, let them see how far
   they can advance in the demand for individual freedom. And we should,
   as passionlessly as possible, observe the secure position which in all
   outward matters the Catholic Church knows how to secure by strong
   organization. Let us then try how far we can attain to unity and
   coherence, yet it must be done in our own spirit and not by setting the
   spiritual order over against the laity in a way quite opposed to this
   spirit. Such healthy influences appear, and the results are seen from
   time to time. But the lazy exclusiveness of the mass checks them and
   all passionate moments interrupt them. It may therefore be long before
   the purpose of the disagreement is attained. Till then, we cannot say
   that the variance has reached its climax and has begun to diminish.
   When that comes to pass, there will be a common duty to exercise a
   vitalizing influence on the Greek Church. As it is almost quite
   defunct, both churches will need for along time to employ all their
   powers and all their remedies. But, until they have succeeded in waking
   the dead, they cannot have fulfilled the destiny of their division.

   [82] How seldom anyone in lands belonging entirely to one church,
   without interested views or artful suasion, but by a true inward
   impulse, is driven to the other church is apparent. In regions where
   the two sects commingle, how calmly we educate the children of parents
   of one faith in the paternal religion, and it does not in the least
   occur to us that they may have an inward destination for the other. As
   the different national character of Christian peoples was not without
   influence on the course the Reformation took, should it not be thought
   that this spiritual attitude is a matter of inheritance or birth? And
   is not this confirmed by the fact that when the adherents of another
   faith come over to Christianity, we do not consider the Christian sense
   pure and steadfast till after two generations. For children of mixed
   marriages, therefore, the natural rule would not be for the sons to
   follow the father and the daughter the mother, but for each to follow
   the parent with whom there is more inherited resemblance. On the other
   side, however, it is not to be denied that the original relation of the
   two churches is not favourable to the hypothesis of a strictly innate
   inclination. It would rather lead us to expect a self-determination for
   one or other form, according to personal character. From this view the
   natural principle for mixed marriages and the principle that without
   extraneous interference would have effect, would be for the children to
   follow the more strongly religious parent. Under the special influence
   of this parent, the religious element would be most strongly developed,
   and then the child's own choice could be calmly and hopefully waited
   for. Were there no foreign motives, no influences that are almost
   violence, and were this natural course generally followed, change in
   the prime of life would be rarer. After a faith has been apprehended
   with love, and has for a long time guided the life, this step is always
   the result and the cause of confusion. It would be only taken by
   individuals who are in other respects exceptions, as it were capricious
   sallies of nature, or by persons who, from perverse guidance, have been
   made to see very clearly the imperfection and narrowness of the
   accepted faith, and are thereby driven to the opposite faith--a thing
   not rare at present in both churches.

   [83] Only a few will require a defence of this position, that the
   Catholic Church, not merely in the old sense, but in the sense we
   understand when we contrast it with the Evangelical Church, might shake
   off the papal authority and return from the monarchical to the
   aristocratic form of the episcopal system, without removing the
   difference between the churches, or, in any marked degree, facilitating
   their union. Nor does it need much proof that the papal authority,
   whether considered in its rise or in its prevailing tendency, has
   striven for aims almost always false and beyond the church's sphere. It
   is noteworthy, however, that almost all who fall away from our church
   become strong papists. It is hardly possible to avoid the conclusion
   that they have not apprehended the true character of the Catholic
   Church, and an only destined to display their religious incapacity in
   two different forms.

   [84] It would be bad if the very conclusion of a work could cause a
   smile that might efface any earlier good impressions. Yet this may do
   it in two respects. First, there is the dread that Bonaparte could have
   some design against Protestantism, for did he not afterwards threaten
   to go over with a large part of France to Protestantism, and, quite
   recently, were not the Protestants in the south of France persecuted as
   his most attached followers? Then, again, I almost always speak as if
   all Germany were Protestant, and now many are hoping that sooner or
   later it will be once more altogether or almost Catholic. In respect of
   the former possibility, what I said expressed too accurately our
   feelings in the years of ignominy that I should not let it stand as I
   then wrote it. So much had been taken from us that we might well fear
   that all was threatened. Undeniably Napoleon acted in a quite different
   way in Protestant and in Catholic Germany, and it could not remain
   hidden from him that our religious sentiment and our political were
   intimately connected. On the other point let everyone take heed not to
   laugh too soon. However firmly he holds his hope, I hold mine as
   firmly. Further progress of a Papistical Catholicism in Germany on many
   grounds necessarily involves a return to every kind of barbarity. As
   the freedom of the Evangelical Church will remain the surest support of
   every noble endeavour, it cannot lie in the ways of Providence to
   weaken it and, at its expense, to allow Catholicism to prevail.
     __________________________________________________________________

THE FIRST EDITION

   IN the first chapter there are many changes, but for the most part
   merely of single words and phrases. The complimentary passage on us
   proud Islanders is even stronger in its original form. Religion can
   only be for us a dead letter, a sacred article in the constitution
   without any reality, for we are only occupied with fierce defence of
   national orthodoxy and the maintenance of superstitious attachment to
   ancient usages, while our pursuit of knowledge is limited to a
   miserable empiricism.'

   P. 16, last par., has lost something of the irony of the Romanticist.
   "We have systems from all schools, yea, even from schools that are mere
   habitations and nurseries of the dead letter. The spirit is neither to
   be confined in academies nor to be poured out into a row of ready
   heads. It evaporates usually between the first mouth and the first
   ear."

   On p. 17, foot, beginning "In isolation," a somewhat mighty figure has
   been weakened, doubtless as too youthfully daring. He is speaking of
   the work of the true heroes of religion. "Only single noble thoughts
   flash through their soul, kindled with celestial fire. The magic
   thunder of an enchanting speech accompanied the high phenomenon, and
   announced to adoring mortals that the Deity had spoken. An atom
   impregnated with heavenly power, fell into their soul, and there
   assimilated all, and gradually expanded till it burst like a divine
   fate in a world whose atmosphere offers too little resistance, and
   produced in its last moments one of those heavenly meteors, one of
   those significant signs of the time, of the origin of which none was
   ignorant, and with awe of which all mortals were filled. You must seek
   this heavenly spark which is produced when a holy soul is stirred by
   the Universe, and you must attend to it in the incomprehensible moment
   of its formation."

   The earlier portion of the Second Chapter (pp. 26-66), has been
   materially altered, a large part of it having been entirely re-cast.
   The opening passage is little altered, the parallel drawn between the
   sociality of states and the combining of the mental activities is only
   verbally different, but it is used to explain that he frequently
   returns to more childlike times, not from depreciation of the present
   but in order to discover religion more by itself.

   Ultimately, metaphysics, morals and religion have the same object, the
   Universe. This has led to confusion. Yet your instinct and opinions are
   against making religion one with metaphysics, for you do not admit that
   it can tread with the same firm step, or with morals, for there are
   foully immoral parts in its history. It must, therefore, deal with the
   same matter in a different way. "What does your metaphysics do, or, if
   you will not have that antiquated, too historical name, your
   transcendental philosophy? It classifies the Universe, gives the
   grounds for what exists, deduces the necessity of the actual, and spins
   from itself the reality and the laws of the world." Religion, however,
   has nothing to do with grounds and deductions and first causes. "And
   what does your ethics do? It developes from the nature of man and his
   relation to the Universe a system of duties, it commands and prohibits
   actions with absolute authority. But religion cannot venture to use the
   Universe for the deduction of duties, or to contain a code of laws."
   The common idea of religion is that it is a mixture of fragments of
   metaphysics and ethics, but it is time this idea was quite annihilated.
   "The theorists in religion who seek to know the nature ofthe Universe
   and of a Highest Being whose work it is, are metaphysicians, but
   discreet enough not to despise a little morals; the practical persons,
   to whom the will of God is the chief matter, are moralists, but a
   little in the metaphysical style. They import the idea of the good into
   metaphysics as the natural law of a Being without limits and without
   wants, and they import the idea of an Original Being from metaphysics
   into morals that the great work should not be anonymous, but that such
   a glorious code might be prefaced by a picture of the law-giver." Were
   this mixture anything more than a selection for beginners, and had a
   principle of union of its own, religion must be the highest in
   philosophy, and metaphysics and ethics only sub-divisions. All these
   are found together even in the sacred books, unavoidably and also of
   high design. But religion is like the diamond in the clay, enclosed not
   to remain hidden, but to be all the more surely found. It is simply a
   device for subtle winning of the hearer, but it has overstepped the
   mark when the shell conceals the kernel. "I have been put out by your
   common idea, it is taken out of the way I trust. Interrupt me now no
   more."

   "Religion neither seeks like metaphysics to determine and explain the
   nature of the Universe, nor like morals to advance and perfect the
   Universe by the power of freedom and the divine will of man. It is
   neither thinking nor acting, but intuition and feeling. It will regard
   the Universe as it is. It is reverent attention and submission, in
   childlike passivity, to be stirred and filled by the Universe's
   immediate influences." To metaphysics, man is the centre of all, the
   condition of all existence; to religion, he is, like every other finite
   thing, but a manifestation of the Universe. Morals proceeds from the
   consciousness of freedom and seeks to expand the realm of freedom to
   infinity; religion regards man as needing to be what he is, whether he
   will or not. Religion, morals and metaphysics are equals, different but
   complementary. "To have speculation and practice without religion is
   mad presumption, audacious hostility to the gods, the unholy sense of
   Prometheus, who faintheartedly stole what he might have asked for in
   safety. Man has but stolen the feeling of his infinity and likeness to
   God, and as unjust goods he cannot prosper with it, for he must also be
   conscious of his limits"

   "Practice is art, speculation is science, religion is sense and taste
   for the Infinite." Without religion, practice cannot get beyond
   venturesome or traditional forms, and speculation is only a stiff and
   lean skeleton. "Practice opposes man to the Universe, not having
   received him as a part of it from the hand of religion. It has, in
   consequence, miserable uniformity, knows only one ideal and forgets to
   cultivate man himself. The feeling for infinite and living nature is
   wanting, whereof the symbol is variety and individuality." And why has
   speculation so long given delusions for a system and words for
   thoughts? From want of religion. "All beginning must be from intuition
   of the Universe, and if the desire to have intuition of the Infinite is
   wanting, there is no touchstone and there is need of none, to know
   whether anything has been rightly thought. Modern Idealism is in need
   of religion, p. 40.

   On intuition of the Universe my whole Speech hinges. It is the highest
   formula of religion, determining its nature and fixing its boundaries.
   "All intuition proceeds from the influence of the thing perceived on
   the person perceiving. The former acts originally and independently,
   and the latter receives, combines and apprehends in accordance with its
   nature." Without mechanical or chemical affection of the organs, there
   is no perception. "What is perceived is not the nature of things, but
   their action upon us, and what is known or believed of this nature is
   beyond the range of intuition. The Universe is in unbroken activity,
   and reveals itself to us at every moment. Every form, every creature,
   every occurrence is an action of the Universe upon us, and religion is
   just the acceptance of each separate thing as a part of the Whole, of
   each limited thing as an exhibition of the Infinite. What would go
   further and penetrate deeper into the nature and substance of the
   Whole, is no more religion, and if it will nevertheless be taken for
   religion, it invariably sinks into vain mythology." Then follows,
   almost unchanged, the passage on p. 49, about what in the ancient world
   was religion, and what was mythology.

   Intuition is always single and distinct. Union and arrangement into a
   whole are not the business of sense but of abstract thinking. For
   religion, each intuition and feeling is unconnected and independent,
   immediate and true by itself. As the Universe can be viewed from an
   infinite number of points of view, there can be no system. There can no
   more be a system of intuitions than of the stars. The only system among
   them is the primitive endeavour to group them in definite but wretched
   and inappropriate figures. You may sketch the wain on the blue scroll
   of the worlds, but your neighbour is free to enclose them in quite
   other outlines. "This infinite chaos, where each point is a world, is
   the best and highest emblem of religion." At each different point of
   the material world you see a new arrangement that leaves no trace of
   your arbitrary figures, and there are new objects within your ken. No
   horizon could embrace all, and there could be no eye which nothing
   could escape. In religion, from each different point of view you will
   see new intuitions and different groupings of the old. The infinity of
   speculation is in the endless variety of action and passion between the
   same limited matter and the mind; the infinity of morals is the
   impossibility of inward completeness; but religion is not only infinite
   in these respects, it is infinite on every side, in matter and in form
   and in way of perception.

   The passage (pp. 54-56) follows little altered.

   "But to complete the general sketch of religion, recollect that each
   intuition, from its very nature, is linked to a feeling. Your organs
   mediate the connection between the object and yourselves. The influence
   of the object that reveals its existence to you, must stimulate them in
   various ways, and produce a change in your inner consciousness.
   Frequently it is hardly perceived. In other circumstances it becomes so
   violent that you forget both the object and yourselves." Yet, even
   then, you will not ascribe the activity of your spirit that has been
   set in motion, to the influence of external objects. "Thus also in
   religion the same operation of the Universe, whereby it reveals itself
   in the finite, brings it also into a new relation to your mind and to
   your state." With the intuition you must necessarily have many
   feelings. The intuition does not, indeed, as in perception,
   preponderate so much over the feeling, but the eternal world may, like
   the sun, dazzle the eyes, casting its image and its splendour long
   after on all objects.

   The kind of intuition of the Universe determines the type of your
   religion, the strength of feeling, its degree. The sounder the sense,
   the more clearly and definitely will each impression be apprehended;
   the more ardent the thirst, the more persistent the impulse to be
   always and everywhere impressed by the Universe, the more easy, perfect
   and dominant will the impressions be. The feelings of religion should
   possess us and we should give them expression, but if they urge us to
   action, we are in another sphere. If you will still consider it
   religion, however good the action, it is only superstition. All actions
   must be moral, religion accompanying as a sacred music, "all should be
   done with religion, nothing from it." And even though you do not admit
   that all actions are moral, the same is true of those you exclude. The
   moralist, the politician, the artist must all act with calmness and
   discretion, not a possible thing if man is impelled to action by the
   violent feelings of religion. Religion, without any other impulse to
   activity, rather tends to inactive contemplation. To act on the Whole
   by feeling direct from the Whole, would be like acting towards a man
   according to the immediate impression he makes upon us. Morals condemns
   it because it gives room for alien motives, and religion because it
   makes man cease to be what gives him religious value--a part of the
   Whole acting by its own free power. Action proceeding from its own
   proper source with the soul full of religion, is the aim of the pious.
   Action from religion is the impulsion of bad spirits not good. The
   legion of angels with which the Father provided the Son were around Him
   not in Him.

   The next matter to understand is intuitions and feelings. For clear
   consciousness, reflection and utterance they must be considered apart,
   but the finest spirit of religion is thereby lost. In our original
   consciousness there are two activities, one controlling and working
   outwards, and another subservient, sketching and copying. Straightway
   in the simplest matter the elements divide, one set combines into an
   image of the object and the other penetrating to the centre of our
   being, dashes itself upon our original impulses and developes a
   fleeting feeling. In the same way no creation of the religious sense
   can escape this fate of division. Yet intuition without feeling is
   nothing, and feeling without intuition is nothing. There is a
   mysterious moment in every sense perception, before intuition and
   feeling divide, when sense and object mingle and are one. "It is
   fleeting and indescribable, but I wish you could seize it and recognize
   it again in the higher, the divine religious activity of the spirit."

   This moment is a kiss, an embrace, pp. 43, 44. Without it religion is
   but a spinning of formulas, pp. 47, 48.

   The divine life is like a tender plant, the flowers of which are
   fertilized in the bud. The holy intuitions and feelings that you can
   dry and preserve are but the calixes and corollas that soon open and
   soon fall. But out of them I would now wind a sacred wreath.

   First I conduct you to Nature as the outer court. The first intuition
   of the world and its Spirit is neither from fear of material forces nor
   from joy at physical beauty. Both had their place in preparing rude
   peoples, and may yet through art have a higher influence, but these
   influences naturally diminish with civilization, (p. 64) one god being
   made to conquer another, and the beauties of the globe being seen to be
   for universal matter pure delusion. "At a higher stage, perhaps, we
   shall see that to which here we must submit, ruling universally in all
   the vault of heaven, and a sacred awe will fill us at the unity and
   universality of material forces, and we may some time discover with
   astonishment in this delusion the same Spirit that quickens the Whole."

   After p. 66 the alterations are less extensive.

   On p. 93 the section on the idea of God has been re-cast, and some
   think entirely changed.

   For me the Deity is only one kind of religious intuition, of which any
   others there may be, are independent. I do not accept the position, No
   God, no religion.'

   The idea of God may be very different. To most men God is merely the
   genius of humanity, man being the prototype. To this God mankind is
   everything, and His disposition and nature are determined by what man
   takes to be His doings and dealings. But to me mankind is not
   everything, but an infinitely small part, a fleeting form of the
   Universe. There may be many beings above humanity, but every race and
   individual is subordinated to the Universe. Can God in this sense then
   be anything for me but one type of intuition?

   Let us proceed to the highest idea, a Highest Being, a Spirit of the
   Universe who rules with freedom and understanding. On this idea also
   religion is not dependent. To have religion is to have an intuition of
   the Universe, and while this idea of God suits every intuition, a
   religion without God might still be better than another with God.

   The stages of religion depend on the sense, the idea of God on the
   direction of the imagination. "If your imagination attach itself to the
   consciousness of freedom so that it cannot think of what originally
   operates on it, except as a free being, you will personify the Spirit
   of the Universe and have a God. If it attach itself to understanding,
   so that you always clearly perceive that freedom has only meaning in
   the individual and for individuals, then you have a World and no God.
   You will not I trust consider it blasphemy that the belief in God
   should depend on the direction of the imagination. You will know that
   imagination is the highest and most original activity in man, and that
   all besides is only reflection upon it." Your imagination creates the
   world, and you could have no God without the world. "The knowledge of
   the source of this necessity will not make anyone less certain, nor
   enable him to escape the almost absolute necessity to have this idea of
   God. Only as operative can God be in religion, and no one has denied
   the divine life and action of the Universe. With the God of existence
   and command religion has nothing to do."

   In the Third Speech, p. 120, "Everyone misses in himself, etc.," was,
   till the third edition, "Seeing I myself miss not a little in myself."

   On p. 138 another interesting personal reference has been toned down.
   "Were it not impious to wish to be more than one is, I would wish that
   I could see as clearly how the sense for art by itself passes into
   religion, how despite the rest into which through each separate
   enjoyment the spirit sinks, it yet feels itself urged to that progress
   which might lead to the Universe. Why are those who have gone this way,
   such silent natures? I do not know this sense, it is my most marked
   limitation, it is the defect in my nature that I feel most deeply. But
   I treat it with esteem. I do not presume to see, but I believe. The
   possibility of the matter stands clear before my eyes, only it must
   remain a secret for me." Again, p. 139, By the sense for art the
   "divine Plato raised the holiest mysticism on the summit of divineness
   and humanness. Let me do homage to the goddess to me unknown, that she
   cherished him and his religion so carefully and disinterestedly."

   In the Fourth Speech there are no changes of any consequence.

   In the Fifth Speech, the first clause, "Man in closest fellowship with
   the Highest," was, "Man in the intuition of the Universe." That is the
   key-note of the changes. Intuition of the Universe gives place to
   relation to God. Thus p. 217, "The whole of all religions is nothing
   but the sum of all relations of man to God," replaces a passage that
   derives the need of an endless mass of religious forms from the number,
   variety, and independence of intuitions of the Infinite.

   Later the additions are more striking than the changes. On p. 224, when
   he asks whether it is necessary to belong to an existing religion, he
   replies "By no means," without any "Provisionally" or any modification
   as in the paragraph at the top of p. 225. Further additions are, on p.
   246 foot, "and that for man under the power of the finite, and
   particular, and too ready to imagine the divine itself in this form,
   salvation is only to be found in the redemption"; p. 248, after "Yet He
   never maintained He was the only mediator," "the only one in whom His
   idea actualized itself. All who attach themselves to Him and form His
   Church should also be mediators with Him and through Him"; further on,
   on the same page, the reason given why the person who sets out from the
   same point as Christ is a Christian, "It will naturally follow that
   they will acknowledge Him," and p. 249 the last clause in the second
   paragraph about the first-fruits of the Spirit having special holiness
   and worth. Page 251, first paragraph. "I at least can only believe,"
   was "I at least fear."
     __________________________________________________________________

INDEX

   ACTS of Apostles, 181.

   America, 196, 197, 201, 205.

   Ancients, religion of, 49, 65, 69.

   Antithesis, xxix., lii., 3, 51, 256, 267.

   Aristotle, xxiii.

   Art, xxxiii., xlii., lvii., 29, 37,68, 129, 138-141, 142, 146, 180,
   283, 284.

   Asceticism, 62.

   BAPTISM, 160, 200-201.

   Berkeley, xxx.

   Berlin, xvii., xxi., xxxvii., xlvii., 151.

   Birth and death, 131.

   Braasch, ix., xl.

   Brinkmann, xvi., xvii., xli.

   Butler, xxii.

   CATHOLICISM, liv., 51, 254, 267-274.

   Celibacy, 105.

   Charité, the, xxiv.

   Chinese Emperor, 194.

   Christ, historical, xx., xxxv., liii., 17, 143,187, 245, 262-263; as
   mediator, xl., liv., 246, 248-249, 258, 263-264, 284; School of, 248.

   Christianity, description of, xlv.-xlvi., lii.-liii., 241-253,262;
   priesthood of, 185; spread of, 108, 187, 188, 272; polemical, 243;
   catholic in, 261; future of, xl., 265, 267-268, 270.

   Church, Apostolic, 192; Catholic, 23, 110, 182, 194, 195, 198, 205,
   206, 260, 268; Evangelical or Protestant, 110, 194, 261, 273, 274;
   Greek, 23, 191, 194, 260, 272; order in, 184; Reformed, xiii., xlix.,
   1., 189; and State, xlix., lviii., 164-176, 198-205; unity of, xxxiii.;
   Visible and Invisible, 157-180, 190-193.

   Communions, smaller, 196-197, 235, 261.

   Conversation, religion in, 150-151, 183.

   Conversion, 260.

   Clergy, 153, 194, 206.

   Creeds, 193-194, 206-207.

   Culture, 92.

   Deism, xxi., 14.

   Dilthey, ix., xxvii., xxxvi.

   Divorce, xxxviii.

   Dogma, xlii., 87, 195, 238.

   Dogmatics, liv., 109, 258.

   Drossen, xvii., xx.

   EDITIONS of "Speeches," ix., xxxv., xxxix.-xlvi., li., 275-284.

   Education and the church, 199-200, 203-204; of to-day, 136.

   Ego, xxvii., 77, 78, 79, 84, 137, 138, 142, 145.

   Emotions, 18.

   England, religious life in, 9, 23, 197, 271, 275; Episcopal Church of,
   197.

   Eudaimonists, 116, 117.

   Explanations, li.

   FAITH implicit, 23.

   Fichte, xxvii., xxviii., xxxvii., xlvii., 113.

   French, the, 10, 23.

   French Revolution, xix., 10, 255.

   GERMANY, religious life in, 9, 197, 207, 208, 270, 271, 274.

   Glaubenslehre, xliii., li., 105-9, 101-2, 114-5, 117, 145, 186-8, 192.

   God, existence of, xxvii., 22, 93-99, 101, 115, 137; Kingdom of, 17,
   145; personality of, xl., xliii., 95-99, 116, 222, 256.

   Goethe, x., xv., xxiv., xxv.

   Grace, 90, 114; moments of, 228, 259.

   Greeks, 96, 139.

   HALLE, xv.-xvii., xxxix., xlvi., xlvii.,

   Harms, xii., 1.

   Heathenism, 108, 267.

   Herder, xxv.

   Heresy, liv., 109-110, 223, 257.

   Hierarchists, lviii.

   History, xliv., xlvii.

   Humanity, 71-78.

   Humility, 79, 112.

   Hypocrisy, 19.

   IDEALISM, 40.

   Illumination, The, x., xvi., xix., xxi., xxii., xxxiv., xlii.

   Imagination, xxvi., 98, 283.

   Imaginative natures, 133-134.

   Immortality, 92, 93, 99-101, 117, 118.

   Individuality, xxx.

   Infinite, seers of, 55.

   Inspiration, 89.

   Intuition, xliii., 44, 280, 284.

   JACOBI, xxiii., xxx.

   John, 262.

   Judaism, xxxv., liii., 108, 238-241, 260, 261.

   KANT and the Illumination, xxi., xxii.; influence of, x., xxii.; study
   of, xv., xvi., xxiii.; system of, xx., xxvii.-xxviii., 113.

   Kantians, 116.

   Klopstock, 106, 181.

   Kurze Darstellung, lii., 107.

   LANDSBERG, xx.

   Leibnitz, xxviii.

   Leo X., 269

   Lessing, xxiv.

   Letter, the, 130, 144, 207.

   Lipsius, ix. xi., xxxix.-xl., xliii.

   Literature of edification, 182-183; mediocre religious, 208.

   Liturgy, xlix.-li.

   Lord's Supper, 193.

   Loyola, 269.

   Lucinda, Confidential Letters on, xxxvi.

   Luther, 269.

   Marriage, 169, 170, 200-202; mixed, 273.

   Mediators, 6, 79, 113.

   Messiah, 240.

   Methodism, xiv., lvii.

   Mind, predominating power in, xxxiii., 27.

   Miracle, 88, 89, 113, 114.

   Missions, 23, 257.

   MOHOMMEDANISM, liii.

   Monotheism, liii., 111, 186.

   Morals, aim of, xxxi., 261.

   Moravians, xiii.-xv., xx., xxvi., xxxiv., xxxv., lvii., 151, 183, 189,
   197.

   Music, 51, 59, 119, 152, 190.

   Musical temperament, lviii.

   Mystics, 17, 154.

   Mysticism, 133, 139.

   Mythology, Heathen, 238, 256, 267; senseless, 139, 163; use of,
   106-107, 126.

   NAPOLEON, xi., xx., xlvi., xlvii., xlviii., xlix., 270, 273.

   Nature, 65-67,282.-- laws of, 67-71.

   Neander, xi., lvi.

   Novalis, xxv., xxvi., 41, 104, 184.

   OATHS, 200.

   Oratory, Sacred, 172, 203.

   PANTHEISM, xl., 24, 97, 115, 116, 222, 256.

   Papacy, xxxvi., 269, 273.

   Patriotism, xi., xlv., xlvi., 255.

   Paul, 112, 115, 186.

   Personality, 77.

   Peter, 143, 185.

   Pietism, lvii., 144-145.

   Piety. See "Religion."

   Pious, Society of, 155.

   Plato, xxiii., xxviii., xxxii., 118, 139, 284.

   Polytheism, xlvi., 102, 110, 111, 139, 256, 257.

   Poor, care of, 198.

   Presentiment, 83, 225.

   Priesthood of Humanity, 8; of Believers, 151, 153, 185.

   Priests, 2, 141,153.

   Prophecy, 89, 266.

   Proselytes, Jewish, 143.

   Proselytizing, 187-188.

   Protestantism, liv., 51, 195, 254, 267-274.

   Pünjer, ix., xxxix.

   Purism, xliv.

   RATIONALISM, xxi. 257.

   Reason, xxviii.

   Reformation, l., liv., 268, 272.

   Religion as activity, 27-29; aim of, xxxi. artistic conception of,
   xxxiii.; communication of, 149-152, 158, 190; corruption of, 215-216;
   definition of, lii., 103; endowments of, 198; and ethics, xxxiii.
   xliii., 14, 36-42, 141, 261, 262; in the family, 178, 189; as feeling,
   xxxiii., xxxvi., xlii. 45-50, heroes of, 60, 135, 230, 237, 275; and
   history, 80-82; impelling to action, 56-59; individuality in, 225, 232,
   259; imitation of, 122; its infinity, 54, 82; as knowledge, xxxiii.,
   xliii., 29-31, 35, 36, 38-40; a malady, 147; mastership in, lvii., 123,
   172-175; and metaphysics, xxii., xxxii., 14, 34, 102, 141, 276; and
   morality, xxii. 18, 34, 56-62, 84; representatives of, 135; its rise,
   12; and sensuous self-consciousness, 106; social, 148; and the state,
   xxxiv., 19-21, 24, 37; as a system, 50-56; not teachable, 122;
   teleological, liii., 145; true and false in, 108, 187; types of, 221.

   Religions. Natural, 214, 217, 230, 232, 233, 234, 265; nature of,
   xxxiv.-xxxv., lviii. 218, 223; plurality of, 212-214, 254; positive,
   214-218, 234.

   Religious life, rise of, 225-228, 258-260.

   Revelation, 89-90.

   Ritschl, ix., xl., lvii.

   Romantic School, xxiii., xxiv., xxvi., xli., lvii., 275.

   Rome, 55, 109-110.

   Rule of religious, lviii., 163.

   SACK, xx., xxxv., xliii.

   Schelling, xxvi. xxix.

   Schiller, xxxvi.

   Schlegel Friedrich, xii., xxv., xxvi., xxxvi. xxxvii., xxxix., xlv.,
   xlviii.

   Schleiermacher, birth, xiv.; death, lv.-lvi.; doubts, xv., 23;
   estimates of, x.-xii., lvi.-lviii.; marriage, xlviii.; parentage,
   xiii.-xiv.; personal references, xlii., 8, 9, 283, 284; uncle, xvii.;
   works of, xii., xix., xxxvii., xxxviii., xxxix., xlvi., xlvii., li.,
   lii.; works on, ix.

   Schlobitten, xviii.

   Science, aim of, xxxi., 94, 141.

   Scriptures, canon of, 249, 264; exposition of, xvi., xxi., xlvii. 182;
   a logical mediator, 237; monument of heroic time, 91; and piety, 150,
   181; not unmixed, 33-34, 237, 277.

   Sectarianism, 22, 153, 162, 220, 255.

   Sense, 127,136, 154, 159, 164; perception, 42-45.

   Socrates, 38, 184.

   Spinoza, x., xxiii., xxviii., xliii., 40-41, 104-105.

   Spinozism, xxviii., xl., 97, 115.

   Steffens, xxvi., xlvi.

   Stein, xlviii.

   Stourdza, 23.

   Strauss, xxxiv., li., lviii.

   Supernatural, liii., 125, 257.

   Synodal government, xlix., 206.

   System, 55, 109, 161, 195, 258.

   TASKMASTER, 178-179.

   Theology, lii., liv., lviii. ; systems of, 15-18, 40.

   UNCULTURED, the, 11.

   Understanding, people of, 125, 128-132.

   Uniformity, xlix., 74, 231, 278.

   Unitarianism, 197.

   Universal Lawgiver, 35.

   Universe, active, xxix.

   Upheaval, times of, 120-121.

   Utilitarianism, xxi. 131.

   VERSATILITY, 136.

   Virtuosos, 86

   WILHELM MEISTER, x., xxv.

   Women, piety of, 37, 47.

   World-Spirit, xxviii., 49, 70, 71, 81, 111, 135, 211; Soul, 111.

   ZEUS, 64, 265.

   Zinzendorf, 269.
     __________________________________________________________________
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                                    Indexes
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Index of Pages of the Print Edition

   [1]vii  [2]viii  [3]ix  [4]x  [5]xi  [6]xii  [7]1  [8]2  [9]3  [10]4
   [11]5  [12]6  [13]7  [14]8  [15]9  [16]10  [17]11  [18]12  [19]13
   [20]14  [21]15  [22]16  [23]17  [24]18  [25]19  [26]20  [27]21  [28]26
   [29]27  [30]28  [31]29  [32]30  [33]31  [34]32  [35]33  [36]34  [37]35
   [38]36  [39]37  [40]38  [41]39  [42]40  [43]41  [44]42  [45]43  [46]44
   [47]45  [48]46  [49]47  [50]48  [51]49  [52]50  [53]51  [54]52  [55]53
   [56]54  [57]55  [58]56  [59]57  [60]58  [61]59  [62]60  [63]61  [64]62
   [65]63  [66]64  [67]65  [68]66  [69]67  [70]68  [71]69  [72]70  [73]71
   [74]72  [75]73  [76]74  [77]75  [78]76  [79]77  [80]78  [81]79  [82]80
   [83]81  [84]82  [85]83  [86]84  [87]85  [88]86  [89]87  [90]88  [91]89
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   [114]129  [115]130  [116]131  [117]132  [118]133  [119]134  [120]135
   [121]136  [122]137  [123]138  [124]139  [125]140  [126]141  [127]142
   [128]147  [129]148  [130]149  [131]150  [132]151  [133]152  [134]153
   [135]154  [136]155  [137]156  [138]157  [139]158  [140]159  [141]160
   [142]161  [143]162  [144]163  [145]164  [146]165  [147]166  [148]167
   [149]168  [150]169  [151]170  [152]171  [153]172  [154]173  [155]174
   [156]175  [157]176  [158]177  [159]178  [160]179  [161]180  [162]209
   [163]211  [164]212  [165]213  [166]214  [167]215  [168]216  [169]217
   [170]218  [171]219  [172]220  [173]221  [174]222  [175]223  [176]224
   [177]225  [178]226  [179]227  [180]228  [181]229  [182]230  [183]231
   [184]232  [185]233  [186]234  [187]235  [188]236  [189]237  [190]238
   [191]239  [192]240  [193]241  [194]242  [195]243  [196]244  [197]245
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   [205]253  [206]265  [207]267  [208]268  [209]269  [210]270  [211]274
   [212]276  [213]277  [214]278  [215]279  [216]280  [217]281  [218]282
   [219]283  [220]284  [221]286  [222]287
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            This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal
               Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org,
                   generated on demand from ThML source.

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