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THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
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THE
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
ON THE BASIS OF ITS HISTORY
y
DR OTTO PFLEIDEREH
PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
OF THE SECOND AND GREATLY ENLARGED EDITION.
VOL. IV,
TRANSLATED BY
ALLAN MENZIES, B.D.
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE
14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON
AND 20 SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH
1888.
THE
PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
ON THE BASIS OF ITS HISTORY
BY
DR. OTTO PFLEIDERER.
IL— GENETIC-SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION.
VOL. IV.— II. THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CON-
SCIOUSNESS (CONCLUDED).
III. THE MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS
CONSCIOUSNESS.
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE
14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON
AND 20 SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH
1888.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME IV.
SECTION II.
THE CONTENTS OF THE EELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
(contijiued.)
PAGE
Chapter IV. — Theodicy, ..... 1
Theories of Origin of Evil. Greek Mythology (2), Legend
of Prometheus (3), Greek Philosophy (4); Plato,
Aristotle (5) ; Stoics, Seneca's doctrine of Divine Pro-
vidence (7). Indian Pessimism (8). Persian Dualism
(9). The Bihle Story of the Fall (9). Prophetic doctrine
of Eetribution (12). Theodicy of Job (13), and the
Books of Wisdom (14); of Deutero-Isaiah (15); of
Jewish Theology (16); of Paul (16), and John (17).
Church Dogma : Manicha^ism, Pelagianism, Augustine
(18). Modern Philosophy (20). Notion of Evil (21).
Origin of Evil. Indeterminism and Predetermination
examined (25). Dogmatic theory of the Fall (30).
Psychological genesis of Evil (34). The Moral World-
order (41). Evil as Eetribution and as a means of
Education (42).
Chapter V — PtEVELATioN and Miracle, . . .46
Mantic, mediate and immediate (46). Theory of Eevela-
tion of the Stoics (49); of Plutarch, of Philo (50).
The Eeligious Consciousness of the Hebrew Prophets
(52). Jewish theory of Inspiration (57). The Self-
consciousness of the Apostles (58). The Church's
vui CONTENTS.
PAGE
principle of Scripture and of Tradition (61). Tlieory
of Inspiration of Indians (62). Persians and Islam (63).
Supernaturalistic and Eationalistic theories of Reve-
lation Examined (64). Historical and Psychological
analysis of the consciousness of revelation (69). Its
metaphysical hackground in the loving will of God (81).
The belief in Miracles in the history of Eeligion (82).
Explanation of Miracles by the Stoics (85). Augustine,
Leibniz (86) ; Criticism of the belief by Spinoza,
Schleiermacher (87), Hegel, Fichte (88). Critical re-
sult (89). Ideal import of the belief in Miracles (92).
Chapter VI. — PiEDEmption and Mediation, . . .94
Mediators of Nature-Eeligion (Heracles-Legend), (95).
Mediatorial Position of Heroes in the Historical Reli-
gions ; Zarathustra (97). Mohammed (98). Redemp-
tion in Brahmanism and Buddhism (101). Personal Ideal
of Buddha (106) and of Krishna (107). Christian Doc-
trine of Redemption : its Roots in Deutero-Isaiah (108)
and in Jewish Theology ; its development in Pauline
and Johannine Theology (109). Anselm's Theory of
Redemption (114). Mediatorship of the Church, Pro-
testant Doctrine (116) ; its Refinement in the Mystics
and Philosophers (118). Psychological Motives of the
Doctrine of Redemption ; Indian and Christian Prin-
ciples of Redemption (122). Redemption as an Ethical
Process of Consciousness (126). Experience of Indi-
viduals and of the Church (128). Originality and Limi-
tations of the Religious genius (130). Psychological
motives of the Doctrine of Mediation (132). Per-
sonal Ideal of Jesus (133). Import of the Statements
Faith makes as to Jesus' Origin and Death (135).
Two-sidedness of the Belief in a Mediator (138). The
CONTENTS. ix
PAGE
Ideal of the Mediator depends on the Subjective Needs
of Feeling (139). Development of the Picture of Christ
in History (141).
Chaptek VII. — The Destiny of Mankind, . . .145
Legends of the Golden Age of the Past and of the Future
(145), Hope of Future Continuance in the Form of
Metempsychosis (Indians) (147), Eesurrection (Per-
sians) (149), and of Immortality (152). The "other
world" (154), State of Souls in the other world
(156). Compensation in the other world (157);
Egyptians (158) ; Greeks (159). Jewish and Hellenis-
tic Forms of the Early Christian Hope (161). The
Church Doctrine of the other world (165). Modern
Philosophy (167). The Soul not a Function but a
Substance (171). Immortality both a Theoretical Pro-
blem and a Practical Postulate. Value of the Belief in
Compensation (174) and of the Hope of Progressive
Perfection (176). Double type of the Ideal of the
Future (179).
SECTION III.
THE KELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS IN OPERATION.
Chapter I. — Worship and Church, . . . .182
Notion of Worship (182), Its Active and its Passive sides
(183). Its Dramatic Form (185). Elementary usages of
Worship; Sacrifice (186). Christian Worship (188).
Baptism (189). Lord's Supper (191). Prayer (195).
Church Song (197). Preaching (199). Cure of Souls
(203). The Church as an Institution for Worship and
CONTENTS.
PAGE
for the Education of the People (205). The Catholic
Priesthood and the Protestant Ministry (208). Rela-
tion of each of these to the State (211). Value of the
Church's Cure of Souls for Society (21-i). Eegulation
of it by the State (217). The Lutheran and the Ee-
formed Form of Church Government (219). Modern
union of the two (222).
Chapter II. — PiEligiox and Morality, . . . 224
The Superuaturalist and the Positivist view of the rela-
tion of the two, criticised (224). " Piety " the common
root of Pieligion and Morality (225). Magic not the
original but a degenerate Form of Pieligious Action (228).
Eeligious Origin of Morality (230). The Social Order
an effluence of the Divine Order according to Egyptian
(232), Indian, and Iranian Tradition (234). Double
Morality of Brahmanism (234) and Buddhism (236).
Greek Morality based on Eeligion (238). Influence
of Delphian Apollo-worship (242). The Illumination
of the age of Pericles (244). Autonomous Morality of
the Socratic School (245). Stoic Ideal of Humanity
(246). Eoman and Persian State Eeligions (247). The
Idealism of the Prophets and the Positivism of the
Priests, in Israel (248). Victory of the latter in
(Pharisaism) Judaism (249). Eeaction of the former
in Christianity. The moral principle of Jesus, theo-
logically developed by Paul (251). The Asceticism of
the primitive Church (254). Double Morality of
Catholicism (257). System of Penance (258). Abelard
and Thomas Aquinas (259). Nominalism and Jesuit-
ism (262). The Ethical Principle of the Reformation
(263), imperfectly carried out in the conduct of the
Church (265). Eationalism, Kant (267). Pietism
CONTENTS. xi
PAGE
(269). Esthetic-ethical Idealism and Komanticism
(270). Historico-social turn of Ethical Thought (271).
Eesult of the Discussion (272).
Chaptek III. — Keligion and Science, . . . 274
Original Unity of the two completely divorced by the
Greeks (274). Interaction on each other in Christianity
(275). Eise of Dogma (276). Scholastic Dogma (279).
Supernaturalism and Eatioualism (280). Mysticism
(284). The Criticism of Kant : its Truth and its Error
(289). Errors of logical Idealism and of Positivism
(294). Metaphysical Knowledge is relative, and requires
to be supplemented (297). The theoretical and the
practical basis of the Idea of God (301). Peculiar
nature of the Eeligious view ; practical truth of it (303).
Eeligion and Science to be reconciled by the Science
of Eeligion (309). Task of that Science : the Genetic
and Comparative method (311). Speculative con-
clusion: there is no absolute Knowledge (314). To
harmonise the Eeligious and the Scientific view of the
world, an ideal to be always kept in view, but never
attained (316). Eelation between the Science of
Eeligion and Dogmatic (317).
Index to the whole wokk, ..... 323
ERRATA IN VOL. III.
P. 115, line 4, fur " from the inner to the outer "
re,ad " from the outer to the inner."
P. 141. The note at the foot is without a mark
of reference in the text. Insert this mark after
" older" in line 9 from foot.
P. 169, line 15, for " alien " read "allied."
SECTION II.
(cotitinued.)
THE CONTENTS OF THE KELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
CHAPTEE IV.
THEODICY.
Whence comes the evil of the world ? This question has stirred
the interest of men in all ages, and the attempt to solve it every-
where contributes an important element to the formation both of
religious and of philosophical theories. The attempts at a solution
fall into three great classes, each of these exhibiting a number of
subordinate variations. The cause of evil is sought either in a being
outside God and independent of him, which forms a dualistic limita-
tion of the divine power, or in a want in the deity himself, or in a
defect which lies only in the creature. In the Jlrst case the prin-
ciple of evil may either be a supersensuous spiritual being, an anti-
god or anti-gods, a whole realm of them — this is the origin of the
belief in devils, of which we spoke in our second chapter — or it may
be an impersonal being, such as fate, an impersonal power confront-
ing the gods and limiting their power; or it may be an entirely
unspiritual substance, like matter, this cosmogonic element of philo-
sophical theories. In the second case, the reason of evil in God may
be a defect in his thinking : thus, in the legend of the Kamtschat-
kans evil came from the stupidity of the Creator of the world, who
was only prevented by his wife, who is cleverer than himself, from
perpetrating still greater follies ; and similarly, in the most recent
pessimism, it is the irrationality of the blind will of the unconscious
VOL. IV. A
2 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
that is accountable for the evil of the world. Or the reason may lie
in the evil will of God, his envy, which cannot allow the human
race to enjoy unmixed good, his jealousy, which regards man's efforts
after higher civilisation as an encroachment on the privileges of deity,
and visits them with evils : this we shall find in the Greek legend, and
echoes of the same idea occur in the oldest Hebrew legend too. In
the third case, finally, the reason of evil may either be a natural imper-
fection necessarily connected with the nature of the creature, or a free
moral transgression. The latter may be sought either in a transgression
of man against the deity at the beginning — under this head come the
efforts of the early age after civihsation which, though in themselves
legitimate, were dangerous from their bold disregard of man's natural
limitations, — or in the gradual deterioration of the race as the gener-
ations sank down into an ever more savage state ; or, finally, in the
personal transgressions of the separate individuals ; and these trans-
gressions of individuals, which bring about individual evils, may be
sought either in their present life or in a former life, a state of pre-
existence whether extramundane or mundane (the latter in the
theories of the fall of souls in heaven, and of metempsychosis). We
may expect to find in the legends of different peoples manifold com-
binations and interweavings of these theories with each other. In
the first place, this belongs to the very nature of such attempted
explanations ; in the second, the union of disparate theories in the
same legend reflects the successive stages of religious development
in which it was elaborated ; and in the third place, even popular
legend assumes new forms under the influence of the successive
interpretations and developments of speculation. The most perfect
examples of all these processes are to be found collected in Greek
legend and speculation ; and we begin with it in this chapter, especi-
ally as what bears on the present question in the lower nature-
religions has already been treated of in connection with the belief in
demons (voL iii. p. 307 sqq.).
According to the Hesiodic legend of the ages of man, there lived
in the golden age, under the rule of Kronos, a happy race of men,
free from cares and troubles, in unbroken youth and cheerfulness,
THEODICY. 3
amid a superfluity of the gifts which the earth of itself afforded
them, — not immortal indeed, but knowing death only as a gentle
slumber. When this race died out, Zeus made them good spirits,
which flit about men. Then the gods created the silver age ; the
men of which were not equal to their predecessors either in strength
or in disposition, but luxurious and arrogant and refractory even
towards the gods : wherefore Zeus destroyed them and made them
demons. Then followed the age of brass, hard and warlike, which
destroyed itself in insensate ragings. Finally came the present age,
that of iron, which has to win its support laboriously from the soil,
and in the constant struggle for existence falls always lower morally,
casts off faith and shame, and keeps nothing but evil. No real reason
can be seen for this gradual descent of man ; it is a natural process,
a necessity of fate, which may be regarded as " a parallel and con-
comitant phenomenon of the theogonic development of the world "
(Preller). Of a totally different character is the group of legends
about Prometheus. He is the Titan in whom the power of human
intelligence, of the spirit of invention and the impulse towards civili-
sation, by which man seeks to equal the gods, is embodied. His
strength does not lie in rude physical power ; hence in the struggle
between the Titans, the rude nature-spirits, and the gods, the repre-
sentatives and upholders of the reasonable world-order, he stood on
the side of the latter. But when the gods had gained the victory
and the world was divided, and unfortunate man was deprived by Zeus
of his proper share, and even dedicated to destruction, then the clever
demigod Prometheus took up the cause of men, and managed to pro-
cure for them the weapon by which, though deserted by the gods,
they might prevail in the hard struggle for existence ; he stole the
heavenly fire which Zeus had jealously reserved, and gave it to men
as an instrument for all sorts of industrial pursuits and devices, by
which they obtained rule over nature. But, for this advance in
human civilisation, thus craftily procured in spite of nature and the
gods, the bringer of this gift and the whole of humanity had to do
bitter penance ; the former, the type of the heroic, energetic human
spirit, was fixed by Zeus to a rock in the desert, where the eagle of
4 THE CONTENTS OF THE HELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
Zeus daily plucked out his liver (the organ of insatiable desire), which
daily grew again, till at last the divine hero Heracles frees the
human sufferer Prometheus from the bonds and torments into which
he had been cast by the bold striving of a human mind restlessly
seeking to be equal to the gods, and yet irapoteutly confined by the
limits of its finitude. But the rest of the race too had to suffer for
the act by which its leader had made civilisation possible ; the gods
sent Pandora to men, a woman adorned with all the charms of the
goddesses, and gave her for her dower a box of unknown contents.
In spite of the forebodings of Prometheus and his warnings against
the Danaan gift of the gods, his brother Epimetheus, the type of
weak, unreasonable, sensuous human nature, appropriated the charm-
ing present of the treacherous gods, and the sad consequences of his
act at once appeared. Out of Pandora's mysterious box there flew
abroad into the world all the evils, especially all the sicknesses,
which had till then been strange to the natural and healthy life of
mankind ; and only hope was left to men to comfort them in their
afflictions. The legend of Prometheus, with that of Heracles, is one
of the most profound and suggestive in all mythology ; and its mean-
ing is not difficult to read : Evils are a result of civilisation, which,
while on one side a beneficent and salutary, indeed an indispensable,
achievement of the human mind, yet on the other side involves a
breach with the simplicity of the narrow and limited nature-life.
By outstepping the natural limits of man's life, and seeking after
a wisdom and a power like that of the gods, it ministers both to
man's arrogant self-deification and to his sensuous greed and love of
pleasure, and in both ways draws down upon him the punishments
of the enraged deity.
The Nature-philosophy of Greece was not led to enter into the
question of the origin of evil ; but the Socratic thinkers could not
avoid it, as they saw the principle of the world in the deity, which
Plato regarded as the supreme good, Aristotle as perfect thought.
From the nature of such a cause it appears that only a perfectly
good world might be expected ; but in both philosophers the deity,
the idea, thought, is not the sole cause of the world ; by its side
THEODICY. 5
matter stands ; and though in relation to the idea, or form, which
alone is real, it may be a mere not-being, a quite undetermined
being, a mere possibility of definite being, yet it has enough reality
to oppose such a resistance to the working of reason, that the ideas,
the ends, can only be imperfectly realised, because they find in the
necessity of material existence a limitation they can never entirely
overcome. Hence the world is not perfectly good, but only good so
far as the deity was able to make it good according to the nature of
matter, which had to be made use of. Especially is the material
body, according to Plato, a fetter and a prison for the soul of man,
not only foreign to the soul's true supersensuous being, but entirely
hindersome to it ; before its earthly birth the soul existed in a
higher life, gazing on the idea in the choir of the gods ; but by
allowing that part of itself which was affected by desire — (it had then
such a part from the beginning) — to gain the upper hand of its
rational part, it sinks down out of the world of the ideas into the
world of the senses, and is planted in an earthly body. By this
combination so much sensuousness and passion and unreason
attaches to the purer nature of the soul, that it is disfigured and
becomes scarcely recognisable ; the ideas, in the contemplation of
which it lived before, it now forgets, and it can only by degrees raise
itself again out of the error of sensuous appearance and the unrest of
sensuous desires to the recollection of the eternal true being and of
the highest good. " So long therefore as we have the body with us,
and the soul is coupled with this evil, we can never perfectly attain
the goal of our (true, higher) desire, viz., truth." The material
body, therefore, which hinders us from the true good, and is the
occasion, the stimulus and the instrument of all low desires, is the
ground-evil, from which we must wish to be freed as soon as
possible ; only with death does the higher life begin, but prepara-
tions can be made for it beforehand by pbilosophic self-liberation
from sense. From this view there is manifestly but a short step to
the conclusion drawn by Philo that matter is the principle of evil ;
but Plato did not take this step ; with him the origin of evil is in
the soul itself, it is. the soul's own desire that, draws it down into
6 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
material corporeity ; so that the latter is not the principle, but only
the form of manifestation, of the soul's evil, which however helps
greatly to confirm and to augment that evil. But though evil is
thus unavoidable in the material world, Plato is deeply penetrated
with the conviction that the merciful deity has arranged and rules
all things for the best ; that goodness and badness surely find,
whether inwardly or outwardly, in this world or the next, their just
compensation ; that to him especially who loves God all things that
come from God work together for good, even evils themselves, in so
far as they are not the punishments of former sins ; though apparent
evils descend on him, yet " all things will in the end work together
for good to him in life and death ; for the gods have a care of any
one whose desire is to become just and to be like God, as far as man
can attain his likeness ; if he is like God, he will surely not be
neglected by him " (Rep. x. 6 1 3).
The ideas of this Platonic theodicy were further worked out by
the later Stoics, whose monistic view of the world however caused
them to differ from Plato in making that necessity of nature, which
gives rise to evils, not a limiting barrier of the purpose and the
reason of the world- order, but the means through which it is con-
summated, ^tiologically considered, evils are in the view of the
Stoics a necessity, being inevitable accessory consequences of the
laws by which tlie world-order is constituted. As all that is good
in the world is based on these laws, it is impossible to remove out
of the whole those evils which also proceed from the same laws,
without destroying the good at the same time ; the two are so in-
separably interwoven in the world that each can only exist along
with its opposite and through it. This is true of moral evils too ;
they are so bound up with the virtues, as the opposite to be overcome,
that the virtue could not work itself out without the evil. But just
because he knows that all things, evils too, came about according to
eternal laws, which the perfect divine reason has ordained, the wise
man nowhere sees blind chance or irrational fate, but the salutary
government, which aims at the best, of divine providence. The
Eoman Stoics especially, a Seneca, a jMarcus Aurelius, an Epictetus,
THEODICY. 7
give beautiful expression to this thought in a great variety of ways.
Thus Seneca ^ says : " I do nothing under compulsion, I do not obey
God slavishly, I freely consent with him, and that the more readily
because I know that all things come about in accordance with fixed
and eternal laws." " What folly is it, rather to be dragged than to
follow ! We are born citizens of the divine kingdom ; to obey God
is liberty. I follow Him not because I must, but from my heart."
Misfortune too is only the occasion of virtue, the means to exercise
and strengthen virtue. " Those in whom He is well pleased, whom
He loves, God hardens and braces, He visits them ; He disciplines
them ; those to whom He appears indulgent and forbearing, them He
is reserving as weaklings for future evils. God is fatherly disposed
towards the good, he loves them with a manly love, and says : Let
them be disciplined by labour, pain, and loss, that they may acquire
true strength ! A spectacle worthy of God is the brave man
struggling with adversity. In the absence of adversaries courage
turns soft." As the brave man therefore knows beforehand that
evils too are not meant to be against him but for him, he does not
lose his composure when they come to him, but continues faithful to
himself and overcomes all outward things, offering to fortune a
serene brow. " All that is adverse he regards as means of discipline,
and what true man would not rejoice in exertion, or would not be
prepared for the dangerous fight ? to what man of [activity would
idleness be anything but a punishment ? Thus to the good man evil
itself becomes a true and inwardly wholesome good ; as, conversely,
to the natural man outward goods often prove an inner evil and a
curse. Hence to the pious Epictetus the theoretical question of
theodicy passes at last into a practical exhortation : " Only dare to
look up to God, and to say, ' Make use of me as thou wilt, thy will
is also mine, I am thine, I refuse nothing that pleases thee ; lead me
wherever thou wilt ! ' For I consider what God wills to be better
than what I will. This way leads to freedom, this way alone is
redemption from slavery ! " ^
^ De providentia, v. 4-6 ; iv. 7 ; ii. 1-6. Vita heata, xv. 6. Epist. xcvi. 2.
' Dissert, ii. 16, 42 ; iv. 7, 20 ; 1, 131.
8 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
In Indian speculation, similarly, evils have a necessary basis in
the being of the world, but they are not mere accessory consequences
of the reasonable constitution of the world, which as such may aM
should be means towards good ; to the pessimistic mood of the
Brahman and the Buddhist, evils appear as the true kernel of all
existence, only to be removed with the cessation of the finite itself.
All life is pain, and the desire to live, the cleaving of desire to exist-
ence and to the world of sense, this is the fundamental evil, the
original sin, which punishes itself throughout the endless cycle of
enforced suffering. Such a non-theological, softly sensitive way of
thinking cannot attain to the thought of the conquest of evil and its
transmutation into a means of good ; all it can think of is the alle-
viation of evils by mercifulness to individual sufferers ; or, even more,
flight from the domain of painful phenomena to the mystic beyohd
of the extinguished will, of ascetic self-mortification and quiet apathy,
or of Nirvana. With this esoteric speculation, however, both
Brahmanism and Buddhism associated the exoteric dojjma, that
every suffering is the retributive consequence of a man's own guilt,
incurred in this or in a previous existence, a punishment which
infallibly follows every act sooner or later, from the inexorable neces-
sity of the causal connection of all that takes place. A mystical
distortion, this, of the profound truth of the moral world- order, which,
moreover, is not based here on the belief in a real divine power and
guiding providence.
The view which regards evil as the retribution following upon
human guilt was everywhere a solution of the problem to which the
religious consciousness readily turned, based as it is psychologically
on the connection of the God-consciousness with the conscience which
judges our acts. The particular manner, hov/ever, in which evil and
guilt were supposed to be connected with each other was capable of
very different interpretations, and depended on the general character
of a religion. AVith the Brahmans, whom the Buddhists followed in
this point also, retribution was conceived as an individual affair;
quite in the spirit of their abstract idealism, the individual life is
detached from the concrete conditions of its connection with nature
THEODICY. 9
and with society, and regarded as a whole, shut off by itself, in
which what is done and what is suffered are said accurately to
correspond. But as daily experience contradicts such a position, the
doctrine of transmigration is brought in, and the ground of present
evils souglit in prior modes of existence, with regard to which, how-
ever, there can be no moral accountability. Tlius did the dark and
unknowable former existence make it impossible to arrive at any
clear or sound judgment of the actual world and the actual self.
Quite different was the form assumed by the idea of' retribution on
the soil of a historical and theological view of the world, such as
that of the Persian, but more specially of the Jewish and the
Christian religion. The position of the Persian religion with regard
to the question of the origin of evil is quite a peculiar one ; in part
it explains it mythologically, from the power of the hostile spirit
Ahriman (vol. iii. p. 314) ; in part ethically, from a transgression of
the first men, which began with lying and idolatrous thoughts, then
grew more pronounced in the selfish efforts of civilisation, and was
consummated in the worship of the devil, by which man suffered the
power of the spirits hostile to God to prevail over himself and over
the earth. , In so far, therefore, as the evils experienced in the world
are due not only to the former transcendent cause, but also to a cause
which is historical and moral, they may be overcome by moral effort,
and to do this is the task of the historical community of Ahuramazda ;
and thus evils though in themselves of anti-divine, devilish origin,
become in their turn the means of the divine world- order ; they call
forth that exercise of moral activity which is pleasing to God, and
that not only in the case of individual wise men, as with the Stoics,
but for the whole of the members of the society which is engaged in
the service of God.
In the Biblical narrative of the " Fall " (Gen. iii.), the prophetic
narrator works up old legendary materials ^ in the ethical spirit of
prophetism. Even the scene of the action, the " garden of Eden," with
its four streams, points to the Babylonian home of the legend. In the
1 Schrader: Cuneiform Inscrijjtiona, etc., i. p. 37 sqq. Delitzsch '. Wo lag das
Paradies? 1882. Dillmann : Commentar zur Gnifsis, 1885.
10 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
two trees, the " tree of life," and the " tree of knowledge," we have
to recognise a Hebrew doubling of the sacred tree of the Assyrian
monuments. The apple plays a considerable part in Greek and
German mythology, now as a love-token, now as an object of strife
(Eris-apple) ; a bite of an apple was fatal to Persephone, and bound
her to the under-world ; and it is by eating the Idun-apples that the
German gods renew their youth. The serpent on the tree, which in
the Hebrew narrative plays the part of the tempter, frequently
occurs in Greek and German legend, as the dragon who watches over
the golden apples (of the Hesperides, for example), or who robs
them. That it had a part in the Babylonian legend too, appears
from several representations on the monuments, one particularly
deserving attention, in which a man and a woman are stretching out
their hands towards fruit hanging on the tree (there a bunch of
dates), while a serpent is creeping upwards behind the woman. The
similarity of this situation with that of the Bible narrative is very
obvious, and we must allow it to be at least very probable that this
representation refers to the fall, though no positive certainty is
attainable on the subject, because we are not yet acquainted with
the Babylonian form of the legend of the fall. It was, no doubt,
myths of this kind (we are not here concerned with their original
meaning), which were worked up into an ethical form in Hebrew
literature ; the inaccessible and dangerous character of the fruit
being traced to a divine prohibition to eat of it. The motive of this
prohibition was not merely, in the original meaning of the legend, to
provide a trial of the virtue of the first parents, but the fear that by
eating of the fruit they might come to possess a knowledge too high
for mortals. The word of the serpent when trying to persuade Eve
— " God knows, that on the day on which ye eat thereof, your eyes
shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil " —
cannot be regarded as a mere deceitful pretence, since God himself
confirms the statement after the act has been done : " See, man is
become like one of us, so that he knows good and evil," words which
the context does not allow us to interpret as mere irony. The
original meaning of the narrative is therefore simply this : The
THEODICY. 11
origin of the evils of human life to be found in the transgres-
sion by the first men of the divine prohibition which had denied to
them the higher knowledge, like that of the Gods, the knowledge,
namely, of good and evil. The knowledge of good and evil is the
knowledge of what is becoming and unbecoming to man ; the first
result of his eating the forbidden fruit was that man found it
unbecoming for him to be naked. But this knowledge is nothing
but the most elementary elevation of man above mere nature, the
first dawning of the consciousness of supersensuous destiny which
makes him higher than the beasts, — in fact, the first stirring of the
impulse towards civilisation. In so far, then, this knowledge was a
progress beyond the naive innocence of the state of nature ; but it
was at the same time a breach with the unity of nature, a loss of its
happy simplicity and of undisturbed converse with the deity. With
the beginning of self-knowledge and of civilisation, the first step of
which is the covering of his nakedness, man sacrificed the happiness
and innocence of the state of nature, and as with every further
advance of civilisation, as described in Genesis iv.-xi., he increases
his emancipation, he also increases his alienation from the highest
good, from the peace of simplicity and of the fear of God. " It is
the yearning cry that goes through all the peoples ; as they advance
to civilisation they feel the value of the goods they have sacrificed
for it" (Wellhausen). We have here, in fact, what finds expression
everywhere, with the Persians and the Greeks too (the Prome-
theus-legend), namely, the view that the entrance on the path of
civilisation could not take place without violating the divine
will, was a self-willed overstepping of the God-imposed limits of
human life, not without an arrogant. Titanic attempt to assume
the likeness of God. And however certain it is that man is
made for civilisation, who will deny that it has that dark side?
Thus the narrative of the fall, if we take it in its original sense,
and not in that which dogma has imposed on it, contains the
profound thought of which the modern philosophy of history
has seen in it the symbol, that the civilisation of mankind has a
two-fold aspect, both with respect to immediate happiness, and
12 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
with respect to the moral and religious judgment to be passed
on it.^ It must be conceded, that the unanimous voice of the
legends of the peoples does not, as we are accustomed to do, give
precedence to the optimist, but to the pessimist side. Yet the
former is not entirely wanting ; in the Greek legend, for example,
of the fatal gift of Pandora, hope was left to comfort the human
race ; and in the Bible narrative, when the first pair are expelled
from Paradise, the hope is given to cheer them on their toilsome
and painful way, that the head of the serpent will one day be
crushed.
The narrative of Genesis iii. explains the origin, not of the sin,
but of the evils, of mankind, as a punishment of the disobedience of
their first parents. In the rest of the Old Testament, there is no
mention of this explanation, except in the late Book of Wisdom.
The general ills of the human lot, as well as the transitoriness of
man's life on the earth, and even his moral weakness and impurity,
are often traced to the fleshly nature of the human race,^ and thus
regarded as having a natural and necessary basis in human nature
(this is not inconsistent with Genesis iii. 19 seqq., as immortality is
not there assumed to be a natural attribute of man, but a later con-
sequence of partaking of the tree of life, which he is driven out of
Eden to prevent him from doing). Special and conspicuous evils on
the contrary are regarded both in the exhortations of the prophets
and in the theory underlying their histories, as an expression of the
divine wrath, God visiting with definite penalties those who trans-
gress his ordinances. According to the old view, it is not only those
immediately guilty who are visited ; the guilt of the fathers is
punished in their children and their grandchildren. Only Jeremiah
and Ezekiel, speaking in view of the ruin of the theocratic popular
life, rejected the earlier view of the solidarity and community of
guilt, and set up the principle of personal responsibility and of re-
^ Compare Schiller : Ueber die erste Menschengesdhchctft nacli dem Leiifaden der
momischen (Jrkunde ; similar views in Hegel's Rdigiomphllosophie, i. 192. Of theo-
logians Wellhausen may be named as one of the few who nnderstand, clearly and
naturally, the original meaning of the narrative.
-Genesis vi. 3 ; Job xiv. 1-4 ; iv. 17 ■'^cq. ; Psalm ciii. 14.
THEODICY. 1:3
pentance as a task to be engaged in by individuals, each for himself.^
But this brought new difficulties into view for the doctrine of retribu-
tion. So long as this idea was only applied to the people as a whole,
it was not difficult to work it out ; for experience also showed the
fortunes of the people to be directly connected for the most part with
its moral and religious behaviour. But when the doctrine of retribu-
tion came to be applied personally, and to teach that outward fortune
accurately corresponds to moral desert in the life of each individual,
it was impossible to overlook the fact that experience contradicts in
many ways such an assumption, and then the problem presented
itself of reconciling the contradiction between the sufferings of good
men, which experience reports, and the assumed retributive justice
of God, — the problem of Theodicy which forms the subject of the
didactic poem of Job.
The first way which presented itself of escaping from the diffi-
culty was to deny that any such contradiction really existed ; either
it could be asserted that the sufferer was not innocent, except in
appearance, and that he had committed secret sins which were the
reason of the penal sufferings he endured ; or it could be said that
his sufferings were merely apparent ; they could be represented as a
mere passing trial sent to prove him, and certain to lead to his
greater happiness in the sequel, as conversely the apparent happiness
of the ungodly only prepared for them a deeper fall. Both these
positions are taken up by Job's friends ; first, they cast doubt upon
his righteousness, and urge him to bethink himself of his secret sin ;
and then again they comfort the sufferer by assuming that he is
innocent, and bidding him look forward to a speedy end of his trial,
and a glorious restoration of his fortune ; and this actually takes
place at the conclusion of the story of the book. But both these
explanations are rejected as inadequate. Against the first the moral
self-consciousness of the righteous man protests : he denies that he
is guilty of any special sins for which he should deserve such excep-
tional sufferings. The latter is disproved by the fact of common
experience that the misfortunes of the good man, the prosperity of
^ Jer. xxxi. 29 seq. ; Ezek. xviii. xxxiii. 12 seqq.
14 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
the ungodly, by no means always change before their death (xxi. 23).
In view of this fact the religion of the Old Testament, M'hicli hoped
for earthly good from the recompensing righteousness and faithfulness
of God, had no resource but dumb resignation, which makes up its
mind that it cannot understand the hidden counsels of God, and
must not strive to do sa " Shall he that cavilleth contend with
the Almighty ? Behold, I am of small account, what shall I answer
thee ? I lay my hand upon my mouth, I will not answer. I have
uttered that which I understood not, things too wonderful for me,
which I knew not ! " (xl. 2-5 ; xlii. 3.)
None but the very deepest piety, however, can support this
position of dumb resignation. Doubts which have merely been
beaten down generally raise up their heads again, and if they are
not solved, lead to general scepticism. The latter is the case in
the " Preacher" who despairs of a solution of the hard contradictions
of life, and falls back on the practical wisdom of a moderate enjoy-
ment of life, restrained by the fear of God. At a later time, from
Daniel onwards, the belief in the resurrection made it possible to
hope that the retribution and compensation which this life had not
afforded would take place in the next. Here, it is true, the spirit of
service for reward, of which there is always a danger in connection
with any doctrine of retribution, was not got rid of; indeed, it w^as
rather intensified by the attention directed to the miraculous world
of the resurrection, as we see from Pharisaism, which kept account
and reckoning of all the sufferings of the just as so many receipts or
notes of exchange to be honoured in heaven. Much higher than
such a calculating piety is that ethical and teleological mode of view,
which, regardless of all outward retribution or compensation, sees the
\'alue of sufferings in the salutary moral influence they exert imme-
diately on the sufferer and the society about him. This deeper turn
of theodicy, too, is by no means unknown to the Old Testament ; it
was based, in fact, in the whole historical and teleological character
of the religion, which represents even the punishments of God's
judicial righteousness as by no means inconsistent with his faith-
fulness to his covenant, but as meant to be the means of chastening
THEODICY. 15
and sifting the impure covenant people in order to restore the true
and God-pleasing covenant community. Through the whole of
prophetism, therefore, there is combined with the idea of primitive
retributive evil, that of salutary and chastening suffering, though the
idea applies, it is true, to the people as a whole ; and the expectation
is thus held fast of the outward restoration of the people after its
discipline has been accomplished. But afterwards, when religious
reflection came to concern itself more with the life of the individual,
the afflictions of individuals too coidd be placed under this idea of
salutary discipline, and the meaning and purpose of them be seen
just in their moral effects as means towards virtue, quite irrespective
of outward retribution or reward. This is exemplified in a number
of fine expressions in the Books of Wisdom.^ In times again, like
those of the exile or the period of the Maccabees, it was seen how
the best had to endure the sorest personal trials, and to suffer for the
guilt of all, to which they had contributed least, and how yet this
fortune did not shake their faith ; but their faithful perseverance
amidst all that was laid upon them was a blessing for those around
them, a rock of strength for those who were cast down, an earnest of
healing and restoration for the whole people of God ; and this ex-
perience led to the great thought that the sufferings of the innocent
had a wider than merely individual meaning, that all were interested
in them, and that they pointed forward to a benefit for all, that they
possessed a healing power for the moral life and history of the
whole community. The great Unknown of the exile first gave
classical expression to this thought (chap. liii.). In Christianity this
teleological view of suffering was the prevailing one ; in view of the
typical sufferings of Christ it could not but be so : in the c7^oss of
Christ the Christian sees the curse which in the world's judgment
rests on those who are unhappy, for ever lifted off them, and even
the hardest lot sanctified as a means of grace in the execution of
God's loving purpose : knowing himself to be a child of God, he
knows that " to them that love God all things work together for
good" (Eom. viii. 28; v. 4).
1 Prov. iii. 2 ; xv. 33. Sirach ii. 1 seqq. Compare also Job v. 17.
k; the contents of tee religious consciousness.
Yet it was only for the practical religion of the Christian that
death had thus lost its sting, and suffering its penal character. As for
the theoretical question of the origin of evil, the theory maintained
itself which had been worked out in Jewish dogmatics, on the
assumptions of legal retribution. In the Old Testament writings the
story of the fall is never used for doctrinal purposes ; but rabbinical
theology could not fail to make use of such an interpretation of the
evils of the world, accurately as it fitted the assumption of that
theology t lint all evil is the consequence of sin. The first trace of
this is met ii\ the Book of Wisdom, which (ii. 23) represents death,
which, accouiing to the old Hebrew view, was based in the nature of
man as a iieshly being, as having come into the world from the
envy of the devil, which means that the devil who is now seen
behind the serpent) out of envy seduced the first men to sin, and
that death became the doom of humanity as a punishment for sin.
And not only death, but also the " impulse to evil " though present
from the first in the nature of man as a creature of sense, came, the
Eabbinical theology teaches, to the universal prevalence experience
shows it to have among men, only in consequence of the sin of the
first parents ; so that the whole present state of mankind, as it is
subject to the power of sin and death, is on the one side the natural
consequence of man's fleshly nature, but, on the other side, the
positive penal consequence of a historical first trangression. It is
certainly difficult to hold both these views at once without contra-
diction ; but it is characteristic both of the theology of Palestine and
of the Alexandrian speculation of Judaism, that they are always
found in combination.
Essentially the same doctrine was taught by the apostle Paul,
who naturally could not deny his Jewish theological training, and
determined the Christian theory upon the subject. With him also
there are two views standing side by side without any attempt to
harmonise them.^ First, it is the transgression of Adam, by which
sin came into the world, and death by sin, and the two came to be a
dominating power over mankind, in virtue of a divine penal sentence,
1 Rom. V. 12-21, with vii.-viii. 13 ; 1 Cor. xv. 45-50, and frequently.
THEODICY. IT
which, to puuish the guilt of its head, condemned the whole race of
man to the strict ward of sin and death. Secondly, however, sin and
death are based on the fleshly nature of man, because it belongs to
the nature of flesh, the sensuous, selfish nature-life, both to resist
the spiritual law of reason and of God, or to be sinful, and also to be
subject to the natural law of the finite, of the world, or to be mortal.
The two theories agree, however, in this : that subjection to sin and
death is a universal and, now at least, an involuntary condition of
man's life. But this necessity of sin and death is only one side
with Paul ; the other side has to be taken along with it, that both
alike are ordained by God with a view to the redemption he intends,
that therefore they only constitute that condition of need of redemp-
tion, which is to be terminated in the actual redemption by Christ
(Gal. iii. and iv. ; Eomans ix.-xi.). Here lies the theodicy of this
apostle, in which the Isaianic anticipations of the theology of the
divine world-government find a majestic fulfilment in the univer-
salism of the all-embracing wisdom and love of God, which make
even the disobedience and errors of man subserve their saving pur-
poses. But that profoundly earnest view of the world, which with
Paul clothed itself in the doctrine borrowed from Jewish dogmatics,.
of the universal rule of sin and death inherited by man from Adam,
pervades the whole of the New Testament. The apostle's cry of
pain, " Who shall deliver me from the body of this death ? " finds an
echo in the whole contemporary literature of his time, even in that
of the Greek and Eoman world, as a glance into the writings of the
Platonists, the Neo-Pythagoreans, and the Stoics of the empire, may
show us. It was natural that minds which were inclined to theosophy
should seek to trace the wretched state of the world, of which they
were so keenly aware, to deeper, transcendental roots. This effort
produced the notion-mythologies of the Gnosticism of the second
century. But the Johannine theology too of the fourth Gospel and
the cognate epistles of the New Testament was not content to find
the origin of the world's evil in a historical human occurrence such
as the act of Adam, but saw in it a manifestation of the mysterious
discord which had run through the spiritual world from the begin-
VOL. IV. B
18 THE CONTEXTS OF THE BELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
ning ; the historical antithesis between the community of the faith-
ful and a hostile world was a mere sign of the metaphysical conflict
of essences between light and darkness, the Son of God and Satan,
the children of God and the children of the devil. But, as with Paul,
the historical antithesis of the elect and the reprobate finally dis-
appears in the universalism of grace, which has concluded all in un-
belief, that it might have mercy upon all, so with John too we see
above the conflict of a divided world the reconciling unity of God,
who loved the world, and gave his Son for it, and the world -conquering
power of the Logos, the one mediator and ultimate end of the whole
creation. Thus there rose above the Pesswiism which formed the
prevailing mood of the period the glad and believing Ojjtimism of
the Christian tidings of redemption, the victorious watchword of the
future.
Each of these two tendencies forms an essential element of the
Christian consciousness ; and the problem of finding a dogmatic
method of reconciling them engaged the attention of Christian
theology from the fifth century onwards. In Manichpean dualism the
early Church encountered the heretical extreme of the pessimistic
view of the world ; that system declared human nature to be so
devilish and bad that the very possibility of redemption seemed to
be taken away as well as all moral accountability. The Fathers of
the Church clung the more firmly to that antique optimism, accord-
ing to which human nature is essentially good, and. evil is only a
defect, a weakness which by no means does away with the freedom
of the will for goodness, but, on the contrary, can be overcome by the
efforts of the will when assisted by proper instruction. Death, too,
appeared to some of the Fathers, especially the Alexandrians, to be
a natural and salutary lot for earthly human nature, with its sensual
inclinations. This teaching was not at first impugned ; but when it
was advanced by Pelagius with such distinctness as to appear to cast
doubt on the necessity of the church provision for salvation, a
reaction was called forth in the African church, of which the acute
theologian 4«^ns^me made himself the spokesman. In his earlier
contests with the Manichaeans, whose dark and fantastic mythology
THEODICY. 19
at the same time had not been without attraction for him, he had
been the champion of freewill and of the imputation of evil ; and to
refute dualism he had also maintained the Greek theory of the mere
negativity and relativity of all evil, evil being merely the shadow
which necessarily accompanies the light to make up the world-whole.
But if he had not approved of that pessimism, neither could he now
approve of the Pelagian optimism. It appeared to him to be in con-
flict with all the assumptions of faith : redemption by Christ, the
sole saving efficacy of the Church's means of grace, the necessity of
infant baptism for salvation ; in conflict too with the facts of our
moral consciousness. For evil is, according to Augustine, not mere
weakness or sensual inclination ; it is the fundamentally perverted
direction of our will, which, instead of finding its centre in the love
of God, rather in its self-love and its love of the world deifies the
creature, and withdraws from the Creator the honour which is due
to Him ; but a will thus poisoned to the very root by pride and
selfishness, whose love is turned away from God to the transitory,
can bring forth nothing truly good in detail ; it is free to evil only,
and destitute of all power for good ; even its apparent virtues are in
reality only splendid sins ; any good it has can only come to it
through God's redeeming grace, as it is conveyed by the means of
grace in the hands of the Church. The latter are the more necessary,
as the state of perfect wretchedness and weakness now described is
not only, as it were, an evil, a sickness, a defect calling for pity, but
involves guilt, and is worthy of damnation. For though to the
individual an involuntary inheritance, it yet originally proceeds from
guilt freely incurred, namely, from the sin of Adam, who, while he
was created in perfect wisdom, holiness, and blessedness, and lived in
Paradise a life of bliss, free from all the defects and needs of the
earth, yet, with an arrogance deserving to be punished, fell away
from God, and by this abuse of his freedom committed, as it were,
moral suicide, completely lost his better nature, and was delivered
over to the dominion of evil desires, to the conflict between flesh and
spirit, to the influences of demons, to the evils of natural life, to the
necessity of death, and finally to the judgment of eternal damnation
20 THE CONTENTS OF TEE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
in hell. Thus, according to Augustine, mankind since the fall of
Adam forms a universal "mass of corruption," in which there are
no differences between good and bad which need to be considered, on
which there rests the infinite responsibility for a damnable first trans-
gression, and from which, therefore, those only can be saved whom
God in his decree before the beginning of time has of his uncaused
grace predestined to salvation. Thus absolute predestination or
election of grace forms the crown of this docrine, as the free trans-
gression of Adam is the basis on which it is built. That the former
position is inconsistent with the latter no one can fail to see ; nor
that the assertion of an inherited original sin is inconsistent with the
moral consciousness which makes every individual feel himself to be
responsible for his own free action. What Augustine puts forward
by way of reconciling these positions with each other, namely, that
we all (virtually) took part in Adam's sin is, of course, empty
dialectic and no more. That this doctrine yet received the approval
of the Church, and became, and continued to be, a prevailing dogma
of the Church, may be ascribed to two reasons. The first is that of
its ecclesiastical usefulness : it seconded the efforts being made at the
time to extend the power of the Church, and to develop the organisa-
tion of the hierarchy, and offered the necessary dogmatic substructure
for these processes. But it also contained a relative truth of per-
manent value ; it embodied what we may call the Pauline depth of
the moral consciousness, the insistence on what is deepest in man ; it
understood the cardinal Christian truth, that it is the heart and its
loving that determine man's value or want of value, and at the same
time his weal or woe. The former was the Catholic side of Augus-
tinian doctrine, which made it of such fundamental importance for
the Medioeval church ; the latter is the evangelical side of it, and
was brought prominently forward by the Eeformation. To free the
pearl entirely from its hard shell is the task, not yet fulfilled, of
Protestant theology.
Modern philosophy can do much to help her in this task. In
philosophy, too, we meet, only in another form, the antithesis found
in the history of dogma, the Pelagian underestimate, the Manichcean
THEODICY. 21
exaggeration, of evil, and the two tendencies which seek to mediate
between these. On the former side are the theories of Spinoza,
Leibniz, Shaftesbury, etc. The thinker who went furthest in this
onesidedness was Spinoza, who declared the notions " good and evil "
to be mere subjective notions of reflection, which we form by arbitrary
comparison of things with each other ; nothing, he taught, is evil in
itself, there is merely an accidental want of something that exists
elsewhere : blindness, for example, is merely a want, — we compare it
with the seeing of others. According to him evil is merely a want
of power or of reality, since good or virtue consists in the power to
maintain one's own being. Thus stated, the assertion is purely
naturalistic ; it is qualified by the further assertion that the true
being of man is being reasonable, or knowledge, and evil thus comes
to consist in a defect of reason or of insight, as with Schleicrmacher
it consists in a want or a weak state of God- consciousness. These
statements are manifestly inadequate ; they arise from the funda-
mental error of Spinozism, its a-teleological causalism, or its refusal
to recognise the inner end as the law of the formation and the life of
all beings. The problem of theodicy was dealt with more thoroughly
and more cautiously, if not altogether satisfactorily, by Leibniz, in
the book bearing that name. He also sees in limitation or privation
the metaphysical origin of evil, the root both of physical pains and
of moral wickedness : the latter consists in the want of the higher
effort which is directed to true good, and that want is connected
with want of insight. Evil, including moral evil, is not itself willed
by God, but as it is an unavoidable accessory consequence of the
production of good, it is permitted by God as a feature of the best
world, and as a means to the attainment of greater goods. It is one
of those discords which, introduced at the right place, make the
harmony more impressive ; it is also in many instances a mere
appearance, due to our human shortsightedness. He, at least, is not
to be praised, who, like discontented citizens, utters nothing but com-
plaints about the divine government of the world. Schelling remarks
on this Leibnizian explanation of evil from finiteness or limitation, that
it is insufficient, and arises from an unliving notion of the positive :
22 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
the positive is rather the whole, or unity; its real contrary is not
mere negation, but division, disharmony, ataxy of forces. Even a
century before the Theodicy of Leibniz, Jakob Bohme had found
the origin of evil to consist in this, that the one will, in order to
become manifest, sensitive, and operative, must carry itself into a
number of different centra, the self- willing of which gives rise at first
to strife, clash of wills, and anxiety, but only to the end that in the
overcoming and flooding it in the eternal will from which it sprang,
the life of goodness and love should become manifest. With this
profound thought, which Schelling took up again in his doctrine of
freedom, the question of theodicy had entered on the right path ; evil
is not to be explained from the empty notion of being and its limits,
and as little from the notion of pure thought, as logical idealism
fancies : it can only be explained from the nature of will, from the
relation of the one whole will to the self-willing of the many will-
centres, of the reason-will to the unreasonable self-will. As the
Panlogism of Hegel, which holds nothing to be real but reason, con-
ducts to a false optimism, so the Panthelism of Schopenhauer, which
knows nothing but the irrational will, conducts to pessimism. If
there is such a thing as goodness, and if goodness is to be regarded
as the power which rules the world, then the principle of the world
is reason ; so far Hegel is right. But if there is really such a thing
as evil, not merely in appearance, but as a reality, to be earnestly
contended with and overcome, then the subject of this reality must be
will, — so far Schopenhauer is right, — will carried out to different-
ness, will distinguished from reason, and manifesting itself as the
self- willing of the individual will-centres. The question is to find
the proper connection of these two sides ; both the religion and
the philosophical history of the problem of theodicy point to this
conclusion.
To be faithful to the critico-genetic method we have hitherto
followed, we must not set out from the transcendental question how
evil is related to God, or how we can explain its presence in the
world, and reconcile it with the world-order ; we simply ask in the
THEODICY. 23
first place what evil is as we know it in our consciousness, what
experiences of our heart those are, which lead us to the problem of
theodicy ? Now the experiences which give us pain are notoriously
many in number, and vary in kind, from the pains accompanying the
first sensations of the new-born child, to the pain at parting of
the old man who is leaving the world weary of life ; were we to con-
sider them all separately there would be no end of it, and for the
question we have in hand little would be gained thereby. It will
be better if we select out of the legion of evils some special group
to represent them all ; and for this a pain will be best suited which
is known to every individual as an immediate experience of his
inner life, and wliich at the same time represents the nature of all
analogous phenomena at the greatest intensity :
" Life is not the first of blessings,
Of all evils guilt is sorest."
We shall seek for the most intense and the most instructive mani-
festation of evil, not in the events of outward life, but in those
experiences of the ego, which, because we are accustomed to connect
them with the painful sense of moral indebtedness, we call " badness,"
or moral evil. That every one is acquainted with such evils from his
own personal experience is an assumption which, it may be supposed,
will be generally allowed.
What then is '' moral evil " ? It might be supposed that all would
have the same notion of an experience so universal and felt so
immediately. It is far from being so : opinions vary widely on the
subject. The oldest and most inadequate explanation is that moral
evil is merely a limitation, a defect of reality ; it would amount then
to just the same thing as the finiteness, the form of existence, of
each individual being. But it expresses a determination which is
there and should not be there, an abnormal quality. Not even
physical evil is a mere want of reality ; no one would think of call-
ing it an evil that we have no wings, but it is an evil to have no
hands or no feet, to be without something that should be there,
something that belongs to the nature, to the purpose and idea, to the
24 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELiaiOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
perfection, of our existence. Sicknesses, too, do not always proceed
from a want of vital energy ; they come as often from a superabun-
dance of energy ; the abnormity consists here essentially in dis-
harmony, in the conflict of the various life-functions with each other,
and with the purpose of the whole, in an inner self-division and
opposition to order. Much more will this be the case with moral
evil. Hence another widely current definition of it is beside the
mark, viz., that it consists in sensuoicsness ; this combines both the
errors of a definition, being both too broad and too narrow. All that
is of sense is not evil, and all evil is not of sense. The most
extreme ascetic would scarcely venture to assert that all the functions
of sense are evil as such ; and we cannot admit of any one of them
that it is in itself evil, because such an assertion would amount to
an impious reproach against the author of nature (1 Tim. iv. 4). In
themselves all the functions are indifferent ; they only become evil
according to circumstances, when they come to be at variance with
any end which either our own person or society ought to serve.
Hence the above definition would at least require to be corrected to
the effect that evil consists in the unregulated movements of sense ;
and as the rule of its order lies in the spirit, and its contrariness to
order consists in its disregarding or setting aside the requirements of
the spirit, the definition might be put in this way, that moral evil
consists in the predominance or rule of sense over spirit. But the
responsibility for the evils of sense lies not with the sensuous body
but with the personal ego, the spirit ; and so it might be more correct
to say that evil consists in the weakness of the spirit as against
sense, in its inability to keep sense under curb and spur, and to rule
and guide it, in the slackness of the ego in asserting its requirements
and opposing the inclinations of sense. Thus put, the definition
applies to many forms of moral evil, and possesses at least relative
truth. But only relative truth : it is far from accounting for all the
forms of moral evil, and least of all the highest forms, in which the
nature of moral evil appears most distinctly. The vices, e.g., of
avarice, of ambition, of lust of rule, of hypocrisy and falsehood, of
fanaticism, — what have these to do with sense ? Can we speak of a
THEODICY. 25
weakness of spirit in connection with such immoralities ? do we not
see the intellect and the will put forth the most astonishing energy
in their service ? And the earliest forms in which evil appears in
children, their obstinacy and self will, cannot very well be traced to
sense.
Such considerations make us the more inclined to agree with
those who place moral evil not in sense but rather in a spiritual
direction of the will, in selfishness. It is certain that in whatever
form it may appear, evil always has its seat in the will, and that the
full notion of moral evil, which always includes accountability, the
incurring of guilt, is only applicable where the will is fully present,
the self-conscious and self-determining ego, the will as subject. It
is also correct to say that the badness of the will consists essentially
in selfishness, in the seeking of the own self alone, of its own per-
sonal ends to the neglect of or in spite of the universal ends of the
whole. Here, however, we must beware of pessimistic exaggeration.
What is evil is not that the will seeks and finds self-satisfaction,
— this is and must be an essential feature of the will. It must will
something, must seek definite ends for itself, and the more it feels
these to be really its own ends, and lives in the realisation of them,
the more self-satisfaction must it of necessity feel ; and this satisfac-
tion does not become less, but purer, deeper, and therefore greater,
the more the will widens out its ends, from its own particular narrow
life to the welfare of the community. Self-willing and self-satisfac-
tion are indissolubly connected with each other by an eternal law
of nature ; and the latter could only appear reprehensible to his eyes,
who saw even in self-will an evil to be overcome, — the position,
consistently held, of the pessimism of the Indians and of Schopen-
hauer, in which all danger of quietism and mysticism is set at
naught. He, on the contrary, who does not require that the will be
mortified and emptied, who holds his own independent activity to
be both his right and his duty, is guilty of an extraordinary incon-
sistency, and offends against a fundamental psychological law, if,
allowing to the will its own activity, he refuses to it its own satis-
faction. What is illegitimate is that the individual will, instead of
26 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
seeking its satisfaction in and with the whole, seeks it outside the
whole and against the whole, that it seeks to make itself the whole
instead of incorporating itself in the whole, subordinating itself to
the whole, as a ministrant member. This subordination is the
eternal and fundamental law of reason for all finite beings ; and we
may therefore say that that will is bad, which wills its own ends
against the law of reason, against the reasonable order of the whole.
And inasmuch as the law of reason is the purpose of God, we may say
that moral evil is the resistance of the particular will to the divine loill.
But here also we have to guard against a misunderstanding which
is found, not very rarely, in theological circles, and which makes it
much more difficult to understand the genetic appearance of evil,
namely, the belief that evil consists from the very first in conscious
rebellion against God, in the denial of God and the deification of
self or of the creature. This view might naturally be suggested
by the Old Testament metaphors of infidelity, of the revolt of Israel
against his king Jahveh : then it obtained a footing in the dogmatics
of the Church through Augustine's theory of the fall of the first
parents ; and it has lately been championed by the theologian Julius
Mliller, in his celebrated book on sin, who, however, acknowledges
that sin is, as he understands it, the most incomprehensible riddle in
the world. On the above assumption, it must certainly be so ; but
this only proves that the assumption, which does not agree with the
facts of experience, is erroneous. Evil is not, from the first, con-
scious enmity with God ; on the contrary, in its earliest stage it is
not connected with the God-consciousness at all, as every one knows
who has children to educate ; but in later life too, he who wills
evil is not bent on offending God— he scarcely thinks of God at all
— he merely wishes to carry through his own will, to satisfy his
inclinations in an irregular way. Objectively considered, there is
certainly opposition to God here ; but that opposition need not be
apparent to him who wills evil, or intentional on his part. Eebelliou
against God in defiant self-deification may be the extremest demonic
pitch of evil, but is not on that account the beginning of evil or
its essential nature.
THEODICY. 27
If evil is thus connected with free will, then, when the next ques-
tion is asked, that, namely, as to the origin of it, the most obvious
and natural answer would appear to be that the origin of evil in each
individual proceeds from his own free choice, — the capacity, which
belongs to every man in an equally original degree, of deciding, from
a state of pure indeterminateness, for good or for evil. This theory,
however — it is called the indeterminist theory — readily as it re-
commends itself to the superficial understanding, is essentially
untenable because psychologically impossible, and moreover quite
in conflict with the fundamental views of every deeper morality,
specially the Christian. The will is never in reality the empty
possibility indeterminism takes it to be, equally capable of turning
to any side and after every action empty again, undetermined with-
out direction. On the contrary, the will has always its own definite
character in every actual individual, and in the character it has at
each time lies the determining motive of its action at that time. If
freedom is self-determination, it is just acting from the character of
the particular self, of this being, determined as it is and distinguished
from every other being ; it is not an acting from the pure undeter-
minedness of a merely possible or unreal ego ; from such an
undeterminedness no real action could ever proceed, least of all an
action from deliberate choice and with clearly conscious motives.
If, moreover, human choice were so undetermined and free, then the
moral life could have no connectedness ; there could be no con-
tinuous development, no regular formation of character ; on the
indeterminist theory the will must be a mere succession of individual
acts ranged one after another like atoms, without any inner con-
nection ; the theory entirely fails to recognise that moral life as well
as life in general is a steadily advancing development in which the
living being and its environment act and react on each other, a
process of becoming in which every antecedent in taken up in the
consequent as a co-operative factor in the living formation of the
moral ego, and every consequent is a fruit which all the former
incidents of life have been preparing. It is on such facts as
these alone that all moral influence brought to bear on the formation
28 THE CONTEXTS OF TEE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
of the will in education and instruction proceeds ; were every act of
the will an uncaused decision from a state of pure undeterminedness,
it would be of no use to implant in the will the best motives, the
purest principles— they could never form a firm and constant direction
of the will. No dependence could ever be placed on any man ; even
if he had hitherto proved himself the best of men, the possibility
would always remain that from his total freedom of choice he might
determine himself the next moment for the very worst conduct.
Indeterminism, however, conflicts specially with two cardinal views
of Christian morality : with the doctrine of the universality and the
originality of sin as a characteristic of the species which does not
depend on the individual will, and with the doctrine of redemption
and of moral renewal by the higher power of the divine spirit.
Were evil the work of each individual free will, and of its uncaused
decision at each time, it could not be proved to be universal without
exception, and it would be inconceivable that evil should cleave to
all men from their very birth, and to such a degree that we should find
it in us from the beginning of our lives as a power with which we
have to struggle and which we can never entirely overcome, as
Christianity justly asserts. But with the surrender of this assumption
we should also have to give up the doctrine taught by Christianity
of man's need of salvation. If the free will of the individual were
the sole originator of evil, then it also, it logically follows, is the sole
originator of the removal of evil or of good, for which accordingly, as
it was his own free act, man would himself deserve the credit. Thus
indeterminism leads, as the history of Pelagianisra, old and new, also
teaches, to the destruction of the Christian doctrine of salvation at its
inmost centres ; it fails to recognise the pregnant truth, that not the
fruits make the tree good, but that as is the tree, so are its fruits, as
the heart, so its willing and doing {agere sequitur esse). " First let
me know a man's heart, and then I know also what he wills, what
he will do."
The undeniable fact of experience, that from the very dawn of
moral life we find evil present in us as a power, the origin of which
accordingly must be beyond the conscious exercise of our freedom, —
THEODICY. 29
this fact, on which indeterminism. Pelagian or rationalistic, must ever
suffer shipwreck, has led to the pre- deterministic tlieoiy which seeks
the origin of evil in an act of freedom which in one way or another
precedes the visible earthly life. This theory is found in a mythical
form in the Indian doctrine of metempsychosis,and then again in Plato.
The statements on the subject in the Phaedrus and the Republic
appear at first to be of so poetical a cast as to make it hard to say
how much of it is doctrine which Plato actually held, how much a
merely exoteric pictorial vesture for the philosophical thought that
the spiritual part of our being is based on our participation in the
supersensuous ideal world. It has lately been maintained that the
doctrine of the pre-existence and post-existence of the soul is entirely
foreign to Platonic idealism and belongs merely to its exoteric state-
ment.^ However this may be, the doctrine certainly determined the
course of thought in the religious speculation of the Jewish and the
Christian Alexandrians {Philo, Origcn), and provided these thinkers
with their explanation of the origin of evil ; and it has lately been
upheld by Jidius Muller, the theologian. It is found in a more
philosophical and sublimated form in Kant, Schelling, and SchojMn-
hauer. The first form, which assumes a real individual pre-existence
of the personal spirit before its entry into the earthly mode of being,
belongs to the problematical ideas of which science can make no-
thing, because they have no point of attachment in our experience, and
only explain one obscurity by another greater obscurity. As regards
the more strictly philosophical form of pre- determinism the case is
somewhat different, as the determining free act here assumed does not
precede the individual's earthly existence in time, but is said to be
related to it as the timeless ground, to be assumed only in the notion.
But if we take this strictly, according to what the words imply, it
appears to me to follow necessarily that what is spoken of cannot be
an act of the free being already in existence, since the individual
character of the individual in question is held to proceed from that
free act as its consequence, but only the hecoming of the free being —
i.e. of the individual will. In that case, however, we may reason-
^ Cf. TeichmiiUer : Studien zur Geschkhte der Begriffe, 1874.
30 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
ably prefer to seek the determining cause of evil not in the inacces-
sible region of a beyond of thought, but in the course of development,
traceable by psychology, of the finite will, from its enchainment in
nature to its freedom.
It was by a true instinct that the Church declined both theories,
the indeterministic and the predeterministic ; the former because it
makes evil unthinkable as an objective power in the world, and so
casts doubt on man's need of redemption ; the latter because it seeks
the origin of evil not in the natural constitution and historical
development of mankind, but in the transcendental regions of the
world of spirits, and, by thus flying off from the ground of history
and morals, casts doubt on man's capability of redemption in the
historical way of positive religion. But while it was natural and
comprehensible, if redemption or the origin of salvation was a
historical fact, that a counterpart should be found for it in a corre-
sponding historical origin of evil, in the fall of Adam, no one can fail
to see that this theory, as dogmatically fixed since Augustine, is
liable, when closely looked into, to the gi^avest objections. It is
indeed impossible for the understanding so far to overcome these
objections as to allow the theory to be really true, though a perma-
nent allegorical truth need not of course be denied to it. Not to
speak of the diflficulties connected with the notion of a primitive
perfect state, it is impossible not to see that on the assumption of
such a state, a fall could scarcely have taken place. Evil cannot
arise out of a will which is purely good ; there could be no motive
for it, and no free act can be conceived without a motive ; but if to
explain the fall we assume the presence of pride or unbelief or lust,
or any such affections as might pro\'ide a motive for evil, then we
have admitted the existence of inner evil before the fall took place,
and the fall becomes not the first origin of evil but only the first
appearance of evil which had its origin elsewhere. Nor does it make
the fall, on the assumption of a sinless primitive state, any easier to
comprehend, if an external tempter is introduced into the transaction ;
since the days of Alexandrian Jewish philosophy (p. 16). Satan
has had this part to play. Not to mention that this is merely thrust-
THEODICY. 31
ing back the question of the first origin of evil from the world of men
into the world of spirits, where all the difficulties reappear with
double force, we cannot forget that an external enticement alone, if
unresponded to by any latent inclination to evil, would be no temp-
tation, and could not exert the very least influence on action. The
outer enticement may awaken the desire within, but the real attraction
of the temptation will always lie in the latter, as even James says :
" Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and
enticed." Thus temptation by Satan could not explain the fall unless
there were present on the part of the first parents some evil lust or
inclination to which it could address itself And thus it remains
true that the first sinful act presupposes a sinful state, and would be
inexplicable without it.
Equally incomprehensible with the fall itself are the consequences
uf it as dogmatic describes them, and that whether we regard them
as brought about in the course of nature or as supernaturally
arranged. In the former case no analogy of experience would be
sufficient to explain the radical corruption of the nature of the race
in consequence of the single, the first act of the first parents. For
while it is true that habits and tendencies may proceed from acts,
they never proceed from isolated acts, but only from a series of
similar acts statedly repeated, and then the habits and tendencies
which proceed from them are only one-sided developments or per-
versions of the forces and impulses implanted in the nature of the
race. Again, that by a first act of the use of freedom freedbin should
itself be lost, that by one particular manifestation of a specifically
human faculty that faculty itself should have been destroyed in its
essence, in its moral capacity — that is simply inconceivable. The
dogmatists of the Church could not help feeling this : they could
never decide whether the divine image, said to have been lost in the
fall, really formed the race-nature of mankind, or was only an
accident of it, and whether an essential or an unessential accident.
The doctrines of the various confessions disagree on this point and so
reflect the difficulty involved in the supposed fact they are based on.
The ruin of the fall is further said to have extended to man's bodily
32 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
nature and even to the rest of the creation outside man, humanity
having become subject in consequence of the fall to the manifold
evils resting upon it and especially to the lot of mortality ; an un-
natural view which requires us to conceive of human nature before
the sin of Adam or apart from that fortuitous occurrence as entirely
free from all those evils. He had a body then, composed of earthly
materials, which was not liable to dissolution in death either from
causes resident in itself or from outward occurrences of any kind — he
might have fallen down from the highest tower and yet have taken
no harm — as one of the Fathers assures us he did ; but such an im-
mortal paradisaical body only exists in poetic fancy ; never and
nowhere can it exist upon the actual earth. And if, to get rid at one
leap of all these incomprehensibilities, we should take refuge in an
appeal to the wonder-working omnipotence of God, which produced
before the fall a supernatural perfection in man's state, and after it as
its punishment an equally supernatural deterioration, all doubts as to
the natural possibility of the matter are overborne, but only to
awaken in their stead and to a greater degree our doubts as to the
moral possibility of such a procedure on the part of God. We could
not reconcile it either with the wisdom or with the justice or with
the goodness of God, if because of the unfavourable result of the first
trial of his quite inexperienced and unpractised pupils, which he had
of course himself foreseen, he at once allowed to descend on the whole
human race the curse of entire physical and moral ruin. No one who
judges this matter honestly and without prejudice can conceal from
himself that such a mode of procedure savours more of the harsh
theocratic idea of the despot of Augustine and Calvin than of that
picture of God which Jesus put before us, the Father in heaven who
makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, the type of unbounded
goodness ! But the gloomy picture, finally, which the Augustinian
dogma draws of the state of fallen man corresponds neither to actual
experience nor to the statements of Holy Scripture, the concordant
testimony of which is to the effect that in spite of its sinfulness
human nature is by no means so God-forsaken as not to carry in its
conscience the law of God, in its understanding the consciousness of
THEODICY. 33
God's revelation, and in its heart the yearning and the search for God
— a bond, not to be broken, of kinship with God now, a pledge not to
be taken away, of the communion with God promised in the future.
The dogmatic view of the " state of corruption," accordingly, we
cannot consider to be anything but a caricature of the reality ; and
this readily suggests to us, that the corresponding view of man's
" first state of perfection " is no more than an ideal picture. There
was never any reality corresponding to it ; it is an abstraction of
actual humanity on its bright side, or according to its God-like con-
stitution and destiny, just as the other picture is an abstraction on
the dark side, of that purely natural state of man which is at enmity
with God.
We are led to the same point by a consideration of the difficul-
ties which are involved in the idea of an original state of man which
was intellectually and morally perfect. To poetry the idea may
have its charms, that heaven poured all truth and goodness on our first
parents as their dower ; sober reason, however, is unable to forget the
cardinal truth of which every day afresh reminds us, that man has to
fight for whatever is true and good, and to purchase it in a perpetual
strucTcrle against obstacles from within and from without. We can
form no idea either of a human wisdom that was not acquired by
the trouble of learning, seeking, investigating, and thinking, or of a
human holiness not reached through the discipline of education and
the conflict of virtue with inclination. These difficulties a priori
have been confirmed of late by the positive knowledge resulting from
the scientific study of antiquity, which, the further back we press to-
wards the beginning of human life, shows us the more unmistakably
the picture of a hard struggle for existence, of difficult and slow
labour in overcoming nature, of a gradual and toilsome rise from the
rudest life-surroundings by the acquirement and improvement of
the tools of civilisation and the elementary establishment of social
customs and laws. In the presence of such facts, what becomes of
the poetical picture of a holy and happy primitive state ? The
dogmatic of the church may cling to the representation for the sake
of its practical contents, when it is regarded as an allegory ; purely
VOL. IV. C
34 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
theoretical religious science must ouce for all abandon it. And it
should also be remembered that the biblical legend of the primitive
state is incomparably more sober than the Augustinian dogma ; it
knows nothing of the perfect wisdom possessed at first by our first
parents, but seems rather to assume the contrary ; if our first parents
acquired their knowledge of good and evil by eating the forbidden
fruit, then it did not belong to them before. But where the elementary
knowledge of moral distinctions is not yet present, it stands to
reason that there can be no such thing as holiness ; the latter is the
state of perfect virtue which is raised above the conflict and the strife
of good and evil, while the former is the state of indifference, of
childish innocence which is not yet acquainted with the difference
between good and evil, has no consciousness of evil, but as little of
good, and has the conflict still before it in which man forms a
practical experience of that difference, and enters on the gradual
effort to get beyond it in a morally virtuous character. This child-
like " innocence," as it meets us in the biblical narrative, obviously
is not a state of superior moral excellence, in which everything is
good and nothing bad ; it is, as we may observe in any child, a state
of morally unconscious naturalness, in which the germs of good and
evil still lie together undeveloped and unseparated from each other,
and the necessary way to goodness lies through the development of
these, i.e. first of all, the distinction of them in consciousness. Then
in the first appearance of the bad germs in sinful desire and act we
have to see not the first origin of evil but its first appearance, which
is by no means indicative of a change for the worse in human
nature, but only a development of it, a development not essentially
different from that which perpetually recurs in the microcosm of
every individual life. We may thus regard the narrative of the
" Fall " as a typical example of the natural process, always essen-
tially the same, of the manner in which man comes to be sinful.
Even the Apostle Paul regarded it in this way in his typical descrip-
tion of this process of consciousness, Eom. vii. 7 seqq.
The psychological genesis of evil is not difficult to understand,
if we set out from the fact that the tendency towards the satisfaction
THEODICY. 35
of his natural impulses is as necessary to man as it is to every other
living being. This tendency, which lies in the essence of the will,
or indeed is that essence, is not in itself evil ; but that evil comes out
of it, and how evil comes out of it may be very easily seen, as soon as
we look at the facts of man's general psychological life, without
prejudice or dogmatic prepossessions. The impulse towards the
satisfaction of the natural impulses is at first purely natural, un-
accompanied, that is to say, by any moral judgment as to the
" should " or " should-not ; " it is not checked by any consciousness
of a law, it is directed unconditionally and without any limitation to
the satisfaction of every impulse, however and whenever it may
arise ; the natural desire is thus at first the sole-ruling, unbroken,
power of the man's life, Now, however, comes the law, first of all
in the form of the requirements coming from without, of guardians,
of society, of the ruling authorities, and imposes a limit on naive
desire, by the prohibition, " Thou shalt not covet." Thus to desire,
which has hitherto been quite unrestricted, there is now added an
obstructing check, represented as an opposing will ; but is the effect
of this new element of consciousness immediately to do away with
desire as a fact, to break and overcome it ? Every one knows
that this is not the case, and it is easy to see how such a thing is
not possible. Natural self-will has on its side the real power of the
impulse to live, and to natural feeling this appears to be the sole
and only right in life : and how then should self-will at once come
to an end at the mere idea of the opposing (forbidding) foreign will ?
That the foreign will which forbids has a higher right to be obeyed
than man's own desire, which till now has been unlimited and has
thus appeared to be alone entitled to regard, is a perception which
cannot by any means be assumed to have been present from the
first, and which is not given implicitly along with the prohibition,
but can only be the result of a series of real experiences, in which
the awakening moral consciousness makes the practical discovery,
that the foreign will which forbids is really as against man's own
desire a higher power, and one which is able to lend force to its
prohibition, to break the resistance of man's self-will by its result-
36 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
lessness or by the disagreeable consequences connected with it.
The idea of repeated real experiences of this kind supplies the first
effectual motive for subordinating self-will to the prohibiting other
will ; and to this there further come the feelings of sympathy, regard
and piety, which suggest a new and more ideal motive in the fear of
offending the higher will which lays its commands upon us. Last of all
comes the perception of rightness,of the inner foundation in the nature
of the case, or the reasonable necessity, of the command or prohibi-
tion. This perception is the highest motive, and confirms the others,
though naturally itself varying from the dimmest suspicion of the
rightness of the other will to full (autonomous) recognition of its
reasonableness. Only from the summation of all these various
motives does there gradually arise as the total result of them the
recognition of the moral right of the will which gives the law, and
of the obligation resting on man to subordinate his self-will to its
prohibition and command ; in short, the moral consciousness of the
shall, which is thus seen to be a complex result arrived at by various
processes of consciousness and various moral experiences before
morality, by no means a thing immediately given in the mind and
developed from the first. The theologians who assume that it is
the latter, cannot possibly understand the genesis of evil ; and we
may be allowed to remark that a little more psychological and
paedagogical insight would do no harm to theological dogmatics and
ethics, and would at least secure those who seek to understand these
things in sober psychological fashion, from the absurd reproach of an
" unethical way of thinking " !
If, then, it cannot be disputed that the moral recognition of the
law which forbids cannot be present from the first, but is a result
arrived at by many different processes of consciousness, it follows of
itself that the warning prohibition "Thou shalt not covet!" can at
first do nothing but call forth the opposition of natural desire ; far
from adapting itself willingly to the limit which thus meets it,
self-will is only stimulated by this opposition to an obstinate insist-
ence on its own purpose (hence " self-will " appears as the earliest
form of evil in children). With this the feeling of self becomes
THEODICY. 37
intensified, and also the strength of the will, that precious and
indispensable foundation of independence of character ; but there
arises at the same time a habitual inclination to struggle against
every limit, a contrariety to the law which, as the higher power, and
more and more also as the higher right, asserts itself against self-
will. Thus, as man's moral consciousness gradually awakens, he
finds himself at once in the midst of the conflict between " would "
and " should"; for he feels a rooted antipathy to the law, which yet
he is obliged to recognise as the good which has authority, and this
antipathy makes obedience to the law partly impossible to him,
inasmuch as moral motives do not powerfully enough oppose his
natural tendencies, and partly at least painful and oppressive ; in any
case the Ego finds in itself, when its moral consciousness awakens,
a poiverful inclination of self-ivill to lawless7iess — i.e. an evil inclina-
tion, which, because originated before moral consciousness, and
therefore before all free moral self-determination, appears as a natural,
innate, radical defect of the will. To this extent, a certain basis of
fact and truth undoubtedly underlies the assertion of the presence in
man of a natural evil or of " original sin." On the other hand, how-
ever, it must be admitted, that this notion is not strictly accurate ;
the element which is natural in man — viz., self-willing, and the
effort after self-satisfaction, cannot properly be called evil; and
that which is evil in man, the tendency of will which asserts itself
against law, cannot properly be called natural, as it does not belong
to the naive stage antecedent to morality, but to the morally con-
scious Ego.
But the transition from the former to the latter is a gradual one,
and consists in a process of consciousness passing through experiences,
acts, and states, which to some extent have not ceased to be natural,
but are already moral ; and this fact gives support to the peculiar
dialectic of the relation between the natural and evil, which is
packed into a paradox in the doctrine of " original sin." In this
dialectical relation, or in the relativity of the whole moral process of
development, lies the reason why we cannot properly speak of a
first sin, cannot fix a definite point as the boundary between action
38 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
which is natural and indifferent (" innocent "), and action which is
moral and involves responsibility, and therefore can draw no abstract
distinction between the mere possibility and the actuality of evil,
the first of which might be asserted to be universal, but not the
latter. No one can arrive at the actual consciousness of good and
evil, these inner determinations of the will, without having in some
way or other, to a greater or less degree, made experience in himself
of the antithesis, without having learned to know in movements of
his own will, more or less protracted and intense, that divergence of
" would" from "should," which itself amounts to some degree of the
presence of evil. Imputation and guilt are similarly to some extent
relative ; in the fullest sense they belong only to the personal moral
act — i.e. to a conscious self-determination against the moral norm ;
before there is any consciousness of a " should " there is no imputa-
tion of guilt for natural action which is morally indifferent, innocent.
Nor can the act of another or its effects ever be imputed to any one
as guilt ; the notion of an original sin which is deserving of con-
demnation must be entirely rejected. But from the point when
moral consciousness awakes, there is imputation, in exact proportion
to the possibility which exists at each particular stage of the
development of conscience, of overcoming lawless inclinations, by
summoning as motives to contend with them the moral insight and
impulses existing at the time. Every step in the development of
conscience, every widening of the moral view, every increase in
refinement of judgment or in instinctive feeling of right and wrong,
augments the possibility of reaction against abnormal impulses, of
overcoming the bad motives by good ones, and thus increases with
man's moral freedom his responsibility also for what he does and
leaves undone.
If accordingly evil only becomes actual in the lawless self-
determination of the finite will, then evil has its origin in the latter,
in the creature, not in God. Evil is neither willed by God as an
end, — on the contrary, it contradicts the end willed by the holy will
of God, or the law of goodness — nor wrought by him as his act ; on
the contrary, man is most distinctly conscious of evil as his own act.
THEODICY. 39
and the divine working with respect to evil presents itself to him
only as a negative reaction against it, in his conscience which judges
him, and in the world-order. As creator of man, a spiritual
being born for free self-determination, God founded the possibility-
only of evil, but inasmuch as he created man with this possibility,
which is inseparable from his nature as a being made for freedom,
and of which God knew from eternity that its realisation too was a
consequence not to be avoided, and a necessary stage on the road to
the realisation of the positive moral end, the real freedom of the
good will, — it may be said that God permitted evil for the sake of the
good which was not to be attained without this condition ; and
inasmuch as the world-order is arranged with a view to the conquest
of evil, the presence of which in the world-plan has thus been
calculated on, we shall have to say, that evil was foreseen by God
and ordained along with good, not as a thing that ought to be, but as
a thing which could not not-be, and so as an accident destined to be
overcome. And as we conceive evil to be an element of the divine
world- order along with good, though an element accidental merely
and to be got rid of, we know it to be dependent on God, and his
unconditioned rule over the world to be secure.
Here, however, the question may be raised whether the God-
contrariness of evil is not in contradiction with the relation of God
to the finite as traced above, where it was said that God as the all-
embracing whole has the finite not outside him but in him ? First
of all we have to remember that we conceived that relation from the
first in such a way as not to destroy but to maintain the relative
independence of the individual beings ; but where will-centres exist
which will themselves, a possibility is at once present that their
will and activity may be abnormal and collide with the order of the
whole. To the abstract intellect the thought may present some
difficulties, that the particular should be in conflict with the whole
which yet embraces and subsumes it ; but that such a relation is
possible is placed beyond doubt by analogies of our immediate
experience. How many tendencies of will, how many feelings and
ideas has the Ego in its consciousness, which it sees to be opposed to
40 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
the purpose of its own being, and therefore denies and seeks to
conquer ! It knows these affections, feelings, and fancies as its own,
present only in itself and through itself, and yet rejects them, abhors
them, hates them, as repugnant, hostile, foreign to itself, and there-
fore to be overcome. "When we hate our own evil tendencies we
show that they are alien, that they are opposed, to our own self ;
and yet we could not regard them as objects of hatred, we could not
fight against them, if they had nothing to do with our Ego, if they
lay outside it, if we did not find them to be moments of our own
life as a whole. It is just because the antithesis of good and evil is
within the embracing unity of the Ego, that it gives rise to the
torture of inner division, to the painful sense of guilt, the agony of
moral struggle; but it is for that reason too that there is a possibility
of cure, of the conquest of the repugnant element, of the restoration
of inner concord and harmony. In pain we witness everywdiere,
both in physical and in moral life, the reaction of the whole against the
abnormal part ; pain is the symptom of evil, of sickness, of division,
and yet at the same time the sign that the living energy is still
there which can conquer the evil and restore harmony. In the life
of the microcosm accordingly the possibility of the overcoming of
evil (both moral and physical, the case is the same with both) rests
on the circumstance that on the one side it is different from the Ego,
opposed to the reasonable purpose of the Ego as a whole, while, on
the other side, it is not separated from the Ego, but forms a part of
its joint life. This must also be true of the evil of the macrocosm
in relation to God; it is certainly opposed to the one will or reason-
able purpose of God, it is certainly denied by his Ego, yet it must
certainly fall within the sphere of that organic interaction in M-liich
the whole life of God unfolds itself, because otherwise there would be
no possibility of its being overcome by the reaction of the divine
organism of the world-order. It is far, then, from being the case
that the fact of evil militates against the theory of concrete mono-
theism which we uphold ; that theory here acquires fresh and most
important confirmation. The evil of the world could not exist as
evil, as disharmony, as division, unless the individual beings of the
THEODICY. 41
world were real independe7it separate wills, different from the one will
of reason, or the self-conscious Ego, of God. And again, the evil of the
world could not be a moment which is destined to be removed and
to be actually overcome in the harmony of the whole, were not all
the separate wills and individual powers embraced hy the unity of the
whole life of God as subordinate moments of it, supported by his
omnipotence, arranged by his perfect wisdom in an organic and
purposeful system. And if, finally, it be objected to this, that if
evil falls within the life of God as a moment of it, then it must be
felt by him, — I am not afraid of this consequence of my position, and
can only rejoice in a train of thought which has led to an idea, which
to the deeper religious mind has always seemed to be a jewel of
faith, though tlieology, wrapped up in her aristotelian-platonic
abstractions has always contemned it : — I mean the conviction that
every pain that passes through our hearts is also really and truly felt
as "sympathy" by the great heart of God, which feels all. Far from
abiding in the monotony of a selfish blessedness, in the fancied other
world of unchangeable singleness and pure thought, untouched by
pains which he leaves to ns mortals as our privilege, he shares with
a compassionate heart all our sorrows, and helps to bear our weak-
ness ; our errors and failures, more especially, grieve his Holy Spirit
(Eph. iv. 30), and so call forth the judging and healing reaction of
his just and gracious will. As he is always certain of overcoming by
his divine power all the evil with which he sympathises, his com-
passion always passes into the blessedness of saving, healing, and
comforting love. And so while he takes a sympathetic part in our
pains, he causes us to rejoice with him as we take part in his
blessedness.
That the divine reaction against evil accomplishes itself in the
form of the moral world-order, we saw above when speaking of the
divine righteousness and holiness. The first manifestation of it is
the judging conscience, in which that objective reason which binds
the individual to the whole, pronounces its judgment on our will and
on our acts in the form of spontaneous feeling. That this function,
by whatever human means worked out and matured, yet rests on a
42 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
trans-subjective divine foundation, the unconditional nature of its
judgments clearly declares. Now, as man is wont to read into the
world what he finds in himself, it is psychologically very intelligible,
how, proceeding from that inner judgment of which he is aware in
the judging voice of conscience, he sees in the outer evils too which
the course of the world brings upon him, the punishments of his
transgressions. Thus the doctrine of retribution proceeds from and
is partly justified by the projection of man's moral self-consciousness
into the outer world ; but there is a double error in that doctrine,
which makes it misleading and confusing, both for religion and for a
rational view of the world. First, it sees in each particular evil a
special divine appointment to repay some particular transgression ;
and secondly, it fails to recognise the theological significance of evil
as a salutary means of education. Those who look at the world from
an objective and rational point of view, cannot by any means discern
that there -is always a causal connection between moral desert and
outward fortune, still less that the one always balances the other, as
the theory of retribution requires that it should. It is frequently
seen that the good man suffers undeserved calamities, while the bad
man rejoices in undeserved prosperity ; and from the time of Job this
circumstance has been a stumbling-block to the doctrine of retribu-
tion. The difficulty disappears however before a purer view of the
divine government ("providence"), such as suggested itself to us
above in our discussion of the divine omnipotence, wisdom, and
righteousness. We must not consider every particular fortunate or
unfortunate event as being by itself, apart from the natural causal
connection of events, a special manifestation of the divine omnipo-
tence or righteousness ; rather does the omnipotence of God manifest
itself as a regular and orderly omnipotence in the whole of the action
and reaction of the world ; particular things are only brought about
by it mediately, by the intervention of all the natural causes at
work in connection with them. Similarly, the scope of divine justice
amoimts to no more than this, that in the whole moral world-order good
is to prevail and evil to come to naught ; and this purpose it attains on
the whole and without fail throuQ;h the fact that the abnormal willinfj
THEODICY. 43
and doing of individuals ultimately suffers shipwreck on the order of
the whole, that it checks and neutralises itself, and in the dialectic
of events turns into its opposite and involuntarily helps in the pro-
motion of goodness. But this by no means prevents it from happen-
ing, that, in this interaction of the free forces which results in the
maintenance of the system of moral goods, in particular instances the
good may often have to suffer and the wicked may often prosper.
The conditions on which the one or the other of these results is brouoht
about are by no means coincident with the moral worth or badness
of the persons in question ; in fact, though the natural and the moral
world-order are arranged each with a view to the other, yet they are
not identical, but represent different stages of the system according
to which the world pursues its goal : different laws rule in these two
stages, independently of each other. Hence the evils which, according
to the natural course of events, light upon individuals, do not for the
most part stand in any causal connection with the moral conduct of
those they light on. They are not to be regarded in the light of
retribution for transgression, but must be understood as the natural
effects of natural causes, according to the causal law of the course of
nature.
But while this natural explanation of evil, from the nexus of
finite causes, satisfies a reasonable view of the world, it is far from
contenting the religious consciousness. To religion it is an axiom
that everything that happens, no matter what its natural cause may
be, is an instrument in the hand of God, and serves the purposes of
his wisdom and love. Religion therefore cannot contemplate evils on
their natural and etiological side alone ; it must also regard them on
their moral and teleological side, and see in them salutary instruments
of education with a vietu to good. That they really can be this, and are
meant by the divine ordinance to be this, is attested by the experi-
ence of all good men, who under the pressure of the evils of the world
did not obstinately harden themselves nor timidly despair, but
allowed themselves to be tausht in the school of affliction, that the
worst evils do not lie outside us but in ourselves, in the selfish
separate will of our foolish heart, which makes its own petty ends
44 TEE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
into idols, which it not only serves itself but would fain make the
whole world serve too. To cure us of such unblessed delusion, from
which the human heart, just because it is personal will, always suffers
more or less, to free us from the self which is opposed to God, so that
we may find in the love of God our true, God-like, reasonable and
free self, this first of- all is the end which the evils of the world are
meant to serve. Thus what certainly appears in the first instance
as an obstruction, never to be overcome, of our separate finite ends,
proves itself to be a furtherance of our infinite end and of our highest
good. In the manifold experiences of pain self-will is made practi-
cally acquainted with the nothingness of its selfish endeavours and
ends ; but this unwelcome obstruction leads to a voluntary bowing
down and yielding to the higher will of the government of the world ;
and out of this surrender, the painful death of the selfish Ego, there
then arises the new life of happy and trustful obedience, of the loving
self-devotion of the free individual will to the will of God and to the
ends of his rule, the true £i;ood of mankind. Then the evils of societv
in particular, from being hindrances to freedom, become stimuli of
moral energy, and standards of the moral tasks requiring from time to
time to be taken in hand. The brave man who has adopted, as the
aim of his own life, tliat which is the aim of God himself, viz., to
advance goodness and to overcome evil in the world, will not let
himself be frightened by the magnitude of the obstacles to be over-
come, nor by the dangers and sufferings which throng about his path :
the more dangerous his enemies, the more will his energy increase
for the good fight. But as the bravest soldier is most exposed to
wounds, so in the moral world too he has always to suffer most
severely from the evils of society, the folly and the malice of the
world, who fights most bravely and effectively against them. Thus
the misproportion between merit and reward, which forms such a
stumbling-block to the belief in retribution, explains itself quite natvir-
ally from the higher moral point of view, and not only explains itself
but altogether ceases to offend, as the practical thought is suggested
to us, that to the brave fighter for God the scars he has gained in the
good fight are changed into insignia of honour, of which lie is proud
THEODICY. 45
rather than ashamed. Even should he be altogether vanquished to
outward appearance, his forward-looking faith regards this as a sacri-
fice which he makes the more readily for the good cause, because
he knows that the future will abundantly make up for it, and that
from one man's seed of tears there will spring for many a harvest of
joy, the anticipation of which makes even his sacrifice easy for
him. Thus the evil of the individual, piously regarded and endured,
becomes not only a means to the accomplishment of his own highest
end, his own personal salvation, but to the salvation of others too.
This is the truth, the ethical, teleological truth of the idea of the
substitutionary sufferings of the righteous on behalf of a world of
sinners. Hence too the apostle Paul knows that God's grace is suf-
ficient for him, that God's strength is perfected in his weakness ;
hence he will glory most of all in his afflictions, because in them the
life of Christ is most gloriously manifested for the church too ; and
so he sums up the fundamental Christian view of the divine govern-
ment of the world in the simple but exalted phrase : " We know that
all things work together for good to them that love God."
CHAPTER V.
REVELATION AND MIRACLE.
With the belief in God and the worship of God the belief in
revelation was everywhere implied, for how could the belief in God
arise and maintain itself without the conviction that he had
revealed himself, and what could be the object of worship, if not to
experience the helpful revelation of the deity ? But two things
were sought from the very first in the revelation of God, two things
were found in it by men. They sought and found in it the knoivledge
of the world and of their place in it, and secondly, victory over the
world ; the former, as defective human knowledge was thought to be
supplemented by divine instructions (oracles, prophecy) ; the latter,
as the deficiencies of human power were held to be made good by
acts of divine power (miracles, acts of healing). That these two
sides of divine revelation are generally connected with each other
even externally, in one way or another, belongs to the very nature of
the case, since accurate knowledge as to the lie of the world is half
the victory over it, and foreknowledge of coming events facilitates the
proper attitude of mind and the suitable mode of action regarding
them. Besides, the divine communications take place to a large
extent by means of outward signs, wliich excite the attention of men
as being acts of more than earthly power.
The revelation of the deity by the communication of knowledge
has been found from of old in two forms of maniic : a mediate form,
by outward signs, which require to be interpreted,^ and an immediate,
1 Inasmuch as this interpretation depends on art, Cicero calls this mantic (de
divin., I. xviii. 34) "artificial," and contrasts with it the immediate as "the
natural." This distinction, however, is accidental, and not so suitable as that given
above.
REVELATION AND MIRACLE. 47
brought about by inner inspiration. Such signs, which were inter-
preted as divine communications with regard to the hidden things of
the present or still more of the future, were found in the most various
occurrences, not only of an extraordinary but also of quite an ordinary
character ; both in the rare event which called forth astonishment
and in that which was perfectly familiar. In Chaldaea a learned
priesthood might watch the course of the stars and think it possible
to read in their mutual approximations and divergences the course of
earthly fortunes ; but the Greeks and Germans managed more easily,
hearing in the rustling of sacred trees the whispers of the gods, and
seeing in sacred birds, as they flew past on the right hand or on the left,
heaven-sent messengers of momentous tidings. The Etruscans and
the Eomans sought the indications of the gods in the bloody entrails
of sacrificial victims ; other peoples again, as the Arabs, the Hebrews,
the Chinese, used as their oracles the casting of lots with sacred
stones or rods. A later form of the oracle by signs was the opening
of a sacred book ; such were the so-called Sibylline books to the
Eomans, to the Greeks their poets, to the Christians afterwards their
Bible or the legends of the saints (sortes Sanctorum). The possibility
of such sign-reading was not a question which entered into the mind
of remote antiquity ; divine communications being in request about
hidden things, they were naturally found in any accidents men
pleased, to which some association or other of ideas attached itself
suggestive of this or that interpretation. It was only the philoso-
phers in Greece who cast doubt on the legitimacy of this mantic from
considerations drawn from scientific thought ; as in Israel the prophets
did the same from motives suggested by a more refined religion.
Following Xenophanes, the school of Epicurus rejected the whole
system of signs as an absurdity ; it contradicted both the physics
of that school, which saw in all events the orderly consequence of
the mechanism of the atoms, and their theology, which represented
the gods as leading a blessed existence in heavenly regions without
troubling themselves in the least about earthly and human affairs.
This deistic irreligiousness, however, which co-operated with their
rational view of the world in leading the Epicureans to reject the
48 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
system of signs, deterred philosophers like the Stoics, who had a
strong interest in religion, from such an Illumination, and drove them
to the misleading paths of that semi-mystical semi-sophistical justi-
fication of superstition, which both in ancient and in modern times
has too readily attached itself to conservative specvilation.
Of more importance for the history of religion, because more
capable of development, is the other form of mantic, the immediate,
which rests on inner inspiration. Widely diffused is the belief in the
divinatory significance of dreams. All nature-peoples hold dreams
to be the highest form of the revelation of the gods. The Indians in
America, e.g., enter on no undertaking of importance without being
assured by means of a dream of its fortunate issue, and they willingly
make the greatest sacrifices if a dream has summoned them to do so,
as they believe that disobedience to such a divine voice will infallibly
have death for its consequence. Dreams which cannot be fulfilled
literally they interpret allegorically, so as to act up to them in some
way. It may happen, moreover, when an order given in in a dream
is extremely disagreeable, that a contrary order is found in another
dream. In Greece, too, it was one of the ordinary methods of pro-
curing the advice of the gods, to sleep in the temples and regard the
dream which was dreamed there as divinely inspired. How imiver-
sally this belief was shared by the Hebrews also, we see from a
number of well-known stories of revelations in dreams, both in the Old
and the New Testament. The form of revelation most nearly akin
to the dream is ecstatic vision. The state of convulsion, ecstasy, was
regarded by the ancients, and is still regarded by savages, as the
work of a god or a superior spirit, temporarily resident in the man
(" enthusiasm ") and making use of him as an instrument of revela-
tion, the man's own mind being all the time quite passive. From
the similarity of the phenomena, the madman was also regarded as
divinely inspired, and the poet and the seer were held to be a kind
of madmen. For practice the great point was, of course, to insert
into the fantastic sense -form of ecstatic vision a rational meaning,
morally valuable and substantial ; either the visionaries themselves
gave expression to their ideal inspiration in such a form, in which
REVELATION AND MIRACLE. 49
case the form too was gradually purified and fitted to be a noble and
poetical vessel of religious and moral ideas ; or the oracles spoken in
ecstasy received afterwards a rational interpretation, as was the case,
e.g. with the public oracles of the Pythian Apollo at Delphi, where
the utterances of the somnambulous priestess, the Pythia, were clothed
by the hands of the priestly brotherhood with the suggestive wording
on which their great, and for a long time salutary influence on the
public life of the Greeks was based (vol. iii. pp. 94, 95). As the
independent political life of the ancient peoples decayed, and public
interests were thrust into the background, the public oracles also
sank to the level of divination from which they had formerly risen.
Instead, however, of the naive belief of the earlier ages, there noM'
ruled a languid superstition out of which cheatery and deceit made
their profit. From the century before Christ a flood of professional
diviners overspread the Eoman world, who pretended to be in the
service of Isis and Osiris, Mithra and Dea Mater, and other Oriental
deities, and traded with the arts of the juggler and the charlatan on
the need of revelation felt alike by people and by sages.
Of the philosophers the Stoics were the first who attempted a
scientific justification of revelation by dream and ecstasy, tracing
these in part to the general likeness to God of the human soul,
which they regarded as an emanation of the divine world-spirit,
partly to appearances of the gods, who speak to man in his dreams.
The former explanation was based on the Stoic doctrine of the Logos,
but would have led to the assumption of a universal revelation of
the divine Logos in all human truth and goodness, such as we find in
later Stoics (Seneca, Marcus Aurelius) ; this doctrine, however, was
insufficient to vouch for individual prophetic dreams and anticipa-
tions ; for this purpose a supernatural explanation was required,
and the well-known Stoic accommodation to the popular faith made
it an easy matter to provide it. Equally conservative towards the
popular faith, especially in the question now before us, was the
Platonising Plutarch, in whom we find the first regular theory of
revelation. That there is such a thinsr as revelation is certain with
him, for the simple reason that without it we could have no know-
VOL. IV. D
50 THE COXTEyTS OF THE BELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSXESS.
ledge of the Deity ; such knowledge can only be communicated by
Deity itself. He considers revelation to consist in a state of
" enthusiasm," — i.e. " a kind of madness -which arises in man not
without divine influence nor of itself. It is an inspired state
brought about by an outward cause, a total change of the intellect
and reason, both the origin and the energy of which are due to a
higher power." The human soul appears to be open to the divine
influence, not in entire passivity, but in accordance with her own
particular character, and thus there appears to be a combination of
two movements, one wrought in the soul from without, the other
lying in the nature of the soul itself. Hence the outcome cannot
be quite perfect ; as each thing is capable of being the expression
and instrument of an idea only so far as its own peculiar nature
admits, and the idea must always receive alloy and defect from the
medium expressing it, so the soul of the Pythia cannot remain
entirely unmoved and quiet at the stirrings of the Gk)d, but is driven
about like a ship on the sea by the passions which are natural to
the human soul. From the imperfect human share of this " mixed
motion," Plutarch acutely accounts for the occasional imperfection
and the changeableness of the Pythian revelation. He also remarks
very justly that we must not fix our regards so much on the mediate
causes of revelation as to overlook the Deity, the ultimate and
operative cause of it, while on the other hand we must not think of
inspiration as immediate, as if the Deity were sitting in the person
of the soothsayers, and speaking through their mouth and voice like
instruments, which would not befit their dignity and greatness.
Thus even the old Platonist rejected the two opposite errors which
constantly recur in the problem before us — the naturalistic denial of
any divine element, and the supematuralist denial of any human
element in the process of revelation.
While Plutarch assumes an independent co-operation on man's
part before revelation can take place, Philo, on the contrary, ever
disposed to exaggerate the dualistic transcendence of the divine,
represents the organ of revelation, or the prophet, as being in a state
of ecstasy, in which the human entirely disappears before the divine
REVELATIOX AXD MIRACLE. 51
subject, which alone is active. He regards the prophet as a musical
instrument, invisibly touched and played by the hand of God ; it is
only in appearance that the prophet himself speaks ; the truth is
that another makes use of Ms mouth and his tongue to com-
municate what he wishes. The human spirit goes out when the
divine spirit comes in (to the body), for it is not fitting that mortal
and immortal should dwell together ; only when the daylight of
human consciousness (Xous) has gone out and darkness taken its
place in man does the divine light rise in him and engender ecstasy
and God-filled inspiration ; the soul must give itseK up to await the
visit of the Logos. Xot only must it remove everything evil from
itself to make itself a pure temple of God, though this is also
requisite ; even our reason and our senses must dive down to
oblivion, so that the true Logos may replace them in the soul.
Moral purification and exercise is only one, though a necessary,
preparation for the way, the real end of which is the complete
absorption of the conscious mind in the night of ecstatic uncon-
sciousness. The very same theory was afterwards further developed
and made the salient point of the system of ^eo-Platonism. The
gulf which yawns, according to this philosophy, between the primal
being and the finite, can only be transcended by the soul's freeing
herself from all finality, to become immediately one with the infinite.
This is done by means of complete retirement from everything
external, by self-absorption and finally forgetfulness even of one's self,
the disappearance of all thought, will, and consciousness, the flowing
away of the whole self in intoxicated surrender to the Deity, whose
blessed light then rises in the soul, when the latter has by complete
" simplification " — i.e. emptying of self, quenched in itself ever\-
natural light. In this convulsed state, entirely destitute of contents,
consciousness has disappeared, and with it also the very possibility
of the religious relation, and the possibility of revelation, in favour
of an orgiastic tumult of feeling. Thus this abstract idealism
ended at the very point at which the primitive belief in revela-
tion had becnm in natural relioion : in mindless enthusiasm and
orgiasm !
52 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
The Philonian doctriue of inspiration exercised a determining
influence in Jewish, and to some extent also in Christian theology,
as bearing on the view taken of the nature of the inspiration of the
prophets ; yet a glimpse into the writings of the Hebrew Prophets
shows how far their religious consciousness was removed from those
unnatural and ecstatic states, and the more it was developed the
more decidedly did it transcend them. The nature of this prophecy
is entirely peculiar to itself, yet it also had its roots in the popular
soothsaying of the Hebrews, which originally did not differ in any
essential respect from that of other peoples. The oldest Hebrew seers
too were called " convulsed ones, madmen " from the ecstatic form
of their seeing. In their communities (" schools of the prophets ")
this state was induced by sensuous means, such as music and dancing,
as is still the custom among fakirs and dervishes in the East,
and the contagiousness which always belonged to this state of
religious possession belonged to it among the Hebrews too, as we
see from the example of Saul when he found himself among the
prophets. The contents of this primitive Hebrew prophecy, too, did
not differ from those of ordinary mantic ; a Saul goes to the famous
man of God, Samuel, to ask where he will find his father's asses ; a
David, setting out on an expedition against the Philistines, inquires
if he will be successful, and receives an encouraging answer ; of the
seer Elisha in especial, a great number of divinations and miracles
are reported, which are quite of the same class as those of heathen
soothsayers and magicians. From these beginnings, which differed
little from the soothsaying of nature-religion, there afterwards pro-
ceeded in Israel something essentially different, and the principal
reason of this was that in Israel the prophets from Samuel onwards
were the principal representatives of the national religious idea, the
belief in Jahveh. In the unions founded by Samuel prophetic
enthusiasm was placed under the service of Jahvism, and thus
elevated to a peculiarly active factor of the political and religious
history of Israel. These unions of the prophets were the citadels of
the belief in Jahveh at times of persecution by kings of heathen
sympathies. Naturally it could not fail to follow that their struggle
REVELATION AND MIRACLE. 53
for the national religion carried them sometimes into the political
sphere ; the position and work of the prophets at the head of the
popular opposition bore some analogy to that of the tribunes of the
people. In course of time this too close connection with politics
might come to impair the moral and religious influence of the
prophets of Israel as a professional body, and might lead to their
being surpassed by individual non-professional men of God, as the
priesthood of Delphi lost its authority from similar causes, and had
to yield the spiritual leadership of Greece to independent thinkers
and poets. Not as a " prophet or pupil of a prophet," i.e. a regular
member of the prophetic order, but as one immediately called by God,
did the shepherd of Tekoa, Amos, appear before his people ; but he
aimed at no direct political results, he gave his attention solely to the
healing of the moral evils of his time, and not of his time only, but of
the coming time as well ; and he therefore gives his exhortation the
fixity of the written word, thus making it a monument for all the
future. From this time forward the activity of the prophets is not
devoted to the political interests of the day, but to the eternal ideals
of religion and morality. Thus in the first prophets whose written
works are in our hands, with Amos and Hosea, the prophecy of
Israel rose to its third and highest stage of development. Having
set out from ordinary soothsaying, and then become in the schools
of the prophets of the early centuries of the kings an influential
politico-religious national oracle, it now (from the eighth century
onwards) became finally the organ of the revelation of moral religious
truth, the representative of the exalted God-consciousness, the incor-
ruptible conscience, and the unshakable future hope of Israel. For
the third and highest stage of Hebrew prophecy history nowhere
presents any direct analogy, though an indirect one may be found in
the ideal forms of the God- inspired poets and thinkers of Greece
(from the sixth century onwards). " Israelite prophetism in fact is
a thing quite by itself, as much so as, e.g. Greek philosophy : as the
origin of the latter can only be explained from the character and
the history of the Hellenes, so for the rise and specially for the later
development of Israelite prophecy the peculiar genius of Israel had
54 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
to co-operate with the certainly by no means ordinary course of
Israel's history " (Kuenen).
Of what nature was the prophetic consciousness at this stage ?
This is an important question ; here if anywhere we may expect to
find an authentic explanation of the notion of revelation, for it is
beyond question that these men felt themselves to be the representa-
tives, the instruments, the speakers, of divine revelation. " They
come before their people with the clear, firm, and living conscious-
ness of a higher commission ; they feel that the spirit which impels
them is not the common spirit ; and if they begin their discourse with
the words, ' Thus saith the Lord ! ' that is neither an empty phrase nor
a vain self-delusion ; it is the effect of the irresistible pressure of the
soul which seeks the warrant for its endeavours, not in itself, nor in
its own neighbourhood, but in immediate contact with the source of
truth and right. And this the more as they feel themselves to be
in conflict with a hostile, or, what is still worse, with an indifferent
world " (Eeuss). The prophets know themselves to be the representa-
tives of God ; they do not announce their own opinions, but the
truths of which they become aware in themselves as the " oracle of
God;" not their own arbitrary reflection is the source of their
announcement, but they feel themselves seized, overmastered by a
higher power, from which they distinguish their own power quite
clearly ; the sense of the contrast between the inadequacy of their
own power and the fearful magnitude and weight of the task
imposed on them makes them tremble and quake. Thus, for example,
Jeremiah seeks to withdraw himself from the divine commission,
but he cannot do so ; it is like a burning fire in his heart, he must
own himself persuaded whether he will or no. But while he feels
himself overwhelmed by the irresistible pressure of the divine spirit,
he is at the same time lifted above himself, filled with a more than
human power which gives him courage to stand alone against the
whole land as an iron pillar and a brazen wall (Jer. i. 6, seq., 18,
seq., XX. 7, seq.). In such experiences of severe conflicts and wonder-
ful uplifting in their mind did the prophets find the legitimation of
their work, the sole but at the same time the infallible proof of their
REVELATION AND MIRACLE. 55
divine mission, to which they appeal as against false seers ; it is a
subjective certainty, but one which rests on the most solid objective
basis, on the moral judgment of conscience. For this is what con-
stitutes the essential and decisive mark of the true prophet as against
the multitude of the people, the priests and the false prophets — that
the former stand up for the inviolable, if not pleasant, truth of con-
science, while the latter allow for and flatter the wishes and in-
clinations of the natural heart (Jer. viii. 11); the former announce
the day of Jahveh as a day of judgment, while the latter preach
" Peace, peace ! " the former require the circumcision of the heart, and
repentance and amendment of life, while the latter are inclined to see
in the full performance of the temple-worship and the sacrifices a
complete guarantee of the divine favour.
This implies, of course, that the burden of the prophetic revela-
tion did not consist in what used generally to be thought of, and to
some extent is thought of still, in connection with the terms " pro-
phecy " and "revelation." It was not on the one hand the prediction
of definite events — true prophecy had pretty well transcended the
stage of heathen soothsaying — nor, on the other hand, was it the
unfolding of dogmatic mysteries, or instruction regarding theological
propositions and notions. True, the prophets possessed and announced
a new and deeper knowledge of the nature of God in his relation to
Israel, of the aims and methods of his government of the world, of
Israel's task and hope. But they themselves acquired this higher
knowledge, not by means of theoretical reflection, least of all by
means of metaphysical speculation ; it came to them as the effect of
practical intuition, as the result of the impression made on their
pure-toned personal feeling by the actual experiences of history, and
the existing condition of their people ; it was the reaction thus pro-
duced on their own mind which led them to new insight. The
divine truth accordingly, which they had to announce to the people,
and to put upon record for posterity, was by no means an abstract
doctrine, or general theory, or even a dogmatic statement on religious
questions generally ; they dealt with truths of an immediate practical
nature, with the concrete consequences of the idea of God, with the
56 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
applications and expositions of tlie holy will of God in its concrete
bearing on the circumstances of a particular time ; they illustrated
and explained the history of their own day with exhortation, rebuke,
and comfort, and they forecast the future in the light of the pure and
unchangeable will of God. " The prophetic discourses never present
even the most universal truths otherwise than in their living con-
nection with the history of the day. And the circumstances of the
time are not merely used externally, as the garment clothing a sub-
ject matter of the prophetic teaching which, in all circumstances,
remained unchanged ; they are, in the truest sense, co-operating
factors of the preaching of the prophets, steps, as it were, by which
divine truth is introduced more deeply into the human circumstances
of Israel " (Schultz). This feature of Hebrew prophecy, its being
bound to the actual history of the people, is what gave it its popular
power, and made it a history-forming agent of the first rank ; but
here lies at the same time its temporal limit. The view of the
prophets was limited to the relation of God to their people, the other
peoples scarcely entered into their consideration at all as an object
of positive divine ends ; hence the hopes of the future which arose
in their teaching out of such a soil, have but a narrow outlook, and
are far from amounting to a correct foreknowledge of the actual future
of the people of Israel, far less of mankind as a whole. The per-
manent truth in these cases is merely the eternal idea itself, which
is contained in the history, and brought forward by history into the
light of consciousness ; and only in so far as the eternal laws will
always assert themselves, the circumstances being analogous, in
analogous forms, do the biblical prophecies possess a typical truth for
all times. In scarcely any case can we speak of a litercd fulfilment
of them.
If the contents of the prophetic consciousness are weighty, they
are presented in a form which is worthy of them, in a style rational
and clear. Dreams and ecstatic visions retire to the background and
become exceptional, the rule is an elevated but clear state of inspira-
tion, in which, while the prophet feels himself passively carried away
by the pov/er of the higher divine spirit which has laid hold of him,
REVELATION AND MIRACLE. 57
he yet retains tlie command of his senses and his thoughts ; he
recognises quite clearly the contrast between the greatness of the
divine burden of his prophecy and its inadequate human form ; he
struggles with his task, and quakes himself under the weight of the
divine oracles he hears, but he also seeks the most suitable form of
expression in word and symbol to convey the greatness of the new
ideas. The truth of the prophetic ideas was born at first from deep
and passionate excitement and heart-struggles, and in the process of
shaping them reason and sense were by no means, as Philo conceived,
plunged in the night of unconsciousness ; on the contrary, they were
operative at their highest power and intensity — a process not analogous
certainly to the cool reflection of the inquirer, but certainly to the
intuition and production by genius of the poet and the artist. The
speciiic form of the prophetic productions must accordingly be ad-
mitted to be fantasy, not fantasy dreaming, however, but awake ; not
flitting about apart from reason and sense, but in the guise of reason
at the pitch of genius, contemplating and creating with full under-
standing and purpose. Such states may easily pass, as is psychologi-
cally quite intelligible, and especially in the excitable nature of
Orientals, into properly ecstatic convulsions and visions ; and so we
cannot wonder if we occasionally meet, even in the true prophets,
with experiences of a visionary nature, the natural and psychological
conditions of which they themselves overlooked, naturally enough,
and which they regarded as direct apprehensions of divine appear-
ances and communications, to be regarded as evidence of their divine
call {e.g. Isaiah vi.). This explains also how at a later time the pro-
phetic word was frequently clothed in the form of visions, which
were not actually experienced as such, but freely invented as poetic
symbol to give the thought an appearance of reality. This is fre-
quently the case in Ezekiel, whose marked inclination for artificial
forms betrays, when we compare him with Isaiah and Jeremiah, a
certain falling-off in original prophetic force. These two prophets,
especially Jeremiah, were too closely engaged in the earnest battles of
life to have leisure for the artificial form of symbolical visions ; and
Jeremiah, besides, thought very little of dreams, and poured out
58 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
fierce satire on those prophets who could speak at length about their
dreams, while bringing forth the deceit of their own heart, and
causing God's word to be forgotten (xxiii. 25). What would this
hero of religious subjectivity, of conviction held with so clear a head,
so warm a heart, have had to say of the doctrine that the prophet is
merely the impersonal instrument, the flute or pen of the Holy Spirit,
who blows into him, or dictates the words he is to write down ?
This curious way of speaking of inspiration is, wherever it ap-
pears, a product of the mental poverty of an age of Epigoni, which
no longer finds in itself any of that creative power of which it vene-
rates the monument in the written records of former spiritual heroes.
The sources of that mechanical notion of inspiration which from this
period weighed like a mountain on Jewish and Christian dogmatic,
lie in the lawyer-like pedantic school-theology of the synagogue, to
which was added in Egypt the analogy of the heathen oracle system,
and the influence of the dualistic Platonic and Philonic psychology.
But when once the notion of verbal inspiration had come into vogue
with regard to the Old Testament writings, and had grown into a
fixed assumption, in which the Christian Church also shared, it fol-
lowed by inevitable consequence that the same view came in time
to be applied to the New Testament writings also, though it finds
as little support in the utterances of the apostles — in fact, is as
repugnant to the views of the apostles as to those of the prophets.
The New Testament writers nowhere lay claim to any exceptional
origin for their epistles or their histories ; they never pretend that
they have enjoyed any unique or miraculous inspiration ; they never
invite the credence of their readers on the basis of any such claim.
Paul, it is true, feels that through the spirit of Christ with which
he is filled he teaches divine truth, and therefore also writes it, and
accordingly he asks that the word of his preaching be accepted as a
true word of God ; but that this spirit of Christ by which he is en-
lightened differs either in kind, or in point of its effects, from the
spirit which is given to the rest of the Christian Church, he nowhere
indicates. The contrary, indeed, appears to be assumed when Paul
says of Christians generally : " We have not received the spirit of
REVELATION AND MIRACLE. 59
the world, but the spirit which is of God, that we should know
those things which are given to us of God." Again, he speaks of
his non-apostolic fellow-worker apostles as quite on a level with
himself, while he opposes himself to his brother-apostle Peter, and
convicts him of error. He calls all our knowledge, and therefore his
own knowledge too, a " knowing in part ; " he strives to prove the
truth of his Christian convictions to his readers by long and most
elaborate argumentation, and exhorts them to prove his doctrines as
well as those of all other spirits. The evangelist Luke again appeals
to human reports, and speaks of the pains he has taken to collect
and sift them, just as any other historian would. A James finally
attacks most vehemently Paul's doctrine and school, while the
catholic author of the second Petrine epistle thinks it right to re-
habilitate the apostle of the Gentiles, and does so by giving him a
somewhat coldly-expressed certificate of orthodoxy. In the face of
such facts it is scarcely possible to base the dogmatic theory of the
inspiration of Scripture on the views and expressions of the New
Testament writers about their own work. And they certainly lose
nothing, but rather appear greater in our eyes, if we leave them
their human self-consciousness, filled and illumined as it is by the
Christian spirit, and refuse to regard them as mere organ-pipes,
through which a spirit blows which is not theirs.
Paul is certainly right when he asserts that he did not receive
his Gospel of men, or through men, but " through revelation of Jesus
Christ ; " but this revelation was by no means a communication,
coming to him from without, of ready-made propositions ; it was an
overwhelming experience of his own soul which, led up to by severe
struggles of conscience, was brought about by the act of his own
will when he obediently surrendered himself to Jesus, the crucified
Messiah. It was the task of the apostle's life from that time forward
to work out all the consequences of this experience in thought and
act ; and to bring this task to a consummation he had incessantly to
labour, to strive, to bear anxiety and sorrow, both outwardly and
inwardly. It requires no extraordinary degree of attention to find
everywhere in his epistles the traces of his meditative seeking,
60 THE CONTENTS OF THE BELIGIOUS COXSCIOUSNESS.
indeed even the scars of his struggle between the old man and the
new, the disciple of the Pharisees and the disciple of Christ, the
believing Jew and the apostle to the Gentiles. This, indeed, is most
distinctly to be seen at the very central points of his doctrine, and
of the church dogmatic which sprang out of it. The apostle's con-
sciousness of revelation therefore is no more than that of the prophets
free from the conditions belonging to the person and the time ; but
for all this Paul knows his gospel to be a power of God unto salvation
to every one who believes, and appeals, instead of every other legitima-
tion, to the " demonstration of the Spirit and of power," by which the
truth of his word attests itself to the hearts and consciences of men.
He is conscious that in his belief in Christ he possesses the spirit of
sonship, which searches the deep places of the Godhead, and reveals
to us also the secrets of divine love, giving iis the witness that we
are the children of God. In this notion of the " Holy Spirit " which
has become our own, which continuously moves our hearts and places
us in the most intimate communion with God and Christ, Paul gives
the Christian consciousness of revelation a peculiar and singularly
profound character. In this " witness of the Holy Spirit in our
hearts " lies the archimedean point of his Gospel certainty, which
cannot be replaced by any outward support, by any positive autho-
rity or attestation of whatever kind ; and here also lies the germ of
a speculative theory of revelation, which unites in a higher synthesis
the historical antithesis. In the Johanninc theology the Holy Spirit
is in the same way an immanent principle of revelation. Here the
Spirit takes the place of the exalted Christ, and is indeed nothing but
the permanent revealing presence, brought about by the historical
appearance of Jesus, of that same Logos who was the principle of
the creation, and as such the light of men from the beginning, who
in the period of history before Christ was the principle of all religious
knowledge, but arrived in Christ at a full and concentrated revela-
tion. But this Spirit, far from being exhausted and ended in the
single person of Jesus, and in the doctrines personally given by him
to his immediate disciples, is always advancing, and leads the Church,
in a constant progress which is never interrupted and never stands
REVELATION AND MIRACLE. 61
still, into all truth — a notable idea of the spiritual Gospel, almost
suggestive of the notion of " development." Thus in this Gospel
Christianity is viewed ideally, and justice is done to the freedom
of man's religious self-consciousness without at the same time com-
promising the historical nature of revelation.
In the early church, too, while the truth revealed to the church
was undoubtedly regarded as new and unique, the feeling yet
asserted itself that the Christian and the general human knowledge
of truth were intimately connected with each other. Even the
Johannine Gospel speaks of the children of God scattered abroad in
the Gentile world (xL 52. x. 16), and the apologist Justin taught
that the whole human race had part in the Logos, and that all who
had lived with reason had been Christians, even if they had been
regarded, like Socrates, as godless persons. The Alexandrian Father
Clement saw in Greek philosophy a parallel education of the human
race by the pre-Christian revelation of the Logos, to that of Hebrew
prophecy ; so that Christianity fulfilled at once the germs of truth
of Hebrew prophecy and of Greek philosophy. Even Augustine, in
spite of the Church feeling which his ecclesiastical battles tended
always to make narrower and more exclusive in him, did not altogether
abandon the great and wide views of the Greek Fathers ; in fact he
is the author of the profound and beautiful saying that that religion
which is now called the Christian was in existence with the ancients
too, and never was wanting from the very beginning of the human
race. And as the early church believed in the connection between
the Christian and the pre-Christian and general human revelation,
it was self-evident that the Christian revelation had not exhausted
itself in the apostolic age, but goes on progressively in each genera-
tion. Tertullian in particular regarded revelation quite, like Lessing,
in the light of a divine education of humanity developing itself
through various ages of life, in which nature-religion represented the
elementary stage, the law and the prophets childhood, the gospel
the period of youth, while the maturity of manhood was only intro-
duced by the Paraclete (the Holy Spirit), who directs the course of
discipline, unfolds the Scripture, reforms knowledge, and generally
62 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
brings about an advance to better things. This advance of faith by
means of the growth of the understanding both of individuals and of
the church as a whole, is according to Vincentius the notion of
Catholic tradition, which seems in so far to have the advantage over
rigid adherence to Scripture of being moveable and living. This
progress, it is true, is far from being a true " development," as it
consists only in the extension of what is already given by new
doctrines, not in a change of it ; that feature is wanting which is
essential to a true development, that the thing becomes other than
it was, that the old is replaced by the new. Hence Catholic
tradition is far from being identical with the living and developing
Christian consciousness, as Mohlcr idealises it ; on the contrary, it is
merely a convenient covering for all the rubbish of Church traditions
and decrees, under the weight of which pure evangelical truth was
always in danger of smothering. Justly, therefore, did the Eeformers
discard tradition and go back to Scripture as the genuine source of
Christian truth. But while a Luther exercised the freedom of
religious genius which is self-inspired, and judged the letter of
Scripture by the spirit, Protestant theology, feeling the need, in the
double struggle against Eome and the fanatics, of some firm outward
support, applied to Scripture the most extreme and mechanical
notion of inspiration (which, indeed, was a heritage received by the
church from Jewish dogmatic, and had always been of some weight),
and carried the deification of the letter of Scripture to the utmost
extent possible. Certain isolated voices were raised from the first
objecting to this exaggeration ; but this was only on the part of the
mystics who opposed the inner light to the outer word. Eationalism,
however, began in the eighteenth century, guided by a true instinct,
to direct its columais of attack against this the weakest point of
orthodoxy ; though it too was certainly under the error that the
defeat of the dogma of the inspiration of Scripture would involve
the destruction of religious faith in revelation altogether.
Here we may remember that the doctrine of inspiration as found
in Jewish and Christian dogmatic has a number of analogies in
other quarters. The Indians believed with regard to their Veda that
REVELATION AND MIRACLE. 63
it had fallen down straight from heaven or had been " breathed out "
by Brahma, in whose spirit it had pre-existed from eternity and been
seen by the holy singers (Eishis) ; at any rate it is, according to
Brahmanic orthodoxy, of superhuman origin, and quite infallible.
This naturally M^as rejected by the heretics, and especially by the
Buddhists. According to Persian dogmatic the contents of the
sacred Scripture Avesta was received by Zarathustra in a personal
conversation with Ahuramazda ; but this word of revelation is the
same as that by which the world was made, and which was living
before the Creation as the pure, holy, quickly moving Honover. The
latter is a Persian Logos, a personification of the divine will, who
revealed himself both in the creation and in the legislation of
Zarathustra ; hence there dwells in the " word " of the Zarathustrian
revelation a wonderful power to sustain and promote life ; as
a word of prayer it becomes a magic power and a principal weapon
against evil spirits. In Islam the Koran is held to be the earthly
copy of an original heavenly text which was revealed to Mohammed
during his ecstasies by the angel of revelation. As to the relation
of this earthly copy to the original heavenly text [i.e. of the
" Scripture " to the " word of God ") there was much controversy in
Islam too ; the legend declared the two to be in perfect agreement,
saying that Mohammed and the angel Gabriel collated the copy with
the original every year. Even this, however, did not satisfy the need
for a direct divine document ; the tendency to deify Scripture only
reached satisfaction in the dogma that the Koran, just as it is
written, its very letters and breathings, was " uncreated," and had an
eternal and independent existence as God's own word, having no part
in the conditions and the imperfection of all created things. The
rationalism of the Mutazilites cast doubt on this postulate of
orthodoxy, and pointed to the real state of the facts which,
when reasonably regarded, exhibited something very different
from an absolutely perfect heavenly text. Nor was a mediating
theology wanting to Islam, which, drawing an ingenious distinc-
tion between the original heavenly text and the earthly Koran,
leaves to the former all the predicates of the orthodox doctrine
64 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
of Scripture, but refuses to apply them without qualification to the
latter.
Belief in an inspired Scripture is, as we saw, only one particular
mode and form of expression of the more general belief in divine
revelation as the foundation of religion. This latter we find every-
where, when once religion has arrived at such a stage of development
as to seek to account for its own existence ; and this belief therefore
must have some connection with the essential nature of reKgion, and
find its true explanation there. If we can arrive at an understand-
ing of the real truth present in this belief, the psychological explana-
tion of the various forms in which it appears will be accompanied
with little difficulty.
In the question as to the nature and the trutli of revelation, two
tendencies of thought have always, both in ancient and in modern
times, confronted each other with that rigid and unbending opposi-
tion which generally indicates that each of the two sides has one side
of the truth, but is insisting on it to the neglect or exclusion of the
other. The two tendencies we may here call a poMe potiori, that of
faith and that of reason, or, to use modern party names, the supra-
naturalistic and the rationalistic. The former is generally the older,
for the simple reason that it only expresses in the form of a dogma,
as the definite outcome of reflection, what the simple believing
consciousness counts to be a self-evident and immediately certain
truth, namely, that in religion man stands in relation, nay rather in
communion, in immediate intercourse with the Deity, that he in-
fluences the Deity by his worship, and experiences in turn the effects
of the blessed nearness in which the Deity makes itself known to
him. This continuous experience of the blessed and elevating
effects of his religious communion with God the believer traces, and
very justly, to a real divine revelation. That is to him the cause of
these effects ; but the assumption, in itself a true one, that an
objective revelation is the cause of his religious experience, clothes
itself to his mind in the form of special revealing acts of the Deity
which happened in space and time, and were cognisable by him. In
these acts the Deity manifested itself externally in such and such a
REVELATION AND MIRACLE. 65
manner, instituted perhaps such and such religious usages or this
particular cultus, or revealed such and such sacred truths, perhaps
even committed to the church by the hand of its ambassadors a
whole collection of rules of faith and life for permanent observance.
All these sacred things, these sacred histories of former acts of
revelation, these sacred usages and signs, doctrines and writings, are
to the faithful the modes in which, by means of which, his inner
religious life acquires form and reality, in which he is certified of the
fact of the revealing nearness of God. Hence it comes about quite
naturally, that he transfers the truth of the revelation of God of
which he is immediately aware in his inner life, to these external
matters too, and asserts of them also, that they proceed from direct
divine communications of an extraordinaiy, quite unique, super-
natural, miraculous nature. The intellect, however, is not long in dis-
covering that in all such traditions, whether oral or written, of divine
revelations, there is much to which objection may be taken, many
things absurd, or unworthy of the Deity, or contradictory of each
other. It is also seen that every religious community is equally
entitled to advance the claim of a divine origin and absolute truth
for its own traditions, while the traditions of one religion conflict
with those of another, so that the claims of both cannot possibly be
well founded. Finally, there are found in the sacred traditions
evident and demonstrable traces of a human origin, the historical
occasions which led to the formation of such and such a legend, the
influences of the surroundings, of the opinions of the times in which
the books arose, of the individuality and of the situation of the
various poets and seers, prophets and apostles. Closer investigation
reveals so plainly on every side the human and historical conditions
of the sacred traditions, that in that which the believing super-
naturalist regards as a direct divine revelation the intellect can
recognise at first no more than a quite indirect natural revelation,
and then no revelation at all, no higher truth, but simply the
product of human forthsetting, poetry, fable, invention, etc. This
antithesis of a rationalistic intellectual illumination on the one side,
and supra-naturalistic adherence to old beliefs on the other, is not
VOL. IV. E
66 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
confined by any means to the ground of the Christian church, nor is
it merely a product of modern times ; it is to be found everywhere,
when a new stage of culture in the life of a community comes in
conflict with the assumptions of the old faith. A very instructive
example of this may be seen in the rationalism of the Greek
sophists, who traced the whole doctrine of the gods of the popular
religion to natural causes, whether to human history misinterpreted
(Euhemerism), or to the deliberate inventions of priests and rulers.
For this they appealed just to the multiplicity and the accidental
character of the religious usages and opinions prevailing in this and
that district, which they held showed them to have been products of
deliberate human invention. In the same way there sprang from
the culture of the age of the Hohenstaufens with its religious syn-
cretism, that rationalism of the later Middle Ages which found its
popular expression in the legend of " the three impostors," and
culminated in the radical heathenism of the Eenaissance. In later
times the same phenomenon repeats itself in three homes of civilisa-
tion successively in different and yet allied forms : in England as
deism, as naturalism in Trance, and finally, as rationalism in Ger-
many. In short, " Eationalism " is not an isolated historical pheno-
menon ; it is a general principle, which, as it recurs with regularity at
certain stages of civilisation, cannot be held to be quite devoid of
justification.
Eationalism is right in asserting that the religious process is
rational and rationally knowable, in respect both of form and of con-
tents. In point of form, it insists on the subjective human side of
the consciousness of revelation, and protests against the supra-
naturalist belief that any religious phenomenon can be, as it appears
in space and time, an entirely divine operation not indebted to the
assistance, nor subject to the conditions of the human mind. It
insists, on the contrary, that everything that occurs in the human
mind, as an element of its consciousness, depends on the human
mind's own activity, and hence must both be in harmony with the
nature of mind in general, with the psychological laws of mind, and
take form in accordance with the particular character of each indi-
REVELATION AND MIRACLE. 67
vidual mind, the contents of its consciousness at the time, its position
in time and space. To accept this view is to discard every mechani-
cal theory of inspiration and revelation, such as would regard the
human mind as the mere lifeless vessel, into which the revelation
was poured ah extra, or the instrumental mouth from which a foreign
speaker makes himself heard. Eevelation being regarded as entirely
subject to human conditions, it follows at once that no particular
product of revelation can, as such, lay claim to absolute perfection or
infallible truth. If it could do so it would be entirely and exclusivelj''
divine; if it depends on human agency, and is subject to human con-
ditions, it must inevitably partake in some degree of human imper-
fection and limitation. But that this actually is the case history tells
us at all hands; for at no point does history show us any absolute pro-
duct of revelation, any knowledge of truth in every respect and abso-
lutely infallible, beyond which no historical progress was possible or
has been made. And supranaturalism concedes this to be the fact,
and explains it by speaking of an accommodation of the revealing
God to human comprehension, — a view which clearly only conducts
us roundabout, by a somewhat gross anthropomorphism, to the propo-
sition we reached before, that in revelation the human mind is a co-
operative and conditioning factor, Nor is rationalism less in the right
when it refuses to recognise as the matter of a revelation anything
contrary to reason, anything which appears unthinkable according to
the laws of thought, whether of theoretical or of moral judgment
(conscience). In our reason and conscience we cannot but see a
divine revelation implanted originally in our nature, and a contradic-
tion of their laws would amount to the contradiction of one divine
revelation by another, which, however, is quite unthinkable, as God
cannot contradict himself. To this we must add that what is com-
pletely untliinkable can never become part of our mental property.
Formulas with which we can connect no clear meaning, or no meaning
at all, we may receive on authority, i.e. leave them undisputed, raise
no objection against them, but we can make nothing of them, they
give us no help, and least of all do they minister to our salvation, to
our improvement or edification. We must therefore say that a
68 THE CONTENTS OF TEE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
" revelation of salvation," the contents of which consist of incompre-
hensible and mysterious doctrines, is an extraordinary contradidio in
adjedo ; it " reveals " nothing, but leaves everything covered with
impenetrable darkness ; and this is far from " saving ;" either it
blunts and kills all interest in religion, or it calls forth doubt and
objections of the most desperate character. It appears at first sight
an insoluble riddle what positive interest the guardians of tradi-
tion can possibly have in getting men to believe propositions which,
as they themselves allow, contain incomprehensible mysteries. The
solution of the riddle is to be found partly at least in the fact that
these extraordinary propositions generally conceal real interests of
the religious life, namely experiences of religious feeling, which have
received in these forms an awkward and foreign expression. It should
be regarded as the positive task of theology to trace the reasonable
meaning concealed under the doctrine — a task, however, which the
guardians of the letter will not allow to be incumbent on them, far
less set themselves to accomplish.
But neither is what is ordinarily called rationalism competent to
solve this problem ; it has never learned yet to apply its principle of
rationality in a really rational way ; in other words, its thought is too
superficial, too narrowly subjective. It conceives reason to consist
in one or two notions, as generally stated, and as vague as possible,
which it has deduced from religion and morality as they now exist,
notions as generally known to man from the beginning and as
unchangeable, as the elementary truths of mathematics. Eationalism
fails to see that religion is not occupied with intellectual notions so
much as with experiences of the heart, efforts of the will, states of
feeling to which the religious ideas correspond. These are facts of
inner human experience which only attain to reality in connection
with the whole complicated development of society, and so can-
not possibly have been present from the beginning, and without
change in the consciousness of the race. Eationalism justly wishes
to find reason in religion, as in other departments of human activity ;
but, in the first place, it overlooks the fact, that the reason to be found
in religion is not primarily theoretical, but practical or emotional
REVELATION AND MIRACLE. 69
reason, not that of thought, but that of the heart ; in the second
place, it fails to see that reason is not innate in man as a certain fixed
magnitude, as a possession he knows himself to have, but only as a
function, as an impulse of rationality, which can only take shape in
the actual contents of his consciousness by means of that interaction
of the individual co-ordinate functions which constitutes the develop-
ment of the mental life of man in history ; and, in the third place,
it does not sufficiently consider that the development of the religious
disposition which is the central one of the reasonable dispositions, and
that in which the complicated threads of all the life-experiences not
only of individual history, but of the history of the race, converge,
would be quite incomprehensible if we were to think of the human
subjects only, and to look no further than to their fortuitous individual
experiences for the ultimate ground of the whole process. Eeligious
development more than any other has its ultimate ground in the
eternal reason of God, by which our growing reason is sustained and
led — in the wisdom and the love of God. In these three respects, then,
psychological, historical, and metaphysical, the thinking of ordinary
rationalism is inadequate, abstract, one-sided, and limited, and has
still, in fact, to make itself rational in deed as well as in name.
Looking again at the prophetic consciousness of revelation, which
we discussed above, the points which appear to be specially character-
istic of it are the following. What appears in the consciousness of
the prophets is a new thing, a thing not learned from others, but
rather in contradiction to the prevailing opinions of the prophets'
environment, and partly also^ to the views and prejudices formerly
entertained by the prophet or the apostle himself. This new thing
again has not been reached in the way of arbitrary reflection, of
discursive thought and investigation, but enters the consciousness in
the guise of an immediate intuition ; it is received, found there as a
thing given, the origin of which therefore is outside of conscious
reflection ; emerging out of the mysterious depths of the soul, it
necessarily creates the impression of a work, a word of God. The
1 Comp. e.r/. 1 Sam. viii. 6-22 ; 2 Sam. vii. 2-6. Specially also the struggles of
Paul before and after his conversion.
70 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
content of it is not a fortuitous isolated object of knowledge, nor is it
a dogmatic theory about God and the world ; it is a thing which has
to do with the central interest of life, with the question what God is
to us, and what he desires that we should be to him ; it is a new view
of the religious and moral ideal of life. For this reason it is not a
matter concerning the cognitive faculty only, it sets the whole soul,
the emotions and the will, mightily in motion ; before the greatness
of the new idea the soul quakes and trembles ; painful conflicts arise
whether between the old prejudices and the new truth (Paul), or at
least between the natural feeling of the man's own weakness and shrink-
ing from action and from pain, and the weight of the task laid on his
soul (Jeremiah). The sense of truth and the sense of duty determine
the issue of the struggle, and while the will yields itself captive to
the higher idea, all its energy, formerly divided and drawn hither and
thither, now concentrates itself on the one tendency of the newly
found ideal of life. With this there arises in the soul an unhoped-for
sense of peace, and not only of peace, but of power raised almost to a
more than human pitch ; and this feeling being also set down to God's
agency is regarded as the divine seal authenticating the truth the
prophet has learned, and his view of his mission ; it is the witness of
the divine Spirit in the human heart.
But certain as it is that this whole condition of life, these views,
these feelings, these movements of the will, announce themselves in
consciousness as a new thing, a thing given from a source not in
man, it must not be overlooked on the other side that this new
thing is, in another aspect, a thing in many ways led up to by the
old — a link indissolubly connected with what went before in the
historical development. The appearance of a revelation is never and
nowhere a fortuitous, unsuggested, uncaused event. It is in every
case occasioned by definite historical occurrences and experiences,
the impression produced by which on a susceptible and pure-toned
soul excites and stimulates the religious impulse in that soul to
independent and powerful activity and to original production.
These historical occasions may be of various kinds ; yet it may be
possible to trace, in the salient examples of them with which we are
REVELATION AND MIRACLE. 71
acquainted, certain common features. Dark fortunes have broken
upon the people of God or are rising threateningly on the horizon ;
the contradiction they offer to the feelings of the people of God, to its
faith and hope up to this time, confronts the religious mind like the
sphinx's riddle ; the contradiction must be solved, or it must rend
the soul asunder, and cast her into the abyss of nothingness. Weak
souls close their eyes before the riddle ; they conceal from them-
selves the gravity of the situation, call " Peace, peace," and perish in
their blindness. The strong soul looks the riddle of the time in the
face, truly and faithfully — denies by no means the torturing contra-
diction the reality presents to the assumptions and claims of the
people's faith, but refuses at the same time to give up the conviction
on which its own faith is based, that there is reason in history, truth
and justice in the divine government of the world ; it seeks there-
fore a solution of the contradiction, and rises to a higher religious
insight, to a purer view of the holy nature and will of God and of the
ideal mission of the people of God. I need scarcely say that Isaiah
and Jeremiah are the classic types of this. The case of the apostle
Paul is different, and yet similar enough. Here too the occasion of
the new revelation lay in the torturing discrepancy between a his-
torical fact and the views and hopes which Paul the Pharisee shared
with those around him. The belief of the Christian community that
the crucified Jesus was the Messiah sent by God was a flagrant con-
tradiction of the Messianic ideal of the kingdom cherished by the
Pharisees, while at the same time the lives and deaths of these
believers powerfully appealed to the conscience of the pious Pharisee,
answered to his ideal of righteousness, and promised to his religious
hunger after righteousness an unhoped-for satisfaction. In vain did
the Pharisee attempt to shake off this riddle which weighed upon his
soul, painfully did he wrestle for a solution, and he found it in the
revelation of the Son of God in his heart, and in the new view of the
God of grace, who in his Son was reconciling the world to himself.
These classic instances plainly show, in the first place, that the
revelation is not to be sought in the outward historical events
regarded by themselves — to the multitude the events are dumb and
72 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
without significance — but that the impulse merely lies in them which
awakens in pure souls the reaction of the religious instinct, and calls
into action processes of consciousness out of which there proceed
new combinations of ideas, new master points of view, and ultimately
a new religious world, a new ideal of life. As on the one hand it is
certain that these new processes of consciousness would not have
taken place but for the outward occasion given by the historical
situation, so it is certain, on the other hand, that these outward im-
pulses could never set such inner processes in motion, were not the
power and the matter which go to form them already present in the
soul, the power, namely, as an innate religious disposition, let it be
called conscience, or religious sense or impulse of reason (Nous), or
by whatever other name ; and the substance in the whole contents of
consciousness acquired by the whole previous development, composed
of the whole sum of religious and moral ideas, feelings and inclina-
tions of will. It is a fundamental error to suppose that ideas or
convictions can ever be brought home to man without his own co-
operation, whether as an innate endowment or by instantaneous infu-
sion or inflation, or any other such external contrivance, however
miraculous. On the contrary, ideas, convictions, tendencies of life,
are always the products of manifold and complicated psychical
activities, only a small part of which, it is true, appears in the light
of consciousness, while the deeper connections of them are too subtle
for reflection to trace. Even where ideas and tendencies already
present in society are brought home to individuals by means of pre-
cept and example, the appropriation of them is in every case the
work of independent functions, through which the individual repro-
duces in his thoughts and feelings what others have thought and felt
before him. Hence the difference between the reproduction of given
ideas and the original production of them in religious heroes (pro-
phets), is, however wide the difference may be, never more than a
relative one. In every reproduction there is, just because it is based
on the independent activity of individuals, something original ; and
the most original production again is never entirely new, but is a
new combination of the contents of consciousness which the original
REVELATION AND MIRACLE. 73
genius has inherited as the accumulation of the mental possessions
of his fathers. The independent activity of his genius may extend
the inheritance of his predecessors, and elevate him and the society
about him to a higher platform of life, but whatever he achieves he
achieves only because of, by means of, the capital laid up by former
generations, into which he entered as its heir.
The fact that the personality of genius, with all it is and can, is
firmly rooted in the soil of its own time and surroundings, is a
part, and not a small part, of the secret of its power, of the mighty
influence it exercises on the world both in its own time and after-
wards, of its effects in history ; but this is also the reason of its
individual weakness, of its historical limitations. That he is the
child of his age the most powerful spirit can never quite deny ; in
the assumptions from which he sets out, the ideas in which he must
perforce express his views and aims, in the limited nature of his
immediate aim, in the tendency of the battle he fights and the weapons
he employs in it, he betrays how he is bound to his time and situa-
tion. It is just this limitation that gives his character those deeply
cut features, and with them, of course, the hard lines and sharp
corners which we could not imagine any considerable historical
character to be without. That the history of religion, of the Chris-
tian religion as well as others, forms no exception to the universal
law, may be seen from such figures as Paul and Luther. To think
away from such figures the limitations of individuality and of his-
torical surroundings, which marked them, would be to exchange their
historical reality for fictitious abstractions, destitute of sap or force.
But if we admit their limitations, then we admit that the revelation
they undoubtedly conveyed to the world was a relative one, and
contained the truth, not with absolute purity, but in forms such as
the history of their times demanded, forms accordingly which, as
history proceeds, must be subject to further development and
change.
But that which is the limitation of the bearers of revelation is at
the same time the root of their power, the reason of their efi'ective-
ness in history. Only because they are themselves the children of
74 THE CONTENTS OF TEE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
their time does their word find something to lay hold on, and meet
with an echo in the reason of the age. Were that which the religious
genius brings not founded in its essence on man's mental constitution
generally, and more particularly on the historical condition of the
epoch in which he appears, then even the profoundest truth could
not be understood, nor greeted by any one as a revelation, it would
be useless, it would be lost to the world. If the appearance of a
revelation in the man of genius would be incomprehensible apart
from the natural equipment and the historical conditions of his mental
life, equally incomprehensible must be the effect that revelation pro-
duces on others to whom he communicates it, if he is not, in spite of
his singularity, the true representative at the same time of all the
ideal tendencies which slumber in the consciousness of his age and
his people. It is always the sufferings of the mass of the people and
the riddles of the time that stir the latent energy of genius, and
impel it to its extraordinary original production, and so that truth
which he has conquered for himself, found in himself, is at the same
time won for all ; it is the truth which had been dimly present to
their minds, what the best, at least those who saw deepest, had at
the bottom of their minds anticipated and desired. Hence, in spite
of its novelty, the revelation which the one man brings is not entirely
unexpected ; it contains the word which solves the riddle of the
time, the ideal spirit appears in it which had been present before as
an under-current in the depths of the consciousness of the age. This
relation of the original genius to society has been aptly described by
Carlyle, and I may transfer his words to my own pages : " What he
(the spiritual hero) says, all men were not far from saying, were
longing to say. The Thoughts of all start up as from enchanted
sleep, around his thought, answering to it. Yes, even so ! Joyful to
men as the dawning of the day from night ; is it not indeed the
awakening for them from no-being into being ; from death into life ?
We still honour such a man ; call him Poet, Genius, and so forth ;
but to these wild men he was a very magician, a worker of miraculous
unexpected blessing for them, a Prophet, a God ! Thought once
awakened does not again slumber ; unfolds itself into a System of
REVELATION AND MIRACLE. 75
Thought ; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, till
its full stature is reached," ^
The new thing so described, though it makes its appearance as
opposite to what men knew before, is yet merely a new manifestation
of one and the same being, and is both called for by the law of life of
that being, and prepared by its previous states. It is simply a new
" stage of development " of that being on one particular side of its
life-process. We are therefore warranted by what has now been
said, to state that every true revelation of a new religious and moral
ideal of life represents a new stage of the development of mankind
in respect of the central sphere of its life, that of moral religion. In
the notion of development rightly understood there are always two
sides, the becoming other, or the newness of the later state which
replaces the earlier one, and at the same time the constancy present
in the change, or the connection of every later with every earlier by
the law of change, which resides in the persistent unity of the being.
This law has for its consequence both that every later stage is causally
conditioned by the earlier, and that every earlier has a teleological
reference to the later. If the first side is overlooked, then there is
no real progress, no living growth ; either the later and higher forms
of life are pressed down to the elementary stage of the earliest, or
they are read into the earliest, so that the beginning is raised to an
unnatural height which could not belong to it ; in either case the
real history is falsified and taken away (in the first instance in a
naturalistic, in the latter in an idealistic way). If the second side
is overlooked (that the later is pointed to in the earlier) then history
resolves itself into a discrete series of unconnected occurrences, each
of which is a fact without a cause, and incomprehensible, a miracle ;
connection may be lent to it by some supposed thread, as, e.g., by
the assumption of a designing Providence ; but this connection
remains purely ideal and assumed, external to the real process of
events, and bearing about the same relation to the actual living-
unity of historical development as the connection of the bones of a
^ Carlyle : On Heroes, Hero- Worship, and the Heroic in History. London, 1872,
p. 19, seq.
7G THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
skeleton arranged together with wires, to the connection of the living
organism. Now if it be the task of all science to understand the
orderly connection of becoming, the real development of life — both
natural life and spiritual — then both of those errors alike make it
impossible for science to fulfil her task. In our sphere those errors
encounter us as Rationalism and Positivism. The former forgets
that religion has a historical life, in the course of the development of
which that which is actually new appears, namely, where, at par-
ticular points in space and time, which we may compare with the
ganglia of plant-growth, or the critical turning-points in the life of
the individual, a higher form of life, having a new principle, presses
itself forward, which can by no means be pressed down to an earlier
and lower level, and cannot be regarded as a mere fortuitous morpho-
logical variation of structure. And Positivism forgets, that the new,
the higher, which comes into existence at definite points of history,
yet always fits in to the real genetic connection of the religious
development of mankind, and is an orderly member of that connec-
tion, since it was regularly prepared for in the course of antecedent
history, and develops itself further in a natural way in the history
which comes after. Positivism forgets that this whole of earlier and
later, lower and higher, represents the total development of the
religious impulse implanted in the nature of our race, and that,
therefore, every individual phenomenon of that development must
be considered, when regarded from the point of view of the whole
of the nature of the human race as a thing veritably natural, and
at the same time when regarded as related to what immediately pre-
ceded it, as a thing positively new and higher.
If the positivist theology (it is to be seen at present in a more
uncompromising form in the school of Ritschl than in the orthodoxy
of the church^) considers that it is necessary in the interests of the
specific truth and value of positive revelation to disconnect that
revelation from the real and living chain of that natural and uni-
versal revelation which takes place in the religious and moral
disposition of mankind, it is in an extraordinary and somewhat
1 Cf. Lipsius, R. A. Die RitschVsche Theologie, Leipzig, 1S88. — Tk.
REVELATION AND MIRACLE. 77
dangerous error. It forgets, that is to say, that if the natural revela-
tion of God in that reason which is present in conscience and in
religious feeling, that " inner light " of which Jesus speaks, that
natural knowledge of God and law of conscience, of which Paul
speaks,^ be denied or ignored as unimportant, then we are deprived
of every standard that can enable us to test the truth, or to estimate
the value, of a religious or moral ideal. When every bond between
Christian truth and human nature is severed, the acceptance of the
former in humanity, the rise, the spread, the preservation of the faith
of the nations in the Christian revelation, becomes an utterly incom-
prehensible riddle, a pure miracle. It may be some feeling of this
that leads the Gottingen theologians to insist so strongly on the one
nature-wonder of the bodily resurrection of Christ. By their
Socinian positivism they have deprived themselves of the inner,
essential explanation of the rise of the Christian faith from the
motives of the human heart ; and they seek to make it somewhat
more intelligible by this outward event. But are they not hanging
hundredweights on a cobweb when they do this ? And what
becomes of scientific consistency in such a procedure, especially in
connection with such a doctrine of God as that of Eitschl, which
will hear of no direct metaphysical causal relation of God to the
world of nature and of man, and gives us instead a purpose of God
which accomplishes itself nowhere but in our ideas ? But not only
does the origin of belief in the revelation of Christ remain, on the
assumptions of Eitschl's theology, an unexplained and inexplicable
miracle ; the rise of the consciousness of revelation in Jesus, and
then, too, in the prophets, is equally inexplicable. For here there
is only one alternative, either this consciousness of revelation is the
product of an external divine influence brought to bear on man, as in
the supranaturalistic theory of revelation and inspiration ; or it is the
product of a divine power which operates within man, as is assumed
since the critical movement by consistent scientific theology of every
shade. The theology of Eitschl, however, abjures the former alter-
native ; it has tasted too much of the tree of knowledge to be able
1 Matt. vi. 23 ; Eom. i. 19, ii. 14.
78 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
to stomach simple, blunt supranaturalism. But it will not accept the
other alternative either, because a revelation which was the product
of a divine power within man would naturally involve the presence
of such a power in human nature generally, and therefore a general
metaphysical connection of essence between human nature and the
divine, the admission of which would be the uprooting and sub-
version of positivism altogether. But what is the theology of Pdtschl
driving at if it refuses to accept a revelation either from without or
from within ? Under such circumstances a thinker in any degree
strict and clear would surely soon arrive at the conclusion that if
revelation is not thinkable from without, nor yet from within, then it
is not a real thing at all, but only the form of idea under which, as
practical men, we have to represent to ourselves the religion which
has, as a fact, attained to historical solidity, in order to place it under
higher sanction as a thing brought about by divine causality, though,
as a fact, there is no such causality. The present generation of
Eitschlians will not hear of any such radical consequence being drawn
from their position ; but it is based too deeply in the natiu-e of the
case, and has too many analogies in the history of scepticism, both
ancient and modern, which is always most intimately connected with
positivism, to let the prophecy of such a negative criticism as a
possibility of the near future appear a mere hobgoblin threat. Every
positivist system which divorces the individual positive revelation
from the general historical development of the race, is irreconcilably
at variance with the root principle of all science, and, therefore, such
a system takes up a position of harsher exclusiveness and arrogance
than any church dogmatic ; for the latter always exhibits in its
speculative elements some approach to general human truth.
Starting from historical facts, the path of our inquiry has brought
us to find in revelation, in the first instance, the history of the
development of the religious faculty in man. In order to accomplish
the further step into the domain of metaphysics, we have only to
remember what was remarked above as to the proofs of the existence
of God and as to the attribute of divine love. As we there saw,
REVELATION AND MIRACLE. 79
it is impossible to understand the development of a number of inde-
pendent beings, agreeing to a certain end, in any other way than by
conceiving them as comprehended in a causal and teleological rela-
tion to a reason which sets their ends, the purpose of which manifests
itself in the law which guides their correlative development. In par-
ticular, it is impossible for us to understand the development of the
moral and religious disposition of man from finite causes merely,
more impossible the more clearly we recognise in it a product, brought
about in the most manifold ways, of the most various factors, of the
complicated interaction of the individual with society and of both
with nature. The fact that in the beginnings of man's life, the im-
pressions made on him by nature disengaged in him the first mani-
festations of the impulse of reason in the apprehension of the divine
and the commencement of a relation therewith ; this fact was to us a
revelation of the creative wisdom which constituted nature and the
human soul with such reference to each other that the impressions of
the one should awaken the faculties ot the other, and create in these
faculties the presentiment of and the striving after, the Higher, which
is above both nature and man. We found it impossible that every
other need placed in our nature should point to a corresponding real
object of its satisfaction in the realm of being, but that the deepest
and most universal of all, the central need of the religious impulse
after communion with God, should be without any object of its satis-
faction, an unexplained illusion. In the very existence of this im-
pulse, therefore, we shall see the operation of that force of gravitation
of the spiritual world which keeps all finite spirits connected with
the Father of spirits, namely, of that will of the divine love which
makes for the living communion of all reasonable creatures with the
creative reason. And if every normal activity and development of
any impulse is to be regarded as an effect of the principle of develop-
ment which underlies it, then in every stirring, every develo]3ment
of the religious impulse, whether in many or in an individual, we
must recognise, so far as it acts normally, a real effect of that
reasonable will of God which supports the growing spiritual life of
all men. It is an operation of that will specially with regard to the
80 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
intention it cherishes of bringing about a living fellowship with us ;
it is an operation of the love of God as giving itself to be experienced
by man in his own heart, or as revealing itself. Wherever, there-
fore, any sound religious impulse manifests itself, though in ever so
primitive and childlike a fashion, there a revelation of the divine
love which aims at living communion takes place. Or are we not to
see this love in the beginnings of religion because here the childish
mind still takes pleasure in smaller gifts of God ? But how else
could divine love educate the children of men in their pupilage to
the true love of God as the highest spiritual good, but by first
causing them to taste and see in small symbols how gracious the
Lord is ? As the religious faculty and religious receptivity develops,
the revelation of divine love grows in value and significance, till at
the highest stage of life, which itself again admits of manifold
development, it culminates in the communication of its holy and
blessed living spirit. This could not be otherwise ; the love of the
parent discloses itself always more deeply and spiritually to the
children as they grow more advanced, although it never denied itself
to them when they were smaller, nor even to the very smallest. If
the Saviour promised the kingdom of heaven to children, what right
have we to deny to the child stage of humanity any share of the
revelation of the love of God ? God's heart certainly is greater, and
his revelation extends much further, than the narrowness of theo-
logical scholasticism can dream.
Here we may remark further, that from this point too the notion
of God of concrete monotheism finds a complete confirmation. Were
the divine and the human ego not really different from each other,
no revelation would be possible, for the removal of one of the two
members would destroy the religious relation itself. But if God
and man were so separated from each other as abstract (deistic)
theism declares, which makes of God a particular extra-mundane
being, separated from the beings in the world and co-ordinate with
them, then a real revelation of God, a revelation that is which offers
itself to man's inner experience, would likewise be impossible. For
then God could only manifest himself to us in the same way as any
REVELATION AND MIRACLE. 81
other being outside us, i.e. by external signs, which affect our senses,
and are worked up by us by means of independent reflection into
idea-pictures and judgments. Now there is certainly such a uni-
versal sign-language of God, and the religious impulse in man is
powerfully stimulated and called into action by it, especially at the
beginning, and always to some extent at later stages too, — viz.,
nature. It is easy to understand, therefore, and the fact is a
characteristic one, that deism, when strictly worked out, limits God
to those outward means or signs, but denies any immediate experi-
ence of them in our hearts. And nature being always essentially
the same from the creation, this revelation is limited to the beginning
of the world, since which God " remains in the deepest silence," as
Herbart naively expresses it. But the religious man cares little for
such an epicurean god ; he seeks and finds the true revelation of God
just within himself, in the experiences of his heart ; in the sum of
the ideas, feelings and movements of will in which his religious life
moves forward, he is aware of the inworking energy of God, the
"witness of the Holy Spirit." If this is not an illusion but the
truth, then it involves a relation of man to God in which he is open
to God's working within him. But that can only be the case if we
live and move not outside God but in him, if our life is a part,
founded on and embraced in the All-life of God. Then beyond all
contradiction, it is not only conceivable, but it is necessary to think,
that our impulse towards communion with God is an effect of the
divine will which aims at communion with us, that therefore every
individual manifestation of that impulse in religious functions is an
outcome of that divine will, and in particular that every intensifying
of the religious impulse to more than ordinary productivity and
higher development of life rests on an intensified communication of
force on the part of the divine will, and is therefore to be regarded
as a special manifestation of the love of Ood in the life of men in time,
whether of peoples or of individuals. To penetrate more deeply into
the manner of this manifestation is neither possible nor necessary ;
yet it may be said that it is no more diflicult to conceive of the
translation of the divine loving will into the activity and satisfaction
VOL. IV. F
82 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS
of the religious impulses of human hearts, than to conceive of the
translation of the 07ie divine will into the many finite acti\dties on
which the existence of the world is built. The secret of revelation
is just an excerpt, a special form of the primal secret of creation,
which though we cannot fathom, we are yet able to think of by
approximation and analogy.
This brings us to the belief in miracles, which at the beginning
of this chapter we spoke of as the other half of the belief in revela-
tion. The belief in miracles is as old as religious faith itself, for
" miracle is faith's dearest child," as the poet says, profoundly
and aptly. From the beginning the Deity was to the religious
consciousness the power which is free and sets free from the
limits of the world ; and so faith ever expected the Deity to do acts
of emancipation, saving miracles, and because and as it expected
them, so it found them in one way or another in its experience.
True, it sees in the ordinary every- day course of nature too, the
continuous personal rule of the gods ; but it does not consider the
gods to be bound to the course of nature, but represents them as types
of the personal will which is free and unbound, and so expects from
them extraordinary manifestations of power. These are seen in
operations which take place contrary to the general order and rule
{irapa /lolpav), in which, therefore, a special divine intention is
apparent, an unusual manifestation of the favour or disfavour of the
gods to the worshippers or their enemies.
The power of doing miracles is not only ascribed immediately to
the Deity, but to those men who are more nearly connected with it.
The principal significance of the belief in miracles in the history of
religion is derived from this fact. IMiracles are always the standing
attribute of those persons who appear in one way or another to
stand nearer to the realm of the divine, and to occupy a middle
position between it and the world of men. This principle appears
more persistently than almost any other phenomenon throughout
the whole history of religion and at all its stages ; only the forms in
which it is applied vary with the modifications of the religious con-
REVELATION AND MIRACLE. 83
sciousness. In the lowest religions, where the priest enjoys inter-
course with the world of the gods through worship, he is the regular
possessor of divine miraculous powers, so that priest, magician,
miracle-doctor, and rain-maker are usually united in one person.
In the higher religions the miraculous gift is only ascribed to such
persons as have produced a profound influence on their surroundings
by the power of their religious inspiration, as prophets, reformers, or
religious founders, who have created a belief in their mission and in
themselves as divine ambassadors ; or to those who, by the extra-
ordinary zeal of their asceticism and contemplation, have obtained
the reputation of saints and initiated persons {mystm). In these
cases it is always found that it matters little whether such men
believed themselves to be in possession of miraculous powers or not,
whether they themselves pretended to work miracles or not ; the
faith of their contemporaries and successors in their extraordinary
divine mission, and their position as mediators between humanity
and the heavenly world, is sufficient to create the presumption of
their miraculous power. And when once a body of disciples expects
miracles, the observation or at least the report of actual miraculous
occurrences cannot be wanting. This phenomenon meets us with
the most striking uniformity in the founders of the three greatest
religions of the present day. The Buddhist legends are full of
miracles which Buddha and his disciples are reported to have done ;
some of these are precisely analogous to the miracles of the Gospels,
but most of them are more extraordinary ; and yet in the canonical
writings of the Buddhists the words are preserved in which the
founder forbade his disciples to work miracles, even if the people
should call out for signs and wonders : the true miracle, he said,
was that they should go and hide their good works before men, but
confess before them their sins. In the same way the Mohammedan
legend narrates a great number of miracles of Mohammed, and yet
he himself says in the Koran that he is a man like other men, and
he considers it unworthy of himself to work miracles, and appeals to
the great miracles of Allah ; the rise and the going down of the sun,
the rain which fertilises the earth, the plants which grow, and the
84 THE CONTENTS OF THE BELIGIOUH CONSCIOUSNESS.
souls which enter into human existence, without any one's being able
to tell whence they come ; these are the true signs and miracles.
And finally we are told about Jesus, that to the demand of the
people for a striking miraculous sign he answered : " There shall no
sign be given to this perverse generation but the sign of the prophet
Jonah,"— ie. the mighty influence of the word of Jesus' preaching,
of which Jonah's preaching of repentance at Nineveh had been a
type ; and there are a number of indications in the evangelical
narratives that he rather sought to check than to encourage the
report of his miracles, which spread in spite of all his efforts. He
withdrew from the crowds which thronged about him in the expec-
tation of seeing a miracle, and he traced the wonderful cures of
believing persons to their simplest cause, the faith of those persons
themselves. It agrees perfectly with this, that he saw in this
powerful effect of his word, which called forth a faith possessing
power even in the sphere of the body, a sign of his higher mission
and of the approach of the kingdom. Various causes contributed
to the elaboration of the later more highly miraculous narratives
of the church, among which may be specified the glorified figure of
Christ in Pauline speculation and in apocalyptic prophecy. They
also answered to the general expectations present in the thought of
the times, without satisfying which a new religion could scarcely
ha,ve effected an entry into the world. Indeed, if we consider all
the senseless superstition which w^as believed even by persons of
cultivation in the Greco-Eoman world of that time, and the morbid
curiosity with which not only the multitude but specially the upper
classes and even philosophers ran after sensational miracles and
mysteries,-^ it will appear to us much less a matter of wonder that
Christianity too, in spite of its spiritual and moral character, and in
spite of the aversion felt by Jesus to such sensuous methods, wound
its wreath of legend and of miracle about the person of its Master,
than that its miracles are so markedly distinguished from heathen
1 Every history of civilisation in the times of the Roman Emperors gives abun-
dance of instances of this ; compare, for example, Lecky's History of European Morals,
from Augustus to Charlemagne, 1869 ; also Hausrath's Histoi-y of Neio Testament
Times, and ZeUer's History of Greek Philosophy, vol. v.
REVELATION AND MIRACLE. 85
superstitions by their measured simplicity aud their deep childlike
and poetic beauty. But the ideal and edifying value of the mira-
culous narrative is of course far from proving the historical nature
of the miraculous events ; on the contrary, the more obvious the
ideal significance of such a narrative is, the more reason is there to
think it probable that it arose from purely ideal and sentimental
motives, without any historical background of definite actual
occurrences. If we add that the other historical religions have
their miraculous legends as well as Christianity, the person of the
founder and the early spread of the religion being in every
instance adorned with them, it must appear to every one who
approaches the subject free from dogmatic prejudice to be at least
possible either to concede that all these miraculous legends are alike
historically true, or to condemn them all alike as not historically
true. For a long time the Christian church did the former ; it
regarded the miracles and oracles of heathenism as real, though it
put them down to demonic agency ; and in this it was at least more
logical than modern Christianity, which considers its own miracles
(ecclesiastical, or at least biblical) to be historically true, but those
of the other religions to be mere tales and legends. As soon as the
question of the reality of the miraculous legends is put in this, the
only logical form, as an alternative between the acceptance or the
rejection of all the miraculous narratives of the various religions, it
is, for us moderns, as good as answered. We must not, however,
decline the task of examining the question as to the objective possi-
bility of miracles from the purely philosophical point of view.
The possibility of miracle was debated even by the philosophers
of the ancient world. The Epicureans were led by their deism and
their atomistic physics to deny it, and the Academics had doubts on
the subject; while the Stoics, the Neo-pythagoreans, and the Neo-
platonists thought it possible to find a place for miracle in their
philosophical view of the world. The active cause of miracles they
sometimes found simply in the demons, which of course was leaving
the ground of philosophy for the more popular one of the imaginations
of polytheism ; sometimes they attempted to explain miracle from
86 THE CONTENTS OF TEE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
their metapliysic, tracing it like soothsaying to the sympathetic con-
nection of all the forces of the universe, by means of which whatever
happened at one spot announced itself in innumerable other places
too, so that every influence exerted on one thing propagated itself to
other and to distant things through invisible dynamic media. These
philosophers accordingly sought to justify miracle, the exception
from the natural order, by bringing it into a connection with nature
which was only hidden to us, and so making it a natural result of
these same universal forces out of which the regular course of
nature arises. We meet the same explanation of miracle, only with
a theological turn, in the Church Father, Augustine. The part
played in the system of those Greek philosophers by the sympathetic
connection of the order of nature, is played in his system by the will
of God. Since nature is nothing but the manifestation of the will of
God, and the nature of each thing just that for which God intended
it, the author of all their natures can, Augustine argues, make of
them anything he likes ; nothing is against nature, because nothing
is against God's will ; miracle is contrary only to nature as known to
us. In this way the contrariety to nature is very simply got rid of,
namely, along with the notion of nature itself, which is exchanged
for the free working of the divine will. But does not miracle
introduce a contradiction into this divine will ? No, Augustine
answers, there is no contradiction here either ; since everything, the
extraordinary as well as the ordinary, is foreordained from eternity
in the one eternal decree of God. In the same way did the founder
of German philosophy, Leibniz, seek to reconcile miracle with his
determinism and the pre-established harmony of the world : God
could not indeed effect any change in the world he had once chosen
to be created, without thereby withdrawing as imperfect the resolution
once arrived at by his wisdom, which cannot be thought ; but the
miracles were themselves included in the idea of the world which
God chose for realisation, and from the point at which he chose this
world from the infinite number of possibilities, God determined to
perform them. Thus miracle is to be saved by being embraced in
the pre-established world-harmony as one of the real possibilities or
BEVELATION AND MIRACLE. 87
germs, which in and through the development of the whole are to
arrive at realisation when their time comes. Looking more closely,
however, we see that miracle is saved in a very ambiguous way — that
the true notion of miracle is in fact got rid of altogether. Instead of
a violation of the order of nature and a breach of law, miracle here
becomes an act which is led up to and prepared in accordance with
law and through the order of the whole ; only in its appearance is it
extraordinary, it is only relatively miraculous ; in its essence it is
natural. This defence of miracle accordingly is not so far as at first
sight it might appear from the denial of miracle by Spinoza.
The first reasoned philosophical attack on the belief in miracle
came from Spinoza. He proves the impossibility that anything can
take place against the laws of nature from the consideration that these
laws are nothing but the determinations of the divine will, which
flow from the necessity and the perfection of the divine nature ; the
power of nature is therefore the same thing as the power of God, and
this again identical with God's own most intimate essence. To say
that God does anything against the laws of nature amounts to saying
that he acts contrary to his own nature ; which is most absurd. Nor
can anything go out beyond nature in such a way as to be independent
of the laws of nature, because these extend to everything that is the
object of the divine thought. Equally unreasonable would it be to
suppose that God made nature so powerless and the laws of nature so
barren, that he was compelled more than once to come to their assist-
ance afresh so as to keep them upright, and things progressing in a good
course. From all this Spinoza concludes that there cannot really
be any supernatural miracles ; when occurrences are called miracles,
that is only to say that when certain things took place men did not
know the natural causes of them. Schleiermacher proceeded on this
thought of Spinoza : he also taught that it was difficult to see how
divine omnipotence could show itself greater in the interruptions of
the connection of nature than in the unchanging course of things in
accordance with their original arrangement, which was itself divine.
To be ahle to change would only be an advantage when it was
necessary to change, and this would involve an original imperfection.
/ l^U^O^ -s'*^ ^^-'ct*^ -^^*^
88 THE CONTENTS OF THE BELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
Every absolute miracle, moreover, would completely destroy the
whole course of nature both backwards and forwards, the very notion
of nature would be destroyed, the divine activity would be a magical
one without order, and God himself would be placed in the
category of individual free causes, one among others, and so reduced
to a finite causality. " Thus," Schleiermacher concludes, " with
respect to miracle the general interest of science, especially
natural science, and the interest of piety, meet together at the
same point, namely, that we must give up the idea of the
absolutely supernatural, because in no single case could any such
thing be cognisable by us, and it could never be demanded of us by
religion that we should recognise it." Similarly, according to Fichte
and Hegel, the belief in miracles is not only not demanded by the
interests of piety ; to the true interest of piety it is rather hindersome,
and to the pure idea of the religion of the spirit it is quite unsuit-
able. The spirit itself, its rationality and freedom, is in their eyes
the one true supernatural, and if so, it can only be the vehicle of what
is truly spiritual ; the belief in outward miracles in the world of
sense, on the contrary, Fichte conceives to be merely the after-,
working of Jewish and pagan superstition, unworthy of the pure
Christian faith in that God " whose great and eternal miracle it is
that he creates a new heart in all those who draw near to him."
For the possibility of miracle the apologists appeal in the first
place to the livingness and freedom of God, who is not to be tied
up by any laws of nature, and again to the elasticity of nature, which
both admits and requires higher intervention. As for the first ar-
gument, a God whose livingness and freedom were only manifested
in miracles would obviously be in general unliving, inactive, and
not free. Against this, faith must enter a decided protest, while the
intellect must, on behalf of the law and order of the world, object to
such isolated exceptions of a lawless divine freedom. As the in-
tellect asserts an inviolable and constant order of the world accord-
ing to its inner laws, so faith asserts an absolute divine activity
which does not show itself alive by way of exception merely, being
usually bound by the outer bonds of nature, but now and then show-
REVELATION AND MIRACLE. 89
ing itself free, but which must be unconditionally and always free
and spontaneous activity. With such a separation, which besides ta,kes
the lion's share for natural law, and only leaves God a vanishing mini-
mum of rare and isolated acts of power, neither faith nor reason can
be satisfied ; each of them claims the whole, and cannot but claim
it. How then is justice to be done to both demands, which appear
to be mutually exclusive of each other ? Manifestly in this way,
that the divine activity and the world-order do not border on each
other outwardly, but the latter is taken to be the rational form of the
former. Now we saw above when speaking of the divine omni-
potence, wisdom and holiness, that the divine will can have nothing
else as the contents of its willing and its activity but the thoughts
of the divine reason, the eternal truths which come to manifestation
in the laws of the world-order ; and if this is the case, it is impos-
sible to see how the divine will could will or work anything contrary
to those laws. And these laws of his own reason are as little a con-
straint to him as it is a constraint to him to will what is good. This
is what constitutes the holiness of God, his being not what man is,
that the willing of the law of reason is his nature, and that the
question of his ability to will otherwise can never arise with him.
It is no glorification of God, but a too human, too low idea of him
to suppose that he must sometimes feel the need of ridding himself
of the burdensome compulsion of the world-order, and suspending
the laws which he himself made. Such a suspension would be
nothing but the emancipation of his will from his reason, from the
eternal necessity of being which dwells in his reason (" the eternal
truths "), and so it would be a self-contradiction within God himself,
an assumption shocking alike to reason and to piety.
As miracle, viewed as an occurrence contrary to order, does not
harmonise with the strict notion of divine omnipotence, so neither
does it harmonise with the strict notion of nature. That our know-
lege of the details of nature is imperfect is no doubt true, but so
much we certainly do know, that nature is an orderly and connected
whole of causes and effects, the very notion of which precludes the
possibility of phenomena contrary to law. It is not only details of
90 THE CONTENTS OF THE EELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
our knowledge of nature, which are always more or less accidental,
that are placed in dispute by the assumption of the possibility of
miracles, but our wliole notion of nature, which is involved in the
necessity of our laws of thought. The phrase, too, of " elastic laws
of nature," proves on calm consideration to amount to an inner
contradiction ; for while it is true that the operation and the coming
into view of the different laws is in every occurrence conditioned
and modified in various ways by the manner in which the various
factors of the occurrence act on each other, this variable element does
not apply to the law itself, which, on the contrary, operates with un-
conditional certainty as soon as, and to the extent that, there occurs
in the world of phenomena a possibility of its operation. It is just
because of this infallible and inviolable validity of the laws of nature
that it is possible for us to infer with certainty from any given
effects to their causes, and to predict that from such causes as may
be given such and such events will certainly follow in the future ;
which is the same thing as the possibility of all our rational thought
and calculated action. And if it be pointed out that in nature itself
there occur analogies of miracles in the entrance of higher forms into
lower forms of life, this analogy, when looked at a little more closely,
proves nothing for miracle proper, which is the suspension of law.
Those so-called " new beginnings " are always based on the law and
order of the world as a whole. They were present in germ in the
antecedent development, and as soon as the conditions are matured
for their appearance they appear infallibly and according to law, and
at once fit in to the general order as harmonious members of it. Of
a contradiction of the universal law, a breaking through the natural
connection of cause and effect, there is nowhere a trace in such cases,
and we cannot apply to them the term of " miracle " in the absolute
sense ; at the most we can speak of the relative mirahilc, which is
all that Leibniz argued for. That which is only a wonderful higher,
as compared with the lower, ordinary existence, can very well be a
necessary member of the development proceeding in the whole of
nature, a member striven after from the first, and brought about in
accordance with law ; and then it is not really a miracle at all. Thus
UEVELATION AND MIRACLE. 91
the human spirit may be called a miracle in comparison with nature
below the level of man, but in this instance it is extremely obvious
what a different thing this relative supernaturalness is from the
absolute supernatural of miracle proper. For in the whole of the world-
order man is, as much as any other being, a part of the whole which
is absolutely subject to the laws of the whole ; his appearance was
the goal towards which the natural and lawful development of life on
the earth was striving from the beginning, and his existence is bound
at every point by those conditions which are prescribed to him both
in his own organisation and by the nature of earthly life in general.
But human freedom, it is objected, — is not human freedom too,
lord over nature, and does it not thus afford an actual demonstration
of the possibility of miracle ? If this lordship over nature is taken to
mean that man is free to set himself above the laws of nature, and
to exercise influence on nature apart from or against those laws, it
is a fanciful idea not borne out by reality, and on which no wise man
will proceed to act. But if the lordship of man's freedom over
nature means no more than that man is able by the exercise of his
will to produce changes in the state of things in nature at a given
time, this is no doubt true, but it is a trivial truth which no one
would deny ; and what does it prove in respect to miracles ? Is it to
prove that God, like ourselves, produces particular results which, if
not contrary to the general laws of nature, yet would not have taken
place in that way without his special intervention ? This would not
suffice to explain the complete supernatural and anti-natural miracle
as it appears in most legends, but only the so-called " miracles of
Providence." And besides, the assumption of such partial interven-
tions of God in the course of the world, by which the lawful orderly
interaction of finite causes was interrupted or suspended at definite
points, would involve that deistic relation of God to the world, of
which we have several times spoken, which makes God an individual
being external and co-ordinated to the beings of the world, and
therefore no longer really God, no more that One who comprehends
in and under himself all the many. If, after all our discussions, we
feel it convincingly necessary to conceive of God's relation to the
92 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
world not in that deistic fashion, but in a truly monotheistic way,
then we cannot think of the divine will as a single cause working
for its own ends beside other causes, we must think of it as the unity,
the one ground which comes to manifestation in the orderly opera-
tion of all finite causes, and by means of their operation.^
"We cannot therefore find in the appeal to the freedom of our own
mind from nature any proof of the possibility or of the reality of the
miracle of nature. Yet we do find here an important thought which
leads us to an explanation of the belief in miracle from its true
motive. Every moral and religious act of self-determination from
the thought of goodness or of God, is undoubtedly a free ascent
above pure naturalness, and therefore something supernatural when
compared with our sensuous and selfish natural disposition, though
at the same time, in respect of our reasonable constitution and destiny
as men, what is most truly in accordance with nature. This super-
naturalness, then, which is a feature of the religious consciousness,
and is according to the moral world-order, has clothed itself, in the
idea of supernatural-natural occurrences, with a symbolical expres-
sion. In the world of the senses there take place no miracles which
conflict with the laws of that world ; but the moral and religious
spirit is itself the great miracle, the divine making itself appear. We
cannot bend nor break the laws of the world-order according to our
particular ends, according to the wish and the insistence of the
human heart as it trembles and quakes in fear and hope ; yet for all
this, " our faith is the victory which overcomes the world." It is
this because it springs from a heart which has let itself be con-
quered by the love of God, and has bent and broken the pride and
obstinacy of self-will under the supreme will which seeks and is
working out in the reasonable order of the whole, the true good of
every individual too. Is it really any loss to the religious conscious-
ness, if it should come to see that it cannot gain anything against
the immovable order of the holy and unchangeable will of God, but
that in this good and wise will it already possesses at all times that
^ Compare on the above, the essentially similar discussions in the dogmatic
works of Biedermann (p. 584) and Lipsius (p. 404).
REVELATION AND MIRACLE. 93
which is best, the freedom which nothing can bind and the peace
which the world can neither give nor take away ? Is anything lost,
when it is found that all that is lofty and fair which was thought to
be contained in the belief in miracles, is in truth nothing but the
reflection of faith's own inner wealth of heavenly goods, thrown out
upon the world of sense ? As an expression in terms of sense of the
eternal spiritual miracle which faith itself is, the miraculous legend
will always maintain its place, where the religious spirit unfolds and
contemplates its mystery in sensuous representation ; in the sym-
bolism of religious art, in the worship of the church which speaks
through that symbolism to the heart.
CHAPTEE VI.
EEDEMPTION AND MEDIATION.
PiEDEMPTiON from the evil of the world, and the attainment of
a salvation which satisfies all wants, in communion with the life of
God, this is the end which every religion seeks in its own way to
attain. But we saw in the foregoing chapter that it is essential to
the religious consciousness to refer its desire for saving divine fellow-
ship to a divine will which also seeks for the same thing, and to find
the revelation of that will in gracious manifestations and saving acts
of the Deity, both of an outward and an inward kind. On this side
redemption is expected from a movement of the will of God which
has man for its object — from his grace. But on the other side it is
held to be no less certain that redemption is only obtained from a
movement of the human will directed to God — from faith. These
two sides, from their very nature, come together to a unity in the
religious process ; and the religious idea now embraces them both in
one pregnant and typical expression, in the ideal representation of
these mediating figures of religious history and legend, the importance
of which for faith lies in every instance in the fact that they make
present and visible to faith, in a personal unity, this bringing
together of the divine and the human, which faith itself is : of this
they afford to faith the typical representation and the certainty,
whether it be that, by their action merely, as ambassadors and re-
presentatives of Deity, they convey the revelation of God to man, or
whether they stand in virtue of their nature in the middle between
the two, partaking in some way of the nature of both, and so repre-
senting in a corporeal form in the personal (metaphysical) unity
resident in them, the becoming one of God and man.
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 95
Of both these kinds of mediators the history of religion in all its
stages exhibits manifold examples. Even in the nature- religions
intermediate beings play a conspicuous part. Now they are divine
beings made men, who live for a time on the earth, and do the works
of a Saviour for the benefit of men ; again they are deified men who
rise upwards from below on the ladder of merit and good fortune ;
again they are sons of the gods, who, begotten by the heavenly ones,
prove the superior force of their origin in an exalted human life, and
complete and transfigure their humanity by a final elevation to the
world of the gods. Accordingly, we must generally trace the origin
of such legends to a double root, an ideal or mythological and a real
or historical one. The heroes are on one side ideal, superhuman
beings, demigods or sons of gods sprung from true nature-gods ; on
the other side, however, and at the same time, they are the national
heroes of former times, the kings and legislators of an early age, its
champions in battle, the quellers of its evils, the founders of civil
order as well as of the practice of worship, the ancestors of illustrious
(kingly and priestly) races. The transference of such reminiscences
of early times to the ideal figures of heroes has a twofold result ; on
one side national tradition becomes more ideal, and on the other side
the heroic legend becomes more human and national, " so that an
interaction was set up between two creative factors, legend and
poetry, which operated to an immeasurable extent, and in a people
endowed with mental ability and engaged in great conflicts and
movements, could not fail to produce extraordinary results." This
admirable remark of Preller, the great student of Greek mythology,
bears the more closely on the inquiry of this chapter, as a similar
" interaction of two creative factors, legend and poetry," the historical
and the ideal, may be observed in the belief in heroes or mediators of
the higher religions too.
Most instructive is the group of Heracles-legends, to which
Greek and Oriental mythology, the poetry of nature and epic heroic
poetry, Greek family legends and moral and didactic philosophy, all
brought their manifold contributions. Heracles is originally a sun-
god, who became a sun-hero and a symbol of triumphant light,
96 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
both in the physical aud iu the ethical sense. The much-tried, yet
ever victorious son of Zeus and of a human mother, he is the
manifestation and the proof of unconquerable divine power, both in
the earthly lowliness of human life and in his heavenly exaltation.
He is equally the type of human virtue suffering and striving in an
infinite succession of battles and labours, and the god-descended hero
who, sent by divine command and equipped with superhuman power,
becomes the bringer of salvation, a " saviour and emancipator " to
vexed humanity. His redeeming activity is at first directed princi-
pally to the ridding of the earth from all monsters, from all the savagery
and untutored rudeness of the early age ; yet profound ethical refer-
ences are not wanting in him. Such a reference may be found
notably in the relation of Heracles to Prometheus ; if the latter is (vol.
iii. p. 5) the representative of natural humanity, which in its titanic
endeavours after freedom and civilisation plunges itself in guilt and
misery, Heracles is the ideal man, who by obedience in action and in
suffering approves his divine origin, aud merits his elevation to the
blessed. To him alone, then, is it allowed to bring to that sufferer,
forsaken alike of gods and men, the termination of his endless tor-
ment. Here we find the idea of the first and the second Adam, the
bringer and the conqueror of death, foreshadowed in mythic traits.
Heracles also appears in the character of the spoiler of hell, over-
coming and leading away the hell-hound Cerberus : in this character
he was often celebrated in the representations of the mysteries, being-
joined with Orpheus as leader of the under-world (mystagogue).
And this victory of the divine power of life over the forces of death,
which had been the burden of his redeeming activity, reaches its con-
summation in his end ; from the sacred mount Oeta, out of the flames
which devour his earthly covering, the transfigured hero rises to
heaven in the thunder-cloud of his father Zeus, Athene leads him,
Nike hovers about him, the Olympians receive him in triumph and
crown him with the victor's wreath ; the anger of fate (Here) is
atoned, and eternal life and joy await him wdio has conquered and is
perfected. Finally, it is extremely interesting to remark how this
mythical god-man, in whom both the lowliness and the exaltation of
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 97
humanity, both its pains and its joys, are so wonderfully symbolised,
became at last, in the fable of Prodicus, the allegorical ideal of purely
human virtuous energy, whose heroism consists in moral self-con-
quest, as he prefers the difficult road of virtue under the guidance
of Athene to the lower life of pleasure in the service of Aphrodite.
Here Heracles is the type of Greek kalokagathia as contrasted with
the oriental view of life, which finds its symbol in the legend of Paris,
whose choice was different.
Greek religion stands half-way between nature-religion and moral
religion, and what the figure of Heracles, the hero of civilisation, is
to Greek religion is found raised to a higher power in those faiths
which are moral from their outset, or in the Jiistorical religions. In
these it is a matter of course that the highest revelation of the
redeeming deity cannot any longer lie in natural processes, nor yet
in the deeds of heroes whose achievements belong to the sphere of
general human civilisation. These religions find the highest revela-
tion of God in their own distinctive religious consciousness, and so
the true mediators between God and man appear to be those person-
alities who took a leading part in the genesis and the development
of their religion, principally, therefore, the religious founders them-
selves. What was said above of the belief in mediators in general,
that it lends objective reality to man's communion with the God who
reveals himself to him, is specially true of the founders of the positive
religions ; for in the view which a religious community forms to itself
of the person and the work of its founder there is reflected in
every instance its own religious self-consciousness, or its moral and
religious ideal of life.
The Persian religion, according, at least, to the somewhat late
theology of the Bundehish, assigns a central position to its founder,
Zarathustra, by placing him in the very centre of the history of the
world. From the creation of the world to his appearance was a
period of 3000 years, the first half of the world-times, during the
lapse of which the kingdom of the evil one (Ahriman) kept the
upper hand. With him, however, comes the turn, in favour of the
rule of the good God ; and hence even at his birth the good spirits
VOL. IV. G
98 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
rejoice, while Ahriman, foreseeing his approaching defeat, seeks to do
away with the champion of the kingdom of light, offering him as the
price of his abandonment of the word of Ahura the empire of the
earth. Zarathustra, however, withstands the temptation, and becomes
the first announcer of the true word of God, by which he smites the
demons, and brings in the kingdom and the blessings of Ahura. The
time of the victorious warfare and advance of the kingdom of God
extends 3000 years from Zarathustra onwards ; and then will come
the great " Bringer of Salvation," Saoshyas, who will be born of a
virgin mother, and conceived by the holy spirit of Zarathustra, and
will thus be in a sense Zarathustra himself come again ; he will
accomplish the work which Zarathustra began, redeeming the world
from the kingdom of the demons, and crowning it with a final
victory.
It is probable that this Persian dogma had some influence on the
development in various directions, on Persian ground, of the doctrine
of Islam regarding the person of the prophet Mohammed. The
orthodox dogmatic made him a wonder-working saint and world-
judge, the rationalists a distinguished teacher of truth, while the
Shiites and Sufis made him an incarnation of the pre-existent divine
light, or more particularly of the light implanted in mankind from
Adam onward. INIohammed had not himself claimed superhuman
dignity, not even perfect holiness ; all he claimed was the infallibility
of his word of revelation, which he said he had received through the
disclosures of the angel Gabriel. To the dogmatic of Islam this
appeared insufficient for the dignity of the founder, and the position
was taken up that from the beginning of his life he had possessed
the infallible knowledge of God, a statement more than bold when
we remember the notorious fact that at an earlier period he had
shared the heathen beliefs of his country. Equally little did the
assertion of the sinlessness of Mohammed agree with the history of
his life, for the noble early enthusiasm of the reformer was sadly
sullied afterwards by the despot and the master of a harem. In view
of these notorious facts, the rationalists of Islam urged objections to
those predicates, while naturally orthodox theology thought it neces-
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION 99
sary to uphold the perfection of the founder of the religion, in which
it saw the expression and the guarantee of the perfection of the
religion itself. Between this ideal postulate and the historical view
the theologians of Islam sought out artificial means of harmony, by
distinguishing, e.g. between the possibility and the actuality of sin ;
the former, they held, belonged to the human nature of Mohammed,
but the possibility never became an actuality, being kept from doing
so both by miraculous divine inspiration and by the prophet's own
virtue. The multitude, however, led more by the interest of faith
than by the reflections of the intellect, gravitated more and more
towards the supernatural ; the miraculous legends grew and increased,
especially did the cardinal miracle of Mohammed's heavenly journey
receive more and more fabulous elaboration, in which he was said to
have been solemnly installed by God as his prophet. Following up,
finally, the roots of his higher nature backwards, theories were reached
which suggest, if they do not positively assert, personal pre-existence ;
according to the doctrine of the Shiites God at the creation intro-
duced into matter a spark of his own light, and this spark was the
soul of Mohammed ; to it God spoke : Thou art the chosen one, the
elect, in thee dwells my light and my guidance, for thy sake do I
spread out the earth and make the heavens an arch, do I institute
reward and punishment, do I create heaven and hell. Thus the sin-
less prophet became here also the centre and the end of the creation.
From this mystic tendency of the Persian Shiites arises also their
legend of the voluntary death of Hosein, a grandson of Mohammed,
who fell in the battle against the Omayyads, but was idealised by his
adherents, and turned into a saint and martyr, who, according to
divine predestination, out of love for the sinful world, gave up his
life as a sacrifice for the world's salvation, and for this was exalted
by God to be the world's judge, who bears the keys of Paradise.
This legend became the subject of a passion-play, which to this day
is performed every year with great solemnity in all the cities of
Persia. This idea of a Saviour's love sacrificing itself for the good
of sinners is quite foreign to Islam generally ; it is connected with
the mysticism of Persian Sufism, and is a proof, like that school of
100 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
thought, that on Indo-Germanic ground Islam was forced to accept
changes and additions in order to adapt itself to a deeper range of
feeling. We need not seek to determine whether these changes came
to Islam from the Buddhist or from the Christian religion of
redemption. It deserves to be remarked that in that popular legend
and celebration the idea of redemption attached itself to the tragic
fate of a historical person, and thus the idealising of this person,
from an unfortunate warrior to a martyr taking upon himself volun-
tary sufferings, came about naturally as a necessary requirement of
worship. It was only by means of this historical attachment and
investment that the idea of redemption succeeded in establishing
itself as to some extent a popular element, a part of the worship, of
Persian Islam ; where it remained without this historical help, and
was taken as a purely inward process of feeling belonging to the
ascetic and mystic love of God, it remained restricted to the esoteric
scholastic speculation of Sufism (vol. iii. p. 182), and only in the
form of an emotional religious poetry did it attain to somewhat
greater and more permanent importance. It must certainly be
acknowledged that among the poems of a Saadi and Jelaleddin Bitmi
(both belonging to the thirteenth century) there are to be found
genuine pearls of religious mysticism not unworthy to be placed by
the side of the finest Christian poetry, e.g. : —
" My spirit with thy soul divine
Is blent as water mixed with wine,
My greater self is now in Thee,
How then shall I the smaller be ?
My nature thou dost take for thine,
Thine let me therefore have for mine.
In the deep places of my breast
With heaven's reflection thou dost rest."
" Say wouldst thou live for ever, abide everlastingly ?
Oh ! haste then thy striving soul from this transient world to free !
Thy heart heed not, nor thy body ; be free from earth's callings and cares !
Let the love of thy Creator now thy true existence be,
And the feeling of self be lost in the sense of eternity !
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 101
See how gladly the corn in the earth rejoices when sown to die,
For the nothingness whither it hastes has the richest gifts in store,
And when in the dark earth buried, self has to nothing grown.
Then the flower and the fruit strive upwards, heavenward evermore !"
Outside Christiauity the belief in redemption and mediation
assumed central importance nowhere but in India ; where it first
appeared as an esoteric doctrine of salvation in Brahmanic speculation,
and then as a popular religion among the disciples of Gautama
Buddha. The most remarkable feature of the Brahmanic doctrine of
salvation is the antithetical and indeed hostile position it takes up
towards the exoteric doctrine of duties of the law of Manu, which
prescribes ritual and moral works as the way to happiness both in
this world and the next. The position, indeed, can only be regarded
as a preparatory stage to the other.^ All doing of works, of what-
ever kind, can never, according to the system of the Vedanta, lead to
redemption ; it can only lead back to Samsara ; for as works proceed
from the Ego which desires, they always demand a compensation in
pleasure or pain ; but these belong only to the bodily not to the
incorporeal existence ; only to the changing, not to the unchanging,
which is the state of Brahma and of redemption. Nor is redemption
to be attained by moral improvement, for all improvement takes
place by the adoption of virtues and the discarding of errors, by an
activity therefore which aims at a change in the object ; but the self
(Atman) is eternal and unchangeable, so that there can be no activity
that is directed to the self as its object, while an activity that is
directed to another object cannot affect the self, nor improve it.
Man's goal, redemption (Moksha), is only attained by knowledge of
the self, a knowledge quite independent of any activity, even of any
moral effort after virtue, by knowledge of one's unity with the great
self of the world, with Brahma. When the consciousness awakens of
the identity of one's own self with Brahma, then the separation from
the all-one, a separation based on the illusion of Maya, comes to an
end, and with it tlie cause of all suffering. This identity has always
1 Compare Deiissen, Z)as System des Vedanta, Leipzig, 1883 (especially the 5th
section ; Moksha oder die Lehre v. d. Erlosung).
102 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
subsisted ; what takes place in redemption is not a becoming, a
change, a renewal of the self; only the barrier is removed which
was caused by the false state of mind in the former ignorance. The
entry of this knowledge, moreover, in which salvation consists, can-
not be brought about by any efforts on our part, as is the case with
other knowledge, such as is directed to outward objects. The know-
ledge here in question is of a peculiar nature ; here the ordinary dis-
tinction between knower and known disappears in the unity of both ;
and this is not possible by means of ordinary (reflecting, discursive)
thought, but only through a mystical immediate becoming aware,
which quite transcends the ordinary antithesis of consciousness ;
hence it is said : " Who does not know, he alone knows it." This
dawn of the higher knowledge, not to be explained from the ordinary
causal nexus, is represented by exoteric dogmatic as a gift of Divine
grace, which effects that which is unattainable to human power, and
manifests to the man whom it has chosen the essential nature of the
self; the esoteric view, to describe it more precisely, is that it is
man's own self in its unity with the absolute, or as subject-object,
which enters unveiled into the mind to which it was veiled before.
But though the redeeming knowledge cannot be brought about
(immediately) by works, nor by virtuous efforts, nor by searching the
Scripture, yet the various works of asceticism (outward and inward)
are so far of religious value as they at least help to bring about
redemption. They are not, as exoteric legal piety considers, meri-
torious in themselves, so as to call for reward, but they are salutary
as means of grace which place the soul in a favourable position for
receiving the redeeming knowledge. The means of grace in this
wider sense, enumerated by Brahraanic dogmatic, are the following :
sacrifice, alms, fasting, self-mortification, study of the Veda, medita-
tion. These exercises belong to the stage of preparation, and cease
after the attainment of knowledge ; the means of grace in the stricter
sense, however, which are directly connected with the religious state
of feeling; quiet of soul, self-training, renunciation, patience, self-
collection, these maintain their place at the stage of redemption, or
with him who knows, and form a part of his life even till death,
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 103
with which redemption is consummated. As for the stage of redemp-
tion, or the blessedness of the wise man, it is described as complete
detachment from all particular determinations of consciousness, such
as are affected by oppositeness or change, from the antithesis of I and
Thou, of activity and passivity, of good and evil. No care for the
things of the world any longer vexes him who has known the world
to be illusion ; no feeling of pain, not even of his own body, affects
him who sees his own body to be an illusion. The incorporeal and
unchangeable, which the wise man has recognised himself to be, is no
longer touched by pleasure or pain. The fruit of former works, too,
good as well as evil, disappears for the consciousness of the wise man ;
for him who knows Brahma, who has recognised that the self is not
active, former works which he did in the vain dream that he was the
doer of them, come to nought when this dream is dispelled by know-
ledge. " Him who knows this, neither overpowers ; whether when
he was in the body he did evil or whether he did good ; he out-
comes both ; no longer does it burn him, what he has done and what
he has not done. This bridge (of redemption) death does not over-
step, nor pain, not good works, and not evil works, all sins turn
round before it." A removal of sins like this, through knowledge of
the illusion of being an actor, may lead to quietude of soul, but can-
not lead to new moral life and energy for goodness ; what does away
with sins does away with good works too, both those past and those
to come : " He wdio has found peace in the self is no longer bound
by any duty." With the knowledge of the soul as Brahma " the
fulfilment of man's destiny has taken place, and all obligation has an
end. All laws, those proceeding from Scripture not excepted, are, if
brought into connection with the knowledge of Brahma, as blunt as
the edge of the knife when pressed against the grindstone." Thus
there is quiet in the soul of him who knows and is redeemed, but it
is the quiet of death, of the heart dead and emptied, to which, along
with evils also goods, along with the false and illusory also the true
and permanent ends of existence have disappeared, and become vain
and meaningless. To this existence, which is so dead within, out-
ward life still rolls on for a while, to be compared to the potter's
104 TEE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
wheel, which continues its revolution for a time after its work is
done. And when at last what remains in the outer life of the earlier
living impulse is used up, the spirits of the wise man's life do not go
forth to a new existence ; his redemption is consummated by his
absorption in Brahma :
" As run the streams, which in the ocean,
Both name and form surrendered, are no more ;
So, freed from name and form, goes forth the sage,
Goes in to the great spirit, the spirit divine."
This Brahmanic doctrine of redemption was an esoteric ideal of life,
which was intimately connected with the esoteric scholastic specula-
tion of the Brahmans, their abstract idealistic and monistic thought,
and for that reason could of course never pass beyond the narrow
circle of the philosophers ; the multitude had to content itself with the
exoteric ideal of ritual piety and civic uprightness as delineated in
the law of Manu. Besides, it was impossible to carry out that
esoteric ideal without an outward as well as an inward withdrawal
from the " world," from the life of the family and of society, so that
one might devote one's self to quiet contemplation. But even in
India, where outward conditions make the life of the " hermit of the
woods " much more possible than with us, it was not every one who
was suited for it ; such total isolation,\without support from any in-
tercourse whatever, only a few world-weary exceptions could endure.
For these reasons the Brahmanic way of salvation could never become
popular. The new turn given to the Indian doctrine of salvation by
Gautama Buddha consisted firstly in its being severed from Brah-
manic scholastic philosophy, and made perfectly practical, so that it
was suited to be the common property' of the whole people ; secondly,
in the type, which every one could understand, of the way of salva-
tion given in the person of the founder ; and lastly, in the fixed
organisation of the holy life in the community of his disciples, which
could assist individuals as a support and supplement of their own
more or less imperfect endeavours.
But however great the difference in form between the popular
religion of redemption of Buddha and the esoteric philosophical and
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 105
mystical theory of redemption of the Brahmans, the practical ten-
dency of the idea of redemption was essentially the same in both.
Both sought the cause of evil in not-knowing, which chained the
will to that which was naught, and the ground of redemption in
knowing, in an illumination of the consciousness, which caused the
illusion to be seen through, and the will entangled in it freed and
brought to rest. True, the content of the knowledge which redeems
is not with Buddha the metaphysical thought of the unity of the self
with Brahma, — this notion he rejected expressly ; — but the practical
thought that pain does not cease so long as the will cleaves to exist-
ence, because till then it is subject to the law of all existence, to
the sentence of the instability of all being, the transitoriness of all
happiness. But as the Brahman expects that by the metaphysical
knowledge he speaks of, all doing and all suffering being seen to be
illusory, will come to an end, just so Buddha holds that when the law
of becoming and of the deceitfulness of all efforts after happiness
once are known, the will which cleaves to the world will go out and
come to rest. The Buddhistic " Nirvana " comes practically to be the
same thing as the Brahmanic "Moksha," only that it wants the
metaphysical pantheistic background of the latter; it is the state
of extinguished desire^ of passionless quiet, of the dead and withered
heart. The way to redemption too is almost the same in both cases.
Buddhism, it is true, attaches no value to ritual sacrifice, to the study
of the Veda, or to mortification, which are reckoned among the Brah-
manic means of grace in the wider sense ; but beneficence in all its
forms, quiet and patience, self-conquest and renunciation of the
world, absorption or meditation even to the pitch of ecstatic emptying
of consciousness, these means of grace in the stricter sense, of the
Vedanta, form the Buddhist way of salvation too. The Buddhist
ideal of life too culminates in the withdrawal of the wise man from
the world, from family and business, house and land, to lead in per-
fect renunciation of the luorlcl the life of holiness and of blessed peace.
But in the manner in which this principle is carried out there is a
difference which has important consequences ; the Brahmanic avoid-
ance of the world led individuals to the retirement of the woods for a
106 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS
life of inactive contemplation ; the Buddliist avoidance of the workl
led many into cloisters, where they organised themselves as monks,
and as mission preachers, father confessors, teachers and educators of
the people, formed a regular religious calling. In the community of
monks and nuns Buddhism possessed the kernel of an ecclesiastical
organisation to which the congregation of the laity attached itself ; here
it found a standing embodiment of its distinctive religious principle,
and an active instrument of its diffusion ; in short, an objective means
of grace, in which the subjective religious life and endeavour of indi-
vidual believers might find, in the form of a fixed institution, both a
visible type, and the needed generative power, the help and support
and fulfilment it craved.
This community of the saints, again, had its type and bond of
unity in the person of the founder, in whose doctrine and life that
ideal had first been manifested by which his followers were inspired.
It was this connection with a historical life with dramatic and
attractive human features, that gave the religion of redemption its
great advantage over the mere theories of redemption of the Brah-
manic schools. The more simple, practical and popular view of the
way of redemption naturally contributed very greatly from the first
to the success of Buddha's preaching ; but this of itself would
scarcely have sufficed both to found and to hold together a religion
which spread beyond the limits of nationality, had not the personal
life of the founder afforded to his first disciples, and then, by the
accounts they transmitted, to later generations also a popularly in-
telligible and winning example of the doctrine of the new religion.
It was no more than a natural expression of this fact that the church
of Buddha exalted its founder, in whom it saw both the embodiment
of its ideal of life and the source of its religious satisfaction, to an
object of worship, and so represented the highest it knew in the world
as being also the highest power over the world, thus assuring itself
of the eternal continuance of his benefits. He thus came to occupy
in the eyes of the church the place of the world-ruling deity, and was
invoked in worship as " god of gods, father of the world, redeemer
and governor of all creatures." But when once the demands of wor-
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 107
ship had lifted wp the founder beyond the measure of humanity, the
result necessarily followed that pious fancy adorned the memory of
his life on earth with legends, in which the pregnant symbolism of
religious ideas was blended with purely mystical traits from old
heroic and divine legends {e.ff. sun-myths). It is not necessary for
us to enter here on the detail of the legend of Buddha ; we need
only remark that the unique and dominating importance of his per-
sonality for the consciousness of his church finds expression not only
in the miracles of his career as a prophet, but also in the legend
of the miraculous beginning of his manifestation on earth. It was
love to the creation that caused him to descend from his heavenly
existence and to be born of a virgin mother, his birth being accom-
panied by all manner of signs and miracles. For all this, however,
the earthly person of the founder was to the Buddhist church no more
than one single appearance and revelation in history of universal ideals
outside of time ; as we may gather from the peculiar expectation, that
similar Buddhas will appear in future ages of the world, repeating and
continuing in an indefinite number of avatars, as often as the need of
the earth requires, the existence of that one who had already come.
Similar to this was the subsequent Brahmanic doctrine of the
incarnations of Vishnu, one of which in particular, that of the solar
hero Krishna, attained to an importance which rivalled that of
Buddha. In moral respects he is much inferior to the latter, but he
has the advantage of him in being connected with the popular
mythology and the epic heroic legend of the Indians. The legends
of Krishna's miraculous birth in a shepherd's stall, and of the flight
of the child from persecution, form the subject of the celebration of
the principal Brahmanic festival, the Indian Christmas, or birth-feast
of Krishna, the similarity of which with the Christian Christmas has
long been remarked. The question has been much discussed whether
we have here a fortuitous coincidence of phenomena arising out of
similar motives, but quite unconnected with each other historically,
or whether a historical connection exists, and if so, which of the two
is the original, and which the derived one ? This question, like the
similar one of the relation to Christianity of the legend of Buddha,
108 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS
we may leave to be decided by further historical investigation, I
content myself with remarking that the passionate excitement which
such inquiries still seem to call forth in the theological world appears
to me very extraordinary and unintelligible ; a little reflection ought,
I think, to show that in any case, whatever may be the result to
which such inquiries lead, there is a similarity in fact between the
two groups of legends, the substantial reason of which can only be
found in psychological considerations. There must be psychological
motives at work, which arise, independently of outward events, out
of the religious consciousness generally, and more particularly out of
the soil of the religions of redemption. In these religions the need
is strongly felt to see in the picture of a personal human life the
typical revelation of the divine redeeming power, and therefore to
conceive of the ideal person of the Saviour as mysteriously connected
from the first with deity. This is a natural need of the brooding
and expectant soul ; and we ought not to deny its legitimacy, or to
undervalue the truth that is in it, because we see that poetic fancy
had a share in forming the miraculous legend.
In Christianity the belief in redemption and mediation is trace-
able in various ways to the religion of Israel, without, however, coin-
ciding exactly with any of the ideas of the older religion. What is
generally comprised under the title of " ]\Iessianic prophecy " is, as
is well known, a mixture of very various ideas, of which it may be
said without injustice that those of them which were intended as
prophecies do not really apply to the Christian Saviour, and that
those in which there really is a prophecy of the new covenant and
its founder had at first no real Messianic significance. To the first
class belong the prophetic hopes of a Davidic ruler, who is to raise
up again in its former glory the national theocracy ; to the latter
belongs the deutero-Isaianic picture of the patiently teaching and
suffering Servant of God, in whom the prophet himself saw, not the
Messiah of the future, but the ideal Israel of the present, as he no
doubt saw it personified in pious sufferers of his own time, Jeremiah,
or other saints not known to us. The idea here expressed of the
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 109
vicarious sufferings of the good man for an atonement for sinners,
was afterwards connected in Jewisli theology with the external legal
doctrine of the merit attaching to works and sufferings, one's own as
well as those of others, and so reached an importance more than in
proportion to its value. But what in Pharisaic theology led to a
morally deadening confidence in the merits of Jewish saints past and
present, and so tended to increase the vain self-righteousness of the
Jewish joint national consciousness, the apostle Paul placed in con-
nection with the death of Christ on the cross, so making it the
foundation of his doctrine of salvation, which casts to the ground all
self-righteousness by the announcement of the atoning grace of God,
and of righteousness by faith alone.
The riddle of the Pauline doctrine of redemption, which to this
day is seldom understood correctly, consists in this, that it overcomes
the Jewish religion of the law on its own ground, and by means of
its own assumptions. That sin is not forgiven without propitiatory
penalty, that the penalty demanded by the law for sin is nothing less
than death, but that the sufferings of the righteous man are imputed
to the community which is bound up with him in solidarity, as a
vicarious penalty for them, these were fixed axioms to the Paul of
the Pharisaic school. The application, too, of the idea of a vicarious,
guilt-atoning suffering of the just man, to the death of Christ, had
established itself in the Christian community before Paul. But the
inferences Paul made from these given premisses were new and of
signal importance. They issued mainly from his higher view of the
person of Christ, whom he regarded not merely as a just man of
Jewish race, or as a national Messiah, whose sufferings could only
have been of force for this one people, but as the second Adam, the
prototypal man from heaven, who represents the wliole of mankind
for good, as the first Adam had represented it for evil. Hence
Christ's death possesses such meaning as if all had died in and with
him, its atoning power is for the benefit of all, potentially of all men,
— for as the first or heavenly man he represents all men before God,
— and in fact all those who recognise the representative meaning
of his death, and so make it in fact their own, experiencing it over
no THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
again in their own consciousness, and so feeling themselves to be
ideally dead and risen again in and with Christ. The death of Christ
therefore effects abstractly, objectively, the atonement of the whole
world ; but this comes to be a subjective reality, a state of justifica-
tion or of freedom from guilt, 07ily in those, but again in all those
who in faith inwardly appropriate to themselves the death of Christ
in such a way that it is no longer merely the outward experience of
one instead of all, but the common inner experience of all in and
with the one. Thus there is added to the higher view of Christ, as a
further decisive factor with Paul, the deeper apprehension of faith
as the central act of obedience in which the heart surrenders itself
to the atoner to be one with liim in death and in life ; by this faith
the many grow together into one spirit and members of one body
with their one head ; they are animated with the one mind of Christ
the Son of God, that spirit of self-sacrificing love, which seeks to
manifest its dignity of being in the likeness of God not in violent
and selfish strivings, but in meek and obedient self-humiliation,
service, and suffering. Turned as Paul thus turns it, the Pharisaic
idea of a removal of guilt by the merit and the sufferings of another
loses the objectionable element which attaches to it not only
apparently but really, and the profoundly moral idea now appears
that in tlie trustful surrender of the heart to the type of pure
liumanity and of saving love, an inner change takes place in man in
which the old guilt is done away, along with the old bondage of the
law, and a new purity and freedom, and energy for good is gained.
The Jewish idea of vicarious propitiation was therefore for Paul
merely the lever by means of which he raised himself and his Jewish
readers to the level of the Christian idea of a redemption which
takes place not outside us but within us, namely, in the turning
away of the heart from the old selfishness of sin and the law to the
trustful experience and grateful return of the love of God. Seen
from this point of view the death of Christ is no longer as at first a
means of propitiation provided by God to satisfy the demands of the
law by executing the curse of it ; it is on one side a proof of the love
of God, wliich gives up for us the best it has, and asks nothing but
BEDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. HI
our heart in return, while on the other side it is the type of our
faithful obedience, which in this central act of the surrender of the
heart to God, an act of moral self-sacrifice, is sure that it accom-
plishes the saving purpose of God, and receives his gift of righteous-
ness and of life. With Paul, as truly as with Jesus, the kernel of
the doctrine of salvation was the inner process of ethical redemption
in the death of the old selfish man and the coming to life of a new,
God-loving man ; and with Paul this process drew from the con-
templation of the historical death of Christ not only its original
impulse, but also its dramatic pattern for all time, and a motive
immediately intelligible and of great force for the simplest mind.
Such a motive and pattern is of irreplaceable value for the religion
of redemption, since in this way alone can the essence of the matter,
of this mysterious process of the heart which can never be exhaus-
tively set forth in the language of nature, obtain a generally intel-
ligible form of expression, such as may prove an effective means for
the diffusion of the religion of redemption. In this sense the
significance Paul attributed to the death of Christ, of a central, all-
comprehending means of salvation, is undoubtedly a truth which can
never be put aside. But the circumstance that in Paul's form of
doctrine this Christian truth is closely inwoven with those assump-
tions of the Jewish religion of law which formed its starting-point,
makes liis doctrine hard, and gives it its oscillating, dialectical
character. It is as if there were two souls in his breast ; the old
one of the Pharisee, which still clings to the law, and the new one
of the Apostle, which has found in faith the liberty of the children
of God; and the struggle of those two souls in Paul's breast is
reflected in the oscillation of his doctrine of redemption between the
form which is Jewish and the result which is Christian. But this
very dialectic, the theoretical comprehension of which is the crux of
expositors, has a peculiar value of its own for the practical religious
life ; we must not forget that the same ascent from the legal to the
childlike consciousness, which was first accomplished with such
struggles in the Apostle Paul, has been repeated in the experience of
multitudes of others, especially in Protestant Christianity. All these
112 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
require in tiirn, just as Paul once did, the lever of legal ideas by
which to raise themselves up above the legal standpoint ; and how
natural is it that the psychological working dialectic of the heart,
when making the transition from the slavish fear of the law to the
childlike confidence of the gospel, should find in the dialectic of
Pauline theology, which stands just between the two positions, and
mediates in so original a fashion between them, both the support
and the bridge it is in search of ! This is the reason why the
dogmatic of the church wall not give up this form of doctrine,
angular as it is, and harsh, and exposed to manifold doctrinal
objections. It does right in this, inasmuch as the end and purpose
of dogmatic is simply to present the right ideas, i.e. the ideas which
are practically serviceable, for the production of the normal processes
of the religious consciousness.
It has to be said, however, that the Pauline doctrine of redemp-
tion, conditioned as it is by individual peculiarities, can only find
entrance and understanding where analogous assumptions exist to
those of its origin ; that it cannot advance the claim to be held solely
and exclusively valid follows from the simple fact that other modes
of doctrine are present in the New Testament. The theory of pro-
pitiation from which Paul set out, finds no place in the Johanninr
theology, since the law with which Paul had still to wrestle is here
altogether transcended, and God is known simply as love, which
does not demand the satisfaction of its claim for penalty by the
execution of the curse of the law, before it can manifest itself as
grace. Here, then, there can be no question of vicarious propitiation
by the death of the Messiah to satisfy the curse ; salvation, atone-
ment is not a thing that has to be wrought out by the merits and
sufferings of a mediator ; it is already present in the person of the
Saviour who possesses, in his consciousness of sonship to God,
redeeming grace and truth, and offers them by all his acts and
words, by his life and death, to the acceptance of the world. Here
the redeeming principle is not found in any particular event, but in
the illuminating and life-giving powers which go forth from the
divine spirit of Jesus. This spirit — modern language would describe it
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 113
most simply by the term " religious genius," which is familiar to us
moderns — the fourth Evangelist designated by the notion " Logos,"
which was current in the Jewish-Hellenist speculation of his day. In
this notion the hypostatised " Word of Eevelation " (Memra) of the
Jewish theology of the period, melted into one with the similarly
hypostatised world-forming and -governing " Eeason " of Greek philo-
sophy. The combination of the two ideas was accomplished by Philo
(vol. iii. p. 172) a full century before the fourth Evangelist, and the
term had been ever since a usual and current expression of what
lay in the mind of the age. The question therefore is perfectly idle,
whether the Logos-notion of the fourth Gospel is to be traced to the
philosophy of Philo, or to Jewish theology. The truth is simply that
it belongs to the general religious consciousness of the second
century, which could not feel that there was any occasion to dis-
tinguish with any exactness between the various sources and nuances
of this convenient expression, this formula in fact of the union and
connection of the wisdoms of the East and of the West. Instead of
carrying on useless discussions on this question, it would be well to
aim at greater clearness than has hitherto prevailed as to the inten-
tion and the result of the application of the Logos-notion to the
person of Jesus, which the fourth Evangelist was the first to resort
to. At the very outset so much is clear ; if in the founder of
Christianity there is seen the " Incarnation," i.e. the personal, cor-
poreal appearance of that same divine Logos who had been from the
first the mediating principle of the divine activity both in creation
and in the history of salvation, then Christianity is thereby asserted
to be the consummation of all previous revelations of God in the
world, and so the perfect religion, equally above Judaism and
heathenism. That relation of the Johannine Christ to the Father-
God, unity of essence along with dependence in point of existence,
manifested in the form of the most confident intimacy combined
with the freest obedience of filial love, — what is it but the perfected
ideal of the Christian religion and indeed of all religion ? And if
the Evangelist makes the Logos arrive first in Jesus at his full mani-
festation in history, while he yet existed before, a pre-existent
VOL. IV. H
114 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
active principle of revelation, what does this really mean, but that
the Christian religion, in spite of all its novelty, was not entirely un-
prepared for, that it did not break into the world without cause or
without connection with what went before, but was the realisation of
the religious endowment of our race, the highest stage of develop-
ment of that divine reasonable impulse which was always and every-
where present in humanity ? Thus we are fully justified in finding
in the Logos- doctrine of Johannine theology a genuine speculative
strain of thought, the rational idealism ' of which belongs to a dis-
tinctly higher level than the national and limited positivism of
Jewish Christianity, or again than the positivism of the present day
which has its root in a universal Logophoby (distrust of reason). The
reverse however must certainly not be overlooked. The Logos being
conceived not only as a divine principle but as a particular divine
person, and the latter immediately identified with the historical per-
son of Jesus, the historical features of the latter are obliterated, and
instead of the man who, in spite of the exaggerated miraculous
nature attributed to him in the earlier Gospels, was yet clearly
enough discernible in them, we here look upon a God clothed in
human form, whose allegorical symbolism, its exalted ideality not-
withstanding, can never quite make up to us for the loss of living
historical reality.
The early church was unable to conceive of redemption other-
wise than as a mythological process, a struggle or a litigation between
God, Christ, and the devil, mankind being only the passive object of
the contest. With this it very naturally connected itself that the
church desired to see the two parties who were to be brought
together by redemption, namely God and man, represented in the
person of the mediator in an external mechanical manner, a complete
divine nature and a complete human nature being united in him.
This motive appears M'ith special clearness in Anselm, who demon-
strated the necessity of the incarnation of God by the following
argumentation. Human sin, thus he sets out, being an insult to
God and a disturbance of his world-order, involved an infinite
penalty, which God for the sake of his own honour could not leave
unpunished ; hence God demands, for the reparation of his injured
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 115
honour, an infinite satisfaction, failing which he must deliver guilty-
mankind to the merited punishment of death. This satisfaction,
however, guilty mankind was not able itself to render, since what-
ever man could offer to God is of finite value only, and since,
besides, he already owes God all that it is in his power to do, and
hence cannot draw from it any superfluous merit to make good his
guilt. There was only one way out of the difficulty ; the satisfac-
tion which mankind owed, but was not able to render, must be
rendered for them by one who was both man and more than man,
that is a God- man. But this satisfaction did not consist in the
obedient life of the God-man Christ ; that was no more than his duty,
and was not therefore meritorious ; it was the surrender to death of
the sacred life of Christ, which furnished, according to Anselm, a
meritorious work to which he would not have been obliged, and
which God therefore accepted as an infinitely valuable satisfaction,
and reckoned to the credit of sinful men as the kindred of the God-
man. This theory is obviously a true reflection of the secular and
ecclesiastical consciousness of the Middle Ages, the ages of chivalry
and of Catholicism ; it simply transfers the idea of wounded honour
which demands satisfaction or vengeance, an idea which belongs to
the moral code of chivalry, to the relation of God to man, never
inquiring whether an idea which has some meaning in human
relations between equals, can reasonably be transferred to the
altogether different relationship between the creator and the creature,
or if this transference does not itself involve a lowering of God to
man, which is most unworthy of his true honour. And again, the
theory of Anselm transfers to the atoning work of Christ the Catholic
view of supererogatory, meritorious works, which go beyond the
measure of duty, and lay the foundation of a merit which is trans-
ferable from one man to another, and so may serve to cover up a
deficit incurred elsewhere, From the ground of the Catholic doctrine
of salvation, to which it was a fixed assumption that supererogatory
meritorious works were possible, and that the merit of them was
transferable, the Anselmic doctrine of satisfaction is perfectly con-
sistent : all that it does is to treat the atoning work of Christ
according to the pattern of the work-service of the church, which
116 TRE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
latter was thus justified by being represented as the copy and the
continuation of the work of Christ.
It was therefore very intelligible that other mediators should be
placed by the side of the first and typical mediator, Christ — the
saints, who again were summed up in the church herself as the
universal mediator between God and man. Nor is it to be wondered
at that these special mediators should at last have supplanted and
thrust into the background the original mediator, Christ, if not in
the dogmatic of the school, yet in the practice of the church. This
was a natural reaction against the exaggeration of the divine in the
person of Christ; the more the human side was absorbed by the
divine, and removed to a mysterious and incomprehensible beyond,
the more did the need make itself felt to fill up the ever widening
gap with new mediators, and so to gain some compensation for a
distant and unapproachable deity by human copies which were near,
familiar, and intelligible. Thus the Catholic belief in saints was but
a sapling from the same root from which the whole religious belief
in mediators springs, and must either fall with the latter, or main-
tain itself with it in a higher, ethically idealised form. The last
result to which the belief in mediators led was practically the most
important and also the most mischievoiis ; namely, the mediatorship
of the church as the community of the saints, in which, according
to the scholastic theory, all the treasures of the merits of Christ and
of the saints are held in store ; which disposes of them as a mistress,
and in her ritual imparts to individuals a share of the enjoyment of
these treasures, or of the saving benefit of salvation, of the favour of
God, — and so wields an unconditioned sway over men's consciences.
It is at this point that the Catholic doctrine of redemption and
mediation is weakest and most open to attack, and here accordingly
Protestantism applied the lever of its criticism. To get rid of the
mediatorship of the church, which rests on the merits of the saints,
it went back to the sole merit of Christ as the one mediator, but in
its dosfmatic statement of this truth it adhered in the main to the
ideas of Anselm, though these have their root just in that mediaeval
Catholic view of the world which was now to be superseded. Hence
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 117
the peculiar phenomenon, that Protestant dogmatic rejects the prin-
ciple that there can be works possessing merit over and above duty,
and yet keeps up Anselm's doctrine of the substitutionary merit of
the death of Christ. Protestant doctrine indeed goes even beyond
Anselm in ascribing to Christ's active obedience, as well as to his
passive, a meritorious character, and representing these merits as
transferred to us by imputation, while yet it lays stress on the
demands of conscience which throw every man's responsibility on
himself alone. In this inconsistency of Protestant doctrine the
same conflict between idea and form, means and end, repeats itself,
which we remarked in the Pauline doctrine of redemption. With
Paul the legal theory of vicarious atonement was merely the means
to get past and rid of the religion of the law ; and in the same way
the Anselmic theory of the satisfying merit of Christ is merely the
means to get rid of the satisfying merits of other ecclesiastical
mediators, and generally of the notion of merit as applied to human
conduct, and so clear the ground for divine grace, which justifies
through faith alone. There is undoubtedly an inconsistency when
redemption by meritorious works is denied within the church, but
asserted at the beginning of the church ; yet we must admit both
that this inconsistency was a necessary outcome of historical con-
ditions, and that it is far less felt in practical religious life, where
the echoes of various feelings go to form a harmony, than in theory.
From the logical point of view Socinians and rationalists may be ever
so much in the right in their criticism of the church's dogma of
atonement ; but the church was at least as much in the right in not
letting all these logical objections keep her from singing Paul
Gerhard's Passion hymn,
" Lamb of God once wounded ! " — ^
a hymn which moves entirely within the dogmatic circle of ideas,
but only uses them to stir up the true evangelical sentiment of
thankful surrender to the Saviour's love, which was faithful to death.
Where the dogma remained without the inner resonance, a mere
1 " Haupt voU Blut und Wunden."
118 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
stiff proposition, the object of cold knowledge and assent, it might
well be open to objections not of a logical kind only, but of a moral
kind as well ; we need only remember the well-known fact of the
moral decivilisation of the people in many respects at the flourishing
period of stiff doctrinal orthodoxy. Hence it was a circumstance
of extraordinary importance, never to be too highly valued, that
Pietism and the community of the Brothers of the Common Life
laid stress not on the dogmatic idea as such, but rather on the experi-
ence of the heart, the tone of feeling, the movement of will which
doctrine was to set up ; in this it was implied, without any change
being made on the dogma, that redemption must be an inward thing, in
the sense of the Pauline mysticism of faith in which the Christ-for-us
is changed into the Christ-in-us, his vicarious death into our ethical
dying and living again with him in the spirit of sonship — a process
within the spirit to which the saviour is related as the awakening
and sealing pattern and sign. This appears with special distinctness
in the literature of edification, especially the spiritual songs from the
works of the mystics, the Pietists and the Herrnhutists. In the
hymns of a Gottfried Arnold, Tersteegen, Fr. Ptichter, Eambach,
Hiller, Bogatzky, Zinzendorf, Novalis, etc., there is such warmth,
such strength, such depth, such purity and freedom of religious feel-
ing, as to stamp them as an admirable expression of evangelical
Christianity, and a true echo of the best voices of the Keformation.
Here, however, it appears in the clearest manner how closely the
deepest and most living piety is allied to the profoundest thinking.
What those pious, poets expressed in the language of inspired
feeling and vision, comes in substance just to the thought in which
theosophists and philosophers, both old new, have clothed the central
kernel of the idea of redemption. I will here present only a small
garland of these utterances ; the reader may supplement them, if he
desires to do so, from the first volume of this work. According to
Meister Eckhart redemption consists in this, that we cease from our
own will and opinions, and in pure devotion of the soul to God let
him work in us, and so in self-forgetting love grow one with him,
that he henceforward may become man in us, as in Christ. Accord-
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 119
ing to the " German Theology," no work of God can save me, in so
far as it is outside me and comes to pass outside me ; it can only save
me in so far as it is and comes to pass inside me, is known and loved,
felt and tasted, in me. But God's work in us is that we, set on fire
by the divine love, go out from self-love, and let ourselves be taught
and impelled to all good by God's spirit and God's will. In turn-
ing away from self-will, which is our condemnation, lies redemption
and the forgiveness of sins, blessedness and freedom ; other way there
is none to these ends. The Protestant theosophists unanimously
taught the same doctrine, upholding it polemically against the dogma
of the church, e.g. Weigel ; Christ's death and merit is imputed to
no one, except he have in himself Christ's death, and rise with Christ
in a new life. It is the Christ who dwells in us who must do this,
not he who dwells outside us ; and Frank says : Adam and Christ
are in every man, inasmuch as he is both flesh and spirit ; the
Christ according to the flesh (the historical Jesus) is given to us by
God for a sacrament and an example, that we should lay hold of God
in him ; but his history must also be accomplished in all his mem-
bers ; only when the Word becomes flesh in us, suffers, dies, and rises
again in us, and drives out the old Adam, is Christ's office and career
entirely completed. According to Bohme, too, redemption consists in
the will's going out from its self-ness, out of which arise strife and
anguish, and plunging itself again entirely and utterly in the one
will of God, from which it sprang ; faith is not a mere acceptance of
the history that Christ died for our sins ; it is this, that one has no
other love than God's, that one throws one's will into God's will, and
Uves in God, that one lets God's spirit live and act in one ; then one
is free of all sins, for they no longer touch him who in God's quiet
eternity has found freedom. In this the Lutheran theosophist is
closely echoed by that philosopher of the Eenaissance, Giordano
Bruno; according to him the way of salvation consists in an ethical and
aesthetic elevation of the heart from the lower passions to the higher
or heroic passions of the true and good, and it reaches its consumma-
tion when divine love becomes the ruling passion of the soul, which
rises thereby above the world of sense and the iron law of necessity,
120 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
and enters on wider efforts after her own perfection. Spinoza follows
Giordano Bruno ; he sees the blessedness of man in the intellectual
love of God, which is engendered in us by the knowledge of the
divine perfection, and gives us strength to overcome our passions,
detaches us thereby from all unfreedom, and in the perfect rest and
inner freedom of the heart, not only expects, but immediately is,
the highest blessedness. ISTothing, therefore, according to Spinoza, is
essentially necessary for salvation but the knowledge of the eternal
Son of God, i.e. of divine wisdom : the knowledge of the historical
Christ is not absolutely necessary, though it is helpful because divine
wisdom, though revealed in the human mind in general, has revealed
itself in Christ Jesus more than in any other. According to Kant
the only essential object of saving faith is the ideal Christ, i.e. the
ideal of God-pleasing humanity. The origin and the authentication
of this idea lie in human reason itself ; but a visible form has been
given to it in a historical personality like Jesus, whose moral power
so victoriously asserted itself against all opposition, that we may
regard him as an example of the idea of moral perfection ; it matters
little whether he corresponds accurately with that ideal or not, and
nothing certain can ever be said on this point. A sharper line is
drawn between the religious ideal and the historical reality by
Jacobi. " We quite understand," he writes to Claudius, " how every-
thing that man can see of the divine, everything that can awaken
him as he beholds it, to a divine life, represents itself to you under
the image and with the name of Christ, In so far as what you
reverence in him is that which is essentially good and divine, your
soul keeps itself upright, you do not humble by the worship of an
idol the reason and morality that are in you. "What Christ may
have been outside you, for himself, whether the reality of him corre-
sponded to your notion or not, or whether he ever really existed at
all, all this can make no difference to the essential truth of your
idea, nor to the value of the dispositions which spring from it.
What he is in you is the only important matter ; and in you he is
a truly divine being ; through him you see the Deity, so far as you
are capable of seeing the Deity at all, and when you rise with him to
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION 121
the highest ideas, you fancy, and it is an innocent error, that you
can only rise to them in him." Fichfe draws a distinction in the
theology of the church between two propositions of very different
value ; the metaphysical one, which contains the perception of the
unity of human existence with the divine life, and the historical one
which amounts to the statement that this unity first came to man's
consciousness in Jesus of Nazareth. " It is only the metaphysical
element, by no means the historical one, that saves ; the latter only
informs. If a man is really united with God and entered into him,
it makes little difference by what road he reached that point, and it
would be a very useless and perverse proceeding to be always going
back upon the idea of the way, instead of living in the thing."
" The one means of blessedness is the death of self-ness, death with
Jesus, regeneration ; but to know the history of the instruction to
this point, contributes nothing whatever to salvation." To Hegel's
more objective thinking the historical element is not quite so un-
essential as it appears to the subjective idealist. In his view, also,
it is true the atonement is based on the nature of the human spirit, or
more precisely on the consciousness of the essential vmity of the
finite and the infinite spirit, in which all the contradiction of the
finite has disappeared ; but this truth, Hegel remarks, can only
enter into the mind of religious mankind in the form of a historically
given view, in which that which spirit essentially is is set forth as a
definite external reality, as one particular fact and personality. Thus
the atoning truth of the Christian church only came to view in the
person of its founder, and hence the church's own consciousness of
the removal of the discord between God and man is concretely set
forth for the church in the idea of the one God-man and his atoning
death. The main error of these two last theories, viz., that redemp-
tion, an experience of the feeling and willing Ego, appears to be
turned into an intellectual process of consciousness, was avoided by
Schleiermachcr, who described redemption and atonement as the com-
munication of the powerful and blessed God-consciousness, which is
present in the church of Christ as the higher life imparted to her by
her founder, and continuing to work to an infinite extent ; in this
122 TRE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
communication we have to recognise both the operation of an ex-
ternal divine act and a development of the energy of the religious
endowment which is peculiar to human nature. This communication
of the higher God-consciousness, which in general he traced to the
influence on individuals of the common Christian spirit, he also
represents as the act of Christ, but this naturally is not to be under-
stood literally, but in the remoter sense in which we may describe
all the blessings which proceeded from a religious genius, and still go
on working centuries after him, as his acts, i.e. as the effects produced
indirectly by his historical life. The last cause of these effects
Schleiermacher found in the work of God which is accomplished
through the endowment of the human race, and consequently he
thought it necessary to infer the supernatural character of the
historical person of the founder, and to prove the identity of that
person with the absolute ideal, and gave an elaborate argument to
this effect ; but here there can be no doubt that he sacrificed what
should in strictness have followed from his premisses to the practical
requirements of dogmatic, which he yet failed altogether to satisfy
by such a procedure (vol. i. p. 339).
The philosophy of religion must not here any more than else-
where take for granted any particular dogmatic or philosophical
theories and formulas, but must start from the facts of the religious
experience of mankind, as presented by the widest historical review.
The less prejudice we bring with us, and the more simply we seek to
explain these facts, not scorning the aid of psychological good sense,
the more shall we be likely to do justice to the real kernel of the
motive which started the dogma, the less likely to fall into any kind
of dogmatism. A glance at history shows at once that the two
religions which turn on the idea of redemption, however different in
their ways of putting that idea, yet exhibit in some points a striking
similarity. The Indian and the Christian religion of redemption
insist alike that redemption is not to be obtained in the way of
works, either ritual or moral, but by the emergence of a new ideal of
life or religious and moral consciousness, which again does not pro-
ceed directly from instruction or reflection, but is the result of an
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 123
illumination in which the supra-mundane truth itself breaks through
the darkness of the natural mind, and frees the heart from the fetters
of natural desire. Both alike see in theoretical knowledge and
practical discipline, whether that of personal self-government or the
activity of beneficence, valuable and indispensable means to bring
about and complete the consciousness, or the state, of salvation. In
both the consciousness of salvation becomes the common spirit of a
community which disregards the barriers of people, rank, and sex,
seeks to win man as man, and takes him under its educative care.
And in both, the ideal of life of the community connects itself in
such a way with the person of its founder that the latter appears to
be the ideal or the highest good in bodily form, and thus becomes
the object not of grateful piety only, but of adoration and worship.
These parallels are not invented by me ; they are historical facts.
My intention, in placing the facts side by side, was not of course to
depreciate Christianity, and to place it on a level with Buddhism. I
have always done the opposite, and that in such clear language that
I can only regard it as a foolish calumny when an opponent imputes
to me any such view. Surely we should have advanced so far by
this time, as to allow a theologian to practise the science of com-
parative religion without exposing himself thereby to injurious
imputations. It is such parallels as this that are peculiarly instruc-
tive for the scientific examination of religious phenomena. Where
the parallels bear on details of the legend, they suggest inquiry
into the historical connection between the two religions. Such an
inquiry has lately been attempted by Seydel in a most interesting
way, though perhaps somewhat too boldly ; the attempt is always
meritorious, whatever we may think of the tenableness of the hypo-
theses set up. The more general resemblances, however, which we
set forth above, can in no case be explained from historical depen-
dence, but only from common analogous motives of the religious
consciousness, and this is what makes them so particularly instruc-
tive in connection with the historical aim we have in view.
At lower stages of religion redemption is no doubt sought for,
but redemption from the external evils of the world only ; and
124 TBE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS QONSCIOUSNESS.
these being connected with the anger of the Deity on account of
particular transgressions of their worshippers, redemption is sought by
methods having to do with worship, and directed to bringing about
the atonement of the angry God ; hence the great systems of pro-
pitiation in worship. As the moral consciousness becomes more
highly developed it is found that the divine will demands goodness
from us, and that all evil includes a transgression against God, which
cannot be made good by mere ceremonies of a ritual nature ; and now
the demand is put forward, in addition to that of ritual works, nay
sometimes before that demand, that morally good works be done, as a
means of putting away transgressions. Thus it is in the religions
of law ; in Mazdaism, exoteric Brahmanism, Judaism, and in the legal
Christianity of Catholicism. But this cannot permanently content
the religious consciousness, which cannot conceal from itself that the
hurt lies too deep to admit of being healed by any mere outward
actions. It lies not only in the individual shortcomings which those
acts prescribed by the law are intended to atone for, it lies in the
fundamental error of the itnier disposition of the heart, in that
selfishly wilful direction of the will which everywhere seeks nothing
but its own, which is always at variance both with duty and with
outward circumstances, which, even when it unwillingly obeys, never
ceases to feel the goad of inner reluctancy, and is thus made to feel
its impurity, its unfreedom, its unblessedness. How can this funda-
mental evil ever be healed by any kind of action, which being the
outcome of the heart must always wear the nature of its source ?
Does not every work betray its impure origin in self-love, if by
nothing else, yet by claiming to be counted meritorious and to obtain
a reward in happy circumstances, in this or in the future world ?
That self-righteous marketing and counting up of performances and
of enjoyments, merits, and happiness, must we not trace it to the
root, in which its effects too are to be seen, of the clinging of desire to
a man's own God-severed self, and to the world of empty desire ;
does it not show a soul imprisoned in the false love of the transitory,
in the illusion of self-deification and deification of the world ?
It was thoughts like these, which, impressing themselves alike
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 125
on the sages of India and on the apostle Paul, on the mystics of
Islam as on those of Catholicism, and last and most of all on the
Protestant Reformers and dogmatists, led ultimately to the conclu-
sion : Not works bring salvation, hut faith — i.e. being penetrated by a
higher truth, which sets the soul free from the false love which is at
once her guilt and her misery. To this extent all those whom we
have named are in fact agreed. Only at the question what truth it
is which when believed sets free, and in what way freedom is
realised, do the paths begin to diverge. If the original evil lies in
a perverted fundamental tendency of will, then there are only two
ways in which a cure is possible ; either the will is found to be
utterly perverted, condemned to total negation, and the ideal of life
found in ceasing to will ; or the perverted tendency of the will is
changed into a right tendency, and the false love conquered by the
true. The former is the principle of redemption of India, the latter
that of Christianity. In both cases alike redemption is accomplished
by faith in the saving truth of an ideal ; but the contents of that
truth differ entirely in the two cases. In the former case it is the
conviction of the vanity of all exercise of will, which leads to nothing
but constant illusion, guilt, and pain, in an endless sequence ; a
conviction the practical result of which is the mortification of the
will, renunciation of the "svorld, the quiet of death. In the latter
case it is the conviction that the mischief only lies in the false love
of the self which is contrary to God, and of the world which is
without him, but that in that good to which the will of God is
directed there lies the highest good for our will too, and that in the
complete surrender of our heart to that good we find both the
perfect fulfilment of the positive end of our life and perfect satis-
faction, or the highest salvation. Of this conviction also the practical
result is self-denial, a dying of the natural will, but only as a means,
as a way to the true assertion of self, to life in the peaceful and
happy communion of God. It is evident that this principle of
redemption alone is the right one, for it alone imparts vigour to life
and causes life to be fruitful ; and it is only of it that we now pro-
ceed to speak.
126 TEE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
Proceeding to ask how the consciousness of redemption is arrived
at, we are struck at the outset by a remarkable statement which
recurs regularly in the history of religion in connection with such
tendencies — viz., that instruction and theoretical reflection do not of
themselves suffice to produce religious faith, but that it rests on
processes of feeling which reach down to the depths of the soul, and
point to its mysterious nature and origin. Such practical truths as
have power to determine the life and the ideals of life are of this
nature — can never be known theoretically only; there may be a know-
ledge about them, even a notional apprehension of their meaning, but
they are not known in the full sense of knowledge, so long as they
are not experienced as a living power in the heart. This experience
may not be always equally profound or clear ; but the full decisive
experience comes about only w^hen the icill lays hold itself of the
truth by the power of which it feels itself laid hold of, appropriates
it, recognises it, takes it up into the heart as the ruling power and
dearest possession of life — in short, where the saving truth is appro-
priated in living faith. But how can the will come to appropriate a
truth which requires of it the abnegation of its own natural and
personal desire ? The wdll is not able to take upon itself this pain
so long as the activity of its natural desire is productive entirely or
predominantly of pleasure. But this is not permanently the case ;
for this the divine wisdom and justice in the natural and moral
world- order has sufficiently provided. The experience of the natural
evils on which the pursuit of happiness suffers shipwreck in a
hundred ways, the experience still more of the moral evil of guilt, in
which selfish will and act turn their sting against the ego itself, and
cause it to feel the discord of its selfish life with the divine law of
life in inner self-condemnation and torturing disorder of mind, the
experience finally of wretched impotence, of the wearing struggle of
a broken and divided mind, to which, in the slavery of legal obedi-
ence, the soul is condemned just by the division of its will betw^een
selfishness and obedience, these are the negative motives which more
and more fill the will with disgust for its natural life-tendency,
and make it inclined to adopt a higher principle of life. To this
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 127
dissatisfaction, which compels the man to turn away from his old
state, there is to be added at the same time the attractive presenti-
ment of the blessed and liberating; effect which union of the will
with goodness, the full surrender of the heart to it, would have on
the painfully distracted soul. The attractive power of goodness
could not influence the soul if it had not in itself a pole turned
towards goodness — the God-given impulse of reason, which keeps
the individual will always bound to its origin in the one sole will of
God. As this impulse asserts itself negatively in the condemning
voice of conscience, in the painful sense of guilt, and in mourning
over the vanity of the service of sin and of the love of self and of
the world, so it manifests itself positively too in the yearning for
redemption from this unblessed state, which passes into hopeful
anticipation, into a presentiment which is a promise, of the higher
life. The more the former repellent dissatisfaction, the latter
attractive presentiment of happiness, increase and stretch out
to meet each other, the more does there ripen in the soul the
capacity to accept the truth which redeems through the act of faith,
the act of the whole knowing, feeling, and willing ego. It makes
little difference in the essence of this process whether the new ideal
of life emerges mainly from within, from the hidden depths of pro-
ductive genius, or whether it is presented from without by instruc-
tion and vivid image. In the latter case, too, it is not recognised as
the truth till it is felt with immediate clearness to be the word which
solves the riddle, the fulfilment of longing hopes, the cure of all dis-
order. The truth flashes like lightning, at once enlightening and
kindling, on the soul ; before its beam the hard crust of selfish
obstinacy melts away, the proud heart surrenders itself as a meek
captive, the doubting heart lifts itself up with confidence and
courage ; in the surrender which is accomplished to the truth which
lifts him from the ground, the man's doubts, distrust, and pride all
disappear, the struggle sinks to rest, the soul which in her distrac-
tion had parted with all her strength now finds, in the peace she has
attained, new power of life both to will and to do that which is
good. " Old things are passed away ; behold, all things are made
128 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
new !" Gone is the painful sense of sin, for the cause of it, the dis-
union of self-will with the divine will, has been removed ; and gone
with it all other fear, the unnerving and torturing pressure of the
evils of the world ; for
" Who the sure treasure bears within his heart,
He feels no terror, looking at life's game ; "
or, to use the words of the apostle, " If God be for us, who can be
against us?" Along with peace joy comes back to the soul, and
with joy liberty and strength of will and deed ; these lift her up
above her own narrowness and weakness, and cause her to see the
world too in a new light ; and thus along with the inner life the
outer life also is made new on every side.
This wonderful change is not arbitrarily brought about by man
himself, but experienced as a thing that has happened to him ; it
appears to him as the operation of a higher power, as the gift of un-
deserved divine favour or grace. And is not this in truth the case ?
Careful thought in fact can do nothing but confirm what the believer
holds as a truth requiring no proof. If in the judging voice of con-
science we saw above the reaction of divine righteousness against the
abnormal direction of self-will, then here too we must see in the
atonement of the previous division the effect of the atoning love of
God which does not leave men, even if they are guilty towards him,
to suffer helplessly and hopelessly the torment that follows upon all
transgression, but holds him with indissoluble bonds within the scope
of its saving omnipotence ; it gives the impulse in his heart, which,
as even Plato saw, reminds him of his true home in the realm of the
spirit, acts like home-sickness to point him homewards when he
wanders, and leads back the lost one to the arms of his father. As
in the material world the force of gravity which draws all individual
things towards the common centre, can only be conceived as a power
of attraction working from this centre, so the root impulse of the
finite reasonable being, wliich draws him out past everything finite,
past even his own self to the unity of the whole, can only be under-
stood as a work of the one sole ground of all spirits, of creative.
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 129!
primitive reason or of God. His good and loving will, which aims
at a living fellowship with us (vol. iii. p. 303 sq.), revealed itself to.
mankind from the very beginning of their moral career, as promising
grace, in the yearning anticipation of a redemption to come ; mani-
fested itself then in the course of the ages at sundry times and in
divers manners as preparatory grace, namely, in all the groping
attempts after ritual atonements to propitiate the deity, in all the
comfortable voices of the prophetic promises of a coming era of
salvation, in all the legends and poems of popular song about a golden
age which had once been and was to return again ; and it manifests
itself finally as fulfilling, redeeming, and atoning grace in the Christian
experience of life, expressed by the apostle in the classic sentence :
" The spirit of God beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the
children of God " (Eom. viii. 1 6). In fact no simpler and no truer
expression could be found for the whole substance of the truth of
redemption than these words, that we are the children of God, of like
essence with him, dependent on him for our existence, objects of his
loving care, destined to communion with him in an intimate and
Godlike life of love. And no less true, no less apt is the other
member of the statement, that the rise in our consciousness of this
redeeming truth, our being apprehended by it and apprehending it in
living faith, is the result of a revelation of the divine spirit in our
spirit, the witness of that unerring voice which speaks to us in our
heart, which is ours, a part of our being, and yet not of us, not a
thing that proceeds from the particular finite ego, and which accord-
ingly can only be conceived of as a divine revelation in us and
through us, as the witness of the holy Spirit. In this witness of the
Spirit the Reformers and the Protestant dogmatists always saw, with
Paul, the solid inner ground of all religious certainty ; the " Neo-
Kantian " theology certainly cannot appeal to them when it treats
the witness of the Holy Spirit as a medioeval superstition, a pagan
nature-mysticism, a hallucination or anything else of the kind, and
proposes to replace it by the historical witness of the church.
As the need of redemption must be felt in the heart of the
individual before the process of redemption becomes possible, so the
VOL, IV. I
130 .THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
certainty of the attainment of redemption is an immediate fact of
consciousness within each individual. Where this certainty is
present the whole Christian church may condemn and contradict ; its
fulminations glance harmlessly off the evangelical conscience. But
where the inner certainty is absent it cannot be replaced by any
testimony of the church, of what kind soever, because manifestly no
attestation by the experiences of others can ever replace that personal
experience on which all assurance of salvation must rest. The
historical witness of the experiences of others can only serve the
individual as a means to arrive at experience of his own, it can never
take the place of the latter, and bring about of itself the assurance of
salvation. Historical faith does not save — that is a cardinal doctrine
of the Reformation and of sound Protestantism, which we cannot aive
up for any positivism, with whatever "scientific" hangings. Only
when this cardinal truth is firmly established can we rightly under-
stand the high importance of historical means for the belief in
redemption. It is no doubt perfectly true that we must not think
of the individual, either in his religious life generally or in his con-
sciousness of redemption as standing in abstract isolation, or severed
from the historical soil in which his whole religious consciousness has
its roots. The educative and awakening, confirming, and strengthen-
ing impressions put forth by the community which is already there,
or is coming into existence, are the indispensable means without
which the above described occurrences could never take place in the
individual, nor the consciousness of redemption ever be consolidated
in a regular moral and religious life.
In this point the difference between the original religious genius
and the ordinary man, however great it be, is not an absolute, but
only a relative one. In whatever way the consciousness of redemption
first appeared in the former, it always had its presuppositions and its
types in the antecedent development ; Luther founded on and
appealed to Paul, Paul to Jesus ; Jesus to the prophets of the Old
Testament. Similarly, the original bearers of the revelation of
redemption are in many ways conditioned by the world surrounding
them. Their processes of feeling, the struggles and pains out of
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 131
which redemption issues forth in their case, are not their individual
experiences merely, they are but typical of the consciousness of the
age ; it is the need of the time, the universal longing for a way of
salvation and escape, that finds its echo in the soul of the chosen
genius, and in him is formed into a profound personal experience.
That anxiety about salvation through which Luther passed in his cell,
shook the whole German people of his time ; all felt the inadequacy
of the means of salvation till then provided by the church, and the
question of a new way to " get a gracious God " lay on unnumbered
lips ; and hence the solution which Luther found for himself in the
struggles of his soul was the word which solved the question
of others too, and at once found a mighty echo in the hearts of all ;
and this echo, again, was a sign and confirmation to him that it was
not his own word and work, but that of God, that he was engaged in.
In the same way Paul appealed for the truth of his Gospel to the
effects it produced in the consciences of men, and it was undoubtedly
this proof by experience that confirmed and perfected his own self-
assurance. We have every reason to suppose that it was the same
with Jesus, that the consciousness of his call to be a Saviour arose
out of his pity for the hungering people, and from his observation of
the actual healing power of his word (Matt. ix. 36). Everywhere
then we see that in the original bearers of the consciousness of
redemption, the development of that consciousness is stirred and
quickened by the present needs and claims of the community in the
midst of which they stand ; and conversely, their own faith is con-
firmed and established by the echo of it which they hear in the
mighty impression their revelation produces on their environment,
which causes a new community of sympathisers to gather around
them. It stands to reason that this dependence in various ways on
others takes place in a much higher degree in the case of those who
find the consciousness of redemption already present as a fact "in
their environment, and have it brought home to them by instruction
and example, so that they have nothing to do but to reproduce it.
Though the external communication of others can never take the
place of the personal experience of the heart, yet the latter cannot
132 TEE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
dispense with the confirmation afforded by the analogous experience
of others ; the less independent and vigorous any one's religious
individuality is, the less can he do without such confirmation.
Here then is the origin of the belief in mediation, a belief of such
importance for the religion of redemption. Belief in redemption
comes to pass in most men not as an original product, but by repro-
duction in them of the ideal which is communicated to them by
others. Where the ideal in c|uestion is a merely legal one, concerned
with nothing but some particular ways of action, customs, and usages
of a ritual or moral nature, this may quite well be communicated by
theoretical doctrines and practical statutes, laws and rules of living
which owe comparatively little to the person who communicates
them, since they are intelligible in themselves, and trace nothing but
their authority to the person, or in fact to the position or mission
only, of the teacher or prophet. In the religion of redemption this
is otherwise ; here the ideal has to do not immediately with outward
works but with faith, with inner processes of the heart, in which the
man experiences a change of his whole way of thinking, his whole
tone of feeling, the whole direction of his will. Such inner ex-
periences, every one knows, can with difl&culty be presented in the
way of notional communication of doctrines ; they can never be
exhaustively set forth in that way ; and in any case such a mode of
presenting them would entirely lack power to lay hold of and to
move the heart. Here certain elementary psychological truths
present themselves for consideration, the importance of which was
recognised even by Spinoza ; that an affection can only be overcome
by an affection, and that to excite the proper affection the idea is
more effective than the notion. Now if redemption consists essentially,
as we saw, in the false love of self-will, which is contrary to God,
being overcome by the true love for what is divinely good, then the
most effective means to bring about redemption will be that which
is most suited to awaken this love. But for this, experience teaches
us that no notional statement can suffice, whether theoretical descrip-
tion or practical precept : for affections cannot be called forth by
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 133
definitions, and love cannot be compelled by laws. This, too, M'e may
remark by the way, is the reason why in religion all moralising is so
entirely unfruitful, wearisome, and ineffective. But as Plato saw, when
goodness is seen in an ideal picture of personal goodness, whether in
external perception, conveyed by the senses, or in the inner seeing of
imagination, then it involuntarily puts forth a power to attract
every soul that is not completely hardened. Now, abstractly, it is
quite true that the highest ideal is the goodness of God himself,
and hence he both can be and ought to be the object of our highest
love. But practically this is difficult of attainment for men, such as
they are on the average ; the whole history of religion shows this,
and it is intelligible enough. For in the first place, it is only in
the profounder religious natures that the idea of God is so living
and so clear as to work powerfully on feeling, and produce any
permanent reaction on temper and disposition ; and then in most
men the idea of the goodness of God meets with an obstacle it can
scarcely overcome, both in their experience of outward evils, and in
their inner sense of guilt. Under this double pressure the human
heart can scarcely find courage to believe in the love of God ; it
thinks it must first of all fear his wrath. How is this obstacle
in the way of love to God and of belief in redemption to be over-
come ?
The answer to this question is to be found in the history of Chris-
tianity, which shows us in the ideal picture of the love of a human
Saviour an agency which produces so powerful an impression on
men's hearts as to overcome their fear and the obstinacy of their self-
will, and change these into confidence and joyful self-surrender. The
best way of bringing home to the human understanding a historical
phenomenon of a particular nature is to place it side by side with
analogous general facts of experience. Now such a general fact,
proclaimed by the poets and sages of all times, and confirmed on a
small scale by common daily experience, is the saving, redeeming,
and elevating influence which issues forth from noble men to the
world around them and after them. This influence does not depend
by any means merely on what they do, on the works they directly
134 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
aimed at doing, or the actual success they attained, or even on the
views they put forth in their teaching ; it far transcends the works
and services which are connected with the person of the good man,
far transcends the sphere of their immediate activity, and the results
which followed their acts ; for these are always individual, and
limited to the particular time ; it rests in its essence on what the ^Je^r-
sonality itself is in its whole life and manifestation. " Common
natures pay with what they do, noble ones with what they are."
This word of the poet contains a deep truth which bears powerfully
on the question before us. It is the noble personality taken by
itself, this living manifestation of goodness, this incarnate visible,
comprehensible ideal of true Godlike humanity, that, with irresistible,
superhuman power, lays hold of all hearts which are not completely
hardened ; which awakens in every breast the quivering spark of the
better self, which, setting forth goodness not merely as a law which
commands, but as a living reality and a life-quickening force, causes
another also to feel how amiable goodness is, how much to be desired,
so that willing surrender to it is no longer a burden but a joy : this
is what extends a saving hand to the guilt-laden conscience, to him
all whose courage has departed from him, who despairs of himself;
which by the unselfish greatness and mildness of its forgiveness, its
help, its healing, encourages the penitent to take heart to believe in
the infiniteness of the divine love which conquers all, forgives all,
makes all good again, and which finally, by the example it affords of
persistent faithfulness in goodness, gives courage to the weak, and
inspires him with confidence to arise and to walk in a new life. Do
I require to add that all this, true as the experience of all ages
shows it to be of the noble personality generally, applies in a unique
degree to the ideal figure of the Saviour, which has nothing to match
it in all history ? That from the heart of the Son of Man of
Nazareth, from his love to God and man, so childlike and pure, so
manly and strong, a stream of new life issued into humanity which
can never again run dry, which gathers to itself in its course what-
ever else of divinely good and true has appeared elsewhere in man-
kind or may at any time appear, and so grows mightier and mightiei'.
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 135
ever richer in fertilising and vivifying forces for all sides of the life
of the human mind ?
That such a personality as this, which overtops all others, which
by its unique ideal traits has served, and must always serve more
than any other as a life-engenderiug and strengthening example and
demonstration of the belief in redemption, of the highest religious
consciousness of mankind, — that such a personality should become
the object of a variety of statements which exceed the limits of the
historical and human, this we readily understand — it is a very
natural, and moreover a useful and salutary phenomenon of con-
sciousness, which religious psychology can readily explain. In
Jesus' intimate consciousness of God, his childlike confidence and
loving communion with the heavenly Father, the knowledge of God
as our Father, and of our call to be the children of God, rose for all
Christians, and this new consciousness announced itself to their
immediate and unerring sentiment as a truth coming from above, and
God-revealed. How natural then that this higher consciousness of
God which had issued forth from Jesus should clothe itself in the
representation of a higher, immediately divine or heavenly, origin of
Jesus himself as the one specific " Son of God " ! In this Christians
only expressed in a graphic symbolical form the indisputable truth
that as every higher ideal of life, so most of all the highest, the ideal
of Sonship of God, had not arisen in the human consciousness by
chance, and not from man's own invention or reflection, but from
divine revelation. It would puzzle me to say in what other way
this deep truth could be made level to the common understanding,
and even more how it could be symbolised more beautifully and more
attractively than in the Christmas story, so childlike, yet so deep, of
the wondrous child who came down from heaven. Again, there lies
in the consciousness of the Sonship of God, which implies the cer-
tainty of the love of God, also the confidence of overcoming the
world, of emancipation from its terrors, of comfort in its evils, of
victory, begun in the present, to be completed in the future, over all
its obstacles and temptations. Now, if this experience of inner
redemption and relief from the pressure of the world was the out-
136 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
come for the Christians of Jesus' consciousness of God, what could
be more natural than that their prophetic eye should elevate the
Saviour himself to the heavenly exaltation of Lord of the world,
sharer of the throne of the divine world-government ? And how
could the lofty truth, that the poor and weak child of mankind can
lift himself upon the eagle's wings of faith to the heavenly heights
of eternal life in the communion of God, how could this truth be
more grandly or more beautifully symbolised than in the splendid
Easter story of the victorious resurrection of the Conqueror of death
and Prince of life ? Between Christmas and Easter, however, lies
Good Friday : the Son of God, come down from heaven, must first
drain the cup of earth's affliction before he is exalted to the Lord of
Heaven. Is there not here too a suggestive symbol of the general
truth that the image of God which is implanted in us by God, this
divine in us, which forms our better self, must first pass through the
struggle and pain of the earth, be purged from the dross of impure
humanity, and learn to use and to approve its divine force in active
and passive obedience, before the peace and joy of blessed com-
munion with God can open before it ?
Till this truth thou kiiowest,
" Die to live again " —
Stranger-like thou goest
In a world of jxiin.
There is also another central religious experience which connects
itself with the view faith takes of the death of the Saviour. The
blessedness of the reconciled consciousness of the children of God
was preceded by the imblessedness of the sense of estrangement from
God, by the fear of an angry God which answers to the sense of sin. The
change of the latter state of feeling into the former is, as we showed
above, in the first instance nothing more than the immediate conse-
quence or the reflex action of the change of mind which takes place
in faith from natural self-will to the new life-tendency which is de-
voted to God, or from the false love to the true. Further, however, we
have seen, that doctrine and law are little suited to call forth this
true love, that this is best done by the sight of a personal ideal of good-
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 137
ness such as is prominently set before the eyes of Christendom in
the image of the Saviour, whose love is most vividly set forth in the
sacrifice love led him to make when he surrendered himself to the
death which laj' unavoidably on the path of his career as a Saviour.
Thus we reach the following argumentation : The love of Christ
awakens in Christians love to him as the personal ideal of goodness ;
this true love overcomes the selfish love of natural self-will, which
separates us from God, and so terminates our estrangement from
God : but the termination of our estrangement from God is the
atonement of the sense of sin, or the forgiveness of sins ; it follows,
therefore, when we omit the intermediate steps of the argument, that
the death of Christ brings about the forgiveness of sins. From this
we see that this dogmatic proposition is based on an actual and well-
founded religious experience. Now we must not forget that the
religious consciousness here as elsewhere overleaps the natural
(psychological) intermediate steps, and traces the effect of which it is
aware to the immediate agency of God. In the case before us
there is a change of the God-consciousness from fear of the angry
God to assurance of the love of God, and though this change is
really, as we saw, one within man and psychologically led up to, yet
it is a very natural and simple step to carry it over to God, and so
to attribute to the death of Christ the import of a means for atoning
the divine wrath, and therefore of a " propitiation." It cannot be
denied that this mode of view implies the impossible assumption
that God, who is atoning love itself, needed on his side to be atoned ;
yet it would be wrong to explain its prevalence in the church from
the mere fortuitous historical assumptions of the Pauline doctrine ;
on the contrary, we must recognise that this view is the easiest way
to take wherever there is a question of transforming a legal stand-
point which still subsists into the higher consciousness of Sonship
or of redemption. So long as man still stands at the position of the
law, he feels his separation from God to be the result of the punitive
righteousness or of the wrath of God, the pressure of which no action
on his part can remove ; and as at this point he still sets out from
the assumption that the righteous claims of God must be met by
138 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
some doing or some suffering, in order to obtain his favour — a view
which is only transcended in the consciousness of redemption — there
seems to be no other way to escape from the fetters of the law,
but the belief that the supposed necessary condition which the man
cannot himself fulfil, has been satisfied vicariously by the Mediator.
Eegarding the death of the Saviour then from this point of view as a
vicarious propitiation presented to God, man is the more impelled by
it to thankful love and to the surrender of his heart, and then atone-
ment with God and redemption from the sense of guilt and fear are
actually attained. Thus by a roundabout road, by a view which
is not inherently correct but is in the circumstances psychologically
natural, the right result is gained, the consciousness of redemption
with all its salutary consequences for heart and life. Whoever has once
understood the position of the case — it is one of the most interesting
and important parts of the phenomenology of religion — will allow the
church dogma of redemption to be relatively justified as well as the
theories of rationalism, idealism, etc. To understand the psychological
genesis of the doctrine both of its kernel and its form, leads here, as
in the case of other doctrines, to the most wide-hearted toleration.
Our argument has now led us to the perception that " the belief
in a Mediator " may have and has had two widely different mean-
ings. It may stand for a transcendental, ji'Tidical treaty of ^^cftce
betwee7i an angry God and sinful man, or for the ethical introduction,
in history, of the consciousness of redemption through the communication
and revelation of its original hearer, whose image then remains in
perpetuity the most powerful means to awaken and uphold this con-
sciousness in the church. In the former sense the belief in a mediator
must certainly be held to belong to the semi-legal point of view,
which appears when looked at from the higher pure consciousness of
redemption to be a lower stage of religious development, but for all
that has a certain inner necessity and justification in the education
of mankind. In the second sense the belief in a mediator is a per-
manent and indispensable truth, and that for the highest stage of the
religion of redemption, because that religion knows no more effective
and no purer means to communicate, awaken, vivify, strengthen, and
■ REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 139
deepen the religious consciousness, than the image of an ideal religious
personality, in which it sees the living embodiment of its own
religious ideal, in which all its members see the standard they all
have in common, the head in whom they are one, and at the same
time the complement, the filling up of whatever is lacking in their
own actual experience. The ideal always contains more than the
reality, the latter has always to look to it to fill up its gaps, to make
good its one-sidedness, to solve its contradictions, and so in this ideal
belief in a mediator too there is always a certain substitution of the
ideal which faith apprehends for the imperfect reality. The sub-
stitute is not here, it is true, the departed earthly personality from
which the higher consciousness proceeded in history ; strictly speak-
ing, it is the ideal which goes on living in the consciousness of the
church and developing itself with the times. In this ideal the
church's own higher self-consciousness, connecting it with that
historical memory, confers on itself a symbolical expression, personifies
and hypostatises its own common religious spirit. This, at the root
of the matter, is what religious language aims at expressing in the
notions, " the glorified Christ," " the ascended Christ," " Christ in
heaven," " the Lord who is the spirit," phrases to which a mystical
turn of the doctrine of redemption is commonly attached. Now if
we consider that this more ideal view was from the first bound up
in many ways with the ruder view of a juridical and vicarious
mediatorship, and that with Paul himself the latter always passes
over into mystical union with Christ, we cannot but conclude that
in religious practice the boundary lines between the one form of the
belief in the mediator and the other, are so imperceptible, the differ-
ence between the two views so slight, as to make all dogmatising
zeal in such matters appear entirely out of place.
A further circumstance connected with this dialectic of fact
bearing on the belief in the Mediator, is that the ideal image of the
mediator does not remain unchanged in the consciousness of the
church, but undergoes manifold changes in the advance of the forms
in which religious and social life are clothed. Too little attention is
paid, even now, to this important point ; it seems to be regarded as
140 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
a matter of course that the Christ of the faith of the church is always
exactly the same, always Jesus as he once lived on the earth : it is
quite forgotten that from the very first a subjective element was
mingled with the idea of Christ in the consciousness of the church,
which from many reasons grew always stronger with the course of
time, and asserted itself in many a changing form. It is obviously
one of the most elementary truths of criticism that the idea-picture
of a personality in the minds of others is not identical with the
thing-in-itself of that personality ; even where the idea-picture is
called up by sense-perception, as in those who immediately surround
a man, every one knows that the picture is not given ready-made by
the senses, but that it arises in consciousness consequently to the
sense- perceptions, as a product of subjective synthetic mental activity,
which is modified from the first by a multitude of subjective elements.
Hence the well-known fact that even in his lifetime a man is judged
in the most various ways by those about him, and that judgments
regarding him vary in proportion as his personality is characteristic
and extraordinary ; the reason being that the reproductive for-
mation of a unique personality in the idea-pictures of others is
the more difficult, the more its distinctive character transcends the
measure of ordinary analogy. Then again it is quite a matter of
course that as the distance, both in space and time, increases, which
separates us from the actual existence of such a personality, the sub-
jective element in the idea-picture of that personality should increase
likewise, in fact should increase in geometrical progression, because
every new feature which is added by a narrator or a worshipper
must, since it cannot be brought to the test of any direct vision, give
occasion to a new set of free combinations in the mind of a third
person, of a fourth, and so on. If this is the case in secular history,
with regard to persons who stood on the open stage of public life
to such an extent that hardly ever will two historians agree in the
view they take of a man's personality, it must be much more the case
in religious history, where two additional causes come into play to
reinforce the subjective element. Firstly there is the circumstance,
that personalities of striking importance to religion have generally
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 141
been but little seen on the public stage of history, their life being-
lived mostly in retirement, the dim light of which affords posterity
more scope for the free production of legends. To this we have to
add that requirement of feeling whicli always exercises a dominating
influence in religious tradition, namely that the tradition must be
first of all, not accurate, but subjectively edifying. But what is
edifying to any man is what contains effective motives for his
peculiar religious consciousness ; and thus it is self-evident, that as
the stage of the development of the religious consciousness varies,
the edifying matter that is wanted must also differ in its nature.
Now as the stock of the religious traditions of a church, and more
particularly its central idea, the object of its faith in the mediator, is
worked up according to the kind of edification wanted at the time, it
must necessarily come to pass that as the religious life of the church
is changed and developed, the idea picture of the mediator must at
the same time be changed, which lives in the church's consciousness.
What all these considerations lead us to expect is quite put be-
yond doubt by a glance into the history of the religions of redemp-
tion. It is very noticeable that the picture of Christ is infinitely
more changeable and multiform in the history of Christianity than
that of Buddha in Buddhism. This follows from that which con-
stitutes the specific superiority of Christianity. Its contents are
much richer in valuable motives, and therefore its impulse to
development is stronger, and it is much more capable of accommo-
dating itself to a variety of circumstances. Every stage and every
side of its development is reflected in a corresponding image of
Christ. In support of this statement I may point out the principal
forms merely of this rich theme ; details might be given in endless
variety. Even in the literature of the New Testament what variety
do we find in the views taken of Christ ! The primitive charch saw
in Jesus simply the prophet or man of God, miglity in deed and
word, the departed teacher and martyr, and the Messianic ruler of
the future. According to Paul, Christ is the prototypal Son of God
descended from heaven, whose incarnation, obedience, death on the
cross, resurrection, and heavenly glory form the drama of redemption
142 THE L'OXTEXTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
which we are to pass through and repeat in ourselves. To the apo-
calyptic seer Christ appears clothed in the glory of the heavenly King
who is on the point of coming again to judge the world and to set up
His kingdom of glory. To the Alexandrian Epistle to the Hebrews
Christ is the Beginner and the Finisher of the faith, the perfect high-
priest in the heavenly sanctuary. To the Evangelist John he is the
incarnate word (Logos),, the manifestation of the only begotten Sou
of God who was from the beginniug, who came into the world to
bear witness to the truth, and to be king in the supra-mundane
kingdom of the truth. With the apologists among the early Fathers
Christ is the embodiment and the full manifestation of that divine
Logos, that principle of all reason and revelation who shed all the
germs of truth which have entered into humanity. When the war-
like Germanic peoples accepted Christianity they represented the
Saviour to themselves as the heavenly king and army-leader to whom
his retinue of vassals owe knightly allegiance. When under Constan-
tine the church had mounted the first step towards rule over the
world, it also elevated Christ from a Son of God who was like God
to the Son of God who was of the same essence with God : and
when the church of the INIiddle Ages had absorbed the world in
herself, her Christ became simply the " Lord God " ^ before whose
divine nature human nature shrunk to nothing. But as the church
maintained relations with the world through clergy and monks, so
the Lord God Christ was at the same time the head of the saints and
the founder of the treasure of grace made up of the merits at the
disposal of the church. When the Eeformation brought back
Christianity out of the darkness of the church to the hearts and
lives of men it brought back Christ too from his incomprehensible
other-worldliness into human comprehension. To the profound
mysticism of Luther he was the divine bridegroom who betroths
himself in the bond of love to the poor human soul, condescends to
take part in her weakness, and lifts her up instead to his
divine dignity ; while to the practical piety of Zwingli he was the
victorious commander under whose banner we have enlisted as
1 "Herrgott."
REDEMPTION AND MEDIATION. 143
warriors for God. In the Eeformed church, the church of Pro-
testant heroism, Christ is mostly thought of as the active type and
the royal head of the elect who are anointed with the Spirit, while
the Lutheran church, the church of Protestant inwardness, looks up
to the " Head with paiu and wounds bowed down," and in faith
presses to her heart the image of suffering love. When Pietism
released Christianity from the scholasticism in which it was frozen,
Christ became the " Gracious Friend of souls," the " Mild Prince of
Peace who sweetens by the power of his love the knighthood of our
faith." The cooler sense of rationalism reverenced in Jesus the
" Teacher far above all teachers,
Rich in wisdom, love, and goodness,"
who by his word and example leads us on to virtue. The Kantian
moralism sees in Christ the moral ideal of that humanity with which
God is pleased, Eomanticism the ideal of the beautiful soul, the
earlier individualistic liberalism the champion of the freedom of
conscience against hierarchy and tradition. And the latest (German)
theology, since the foundation of the German Empire, loves to see in
Christ the founder of the kingdom of God.
Should any one ask which of all those images of Christ is the
true one, he cannot have understood either the foregoing historical
sketch or the psychological analysis given in this chapter of the
belief in a Mediator. Both of these, I imagine, teach with perfect
agreement that every image of Christ is right in proportion as it is
the right expression of the 'peculiar religious and moral ideal of an
age. The more purely, the more aptly, the more intelligibly the
ideal cherished by the church at the time is expressed in the dog-
matic view of Christ, the more that image answers the purpose of
communicating the Christian spirit in worship and education, the
more correctly is it framed, be the form of the expression what it
may. The error of dogmatic begins when it claims for its statement,
however relatively justified that statement be, that it is the only
right one, and declares other statements which answer to other
practical needs, to be inadmissible, thus narrowly exaggerating truth
144 THE CONTENTS OF TEE BELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
that is relative and suited for a practical purpose, into truth absolute.
The surest preventive of this error is scientific insight into the
psychological genesis of the belief in a Mediator, such as I have here
endeavoured to delineate. Tor as all life is development, a true
ideal of life cannot be a thing finished and ready-made, but must be
a thing becoming, developing itself through life and in life. The
only thing that is persistent in all this change and movement is the
law of development, and that again is ultimately nothing but the
religious endowment of our race, this eternal revelation of God in
mankind, to which everything historical is related as the phenomenon
under the conditions of time, as the relative type and means to the
absolute ultimate end, viz. — the fulfilment of the divine destiny of
mankind.
CHAPTER VII.
THE DESTINY OF MANKIND.
Mankind has always had, iu virtue of its endowment of reason,,
an anticipation of a higher, superseusuous destiny, and this has been
expressed by form-giving fancy, in the representation of a perfect
and happy state, placed sometimes at the beginning of mankind — as
the " golden age " of the past — sometimes at the end ; and this, again,
sometimes at the end of history on earth, sometimes in a supra-
mundane continuation of life in the other world, as immortality and
eternal life.
Of the golden age in the past, found in the legends of the Greeks
and Eomans, the Persians and the Hebrews, and, borrowed from the
latter, in Christian dogmatics from Augustine onwards, we have
more than once had occasion to speak. We saw that these legends
of the primitive state do not belong immediately to the domain of
history, but to that of religious legend, but that they yet contain
truths which in many respects are of great importance. First of all,
they contain (especially the Bible and the Church doctrine of the
primitive state) the symbolical expression of what man is according
to the idea of him ; i.e. of what he neither was nor could be actually
when his life on the earth began, but was from the beginning fitted
and intended to become. Then again these leoends contain a dim
reminiscence of the fact that the present state of civilisation was pre-
ceded by a state of nature, an age of childhood, which was better than
the present human lot of struggle and pain, in that it enjoyed the
relative happiness of childlike innocence, simplicity, and the absence
of wants, was nearer to the deity because not separated from it by
any conscious selfishness or guilt, and did not know sickness, the-
VOL. IV. K
146 THE COI^ TENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
worst of natural evils, because it lived quite naturally, borne along
and protected by sound natural instinct. Further, these legends
tell us that when man emerged from the state of childlike innocence,
and entered on the toilsome labour of civilisation, he had to purchase
his progress in knowledge and power at a great price, losing, to his
sorrow, his happy natural simplicity and his childlike peace with
God, so that he looks back with longing eyes to what he has lost,
while he pursues a problematical happiness in the distant future.
This we saw to be the significance of the legends of the origin of
evil among the Greeks, the Persians, and the Hebrews (p. 12). And
who would deny the weighty truth of these legends, which do nothing
but attribute to man at the outset of his history an experience which
repeats itself in every individual life, that he who stands in the
midst of the battle of life cannot look back without painful yearning
to the golden days of childhood ?
No reasonable man, however, wishes that he had stood still at the
undeveloped standpoint of the child ; does he not know that his
nature could only be developed, his destiny fulfilled, through the
manifold experiences, labours, and battles of life ? and hence the
wise man says with the apostle : " Forgetting the things that are
behind, I reach forward to those things which are before, for the
prize of my high calling !" Though the happiness of childhood has
vanished, he seeks to find it again at a higher stage, in a better peace
which lies beyond the struggle, in an inner harmony which is much
richer than that of childhood, because in it the antitheses, which
there slumbered and were not known, have been fully developed, but
harmonised and overcome. Similarly, mankind as a whole must not
mourn and lament in the idle and fruitless pain of looking back at
the lost paradise of the state of nature ; not in the undeveloped
beginning must it seek the ideal of its destiny ; it must reach for-
ward incessantly after that which is before, and strive to gain the
prize of its high calling. What it is essentially and imconscionsly
from the first, by God's creative act, it must seeh actually to become by
its own conscious act. Its destiny, the development, to a perfect God-
like whole, of all the powers deposited in its nature, can be attained
THE DESTINY OF MANKIND. 147
in no other way than by the free exercise of these very powers, and
thus can only form the goal, not the beginning, of its historical
career. It is the fore-sense of this that has found expression in all
religions in the manifold hopes of a future perfect state, whether in
this world or the world beyond. We shall in the first place glance
at the principal forms of this hope as they occur in the history of
religion. There are, broadly speaking, three forms of it : Metem-
psychosis, the belief in resurrection, and the belief simply in
immortality.
The doctrine of the transmigration of souls is a special modifica-
tion and corollary of the general view of the nature-peoples, that
souls (even during the life of the individual) can take up their
residence for a time in other bodies. This is the basis of the theory
of possession and of other magical and spiritist ghost-doctrine.
Starting from this assumption, it is not far to the thought that a
soul which has been, as it were, without a shelter after the death of
its former body, may choose for its new habitation a body which is
only in process of becoming. Thus the Indians of North America
believe that the souls of children who have died enter into mothers
who are passing at the time, to be born again by their means. By
this theory of transmigration these savages reach a very simple
explanation of the problem of " Atavism." This migration becomes,
according to the nature of the new body, a progress and a gain, or a
retrogression and an evil : the former, for example, in the belief of
many of the negroes, as well as of the Australians, who hope that
their souls will occupy bodies of the white race, and accordingly
regard white men as the souls of their ancestors come back again in
an improved edition. Equally common, however, is the belief in
migration into the bodies of animals, into those of beneficent or
hurtful, beautiful or ugly animals, according to the personal worth
or the social position of the departed, not, so far as we know, accord-
ing to any other principle.
In India the doctrine of metempsychosis was an integral part of
the Brahmanic system ; it was connected partly with the doctrine of
148 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
creation, partly with that of retribution. The whole world being a
graduated system of emanations of the primal and all-embracing life
of Brahma, which passes through all beings as forms of his manifesta-
tion and returns from them all to unity again, the particular soul
shares with the one world-soul of which it is only one specialisation
the same circling course through the successive stages of its mani-
festation. Into what form it may pass on each occasion, whether into
higher or into lower stages of life, depends on its past actions ; it is
the nexus of retribution that determines the future form of existence.
Kedemption from this cycle of new truths is only to be attained, as
we saw above (p. 101 sq.), by means of the higher knowledge of the
unity of the self with Brahma, and of the unreality of the self which
desires and acts. With this the practical renunciation of self or of
the world is accomplished, the emancipation, even now, from the
world of appearances ; and with the death of the body this leads to
the entire cessation of separate existence or passing into Brahma.
Buddhism taught the same thin^ as this esoteric Brahmanic doctrine
of redemption ; the only difference is that in the Buddhistic Nirvana
(vol. iii. p. 70), there is no background of Pantheistic metaphysics,
and the main stress falls on the practical side of the mortification of
the will, while the question as to the non-existence of the soul after
death was left open, as unessential. In Buddhism, however, as well
as in Brahmanism, the doctrine of metempsychosis forms the fixed
assumption of the doctrine of redemption.
The Egyptians also taught a partial transmigration of souls, but
only, it would appear, as a punishment of special severity for such
souls as had sinned so heavily as not to deserve rest. From Egypt,
if we may believe Herodotus (ii. 123), the doctrine came to the Greeks,
where it seems to make its first appearance in the Orphic mysteries ;
from this source the philosophers Empedocles and Pythagoras pro-
bably derived it, and from these again it was taken by Plato, in
whose hands it received a somewhat more ideal significance. It is
not, however, by any means impossible that the derivation of the
belief from Egypt by Herodotus is one of the unhistorical supposi-
tions of that writer, and that it belonged to the Orphic mysteries from
THE DESTINY OF MANKIND. 149
the very first. In that case it might be simply enough explained ;
the idea of the circle of life, on which the Orphic and Dionysian
mysteries are founded, though no doubt connected at first with the
change, the death and revival of the life of nature, may have come to
be applied to the life of man. As Dionysus-Zagreus is killed and
torn to pieces in autumn when vegetation dies, and rises anew in
spring, or as Demeter's daughter, Core, snatched away from Hades
comes back year by year to the earth, so by an analogy which lay
very near the child-like consciousness, the individual souls of men
might be thought to return from death in the vestments of new bodies.
From the same premisses the same conclusions might be indepen-
dently drawn in Greece, as well as in India and in Egypt.
Halfway between the doctrine of metempsychosis and that of
the continuance of the soul without the body, is the doctrine of a
resurrection, to take place at some definite future time, of souls with
their renewed bodies. In metempsychosis only the soul possesses
personal identity ; the new body, whether that of an animal or of a
man, is a different one ; but according to the doctrine of resurrection
the old body is restored in the self- same form, and recognisable,
though with improved powers and composed of nobler and finer
material, so that the man who rises again is entirely the same as the
former man, both in soul and body. This doctrine came into exist-
ence in the Persian religion, from which it passed into post-exilic
Judaism, and thence into Christianity, where it was combined in a
peculiar manner with the more spiritual Greek doctrine of immortality.
According to the Persian hope of the future the struggle between the
two world-kingdoms of Ahura and Ahriman is to be finally adjusted
by the appearance of the victorious Saviour Saoshyas (vol. iii. p. 84).
Simultaneously with the appearance of this Saviour the resurrection
of the dead is to begin, the completion of which will be followed by
the general world-judgment. All men will be gathered together by
the son of Zarathustra, and then every one will see his own good and
evil works ; the ungodly will at once be seen, like a white animal
among a herd of black ones. Wailing, he will then seek to cast the
blame of his misdeeds on the neglect of the pious, who did not
150 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
sufficiently instruct him, but no answer will be given him, and shame
will be his portion. The pious and the wicked will then be separated
from each other ; the former will go to heaven, the latter to hell.
But after the short interval of three days and three nights the great
renewing of the world will commence, which makes everything good
again and unites in harmony what was formerly divided. A comet
falls from the moon upon the trembling earth, the metal of the
mountains begins to burn and pours out over the earth in a glowing
stream. All men plunge into this stream, but the good only feel it
like a bath in warm milk, while the ungodly will feel as if they had
been cast into a fiery oven. All men come forth out of this fire
purified, only the devils will be entirely destroyed. Now the great
joy dawns ; father and son, brother and friend are united, never to be
separated any more. All raise up their voices in harmony, to praise
Ahura and the immortal saints, whose creation is now consummated.
Of the Soma-juice, the Persian nectar, the draught of immortality is
prepared for men, which ensures eternal life to every one who drinks
it. It is the former life, only raised to a higher level and made new ;
he who died at a mature age will rise again at the age of forty years,
and remain at that age ; he who died before he was grown up, will be
a youth of fifteen. The family will also continue ; each man will
receive a wife and children, but no new children will be born. Every
one will reap as he has sowed. Saoshyas will distribute rewards with
strict justice, according to Ahura's command. Those who brought no
offerings and gave no alms will have to go naked ; but those who
observed these duties will be clothed by the angels. Such are the
principal features of Persian eschatology : retribution there is, and
separation in the general judgment, no eternal punishment however,
but redemption, atonement, and peace, at the end. " That he should
continue living for ever in a purified body, on a new earth, cleansed
from everything that now defiles it, an earth which Ahura himself
has sanctified by his presence, and from which the passage to the
dwellings of light stands perpetually open : this was the cherished
dream of the Persian saints " (Tiele).
Persian influences also helped to form the belief in the resurrec-
THE DESTINY OF MANKIND. 151
tion in post-exilic Judaism. At an earlier period the religious
hope of the Jews was directed only to the continuance of the people
as a whole, and of individual families and races within it, not to an
actual living-on of individuals after death. The life of the indivi-
dual seemed to the Hebrews to be inseparably bound up with his
body, and though there was a certain continuance of the existence of
souls in Sheol (Hades, the underworld), yet it was no more than a
melancholy vegetating existence, without any force or feeling, by no
means the object of joyful hope, but a state where the help of God
appeared to have come to an end. " Wilt thou show wonders to the
dead ? Shall the dead arise and praise thee ? Shall thy loving
kindness be declared in the grave ? or thy faithfulness in destruc-
tion ? Shall thy wonders be known in the dark, and thy righteous-
ness in the land of f orgetf ulness ? " Those questions of the Psalmist
(Ps. Ixxxviii. 11) show distinctly the old Hebrew view of the other
world or Sheol ; it is the land of hopelessness, of darkness and for-
getfulness, where joy and grief are at an end. But this mode of
view could no longer satisfy, when once the religious consciousness
of the Jews had begun to assume a more individual form. When
stress began to be laid on the relation of the individual to God and
not merely on that of the people as a whole, and when reflection
turned to the contradiction between the sufferings of the good in this
earthly life and the religious postulates involved in the doctrine of
retribution, as was first done in the book of Job (p. 13), it was felt
necessary to extend the hope of a miraculous divine restoration of
the people as a whole, to individual pious men, who having died in
the time of trial of their people could not be witnesses of its restora-
tion. Thus from its inner religious development from the time of
the exile Judaism began at first to put the yearning and hoping
question, which under the influence of the Persian doctrine of resur-
rection first came to be the conviction of individuals,'^ while at a later
time, and especially amid the universal religious excitement of the
^ E.g. the unknown author of Isaiah xxiv.-xxvii. probably a contemporary of
the Great Unknown (chap, xl.-lxvi.) Passages like Isa. xxvi. 19, liii. 10 sqq. con-
tain the first traces of the belief in a resurrection in Israel, though here the belief
hovers between picture and actual opinion.
152 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
Maccabean asje of trial and heroism this conviction more and more
gained ground in the religious consciousness of the people. It is
remarkable that the belief in a resurrection as a fixed element in the
Jewish popular stock of ideas is first met with in two works of
the period of the Maccabees ; in the second book of the Maccabees
(vii. 9 sqq.) and in the apocalypse of Daniel, where we read (xil 2
sq.) : " Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake,
some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting con-
tempt. And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the
firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for
ever and ever." At the time of Jesus the resurrection was a fixed
article of the popular belief, though some, like the illuminated Sad-
ducees, might cast doubt on it ; it was specially laid hold of by the
Pharisaic tendency, and interpreted in a grossly sensuous way in the
spirit of the carnal Messianic hope fostered by that party. The
belief naturally passed into Christianity as the Christian belief of
the Messiahship of Jesus was mainly based on his resurrection. Yet
under the influence of the Christian spirit this idea underwent from
the first a certain purification ; according to Paul it is not the gross
sense-body, made of earthly flesh, that is to rise again, but a spiritual
body, of the supersensuous-sensuous light-stuff of the heavenly
world, which Paul with his whole age considered to be the most
suitable and the purest form in which the divine and the Godlike
spirit could appear. We shall afterwards revert to the detail of the
Christian resurrection as bearing on immortality and on the blessed-
ness of heaven.
One of the commonest subjects of belief among mankind is the
continuance of bodiless souls after death, which we might call im-
mortality in the stricter sense, did not the term imply more than
that belief can be said to contain, especially among the nature-
peoples. In many instances the continuance is assumed not of all
human souls as such, but only of the souls of men in some way
remarkable, whether distinguished by social position or by their
virtues and merits ; and even then the soul which continues after the
death of the body is not held to be absolutely immortal ; savages
THE DESTINY OF MANKIND. 153
consider that it may very well be destroyed, fall in battle or be
crushed by the club of the judge of the dead, or fall off the bridge of
death into the abyss, or meet with a mishap in some other way.
The fact however of immediate continuance after death is established
for the savage with the certainty of ocular testimony ; he sees the
breath depart from the dying man, which was his life, his soul ;
whither, he asks, has it gone ? Then he sees in a dream or in some
vivid imagination or vision even by day-light, the dead man living
before him with the same objectivity that the perceptions of actual
things commonly have. How then should he (who knows nothing
of the psychological explanation of such phenomena) cherish any
doubt of the reality of this phenomenon, i.e. of the continued exist-
ence of the soul which appeared to him in his dream ?
As for the place of abode of souls which continue living, the most
naive idea is undoubtedly that which represents the soul as staying
near the place where the body was buried, or in the scene of its for-
mer life. With the latter view is connected the worship of Manes
and Penates, which ^^'el•e thought of as present in and presiding
beneficently over the house. Where evil rather than beneficent
results are expected to accompany the presence of the spirits of the
departed, or where shrinking or repulsion is felt at their too close
neighbourhood, the attempt is made to keep them at a distance from
the abode of the living ; for this end many savages will forsake the
hut where any one has died, in order that his spirit may occupy it
undisturbed ; or where this plan appears too luxurious and cannot be
carried out, they take means to keep the spirit from coming back to
the old house ; they will carry the body out, for example, not by the
door, but by the window, they will throw a firebrand after it, pour a
gallon of water after it, and so on. Many survivals of these old
usages may be seen in the superstitious practices still observed
among civilised peoples. The departed soul, moreover, is thought of
in a certain sympathetic relation with the body ; its rest is conceived
to depend on the peaceable and orderly observance of the funeral
rites ; and hence the souls of those whose bodies remain unburied
are compelled to go about without rest. This is one of the most
154 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
widely-diffused ideas of all peoples, civilised peoples by no means
excepted. How intimate the connection is often supposed to be
between the soul and its interred body, we see distinctly from the
very general custom of placing food at the grave for the dead, put-
ting it in the grave along with the corpse, and here and there also
renewing it periodically. Among the Chinese and the Hindus this
custom is still kept up as a regular sacrificial worship paid to the
souls of ancestors. Perhaps the Christian love-feasts at the graves of
martyrs, as well as the observance of All-souls' day may be regarded
as survivals of similar old customs and ideas.
Though souls love to visit certain earthly localities, yet the
general belief places their real abode not here but in a "beyond."
The place of this beyond, the way to it, the perils of the journey
and the conditions to be met with there, form one of the most fruitful
themes of the mythology of all religions. Man's knowledge about
all these things is generally traced either simply to divine revelation,
or, with more epic detail, to the descriptions of such gods and heroes
as have made temporaiy visits to the under- world. The stories of
this kind in Greek mythology are well known ; the descents to Hades
of Dionysus, Orpheus, Herakles, and Odysseus ; an interesting
parallel has recently been found to these in the Descent of (the
Assyrian) Istar,^ with which may also be compared the interesting
epos " Kalewala " of the visit of Wainamoinen to Mana, the land of
the dead. The origin of all such legendary descents into hell has
been properly traced to the solar myth ; " the sun himself is the
heavenly hero, who daily descends into the land of darkness, and
daily returns victorious to the land of the living. It agrees with
this that the place of the beyond is almost always either an earthly
place in the west, generally a distant island or mountain height, or
the deep place under the earth. The " islands of the blessed," well
known from Greek mythology, have many counterparts in other
mythologies, for example in the legends of the Polynesians. More
frequently, however, than the west upon the earth, the region under
^Translated (into German) and explained by Eberliard Schrader: Giessen,
1874. - Tylor : Primitive Culture, ii. p. 4S.
THE DESTINY OF MANKIND. 155
the earth is the place of the beyond. To this the optical appearance
of the sun's sinking under the earth may have contributed, and no
doubt also the interment of dead bodies helped to bring about the
idea. The Greek Hades, the Eoman Orcus, the Hebrew Sheol, the
Germanic Nifihel, the Finnic Mana, and other such representations
are all extensions of the depth of the grave into a place, situated in
the depths, where all the dead assemble. If the idea of the under-
world arose in this natural way, then we readily understand that the
idea was at first morally indifferent, without any distinction of the
lot of the good and of the wicked ; the under- world was the receptacle
of all souls without distinction. It was only gradually, as the idea of
the beyond came to be connected with that of moral recompence, that
the original indifferent and colourless uniformity of the under- world
was broken up into a bright abode of the blessed and a dark prison
of the lost. Thus the Greek, for example, distinguished from the
general Hades, which was neutral, a special place of punishment,
Tartarus, and a special place of reward, Elysium; the Jew distin-
guished from the general Sheol Gehenna (hell), and Paradise or
Abraham's bosom ; and in other quarters too the beyond was divided
into a better land and a land of woe, which are separated by a
chasm, spanned by the fateful bridge. The place of the blessed is
often fixed in regions of light above the earth, in heaven, the special
abode of the blessed gods and spirits. This way of thinking was
characteristic of the religion of light of the early Aryans, as may be
seen from a fine hymn of the Vedas : —
Where the eternal light arises, where the sun shines eternally,
In the land where all endures, there, gods, grant that I may he I
Where King Waiwasvata rules, in the sanctuary of heaven,
Where the mighty waters are, there let me be immortal !
Where the third heaven is, where life is for ever free,
In the central point of the worlds, there let me be immortal !
Where the end and goal of all wishes is, where the sun shines gloriously.
Where there is nothing but pleasure and freedom, there let me be immortal !
Where pleasure and blessedness are, where joy and bliss abide,
Where every wish is silent, there let me be immortal !
With the Persians too heaven is the place of the good, which they
156 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
enter by passing over the bridge of judgment, while the wicked, who
cannot get over the bridge, fall into the abyss of hell. The Germans
thought of Walhalla, the hall of the gods, which noble men enter, as
being in heaven, while the common people go, as a matter of course,
to the under-world. Paradise, or the Abraham's bosom of later Jewish
eschatology, is no doubt to be thought of as in heaven, where the
reward for the just is laid up, and from which the " kingdom of
heaven " comes down into the earth. In Jewish eschatology, certainly,
this heavenly other world or world above often gives place to the
temporal other world of the future Messianic kingdom. In Hellenism,
on the contrary, the upper heavenly world, the place of non-material
souls, was regarded as the scene of consummation ; it could not but
be so where no sympathy was felt for the notions of resurrection and
of the earthly Messianic kingdom. Similarly in Christian eschatology,
the more chiliasm retreated into the background, the more was
heaven regarded as the place of blessedness and of the final consum-
mation, as we shall afterwards see more in detail.
And this brings us to the principal remaining question, the state of
souls in the other icorld. It is conceived sometimes as a simple con-
tinuation of the present existence, sometimes as a compensation,
an equalising, a retribution for this life. The continuation sometimes
appears as the melancholy and dismal echo of a reality which was
better, because richer and fuller of life, as a shadoio of the earthly life.
This we saw above to be the early Hebrew way of thinking on the
subject, and we find it again in the Homeric Greeks ; an Achilles
would rather earn day-wages on earth than be king among the
shades. But we soon meet with a different notion of the other
w^orld, in which it is the ideal of the life on earth, the fulfilment of
all wishes, the removal of all want and need, the perpetuation of all
happiness. This has probably always been the more usual mode of
view both in nature-peoples and in civilised races of the most various
zones and religions ; though the concrete features in which the ideal
is set forth naturally differ very widely in accordance with var^'ing
taste and culture. Thus, for example, the shivering Greenlander
hopes to find in the other world perpetual summer and constant sun-
TJSU DESTINY OF MANKIND. 157
shine, good water, abundance of fish and birds, seals and reindeer,
which will allow themselves to be easily caught, or to be found
cooked alive in the kettle. The North Germans hope that in Wal-
halla they will rejoice anew in battle every morning ; there will no
doubt be wounds and death as on earth, but the fallen will come
alive every evening, and they will all, victors and vanquished, eat
boar's-flesh and drink beer and mead together at Odin's table ; and,
though consumed every evening, these viands will be there afresh
next day. The believing Moslem hopes that in the other world he
will rest on couches of gold and ivory, served by maidens beautiful
and ever young, refreshing himself with drinks which, while full of
spirit, will produce neither intoxication nor headache, and feeding on
fruits which grow on trees without thorns, and on the flesh of the
rarest birds. The ascetic Buddhist, on the contrary, cannot con-
ceive of heaven as a paradise of exquisite sensuous joys, but only as
an ascending series of ever more mystical ecstasy, which at last
passes into Nirvana, as the earthly ecstasy into trance. The disputa-
tious Eabbi, like the dialectical Christian philosopher Origen, imagines
heavenly joy to consist in an academic debating room or society,
where learning and philosophising never cease. The contemplative
mysticism of Christianity, from John's Gospel onwards and through-
out the whole of scholasticism, places blessedness in the constant
vision of God.
In all these views the world beyond is simply this world idealised.
If this be so, it could not fail to appear that the virtue which even
in this world commands recognition and distinction will not be less
valued in the other, nor fail to be rewarded there by suitable dis-
tinction. By means of this obvious association of ideas, the theory
of simple continuance passes into the theory of compensation in the
other world. It must of course be remembered that the standard by
which a man's lot in the other world was supposed to be regulated
was not at first one of purely inward morality, but that of outward
ability, specially, therefore, that of meritorious contributions to the
good of the community. In manly nature-peoples, especially such
as the ancient Germans, the Indians, the Aztecs, the Arabians, the
158 THE CONTEXTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
suggestive thounht is often met with that a man's heroic death on
the field of battle and the death of a woman in childbed gave a
good claim for happiness in the other world. But when in the
sequel the moral estimate of human worth grew deeper, and a man
was judged less by the particular good services he had rendered, and
more in accordance with his general personal virtue or badness, then
this moral value of the individual was thought to determine his fate
in the other world. On earth good and bad men are mixed together,
and share alike in the good things and in the evils of the world,
without any special regard to their inner worth ; but in the other
world there is to be a separation of the two classes, and the outward
experience of all is to correspond accurately to their true deservings.
This thought has often clothed itself in the legend of the dangerous
bridge of death, which is said to lead across the river of death or
the abyss of hell, and over which the good pass safely while the bad
fall in. This legend recurs with closely analogous features in the
most diverse peoples, even peoples of the modern world. The
natural origin of it is no doubt to be seen in the rainbow, which to
the eye of childhood appears to form a miraculous bridge from this
world to the heavenly other- world ; and it is one of the most telling
examples of the process of the naive consciousness which leads it to
attach to simple nature-myths higher ideas belonging to a moral
and religious view of the world ; the former being the form in which
this ideal content frames itself in the childlike picture of the
world. The doctrine of retribution in the other world reached its
earliest development among the Egyptians, where it came to be of
great importance for the customs and morals of the people. Souls,
according to the I^gyptian view, must, as soon as they leave the
body, appear before Osiris and the forty-two judges of the dead, and
are examined according to the priestly law-book, which is called
from this circumstance the " Book of the Dead." They must be
able to profess that they have not wittingly done evil to any man,
that they have said nothing false before the judgment-seat of truth,
have done nothing impious, have not slandered the servant to his
master, have not committed murder, have deceived no one, have not
THE DESTINY OF MANKIND. 159
altered the measures of the country, have not spoken ill of the
images of the gods, have not taken away any piece of the wrappings
of the dead, have not committed adultery, have not turned milk
away from the mouth of sucklings, have not driven any wild beasts
upon the pasture, have caught none of the sacred birds : " I am
pure, am pure, am pure !" If this is found to be correct, the souls
enter into the beaming light of heaven ; if otherwise, they go to the
dark Hades which lies in the west. In the Greek popular faith the
general view of Hades was also gradually modified by a few traits of
moral retribution, but these only applied to eminent exceptions in
good or in evil. The happy fields of Elysium are reserved for the
heroes whom the gods love ; and heroic criminals have to appear
before the judgment-seat of Ehadamanthus and Minos, where they
are condemned to the punishments of Tartarus : the ordinary run of
people is not subject to any judgment or retribution, but is left to
the dream-life of Hades. So at least according to the general
popular belief. In the cultus of the mysterica the analogy of the
life of nature led to the adoption of a higher view of the fate of
souls in the other world, and to the expression of that view under
symbolical forms. The doctrine of the transmigration of souls was
peculiar to the Orphic mysteries, w^hile the Eleusinian entertained
the hope of a blessed life in the communion of the gods, designed for
those who were purified by the sacred initiations. " Blessed is he
who does not go under the earth without having seen it (the Eleu-
sinian mysteries) ; he knows the goal of life and the beginning
given to it by Zeus" — so sings Pindar. These initiated ones will,
according to him, lead an untroubled and blessed life in Hades with
the high gods (of the under- world), while an inexorable judgment
awaits the others. In the same way Plato says in the Phacdo : He
who comes to Hades uninitiated and unpurified will lie in the mud ;
but he who comes thither initiated and purified will dwell with
gods." And Sophocles, in a fragment preserved in Plutarch, praises
as " thrice happy the mortals who, after they have witnessed these
rites, go to Hades ; for them alone is life prepared there ; for the
others evil!"
160 THE CONTEXTS OF THE RELIGIOUS COXSGIOUSNESS.
The doctrine of the mysteries "vvas the source from which Greek
philosophy also derived its theory of the other world. It was re-
marked above that the Pytliagorean doctrine of transmigration was
derived from the Orphic rites ; it can scarcely be said to have any
inner connection with the Pythagorean philosophy. Such a connec-
tion, however, does undoubtedly exist in Heraditiis ; the migration
downwards and upwards, which his world-soul has to pass through in
its development into the world and its return to unity, has to be
made by individual souls too along with the world-soul. In its con-
nection with a material body, into which it enters from a higher
existence, the soul is estranged from the true divine life which is its
origin ; only when it lays off this wrapping, which is ill-suited to its
divine nature, does it return to the purer life of the gods (demons).
Hence Heraclitus calls men mortal gods, the gods immortal men, and
our life the death of the gods, our death their life. These ideas are
worked out in the Platonic philosophy in a way which determined
the subsequent course of thought ; Plato weaves them into his ideal-
istic system and so provides them with a philosophic basis. Plato
was the first to endeavour to prove the immortality of the soul
scientifically, without teaching that the soul had any beginning or
pre- existence. The arguments stated in the " Phaedo " are partly
drawn from experience and analogy, partly of an a priori meta-
physical character. To the former belongs the comparison of life and
death to waking and sleeping and other changing states, which pre-
suppose a persistent subject as their substance ; also the remark that
our becoming conscious of universal truths appears to be a remember-
ing of ideas possessed formerly and thus involves a former existence ;
but specially, too, the reference to the experiences in which the
thinking and willing mind actually proves its liberty from sense,
from which we have to infer the probability that the soul which is so
different from the body will not have to share the fate of the latter
in death, but will survive it. His metaphysical argument Plato based
upon his doctrine of ideas : as each idea remains simply equal to itself,
and excludes from itself all negation and change, so the soul too is in
its nature one with life itself, and is thus inaccessible to its contrary,
THE DESTINY OF MANKIND. 161
death ; it is the very notion of the soul to be incorruptible life. It
has recently been asserted that this argument of Plato is not so
much in the line of individual immortality, but rather an exoteric
dressing up of the thought of the eternity of the general or the world-
soul, since it must regard the individual soul as a mixed thing having
in it both being and not-being, having part in the principle of becom-
ing, and hence subject to decay ; this, it is said, is what his doctrine
of ideas in consistency implies.-^ This latter may very probably be
the case ; the force of the contention may be allowed, that the
Platonic doctrine of ideas leads in strict consistency to idealistic
pantheism, which has no room for individual substances and personal
immortality. But must it follow from this, that Plato himself con-
sciously drew such an inference ? Is it such an unheard-of thing in
the history of philosophy, that the consequences which objectively
seem to be the necessary result of a system were not drawn, not
recognised, by its originator ? or even that propositions which he had
a practical interest in maintaining may have been upheld by him
in contradiction to the theoretical premises of his system? This
seems to me a much simpler and more natural assumption in the
case before us, than that other assumption that in those arguments
in which he speaks so clearly and unambiguously of the immortality
of individual souls, Plato was only speaking in the way of accom-
modation for the unphilosophical multitude standing in the position
of exoteric opinion. One thing in particular seems to me to dis-
agree with this assumption, namely the practical importance which
Plato himself manifestly attributed to this doctrine of immortality ;
in fact he makes it the basis of his idealistic ethics, the principal
motive of his doctrine of virtue, as we read at the close of the
Phaedo : " Hence it becomes us to do everything we can in order to
become partakers of virtue and wisdom in our life, for the prize is fair,
and the hope great ! " This is not the place to enter further into
this controversy ; but however it may be decided, it is certain that
throughout the whole history of thought and belief Plato was always
regarded as the champion of the doctrine of individual immortality
1 Compare notably TeichmuUer : Stmlien zur Geschichte der Begrlffe, p. 105 sqq.
VOL. IV. L
162 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
and that his influence has always been on this side. His immense
importance in Christian theology was essentially due to this.
What led from tlie one to the other was Alexandrian Hellenism.
Plato's theory of pre-existence and immortality meets us in the
Alexandrian Book of Wisdom and in Philo ; and not less in the
Essenes who stood under Hellenic influence. In all these quarters
the ordinary Jewish doctrine of resurrection is replaced by that of
immortality without the body in a beyond which is divided into a
heavenly place for the blessed and a hell for the ungodly. Of the
transmigration of souls which Plato said (at least in the Phaedo for the
ordinary run of people) was to be expected after the elapse of the
millennial intermediate state of retribution in the other world, we
find only a weak trace in Philo. The essential eschatological hope
of Hellenism is commonly directed to the liberation of the soul from
the prison of the body, its rise into the aether and its permanent com-
munion with the pure and blessed spirits.^ This Hellenistic eschato-
logy had probably influenced the general popular belief of the Jews
in the time of Jesus, through the channel of Essenism, For, not to
speak of the general Messianic final judgment which was connected
with the resurrection, it was a fixed thing in the popular eschatology
that immediately after death there was to be a retribution in the
other world in hell (Gehenna) and in " Abraham's bosom " ; as we
see very clearly from the Biblical parable of Dives and Lazarus
(Luke xvi.) as well as from the promise of Jesus (also in the Luke
tradition, xxiii. 43) to the thief crucified at his side : "To-day thou
shalt be with me in Paradise." In Judaism proper, however, which
found its most distinct expression in Pharisaism, the main hope con-
tinued to be directed to the coming earthly consummation of the
Messianic kingdom, and the retribution in the beyond pointed to in
such passages could be no more than a preliminary intermediate
state, before the general resurrection and the general judgment which
was to fix men's fate.
These same two tendencies, which we may shortly call the Jewish
^ Compare Philo : de Somniis, i. 22. Book of Wisdom, chap. iii. 8, 20. On the
Essenes; Josephus, B. J. ii. viii. 11.
THE DESTINY OF MANKIND. 163
and the Hellenistic, are combined in Christian eschatology, which,
according as one or the other factor predominates in it, bears a more
realistic or a more idealistic character. In the eschatology of primi-
tive Christianity, which was in the main also that of Paul, the chief
point was the expectation of the speedy and visible seeond coming of
Christ on earth to set up his Messianic kingdom, which was thought
of at one time more sensuously, at another less, but in its main
features, of course, according to the Old Testament theocratic ideal.
But just because this Messianic kingdom was hindered by its Jewish
origin and form from becoming quite identical with the idea of the
eternal consummation of the future, it was distinguished from the
latter, and made to precede it as a merely preliminary interimistic
state, a foretaste of eternal blessedness in the glory of earthly victory.
Thus arose the idea, common to Christian and to Jewish apocalyptic,
of an earthly Messianic kingdom of limited duration preceding the
consummation of the world. The Johannine Apocalypse fixed the
duration of this state at 1000 years, whence the name of the
Millennium, and the word Chiliasm. With this it came to pass that
the resurrection and the judgment, which even in the Jewish view
were to form the opening acts of the Messianic kingdom, were
separated into two different scenes, one at the beginning, the other
at the end, of Christ's millennial reign on earth. Only with the second
or general resurrection, which is followed by the general world-
judgment, does the Apocalypse arrive at the consummation of the
world (chap, xxi.) : the first heaven and the first earth pass away, a
new heaven and a new earth take their place, and a new world,
the " new Jerusalem " comes down to the earth out of heaven
adorned like a bride for her husband ; God himself then dwells
in the midst of the saints, lights them as their sun, and governs
them from eternity to eternity ; but the saints themselves,
with Christ at their head, will share in the glory of God, and
in his government of the world. But even in Jewish eschatology
which that of Christianity always followed very closelj^ the " days
of the Messiah," i.e. the earthly Messianic rule, and the " world to
come, i.e. the state of eternal consummation, often run into each
164 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
other, tlie boundaries between them are never rigid ; and so in the
New Testament hope of tlie future also, the two epochs of the con-
summation, the limited earthly rule of Christ which belongs to
Chiliasm, and the eternity of heaven, are never so clearly distin-
guished from each other as in the Apocalypse. In the discourses on
the future in the Synoptic Gospels we always hear of a single final
catastrophe only ; while in the description of the final state there are
so many purely earthly traits as to suggest that the state spoken of
is rather a provisional one on earth than the definitive one of eternity.
It might also be hard to make out with regard to Paul, whether he
regards the second coming of Christ, which he too expected to come
immediately, as the definitive end of the world, or as the beginning of
an intermediate kingdom after the nature of the millennium of the
Apocalypse. It is certain, on the other hand, that the deutero-
Johannine theology dropped the earthly Messianic kingdom
altogether, and put in its place on the one hand the constant presence
of Christ, who has come back in his Spirit, on the other the eternal
blessedness of the perfected community of Christians.
On the state of souls after death, too, the New Testament contains
a variety of statements, some of them perhaps scarcely to be reconciled
together. The common description of the dead is " they that sleep,"
which points to the sleep of souls in Hades, from w^hich they will
only arise at the general resurrection. Other passages, however, do
not agree v/ith this, where the departed soul passes at once into Para-
dise, or is at home with Christ, and receives a new habitation of a
heavenly nature. This certainly excludes the state of sleep ; and it
is hard to understand how the soul's being at home with Christ can
be a mere provisional state, still to be followed by the resurrection,
the judgment, and the final entrance into blessedness. These realistic
elements of Jewish eschatology refuse to combine with the more
ideal view of the state of the soul which is united with Christ, With
Paul the latter view was the outcome of the peculiar mysticism of
his faith ; the inner communion of the believer with Christ, which
lias begun even here, could not, he thought, be interrupted, could
only be completed, by the death of the body. Still more decidedly
THE DESTINY OF MANKIND. 165
does this appear in the Gospel of John, which expressly makes
" eternal life " and eternal blessedness begin in faith in this life, since
they consist in nothing but that complete communion with God and
Math Christ without which faith cannot exist. True, we also read
in this Gospel of a resurrection and of the dead going forth out of
their graves on the day of judgment. As to the fate of the wicked,
it is difficult to gather a consistent view from the New Testament.
According to many passages their punishment seems to be simply
that they remain in death without any hope of resurrection : accord-
ing to others, they rise, and are condemned in the general judgment
to eternal torments, which they endure in a place of darkness, or else
of unquenchable fire. There are some indications which point to the
hope that they may yet be saved ; we hear of a rising again of all
men in Christ, and of the destruction of death, and the ultimate goal
is described as God's being all in all, which it would be difficult to
reconcile with the continuance of hell and of the damned. This play
of heterogeneous views belongs to the very nature of such transcen-
dental hopes, and is also due more particularly to the variety of the
sources and presuppositions which the history of early Christianity
brought to meet and play upon each other in this field,
The expectation of the immediate coming of Christ to set up
his earthly kingdom, of glory was vividly present to the mind of
Christendom during the first two centuries ; but in the altered
circumstances of the third century it began more and more to fade
away. The more Christendom departed from its original avoidance
of the world, the more it aimed at setting up house for continuance
in the world, and the more confidently it began to rule the world by
the force of its ecclesiastical SDirit, the less interest or belief remained
in a supernatural chiliastic kingdom of Christ as distinguished from
the kingdom of God already realised in the church. Tlius it soon
came to pass, that that view which had been the very air the
primitive Christians breathed was directly condemned as a Jewish
heresy by the Catholic Church, and never after this period found its
way into the church's dogmatic ; one of the most instructive instances
of a community changing its religious consciousness. The church,
166 THE CONTENTS OF THE BELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
however, held fast to the last act of the primitive Christian drama
of world-consummation, that namely which is accomplished in the
general resurrection of all men, the general judgment of the world,
the damnation of the ungodly, includiug all not- Christians, the
entrance into blessedness of the good, or more particularly of true
Christians ; and which forms the definitive close of time and entrance
on eternity. The place of the damned will be hell, the punishments
of which were conceived by most of the Fathers (certain idealists
excepted, such as Origen, who was counted a heretic on this point)
as sensible tortures of eternal duration. This view, deeply impressed
on the popular mind both by word and picture, was no doubt an
effective pedagogic instrument in the discipline and civilisation of
the rude nature-peoples, but on the other hand was undoubtedly the
cause at least in part of that rudeness and hardness of feeling which
manifested itself for half a millennium in the prosecutions of heretics
and witches. The place of the blessed was seen in that earthly-
heavenly beyond, which is to arise out of the renewal and at the
same time the fusion of the present heaven and the present earth.
Whether the heavenly or the earthly side is the more prominent in
this new scene of consummation, whether the supersensuous or the
sensuous traits predominate, always depends on the idea formed of the
detail of the life of the blessed. On this point the views held in the
church have been from the first very much divided. On the one side
we have an idealistic spiritualising of the beyond ; this is met first
and foremost in the Gnostics of the second century, and the view of
the Alexandrian theology of the fourth Gospel and of Origen is
essentially the same, though here the other side makes itself per-
ceptible also ; and we find it too at a later period in certain mystical
speculative theologians. Here salvation is really nothing but being
one with God and Christ in love and knowledge, which is just the
ideal of the Christian life in the present. The resurrection of the
body is either ignored entirely or it is accepted from the traditional
way of speaking as an unessential and unimportant appendix to the
true doctrine, and the sensuous element as far as possible eliminated
from it. On the other side we have the gross sensuous idea of a
THE DESTINY OF MANKIND. 167
resurrection of the body of flesh, its very skin and hair, bones and
bowels — an idea which is compelled to disregard the expressions of
Paul in an opposite sense, and goes back to the Jewish and Pharisaic
doctrine of the resurrection. And this came to be the prevailing-
doctrine of the church. The manifold difficulties and contradictions
in which this view was inevitably entangled at every attempt to go
into details were simply borne down by a reference to the divine
omnipotence and to the limited range of human knowledge. It was
only rationalism that gave up the resurrection altogether, since, as
Kant says, man can have no desire to drag about a body through all
eternity which he was never really fond of even when alive. The early
church had parted with the first and the most important article of primi-
tive Christian eschatology, and had regarded the millennial kingdom of
Christ as a Jewish error ; now Eationalism dropped this last remainder
of Jewish eschatology, and restricted itself to the pure incorporeal
immortality of Hellenism, thus making what the church had hitherto re-
garded merely as an intermediate state of individual souls between death
and the resurrection, the permanent and only state of the other vi^orld.
The result of this was that interest was now concentrated on the
" that " of the continuance of the soul, or on finding a secure founda-
tion for the belief in immortality. Spinoza in his Treatise on God,
etc., had asserted the imperishableness of the pious souls which in
love to God came to have part in his unchangeable being, and had
also spoken in his Ethics of the eternity of the spiritual and active
part of the human soul, which he said was greater than the perishable
part in proportion as our love to God was greater ; but he counted
memory, on which the continuity of self-consciousneas depends, to
be a part of the " imaginatio," which depends on corporeity and passes
away in death. This amounted to a denial of personal immortality ;
at least it cannot be denied that the premises of this conclusion are
to be found in the Ethics of Spinoza, even should it be uncertain how
far he himself wished it to be drawn (vol. i. p. 61). Against the so-
called moral argument for immortality from the necessity of com-
pensation in the other world, Spinoza set up the proposition that
blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself, namely the
168 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
love of God, which includes iti itself power to overcome the lusts.
For these same reasons the idealistic moralist Shaftesbury protested
against the eudaemonistic demand of compensation in the other
world ; and the sceptic Hume pointed out the weakness of the argu-
ment which concludes from the absence of compensating justice in
this world, of which alone we know anything, to its presence in the
future in another and a problematical world (vol. i. p. 129). In the
Leibniz-Wolftian Illumination, on the contrary, immortality was a
fixed and a cardinal article of faith, which admitted of being proved
from "rounds of reason. For Leibniz himself it followed from the
very nature of the soul as an uncreated and imperishable monad of
infinite capacity of development. ^Volff added to this the argument
from analogy, that as the uncreated soul did not lose its power of
forming ideas when it entered this life from a former state, the same
will be the case at its exit from this life. Mendelssohn was the
spokesman of the Illumination on this question ; in his Phaedon he
on the one hand proved the immortality of the soul from its nature,
since being a simple substance it could not be destroyed, but only
annihilated by a miracle, which, however, was inconceivable ; while,
on the other hand, he proved it teleologically from man's natural
striving after ever greater perfection, a striving implanted in him by
his Creator as his calling, which even death cannot hinder him from
fulfilling ; and if this striving is to go on, the soul's essential properties
of thought and will must also continue. The metaphysical argument
from the substantiality of the soul Kcmt attacked as a paralogism
proceeding out of a confusion of the synthetic unity of the function
of the ego or of self-consciousness with the simple nature of a soul-
being. In its place Kant put the moral argument or rather (for it
cannot be properly called an " argument ") the postulate of practical
reason, that for the realisation of the moral law, which from tlie
recalcitrant sensuousness of our nature is unattainable to us at any
point of time, an eternal duration of personal existence must be at
our command, and that in that case a happiness may be expected in
the other world answering to our virtue or our desert of happiness.
In Fichtes later philosophy Kant's moral postulate took a meta-
THE DESTINY OF MANKIND. 169
physical turn, Fichte seeing in the moral personality an imperishaljle
form of the manifestation of God ; yet his opinion seems to have
varied on the question whether every individual had the prospect of
continuing to act in a future order of things, or only those who had
developed out of themselves here below something universal and of
general value. The latter was also the view of Goethe ; from con-
siderations connected with the economy of nature he draws the con-
viction that the monad which is incessantly active will not want
occupation in eternity, but that in order to manifest one's self in the
future as a great entelechy, one must be it now. The same theory
of a particular or hypothetical immortality has also been favoured by
Weisse, Rothe, and J. H. Fichte, junr. (at least formerly). But that
it is a small step from the immortality only of good men, to the
immortality only of that which is good and true, or of the spirit
generally, may be seen even in Spinoza on comparing his earlier and
his later treatment of this question. The same thing was repeated in
modern philosoiohy when ethical idealism took its metaphysical and
logical turn. To 8chleiermaclier the interest ordinarily felt in
immortality appears to be simply a sign of a selfish and therefore an
irreligious disposition, for not immortality outside of time and behind
time, he considers, is the aim and the character of religion, but that
immortality which we may have even in this life in time, and which
is a task in the solution of which we are actually engaged. " In the
midst of the finite to be one with the infinite, to be eternal every
moment, that is the immortality of religion." According to Hegel
too the one essential point is the eternity of spirit, which cannot be
merely future but must appertain to spirit in its thinking and willing
what is universal even now. As to the continuance of the individual
soul Hegel did not distinctly pronounce, so that this question proved
an apple of discord and ground of separation in his school between
those on the right (Goschel and Conradi) and those on the left
(Eichter, Feuerbach, and Strauss). To be consistent, logical idealism,
which holds that the idea, the universal, is the only true existence,
should lead to the denial of individual immortality ; and accordingly
Biedcrmann takes his place on the Hegelian left on this question —
170 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
on the other hand^ it is equally natural that a pluralistic metaphysic,
such as that of Herhart, which holds the particular to be the real,
should maintain the immortality of the individual soul. In Herbart's
own system it is an awkward circumstance, that the consciousness
of the soul only proceeds from its being together with the reals
which form its body, which seems to raise serious doubts as to the
continuance of self- consciousness beyond death. Those real- idealistic
systems are in a more fortunate position, which, following Leibniz,
consider the soul to be an independent monad capable of infinite
development, to which death imports no more than the transition
to a new stage of growth. This theory has been ably worked out
by Krausc, and is now generally maintained by the adherents of
speculative theism : in addition to Weisse and Fichte, junr., of whom
m entionhas already been made, we may here name the philosophers
Wirth, Ulrici, Carriere, Fechner, Lotze, and Teichmliller.
It is conceded by these thinkers that no apodeictic demonstration
of the imperishableness of our self-conscious ego, or of " personal
immortality," is possible. Such a " demonstration " could only be
given if it could be shown on the ground of experience that it was
impossible, because repugnant to the facts of our consciousness, to
think a future non-existence of our individual ego. But this can
never be shown ; not only does our ego sink episodically into
unconsciousness, during sleep or fainting, but we also know notliing
of a previous existence of our ego before our present life ; but of that
which we cannot assert to have existed in the past we cannot
apodeictically prove that it will exist in the future. Hence personal
immortality cannot, once for all, be an object of knowledge, with
regard to which any statements of a positive and scientific nature
can be advanced. It is an object of hope, which is not dependent on
grounds of knowledge. All that philosophical reflection can do here
is, it appears to me, only to lend an indirect support to that hope by
refuting the arguments Ijrought forward against it, and then de-
monstrating the positive \alue of the hope, or imparting to it a more
elevated character by purifying it from all comparatively unworthy
motives.
THE DESTINY OF MANKIND. 171
If no strict proof can be given for immortality, still less is it pos-
sible to disprove it. The impossibility of immortality could only be
maintained on one assumption, an assumption which would leave us
no choice, viz., that the soul was not a substance but a mere function.
But in that case, as a function cannot be without a subject of which
it is a function, we should at once have to ask of what our soul is
said to be a function. To this question the materialists have a
ready answer : that the soul is a function of the body. Idealists,
however, regard it as a function, helped by the body and conditioned
by it, of an ideal principle, whether God or spirit or world-soul or
idea, or the unconscious, or entelechy, or whatever other name be
given to it. With all their differences in other directions, all these
conflicting views of the world come to the same result on our ques-
tion, because they all have one fundamental assertion in common,
viz., the non- materiality of individual souls. But if we test the view
before us by the facts of experience, we can prove it to be untenable.
The body is a whole set together out of many parts ; now if the
soul were one of its functions, then the fundamental fact of our
experience, the luiity of consciousness, would be unintelligible. Even
though we confine the subject of which it is a function to a part of
the body, say the brain, that does not help us ; for the brain too is a
plurality of parts outside each other in space ; now if we conceived,
as the materialists do, that our ideas were functions or products of
the molecules of the brain, the synthetic unity of the act of thought,
in which various ideas are combined together, would still be incom-
prehensible, in the absence of a central subject of this act. Then
again, the body is notoriously an aggregate of parts which are con-
stantly being added to it or taken away from it ; it renews itself
entirely in the course of a few years. If the soul be its function,
whence comes the stability of consciousness ? whence memory, which
is scarcely touched by the change of the materials of the body and
yet preserves in itself almost the whole sum of the experiences of
life ? But when the materialists point to the manifest dependence of
the soul on the body, most obvious in its sense-perceptions and its
lower states of feeling, we must first of all remind them that no one
172 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
denies that the life of the soul is in many ways conditioned by the
body, but that this proves nothing for the identity of tlie two ; and
secondly we must maintain that such an identity is positively dis-
proved by the converse of the former fact (of the conditionedness of
the soul by the body). Materialists very commonly overlook this,
but it is a fact that in the liioher relations of life our soul has an
existence of its own quite different from the functions of the body
and independent of it. Its thoughts, feelings, and efforts of an ideal
nature are its own exclusive property, incomparable with any func-
tions of the body, and in no causal connection with the latter; and
our soul finally possesses in this, its inner life, the power of govern-
ing the body, resisting its impulses, forgetting its pains, overcoming
its weakness. This is quite incomprehensible on the assumption
that the soul is nothing but a function of this very body which it so
dii'ectly and decidedly opposes ; it is quite comprehensible if we
assume that it is different from the body and has a being in and for
itself, that it itself therefore is a substance and the independent sub-
ject of its functions, which at the same time are no doubt conditioned
in many ways l^y the functions of the body through which, in our
present condition, it is compelled to act.
Scarcely more tenable, though somewhat more complicated, is
the idealistic theory that the soul is a function, brought about by
means of the body, of a universal ideal principle. According to this
hypothesis too the peculiarity which makes the universal function of
that principle this individual soul, rests exclusively on the body,
because in the universal taken by itself there could be no principle
of individuation ; and so the individual soul appears here again
primarily and immediately as the function of its individual body,
and only mediately as a result of the universal ideal principle. As
against the former conclusion we have to iusist here also on what
was remarked against the materialistic hypothesis, while the latter
conclusion makes the difficulty double ; for if the soul were im-
mediately a function of the body, it could not enter into opposition
to it, and if it were mediately at the same time a function of the
ideal, it could not be at discord with the ideal : and yet experi-
THE DESTINY OF MANKIND. 173
ence shows it to be constantly at variance with either one or the
other. A further modification of this theory is the Spinozistic
hypothesis that body and soul are the parallel forms of manifestation
or modes of function of one common substance, which regarded from
one side presents itself as matter, regarded from the other, as spirit.
But though this recognises the difference between the functions of
the body and those of the soul, the fact of their action and reaction on
each other, the mutual activity and passivity of each in its connection
with the other, is made the more incomprehensible. According to
the Spinozistic theory of the parallelism of the corporeal and the
psychical, every phenomenon on either of the two sides can only be
caused by a phenomenon in the same kind in the same series ; it is
only accompanied by the phenomenon, in a different kind, of the
other series. (" Ordo et connexio idearum idem est ac ordo et
connexio rerum.") But experience shows with a distinctness which
does not admit of doubt numberless cases in which psychical move-
ments are occasioned by bodily processes, which were in no way pre-
pared for in the soul, as well as cases in which bodily movements have
been occasioned by impulses in the soul, which had nothing what-
ever to do with the antecedent states of the body. Thus we see that
the theory of functions, whatever turn it assume, encounters insuper-
able difficulties, being unable to explain now the difference and now
the dependence on each other of psychical and corporeal phenomena.
And finally we must appeal as against the whole principle of this
theory to the fundamental fact of our consciousness that we are
immediately aware of our independent reality and of the active
causality present in our will, and that whatever reality or activity
beyond this we may come to know we can only assert as a con-
sequence deduced from that immediate fact of our ego. What right
can we have to ignore the immediate fundamental fact, or to deny
to ourselves and ascribe to something else that notion of substance
which we deduce originally only from our own ego ?
We may therefore hold fast to this, that our ego is an independ-
ent subject or substance other than the body, and this obviously secures
at least the possibility of an independent continuance of this subject
1V4 THE CONTENTS OF THE BELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
after the death of the body. Many thinkers go further tlian tliis,
and find that the notion of substance involves the metaphysical
necessity both that it can never perish and that it was never pro-
duced. Uncreatedness would certainly be the necessary consequence
of the assertion of the metaphysical necessity that the substance of
the soul is as such imperishable. But not to insist on the point
that such a consequence might entangle us in difficulties with the
notion of God and that of creation, nothing further seems to be
gained by it for the question we have in hand. For even he who
considers our human soul- substance to be essentially uncreated and
imperishable must yet admit that it did not formerly exist as this
self-conscious ego ; though he may give it pre- existence as that of
another ego (according to the theory of transmigration) or as the
dim germ-state of a psychical power with a latent capacity for con-
sciousness. In either of these cases the logical necessity is not
■excluded, that as the soul was before — in the one state or the other
— so it may be again ; i.e. that our present ego, as it did not formerly
■exist in the form of this personality, may cease to be in that form in
the future, that it may be replaced by other states of the indestruct-
ible soul substance, and this would be to give up personal immor-
tality. Hence I am of opinion that we must give up the attempt to
get beyond the possibility of immortality or to reach apodeictic cer-
tainty by means of metaphysical argumentation. But it is also quite
unnecessary that we should do so : for practical purposes it is quite
■enough if the metaphysical possibility is admitted. This is enough to
give practical motives room to assert themselves and to engender a con-
viction which, though it is, as cannot be denied, of a subjective nature,
yet need not on that account be any less warm or salutary than any
■objective conviction, any positive knowledge on the subject, would be.
In the practical motives of the hope of immortality, both pure and
somewhat impure elements may be seen at work : the more the latter
are sifted out of it, the more valuable and the more healthy does the
hope become. The idea of compensation in the other world, it has
T3een often and justly remarked, belongs, if it be admitted as a motive
•of moral action, to a lower stage of moral development. He who
THE DESTINY OF MANKIND. 175
should do right merely for the hope of future reward, or desist from
wrong-doing merely from the fear of future punishment, would of
course be no more morally good than the clever Epicurean and Egoist
who arranges his acts by considerations of utility' measured by earthly
consequences. Yet here too there are two things which should not be
overlooked. Eirst, the pedagogic value of such an idea to restrain and
overcome rude natures, and to prepare the way for a legal discipline
which may in time lead to a purer morality. In the general deve-
lopment of mankind the religion of law, of a servile and fearful spirit,
had to precede the religion of redemption, the religion of Sonship
and love ; and so too in the moral education of a particular genera-
tion, such as is the task of religion as organised in the Church, the
motives, borrowed though they be from the legal standpoint, of retri-
bution both in this world and in the world beyond, can never be
altogether dispensed with. Where they operate they must still be
pedagogically necessary ; and where they are no longer necessary,
they will of themselves cease to operate. And even if the notion of
compensation in the other world is kept up at a higher standpoint,
we are not entitled to conclude that impure moral motives are at
work. This mistake is very commonly committed by doctrinaire
criticism, when wanting in practical understanding of religious psy-
chology. Such criticism confounds the accompanying idea with the
determining motive, and fails to see that at a higher stage of moral
perfection, where pure love to God and goodness is the sole acting
motive, the idea of heavenly blessedness still possesses practical im-
portance, though not so much as at the lower stage. The idea does
not, when entertained at the higher stage, import an external com-
pensation or reward, but the ideal fulfilment of one's religious and
moral destiny, the ideal therefore of true inner perfection, which
includes in itself, it is true, perfect self-satisfaction as its natural
accompaniment, because the eternal order of the world has linked
the feeling of satisfaction to the fulfilment of one's end. The feelins;
of satisfaction is everywhere the accompanying secondary result and
the sign of the fulfilment of an end, but it ought not of itself to be
the end ; and so, to a pure moral consciousness, blessedness will not
176 THE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
be the personal end to be aimed at, but it will certainly be an accom-
panying secondary result and sign of the fulfilment of the highest
end of the personality, of the perfection of the self in communion
with and likeness to God. By this distinction the ground is cut
away both from naturalistic eud?emonism and from anti-natural
pessimism ; but important as it is, every one who is familiar wath
living human nature knows that in real life the theoretical distinction
cannot be so- clearly maintained, that in the complicated web of the
motives of human hearts the lines between pure ways of thinking
and such as are less pure are apt to run into each other imperceptibly,
so that only He who knows the hearts of men could decide with
certainty what degree of moral rightness there is in any individual
case. Hence all doctrinaire repudiating and insisting in such matters
is utterly useless and foolish. And hence the right of the educator
and of the guardian of souls must not be disputed to strike, according
to the need of the hearts they have to deal with, on this string or on
that. With infants he must be at liberty to threaten or to comfort,
by pointing to the retributive justice and faithfulness of God, but he
must also be at liberty to speak wisdom among them that are perfect
(1 Cor. ii. 6) ; that is, to speak of the love of God, which is higher
than all reason, which even now we experience in our hearts, and
from which no death can separate us (Eom. v. 5 ; viii. 39).
This naturally brings us to the higher motive of the hope of im-
mortality : the idea of the progressive development and pt^rfection of the
human personality. " Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in
heaven is perfect!" That is a brief, and it is the aptest, expression
of the destiny of man. Now perfection, generally speaking, is the
full realisation of one's nature ; and so the perfection man is bidden
to strive after will consist in this, that man's godlike natural dispo-
sition is developed in each individual, fully and harmoniously, in the
particular way specially prescribed from the outset for him. Now,
the specific human element in which the God-likeness of our nature
is to be sought is the faculty of reason, which acts in personal know-
ing, feeling, and willing, towards God and man and nature. Human
destiny accordingly may be expressed in this way : reason is to realise
THE DESTINY OF MANKIND. 177
itself as it does in God, in the knowing, the feeling, and the will of the
personality ; or as the reason of knowledge is truth, and the reason of
the heart is love, we may shortly say that man's destiny is his per-
sonal cultivation in truth and love in relation to God and to the world.
These two, truth and love, are inseparably bound up with one another ;
we can only love what we know to be true, and we can only truly
know where we lovingly seek and find communion. Now the object
of this knowledge and this love is God, inasmuch as he is in himself
truth and goodness, and the source of all that is good and true in the
world. To know therefore and to love, not only God by himself nor
the world by itself, but God along with all that is of him in the
world, or along with all that is divinely good and true in man and
in nature — to know all this, to love it, and knowinir and loving it,
to appropriate it or enter into fellowship with it : this is the perfect
life, life in God and like God, for which man is intended ; this is the
realisation of the final end of divine wisdom and love, which created
beings like himself, just that he might enter into living communion
with Him (vol. iii. pp. 299, 304).
The ideal of human destiny thus described is certainly a high one ;
we cannot fail to see what a wide interval separates it from real
human life as experience shows it to be. How limited is the circle
of the knowledge even of the wisest of men ! How narrow the
sphere of the loving activity even of the best ! How many a useful
force is called away before it has grown to maturity ; how many too
in the midst of the most fruitful activity ! And the great majority
even, at what a distance does it remain during the whole of life, from
that goal ! How many generations of mankind have passed away,
how many will yet pass away, without even being acquainted with
this ideal ! It certainly cannot be denied that these facts of experi-
ence, seeming as they do to be so directly opposed to the universal
authority of the ideal, produce a depressing and confusing effect on
human feeling, and are capable of leading only too easily either to
sorrowful resignation and despair of the attainableness of the ideal,
or to a lowering of the ideal to the level of ordinary reality ; while
in either case strenuous endeavour after the ideal is exchanged with
VOL. IV. M
178 TEE CONTENTS OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
indolent and spiritless acquiescence in life as it is. This danger of
spiritual incapacity and paralysis is most effectively met by the hope
of immortality, which finds in the other world the complement of this
fragmentary earthly existence. For the development of human
faculties in individuals and in peoples in this world, which must
always remain imperfect, it substitutes the perspective of an advance
in the world beyond, with indefinitely great possibilities of further
development and perfection ; thus lifting up the downcast by the
comfortable promise that their pains and strivings are not aimless nor
resultless, stirring up and inciting the indolent and the contented,
not to count themselves to have already attained, but to strive with
all their powers towards the mark (Phil. i. 6 ; iii. 12-15), Acting in
both these ways, as an ideal which elevates, comforts, and encourages,
and as an authority which rebukes and incites, the hope of immortality
is a motive so incomparably rich in blessings, that mankind certainly
would not give it up even if theoretical grounds existed for doubting
its possibility. This, as we showed above, is not the case, and this
hope will remain an inalienable treasure of mankind for all times.
Its value will not be lessened by the fact that we cannot know any-
thing about the manner of that future in the beyond, any more than
we can know anything about the remote future of mankind on this
earth.
Indeed, this absence of knowledge as to the manner of the future
appears not only to be no evil, but in many respects to be a very
salutary circumstance. The indefiniteness of the picture we form of
the future tends to check the inclination which easily becomes so
dangerous, to revel to such an extent in pictures of the future as to
forget the claims and the value of the present. The serious error of
denying to our earthly life its own peculiar value and its moral
justification considered by itself alone, and of degrading it to a mere
means for the life to come, is one into which the defenders of the belief
in immortality are very apt to fall ; and occasion is thus given to the
opponents of that belief for saying that it lends itself to a false and
exaggerated habit of overlooking the present with its real blessings
and its pressing duties. This reproach Kraicse was able happily to
THE DESTINY OF MANKIND. 179
avoid when he remarked in his suggestive way that as each period of
our earthly life has its own dignity, its own beauty, and is by no
means a mere preparation for the age succeeding it, so our earthly
course as a whole has, when compared to that future state, its own
peculiar value ; the fact that it is not the whole, but only a fragment,
is no reason for regarding it as vain and trifling ; and the law of
development is certainly the same now in the case of every individual
as it will be in the future, however the outward form of the state
may change. This agrees perfectly with the Apostolic doctrine,
according to which " eternal life " is begun in faith even now, and
will only be continued and completed in the future in a richer and
purer form.
Again, the indefiniteness of our idea of the future state is good
for us, because it leaves the possibility open to every one of framing
his own special representation of the future to suit his own practical
needs; and the variety of the biblical representations of the last
things makes this easy and natural. Nowhere could narrow dogmatic
insistence on any particular proposition or speculation be more to be
condemned than here. There are two main forms, however, of the
ideal of life, which being equally based on human nature, and both
alike essentially legitimate, and having found expression in a variety
of historical types (e.g. in the Lutheran and the Reformed piety and
morals — see vol. iii. p. 235), have also determined, each in its own
way, the form of the eschatological picture of the future ; for the
sake of brevity we may call them the contemplative holiday mood
and the work-day tendency to action. The former mood rejoices,
amid the toil and care, the struggles and afflictions of this present
time, in the comforting thought of the rest which is prepared above
for the people of God, where the quiet retirement of the holy day
which here below only sheds its fleeting ray for a moment on the
darkness of earth's days, will have passed into the permanent holy-
day peace and the blessed service of God enjoyed in the vision and
communion of God and of his saints. This is a lofty thought which
no one ought to carp at because his individual mood turns to some-
thing different ; it is in this thought that those natures find repose
180 THE CONTENTS OF TEE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
and comfort, which are given to turning inwards. They are not on
that account less noble : in the bewildering worldliness they now see
around them, the horrid dance around the golden calf, and the wild
struggle for existence, all of which are euphemistically called
" modern culture," they feel themselves ill at ease ; strangers here,
they yearn after a better home, after their heavenly country (Heb.
xi. 13 scqq.). Yet the others, too, are entitled to consideration, the
natures which are turned more outwards, to working and making,
forming, organising, things and men ; they hope that in the other
world too, their restlessly active power will be able to manifest itself
in new forms and spheres, and be permitted to rise in an unwearying
progress, from one stage to another, through the countless depart-
ments of labour in God's great economy. This is a powerful thought,
and is well fitted to inspire the impulse towards action, that impulse
which takes joy in life and is happy in activity, to ever new ascents,
as we see in the attractive and classical example of Goethe (vol. i.
p. 245).
It scarcely needs to be remarked, that the difference between
these two hopes of the future is not to be imagined to amount to an
antithesis, only one member of which can be adopted, as if only the
one or only the other could claim to be the whole truth of the
matter. If there are many mansions in our Father's house, care will
no doubt be taken that each individual shall get that for which his
God-given idiosyncrasy has predestined him, this one quiet Sabbath
rest, that one active labour. Even in this life the religious con-
sciousness manifests itself in this double form, in the contemplative
enjoyment and rest of worship, and in the active work of moral
conduct and scientific pursuit of knowledge, and what thus takes
place here as day succeeds day and week follows week, cannot that
take place in the other world too in a succession of longer periods ?
We know nothing about it ; we only believe that " what eye hath
not seen nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man to
conceive, God hath laid up for them that love him." But here
we stand before the mystery, the veil of which no mortal eye
has ever penetrated, or will ever penetrate ; and we now turn to the
THE DESTINY OF MANKIND. 181
description of the earthly manifestation of the religious conscious-
ness, imperfect, it is true, but not valueless nor trivial, its manifesta-
tion in the double form of the service of God in its narrower^ and
in its wider sense, in the form of worship, and in that of moral,
practical, and theoretical life.
SECTION III.
THE MANIFESTATION OE THE EELIGIOUS
CONSCIOUSNESS.
CHAPTEE I.
WOESHIP AXD CHURCH.
If the saying is correct, that iu its hope of the future religion
betrays its innermost nature, then the last chapter has confirmed the
statement with which we set out as to the nature of religion, that it
is such a reference of life to the world-ruling divine power, as seeks
to grow into a living communion with it. Now the immediate
manifestation of this consciousness and the fulfilment of this striving
is worship. Worship may be called, not unjustly, a representing
action, inasmuch as it does not aim at realising outward ends in the
world, nor seek to call forth the religious consciousness for the first
time : it assumes the latter to be the common state of a number of
men, and seeks to give to that which inwardly moves them all alike
a common outward expression in words and acts, in which every
individual finds the movement of his own feelings symbolised, in
which accordingly the ideas, feelings, and will-movements of all flow
together in one common stream, and thus mutually support and
strengthen one another. But while worship is no doubt a represent-
ing action, and undoubtedly has a certain affinity with artistic
representation, this is far from an exhaustive account of it ; besides
the aesthetic it has an ethico-teleological side which must not be
overlooked. Worship aims at attaining an ohject ; not an object in
WORSHIP AND CHURCH. 183
the outer world of phenomena, and not really an object in God, as a
naive religious consciousness may imagine, as if a certain impression
were to be produced on his disposition or his mode of action ; the
effect aimed at in worship lies in the inner part of those who celebrate
it ; it is, namely, to make them receptive for the divine influence,
or so to awaken and attune their emotions, that the religious relation
of reference to and connection with the divine may be really accom-
plished in their actual experience. Thus we may further define
worship as that manifestation of the religious consciousness in the
representing action of a community, in which its efforts after living
communion with the divine come to real and actual accomplishment.
Here two sides must at once be distinguished ; the distinction
and at the same time the close connection of the two are of the
greatest importance for an understanding of worship. On the one
side is the striving of man after living communion with the divine, a
spontaneous activity (in the first instance inward), which culminates
in self-surrender to the divine ; on the other side the experience by
man of this living communion, which is received and enjoyed by man
as a divine gift and operation. The Old Testament expresses the
former very profoundly as a seeking of God's face, the latter as a
rejoicing before God's face. In Christianity the two sides are the
foundation, each of a different view of worship, and particularly of
the Lord's Supper, two views which have always been connected
with each other, and have very unnecessarily been regarded of late
as mutually exclusive of each other. Firstly, worship is regarded as
a religious act or " sacrifice " on man's part ; and secondly, as the
means of a divine act or giving to men, — as a " means of grace," which
man on his part receives as a divine gift. It is unnecessary I say
to represent these two views as mutually exclusive, or to make them
matters of controversy between different confessions ; if we look at
the principle of the matter, it is clear and obvious that the two views
neither can nor ought to be severed from each other. If worship
were a mere human act without any corresponding " receiving," it
would be an objectless and empty ceremony, an cesthetic amusement
without any religious value. If, on the other hand, worship were
184 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS. -
a pure channel for men to receive by without any corresponding
religious and moral action, this receiving would necessarily be a
magical thing, because not brought about by any spiritual element in
the personal religious life of the receiver. We must give the name
of magic to every idea of a spiritual operation which takes place
without any preparation, or with none but a physical preparation ;
and an idea like this does not belong to the sphere of spiritual or
ethical religion, bmt to that of nature-reli"ion. For the religion of
the " worship of God in spirit and in truth " it is unconditionally
true that no experience of the divine salvation can enter the mind
in any otlier way than by the acts of the mind itself, the man must
be there with his whole knowing, feeling, and willing ego, he must
himself take part, be active, in what takes place. No revelation is
breathed into a man who is entirely passive, no operation of grace is
poured into him ; it is when the soul is seeking and striving that
there reveals itself from within, under the awakening and encourag-
ing impression of communion, the light of the higher life which
enlightens it, the power of the life hid in God, which sets it free.
This, it is true, is an operation within the spirit which is not pro-
duced by the individual ego and his arbitrary or calculated action,
but experienced by him as the operation of a higher power to which
the human subject stands in an attitude of receptiveness, but this
receiving is only possible by means of that inner activity, directed
back on the self, which we saw above to be saving " faith," or the
free act of the self- surrender of the whole heart to divine grace. In
so far then as in worship the heart opens itself up to the impression
of the divine, surrenders itself, takes the divine to itself and appro-
priates it as part of its own life, it experiences thereby a divinely
operated furtherance or a communication of living divine powei', it
becomes aware of its own life raised to a higher level, as a life that
proceeds from God and is connected with God, an experience to
which dogmatic gives the very fitting expression of 7tnio mystica. In
this mystic coming together of man with God to a conscious living
communion which is personally free, — and this is the kernel and the
end of the act of worship, — lies precisely the proper mean between
WOESHIP AND church:. 185
the empty symbolism of a mere human act (a ceremony) and the
unspiritual magic of a mere divine act (a miracle).
From the fact that worship has these two sides (and each of them
allows of being dissected into a number of processes, inward and
outward), it results that worship is never a simple act merely, but
always a transaction moving through a series of connected acts, i.e. a
drama. This notion, borrowed from art, ought not to give offence
when thus employed ; all that it is meant to indicate as applied to
worship is that the foriii in which the religious consciousness here
manifests itself is that of representative action. The contents of the
dramatic representation may be of the most varied nature ; from the
epic nature-mythology of the earliest heathenism, which turned on
the course of the sun and of nature, to the most ideal processes of
man's emotional life as they are set forth in Christian worship.
There is no intention to under-estimate the immense difference
between these two, or to deny in any way whatever the specific
superiority and uniqueness of Christian worship ; yet it is right and
proper to recognise that in point of form the common element of all
worship consists in its dramatic character, the various moments in
which the religious consciousness acts and the religious relation is
realised being set forth in a plurality of acts, which for that very
reason can only be properly judged when taken together, as being,
in conjunction with each other, the exponents of the dialectic of fact
of the religious process. This is an important point for the under-
standing of religious phenomena, and demands more attention than
is usually given to it. We find on the most cursory glance into the
history of religion abundant illustrations of it.
The earliest action in the way of worship, in the primitive history
of mankind, was nothing but a dramatic repetition of the divine life
seen in the processes of nature, with a view to taking part in it in a
mutual intercourse of gods and men. The usages connected with
the spring and autumn festivals in nature-religions everywhere show
very plainly an effort to represent the coming and the departure of
the deity of life and light, in such a manner that the changing
fortunes of the deity may be repeated and experienced afresh in the
186 MANIF.ESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
imitative acts and emotions of their worshippers. Thus in Egypt
was celebrated the complaint of Isis for Osiris, in Syria the marriage
and the death of the sun-god Melcarth or Adonis, in Eleusis the
search and the lament of Demeter for her daughter Core, snatched
away into the under-world, and then her return and reunion with her
happy mother, in Athens the death and the resurrection of Dionysus ;
all in a manner essentially dramatic and full of movement and
change, and therefore quite fitted to become the root of the drama
proper, which, it is well known, was developed out of the Dionysiac
festival-games. And as at the yearly festivals at the turning-points
of the life of nature, man took part in the life of the deity by imitating
it and sharing in the experience of it, so at the turning-points of his
own life also he sought to assure himself of the sympathy and the
blessing of the deity for himself and for his household ; hence the
manifold religious customs connected with birth, with the entrance
on puberty, with marriage and death. These usages are found in all
religions alike, the scantiest and most primitive religions of savages
not excepted ; there is no doubt that we must see in them the most
elementary forms of worship, and if this is so, then the aim of
worship was from the very beginning just what it is still in the
highest forms of religion, namely, to realise the religious relation of
living communion with the power which rules the world, or with God.
Even sacrifice and prayer are only particular incidents and means,
probably not even the oldest incidents and means of this dramatic
action in which worship aimed at communion with the divine.
The origin of sacrifice is simply this, that at festive occasions man
invited the divine powers to share in his meals. He brought their
share near to them by burning the food of the offering, and pouring
out the drink on the ground (fire and earth are the intermediaries, them-
selves divine, of the gifts). The common participation of the meal by
men and gods was afterwards lost sight of as sacrifice became priestly,
sacramental, and narrower in its idea ; but this was originally the
main point of it ; the aim was primarily to make the gods man's
guest- friends, and so to assure oneself of their friendship and alliance,
and it may also have had the intention to strengthen and inspirit the
WORSHIP AND CHURCH. 187
gods for vigorous deeds on behalf of their worshippers, as, for exaraple,
the old Indians considered this to be the meaning of their Soma-
offering. What was originally a sign and means of the league of
friendship between men and their divine guests gradually received,
as the idea of the divine dignity grew more exalted, the significance of
an act of homage, or of the offering of a tribute which was due, such as
the subject or the vassal has to pay to his king or patron. According
as this act of homage is concerned with the giving of thanks for
favours already received, or with petition for further blessings, it is a
thank-offering, or an offering of supplication. The propitiatory
sacrifice, too, finds its explanation in the analogy of primitive legal
relationships ; it is originally nothing but the offering of a penitent
in compensation of some wrong, or the " were "-money which the
offender or some of his people offers to the offended person to buy off
his vengeance. If the liability arise out of an offence committed by
a community which could be regarded as a corporate unit, against a
powerful lord, the latter might demand that one or several members
of the community should be given up to him for death or slavery, by
way of ransom for the whole ; but an equivalent might be oifered
and accepted for the human ransom, some valuable piece of property,
e.g. cattle or herds. Tlie whole of antiquity considered that any
interruption of the relation with God was to be dealt with in this
way : to soothe the wratli of the deity and buy off the disfavour
which threatened evil to the community, some valuable gift was
offered by way of ransom. In graver cases this offering no doubt
consisted generally in earlier, times of the life of a man, whose
vicarious death was thought to propitiate the deity for the others.
Only at a later time, when manners and ways of thinking became
more humane, was the deity credited with a gentler disposition, and
believed to be willing to accept the life of an animal as propitiatory
sacrifice, instead of the life of a man. The memory of this advance
in the humanising of worship is preserved in such legends as that
of the sacrifice of Isaac or Iphigenia. The moral value of these
sacrifices depends on the degree in which the offerer really felt the
pain of penitence, and the desire to have peaceful intercourse with the
188 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
deity, restored to him ; these motives were from the first symbolised
in sacrifice, in so far as it was a propitiation, along with the desire to
avert the punishment of the deity. The many no doubt laid most
stress on the outward action as such, ascribed to it an immediate and,
as it were, a compelling influence in procuring the divine favour,
and so exempted themselves from all deeper moral stirrings in con-
nection with the occurrence ; this belongs to human nature. Hence
the active polemic which profounder minds, such as the Hebrew
prophets and the Greek philosophers, waged at all times against the
superstition of an empty ceremonial service, and against carnal
reliance on the healing efficacy of sacrifice ; instead of sacrifice they
called for the moral worship of heart- and life- surrender to God and
to his holy will. But the religion of a community cannot be without
symbols of worship, and mere polemic is fruitless so long as it is not
possible to put in place of the coarse worship of ceremonies a purer
and more spiritual symbolism, which being an immediate and vivid
expression of the moral and religious ideas, is fitted to call forth in
the worshipping community the corresponding views and movements
of feeling.
This is the case in Christian worship as in no other ; here the
means of representation in word and act, and in the act its simplicity
of form, the vividness of the historical motives from which it is
derived, and the depth of its religious ideas have always, or to speak
more accurately, from the days of Paul, combined to form a mysticism
of the most effective kind. Paul found baptism and the love-feasts
in use as the fixed customs of the primitive church, but it was his
theology that connected both these acts with the cardinal Christian
idea of redemption in so immediate a way as to make them sacramen-
tal expressions and forms of communication of the Christian spirit.
Baptism occurs first in the practice of John the Baptist : with
him it is an act of penitence and of dedication to the coming
Messianic kingdom. The Christian church took it up, with
essentially the same significance ; but here the confession of belief
in Jesus as the Christ was thought to be accompanied with the
WORSHIP AND CHURCH. 189
forsiveness of a man's sins and with his receiviuf( certain miraculous
gifts of the Spirit {e.(/. ecstatic speaking with tongues, and the
miraculous power of healing). Paul's deeper notion of " faith "
caused baptism, which is the act of confessing that faith, to receive
the mystic significance of a union with Christ as the spiritual head
of the church, in which the believer grows into one person with
Christ, experiences afresh in his immersion in water Christ's death
and resurrection, and then, as a " new man " has part in Christ's life
of holiness and glory which is removed above earth's sin and death.
According to Paul baptism is a symbolic and dramatic repetition of
Christ's death and resurrection, and is thus the appropriation and
inner accomplishment of the central Christian idea of redemption by
ethical dying and becoming new. In baptism the new man, the
spiritual man, comes to the birth, who no longer stands under the
slavery of sin and of the law, but in whom the spirit of life and love,
the spirit of the children of God has sway. Thus baptism is two
things : it is the foundation of a new religious position in life
(those who are baptized into Christ have put on Christ, Gal. iii. 27) ;
and it is the obligation to a new moral life and conversation (the
promise of a good conscience towards God, 1 Peter iii. 21, Eom. vi.
3 sqq.). Here we may remember that admission to the Eleusinian
mysteries was also regarded as a sort of new birth, and that specially
the hierophant who was intended for the temple service had to take
a sacramental bath out of which he emerged a new man with a new
name, the " former things were passed away," the old man was put
off with the old name. The church fathers saw very well how like
the rite of baptism was to the solemnities of the mysteries, and they
even allowed themselves to be led away by the similarity at an early
period into ideas regarding the efficacy of baptism which were not far
removed from magic ; while baptism not only was near this danger,
but actually fell into it when the baptism of infants took the place
of the adult act of faith (this was more and more the case from the
fourth century onwards). It is evident that when baptism is ad-
ministered to infants it cannot have the same meaning as when it is
the expression of a personal faith. Yet it cannot be denied that this
190 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
custom was bound to come up in history when Christianity entered
into the form of a national church ; nor can it be denied that for the
national church it is right, permanently right. It contains the true
and profound thought, that inside the Christian church the divine
spirit of goodness and truth is the objective power, under whose
educative, purifying, and strengthening influence all individuals
stand from the very beginning of their spiritual development,
so that they have merely to grow into this spirit of the community
in which they live, to open themselves to that spirit and give
themselves up to it, in order to become partakers of its saving
and sanctifying powers. Thus infant baptism is a very fitting
expression, an expression level to the comprehension of all, of that
specific Christian consciousness of redemption according to which
the religious salvation of the community of God is not an ideal
devoid of actuality, the realisation of which is to be the aim sought
with endless pain and labour by the individual with his finite
powers, but never attained by him ; but that it is already present in
the historical community, an active and educative living power, the
redeeming energy of which each may experience who willingly
surrenders himself to its educative influence. This last element of
personal free self-surrender does not take place in infant baptism at
the same time with the outward act, but is added afterwards by
means of the education the church imparts. The latter is not the
necessary consequence merely, it is a necessary complement of infant
baptism, the unfolding in fact of the " educating grace " of the
religion of redemption which in that symbolic act was only ideally
guaranteed. Thus it is a very fitting arrangement that in the
" Confirmation " ^ w^hich takes place at the close of the religious
education of youth the personal belief of the young Christian is set
forth in a solemn confession, so that what is wanting in infant
baptism, the free personal appropriation of divine grace, is afterwards
explicitly supplied. The grace offered to the child, unconscious of
the offer, is now consciously laid hold of, and this brings about the
final ratification of the covenant of communion with God, the
1 Einsegnung.
WORSHIP AND CHURCH. 191
initiative of which was taken on God's side in the act of the church
at the beginning, but which could only be ratified by a free act on
the part of man.
The primitive Christian church was accustomed to hold regular
love-feasts at its meetings, such as were customary in other religious
communities also, for example among the Essenes. During this
meal, and especially at the solemn act of the " breaking of bread,"
the Christian thou ht of the last meal Jesus ate with his disciples,
when he himself made the broken bread a symbol of his own body,
soon to be broken in death. Thus the love-feast of the disciples
also became to them a commemoration of the last occasion when
their Master had been present with them, and of his death which
followed immediately after. Even the fact that this meal was
regularly connected with the meetings of the church for religious
exercises, conferred on it a certain religious consecration as if it
were a part of worship, yet no sacramental meaning seems to have
been even distantly attached to it, to judge from the indications in
the first Epistle to the Corinthians as to the order or rather
disorder of the observance. It was Pauline theology once more
which provided a basis for the sacramental character of this
observance. Paul compares the " Lord's Supper " as he sug-
gestively names it, with the Jewish and heathen sacrificial
feasts ; as in these the sacrifices enter into a mystic relation
with the God to whom the altar belongs, so does the Christian
with Christ at the Lord's Supper. Participation in the consecrated
cup and bread, these symbols of the shed blood and the broken
body of Christ, not only represents, but in some mysterious fashion
brings to pass a personal union with the crucified head of the
church, and thus in a sense establishes a fellowship in death, a cove-
nant of blood between Christ and all those who are his. By this
union those who share it are removed from the demonic life of the
world and admitted into a spiritual living connection with Christ, or
become " members of his body," inspired by his spirit of Sonship to
God, and stand towards God in the peaceful relation of the " new
covenant" of atonement. Hence with Paul the consecrated cup
192 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
which brings about this union is itself called the " new covenant,"
and "the communion of the blood of Christ" (1 Cor. xi. 25 ; x. 16),
and the reason given for the constant repetition of the rite is that
"Christ's death is showed forth" in it again and again, i.e. proved
as a fact to be what to Paul it essentially is — the foundation of the
new covenant in which old things are passed away and all things
are made new. Thus the Lord's Supper is taken by Paul, as well
as baptism, to be a mystic and symbolic act, in which the death
of Christ is repeated in the experience of his followers, translated
from an outward experience of an individual into an inner experi-
ence of all, into that ethical process of feeling in which the idea of
redemption is realised. Thus, according to Paul, the sacramental act
is not a mere symbol ; a mystic union takes place in it between the
participants and the spirit of Christ ; only this union is not bound to
the elements of the Supper, as if these were anything more than
symbols merely ; it is rather the act of piously partaking, a sym-
bolical social exercise of faith, that brings the participators into a
covenant for life and death with the head to whom they all look, and
with each other. In the church, however, this ideal Pauline view of
the Lord's Supper was soon turned into something more realistic,
more material ; the bread of the Lord's Supper was taken to be a
continued incarnation, as it were, of the divine Logos, and hence a
supersensuous yet sensuous medicine and elixir of life. This belongs
to the nature of all such modes of representation in worship, and comes
from the simple psychological circumstance that the inner experience
of the elevating and reviving influence of the rite is traced to an out-
ward cause, and this cause supposed to reside in the matter of the rite.
The celebration of the Lord's Supper occupied from the first a
central place in Christian worship ; and that worship consequently
was developed in a way for which I can find no more fitting term
than the dramatisation of redemption, the celebration being regarded
both as a work of revelation on God's part, and as a manifestation of
faith on the part of man. The action runs through a number of acts,
in which the mutual relation of God and man, which constitutes the
essence of the religion of redemption, unfolds itself as a repetition in
WORSHIP AND CHURCH. 193
a sort of dialogue of the dialectic which obtains in fact between the
acts of divine revelation and the answer of human faith. At first
the parts were divided between priest and people ; but at a later
time the people, especially in the Greek Church, were reduced to
mere spectators of the priest, who does everything. The action ex-
tends from the mischief wrought by Adam, which made redemption
necessary, to the hoped-for consummation of redemption in the
blessedness of the church triumphant, and thus forms an abbreviated
edition of the history of the world and of salvation, and at the same
time a symbolical prefiguration of the processes of feeling in which
redemption should be ever afresh experienced and appropriated by
the church. As a representation of the redeeming work of God it
is a means of the grace which is offered to man in revelation, while
as a thanksgiving on the part of the redeemed community it is the
spontaneous act of self- surrender by the church to God, and in this
aspect the idea of sacrifice is expressed in it in a purely ethical way.
In the thankful celebration of the sacrifice of the love of Christ the
church presents itself, the " mystic body of Christ " ever afresh, to
God, as a divinely dedicated sacrifice ; that was the original meaning
of the " Mass," or the Eucharist, as plainly appears even in Augus-
tine. But as the congregation came to take less of an active part in
the celebration, and the action became more predominantly clerical,
and as at the same time an immediate theurgic saving power was
attributed to this action of the clergy, and as mediteval Christendom,
with its more material mode of view, asked to see the divine actually
present in the consecrated host, the originally purer meaning of the
Eucharist became more external and coarser, till the magical idea
was reached of the miracle of the sacrifice of the mass, in which the
priest daily repeated the sacrifice of Christ for the benefit of the
living and the dead. Here a true and profound idea, namely, that
redemption is an experience which repeats itself ever afresh in the
church, was most fatally distorted ; instead of the ethical process in
the hearts of the faithful there was now a priestly miracle, by his
command of which the priest came to be the author of salvation, and
so the lord of the conscience, the distributor of all the treasures of
VOL. IV. N
194 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
grace, the indispensable mediator between God and the church. As
this cardinal error of Catholicism was inseparably bound up in the
priestly sacrifice of the mass, the Eeformers unanimously and with
perfect justice, directed their protests against this seat of the evil, and
insisted on the immediateness of the relation between Christ and the
individual at the Lord's Supper. In the positive view then formed
of this relation the two Protestant churches took different lines. The
Lutheran church laid stress on the faithful receiving, on the resting
enjoyment of God on the part of the communicant ; the Keformed
church on the faithful doing, on the common putting forth of the
Christian spirit which fills the church in solemn thanks and self-
dedication to God and Christ. This difference in the attitude of the
communicant's mind is closely connected with the difference in the
tone of piety cultivated in the two churches respectively ; the piety
of the former is mystic and contemplative, that of the latter ethical
and productive ; and this difference in mental attitude is the real
point of difference between the two churches : the question as to the
presence of the body of Christ is only important as a symptom. The
fact is that the two churches have each taken one of the two sides,
as sisters might, which, as we said above, are equally essential to
worship, and which were in fact combined in the early Christian view
of the Eucharist. Worship is a means of grace ; it is also an act of
sacrifice ; and each of the churches lays stress on one of these two
sides, without really wishing to deny the other. On the Lutheran
side, too, a living act of faith is required in order to a worthy par-
taking and spiritual enjoyment of the Lord's Supper : and on the
Eeformed side too it is not denied that the saving efficacy of the rite
is added to the act of faith to confirm the assurance of salvation.
From this it follows that here, as in all the points with regard to
which they have a controversy with each other, the two Protestant
churches are both right, and that they only begin to be wrong when
they claim to exclude each other instead of learning from each other.
Could they learn from each other in this matter, the Old Catholic
ideal view of the Eucharist would be called up once more ; and no
unprejudiced judge can therefore fail to admit that a reunion of the
WORSHIP AND CHURCH. 195
two churches is at this, the most hotly controverted point, perfectly-
possible, and would lead to a position more truly catholic than either
of them now occupies.
Another particular in which Protestantism has reverted to the
early Christian mode of worship is that it has given the loorcl the
prominent place which is its due in the worship of the religion of the
spirit, that word too being that which all can understand, which is
spoken in the language of the people. The action regarded by itself
may contain the profoundest symbolism, but without the word which
interprets it, it is a dumb and uncomprehended sign, which too easily
becomes for the multitude an opus opei'atum, and though it may
awaken some dull sentiment of devotion, cannot be helpful to a piety
which is aware of itself, whose understanding is clear, whose will is
vigorous. Only the word in which the spirit frames itself into a
definite thought, can make any impression on the thought or the will
of the congregation. At the very first the word was the creative
power which brought light and order into the chaos of seething
energies of life ; and in religion too, the word alone has power to
introduce any clearness into the chaos of the tumultuous feelings,
moods, and strivings of men's souls, and to give them shape in a per-
manent and living social order, in the ideal world of a community's
convictions and dispositions. And the word has to be considered in
worship in a twofold aspect ; firstly, it is the congregation's litur-
gical word of prayer, which is either directly uttered by the congre-
gation in church music, or recited for it by the minister, who here
is simply the mouth of the congregation ; and secondly, it is the
contemplative, instructive, hortatory, word of preaching, which
starts from the word of Scripture, and expounds and brings
out the sense of Scripture in which the teacher is well versed, with
a view to the edification of the worshippers. The teacher here
exercises the function of the productive "prophet" of the early
church.
Prayer is the transporting of ourselves into intercourse with God,
to find with him that salvation which the world of the finite cannot
give. When it seeks salvation from God it is supplication ; when it
196 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
celebrates and rejoices in salvation already possessed it is thanks-
giving, or more generally adoration, absorption in the view of the
divine perfection and in the feeling of having a part in it. Accord-
ing as an advanced idea of God, and an advanced state of personal
feeling has been attained or the reverse, the contents and the form
of prayer will vary. Generally speaking everything may form the
subject of supplication that man cares about, from the lower wishes
connected with his outward welfare to the loftiest desires after moral
strength and religious peace, after the fulfilment of the divine will
both in the individual and in the kingdom of God as a whole. In
low religions the former of course predominates, while the moral
element only appears gradually and sporadically, e.g. in the petition
for the forgiveness of sins ; while in Christian prayer the care for
earthly things may still be an element, may be the point from which
we set out, but cannot be the point at which we aim. Here prayer
is itself the means used in order to put off all low and selfish cares,
and to raise our minds to the one thing needful, to the absolute ful-
filment of our aim in participation in the holy and blessed life of
God, to peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. When we lift up our
minds to this supreme good, all special and conditional ends arrange
themselves under this chief end, in such a way as to be no longer
objects of desire when taken by themselves, but only in so far as they
are destined to serve the all-good and all-wise government of the
world as means to the highest good. All particular ends are ulti-
mately summed up in the one petition : " thy will be done." The
true spirit of prayer accordingly embraces on one side childlike confi-
dence in the divine love and wisdom, which knov/s and determines
what is best for us, and on the other childUke resignation to the divine
will, a temper which cannot wish selfishly to demand anything, cannot
dream that it is able to extort anything, but always remembers its
absolute dependence on the all-determining will of God. The mere
feeling of dependence on the divine power, without confidence in its
love and wisdom, leads to a dull resignation, which saps all courage
to hope and strive, and ends in joyless, actionless quietism, or in
despair. The mere feeling of confidence, again, without the humble
WORSHIP AND CHURCH. 197
and resigned sense of dependence, leads to childish wilfulness which
bids God defiance, and imagines it possible to force his power into
the service of selfish private ends. This is the mode of thought and
view which lies at the root of all magic ; for magic is nothing but
the attempt to force the supersensuous power of the deity, or of the
spirit-world, into the service of self-will by means of certain forms
of worship. The limits between this superstition and the too much
belief of selfish and defiant prayer are not fixed, but quite fluid.
Equally removed, therefore, both from spiritless resignation and from
arrogant defiance, the true piety of prayer consists in that childlike
disposition, that faithful resignation which Jesus taught us in that
pattern of all prayer : " Not my will, but thine, be done !" To
bring our mind into this the true spirit of prayer, no means is so
well adapted as common prayer in the midst of the worshipping con-
gregation. Here private interests of themselves retire before the
general aims of the moral and religious life of the community ; the
ideal goods to which the common will of the congregation is directed
in prayer, at once present themselves to the sentiment of the indi-
vidual too, as the superior, the supreme goods ; and while his in-
terest is thus engaged for them, his taste for them awakened, his
capacity for them revealed, the heart rises above the mists of selfish
cares and ties to the pure ether of the divinely good and true, the
glow of common devotion warms and softens even the unwilling
heart, purifies it from the dross of selfishness and worldliness, and fills
it with noble enthusiasm.
A specially effective instrument for creating this elevated pitch
of feeling in a number of people at once is church song, or the chorale.
Here the common prayer, for every church song is this, is actually
sung by all together, and this intensifies the effect of it; and to this
is added the use of a solemn, sustained, and powerful piece of music,
to make the impression of elevation and enthusiasm complete.
Though the chorale, as sung by the congregation, should fall always
short, more or less, of the aisthetic demands of a musical ear, yet the
great majority of the congregation is not aware of it, and even those
few who feel it to some extent will not let it disturb them too much,
198 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
if their heart is really in what is going on. The chorale " Ein feste
Burg ist unser Gott " is seldom sung quite correctly, yet at every
festival celebration it produces an incomparable effect. It is not
meant to deny that much could, and should be done for the improve-
ment of church music : a little more variety might, for example, be
introduced into the airs, the rhythm might be made, as a rule, a little
more cheerful, the pitch of voice might be lowered, so as to make it
easier for men to join in the singing, and, most of all, the singing
might be supported and led by a choir of the best voices. Again,
" liturgical services " might be arranged for the evenings of holy days,
in which a suitable selection of Scripture passages might be read,
varied with the singing, not only of chorales, but also of solo airs ;
something, in fact, analogous to the oratorio, though, of course, much
simpler, and with less pretence of art. Such a service would be
little inferior to oratorio in point of edifying effect, and it would be a
change which all would welcome, from the ordinary service with
preaching. By its lively dramatic movement, such a liturgical
service would afford a suitable mean between worship and the
popular religious drama, which, as it formerly grew out of Catholic
worship, might in time come back to the Protestant Church, not as
a substitute for worship proper (as Rothe proposed), but as a com-
plement of it, and as a link between religious and secular art. Such
a bond of union would benefit both sides ; religious art would be
enriched, and the forms it uses beautified, while secular art would be
ennobled, and taught to use deeper themes. " Verily our stage,
which has no mind but for sestheticism, might well employ the
sanctifying power of morality and religion, while sober Protestant
worship might seek more than it does, the adornment of art "
(Thoma). These ideas belong, in the meantime, to the future,
and many may shake their heads over them ; I will not here fol-
low them up further, but will only call to mind the Luther festival
plays of Devrient and Herrig, which the Jubilee of the Reformer
gave us. To me these seemed to promise much, and to be a
beginning, which may be carried further, of a popular Pro-
testant drama, a germ which needs nothing but the proper soil
WORSHIP AND CHURCH. 199
and the loving care of competent persons, to grow up into a fair
tree.^
To the liturgical word of prayer, said or sung, in which the
common religious spirit of the assembled worshippers finds direct
expression, there is to he added the word of the address belonging to
worship, or the sermon, in which religious truth finds expression
through the individual knowledge and statement of the preacher.
As liturge, the minister is only the mouth of the congregation ; he
has to express the consciousness of the congregation in the fixed
current form which the church has sanctioned. As preacher, on the
contrary, he announces Christian truth in the form which it has
assumed in his own personal conviction ; he develops its contents by
freely discussing them, he expounds the traditional forms according to
the measure and character of the insight he has attained, and applies
general truths to the special circumstances and needs of his hearers.
In point of form, j)reaching is like ordinary discourse, but it differs
from the latter in that it neither seeks to communicate knowledge,
like lecturing, in special departments of learning, nor yet like political
or forensic speaking to produce a definite conviction and resolution
to act in special departments of life. On the contrary, it seeks to
lay hold of the whole man at the centre of his personality, to conquer
his heart, to influence his moral and religious disposition, to determine
the formation of his character, with one word to " edify " him. This
edifying effect preaching produces by setting forth concretely and
definitely, with the persuasive force of personal conviction, the Chris-
tian ideal, which is the fixed basis and assumption of the conscious-
ness the members of the congregation all share with one another.
It is this combination of objective truth with subjectivity of state-
ment that constitutes the peculiar power of preaching to awaken
personal conviction and to engender religious life ; for here too, it is
true that life can only come from life. At this point, it is true, we
touch the peculiar difficulty and danger of preaching ; it seeks to
1 Compare my Lecture on " The Religious Drama," printed separately from the
Prot. Kirch. Zeitung, 1881, Nos. 19 and 21 ; also the reports on the Luther festival
plays of Devrient and Herrig, Prot. Kirch. ZeiL, 1883, Nos. 44 and 46.
200 MANIFESTATION OF TEE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
declare the truth as it is apprehended in the mind of the preacher,
and at the same time as it is taken for granted in the minds of his
hearers. But will the one without further question coincide with
the other ? It can never be expected tliat it will altogether do so.
Not to speak of the special circumstances of our time, it must be
stated as a general fact that the richer the truth is, and the more
weighty for personal life, the more must it, when reproduced by one
person, bear the stamp of an individual apprehension, and therefore
appear peculiar and new. The abler the preacher the more will the
peculiarity of the truth, as he knows it, be stamped upon his manner
of preaching, and indeed lend to his preaching its greatest charm and
value. The preacher's right cannot be disputed on general grounds
to state the truth as he individually has apprehended it, and the
question can only be as to the limits of this right, or how far the
preacher is bound to agree with the assumptions present in the
minds of the people ?
This question is readily answered by considering what is the
object of preaching. Preaching is not meant to convey information
about any object of knowledge, and should not therefore contain
statements of dogma or of history ; it is meant to edify, i.e. to pro-
duce personal religious life ; and it should therefore set forth the
truth of Christianity not in theoretical notions and formulas for the
intellect, but as a practical living ideal for the heart ; it should
paint the picture of Christian piety and morality as clearly, as
vividly, and as attractively as possible ; now developing it outwards
from the central principle to every side of the periphery, now start-
ing from one particular side of its manifestation and tracing it back
to the general principle of the Christian disposition of the heart. If
this is the essential object of preaching, then two things follow with
reference to the question asked above. First it is clear that there
must be agreement between the preacher and his church as to the
nature of the Christian ideal, or as to what is essential to the living
piety and morality of a Christian personality, and how the Christian
principle directs that the disposition be formed in relation to God
and to the world. Agreement as to this real and practical relation
WORSHIP AND CHURCH. 201
of life is the community of faith which is absolutely indispensable
for the preacher's usefulness. But as to the proper way of formulat-
ing this ideal theoretically, as to the doctrinal statements which
must accompany it as its dogmatic or historical assumptions or con-
sequences, this is not immediately connected with the end of
preaching ; it is less a question of church practice than a question
of the school, and the preacher as such can and should be left free
to form his own judgment respecting it. He may consider the dog-
matic definitions of the church symbols to be technically correct
formulas of the Christian religion, and may yet refrain from employ-
ing them, judging them to be uusuited for the practical ends of
preaching. And conversely he may regard the dogmas as defective
expressions of the faith which were only justified at a particular
time, and may yet make use of their ideas and their phraseology in
his preaching, considering this to be the readiest road to the com-
prehension of those to whom the faith is only familiar in this
form. Wliat is important for preaching and for worship generally
is not that doctrines should be theoretically correct and capable of
standing the test of logical examination, but that they should be
practically right, that they should appeal to the heart and
have the power of motives, that they should be psychologically
serviceable. This, however, is not only true of different doctrines
in very different degrees, it is a thing that depends very much
on the stage of cultivation reached by a particular congregation
both religiously and generally. Where the religious conscious-
ness of a church is so estranged from the dogmatic mode of
view of the church symbols as only to adapt itself to them with
difficulty and by laborious and roundabout reflection, there it would
be a very purposeless proceeding if the preacher insisted on these
dogmatic formulae, and sought to force them on the congregation as
if they were the very kernel of the matter, when in any case they
are no more than the human, scholastically formed vessel of the
religious spirit, the communication and quickening of which alone is
the end of worship. Where, on the contrary, a congregation lives
so imquestioningly in the traditional dogmatic ideas, that they are as
202 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
it were the mother tongue of its religion, than which it knows no
other, there the preacher will make use of these ideas, as the readiest
means of making himself understood in his efforts after edification,
whatever he may think of their theoretical correctness, whether he
regards them as a fit expression of the living truth of religion, or as
an unfit expression, as tenable or as calling for improvement. In
the former case he will only have to give heed to it that he do not
make the dogmatic form which in any case can only be a means
towards a practical end, itself the end, that he do not confound the
starting-point with the end, of the address in worship, and thereby
miss the real end of worship, the edification of the congregation. In
the second case he must no less take heed that he do not by rash
and loveless criticism of the forms of the church tradition confuse
and wound the consciousness of the cono;res;ation which is still
attached to these forms, in which case he will forfeit the confidence
of his people, and by discarding the means of reaching their under-
standing lose the means of influencing them practically. Eagerness
against dogmas is as out of place in the pulpit as eagerness for
them ; the one is as well as the other a symptom of short-sighted
and narrow-hearted dogmatism and doctrinaire-ism, which exalts
the form above the substance, confounds the church with the school,
puts theology in place of religion, and so in zeal for theory forgets
and injures life. "Grey, friend, is all theory; green the golden tree
of life." If this saying were always remembered by preachers,
ecclesiastical difficulties would often prove less formidable. But it
is a fortunate circumstance that in this matter life itself is generally
wiser than men's school-wisdom. Antitheses which men regard as
insuperable (and to logic they may really be so) practice with its
unconscious reason adjusts quite simply till they are scarcely
noticed ; theologians who confront each other irreconcilably in the
dogmatic strife, and mutually accuse each other of the most " sub-
versive errors," are led by their natural good sense to resemble each
other so closely in their practical work in congregations similarly
placed that the ear which is not theologically trained can scarcely
detect any difference between their styles of preaching. Hence the
WORSHIP AND CHURCH. 203
people comes to care less and less about the dogmatic disputes of
theologians : it regards the man and not his professional opinion ;
when once it feels confidence in the religious and moral personality
of a preacher, it no longer asks what school of theology he belongs
to. And we conceive the people are quite right in the matter, and
could only wish that as time goes on the good sense of the' people
might make its way among the ruling bodies of all the churches !
Preaching as a regular part of public worship aims at the edifica-
tion of the Christian life generally, but the minister of religion is
called to deliver addresses on other occasions (German " Kasual-rede,"
address at functions) when he has to place in the light of moral and
religious truth special experiences of individuals or of the church as
a whole, and to sanctify these by his words of exhortation or of com-
fort. The events of family life in particular ; the birth of children,
their coming of age and entrance into society, marriage and death, are
consecrated by special acts of worship, which afford the most natural
opportunity for tending the moral and spiritual life of individuals
and of families, or for the " cure of souls." In this regular cure of
souls, connected with the events which naturally occur in life, even
more than in public worship, lies the bond which connects the
individual with the religious community. As the latter in the
person of its regular organ accompanies with its blessing and with
religious observances the life of each of its members from the cradle
to the grave, it attests the loving sympathy and participation of the
body in the joy and sorrow of the individual, and makes every one,
even the poorest and the most deserted, feel that he does not stand
alone in the world, that his life, his weal and woe, matter something
to the community, and is the object of their sympathy, their care,
their intercession. In this feeling of the linked union of the body
lies the strongest motive of the individual's feeling of responsibility
to the community, by the sympathy of which he knows himself
encompassed and upheld. While the sympathy shown by the com-
munity to the individual increases his sense of the value of his life,
it at the same time educates and deepens his feeling of responsibility
for his conduct, and in his sense of honour and of shame reinforces
204 MAXIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
in the most powerful way his sense of duty. Thus the cure of souls
is the most natural and the most effective means of the moral educa-
tion of the people ; as the organ of the religious community, the
minister represents the ideal of the community or of the public con-
science ; his word of exhortation or rebuke is something more than
the word of an individual, it is the voice of the ideal moral common
spirit, the judgment of the acknowledged conscience of the people, of
the community's sense of honour and of duty, and so it possesses an
authority, an educative power such as is not possessed to a similar
degree by any other institution, neither by the civil magistrate nor
by the school.
These two must certainly co-operate with the religious community
or the church for the purpose of the normal moral education of the
people, but they will never be able to take the place of the church,
because they cannot take hold of the individual so directly as she
does, at the inmost centre of his personality, his heart and conscience ;
they also, it is true, represent what is true and good, but only on one
particular side ; they do not offer an all-comprehensive ideal of life,
they cannot bring to bear on every individual as the church does an
influence which penetrates the whole of his life. The religious com-
munity consecrates the very beginning of life with the solemn
declaration that the infant citizen of the world is called to the hisrhest
ideal, and must be conducted towards it by means of education ; then
it cares for this education both directly by the religious instruction
of youth, and indirectly by its influence on family and school ; and
even when these two are relieved of their educational charge by the
pupil's arriving at years of discretion, the church still continues, by
means of her worship and her cure of souls, to educate, to exhort, to
direct, to encourage, to strengthen. To family life, too, religion gives
the most ideal consecration by representing the marriage-bond, not
as a mere legal contract, though it no doubt is this in the first instance
in civil society, but as a community of hearts knit in God, which
conscience is charged to keep sacred and inviolate. Then in
civil life, where the harsh riiihts of man look to notliinc; but the
letter of the law, wdiich so frequently involves cruel injustice to those
WORSHIP AND CHURCH. 205
more slenderly equipped for the struggle for existence, there the
religious and moral community steps in, whether directly as the
church, or indirectly in the associations and institutions it has called
into existence by appeals to the sentiments of compassion and charity ;
the religious community redresses the inequality, supports those who
are sinking, and represents those eternal unwritten laws of humanity
which are not codified in the laws of any state. And finally, where the
law can no longer put forward any claim, where all knowledge and all
power are at an end, and only the voice of sorrowing and yearninf
love is heard ; at the border of the grave it sets up a standard of hope.
It is this indissolubly close connection between the institution of
religious worship and the institution of the moral education of the
people that constitutes the distinctive characteristic of the Christian
church as compared with other religious communities. The popular
religions of antiquity never produced a " church " in the proper sense
of the word, and that because the civil and the religious community
were still one, worship was a matter pertaining to the state, and those
who officiated at it were state officials, and formed no special union
distinguished from the civil community. Worship had no doubt a
very close relation to the objects of the state, and it would be wrong
to deny that the popular religion had a great deal to do with the
manners of the people generally ; yet scarcely anywhere in antiquity
do we see such a thing as a regular moral education of the people by
the representatives of worship. Some faint beginnings of such a
thing may be seen here and there, as, for example, in the flourishing
period of the Delphic worship of Apollo, the priesthood of which
exercised a moral educative authority as promulgators of the Pythian
oracles ; but this influence was limited to the occasional emergencies
of public life, and never amounted to a moral leadership of all the
classes of the people. The popular worship was in general far too
external and ritualistic, and was based too much on naturalistic
assumptions to allow it to exercise an ennobling and formative moral
authority. Hence the sages of Greece, like the prophets of Israel,
were generally in opposition to the priesthood, and expressed very
depreciatory judgments on the value of the ritual of worship. In his
206 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
ideal state Plato did not intrust the education of the people to the
priests, but to the statesmen and philosophers. In Israel it was not
the priests but the prophets of the monarchy, and after the exile, the
scribes and teachers of the synagogue who worked, quite apart from
the priests, and often in opposition to the priestly ritualism (vol. iii.
pp. 140, 144), at the moral and religious education of the people. The
synagogue, with its spiritual worship, which was limited to the con-
sideration of the scriptures and to prayer, was, it is true, the pre-
cursor of the church, and partook to some extent of the same
character ; but in the first place it was not the whole religion of
Judaism, it stood outside the powerful organisation of the priesthood
and its sensuous worship in the central sanctuary, and in the second
place it was always tied to the Jewish law, which, by its national
peculiarities and by its ritualistic elements, opposed an insuperable
obstacle to any purely moral and widely human education on the part
of the synagogue. The same is the case with Islavi ; though it has
been much more fortunate than the synagogue in its propaganda, and
deserves great credit for the way in which it has tamed and discip-
lined rude tribes, yet it is not suited for the moral education and
spiritualisation of mankind, held back, as it must always be, by its
legal positivism, originally devised for a single people only. The
first religious community to overstep the barriers of race, and to
become a world-religion, was, as is well known, the Buddhist ; and
this it was able to do by overlooking the Brahmanic ritualism and
dogmatism, and addressing itself to men as such, meeting the desire
of their hearts for peace and freedom by its helpful preaching of
redemption. Nor can it be denied that in this idea of redemption,
which forms the centre of the worship also of Buddhism, there lay a
morally educative, purifying, and restraining power : history itself
proves how admirably Buddhism was adapted to tame rude tribes of
barbarians. Yet the Buddhist church too suffers from a tremendous
one-sidedness : it cannot conceal its origin from a world-avoiding
community of ascetics. Originally it was nothing but an order of
monks, which was then joined by a great company of lay brothers
and sisters, and the educative influence this community was able to
WORSHIP AND CRUBCH. 207
exercise on tlie people was always impaired by the limitations of
monasticisni ; its ideal was only the negative ascetic one of self- and
world- renunciation, not the positive one of the sanctification of
individual and social life ; hence its influence on the historical life
of the people went less to enliven and to form, than to impede and
to unnerve.
The Christian Church, on the contrary, possesses in a peculiar
degree a positive power to educate and to make history. From the
first she was conscious of her calling to be the " salt of the earth,"
the " light of the world," and she has always been guided by the con-
sciousness of this, both in the attitude she has taken up towards
secular life and in her inner organisation. Though at first holding
zealously aloof from the " present world," and eagerly looking for the
kingdom of Christ spoken of in the Apocalypse, which comes down
from heaven, she was yet intent on conquering the world for this
kingdom and on preparing the way for the future condition of the
world by the conversion and sanctification of men. But what
appeared at first more as a means for an end situated in the other
world, became in the progress of time, as the hopes of the future
paled and retreated to the background, an end in itself. Thus, out
of the church of those contemners of the world who hoped for the
second coming of Christ, there grew the world-governing church,
which saw in the education of the nations her historical calling and
her immediate task. However strongly the action of the Catholic
world-church was marked at every period with human weakness and
passion, we cannot fail to acknowledge that the leading motive of her
politics, both external and internal, sprang from this well-grounded
consciousness of her call to be the educator of mankind. To gain
the world she accommodated herself to the world ; to lead the nations
she not only tolerated in many respects, and on a large scale, their
customs and ideas, but even adopted them in her own worship and
belief. To educate the world of the heathen nations by degrees to
Christian thinking and living she had need of those dogmas so won-
derfully adorned with mythology and philosophy, she had need of the
elaborate apparatus of worship which hovers between the darkness of
208 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
mysteries and the splendour of the world's pomp, and captivates the
heart with the magic of fancy. She had need also of her clergy,
' organised as a unity, holding an independent position as regards the
secular power, equipped with superior dignity and authority in the
eyes of the people, the clergy which found so powerful an ally in the
monastic orders. Both the inner struggles of the church against
heretics and separatists, and her outward struggles against emperor,
king, people, and city, admit of being regarded and understood as the
natural consequences of the great idea of a universal institution for
the education of the peoples, in which the mediaeval church saw her
mission, both her right and her duty, a mission which, to a certain
degree, she actually fulfilled.
All this we Protestants need not scruple to admit, especially with
regard to the earlier centuries of the Middle Ages ; yet, at the same
time, we cannot help seeing the mischievous consequences which
sprang out of the church's efforts to rule the world, and which,
though at first outweighed by the benefits of her wholesome education,
yet afterwards led to abuses which grew ever more intolerable and
pernicious. It was, of course, very natural that amid the struggles of
the early church with enemies without and within, the bishops should
rise above the modest position they originally occupied of men freely
chosen by the church on account of the confidence felt in them, and
assume the dignity of dominating persons of authority, representa-
tives of Christ and successors of the apostles ; so much we find even
in the Pastoral Epistles, and still more in the so-called Ignatian
Epistles, about the middle of the second century. It was equally
natural that as Christ was removed to the mysterious darkness of
the Trinity, and as the miraculous element in worship increased, a
reflection of the supernatural shovild fall on the office of the bishop
as the representative of Christ and the performer in worship, so that
he should appear as the specific vessel of the Holy Ghost, as the sole
depository of infallible truth and of saving grace, as the keeper of the
keys of heaven and the mediator between God and the church. But
it is not less clear that when this took place Christianity had fallen
from the moral and religious elevation it possessed at first, to a lower
WORSHIP AND CHURCH. 209
position. In place of the universal priesthood of the immediate inter-
course with God of all believers, there was now separation of the
church from God ; it was bound to the mediatorship of the priest.
Instead of the pious heart's immediate certainty of saving truth, the
conscience was now dependent on human authorities and external
means of grace. A new state of servitude had been brought in,
destructive in point of religion of the satisfying confidence felt by the
child of God in divine grace, and in point of morals of the satisfying
freedom and dignity accompanying the personal self-determination of
the Christian man.
When the Reformation rediscovered in faith, in the immediate
surrender of the heart to God, the sole source of salvation, then the
freedom of the Christian man from priestly mediation and ecclesiasti-
cal tyranny, the immediate access of every individual to divine
grace, the individual conviction of each man concerning divine truth,
or, in a word, the universal priesthood of Protestant Christianity was
won back, as primitive Christendom had possessed it in the Apo-
stolic age. This, of course, made the relation of the clergy to the con-
gregation an entirely new one. Tar from having become superfluous,
from the universal priesthood of the community (as some fanatics
supposed), the clerical office now came to its true place, the place
demanded for it by the spiritual and moral nature of Christianity ;
no longer in an unnatural position of superiority to the church, it
was now fitted into the body of the community as its natural organ.
The Protestant minister is no longer the priest with supernatural
official character and power to rule over the faith and life of the
church ; he is the " minister of the word," or of the Christian spirit
by means of the word which, as speaker in public worship and in the
cure of souls, he declares and applies " in the name and by the
authority " of all — for the word belongs to the whole church. He
is distinguished from the other members of the congregation by his
social calling as the organ of the moral and religious community,
precisely as the civil magistrate is distinguished from the ordinary
citizen. The difference is one of social calling merely ; it involves
no religious superiority, no specific relation to God different from the
VOL. IV.
210 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
universal priesthood of the faithful, no specific worldly authority as
distinguished from the royal freedom of all the children of God : in
fact, no mysterious sacramental or hierarchical official character.
Hence, too, in his relations to civil order and to the magistrate as
representing it, he claims no exceptional position, no exemption from
those obligations of the subject which are incumbent on all ; he does
not claim that his order is on a level with the civil magistrate, or even
superior to him ; he does not seek to encroach upon the magistrate
in the civil government, to prescribe or to forbid laws, or to subject
state policy to the church's ends. He does not seek to found a state
within a state or above the state. All claims of a worldly church
policy, such as characterise the Eomish church are, according to the
Protestant view, entirely foreign to the clerical office, because it does
not seek to rule but to serve in the community.
Should this renunciation of worldly power and rule make the Pro-
testant church less able to fulfil her task in the moral education of
the people, than the Catholic church of the Middle Ages ? Or does
the church no longer need to attend to that task, may she leave it to
the state and restrict herself to her functions in worship only ?
Neither of these opinions is true, or could ever be held except by one
who drew no adequate distinction between moral and religious educa-
tion and the compulsion of police and law. The fact is that the
Reformation for the first time put the church in a position to fulfil
its educative task in the moral and spiritual way in which alone jus-
tice can be done to it. The Eeformation drew a clear distinction
between the sphere in which the Gospel operates, or the sphere in
which the moral and religious disposition rules (" the Kingdom of
Christ " Luther called it), and the sphere of the world's law, or the
sphere of civil right ; these two spheres the Reformation taught us to
regard as two modes of the appearance of the kingdom of God,
different from each other in quality and yet never to be abstractly
divided and torn asunder. That distinction was demanded by the
Protestant principle of freedom of belief and of conscience ; but
on the other side the Reformers had so deep a conviction of the
divine appointment of the civil magistrate, and of the moral import-
WORSHIP AND CHURCH. 211
ance of the law and order in which the life of a people is framed,
that they thought it necessary that the church should lean on the
state and should form one of the civilly regulated institutions of the
nation. It was this distinction of the church from the state, and,
at the same time, this making the church a member of the civic order
of the nation, that provided the proper sphere for the evangelical
church ; a sphere in which she can and will fulfil her call to the
moral education of the people with far greater purity and with a
richer blessing than ever could the Catholic world-theocracy.
The cry for the " separation of Church and State " is now heard
in many quarters, but this may be very easily accounted for when we
remember the endless controversies between church and state, which
are generally equally embarrassing and injurious to both parties. But
while it is natural and legitimate that disgust should be expressed at
these controversies, it would be going far beyond what the case
requires if such a radical cure were resorted to for such evils as the
separation of church and state would undoubtedly be. Before we
make up our minds to such a step, the consequences of which no one
can calculate, and which must at least violently convulse the whole
life of the people, we ought earnestly to consider the question whether
such disagreeable conflicts are not rather temporary and fortuitous
phenomena than symptoms of any permanent or essential hostility,
and whether, by the exercise of a little prudence and moderation on
both sides, they might not be avoided, or at least kept within
bounds ? And here it is very necessary to observe that the church
should not be spoken of in the slump. The relations of the different
churches to the state vary very much, and it would be a great injus-
tice to the Protestant church to judge her in this respect as on the
same line with the Church of Eome.
The Church of Eome, indeed, is prevented both by her theocratic
principle and by a history of a thousand years, from entering into a
genuinely peaceful relation with the autonomous state, which is the
expression and the promoter of modern civilisation : she would have
to renounce her claim to rule the world, i.e. she would have to re-
nounce herself, before she could desist altogether from the attempt to
212 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
guide the external and internal policy of states, or to bring the order
of society, marriage, the education of children, school and science into
subjection to her maxims and interests, which are at least as much
secular as spiritual in their nature. But the modern State can never
yield to such an attempt without giving up her sovereign self-deter-
mination, i.e. herself ; and so there can never be genuine peace
between the modern state and the Eomish church, but, at the best,
merely a tolerable modus vivendi, in which both parties are incessant-
ly on the alert, the one watching for an opportunity to invade the
state's sphere of rule, the other concerned to maintain its household
law and to keep back the church in her own limits. In the very
interests of self-preservation, the state never can and never must
maintain an attitude of indifference towards the Catholic church.
To leave alone a church of such immense resources, of such inde-
fatigable ambition, so unscrupulous, so unhesitating, and so wary in
the choice of her means, as experience proves the Church of Eome
to be, to pay such regard to abstract theories of freedom as to leave
such a church alone, whatever she may do, would manifestly be a
great folly, for which the state which committed it could not fail to
suffer grievously. Once let the priestly church, protected by a
regime of laisser /aire, have the field prepared for aggression, and the
state which has been thus deluded wdll soon find that freedom
means nothing in the mouth of that Church but unlimited rule over
every one and every thing. With respect to the Catholic church,
therefore, the interest of the state in its own preservation forbids an
abstract separation of church and state.
"With respect to the evangelical church the case is somewhat
different ; it can scarcely happen that the state should feel its
independence seriously threatened from this quarter. It may
happen here from time to time that attempts are made on the part
of ecclesiastical zealots to encroach on the sphere of the state,
but even these are mere chance excesses of individuals : they have
no foundation in the principles of the Protestant church ; nay,
these principles quite cut away the ground from them. For in
principle the evangelical church makes no pretence to worldly rule ;
WORSHIP AND CHURCH. 213
in principle it recognises the divine right of the civil magistrate to
regulate and direct civil life in all its parts, and the plain duty of
all citizens to obey the magistrates in all things not contrary to
conscience ; in principle it adapts its own church order to the exist-
ing circumstances of the country where it may happen to be, and as
an institution willingly takes its fitting place in the organism of the
life of the people. Nay, the Protestant church has always, from its
birth, been so full of confidence towards the civil power, where that
power was not directly hostile to her, that in many instances she has
placed in the hands of the government of the state the drawing up of
her own constitution and the direction of her corporate business. By
a church which concedes to the state such extensive rights, the
state can never have to fear that its interests will be endangered.
And this adds force to the consideration that the state has not
only rights with regard to the church, but also duties, which it can-
not refuse to discharge without inflicting serious injury on the
commonwealth, not even if it does so on the specious pretext of the
•' freedom of the church," whether demanded by zealots for the
purity of the church or by the doctrinaires of liberalism. The
duties of the state towards the church are, like duties in all social
relations, of a twofold nature, both negative and positive : the
former demand a respectful consideration of all that belongs to the
peculiar inner life of the church, of its faith and worship ; the latter
requires the helpful furtherance of the church in all that belongs to
her outward social station and activity, which we comprehend in the
notion of the " institution for the moral education of the people."
We can now see how important and how charged with practical
consequences in the matter of the relation of the church to the state
is the distinction drawn above between the two sides of the church
as an institution for religious worship and an institution for moral
education. The more the state respects the freedom of the church
on the former side, and protects it from all attempted oppression
whether from without or from within, the more the state takes
the action of the church on the latter side under its own regulative,
guiding and furthering charge, the more certainly will all conflicts
214 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
be avoided, and the more will the two institutions fill up each
other's Avants and promote each other's welfare.
The blessing will not be on one side only. A little consideration
is enough to show that the state can no more do without the church
than the church can do without the state. The power of the laws
of the state goes no further than its power to enforce them, no
further, that is, than the outward doing or leaving undone. But the
dispositions of men, on which the permanence of all social order
ultimately rests, are not to be commanded by laws or forced by
police regulations. Nor must we forget that the idea of the state,
which no doubt supplies of itself a lofty and elevating moral motive,
lies as a fact quite out of the reach of the great majority of men. It
is an abstraction to them which excites no emotion in their breast.
Most people only come into close contact with the state through
the taxgatherer, a contact not conducive to enthusiasm, as no one
can fail to admit. Some point to the school as an omnipotent
instrument in the hands of the state for the formation of well-
disposed citizens. There is no doubt that the school is an admirable
instrument of education; but in the first place its influence is
much too brief in its duration to be sufficient by itself, and
in the second place even while it lasts it depends much more
than is generally supposed on the co-operation of the family and
the church. Without this co-operation or in opposition to it, it
may be doubted if the school could do much to form the moral
disposition of its pupils. It certainly cannot do much in that
direction at present when it is so much under the influence of the
positivist and utilitarian spirit of the age, a spirit which attaches so
much importance to cramming the memory with the greatest possible
quantity of knowledge, as necessarily to neglect the harmonious
formation of the whole man, which embraces other things besides
knowledge, namely soundness of feeling, of fancy, and of the bodily
frame. An improved technique in the method of teaching, the
increasing demands of practical life, the many-sidedness of the
cultivation of the present day, and other similar considerations,
may be put forward to excuse the tendency complained of ; but
WORSHIP AND CHURCH. 210
none of them is able to remove the serious apprehension that as
young heads are increasingly burdened with chaotic and ill-arranged
rote-work put into them undigested by a mechanical system of
cram, the result must be the opposite of nobility of disposition or of
thorough formation of character ; viz., that unblessed half cultiva-
tion, both hlasd and lost in self-conceit, which knows a little of
everything but nothing right, and hence has no heart left for any-
thing, no respect or piety for anything, in its self-sufficient conceit
of knowledge regards everything ideal as so much ancient rubbish,
and in this sceptical, nihilistic mood becomes the prey of every
charlatan and false guide !
If ever an age required an ideal counterpoise to the rude and
coarsening supremacy of matter, of physical and intellectual material-
ism and positivism, it is certainly our own. And such a counter-
poise is found first in the Christian moral education of the people,
such as is afforded by an ecclesiastical cure of souls, in the widest
sense of the word, and wisely conducted. This education has first
of all the incomparable advantage that it does not build morality in
the air, but on the foundation of a religious view of the world, which,
founded in the education of the young, is ever anew confirmed in
the church's regular acts of worship, in which, as we saw above
in our discussion of w^orship, edification and the formation of the
disposition depend less on definite dogmatic formulas than on a true
and clear ideal of life. Then again the education of the cure of
souls has the great advantage that it goes through the whole of life,
and that it is connected with the important experiences of the life of
each individual, with the seasons when his mind is moved by joy or
sorrow and most receptive and open to the words of sympathising
love, of comforting faith, of serious admonition. And as it represents
amid the changes of time that truth which ever remains the same, it
also dispenses the common word of truth with impartial equality to
all. No castle is too grand for the minister of the word, no poor
man's hut too mean for him to bring his spiritual gift there, and
proclaim there too the sacred and sanctifying word of the Gospel.
Where in this age of ours, which boasts so much of universal equality
216 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
and humanity, but in practice is making the gulf between the differ-
ent classes wider than it ever was before, — where is there another
institution that is in the noblest sense of the word so popular,
which not only, like the state, demands the same from all, and pro-
mulgates the same criminal laws for all, but which brings to all
alike the same sympathising love, treats the souls of all with the
same care and tendance ? And not only their souls ; for the
needs of the body too, for the care of the poor and of the sick the
cure of souls as organised in the church is the most natural centre
and point of departure. However useful the civil care of the poor
may be, it is bound by its form as law, it is too awkward, too stiff,
too slow, everywhere to bring the needed help at the right time.
IVIuch more readily will the distressed confide in the pastor, and the
pastor's eye is much better able, with its practised insight into
human circumstances, to understand the complicated situations in
which sin and misfortune are often so inextricably linked together ;
and while he provides the means to relieve the immediate necessity,
he adds to his outward gift the spiritual one of the word of comfort
and encouragement or of exhortation and rebuke. The pastor who
goes both to the rich and to the poor, softening the hearts of the
former to mercy and beneficence, and filling the hearts of the latter
with courage, confidence and contentment, is just in virtue of this
work the most effective reconciler of social antitheses, and can exor-
cise the dangers of class hatred better than any civil power. More-
over, the educative influence of the minister is not confined to his
directly official activity ; his very existence in the parish is a constant
reminder to the parishioners of the higher world of the kingdom of God,
whose representative, advocate, witness and pattern they see in him.
His peculiar position, between that of an official to be regarded with
awe and that of a fatherly friend and confidant, adds a weight both
to his person and to his counsel and opinion, which no one else en-
joys in a similar degree. Especially in the simpler circumstances of
rural parishes the respected minister is usually the incorporate con-
science of his flock, the representative and the pillar of public
morality and authority : to the common man the respect and piety
WORSHIP AND CHURCH. 217
which is felt towards the personal worth and official dignity of the
minister represents in a concentrated form all and every feeling of
piety towards the authorities both of the visible and the invisible
world. Thus it may be said that the evangelical minister too is
a mediator of the higher world to his congregation, only not in the
dogmatic and hierarchical sense in which the Catholic priest is so,
but in the ethical sense of a witness and a teacher, a personal
representative of the Christian ideal, who does not separate them
from God by standing between God and them, but points them and
leads them to God. The same difference in the notion of the
mediator, which we noted in our chapter on that subject, meets us
here too as the distinctive difference between the Catholic priesthood
and the evangelical pastorate.
It appears very clearly from the above how valuable, indeed how
indispensable, to the state is the moral education of the people by
means of the pastorate of the church ; and if this is so, it follows
that the state should do all it can to aid the church in this work.
It must recognise the clergy as one of the regular institutions of the
organised life of the people, must extend to it legal protection,
assure its permanence, sanction its public authority, arrange its
functions outside of worship, and regulate its relations with the other
organs of social life. Further, it must see to it that the minister is
freed from worldly cares, and placed in a position of dignity by the
receipt of an adequate stipend, without which his moral authority
can scarcely be maintained, since penury entails dependence on all
hands, and makes a man less regarded of his neighbours. Then
again, it cannot possibly be a matter of indifference to the state
whether the servants of the church, who are not merely the organs
of her worship, but as educators of the people are the state's own
organs and servants, are properly equipped or not for this high
function by means of proper training. A minister who is quite
apart from, quite closed to, the cultivation of his age and of his
people, may be ever so respectable in point of personal character ;
but his influence as a pastor will necessarily be both limited in its
range — for he must be a stranger to the circles of cultivated society
218 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
— and one-sided in its nature ; for he cannot understand many of the
interests and questions by which the thoughts and feelings of his
contemporaries are agitated. Hence the state justly demands from
all the servants of the religious communities which it recognises
such a measure of general cultivation as the university affords. Nor
is there anything excessive in the demand that the university studies
of those future servants of the church and of the state — for pastors
are both of these at once— should not consist of an exclusively pro-
fessional course of theology, but should embrace a wider field, and
deal with the history of man's whole mental life. This demand is far
from being met by a small appendix of two or three extra-theological
courses of lectures being tacked on to a theological course, which is
conducted mainly from the points of view of the church. It might
be the simplest way to solve this difficulty as well as others con-
nected with it, if the university course for the service of the church
and that for the higher part of the scholastic profession were brought
into close connection with each other, as was formerly everywhere
the case ; if both proceeded together for a considerable distance, so
that it should be easy to pass from the one to the other. It would
certainly be a good thing for both parties, for the church and for the
school, if the training of the servants of both were thus combined ;
it might help to cure the one-sidedness both of philological
formalism and 'of theological dogmatism. Could this be brought
about, the evil rivalry which now subsists between church and
school would at once be removed, and instead of it we should see an
ultimate co-operation of the two throughout all the stages of school
education. The valuable capital of higher cultivation possessed by
the minister, which at present often lies quite unproductive, espe-
cially in simple country parishes, would then be utilised, as even
now it ought to be, in co-operation in the work of the school, and
would become fruitful of a sound Christian and human education of
the people.
At present the tendency of the age seems to be in the contrary
direction, not towards a more intimate union, but towards a sharper
separation between the church on the one side, and the school and
WORSHIP AND CHURCH. 219
society on the other ; on the side of the world the church is repre-
sented as an antiquated institution Avhich is hindersome to progress,
and is jealously repelled from all participation in public life ; while
on the side of the church there prevails partly a forced self-repres-
sion and partly an attitude of sulking. This is an unhealthy state
of matters, and extremely prejudicial to the common weal, and as
there are faults on both sides, a sensible understanding is not per-
haps to be despaired of. Society should see that it simply cannot
dispense with the education of the people by the church, and that
nothing whatever can take the place of that. And the church on
the other hand should see that the educative work she has to do for
society, and which is so necessary for society, is not bound up with
definite dogmas, however valuable these may be for .worship, for the
simple reasons that, if that were so, the different confessions could
not all be carrying on that work, as we yet see that they do. So
long as the church insists on accompanying the blessings of her
moral education with fixed dorrmatic convictions and formulated
confessions as her conditio sine qua non, she will not cease to en-
counter a growing resistance, and she will be placing her light under
a bushel, to the world's loss. If, according to the word of her
founder, she seeks to become the liffht of the world and the salt of
the earth, she must learn to distinguish between the Christian ideal, a
universal thing which as teacher of the people she must bring home
to the people and impress on the heart of the people by means of the
current language of the day ; and those ecclesiastical dogmas and
usages, which, framed by the fathers for the purpose of worship,
have their legitimate place, their only legitimate place, in worship,
Avhich cannot well do without some degree of stability in its forms.
Even here, indeed, these dogmas and usages are not an end in them-
selves ; they are only the means, the point of departure, which it
must be left to the tact of the preacher to interpret and to deal
with as he finds it advisable.
The constitution of the church, finally, cannot be a matter of in-
difference to the state, simply because the manner in which the
various organs of the church discharge their office depends on it.
220 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
As regards the Catholic church, the state can exercise no influence
on her constitution, as it rests on the historical tradition of a
thousand years, which the church herself — by an immense historical
fiction — traces back to Christ's own institution. But the more is the
state entitled to reserve for itself a voice in the filling up of the
higher ecclesiastical dignities, such as bishoprics and archbishoprics,
within its own territory, and to claim the right to object to persons
whose influence it has reason to expect wall be prejudicial to the
peace and order of the commonwealth, and ultimately to interdict
them from the further exercise of their oSice. This right, which the
Catholic state has always claimed and exercised, the Protestant state
ought also to assert, as an indispensable means of self-defence with
a view to its own self-preservation.
It belongs to the principles of Protestantism that it regards ques-
tions as to the constitution of the church from quite a different point
of view from that of Catholicism. To the latter the church is an
organised society in the form of a state, a hierarchical power or
theocracy, and as such an absolute end in itself, to which end all the
functions of worship are only the means. To Protestantism, on the
contrary, the church service of the congregation or the " ministry of
the word " in worship and in the cure of souls is the highest end of
the church, and all the arrangements of church government are
merely the means in order to the regulation of that function in the
most suitable manner possible. Here, accordingly, the form of
church government or the constitution of the church is not a ques-
tion of religious importance, and can never become an article of
faith, as the authority of the Pope is to Catholics. It is a question
of utility merely, and may admit of different answers in different
places and times. Hence, too, the Protestant churches of the Ke-
formation assumed different forms of constitution.
The Reformed church built up its constitution on the basis of
the congregation, in the elective and representative bodies of Pres-
byteries and provincial and national Synods. This form, it must be
admitted, answers most closely to the Protestant notion of the
universal priesthood of Christians, and wherever it was introduced
WORSHIP AND CHURCH. 221
originally in favourable conditions, it has shown a great facility of
self-preservation and self-extension, and great efficiency of church
organisation. Without this democratic constitution, which brings
the whole church to take part in church government, the tough
endurance of the Calvinistic churches in bearing persecutions would
not have been possible ; they could not have shown so keen a spirit
of enterprise, such power to found or to revolutionise states, so strict
a discipline ; they could not have attained such an eminent position
in the world's history. The Lutheran churches, on the contrary,
which are governed by provincial consistories composed of theologians
and lawyers, have been from the first rather theologians' than
people's churches. This is not the same thing as the Catholic
hierarchy, but somewhat nearer it; what we have here is not a
priesthood equipped with supernatural powers of salvation, and with
the jurisdiction of the father confessor ; but a class of theologians,
with privileged knowledge of scripture and authority to expound it,
stands above the laity of the congregation, which is thus once more
depressed to a certain position of minority and made the object of
spiritual pedagogy. There was a time, no doubt, when this pedagogy
was legitimate and useful, even within Protestantism ; it is an
incontestable historical fact that during and after the Thirty Years'
War it was principally the Lutheran clergy who preserved for the
down-trodden German people its religion and morals, and thereby its
power of self-preservation. But the other side of this bureaucratic,
police-like church government did not fail to appear. As the state
is the business of the magistrate, so the church appeared to be the
business of theologians, not a concern of the laity ; and the less the
congregations took part in it, the slighter became the influence of the
church on the religious and moral life of the people. To pietism
belongs the merit of having made the gulf between the clergy and
the congregation somewhat less wide, of having made the church
more popular, the people more ecclesiastical. Eationalism, too, had
a good influence in this direction ; with its straightforward hon sens
it drew the clergy away from dogma to ethics, and from the study to
the practical life of the congregation. The anti-rationalist reaction
222 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
of the present century was no doubt justified in many ways, but in
this it M'as not happy, that in recalling the clergy to a strict ortho-
doxy, formed on the standards of the church, it also awakened in
them the consciousness of their official and class position, and so
widened the gulf between the clerical profession and the people in a
way which both sides have reason to deplore.
It was natural that an attempt should be made to remedy this
evil state of things by bringing the laity to take part in the govern-
ment of the church. Thus, during the last few decennia, synods
have made their appearance in nearly all the state churches of
Germany, bodies which share the government of the church with
the consistories, which still continue to exist — a union of the
Lutheran and the Eeformed system of Church government. The
result of this innovation, it must be confessed, has only very partially
answered to the high hopes amid which it was made. The fear
which those not directly implicated in the matter felt, that a time
like the present, in which men's minds are moved with such force
and in such opposite directions in matters of religion, might not be
happily chosen for the introduction of a democratic church constitu-
tion, appears so far to be justified by experience. The first result of
the synods was, that antithetical tendencies in religion and theology
which formerly were rather latent and undefined, took shape in
definite parties in church politics, so that all the evils of party in
parliamentary life were imported into the sphere of the church.
Violent party spirit, and in consequence disregard of the common
cause ; the domination of party leaders, men distinguished only by
their familiarity with the forms of business and by unscrupulous
determination, the darkening of calm judgment of the matter in hand
by the introduction of the most heterogeneous motives and party
interests both of church and of general politics, the oppression of
minorities, and inroads upon the rights of the civil government —
these are the shadows which have thrust themselves into notice even
more quickly and more fatally in the parliamentarism of the church
than in its political prototype.
It will not be possible to get rid of the synods, however, any
WOBSRIP AND CHURCH. 223
more than of the parliaments. But there will be the greater need,
on account of these abuses, to hold fast the supremacy of the state
over the church, and rather to strengthen than relax its guiding
hand. The state is everywhere the representative of the whole as
against the centrifugal motion of its parts, it represents steady
development as against violent leaps, quiet reason and justice as
against the changing parties and opinions of the day. It is the high
office of the state in unquiet times of church party struggles to keep
its hand on the rudder of the church, and with wise foresight to
prevent her from running upon rocks or sandbanks. Not that the
state should take a side in questions within the church, respecting
worship and dogma ; that would be entirely to forget both the office
of the state and the peculiar nature of the worshipping people whose
belief and union with each other must be free. But the state must
act as an impartial umpire, as in social, economical, and other similar
provinces of life, so also in the province of the church, and see to it
that all get fair play, that no party be allowed anywhere to suppress
its antagonists, that minorities too be protected in the enjoyment of
their fundamental Protestant right to freedom of conscience and of
belief. The state is the guardian of equal rights for all, and as it
keeps the peace among the different confessions, it is also intrusted
with the noble task of setting to the conflicts of church parties a
measure and a limit, and of reminding ever and anon those who are
at variance with each other, that they are citizens of one Fatherland
and of one Kingdom of God.
CHAPTEE II.
RELIGION AND MORALITY.
It is an incontestable fact that in the higher states of civilisation
religion and morality act and re-act very intimately on each other ;
and it is natural to suppose that this was the case from the beginnings
of human life on the globe. It may indeed be unhesitatingly asserted
that it was so, if only we do not forget two things : first, that a
relation of action and re-action is not identity, and then that neither
the religion nor the morality of primitive times corresponds exactly
to what we now understand by these terms. Both of these points
have been very much overlooked ; some students have maintained
that a pure morality, being an element of a pure religion, sprang from
the primitive revelation ; others on the contrary have held that
religion arose out of a highly-developed moral consciousness, out of
the recognition of our duties as divine commands, or the need of the
conscience for divine support of our moral strength, or something else
of the kind. It was a natural and justifiable reaction from such
aberrations when the new and more exact study of religion pointed
with emphasis to the wide interval which exists between the views
and usages of primitive religions and our moral ideals. When we
see that in rude states of civilisation petty usages devoid of any
rational meaning are invested with the greatest religious importance
and sanctity, while moral vices and abominable acts are practised not
only without scruple on the part of religion, but in many cases even
in her name, the assertion may appear to be justified " that the
relation of morality to religion is one that belongs only in its rudi-
RELIGION AND MORALITY. 225
ments, or not at all, to rudimentary civilisation," and that it is only
during the course of history that the two spheres, originally indepen-
dent of each other, have been joined in one/
This assertion, however, is one which we are compelled to
characterise as a precipitate conclusion from an inadequate appre-
hension of the phenomena in question. If religion and morality
alike spring from that same reasonable nature of man which on the
practical side manifests itself in his earliest impulses and feelings, then
if we believe the human being to be an organic unity, we must
expect to find that the two are from the first in a close relation to
each other. And such a relation may in fact be shown in various ways
to have existed. The beginnings of all morality lie in social custom
which arises in that fundamental form of human society, the family.
In the natural sympathy felt by the members of the family for each
other, and in the feeling of " piety," the sentiment of mingled awe,
respect, and confidence to the head of the family, lie the roots of the
moral consciousness, of social obligation and duty. This is early
reinforced by the sense of order, or the need of doing regularly
recurring acts in a form that is fixed for all alike (and this is dictated
partly by reasons of utility, and partly by the unconscious symbolism
of the ideas accompanying the acts) ; and finally there is the retribu-
tive impulse, which forms the foundation of the claims and rules of
primitive law. From these feelings and impulses, innate in human
nature, in which man's reasonable disposition manifests itself from
the very first in a perfectly spontaneous and instinctive way, arise
the elements of social customs, which the individual finds there as
given limits and norms of what he has to do or to refrain from doing,
and from which the moral idea of the subjection of action to rules
of universal validity, of obligation by the binding relations of super-
and subordination, in fact what we call " conscience " arises by
means of the abstracting and generalising work of reflection. To
regard conscience as an inborn codex of moral laws was, and in fact
is still, the error of unpractised psychological thought, which carries
1 Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. 360. To the same effect Waitz, Lubbock, Hell-
wald, Lippert, and others. But compare Roskoff : das Religionswesen der rohesten
Volkerstdmme, pp. 155, sqq.
VOL, IV. P
226 3IANIFi:STATI0N OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
back to the very beginning the results which have been arrived at
in many different ways by a developed civilisation. Nothing in fact
that is present in our consciousness as its content is innate in us ;
but only the disposition and the faculty of producing such a content
for ourselves under the stimulation of the external world. It is
through the social dwelling together of families, tribes, and peoples
that the social feelings and impulses of our nature are brought to
development, i.e. are incited to seek manifestation and satisfaction
in definite forms, rules, orders, and customs, all produced at first
instinctively ; and it is from these concrete arrangements, which like
language are the product of reason which has not yet given an
account to itself of its own doings, that there arises the abstract idea
of the rule, of duty generally. As social relations grow wider
and more delicate, and this idea is applied in an ever-increasing
variety of ways, the moral consciousness results, with definite
contents developed on many sides, which again, of course, is suscep-
tible of infinite degrees both in the width of its sphere of action and
in point of inner cultivation and purity ; which latter accounts for
the great manifoldness of moral views in different peoples and ages.
It was the great error of the supernaturalist explanation of morality
which formerly prevailed, that it overlooked this development, and
the natural conditions under which it took place. Modern positivism,
on the contrary, falls into the still more fatal error of fixing its
attention so exclusively on the natural conditions of the development
as to fail to see that the impulse of reason which occasions the
whole process is not limited to these conditions. Thus morality is
lowered to mere empirical utility, which in no way excels the
attainments of the society in which it operates either in the form
in which it shows itself or even in its essence, having for its root
nothing but the collective egoism of that same society. Positivism
moreover, traces religion to the unreason of animistic superstition and
egoistic magic, and thus religion and morality would seem to have
nothing in common but what is negative, namely, the want of any
foundation in reason ; and as they arise from totally different springs,
the matter for wonder is, not that they diverged at the outset, but
RELIGION AND MORALITY. 227
that they should ever have come together at a later time and acted
on each other in a reasonable manner.
To US the subject presents itself in a very different light, since we
conceive both religion and morality, whatever the natural conditions
under which they must be allowed to have developed, to be founded
in principle in the nature of man as a reasonable being. By the
impressions made on him by nature, his reason was incited, we con-
ceive, towards religion, — by social life towards morality; and however
different the forms it assumed, it yet betrays its essential unity in
the active connection which subsists between these two sides. In
spite, therefore, of all the talk we hear to the effect that selfishness
is the spring and the essence of primitive religion, we shall continue
to maintain that religion arises from the rationality of man, from that
in him which is akin to God, not from his animal irrationality and
badness. From the very first it was the same reasonable sentiments of
piety and sympathetic obligation which as a social bond were the
spring of manners and morality, and as a link with the world-
governing power or the deity were the foundation of religion and
worship. In both respects these sentiments were the original means
of saving and educating man, so that he should overcome the selfish
inclinations of his heart, not the means by which he ministered to
that selfishness. Where they became the latter, we are no longer in
contact with the pure original state, but with a degeneration of
religion ; we have before us not naive faith (glaube) but false faith,
superstition (aberglaube), the distinctive mark of which it is that
instead of letting the idea of the divine lift him up above selfish-
ness, he drags it down into his own service and employs it as
a means of that selfish rule of the world he aims at establishing
for himself. Superstition does not by any means consist in the
representation of the divine in unsuitable forms, in the image of the
nature-phenomenon — that may be the imperfection of a childlike
form of belief; but the imperfection of the child is something quite
different from abnormity, or perversion, or sickness, in which the
process of life has fallen into disharmony and decay. This is the
case in superstition ; it is not the imperfection merely, it is the
228 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
disease of faith, the ruin of its normal life-process, the perversion of
the ordained relation between man and God, man setting himself in
the first place, and making his natural tendency to self-assertion his
absolute end and God the means and minister of his own selfish pur-
pose. This is taking for granted that man has the idea of a higher
divine power, and also of the possibility of entering into a relation
with that power which will be for his advantage, and finally the idea
of certain actions and words (ceremonies and formulae) which are
fitted to bring about such a relation. All these ideas, however, are
elements of faith and of its manifestation in worship, which therefore
must be assumed to exist before the superstitious abuse of magic can
make its appearance, just as there must be life before there can be
disease. All the means the magician uses for his superstitious pur-
poses are nothing but the stale and withered forms of an earlier cultus ;
forms in which now, indeed, no rational meaning can be found,
because the life which originally produced them has departed out of
them, but in which there must certainly have been a religious mean-
ing originally, since it would be impossible to explain the fact of
their existence except from the requirements of primitive worship.
Those stiff and unmeaning magic usages therefore were preceded by
rites of worship which were full of meaning ; selfish and unreligious
superstition was preceded by a pious faith which was childlike and
naive. The contention of Positivism is entirely erroneous when it
draws the inference from the fetichistic religions that religion and
morality had originally nothing to do with each other, that the action
of the one had no reference to that of the other. I am prepared to
defend the opposite thesis, that the underlying feeling in both was
always essentially the same, and that therefore the manifestation and
development of both, in the customs of worship and of society, was
for a long way inseparably connected and interwoven.
If we designate the fundamental sentiment of religion as that of
"piety," we mean just that mixture of fear, reverence, confidence,
and sympathy which is exemplified in the fundamental social relation^
that of the family. The foundation of piety consists, it is true, in
that shrinking fear which is everywhere connected with the sense
RELIGION AND MORALITY. 229
of entire dependence on a superior, an irresistible power. This is by
no means denied ; on the contrary, there is more need than ever at
present to insist on the fundamental importance of this point. For
it remains true that " the fear of the Lord is the be^inninof of
wisdom ! " All education to reasonableness in tlie life of mankind
as well as that of the individual, begins with this, that a firm barrier
is set up against the unreason of self-will against the natural
impulses of individuals, by their becoming aware of their dependence
on a superior power, which being irremovably founded in itself
cannot be bent nor broken, which exists and works by no means for
our sake merely, with which it is impossible to take any liberties,
which cannot be used as a means, but energetically asserts and
causes to be felt its independence of us and lordship over us, whose
procedure follows its own purpose, its own firmly established rule,
and to which therefore impotent man must first of all bend and
submit himself. Only when the arrogance of human selfishness has
received its death-blow from this salutary fear of the divine power,
is the field opened for the development of rational feelings of a
positive nature. With the fear of the superior power there is then
combined the feeling of consideration, of respect, produced even in
primitive man not by the greatness of the divine power merely, but
also by the perception of its ordered regularity, and of the many
useful results which flow from the exercise of it for the maintenance
of the life of the world and of man. Man's fear of the deity is thus
turned into reverence, which is combined with confidence : he sees
in the ruling powers of the world beings related to himself, which
maintain the world of life and light for his benefit, and protect him
from the powers of death and of darkness. Thus he feels a senti-
ment of solidarity and sympathy with the ruling powers, he seeks
their intercourse, their alliance, their patronage ; he manifests the
interest he takes in their life by imitating it in his worship, and in
return he seeks to assure himself, and in his social customs bears
witness to his conviction, that the gods take an interest in his social
life and aims, especially at the regularly-occurring and important
events and turning-points of it, on the occurrence of birth and death.
230 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
at puberty and marriage, war and peace, seed-time and harvest. In
the usages which men have been accustomed from the earliest times
to observe on such occasions lie the beginnings of all social customs,
and therefore of all morality. It is, however, an incontestable fact,
and one established by a growing body of evidence in recent investi-
gations,^ that all those usages were originally of a religious character,
and were nothing more nor less than primitive acts of worship, in
which man sought to bring his own weak life and the lives of those
belonging to him into connection with the powerful life of the deity,
to celebrate his living intercourse with the power which governs the
world. If we add that the elements of law and security as they ap-
pear from the most venerable antiquity in the form of oath and ordeal
rest on a basis of religion, that the beginnings of all civil government,
of the foundation of all towns and states, of all ruling famiHes, are
traced to the same origin, and finally, that civil duties generally, no
less than the duties of worship, were placed under the sanction and
protection of the deity; in the face of all these facts, recurring as they
do with perfect regularity in all instances, it cannot well be denied
that the historical heginning of all morality is to he found in religion.
There was always, however, a reaction of morality on religion too.
The sentiments beincj similar in the religious and in the social rela-
tions of piety, it naturally happened that the divine beings were
more and more represented after the analogy of social lordships,
which led to their being detached from the natural phenomenon and
made independent rulers of nature and disposers of human fortunes
after the likeness of men. This anthropomorphising of the nature-
powers led, as we saw, to two results : on the one hand, the gods
made men were brought into close relation to the general interests
of society, and acquired more of a moral character ; they became
human ideals, and representatives of the true ethical ends of society.
On the other side, however, they were lowered to the weakness and
^ Of marriage and burial customs this has long been well known : with respect
to the tattooing connected with the entrance on puberty, and with respect to
festival dances it has lately been clearly demonstrated by several writers, e.//. by
Reville in his work on the religion of savages.
BELiaiON AND MORALITY. 231
moral impurity of human nature, as if they had been individual men;
human passions and vices were attributed to them, and their wishes
and claims on men were conceived after the analogy of capricious
and greedy lords, not inaccessible to flattery and bribes. A discord
thus found its way into the idea of the deity, such as the primitive
myth had not known, and not into the idea of the deity only but also
into worship. If worship had formerly consisted of those simple
usages sprung as it were out of the soil, in which the earliest men
celebrated their patriarchal community with each other, and at the
same time with the nature-deity which ruled the world, there were
now added to these observances, which were of a social nature,
special duties towards the gods, who now demanded their sacrifices,
feasts, temples, priesthood, and so on. To act in conformity with
custom had formerly been both religious and moral, but a distinction
now appeared between social and religious duties, the latter now
forming a class by themselves, and claiming to be of higher importance
than the former. The religious and the moral being thus separated
it became possible that the two might be in conflict with each other,
and it further became possible that one or the other might be
developed abnormally. We also saw above that this abnormity
actually took place, and could not fail to take place in the highest
degree where the state of nature was left behind without passing
into the state of civilisation, where families and tribes failed to be
regularly and legally organised in a civilised nation and state, the
civilisation of which might have presented common interests of high
value such as might form the ideal subject-matter of religious ideas
and usages. Where this did not take place, where the multitude,
instead of gathering itself together in civic discipline, and in the
work of civilisation, followed instead the centrifugal impulse of
separate selfish wills, there social disorganisation tended to disorgan-
ise and ruin religion too : the high gods of the powers of nature
retreated before the swarm of lower spirits, in which there was
nothing of the divine but the power to benefit or injure. These gods
being no longer bound to any visible phenomenon of the course of
nature, and having equally little any constant reference to a social
232 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
order, their action was subject to no rule, and sank to the level of
pure caprice of the most meaningless and useless kind ; they were
the true reflection and instrument of the selfish caprice of degenerate
" savages." The corruption of the primitive religion in animistic
superstition and magical worship was therefore the consequence of
the disintegration and dissolution of primitive society ; and it was
natural that the religion which had thus been ruined should react
in a still greater degree in the direction of ruining social conditions
and moral ideas ; and thus there sprang from this mutual corrupting
influence all the abominations of the magical religion of savages,
which have led modern positivism to the precipitate conclusion that
from the first religion has had no relation to morality, or only a
negative hostile relation to it.
Of the process of corruption in religion and morals we can have
no history, but the ultimate result of it appears in a fixed form in
the religions of savages, e.^. of the negro tribes of Africa. An extremely
instructive contrast to it is to be found in the Egyptian religion, the
oldest religion of a civilised people of which we have immediate
information. In the Egyptian view of God the nature-character of
God is combined with a striking tendency in the direction of the
unity of the divine being, and in this, as well as in its interest in
departed souls and its fetichistic animal worship, this religion
distinctly betrays a near affinity to the nature-religion of the African
tribes. The more striking is its difference from the latter by the
way in which the moral bearings of mythological ideas are made to
apply to social life. Two points are characteristic in this respect ;
the idea of the orderly and lawful character of the diviue govern-
ment both in nature and in the moral life of society, and the idea of
retribution in the other world. The Egyptian word " Maat " denotes
law, not in the legal sense of an ordinance which proceeds either from
a human governing power, or from the divine legislator, but in the
sense of " that unfailing order which rules tlie universe whether we
regard it from the physical or from the moral point of view ; " and
this thought, " a great and noble idea " Le Page Renouf justly calls it,^
1 Lectures on the Religion of Ancient Egypt, Hibbert Lectures, 1S79, p. 119-22.
RELIGION AND MORALITY. 233
plays so important a part in the Egyptian religion, that Maat is
hypostatised to a divine person, and called Lady of Heaven, Eegent
of the World, and President of the world below. She knows, strictly
speaking, no lord and governor, and yet again she is connected with
all the great gods, especially with the sun-god Ea, and with the god
of measure and mediator of revelation Thoth, as Erinnys and Dike
are with Zeus, Now the Egyptian king is counted the sou of the
heaven-king Ea, whose daughter is the regulating law or Maat, and
thus the profound view is evidently shown to have been held by the
Egyptian that the civil order of his land was an outcome of the
same divine procedure which is to be observed in the regularity of
the phenomena of heaven as well as of earth (the Nile). As guardians
of civil order, however, the gods are also the retributive judges of
human conduct. According to the " Book of the Dead " the departed
soul stands in the other world before the judgment-seat of Osiris and
the forty-two gods, each of whom is the guardian of a separate law,
and judges the soul's conduct with reference to it. Most significant
is the picture in which the "Book of the Dead " describes the scene of
the judgment. The soul of the departed stands before the goddess
Maat, who, in one hand holds the sceptre, and in the other the
symbol of life. The heart, the symbol of his moral personality, is
weighed before Osiris, who sits upon the throne as judge of the dead ;
in the one scale lies the heart, and in the other the image of Maat ;
Horus observes the tongue of the balance, and Tehuti, the god of
writing, notes the result. The sins of which account is taken in the
examination, are those of a moral and legal nature, and those con-
nected with worship, but are not specified in any definite order : the
gravest appear to be violations of piety towards the gods, parents,
and the magistrates, and of justice towards fellow-citizens. " He who
blasphemes the king, his father, or his god, he who lends his ear to
evil and remains deaf to the words of truth and righteousness, he
who hurts his neighbour or despises the gods in his heart, he cannot
enter into the dwellings of the blessed dead." It at once appea^
what a penetrating influence these ideas of the judgment of the dead,
and the insistence on the moral law connected with it in " The Book
234 MAXIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
of the Dead," the oldest law-book of which tradition tells us, must
have had on the formation of the morals of the people of early Egypt.
To such fruitful moral motives could the elementary ideas and
sentiments of primitive religion give rise on the soil of a favouring
civilisation.
The notion of a " divine world-order," which was personified in
Egypt in the goddess Maat, was not unknown, even from the earliest
times, to Indo-Germanic thought. In his Lectures on the Origin
and Growth of Religion j\Iax Miiller shows (pp. 245, sg-^.) that the
Vedic word Rita was originally the settled movement of the world,
the sun, and the times of day ; then that it meant the right path
which men should follow, whether in regard to worship, or in their
general moral conduct. The corresponding word in Zend is Asha,
which also denotes both the ruling law of the world, the order of
nature, and the correct walk and conversation of men. On this
M. Miiller makes the noteworthy remark : " This will suffice to show
that a belief in a cosmic order existed before the Indians and the
Iranians separated, that it formed part of their ancient, common
religion, and was older therefore than the oldest Gatha of the Avesta
and the oldest hymn of the Veda. It was not the result of later
speculation, it did not come in only after the belief in the different
gods and their more or less despotic government of the world had
been used up. No, it was an intuition which underlay and pervaded
the most ancient religion of the Southern Aryans, and for a true
appreciation of their religion it is far more important than all the
stories of the dawn, of Agni, Indra, and Rudra." ..." It was all
the difference between a chaos and a kosmos, between the blind play
of chance and an intelligible and therefore intelligent providence "
(pp. 257, sq). Thus we see that this idea of the regular world-order
was of primitive date with the Indians and Iranians, as well as the
Egyptians, and that it was derived from the simplest daily observa-
tions of the senses, particularly from the regular movement of the
sun, and of the periods of the day and of the year ; and this gives
us an incontestable right to regard this idea as one of the oldest
elements of the religious consciousness, and one of the main sources
UELiaiON AND MORALITY. 235
of the moral ideas of social order, and of right and law. That this
idea, moreover, of the divine world-order was by no means an empty-
theory, but operated from the beginning as a powerful motive in
dealing with deep moral stirrings of conscience, we see distinctly
from the well-known penitential hymn of the Vedic singer, in which
he supplicates Varuna for the forgiveness of his fault, and seeks to
move the god to pity by reminding him of the weakness of human
nature (as the poet of Psa. ciii. comforts himself with thinking that
God knows our frame, and remembers that we are dust). When we
consider how naive, how thoroughly of the soil this old Vedic hymn
and others like it are, and when we compare them with the immense
ritualism of Brahman theology, we are led, in direct contradiction to
the positivist axiom, to the conviction that these ritualistic practices
in which there is so little that is moral, are not the beginning, but
the late product of such a legal formalism as has everywhere been
developed from the traditions and the pedantic reflections of a
professional priesthood and guild of scribes.
The ideal of life of the Brahmanic legal religion is found ex-
pressed in the law of Manu ; and this law contains precepts for the
ritual, legal and moral life of the higher castes in India, in such
detail as to place the whole of life from birth to death under the
discipline of fixed rules. This law does not, it is true, present us
with a picture of sombre asceticism, but with one of sober and solid
practical morality ; it attaches the greatest weight to the foundation
of a household, and to the performance of the duties of the father of
a household. But it labours under two great mistakes. One it has
in common with all religions of law : by the minute formalism it
sets up for the ceremonial of worship and of society it crushes per-
sonal freedom, takes away motives for personal energy, obstructs all
change in customs and in the order of society, and in all these ways
renders all sound historical development impossible. The other
error is specifically Indian. In addition to the exoteric ideal of life,
which is valid for all, and which consists in the fulfilment of ritual
and civic duties, it recognises another and a higher ideal, which it
does not bind on any one as a duty, but recommends to all those who
236 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
are seeking for eternal blessedness as the true way of perfection :
namely, withdrawal from the world and from domestic life to the
quiet of a silvan solitude, there in contemplation without any works
to find true insight and the freedom which makes blessed, from all
the fetters of the world. Examples may be found elsewhere of a
similar doulile morality ; what is peculiar to Brahmanism is that it
does not leave every one free to choose between the practical and the
ascetic ideal, but in the first place makes the former the duty of every
one, and allows only then the man who has fulfilled this common
duty to strive, and that only in later years, after the attainment of the
esoteric ideal. By this provision the Brahmanic law seeks to do
away in practice with the inner contradiction between the two forms
of life : for tlie mass of men the exoteric law of works is to remain
in inviolable force, but for those spirits which aim higher an escape
is to be provided in mature years from legal unfreedom to personal
freedom, the freedom at least of thought and of cessation from activity.
In this we must certainly recognise a broad and tolerant trait such
as is foreign to most positive religions ; but it cannot be denied that
the bifurcation of morality into two opposite forms of life, one of
them active and unfree, the other free and inactive, was bound to
have consequences fatal to any sound and harmonious formation of
the people. What profits it to know the w^orthlessness of outward
works and services, if that knowledge is to be the privilege of weak
old hermits merely, and the multitude are to go on just as before ?
And what positive value is there in a world-avoiding sanctity which
regards not only the fetters of external work-service but the moral
duties of social life too, as a thing it has transcended and left behind,
and on its cold and lonely height of sterile contemplation puts away
all the bonds of the world, even those of love to wife and child,
house and calling, as burdensome entanglements ? In this discord,
which arose out of its peculiar religious development, between an
abstract, morally unfruitful idealism, and an idea-less, morally unfree
ritualism, the rich vigour of the Indian race was w^asted awav.
Buddhism is the logical result, the universalising of esoteric
Brahmanism, the doctrine of redemption of wliich it made the
RELIGION AND MORALITY. 237
common property of the people, and at the same time the principle
of a universalistic religious community. It has the advantage of
Brahmanism, first of all in its compassionate love to the people, its
unlimited missionary impulse, which is not obstructed by the barriers
of race ; then in its freedom from the narrow bonds of Brahmanic
ritualism and scholasticism, in the popular character of its preaching
and the simplicity of its worship ; and finally in the edifying power
of the personal type of its founder and its numerous saints, in whom
the pious craving for reverence found a welcome object and a pattern
of ideal morality. By making a principle of the religious nothing-
ness of all worldly things, even of the limits of race and of the
ordinary rules of society, by going back from everything outward to
the inner disposition, and making the salvation of man depend
entirely on the moral virtues of the heart, on self-conquest, patience,
mildness, and good -will. Buddhism for the first time in history
detached religion from its earlier entanglement in civic interests and
in the sphere of civil law, and made it the personal affair of the indi-
vidual heart, and of the voluntary union it established — a union of
which the sole link was that of living moral fellowship. But great
as the advance undoubtedly was, which was made in this universalist
religion of redemption upon the national religion of law previously
prevailing in India, Buddhism still laboured under the fundamental
error of esoteric Brahmanism, its one-sided ascetic, world-avoiding,
monastic tendency of life. Indeed it even surpassed Brahmanism in
this ; for what Brahmanism had recommended only for the latter
part of a life that had been actively engaged in the world before,
Buddhism raised to an exclusive ideal which filled the whole of life,
and provided it with rule and system ; it became the founder of
monasticism and of the rule of the cloister. But in this way a double
ideal of life was set up once more : the perfect life for the narrower
monastic community, the imperfect for the wider community of the
laity ; and thus religious perfection was once more made to depend
on definite outward forms and customs. The spiritual and moral
principle of inwardness and freedom, which had been asserted against
traditional ritualism as a principle of reformation and progress, was
238 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
not after all consistently carried through, but had agaiu to yield to
the monastic and ritualistic formalism of the Buddhist church, which
was not a whit more favourable to the purity and vigour of the moral
life of the people than the formalism of Brahmanism. Buddhistic
morality therefore everywhere operated only as a narcotic quietive
to curb rude natural force, or to alleviate the natural griefs of indi-
viduals ; it proved incapable of acting as a reforming power to renew
society, of carrying on any persistent influence in the direction of
moral enrichment, or guiding the spirit of the peoples into the path
of humane development in history. The reason of this impotence
is to be found in the want of any positive practical moral principle,
and this again is the natural consequence of the want of any positive
religious principle of the world.
In Greece too religion was at first in immediate unity with law
and custom ; then the two sides developed themselves for a time in
a fruitful interaction on each other, while at last the moral unfolded
itself independently in a world of beautiful humanity, which yet was
not able to compensate for the decay of religion, nor to satisfy the
craving of the peoples for a firm basis of life. The positivist view
that at first religion and morality had nothing to do with each other
finds as little confirmation in the earliest Greek testimonies as in the
yet older ones of the Egyptians and the Indians. A look into the
Homeric songs or into the " Works and Days " of Hesiod shows us at
once that at a time when priestly ritual and the ideas of liturgical
obligations and transgressions were but little formed, the whole life
of the Greeks was yet governed by religious motives. Among the
Greeks too ^ custom and morality rested from the first on the fixed
belief in a strict righteousness which rules in the fortunes of men,
which rewards goodness and punishes evil, in a moral world-order,
which in part the gods and specially Zeus were supposed to uphold,
but which, like the Egyptian Maat, was also personified as a special
goddess, now called Dike and now Erinnys, and placed by the side
of Zeus as the executive organ of his just government. And as in
^ Cf. the very instructive work of Leoji. Schmidt, Die Etliik der alten Griechen,
Berlin, 1S82 ; specially vol. i. caj). 1 and 2 ; vol. ii. cap. 1.
RELIGION AND MORALITY. 239
Maat and Eita we saw the law of the natural and of the social or
moral world-order combined in one single notion, so here too there is
something of the same nature ; the Erinnys, generally the fulfiller of
the divine punitive judgments, is at the same time the guardian of
the order of nature. Thus, for example, in the Iliad she prevents the
horse of Achilles from speaking with a human voice, and, according
to an expression of Heraclitus, she would lead back the sun into his
course if he should leave it. Thus it is a primitive Greek convic-
tion, as well as an Indian, Iranian, and Egyptian one, that the moral
is radically connected with the natural order, and that the basis of
both is divine. In the post-Homeric age the belief in the ruling
righteousness of providence (Opis) was worked out with growing
definiteness. The good man is the beloved of the gods ; it goes well
with him, and even though he has to endure many a calamity and
humiliation, like Odysseus or Heracles, yet these work ultimately for
good to him, for " Zeus makes mortals advance to wisdom, and has
fixed it that in pain there is teaching," as Aeschylus makes the
chorus say in the Agamemnon (176). The ungodly, on the con-
trary, the despiser of divine and human ordinances, punishment finds
out surely, even though late, for,
" Though the mills of God grind slowly,
Yet they grind exceeding small,"
as a Greek proverb says. Where retribution does not come in view
before death, it descends on children and grandchildren, and in them
also on the soul of the guilty father which suffers trouble in Hades
from the ill fortune of those belonging to him. As time went on the
belief cherished by the mysteries in a direct retribution in the other
world became more and more general, as many indications combine
to show. Nor did the Eleusinian priests neglect to enforce the
moral significance of this belief; Plato bears them witness that they
teach that the soul is immortal, and that it is necessary, on that
account, " to make one's life as holy as possible."
What a profoundly pious and what a pure moral feeling this
belief in a divine world-order awakened in the better minds among
240 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
the Greeks, the poems of a Piudar, Aeschykis, and Sophocles show in
the clearest way. What a power of beauty is tliere in the chorus in
Sophocles' "King Oedipus" (846 sqq.) —
" Oh, may I live
Sinless and pure in every word and deed,
Ordained by those firm laws that hold their realm on high i
Begotten of heaven, of brightest ether born,
Created not of man's ephemeral mould,
They ne'er shall sink to slumber in oblivion ;
A power of God is there, untouched by Time."
The " shame " or "reverence " (Aidos) which expresses the funda-
mental sentiment of the Greek towards the divine government, is
exactly what I showed above to be the common source of religion
and morality ; the feeling of piety, of reverence to what is venerable
and challenges regard. An element of fear is not wanting in it, but
Aidos is something more than mere fear ; in fact it is often expressly
distinguished from fear and put side by side with the sentiment of
humility and reverence, righteousness and insight, veneration and
love. The objects of Aidos are the gods and magistrates, moral
orders and duties, parents and old men, the unfortunate and those in
need of help ; indeed, the young man when alone is to feel Aidos
even for himself, and to represent to himself the image of Aidos, as
is often required of him ; ^ in the last two cases Aidos is the moral
feeling of respect for human dignity, the shrinking from injuring in
any way the moral personality. But as reverence for superiors and
respect to law and custom are based in pious awe at the holy rule of
the deity, it involves not merely obligation, but also an element of
liberation, a power of lifting up the personal conscience above the
mere social statutes of human rulers to the eternal truth and trood-
ness of the divine world-order, which, as it is not perfectly repre-
sented in any civil law, forms everywhere the court of higher appeal
to which the oppressed can turn to seek justice. Sophocles describes
a piety of exalted moral elevation and freedom, when he makes
Antigone justify herself against the angry King (451 seqq.) —
1 Schmidt, op. cit. i. 173.
RELIGION AND MOBALTTY. 241
" I could not find such force in thy decree
As that a mortal should have power to outrun
The sure unwritten institutes of heaven.
Not of to-day or yesterday they live,
But everlastingly, and none can tell
The hour that saw them leap to light. I would not
Be so o'erwhelmed by a man's resolve,
To be arraigned before the Bar Supreme
Doing them violence."
The moral and religious temper of the Greeks finds its most char-
acteristic expression in the notion of Aidos ; but it embraces, in
addition to reverence, the other fundamental religious sentiment, the
sympathetic desire after communion, after intimate intercourse, with
the deity, out of which there naturally developed itself at a later
time the moral desire to be made like to the divine ideal. The well-
known word of the Odyssey (iii. 48), "All men need (long after) the
Gods," finds manifold echo in the whole course of Greek history, and
indicates indeed the general mood on which the Greek view of
worship was essentially based. Nowhere is worship a mere empty
ceremonial or a slavish and selfish service for reward ; it is the
" intercourse of Gods and men with each other," which affords to the
human spirit its highest happiness. Plato speaks from the soul of
his people when he calls it {Laws, iv. 71 G) " the noblest and truest of
all sayings, that for the good man to offer sacrifice to the Gods, and
hold converse with them by prayers, and offerings, and every kind of
service, is the noblest and best of all things, and also the most con-
ducive to a happy life, and very fit and meet." And what he adds
to this corresponds, if not to the consciousness of all his contem-
poraries, yet to that of the best men of his time, that the bad man is
not profited by his worship, " for the bad man has an impious soul,
and from one who is polluted neither a good man nor God is right
in receiving gifts. And therefore the unholy waste their much ser-
vice on the Gods." That this conviction was not confined to the
philosophers, but widespread, and held in priestly circles too, is
proved by the inscription on the temple of Epidauros : " He only who
is pure must tread the threshold of this temple : and none is pure
but he who thinks holy thoughts."
VOL. IV. Q \
242 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
This perception that purity from sin is the indispensable condition
for intercourse with the deity was of uncommon importance for the
moral effect of religion on the life of the people. It does not, it is
true, appear from the first as plainly as it does here ; yet it seems to
have appeared at an early period in connection with the far-reaching
influence of the Delphic cult of Apollo, to have been diffused by pious
singers, and to have been sanctioned by the legal regulations as to
propitiation, and as to the withdrawal of unworthy persons from
public worship. It is, as Schmidt remarks in the work above cited,
one of the results of the immense change which took place in the
religious feelings of the Greeks in the period between the beginning
of the Olympiads and the Persian wars, that the thought was con-
ceived of a purifying approach to the Gods : and to this change the
peculiar ideas of purity and exaltation connected with the cult of
Apollo, and nourished mainly by the influence of the oracle at Delphi,
very materially contributed. With the religion of Apollo Pytha-
goreanism was very closely connected, and those of its views with
which we are concerned here were derived from that religion. The
ethical reflections of Pythagoreanism afford the first well-known
example of the new mode of view. " Follow the God " is the
characteristic utterance of the founder of the Pythagorean league ;
and the similar expression is also attributed to hiu), that men
are most perfect when they go to the Gods. These sayings indicate
in the clearest way that the deity is not only the guardian of the
world-order, but may also be the object to which man may draw
near, and his pattern. Pindar, who came from the priesthood of
Delphi, and who drank in at an early age the religious and moral
ideas of these men, gives in one of his odes an animated description
of Apollo, who pours peaceful harmony into the souls of his wor-
shippers. The same Pythagorean position was occupied by Socrates
too ; he felt himself to stand under the immediate guidance of a
divine spirit, and he counted faithfulness to his life-task, which the
order of the God had imposed on him, to be better to him than
life. Plato packs this whole tendency, whicli aims at the deepen-
ing of the religious consciousness, into the profound thought that
RELIGION AND MORALITY. 243
man is called to resemble as far as possible the God wliose property
he is.
This effort after purity, which proceeded from the Delphic cult
of the pure light-God Apollo, exercised, as we have seen, a great
morally formative influence on the best of the people : in the national
and popular religion it first appeared in the form of a pretty elaborate
system of propitiatory and purificatory rites. The rules to be
observed in conducting the purificatory rites were fixed by the priest-
hood of Delphi, and by tradition and public law received public
sanction over the whole of Greece, without interfering, however,
with many peculiarities of local worship and laws. Here, as in all
priestly legislations, we find that what was held to defile, what called
for atonement, and excluded from public worship, was partly litur-
gical impurity, partly moral guilt, without much discrimination. On
the whole, however, we are able to say that the tendency of the
Delphic priesthood was, not indeed to separate the liturgical and the
moral from each other, or to make either independent of the other,
but to frame the requirements of religion in such a way as not in
any marked degree to conflict with the requirements of morality.
Moral guilt was made to appear as the worst form of impurity, as we
see from two remarkable Delphic oracles, one of which declares him
to be impure who neglected to defend his friend in battle, although
no blood cleaves to his hands, while the other frees him from all
impurity who, in defending his friend, accidentally killed him. The
elaboration of the liturgical notion of purity belongs only to the
Greek middle ages, i.e. to the flourishing period of the Delphic
oracle in the centuries from the Doric immigration to the Persian
wars ; this we infer from the absence of that notion in Homer and
Hesiod. It is as the priesthood and the ceremonial of worship acquire
strenii-th that the idea of ceremonial purity and purification begins to
appear. Once there, that idea may, on the one hand, be turned to
o-ood account as a very effective means for the moral education of
the people, and for protecting public morals, as was to a very large
degree the case with the Greeks (those who neglected good manners
were excluded from all public acts of worship, processions, festival
244 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
plays and games, as impure persons) ; but, on the other hand, the
fear of contracting impurity easily passes with the multitude, in
whose minds the distinction between liturgical stain and moral guilt
may not always be maintained, into superstitious awe, and anxious
seeking for ever more effective means of propitiation, a state of mind
on the part of the people which the priestly class has everywhere
known how to use for its own ends. This point once reached, the
ideas and influences which formerly had a wholesome influence as
means of moral discipline, become means of corruption of the worst
kind, leading as they do to a Pharisaic perversion of the moral judg-
ment, to depreciation of moral conduct, and exaggeration of the value
of ritual acts. In Greece too, this ordinary morbid symptom of
priestly and legal religions appears to have occurred not infrequently ;
Plato draws in his Ptepublic (ii. 364) a glaring picture of the juggling
arts of the priests of Orpheus, who charged a high price for their
methods of atoning for every sin a man had committed himself, and
even for those committed by his ancestors.
But as the ideas of liturgical purity degenerated into supersti-
tious practices, they also provoked a trenchant opposition to their
whole principle on the part of men of deep thought or of pure feel-
ing ; an opposition which concerned not the rites only, Init even the
myths of the traditional religion. The philosophers Xenophanes and
Heraclitus criticised the popular worship and belief in the gods with
the greatest acuteness. According to Heraclitus, to undertake rites
of purification is just to try to wash off mud with mud ; the Gods
have no need of the sacrifices, they in no way resemble the images
in which they are worshipped, and it is most indecent to accuse
them, as Homer and Hesiod did, of human vices. As for the last
charge, it would be wrong to think that the mythical anthropo-
morphism of the Greeks had too much influence on the spirit of
their religion or on their moral judgment ; but some influence of the
kind it undeniably did have. On this Schmidt remarks very aptly,
that " the nation was competent to keep the two spheres of ideas
apart from each other ; that those light plays of fancy did not on the
whole interfere with their devotions may surprise us and may dis-
RELIGION AND MORALITY. 245
pose us to a certain extent to wonder ; but it would be erroneous to
say that those fancies involved no injury to religious feeling and
even to the moral disposition of the Greeks ; poetry entered too much
into all the spheres of life, and had too much influence on worship
also, not to produce some such effect." The more reflection extended
its flight, the more did that simple innocence disappear, which could
readily find entertainment in the human conduct of those same gods
who at the same time were reverenced as the supporters of the moral
order and the dispensers of blessings. And if awakening reflection
thus led the more earnest spirits to the rejection of the myths of the
gods and to the purification of the religious consciousness, to others,
such as the Sophists, the Illumination provided a justification of their
moral lightness, leading them to excuse their immorality by pointing
to the laches of the gods in the myths. Such views could not fail
to have a dangerous influence on the popular consciousness, as they
soon came to be proclaimed from the stage, which with the Greeks
occupied the place of our pulpit. However zealous Aristophanes
was for the old orthodoxy, he contributed not a little to its subver-
sion, by making the gods ridiculous on the stage. And though
Euripides took occasion to announce his own purified view of the
gods in the most pointed sentences (" When the gods do vilely, No
gods they at all ") this could scarcely counteract the sceptical im-
pression which his bold treatment of the gods on the stage could not
fail to make on the Athenian public.
Thus the Illumination of the age of Pericles undermined not only
mythical and liturgical superstition, but at the same time the pious
beliefs and the good morals of the fathers, and loosed the bond which
till this time had connected religion with morality in Greece. The
popular religion was indissolubly interwoven with its natural basis in
the myths, and it was not to be expected that that religion could be
renewed and cured ; renewal and cure were only to be looked for in
the way of independent philosophical reflection on the foundations of
morality which lie in human nature itself. This path was opened
up by the Socratic school. The moral thinking of Socrates and Plato
was penetrated by a deeply religious spirit, but even in Socrates this
246 MANIFESTATION OF TEE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
religious spirit was only loosely connected with the popular religion,
and Plato got rid of the latter altogether, and attached his moral
ideals to the idea-world of his speculation. The speculation of
Aristotle dropped the religious basis of ethics altogether, and reduced
the latter to a descriptive analysis of the various modes of human
conduct and thought. The same road was followed by his successors
till the Stoics, who began again to connect ethics with metaphysics,
and so gave that science once more a close relation to religion.
They regarded that reason which ought to be the principle of our
action as an efflux of the divine reason, and thus made the exercise
of virtuous wisdom appear as the fulfilment of our divine calling, and
in the light of pious obedience to the divine government of the
world. And inasmuch as all men alike have a share in the same
divine wisdom, it forms a bond of universal moral obligation, which,
because it is based on the affinity to God of liuman nature generally,
transcends the limit of people and race. Thus this philosophy
arrived at the thought, big with promise of the future, of a kingdom
of God which embraced the whole of mankind, in which all should
be fraternally joined together as subjects of the same divine law,
namely, the reason which is both divine and human. We must not
undervalue this Stoic idea of humanity, which for the first time
broke through the exclusiveness of the sense of nationality in the
ancient world, and especially exercised a moderating and humanising
influence on the brutal egoism of the Eoman deification of the state
and contempt of man. But, that it failed to achieve any thorough
reform of society was due not only to the fact that philosophical
ideas never possess that universal and energetic motive power which
belongs to religious ideas, but more particularly to the inner defect
of Stoicism. In its abstract idealism and rationalism it set its pride in
the indifference of the thinking mind to the heart which feels, and
thus necessarily weakened and impaired the sympathetic instincts of
our nature, on which alone all positive social ethics are based. Thus
it was perfectly natural that the Stoic ideal of humanity, however
theoretically true, yet remained practically unfruitful, or rather that
its real value lay only in the fact that it helped to prepare the way
RELIGION AND MORALITY. 247
in the heatheu world for that religious idea of humanity with which
Christianity was charged ; it was also helpful to Christianity at a
later time, serving in various ways to set in a clear light the truth
of the new doctrine.
The state religions of the Romans and Persians need not long
detain us ; no such development of the relation between religion and
morality took place in them as we saw in India and in Greece. In
Home and in Persia religion referred mainly to civic life, and this
had the advantage that religion and the state mutually supported each
other, and that the state derived from religious ideas an uncommonly
effective motive to help its own vigorous development ; it was in
honour of their God, whose kingdom coincided with their state,
that both Eomans and Persians founded their empires. The great
defect, however, of these and of all state- religions was that religion
was externalised into a legal police institution, made mechanical in
priestly ceremonies, perverted to an instrument of political selfish-
ness, and deprived of its moralising influence in proportion as ideal
motives gave way to those of a more worldly nature in the life of the
state. Whatever falls outside the object of the state and the legisla-
tion of the state, is left here without any reference to religion ; any-
thing like an elevation of the personal consciousness to behold and
imitate the divine ideal in noble humanity, such as took place in the
Apollo-religion, is hardly to be traced among the Persians, and among
the Komans not at all. Here accordingly, as soon as the end of the
state was in the main secured, the rude superstition of religious
ceremonial was accompanied by a frivolous unbelief, and by the
barbarous inhumanity of a legalised and refined selfishness. No
state-religion can produce humane culture out of itself; the utmost
a people in such a position can do is, to a certain extent, to take on
foreign culture ; but that culture it at the same time spoils, detaching
it from its original ideal soil, and using it as an instrument for its own
worldly and carnal ends. Had the Persians conquered the Greeks,
ancient civilisation would never have come about at aU : when
the Komans conquered the Greeks, the decay of ancient civilisa-
tion began. State -religion, however provocative of civic virtue,
248 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
is injurious to humane culture and to the growth of the finer
feelings.
Judaism also was a state-religion, a national theocracy, up to the
destruction of Jerusalem by the Eomans ; but an impulse was present
in Judaism from the first, which led the religion, as it developed, be-
yond this limitation. This was the moral spirit, which the prophets
of Israel had introduced into the national henotheism, taking the
" Holy One of Israel " to be the God who showed himself holy in
justice and judgment on all human sin, both in Israel and outside it,
and who uses the fortunes of the world of the nations too as the
means of his work of moral education. The primitive Semitic idea of
the divine " holiness," i.e. incomparable exaltation and terrible majesty,
was thus made a vessel to contain the moral thought of perfection,
and there was thus infused into the Hebrew God-consciousness an
element of unique moral energy and strictness. For it was known
that the holy God desired to have a holy people also as his property,
and that to everything that was done inconsistently with this
character of the people, to every violation of the religious and moral
ordinances of his people, he manifested himself in judgments as a
terrible and jealous God, as a consuming fire. This vivid conscious-
ness of sin as guilt against the deity, and as calling for punishment,
is characteristic of Semitism generally, and is connected with its
profound feeling of dependence ; but by the multitude, in Israel as
well as outside it, this feeling of guilt was generally connected with
mistakes in worship, and made good by performances in the way of
worship. The prophets, on the contrary, when they rose to a higher
notion of the holy God, also conceived a higher idea of the holy
people of God, and opposed to the popular service of God by ritual
usages, the inoral service of God by a pure life, as the one true
means by which man could assure himself of the divine approval, and
become partaker of divine blessings (vol. iii. p. 139). The changing
relation of these two tendencies, so radically opposed to each other,
now one and now the other occupying the field, now both of them
proceeding side by side, of the free, spiritual, moral idealism of the
RELIGION AND MORALITY. 249
prophetic religion on the one hand, the mechanical sensuous ritualistic
positivism of the religion of the priests and the people on the other, this
is the central interest of the history of the Jewish religion from the
eighth century to the beginning of Christianity. We saw in a former
chapter how the prophetic idealism, in order to establish a footing
among the people, was obliged to enter into that compromise with
priestly positivism of which the Deuteronomic law-book was the first
product, a book in which the prophetic spirit of an inward religion
and a humane morality still predominates. Here the motive given
for obeying the law is not only fear of a jealous God who avenges
the transgression of his commandments with fearful penalties upon
the transgressors, and on their posterity to the third and fourth
generation, but also hearty love to that God who of free grace chose
Israel for his own, and who, as a faithful and merciful God, keeps
his covenant to the thousandth generation to those who love him and
keep his commandments. This law is filled up with ceremonial,
civic, and moral injunctions promiscuously : but ritual is only
insisted on so far as is necessary for the suppression of image-
w^orship. Some of the ritual and ascetic laws merely confirm usages
already prevailing ; there is no trace of the hierarchical element ;
the civic and moral injunctions sketch the ideal of a healthy popular
life, with very simple customs which often show a surprising degree
of humanity.
Very different was the aspect of affairs two centuries later, in the
priestly law of Ezra and his school. Here the ritual laws about
priests and festivals, sacrifices and propitiations, are of the first
importance ; the most petty outward forms are treated as of greater
moment than moral purity of heart and life, the taking away of sin is
made mechanical and represented as the effect of sacramental priestlj^
acts, the priesthood is raised to a hierarchical mediatorship between
God and the people, national feeling is intensified to a high pitch of
fanaticism (vol. iii. p. 154). This spirit of Levitical legalism was now
stronger, now weaker, in Judaism, but on the whole always main-
tained itself, and in Pharisaism it found its most naked manifestation.
The theology of this school is the classical pattern of a religion of
250 MANIFEST A TION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
law, the national and legal positivism of which makes the moral
consciousness narrow, petty, external, self-righteous, intolerant,
inhuman, and in which, on the other hand, as its moral consciousness
aims at nothing more than a literal and pedantic legalism, humility,
the fundamental sentiment of religion, is altogether taken away, and
the whole of religion lowered to a transcendental matter of business.^
The exclusive relation of God to the Jews now appears no longer as
a temporary means adopted in the divine plan of the education of
mankind, as the old prophets had believed, but as an eternal
privilege of the people, which, for the sake of its fathers and its law,
is and remains the people alone loved by God. The heathens, i.e.
all who are not Jews, have no value nor importance in God's sight,
he allows them still to do their pleasure in this world for a while,
but he does not will their salvation, he has appointed them for
judgment and for the damnation of hell. The Jew, accordingly,
has no positive duty to fulfil towards them, he must not enter into
any fellowship with them, must not care for their culture and
wisdom, must neither receive benefits at their hands nor do
them benefits. Marriage with heathens is like fornication, and
commercial intercourse with the heathen is only allowed as it damages
him. As for the moral value (the righteousness) of the Jew, it rests,
according to the Pharisaic theology, not on the purity of his disposi-
tion, a thing which he would know about at once, but on the state,
which he can never know accurately, of a somewhat complicated
reckoning, which is kept in heaven by the subordinate officers of the
divine tribunal. The sum of a man's fulfilling of the law, and of
the alms which he has given, forms the treasure of his own merits,
which is increased by the inherited capital of the merits of his
fathers ; on this, on his own merits, and those of others, rests his
claim to a divine reward. Over-against this credit side, however,
stands the account of what he owes on account of his transgressions
of the law, reckoned one by one ; these involve a certain measure of
punishments, but the debts thus contracted admit of being wiped off
^ Evidence for this verdict on Pharisaism maj' be found in immeasurable
quantity in the description, from the sources, of the theology of the Old Synagogue,
by Weber; r/. especially par. ]."», IS, 59-72.
RELIGION AND MORALITY. 251
by the voluntary or involuntary suffering of pains, both in the man's
own person, and in that of persons closely connected with him ; and
in this way the state of the account may be materially improved
against the final reckoning in the other world. He who has reason
for anxiety, when death approaches, as to the state of his account in
heaven, acts wisely if he seeks to cover the deficit by leaving legacies
for benevolent purposes, and so on,
Christianity arose out of the reaction of the inward spirit of the
religion of the prophets, against the external character of Pharisaic
Judaism. It took over from the religion of Israel the religious basis
of morals, viz., the belief in the unconditional obligation and
authority of the holy will of God as the Governor and Judge of the
world ; it also shared with later Judaism the belief in the divine
inspiration and authority of the Scriptures of the Old Testament, as
well as the belief in a retribution in the other world at the general
judgment. It differed from legal positive Judaism in appealing from
the letter to the spirit, and found, with old prophecy, the most
immediate revelation of God in the inner impulses of his Holy Spirit.
Jesus declared war from the first against the external righteous-
ness of the Pharisees and Scribes ; instead of the cleanness of dishes
and of the skin he demanded, with the prophets, purity of heart :
instead of a heart divided between the service of God and of
Mammon, he required the undivided surrender of the heart to the
love of God in active and patient fulfilment of his will ; instead
of the loveless self-righteousness which looked with scorn on
the sinful multitude, he called for unaffected humility, meekness,
mildness, and compassion towards all men, as towards brothers and
children of the merciful God who makes his sun to shine on the evil
and on the good. What we have here in a still undeveloped
form, popularly and simply stated, is essentially the same antithesis
which meets us again in Paul, theologically developed and carried to
its logical issue, the antithesis, namely, of inwardness and outward-
ness, spirit and letter, childlike love and slavish law, " Love is the
fulfilling of the law " : so Paul taught with Jesus. But love cannot
252 MANIFEST ATIOX OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
be commanded ; it only awakens in the heart which is touched by
the beam of the love of God, whether directly as with Jesus, or
indirectly as with Paul, who saw in the crucified Christ the mani-
festation of the love of God which moved him to the trustful and
thankful surrender of his heart and life to God, who was reconciling
the world to himself in Christ. Thus Paul found the highest moral
motive in a feeling of the heart which is one of the most natural,
one of the noblest, feelings of our race, in adoring love to the divinely
good as manifested in human form.
And this was in fact a new moral principle which transcended
Jewish legalism as far as it did the Greek virtue of the sages. It
shares with the latter, and here it has the advantage over the former,
the imoardness and freedom of the moral life- principle. He who is
impelled by love does not stand under the compulsion of a law which
is foreign to him, but carries in himself the norm of his willing and
acting ; it springs from his own impulse, from the feeling of his own
heart, not however from a selfish affection, but from an affection
which lifts him above his sinful self, and which therefore he feels in
himself as an operation of divine power, as an impulse of the Holy
Spirit. He who loves God feels himself to be inspired by God ; and
he also knows himself to be authorised by God to find in this holy
spirit which inspires him the only unconditional norm of what he
must do or leave undone, and by which too he may judge everything
outside himself, even religious traditions and usages, in respect to
their serviceableness to the ends of holy love (1 Cor. ii. 15, iii. 22).
Thus he knows himself to be released from the authority of religious
statute, which now appears to him not as the eternally valid revela-
tion of the will of God but only as a temporary means of education
for the elementary stage of mankind (Gal. iv. 1-10). At the same
time the limitation of the religion of law to a single people is removed ;
the law of the letter might be given for the Jewish race alone, but the
gospel of the spirit is a power of God to salvation for every one who
believes. Gentile as well as Jew. In faith in the Gospel of the Son-
ship of God every one has part in the love of God with its promises
and obligations, its gifts and tasks ; thus this faitli becomes a bond of
EELIQION AND MORALITY. 253
religious as of moral union, which binds men of all peoples and
classes into one new people of God. Here Pauline universalism
coincides in the result attained by the cosmopolitan humanism of the
Stoics ; but what with the Stoics was a theory based on rational
reflection and without any far-reaching practical consequences, was
with Paul a living principle born of the emotional impulse of faith
and love and endowed with energy to conquer the world. And this
is connected with a further point of difference. The Stoics certainly
traced universal human obligation to the affinity of our nature to
God and to the universal divine law implanted in our reason, and so
spoke of a kingdom of God whose citizens we all are or are called to
be ; but this ideal was quite in the air, was not exemplified by any-
thing in the real world : how it could ever be realised in the actual
world was quite problematical, as the Stoics, the later Stoics at least,
held pessimist views of the weakness and sinful corruption of human
nature, its affinity to God notwithstanding, — views scarcely less pro-
nounced than those of the Apostle Paul on this subject. With Paul,
on the contrary, the ideal of the universal community of all the
children of God in the kingdom of heaven was based on a belief in that
definite revelation of the saving divine purpose, which he saw in the
person and the work of Jesus. This revelation was in his eyes the
end and goal of the whole series of prior revelations of God, and thus
easily took its place within that positive belief in a historical and
teleological revelation which he shared with his compatriots. Thus
the Pauline ethic, for all its ideal autonomy, was founded on the
positive basis of a sacred history possessing undeniable authority as a
revelation ; its moral ideal was not an empty one, moving in the air,
which had still to look for an attachment to reality, but the ripe
fruit of the tree the roots of which stretched back to the early period
of the patriarchs, the fruit of the historical religion of Israel. In this
doublesidedness, its continuity with the history of the religion of the
Old Testament, and its transcendence of the Jewish religion of law,
the Pauline ethic became the link, of world-historical importance,
between the pious narrowness of the Jewish conscience and the free
and wide liumanism of Greek thought. And these two sides, tlie
254 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
historical liniitatiou and the personal rational freedom are always
equally indispensable for a sound ethic ; the great matter is always
to settle their relations to each other. And here too Paul pointed
out the right way, founding his philosophy of religion on the thought
which in modern thinking must always be the principal point of
view : the thought, namely, of a development of the moral spirit under
the guiding education of God. Each stage of the development has its
corresponding moral ideal ; none of them is fortuitous or arbitrary,
each rests on a divine ordinance and is good and necessary for its
own time, but for its own time only ; what was suitable for the boy
no longer suits the man, and in the stream of history there is no point
for standing still, there is no last, nothing fixed unchangeably ; only
the law of development is ever the same, for it is founded in the
decree of divine wisdom and deposited in the organisation of human
nature.
Christian ethics too required a development of eighteen centuries
to arrive at a pure realisation of its princij)le on all its sides. The
power, so positively fruitful and so able to transform the world, which
lay in the principle of brotherly love, manifested itself at first only
within the sphere of the community, in the exercise of compassion
and beneficence to the suffering brethren in the faith. " See how they
love one another ! " the astonished heathens cried when they wit-
nessed the beneficence of the Christians to the poor, the sick, the
destitute, and prisoners. The impression must have been very great ;
the phenomenon was an unheard of thing, a unique thing in a society
where murder was a public entertainment, and the most barefaced
avarice and deceit was a matter of course with great and small. In
the first centuries however the ascetic, world-opposing side of Chris-
tian morality predominated so much, and the positive, world-shaping
force of it was so little made to appear, that primitive Christianity
has seemed to many students to have been in the main a world-
avoiding spiritualism. We must not forget that the world the
Christians avoided, and from the interests and efforts of which, — its
higher efforts too, we must confess, — they turned unsympathisingly
away, was not the world generally, but the then subsisting world of
RELIGION AND MORALITY. 255
heatheu society. This is naturally accounted for, partly by the
corruption of the manners of the Gentile world and partly by the
primitive Christian expectation of the end of the world. In the
heathen world of the Eomau empire the most dissolute sensuality
and the coarsest contempt for men went hand in hand ; and art,
especially the degenerate drama, and in part even worship, were under
the influence of these corrupt tendencies. What was more natural
than that Christianity, compelled to enter on a struggle with this
corrupt sensuality, should have exaggerated to the utmost the anti-
thesis between the spirit and the flesh, a position which it shared
with Essenism, Alexandrianism, Platonism, the younger Stoicism and
Neo-Pythagoreanism, — that is to say, with nearly all the serious
mental tendencies of the age, and should rather have inclined to a
rigorous spiritualistic asceticism than by a premature treaty between
the spirit and nature have sacrificed the purity of its moral principles ?
Then again Christianity encountered in the Eoman Empire a public
life which in a hundred ways was interlaced with heathen worship
and belief, that is, in the Christian view, with the service of demons ;
a political system built upon the ruins of the freedom of the nations,
which no longer offered any satisfaction to the ideal needs of higher
minds, and which set up in place of the faded ideals of the religions
of the nations its worship of the Caesars. Was it to be wondered
at that the Christian community had little sympathy for such a state
and desired to have as little as possible to do with its affairs, without
at the same time violating the obligation of passive obedience to it ?
And when the Roman Empire, not content with this passive obedience,
persecuted the Christians with merciless severity as dangerous to the
state, was it to be wondered at if to the eyes of the persecuted this
hostile state appeared to be an embodiment of the satanic world-
power, the kingdom of the devil, who was now conducting his last
desperate struggle with the children of God, but was soon to fall into
destruction at Christ's final judgment of the world ?
The expectation of the closely impending return of Christ to set
up his visible kingdom of glory, and the assumption that till this
not distant term the present world stood under the rule of the devil
25G MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
and his demons, — these essential elements of the primitive Christian
belief had a most powerful influence on the moral thought of the
early Christians ; and it cannot be denied that this influence was
two-sided. On the one side it is true that the belief that they were
surrounded at every step by the snares of the demons stimulated
them to stricter watchfulness and self- discipline, and to joyful
renunciation of the world ; and that the hope of soon witnessing the
triumph of Christ over the world and taking part in it incited them
to the most -wonderfully heroic endurance ; but when the world was
lighted with this dull apocalyptic glare, it was scarcely possible that
their eye should be clear or their hand active for the moral tasks of
life. What did it profit to labour for the amelioration of social
conditions which were soon to be swallowed up in destruction?
With such prospects, the most that could be looked for was that
compassionate brotherly love should feel itself compelled to do
something to alleviate the immediate evils of the neiirhbourhood :
there was too little positive interest in the things of this world to
lead to any active effort for the general aims of society. Even the
most natural moral community, the family, could not, from this
point of view, be regarded as an institution of positive moral value
in itself ; it was regarded, like the state, as at the most a necessary
evil, which the Christian was free to use, but which it was safer to
despise. This point of view was set up by Paul (1 Cor. vii.) ; it
remained dominant with the fathers of the Church, and it led after-
wards to the doctrine of a double morality, a lower and a higher, and
to the promotion of celibacy for those who represented the Church's
ideal of life, namely the order of the clergy. Only the Alexandrian
father, Clement, formed a notable exception ; he was preserved from
ascetic extravagances by his familiarity with Greek and especially
Stoic philosophy. He is convinced that the Christian can guard his
moral perfectness in every situation in life, in riches as well as in
poverty, in marriage as well as in celibacy ; in fact, that so far was
marriage from being a hindrance to Christian perfection that on the
contrary by the special demands it makes for moral effort it promotes
a fuller and more rounded development of Christian virtue than the
BELIGION AND MORALITY. 257
celibate who tliinks of nothing but the salvation of his soul, can ever
attain. But such reasonable views remained an isolated exception.
The ascetic tendency was too much interwoven with the beginnings
of Christianity, as even the New Testament shows, and was too
much in accordance with the general current of the age, to be over-
come by the dissenting voices of isolated teachers of greater en-
lightenment.
In such circumstances the only thing the church could do was,
while allowing the legitimacy of the ascetic ideal, to set such bounds
to it as regard for the constitution of human nature and for the
requirements of life in the world demanded. The doctrine of a douhh
morality, which had such grave consequences for after ages, was just
such a compromise ; the lower morality being that which might be
required of every Christian, and the higher that which might be re-
commended as a counsel of perfection to him who aimed at a higher
attainment ; by the latter, celibacy and voluntary poverty were
meant, and the stricter style of fasting too is counted by the Eoman
Hennas to be a work of greater merit than the law demands. The
organisation of this higher morality in an order of spiritual perfection,
or in monasticism, did not proceed directly from the church, but arose
out of Egyptian asceticism with the co-operation perhaps of influences
proceeding from other than Christian sources; but the church,
especially the Western Church, always knew how to incorporate the
monastic order as a regular member of her hierarchical grades, and
so to make it not what it might have been, a dangerous rival to the
clergy of the church, but an obedient corps of picked men in her
struggle for world-rule.
This distinction of lower and higher morality, of the morality
of duty merely and that to which merit was attached, and this
identification of Christian perfection with a definite external
manner of action, implies a mode of judging moral value more
by the outward acts than by the disposition— a legal standard
therefore. The spirit of Jewish legalism, indeed, held its entry
into the church more and more, only without the national Jewish
forms it had before ; and set up its permanent seat most markedly
VOL. IV. R
258 MANIFESTATION OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS.
in Eome, where it met with a temperament akin to that of Jerusalem,
and with an old habit of rule. The Eoman view of Christian morality
appeared in a characteristic form and very early, in the treatment
of the subject of penance. With the practical wisdom which always
distinguished her, Eome first saw that rigoristic ascetic idealism
which appeared in its most exaggerated form in Montanism, to be
thoroughly impracticable, and set up instead a law of penance which
allowed even the " fallen," those whose sin the church had hitherto
regarded as unforgivable or as " mortal," to be received again into
the communion of the church ; care only being taken that their
restoration should be proceeded by a solemn penance, the kind and
decree of which the church was to fix in proportion to the sin to be
wiped out. The distinction between " mortal " and " venial " sins
now came to imply that the former required a special church penance
if they were not to lead to eternal damnation, while the latter might
be forgiven without such a process, simply by means of prayer, alms-
giving, and observance of the regular fasts. Thus penance came to
be a legal transaction, the conditions of which were settled by the
church in ever greater detail in decrees of synods and " Penitentials,"
according to which the priest had to estimate various kinds of sins
confessed to him, and to fix the measure of the penance or satisfac-
tion demanded by each of them,— exactly as the secular judge has to
adjust his sentences in accordance with the penal code. We certainly
must not undervalue the educative influence the church thus exer-
cised on the rude peoples of the Middle Ages ; but it is also certain
that the inwardness and freedom of evangelical morality entirely
disappeared before an external legalism only distinguished from that
of Judaism by not being limited to the theocracy of a single people
but claiming universal rule over the nations. Along with this out-
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