The Essence of Christianity 28 – Eliot · Verses Across
Freethought · Atheism
The Essence of Christianity 28Part 2 · Concluding Application (part 1)
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Freethought · Atheism
The Essence of Christianity 28
Part 2 · Concluding Application (part 1)
EliotEnglish
In the contradiction between Faith and Love which has just been exhibited, we see the practical, palpable ground of necessity that we should raise ourselves above Christianity, above the peculiar stand-point of all religion. We have shown that the substance and object of religion is altogether human; we have shown that divine wisdom is human wisdom; that the secret of theology is anthropology; that the absolute mind is the so-called finite subjective mind. But religion is not conscious that its elements are human; on the contrary, it places itself in opposition to the human, or at least it does not admit that its elements are human. The necessary turning-point of history is therefore the open confession, that the consciousness of God is nothing else than the consciousness of the species; that man can and should raise himself only above the limits of his individuality, and not above the laws, the positive essential conditions of his species; that there is no other essence which man can think, dream of, imagine, feel, believe in, wish for, love and adore as the absolute, than the essence of human nature itself.
Our relation to religion is therefore not a merely negative, but a critical one; we only separate the true from the false;--though we grant that the truth thus separated from falsehood is a new truth, essentially different from the old. Religion is the first form of self-consciousness. Religions are sacred because they are the traditions of the primitive self-consciousness. But that which in religion holds the first place--namely, God--is, as we have shown, in itself and according to truth, the second, for it is only the nature of man regarded objectively; and that which to religion is the second--namely, man--must therefore be constituted and declared the first. Love to man must be no derivative love; it must be original. If human nature is the highest nature to man, then practically also the highest and first law must be the love of man to man. Homo homini Deus est:--this is the great practical principle:--this is the axis on which revolves the history of the world. The relations of child and parent, of husband and wife, of brother and friend--in general, of man to man--in short, all the moral relations are per se religious. Life as a whole is, in its essential, substantial relations, throughout of a divine nature. Its religious consecration is not first conferred by the blessing of the priest. But the pretension of religion is that it can hallow an object by its essentially external co-operation; it thereby assumes to be itself the only holy power; besides itself it knows only earthly, ungodly relations; hence it comes forward in order to consecrate them and make them holy.
But marriage--we mean, of course, marriage as the free bond of love --is sacred in itself, by the very nature of the union which is therein effected. That alone is a religious marriage, which is a true marriage, which corresponds to the essence of marriage--of love. And so it is with all moral relations. Then only are they moral,--then only are they enjoyed in a moral spirit, when they are regarded as sacred in themselves. True friendship exists only when the boundaries of friendship are preserved with religious conscientiousness, with the same conscientiousness with which the believer watches over the dignity of his God. Let friendship be sacred to thee, property sacred, marriage sacred,--sacred the well-being of every man; but let them be sacred in and by themselves.
In Christianity the moral laws are regarded as the commandments of God; morality is even made the criterion of piety; but ethics have nevertheless a subordinate rank, they have not in themselves a religious significance. This belongs only to faith. Above morality hovers God, as a being distinct from man, a being to whom the best is due, while the remnants only fall to the share of man. All those dispositions which ought to be devoted to life, to man--all the best powers of humanity, are lavished on the being who wants nothing. The real cause is converted into an impersonal means, a merely conceptional, imaginary cause usurps the place of the true one. Man thanks God for those benefits which have been rendered to him even at the cost of sacrifice by his fellow-man. The gratitude which he expresses to his benefactor is only ostensible; it is paid, not to him, but to God. He is thankful, grateful to God, but unthankful to man. Thus is the moral sentiment subverted into religion! Thus does man sacrifice man to God! The bloody human sacrifice is in fact only a rude, material expression of the inmost secret of religion. Where bloody human sacrifices are offered to God, such sacrifices are regarded as the highest thing, physical existence as the chief good. For this reason life is sacrificed to God, and it is so on extraordinary occasions; the supposition being that this is the way to show him the greatest honour. If Christianity no longer, at least in our day, offers bloody sacrifices to its God, this arises, to say nothing of other reasons, from the fact that physical existence is no longer regarded as the highest good. Hence the soul, the emotions are now offered to God, because these are held to be something higher. But the common case is, that in religion man sacrifices some duty towards man--such as that of respecting the life of his fellow, of being grateful to him--to a religious obligation,--sacrifices his relation to man to his relation to God. The Christians, by the idea that God is without wants, and that he is only an object of pure adoration, have certainly done away with many pernicious conceptions. But this freedom from wants is only a metaphysical idea, which is by no means part of the peculiar nature of religion. When the need for worship is supposed to exist only on one side, the subjective side, this has the invariable effect of one-sidedness, and leaves the religious emotions cold; hence, if not in express words, yet in fact, there must be attributed to God a condition corresponding to the subjective need, the need of the worshipper, in order to establish reciprocity. All the positive definitions of religion are based on reciprocity. The religious man thinks of God because God thinks of him; he loves God because God has first loved him. God is jealous of man; religion is jealous of morality; it sucks away the best forces of morality; it renders to man only the things that are man's, but to God the things that are God's; and to him is rendered true, living emotion,--the heart.
When in times in which peculiar sanctity was attached to religion, we find marriage, property, and civil law respected, this has not its foundation in religion, but in the original, natural sense of morality and right, to which the true social relations are sacred as such. He to whom the Right is not holy for its own sake will never be made to feel it sacred by religion. Property did not become sacred because it was regarded as a divine institution, but it was regarded as a divine institution because it was felt to be in itself sacred. Love is not holy because it is a predicate of God, but it is a predicate of God because it is in itself divine. The heathens do not worship the light or the fountain because it is a gift of God, but because it has of itself a beneficial influence on man, because it refreshes the sufferer; on account of this excellent quality they pay it divine honours.
Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever the right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established. I can found morality on theology only when I myself have already defined the Divine Being by means of morality. In the contrary case, I have no criterion of the moral and immoral, but merely an unmoral, arbitrary basis, from which I may deduce anything I please. Thus, if I would found morality on God, I must first of all place it in God: for Morality, Right, in short, all substantial relations, have their only basis in themselves, can only have a real foundation--such as truth demands--when they are thus based. To place anything in God, or to derive anything from God, is nothing more than to withdraw it from the test of reason, to institute it as indubitable, unassailable, sacred, without rendering an account why. Hence self-delusion, if not wicked, insidious design, is at the root of all efforts to establish morality, right, on theology. Where we are in earnest about the right we need no incitement or support from above. We need no Christian rule of political right: we need only one which is rational, just, human. The right, the true, the good, has always its ground of sacredness in itself, in its quality. Where man is in earnest about ethics, they have in themselves the validity of a divine power. If morality has no foundation in itself, there is no inherent necessity for morality; morality is then surrendered to the groundless arbitrariness of religion.
Thus the work of the self-conscious reason in relation to religion is simply to destroy an illusion:--an illusion, however, which is by no means indifferent, but which, on the contrary, is profoundly injurious in its effect on mankind; which deprives man as well of the power of real life as of the genuine sense of truth and virtue; for even love, in itself the deepest, truest emotion, becomes by means of religiousness merely ostensible, illusory, since religious love gives itself to man only for God's sake, so that it is given only in appearance to man, but in reality to God.
And we need only, as we have shown, invert the religious relations--regard that as an end which religion supposes to be a means--exalt that into the primary which in religion is subordinate, the accessory, the condition,--at once we have destroyed the illusion, and the unclouded light of truth streams in upon us. The sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, which are the characteristic symbols of the Christian religion, may serve to confirm and exhibit this truth.
The Water of Baptism is to religion only the means by which the Holy Spirit imparts itself to man. But by this conception it is placed in contradiction with reason, with the truth of things. On the one hand, there is virtue in the objective, natural quality of water; on the other, there is none, but it is a merely arbitrary medium of divine grace and omnipotence. We free ourselves from these and other irreconcilable contradictions, we give a true significance to Baptism, only by regarding it as a symbol of the value of water itself. Baptism should represent to us the wonderful but natural effect of water on man. Water has, in fact, not merely physical effects, but also, and as a result of these, moral and intellectual effects on man. Water not only cleanses man from bodily impurities, but in water the scales fall from his eyes: he sees, he thinks more clearly; he feels himself freer; water extinguishes the fire of appetite. How many saints have had recourse to the natural qualities of water in order to overcome the assaults of the devil! What was denied by Grace has been granted by Nature. Water plays a part not only in dietetics, but also in moral and mental discipline. To purify oneself, to bathe, is the first, though the lowest of virtues. In the stream of water the fever of selfishness is allayed. Water is the readiest means of making friends with Nature. The bath is a sort of chemical process, in which our individuality is resolved into the objective life of Nature. The man rising from the water is a new, a regenerate man. The doctrine that morality can do nothing without means of grace has a valid meaning if, in place of imaginary, supernatural means of grace, we substitute natural means. Moral feeling can effect nothing without Nature; it must ally itself with the simplest natural means. The profoundest secrets lie in common everyday things, such as supranaturalistic religion and speculation ignore, thus sacrificing real mysteries to imaginary, illusory ones; as here, for example, the real power of water is sacrificed to an imaginary one. Water is the simplest means of grace or healing for the maladies of the soul as well as of the body. But water is effectual only where its use is constant and regular. Baptism, as a single act, is either an altogether useless and unmeaning institution, or, if real effects are attributed to it, a superstitious one. But it is a rational, a venerable institution, if it is understood to typify and celebrate the moral and physical curative virtues of water.
But the sacrament of water required a supplement. Water, as a universal element of life, reminds us of our origin from Nature, an origin which we have in common with plants and animals. In Baptism we bow to the power of a pure Nature-force; water is the element of natural equality and freedom, the mirror of the golden age. But we men are distinguished from the plants and animals, which together with the inorganic kingdom we comprehend under the common name of Nature;--we are distinguished from Nature. Hence we must celebrate our distinction, our specific difference. The symbols of this our difference are bread and wine. Bread and wine are, as to their materials, products of Nature; as to their form, products of man. If in water we declare: Man can do nothing without Nature; by bread and wine we declare: Nature needs man, as man needs Nature. In water, human mental activity is nullified; in bread and wine it attains self-satisfaction. Bread and wine are supernatural products,--in the only valid and true sense, the sense which is not in contradiction with reason and Nature. If in water we adore the pure force of Nature, in bread and wine we adore the supernatural power of mind, of consciousness, of man. Hence this sacrament is only for man matured into consciousness; while baptism is imparted to infants. But we at the same time celebrate here the true relation of mind to Nature: Nature gives the material, mind gives the form. The sacrament of Baptism inspires us with thankfulness towards Nature, the sacrament of bread and wine with thankfulness towards man. Bread and wine typify to us the truth that Man is the true God and Saviour of man.
Eating and drinking is the mystery of the Lord's Supper;--eating and drinking is, in fact, in itself a religious act; at least, ought to be so. Think, therefore, with every morsel of bread which relieves thee from the pain of hunger, with every draught of wine which cheers thy heart, of the God who confers these beneficent gifts upon thee,--think of man! But in thy gratitude towards man forget not gratitude towards holy Nature! Forget not that wine is the blood of plants, and flour the flesh of plants, which are sacrificed for thy well-being! Forget not that the plant typifies to thee the essence of Nature, which lovingly surrenders itself for thy enjoyment! Therefore forget not the gratitude which thou owest to the natural qualities of bread and wine! And if thou art inclined to smile that I call eating and drinking religious acts, because they are common everyday acts, and are therefore performed by multitudes without thought, without emotion; reflect, that the Lord's Supper is to multitudes a thoughtless, emotionless act, because it takes place often; and, for the sake of comprehending the religious significance of bread and wine, place thyself in a position where the daily act is unnaturally, violently interrupted. Hunger and thirst destroy not only the physical but also the mental and moral powers of man; they rob him of his humanity--of understanding, of consciousness. Oh! if thou shouldst ever experience such want, how wouldst thou bless and praise the natural qualities of bread and wine, which restore to thee thy humanity, thy intellect! It needs only that the ordinary course of things be interrupted in order to vindicate to common things an uncommon significance, to life, as such, a religious import. Therefore let bread be sacred for us, let wine be sacred, and also let water be sacred! Amen.
APPENDIX.
EXPLANATIONS--REMARKS--ILLUSTRATIVE CITATIONS.
§ 1.
Man has his highest being, his God, in himself; not in himself as an individual, but in his essential nature, his species. No individual is an adequate representation of his species, but only the human individual is conscious of the distinction between the species and the individual; in the sense of this distinction lies the root of religion. The yearning of man after something above himself is nothing else than the longing after the perfect type of his nature, the yearning to be free from himself, i.e., from the limits and defects of his individuality. Individuality is the self-conditionating, the self-limitation of the species. Thus man has cognisance of nothing above himself, of nothing beyond the nature of humanity; but to the individual man this nature presents itself under the form of an individual man. Thus, for example, the child sees the nature of man above itself in the form of its parents, the pupil in the form of his tutor. But all feelings which man experiences towards a superior man, nay, in general, all moral feelings which man has towards man, are of a religious nature. Man feels nothing towards God which he does not also feel towards man. Homo homini deus est. Want teaches prayer; but in misfortune, in sorrow, man kneels to entreat help of man also. Feeling makes God a man, but for the same reason it makes man a God. How often in deep emotion, which alone speaks genuine truth, man exclaims to man: Thou art, thou hast been my redeemer, my saviour, my protecting spirit, my God! We feel awe, reverence, humility, devout admiration, in thinking of a truly great, noble man; we feel ourselves worthless, we sink into nothing, even in the presence of human greatness. The purely, truly human emotions are religious; but for that reason the religious emotions are purely human: the only difference is, that the religious emotions are vague, indefinite; but even this is only the case when the object of them is indefinite. Where God is positively defined, is the object of positive religion, there God is also the object of positive, definite human feelings, the object of fear and love, and therefore he is a positively human being; for there is nothing more in God than what lies in feeling. If in the heart there is fear and terror, in God there is anger; if in the heart there is joy, hope, confidence, in God there is love. Fear makes itself objective in anger; joy in love, in mercy. "As it is with me in my heart, so is it with God." "As my heart is, so is God."--Luther (Th. i. p. 72). But a merciful and angry God--Deus vere irascitur (Melancthon)--is a God no longer distinguishable from the human feelings and nature. Thus even in religion man bows before the nature of man under the form of a personal human being; religion itself expressly declares--and all anthropomorphisms declare this in opposition to Pantheism.--quod supra nos nihil ad nos; that is, a God who inspires us with no human emotions, who does not reflect our own emotions, in a word, who is not a man,--such a God is nothing to us, has no interest for us, does not concern us. (See the passages cited in this work from Luther.)
Religion has thus no dispositions and emotions which are peculiar to itself; what it claims as belonging exclusively to its object, are simply the same dispositions and emotions that man experiences either in relation to himself (as, for example, to his conscience), or to his fellow-man, or to Nature. You must not fear men, but God; you must not love man,--i.e., not truly, for his own sake,--but God; you must not humble yourselves before human greatness, but only before the Lord; not believe and confide in man, but only in God. Hence comes the danger of worshipping false gods in distinction from the true God. Hence the "jealousy" of God. "Ego Jehova, Deus tuus, Deus sum zelotypus. Ut zelotypus vir dicitur, qui rivalem pati nequit: sic Deus socium in cultu, quem ab hominibus postulat, ferre non potest." (Clericus, Comment. in Exod. c. 20, v. 5.) Jealousy arises because a being preferred and loved by me directs to another the feelings and dispositions which I claim for myself. But how could I be jealous if the impressions and emotions which I excite in the beloved being were altogether peculiar and apart, were essentially different from the impressions which another can make on him? If, therefore, the emotions of religion were objectively, essentially different from those which lie out of religion, there would be no possibility of idolatry in man or of jealousy in God. As the flute has another sound to me than the trumpet, and I cannot confound the impressions produced by the former with the impressions produced by the latter; so I could not transfer to a natural or human being the emotions of religion, if the object of religion, God, were specifically different from the natural or human being, and consequently the impressions which he produced on me were specific, peculiar.
§ 2.
Feeling alone is the object of feeling. Feeling is sympathy; feeling arises only in the love of man to man. Sensations man has in isolation; feelings only in community. Only in sympathy does sensation rise into feeling. Feeling is æsthetic, human sensation; only what is human is the object of feeling. In feeling man is related to his fellow-man as to himself; he is alive to the sorrows, the joys of another as his own. Thus only by communication does man rise above merely egoistic sensation into feeling;--participated sensation is feeling. He who has no need of participating has no feeling. But what does the hand, the kiss, the glance, the voice, the tone, the word--as the expression of emotion--impart? Emotion. The very same thing which, pronounced or performed without the appropriate tone, without emotion, is only an object of indifferent perception, becomes, when uttered or performed with emotion, an object of feeling. To feel is to have a sense of sensations, to have emotion in the perception of emotion. Hence the brutes rise to feeling only in the sexual relation, and therefore only transiently; for here the being experiences sensation not in relation to itself taken alone, or to an object without sensation, but to a being having like emotions with itself,--not to another as a distinct object, but to an object which in species is identical. Hence Nature is an object of feeling to me only when I regard it as a being akin to me and in sympathy with me.
It is clear from what has been said, that only where in truth, if not according to the subjective conception, the distinction between the divine and human being is abolished, is the objective existence of God, the existence of God as an objective, distinct being, abolished:--only there, I say, is religion made a mere matter of feeling, or conversely, feeling the chief point in religion. The last refuge of theology therefore is feeling. God is renounced by the understanding; he has no longer the dignity of a real object, of a reality which imposes itself on the understanding; hence he is transferred to feeling; in feeling his existence is thought to be secure. And doubtless this is the safest refuge; for to make feeling the essence of religion is nothing else than to make feeling the essence of God. And as certainly as I exist, so certainly does my feeling exist; and as certainly as my feeling exists, so certainly does my God exist. The certainty of God is here nothing else than the self-certainty of human feeling, the yearning after God is the yearning after unlimited, uninterrupted, pure feeling. In life the feelings are interrupted; they collapse; they are followed by a state of void, of insensibility. The religious problem, therefore, is to give fixity to feeling in spite of the vicissitudes of life, and to separate it from repugnant disturbances and limitations: God himself is nothing else than undisturbed, uninterrupted feeling, feeling for which there exists no limits, no opposite. If God were a being distinct from thy feeling, he would be known to thee in some other way than simply in feeling; but just because thou perceivest him only by feeling, he exists only in feeling--he is himself only feeling.
§ 3.
God is man's highest feeling of self, freed from all contrarieties or disagreeables. God is the highest being; therefore, to feel God is the highest feeling. But is not the highest feeling also the highest feeling of self? So long as I have not had the feeling of the highest, so long I have not exhausted my capacity of feeling, so long I do not yet fully know the nature of feeling. What, then, is an object to me in my feeling of the highest being? Nothing else than the highest nature of my power of feeling. So much as a man can feel, so much is (his) God. But the highest degree of the power of feeling is also the highest degree of the feeling of self. In the feeling of the low I feel myself lowered, in the feeling of the high I feel myself exalted. The feeling of self and feeling are inseparable, otherwise feeling would not belong to myself. Thus God, as an object of feeling, or what is the same thing, the feeling of God, is nothing else than man's highest feeling of self. But God is the freest, or rather the absolutely only free being; thus God is man's highest feeling of freedom. How couldst thou be conscious of the highest being as freedom, or freedom as the highest being, if thou didst not feel thyself free? But when dost thou feel thyself free? When thou feelest God. To feel God is to feel oneself free. For example, thou feelest desire, passion, the conditions of time and place, as limits. What thou feelest as a limit thou strugglest against, thou breakest loose from, thou deniest. The consciousness of a limit, as such, is already an anathema, a sentence of condemnation pronounced on this limit, for it is an oppressive, disagreeable, negative consciousness. Only the feeling of the good, of the positive, is itself good and positive--is joy. Joy alone is feeling in its element, its paradise, because it is unrestricted activity. The sense of pain in an organ is nothing else than the sense of a disturbed, obstructed, thwarted activity; in a word, the sense of something abnormal, anomalous. Hence thou strivest to escape from the sense of limitation into unlimited feeling. By means of the will, or the imagination, thou negativest limits, and thus obtainest the feeling of freedom. This feeling of freedom is God. God is exalted above desire and passion, above the limits of space and time. But this exaltation is thy own exaltation above that which appears to thee as a limit. Does not this exaltation of the divine being exalt thee? How could it do so, if it were external to thee? No; God is an exalted being only for him who himself has exalted thoughts and feelings. Hence the exaltation of the divine being varies according to that which different men or nations perceive as a limitation to the feeling of self, and which they consequently negative or eliminate from their ideal.
§ 4.
The distinction between the "heathen," or philosophic, and the Christian God--the non-human, or pantheistic, and the human, personal God--reduces itself only to the distinction between the understanding or reason and the heart or feelings. Reason is the self-consciousness of the species, as such; feeling is the self-consciousness of individuality; the reason has relation to existences, as things; the heart to existences, as persons. I am is an expression of the heart; I think, of the reason. Cogito, ergo sum? No! Sentio, ergo sum. Feeling only is my existence; thinking is my non-existence, the negation of my individuality, the positing of the species; reason is the annihilation of personality. To think is an act of spiritual marriage. Only beings of the same species understand each other; the impulse to communicate thought is the intellectual impulse of sex. Reason is cold, because its maxim is, audiatur et altera pars, because it does not interest itself in man alone; but the heart is a partisan of man. Reason loves all impartiality, but the heart only what is like itself. It is true that the heart has pity also on the brutes, but only because it sees in the brute something more than the brute. The heart loves only what it identifies with itself. It says: Whatsoever thou dost to this being, thou dost to me. The heart loves only itself; does not get beyond itself, beyond man. The superhuman God is nothing else than the supernatural heart; the heart does not give us the idea of another, of a being different from ourselves. "For the heart, Nature is an echo, in which it hears only itself. Emotion, in the excess of its happiness, transfers itself to external things. It is the love which can withhold itself from no existence, which gives itself forth to all; but it only recognises as existing that which it knows to have emotion." Reason, on the contrary, has pity on animals, not because it finds itself in them, or identifies them with man, but because it recognises them as beings distinct from man, not existing simply for the sake of man, but also as having rights of their own. The heart sacrifices the species to the individual, the reason sacrifices the individual to the species. The man without feeling has no home, no private hearth. Feeling, the heart, is the domestic life; the reason is the res publica of man. Reason is the truth of Nature, the heart is the truth of man. To speak popularly, reason is the God of Nature, the heart the God of man;--a distinction however which, drawn thus sharply, is, like the others, only admissible in antithesis. Everything which man wishes, but which reason, which Nature denies, the heart bestows. God, immortality, freedom, in the supranaturalistic sense, exist only in the heart. The heart is itself the existence of God, the existence of immortality. Satisfy yourselves with this existence! You do not understand your heart; therein lies the evil. You desire a real, external, objective immortality, a God out of yourselves. Here is the source of delusion.
But as the heart releases man from the limits, even the essential limits of Nature; reason, on the other hand, releases Nature from the limits of external finiteness. It is true that Nature is the light and measure of reason;--a truth which is opposed to abstract Idealism. Only what is naturally true is logically true; what has no basis in Nature has no basis at all. That which is not a physical law is not a metaphysical law. Every true law in metaphysics can and must be verified physically. But at the same time reason is also the light of Nature;--and this truth is the barrier against crude materialism. Reason is the nature of things come fully to itself, re-established in its entireness. Reason divests things of the disguises and transformations which they have undergone in the conflict and agitation of the external world, and reduces them to their true character. Most, indeed nearly all, crystals--to give an obvious illustration--appear in Nature under a form altogether different from their fundamental one; nay, many crystals never have appeared in their fundamental form. Nevertheless, the mineralogical reason has discovered that fundamental form. Hence nothing is more foolish than to place Nature in opposition to reason, as an essence in itself incomprehensible to reason. If reason reduces transformations and disguises to their fundamental forms, does it not effect that which lies in the idea of Nature itself, but which, prior to the operation of reason, could not be effected on account of external hindrances? What else then does reason do than remove external disturbances, influences, and obstructions, so as to present a thing as it ought to be, to make the existence correspond to the idea; for the fundamental form is the idea of the crystal. Another popular example. Granite consists of mica, quartz, and feldspar. But frequently other kinds of stone are mingled with it. If we had no other guide and tutor than the senses, we should without hesitation reckon as constituent parts of granite all the kinds of stone which we ever find in combination with it; we should say yes to everything the senses told us, and so never come to the true idea of granite.
But reason says to the credulous senses: Quod non. It discriminates; it distinguishes the essential from the accidental elements. Reason is the midwife of Nature; it explains, enlightens, rectifies and completes Nature. Now that which separates the essential from the non-essential, the necessary from the accidental, what is proper to a thing from what is foreign, which restores what has been violently sundered to unity, and what has been forcibly united to freedom,--is not this divine? Is not such an agency as this the agency of the highest, of divine love? And how would it be possible that reason should exhibit the pure nature of things, the original text of the universe, if it were not itself the purest, most original essence? But reason has no partiality for this or that species of things. It embraces with equal interest the whole universe; it interests itself in all things and beings without distinction, without exception;--it bestows the same attention on the worm which human egoism tramples under its feet, as on man, as on the sun in the firmament. Reason is thus the all-embracing, all-compassionating being, the love of the universe to itself. To reason alone belongs the great work of the resurrection and restoration of all things and beings--universal redemption and reconciliation. Not even the unreasoning animal, the speechless plant, the unsentient stone, shall be excluded from this universal festival. But how would it be possible that reason should interest itself in all beings without exception, if reason were not itself universal and unlimited in its nature? Is a limited nature compatible with unlimited interest, or an unlimited interest with a limited nature? By what dost thou recognise the limitation of a being but by the limitation of his interest? As far as the interest extends, so far extends the nature. The desire of knowledge is infinite; reason then is infinite. Reason is the highest species of being;--hence it includes all species in the sphere of knowledge.
Reason cannot content itself in the individual; it has its adequate existence only when it has the species for its object, and the species not as it has already developed itself in the past and present, but as it will develop itself in the unknown future. In the activity of reason I feel a distinction between myself and reason in me; this distinction is the limit of the individuality; in feeling I am conscious of no distinction between myself and feeling; and with this absence of distinction there is an absence also of the sense of limitation. Hence it arises that to so many men reason appears finite, and only feeling infinite. And, in fact, feeling, the heart of man as a rational being, is as infinite, as universal as reason; since man only truly perceives and understands that for which he has feeling.
Thus reason is the essence of Nature and Man, released from non-essential limits, in their identity; it is the universal being, the universal God. The heart, considered in its difference from the reason, is the private God of man; the personal God is the heart of man, emancipated from the limits or laws of Nature.
§ 5.
Nature, the world, has no value, no interest for Christians. The Christian thinks only of himself and the salvation of his soul. "A te incipiat cogitatio tua et in te finiatur, nec frustra in alia distendaris, te neglecto. Praeter salutem tuam nihil cogites. De inter. Domo. (Among the spurious writings of St. Bernard.) Si te vigilanter homo attendas, mirum est, si ad aliud unquam intendas.--Divus Bernardus. (Tract. de XII grad. humil. et sup.).... Orbe sit sol major, an pedis unius latitudine metiatur? alieno ex lumine an propriis luceat fulgoribus luna? quae neque scire compendium, neque ignorare detrimentum est ullum.... Res vestra in ancipiti sita est: salus dico animarum vestrarum.--Arnobius (adv. gentes, l. ii. c. 61). Quaero igitur ad quam rem scientia referenda sit; si ad causas rerum naturalium, quae beatitudo erit mihi proposita, si sciero unde Nilus oriatur, vel quicquid de coelo Physici delirant?--Lactantius (Instit. div. l. iii. c. 8). Etiam curiosi esse prohibemur.... Sunt enim qui desertis virtutibus et nescientes quid sit Deus ... magnum aliquid se agere putant, si universam istam corporis molem, quam mundum nuncupamus, curiosissime intentissimeque perquirant.... Reprimat igitur se anima ab hujusmodi vanae cognitionis cupiditate, si se castam Deo servare disposuit. Tali enim amore plerumque decipitur, ut (aut) nihil putet esse nisi corpus.--Augustinus (de Mor. Eccl. cath. l. i. c. 21). De terrae quoque vel qualitate vel positione tractare, nihil prosit ad spem futuri, cum satis sit ad scientiam, quod scripturarum divinarum series comprehendit, quod Deus suspendit terram in nihilo.--Ambrosius (Hexaemeron, l. i. c. 6). Longe utique praestantius est, nosse resurrecturam carnem ac sine fine victuram, quam quidquid in ea medici, scrutando discere potuerunt.--Augustinus (de Anima et ejus orig. l. iv. c. 10)." "Let natural science alone.... It is enough that thou knowest fire is hot, water cold and moist.... Know how thou oughtest to treat thy field, thy cow, thy house and child--that is enough of natural science for thee. Think how thou mayest learn Christ, who will show thee thyself, who thou art, and what is thy capability. Thus wilt thou learn God and thyself, which no natural master or natural science ever taught."--Luther (Th. xiii. p. 264).
Such quotations as these, which might be multiplied indefinitely, show clearly enough that true, religious Christianity has within it no principle of scientific and material culture, no motive to it. The practical end and object of Christians is solely heaven, i.e., the realised salvation of the soul. The theoretical end and object of Christians is solely God, as the being identical with the salvation of the soul. He who knows God knows all things; and as God is infinitely more than the world, so theology is infinitely more than the knowledge of the world. Theology makes happy, for its object is personified happiness. Infelix homo, qui scit illa omnia (created things) te autem nescit, Beatus autem qui te scit, etiam si illa nesciat.--Augustin (Confess. l. v. c. 4). Who then would, who could exchange the blessed Divine Being for the unblessed worthless things of this world? It is true that God reveals himself in Nature, but only vaguely, dimly, only in his most general attributes; himself, his true personal nature, he reveals only in religion, in Christianity. The knowledge of God through Nature is heathenism; the knowledge of God through himself, through Christ, in whom dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily, is Christianity. What interest, therefore, should Christians have in occupying themselves with material, natural things? Occupation with Nature, culture in general, presupposes, or, at least, infallibly produces, a heathenish, mundane, anti-theological, anti-supranaturalistic sentiment and belief. Hence the culture of modern Christian nations is so little to be derived from Christianity, that it is only to be explained by the negation of Christianity, a negation which certainly was, in the first instance, only practical. It is indeed necessary to distinguish between what the Christians were as Christians and what they were as heathens, as natural men, and thus between that which they have said and done in agreement, and that which they have said and done in contradiction with their faith. (See on this subject the author's P. Bayle.)
How frivolous, therefore, are modern Christians when they deck themselves in the arts and sciences of modern nations as products of Christianity! How striking is the contrast in this respect between these modern boasters and the Christians of older times! The latter knew of no other Christianity than that which is contained in the Christian faith, in faith in Christ; they did not reckon the treasures and riches, the arts and sciences of this world as part of Christianity. In all these points, they rather conceded the pre-eminence to the ancient heathens, the Greeks and Romans. "Why dost thou not also wonder, Erasmus, that from the beginning of the world there have always been among the heathens higher, rarer people, of greater, more exalted understanding, more excellent diligence and skill in all arts, than among Christians or the people of God? Christ himself says that the children of this world are wiser than the children of light. Yea, who among the Christians could we compare for understanding or application to Cicero (to say nothing of the Greeks, Demosthenes and others)?"--Luther (Th. xix. p. 37). Quid igitur nos antecellimus? Num ingenio, doctrina, morum moderatione illos superamus? Nequaquam. Sed vera Dei agnitione, invocatione et celebratione præstamus.--Melancthonis (et al. Declam. Th. iii. de vera invocat. Dei).
§ 6.
In religion man has in view himself alone, or, in regarding himself as the object of God, as the end of the divine activity, he is an object to himself, his own end and aim. The mystery of the incarnation is the mystery of the love of God to man, and the mystery of the love of God to man is the love of man to himself. God suffers--suffers for me--this is the highest self-enjoyment, the highest self-certainty of human feeling. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son."--John iii. 16. "If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?"--Rom. viii. 31, 32. "God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."--Rom. v. 8. "The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me."--Gal. ii. 20. See also Titus iii. 4; Heb. ii. 11. "Credimus in unum Deum patrem ... et in unum Dominum Jesum Christum filium Dei ... Deum ex Deo ... qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit et incarnatus et homo factus est passus."--Fides Nicaenae Synodi. "Servator ... ex praeexcellenti in homines charitate non despexit carnis humanae imbecillitatem, sed ea indutus ad communem venit hominum salutem."--Clemens Alex. (Stromata, l. vii. ed. Wirceb. 1779). "Christianos autem haec universa docent, providentiam esse, maxime vero divinissimum et propter excellentiam amoris erga homines incredibilissimum providentiae opus, dei incarnatio, quae propter nos facta est."--Gregorii Nysseni (Philosophiae, l. viii. de Provid. c. i. 1512. B. Rhenanus. Jo. Cono interp.) "Venit siquidem universitatis creator et Dominus: venit ad homines, venit propter homines, venit homo."--Divus Bernardus Clarev. (de Adventu Domini, Basil, 1552). "Videte, Fratres, quantum se humiliavit propter homines Deus.... Unde non se ipse homo despiciat, propter quem utique ista subire dignatus est Deus."--Augustinus (Sermones ad pop. S. 371, c. 3). "O homo propter quem Deus factus est homo, aliquid magnum te credere debes." (S. 380, c. 2).
"Quis de se desperet pro quo tam humilis esse voluit Filius Dei?" Id. (de Agone Chr. c. 11). "Quis potest odire hominem cujus naturam et similitudinem videt in humanitate Dei? Revera qui odit illum, odit Deum."--(Manuale, c. 26. Among the spurious writings of Augustine.) "Plus nos amat Deus quam filium pater.... Propter nos filio non pepercit. Et quid plus addo? et hoc filio justo et hoc filio unigenito et hoc filio Deo. Et quid dici amplius potest? et hoc pro nobis, i.e. pro malis, etc."--Salvianus (de gubernatione Dei. Rittershusius, 1611, pp. 126, 127). "Quid enim mentes nostras tantum erigit et ab immortalitatis desperatione liberat, quam quod tanti nos fecit Deus, ut Dei filius ... dignatus nostrum inire consortium mala nostra moriendo perferret."--Petrus Lomb. (lib. iii. dist. 20, c. 1). "Attamen si illa quae miseriam nescit, misericordia non praecessisset, ad hanc cujus mater est miseria, non accessisset."--D. Bernardus (Tract. de XII. gradibus hum. et sup.) "Ecce omnia tua sunt, quae habeo et unde tibi servio. Verum tamen vice versa tu magis mihi servis, quam ego tibi. Ecce coelum et terra quae in ministerium hominis creasti, praesto sunt et faciunt quotidie quaecunque mandasti. Et hoc parum est: quin etiam Angelos in ministerium hominis ordinasti. Transcendit autem omnia, quia tu ipse homini servire dignatus es et te ipsum daturum ei promisisti."--Thomas à Kempis (de Imit. l. iii. c. 10). "Ego omnipotens et altissimus, qui cuncta creavi ex nihilo me homini propter te humiliter subjeci.... Pepercit tibi oculus meus, quia pretiosa fuit anima tua in conspectu meo" (ibid. c. 13). "Fili ego descendi de coelo pro salute tua, suscepi tuas miserias, non necessitate, sed charitate trahente" (ibid. c. 18). "Si consilium rei tantae spectamus, quod totum pertinet, ut s. litterae demonstrant. ad salutem generis humani, quid potest esse dignius Deo, quam illa tanta hujus salutis cura, et ut ita dicamus, tantus in ea re sumptus?... Itaque Jesus Christus ipse cum omnibus Apostolis ... in hoc mysterio Filii Dei en sarki phanerothentos angelis hominibusque patefactam esse dicunt magnitudinem sapientis bonitatis divinae."--J. A. Ernesti (Dignit. et verit. inc.
Filii Dei asserta. Opusc. Theol. Lipsiae, 1773, pp. 404, 405. How feeble, how spiritless compared with the expressions of the ancient faith!) "Propter me Christus suscepit meas infirmitates, mei corporis subiit passiones, pro me peccatum h. e. pro omni homine, pro me maledictum factus est, etc. Ille flevit, ne tu homo diu fleres. Ille injurias passus est, ne tu injuriam tuam doleres."--Ambrosius (de fide ad Gratianum, l. ii. c. 4). "God is not against us men. For if God had been against us and hostile to us, he would not assuredly have taken the poor wretched human nature on himself." "How highly our Lord God has honoured us, that he has caused his own Son to become man! How could he have made himself nearer to us?"--Luther (Th. xvi. pp. 533, 574). "It is to be remarked that he (Stephen) is said to have seen not God himself but the man Christ, whose nature is the dearest and likest and most consoling to man, for a man would rather see a man than an angel or any other creature, especially in trouble."--Id. (Th. xiii. p. 170). "It is not thy kingly rule which draws hearts to thee, O wonderful heart!--but thy having become a man in the fulness of time, and thy walk upon the earth, full of weariness." "Though thou guidest the sceptre of the starry realm, thou art still our brother; flesh and blood never disowns itself." "The most powerful charm that melts my heart is that my Lord died on the cross for me." "That it is which moves me; I love thee for thy love, that thou, the creator, the supreme prince, becamest the Lamb of God for me." "Thanks be to thee, dear Lamb of God, with thousands of sinners' tears; thou didst die for me on the cross and didst seek me with yearning." "Thy blood it is which has made me give myself up to thee, else I had never thought of thee through my whole life." "If thou hadst not laid hold upon me, I should never have gone to seek thee." "O how sweetly the soul feeds on the passion of Jesus! Shame and joy are stirred, O thou son of God and of man, when in spirit we see thee so willingly go to death on the cross for us, and each thinks: for me."
"The Father takes us under his care, the Son washes us with his blood, the Holy Spirit is always labouring that he may guide and teach us." "Ah! King, great at all times, but never greater than in the blood-stained robe of the martyr." "My friend is to me and I to him as the Cherubim over the mercy-seat: we look at each other continually. He seeks repose in my heart, and I ever hasten towards his: he wishes to be in my soul, and I in the wound in his side." These quotations are taken from the Moravian hymn-book (Gesangbuch der Evangelischen Brüdergemeine. Gnadau, 1824). We see clearly enough from the examples above given, that the deepest mystery of the Christian religion resolves itself into the mystery of human self-love, but that religious self-love is distinguished from natural in this, that it changes the active into the passive. It is true that the more profound, mystical religious sentiment abhors such naked, undisguised egoism as is exhibited in the Herrnhut hymns; it does not in God expressly have reference to itself; it rather forgets, denies itself, demands an unselfish, disinterested love of God, contemplates God in relation to God, not to itself. "Causa diligendi Deum, Deus est. Modus sine modo diligere.... Qui Domino confitetur, non quoniam sibi bonus est, sed quoniam bonus est, hic vere diligit Deum propter Deum et non propter seipsum. Te enim quodammodo perdere, tanquam qui non sis et omnino non sentire te ipsum et a temetipso exinaniri et pene annullari, coelestis est conversationis, non humanae affectionis" (thus the ideal of love, which, however, is first realised in heaven).--Bernhardus, Tract. de dilig. Deo (ad Haymericum). But this free, unselfish love is only the culmination of religious enthusiasm, in which the subject is merged in the object. As soon as the distinction presents itself--and it necessarily does so--so soon does the subject have reference to itself as the object of God.
And even apart from this: the religious subject denies its ego, its personality, only because it has the enjoyment of blissful personality in God--God per se the realised salvation of the soul, God the highest self-contentment, the highest rapture of human feeling. Hence the saying: "Qui Deum non diligit, seipsum non diligit."
§ 7.
Because God suffers man must suffer. The Christian religion is the religion of suffering. "Videlicet vestigia Salvatoris sequimur in theatris. Tale nobis scilicet Christus reliquit exemplum, quem flerisse legimus, risisse non legimus."--Salvianus (l. c. l. vi. § 181). "Christianorum ergo est pressuram pati in hoc saeculo et lugere, quorum est aeterna vita."--Origenes (Explan. in Ep. Pauli ad Rom. l. ii. c. ii. interp. Hieronymo). "Nemo vitam aeternam, incorruptibilem, immortalemque desiderat, nisi eum vitae hujus temporalis, corruptibilis, mortalisque poeniteat.... Quid ergo cupimus, nisi ita non esse ut nunc sumus? Et quid ingemiscimus, nisi poenitendo, quia ita summus?"--Augustinus (Sermones ad pop. S. 351, c. 3). "Si quidem aliquid melius et utilius saluti hominum quam pati fuisset, Christus utique verbo et exemplo ostendisset.... Quoniam per multas tribulationes oportet nos intrare in regnum Dei."--Thomas à Kempis (de Imit. l. ii. c. 12). When, however, the Christian religion is designated as the religion of suffering, this of course applies only to the Christianity of the "mistaken" Christians of old times. Protestantism, in its very beginning, denied the sufferings of Christ as constituting a principle of morality. It is precisely the distinction between Catholicism and Protestantism, in relation to this subject, that the latter, out of self-regard, attached itself only to the merits of Christ, while the former, out of sympathy, attached itself to his sufferings. "Formerly in Popery the sufferings of the Lord were so preached, that it was only pointed out how his example should be imitated. After that, the time was filled up with the sufferings and sorrows of Mary, and the compassion with which Christ and his mother were bewailed; and the only aim was how to make it piteous, and move the people to compassion and tears, and he who could do this well was held the best preacher for Passion-Week. But we preach the Lord's sufferings as the Holy Scripture teaches us.... Christ suffered for the praise and glory of God ... but to me, and thee, and all of us, he suffered in order to bring redemption and blessedness.... The cause and end of the sufferings of Christ is comprised in this--he suffered for us. This honour is to be given to no other suffering."--Luther (Th. xvi. p. 182). "Lamb! I weep only for joy over thy suffering; the suffering was thine, but thy merit is mine!" "I know of no joys but those which come from thy sufferings." "It remains ever in my mind that it cost thee thy blood to redeem me." "O my Immanuel! how sweet is it to my soul when thou permittest me to enjoy the outpouring of thy blood." "Sinners are glad at heart that they have a Saviour ... it is wondrously beautiful to them to see Jesus on the Cross" (Moravian hymn-book). It is therefore not to be wondered at if Christians of the present day decline to know anything more of the sufferings of Christ. It is they, forsooth, who have first made out what true Christianity is--they rely solely on the divine word of the Holy Scriptures. And the Bible, as every one knows, has the valuable quality that everything may be found in it which it is desired to find. What once stood there, of course now stands there no longer. The principle of stability has long vanished from the Bible. Divine revelation is as changing as human opinion. Tempora mutantur.
