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 LESSING : His Life and Writings. 
 
 By JAMES SIME, M.A. 
 
 Second Edition. 
 
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 AN ACCOUNT OF THE POLYNESIAN RACE : 
 
 ITS ORIGIN AND MIGRATIONS, 
 
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 KAMEHAMEHA [. 
 
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 ORIENTAL RELIGIONS, 
 
 AND THBIE RELATION TO UNIVERSAL RELIGION. 
 
 By SAMUEL JOHNSON. 
 
 I.— INDIA. 
 
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THE 
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY. 
 
TlIK 
 
 ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 LUDWIG FEUERBACH, 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION 
 
 MAEIAX EVANS, Q:-- - 
 
 TRANSLATOR OF " STRAUSS'S LIFE OP JESUS." 
 
 ®econl) dEtiition. 
 
 LONDON: 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TEUBNEE, & CO., LtV 
 
 1890. 
 
S. 303 
 
 s 
 
 The rights of translal iun ami of reproduclion are resened. 
 
PUBLISHERS' NOTE. 
 
 The first edition of tliis work was publislied in 1854, and, 
 although a large one, has been long out of print. Many- 
 inquiries having been made for it since the recent lamented 
 death of the translator, the publishers have determined to 
 offer a second edition to the public, and have been advised to 
 give it a place in their " English and Foreign Philosophical 
 Library." It is an exact reprint of the first edition, and 
 they trust it will be received with equal favour. 
 
 London, June 1881. 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 The clamour excited by the present work has not surprised 
 rue, and hence it has not in the least moved me from my 
 position. On the contrary, I have once more, in all calmness, 
 subjected my work to the severest scrutiny, both historical 
 and philosophical ; I have, as far as possible, freed it from 
 its defects of form, and enriched it with new developments, 
 illustrations, and historical testimonies, — testimonies in the 
 highest degree striking and irrefragable. Now that I have 
 thus verified my analysis by historical proofs, it is to be 
 hoped that readers whose eyes are not sealed will be con- 
 vinced and will admit, even though reluctantly, that my 
 work contains a faithful, correct translation of the Christian 
 religion out of the Oriental language of imagery into plain 
 speech. And it has no pretension to be anything more than 
 a close translation, or, to speak literally, an empirical or 
 historico-philosophical analysis, a solution of the enigma 
 of the Christian religion. The general propositions which 
 I premise in the Introduction are no d priori, excogitated 
 propositions, no products of speculation ; they have arisen 
 out of the analysis of rehgion; they are only, as indeed 
 are all the fundamental ideas of the work, generalisations 
 from the known manifestations of human nature, and in 
 particular of the religious consciousness, — facts converted 
 into thoughts, i.e., expressed in general terms, and thus made 
 the property of the understanding. The ideas of my work 
 are only conclusions, consequences, drawn from premisses 
 which are not themselves mere ideas, but objective facts 
 either actual or historical — facts which had not their place 
 
 * The opening paragraphs of this Preface are omitted, as having too 
 specific a reference to transient German polemics to interest the English 
 reader. 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 in my head simply in virtue of their ponderous existence 
 in folio. I unconditionally repudiate absolute, immaterial, 
 self-sufficing speculatioii,^that speculation which drawsits 
 material from within. 1 1 differ toto cmlo from those philo- 
 sophers who pluck out their eyes that they may see better ; 
 for my thought I require the senses, especially sight; I- 
 found my ideas on materials which can be appropriated 
 only through the activity of the senses. I do not gene- 
 rate the object from the thought, but the thought from the 
 object ; and I hold tliat alone to be an object which has an 
 existence beyond one's own brai^ I am an idealist only in 
 the region of iwadical philosophy, that is, I do not regard 
 the limits of the past and present as the limits of humanity, 
 of the future ; on the contrary, I firmly believe that many 
 things — yes, many things — which with the short-sighted, 
 pusillanimous practical men of to-day, pass for flights of 
 imagination, for ideas never to be realised, for mere chimeras, 
 will to-morrow, i.e., in the next century, — centuries in indi- 
 vidual life are days in the life of humanity, — exist in full 
 reality. Briefly, the "Idea" is to me only faith in the 
 historical future, in the triumph of truth and virtue ; it has 
 for me only a political and moral significance ; for in the 
 sphere of strictly theoretical philosophy, I attach myself, in 
 direct opposition to the Hegelian philosophy, only to realism, 
 to materialism in the sense above indicated. The maxim 
 hitherto adopted by speculative philosophy : All that is 
 mine I carry with me, the old omnia mea mecum iJorto, I 
 cannot, alas ! appropriate. 1 have many things outside m.y- 
 self, which I cannot convey either in my pocket or my head 
 but which nevertheless I look upon as belongino- to me not 
 
 indeed as a mere man — a view not now in question but as a 
 
 philosopher. I am nothing but a natural philosopher in the 
 domain of mind ; and the natural philosopher can do nothino- 
 without instruments, without material means. lu this 
 character I have written the present work, which con- 
 sequently contains nothing else than the principle of a new 
 philosophy verified practically, i.e., in concreto, in application 
 to a special object, but an object which has a universal 
 significance : namely, to religion, in which this principle is 
 exhibited, developed, and thoroughly carried out. This 
 philosophy is essentially distinguished from the systems 
 hitherto prevalent, in that it corresponds to the real com- 
 
PREFA CE. ix 
 
 plete nature of inaii ; but for that very reason it is antagon- 
 istic to minds perverted and crippled by a superhuman, i.e., 
 anti-human, anti-natural religion and speculation. It does 
 not, as I have already said elsewhere, regard the pen as the 
 only fit organ for the revelation of truth, but the eye and 
 ear, the hand and foot ; it does not identify the idea of the 
 fact with the fact itself, so as to reduce real existence to an 
 existence on paper, but it separates the two, and precisely 
 by this separation attains to the fact itself ; it recognises as 
 the true thing, not the thing as it is an object of the abstract 
 reason, but as it is an object of the real, complete man, and 
 hence as it is itself a real, complete thing. This philosophy 
 does not rest on an Understanding per se, on au absolute, 
 nameless understanding, belonging one knows not to whom, 
 but on the understanding of man ; — though not, I grant, on 
 that of man enervated by speculation and dogma; — and it 
 speaks the language of men, not an empty, unknown tongue. 
 Yes, both in substance and in speech, it places philosophy 
 in the negation of ijhilosopliy, i.e., it declares thcd alone to 
 be the true philosophy which is converted in succum et 
 sanguinem, wliich is incarnate in Man ; and hence it finds 
 its highest triumph in the fact that to all dull and pedantic 
 minds, which place the essence of philosophy in the shoiv of 
 philosophy, it appears to be no philosophy at all. 
 
 This philosophy has for its principle, not the Substance 
 of Spinoza, not the ego of Kant and Fichte, not the Absolute 
 Identity of Schelling, not the Absolute Mind of Hegel, in 
 short, no abstract, merely conceptional being, but a reed 
 beino-, the true Ens realissiinum — man ; its principle, there- 
 fore, is in the highest degree positive and real. It generates 
 thouo-ht from the opposite of thought, from Matter, from 
 existence, from the senses ; it has relation to its object first 
 through the senses, i.e., passively, before defining it in 
 thought. Hence my work, as a specimen of this philosophy, 
 so far from being a production to be placed in the category 
 of Speculation, — although in another point of view it is the 
 true, the incarnate result of prior philosophical systems, — 
 is the direct opposite of speculation, nay, puts an end to it 
 by explaining it. Speculation makes religion say only what 
 it has itself thoughi, and expressed far better than religion; 
 it assigns a meaning to religion without any reference to 
 the actual meaning of religion; it does not look beyond 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 itself. I, on the contrary, let religion itself speak;! 
 constitute myself only its listener and interpreter, not its 
 prompter. Not to invent, but to discover, "to unveil 
 existence," has been my sole object; to see correctly, my 
 sole endeavour. It is not I, but religion that worships 
 man, although religion, or rather theology, denies this ; it 
 is not I, an insignificant individual, but religion itself that 
 says: God is man, man is God; it is not I, but religion 
 that denies the God who is not man, but only an e7is 
 rationis, — since it makes God become man, and then 
 constitutes this God, not distinguished from man, having 
 a human form, human feelings, and human thoughts, the 
 object of its worship and veneration. I have only found 
 the key to the cipher of the Christian religion, only extri- 
 cated its true meaning from the web of contradictions and 
 delusions called theology ; — but in doing so I have certainly 
 committed a sacrilege. If therefore my work is negative, 
 irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism — at 
 least in the sense of this work — is the secret of religion 
 
 O 
 
 itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but 
 fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own 
 supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in 
 nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature. 
 Or let it be iwoved that the historical as well as the rational 
 arguments of my work are false ; let them be refuted — not, 
 however, I entreat, by judicial denunciations, or theological 
 jeremiads, by the trite phrases of speculation, or other 
 pitiful expedients for which I have no name, but by 
 reasons, and such reasons as I have not already thoroufrhly 
 answered. 
 
 Certainly, my work is negative, destructive ; but, be it 
 observed, only in relation to the imhuman, not to the human 
 elements of religion. It is therefore divided into two parts 
 of which the first is, as to its main idea, positive, the second 
 including the Appendix, not wholly, but in the main, negative ' 
 in both, however, the same positions are proved, only in a 
 different or rather opposite manner. The first exhibits 
 religion in its essence, its truth, the second exhibits it in its 
 contradictions; the first is development, the second polemic • 
 tlms the one is, according to the nature of the case, calmer' 
 the other more vehement. Development advances gently' 
 contest impetuously ; for development is self-contented at 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 every stage, contest only at the last blow. Development is 
 deliberate, but contest resolute. Development is light, con- 
 test fire. Hence results a difference between the two parts 
 even as to their form. Thus in the first part I show that 
 the true sense of Theology is Anthropology, that there is 
 no distinction between the predicates of the divine and 
 human nature, and, consequently, no distinction between 
 the divine and human subject : I say consequently, for wher- 
 ever, as is especially the case in theology, the predicates 
 are not accidents, but express the essence of the sub- 
 ject, there is no distinction between subject and predicate, 
 the one can be put in the place of the other ; on which 
 point I refer the reader to the Analytics of Aristotle, or 
 even merely to the Introduction of Porphyry. In the 
 second part, on the other hand, I show that the distinction 
 which is made, or rather supposed to be made, between the 
 theological and anthropological predicates resolves itself 
 into an absurdity. Here is a striking example. In the 
 first part I prove that the Son of God is in religion a real 
 son, the son of God in the same sense in which man is the 
 son of man, and I find therein the truth, the esse^ice of religion, 
 that it conceives and affirms a profoundly human relation as 
 a divine relation; on the other hand, in the second part I 
 show that the Son of God — not indeed in religion, but in 
 theology, which is the reflection of religion upon itself, — 
 is not a son in the natural, human sense, but in an entirely 
 different manner, contradictory to Nature and reason, and 
 therefore absurd, and I find in this negation of human sense 
 and the human understanding, the negation of religion. 
 Accordingly the first part is the direct, the second the in- 
 direct proof, that theology is anthropology : hence the second 
 part necessarily has reference to the first ; it has no inde- 
 pendent significance ; its only aim is to show that the sense 
 in which religion is interpreted in the previous part of the 
 work must be the true one, because the contrary is absurd. 
 In brief, in the first part I am chiefly concerned with religion, 
 in the second with theology: I say chiefly, for it was impossible 
 to exclude theology from the first part, or religion from the 
 second. A mere glance will show that my investigation 
 includes speculative theology or philosophy, and not, as has 
 been here and there erroneously supposed, common theology 
 only, a kind of trash from which I rather keep as clear 
 
xii PREFACE. 
 
 as possible, (thouoh, for the rest, I am sufficiently well 
 acquainted with it), confining myself always to the most 
 essential, strict and necessary definition of the object,* and 
 hence to that definition which gives to an object the most 
 general interest, and raises it above the sphere of theology. 
 But it is with theology that I have to do, notwith theo- 
 logians ; for I can only undertake to characterise what is 
 primary,— t\ie original, not the cojiv, principles, not persons, 
 species, not individuals, objects of history, not objects of the 
 chronique scandaleuse. 
 
 If my work contained only the second part, it would be 
 perfectly just to accuse it of a negative tendency, to repre- 
 sent the proposition : Keligion is nothing, is an absurdity, 
 as its essential purport. But I by no means say (that were 
 an easy task !) : God is nothing, the Trinity is nothing, the 
 Word of God is nothing, &c. I only show that they are not 
 that which the illusions of theology make them, — not foreign, 
 but native mysteries, the mysteries of human nature ; I show 
 that religion takes the apparent, the superficial in Nature 
 and humanity for the essential, and hence conceives their 
 true essence as a separate, special existence : that conse- 
 quently, religion, in the definitions which it gives of God, 
 e.g., of the Word of God, — at least in those definitions which 
 are not negative in the sense above alluded to, — only defines 
 or makes objective the true nature of the human word. 
 The reproach that according to my book religion is an 
 absurdity, a nullity, a pure illusion, would be well founded 
 only if, according to it, that into which I resolve religion, 
 which I prove to be its true object and substance, namely, 
 man, — anthropology, were an absurdity, a nullity, a pure 
 illusion. But so far from giving a trivial or even a sub- 
 ordinate significance to anthropology, — a significance which 
 is assigned to it only just so long as a theology stands above 
 it and in opposition to it, — I, on the contrary, while reducing 
 theology to anthropology, exalt anthropology into theology^ 
 very much as Christianity, while lowering God into man', 
 made man into God ; though, it is true, this human God was 
 by a further process made a transcendental, imaginary God, 
 remote from man. Hence it is obvious that I do not take 
 the word anthropology in the sense of the Hegelian or of any 
 
 * For example, in considering the sacraments, I limit myself to two • for 
 in tlie strictest sense (see Luther, T. xvii. p. 558), there are no more. ' 
 
PREFACE. xiii 
 
 other philosophy, but in an infinitely higher and more 
 general sense. 
 
 Eeligion is the dream of the human mind. But even in 
 dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, 
 but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real 
 things in the entrancing splendour of imagination and 
 caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and 
 necessity. Hence I do nothing more to religion — and to 
 speculative philosophy and theology also — than to open its 
 eyes, or rather to turn its gaze from the internal towards 
 the external, i.e., I change the object as it is in the imagi- 
 nation into the object as it is in reality. 
 
 But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign 
 to the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to 
 reality, the appearance to the essence, this change, inas- 
 much as it does away with illusion, is an absolute annihi- 
 lation, or at least a reckless profanation ; for in these days 
 illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Xay, sacredness is held 
 to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion 
 increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be 
 the highest degree of sacredness. Eeligion has disappeared, 
 and for it has been substituted, even among Protestants, 
 the appearance of religion — the Church — in order at least 
 that " the faith " may be imparted to the ignorant and in- 
 discriminating multitude ; that faith being still the Chris- 
 tian, because the Christian churches stand now as they did 
 a thousand years ago, and now, as formerly, the external 
 signs of the faith are in vogue. That which has no longer 
 any existence in faith (the faith of the modern world is only 
 an ostensible faith, a faith which does not believe what it 
 fancies that it believes, and is only an undecided, pusillani- 
 mous unbelief) is still to pass current as opinion: that 
 which is no longer sacred in itself and in truth is still at 
 least to seem sacred. Hence the simulated religious indig- 
 nation of the present age, the age of shows and illusion, 
 concerning my analysis, especially of the Sacraments. But 
 let it not be demanded of an author who proposes to him- 
 self as his goal not the favour of his contemporaries, but 
 only the truth, the unveiled, naked truth, that he should 
 have or feign respect towards an empty appearance, espe- 
 cially as the object which underlies this appearance is in 
 itself the culminating point of religion, i.e., the point at 
 
xiv PREFACE. 
 
 which the religious slides into the irreligious. Thus much 
 in justification, not in excuse, of my analysis of the bac- 
 raments. 
 
 With regard to tlie true bearing of my analysis ot the 
 Sacraments'^ especially as presented in the concluding chap- 
 ter, I only remark, that I therein illustrate by a palpable 
 and visible example the essential purport, the peculiar theme 
 of my work ; that I therein call upon the senses them- 
 selves to witness to the truth of my analysis and my ideas, 
 and demonstrate ad oculos, ad tadum, ad gustum, what I 
 have taught ad captum throughout the previous pages. As, 
 namely, the water of Baptism, the wine and bread of the 
 Lord's Supper, taken in their natural power and significance, 
 are and effect infinitely more than in a supernaturalistic, 
 illusory significance ; so the object of religion in general, 
 conceived in the sense of this work, i.e., the anthropolo- 
 gical sense, is infinitely more productive and real, both in 
 theory and practice, than when accepted in the sense of theo- 
 logy. For as that which is or is supposed to be imparted 
 in the water, bread, and wine, over and above these natural 
 substances themselves, is something in the imagination only, 
 but in truth, in reality, nothing ; so also the object of re- 
 ligion in general, the Divine essence, in distinction from 
 the essence of Nature and , Humanity, — that is to say, if 
 its attributes, as understanding, love, &c., are and signify 
 something else than these attributes as they belong to man 
 and Nature, — is only something in the imagination, but in 
 truth and reality nothing. Therefore — this is the moral of 
 the fable — we should not, as is the case in theology and 
 speculative philosophy, make real beings and things into 
 arbitrary signs, vehicles, symbols, or predicates of a distinct, 
 transcendant, absolute, i.e., abstract being ; but we should 
 accept and understand them in the significance which they 
 have in themselves, which is identical with their qualities, 
 with those conditions which make them what they are :— ' 
 thus only do we obtain the key to a real theory and pradiee. 
 I, in fact, put in the place of the barren baptismal water 
 the beneficent effect of real water. How " watery," how' 
 trivial ! Yes, indeed, very trivial. But so IMarriage^ in its 
 time, was a very trivial truth, which Luther, on the "round 
 of his natural good sense, maintained in opposition to the 
 seemingly holy illusion of celibacy. But while I thus view 
 
PREFACE. XV 
 
 water as a real thing, I at the same time intend it as a 
 vehicle, an image, an example, a symbol, of the " unholy " 
 spirit of my work, just as the water of Baptism — the object 
 of my analysis — is at once literal and symbolical water. 
 It is the same with bread and wine. Malignity has hence 
 drawn the conclusion that bathing, eating, and drinking are 
 the summa siimmarum, the positive result of my work. I 
 make no other reply than this : If the whole of religion is 
 contained in the Sacraments, and there are consequently no 
 other religious acts than those which are performed in 
 Baptism and the Lord's Supper ; tlun I grant that the entire 
 purport and positive result of my work are bathing, eating, 
 and drinking, since this work is nothing but a faithful, 
 rigid, historico-philosophical analysis of religion — the re- 
 velation of religion to itself, the aicakeniiig of religion to 
 self-consciousness. 
 
 I say an historico-philosophical analysis, in distinction 
 from a merely historical analysis of Christianity. The 
 historical critic — such a one, for example, as Daumer or 
 Ghillany — shows that the Lord's Supper is a rite lineally 
 descended from the ancient cultus of human sacrifice ; that 
 once, instead of bread and wine, real human flesh and blood 
 were partaken. I, on the contrary, take as the object of 
 my analysis and reduction only the Christian significance 
 of the rite, that view of it which is sanctioned in Christianity, 
 and I proceed on the supposition that only that significance 
 which a dogma or institution has in Christianity (of course 
 in ancient Christianity, not in modern), whether it may 
 present itself in other religions or not, is also the true origin 
 of that dogma or institution in so far as it is Christian. 
 Again, the historical critic, as, for example, Liitzelberger, 
 shows that the narratives of the miracles of Christ resolve 
 themselves into contradictions and absurdities, that they 
 are later fabrications, and that consequently Christ was no 
 miracle-worker, nor, in general, that which he is represented 
 to be in the Bible. I, on the other hand, do not inquire 
 what the real, natural Christ was or may have been in dis- 
 tinction from what he has been made or has become in Super- 
 naturalism; on the contrary, I accept the Christ of religion, 
 but I show that this superhuman being is nothing else 
 than a product and reflex of the supernatural human mind. 
 I do not ask whether this or that, or any miracle caii happen 
 
xvi PREFACE. 
 
 or not ; I only show ivJuU miracle is, and I show it not « 
 jyriori, but by examples of miracles narrated m the Bible 
 as real events; in doing so, however, I answer or rather 
 preclude the question as to the possibility or reality of ne- 
 cessity of miracle. Thus much concerning the distinction 
 between me and the historical critics who have attacked 
 Christianity. As regards my relation to Strauss and Bruno 
 Bauer, in company with whom I am constantly named, I 
 merely point out here that the distinction between our 
 works is sufficiently indicated by the distinction between 
 their objects, which is implied even in the title-page. Bauer 
 takes for the object of his criticism the evangelical his- 
 tory, i.e., biblical Christianity, or rather biblical theology ; 
 Strauss, the System of Christian Doctrine and the Life of 
 Jesus (which may also be included under the title of 
 Christian Doctrine), i.e., dogmatic Christianity, or rather 
 dogmatic theology ; I, Christianity in general, i.e., the 
 Christian religion, and consequently only Christian philo- 
 sophy or theology. Hence I take my citations chiefly from 
 men in whom Christianity was not merely a theory or a 
 dogma, not merely theology, but religion. My principal 
 theme is Christianity, is Eeligion, as it is the immediate 
 object, the immediate nature, of man. Erudition and philo- 
 sophy are to me only the means by which I bring to light 
 the treasure hid in man. 
 
 I must further mention that the circulation which my 
 work has had amongst the public at large was neither 
 desired nor expected by me. It is true that I have always 
 taken as the standard of the mode of teaching and writing, 
 not the abstract, particular, professional philosopher, but 
 universal man, that I have regarded man as the criterion of 
 truth, and not this or that founder of a system, and have 
 from the first placed the highest excellence of the philo- 
 sopher in this, that he abstains, both as a man and as an 
 author, from the ostentation of philosophy, i.e., that he is a 
 philosopher only in reality, not formally, that he is a quiet 
 philosopher, not a loud and still less a brawling one. Hence, 
 m all my works, as well as in the present one, I have made 
 the utmost clearness, simplicity, and definiteness a law to 
 myself, so that they may be understood, at least in the 
 main, by every cultivated and thinking man. But notwith- 
 standing this, my work can be appreciated and fully under- 
 
PREFACE. xvii 
 
 stood only by tlie scholar, that is to say, by the scholar who 
 loves truth, who is capable of forming a judgment, who 
 is above the notions and prejudices of the learned and 
 unlearned vulgar; for although a thoroughly independent 
 production, it has yet its necessary logical basis in history. 
 I very frequently refer to this or that historical phenomenon 
 without expressly designating it, thinking this superfluous ; 
 and such references can be understood by the scholar alone. 
 Thus, for example, in the very first chapter, where I develop 
 the necessary consequences of the standpoint of Feeling, I 
 allude to Jacobi and Schleiermacher ; in the second chapter 
 I allude chiefly to Kantism, Scepticism, Theism, Material- 
 ism and Pantheism ; in the chapter on the " Standpoint of 
 Religion," where I discuss the contradictions between the 
 religious or theological and the physical or natural-philo- 
 sophical view of Nature, I refer to philosophy in the age of 
 orthodoxy, and especially to the philosophy of Descartes 
 and Leibnitz, in which this contradiction presents itself 
 in a peculiarly characteristic manner. The reader, therefore, 
 who is unacquainted with the historical facts and ideas 
 presupposed in my work, will fail to perceive on what my 
 arguments and ideas hinge ; no wonder if my positions often 
 appear to him baseless, however firm the footing on which 
 they stand. It is true that the subject of my work is of 
 universal human interest ; moreover, its fundamental ideas, 
 though not in the form in which they are here expressed, or 
 in which they could be expressed under existing circum- 
 stances, will one day become the common property of man- 
 kind : for nothing is opposed to them in the present day but 
 empty, powerless illusions and prejudices in contradiction 
 with the true nature of man. But in considering this 
 subject in the first instance, I was under the necessity of 
 treating it as a matter of science, of philosophy; and in 
 rectifying the aberrations of Eeligion, Theology, and Specu- 
 lation, I was naturally obliged to use their expressions, and 
 even to appear to speculate, or — which is the same thing — 
 to turn theologian myself, while I nevertheless only analyse 
 speculation, i.e., reduce theology to anthropology. My work, 
 as I said before, contains, and applies in the concrete, the 
 principle of a new philosophy suited — not to the schools, 
 but — to man. Yes, it contains that principle, but only by 
 evolvinj it out of the very core of religion ; hence, be it said 
 
xviii PREFACE. 
 
 in passing, the new philosophy can no longer, like the old 
 Catholic and modern Protestant scholasticism, fail into the 
 temptation to prove its agreement with religion by its agree- 
 ment with Christian dogmas ; on the contrary, being evolved 
 from the nature of religion, it has in itself the true essence 
 of religion,— is, in its very quality as a philosophy, a religion 
 also. °But a work which considers ideas in their genesis 
 and explains and demonstrates them in strict sequence, is, 
 by the very form which this purpose imposes upon it, un- 
 suited to popular reading. 
 
 Lastly, as a supplement to this work with regard to many 
 apparently unvindicated positions, I refer to my articles 
 in the Dcutsches Jahrhuch, January and February 1842, 
 to my critiques and Charakteristiken des modernen After- 
 christcnthv.ms, in previous numbers of the same periodical, 
 and to my earlier works, especially the following: — P. 
 Bayle. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Fhilosophie und 
 Mensclihcit, Ausbacli, 1838, and PliilosopMe und Christen- 
 thum, Mannheim, 1839. In these works I have sketched, 
 with a few sharp touches, the historical solution of Chris- 
 tianity, and have shown that Christianity has in fact long 
 vanished, not only from the reason but from the life of 
 mankind, that it is nothing more than a fixed idea, in 
 flagrant contradiction with our fire and life assurance 
 companies, our railroads and steam- carriages, our picture 
 and sculpture galleries, our military and industrial schools, 
 our theatres and scientific museums. 
 
 LUDWIG FEUERBACH. 
 
 Bruckberg, Fch. 14, 1843. 
 
CONTEl^TS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 AFTER ~ PACE 
 
 I. § I. The Essential Nature of Man . . . . i 
 
 §2. The Essence of Religion Considered Generally . 12 
 
 Part I. 
 
 THE TRUE OR ANTHROPOLOGICAL ESSENCE OF 
 RELIGION. 
 
 II. God as a Being of the Understanding ■ . ■ . 33 
 
 III. God as a Moral Being or Law 44 
 
 IV. The Mystery of the Incarnation ; or, God as Love, as a 
 
 Being of the Heart ... ... 50 
 
 V. The Mystery of the Suffering God . . -59 
 
 VI. The Mystery of the Trinity and the Mother of God . 65 
 
 VII. The Mystery of the Logos and Divine Image, . . 74 
 
 VIII. The Mystery of the Cosmogonical Principle in God . 80 
 
 IX. The Mystery of Mysticism, or of Nature in God . . 87 
 
 X. The Mystery of Providence and Creation out of Nothing loi 
 
 XL The Significance of the Creation in Judaism . .112 
 
 XII. The Omnipotence of Feeling, or the Mystery of Prayer 120 
 
 XIII. The Mystery of Faith— The Mystery of Miracle . . 126 
 
 XIV. The Mystery of the Resurrection and of the Miraculous 
 
 Conception 135 
 
 XV. The Mystery of the Christian Christ, or the Personal God 140 
 
 'XVI. The Distinction between Christianity and Heathenism 150 
 
 XVII. The Significance of Voluntary Celibacy and Monaohism 160 
 
 XVIII. The Christian Heaven, or Personal Immortality . 170 
 
XX CONTENTS. 
 
 Part 1 1. 
 THE FALSE OR THEOLOGICAL ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 
 
 PACK 
 CHAPTER 
 
 ■i XIX. The Essential Standpoint of Religion . . . .185 
 
 XX. Tlie Contradiction in the Existence of God . . .197 
 
 XXL The Contradiction in the Revelation of God . . 204 
 
 XXIL The Contradiction in the Nature of God in General . 213 
 
 XXIII. The Contradiction in the Speculative Doctrine of God 226 
 
 XXIV. The Contradiction in the Trinity ... .232 
 XXV. The Contradiction in the Sacraments .... 236 
 
 XXVI. The Contradiction of Faith and Love . . 247 
 
 XXVII. Concluding Application .... • 27( 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 SECTION 
 
 1 . The Religious Emotions Purely Human 
 
 2. God is Feeling Released from Limits 
 
 3. God'.is the Highest Feeling of Self . 
 
 4. Distinction between the Pantheistic and Personal God 
 
 5. Nature without Interest for Christians 
 
 6. In God Man is his Own Object 
 
 7. Christianity the Religion of Suffering 
 
 8. Mystery of tlie Trinity . 
 
 9. Creation out of Nothing . 
 
 10. Egoism of the Israelitish Religion . 
 
 1 1. The Idea of Providence . 
 
 1 2. Contradiction of Faith and Reason 
 
 13. The Resurrection of Christ 
 
 14. The Christian a Supermundane Being 
 
 15. The Celibate and Monachism . 
 
 16. Tlie Christian Heaven 
 
 17. What Faith Denies on Earth it Affirms in Heaven 
 
 18. Contradictions in the Sacraments . 
 
 19. Contradiction of Faith and Love 
 
 20. Results of the Principle of Faith 
 
 21. Contradiction of the God-Man 
 
 22. Anthropology the Mystery of Theology 
 
 281 
 283 
 284 
 285 
 287 
 289 
 292 
 
 293 
 297 
 298 
 299 
 304 
 306 
 
 307 
 308 
 
 31S 
 316 
 317 
 320 
 326 
 332 
 336 
 
THE 
 
 ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 § I. TJie Essential Nature of Man. 
 
 Eeligion has its basis in the essential difference between 
 man and the brute — the brutes have no religion. It is true 
 that the old uncritical writers on natural history attributed 
 to the elephant, among other laudable qualities, the virtue 
 of religiousness ; but the religion of elephants belongs to 
 the realm of fable. Cuvier, one of the greatest authorities 
 on the animal kingdom, assigns, on the strength of his 
 personal observations, no higher grade of intelligence to 
 the elephant than to the dog. 
 
 But what is this essential difference between man and 
 the brute ? The most simple, general, and also the most 
 popular answer to this question is — consciousness : — but 
 consciousness in the strict sense ; for the consciousness im- 
 plied in the feeling of self as an individual, in discrimination 
 by the senses, in the perception and even judgment of out- 
 ward things according to definite sensible signs, cannot be 
 denied to the brutes. Consciousness in the strictest sense 
 is present only in a being to whom his species, his essential 
 nature, is an object of thought. The brute is indeed con- 
 scious of himself as an individual — and he has accordingly 
 the feeling of self as the common centre of successive 
 sensations — but not as a species : hence, he is without that 
 consciousness which in its nature, as in its name, is akin to 
 
 A 
 
2 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 science. Where there is this higher consciousness there is 
 a capability of science. ^ Science is the cognisance of species^^ 
 In practical life we have to do with individuals ; in science, 
 ■with species. But only a being to whom his own species, 
 his own nature, is an object of thought, Can make the essential 
 nature of other things or beings an object of thought. 
 
 Hence the brute has only a simple, man a twofold life : 
 in the brute, the inner life is one with the outer ; man has 
 both an inner and an outer life. The inner life of man is 
 the life which has relation to his species, to his general, as 
 distinguished from his individual, natin-e. Man thinks — 
 that is, he converses with himself. The brute can exercise 
 no function which has relation to its species without another 
 individual external to itself; but man can perform the 
 functions of thought and speech, which strictly imply such 
 a relation, apart from another individual. Man is himself at 
 once I and thou ; he can put himself in the place of another, 
 for this reason, that to him his species, his essential nnrture, 
 and not merely his individuality, is an object of thought. 
 
 Eeligion being identical with the distinctive characteristic 
 of man, is then identical with self-consciousness — with the 
 consciousness which man has of his nature. But religion, 
 expressed generally, is consciousness of the infinite ; thus it 
 is and can be nothing else than the consciousness which 
 man has of his own — not finite and limited, but infinite 
 
 'nature.-' A really finite being has not even the faintest 
 adumbration, still less consciousness, of an infinite being, 
 for the limit of the nature is also the limit of the conscious- 
 
 jiess. The consciousness of the caterpillar, whose life is 
 confined to a particular species of plant, does not extend 
 itself beyond this narrow domain. It does, indeed, dis- 
 criminate between this plant and other plants, but more it 
 knows not. A consciousness so limited, but on account of 
 that very limitation so infallible, we do not call conscious- 
 ness, but instinct. Consciousness, in the strict or proper 
 sense, is identical with consciousness of the infinite; a 
 limited consciousness is no consciousness ; consciousness is 
 
 ' essentially infinite in its nature.^ [The consciousness of the 
 
 1 "Objectum intellcctus esse illimitatum sive omne verum ac, ut loquuntur 
 omne ens ut ens, ex eo constat, quod ad nullum non genus reruni cxteuditur' 
 nallunique est, cujus cognoscendi capax non sit, licet ob Taria obstacula 
 multa smt, quie re ipsa non norit."— Gassendi (0pp. Omn. Pliys.) 
 
THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MAN. 3 
 
 infinite is nothing else than the consciousness of tlie infinity 
 of the consciousness ; or, in the consciousness of the infinite, 
 the conscious subject has for his object the infinity of his 
 own nature. 
 
 What, then, is tlie nature of man, of which he is con- 
 scious, or what constitutes the specific distinction, the 
 proper humanity of man ? 1 Eeason, Will, Affection. To 
 a complete man belong the power of thought, the power of 
 will, the power of affection. The power of thought is the 
 light of the intellect, the power of will is energy of char- 
 acter, the power of affection is love. Eeason, love, force 
 of will, are perfections — the perfections of the human 
 being — nay, more, they are absolute perfections of being. 
 To will, to love, to think, are the highest powers, are the 
 absolute nature of man as man, and the basis of his exist- 
 ence. Man exists to think, to love, to will. Now that 
 which is the end, the ultimate aim, is also the true basis 
 and principle of a being. But what is the end of reason ? 
 Eeason. Of love ? Love. Of will ? Freedom of the will. 
 We think for the sake of thinking ; love for the sake of 
 loving ; will for the sake of willing — i.e., that we may be 
 free. True existence is thinking, loving, willing existence. 
 That alone is true, perfect, divine, which exists for its own 
 sake. But such is love, such is reason, such is will. The 
 divine trinity in man, above the individual man, is the 
 unity of reason, love, will. Eeason, Will, Love, are not 
 powers which man possesses, for he is nothing without 
 them, he is what he is only by them ; they are the consti- 
 tuent elements of his nature, which he neither has nor makes, 
 the animating, determining, governing powers — divine, 
 absolute powers — to which he can oppose no resistance.^ 
 
 How can the feeling man resist feeling, the loving one 
 love, the rational one reason ? Who has not experienced 
 the overwhelming power of melody ? And what else is the 
 power of melody but the power of feeling ? Music is the 
 
 1 The obtuse Materialist says: "Man is distinguished from the brute 
 oily by consciousness — he is an animal with consciousness superadded ;" 
 not reflecting, that in a being which awakes to consciousness, there takes 
 place a qualitative change, a diSerentiation of the entire nature. For the 
 rest, our words are by no means intended to depreciate the nature of the 
 lower animals. This is not the place to enter further into that question. 
 
 ^ "Toute opinion est assez forte pour se faire e.^iposer au prix de la 
 vie." — Montaigne. 
 
4 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 language of feeling; melody is audible feeling — feeling 
 communicating itself. Who has not experienced the 
 power of love, or at least heard of it ? Which is the 
 stronger — love or the individual man ? Is it man that J 
 possesses love, or is it not much rather love that possesses 
 man ? When love impels a man to suffer death even joy- 
 fully for the beloved one, is this death-conquering power 
 his own individual power, or is it not rather the power 
 of love ? And who that ever truly thought has not ex- 
 perienced that quiet, subtle power — the power of thought ? 
 When thou sinkest into deep reflection, forgetting thyself 
 and what is around thee, dost thou govern reason, or is it 
 not reason which governs and absorbs thee ? Scientiiic 
 enthusiasm — is it not the most glorious triumph of intellect 
 over thee ? The desire of knowledge — is it not a simply 
 irresistible, and all-conquering power ? And when thou 
 suppressest a passion, renouncest a habit, in short, achievest 
 a victory over thyself, is this victorious power thy own 
 personal power, or is it not rather the energy of will, the 
 force of morality, which seizes the mastery of thee, and 
 fills thee with indignation against thyself and thy indi- 
 vidual weaknesses ? 
 '' Man is nothing without an object.i The great models of 
 humanity, such men as reveal to us what man is capable 
 of, have attested the truth of this proposition by their 
 lives. They had only one dominant passion— the realisa- 
 tion of the aim which was the essential object of their 
 activity. But the object to which a subject essentially, 
 necessarily relates, is nothing else than this subject's own, 
 but objective, nature. If it be an object common to several 
 individuals of the same species, but under various con- 
 ditions, it is still, at least as to the form under which it 
 preseuts itself to each of them according to their respective 
 modifications, their own, but objective, nature. 
 
 Thus the Sun is the common object of the planets, but 
 it is an object to Mercury, to Venus, to Saturn, to Uranus, 
 under other conditions than to the Earth. Each planet 
 has its own suu. The Sun which lights and warms Uranus 
 has no physical (only an astronomical, scientific) existence 
 for the Earth ; and not only does the Sun appear different 
 but it leally is another sun on Uranus than on the Earth 
 The relation of the Sun to the Earth is therefore at the 
 
THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MAN. 5 
 
 same time a relation of the Earth to itself, or to its own 
 nature, for the measure of the size and of- the intensity of 
 light which the Sun possesses as the object of the Earth is 
 the measure of the distance which determines the peculiar 
 nature of the Earth. Hence each planet has in its sun the 
 mirror of its own nature. 
 
 In the object which he contemplates, therefore, man 
 becomes acquainted with himself; consciousness of the 
 objective is the self-consciousness of man.-' We know the 
 man by the object, by his conception of what is external to 
 himself ; in it his nature becomes evident ; this object is 
 his manifested nature, his true objective ego. And this is 
 true not merely of spiritual, but also of sensuous objects. 
 Even the objects which are the most remote from vaa,n, because 
 they are objects to him, and to the extent to which they 
 are so, are revelations of human nature. Even the moon, 
 the sun, the stars, call to man Fvaidi aeavrov. That he 
 sees them, and so sees them, is an evidence of his own 
 nature. The animal is sensible only of the beam which 
 immediately affects life ; while man perceives the ray, to 
 him physically indifferent, of the remotest star. Man alone 
 has purely intellectual, disinterested joys and passions ; the 
 eye of man alone keeps theoretic festivals. The eye which 
 looks into the starry heavens, which gazes at that light, 
 alike useless and harmless, having nothing in common with 
 the earth and its necessities — this eye sees in that light its 
 own nature, its own origin. The eye is heavenly in its 
 nature. Hence man elevates himself above the earth only 
 with the eye ; hence theory begins with the contemplation 
 of the heavens. The first philosophers were astronomers. 
 It is the heavens tliat admonish man of his destination, 
 and remind him that he is destined not merely to action, 
 but also to contemplation. 
 
 ''The absolute to man is his own nature. 1 The power of 
 the object over him is therefore the power of his own 
 nature. Thus the power of the object of feeling is the 
 power of feeling itself ; the power of the object of the 
 intellect is the power of the intellect itself ; the power of 
 the object of the will is the power of the will itself. The 
 man who is affected by musical sounds is governed by 
 feeling ; by the feeling, that is, which finds its correspond- 
 ing element in musical sounds. But it is not melody as 
 
6 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 such, it is only melody pregnant with meaning and emotion, 
 which has power over feeling. Feeling is only acted on by 
 that which conveys feeling, i.e., hy itself, its own nature. 
 Thus also the will ; thus, and infinitely more, the intellect. 
 Whatever kind of object, therefore, we are at any time 
 conscious of, we are always at the same time conscious of 
 our own nature ; we can affirm nothing without affirming 
 -ourselves. And since to will, to feel,_ to think, are per- 
 fections, essences, realities, it is impossible that intellect, 
 feeling, and will should feel or perceive themselves as 
 limited, finite powers, i.e., as worthless, as nothing. For 
 ^niteness and nothingness are identical ; finiteness is only 
 a euphemism for nothingness. Finiteness is the meta- 
 physical, the theoretical — nothingness the pathological, 
 practical expression. What is finite to the understanding 
 is nothing to the heart. But it is impossible that we 
 should be conscious of will, feeling, and intellect, as finite 
 powers, because every perfect existence, every original 
 power and essence, is the immediate verification and 
 affirmation of itself. It is impossible to love, will, or 
 think, without perceiving these activities to be perfections 
 — impossible to feel that one is a loving, willing, thinking 
 being, without experiencing an infinite joy therein. Con- 
 sciousness consists in a being becoming objective to itself; 
 hence it is nothing apart, nothing distinct from the being 
 which is conscious of itself. How could it otherwise 
 become conscious of itself ? It is therefore impossible to 
 be conscious of a perfection as an imperfection, impossible 
 to feel feeling limited, to think thought limited. 
 
 Consciousness is self-verification,"' self-aflirmation, self- 
 love, joy in one's own perfection. Consciousness is the 
 characteristic inai'k of a perfect nature ; it exists only in a 
 self-sufficing, complete being. Even human vanity attests 
 this truth. A man looks in the glass ; he has complacency 
 m his appearance. This complacency is a necessary 
 involuntary consequence of the completeness, the beauty 
 of his form. A beautiful form is satisfied in itself ■ it has 
 necessarily joy in itself— in self-contemplation. This com- 
 placency becomes vanity only when a man piques himself on 
 his form as being his individual form, not when he admires 
 it as a specimen of human beauty in general. It is fittin" 
 that he sliould admire it thus : he can conceive no form 
 
THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MAN. 7 
 
 more beautiful, more sublime than the human.i Assuredly 
 every being loves itself, its existence — and fitly so. To 
 exist is a good. Qiddquid essentia digniim est, seicntia dig- 
 num est. Everything that exists has value, is a being of 
 distinction — at least this is true of the species : hence it 
 asserts, maintains itself. But the highest form of self- 
 assertion, the form which is itself a superiority, a perfec- 
 tion, a bliss, a good, is consciousness. 
 
 Every limitation of the reason, or in general of the nature 
 of man, rests on a delusion, an error. It is true that the 
 human being, as an individual, can and must — herein 
 consists his distinction from the brute — feel and recognise 
 himself to be limited ; but he can become conscious of his 
 limits, his finiteness, only because the perfection, the infini- 
 tude of his species, is perceived by him, whether as an 
 object of feeling, of conscience, or of the thinking conscious- 
 ness. If he makes his own limitations the limitations of 
 the species, this arises from the mistake that he identifies 
 himself immediately with the species — a mistake which is 
 intimately connected with the individual's love of ease, 
 sloth, vanity, and egoism. For a limitation which I know 
 to be merely mine humiliates, shames, and perturbs me. 
 Hence to free myself from this feeling of shame, from 
 this state of dissatisfaction, I convert the limits of my 
 individuality into the limits of human nature in general. 
 What is incomprehensible to me is incomprehensible to 
 others; why should I trouble myself further? It is no 
 fault of mine ; my understanding is not to blame, but thp 
 understanding of the race. But it is a ludicrous and eveii] 
 culpable error to define as finite and limited what consti- 
 tutes the essence of man, the nature of the species, which 
 is the absolute nature of the individual. Every being is 
 sufficient to itself. Ko being can deny itself, i.e., its own 
 nature ; no being is a limited one to itself. Eather, everjj 
 being is in and by itself infinite — has its God, its highest 
 conceivable being, in itself. Every limit of a being is 
 cognisable only by another being out of and above him. 
 
 1 Homini homine nihil pulchrius. (Cic. de Nat. D. 1. i.) And this is no 
 sign of limitation, for he regards other beings as beautiful besides himself ; 
 he delights in the beautiful forms of animals, in the beautiful forms of 
 plants, in the beauty of nature in general. But only tlie absolute, the per- 
 lect form, can delight without envy in the forms of other beings. 
 
8 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 The life of the ephemera is extraordinarily short in com- 
 parison with that of longer-lived creatures ; but neverthe- 
 less, for the ephemera this short life is as long as a lite of 
 years to others. The leaf on which the caterpillar lives is 
 s^for it a world, an iniinite space. _ i . •, 
 
 That which makes a being what it is, is its talent, its 
 power, its wealth, its adornment. How can it possibly 
 hold its existence non-existence, its wealth poverty, its 
 talent incapacity? If the plants had eyes, taste, and 
 judgment, each plant would declare its own flower the 
 most beautiful; for its comprehension, its taste, would 
 reach no farther than its natural power of production. 
 What the productive power of its nature has brought forth 
 as the highest, that must also its taste, its judgment, recog- 
 nise and "affirm as the highest. What the nature affirms, 
 the understanding, the taste, the judgment, cannot deny; 
 otherwise the understanding, the judgment, would no longer 
 be the understanding and judgment of this particular being, 
 but of some other. The measure of the nature is also the 
 measure of the understanding. If the nature is limited, so 
 also is the feeling, so also is the understanding. But to a 
 limited being its limited understanding is not felt to be a 
 limitation ; on the contrary, it is perfectly happy and con- 
 tented with this understanding ; it regards it, praises and 
 values it, as a glorious, divine power; and the limited 
 understanding, on its part, values the limited nature whose 
 understanding it is. Each is exactly adapted to the other ; 
 how should they be at issue with each other ? A being's 
 understanding is its sphere of vision. As far as thou 
 seest, so far extends thy nature; and conversely. The 
 eye of the brute reaches no farther than its needs, and its 
 nature no farther than its needs. And so far as thy nature 
 reaches, so far reaches thy unlimited self-consciousness, so 
 far art thou God. The discrepancy between the understand- 
 ing and the nature, between the power of conception and 
 the power of production in the human consciousness, on the 
 one hand, is merely of individual significance and has not 
 a universal application; and, on the other hand, it is only 
 apparent. He who, having written a bad poem, knows it 
 to be bad, is in his intelligence, and therefore in his nature 
 not so limited as he who, having written a bad poem' 
 admires it and thinks it good. 
 
THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MAN. 9 
 
 It follows that if thou thinkest the infinite, thou per- 
 ceivest and affirmest the infinitude of the power of thought ; 
 if thou feelest the infinite, thou feelest and affirmest the 
 infinitude of the power of feeling. The object of the in- 
 tellect is intellect objective to itself; the object of feeling 
 is feeling objective to itself. If thou hast no sensibility, 
 no feeling for music, thou perceivest in the finest music 
 nothing more than in the wind that whistles by thy ear, 
 or than in the brook which rushes past thy feet. What, 
 then, is it which acts on thee when thou art affected by 
 melody? "What dost thou perceive in it? What else 
 than the voice of thy own heart ? Feeling speaks only to 
 feeling ; feeling is comprehensible only by feeling, that is, 
 by itself — for this reason, that the object of feeling is 
 nothing else than feeling. Music is a monologue of emo- 
 tion. But the dialogue of philosophy also is in truth only 
 a monologue of the intellect; thought speaks only to 
 thought. The splendours of tlie crystal charm the sense, but 
 the intellect is interested only in the laws of crystallisation. 
 The intellectual only is the object of the intellect. ^ 
 
 All therefore which, in the point of view of meta- 
 physical, transcendental speculation and religion, has the 
 significance only of the secondary, the subjective, the 
 medium, the organ — has in truth the significance of the 
 primary, of the essence, of the object itself. If, for ex- I 
 ample, feeling is the essential organ of religion, the nature 
 of God is nothing else than an expression of the nature of 
 feeling. The true but latent sense of the phrase, " Feeling ' 
 is the organ of the divine," is, feeling is the noblest, the^ 
 most excellent, i.e., the divine, in man. How couldst thou 
 perceive the divine by feeling, if feeling were not itself 
 divine in its nature ? The divine assuredly is known only 
 by means of the divine — God is known only by himself. 
 The divine nature which is discerned by feeling is in truth 
 nothing else than feeling enraptured, in ecstasy with itself 
 — feeling intoxicated with joy, blissful in its own plenitude. 
 
 It is already clear from this that where feeling is held' 
 to be the organ of the infinite, the subjective essence of 
 religion, — the external data of religion lose their objective 
 value. And thus, since feeling has been held the cardinal 
 
 ^ " The understanding is percipient only of understanding, and what 
 proceeds tlienee." — Reimarus (Wahrh. der Katiirl. Religion, iv. Abth. § 8). 
 
lo THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 principle in religion, the doctrines of Christianity, formerly 
 so sacred, have lost their importance. If, from this pomt 
 of view, some value is still conceded to Christian ideas, it 
 is a value springing entirely from the relation they bear to 
 feeling ; if another object would excite the same emotions, 
 Tt would be just as welcome. But the object of religious 
 feeling is become a matter of indifference, only because 
 when once feeling has been pronounced to be the subjective 
 essence of religion, it in fact is also the objective essence 
 of religion, though it may not be declared, at least directly, 
 to be such. I say directly ; for indirectly this is certainly 
 admitted, when it is declared that feeling, as such, is 
 religious, and thus the distinction between specifically 
 religious and irreligious, or at least non-religious, feelings 
 is abolished — a necessary consequence of the point of view 
 in which feeling only is regarded as the organ of the divine. 
 For on what other ground than that of its essence, its 
 nature, dost thou hold feeling to be the organ of the iniinite, 
 the divine being? And is not the nature of feeling in 
 general also the nature of every special feeling, be its object 
 what it may ? What, then, makes this feeling religious ? 
 A given object? Not at all; for this object is itself a 
 religious one only when it is not an object of the cold 
 understanding or memory, but of feeling. What then ? 
 The nature of feeling — a nature of which every special 
 feeling, without distinction of objects, partakes. Thus, 
 feeling is pronounced to be religious, simply because it is 
 feeling ; the ground of its religiousness is its own nature — 
 lies in itself. But is not feeling thereby declared to be 
 itself the absolute, the divine ? If feeling in itself is good, 
 religious, i.e., holy, divine, has not feeling its God in itself ? 
 But if, notwithstanding, thou wilt posit an object of 
 feeling, but at the same time seekest to express thy feeling 
 truly, without introducing by thy reflection any foreign 
 element, what remains to thee but to distinguish between 
 thy individual feeling and the general nature of feeling ; — 
 to separate the universal in feeling from the disturbing, 
 adulterating influences with which feeling is bound up in 
 thee, under thy individual conditions ? Hence what thou 
 canst alone contemplate, declare to be the infinite, and 
 define as its essence, is merely the nature of feeling. Thou 
 hast thus no other definition of God than this : God is pure, 
 
THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MAN. ii 
 
 ■unlimited, free Feeling. Every other God, whom tliou 
 supposest, is a God thrust upon thy feeling from without. 
 Feeling is atheistic in the sense of the orthodox belief, which 
 attaches religion to an external object; it denies an 
 objective God — it is itself God. In this point of view 
 only the negation of feeling is the negation of God. Thou 
 art simply too cowardly or too narrow to confess in words 
 what thy feeling tacitly affirms. Fettered by outward 
 considerations, still in bondage to vulgar empiricism, in- 
 capable of comprehending the spiritual grandeur of feeling, 
 thou art terrified before the religious atheism of thy heart. 
 By this fear thou destroyest the unity of thy feeling with 
 itself, in imagining to thyself an objective being distinct 
 from thy feeling, and thus necessarily sinking back into 
 the old questions and doubts — is there a God or not? — 
 questions and doubts which vanish, nay, are impossible, 
 where feeling is defined as the essence of religion. Feeling is 
 thy own inward power, but at the same time a power distinct 
 from thee, and independent of thee ; it is in thee, above thee; 
 it is itself that which constitutes the objective in thee — thy 
 own being which impresses thee as another being ; in short, 
 thy God. How wilt thou, then, distinguish from this ob- 
 jective being within thee another objective being? how wilt 
 thou get beyond thy feeling ? 
 
 But feeling has here been adduced only as an example. 
 It is the same with every other power, faculty, potentiality, 
 reality, activity — the name is indifferent — which is defined 
 as the essential organ of any object. Whatever is a sub- ' 
 jective expression of a nature is simultaneously also its 
 objective expression. Man cannot get beyond his true 
 nature. He may indeed by means of the imagination con- 
 ceive individuals of another so-called higher kind, but he 
 can never get loose from his species, his nature ; the con- 
 ditions of being, the positive final predicates which he gives 
 to these other individuals, are always determinations or 
 qualities drawn from his own nature — qualities in which he 
 in truth only images and projects himself. There may cer- 
 tainly be thinking beings besides men on the other planets 
 of our solar system. But by the supposition of such beings 
 we do not change our standing point — we extend our con- 
 ceptions quantitatively not qualitatively. For as surely as 
 on the other planets there are the same laws of motion, so 
 
12 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 surely are there the same laws of perception and thought 
 as here. In fact, we people the other planets, not that we 
 may place there different beings from ourselves, but more 
 beings of our own or of a similar nature.^ 
 
 § 2. The Essence of Eeligion Considered Generally. 
 
 What we have hitherto been maintaining generally, even 
 with regard to sensational impressions, of the relation be- 
 tween subject and object, applies especially to the relation 
 between the subject and the religious object. 
 
 In the perceptions of the senses consciousness of the 
 object is distinguishable from consciousness of self ; but in 
 religion, consciousness of the object and self-consciousness 
 coincide. The object of the senses is out of man, the 
 religious object is within him, and therefore as little for- 
 sakes him as his self-consciousness or his conscience ; it is 
 the intimate, the closest object. " God," says Augustine, 
 for example, "is nearer, more related to us, and therefore 
 more easily known by us, than sensible, corporeal things."^ 
 The object of the senses is in itself indifferent — independent 
 of the disposition or of the judgment ; but the object of 
 religion is a selected object ; the most excellent, the first, 
 the supreme being ; it essentially presupposes a critical 
 judgment, a discrimination between the divine and the non- 
 divine, between that which is worthy of adoration and that 
 which is not worthy.^ And here may be applied, without 
 any limitation, the proposition : the object of any subject 
 is nothing else than the subject's own nature taken objec- 
 tively. Such as are a man's thoughts and dispositions, 
 such is his God ; so much worth as a man has, so much 
 and no more has his God. Consciousness of God is self- 
 consciousness, knowledge of God is self-knowledge. By his 
 God thou knowest the man, and by the man his God ; the 
 two are identical. Whatever is God to a man, that is his heart 
 and soul ; and conversely, God is the manifested inward 
 
 1 ' ' Verisimile est, non minus quara geometrisi, etiam musicas oblectationem 
 ad phires quam ad nos pertinere. Positis enim aliis terris atque animalibus 
 ratioue et audita poUentibus, cur tan turn his nostris contigisset ea voluptas 
 quai sola ex sono peroipi potest ?" — Christ. Hugenius (Cosmotlieor., 1. i.). ' 
 
 ^ De Gencsi ad litteram, 1. v. c. i6. 
 
 ' " Unusquisque vestrura non cogitat, 'prius se debere Deuni nosse, quam 
 colere." — M. Minucii Felicis Octayianus, c. 24. 
 
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 13 
 
 nature, the expressed self of a man, — religion the solemn 
 unveiling of a man's hidden treasures, the revelation of his 
 intimate thoughts, the open confession of his love-secrets. 
 
 (But when religion — consciousness of God — is designated 
 as the self-consciousness of man, this is not to be under- 
 stood as affirming that the religious man is directly aware 
 of this identity ; for, on the contrary, ignorance of it is 
 fundamental to the peculiar nature of religion. To pre- 
 clude this misconception, it is better to say, religion is 
 man's earliest and also indirect form of self-knowledge. 
 Hence, religion everywhere precedes philosophy, as in the 
 history of the race, so also in that of the individual. Man 
 first of all sees his nature as if out 0/ himself, before he 
 finds it in himself. His own nature is in the first instance 
 contemplated by him as that of another being. Eeligion 
 is the childlike condition of humanity ; but the child sees 
 his nature — man — out of himself ; in childhood a man is 
 an object to himself, under the form of another man. 
 Hence the historical progress of religion consists in this : 
 that what by an earlier religion was regarded as objective, 
 is now recognised as subjective; that is, what was formerly 
 contemplated and worshipped as God is now perceived to 
 be something human. What was at first religion becomes 
 at a later period idolatry ; man is seen to have adored his 
 own nature. Man has given objectivity to himself, but 
 has not recognised the object as his own nature : a later 
 religion takes this forward step; every advance in religion 
 is therefore a deeper self-knowledge. But every particular 
 religion, while it pronounces its predecessors idolatrous, 
 excepts itself — and necessarily so, otherwise it would no 
 longer be religion — from the fate, the common nature of 
 all religions : it imputes only to other religions what is the 
 fault, if fault it be, of religion iu general. Because it has 
 a different object, a different tenor, because it has tran- 
 scended the ideas of preceding religions, it erroneously 
 supposes itself exalted above the necessary eternal laws 
 which constitute the essence of religion — it fancies its 
 object, its ideas, to be superhuman. But the essence of 
 religion, thus hidden from the religious, is evident to the 
 thinker, by whom religion is viewed objectively, which it 
 cannot be by its votaries. And it is our task to show that 
 the antithesis of divine and human is altogether illusory. 
 
H THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 that it is notliing else than the antithesis hetweeii the 
 human nature in general and the human mdividuai ; that, 
 consequently, the object and contents of the Christian 
 religion are altogether human. 
 
 Eeligion, at least the Christian, is the relation of man to 
 himself or more correctly to his own nature (i.e., his sub- 
 iective nature);! ^^t a relation to it, viewed as a nature 
 apart from his own. The divine being is nothing else than 
 the human being, or, rather, the human nature purifaed, 
 freed from the limits of the individual man, made objective 
 —i.e., contemplated and revered as another, a distinct being. 
 Au'tiie attributes of the divine nature are, therefore, attri- 
 butes of the human nature.^ 
 
 In relation to the attributes, the predicates, of the Divme 
 Being, this is admitted without hesitation, but by no means 
 in rektion to the subject of these predicates. The nega- 
 tion of the subject is held to be irreligion, nay, atheism; 
 though not so the negation of the predicates. But that 
 which has no predicates or qualities, has no effect upon 
 me ; that which has no effect upon me has no existence 
 for me. To deny all the qualities of a being is equivalent 
 to denying the being himself. A being without qualities is 
 one which cannot become an object to the mind, and such 
 a being is virtually non-existent. Where man deprives 
 God of all qualities, God is no longer anything more to him 
 than a negative being. To the truly religious man, God is 
 not a being without qualities, because to him he is a posi- 
 tive, real being. The theory that God cannot be defined, 
 and consequently cannot be known by man, is therefore the 
 offspring of recent times, a product of modern unbelief. 
 
 As reason is and can be pronounced finite only where 
 man regards sensual enjoyment, or religious emotion, or 
 ffisthetic contemplation, or moral sentiment, as the absolute, 
 the true ; so the proposition that God is unknowable or un- 
 
 1 The meaning of this piirenthetic limitation will be clear in the sequel. 
 ^ " Les perfections de Dieu sont celles de nos ames, mais il les possede sans 
 homes — il y a en nous quelque puissance, quelque connaissance, quelque 
 utes eutieres en Dieu." — Leibnitz (Theod. Preface). 
 
 bonte, mais elles sont toutes ( ^ 
 
 "Nihil in anima esse putemus eximium, quod non etiam divina; naturae 
 
 proprium sit — Quidquid a Deo alienum extra definitiouem anim.-e." St. 
 
 Gregorius Nyss. " Est ergo, ut videtur, disciplinarum omnium pulcherrima 
 et maxima se ipsum nosse ; si quis enim se ipsum norit, Deuni co"noscet." 
 —Clemens Alex. (I'sd. 1. iii. c. i). 
 
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 15 
 
 definable, can only be enunciated and become fixed as a 
 dogma, where this object lias no longer any interest for the 
 intellect; where the real, the positive, alone has any hold 
 on man, where the real alone has for him the significance 
 of the essential, of the absolute, divine object, but where at 
 the same time, in contradiction witli this purely worldly 
 tendency, there yet exist some old remains of religiousness. 
 On the ground that God is unknowable, man excuses him- 
 self to what is yet remaining of his religious conscience for 
 his forgetfulness of God, his absorption in the world : he 
 denies God practically by his conduct, — the world has pos- 
 session of all his thoughts and inclinations, — but he does 
 not deny him theoretically, he does not attack his existence],, 
 lie lets that rest. But this existence does not affect or in- 
 commode him; it is a merely negative existence, an existence 
 without existence, a self-contradictory existence,— a state of 
 being which, as to its effects, is not distinguishable from 
 non-being. The denial of determinate, positive predicatesj 
 concerning the divine nature is nothing else than a denial 
 of religion, with, however, an appearance of religion in its 
 favour, so that it is not recognised as a denial ; it is simply 
 a subtle, disguised atheism. The alleged religious horror of 
 limiting God by positive predicates is only the irreligious 
 wish to know nothing more of God, to banish God from the 
 mind. Dread of limitation is dread of existence. All real 
 existence, i.e., all existence which is truly such, is qualita- 
 tive, determinative existence. He who earnestly believes 
 in the Divine existence is not shocked at the attributing 
 even of gross sensuous qualities to God. He who dreads 
 an existence that may give offence, who shrinks from the 
 grossness of a positive predicate, may as well renounce 
 existence altogether. A God who is injured by determinate 
 qualities has not the courage and the strength to exist. 
 Qualities are the fire, the vital breath, the oxygen, the salt 
 of existence. An existence in general, an existence without 
 qualities, is an insipidity, an absurdity. But there can be 
 no more in God than is supplied by religion. Only where 
 man loses his taste for religion, and thus religion itself 
 becomes insipid, does the existence of God become an 
 insipid existence — an existence without qualities. 
 
 There is, however, a still' milder way of denying tlie 
 divine predicates than the direct one just described. It is 
 
1 6 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 admitted that the predicates of the divine nature are finite, 
 and, more particularly, human qualities, but their rejection 
 is rejected; they are even taken under protection, because it 
 
 /is necessary to man to have a definite conception of God; 
 and since he is man he can form no other than a human 
 conception of him. In relation to God, it is said, these 
 predicates are certainly without any objective validity ; but 
 to me, if he is to exist for me, he cannot appear otherwise 
 than as he does appear to me, namely, as a being with attri- 
 butes analogous to the human. But this distinction 
 "between what God is in himself, and what he is for me 
 destroys the peace of religion, and is besides in itself an 
 unfounded and untenable distinction. I cannot know 
 whether God is something else in himself or for himself 
 than he is for me ; what he is to me is to me all that he is. 
 For me, there lies in these predicates under which he exists 
 for me, what he is in himself, his, very nature ; he is for me 
 what he can alone ever be for me.; The religious man finds 
 perfect satisfaction in that which God is in relation to him- 
 self ; of any other relation he knows nothing, for God is to 
 him what he can alone be to man. In the distinction above 
 stated, man takes a point of view above himself, i.e., above 
 his nature, the absolute measure of his being ; but this 
 transcendentalism is only an illusion ; for I can make the 
 distinction between the object as it is in itself, and the 
 object as it is for me, only where an object can really 
 appear otherwise to me, not where it appears to me such 
 as the absolute measure of my nature determines it to 
 appear — such as it must appear to me. It is true that I 
 may have a merely subjective conception, i.e., one which 
 does not arise out of the general constitution of my species ; 
 but if my conception is determined by the constitution of 
 my species, the distinction between what an object is in 
 itself, and what it is for me ceases ; for this conception is 
 itself an absolute one. The measure of the species is the 
 absolute measure, law, and criterion of man. And, indeed, 
 religion has the conviction that its conceptions, its predi- 
 cates of God, are such as every man ought to have and 
 must have, if he would have the true ones — that they are 
 the conceptions necessary to human nature ; nay, further 
 that they are objectively true, representing God as he is. 
 
 To every religion the gods of other religious are only notions 
 
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 17 
 
 concerning God, but its own conception of God is to it God 
 himself, the true God — God such as he is in himself. 
 Eeligion is satisfied only with a complete Deity, a God 
 without reservation ; it will not have a mere phantasm of 
 God ; it demands God himself. Eeligion- gives up its own 
 existence when it gives up the nature of God; it is no 
 longer a truth when it renounces the possession of the true 
 God. Scepticism is the arch-enemy of religion ; but the 
 distinction between object and conception — between God 
 as he is in himself, and God as he is for me — is a sceptical 
 distinction, and therefore an irreligious one. 
 
 That which is to man the self-existent, the highest being, 
 to which he can conceive nothing higher — that is to him 
 the Divine Being. How then should he inquire concerning 
 this being, what he is in himself ? If God were an object 
 to the bird, he would be a winged being : the bird knows 
 nothing higher, nothing more blissful, than the winged 
 condition. How ludicrous would it be if this bird pro- 
 nounced : To me God appears as a bird, but what he is in 
 himself I know not. To the bird the highest nature is the 
 bird- nature ; take from him the conception of this, and you 
 take from him the conception of the highest being. How, 
 then, could he ask whether God in himself were winged ? 
 To ask whether God is in himself what he is for me, is to 
 ask whether God is God, is to lift oneself above one's God, 
 to rise up against him. 
 
 Wherever, therefore, this idea, that the religious pre- 
 dicates are only anthropomorphisms, has taken possession 
 of a man, there has doubt, has unbelief, obtained the 
 mastery of faith. And it is only the inconsequence of 
 faint-heartedness and intellectual imbecility which does 
 not proceed from this idea to the formal negation of the 
 predicates, and from thence to the negation of the subject 
 to which they relate. If thou doubtest the objective truth 
 of the predicates, thou must also doubt the objective truth 
 of the subject whose predicates they are. If thy predicates 
 are anthropomorphisms, the subject of them is an an- 
 thropomorphism too. If love, goodness, personality, &c., 
 are human attributes, so also is the subject which thou 
 presupposest, the existence of God, the belief that there 
 is a God, an anthropomorphism — a presupposition purely 
 human. Whence knowest thou that the belief in a God 
 
 B 
 
1 8 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 at all is not a limitation of man's mode of conception ? 
 Higher beings— and thou supposest such— are perhaps so 
 blest in themselves, so at unity with themselves, that they 
 are not hung in suspense between themselves and a yet 
 higher being. To know God and not oneself to be God, to 
 know blessedness and not oneself to enjoy it, is a state of 
 disunity, of unhappiness. Higher beings know nothing _ of 
 this unhappiness ; they have no conception of that which 
 they are not. 
 
 Thou believest in love as a divine attribute because thou 
 thyself lovest; thou behevest that God is a wise, bene- 
 volent being because thou knowest nothing better in thy- 
 self than benevolence and wisdom ; and thou believest that 
 God exists, that therefore he is a subject — whatever exists 
 is a subject, whether it be defined as substance, person, 
 essence, or otherwise — because thou thyself existest, art 
 thyself a subject. Thou knowest no higher human good 
 than to love, than to be good and wise ; and even so thou 
 knowest no higher happiness than to exist, to be a subject ; 
 for the consciousness of all reality, of all bliss, is for thee 
 bound up in the consciousness of being a subject, of exist- 
 ing. God is an existence, a subject to thee, for the same 
 reason that he is to thee a wise, a blessed, a personal being. 
 The distinction between the divine predicates and the 
 divine subject is only this, that to thee the subject, the 
 existence, does not appear an anthropomorphism, because 
 the conception of it is necessarily involved in thy own 
 existence as a subject, whereas the predicates do appear 
 anthropomorphisms, because their necessity — the necessity 
 that God should be conscious, wise, good, &c., — is not an 
 immediate necessity, identical with the being of man, but 
 is evolved by his self-consciousness, by the activity of his 
 -tlrought. I am a subject, I exist, whether I be wise or 
 unwise, good or bad. To exist is to man the first datum • 
 it constitutes the very idea of the subject ; it is presup- 
 posed by the predicates. Hence man relinquishes the 
 predicates, but the existence of God is to him a settled 
 irrefragable, absolutely certain, objective truth. But 
 nevertheless, this distinction is merely an apparent one. 
 The necessity of the subject Lies only in the necessity of 
 the predicate. Thou art a subject only in so far as thou 
 art a human subject; the certainty and reality of thy 
 
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 19 
 
 existence lie only in the certainty and reality of thy human 
 attributes. What the subject is lies only in the predicate ; 
 the predicate is the truth of the subject — the subject only 
 the personified, existing predicate, the predicate conceived 
 as existing. Subject and predicate are distinguished only 
 as existence and essence. The negation of the predicates 
 is therefore the negation of the subject. What remains of 
 the human subject when abstracted from the human attri- 
 butes ? Even in the language of common life the divine 
 predicates — Providence, Omniscience, Omnipotence — are 
 put for the divine subject. 
 
 The certainty of the existence of God, of which it has 
 been said that it is as certain, nay, more certain to man 
 than his own existence, depends only on the certainty of the 
 qualities of God — it is in itself no immediate certainty. 
 To the Christian the existence of the Christian God only 
 is a certainty ; to the heathen that of the heathen God 
 only. The heathen did not doubt the existence of Jupiter, 
 "oecause he took no offence at the nature of Jupiter, be- 
 cause he could conceive of God under no other qualities, 
 because to him these qualities were a certainty, a divine 
 reality. The reality of the predicate is the sole guarantee 
 of existence. 
 
 Whatever man conceives to be true, he immediately 
 conceives to be real (that is, to have an objective exist- 
 ence), because, originally, only the real is true to him — 
 true in opposition to what is merely conceived, dreamed, 
 imagined. The idea of being, of existence, is the original 
 idea of truth ; or, originally, man makes truth dependeht 
 on existence, subsequently, existence dependent on truth. 
 Now God is the nature of man regarded as absolute truth, 
 — the truth of man ; but God, or, what is the same thing, 
 religion, is as various as are the conditions under which 
 man conceives this his nature, regards it as the highest 
 being. These conditions, then, under which man con- 
 ceives God, are to him the truth, and for that reason 
 they are also the highest existence, or rather they are 
 existence itself; for only the emphatic, the highest exist- 
 ence, is existence, and deserves this name. Therefore, 
 God is an existent, real being, on the very same ground 
 that he is a particular, definite being ; for the qualities of 
 God are nothing else than the essential qualities of man 
 
20 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 himself, and a particular man is what he is, has his exist- 
 ence, his reality, only in his particular conditions. Take 
 away from the Greek the quality of being Greek, and you 
 take away his existence. On this ground it is true that 
 for a definite positive religion— that is, relatively— the 
 certainty of the existence of God is immediate; for just as 
 involuntarily, as necessarily, as the Greek was a G-reek, so 
 necessarily were his gods Greek beings, so necessarily were 
 they real, existent beings. Religion is that _ conception of 
 the nature of the world and of man which is essential to, 
 i.e., identical with, a man's nature. But man does not 
 stand above this his necessary conception ; on the contrary, 
 it stands above him ; it animates, determines, governs him. 
 The necessity of a proof, of a middle term to unite qualities 
 with existence, the possibility of a doubt, is abolished. 
 Only that which is apart from my own being is capable of 
 being doubted by me. How then can I doubt of God, who 
 is my being? To doubt of God is to doubt of myself\ 
 Only when God is thought of abstractly, when his predi- 
 cates are the result of philosophic abstraction, arises the 
 distinction or separation between subject and predicate, 
 existence and nature — arises the fiction that the existence 
 or the subject is something else than the predicate, some- 
 thing immediate, indubitable, in distinction from the pre- 
 dicate, which is held to be doubtful. But this is only a 
 fiction. A God who has abstract predicates has also an 
 abstract existence. Existence, being, varies with varying 
 qualities. 
 
 The identity of the subject and predicate is clearly evi- 
 denced by the progressive development of religion, which 
 is identical with the progressive development of human 
 culture. So long as man is in a mere state of nature, 
 so long is his god a mere nature-god — a personification 
 of some natural force. Where man inhabits houses, he 
 also encloses his gods in temples. ; The temple is only a 
 manifestation of the value which man attaches to beauti- 
 ful buildings. Temples in honour of religion are in truth 
 temples in honour of architecture. With the emero-ino- of 
 man from a state of savagery and wildness to one of culture 
 with the distinction between what is fitting for man and 
 what is not fitting, arises simultaneously the distinction 
 between that which is fitting and that which is not fitting- 
 
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 21 
 
 for God. God is the idea of majesty, of the highest dignity: 
 the religious sentiment is the sentiment of supreme fitness. 
 The later more cultured artists of Greece were the first to 
 embody in the statues of the gods the ideas of dignity, of 
 spiritual grandeur, of imperturbable repose and serenity. 
 But why were these qualities in their view attributes, 
 predicates of God ? Because they were in themselves 
 regarded by the Greeks as divinities. Why did those 
 artists exclude all disgusting and low passions ? Because 
 they perceived them to be unbecoming, unworthy, un- 
 human, and consequently ungodlike. The Homeric gods 
 eat and drink; — that implies eating and drinking is a 
 divine pleasure. Physical strength is an attribute of the 
 Homeric gods : Zeus is the strongest of the gods. Wliy ? 
 Because physical strength, in and by itself, was regarded as 
 something glorious, divine. To the ancient Germans the 
 highest virtues were those of the warrior ; therefore their 
 supreme god was the god of war, Odin, — war, " the original 
 or oldest law." E"ot the attribute of the divinity, but the 
 divineness or deity of the attribute, is the first true Divine 
 Being. Thus what theology and philosophy have held to be 
 God, the Absolute, the Infinite, is not God ; but that which 
 they have held not to be God is God : namely, the attribute, 
 the quality, whatever has reality. Hence he alone is the 
 true atheist to whom the predicates of the Divine Being, — 
 for example, love, wisdom, justice, — are nothing ; not he to 
 whom merely the subject of these predicates is nothing. 
 And in no wise is the negation of the subject necessarily 
 also a negation of the predicates considered in themselves. 
 These have an intrinsic, independent reality ; they force 
 their recognition upon man by their very nature ; they are 
 self-evident truths to him ; they prove, they attest them- 
 selves. It does not follow that goodness, justice, wisdom, 
 are chimeeras because the existence of God is a chimsera, 
 nor truths because this is a truth. The idea of God is 
 dependent on the idea of justice, of benevolence ; a God 
 who is not benevolent, not just, not wise, is no God; but^ 
 the converse does not hold. The fact is not that a quality 
 is divine because God has it, but that God has it because 
 it is in itself divine : because without it God would be a 
 defective being. Justice, wisdom, in general every quality 
 which constitutes the divinity of God, is determined and 
 
23 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 known by itself independently, but the idea of God is 
 determined by the qualities which have thus been pre- 
 viously judged to be worthy of the divine nature ; only m 
 the case in which I identify God and justice, m which I 
 think of God immediately as the reality of the idea of 
 justice, is the idea of God self-determined. But if God as 
 a subject is the determined, while the quality, the predicate, 
 is the determining, then in truth the rank of the godhead is 
 due not to the subject, but to the predicate. 
 
 ISTot until several, and those contradictory, attributes are 
 united in one being, and this being is conceived as personal 
 — the personality being thus brought into especial promi- 
 nence — not until then is the origin of religion lost sight of, 
 is it forgotten that what the activity of the reflective power 
 has converted into a predicate distinguishable or separable 
 from the subject, was originally the true subject. Thus the 
 Greeks and Eomans deified accidents as substances ; virtues, 
 states of mind, passions, as independent beings. Man, 
 especially the religious man, is to himself the measure of 
 all things, of all reality. Whatever strongly impresses a 
 man, whatever produces an unusual effect on his mind, if 
 it be only a peculiar, inexplicable sound or note, he per- 
 sonifies as a divine being. Eeligion embraces all the 
 objects of the world : everything existing has been an 
 object of religious reverence ; in the nature and conscious- 
 ness of religion there is nothing else than what lies in the 
 nature of man and in his consciousness of himself and of the 
 world. Eeligion has no material exclusively its own) In 
 Eome even the passions of fear and terror had their 
 temples. The Christians also made mental phenomena into 
 independent beings, their own feelings into qualities of 
 things, the passions which governed them into powers 
 which governed the world, in short, predicates of their own 
 nature, whether recognised as such or not, into independent 
 subjective existences. Devils, cobolds, witches, o-hosts, 
 angels, were sacred truths as long as the religious spirit 
 held undivided sway over mankind. 
 
 In order to banish from the mind the identity of the 
 divine and human predicates, and the consequent identity 
 of the divine and human nature, recourse is had to the 
 idea that God, as the absolute, real Being, has an infinite 
 fulness of various predicates, of which we here know only 
 
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 23 
 
 a part, and those such as are analogous to our own ; while 
 the rest, by virtue of which God must thus have quite a 
 different nature from the human or that which is analogous 
 to the human, we shall only know in the future — that is, 
 after death. But an infinite plenitude or multitude of 
 predicates which are really different, so different that the 
 one does not immediately involve the other, is realised 
 only in an infinite plenitude or multitude of different 
 beings or individuals. Thus the human nature presents 
 an infinite abundance of different predicates, and for that 
 very reason it presents an infinite abundance of different 
 individuals. Each u.ew man is a new predicate, a new 
 phasis of humanity. As many as are the men, so many are 
 the powers, the properties of humanity. It is true that 
 there are the same elements in every individual, but under 
 such various conditions and modifications that they ap- 
 pear new and peculiar. The mystery of the inexhaustible 
 fulness of the divine predicates is therefore nothing else 
 than the mystery of human nature considered as an 
 infinitely varied, infinitely modifiable, but, consequently, 
 phenomenal being. Only in the realm of the senses, only 
 in space and time, does there exist a being of really infinite 
 qualities or predicates. Where there are really different 
 predicates there are different times. One man is a distin- 
 guished musician, a distinguished author, a distinguished 
 physician ; but he cannot compose music, write books, 
 and perform cures in the same moment of time. Time, 
 and not the Hegelian dialectic, is the medium of uniting 
 opposites, contradictories, in one and the same subject. But 
 distinguished and detached from the nature of man, and 
 combined with the idea of God, the infinite fulness of 
 various predicates is a conception without reality, a mere 
 phantasy, a conception derived from the sensible world, but 
 without the essential conditions, without the truth of sen- 
 sible existence, a conception which stands in direct con- 
 tradiction with the Divine Being considered as a spiritual, 
 i.e., an abstract, simple, single being ; for the predicates of 
 God are precisely of this character, that one involves all the 
 others, because there is no real difference between them. 
 If, therefore, in the present predicates I have not the future, 
 in the present God not the future God, then the future God 
 
24 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 is not the, present, but they are two distinct beings.^ But 
 this distinction is in contradiction with the unity and sim- 
 plicity of the theological God. Why is a given predicate 
 a predicate of God? Because it is divine in its nature, i.e., 
 because it expresses no limitation, no defect. Why are other 
 predicates applied to him ? Because, however various in 
 themselves, they agree in this, that they all alike express 
 f'perfection, unlimitedness. Hence I can conceive innumer- 
 able predicates of God, because they must all agree with 
 the abstract idea of the Godhead, and must have in common 
 that which constitutes every single predicate a divine attri- 
 , bute. Thus it is in the system of Spinoza. He speaks of 
 an infinite number of attributes of the divine substance, but 
 he specifies none except Thought and Extension. Why ? 
 Because it is a matter of indifference to know them ; nay, 
 Because they are in themselves indifferent, superfluous ; for 
 with all these innumerable predicates, I yet always mean 
 to say the same thing as when I speak of Thought and 
 Extension. Why is Thought an attribute of substance ? 
 Because, according to Spinoza, it is capable of being con- 
 ceived by itself, because it expresses something indivisible, 
 perfect, infinite. Why Extension or Matter? For the 
 same reason. Thus, substance can have an indefinite 
 number of predicates, because it is not their specific 
 definition, their difference, but their identity, their equi- 
 valence, which makes them attributes of substance. Or 
 rather, substance has innumerable predicates only because 
 (how strange!) it has properly no predicate; that is, no 
 definite, real predicate. The indefinite unity which is 
 the product of thought, completes itself by the indefinite 
 multiplicity which is the product of the imagination. 
 Because the predicate is not imiltum, it is multa In 
 truth, the positive predicates are Thought and Extension 
 In these two infinitely more is said than in the nameless 
 innumerable predicates; for they express somethino- de- 
 ^^'I'r"''' *^'^™ ^ ^'^^® something. But substance i1 too 
 indifferent, too apathetic to be something ; tliat is, to have 
 
 fnt.v^y' '^i^^r' ^'"\*l'f ■■%i^ "° otl^'^i' distinction between the present and 
 future God than that the former is an object of faith, of conception of 
 imagination while the latter is to be an object of immediate, that is ner 
 sonal, sensible perception. In this life and in the next he is the'sanifl 
 God ; but m the one he is incomprehensible, in the other comprehensible 
 
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 25 
 
 qualities and passions ; that it may not be something, it is 
 rather nothing. 
 
 ISTow, when it is shown that what the subject is lies 
 entirely in the attributes of the subject ; that is, that the 
 predicate is the true subject ; it is also proved that if the 
 divine predicates are attributes of the human nature, the 
 subject of those predicates is also of the human nature. But 
 the divine predicates are partly general, partly personal. 
 The general predicates are the metaphysical, but these serve 
 only as external points of support to religion ; they are not 
 the characteristic definitions of religion. It is the personal 
 predicates alone which constitute the essence of religion — 
 in which the Divine Being is the object of religion. Such 
 are, for example, that God is a Person, that he is the moral 
 Lawgiver, the Father of mankind, the Holy One, the Just, 
 the Good, the Merciful. It is, however, at once clear, or it 
 will at least be clear in the sequel, with regard to these and 
 other definitions, that, especially as applied to a personality, 
 they are purely human definitions, and that consequently 
 
 ean in religion — in his relation to God — is in relation to 
 s own nature ; for to the religious sentiment these predi- 
 cates are not mere conceptions, mere images, which man 
 forms of God, to be distinguished from that which God 
 is in himself, but truths, facts, realities. Eeligion knows 
 nothing of anthropomorphisms; to it they are not anthropo- 
 morphisms. It is the very essence of religion, that to it 
 these definitions express the nature of God. They are pro- 
 nounced^ to be images only by the understanding, which 
 reflects on religion, and which while defending them yet 
 before its own tribunal denies them. But to the religious 
 sentiment God is a real Father, real Love and Mercy ; for 
 to it he is a real, living, personal being, and therefore his attri- 
 butes are also living and personal. Nay, the definitions which 
 are the most sufficing to the religious sentiment are precisely 
 those which give the most offence to the understanding, 
 and which in the process of reflection on religion it denies. 
 Eeligion is essentially emotion ; hence, objectively also, 
 emotion is to it necessarily of a divine nature. Even anger 
 appears to it an emotion not unworthy of God, provided only 
 there be a religious motive at the foundation of this anger. 
 But here it is also essential to observe, and this pheno- 
 menon is an extremely remarkable one, characterising the 
 
25 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 very core of religion, that in proportion as the divine 
 subject is in reality human, the greater is the apparent 
 difference between God and man; that is, the more, by 
 reflection on religion, by theology, is the identity of the 
 divine and human denied, and the human, considered as 
 such, is depreciated.! xhe reason of this is, that as what is 
 positive in the conception of the divine being can only be 
 human, the conception of man, as an object of consciousness, 
 can only be negative. To enrich God, man must become 
 poor; that God'may be all, man must be nothing. But he 
 desires to be nothing in himself, because what he takes 
 from himself is not lost to him, since it is preserved in God. 
 Man has his being in God ; why then should he have it 
 in himself ? Where is the necessity of positing the same 
 thing twice, of having it twice ? What man withdraws 
 from himself, what he renounces in himself, he only enjoys 
 in an incomparably higher and fuller measure in God. 
 
 The monks made a vow of chastity to God ; they morti- 
 fied the sexual passion in themselves, but therefore they 
 had in heaven, in the Virgin Mary, the image of woman 
 — an image of love. They could the more easily dispense 
 with real woman in proportion as an ideal woman was an 
 object of love to them. The greater the importance they 
 attached to the denial of sensuality, the greater the import- 
 ance of the heavenly virgin for them : she was to them in 
 the place of Christ, in the stead of God. The more the 
 sensual tendencies are renounced, the more sensual is the 
 God to whom they are sacrificed. For whatever is made 
 an offering to God has an especial value attached to it ; in 
 it God is supposed to have especial pleasure. That which 
 is the highest in the estimation of man is naturally 
 the highest in the estimation of his God; what pleases 
 man pleases God also. The Hebrews did not offer to 
 Jehovah unclean, ill-conditioned animals ; on the contrary, 
 those which they most highly prized, which they them- 
 selves ate, were also the food of God (Cibus Dei, Lev. iii. 
 
 1 Inter creatorem et creaturam noii potest tanta similitude notari quin 
 inter eos major sit dissimilitudo notanda. — Later. Cone. can. 2 (Summa 
 Omn. Cone. Carranza. Antw. 1559. p. 326.) The last distinction between 
 man and God, between the finite and infinite nature, to which the religious 
 speculative imagination soars, is the distinction between Something 
 and Nothing, Ens and Non-Ens ; for only in Nothing is all community 
 with other beings abolished. ■* 
 
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 27 
 
 2). Wherever, therefore, the denial of the sensual delights 
 is made a special offering, a sacrifice well-pleasing to God, 
 there the highest value is attached to the senses, and the 
 sensuality which has been renounced is unconsciously re- 
 stored, in the fact that God takes the place of the material 
 delights which have been renounced. The nun weds her- 
 self to God ; she has a heavenly bridegroom, the monk a 
 heavenly bride. But the heavenly virgin is only a sensible 
 presentation of a general truth, having relation to the 
 essence of religion. Man denies as to himself only what he 
 attributes to God. Eeligion abstracts from man, from the 
 world ; but it can only abstract from the limitations, from 
 the phenomena ; in short, from the negative, not from the 
 essence, the positive, of the world and humanity : hence, in 
 the very abstraction and negation it must recover that 
 from which it abstracts, or believes itself to abstract. And 
 thus, in reality, whatever religion consciously denies — 
 always supposing that what is denied by it is something 
 essential, true, and consequently incapable of being ulti- 
 mately denied — it unconsciously restores in God. Thus, in 
 religion man denies his reason ; of himself he knows nothing 
 of God, his thoughts are only worldly, earthly ; he can only 
 believe what God reveals to him. But on this account the 
 thoughts of God are human, earthly thoughts : like man, 
 he has plans in his mind, he accommodates himself to 
 circumstances and grades of intelligence, like a tutor with 
 his pupils ; he calculates closely the effect of his gifts and 
 revelations ; he observes man in all his doings ; he knows 
 all things, even the most earthly, the commonest, the most 
 trivial. In brief, man in relation to God denies his own 
 knowledge, his own thoughts, that he may place them in God. 
 Man gives up his personality ; but in return, God, the Al- 
 mighty, infinite, unlimited being, is a person ; he denies 
 human dignity, the human ego ; but in return God is to him 
 a selfish, egoistical being, who in all things seeks only him- 
 self, his own honour, his own ends ; he represents God as 
 simply seeking the satisfaction of his own selfishness, while 
 yet he frowns on that of every other being; his God is the 
 very luxury of egoism. ^ Eeligion further denies goodness 
 
 1 Gloriam suam plus amat Deus quam omnes creaturas. "God can only 
 love himself, can only think of himself, can only work for himself. In 
 creating man, God seeks his owa ends, his own glory," &c. — Vide P. Bayle, 
 Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Philos. u. Menschh., pp. 104-107. 
 
28 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 as a quality of human nature ; man is wicked, corrupt 
 incapable of good; but, on the other hand, God is only good 
 -the Good Being. Man's nature demands as an object 
 goodness, personified as God; but is it not hereby declared 
 that goodness is an essential tendency of man ? If my 
 heart is wicked, my understanding perverted, how can I 
 perceive and feel the holy to be holy, the good to be good ? 
 Could I perceive the beauty of a fine picture if my mmd 
 were aesthetically an absolute piece of perversion ? Though 
 I may not be a painter, though I may not have the power 
 of producing what is beautiful myself, I must yet have 
 esthetic feeling, ajsthetic comprehension, since I perceive 
 the beauty that is presented to me externally. Either 
 goodness does not exist at all for man, or, if it does exist, 
 therein is revealed to the individual man the holiness and 
 goodness of human nature. That which is absolutely 
 opposed to my nature, to which I am united by no bond 
 of sympathy, is not even conceivable or perceptible by me. 
 The holy is in opposition to me only as regards the modi- 
 fications of my personality, but as regards my fundamental 
 nature it is in unity with me. The holy is a reproach to 
 my sinfulness ; in it I recognise myself as a sinner ; but in 
 so doing, while I blame myself, I acknowledge what I am 
 not, but ought to be, and what, for that very reason, I, 
 according to my destination, can be ; for an " ought " which 
 has no corresponding capability does not affect me, is a 
 ludicrous chimtera without any true relation to my mental 
 constitution. But when I acknowledge goodness as my 
 destination, as my law, I acknowledge it, whether con- 
 sciouslj^ or unconsciously, as my own nature. Another 
 nature than my own, one different in quality, cannot touch 
 me. I can perceive sin as sin, only when I perceive it to 
 be a contradiction of myself with myself — that is, of my 
 personality with my fundamental nature. As a contradic- 
 tion of the absolute, considered as another being, the feel- 
 ing of sin is inexplicable, unmeaning. 
 
 The distinction between Augustinianism and Pelan-ianism 
 consists only in this, that the former expresses after the 
 manner of religion what the latter expresses after the 
 manner of Eationalism. Both say the same thing, both 
 vindicate the goodness of man; but Pelagianism does it 
 directly, in a rationalistic and moral form; Augustinianism 
 
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 29 
 
 indirectly, in a mystical, that is, a religious form.i For 
 that which is given to man's God is in truth given to man 
 himself ; what a man declares concerning God, he in truth 
 declares concerning himself. Augustinianism would be a 
 truth, and a truth opposed to Pelagianism, only if man had 
 the devil for his God, and, with the consciousness that he 
 was the devil, honoured, reverenced, and worshipped him 
 as the highest being. But so long as man adores a good 
 being as his God, so long does he contemplate in God the 
 goodness of his own nature. 
 
 As with the doctrine of the radical corruption of human 
 nature, so is it with the identical doctrine, that man can 
 do nothing good, i.e., in truth, nothing of himself — by his 
 own strength. For the denial of human strength and 
 spontaneous moral activity to be true, the moral activity 
 of God must also be denied ; and we must say, with the 
 Oriental nihilist or pantheist : the Divine being is absolutely 
 without will or action, indifferent, knowing nothing of the 
 discrimination between evil and good. But he who defines^ 
 God as an active being, and not only so, but as morally 
 active and morally critical, — as a being who loves, works, 
 and rewards good, punishes, rejects, and condemns evil, — 
 he who thus defines God only in appearance denies human 
 activity, in fact, making it the highest, the most real activity. 
 He who makes God act humanly, declares human activity 
 to be divine ; he says : A god who is not active, and not 
 morally or humanly active, is no god ; and thus he makes 
 the idea of the Godhead dependent on the idea of activity, 
 that is, of human activity, for a higher he knows not. 
 Man — this is the mystery of religion — projects his being 
 
 ^ Pelagianism denies God, religion — isti tantam tribuunt potestatem 
 Toluntati, ut pietati auferant orationem. (Augustiu de Nat. et Grat. cont. 
 Pelagium, c. 58.) It has only the Creator, i.e., Nature, as a basis, not the 
 Saviour, the true God of the religious sentiment — in a word, it denies God ; 
 but, as a consequence of this, it elevates man into a God, since it makes 
 him a being not needing God, self-sufficing, independent. (See on this 
 subject Luther against Erasmus and Augustine, 1. c. c. 33.) Augustinian- 
 ism denies man ; but, as a consequence of this, it reduces God to the level 
 of man, even to the ignominy of the cross, for the sake of man. The former 
 puts man in the place of God, the latter puts God in the place of man ; 
 both lead to the same result — the distinction is only apparent, a pious 
 illusion. Augustinianism is only an inverted Pelagianism ; what to the 
 latter is a subject, is to the former an object. 
 
30 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 into objectivity/ and then again makes himself an object 
 to this projected imac;e of himself thus converted into a 
 subject; he thinks of ^himself is an object to himself, but 
 as the object of an object, of another being than himself. 
 Thus here. Man is an object to God. That man is good 
 or evil is not indifferent to • God ; no ! He has a lively, 
 profound interest in man's being good; he wills that man 
 should be good, happy — for without goodness there is no 
 happiness. Thus the religious man virtually retracts the 
 nothingness of human activity, by making his dispositions 
 and actions an object to God, by making man the end of 
 God — for that which is an object to the mind is an end in 
 action ; by making the divine activity a means of human 
 salvation. God acts, that man may be good and happy. 
 Thus man, while he is apparently humiliated to the lowest 
 degree, is in truth exalted to the highest. Thus, in and 
 through God, man has in view himself alone. It is true 
 that man places the aim of his action in God, but God has 
 no other aim of action than the moral and eternal salvation 
 flf man: thus man has in fact no other aim than himself. 
 The divine activity is not distinct from the human.) 
 
 How could the divine activity work on me as its object, 
 nay, work in me, if it were essentially different from me; 
 how could it have a human aim, the aim of ameliorating 
 and blessing man, if it were not itself human ? Does not 
 the purpose determine the nature of the act ? When man 
 makes his moral improvement an aim to himself, he has 
 divine resolutions, divine projects ; but also, when God 
 seeks the salvation of man, he has human ends and a 
 human mode of activity corresponding to these ends. 
 Thus in God man has only his own activity as an object. 
 But for the very reason that he regards his own activity 
 as objective, goodness only as an object, he necessarily 
 receives the impulse, the motive not from himself, but 
 from this object. He contemplates his nature as external 
 to himself, and this nature as goodness ; thus it is self- 
 
 ' The religious, the original mode in whicli man becomes objective to 
 himself, is (as is clearly enough explained in this work) to he distino-uished 
 from the mode in -which this occurs in reflection and speculation ; th'e latter 
 is voluntary, the former involuntary, necessary — as necessary' as art as 
 speech. "With the progress of time, it is true; theology coincides -with 
 religion. 
 
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 31 
 
 evident, it is mere tautology to say that the impulse to 
 good comes only from thence where he places the good. 
 
 _ Grod is the highest subjectivity of man abstracted from 
 himself ; hence man can_ do nothing of himself, all good- 
 ness comes from God. , The more subjective God is, the 
 more completely does man divest himself of his subjec- 
 tivity, because God is, per se, his relinquished self, the 
 possession of which he however again vindicates to himselfr\ 
 As the action of the arteries drives the blood into the ex-~ 
 tremities, and the action of the veins brings it back again, 
 as life in general consists in a perpetual systole and diastole; 
 so is it in religion. In the religious systole man propels his 
 own nature from himself, he throws himself outward ; in the 
 religious diastole he receives the rejected nature into his 
 heart again. God alone is the being who acts of himself, — 
 this is the force of repulsion in religion ; God is the being 
 who acts in me, with me, through me, upon me, for me, is 
 the principle of my salvation, of my good dispositions and 
 actions, consequently my own good principle and nature, — 
 this is the force of attraction in religion. 
 
 The course of religious development which has been gene- 
 rally indicated consists specifically in this, that man abstracts 
 more and more from God, and attributes more and more to 
 himself. This is especially apparent in the belief in reve- 
 lation. That which to a later age or a cultured people is 
 given by nature or reason, is to an earlier age, or to a yet 
 uncultured people, given by God. Every tendency of man, 
 however natural — even the impulse to cleanliness, was 
 conceived by the Israelites as a positive divine ordinance. 
 From this example we again see that God is lowered, is 
 conceived more entirely on the type of ordinary humanity, 
 in proportion as man detracts from himself. How can the 
 self-humiliation of man go further than when he disclaims 
 the capability of fulfilling spontaneously the requirements 
 of common decency ? ^ The Christian religion, on the other 
 hand, distinguished the impulses and passions of man 
 according to their quality, their character; it represented 
 only good emotions, good dispositions, good thoughts, as 
 revelations, operations — that is, as dispositions, feelings, 
 thoughts, — of God ; for what God reveals is a quality of 
 God himself : that of which the heart is full overflows the 
 '' Deut. xxiii. 12, 13. 
 
32 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 lips ; as is the effect such is the cause ; as the revelation, 
 such the being who reveals himself. A God who reveals 
 himself in good dispositions is a God whose essential attri- 
 bute is only moral perfection. The Christian religion 
 distinguishes inward moral purity from external physical 
 purity; the Israelites identified the two.^ In relation to 
 the Israelitish religion, the Christian religion is one of criti- 
 cism and freedom. The Israelite trusted himself to do 
 nothing except what was commanded by God ; he was with- 
 out will even in external things ; the authority of religion 
 extended itself even to his food. The Christian religion, 
 on the other hand, in all these external things made man 
 dependent on himself, i.e., placed in man what the Israelite 
 placed out of himself in God. Israel is the most complete 
 presentation of Positivism in religion. In relation to the 
 Israelite, the Christian is an esprit fori, a free-thinker. 
 Thus do things change. What yesterday was still religion 
 is no longer such to-day ; and what to-day is atheism, to- 
 morrow will be religion. 
 
 1 See, for example. Gen. xxxv. 2 ; Levit. xi. 44 ; xx. 26 ; and the Com- 
 mentary of Le Clerc on these passages. 
 
( 33 ) 
 
 PART I. 
 
 THE TRUE OR ANTHROPOLOGICAL ESSENCE 
 OF RELIGION 
 
 CHAPTEE 11. 
 
 GOD AS A BEING OF THE IJNDEESTANDING. 
 
 Eeligion is the disuniting of man from himself ; he sets 
 God before him as the antithesis of himself. God is not 
 ■what man is — man is not what God is. God is the infinite, 
 man the finite being ; God is perfect, man imperfect ; God 
 eternal, man temporal ; God almighty, man weak ; God 
 holy, man sinful. God and man are extremes : God is 
 the absolutely positive, the sum of all realities ; man the 
 absolutely negative, comprehending all negations. 
 
 But in religion man contemplates his own latent nature. 
 Hence it must be shown that this antithesis, this differ- 
 encing of God and man, with which religion begins, is a 
 differencing of man with his own nature. " 
 
 The inherent necessity of this proof is at once apparent 
 from this, — that if the divine nature, which is the object of 
 religion, were really different from the nature of man, a 
 division, a disunion could not take place. If God is really 
 a different being from myself, why should his perfection 
 trouble me ? Disunion exists only between beings who are 
 at variance, but who ought to be one, who can be one, 
 and who consequently in nature, in truth, are one. On 
 this general ground, then, the nature with which man feels 
 himself in disunion must be inborn, immanent in himself, 
 but at the same time it must be of a different character 
 from that nature or power which gives him the feeling, the 
 consciousness of reconciliation, of union with God, or, what 
 is the same thing, with himself. 
 
 c 
 
34 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 This nature is nothing else than the intelligence — the 
 reason or the understanding. God as the antithesis of man, 
 as a heing not human, i.e., not personally human, is the 
 ohjective nature of the understanding. The pure, perfect 
 divine nature is the self-consciousness of the understanding, 
 the consciousness which the understanding has of its own 
 perfection. The understanding knows nothing of the suffer- 
 ings of the heart ; it has no desires, no passions, no wants, 
 and, for that reason, no deficiencies and weaknesses, as the 
 heart has. Men in whom the iiitellect predominates, who, 
 with one-sided but all the more characteristic definiteness, 
 embody and personify for us the nature of the understanding, 
 are free from the anguish of the heart, from the passions,' 
 the excesses of the man who has strong emotions ; they are 
 not passionately interested in any finite, i.e., particular object; 
 they do not give themselves in pledge ; they are free. " To 
 want nothing, and by this freedom from wants to become 
 like the immortal gods ; " — " not to subject ourselves to 
 things, but things to us ; " — " all is vanity ; " — these and 
 similar sayings are the mottoes of the men who are governed 
 by abstract understanding. The understanding is that part 
 of our nature which is neutral, impassible, not to bribed, not 
 subject to illusions — the pure, passionless light of the intelli- 
 gence. It is the categorical, impartial consciousness of the 
 fact as fact, because it is itself of an objective nature. It is 
 the consciousness of the uncontradictory, because it is itself 
 the uncontradictory unity, the source of logical identity. It 
 is the consciousness of law, necessity, rule, measure, because 
 it is itself the activity of law, the necessity of the nature of 
 things under the form of spontaneous activity, the rule of 
 rules, the absolute measure, the measure of measures. Only 
 by the imderstanding can man judge and act in contradic- 
 tion with his dearest human, that is, personal feelings, when 
 the God of the understanding, — law, necessity, right, com- 
 mands it. The father who, as a judge, condemns his own 
 son to death because he knows him to be guilty, can do this 
 only as a rational, not as an emotional being. ' The under- 
 standing shows us the faults and weaknesses even of our 
 beloved ones; it shows us even our own. It is for this 
 reason that it so often throws us into painful collision with 
 ourselves, with our own hearts. We do not like to o-ive 
 reason the upper hand : we are too tender to ourselvet to 
 
GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 35 
 
 carry out the true, but hard, relentless verdict of the under- 
 standing. The understanding is the power which has rela- 
 tion to species: the heart represents particular circumstances, 
 individuals, — the understanding, general circumstances, uni- 
 yersals ; it is the superhuman, i.e., the impersonal power 
 in man. Only by and in the understanding has man the 
 power of abstraction from himself, from his subjective being, 
 --of exalting himself to general ideas and relations, of 
 distinguishing the object from the impressions which it 
 produces on his feelings, of regarding it in and by itself 
 without reference to human personality. Philosophy, mathe- 
 matics, astronomy, physics, in short, science in general, is 
 the practical proof, because it is the product of this truly 
 infinite and divine activity. Eeligious anthropomorphisms, 
 therefore, are in contradiction with the understanding; it 
 repudiates their application to God ; it denies them. But 
 this God, free from anthropomorphisms, impartial, passion- 
 less, is nothing else than the nature of the understanding 
 itself regarded as objective. 
 
 God as God, that is, as a being not finite, not human, not 
 materially conditioned, not phenomenal, is only an object 
 of thought. He is the incorporeal, formless, incomprehen- 
 sible — the abstract, negative being: he is known, i.e., becomes 
 an object, only by abstraction and negation (via negationis). 
 Why ? Because he is nothing but the objective nature of 
 the thinking power, or in general of the power or activity, 
 name it what you will, whereby man is conscious of reason, 
 of mind, of intelligence. There is no other spirit, that is 
 (for the idea of spirit is simply the idea of thought, of intelli- 
 gence, of understanding, every other spirit being a spectre 
 of the imagination), no other intelligence which man can 
 believe in or conceive than that intelligence which enlightens 
 him, which is active in him. He can do nothing more than 
 separate the intelligence from the limitations of his own 
 individuality. The "infinite spirit," in distinction from 
 the finite, is therefore nothing else than the intelligence 
 disengaged from the limits of individuality and corporeality, 
 — for individuality and corporeality are inseparable, — intel- 
 ligence posited in and by itself. God, said the schoolmen, 
 the Christian fathers, and long before them the heathen 
 philosophers, — God is immaterial essence, intelligence, spirit, 
 pure understanding. Of God as God no image can be made; 
 
36 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 but canst thou frame an image of mind ? Has mind a 
 form ? Is not its activity the most inexplicable, the most 
 incapable of representation? God is incomprehensible; 
 but knowest thou the nature of the intelligence ? Hast thou 
 searched out the mysterious operation of thought, the hidden 
 nature of self-consciousness ? Is not self-consciousness the 
 enio-ma of enigmas ? Did not the old mystics, schoolmen, 
 and fathers, long ago compare the incomprehensibility of the 
 divine nature with that of the human intelligence, and thus, 
 in truth, identify the nature of God with the nature of 
 man ? * God as God — as a purely thinkable being, an object 
 of the intellect — is thus nothing else than the reason in its 
 utmost intensification become objective to itself. It is asked 
 what is the understanding or the reason ? The answer is 
 found in the idea of God. Everything must express itself, 
 reveal itself, make itself objective, affirm itself. God is the 
 reason expressing, affirming itself as the highest existence. 
 To the imagination, the reason is the revelation of God ; but 
 to the reason, God is the revelation of the reason ; since 
 what reason is, what it can do, is first made objective in 
 God. God is a need of the intelligence, a necessary thought 
 — the highest degree of the thinking power. " The reason 
 cannot rest in sensuous things ;" it can find contentment only 
 when it penetrates to the highest, first necessary being, which 
 can be an object to the reason alone. Why ? Because with 
 the conception of this being it first completes itself, because 
 only in the idea of the highest nature is the highest nature 
 of reason existent, the highest step of the thinking power 
 attained : and it is a general truth, that we feel a blank, a 
 void, a want in ourselves, and are consequently unhappy and 
 unsatisfied, so long as we have not come to the last degree 
 of a power, to that q2(o nihil majus cogitari potest, — so long 
 as we cannot bring our inborn capacity for this or that art, 
 this or that science, to the utmost proficiency. Por only in 
 the highest proficiency is art truly art ; only in its highest 
 degree is thought truly thought, reason. Only wheiT thy 
 
 * Augustine, in his work Contra Amdemicos, which he -s^Tote when he was 
 still in some measure a heathen, says (1. iii. c. 12) that the highest good of 
 man consists in the mind or in the reason. On the other hand, in his Lib: 
 Retractatiomim, which he ivi-ote as a distinguished Christian and theologian he 
 revises (1. i. c. 1) this declaration as follows :— Verius dixissem in Deo Ipso 
 enim mens fruitur, ut beata sit. tauquam summo bono suo. But is there any 
 distinction here ? Where my highest good is, is not there my nature also ? 
 
GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 37 
 
 thought is God dost thou truly think, rigorously speaking ; 
 for only God is the realised, consummate, exhausted thinking 
 power. Thus in conceiving God, man first conceives reason as 
 it truly is, though by means of the imagination he conceives 
 this divine nature as distinct from reason, because as a being 
 affected by external things he is accustomed always to dis- 
 tinguish the object from the conception of it. And here he 
 applies the same process to the conception of the reason, thus 
 for an existence in reason, in thought, substituting an exis- 
 tence in space and time, from which he had, nevertheless, 
 previously abstracted it. God, as a metaphysical being, is 
 the intelligence satisfied in itself, or rather, conversely, the 
 intelligence, satisfied in itself, thinking itself as the absolute 
 being, is God as a metaphysical being. Hence all meta- 
 physical predicates of God are real predicates only when 
 they are recognised as belonging to thought, to intelligence, 
 to the understanding. 
 
 The understanding is that which conditionates and co-ordi- 
 nates all things, that which places all things in reciprocal 
 dependence and connection, because it is itself immediate 
 and unconditioned ; it inquires for the cause of all things, 
 because it has its own ground and end in itself. Only that 
 which itself is nothing deduced, nothing derived, can deduce 
 and construct, can regard all besides itself as derived ; just as 
 only that which exists for its own sake can view and treat other 
 things as means and instruments. The understanding is thus 
 the original, primitive being. The understanding derives all 
 things from God as the first cause ; it finds the world, without 
 an intelligent cause, given over to senseless, aimless chance; 
 that is, it finds only in itself, in its own nature, the efficient 
 and the final cause of the world — the existence of the world 
 is only then clear and comprehensible when it sees the expla- 
 nation of that existence in the source of all clear and intelli- 
 gible ideas, i.e., in itself. The being that works with design 
 towards certain ends, i.e., with understanding, is alone the 
 being that to the understanding has immediate certitude, 
 self-evidence. Hence that which of itself has no designs, 
 no purpose, must have the cause of its existence in the 
 design of another, and that an intelligent being. And thus 
 the understanding posits its own nature as the causal, first, 
 premundane existence — i.e., being in rank the first but in 
 time the last, it makes itself the first in time also. 
 
 The understanding is to itself the criterion of all realitv. 
 
38 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 That which is opposed to the understanding, that which is 
 self-contradictory, is nothing; that which contradicts reason 
 contradicts God. For example, it is a contradiction of 
 reason to connect with the idea of the highest reality the 
 limitations of definite time and place; and hence reason 
 denies these of God as contradicting his nature. The reason 
 can only believe in a God who is accordant with its own 
 nature, in a God who is not beneath its own dignity, who, 
 on the contrary, is a realisation of its own nature : i.e., the 
 reason believes only in itself, in the absolute reality of its 
 own nature. The reason is not dependent on God, but God 
 on the reason. Even in the age of miracles and faith in 
 authority, the understanding constitutes itself, at least for- 
 mally, the criterion of divinity. God is all and can do all, 
 it was said, by virtue of his omnipotence ; but nevertheless 
 he is nothing and he can do nothing which contradicts 
 himself, i.e., reason. Even omnipotence cannot do what is 
 contrary to reason. Thus above the divine omnipotence 
 stands the higher power of reason ; above the nature of God 
 the nature of the understanding, as the criterion of that which 
 is to be affirmed and denied of God, the criterion of the posi- 
 tive and negative. Canst thou beHeve in a God who is an 
 unreasonable and wicked being ? N"o, indeed ; but why not ? 
 Because it is in contradiction with thy understanding to 
 accept a wicked and unreasonable being as divine. What 
 then dost thou affirm, what is an object to thee, in God ? 
 Thy own understanding. God is thy highest idea, the 
 supreme effort of thy understanding, thy highest power of 
 thought. God is the sum of all realities, i.e., the sum of all 
 affirmations of the understanding. That which I recognise 
 in the understanding as essential I place in God as existent : 
 God is what the understanding thinks as the highest. But in 
 what I perceive to be essential is revealed the nature of my 
 understanding, is shown the power of my thinking faculty. 
 Thus the understanding is the ens realissimtom° the most 
 real being of the old onto-theology. " Fundamentally," says 
 onto-theology, " we cannot conceive God otherwise than by 
 attributing to him without limit all the real qualities which 
 we find in ourselves." * Our positive, essential qualities, our 
 realities, are therefore the realities of God, but in us th^y 
 exist with, in God without, limits. But what then withdraws 
 
 * Kant, Vorles. uber d. pliilos. Religionsl., Leipzig, 1817, p. 39. 
 
GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 39 
 
 the limits from the realities, what does away with the limits ? 
 The understanding. What, according to this, is the nature 
 conceived without limits, but the nature of the understand- 
 ing releasing, abstracting itself from all limits ? As thou 
 thinkest God, such is thy thought ; — the measure of thy God 
 is the measure of thy understanding. If thou conceivest 
 God as limited, thy understanding is limited ; if thou con- 
 ceivest God as unlimited, thy understanding is unlimited ; 
 If, for example, thou conceivest God as a corporeal being, 
 corporeality is the boundary, the limit of thy understanding ; 
 thou canst conceive nothing without a body. If, on the con- 
 trary, thou deniest corporeality of God, this is a corroboration 
 and proof of the freedom of thy understanding from the limi- 
 tation of corporeality. In the unlimited divine nature thou 
 representest only thy unlimited understanding. And when 
 thou declarest this unlimited being the ultimate essence, the 
 highest being, thou sayest in reality nothing else than this : 
 the Stre supreme, the highest being, is the understanding. 
 
 The understanding is further the self-subsistent and inde- 
 pendent being. That which has no understanding is not 
 self-subsistent, is dependent. A man without understand- 
 ing is a man without will. He who has no understanding 
 allows himself to be deceived, imposed upon, used as an 
 instrument by others. How shall he whose understanding 
 is the tool of another have an independent wiU ? Only he 
 who thinks is free and independent. It is only by the 
 understanding that man reduces the things around and 
 beneath him to mere means of his own existence. In general, 
 that only is self-subsistent and independent which is an end 
 to itself, an object to itself. That which is an end and object 
 to itself is for that very reason — in so far as it is an object 
 to itself — no longer a means and object for another being. 
 To be without understanding is, in one word, to exist for 
 another, — to be an object : to have understanding is to exist 
 for oneself, — to be a subject. But that which no longer exists 
 for another, but for itself, rejects all dependence on another 
 being. It is true we, as physical beings, depend on the beings 
 external to us, even as to the modifications of thought ; but 
 in so far as we think, in the activity of the understanding 
 as such, we are dependent on no other being. Activity of 
 thought is spontaneous activity. " When I think, I am con- 
 scious that my ego in me thinks, and not some other thing. 
 
40 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 I conclude, therefore, that this thinking in me does not inhere 
 in another thing outside of me, but in myself, consequently 
 that I am a substance, i.e., that I exist by myself, without 
 being a predicate of another being." * Although we always 
 need°the air, yet as natural philosophers we convert the air 
 from an object of our physical need into an object of the 
 self-sufficing activity of thought, i.e., into a mere thing for 
 us. In breathing I am the object of the air, the air the 
 subject ; but when I make the air an object of thought, of 
 investigation, when I analyse it, I reverse this relation, — I 
 make myself the subject, the air an object. But that which 
 is the object of another being is dependent. Thus the plant 
 is dependent on air and light, that is, it is an object for air, 
 and light, not for itself. It is true that air and light are 
 reciprocally an object for the plant. Physical life in general 
 is nothing else than this perpetual interchange of the objec- 
 tive and subjective relation. We consume the air and are 
 consumed by it ; we enjoy and are enjoyed. The under- 
 standing alone enjoys all things without being itself enjoyed ; 
 it is the self-enjoying, self-sufficing existence — the absolute 
 subject — the subject which cannot be reduced to the object 
 of another being, because it makes all things objects, predi- 
 cates of itself, — which comprehends all things in itself, be- 
 _cause it is itself not a thing, because it is free from all things. 
 That is dependent the possibility of whose existence lies 
 out of itself ; that is independent which has the possibility of 
 its existence in itself. Life therefore involves the contra- 
 diction of an existence at once dependent and independent, — 
 the contradiction that its possibility lies both in itself and 
 out of itself. The understanding alone is free from this and 
 other contradictions of life ; it is the essence perfectly self- 
 subsistent, perfectly at one with itself, perfectly self-exis- 
 tent.t Thinking is existence in self; life, as differenced 
 from thought, existence out of self : life is to give from one- 
 self ; thought is to take into oneself. Existence out of self is 
 the world ; existence in self is God. To think is to be God. 
 
 * J Kant, 1. c, p. So. 
 
 + To guard against mistake, I observe that I do not apply to tlie under- 
 standing the expression self-subsistent essence, and other terms of a like 
 character, in my own sense, but that I am here placing myself on the 
 standpoint of onto-theology, of metaphysical theology in general, in order 
 to show that metaphysics is resolvable into psychology, that the outo- 
 theological predicates are merely predicates of the understandinc.j 
 
GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 41 
 
 The act of thought, as such, is the freedom of the immortal 
 gods from all external limitations and necessities of life. 
 
 The unity of the understanding is the unity of Ciod. To 
 the understanding the consciousness of its unity and univer- 
 sality is essential ; the understanding is itself nothing else 
 than the consciousness of itself as ahsolute identity, i.e., 
 that which is accordant with the understanding is to it an 
 absolute, universally valid, law ; it is impossible to the un- 
 derstanding to think that what is self -contradictory, false, 
 irrational, can anywhere be true, and, conversely, that what is 
 true, rational, can anywhere be false and irrational. " There 
 may be intelligent beings who are not like me, and yet I am 
 certain that there are no intelligent beings who know laws 
 and truths different from those which I recognise ; for every 
 mind necessarily sees that two and two make four, and that 
 one must prefer one's friend to one's dog.* Of an essentially 
 different understanding from thatwhich affirms itself in man, 
 I have not the remotest conception, the faintest adumbration. 
 On the contrary, every understanding which I posit as dif- 
 ferent from my own, is only a position of my own under- 
 standing, i.e., an idea of my own, a conception which falls 
 within my power of thought, and thus expresses my under- 
 standing. What I think, that I myself do, of course only 
 in purely intellectual matters ; what I think of as united, I 
 unite ; what I think of as distinct, I distinguish ; what I 
 think of as abolished, as negatived, that I myself abolish and 
 negative. For example, if I conceive an understanding in 
 which the intuition or reality of the object is immediately 
 united with the thought of it, I actually unite it ; my un- 
 derstanding or my imagination is itself the power of uniting 
 these distinct or opposite ideas. How would it be possible 
 for me to conceive them united — whether this conception be 
 clear or confused — -if I did not unite them in myself ? But 
 whatever may be the conditions of the understanding which 
 a given human individual may suppose as distinguished 
 from his own, this other understanding is only the under- 
 standing which exists in man in general — the understand- 
 ing conceived apart from the limits of this particular indi- 
 
 * Malebranche. (See the author's Geschichte der Philos., i Bd. p. 322.) 
 " Exstaretne alibi diversa ab hac ratio ? censereturque injustum aut scelesttim 
 in Jove aut Marte, quod apud nos justum ac prasclarum habetur ? Certo 
 neo verisimile nee omnino possibile." — Chr. Hugenii (Cosmotheoros, lib. i.). 
 
42 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 vidual. Unity is involved in the idea of the understand- 
 ing. The impossibility for the understanding to think two 
 supreme beings, two infinite substances, two Gods, is the 
 impossibility for the understanding to contradict itself, to 
 deny its own nature, to think of itself as divided. 
 
 The understanding is the infinite being. Infinitude is 
 immediately involved in unity, and finiteness in plurality. 
 Piniteness — in the metaphysical sense — rests on the dis- 
 tinction of the existence from the essence, of the individual 
 from the species ; infinitude, on the unity of existence and 
 essence. Hence, that is finite which can be compared with 
 other beings of the same species ; that is infinite which has 
 nothing like itself, which consequently does not stand as 
 an individual under a species, but is species and individual 
 in one, essence and existence in one. But such is the under- 
 standing; it has its essence in itself, consequently it has 
 nothing, together with or external to itself, which can be 
 ranged beside it; it is incapable of being compared, because 
 it is itself the source of all combinations and comparisons; 
 immeasurable, because it is the measure of all measures, — 
 we measure all things by the understanding alone ; it can 
 be circumscribed by no higher generalisation, it can be 
 ranged under no species, because it is itself the principle of 
 all generalising, of all classification, because it circumscribes 
 all things and beings. The definitions which the speculative 
 philosophers and theologians give of God, as the being in 
 whom existence and essence are not separable, who himself 
 is all the attributes which he has, so that predicate and 
 subject are with him identical, — all these definitions are 
 thus ideas drawn solely from the nature of the under- 
 standing. 
 
 Lastly, the understanding or the reason is the necessary 
 being. Eeason exists because only the existence of tlie 
 reason is reason ; because, if there were no reason, no con- 
 sciousness, all would be nothing ; existence would be equi- 
 valent to non-existence. Consciousness first founds the dis- 
 tinction between existence and non-existence. In con- 
 sciousness is first revealed the value of existence, the value 
 of nature. Why, in general, does something exist? why 
 does the world exist ? on the simple ground that if some- 
 thing did not exist, nothing would exist; if reason did not 
 exist, there would be only unreason; thus the world exists 
 
GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 43 
 
 because it is an absurdity that tlie world should not exist. 
 In the absurdity of its non-existence is found the true 
 reason of its existence, in the groundlessness of the supposi- 
 tion that it were not the reason that it is. Nothing, non- 
 existence, is aimless, nonsensical, irrational. Existence 
 alone has an aim, a foundation, rationality; existence is, 
 because only existence is reason and truth ; existence is 
 the absolute necessity. What is the cause of conscious 
 existence, of life ? The need of life. But to whom is it a 
 need ? To that which does not live. It is not a being who 
 saw that made the eye : to one who saw already, to what 
 purpose would be the eye ? No ! only the being who saw 
 not needed the eye. We are all come into the world with- 
 out the operation of knowledge and will ; but we are come 
 that knowledge and will may exist. Whence, then, came 
 the world ? Out of necessity ; not out of a necessity which 
 lies in another being distinct from itself — that is a pure 
 contradiction, — but out of its own inherent necessity ; out 
 of the necessity of necessity; because without the world 
 there would be no necessity ; without necessity, no reason, 
 no understanding. The nothing, out of which the world 
 came, is nothing without the world. It is true that thus, 
 negativity, as the speculative philosophers express them- 
 selves — nothing is the cause of the world ; — but a nothing 
 which abolishes itself, i.e., a nothing which could not have 
 existed if there had been no world. It is true that the 
 world springs out of a want, out of privation, but it is false 
 speculation to make this privation an ontological being : 
 this want is simply the want which lies in the supposed 
 non-existence of the world. Thus the world is only neces- 
 sary out of itself and through itself. But the necessity of 
 the world is the necessity of reason. The reason, as the 
 sum of all realities, — for what are all the glories o^ the 
 world without light, much more external light without 
 internal light ?— the reason is the most indispensable being 
 — the profoundest and most essential necessity. In the 
 reason first lies the self-consciousness of existence, self- 
 conscious existence ; in the reason is first revealed the end, 
 the meaning of existence. Eeason is existence objective 
 to itself as its own end ; the ultimate tendency of things. 
 That which is an object to itself is the highest, the final 
 being ; that which has power over itself is almiglity. 
 
44 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 GOD AS A MOEAL BEING, OR LAW. 
 
 God as God — the infinite, universal, non-anthropomorphic 
 being of the understanding, has no more significance for 
 religion than a fundamental general principle has for a 
 special science ; it is merely the ultimate point of support, — 
 as it were, the mathematical point of religion. The conscious- 
 ness of human limitation or nothingness which is united with 
 the idea of this being,is by no means a religious consciousness; 
 on the contrary, it characterises sceptics, materialists, and 
 pantheists. The belief in God — at least in the God of reli- 
 gion — is only lost where, as in scepticism, pantheism, and 
 materialism, the belief in man is lost, at least in man such 
 as he is presupposed in religion. As little then as religion 
 has any influential belief in the nothingness of man,* so 
 little has it any influential belief in that abstract being with 
 which the consciousness of this nothingness is united. The 
 vital elements of religion are those only which make man an 
 object to man. To deny man is to deny religion. 
 
 It certainly is the interest of religion that its object should 
 be distinct from man ; but it is also, nay, yet more, its in- 
 terest that this object should have human attributes. That 
 he should be a distinct being concerns his existence only ; 
 but that he should be human concerns his essence. If he 
 be of a different nature, how can his existence or non- 
 existence be of any importance to man ? How can he take 
 so profound an interest in an existence in which his own 
 nature has no participation ? 
 
 To give an example. " When I believe that the human 
 nature alone has suffered for me, Christ is a poor Saviour to 
 
 * In religion, tlie representation or expression of the nothingness of man 
 before God is the anger of God ; for as the love of God is the affirmation, 
 his anger is the negation of man. But even this anger is not taken in 
 earnest. " God ... is not really angry. He is not thoroughly in earnest 
 even when we think that he is angry, and punishes."— Luther (Th viii p 
 2oS). ■ '^ 
 
GOD AS A MORAL BEING, OR LAW. 45 
 
 nae : in that case, he needs a Saviour himself." And thus, out 
 of the need for salvation is postulated something transcend- 
 ing human nature, a being different from man. But no 
 sooner is this being postulated than there arises the yearning 
 of man after himself, after his own nature, and man is im- 
 mediately re-established. '•' Here is God, who is not man 
 and never yet became man. But this is not a God for me. 
 . . . That would be a miserable Christ to me, who . . . 
 should be nothing but a purely separate God and divine 
 person . . . without humanity. No, my friend ; where thou 
 givest me God, thou must give me humanity too." * 
 
 In religion man seeks contentment ; religion is his highest 
 good. But how could he find consolation and peace in God 
 if God were an essentially different being ? How can I share 
 the peace of a being if I am not of the same nature with him ? 
 If his nature is different from mine, his peace is essentially 
 different, — it is no peace for me. How then can I become a 
 partaker of his peace if I am not a partaker of his nature ? 
 but how can I be a partaker of his nature if I am really of a 
 different nature ? Every being experiences peace only in its 
 own element, only in the conditions of its own nature. Thus, 
 if man feels peace in God, he feels it only because iu God he 
 first attains his true nature, because here, for the first time, 
 he is with himself, because everything in which he hitherto 
 sought peace, and which he hitherto mistook for his nature, 
 was alien to him. Hence, if man is to find contentment in 
 God, he must find himself in God. " ISTo one will taste of 
 God but as he wills, namely — in the humanity of Christ; 
 and if thou dost not find God thus, thou wilt never have 
 rest." t " Everything finds rest on the place in which it was 
 born. The place where I was born is God. God is my 
 fatherland. Have I a father in God ? Yes, I have not only 
 a father, but I have myself in him ; before I lived in myself, 
 I lived already in God." j 
 
 A God, therefore, who expresses only the nature of the un- 
 derstanding does not satisfy religion,is not the God of religion. 
 The understanding is interested not only in man, but in the 
 
 * Luther, Concordienbucli, Art. 8, Erkliir. 
 
 + Luther, Sammtliche Schriften und Werke, Leipzig, 1729, fol. Th. iii. 
 p. 589. It is according to this edition that references are given throughout 
 the present work. 
 
 J Predigten etzlicher Lehrer vor und zu Tauleri Zeiten, Hamburg, 1621, 
 p. 81. 
 
46 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 things out of man, in universal nature. The intellectual 
 man forgets even himself in the contemplation of nature. 
 The Christians scorned the pagan philosophers because, 
 instead of thinking of themselves, of their own salvation, 
 they had thought only of things out of themselves. The 
 Christian thinks only of himself. By the understanding an 
 insect is contemplated with as much enthusiasm as the image 
 Qf God — man. The understanding is the absolute indiffer- 
 ence and identity of all things and beings. It is not Chris- 
 tianity, not religious enthusiasm, but the enthusiasm of the 
 understanding that we have to thank for botany, mineralogy, 
 zoology, physics, and astronomy. The understanding is 
 universal, pantheistic, the love of the universe; but the 
 grand characteristic of religion, and of the Christian reli- 
 gion especially, is that it is thoroughly anthropotheistic, 
 the exclusive love of man for himself, the exclusive self- 
 affirmation of the human nature, that is, of subjective 
 human nature ; for it is true that the understanding also 
 affirms the- nature of man, but it is his objective nature, 
 which has reference to the object for the sake of the object, 
 and the manifestation of which is science. Hence it must 
 be something entirely different from the nature of the under- 
 standing which is an object to man in religion, if he is to find 
 contentment therein, and this something will' necessarily be 
 the very kernel of religion. 
 
 Of all the attributes which the understanding assigns to 
 God, that which in religion, and especially in the Christian 
 religion, has the pre-eminence, is moral perfection. But God 
 as a morally perfect being is nothing else than the realised 
 idea, the fulfilled law of morality, the moral nature of man 
 posited as the absolute being; man's own nature, for the 
 moral God requires man to be as he himself is : Be ye holy 
 for I am holy ; man's own conscience, for how could he other- 
 wise tremble before the Divine Being, accuse himself before 
 him, and make him the judge of hi"s inmost thoughts and 
 feelings ? 
 
 But the consciousness of the absolutely perfect moral 
 nature, especially as an abstract being separate from man, 
 leaves us cold and empty, because we feel the distance, the 
 chasm between ourselves and this being ; — it is a dispiriting 
 consciousness, for it is the consciousness of our personal 
 nothingness, and of the kind which is the most acutely felt 
 
GOD AS A MORAL BEING, OR LAW. 47 
 
 — moral nothingness. The consciousness of the divine omni- 
 potence and eternity in opposition to my limitation in space 
 and time does not afflict me : for omnipotence does not com- 
 mand me to be myself omnipotent, eternity, to be myself 
 eternal. But I cannot have the idea of moral perfection 
 without at the same time being conscious of it as a law 
 for me. Moral perfection depends, at least for the moral 
 consciousness, not on the nature, but on the will — it is a 
 perfection of will, perfect will. I cannot conceive perfect 
 will, the will which is in unison with law, which is itself 
 law, without at the same time regarding it is an object of 
 will, i.e., as an obligation for myself. The conception of the 
 morally perfect being is no merely theoretical, inert con- 
 ception, but a practical one, calling me to action, to imita- 
 tion, throwing me into strife, into disunion with myself; 
 for while it proclaims to me what I ought to be, it also tells 
 me to my face, without any flattery, what I am not.* And 
 religion renders this disunion all the more painful, all the 
 more terrible, that it sets man's own nature before him as a 
 separate nature, and moreover as a personal being, who hates 
 and curses sinners, and excludes them from his grace, the 
 source of all salvation and happiness. 
 
 Now, by what means does man deliver himself from this 
 state of disunion between himself and the perfect being, 
 from the painful consciousness of sin, from the distressing 
 sense of his own nothingness ? How does he blunt the fatal 
 sting of sin -? Only by this ; that he is conscious of love as 
 the highest, the absolute power and truth, that he regards 
 the Divine Being not only as a law, as a moral being, as a 
 being of the understanding ; but also as a loving, tender, even 
 subjective human being (that is, as having sympathy with 
 individual man). 
 
 The understanding judges only according to the stringency 
 of law ; the heart accommodates itself, is considerate, lenient, 
 relenting, xar avOpwirov. No man is sufficient for the law 
 which moral perfection sets before us ; but, for that reason, 
 neither is the law sufficient for man, for the heart. The law 
 condemns ; the heart has compassion even on the sinner. The 
 
 * " That whicli, in our own judgment, derogates from our self-conceit, 
 humiliates us. Thus the moral law inevitably humiliates every man when 
 he compares with it the sensual tendency of hi.s nature." — Kant, Kritik der 
 prakt. Vernunft, 4th edition, p. 132. 
 
48 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 law affirms me only as an abstract being, — love, as a real 
 being. Love gives me the consciousness that I am a man; 
 the law only the consciousness that I am a sinner, that I am 
 worthless.* The law holds man in bondage ; love makes 
 him free. 
 
 Love is the middle term, the substantial bond, the prin- 
 ciple of reconciliation between the perfect and the imperfect, 
 the sinless and sinful being, the universal and the individual, 
 the divine and the human. Love is God himself, and apart 
 from it there is no God. Love makes man God and God man. 
 Love strengthens the weak and weakens the strong, abases 
 the high and raises the lowly, idealises matter and material- 
 ises spirit. Love it the true unity of God and man, of spirit 
 and nature. In love common nature is spirit, and the pre- 
 eminent spirit is nature. Love is to deny spirit from the 
 point of view of spirit, to deny matter from the point of 
 view of matter. Love is materialism ; immaterial love is a 
 chimajra. In the longing of love after the distant object, 
 the abstract idealist involuntarily confirms the truth of sen- 
 suousness. But love is also the idealism of nature — love is 
 also spirit, esprit. Love alone makes the nightingale a song- 
 stress ; love alone gives the plant its corolla. And what 
 wonders does not love work in our social life ! What faith, 
 creed, opinion separates, love unites. Love even, humorously 
 enough, identifies the high noblesse with the people. What 
 the old mystics said of God, that he is the highest and yet 
 the commonest being, applies in truth to love, and that not 
 a visionary, imaginary love — no! a real love, a love which 
 has flesh and blood, which vibrates as an almighty force 
 through all living. 
 
 Yes, it applies only to the love which has flesh and blood, 
 for only this can absolve from the sins which flesh and blood 
 commit. A merely moral being cannot forgive what is con- 
 trary to the law of morality. That which denies the law is 
 denied by the law. The moral judge, who does not infuse 
 human blood into his judgment judges the sinner relent- 
 lessly, inexorably. Since, then, God is regarded as a sm- 
 pardoning being, he is posited, not indeed as an unmoral, 
 but as more than a moral being — in a word, as a human 
 
 * " Omnes peccavimus. . . . Parricide cum lega CEeperunt et illis facinus 
 pccna moustravit." — Seneca. " The law destroys us." — Luther (Th xvi o 
 320). , . . . 
 
GOD AS A MORAL BEING, OR LAW. 49 
 
 being. The negation or annulling of sin is the negation of 
 abstract moral rectitude, — the positing of love, mercy, sen- 
 suous life. Not abstract beings — no ! only sensuous, living 
 beings are merciful. Mercy is the justice of sensuous life* 
 Hence God does not forgive the sins of men as the abstract 
 God of the understanding, but as man, as the God made 
 flesh, the visible God. God as man sins not, it is true, but 
 he knows, he takes on himself, the sufferings, the wants, the 
 needs of sensuous beings. The blood of Christ cleanses us 
 from our sins in the eyes of God ; it is only his human 
 blood that makes God merciful, allays his anger ; that is, 
 our sins are forgiven us because we are no abstract beings, 
 but creatures of flesh and blood.f 
 
 * "Das Rechtsgefiihl der Sinnlichkeit." 
 
 + ' ' This, my God and Lord, has taken upon him my nature, flesh and 
 blood such as I have, and has been tempted and has suffered in all things 
 like me, but without sin ; therefore he can have pity on my weakness. — 
 Hebrews v. Luther (Th. xvi. s. 533). " The deeper we can bring Christ 
 into the flesh the better." — (Ibid. s. 565.) " God himself, when he is dealt 
 with out of Christ, is a terrible God, for no consolation is found in him, but 
 pure anger and disfavour." — (Th. xv. s. 298.) 
 
50 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 THE MYSTEEY OF THE IXCAENATIOX ; OK, GOD AS LOVE, AS A 
 BEING OF THE HEAET. 
 
 It is the consciousness of love by whicli man reconciles him- 
 self with God, or rather with^his own nature as represented 
 in the moral law. The consciousness of the divine love, or 
 what is the same thing, the contemplation of God as human, 
 is the mystery of the Incarnation. The Incarnation is 
 nothing else than the practical, material manifestation of the 
 human nature of God. God did not become man for his 
 own sake ; the need, the want of man — a want which still 
 exists in the religious sentiment — was the cause of the 
 Incarnation. God became man out of mercy : thus he was 
 in himself already a human God before he became an actual 
 man ; for human want, human misery, went to his heart. 
 The Incarnation was a tear of the divine compassion, and 
 hence it was only the visible advent of a Being having 
 human feelings, and therefore essentially human. 
 
 If in the Incarnation we stop short at the fact of God 
 becoming man, it certainly appears a surprising, inexplicable, 
 marvellous event. But the incarnate God is only the apparent 
 manifestation of deified man ; for the descent of God to man 
 is necessarily preceded by the exaltation of man to God. 
 Man was already in God, was already God himself, before 
 God became man, i.e., showed himself as man.* How other- 
 wise could God have become man ? The old maxim, ex 
 nihilo nihil fit, is applicable here also. A king who has not 
 the welfare of his subjects at heart, who, while seated on his 
 throne, does not mentally live with them in their dweUings, 
 who, in feeling, is not, as the people say, " a common man," 
 
 * " Such descriptions as those in which the Scriptures speak of God as of 
 a man, and ascribe to him all that is human, are very sweet and comforting 
 — namely, that he talks with us as a friend, and of such thiu<Js as men are 
 wont to talk of with each other ; ^that he rejoices, sorrows, ancf suffers like a 
 
 man, for the sake of the mystery of the future humanity of Christ " ^'luther 
 
 (Th. ii. p. 334). 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION. 51 
 
 such a king will not descend bodily from his throne to make 
 his people happy by his personal presence. Thus, has not 
 the subject risen to be a king before the king descends to 
 be a subject ? And if the subject feels himself honoured and 
 made happy by the personal presence of his king, does this 
 feeling refer merely to the bodily presence, and not rather 
 to the manifestation of the disposition, of the philanthropic 
 nature which is the cause of the appearance ? But that 
 which in the truth of religion is the cause, takes in the con- 
 sciousness of religion the form of a consequence ; and so 
 here the raising of man to God is made a consequence of the 
 humiliation or descent of God to man. God, says religion, 
 made himself human that he might make man divine.* 
 
 That which is mysterious and incomprehensible, i.e., con- 
 tradictory, in the proposition, " God is or becomes a man," 
 arises only from the mingling or confusion of the idea or 
 definitions of the universal, unlimited, metaphysical being 
 with the idea of the religious God, i.e., the conditions of the 
 understanding with the conditions of the heart, the emotive 
 nature ; a confusion which is the greatest hindrance to the 
 correct knowledge of religion. But, in fact, the idea of the 
 Incarnation is nothing more than the human form of a God, 
 who already in his nature, in the profoundest depths of his 
 soul, is a merciful and therefore a human God. 
 
 The form given to this truth in the doctrine of the Church 
 is, that it was not the first person of the Godhead who was 
 incarnate, but the second, who is the representative of man in 
 and before God ; the second person being however in reality, 
 as will be shown, the sole, true, first person in religion. And 
 it is only apart from this distinction of persons that the God- 
 man appears mysterious, incomprehensible, " speculative ; " 
 for, considered in connection with it, the Incarnation is a 
 necessary, nay, a self-evident consequence. The allegation, 
 therefore, that the Incarnation is a purely empirical fact, 
 which could be made known only by means of a revelation 
 in the theological sense, betrays the most crass religious 
 materialism ; for the Incarnation is a conclusion which rests 
 
 * "Deus homo factus est, ut homo Deus fieret." — Augustinus (Serm. ad 
 Pop. p. 371, c. i). In Luther, however (Th. i. p. 334), there is a passage 
 which indicates the true relation. When Moses called man "the image of 
 God, the likeness of God," he meant, says Luther, obscurely to intimate that 
 "God was to become man." Thus here the incarnation of God is clearly 
 enough represented as a consequence of the deification of man. 
 
52 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 on a very comprehensible premiss. But it is equally perverse 
 to attempt to deduce the Incarnation from purely specula- 
 tive, i.e., metaphysical, abstract grounds ; for metaphysics 
 apply only to the first person of the Godhead, who does not 
 become incarnate, who is not a dramatic person. Such a 
 deduction would at the utmost be justifiable if it were 
 meant consciously to deduce from metaphysics the negation 
 of metaphysics. 
 
 This example clearly exhibits the distinction between the 
 method of our philosophy and that of the old speculative 
 philosophy. The former does not philosophise concerning 
 the Incarnation, as a peculiar, stupendous mystery, after the 
 manner of speculation dazzled by mystical splendour ; on 
 the contrary, it destroys the illusive supposition of a peculiar 
 supernatural mystery ; it criticises the dogma and reduces 
 it to its natural elements, immanent in man, to its originat- 
 ing principle and central point — love. 
 
 The dogma presents to us two things — God and love. 
 God is love : but what does that mean ? Is G<M something 
 besides love ? a being distinct from love ? Is it as if I said 
 of an affectionate human being, he is love itself ? Certainly; 
 otherwise I must give up the name God, which expresses a 
 special personal being, a subject in distinction from the pre- 
 dicate. Thus love is made something apart. God out of 
 love sent his only-begotten Son. Here love recedes and 
 sinks into insignificance in the dark background — God. It 
 becomes merely a personal, though an essential, attribute ; 
 hence it receives both in theory and in feeKng, both objec- 
 tively and subjectively, the rank simply of a predicate, not 
 that of a subject, of the substance ; it shrinks out of obser- 
 vation as a collateral, an accident ; at one moment it pre- 
 sents itself to me as something essential, at another, it 
 vanishes agaim God appears to me in another form besides 
 that of love ; in the form of omnipotence, of a severe power 
 not bound by love ; a power in which, though in a smaller 
 degree, the devils participate. 
 
 So long as love is not exalted into a substance, into an 
 essence, so long there lurks in the background of love a 
 subject who even without love is something by himself, an 
 unloving monster, a diabolical being, whose personality, 
 separable and actually separated from love, delights in the 
 blood of heretics and unbelievers, — the phantom of religious 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION. 53 
 
 fanaticism. ISTevertheless the essential idea of the Incarna- 
 tion, though enveloped in the night of the religious conscious- 
 ness, is love. Love determined God to the renunciation of 
 his divinity.* Not because of his Godhead as such, accord- 
 ing to which he is the subject in the proposition, God is 
 love, but because of his love, of the predicate, is it that he re- 
 nounced his Godhead ; thus love is a higher power and truth 
 than deity. Love conquers God. It was love to which 
 God sacrificed his divine majesty. And what sort of love 
 was that ? another than ours ? than that to which we sacri- 
 fice life and fortune ? Was it the love of himself ? of himself 
 as God ? No ! it was love to man. But is not love to man 
 human love ? Can I love man without loving him humanly, 
 without loving him as he himself loves, if he truly loves ? 
 Would not love be otherwise a devilish love ? The devil 
 too loves man, but not for man's sake — for his own ; thus 
 he loves man out of egotism, to aggrandise himself, to extend 
 his power. But God loves man for man's sake, i.e., that he 
 may make him good, happy, blessed. Does he not then 
 love man as the true man loves his fellow ? Has love a 
 plural ? Is it not everywhere like itself ? What then is 
 the true unfalsiiied import of the Incarnation but absolute, 
 pure love, without adjunct, without a distinction between 
 divine and human love ? For though there is also a self- 
 interested love among men, still the true human love, which 
 is alone worthy of this name, is that which impels the 
 sacrifice of self to another. Who then is our Saviour and 
 Eedeemer ? God or Love ? Love; for God as God has not 
 saved us, but Love, which transcends the difference between 
 the divine and human personality. As God has renounced 
 himself out of love, so we, out of love, should renounce 
 God ; for if we do not sacrifice God to love, we sacrifice love 
 to God, and, in spite of the predicate of love, we have the 
 God — the evil being — of religious fanaticism. 
 
 * It was in this sense that the old uncompromising enthusiastic faith 
 celebrated the Incarnation. "Amor triumphat de Deo," says St. Bernard. 
 And only in the sense of a real self-renunciation, self-negation of the God- 
 head, lies the reality, the vis of the Incarnation ; although this self-nega- 
 tion is in itself merely a conception of the imagination, for, looked at in 
 broad daylight, God does not negative himself in the Incarnation, but he 
 shows himself as that which he is, as a human being. The fabrications 
 which modern rationalistic orthodoxy and pietistic rationalism have ad- 
 vanced concerning the Incarnation, in opposition to the rapturous concep- 
 tions and expressions of ancient faith, do not deserve to be mentioned, still 
 less controverted. 
 
54 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 While, however, we have laid open this nucleus of truth m 
 the Incarnation, we have at the same time exhibited the 
 dogma in its falsity ; we have reduced the apparently super- 
 natural and super-rational mystery to a simple truth mhe- 
 rent in human nature :— a truth which does not belong to 
 the Christian religion alone, but which, implicitly at least, 
 belongs more or less to every religion as such. For every 
 religion which has any claim to the name presupposes that 
 God is not indifferent to the beings who worship him, 
 that therefore what is human is not alien to him, that, 
 as an object of human veneration, he is a human God. 
 Every prayer discloses the secret of the Incarnation, every 
 prayer is in fact an incarnation of God. In prayer I involve 
 God in human distress, I make him a participator in my 
 sorrows and wants. God is not deaf to my complaints ; 
 he has compassion on me ; hence he renounces his divine 
 majesty, his exaltation above all that is iinite and human; 
 he becomes a man with man ; for if he listens to me, and 
 pities me, he is affected by my sufferings. God loves man 
 — i.e., God suffers from man. Love does not exist without 
 sympathy, sympathy does not exist without suffering in 
 common. Have I any sympathy for a being without feel- 
 ing ? No ! I feel only for that which has feeling, only for 
 that which partakes of my nature, for that in which I feel my- 
 self, whose sufferings I myself suffer. Sympathy presupposes 
 a like nature. The Incarnation, Providence, prayer, are the 
 expression of this identity of nature in God and man.* 
 
 It is true that theology, which is pre-occupied with the 
 metaphysical attributes of eternity, uncouditionedness, un- 
 changeableness, and the like abstractions, which express 
 the nature of the understanding, — theology denies the pos- 
 sibility that God should suffer, but in so doing it denies the 
 truth of religion.f For religion — the religious man in the 
 
 * "Kos scimus afRoi Deum misericordia nostri et non solum respicere 
 lacvymas nostras, sed etiam numerare stillulas, sicut scriptum in Psalmo 
 LVI. Filius Dei vere afficitur sensu miseriaruin[nostraruin."— Melancthonis 
 et aliorum (Declam. Th. iii. p. 2S6, p. 450). 
 
 t St. Bernard resorts to a charmingly sophistical play of words :— 
 " Impassibilis est Deus, sed non incompassililis, cui proprium est misereri 
 semper et parcere."— (Sup. Cant. Sermo 26.) As if compassion were not 
 suffcrmg— the suffering of love, it is true, the suffering of the heart But 
 what does suffer if not thy sympathising heart ? No love, no sufferino- 
 The material, the source of suffering, is the universal heart, the common 
 bond of all beings. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION. 55 
 
 act of devotion Relieves in a real sympathy of the divine 
 being in his sufferings and wants, believes that the will of 
 God can be determined by the fervour of prayer, i.e., by the 
 force of feeling, believes in a real, present fulfilment of his 
 desire, wrought by prayer. The truly religious man un- 
 hesitatingly assigns his own feelings to God ; God;is to him 
 a heart susceptible to all that is human. The heart can 
 betake itself only to the heart ; feeling can appeal only to 
 feeling ; it finds consolation in itself, in its own nature alone. 
 
 The notion that the fulfilment of prayer has been deter- 
 mined from eternity, that it was originally included in the 
 plan of creation, is the empty, absurd fiction of a mechanical 
 mode of thought, which is in absolute contradiction with the 
 nature of religion. "We need," says Lavater somewhere, 
 and quite correctly according to the religious sentiment, "an 
 arbitrary God." Besides, even according to this fiction, God 
 is just as much a being determined by man, as in the real, 
 present fulfilment consequent on the power of prayer ; the 
 only difference is, that the contradiction with the unchange- 
 ableness and unconditionedness of God — that which con- 
 stitutes the diificulty — is thrown back into the deceptive 
 distance of the past or of eternity. Whether God decides 
 on the fulfilment of my prayer now, on the immediate occa- 
 sion of my offering it, or whether he did decide on it long 
 ago, is fundamentally the same thing. 
 
 It is the greatest inconsequence to reject the idea of a God 
 who can be determined by prayer, that is, by the force of 
 feeling, as an unworthy anthropomorphic idea. If we once 
 believe in a being who is an object of veneration, an object 
 of prayer, an object of affection, who is providential, who 
 takes care of man,^in a Providence, which is not conceiv- 
 able without love, — in a being, therefore, who is loving, 
 ■ whose motive of action is love ; we also believe in a being, 
 who has, if not an anatomical, yet a psychical human heart. 
 The religious mind, as has been said, places everything in 
 God, excepting that alone which it despises. The Chris- 
 tians certainly gave their God no attributes which con- 
 tradicted their own moral ideas, but they gave him without 
 hesitation, and of necessity, the emotions of love, of compas- 
 sion. And the love which the religious mind places in God 
 is not an illusory, imaginary love, but a real, true love. God 
 is loved and loves again ; the divine love is only human love 
 
56 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 made objective, affirming itself. In God love is alDSorbed in 
 itself as its own ultimate truth. 
 
 It may be objected to the import here assigned to the 
 Incarnation, that the Christian Incarnation is altogether 
 peculiar, that at least it is different (which is quite true in 
 certain respects, as will hereafter be apparent) from the 
 incarnations of the heathen deities, whether Greek or 
 Indian. These latter are mere products of men or deified 
 men ; but in Christianity is given the idea of the true God; 
 here the union of the divine nature with the human is first 
 significant and "speculative." Jupiter transforms himself 
 into a bull ; the heathen incarnations are mere fancies. In 
 paganism there is no more in the nature of God than in his 
 incarnate manifestation; in Christianity, on the contrary, 
 it is God, a separate, superhuman being, who appears as 
 man. But this objection is refuted by the remark already 
 made, that even the premiss of the Christian Incarnation 
 contains the human nature. God loves man ; moreover 
 God has a Son ; God is a father ; the relations of humanity 
 are not excluded from God ; the human is not remote from 
 God, not unknown to him. Thus here also there is nothing 
 more in the nature of God than in the incarnate manifesta- 
 tion of God. In the Incarnation religion only confesses, 
 what in reflection on itself, as theology, it will not admit; 
 namely, that God is an altogether human being. The 
 Incarnation, the mystery of the "God-man," is therefore 
 no mysterious composition of contraries, no synthetic fact, 
 as it is regarded by the speculative religious philosophy, 
 which has a particular delight in contradiction ; it is an 
 analytic fact, — a human word with a human meaning. If 
 there be a contradiction here, it lies before the incarnation 
 and out of it; in the union of providence, of love, with 
 deity ; for if this love is a real love, it is not essentially 
 different from our love, — there are only our limitations to 
 be abstracted from it ; and thus the Incarnation is only the 
 strongest, deepest, most palpable, open-hearted expression 
 of this providence, this love. Love knows not how to make 
 its object happier than by rejoicing it with its personal 
 presence, by letting itself be seen. To see the invisible 
 benefactor face to face is the most ardent desire of love. 
 To see is a divine act. Happiness lies in the mere si^ht of 
 the beloved one. The glance is the certainty of love. And 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION. 57 
 
 the Incarnation has no other significance, no other effect, 
 than the indubitable certitude of the love of God to man. 
 Love remains, but the Incarnation upon the earth passes 
 away : the appearance was limited by time and place, 
 accessible to few ; but the essence, the nature which was 
 manifested, is eternal and universal. We can no longer 
 believe in the manifestation for its own sake, but only for 
 the sake of the thing manifested ; for to us there remains no 
 immediate presence but that of love. 
 
 The clearest, most irrefragable proof that man in religion 
 contemplates himself as the object of the Divine Being, as 
 the end of the divine activity, that thus in religion he has 
 relation only to his own nature, only to himself, — the 
 clearest, most irrefragable proof of this is the love of God 
 to man, the basis and central point of religion. God, for 
 the sake of man, empties himself of his Godhead, lays aside 
 his Godhead. Herein lies the elevating influence of the 
 Incarnation ; the highest, the perfect being humiliates, 
 lowers himself for the sake of man. Hence in God I learn 
 to estimate my own nature ; I have value in the sight of 
 God ; the divine significance of my nature is become evident 
 to me. How can the worth of man be more strongly 
 expressed than when God, for man's sake, becomes a man, 
 when man is the end, the object of the divine love ? The 
 love of God to man is an essential condition of the Divine 
 Being : God is a God who loves me — who loves man in 
 general. Here lies the emphasis, the fundamental feeling 
 of religion. The love of God makes me loving; the love 
 of God to man is the cause of man's love to God ; the divine 
 love causes, awakens human love. " We love God because 
 he first loved us." What, then, is it that I love in God ? 
 Love : love to man. But when I love and worship the love 
 with which God loves man, do I not love man ; is not my 
 love of God, though indirectly, love of man ? If God loves 
 man, is not man, then, the very substance of God ? That 
 which I love, is it not my inmost being ? Have I a heart 
 when I do not love ? No ! love only is the heart of man. 
 But what is love without the thing loved ? Thus what I 
 love is my heart, the substance of my being, my nature. 
 Why does man grieve, why does he lose pleasure in life 
 when he has lost the beloved object ? Why ? because with 
 the beloved object he has lost his heart, the activity of his 
 
5S THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 affections, the principle of life. Thus if God loves man, 
 man is the heart of God— the welfare of man his deepest 
 anxiety. If man, then, is the object of God, is not man, in 
 God, an object to himself ? is not the content of the divine 
 nature the human nature? If God is love, is not the 
 essential content of this love man ? Is not the love of God 
 to man — the basis and central point of religion — the love 
 of man to himself made an object, contemplated as the 
 highest objective truth, as the highest being to man ? ^ Is 
 not then the proposition, " God loves man " an orientalism 
 (religion is essentially oriental), which in plain speech 
 means, the highest is the love of man ? 
 
 The truth to which, by means of analysis, we have here 
 reduced the mystery of the Incarnation, has also been re- 
 cognised even in the religious consciousness. Tlius Luther, 
 for example, says, " He who can truly conceive such a thing 
 (namely, the incarnation of God) in his heart, should, for the 
 sake of the flesh and blood which sits at the right hand of 
 God, bear love to all flesh and blood here upon the earth, 
 and never more be able to be angry with any man. The 
 gentle manhood of Christ our God should at a glance fill all 
 hearts with joy, so that never more could an angry, unfriendly 
 thought come therein — yea, every man ought, oat of great 
 joy, to be tender to his fellow-man for the sake of that our 
 flesh and blood." This is a fact which should move us to 
 great joy and blissful hope that we are thus honoured above 
 all creatures, even above the angels, so that we can with 
 truth| boast, My own flesh and blood sits at the right hand 
 of God and reigns over all. Such honour has no creature, 
 not even an angel. This ought to be a furnace that should 
 melt us all into one heart, and should create such a fervour 
 in us men that we should heartily love each other." But 
 that which in the truth of religion is the essence of the 
 fable, the chief thing, is to the religious consciousness only 
 the moral of the fable, a collateral thing. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE SUFFERING GOD. 59 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF THE SUFFERING GOD. 
 
 An essential condition of the incarnate, or, what is the same 
 thing, the human God, namely, Christ, is the Passion. Love 
 attests itself by suffering. AH thoughts and feelings which 
 are immediately associated with Christ concentrate them- 
 selves in the idea of the Passion. God as God is the sum of 
 all human perfection ; God as Christ is the sum of all human 
 misery. The heathen philosophers celebrated activity, espe- 
 cially the spontaneous activity of the intelligence, as the 
 highest, the divine ; the Christians consecrated passivity, 
 even placing it in God. If God as actus purus, as pure 
 activity, is the God of abstract philosophy ; so, on the other 
 hand, Christ, the God of the Christians, is the passio pura, 
 pure suffering — the highest metaphysical thought, the Stre 
 supreme of the heart. For what makes more impression on 
 the heart than suffering ? especially the suffering of one 
 who considered in himself is free from suffering, exalted 
 above it ; — the suffering of the innocent, endured purely for 
 the good of others, the suffering of love, — self-sacrifice ? But 
 for the very reason that the history of the Passion is the 
 history which most deeply affects the human heart, or 
 let us rather say the heart in general — for it would 
 be a ludicrous mistake in man to attempt to conceive 
 any other heart than the human, — it follows undeniably 
 that nothing else is expressed in that history, nothing else is 
 made an object in it, but the nature of the heart, — that it 
 is not an invention of the understanding or the poetic 
 faculty, but of the heart. The heart, however, does not 
 invent in the same way as the free imagination or intelli- 
 gence ; it has a passive, receptive relation to what it pro- 
 duces; all that proceeds from it seems to it given from 
 without, takes it by violence, works with the force of irre- 
 sistible necessity. The heart overcomes, masters man ; he 
 who is once in its power is possessed as it were by his 
 demon, by his God. The heart knows no other God, no 
 
6o THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 more excellent being than itself, than a God whose name 
 may indeed be another, but whose nature, whose substance 
 is the nature of the heart. And out of the heart, out of the 
 inward impulse to do good, to live and die for man, out of 
 the divine instinct of benevolence which desires to make 
 all happy, and excludes none, not even the most abandoned 
 and abject, out of the moral duty of benevolence in^ the 
 highest sense, as having become an inward necessity, i.e., a 
 movement of the heart, — out of the human nature, there- 
 fore, as it reveals itself through the heart, has sprung what 
 is best, what is true in Christianity — its essence purified 
 from theological dogmas and contradictions. 
 
 For, according to the principles which we have already 
 developed, that which in religion is the predicate we must 
 make the subject, and that which in religion is a subject 
 we must make a predicate, thus inverting the oracles of 
 religion ; and by this means we arrive at the truth. God 
 suffers — suffering is the predicate — but for men, for others, 
 not for himself. What does that mean in plain speech ? 
 Nothing else than this : to suffer for others is divine ; he 
 who suffers for others, who lays down his life for them, acts 
 divinely, is a God to men.* 
 
 The Passion of Christ, however, represents not only moral, 
 voluntary suffering, the suffering of love, the power of sacri- 
 ficing self for the good of others ; it represents also suffering 
 as such, suffering in so far as it is an expression of passibihty 
 in general The Christian religion is so little superhuman 
 that it even sanctions human weakness. The heathen 
 philosopher, on hearing tidings of the death of his child 
 exclaims : " I knew that he was mortal." Christ, on the 
 contrary, — at least in the Bible, — sheds tears over the death 
 of Lazarus, a death which he nevertheless knew to be only 
 an apparent one. While Socrates empties the cup of poison 
 with unshaken soul, Christ exclaims, " If it be possible, 
 
 * Religion speaks by example. Example is the law of religion. What 
 Christ did is law. Christ suflfered for others ; therefore, we should do 
 likewise. " Quse necessitas fuit ut sic exinaniret se, sic humiliaret se, sic 
 abbreviaret se Dominiis niajestatis; nisi ut vos similiter faciatis ?" — Bernardus 
 (in Die nat. Domini). "We ought studiously to consider the example of 
 Christ. . . . That would move us and incite us, so that we from our hearts 
 should willingly help and serve other people, even though it might be hard, 
 
 nnrl wp mnat cnffpr rir> nppmmf nf it " T.nflioT /TVi -v-it ii tt^\ 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE SUFFERING GOD. 6i 
 
 let this cup pass from me." * Christ is in this respect the 
 self-confession of human sensibility. In opposition to the 
 heathen, and in particular the stoical principle, with its 
 rigorous energy of will and self-sustainedness, the Christian 
 involves the consciousness of his own sensitiveness and 
 susceptibility in the consciousness of God ; he finds it, if 
 only it be no sinful weakness, not denied, not condemned 
 in G-od. 
 
 To suffer is the highest command of Christianity — the 
 history of Christianity is the history of the Passion of 
 Humanity. While amongst the heathens the shout of sensual 
 pleasure mingled itself in the worship of the gods, amongst 
 the Christians, we mean of course the ancient Christians, 
 God is served with sighs and tears. t But as where sounds 
 of sensual pleasure make' a part of the cultus, it is a sensual 
 God, a God of life, who is worshipped, as indeed these shouts 
 of joy are only a symbolical definition of the nature of the 
 gods to whom this jubilation is acceptable; so also the 
 sighs of Christians are tones which proceed from the inmost 
 soul, the inmost nature of their God. The God expressed 
 by the cultus, whether this be an external, or, as with the 
 Christians, an inward spiritual worship, — not the God of 
 sophistical theology, — is the true God of man. But the 
 Christians, we mean of course the ancient Christians, be- 
 lieved that they rendered the highest honour to their God 
 by tears, the tears of repentance and yearning. Thus tears 
 are the light-reflecting drops which mirror the nature of 
 the Christian's God. But a God who has pleasure in tears, 
 expresses nothing else than the nature of the heart. It is 
 true that the theory of the Christian religion says : Christ 
 has done all for us, has redeemed us, has reconciled us with 
 God ; and from hence the inference may be drawn : Let us 
 be of a joyful mind and disposition ; what need have we 
 to trouble ourselves as to how we shall reconcile ourselves 
 with God ? we are reconciled already. But the imperfect 
 tense in which the fact of suffering is expressed makes a 
 
 * " Hserent plerique hoc loco. Ego autem non solum excusandum non 
 puto, sed etiam nusquam magis pietatem ejus majestatemque demiror. 
 Minus enim coutulerat mihi, nisi meum suscepisset affectum. Ergo pro 
 me doluit, qui pro se nihil habuit, quod doleret" — Ambrosius {Exposit. in 
 Lucse Ev. 1. X. c. 22). 
 
 t ' ' Quando enim illi (Deo) appropinquare auderemus in sua impassi- 
 bilitate manenti ? " — Bernardus (Tract, de xii. Grad. HumU. et Superb.). 
 
62 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 deeper, a more enduring impression, than the perfect tense 
 ■which expresses the fact of redemption. The redemption 
 is only the result of the suffering ; the suffering is the cause 
 of the redemption. Hence the suffering takes deeper root 
 in the feelings; the suffering makes itself an object of 
 imitation ;— not so the redemption. If God himself suffered 
 for my sake, how can I be joyful, how can I allow myself 
 any gladness, at least on this corrupt earth, which was the 
 theatre of his suffering?* Ought I to fare better than 
 God ? Ought I not, then, to make his sufferings my own ? 
 Is not what God my Lord does my model ? Or shaU I 
 share only the gain and not the cost also ? Do I know 
 merely that he has redeemed me ? Do I not also know the 
 history of his suffering? Should it be an object of cold 
 remembrance to me, or even an object of rejoicing, because 
 it has purchased my salvation ? Who can think so — who 
 can wish to be exempt from the sufferings of his God ? 
 
 The Christian religion is the religion of suffering.f The 
 images of the crucified one which we still meet with in aU 
 churches, represent not the Saviour, but only the crucified, 
 the suffering Christ. Even the self-crucifixions among the 
 Christians are, psychologically, a deep-rooted consequence of 
 their religious views. How should not he who has always 
 the image of the crucified one in his mind, at length con- 
 tract the desire to crucify either himself or another ? At 
 least we have as good a warrant for this conclusion as 
 Augustine and other fathers of the Church for their reproach 
 against the heathen religion, that the licentious religious 
 images of the heathens provoked and authorised licen- 
 tiousness. 
 
 God suffers, means in truth nothing else than : God is a 
 heart. The heart is the source, the centre of all suffering. 
 A being without suffering is a being without a heart. The 
 mystery of the suffering God is therefore the mystery of 
 feeling, sensibility. A suffering God is a feeling, sensitive 
 God.J But the proposition : God is a feeling Being, is only 
 
 * "Deus meus pendet in patibulo et ego voluptati operam dabo?"— 
 (Form. Hon. Vitse. Among the spurious writings of St. Bernard.) "Me- 
 moria cruciflxi crucifigat in te carnem tuam."— Job. Gerbard (Medit Sacrse, 
 M. 37). 
 
 t " It is better to suffer evil tban to do good." — Lutber (Tb. iv. s. 15). 
 
 J " Pati voluit, ut compati disceret, miser fieri, ut misereri disceret." — 
 Bernbard (de Grad.). " Miserere nostri, quoniam carnis imbecillitatem, tu 
 pse earn passus, expertus es." — Clemens Alex. Paedag. 1, i. c. S. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE SUFFERING GOD. 63 
 
 the religious periphrase of the proposition : feeling is abso- 
 lute, divine in its nature. 
 
 Man has the consciousness not only of a spring of ac- 
 tivity, but also of a spring of suffering in himself. I feel ; 
 and I feel feeling (not merely will and thought, which are 
 only too often in opposition to me and my feelings), as 
 belonging to my essential being, and, though the source of 
 all sufferings and sorrows, as a glorious, divine power and 
 perfection. What would man be without feeling? It is 
 the musical power in man. But what would man be with- 
 out music ? Just as man has a musical faculty and feels 
 an inward necessity to breathe out his feelings in song ; so, 
 by a like necessity, he in religious sighs and tears streams 
 forth the nature of feeling as an objective, divine nature. 
 
 Eeligion is human nature reflected, mirrored in itself. 
 That which exists has necessarily a pleasure, a joy in itself, 
 loves itself, and loves itself justly ; to blame it because it 
 loves itself is to reproach it because it exists. To exist is 
 to assert oneself, to affirm oneself, to love oneself ; he to 
 whom life is a burthen rids himself of it. Where, there- 
 fore, feeling is not depreciated and repressed, as with the 
 Stoics, where existence is awarded to it, there also is reli- 
 gious power and significance already conceded to it, there 
 also is it already exalted to that stage in which it can 
 mirror and reflect itself, in which it can project its own 
 image as God. God is the mirror of man. 
 
 That which has essential value for man, which he esteems 
 the perfect, the excellent, in which he has true delight, — 
 that alone is God to him. If feeling seems to thee a glorious 
 attribute, it is then, per se, a divine attribute to thee. There- 
 fore, the feeling, sensitive man believes only in a feeling, 
 sensitive God, i.e., he believes only in the truth of his own 
 existence and nature, for he can believe in nothing else than 
 that which is involved in his own nature. His faith is the 
 consciousness of that which is holy to him ; but that alone 
 is holy to man which lies deepest within him, which is 
 most peculiarly his own, the basis, the essence of his indi- 
 viduality. To the feeling man a God without feeling is an 
 empty, abstract, negative God, i.e., nothing ; because that 
 is wanting to him which is precious and sacred to man. 
 God|is for man the commonplace book where he registers 
 his highest feelings and thoughts, the genealogical tree on 
 
64 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 which are entered the names that are dearest and most 
 sacred to him. 
 
 It is a sign of an undiscriminating good-nature, a woman- 
 ish instinct, to gather together and then to preserve tena- 
 ciously all that we have gathered, not to trust anything to 
 the waves of forgetfulness, to the chance of memory, in short 
 not to trust ourselves and learn to know what really has 
 value for us. The freethinker is liable to the danger of an 
 unregulated, dissolute life. The religious man who binds 
 together all things in one, does not lose himself in sensu- 
 ality ; but for that reason he is exjDosed to the danger of 
 illiberality, of spiritual selfishness and greed. Therefore, 
 to the religious man at least, the irreligious or un-religious 
 man appears lawless, arbitrary, haughty, frivolous ; not be- 
 cause tliat which is sacred to the former is not also in itself 
 sacred to the latter, but only because that which the un- 
 religious man holds in his head merely, the religious man 
 places out of and above himself as an object, and hence 
 recognises in himself the relation of a formal subordination. 
 The religious man having a commonplace book, a nucleus 
 of aggregation, has an aim, and having an aim he has firm 
 standing-ground. Not mere will as such, not vague know- 
 ledge — only activity with a purpose, which is the union of 
 theoretic and practical activity, gives man a moral basis and 
 support, i.e., character. Every man, therefore, must place 
 before himself a God, i.e., an aim, a purpose. The aim is 
 the conscious, voluntary, essential impulse of life, the glance 
 of genius, the focus of self-knowledge, — the unity of the 
 material and spiritual in the individual man. He who has 
 an aim has a law over him ; he does not merely guide him- 
 self ; he is guided. He who has no aim, has no home, no 
 sanctuary ; aimlessness is the greatest unhappiness. Even 
 he who has only common aims gets on better, though he 
 may not be better, than he who has no aim. An aim sets 
 limits ; but limits are the mentors of virtue. He who has 
 an aim, an aim which is in itself true and essential, has, 
 CO ipso, a religion, if not in the narrow sense of common 
 pietism, yet — and this is the only point to be considered — 
 in the sense of reason, in the sense of the universal, the only 
 true love. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY. 65 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 THE MYSTERY OP THE TRINITY AND THE MOTHER OF GOD. 
 
 If a God without feeling, without a capability of suffering, 
 will not suffice to man as a feeling, suffering being, neither 
 will a God with feeling only, a God without intelligence and 
 will. Only a being who comprises in himself the whole 
 man can satisfy the whole man. Man's consciousness of him- 
 self in his totality is the consciousness of the Trinity. The 
 Trinity knits together the qualities or powers which were 
 before regarded separately into unity, and thereby reduces 
 the universal being of the understanding, i.e., God as God, 
 to a special being, a special faculty. 
 
 That which theology designates as the image, the simili- 
 tude of the Trinity, we must take as the thing itself, the 
 essence, the archetype, the original ; by this means we shall 
 solve the enigma. The so-called images by which it has been 
 sought to illustrate the Trinity, and make it comprehensible, 
 are principally : mind, understanding, memory, will, love — 
 mens, infdlectus, memoria, voluntas, amor or caritas. 
 
 God thinks, God loves ; and, moreover, he thinks, he loves 
 himself ; the object thought, known, loved, is God himself. 
 The objectivity of self-consciousness is the first thing we 
 meet with in the Trinity. Self-consciousness necessarily 
 urges itself upon man as something absolute. Existence is 
 for him one with self-consciousness; existence with self- 
 consciousness is for him existence simply. If I do not know 
 that I exist, it is all one whether I exist or not. Self-con- 
 sciousness is for man — is, in fact, in itself — absolute. A 
 God who knows not his own existence, a God without con- 
 sciousness, is no God. Man cannot conceive himself as 
 without consciousness; hence he cannot conceive God as 
 without it. The divine self-consciousness is nothing else 
 than the consciousness of consciousness as an absolute or 
 divine essence. 
 
 E 
 
66 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 But this explanation is by no means exhaustive. _ On 
 the contrary, we should be proceeding very arbitrarily if we 
 sought to reduce and limit the mystery of the Trinity to 
 the proposition just laid down. Consciousness, understand- 
 ing, will, love, in the sense of abstract essences or qualities, 
 belong only to abstract philosophy. But religion is man's 
 consciousness of himself in his concrete or living totality, 
 in which the identity of self-consciousness exists only as 
 the pregnant, complete unity of / and thou. 
 
 Eelio-ion, at least the Christian, is abstraction from the 
 world ; it is essentially inward. The religious man leads a 
 life withdrawn from the world, hidden in God, still, void of 
 worldly joy. He separates himself from the world, not only 
 in the ordinary sense, according to which the renunciation 
 of the world belongs to every true, earnest man, but also in 
 that wider sense which science gives to the word, when 
 it calls itself world-wisdom (welt-iaeisheit) ; but he thus 
 separates himself only because God is a being separate 
 from the world, an extra and supramundaiie being, — i.e., 
 abstractly and philosophically expressed, the non-existence 
 of the world. God, as an extramundane being, is however 
 nothing else than the nature of man withdrawn from the 
 world and concentrated in itself, freed from all worldly ties 
 and entanglements, transporting itself above the world, and 
 positing itself in this condition as a real objective being; 
 or, nothing else than the consciousness of the power to 
 abstract oneself from all that is external, and to live for 
 and with oneself alone, under the form which this power 
 takes in religion, namely, that of a being distinct, apart 
 from man.* God as God, as a simple being, is the being 
 absolutely alone, solitary — absolute solitude and self-suffi- 
 cingness ; for that only can be solitary which is self- 
 sufficing. To be able to be solitary is a sign of character 
 and thinking power. Solitude is the want of the thinker, 
 
 * "Dei essentia est extra omnes creaturas, sicut ab a;terno fuit Deus in 
 se ipso ; ab omnibus ergo creaturis amorem tuum abstrahas."— John Ger- 
 hard (Medit. Sacrse, M. 31). " If thou wouldst have the Creator, thou 
 must do without the creature. The less of the creature, the more of God. 
 
 Therefore, abjure all creatures, with all their consolations " J Tauler 
 
 (Postilla. Hamburg, 1621, p. 312). " If a man cannot say in his heart 
 with truth : God and I are alone in the world— there is nothing else —he 
 has no peace in himself."— G. Arnold (Von Verschmahung der "wSt. Wahre 
 Abbild der Ersten Christen, L. 4, c. 2, § 7). 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY. 67 
 
 society the want of the heart. We can think alone, but we 
 can love only with another. In love we are dependent, for 
 it is the need of another being ; we are independent only 
 in the solitary act of thought. Solitude is self-sufficingness. 
 
 But from a solitary God the essential need of duality, of 
 love, of community, of the real, completed self-consciousness, 
 of the alter ego, is excluded. This want is therefore satisfied 
 by religion thus : in the still solitude of the Divine Being is 
 placed another, a second, different from God as to personality, 
 but identical with him in essence, — God the Son, in distinc- 
 tion from God the Father. God the Father is /, God the 
 Son Thoic. The /is understanding, the Thoic love. But love 
 with understanding and understanding with love is mind, 
 and mind is the totality of man as such — the total man. 
 
 Participated life is alone true, self-satisfying, divine life : 
 — this simple thought, this truth, natural, immanent in 
 man, is the secret, the supernatural mystery of the Trinity. 
 But religion expresses this truth, as it does every other, 
 in an indirect manner, i.e., inversely, for it here makes a 
 general truth into a particular one, the true subject into a 
 predicate, when it says : God is a participated life, a life of 
 love and friendship. The third Person in the Trinity 
 expresses nothing further than the love of the two divine 
 Persons towards each other ; it is the unity of the Son and 
 the Father, the idea of community, strangely enough re- 
 garded in its turn as a special personal being. 
 
 The Holy Spirit owes its personal existence only to a 
 name, a word. The earliest Fathers of the Church are well 
 known to have identified the Spirit with the Son. Even 
 later, its dogmatic personality wants consistency. He is 
 the love with which God loves himself and man, and, on 
 the other hand, he is the love with which man loves God 
 and men. Thus he is the identity of God and man, made 
 objective according to the usual mode of thought in religion, 
 namely, as in itself a distinct being. But for us this unity 
 or identity is already involved in the idea of the Father, 
 and yet more in that of the Son. Hence we need not make 
 the Holy Spirit a separate object of our analysis. Only 
 this one remark further. In so far as the Holy Spirit 
 represents the subjective phase, he is properly the repre- 
 sentation of the religious sentiment to itself, the represen- 
 tation of religious emotion, of religious enthusiasm, or the 
 
68 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 personification, tlie rendering objective of religion in reli- 
 gion. The Holy Spirit is therefore the sighing creature, the 
 yearning of the creature after God. 
 
 But that there are in fact only two Persons in the Trinity, 
 the third representing, as has been said, only love, is involved 
 in this, that to the strict idea of love two suffice._ With two 
 we have the principle of multiplicity and all its essential 
 results. Two is the principle of multiplicity, and can there- 
 fore stand as its complete substitute. If several Persons 
 were posited, the force of love would only be weakened — it 
 would be dispersed. But love and the heart are identical ; 
 the heart is no special power ; it is the man who loves, and 
 in so far as he loves. The second Person is therefore the 
 self-assertion of the human heart as the principle of duality, 
 of participated life, — it is warmth ; the Father is light, 
 although light was chiefly a predicate of the Son, because 
 in him the Godhead first became clear, comprehensible. 
 But notwithstanding this, light as a superterrestrial ele- 
 ment may be ascribed to the Father, the representative of 
 the Godhead as such, the cold being of the intelligence ; 
 and warmth, as a terrestrial element, to the Son. God as the 
 Son first gives warmth to man ; here God, from an object of 
 the intellectual eye, of the indifferent sense of light, becomes 
 an object of feeling, of affection, of enthusiasm, of rapture ; 
 but only because the Son is himself nothing else than the 
 glow of love, enthusiasm.* God as the Son is the primi- 
 tive incarnation, the primitive self-renunciation of God, the 
 negation of God in God ; for as the Son he is a finite being, 
 because he exists ab alio, he has a source, whereas the Father 
 has no source, he exists a se. Thus in the second Person the 
 essential attribute of the Godhead, the attribute of self- 
 existence, is given up. But God the Father himself begets 
 the Son ; thus he renounces his rigorous, exclusive divinity ; 
 he humiliates, lowers himself, evolves within himself the 
 principle of finiteness, of dependent existence ; in the Son 
 he becomes man, not indeed, in the first instance, as to the 
 outward form, but as to the inward nature. And for this 
 reason it is as the Son that God first becomes the object of 
 man, the object of feeling, of the heart. 
 
 * " Exigit ergo Deus timeri ut Dominus, honorari ut pater, ut sponsus 
 amari. Quid in his pixstat, quid eminet ?— Amor. " Beruardus (Sup 
 Cant. Scrm. 83). ^ 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY. 69 
 
 The heart comprehends only what springs from the heart. 
 From the character of the subjective disposition and impres- 
 sions the conclusion is infallible as to the character of the 
 object. The pure, free understanding deniesthe Son, — not 
 so the understanding determined by feeling, overshadowed 
 by the heart ; on the contrary, it finds in the Son the depths 
 of the Godhead, because in him it finds feeling, which in and 
 by itself is something dark, obscure, and therefore appears 
 to man a mystery. The Son lays hold on the heart, because 
 the true Father of the Divine Son is the human heart,* and 
 the Son himself nothing else than the divine heart, i.e., the 
 human heart become objective to itself as a Divine Being. 
 
 A God who has not in himself the quality of finiteness, 
 the principle of concrete existence, the essence of the feel- 
 ing of dependence, is no God for a finite, concrete being. 
 The religious man cannot love a God who has not the 
 essence of love in himself, neither can man, or, in general, 
 any finite being, be an object to a God who has not in him- 
 self the ground, the principle of finiteness. To such a God 
 there is wanting the sense, the understanding, the sympathy 
 for finiteness. How can God be the Father of men, how 
 can he love other beings subordinate to himself, if he has 
 not in himself a subordinate being, a Son, if he does not 
 know what love is, so to speak, from his own experience, 
 in relation to himself ? The single man takes far less interest 
 in the family sorrows of another than he who himself has 
 family ties. Thus God the Father loves men only in the 
 Son and for the sake of the Son. The love to man is derived 
 from the love to the Son. 
 
 The Father and Son in the Trinity are therefore father 
 and son not in a figurative sense, but in a strictly literal 
 sense. The Father is a real father in relation to the Son, 
 the Son is a real son in relation to the Father, or to God as 
 the Father. The essential personal distinction between 
 them consists only in this, that the one begets, the other is 
 begotten. If this natural empirical condition is taken away, 
 their personal existence and reality are annihilated. The 
 Christians — we mean of course the Christians of former 
 days, who would with difficulty recognise the worldly, 
 
 * Just as the feminine; spirit of Catholicism — in distinction from Pro- 
 testantism, whose principle is the masculine God, the masculine spirit — is 
 the Mother of God. 
 
^o THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 frivolous, pagan Christians of the modern world as their 
 brethren in Christ— substituted for the natural love and 
 unity immanent in man a purely religious love and unity ; 
 they rejected the real life of the family, the intimate bond 
 of love which is naturally moral, as an undivine, unheavenly, 
 i.e., in truth, a worthless thing. But in compensation they 
 had a Father and Son in God, who embraced each other 
 with heartfelt love, with that intense love which natural 
 relationship alone inspires. On this account the mystery 
 of the Trinity was to the ancient Christians an object of 
 unbounded wonder, enthusiasm, and rapture, because here 
 the satisfaction of those profoundest human wants which 
 in reality, in life, they denied, became to them an object of 
 contemplation in God* 
 
 It was therefore quite in order that, to complete the 
 divine family, the bond of love between Father and Son, a 
 third, and that a feminine person, was received into heaven ; 
 for the personality of the Holy Spirit is a too vague and 
 precarious, a too obviously poetic personification of the 
 mutual love of the Father and Son, to serve as the third 
 complementary being. It is true that the Virgin Mary was 
 not so placed between the Father and Son as to imply that 
 the Father had begotten the Son through her, because the 
 sexual relation was regarded by the Christians as something 
 unholy and sinful ; but it is enough that the maternal prin- 
 ciple was associated with the Father and Son. 
 
 It is, in fact, difficult to perceive why the Mother should 
 be something unholy, i.e., unworthy of God, when once God 
 is Father and Son. Though it is held that the Father is 
 not a father in the natural sense — that, on the contrary, the 
 divine generation is quite different from the natural and 
 human — still he remains a Father, and a real, not a nominal 
 or symbolical Father in relation to the Son. And the idea 
 of the Mother of God, which now appears so strange to us, 
 is therefore not really more strange or paradoxical, than the 
 idea of the Son of God, is not more in contradiction with the 
 general, abstract definition of God than the Sonship. On 
 the contrary, the Virgin Mary fits in perfectly with the 
 relations of the Trinity, since she conceives without man the 
 
 * " Dum Patris et Filii proprictates communionemque delectabilem 
 intueor, nihil delectabilius in illis invenio, quam mutuum amoris affectum." 
 — Anselmus (in Kixner's Gescli. d. Phil. II. B. Anli. p. iS). 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY. yi 
 
 Son whom the Father begets without woman ; * so that 
 thus the Holy Virgin is a necessary, inherently requisite 
 antithesis to the Father in the bosom of the Trinity. More- 
 over we have, if not in concreto and explicitly, yet in dbstracto 
 and implicitly, the feminine principle already in the Son. 
 The Son is the mild, gentle, forgiving, conciliating being — 
 the womanly sentiment of God. God, as the Father, is the 
 generator, the active, the principle of masculine spontaneity ; 
 but the Son is begotten without himself begetting, Beus 
 genitus, the passive, suffering, receptive being ; he receives 
 his existence from the Father. The Son, as a son, of course 
 not as God, is dependent on the Father, subject to his 
 authority. The Sou is thus the feminine feeling of depend- 
 ence in the Godhead ; the Son implicity urges upon us the 
 need of a real feminine being.-f- 
 
 The son — I mean the natural, human son — considered as 
 such, is an intermediate being between the masculine nature 
 of the father and the feminine nature of the mother ; he is, 
 as it were, still half a man, half a woman, inasmuch as he 
 has not the full, rigorous consciousness of independence 
 which characterises the man, and feels himself drawn rather 
 to the mother than to the father. The love of the son to 
 the mother is the first love of the masculine being for the 
 feminine. The love of man to woman, the love of the youth 
 for the maiden, receives its religious — its sole truly religious 
 consecration in the love of the son to the mother ; the son's 
 love for his mother is the first yearning of man towards 
 Avoman — his first humbling of himself before her. 
 
 K'ecessarily, therefore, the idea of the Mother of God is 
 associated with the idea of the Son of God, — the same 
 lieart that needed the one needed the other also. Where 
 the Son is, the Mother cannot be absent ; the Son is 
 the only-begotten of the Father, but the Mother is the con- 
 comitant of the Son. The Son is a substitute for the Mother 
 to the Father, but not so the Father to the Son. To the 
 
 * ' ' Natus est de Patre semper et matre semel ; de Patre sine sexu, de 
 matre sine usu. Apud patrem quippe defuit concipientis uterus ; apud 
 matrem defuit seminantis amplexua." — Augustinus (Serm. ad Pop. p. 372, 
 c. I, ed. Bened. Antw. 1701). 
 
 t In Jewish mysticism, God, according to one school, is a masculine, the 
 Holy Spirit a feminine principle, out of whose intermixture arose the Son, 
 and"with him the world. Gfrorer, Jahrb. d. H. i. Abth. pp. 332-334. The 
 Herrnhuters also called the Holy Spirit the mother of the Saviour. 
 
72 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Son the Mother is indispensable ; the heart of the Son is 
 the heart of the Mother. "Why did God become man only 
 through woman ? Could not the Almighty have appeared 
 as a man amongst men in another manner — immediately ? 
 Why did the Son betake himself to the bosom of the 
 Mother?* Por what other reason than because the Son is 
 the yearning after the Mother, because his womanly, tender 
 heart found a corresponding expression only in a feminine 
 body ? It is true that the Son, as a natural man, dwells 
 only temporarily in the shrine of this body, but the impres- 
 sions which he here receives are inextinguishable ; the 
 Mother is never out of the mind and heart of the Son. If 
 then the worship of the Son of God is no idolatry, the 
 worship of the Mother of God is no idolatry. If herein 
 we perceive the love of God to us, that he gave us his 
 only-begotten Son, i.e., that which was dearest to him, for 
 our salvation, — we can perceive this love still better when 
 we find in God the beating of a mother's heart. The highest 
 and deepest love is the mother's love. The father consoles 
 himself for tire loss of his son ; he has a stoical principle 
 within him. The mother, on the contrary, is inconsolable ; 
 she is the sorrowing element, that which cannot be indem- 
 nified — the true in love. 
 
 Where faith in the Mother of God sinks, there also sinks 
 faith in the Son of God, and in God as the Father. The 
 Father is a truth only where the Mother is a truth. Love 
 is in and by itself essentially feminine in its nature. The 
 belief in the love of God is the belief in the feminine prin- 
 ciple as divine.* Love apart from living nature is an 
 anomaly, a phantom. Behold in love the holy necessity 
 and depth of Nature ! 
 
 Protestantism has set aside the Mother of God ; but this 
 deposition of woman has been severely avenged. t The 
 arms which it has used against the Mother of°God have 
 turned against itself, against the Son of God, against the 
 whole Trinity. He who has once ofiered up the Mother of 
 
 * "For it could not have been difficult or impossible to God to brinf bis 
 Son into the world without a mother; but it was his will to use°the 
 woman for that end." — Luther (Th. ii. p. 348). 
 
 t In the Concordienbuch, Erkliir. Art. 8, and in the Apol of the Aucrs 
 burg Confession, Mary is nevertheless still called the " Blessed Yirgin wdio 
 was truly the Mother of God, and yet remained a virgin,"—" worthy of nil 
 honour." •' 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY. 
 
 73 
 
 God to the understanding, is not far from sacrificing the 
 mystery of the Son of God as an anthropomorphism. The 
 anthropomorphism is certainly veiled when the feminine 
 being is excluded, but only veiled — not removed. It is 
 true that Protestantism had no need of the heavenly bride, 
 because it received with open arms the earthly bride. But 
 for that very reason it ought to have been consequent and 
 courageous enough to give up not only the Mother, but the 
 Son and the Father. Only he who has no earthly parents 
 needs heavenly ones. The triune God is the God of Catholi- 
 cism ; he has a profound, heartfelt, necessary, truly religious 
 significance, only in antithesis to the negation of all sub- 
 stantial bonds, in antithesis to the life of the anchorite, the 
 monk, and the nun.* The triune God has a substantial 
 meaning only where there is an abstraction from the sub- 
 stance of real life. The more empty life is, the fuller, the 
 more concrete is God. The impoverishing of the real world 
 and the enriching of God is one act. Only the poor man 
 has a rich God. God springs out of the feeling of a want ; 
 what man is in need of, whether this be a definite and 
 therefore conscious, or an unconscious need, — that is God. 
 Thus the disconsolate feeling of a void, of loneliness, needed 
 a God in whom there is society, a union of beings fervently 
 loving each other. 
 
 Here we have the true explanation of the fact that the 
 Trinity has in modern times lost first its practical, aud ulti- 
 mately its theoretical significance. 
 
 * " Sit monaohus quasi Melchisedec sine patre, sine matre, sine genea- 
 loffia : neque patrem sibi vocet super terram. Imo sic existimet, quasi ipse 
 sit solus etDeus. (Specul. Monach. Pseudo-Bernard.) Melchisedec . . . 
 refertur ad exemplum, ut tanquam sine patre et sine matre sacerdos esse 
 debeat." — Ambrosius. 
 
74 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 THE MYSTEEY OF THE LOGOS AND DIVIXE IMAGE. 
 
 The essential significance of the Trinity is, however, concen- 
 trated in the idea of the second Person. The warm interest 
 of Christians in the Trinity has been, in the main, only an 
 interest in the Son of God.* The fierce contention con- 
 cerning the Homousios and Homoiousios was not an empty 
 one, although it turned upon a letter. The point in question 
 was the co-equality and divine dignity of the second Person, 
 and therefore the honour of the Christian religion itself ; for 
 its essential, characteristic object is the second Person ; and 
 that which is essentially the object of a religion is truly, 
 essentially its God. The real God of any religion is the 
 so-called Mediator, because he alone is the immediate object 
 of religion. He who, instead of applying to God, applies to 
 a saint, does so only on the assumption that the saint has 
 all power with God, that what he prays for, i.e., wishes and 
 wills, God readily performs ; that thus God is entirely in 
 the hands of the saint. Supplication is the means, under 
 the guise of humility and submission, of exercising one's 
 power and superiority over another being. That to which 
 my mind first turns is also, in truth, the first being to me. 
 I turn to the saint, not because the saint is dependent on 
 God, but because God is dependent on the saint, because 
 God is determined and ruled by the prayers, i.e., by the 
 wish or heart of the saint. The distinctions which the 
 Catholic theologians made between latreia, doulia, and 
 hypercloidia, are absurd, groundless sophisms. The God in 
 the background of the Mediator is only an abstract, inert 
 conception, the conception or idea of the Godhead in 
 general; and it is not to reconcile us with this idea, but to 
 remove it to a distance, to negative it, because it is no 
 
 * " Negas ergo Deuni, si non omnia filio, qua; Dei sunt, deferentur." 
 
 Ambrosius de Fide ad Gratianum, 1. iii. c. 7. On the same ground tlio 
 Latin Church adhered so tenaciously to the dogma that the Holy Spirit 
 proceeded not from the Father alone, as the Greek Church maintained, but 
 from the Son also. See on this subject J. G. Walcliii, Hist. Contr. Gr. et 
 Lat. de Proc. Spir. S. Jente, 175 1. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE LOGOS. 75 
 
 object for religion, that the Mediator interposes.* God 
 above the Mediator is nothing else than the cold under- 
 standing above the heart, like Fate above the Olympic gods. 
 Man, as an emotional and sensuous being, is governed and 
 made happy only by images, by sensible representations. 
 Mind presenting itself as at once type-creating, emotional, 
 and sensuous, is the imagination. The second Person in 
 Grod, who is in truth the first person in religion, is the 
 nature of the imagination made objective. The definitions 
 of the second Person are principally images or symbols ; 
 and these images do not proceed from man's incapability of 
 conceiving the object otherwise than symbolically, — which 
 is an altogether false interpretation, — but the thing cannot 
 be conceived otherwise than symbolically because the thing 
 itself is a symbol or image. The Son is, therefore, expressly 
 called the Image of God ; his essence is that he is an image 
 — the representation of God, the visible glory of the invi- 
 sible God. The Son is the satisfaction of the need for mental 
 images, the nature of the imaginative activity in man 
 made objective as an absolute, divine activity. Man makes 
 to himself an image of God, i.e., he converts the abstract 
 being of the reason, the being of the thinking power, into 
 an object of sense or imagination.-f- But he places this 
 image in God himself, because his want would not be satis- 
 fied if he did not regard this image as an objective reality, 
 if it were nothing more for him than a subjective image, 
 separate from God, — a mere figment devised by man. And 
 it is in fact no devised, no arbitrary image ; for it expresses 
 the necessity of the imagination, the necessity of affirming the 
 imagination as a divine power. The Son is the reflected splen- 
 dour of the imagination, the image dearest to the heart ; but 
 for the very reason that he is only an object of the imagina- 
 tion, he is only the nature of the imagination made objective. J 
 
 * This is expressed very significantly in the Incarnation. God renounces, 
 denies his majesty, power, and affinity, in order to become a man ; i.e., 
 man denies the God who is not himself a man, and only affirms the God who 
 affirms man. Exinanivit, says St. Bernard, majestate et potentia, non bonitate 
 et misericordia. That which cannot be renounced, cannot be denied, is thus 
 the Divine goodness and mercy, i.e., the self-affirmation of the human heart. 
 
 + It is obvious that the Image of God has also another signification, 
 namely, that the personal, visible man is God himself. But here the image 
 is considered simply as an image. 
 
 J Let the reader only consider, for example, the Transfiguration, the 
 Resurrection, and the Ascension of Christ, 
 
76 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 It is clear from tliis how blinded by prejudice dogmatic 
 speculation is, when, entirely overlooking the inward genesis 
 of the Son of God as the Image of God, it demonstrates the 
 Son as a metaphysical ens, as an object of thought, whereas 
 the Son is a declension, a falling oS from the metaphysical 
 idea of the Godhead ;— a falling off, however, which religion 
 naturally places in God himself, in order to justify it, and not 
 to feel it as a falling off. The Son is the chief and ultimate 
 principle of image-worship, for he is the image of God ; and 
 the image necessarily takes the place of the thing. The adora- 
 tion of the saint in his image is the adoration of the image 
 as the saint. Wherever the image is the essential expression, 
 the organ of religion, there also it is the essence of religion. 
 
 The Council of Nice adduced, amongst other grounds for 
 the religious use of images, the authority of Gregory of 
 Nyssa, who said that he could never look at an image 
 which represented the sacrifice of Isaac without being 
 moved to tears, because it so vividly brought before him 
 that event in sacred history. But the effect of the repre- 
 sented object is not the effect of the object as such, but the 
 effect of the representation. The holy object is simply the 
 haze of holiness in which the image veils its mysterious 
 power. The religious object is only a pretext, by means of 
 which art or imagination can exercise its dominion over 
 men unhindered. For the religious consciousness, it is 
 true, the sacredness of the image is associated, and neces- 
 sarily so, only with the sacredness of the object; but the 
 religious consciousness is not the measure of truth. Indeed, 
 the Church itself, while insisting on the distinction between 
 the image and the object of the image, and denying that the 
 worship is paid to the image, has at the same time made at 
 least an indirect admission of the truth, by itself declaring 
 the sacredness of the image.* 
 
 But the ultimate, highest principle of image-worship is 
 the worship of the Image of God in God. The Son, who is 
 the "brightness of his glory, the express image of his 
 person," is the entrancing splendour of the imagination, 
 which only manifests itself in visible images. °Both to 
 inward and outward contemplation the representation of 
 
 " Sacram imaginem Domini nostrl Jesu Christi et omnium Salvatoris 
 .Tiquo lionore cum libro sanctorum evangeliorum adorari decernlmus . 
 Diguum est euim ut . . . propter honorcm qui ad principia refertur' 
 etiam derivative imagines honorentur ot adorentur."— Gener. Const Cone' 
 viii. Art. lo, Can. ^. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE LOGOS. yj 
 
 Christ, the Image of God, was the image of images. The 
 images of the saints are only optical multiplications of one 
 and the same image. The speculative deduction of the 
 Image of God is therefore nothing more than an uncon- 
 scious deduction and establishing of image-worship : for 
 the sanction of the principle is also the sanction of its 
 necessary consequences ; the sanction of the archetype is 
 the sanction of its semblance. If God has an image of 
 himself, why should not I have an image of God ? If God 
 loves his Image as himself, why should not I also love the 
 Image of God as I love God himself ? If the Image of 
 God is God himself, why should not the image of the saint 
 be the saint himself? If it is no superstition to believe 
 that the image which God makes of himself is no image, 
 no mere conception, but a substance, a person, why should 
 it be a superstition to believe that the image of the saint is 
 the sensitive substance of the saint ? The Image of God 
 weeps and bleeds ; why then should not the image of a 
 saint also weep and bleed ? Does the distinction lie in the 
 fact that the image of the saint is a product of the hands ? 
 Why, the hands did not make this image, but the mind 
 which animated the hands, the imagination ; and if God 
 makes an image of himself, that also is only a product of the 
 imagination. Or does the distinction proceed from this, that 
 the Image of God is produced by God himself, whereas the 
 image of the saint is made by another ? Why, the image of 
 the saint is also a product of the saint himself : for he appears 
 to the artist ; the artist only represents him as he appears. 
 
 Connected with the nature of the image is another definition 
 of the second Person, namely, that he is the Word of God. 
 
 A word is an abstract image, the imaginary thing, or, in 
 so far as everything is ultimately an object of the thinking 
 power, it is the imagined thought : hence men, when they 
 know the word, the name for a thing, fancy that they know 
 the thing also. Words are a result of the imagination. 
 Sleepers who dream vividly and invalids who are deli- 
 rious speak. The power of speech is a poetic talent. 
 Brutes do not speak because they have no poetic faculty. 
 Thought expresses itself only by images ; the power by 
 which thought expresses itself is the imagination ; the 
 imagination expressing itself is speech. He who speaks, 
 lays under a spell, fascinates those to whom he speaks; 
 but the power of words is the power of the imagination. 
 
78 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Therefore to the ancients, as children of the imagination, 
 the Word was a being— a mysterious, magically powerful 
 being. Even the Christians, and not only the vulgar among 
 them, but also the learned, the Fathers of the Church, 
 attached to the mere name Christ, mysterious powers of 
 healing* And in the present day the common people still 
 believe that it is possible to bewitch men by mere words. 
 Whence comes this ascription of imaginary influences to 
 M'ords ? Simply from this, that words themselves are only 
 a result of the imagination, and hence have the effect of 
 a narcotic on man, imprison him under the power of the 
 imagination. Words possess a revolutionising force ; words 
 "overn mankind. Words are held sacred ; while the things 
 of reason and truth are decried. 
 
 The affirming or making objective of the nature of the 
 imagination is therefore directly connected with the affirm- 
 ing or making objective of the nature of speech, of the word. 
 Man has not only an instinct, an internal necessity, which 
 impels him to think, to perceive, to imagine ; he has also 
 the impulse to speak, to utter, impart his thoughts. A 
 divine impulse this — a divine power, the power of words. 
 The word is the imaged, revealed, radiating, lustrous, en- 
 lightening thought. The word is the light of the world. 
 The word guides to all truth, unfolds all mysteries, reveals 
 the unseen, makes present the past and the future, defines 
 the infinite, perpetuates the transient. Men pass away, the 
 word remains ; the word is life and truth. All power is 
 given to the word : the word makes the blind see and the 
 lame walk, heals the sick, and brings the dead to life; — 
 the word works miracles, and the only rational miracles. 
 The word is the gospel, the paraclete of mankind. To con- 
 vince thyself of the divine nature of speech, imagine thyself 
 alone and forsaken, yet acquainted with language; and 
 imagine thyself further hearing for the first time the word 
 of a human being : would not this word seem to thee an- 
 gelic ? would it not sound like the voice of God himself, 
 like heavenly music ? Words are not really less rich, less 
 pregnant than music, though music seems to say more, and 
 appears deeper and richer than words, for this reason simply, 
 that it is invested with that prepossession, that illusion. 
 
 * " Tanta certe vis nomini Jesu inest contra dsemones, ut nonnunquara 
 etiam a lualis nommatum sit efficax." — Origenes adv. Celsum, 1. i. • see also 
 1. iii. ' ' ' 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE LOGOS. 79 
 
 The word has power to redeem, to reconcile, to bless, to 
 make free. The sins which we confess are forgiven us by 
 virtue of the divine power of the word. The dying man 
 who gives forth in speech his long-concealed sins departs 
 reconciled. The forgiveness of sins lies in the confession 
 of sins. The sorrows which we confide to our friend are 
 already half healed. Whenever we speak of a subject, the 
 passions which it has excited in us are allayed ; we see more 
 clearly ; thfe object of anger, of vexation, of sorrow, appears 
 to us in a light in which we perceive the unworthiness of 
 those passions. If we are in darkness and doubt on any 
 matter, we need only speak of it ; — often in the very moment 
 in which we open our lips to consult a friend, the doubts and 
 difficulties disappear. The word makes man free. He who 
 cannot express himself is a slave. Hence, excessive pas- 
 sion, excessive joy, excessive grief, are speechless. To speak 
 is an act of freedom ; the word is freedom. Justly therefore 
 is language held to be the root of culture ; where language 
 is cultivated,man is cultivated. The barbarism of the Middle 
 Ages disappeared before the revival of language. 
 
 As we can conceive nothing else as a Divine Being than 
 the Eational which we think, the Good which we love, the 
 Beautiful which we perceive ; so we know no higher spiri- 
 tually operative power and expression of power than the 
 power of the Word. * God is the sum of all reality. All 
 that man feels or knows as a reality he must place in God 
 or regard as God. Eeligion must therefore be conscious of 
 the power of the word as a divine power. The Word of God 
 is the divinity of the word, as it becomes an object to man 
 within the sphere of religion, — the true nature of the human 
 word. The Word of God is supposed to be distinguished 
 from the human word in that it is no transient breath, but 
 an imparted being. But does not the word of man also con- 
 tain the being of man, his imparted self, — at least when it 
 is a true word ? Thus religion takes the appearance of the 
 human word for its essence ; hence it necessarily conceives 
 the true nature of the Word to be a special being, distinct 
 from the human word. 
 
 * "God reveals himself to us, as the Speaker, who has, in himself, an 
 eternal uncreated Word, whereby he created the world and all things, with 
 slight labour, namely, with speech, so that to God it is not more difficult to 
 create than it is to us to name."— Luther, Th. i. p. 302. 
 
8o THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 THE MYSTEEY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PEINCIPLE IN GOD. 
 
 The second Person, as God revealing, manifesting, declaring 
 himself (^Beus se elicit), is the world-creating principle in 
 God. But this means nothing else than that the second 
 Person is intermediate between the noumenal nature of 
 God and the phenomenal nature of the world, that he is the 
 divine principle of the finite, of that which is distinguished 
 from God. The second Person as begotten, as not d se, not 
 existing of himself, has the fundamental condition of the 
 finite in himself.* But at the same time, he is not yet a 
 real finite Being, posited out of God ; on the contrary, he is 
 still identical with God, — as identical as the son is with 
 the father, the son being indeed another person, but still 
 of like nature with the father. The second Person, there- 
 fore, does not represent to us the pure idea of the Godhead, 
 but neither does he represent the pure idea of humanity, 
 or of reality in general : he is an intermediate Being be- 
 tween the two opposites. The opposition of the noumenal or 
 invisible divine nature and the phenomenal or visible nature 
 of the world, is, however, nothing else than the opposition 
 between the nature of abstraction and the nature of per- 
 ception ; but that which connects abstraction with percep- 
 tion is the imagination : consequently, the transition from 
 God to the world by means of the second Person, is only 
 the form in which religion makes objective the transition 
 from abstraction to perception by means of the imagination. 
 It is the imagination alone by which man neutralises the 
 opposition between God and the world. All reUgious cos- 
 mogonies are products of the imagination. Every being, 
 intermediate between God and the world, let it be defined 
 
 * " Hylavius ... Si quis innascibilem et sine initio dicat filium, quasi 
 duo sine principio et duo innascibilia, et duo innata dicens, duos faciat 
 Deos, anathema sit. Caput autem quod est principium Christi, Dens. . . . 
 Filium innascibilem coniiteri impiissimum est." — Petrus Lomb. Sent, i i. 
 dist. 31, u. 4. 
 
MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE. 8 1 
 
 how it may, is a being of the imagination. The psychological 
 truth and necessity which lies at the foundation of all these 
 theogonies and cosmogonies is the truth and necessity of 
 the imagination as a middle term between the abstract and 
 concrete. And the task of philosophy in investigating this 
 subject is to comprehend the relation of the imagination to 
 the reason, — the genesis of the image by means of which an 
 object of thought becomes an object of sense, of feeling. 
 
 But the nature of the imagination is the complete, ex- 
 haustive truth of the cosmogonic principle, only where the 
 antithesis of God and the world expresses nothing but the 
 indefinite antithesis of the noumenal, invisible, incompre- 
 hensible being, God, and the visible, tangible existence of 
 the world. If, on the other hand, the cosmogonic being is 
 conceived and expressed abstractly, as is the case in religious 
 speculation, we have also to recognise a more abstract psy- 
 chological truth as its foundation. 
 
 The world is not God ; it is other than God, the opposite 
 of God, or at least that which is different from God. But 
 that which is different from God cannot have come im- 
 mediately from God, but only from a distinction of God in 
 God. The second Person is God distinguishing himself 
 from himself in himself, setting himself opposite to himself, 
 hence being an object to himself. The self-distinguishing 
 of God from himself is the ground of that which is different 
 from himself, and thus self -consciousness is the origin of the 
 world. God first thinks the world in thinking himself : to 
 think oneself is to beget oneself, to think the world is to 
 create the world. Begetting precedes creating. The idea 
 of the production of the world, of another being who is 
 not God, is attained through the idea of the production of 
 another being who is like God. 
 
 This cosmogonical process is nothing else than the mystic 
 paraphrase of a psychological process, nothing else than the 
 unity of consciousness and self-consciousness made objec- 
 tive. God thinks himself : — thus he is self-conscious. God 
 is self-consciousness posited as an object, as a being ; but 
 inasmuch as he knows himself, thinks himself, he also 
 thinks another than himself ; for to know oneself is to 
 distinguish oneself from another, whether this be a possible, 
 merely conceptional, or a real being. Thus the world — at 
 least the possibility, the idea of the world— is posited with 
 
82 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 consciousness, or rather conveyed in it. The Son, i.e., God 
 thought by himself, objective to himself, the original reflec- 
 tion of God, the other God, is the principle of creation The 
 truth which lies at the foundation of this is the nature ot man : 
 the identity of his self-consciousness with his consciousness 
 of another who is identical with himself, and of another 
 who is not identical with himself. And the second, the 
 other who is of like nature, is necessarily the middle term 
 between the first and third. The idea of another in general, 
 of one who is essentially different from me, arises to me first 
 through the idea of one who is essentially like me. 
 
 Consciousness of the world is the consciousness of my 
 limitation : if I knew nothing of a world, I should^ know 
 nothing of limits ; but the consciousness of my limitation 
 stands°in contradiction with the impulse of my egoism 
 towards unlimitedness. Thus from egoism conceived as 
 absolute (God is the absolute Self) I cannot pass imme- 
 diately to its opposite; I must introduce, prelude, mode- 
 rate this contradiction by the consciousness of a being w^ho 
 is indeed another, and in so far gives me the perception 
 of my limitation, but in such a way as at the same time 
 to affirm my own nature, make my nature objective to me. 
 The consciousness of the world is a humiliating conscious- 
 ness; the creation was an " act of humility;" but the first 
 stone against which the pride of egoism stumbles is the 
 thou, the alter ego. The ego first steels its glance in the eye 
 of a thou before it endures the contemplation of a being 
 which does not reflect its own image. My fellow-man is 
 the bond between me and the world. I am, and I feel 
 myself, dependent on the world, because I first feel myself 
 dependent on other men. If I did not need man, I should 
 not need the world. I reconcile myself with the world only 
 through my fellow-man. Without other men, the world 
 would be for me not only dead and empty, but meaningless. 
 Only through his fellow does man become clear to himself 
 and self-conscious ; but only when I am clear to myself 
 does the world become clear to me. A man existing 
 absolutely alone would lose himself without any sense of 
 his individuality in tlie ocean of Nature ; he would neither 
 comprehend himself as man nor Nature as Nature. The 
 first object of man is man. The sense of Nature, which 
 opens to us tlife consciousness of the world as a world, is a 
 
MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE. 83 
 
 later product ; for it first arises through the distinction of 
 man from himself. The natural philosophers of Greece were 
 preceded by the so-called seven Sages, whose wisdom had 
 immediate reference to human life only. 
 
 The ego, then, attains to consciousness of the world through 
 consciousness of the thou. Thus man is the God of man. That 
 he is, he has to thank Nature ; that he is man, he has to 
 thank man ; spiritually as well as physically he can achieve 
 nothing without his fellow-man. Four hands can do more 
 than two, but also four eyes can see more than two. And 
 this combined power is distinguished not only in quantity 
 but also in quality from that which is solitary. In isolation 
 human power is limited, in combination it is infinite. The 
 knowledge of a single man is limited, but reason, science, is 
 unlimited, for it is a common act of mankind ; and it is so, 
 not only because innumerable men co-operate in the con- 
 struction of science, but also in the more profound sense, 
 that the scientific genius of a particular age comprehends 
 in itself the thinking powers of the preceding age, though 
 it modifies them in accordance with its own special charac- 
 ter. Wit, acumen, imagination, feeling as distinguished 
 from sensation, reason as a subjective faculty, — all these 
 so-called powers of the soul are powers of humanity, not 
 of man as an individual ; they are products of culture, pro- 
 ducts of human society. Only where man has contact and 
 friction with his fellow-man are wit and sagacity kindled ; 
 hence there is more wit in the town than in the country, 
 more in great towns than in small ones. Only where man 
 suns and warms himself in the proximity of man arise 
 feeling and imagination. Love, which requires mutuality, 
 is the spring of poetry ; and only where man communicates 
 with man, only in speech, a social act, awakes reason. To 
 ask a question and to answer are the first acts of thought. 
 Thought originally demands two. It is not until man has 
 reached an advanced stage of -culture that he can double 
 himself, so as to play the part of another within himself. 
 To think and to speak are therefore, with all ancient and 
 sensuous nations, identical ; they think only in speaking ; 
 their thought is only conversation. The common people, 
 i.e., people in whom the power of abstraction has not been 
 developed, are still incapable of understanding what is writ- 
 ten if they do not read it audibly, if they do not pronounce 
 
84 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 what they read. In this point of view Hobbes correctly 
 enough derives the understanding of man from his ears ! 
 
 Eeduced to abstract logical categories, the creative prin- 
 ciple in God expresses nothing further than the tautolo- 
 gical proposition : the different can only proceed from a 
 principle of difference, not from a simple being. However 
 the Christian philosophers and theologians insisted on the 
 creation of the world out of nothing, they were unable 
 altogether to evade the old axiom — " Nothing comes from 
 nothing," because it expresses a law of thought. It is true 
 that they supposed no real matter as the principle of the 
 diversity Of material things, but they made the divine 
 understanding (and the Son is the wisdom, the science, the 
 understanding of the Father) — as that which comprehends 
 within itself all things as spiritioal matter — the principle of 
 real matter. The distinction between the heathen eternity 
 of matter and the Christian creation in this respect is only 
 that the heathens ascribed to the world a real, objective 
 eternity, whereas the Christians gave it an invisible, imma- 
 terial eternity. Things were before they existed positively, 
 — not, indeed, as an object of sense, but of the subjective 
 understanding. The Christians, whose principle is that of 
 absolute subjectivity, conceive all things as effected only 
 through this principle. The matter posited by their subjec- 
 tive thought, conceptional, subjective matter, is therefore to 
 them the first matter, — far more excellent than real, objective 
 matter. Nevertheless, this distinction is only a distinction 
 in the mode of existence. The world is eternal in God. 
 Or did it spring up in him as a sudden idea, a caprice ? 
 Certainly man can conceive this too ; but, in doing so, he 
 deifies nothing but his own irrationality. If, on the con- 
 trary, I abide by reason, I can only derive the world from its 
 essence, its idea, i.e., one mode of its existence from another 
 mode; in other words, I can derive the world only from 
 itself. The world has its basis in itself, as has everything in 
 the world which has a claim to the name of species. The 
 differentia specifica, the peculiar character, that by which a 
 given being is what it is, is always in the ordinary sense inex- 
 plicable, undeducible, is through itself, has its cause in itself. 
 
 The distinction between the world and God as the creator 
 of the world is therefore only a formal one. The nature of 
 God — for the divine understanding, that which comprehends 
 
MYSTERY OF THE-COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE. 85 
 
 within itself all things, is the divine nature itself ; hence 
 God, inasmuch as he thinks and knows himself, thinks and 
 knows at the same time the world and all things — the 
 nature of God is nothing else than the abstract, thought 
 nature of the world ; the nature of the world nothing else 
 than the real, concrete, perceptible nature of God. Hence 
 creation is nothing more than a formal act ; for that which, 
 before the creation, was an object of thought, of the under- 
 standing, is by creation simply made an object of sense, its 
 ideal contents continuing the same ; although it remains 
 absolutely inexplicable how a real material thing can spring 
 out of a pure thought* 
 
 So it is with plurality and difference — if we reduce the 
 world to these abstract categories — in opposition to the 
 unity and identity of the Divine nature. Eeal difference 
 can be derived only from a being which has a principle of 
 difference in itself. But I posit difference in the original 
 being, because I have originally found difference as a positive 
 reality. Wherever difference is in itself nothing, there also 
 no difference is conceived in the principle of things. I posit 
 difference as an essential category, as a truth, where I derive 
 it from the original being, and vice versa : the two proposi- 
 tions are identical. The rational expression is this : Differ- 
 ence lies as necessarily in the reason as identity. 
 
 But as difference is a positive condition of the reason, I 
 cannot deduce it without presupposing it ; I cannot explain 
 it except by itself, because it is an original, self-luminous, 
 self-attesting reality. Through what means arises the 
 world, that which is distinguished from God ? through the 
 distinguishing of God from himself in himself. God thinks 
 himself, he is an object to himself ; he distinguishes himself 
 from himself. Hence this distinction, the werld, arises 
 only from a distinction of another kind, the external dis- 
 tinction from an internal one, the static distinction from a 
 dynamic one, — from an act of distinction : thus I establish 
 difference only through itself, i.e., it is an original concept, 
 a ne plus ultra of my thought, a law, a necessity, a truth. 
 The last distinction that I can think is the distinction of a 
 being from and in itself. The distinction of one being from 
 
 * It is therefore mere self-delusion to suppose that the hypothesis of a 
 creation explains the existence of the world. 
 
86 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 another is self-evident, is already implied in their existence, 
 is a palpable truth : they are two. But I first establish 
 difference for thought when I discern it in one and the 
 same being, when I unite it with the law of identity. 
 Herein lies the ultimate truth of difference. The cosmo- 
 gonic principle in God, reduced to its last elements, is 
 nothing else than the act of thought in its simplest forms 
 made objective. If I remove difference from God, he gives 
 me no material for thought ; he ceases to be an object of 
 thought ; for difference is an essential principle of thought. 
 And if I consequently place difference in God, what else do 
 I establish, what else do I make an object, than the truth 
 and necessity of this principle of thought ? 
 
THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 87 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM, OK OF NATURE IN GOD. 
 
 Interesting material for the criticism of cosmogonic and 
 theogonic fancies is furnished in tire doctrine — revived by 
 Schelling and drawn from Jacob Bohme — of eternal Nature 
 in God. 
 
 God is pure spirit, clear self-consciousness, moral person- 
 ality ; Nature, on the contrary, is, at least partially, confused, 
 dark, desolate, immoral, or to say no more, unmoral. But 
 it is self-contradictory that the impure should proceed from 
 the pure, darkness from light. How then can we remove 
 these obvious difficulties in the way of assigning a divine 
 origin to Nature ? Only by positing this impurity, this dark- 
 ness in God, by distinguishing in God himself a principle 
 of light and a principle of darkness. In other words, we 
 can only explain the origin of darkness by renouncing 
 the idea of origin, and presupposing darkness as existing 
 from the beginning.* 
 
 But that which is dark in Nature is the irrational, the 
 material. Nature strictly, as distinguished from intelligence. 
 Hence the simple meaning of this doctrine is, that Nature, 
 Matter, cannot be explained as a result of intelligence ; on 
 the contrary, it is the basis of intelligence, the basis of 
 personality, without itself having any basis ; spirit without 
 Nature is an unreal abstraction ; consciousness develops 
 itself only out of Nature. But this materialistic doctrine 
 is veiled in a mystical yet attractive obscurity, inasmuch as 
 it is not expressed in the clear, simple language of reason, 
 but emphatically enunciated in that consecrated word of 
 the emotions — God. If the light in God springs out of the 
 
 * It is beside our purpose to criticise this crass mystical theory. We 
 merely remark here, that darkness can be explained only when it is derived 
 from light ; that the derivation of the darkness in Nature from light appears 
 an impossibility only when it is not perceived that even in darkness there 
 is a residue of light, that the darkness in Nature is not an absolute, but a 
 modified darkness, tempered by light. 
 
88 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 darkness in God, this is only because it is involved in the 
 idea of light in general, that it illuminates darkness, thus 
 presupposing darkness, not making it. If then God is once 
 subjected to a general law,— as he must necessarily be un- 
 less he be made the arena of conflict for the most senseless 
 notions, — if self-consciousness in God as well as in itself, 
 as in general, is evolved from a principle in Nature, why 
 is not this natural principle abstracted from God ? That 
 which is a law of consciousness in itself is a law for 
 the consciousness of every personal being, whether man, 
 an^el, demon, God, or whatever else thou mayest con- 
 ceive to thyself as a being. To what then, seen in their 
 true light, do the two principles in God reduce themselves ? 
 The one to Nature, at least to Nature as it exists in the 
 conception, abstracted from its reality ; the other to mind, 
 consciousness, personality. The one half, the reverse side, 
 thou dost not name God, but only the obverse side, on 
 which he presents to thee mind, consciousness : thus his 
 specific essence, that whereby he is God, is mind, intelli- 
 gence, consciousness. Why then dost thou make that 
 which is properly the subject in God as God, i.e., as mind, 
 into a mere predicate, as if God existed as God apart from 
 mind, from consciousness ? Why, but because thou art 
 enslaved by mystical religious speculation, because the 
 primary principle in thee is the imagination, thought being 
 only secondary and serving but to throw into formulae the 
 products of the imagination, — because thou feelest at ease 
 and at home only in the deceptive twilight of mysticism. 
 
 Mysticism is deuteroscopy — a fabrication of phrases 
 having a double meaning. The mystic speculates con- 
 cerning the essence of Nature or of man, but under, and 
 by means of, the supposition that he is speculating con- 
 cerning another, a personal being, distinct from both. The 
 mystic has the same objects as the plain, self-conscious 
 thinker ; but the real object is regarded by the mystic, not 
 as itself, but as an imaginary being, and hence the imagi- 
 nary object is to him the real object. Thus here, in the 
 mystical doctrine of the two principles in God, the real 
 object is pathology, the imaginary one, theology; i.e., 
 pathology is converted into theology. There would be 
 nothing to urge against this, if consciously real pathology 
 were recognised and expressed as theology; indeed, it°is 
 
THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 89 
 
 precisely our task to show that theology is nothing else 
 than an unconscious, esoteric pathology, anthropology, and 
 psychology, and that therefore real anthropology, real patho- 
 logy, and real psychology have far more claim to the name 
 of theology than has theology itself, because this is nothing 
 more than an imaginary psychology and anthropology. 
 But this doctrine or theory is supposed — and for this reason 
 it is mystical and fantastic — to be not pathology, but theo- 
 logy, in the old or ordinary sense of the word ; it is sup- 
 posed that we have here unfolded to us the life of a Being 
 distinct from us, while nevertheless it is only our own nature 
 which is unfolded, though at the same time again shut up 
 from us by the fact that this nature is represented as inher- 
 ing in another being. The mystic philosopher supposes 
 that in God, not in us human individuals, — that would be 
 far too trivial a truth, — reason first appears after the Passion 
 of ISTature ; — that not man, but God, has wrestled himself out 
 of the obscurity of confused feelings and impulses into the 
 clearness of knowledge ; that not in our subjective, limited 
 mode of conception, but in God himself, the nervous tremors 
 of darkness precede the joyful consciousness of light ; in 
 short, he supposes that his theory presents not a history of 
 human throes, but a history of the development, i.e., the 
 throes of God — for developments (or transitions) are birth- 
 struggles. But, alas ! this supposition itself belongs only to 
 the pathological element. 
 
 If, therefore, the cosmogonic process presents to us the 
 Light of the power of distinction as belonging to the divine 
 essence ; so, on the other hand, the Night or ISTature in God 
 represents to us the Pens^es confuses of Leibnitz as divine 
 powers. But the Pensies confuses — confused, obscure con- 
 ceptions and thoughts, or more correctly images — represent 
 the flesh, matter ; — a pure intelligence, separate from matter, 
 has only clear, free thoughts, no obscure, i.e., fleshly ideas, 
 no material images, exciting the imagination and setting the 
 blood in commotion, The Night in God, therefore, implies 
 nothing else than this : God is not only a spiritual, but also 
 a material, corporeal, fleshly being ; but as man is man, and 
 receives his designation, in virtue not of his fleshly nature, 
 but of his mind, so is it with God. 
 
 But the mystic philosopher expresses this only in obscure, 
 mysticaljindefinite, dissembling images. Instead of the rude. 
 
go THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 but hence all the more precise and striking expression, /«s^, 
 it substitutes the equivocal, abstract words nature and 
 ground. " As nothing is before or out of God, he must have 
 the ground of his existence in himself. This all pMloso- 
 phies say, but they speak of this ground as a mere idea, 
 without making it something real. This ground of his 
 existence which God has in himself, is not God considered 
 absolutely, i.e., in so far as he exists ; it is only the ground 
 of his existence. It is Nature— in God ; an existence 
 inseparable from him, it is true, but still distinct. Ana- 
 logically (?), this relation may be illustrated by gravitation 
 and light in Nature." But this ground is the non-intelligent 
 in God. " That which is the commencement of an intelli- 
 gence (in itself) cannot also be intelligent." " In the strict 
 sense, intelligence is born of this unintelligent principle. 
 Without this antecedent darkness there is no reality of the 
 Creator." " With abstract ideas of God as actus purissimus, 
 such as were laid down by the older philosophy, or such as 
 the modern, out of anxiety to remove God far from Nature, 
 is always reproducing, we can effect nothing. God is some- 
 thing more real than a mere moral order of the world, and 
 has quite another and a more living motive power in him- 
 self than is ascribed to him by the jejune subtilty of abstract 
 idealists. Idealism, if it has not a living realism as its 
 basis, is as empty and abstract a system as that of Leibnitz 
 or Spinoza, or as any other dogmatic system." " So long as 
 the God of modern theism remains the simple, supposed 
 purely essential, but in fact non-essential Being that all 
 modem systems make him, so long as a real duality is not 
 recognised in God, and a limiting, negativing force, opposed 
 to the expansive af&rming force, so long will the denial of 
 a personal God be scientific honesty." " All consciousness 
 is concentration, is a gathering together, a collecting of one- 
 self. This negativing force, by which a being turns back 
 upon itself, is the true force of personality, the force of 
 egoism." " How should there be a fear of God if there 
 were' no strength in him ? But that there should be some- 
 thing in God which is mere force and strength ca,nnot be 
 held astonishing if only it be not maintained that he is this 
 alone and nothing besides."* 
 
 * Schelling, Ueber das Wesen der Mensclilichen Freiheit, 429, 432, 427. 
 Denkmal Jacobi's, o. 82, 97-99. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 91 
 
 But what then is force and strength which is merely such, 
 if not corporeal force and strength ? Dost thou know any 
 power which stands at thy command, in distinction from the 
 power of kindness and reason, hesides muscular power ? If 
 thou canst effect nothing through kindness and the argu- 
 ments of reason, force is what thou must take refuge in. 
 But canst thou " effect " anything without strong arms and 
 fists ? Is there known to thee, in distinction from the 
 power of the moral order of the world, " another and more 
 living motive power " than the lever of the criminal court ? 
 Is not Nature without body also an "empty, abstract" 
 idea, a "jejune subtilty " ? Is not the mystery of Nature 
 the mystery of corporeality? Is not the system of a 
 " living realism " the system of the organised body ? Is 
 there, in general, any other force, the opposite of intelli- 
 gence, than the force of flesh and blood, — any other strength 
 of Nature than the strength of the fleshly impulses ? And 
 the strongest of the impulses of Nature, is it not the sexual 
 feeling ? Who does not remember the old proverb : " Am- 
 are et sapere vix Deo competit?" So that if we would 
 posit in God a nature, an existence opposed to the light of 
 intelligence, — can we think of a more living, a more real 
 antithesis, than that of amare and sapere,, of spirit and flesh, 
 of freedom and the sexual impulse ? 
 
 Personality, individuality, consciousness, without Nature, 
 is nothing ; or, which is the same thing, an empty, unsub- 
 stantial abstraction. But Nature, as has been shown and 
 is obvious, is nothing without corporeality. The body 
 alone is that negativing, limiting, concentrating, circum- 
 scribing force, without which no personality is conceivable. 
 Take away from thy personality its body, and thou takest 
 away that which holds it together. The body is the basis, 
 the subject of personality. Only by the body is a real per- 
 sonality distinguished from the imaginary one of a spectre. 
 What sort of abstract, vague, empty personalities should we 
 be, if we had not the property of impenetrability, — if in the 
 same place, in the same form in which we are, others might 
 stand at the same time ? Only by the exclusion of others 
 from the space it occupies does personality prove itself to 
 be real. But a body does not exist without flesh and blood. 
 Flesh and blood is life, and life alone is corporeal reality. 
 But flesh and blood is nothing without the oxygen of sexual 
 
92 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 distinction. The distinction of sex is not superficial, or 
 limited to certain parts of the body ; it is an essential one : 
 it penetrates bones and marrow. The substance of man is 
 manhood ; that of woman, womanhood. However spiritual 
 and supersensual the man may be, he remains always 
 a man ; and it is the same with the woman. Hence per- 
 sonality is nothing without distinction of sex ; personality 
 is essentially distinguished into masculine and feminine. 
 Where there is no thou, there is no /; but the distinction 
 between / and thou, the fundamental condition of all per- 
 sonality, of aU consciousness, is only real, living, ardent, 
 when felt as the distinction between man and woman. 
 The tlwii, between man and woman has quite another 
 sound than the monotonous thou between friends. 
 
 Nature in distinction from personality can signify nothing 
 else than difference of sex. A personal being apart from 
 Nature is nothing else than a being without sex, and con- 
 versely. Nature is said to be predicated of God, " in the 
 sense in which it is said of a man that he is of a strong, 
 healthy nature." But what is more feeble, what more in- 
 supportable, what more contrary to Nature, than a person 
 without sex, or a person who in character, manners, or 
 feelings denies sex ? What is virtue, the excellence of 
 man as man ? iManhood. Of man as woman ? Woman- 
 hood. But man exists only as man and woman. The 
 strength, the healthiness of man consists therefore in 
 this : that as a woman, he be truly woman ; as man, truly 
 man. Thou repudiatest " the horror of all that is real, 
 which supposes the spiritual to be polluted by contact 
 with the real." Repudiate then, before all, thy own horror 
 for the distinction of sex. If God is not polluted by Nature, 
 neither is he polluted by being associated with the idea of 
 sex. In renouncing sex, thou renouncest thy whole prin- 
 ciple. A moral God apart from Nature is without basis ; 
 but the basis of morality is the distinction of sex. Even 
 the brute is capable of self-sacrificing love in virtue of the 
 sexual distinction. All the glory of Nature, all its power, 
 all its wisdom and profundity, concentrates and individual- 
 ises itself in distinction of sex. Why then dost thou shrink 
 from naming the nature of God by its true name ? Evidently, 
 only because thou hast a general horror of things in their 
 truth and reality ; because thou lookest at all things through 
 
THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 93 
 
 the deceptive vapours of mysticism. For this very reason 
 then, because Nature in God is only a delusive, unsub- 
 stantial appearance, a fantastic ghost of Nature, — for it is 
 based, as we have said, not on flesh and blood, not on a real 
 ground, — this attempt to establish a personal God is once 
 more a failure, and I, too, conclude with the words, " The 
 denial of a personal God will be scientific honesty : " — and, 
 I add, scientific truth, so long as it is not declared and shown 
 in unequivocal terms, first d priori, on speculative grounds, 
 that form, place, corporeality, and sex do not contradict the 
 idea of the Godhead ; and secondly, d posteriori, — for the 
 reality of a personal being is sustained only on empirical 
 grounds, — what sort of form God has, where he exists, — in 
 heaven, — and lastly, of what sex he is. 
 
 Let the profound, speculative religious philosophers of 
 Germany courageously shake off the embarrassing remnant 
 of rationalism which yet clings to them, in flagrant contra- 
 diction with their true character; and let them complete 
 their system, by converting the mystical "potence" of 
 Nature in God into a really powerful, generating God. 
 
 The doctrine of Nature in God is borrowed from Jacob 
 Bohme. But in the original it has a far deeper and more 
 interesting significance than in its second modernised and 
 emasculated edition. Jacob Bohme has a profoundly reli- 
 gious mind. Eeligion is the centre of his life and thought. 
 But at the same time, the significance which has been given 
 to Nature in modern times — by the study of natural science, 
 by Spinozism, materialism, empiricism — has taken posses- 
 sion of his religious sentiment. He has opened his senses 
 to Nature, thrown a glance into her mysterious being ; but 
 it alarms him, and he cannot harmonise this terror at Nature 
 with his religious conceptions. " When I looked into the 
 great depths of this world, and at the sun and stars, also at 
 the clouds, also at the rain and snow, and considered in 
 my mind the whole creation of this world ; then I found 
 in all things evil and good, love and anger, — in unreason- 
 ing things, such as wood, stone, earth, and the elements, as 
 well as in men and beasts. . . . But because I found that 
 in all things there was good and evil, in the elements as 
 well as in the creatures, and that it goes as well in the world 
 with the godless as with the pious, also that the barbarous 
 
94 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 nations possess the best lands, and have more prosperity than 
 the godly ; I was therefore altogether melancholy and ex- 
 tremely troubled, and the Scriptures could not console me, 
 though almost all well known to me; and therewith assuredly 
 the devil was not idle, for he often thrust upon me heathenish 
 thoughts, of which I will here be silent." * But while his 
 mind^seized with fearful earnestness the dark side of Nature, 
 which did not harmonise with the religious idea of a hea- 
 venly Creator, he was on the other hand rapturously affec- 
 ted by her resplendent aspects. Jacob Bohme has a sense 
 for Nature. He preconceives, nay, he feels the joys of the 
 mineralogist, of the botanist, of the chemist — the joys of 
 " godless natural science." He is enraptured by the splen- 
 dour of jewels, the tones of metals, the hues and odours of 
 plants, the beauty and'gentleness of many animals. In another 
 place, speaking of the revelation of God in the phenomena 
 of light, the process by which " there arises in the Godhead 
 the wondrous and beautiful structure of the heavens in 
 various colours and kinds, and every spirit shows itself in its 
 form specially," he says, " I can compare it with nothing but 
 witli the noblest precious stones, such as the ruby, emerald, 
 epidote, onyx, sapphire, diamond, jasper, hyacinth, amethyst, 
 beryl, sardine, carbuncle, and the like." Elsewhere : " But 
 regarding the precious stones, such as the carbuncle, ruby, 
 emerald, epidote, onyx, and the like, which are the very 
 best, these have the very same origin — the flash of light in 
 love. For that flash is born in tenderness, and is the heart 
 in the centre of the Fountain-spirit, wherefore those stones 
 also are mild, powerful, and lovely." It is evident that 
 Jacob Bohme had no bad taste in mineralogy ; that he had 
 delight in flowers also, and consequently a faculty for 
 botany, is proved by the following passages among others: 
 — " The heavenly powers gave birth to heavenly joy-giving 
 fruits and colours, to all sorts of trees and shrubs, where- 
 upon grows the beauteous and lovely fruit of life: also 
 there spring up in these powers all sorts of flowers with 
 beauteous heavenly colours and scents. Their taste is 
 various, in each according to its quality and kind, altogether 
 holy, divine, and joy-giving." " If thou desirest to contem- 
 plate the heavenly, divine pomp and glory, as they are, and 
 to know what sort of products, pleasure, or joys there are 
 
 * Kernhafter Auszug ... J. Bcihme : Amsterdam, 1718, p. 58. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 95 
 
 above: look diligently at this world, at the varieties of 
 fruits and plants that grow upon the earth, — trees, shrubs, 
 vegetables, roots, flowers, oils, wines, corn, and everything 
 that is there, and that thy heart can search out. All this 
 is an image of the heavenly pomp." * 
 
 A despotic fiat could not sufRce as an explanation of the 
 origin of Nature to Jacob Bohme ; Nature appealed too 
 strongly to his senses, and lay too near his heart ; hence 
 he sought for a natural explanation of Nature ; but he 
 necessarily found no other ground of explanation than 
 those qualities of Nature which made the strongest im- 
 pression on him. Jacob Bohme — this is his essential 
 character — is a mystical natural philosopher, a theosophic 
 Vulcanist and Neptunist,f for according to him " all things 
 had their origin in fire and water." Nature had fascinated 
 Jacob's religious sentiments, — not in vain did he receive 
 his mystical light from the shining of tin utensils ; but the 
 religious sentiment works only witliin itself ; it has not the 
 force, not the courage, to press forward to the examination 
 of things in their reality ; it looks at all things through the 
 medium of religion, it sees all in God, i.e., in the entrancing, 
 soul-possessing splendour of the imagination, it sees all in 
 images and as an image. But Nature affected his mind in 
 an opposite manner ; hence he must place this opposition 
 in God himself, — for the supposition of two independently 
 existing, opposite, original principles would have afflicted 
 his religious sentiment; — he must distinguish in God him- 
 self a gentle, beneficent element, and a fierce consuming one. 
 Everything fiery, bitter, harsh, contracting, dark, cold, comes 
 from a divine harshness and bitterness ; everything mild, 
 lustrous, warming, tender, soft, yielding, from a mild, soft, 
 luminous quality in God. " Thus are the creatures on the 
 earth, in the water, and in the air, each creature out of its 
 own science, out of good and evil. ... As one sees before 
 one's eyes that there are good and evil creatures ; as 
 venomous beasts and serpents from the centre of the nature 
 of darkness, from the power of the fierce quality, which 
 only want to dwell in darkness, abiding in caves and hiding 
 
 * L. c. pp. 480, 338, 340, 323. 
 
 t The Philosophm teutonicus walked physically as well as mentally on 
 volcanic ground. "The town of Gorlitz is paved throughout with pure 
 basalt." — Charpentier, Mineral. Geographie der Chursachsischen Lande, 
 p. 19. 
 
96 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 themselves from the sun. By each animal's food and dwelling 
 we see whence they have sprung, for every creature needs 
 to dwell with its mother, and yearns after her, as is plain 
 to the sight." " Gold, silver, precious stones, and all bright 
 metal, has its origin in the light, which appeared before the 
 times of anger," &c. " Everything which in the substance 
 of this world is yielding, soft, and thin, is flowing, and 
 gives itself forth, and the ground and origin of it is in the 
 eternal Unity, for unity ever iiows forth from itself; for 
 in the nature of things not dense, as water and air, we can 
 understand no susceptibility or pain, they being one in 
 themselves.* In short, heaven is as rich as the earth. 
 Everything that is on this earth is in heaven,-f- all that is 
 in Nature is in God. But in the latter it is divine, heavenly; 
 in the former, earthly, visible, external, material, but yet 
 the same." " When I write of trees, shrubs and fruits, thou 
 must not understand me of earthly things, such as are in 
 this world ; for it is not my meaning that in heaven there 
 grows a dead, hard, wooden tree, or a stone of earthly 
 qualities. No : my meaning is heavenly and spiritual, but 
 yet truthful and literal ; thus, I mean no other things than 
 what I write in the letters of the alphabet ; " i.e., in heaven 
 there are the same trees and flowers, but the trees in heaven 
 are the trees which bloom and exhale in my imagination, 
 without making coarse material impressions upon me ; the 
 trees on earth are the trees which I perceive through my 
 senses. The distinction is the distinction between imagina- 
 tion and perception. " It is not my undertaking," says 
 Jacob Eohme himself, " to describe the course of all stars, 
 their place and name, or how they have yearly their con- 
 junction or opposition, or quadrate, or the like, — what they 
 do yearly and hourly, — which through long years has been 
 discovered by wise, skilful, ingenious men, by diligent con- 
 templation and observation, and deep thought and calcula- 
 tion. I have not learned and studied these things, and 
 leave scholars to treat of them, but my undertaking' is to 
 * L. c. pp. 468, 617, 61S. 
 
 + According to Swedenborg, the angels in heaven have clothes and 
 dwellings. " Their dweDings are altogether such as the dwellings or houses 
 on earth, but far more beautiful ; there are apartments, rooms, and sleeping 
 chambers therein in great number, and entrance-courts, and round about 
 gardens, flowers, meadows, and fields." (E. v. S. Auserlesene Schriften 
 I Th. Frankf. a. M. 1776, p. 190, and 96.) Thus to the mystic this world 
 IS the other fl-orld ; but for that reason the other world is this world 
 
THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 97 
 
 write accordinf? to the spirit and thought, not accordinn- to 
 sight."* 
 
 The doctrine of Nature in God aims, by naturalism, to 
 establish theism, especially the theism which regards the 
 Supreme Being as a personal being. But personal theism 
 conceives God as a personal being, separate from all material 
 things ; it excludes from him all development, because that 
 is nothing else than the self-separation of a being from 
 circumstances and conditions which do not correspond to its 
 true idea. And this does not take place in God, because in 
 him beginning, end, middle, are not to be distinguished, — 
 because he is at once what he is, is from the beginning what 
 he is to be, what he can be ; he is the pure unity of exist- 
 ence and essence, reality and idea, act and will. Deus 
 suum Esse est. Herein theism accords with the essence of 
 religion. All religions, however positive they may be, rest 
 on abstraction ; they are distinguished only in that from 
 which the abstraction is made. Even the Homeric gods, 
 with all their living strength and likeness to man, are 
 abstract forms ; they have bodies, like men, but bodies from 
 which the limitations and difficulties of the human body 
 are eliminated. The idea of a divine being is essentially 
 an abstracted, distilled idea. It is obvious that this 
 abstraction is no arbitrary one, but is determined by the 
 essential stand-point of man. As he is, as he thinks, so 
 does he make his abstraction. 
 
 The abstraction expresses a judgment, — an affirmative 
 and a negative one at the same time, praise and blame. 
 What man praises and approves, that is God to himjf what 
 he blames, condemns, is the non-divine. Eeligion is a jiodg- 
 meni. The most essential condition in religion — in the idea 
 of the divine being — is accordingly the discrimination of 
 the praiseworthy from the blameworthy, of the perfect from 
 the imperfect ; in a word, of the positive from the negative. 
 The cultus itself consists in nothing else than in the con- 
 tinual renewal of the origin of religion — a solemnising of 
 the critical discrimination between the divine and the non- 
 divine. 
 
 The Divine Being is the human being glorified by the 
 
 * L. c. p. 339, p. 69. 
 
 + " Quidquid enim unus quisque super csetera colit : hoc illi Deus est." — 
 Origines Explan. in Epist. Pauli ad Rom. c. 1. 
 
 G 
 
98 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 death of abstraction; it is the departed spirit of man In 
 religion man frees himself from the limits of life ; he here 
 lets fall what oppresses him, obstructs him, affects him 
 repulsively; God is the self-consciousness of man freed 
 from all discordant elements ; man feels himself free, happy, 
 blessed in his religion, because he only here lives the life of 
 genius, and keeps holiday. The basis of the divine idea lies 
 for him outside of that idea itself ; its truth lies in the prior 
 judgment, in the fact that all which he excludes from God 
 is previously judged by him to be non-divine, and what is 
 non-divine to be worthless, nothing. If he were to include 
 the attaining of this idea in the idea itself, it would lose its 
 most essential significance, its true value, its beatifying 
 charm. The divine being is the pure subjectivity of man, 
 freed from all else, from everything objective, having 
 relation only to itself, enjoying only itself, reverencing only 
 itself — his most subjective, his inmost self. The process of 
 discrimination, the separating of the intelligent from the 
 non-intelligent, of personality from Nature, of the perfect 
 from the imperfect, necessarily therefore takes place in the 
 subject, not in the object, and the idea of God lies not at the 
 beginning but at the end of sensible existence, of the world, 
 of Nature. " Where Nature ceases, God begins," because 
 God is the ne jjlus ultra, the last limit of abstraction. That 
 from which I can no longer abstract is God, the last thought 
 which I am capable of grasping — the last, i.e., the highest. 
 Id quo nihil majus cogitari potest. Dens est. That this Omega 
 of sensible existence becomes an Alpha also, is easily com- 
 prehensible ; but the essential point is, that he is the Omega. 
 The Alpha is primarily a consequence ; because God is the 
 last or highest, he is also the first. And this predicate — 
 the first Being, has by no means immediately a cosmogonic 
 significance, but only implies the highest rank. The creation 
 in the Mosaic religion has for its end to secure to Jehovah 
 the predicate of the highest and first, the true and exclusive 
 God in opposition to idols. 
 
 The eiiort to establish the personality of God through 
 Nature has therefore at its foundation an illegitimate, pro- 
 fane mingling of philosophy and religion, a complete absence 
 of criticism and knowledge concerning the genesis of the 
 personal God. Where personality is held the essential 
 attribute of God, where it is said — an impersonal God is no 
 
THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 99 
 
 God ; there personality is held to be in and by itself the 
 highest and most real thing, there it is presupposed that 
 everything which is not a person is dead, is nothing, that 
 only personal existence is real, absolute existence, is life 
 and truth — but Nature is impersonal, and is therefore a 
 trivial thing. The truth of personality rests only on the 
 untruth of Nature. To predicate personality of God is 
 nothing else than to declare personality as the absolute 
 essence ; but personality is only conceived in distinction, 
 in abstraction from Nature. Certainly a merely personal 
 God is an abstract God ; but so he ought to be — that is 
 involved in the idea of him ; for he is nothing else than the 
 personal nature of man positing itself out of all connection 
 with the world, making itself free from all dependence on 
 nature. In the personality of God man consecrates the 
 supernaturalness, immortality, independence, unlimitedness 
 of his own personality. 
 
 In general, the need of a personal God has its foundation 
 in this, that only in the attribute of personality does the 
 personal man meet with himself, find himself. Substance, 
 pure spirit, mere reason, does not satisfy him, is too abstract 
 for him, i.e., does not express himself, does not lead him 
 back to himself. And man is content, happy, only when 
 he is with himself, with his own nature. Hence, the more 
 personal a man is, the stronger is his need of a personal 
 God. The free, abstract thinker knows nothing higher than 
 freedom ; he does not need to attach it to a personal 
 being ; for him freedom in itself, as such, is a real positive 
 thing. A mathematical, astronomical mind, a man of pure 
 understanding, an objective man, who is not shut up in 
 himself, who feels free and happy only in the contemplation 
 of objective rational relations, in the reason which lies in 
 things in themselves — such a man will regard the substance 
 of Spinoza, or some similar idea, as his highest being, and 
 be full of antipathy towards a personal, i.e., subjective God. 
 Jacobi therefore was a classic philosopher, because (in this 
 respect, at least) he was consistent, he was at unity with 
 himself ; as was his God, so was his philosophy — personal, 
 subjective. The personal God cannot be established other- 
 wise than as he is established by Jacobi and his disciples. 
 Personality is proved only in a personal manner. 
 
 Personality may be, nay, must be, founded on a natural 
 
loo THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 basis ; but this natural basis is attained only when I cease 
 to grope in the darkness of mysticism, when I step forth 
 into the clear daylight of real Nature, and exchange the idea 
 of the personal God for the idea of personality in general. 
 But into the idea of the personal God, the positive idea of 
 whom is liberated, disembodied personality, released from 
 the limiting force of Nature, to smuggle again this very 
 Nature, is as perverse as if I were to mix Brunswick mum 
 with the nectar of the gods, in order to give the ethereal 
 beverage a solid foundation. Certainly the ingredients of 
 animal blood are not to be derived from the celestial juice 
 which nourishes the gods. But the flower of sublimation 
 arises only through the evaporation of matter ; why, then, 
 wilt thou mix with the sublimate that very matter from 
 which thou hast disengaged it ? Certainly, the impersonal 
 existence of Nature is not to be explained by the idea of 
 personality ; but where personality is a truth, or, rather, 
 the absolute truth, Nature has no positive significance, and 
 consequently no positive basis. The literal creation out of 
 nothing is here the only sufficient ground of explanation ; 
 for it simply says this : Nature is nothing ; — and this 
 precisely expresses the significance which Nature has for 
 absolute personality. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE JIYSTEEY OF PEOVIDENCE, AND CEEATION OUT OF 
 NOTHING. 
 
 Creation is the spoken word of G-od ; the creative, cosmo- 
 gonic fiat is the tacit word, identical with the thought. To 
 speak is an act of the will ; thus, creation is a product of 
 the Will : as in the Word of God man affirms the divinity 
 of the human word, so in creation he affirms the divinity 
 of the Will : not, however, the will of the reason, but the 
 will of the imagination — the absolutely subjective, unlimited 
 will. The culminating point of the principle of sub- 
 jectivity is creation out of nothing.* As the eternity of 
 the world or of matter imports nothing further than the 
 essentiality of matter, so the creation of the world out of 
 nothing imports simply the non-essentiality, the nothingness 
 of the world. The commencement of a thing is immediately 
 connected, in idea if not in time, with its end. " Lightly 
 come, lightly go." The will has called it into existence — 
 the will calls it back again into nothing. When? The 
 time is indifferent : its existence or non-existence depends 
 only on the will. But this will is not its own will : — not only 
 because a thing cannot will its non-existence, but for the 
 prior reason that the world is itself destitute of will. Thus 
 the nothingness of the world expresses the power of the will. 
 The will that it should exist is, at the same time, the will 
 — at least the possible will — that it should not exist. The 
 existence of the world is therefore a momentary, arbitrary, 
 unreliable, i.e., unreal existence. 
 
 Creation out of nothing is the highest expression of omni- 
 potence : but omnipotence is nothing else than subjectivity 
 exempting itself from all objective conditions and limita- 
 
 * " Quare fecit Dens coelum et terram ? Quia voluit. A'"oluntas enim Dei 
 causa est coeli et terr« et ideo major est voluntas Dei quam ccelum et terra. 
 Qui autem dicit : quare voluit facere ccelum et terram ? majus aliquid qnse- 
 rit, quam est voluntas Dei, nihil enim majus invenire potest." — Augustinus 
 (de Genesi adv. Manich. 1. i. c. 2). 
 
102 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 tions, and consecrating this exemption as the highest power 
 and reality .- nothing else than the ability to posit every- 
 thing real as unreal — everything conceivable as possible: 
 nothing else than the power of the imagination, or of the 
 will as'' identical with the imagination, the power of self- 
 will* The strongest and most characteristic expression of 
 subjective arbitrariness is, " it has pleased;" — the phrase, 
 "it has pleased God to call the world of bodies and spirits 
 into existence," is the most undeniable proof that individual 
 subjectivity, individual arbitrariness, is regarded as the 
 highest essence — the omnipotent world-principle. On this 
 ground, creation out of nothing as a work of the Almighty 
 Will falls into the same category with miracle, or rather it 
 is the first miracle, not only in time but in rank also ; — the 
 principle of which all further miracles are the spontaneous 
 result. The proof of this is history itself ; all miracles have 
 been vindicated, explained, and illustrated by appeal to the 
 omnipotence which created the world out of nothing. Why 
 should not He who made the world out of nothing, make 
 wine out of water, bring human speech from the mouth of 
 an ass, and charm water out of a rock ? But miracle is, 
 as we shall see further on, only a product and object of 
 the imagination, and hence creation out of nothing, as the 
 primitive miracle, is of the same character. For this reason 
 the doctrine of creation out of nothing has been pronounced 
 a supernatural one, to which reason of itself could not have 
 attained ; and in proof of this, appeal has been made to the 
 fact that the pagan philosophers represented the world to 
 have been formed by the Divine Eeason out of already 
 existing matter. But this supernatural principle is no 
 other than the principle of subjectivity, which in Chris- 
 tianity exalted itself to an unlimited, universal monarchy ; 
 whereas the ancient philosophers were not subjective 
 enough to regard the absolutely subjective being as the 
 exclusively absolute being, because they limited subjectivity 
 by the contemplation of the world or reality — because to 
 them the world was a truth. 
 
 Creation out of nothing, as identical with miracle, is one 
 
 profound origin of the creation out of notliing lies in the 
 ature, as is both directly aud indirectly declared in this work. 
 
 * A more 
 ciuoLiuiicii liarui 6, u.^ io ^jwi^ii vii^i-.i^iji)' t^wv^ iin.Liii^i.i,i v uuuitiieLi in Lniy woi'K. 
 But arbitrariness is, in fact, the will of the emotions, their external mani- 
 festation of force. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 103 
 
 with Providence ; for tlie idea of Providence — originally, in 
 its true religious significance, in which it is not yet infringed 
 upon and limited by the unbelieving understanding — is 
 one with the idea of miracle. The proof of Providence is 
 miracle.* Belief in Providence is belief in a power to 
 which all things stand at command to be used according 
 to its pleasure, in opposition to which all the power of 
 reality is nothing. Providence cancels the laws of Nature ; 
 it interrupts the course of necessity, the iron bond which 
 inevitably binds effects to causes ; in short, it is the same 
 unlimited, all-powerful will, that called the world into 
 existence out of nothing. Miracle is a creatio ex nihilo. 
 He who turns water into wine, makes wine out of nothing, 
 for the constituents of wine are not found in water ; other- 
 wise, the production of wine would not be a miraculous, but 
 a natural act. The only attestation, the only proof of Provi- 
 dence is miracle. Thus Providence is an expression of the 
 same idea as creation out of nothing. Creation out of 
 nothing can only be understood and explained in connection 
 with Providence ; for miracle properly implies nothing 
 more than that the miracle worker is the same as he who 
 brought forth all things by his mere will — God the Creator. 
 But Providence has relation essentially to man. It is 
 for man's sake that Providence makes of things whatever it 
 pleases : it is for man's sake that it supersedes the authority 
 and reality of a law otherwise omnipotent. The admiration 
 of Providence in Nature, especially in the animal kingdom, 
 is nothing else than an admiration of Nature, and therefore 
 belongs merely to naturalism, though to a religious natural- 
 ism ; -[- for in Nature is revealed ouly natural, not divine 
 Providence — not Providence as it is an object to religion. 
 Eeligious Providence reveals itself only in miracles — especi- 
 ally in the miracle of the Incarnation, the central point of 
 relioion But we nowhere read that God, for the sake of 
 
 o 
 
 * " Certissinmm divine providentife testimonium prsebent Diiracula." — 
 H. Grotius (de Terit. Rel. Christ. 1. i. § 13). 
 
 t It is true that religious naturalism, or the acknowledgment of the 
 Divine in Nature, is also an element of the Christian religion, and yet more 
 of the Mosaic, which was so friendly to animals. But it is by no means 
 the characteristic, the Christian tendency of the Christian religion. The 
 Christian, the religious Providence, is quite another than that which clothes 
 the lilies and feeds the ravens. The natural Providence lets a man sink in 
 the water, if he has not learned to swim ; but the Christian, the religious 
 Providence, leads him with the hand of omnipotence over the water unharmed. 
 
104 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 brutes, became a brute— the very idea of this is, in the eyes of 
 religion, impious and ungodly ; or that God ever performed 
 a miracle for the sake of animals or plants. On the contrary, 
 we read that a poor fig-tree, because it bore no fruit at a time 
 when it could not bear it, was cursed, purely in order to 
 give men an example of the power of faith over Nature ; — 
 and again, that when the tormenting devils were driven out 
 of men, they were driven into brutes. It is true we also 
 read: "No sparrow falls to the ground without your 
 Father;" but these sparrows have no more worth and im- 
 portance than the hairs on the head of a man, which are 
 all numbered. 
 
 Apart from instinct, the brute has no other guardian spirit, 
 no other Providence, than its senses or its organs in general. 
 A bird ^Yhich loses its eyes has lost its guardian angel ; it 
 necessarily goes to destruction if no miracle happens. We 
 read indeed that a raven brought food to the prophet Elijah, 
 but not (at least to my knowledge) that an animal was sup- 
 ported by other than natural means. But if a man believes 
 that he also has no other Providence than the powers of his 
 race — his senses and understanding, — he is in the eyes of 
 religion, and of all those who speak the language of religion, 
 an irreligious man ; because he believes only in a natural 
 Providence, and a natural Providence is in the eyes of reli- 
 gion as good as none. Hence Providence has relation essen- 
 tially to men, and even among men only to the religious. 
 " God is the Saviour of all men, but especially of them that 
 believe." It belongs, like religion, only to man; it is in- 
 tended to express the essential distinction of man from the 
 brute, to rescue man from the tyranny of the forces of 
 Nature. Jonah in the whale, Daniel in the den of lions, are 
 examples of the manner in which Providence distinguishes 
 (religious) men from brutes. If therefore the Providence 
 which manifests itself in the organs with which animals 
 catch and devour their prey, and which is so greatly admired 
 by Christian naturalists, is a truth, the Providence of the 
 Bible, the Providence of religion, is a falsehood ; and vice 
 versa. What pitiable and at the same time ludicrous hypo- 
 crisy is the attempt to do homage to botJi, to Nature, and 
 the Bible at once ! How does Nature contradict the Bible ! 
 How does the Bible contradict Nature! The God of Nature 
 reveals himself by giving to the lion strength and appropriate 
 
THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 105 
 
 organs in order that, for the preservation of his life, he may 
 in case of necessity kill and devour even a human being ; 
 the God of the Bible reveals himself by interposing his own 
 aid to rescue the human being from the jaws of the lion ! * 
 
 Providence is a privilege of man. It expresses the value 
 of man, in distinction from other natural beings and things ; 
 it exempts him from the connection of the universe. Pro- 
 vidence is the conviction of man of the infinite value of his 
 existence, — a conviction in which he renounces faith in the 
 reality of external things ; it is the idealism of religion. 
 Faith in Providence is therefore identical with faith in per- 
 sonal immortality ; save only, that in the latter the infinite 
 value of existence is expressed in relation to time, as infinite 
 duration. He who prefers no special claims, who is indif- 
 ferent about himself, who identifies himself with the world, 
 who sees himself as a part merged in the whole, — such a one 
 believes in no Providence, ■i.e., in no special Providence; but 
 only special Providence is Providence in the sense of religion. 
 Faith in Providence is faith in one's own worth, the faith 
 of man in himself; hence the beneficent consequences of 
 this faith, but hence also false humility, religious arrogance, 
 ■which, it is true, does not rely on itself, but only because it 
 commits the care of itself to the blessed God. God concerns 
 himself about me ; he has in view my happiness, my salva- 
 tion; he wills that I shall be blest; but that is my will also: 
 thus, my interest is God's interest, my own will is God's 
 will, my own aim is God's aim, — God's love for me nothing 
 else than my self-love deified. Thus when I believe in Pro- 
 vidence, in what do I believe but in the divine reality and 
 significance of my own being ? 
 
 But where Providence is believed in, belief in God is made 
 dependent on belief in Providence. He who denies that there 
 is a Providence, denies that there is a God, or — what is the 
 same thing — that God is God ; for a God who is not the 
 Providence of man, is a contemptible God, a God who is 
 wanting in the divinest, most adorable attribute. Conse- 
 quently, the belief in God is nothing but the belief in 
 human dignity,t the belief in the absolute reality and signi- 
 
 * In this contrast of the religious, or biblical, and the natural Provi- 
 dence, the author had especially in view the vapid, narrow theology of the 
 English natural philosophers. 
 
 t " Qui Decs negant, nobilitatem generis humani destruunt."— Bacon 
 (Serm. Fidel. 16). 
 
lo6 THE ESSEXCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 ficance of tlie human nature. But belief in a (religious) Pro- 
 vidence is belief in creation out of nothing, and vice versa; 
 the latter, therefore, can have no other significance than 
 that of Providence as just developed, and it has actually no 
 other. Eeligion sufficiently expresses this by making man 
 the end of creation. All things exist, not for their own 
 sake, but for the sake of man. He who, like the pious 
 Christian naturalists, pronounces this to be pride, declares 
 Christianity itself to be pride ; for to say that the material 
 world exists for the sake of man, implies infinitely less than 
 to say that God— or at least, if we follow Paul, a being who 
 is almost God, scarcely to be distinguished from God — be- 
 comes man for the sake of men. 
 
 But if man is the end of creation, he is also the true cause 
 of creation, for the end is the principle of action. The dis- 
 tinction between man as the end of creation, and man as its 
 cause, is only that the cause is the latent, inner man, the 
 essential man, \Yhereas the end is the self-evident, empirical, 
 individual man, — that man recognises himself as the end of 
 creation, but not as the cause, because he distinguishes the 
 cause, the essence from himself as another personal being.* 
 But this other being, this creative principle, is in fact 
 nothing else than his subjective nature separated from the 
 limits of individuality and materiality, i.e., of objectivity, 
 unlimited will, personality posited out of all connection 
 with the world, — which by creation, i.e., the positing of the 
 world, of objectivity, of another, as a dependent, finite, non- 
 essential existence, gives itself the certainty of its exclusive 
 reality. The point in question in the Creation is not the truth 
 and reality of the world, but the truth and reality of person- 
 ality, of subjectivity in distinction from the world. The point 
 in question is the personality of God ; but the personality of 
 
 * In Clemens Alex. (Coh. ad Gentes) there is an interesting passage. It 
 runs in the Latin translation (the bad Augsburg edition, 177S) thus : — "At 
 nos ante niundi constitutionem fuinius, ratione futuras nostras productionis, 
 in ipso Deo quodammodo turn prosexistentes. Divini igitur Verbi sive 
 Eationis, nos creature rationales sumus, et per eum primi esse dicimur, 
 quoniam in principio erat verbum." Yet more decidedly, however, has 
 Christian mysticism declared the human nature to be the creative principle, 
 the ground of the world. " Man, who, before time was, existed in eternity, 
 works with God all the works that God wTought a thousand years ago and 
 now, after a thousand years, still works." "All creatures have sp'run" 
 forth through man." — Predigten, vor u. zu Tauleri Zeiten (Ed c t> c" 
 p. 119). ■ • ■'■ ^' 
 
THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 107 
 
 God is the personality of man freed from all the conditions 
 and limitations of Nature. Hence the fervent interest in 
 the Creation, the horror of all pantheistic cosmogonies. 
 The Creation, like the idea of a personal God in general, 
 is not a scientific, but a personal matter ; not an object of 
 the_ free intelligence, but of the feelings; for the point on 
 which it hinges is only the guarantee, the last conceivable 
 proof and demonstration of personality or subjectivity as 
 an essence quite apart, having nothing in common with 
 Nature, a supra- and extra-mundane entity* 
 
 Man distinguishes himself from Nature. This distinction 
 of his is his God : the distinguishing of God from Nature 
 is nothing else than the distinguishing of man from Nature. 
 The antithesis of pantheism and personalism resolves itself 
 into the question : Is the nature of man transcendental or 
 immanent, supranaturalistic or naturalistic ? The specu- 
 lations and controversies concerning the personality or 
 impersonality of God are therefore fruitless, idle, uncritical, 
 and odious ; for the speculatists, especially those who main- 
 tain the personality, do not call the thing by the right 
 name ; they put the light under a bushel. While they 
 in truth speculate only concerning themselves, only in the 
 interest of their own instinct of self-preservation ; they yet 
 will not allow that they are splitting their brains only about 
 themselves ; they speculate under the delusion that they 
 are searching out the mysteries of another being. Pantheism 
 identifies man with Nature, whether with its visible appear- 
 ance, or its abstract essence. Personalism isolates, separates, 
 him from Nature ; converts him from a part into the whole, 
 into an absolute essence by himself. This is the distinction. 
 If, therefore, you would be clear on these subjects, exchange 
 your mystical, perverted anthropology, which you call 
 theology, for real anthropology, and speculate in the light 
 of consciousness and Nature concerning the difference or 
 identity of the human essence with the essence of Nature. 
 You yourselves admit that the essence of the pantheistical 
 God is nothing but the essence of Nature. Why, then, will 
 
 * Hence is explained why all attempts of speculative theology and of its 
 kindred philosophy to make the transition from God to the world, or to 
 derive the world from God, have failed and must fail. Namely, because 
 they are fundamentally false, from being made in ignorance of the idea on 
 which the Creation really turns. 
 
io8 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 you only see the mote in the eyes of your opponents, and not 
 observe the very obvious beam in your own eyes ? why make 
 yourselves an exception to a universally valid law? Admit 
 that your personal God is nothing else than your own 
 personal nature, that while you believe in and construct 
 your supra- and extra-natural God, you believe in and 
 construct nothing else than the supra- and extra-naturalism 
 of your own self. 
 
 In the Creation, as everywhere else, the true principle is 
 concealed by the intermingling of universal, metaphysical, 
 and even pantheistic definitions. But one need only be 
 attentive to the closer definitions to convince oneself that 
 the true principle of creation is the self-afhrmation of sub- 
 jectivity in distinction from Nature. God produces the 
 world outside himself ; at first it is only an idea, a plan, 
 a resolve ; now it becomes an act, and therewith it steps 
 forth out of God as a distinct and, relatively at least, a self- 
 subsistent object. But just so subjectivity in general, 
 which distinguishes itself from the world, which takes itself 
 for an essence distinct from the world, posits the world out 
 of itself as a separate existence, indeed, this positing out 
 of self, and the distinguishing of self, is one act. When 
 therefore the world is posited outside of God, God is posited 
 by himself, is distinguished from the world. What else 
 then is God but your subjective nature, when the world is 
 separated from it ? * It is true that when astute reflection 
 intervenes, the distinction between extra and intra is dis- 
 avowed as a finite and human (?) distinction. But to the 
 disavowal by the understanding, which in relation to reli- 
 gion is pure misunderstanding, no credit is due. If it is 
 meant seriously, it destroys the foundation of the religious 
 consciousness ; it does away with the possibility, the very 
 principle of the creation, for this rests solely on the reality 
 
 * It is not admissible to urge against this the omnipresence of God, the 
 existence of God in all things, or the existence of things in God. For, 
 apart from tlie consideration that the future destruction of the world 
 expresses clearly enough its existence outside of God, i.e., its non-divineness, 
 God is in a special manner only in man ; but I am at home only where I am 
 specially at home. ' ' Nowhere is God properly God, but in the soul. In 
 all creatures there is something of God ; but in the soul God exists com- 
 pletely, for it is his resting-place." — Predigten etzlicher Lelirer, &c., p. 19. 
 And the existence of things in God, especially where it has no pantheistic 
 significance, and any such is here excluded, is equally an idea without reality, 
 and does not express the special sentiments of religion. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 109 
 
 of the above-mentioned distinction. Moreover, the effect 
 of the creation, all its majesty for the feelinsrs and the ima- 
 gination, is quite lost, if the production of the world out of 
 God is not taken in the real sense. What is it to make, to 
 create, to produce, but to make that which in the first in- 
 stance is only subjective, and so far invisible, non-existent, 
 into something objective, perceptible, so that other beings 
 besides me may know and enjoy it, and thus to put some- 
 thing out of myself, to make it distinct from myself ? Where 
 there is no reality or possibility of an existence external to 
 me, there can be no question of making or creating. God 
 is eternal, but the world had a commencement ; God was, 
 when as yet the world was not ; God is invisible, not cog- 
 nisable by the senses, but the world is visible, palpable, 
 material, and therefore outside of God ; for how can 
 the material as such, body, matter, be in God ? The 
 world exists outside of God, in the same sense in which 
 a tree, an animal, the world in general, exists outside of 
 my conception, outside of myself, is an existence distinct 
 from subjectivity. Hence, only when such an external 
 existence is admitted, as it was by the older philosophers 
 and theologians, have we the genuine, unmixed doctrine of 
 the religious consciousness. The speculative theologians 
 and philosophers of modern times, on the contrary, foist in 
 all sorts of pantheistic definitions, although they deny the 
 principle of pantheism ; and the result of this process is 
 simply an absolutely self-contradictory, insupportable fabri- 
 cation of their own. 
 
 Thus the creation of the world expresses nothing else 
 than subjectivity, assuring itself of its own reality and 
 infinity through the consciousness that the world is created, 
 is a product of will, i.e., a dependent, powerless, unsubstan- 
 tial existence. The " nothing " out of which the world was 
 produced, is a still inherent nothingness. When thou 
 sayest the world was made out of nothing, thou conceivest 
 the world itself as nothing, thou clearest away from thy 
 head all the limits to thy imagination, to thy feelings, to 
 thy will, for the world is the limitation of thy will, of thy 
 desire ; the world alone obstructs thy soul ; it alone is the 
 wall of separation between thee and God, — thy beatified, 
 perfected nature. Thus, subjectively, thou annihilatest the 
 world ; thou thinkest God by himself, i.e., absolutely un- 
 
no THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 limited subjectivity, the subjectivity or soul which enjoys 
 itself alone, which needs not the world, which knows no- 
 thing of the painful bonds of matter. In the inmost depths 
 of thy soul thou wouldest rather there were no world, for 
 where the world is, there is matter, and where there is 
 matter there is weight and resistance, space and time, 
 limitation and necessity. ISTevertheless, there is a world, 
 there is matter. How dost thou escape from the dilemma 
 of this contradiction ? How dost thou expel the world from 
 thy consciousness, that it may not disturb thee in the beati- 
 tude of the unlimited soul ? Only by making the world 
 itself a product of will, by giving it an arbitrary existence 
 always hovering between existence and non-existence, always 
 awaiting its annihilation. Certainly the act of creation does 
 not suffice to explain the existence of the world or matter 
 (the two are not separable), but it is a total misconception 
 to demand this of it, for the fundamental idea of the creation 
 is this : there is to be no world, no matter ; and hence its 
 end is daily looked forward to with longing. The world in 
 its truth does not here exist at all, it is regarded only as 
 the obstruction, the limitation of subjectivity ; how could 
 the world in its truth and reality be deduced from a principle 
 which denies the world ? 
 
 In order to recognise the above developed significance of 
 the creation as the true one, it is only necessary seriously 
 to consider the fact, that the chief point in the creation is 
 not the production of earth and water, plants and animals, 
 for wliich indeed there is no God, but the production of 
 personal beings — of spirits, according to the ordinary phrase. 
 God is the idea of personality as itself a person, subjectivity 
 existing in itself apart from the world, existing for self 
 alone, without wants, posited as absolute existence, the me 
 without a thee. But as absolute existence for self alone 
 contradicts the idea of true life, the idea of love ; as self- 
 consciousness is essentially united with the consciousness 
 of a thee, as solitude cannot, at least in perpetuitj'-, preserve 
 itself from tedium and uniformity ; thought immediately 
 proceeds from the divine Being to other conscious beings, 
 and expands the idea of personality which was at first 
 condensed in one being to a plurality of persons.* If the 
 
 * Here is also the point where the Creation represents to us not only the 
 Divine power, but also the Divine love. " Quia bonus est (Deus), sumus " 
 
THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. in 
 
 person is conceived physically, as a real man, in which form 
 he is a being with wants, he appears first at the end of the 
 physical world, when the conditions of his existence are 
 present, — as the goal of creation. If, on the other hand, 
 man is conceived abstractly as a person, as is the case in 
 religious speculation, this circuit is dispensed with, and the 
 task is the direct deduction of the person, i.e., the self- 
 demonstration, the ultimate self-verification of the human 
 personality. It is true that the divine personality is dis- 
 tinguished in every possible way from the human in order 
 to veil their identity ; but these distinctions are either 
 purely fantastic, or they are mere assertions, devices which 
 exliibit the invalidity of the attempted deduction. All 
 positive grounds of the creation reduce themselves only to 
 the conditions, to the grounds, which urge upon the me the 
 consciousness of the necessity of another personal being. 
 Speculate as much as you will, you will never derive your 
 personality from God, if you have not beforehand introduced 
 it, if God himself be not already the idea of your person- 
 ality, your own subjective nature. 
 
 (Augustin). In the beginning, before the world, God was alone. "Ante 
 omnia Deus erat solus, ipsi sibi et mundus et locus et omnia. Solus autem ; 
 quia nihil extrinsecus prseter ipsum " (TertuUian). But there is no higher 
 happiness than to make another happy, bliss lies in the act of imparting. 
 And only joy, only love imparts. Hence man conceives imparting love as the 
 principle of existence. ' ' Extasis bono non sinit ipsum manere in se ipso " 
 (Dionysius A.). Everything positive establishes, attests itself, only by itself. 
 The divine love is the joy of life, establishing itself, affirming itself. But 
 the highest self-consciousness of life, the supreme joy of life is the love which 
 confers happiness. God is the bliss of existence. 
 
THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CEEATION IN JUDAISM. 
 
 The doctrine of the Creation sprang out of Judaism ; in- 
 deed, it is tlie characteristic, the fundamental doctrine of 
 the Jewish religion. The principle which lies at its foun- 
 dation is, however, not so much the principle of subjectivity 
 as of egoism. The doctrine of the Creation in its charac- 
 teristic significance arises only on that stand-point where 
 man in practice makes Nature merely the servant of his 
 will and needs, and hence in thought also degrades it to a 
 mere machine, a product of the will. Noiv its existence is 
 intelligible to him, since he explains and interprets it out 
 of himself, in accordance with his own feelings and notions. 
 The question, Whence is Nature or the world ? presupposes 
 wonder that it exists, or the question, Why does it exist ? 
 But this wonder, this question, arises only where man has 
 separated himself from Nature and made it a mere object 
 of will. The author of the Book of Wisdom says truly of 
 the heathens, that, " for admiration of the beauty of the 
 world they did not raise themselves to the idea of the 
 Creator." To him who feels that Nature is lovely, it appears 
 an end in itself, it has the ground of its existence in itself : 
 in him the question, Why does it exist ? does not arise. 
 Nature and God are identified in his consciousness, his 
 perception, of the world. Nature, as it impresses his senses, 
 has indeed had an origin, has been produced, but not created 
 in the religious sense, is not an arbitrary product. And 
 by this origin he implies nothing evil ; originating involves 
 for him nothing impure, undivine ; he conceives his gods 
 themselves as having had an origin. The generative force 
 is to him the primal force : he posits, therefore, as the 
 ground of Nature, a force of Nature, — a real, present, visibly 
 active force, as the ground of reality. Thus does man think 
 where his relation to the world is ffisthetic or theoretic (for 
 the theoretic view was originally the esthetic view, the 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION. 113 
 
 prima pMlosopliia) , where the idea of the world is to him 
 the idea of the cosmos, of majesty, of deity itself. Only 
 where such a theory was the fundamental principle could 
 there be conceived and expressed such a thought as that 
 of Anaxagoras : — Man is born to behold the world* The 
 standpoint of theory is the standpoint of harmony with 
 the world. The subjective activity, that in which man 
 contents himself, allows himself free play, is here the 
 sensuous imagination alone. Satisfied with this, he lets 
 Nature subsist in peace, and constructs his castles in the 
 air, his poetical cosmogonies, only out of natural materials. 
 When, on the contrary, man places himself only on the 
 practical standpoint and looks at the world from thence, 
 making the practical standpoint the theoretical one also, he 
 is in disunion with Nature ; he makes Nature the abject 
 vassal of his selfish interest, of his practical egoism. The 
 theoretic expression of this egoistical, practical view, accord- 
 ing to which Nature is in itself nothing, is this : Nature 
 or the world is made, created, the product of a command. 
 God said. Let the world be, and straightway the world pre- 
 sented itself at his bidding. f 
 
 Utilism is the essential theory of Judaism. The belief 
 in a special Divine Providence is the characteristic belief 
 of Judaism ; belief in Providence is belief in miracle ; but 
 belief in miracle exists where Nature is regarded only as 
 an object of arbitrariness, of egoism, which uses Nature only 
 as an instrument of its own will and pleasure. Water 
 divides or rolls itself together like a firm mass, dust is 
 changed into lice, a staff into a serpent, rivers into blood, a 
 rock into a fountain ; in the same place it is both light and 
 dark at once, the sun now stands still, now goes backward. 
 And all these contradictions of Nature happen for the 
 welfare of Israel, purely at the command of Jehovah, who 
 troubles himself about nothing but Israel, who is nothing 
 
 * In Diogenes (L. 1. ii. c. iii. § 6), it is literally, "for the contemplation 
 of tlie sun, the moon and the heavens." Similar ideas were held by other 
 philosophers. Thus the Stoics also said : — " Ipse autem homo ortus est ad 
 mundum contemplandum et imitandum." — Cic. (de Nat.). 
 
 t " Hebrtei nnmen verbo quidquid videtur efficiens describunt et quasi 
 imperio omnia creata tradunt, ut facilitatem in eo quod vult efficiendo, 
 summamque ejus in omnia potentiam ostendant." — Ps. xxxiii. 6. "Verbo 
 Jehova; cceli facti sunt."— Ps. cxlviii. 5. " lUe jussit eaque creata sunt."— 
 J. Clericus (Comment, in Mosem. Genes, i. 3). 
 
 H 
 
114 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 but the personified selfishness of the Israelitish people, to 
 the exclusion of all other nations,— absolute intolerance, the 
 secret essence of monotheism. 
 
 The Greeks looked at Nature with the theoretic sense ; 
 they heard heavenly music in the harmonious course of the 
 stars ; they saw Nature rise from the foam of the all- pro- 
 ducing ocean as Venus Anadyomene. The Israelites, on the 
 contrary, opened to Nature only the gastric sense ; their 
 taste for Nature lay only in the palate ; their consciousness 
 of God in eating manna. The Greek addicted himself to 
 polite studies, to the fine arts, to philosophy ; the Israelite 
 did not rise above the alimentary view of theology. " At 
 even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be 
 filled with bread ; and ye shall know that I am the Lord 
 your God." * " And Jacob vowed a vow, saying. If God 
 win be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and 
 will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on, so that I 
 come again to my father's house in peace, then shall the 
 Lord be my God." -f- Eating is the most solemn act or the 
 initiation of the Jewish religion. In eating, the Israelite 
 celebrates and renews the act of creation ; in eating, man 
 declares Nature to be an insignificant object. When the 
 seventy elders ascended the mountain with Moses, " they 
 saw God ; and when they had seen God, they ate and 
 drank." J Thus with them what the sight of the Supreme 
 Being heightened was the appetite for food. 
 
 The Jews have maintained their peculiarity to this day. 
 Their principle, their God, is the most practical principle in 
 the world, — namely, egoism ; and moreover egoism in the 
 form of religion. Egoism is the God who will not let his 
 servants come to shame. Egoism is essentially monotheistic, 
 for it has only one, only self, as its end. Egoism strengthens 
 cohesion, concentrates man on himself, gives him a consis- 
 tent principle of life ; but it makes him theoretically narrow, 
 because indifferent to all which does not relate to the well- 
 being of self. Hence science, like art, arises only out of 
 polytheism, for polytheism is the frank, open, unenvying 
 sense of all that is beautiful and good without distinction, 
 the sense of the world, of the universe. The Greeks looked 
 
 * Exod. xvi. 12. f Gen. xxviii. 20. 
 
 I Exod. xxiv. 10, II. " Tan turn abest ut mortui sint, ut contra con- 
 vivium hiiares celebrarint." — Clericus. 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION. 115 
 
 abroad into the wide world that they might extend their 
 sphere of vision ; the Jews to this day pray with their faces 
 turned towards Jerusalem. In the Israelites, monotheistic 
 egoism excluded the free theoretic tendency. Solomon, it is 
 true, surpassed " all the children of the East " in understand- 
 ing and wisdom, and spoke (treated, agebat) moreover " of 
 trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon, even unto the 
 hyssop that springeth out of the wall," and also of " beasts 
 and of fowl, and of creeping things and of fishes " (i Kings 
 iv. 30, 34). But it must be added that Solomon did not 
 serve Jehovah with his whole heart; he did homage to 
 strange gods and strange women; and thus he had the 
 polytheistic sentiment and taste. The polytheistic senti- 
 ment, I repeat, is the foundation of science and art. 
 
 The significance which Nature in general had for the 
 Hebrews is one with their idea of its origin. The mode in 
 which the genesis of a thing is explained is the candid 
 expression of opinion, of sentiment respecting it. If it be 
 thought meanly of, so also is its origin. Men used to sup- 
 pose that insects, vermin, sprang from carrion and other 
 rubbish. It was not because they derived vermin from so 
 uninviting a source that they thought contemptuously of 
 them, but, on the contrary, because they thought thus, 
 because the nature of vermin appeared to them so vile, they 
 imagined an origin corresponding to this nature, a vile origin. 
 To the Jews Nature was a mere means towards achieving 
 the end of egoism, a mere object of will. But the ideal, the 
 idol of the egoistic will is that Will which has unlimited 
 command, which requires no means in order to attain its 
 end, to realise its object, which immediately by itself, i.e., 
 by pure will, calls into existence whatever it pleases. It 
 pains the egoist that the satisfaction of his wishes and need 
 is only to be attained immediately, that for him there is a 
 chasm between the wish and its realisation, between the 
 object in the imagination and the object in reality. Hence, 
 in order to relieve this pain, to make himself free from the 
 limits of reality, he supposes as the true, the highest being. 
 One who brings forth an object by the mere I WILL. Por 
 this reason. Nature, the world, was to the Hebrews the pro- 
 duct of a dictatorial word, of a categorical imperative, of a 
 magic fiat. 
 
 To that which has no essential existence for me in theory 
 
ii6- THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 I assign no theoretic, no positive ground. By refemng itto 
 Will I only enforce its theoretic nullity. What we despise 
 we do not honour with a glance : that which is observed has 
 importance : contemplation is respect. Whatever is looked 
 at fetters by secret forces of attraction, overpowers by the 
 spell which 'it exercises upon the eye, the criminal arrogance 
 of that Will which seeks only to subject all things to itself. 
 Whatever makes an impression on the theoretic sense, on 
 the reason, withdraws itself from the dominion of the egois- 
 tic Will : it reacts, it presents resistance. That which devas- 
 tating egoism devotes to death, benignant theory restores 
 to life. 
 
 The much-belied doctrine of the heathen philosophers 
 concerning the eternity of matter, or the world, thus implies 
 nothing more than that Nature was to them a theoretic 
 reality.* The heathens were idolaters, that is, they con- 
 templated Nature ; they did nothing else than what the 
 profoundly Christian nations do at this day when they 
 make Nature an object of their admiration, of their inde- 
 fatigable investigation. " But the heathens actually wor- 
 shipped natural objects." Certainly; for worship is only 
 the childish, the religious form of contemplation. Contem- 
 plation and worship are not essentially distinguished. That 
 which I contemplate I humble myself before, I consecrate 
 to it my noblest possession, my heart, my intelligence, as 
 an offering. The natural philosopher also falls on his knees 
 before Nature when, at the risk of his life, he snatches from 
 some precipice a lichen, an insect, or a stone, to glorify it 
 in the light of contemplation, and give it an eternal exist- 
 ence in the memory of scientific humanity. The study of 
 Nature is the worship of Nature — idolatry in the sense of 
 the Israelitish and Christian God ; and idolatry is simply 
 man's primitive contemplation of Nature; for religion is 
 nothing else than man's primitive, and therefore childish, 
 popular, but prejudiced, unemancipated consciousness of 
 himself and of Nature. The Hebrews, on the other hand, 
 raised themselves from the worship of idols to the worship 
 of God, from the creature to the Creator; i.e., they raised 
 
 * It is well known, however, that their opinions on this point were 
 various. (See e.g. iristoteles de Ccelo, 1. i. c. lo. ) But their diti'ereuce is 
 a subordinate one, since the creative agency itself is with them a more or 
 less cosmical being. 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION. 117 
 
 themselves from the theoretic view of Nature, which fasci- 
 nated the idolaters, to the purely practical view wliich sub- 
 jects Nature only to the ends of egoism. " And lest thou 
 lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the 
 sun, the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, 
 shouldst be driven to worship them and serve them, which 
 the Lord thy God hath divided unto (i.e., bestowed upon, 
 largitus est) all nations under the whole heaven." * Thus 
 the creation out of nothing, i.e., the creation as a purely 
 imperious act, had its origin only in the unfathomable depth 
 of Hebrew egoism. 
 
 On this ground, also, the creation out of nothing is no 
 object of philosophy ; — at least in any other way than it is 
 so here ; — for it cuts away the root of all true speculation, 
 presents no grappling-point to thought, to theory ; theoreti- 
 cally considered, it is a baseless air-built doctrine, which 
 originated solely in the need to give a warrant to utilism, 
 to egoism, which contains and expresses nothing but the 
 command to make Nature — not an object of thought, of 
 contemplation, but — an object of iitilisation. The more 
 empty it is, however, for natural philosophy, the more pro- 
 found is its " speculative " significance ; for just because it 
 has no theoretic fulcrum, it allows to the speculatist infinite 
 room for the play of arbitrary, groundless interpretation. 
 
 It is in the history of dogma and speculation as in the 
 history of states. World-old usages, laws, and institutions 
 continue to drag out their existence long after they have 
 lost their true meaning. What has once existed will not 
 be denied the right to exist for ever ; what was once good, 
 claims to be good for all times. At this period of super- 
 annuation come the interpreters, the speculatists, and talk 
 of the profound sense, because they no longer know the 
 true one.t Thus religious speculation deals with the dog- 
 mas torn from the connection in which alone they have any 
 
 * Deut. iv. 19. " Licet enim ea, qufe sunt in cceIo, non sint hominum 
 artificia, at hominum tamen gratia coudita fuerunt. Ne quis igitur solem 
 adoret, sed solis effectorem desideret. "—Clemens Alex. (Coh. ad Gentes). 
 
 t But of course they only do this in the case of the " absolute religion ;'' 
 for with regard to other religions they hold up the ideas and customs which 
 are foreign"to us, and of which we do not know the original meaning and 
 purpose, as senseless and ludicrous. And yet, in fact, to worship the urine 
 of cows, which the Parsees and Hindoos drink that they may obtain for- 
 giveness of sins, is not more ludicrous than to worship the comb or a shred 
 of the garment of the Mother of God. 
 
iiS THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 true meaning; instead of tracing them back critically to 
 their true origin, it makes the secondary primitive, and the 
 primitive secondary. To it God is the first, man the second. 
 Thus it inverts the natural order of things. In reality, the 
 first is man, the second the nature of man made objective, 
 namely, God. Only in later times, in which religion is 
 already become flesh and blood, can it be said — As God is, so 
 is man ; although, indeed, this proposition never amounts to 
 anything more than tautology. But in the origin of religion 
 it is otherwise ; and it is only in the origin of a thing that 
 we can discern its true nature. Man first unconsciously and 
 involuntarily creates God in his own image, and after this 
 God consciously and voluntarily creates man in his own 
 image. This is especially confirmed by the development of 
 the Israelitish religion. Hence the position of theological 
 one-sidedness, that the revelation of God holds an even pace 
 with the development of the human race. Naturally ; for 
 the revelation of God is nothing else than the revelation, 
 the self-unfolding of human nature. The supranaturalistic 
 egoism of the Jews did not proceed from the Creator, but 
 conversely, the latter from the former ; in the creation the 
 Israelite justified his egoism at the bar of his reason. 
 
 It is true, and it may be readily understood on simply 
 practical grounds, that even the Israelite could not, as a 
 man, withdraw himself from the theoretic contemplation 
 and admiration of Nature. But in celebrating the power 
 and greatness of Nature, he celebrates only the power and 
 greatness of Jehovah. And the power of Jehovah has exhi- 
 bited itself with the most glory in the miracles which it 
 has wrought in favour of Israel. Hence, in the celebration 
 of this power, the Israelite has always reference ultimately 
 to himself ; he extols the greatness of Nature only for the 
 same reason that the conqueror magnifies the strength of 
 his opponent, in order thereby to heighten his own self- 
 complacency, to make his own fame more illustrious. Great 
 and mighty is Nature, which Jehovah has created, but yet 
 mightier, yet greater, is Israel's self-estimation. Por his sake 
 the sun stands still ; for his sake, according to Pliilo, the 
 earth quaked at the delivery of the law; in short, for his 
 sake all Nature alters its course. "For the whole creature 
 in his proper kind was fashioned again anew, serving the 
 peculiar commandments that were given unto them, that 
 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION. 119 
 
 thy children might be kept without hurt." * According to 
 Philo, God gave Moses power over the whole of Nature; all 
 the elements obeyed him as the Lord of Nature.-f- Israel's 
 requirement is the omnipotent law of the world, Israel's 
 need the fate of the universe. Jehovah is Israel's conscious- 
 ness of the sacredness and necessity of his own existence, — 
 a necessity before which the existence of Nature, the exist- 
 ence of other nations, vanishes into nothing ; Jehovah is the 
 salus populi, the salvation of Israel, to which everything that 
 stands in its way must be sacrificed ; Jehovah is exclusive, 
 monarchical arrogance, the annihilating flash of anger in the 
 vindictive glance of destroying Israel ; in a word, Jehovah 
 is the ego of Israel, which regards itself as the end and aim, 
 the Lord of Nature. Thus, in the power of Nature the 
 Israelite celebrates the power of Jehovah, and in the power 
 of Jehovah the power of his own self-consciousness. 
 " Blessed be God ! God is our help, God is our salvation." — 
 " Jehovah is my strength." — " God himself hearkened to the 
 word of Joshua, for Jehovah himself fought for Israel" — 
 " Jehovah is a God of war." 
 
 If, in the course of time, the idea of Jehovah expanded 
 itself in individual minds, and his love was extended, as by 
 the writer of the Book of Jonah, to man in general, this does 
 not belong to the essential character of the Israelitish reli- 
 gion. The God of the fathers, to whom the most precious 
 recollections are attached, the ancient historical God, remains 
 always the foundation of a religion.j 
 
 * Wisd. xix. 6. t See Gfrorer's Philo. 
 
 + "We may here observe, that certainly the admiration of the power and 
 glory of God in general, and so of Jehovah, as manifested in Nature, is in 
 fact, though not in the consciousness of the Israelite, only admiration of the 
 power and glory of Nature. (See, on this subject, P. Bayle, Ein Beitrag, 
 &c., pp. 25-29.) But to prove this formally lies out of our plan, since we 
 here coniine ourselves to Christianity, i.e., the adoration of God in man 
 (Deum colimus per Christum. Tertullian, Apolog. c. 21). Nevertheless, 
 the principle of this proof is stated in the present work. 
 
THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 CHArTEE XII. 
 
 THE OMNIPOTENCE OF FEELING, OR THE MYSTEKY OF PKAYEK. 
 
 ISEAEL is the historical definition of the specific nature of the 
 religious consciousness, save only that here this consciousness 
 was" circumscribed by the limits of a particular, a national 
 interest. Hence, we need only let these limits fall, and we 
 have the Christian religion. Judaism is worldly Christianity ; 
 Christianity, spiritual Judaism. The Christian religion is 
 the Jewish religion purified from national egoism, and yet 
 at the same time it is certainly another, a new religion ; for 
 every reformation, every purification, produces — especially in 
 religious matters, where even the trivial becomes important 
 — an essential change. To the Jew, the Israelite was the 
 mediator, the bond between God and man ; in his relation 
 to Jehovah he relied on his character of Israelite ; Jehovah 
 himself was nothing else than the self-consciousness of Israel 
 made objective as the absolute being, the national conscience, 
 the universal law, the central point of the political system.* 
 If we let fall the limits of nationality, we obtain — instead of 
 the Israelite — V2an. As in Jehovah the Israelite personified 
 his national existence, so in God the Christian personified 
 his subjective human nature, freed from the limits of nation- 
 ality. As Israel made the wants of his national existence 
 the law of the world, as, under the dominance of these wants, 
 he deified even his political vindictiveness ; so the Christian 
 made the requirements of human feeling the absolute powers 
 and laws of the world. The miracles of Christianity, which 
 belong just as essentially to its characterisation as the 
 miracles of the Old Testament to that of Judaism, have not 
 the welfare of a nation for their object, but the welfare of 
 man : — that is, indeed, only of man considered as Christian ; 
 for Christianity, in contradiction with the genuine universal 
 
 * ' ' The gi'eater part of Hebrew poetry, which is often held to be only 
 spiritual, is political." — Herder. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF PRAYER. 121 
 
 human heart, recognised man only under the condition, the 
 limitation, of belief in Christ. But this fatal limitation 
 will be discussed further on. Christianity has spiritualised 
 the egoism of Judaism into subjectivity (though even within 
 Christianity this subjectivity is again expressed as pure 
 egoism), has changed the desire for earthly happiness, the 
 goal of the Israelitish religion, into the longing for heavenly 
 bliss, which is the goal of Christianity. 
 
 The highest idea, the God of a political community, of a 
 people whose political system expresses itself in the form 
 of religion, is Law, the consciousness of the law as an abso- 
 lute divine power ; the highest idea, the God of unpolitical, 
 unworldly feeling is Love; the love which brings all the 
 treasures and glories in heaven and upon earth as an offering 
 to the beloved, the love whose law is the wish of the beloved 
 one, and whose power is the unlimited power of the imagina- 
 tion, of intellectual miracle-working. 
 
 God is the Love that satisfies our wishes, our emotional 
 wants ; he is himself the realised wish of the heart, the 
 wish exalted to the certainty of its fulfilment, of its reality, 
 to that undoubting certainty before which no contradiction 
 of the understanding, no difficulty of experience or of the 
 external world, maintains its ground. Certainty is the highest 
 power for man ; that which is certain to him is the essential, 
 the divine. " God is love : " this, the supreme dictum of 
 Christianity, only expresses the certainty which human 
 feeling has of itself, as the alone essential, i.e., absolute 
 divine power, the certainty that the inmost wishes of the 
 heart have objective validity and reality, that there are no 
 limits, no positive obstacles to human feeling, that the 
 whole world, with all its pomp and glory, is nothing weighed 
 against human feeling. God is love : that is, feeling is the 
 God of man, nay, God absolutely, the Absolute Being. God 
 is the nature of human feeling, unlimited, pure feeling, made 
 objective. God is the optative of the human heart trans- 
 formed into the tempus finitum, the certain, blissful "IS," — 
 the unrestricted omnipotence of feeling, prayer hearing itself, 
 feeling perceiving itself, the echo of our cry of anguish. 
 Pain must give itself utterance; involuntarily the artist 
 seizes the lute that he may breathe out his sufferings in its 
 tones. He soothes his sorrow by making it audible to 
 himself, by making it objective; he lightens the burden 
 
122 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 which weighs upon his heart by communicating it to the 
 air, by making his sorrow a general existence. But nature 
 listens not to the plaints of man, it is callous to his sorrows. 
 Hence man turns away from Nature, from all visible objects. 
 He turns within, that here, sheltered and hidden from the 
 inexorable powers, he may find audience for his griefs. 
 Here he utters his oppressive secrets ; here he gives vent to 
 his stifled sighs. This open-air of the heart, this outspoken 
 secret, this uttered sorrow of the soul, is God. God is a 
 tear of love, shed in the deepest concealment over human 
 misery. " God is an unutterable sigh, lying in the depths 
 of the heart;"* this saying is the most remarkable, the 
 profoundest, truest expression of Christian mysticism. 
 
 The ultimate essence of religion is revealed by the simplest 
 act of religion — prayer; an act which implies at least as 
 much as the dogma of the Incarnation, although religious 
 speculation stands amazed at this, as the greatest of mys- 
 teries. Not, certainly, the prayer before and after meals, 
 the ritual of animal egoism, but the prayer pregnant with 
 sorrow, the prayer of disconsolate love, the prayer which 
 expresses the power of the heart that crushes man to the 
 ground, the prayer which begins in despair and ends in 
 rapture. 
 
 In prayer, man addresses God with the word of intimate 
 affection — Thou ; he thus declares articulately that God is 
 his alter ego ; he confesses to God, as the being nearest to 
 him, his most secret thoughts, his deepest wishes, which 
 otherwise he shrinks from uttering. But he expresses 
 these wishes in the confidence, in the certainty that they 
 will be fulfilled. How could he apply to a being that had 
 no ear for his complaints ? Thus wliat is prayer but the 
 wish of the heart expressed with confidence in its fulfil- 
 ment ? -f- what else is the being that fulfils these wishes 
 
 * Sebastian Frank von Word in Zinkgrefs Apophthegmata deutscher 
 Kation. 
 
 t It would be an imbecile objection to say that God fulfils only those 
 wishes, those prayers, which are uttered in his name, or in the interest of 
 the Church of Christ, in short, only the wishes which are accordant with 
 his will ; for the will of God is the will of man, or rather God has the 
 power, man the will : God makes men happy, hut man wills that he may 
 be happy. A particular wish may not be granted ; but that is of no con- 
 sequence, if only the species, the essential tendency is accepted. The pious 
 soul whose prayer has lailed consoles himself, therefore, by thinking that its 
 fulfilment would not have been salutary for him. "NuUo igitur modo vota 
 
THE MYSTERY OF PRAYER. 123 
 
 but huinan affection, the human soul, giving ear to itself, 
 approving itself, unhesitatingly affirming itself? The man 
 who does not exclude from his mind the idea of the world, 
 the idea that everything here must be sought intermediately, 
 that every effect has its natural cause, that a wish is only 
 to be attained when it is made an end and the corresponding 
 means are put into operation — such a man does not pray : 
 he only works ; he transforms his attainable wishes into 
 objects of real activity ; other wishes which he recognises as 
 purely subjective he denies, or regards as simply subjective, 
 pious aspirations. In other words, he limits, he conditionates 
 his being by the world, as a member of which he conceives 
 himself ; he bounds his wishes by the idea of necessity. In 
 prayer, on the contrary, man excludes from his mind the 
 world, and with it all thoughts of intermediateness and de- 
 pendence ; he makes his wishes — the concerns of his heart, 
 objects of the independent, omnipotent, absolute hemg,\i.e., 
 he affirms them without limitation. God is the affirmation * 
 of human feeling ; prayer is the unconditional confidence of 
 human feeling in the absolute identity of the subjective and 
 objective, the certainty that the power of the heart is greater 
 than the power of Nature, that the heart's need is absolute 
 necessity, the fate of the world. Prayer alters the course 
 of Nature ; it determines God to bring forth an effect in 
 contradiction with the laws of Nature. Prayer is the abso- 
 lute relation of the human heart to itself, to its own nature ; 
 in prayer, man forgets that there exists a limit to his wishes, 
 and is happy in this forgetfulness. 
 
 Prayer is the self-division of man into two beings, — a 
 dialogue of man with himself, with his heart. It is essential 
 to the effectiveness of prayer that it be audibly, intelligibly, 
 energetically expressed. Involuntarily prayer wells forth 
 in sound; the struggling heart bursts the barrier of the 
 closed lips. But audible prayer is only prayer revealing 
 its nature; prayer is virtually, if not actually, speech, — 
 the Latin word oraiio signifies both : in prayer, man speaks 
 undisguisedly of that which weighs upon him, which affects 
 him closely ; he makes his heart objective ; — hence the 
 
 aut preces sunt irritee aut infrugiferas et recte dicitur, in petitions rerum 
 corporalium aliquando Deum exaudire nos, non ad voluntatem nostram, 
 sed ad salutem."— Oratio de Precatione, in Declamat. Melancthonis, Th. iii. 
 * Ja-wort. 
 
124 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 moral power of prayer. Concentration, it is said, is the 
 condition of prayer ; but it is more than a condition ; prayer 
 is itself concentration, — the dismissal of all distracting ideas, 
 of all disturbing influences from without, retirement within 
 oneself, in order to have relation only with one's own being. 
 Only a trusting, open, hearty, fervent prayer is said to help ; 
 but this help lies in the prayer itself. As everywhere in 
 religion the subjective, the secondary, the conditionating, 
 is the prima causa, the objective fact ; so here, these sub- 
 jective qualities are the objective nature of prayer itself.* 
 
 It is an extremely superficial view of prayer to regard it 
 as an expression of the sense of dependence. It certainly 
 expresses such a sense, but the dependence is that of man 
 on his own heart, on his own feeling. He who feels himself 
 only dependent, does not open his mouth in prayer ; the 
 sense of dependence robs him of the desire, the courage 
 for it, for the sense of dependence is the sense of need. 
 Prayer has its root rather in the unconditional trust of the 
 heart, untroubled by all thought of compulsive need, that 
 its concerns are objects of the Absolute Being, that the 
 almighty, infinite nature of the Father of men is a sympa- 
 thetic, tender, loving nature, and that thus the dearest, most 
 sacred emotions of man are divine realities. But the child 
 does not feel itself dependent on the father as a father ; 
 rather, he has in the father the feeling of his own strength, 
 the consciousness of his own worth, the guarantee of his 
 existence, the certainty of the fulfilment of his wishes ; on 
 the father rests the burden of care ; the child, on the con- 
 trary, lives careless and happy in reliance on the father, his 
 visible guardian spirit, who desires nothing but the child's 
 welfare and happiness. The father makes the child an end, 
 and himself the means of its existence. The child, in ask- 
 ing something of its father, does not apply to him as a being 
 distinct from itself, a master, a person in general, but it 
 
 * Also, on subjective grounds, social prayer is more effectual than isolated 
 prayer. Community enhances the force of emotion, heightens confidence. 
 What we are unable to do alone we are able to do with others. The sense 
 of solitude is the sense of limitation : the sense of community is the sense 
 of freedom. Hence it is that men, when threatened by the destructive 
 powers of Nature, crowd together. "Multorum preces impossibile est, ut 
 non impetrent, linquit Ambrosius. . . . Sanctse orationis fervor qua'uto 
 inter plures coUectior tanto ardet diutius ac intensius cor divinum penetrat. 
 . Negatur singularitati, quod conceditur charitati." — Sacra Hist de 
 Gcntis Hebr. ortu. P. Paul. Mezger. Aug. Vind. 1700, pp. 66S, 669. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF PRAYER. 
 
 125 
 
 applies to him in so far as he is dependent on, and deter- 
 mined by his paternal feeling, his love for his child.* The 
 entreaty is only an expression of the force which the child 
 exercises over the father ; if, indeed, the word force is ap- 
 propriate here, since the force of the child is nothing more 
 than the force of the father's own heart. Speech has the 
 same form both for entreaty and command, namely, the 
 imperative. And the imperative of love has infinitely more 
 power than that of despotism. Love does not command ; 
 love needs but gently to intimate its wishes to be certain 
 of their fulfilment ; the despot must throw compulsion even 
 into the tones of his voice in order to make other beings, in 
 themselves uncaring for him, the executors of his wishes. 
 The imperative of love works with electro-magnetic power ; 
 that of despotism with the mechanical power of a wooden 
 telegraph. The most intimate epithet of God in prayer is 
 the word "Father;" the most intimate, because in it man 
 is in relation to the absolute nature as to his own ; the word 
 " Father " is the expression of the closest, the most intense 
 identity, — the expression in which lies the pledge that my 
 wishes will be fulfilled, the guarantee of my salvation. 
 The omnipotence to which man turns in prayer is nothing 
 but the Omnipotence of Goodness, which, for the sake of 
 the salvation of man, makes the impossible possible ; — is, 
 in truth, nothing else than the omnipotence of the heart, 
 of feeling, which breaks through all the limits of the un- 
 derstanding, which soars above all the boundaries of Nature, 
 which wills that there be nothing else than feeling, nothing 
 that contradicts the heart. Faith in omnipotence is faith 
 in the unreality of the external world, of objectivity, — faith 
 in the absolute reality of man's emotional nature : the 
 essence of omnipotence is simply the essence of feeling. 
 Omnipotence is the power before which no law, no external 
 condition, avails or subsists ; but this power is the emo- 
 tional nature, which feels every determination, every law, 
 to be a limit, a restraint, and for that reason dismisses it. 
 Omnipotence does nothing more than accomplish the will 
 of the feelings. In prayer man turns to the Omnipotence 
 of Goodness ; — which simply means, that in prayer man 
 adores his own heart, regards his own feelings as absolute. 
 
 * In the excellent work, Tlieanthropos, eine Reihe ron Aphorismen (Zurich, 
 1838), the idea of the sense of deiiendence, of omnipotence, of prayer, and 
 of love, is admirably developed. 
 
125 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF FAITH THE MYSTEEY OF MIRACLE. 
 
 Faith in the power of prayer — and only where a power, an 
 objective power, is ascribed to it, is prayer still a religious 
 truth — is identical with faith in miraculous power; and 
 faith in miracles is identical with the essence of faith in 
 general. Faith alone prays ; the prayer of faith is alone 
 effectual. But faith is nothing else than confidence in the 
 reality of the subjective in opposition to the limitations or 
 laws of Nature and reason, — that is, of natural reason. The 
 specific object of faith, therefore, is miracle ; faith is the 
 belief in miracle ; faith and miracle are absolutely insepar- 
 able. That which is objectively miracle or miraculous 
 power is subjectively faith ; miracle is the outward aspect 
 of faith, faith the inward soul of miracle ; faith is the mir- 
 acle of mind, the miracle of feeling, which merely becomes 
 objective in external miracles. To faith nothing is impos- 
 sible, and miracle only gives actuality^ to this omnipotence 
 of faith : miracles are but a visible example of what f alffi" 
 can effect. Unlimitedness, supernaturalness, exaltation of 
 feeling, — transcendence is therefore the essence of faith. 
 Faith has reference only to things which, in contradiction 
 with the limits or laws of Nature and reason, give objective 
 reality to human feelings and human desires. Faith unfetters 
 the wishes of subjectivity from the bonds of natural reason ; 
 it confers what Nature and reason deny ; hence it makes 
 man happy, for it satisfies his most personal wishes. And 
 true faith is discomposed by no doubt. Doubt arises only 
 where I go out of myself, overstep the bounds of my per- 
 sonality, concede reality and a right of suffrage to that which 
 is distinct from myself; — where I know myself to be a 
 subjective, i.e., a limited being, and seek to widen my limits 
 by admitting things external to myself. But in faith the 
 very principle of doubt is annulled ; for to faith the sub- 
 jective is in and by itself the objective — nay, the absolute. 
 Faith is nothing else than belief in the absolute reality of 
 subjectivity. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 127 
 
 " Faith is that courage in the heart which trusts for all 
 good to God. Such a faith, in M'hich the heart places its 
 reliance on God alone, is enjoined by God in the first com- 
 mandment, where he says, I am the Lord thy God. . . . 
 That is, I alone will be thy God ; thou sbalt seek no other 
 God ; I will help thee out of all trouble. Thou shalt not 
 think that I am an enemy to thee, and will not help thee. 
 When thou thinkest so, thou makest me in thine heart into 
 another God than I am. Wherefore hold it for certain that 
 I am willing to be merciful to thee." — " As thou behavest 
 thyself, so does God behave. If thou thinkest that he is 
 angry with thee, he is angry ; if thou thinkest that he is 
 unmerciful and will cast thee into hell, he is so. As thou 
 believest of God, so is he to thee." — " If thou believest it, 
 thou hast it ; but if thou believest not, thou hast none of 
 it." — " Therefore, as we believe so does it happen to us. If 
 we regard him as our God, he will not be our devil. But if 
 we regard him not as our God, then truly he is not our God, 
 but must be a consuming fire." — " By unbelief we make God 
 a devil." * Thus, if I believe in a God, I have a God, i.e., faith 
 in God is the God of man. If God is such, whatever it may 
 be, as I believe him, what else is the nature of God than the 
 nature of faith ? Is it possible for thee to believe in a God 
 who regards thee favourably, if thou dost not regard thyself 
 favourably, if thou despairest of man, if he is nothing to 
 thee ? What else then is the being of God but the being of 
 man, the absolute self-love of man ? If thou believest that 
 God is for thee, thou believest that nothing is or can be 
 against thee, that nothing contradicts thee. But if thou be- 
 lievest that nothing is or can be against thee, thou believest 
 — what ? — nothing less than that thou art God.f That God 
 is another being is only illusion, only imagination. In de- 
 claring that God is for thee, thou declarest that he is thy own 
 being. What then is faith but the infinite self-certainty of 
 man, the undoubting certainty that his ownsubjective being 
 is the objective, absolute being, the being of beings ? 
 
 * Luther (Th. xv. p. 282 ; Th. xvi. pp. 491-493)- ^ , ,. ^, 
 
 + "God is Almighty; but he who believes is a God." Luther (m Chr. 
 Kapps Christus u. die Wdtgeschichte, s. 'ii). In another place Luther calls 
 faith the "Creator of the Godhead ; " it is true that he immediately adds, 
 as he must necessarily do on his standpoint, the following limitation :— 
 "Not that it creates anything in the Divine Eternal Being, but that it 
 creates that Being in us" (Th. xi. p. 161). 
 
128 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Faith does not limit itself by the idea of a world, a universe, 
 a necessity. For faith there is nothing but God, i.e., limitless 
 subjectivity. Where faith rises the world sinks, nay, has 
 already sunk into nothing. Faith in the real annihilation 
 of the world — in an immediately approaching, a mentally 
 present annihilation of this world, a world antagonistic to 
 the wishes of the Christian, is therefore a phenomenon 
 belonging to the inmost essence of Christianity ; a faith 
 which is not properly separable from the other elements of 
 Christian belief, and with the renunciation of which, true, 
 positive Christianity is renounced and denied.* The essence 
 of faith, as may be confirmed by an examination of its 
 objects down to the minutest speciality, is the idea that that 
 which man wishes actually is : he wishes to be immortal, 
 therefore he is immortal ; he wishes for the existence of a 
 being who can do everything which is impossible to Nature 
 and reason, therefore such a being exists ; he wishes for a 
 world which corresponds to the desires of the heart, a world 
 of unlimited subjectivity, i.e., of unperturbed feeling, of 
 uninterrupted bliss, while nevertheless there exists a world 
 the opposite of that subjective one, and hence this world 
 must pass away, — as necessarily pass away as God, or 
 absolute subjectivity, must remain. Faith, love, hope, are 
 the Christian Trinity. Hope has relation to the fulfilment 
 of the promises, the wishes which are not yet fulfilled, but 
 which are to be fulfilled ; love has relation to the Beins; who 
 gives and fulfils these promises ; faith to the promises, the 
 wishes, which are already fulfilled, which are historical 
 facts. 
 
 Miracle is an essential object of Christianity, an essential 
 article of faith. But what is miracle 1 A supranaturalistic 
 
 * This "belief is so essential to the Bible, that without it the biblical 
 writers can scarcely be understood. The passage 2 Pet. iii. S, as is evident 
 from the tenor of the whole chapter, says nothing in opposition to an 
 immediate destruction of the world ; for though with the Lord a thousand 
 years are as one day, yet at the same time one day is as a thousand years, 
 and therefore the world may, even by to-morrow, no longer exist. That in 
 the Bible a very near end of the world is expected and prophesied, although 
 the day and hour are not determined, only falsehood or blindness can 
 deny. (See on this subject Liitzelberger.) Hence religious Christians, in 
 almost all times, have believed that the destruction of the world is near at 
 hand — Luther, for example, often says that " The last day is not far oif " 
 (e.g. , Th. xvi. p. 26) ; — or at least their souls have longed for the end of 
 the world, though they have prudently left it undecided whether it be near 
 or distant. See Augustin (de Fine Sajculi ad Hesychium, u. 13). 
 
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 129 
 
 wish realised — nothing more. The Apostle Paul illustrates 
 the nature of Christian faith by the example of Abraham. 
 Abraham could not, in a natural way, ever hope for pos- 
 terity ; Jehovah nevertheless promised it to him out of 
 special favour, and Abraham believed in spite of Nature. 
 Hence this faith was reckoned to him as righteousness, as 
 merit ; for it implies great force of subjectivity to accept as 
 certain something in contradiction witla experience, at least 
 with rational, normal experience. But what was the object 
 of this divine promise ? Posterity, the object of a human 
 wish. And in what did Abraham believe when he believed 
 in Jehovah ? In a Being who can do everything, and can 
 fulfil all wishes. " Is anything too hard for the Lord ? " * 
 
 But why do we go so far back as to Abraham ? We have 
 the most striking examples much nearer to us. Miracle 
 feeds the hungry, cures men born blind, deaf, and lame, 
 rescues from fatal diseases, and even raises the dead at the 
 prayer of relatives. Thus it satisiies human wishes, and 
 wishes which, though not always intrinsically like the wish 
 for the restoration of the dead, yet in so far as they appeal 
 to miraculous power, to miraculous aid, are transcendental, 
 supranaturalistic. But miracle is distinguished from that 
 mode of satisfying human wishes and needs which is in 
 accordance with Nature and reason, in this respect, that it 
 satisfies the wishes of men in a way corresponding to the 
 nature of wishes — in the most desirable way. Wishes 
 own no restraint, no law, no time ; they would be fulfilled 
 without delay on the instant. And behold ! miracle is as 
 rapid as a wish is impatient. Miraculous power realises 
 human wishes in a moment, at one stroke, withou.t any 
 hindrance. That the sick should become well is no miracle ; 
 but that they should become so immediately, at a mere 
 word of command, — that is the mystery of miracle. Thus 
 it is not in its product or object that miraculous agency is 
 distinguished from the agency of Nature and reason, but 
 only in its mode and process ; for if miraculous power were 
 to effect something absolutely new, never before beheld, 
 never conceived, or not even conceivable, it would be 
 practically proved to be an essentially different, and at the 
 same time objective, agency. But the agency which in 
 essence, in substance, is natural and accordant with the 
 * Gen. xviii. 14. 
 
 I 
 
130 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 forms of the senses, and which is supernatural, supersensual, 
 only in the mode or process, is the agency of the imagina- 
 tion. The power of miracle is therefore nothing else than 
 the power of the imagination. 
 
 Miraculous agency is agency directed to an end. The 
 yearning after the departed Lazarus, the desire of his rela- 
 tives to possess him again, was the motive of the miraculous 
 resuscitation ; the satisfaction of this wish, the end. It is 
 true that the miracle happened " for tlie glory of God, that 
 the Son of God might be glorified thereby ; " but the mes- 
 sage sent to the Master by the sisters of Lazarus, " Behold, 
 he whom thou lovest is sick," and the tears which Jesus 
 shed, vindicate for the miracle a human origin and end. The 
 meaning is : to that power which can awaken the dead no 
 human wish is impossible to accomplish.* And the glory 
 of the Son consists in this : that he is acknowledged and 
 reverenced as the being who is able to do what man is un- 
 able but wishes to do. Activity towards an end is well 
 known to describe a circle : in the end it returns upon its 
 beginning. But miraculous agency is distinguished from 
 the ordinary realisation of an object in that it realises the 
 end without means, that it effects an immediate identity of 
 the wish and its fulfilment ; that consequently it describes 
 a circle, not in a curved, but in a straight line, that is, the 
 shortest line. A circle in a straight line is the mathematical 
 symbol of miracle. The attempt to construct a circle with 
 a straight line would not be more ridiculous than the 
 attempt to deduce miracle philosophically. To reason, mir- 
 acle is absurd, inconceivable ; as inconceivable as wooden 
 iron or a circle without a peripliery. Before it is discussed 
 whether a miracle can happen, let it be shown that miracle, 
 i.e., the inconceivable, is conceivable. 
 
 What suggests to man the notion that miracle is conceiv- 
 
 oo 
 
 * " To the whole world it is impossible to raise the dead, but to the Lord 
 Christ, not onl)' is it not impossible, but it is no trouble or labour to him. 
 . . . This Christ did as a witness and a sign that he can and will raise 
 from death. He does it not at all times and to every one. . . It is 
 enough that he has done it a few times ; the rest he leaves to the last day." 
 — Luther (Th. xvi. p. 51S). The positive, essential significance of miracle 
 is therefore that the divine nature is the human nature. Miracles confirm, 
 authenticate doctrine. "What doctrine ? Simply this, that God is a Saviour 
 of men, their Redeemer out of all trouble, i.e., a being corresponding to the 
 wants and wishes of man, and therefore a human being. What the God- 
 man declares in words, miracle demonstrates ad ocidos by deeds. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 131 
 
 atle is tliat miracle is represented as an event perceptible 
 hj the senses, and hence man cheats his reason by material 
 images which screen the contradiction. The miracle of the 
 turning of water into wine, for example, implies in fact 
 nothing else than that water is wine, — nothing else than 
 that two absolutely contradictory predicates or subjects are 
 identical ; for in the hand of the miracle-worker there is no 
 distinction between the two substances ; the transformation 
 is only the visible appearance of this identity of two contra- 
 dictories. But the transformation conceals the contradic- 
 tion, because the natural conception of change is interposed. 
 Here, however, is no gradual, no natural, or, so to speak, 
 organic change ; but an absolute, immaterial one ; a pure 
 creatio ex nihilo. In the mysterious and momentous act of 
 miraculous power, in the act wliich constitutes the miracle, 
 water is suddenly and imperceptibly wine : which is equiva- 
 lent to saying that iron is wood, or wooden iron. 
 
 The miraculous act — and miracle is only a transient act — 
 is therefore not an object of thought, for it nullifies the very 
 principle of thought; but it is just as little an object of 
 sense, an object of real or even possible experience. Water 
 is indeed an object of sense, and wine also; I first see water 
 and then wine ; but the miracle itself, that which makes 
 this water suddenly wine, — this, not being a natural pro- 
 cess, but a pure perfect without any antecedent imperfect, 
 without any modus, without way or means, is no object of 
 real, or even of possible experience. Miracle is a thing of 
 the imagination ; and on that very account is it so agreeable : 
 for the imagination is the faculty which alone corresponds 
 to personal feeling, because it sets aside all limits, all laws 
 which are painful to the feelings, and thus makes objective 
 to man the immediate, absolutely unlimited satisfaction 
 of his subjective wishes." * Accordance with subjective 
 inclination is the essential characteristic of miracle. It is 
 true that miracle produces also an awful, agitating impres- 
 sion, so far as it expresses a power which nothing can resist, 
 — the power of the imagination. But this impression lies 
 only in the transient miraculous act ; the abiding, essential 
 
 * This satisfaction is certainly so far limited, that it is united to religion, 
 to faith in God : a remark which however is so obvious as to be superfluous. 
 But this limitation is in fact no limitation, for God himself is uuhmited, 
 absolutely satisfied, self-contented human feeling. 
 
132 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 impression is the agreeable one. At the moment in which 
 the beloved Lazarus is raised up, the surrounding relatives 
 and friends are awestruck at the extraordinary, almighty 
 power which transforms the dead into the living ; but soon 
 the relatives fall into the arms of the risen one, and lead 
 him with tears of joy to his home, there to celebrate a festi- 
 val of rejoicing. Miracle springs out of feeling, and has its 
 end in feeling. Even in the traditional representation it 
 does not deny its origin ; the representation which gratifies 
 the feelings is alone the adequate one. Who can fail to 
 recognise in the narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus the 
 tender, pleasing, legendary tone ? * Miracle is agreeable, 
 because, as has been said, it satisfies the wishes of man 
 without labour, without effort. Labour is unimpassioned, 
 unbelieving, rationalistic ; for man here makes his existence 
 dependent on activity directed to an end, which activity 
 again is itself determined solely by the idea of the objective 
 world. But feeling does not at all trouble itself about the 
 objective world ; it does not go out of or beyond itself ; it 
 is happy in itself. The element of culture, the Northern 
 principle of self-renunciation, is wanting to the emotional 
 nature. The Apostles and Evangelists were no scientifically 
 cultivated men. Culture, in general, is nothing else than 
 the exaltation of the individual above his subjectivity to 
 objective universal ideas, to the contemplation of the world. 
 The Apostles were men of the people ; the people live only 
 in themselves, in their feelings ; therefore Christianity took 
 possession of the people. Vox populi vox Dei. Did Chris- 
 tianity conquer a single philosopher, historian, or poet of 
 the classical period ? The philosophers who went over to 
 Christianity were feeble, contemptible philosophers. All 
 who had yet the classic spirit in them were hostile, or at 
 least indifferent to Christianity. The decline of culture 
 was identical with the victory of Christianity. The classic 
 spirit, the spirit of culture, limits itself by laws, — not indeed 
 by arbitrary, finite laws, but by inherently true and valid 
 ones ; it is determined by the necessity, the truth of the 
 
 * The legends of Catholicism — of course only the best, the really pleasing 
 ones — are, as it were, only the echo of the keynote which predominates in 
 this New Testament narrative. Miracle might be fitly defined as religious 
 humour. Catholicism especially has developed miracle on this its humorous 
 side. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 133 
 
 nature of things ; in a word, it is the objective spirit. In 
 place of this, there entered with Christianity the principle 
 of unlimited, extravagant, fanatical, supranaturalistic sub- 
 jectivity ; a principle intrinsically opposed to that of science, 
 of culture.* With Christianity man lost the capability of 
 conceiving himself as a part of Nature, of the universe. As 
 long as true, unfeigned, unfalsified, uncompromising Chris- 
 tianity existed, as long as Christianity was a living, practical 
 truth, so long did real miracles happen ; and they necessarily 
 happened, for faith in dead, historical, past miracles is itself 
 a dead faith, the first step towards unbelief, or rather the 
 first and therefore the timid, uncandid, servile mode in 
 which unbelief in miracle finds vent. But where miracles 
 happen, all definite forms melt in the golden haze of 
 imagination and feeling; there the world, reality, is no 
 truth ; there the miracle-working, emotional, i.e., subjective 
 being, is held to be alone the objective, real being. 
 
 To the merely emotional man the imagination is imme- 
 diately, without his willing or knowing it, the highest, the 
 dominant activity ; and being the highest, it is the activity 
 of God, the creative activity. To him feeling is an imme- 
 diate truth and reality ; he cannot abstract himself from his 
 feelings, he cannot get beyond them : and equally real is 
 his imagination. The imagination is not to him what it 
 is to us men of active understanding, who distinguish it 
 as subjective from objective cognition ; it is immediately 
 identical with himself, with his feelings ; and since it is 
 identical with his being, it is his essential, objective, neces- 
 sary view of things. For us, indeed, imagination is an 
 arbitrary activity; but where man has not imbibed the 
 principle of culture, of theory, where he lives and moves 
 only in his feelings, the imagination is an immediate, in- 
 voluntary activity. 
 
 The explanation of miracles by feeling and imagination 
 is regarded by many in the present day as superficial. But 
 let any one transport himself to the time when living, 
 present miracles were believed in; when the reality of 
 
 * Culture in the sense in which it is iiere taken. It is highly charac- 
 teristic of Christianity, and a popular proof of our positions, that the only 
 language in which the Divine Spirit was and is held to reveal himself in 
 Christianity is not the language of a Sophocles or a Plato, of art and 
 philosophy, but the vague, unformeJ, crudely emotional language of the 
 Bible. 
 
134 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 things witliout us was as yet no sacred article of faith; 
 when men were so void of any theoretic interest in the 
 world, that they from day to day looked forward to its 
 destruction ; when they lived only in the rapturous prospect 
 and hope of heaven, that is, in the imagination of it (for 
 whatever heaven may be, for them, so long as they were 
 on earth, it existed only in the imagination) ; when this 
 imagination was not a iiction but a truth, nay, the eternal, 
 alone abiding truth, not an inert, idle source of consolation, 
 but a practical moral principle determining actions, a prin- 
 ciple to which men joyfully sacrificed real life, the real 
 world with all its glories; — let him transport himself to 
 those times and he must himself be very superficial to pro- 
 nounce the psychological genesis of miracles superficial. 
 It is no valid objection that miracles have happened, or are 
 supposed to have happened, in the presence of whole assem- 
 blies : no man was independent, all were filled with exalted 
 supranatiiralistic ideas and feelings ; all were animated by 
 the same faith, the same hope, the same hallucinations. 
 And wlio does not know that there are common or similar 
 dreams, common or similar visions, especially among im- 
 passioned individuals who are closely united and restricted 
 to their own circle ? But be that as it may. If the explana- 
 tion of miracles by feeling and imagination is superficial, 
 the charge of superficiality falls not on the explainer, but 
 on that which he explains, namely, on miracle ; for, seen in 
 clear dayliglit, miracle presents absolutely nothing else than 
 the sorcery of the imagination, which satisfies without con- 
 tradiction all the wishes of the heart.* 
 
 * Many miracles may really have had originally a physical or physiological 
 phenomenon as their foundation. But we are here" considering only the 
 religious significance and genesis of miracle. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE MYSTEEY OF THE EESUKRECTION AND OF THE 
 MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION. 
 
 The quality of being agreeable to subjective inclination 
 belongs not only to practical miracles, in which it is con- 
 spicuous, as they have immediate reference to the interest 
 or wish of the human individual ; it belongs also to theo- 
 retical, or more properly dogmatic miracles, and hence to 
 the Eesurrection and the Miraculous Conception. 
 
 Man, at least in a state of ordinary well-being, has the 
 wish not to die. This wish is originally identical with the 
 instinct of self-preservation. Whatever lives seeks to main- 
 tain itself, to continue alive, and consequently not to die. 
 Subsequently, when reflection and feeling are developed 
 under the urgency of life, especially of social and political 
 life, this primary negative wish becomes the positive wish 
 for a life, and that a better life, after death. But this wish 
 involves the further wish for the certainty of its fulfilment. 
 Eeason can afford no such certainty. It has therefore been 
 said that all proofs of immortality are insufficient, and even 
 that unassisted reason is not capable of apprehending it, still 
 less of proving it. And with justice ; for reason furnishes 
 only general proofs ; it cannot give the certainty of any 
 personal immortality, and it is precisely this certainty which 
 is desired. Such a certainty requires an immediate personal 
 assurance, a practical demonstration. This can only be given 
 to me by the fact of a dead person, whose death has been 
 previously certified, rising again from the grave; and he must 
 be no indifferent person, but, on the contrary, the type and 
 representative of all others, so that his resurrection also may 
 be the type, the guarantee of theirs. The resurrection of 
 Christ is therefore the satisfied desire of man for an im- 
 mediate certainty of his personal existence after death, — 
 personal immortality as a sensible, indubitable fact. 
 
 Immortality was with the heathen philosophers a question 
 in which the personal interest was only a collateral point. 
 
136 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 They concerned themselves chiefly with the nature of the 
 soul, of mind, of the vital principle. The immortality of the 
 vital principle by no means involves the idea, not to mention 
 the certainty, of personal immortality. Hence the vague- 
 ness, discrepancy, and dubiousness with which the ancients 
 express themselves on this subject. The Christians, on the 
 contrary, in the undoubting certainty that their personal, 
 self-fiattering wishes will be fulfilled, i.e., in the certainty of 
 the divine nature of their emotions, the truth and unassail- 
 ableness of their subjective feelings, converted that which to 
 the ancients was a theoretic problem into an immediate fact, 
 — converted a theoretic, and in itself open question, into a 
 matter of conscience, the denial of which was equivalent to 
 the high treason of atheism. He who denies the resurrec- 
 tion denies the resurrection of Christ, but he who denies the 
 resurrection of Christ denies Christ himself, and he who 
 denies Christ denies G-od. Thus did "spiritual" Christianity 
 unspirituahse what was spiritual ! To the Christians the 
 immortality of the reason, of the soul, was far too abstract 
 and negative; they had at heart only a personal immortality, 
 such as would gratify their feelings, and the guarantee of 
 this lies in a bodily resurrection alone. The resurrection of 
 the body is the highest triumph of Christianity over the sub- 
 lime but certainly abstract spirituality and objectivity of the 
 ancients. For this reason the idea of the resurrection could 
 never be assimilated by the pagan mind. 
 
 As the Resurrection, which terminates the sacred history 
 (to the Christian not a mere history, but the truth itself), is 
 a realised wish, so also is that which commences it, namely, 
 the Miraculous Conception, though this has relation not so 
 much to an immediately personal interest as to a particular 
 subjective feeling. 
 
 The more man alienates himself from Nature, the more 
 subjective, i.e., supranatural or antinatural, is his view of 
 things, the greater the horror he has of Nature, or at least 
 of those natural objects and processes which displease his 
 imagination, which affect him disagreeably.* The free, objec- 
 
 "■ "If Adam had not fallen into sin, nothing would have been known of 
 the cruelty of wolves, lions, bears, &c., and there would not have been in 
 all creation anything vexatious and dangerous to man . . . ; no thorns, or 
 thistles, or diseases . . . ; his brow would not have been wrinkled ; no foot 
 
 or hand, or other member of the body would have been feeble or infirm." 
 
 " But now, since the Fall, we all know and feel what a fury lurks in our 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE RESURRECTION. 137 
 
 tive man doubtless finds things repugnant and distasteful in 
 Nature, but he regards them as natural, inevitable results, 
 and under this conviction he subdues his feeling as a merely 
 subjective and untrue one. On the contrary, the subjective 
 man, who lives only in the feelings and imagination, regards 
 these things with a quite peculiar aversion. He has the eye 
 of that unhappy foundling, who even in looking at the love- 
 liest flower could pay attention only to the little " black 
 beetle " which crawled over it, and who by this perversity of 
 perception had his enjoyment in the sight of flowers always 
 embittered. Moreover, the subjective man makes his feelings 
 the measure, the standard of what ought to be. That which 
 does not please him, which offends his transcendental, supra- 
 natural, or antinatural feelings, ought not to be. Even if 
 that which pleases him cannot exist without being associated 
 with that which displeases him, the subjective man is not 
 guided by the wearisome laws of logic and physics, but by 
 the self-will of the imagination; hence he drops what is dis- 
 agreeable in a fact, and holds fast alone what is agreeable. 
 Thus the idea of the pure, holy Virgin pleases him ; still he 
 is also pleased with the idea of the Mother, but only of the 
 Mother who already carries the infant on her arms. 
 
 Virginity in itself is to him the highest moral idea, the 
 cornu copim of his supranaturalistic feelings and ideas, his 
 personified sense of honour and of shame before common 
 nature.* Nevertheless, there stirs in his bosom a natural 
 feeling also, the compassionate feeling which makes the 
 Mother beloved. What then is to be done in this difficulty 
 of the heart, in this conflict between a natural and a supra- 
 
 flesh, which not only burns and rages with lust and desire, but also loathes, 
 when once obtained, the very thing it has desired. But this is the fault of 
 original sin, which has polluted all creatures ; wherefore I believe that 
 before the Fall the sun was much brighter, water much clearer, and the 
 land much richer, and luller of all sorts of plants." — Luther (Th. i. s. 322, 
 
 323, 329, 337)- . 
 
 * "Tantum denique abest ineesti cupido, ut nonnulbs rubon sit etiam 
 pudica conjunctio." — M. Felicis, Oct. c. 31. One Father was so extraordi- 
 narily chaste that he had never seen a woman's face, nay, he dreaded even 
 touching himself, " se quoque ipsum attingere quodammodo horrebat." 
 Another Father had so hne an olfactory sense in this matter, that on the 
 approach of an unchaste person he perceived an insupportable odour. "^- 
 Bayle (Diet. Art. Mariana Eem. C). But the supreme, the divine prin- 
 ciple of this hyperphysical delicacy is the Virgin Mary ; hence the Catho- 
 lics name her Virginum Gloria, Virginitatis corona, Virginitatis typus et 
 forma puritatis, Virginum vexillifera, Virginitatis magistra, Virginum 
 prima, Virginitatis priraiceria. 
 
I3S THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 natural feeling ? The supranaturalist must unite the two, 
 must comprise in one and the same subject two predicates 
 which exclude each other * Oh, what a plenitude of agree- 
 able, sweet, supersensual, sensual emotions lies in this com- 
 bination ! 
 
 Here we have the key to the contradiction in Catholicism, 
 that at the same time marriage is holy and celibacy is holy. 
 This simply realises, as a practical contradiction, the dog- 
 matic contradiction of the Virgin Mother. But this wondrous 
 union of virginity and maternity, contradicting Nature and 
 reason, but in the highest degree accordant with the feelings 
 and imagination, is no product of Catholicism ; it lies already 
 in the twofold part which marriage plays in the Bible, 
 especially in the view of the Apostle Paul. The super- 
 natural conception of Christ is a fundamental doctrine of 
 Christianity, a doctrine which expresses its inmost dogmatic 
 essence, and which rests on the same foundation as all other 
 miracles and articles of faith. As death, which the philo- 
 sopher, the man of science, the free objective thinker in 
 general, accepts as a natural necessity, and as indeed all 
 the limits of nature, which are impediments to feeling, but 
 to reason are rational laws, were repugnant to the Christians, 
 and were set aside by them through the supposed agency 
 of miraculous power ; so, necessarily, they had an equal 
 repugnance to the natural process of generation, and super- 
 seded it by miracle. The Miraculous Conception is not less 
 welcome than the Eesurrection to all believers ; for it was 
 the first step towards the purification of mankind, polluted 
 by sin and Nature. Only because the God-man was not 
 infected with original sin, could he, the pure one, purify 
 mankind in the eyes of God, to whom the natural process 
 of generation was an object of aversion, because he himself 
 is nothing else but supranatural feeling. 
 
 Even the arid Protestant orthodoxy, so arbitrary in its 
 criticism, regarded the conception of the God-producing 
 Virgin as a great, adorable, amazing, holy mystery of faith, 
 transcending reasou.f But with the Protestants, who con- 
 
 * " Salve sancta parens, enixa puerpera Kegem, 
 Gaiidia matris habens cum virginitatis honore." 
 
 Theol. Scliol. Mezger. t. iv. p. 132. 
 + See c.rj. J. D. AVinckler, Philolog. Lactant. s. Bruusvigaj, 1754, pp. 
 
 247-254. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE RESURRECTION. 139 
 
 fined the speciality of the Christian to the domain of faith, 
 and with whom, in life, it was allowable to be a man, even 
 this mystery had only a dogmatic, and no longer a practical 
 significance ; they did not allow it to interfere with their 
 desire of marriage. With the Catholics, and with all the 
 old, uncompromising, uncritical Christians, that which was 
 a mystery of faith was a mystery of life, of morality. * 
 Catholic morality is Christian, mystical ; Protestant morality 
 was, in its very beginning, rationalistic. Protestant morality 
 is and was a carnal mingling of the Christian with the 
 man, the natural, political, civil, social man, or whatever 
 else he may be called in distinction from the Christian ; 
 Catholic morality cherished in its heart the mystery of the 
 unspotted virginity. Catholic morality was the Mater 
 dolorosa; Protestant morality a comely, fruitful matron. 
 Protestantism is from beginning to end the contradiction 
 between faith and love ; for which very reason it has been 
 the source, or at least the condition, of freedom. Just 
 because the mystery of the Virgo Beipara had with the 
 Protestants a place only in theory, or rather in dogma, and 
 no longer in practice, they declared that it was impossible 
 to express oneself with sufficient care and reserve concern- 
 ing it, and tliat it ought not to be made an object of specu- 
 lation. That whicli is denied in practice has no true basis 
 and durability in man, is a mere spectre of the mind ; and 
 hence it is withdrawn from the investigation of the under- 
 standing. Ghosts do not brook daylight. 
 
 Even the later doctrine (which, however, had been already 
 enunciated in a letter to St. Bernard, who rejects it), that 
 Mary herself was conceived without taint of original sin, is 
 by no means a "strange school-bred doctrine," as it is called 
 by a modern historian. That which gives birth to a miracle, 
 which brings forth God, must itself be of miraculous divine 
 origin or nature. How could Mary have had the honour of 
 being overshadowed by the Holy Ghost if she had not been 
 from the first pure ? Could the Holy Ghost take up his 
 abode in a body polluted by original sin ? If the principle 
 of Christianity, the miraculous birth of the Saviour, does 
 not appear strange to you, why think strange the naive, 
 well-meaning inferences of Catholicism ? 
 
 * See on tliis subject Philos. unci Christenthum, by L. Feuerbach. 
 
I40 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE MYSTEEY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST, OR THE PERSONAL 
 
 GOD. 
 
 The fundamental dogmas of Christianity are realised wishes 
 of the heart; — the essence of Christianity is the essence of 
 human feeling. It is pleasanter to be passive than to act, 
 to be redeemed and made free by another than to free one- 
 self; pleasanter to make one's salvation dependent on a 
 person than on the force of one's own spontaneity ; plea- 
 santer to set before oneself an object of love than an object 
 of effort ; pleasanter to know oneself beloved by God than 
 merely to have that simple, natural self-love which is innate 
 in all beings ; pleasanter to see oneself imaged in the love- 
 beaming eyes of another personal being, than to look into 
 the concave mirror of self or into the cold depths of the 
 ocean of Nature ; pleasanter, in short, to allow oneself to be 
 acted on by one's own feeling, as by another, but yet funda- 
 mentally identical being, than to regulate oneself by reason. 
 Feeling is the oblicjue case of the ego, the ego in the accusa- 
 tive. The ego of Fichte is destitute of feeling, because the 
 accusative is the same as the nominative, because it is 
 indeclinable. But feeling or sentiment is the ego acted on 
 by itself, and by itself as another being, — the passive ego. 
 Feeling changes the active in man into the passive, and the 
 passive into the active. To feeling, that which thinks is the 
 thing thought, and the thing thought is that which thinks. 
 Feeling is the dream of Nature ; and there is nothing more 
 blissful, nothing more profound than dreaming. But what 
 is dreaming ? The reversing of the waking consciousness. 
 In dreaming, the active is the passive, the passive the active ; 
 in dreaming, I take the spontaneous action of my own mind 
 for an action upon me from without, my emotions for events, 
 my conceptions and sensations for true existences apart from 
 myself. I suffer what I also perform. Dreaming is a double 
 refraction of the rays of light ; hence its indescribable charm. 
 It is the same ego, the same being in dreaming as in wakin" ; 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 
 
 141 
 
 the only distinction is, that in waking, the efjo acts on itself; 
 whereas in dreaming it is acted on by itself as by another 
 being. I think myself — is a passionless, rationalistic posi- 
 tion ; lam thought by God, and think myself only as thought 
 by God — is a position pregnant with feeling, religious. Feel- 
 ing is a dream with the eyes open ; religion the dream of 
 waking consciousness : dreaming is the key to the mysteries 
 of religion. 
 
 The highest law of feeling is the immediate unity of will 
 and deed, of wishing and reality. This law is fulfilled by 
 the Eedeemer. As external miracles, in opposition to natural 
 activity, realise immediately the physical wants and wishes 
 of man ; so the Eedeemer, the Mediator, the God-man, in 
 opposition to the moral spontaneity of the natural or rational- 
 istic man, satisfies immediately the inward moral wants and 
 wishes, since he dispenses man on his own side from any 
 intermediate activity. What thou wishest is already effected. 
 Thou desirest to win, to deserve happiness. Morality is the 
 condition, the means of happiness. But thou canst not fulfil 
 this condition; that is, in truth, thou needest not. That 
 which thou seekest to do has already been done. Thou hast 
 only to be passive, thou needest only believe, only enjoy. 
 Thou desirest to make God favourable to thee, to appease 
 his anger, to be at peace with thy conscience. But this 
 peace exists already ; this peace is the Mediator, the God- 
 man. He is thy appeased conscience ; he is the fulfilment 
 of the law, and therewith the fulfilment of thy own wish 
 and effort. 
 
 Therefore it is no longer the law, but the fulfiller of the 
 law, who is the model, the guiding thread, the rule of thy 
 life. He who fulfils the law annuls the law. The law has 
 authority, has validity, only in relation to him who violates 
 it. But he who perfectly fulfils the law says to it : What 
 thou wiliest I spontaneously will, and what thou com- 
 mandest I enforce by deeds ; my life is the true, the living 
 law. The fulfiller of the law, therefore, necessarily steps 
 into the place of the law ; moreover he becomes a new law, 
 one whose yoke is light and easy. For in place of the merely 
 imperative law, he presents himself as an example, as an 
 object of love, of admiration and emulation, and thus be- 
 comes the Saviour from sin. The law does not give me the 
 power to fulfil the law ; no ! it is hard and merciless ; it only 
 
142 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 commands, without troubling itself whether I can fulfil it, 
 or how I am to f uiai it ; it leaves me to myself, without 
 counsel or aid. But he who presents himself to me as an 
 example lights up my path, takes me by the hand, and im- 
 parts to me his own strength. The law lends no power of 
 resisting sin, but example works miracles. The law is dead ; 
 but example animates, inspires, carries men involuntarily 
 along with it. The law speaks only to the understanding, 
 and sets itself directly in opposition to the instincts; 
 example, on the contrary, appeals to a powerful instinct 
 immediately connected with the activity of the senses, that 
 of involuntary imitation. Example operates on the feelings 
 and imagination. In short, example has magical, i.e., sense- 
 affecting powers ; for the magical or involuntary force of 
 attraction is an essential property, as of matter in general, 
 so in particular of that which affects the senses. 
 
 The ancients said that if virtue could become visible, its 
 beauty would win and inspire all hearts. The Christians 
 were so happy as to see even this wish fulfilled. The 
 heathens had an unwritten, the Jews a written law ; the 
 Christians had a model — a visible, personal, living law, a 
 law made flesh. Hence the joyfulness especially of the 
 primitive Christians, hence the glory of Christianity that it 
 alone contains and bestows the power to resist sin. And 
 this glory is not to be denied it. Only, it is to be observed 
 that the power of the exemplar of virtue is not so much the 
 power of virtue as the power of example in general ; just 
 as the power of religious music is not the power of religion, 
 but the power of music ; * and that therefore, though the 
 image of virtue has virtuous actions as its consequences, 
 these actions are destitute of the dispositions and motives 
 of virtue. But this simple and true sense of the redeem- 
 ing and reconciling power of example in distinction from 
 the power of law, to which we have reduced the antithesis of 
 the law and Christ, by no means expresses the full religious 
 significance of the Christian redemption and reconciliation. 
 In this everything reduces itself to the personal power of 
 
 * In relation to this, the confession of Augustine is interesting : " Ita 
 fluctuo inter periculum voluptatis et experimentum salubritatis : magisque 
 adducor . cantandi consuetudinem approbare in ecclesia, ut per oblecta- 
 meuta aurium intirmior animus in affectum pietatis assurgat. Tameu cum 
 milri acciilit, ut nos amplius cantus, quam res quaj canitur moveat, pcenali- 
 ter me peccare confiteor." — Confess. 1. x. c. 33. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 143 
 
 that miraculous intermediate being who is neither God alone 
 nor man alone, but a man who is also God, and a Ggd who 
 is also man, and who can therefore only be comprehended 
 in connection with the significance of miracle. In this, the 
 miraculous Eedeemer is nothing else than the realised wish 
 of feeling to be free from the laws of morality, i.e., from the 
 conditions to which virtue is united in the natural course of 
 things ; the realised wish to be freed from moral evils instan- 
 taneously, immediately, by a stroke of magic, that is, in an 
 absolutely subjective, agreeable way. " The word of God," 
 says Lutlier, for example, " accomplishes all things swiftly, 
 brings forgiveness of sins, and gives thee eternal life, and 
 costs nothing more than that thou shouldst hear the word, 
 and when thou hast heard it shouldst believe. If thou be- 
 lievest, thou hast it without pains, cost, delay, or difificulty." * 
 But that hearing of the word of God which is followed by 
 faith is itself a " gift of God." Thus faith is nothing else 
 than a psychological miracle, a supernatural operation of 
 God in man, as Luther likewise says. But man becomes 
 free from sin and from the consciousness of guilt only 
 through faith, — morality is dependent on faith, the virtues 
 of the heathens are only splendid sins ; thus he becomes 
 morally free and good only through miracle. 
 
 That the idea of miraculous power is one with the idea of 
 the intermediate being, at once divine and human, has his- 
 torical proof in the fact that the miracles of the Old Testa- 
 ment, the delivery of the law, providence — all the elements 
 which constitute the essence of religion, were in the later 
 Judaism attributed to the Logos. In Philo, however, this 
 Logos still hovers in the air between heaven and earth, now 
 as abstract, now as concrete ; that is, Philo vacillates be- 
 tween himself as a philosopher and himself as a religious 
 Israelite — -between the positive element of religion and the 
 metaphysical idea of deity; but in such a way that even 
 the abstract element is with him more or less invested with 
 imaginative forms. In Christianity this Logos first attained 
 perfect consistence, i.e., religion now concentrated itself ex- 
 clusively on that element, that object, which is the basis of 
 its essential difference. The Logos is the personified essence 
 of religion. Hence the definition of God as the essence of 
 feeling has its complete truth only in the Logos. 
 
 * Th. xvi. p. 490. 
 
144 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 God as God is feeling as yet sliut up, hidden ; only Christ 
 is the unclosed, open feeling or heart. In Christ feeling is 
 first perfectly certain of itself, and assured beyond doubt of 
 the truth and divinity of its own nature ; for Christ denies 
 nothing to feeling ; he fulfils all its prayers. In God the 
 soul is°still silent as to what affects it most closely,— it only 
 sighs; but in Christ it speaks out fully; here it has no 
 longer any reserves. To him who only sighs, wishes are 
 still attended with disquietude ; he rather complains that 
 what he wishes is not, than openly, positively declares what 
 he wishes ; he is still in doubt whether his wishes have the 
 force of law. But in Christ all anxiety of the soul vanishes ; 
 he is the sighing soul passed into a song of triumph over its 
 complete satisfaction ; he is the joyful certainty of feeling 
 that its wishes hidden in God have truth and reality, the 
 actual victory over death, over all the powers of the world 
 and Nature, the resurrection no longer merely hoped for, 
 but already accomplished ; he is the heart released from all 
 oppressive limits, from all sufferings, — the soul in perfect 
 blessedness, the Godhead made visible.* 
 
 To see God is the highest wish, the highest triumph of 
 the heart. Christ is this wish, this triumph, fulfilled. God, 
 as an object of thought only, i.e., God as God, is always a 
 remote being ; the relation to him is an abstract one, like 
 that relation of friendship in which we stand to a man who 
 is distant from us, and personally unknown to us. However 
 his works, the proofs of love which he gives us, may make 
 his nature present to us, there alwaj's remains an unfilled 
 void, — the heart is unsatisfied, we long to see him. So long 
 as we have not met a being face to face, we are always in 
 doubt whether he be really such as we imagine him ; actual 
 presence alone gives final confidence, perfect repose. Christ 
 
 * "Because GoJ lias given us his Son, he has with him given us every- 
 thing, whether it be called devil, sin, hell, heaven, righteousness, life ; all, 
 all must be ours, because the Son is ours as a gift, in whom all else is 
 included." — Luther (Th. xv. p. 311). ''The best pai-t of the resurrection 
 has already happened ; Christ, the head of all Christendom, has passed 
 through death and risen from the dead. Moreover, the most excellent 
 part of me, my soul, has likewise passed through death, and is with Christ 
 in the heavenly being. What harm, then, can death and the grave do 
 me?" — Luther (Th. xvi. p. 235). "A Christian man has equal power 
 with Christ, has fellowship with him and u, common tenure." (Th. xiii. 
 p. 648.) "Whoever cleaves to Christ has as much as he." (Th. xvi. 
 P- 574) 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 145 
 
 is God known personally ; Christ, therefore, is the blessed 
 certainty that God is what the soul desires and needs him 
 to be. God, as the object of prayer, is indeed already a 
 human being, since he sympathises with human misery, 
 grants human wishes ; but still he is not yet an object to 
 the religious consciousness as a real man. Hence, only in 
 Christ is the last wish of religion realised, the mystery of 
 religious feeling solved : — solved however in the language of 
 imagery proper to religion, for what God is in essence, that 
 Christ is in actual appearance. So far the Christian religion 
 may justly be called the absolute religion. That God, who 
 in himself is nothing else than the nature of man, should 
 also have a real existence as such, should be as man an 
 object to the consciousness — this is the goal of religion; 
 and this the Christian religion has attained in the incarna- 
 tion of God, which is by no means a transitory act, for 
 Christ remains man even after his ascension, — man in heart 
 and man in form, only that his body is no longer an earthly 
 one, liable to suffering. 
 
 The incarnations of the Deity with the Orientals — the 
 Hindoos, for example — have no such intense meaning as^the 
 Christian incarnation ; just because they happen often they 
 become indifferent, they lose their value. The manhood of 
 God is his personality ; the proposition, God is a personal 
 being, means : God is a human being, God is a man. Person- 
 ality is an abstraction, which has reality only in an actual 
 man.* The idea which lies at the foundation of the incarna- 
 tions of God is therefore infinitely better conveyed by one 
 incarnation, one personality. "Where God appears in several 
 persons successively, these personalities are evanescent. What 
 is required is a permanent, an exclusive personality. Where 
 there are many incarnations, room is given for innumerable 
 others ; the imagination is not restrained ; and even those 
 incarnations which are already real pass into the category 
 ■of the merely possible and conceivable, into the category of 
 fancies or of mere appearances. But where one personality 
 is exclusively believed in and contemplated, this at once 
 
 * This exhibits clearly the untruthfulness and vanity of the modern 
 speculations concerning the personality of God. If you are not ashamed 
 of a personal God, do not be ashamed of a corporeal God. An abstract 
 colourless personality, a personality without flesh and blood, is an empty 
 shade. 
 
 K 
 
146 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 impresses with the power of an historical personality; 
 imagination is done away with, the freedom to imagine 
 others is renounced. This one personality presses on me 
 the belief in its reality. The characteristic of real person- 
 ality is precisely exclusiveness, — the Leibnitzian principle 
 of distinction, namely, that no one existence is exactly like 
 another. The tone", the emphasis, with which the one 
 personality is expressed, produces such an effect on the 
 feelings, that it presents itself immediately as a real one, 
 and is converted from an object of the imagination into an 
 object of historical knowledge. 
 
 Longing is the necessity of feeling, and feeling longs for 
 a personal God. But this longing after the personality of 
 God is true, earnest, and profound only when it is the 
 longing for one personality, wdien it is satisfied with one. 
 With the plurality of persons the truth of the want 
 vanishes, and personality becomes a mere luxury of the 
 imagination. But that which operates with the force of ne- 
 cessity, operates with the force of reality on m an. That which 
 to the feelings is a necessary being, is to them immediately 
 a real being. Longing says : There must be a personal God, 
 i.e., it cannot be that there is not; satisfied feeling says : He is. 
 The "uarautee of his existence lies for feeling in its sense 
 of the necessity of his existence the necessity of the satis- 
 faction in the force of the want. Kecessitj' knows no law 
 besides itself ; necessity breaks iron. Feeling knows no 
 other necessity than its own, than the necessity of feeling, 
 than longing; it holds in extreme horror the necessity of 
 Nature, the necessity of reason. Thus to feeling, a subjec- 
 tive, sympathetic, personal God is necessary ; but it demands 
 one personality alone, and this an historical, real one. Only 
 when it is satisfied in the unity of personality has feeling 
 any concentration ; plurality dissipates it. 
 
 But as the truth of personality is unity, and as the truth 
 of unity is reality, so the truth of real personality is — ilood. 
 The last proof, announced with peculiar emphasis by the 
 author of the fourth Gospel, that the visible person of God 
 was no phantasm, no illusion, but a real man, is that blood 
 flowed from his side on the cross. If the personal God has 
 a true sympathy with distress, he must himself suffer dis- 
 tress. Only in his suffering lies the assurance of his reality ; 
 only on this depends the impressiveness of the incarnation. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 147 
 
 To see God does not satisfy feeling ; the eyes give no 
 sufficient guarantee. The truth of vision is confirmed only 
 by touch. But as subjectively touch, so objectively the 
 capability of being touched, palpability, passibility, is the 
 last criterion of reality ; hence the passion of Christ is the 
 highest confidence, the highest self-enjoyment, the highest 
 consolation of feeling ; for only in the blood of Christ is 
 the thirst for a personal, that is, a human, sympathising, 
 tender God allayed. 
 
 " "Wherefore we hold it to be a pernicious error when 
 such (namely, divine) majesty is taken away from Christ 
 according to his manhood, thereby depriving Christians of 
 their highest consolation, which they have in . . . the pro- 
 mise of the presence of their Head, King and High Priest, 
 who has promised them that not his mere Godhead, which 
 to us poor sinners is as a consuming fire to dry stubble, 
 but he — he the Man^who has spoken with us, who has 
 proved all sorrows in the human form which he took upon 
 him, who therefore can have fellow-feeling with us as his 
 brethren, — that he will be with us in all our need, according 
 to the nature whereby he is our brother and we are flesh of 
 his flesh." * 
 
 It is superficial to say that Christianity is not the religion 
 of one personal God, but of three personalities. These 
 three personalities have certainly an existence in dogma ; 
 but even there the personality of the Holy Spirit is only 
 an arbitrary decision which is contradicted by impersonal 
 definitions ; as, for example, that the Holy Spirit is the gift 
 of the Father and Son.-|- Already the very " procession " 
 of the Holy Ghost presents an evil prognostic for his per- 
 sonality, for a personal being is produced only by generation, 
 not by an indefinite emanation or by spiratio. And even the 
 rather, as the representative of the rigorous idea of the God- 
 head, is a personal being only according to opinion and asser- 
 tion, not according to his definitions ; he is an abstract idea, 
 a purely rationalistic being. Only Christ is the plastic per- 
 sonality. To personality belongs form ; form is the reality 
 
 * Concordienb. Erklar. Art. 8. 
 
 t This was excellently shown by Faustus Socinns. See his Defens. Ani- 
 madv. in Assert. Theol. Coll. Posnan. de trino et uuo Deo. Irenopoli, 1656, 
 
,4S THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 of personality. Christ alone is the personal God ; he is 
 the real God of Christians, a truth which cannot be too often 
 repeated.* In him alone is concentrated the Christian 
 religion, the essence of religion in general. He alone 
 meets the longing for a personal God; he alone is an 
 existence identical with the nature of feeling ; on him alone 
 are heaped all the joys of the imagination, and all the suffer- 
 ings of the heart ; in him alone are feeling and imagination 
 exhausted. Christ is the blending in one of feeling and 
 imagination. 
 
 Christianity is distinguished from other religions by this, 
 that in other religions the heart and imagination are di^dded, 
 in Christianity they coincide. Here the imagination does not 
 wander, left to itself ; it follows the leadings of the heart ; it 
 describes a circle, whose centre is feeling. Imagination is 
 here limited by the wants of the heart, it only realises the 
 wishes of feeling, it has reference only to the one thing 
 needful ; in brief, it has, at least generally, a practical, con- 
 centric tendency, not a vagrant, merely poetic one. The 
 miracles of Christianity — no product of free, spontaneous 
 activity, but conceived in the bosom of yearning, necessi- 
 tous feeling — place us immediately on the ground of com- 
 mon, real life'; they act on the emotional man with irresistible 
 force, because they have the necessity of feeling on their 
 side. The power of imagination is here at the same time 
 the power of the heart, — imagination is only the victorious, 
 triumphant heart. AVith the Orientals, with the Greeks, 
 imagination, untroubled by the wants of the heart, revelled 
 
 * Let tlie reader examine, with reference to this, the writings of the 
 Christian ortliodox theologians against the heterodox ; for example, against 
 the Socinians. Modern theologians, indeed, agree with the latter, as is well 
 known, in pronouncing the divinity of Christ as accepted by the Church 
 to be unbiblical ; but it is undeniably the characteristic principle of Chris- 
 tianity, and eyen if it does not stand in the Bible in the form wdiich is 
 given to it by dogma, it is nevertheless a necessary conseq^uence of what is 
 found in the Bible. A being who is the fulness of the Godhead bodily, 
 who is omniscient (John xvi. 30) and almighty (raises the dead, works 
 miracles), who is before all things, both in time and rank, wlio has life in 
 himself (though an imparted life) like as the Father has life in himself, — 
 what, if we follow out the consequences, can such a being be, but God ? 
 " Christ is one with the Father in will ; " — but unity of will presupposes 
 unity of nature. " Christ is the ambassador, the representative of God ; " — 
 but God can only be represented by a divine being. I can only choose as 
 my representative one in whom I find the same or similar equalities as in 
 myself; otherwise I belie myself. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 149 
 
 in the enjoyment of eartlily splendour and glory ; in Chris- 
 tianity, it descended from the palace of the gods into the 
 abode of poverty, where only want rules, — it humbled itself 
 under the sway of the heart. But the more it limited itself 
 in extent, the more intense became its strength. The wan- 
 tonness of the Olympian gods could not maintain itself 
 before the rigorous necessity of the heart ; but imagination 
 is omnipotent when it has a bond of union with the heart. 
 And this bond between the freedom of the imagination and 
 the necessity of the heart is Christ. All things are subject 
 to Christ ; he is the Lord of the world, who does with it 
 what he will ; but this unlimited power over Nature is 
 itself again subject to the power of the heart ; — Christ com- 
 mands raging Nature to be still, but only that he may hear 
 the sighs of the needy. 
 
I50 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN CIIEISTIANITY AND HEATHENISH. 
 
 Christ is the omnipotence of subjectivity, the heart released 
 from all the bonds and laws of Nature, the soul excluding 
 the world, and concentrated only on itself, the reality of all 
 the heart's wishes, the Easter festival of the heart, the ascent 
 to heaven of the imagination : — Christ therefore is the dis- 
 tinction of Christianity from heathenism. 
 
 In Christianity, man was concentrated only on himself, he 
 unlinked himself from the chain of sequences in the system 
 of the universe, he made himself a self-sufficing whole, an 
 absolute, extra- and supra-mundane being. Because he no 
 longer regarded himself as a being immanent in the world, 
 because he severed himself from connection with it, he felt 
 himself an unlimited being — (for the sole limit of subjec- 
 tivity is the world, is objectivity), — he had no longer any 
 reason to doubt the truth and validity of his subjective 
 wishes and feelings. 
 
 The heathens, on the contrary, not shutting out Nature 
 by retreating within themselves, limited their subjectivity 
 by the contemplation of the world. Highly as the ancients 
 estimated the intelligence, the reason, they were yet liberal 
 and objective enough, theoretically as well as practically, to 
 allow that which they distinguished from mind, namely, 
 matter, to live, and even to live eternally ; the Christians 
 evinced their theoretical as well as practical intolerance in 
 their belief that they secured the eternity of their subjective 
 life only by annihilating, as in the doctrine of the destruc- 
 tion of the world, the opposite of subjectivity — Nature. The 
 'ancients were free from themselves, but their freedom was 
 that of indifference towards themselves ; the Christians were 
 free from Nature, but their freedom was not that of reason, 
 not true freedom, which limits itself by the contemplation 
 of the world, by Nature, — it was the freedom of feeling and 
 imagination, the freedom of miracle. The ancients were so 
 enraptured by the cosmos, that tliey lost sight of themselves, 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 151 
 
 suffered themselves to be merged in the whole; the Christians 
 despised the world ; — what is the creature compared with the 
 Creator ? what are sun, moon, and earth compared with the 
 human soul ? * The world passes away, but man, nay, the 
 individual, personal man, is eternal. If the Christians severed 
 man from all community with Nature, and hence fell into 
 the extreme of an arrogant fastidiousness, which stigmatised 
 the remotest comparison of man with the brutes as an im- 
 pious violation of human dignity ; the heathens, on the other 
 hand, fell into the opposite extreme, into that spirit of de- 
 preciation which abolishes the distinction between man and 
 the brute, or even, as was the case, for example, with Celsus, 
 the opponent of Christianity, degrades man beneath the 
 brute. 
 
 But the heathens considered man not only in connection 
 with the universe ; they considered the individual man, 
 in connection with other men, as meniber of a common-' 
 wealth. They rigorously distinguished the individual from 
 the species, the individual as a part from the race as a whole, 
 and they subordinated the part to the whole. Men pass 
 away, but mankind remains, says a heathen philosopher. 
 " Why wilt thou grieve over the loss of thy daughter ? " 
 writes Sulpicius to Cicero. "Great, renowned cities and 
 empires have passed away, and thou behavest thus at the 
 death of an homunculus, a little human being ! Where is 
 thy philosophy ? " The idea of man as an individual was 
 to the ancients a secondary one, attained through the idea 
 of the species. Though they thought highly of the race, 
 highly of the excellences of mankind, highly and sublimely 
 of the intelligence, they nevertheless thought slightly of the 
 individual. Christianity, on the contrary, cared nothing for 
 the species, and had only the individual in its eye and mind. 
 Christianity — not, certainly, the Christianity of the present 
 day, which has incorporated with itself the culture of hea- 
 thenism, and has preserved only the name and some general 
 positions of Christianity — is the direct opposite of heathen- 
 ism, and only when it is regarded as such is it truly com- 
 
 * " How much better is it that I should lose the whole world than that 
 I should lose God, who created the world, and can create innumerable 
 worlds, who is better than a hundred thousand, than innumerable worlds ? 
 For what sort of a comparison is that of the temporal with the eternal ? 
 . . . One soul is better than the whole world." — Luthor (Th. xix. p. 21). 
 
152 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 prehended, and untravestied by arbitrary speculative inter- 
 pretation ; it is true so far as its opposite is false, and false 
 so far as its opposite is true. The ancients sacrificed the 
 individual to the species; the Christians sacrificed the 
 species to the individual Or, heathenism conceived the 
 individual only as a part in distinction from the whole of 
 the species; Christianity, on the contrary, conceived the 
 individual only in immediate, undistinguishable unity with 
 the species. 
 
 To Christianity the individual was the object of an imme- 
 diate providence, that is, an immediate object of the Divine 
 Being. The heathens believed in a providence for the indi- 
 vidual only through his relation to the race, through law, 
 through the order of the world, and thus only in a mediate, 
 natural, and not miraculous providence ; * but the Christians 
 left out the intermediate process, and placed themselves in 
 immediate connection with the prescient, all-embracing, uni- 
 
 r'versal Being; i.e., they immediately identified the individual 
 
 ; with the universal Being. 
 
 But the idea of deity coincides with the idea of humanity. 
 All divine attributes, all the attributes which make God God, 
 are attributes of the species — attributes which in the indi- 
 vidual are limited, but the limits of which are abolished in 
 the essence of the species, and even in its existence, in so 
 far as it has its complete existence only in all men taken 
 together. My knowledge, my will, is limited ; but my limit 
 is not the limit of another man, to say nothing of mankind; 
 what is difficult to me is easy to another; what is impossible, 
 inconceivable, to one age, is to the coming age conceivable 
 and possible. My life is bound to a limited time ; not so the 
 life of humanity. The history of mankind consists of nothing 
 else than a continuous and progressive conquest of limits, 
 which at a given time pass for the limits of humanity, and 
 
 * It is true that the heathen philosophers also, as Plato, Socrates, the 
 Stoics (see e.g. J. Lipsius, Physiol. Stoic. 1. i. diss, xi.), believed that the 
 divine providence extended not merely to the general, but also to the par- 
 ticular, the individual ; but they identified providence with Nature, law, 
 necessity. The Stoics, who were the orthodox speculatists of heathenism, 
 did indeed believe in miracles ^vrought by providence (Cic. de Nat. Deor. 1. 
 ii. and De Divinat. 1. i.) ; but their miracles had no such supranaturalistio 
 significance as those of Christianity, though they also appealed to the supra- 
 naturalistic axiom : " Nihil est quod Deus efficere non possit." 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 153 
 
 therefore for absolute insurmountable limits. But the future 
 always unveils the fact that the alleged limits of the species 
 were only limits of individuals. The most striking proofs 
 of this are presented by the history of philosophy and of 
 physical science. It would be highly interesting and in- 
 structive to write a history of the sciences entirely from 
 this point of view, in order to exhibit in all its vanity the 
 presumptuous notion of the individual than he can set limits 
 to his race. Thus the species is unlimited ; the individual 
 alone limited. 
 
 But the sense of limitation is painful, and hence the in- 
 dividual frees himself from it by the contemplation of the 
 perfect Being ; in this contemplation he possesses what 
 otherwise is wanting to him. With the Christians God is 
 nothing else than the immediate unity of species and indi- 
 viduality, of the universal and individual being. God is the 
 idea of the species as an individual — the idea or essence of 
 the species, which as a species, as universal being, as the 
 totality of all perfections, of all attributes or realities, freed 
 from all the limits which exist in the consciousness and 
 feeling of the individual, is at the same time again an indi- 
 vidual, personal being. Ipse suuni esse est. Essence and 
 existence are in God identical ; which means nothing else 
 than that he is the idea, the essence of the species, con- 
 ceived immediately as an existence, an individual. The 
 highest idea on the standpoint of religion is : God does not 
 love, he is himself love ; he does not live, he is life ; he is not 
 just, but justice itself ; not a person, but personality itself, — ■ 
 the species, the idea, as immediately a concrete existence.* 
 
 Because of this immediate unity of the species with indi- 
 viduality, this concentration of all that is universal and real 
 in one personal being, God is a deeply moving object, enrap- 
 turing to the imagination ; whereas, the idea of humanity 
 has little power over the feelings, because humanity is only 
 an. abstraction ; and the reality which presents itself to us in 
 distinction from this abstraction is the multitude of separate, 
 limited individuals. In God, on the contrary, feeling has 
 immediate satisfaction, because here all is embraced in one, 
 i.e., because here the species has an immediate existence, — 
 
 * "Dicimur amare et Deus ; dicimur nosse et Deus. Et multa in hune 
 modum. Sed Deus amat ut charitas, novit ut Veritas, etc."— Bernard, (de 
 Consider. 1. v.). 
 
154 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 is an individuality. God is love, is justice, as itself a subject ; 
 he is the perfect universal being as one being, the infinite 
 extension of the species as an all-compreheuding unity. But 
 God is only man's intuition of his own nature; thus the 
 Christians are distinguished from the heathens in this, that 
 they immediately identify the individual with the species — 
 that with them the individual has the significance of the 
 species, the individual by himself is held to be the perfect 
 representative of the species — that they deify the human 
 individual, make him the absolute being. 
 
 Especially characteristic is the difference between Chris- 
 tianity and heathenism concerning the relation of the in- 
 dividual to the intelligence, to the understanding, to the 
 vov'i. The Christians individualised the understanding, the 
 heathens made it a universal essence. To the heathens, the 
 understanding, the intelligence, was the essence of man ; to 
 the Christians, it was only a part of themselves. To the 
 heathens therefore only the intelligence, the species, to the 
 Christians, the individual, was immortal, i.e., divine. Hence 
 follows the further difference between heathen and Chris- 
 tian philosophy. 
 
 The most unequivocal expression, the characteristic sym- 
 bol of this immediate identity of the species and individu- 
 ality in Christianity is Christ, the real God of the Christians. 
 Christ is the ideal of humanity become existent, the com- 
 pendium of all moral and divine perfections to the exclu- 
 sion of all that is negative ; pure, heavenly, sinless man, 
 the typical man, the Adam Kadmon ; not regarded as the 
 totality of the species, of mankind, but immediately as one 
 individual, one person. Christ, i.e., the Christian, religious 
 Christ, is therefore not the central, but the terminal point 
 of history. The Christians expected the end of the world, 
 the close of history. In the Bible, Christ himself, in spite 
 of all the falsities and sophisms of our exegetists, clearly 
 prophesies the speedy end of the world. History rests only 
 on the distinction of the individual from the race. Where 
 this distinction ceases, history ceases ; the very soul of his- 
 tory is extinct. Nothing remains to man but the contem- 
 plation and appropriation of this realised Ideal, and the 
 spirit of proselytism, which seeks to extend the prevalence 
 of a fixed belief, — the preaching that God has appeared, and 
 that the end of the world is at hand. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 155 
 
 Since the immediate identity of the species and the indi- 
 vidual oversteps the limits of reason and Nature, it followed 
 of course that this universal, ideal individual was declared 
 to he a transcendent, supernatural, heavenly being. It is 
 therefore a perversity to attempt to deduce from reason the 
 immediate identity of the species and individual, for it is 
 only the imagination which effects this identity, the imagi- 
 nation to which nothing is impossible, and which is also the 
 creator of "miracles ; for the greatest of miracles is the being 
 who, while he is an individual, is at the same time the ideal, 
 the species, humanity in the fulness of its perfection and 
 infinity, i.e., the Godhead. Hence it is also a perversity to 
 adhere to the biblical or dogmatic Christ, and yet to thrust 
 aside miracles. If the principle be retained, wherefore deny 
 its necessary consequences ? 
 
 The total absence of the idea of the species in Christi- 
 anity is especially observable in its characteristic doctrine 
 of the universal sinfulness of men. Por there lies at the 
 foundation of this doctrine the demand that the individual 
 shall not be an individual, a demand which again is based 
 on the presupposition that the individual by himself is a 
 perfect being, is by himself the adequate presentation or 
 existence of the species.* Here is entirely wanting the 
 objective perception, the consciousness, that the thou belongs 
 to the perfection of the /, that me7i are required to consti- 
 tute humanity, that only men taken together are what man 
 should and can be. All men are sinners. Granted; but 
 they are not all sinners in the same way ; on the contrary, 
 there exists a great and essential difference between them. 
 One man is inclined to falsehood, another is not ; he would 
 rather give up his life than break his word or tell a lie ; the 
 third has a propensity to intoxication, the fourth to licen- 
 tiousness ; while the fifth, whether by favour of Nature, or 
 from the energy of his character, exhibits none of these 
 vices. Thus, in the moral as well as the physical and in- 
 tellectual elements, men compensate for each other, so that, 
 
 * It is true that in one sense the individual is the absolute— in the 
 jihraseology of Leibnitz, the mirror of the universe, of the infinite. But in 
 so far as there are many individuals, each is only a single, and, as such, a, 
 finite mirror of the infinite. It is true also, in opposition to the abstrac- 
 tion of a sinless man, that each individual regarded in himself is perfect, 
 and only by comparison imperfect, for each is what alone he can be. 
 
156 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 taken as a whole, they are,, as they should be, they present 
 the perfect man. 
 
 Hence intercourse ameliorates and elevates ; involun- 
 tarily and without disguise, man is different in intercourse 
 from what he is when alone. Love especially works won- 
 ders, and the love of the sexes most of all Man and 
 woman are the complement of each other, and thus united 
 they first present the species, the perfect man.* Without 
 species, love is inconceivable. Love is nothing else than the 
 self-consciousness of the species as evolved within the dif- 
 ference of sex. In love, the reality of the species, which 
 otherwise is only a thing of reason, an object of mere 
 thought, becomes a matter of feeling, a truth of feeling ; for 
 in love, man declares himself unsatisfied in his individuality 
 taken by itself, he postulates the existence of another as a 
 need of the heart ; he reckons another as part of his own 
 being ; he declares the life which he has through love to be 
 the truly human life, corresponding to the idea of man, i.e., 
 of the species. The individual is defective, imperfect, weak, 
 needy ; but love is strong, perfect, contented, free from 
 wants, self-sufficing, infinite ; because in it the self-con- 
 sciousness of the individuality is the mysterious self-con- 
 sciousness of the perfection of the race. But this result of 
 love is produced by friendship also, at least where it is 
 intense, where it is a religion,-)- as it was with the ancients. 
 Friends compensate for each other ; friendship is a means 
 of virtue, and more : it is itself virtue, dependent however 
 on participation. Friendship can only exist between the 
 virtuous, as the ancients said. But it cannot be based on 
 perfect similarity ; on the contrary, it requires diversity, for 
 friendship rests on a desire for self-completion. One friend 
 obtains through the other what he does not himself possess. 
 The virtues of the one atone for the failings of the other. 
 
 * With the Hindoos (Inst, of Menu) he alone is " a perfect man ■who 
 consists of three united persons, liis wife, himself, and his son. For man 
 and wife, and father and son, are one." The Adam of the Old Testament 
 also is incomplete without woman ; he feels his need of her. But the Adam 
 of the New Testament, the Christian, heavenly Adam, the Adam who is 
 constituted with a view to the destruction of this world, has no longer any 
 sexual impulses or functions. 
 
 + " Hae sane vires amicitise mortis contemptum ingenerare . . . potu- 
 erunt : quibus pene tantum venerationis, quantum Deorum immortalium 
 ceremoniis debetur. lUis enim publica salus, his privata confine tur. " — Vale- 
 rius Ma.x. 1. iv. c. 7. 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 157 
 
 Friend justifies friend before God. However faulty a man 
 may be, it is a proof that tliere is a germ of good in liim if 
 he has worthy men for his friends. If I cannot be myself 
 perfect, I yet at least love virtue, perfection in others. If 
 therefore I am called to account for any sitis, weaknesses, and 
 faults, I interpose as advocates, as mediators, the virtues of 
 my friend. How barbarous, how unreasonable would it be 
 to condemn me for sins which I doubtless have committed, 
 but which I have myself condemned in loving my friends, 
 who are free from these sins ! 
 
 But if friendship and love, which themselves are only 
 subjective realisations of the species, make out of singly 
 imperfect beings an at least relatively perfect whole, how 
 much more do the sins and failings of individuals vanish in 
 the species itself, which has its adequate existence only in 
 the sum total of mankind, and is therefore only an object of 
 reason ! Hence the lamentation over sin is found only where 
 the human individual regards himself in his individuality 
 as a perfect, complete being, not needing others for the realisa- 
 tion, of the species, of the perfect man ; where instead of 
 the consciousness of the species has been substituted the 
 exclusive self-consciousness of the individual ; where the 
 individual does not recognise himself as a part of mankind, 
 but identifies himself with the species, and for this reason 
 makes his own sins, limits and weaknesses, the sins, limits, 
 and weaknesses of mankind in general. Nevertheless man 
 cannot lose the consciousness of the species, for his self- 
 consciousness is essentially united to his consciousness of 
 another than himself. Where therefore the species is not 
 an object to him as a species, it will be an object to him as 
 God. He supplies the absence of the idea of the species by 
 the idea of God, as the being who is free from the limits and 
 wants which oppress the individual, and, in his opinion 
 (since he identifies the species with the individual), the 
 species itself. But this perfect being, free from the limits 
 of the individual, is nothing else than the species, which 
 reveals the infinitude of its nature in this, that it is realised 
 in infinitely numerous and various individuals. If all men 
 were absolutely alike, there would then certainly be no dis- 
 tinction between the race and the individual But in that 
 case the existence of many men would be a pure superfluity ; 
 a shigle man would have achieved the ends of the species. 
 
158 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 lu the one who enjoyed the happiness of existence all would 
 have had their complete substitute. 
 
 Doubtless the essence of man is one, but this essence is 
 infinite ; its real existence is therefore an infinite, recipro- 
 cally compensating variety, which reveals the riches of 
 this essence. Unity in essence is multiplicity in existence. 
 Between me and another human being — and this other is 
 the representative of the species, even though he is only 
 one, for he supplies to me the want of many others, has for 
 me a universal significance, is the deputy of mankind, in 
 whose name he speaks to me, an isolated individual, so that, 
 when united only with one, I have a participated, a human 
 life; — between me and another human being there is an 
 essential, qualitative distinction. The other is my tJiou, — ■ 
 the relation being reciprocal, — my alter ego, man objective to 
 me, the revelation of my own nature, the eye seeing itself. 
 In another I first have the consciousness of humanity; 
 tlirou"h him I first learn, I first feel, that I am a man : in 
 my love for him it is first clear to me that he belongs to 
 me and I to him, that we two cannot be without each other, 
 that only community constitutes humanity. But morally, 
 also, there is a qualitative, critical distinction between the 
 / and tJwii: ]\Iy fellow-man is my objective conscience; 
 he makes my failings a reproach to me ; even when he does 
 not expressly mention them, he is my personified feeling of 
 shame. The consciousness of the moral law, of right, of 
 propriety, of truth itself, is indissolubly united with my 
 consciousness of another than myself. That is true in which 
 another agrees with me, — agreement is the first criterion of 
 truth ; but only because the species is the ultimate measure 
 of truth. That which I think only according to the standard 
 of my individuality is not binding on another; it can be 
 conceived otherwise ; it is an accidental, merely subjective 
 view. But that which I think according to the standard 
 of the species, I think as man in general only can think, 
 and consequently as every individual must think if he 
 thinks normally, in accordance with law, and therefore 
 "truly. That is true which agrees with the nature of the 
 species, that is false which contradicts it. There is no 
 other rule of truth. But my fellow-man is to me the re- 
 presentative of the species, the substitute of the rest, nay, 
 his judgment may be of more authority with me than the 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 159 
 
 judgment of the innumerable multitude. Let the fanatic 
 make disciples as the sand on the sea-shore ; the sand is 
 still sand ; mine be the pearl — a judicious friend. The 
 agreement of others is therefore my criterion of tlie normal- 
 ness, the universality, the truth of my thoughts. I cannot 
 so abstract myself from myself as to judge myself with 
 perfect freedom and disinterestedness ; but another has 
 an impartial judgment ; through him I correct, complete, 
 extend my own judgment, my own taste, my own know- 
 ledge. In short, there is a qualitative, critical difference 
 between men. But Christianity extinguishes this quali- 
 tative distinction ; it sets the same stamp on all men alike, 
 and regards them as one and the same individual, because 
 it knows no distinction between the species and tlie indi- 
 vidual : it has one and the same means of salvation for all 
 men, it sees one and the same original sin in all. 
 
 Because Christianity thus, from exaggerated subjectivity, 
 knows nothing of the species, in which alone lies the redemp- 
 tion, the justification, the reconciliation and cure of the sins 
 and deficiencies of the individual, it needed a supernatural 
 and peculiar, nay, a personal, subjective aid in order to 
 overcome sin. If I alone am the species, if no other, that 
 is, no qualitatively different men exist, or, which is the same 
 thing, if there is no distinction between me and others, if 
 we are all perfectly alike, if my sins are not neutralised by 
 the opposite qualities of other men : then assuredly my 
 sin is a blot of shame which cries up to heaven ; a revolting 
 horror which can be exterminated only by extraordinary, 
 superhuman, miraculous means. Happily, however, there 
 is a natural reconciliation. My fellow-man is per se the 
 mediator between me and the sacred idea of the species. 
 Homo homini Dcus est. My sin is made to shrink within 
 its limits, is thrust back into its nothingness, by the fact 
 that it is only mine, and not that of my fellows. 
 
i6o THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 CHAPTEE XVII. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAX SIGNIFICANCE OF VOLUKTAKY CELIBACY AXD 
 MOXACHISII. 
 
 The idea of man as a species, and with it the significance 
 of the life of the species, of humanity as a whole, vanished 
 as Christianity became dominant. Herein we have a new 
 confirmation of the position advanced, that Christianity does 
 not contain within itself the principle of culture. Where 
 man immediately identifies the species with the individual, 
 and posits this identity as his highest being, as God, where 
 the idea of humanity is thus an object to him only as the 
 idea of Godhead, there the need of culture has vanished ; 
 man has all in himself, all in his God, consequently he has 
 no need to supply his o^Yn deficiencies by others as the 
 representatives of the species, or by the contemplation of 
 the world generally ; and this need is alone the spring of 
 culture. The individual man attains his end by himself 
 alone ; he attains it in God, — God is himself the attained 
 goal, the realised highest aim of humanity ; but God is 
 present to each individual separately. God only is the 
 want of the Christian ; others, the human race, the world, 
 are not necessary to him ; he is not the inward need of 
 others. God fills to me the place of the species, of my 
 fellow-men ; yes, when I turn away from the world, when 
 I am in isolation, I first truly feel my need of God, I first 
 have a lively sense of his presence, I first feel what God is, 
 and what he ought to be to me. It is true that the religious 
 man has need also of fellowship, of edification in common ; 
 but this need of others is always in itself something ex- 
 tremely subordinate. The salvation of the soul is the fun- 
 damental idea, the main point in Christianity ; and this 
 salvation lies only in God, only in the concentration of the 
 mind on him. Activity for others is required, is a condition 
 of salvation; but the ground of salvation is God, immediate 
 reference in all things to God. And even activity for others 
 
CELIBACY AND MONACHISM. i6i 
 
 has only a religious significance, has reference only to God, 
 as its motive and end, is essentially only an activity for God, 
 —for the glorifying of his name, the spreading abroad of 
 his praise. But God is absolute subjectivity,— subjectivity 
 separated from the world, above the world, set free from 
 matter, severed from the life of the species, and therefore 
 from the distinction of sex. Separation from the world, 
 from matter, from the life of the species, is therefore 
 the essential aim of Christianity.* And this aim had its 
 visible, practical realisation in Monachism. 
 
 It is a self-delusion to attempt to derive monachism from 
 the East. At least, if this derivation is to be accepted, they 
 who maintain it should be consistent enough to derive the 
 opposite tendency of Christendom, not from Christianity, 
 but from the spirit of the Western nations, the occidental 
 nature in general. But how, in that case, shall, we explain 
 the monastic enthusiasm of the West ? Monachism must 
 rather be derived directly from Christianity itself : it was 
 necessary consequence of the belief in heaven promised to 
 mankind by Christianity. Where the heavenly life is a 
 truth, the earthly life is a lie ; where imagination is all, 
 reality is nothing. To him who believes in an eternal 
 heavenly life, the present life loses its value,— or rather, it 
 has already lost its value : belief in the heavenly life is 
 belief in the worthlessness and nothingness of this life. I 
 cannot represent to myself the future life without longing 
 for it, without casting down a look of compassion or con- 
 tempt on this pitiable earthly life, and the heavenly life 
 can be no object, no law of faith, without, at the same time, 
 being a law of morality : it must determine my actions,-f- 
 at least if my life is to be in accordance with my faith : I 
 ought not to cleave to the transitory things of this earth. 
 I ought not ; — but neither do I wish ; for what are all things 
 here below compared with the glory of the heavenly life %% 
 
 * " The life for God is not this natural life, -whicli is subject to decay. 
 . . . Ought we not then to sigh after future things, and be averse to all 
 these temporal things ? . . . Wherefore we should find consolation in heartily 
 despising this lite and this world, and from our hearts sigh for and desire 
 the future honour and glory of eternal life." — Luther (Th. i. s. 466, 467). 
 
 t " Eo dirigendus est spiritus, quo aliquando est iturus." — Meditat. Sacrfe 
 Joh. Gerhardi. Med. 46. 
 
 X "Aifectanti coe.lestia, terrena non sapiunt, jEternis inhianti, fastidio 
 sunt transitoria." — Bernard. (Epist. E.x Persona Helise Monaclii ad Parentes). 
 
 L 
 
1 62 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 It is true that the quality of that life depends on the 
 quality, the moral condition of this ; but morality is itself 
 determined by the faith in eternal life. The morality cor- 
 responding to the super-terrestrial life is simply separation 
 from the world, the negation of this life ; and the practical 
 attestation of this spiritual separation is the monastic life.* 
 Everything must ultimately take an external form, must 
 present itself to the senses. An inward disposition must 
 become an outward practice. The life of the cloister, indeed 
 ascetic life in general, is the heavenly life as it is realised 
 and can be realised here below. If my soul belongs to 
 heaven, ought I, nay, can I belong to the earth with my 
 body ? The soul animates the body. But if the soul is in 
 heaven, the body is forsaken, dead, and thus the medium, 
 the organ of connection between the M'orld and the soul is 
 annihilated. Death, the separation of the soul from the 
 body, at least from this gross, material, sinful body, is the en- 
 trance into heaven. But if death is the condition of blessed- 
 ness and moral perfection, then necessarily mortification 
 is the one law of morality. Moral death is the necessary 
 anticipation of natural death ; I say necessary, for it would 
 be the extreme of immoiality to attribute the obtaining of 
 heaven to physical death, which is no moral act, but a natural 
 one common to man and the brute. Death must therefore 
 be exalted into a moral, a spontaneous act. " I die daily," 
 says the apostle, and this dictum Saint Anthony, the founder 
 of monachism,-f- made the theme of his life. 
 
 But Christianity, it is contended, demanded only a spiri- 
 tual freedom. True ; but what is that spiritual freedom 
 which does not pass into action, which does not attest itself 
 in practice ? Or dost thou believe that it only depends on 
 thyself, on thy will, on thy intention, wliether thou be free 
 from anything ? If so, thou art greatly in error, and hast 
 
 "Nihil nostra referti n hoc eevo, nisi de eo quam celeriter excedere." — Ter- 
 tullian (Apol. adv. Geiites, c. 41). "Wherelore a Christian man sho Id 
 rather he advised to bear sickness with patience, yea, even to desire that 
 death should con le,— the sooner the better. For, as St. Cyprian says, 
 nothing is more for the advantage of a Christian than soon to die. But 
 we rather listen to the pagan Juvenal when he says : 'Orandum est ut sit 
 mens sana in corpore sano.' " — Luther (Th. iv. s. 15). 
 
 * " lUe perlectus est qui mente et corpore a seculo est elongatus." — De 
 Modo Bene Vivendi ad Sororem, s, vii. (Among the spurious writings of 
 St. Bernard.) or o 
 
 t On this snbject see " Hieronymus, de Vita Pauli Primi Ei'emitte."' 
 
CELIBACY AND MONACHISM. 163 
 
 never experienced what it is to be truly made free. So 
 long as thou art in a given rank, profession, or relation, so 
 long art thou, willingly or not, determined by it. Thy will, 
 thy determination, frees thee only from conscious limitations 
 and impressions, not from the unconscious ones which lie in 
 the nature of the case. Thus we do not feel at home, we 
 are under constraint, so long as we are not locally, physically 
 separated from one with whom we have inwardly broken. 
 External freedom is alone the full truth of spiritual freedom. 
 A man who has really lost spiritual interest in earthly trea- 
 sures soon throws them out at window, that his heart may 
 be thoroughly at liberty. What I no longer possess by 
 inclination is a burden to me ; so away with it ! What 
 affection has let go, the hand no longer holds fast. Only 
 affection gives force to the grasp ; only affection makes pos- 
 session sacred. He who having a wife is as though he had 
 her not, will do better to have no wife at all. To have as 
 though one had not, is to have without the disposition to 
 have, is in truth not to have. And therefore he who says 
 that one ought to have a thing as though one had it not, 
 merely says in a subtle, covert, cautious way, that one ought 
 not to have it at all. Tliat which I dismiss from my heart 
 is no longer mine, — it is free as air. St. Anthony took the 
 resolution to renounce the world when he had once heai'd the 
 saying, " If thou wilt be perfect, go thy way, sell that thou 
 hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in 
 heaven ; and come and follow me." St. Anthony gave the 
 only true interpretation of this text. He went his way, and 
 sold his possessions, and gave the proceeds to the poor. 
 Only thus did he prove his spiritual freedom from the 
 treasures of this world.* 
 
 Such freedom, such truth, is certainly in contradiction 
 with the Christianity of the present day, according to which 
 the Lord has required only a spiritual freedom, i.e., a free- 
 dom which demands no sacrifice, no energy, — an illusory, 
 self - deceptive freedom ; — a freedom from earthly good, 
 which consists in its possession and enjoyment ! For cer- 
 tainly the Lord said, " My yoke is easy." How harsh, liow 
 
 * Naturally Christianity had only such power when, as Jerome writes to 
 Demetrius, Domini nostri adhuo calebat cruor et fervebat recens in creden- 
 tibus fides. See also on this subject G. Arnold. — Von der ersten Vhribten 
 Geniigmmkeit u. Verschmahung alles Eigamutzes, 1. u. B. iv". c. 12, § 7-16. 
 
i64 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 unreasonable would Christianity be if it exacted from 
 man the renunciation of earthly riches ! Then assuredly 
 Christianity would not be suited to this world. So far from 
 this, Christianity is in the highest degree practical and 
 judicious ; it defers the freeing oneself from the wealth and 
 pleasures of this world to the moment of natural death 
 (monkish mortification is an unchristian suicide); — and 
 allots to our spontaneous activity the acquisition and en- 
 joyment of earthly possessions. Genuine Christians do not 
 indeed doubt the truth of the heavenly life, — God forbid ! 
 Therein they still agree with the ancient monks ; but they 
 await that life patiently, submissive to the will of God, i.e., 
 to their own selfishness, to the agreeable pursuit of worldly 
 enjoyment.* But I turn away with loathing and contempt 
 from modern Christianity, in which the bride of Christ 
 readily acquiesces in polygamy, at least in successive poly- 
 gamy, and this in the eyes of the true Christian does not 
 essentially differ from contemporaneous polygamy ; but yet 
 at the same time — oh ! shameful hypocrisy ! — swears by 
 the eternal, universally binding, irrefragable sacred truth of 
 God's Word. I turn back with reverence to the miscon- 
 ceived truth of the chaste monastic cell, where the soul 
 betrothed to heaven did not allow itself to be wooed into 
 faithlessness by a strange earthly body ! 
 
 The unworldly, supernatural life is essentially also an 
 unmarried life. The celibate lies already, though not in 
 the form of a law, in the inmost nature of Christianity. 
 This is sufficiently declared in the supernatural origin of 
 the Saviour, — a doctrine in which unspotted virginity is 
 hallowed as the saving principle, as the principle of the 
 new, the Christian world. Let not such passages as, " Be 
 fruitful and multiply," or, " What God has joined to- 
 gether let not man put asunder," be urged as a sanction 
 of marriage. The first passage relates, as TertuUian and 
 Jerome have already observed, only to the unpeopled 
 earth, not to the earth when filled with men, only to the 
 
 * How far otherwise the ancient Christians ! " Difficile, imo impossibile 
 est, ut et prsesentibus quis et futuris fruatur bonis." — Hieronymus (Epist. 
 Juliano). " Delicatus es, frater, si et hie vis gaudere cum seculo et postea 
 regnare cum Christo." — lb. (Epist. ad Heliodormn). "Ye wish to have 
 both God and the creature together, and that is impossible. Joy in God 
 and joy in the creature cannot subsist together." — Tauler (ed. c. p. 334). 
 But they \vere abstract Christians. And we live now in the age of concilia- 
 tion. Yes, truly ! 
 
CELIBACY AND MONACHISM. 165 
 
 beginning, not to the end of the world, an end which 
 was initiated by the immediate appearance of God upon 
 earth. And the second also refers only to marriage as an 
 institution of the Old Testament. Certain Jews proposed 
 the question whether it were lawful for a man to separate 
 from his wife; and the most appropriate way of dealing 
 with this question was the answer above cited. He who 
 has once concluded a marriage ought to hold it sacred. 
 Marriage is intrinsically an indulgence to the weakness or 
 rather the strength of the Hesh, an evil which therefore 
 must be restricted as much as possible. The indissoluble- 
 ness of marriage is a nimbics, a sacred irradiance, which 
 expresses precisely the opposite of what minds, dazzled and 
 perturbed by its lustre, seek beneath it. Marriage in itself 
 is, in the sense of perfected Christianity, a sin,* or rather a 
 weakness which is permitted and forgiven tliee only on con- 
 dition that thou for ever limitest thyself to a single wife. 
 In short, marriage is hallowed only in the Old Testament, 
 but not in the New. The New Testament knows a higher, a 
 supernatural principle, the mystery of unspotted virginity.f 
 " He who can receive it let him receive it." " The children 
 of this world marry, and are given in marriage : but they 
 which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and 
 the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given 
 in marriage : neither can they die any more : for they are 
 equal unto the angels ; and are the children of God, being 
 the children of the resurrection." Thus in heaven there is 
 no marriage ; the principle of sexual love is excluded from 
 heaven as an earthly, worldly principle. But the heavenly 
 life is the true, perfected, eternal life of the Christian. 
 Why then should I, who am destined for heaven, form a tie 
 which is unloosed in my true destination ? Why should I, 
 who am potentially a heavenly being, not realise this pos- 
 sibility even here ? | Marriage is already proscribed from 
 
 * "Perfectum autem esse nolle deliuquere est." — Hieronyraus (Epist. ad 
 Heliodorum de laude Vitse solit.). Let me observe once for all that I inter- 
 pret the biblical passages concerning marriage in the sense in which they 
 have been interpreted by the history of Christianity. 
 
 t ' ' The marriage state is nothing new or unwonted, and is lauded and 
 held good even by heathens according to the judgment of reason." — Luther 
 (Th. ii. p. 377a). 
 
 J ' ' Prffisumendum est hos qui intra paradisum recipi volunt debere cessare 
 ab eare, a qua paradisus intactus est." — TertuUian (de Exhort, cast. c. 13). 
 " Coelibatus angelorum est imitatio." — Jo. Daraasceni (Orthod. Fidei, 1. iv. 
 c. 25). 
 
1 66 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 my mind, my heart, since it is expelled from heaven, the 
 essential object of my faith, hope, and life. How can an 
 earthly wife have a place in my heaven-filled heart ? How 
 can I divide my heart between God and man ? * The Chris- 
 tian's love to God is not an abstract or general love such as 
 the love of truth, of justice, of science ; it is a love to a 
 subjective, personal God, and is therefore a subjective, per- 
 sonal love. It is an essential attribute of this love that it 
 is an exclusive, jealous love, for its object is a personal and 
 at the same time the highest being, to whom no other can 
 be compared. " Keep close to Jesus [Jesus Christ is the 
 Christian's God], in life and in death ; trust his faithfulness: 
 he alone can help thee, when all else leaves thee. Thy 
 beloved has this quality, that he will suffer no rival; he 
 alone will have thy heart, wiU rule alone in thy soul as a 
 king on his throne." — " What can the world profit thee 
 without Jesus ? To be without Christ is the pain of hell ; 
 to be with Christ, heavenly sweetness." — " Thou canst not 
 live without a friend : but if the friendship of Christ is not 
 more than all else to thee, thou wilt be beyond measure sad 
 and disconsolate." — " Love everything for Jesus' sake, but 
 Jesus for his own sake. Jesus Christ alone is worthy to be 
 loved." — " My God, my love [my heart] : thou art wholly 
 mine, and I am wholly thine." — "Love hopes and trusts 
 ever in God, even when God is not gracious to it [or tastes 
 bitter, non sapit] ; for we cannot live in love without sorrow. 
 .... Por the sake of the beloved, the loving one must 
 accept all things, even the hard and bitter." — " My God and 
 my all, .... in thy presence everything is sweet to me, 
 in thy absence everything is distasteful .... Without 
 thee nothing can please me." — " Oh, when at last will that 
 blessed, longed-for hour appear, when thou wilt satisfy 
 me wholly, and be all in all to me ? So long as this is not 
 granted me, my joy is only fragmentary." — " Whei^ was 
 it well with me without thee ? "or when was it ill with 
 me in thy presence ? I will rather be poor for thy sake, 
 than rich without thee. I will rather be a pilgrim on earth 
 with thee, than the possessor of heaven without thee. 
 Where thou art is heaven ; death and hell where thou art 
 
 * " Quse non nubit, soli Deo dat operam et ejus cura non dividitur ; 
 pudica autem, qure nnpsit, ritam cum Deo et cum marito dividit." — 
 Clemens Alex. (I'ludag. 1. ii.). 
 
CELIBACY AND MONACHISM. 167 
 
 not. I long only for tliee." — " Thou canst not serve God 
 and at the same time have thy joys in earthly things : thou 
 must wean thyself from all acquaintances and friends, and 
 sever thy soul from all temporal consolation. Believers in 
 Christ should regard themselves, according to the admoni- 
 tion of the Apostle Peter, only as strangers and pilgrims on 
 the earth." * Thus love to God as a personal being is a 
 literal, strict, personal, exclusive love. How then can I at 
 once love God and a mortal wife ? Do I not thereby place 
 God on the same footing with my wife ? No ! to a soul 
 which truly loves God, the love of woman is an impossibility, 
 is adultery. " He that is unmarried," says the Apostle 
 Paul, " careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how 
 he may please the Lord ; but he that is married careth 
 for the things that are of the world, how he may please 
 his wife." 
 
 The true Christian not only feels no need of culture, 
 because this is a worldly principle and opposed to feeling ; 
 he has also no need of (natural) love. God supplies to him 
 the want of culture, and in like manner God supplies to him 
 the want of love, of a wife, of a family. The Christian im- 
 mediately identifies the species with the individual ; hence 
 he strips oft' the difference of sex as a burdensome, accidental 
 adjunct.f Man and woman together first constitute the true 
 man ; man and woman together are the existence of the race, 
 for their union is the source of multiplicity, the source of 
 other men. Hence the man who does not deny his man- 
 hood, is conscious that he is only a part of a being, which 
 needs another part for the making up of the whole of true 
 humanity. The Christian, on the contrary, in his excessive, 
 transcendental subjectivity, conceives that he is, by himself, 
 a perfect being. But the sexual instinct runs counter to 
 this view ; it is in contradiction with his ideal : the Christian 
 must therefore deny this instinct. 
 
 The Christian certainly experienced the need of sexual 
 love, but only as a need in contradiction with his heavenly 
 
 * Thomas h Kempis de Imit. (1. ii. 0. 7, c. 8, 1. iii. c. 5, c. 34, c. 53, c. 59). 
 "Felix ilia conscientia et beata virginitas, in cujus covde prater amoreni 
 
 Christi nullus alius versatur amor." — Hieronymus (Demetriadi , 
 
 Yirgini Deo consecratse). 
 
 t " Divisa est . . . rnulier et virgo. Vide quantse felicitatis sit, qua; 
 et nomen sexus amiserit. Virgo jam rnulier iion vocatur."— Hieronymus 
 (adv. Helvidium de perpet. Virg. p. 14. Th. ii. Erasmus). 
 
1 68 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 destination, and merely natural, in the depreciatory, con- 
 temptuous sense which this word had in Christianity, — not 
 as a moral, inward need — not, if I may so express myself, as 
 a metaphysical, i.e., an essential need, which man can expe- 
 rience only where he does not separate difference of sex from 
 himself, but, on the contrary, regards it as belonging to his 
 inmost nature. Hence marriage is not holy in Christianity ; 
 at least it is so only apparently, illusively; for the natural 
 principle of marriage, which is the love of the sexes, — how- 
 ever civil marriage may in endless instances contradict this, 
 —is in Christianity an unholy thing, and excluded from 
 heaven.* But that which man excludes from heaven he 
 excludes from his true nature. Heaven is his treasure- 
 casket. Believe not in what he establishes on earth, what 
 he permits and sanctions here : here he must accommodate 
 himself ; here many things come athwart him which do not 
 fit into his system ; here he shuns thy glance, for he finds 
 himself among strangers who intimidate him. But watch 
 for him when he throws off his incognito, and shows him- 
 self in his true dignity, his heavenly state. In heaven he 
 speaks as he thinks ; there thou hearest his true opinion. 
 Where his heaven is, there is his heart, — heaven is his heart 
 laid open. Heaven is nothing but the idea of the true, the 
 good, the valid, — of that which ought to be; earth, nothing 
 but the idea of the untrue, the unlawful, of that which ought 
 not to be. The Christian excludes from heaven the life of 
 the species : there the species ceases, there dwell only pure 
 sexless individuals, "spirits;" there absolute subjectivity 
 reigns : — thus the Christian excludes the life of the species 
 
 ■^ This may be expressed as follows : Marriage has in Christianity only a 
 moral, no religions signifieance, no religious principle and exemplar. It is 
 otherwise with the Greeks, where, for example, ' ' Zeus and Here are the 
 great archetype of every marriage" (Creuzer, Symbol.); with the ancient 
 Parsees, where procreation, as " the multiplication of the human lace, is the 
 diminution of the empire of Ahriman," and thus a religious act and duty 
 (Zend-Avesta) ; with the Hindoos, wdiere the son is the regenerated father. 
 Among the Hindoos no regenerate man could assume the rank of a Sany- 
 assi, that is, of an anchorite absorbed in God, if he had not previously paid 
 three debts, one of which was that he had had a legitimate son. Amongst 
 the Christians, on the contrary, at least the Catholics, it Avas a true festival 
 of ]'eligious rejoicing when betrothed or even married persons— supposing 
 that it happened with mutual consent— renounced the married state and 
 sacrificed conjugal to religious love. 
 
CELIBACY AND MONACHISM. 169 
 
 fi'om his conception of the true life; he pronounces the 
 principle of marriage sinful, negative ; for the sinless, posi- 
 tive life is the heavenly one.* 
 
 * Inasmuch as the religious consciousness restores everything which it 
 begins by abolishing, and the future life is ultimately nothing else than the 
 present life re-established, it follows that sex must be re-established. 
 •' Erunt , . . similes angelorum. Ergo homines non desinent . . . ut 
 apostolus apostolus sit et Maria Maria." — Hieronymus (ad Theodoram 
 Viduam). But as the body in the other world is an incorporeal body, so 
 necessarily the sex there is oue without difference, i.e., a sexless sex. 
 
I70 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE CHEISTIAN HEAVEX, OR PEESOXAL IMMOKTALITY. 
 
 The unwedded and ascetic life is the direct way to the 
 heavenly, immortal life, for heaven is nothing else than life 
 liberated from the conditions of the species, supernatural, 
 sexless, absolutely subjective life. The belief in personal 
 immortality has at its foundation the belief that difference 
 of sex is only an external adjunct of individuality, that in 
 himself the individual is a sexless, independently complete, 
 absolute being. But he who belongs to no sex belongs to 
 no species ; sex is the cord which connects the individuality 
 with the species, and he who belongs to no species, belongs 
 only to himself, is an altogether independent, divine, abso- 
 lute being. Hence only when the species vanishes from 
 the consciousness is the heavenly life a certainty. He who 
 lives in the consciousness of the species, and consequently 
 of its reality, lives also in the consciousness of the reality 
 of sex. He does not regard it as a mechanically inserted, 
 adventitious stone of stumbling, but as an inherent quality, 
 a chemical constituent of his being. He indeed recognises 
 himself as a man in the broader sense, but he is at the same 
 time conscious of being rigorously determined by the sexual 
 distinction, which penetrates not only bones and marrow, 
 but also his inmost self, the essential mode of his thought, 
 will, and sensation. He therefore who lives in the conscious- 
 ness of the species, who limits and determines his feelings 
 and imagination by the contemplation of real life, of real 
 man, can conceive no life in which the life of the species, 
 and therewith the distinction of sex, is abolished ; he regards 
 the sexless individual, the heavenly spirit, as an agreeable 
 figment of the imagination. 
 
 But just as little as the real man can abstract himself 
 from the distinction of sex, so little can he abstract himself 
 from his moral or spiritual constitution, which indeed is 
 profoundly connected with his natural constitution. Pre- 
 cisely because he lives in the contemplation of the whole, 
 
THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 171 
 
 he also lives in the consciousness that he is himself no 
 more than a part, and that he is what he is only by virtue 
 of the conditions which constitute him a member of the 
 whole, or a relative whole. Every one, therefore, justifiably 
 regards his occupation, his profession, his art or science, as 
 the highest ; for the mind of man is nothing but the essential 
 mode of his activity. He who is skilful in his profession, 
 in his art, he who fills his post well, and is entirely devoted 
 to his calling, thinks that calling the his;hest and best. How 
 can he deny in thought what he emphatically declares in 
 act by the joyful devotion of all his powers ? If I despise 
 a thing, how can I dedicate to it my time and faculties ? If 
 I am compelled to do so in spite of my aversion, my activity 
 is an unhappy one, for I am at war with myself. Work is 
 worship. But how can I worship or serve an object, how 
 can I subject myself to it, if it does not hold a high place 
 in my mind ? In brief, the occupations of men determine 
 their judgment, their mode of thought, their sentiments. 
 And the higher the occupation, the more completely does a 
 man identify himself with it. In general, whatever a man 
 makes the essential aim of his life, he proclaims to be his 
 soul ; for it is the principle of motion in him. But through 
 his aim, through the activity in which he realises this aim, 
 man is not only something for himself, but also something 
 for others, for the general life, the species. He therefore 
 who lives in the consciousness of the species as a reality, 
 regards his existence for others, his relation to society, his 
 utility to the public, as that existence which is one with 
 the existence of his own essence — as his immortal exist- 
 ence. He lives with his whole soul, with his whole heart, 
 for humanity. How can he hold in reserve a special exist- 
 ence for himself, how can he separate himself from mankind ? 
 How shall he deny in death what he has enforced in life ? 
 And in life his faith is this : Nee sibi sed Mi genitum se 
 credere mundo. 
 
 The heavenly life, or what we do not here distinguish 
 from it — personal immortality, is a characteristic doctrine 
 of Christianity. It is certainly in part to be found among 
 the heathen philosophers ; but with them it had only the 
 significance of a subjective conception, because it was not 
 connected with their fundamental view of things. How 
 contradictory, for example, are the expressions of the Stoics 
 
1/2 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 on this subject ! It was among the Christians that personal 
 immortality first found that principle, whence it follows as 
 a necessary and obvious consequence. The contemplation 
 of the world, of Nature, of the race, was always coming 
 athwart the ancients ; they distinguished between the prin- 
 ciple of life and the living subject, between the soul, the 
 mind, and self : whereas the Christian abolished the distinc- 
 tion between soul and person, species and individual, and 
 therefore placed immediately in self what belongs only to 
 the totality of the species. But the immediate unity of the 
 species and individuality is the highest principle, the God 
 of Christianity, — in it the individual has the significance of 
 the absolute being, — and the necessary, immanent conse- 
 quence of this principle is personal immortality. 
 
 Or rather : the belief in personal immortality is perfectly 
 identical with the belief in a personal God ; — i.e., that which 
 expresses the belief in the heavenly, immortal life of the 
 person, expresses God also, as he is an object to Christians, 
 namely, as absolute, unlimited personality. Unlimited per- 
 sonality is God ; but heavenly personality, or the perpetua- 
 tion of human personality in heaven, is nothing else than 
 personality released from all earthly encumbrances and 
 limitations ; the only distinction is, that God is heaven 
 spiritualised, while heaven is God materialised, or reduced 
 to the forms of the senses : that what in God is posited only 
 in abstrado is in heaven more an object of the imagination. 
 God is the implicit heaven ; heaven is tlie explicit God. 
 In the present, God is the kingdom of heaven ; in the future, 
 heaven is God. God is the pledge, the as yet abstract pre- 
 sence and existence of heaven ; the anticipation, the epitome 
 of heaven. Our own future existence, which, while we are 
 in this world, in this body, is a separate, objective existence, 
 — is God : God is the idea of the species, which will be first 
 realised, individualised in the other world. God is the 
 heavenly, pure, free essence, which exists there as heavenly 
 pure beings, the bliss which there unfolds itself in a pleni- 
 tude of blissful individuals. Thus God is nothing else than 
 the idea or the essence of the absolute, blessed, heavenly 
 life, here comprised in an ideal personality. This is clearly 
 enough expressed in the belief that the blessed life is unity 
 with God. Here we are distinguished and separated from 
 God, there the partition falls ; here we are men, there orods • 
 
THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 173 
 
 here the Godhead is a monopoly, there it is a common 
 possession ; here it is an abstract unity, there a concrete 
 multiplicity* 
 
 The only difficulty in the recognition of this is created by 
 the imagination, which, on the one hand by the conception 
 of the personality of God, on the other by the conception of 
 the many personalities which it places in a realm ordinarily 
 depicted in the hues of the senses, hides the real unity of 
 the idea. But in truth there is no distinction between the 
 absolute life which is conceived as God and the absolute life 
 which is conceived as heaven, save that in heaven we have 
 stretched into length and breadth what in God is concen- 
 trated in one point. The belief in the immortality of man is 
 the belief in the divinity of man, and the belief in God is 
 the belief in pure personality, released from all limits, and 
 consequently eo ipso immortal. The distinctions made 
 between the immortal soul and God are either sophistical 
 or imaginative ; as when, for example, the bliss of the in- 
 habitants of heaven is again circumscribed by limits, and 
 distributed into degrees, in order to establish a distinction 
 between God and the dwellers in heaven. 
 
 The identity of the divine and heavenly personality is ap- 
 parent even in the popular proofs of immortality. If there 
 is not another and a better life, God is not just and good. 
 The justice and goodness of God are thus made dependent on 
 the perpetuity of individuals ; but without justice and good- 
 ness God is not God ; — the Godhead, the existence of God, 
 is therefore made dependent on the existence of individuals. 
 If I am not immortal, I believe in no God ; he who denies 
 immortality denies God. But that is impossible to me : as 
 surely as there is a God, so surely is there an immortality. 
 God is the certainty of my future felicity. The interest I 
 have in knowing that God is, is one with the interest I have 
 
 * " Bene dicitur, quod tunc plene videbimus sum sicuti est, cum similes 
 ei erimus, h. e. erimus quod ipse est. Quibus enim potestas data est filios 
 Dei fieri, data est potestas, non quidem ut sint Deus, sed sint tamen quod 
 Deus est : sint sancti, tuturi plene beati, quod Deus est. Nee aliunde hie 
 sancti. ncc ibi futuri beati, quara ex Deo qui eorum et sanctitas et beatitudo 
 est."— De Vita solitar a (among the spurious writings of St. Bernard). 
 "Finis autem bonee voluntatis beatitudo est: vita .xterna ipse Deus." — 
 Augustin. (ap. Petrus Lotnb. 1. ii. dist. 38, u. i). " The other man will be 
 renovated in the spiritual life, i.e., will become a, spiritual man, when lie 
 shall be restored into the image of God. For he will be like God, in life, in 
 righteousness, glory, and wisdom." — Luther (Th. i. p. 324). 
 
174 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 in knowing that / am, that I am immortal. God is my 
 hidden, my assured existence ; he is the subjectivity of sub- 
 jects, the personality of persons. How then should that not 
 belong to persons which belongs to personality ? In God I 
 make^my future into a present, or rather a verb into a sub- 
 stantive ; how should I separate the one from the other ? 
 God is the existence corresponding to my wishes and feel- 
 ings : he is the just one, the good, who fulfils my wishes. 
 Nature, this world, is an existence which contradicts my 
 wishes, my feelings. Here it is not as it ought to be ; this 
 world passes away ; but God is existence as it ought to be. 
 God fulfils my wishes ; — this is only a popular personifica- 
 tion of the position : God is the f ulfiller, i.e., the reality, the 
 fulfilment of my wishes.* But heaven is the existence 
 adequate to my wishes, my longing ; -f- thus there is no 
 distinction between God and heaven. God is the power by 
 which man realises his eternal happiness ; God is the abso- 
 lute personality in which all individual persons have the 
 certainty of their blessedness and immortality ; God is to 
 subjectivity the highest, last certainty of its absolute truth 
 and essentiality. 
 
 The doctrine of immortality is the final doctrine of reli- 
 gion ; its testament, in which it declares its last wishes. 
 Here therefore it speaks out undisguisedly what it has 
 hitherto suppressed. If elsewhere the religious soul con- 
 cerns itself with the existence of another being, here it openly 
 considers only its own existence ; if elsewhere in religion 
 man makes his existence dependent on the existence of God, 
 he here makes the reality of God dependent on his own 
 reality ; and thus what elsewhere is a primitive, immediate 
 truth to him, is here a derivative, secondary truth : if I am 
 not immortal, God is not God ; if there is no immortality, 
 there is no God; — a conclusion already drawn by the Apostle 
 Paul. If we do not rise again, then Christ is not risen, and 
 all is vain. Let us eat and drink. It is certainly possible 
 
 * " Si bonum est habere corpus incorruptibile, quare hoc facturum Deum 
 volumus dasperere?" — Augustinus (0pp. Antwerp, 1700, Th. v. p. 69S). 
 
 + " tjuare dicitur spiritale corpus, nisi quia ad nutum spiritus serviet? 
 
 Niliil tibi coutradicet ex te, nihil in te rebellabit ad\rersus te Ubi 
 
 volueris, eris Credere cnitn debemus talia corpora nos habituros, ut 
 
 ubi vcliinus. quando voluerimus, ibi simus." — Augustinus (1. u. pp. 703, 705). 
 "Nihil indecorum ibi erit, summa pax erit, nihil discordaus, nihil mons- 
 truosum, nihil quod oHendat adspectum " (1. c. 707). "Nisi beatus, non 
 vivit nt vult." (De Civ. Dei, 1. 14, c. 25.) 
 
THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 175 
 
 to do away with what is apparently or really objectionable 
 in the popular argumentation, by avoiding the inferential 
 form ; but this can only be done by making immortality an 
 analytic instead of a synthetic truth, so as to show that the 
 very idea of God as absolute personality or subjectivity is 
 per se the idea of immortality. God is the guarantee of my 
 future existence, because he is already the certainty and 
 reality of ray present existence, my salvation, my trust, my 
 shield from the forces of the external world ; hence I need 
 not expressly deduce immortality, or prove it as a separate 
 truth, for if I have God, I have immortality also. Thus it 
 was with the more profound Christian mystics ; to them 
 the idea of immortality was involved in the idea of God ; 
 God was their immortal life, — God himself their subjective 
 blessedness : he was for them, for their consciousness, what 
 he is in himself, that is, in the essence of religion. 
 
 Thus it is shown that God is heaven ; that the two are 
 identical. It would have been easier to prove the converse, 
 namely, that heaven is the true God of men. As man con- 
 ceives his heaven, so he conceives his God ; the content of 
 his idea of heaven is the content of his idea of God, only 
 that what in God is a mere sketch, a concept, is in heaven 
 depicted and developed in the colours and forms of the 
 senses. Heaven is therefore the key to the deepest mysteries 
 of religion. As heaven is objectively the displayed nature 
 of God, so subjectively it is the most candid declaration of 
 the inmost thoughts and dispositions of religion. For this 
 reason, religions are as various as are the kingdoms of heaven, 
 and there are as many different kingdoms of heaven as there 
 are characteristic differences among men. The Christians 
 themselves have very heterogeneous conceptions of heaven.* 
 
 The more judicious among them, however, think and say 
 nothing definite about heaven or the future world in general, 
 on the ground that it is inconceivable, that it can only be 
 thought of by us according to the standard of this world, a 
 standard not applicable to the other. All conceptions of 
 heaven here below are, they allege, mere images, whereby 
 
 * And their conceptions of God are just as lieterogeneous. The pious 
 Germans have a German God, the pious Spaniards a Spanish God, the 
 French a French God. The French actually have the proverb: " Le hon 
 Dieu est Fran^ais." In fact, polytheism must exist so long as there are 
 various nations. The real God of a people ia the point dhonneur of its 
 nationality. ^ 
 
176 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 man represents to himself that future, the nature of which 
 is unknown to him, but the existence of which is certain. 
 It is just so with God. The existence of God, it is said, is 
 certain; but what he is, or how he exists, is inscrutable. 
 But he who speaks thus has already driven the future world 
 out of his head ; he still holds it fast, either because he does 
 not think at all about such matters, or because it is still a 
 want of his heart; but, preoccupied with real things, he 
 thrusts it as far as possible out of his sight ; he denies with 
 his head what he affirms with his heart ; for it is to deny 
 the future life, to deprive it of the qualities by which alone 
 it is a real and effective object for man. Quality is not 
 distinct from existence ; quality is nothing but real exist- 
 ence. Existence without quality is a chimera, a spectre. 
 Existence is first made known to me by quality ; not exist- 
 ence first, and after that quality. The doctrines that God 
 is not to be known or defined, -and that the nature of the 
 future life is inscrutable, are therefore not originally re- 
 ligious doctrines ; on the contrary, they are the products 
 of irreligion while still in bondage to religion, or rather 
 hiding itself behind religion ; and they are so for this reason, 
 that originally the existence of God is posited only with a 
 definite conception of God, the existence of a future life 
 only with a definite conception of that life. Thus to the 
 Christian, only his own paradise, the paradise which has 
 Christian qualities, is a certainty, not the paradise of the 
 Mahometan or the Elysium of the Greeks. The primary 
 certainty is everywhere quality ; existence follows of course 
 when once quality is certain. In the New Testament we 
 find no proofs or general propositions such as : there is a 
 God, there is a heavenly life ; we find only qualities of the 
 heavenly life adduced ; — " in heaven they marry not." 
 Naturally ; — it may be answered, — because the existence of 
 God and of heaven is presupposed. But here reflection in- 
 troduces a distinction of which the religious sentiment 
 knows nothing. Doubtless the existence is presupposed, 
 but only because the quality is itself existence, because the 
 inviolate religious feeling lives only in the quality, just as 
 to the natural man the real existence, the thing in itself, lies 
 only in the quality which he perceives. Thus in the pas- 
 sage above cited from the New Testament, the virgin or 
 rather sexless life is presupposed as the true life, which, 
 
THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 
 
 177 
 
 however, necessarily becomes a future one, because the actual 
 life contradicts the ideal of the true life. But the certainty 
 of this future life lies only in the certainty of its qualities, 
 as those of the true, highest life, adequate to the ideal. 
 
 Where the future life is really believed in, where it is a 
 certain life, there, precisely because it is certain, it is also 
 definite. If I know not now what and how I shall be ; if 
 there is an essential, absolute difference between my future 
 and my present ; neither shall I then know what and how 
 I was before, the unity of consciousness is at an end, per- 
 sonal identity is abolished, another being will appear in my 
 place ; and thus my future existence is not in fact distin- 
 guished from non-existence. If, on the other hand, there 
 is no essential difference, the future is to me an object that 
 may be defined and known. And so it is in reality. I am 
 the abiding subject under changing conditions ; I am the 
 substance which connects the present and the future into a 
 unity. How then can the future be obscure to me ? On 
 the contrary, the life of this world is the dark, incompre- 
 hensible life, which only becomes clear through the future 
 life ; here I am in disguise ; there the mask will fall ; there 
 I shall be as I am in truth. Hence the position that there 
 indeed is another, a heavenly life, but that what and how it 
 is must here remain inscrutable, is only an invention of re- 
 ligious scepticism, which, being entirely alien to the religious 
 sentiment, proceeds upon a total misconception of religion. 
 That which irreligious-religious refiection converts into a 
 known image of an unknown yet certain thing, is origi- 
 nally, in the primitive, true sense of religion, not an image, 
 but the thing itself. Unbelief, in the garb of belief, doubts 
 the existence of the thing, but it is too shallow or cowardly 
 directly to call it in question ; it only expresses doubt of 
 the image or conception, i.e., declares the image to be only 
 an image. But the untruth and hollowness of this scepti- 
 cism has been already made evident historically. Where 
 it is once doubted that the images of immortality are real, 
 that it is possible to exist as faith conceives, for example, 
 without a material, real body, and without difference of 
 sex; there the future existeuce in general is soon a matter 
 of doubt. With the image falls the thing, simply because 
 the image is the thing itself. 
 
 The belief in heaven, or in a future life in general, rests 
 
 M 
 
178 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 on a mental judgment. It expresses praise and blame; it 
 selects a wreath from the Hora of this world, and this 
 critical florilegium is heaven. That which man thmks 
 beautiful, good, agreeable, is for him what alone ought to 
 be ; that which he thinks bad, odious, disagreeable, is what 
 ought not to be ; and hence, since it nevertheless exists, it is 
 condemned to destruction, it is regarded as a negation. Where 
 life is not in contradiction with a feeling, an imagination, an 
 idea, and where this feeling, this idea, is not held authorita- 
 tive and absolute, the belief in another and a heavenly life 
 does not arise. The future life is nothing else than life in 
 unison with the feeling, with the idea, which the present life 
 contradicts. The whole import of the future life is the aboli- 
 tion of this discordance, and the realisation of a state which 
 corresponds to the feelings, in which man is in unison M'ith 
 himself. An unknown, unimagined future is a ridiculous 
 chimera : the other world is nothing more than the reality 
 of a known idea, the satisfaction of a conscious desire, 
 the fulfilment of a wish ; * it is only the removal of limits 
 which here oppose themselves to the realisation of the idea. 
 Where would be the consolation, where the significance of 
 a future life, if it were midnight darkness to me ? No ! 
 from yonder world there streams upon me with the splen- 
 dour of virgin gold what here shines only with the dimness 
 of unrefined ore. The future world has no other signifi- 
 cance, no other basis of its existence, than the separation 
 of the metal from the admixture of foreign elements, the 
 separation of the good from the bad, of the pleasant from 
 the unpleasant, of the praiseworthy from the blamable. 
 The future world is the Iridal in which m,an concludes 
 his union with his beloved. Long has he loved his bride, 
 long has he yearned after her ; but external relations, hard 
 reality, have stood in the way of his union to her. When 
 the wedding takes place, his beloved one does not become 
 a different being ; else how could he so ardently long for 
 her ? She only becomes his own ; from an object of yearn- 
 ing and affectionate desire she becomes an object of actual 
 possession. It is true that here below, the other world is 
 
 * " Ibi nostra spes erit res." — Augustin. "Therefore we have the first 
 fruits of immortal life in hope, until perfection comes at the last day, where- 
 in we shall see and feel the life we have believed in and hoped for." — 
 Luther (Th. i. s. 459). 
 
THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 179 
 
 only au image, a conception ; still it is not the image of a 
 remote, unknown thing, but a portrait of that which man 
 loves and prefers before all else. What man loves is his 
 soul. The heathens enclosed the ashes of the beloved dead 
 in an urn ; with the Christian the heavenly future is the 
 mausoleum in which he enshrines his soul. 
 
 In order to comprehend a particular faith, or religion in 
 general, it is necessary to consider religion in its rudimentary 
 stages, in its lowest, rudest condition. Eeligion must not 
 only be traced in an ascending line, but surveyed in the 
 entire course of its existence. It is requisite to regard the 
 various earlier religions as present in the absolute religion, 
 and not as left behind it in the past, in order correctly to 
 appreciate and comprehend the absolute religion as well as 
 the others. The most frightful " aberrations," the wildest 
 excesses of the religious consciousness, often afford the 
 profoundest insight into the mysteries of the absolute 
 religion. Ideas, seemingly the rudest, are often only the 
 most childlike, innocent, and true. This observation applies 
 to the conceptions of a future life. The " savage," whose 
 consciousness does not extend beyond his own country, 
 whose entire being is a growth of its soil, takes his country 
 with him into the other world, either leaving Nature as it 
 is, or improving it, and so overcoming in the idea of the 
 other life the difficulties he experiences in this.* In this 
 limitation of uncultivated tribes there is a striking trait. 
 With them the future expresses nothing else than home- 
 sickness. Death separates man from his kindred, from his 
 people, from his country. But the man who has not extended 
 his consciousness, cannot endure this separation ; he must 
 come back again to his native land. The negroes in the 
 West Indies killed themselves that they might come to life 
 again in their fatherland. And, according to Ossian's 
 conception, " the spirits of those who die in a strange land 
 float back towards their birthplace." f This limitation is 
 the direct opposite of imaginative spiritualism, which makes 
 
 * According to old books of travel, however, there are many tribes which 
 do not believe that the future is identical with the present, or that it is 
 better, but that it is even worse. Parny (CEuv. Chois. t. i. Melang. I tells 
 of a dying negro-slave who refused the inauguration to immortality by 
 baptism in these words : " Je ne veux point d'une autre vie, car peut-etre y 
 serais-je encore votre esclave." 
 
 t Ahlwardt (Ossian Anm. zu Carthonn.). 
 
i8o THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 man a vagabond, who, indifferent even to the earth, roams 
 from star'' to star; and certainly there lies a real truth at 
 its foundation. Man is what he is through Nature, however 
 much may belong to his spontaneity ; for even his spon- 
 taneity has its foundation in Nature, of which his particular 
 character is only an expression. Be thankful to Nature ! 
 Man cannot be separated from it. The German, whose G-od 
 is spontaneity, owes his character to Nature just as much 
 as the Oriental. To find fault with Indian art, with Indian 
 religion and philosophy, is to find fault with Indian Nature. 
 You complain of the reviewer who tears a passage in your 
 works from the context that he may hand it over to ridicule. 
 "VVliy are you yourself guilty of that which you blame in 
 others ? Why do you tear the Indian religion from its 
 connection, in which it is just as reasonable as your absolute 
 religion ? 
 
 Paith in a future world, in a life after death, is therefore 
 with " savage " tribes essentially nothing more than direct 
 faith in the present life — immediate unbroken faith in this 
 life. For them, their actual life, even with its local limita- 
 tions, has all, has absolute value; they cannot abstract from 
 it, they cannot conceive its being broken off; i.e., they be- 
 lieve directly in the infinitude, the perpetuity of this life. 
 Only when the belief in immortality becomes a critical 
 belief, when a distinction is made between what is to be left 
 behind here, and what is in reserve there, between what h-ere 
 passes away, and what there is to abide, does the belief in 
 life after death form itself into the belief in another life ; but 
 this criticism, this distinction, is applied to the present life 
 also. Thus the Christians distinguish between the natural 
 and the Christian life, the sensual or worldly and the spiritual 
 or holy life. The heavenly life is no other than that which 
 is, already here below, distinguished from the merely natural 
 life, though still tainted with it. That which the Christian 
 excludes from himself now — for example, the sexual life — 
 is excluded from the future : the only distinction is, that he 
 is there free from that which he here wishes to be free from, 
 and seeks to rid himself of by the will, by devotion, and by 
 bodily mortification. Hence this life is, for the Christian, a 
 life of torment and pain, because he is here still beset by a 
 hostile power, and has to struggle with the lusts of the flesh 
 and the assaults of the devil. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. i8i 
 
 The faith of cultured nations is therefore distinguished 
 from that of the uncultured in the same way that culture in 
 general is distinguished from inculture : namely, that the 
 faith of culture is a discriminating, critical, abstract faith. 
 A distinction implies a judgment ; but where there is a 
 judgment there arises the distinction between positive and 
 negative. The faith of savage tribes is a faith without a 
 judgment. Culture, on the contrary, judges : to the cultured 
 man only cultured life is the true life ; to the Christian only 
 the Christian life. The rude child of Nature steps into the 
 other life just as he is, without ceremony : the other world 
 is his natural nakedness. The cultivated man, on the con- 
 trary, objects to the idea of such an unbridled life after 
 death, because even here he objects to the unrestricted life 
 of Nature. Faith in a future life is therefore only faith in 
 the true life of the present ; the essential elements of this 
 life are also the essential elements of the other : accordingly, 
 faith in a future life is not faith in another unknown life ; 
 but in the truth and infinitude, and consequently in the per- 
 petuity, of that life which already here below is regarded as 
 the authentic life. 
 
 As God is nothing else than the nature of man purified 
 from that which to the human individual appears, whether 
 in feeling or thought, a limitation, an evil ; so the future life 
 is nothing else than the present life freed from that which 
 appears a limitation or an evil. The more definitely and 
 profoundly the individual is conscious of the limit as a limit, 
 of the evil as an evil, the more definite and profound is his 
 conviction of the future life, where these limits disappear. 
 The future life is the feeling, the conception of freedom from 
 those limits which here circumscribe the feeling of self, the 
 existence of the individual. The only difference between the 
 course of religion and that of the natural or rational man is, 
 that the end which the latter arrives at by a straight line, 
 the former only attains by describing a curved line — a circle. 
 The natural man remains at home because he finds it agree- 
 able, because he is perfectly satisfied ; religion which com- 
 mences with a discontent, a disunion, forsakes its home and 
 travels far, but only to feel the more vividly in the distance 
 the happiness of home. In religion man separates himself 
 from himself, but only to return always to the same point 
 
i82 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 from which he set out. Man negatives himself, but only to 
 posit himself again, and that in a glorified form : he nega- 
 tives this life, but only, in the end, to posit it again in the 
 future life* The future life is this life once lost, but found 
 again, and radiant with all the more brightness for the joy of 
 recovery. The religious man renounces the joys of this world, 
 but only that he may win in return the joys of heaven ; or 
 rather he renounces them because he is already in the ideal 
 possession of heavenly joys ; and the joys of heaven are the 
 same as those of earth, only that they are freed from the 
 limits and contrarieties of this life. Eeligion thus arrives, 
 though by a circuit, at the very goal, the goal of joy, towards 
 which the natural man hastens in a direct line. To live in 
 images or symbols is the essence of religion. Eeligion sac- 
 rifices the thinn- itself to the image. The future life is the 
 present in the mirror of the imagination : the enrapturing 
 image is in the sense of religion the true type of earthly 
 life, — real life only a glimmer of that ideal, imaginary life. 
 The future life is the present embellished, contemplated 
 through the imagination, purified from all gross matter ; 
 or, positively expressed, it is the beauteous present inten- 
 sified. 
 
 Embellishment, emendation, presupposes blame, dissatis- 
 faction. But the dissatisfaction is only superficial I do 
 not deny the thing to be of value ; just as it is, however, it 
 does not please me ; I deny only the modification, not the 
 substance, otherwise I should urge annihilation. A house 
 which absolutely displeases me I cause to be pulled down, 
 not to be embellislied. To the believer in a future life 
 joy is agreeable — who can fail to be conscious that joy 
 is something positive ? — but it is disagreeable to him 
 that here joy is followed by opposite sensations, that it 
 is transitory. Hence he places joy in the future life also, 
 but as eternal, uninterrupted, divine joy (and the future 
 life is therefore called the world of joy), such as he here 
 conceives it in God ; for God is nothing but eternal, unin- 
 terrupted joy, posited as a subject. Individuality or per- 
 
 * There everything will be restored. ' ' Qui modo vivit, erit, nee me vel 
 dente, vel ungiie fraudatum revomet patefacti fossa sepulchri." — Aurelius 
 Prud. (Apotheos. de Resurr. Carnis Hum.). And this faith, which you con- 
 sider rude and carnal, and which you therefore disavow, is the only consis- 
 tent, honest, and true faith. To the identity of the person belongs the 
 identity of the body. 
 
THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 183 
 
 sonality is agreeable to him, but only as unencumbered by 
 objective forces ; hence, he includes individuality also, but 
 pure, absolutely subjective individuality. Light pleases him ; 
 but not gravitation, because this appears a limitation of the 
 individual ; not night, because in it man is subjected to 
 Nature : in the other world, there is light, but no weight, 
 no night, — pure, unobstructed light.* 
 
 As man in his utmost remoteness from himself, in God, 
 always returns upon himself, always revolves round him- 
 self ; so in his utmost remoteness from the world, he always 
 at last comes back to it. The more extra- and supra-human 
 God appears at the commencement, the more human does 
 he show himself to be in the subsequent course of things, 
 or at the close : and just so, the more supernatural the 
 heavenly life looks in the beginning or at a distance, the 
 more clearly does it, in the end or when viewed closely, 
 exhibit its identity with the natural life, — an identity 
 which at last extends even to the flesh, even to the body. 
 In the first instance the mind is occupied with the sepa- 
 ration of the soul from the body, as in the conception 
 of God the mind is first occupied with the separation of 
 the essence from the individual ; — the individual dies a 
 spiritual death, the dead body which remains behind is the 
 human individual ; the soul which has departed from it is 
 God. But the separation of the soul from the body, of the 
 essence from the individual, of God from man, must be 
 abolished again. Every separation of beings essentially 
 allied is painfuL The soul yearns after its lost half, after 
 its body ; as God, the departed soul yearns after the real 
 man. As, therefore, God becomes a man again, so the soul 
 returns to its body, and the perfect identity of this world 
 and the other is now restored. It is true that this new 
 body is a bright, glorified, miraculous body, but — and this is 
 the main point — it is another and yet the same body,-|- as 
 God is another being than man, and yet the same. Here 
 we come again to the idea of miracle, which unites contra- 
 dictories. The supernatural body is a body constructed by 
 
 * " Neque enim post resurrectionem tempus diebus ac noctibus numera- 
 bitur. Erit magis una dies sine vespere." — Job. Damascen. (Orth. Fidei 
 1. ii. c. I). 
 
 t "Ipsum (corpus) erit et non ipsum erit." — Augustinus (v. J. Ch. Doe- 
 derlein, Inst. Theol. Christ. Altorf, 1781, § 280). 
 
i84 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 the imagination, for which very reason it is adequate to the 
 feelings of man : an unburdensome, purely subjective body. 
 Faith in the future life is nothing else than faith in the 
 truth of the imagination, as faith in God is faith in the 
 truth and infinity of human feeling. Or : as faith in God 
 is only faith in the abstract nature of man, so faith in the 
 heavenly life is only faith in the abstract earthly life. 
 
 But the sum of the future life is happiness, the everlast- 
 ing bliss of personality, which is here limited and circum- 
 scribed by Nature. Faith in the future life is therefore 
 faith in the freedom of subjectivity from the limits of 
 Nature ; it is faith in the eternity and infinitude of person- 
 ality, and not of personality viewed in relation to the idea 
 of the species, in which it for ever unfolds itself in new 
 individuals, but of personality as belonging to already 
 existing individuals : consequently, it is the faith of man 
 in himself. But faith in the kingdom of heaven is one 
 with faith in God — the content of both ideas is the same ; 
 God is pure absolute subjectivity released from all natural 
 limits ; he is what individuals ought to be and will be : faith 
 in God is therefore the faith of man in the infinitude and 
 truth of his own nature ; the Divine Being is the subjective 
 human being in his absolute freedom and unlimitedness. 
 
 Our most essential task is now fulfilled. We have reduced 
 the supermundane, supernatural, and superhuman nature 
 of God to the elements of human nature as its fundamental 
 elements. Our process of analysis has brought us again 
 to the position with which we set out. The beginning, 
 middle and end of religion is Man. 
 
PART II. 
 
 THE FALSE OR THEOLOGICAL ESSENCE 
 OF RELIGION. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE ESSENTIAL STANDPOINT OF KELIGION. 
 
 The essential standpoint of religion is the practical or sub- 
 jective. The end of religion is the welfare, the salvation, 
 the ultimate felicity of man ; the relation of man to God is 
 nothing else than his relation to his own spiritual good ; 
 God is the realised salvation of the soul, or the unlimited 
 power of effecting the salvation, the bliss of man.* The 
 Christian religion is specially distinguished from other 
 religions in this, — that no other has given equal prominence 
 to the salvation of man. But this salvation is not temporal 
 earthly prosperity and well-being. On the contrary, the 
 most genuine Christians have declared that earthly good 
 draws man away from God, whereas adversity, suffering, 
 afflictions lead him back to God, and hence are alone 
 suited to Christians. Why? Because in trouble man is 
 only practically or subjectively disposed ; in trouble he has 
 resource only to the one thing needful ; in trouble God is 
 felt to be a want of man. Pleasure, joy, expands man; 
 trouble, suffering, contracts and concentrates him ; in suffer- 
 ing man denies the reality of the world ; tlie tilings that 
 
 * "Prater salutem tuam nihil cogites ; solum quse Dei sunt cures." — 
 Thomas \ K. (de Imit. 1. i. c. 23). "Contra salutem proprium cogites nihil. 
 Minus dixi : contra, prteter dixisse debueram." — Bernhardus (de Consid. ad 
 Eugenium Pontif. Max. 1. ii.). "Qui Deum quaerit, de propria salute solli- 
 citus est." — Clemens Alex. (Cohort, ad Gent.). 
 
1 86 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 charm the imagination of the artist and the intellect of 
 the thinker lose their attraction for him, their power over 
 him ; he is absorbed in himself, in his own soul. The soul 
 thus self-absorbed, self- concentrated, seeking satisfaction in 
 itself alone, denying the world, idealistic in relation to the 
 world, to Nature in general, but realistic in relation to man, 
 caring only for its inherent need of salvation, — this soul is 
 God. God, as the object of religion, — and only as such is 
 he God, — God in the sense of a nomen proprium, not of a 
 vague, metaphysical entity, is essentially an object only of 
 religion, not of philosophy, — of feeling, not of the intellect, 
 — of the heart's necessity, not of the mind's freedom: in 
 short, an object which is the reflex not of the theoretical 
 but of the practical tendency in man. 
 
 Eeligion annexes to its doctrines a curse and a blessing, 
 damnation and salvation. Blessed is he that believeth, 
 cursed is he that believeth not. Thus it appeals not to 
 reason, but to feeling, to the desire of happiness, to the 
 passions of hope and fear. It does not take the theoretic 
 point of view ; otherwise it must have been free to enunciate 
 its doctrines without attaching to them practical conse- 
 quences, without to a certain extent compelling belief in 
 them ; for when the case stands thus : I am lost if I do not 
 believe, — the conscience is under a subtle kind of constraint; 
 the fear of hell urges me to believe. Even supposing my 
 belief to be in its origin free, fear inevitably intermingles 
 itself ; my conscience is always under constraint ; doubt, 
 the principle of theoretic freedom, appears to me a crime. 
 And as in religion the highest idea, the highest existence is 
 God, so the highest crime is doubt in God, or the doubt that 
 God exists. But that which I do not trust myself to doubt, 
 which I cannot doubt without feeling disturbed in my soul, 
 without incurring guilt ; that is no matter of theory, but a 
 matter of conscience, no being of the intellect, but of the 
 heart. 
 
 Now as the sole standpoint of religion is the practical or 
 subjective standpoint, as therefore to religion the whole, the 
 essential man is that part of his nature which is practical, 
 which forms resolutions, which acts in accordance with con- 
 scious aims, whether physical or moral, and which considers 
 the world not in itself, but only in relation to those aims or 
 wants : the consequence is that everything which lies behind 
 
THE ESSENTIAL STANDPOINT OF RELIGION. 187 
 
 the practical consciousness, but which is the essential object 
 of theory — theory in its most original and general sense, 
 namely, that of objective contemplation and experience, of 
 the intellect, of science * — is regarded by religion as lying 
 outside man and Nature, in a special, personal being. All 
 good, but especially such as takes possession of man apart 
 from his volition, such as does not correspond with any 
 resolution or purpose, such as transcends the limits of the 
 practical consciousness, comes from God ; all wickedness, 
 evil, but especially such as overtakes him against his will 
 in the midst of his best moral resolutions, or hurries him 
 along with terrible violence, comes from the devil. The 
 scientific knowledge of the essence of religion includes the 
 knowledge of the devil, of Satan, of demons.f These things 
 cannot be omitted without a violent mutilation of religion. 
 Grace and its works are the antitheses of the devil and his 
 works. As the involuntary, sensual impulses which flash 
 out from the depths of the nature, and, in general, all those 
 phenomena of moral and physical evil which are inexplicable 
 to religion, appear to it as the work of the Evil Being; so 
 the involuntary movements of inspiration and ecstasy appear 
 to it as the work of the Good Being, God, of the Holy Spirit 
 or of grace. Hence the arbitrariness of grace — the com- 
 plaint of the pious that grace at one time visits and blesses 
 them, at another forsakes and rejects them. The life, the 
 agency of grace, is the life, the agency of emotion. Emotion 
 is the Paraclete of Christians. The moments which are for- 
 saken by divine grace are the moments destitute of emotion 
 and inspiration. 
 
 In relation to the inner life, grace may be defined as 
 religious genius; in relation to the outer life as religious 
 chance. 'Man is good or wicked by no means through him- 
 self, his own power, his will; but through that complete 
 synthesis of hidden and evident determinations of things 
 
 * Here and iu other parts of this work, theory is taken in the sense in 
 which it is the source of true objectiYe activity,— the science which gives 
 birth to art, — for man can do only so much as he knows : "tantum potest 
 quantum scit." 
 
 t Concerning the biblical conceptions of Satan, his power and works, see 
 Liitzelberger's " Grundziige der Paulinischen Glaubenslehre, " and G. Cli. 
 Knapp's "Tories, iiber d. Christl. Glaubensl.," § 62-65. To this subject 
 belongs demoniacal possession, wMch also has its attestation iu the Bible. 
 See Knapp (§ 65, iii. 2, 3). 
 
iS8 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 wliicli, because they rest on no evident necessity, we ascribe 
 to the power of " chance." Divine grace is the power of 
 chance beclouded with additional mystery. Here we have 
 again the confirmation of that which we have seen to be the 
 essential law of religion. Eeligion denies, repudiates chance, 
 making everything dependent on God, explaining everything 
 by means of him ; but this denial is only apparent ; it merely 
 gives chance the name of the divine sovereignty. For the 
 divine will, which, on incomprehensible grounds, for in- 
 comprehensible reasons, that is, speaking plainly, out of 
 groundless, absolute arbitrariness, out of divine caprice, as 
 it were, determines or predestines some to evil and misery, 
 others to good and happiness, has not a single positive 
 characteristic to distinguish it from the power of chance. 
 The mystery of the election of grace is thus the mystery of 
 chance. I say the mystery of chance ; for in reality chance 
 is a mystery, although slurred over and ignored by our 
 speculative religious philosophy, which, as in its occupation 
 with the illusory mysteries of the Absolute Being, i.e., of 
 theology, it has overlooked the true mysteries of thought 
 and life, so also in the mystery of divine grace or freedom 
 of election, has forgotten the profane mystery of chance.* 
 
 But to return. The devil is the negative, the evil, that 
 springs from the nature, but not from the will; God is the 
 positive, the good, which comes from the nature, but not 
 from the conscious action of the will; the devil is involuntary, 
 inexplicable wickedness; God involuntary, inexplicable good- 
 ness. The source of both is the same, the quality only is 
 different or opposite. For this reason, the belief in a devil 
 was, until the most recent times, intimately connected with 
 the belief in God, so that tlie denial of the devil was held to 
 be virtually as atheistic as the denial of God. Nor without 
 reason ; for when men once begin to derive the phenomena 
 of evil from natural causes, they at the same time begin to 
 derive the plienomena of good, of the divine, from the nature 
 of things, and come at length either to abolish the idea of 
 God altogether, or at least to believe in another God than 
 the God of religion. In this case it most commonly happens 
 
 * Doubtless, this unveiling of the mystery of predestination will be pro- 
 nounced atrocious, impious, diabolical. I have nothing to allege against 
 this ; I would rather be a devil in alliance with truth, than an angel in 
 alliance with falsehood. 
 
THE ESSENTIAL STANDPOINT OF RELIGION. 189 
 
 that they make the Deity an idle inactive being, whose 
 existence is equivalent to non-existence, since he no longer 
 actively interposes in life, but is merely placed at the summit 
 of things, at the beginning of the world, as the First Cause. 
 God created the world : this is all that is here retained of 
 God. The past tense is necessary ; for since that epoch the 
 world pursues its course like a machine. The addition: He 
 still creates, he is creating at this moment, is only the result 
 of external reflection ; the past tense adequately expresses 
 the religious idea in this stage ; for the spirit of religion is 
 gone when the operation of God is reduced to a fecit or 
 creavit. It is otherwise when the genuine religious con- 
 sciousness says : The fecit is still to-day a facit. This, 
 though here also it is a product of reflection, has neverthe- 
 less a legitimate meaning, because by the religious spirit 
 God is really thought of as active. 
 
 Eeligion is abolished where the idea of the world, of so- 
 called second causes, intrudes itself between God and man. 
 Here a foreign elenient, the principle of intellectual culture, 
 has insinuated itself, peace Is broken, the harmony of reli- 
 gion, which lies only in the immediate connection of man 
 with God, is destroyed. Second causes are a capitulation 
 of the unbelieving intellect with the still believing heart. 
 It is true that, according to religion also, God works on man 
 by means of other things and beings. But God alone is 
 the cause, he alone is the active and efficient being. What 
 a fellow-creature does is in the view of religion done not 
 by him, but by God. The other is only an appearance, a 
 medium, a vehicle, not a cause. But the " second cause " is 
 a miserable anomaly, neither an independent nor a dependent 
 being: God, it is true, gives the first impulse, but then ensues 
 the spontaneous activity of the second cause.* 
 
 Eeligion of itself, unadulterated by foreign elements, 
 knows nothing of the existence of second causes ; on the 
 contrary, they are a stone of stumbling to it ; for the realm 
 of second causes, the sensible world. Nature, is precisely 
 
 * A kindred doctrine is that of the Concursus Dei, according to which, 
 God not only gives the first impulse, but also co-operates in the agency of 
 the second cause. For the rest, this doctrine is only a particular form of 
 the contradictory dualism between God and Nature, which runs through 
 the history of Christianity. On the subject of this remark, as of the whole 
 paragraph, see Strauss : Die ChrisUiche Glaubendehre, B. ii. § 75, 76. 
 
I go THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 what separates man from God, although God as a real God, 
 i.e., an external being, is supposed himself to become m the 
 other world a sensible existence.* Hence religion believes 
 that one day this wall of separation will fall away. One 
 day there will be no Nature, no matter, no body, at least 
 none such as to separate man from God : then there will be 
 only God and the pious soul. Eeligion derives the idea of 
 the existence of second causes, that is, of things which are 
 interposed between God and man, only from the physical, 
 natural, and hence the irreligious or at least non-religious 
 theory of the universe : a theory which it nevertheless 
 immediately subverts by making the operations of Nature 
 operations of God. But this religious idea is in contradic- 
 tion with the natural sense and understanding, which con- 
 cedes a real, spontaneous activity to natural things. And 
 this contradiction of the physical view with the religious 
 theory, religion resolves by converting the undeniable ac- 
 tivity of things into an activity of God. Thus, on this view, 
 the positive idea is God ; the negative, the world. 
 
 On the contrary, where second causes, having been set in 
 motion, are, so to speak, emancipated, the converse occurs ; 
 Nature is the positive, God a negative idea. The world is 
 independent in its existence, its persistence ; only as to its 
 commencement is it dependent. God is here only a hypo- 
 thetical Bemg, an inference, arising from the necessity of 
 a limited understanding, to which the existence of a world 
 viewed by it as a machine is inexplicable without a self- 
 moving principle ; — he is no longer an original, absolutely 
 necessary Being. God exists not for his own sake, but for 
 
 * " Dum smnus in hoc corpore, peregrinanmr ab eo qui summe est." — 
 Bernard. Epist. i8 (ed. Basle, 1552). "As long as we live, we are in the 
 midst of death." — Luther (Th. i. p. 331). The idea of the future life is 
 therefore nothing else than the idea of true, perfected religion, ireed from 
 the limits and obstructions of this life, — the future life, as has been already 
 said, nothing but the true opinion and disposition, the open heart, of reli- 
 gion. Here we believe — there we behold ; i.e., there there is nothing 
 besides God, and thus nothing between God and the soul ; but only for 
 this reason, that there ought to be nothing between them, because the 
 immediate union of God and the soul is the true opinion and desire of 
 religion. "We have as yet so to do with God as with one hidden from us, 
 and it is not possible that in this life we should hold communion with him 
 face to face. All creatures are now nothing else than vain masks, under 
 which God conceals himself, and by which he deals with us." — Luther (Th. 
 xi. p. 70). " If thou wert only free from the images of created things, thou 
 mightest have God without intermission." — Tauler (1. c. p. 313). 
 
THE ESSENTIAL STANDPOINT OF RELIGION. 191 
 
 the sake of the world, — merely that he may, as a First 
 Cause, explain the existence of the world. The narrow 
 rationalising man takes objection to the original self-subsis- 
 tence of the world, because he looks at it only from the sub- 
 jective, practical point of view, only in its commoner aspect, 
 only as a piece of mechanism, not in its majesty and glory, 
 not as the Cosmos. He conceives the world as having been 
 launched into existence by an original impetus, as, according 
 to mathematical theory, is the case with matter once set 
 in motion and thenceforth going on for ever : that is, he 
 postulates a mechanical origin. A machine must have a 
 beginning ; this is involved in its very idea ; for it has not 
 the source of motion in itself. 
 
 All religious speculative cosmogony is tautology, as is 
 apparent from this example. In cosmogony man declares 
 or realises the idea he has of the world ; he merely repeats 
 what he has already said in another form. Thus here, if 
 the world is a machine, it is self-evident that it did not 
 make itself, that, on the contrary, it was created, i.e., had a 
 mechanical origin. Herein, it is true, the religious con- 
 sciousness agrees with the mechanical theory, that to it 
 also the world is a mere fabric, a product of Will. But 
 they agree only for an instant, only in the moment of crea- 
 tion ; that moment past, the harmony ceases. The holder 
 of the mechanical theory needs God only as the creator of 
 the world; once made, the world turns its back on the 
 Creator, and rejoices in its godless self-subsistence. But 
 religion creates the world only to maintain it in the per- 
 petual consciousness of its nothingness, its dependence on 
 God.* To the mechanical theorist, the creation is the 
 last thin thread which yet ties him to religion ; the religion 
 to which the nothingness of the world is a present truth 
 (for all power and activity is to it the power and activity 
 of God), is with him only a surviving reminiscence of youth ; 
 hence he removes the creation of the world, the act of 
 religion, the non-existence of the world (for in the begin- 
 ning, before the creation, there was no world, only God), 
 
 * "Voluntate igitur Dei immobilis manet et stat in seculum terra . . . 
 et voluntate Dei movetur et nutat. Non ergo fundamentis suis nixa sub- 
 sistit, nee fulcris suis stabilis perseverat, sed Dominus statuit earn et firma- 
 mento voluntatis bUis continet, quia in manu ejus omnes fines terrse."— 
 Anibrosius (HexEemeron. 1. i. 0. 61). 
 
192 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 into the far distance, into the past, while the self-subsistence 
 of the world, which absorbs all his senses and endeavours, 
 acts on him with the force of the present. The mechanical 
 theorist interrupts and cuts short the activity of God by 
 the activity of the world. With him God has indeed still 
 an historical right, but this is in contradiction with the 
 rio-ht he awards to Nature ; hence he limits as much as 
 possible the right yet remaining to God, in order to gain 
 wider and freer play for his natural causes, and thereby for 
 his understanding. 
 
 With this class of thinkers the creation holds the same 
 position as miracles, which also they can and actually do 
 acquiesce in, because miracles exist, at least according to 
 religious opinion. But not to say that he explains miracles 
 naturally, that is, mechanically, he can only digest them 
 w^hen he relegates them to the past ; for the present he begs 
 to be excused from believing in them, and explains every- 
 thing to himself charmingly on natural principles. When 
 a belief has departed from the reason, the intelligence, when 
 it is no longer held spontaneously, but merely because it is 
 a common belief, or because on some ground or other it 
 must be held ; in short, when a belief is inwardly a past 
 one; then externally also the object of the belief is referred 
 to the past. Unbelief thus gets breathing space, but at the 
 same tune concedes to belief at least an historical validity. 
 The past is here the fortunate means of compromise between 
 belief and unbelief : I certainly believe in miracles, but, 
 nota hene, in no miracles which happen now — only in those 
 which once happened, which, thank God ! are already plus 
 quam perfcda. So also with the creation. The creation is 
 an immediate act of God, a miracle, for there was once 
 nothing but God. In the idea of the creation man transcends 
 the world, he rises into abstraction from it ; he conceives it 
 as non-existent in the moment of creation ; thus he dispels 
 from his sight what stands between himself and God, the 
 sensible world ; he places himself in immediate contact with 
 God. But the mechanical thinker shrinks from this im- 
 mediate contact with God ; hence he at once makes the 
 prmsens, if indeed he soars so high, into a perfcctum ; he 
 interposes millenniums between his natural or materialistic 
 view and the thought of an immediate operation of God. 
 
 To the religious spirit, on the contrary, God alone is the 
 
THE ESSENTIAL STANDPOINT OF RELIGION. 193 
 
 cause of all positive effects, God alone the ultimate and also 
 the sole ground wherewith it answers, or rather repels, all 
 questions which theory puts forward ; for the affirmative of 
 religion is virtually a negative; its answer amounts to 
 nothing, since it solves the most various questions always 
 with the same answer, making all the operations of Nature 
 immediate operations of God, of a designing, personal, extra- 
 natural or supranatural Being. God is the idea which sup- 
 plies the lack of theory. The idea of God is the explanation 
 of the inexplicable, — which explains nothing because it is 
 supposed to explain everything without distinction ; he is 
 the night of theory, a night, however, in which everything 
 is clear to religious feeling, because in it the measure of 
 darkness, the discriminating light of the understanding, 
 is extinct; he is the ignorance which solves all doubt by 
 repressing it, which knows everything because it knows 
 nothing definite, because all things which impress the intel- 
 lect disappear before religion, lose their individuality, in the 
 eyes of divine power are nothing. Darkness is the mother 
 of religion. 
 
 The essential act of religion, that in which religion puts 
 into action what we have designated as its essence, is prayer. 
 Prayer is all-powerful. What the pious soul entreats for 
 in prayer God fulfils. But he prays not for spiritual gifts* 
 alone, which lie in some sort in the power of man ; he 
 prays also for things which lie out of him, which are in the 
 power of Nature, a power which it is the very object of 
 prayer to overcome; in prayer he lays hold on a super- 
 natural means, in order to attain ends in themselves natural. 
 God is to him not the cmisa remota but the causa proxima, 
 the immediate, rfficient cause of all natural effects. All 
 so-called secondary forces and second causes are nothing 
 to him when he prays ; if they were anything to him, the 
 might, the fervour of prayer would be annihilated. But in 
 fact they have no existence for him ; otherwise he would 
 assuredly seek to attain his end only by some intermediate 
 process. But he desires immediate help. He has recourse 
 to prayer in the certainty that he can do more, infinitely 
 more, by prayer, than by all the efforts of reason and all 
 the agencies of Nature, — in the conviction that prayer pos- 
 
 * It is only unbelief in the efficacy of prayer which has subtly limited 
 prayer to Spiritual matters. 
 
 N 
 
194 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 sesses superhuman and supernatural powers* But in 
 prayer he applies immediately to God. Thus God is to 
 him the immediate cause, the fulfilment of prayer, the 
 power which reahses prayer. But an immediate act of God 
 is a miracle ; hence miracle is essential to the religious 
 view. Eeligion explains everything miraculously. That 
 miracles do not always happen is indeed obvious, as that 
 man does not always pray. But the consideration that 
 miracles do not always happen lies outside the nature of 
 religion, in the empirical or physical mode of view only. 
 Where religion begins, there also begins miracle. Every true 
 prayer is a miracle, an act of the wonder-working power. 
 External miracles themselves only make visible internal 
 miracles, that is, they are only a manifestation in time and 
 space, and therefore as a special fact, of what in and by 
 itself is a fundamental position of religion, namely, that God 
 is, in general, the supernatural, immediate cause of all things. 
 The miracle of fact is only an impassioned expression of 
 religion, a moment of inspiration. Miracles happen only 
 in extraordinary crises, in which there is an exaltation of the 
 feelings : hence there are miracles of anger. No miracle is 
 wrought in cold blood. But it is precisely in moments of 
 passion that the latent nature reveals itself. Man does not 
 always pray with equal warmth and power. Such prayers 
 are therefore ineffective. Only ardent praj^er reveals the 
 nature of prayer. Man truly prays when he regards prayer 
 as in itself a sacred power, a divine force. So it is with 
 miracles. Miracles happen — no matter whether few or 
 many — wherever there is, as a basis for them, a belief in 
 the miraculous. But the belief in miracle is no theoretic 
 or objective mode of viewing the world and Nature ; miracle 
 realises practical wants, and that in contradiction with the 
 laws which are imperative to the reason ; in miracle man 
 subjugates Nature, as in itself a nullity, to his own ends, 
 which he regards as a reality ; miracle is the superlative 
 expression of spiritual or religious utilitarianism ; in miracle 
 all things are at the service of necessitous man. It is clear 
 
 * According to the notion of barbarians, therefore, prayer is a coercive 
 power, a charm. But this conception is an unchristian one (althouirh even 
 among many Christians the idea is accepted that prayer constrains God) ; 
 for in Christianity God is essentially feeling satisfied in itself, Almighty 
 goodness, which denies nothing to (religious) feeling. The idea of coercion 
 presupposes an unfeeling God. 
 
THE ESSENTIAL STANDPOINT OF RELIGION. 19; 
 
 from this, that the conception of the world which is essential 
 to religion is that of the practical or subjective standpoint, 
 that God — for the miracle-working power is identical witli 
 God — is a purely practical or subjective Being, serving, 
 however,'as a substitute for a theoretic view, and is thus no 
 object of thought, of the knowing faculty, any more than 
 miracle, which owes its origin to the negation of thought. 
 If I place myself in the point of view of thought, of investi- 
 gation, of theory, in which I consider things in themselves, in 
 their mutual relations, the miracle-working being vanishes 
 into nothing, miracle disappears ; i.e., the religious miracle, 
 which is absolutely different from the natural miracle, 
 though they are continually interchanged, in order to 
 stultify reason, and, under the appearance of natural science, 
 to introduce reKgious miracle into the sphere of rationality 
 and reality. 
 
 But for this very reason — namely, that religion is re- 
 moved from the, standpoint, from the nature of theory — 
 the true, universal essence of Nature and humanity, which 
 as such is hidden from religion and is only visible to the 
 theoretic eye, is conceived as another, a miraculous and 
 ' supernatural essence; the idea of the species becomes the 
 idea of God, who again is himself an individual being, but 
 is distinguished from human individuals in this, that he 
 possesses their qualities according to the measure of the 
 species. Hence, in religion man necessarily places his 
 nature out of himself, regards his nature as a separate 
 nature ; necessarily, because the nature which is the object 
 of theory lies outside of him, because all his conscious 
 existence spends itself in his practical subjectivity. God 
 is his alter ego, his other lost half ; God is the complement 
 of himself ; in God he is first a perfect man. God is a need 
 to him ; something is wanting to him without his knowing 
 what it is — God is this something wanting, indispensable 
 to him ; God belongs to his nature. The world is nothing 
 to religion,* — the world, which is in truth the sum of all 
 reality" is revealed in its glory only by theory. The joys of 
 
 * " Natura enim remota providentia et potestate divina prorsus nihil est." 
 — Lactantius (Div. Inst. lib. 3, 0. 2S). " Omnia qufe creata sunt, quamvis 
 ea Deus fecerit valde bona, Creatori tamen comparata, nee bona sunt, cui 
 comparata nee sunt ; altissime quippe et proprio modo quodam de se ipso 
 dixit : Ego sum, qui sum."— Augustinus (de Perfectione Just. Horn. c. 14). 
 
195 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 theory are the sweetest intellectual pleasures of life ; but 
 religion knows nothing of the joys of the thinker, of the 
 investicrator of Nature, of the artist. The idea of the 
 universes is wanting to it, the consciousness of the really 
 infinite, the consciousness of the species. God only is its 
 compensation for the poverty of life, for the want of a sub- 
 stantial import, which the true life of rational contempla- 
 tion presents in unending fulness. God is to religion the 
 substitute for the lost world, — God is to it in the stead of 
 pure contemplation, the life of theory. 
 
 That which we have designated as the practical or sub- 
 jective view is not pure, it is tainted with egoism, -for 
 therein I have relation to a thing only for my own sake ; 
 neither is it self-sufficing, for it places me in relation to an 
 object above my own level. On the contrary, the theoretic 
 view is joyful, self-sufficing, happy; for here the object 
 calls forth love and admiration; in the light of the free 
 intelligence it is radiant as a diamond, transparent as a 
 rock-crystal. The theoretic view is Eesthetic, whereas the 
 practical is unassthetic. Eeligion therefore finds in God a 
 compensation for the want of an aesthetic view. To the 
 religious spirit the world is nothing in itself ; the admira- 
 tion, the contemplation of it is idolatry; for the world is a 
 mere piece of mechanism.* Hence in religion it is God 
 that serves as the object of pure, untainted, i.e., theoretic 
 or testhetic contemplation. God is the existence to which 
 the religious man has an objective relation; in God the 
 object is contemplated by him for its own sake. God is an 
 end in himself ; therefore in religion he has the significance 
 which in the theoretic view belongs to the object in general. 
 The general being of theory is to religion a special being. 
 It is true that in religion man, in his relation to God, has 
 relation to his own wants as well in a higher as in the lower 
 sense : " Give us this day our daily bread ; " but God can 
 satisfy all wants of man only because he in himself has no 
 wants, — because he is perfect blessedness. 
 
 * " Pulchras formas et varias, nitidos et amo3no3 colores amant ocuK. 
 Non teneant lipec aniniam meam ; teueat earn Deus qui ha;c fecit, bona qui- 
 dem valde, sed ipse est bonum meum, non hajc. " — Augnstinus (Confess. 1. x. 
 c. 34). " Vetitiautem sumus (2 Cor. iv. 18.) couverti ad ea qu£e videntur. 
 . . . Amandus igitur solus Deus est : omnis vero iste mundus, i.e. omnia 
 sensibilia contemnenda, utendum autem his ad hujus vita! necessitatem." — 
 lb. de Moribus Eccl. Cathol. 1. i. c. 20. 
 
CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 197 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 
 
 Eeligion is the relation of man to his own nature, — therein 
 lies its truth and its power of moral amelioration ; — but to 
 his nature not recognised as his own, but regarded as another 
 nature, separate, nay, contradistinguished from his own : 
 herein lies its untruth, its limitation, its contradiction to 
 reason and morality ; herein lies the noxious source of reli- 
 gious fanaticism, the chief metaphysical principle of human 
 sacrifices, in a word, the imma materia of all the atrocities, 
 all the horrible scenes, in the tragedy of religious history. 
 
 The contemplation of the human nature as another, a 
 separately existent nature, is, however, in the original con- 
 ception of religion an involuntary, childlike, simple act of 
 the mind, that is, one which separates God and man just as 
 immediately as it again identifies them. But when religion 
 advances in years, and, with years, in understanding ; when, 
 within the bosom of religion, reflection on religion is 
 awakened, and the consciousness of the identity of the 
 divine being with the human begins to dawn, — in a word, 
 when religion becomes theology, the originally involuntary 
 and harmless separation of God from man becomes an 
 intentional, excogitated separation, which has no other 
 object than to banish again from the consciousness this 
 identity which has already entered there. 
 
 Hence the nearer religion stands to its origin, the truer, 
 the more genuine it is, the less is its true nature disguised ; 
 that is to say, in the origin of religion there is no qualitative 
 or essential distinction whatever between God and man. 
 And the religious man is not shocked at this identification ; 
 for his understanding is still in harmony with his religion. 
 Thus in ancient Judaism, Jehovah was a being differing 
 from the human individual in nothing but in duration of 
 existence; in his qualities, his inherent nature, he was 
 entirely similar to man, — had the same passions, the same 
 human, nay, even corporeal properties. Only in the later 
 
igS THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Judaism was Jehovah separated in the strictest manner 
 from man, and recourse was had to allegory in order to 
 give to the old anthropomorphisms another sense than that 
 which they originally had. So again in Christianity: in 
 its earliest records the divinity of Christ is not so decidedly 
 stamped as it afterwards became. With Paul especially, 
 Christ is still an undefined being, hovering between heaven 
 and earth, between God and man, or in general, one amongst 
 the existences subordinate to the highest, — the first of the 
 angels, the first created, but still created ; begotten indeed 
 for our sake ; but then neither are angels and men created, 
 but begotten, for God is their Pather also. The Church first 
 identified him with God, made him the exclusive Son of God, 
 defined his distinction from men and angels, and thus gave 
 him the monopoly of an eternal, uncreated existence. 
 
 In the genesis of ideas, the first mode in which reflection 
 on religion, or theology, makes the divine being a distinct 
 being, and places him outside of man, is by making the 
 existence of God the object of a formal proof. 
 
 The proofs of the existence of God have been pronounced 
 contradictory to the essential nature of religion. They are 
 so, but only in their form as proofs. Eeligion immediately 
 represents the inner nature of man as an objective, external 
 being. And the proof aims at nothing more than to prove 
 that religion is right. The most perfect being is that than 
 which no higher can be conceived : God is the highest that 
 man conceives or caii conceive. This premiss of the onto- 
 logical proof — the most interesting proof, because it pro- 
 ceeds from within — expresses the inmost nature of religion. 
 That which is the highest for man, from which he can make 
 no further abstraction, which is the positive limit of his in- 
 tellect, of his feeling, of his sentiment, that is to him God— 
 ill quo nihil majus cogitari potest. But this highest being 
 would not be the higliest if he did not exist ; we could then 
 conceive a higher being who would be superior to him in 
 the fact of existence ; the idea of the highest being directly 
 precludes this fiction. Not to exist is a deficiency ; to exist 
 is perfection, happiness, bliss. From a being to whom man 
 gives all, offers up all that is precious to him, he cannot 
 withhold the bliss of existence. The contradiction to the 
 religious spirit in the proof of the existence of God lies only 
 in this, that the existence is thought of separateh-, and 
 
CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 199 
 
 thence arises the appearance that God is a mere conception, 
 a being existing in idea only, — an appearance, however, 
 which is immediately dissipated ; for the very result of the 
 proof is, that to God belongs an existence distinct from an 
 ideal one, an existence apart from man, apart from thought, 
 — a real self-existence. 
 
 The proof therefore is only thus far discordant with the 
 spirit of religion, that it presents as a formal deduction the 
 implicit enthymeme or immediate conclusion of religion, 
 exhibits in logical relation, and therefore distinguishes, what 
 religion immediately unites ; for to religion God is not a 
 matter of abstract thought, — he is a present truth and reality. 
 But that every religion in its idea of God makes a latent, un- 
 conscious inference, is confessed in its polemic against other 
 religions. " Ye heathens," says the Jew or the Christian, 
 "were able to conceive nothing higher as your deities 
 because ye were sunk in sinful desires. Your God rests on 
 a conclusion, the premisses of which are your sensual im- 
 pulses, your passions. You thought thus : the most excel- 
 lent life is to live out one's impulses without restraint ; and 
 because this life was the most excellent, the truest, you 
 made it your God. Your God was your carnal nature, your 
 heaven only a free theatre for the passions which, in society 
 and in the conditions of actual life generally, liad to suffer 
 restraint." But, naturally, in relation to itself no religion 
 is conscious of such an inference, for the highest of which 
 it is capable is its limit, has the force of necessity, is not a 
 thought, not a conception, but immediate reality. 
 
 The proofs of the existence of God have for their aim to 
 make the internal external, to separate it from man.* His 
 existence being proved, God is no longer a merely relative, 
 but a noumenal being (Dinf/ an sich) : he is not only a 
 being for us, a being in our faith, our feeling, our nature, 
 he is a being in himself, a being external to us, — in a word, 
 not merely a belief, a feeling, a thought, but also a real exist- 
 ence apart from belief, feeling, and thought. But such 
 an existence is no other than a sensational existence ; 
 
 * At the same time, however, their result is to prove the nature of man. 
 The various proofs of the existence of God are nothing else than various 
 highly interesting forms in which the human nature affirms itself. Thus, 
 for example, the physico-theologioal proof (or proof from design) is the self- 
 afarmation of the calculated activity of the understanding. Every philo- 
 sophic system is, in this sense, a proof of the existence of God. 
 
zoo THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 i.e., an existence conceived according to the forms of our 
 senses. 
 
 Tlie idea of sensational existence is indeed already in- 
 volved in the characteristic expression " external to us." It 
 is true that a sophistical theology refuses to interpret the 
 word " external " in its proper, natural sense, and substitutes 
 the indefinite expression of independent, separate existence. 
 But if tlie externality is only figurative, the existence also is 
 figurative. And yet vee are here only concerned with exist- 
 ence in the proper sense, and external existence is alone the 
 definite, real, unshrinking expression for separate existence. 
 
 Eeal, sensational existence is that which is not dependent 
 on my own mental spontaneity or activity, but by which I 
 am involuntarily affected, which is wlien I am not, when I 
 do not think of it or feel it. The existence of God must 
 therefore be in space — in general, a qualitative, sensational 
 existence. But God is not seen, not heard, not perceived 
 by the senses. He does not exist for me, if I do not exist 
 for him ; if I do not believe in a God, there is no God for 
 me. If I am not devoutly disposed, if I do not raise myself 
 above the life of the senses, he has no place in my conscious- 
 ness. Thus he exists only in so far as he is felt, thought, 
 believed in ; — the addition " for me " is unnecessary. His 
 existence therefore is a real one, yet at the same time not 
 a real one ; — a spiritual existence, says the theologian. But 
 spiritual existence is only an existence in thought, in feeling, 
 in belief ; so that his existence is a medium between sensa- 
 tional existence and conceptional existence, a medium full of 
 contradiction. Or : he is a sensational existence, to which 
 however all the conditions of sensational existence are want- 
 ing : — consequently an existence at once sensational and not 
 sensational, an existence which contradicts the idea of the 
 sensational, or only a vague existence in general, which is 
 fundamentally a sensational one, but which, in order that 
 this may not become evident, is divested of all the predicates 
 of a real, sensational existence. But such an " existence in 
 general" is self- contradictory. To existence belongs full, 
 definite reality. 
 
 A necessary consequence of this contradiction is Atheism. 
 The existence of God is essentially an empirical existence, 
 without having its distinctive marks ; it is in itself a matter 
 of experience, and yet in reality no object of experience. It 
 
CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 201 
 
 calls upon man to seek it in Eeality : it impregnates his 
 mind with sensational conceptions and pretensions ; hence, 
 when these are not fulfilled — when, on the contrary, he 
 finds experience in contradiction with these conceptions, he 
 is perfectly justified in denying that existence. 
 
 Kant is well known to have maintained, in his critique of 
 the proofs of the existence of God, that that existence is 
 not susceptible of proof from reason. He did not merit, on 
 this account, the blame which was cast on him by Hegel. 
 The idea of the existence of God in those proofs is a 
 thoroughly empirical one ; but I cannot deduce empirical 
 existence from an d priori idea. The only real ground 
 of blame against Kant is, that in laying down this position 
 he supposed it to be something remarkable, whereas it is 
 self-evident. Eeason cannot constitute itself an object of 
 sense. I cannot, in thinking, at the same time represent 
 what I think as a sensible object, external to me. The 
 proof of the existence of God transcends the limits of 
 the reason ; true ; but in the same sense in which sight, 
 hearing, smelling transcend the limits of the reason. It is 
 absurd to reproach reason that it does not satisfy a demand 
 which can only address itself to the senses. Existence, 
 empirical existence, is proved to me by the senses alone ; 
 and in the question as to the being of God, the existence 
 implied has not the significance of inward reality, of truth, 
 but the significance of a formal, external existence. Hence 
 there is perfect truth in the allegation that the belief that 
 God is or is not has no consequence with respect to inward 
 moral dispositions. It is true that the thought : There is a 
 God, is inspiring ; but here the is means inward reality ; 
 here the existence is a movement of inspiration, an act of 
 aspiration. Just in proportion as this existence becomes a 
 prosaic, an empirical truth, the inspiration is extinguished. 
 
 Eeligion, therefore, in so far as it is founded on the exist- 
 ence of God as an empirical truth, is a matter of indifference 
 to the inward disposition. As, necessarily, in the religious 
 cultus, ceremonies, observances, sacraments, apart from the 
 moral spirit or disposition, become in themselves an im- 
 portant fact : so also, at last, belief in the existence of God 
 becomes, apart from the inherent quality, the spiritual 
 import of the idea of God, a chief point in religion. If 
 thou only believest in God— believest that God is, thou art 
 
203 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 already saved. Whether under this God thou conceivest a 
 really divine being or a monster, a Nero or a Caligula, an 
 image of thy passions, thy revenge, or ambition,_ it is all 
 one, — the main point is that thou be not an atheist. The 
 history of rehgion has amply confirmed this consequence 
 which we here draw from the idea of the divine existence. 
 If the existence of God, taken by itself, had not rooted 
 itself as a religious truth in minds, there would never have 
 been those infamous, senseless, horrible ideas of God which 
 stigmatise the history of religion and theology. The exist- 
 ence of God was a common, external, and yet at the same 
 time a holy thing : — what wonder, then, if on this ground the 
 commonest, rudest, most unholy conceptions and opinions 
 sprang up ! 
 
 Atheism was supposed, and is even now supposed, to be 
 the negation of all moral principle, of all moral foundations 
 and bonds : if God is not, all distinction between good and 
 bad, virtue and vice, is abolished. Thus the distinction lies 
 only in the existence of God ; the reality of virtue lies not 
 in itself, but out of it. And assuredly it is not from an 
 attachment to virtue, from a conviction of its intrinsic 
 worth and importance, that the reality of it is thus bound 
 up with the existence of God. On the contrary, the belief 
 that God is the necessary condition of virtue is the belief 
 in the nothingness of virtue in itself. 
 
 It is indeed worthy of remark that the idea of the em- 
 pirical existence of God has been perfectly developed in 
 modern times, in which empiricism and materialism in 
 general have arrived at their full blow. It is true that 
 even in the original, simple religious mind, God is an em- 
 pirical existence to be found in a place, though above the 
 earth. But here this conception has not so naked, so prosaic 
 a significance ; the imagination identifies again the external 
 God with the soul of man. The imagination is, in general, 
 the true place of an existence which is absent, not present 
 to the senses, though nevertheless sensational in its essence.* 
 
 * " Christ is ascended on high, . . . that is, he not only sits there above, 
 but he is also here below. And he is gone thither to the very end that he 
 might be here below, and fill all things, and be in all places, which he 
 could not do while on earth, for here lie could not be seen by all bodily 
 eyes. Therefore he sits above, where every man can see him, and he has to 
 do with every man." — Luther (Th. xiii. p. 643). That is to say : Christ or 
 God is an object, an existence, of the imagination ; in the imagination he is 
 
CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 203 
 
 Only the ^imagination solves the contradiction in an exist- 
 ence which is at once sensational and not sensational ; 
 only the imagination is the preservative from atheism. In 
 the imagination existence has sensational effects, — existence 
 affirms itself as a power ; with the essence of sensational 
 existence the imagination associates also the phenomena of 
 sensational existence. Where the existence of God is a 
 living truth, an object on which the imagination exercises 
 itself, there also appearances of God are believed in.* Where, 
 on the contrary, the fire of the religious imagination is 
 extinct, where the sensational effects or appearances neces- 
 sarily connected with an essentially sensational existence 
 cease, there the existence becomes a dead, self-contradictory 
 existence, which falls irrecoverably into the negation of 
 atheism. 
 
 The belief in the existence of God is the belief in a 
 special existence, separate from the existence of man and 
 Nature. A special existence can only be proved in a special 
 manner. This faith is therefore only then a true and living 
 one when special effects, immediate appearances of God, 
 miracles, are believed in. Where, on the other hand, the 
 belief in God is identified with the belief in the world, 
 where the belief in God is no longer a special faith, where 
 the general being of the world takes possession of the 
 whole man, there also vanishes the belief in special effects 
 and appearances of God. Belief in God is wrecked, is 
 stranded on the belief in the world, in natural effects as the 
 only true ones. As here the belief in miracles is no longer 
 anything more than the belief in historical, past miracles, so 
 the existence of God is also only an historical, in itself 
 atheistic conception. 
 
 limited to no place, — lie is present and objective to every one. God exists 
 in heaven, but is for that reason omnipresent ; for this heaven is the ima- 
 gination. 
 
 * " Thou hast not to complain that thou art less experienced than was 
 Abraham or Isaac. Thou also hast appearances. . . . Thou hast holy 
 baptism, the supper of the Lord, the bread and wine, which are figures and 
 forms, under and in which the present God speaks to thee, and acts upon 
 thee, in thy oars, eyes, and heart. ... He appears to thee in baptism, 
 and it is he himself who baptizes thee, and speaks to thee. . . . E'^ery- 
 thing is full of divine appearances and utterances, if he is on thy side." — 
 Luther (Th. ii. p. 466. See also on this subject, Th. xix. p. 407). 
 
204 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 TEE CONTRADICTION IN THE EEYELATION OF GOD. 
 
 With the idea of the existence of God is connected the idea 
 of revelation. God's attestation of his existence, the authen- 
 tic testimony that God exists, is revelation. Proofs drawn 
 from reason are merely subjective ; the objective, the only 
 true proof of the existence of God, is his revelation. God 
 speaks to man ; revelation is the word of God ; he sends 
 forth a voice which thrills the soul, and gives it the joyful 
 certainty that God really is. The word is the gospel of life, 
 — the criterion of existence and non-existence. Belief in 
 revelation is the culminating point of religious objectivism. 
 The subjective conviction of the existence of God here 
 becomes an indubitable, external, historical fact. The ex- 
 istence of God, in itself, considered simply as existence, is 
 already an external, empirical existence ; still, it is as yet 
 only thought, conceived, and therefore doubtful ; hence the 
 assertion that all proofs produce no satisfactory certainty. 
 This conceptional existence converted into a real existence, 
 a fact, is revelation. God has revealed himself, has demon- 
 strated himself: who then can have any further doubt? 
 The certainty of the existence of God is involved for me in 
 the certainty of the revelation. A God who only exists 
 without revealing himself, who exists for me only through 
 my own mental act, such a God is a merely abstract, 
 imaginary, subjective God ; a God who gives me a know- 
 ledge of himself through his own act is alone a God who 
 truly exists, who proves himself to exist, — an objective God. 
 Faith in revelation is the immediate certainty of the reli- 
 gious mind, that what it believes, wishes, conceives, really 
 is. Eeligion is a dream, in which our own conceptions and 
 emotions appear to us as separate existences, beings out of 
 ourselves. The religious mind does not distinguish between 
 subjective and objective, — it has no doubts ; it has the 
 faculty, not of discerning other things than itself, but of seeing 
 
CONTRADICTION IN THE REVELATION OF GOD. 205 
 
 its own conceptions out of itself as distinct beings. What 
 is in itself a mere theory is to the religious mind a practical 
 belief, a matter of conscience, — a fact. A fact is that which 
 from being an object of the intellect becomes a matter of 
 conscience ; a fact is that which one cannot criticise or 
 attack without being guilty of a crime ; * a fact is that which 
 one must believe nolens volens ; a fact is a physical force, 
 not an argument, — it makes no appeal to the reason. ye 
 shortsighted religious philosophers of Germany, who fling 
 at our heads the facts of the religious consciousness, to stun 
 our reason and make us the slaves of your childish super- 
 stition, — :do you not see that facts are just as relative, as 
 various, as subjective, as the ideas of the different religions ? 
 Were not the gods of Olympus also facts, self-attesting 
 existences ? f Were not the ludicrous miracles of paganism 
 regarded as facts ? Were not angels and demons historical 
 persons ? Did they not really appear to men ? Did not 
 Balaam's ass really speak ? Was not the story of Balaam's 
 ass just as much believed even by enlightened scholars of 
 the last century, as the Incarnation or any other miracle ? 
 A fact, I repeat, is a conception about the truth of which 
 there is no doubt, because it is no object of theory, but of 
 feeling, which desires that what it wishes, what it believes, 
 should be true. A fact is that, the denial of which is for- 
 bidden, if not by an external law, yet by an internal one. 
 A fact is every possibility which passes for a reality, every 
 conception which, for the age wherein it is held to be a fact, 
 expresses a want, and is for that reason an impassable limit 
 of the mind. A fact is every wish that projects itself on 
 
 * The denial of a fact is not a matter of indifference ; it is something 
 morally evil, — a disowning of whs^t is known to be true. Christianity made 
 its articles of faith objective, i.e., undeniable, unassailable facts, thus over- 
 powering the reason, and taking the mind prisoner by the force of external 
 reality : herein we have the true explanation why and how Christianity, 
 Protestant as well as Catholic, enunciated and enforced with all solemnity 
 the principle, that heresy — the denial of an idea or a fact which forms an 
 article of laith — is an object of punishment by the temporal power, i.e., a 
 crime. What in theory is an external iact becomes in practice an external 
 force. In this respect Christianity is far below Mohammedanism, to which 
 the crime of heresy is unknown. 
 
 t "Preesentiam saipe divi suam declarant."— Cicero (de Nat. D. 1. ii.). 
 Cicero's works {de Nat. D. and de Divinatione) are especially interesting, be- 
 cause the arguments there used for the reality of the objects of pagan faith 
 are virtually the same as those urged in the present day by theologians and 
 the adherents of positive religion generally for the reality of the objects of 
 Christian faith. 
 
2o5 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 reality : in short, it is everything that is not doubted simply 
 because it is not — must not be — doubted. 
 
 The religious mind, according to its nature as hitherto 
 unfolded, has the immediate certainty that all its involun- 
 tary, spontaneous affections are impressions from without, 
 manifestations of another being. The religious mind makes 
 itself the passive, God the active being. God is activity ; 
 but that which determines him to activity,' which causes his 
 activity (originally only omnipotence, potentia) to become 
 real activity, is not himself, — he needs nothing, — but man, 
 the religious subject. At the same time, however, man 
 is reciprocally determined by God ; he views himself as 
 passive ; lie receives from God determinate revelations, 
 determinate proofs of his existence. Thus in revelation 
 man determines himself as that which determines God, i.e., 
 revelation is simply the self-determination of. man, only 
 that between himself the determined, and himself the de- 
 termining, he interposes an object — God, a distinct being. 
 God is the medium by which man brings about the recon- 
 ciliation of himself with his own nature : God is the bond, 
 the vincul'wm substantiale, between the essential nature — the 
 species — and the individual. 
 
 The belief in revelation exhibits in the clearest manner 
 the characteristic illusion of the religious consciousness. 
 The general premiss of this belief is : man can of himself 
 know nothing of God ; all his knowledge is merely vain, 
 earthly, human. But God is a superhuman being ; God is 
 known only by himself. Thus we know nothing of God 
 beyond what he reveals to us. The knowledge imparted 
 by God is alone divine, superhuman, supernatural know- 
 ledge. By means of revelation, therefore, we know God 
 through himself ; for revelation is the word of God — God 
 declaring himself. Hence, in the belief in revelation man 
 makes himself a negation, he goes out of and above himself ; 
 he places revelation in opposition to human knowledge and 
 opinion ; in it is contained a hidden knowledge, the fulness 
 of all supersensuous mysteries ; here reason must hold its 
 peace. But nevertheless the divine revelation is determined 
 by the human nature. God speaks not to brutes or angels, 
 but to men ; hence he uses human speech and human con- 
 ceptions. Man is an object to God, before God perceptibly 
 imparts himself to man ; he thinks of man ; he determines 
 
CONTRADICTION IN THE REVELATION OF GOD. 207 
 
 his action in accordance with the nature of man and his 
 ■needs. God is indeed free in will ; he can reveal himself or 
 not ; but he is not free as to the understanding ; he cannot 
 reveal to man whatever he will, but only what is adapted 
 to man, what is commensurate with his nature such as it 
 actually is ; he reveals what he must reveal, if his revelation 
 is to be a revelation for man, and not for some other kind 
 of being. Now what God thinks in relation to man is 
 determined by the idea of man — it has arisen out of reflec- 
 tion on human nature. God puts himself in the place of 
 man, and thinks of himself as this other being can and 
 should think of him ; he thinks of himself, not with his 
 own thinking power, but with man's. In the scheme of 
 his revelation God must have reference not to himself, but 
 to man's power of comprehension. That which comes from 
 God to man, comes to man only from man in God, that is, 
 only from the ideal nature of man to the phenomenal man, 
 from the species to the individual. Thus, between the 
 divine revelation and the so-called human reason or nature, 
 there is no other than an illusory distinction ; — the contents 
 of the divine revelation are of human origin, for they have 
 proceeded not from God as God, but from God as deter- 
 mined by human reason, human wants, that is, directly from 
 human reason and human wants. And so in revelation 
 man goes out of himself, in order, by a circuitous path, to 
 return to himself ! Here we have a striking confirmation 
 of the position that the secret of theology is nothing else 
 than anthropology — the knowledge of God nothing else 
 than a knowledge of man ! 
 
 Indeed, the religious consciousness itself admits, in rela- 
 tion to past times, the essentially human quality of revela- 
 tion. The religious consciousness of a later age is no longer 
 satisfied with a Jehovah who is from head to foot a man, 
 and does not shrink from becoming visible as such. It 
 recognises that those were merely images in which God 
 accommodated himself to the comprehension of men in 
 that age, that is, merely human images. But it does not 
 apply this mode of interpretation to ideas accepted as 
 revelation in the present age, because it is yet itself steeped 
 in those ideas. Nevertheless, every revelation is simply a 
 revelation of the nature of man to existing men. In revela- 
 tion man's latent nature is disclosed to him, because an 
 
2o8 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 object to him. He is determined, affected by bis own 
 nature as by another being ; he receives from the hands of 
 God what his own unrecognised nature entails upon him as 
 a necessity, under certain conditions of time and circum- 
 stance. Eeason, the mind of the species, operates on the 
 subjective, uncultured man only under the image of a 
 personal being. Moral laws have force for him only as the 
 commandments of a Divine Will, which has at once the 
 power to punish and the glance which nothing escapes. 
 That which his own nature, his reason, his conscience says 
 to him, does not bind him, because the subjective, un- 
 cultured man sees in conscience, in reason, so far as he 
 recognises it as his own, no universal objective power; 
 hence he must separate from himself that which gives him 
 moral laws, and place it in opposition to himself, as a dis- 
 tinct personal being. 
 
 Belief in revelation is a childlike belief, and is only 
 respectable so long as it is childlike. But the child is de- 
 termined from without, and revelation has for its object 
 to effect by God's help what man cannot attain by himself. 
 Hence revelation has been called the education of the 
 human race. This is correct ; only revelation must not be 
 regarded as outside the nature of man. There is within 
 him an inward necessity which impels him to present moral 
 and philosophical doctrines in the form of narratives and 
 fables, and an equal necessity to represent that impulse as 
 a revelation. The mythical poet has an end in view — that 
 of making men good and wise; he designedly adopts the 
 form of fable as the most appropriate and vivid method of 
 representation ; but at the same time, he is himself urged 
 to this mode of teaching by his love of fable, by his inward 
 impulse. So it is with a revelation enunciated by an in- 
 dividual. This individual has an aim; but at the same 
 time he himself lives in the conceptions by means of which 
 he realises this aim. Man, by means of the imagination, 
 involuntarily contemplates his inner nature ; he represents 
 it as out of himself. The nature of man, of the species — 
 thus working on him through the irresistible power of the 
 imagination, and contemplated as the law of his thought 
 and action- — is God. 
 
 Herein lie the beneficial moral effects of the belief in 
 revelation. 
 
CONTRADICTION IN THE REVELATION OF GOD. 209 
 
 But as Nature " unconsciously produces results whicli 
 look as if they were produced consciously," so revelation 
 generates moral actions, which do not, however, proceed 
 from morality ; — moral actions, but no moral dispositions. 
 Moral rules are indeed observed, but they are severed from 
 the inward disposition, the heart, by being represented as 
 the commandments of an external lawgiver, by being placed 
 in the category of arbitrary laws, police regulations. What 
 is done is done not because it is good and ri^ht, but because 
 it is commanded by G-od. The inherent quality of the deed 
 is indifferent ; whatever God commands is right.* If these 
 commands are in accordance with reason, with ethics, it is 
 well ; but so far as the idea of revelation is concerned, it 
 is accidental. The ceremonial laws of the Jews were re- 
 vealed, divine, though in themselves adventitious and arbi- 
 trary. The Jews received from Jehovah the command to 
 steal ; — in a special case, it is true. 
 
 But the belief in revelation not only injures the moral 
 sense and taste, — the sesthetics of virtue ; it poisons, nay 
 it destroys, the divinest feeling in man — the sense of truth, 
 the perception and sentiment of truth. The revelation of 
 God is a determinate revelation, given at a particular epoch: 
 God revealed himself once for all in the year so and so, 
 and that, not to the universal man, to the man of all times 
 and places, to the reason, to the species, but to certain 
 limited individuals. A revelation in a given time and 
 place must be fixed in writing, that its blessings may be 
 transmitted uninjured. Hence the belief in revelation is, 
 at least for those of a subsequent age, belief in a written 
 revelation; but the necessary consequence of a faith in 
 which an historical book, necessarily subject to all the con- 
 ditions of a temporal, finite production, is regarded as an 
 eternal, absolute, universally authoritative word, is — super- 
 stition and sophistry. 
 
 Faith in a written revelation is a real, unfeigned, and so 
 far respectable faith, only where it is believed that all in the 
 sacred writings is significant, true, holy, divine. Where, on 
 
 * "Quod crudeliter ab hominibus sine Dei ju,ssu fieret aut factum est, id 
 debuit ab Hebrais fieri, quiaadeo vita; et necis summo arbitrio, jussi bellum 
 ita gerebant."— J. Clericus (Comm. in Mos. Num. c. 31, 7). "Multa gessit 
 Samson, qua; vix posseut defendi, nisi Dei, a quo homines pendent, mstru- 
 mentum liiisse censeatur." — lb. (Comm. in Judicum, c. 14, 19). See also 
 Luther, e.g. (Th. i. p. 339, Th. xvi. p. 495). 
 
 
 
210 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 the contrary, the distinction is made between the human 
 and divine, the relatively true and the absolutely true, the 
 historical and the permanent,— where it is not held that 
 all without distinction is unconditionally true ; there the 
 verdict of unbelief, that the Bible is no divine book, is 
 already introduced into the interpretation of the Bible,— 
 there, at least indirectly, that is, in a crafty, dishonest 
 way, 'its title to the character of a divine revelation is 
 denied. Unity, unconditionality, freedom from exceptions, 
 immediate certitude, is alone the character of divinity. 
 A book that imposes on me the necessity of discrimina- 
 tion, the necessity of criticism, in order to separate the 
 divine from the human, the permanent from the temporary, 
 is no longer a divine, certain, infallible book, — it is degraded 
 to the rank of profane books ; for every profane book has 
 the same quality, that together with or in the human it con- 
 tains the divine, that is, together with or in the individual 
 it contains the universal and eternal. But that only is a 
 truly divine book in which there is not merely something 
 good and something bad, something permanent and some- 
 thing temporary, but in which all comes as it were from one 
 crucible, all is eternal, true and good. "What sort of a 
 revelation is that in which I must first listen to the apostle 
 Paul, then to Peter, then to James, then to John, then to 
 Matthew, then to Mark, then to Luke, until at last I come 
 to a passage where my soul, athirst for God, can cry out : 
 Eureka ! here speaks the Holy Spirit himself ! here is some- 
 thing for me, something for all times and men. How true, 
 on the contrary, was the conception of the old faith, when 
 it extended inspiration to the very words, to the very letters 
 of Scripture ! The word is not a matter of indifference in 
 relation to the thought; a definite thought can only be ren- 
 dered by a definite word. Another word, another letter — 
 another sense. It is true that such faith is superstition; 
 but this superstition is alone the true, undisguised, open 
 faith, which is not ashamed of its consequences. If God 
 numbers the hairs on the head of a man, if no sparrow falls 
 to the ground without his will, how could he leave to the 
 stupidity and caprice of scribes his Word — that Word on 
 which depends the everlasting salvation of man ? Why 
 should he not dictate his thoughts to their pen in order to 
 guard them from the possibility of disfiguration ? " But if 
 
CONTRADICTION IN THE REVELATION OF GOD. 211 
 
 man were a mere organ of the Holy Spirit, human freedom 
 ■would be abolished ! " * Oh, what a pitiable argument ! Is 
 human freedom, then, of more value than divine truth ? 
 Or does human freedom consist only in the distortion of 
 divine truth ? 
 
 And just as necessarily as the belief in a determinate 
 historical revelation is associated with superstition, so ne- 
 cessarily is it associated with sophistry. The Bible contra- 
 dicts morality, contradicts reason, contradicts itself, innum- 
 erable times ; and yet it is the Word of God, eternal truth, 
 and "truth cannot contradict itself. "f How does the be- 
 liever in revelation elude this contradiction between the 
 idea in his own mind of revelation as divine, harmonious 
 truth, and this supposed actual revelation ? Only by self- 
 deception, only by the silliest subterfuges, only by the most 
 miserable, transparent sophisms. Christian sophistry is the 
 necessary product of Christian faith, especially of faith in 
 the Bible as a divine revelation. 
 
 Truth, absolute truth, is given objectively in the Bible, 
 subjectively in faith ; for towards that which God himself 
 speaks I can only be believing, resigned, receptive. Nothing 
 is left to the understanding, the reason, but a formal, sub- 
 ordinate oiBce ; it has a false position, a position essentially 
 contradictory to its nature. The understanding in itself 
 is here indifferent to truth, indifferent to the distinction 
 between the true and the false ; it has no criterion in itself ; 
 whatever is found in revelation is true, even when it is in 
 direct contradiction with reason. The understanding is 
 helplessly given over to the haphazard of the most ignoble 
 empiricism ; — whatever I find in divine revelation I must 
 believe, and if necessary, my understanding must defend it ; 
 the understanding is the watchdog of revelation ; it must 
 let everything without distinction be imposed on it as truth, 
 — discrimination would be doubt, would be a crime : con- 
 sequently, nothing remains to it but an adventitious, iudif- 
 
 * It was very justly remarked by the Jansenists against the Jesuits : 
 " Vouloir reconnoitre dans I'Ecriture quelque chose de la foiblesse et de 
 I'esprit natural de rhomme, c'est donner la liberte k chacun d'en faire le 
 discernment et de rejetter ce qui lui plaira de I'Ecriture, comme venant 
 plutot de la foiblesse de rhomme que de I'esprit de Dieu." — Ba,yle (Diet, 
 art. Adam (Jean) Rem. E.). • 
 
 t " Nee in scriptura divina fas sit sentire aliquid contrarietatis." — Petrus 
 L. (1. ii. dist. ii. c. i). Similar thoughts are found in the Fathers. 
 
122 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 ferent, i.e., disingenuous, sophistical, tortuous mode of 
 thought, which is occupied only with 'groundless distinc- 
 tions and subterfuges, with ignominious tricks and evasions. 
 But the more man, by the progress of time, becomes 
 estranged from revelation, the more the understanding 
 ripens into independence, — the more glaring, necessarily, 
 appears the contradiction between the understanding and 
 belief in revelation. The believer can then prove revelation 
 only by incurring contradiction with himself, with truth, 
 with the understanding, only by the most impudent assump- 
 tions, only by shameless falsehoods, only by the sin against 
 the Holy Ghost. 
 
CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD. 213 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE CONTEADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD IN GENEKAL. 
 
 The grand principle, the central point of Christian sophistry, 
 is the idea of G-od. God is the human being, and yet he 
 must be regarded as another, a superhuman being. God is 
 universal, abstract Being, simply the idea of Being; and 
 yet he must be conceived as a personal, individual being ; — 
 or God is a person, and yet he must be regarded as God, as 
 universal, i.e., not as a personal being. God is ; his exist- 
 ence is certain, more certain than ours ; he has an existence 
 distinct from us and from things in general, i.e., an indi- 
 vidual existence ; and yet his existence must be held a 
 spiritual one, i.e., an existence not perceptible as a special 
 one. One half of the definition is always in contradiction 
 with the other half : the statement of what must be held 
 always annihilates the statement of what is. The funda- 
 mental idea is a contradiction which can be concealed only 
 by sophisms. A God who does not trouble himself about 
 us, who does not hear our prayers, who does not see us and 
 love us, is no God ; thus humanity is made an essential pre- 
 dicate.of God ; — but at the same time it is said : A God who 
 does not exist in and by himself, out of men, above men, as 
 another being, is a phantom ; and thus it is made an essen- 
 tial predicate of God that he is non-human and extra-human. 
 A God who is not as we are, who has not consciousness, not 
 intelligence, i.e., not a personal understanding, a personal 
 consciousness (as, for example, the "substance " of Spinoza), 
 is no G-od. Essential identity with us is the chief condition 
 of deity ; the idea of deity is made dependent on the idea of 
 personality, of consciousness, quo nihil majus cogitari potest. 
 But it is said in the same breath, a God who is not essen- 
 tially distinguished from us is no God. 
 
 The essence of religion is the immediate, involuntary, 
 unconscious contemplation of the human nature as another, 
 a distinct nature. But when this projected image of human 
 
214 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 nature is made an object of reflection, of theology, it becomes 
 an inexhaustible mine of falsehoods, illusions, contradic- 
 tions, and sophisms. 
 
 A peculiarly characteristic artifice and pretext of Chris- 
 tian sophistry is the doctrine of the unsearchableness, the 
 incomprehensibility of the divine nature. But, as will be 
 shown, the secret of this incomprehensibility is nothing 
 further than that a known quality is made into an unknown 
 one, a natural quality into a supernatural, i.e., an unnatural 
 one, so as to produce the appearance, the illusion, that the 
 divine nature is different from the human, and is eo ipso an 
 incomprehensible one. 
 
 In the original sense of religion, the incomprehensibility 
 of God has only the significance of an impassioned expres- 
 sion. Thus, when we are affected by a surprising pheno- 
 menon, we exclaim : It is incredible, it is beyond conception ! 
 though afterwards, when we recover our self-possession, we 
 find the object of our astonishment nothing less than incom- 
 prehensible. In the truly religious sense, incomprehensibility 
 is not the dead full stop which reflection places wherever 
 understanding deserts it, but a pathetic note of exclamation 
 marking the impression which the imagination makes on 
 the feelings. The imagination is the original organ of 
 religion. Between God and man, in the primitive sense of 
 religion, there is on the one hand only a distinction in rela- 
 tion to existence, according to which God, as a self-sub.sis- 
 tent being, is the antithesis of man as a dependent being ; 
 on the other hand, there is only a q;uantitative distinction, 
 i.e., a distinction derived from the imagination, for the dis- 
 tinctions of the imagination are only quantitative. The 
 infinity of God in religion is quantitative infinity ; God is 
 and has all that man has, but in an infinitely greater 
 measure. The nature of God is the nature of the imagina- 
 tion unfolded, made objective.* God is a being conceived 
 under the forms of the senses, but freed from the limits of 
 sense, — a being at once unlimited and sensational. But 
 what is the imagination ? — limitless activity of the senses. 
 God is eternal, i.e., he exists at all times ; God is omni- 
 
 * This is especially apparent in the superlative, and the preposition mper, 
 
 inrep, which distinguish the divine predicates, and which very early as, for 
 
 example, with the ISTeo-PIatonists, the Christians among heathen philoso- 
 phers — played a chief part in theology. 
 
CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD. 215 
 
 present, i.e., he exists in all places ; God is the omniscient 
 being, i.e., the being to whom every individual thing, every 
 sensible existence, is an object without distinction, without 
 limitation of time and place. 
 
 Eternity and omnipresence are sensational qualities, for 
 in them there is no negation of existence in time and space, 
 but only of exclusive limitation to a particular time, to a 
 particular place. In like manner omniscience is a sensa- 
 tional quality, a sensational knowledge. Eeligion has no 
 hesitation in attributing to God himself the nobler senses : 
 God sees and hears all things. But the divine omniscience 
 is a power of knowing through the senses while yet the 
 necessary quality, the essential determination of actual 
 knowledge through the senses is denied to it. My senses 
 present sensible objects to me only separately and in 
 succession ; but God sees all sensible things at once, all 
 locality in an unlocal manner, all temporal things in an 
 untemporal manner, all objects of sense in an unsensational 
 manner.* That is to say : I extend the horizon of my 
 senses by the imagination ; I form to myself a confused 
 conception of the whole of things ; and this conception, 
 which exalts me above the limited standpoint of the senses, 
 and therefore affects me agreeably, I posit as a divine reality. 
 I feel the fact that my knowledge is tied to a local stand- 
 point, to sensational experience, as a limitation ; what I 
 feel as a limitation I do away with in my imagination, 
 which furnishes free space for the play of my feelings. 
 This negativing of limits by the imagination is the positing 
 of omniscience as a divine power and reality. But at the 
 same time there is only a qtcantitative distinction between 
 omniscience and my knowledge ; the q-iiality of the know- 
 ledge is the same. In fact, it would be impossible for me to 
 predicate omniscience of an object or being external to 
 myself, if this omniscience were essentially different from 
 my own knowledge, if it were not a mode of perception of 
 my own, if it had nothing in common with my own power 
 of cognition. That which is recognised by the senses is as 
 much the object and content of the divine omniscience as 
 of my knowledge. Imagination does away only with the 
 
 * " Scit itaque Deus, quanta sit multitudo pulicum, culicum, muscarum 
 et piscium et quot nascantur, quotve moriantur, sed non scit hoc per mo- 
 menta singula, imo sinml et semel omnia." — Petrus L. (1. i. dist. 39, c. 3). 
 
2i6 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 limit of quantity, not of quality. The proposition that 
 our knowledge is limited, means : we know only some 
 things, a few things, not all. 
 
 The beneficial influence of religion rests on this extension 
 of the sensational consciousness. In religion man is in the 
 open air, suh dco; in the sensational consciousness he is in 
 his narrow confined dwelling-house. Eeligion has relation 
 essentially, originally — and only in its origin is it some- 
 thing holy, true, pure, and good — to the immediate sensa- 
 tional consciousness alone ; it is the setting aside of the limits 
 of sense. Isolated, uninstructed men and nations preserve 
 religion in its original sense, because they themselves re- 
 main in that mental state which is the source of religion. 
 The more limited a man's sphere of vision, the less he 
 knows of history, N"ature, philosophy — the more ardently 
 does he cling to his religion. 
 
 For tliis reason the religious man feels no need of culture. 
 Why had the Hebrews no art, no science, as the Greeks 
 had ? Because they felt no need of it. To them this need 
 was supplied by Jehovah. In the divine omniscience man 
 raises himself above the limits of his own knowledge ; * in 
 the divine omnipresence, above the limits of his local stand- 
 point ; in the divine eternity, above the limits of his time. 
 The religious man is happy in his imagination ; he has all 
 things in nucc ; his possessions are always portable. Je- 
 hovah accompanies me everywhere ; I need not travel out 
 of myself ; I have in my God the sum of all treasures and 
 precious things, of all that is worth knowledge and remem- 
 brance. But pulture is dependent on external things ; it 
 has many and various wants, for it overcomes the limits of 
 sensational consciousness and life by real activity, not by 
 the magical power of the religious imagination. Hence the 
 Christian religion also, as has been often mentioned already, 
 has in its essence no principle of culture, for it triumphs 
 over the limitations and difficulties of earthly life only 
 through the imagination, only in God, in heaven. God is 
 all that the heart needs and desires — all good things, all 
 blessings. " Dost thou desire love, or faithfulness, or truth, 
 or consolation, or perpetual presence ? — this is always in him 
 
 c. 
 
 * " Qui scientem cuncta scimit, quid nescire nequeunt?" — Liber Meilitat. 
 26 (among the spurious writings of Augustine). 
 
CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD. 217 
 
 without measure. Dost thou desire beauty ? — he is the 
 supremely beautiM. Dost thou desire riches ? — all riches 
 are in him. Dost thou desire power? — he is supremely 
 powerful. Or whatever thy heart desires, it is found a 
 thousandfold in Him, in the best, the single good, which is 
 God." * But how can he who has all in God, who already 
 enjoys heavenly bliss in the imagination, experience that 
 want, that sense of poverty, which is the impulse to all 
 culture? Culture has no other object than to realise an 
 earthly heaven ; and the religious heaven is only realised 
 or won by religious activity. 
 
 The difference, however, between God and man, which is 
 originally only quantitative, is by reflection developed into 
 a qualitative difierence ; and thus what was originally only 
 an emotional impression, an immediate expression of admi- 
 ration, of rapture, an influence of the imagination on the 
 feelings, has fixity given to it as an objective quality, as 
 real incomprehensibility. The favourite expression of re- 
 flection in relation to this subject is, that we can indeed 
 know concerning God that he has such and such attributes, 
 but not how he has them. For example, that the predicate 
 of the Creator essentially belongs to God, that he created 
 the world, and not out of matter already existing, but out 
 of nothing, by an act of almighty power, — this is clear, 
 certain — yes, indubitable; but how this is possible naturally 
 passes our understanding. That is to say : the generic idea 
 is clear, certain, but the specific idea is unclear, uncertain. 
 
 The idea of activity, of making, of creation, is in itself a 
 divine idea ; it is therefore unhesitatingly applied to God. 
 In activity, man feels himself free, unlimited, happy ; in 
 passivity, limited, oppressed, unhappy. Activity is the 
 positive sense of one's personality. That is positive which 
 in man is accompanied with joy ; hence God is, as we have 
 already said, the idea of pure, unlimited joy. We succeed 
 only in what we do willingly; joyful effort conquers all 
 things. But that is joyful activity which is in accordance 
 with our nature, which we do not feel as a limitation, and 
 consequently not as a constraint. And the happiest, the 
 most blissful activity is that which is productive. To read 
 is delightful, reading is passive activity; but to produce 
 what is worthy to be read is more delightful still. It is 
 * Tanler, 1. c. p. 312. 
 
2i8 THE ESSENCE OP CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 more blessed to give than to receive. Hence this attribute 
 of the species— productive activity— is assigned to God; 
 that is, realised and made objective as divine activity. _ But 
 every special determination, every mode of activity is ab- 
 stracted, and only the fundamental determination, which, 
 however, is essentially human, namely, production of what is 
 external'to self, is retained. God has not, like man, produced 
 something in particular, this or that, but all things ; his 
 activity is absolutely universal, unlimited. Hence it is 
 self-evident, it is a necessary consequence, that the mode in 
 which God has produced the All is incomprehensible, because 
 this activity is no mode of activity, because the question 
 concerning the lioiv is here an absurdity, a question which 
 is excluded by the fundamental idea of unlimited activity. 
 Every special activity produces its effects in a special 
 manner, because there the activity itself is a determinate 
 mode of activity; and thence necessarily arises the question: 
 How did it produce this ? But the answer to the question: 
 How did God make the world ? has necessarily a negative 
 issue, because the world-creating activity in itself negatives 
 every determinate activity, such as would alone warrant 
 the question, every mode of activity connected with a de- 
 terminate medium, i.e., with matter. This question illegiti- 
 mately foists in between the subject or producing activity, 
 and the object or thing produced, an irrelevant, nay, an 
 excluded intermediate idea, namely, the idea of particular, 
 individual existence. The activity in question has relation 
 only to the collective — the All, the world ; God created all 
 things, not some particular thing ; the indefinite whole, the 
 All, as it is embraced by the imagination, — not the deter- 
 minate, the particular, as, in its particularity, it presents 
 itself to the senses, and as, in its totality as the universe, 
 it presents itself to the reason. Every particular thing 
 arises in a natural way ; it is something determinate, and 
 as such it has — ^what it is only tautology to state — a 
 determinate cause. It was not God, but carbon that pro- 
 duced the diamond ; a given salt owes its origin, not to God, 
 but to the combination of a particular acid with a particular 
 base. God only created all things together without dis- 
 tinction. 
 
 It is true that according to the religious conception, God 
 has created every individual thing, as included in the whole; 
 
CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD. 219 
 
 — but only indirectly ; for he has not produced the indivi- 
 dual in an individual manner, the determinate in a deter- 
 minate manner; otherwise he would be a determinate or 
 conditioned being. It is certainly incomprehensible how out 
 of this genera], indeterminate, or unconditioned activity the 
 particular, the determinate, can have proceeded ; but it is 
 so only because I here intrude the object of sensational, 
 natural experience, because I assign to the divine activity 
 another object than that which is proper to it. Eeligion 
 has"no physical conception of the world; it has no interest 
 in a natural explanation, which can never be given but with 
 a mode of origin. Origin is a theoretical, natural-philo- 
 sophical idea. The heathen philosophers busied themselves 
 with the origin of things. But the Christian religious con- 
 sciousness abhorred this idea as heathen, irreligious, and 
 substituted the practical or subjective idea of creation, 
 which is nothing else than a prohibition to conceive things 
 as having arisen in a natural way, an interdict on all physical 
 science. The religious consciousness connects the world 
 immediately with God; it derives all from God, because 
 nothing is an object to him in its particularity and reality, 
 nothing is to him as it presents itself to our reason. All 
 proceeds from God : — that is enough, that perfectly satis- 
 fies the religious consciousness. The question, how did 
 God create ? is an indirect doubt that he did create the 
 world. It was this question which brought man to atheism, 
 materialism, naturalism. To him who asks it, the world is 
 already an object of theory, of physical science, i.e., it is an 
 object to him in its reality, in its determinate constituents. 
 It is this mode of viewing the world which contradicts the 
 idea of unconditioned, immaterial activity : and this con- 
 tradiction leads to the negation of the fundamental idea — 
 the creation. 
 
 The creation by omnipotence is in its place, is a truth, 
 only when all the phenomena of the world are derived from 
 God. It becomes, as has been already observed, a myth of 
 past ages where physical science introduces itself, where 
 man makes the determinate causes, the how of phenomena, 
 the object of investigation. To the religious consciousness, 
 therefore, the creation is nothing incomprehensible, i.e., un- 
 satisfying ; at least it is so only in moments of irreligious- 
 -ness, of doubt, when the mind turns away from God to 
 
220 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 actual tilings ; but it is highly unsatisfactory to reflection, 
 to theology, which looks with one eye at heaven and with 
 the other at earth. As the cause, so is the effect. A flute 
 sends forth the tones of a flute, not those of a bassoon or 
 a trumpet. If thou hearest the tones of a bassoon, but hast 
 never before seen or heard any wind-instrument but the 
 flute, it will certainly be inconceivable to thee how such 
 tones can come out of a flute. Thus it is here : — the com- 
 parison is only so far inappropriate as the flute itself is a 
 particular instrument. But imagine, if it be possible, an 
 absolutely universal instrument, which united in itself all 
 instruments, without being in itself a particular one ; thou 
 wilt then see that it is an absurd contradiction to desire a 
 particular tone which only belongs to a particular instrument, 
 from an instrument which thou hast divested precisely of 
 that which is characteristic in all particular instruments. 
 
 But there also lies at the foundation of this dogma of 
 incomprehensibility the design of keeping the divine 
 activity apart from the human, of doing away with their 
 similarity, or rather their essential identity, so as to make 
 the divine activity essentially different from the human. 
 This distinction between the divine and human activity is 
 " nothing." God makes, — he makes something external to 
 himself, as man does. Making is a genuine human idea. 
 Nature gives birth to, brings forth ; man makes. Making 
 is an act which I can omit, a designed, premeditated, ex- 
 ternal act ; — an act in which my inmost being is not im- 
 mediately concerned, in which, while active, I am not at 
 the same time passive, carried away by an internal impulse. 
 On the contrary, an activity which is identical with my 
 being is not indifferent, is necessary to me, as, for example, 
 intellectual production, which is an inward necessity to me, 
 and for that reason lays a deep hold on me, affects me 
 pathologically. Intellectual works are not made, — making 
 is only the external activity applied to them ; — they arise 
 in us. To make is an indifi'erent, therefore a free, i.e., 
 optional activity. Thus far then — that he makes — God is 
 entirely at one with man, not at all distinguished from him ; 
 but an especial emphasis is laid on this, that his making is 
 free, arbitrary, at his pleasure. " It has pleased God " to 
 create a world. Thus man here deifies satisfaction in self- 
 pleasing, in caprice and groundless arbitrariness. The fun- 
 
CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD. 221 
 
 damentally human character of the divine activity is by the 
 idea of arbitrariness degraded into a human manifestation 
 of a low kind ; God, from a mirror of human nature, is con- 
 verted into a mirror of human vanity and self-complacency. 
 
 And now all at once the harmony is changed into discord ; 
 man, hitherto at one with himself, becomes divided : — God 
 makes out of nothing ; he creates, — to make out of nothing 
 is to create, — this is the distinction. The positive condition 
 — the act of making — is a human one ; but inasmuch as all 
 that is determinate in this conception is immediately denied, 
 reflection steps in and makes the divine activity not hu- 
 man. But with this negation, comprehension, understanding 
 comes to a stand ; there remains only a negative, empty 
 notion, because conceivability is already exhausted, i.e., the 
 distinction between the divine and human determination is 
 in truth a nothing, a nihil negativum of the understanding. 
 The naive confession of this is made in the supposition of 
 " nothing " as an object. 
 
 God is Love, but not human love ; Understanding, but 
 not human understanding, — no ! an essentially diiTerent 
 understanding. But wherein consists this difference ? I 
 cannot conceive an understanding which acts under other 
 forms than those of our own understanding ; I cannot halve 
 or quarter understanding so as to have several imderstand- 
 ings ; I can only conceive one and the same understanding. 
 It is true that I can and even must conceive understanding 
 in itself, i.e., free from the limits of my individuality ; but 
 in so doing I only release it from limitations essentially 
 foreign to it ; I do not set aside its essential determinations 
 or forms. Eeligious reflection, on the contrary, denies pre- 
 cisely that determination or quality which makes a thing 
 what it is. Only that in which the divine understanding 
 is identical with the human is something, is understanding, 
 is a real idea; while that which is supposed to make it 
 another — yes, essentially another than the human — is objec- 
 tively nothing, subjectively a mere chimera. 
 
 ,In all other definitions of the Divine Being the "notliing " 
 which constitutes the distinction is hidden ; in the creation, 
 on the contrary, it is an evident, declared, objective nothing ; 
 —and is therefore the official, notorious nothing of theology 
 in distinction from anthropology. 
 
 But the fundamental determination by which man makes 
 
222 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 his own nature a foreign, incomprehensible nature is the 
 idea of individuality or— what is only a more abstract 
 expression — personality. The idea of the existence of God 
 first realises itself in the idea of revelation, and the idea of 
 revelation first realises itself in the idea of personality. God 
 is a personal being : — this is the spell which charms the ideal 
 into the real, the subjective into the objective. All predi- 
 cates, all attributes of the Divine Being are fundamentally 
 human ; but as attributes of a personal being, and therefore 
 of a being distinct from man and existing independently, 
 they appear immediately to be really other than human, 
 yet so as that at the same time the essential identity always 
 remains at the foundation. Hence reflection gives rise to 
 the idea of so-called anthropomorphisms. Anthropomor- 
 phisms are resemblances between God and man. The 
 attributes of the divine and of the human being are not 
 indeed the same, but they are analogous. 
 
 Thus personality is the antidote to pantheism ; i.e., by 
 the idea of personality religious reflection expels from its 
 thought the identity of the divine and human nature. The 
 rude but characteristic expression of pantheism is : Man is 
 an effluence or a portion of the Divine Being ; the religious 
 expression is : Man is the image of God, or a being akin to 
 God ; — for according to religion man does not spring from 
 Nature, but is of divine race, of divine origin. But kinship 
 is a vague, evasive expression. There are degrees of kin- 
 ship, near and distant. What sort of kinship is intended ? 
 Por the relation of man to God there is but one form of 
 kinship which is appropriate, — the nearest, profoundest, 
 most sacred that can be conceived, — the relation of the 
 child to the father. According to this, God is the father of 
 man, man the son, the child of God. Here is posited at 
 once the self-subsistence of God and the dependence of man, 
 and posited as an immediate object of feeling ; whereas in 
 pantheism the part appears just as self-subsistent as the 
 whole, since this is represented as made up of its parts. 
 Nevertheless this distinction is only an appearance. The 
 father is not a father without the child; both together 
 form a correlated being. In love man renounces his inde- 
 pendence, and reduces himself to a part ; a self-humiliation 
 which is only compensated by the fact that the one whom 
 he loves at the same time voluntarily becomes a part also ; 
 
CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD. 223 
 
 that they both submit to a higher power, the power of the 
 spirit of family, the power of love. Thus there is here the 
 same relation between God and man as in pantheism, save 
 that in the one it is represented as a personal, patriarchal 
 relation, in the other as an impersonal, general one, — save 
 that pantheism expresses logically and therefore definitely, 
 directly, what religion invests with the imagination. The 
 correlation, or rather the identity of God and man is veiled 
 in religion by representing both as persons or individuals, 
 and God as a self-subsistent, independent being apart from 
 his paternity : — an independence which, however, is only 
 apparent, for he who, like the God of religion, is a father 
 from the depths of the heart, has his very life and being in 
 his child. 
 
 The reciprocal and profound relation of dependence be- 
 tween God as father and man as child cannot be shaken by 
 the distinction that only Christ is the true, natural son of 
 God, and that men are but his adopted sons ; so that it is 
 only to Christ as the only-begotten Son, and by no means 
 to men, that God stands in an essential relation of depen- 
 dence. For this distinction is only a theological, i.e., an 
 illusory one. God adopts only men, not brutes. The ground 
 of adoption lies in the human nature. The man adopted 
 by divine grace is' only the man conscious of his divine 
 nature and dignity. Moreover, the only-begotten Son him- 
 self is nothing else than the idea of humanity, than man 
 preoccupied with himself, man hiding from himself and the 
 world in God, — the heavenly man. The Logos is latent, 
 tacit man; man is the revealed, expressed Logos. The 
 Logos is only the prelude of man. That which applies to 
 the Logos applies also to the nature of man.* But between 
 God and the only-begotten Son there is no real distinction, 
 — he who knows the Son knows the Father also, — and thus 
 there is none between God and man. 
 
 It is the same with the idea that man is the image of 
 God. The image is here no dead, inanimate thing, but a 
 living being. " Man is the image of God," means nothing 
 more than that man is a being who resembles God. Simi- 
 
 * "The closest union which Christ possessed with the Father, it is pos- 
 sible for me to win. . . . All that God gave to his only -begotten Son, he has 
 given to me as perfectly as to him. "— Predigten etzlicher Lehrer vor und zu 
 Tauleri Zeiten. Hamburg, 1621, p. _I4- "Between the only-begotten Son 
 and the soul there is no distinction." — lb. p. 68. 
 
224 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 larity between living beings rests on natural relationship. 
 The idea of man being the image of God reduces itself 
 therefore to kinship ; man is like God, because he is the 
 child of God. Eesemblance is only kinship presented to 
 the senses ; from the former we infer the latter. 
 
 But resemblance is just as deceptive, illusory, evasive an 
 idea as kinship. It is only the idea of personality which 
 does away with the identity of nature. Eesemblance is 
 identity which will not admit itself to be identity, which 
 hides itself behind a dim medium, behind the vapour of the 
 imagination. If I disperse this vapour, I come to naked 
 identity. The more similar beings are, the less are they to 
 to be distinguished ; if I know the one, I know the other. 
 It is true that resemblance has its degrees. But also the 
 resemblance between God and man has its degrees. The 
 good, pious man is more like God than the man whose re- 
 semblance to Him is founded only on the nature of man in 
 general. And even with the pious man there is a highest 
 degree of resemblance to be supposed, though this may not 
 be obtained here below, but only in the future life. But 
 that which man is to become belongs already to him, at 
 least so far as possibility is concerned. The highest degree 
 of resemblance is that where there is no further distinction 
 between two individuals or beings than that they are two. 
 The essential qualities, those by M'hich we distinguish things 
 from each other, are the same in both. Hence I cannot dis- 
 tinguish them in thought, by the reason, — for this all data 
 are wanting ; — I can only distinguish them by figuring them 
 as visible in my imagination or by actually seeing them. If 
 my eyes do not say. There are really two separately exis- 
 tent beings, my reason will take both for one and the 
 same being. Nay, even my eyes may confound the one 
 with the other. Things are capable of being confounded 
 with each other which are distinguishable by the sense and 
 not by the reason, or rather which are different only as to 
 existence, not as to essence. Persons altogether alike have 
 an extraordinary attraction not only for each other, but for 
 the imagination. Eesemblance gives occasion to all kinds 
 of mystifications and illusions, because it is itself only an 
 illusion ; my eyes mock my reason, for which the idea of an 
 independent existence is always alhed to the idea of a deter- 
 minate diiTerence. 
 
CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD. 225 
 
 Eeligion is the mind's liglit, the rays of whicli are broken 
 by the medium of the imagination and the feelings, so as to 
 make the same being appear a double one. Eesemblance is 
 to the Eeason identity, which in the realm of reality is 
 divided or broken up by immediate sensational impressions, 
 in the sphere of religion by the illusions of the imagination ; 
 in short, that which is identical to the reason is made sepa- 
 rate by the idea of individuality or personality. I can dis- 
 cover no distinction between father and child, archetype and 
 image, God and man, if I do not introduce the idea of per- 
 sonality. Eesemblance is here the external guise of iden- 
 tity; — the identity which reason, the sense of truth, affirms, 
 but which the imagination denies ; the identity which 
 allows an appearance of distinction to remain, — a mere 
 phantasm, which says neither directly yes, nor directly no. 
 
226 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIII. 
 
 THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SPECULATIVE DOCTRINE OF GOD. 
 
 The personality of God is thus the means by which man 
 converts the qualities of his own nature into the qualities 
 of another being, — of a being external to himself. The 
 personality of God is nothing else than the projected per- 
 sonality of man. 
 
 On this process of projecting self outwards rests also the 
 Hegelian speculative doctrine, according to which man's 
 consciousness of God is the se//-consciousness of God. God 
 is thought, cognised by us. According to speculation, God, 
 in being thought by us, thinks himself or is conscious of 
 himself ; speculation identifies the two sides which religion 
 separates. In this it is far deeper than religion, for the 
 fact of God being thought is not like the fact of an external 
 object being thought. God is an inward, spiritual being; 
 thinking, consciousness, is an inward, spiritual act ; to 
 think God is therefore to affirm what God is, to establish 
 t'.ie being of God as an act. That God is thought, cognised, 
 is essential ; that this tree is thought, is to the tree acci- 
 dental, unessential. God is an indispensable thought, a 
 necessity of thought. But how is it possible that this 
 necessity should simply express the subjective, and not the 
 objective also ? — how is it possible that God — if he is to exist 
 for us, to be an object to us — must necessarily be thought, 
 if he is in himself like a block, indifferent whether he be 
 thought, cognised or not ? No ! it is not possible. We are 
 necessitated to regard the fact of God being thought by us, 
 as his thinking himself, or his self-consciousness. 
 
 Eeligious objectivism has two passives, two modes in which 
 God is thought. On the one hand, God is thought by us, 
 on the other,he is thought by himself. God thinks himself, 
 independently of his being thought by us : he has a self- 
 consciousness distinct from, independent of, our conscious- 
 
SPECULATIVE DOCTRINE OF GOD. 227 
 
 ness. This is certainly consistent when once God is con- 
 ceived as a real personality; for the real human person 
 thinks himself, and is thought by another ; my thinking of 
 him is to him an indifferent, external fact. This is the 
 last degree of anthropopathism. In order to make God free 
 and independent of all that is human, he is regarded as a 
 formal, real person, his thinking is confined within himself, 
 and the fact of his being thought is excluded from him, 
 and is represented as occurring in another being. This 
 indifference or independence with respect to us, to our 
 thought, is the attestation of a self-subsistent, i.e., external, 
 personal existence. It is true that religion also makes the 
 fact of God being thought into the self-thinking of God ; 
 but because this process goes forward behind its conscious- 
 ness, since God is immediately presupposed as a self-existent 
 personal being, the religious consciousness only embraces 
 the indifference of the two facts. 
 
 Even religion, however, does not abide by this indifference 
 of the two sides. God creates in order to reveal himself : 
 creation is the revelation of God. But for stones, plants, 
 and animals there is no God, but only for man ; so that 
 Nature exists for the sake of man, and man purely for the 
 sake of God. God glorifies himself in man : man is the 
 pride of God. God indeed knows himself even without 
 man ; but so long as there is no other me, so long is he only 
 a possible, conceptional person. First when a difference 
 from God, a non-divine is posited, is God conscious of him- 
 self ; first when he knows what is not God, does he know 
 what it is to be God, does he know the bliss of his Godhead. 
 First in the positing of what is other than himself, of the 
 world, does God posit himself as God. Is God almighty 
 without creation ? No ! Omnipotence first realises, proves 
 itself in creation. What is a power, a property, which does 
 not exhibit, attest itself ? What is a force which affects 
 nothing ? a light that does not illuminate ? a wisdom which 
 knows nothing, i.e., nothing real ? And what is omnipo- 
 tence, what all other divine attributes, if man does not exist ? 
 Man is nothing without God; but also, God is nothing 
 without man ; * for only in man is God an object as God ; 
 
 * "God can as little do without us as we without him."— Predigten 
 etzlicher Lehrer, &c., p. 16. See also on this subject— Strauss, Chrijstl. 
 aiaubensl. B. i. § 47, and the author's work entitled, P. JBayle, pp. 104, 107. 
 
228 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 only in man is he God. The various qualities of man first 
 give difference, which is the ground of reality in God. The 
 physical qualities of man make God a physical being— God 
 the Father, who is the creator of ISTature, i.e., the personi- 
 fied, anthropomorphised essence of Nature ; * the intellec- 
 tual qualities of man make God an intellectual being, the 
 moral, a moral being. Human misery is the triumph of 
 divine compassion ; sorrow for sin is the delight of the 
 divine holiness. Life, fire, emotion comes into God only 
 through man. With the stubborn sinner God is angry ; 
 over the repentant sinner he rejoices. Man is the revealed 
 God : in man the divine essence first realises and unfolds 
 itself. In the creation of Xature God goes out of himself, 
 lie has relation to what is other than himself, but in man 
 he returns into himself : — man knows God, because in him 
 God finds and knows himself, feels himself as God. "Where 
 there is no pressure, no want, there is no feeling ; — and 
 feeling is alone real knowledge. Who can know compassion 
 without having felt the want of it ? justice without the 
 experience of injustice ? happiness without the experience 
 of distress ? Thou must feel what a thing is ; otherwise 
 thou wilt never learn to know it. It is in man that the 
 divine properties first become feelings, i.e., man is the self- 
 feeling of God ; — and the feeling of God is the real God; 
 for the qualities of God are indeed only real qualities, 
 realities, as felt by man, — as feelings. If the experience of 
 human misery were outside of God, in a being personally 
 separate from him, compassion also would not be in God, 
 and we should hence have again the Being destitute of 
 qualities, or more correctly the nothing, which God was 
 before man or without man. For example : — Whether I 
 be a good or sympathetic being — for that alone is good 
 which gives, imparts itself, bonum est communicatitum sui, 
 — is unknown to me before the opportunity presents itself 
 of showing goodness to another being. Only in the act of 
 imparting do I experience the happiness of beneficence, 
 the joy of generosity, of liberality. But is this joy apart 
 
 * " This temporal, transitory life in this world {i.e., natural life) we have 
 through God, who is the almighty Creator of heaven and earth. But the 
 eternal untransitory life we have through the Passion and Resurrection of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ. . . Jesus Christ a Lord over that life." — Luther 
 (Th. xvi. s. 459). 
 
SPECULATIVE DOCTRINE OF GOD. 229 
 
 from the joy of the recipient ? No ; I rejoice because he 
 rejoices. I feel the wretchedness of another, I suffer with 
 him ; in alleviating his wretchedness, I alleviate my own ; 
 — sympathy with suffering is itself suffering. The joyful 
 feeling of the giver is only the reflex, the self-consciousness 
 of the joy in the receiver. Their joy is a common feeling, 
 which accordingly makes itself visible in the union of hands, 
 of lips. So it is here. Just as the feeling of human misery 
 is human, so the feeling of divine compassion is human. It 
 is only a sense of the poverty of finiteness that gives a sense 
 of the bliss of infiniteness. Where the one is not, the other 
 is not. The two are inseparable, — inseparable the feeling 
 of G-od as God, and the feeling of man as man, inseparable 
 the knowledge of man and the self-knowledge of God. 
 God is a Self only in the human self, — only in the human 
 power of discrimination, in the principle of difference that 
 lies in the human being. Thus compassion is only felt as 
 a me, a self, a force, i.e., as something special, through its 
 opposite. The opposite of God gives qualities to God, 
 realises him, makes him a Self. God is God, only through 
 that which is not God. Herein we have also the mystery 
 of Jacob Bohme's doctrine. It must only be borne in mind 
 that Jacob Bohme, as a mystic and theologian, places out- 
 side of man the feelings in which the divine being first 
 realises himself, passes from nothing to something,, to a 
 qualitative being apart from the feelings of man (at least in 
 imagination), — and that he makes them objective in the 
 form of natural qualities, but in such a way that these 
 qualities still only represent the impressions made on his 
 feelings. It will then be obvious that what the empirical 
 religious consciousness first posits with the real creation of 
 Nature and of man, the mystical consciousness places before 
 the creation in the premundane God, in doing which, how- 
 ever, it does away with the reality of the creation. For if 
 God has what is not-God, already in himself, he has no 
 need first to create what is not-God in order to be God. 
 The creation of the world is here a pure superfluity, or 
 rather an impossibility ; this God for very reality does not 
 come to reality ; he is already in himself the full and rest- 
 less world. This is especially true of Schelling's doctrine 
 of God, who though made up of innumerable " potences " 
 is yet thoroughly impotent. Far more reasonable, therefore. 
 
230 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 is the empirical religious consciousness, which makes God 
 reveal, i.e., realise himself in real man, real nature, and 
 according to which man is created purely for the praise 
 and gloiy of God. That is to say, man is the mouth of 
 God, which articulates and accentuates the divine qualities 
 as human feelings. God wills that he be honoured, praised. 
 Why ? because the passion of man for God is the self- 
 consciousness of God. Nevertheless, the religious conscious- 
 ness separates these two properly inseparable sides, since 
 by means of the idea of personality it makes God and man 
 independent existences. Now the Hegelian speculation 
 identifies the two sides, but so as to leave the old contra- 
 diction still at the foundation ; — it is therefore only the 
 consistent carrying out, the completion of a religious truth. 
 The learned mob was so blind in its hatred towards Hegel 
 as not to perceive that his doctrine, at least in this relation, 
 does not in fact contradict religion ; — that it contradicts it 
 only in the same way as, in general, a developed, consequent 
 process of thought contradicts an undeveloped, inconsequent, 
 but nevertheless radically identical conception. 
 
 But if it is only in human feelings and wants that the 
 divine "nothing" becomes something, obtains qualities, then 
 the being of man is alone the real being of God, — man is 
 tbe real God. And if in the consciousness M-hich man has of 
 God first arises the self-consciousness of God, then tbe 
 human consciousness is, 2"'' sc, the divine consciousness. 
 Why then dost thou alienate man's consciousness from him, 
 and make it the self-consciousness of a being distinct from 
 man, of that which is an object to him ? Why dost thou 
 vindicate existence to God, to man only the consciousness 
 of that existence ? God has his consciousness in man, 
 and man his being in God ? Man's knowledge of God is 
 God's knowledge of himself? What a divorcing and 
 contradiction ! The true statement is this : man's know- 
 ledge of God is man's knowledge of himself, of his own 
 nature. Only the unity of being and consciousness is truth. 
 Where the consciousness of God is, there is the being of God, 
 — in man, therefore ; in the being of God it is only thy own 
 being which is an object to thee, and what presents itself 
 lie/ore thy consciousness is simply what lies behind it. If the 
 divine qualities are human, the human qualities are divine. 
 
 Only when we abandon a philosophy of religion or a 
 
SPECULATIVE DOCTRINE OF GOD. 231 
 
 theology, which is distinct from psychology and anthro- 
 pology, and recognise antliropology as itself theology, do 
 we attain to a true, self-satisfying identity of the divine 
 and human being, the identity of the human being with 
 itself. In every theory of the identity of the divine and 
 human which is not true identity, unity of the human 
 nature with itself, there still lies at the foundation a division, 
 a separation into two, since the identity is immediately 
 abolished, or rather is supposed to be abolished. Every 
 theory of this kind is in contradiction with itself and with 
 the understanding, — is a half measure — a thing of the 
 imagination — a perversion, a distortion ; which, however, 
 the more perverted and false it is, all the more apioears to 
 be profound. 
 
232 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE CONTEADICTION IN THE TKINITY. 
 
 Eeligion gives reality or objectivity not only to the human 
 or divine nature in general as a personal being; it further 
 gives reality to the fundamental determinations or funda- 
 mental distinctions of that nature as persons. The Trinity 
 is therefore originally nothing else than the sum of the essen- 
 tial fundamental distinctions which man perceives in the 
 luiman nature. According as the mode of conceiving this 
 nature varies, so also the fundamental determinations on 
 which the Trinity is founded vary. But these distinctions, 
 perceived in one and the same human nature, are hyposta- 
 sised as substances, as divine persons. And herein, namely, 
 that these different determinations are in God, hj'postases, 
 subjects, is supposed to lie the distinction between these 
 determinations as they are in God, and as they exist in man, 
 — in accordance with the law already enunciated, that only 
 in the idea of personality does the human personality 
 transfer and make objective its own qualities. But the 
 personality exists only in the imagination; the fundamental 
 determinations are therefore only for the imagination 
 hypostases, persons ; for reason, for thought, they are mere 
 relations or determinations. The idea of the Trinity con- 
 tains in itself the contradiction of polytheism and mono- 
 theism, of imagination and reason, of fiction and reality. 
 Imagination gives the Trinity, reason the Unity of the per- 
 sons. According to reason, the things distinguished are 
 only distinctions ; according to imagination, the distinctions 
 are things distinguished, which therefore do away with the 
 unity of the divine being. To the reason, the divine per- 
 sons are phantoms, to the iTuagination realities. The idea 
 of the Trinity demands that man should think the opposite 
 of what he imagines, and imagine the opposite of what he 
 thinks, — that he should think phantoms realities.* 
 
 It is curious to observe how the speculative religious pliilo.sophy under- 
 takes the defeni'e of the Trinity against the godless understanding, and yet, 
 hy doing away with the personal substances, and explaining the relation of 
 
THE CONTRADICTION IN THE TRINITY. 233 
 
 There are three Persons, but they are not essentially dis- 
 tinguished. T7'es personce, but una essentia. So far the 
 conception is a natural one. We can conceive three and 
 even more persons, identical in essence. Thus we men are 
 distinguished from one another by personal differences, but 
 in the main, in essence, in humanity we are one. And this 
 identification is made not only by the speculative under- 
 standing, but even by feeling. A given individual is a man 
 as we are ; punchtm satis ; in this feeling all distinctions 
 vanish, — whether he be rich or poor, clever or stupid, cul- 
 pable or innocent. The feeling of compassion, sympathy, is 
 therefore a substantial, essential, speculative feeling. But 
 the three or more human persons exist apart from each 
 other, have a separate existence, even when they verify and 
 confirm the unity of their nature by fervent love. They 
 together constitute, through love, a single moral personality, 
 but each has a physical existence for himself. Though they 
 may be reciprocally absorbed in each other, may be unable 
 to dispense with each other, they have yet always a formally 
 independent existence. Independent existence, existence 
 apart from others, is the essential characteristic of a 
 person, of a substance. It is otherwise in God, and ireces- 
 sarily so ; for while his personality is the same as that of 
 man, it is held to be the same with a difference, on the 
 ground simply of this postulate : there must be a difference. 
 The three Persons in God have no existence out of each 
 other ; else there would meet us in the heaven of Christian 
 dogmatics, not indeed many gods, as in Olympus, but at 
 least three divine Persons in an individual form, three Gods. 
 The gods of Olympus were real persons, for they existed 
 apart from each other, they had the criterion of real person- 
 ality in their individuality, though they were one in essence, 
 in divinity ; they had different personal attributes, but were 
 each singly a god, alike in divinity, different as existing 
 subjects or persons ; they were genuine divine personalities. 
 
 Father and Son as merely an inadequate image borrowed from organic life, 
 robs the Trinity of its very heart and soul, truly, if the cabalistic artifices 
 which the speculative religious philosophy applies in the service of the 
 absolute religion were admissible in favour of finite religions, it would not 
 be difficult to squeeze the Pandora's box of Christian dogmatics out of the 
 horns of the Egyptian Apis. Nothing further would be needed for this 
 purpose than the ominous distinction of the understanding from the specu- 
 lative reason,— a distinction which is adapted to the justification of every 
 absurdity. 
 
234 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 The three Persons of the Christian Godhead, on the con- 
 trary, are only imaginary, pretended persons, assuredly 
 different from real persons, just because they are only 
 phantasms, shadows of personalities, while, notwithstand- 
 ing, they are assumed to be real persons. The essential 
 characteristic of personal reality, the polytlieistic element, 
 is excluded, denied as non-divine. But by this negation 
 their personality becomes a mere phantasm. Only in the 
 truth of the plural lies the truth of the Persons. The three 
 persons of the Christian'Godhead are not tres Dii, three Gods ; 
 — at least they are not meant to be such ; — but imus Deus, 
 one God. The three Persons end, not, as might have been 
 expected, in a plural, but in a singular; they are not only 
 Unum — the gods of Olympus are that — but Unus. Unity 
 has here the significance not of essence only, but also of 
 existence ; unity is the existential form of God. Three are 
 one : the plural is a singular. God is a personal being con- 
 sisting of three persons.* 
 
 The three persons are thus only phantoms in the eyes of 
 reason, for the conditions or modes under which alone their 
 personality could be realised, are done away with by the 
 command of monotheism. The unity gives the lie to the 
 personality ; the self-subsistence of the persons is annihi- 
 lated in the self-subsistence of the unity — they are mere 
 relations. The Son is not without the Father, the Father 
 not without the Son : the Holy Spirit, who indeed spoils the 
 symmetry, expresses nothing but the relation of the two to 
 each other. But the divine persons are distinguished from 
 each other only by that which constitutes their relation 
 to each other. The essential in the Father as a person is 
 that he is a Father, of the Son that he is a Son. What the 
 Father is over and above his fatherhood, does not belong to 
 his personality; therein he is God, and as God identical 
 with the Son as God. Therefore it is said : God the 
 Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost : — God is 
 in all three alike. "There is one person of the Father, 
 another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But 
 
 * The unity has not the significance of genm, not of invum but of m\m. 
 (See Augustine and Petrus Lomb. 1. 1. dist. ig, c. 7, S, 9.) '^ Hi ergo tres, 
 qui unum sunt propter ineffabileni conjunctionem deitatis qua ineffabiliter 
 copulantur, unus Deus est." (Petrus L.'l. c. c. 6.) " How can reason brin" 
 itself into accord with this, or believe, that three is one and one is three ? " 
 — Luther (Th. x. iv. p. 13). 
 
THE CONTRADICTION IN THE TRINITY. 235 
 
 ' the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy 
 Ghost, is all one ; " i.e., they are distinct persons, but with- 
 out distinction of substance. The personality, therefore 
 arises purely in the relation of the Fatherhood; i.e., the 
 idea of the person is here only a relative idea, the idea of a 
 relation. Man as a father is dependent, he is essentially 
 the correlative of the son ; he is not a father without the 
 son; by fatherhood man reduces himself to a relative, 
 dependent, impersonal being. It is before all things neces- 
 sary not to allow oneself to be deceived by these relations 
 as they exist in reality, in men. The human father is, over 
 and above his paternity, an independent personal being ; he 
 has at least a formal existence for himself, an existence apart 
 from his son ; he is not merely a father, with the exclusion 
 of all the other predicates of a real personal being. Father- 
 hood is a relation which the bad man can make quite an 
 external one, not touching his personal being. But in God 
 the Father, there is no distinction between God the Father 
 arid God the Son as God; the abstract fatherhood alone con- 
 stitutes his personality, his distinction from the Son, whose 
 personality likewise is founded only on the abstract sonship. 
 But at the same time these relations, as has been said, 
 are maintained to be not mere relations, but real persons, 
 beings, substances. Thus the truth of the plural, the truth 
 of polytheism is again affirmed,* and the truth of mono- 
 theism is denied. To require the reality of the persons is to 
 require the unreality of the unity, and conversely, to require 
 the reality of the unity is to require the unreality of the 
 persons. Thus in the holy mystery of the Trinity, — that is 
 to say, so far as it is supposed to represent a truth distinct 
 from human nature, — all resolves itself into delusions, 
 phantasms, contradictions, and sophisms.f 
 
 * " Quia ergo pater Deus et filius Deus et .spiritus s. Deus cur non dicuntur 
 tres Dii ? Ecee proposuit banc propositionem (Augustinus) attende quid 
 respondeat ... Si autem dicerem : tres Deos, contradicerct scriptura 
 dicens : Audi Israel : Deus tuus unus est. Ecce absolutio qufestionis : quare 
 potius dicamus tres personas quam tres Deos, quia soil, illud non contradicit 
 scriptura." — Petrus L. (1. i. dist. 23, c. 3). How much did even Catholicism 
 repose upon Holy Writ ! 
 
 t A truly masterly presentation of the overwhelming contradictions in 
 which the mystery of tlie Trinity involves the genuine religious sentiment, 
 is to be found in the worlc already cited — Theanthropos. Eine Reihe von 
 Aphori&men — which expresses in the form of the religious sentiment what 
 in the present work is expressed in the form of the reason ; and which is 
 therefore especially to be recommended to women. 
 
236 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXV. 
 
 THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACEAMENTS. 
 
 As the objective essence of religion, the idea of God, resolves 
 itself into mere contradictions, so also, on grounds easily- 
 understood, does its subjective essence. 
 
 The subjective elements of religion are on the one hand 
 Faith and Love ; on the other hand, so far as it presents 
 itself externally in a cultus, the sacraments of Baptism and 
 the Lord's Supper. The sacrament of Faith is Baptism, 
 the sacrament of Love is the Lord's Supper. In strictness 
 there are only two sacraments, as there are two subjective 
 elements in religion, Faith and Love : for Hope is only faith 
 in relation to the future ; so that there is the same logical 
 impropriety in making it a distinct mental act as in making 
 the Holy Ghost a distinct being. 
 
 The identity of the sacraments with the specific essence 
 of religion as hitherto developed is at once made evident, 
 apart from other relations, by the fact that they have for 
 their basis natural materials or things, to which, however, 
 is attributed a significance and effect in contradiction with 
 their nature. Thus the material of baptism is water, 
 common, natural water, just as the material of religion in 
 general is common, natural humanity. But as religion 
 alienates our own nature from us, and represents it as not 
 ours, so the water of baptism is regarded as quite other 
 than common water ; for it has not a physical but a hyper- 
 physical power and significance ; it is the Lavacrum regene- 
 rationis, it purifies man from the stains of original sin, 
 expels the inborn devil, and reconciles with God. Thus 
 it is natural water only in appearance ; in truth it is 
 supernatural. In other words : the baptismal water has 
 supernatural effects (and that which operates superua- 
 turally is itself supernatural) only in idea, only in the 
 imagination. 
 
 And yet the material of Baptism is said to be natural 
 water. Baptism has no validity and efficacy if it is not 
 
THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS. 237 
 
 performed with water. Thus the natural quality of water 
 has in itself value and significance, since the supernatural 
 effect of baptism is associated in a supernatural manner 
 with water only, and not with any other material. God, by 
 means of his omnipotence, could have united the same 
 effect to anything whatever. But he does not ; he accommo- 
 dates himself to natural qualities ; he chooses an element 
 corresponding, analogous to his operation. Thus the natural 
 is not altogether set aside ; on the contrary, there always 
 remains a certain analogy with the natural, an appearance 
 of naturalness. In like manner wine represents blood ; 
 bread, flesh.* Even miracle is guided by analogies ; water 
 is changed into wine or blood, one species into another, 
 with the retention of the indeterminate generic idea^ of 
 liquidity. So it is here. Water is the purest, clearest 
 of liquids ; in virtue of this its natural character it is 
 the image of the spotless nature of the Divine Spirit. 
 In short, water has a significance in itself, as water; 
 it is on account of its natural quality that it is conse- 
 crated and selected as the vehicle of the Holy Spirit. So 
 far there lies at the foundation of Baptism a beautiful, 
 profound natural significance. But, at the very same time, 
 this beautiful meaning is lost again because water has a 
 transcendental effect, — an effect which it has only through 
 the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit, and not through 
 itself. The natural quality becomes indifferent: he who 
 makes wine out of water, can at will unite the effects of 
 baptismal water with any material whatsoever. 
 
 Baptism cannot be understood without the idea of miracle. 
 Baptism is itself a miracle. The same power which works 
 miracles, and by means of them, as a proof of the divinity 
 of Christ, turns Jews and Pagans into Christians, — this 
 same power has instituted baptism and operates in it. 
 Christianity began with miracles, and it carries itself for- 
 ward with miracles. If the miraculous power of baptism 
 is denied, miracles in general must be denied. The miracle- 
 working water of baptism springs from the same source as 
 the water which at the wedding at Cana in Galilee was 
 turned into wine. 
 
 The faith which is produced by miracle is not dependent 
 
 * " Sacramentum ejus rei similitudinem gerit, cujus signum est."— Petrus 
 Lomb. (1. iv. dist. i, c. i). 
 
238 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 on me, on my spontaneity, on freedom of judgment and 
 conviction. A miracle wliich happens before my eyes I 
 must believe, if I am not utterly obdurate. Miracle com- 
 pels me to believe in the divinity of the miracle-worker. * 
 It is true that in some cases it presupposes faith, namely, 
 where it appears in the light of a reward ; but with that 
 exception it presupposes not so much actual faith' as a 
 believing disposition, willingness, submission, in opposition 
 to an unbelieving, obdurate, and malignant disposition, like 
 that of the Pharisees. The end of miracle is to prove that 
 the miracle-worker is really that which he assumes to be. 
 Faith based on miracle is the only thoroughly warranted, 
 well-grounded, objective faith. The faith which is pre- 
 supposed by miracle is only faith in a Messiah, a Christ in 
 general ; but the faith that this very man is Christ — and 
 this is the main point — is first wrought by miracle as its 
 consequence. This presupposition even of an indeterminate 
 faith is, however, by no means necessary. Multitudes first 
 became believers through miracles ; thus miracle was the 
 cause of their faith. If then miracles do not contradict 
 Christianity, — and how should they contradict it ? — neither 
 does the miraculous efficacy of baptism contradict it. On 
 the contrary, if baptism is to have a Christian significance 
 it must of necessity have a supernaturalistic one. Paul 
 was converted by a sudden miraculous appearance, when 
 he was still full of hatred to the Christians. Christianity 
 took him by violence. It is in vain to allege that with 
 another than Paul this appearance would not have had the 
 same consequences, and that therefore the effect of it must 
 still be attributed to Paul. Por if the same appearance had 
 been vouchsafed to others, they would assuredly have 
 become as thoroughly Christian as Paul. Is not divine 
 grace omnipotent ? The unbelief and non-convertibility 
 of the Pharisees is no counter-argument; for from them 
 grace was expressly withdrawn. The Messiah must neces- 
 sarily, according to a divine decree, be betrayed, maltreated 
 and crucified. For this purpose there must be individuals 
 who should maltreat and crucify him : and hence it was a 
 
 * In relation to the miracle-worker faith (confidence in God's aid) is 
 certainly the causa efficiens of the miracle. (See Matt. ,xvii. 20 ; Acts vi. 8.) 
 But in relation to the spectators of the miracle — and it is they who are in 
 (luestion here — miracle is the causa efficieits of faith. 
 
THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS. 239 
 
 prior necessity that the divine grace should be withdrawn 
 from those individuals. It was not indeed totally with- 
 drawn from them, but this was only in order to aggravate 
 their guilt, and by no means with the earnest will to con- 
 vert them. How would it be possible to resist the will of 
 God, supposing of course that it was his real will, not a 
 mere velleity ? Paul himself represents his conversion as a 
 work of divine grace thoroughly unmerited on his part ; * 
 and quite correctly. Not to resist divine grace, i.e., to 
 accept divine grace, to allow it to work upon one, is already 
 something good, and consequently is an effect of the Holy 
 Spirit. Nothing is more perverse than the attempt to re- 
 concile miracle with freedom of inquiry and thought, or 
 grace with freedom of will. In religion the nature of man 
 is regarded as separate from man. The activity, the grace 
 of God is the projected spontaneity of man, Free Will made 
 objective, f 
 
 It is the most flagrant inconsequence to adduce the ex- 
 perience that men are not sanctified, not converted by bap- 
 tism, as an argument against its miraculous efficacy, as is 
 done by rationalistic orthodox theologians ; J for all kinds 
 of miracles, the objective power of prayer, and in general all 
 the supernatural truths of religion, also contradict experience. 
 He who appeals to experience renounces faith. Where ex- 
 perience is a datum, there religious faith and feeling have 
 already vanished. The unbeliever denies the objective 
 efficacy of prayer only because it contradicts experience ; 
 the atheist goes yet further, — he denies even the existence 
 of God, because he does not find it in experience. Inward 
 experience creates no difficulty to him ; for what thou 
 experiencest in thyself of another existence, proves only 
 that there is something in thee which thou thyself art not, 
 
 * "Here we see a miracle surpassing all miracles, that Christ should have 
 so mercifully converted his greatest enemy." — Luther (Th. xvi. p. 560). 
 
 t Hence it is greatly to the honour of Luther's understanding and sense 
 of truth that, particularly when writing against Erasmus, he unconditionally 
 denied the free will of man as opposed to divine grace. " The name Free 
 Wm," says Luther, quite correctly from the standpoint of religion, "is a 
 divine title and name, which none ought to bear but the Divine Majesty 
 alone" (Th. xix. p. 28). 
 
 t Experience indeed extorted even from the old theologians, whose faith 
 was an uncompromising one, the admission that the effects of baptism are, 
 at least in this life, very limited. " Baptismus non aufert omnes pcenali- 
 tates hujus vitEe."— Mezger. Theol. Schol. Th. iv. p. 251. See also Petrus 
 I. 1. iv. dist. 4, c. 4 ; 1. ii. dist. 32, c. i. 
 
240 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 which works upon thee independently of thy personal will 
 and consciousness, without thy knowing what this myste- 
 rious something is. But faith is stronger than experience. 
 The facts which contradict faith do not disturb it; it is 
 happy in itself ; it has eyes only for itself, to all else it is 
 blind. 
 
 It is true that religion, even on the standpoint of its 
 mystical materialism, always requires the co-operation of 
 subjectivity, and therefore requires it in the sacraments ; but 
 herein is exhibited its contradiction with itself. And this 
 contradiction is particularly glaring in the sacrament of the 
 Lord's Supper ; for baptism is given to infants, — though 
 even in them, as a condition of its efficacy, the co-operation 
 of subjectivity is insisted on, but, singularly enough, is 
 supplied in the faith of others, in the faith of the parents, 
 or of their representatives, or of the church in general.* 
 
 The object in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper is the 
 body of Christ, — a real body ; but the necessary predicates 
 of reality are wanting to it. Here we have again, in an 
 example presented to the senses, what we have found in 
 the nature of religion in general. The object or subject in 
 the religious syntax is always a real human or natural sub- 
 ject or predicate ; but the closer definition, the essential 
 predicate of this predicate is denied. The subject is sen- 
 suous, but the predicate is not sensuous, i.e., is contradic- 
 tory to the subject. I distinguish a real body from an 
 imaginary one only by this, that the former produces cor- 
 poreal effects, involuntary effects, upon me. If therefore the 
 bread be the real body of God, the partaking of it must 
 produce in me immediate, involuntary sanctifying effects ; I 
 need to make no special preparation, to bring with me no 
 holy disposition. If I eat an apple, the apple of itself gives 
 rise to the taste of apple. At the utmost I need nothing 
 more than a healthy stomach to perceive that the apple is 
 an apple. The Catholics require a state of fasting as a 
 condition of partaking the Lord's Supper. This is enough. 
 I take hold of the body with my lips, I crush it with my 
 
 * Even in the absurd fiction of the Lutherans, that "infants believe in 
 baptism," the action of subjectivity reduces itself to the faith of others, 
 since the faith of infants is "wrought by God through the intercession of 
 the god-parents and their bringing up of the children in the faith of the 
 Christian Church."— Luther (Th. xiii. pp. 360, 361). "Thus the faith of 
 another helps me to obtain a faith of my own." — lb. (T. xiv. p. 347a). 
 
THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS. 241 
 
 teeth, by my cBsophagus it is carried into my stomach ; I 
 assimilate it corporeally, not spiritually.* Why are its 
 effects not held to be corporeal ? Why should not this body, 
 wMch is a corporeal, but at the same time heavenly, super- 
 natural substance, also bring forth in me corporeal and yet 
 at the same time holy, supernatural effects ? If it is my 
 disposition, my faith, which alone makes the divine body a 
 means of sanctification to me, which transubstantiates the 
 dry bread into pneumatic animal substance, why do I still 
 need an external object ? It is I myself who give rise to 
 the effect of the body on me, and therefore to the reality of 
 the body ; I am acted on by myself. Where is the objective 
 truth and power ? He who partakes the Lord's Supper 
 unworthily has nothing further than the physical enjoyment 
 of bread and wine. He who brings nothing, takes nothing 
 away. The specific difference of this bread from common 
 natural bread rests therefore only on the difference between 
 the state of mind at the table of the Lord, and the state of 
 mind at any other table. " He that eateth and drinketh 
 unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not 
 discerning the Lord's body." f But this mental state itself 
 is dependent only on the significance which I give to this 
 bread. If it has for me the significance not of bread, but of 
 the body of Christ, then it has not the effect of common 
 bread. In the significance attached to it lies its effect. I 
 do not eat to satisfy hunger ; hence I consume only a 
 small quantity. Thus to go no further than the quantity 
 taken, which in every other act of taking food plays an 
 essential part, the significance of common bread is externally 
 set aside. 
 
 But this supernatural significance exists only in the 
 imagination ; to the senses, the wine remains wine, the bread, 
 
 * " This," says Luther, " is in summa our opinion, that in and with the 
 hread, the body of Christ is truly eaten ; thus, that all which the bread 
 undergoes and effects, the body of Christ undergoes and effects ; that it is 
 divided, eaten and chewed with the teeth ^ro^ter unionem mcrameiitakm." 
 (Plank's Gesch. der Entst. des protest. Lehrbeg. B. viii. s. 369). Elsewhere, 
 it is true, Luther denies that the body of Christ, although it is partaken of 
 corporeally, " is chewed and digested like a piece of beef." (Th. xix. p. 429.) 
 No wonder ; for that which is partaken of is an object without objectivity, 
 a body without corporeality, flesh mthout the qualities of flesh ; " spiritual 
 . flesh," as Luther says, i.e., imaginary flesh. Be it observed further, that the 
 Protestants also take the Lord's Supper fasting, but this is merely a custom 
 with them, not a law. (See Luther, Th. xviii. p. 200, 201.) 
 t I Cor. xi. 29. 
 
 Q 
 
242 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 bread. The Schoolmen therefore had recourse to the pre- 
 cious distinction of substance and accidents All the acci- 
 dents which constitute the nature of wine and bread are still 
 there • only that which is made up by these accidents, the 
 subject, the substance, is wanting, is changed into flesh and 
 blood. But all the properties together, whose combination 
 forms' this unity, are the substance itself. What are wme 
 and bread if I take from them the properties which make 
 them what they are? Nothing, llesh and blood have 
 therefore no objective existence; otherwise they must be 
 an object to the unbelieving senses. On the contrary : the 
 only valid witnesses of an objective existence — taste, smell, 
 touch, sight — testify unanimously to the reality of the wine 
 and bread, and nothing else. The wine and bread are in 
 reality natural, but in imagination divine substances. 
 
 Faith is the power of the imagination, which makes the 
 real unreal, and the unreal real : in direct contradiction 
 with the truth of the senses, with the truth of reason. 
 Paith denies what objective reason affirms, and affirms what 
 it denies.* The mystery of the Lord's Supper is the 
 mystery of faith : t — hence the partaking of it is the high- 
 est, the most rapturous, blissful act of the believing soul. 
 The negation of objective truth which is not gratifying to 
 feeling, the truth of reality, of the objective world and 
 reason, — a negation which constitutes the essence of faith, — 
 reaches its highest point in the Lord's Supper ; for faith 
 here denies an immediately present, evident, indubitable 
 object, maintaining that it is not what the reason and senses 
 declare it to be, that it is only in appearance bread, but in 
 
 * " YiJetur eiiim species vini et panis, et substantia panis et vini non 
 creditur. Creditur autem substantia corporis et sanguinis Christi et tamen 
 species non cernitur." — Bernardus (ed. Bas. 1552, pp. 189-191). 
 
 t It is so in anotlier relation not developed here, but which may be men- 
 cioned in a note : namely, the following. In religion, in faith, man is an 
 object to himself as the object, i.e., the end or determining motive, of God. 
 Man is occupied with himself in and through God. God is the means of 
 human existence and happiness. This religious truth, embodied in a cultus, 
 in a sensuous form, is the Lord's Supper. In this sacrament man feeds upon 
 Clod — the Creator of heaven and earth — as on material food ; by the act of 
 eating and drinking he declares God to be a mere means of life to man. 
 Here man is virtually supposed to be the God of God : hence the Lord's 
 Supper is the highest self-enjoyment of human subjectivity. Even the 
 Protestant — not indeed in words, but in truth — translorms God into an ex- 
 ternal thing, since he subjects Him to himself as an object of sensational 
 enjoyment. 
 
THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS. 243 
 
 reality flesh. The position of the Sclioolmen, that according 
 to the accidents it is bread, and according to the substance 
 ilesh, is merely the abstract, explanatory, intellectual ex- 
 pression of what faith accepts and declares, and has therefore 
 no other meaning than this : to the senses or to common 
 perception it is bread, but in truth, flesh. Where therefore 
 the imaginative tendency of faith has assumed such power 
 over the senses and reason as to deny the most evident 
 sensible truths, it is no wonder if believers can raise them- 
 selves to such a degree of exaltation as actually to see blood 
 instead of wine. Such examples Catholicism has to show. 
 Little is wanting in order to perceive externally what faith 
 and imagination hold to be real. 
 
 So long as faith in the mystery of the Lord's Supper as 
 a holy, nay the holiest, highest truth, governed man, so long- 
 was his governing principle the imagination. All criteria 
 of reality and unreality, of unreason and reason, had dis- 
 appeared : anything whatever that could be imagined passed 
 for real possibility. Eeligion hallowed every contradiction 
 of reason, of the nature of tilings. Do not ridicule the absurd 
 questions of the Schoolmen ! They were necessary con- 
 sequences of faith. That which is only a matter of feeling 
 had to be made a matter of reason, that which contradicts 
 the understanding had to be made not to contradict it. 
 This was the fundamental contradiction of Scholasticism, 
 whence all other contradictions followed of course. 
 
 And it is of no particular importance whether I believe 
 the Protestant or the Catholic doctrine of the Lord's Supper. 
 The sole distinction is, that in Protestantism it is only on 
 the tongue, in the act of partaking, that flesh and blood are 
 united in a thoroughly miraculous manner with bread and 
 wine ; * while in Catholicism, it is before the act of par- 
 taking, by the power of the priest, — who however here acts 
 only in the name of the Almighty, — that bread and wine 
 are really transmuted into flesh and blood. The Protestant 
 prudently avoids a definite explanation ; he does not lay 
 himself open. Like the pious, uncritical simplicity of Catho- 
 
 * "Nostrates, prjeseiitiam realem consecrationis effectum esse, adfirmant ; 
 idque ita, ut turn se exserat, cum usus legitimus accedit. Nee est quod 
 regeras, Christum hac verba : hoc est corpus meum, protulisse, antequam 
 discipuli ejus comederent, adeoque panem jam ante usum corpus Christ! 
 fuisse."— Buddeus (1. c. 1. v. c. 1, §§ 13, i7)- See, on the other hand, 
 Concil. Trident. Sessio 13, cc. 3, 8, Can. 4. 
 
244 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 licism, whose God, as an external object, can be devoured 
 by a mouse : lie shuts up his God within himself, where he 
 can no more be torn from him, and thus secures him as well 
 from the power of accident as from that of ridicule ; yet, 
 notwithstanding this, he just as much as the Catholic con- 
 sumes real flesh and blood in the bread and wine. Slight 
 indeed was the difference at first between Protestants and 
 Catholics in the doctrine of the Lord's Supper ! Thus at 
 Anspach there arose a controversy on the question — 
 " whether the body of Christ enters the stomach, and is 
 digested like other food ? " * 
 
 But although the imaginative activity of faith makes the 
 objective existence the mere appearance, and the emotional, 
 imaginary existence the truth and reality ; still, in itself or 
 in truth, that which is really objective is only the natural 
 elements. Even the host in the pyx of the Catholic priest 
 is in itself only to faith a divine body, — this external thing, 
 into which he transubstantiates the divine being, is only a 
 thing of faith ; for even here the body is not visible, tangi- 
 ble, tasteable as a body. That is : the bread is only in its 
 significance flesh. It is true that to faith this significance 
 has the sense of actual existence ; — as, in general, in the 
 ecstasy of fervid feeling that which signifies becomes the 
 thing signified ; — it is held not to signify, but to be flesh. 
 But this state of being flesh is not that of real flesh ; it is 
 a state of being which is only believed in, imagined, i.e., it 
 has only the value, the quality, of a significance, a truth 
 conveyed in a symbol.f A thing which has a special signi- 
 ficance for me, is another thing in my imagination than 
 in reality. The thing signifying is not itself that which is 
 signified. What it is, is evident to the senses ; what it 
 signifies, is only in my feelings, conception, imagination, — 
 is only for me, not for others, is not objectively present. 
 So here. When therefore Zwinglius said that the Lord's 
 Supper has only a subjective significance, he said the same 
 thing as his opponents ; only he disturbed the illusion of 
 
 * Apologie Melancthon. Strobel. Nurnb. 1783, p. 127. 
 
 t "The fanatics, however, believe that it is mere bread and wine, and it is 
 assuredly so as they believe ; they have it so, and eat mere bread and wine." 
 — Luther (Th. xix. p. 432). That is to say, if thou believest, representest to 
 thyself, conceivest, that the bread is not bread, but the body of Christ, it 
 is not bread ; but if thou dost not believe so, it is not so. What it is in 
 thy belief that it actually is. 
 
THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS. 245 
 
 the religious imagination ; for tliat wliich " is " in the Lord's 
 Sapper, is only an illusion of the imagination, but with the 
 farther illusion that it is not an illusion. Zwinglius only 
 expressed simply, nakedly, prosaically, ration alistically, and 
 therefore offensively, what the others declared mystically, 
 indirectly, — inasmuch as they confessed * that the effect of 
 the Lord's Supper depends only on a worthy disposition or on 
 faith ; i.e., that the bread and wine are the flesh and blood of 
 the Lord, are the Lord himself, only for him for whom they 
 have the supernatural significance of the divine body, for 
 on this alone depends the worthy disposition, the religious 
 emotion. t 1 
 
 But if the Lord's Supper effects nothing, consequently is 
 nothing, — for only that which produces effects, is, — without 
 a certain state of mind, without faith, then in faith alone 
 lies its reality ; the entire event goes forward in the feelings 
 alone. If the idea that I here receive the real body of the 
 Saviour acts on the religious feelings, this idea itself arises 
 from the feelings; it produces devout sentiments, because 
 it is itself a devout idea. Thus here also the religious sub- 
 ject is acted on by himself as if by another being, through 
 the conception of an imaginary object. Therefore the pro- 
 cess of the Lord's Supper can quite well, even without the 
 intermediation of bread and wine, without any church 
 ceremony, be accomplislied in the imagination. There are 
 innumerable devout poems, the sole theme of which is the 
 blood of Christ. In these we have a genuinely poetical cele- 
 bration of the Lord's Supper. In the lively representation 
 of the suffering, bleeding Saviour, the soul identifies itself 
 with him ; here the saint in poetic exaltation drinks the 
 pure blood, unmixed with any contradictory, material ele- 
 ments; here there is no disturbing object between the idea 
 of the blood and the blood itself. 
 
 But though the Lord's Supper, or a sacrament in general, 
 is nothing without a certain state of mind, without faith, 
 
 * " Even the Catholics also. " Hujus sacramenti effectus, ((uem in aninia 
 operatur digne sumentis, est adunatio honiinis ad Christum."— Concil. 
 Florent. de S. Euohar. 
 
 t "If the body of Christ is in the bread and is eaten with faith, it 
 strengthens the soul, in that the soul believes that it is the body of Christ 
 which the mouth eats."— Luther (Th. xix. p. 433 ; see also p. 205). " For 
 what we believe that we receive, that we receive m truth."— lb. (Th. xvu. 
 P- 557). 
 
246 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 nevertheless religion presents the sacrament at the same 
 time as something in itself real, external, distinct from the 
 human being, so that in the religious consciousness the true 
 thing, which is faith, is made only a collateral thing, a con- 
 dition, and the imaginary thing becomes the principal thing. 
 And the necessary, immanent consequences and effects of 
 this religious materialism, of this subordination of the human 
 to the supposed divine, of the subjective to the supposed 
 objective, of truth to imagination, of morality to religion, — 
 the necessary consequences are superstition and immorality : 
 superstition, because a thing has attributed to it an effect 
 which does not lie in its nature, because a thing is held up 
 as not being what it in truth is, because a mere conception 
 passes for objective reality; immorality, because necessarily, 
 in feeling, the holiness of the action as such is separated 
 from morality, the partaking of the sacrament, even apart 
 from the state of mind, becomes a holy and saving act. 
 Such, at least, is the result in practice, which knows nothing 
 of the sophistical distinctions of theology. In general : 
 V-'herever religion idaccs itself in contradiction ivith reason, it 
 places itself also in contradiction tvlth the moral sense. Only 
 with the sense of truth coexists the sense of the right and 
 good. Depravity of understanding is always depravity 
 of heart. He who deludes and cheats his understanding 
 has not a veracious, honourable heart ; sophistry corrupts 
 the whole man. And the doctrine of the Lord's Supper is 
 sophistry. 
 
 The Truth of the disposition, or of faith as a requisite to 
 communion, involves tlie Untruth of the bodily presence of 
 God ; and again the Truth of the objective existence of the 
 divine body involves the Untruth of the disposition. 
 
THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 247 
 
 CHAPTEE XXVI. 
 
 THE CONTKADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 
 
 The Sacraments are a sensible presentation of that contra- 
 diction of idealism and materialism, of subjectivism and 
 objectivism, which belongs to the inmost nature of religion. 
 But the sacraments are nothing without Paith and Love. 
 Hence the contradiction in the sacraments carries us back 
 to the primary contradiction of Faith and Love. 
 
 The essence of religion, its latent nature, is the identity of 
 the divine being with the human ; but the form of religion, 
 or its apparent, conscious nature, is the distinction between 
 them. God is the human being ; but he presents himself 
 to the religious consciousness as a distinct being. ISTow, 
 that which reveals the basis, the hidden essence of religion, 
 is Love ; that which constitutes its conscious form is Faith. 
 Love identifies man with God and God with man, conse- 
 quently it identifies man with man ; faith separates God 
 from man, consequently it separates man from man, for 
 God is nothing else than the idea of the species invested 
 with a mystical form, — the separation of God from man is 
 therefore the separation of man from man, the unloosening 
 of the social bond. By faith religion places itself in contra- 
 diction with morality, with reason, with the unsophisticated 
 sense of truth in man ; by love, it opposes itself again to 
 this contradiction. Faith isolates God, it makes him a 
 particular, distinct being : love universalises ; it makes 
 God a common being, the love of whom is one with the 
 love of man. Faith produces in man an inward disunion, 
 a disunion with himself, and by consequence an outward 
 disunion also ; but love heals the wounds which are made 
 by faith in the heart of man. Faith makes belief in its 
 God a law : love is freedom, — it condemns not even the 
 atheist, because it is itself atheistic, itself denies, if not 
 theoretically, at least practically, the existence of a parti- 
 cular, individual God, opposed to man. Love has God in 
 
248 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 itself : faith has God out of itself ; it estranges God from 
 man, it makes him an external object. 
 
 Faith, being inherently external, proceeds even to the 
 adoption of outward fact as its object, and becomes histori- 
 cal faith. It is therefore of the nature of faith that it can 
 become a totally external confession ; and that with mere 
 faith, as such, superstitious, magical effects are associated.* 
 The devils believe that God is, without ceasing to be devils. 
 Hence a distinction has been made between faith in God, 
 and belief that there is a God.f But even with this bare 
 belief in the existence of God, the assimilating power of 
 love is intermingled ; — a power which by no means lies in 
 the idea of faith as such, and in so far as it relates to 
 external things. 
 
 The only distinctions or judgments which are immanent 
 to faith, which spring out of itself, are the distinctions of 
 right or genuine, and wrong or false faith ; or in general, of 
 belief and unbelief. Faith discriminates thus : This is true, 
 that is false. And it claims truth to itself alone. Faith has 
 for its object a definite, specific truth, which is necessarily 
 united with negation. Faith is in its nature exclusive. 
 One thing alone is truth, one alone is God, one alone has 
 the monopoly of being the Son of God ; all else is nothing, 
 error, delusion. Jehovah alone is the true God ; all other 
 gods are vain idols. 
 
 Faith has in its mind something peculiar to itself ; it 
 rests on a peculiar revelation of God ; it has not come to 
 its possessions in an ordinary way, that way which stands 
 open to all men alike. What stands open to all is common, 
 and for that reason cannot form a special object of faith. 
 That God is the creator, all men could know from Nature ; 
 but what this God is in person, can be known only by 
 special grace, is the object of a special faith. And because 
 he is only revealed in a peculiar manner, the object of this 
 faith is himself a peculiar being. The God of the Christians 
 is indeed the God of the heathens, but with a ■^^'ide differ- 
 ence : — just such a difference as there is between me as I am 
 to a friend, and me as I am to a stranger, who only knows 
 me at a distance. God as he is an object to the Christians, 
 is quite another than as he is an object to the heathens. 
 
 * Hence the mere name of Christ has miraculous powers. 
 'Y " Gott glauhen und an Gott glauhen.^^ 
 
THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 
 
 249 
 
 The Christiaus know God personally, face to face. The 
 heathens know only — and even this is too large an admis- 
 sion — "what," and not "who," God is ; for which reason tliey 
 fell into idolatry. The identity of the heathens and Chris- 
 tians before God is therefore altogether vague ; what the 
 heathens have in common with the Christians — if indeed 
 we consent to be so liberal as to admit anything in common 
 between them — is not that which is specifically Christian, 
 not that which constitutes faith. In whatsoever the Chris- 
 tians are Christians, therein they are distinguished from 
 the heathens ; * and they are Christians in virtue of their 
 special knowledge of God ; thus their mark of distinction is 
 God. Speciality is the salt which first gives a flavour to 
 the common being. What a being is in special, is the being 
 itself; he alone knows me, who knows me in specie. Thus 
 the special God, God as he is an object to the Christians, 
 the personal God, is alone God. And this God is unknown 
 to heathens, and to unbelievers in general ; he does not 
 exist for them. He is, indeed, said to exist for the heathens ; 
 but mediately, on condition that they cease to be heathens, 
 and become Christians. Faith makes man partial and 
 narrow ; it deprives him of the freedom and ability to esti- 
 mate duly what is different from himself. Faith is im- 
 prisoned within itself. It is true that the philosophical, or, 
 in general, any scientific theorist, also limits himself by a 
 definite system. But theoretic limitation, however fettered, 
 short-sighted and narrow-hearted it may be, has still a freer 
 character than faith, because the domain of theory is in 
 itself a free one, because here the ground of decision is the 
 nature of things, argument, reason. But faith refers the 
 decision to conscience and interest, to the instinctive 
 desire of happiness ; for its object is a special, personal 
 Being, urging himself on recognition, and making salvation 
 dependent on that recognition. 
 
 Faith gives man a peculiar sense of his own dignity and 
 importance. The believer finds himself distinguished above 
 other men, exalted above the natural man ; he knows him- 
 self to be a person of distinction, in the possession of 
 peculiar privileges ; believers are aristocrats, unbelievers 
 plebeians. God is this distinction and pre-eminence of 
 
 * " If I wish to be a Christian, I must believe and do what other people 
 do not believe or do." — Luther (Th. xvi. p. 569). 
 
2 50 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 believers above unbelievers, personified* Because faith 
 represents man's own nature as that of another being, the 
 believer does not contemplate his dignity immediately in 
 himself, but in this supposed distinct person. The con- 
 sciousness of his own pre-eminence presents itself as a con- 
 sciousness of this person ; he has the sense of his own 
 dignity in this divine personality.f As the servant feels 
 himself honoured in the dignity of his master, nay, fancies 
 himself greater than a free, independent man of lower rank 
 than his master, so it is with the believer.^ He denies all 
 merit in himself, merely that he may leave all merit to his 
 Lord, because his own desire of honour is satisfied in the 
 honour of his Lord. Faith is arrogant, but it is distinguished 
 from natural arrogance in this, that it clothes its feeling of 
 superiority, its pride, in the idea of another person, for 
 whom the believer is an object of peculiar favour. This dis- 
 tinct person, however, is simply his own hidden self, his per- 
 sonified, contented desire of happiness : for he has no other 
 qualities than these, that he is the benefactor, the Eedeemer, 
 the Saviour — qualities in which the believer has reference 
 only to himself, to his own eternal salvation. In fact, we 
 have here the characteristic principle of religion, that it 
 changes that which is naturally active into the passive. 
 The heathen elevates himself, the Christian feels himself 
 elevated. The Christian converts into a matter of feeling, 
 of receptivity, what to the heathen is a matter of spon- 
 taneity. The humility of the believer is an inverted arro- 
 gance, — an arrogance none the less because it has not the 
 appearance, the external characteristics of arrogance. He 
 feels himself pre-eminent : this pre-eminence, however, is 
 not a result of his activity, but a matter of grace ; he has 
 been made pre-eminent ; he can do nothing towards it him- 
 self. He does not make himself the end of his own activity, 
 but the end, the object of God. 
 
 * Celsus makes it a reproach to the Christians that they boast: "Est 
 Deus et post ilium nos." (Origcnes adv. Gels. ed. Hceschelius. Aug. Vind. 
 1605, p. 182). 
 
 + " I am proud and exulting on account of my blessedness and the forgive- 
 ness of my sins, but through what ? Through the glory and pride of 
 another, namely, the Lord Christ." — Luther (Th. ii. p. 344). "He that 
 glorieth let him glory in the Lord." — i Cor. i. 31. 
 
 $ A military officer who had been adjutant of the Russian general 
 Miinnich said : " When I was his adjutant I felt myself greater than now 
 that I command." 
 
THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 251 
 
 Faith is essentially determinate, specific. God according 
 to the specific view taken of him by faith, is alone the true 
 God. This Jesus, such as I conceive him, is the Christ, the 
 true, sole prophet, the only-begotten Son of God, And this 
 particular conception thou must believe, if thou wouldst 
 not forfeit thy salvation. Paith is imperative. It is there- 
 fore necessary — it lies in the nature of faith — that it be 
 fixed as dogma. Dogma only gives a formula to what faith 
 had already on its tongue or in its mind. That when once 
 a fundamental dogma is established, it gives r-ise to more 
 special questions, which must also be thrown into a dogma- 
 tie form, that hence there results a burdensome multiplicity 
 of dogmas, — this is certainly a fatal consequence, but does 
 not do away with the necessity that faith should fix itself 
 in dogmas, in order that every one may know definitely 
 what he must believe and how he can win salvation. 
 
 That which in the present day, even from the standpoint 
 of believing Christianity, is rejected, is compassionated as 
 an aberration, as a misinterpretation, or is even ridiculed, 
 is purely a consequence of the inmost nature of faith. 
 Faith is essentially illiberal, prejudiced ; for it is concerned 
 not only wich individual salvation, but with the honour of 
 God. And just as we are solicitous as to whether we show 
 due honour to a superior in rank, so it is with faith. The 
 apostle Paul is absorbed in the glory, the honour, the 
 merits of Christ. Dogmatic, exclusive, scrupulous particu- 
 larity, lies in the nature of faith. In food and other matters, 
 indifferent to faith, it is certainly liberal ; but by no means 
 in relation to objects of faith. He who is not for Christ 
 is against him ; that which is not christian is antichristian. 
 But what is christian ? This must be absolutely determined, 
 this cannot be free. If the articles of faith are set down in 
 books which proceed from various authors, handed down 
 in the form of incidental, mutually contradictory, occasional 
 dicta, — then dosmatic demarcation and definition are even 
 an external necessity. Christianity owes its perpetuation 
 to the dogmatic formulas of the Church. 
 
 It is only the believing unbelief of modern times which 
 hides itself behind the Bible, and opposes the biblical dicta 
 to dogmatic definitions, in order that it may set itself free 
 from the limits of dogma by arbitrary exegesis. But faith 
 has already disappeared, is become indifferent, when the 
 
252 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 determinate tenets of faith are felt as limitations. It is 
 only religious indifference under the appearance of religion 
 that makes the Bible, which in its nature and origin is 
 indefinite, a standard of faith, and under the pretext of 
 believing only the essential, retains nothing which deserves 
 the name of faith ; — for example, substituting for the dis- 
 tinctly characterised Son of God, held up by the Church, 
 the vague negative definition of a Sinless Man, who can 
 claim to be the Son of God in a sense applicable to no 
 other being, — in a word, of a man, whom one may not 
 trust oneself to call either a man or a God. But that it 
 is merely indifference which makes a hiding-place for itself 
 behind the Bible, is evident from the fact that even what 
 stands in the Bible, if it contradicts the standpoint of the 
 present day, is regarded as not obligatory, or is even denied ; 
 nay, actions which are essentially christian, which are the 
 logical consequences of faith, such as the separation of 
 believers from unbelievers, are now designated as un- 
 christian. 
 
 The Church was perfectly justified in adjudging dam- 
 nation to heretics and unbelievers,* for this condemnation 
 is involved ia the nature of faith. Faith at first appears to be 
 only an unprejudiced separation of believers from un- 
 believers ; but this separation is a highly critical distinction. 
 The believer has God for him, the unbeliever, against him ; 
 — it is only as a possible believer that the unbeliever has 
 God not against him ; — and therein precisely lies the ground 
 of the requirement that he should leave the ranks of un- 
 belief. But that which has God against it is worthless, re- 
 jected, reprobate ; for that which has God against it is itself 
 against God. To believe, is synonymous with goodness ; not 
 to believe, with wickedness. Faitli, narrow and prejudiced 
 refers all unbelief to the moral disposition. In its view 
 the unbeliever is an enemy to Christ out of obduracy, out 
 of wickedness.-|- Hence faith has fellowship with believers 
 only ; unbelievers it rejects. It is well-disposed towards 
 believers, but ill-disposed towards unbelievers. In, faith 
 there lies a 7nallgiinnt principle. 
 
 * To faith, so long as it has any vital heat, any character, the heretic is 
 always on a level with the unbeliever, with the atheist. 
 
 t Already in the New Testament the idea of disobedience is associated 
 with unbelief. "The cardinal wickedness is unbelief. " — Luther (xiii, p. 647). 
 
THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 253 
 
 It is owing to the egoism, the vanity, the self-complacency 
 of Christians, that they can see the motes in the faith of 
 non-christian nations, but cannot perceive the beam in their 
 own. It is only in the mode in which faith embodies itself 
 that Christians differ from the followers of other religions. 
 The distinction is founded only on climate or on natural 
 temperament. A warlike or ardently sensuous people will 
 naturally attest its distinctive religious character by deeds, 
 by force of arms. But the nature of faith as such is every- 
 where the same. It is essential to faith to condemn, to 
 anathematise. All blessings, all good it accumulates on 
 itself, on its God, as the lover on his beloved ; all curses, 
 all hardship and evil it casts on unbelief. The believer is 
 blessed, well-pleasing to God, a partaker of everlasting 
 felicity ; the unbeliever is accursed, rejected of God and 
 abjured by men : for what God rejects man must not receive, 
 must not indulge ; — that would be a criticism of the divine 
 judgment. The Turks exterminate unbelievers with fire 
 and sword, the Christians with the flames of hell. But the 
 fires of the other world blaze forth into this, to glare 
 through the night of unbelief. As the believer already here 
 below anticipates the joys of heaven, so the flames of the 
 abyss must be seen to flash here as a foretaste of the await- 
 ing hell, — at least in the moments when faith attains its 
 highest enthusiasm.* It is true that Christianity ordains 
 no persecution of heretics, still less conversion by force of 
 arms. But so far as faith anathematises, it necessarily 
 generates hostile dispositions, — the dispositions out of 
 which the persecution of heretics arises. To love the man 
 who does not believe in Christ, is a sin against Christ, is to 
 love the enemy of Christ.f That which God, which Christ 
 does not love, man must not love ; his love would be a 
 contradiction of the divine will, consequently a sin. God, 
 it is true, loves all men ; but only when and because they 
 are Christians, or at least may be and desire to be such. 
 
 * God himself by no means entirely reserves the punishment of blas- 
 phemers, of unbelievers, of heretics, lor the future ; he often punishes them 
 in this life also, " for the benefit of Christendom and the strengthening of 
 faith : " as, for example, the heretics Cerinthus and Arius. See Luther 
 (Th. xiv. p. 13). 
 
 t " Si quis spiritum Dei habet, illius versiculi recordetur : Nonne qui 
 oderunt te, Domine, oderam ?" (Psal. cxxxix. 21); Bernhardus, Epist. (193) 
 ad magist. Yvonem Cardin. 
 
254 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 To be a Christian is to be beloved by God ; not to be a 
 Christian is to be hated by God, an object of the divme 
 anger.* The Christian must therefore love only Christians 
 — others only as possible Christians; he must only love 
 what faith hallows and blesses. Faith is the baptism^ of 
 love. Love to man as man is only natural love. Christian 
 love is supernatural, glorified, sanctified love ; therefore it 
 loves only what is Christian. The maxim, " Love your 
 enemies," has reference only to personal enemies, not to 
 public enemies, the enemies of God, the enemies of faith, 
 unbelievers. He who loves the men whom Christ denies, 
 does not believe Christ, denies his Lord and God. Faith 
 abolishes the natural ties of humanity ; to universal, natural 
 unity, it substitutes a particular unity. 
 
 Let it not be objected to this, that it is said in the Bible, 
 " Judge not, that ye be not judged ; " and that thus, as 
 faith leaves to God the judgment, so it leaves to him the 
 sentence of condemnation. This and other similar sayings 
 have authority only as the private law of Christians, not as 
 their public law ; belong only to ethics, not to dogmatics. 
 It is an indication of indifference to faith, to introduce 
 such sayings into the region of dogma. The distinction 
 between the unbeliever and the man is a fruit of modern 
 philanthropy. To faith, the man is merged in the believer ; 
 to it, the essential difference between man and the brute 
 rests only on religious belief. Faith alone comprehends in 
 itself all virtues which can make man pleasing to God ; and 
 God is the absolute measure, his pleasure the highest law : 
 the believer is thus alone the legitimate, normal man, man 
 as he ought to be, man as he is recognised by God. Wherever 
 we iind Christians making a distinction between the man 
 and the believer, there the human mind has already severed 
 itself from faith ; there man has value in himself, independ- 
 ently of faith. Hence faith is true, unfeigned, only where 
 the specific difference of faith operates in all its severity. If 
 the edge of this difference is blunted, faith itself naturally 
 becomes indifferent, effete. Faith is liberal only in things 
 intrinsically indifferent. The liberalism of the apostle Paul 
 presupposes the acceptance of the fundamental articles of 
 faith. Where everything is made to depend on the funda- 
 
 *" Qui Christum negat, negatur a Cliristo." — Cj'prian (Epist E 7^ S i8 
 edit. Gersdorf.l. i o> o , 
 
THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 255 
 
 mental articles of faith, there arises the distinction between 
 essential and non-essential belief. In the sphere of the 
 non-essential there is no law, — there you are free. But 
 obviously it is only on condition of your leaving the rights 
 of faith intact, that_faith allows you freedom. 
 
 It is therefore an altogether false defence to say, that 
 faith leaves judgment to God. It leaves to him only the 
 moral judgment with respect to faith, only the judgment as 
 to its moral character, as to whether the faith of Christians 
 be feigned or genuine. So far as classes are concerned, 
 faith knows already whom God will place on the right 
 hand, and whom on the left ; in relation to the persons who 
 compose the classes faith is uncertain ; but that believers 
 are heirs of the Eternal Kingdom is beyond all doubt. 
 Apart from this, however, the God who distinguishes be- 
 tween believers and unbelievers, the condemning and re- 
 warding God, is nothing else than faith itself. What God 
 condemns, faith condemns, and vice versa. Faith is a con- 
 suming fire to its opposite.* This fire of faith regarded 
 objectively, is the anger of God, or what is the same thing, 
 hell ; for hell evidently has its foundation in tlie anger of 
 God. But this hell lies in faith itself, in its sentence of 
 damnation. The flames of hell are only the flashings of 
 the exterminating, vindictive glance which faith casts on 
 unbelievers. 
 
 Thus faith is essentially a spirit of partisanship. He who 
 is not for Christ is against him.f Faith knows only friends 
 or enemies, it understands no neutrality ; it is preoccupied 
 only with itself. Faith is essentially intolerant ; essentially, 
 because with faith is always associated the illusion that its 
 cause is the cause of God, its honour his honour. The God 
 of faith is nothing else than the objective nature of faith — ■ 
 faith become an object to itself. Hence in the religious 
 consciousness also the cause of faith and the cause of God 
 are identified. God himself is interested : the interest of 
 faith is the nearest interest of God. "He who toucheth 
 you," says the prophet Zachariah, " toucheth the apple of 
 
 * Thus the apostle Paul cursed " Elymas the sorcerer" with blindness, 
 because he withstood the faith. — Acts xiii. 8-1 1. 
 
 t Historically considered, this saying, as well as the others cited pp. 384, 
 385, may be perfectly justified. But the Bible is not to be regarded as an 
 historical or temporal, but as an eternal book. 
 
256 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 His eye." * That which wounds faith, wounds God, that 
 which denies faith, denies God himself. 
 
 Faith knows no other distinction than that between the 
 service of God and the service of idols. Faith alone gives 
 honour to God ; unbelief withdraws from God that which is 
 due to him. Unbelief is an injury to God, religious high 
 treason. The heathens worship demons ; their gods are 
 devils. " I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, 
 they sacrifice to devils, and not to God : and I would not 
 that ye should have fellowship with devils." t But the 
 devil is the negation of God ; he hates God, wills that there 
 should be no God. Thus faith is blind to what there is of 
 goodness and truth lying at the foundation of heathen wor- 
 ship ; it sees in everything which does not do homage to its 
 God, i.e., to itself, a worship of idols, and in the worship of 
 idols only the work of the devil. Faith must therefore, 
 even in feeling, be only negative towards this negation of 
 God : it is by inherent necessity intolerant towards its oppo- 
 site, and in general towards whatever does not thoroughly 
 accord with itself. Tolerance on its part would be intoler- 
 ance towards God, who has the right to unconditional, un- 
 divided sovereignty. Nothing ought to subsist, nothing 
 to exist, which does not acknowledge God, which does 
 not acknowledge faith : — " That at the name of Jesus 
 every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things 
 on earth, and things under the earth ; and that every 
 tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the 
 glory of the Father." J Therefore faith postulates a future, 
 a world where faith has no longer an opposite, or where 
 at least this opposite exists only in order to enhance 
 the self-complacency of triumphant faith. Hell sweetens 
 the joys of happy believers. " The elect will come forth to 
 behold the torments of the ungodly, and at this spectacle 
 they will not be smitten with sorrow ; on the contrary, 
 
 * " Tenerrimam partem Immani corporis nominavit, ut apertissime in- 
 telligereuius, euni (Deuiii) tarn parya Sanctorum suorum contumelia laedi, 
 quam parvi verberis tactu liumaui yisus acies lajditur."— Salvianus, 1. 8, de 
 Guborn. Dei. 
 
 t I Cor. X. 2o. 
 
 t Phil. ii. lo, 1 1. " When the name of Jesus Christ is heard, all that is 
 unbelieving and ungodly in heaven or on earth shall be terrified."— Luther 
 (Th. xvi. p. 322). "In morte pagani Christianus gloriatur, quia Chi-istus 
 glonficatur."— Divus Bernardus. Sermo exhort, ad Milites Templi. 
 
THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 257 
 
 while they see the unspeakable sufferings of the ungodly, 
 they, intoxicated with joy, will thank God for their own 
 salvation."* 
 
 Faith is the opposite of love. Love recognises virtue even 
 in sin, truth in error. It is only since the power of faith has 
 been supplanted by the power of the natural unity of man- 
 kind, the power of reason, of humanity, that truth has been' 
 seen even in polytheism, in idolatry generally, — or at least 
 that there has been any attempt to explain on positive 
 grounds what faith, in its bigotry, derives only from the 
 devil. Hence love is reconcilable with reason alone, not 
 with faith ; for as reason, so also love is free, universal, in 
 its nature ; whereas faith is narrow-hearted, limited. Only 
 where reason rules, does universal love rule ; reason is itself 
 nothing else than universal love. It was faith, not love, not 
 reason, which invented Hell. To love. Hell is a horror ; to 
 reason, an absurdity. It would be a pitiable mistake to 
 regard Hell as a mere aberration of faith, a false faith. Hell 
 stands already in the Bible. Faith is everywhere like itself; 
 at least positive religious faith, faith in the sense in which 
 it is here taken, and must be taken unless we would mix 
 with it the elements of reason, of culture, — a mixture which 
 indeed renders the character of faith unrecognisable. 
 
 Thus if faith does not contradict Christianity, neither do 
 those dispositions which result from faith, neither do the 
 actions which result from those dispositions. Faith condemns, 
 anathematises ; all the actions, all the dispositions, which 
 contradict love, humanity, reason, accord with faith. All 
 the horrors of Christian religious history, which our believers 
 aver not to be due to Christianity, have truly arisen out of 
 
 * Petrus L. 1. iy. dist. 50, c. 4. But this passage is by no means a declara- 
 tion of Peter Lombard himself. He is far too modest, timid, and dependent 
 on the authorities of Christianity to have ventured to advance such a tenet 
 on his own account. No ! This position is a universal declaration, a charac- 
 teristic expression of Christian, of believing love. The doctrine of some 
 Fathers of the Church, e.g., of Origen and Gregory ofSjssa,, that the punish- 
 ment of the damned would have an end, sprung not out of Christian or 
 Church doctrine, but out of Platonism. Hence the doctrine that the punish- 
 ment of hell is finite, was rejected not only by the Catholic but also by the 
 Protestant church. (Augsb. Confess, art. 17). A precious example of the 
 exclusive, misanthropical narrowness of Christian love, is the passage cited 
 from Buddeus by Strauss (Christl. Glaubensl. B. ii. s. 547), according to 
 which not infants in general, but those of Christians exclusively, would 
 have a share in the divine grace and blessings if they died unbaptized. 
 
 E 
 
258 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Christianity, because they have arisen out of faith. This 
 repudiation of them is indeed a necessary consequence of 
 faith ; for faith claims for itself only what is good, every- 
 thing bad it casts on the shoulders of unbelief, or of mis- 
 belief, or of men in general But this very denial of faith 
 that it is itself to blame for the evil in Cliristianity, is a 
 striking proof that it is really the originator of that evil, 
 because it is a proof of the narrowness, partiality, and in- 
 tolerance which render it well-disposed only to itself, to 
 its own adherents, but ill-disposed, unjust towards others. 
 According to faith, the good which Christians do, is not 
 done by the man, but by the Christian, by faith ; but the evil 
 which Christians do, is not done by the Christian, but by 
 the man. The evil which faith has wrought in Christendom 
 thus corresponds to the nature of faith, — of faith as it is 
 described in the oldest and most sacred records of Chris- 
 tianity, of the Bible. " If any man preach any other gospel 
 unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed,"* 
 dvddefxaeaTeo, Gal. i. g. "Be ye not unequally yoked together 
 with unbelievers : for what fellowship hath righteousness 
 with unrighteousness ? and what communion hath light with 
 darkness ? And what concord hath Christ witli Belial ? or 
 what part hath he that believeth with an infidel ? And what 
 agreement hath the temple of God with idols ? for ye are 
 the temple of the living God ; as God hath said, I will dwell 
 in them and walk in them ; and I will be their God, and 
 they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among 
 them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the 
 unclean thing; and I will receive you," 2 Cor. iv. 14-17. 
 " When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with 
 his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them 
 that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ : who shall be punished with everlasting 
 destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the 
 glory of his power ; when lie shall come to be glorified in 
 his saints, and admired in all them that believe," 2 Thess. 
 i. 7-10. "Without faith it is impossible to please God," 
 Heb. xi. 6. " God so loved the world, that he gave his 
 ouly begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him, should 
 not perish, but have everlasting life," John iii. 16. "Every 
 
 * " Fu£;ite, abhorrete hunc doctorem." But why should I flee from him '! 
 because the anger, i.e., the curse of God rests on his liead. 
 
e 
 
 THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 259 
 
 spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh 
 is of God : and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus 
 Christ ia come in the flesh is not of God : and this is the 
 spirit of antichrist," i John iv. 2, 3. "Who is a liar, but 
 he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ ? He is antichrist 
 that denieth the Father and the Son," i John ii. 22. " Who- 
 soever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, 
 hath not God : he that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he 
 hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any unto 
 you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your 
 house, neither bid him God speed : for he that biddeth him 
 God speed, is partaker of his evil deeds," 2 John ix. 1 1. 
 Thus speaks the apostle of love. But the love w^hich he 
 celebrates is only the brotherly love of Christians. " God 
 is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe," 
 I Tim. iv. 10. A fatal " specially ! " " Let us do good unto 
 all men, especially unto them who are of the household of 
 faith," Gal. vi. 10. An equally pregnant " especially ! " "A 
 man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition 
 reject ; knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, 
 being condemned of himself," * Titus iii. 10, 1 1. "He that 
 believeth on the Son hath everlasting life : and he that 
 believeth not the Son shall not see life ; but the wratli of 
 God abideth on him," f John iii. 36. " And whosoever shall 
 offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it were 
 better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, 
 and that he were cast into the sea," Mark ix. 42 ; Matt, xviii. 
 6. " He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; but 
 he that believeth not shall be damned," Mark xvi. 16. The 
 distinction between faith as it is expressed in the Bible and 
 faith as it has exhibited itself in later times, is only the 
 distinction between the bud and the plant. In the bud I 
 cannot so plainly see what is obvious in the matured plant ; 
 and yet the plant lay already in the bud. But that which 
 
 * There necessarily results from this a sentiment which, e.g. , Cyprian 
 expresses: "Si vero ubique hjeretici nihil aliud quam adversarii et anti- 
 christ! nominantur, si vitandi et perversi et a semet ipsis damnati pro- 
 nuntiantur; quale est ut videantur damnandi a nobis non esse, quos constat 
 apostolica contestatione a semet ipsis damnatos esse." Epistol. 74. (Edit, cit.) 
 
 + The passage Luke ix. 56, as the parallel of which is cited John iii. 17, 
 receives its completion and rectification in the immediately following v. 18 : 
 " He that believeth in him is not condemned ; but he that believeth not is 
 condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only 
 begotten Son of God." 
 
26o THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 is obvious, sophists of course will not condescend to recog- 
 nise ; they confine themselves to the distinction between 
 explicit and implicit existence —wilfully overlooking their 
 essential identity. 
 
 Faith necessarily passes into hatred, hatred into persecu- 
 tion, where the power of faith meets with no contradiction, 
 where it does not find itself in collision with a power foreign 
 to faith, the power of love, of humanity, of the sense of 
 justice. Faith left to itself necessarily exalts itself above 
 the laws of natural morality. The doctrine of faith is the 
 doctrine of duty towards God, — the highest duty of faith. 
 By how much God is higher than man, by so much higher 
 are duties to God than duties towards man ; and duties 
 towards God necessarily come into collision with common 
 human duties. God is not only believed in, conceived as 
 the universal being, the Father of men, as Love : — such 
 faith is the faith of love ; — he is also represented as a per- 
 sonal being, a being by himself. And so far as God is 
 regarded as separate from man, as an individual being, so 
 far are duties to God separated from duties to man : — faith 
 is, in the religious sentiment, separated from morality, from 
 love.* Let it not be replied that faith in God is faith in 
 love, in goodness itself ; and that thus faith is itself an 
 expression of a morally good disposition. In the idea of 
 personality, ethical definitions vanish ; they are only col- 
 lateral things, mere accidents. The chief thing is the 
 subject, the divine Ugo. Love to God himself, since it is 
 love to a personal being, is not a moral but a personal love. 
 Innumerable devout hymns breathe nothing but love to the 
 Lord ; but in this love there appears no spark of an exalted 
 moral idea or disposition. 
 
 Faith is the highest to itself, because its object is a divine 
 
 * "Faitli, it is true, is not "without good works," nay, according to 
 Luther's declaration, it is as impossible to separate faith from works as to 
 separate heat and light from fire. Nevertheless, and this is the main point, 
 good works do not belong to the article of justification before God, i.e., men 
 are justified and "saved without works, through faith alone." Faith is thus 
 expressly distinguished from good works ; faith alone avails before God, not 
 good works ; faith alone is the cause of salvation, not virtue ; thus faith 
 alone has substantial significance, virtue only accidental ; i.e., faith alone 
 has religious significance, divine authority — and not morality. It is well 
 known that many have gone so far as to maintain that good works are 
 not necessary, but are even "injurious, obstructive to salvation." Quito 
 correctly. 
 
THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITR AND LOVE. 261 
 
 personalit}^ Hence it makes salvation dependent on itself, 
 not on the fulfilment of common human duties. But that 
 which has eternal salvation as its consequence, necessarily 
 becomes in the mind of man the chief thing. As therefore 
 inwardly morality is subordinate to faith, so it must also be 
 outwardly, practically subordinate, nay, sacrificed, to faith. 
 It is inevitable that there should be actions in which faith 
 exhibits itself in distinction from morality, or rather in con- 
 tradiction with it; — actions which are morally bad, but 
 which according to faith are laudable, because they have 
 in view the advantage of faith. All salvation depends on 
 faith : it follows that all again depends on the salvation of 
 faith. If faith is endangered, eternal salvation and the 
 honour of God are endangered. Hence faith absolves from 
 everything ; for, strictly considered, it is the sole subjective 
 good in man, as God is the sole good and positive being : — 
 the highest commandment therefore is : Believe ! * 
 
 For the very reason that there is no natural, inherent 
 connection between faith and the moral disposition, that, 
 on the contrary, it lies in the nature of faith that it is in- 
 different to moral duties,t that it sacrifices the love of 
 man to the honour of God, — for this reason it is required 
 that faith should have good works as its consequence, that 
 it should prove itself by love. Faith destitute of love, or 
 indifferent to love, contradicts the reason, the natural sense 
 of right in man, moral feeling, on which love immediately 
 urges itself as a law. Hence faith, in contradiction with its 
 intrinsic character, has limits imposed on it by morality : a 
 faith which effects nothing good, which does not attest itself 
 
 *■ " Causa fidei . . . exorbitan tern et irregiilarem prorsus fay orem habet 
 et ab omni jure deviare, omnem captivare ratioriem, neo jadiciis laicorum 
 ratione corrapta utentium subjecta creditur. Etenim Causa fidei ad multa 
 obligat, quae alias sunt voluntaria, multa, imo infinita remittit, quie alias 
 prfficepta ; quai alius valide gesta animllat, et contra quas alias nulla et 
 irrita, fiunt valida ... ex jure canonico."— J. H. Boehmeri (Jus Eceles. 
 lib. V. tit. vii. § 32. See also § 44 et seq.). 
 
 t "Placetta de Fide, ii. II ne faut pas eliercher dans la nature^ des 
 clioses mgmes la veritable cause de I'inseparabilit^ de la foi et de la piete. ^ II 
 faut, si je ne me trompe, la chercher uniquement dans la volonte de Dieu 
 Bene facit et nobiscum sentit, cum illam conjunctionem {i.e. , of sanctity 
 or virtue with faith) a benifica Dei voluntate et dispositione repetit ;^ nee id 
 novum est ejus inventurn. sed cum antiquioribus Theologis nostris com- 
 mune."— J. A. Ernesti. (VindiciiE arbitrii divini. Opusc. theol. p. 297.) 
 " Si quis dixerit . . . qui fidera sine charitate habet, Christianum non esse, 
 anathema sit."— Concil. Trid. (Sess. vi. de Jiistif. can. 28). 
 
262 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 by love, comes to be held as not a true and living faith. 
 But this limitation does not arise out of faith itself. It is 
 the power of love, a power independent of faith, which 
 gives laws to it; for moral character is here made the 
 criterion of the genuineness of faith, the truth of faith is 
 made dependent on the truth of ethics :— a relation which, 
 however, is subversive of faith. 
 
 Faith does indeed make man happy; but thus much is 
 certain : it infuses into him no really moral dispositions. 
 If it ameliorate man, if it have moral dispositions as its con- 
 sequence, this proceeds solely from the inward conviction 
 of the irreversible reality of morals : — a conviction indepen- 
 dent of religious faith. It is morality alone, and by no 
 means faith, that cries out in the conscience of the believer: 
 thy faith is nothing, if it does not make thee good. It is 
 not to be denied that the assurance of eternal salvation, 
 the forgiveness of sins, the sense of favour and release from 
 all punishment, inclines man to do good. The man who has 
 this confidence possesses all things ; he is happy ; * he be- 
 comes indifferent to the good things of this world ; no envy, 
 no avarice, no ambition, no sensual desire, can enslave him ; 
 everything earthly vanishes in the prospect of heavenly 
 grace and eternal bliss. But in him good works do not 
 proceed from essentially virtuous dispositions. It is not 
 love, not tlie object of love, man, the basis of all morality, 
 which is the motive of his good works. ISTo ! he does good 
 not for the sake of goodness itself, not for the sake of man, 
 but for the sake of God ;— out of gratitude to God, who has 
 done all for him, and for whom therefore he must on his 
 side do all that lies in his power. He forsakes sin, because 
 it wounds God, his Saviour, his Benefactor.f The idea of 
 virtue is here the idea of compensatory sacrifice. God has 
 sacrificed himself for man ; therefore man must sacrifice 
 himself to God. Tlie greater the sacrifice the better the 
 deed. The more anything contradicts man and Nature, 
 
 * See on this subject Luther, e.g., T. xiv. p. 2S6. 
 
 + "Therefore good works must follow faith, as an exprcs.sion of thank- 
 fulness to God." — Apol. der Augs. Conf art. 3. " How can I make a 
 return to thee for thy deeds of love in works ? yet it is something accept- 
 able to thee, if I quench and tame the lusts of tlie flesh, that tliey may not 
 anew inflame my heart with fresh sins." " If sin bestirs itself, I am not 
 overcome ; a glance at the cross of Jesus destroys its charms." — Gesan"buch 
 der Evangel. Briidergemeinen (Moravian Hymn-book). 
 
THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 263 
 
 the greater the abnegation, the greater is the virtue. This 
 merely negative idea of goodness has been especially realised 
 and developed by Catholicism. Its highest moral idea is 
 that of sacrifice ; hence the high significance attached to 
 the denial of sexual love, — to virginity. Chastity, or rather 
 virginity, is the characteristic virtue of the Catholic faith, — 
 for this reason, that it has no basis in Nature. It is the 
 most fanatical, transcendental, fantastical virtue, the virtue 
 of supranaturalistic faith ; — to faith, the highest virtue, but 
 in itself no virtue at all. Thus faith makes that a virtue 
 which intrinsically, substantially, is no virtue ; it has there- 
 fore no sense of virtue ; it must necessarily depreciate true 
 virtue because it so exalts a merely apparent virtue, because 
 it is guided by no idea but that of the negation, the contra- 
 diction of human nature. 
 
 But although the deeds opposed to love which mark Chris- 
 tian religious history, are in accordance with Christianity, 
 and its antagonists are therefore right in imputing to it the 
 horrible actions resulting from dogmatic creeds ; those deeds 
 nevertheless at the same time contradict Christianity, because 
 Christianity is not only a religion of faith, bnt of love also, — 
 pledges us not only to faith, but to love. Uncharitable 
 actions, hatred of heretics, at once accord and clash with 
 Christianity ? how is that possible ? Perfectly. Christianity 
 sanctions both the actions that spring out of love, and the 
 actions that spring from faith without love. If Christianity 
 had made love only its law, its adherents would be right, — 
 the horrors of Christian religious history could not be im- 
 puted to it ; if it had made faith only its law, the reproaches 
 of its antagonists would be unconditionally, unrestrictedly 
 true. But Christianity has not made love free ; it has not 
 raised itself to the height of accepting love as absolute. 
 And it has not given this freedom, nay, cannot give it, 
 because it is a religion, — and hence subjects love to the 
 dominion of faith. Love is only the exoteric, faith the 
 esoteric doctrine of Christianity ; love is only the vwrality, 
 faith the religion of the Christian religion. 
 
 God is love. This is the sublimest dictum of Christianity. 
 But the contradiction of faith and love is contained inthe 
 very proposition. Love is only a predicate, God the subject. 
 What, then, is this subject in distinction from love ? And 
 I must necessarily ask this question, make this distinction. 
 
264 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 The necessity of the distinction would be done away with 
 only if it were said conversely : Love is God, love is the 
 absolute being. Thus love would take the position of the 
 substance. In the proposition " God is love," the subject is 
 the darkness in which faith shrouds itself ; the predicate is 
 the lio-ht, which first illuminates the intrinsically dark sub- 
 ject. °In the predicate I affirm love, in the subject faith. 
 Love does not alone fill my soul : I leave a place open for 
 my uneharitableness by thinking of God as a subject in dis- 
 tinction from the predicate. It is therefore inevitable that 
 at one moment I lose the thought of love, at another the 
 thought of God, that at one moment I sacrifice the person- 
 ality of God to the divinity of love, at another the divinity of 
 love to the personality of God. The history of Christianity 
 has given sufficient proof of this contradiction. Catholicism, 
 especially, has celebrated Love as the essential deity with 
 so much enthusiasm, that to it the personality of God has 
 been entirely lost in this love. But at the same time it has 
 sacrificed love to the majesty of faith. Faith clings to the 
 self-subsistence of God ; love does away with it. " God is 
 love," means, God is nothing by himself: he who loves, 
 gives up his egoistical independence ; he makes what he 
 loves indispensable, essential to his existence. But while 
 Self is being sunk in the depths of love, the idea of the 
 Person rises up again and disturbs the harmony of the 
 divine and human nature which had been established by 
 love. Faith advances with its pretensions, and allows only 
 just so much to Love as belongs to a predicate in the ordi- 
 nary sense. It does not permit love freely to unfold itself ; 
 it makes love the abstract, and itself the concrete, the fact, 
 the basis. The love of faith is only a rhetorical figure, a 
 poetical fiction of faith, — faith in ecstasy. If faith comes 
 to itself. Love is fled. 
 
 This theoretic contradiction must necessarily manifest 
 itself practically. Necessarily; for in Christianity love is 
 tainted by faith, it is not free, it is not apprehended truly. 
 A love which is limited by faith is an untrue love.* Love 
 knows no law but itself; it is divine through itself ; it needs 
 
 * The only limitation which is not contradictory to the nature of love is 
 the self-limitation of love by reason, intelligence. The love which despises 
 the stringency, the law of the intelligence, 'is theoretically false and prac- 
 tically noxious. 
 
THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 265 
 
 not the sanction of faith ; it is its own basis. The love 
 which is bound by faith is a narrow-hearted, false love, 
 contradicting the idea of love, i.e., self-contradictory, — a 
 love which has only a semblance of holiness, for it hides in 
 itself the hatred that belongs to faith ; it is only benevolent 
 so long as faith is not injured. Hence, in this contradiction 
 with itself, in order to retain the semblance of love, it falls 
 into the most diabolical sophisms, as we see in Augustine's 
 apology for the persecution of heretics. Love is limited by 
 faith; hence it does not regard even the uncharitable 
 actions which faith suggests as in contradiction with itself ; 
 it interprets the deeds of hatred which are committed for 
 the sake of faith as deeds of love. And it necessarily falls 
 into such contradictions, because the limitation of love by 
 faith is itself a contradiction. If it once is subjected to 
 this limitation, it has given up its own judgment, its in- 
 herent measure and criterion, its self-subsistence ; it is 
 delivered up without power of resistance to the promptings 
 of faith. 
 
 Here we have again an example, that much which is not 
 found in the letter of the Bible, is nevertheless there in 
 principle. We find the same contradictions in the Bible as 
 in Augustine, as in Catholicism generally ; only that in the 
 latter they are definitely declared, they are developed into 
 a conspicuous, and therefore revolting existence. The 
 Bible curses through faith, blesses through love. But the 
 only love it knows is a love founded on faith. Thus here 
 already it is a love which curses, an unreliable love, a love 
 which gives me no guarantee that it will not turn into 
 hatred ; for if I do not acknowledge the articles of faith, I 
 am out of the sphere of love, a child of hell, an object of 
 anathema, of the anger of God, to whom the existence of 
 unbelievers is a vexation, a thorn in the eye. Christian 
 love has not overcome hell, because it has not overcome 
 faith. Love is in itself unbelieving, faith unloving. And 
 love is unbelieving because it knows nothing more divine 
 than itself, because it believes only in itself as absolute 
 truth. 
 
 Christian love is already signalised as a particular, 
 limited love, by the very epithet. Christian. But love is 
 in its nature universal. So long as Christian love' does not 
 renounce its qualification of Christian, does not make 
 
266 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 love, simply, its highest law, so long is it a love which is 
 injurious to the sense of truth, for the very office of love is 
 to abolish the distinction between Christianity and so-called 
 heathenism ;— so long is it a love which by its particularity 
 is in contradiction with the nature of love, an abnormal, 
 loveless love, which has therefore long been justly an object 
 of sarcasm. True love is sufficient to itself ; it needs no 
 special title, no authority. Love is the universal law of 
 intelligence and Nature ; — it is nothing else than the reali- 
 sation'^of the unity of the species through the medium of 
 moral sentiment. To found this love on the name of a 
 person, is only possible by the association of superstitious 
 ideas, either of a religious or speculative character. For 
 witlr superstition is always associated particularism, and 
 with particularism, fanaticism. Love can only be founded 
 on the unity of the species, the unity of intelligence — on 
 the nature of mankind ; then only is it a well-grounded 
 love, safe in its principle, guaranteed, free, for it is fed by 
 the original source of love, out of which the love of Christ 
 himself arose. Tlie love of Christ was itself a derived 
 love. He loved us not out of himself, by virtue of his own 
 authority, but by virtue of our common human nature. 
 A love which is based on his person is a particular, exclusive 
 love, which extends only so far as the acknowledgment of 
 this person extends, a love which does not rest on the 
 proper ground of love. Are we to love each other because 
 Christ loved us ? Such love would be an affected, imitative 
 love. Can we truly love each other only if we love Christ ? 
 Is Christ the cause of love ? Is he not rather the apostle 
 of love ? Is not the ground of his love the unity of human 
 nature ? Shall I love Christ more than mankind ? Is not 
 such love a chimerical love ? Can I step beyond the idea 
 of the species ? Can I love anything higher than humanity ? 
 What ennobled Christ was love; whatever qualities he had, 
 he held in fealty to love ; he was not the proprietor of love, 
 as he is represented to be in all superstitious conceptions. 
 The idea of love is an independent idea ; I do not first 
 deduce it from the life of Christ ; on the contrary, I revere 
 that life only because I find it accordant with the law, the 
 idea of love. 
 
 This is already proved historically by the fact that the 
 idea of love was by no means first introduced into the con- 
 
THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 267 
 
 sciousness of mankind with and by Christianity, — is by no 
 means peculiarly Christian. The horrors of the Eoman 
 Empire present themselves with striking significance in 
 company with the appearance of this idea. The empire of 
 policy which united men after a manner corresponding with 
 its own idea, was coming to its necessary end. Political 
 unity is a unity of force. The despotism of Rome must 
 turn in upon itself, destroy itself. But it was precisely 
 through this catastrophe of political existence that man 
 released himself entirely from the heart-stifling toils of 
 politics. In the place of Eome appeared the idea of 
 humanity ; to the idea of dominion succeeded the idea of 
 love. Even the Jews, by imbibing the principle of humanity 
 contained in Greek culture, had by this time mollified their 
 malignant religious separatism. Philo celebrates love as 
 the highest virtue. The extinction of national differences 
 lay in the idea of humanity itself. Thinking minds had 
 very early overstepped the civil and political separation of 
 man from man. Aristotle distinguishes the man from the 
 slave, and places the slave, as a man, on a level with his 
 master, uniting them in friendship. Epictetus, the slave, 
 was a Stoic ; Antoninus, the emperor, was a Stoic also : 
 thus did philosophy unite men. The Stoics taught * that 
 man was not born for his own sake, but for the sake of 
 others, i.e., for love : a principle which implies infinitely 
 more than the celebrated dictum of the Emperor Antoninus, 
 which enjoined the love of enemies. The practical principle 
 of the Stoics is so far the principle of love. The world is 
 to them one city, men its citizens. Seneca, in the sublimest 
 sayings, extols love, clemency, humanity, especially towards 
 slaves. Thus political rigour and patriotic narrowness were 
 on the wane. 
 
 Christianity was a peculiar manifestation of these human 
 tendencies; — a popular, consequently a religious, and cer- 
 tainly a most intense manifestation of this new principle of 
 love. That which elsewhere made itself apparent in the 
 process of culture, expressed itself here as religious feeling, 
 as a matter of faith. Christianity thus reduced a general 
 unity to a particular one, it made love collateral- to faith ; 
 and by this means it placed itself in contradiction with 
 
 * The Peripatetics also ; who founded love, even that towards all men, 
 not on a particular, religious, but a natural principle. 
 
268 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 universal love. The unity was not referred to its true 
 origin. Ifational differences indeed disappeared; but in 
 their place difference of faith, the opposition of Christian 
 and un-Christian, more vehement than a national anta- 
 gonism, and also more malignant, made its appearance in 
 history. 
 
 All love founded on a special historical phenomenon 
 contradicts, as has been said, the nature of love, which 
 endures no limits, which triumphs over all particularity. 
 Man is to be loved for man's sake. Man is an object of 
 love because he is an end in himself, because he is a 
 rational and loving being. This is the law of the species, 
 the law of the intelligence. Love should be immediate, un- 
 determined by anything else than its object ; — nay, only 
 as such is it love. But if I interpose between my fellow- 
 man and myself the idea of an individuality, in whom the 
 idea of the species is supposed to be already realised, I 
 annihilate the very soul of love, I disturb the unity by the 
 idea of a third external to us ; for in that case my fellow- 
 luan is an object of love to me only on account of his re- 
 semblance or relation to this model, not for his own sake. 
 Here all the contradictions reappear which we have in the 
 personality of God, where the idea of the personality by 
 itself, without regard to the qualities which render it 
 worthy of love and reverence, fixes itself in the conscious- 
 ness and feelings. Love is the subjective reality of the 
 species, as reason is its objective reality. In love, in reason, 
 the need of an intermediate person disappears. Christ is 
 nothing but an image, under which the unity of the species 
 has impressed itself on the popular consciousness. Christ 
 loved men : he wished to bless and unite them all without 
 distinction of sex, age, rank, or nationality. Christ is the 
 love of mankind to itself embodied in an image — in ac- 
 cordance with the nature of religion as we have developed it 
 — or contemplated as a person, but a person who (we mean, 
 of course, as a religious object) has only the significance of 
 an image, who is only ideal. For this reason love is pro- 
 nounced to be the characteristic mark of the disciples. But 
 love, as has been said, is nothing else than the active proof, 
 the realisation of the unity of the race, through the medium 
 of the moral disposition. The species is not an abstraction ; 
 it exists in feeling, in the moral sentiment, in the energy of 
 
THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE. 269 
 
 love. It is the species which infuses love into me. A 
 loving heart is the heart of the species throhbing in the 
 individual. Thus Christ, as the consciousness of love, is 
 the consciousness of the species. We are all one in Christ. 
 Christ is the consciousness of our identity. He therefore 
 who loves man for the sake of man, who rises to the love 
 of the species, to universal love, adequate to the nature of 
 the species,* he is a Christian, is Christ himself. He does 
 what Christ did, what made Christ Christ. Thus, where 
 there arises the consciousness of the species as a species, 
 the idea of humanity as a whole, Christ disappears, without, 
 however, his true nature disappearing; for he was the sub- 
 stitute for the consciousn,ess of the species, the image under 
 which it was made present to the people, and became the 
 law of the popular life. 
 
 * Active love is and must of course always be particular and limited, i.e., 
 directed to one's neighbour. But it is yet in its nature universal, since it 
 loves man for man's sake, in the name of the race. Christian love, on the 
 contrary, is in its nature exclusive. 
 
270 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 CONCLUDING APPLICATION. 
 
 In the contradiction between Paith and Love which has just 
 been exhibited, we see the practical, palpable ground of 
 necessity that we should raise ourselves above Christianity, 
 above the peculiar stand-point of all religion. We have 
 shown that the substance and object of religion is altogether 
 human ; we have shown that divine wisdom is human wisdom; 
 that the secret of theology is anthropology ; that the absolute 
 mind is the so-called finite subjective mind. But religion 
 is not conscious that its elements are human; on the contrary, 
 it places itself in opposition to the human, or at least it does 
 not admit that its elements are human. The necessary 
 turning-point of history is therefore the open confession, 
 that the consciousness of God is nothing else than the 
 consciousness of the species ; that man can and should raise 
 himself only above the limits of his individuality, and not 
 above the laws, the positive essential conditions of his 
 species ; that there is no other essence which man can think, 
 dream of, imagine, feel, believe in, wish for, love and adore 
 as the absolute, than the essence of human nature itself.* 
 
 Our relation to religion is therefore not a merely negative, 
 but a critical one ; we only separate the true from the false; 
 — though we grant that the truth thus separated from false- 
 hood is a new truth, essentially different from the old. 
 Eeligion is the first form of self-consciousness. Eeligions 
 are sacred because they are the traditions of the primitive 
 self-consciousness. But that which in religion holds the 
 first place — namely, God — is, as we have shown, in itself 
 and according to truth, the second, for it is only the nature 
 of man regarded objectively ; and that which to religion is 
 the second — namely, man — must therefore be constituted 
 
 * Including external nature ; for as man belongs to the essence of Nature, 
 — in opposition to common materialism ; so Nature belongs to the essence of 
 man, — in opposition to subjective idealism; which is also the secret of our 
 "absolute" philosophy, at least in relation to Nature. Only by uniting 
 man with Nature can we conquer the supranaturalistic egoism of Christianity. 
 
CONCLUDING APPLICATION. 271 
 
 and declared the first. Love to man must be no derivative 
 love ; it must be original. If human nature is the highest 
 nature to man, then practically also the highest and first 
 law must be the love of man to man. Homo homini JDeus 
 est: — this is the great practical principle: — this is the axis 
 on which revolves the history of the world. The relations 
 of child and parent, of husband and wife, of brother and 
 friend — in general, of man to man — in short, all the moral 
 relations are per se religious. Life as a whole is, in its 
 essential, substantial relations, throughout of a divine nature. 
 Its religious consecration is not first conferred by the blessing 
 of the priest. But the pretension of religion is that it can 
 hallow an object by its essentially external co-operation ; it 
 thereby assumes to be itself the only holy power; besides 
 itself it knows only earthly, ungodly relations; hence it 
 comes forward in order to consecrate them and make them 
 holy. 
 
 But marriage — we mean, of course, marriage as the free 
 bond of love *— is sacred in itself, by the very nature of the 
 union which is therein effected. That alone is a religious 
 marriage, which is a true marriage, which corresponds to the 
 essence of marriage — of love. And so it is with all moral 
 relations. Then only are they moral, — then only are they 
 enjoyed in a moral spirit, when they are regarded as sacred 
 in themselves. True friendship exists only when the 
 boundaries of friendship are preserved with religious con- 
 scientiousness, with the same conscientiousness with which 
 the believer watches over the dignity of his God. Let 
 friendship be sacred to thee, property sacred, marriage sacred, 
 — sacred the well-being of every man ; but let them be 
 sacred in and hy themselves. 
 
 In Christianity the moral laws are regarded as the com- 
 mandments of God ; morality is even made the criterion of 
 piety; but ethics have nevertheless a subordinate rank, 
 they have not in themselves a religious significance. This 
 belongs only to faith. Above morality hovers God, as a 
 being distinct from man, a being to whom the best is due, 
 
 * Yes, only as the free bond of love ; for a marriage the bond of which is 
 merely an external restriction, not the voluntary, contented self-restriction 
 of love, in short, a marriage which is not spontaneously concluded, spon- 
 taneously willed, self-sufficing, is not a true marriage, and therefore not a 
 truly moral marriage. 
 
272 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 while the remnants only fall to the share of man. All those 
 dispositions which ought to be devoted to life, to man— all 
 the best powers of humanity, are lavished on the being who 
 wants nothing. The real cause is converted into an im- 
 personal means, a merely conceptional, imaginary cause 
 usurps the place of the true one. Man thanks God for 
 those benefits which have been rendered to him even at the 
 cost of sacrifice by his fellow-man. The gratitude which 
 he expresses to his benefactor is only ostensible ; it is paid, 
 not to him, but to God. He is thankful, grateful to God, 
 but unthankful to man.* Thus is the moral sentiment 
 subverted into religion ! Thus does man sacrifice man to 
 God ! The bloody human sacrifice is in fact only a rude, 
 material expression of the inmost secret of religion. Where 
 bloody human sacrifices are offered to God, such sacrifices 
 are regarded as the highest thing, physical existence as the 
 chief good. For this reason life is sacrificed to God, and it 
 is so on extraordinary occasions ; the supposition being 
 that this is the way to show him the greatest honour. If 
 Christianity no longer, at least in our day, offers bloody 
 sacrifices to its God, this arises, to say nothing of other 
 reasons, from the fact that physical existence is no longer 
 regarded as the highest good. Hence the soul, the emotions 
 are now offered to God, because these are held to be some- 
 thing higher. But the common case is, that in religion 
 man sacrifices some duty towards man — such as that of 
 respecting the life of his fellow, of being grateful to him — 
 to a religious obligation, — sacrifices his relation to man to 
 his relation to God. The Christians, by the idea that God 
 is without wants, and that he is only an object of pure 
 adoration, have certainly done away with many pernicious 
 conceptions. But this freedom from wants is only a meta- 
 physical idea, which is by no means part of the peculiar 
 nature of religion. When the need for worship is supposed 
 to exist only on one side, the subjective side, this has the 
 invariable effect of one-sidedness, and leaves the religious 
 
 * "Because God does good through government, great men and creatures 
 in general, people rush into error, lean on creatures and not on the Creator ; 
 — they do not look from the creatui-e to the Creator. Hence it came that 
 the heathens made gods of kings . . . For they cannot and will not per- 
 ceive that the work or the benefit comes from God, and not merely from the 
 creature, though the latter is a means, through which God works, helps us, 
 and gives to us." — Luther (T. iv. p. 237). 
 
CONCLUDING APPLICATION. 273 
 
 emotions cold ; hence, if not in express words, yet in fact, 
 there must be attributed to God a condition corresponding 
 to the subjective need, the need of the worshipper, in order to 
 establish reciprocity.* All the positive definitions of religion 
 are based on reciprocity. The religious man thinks of God 
 because God thinks of him ; he loves God because God has 
 first loved him. God is jealous of man ; religion is jealous 
 of morality ;t it sucks away the best forces of morality ; it 
 renders to man only the things that are man's, but to God 
 the things that are God's ; and to him is rendered true, 
 living emotion, — the heart. 
 
 When in times in which peculiar sanctity was attached 
 to religion, we find marriage, property, and civil law re- 
 spected, this has not its foundation in religion, but in the 
 original, natural sense of morality and right, to wliich the 
 true social relations are sacred as stock. He to whom tlie 
 Eight is not holy for its own sake will never be made 
 to feel it sacred by religion. Property did not become 
 sacred because it was regarded as a divine institution, but 
 it was regarded as a divine institution because it was felt to 
 be in itself sacred. Love is not holy because it is a predicate 
 of God, but it is a predicate of God because it is in itself 
 divine. The heathens do not worship the light or the 
 fountain because it is a gift of God, but because it has of 
 
 * "They who honour me, I will honour, and they who despise me shall be 
 lightly esteemed." — i Sam. ii. 30. "Jam se, bone pater, vermis vilissimus 
 et odio dignissimus sempiterno, tamen coniidit amari, quoniam se sentit 
 amare, imo quia se amari prsssentit, non redamare eonfunditur. . . . Nemo 
 itaque se amari diffidat, qui jam amat." — Bernardus ad Thomam (Epist. 
 107). A very fine and pregnant sentence. If I exist not for God, God 
 exists not for me ; if I do not love, I am not loved. The passive is the 
 active certain of itself, the object is the subject certain of itself. To love is 
 to be man, to be loved is to be God. I am loved, says God ; I love, says 
 man. It is not untD. later that this is reversed, that the passive transforms 
 itself into the active, and conversely. 
 
 + "The Lord spake to Gideon : The people are too many that are with 
 thee, that I should give Midian into their hands ; Israel might glorify 
 itself against me and say : My hand has delivered me," — i.e., "Ne Israel 
 sibi tribuat, quas mihi debentur. " Judges vii. 2. " Thus saith the Lord : 
 Cursed is the man that trusteth in u^an. But blessed is the man that 
 trusteth in the Lord and whose hope is in the Lord." — Jer. xvii. 5. "God 
 desires not our gold, body and possessions, but has given these to the 
 emperor (that is, to the representative of the world, of the state), and to us 
 through the emperor. But the heart, which is the greatest and best in 
 man, he has reserved for himself ; — this must be our offering to God— that 
 we believe in him." — Lutlier (xvi. p. 505). 
 
 S 
 
2/4 
 
 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 itself a Leneficial influence on man, because it refreshes 
 the sufferer; on account of this excellent quality they pay 
 it divine honours. 
 
 Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever the 
 right is made dependent on divine authority, the most 
 immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and 
 established. I can found morality on theology only when 
 I myself have already defined the Divine Being by means 
 of morality. In the contrary case, I have no criterion of 
 the moral and immoral, but merely an Mwmoral, arbitrary 
 basis, from which I may deduce anything I please. Thus, 
 if I would found morality on God, I must first of all place 
 it in God: for Morality, Eiu'ht, in short, all substantial 
 relations, liave their only basis in themselves, can only have 
 a real foundation — such as truth demands — when they are 
 thus based. To place anything in God, or to derive anything 
 from God, is nothing more than to withdraw it from the test 
 of reason, to institute it as indubitable, unassailable, sacred, 
 without rendering an account why. Hence self-delusion, if 
 not wicked, insidious design, is at the root of all efforts to 
 establish morality, right, on theology. Where we are in 
 earnest about the right we need no incitement or support 
 from above. We need no Christian rule of political right : 
 we need only one which is rational, just, human. The right, 
 the true, the good, has alwaj's its ground of sacreduess in 
 itself, in its quality. Where man is in earnest about ethics, 
 they have in themselves the validity of a divine power. If 
 morality has no foundation in itself, there is no inherent 
 necessity for morality ; morality is then surrendered to the 
 groundless arbitrariness of religion. 
 
 Thus the work of the self-conscious reason in relation to 
 religion is simply to destroy an illusion: — an illusion, how- 
 ever, which is by no means indifferent, but which, on the 
 contrary, is profoundly injurious in its effect on mankind ; 
 which deprives man as well of the power of real life as of 
 the genuine sense of truth and virtue: for even love, in 
 itself the deepest, truest emotion, becomes by means of 
 religiousness merely ostensible, illusory, since religious love 
 gives itself to man only for God's sake, so that it is given 
 only in appearance to man, but in reality to God. 
 
 And we need only, as we have shown, invert the religious 
 
CONCLUDING APPLICATION. 27; 
 
 relations — regard that as an end which religion supposes to 
 be a means — exalt that into the primary which in religion 
 is subordinate, the accessory, the condition, — at once we 
 have destroyed the illusion, and the unclouded light of truth 
 streams in upon us. The sacraments of Baptism and the 
 Lord's Supper, which are the characteristic symbols of the 
 Christian religion, may serve to confirm and exhibit tins 
 truth. 
 
 The Water of Baptism is to religion only the means by 
 which the Holy Spirit imparts itself to man. But by this 
 conception it is placed in contradiction with reason, with 
 the truth of things. On the one hand, there is virtue in 
 the objective, natural quality of water ; on the other, there 
 is none, but it is a merely arbitrary medium of divine grace 
 and omnipotence. We free ourselves from these and other 
 irreconcilable contradictions, we give a true significance to 
 Baptism, only by regarding it as a symbol of the value of 
 water itself. Baptism should represent to us tlie wonderful 
 but natural effect of water on man. Water has, in fact, not 
 merely physical effects, but also, and as a result of these, 
 moral and intellectual effects on man. Water not only 
 cleanses man from bodily impurities, but in water the scales 
 fall from his eyes : he sees, he thinks more clearly; he feels 
 himself freer ; water extinguishes the fire of appetite. How 
 many saints have had recourse to the natural qualities of 
 water in order to overcome the assaults of the devil ! What 
 was denied by Grace has been granted by Nature. Water 
 plays a part not only in dietetics, but also in moral and 
 mental discipline. To purify oneself, to bathe, is the first, 
 though the lowest of virtues.* In the stream of water the 
 
 * Christian 'baptism also is obviously only a relic of the ancient ISTatnre- 
 worship, in which, as in the Persian, water was a means of religious purifi- 
 cation. (S. Rhode : Die heilige Sage, &c., pp. 305, 426.) Here, however, 
 water haptism had a much truer, and conse(juently a deeper meaning, than 
 with the Christians, because it rested on the natural power and ^'alue of 
 water. But indeed for these simple views of Nature which characterised 
 the old religious, 'Our speculative as well as theological supranaturalism has 
 neither sense nor understanding. When therefore the Persians, the Hindoos, 
 the Egyptians, the Hebrews, made physical purity a religious duty, they 
 were herein far wiser than the Christian saints, who attested the supra- 
 naturalistic principle of their religion by physical impurity. Supranaturalism 
 in theory becomes anti-naturalism in practice. Supranaturalism is only a 
 euphemism lor anti-naturalism. 
 
276 THE ESSENCE OE CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 fever of selfishness is allayed. Water is the readiest means 
 of making friends with Nature. The bath is a sort of 
 chemical "process, in which our individuality is resolved 
 into the objective life of Nature. The man rising from the 
 water is a new, a regenerate man. The doctrine that 
 morality can do nothing without means of grace has a valid 
 meaning if, in place of imaginary, supernatural means of 
 grace, we substitute natural means. Moral feeling can 
 effect nothing without Nature ; it must ally itself with the 
 simplest natural means. The profoundest secrets lie in 
 common everyday things, such as supranaturalistic religion 
 and speculation ignore, thus sacrificing real mysteries to 
 imaginary, illusory ones ; as here, for example, the real 
 l^ower of water is sacrificed to an imaginary one. Water 
 is the simplest means of grace or healing for the. maladies 
 of the soul as well as of the body. But water is effectual 
 only where its use is constant and regular. Baptism, as a 
 single act, is either an altogether useless and unmeaning 
 institution, or, if real effects are attributed to it, a super- 
 stitious one. But it is a rational, a venerable institution, 
 if it is understood to typify and celebrate the moral and 
 physical curative virtues of water. 
 
 But the sacrament of water required a supplement. 
 Water, as a universal element of life, reminds us of our 
 oricfin from Nature, an origin which we have in common 
 with plants and animals. In Baptism we bow to the power 
 of a pure Nature-force ; water is the element of natural 
 equality and freedom, the mirror of the golden age. But 
 we men are distinguished from the plants and animals, 
 which together with the inorganic kingdom we comprehend 
 under the common name of Nature ; — we are distinguished 
 from Nature. Hence we must celebrate our distinction, 
 our specific difference. The symbols of this our difference 
 are bread and wine. Bread and wine are, as to their 
 materials, products of Nature ; as to their form, products of 
 man. If in water we declare : Man can do nothing without 
 Nature ; by bread and wine we declare : Nature needs man, 
 as man needs Nature. In water, human mental activity is 
 nullified ; in bread and wine it attains self-satisfaction. 
 Bread and wine are supernatural products, — in the only 
 valid and true sense, the sense which is not in contradiction 
 
CONCLUDING APPLICATION. 277 
 
 witli reason and Nature. If in water we adore the pure 
 force of Nature, in bread and wine we adore the super- 
 natural power of mind, of consciousness, of man. Hence 
 this sacrament is only for man matured into consciousness ; 
 while baptism is imparted to infants. But we at the same 
 time celebrate here the true relation of mind to Nature : 
 Nature gives the material, mind gives the form. The sacra- 
 ment of Baptism inspires us witli thankfulness towards 
 Nature, the sacrament of bread and wine with thankfulness 
 towards man. Bread and wine typify to us the truth that 
 Man is the true God and Saviour of man. 
 
 Eating and drinking is the mystery of the Lord's Supper ; 
 — eating and drinking is, in fact, in itself a religious act ; at 
 least, ought to be so.* Think, therefore, with every morsel 
 of bread which relieves thee from the pain of liunger, with 
 every draught of wine which cheers thy heart, of the God 
 who confers these beneficent gifts upon thee, — think of man ! 
 But in thy gratitude towards man forget not gratitude 
 towards holy Nature ! Forget not that wine is the blood 
 of plants, and flour the flesli of plants, which are sacrificed 
 for thy well-being ! Forget not that the plant typifies to 
 thee the essence of Nature, which lovingly surrenders itself 
 for thy enjoyment! Therefore forget not the gratitude 
 which thou owest to the natural qualities of bread and 
 wine ! And if thou art inclined to smile that I call eating 
 and drinking religious acts, because they are common every- 
 day acts, and are therefore performed by multitudes without 
 thought, without emotion ; reflect, that the Lord's Supper 
 is to multitudes a thoughtless, emotionless act, because it 
 takes place often ; and, for the sake of comprehending the 
 reHgious significance of bread and wine, place thyself in a 
 position where, the daily act is unnaturally, violently in- 
 terrupted. Hunger and thirst destroy not only the physi- 
 cal but also the mental and moral powers of man ; they rob 
 
 * " Eating and drinking is the easiest of all work, for men like nothing 
 better : yea, the most joyful work in the whole world is eating and drinking, 
 as it is commonly said : Before eating no dancing, and. On a full stomacli 
 stands a merry head. In short, eating and drinking is a pleasant necessary 
 work ;— that is a doctrine soon learned and made popular. The same pleasant 
 necessary work takes our blessed Lord Christ and says : ' I haye prepared 
 a joyful, sweat and pleasant meal, I will lay on you no hard heavy work 
 I institute a stipper,' &c."— Luther (xvi. 222). 
 
27S THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 him of liis liumanity — of understandinrr, of consciousness. 
 Oh! if thou shouldst ever experience such want, how wouldst 
 thou bless and praise the natural qualities of bread and 
 wine, which restore to thee thy humanity, thy intellect ! 
 It needs only that the ordinary course of things be inter- 
 rupted in order to vindicate to common things an uncommon 
 significance, fo life, ns stich, a religious impo7-t. Therefore 
 let bread be sacred for us, let wine be sacred, and also let 
 water be sacred ' Amen. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 EXPLANATIONS-^REMARKS— ILLUSTRATIVE CITATIONS. 
 
 § 1- 
 
 Man has his highest being, his God, in hiinself ; not in himself as 
 an individual, but in his essential nature, his species. No indi- 
 vidual is an adequate representation of his species, but only the 
 human individual is conscious of the distinction between the specie.? 
 and the individual ; in the sense of this distinction lies the root of 
 religion. The yearning of man after something above himself is 
 nothing else than the longing after the perfect type of his nature, 
 the yearning to be free from himself, i.e., from the limits and 
 defects of his individuality. Individuality is the self-conditionating, 
 the self-limitation of the species. Thus man has cognisance of 
 nothing above himself, of nothing beyond the nature of humanity ; 
 but to the individual man this nature presents itself under the 
 form of an individual man. Thus, for example, the child sees the 
 nature of man above itself in the form of its parents, the pupil in 
 the form of his tutor. But all feelings which man experiences 
 towards a superior man, nay, in general, all moral feelings which 
 man lias towards man, are of a religious nature.* Ala^i feels 
 nothing toiuards God which he does not also feel totoar'ds man. 
 Homo homini deus est. Want teaches prayer ; but in misfortune, 
 in sorrow, man kneels to entreat help of man also. Feeling makes 
 God a man, but for the same reason it makes man a God. How 
 often in deep emotion, which alone speaks genuine truth, man 
 exclaims to man : Thou art, thou hast been my redeemer, my 
 saviour, my jirotecting spirit, my God ! We feel awe, reverence, 
 humility, devout admiration, in thinking of a truly great, noble 
 man ; we feel ourselves worthless, we sink into nothing, even in 
 
 * " Manifestum igitur est tantum religionis s.anguini et affinitati, quantum 
 ipsis Diis immortalibus tributum : quia inter ista tani sancta vincula non 
 inagis, quam in aliquo loco sacrato nudare so, iiefns esse credebatur." — Valer. 
 Max. (1. ii. c. i.) 
 
282 APPENDIX. 
 
 the presence of human greatness. The purely, truly human emo- 
 tions are religious ; but for that reason the religious emotions are 
 purely human : the only difference is, that the rehgious emotions 
 are vague, indefinite; but even this is only the case ^'len the 
 object of them is indefinite. Where God is po,sitively defined, is 
 the object of positive relidon, there God is also the object ot posi- 
 tive definite human feelings, the object of fear and love, and there- 
 fore he is a positively human being ; for there is nothing more m 
 God than what lies in feeling. If in the heart there is fear and 
 terror, in God there is anger; if in the heart there is joy, hope, 
 confidence, in God there is love. Fear makes itself objective in 
 ancrer ; joy in love, in mercy. "As it is with me in my heart, so is 
 it with God." " As my heart is, so is God."— Luther (Th. i. p. 72). 
 But a merciful and angry God — Deus vere irascitur (Jlelancthon)— 
 is a God no longer distinguishable from the human feelings and 
 nature. Thus even in religion man bows before the nature of man 
 under the form of a personal human being ; religion itself expressly 
 declares — and all anthropomorphisms declare this in opposition to 
 Pantheism, — quod supra nos nihil ad nos; that is, a God who inspires 
 us with no human emotions, who does not reflect our own emotions, 
 in a word, who is not a man,— such a God is nothing to us, has no 
 interest for us, does not concern us. (See the passages cited in this 
 work from Luther.) 
 
 Keligion has thus no dispositions and emotions which are peculiar 
 to itself ; what it claims as belonging exclusively to its object, are 
 simply the same dispositions and emotions that man experiences 
 either in relation to himself (as, for example, to his conscience), or 
 to his fellow-m;in, or to Nature. You must not fear men, but God; 
 you must not love man, — i.e., not truly, for his own sake, — but God; 
 you must not humble yourselves before human greatness, but only 
 before the Lord ; not believe and confide in man, but only in God. 
 Hence comes the danger of worshipping false gods in distinction 
 from the true God. Hence the "jealousy " of God. '" Ego Jehova, 
 Deus tuus, Deus sum zelotypus. Ut zelotypus vir dicitur, qui 
 rivaleiii pati nequit : sic Deus socium in cultu, quern ab hominibus 
 postulat, ferre non potest." (Clericus, Comment, in Exod. c. 20, 
 V. 5.) Jealousy arises because a being preferred and loved by me 
 directs to another the feelings and dispositions which I claim for 
 myself. But how could I be jealous if the impressions and emotions 
 which I excite in the beloved lieing were altogether peculiar and 
 apart, were essentially ditl'erent from the impressions which another 
 can make on him 1 If, therefore, the emotions of religion were 
 objectively, essentially diff'erent from those which lie out of religion, 
 there would be no possibility of idolatry in man or of jealousy in 
 God. As the flute has another sound to me than the trumpet, and 
 I cannot confound the impressions produced by the former with the 
 impressions produced by the latter ; so I could not transfer to a 
 natural or human being the emotions of religion, if the object of 
 religion, God, were specifically different from the natural or human 
 being, and consequently the impressions which he produced on me 
 were specific, peculiar. 
 
APPENDIX. 283 
 
 Feeling alone is the object of feeling. Feeling is symyiatliy ; feeling 
 arises only in tlje love of man to man. Sensations man has in isola- 
 tion; feelings only in community. Only m sympathy dues sensa- 
 tion rise into feeling. Feeling is aesthetic, human sensation ; only 
 what is human is the object of feeling. In feeling man is related 
 to his fellow-man as to himself ; he is alive to the sorrows, the joys 
 of another as his own. Thus only by communication does man rise 
 above merely egoistic sensation into feeling ;— participated sensa- 
 tion is feeling. He who has no need of participating has no feeling. 
 But wliat does the hand, the kiss, the glance, the voice, the tone, 
 the word — as the expression of emotion — impart 1 Emotion. The 
 very same thing which, pronounced or performed without the appro- 
 priate tone, without emotion, is only an object of indifferent percep- 
 tion, becomes, when uttered or performed with emotion, an object 
 of feeling. To feel is to have a sense of sensations, to have emotion 
 in the perception of emotion. Hence the brutes rise to feeling only 
 in the sexual relation, and therefore only transiently ; for here the 
 being experiences sensation not in relation to itself taken alone, or 
 to an object without sensation, but to a being having like emotions 
 with itself, — not to another as a distinct object, but to an object 
 which in species is identical. Hence Nature is an object of feeling 
 to me only when I regard it as a being akin to me and in sympathy 
 with me. 
 
 It is clear from what has been said, that only where in truth, if 
 not according to the subjective conception, the distinction between 
 the divine and human being is abolished, is the objective existence 
 of God, the existence of God as an objective, distinct being, abol- 
 ished: — only there, I say, is religion made a mere matter of feeling, 
 or conversely, feeling the chief point in religion. The last refuge 
 of theology therefore is feeling. Gnd is renounced by the under- 
 standing ; he has no longer the dignity of a real object, of a reality 
 which imposes itself on the understanding ; hence he is transferred 
 to feeling ; in feeling his existence is thought to be secure. And 
 doubtless this is the safest refut;e ; for to make feeling the essence 
 of religion is nothing else than to make feeling the essence of God. 
 And as certainly as I exist, so certainly does my feeling exist ; and 
 as certainly as my feeling exists, so certainly does my God exist. 
 The certainty of God is here nothing else th;in the self-certainty 
 of human feeling, the yearning after God is the yearning after 
 unlimited, uninterrupted, pure feeling. In life the feelings' are 
 interrupted ; they collapse ; they are followed by a state of void, 
 of insensibility. The religious problem, therefore, is to give fixity 
 to feeling in spite of the vicissitudes of life, and to separate it from 
 repugnant disturbances and limitations : God himself is nothing 
 else than undisturbed, uninterrupted feeling, feeling for which there 
 exists no limits, no opposite. If God were a being distinct from 
 thy feeling, he would be known to thee in some other way than 
 simply in feeling ; but just because thou perceivest him only by 
 feeling, he exists only in feeling— he is himself only feeling. 
 
284 APPENDIX. 
 
 §3- 
 
 God is man's highest feelmg of self, freed from all contrarieties o 
 disagreeables. God is the highest being ; therefore, to feel God i 
 the highest feeling. But is not the highest feeling also the highest 
 feeling of self 1 So long as I have not had the feeling of the highest, 
 so long I have not exhausted my capacity of feeling, so long I do 
 not yet fully know the nature of feeling. What, then, is an object 
 to me in my feeling of the highest being ? Nothing else than the 
 highest nature of my power of feeling. So much as a man can feel, 
 so much is (his) God. But the highest degree of the power of feel- 
 ing is also the highest degree of the feeling of self. In the feeling 
 of the loiv I feel myseK lowered, in the feeling of the high Heel my- 
 self exalted. The feeling of self and feeling are inseparable, other- 
 wise feeling would not belong to myself. Thus God, as an object 
 of feeling, or what is the same thing, the feehng of God, is nothing 
 else than man's highest feeling of self. But God is the freest, or 
 rather the absolutely only free being ; thus God is man's highest 
 feeling of freedom. How couldst thou be conscious of the highest 
 being as freedom, or freedom as the highest being, if thou didst not 
 feel thyself free ? But when dost thou feel thyself free ? When 
 thou feelest God. To feel God is to feel oneself free. For ex- 
 ample, thou feelest desire, passion, the conditions of time and 
 place, as limits. What thou feelest as a limit thou struggles! 
 against, thou breakest loose from, thou deniest. The conscious- 
 ness of a limit, as such, is already an anathema, a sentence of 
 condemnation pronounced on this limit, for it is an oppressive, 
 disagreeable, negative consciousness. Only tlie feeling of the 
 good, of the positive, is itself good and positive — is joy. Joy alone 
 is feeling in its element, its paradise, because it is unrestricted ac- 
 tivity. The sense of pain in an organ is nothing else than the 
 sense of a disturbed, obstructed, thwarted activity ; in a word, the 
 sense of something abnormal, anomalous. Hence tliou strivest to 
 escape from the sense of limitation into unlimited feeling. By 
 jneans of the will, or the imagination, thou negativest limits, and 
 thus ohtainest the feeling of freedom. This feeling of freedom is 
 God. God is exalted above desire and passion, above the limits of 
 space and time. But this exaltation is thy own exaltation above 
 that which appears to thee as a limit. Does not this exaltation of 
 the divine being exalt thee 'i How could it do so, if it were external 
 to thee ? No ; God is an exalted being only for him wlio himself 
 has exalted thoughts and feelings. Hence the exaltation of the 
 divine being varies according to that which different men or 
 nations perceive as a limitation to the feeling of self, and which 
 they consequently negative or eliminate from their ideal. 
 
APPENDIX. 2S5 
 
 §4- 
 
 The distinction hetieeen the "heatheti," or philosophic, and the 
 Christian God — the non-human, or pantheistic, and the human, 
 piersonal God — reduces itself only to the distinction between the 
 understanding or reason and the heart or feelings. Eeason is the 
 self-consciousness of the species, as such ; feeling is the self-con- 
 sciousness of individuality ; the reason has relation to existences, 
 as things ; the heart to existences, as persons. / am is an expres- 
 sion of the heart ; / think, of the reason. Cogito, ergo sum ? No ! 
 Sentio,ergo sum. Feeling only is my existence ; thinking is my 
 non-existence, the negation of my individuality, the positing of the 
 species ; reas on is the annihilation of p ersonalitv. To think is an 
 act of spirTttfaT'marriage. Only beingsofTllB^Mne species under- 
 stand each other ; the impulse to communicate thought is the in- 
 tellectual impulse of sex. Reason is cold, because its maxim is, 
 audiatur et altera pars, because it does not interest itself in man 
 alone ; but the heart is a partisan of man. Reason loves all im- 
 partiality, but the heart only what is like itself. It is true that 
 the heart has pity also on the brutes, but only because it sees in 
 the brute something more than the brute. The heart loves only 
 what it identifies with itself. It says : Whatsoever thou dost to 
 this being, thou dost to me. The heart loves only itself ; does not 
 get beyond itself, beyond man. The superhuman God is nothing 
 else than the supernatural heart ; the heart does not give us the 
 idea of another, of a being different from ourselves. " For the 
 heart, Nature is an echo, in which it hears only itself. Emotion, 
 in the excess of its happiness, transfers itself to external things. It 
 is the love which can withhold itself from no existence, which gives 
 itself forth to all ; but it only recognises as existing that which it 
 knows to have emotion." * Reason, on the contrary, has pity on 
 animals, not because it finds itself in them, or identifies them with 
 man, but because it recognises them as beings distinct from man, 
 not existing simply for the sake of man, but also as having rights of 
 their own. T_bejieart sa crifices the sp eciesJ:o the individual, th«- 
 reasoBr-sa«riSeea_thejn3rvidual to the species.^^^TTbe man without^ 
 feelingJi as no home, no private hearUi. Feeling, the heart, is the 
 domestic life ; the TeSsdrris~ttiererjni.btica of man. Reason is the 
 truth of Nature, the heart is the truth of man. To speak popularly, 
 reason is the God of Nature, the heart the God of man ; — a distinc- 
 tion however which, drawn thus sharply, is, like the others, only 
 admissible in antithesis. Everything which rnan wishes, but which 
 reason, which Nature denies, the heart bestows. God, immortality, 
 freedom, in the supranaturalistic sense, exist only in the heart. The 
 heart is itself the existence of God, the existence of immortality. 
 Satisfy yourselves with this existence ! You do not understand 
 your heart ; therein lies the evil. You desire a real, external, 
 objective immortality, a God out of yourselves. Here is the source 
 of delusion. 
 
 *3ee the author's "Leibnitz." 
 
286 APPENDIX. 
 
 But as the heart releases man from the limits, even the essential 
 limits of Nature ; reason, on the otlier hand, releases Nature from 
 the limits of external finiteness. It is true that Nature is the light 
 and measure of reason .—a truth which is opposed to abstract 
 Idealism. Only what is naturally true is logically true ; what has 
 no basis in Nature has no basis at all. That which is not a physical 
 law is not a metaphysical law. Every true law in metaphysics can 
 and must be verified physically. But at the same time reason is 
 also the light of Nature;— and this truth is the barrier against 
 crude materialism. Keason is the nature of things come fully to 
 itself, re-established in its entireness. Eeason divests things of the 
 disguises and transformations vhich they have undergone in the 
 conflict and agitation of the external worlil, and reduces them to 
 their true character. Most, indeed nearly all, crystals — to give an 
 obvious illustration — appear in Nature under a form altogether 
 different from their fundamental one ; nay, many crystals never 
 have ap)ieared in their fundamental form. Nevertheless, the 
 mineralogical reason has discovered that fundamental form. Hence 
 nothing is more foolislj than to place Nature in opposition to reason, 
 as an essence in itself incomprehensible to reason. If reason rfduces 
 transformations and disguises to their fuudimeiital forms, does it 
 not effect that which lies in the idea of Nature itself, but which, 
 prior to the operation of reason, could not be effected on account 
 of external hindrances V What else then does reason do than re- 
 move external disturbances, influences, and obstructions, so as to 
 present a thing as it ou;,'ht to be, to make the existence correspond 
 to the idea; for the fundamental form is the idea of the crystal. 
 Another popular examjile. Granite consists of mica, quartz, and 
 feldspar. But frequently other kinds of stone are mingled with it. 
 If we had no other guide and tutor than the senses, we should 
 without hesitation reckon as constituent parts of granite all the 
 kinds of stone which we ever find in combination with it; we 
 should say yes to everything the senses told us, and so never come 
 to the true idea of granite. But i-eason says to the credulous 
 senses : Quod non. It discriminaies ; it distiugui-hes the essential 
 from the accidental elements. Reason is tlie midwife of Nature ; it 
 explains, enlightens, rectifies and completes Nature. Now that 
 which separates the essential from the non-essential, the necessary 
 from the accidental, what is proiier to a thin^ from what is foreign, 
 which restores what has been violently sundered to unity, and what 
 has been forcibly united to freedom,— is not this divine? Is not 
 such an agency as this the agency of the highest, of divine love? 
 And how would it be possible that reason should exhibit tlie purs 
 nature of things, the original text of the universe, if it were not 
 itself the purest, most original e>sence ? But reason has no partiality 
 for this or that species of things. It embraces with equal interest 
 the whole universe ; it interests itself in all things and beings with- 
 out distinction, without exception ; — it bestows the same attention 
 on the worm which human egoism tramples under its feet, as on 
 man, as on the sun in the firmament. ,B,eason is thus the all- 
 embracing, all-compassionating being, the love of the universe to 
 
APPENDIX. 287 
 
 itself._ Tojeas gn alone belongs tlie }a £ai-weris--f)ijjje j-esurrection 
 and r^Sration^ all things and beings— u niveraal re 3elTiption and 
 recOneHrtartron^ Not even tSe uiireasonmg~animal,TlTe speechless 
 plant, the wnsentient stone, shall be excluded from this universal 
 festival. But how would it be possible that reason should interest 
 itself in all beings without exception, if reason were not itself uni- 
 versal and unlimited in its natur-e 't Is a limited nature compatible 
 with unlimited interest, or an unlimited interest with a limited 
 nature 1 By what dost thou recognise the limitation of a being but 
 by the limitation of his interest ? As far as the interest extends, so 
 far extends the nature. The desire of knowledge is infinite ; reason 
 then is infinite. Eeason is the highest species of being ; — hence it 
 includes all species in the sphere of knowledge. Heason cannot 
 co ntent itself in the individual : it has its adequate existence only" 
 when it has the species forits object, and ttie species^not as it has 
 aTreaUy deA'flapgd~itsBlf in the past and present, but as it will 
 develop itself in the unkno wn fu ture. In the activi ty of _xeason I 
 feelr^ distinction between myself and rea'son in mJeT~tli[s distinction 
 is the lTSrrtT)f~theTiidividuality ; in feeling I am conscious of no 
 d istm otion" Between myself and feeling ; and v«thr-this- absence of 
 diitinction_ there is an absence also of the sense of limitation. Hence 
 it arises that to so many men reasim appears finite, and only feeling 
 infinite. And, in fact, feeling, the heart of man as :i rational being, 
 is as infinite, as universal as reason ; since man only truly perceives 
 and understands that for which he has feeling. 
 
 Thus reason is the essence of Nature and Man, released from 
 non-essenthil limits, in their identity ; it is ilie universal being, the 
 universal God. The heart, considered in its difference from the 
 reason, is the private God of man ; the personal Gud is the heart of 
 man, emancipated from the limits or laws of Nature.* 
 
 § S- 
 
 Nature, the world, has no value, no interest for Christians. The 
 Christian thinks only of himself and the salvation of his soul. " A te 
 inci|)iat cogitatio tua et in te finiatur, nee frustra in alia distendaris, 
 te neglecto. Praeter salutem tuam nihil cogites. JJe inter. Domo. 
 (Among the spurious writino:s of St. Bernard.) Si te vigilanter 
 homo attendas, mirum est, si ad aliud unquatn intendas.—Divus 
 
 Bernardus. (Tract, de XII grad. humil. et sup.) Orhe sit sol 
 
 major, an pedis unius ktitudme metiarur? alieno ex lumiue an 
 proprii> luceat fulgoribus luna 1 quae neque scire compendium, neque 
 ignorare detrimentum est idlum Re-s ve->tra in ancipiti sita est : 
 
 * [Here follows in the original a distinction between Herz, or feeling directed 
 towards real objects, and therefore practically sympathetic; and Gemuth, or 
 feelin" directed towards imaginary objects, ai.d therefore practically unsym- 
 pathetic self-absorbed. But the verbal distinction is not adhered to in the 
 ordinary use of the language, or, indeed, by Feuerbach himself; and the 
 psychological, distinction is sufficiently indicated in other parts of the present 
 work The passage is therefore omitted, as likely to confuse the reader. — 1 K.J 
 
288 APPENDIX. 
 
 mlus clico animarum ws?rar»m.— Arnobius (adv. gentes, 1. ii. c. 6i). 
 Quaero igitur ad quam rem scientia referenda sit ; si ad causas 
 rerum naturalium, quae heatitudo erit mihi proposita, si sciero unde 
 Nilus oriatur, vel quicquid de coelo Physici delirant 1— Lactantius 
 
 (Instit. div. 1. iii. c. 8). Etiam ouriosi esse prohibemur Sunt 
 
 enim qui desertis virtutibus et nescientes quid sit Deus magnum 
 
 aliquid se au'ere putant, si universam istam corporis molem, quam 
 
 mundum nuncupamus, curiosissime iiiteiitissimeque perquirant 
 
 Eeprimat igitur se anima ab hujusmodi vanae cognitionis cupiditate, 
 si se castam Deo servare disposuit. Tali enim amore plerumque 
 decipitur, ut (aut) nihil pui:et esse nisi corpus. — Augustinus (de 
 jNIor. Eccl. oath. 1. i. c. 21). De terrae quoque vel qualitate vel 
 positione tractare, nihil prosit ad sj^em fnturi, cum satis dt ad, 
 srieiitiam, quod scripiurarum divinarum series comprehendit, quod 
 Deus suspendit terram in nihilo. — Ambrosius (Hexaemeron, I. i. c. 
 6). Longe utique praestantius est, nosse resurrecturam carnem ac 
 sine fine t'icturam, quam quidquid in ea 7nedici scrutando discere 
 potuerunt. — Augustinus (de Anima et ejus orig. 1. iv. c. 10)." " Let 
 
 natural science alone It is enough that thou knowest fire is 
 
 hot, water cold and moist Know'how thou oughtest to treat thy 
 
 field, thy cow, thy house and child — that is enough of natural 
 science for thee. Tliink how thou mayest learn Christ, who will 
 show thee thyself, who thou art, and what is thy capability. Thus 
 wilt thou learn God and thyself, which no natural master or natural 
 science ever taught." — Luther (Th. xiii. p. 264). 
 
 Such quotations as these, which might be multiplied indefinitely, 
 show clearly enough that true, religious Christianity has within 
 it no principle of scientific and material culture, no motive to it. 
 The practical end and object of Christians is solely heaven, i.e., the 
 realised salvation of the soul. The theoretical end and object of 
 Christians is solely God, as the being identical with the salvation 
 of the soul. He who knows God knows all things ; and as God is 
 infinitely more than the world, so theology is infinitely more than 
 the knowledge of the world. Theology makes happy, for its object 
 is personified happiness. Tnfelix homo, qui scit ilia omnia (created 
 things) te autem nescit, Beatus autem qui te scit, etiam si ilia nesciat. 
 — Augnstin (Confess, 1. v. c. 4). Who then would, who could 
 exchange the blessed Divine Being for the unblessed worthless 
 things of this world? It is true that God reveals himself in 
 Nature, but only vaguely, dimly, only in his most general attributes ; 
 himself, his true personal nature, he reveals only in religion, in 
 Christianity. The knowledge of God through Nature is heathen- 
 ism ; the knowledge of God through himself, through Christ, in 
 whom dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily, is Christianity. 
 What interest, therefore, should Christians have in occupying 
 themselves with material, natural things ? Occupation with Nature, 
 culture in general, presupposes, or, at least, infallibly produces, a 
 heathenish mundane, anti-theological, anti-supranaturalistic sen- 
 timent and belief. Hence the culture of modern Christian na- 
 tions is so little to be derived from Christianity, that it is only 
 to be explained by the negation of Christianity, a negation which 
 
APPENDIX. 289 
 
 certainly was, in the first instance, only practical. It is indeed 
 necessary to distinguish between what the Christians were as 
 Christians and what they were as heathens, as natural men, and 
 thus between that which they have said and done in agreement, 
 and that which they have said and done in contradiction witli 
 their faith. (See on this subject the author's F. Bayle.) 
 
 How frivolous, therefore, are moderu Christians when they deck 
 themselves in the arts and sciences of modern nations as products 
 of Christianity ! How striking is the contrast in this respect 
 between these modern boasters and the Christians of older times ! 
 The latter knew of no other Christianity than that which is con- 
 tained in the Christian faith, in faith in Christ ; they did not 
 reckon tlie treasures and riches, the arts and sciences of this world 
 as part of Christianity. In all these points, they rather conceded 
 the pre-eminence to the ancient heathens, the Greeks and Romans. 
 " Why dost thou not also wonder, Erasmus, that from the beginning 
 of the world there have always been among the heathens higher, 
 rarer people, of greater, more exalted understanding, more excellent 
 diligence and skill in all arts, than among Christians or the people 
 of God ? Christ himself says that the children of this world are 
 wiser than the children of light. Yea, who among the Christians 
 could we compare for understanding or application to Cicero (to 
 say nothing of the Greeks, Demosthenes and others) ? " — Luther 
 (Th. xix. p. 37). Quid igitur nos anteceUimus 1 Num. ingenio, 
 doctrina, morum Tnoderatione illos superamus ? Nequaquam. Sed 
 vera Dei agnitione, invocatione et celel/ratione prccstamu-s. — Melano- 
 thoiiis (et al. Deolam. Th. iii. de vera invocat. Dei). 
 
 §6. 
 
 In religion man has in view himself alone, or, in regarding him- 
 self as the object of God, as the end of the divine activity, A« is an 
 object to himself, his own end and aim. The mystery of the incar- 
 nation is the mystery of the love of God to man, and the mystery 
 of the love of God to man is the love of man to himself. God 
 suffers— suffers for me— this is the highest self-enjoyment, the 
 highest self-certainty of human feeling. " God so loved the world, 
 that he gave his only-begotten Son."— John iii. 16. " If God be for 
 us, who can be against us 1 He that spared not his own Son, but 
 gave him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give 
 us all things?"— Rom. viii. 31, 32. "God commendeth his love 
 towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." 
 —Rom. V. 8. " The life which I now live in the fiesh I live by the 
 faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me."— 
 Gal. ii. 20. See also Titus iii. 4 ; Heb. ii. 1 1. " Credimus m unum 
 
 Deum patrem et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum fihum 
 
 Dei Deum ex Deo qm. propter nos homines et propter nos- 
 
 tram salutem descendit et iiicarnatus et homo factus est passus."— 
 
 Fides Nicaenae Synodi. " Servator %tl praeexcellenti m homi- 
 
 nes charitate non despexit carnis humanae imbeciUitatem, sed ea 
 indutus ad communem venit hominum salutem. —Clemens Alex. 
 
2 go APPENDIX. 
 
 (Stromata, 1. vii. ed. Wirceb. 1779). " Christianos autem liaec 
 imiversa decent, provideMiam esse, maxime vero divinissimum et 
 propter excellmtiam amoris erga Iwmines incredibilissimum provi- 
 dentiae opus, dei incarnatio, qaae propter nos facta est." — Gregorii 
 Nysseni (Pliilosophiae, 1. viii. de Provid. c. i. 151 2. B. Ehenanus. 
 Jo. Cono interp.) " Venit siquidem universitatis creator et Dominus : 
 venit ad Iwmines, venit j^ropter homines, venit homo." — Divus Ber- 
 nardus Clarev. (de Adventu Domini, Basil, 1552). " Videte, Fratres, 
 
 quantum se liumiliavit propter homines Deus Unde non se ipse 
 
 homo despiciat, propter quern utique ista subire dignatus est Deus." — 
 Augustinus (Sermones ad pop. S. 371, c. 3). " homo propter quern 
 Deus factus est homo, aliquid magnum te credere debes." S. 380, c. 
 2). " Quis de se desperet pro quo tam huniilis esse voluit Filius 
 Dei ? " Id. (de Agone Clir. c. 1 1). " Quis potest odire Iwminem 
 cujus naturam et similitudinem videt in htimanitate Dei? Eevera qui 
 odit ilium,, odit Deum." — (Manuale, c. 2$. Among the spurious writings 
 
 of Augustine.) " Plus nos amat Deus quamfilium pater Propter 
 
 nosfilio non pepercit. Kt quid plus addo ? et hoc filio justo et hoc 
 lilio unigenito et hoc filio Deo. Et quid dici amplius potest 1 et 
 hoc pro nobis, i.e. pro mails, etc." — Salvianus (de gubernatione DeL 
 Kittershusius, 161 1, pp. 126, 127). "Quid enim mentes nostras tan- 
 tum erigit et ab immortalitatis desperatione liberat, quam quod tanti 
 
 nos fecit Deus, ut Dei filius dignatus nostrum inire consortium 
 
 niala nostra moriendo perferret." — Petrus Lomb. (lib. iii. dist. 20, 
 c. i). " Attamen si ilia quae miseriam nescit, misericordia non 
 praecessisset, ad banc cujus mater est miseria, non accessisset." — D. 
 liernardus (Tract, de XII. gradibus hum. et sup.). " Ecce omnia tua 
 hunt, quae habeo et unde tibi servio. Veruui tamen vice versa tu 
 7n,agis mihi servis, quam ego tibi. Ecce coelum et terra quae in 
 ministerium homiiiis creasti, praesto sunt et faciunt quotidie quae- 
 cunque mandasti. Et hoc parum est : quin etiam Angelos in mini- 
 sterium hominis ordinasti. Transcendit autem omnia, quia tu ipse 
 homini servire dignatus es et te ipsum daturum ei promisisti. — 
 Thomas h. Kempis (de Imit. 1. iii. c. 10). " Ego omnipotens et 
 altissimus, qui cuncta creavi ex nihilo me Iwmini propter te humi- 
 
 liter^ suhjeci Pepercit tibi oculus mens, qma, pretiosa fuit anima 
 
 tua in conspectu meo " (ibid. c. 13). " Fill ego descendi de coelo pro 
 salute tua, suscepi tuas miserias, non necessitate, sed charitate 
 trahente" (ibid. c. 18). "Si consilium rei tantae spectamus, quod 
 totum pertinet, ut s. litterae deraonstrant, ad salutem generis 
 humani, quid potest esse dignius Deo, quam ilia tanta hujus salutis 
 
 cura, et ut ita dicamus, tantus in ea re sumptus? Itaque Jesus 
 
 Christus ipse cum omnibus Apostolis in hoc mysterio Filii 
 
 J3ei iv aapKl ^ ^avepa^hros angelis honiinibusque patefactam esse 
 dicunt magnitudinem sapientis bonitatis divinae." — J. A. Ernesti 
 (Dignit. et verit. inc. Filii Dei asserta. Opusc. Theol. Lipsiae, 1773, 
 pp. 404, 405. How feeble, how spiritless compared with the ex- 
 pressions of the ancient faith 1) " Propter me Christus suscepit meas 
 infirmitates, mei corporis subiit passiones, pro me peccatum h. e. 
 pro omni homiiie, pro me maledictum factus est, etc. Hie fievit, 
 ne tu homo diu fleres. Hie injurias passus est, ne tu injuriam 
 
APPENDIX. 3-,! 
 
 tuiira doleres."— Ambrosias (de fide ad Gratiaiium, 1. ii. c. 4) 
 Cxod IS not against us men. For if God had been agamst us and 
 hostile to us, he would not assuredly have taken the poor wretched 
 . human nature on himself." " How highly our Lord God has 
 honoured us, that he has caused his own Son to become man ! How 
 could he have made himself nearer to us I "—Luther (Th. xvi. pp. 533 
 574)- "It is to be remarked that he (Stephen) is said to have 
 seen not God himself but the man Christ, whose nature is the 
 dearest and likest and most consoling to man, for a man would 
 rather see a man than an angel or any other creature, especially in 
 trouble."— Id. (Th. xiii. p. 170). "It is not thy kingly rule which 
 draws hearts to thee, O wonderful heart !— but thy having become 
 a man m the fulness of time, and thy walk upon the earth, full of 
 weariness." " Though thou guidest the sceptre of the starry realm, 
 thou art still our brother ; flesh and blood never disowns itself." 
 "The most powerful cliarm that melts my heart is that my Lord 
 died on the cross for me" " That it is which moves me ; I love 
 thee for thy love, that thou, the creator, the supreme prince, be- 
 camest the Lamb of God for me." " Thanks be to thee, dear Lamb 
 of God, with thousands of sinners' tears ; thou didst die for me on 
 the cross and didst seek me with yearning." " Thy blood it is which 
 has made me give myself up to thee, else I had never thought of 
 thee through my whole life." " If thou hadst not laid hold upon 
 me, I should never have gone to seek thee." " O how sweetly the 
 soul feeds on the passion of Jesus ! Shame and joy are stirred, O 
 thou son of God and of man, when in spirit we see thee so willingly 
 go to death on the cross for us, and each thinks : for me." " The 
 Father takes us under his care, the Son washes us with his blood, 
 the Holy Spirit is always labouring that he may guide and teach 
 us." " Ah ! King, great at all times, but never greater than in the 
 blood-stained robe of the martyr." " My friend is to me and I to 
 him as the Cherubim over the mercy-seat : we look at each other con- 
 tinually. He seeks repose in my heart, and I ever hasten towards 
 his : he wishes to be in my soul, and I in the wound in his side." 
 These quotations are taken from the Moravian hymn-book (Gesang- 
 buch der Evangelischen BrtLdergemeine. Gnadau, 1824). We see 
 clearly enough from the examples above given, that the deepest 
 mystery of the Christian relig;ion resolves itself into the mystery of 
 human self-love, but that religious self-love is distinguished from 
 natural in this, that it changes the active into the passive. It is 
 true that the more profound, mystical religious sentiment abhors 
 such naked, undisguised egoism as is exhibited in the Herrnhut 
 hymns ; it does not in God expressly have reference to itself ; it 
 rather forgets, denies itself, demands an unselfish, disinterested love 
 of God, contemplates God in relation to God, not to itself. " Causa 
 
 diligendi Deum, Dens est. Modus sine modo diligere Qui 
 
 Domino confitetur, non quoniam sibi bonus est, sed quoniam bonus 
 est, hie vere diligit Deum propter Deum et non propter seipsum. 
 Te enira quodammodo perdere, tanquam qui non sis et omnino non 
 sentire te ipsnm et a temetipso ezinaniri et pene annullari, coelestis 
 est couversationis, non humanae affectionis " (thus the ideal of love, 
 
292 APPENDIX. 
 
 which, however, is first realised in heaven).— Bernhardus, Tract, 
 de dilig. Deo (ad Haymericum). But this free, unselfish love is only 
 the culmination of religious enthusiasm, in which the subject is 
 merged in the object. As soon as the distinction presents itseK— 
 and it necessarily does so— so soon does the subject have reference 
 to itself as the object of God. And even apart from this _; the reli- 
 gious subject denies its ego, its personality, only because it has the 
 enjoyment of blissful personality in God — God jier se the realised 
 salvation of the soul, God the highest self-contentment, the highest 
 rapture of human feeling. Hence the saying : " Qui Deum nou 
 diiigit, seipsum.iion diligit." 
 
 §7- 
 
 Jjeranse God suffers man miist siijf'ei: The Cliriitian religioji is 
 the religion of sujf'ervig- " Videlicet vestigia Salvatoris sequimur iu 
 theatris. Tale nobis scilicet Christus reliquit exempluni, queni 
 Jierlsse legimiis, risisse non legimus." — Salvianus (1. c. 1. vi. § l8i). 
 " Christianorum ergo est jircssuram pati in hoc saeculo et lugere, 
 quorum est aetenm vita." — Origenes (Explan. in Ep. Pauli ad Rom. 
 1. ii. c. ii. interp, Hieronymo). "Nemo vitam aeternam, incorrupti- 
 bileni, immortalemque deslderat, nisi eum vitae hujus temporalis, 
 
 corruptibilis, mortalisque }ii>eniieat Quid ergo ciijnmiis, nisi ita 
 
 non esse id nunc snmiis' Et quid ingemisclmus, nisi poenitendo, 
 quia ita sitvins ? " — Augustinus (iSermones ad pop. S. 351, c. 3). " Si 
 quideni aliquid melius et utiiius saluti hominum quam pati fuisset, 
 
 C/irlsttis utique verba et exemplo ostendisset Quoniam per 
 
 multas tribulationes oportet nos nitrare in regnum Dei." — Thomas 
 k Kempis (de Imit. 1. ii. c. 12). When, however, the Christian reli- 
 gion is designated as the religion of suffering, this of course applies 
 only to the Christianity of the " mistaken " Christians of old times. 
 Protestantism, in its very beginning, denied the sufferings of Christ 
 as constituting a principle of morality. It is precisely the distinc- 
 tion between Catholicism and Protestantism, in relation to this sub- 
 ject, that the latter, out of self-regard, attached itself only to the 
 merits of Christ, while the former, out of sympathy, attached itself 
 to his suffeiiii<;s. " Formerly in Popery the sufterings of the Lord 
 were so preached, that it was only pointed out how his example 
 shi luld be imitated. After that, the time was filled up with the sufl'er- 
 ings and sorrows of ilary, and the compassion with which Christ 
 and his mother were bewailed ; and the only aim was how to make 
 it piteous, and move the people to compassion and tears, and he who 
 could do this well was held the best preacher for Passion-Week. 
 But we preach the Lord's sufferings as the Holy Scripture teaches 
 
 us Christ suffered for the praise and glory of God but to 
 
 me, and thee, and all of us, he suffered in order to bring redemption 
 
 and blessedness The cause and end of the sufferings of Christ 
 
 is cumprised in this — he suffered for us. This honour is to be given 
 to no other suffering." — Luther (Th. xvi. p. 182). " Lamb ! I weep 
 only for joy over thv suffering ; the suffering was thine, but thy 
 merit is mine '." "I know of no joys but those which come from 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 293 
 
 tliy sufferings.'' " It remains ever in my mind tliat it cost tliee thy 
 blood to redeem me." " my Immanuel ! how sweet is it to my 
 soul when thou permittest me to enjoy the outpouring of thy blood." 
 
 " Sinners are glad at heart that they have a Saviour it is won- 
 
 drously beautiful to them to see Jesus on the Cross" (Moravian 
 hymn-book). It is therefore not to be wondered at if Christians of 
 the present day decline to know anything more of the sufferings of 
 Christ. It is they, forsooth, who have first made out what true 
 Christianity is — they rely solely on the divine word of the Holy 
 Scriptures. And the Bible, as every one knows, has the valuable 
 quality that everything may be found in it which it is desired to find. 
 What once stood there, of course now stands there no longer. The 
 principle of stability has long vanished from the Bible. Divine 
 I'evelation is as changing as human opinion Tcmjiura mutantur. 
 
 The mystery of the Trinity is the mystery of i:)articipated, social 
 life — the mystery of I and thou. " Unum Deuiii esse confitemur. 
 Non sic unum Deum, quasi solitariwm, nee eundem, qui ipse sibi 
 pater, sit ipse filius, sed patrem vermn, qui genuit filium verum, 
 
 i.e. Deum ex Deo non creatum, sed genitum." — Concil. Chalced. 
 
 (Carranza Summa, 1559. p. 139). ''Si quis quod scriptum est: 
 Faeiamus hominem, non patrem ad filium dicere, sed ipsum ad 
 semetipsum asserit dixisse Deum, anathema sit." — Concil. Syrmiense 
 (ibid. p. 68). " Jubet autem his verbis : Faeiamus hominem, prodeat 
 herba. Ex quibus apparet, Deum cum aliquo sibi proximo ser- 
 mones his de rebus conserere. Necesse est igitur aliquem ei adfuisse, 
 cum quo universa condens, colloquium miscehat!^ — Athanasius (Con- 
 tra Gentes Orat. Ath. 0pp. Parisiis, 1627, Th. i. p. 51). " Professio 
 enim consortii sustulit intelligentiam singularitatis, quod consortium 
 aliquid nee potest esse sibi ipsi solita.rio,^ neque rursum solitudo 
 solitarii recipit : faeiamus Non solitario convenit dicere ; faei- 
 amus et nostram." — Petrus Lomb. (1. i. dist. 2, c. 3, e.). The Pro- 
 testants explain the passage in the same way. " Quod profecto 
 aliter intelligi nequit, quam inter ipsas trinitatis personas quandam 
 de creando homine institutam fuisse consuUationem..^' — Buddeus 
 (comp. Inst. TheoL dog. cur. .J. G. Walch. 1. ii. c. i. § 45). " ' Let us 
 make' is the word of a deliberative council. And from these 
 words it necessarily follows again, that in the Godhead there must 
 
 be more than one person For the little word ' us' indicates that 
 
 he who there speaks is not alone, though the Jews make the text 
 ridiculous by saying that there is a way of speaking thus, even where 
 there is only one person."— Luther (Th. i. p. 19). Not only consul- 
 tations, but compacts take place between the chief persons in the 
 Trinity, precisely as in human society. "Nihil aliud superest, 
 quam ut consensum quemdam patris ac filii adeoque quoddam 
 velut pactum (in relation, namely, to the redemption of men) inde 
 concludamus."— Buddeus (Comp. 1. iv. c. i. § 4, note 2). And as 
 the essential bond of the Divine Persons is love, the Trmity is the 
 heavenly type of the closest bond of love— marriage. "Nunc 
 
294 APPENDIX. 
 
 Filium Dei precemur, ut spiritu sancto suo, qui nexus est et 
 
 vinculum mutui amoris inter aeternum patrem ac filium, sponsi et 
 sponsaj pectora conglutinet."— Or. de, Conjugio (Leclam. Melanctb. 
 Th. iii. p. 453). 
 
 The dhtiiicfions in ihe Divine essence of the Trinity are natural, 
 fihysical distinctions. " Jam de proprietatibus personarum videamus 
 
 Et est pi-oprimn solius pntris, non quod non est natus ipse, 
 
 sed quod nniim filium gemterit, propriumque solius filii, non quod 
 ipse non genuit, sed quod de i^atris essentia natus est." — Hylarius 
 311 1. iii. de Trinirate. " Nos filii Dei sumus, sed non talis hie 
 filius. Hie enim verus et j>roj trials est filius origins, non adoptione, 
 veritate, non nuncupatione, nativitate, non creations." — Petrus L. 
 (1. i. dist. 26, cc. 2, 4). " Quodsi dum eum aeternum confitemur, 
 profitemur ipsuni Filium ex Patre, quomodo is, qui geiiitus est, 
 
 genitoris frater esse poterit ? Nou enim ex aliquo principio 
 
 pvaeexistente Pater et Filius procreati simt, ut fratres existimari 
 queant, sed Pater prinoipium Filii et genitor est : et Pater Pater 
 est neque ullius Filius iuit, et Filius Filius est et non frater." — 
 Athanasius (Contra Arianos. Orat. II. Ed. c. T. i. p. 320). "Qui 
 (Deus) cum in rebus quae nascuntur in tempore, sua bonitate 
 effecerit, ut suae suhstantiae prolem quaelihet res gignat, sicnt homo 
 giijnit hominem, non alterius naturae, sed ejus cujus ipse est, vide 
 quam impie dicatur ipse non. genuisse id qjiod ipse est." — Augustinus 
 (Ep. 170, § 6. ed. Antwp. 1700. " Ut igitur in natura hominum 
 filium dicimus genitum de substantia patris, similem patri : ita 
 secunda persona Filius dicitur, quia de substantia Patris natus est 
 et ejus est imago." — Melanotlion (Loci praecipui Theol Wite- 
 bergae, 1595, p. 30). "As a corporeal son has his flesh and blood 
 and nature from his father, so also the Son of God, born of the 
 Father, has his divine nature from the Father of Eternity." — 
 Luther (Th. ix. p. 408). H. A. I!oel, a theologian of the school of 
 Descartes and Coccejus, had advanced this thesis : " Filium Dei, 
 Secundam Deitatis personam impvoprie dici genitam." This -was 
 immediately opposed by his colleague. Camp. Yitringa, who de- 
 clared it an unheard-of thesis, and maintained : " Cenerationem 
 Filii Dei ab aeterno propriissime enunciari." Other theologians 
 also contended against Eoel, and declared : " Generationem in Deo 
 esse maxime verarn et propriam."— (Acta Erudit. Supplem. T. i. S. 
 vii. p. 377, etc.). That in the Bible also the Filins Dei signifies 
 a real son is unequivocally implied in this passage : " God so loved 
 the world that he gave his only-begotten Son." If the love of God, 
 \yhicli this passage insists upon, is to be regarded as a truth, then the 
 Son also must be a truth, and, in plain language, a physical truth. 
 On this lies the emphasis that God gave his own Son for us— in 
 this alone the proof of his great love. Hence the Herrnliut hymn- 
 book correctly apprehends the sense of the Bible when it says of 
 ^|the Father of our Lord Jesus Clirist, who is also our Father : " 
 " His Son is not too dear. No ! he gives him up for me, that he 
 may save me from the eternal fire by his dear blood. Tliou bast 
 so loved the world that thy heart consents to give up the Son thy 
 joy and life, to suffering and death." 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 295 
 
 God is a tlireefold being, a trinity of persons, means : God is not 
 only a'metapliysical, abstract, spiritual, but a physical bein^"-. The 
 central point of the Trinity is the Son, for the Father is Father only 
 through the Son ; but the mystery of the generation of the Son is 
 the mystery of physical nature. The Son is the need of sensuous- 
 ness, or of the heart, satisfied in God ; for all wishes of the heart, 
 even the wish for a personal God nnd for heavenly felicity, are 
 sensuous wishes ; — the heart is essentially materialistic, it con- 
 tents itself only with an object which is seen and felt. This is 
 especially evident in the conception that the Son, even m the midst 
 of the Divine Trinity, has the human body as an essential, per- 
 manent attribute. Ambrosius : "Scriptum est Ephes. i. : Secun- 
 dum carnem igitur omnia ipsi subjecta traduntur." Chrysostonms : 
 "Christum secundum carnem pater jussit actmctis angelis adorari." 
 Theodoretus : " Corpus Dominicum surrexit quidem a mortuis, 
 
 divina glorificata gloria corpus tamen est et habet, quam prius 
 
 habuit, circiimscriptionem." (See Concordienbuohs-anhang. ''Zeug- 
 nisse der h. Schrift und Altviiter von Christo," and Petrus L. L iii. 
 dist. 10,' cc. I, 2. See also on this subject Luther, Tli. xix. pp. 
 464-468.) In accordance with this the United Brethren say : "I 
 will ever embrace thee in love and faith, until, when at length my 
 lips are pale in death, I shall see thee bodily." " Thy eyes, thv 
 mouth, the body wounded for us, on which we so firmly rely, — all 
 that I shall behold." 
 
 Hence the Son of God is the darling of the human heart, the 
 bridegroom of the soul, the object of a formal, personal love. " O 
 Domine Jesu, si adeo sunt dulces istae lacliryinae, quae ex vieinoria 
 et desiderio tui excitantur, quam dulce erit gaudiuni, quod ex 
 manifesta tui visione capietur ? Si adeo dulce &i\,flerepro te, quam 
 dulce erit gaiidere de te. Sed quid hujusmodi secreta colloquia 
 proferimus ' in publicum '\ Cur ineffabiles et innarrabiles affectus 
 commuuibus verbis conamur exprimere? Iiiexperti talia non in- 
 
 telligunt. Zeloiypus est sponsus iste Delicatus est sponsus iste." 
 
 — Scala Claustralium (sive de modo orandi. Among the spurious 
 writings of St. Bernard). "Luge propter amorem Jesu Christi, sponsi 
 tui, quosque eum videre possis."— (De modo bene Vivendi. Sermo 
 X. id.) " Adspectum Christi, qui adhuc inadspectabilis et absens 
 amorem nostrum meruit et exercuit, frequentius scripturae com- 
 memorant. Joh. xiv. 3 ; 1 Job. iii. i ; i Pet. i. 8 ; i Thess. iv. 17. 
 Acquis nonjucundum credat videre corpzts illud, cujus velut in- 
 strumento usus est filius Dei ad expianda peccata, et absentem 
 tandem amicam salutare ? "— Doederlein (Inst. TheoL Chr. 1. u. P. 
 ii. C. ii. Sect. ii. § 302. Obs. 3). "Quod oculis corporis Christum 
 visuri simus, dubio caret."— J. Fr. Buddeus (Comp. Inst. TheoL 
 Dogm. 1. ii. c. iii. § 10). 
 
 The distinction between God ruith the Son, or tlie sensuous 
 God, and God without the Son, or God divested of sensuousness, 
 is nothing further than the distinction between the mystical and 
 the rational man. The rational man lives and thmlcs ; with him 
 life is the complement of thought, and thought the complement 
 of life, both theoretically, inasmuch as he convinces himself of 
 
296 APPENDIX. 
 
 the reality of sensuousness through the reason itKelf, and^ practi- 
 cally, inasmuch as he combines activity of life with activity of 
 thought. That which I have in life, I do not need to posit beyond 
 life, m spirit, in metaphysical existence, in God ; love, friendship, 
 perception, the world in general, give nie what thought does not, 
 cannot give me, nor ought to give me. Therefore I dismiss the 
 needs of the heart from the sphere of thought, that reason may not 
 hn clouded by desires ; — in the demarcation of activities consists the 
 wisdom of life and thought ;— I do not need a God who supplies by 
 a mystical, imaginary physicalness or sensuousness the absence of 
 the real. ^Nfy heart is satisfied before I enter into intellectual 
 activity ; hence my thought is cold, indifferent, abstract, i.e., free, 
 in relation to the heart, which oversteps its limits, and improperly 
 mixes itself with the aiiairs of the reason. Thus I do not think 
 in order to satisfy my heart, but to satisfy my reason, which is not 
 satisfied by the heart ; I thiiilj only in the interest of reason, from 
 pure desire of knowledge, I seek in God only the contentment of 
 the pure, unmixed intelligence. Xecessarily, therefore, the God of 
 the rational thinker is another than the God of the heart, which in 
 thought, in reason, only seeks its own satisfaction. And this is the 
 aim of the mystic, who cannot endure the luminous fire of dis- 
 criminating and limiting criticism ; for his mind is always beclouded 
 by tlie vapours which rise from the unextinguished ardour of his 
 feelings. He never atiains to abstract, i.e., disinterested, free 
 thouglit, and for that reason he never attains to the perception of 
 things in their naturalness, truth, and reality. 
 
 One more remark concerning the Trinity. The older theologians 
 said that the essential attributes of God as God were made manifest 
 by the light of natural reas(m. But how is it that reason can know 
 the Divine iJeiiig, unless it be because the Divine Being is nothing 
 else than the objective nature of the intelligence itself? Of the 
 Trinity, on the other hand, they said that it could only be known 
 through revelation. Why not through reason ; because it con- 
 tradicts reason, i.e., because it does not express a want of the 
 reason, but a sensuous, emotional want. In general, the proposition 
 that an idea springs from revelation means no more than that it 
 has come to us by the way of tradition. The dogmas of religion 
 have arisen at certain times out of definite wants, under definite 
 relations and conceptions ; for this reason, to the men of a later 
 time, in which these relations, wants, conceptions, have disappeared, 
 they are something unintelligible, incomprehensible, only tradi- 
 tional, i.e., revealed. The antithesis of revelation and reason re- 
 duces itself only to the antithesis of history and reason, only to 
 this, that mankind at a given time is no longer capable of that 
 which at another time it was quite capable of; just as the individual 
 man does not unfold his powers at all times indifferently, but only 
 in moments of special appeal from without or incitement from 
 within. Thus the works of genius arise only under altogether 
 special inward and outward conditions which cannot thus coincide 
 more tlian once ; they are (Siral XeySfj.em. " Einmal ist alles wahre 
 nur." The true is born but once. Hence a man's own works often 
 
APPENDIX. 297 
 
 appear to liim in later years quite strange and incomprehensible 
 He no longer knows liow he produced them or could produce them 
 i.e., he can no longer explain them out of himself, still less repro- 
 duce them. _ And just as it would be folly if, in riper years, because 
 the productions of our youth have become strange and inexplicable 
 to us in their tenor and origin, we were to refer them to a special 
 inspiration from above ; so it is folly, because the doctrines and 
 ideas of a past age are no longer recognised by the reason of a sub- 
 sequent age, to claim for theui a supra- and extra-human, i.e., an 
 imaginary, illusory origin. 
 
 §9- 
 
 The creation out of nothing e.rpresses the non-divineness, non- 
 essentiality, i.e., the nothingness of the world. 
 
 That is created which once did not exist, which some time will 
 exist no longer, to which, therefore, it is possible not to exist, which 
 we can think of as not existing, in a word, which has not its 
 existence in itself, is not necessary. " Cum enim res producantur 
 ex suo non-esse, possunt ergo absolute non-esse, adeoque implicat, 
 quod lion sunt necessaria3."— Duns Scotus (ap. Pdxner, B. ii. p. 78). 
 But only necessary existence is existence. If I am not necessary, 
 do^ not feel myself necessary, I feel that it is all one whether I 
 exist or not, that thus my existence is worthless, nothing. "I am 
 nothing," and "I am not necessary," is fundamentally the same 
 thing. "Creatio non est motus, seel simplicis divinae voluntatis 
 vocatio ad esse eorum, quae antea nihil faerunt et secundum se ipsa 
 et nihil sunt et ex nihilo sunt." — Albertus M. (de. ilirab. Scient. 
 Dei P. ii. Tr. i. Qu. 4, Art. 5, memb. ii.) But the position that 
 the world is not necessary, has no other bearing than to prove that 
 the extra- and supra-mundane being {i.e., in fact, the human being) 
 is the only necessary, only real being. Since the one is non- 
 essential and temporal, the other is necessarily the essential, existent, 
 eternal. The creation is the proof that God is, that he is exclu- 
 sively true and real. "Sanctus Dominus Deus omnipotens in 
 principio, quod est in te, in sapientia tua, quae nata est de sub- 
 stantia tua, fecisti aliquid et de nihilo. Fecisti enim coelum et 
 terram non de te, nam esset aequale unigenito tuo, ac per hoc et 
 tibi, et nullo modo justum esset, ut aequale tibi esset, quod in te non 
 
 esset. Et aliud praeter te non erat, unde faceres ea Deus Et 
 
 ideo de nihilo fecisti coelum et terram." — Augustmus (Confessionum 
 1. xii. c. 7). " Vere enim ipse est, quia incommutahilis est. Omnis 
 
 enim mutatio facit non esse quod erat Ei ergo qui sumiue est, 
 
 non potest esse contrarium nisi quod no7i est. — Si solus ip^e incom- 
 mutabilis, omnia quae fecit, quia ex nihilo id est ex eo quod omnino 
 non est — fecit, mutabdia sunt." — Augustin (de nat. boni adv. jNIanich. 
 cc. 1, 19). " Creatura in mdlo debet p>arificari Deo, si autem non 
 habuisset initium durationis et e.ise, in hoc parijicaretur Deo." — 
 (Albertus M. 1. c. Quaest. incidens i). The positive, the essential 
 in the world is not that which makes it a world, which distinguishes 
 it from God— this is precisely its finiteness and nothingness— but 
 
298 APPENDIX. 
 
 rather tliat in it wliicli is not itself, which is God. ^ " All creatures 
 
 are a pure nothing they have no essential existence, for their 
 
 existence hanss on the presence of God. If God turned himself 
 away a moment, they would fall to nothing."— (Predigten vor. u. 
 zu. Tauleri Zeiten, ed. c. p. 29. See also Augustine, e.g. Confess. 
 1. vii. c. II). This is quite correctly said from the standpoint of 
 religion, fur God is the principle of existence, the being of the 
 world, though he is represented as a personal being distinct from 
 the woild. The world lasts so long as God wills. The world is 
 transient, but man eternal. " Quamdki viilf, omnia ejus virtute 
 nianent atque consistunt, etjinis eorum in Dei roluntatem recurrit, 
 et ejiifi arUtrin resolvuntur." — Ambrosins (Hexaemeron. 1. i. c. 5). 
 
 ^' K^jiiritu.i enim a Deo creati nunquam es.se desimint Corpora 
 
 coeU'xiid tarn diu conservantur, quamdiu Devs ea vult iiermanere." 
 — Buddeus (Cnnip. 1. ii. c. ii. § 47). " The dear God does not alone 
 create, but what he creates he lieeps with his own being, until he 
 wills that it shall be no longer. For the time will come when the 
 sun, moon, and stars shall be no more." — Luther (Th. ix. s. 418). 
 " The end will come sooner than we think." — Id. (Th. xi. s. 536}. 
 By means of the creation out of nothing man gives himself the 
 certainty that tlie world is nothing, is powerless against man. 
 " We have a Lord who is greater than the whole world ; we have 
 a Lord so powerful, that when he only speaks all things are born 
 
 Wherefore sliould we fear, since he is favourable to us ?" — Id. 
 
 (Th. vi. p.' 293). Identical with the belief in the creation out of 
 nothing is the belief in tlie eternal life of man, in the victory over 
 death, the last constraint which nature imposes on man — m the 
 resurrection of the dead. " Six thousand years ago the world was 
 
 nothing; and who has made tbe world? The same God and 
 
 Creator can also awake thee from the dead ; he will do it, and can 
 do it." — Id. (Th. xi. p. 426. See also 421, &c.) "We Christians are 
 greater and more than all creatures, not in or by ourselves, but 
 through the gift of God in Christ, against whom the world is 
 nothing, and can do nothing."— Id. (Th. xi. p. 377). 
 
 8 lo- 
 
 The Cri'dtion in ilie Lsmelitish relir/ioii has only a iiarticular, 
 erfoistic aim ami purjiort. The Israelitish religion is the religion of 
 the most Jiarrow-hearted egoism. Even the later Israelites, scat- 
 tered throughout the world, persecuted and oppressed, adhered 
 with immovable firmness to the egoistic faith of tlieir forefathers. 
 " Every Israelitish soul by itself is, in the eyes of the blessed God, 
 dearer and more precious than all the souls of a whole nation 
 besides." " The Israelites are among the nations what the heart is 
 among the members." " The end in the creation of the world was 
 Israel alone. The world was created for the sake of the Israelites ; 
 they are the fruit, other nations are their husks." "All the 
 heathens are nothing for him (God) ; but for the Israelites God has 
 
 a use They adore and bless the name of the holy and blessed 
 
 God every day, therefore they are numbered every hour, and made 
 
APPENDIX. 299 
 
 as (numerous as) the grains of corn." " If the Israelites were not, 
 there \voi:ld fall no rain on the world, and the sun would not rise 
 but for their sakes." " He (God) is our kinsman, and we are hia 
 
 kindred No power or angel is akin to us, for the Lord's portion 
 
 is his people" (Deut. xxxii. 9). "He who rises up against an 
 Isra,elite (to injure him), does the same thing as if ihe rose up 
 against God." " If any one smite an Israelite on the cheek, it is 
 the same as if he smote the cheek of the divine majesty." — Eisen- 
 mengers (Entdecktes Judenthum, T. i. Kap. 14). The Christians 
 blamed the Jews for this arrogance, but only because the kingdom 
 of God was taken from them and transferred to the Christians. 
 Accordingly, we find the same thoughts and sentiments in the 
 Christians as in the Israelites. "Know that God so takes thee 
 unto himself that thy enemies are his enemies."— Luther (T. vi. 
 p. 99). " It is the Christians for whose sake God spares the whole 
 
 world The Father makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the 
 
 good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. Yet this 
 happens only for the sake of the pious and thankful." (T. xvi. 
 p. 506.) "He who despises me despises God." (T. xi. p. 538.) 
 "God suffers, and is despised and persecuted, in us." (T. iv. p. 577.) 
 Such declarations as these are, I should th.mk'^argumenta adhominem 
 for the identity of God and man. 
 
 § ri. 
 
 The idea of Providence is the religious consciousness of man's dis- 
 tinction from ihe brutes, from Natxire in general. " Doth God take 
 care for oxen ? " (i Cor. ix. 9.) "Nunquid curae est Deo bobus? 
 inquit Paulus. Ad nos ea cura dirigitur, non ad boves, equos, asinos, 
 qui in usum nostrum sunt conditi" — J. L. Vivis Val. (de Veritate 
 I'idei Chr. Bas. 1544, p. 108). "Providentia Dei in omnibus aliis 
 creaturis respioit ad hominem tanquam ad metam suam. Multis 
 passeribus vos pluris estis. Matth. x. 31. I" ropter peccatum hominis 
 natura subjecta est vanitati. Kom. viii. 20." — M. Cliemnitii (Loci 
 theol. Francof. 1608, P. i. p. 312). " Nunquid enim cura est Deo de 
 bobus ? Et sicut non est cura Deo de bobus, ita nee de aliis irra- 
 tionalibus. Dicit tamen scriptura (Sapient, vi.) quia ipsi cura est de 
 omnibus. Providentiam ergo et curam universaliter de cunctis, 
 
 quae condidit, habet Sed specialem providentiam atque curam 
 
 habet de rationalibus."— Petrus L. (1. i. dist. 39, c. 3). Here we 
 have again an example how Christian sophistry is a product of 
 Christian faith, especially of faith in the Bible as the word of Gnd. 
 First we read that God cares not for oxen ; then that God cares for 
 everything, and therefore for oxen. That is a contradiction ; but 
 the word of God must not contradict itself. How does faith escape 
 from this contradiction t By distinguishing between a general and 
 a special providence. But general providence is illusory, is in truth 
 no providence. Only special providence is providence in the sense 
 of religion. 
 
 General providence— the providence which extends itself equally 
 to irrational and rational beings, which makes no distinction be- 
 
300 APPENDIX. 
 
 tween man and the lilies of the field or the fowls of the air, is 
 nothing else than the idea of Nature— an idea which man may 
 have without religion. The religious consciousness admits this 
 when it says : he who denies providence abolishes religion, places 
 man on a level with the brutes ;— thus declaring that the provi- 
 dence in which the brutes have a share is in truth no providence. 
 Providence partakes of the character of its object ; hence the pro- 
 vidence which has plants and animals for its object is in accordance 
 with the qualities and relations of plants and animals. Providence 
 is nothing else than the inward nature of a thing; this inward 
 nature is its genius, its guardian spirit — the necessity of its exist- 
 ence. The higher, the more precious a being is,— the more ground 
 of existence it has, the more necessary it is, the less is it open to 
 annihilation. Every being is necessary only through that by which 
 it is distinguished from other beings ; its specific difference is the 
 ground of its existence. So man is necessary only through that by 
 which he is distinguished from the brutes ; hence providence is 
 nothing else than man's consciousness of the necessity of his exist- 
 ence, of the distinction between his nature and that of other beings ; 
 consequently that alone is the true providence in which this specific 
 difference of man becomes an object to him. But this providence 
 is special, i.e., the providence of love^ for only love interests itself 
 in what is special to a being. Providence without love is a con- 
 ception without basis, without reality. The truth of providence is 
 lo"e. God loves men, not brutes, not plants ; for only for man's 
 sake does he perform extraordinary deeds, deeds of love — miracles. 
 Where there is no community there is no love. But what bond 
 can be supposed to unite brutes, or natural things in general, with 
 God ? God does not recognise himself in them, for they do not 
 recognise him ; — where I find nothing of myself, how can I love? 
 " God who thus promises, does not speak with asses and oxen, as 
 Paul says : Doth God take care for oxen ? but with rational crea- 
 tures made in his likeness, that they may live for ever with him." 
 Luther (Th. ii. s. 156). God is first with himself in man ; in man 
 first begins religion, providence ; for the latter is not something 
 difl'erent from the former, on the contrary, religion is itself the 
 providence of man. He who loses religion, i.e., faith in himself, 
 faith in man, in the infinite significance of his being, in the neces- 
 sity of his existence, loses providence. He alone is forsaken who 
 forsakes himself; he alone is lost who despairs; he alone is without 
 God who is without faith, i.e., without courage. Wherein does 
 religion place the true proof of providence ? in the phenomena of 
 Nature, as they are objects to us out of religion, — in astronomy, in 
 physics, in natural history ? No ! In those appearances which are 
 objects of religion, of faith only, which express only the faith of 
 religion in itself, i.e., in the truth and reality of man, — in the reli- 
 gious events, means, and institutions which God has ordained exclu- 
 sively for the salvation of man, in a word, in miracles ; for the means 
 of grace, the sacraments, belong to the class of providential miracles. 
 " Quamquam autem liaec consideratio universae naturae nos admonet 
 de Deo tamen nos referamus initio mentein et oculos ad omnia 
 
APPENDIX. 30 T 
 
 testimonia, in quihiis se Dens ecclesiae patefecit ad e<l uctiaiiem ex 
 Aegypto, ad vocem sonantem in Sinai, ad Christum resuscitaniem 
 
 mortuos et resuscitatum, etc Ideo semper defixae sint mentes in 
 
 horum testiinoniorum, cogitationem, et his confirraatae articulum de 
 Greatione meditentur, deinde considerent etiam vestigia Dei impressae 
 naturae." — Melancthon (Loci de Great, p. 62, ed. cit.). "Mirentur 
 alii creationem, mihi magis libet mirari redemptionem. Mirabile est, 
 quod caro nostra et ossa nostra a Deo nobis sunt formata, mirahilius 
 adliuc est, quod ipse Devs caro de came nostra et os de ossibus 
 nostris fieri voluit." — J. Gerhard (Med. s. M. 15). "The heathens 
 know God no further than that he is a Creator.'' — Luther (T. ii. 
 p. 327). That providence has only man for its essential object 
 is evident from this, that to religious faith all things and beings 
 are created for the sake of man. " We are lords not ordy of birds, 
 but of all living creatures, and all things are given for our service, 
 and are created only for our sake." — Luther (T. ix. p. 281). But 
 if things are created only for the sake of man, tbey are also pre- 
 served only for the sake of man. And if things are mere instru- 
 ments of man, they stand under the protection of no law, they are, 
 in relation to man, tvitlwtU rights. This outlawing of things explains 
 miracle. 
 
 The negation of providence is the negation of God. " Qui ergo 
 providentiam tollit, totam Dei substantiam tollit et quid dicit nisi 
 
 Deum non esse? Si non curat humana, sive nesciens, cessat 
 
 omnis causa pietatis, cum sit s^yes nulla sabitis." — Joa. Trithemius 
 (Tract, de Provid. Dei). "Nam qui nihil aspici a Deo affirmant 
 prope est ut cui adspectum adimunt, etiam substantiam toUant." 
 — Salvianus (h c. 1. iv.). " Aristotle almost falls into the opinion 
 that God— though he does not expressly name him a fool— is such 
 a one that he knows nothing of our affairs, nothing of our designs, 
 
 understands, sees, regards nothing but himself But what is 
 
 such a God or Lord to us ? of what use is he to us ? "—Luther (m 
 Walch's Philos. Lexikon, art. Vorsehung). Providence is therefore 
 the most undeniable, striking proof that in religion, in the nature 
 of God himself, man is occupied only with himself, that the 
 mystery of theology is anthropology, that the substance, the 
 content of the infinite being, is the " finite " being. " God sees 
 men," means: in God man sees only himself; " God cares for 
 man," means : a God who is not active is no real God. But there 
 is no activity without an object: it is the object which first converts 
 activity from a mere power into real activity. This object is man. 
 If man did not exist, God would have no cause for activity. Thus 
 man is the motive principle, the soul of God. A God who does not 
 see and hear man, who has not man tn himself, is blind and deal, 
 i.e., inert, empty, unsubstantial. Thus the fulness of the divine 
 nature is the fulness of the human ; thus the Godhead of God is 
 humanity. I for myself is the comfortless mystery of epicureanism, 
 stoicism, pantheism ; God for me, this is the consolatory mystery of 
 religion, of Christianity. Is man for God's sake, or God for man s ( 
 It is true that in religion man exists for God's sake, 0"t only because 
 God exists for man's sake. I am for God because God is for me. 
 
302 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Providence is idmtical with miraculous jjower, supernaturalutic 
 freedom from Nature, the dotiiinio7i of arbitrariness over _ law. 
 "Etbi (sc. Deus) sustentat naturani, tamen contra ordinem ^nfmit 
 
 aliquando Solem regredi, etc Ut igitur invocatio vere fieri 
 
 possit, cogitenms Deum sic adesse suo opificio, non, ut Stoici fin- 
 gunt, aUit/iifum secundis causis, sed susteritantem naturam et multa 
 
 suo libei'rim.0 cousilio moderantem Multa facit prima causa 
 
 praeter senindiis, quia est agens liberum." — iMelancthon (Loci de 
 (Aiu.-a, Pecciiti, pp. 82, 83, ed. cit.) " Sciiptura vero tradit, Deum 
 in actione providentiae esse ayens tiberuia, qui ut plurimum quidem 
 ordinem sui opeiis servet, illi tamen ordini non sit alligatus, sed 
 i) quioquid facit per causas secundas, illud possit etiam sine illis 
 per se solum facere 2) quod ex causis secundis possit alium ejfecium 
 producere, quam ipsarum dispositio et natura ferat 3) quod positis 
 ausis secundis in actu, Deus tamen effectum possit impedire, 
 
 inuf<(re, mitigare, exasperare Non igitur est connexio causarum 
 
 iStoica iu actionibus providentiae Dei." — M. Chenmitius (1. c. iip. 
 316, 317). " Liljerrime Deus iinjieraf naturae — Naturam saluti 
 
 hominum attemperat propter Ecclesiam Omnino tribuendus 
 
 est Deo bic bonos, quod possit et velit opitulari nobis, etiam cum a 
 tota natura destituimur, contra sericm omnium secundarum causa- 
 rum Et multa accidunt plurimis hominibus, in quibus mirandi 
 
 eventus fateri eos cogunt, se a l)eo sine causis sec ;/;((7i'sservatos esse." — 
 C. Peucerus (de Praecip. Divinat. gen. Servestae, 1 591, p. 44). " Ille 
 tamen qui omnium est conditor, nuUis instrumentis mdiget. Nam 
 si id continuo fit, quicquid ipse vult, velle illius erit author atque 
 instrumentum ; nee magis ad haec regenda astris indiget, quam cum 
 luto aperuit oculos coeci, sicut refert historia Evangelica. Lutum 
 enim magis videbatur obturaturum oculos, quam aperturum. Sed 
 ipse ostendere nobis voluit omnem naturam esse sibi instrumentum 
 ail qiiidcis, quiintumcunque alienum." — J. L. Yives (1. c. 102). 
 " How is tliis to be reconciled '! The air gives food and nourishment, 
 and here stones or rocks flow with water ; it is a marvellous gift. 
 And it is also strange and marvellous that corn grows out of the 
 earth. Who has this art and this power ? God has it, who can do 
 such ■unmatured things, that we may thence imagine what sort of a 
 God he is and what sort of power he has, that we may not be 
 terrified at him nor despair, but firmly believe and trust him, that 
 he can make the leather in the pocket into gold, and can make dust 
 into corn on the earth, and the air a cellar for me full of wine. 
 He is to be trusted, as having such great power, and we may know 
 that we have a God who can perform these deeds of skill, and that 
 around him it rains and snows with miraculous works." — Luther 
 (T. iii. p. 594). 
 
 The oiimijwtence of Providence is the omnipotence of human feel- 
 ing releasing itself from all conditions and laws of Nature. This 
 om?iipotence is recdised by prayer. Prayer is Almigliti/. "The 
 
 prayer of faith shall save the sick The efi'ectual fervent prayer 
 
 of a righteous man availeth much. Elias was a man subject to like 
 ])assions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain ; 
 and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six 
 
APPENDIX. 303 
 
 months. And he prayed again, and the heavens gave rain and the 
 earth brought forth her fruit." — James v. 15-18. "If ye have faith 
 and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig- 
 tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed 
 and be thou cast into the sea, it shall be done, and all things what- 
 soever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive." — Jlatt. 
 xxi. 21, 22. That under this mountain which the power of faith is 
 to overcome are to be understood not only very difficult things — 
 res difficillimae, as the exegetists say, who explain this passage as a 
 proverbial, hyperbolical mode of speech among the Jews, but rather 
 things which according to Nature and reason are impossible, is 
 proved by the case of the instantaneously withered fig-tree, to 
 which the passage in question refers. Here indubitably is declared 
 the omnipotence of prayer, of faith, before which the power of 
 Nature vanishes into nothing. "MutanturquoqueacZior«(:-f.seaquaeex 
 naturae causis erant sequutura, quemadraodum in Ezechia contigit, 
 rege Juda, cui, quod naturales causarum progressus mortem mina- 
 bantur, dictum est a propheta Dei : Morieris et non vives ; sed is 
 decursus naturae ad regis preces mutatus est et mutaturum se Deus 
 praeviderat." — J. L. Vives (1. c. p. 132). " Saepe fatorum saevitiam 
 lenit Dens, placatus piorum votis." — Melancthon (Epist. Sim. 
 Grynaeo). " Gedit natura rerum precibus Moysi, Eliae, Elisaei, 
 Jesaiae et omnium piorum, sicut Cliristus inquit Matt. 21 : Omnia • 
 quaepetetis, credentes accipietis." — Id. (Loci de Great, p. 64, ed. cit.). 
 Celsus calls on the Christians to aid the Emperor and not to decline 
 military service. Whereupon Origen answers . '^ Precibiis nostris 
 profligantes onmes bellorum excitatores daemonas et perturbatores 
 pacis ac foederum plus conferimus regibus, quam qui atma gestant 
 ]iro Eepublica." — Origenes (adv. Celsum. iS. Glenio int. 1. viii.). 
 Human need is the necessity of the Divine Will. In prayer man 
 is the active, the determining, God the passive, the determined. 
 God does the will of man. " God does the will of those that fear 
 
 him, and he gives his will up to ours For the text says clearly 
 
 enough, that Lot was not to stay in all the plain, but to escape to 
 the mountain. But this his wish God changes, because Lot fears 
 him and prays to him." " And we have other testimonies in the 
 Scriptures which prove that God allows himself to be turned and 
 subjects his will to our wish." " Thus it was according to the 
 regular order of God's power that the sun should maintain its 
 revolution and wonted course ; but when Joshua in his need called 
 on the Lord and commanded the sun that it should stand still, it 
 stood still at Joshua's word. How great a miracle this was, ask the 
 astronomers."— Luther (T. ii. p. 226). " Lord, I am here and there 
 m great need and danger of body and soul, and therefore want thy 
 help and comfort. Item : I must have this and that ; therefore I 
 entreat thee that thou give it me." "He who so prays .-aid per- 
 severes unabashed does right, and our Lord God is well pleased 
 with him, for he is not so squeamish as we men."— Id. (T. xvi. 
 p. 150). 
 
304 APPENDIX. 
 
 Faith is the freedom and blessed nexK rchich feeling finds in it- 
 self. Feeling fjijective to itself and active in this freedom, the 
 reaction of feeling against Xature, is the arbitrariness of the 
 imagination. The objects of faith therefore neeessarihj contradict 
 Nature, iieeessurily contradict Reason, as that vjhich represents the 
 nature of things. ''Quid magis coutra fidera, quam credere nolle, 
 
 quidquid non possit ratione attingere 1 N;im illam quae in 
 
 L)eum est fides, beatus papa Gregoriiis negat plane habere meritum, 
 si ei liuinana ratio praebeat experimentum." — Bernardus (contr. 
 Abelard. Ep. ad. Dom. Papam Innocentium). '' Partus virginis nee 
 ratione colligitur, nee exemplo monstratur. Quodsi ratione colligitur 
 non erit mira,bile." — Cone. Toletan. XI. Art. IV. (Summa. Carranza.) 
 " Quid autem incredibile, si contra usum originis naturalis peperit 
 Maria et virgo permanet : quando contra usum naturae mare vidit 
 et fugit atque in tontem suum Jordaiiis fluenta remearunt ? Non 
 ergo exeedit fidem, quod virgo peperit, quando legimus, quod petra 
 vomuit aquas et in mentis speciem maris unda solidata est. Non 
 ergo exeedit fidem, quod homo exivit de virgine, quando petra pro- 
 fluit, scaturivit ferrum supra aquas, ambulavit homo supra aquas." 
 — Ambrosius (Epist. L. x. Ep. 8i. edit. Basil. Amerbach. 1492 et 
 
 1516). '■ Mira sunt fratres, quae de isto sacraraento dieuntur 
 
 Haec sunt quae fidem necessario exigunt, rationem oniniiio non 
 admittunt." — Bernardus (de Coena Dom.). '' Quid ergo hie quaeris 
 naturae ordincni in Christi corpore, cum praeter naturam sit ipse 
 partus ex virgiue." — Petrus Lomb. (1. iv. dist. 10, e. 2). " Laus 
 fidei est credere quod est supra rationem, ubi homo abnegat intel- 
 lectnrn et omnes sensus." (Addit. Henrici de Vurimaria. ibid. dist. 
 12, c. 5.) "All the articles of our faith appear foolish and ridiculous 
 
 to reason." " We Cliristians seem fools to the world for believing 
 
 that Alary was the true mother of this child, and was nevertheless a 
 pure virgin. For this is not only against all reason, but also against 
 the creation of God, who said to Adam and Eve, " Be fruitful and 
 multiply." " ^Ve ought not to inquire whether a thing be possible, 
 but we should say, God has said it, tlierefore it will happen, even if 
 it be impossible. For although I cannot see or understand it, yet 
 the Lord can make the impossible possible, and out of nothing can 
 make all things."— Luther (T. xvi. pp. 148,149, 570). "What is 
 more miraculous than that God and man is one Person ? that he is 
 the Son of God and the Son of Jlary, and yet only one Son ? Who 
 will comprehend this mystery in all eternity, that God is man, that 
 a creature is the Creator, and the Creator a creature ? "—Id. (T. vii. 
 p. 128). The essential object of faith, therefore, is miracle; but 
 not common, visible miracle, which is au object even to the bold 
 eye of curiosity and unbelief in general ; not the appearance, but 
 the essence of miracle ; not the fact but the miraculous ^0!^«-, the 
 Being wlio works miracles, who attests and reveals himself in 
 miracle. And this miraculous power is to faith always present ; 
 even Protestantism believes in the uninterrupted perpetuation of 
 miraculous power ; it only denies the necessity that it should still 
 
APPENDIX. 305 
 
 manifest itself in special visible signs, for the furtherance of dog- 
 matic ends. " Some have said that signs were the revelation of the 
 Spirit in the commencement of Christianity and have now ceased. 
 That is not correct ; for there is even now such a power, and though 
 it is not used, that is of no importance. For we have still the power 
 to perform such signs." " Now, however, that Christianity is spread 
 abroad and made known to all the world, there is no need to work 
 miracles, as in the times of the apostles. But if there were need for 
 it, if the Gospel were oppressed and persecuted, we must truly apply 
 ourselves to this, and must also work miracles." — Luther (Th. xiii. 
 pp. 642, 648). j\Iiracle is so essential, so natural to faith, that 
 to it even natural phenomena are miracles, and not in the physical 
 sense, but in the theological, supranaturalistic sense. " God, in the 
 beginning, said : Let the earth bring forth grass and herbs, &c. 
 That same word which the Creator spoke brings the cherry out of 
 the dry bough and the cherry-tree out of the little kernel. It is the 
 omnipotence of God which makes young fowls and geese come out 
 of the eggs. Thus God preaches to us daily of the resurrection of 
 the dead, and has given us as many examples and experiences of 
 this article as there are creatures."— Luther (Th. x. p. 432. See also 
 Th. iii.' pp. 586, 592, and Augustine, e.g., Enarr. in Ps. 90, Sermo 
 ii. c. 6). If, therefore, faith desires and needs no special miracle, 
 this is only because to it everything is fundamentally miracle, 
 everything an effect of divine, miraculous power. Eeligious faith 
 has no sense, no perception for Nature. Nature, as it exists for us, 
 has no existence for faith. To it the will of God is alone the 
 
 ground, the bond, the necessity of things. " God could indeed 
 
 liave made us men, as he did Adam and Eve, by himself, without 
 father and motlier, as he could reign without princes, as he could 
 give light without sun and stars, and bread without fields and 
 ploughs and labour. But it is not his will to do thus."— Luther 
 (Th. xvi. p. 614). It is true " God employs certain means, and so 
 conducts his miraculous works as to use the service of Nature and 
 instruments." Therefore we ought— truly on very natural grounds 
 —" not to despise the means and instruments of Nature." "Thus 
 it is allowable to use medicine, nay, it ought to be used, for it is a 
 means created in order to preserve health." — Luther (Th. i. p. 508), 
 But— and that alone is decisive— it is not necessary that I should 
 use natural means in order to be cured ; I can be cured mime- 
 diately by God. What God ordinarily does by means of Nature, 
 he can also do without, nay, in opposition to Nature, and actually 
 does it thus, in extraordinary cases, when he will. "God,' says 
 Luther in the same place, "could indeed easily have preserved 
 Noah and the animals through a whole year without food, as he 
 preserved Moses, Elijah, and Christ forty days without any food. 
 Whether he does it often or seldom is indifferent ; it is enough it 
 he only does it once ; what happens once can happen mnumerable 
 times. A sin-rle miracle has universal significance— the signi- 
 ficance of an example. "This deed, the passage through the Ked 
 Sea, happened as a figure and example, to show us that it will be 
 so with us."— Luther (Th. iii. p. 596)- " These miracles are written 
 
 U 
 
3o6 APPENDIX. 
 
 for us, wlio are cliosen."— lb. (Th. ix. p. 142). The natural means 
 which God employs when he does no miracle, have no more signi- 
 ficance than those which he employs when lie performs miracles. 
 If the animals, God so willing it, can live as well without food as 
 with it, food is in itself as unnecessary for the preservation of life, 
 as indifferent, as non-essential, as arbitrary, as the clay with which 
 Christ anointed the eyes of the blind man to whom he restored 
 sight, as the staff with vhich Moses divided the sea (" God could 
 have done it just as well without the staft"). " Faith is stronger 
 than heaven and earth, or all creatures." " Faith turns water into 
 stones ; out of fire it can bring water, and out of water fire." — 
 Luther (Th. iii. pp. 564, 565). That is to say, for faith there exists 
 no limit, no law, no necessity, no Nature ; there exists only the 
 will of God, against which all things and powers are nothing. If 
 tlierefore the believer, when in sickness and distress, has recourse 
 notwithstanding to natural means, he only follows the voice of his 
 natural reason. The one means of cure which is congruous with 
 faith, which does not contradict faith, which is not thrust upon it, 
 whether consciously and voluntarily or not, from without, — the one 
 remedy for all evil and misery is prayer ; for ''prayer is almighty." 
 — Luther (Th. iv. p. 27). Why then use a natural means also 'I For 
 even in case of its application, the effect which follows is hy no means 
 its own, but the effect of the supernatural will of God, or rather the 
 effect of faith, of prayer ; for prayer, faith determines the will of 
 God. " Thy faith liath saved thee." Tims the natural means 
 which faith recognises in practice it nullifies in theory, since it 
 makes the effect of such means an effect of God, — i.e., an effect 
 which could have taken place just as well without this mean.s. The 
 natural effect is therefore nothing else than a circumstantial, covert, 
 concealed miracle ; a miracle however which has not the appearance 
 of a miracle, but can only be perceived as such by the eyes of faith. 
 Only in expression, not in fact, is there any difference between an 
 immediate and mediate, a miraculous and natural operation of (3od. 
 ^Vhen faith makes use of a natur.-d means, it spenls otherwise than 
 it thinls ; when it supposes a miracle it speaks as it thinks, but in 
 both cases it thinks the same. In the mediate agency of God 
 iaith is in disunion with itself, for the senses here deny what faith 
 affirms ; in miracle, on the contrary, it is at one with itself, for 
 there the appearance coincides with the reality, the senses with 
 faith, the expression with tlie fact. :sliracle is the terminus iechii.i- 
 riis of faith. 
 
 § 13- 
 
 The Hesiirrection of Christ is hodily, i.e., 2''ers">ial immortality, 
 presetited as a .^eiisi/ile imlid/itab/efact. 
 
 " llesurrexit Christus, alisotuta res est.— Ostendit se ip^um dis- 
 
 cipulis -et fidelibus suis . coiitrectata est soliditas corporis 
 
 (Jonfirma.la fides est non solum in cordibus, sed etiam in oculis 
 hominum."— Augustinus (Sermones ad Pop. S. 242, c. i, S. 361, c. 
 S. See also on this subject Melancthon, Loci : de Fiesu'rr. Jlort.)'. 
 
APPENDIX. 307 
 
 "The pliilosopliers held that by death the soul was released 
 
 from the body, and that after it was thus set free from tlie body, as 
 from a prison, it came into the assembly of the gods, and was 
 relieved from all corporeal burthens. Of such an immortality the 
 philosophers allowed men to dream, though they did not hold it 
 to be certain, nor could defend it. But the Holy Scriptures teach 
 of the resurrection and eternal life in another manner, and place 
 the hope of it so certainly before our eyes, that we cannot doubt 
 it."— Luther (Th. i. p. 549). 
 
 § 14- 
 
 Christianity made man an extramundaiie, supernatural being. 
 " We have here no abiding city, but we seek one to come." — Heb. 
 xiii. 14. " Whilst we are at hume in the body, we are absent from 
 the Lord." — 2 Cor. v. 6. " If in this body, which is properly our 
 own, we are strangers, and our life in this body is nothing else 
 than a pilgrimage ; how much more then are the possessions which 
 we have for the sake of the body, such as fields, houses, gold, &c., 
 nothing else than idle, strange things, to be used as if we were on a 
 pilgrimage! " "Therefore we must in this life live like strangers 
 until we reach the true fatherland, and receive a better life wliicli 
 is eternal." — Luther (Th. ii. pp. 240, 370 a). " Our conversation 
 (iroMreu/ia, civitas aut jus civitatis) is in heaven, from wlience also 
 we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change 
 our vile body that it may be like unto Ids glorious body, according 
 ■to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto 
 himself." — Phil. iii. 20, 21. ^'Neqiie mnndus generat hominem, neqiie 
 mundi homo pars est." — Lactantius (Div. Inst. 1. ii. c. 6). " Coelnm 
 de mundo : homo supra muiidum." — Ambrosius (Epist. 1. vi. Ep. 
 38, ed. cit). " Agnosce o homo dignitatem tuam, agnosce gloriam 
 
 conditionis humanae. Est enim tibi cum mundo corpnis sed 
 
 est tibi etiam sublimius aliquid, nee omnino comparandus es 
 caeteris creaturis." — Bernardus (0pp. Basil. 1552, p. 79). "xVt 
 
 Christianus ita supra totum mundum ascendit, nee consistit 
 
 in coeli convexis, sed transcensis mente locis supercoelestibus ductu 
 divini spiritus velut jam extra numdum rapitus offert Deo preces." 
 — Origenes (contra C'elsum. ed. Hoeschelio, p. 370). "Totusquidem 
 iste mundus ad unius animae piretium aestimari non potest. Non 
 enim pro toto mimdo Deus animam suam dare voluit, quam 2^ro 
 anima humana dedit. Sublimius est ergo animae pretium, quae 
 non nisi sanguine Ghristi redimi potest." — iledit. devotiss. c. ii. 
 (Among the spurious writings of St. Bernard.) _ "Sapiens anima 
 
 Deum tantummodo sapiens hominem in homine exuit, Deoque 
 
 plene et in omnibus aflecta, omnem infra Deum creaturam nou 
 aliter quam Deus attendit. Kelioto ergo corpore et corporeis omni- 
 bus curis et impedimentis omnium quae sunt praeter Deum oblivis- 
 citur, nihilque praeter Deum attendens quasi se solam, solumque 
 Deum existimans," etc.— De Nat. etDign. Amoris Divini, cc. 14, 15. 
 (lb.) " Quid agis frater in saccule, qui^ major es mundo 1 ''— Hier- 
 onymus (ad Heliod. de Laude Vitae solit.). 
 
loS APPENDIX. 
 
 §15- 
 
 Thi' celibate and monachism^nf eonrse onlij in their original, 
 religious aigiiififnace ami form — are sensible riianifestations, neces- 
 sary conseeiuences, of the supranatiiralistir, exiranunulane character 
 of i'liristianitij. It is true tliat they also contradict Christianity ; 
 the reason of this is shown by implication in the present work ; but 
 only because Christianity is itself a contradiction. They contra- 
 dict exoteric, practical, but not esoteric, theoretical Christianity ; 
 they contradict Christian love so far as this love relates to man, 
 but not Christian faith, not Christian love so far as it loves man 
 only for CJod's sake. There is certainly nothing concerning celibacy 
 and nionachisiii in the Bible ; and that is very natural. In the 
 beginning of Christianity the great matter was the recognition of 
 Jesus as the Christ, the ^Messiah — the conversion of the heathens 
 and Jews. And this conversion was the more pressing, the nearer 
 the Christians supposed the day of judgment and the destruction 
 of the Avorld ■,—jieric)il)im in mora. There was not time or oppor- 
 tunity for a life of quietude, for the contemplation of moiiachism. 
 Hence there necessarily reigned at that time a more practical and 
 even liberal sentiment than at a later period, when Christianity 
 had attained to worldly dominion, and thus the enthusiasm of 
 proselytism was extinguished. " Apostoli (says the Church, quite 
 correctly • Carranza, 1. c. p. 256) cum fides incijieret, ad fidelivm 
 iinbecdlilatent se magis demittebant, cuin autem evangelii prae- 
 dicatio sit magis ampliata, oportet et Pontifices ad perfectam con- 
 tinentiam vitam suam dirigere.'' ^\'hen once Christianity realised 
 itself in a worldly form, it must also necessarily develop the 
 supranaturalistic, supramundane tendency of Christianity into a 
 literal separation from the world. And this disposition to separa- 
 tion from life, from the body, from the world, — this first hyper- 
 cosmic then anti-cosmic tendency, is a genuinely biblical disposi- 
 tion and spirit. In addition to the passages already cited, and 
 others universally known, the following may stand as examples : 
 " He that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life 
 eternal." " I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no 
 good thing." — Eom. vii. 18. ("Veteres enim omnis vitiositatis in 
 agendo origenes ad corpus referebant." — J. G. Eoseumiiller Scholia.) 
 "Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm 
 yourselves also with the same mind ; for he that hath suffered in 
 the flesh hath ceased from sin." — i Pet. iv. 1. "I have a desire to 
 depart, and to be with Christ."— Phil. i. 23. "We are confident 
 and willing rather to be absent from the body and present with the 
 Lord." — 2 Cor. v. 8. Thus, according to these passages, the parti- 
 tion-wall between Cod and man is the body (at least the fleshly, 
 actual body) ; thus the body as a hindrance to union with God is 
 something worthless, to be denied. That by the world, which is 
 denied in Christianity, is by no means to be understood a life of 
 mere sensuality, but the real objective world, is to be inferred in a 
 popular manner from the belief that at the advejit of the Lord i.e. 
 
APPENDIX. 309 
 
 the consummation of the Christian religion, heaven and earth will 
 pass away. 
 
 The difference between the belief of the Christians and that of 
 the heathen philosophers as to the destruction of the world is not 
 to be overlooked. The Christian destruction of the world is only a 
 crisis of faith, — the separation of the Christian from all that is anti- 
 christian, the triumph of faith over the world, a judgment of God, 
 an aiiti-cosmical, supernaturalistic act. "But the heavens and the 
 earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved 
 imto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly 
 men." — 2 Pet. iii. 7. The heathen destruction of the world is a 
 crisis of the cosmos itself, a process which takes place according to 
 law, which is founded in the constitution of Nature. " Sic origo 
 mundi, non minus solem et lunam et vices siderum et animalium 
 ortus, quam quibus mutarentur terrena, continuit. In his fuit 
 inundatio, quae non secus quam hiems, quam aestas, lege mundi 
 venit." — Seneca (Nat Qu. 1. iii. c. 29). It is the principle oi life 
 immanent in the world, the essence of the world itself, which evolves 
 this crisis out of itself. ''Aqua et ignis terrenis dominantur. £,k 
 his ortus et ex his interitus est." — (Ibid. c. 28.) "Quidquid est, non 
 erit ; nee peribit, sed resolvetur." — (Idem. Epist. 71.) The Christians 
 excluded themselves from the destruction of the world. "And he 
 shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet ; and they 
 shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of 
 heaven to the other." — Matt. xxiv. 31. " But there shall not a hair 
 
 of your head perish And then shall they see the Son of Man 
 
 coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these 
 things begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads ; 
 for your redemption draweth nigh." — Lukexxi. 18, 27, 28. " Watch 
 ye therefore and pray always, tliat ye may be accounted worthy to 
 escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before 
 the Son of Man." — lb. 36. The heathens, on the contrary, identified 
 their fate with the fate of the world. " Hoc universum, quod omnia 
 
 divina humanaque complectitur dies aliquis dissipabit et in 
 
 confusionem veterem tenebrasque demerget. Eat mine aliquis et 
 singulas comploret anivias. Quis tarn superbae impotentisque arro- 
 gantiae est, ut in hac naturae necessitate, omnia ad eundem finem 
 revocantis, se vMum ac siios sqmni velit." — Seneca (Cons, ad Polyb. 
 
 cc. 20, 21). "Ergo cjuandoque erit terminus rebus humanis 
 
 Non muri quenquam, non turres tuebuntnr. Non proderunt templa 
 suppliciUis." — (Nat. Qu. L. iii. c. 29.) Thus here we have again 
 the characteristic distinction between heathenism and Christianity. 
 The heathen forgot himself in the world, the Christian forgot the 
 world in himself. And as tlie heathen identified his destruction 
 with the destruction of the world, so he identified his immortality 
 with the immortality of the world. To the heathen, man was a 
 common to the Christian, a select being ; to the latter immortality 
 was a privilege of man, to the former a common good which he vin- 
 dicated to himself only because, and in so far as, he assigned to other 
 beino-s a share in it also. The Christians expected the destruction of 
 the world immediately, because the Christian religion has in it no 
 
3IO APPENDIX. 
 
 cosmical principle of development : — all which developed itself in 
 Christendom developed itself only in contradiction witli the original 
 nature of Christianity ;— because by the existence of God in the 
 flesh, i.e., by the immediate identity of the species with the indivi- 
 dual, everything was attained, the thread of history was cut short, no 
 otlier tLought of the future remained than the thought of a repetition 
 of the second coming of the Lord. The heathens, on the contrary, 
 placed the destruction of the world in the distant future, because, 
 living in the contemplation of the universe, they did not set heaven 
 and earth in motion on their own account, — because they extended 
 and freed their self-consciousness by the consciousness of the species, 
 placed immortality only in the perpetuation of the species, and thus 
 did not reserve the future to themselves, but left it to the coming 
 generations. " Veniet tempus quo posteri nostri tarn aperta noK 
 nescisse mirentur." — Seneca (Nat. Qu. L vii. c. 25). He who places 
 immortality in himself abolishes the principle of historical devehip- 
 lueut. The Christians did indeed, according to Peter, expect a new 
 heaven and a new earth. But with this Cliristian, i.e., superter- 
 restrial earth, the theatre of history is for ever closed, the end of 
 the actual world is come. The heathens, on the contrary, set no 
 limits to the development of the cosmos ; they supposed the 
 world to be destroyed only to arise again renovated as a real world ; 
 they granted it eternal life. The Christian destruction of the 
 world was a matter of feeling, an object of fear and longing ; the 
 heathen, a matter of reason, an inference from the contemplation 
 of nature. 
 
 Unspotted Virginity is the principle of Salvation, the principle of 
 the regenerate Christian world. " Virgo genuit mimdi salutem ; virgo 
 
 peperit vitam uiiiversorum Virgo portavit, quem mundus 
 
 iste capere ant susiinere non potest Per virum autem et 
 
 mulierem caro ejecta de paradiso : per virginem juncta est Deo." — 
 Ambrosius (Ep. L. x. Ep. 82). "Jure laudatur bona uxor, sed 
 melius pm virgo praefertur, dicente Ajmstolo (i Cor. vii.). Bonum 
 conjugiun), per quod est inventa posteritas successionis humanae ; 
 sed meliiis^ virginitas, per quam regni coelestis liaereditas acquisita 
 et coelestium meritorum reperta successio. Per mulierem cura 
 successit : ^)fr virginem salus evenit."— (Id. Ep. 8i.) "Castitas 
 
 jungit hominem coelo Bona est castitas conjugalis, sed melior 
 
 est continentia vidualis. Ojitima vero integritas virginalis." — De 
 modo bene vivendi, Sermo 22. (Among the spurious writings of 
 Ijernard.) "Fulc/iritudinemhomims non concupiscas." — (Ibid. S. 23.) 
 
 " Fornicatio major est ominhus peccatis Audi heati Isidm-i 
 
 verba : Fornicntione coinquinari deterius est omni peccato."— (Ibid.) 
 " Virginitas cui gloriae merito non praefertur ? Angehcae 2 Angelus 
 liabet virginitatem, sed non carnem, sane felicior, quam fortior in 
 hac parte."— Beruardus (Ep. 113, ad Sophiam Virginem). "Me- 
 niento semper, quod paradid colonum de possessione sua mulier 
 ejecerit." — Hieronymus (Ep. Nepotiano). " In paradiso virginitas 
 
 conversabatur.. Ipse Christus virginitatis gloria non modo ex 
 
 patre sine initio et sine duorum concursu genitus, sed et homo 
 secundum nos factus, super nos ex virgine sine alieno consortio 
 
APPENDIX. 31 [ 
 
 inoarn.atus est. Et ipse virt/initatem veram et perfectam esse, 'in se 
 ij}so demon stravit. Unde hanc nobis legem nou s'fafuif (non eiiim 
 (imnes eapinnt verbum hoc, lit ipse dixit) sed ojiere nos erudivit."-r- 
 Joan. Damasc. (Orthod. Fidei, 1. iv. c. 25). 
 
 Now if abstinence from the satisfaction of tlie sen.sual impulse, the 
 negation of diiference of sex and consequently of sexual love, — for 
 what is this without the other ? — is the principle of the Christian 
 heaven and salvation ; then necessarily the satisfaction of the sexual 
 impulse, sexual love, on which marriage is founded, is the source of 
 sin and evil. And so it is held. The mystery of original sin is the 
 mystery of sexual desire. All men are conceived in sin because they 
 were conceived with sensual, i.e., natural pleasure. The act of 
 generation, as an act of sensual enjoyment, is sinful. Sin is propa- 
 gated from Adam down to us, simply because its propagation is the 
 natural act of generation. This is the mystery of Christian original 
 sin. " Atque hie quam alienus a vero sit, etiam hie reprehenditur, 
 quod vohiptatem in homine Deo authore creatam asserit principaliter. 
 Sed hoc diviuae scrijjtura redarguit, quae serpentis insidiis atque 
 illecebris infusam Adae atque Evae voluptatem docet, siquideni 
 
 ipse serpens voluptas sit Quomodo igitur voluptas ad paradisum 
 
 revocare nos potest, quae sola nos paradiso exuit?" — Ambrosius 
 (Ep. L. X. Ep. 82). " Voluptas ipsa .sine ndpa nuUatenus esse 
 potest." — Petrus L. (1. iv. dist. 31, c. 5). " Omnes in peccatis nati 
 sumus, et ex cnriiis delectatione concepti culpam originalem nobis- 
 cum traximus." — Gregorius (Petrus L. 1. ii. dist. 30, c. 2). "Firmis- 
 sime teue et nuUatenus dubites, omnem hominem, qai -guv co7icid)itimi 
 
 viri et Tmdieris concipitur, cum original! peccato nasci Ex his 
 
 datur intelligi, quid sit originale pieccatam, scl. vitium conmp>iscentiae, 
 quod in omnes concupiscentialiter natos per Adam intravit." — (Ibid. 
 c. 3, see also dist. 31, c. i.) " Peccati causa ex came est." — Ambrosius 
 (ibid.) " Chtistus, pieccatvm non habet, nee originale traxit, nee suuni 
 addidit : extra voluptatem carnalis libidinis venit, non ibi fuit 
 
 complex.iis maritalis Omnis geii.eratus, damnatus." — Augustinus 
 
 (Serm. ad Pop. S. 294, cc. 10, 16). '■ Homo natus de mtdiere et oh hoe 
 cum rea^M."— Bernardus (de Consid. 1. ii.). " Peccatum quomodo 
 
 non fuit, ubi libido non defuit^ Quo pacto, inquam, aut sanctus 
 
 asseretur conceptus, qui de spiritus nou est, ne dicam de peccato est I" 
 —Id. (Epist. 174, edit. cit.). "All that is born into the world of 
 man and woman is sinful, under God's auger and curse, condemned 
 to death." '-AH men born of a father and mother aie children of 
 wrath by nature, as St. Paul testifies, Ephes. ii." " We have by 
 nature a tainted, sinful conception and birth."— Luther (Th. xvi. 246, 
 573). It is clear from these examples, that " carnal intercourse — 
 even a kiss is carnal intercourse- is the radical sm, the radical evil 
 of mankind ; and consequently the basis of marriage, the sexual 
 impulse, honestly outspoken, is a product of the devil. It is true 
 that the creature as the work of God is good, but it has long ceased 
 to exist as it was created. The devil has alienated the creature 
 from God and corrupted it to the very foundation. Cursed be 
 the o-round for thy sake." The fall of the creature, however, is only 
 au h°ypothesis by which faith drives from its mind the burdensome. 
 
312 APPENDIX. 
 
 disquieting contradiction, that Nature is a product of God, and yet, 
 as it actually is, does not harmonise witli God, i.e., with the Chris- 
 tian sentiment. 
 
 Christianity certainly did not pronounce the flesh as flesh, matter 
 as matter, to be something sinful, impure ; on the contrary ,^ it con- 
 tended vehemently against the heretics who held this opinion and 
 rejected marriage. (See for example Augustin. contra Faustum, 
 1. 29, c. 4, ). 30, c. 6. Clemens Alex. Stromata, lib. iii. and Bernard. 
 Super Cantica, Sevmo 66.) But quite apart from the hatred to 
 heretics which so inspired the holy Christian Church and made it 
 so politic, this protest rested on grounds which by no means involved 
 the recognition of Nature as such, and under limitations, i.e., nega- 
 tions, which make the recognition of Nature merely apparent and 
 illusory. The distinction between the heretics and the orthodox is 
 only this, that the latter said indirectly, covertly, secretly, what the 
 former declared plainly, directly, but for that very reason offensively. 
 Pleasure is not separable from matter. Material pleasure is nothing 
 further, so to speak, than the joy of matter in itself, matter proving 
 itself by activity. Every joy is self-activity, every pleasure a mani- 
 festation of force, energy. Every organic function is, in a normal 
 condition, united with enjoyment ; even breathing is a pleasurable 
 act, which is not perceived as such only because it is an uninterrupted 
 process. He therefore who declares generation, fleshly intercourse, 
 as such, to be pure, but fleshly intercourse united with sensual plea- 
 sure to be a consequence of original sin and consequently itself a 
 sin, acknowledges only the dead, not the living flesh — he raises a 
 mist before us, he condemns, rejects the act of generation, and 
 matter in general, though under the appearance of not rejecting it, 
 of acknowledging it. The unhypocritical, honest acknowledgment 
 of sensual life is the acknowledsment of sensual pleasure. In brief, 
 he who, like the Bible, like the Church, does not acknowledge fleshly 
 pleasure — that, be it understood, which is natural, normal, insepar- 
 able from life — does not acknowledge the flesh. That which is not 
 recognised as an end in itself (it by no means follows that it should 
 be the ultimate end) is in truth not recognised at all. Thus he who 
 allows me wine only as medicine forbids me the enjoyment of wine. 
 Let not the liberal supply of wine at the wedding at Cana be urged. 
 For that scene transports us, by the metamorphosis of water into 
 wine, beyond Nature into the region of supernaturalism. Where, 
 as in Christianity, a supernatural, spiritual body is regarded as the 
 true, eternal body. I.e., a body from which all objective, sensual im- 
 pulses, all flesh, all nature, is;removed, there real, i.e., sensual fleshly 
 matter is denied, is regarded as worthless, nothing. 
 
 Certainly Christianity did not make celibacy a law (save at a 
 later period for the priests). But for the very reason that 
 chastity, or ratiier privation of marriage, of sex, is the highest, 
 the most transcendent, supernaturalistic, heavenly virtue, it can- 
 not and must not be lowered into a common object of duty • it 
 stands above the law, it is the virtue of Christian grace and free- 
 dom. " Christus hortatur idoneos ad coelibatnm, ut donum recte 
 tueaiitur ; idem Christus iis, qui pu)itiitem. extra conjtujium non 
 
APPENDIX. ^i^ 
 
 retinent, praecipit, ut pure in conjugio vivant."— Melancthon. (Re- 
 sponsio ad Colonienses. l)eclam. T. iii.). " Virginitas noii aaX, jussa, 
 sed adinonita, quia nimis est excelsa." — De modo bene viv. (Sermo 
 2i). "Et qui matriraonio jungit virginem suam, benefacit, et qui 
 nonjungit, melius facit. Quod igitur bonum est, non vitandum est, 
 et quod est melius eligendum est. Itaque non imponitur, sed pro- 
 ponitur. Et ideo bene Apostolus dixit : De virginibus autem 
 praeceptum non babeo, consilium auteni do. Ubi praeceptum est, 
 
 ibi lex est, ubi consilium, ibi gratia est Praeceptum eniui 
 
 castitatis est, consiliiim integritatis Sed K(?c vidua praeceptum 
 
 accipit, sed consilium. Consilium autem non semel datum, sed 
 saepe repetitum." — Ambrosius (Liber, de viduis). That is to say ■ 
 cehbacy, abstinence from marriage, is no law in the common or 
 Jewish sense, but a law in the Christian sense, or for the C'hristian 
 sentiment, which takes Christian virtue and perfection as the rule 
 of conscience, as the ideal of feeling, — no despotic but a friendly 
 law, no public but a secret, esoteric law — a mere counsel, i.e., a 
 law which does not venture to express itself as a law, a law for 
 those of finer feelings, not for the great mass. Thou mayst marry ; 
 yes indeed ! without any fear of committing a sin, i.e., a public, 
 express, plebeian sin ; but thou dost all the better if thou dost not 
 marry ; meanwhile this is only my undictatorial, friendly advice. 
 Omnia licetit, sed omnia non expedixmt. What is allowed in the first 
 member of the sentence is retracted in the second. Licet, says the 
 man ; non ex2}edit, says the Christian. But only that which is good 
 for the Christian is fur the man, so far as he desires to be a Chris- 
 tian, the standard of doing and abstaining. " Quae non expediunt, 
 nee licent," such is the conclusion arrived at by the sentiment of 
 Christian nobility. Marriage is therefore only an indulgence to 
 the weakness, or rather the strength of the flesh, a taint of nature 
 in Christianity, a falling short of the genuine, perfect Christian 
 sentiment ; being, however, nevertheless good, laudable, even holy, 
 in so far as it is the best antidote to fornication. For its own sake, 
 as the self-enjoyment of sexual love, it is not acknowledged, not 
 consecrated ; thus the holiness of marriage in Christianity is only 
 an ostensible holiness, only illusion, for that which is not acknow- 
 ledged for its own sake is not acknowledged at all, while yet there 
 is a deceitful show of acknowledgment. jNIarriage is sanctioned 
 not in order to hallow and satisfy the flesh, but to re.^trict the flesh, 
 to repress it, to kill it — to drive Beelzebub out by Beelzebub. " Quae 
 res et viris et feminis omnibus adest ad matrimonium et stuprum i 
 Commixtio carnis scilicet, cujus concupiscentiam Dominus stupro 
 
 adaequavit Ideo virginis principalis sanctitas, quia caret stupri 
 
 affinitati." — TertuUianus (de Exhort. Cast. c. 9). " Et de ipso con- 
 jugis melius aliquid, quam concessisti, monuisti." — Augustinus 
 (Confess, x. c. 30). "It is better to marry than to burn." — i Cor. 
 vii. 9. But how much better is it, says TertuUian, developing this 
 
 text, neither to marry nor to burn "Possum dicere, quod per- 
 
 mittitur boyium non «5<."— (AdUxorem,l.i.c.3.) "De mmoribus bonis 
 
 est conjugiam, quod non meretur palmam, sed est in remedium 
 
 Prima institutio habuit praeceptum, secunda indulgentiam. Didi- 
 
314 APPENDIX. 
 
 cimus enim ab Apostolo, liumano seneri proijter vitaudiim fornica- 
 tionem iiidultum esse coiijugium."— Petrus Lomb. (1. iv. dist. 26, 
 c. 2). " The :Master of the Sentences says rightly, that in Paradise 
 marriage was ordained as service, but after sin as medicine." — Luther 
 (Th. i. p. 349). " 'Where marriage and virginity are compared, cer- 
 tainly chastity is a nobler gift tlian marriage." — Id. (Th. i. p. 319). 
 '■ Those whom the weakness of nature does not compel to marriage, 
 but who are such that they can dispense with marriage, these do 
 rightly to abstain from marriage." — Id. (Th. v. p. 538). Christian 
 sophistry will reply to this, that only marriage which is not Christian, 
 only that which is not consecrated by the spirit of Christianity, i.e., 
 in which Nature is not veiled in pious images, is unholy. But if 
 marriage, if Nature is first made holy by relation to Christ, it is 
 not the holiness of marriage which is declared, but of Christianity; 
 and marriage, Nature, in and by itself, is unholy. And what is the 
 semblance of holiness with which Christianity invests marriage, in 
 order to becloud the understanding, but a pious illusion ^ Can the 
 Christian fulfil his marriage duties without surrendering himself, 
 willingly or not, to the passion of love ? Yes indeed. The Christian 
 has for his object the replenishing of the Christian Church, not the 
 satisfaction of love. The end is holy, but the means in itself un- 
 holy. And the end sanctifies, exculpates the means. " Conjugalis 
 concubitus generandi gratia non habet culpam." Thus the Christian, 
 at least the true Christian, denies, or at least is bound to deny 
 Nature, while he satisfies it ; he does not wish for, he rather con- 
 temns the means in itself ; he seeks only the end in abs/racio ; he 
 does with religious, supranaturalistio horror what he does, though 
 against his will, with natural, sensual pleasure. The Christian does 
 not candidly confess his sensuality, he denies Nature before his 
 faith, and his faith before Nature, i.e., he publicly disavows what he 
 privately does. Oh, how much better, truer, purer-hearted in this 
 respect were the heathens, who made no secret of their sensuality, 
 tlian the Christians, who, 'while gratifying the flesh, at the same 
 time deny that they gratify it ! To this day the Christians adhere 
 theoretically to their heavenly origin and destination ; to this day, 
 out of supranaturalistio affectation, they deny their sex, and turn 
 away with mock modesty from every sensuous picture, every naked 
 statue, as if they were angels ; to this day they repress, even by 
 legal force, every open-hearted, ingenuous self-confession even of the 
 most uncorrupt sen.suality, only stimulating bv this public prohibi- 
 tion the secret enjoyment of sensuality. What then, speaking 
 briefly and plainly, is the distinction between Christians and 
 heathens in this matter ? The heathens confirmed, the Christians 
 contradicted their faith by their lives. The heathens do what they 
 mean to do, the Cliristians what they do not mean : the former, 
 where they sin, sin with their conscience, the latter against their 
 conscience ; the former sin simply, the latter doubly ; the former 
 from hypertrophy, the latter from atrophy of the flesh. The specific 
 crime of the heathens is the ponderable, palpable crime of licen- 
 tiousness, that of the Christians is the imponderable, theologicid 
 Clime of hypocrisy, — that hypocrisy of which Jesuitism is indeed 
 
APPENDIX. ,,- 
 
 the most striking, world-historioal, but nevertljeless only a parti- 
 cular manifestation. "Theology makes sinners," says Luther- 
 Luther, whose positive qualities, his heart and understanding, so 
 far as they applied thenjseives to natural things, were not perverted 
 by theology. And Montesquieu gives the best commentary on this 
 saying of Luthers when he says : " La devotion trouve, ])()ur fau-e 
 de mauvaises actions, des raisons, qu'un simple honnete homme ne 
 saurait trouver." — (Pensoes Diverse^.) 
 
 §i6. 
 
 The Christian heawn is Christian trvth. That whicJi is excluded 
 from heaven is excluded from true Christianity. In heaven tlie 
 Christian is free from that ivhich he wishes to he free from here — 
 free from the sexucd impulse, free from matter, free from Nahire in 
 genercd. " In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in 
 marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven." — iLitt. xxii. 
 30. " Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats ; but God shall 
 destroy {KaTapy-fitrei, make useless) both it and them." — i Cor. vi. 13. 
 " Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the 
 kingdom of heaven, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption." 
 — lb. XV. 50. " They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any 
 more ; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat." — Eev. 
 vii. 16. "And there shall be no night there ; and they need no 
 candle, neither light of the sun." — lb. xxii. 5. " Comedere, bibere, 
 vigilare, dormire, quiescere, laborare et caeteris necessitatihvs 
 naturae subjacere, vere magna miseriaest et afilictio homini devoto, 
 qui libenter esset absolutus et liber ab omni peccato. Utinam non 
 essent istae necessitates, sed solum spirituales aniniae refectiones, 
 quas heu ! satis raro degustamus." — Thomas a K. (de Imit. 1. i. 
 cc. 22, 25). )See also on this subject S. Gregorii Nyas. de Anima 
 et Kesurr., Lipsiae, 1837, pp. 98, 144, 153). It is true that the 
 Christian immortality, in distinction from the heathen, is not 
 the immortality of the soul, but that of the flesh, that is, of the 
 whole man. "Scientia immortalis visa est res illis (the heathen 
 philosophers) atque incorruptibilis. Nos autem, quibus divina 
 
 revelatio illuxit novimus, non solum mentem, sed affectus per- 
 
 purgatos, neque animam tantum, sed etiara corpus ad immortali- 
 tatem as'sumptum iri suo tempore." — Baco de Verul. (de Augm. 
 Scien. \. i.). On this account Celsiis reproached the Christians with 
 a des'iderium corporis. But this immortal body is, as has been 
 already remarked, an immaterial, i.e., a thoroughly fanciful, sub- 
 jective body— a body which is the direct negation of the. real, 
 natural body. The ideal on which this faith hinges is not the 
 recoo-nition or glorification of nature, of matter as such, but rather 
 the reality of the emotive imagination, the satisfaction of the un- 
 limited, supranaturalistic desire of happiness, to which the actual, 
 objective body is a limitation. , •„ , 
 
 As to what the angels strictly are, whom heavenly souls will be 
 like the Bible is as far from giving us any definite information as 
 ou other weighty subjects ; it only calls them Trvivfiara, spirits, and 
 
3i6 APPENDIX. 
 
 declfires tliem to be higher than men. The later Christians ex- 
 pressed themselves more definitely on this subject ; more definitely, 
 but variously. Some assigned bodies to the angels, others not ; a 
 diflference which, however, is only apparent, smce the angelic body 
 is only a phantasmal one. But concerning the human body of the 
 resurrection, they had not only difi'erent, but even opposite, con- 
 ceptio]is ; indeed, these contradictions lay in the nature of the case, 
 necessarily resulted from the fundamental contradiction of the re- 
 ligious consciousness which, as we have shown, exhibits itself in 
 the incompatible propositions that the body which is raised is the 
 same individual body which we had before the resurrection, and 
 that nevertheless it is another. It is the same body even to the 
 hair, "cum nee periturus sit capillus, ut ait Dominus : Capillus 
 de capite ve'itro non peribit." — Augustinus und Petrus, L. 1. iv. dist. 
 44, c. I. Nevertheless it is the same in such a way that every- 
 thing burdensome, everything contradictory to transcendental 
 feeling, is removed. "Immosicut dicit Augustinus : Detrahentur 
 vitia et remanebit natura. Siiperej-Crescentia autem cajiillorum et 
 ■iiiiii>iuim est de siiperjiiiitate etvitio imturae. Si enim noii peccasset 
 linino, rrexrerciit iimjiicx et capilli ejus usque aJ determinatam quaii- 
 titatem, sicat in leonibus et avibus." — (Addit. Henrici ab Vurimaria, 
 ibid. edit. Basiliae, 1513.) What a specific, naive, ingenuous, con- 
 fident, harmonious faith ! The risen body, as tiie same and yet 
 another, a new body, has hair and nails, otherwise it would be a 
 maimed body, deprived of an essential ornament, and consequently 
 the resurrection would not be a restitutio in inter/rum ; moreover 
 they are the same hair and nails as before, but yet so modified that 
 they are in accordance with the body. Why do not the believing 
 tiieologians of modern times enter into such specialities as occupied 
 the older theologians? Because their faith is itself only general, 
 indefinite, i.e., a faith which they only suppose themselves to 
 possess ; because, from fear of their understanding, which has 
 long been at issue with their faith, from fear of risking their feeble 
 faith by bringing it to the light, that is, considering it in detail, 
 they suppress the consequences, the necessary determinations of 
 their faith, and conceal them from their understanding. 
 
 § 17- 
 
 Wliat fiiitlt denies on earth it nflinns in heaven ; what it renounces 
 liere it recovers a hundred-fold tliere. In this world, faith occupies 
 itself with nullifying the body ; in the other world, with establishing 
 it. Here the main point is the separation of the soul from the 
 body, there the main point is the reunion of the body with the soid. 
 " 1 would live not only according to the soul, but according to the 
 body also. I would have the crjrpus with me ; I would that the 
 body should return to the soul and be united with it." — Luther (Tb. 
 vii. p. go). In that which is sensuous, Christ is supersensuous ; but 
 for that reason, in the supersensuous he is sensuous. Heavenly 
 bliss is tlierefore'bj; no means merely spiritual, it is equally corporeal, 
 sensuiius — a state in Avhich all wishes are fulfilled. " Whatever thy 
 
A PPENDIX. o , 7 
 
 lieart seeks joy and pleasure in, that shall be there in abundance 
 For it is said, God shall be all in all. And where God is, there 
 must be all good things that can ever be desired." " Dost thou 
 desire to see acutely, and to hear through walls, and to be so light 
 that thou mayst be wherever thou wilt m a moment, whether here 
 below on the earth, or above in the clouds, that shall all be, and 
 what more thou canst conceive, which thou couldst have in body 
 and soul, thou shalt have abundantly if thou hast him." — Luther 
 (Th. X. pp. 380, 381). Certainly eating, drinking, and marriage find 
 no place in the Christian heaven, as they do in the Mohammedan ; 
 but only because with these enjoyments want is associated, and with 
 want matter, i.e., passion, dependence, uuhappiness. "lllic ipsa 
 indigentia morietur. Tunc vere dives eris, quando nuUius indigens 
 eris." — Augustin. (Serm. ad Pop. p. 77, c. 9). The pleasures of this 
 earth are only medicines, says the same writer ; true health exi.sts 
 only in immortal life — " vera sanitas, nisi quando vera immortalitas." 
 The heavenly life, the heavenly body, is as free and unlimited as 
 wishes, as omnipotent as imagination. " Futurae ergo resurrectionis 
 corpus imperfectae felicitatis erit, si cibos suniere non potuerit, 
 imperfectae felicitatis, si cibus egiierit." — Augustin. (Epist. 102, § 
 6, edit. cit.). Nevertheless, existence in a body without fatigue, 
 without heaviness, without disagreeables, without disease, without 
 mortality, is associated with the highest corporeal well-being. Even 
 the knowledge of God in heaven is free from any effort of thought 
 or faith, is sensational, immediate knowledge — intuition. The 
 Christians are indeed not agreed whether God, as God, the essentia 
 Dei, will be visible to bodily eyes. (See, for example,^ Augustin. 
 Serm. ad Pop. p. 277, and Buddeus, Comp. Inst. Th. 1. ii. c. 3, § 4.) 
 But in this difference we again have only the contradiction between 
 the abstract and the real God ; the former is certainly not an object 
 of vision, but the latter is so. " Flesh and blood is the wall between 
 
 me and Christ, which will be torn away There everything will 
 
 be certain. For in that life the eyes will see, the mouth taste, and 
 
 the nose smell it ; the treasure will shine into the soul and life 
 
 Faith will cease, and I shall behold with my eyes."— Luther (Th. ix. 
 p. 595). It is clear from this again, that God, as he is an object of 
 religious sentiment, is nothing else than a product of the imagina- 
 tion. The heavenly beings are supersensuous sensuous, immaterial 
 material beings, i.e., beings of the imagination ; but they are like 
 God, nay, identical with God, consequently God also is a super- 
 sensuous sensuous, an immaterial material being. 
 
 §18. 
 
 The contradiction in the Sacraments is the contradiction of 7iatur- 
 alism and supernaturalism. In the first place the natural qualities 
 of water are pronounced essential to Baptism. " Si quis dixerit 
 aquam veram et natnralem non esse de necessitate Baptismi atque 
 iaeo verba ilia domini nostri Jesu Christi : Nisi quis renatus fuerit 
 ex aqua et Spiritu sancto, ad metamorpham aliquam detorserit, 
 anathema sit.— Concil. Trident. (Sessio vii. Can. ii. de Bapt.) De 
 
3iS APPENDIX. 
 
 siiljstanil(( liujua sacramenti sunt verhum et elemenium Xon 
 
 ergo ill alio liquore potest consecraii baptismus uisi m cujua.— 
 Petrus Loiub. (1. iv. dist. 3, c. 1. c. 5). Ad certitudmem baptisnn 
 
 requiritur major quam ttidiis guttae quantitas Necesse est ad 
 
 valorem lonptismi fieri conladum 'p^uj^^icinn inter aquam et corpus 
 baptizati, ita ut non siifticiat, vestes tautum ipsins aqua tmgi...... 
 
 Ad certitudinem baptismi requiritur, ut saltem talis j>ars corporis 
 abluatur, nitione cuju.s homo solet dici vere ablutus, v. 6, coUum, 
 Immeri, jiectus et prai'.vrfim caj,„t.—Theolog. Scbol. (P. Mezger. 
 Aug. Vind. 1695, Th. iv. pp. 230, 231). Aqiiam, eamrjve veram ac 
 naturidi'ni in baptismo adliibendam esse, exemplo Joannis....^. 
 
 lion minus vero et Apostolorum Act. viii. 36, x. 47, patet. — F. 
 Buddeus (Com. Inst. Th. dog. 1. iv. c. i. § 5)." Thus water is 
 essential But now comes the nefiation of the natural qualities 
 of water. The siginficance of Baptism is not the natural power 
 of water, but the supernatural, almighty power of the Word of 
 God, who instituted the use of water as a sacrament, and now by 
 means of this element imparts himself to man in a supernatural, 
 miraculous manner, but who could just as well have chosen any 
 other element in order to produce the same effect. So Luther, for 
 example, says : " Understand the distinction, that Baptism is quite 
 another thing than all other w'ater, not on account of its natural 
 i|ualily, but because here something more noble is added. For 
 
 (iod himself brings hither his glory, power, and might as 
 
 iSl. Augustine also hath taught: 'accedat verbum ad eleinentum 
 et fit sacramcntum.'" "Baptize them in the name of the Father, 
 
 cVc. AVater without these words is mere water Who will 
 
 call the baptism of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost mere water 1 
 ].)o we not see what sort of spice God puts into this water ? 
 AVheii sugar is thrown into water it is no longer water, but a 
 cdstly claret or other beverage. AVhy then do we here separate 
 the w ord from the water and say, it is mere water ; as if the word 
 
 of God, yea, God himself, were not with and in the water 
 
 Therefore, the water of Baptism is such a water as takes away sin, 
 death, and unhappiuess, helps us in heaven and to everlasting life. 
 It is become a precious sugared water, aromaticiiDu and restorative, 
 since God has mingled himself therewith." — Luther (Th. xvi. p. 
 105). 
 
 As with the water in Baptism, which sacrament is nothing 
 without water, though this water is nevertheless in itself in- 
 different, so is it with the wine and bread in the Eucharist, even 
 in Catholicism, where the substance of bread and wine is destroved 
 by the power of the Almighty. " Accidentia eucharistica tamdiu 
 C(.mtinent Christum, quamdiu retinent illiid temperamentum, cum 
 ipio connaturaliter panis et viiii substantia permaneret : ut econtra, 
 quando tanta fit temperamenti dissolutio, illorumque corruptio, ut 
 sub lis substantia panis et vini naturaliter remanere non posset, 
 do^inuiit continere Christum." — Theol. Schol. (Mezger. 1. c. p. 
 292). That is to say : so long as the bread remains bread, so long 
 does the bread remain flesh; when the bread is gone, the flash 
 is gone. Therefore a due portion of bread, at least euou"-h to 
 
APPENDIX. 3,g 
 
 render bread recognisable as such, must be present, for conse- 
 cration to be possible.— (ib. p. 284.) For the rest, Catholic tran- 
 substantiation, the conversio realis et physica totius 'X>anis in cm-pus 
 Christi, is only a consistent continuation of the miracles of the 
 Old and New Testaments. By the transformation of water into 
 wine, of^ a staff into a serpent, of stones into brooks (Ps. cxiv.) by 
 these biblical transubstantiations the Catholics explained and 
 proved the turning of bread into flesh. He who does not stumble 
 at those transformations, has no right, no reason to hesitate at 
 accepting this. The Protestant doctrine of the Lord's Supper is 
 not less in contradiction with reason than the Catholic. " The 
 body of Christ cannot be partaken otherwise than in two ways, 
 spivituidly or bodily. Again, this bodily partaking cannot be 
 visible or perceptible,'' i.e., is not bodily, " else no bread would 
 remain. Again, it cannot be mere bread ; otherwise it would not 
 be a bodily communion of the body of Christ, but of bread. 
 Iherefore the bread broken must also be truly and corporeally 
 the body of Christ, although invisibly " {i.e., incorporeally). — 
 Luther (Th. xix. p. 203). The difference is, that the Protestant 
 gives no explanation concerning the mode in which bread can be 
 ilesh and wine blood. " Thereupon we stand, believe, and teach, 
 that the body of Christ is truly and corporeally taken and eaten 
 in the Lord's Supper. But how this takes place, or how he is in 
 the bread, we know not, and are not bound to know." — Id. (ut 
 sup. p. 393). " He who will be a Christian must not ask, as our 
 fanatics and factionaries do, how it can be that bread is the body 
 of Christ and wine the blood of Christ." — Id. (Th. xvi. p. 220). 
 '■ Cum retineamus doctrinam de praesentia corporis Christi, quid 
 opus est quaerere de modo ? " — Melancthon (Vita Mel. Came- 
 rarius, ed. Strobel, Halae, 177 7, P- 446). Hence the Protes- 
 tants as well as the Catholics took refuge in Omnipotence, the 
 grand source of ideas contradictory to reason. — (Concord. Summ. 
 Beg. Art. 7, Aff. 3, Negat. 13. See also Luther, e.g., Th. xix. p. 
 400.) 
 
 An instructive example of theological incomprehensibleness and 
 supernaturalness is afibrded by the distinction, in relation to the 
 Eucharist (Concordienb. Summ. Beg. art. 7), between partaking 
 with the mouth and partaking in a fleshly or natural manner. 
 " We believe, teach, and confess that the body of Christ is taken 
 in the bread and wine, not alone spiritually by faith, but also 
 with the mouth, yet not in a Capeniaitic, but a supernatural 
 lieavenly manner, for the sake of sacramental union." ''Probe 
 namque discrimen inter manducationem oralem et jiaturalem 
 tenendum est. Etsi enim oralem manducationem adseramus 
 
 atque propugnemus, naturalem tamen nou adrnittimus 
 
 Omnis equid'em manducatio naturalis etiam oralis est, sed non 
 
 vicissim oralis manducatio statim est naturalis Unicus 
 
 itaque licet sit actus, unicmnque organum, quo panenr et corpus 
 Christi itemque vinum et sanguineni Christi accipimus, 'jiiodus 
 (yes truly, the mode) nihilominus maximopere differt, cum panem 
 
320 APPENDIX. 
 
 et vinum modo naturali et sensibili, corpus et sanguinem Cliri^ti 
 simul equidem cum pmw et vino, at modo siij>ermfiirali etinseii- 
 dbili, qui adeo etiam a neniine mortalmm (nor, assuredly, Dy auy 
 Ood) explicare potest, rfvera interim et ore corporis acnjnamus. — 
 Jo. Fr. Buddeus (1. c. Lib. v. c. i. § 1 5)- 
 
 § 19- 
 Dorpna and MoraJitv, Faith and Love, contradict each other in 
 Chrikiitnity. It is true that God, the object of faith, is m himself 
 the idea of the species in a mystical garb— the common Father of 
 men— and so far love to God is mystical love to man. But God is 
 not only the universal being ; he is also a peculiar, personal being, 
 distinguished from love. Where the being is distinguished from 
 love arises arbitrarincn.-i. Love acts from necessity, personality from 
 will. Personality proves itself as such only by arbitrariness ; per- 
 sonality seeks dominion, is greedy of glory ; it desires only to assert 
 itself, to enforce its own authority. The highest worship of God 
 as a personal being is therefore the worship of God as an absolutely 
 unlimited, arbitrary being. Personality, as such, is indifferent to 
 all substantial determinations which lie in the^ nature of things ; 
 inherent necessity, the coercion of natural qualities, appears to it a 
 constraint. Here we have the mystery of Christian love. The love 
 of God, as the predicate of a personal being, has here the signifi- 
 cance of grace, favour : God is a gracious master, as in Judaism he 
 was a severe master. Grace is arbitrary love, — love which does 
 not act from an inward necessity of the nature, but ^yhich is equally 
 capable of nut doing what it does, which could, if it would, con- 
 demn its object ; thus it is a groundless;, unessential, arbitrary, 
 absolutely subjective, merely personal love. '■ He hath mercy on 
 whom he w'ill have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth (Rom. 
 
 ix. i8) The king does what he will. So is it with the will of 
 
 God. He has perfect right and full power to do with us and all 
 creatures as he will. And no wrong is done to us. If his wall had 
 a measure or rule, a law, ground, or cause, it would not be the 
 divine will. For what he wills is right, because he wills it. "Where 
 
 there is faith and the Holy Spirit it is believed that God 
 
 would be sood and kind even if he consigned all men to damnation. 
 ' Is not Esau Jacob's brother 1 said the Lord. Yet I have loved 
 Jacob and hated Esau.'" — Luther (Th. xix. pp. 83, 87, 90, 91, 97). 
 Where love is understood in this sense, jealous watch is kept that 
 man attribute nothing to himself as merit, that the merit may lie 
 with the divine personality alone ; there every idea of necessity is 
 carefully dismissed, in order, through the feeling of obligation and 
 gratitude, to be able to adore and glorify the personality exclusively. 
 The Jews deified the pride of ancestry ; the Christians, on the other 
 hand, interpreted and transformed the Jewish aristocratic principle 
 of hereditary nobility into the democratic principle of nobility of 
 merit. The Jew makes salvation depend on birth, the Catholic 011 
 the merit of works, the Protestant on the merit of faith. But the 
 idea of obligation and meritoriousness allies itself only with a deed, 
 
APPENDIX. 321 
 
 a work, wliich cannot be demanded of me, or wlaicli does not 
 necessarily proceed from my nature. The works of the poet, of the 
 philosopher, can be regarded in the light of merit only as considered 
 externally. They are works of genius— inevitable products : the 
 poet must bring forth poetry, the philosopher must philosophise. 
 They have the highest satisfaction in the activity of creation, apart 
 from any collateral or ulterior purpose. And it is just so with a 
 truly noble moral action. To the man of noble feeling, the noble 
 action is natural : he does not hesitate whether he should do it or 
 not, he does not place it in the scales of choice ; he must do it. 
 Only he who so acts is a man to be confided in. Meritoriousness 
 always involves the notion that a thing is done, so to speak, out of 
 luxury, not out of necessity. The Christians indeed celebrated the 
 highest act in their religion, the act of God becoming man, as a 
 work of love. But Cliristian love in so far as it reposes on faith, 
 on the idea of God as a master, a Bominiis, has the significance of 
 an act of grace, of a love in itself superfluous. A gracious master is 
 one who foregoes his rights, a master who does out of graciousness 
 what, as a master, he is not bound to do — what goes beyond the 
 strict idea of a master. To God, as a master, it is not even a duty 
 to do good to man ; he has even the right — for he is a master bound 
 by no law — to annihilate man if he wiU. In fact, mercy is optional, 
 non-necessary love, love in contradiction with the essence of love, 
 love which is not an inevitable manifestation of the nature, love 
 which the master, the subject, the person (personality is only an 
 abstract, modern expression for sovereignty) distinguishes from 
 himself as a predicate which he can either have or not have with- 
 out ceasing to be himself. This internal contradiction necessarily 
 manifested itself in the life, in the practice of Christianity ; it gave 
 rise to the practical separation of the subject from the predicate, of 
 faith from love. As the love of God to man was only an act of 
 grace, so also the love of man to man was only an act of favour or 
 grace on the part of faith. Christian love is the graciousness of 
 faith, as the love of God is the graciousness of personality or supre- 
 macy. (On the divine arbitrariness, see also J. A. Ernesti's treatise 
 previously cited : " Vindicise arbitrii divini.") 
 
 Faith has within it a malignant princiji^e. Christian faith, and 
 nothing else, is the ultimate ground of Christian persecution and 
 destruction of heretics. Faith recognises man only on condition 
 that he recognises God, i.e., faith itself. Faith is the honour which 
 man renders to God. And this honour is due unconditionally. To 
 faith the basis of all duties is faith in God : faith is the absolute 
 duty • duties to men are only derivative, subordinate. The unbe- 
 liever is thus 'an outlaw*— a man worthy of extermination. That 
 which denies God must be itself denied. The highest crime is the 
 crime laesae majestatis Dei. To faith God is a personal being— the 
 supremely personal, inviolable, privileged being. The acme of per- 
 sonality is honour ; hence an injury towards the highest personality 
 
 * "Haereticus usu omtiium jurium destitutus est, ut deportatus. "— J. H. 
 Boehmer (1. c. 1. v. Tit. vU. § 223. See also Tit. vi.) 
 
 A. 
 
322 APPENDIX. 
 
 is necessarily the highest crime. The honour of God cannot be dis- 
 avowed as an accidental, rude, anthropomorphic conception, lor 
 is not the personality, even the existence of God, a sensuous, 
 anthropomorphic conception ? Let those who renounce the honour 
 be consistent enough to renounce the personality. From the idea 
 of personality results the idea of honour, and from this again the 
 idea of religious offences. " Quicunque Magistratibus male precatus 
 fuerit, pro eorum arbitrio poenas luito ; Cjuicunque vero idem scelus 
 
 erga Deum admiserit kqiidihns hlasphemiae caiim obruitur." 
 
 —{Lev. xxiv. 15, 16. See also Deut. xii., whence the Catholics 
 deduce the right to kill heretics. Boehmer, L c. L v. Th. yii. 
 § 44.) " Eos autem merito torqueri, qui Deum nesciunt, ut im- 
 pios, ut injustos, nisi jirofanus nemo deliberat : quum parentem 
 omnium et domiimm omnium non minim sceleris sit ignorare, quam 
 laeth'ir." — ^limxcii Fel. Oct. c. 35. "Ubi erunt legis praecepta 
 diviuae, quae dicunt : honora patrem et matrem, si vocabulum 
 patris, quod in hiuuine honorari praecipitur, in Deo hnjmne vio- 
 latur '?■ "— Cypriani Epist. 73 (ed. Gersdorf). " Cur enim, cum datum 
 sit divinitus homini liberum arbitrium, adulteria legibus puniantur 
 et sacrilegia permittantur ? An ^fidem non servare levius est animam 
 l>eo, ijuamfeminiim viroV — Augustinus (de Correct. Donatist. lib. 
 ad Bonifaoium, c. 5). " )Si hi qui nummos adulterant morte mulc- 
 tantur, quid de illis stataenduin cenxemxs, qui fidem pervertere 
 (■(inii:i/iir?" — Paulus Cortesius (in Sententias (Petri L.) iii. 1. dist. 
 vii.). " Si enim illustrem ac praepotentem virum nequaquam ex- 
 lionorari a quoquam licet, et si quisquam exhonoraverit, decretis 
 legalibus reus sistitur et iiijuriarum auctor jure danuiatur : quanta 
 ulique majoris 2'i'^icuU crinien est, injwi-iosmn quemjnam Deo esse % 
 Semper enim per dignitatem injuriam perferentis crescit culpa 
 faoientis, quia necesse est, quauto major est persona ejus qui contu- 
 meliam patitur, tanto major sit noxa ejus, qui facit." Thus speaks 
 Salvianus (de Gubernat. Dei, \. vi. p. 218, edit, cit.) — Salvianus, 
 who is called Magistriim Upiscoportim, sui sciecidi Jeremiam, Scrip- 
 torem Christ ianissimtim, Orhis chnsiiniii meKjistrum. But heresy, 
 unbelief in general — heresy is only a definite, limited unbelief — is 
 blasphemy, and thus is the highest, the most flagitious crime. Thus 
 to cite only one among innumerable examples, .J. Oecolampadius 
 writes to Servetus : "Dum non summam patientiam prae me fero, 
 dolens Jesum Christum filium Dei sic dehonestari, parum christiane 
 tibi agere videor. In aliis mansuetus ero ; in blaspiliemiis quae in 
 Christum, non item." — (Historia Mich. Serveti. H. ab Allwoerden 
 Helmstadii, 1737, p. 13). For what is blasphemy? Every nega- 
 tion of an idea, of a definition, in which the honour of God, the 
 honour of faith is concerned. Servetus fell as a sacrifice to Christian 
 faith. Calvin said to Servetus two hours before his death : "Ego 
 vero ingenue praefatus, me nunquam jirivatas injurias fuisse per- 
 secutum," and parted from him with a sense of being thoroughly 
 sustained by the Bible : "Ab haeretico homine, qui avTOKaroLKpLToi 
 ^eacabat, secundum Paid i praeceptinn discessi." — (Ibid. p. 120.) Thus 
 it was by no means a personal hatred, though this may have been 
 conjoined, — it was a religious heitred which brought Servetus to 
 
APPENDIX. 323 
 
 the stake— the hatred which springs from tlie nature of unchecked 
 faith. Even Melancthon is known to have approved the execution 
 of Servetus. The Swiss theologians, whose opinion was asked by 
 the Genevans, very subtilely abstained, in their answer, from men- 
 tioning the punishment of death,* but agreed with the Genevans in 
 this — "HorrendosServeti errores detestandos esse,severiusque idcirco 
 in Servetum animadvertendum." Thus there is no difference as to 
 the principle, only as to the mode of punishment. Even Calvin 
 himself was so Christian as to desire to alleviate the horrible mode 
 of death to which the Senate of Geneva condemned Servetus. (See 
 on this subject, e.g., il. Adami Vita Calvini, p. 90 ; Vita Bezae, p. 
 207 ; Vitae Theol. Exter. Francof. 1618.) We have, therefore, to 
 consider this execution as an act of general significance — as a work 
 of faith, and that not of Koman Catholic, but of reformed, biblical, 
 evangelical faith. That heretics must not be compelled to a pro- 
 fession of the faith by force was certainly maintained by most of 
 the lights of the Church, but there nevertheless lived in them the 
 most malignant hatred of heretics. Thus, for example, St. Bernard 
 says (Super Cantica, § 66) in relation to heretics : " Fides suadenda 
 est, non imponenda," but he immediately adds : " Quamquam melius 
 procul dubio gladio ooercerentur, illius videlicet, qui non sine causa 
 gladium portat,quam insuum erroremmultos trajicere permittantur." 
 If the faith of the present day no longer produces such flagrant 
 deeds of horror, this is due only to the fact thatr the faith of this 
 age is not an uncompromising, living faith, but a sceptical, eclectic, 
 unbelieving faith, curtailed and maimed by the power of art and 
 science. Where heretics are no longer burned either in the fires of 
 this world or of the other, there faith itself has no longer any fire, 
 any vitality. The faith which allows variety of belief renounces its 
 divine origin and rank, degrades itself to a subjective opinion. It 
 is not to Christian faith, not to Christian, love (i.e., love limited by 
 faith) ; no ! it is to doubt of Christian faith, to the victory of religious 
 scepticism, to free-thinie?:s, to heretics, that we oive tolerance, freedom 
 of opinion. It was the heretics, persecuted by the Christian Church, 
 who alone fouglit for freedom of conscience. Christian freedom 
 is freedom in non-essentials only : on the fundamental articles of 
 faith freedom is not allowed. When, however. Christian faith — 
 faith considered in distinction from love, for faith is not one with 
 love, " potestis habere fidem sine caritate " ( Augustinus, Serm. ad 
 Pop. § 90) — is pronounced to be the principle, the ultimate ground 
 of the violent deeds of Christians towards heretics (that is, such 
 deeds as arose from real believing zeal), it is obviously not 
 meant that faith could have these consequences immediately and 
 originally, but only in its historical development. Still, even to 
 the earliest Christians the heretic was an antichrist, and necessarily 
 so — " adversus Christum sunt haeretici " (Cyprianus, Epist. 76, § 14, 
 
 * Very many Christians rejected the punishment of death, but other criminal 
 punishments of lieretics, such as banishment, confiscation — punishments which 
 deprive of life indirectly — they did not find in contradiction with their Christian 
 faith. See on this subject J. H.Boehmer, Jus. Eccl. Protest. 1. v. Tit. vii. 
 e.g. §'§ i. 15s. iS7. 162, 163. 
 
324 APPENDIX. 
 
 edit, cit.)— accursed— " apostoli in epistolis haereticos exsecrati 
 
 sunt =' (Cyprianus, ib. § 6)— a lost being, doomed by God to hell 
 and everlasting death. "Thou hearest that the tares are alrea,dy 
 condemned and sentenced to the fire. Why then wilt thou lay 
 many sufferings on a heretic 1 Dost thou not hear that he is already 
 judged to a punishment heavier than he can bear? Who art thou, 
 that thou wilt interfere and punish him who has already fallen 
 under the punishment of a more powerful master ? What would I 
 do against a thief already sentenced to the gallows ?...... God has 
 
 already commanded his angels, who in his own time will be the 
 executioners of heretics."— Luther (Th. xvi. p. 132). When there- 
 fore the State, the world, became Christian, and also, for that 
 reason, Christianity became worldly, the Christian religion a State 
 religion ; then it was a necessary consequence that the condemnation 
 of heretics, which was at first only religious or dogmatic, became a 
 political, practical condemnation, and the eternal punishment of 
 hell was anticipated by temporal punishment. If, therefore, the 
 definition and treatment of heresy as a punishable crime is in 
 contradiction with the Christian faith, it follows that a Christian 
 king, a Christian State, is in contradiction with it ; for a Christian 
 State is that which executes the Divine judgments of faith with 
 the sword, which makes earth a heaven to believers, a hell to un- 
 believers. " Docuimus pertinere ad reges relic/iosos, non solnm 
 
 adulteria vel homicidia vel hujusmodi alia flagitia seu facinora, 
 verum etiani sacrilegia severilate congnui cohibere." — Augustinus 
 (Epist. ad Dulcitium). " Kings ought thus to serve the Lord 
 Christ by helping with laws that his honour be furthered. Now 
 when the temporal magistracy finds scandalous errors, whereby the 
 honour of the Lord Christ is blasphemed and men's salvation 
 
 hindered, and a schism arises among the people where such 
 
 false teachers will not be admonished and cease from preaching, 
 there ought the temporal magistracy confidently to arm itself, and 
 know that nothing else befits its office but to apply the sword and 
 all force, that doctrine may be pure and God's service genuine and 
 unperverted, and also that peace and unity may be preserved." — 
 Luther (Th. xv. pp. no, iii). Let it be further remarked here, 
 that Augustine justifies the application of coercive measures for 
 the awaking of Christian faith by urging that the Apostle Paul 
 was converted to Christianity by a deed of force — a miracle. (De 
 Correct. Donat. c. 6.) ^ The intrinsic connection bet^i'een temporal 
 and eternal, i.e., political and spiritual punishment, is clear from 
 this, that the same reasons which have been urged against the 
 temporal punishment of heresy are equally valid against the 
 punishment of hell. If heresy or unbelief cannot be punished Im-e 
 because it is a mere mistake, neither can it be punished by God in 
 hell If coercion is in contradiction with the nature of faith, so 
 is hell ; for the fear of the terrible consequence of unbelief, the 
 torments of hell, urge to belief against knowledge and will. Boeh- 
 mer, in his Jus. EccL, argues that lieresy and unbelief should be 
 struck out of the category of crimes, that unbelief is only a vitium 
 theologicum, apeccatttmin Deum. But God, in the view of faith, 
 
APPENDIX. 325 
 
 is not only a religious, but a political, juridical being, the Kinc of 
 kings, the true head of the State. " There is no power but of God 
 ......it is the minister of God"— Kom. xiii. i, 4. If, therefore, the 
 
 jaridical idea of majesty, of kingly dignity and honour, applies to 
 God, sin against God, unbelief, must by consequence come under 
 the definition of crime. And as with God, so with faith. Where 
 faith is still a truth, and a public truth, there no doubt is entertained 
 that it can be demanded of every one, that every one is bound to 
 believe. Be it further observed, that the Christian Church has 
 gone so far in its hatred against heretics, that according to the 
 canon law even the suspicion of heresy is a crime, "ita ut de jure 
 canonico revera crimen suspecfi detur, cujus existentiain friistra in 
 jure civili quaerimns." — Boehmer (1. c. v. Tit. vii. §§ 23-42). 
 
 Tlie command to love enemies extends onhj to personal enemies, 
 not to the enemies of God, the enemies of faith. " Does not the Lord 
 Christ command that we should love even our enemies ? How 
 then does David here boast that he hates the assembly of the 
 
 wicked, and sits not with the ungodly ? For the sake of the 
 
 person I should love them; but for the sake of the doctrine I should 
 hate them. And thus I must hate them or hate God, who com- 
 mands and wills that we should cleave to his word alone..:... What 
 I cannot love with God, I must hate ; if they only preach some- 
 thing which is against God, all love and friendship is destroyed ; — 
 thereupon I hate thee, and do thee no good. For faith must be 
 uppermost, and where the word of God is attacked, hate takes the 
 
 place of love And so David means to say - I hate them, not 
 
 because they have done injury and evil to me and led a bad and 
 wicked life, but because they despise, revile, blaspheme, falsify, and 
 persecute the word of God." " Faith and love are two things. 
 Faith endures notliing, love endures all things. Faith curses, love 
 blesses : faith seeks vengeance and punishment, love seeks forbear- 
 ance and forgiveness." " Piather than God's word should fall and 
 heresy stand, faith would wish all creatures to be destroyed ; for 
 through heresy men lose God himself." — Luther (Th. vi. p. 94 ; Th. v. 
 pp. 624, 630). See also, on this subject, my treatise in the Deutsches 
 Jahrh. and Augustini Enarrat. in Psalm cxxxviii. (cxxxix.). As 
 Luther distinguishes the, 2)erson from the enemy of God, so Augus- 
 tine here distinguishes the man from the enemy of God, from the 
 unbeliever, and says : We should hate the ungodliness in the man, 
 but love the humanity in him. But what, then, in the eyes of faith, 
 is the man in distinction from faith, man without faith, i.e., with- 
 out God? Nothing: for the sum of all realities, of all that is 
 worthy of love, of all that is good and essential, is [faith, as that 
 which alone apprehends and possesses God. It is true that man as 
 man is the image of God, but only of the natural God, of God as 
 the Creator of Nature. But the Creator is only God as he manifests 
 himself outwardly ; the true God, God as he is in himself, the 
 inward essence of God, is the triune God, is especially Christ, (bee 
 Luther, Th. xiv. pp. 2, 3, and Th. xvi. p. 581.) And the image of this 
 true essential. Christian God, is only the believer, the Christian. 
 Moreover, man is not to be loved for his own sake, but for God s. 
 
326 APPENDIX. 
 
 "Diligendua est propter Deum, Deus vero propter se ipsum."— 
 Augustinus (de Doctrina Chr. 1. i. cc. 22, 27). How, then, should the 
 imbelieving man, who has no resemblance to the true God, be an 
 object of love 2 
 
 § 20. 
 
 Faith separates man from man, puts in the place of the natu- 
 ral unity founded in NaUire and Love a guperiwtnral uniti/ — 
 the unity of Faith. " Inter Christianum et gentilem non Jidcs 
 
 tantmn "debet, sed etiam vita distinguere Nolite, ait Apd- 
 
 stolus, jugum ducere cum infidelibus Sit ergo i?iter nos et illos 
 
 maxima, separatio." — Hieronyraus (Epist. Caelantiffi matronae) 
 
 "Prope nihil gravius quam copulari alienigeniae Nam cum 
 
 ipsum conjugium velamine sacerdotali et benedictione sanctificari 
 oporteat : ipiomodo piotext coiijugivm dici, iil/i non est fidei concordia ? 
 
 iSaepeplerique capti amorefeminarum fidem suamprodiderunt.'' 
 
 — Ambrosius (Ep. 70, Lib. ix.). " Non enim licet christiano cum 
 gentili vel judaeo inire conjugium." — Petrus L. (1. iv. dist. 39, c. i). 
 And this separation is by no means unbiblical. On the contrary, 
 we find that, in support of it, the Fathers appeal directly to the 
 Bible. The well-known passage of the Apostle Paul concerning 
 marriage between heathens and Christians relates only to marriages 
 which had taken place before conversion, not to those which were 
 yet to be contracted. Let the reader refer to what Peter Lom- 
 bard says in the book already cited. " The first Christians did not 
 acknowledge, did not once listen to, all those relatives who sought 
 to turn them away from the hope of the heavenly reward. This 
 they did through the power of the Gospel, for the sake of which all 
 love of kindred was to be desjiised ; inasmuch as the brother- 
 hood of Christ far surpassed natural brotherhood. To us the 
 Fatherland and a common name is not so dear, but that we have a 
 horror even of our parents, if they seek to advise something against 
 the Lord.' — C Arnold (Wahre Abbild. der ersten Christen. B. iv. c. 
 2). "Qui amat patreni et matremphis quam me, non est me dignus 
 
 ]Matth. X in hoc vos non agnosco parentes, sed hostes 
 
 Alioquiii quid niihi et vobis ? Qnid a vobis haheo nisi 2KCcatum et 
 «?(sfria9)i?"— Bernardns (Epist. lii. Ex persona Hehae monachi 
 ad parentes sues). " Etsi impium est, contemnere matrem, con- 
 temnere tamen propter Christum piissimum est."— Bernardus (Ep. 
 104. See also Ep. 35i,adHugonemnovitium). " Audi sententiam 
 
 Isidori: multi canonicorum, inonachorum temporali salute 
 
 suorum parentum perdunt animas suas Servi Dei qui paren- 
 
 tum suorum utilitatem procurant a Dei amoie se separant."— !>,' 
 modo bene vivendi (S. vii.). " Omnem hominem /c/e/cTO judica tuum 
 esse fratrem."— (Ibid. Sernio 13). ''Ambrosius dicit, longe plus nos 
 debere diligere >7ios qnos de fonte levam^is, quam qnos carnaliter 
 f/e)mimus."—'Petvus L. (1. iv. dist. 6, c. 5, addit. Henr. ab Yurim.). 
 "Infantes nascuntur cum peccato, nee fiunt baeredes vitae aeternae 
 
 sine remissione peccati Cum igitur dubium non sit, in infan- 
 
 tibus esse peccatum, debet alii/nod esse discrimen infcmtium Ethni- 
 
APPENDIX. 307 
 
 cjTiim, qui manent rei, et infantium in Ecch-sia, qui recipimdur a 
 Deo per ministerium." — Melanothon (Loci de bapt. inf. Argum. II. 
 Compare with this the passage above cited from Buddeus, as a proof 
 of thenarrowness of the true believer's love). " Ut Episcopi vel 
 Clericiiu eos, qui Catholici Ghristiani non sunt, etiam si consanguinei 
 fuerint, neo per donationes rerum suarum aliquid conferant." — 
 ConciL Carthag. III. can. 13 (^Summa Carranza). "Cum haereticis 
 nee orandum, nee psaUendtim.' — Concil. Carthag. IV. can. 72 (ibid.). 
 
 Faith has the significance of religion, love only that of morality. 
 This has been declared very decidedly by Protestantism. The doc- 
 trine that love does not justify in the sight of God, but only faith, 
 expresses notliiiig furtlier than that love has no religious power 
 and significance. (Apol. Augsb. Confess, art. 3. Of Love and the 
 Fulfilment of the Law.) It is certainly here said : " What the 
 scholastic writers teach concerning the love of God is a dream, and 
 it is impossible to know and love God before we know and lay hold 
 on mercy through faith. For then first does God become ohjectum 
 amabile, a lovable, blissful object of contemplation." Thus here 
 mercy, love is made the proper object of faith. And it is true that 
 faith is immediately distitiguished from love only in this, that faith 
 places out of itself what love places in itself. "We believe that 
 our justification, salvation, and consolation, lie out of ourselves." — 
 Luther (Th. xvi. p. 497; see also Th. ix. p. 587). It is true that faitli 
 in the Protestant sense is faith in the forgiveness of sins, faith in 
 mercy, faith in Christ, as the God who suffered and died for men, 
 so that man, in order to attain everlasting salvation, has nothing 
 further to do on his side than believingly to accept this sacrifice of 
 God for him. But it is not as love only that God is an object of faith. 
 On the contrary, the characteristic object of faith as faith is God as 
 a subject, a person. And is a God who accords no merit to man, 
 who claims all exclusively for himself, who watches jealously over 
 his honour — is a self-interested, egoistic God like this a God of 
 level 
 
 The morality which proceeds from faith has for its ]}ri?iciple and 
 criterion only the contradiction of Nature, of man. As the highest 
 object of faith is that which most contradicts reason, the Eucharist, 
 so necessarily the highest virtue of the morality which is true and 
 obedient to faith is that which most contradicts Nature. Dog- 
 matic miracles have therefore moral miracles as their consequence. 
 Antinatural morality is the twin sister of supernatural faith. As 
 faith vanquishes Nature outside of man, so the morality of faith 
 vanquishes Nature within man. This practical supernaturalism, 
 the summit of which is " virginity, the sister of the angels, the queen 
 of virtues, the mother of all good " (see A. v. Buchers : Geistliches 
 Suchverloren. (Sammtl. W. B. vi. 151), has been specially deve- 
 loped by Catholicism ; for Protestantism has held fast only the 
 principle of Christianity, and has arbitrarily eliminated its logical 
 consequences ; it has embraced only Christian faith and not Christian 
 morality. In faith, Protestantism has brought man back to the 
 standpoint of primitive Christianity ; but in life, in practice, in mo- 
 rality, it has restored him to the pre-Christian, the Old Testament, 
 
328 APPENDIX. 
 
 the heathen, Adamitic, natural standpoint. God instituted mar- 
 riage in paradise ; therefore even in the present day, even to Chris- 
 tians, the command Multiply ! is valid. Christ advises those only 
 not to marry who " can receive " this higher rule. Chastity is a 
 supernatural gift ; it canuot therefore be expected of every one. 
 But is not faith also a supernatural gift, a special gift of God, a 
 miracle, as Luther says innumerable times, and is it not neverthe- 
 less commanded to us all ? Are not all men included in the com- 
 mand to mortify, blind, and contemn the natural reason ? Is not the 
 tendency to believe and accept nothing which contradicts reason as 
 natural, as strong, as necessary in us, as the sexual impulse 1 If 
 we ought to pray to God for faith because by ourselves we are 
 too weak to believe, why should we not on the same ground entreat 
 God for chastity ? Will he deny us this gift if we earnestly implore 
 him for it ? Never ! Thus we may regard chastity as a universal 
 command equally with faith, for what we cannot do of ourselves, 
 we can do through God. What speaks against chastity speaks 
 against faith also, and what speaks for faith speaks for chastity. 
 One stands and falls with the other ; with a supernatural faith is 
 necessarily associated a supernatural morality. Protestantism tore 
 this bond asunder ; in faith it affirmed Christianity ; in life, in 
 practice, it denied Christianity, acknowledged the autonomy of 
 natural reason, of man, — restored man to his original rights. Pro- 
 testantism rejected celibacy, chastity, not because it contradicted 
 the Bible, but because it contradicts man and nature. " He who 
 will be single renounces the name of man, and proves or makes 
 
 himself an angel or spirit It is pitiable folly to wonder that 
 
 a man takes a wife, or for any one to be ashamed of doing so, since 
 no one wonders that men are accustomed to eat and drink." — 
 Luther (Th. xix. pp. 368, 369). Does this unbelief as to the possi- 
 bility and reality of chastity accord with the Bible, where celibacy 
 is eulogised as a laudable, and consequently a possible, attainable 
 state 1 No ! It is in direct contradiction with the Bible. Pro- 
 testantism, in consequence of its practical spirit, and therefore by its 
 own inherent force, repudiated Christian supranaturalism in the 
 sphere of morality. Christianity exists for it only in faith — not 
 in law, not in morality, not in the State. It is true that love (the 
 compendium of morality) belongs essentially to the Christian, so 
 that where there is no love, where faith does not attest itself by love, 
 there is no faith, no Christianity. Nevertheless love is only the 
 outward manifestation of faith, only a consequence, and only human. 
 " Faith alone deals with God," " faith makes us gods ; " love makes 
 us merely men, and as faith alone is for God, so God is for faith 
 alone, i.e., faith alone is the divine, the Christian in man. To faith 
 belongs eternal life, to love only this temporal life. " Long before 
 Christ came God gave this temporal, earthly life to the whole world, 
 and said that man should love him and his neighbour. After that 
 he gave the world to his Son Christ, that we through and by him 
 
 should have eternal life Moses and the law belong to this life, 
 
 but for the other life we must have the Lord." — Luther (Th. xvi. p! 
 459)- Thus although love belongs to the Christian, yet is the 
 
APPENDIX. 329 
 
 Christian a Christian only through this, that lie believes in Christ. 
 It IS true that to serve one's neighbour, in whatever way, rank, or 
 calling, is to serve God. But the God whom I serve in fulfilling a 
 worldly or natural office is only the universal, mundane, natural, 
 pre-Christian God. Government, the State, marriage, existed prior 
 to Christianity, was an institution, an ordinance of God, in which 
 he did not as yet reveal himself as the true God, as Christ. Christ 
 has nothing to do with all these worldly things ; they are external, 
 indifferent_ to him. But for this very reason, every worldly calling 
 and rank is compatible with Christianity ; for the true. Christian 
 service of God is faith alone, and this can be exercised everywhere. 
 Protestantism binds men only in faith, all the rest it leaves free, 
 but only because all the rest is external to faith. 
 
 It is true that we are bound by the commandments of Christian 
 morality, as, for example, " Avenge not yourselves," ifec, but they 
 have validity for us only as private, not as public persons. The 
 world is governed according to its own laws. Catholicism " mingled 
 together the worldly and spiritual kingdoms," i.e., it sought to 
 govern the world by Christianity. But " Christ did not come on 
 earth to interfere in the government of the Emperor Augustus and 
 teach him how to reign." — Luther (Th. xvi. p. 49). Where worldly 
 government begins Christianity ends ; there worldly justice, the 
 sword, war, litigation, prevail. As a Christian I let my cloak be 
 stolen from me without resistance, but as a citizen I seek to recover 
 it by law. " Evangelium non abolet jus naturae." — Melancthon (de 
 Vindicta Loci. See also on this subject M. Chemnitii Loci Theol. 
 de Vindicta). In fact. Protestantism is the practical negation of 
 Christianity, the practical assertion of the natural man. It is true 
 that Protestantism also commands the mortifying of the flesh, the 
 negation of the natural man ; but apart from the fact that this 
 negation has for Protestantism no religious significatice and efficacy, 
 does not justify, i.e., make acceptable to God, procure salvation ; 
 the negation of the flesh in Protestantism is not distinguished from 
 that limitation of the flesh which natural reason and morality enjoin 
 on man. The necessary practical consequences of the Christian 
 faith Protestantism has relegated to the other world, to heaven — 
 in other words, has denied them. In heaven first ceases the worldly 
 standpoint of Protestantism ; there we no longer marry, there first 
 we are new creatures ; but here everything remains as of old " until 
 that life ; there the external life will be changed, for Christ did not 
 come to change the creature."— Luther (Th. xv. p. 62). Here we are 
 half heathens, half Christians ; half citizens of the earth, half citizens 
 of heaven. Of this division, this disunity, this chasm, Catholicism 
 knows nothing. What it denies in heaven, i.e., in faith, it denies, 
 also, as far as possible, on earth, ie., in morality. " Grandis igitur 
 virtutis est et soUicitate diligentiae, superare quod nxita sis: m 
 came non carnaliter vivere, tecum pugnare quotidie."— Hieronymus 
 (Ep. Furiae Kom. nobilique viduae). "Quanto igitur nati(^a am- 
 plius vincitur et premitur, tanto major gratia infunditur.' —Thomas 
 a, K (Imit. 1. iii. c. 54). "Esto robustus tam m agendo, quam m 
 patiendo naturae contraria."—{Vo\d.. c. 49-) " Beatus lUe homo, qui 
 
330 APPENDIX. 
 
 propter te, Domine, omnibus creiituris licentiam abeundi tribuit, 
 qui naturae vim facit et concupisceiitias carms tervore spiritus 
 cruoificdt "' (c. 48). " Adhuc proh dolor ! vmt m me verus homo, 
 noil est totus crucifixus."— (Ibid, c 34, 1- m- c 19, .1- n-.C- I2-.) And 
 these dicta by no means emanate simply from the pious individuality 
 of the author of the work De Imitatione Ghristi ; they express the 
 genuine morality of Catholicism, that morality which the saints 
 attested by their lives, and which was sanctioned even by the Head 
 of the Church, otherwise so worldly. Thus it is said, for example, 
 in the Canonizatio S. Bernhardi Abbatis per Alexandrum papam 
 
 III. anno Ch. 1164. Litt. apost primo ad. Praelatos Eccles. 
 
 Gallic. : "/re afflictione -ivro corporis sui usque adeo sibi niundum, 
 seque mundo reddidit crucifixum, ut confidamus martyrum quoque 
 eum merita obtinere sanctorum, etc." It was owing to this purely 
 negative moral principle that there could be enunciated within 
 Catholicism itself the gross opinion that mere martyrdom, without 
 the motive of love to God, obtains heavenly blessedness. 
 
 It is true that Catholicism also in practice denied the supra- 
 naturalistic morality of Christianity ; but its negation has an essen- 
 tially different signiiicance from that of Protestantism ; it is a 
 negation de facto but not de jure. The Catholic denied in life 
 what he ought to have affirmed in life, — as, for example, the vow of 
 chastity, — what he desired to affirm, at least if he was a religious 
 Catholic, but which in the nature of things he could not affirm. 
 Thus he gave validity to the law of Nature, he gratified the flesh, 
 in a word, he was a man, in coTitradietion with his essential cha- 
 racter, his religious principle and conscience. Adlvic proh dolor ! 
 vivit in me vertis homo. Catholicism has proved to the world that 
 the supernatural principle of faith in Cliristianity, applied to life, 
 made a principle of morals, has immoral, radically corrupting con- 
 sequences. This experience Protestantism made use of, or rather 
 this experience called forth Protestantism. It made the illegiti- 
 mate, practical negation of Christianity — illegitimate in the sense 
 of true Catholicism, thmigh not in that of the degenerate Church — 
 the law, the norm of life. You cannot in life, at least in this life, 
 be Christians, peculiar, superhuman beings, therefore ye ought not 
 to be such. And it legitimised this negation of Christianity before 
 its still Christian conscience, by Christianity itself, pronounced it to 
 be Christian ; — no wonder, therefore, that now at last modern Chris- 
 tianity not only practically but theoretically represents the total 
 negation of Christianity as Christianity. When, however, Pro- 
 testantism is designated as the contradiction, Catholicism as the 
 unity of faith and practice, it is obvious that in both cases we refer 
 only to the essence, to the principle. 
 
 Faith merifices man to God. Human sacrifice belongs to the 
 very idea of religion. Bloody human sacrifices only dramatise this 
 idea. " By faith Abraham offered up Isaac." — Heb. xi. 17. "Quanto 
 
 major Abraham, qui unicum filium vohintate jngidavit Jepte 
 
 obtulit virginem filiam et idcirco in enumeratione sanctorum ab 
 Apostolo ponitur."— Hieronymus (Epist. Juliano). On the human 
 sacrifices in the Jewish religinn we refer the reader to the works of 
 
APPENDIX. 331 
 
 Daumer and Ghillany. In the Christian religion also it is only 
 blood, the sacrifice of the Son of Jlan, which allays God's anger and 
 reconciles him to man. Therefore a pure, guiltless man must fall a 
 sacrifice. Such blood alone is precious, such alone has reconciling 
 power. And this blood, shed on the cross for the allaying of the 
 divine anger, Christians partake in the Lord's Supper, for the 
 strengthening and sealing of their faith. But why is the blood 
 taken under the form of wine, the flesh under the form of bread I 
 That it may not appear as if Christians ate real human flesh 
 and drank human blood, that the natural man may not shrink 
 from the mysteries of the Christian faith. "Etenim ne humana 
 infirmitas esum carnis et potum sanguinis in sumptione horreref, 
 Christus velan et jialliari ilia duo voliiit speciebus panis et vini." — 
 Bernard, (edit. cit. pp. 1 89-1 91). " SuValia autem specie tribus de 
 causis carnem et sanguinem tradit Christus et deinceps sumendum 
 instituit. Ut fides scil. haberet meritum, quae est de his quae 
 non videntur, quod Jide" non hahet merituvi, ubi humana ratio 
 praebet experimentum. Et ideo etiam ne ahhorreret animus quod 
 cerneret oculus ; quod rum habemus in iii,u carnem criidaj)i comedere 
 
 et sanguinem bibere Et etiam ideo ne ab incredtdis relujioni 
 
 christianae ins%dtaretur. (Unde Augustinus : Nihil rationabilius, 
 quam ut sanguinis similitudinem sumamus, ut et ita Veritas 
 non desit et ridimdum nullnm fint a, paganis, quod cruorem 
 oocisi hominis bibamus." — Petrus Lomb. (Sent. lib. iv. dist. ii. 
 c. 4). 
 
 But as the bloody human sacrifice, while it expresses the utmost 
 abnegation of man, is at the same time the highest assertion of his 
 value ; — for only because human life is regarded as the highest, 
 because the sacrifice of it is the most painful, costs the greatest 
 conquest over feeling, is it offered to God ;— so the contradiction of 
 the Eucharist with human nature is only, apparent. Apart from 
 the fact that flesh and blood are, as St. Bernard says, clothed with 
 bread and wine, i.e., that in truth it is not flesh but bread, not 
 blood but wine, which is partaken,— the mystery of the Eucharist 
 resolves itself into the mystery of eating and drinking. "AH 
 
 ancient Christian doctors teach that the body of Christ is not 
 
 taken spiritually alone by faith, which happens also out of the 
 Sacraments, but also corporeally ; not alone by believers, by the 
 pious, but also by unworthy, unbelieving, false and wicked Chris- 
 tians." " There are thus two ways of eating Christ's flesh, one 
 
 spiritual such spiritual eating however is nothing else than 
 
 faith The other way of eating the body of Christ is to eat it 
 
 corporeally or sacramentally."— (Concordienb. Erkl. art. 7). " The 
 mouth eats the body of Christ bodily." — Luther (against the 
 "fanatics." Th. xix. p. 417)- What then forms the specific difler- 
 ence of the Eucharist J Eating and drinking. Apart from the 
 Sacrament, God is partaken of spiritually ; m the Sacrament he is 
 partaken of materially, i.e, he is eaten and drunken, assimilated 
 by the body. But how couldst thou receive God into thy body, it 
 it were in thy esteem an organ unworthy of God 1 Dost thou pour 
 wine into a water-cask ? Dost thou not declare thy hands and lips 
 
332 APPENDIX. 
 
 holy when by means of them thou comest in contact with the Holy 
 One ? Thus if God is eaten and drunken, eatnig and drinking is 
 declared to be a divine act ; and this is what the Luchanst ex- 
 presses, though in a self-contradictory, mystical, covert manner. 
 But it is our task to express the mystery of religion, openly and 
 honourably, clearly and definitely. Life is God; the enjoiimentof 
 life is the enjoyment of God; true bliss in life is true reluiion. But 
 to the enjoyment of life belongs the enjoyment of eating and 
 drinking. If therefore life in general is holy, eating and dnnkmg 
 must be holy. Is this an irreligious creed ? Let it be remembered 
 that this irreligion is the analysed, unfolded, unequivocally ex- 
 pressed mystery of religion itself. All the mysteries of religion 
 ultimately resolve themselves, as we have shown, into the mystery 
 of heavenly bliss. But heavenly bliss is nothing else than happiness 
 freed from the limits of reality. The Christians have happiness for 
 their object just as much as the heathens; the only difi'erence is, 
 that the heathens place heaven on earth, the Christians place earth 
 in heaven. Whatever is, whatever is really enjoyed, is finite ; that 
 which is not, which is believed in and hoped for, is infinite. 
 
 The Christian religion is a contradiction. It is at once the re- 
 conciliation and the disunion, the unity and the opposition, of God 
 and man. This contradiction is personified in the God-man. The 
 unity of the Godhead and manhood is ((t once a truth and an untruth. 
 A\'e have already maintained that if Christ was God, if he was at 
 once man and another being conceived as incapable of suffering, 
 his suffering was an illusion. For his suffering as man was no 
 suffering to him as God. No ! what he acknowledged as man he 
 denied as God. He suifered only outwardly, not inwardly, i.e., 
 he suffered only apparently, not really ; for he was man only in 
 appearance, in form, in the external ; in truth, in essence, in which 
 alone he was an object to the believer, he was God. It would have 
 been true sufl'ering only if he had suffered as God also. What he 
 did not experience in his nature as God, he did not experience in 
 truth, in substance. And, incredible as it is, the Christians them- 
 selves half directly, half indirectly, admit that their highest, 
 holiest mystery is only an illusion, a simulation. This simulation 
 indeed lies at the foundation of the thoroughly unhistorical,* 
 theatrical, illusory Gospel of John. One instance, among others, 
 in which this is especiall3' evident, is the resurrection of Lazarus, 
 where the omnipotent arbiter of life and death evidently sheds 
 tears only in ostentation of his manhood, and expressly says : 
 " Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me, and I know that 
 
 * On tliis subject I refer to Liitzelberger's \vork : "Die Kirchliche Tradition 
 liber dea Apostel Joiiannes und seine Schrifteii in ihrer Grundlosigkeit nach- 
 gcwiesen," and to Bruno Bauer's " Kritik der Evangelischen Gescliichte der 
 Bynoptiker und des Joiiannes " (B. iii.). 
 
APPENDIX. 333 
 
 thou hearest me always, but for the sake of the people who stand 
 round i said it, that they may believe in thee." The simulation 
 thus indicated m the Gospel has been developed by the Church 
 into avowed delusion. " Si credas susceptionem corporis, adjungas 
 divinitahs comxissionem, portionem utique perfidiae, non pei'fidiam 
 declmasti. Credis enim, quod tibi prodesse praesumis, non credis 
 
 quod Deo digmcm est Idem enim patiebatur et non patiebatur. 
 
 ......1 atiebatur secundum corporis susceptionem, ut S2iscepti corporis 
 
 Veritas crederetur et non patiebatur secundum verbi impassibilem 
 
 divinitatem Erat^ igitur immortalis in morte, impassibilis in 
 
 passione Cur divinitati attribuis aerumnas corporis et infirmum 
 
 doloris humani divinae connectis naturae?" — Ambrosius (de incarnat. 
 domin. sacr. cc. 4, 5). " Juxta homiiiis naturam proficiebat sapien- 
 
 tia, non quod ipse sapientior esset ex tempore sed eandem, qua 
 
 plenus erat, sapientiam caeteris ex tempore paulatim demomtrahat. 
 
 In aliis ergo non in se proiiciebat sapientia et gratia." — Gre- 
 
 gorius in homil. quadam (ap. Petrus Lomb. 1. iii. dist. 13, c. 1). 
 " Proiiciebat ergo humanus sensus in eo semndiim ostensionem et 
 aliorum hominum opinionem. Ita enim patrem et matrern dicitur 
 ignorasse in infantia, quia ita se gerehat et habehat ac si aguitionis 
 expers esset." — Petrus L. (ibid. c. 2). " Ut homo ergo dubitat, ut 
 homo locutus est." — x'^.mbrosius. " His verbis innui videtur, quod 
 Christus non inquantum Deus vel Dei filius, sed inquantum homo 
 dubitaverit aflfectu humano. Quod ea ratione dictum accipi potest : 
 non quod ipse dubitaverit, sed quod niodicm qessit dubitantis et 
 hominibus dubitare videbatur." — Petrus L. (ibid. dist. 17, c. 2). 
 In the first part of the present vfork we have exhibited the truth, 
 in the second part the untruth of religion, or rather of theology. 
 The truth is only the identity of God and man. Eeligion is truth 
 only when it afiirms human attributes as divine, falsehood when, in 
 the form of theology, it denies these attributes, separating God 
 from man as a different being. TIjus, in the first part we had to 
 show the truth of God's suffering ; here we have the proof of its 
 untruth, and not a proof which lies in our own subjective view, but 
 an objective proof — the admission of theology itself, that its highest 
 mystery, the Passion of God, is only a deception, an illusion. It is 
 therefore in the highest degree uncritical, untruthful, and arbitrary 
 to explain the Christian religion, as speculative philosophy has 
 done, only as the religion of reconciliation between God and man, 
 and not also as the religion of disunion between the divine and 
 human nature,— to find in the God-man only the unity, and not also 
 the contradiction of the divine and human nature. Christ suffered 
 only as man, not as God. Capability of suffering is the sign of real 
 humanity. It was not as God that he was born, that he increased 
 in wisdom, and was crucified ; i.e., all human conditions remained 
 foreign to him as God. " Si quis non confitetur proprie et vere 
 substantialem differentiam naturarum post ineffabilem uiiionem, 
 ex quibus unus et solus extitit Christus, in ea salvatum, sit con- 
 demnatus."— Concil. Later. I. can. 7 (Carranza). The divme nature 
 notwithstanding the position that Christ was at once God and 
 man is just as much dissevered from the human nature m the 
 
334 APPENDIX. 
 
 incarnation as before it, since each nature excludes the conditions 
 of the other, although both are united in one personality, in an in- 
 comprehensible, miraculous, i.e., untrue manner, in contradiction 
 Tvith the relation in which, according to their definition, they stand 
 to each other. Even the Lutherans, nay, Luther himself, however 
 strongly he expresses himself concerning the community and union 
 of the human and divine nature in Christ, does not escape from the 
 irreconcilable division between them. " God^ is man, and man is 
 God, but thereby neither the natures nor their attributes are con- 
 founded, but each nature retains its essence and attributes." " The 
 Son of God himself has truly suffered and truly died, but according 
 to the human nature which he had assumed ; for the divine nature 
 can neither suffer nor die." " It is truly said, the Son of God 
 suffers. For although the one part (so to speak), as the Godhead, 
 does not suffer, still the person who is God suffers in the other 
 half, the manhood ; for in truth the Son of God was crucified for 
 ns, that is, the person who is God ; for the person is crucified 
 according to his manhood." " It is the person that does and 
 suffers all, one thing according to this nature, another according 
 to that nature, all which the learned well know." — (Concordienb. 
 Erklar. art. 8.) " The Son of God and God himself is killed and 
 murdered, for God and man is one person. Therefore God was 
 crucified, and died, and became man ; not God apart from humanity, 
 but united with it ; not according to the Godhead, but according 
 to the human nature which he had assumed." — Luther (Th. iii. 
 p. 502). Thus only in the person, i.e., only in a nomeii pi'opriu7n, 
 not in essence, not in truth, are the two natures united. " Quando 
 dicitur : Deus est homo vel homo est Deus, propositio ejusmodi 
 vocatur personalis. Ratio est, quia unionem personalem in Christo 
 supponit. Sine tali enim naturarum in Christo unione nunquam 
 dicere potuissem, Deum esse hominem aut hominem esse Deum. 
 
 Abstracta autem naturae de se invicem enuntiari non posse, 
 
 longe est manifestissimum Dicere itaque non licet, divina 
 
 natura est humana aut deltas est humanitas et vice versa." — J. 
 F. Buddeus (Comp. Inst. Theol. Dogm. 1. iv. c. ii. § 11). Thus 
 the union of the divine and human natures in the incarnation is 
 only a deception, an illusion. The old dissidence of God and 
 man lies at the foundation of this dogma also, and operates all the 
 more injuriously, is all the more odious, that it conceals itself behind 
 the appearance, the imagination of unity. Hence Socinianism, far 
 from being superficial when it denied the Trinity and the God-man, 
 was only consistent, only truthful. God was a triune being, ancl 
 yet he was to be held purely simple, absolute unity, an ens simpli- 
 cissimum ; thus the Unity contradicted the Trinity. God was God- 
 man, and yet the Godhead was not to be touched or annulled 
 by the manhood, i.e., it was to be essentially distinct ; thus the 
 incompatibility of the divine and human attributes contradicted 
 the unity of the two natures. According to this, we have in the 
 very idea of the God-man the arch-enemy of the God-man, — 
 rationalism, blended, however, with its opposite — mysticism. Thus 
 Socinianism only denied what faith itself denied, and yet, in con- 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 335 
 
 tradiction with itself, at the same time aiBrmed ; it only denied a 
 contradiction, an untruth. 
 
 Nevertheless the Christians have celebrated the incarnation as a 
 work of love, as a self-renunciation of God, an abnegation of his 
 majesty — Atnor triumphat de Deo; for the love of God is an 
 empty word if it is understood as a real abolition of the distinction 
 between him and man. Thus we have, in the very central point of 
 Christianity, the contradiction of Faith and Love developed in the 
 close of the present work. Faith makes the suffering of God a 
 mere appearance, love makes it a truth. Only on the truth of the 
 suffering rests the true positive impression of the incarnation. 
 Strongly, then, as we have insisted on the contradiction and division 
 between the divine and the human nature in the God-man, we 
 must equally insist on their community and unity, in virtue of 
 which God is really man and man is really God. Here then we 
 have the irrefragable and striking proof that the central point, the 
 supreme object of Christianity, is nothing else than man, that Chris- 
 tians adore the human individual as God, and God as the human 
 individual. "This man born of the Virgin Mary is God himself, 
 who has created heaven and earth." — Luther (Th. ii. p. 671). "I 
 point to the man Christ and say : That is the Son of God." — (Th. xix. 
 p. 594.) "To give life, to have all power in heaven and earth, to 
 have all things in his hands, all things put under his feet, to purify 
 from sin, and so on, are divine, infinite attributes, which, according 
 to the declaration of the Holy Scriptures, are given and imparted 
 to the man Christ." "Therefore we believe, teach, and confess 
 
 that the Son of Man now not only as God, but also as man, 
 
 knows all things, can do all things, is present with all creatures." 
 "We reject and condemn the doctrine that he (the Son of God) is 
 not capable according to his human nattire of omnipotence and other 
 attributes of the divine nature."— (Concordienb. Summar. Begr. u. 
 Erklar. art. 8.) "Unde et sponte sua fluit, Christo^ etiam qua 
 Jiumanam naturam spectato cidtum religionim dehcri." — Buddeus 
 (1. c. 1. iv. c. ii. § 17). The same is expressly taught by the 
 Fathers and the Catholics, e.g., "Eadem adoratione adoranda in 
 
 Christo est divinitas et humanitas Divinitas intrinsece inest 
 
 humanitati per unionem hypostaticam : ergo humanitas Christi seu 
 Christus ut homo potest adorari absoluto cultu latriae."— Theol. 
 SchoL (.'lec. Thomam Aq. P. Metzger. iv. p. 124). It is certamly 
 said that it is not man, not flesh and blood by itself, which is wor- 
 shipped, but tlie flesh united with God, so that the cultus applies 
 not to the flesh, or man, but to God. But it is here as with the 
 worship of saints and images. As the saint is adored m the image 
 and God in the saint, only because the image and the samt are them- 
 selves adored, so God is worshipped in the human body only be- 
 cause the human flesh is itself worshipped. God becomes flesh, 
 man, because man is in truth already God. How could it enter 
 into thy mind to bring the human flesh into so close a relation and 
 contact with God if it were something impure, degrading, unworthy 
 of God 1 If the value, the dignity of the human flesh does not lie 
 in itself, why dost thou not make other flesh— the flesh of brutes 
 
336 APPENDIX. 
 
 the habitatiim of the Divine Spirit ? True it is said : Man is only 
 the organ in, with, and by which the Godhead works, as the soul in 
 the body. But this pretext also is refuted by what has been said 
 above. God chose man as his organ, his body, because only in 
 man did he find an organ worthy of him, suitable, pleasing to him. 
 If the nature of man is indifferent, why did not God become incar- 
 nate in a brute 1 Thus God comes into man only ot/t of man. 
 The manifestation of God in man is only a manifestation of the 
 divinity and glory of man. " Noscitur ex alio, qui non cognoscitur 
 ex se"— this trivial saying is applicable here. God is known through 
 man, whom he honours with his personal presence and indwelling, 
 and known as a human being, for what any one prefers, selects, 
 loves, in his ohjective nature ; and man is known through God, and 
 known as a divine being, for only that which is worthy of God, 
 which is divine, can be the object, organ, and habitation of God. 
 True it is further said : It is Jesus Christ alone, and no other man, 
 who is worshipped as God. But this argument also is idle and 
 empty. Christ is indeed one only, but he is one who represents all. 
 He is a man as we are, "our brother, and we are flesh of his flesh 
 and bone of his bone." " In Jesus Christ our Lord every one of us 
 is a portion of flesh and blood. Therefore where my body is, there 
 I believe that I myself reign. Where my flesh is glorified, there I 
 believe that I am myself glorious. Where my blood rules, there I 
 hold that I myself rule." — Luther (Th. xvi. p. 534). This then 
 is an undeniable fact : Christians worship the human individual 
 as the supreme being, as God. Not indeed consciously, for it 
 is the unconsciousness of this fact which' constitutes the illusion of 
 the religious principle. But in this sense it may be said that the 
 heathens did not worship the statues of the gods ; for to them also 
 the statue was not a statue, but God himself. Nevertheless they 
 did worship the statue ; just as Christians worship the human indi- 
 vidual, though, naturally, they will not admit it. 
 
 Man is the God of Chrixtianity, Anthropology the mystery of 
 Christian Theology. The history of Christianity has had for its 
 grand result the unveiling of this mystery — the realisation and 
 recognition of theology as anthropology. The distinction between 
 Protestantism and Catholicism — the old CathoKcism, which now 
 exists only in books, not in actuality — consists only in this, that 
 tlie latter is Theology, the former Christology, i.e., (religious) An- 
 thropology. Catholicism has a supranaturalistic, abstract God, a 
 God who is other than human, a not human, a superhuman being. 
 The goal of Catholic morality, likeness to God, consists therefore 
 in this, to be not a man, but more than a man — a heavenly 
 abstract being, an angel. Only in its morality does the essence of 
 a religion realise, reveal itself : morality alone is the criterion, 
 whether a religious dogma is felt as a truth or is a mere chimera. 
 Thus the doctrine of a superhuman, supernatural God is a truth 
 
APPENDIX. 337 
 
 only where it has as its consequence a superhuman, supernatural, or 
 rather antinatural morality. Protestantism, on the contrary, has 
 not a supranaturalistic but a human morality, a morality of and 
 for fiesh and blood ; consequently its God, at least its true, real 
 God, is no longer an abstract, supranaturalistic being, but a being 
 of flesh and blood. " This defiance the devil hears unwillingly, 
 that our flesh and blood is the Son of God, yea, God himself, and 
 reigns in heaven over all." — Luther (Th. svi. p. 573). " Out of 
 Christ there is no God, and where Christ is, there is the whole 
 Godhead." — Id. (Th. xis. p. 403). Catholicism has, both in theory 
 and practice, a God who, in spite of the predicate of love, exists 
 for himself, to whom therefore man only comes by being against 
 himself, denying himself, renouncing his existence for self ; Pro- 
 testantism, on the contrary, has a God who, at least practically, 
 virtually, has not an existence for himself, but exists only for 
 man, for the welfare of man. Hence in Catholicism the highest 
 act of the cultus, "the mass of Christ," is a sacrifice of man, — 
 the same Christ, the same flesh and blood, is sacrificed to God 
 in the Host as on the cross ; in Protestantism, on the contrary, 
 it is a sacrifice, a gift of God : God sacrifices himself, surrenders 
 himself to be partaken by man. (See Luther, e.g., Th. xx. p. 259 ; 
 Th. xvii. p. 529.) In Catholicism manhood is the property, the 
 predicate of the Godhead (of Christ) — God is man ; in Protes- 
 tantism, on the contrary, Godhead is the property, the pre- 
 dicate of manhood (Christ)— man is God. " This, in time past, 
 the greatest theologians have done — they have fled from the 
 manhood of Christ to his Godhead, and attached themselves 
 to that alone, and thought that we should not know the man- 
 hood of Christ. But we must so rise to the Godhead of Christ, 
 and hold by it in such a way, as not to forsake the manhood of 
 Christ and come to the Godhead alone. Thou shouldst know of 
 no God, nor Son of God. save him who was born of the Virgin 
 Mary and became man. He who receives his manhood has also 
 his Godhead."— Luther (Th. ix. pp. 592, 598).* Or, briefly thus : in 
 Catholicism, man exists for God ; m Protestantism, God exists for 
 man.t "Jesus Christ our Lord was conceived for us, born for 
 us suffered for us, was crucified, died, and was buried for us. Our 
 Lo'rd rose from the dead for mir consolation, sits for our good at 
 the right hand of the Almighty Father, and is to judge the living 
 and the dead for our comfort. Thi^ the holy Apostles and beloved 
 Fathers intended to intimate in their confession by the words : (Js 
 and our Lord— namely, that Jesus Christ is ours, whose office and 
 
 will it is to help us so that we should not read or speak the 
 
 words coldly, and interpret them only of Christ, but of ourselves 
 
 * In another place Luther praises St. Bernard and Bonaventura because they 
 laid so much stress on the manhood of Christ. ii /^ j ■ * 
 
 + It Strue that in Catholicism also-in Christianity generally God exists 
 for man ; hut it was Protestantism which first drew from this relativity of God 
 its true result— the absoluteness of man. 
 
338 APPENDIX. 
 
 also.='-Luther (Th. xvi. p. 538). " I know of no God but liim who 
 save himself for me. Is not that a great thing that God is man, 
 that God gives himself to man and will be his, as man gives him- 
 self to his wife and is hers? But if God is ours, all things are 
 ours."— (Th. xii. p. 283.) " God cannot be a God of the dead, who are 
 nothing, but is a God of the living. If God were a God of the 
 dead, he would be as a husband who had no wife, or as a tatJier 
 who had no son, or as a master who had no servant, h or it lie is 
 a husband, he must have a wife. If he is a father, he must have 
 a son. If he is a master, he must have a servant. Or he would 
 be a fictitious father, a fictitious master, that is, nothing. God is 
 not a God lilie the idols of the heathens, neither is he an imaginary 
 God, who exists for himself alone, and has none who call upon 
 him and worship him. A God is he from whom everything 
 
 is to be expected and received If he were God for himselt 
 
 alone in heaven, and we had no good to rely on from him, he 
 
 would be a God of stone or straw If he sat alone m. heaven 
 
 like a clod, he would not be God."— (Th. xvi. p. 465)- " Goi says : 
 
 I the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth am thy God To be 
 
 a God means to redeem us from all evil and trouble that oppresses 
 us, as sin, hell, death, &c."— (Th. ii. p. 327.) " All the world calls 
 that a God in whom man trusts in need and danger, on whom 
 he relies, from whom all good is to be had and who can help. 
 Thus reason describes God, that he affords help to man, and does 
 good to him, bestows benefits upon him. This thou seest also 
 in this text : 'I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out 
 of the land of Egypt.' There we are taught what God is, what 
 is his nature, and what are his attributes, — namely, that he does 
 good, ■ delivers from dangers, and helps out of trouble and all 
 calatoities."- (Th. iv. pp. 236, 237.) But if God is a living, i.e., real 
 God, is God in general, only in virtue of this — that he is a God to 
 man, a being who is useful, good, beneficent to man ; then, in truth, 
 man is the criterion, the measure of God, man is the absolute, 
 divine being. The proposition : A God existing only for himself 
 is no God — means nothing else than that God without man is not 
 God ; where there is no man there is no God ; if thou takest from 
 God the predicate of humanity, thou takest from him the predicate 
 of deity ; if his relation to man is done away with, so also is his 
 existence. 
 
 Nevertheless Protestantism, at least in theory, has retained in 
 the background of this human God the old supranaturalistic God. 
 Protestantism is the contradiction of theory and practice ; it has 
 emancipated the flesh, but not the reason. According to Protes- 
 tantism, Christianity, i.e., God, does not contradict the natural 
 impulses of man : — " Therefore we ought now to know that God 
 does not condemn or abolish the natural tendency in man which 
 was implanted in Nature at the creation, but that he awakens and 
 Xjreserves it." — Luther (Th. ill. p. 290). But it contradicts reasou, 
 and is therefore, theoretically, only an object of faith. We have 
 shown, however, that the nature of faith, the nature of God, is 
 
APPENDIX. 339 
 
 itself notliiug else than tlie nature of man placed out of man, con- 
 ceived as external to man. The reduction of tlie extrahumaii, 
 supernatural, and antirational nature of God to the natural, 
 immanent, inborn nature of man, is therefore the liberation of 
 Protestantism, of Christianity in general, from its fundamental 
 contradiction, the reduction of it to its truth, — the result, the 
 necessary, irrepressible, irrefragable result of Christianity. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 yKlNTEU BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO- 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON