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 expressions which, to begin with, have in themselves a certain generality, and which exegesis can transfer to the region of general views, but which Faith by its explanation of the death of Christ lays hold of in their true meaning; for Faith is essentially the consciousness of absolute truth, of what God is in His true nature. But we have already seen what God is in His true essential nature; He is the life-process, the Trinity, in which the Universal puts itself into antithesis with itself, and is in this antithesis identical with itself. God in this element of eternity represents what encloses itself in union with itself, the enclosing of Himself with Himself. Faith simply lays hold of the thought and has the consciousness that in Christ this absolute essential truth is perceived in the process of its development, and that it is through Him that this truth has first been revealed.

This view represents, to begin with, the religious attitude as such, in which the Divine is itself an essential moment. This anticipation, this imagining, this willing of a new Kingdom, “a new heaven and a new earth,” of a new world, is found amongst those friends and acquaintances who have been taught the truth; this hope, this certainty has made its way into the real part of their hearts, has sunk into their inmost hearts as a reality.

Accordingly the Passion, the death of Christ does away with the human side of Christ’s nature, and it is just in connection with this death that the transition is made into the religious sphere; and here the question comes to be as to how this death is to be conceived of. On the one hand, it is a natural death brought about by injustice, hate, and violence; on the other hand, however, believers are already firmly convinced in their hearts and feelings that they are not here specially concerned with morality, with the thinking and willing of the subject in itself or as starting from itself, but that the real point of importance is an infinite relation to God, to God as actually present,


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 the certainty of the Kingdom of God, a sense of satisfaction not in morality, nor even in anything ethical, nor in the conscience, but a sense of satisfaction beyond which there can be nothing higher, an absolute relation to God Himself.

All other modes of satisfaction imply that in some aspect or other they are of a subordinate sort, and thus the relation of Man to God does not get beyond being a relation to something above, and distant, to something, in fact, which is not actually present at all. The fundamental characteristic of this Kingdom of God is the presence of God, meaning that the members of this Kingdom are not only expected to have love to men, but to have the consciousness that God is Love.

This implies, in fact, that God is present, and that this as personal feeling must be the feeling of the individual Self. This aspect of the truth is represented by the Kingdom of God, or the presence of God, and it is to it that the certainty of the presence of God belongs. Since it is, on the one hand, a need, a feeling, the subject must, on the other hand, distinguish itself from it, must make a distinction between this presence of God and itself, but in such a way that this presence of God will be something certain, and this certainty can actually exist here only in the form of sensuous manifestation.

The eternal Idea itself means that the characteristic of subjectivity as real, as distinguished from what are simply thoughts, is permitted to appear in an immediate form. On the other hand, it is faith begotten by the sorrow of the world, and resting on the testimony of the Spirit, which explains the life of Christ. The teaching of Christ and His miracles are conceived of and understood in connection with this witness of the Spirit. The history of Christ is related, too, by those upon whom the Spirit has been already poured out. The miracles are conceived of and related under the influence of this Spirit, and the death of Christ is truly understood by this Spirit to mean

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 that in Christ God is revealed together with the unity of the Divine and human natures. Christ’s death is accordingly the touchstone, so to speak, by means of which Faith verifies its belief, since it is essentially here that its way of understanding the appearance of Christ makes itself manifest. Christ’s death primarily means that Christ was the God-Man, the God who had at the same time human nature, even unto death. It is the lot of finite humanity to die; death is the most complete proof of humanity, of absolute finitude, and Christ in fact died the aggravated death of the evil-doer; He did not only die a natural death, but a death even of shame and dishonour on the cross; in Him humanity was carried to its furthest point.

In connection with this death we have to notice first of all what is one of its special characteristics, namely, its polemical attitude towards outward things. Not only is the act whereby the natural will yields itself up here represented in a sensible form, but all that is peculiar to the individual, all those interests and personal ends with which the natural will can occupy itself, all that is great and counted as of value in the world, is at the same time buried in the grave of the Spirit. This is the revolutionary element by means of which the world is given a totally new form. And yet in this yielding up of the natural will, the finite, the Other-Being or otherness, is at the same time transfigured. Other-Being or otherness has in fact besides its immediate natural being a more extended sphere of existence and a further determination. It belongs essentially to the definite existence of the subject that it should exist for others; the subject exists not only on its own account or for itself, but exists also in the idea formed of it by others, it exists, has value, and is objective to the extent to which it is able to assert its claim to exist amongst others and has a valid existence. Its validity is the idea formed of it by others, and is based on a comparison with what they hold to be of value


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 and what is regarded by them as possessing the worth of something potential or essential.

Since, accordingly, the death of Christ, in addition to the fact that it is natural death, is, further, the death of an evil-doer, the most degrading of all deaths, death upon the cross, it involves not only what is natural, but also civil degradation, worldly dishonour; the cross is transfigured, what according to the common idea is lowest, what the State characterises as degrading, is transformed into what is highest. Death is natural, every man must die. But since degradation is made the highest honour, all those ties that bind human society together are attacked in their foundations, are shaken and dissolved. When the cross has been elevated to the place of a banner, and is made a banner in fact, the positive content of which is at the same time the Kingdom of God, inner feeling is in the very heart of its nature detached from civil and state life, and the substantial basis of this latter is taken away, so that the whole structure has no longer any reality, but is an empty appearance, which must soon come crashing down, and make manifest in actual existence that it is no longer anything having inherent existence. Imperial power, on its part, degraded all that was esteemed and valued by men. The life of every individual depended on the caprice of the Emperor, and this caprice was not limited by anything either without or within. But, besides life, all virtue, worth, age, rank, race, everything, in short, was utterly degraded. The slave of the Emperor was next to him the highest power in the State, or had even more power than the Emperor himself; the Senate debased itself in proportion as it was debased by the Emperor. Thus the majesty of world-empire, together with all virtue, justice, veneration for institutions and constituted things, the majesty of everything, in short, held by the world as of value was pitched into the gutter. Thus the temporal ruler of the earth, on his part, changed what was highest into what


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 24 of the king, Sturla does not neglect the more showy part of his government—as in the coronation that so impressed the Scottish knight. The correspondence with the Emperor Frederick and King Lewis of France, with King James of Aragon, the Conqueror, and King Alfonso of Castile, the Wise, not to speak of the Sultan of Tunis—all this takes one far from the dales of Iceland. The King of Norway belonged to the great world, and to the new fashions. There was some vanity in his ambition;—in his Icelandic policy, in his annexation of all Greenland, 'North to the loadstar', and in his last enterprise, the voyage to Scotland. But we may still believe that Sturla was right in his view of the king, as a hard-working man and a successful peace-maker.

Far beyond all the separate notable things in the book is the conduct of that story which Ibsen has taken for his drama Kongsemnerne. It is in the relation of Hacon to his father-in-law Duke Skuli that the two different principles—the monarchy and the oligarchy—are dramatized; and Sturla fully understands this, the tragic opposition of two sorts of good intentions; with the pathos, also, brought out in one memorable chapter, of the queen Margaret in her choice between her father, Skuli, and her husband the king. But it is impossible to say more of this here, except that the grace and dignity of it, in Sturla's history, the honours paid to the beaten side, make us understand the character of Sturla himself better than anything else in his writings. He is described by the anonymous first editor of Sturlunga (about the year 1300, probably) as 'a man to our knowledge most wise and fair-minded'. His writings are proof that this friendly opinion is to be trusted; and with that we may leave him.

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 was most despised, and fundamentally perverted feeling, so that in man’s inner life there no longer remained anything to set against the new religion, which in its turn raised what had been most despised to the place of what was highest, and made it a banner. Everything established, everything moral, everything considered by ordinary opinion as of value and possessed of authority, was destroyed, and all that was left to the existing order of things, towards which the new religion took up a position of antagonism, was the purely external, cold power, namely, death, which life, ennobled by feeling that in its inner nature it was infinite now, no longer in any way dreaded.

Now, however, a further determination comes into play—God has died, God is dead,—this is the most frightful of all thoughts, that all that is eternal, all that is true is not, that negation itself is found in God; the deepest sorrow, the feeling of something completely irretrievable, the renunciation of everything of a higher kind, are connected with this. The course of thought does not, however, stop short here; on the contrary, thought begins to retrace its steps: God, that is to say, maintains Himself in this process, and the latter is only the death of death. God comes to life again, and thus things are reversed. The Resurrection is something which thus


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 essentially belongs to faith. After His resurrection Christ appeared only to His friends; this is not outward history for unbelief, but, on the contrary, this appearing of Christ is for faith only. The resurrection is followed by the glorification of Christ; and the triumph of His exaltation to the right hand of God closes this part of His history, which, as thus understood by believing consciousness, is the unfolding of the Divine nature itself. If in the first division of the subject we conceived of God as He is in pure thought, in this second division we start from immediacy as it exists for sense-perception and for ideas based on sense. The process is accordingly this, that immediate particularity is done away with and absorbed; and just as in the first region of thought, God’s state of seclusion came to an end, and His primary immediacy as abstract universality, according to which He is the Essence of Essences, was annulled, so here the abstraction of humanity, the immediacy of existing particularity, is annulled, and this is brought about by death; the death of Christ, however, is the death of death, the negation of the negation. We have had in the Kingdom of the Father the same course and process in the unfolding of God’s nature; here, however, the process is explained in so far as it is an object for consciousness. For here there existed the impulse to form a mental picture of the divine nature. In connection with the death of Christ we have finally to emphasise the moment according to which it is God who has killed death, since He comes out of the state of death: this means that finitude, human nature, and humiliation are attributed to Christ as something foreign to His nature, which is that of one who is God pure and simple; it is shown that finitude is something foreign to His nature, and has been adopted by Him from an Other; this Other is represented by men who stand over against the divine process. It is their finitude which Christ has taken upon Himself, this finitude in all its forms, and which at its furthest extreme is


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 represented by Evil; this humanity, which is itself a moment in the divine life, is now characterised as something foreign to God, as something which does not belong to His nature; this finitude, however, in its condition of Being-for-self, or as existing independently in relation to God, is evil, something foreign to God’s nature; He has, however, taken our finite nature in order to slay it by His death. His shameful death, as representing the marvellous union of these absolute extremes, is at the same time infinite love.

It is a proof of infinite love that God identified Himself with what was foreign to His nature in order to slay it. This is the signification of the death of Christ. Christ has borne the sins of the world, He has reconciled God to us, as it is said.

This death is thus at once finitude in its most extreme form, and at the same time the abolition and absorption of natural finitude, of immediate existence and estrangement, the cancelling of limits. This abolition and absorption of the natural is to be conceived of in a spiritual sense as essentially meaning that the movement of Spirit consists in comprehending itself in itself, in dying to the natural, that it is therefore abstraction from immediate volition and immediate consciousness, an act of sinking into itself, and then an act whereby it itself draws out of this depth into which it has plunged what is merely its own specific character, its true essence, and its absolute universality. What has for it worth, and all that constitutes its value, it finds only in this abolition of its natural Being and will. The suffering and the sorrow connected with this death which contains this element of the reconciliation of Spirit with itself and with what it potentially is, this negative moment which belongs to Spirit only as Spirit, is inner conversion and change. Here, however, death is not brought before us with this concrete meaning, but is represented as natural death, for in the Divine Idea that negation cannot be exhibited


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 under any other form. When the eternal history of Spirit exhibits itself in an outward way, in the sphere of the natural, Evil which realises itself in the Divine Idea can appear only in the form of the Natural, and thus the reversion which takes place can have only the form of natural death. The Divine Idea cannot proceed beyond this characteristic of the natural. This death, however, although it is natural, is the death of God, and thus sufficient as an atonement for us, since it exhibits the absolute history of the Divine Idea, what has implicitly taken place and takes place eternally.

That the individual man does something, attains to something, and accomplishes it, is owing to the fact that this is how the matter stands regarding the true reality looked at from the point of view of its Notion. The fact, for example, that any particular criminal can be punished by the judge, and that this punishment is the carrying out and expiation of the law, does not imply that it is the judge who does this, or that the criminal does it by undergoing the punishment as a particular outward event; but, on the contrary, what takes place is in accordance with the nature of the thing or true fact, with the necessity of the Notion. We thus have this process before us in a double form: on the one hand, we have it in thought, in the idea embodied in law, and in the Notion; and, on the other, in one particular instance, and in this particular instance the process is what it is because this belongs to the nature of the thing, and apart from this neither the action of the judge nor the suffering undergone by the criminal would represent the punishment inflicted by the law and the expiation it demands. The fundamental reason, the substantial element, belongs to the nature of the thing.

Accordingly this is how it stands, too, with that satisfaction or atonement for us above referred to, i.e., what lies at the basis of that idea is that this atonement has actually and completely taken place, has taken place


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 in-and-for-itself; it is not a strange sacrifice, a sacrifice of what is foreign to man which has been offered, it is not an Other who has been punished in order that there might be punishment. Each one must for himself, starting from his own subjectivity and responsibility, do and be what he ought to be. But what he thus is for himself must not be anything accidental, or be his own caprice; it must, on the contrary, be something true. When he thus accomplishes within himself this conversion and the yielding up of the natural will, and lives in love, this represents the essential fact, the thing in-and-for-itself. His subjective certainty, his feeling, is truth, it is the truth and the nature of the Spirit. The basis of redemption is thus contained in the history spoken of, for it represents the essential thing or fact, the thing as it is in-and-for-itself; it is not an accidental special act and occurrence, but is true and complete. This proof of its truth is the pictorial view given of it in the history referred to, and according to that representation the individual lays hold of, appropriates the merit of Christ. It is not, however, the history of one individual; on the contrary, it is God who accomplishes what is told in it; i.e., the view which it gives is that this history is the universal and absolute history, the history which is for itself.

Other forms, for example, of the sacrificial offering, with which is connected the false idea that God is a tyrant who desires sacrifice, reduce themselves to that conception of sacrifice which has been stated, and are to be corrected by it. Sacrifice means the abolition and absorption of naturalness, of Otherness. It is further said that Christ died for all, and this does not represent an individual act, but the divine eternal history. It is said in the same way that in Him all have died. This is itself a moment in the nature of God; it has taken place in God Himself. God cannot find satisfaction through anything other than Himself, but only through


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 Himself. This death is love itself, expressed as a moment of God, and it is this death which brings about reconciliation. In it we have a picture of absolute love. It is the identity of the Divine and the human, it implies that in the finite God is at home with Himself, and this finite as seen in death is itself a determination belonging to God. God has through death reconciled the world, and reconciled it eternally with Himself. This comingback from the state of estrangement is His return to Himself, and it is because of it that He is Spirit, and the third point accordingly is that Christ has risen. Negation is consequently surmounted, and the negation of the negation is thus a moment of the Divine nature.

Suffering and dying taken in this sense are ideas opposed to the doctrine of moral imputation according to which each individual has to stand for himself only, and each is the doer of his own deeds. The fate of Christ seems to contradict this imputation; this imputation, however, has a place only in the sphere of finitude, where the subject is regarded as a single person, and not in the sphere of free Spirit. The characteristic idea in the region of finitude is that each remains what he is; if he has done evil, he is evil; evil is in him as representing his quality. But already in the sphere of morality, and still more in that of religion, Spirit is known to be free, to be affirmative in itself, so that the element of limit in it which gets the length of evil is a nullity for the infinitude of Spirit; Spirit can make what has happened as if it had not happened; the action certainly remains in the memory, but Spirit puts it away. Imputation, therefore, does not reach to this sphere. For the true consciousness of Spirit the finitude of Man is slain in the death of Christ. This death of the natural gets in this way a universal signification, the finite, evil, in fact, is destroyed. The world is thus reconciled, and through this death the world is implicitly freed from its evil. It is in connection with a true understanding of the death of


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 Christ that the relation of the subject as such in this way comes into view. Here any mere outward consideration of the history ceases; the subject is itself drawn into the process; it feels the pain of evil and of its own alienation, which Christ has taken upon Himself by putting on humanity, while at the same time destroying it by His death.

Since the content, too, just consists in this, we have here the religious side of the subject, and it is in it that the Spiritual Community, or the Church, first originates. This content is the same thing as what is termed the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It is Spirit which has revealed this; the relation to men simply as men is changed into a relation which is altered and transformed into a relation which is entirely one of Spirit, and is of such a kind that the nature of God unfolds itself in it, and this truth comes to have immediate certainty in accordance with the form of outward manifestation.

Here, accordingly, he who at first was regarded as a teacher, a friend, a martyr, comes to have a totally different position. Up to this point we have had simply the beginning, which is now carried forward by the Spirit so as to form a result, an end, truth. The death of Christ is in one aspect the death of a man, of a friend who met his death by violence, &c.; but then it is just this death which, when conceived of in a spiritual way, becomes the means of salvation and the central point of reconciliation.

The perception of the nature of Spirit, that is, the presentation of the satisfaction of the need of Spirit, in a sensuous way, was accordingly what was disclosed to the friends of Christ only after His death. Thus the conviction concerning Him which it was possible for them to get from a study of His life was not yet the real truth; but, on the contrary, it was the Spirit which first showed them the truth.

Before His death He appeared to them as an individual


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 under the limitations of sense; the real disclosure of what He was was given to them by the Spirit, of whom Christ said, “He will lead you into all truth.” “That will first be the truth into which the Spirit will lead you.”

Regarded in this aspect this death consequently assumes the character of a death which is the transition to glory, to a glorified state, which, however, is merely a restoration of the original glorified state. The death, the negative, is the mediating element implying that the original state of majesty is thought of as having been reached. The history of the resurrection and exaltation of Christ to the right hand of God forms part of the history of His death when this comes to have a spiritual signification.

Thus it came about that this little community of believers attained the sure conviction: God has appeared in the form of Man; this humanity in God, and this humanity in its most abstract form, the most complete dependence, weakness in its most extreme form, the final stage of frailty, is just what we have in natural death.

“God Himself is dead,” as it is said in a Lutheran hymn; the consciousness of this fact expresses the truth that the human, the finite, frailty, weakness, the negative, is itself a divine moment, is in God Himself; that otherness or Other-Being, the finite, the negative, is not outside of God, and that in its character as otherness it does not hinder unity with God; otherness, the negation, is consciously known to be a moment of the Divine nature. The highest knowledge of the nature of the Idea of Spirit is contained in this thought.

This outward negative changes round in this way into the inner negative. Regarded in one aspect the meaning, the signification attached to death is that in it the human element has been stripped off, and the divine glory comes again into view. But death is itself at the same time also the negative, the furthest point of that experience to which man as a natural being and consequently God Himself are exposed.


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 In this whole history men have attained to the consciousness of a truth, and this is the truth which they have reached, namely, that the Idea of God has come to be a certainty for them, that the human is God as immediate and present, and this indeed means that we have in this history, as understood by Spirit, the actual representation of the process of what constitutes Man or Spirit. Man as potentially God and dead—that is the mediation whereby the human element is discarded; or, regarded from another point of view, what has potential or essential Being returns to itself and by this act first comes to be Spirit.

It is with the consciousness of the Spiritual Community, which thus makes the transition from man pure and simple to a God-man, and to a perception, a consciousness, a certainty of the unity and union of the Divine and human natures, that the Church or Spiritual Community begins, and it is this consciousness which constitutes the truth upon which the Spiritual Community is founded.

This then is the explication of the meaning of reconciliation, that God is reconciled with the world, or rather that God has shown Himself to be by His very nature reconciled with the world, that what is human is not something alien to His nature, but that this otherness, this self-differentiation, finitude, as it is sometimes expressed, is a moment in God Himself, though, to be sure, it is a vanishing moment; still He has in this moment revealed and shown Himself to the Church.

This is the form which the history of God’s manifestation takes for the Church; this history is a divine history whereby it reaches a consciousness of the truth. It is this which creates the consciousness, the knowledge, that God is a Trinity.

The reconciliation believed in as being in Christ has no meaning if God is not known as Trinity, if it is not recognised that He is but is at the same time the Other, the self-differentiating, the Other in the sense that this


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 Other is God Himself and has potentially the divine nature in it, and that the abolishing of this difference, of this otherness, this return, this love, is Spirit.

This consciousness involves the truth that faith does not express relation to anything which is an Other, but relation to God Himself. These are the moments with which we are here concerned, and which express the truth that Man has come to a consciousness of that eternal history, that eternal movement which God Himself is.

This is the description of the second Idea as Idea in outward manifestation, and of how the eternal Idea has come to exist for the immediate certainty of Man, i.e., of how it has appeared in history. The fact that it is a certainty for men necessarily implies that it is material or sensuous certainty, but one which at the same time passes over into spiritual consciousness, and for the same reason is converted into immediate sensuousness, but in such a way that we recognise in it the movement, the history of God, the life which God Himself is.

III.

THE IDEA IN THE ELEMENT OF THE CHURCH OR SPIRITUAL COMMUNITY, OR, THE KINGDOM OF SPIRIT.

What was first dealt with was the notion or conception of this standpoint for consciousness; what came second was what was supplied to this standpoint, what actually exists for the Spiritual Community; the third point is the transition into this Community itself.

This third sphere represents the Idea in its specific character as individuality; but, to begin with, it exhibits only the one individuality, the divine, universal individuality as it is in-and-for-itself. One is thus all; once is always, potentially, from the point of view of the Notion,


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 it is simple determinateness. But individuality in its character as independent Being, Being-for-self, is this act of allowing the differentiated moments to reach free immediacy and independence, it shuts them off from each other; individuality just means that it has at the same time to be empirical individuality.

Individuality as exclusive is for others immediacy, and is the return from the Other into self. The individuality of the Divine Idea, the Divine Idea as a person, first attains to completeness in reality, since at first it has the many individuals confronting it, and brings these back into the unity of Spirit, into the Church or Spiritual Community, and exists here as real, universal self-consciousness.

It is just in connection with the act whereby the definite transition of the Idea to the sensuous present is accomplished that we have what is most distinctive in the religion of Spirit, namely, that all the moments are developed till they have reached definiteness and completeness in their most external forms. But even in this condition of extreme opposition Spirit is certain of itself as being absolute truth, and consequently it is afraid of nothing, not even of the sensuous present. It is part of the cowardice of abstract thought that it shuns the sensuous present in a monkish fashion; modern abstraction takes up this attitude of fastidious gentility towards the moment of the sensuous present.

It is next required of the individuals in the Community or Church that they should revere the Divine Idea in the form of individuality, and appropriate it to themselves. For the tender, loving disposition, that of woman, this is easy; but then, on the other side, we are confronted with the fact that the subject on which this demand is made is in a condition of infinite freedom, and has come to understand the substantiality of its self-consciousness; for the independent Notion, the man, this demand is accordingly infinitely hard. The freedom of the subject rebels against


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 1906

IN THE SCHOOLS, OXFORD

NOVEMBER 24, 1906

OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1906

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 the thought of reverencing a single sensuous individual as God, and against the combination which this implies. The Oriental does not hesitate to comply with this demand, but then he is nothing, he is implicitly thrown aside as of no value, without, however, having thrown himself aside, i.e., without having the consciousness of infinite freedom in himself. Here, however, this love, this recognition of the Divine in an individual is the direct opposite of this, and is just what constitutes the supreme miracle, that miracle which Spirit itself just is.

This region is accordingly the Kingdom of Spirit, implying that the individual is of infinite value in himself, knows himself to be absolute freedom, possesses in himself the most rigid fixedness, and at the same time yields up this fixedness and maintains himself in what is absolutely an Other. Love harmonises all things, even absolute opposition.

The pictorial conception of this religion demands the despising of all that presently exists, of everything which is otherwise regarded as possessed of value, it is that perfect ideality which takes up a polemical attitude towards all the glory of the world; in this single person, in this present immediate individual in whom the Divine Idea appears, everything that belongs to the world has met together, so that it is the individual sensuous present which has value. This individuality or particularity is consequently to be regarded as absolutely universal. Even in ordinary love we find this infinite abstraction from all worldly things, and the loving person centres all his satisfaction in one particular individual; but this satisfaction still belongs essentially to particularity; it is particular contingency and feeling which opposes itself to the Universal, and desires in this way to become objective.

In contrast to this, that individuality in which I will the Divine Idea, is purely universal, it is for this reason directly removed from the sphere of the senses, it passes away of itself, becomes part of a history that is past, this


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 sensuous mode must disappear and mount into the region of idea or mental representation. One of the constituent parts of the formation of the Church is that this sensuous form passes over into a spiritual element. The mode in which this purification from immediate Being takes place implies that the sensuous element in it is preserved; the fact that it passes away is negation, as this is posited in and appears in one particular sensuous individual as such. It is only in a single individual that this sensuous representation is found, it is not something which can be inherited, and is not capable of renewal as the manifestation of substance in the Lama is, it cannot appear in such a way because the sensuous manifestation as a definite individual manifestation is in its nature momentary; it has to be spiritualised, and is therefore essentially a manifestation that has already been, and so is raised to the region of idea or mental representation.

It is possible also to occupy a standpoint at which we do not get beyond the Son and His appearance in time. This is the case in Catholicism, in which the intercession of Mary and the Saints is added to the reconciling power of the Son, and where the Spirit is present, rather in the Church as a hierarchy merely, and not in the Community of believers. Here, however, the second element in the specification of the Idea is not so much spiritualised, but rather remains in the region of ordinary thought. Or to put it otherwise, Spirit is not so much known as objective, but merely as the particular subjective form in which it appears in the sensuous present as the Church and lives in tradition. Spirit in this outward form of reality is, as it were, the Third Person.

For the spirit which stands in need of it, the sensuous present can be given a permanent existence in pictures, though these are not indeed works of art, but are rather miracle-working pictures, regarded, that is to say, as existing in a definite material form. It follows from this that it is not merely the corporeal form and the body of


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 Christ which is able to satisfy the sensuous need, but rather the sensuous aspect of His bodily presence in general, the cross, the places in which He moved about, and so on. To this, relics, &c., come to be added. There is no lack of such mediate means of satisfying the craving felt. For the Spiritual Community, however, the immediate Present, the Now, is past and gone. The sensuous idea accordingly, above all, integrates the Past, views it from the point of view of the whole, for it the Past is a one-sided moment; the Present contains the Past and the Future in it as moments. Thus the sensuous idea finds the completion of its representation in the Second Advent, but the essentially absolute return is the act of exchanging externality for what is inward: this is the Comforter who can come only when sensuous history as immediate is past.

This, therefore, is the point represented by the formation of the Spiritual Community, or the third point; it is the Spirit. It represents the transition from what is outward, from outward manifestation to what is inward. It occupies itself with the certainty felt by the subject of its own infinite non-sensuous substantiality, and of the fact that it knows itself to be infinite and eternal, knows itself to be immortal.

The retreat into inner self-consciousness which is involved in this conversion is not of the Stoical kind, the value of which consists in the fact that it accomplishes this through the strength of the individual spirit as exercising thought, and seeks for the reality of thought in Nature, in natural things and in comprehending these, and which consequently is devoid of infinite sorrow and stands at the same time in a thoroughly positive relation to the world. On the contrary, it takes the form of the self-consciousness which endlessly yields up its particularity and individuality, and finds its infinite value only in that love which is contained in infinite sorrow and arises out of it. All


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 immediacy in which Man might find some worth is thrown away; it is in mediation alone that he finds such value, but of an infinite kind, and in which subjectivity becomes truly infinite and has an essential existence, is in-and-for-itself. It is only through this mediation that Man is not immediate, and thus at first he is capable merely of having such value; but this capacity and possibility is his positive, absolute, essential nature or characteristic.

This characteristic contains the reason why the immortality of the soul becomes a definite doctrine in the Christian religion. The soul, the individual soul, has an infinite, an eternal quality, namely, that of being a citizen in the Kingdom of God. This is a quality and a life which is removed beyond time and the Past; and since it is at the same time opposed to the present limited sphere, this eternal quality or determination eternally determines itself at the same time as a future. The infinite demand to see God, i.e., to become conscious in spirit of His truth as present truth, is in this temporal Present not yet satisfied so far as consciousness in its character as ordinary consciousness is concerned.

The subjectivity which has come to understand its infinite worth has thereby abandoned all distinctions of authority, power, position, and even of race; before God all men are equal. It is in the negation of infinite sorrow that love is found, and there, too, are first found the possibility and the root of truly universal Right, of the realisation of freedom. The Roman formal life of right or justice starts from the positive standpoint and from the Understanding, and has no principle whereby to maintain absolutely the standpoint of Right, but is thoroughly worldly.

This purity of subjectivity which passes out of infinite sorrow by mediating itself in love, is reached simply by that mediation which has its objective form and pictorial representation in the sufferings, death, and exaltation of


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 HENRY FROWDE, M.A.

PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

LONDON, EDINBURGH

NEW YORK AND TORONTO

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 Christ. Regarded from another point of view, this subjectivity likewise possesses this mode of its reality in itself, inasmuch as it is a multiplicity of subjects and individuals; but since it is implicitly universal and is not exclusive, the multiplicity of individuals has to be absolutely posited as having merely the appearance or show of reality, and the very fact that it posits itself as this show of reality is what constitutes the unity of faith, according to the ordinary idea formed by faith, and therefore in this third thing. This is the love of the Spiritual Community, which seems to consist of many individuals, while this multiplicity is merely a semblance or illusion.

This love is neither human love, love of persons, the love of the sexes, nor friendship. Surprise has often been expressed that such a noble relationship as friendship is does not find a place amongst the duties enjoined by Christ. Friendship is a relationship which is tinged with particularity, and men are friends not so much directly as objectively rather through some substantial bond of union, in a third thing, in fundamental principles, studies, knowledge; the bond, in short, is constituted by something objective; it is not attachment as such, like that of the man to the woman as a definite particular personality. The love of the Spiritual Community, on the other hand, is directly mediated by the worthlessness of all particularity. The love of the man for the woman, or friendship, can certainly exist, but they are essentially characterised as subordinate; they are characterised not indeed as something evil, but as something imperfect; not as something indifferent, but as representing a state in which we are not to remain permanently, since they are themselves to be sacrificed, and must not in any way injuriously affect that absolute tendency and unity which belong to Spirit.

The unity in this infinite love springing out of infinite sorrow is consequently in no way a sensuous, worldly


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 connection of things, not a connection of the particularity and naturalness which may still remain over and be held to have value, but unity in the Spirit simply, the love, in fact, which is just the notion or conception of Spirit itself. It is an object for itself in Christ as representing the central point of faith, in which it appears to itself in an infinite, far-off loftiness. But this loftiness is at the same time an infinite nearness to the subject, something peculiar to it and belonging to it, and thus what at first comprised individuals as a Third is also what constitutes their true self-consciousness, their most inner and individual character. Thus this love is Spirit as such, the Holy Spirit. It is in them, and they are and constitute the universal Christian Church, the Communion of saints. Spirit is infinite return into self, infinite subjectivity, not Godhead conceived of in ideas, but the real present Godhead, and thus it is not the substantial potentiality of the Father, not the True in the objective or antithetical form of the Son, but the subjective Present and Real, which, just because it is subjective, is present, as estrangement into that objective, sensuous representation of love and of its infinite sorrow, and as return, in that mediation. This is the Spirit of God, or God as present, real Spirit, God dwelling in His Church. Thus Christ said, “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of you.” “I am with you always, even to the end of the world.”

It is as containing this absolute signification of Spirit, and in this deep sense of being absolute truth, that the Christian religion is the Religion of Spirit, though not in the trivial sense of being a spiritual religion. On the contrary, the true element in the determination of the nature of Spirit, the union of the two sides of the infinite antithesis—God and the world, I, this particular homuncio—is what constitutes the content of the Christian religion, and makes it into a religion of Spirit,


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 and this content is also found in it by the ordinary uncultured consciousness.

All men are called to salvation; that is what is highest in the Christian religion and highest in a unique degree. Therefore Christ also says, “All sins can be forgiven to men except the sin against the Spirit.” The violation of absolute truth, of the Idea of that union of the two sides of the infinite antithesis, is in these words declared to be the supreme transgression. People have from time to time given themselves a deal of trouble and racked their brains trying to find out what is the sin against the Holy Spirit, and have smoothed down this significant expression in all kinds of ways in order to get entirely rid of it. Everything can be destroyed in the infinite sorrow of love, but this destroying process itself appears only as inner present Spirit. What is devoid of Spirit appears at first to have no sin in it, but to be innocent; but this is just the innocence which is by its very nature judged and condemned.

The sphere of the Spiritual Community is accordingly the region which belongs peculiarly to Spirit. The Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples, it was their immanent life, from that time onward they joyfully went out into the world as a Spiritual Community, in order to raise it to the condition of a universal Community of believers, and to extend far and wide the Kingdom of God.

We have thus to consider (a) the origin of the Spiritual Community, or, in other words, its conception or notion; (b) its existence in a definite form and its continued existence, this is the realisation of its conception; and (c) the transition from faith to knowledge, the alteration, the transfiguration of faith in philosophy.

(a.) The Conception of the Spiritual Community.

The Spiritual Community consists of the subjects or persons, the individual, empirical subjects who live in the


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 Spirit of God, though at the same time it is necessary to distinguish between them and the definite content, the history, the truth which confronts them. Faith in this history, in reconciliation, is, on the one hand, immediate knowledge, an act of faith; on the other hand, the nature of Spirit is in itself this process which has been considered in the universal Idea, and in the Idea in the form of manifestation, and this means that the subject itself is nothing but Spirit, and consequently becomes a citizen of the Kingdom of God owing to the fact that it passes through this process in virtue of what it is. The Other, which exists for the subjects, exists for them objectively in this divine drama in the sense in which the spectator beheld himself objectively in the Chorus.

To begin with, it is undoubtedly the subject, the human subject, Man, in whom is revealed what comes by the aid of Spirit to have for Man the certainty of reconciliation, and comes to be characterised as individual, exclusive, different from others. Thus the representation of the divine history is an objective one so far as the other subjects are concerned; they have accordingly still to pass through this history and this process in their own selves also.

In order to this, however, they must first presuppose that reconciliation is possible, or, to put it more accurately, that this reconciliation has actually and completely taken place and is a certainty.

This is the universal Idea of God in-and-for-itself; the other presupposition is that this reconciliation is something certain for Man, and that this truth does not exist for him by means of speculative thought, but is, on the contrary, something certain. This presupposition implies that it is certain that the reconciliation has been accomplished, i.e., it must be represented as something historical, as something which has been accomplished on the earth, in a manifested form. For there is no other mode of representing what is called certainty. This is


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 the presupposition in which we must believe, to begin with.

I. The rise of the Spiritual Community appears in the form of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Faith takes its rise first of all in a man, a human, material manifestation; and next comes spiritual comprehension, consciousness of the Spiritual. We get spiritual content, a changing of what is immediate into what has a spiritual character. The verification here is spiritual, it is not found in what is sensuous or material; and it cannot be brought about in an immediate, material way; some objection can always be brought against the material facts.

As regards the empirical mode of verifying the truth, the Church is so far right when it refuses to countenance investigations such as those concerned with the appearances of Christ after His death; for investigations of this sort start from a point of view which implies that the real question is as to the sensuous element in the appearance of Christ, as to what is historical in it, as if the verification of Spirit and of its truth was contained in such narratives regarding one who was represented as an historical person and in an historical fashion. This truth, however, is sure and certain by itself, although it has an historical starting-point.

This transition is the outpouring of the Spirit, which could make its appearance only after Christ had been taken away out of the flesh, and the sensuous, immediate present had ceased. It is then the Spirit appears, for then the entire history is completed, and the entire picture of Spirit is present to perception. What Spirit now produces is something different and has a different form.

The question as to the truth of the Christian religion directly divides itself into two questions: 1. Is it really true that God does not exist apart from the Son, and that He has sent Him into the world? And 2. Was this


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 individual, Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter’s son, the Son of God, the Christ?

These two questions are commonly mixed up together, with the result that if this particular person was not God’s Son sent by Him, and if this cannot be proved to be true of Him, then there is no meaning at all in His mission. If this were not true of Him, we would either have to look for another, if indeed one is to come, if there is a promise to that effect, i.e., if it is absolutely and essentially necessary, necessary from the point of view of the Notion, of the Idea; or, since the correctness of the Idea is made to depend on the demonstration of the divine mission referred to, we should have to conclude that there can really be no longer any thought of such a mission, and that we cannot further think about it.

But it is essential that we ask first of all, Is such a manifestation true in-and-for-itself? It is, because God as Spirit is the triune God. He is this act of manifestation, this self-objectifying, and it is His nature to be identical with Himself while thus making Himself objective; He is eternal love. This objectifying as seen in its completely developed form in which it reaches the two extremes of the universality of God and finitude or death, and this return into self in the act of abolishing the rigidity of the antithesis is—love in the infinite sorrow, which is at the same time assuaged in it.

This absolute truth, this truth in-and-for-itself that God is not an abstraction, but something concrete, is unfolded by philosophy, and it is only modern philosophy which has reached the profound thought thus contained in the Notion. It is not possible at all to discuss this truth in unphilosophical platitudes which suggest an idea of contradiction that is so entirely valueless and is so absolutely wanting in what is spiritual.

But this notion or conception must not be thought of as one which gets a complete form in philosophy only, it is not only potentially true; on the contrary, it belongs


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 essentially to philosophy to get a grasp of what is, of what is actually real in itself. All that is true starts from the form of immediacy as it appears in its manifestation, i.e., in its Being. The notion or conception must therefore be implicitly present in the self-consciousness of men, in the Spirit; the World-Spirit must have conceived of itself after this fashion. This conception of itself, however, is necessity in the form of the process of Spirit, which was exhibited in the preceding stages of religion, and chiefly in the Jewish, the Greek, and the Roman religions, and had for its result the notion or conception of the absolute unity of the divine and human natures, the reality of God, i.e., God’s objectifying of Himself as representing His truth. Thus the history of the world is the setting forth of this truth as a result in the immediate consciousness of Spirit.

We have seen God as a God of free men, though at first as yet in the subjective, limited, national spirit of the various peoples, and in the accidental shape which belongs to imagination; next we had the sorrow of the world following on the crushing out of the national Spirit. This sorrow was the birthplace of the impulse felt by Spirit to know God as spiritual in a universal form and stripped of finitude. This need was created by the progress of history, by the gradual advance of the World-Spirit. This immediate impulse, this longing which wishes and craves for something definite, the instinct, as it were, of Spirit which is impelled to seek for this, demanded such an appearance in time, the manifestation of God as the infinite Spirit in the form of a real man.

“When the fulness of time was come, God sent His Son,” i.e., when Spirit had entered so deeply into itself as to know its infinitude, and to comprehend the Substantial in the subjectivity of immediate self-consciousness, in a subjectivity, however, which is at the same time infinite negativity, and is just, in consequence of this, absolutely universal.


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 The proof, however, that this particular individual is the Christ, is of another kind, and has reference only to the specific statement that this particular individual is the Christ, and not any other individual, and has not to do with the question as to whether in this case the Idea does not exist at all. Christ said, “Run not hither and thither; the Kingdom of God is within you.” Many others amongst Jews and heathen were revered as divine messengers or as gods. John the Baptist went before Christ; amongst the Greeks, statues were erected, for instance, to Demetrius Poliorcetes as if he were a god; and the Roman Emperor was revered as God. Apollonius of Tyana and many others passed for being workers of miracles; and for the Greeks, Hercules was the man who by his deeds, which were at the same time deeds of obedience merely, took his place amongst the gods, and became God; without mentioning that great number of incarnations, and the deification implied in being raised to Brahma, which we meet with amongst the Hindus. But it was to Christ only that the Idea, when it was ripe and the time was fulfilled, could attach itself, and in Him only could it see itself realised. In the heroic deeds of Hercules the nature of Spirit is still imperfectly expressed. But the history of Christ is a history for the Spiritual Community, since it is absolutely adequate to the Idea; while it is only the effort of Spirit to reach the determination implied in the implicit unity of the Divine and the Human, which lies at the basis of those earlier forms, and can be recognised as present in them. This is what must be regarded as the essential thing, this is the verification, the absolute proof; this is what is to be understood by the witness of the Spirit; it is the Spirit, the indwelling Idea which attests Christ’s mission, and for those who believed, and for us who are in possession of the Notion in its developed form, this is verification. This is also the kind of verification whose force is of a spiritual kind, and is not


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 outward force such as that used by the Church against heretics.

This then is (2.) Knowledge or Faith, for faith is also knowledge only in a peculiar form. We have now to consider this point.

Thus what we see is that the divine content appears as self-conscious knowledge of the Divine in the element of consciousness, of inwardness. On the one hand, it is seen that the content is the truth, and that it is the truth of infinite Spirit in general, i.e., is its knowledge, in such a way that it finds its freedom in this knowledge, is itself the Process by which it casts aside its particular individuality, and gets freedom for itself in this content.

To begin with, however, the content exists for the immediate consciousness, and the truth might appear for consciousness in a variety of material forms, for the Idea is one in all things, it is universal necessity; reality can be only the mirror of the Idea, and for consciousness the Idea can accordingly issue forth from everything, for it is always the Idea that is in these infinitely many drops which reflect back the Idea. The Idea is represented figuratively, known and foreshadowed in the seed which is the fruit; the fruit in its final character dies away in the earth, and it is through this negation that the plant first comes into being. A history, a pictorial representation, a description, a phenomenon of this sort can be elevated by Spirit to the rank of something universal, and thus the history of the seed or of the sun becomes a symbol of the Idea, but only a symbol, for they are forms which, so far as their peculiar content and specific quality are concerned, are inadequate to express the Idea; what is consciously known through them lies outside of them, the signification they suggest does not exist in them as signification. The object which exists in itself as the Notion is spiritual subjectivity, Man; it is signification in virtue of what it itself is, and this signification does not lie outside of it. It is what thinks everything, knows


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 everything, it is not a symbol, but, on the contrary, its subjectivity, its inner form, its self is essentially this very history itself, and the history of the Spiritual is not found in some form of existence, which is inadequate to express the Idea, but rather in its own element. It is therefore necessary for the Spiritual Community that Thought, the Idea, should become objective. At first, however, the Idea appears in a single individual in a material, pictorial form; this must be discarded, and the real signification, the eternally true essence must be brought into view. This is the faith of the Spiritual Community when it is coming into existence. It starts from faith in the individual, this individual man is changed by the Spiritual Community, He is recognised to be God and is characterised as the Son of God and as comprising all of the finite which attaches to subjectivity as such in its development, but as being subjectivity He is separated from substantiality.

The material or sensuous manifestation is accordingly changed into knowledge of the Spiritual. We thus see the Spiritual Community starting from faith, but regarded in another aspect it appears in the form of Spirit. The different significations of faith and of verification or proof have now to be brought out.

Since faith starts from the sensuous way of viewing things, it has before it a history in time; what it holds as true is an outward ordinary event, and the verification of the truth of this is conducted according to the historical and juridical mode of verifying a fact, which gives sensuous certainty; the idea formed of the basis upon which truth rests takes as a foundation the material certainty of other persons regarding certain material facts, and brings other facts into connection with these.

The history of the life of Christ is thus the outward form of verification; but faith alters its meaning, that is to say, we have not merely got to do with faith as faith in a certain external history, but with the fact that this particular man was the Son of God.


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 The sensuous content thus becomes something wholly different, it becomes altered into another kind of content, and what is demanded is that this should be proved to be true. The object has undergone a complete alteration, and from being a material, empirically existing element, it has become a divine moment, an essentially supreme moment in God Himself. This content is no longer anything material, and therefore when the demand is made that it should be verified in the material fashion just referred to, this method is at once seen to be insufficient, because the object is of a wholly different nature.

If miracles are supposed to contain the immediate verification of the truth, still in-and-for-themselves they supply a merely relative verification or a proof of a subordinate sort. Christ says, by way of reproof, “Unless ye see miracles, ye will not believe.” “Many will come and say to Me: Have we not done many signs in Thy name? And I will say to them: I have not known you; depart from Me.” What is the kind of interest that can here any longer attach to this working of miracles? The relative element could have an interest or importance only for those who stood outside, for the instruction of Jews and heathen. But the Spiritual Community, which has taken a definite form, no longer stands in need of this relative kind of proof, it has the Spirit in itself, which leads into all truth, and which, by means of its truth as Spirit, exercises upon Spirit the true kind of force, a power in which Spirit has left to it its absolute freedom. The miracle represents a force which influences the natural connections of things, and is consequently a force which is exercised only upon Spirit when it is confined within the consciousness of this limited connection between things. How is it possible that the eternal Idea itself could reach consciousness through the conception of a force of this kind?

When the content is defined to mean that the miracles of Christ are themselves material phenomena


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 which can be attested historically, and when His resurrection and ascension are in the same way considered as occurrences perceived by the senses, so far as the Sensuous is concerned we are not dealing with the sensuous attestation of these phenomena, and it is not suggested that the miracles of Christ, His resurrection and ascension, in their character as themselves outward phenomena and sensuous occurrences, have not sufficient evidence of their truth; but, on the contrary, what we are concerned with is the relation of the sensuous verification and the sensuous occurrences taken together, to Spirit, to the spiritual content. The verification of the Sensuous, whatever be its content, and whether it is based on evidence or direct perception, is always open to an infinite number of objections, because it is based on what is sensuous and external, and this is an Other so far as Spirit or consciousness is concerned; here consciousness and its object are separated, and what holds sway is this underlying separation, which carries with it the possibility of error, deception, and a want of the culture necessary to form a correct conception of a fact, so that one may have doubts, and look on the Holy Scriptures, as regards what in them has reference to what is merely external and historical, as profane writings, without mistrusting the goodwill of those who give the personal evidence. The sensuous or material content is not certain in itself, because it does not originate with Spirit as such, because it belongs to another sphere and does not come into existence by means of the Notion. It may be thought that we ought to come to our conclusions by a comparison of all the evidence and the circumstances, or that there must be reasons why we should decide for the one or for the other, only, this entire method of proof and the sensuous content as such ought to be given a subordinate place in comparison with the need of Spirit. What is to be true for Spirit, what it is necessary for it to believe must have no connection with


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 sensuous faith; what is true for Spirit is something for which sensuous manifestation has only a secondary value. Since Spirit starts from what is sensuous, and attains to this lofty estimate of itself, its relation to the Sensuous is a directly negative relation. This is a fundamental principle.

Still, spite of this, there always remains a certain curiosity in this matter, and a desire to know how in this case we are to understand miracles, how we are to explain them and conceive of them—to conceive of them, that is to say, in the sense that they are not miracles at all, but, on the contrary, are natural effects. A curiosity of this kind, however, presupposes doubt and unbelief, and would like to find some plausible grounds whereby the persons concerned might still be held to be morally virtuous and preserve their character for truthfulness; so next it is maintained that there was no intention to deceive, i.e., that no deception actually was practised, and that in any case it was so moderate and well meant that Christ and His friends ought still to be considered as honourable persons. The shortest way of settling the matter would be entirely to reject miracles; if we do not believe in any miracles at all, and find that they are opposed to reason, the fact of their being proved will do no good; the evidence for them must rest on sense-perception, but there is in the human mind an insurmountable objection to regard as truth what is attested solely after this fashion—for here the proofs are nothing but possibilities and probabilities, i.e., they are merely subjective and finite reasons.

Or we must give the advice: simply don’t have doubts and then they are solved! But I must have them, I cannot rid myself of them, and the necessity there is for answering them rests on the necessity of having them. Reflection advances these claims as absolute, it fixes on these finite reasons; but by piety, by true faith, these finite reasons, these methods of the finite understanding


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 have long since been set aside. Curiosity of this sort really has its origin in unbelief; faith, however, rests on the witness of the Spirit—not on miracles, but on the absolute truth, on the eternal Idea. Thus so far as the true content is concerned, and regarding them from this standpoint, miracles are of small importance, they may with equal propriety either be used as subjective reasons with the minor purpose of edification, or else be let alone. There is the further fact that miracles, if they are to attest the truth of anything, must first be attested themselves. But what has to be attested by them is the Idea which has no need of them, and because of this has no need to attest them.

It has further to be observed that miracles are, speaking generally, effects produced by the power exercised by Spirit upon the natural connection of things, are an interference with the course and the eternal laws of Nature. But the truth is that it is Spirit which is this miracle, this absolute interference. Life is already an interference with these so-called eternal laws of Nature; it destroys, for instance, the eternal laws of mechanism and chemistry. The power of Spirit, and also its weakness, have still more effect on life. Terror can produce death, anxiety, illness, and so in all ages infinite faith and trust have enabled the lame to walk and the deaf to hear, &c. Modern unbelief in occurrences of this sort is based on a superstitious belief in the so-called force of Nature and its independence relatively to Spirit.

This, however, is merely the first and accidental method of attesting truth employed by faith. The real kind of faith rests on the Spirit of truth. The former kind of verification still involves a relation to the sensuous immediate present; faith proper is spiritual, and in Spirit truth has the Idea for its basis, and, since the Idea is at the same time represented in a temporal and finite way existing in a single definite individual, it can appear as realised in this individual only after his death and after


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 he has been removed from the temporal sphere when the process through which the manifestation passes has itself reached the form of spiritual totality, i.e., the very fact of believing in Jesus implies that this faith has no longer before it the sensuous manifestation as such, the sensuous perception of which would in that case have constituted the proof of the truth.

What happens here is what happens in connection with all knowledge in so far as it has reference to a Universal. Kepler, as is well known, discovered the laws of the Heavens. They are valid for us in a double way, they are the Universal. A start was made from single instances; certain movements were referred back to laws. But these are only single instances, and we would be free to think that there may be millions more of instances, that there may be bodies which don’t move like those we know of, and thus this is not a universal law even in the case of the heavenly bodies themselves. We have certainly become acquainted with these laws by means of induction; but for Spirit, the interest lies in the fact that such a law is true in-and-for-itself, i.e., in its own nature, that reason finds in it its counterpart, and then recognises it to be true in-and-for-itself. In comparison with this absolute knowledge, the sensuous knowledge referred to accordingly takes a secondary place, it is indeed a starting-point, a point of departure which has to be gratefully recognised, but a law such as that just mentioned holds good for itself—and thus accordingly the proof of its truth is of a different kind from that supplied by the senses, it is the Notion, and sensuous existence is now lowered to the condition of a dream-like vision of the earthly-life, above which exists a higher region with a fixed content of its own.

The same kind of thing is seen in connection with the proofs of the existence of God which start from the finite. The defect in them is that the finite is conceived of in an affirmative way only; but the transition from the finite to the Infinite


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 is at the same time of such a character that the region of the finite is left behind, and the finite is reduced to the condition of something subordinate, to being a far-away picture, which has its real existence only in the past and in memory, and not in Spirit, which is above all things present, and which has left that starting-point behind, and belongs to a region the value of which is of a totally different sort. The pious man can thus take advantage of everything in order to edify himself, and in that case this is the starting-point. It has been proved that several of the quotations made by Christ from the Old Testament are incorrect, and that the meaning extracted from them is not based on the immediate sense of the words. The Word, according to this view, is to be regarded as something fixed; but Spirit makes out of it something that is true. Thus the material history is the starting-point for Spirit, for faith, and these two characteristics must be distinguished from each other, and what we are first of all concerned with is the return of Spirit into itself, spiritual consciousness.

It thus becomes clear that it is the Church or Spiritual Community which of itself produces this faith, and that it is not, so to speak, created by the words of the Bible, but, on the contrary, by the Spiritual Community. So, too, it is not the material Present but the Spirit which teaches the Spiritual Community that Christ is the Son of God, that He sits eternally at the right hand of the Father in heaven. That is the interpretation, the witness, the decree of Spirit. If grateful peoples have only placed their benefactors amongst the stars, Spirit has recognised subjectivity as an absolute moment of the divine nature. The person of Christ has been decreed by the Church to be the Son of God. We have nothing to do in this connection with the empirical method of stating this, with the ecclesiastical method of determining the truth, with councils and such like. The real question is as to what the content essentially is, is in-and-for-itself. The true


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 Christian content of faith is to be justified by philosophy, not by history. What Spirit does is no history; it takes to do only with what exists on its own account, is in-and-for-itself, not with something past, but, on the contrary, simply with what is present.

3. But this has appeared in time, too, it has a relation to the subject, it exists for it, and it has a no less essential relation to the fact that the subject is intended to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God.

This fact that the subject itself is to become a child of God involves the truth that reconciliation has actually been completely accomplished in the Divine Idea, and that it has accordingly appeared in time, that the truth has become a matter of certainty to men. It is just this fact of certainty which is the manifestation, the Idea, in the manifested form in which it comes to consciousness.

The relation of the subject to this truth is that the subject reaches this very consciousness of unity, thinks itself worthy of it, produces it in itself, is filled with the Divine Spirit.

This takes place by means of mediation in itself, and this mediation means that the subject has this faith; for faith is the truth, the presupposition that reconciliation is essentially and absolutely accomplished and is certain. It is only by means of this belief that reconciliation has been essentially and absolutely accomplished and is certain, that the subject is capable of placing itself in this unity, and is in a position to do this. This mediation is absolutely necessary.

In the blissful feeling thus reached by means of this act of apprehending the truth, the difficulty is removed which is directly involved in the circumstance that the relation of the Spiritual Community to this Idea is a relation of individual particular subjects to the Idea; this difficulty is, however, done away with in this very truth itself.


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 Speaking more strictly, the difficulty is that the subject is different from the Divine Spirit, and appears as something which is its finitude. This finite element is taken away, and the reason of this is that God looks on the heart of Man, on the substantial will, on the most inward all-embracing subjectivity of Man, on the inner, true, earnest act of will.

Besides this inner will, and as distinguished from this inner substantial reality, there further exists in Man an element of externality, of defectiveness, which shows itself in the fact that he commits mistakes, that he can exist in a way which is not in conformity with this inner, substantial, essential nature, this substantial, essential inwardness.

But externality, otherness—in short, finitude, or imperfection as it may further be defined, is degraded to the condition of something unessential, and is known as such. For in the Idea the otherness, or Other-Being of the Son, is a passing, disappearing moment, and not at all a true, essential, permanent, and absolute moment.

This is the notion or conception of the Spiritual Community in general; the Idea, which so far is the process of the subject within and in itself—this subject being taken up into the Spirit—is spiritual, in the sense that the Spirit of God dwells in it. This pure self-consciousness which thus belongs to it is at the same time a consciousness of the truth, and this pure self-consciousness which knows and wills the truth is just the Divine Spirit in it. Or, this self-consciousness taken as faith which rests on the Spirit, i.e., on a mediation which does away with all finite mediation, is the faith wrought in Man by God.

(b.) The Realisation of the Spiritual Community.

The real Spiritual Community is what we in general call the Church. This no longer represents the rise of


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 the Spiritual Community, but the Spiritual Community as actually existing and as maintaining itself.

The actual, permanent existence of the Spiritual Community is its continuous, eternal becoming, which is based on the fact that it is the very nature of Spirit to know itself as eternal, to liberate itself so as to form those finite flashes of light which make the individual consciousness, and then to collect itself again out of this finitude and comprehend itself, and in this way the knowledge of its essence and consequently the divine self-consciousness appear in finite consciousness. Out of the ferment of finitude, and while it changes itself into foam, Spirit rises like a vapour.

In the Spiritual Community as actually existing, the Church is emphatically the institution in virtue of which the persons composing it reach the truth and appropriate it for themselves, and through it the Holy Spirit comes to be in them as real, actual, and present, and has its abode in them; it means that the truth is in them, and that they are in a condition to enjoy and give active expression to the truth or Spirit, that they as individuals are those who give active expression to the Spirit.

The Church viewed in its universal aspect means that the truth is here presupposed as already existing—not as if it were just originating, and the Holy Spirit were being poured out for the first time, and was being brought into existence for the first time, but rather that the truth exists as actually present truth. For the subject this means an alteration of the relation in which it stood to the truth at the beginning.

1. This truth which is thus presupposed is actually present; it is the doctrine of the Church, the Faith, and we know what the content of this doctrine is; it is, in one word, the doctrine of reconciliation. We have no longer to do with the fact that this one man has been elevated by the outpouring, the decree of the Spirit, so as to have an absolute signification, but with the fact that this signification is consciously known and recognised.


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 This represents the absolute capacity possessed by the subject for taking a share in the truth, both as it exists in itself and as it exists in an objective form, the capacity for reaching the truth, for being in the truth, for attaining to a consciousness of the truth. This consciousness of doctrine is here presupposed and actually exists.

It is clear from this, both that some kind of doctrine is necessary, and that the doctrine is already formed when the Spiritual Community definitely exists. It is this doctrine which is represented in a pictorial way, and constitutes a content in which we see and have shown in an absolutely completed form what ought to be accomplished in the individual as such.

This doctrine is thus regarded as something presupposed so far as its main elements are concerned, as something already formed, while it is in the Spiritual Community itself that it first gets a matured form. The Spirit which is poured out is the beginning, what makes the beginning, that in which the doctrine takes its rise. The Spiritual Community is the consciousness of this Spirit, the expression of what the Spirit has discovered, and by which it has been laid hold of, namely, that Christ is for the Spirit. The distinction involved in the question as to whether the Spiritual Community gives expression to its consciousness on the basis of a written document, or attaches its own self-determinations to tradition, is not at all an essential one; the main point is, that by means of the Spirit, which is present in it, this Community is the infinite power and authority whereby its doctrine is further developed and gets a more specific form. This authority makes its presence felt in both of those different cases. The exposition of a document which lies at the basis of any doctrine is always in its turn a form of knowledge, and develops into new specific truths; and even if, as in the case of tradition, it attaches itself to something given or taken for granted,


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 the tradition itself, in its historical development, is essentially a positing or making explicit of some implicit truth. Thus doctrine is essentially worked out and matured in the Church. It exists, to begin with, as intuition, feeling, as the felt, flash-like witness of the Spirit. But the determination implied in the act of producing or bringing into existence is itself merely a one-sided determination, for truth is at the same time implicitly present or presupposed. The subject is already taken up into the content.

The confession of faith or dogma accordingly is something which has been essentially formed in the Church first of all, and it is consequently Thought, developed consciousness which asserts its rights in connection with it, and it applies all that it has gained from trained thinking and philosophy, to these thoughts and on behalf of this truth thus consciously perceived; doctrine is constructed out of foreign concrete elements which have still an impure element mixed with them.

This actually existing doctrine must accordingly be preserved in the Church, and all that is considered as doctrine must be taught. In order to remove it out of the region of caprice and of accidental opinions and views, and to preserve it as absolute truth and as something fixed, it is deposited or stated in creeds. It is, it exists, it has value, it is recognised immediately yet not in a material fashion that the apprehension of this doctrine takes place through the senses, just as the world, too, is something presupposed as existing, and to which we are related as to something material.

Spiritual truth exists only as something consciously known; the mode in which it outwardly appears consists in the fact that it is taught. The Church is essentially the institution which implies the existence of a teaching body to which is committed the duty of expounding this doctrine.

The subject is born within the circle of this doctrine;


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 he begins in this condition of established existing truth and in the consciousness of it. That is his relation to this truth, which actually exists, and is presupposed as having an absolute and essential existence.

2. Since the individual is thus born in the Church, he is forthwith destined, although, to be sure, unconsciously, to share in this truth and to become a partaker of it; he is destined for this truth. The Church expresses this in the Sacrament of Baptism, Man is in the fellowship of the Church, in which Evil is essentially, in-and-for-itself, overcome, and God is essentially, or in-and-for-Himself, reconciled.

Baptism shows that the child has been born in the fellowship of the Church, not in sin and misery; that he has not come into a hostile world, but that the Church is his world, and that he has only to train himself in the Spiritual Community which already actually exists as representing his worldly condition.

Man must be born twice, once naturally, and then again spiritually, like the Brahman. Spirit is not immediate, it exists only in so far as it brings itself out of itself; it exists only as the regenerate Spirit.

This regeneration is no longer that infinite sadness which is in general the birth sorrow of the Spiritual Community; the subject is not indeed spared the infinitely real sorrow, but this is softened; for there still exists the opposing factor of particularity, of special interests, passions, selfishness. The natural heart which encompasses Man is the enemy that has to be fought; this is, however, no longer the real battle out of which the Spiritual Community sprang.

The doctrine of the Church is related to this individual as something external. The child is, to begin with, Spirit implicitly only, it is not yet realised Spirit, does not actually exist as Spirit, but has only the capability, the faculty of being Spirit, of becoming Spirit actually; thus the truth comes to it at first as something taken for


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 granted, recognised, valid, i.e., truth necessarily presents itself at first to men in the form of authority.

All truth, even material truth—this, however, is not truth properly so-called—comes to men in this form, to begin with. In our sense-perception the world presents itself to us as authority, it is, we find it as it is, we take it as something which has existence, and we are related to it as something which exists. It exists in a certain way, and its existence in this form is valid for us.

Doctrine, the spiritual element does not actually exist in the form of material authority of this sort, but must be taught as established truth. Custom is something established or valid, a definitely formed conviction; but because it is something spiritual we do not say: it is; but rather, it is valid. Since it comes to us as something which exists, it is, and since it thus comes to us as something having valid worth, we call the mode in which it thus appears authority.

Just as man has to learn about material things on authority and because they are there and exist, has to be content with them—the sun is there, and because it is there I must be content with it—so, too, is it with doctrine or truth; it does not, however, come to us by means of sense-perception, by the active exercise of the senses, but through teaching, as something which actually exists, through authority. What is in the human spirit, i.e., in its true spirit, is in this way brought into its consciousness as something objective, or what is in it is developed so that it knows it to be the truth in which it exists. In such education, practice, training, and appropriation, the whole interest centres merely in getting accustomed to the Good and the True. So far we are not concerned with overcoming Evil, for Evil has implicitly and actually been overcome.

We are concerned merely with contingent subjectivity. With the one characteristic of faith, namely, that the subject is not what it is meant to be, there is joined the


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 absolute possibility that it may fulfil its destiny and be received into favour by God. This belongs to faith. The individual must lay hold of the truth of the implicit unity of divine and human nature, and he lays hold of this truth by faith in Christ; God is thus no longer for the individual something beyond this world, and the apprehension of this truth is in direct contrast to the first fundamental characteristic, according to which the subject is not what it ought or is intended to be. The child, inasmuch as it has been born in the Church, has been born in freedom and to freedom; there no longer exists for it any absolute Other-Being, this Other-Being is considered as something overcome and conquered.

This education in the truth is concerned only with preventing evil from appearing, for there is in Man, looked at from a general point of view, a possibility that it will appear; but in so far as evil appears when a man does what is evil, it is at the same time something which is implicitly a nullity over which Spirit has power, and this power is of such a character that Spirit is able to make evil to cease to exist, to undo it.

Repentance, Penitence signifies that the transgression has come to be recognised owing to a man’s elevation to the truth, as something which has been virtually overcome and has no longer power in itself. That what has happened can be made as though it had not happened, cannot take place in a sensuous or material way, but in a spiritual and inward way. He is pardoned, he passes for one who has been adopted by the Father amongst men.

This is the business of the Church, this training whereby the education of the spirit becomes ever more inward, and this truth becomes identical with his Self, with the will of Man, becomes his act of will, his Spirit. The battle is past, and Man is conscious that it is not a case of battle, as it is in the Persian religion or the Kantian Philosophy, in which Evil is indeed to be overcome, but


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 in which it confronts the Good in virtue of its own essential nature, and in which infinite progress is what is highest of all.

If we get no further than the idea of what ought to be, then effort becomes endless, and the solution of the problem is removed infinitely far away.

Here, on the contrary, the contradiction is already implicitly solved; evil is known as something which in the Spirit is virtually and absolutely overcome, and in virtue of the fact of its being thus overcome the subject has only to make its will good, and evil, the evil action, disappears.

Here there is the consciousness that there is no sin which cannot be forgiven if the natural will is surrendered, unless the sin against the Holy Spirit, the denial of Spirit; for it alone is the power which can cancel everything.

Very many difficulties arise in connection with this point, and they all spring from the conception of Spirit and of freedom. On the one hand, Spirit is regarded as universal Spirit, and, on the other hand, as Man’s independent existence, as the independent existence of the single individual. It is necessary to say that it is the divine Spirit which effects regeneration; this is divine free grace, for all that is divine is free; it is not fate, it is not destiny. On the other hand, however, there is the self of the soul existing in a positive way, and it is sought accordingly to ascertain how much Man’s share in the matter is; a Velleitas, a Nisus is left to him, but persistence in firmly remaining in such a relation is itself unspiritual. The first condition of Being, the Being of the Self, is potentially the Notion, potentially Spirit, and what has to be abolished is the form of its immediacy, of its isolated, particular, independent Being or Being-for-self. This cancelling of self and coming to self on the part of the Notion is not, however, limited, universal Spirit. The act implied in belief in implicit


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, is, viewed in one aspect, the act of the subject, and, viewed in another aspect, it is the act of the Divine Spirit: faith is itself the Divine Spirit which works in the individual; but this latter is not in this case a passive receptacle, but, on the contrary, the Holy Spirit is equally the Spirit of the subject, since it has faith; in the exercise of this faith it acts against its natural life, discards it, puts it away. The difference between the three ways of representing this truth which have been employed may also serve to throw light on the antinomy which is involved in the course thus pursued by the soul.

(a.) There is first the moral view which finds its antithesis in the absolutely external relation of self-consciousness, in a relation which, taken by itself, might appear either as first or as fourth, namely, in the oriental despotic relation which involves the annihilation of individual thought and will; this moral view places the absolute end, the essence of Spirit, in an end connected with volition, and with volition, in fact, simply as its volition, so that this subjective aspect is the main point. Law, the Universal, the Rational is my rationality in me, and so, too, the willing of the end and its realisation which make it my own, my subjective end, are also mine; and inasmuch as the idea of something higher or highest, of God and the Divine, enters into this view, this is itself merely a postulate of my reason, something posited by me. It ought, it is true, to be something which has not been posited, something which is a purely independent power; still, although it is thus something not posited, I do not forget that this very fact of its not being posited is something which has been posited by me. It comes to the same thing whether this be stated in the form of a postulate, or whether we say, my feeling of dependence or of the need of salvation is what comes first, for in both cases the peculiar objectivity of truth has been abolished.

(b.) In reference to the good resolve, and still more in


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 reference to the Universal or Law, the pious man further adds that this is the divine will, and that the power of making the good resolution is itself really something divine, and he does not go beyond the universal relation here implied.

Finally, (c.) The mystical and ecclesiastical view gives greater definiteness to this connection between God and the subjective act of will and Being, and brings it into the relation which is based on the nature of the Idea. The various ways in which this truth has been conceived of in the Church are simply attempts to solve the antinomy. The Lutheran conception of it is, without doubt, the most brilliant, even if it has not perfectly reached the form of the Idea.

3. What comes last in this sphere of thought is the enjoyment of what is thus appropriated, the enjoyment of the presence of God. What we have here is the consciously felt presence of God, unity with God, the unio mystica, the feeling of God in the heart.

This is the Sacrament of the Supper, in which Man has given him in a sensible immediate way the consciousness of his reconciliation with God, the abiding and indwelling of the Spirit in him.

Since this is a feeling in the individual heart, it is also a movement, it presupposes the abolition of differences whereby this negative unity comes into existence as the result. If the permanent preservation of the Spiritual Community, which is at the same time its unbroken creation, is itself the eternal repetition of the life, passion, and resurrection of Christ, then this repetition gets a complete expression in the Sacrament of the Supper. The eternal sacrifice here just is, that the absolute substantial element, the unity of the subject and of the absolute object is offered to the individual to enjoy in an immediate way, and since the individual is reconciled, it follows that this complete reconciliation is the resurrection of Christ. Consequently the Supper is the


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 central point of Christian doctrine, and it is from it that all the differences in Christian doctrine get their colour and peculiar character. The conceptions formed of it are of three kinds:—

(1.) According to one conception the host, this outward, material, unspiritual thing is, owing to the act of consecration, the actually present God—God as a thing, and in the form of an empirical thing, and thus, too, as empirically enjoyed by Man. Since God is thus known as something outward in the Supper which is the central point of doctrine, this externality is the basis of the whole Catholic religion. There arises from this a slavishness of knowledge and action; this externality runs through all further definitions of the truth owing to the fact that the True is represented as something fixed and external. Being thus something which has a definite existence outside of the subject, it can come to be in the power of others; the Church is in possession of it as it is of all the means of grace; the subject is in this respect something passive and receptive which does not know what is true, right, and good, but has to accept it merely from others.

(2.) According to the Lutheran conception the movement starts from something external which is an ordinary common thing, but the act of communion takes place and the inner feeling of the presence of God arises to the extent to which, and in so far as, the externality is eaten not simply in a corporal fashion, but in spirit and faith. It is only in spirit and in faith that we have the present God. The sensible presence is in itself nothing, nor does consecration make the host into an object worthy of adoration; but, on the contrary, the object exists in faith only, and thus it is in the consuming and destroying of the sensuous that we have union with God and the consciousness of this union of the subject with God. Here the grand thought has arisen that, apart from the act of communion and faith, the host is a common, material