The lordship of the spirit over the world, in other words, over the system of the natural and particular motives of life, is connected in Christianity with the task of the Kingdom of God, as well as with that religious freedom in which evil in its many forms is employed as a test and purifier of character.

The task of the Kingdom of God, however, includes likewise all labour in which our lordship over nature is exercised for the maintenance, ordering, and furtherance even of the bodily side of human life. For unless activities such as these are ultimately to end in anti-social egoism, or in a materialistic overestimate of their immediate results, they must be judged in the light of those ends which, in ascending series, represent the social, spiritual, and moral ideal of man. Otherwise civilisation, which embraces the intellectual and technical species of mastery over the world, is placed in contradiction to the religious and moral species. In that case, however, the farthest advance of civilisation were likely to bring in its train only moral and intellectual barbarism.

Recently a theologian has undertaken to point out a way of escape from the aimless and confused animosity of theological parties—against which he makes the complaint that with one accord they are striving to reconcile Christianity with culture—by maintaining that at bottom the outcome of Christianity is merely negation of the world.¹ As establishing this view he claims that monasticism, with its negation of the world, occupies the first period of the existence of Christianity, covering a space of fifteen hundred years; that everything that was great in that period was achieved by monasticism; further, that the early Christian anticipation of the end of the world can only be interpreted as expressing the principle that between Christianity and the world there is an incompatibility; lastly, that not only in the principles of Paul, but also in the words of Christ in Matt. xix. 12, the demand for ascetic negation of the world is laid down. But if it does no more, the original opposition between Buddhism and Christianity may well continue to determine our opinion of the two as views of the world. I am far from underestimating the significance of monasticism for Christianity as a counterpoise to its Byzantine secularisation.² But in monasticism itself we find two species, of which the Oriental comes little short of Buddhism in its negation of the world, but for that very reason is of no more value than the secularised Church life of the Byzantines. The Occidental species of monasticism, however, so long as it retained a general value in history, acquired that value because, while resting on a basis of certain world-negating motives, it applied itself to ordered labour in many forms, i.e. to the task of world-mastery in the sense of technical and intellectual culture. The anticipation of the end of the world in the apostolic age would have had to be interpreted as a mark of world-negation in principle, if the inference which certain Christians in Thessalonica allowed themselves had been drawn from it universally. But not only did Paul, on the contrary, enjoin that whoever, influenced by this anticipation, did not work must not look to his fellow-members for support, but there is not a trace in any of the New Testament writings which serves to legalise beggary, which is the basal form of Buddhistic world-negation.

Hitherto we have been accustomed to regard the early Christian expectation of the nearness of the world’s end as belonging to the shell and not to the kernel. And there the matter will rest, for that anticipation has not acted prejudicially on any of the positive social duties which follow from Christianity. That Paul should deprecate marriage, in view of the calamities heralding the end of the world, goes along with his special estimate of the marriage state, which is anything but the view common to Christians. This follows directly from the saying of Christ adduced, which merely describes exceptions which directly imply the general normality of marriage. The fact that some refrain from marriage for the Kingdom of God’s sake indicates a principle which, under certain circumstances, makes a similar sacrifice a duty in any public vocation.

Thus there attaches to Christianity only so much world-negation as belongs to world-mastery. What is denied is just the dominion of the world over man; for the reverse relationship is set before us as our prospect and our task. Christianity favours pessimism, too, only from the unfavourable view it takes of man’s situation as subject to the dominion of the world or of sin. On the other hand, its faith in the purposiveness of suffering in testing and purifying character proves that its view of the world is opposed to that of pessimism. For the rest, I need not enter here upon a special elucidation of pessimism, for it is a view of the world which can only be directly refuted through the personal feeling of its representatives. For the charm of superior knowledge, by which the pessimistic theory is accompanied, is an outcome of the rule that every creature strives after well-being, and, if it be possible, a well-being which transcends the measure attained by others. While general optimism, therefore, must, as a permanent self-deception, be reckoned as part of the badness of the world, pessimism in itself denotes the possession of a truth which is thought to give one a more favourable position relative to reality than that occupied by optimists. This, however, is simply to satisfy man’s need of well-being, only in a peculiar fashion.

§ 63. The lordship over the world which Christianity bestows upon men, is not to be taken in an empirical sense. So that it is of no consequence what position the planet, with which our existence is bound up, occupies in the universe. True, the opinion is to be met with that the Christian view of the world has been invalidated by the refutation of the hypothesis that the earth is the centre of the universe, and that the sun was directly intended to give light to its inhabitants. I do not consider it the task of theology to attempt to prove as against this view that, of the planets of our solar system, the earth alone is suited to the development of a spiritually-endowed race of organisms. For the materials for such a proof are wanting; and even granting that on this question more were possible than a probable conjecture, there does not exist the slightest evidence to prove that no other astronomical system would furnish the conditions necessary for the development of spirits. Thus it is possible that the earth is not the only scene of the history of created spirits. But it is impossible to perceive how this should invalidate the estimate of self which Christianity leads man to form. The above-mentioned possibility or probability, which we must concede to natural science, has nothing whatever to do with the view we take of our practical attitude towards the natural world, partly because we cannot increase this possibility to any degree of actual knowledge, partly because the estimate we hold of ourselves as spiritual personalities is quite uninfluenced by our knowledge of natural laws. The man who, as an investigator of nature, keeps ever so clearly before his mind that our earth is an extremely insignificant part of the universe, behaves exactly as people did before Copernicus. Practically he behaves as though the earth were the firm foundation of his existence, as though the sun were intended to give him light and warmth, as though all nature, inclusive of the mechanical conditions of the boundless universe, existed simply for him. For these are the tacit presuppositions of our spiritual existence, in which we all in some degree manifest the feeling that we are the purpose of the world, and have the right to be lords over it. This fact indicates that our spiritual life is subject to laws which are not related to known natural laws as their consequences, but come under an exactly opposite category. The universal moral law, when it really deserves the name, represents the thought that the moral fellowship of the human race is the final end of the phenomenal world, the end supreme over all nature. The religious view of the world is, in general, a normal function of the human spirit which, in its Christian form, has for its aim to make possible the supernatural independence of the spirit in all its relations to the world of nature and to society.

Collisions between religion and science, especially natural science, arise only when laws which are valid for narrower realms of nature or spirit are erected into world-laws, and used as a key to open up a view of the whole. But to proceed thus is simply to introduce an apocryphal religious interest into scientific investigation; it can claim none of the rights of science (p. 207). On the recognition of this truth depends the prospect of appeasing the controversy between faith and knowledge. It would be out of place to devote closer attention to this prospect here. But it must be possible to harmonise the scientific study of nature and the Christian view of the world in the same mind; therefore I wish to notice one objection which it is customary to make to the possibility of such a combination. This is the assertion that the teleological and especially the miraculous character of the Christian view of the world is intolerable to one who on principle confines himself to the mechanical consideration of the world. If, now, this issues in the further contention that the scientific view of the world can get along without the conception of end, and without the assumption of miracles, this is a self-delusion. Miracles, in the sense of effects which are not produced according to law, are assumed in every philosophical or scientific theory of the universe; for no such theory is without gaps; and these gaps are discernible whenever such effects are affirmed as are not mediated by any known law. Moreover, without the conception of end it is simply impossible to essay the explanation of organisms, or of nature as a whole. If any man professes to have divested himself of this conception, it is easy to show that it is still tacitly operative in his thinking. But if it be declared untrustworthy in the interpretation of nature, because it denotes a presupposition of spiritual life, in particular of conscious will, which ought not to be applied to nature, neither is the principle of efficient cause abstracted from our experience, but is a presupposition of our thought without which experience is impossible, so that it likewise ought not to be applied to the changes of natural phenomena, if in their interpretation we have no right to employ the conception of end.

Accordingly, a view of the world which is teleological, and in detail even miraculous, which answers to man’s need of religion, which guarantees to him his position as a spiritual and moral whole in his connections with nature and human society, is—as compared with our knowledge of nature and its laws—anything but irrational; or, if it is so, then the delusion to which we submit in religion is repeated likewise in every investigation of nature, even when conducted solely in accordance with the law of efficient cause. If, finally, it is sought to throw suspicion on the trustworthiness of the religious view of the world by urging that it arises merely from a need of the human heart, let it be remembered that all, even the simplest, study of nature guided by the law of efficient cause likewise proceeds from a need of the human reason, and that its cogency is liable to the same suspicion that the human observer finds something, which he is conscious of in his own will, behind phenomena only because he wishes to find it. Lordship over the world, accordingly, though it is not technical and empirical, but ideal, is not therefore unreal. For the will which exercises religious dominion over the world is the real; and it is at the same time as much ideal as real. Moreover, the spiritual activity which so operates as to secure to the spirit its independence, cannot be something merely imaginary. The truth is, if everything with which we are here dealing were justly condemned as subjective imagination, then every spiritual activity which evidences the self-distinction of spirit from nature would fall under the same fatal judgment.

Now, in general, the form in which religious lordship over the world is exercised is faith in God’s providence. For that unified view of the world, the ruling idea of which is that of the supramundane God, Who as our Father in Christ loves us and unites us in His Kingdom for the realisation of that destiny in which we see the final end of the world, as well as the corresponding estimate of self, constitutes the realm within which come to be formed all such ideas as that all things and events in the world serve our good, because as children of God we are objects of His special care and help. This faith appears first of all in the form of a definite and distinct judgment, that is, as an act of knowledge. We judge that a particular restriction of freedom, which for the first moment is felt as a special evil, is or has been rather a benefit, in so far as it has promoted the development of the character to its highest quality as a whole within the whole of the moral order. But the conditions under which faith in providence makes its appearance as a species of knowledge, distinguish it from every other species. In it we are guided not by observation of the attitude towards the world occupied by others as well as ourselves, but solely by our own experiences. For observation of the fortunes of others would offer as much occasion—or even more—for dismay, as for confirmation of our own conviction. Often enough so much that is untoward is to be found in the lot of others, that one who felt himself called upon to estimate such facts in the light of the idea of God might easily feel himself tempted to adopt the notions, suggested by the Greeks, of Envy, or the indifference of the gods to mankind. But faith in providence affirms the general truth of the Divine goodness not as a law of phenomena discovered inductively, but as the personal conviction of each individual, drawn from the nexus of the experiences he has made of himself (§ 60). If, on the other hand, we will accept the validity of this conviction only on condition that it be tested by the lot of others, or if we even abandon it altogether because we find that the unfavourable experiences in the case of others are more numerous than the favourable in our own—this is to miss the distinction between the claims due to the nature of theoretical cognition, and the conditions of this religious knowledge of self and the world. Theoretical cognition of general laws, and of truths which are comprehended under such laws, is in itself indifferent to the worth of the individual, and is not sufficiently comprehensive to take in the whole of the world; in cognition which arises out of faith in providence, the individual’s desire is to master his own special position relatively to the whole of the world in which, as a Christian, he himself possesses the value of a whole.

The rejection of the rationality or the validity of faith in providence is combined either with the affirmation or the negation of the peculiar worth of spiritual personality. In the latter case, Strauss sees himself helplessly entangled in the monstrous world-machine, with its iron-toothed wheels, its heavy hammers and presses. While, as the prophet of the new faith, he confesses the horrible impression made on man by this situation, he adds the comforting consideration, that while the wheels of the world-machine move round mercilessly, yet they are lubricated by a mollifying oil. Under this figure he recommends us to convince ourselves of the necessity and rationality of the movements of the world-machine even when they crush us, and, through the kindly influence of custom, to accommodate ourselves to those imperfect features of our situation which are disclosed by our experience of the world. The obscurity of the figures which Strauss employs is most significant of the impossibility of his view of the world. If in the world-machine mollifying oil is poured upon us, then men are merely parts of the machine; then they have, as such, no consciousness of the whole or of their relation to it as parts; then they require no comfort when, after having become useless, they are replaced by other parts. Or men are distinguished from the world-machine as intelligent observers, but at the same time are conceived as being such that they are crushed by its movements. Then, truly, it is no alleviation and no comfort, if, before they are crushed, they have a dash of rancid oil poured over them; if, i.e. by being reminded of the inevitable necessity of their annihilation, they are robbed of that sense of worth which they draw from the fact that, as observers of the machine and as understanding its structure, they are superior to it. Strauss has not clearly realised either the one or the other position thus possible to man. But while his intention is to deny that man can be superior to the world and at the same time entangled in it, contrary to his intention his testimony goes to prove man’s superiority. The confusion of the figures which he employs proves that if men are actually what he in his new creed insists they are, he must persuade them to abandon altogether their craving for comfort regarding their unconditional subjection to the world. If, on the other hand, this craving is ineradicable, he ought to spare them the alleviating oil of resignation to necessity and kindly custom; for, while machine-oil is useful for the parts of a machine, it does no good to lookers-on.

These discussions, it is true, bring clearly before our minds the difficulty which faith in God’s providence solves. Man is a part of the world, and that not merely in his bodily limitations, but also as an individual spirit. And yet as spirit he distinguishes himself from the world, gains through the conception of God the idea of his worth as against the world, and rises in the Christian religion to the self-feeling that the worth of his spiritual personality transcends that of the whole system of nature. For this estimate of self is the basis of the horror to which Strauss testifies at the fact that, as a spectator of the system of the universe, one is likewise in danger of being drawn, as though by an unavoidable giddiness, between the wheels of the world-machine and there pulverised. Thus the self-feeling of man over against the whole world must be accepted, even though unwillingly, as a fact on which every merely mechanical view of the world makes shipwreck. But now if, simultaneously with the assertion of this standpoint, faith in God’s providence is set aside as unjustified and baseless, it is very improbable that such a position can be permanently or sincerely maintained. As I understand this position, the denial of Divine providence springs from the scientific knowledge and estimate of the law-governed system of all nature, this knowledge being kept before the mind along with the certainty that as a spirit man is an independent part of the system of the world. Now in this case there is indicated a degree of care for the preservation of one’s own life which is fitted only to blunt that feeling of worth by which, in the midst of the incalculable system of nature, this care is called forth. If one is in earnest with the scientific study of nature in the name of which Divine providence is denied, the consistent outcome of such a view of the world ought to be despair of that value of personal life which we destroy in ourselves by the wakeful care of every moment. If this result does not actually follow, however, that is a proof that the scientific view of the world is not taken so seriously as the negative inference would lead us to expect. And this would only be an example of the ordinary experience that scientific knowledge and practical conduct usually have very little to do with one another. If the same thing should possibly appear likewise in the realm of ethics, that is really intelligible only if what is involved is a scientific knowledge of natural phenomena which does not in itself comprise the conditions of spiritual life. The champions of Pantheism, who regard each spiritual individuality merely as a transient manifestation of the world-soul, or as a function of universal reason, to which, therefore, every kind of theoretical or practical friction between different men ought to matter nothing, take nevertheless a very lofty view of their personal honour, as expressing the permanent worth of the spiritual individual in distinction from all others. The champions of the theory of natural descent, who do not recognise as original the specific differentiation of spiritual life and nature, nevertheless conduct themselves as though this very distinction were the fundamental rule of their existence. And rightly, too. For the feeling of self, which expresses the incomparable worth of the personality as against all other personalities and the whole system of nature, is also the basis of all scientific study of nature, and cannot be neutralised by its results, whatever their character may be. It is thus a delusion to suppose that, by attaching importance to a scientific theory of the world, it is possible to suppress the original feeling of the worth of our own personality and the inferences which naturally follow from it. And it is likewise only an error in cognition to make scientific knowledge of nature as a system a reason for declaring invalid that faith in Divine providence which springs from our religious valuation of our spiritual personality, as contrasted with our relative dependence on the world. Here, rather, there comes to light a law of our spiritual life which is no less valid than the laws of thought and the laws of nature. Men are so easily deceived about these matters, because, in estimating those clear ideas and conceptions which are put forward as valid in science, they often forget that our practical behaviour is often ruled more by obscure ideas than by those which are clear.

Now this is exactly the case with regard to faith in Divine providence. We believe it to be true, not because we can follow or demonstrate its course clearly and completely, in other words, objectively; but we commit ourselves to it all the more decisively, the less we expose ourselves to the possible danger of falling into uncertainty in our knowledge of it through instituting a scientific kind of inquiry into its grounds. For to become certain of our own Ego we do not need a scientific analysis of its grounds and conditions, or an empirical explanation of its origin. We are certain of our Ego, even when we have present to our mind no clear idea of it; and the professional psychologist is not practically conscious of himself as an Ego in a different way from anyone else. The feeling of pleasure and pain in which the Ego grasps itself, whether what happens be a sense of our independent activity or an experience of restrictions upon it, is, indeed, always related to the surrounding world, and therefore, too, is always accompanied by ideas. But so far as these ideas are not clear, the self-feeling of the Ego is represented by good humour or dissatisfaction, according as the sense of self-activity or of restriction predominates. Accordingly, even faith in Divine providence is normally a tone of feeling which develops into the form of clear ideas and judgments, only if those hindrances to our feeling of self which arise from the world appear in a quantity which depresses the ordinary amount of spiritual energy. The normal amount of good spirits, in which the feeling of self and the sense of power manifest themselves, is sufficient in the case of many men to make them feel a certain amount of hindrances no evil at all. One does not need to be a Stoic on principle in order to face certain physical pains or social trials with momentary indifference, without having to call up the definite thought of God’s providence and without having to convince one’s self that such evils are intended to test us or to make us better. The energy used in overcoming pain, and the justifiable self-confidence which is felt in opposing certain antagonists, actually lead men of strong character to put aside for the moment the definite thought of God’s help, however much they feel their dependence on it as a rule. For in certain circumstances that thought may make us feel as though the degree of self-activity which duty calls for at the moment were being impaired.

Now, it may be said, the amount of confidence which most people possess is only the result of a custom which owes its existence first of all to the child’s ignorance of the hindrances that may arise from the surrounding world, which lasts until the individual has gone through his own special experiences, and which either reconstructs itself out of these experiences if he is a man of force of mind, or, in the reverse case, gives place to harassing care. As an anxious attitude of mind is frequently caused by bodily weakness, so, it is argued, confidence in face of possible evils and in spite of evils which have been experienced, has no necessary connection with faith in Divine providence, even though it were granted that this religious estimate of self is capable of strengthening one’s confidence in life. Of course no demonstration is of any use against such a view; for the necessity of a religious self-estimate and world-view is never connected with the experience of the individual as such. But history, which shows us men associated together, by no means confirms the view that confidence in face of possible hindrances due to nature or human society, and cherished without presumption or moral perversity, is a matter of course. A great tract of feeling among heathen peoples is dominated by the fear of nature, and there was nothing which the most pious Israelites found it so hard to rise above as troubles due to other men. Must not a completely different feeling, full of confidence in face of nature and unassuming towards men—a feeling which the individual, guided merely by his own experience, regards as due to nature or custom—be the product of Christian education? Must it not be dependent on the fact that Christianity as a matter of principle excludes the fear of nature, and declines to make it a necessary test of our feeling of self that our worth should be recognised by men? If we are reminded that the fear of nature not only continued to possess men’s minds in mediaeval Catholicism, but was corroborated even by the Reformers, and that to this day it is strengthened by various kinds of belief in devils, still it does not thence follow that it is an original element of Christianity. The theology of the Aufklärung, from which this feeling received its death-blow, is not thereby proved to be a culture-promoting force which surpasses Christianity, but rather a mere element in culture, the influence of which in the realm of ecclesiastical Christianity has, in this respect, justified itself. There is really no common element in the spiritual life of men which is rooted merely in nature and not rather in history. The semblance of being the product of nature clings to certain convictions and feelings, only because we are both familiar with their historical connection and not specifically conscious of it. When, therefore, bound up with a direct denial of Divine providence based upon the scientific conviction that the system of nature is governed by necessary law, there is to be found a self-feeling of personal worth, and when withal there is cherished, not a perpetual fear of annihilation by the powers of nature, but a modest confidence in life—then I believe I am justified in asserting that we have here a case of the faith in God’s providence which is gained from education working on still as a tone of feeling.

The obscurity which surrounds this point, however, is in an eminent degree due to orthodox theology itself, in so far as it represents faith in God’s providence as an element of natural religion (p 181). In consequence of this, theological naturalism declares that we can dispense with positive Revelation, which seemed to furnish this natural piety with no more distinct motive. What wonder if men of science, having demonstrated the fallaciousness of the teleological argument, for that reason likewise assert the invalidity of the religious use of this formula, seeing that theologians, whether of the Right or the Left, put forward faith in Divine providence as the result of popular or scientific knowledge of nature? But the confidence with which, whether in favourable or adverse positions in life, men cast themselves on the guidance and help of God, regarding themselves as enjoined by Him to seek the one highest goal, dominion over the world in the fellowship of the Kingdom of God, is in reality a product of the Christian religion. For the God Who is the Lord over the world and our Father, Who cherishes no envy and wrath against His children, gives them the assurance that all things serve for their good. And this truth stands firm only when based upon our reconciliation with God.

§ 64. Nevertheless, faith in God’s providence is subject to a difficulty which arises from the religious conception of God Himself, and finds precise expression in the statement that the judgments and ways of God are unsearchable (Rom. xi. 33). This statement of Paul, however, is not meant to annul the significance of God’s revelation. The apostle does not affirm that God is absolutely unknowable; for that would contradict the certainty of His saving revelation. But he affirms that the knowledge of God’s general saving purpose, which we possess in virtue of His revelation, does not imply an antecedent knowledge of the special methods by which God guides to salvation particular bodies of men or particular individuals. This special side of God’s government of the world remains concealed beforehand, and can become clear to anyone only from experience, as the course of the world takes shape. On this point the attitude of the Christian theory is precisely the opposite of that of pre-Christian religions. In the latter we find men forming very decided judgments on events as manifestations of Divine punishment, while at the same time uncertain about the disposition of God or the gods as a whole. But in Christianity the full revelation of God implies that we can hardly comprehend the application of God’s saving will to our own destiny, or its intertwining with the history of particular groups of men or of the whole of humanity, and that least of all may we, by our prayers and counsels, exercise an influence on the Divine dispensations. Indeed, even subsequent reflection on historical events, though guided by the idea of the Divine government of the world, is not protected from error by the desire to acknowledge that idea. It is a common enough experience to find egotistical obstinacy mingling even with this practical exercise of religion, while all the time seeking to justify itself by the misuse of Scripture. How soon partisans are ready to pronounce an opinion in God’s name on events which are in process of development, just as though they had known the mind of the Lord, or been His counsellors! How rash they are in exaggerating the guilt of the one party and minimising that of the other, speculating, according to the side they take, on the help or the vengeance of God, and deciding how much is merely the work of man and what the cause of God! Cases of this kind furnish really terrible proofs of the weakness of the Christian faith of those who are loudest in their professions. True, the subjection of natural phenomena to their laws is made out by a more or less limited range of observation, and by logical judgment; for all phenomena of this kind are found in space, and the characteristics of natural objects clearly reveal the species to which they belong. But the historical events of human life are likewise in time, and the nature of their mutual intertwining is obscure, for it is always subject to the interference of human freedom. Who, now, will assert that he has at his command a range of historical observation sufficient for forming a judgment on God’s special designs; and who is conscious of being so free from personal guilt that he can decide what group of human actions possesses, in God’s judgment, the character of pure right or pure wrong? Infallible people, who are in the habit of judging as though they claimed this, profess to occupy a standpoint as far removed as possible from that of “unbelieving” scientists; in reality, they treat the Divine government of the present and the most recent past as though it were simply an object like the objects of natural science!

There are no organs other than those of patience and humility, by which all those experiences of life which lie nearest—those which are most special as well as those which are common—may be comprehended under general faith in God’s providence. They yield that prudence which answers to the providence of God, and that religious tenderness of feeling which is rendered possible by the Christian estimate of self. Every logical judgment is incisive, as the word (Urtheilen) itself directly indicates; a religious judgment on our experiences of life is light of touch, tender in feeling, pliant. There is no gift for scientific theology, no capacity for ecclesiastical office, which could make any difference here, or ensure such an infallibility as belongs—granting right processes—to mathematical or logical conclusions.

The feeling which views especially the evils of life in the light of Divine providence is patience. It is that attitude of soul which, even apart from religion altogether, withdraws the sting from those lasting evils which afflict us. Patience is quite different from apathy. For when the latter is demanded of the Stoic as a duty, whether in reality it is attainable or not, it implies that the pain due to the evil, the emotional sense of restraint, is altogether suppressed. But patience in suffering implies that the pain continues. If it be possible to get rid entirely of the sense of pain, whether by Stoical effort or by the deadening of our spiritual force, there remains no basis for patience. Wherever, therefore, this feeling is called for, it decidedly implies the continuance of the sense of the evil as a restriction of freedom. But by patience the evil is reduced to a relative degree, in so far as patience itself is a specific application of freedom. True, the range of freedom, in the form of patience, is limited in the first place to ordering the relation of sensations to the personal feeling of self, or, more precisely, to the subordination of a particular restriction of freedom to the general feeling of freedom. But patience, as an act of freedom, never confines itself to the inward domain, but always in varying fashion issues in outward manifestation, at least in negative effects. Otherwise we should not become clearly conscious of it. That patience which we have to exercise in the training of children will show itself in a consecutive and positive counteraction of their faults and defects, which we perceive with pain because they restrict the freedom of our intercourse with them. On the other hand, patience under bodily suffering may, perhaps, display itself merely in our refraining from expressions of pain by an exertion of the sense of honour. Between these instances of patience there lie an immense number of possibilities, which represent the reaction of the general feeling of self and personal worth against restrictions of freedom, of which we are specially conscious only under special circumstances.

These general conditions of patience hold good likewise for the Christian form of this temper as a religious virtue. The elevation of the general human exercise of patience into its special Christian form depends on the fact that man’s feeling of self and of personal worth, by being combined with the thought of the supramundane God Who is our Father, and guarantees to us salvation through dominion over the world and participation in the Kingdom of God, is raised above all natural and particular motives, even when they are the occasion of troubles. This still admits of evils being felt with pain even by the Christian.³ True, he is raised to such a height that he can glory in the afflictions and persecutions which he undergoes for Christ’s sake (Jas. i. 2; Rom. v. 3), while the Stoic, who resigns himself to the course of the Cosmos, deadens his sensibility to the feeling of evils. But if we apparently have to infer from the series of New Testament injunctions to rejoice in suffering (vol. ii. p. 350), that pain should not form part of a Christian’s sense of social afflictions, yet we can quote against any such position, not only the explicit confession in Heb. xii. 11, but also the example of Jesus and Paul. For while joy in the midst of persecutions is expected from Christians, yet, from the equally clear commendation of patience (ὑπομονὴ καὶ μακροθυμία) it follows that joyousness in suffering, while compensating for the feeling of pain, is not to exterminate it. The consciousness of reconciliation with God places the assurance of personal worth firm above all the special motives which arise from the world; and therefore the pain which springs from their oppressive action can be subordinated to the joy which, in our feeling of self, denotes the incomparable worth of Divine sonship. But in the case in question, joy would not last; rather, it would veer round into indifference, unless underneath the joy the pain still continued. Moreover, the truth of the Fatherly care of God for His children suggests to us not only the inference that no evils arising from the world can overbalance the blessing of fellowship with God, but also this further application, that these evils, as tests of our fidelity to God, are elevated into relative blessings. And this comes about just through the exercise of patience as the peculiar and proper manifestation of Christian freedom. Finally, so far as a general or special feeling of guilt accompanies experience of evils, that experience is elevated through faith in God’s Fatherly providence into the idea of educative punishment. For experience of evils has a bettering influence only when it is looked at in the light of the truth that the goodness of God leadeth us to repentance (Rom. ii. 4). The goodness of God is not one ground of repentance, and punishment another; rather, it is the general principle under which even Divine punishment is to be brought. The idea of legal retribution no more carries with it the impulse to improvement than does the thought of experiencing Divine wrath. It is therefore an error to regard the preaching of an angry God as a necessary element in the Christian ordering of life. Those who ex hypothesi are overtaken by the wrath of God, are nothing bettered by having the prospect foretold them.

Resignation to God’s will, which elevates patience in suffering into a religious virtue, is not to be acquired by sober reflection or by the exertion of the imagination. One who is suffering from a great sorrow which pierces deeply into his life, can hardly in that way make the religious truth which he acknowledges so to operate upon his feeling as to banish the disabling power of pain. Patience under such suffering, drawn from the acquired conviction of God’s love, is exercised most surely when it is supported by labour in our vocation, for all the true impulses of the Christian religion can be appropriated, not in inaction and effortless meditation, but only when brought into touch with our regular work; and for this reason activity in our moral vocation, as well as patience in suffering, is an integral element of Christian perfection (§§ 67, 68). In the case in question, the significance of work for the acquisition of patience is evident from the fact that both are united in the conception of the worthy exercise of independent freedom. As the point of importance in patience is that a man should hold firmly to his freedom as a counter-weight to the restriction of suffering and its consequences, though the sense of suffering neither can nor should be removed, work serves as a means of testing our free activity as such, and thus furthers the end of maintaining ourselves even against the disabling power of pain. This process is not to be understood as though through work ideas were excited which suppressed the ideas which cause pain. This may, indeed, be the case with many. They will be in a position to work out for themselves indifference to the cause of their pain; but in that case they lose the enrichment of soul which is the outcome of the struggle of patience with pain, and remains real even when the latter is still felt only as a gentle sadness. For the former reduction of pain to indifference, though it may often succeed, is yet far from ethically satisfactory; and inasmuch as patience, not indifference, is a religious function, the case described is mentioned at this point only as exemplifying an aberration which had to be noted as well as the true principle.

Even from the standpoint of deliberate Christian faith, resignation to God’s will will be found easier in the relations of private life than in respect to those cases of mutual interest in public life in which we may be involved on one side. Here appear the difficulties described above in which, as has been said, patience and humility must decide what is to be regarded as appointed by God. In this realm there exists a great danger of error, when, for example, a man does not maintain the necessary distinction between his Christian and his political convictions. This error is palpable in the case of those Roman Catholics who identify the continued existence and the validity of Christianity with the supremacy of an infallible Pope. Should they, though from no failure of Ultramontane intrigues and acts of violence, be disappointed in their desire thus to amalgamate religion and the lust of power, they preach all the more passionately the imminence of Divine judgments upon their adversaries. Quite analogous phenomena, however, confront us even in the case of those professors of Evangelical Christianity who think they are serving it best by making its ecclesiastical administration an item in their political party programme. If the latter is shipwrecked, they invoke God’s protection upon it, and shrink from no injustice in representing their political opponents as the enemies of God. They are clearly altogether unaware of the fact that Christian patience has for its field of exercise not only the subjection of private life to the guidance of God, but also the cautious criticism of the history of the present.

§ 65. Humility is the current rendering of the Hebrew word עֲנָוָה. In the few cases in which it occurs, it denotes literally the condition of the עָנִי. The epithet “suffering,” however, became the positive description of the man who experiences oppressions and troubles as a worshipper of God and a person of moral righteousness. Since, therefore, the suffering and wretched are regarded as those who seek God and walk uprightly (Ps. ix. 11, 13; xxv. 9; xxxvii. 11; lxix. 33), עֲנָוָה really coincides with righteousness (Ps. xlv. 5; Zeph. ii. 3) and the fear of God which is the beginning of wisdom (Prov. xv. 33; xxii. 14), and in this reference it denotes the opposite of pride of heart and scorning, i.e. of godlessness (Prov. xviii. 12; iii. 34). In the New Testament the place of these words is taken by the conception ταπεινός. Apart from the meaning “meek” (2 Cor. x. 1; cf. Num. xii. 4), this adjective denotes a humble position in life just in so far as it includes worthiness in God’s sight (2 Cor. vii. 6; Luke i. 52), ταπεινοφροσύνη (Acts xx. 19), that temper, inclining to the service of God, which accepts resignedly an oppressed and wretched condition. Accordingly, the expression in part includes the whole compass of the practice of the Christian religion as opposed to those who are high-minded (Jas. i. 9; 1 Pet. v. 6; Rom. xii. 16), in part it points to that subjection to God which is attested by prayer for the forgiveness of sins (Jas. iv. 10; Luke xviii. 14), in part it indicates Jesus’ religious subordination to God, manifested in His obedience to His vocation (Phil. ii. 8). Lastly, in Jesus’ saying about Himself (Matt. xi. 28–30; cf. supra, p. 462), πραΰς and ταπεινός are synonymous, for both words are used in the LXX for עָנִי. Jesus calls to Himself the suffering, while He describes Himself as a sufferer. But by His description of His own suffering, differing from the description He gives of that of others, and further by the addition of the words τῇ καρδίᾳ, He indicates that He is reconciled to His suffering because He accepts it for God’s sake; this gives Him calmness, as well as a sense that His burden is light. Therefore He can invite those to learn of Him who load themselves with an intolerable burden of care, under the impression that they can fashion their destiny by their independent exertions. This group of terms, accordingly, has in any case a thoroughly religious colour, while on the other hand ταπεινός and ταπεινοφροσύνη denote also modesty in relation to men (Matt. xxiii. 12; Luke xiv. 11; Col. iii. 2; Eph. iv. 2; Phil. ii. 3; 1 Pet. v. 5), and in the last two passages this is done in such a way that its close analogy with humility before God comes out. Lastly, ταπεινοφροσύνη (Col. ii. 18, 23) denotes an ascetic worship of God, marked by a degradation of the bodily life, which is foreign to Christianity.

The predominating impression we receive from the Biblical idea of religious lowliness is this, that humility is represented only in connection with undeserved suffering. Nevertheless, even in the Old Testament this is not the case throughout. One could not expect, indeed, that the rule of goodness (Mic. vi. 8), namely, “to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God,” should contain the suggestion that action of this kind will be accompanied by adversity. But the delineation of the king in Ps. xlv. 5 emphasises eulogistically the lowliness—which is righteousness—i.e. the humility, by which he is characterised, even when the marks of suffering disappear. Nevertheless, the usage of the New Testament proves that the idea of religious lowliness or humility still maintains itself exactly in its original meaning, namely, as involving undeserved suffering. However, we find the conception of humility in the circle of New Testament ideas beginning to be detached from the presupposition that it implies outward misery. True, in Jas. i. 9, 10, the view which obtains in the Old Testament appears again as distinctly as possible. The Christian is as certainly regarded as occupying a miserable and oppressed position in outward life, as the rich man is regarded as godless. But in another aspect this statement differs from the form predominantly given to the idea in the Old Testament. The lowly and humble Christian does not merely expect his exaltation in the future, but is assured of it as a present inward possession, while in the Old Testament this feeling is devoid of influence even when the believer momentarily claims peace-bringing fellowship with God (Ps. lxxiii. 25–28; Mic. vii. 8). The idealisation of the notion of humility makes its presence felt gently, though clearly, in the words of Jesus Himself (Matt. xi. 28, 29). For here the additional words τῇ καρδίᾳ are designed to express the acquiescence of a pious mind in His lowly position, as in the phrase πτωχὸς ἐν πνεύματι; while the connection of the words shows that deliberate submission to God is the power which makes any situation of suffering tolerable. Thus in the idea of the lowly and the wretched, the emphasis is laid on that attitude of soul which finds compensation for every burden of life in deliberate acceptance of God’s dispensations, and therefore bears such burdens patiently. This comes out, too, when Paul (Rom. xii. 16) represents the lowly as the opposite of those who “mind high things.” The conception of “lowly” is thus indirectly limited to this—that one strives after lowliness, i.e. subjection to God, and stamps it on his own heart. This inward self-abasement before God is vividly represented in the parable of the Publican (Luke xviii. 14), in his prayer for God’s forgiveness, and in Jas. iv. 10, in the repentance which likewise requires outward attestation. Finally, it is demanded in 1 Pet. v. 6 in respect to all God’s unavoidable dispensations, just as in Phil. ii. 8 witness is borne to it by the consideration that Christ chose His path in obedience to His vocation, and therefore submitted willingly to the fate of death.

These indications point to deliberate submission to God’s dispensations as the common meaning of them all. To be sure, in most of the cases adduced the occasion for this temper of soul is furnished by the sufferings of life, or the social pressure under which we stand against our will. But this occasion falls out of sight in both the instances of self-abasement in order to secure Divine forgiveness; and Jesus’ self-abasement in obedience even unto death represents not merely this lot of suffering, but the whole range of His moral activity in the vocation which He undertook and freely carried out. But if His resolve to fulfil His moral vocation coincides with His resolve to submit to God’s ordinance, we have opened up to us the prospect of a view which transcends the original conception of humility. For if Christianity even approximately corresponds to its destiny of spiritual dominion over human society, then either we may reckon on it that moral fidelity to one’s vocation will have no hindrances to undergo, but in some degree will obtain the recognition it deserves; or, since all evil is conditioned by our judgment upon it, the believer, by his humble estimate of the fidelity with which he discharges his vocation before God, will rise above the hindrances due to society as though they did not exist. We thus retain the inner essential quality characteristic of the suffering and oppressed, from the manifestation of which the Biblical usage is derived, if by humility we understand the resolve to submit ourselves to God. This resolve, indeed, is not always present to us as a conscious decision, but all the more does it appear in a tone of feeling and a sense of pleasure, which we can only explain by the obscure influence of that resolve. For where you have a distinct determination to be humble, it is rather a proof that it has met with restrictive opposition in ourselves. Humility, as one would wish to exercise it, is, as Scriver strikingly says, the eye which sees everything except itself; true humility knows not of its own existence. In this form, however, humility in the Christian sense does not at all necessarily involve straitened outward circumstances, or troubles due to society.

A more exact knowledge of this conception, and at the same time a confirmation of it, is supplied by the importance which, even for the men of the New Testament, belongs to “the fear of God.” This tone of feeling may seem to be alien to Christianity (Rom. viii. 15; 1 John iv. 18), but that holds true only of that pain at the thought of God which clings to Pharisaic and ceremonial piety. In the Christian sense, however, it is the impulse, accompanied by blessedness, to an open acknowledgment of God’s glory, as in the Old Testament. For the rest, in Phil. ii. 12, 1 Pet. i. 17, the fear of God signifies the acknowledgment that we are dependent on God throughout the whole range of our moral activity, so far as He is Judge and Father, i.e. so far as He guides our life to the securing of our moral rights as opposed to other men, according to His especial grace. Now this feeling, as religious lowliness or humility, is opposed to highmindedness or false independence (Rom. xi. 20; cf. xii. 16; Col. iii. 22). While, therefore, in the New Testament it assumes the form of one special motive of action or self-education alongside of others (1 Pet. iii. 2; 2 Cor. v. 11, vii. 1), it is properly to be comprehended under the conception of humility. But this makes it clear once more that humility may be discerned not merely in relation to the prevalent depression of our outward circumstances, but also throughout the whole extent of our conscious moral activity.

This presupposition of our resignation to God depends no less distinctly on the fact that we know Him as our Father, and use our freedom to realise His end, than on the fact that our freedom has its dark side, and God’s ways in detail are unsearchable. Humility equalises contending feelings in these respects just in so far as it is a tone of feeling, and the feeling of pleasure predominant in it testifies indirectly to our ruling intention to submit ourselves to God. Now ascetic writers, e.g. Scriver, when dealing with the contrast, which humility overcomes, between the lowliness of man and the sublimity of God, normally take into account also the feeling of guilt against God. This, however, is not one of the essential conditions of humility, for we know that humility was also an element in Christ’s character. Still, their conception of the matter gives rise to the idea that humility is properly the whole of religion as found in man. For in so far as religion, in all its species and stages, is the acknowledgment—concentrated in feeling—of our subjection to God, humility—granted the omnipotence and grace of God and our reconciliation with Him—will be subjective religion itself. Now this is correct, in the sense that humility is the Christian religion in the form of religious virtue. But patience must be added to it as the other religious virtue. In other words, patience is religious feeling as lordship over a refractory world, and is supplementary to humility as the feeling of submission to God. Humility and patience, however, come under the conception of virtue because they are acquired frames of feeling, and at the same time powers, inasmuch as they move and rule the will. Finally, the compass of both is such that they both accompany moments of special activity, and give to compulsory experiences of suffering their importance as elements in our active character. The test of both forms of feeling will have to be made, perhaps, with more intensity along the line of moral action than in connection with unavoidable suffering. For successful action brings with it the danger of our repudiating humility; and our patience is menaced when action brings with it no visible result, even though it does not involve us in actual suffering. To sustain patience in the absence of success, and humility in its abundance, is a quite specific test of Christian piety. In cases of an opposite kind, impatience betrays a lack of religious independence of the world; while, on the other hand, arrogant assurance of success betrays such an irreligious independence in the world as, for all one’s desire to defend God’s cause, is exposed to nothing so much as the danger of gross errors in the knowledge of God’s purposes.

As humility is not necessarily connected with unavoidable suffering, so it does not necessarily involve any definite outward manifestation. It is true, the language of the New Testament itself indicates that there is an affinity between this religious virtue and modesty towards men, which, therefore, will be found to be a regular feature of it. Modesty is a principle of respect for other persons, which rests on the fact that for one thing we are bound together with one another to work for a higher common end. and on the presupposition that in this system each person has a place of his own, and in himself represents to us the worth of moral fellowship. Now humility, which emphasises the obligatoriness of our joint moral tasks and our responsibility to God, normally calls forth likewise modesty towards men. But the validity of this principle of duty, like all others of a similar kind, is limited by circumstances. One is not obliged to be modest towards insolent people. Of course one is not obliged, nor has one the right, to be insolent towards the insolent. But since we are bound to be sincere towards them, this may perhaps relieve us of the duty of modesty. Insolent people, therefore, who are so because they profess as universal ends which are really particular, get into the attitude of regarding as insolent and arrogant opponents who in reality are humble, but who, in consequence of that very virtue, can only act in such a way as to offend their opponents by their candour. In this respect the collection of Jesus’ sayings in Matt. xxiii. is worthy of our consideration as an instructive model. For the humblest and most patient of men there tells the insolent representatives of a narrow religiosity nothing but the truth; while the Pharisees lived in the belief that they were the legitimate custodians of God’s law and the dispensers of His salvation, and therefore could count on the deference of all their fellow-countrymen.

Even in ascetic forms of worship there is no particular form of expression necessary to humility. Asceticism as a whole, which found its way into the Catholic Church from the realms of alien religions, strives to commend itself as an expression of humility. For if the contrast between human and Divine nature—for which, it is considered, humility makes up—is reduced to the opposition between impure and pure, then humility must be identified with abstinence from such relationships and activities as appear to defile man. But the assumption that certain foods and marriage are impure is rejected in the Epistle to Titus and the First Epistle to Timothy, while in the Epistle to the Colossians Paul passes the severest criticism on the position that abstinence from the enjoyment of wine and flesh is necessary, as being a ταπεινοφροσύνη which possesses, as a means of serving God, the value merely of a capricious device, and leads to arrogance. That this latter judgment should be so overwhelmingly confirmed by monasticism everywhere, is easily intelligible. As ascetic legalism represents the surviving influence of the last forms assumed by developing Hellenism, so no two things are more alien to one another than on the one hand the free resolve of the Christian accompanied by his feeling of humility, accommodating itself to all the different experiences of life, and on the other hand a statutory list of scruples touching abstinence, and of outward acts of worship. One who chooses such media to express his humility will be seduced into arrogance by the inward contradiction there exists between the means and the end, and by his externally separating himself from those Christians who are content with what he pretends is a life of defilement. If now, still further, humility towards God is taken to mean that one should place himself, like a corpse, at the disposal of the Superiors of an Order, the consequence is that his sense for truth is falsified all round, a result which needs no special commentary.

Nevertheless, similar misconceptions of Christian humility have been called forth by Calvinism and Pietism. They are connected principally with a more or less distinct feeling of suspicion regarding the “impurity” of aesthetic culture, and of the time-honoured means of social recreation. Originally, therefore, they have nothing in common with the after-effects of non-Christian religions on Christianity at its Catholic stage of development. Both tendencies may be excused on the ground of the historical situation of the Christian Church in which they appeared. For in the Middle Ages the secularisation of the Church was inevitable, since the Church was held to be the legal form of Christian society, embracing within itself all other forms of life. Calvinism, in imposing the duties of sanctification on the entire Christian society in the name of the Church, acknowledged the principle that the Church is the framework of everything that is Christian, even of the State. In Lutheranism, on the other hand, there was directly perpetuated the mediaeval, i.e. relatively secularised, conception of the Church, until Pietism appeared in this domain in the same fashion as Puritanical Calvinism, with the result, however, of narrowing the significance of the Church, and, in many cases, allowing Christian society to escape from its framework. Following a narrow-hearted interpretation of Old Testament ordinances, both tendencies in part cherished the belief that no Divine sanction could be found for social recreation, the misuse of which had led to moral corruption, and in part restrained the artistic impulse by making public worship as plain and bare as possible, as the Second Commandment seemed to prescribe. Where the customs of the people have been determined by these principles, they give no occasion to individual revolt. But when they are combined with a sectarian tendency, the result is that some strive to mark themselves off from their otherwise-minded neighbours by abstention from social joys and the rejection of artistic pleasures, in order thus to give expression to the religious complexion of their mind, that is, their humility. I do not say that the conscious and deliberate expression of humility in the way described is a necessary characteristic of Pietism which holds good in all cases. But I must say I have found that when Pietists lay stress on these practices of theirs in contrast to other Christians, and with open or tacit condemnation of the unbelief of others, they fall into the error of thinking that a specific manifestation of humility is possible or necessary. This error, however, where it obtains, is accompanied for the most part by all those perversities by which, in Catholic monasticism, arrogant humility is characterised.

§ 66. In statements by the Reformers,⁴ cited above, we have a recognition of the truth that prayer stands in the closest connection with faith in Divine providence, and that the understanding of prayer, as well as faith in Divine providence, issues directly from our reconciliation with God through Christ. In every religion, prayer, or, what is equivalent to it, sacrifice, is originally the product and the proof of man’s resolve to recognise his subjection to God in whatever character He may be believed in. Accordingly Evangelical theologians do not take a very profound view of the subject when they find no other ground for prayer than God’s command (vol. i. p. 351). Such an hypothesis arises simply from attending merely to the statutory stage of the development of religions. This stage, however, presupposes everywhere an original freedom of action in giving shape to the common forms of worship. The original form of prayer, therefore, can be understood only from the resolves of particular persons, as indeed it is in this limited sphere alone that it is open to observation. What is given as a description of prayer in Heb. xiii. 15 holds good for every religion—that it is the sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips which acknowledge the name of God. The variety of prayer in different religions depends on the relations of the Divine will to us and to the world, which are included by thought in the name of God. Where prayer is regarded as an equivalent for tangible gifts, we find also, to begin with, an agreement between both forms of worship—that is, a definite resolve to adopt outward action. The resolve to dedicate tangible property to God is the characteristic which gives value to all sacrifice in the ordinary sense; the resolve to praise God calls forth the equally sensible phenomenon of prayer, inasmuch as it either interrupts ordinary profane business, or breaks off the soul’s feeling of uncertainty and doubt. The name of God as our Father, Whom in prayer we resolve to confess, embraces the attributes of almighty love and grace towards us, whose salvation God has in view in His entire government of the world. Thus prayer in the Christian sense is, on the one hand, a special manifestation of the faith in the Fatherly providence of God, which springs from reconciliation; on the other hand, a special manifestation of the resolve to be humble, which is distinguished from the ordinary tenor of that virtue by the fact that the resolve, which is present as an obscure idea or as a tone of feeling, is brought to clear representation. The basal functions of the human spirit are all participant in each of these religious acts. It is not the fact that faith in Divine providence is a kind of knowledge, humility a kind of feeling, prayer a kind of willing. That faith rather includes the resolve of the will to submit to God, together with feeling as pleasure or as pain; humility is a continuous feeling of pleasure in submission to God only because it springs from the corresponding resolve, and is accompanied by an idea—not a clear idea, it is true—of God’s power and grace. Prayer, as a resolve of the will, finds its material in our knowledge of Divine providence, and attests itself by the attainment or the increase of joyfulness which accompanies the act itself. All that can be maintained is that in each of these religious functions the leading and dominant place is occupied now by knowledge, now by feeling, now by willing. Silent devotion and the feeling of humility, finally, rise into prayer from two motives—first, in order that these religious functions may be exercised by many in common and in accord; and, further, that the individual may ensure his faith in providence and his humility against those hindrances which arise, partly from contact with the secular world, partly from causes which lead him to doubt the security of his own religious convictions.

This discussion is guided by considerations other than those which dominate Schleiermacher’s doctrine of prayer. He says (§ 146, 1): “Relatively to the fact that success is never the result solely of our independent activity, but also at the same time the result of the Divine government of the world, our God-consciousness in respect of those present possessions which are the result of previous efforts is either resignation or gratitude; while in respect of those which are still undecided, it is prayer, i.e. the combination of desire directed to the best success with our God-consciousness.” This limitation of the conception to cases of petition directed to God is not in harmony with the original sense of προσευχή, in idea or in practice, at either stage of the religion of the Bible. Undoubtedly, what predominates in the latter conception is just that acknowledgment of God by thanksgiving and by devotion which balances the tension of desire. The representation given by Schleiermacher, which excludes from prayer precisely this kind of acknowledgment of God, appears to have a closer affinity to that preference for petitionary prayer which has its home in Pietistic circles, and there manifests itself in a didactic interest in the hearing of prayer, the truth of which people seek to demonstrate empirically by numerous examples. This one-sidedness is presumably due to the fact that, apart from German usage, which designates the general conception (of prayer) by the name of a particular species [Beten], the discourses of Jesus on the subject are concerned almost exclusively with petitionary prayer and God’s hearing of it. The model prayer for Jesus’ disciples, too, is simply a collection of wishes. The popular instruction of the Church, accordingly, which is based upon this model prayer, recognises thanksgiving, indeed, as a second kind of prayer alongside of petition, but only as of the second rank, as though we had to thank God only after ascertaining that He has heard our petitions. Against this, however, are to be set two characteristic utterances of Paul. In one (Phil. iv. 6) he desires that in every petition their requests should be laid before God with thanksgiving (vol. ii. p. 346); further, he gives with strong emphasis the precept (1 Thess. v. 16–18), “Rejoice evermore; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks: for this is the will of God for you revealed in Christ Jesus.” This last binding consideration refers to all the three precepts with which it stands connected. Now, these two utterances of Paul yield the conclusion, that for the Christian Church thanksgiving as an acknowledgment of God stands higher than petition, that thanksgiving is not one species of prayer alongside of petition, but rather the general form of prayer, while petition is merely a modification of thanksgiving to God.

This certainly takes for granted that in consequence of reconciliation we Christians rejoice alway, even in distress and persecution; otherwise the injunction of Paul is unintelligible (vol. ii. p. 344). But in joy we have no wishes, no intense desire for anything not yet attained; or if wishes do arise, we have them in joy without the pain which springs from their delayed fulfilment. Thus we are in a position to present them to God with thanksgiving, with an acknowledgment, reassuring to ourselves, of His power and goodness. It must be confessed that this attitude of soul is not present at every moment even in the most sincerely pious, and that often it must first be brought forth in prayer by a conflict with a reluctant or crippled frame of spirit which is opposed to it. But if Christianity has true reconciliation to offer, then joy must be recognised as the normal accompaniment of humility and patience. According to Paul’s principle, then, it is the rule of prayer in the Christian community that in our joyful assurance of peace with God arising from reconciliation, we should give thanks to God in every case and under all circumstances, and only ask something when thanking Him at the same time. Thanksgiving always combines the whole circle of our own transitory experiences with the thought that, within this realm, God is guiding us according to His wisdom and grace. Were anyone to attempt to make a distinction between this and the praise or the blessing of God, by urging that in the latter case we abstract from the relation between God and the special causes of our need or our satisfaction, such an idea would not stand the test of examination. For there is no religious acknowledgment of God which cannot be applied to the situation of the man who is praying to God. While, therefore, in praising and blessing God, the benefits of salvation may be touched upon only in their most general aspect, yet for that reason such praise shows itself to be thanksgiving.

As regards petition, however, its range is more narrowly limited by the assumed certainty of reconciliation than appears in the religion of the Old Testament. If in the Christian community, or in a vocation devoted to its furtherance, we find ourselves thwarted by prejudice, mistrust, or calumny, it is not for us to follow the prevailing practice of the Psalmists and call upon God to vindicate our rights and slay our foes, so that we may then be able to thank Him. When more closely examined, even the Lord’s Prayer is very far from being an example of one-sided petition. For as the invocation of the Father stands at the head of all the particular sentences it contains, so all the petitions in it are subordinate to the thanksgiving which forms the content of the invocation. Further, the wish uttered for the hallowing of the Father’s name is only an expression of the certain expectation that the Father will everywhere receive thanks. Finally, the petition for our necessary food is rather an expression of thanks to God, if on the one hand it be assumed that God is ready to grant the necessaries of life before we ask them (Matt. vi. 8), and on the other that we earn what is needed for life by our own labour But simply as a model of what should be prayed for in the name of Jesus, i.e. in view of the revelation of God present in Him, it serves to limit the promises of the hearing of prayer given by Jesus in Matt. vii. 7–11. Our prayers ought to be directed not to every conceivable kind of blessing, such as trouble the minds of the heathen (vi. 31–34), but to the benefits of salvation in all their possible relations to blessedness. To this refers the saying that God hears us if we pray according to His will, so that we immediately experience the fulfilment of our prayer (1 John v. 14, 15). For Jesus proves by His own example that not every petition is justifiable (Mark xiv. 36). Since, then, there exists a danger that we should pray for blessings which it is not God’s will that we should receive, the ultimate resting of the soul in the contrary will of God is a manifestation of that thanksgiving by which every petition ought to be ruled and, according to circumstances, limited. Granting this presupposition, prayer is the expression of humility and patience, and the means of confirming oneself in these virtues. But if this view holds good for every uttered prayer, of the individual as well as the community, it is singularly corroborated by Paul’s injunction to pray without ceasing. For this denotes that transformation of prayer back into the voiceless feeling of humility and patience, which, as accompanying the whole active life, is equivalent to prayer as the normal form of the worship of God. On this presupposition, all the believer’s action, especially so far as it exemplifies the principle of patience and modesty towards one’s fellow-Christians, serves the glory of God (1 Cor. x. 31; Phil. i. 11).

§ 67. These religious functions, springing from reconciliation with God, are to be assigned to the elements of Christian freedom as affirmed by Luther (§ 25), thus—faith in God’s fatherly providence and patience correspond to the kingly dignity, humility and prayer to the priestly dignity, of the Christian. The believer, however, occupies a position of lordship over the world, in the religious sense meant here, because he stands so near to God, and belongs so peculiarly to God as to ensure his independence of all the elements of the world. That independence is determined by his adoption of the end of the Kingdom of God, which is seen to be the end of the world and at the same time the most personal end of God Himself. These functions are the proper manifestation of the reconciliation and the Divine sonship accomplished in Christianity; where they appear, they represent our personal realisation of Christianity as a religion; they are a guarantee that it is not merely a doctrine of morals. But at the same time they constitute the norm which should determine whether other religious functions—or what are practised as such—possess merely the subordinate value of auxiliary actions, or no value at all. In this respect it is of practical importance to observe that the Augsburg Confession not merely testifies that faith in God’s fatherly providence and prayer are the expression of our consciousness of reconciliation, but also that these functions, together with humility and the moral activity proper to one’s vocation, are the expressions of Christian perfection.⁵ The phrase “ Christian perfection ” is employed here in a sense not directly furnished by the New Testament. What we have there, rather, is two other aspects of the idea. First, for all His followers Christ places the task of perfection in the fulfilment of the command to love our enemies (Matt. v. 48); on the other hand, Paul describes a particular stage of the development of moral character in Christianity as the stage of “ the perfect,” among whom he reckons himself (1 Cor. ii. 6; Phil. iii. 15; cf. Heb. v. 14; Jas. iii. 2).

The language of Catholicism adopts this distinction, but in such a way as to substitute a quite different content. For monasticism makes it its aim to realise a religious and moral perfection which contrasts with that imperfect kind of Christianity which conforms to the world, by alienating its devotees from civil callings and from the family, and at the same time violating personal independence by the prohibition of private property and the limitation of personal honour by its superiors. Since, now, this cast a semblance of defilement upon moral life in civil callings, there was added as a kind of compensation the tenet that the religion of the laity must at least approximate to the perfection of the monk by practising as strenuously as possible the ascetic usages of the ceremonial law.⁶ This is the tendency of the reform of ecclesiastical life set on foot by St. Francis. Now, when the Reformers hold, in opposition to the pretended perfection of monasticism, that faith in providence, humility, and patience and faithful activity in any calling, represent Christian perfection,⁷ they mean this no longer in the sense of a stage superior to a Christian imperfection which is unavoidable and therefore permissible, but as an injunction incumbent on all Christians. They revert, that is, from the line of the apostolic usage to the line followed by Jesus in His demand for perfection. For the perfection meant by Jesus is that which distinguishes the Christian life in general from the imperfection to be found in other religions. Now that is the meaning of the Reformers’ principle too; it is meant to exclude every possibility of two kinds of Christianity. Now the Reformers, it is true, place a number of religious and moral functions under the heading of perfection which Jesus did not conceive as such. But still they describe precisely the content which really constitutes the proper character of the Christian life, in other words, the attitude which is rendered possible by reconciliation through Christ. But they have likewise the full right to go beyond the usage of the New Testament in this respect; for the historical situation in the midst of which the Reformers had to indicate the true inferences which follow from the Gospel, did not exist in the original circumstances of the Church, and therefore could not be foreseen by Jesus or the Apostles.

The Catholic view of Christian perfection, indeed, is influenced for one thing by the fact that the ascetic motives of the later Hellenism were adopted in the Catholic form of Christianity (§ 65). Nevertheless, the monastic, and in general the statutory, form of Catholicism had, in a formal respect, still another root, which, when it is pointed out, frees the contradiction in question from the appearance of chance. I have shown (p. 177) that the topic of Christian freedom, with which coincide perfection in the Evangelical sense and the status of Divine sonship, has its Catholic counterpart in the timor filialis, as that conception is developed by Thomas. The fear of God, which corresponds to the Catholic view of the Divine sonship, is made to consist in perpetual contemplation of the guilt which we should incur by violation of obedience to God. Now, if the feeling towards God answering to the status of a Christian is the perpetual terror of disobeying the Divine commandments which confront the soul in all their statutory multiplicity, and for that very reason confuse the memory and distract the attention, here lies the impulse to withdraw into monasticism from life in the world, and cut off those relationships in life which are attended by the most pressing danger of transgressing Divine commandments. Since, therefore, monasticism is the general expression in history of this Catholic fear of God, the ideal set up by the Reformation of humble and trustful reverence before God is the true opposite of pretended monastic perfection. This, however, carries with it likewise the assurance that every one who in his moral vocation acts according to the law is not confronted by the statutory multiplicity of the Divine commandments, but follows the inward law of freedom, and thus is freed from the terror of missing the mark at every moment, from the uncertainty of his knowledge of the Divine will. In reserving this point for more accurate discussion, let me add that the Thomistic interpretation of timor filialis is not at all analogous to the Biblical idea of the fear of God. For the “ fear of God ” which Old Testament experience proves to be the beginning of wisdom, is itself something quite different from terror lest at any moment we should violate a commandment of God, even though it be against our will. For the saints who strive to act in the fear of God and to follow God’s ways, come to know the duties incumbent on them through their disposition and not through a statutory law. Even those infrequent appeals to the fear of God which occur in the New Testament, and have been interpreted above as referring to humility (p. 636), reflect the sublimity of God—in other words, that side of His ways or purposes which is inscrutable a priori, but are not guided by the consideration that we are continually in peril of offending God. Accordingly reverence towards God is indicated as an expression of soul equivalent to humility, a feeling of the qualitative distance between man and God which certainly limits the natural feeling of self, but not in such a way that the impression of the Divine authority awakens first and foremost a thought of the guilt one would incur by offending God. The interpretation of childlike fear given by Thomas is a significant example of the method—very common in theology—of affirming a sense which the words may possibly bear, without considering whether it really suits the various relations involved. But this cowering terror of offending God’s Fatherly authority simply does not accord with the religion of reconciliation, and the trust in God arising thence, represented by the Apostles. All the more, of course, does this “ childlike terror ” agree with the view that Christianity, in its first aspect and its last, is to be regarded as statutory law. This childlike fear, therefore, reappears wherever in Protestantism the standpoint of the law of freedom is exchanged for the predominant recognition of statutory law.

The perfection, however, which is set up as an ideal in the Evangelical view of Christianity, is a conception which was not called forth merely accidentally by the misinterpretation of it in monasticism, but is necessary to the completeness of Christianity. It must be asserted, despite the many imperfections we perceive in our religious functions and our moral actions. The destination of men for perfection in Christianity may likewise be seen in the exhortation to rejoice amid all the changes of life which, in the New Testament, accompanies instruction in the Christian faith (vol. ii. pp. 344, 350). For joy is the sense of perfection. In the present case, however, this characteristic has not quantitative but qualitative significance; it marks the fact that in Christianity man is destined and is enabled to be a whole in his own spiritual order (p. 502). Now there is no contradiction between the qualitative sense of Christian perfection, and the fact that we still continue to be conscious of the quantitative imperfectness and defectiveness even of those functions in which our Christian faith is expressed. The phenomena of hesitancy to put faith in God’s providence, of reluctance to submit to His dispensations, of momentary impatience under suffering—phenomena, in short, of weak faith and lack of joyousness in religious life—are well known. Nor can they be explained entirely by the fact that even Christian perfection is a growing thing; rather do they express often enough an unexpected revolt of the natural man in the Christian against his religious purpose; nevertheless, in this respect they are not necessarily phenomena of sinful egoism, but phenomena of temptation. But the reactions which are provoked in us by these vestiges of religious instability are themselves an evidence, in their own order, of Christian perfection. For every organic being which in its order forms a whole, can bear a certain amount of defects without destruction. The spiritual life, however, is a whole in this sense that its freedom—directed to the final end of the good—is prepared at every moment to restrain, to order, or to overcome the spiritual impulses which arise from the relation of the spirit to its own individual nature and to the surrounding world. So far, therefore, as restrictions and disturbances spring up in the proper functions of the religious life, the perception of these hindrances as such, if combined with a determination to overcome them, is itself an evidence of imperfection merely in a quantitative respect, while in a qualitative aspect it is really a manifestation of religious perfection. The faith which breaks forth in the prayer, “ Lord, help mine unbelief,” is perfect in its own kind.

Faith in the Fatherly providence of God, which maintains a right feeling with God through humility, and with the world through patience, and which expresses and confirms itself through prayer, forms in general the content of the religious life which springs out of reconciliation with God through Christ. For in the human mind clear trains of knowledge are interwoven with states of feeling in such a way that conscious and intentional acts of submission to God’s will, and the attaining of the continuous feeling of self to humility and patience, condition each other mutually. These phenomena, combined as they are in normal fashion with the disposition to obey the moral law and with good action in one’s calling, are sufficient evidence, to the man himself who is the subject of them, of his being in a state of salvation. There is no other way of persuading ourselves of our reconciliation with God than by finding reconciliation experimentally in active trust in God’s providence, in patient submission to sufferings sent by God as a means of testing and purifying us, in humble attention to the nexus of His dealing with our fortunes, in the sense of independence of human prejudices—and that, too, just in so far as they set themselves up as a rule to religion—and, finally, in daily prayer for the forgiveness of sins, on the understanding that by the exercise of a forgiving spirit we prove that we have a place in the community of God (vol. ii. p. 34). These acts are not to be understood in the sense that we reconcile ourselves to God through them by the power of our own determination, but in the sense that, as springing from Christ’s reconciliation of sinners, they prove us children of God who trace back our standing before Him solely to the grace of God revealed in Christ. Thus these religious functions are already characterised even by Melanchthon in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession as the evidences of reconciliation (p. 169). While, therefore, in the fellowship of the Church, out of regard for unavoidable statutes and out of consideration for the needs of others, we may aim ever so much at accommodation and submission, yet in the personal sanctuary of the unique knowledge of God, the view of the world and estimate of self which belong to Christianity, consisting as they do more in tones of feeling than in reflections of the understanding, we stand absolutely independent of our fellow-men—otherwise, we have simply not attained to the enjoyment of reconciliation at all. We shall not succeed, however, either in helping others or enlightening ourselves in this respect, if we employ the methods for attaining assurance of salvation which have been criticised above (p. 153). They come to this, that we should derive our individual assurance of salvation inferentially from the general article of faith of the forgiveness of sins through the merits of Christ, instead of ascertaining it directly from the subjective effects of reconciliation. That a method of logical inference was devised, in which the terminus medius is either assumed as given or is to be produced by a categorical exhortation to strong faith, is certainly not to be excused by pleading that the only functions of the human mind with which its authors were acquainted were knowing and willing, while they as good as knew nothing of feeling, or its intertwining with indistinct ideas, or its significance for the excitation of the will. But as we cannot now divest ourselves of those discoveries which assure us that personal life possesses a richer fulness than men were aware of in the age of the Reformation, Löhe’s proposal (p. 157) merely to enforce anew the old dogmatic directions which had never been proved by experience, has neither a claim to success, nor any prospect of it. For if it comes to this, that we must really secure assurance of salvation, then Gerhard was right in comparing this demand of Protestantism to that other—that you must be able to prove that you are a man and not a ghost.⁸ Now, if we reach certainty in the latter case by exercising human activities as human beings, so in the Christian community we experimentally attain the certainty of pardon by exercising the confidence of a child towards God as our loving Father, and submitting with humility and patience to His dispensations, be they stimulating or depressing. And though in these exercises we perceive in ourselves never so many defects, yet in combating them we have always this to be thankful for, that we are living and moving in the domain of God’s grace opened to us through Christ. But just as one does not attain the consciousness of being a man by testing himself by a list of the characteristics of manhood to find out whether he possesses them all, or by straining himself to produce them completely, no more is it practicable for a man fully to attain to a certainty of his salvation by the path of consistent inference from the general truth of the promise of grace, or for this end to produce in himself a special sense of strong faith in that truth. Dogmatic theologians, following the steps of Melanchthon and Calvin, have come to take this view only because they have forgotten, or never were aware of, the functions of Christian perfection, and especially their consistent harmony with the facts of forgiveness and providence, to which testimony is given in the Augsburg Confession and its Apology. All the more significant is it that Calvin, when describing fiducia as the completion of faith, involuntarily expands the special relations of dogmatic faith into the general relations of Divine providence.⁹ But when, further, on the soil of Pietism, Methodism, and the Baptist movement, assurance of salvation is made dependent on one’s being able to supply the date and the exact circumstances of his regeneration in correct order, the demand becomes just as absurd as to say that one cannot rightly consider himself a man unless he is conversant with the fact and the laws of his own procreation.

In the Catholic system the right and the ground of individual assurance remained undecided (§ 23). Assurance, it is true, is a consistent result of the line of thought founded upon grace which we find in St. Bernard. So far, therefore, as the influence of this original element of mediaeval Catholicism survives, as it does in the above-named contemporaries of the Reformation and the Council of Trent, even in the Romish Church men may experience their own individual salvation in patience and humility and submission to God’s will. So far, however, as these virtues are elucidated under the heading of hope (p. 37), Thomas attaches them, as an antecedent condition, to the exercise of love toward God and men. His interpretation of timor filialis, accordingly, goes to prove that for the most part he recommends uncertainty about our own salvation (p. 177). But yet, just in champions of the Romish Church, we meet with an assurance of salvation of the strongest kind, especially in the form of denying salvation to all who hold a different faith. Here the case is altogether different. For what appears here is an unexpected acknowledgment of the importance of numbers, as though quantity could ever take the place of quality. Under the wing of the Church of the multitude, men feel quite certain of salvation, for that Church, in their opinion, must rule the world because it includes within itself all salvation; and thus the question of the right of the individual to assurance is overborne. Just as, until a few years ago, each Catholic bishop was by himself liable to dogmatic error, but all together in Council were held to be infallible, so each Catholic is bound, in timor filialis, to cherish doubts of his own salvation, but collectively they are the exclusive possessors of salvation. Now, the spokesmen who have to maintain this claim always come forward with the kind of courage which draws its power from assemblages of the masses. This form of infallible conviction, therefore, always has about it an odour such as one is not accustomed to meet with in good society.

It is no mere accident that the Reformers’ notion of Christian perfection, this expression of the reconciliation with God which operates in believers, was constructed in opposition to monasticism. For monasticism had reintroduced into Christianity the religious error of Pharisaism (vol. ii. p. 275). The Reformation of the sixteenth century would not have excelled all preceding Reformations of the Church, had it not at this point decided against the greatest corruption possible of the Christian religion. It is to be regretted, however, that the theologians of the Reformation were unable to keep clearly in sight the connection which has been shown to exist between Christian perfection and the idea of reconciliation. In the 4th Article of the Augsburg Confession, the statement of justification by faith is not accompanied by the explanation that its purpose is to be found in the functions of Christian perfection; this relation is touched upon merely incidentally in the 20th Article, and only in view of its abuse drawn out in Article 27 (p. 647). Apart from the Apology of the C. A., the Confessions of both branches of the Reformation have preserved nothing of all this; and, as has been demonstrated above (vol. i. p. 350), the problem has been neglected in Dogmatics, and thereby the doctrine of justification which it contains has been mutilated. The practice of faith in providence, humility, and patience has not therefore died out in the Lutheran Church; it has always been duly nourished by the literature of asceticism and by hymns suited for use in the Church. But the piety which grows up on this soil often stands in tense opposition to the “Churchly theology” of those who hold the office of teaching, and to their claims to guide the Christian knowledge of the community. These unfortunate relations are entirely due to the “Churchly theology,” which possesses among its dogmatic media of tradition no theory of the connection between justification by faith and the functions of Christian perfection. This circumstance helped to produce a century ago the rationalistic decomposition of Evangelical Christianity. The reactionary theologians of this century have not been able thoroughly to annul this development, and therefore are not in possession of the means of overcoming the Aufklärung.

It is worthy of note, therefore, that the opposition which Luther brought out between Christian freedom and the piety of the ceremonial law, has a wider range than is indicated merely by its application to the criticism of monasticism or any similar feature in Catholic Christianity. In themselves, ceremonies are no more absurd than doctrines held in common; they become useless and a hindrance to religion only when the significance which they possessed at their original creation has become unintelligible. Then, even ceremonial custom becomes an alien law which, from the point of view of the Evangelical faith, may indeed be observed as a matter of fact, but only as a concession to fellow-members of the Church who have not yet discovered the merely human and relative worth of such practices as ordinances of the Church.¹⁰ Luther made this admission at a time when he had not yet conceived the thought of separation from the Church of the ceremonial law. He supplements this teaching, however, by the assertion that in our intercourse with unbending champions of ceremonial we should rather offer them opposition, and by transgressing ecclesiastical ordinances should seek to excite them to sin and put them in the wrong.¹¹ These rules, however, are not merely significant for the position which Luther then occupied, but may be applied to every case in which a collision is indicated between the religious aims of the Church and any of its legal forms. In relation to ceremonies, says Luther, the righteousness of faith is always in peril; but religious faith must always be confronted with this danger so long as legal ordinances have to be used to maintain it.¹² It is just this which makes the position of the Christian religion under the legal ordinances of the Church so tragic, that the end which they ought to serve as means may be as easily threatened as promoted by them. Now I do not find that this relation has been perceived by those who, for the past generation, have put themselves forward as custodians of the “Churchly theology,” as champions of the legal ordinances of the Church, especially of the Church’s confession, and quite recently likewise as defenders of “the rights of the Church” against the powers which in Germany since the Reformation have rightly belonged in the constitution of the Church to the nobility. The ground of this want of perception, however, lies partly in the fact that Dogmatics, by which these “Churchly theologians” mean the Confession of the Church, especially the Augsburg Confession, has lost the connection between the doctrine of justification and the duties of Christian freedom and perfection, partly in the fact that the Pietism of this century, from which confessional ecclesiasticism springs, has been from the outset guided by a ceremonial interest in the imperfect Dogmatics of the seventeenth century. In the “Revival” not only do aesthetic and moral motives of revolt against Rationalism prevail over intellectual interests, but in this spiritual movement a sacrificium intellectus is performed just as a proof of earnest obedience to Christ. Moved by this ascetic impulse, people regard the confession of certain dogmas—as these have been handed down in that forbidding and unintelligible form which neither displays any relation to a common end, nor presents a complete practical outline of Christianity—as the condition and chief guarantee of Christian perfection. At the same time, there may be heard from these circles depreciatory judgments regarding the piety in which, as the Augsburg Confession testifies, Christian perfection consists, and which draws its continuous nourishment from those hymns, dear to the Church, in which the healthiest tradition of Evangelical Christianity is expressed. In Pietistic circles people have the appearance of regarding faith in providence as something inferior,¹³ simply because that faith was the purport likewise of Rationalism, and it ought not to be conceded that Rationalism contains a sound element of Christianity. There is no difficulty in understanding how, with the mass of Evangelical Christians, faith in providence has no clear connection with Dogmatics; for in this century theology has never taken to heart the truth that, according to the Augsburg Confession, this faith ought to be regarded as the proof of reconciliation having been experienced; and the teaching of the Church, so far as my observation goes, is not directed to this truth. What wonder that in Evangelical Christendom at present, just as in the Middle Ages, there should exist two forms of religion, the lay Christianity of undogmatic faith in providence, and the perfect piety of faith in dogma, which, unless we add a circle of Tertians, male and female, is represented only by the clergy, or at least expected of them. Such a state of matters is intolerable, for it runs counter to all the principles of Evangelical Christianity. The interest of the laity in the Church is always growing weaker, for they find a surer basis for their Christianity in their private convictions than in dogmatic preaching, which contributes nothing to a better understanding of what is involved in Evangelical perfection. Christians who are dogmatically perfect, however, are always becoming less fitted to rule in the Evangelical Church, partly because, owing to the ceaseless agitation of Church politics necessary to maintain their influence, they become secularised, partly because their hierarchical aspirations carry them along the lines taken by Jesuitism. Do those on this side really think that it is possible and necessary to impart a dogmatic temper to the laity, in order that what only exists to guide the teaching of the Church’s ministers should become operative as the confession of all Church members? One would expect that, if dogmatically correct views are to be insisted on, at least women would be spared, for they, though without clear dogmatic knowledge, mostly know how to practise Christian perfection in exemplary fashion. For ladies who strive to make themselves perfect in dogmatic faith, and in criticising the faith of others, hardly please God any more thereby than they please men. I am quite aware that those who are interested in the ecclesiastical particularism which is fenced round by the claim to render the most genuine and the truest worship, will protest in the most vehement way against these remarks, and all the more vehemently that their party cannot deny that I have the Augsburg Confession and Luther’s most original views on my side. Nevertheless, I ask them to consider that the Church, quâ legal institution, belongs to the world; and separate Churches, in so far as they are characterised by legal ordinances, are the most worldly of all. The interest which attaches to these Churches exclusively or predominantly, is secular and a motive to secularisation. True, we are called on to live and work in a particular Church. But the same rule holds good as was laid down by Paul for marriage as a worldly condition (1 Cor. vii. 29), “Let him who has his particular Church be as though he had none!”

§ 68. In the Augsburg Confession moral action in one’s civic vocation is reckoned as one of the features of Christian perfection, and this is intelligible from the opposition felt to monasticism. On the other hand, such a conception seems to be entirely out of relation to the New Testament. It is true, our civic vocation receives a peculiar sanction from Paul’s words, that men should not seek to escape from slavery because of Christianity, but should remain in this or any other vocation in which their calling to be Christians found them (1 Cor. vii. 20, 24). But this feature does not appear to find a place among the marks of perfection, whether we understand that ideal in the sense Jesus gives it, or in the particular distinctive form it receives from the Apostle. Besides, the position of the Augsburg Confession has against it the assertion, always emphasised in Evangelical doctrine, that even in the state of grace we must always be mindful of the imperfection of moral action, that we may base our salvation, not on good works which always come short of the law’s demands, but only on faith in Christ. This doctrine, with the relations in which it stands, must first be more closely examined. Attention has already been drawn to the difficulty of making a practical application of it when taken rigorously (pp. 164, 489). For we are told that we must look away from our good works on account of their imperfection, so as to base our salvation upon faith in Christ; but in order to have the assurance of faith we must conclude from our good works, in spite of their imperfection, that we stand under the influence of grace. Either this leads to an endless series of alternating judgments of opposite content, or it is an error to estimate our works by the standard of the law. For although the consciousness of imperfection, which every day we find within, may serve to emphasise faith in Christ as the condition of salvation, yet the perpetual consciousness of imperfection in our good works is no slight obstacle to enthusiasm in discharging the moral tasks of Christianity. It is certainly no just reproach against the Reformers that by the assertion of justification by faith they render men indifferent to the tasks of moral activity; but from their assertion of the continual imperfection of such action and of the inevitable inaccessibility of its goal one might easily draw an inference of that kind. For if we know ourselves unconditionally condemned beforehand to imperfection in any activity, the impulse to discharge it is crippled. The possibility of perfection must be held out in prospect if we are to expend our industry on any branch of action.

Now the conception of good works, such as are measured by the statutory law, expresses a task which not merely is impracticable if sinfulness be presupposed as still operative, but which it is impossible to combine in thought with the attribute of perfection. Perfection is the attribute of a whole (§ 67); on the other hand, good works, as related to the statutory law, cannot be conceived as a whole. Not only do they form an endless series in time; they have likewise at every moment of time to occupy an indefinite expanse in space. For the law, as we conceive it, claims the will simultaneously for all the possible ends which fall within the compass of the good. In order to do one good work, however, one must simultaneously leave unattended to all other demands for good action and the furtherance of good ends, for a single action is all we are capable of at one point of time. So that sin, whether as evil will or as indifference, is not essential to the thwarting of a quantitatively perfect fulfilment of the moral law; such fulfilment is impossible per se, as judged by the statutory form of the law. Therefore the duty of good works, unlimited as it is in time and in space, and the duty of perfection, namely, to realise moral action as a totality, are mutually exclusive. The unpractical rigorism, in which both demands are combined, has also avenged itself in history. For in the theology of the Aufklärung this dogma has veered round into the contrary assertion, that God demands from every man only such and so many moral services as from his endowments and his circumstances he is capable of rendering (vol. i. p. 393). Nor did this laxity in conceiving the moral task usurp the place of the orthodox doctrine by a sudden reversal of judgment, in the form, i.e., of a declension from truth; nay, we meet with the above principle in the official conduct of pastoral work even in the halcyon days of orthodoxy (vol. i. p. 418). Confirmation of this view is to be found in the argument urged by Calvin, that with Divine sonship there is combined the confidence that God will judge imperfect moral deeds not after the strictness of the law, but with leniency according to circumstances.¹⁴ And although for God this rule is balanced by the fact that to believers so judged He imputes the perfect righteousness of Christ, that does not touch the practical self-estimate of the believer in the light of this rule. But how, I ask, does this principle of God’s leniency towards the believer’s imperfect moral action differ from the view put forward by Socinianism and the theologians of the Aufklärung? The impossibility of quantitative perfection in good works, which is admitted, always carries with it likewise a limitation of the validity of the moral law.

In still another respect the rubric of good works, current in orthodox theology, is unsuitable as a comprehensive designation of the ethical side of Christianity. To state our task so excludes the perfection of moral achievement in any sense, and is thus at the same time a denial that in moral relations the believer can ever become a whole in his own order. But now the Christian religion has it for its aim that through reconciliation and the spiritual dominion over the world which answers thereto, the believer should gain and display the value of a whole. And so it would indicate an incongruity in Christianity were the state of the believer, in religious and moral respects, necessarily subject to contrary conditions. In the New Testament, however, the rubric of good works is never used as though meaning that it is an exhaustive expression for the essential practice of morality; the expression rather occurs as a description of the normal phenomena of that moral action which, in important statements in the apostolic Epistles, is differentiated from good works by being entitled the one all-inclusive good work of life (vol. ii. pp. 292, 371). On the other hand, moral perfection is to be regarded not merely as something demanded by Jesus, but also as a fact attested by Paul (p. 647). When, therefore, in Methodism¹⁵ the perfection of sanctification is directly aimed at, this idea, altogether apart from any relation to the statutory law, is related to the perfect character of love to God, which excludes sin, and in its own order represents a whole, despite the weaknesses and imperfections which accompany it. This representation, it is true, is partly obscure, and partly bound up with dubious associations. For what it really describes is not at all the moral, but simply the religious character, and this, too, only in its most general expression. But how perfection of love to man is included in perfect love to God is not shown. Moreover, it is sought to confirm the statement by arguing that it is possible not to sin even when actually doing wrong to others. But the casuistical contention that error of this kind stands in no relation to sin, deserves no more notice than does the remark that not every transgression of the law is sin. For this betrays an effort once more to conform Methodist perfection to the statutory law, from which, to begin with, it had been withdrawn. Thus the standard of possible perfection is not clear. For perfection of the ethico-religious character demands under all circumstances a moral sensibility which guides self-examination otherwise than according to the coarse lines of the moral law, conceived in a statutory form; on the other hand, Methodist positions lead to the view that the character of personal sinlessness is to be attained by laying all sorts of restrictions on moral sensibility.

The conception of moral perfection in the Christian life ought on no account to be associated with the idea of a fruitless search for actual sinlessness of conduct in all the details of life. It rather means that our moral achievement or life-work in connection with the Kingdom of God should, however limited in amount, be conceived as possessing the quality of a whole in its own order. For these are the conditions of the matter described by Paul. At the same time it is clear that Paul regards the life-work as a totality, because he conceives it as limited by our special vocation. For it is as mediated by the species that a multiplicity of phenomena, directed to a common end and through it regularly connected, constitute a whole. And so Luther, even though without thinking Paul’s self-estimate (vol. ii. p. 365) worthy of any special consideration, helped to express a true thought when, in his “Address to the Nobility of the German Nation,” he maintained that every Christian in his civil vocation, of whatever nature it might be, exercised the character of a spiritual personality; and congruous with this is the thought that activity in our calling is to be reckoned part of the Christian’s perfection.¹⁶ Now, in spite of the authority of the Augsburg Confession, this truth, while remaining operative in the practice of Protestantism, has not received its proper weight in public teaching. The predominance of a negatively ascetic conception of morality in the era of orthodoxy, indeed, made it possible for Johann Arndt, in his True Christianity, to judge our civil vocation merely in the light of the principle that the heritage and goods of the Christian are not in this world, and that therefore they should use temporal things as aliens to the world. Of course, if we conceive the example of Christ, as did the Middle Ages, as the ideal of abstract self-abnegation, we shall miss the truth that we have to seek in Christ no special moral pattern other than that of perfect fidelity to our calling.

While referring back to the analysis I have given of the idea of “vocation,” which was made in order to explain the religious value of Christ (§ 48), I repeat that each individual acts morally when he fulfils the universal law in his special vocation, or in that combination of vocations which he is able to unite in his conduct of life. This excludes every moral necessity to expend good action on such ends as do not fit into the individual’s vocation. Such good action, however, as is incumbent, but is not directly determined thus, may be viewed as obligatory, on condition that by a judgment of duty it can be construed analogously to our vocation, that is, provided that after consideration of all the circumstances one is called to discharge it as an extraordinary duty of love. True, even when the fulfilment of the moral law is confined to one’s calling and what is analogous thereto, the series of good actions which are incumbent is still infinite in time; but there falls away thus the chief ground of the imperfection of good works as measured directly by the universal moral law. The fact that good action is conditioned by one’s calling invalidates the apparent obligation we are under at each moment of time to do good action in every possible direction. But, further, just here it becomes plain that the significance of our moral calling for good action in general supersedes the statutory idea of the moral law, on which depends the intolerable, because boundless, demand for good works. The autonomy of moral action (§ 53) is realised in general whenever we find in our moral vocation the proximate norm which specifies for each individual the action which the moral law makes necessary. Our special calling, in fact, is seen to be the field of moral action to which we are summoned, because we appropriate it as subordinate to the universal final end of the good, or as an integral part of the Kingdom of God. On this presupposition, a universal statutory moral law is unthinkable, for it would have no point of contact with the moral significance of special vocations. Rather, out of the moral disposition which, in the field of a special vocation, takes shape in action for the highest common end, we have to evolve those principles by which we regulate particular groups of moral action, and, in harmony therewith, form particular judgments of duty affirming that it is necessary in a given case to realise the final end of the good. Under these circumstances and in this form the individual, out of his freedom, produces the moral law, or lives in the law of freedom.

It is under these conditions, too, that the individual’s moral achievement becomes a whole. The realisation of the universal good within the special limited domain of our vocation, and in such a way that all extraordinary actions are regarded as essential from their analogy to our vocation, is the reason why the multiplicity of good works, in which action manifests itself, forms an inwardly limited unity, in other words, a whole. But even to conceive the whole thus does not yet show it to us as a magnitude which is also limited externally. Even if the spatial unlimitedness of good works, as measured by a universal statutory moral law, be set aside, yet the temporal series of actions necessary in one’s moral vocation appears to be infinite. Here, therefore, a self-torturing self-scrutiny might insert its lever, and throw back the discussion on to the lines of the idea of good works from which we are trying to escape. Does not an impression of perpetual imperfection, even in the discharge of our calling, follow from the fact that every omission of an action possible in this domain is to be reckoned as guilt? How can we ever satisfy ourselves, even in this domain, and how can it ever be right to yield to the impression that what we are achieving is a whole in its own order? But against this I set the experience that though we may have scruples about many omissions of actions possible in our calling, there comes later the knowledge that the relaxation which we have allowed ourselves to take has served to increase our activity in our calling. Moreover, the omission of possible useful actions is not wrong, but only the omission of actions which are morally necessary. Besides, the conception of a whole does not depend so much on quantity as the above objection presupposes. True, a whole, too, must be a quantum, in the present case, as in all cases. But a whole does not require as one of its conditions a quantitative extension ad infinitum, which, indeed, renders a whole impossible. And he who in the moral fulfilment of his vocation is more indefatigable than his neighbour, merely makes the whole possibly greater, while he also possibly imperils its existence; and prudence counsels us not to put an excessive strain on our powers. But, finally, this circumstance brings before us the fact that a fulfilment of our vocation, though quantitatively more limited, certainly possesses the value of a whole, if at the same time we attain, in producing it, moral character as a whole. The Apostle Paul already perceives this when he makes the practice of moral righteousness relative to the end of self-sanctification (Rom. vi. 19; vol. ii. p. 287). For this signifies nothing but the formation of virtuous character, which we cannot attain by a negatively ascetic elaboration of our previously existing defects, but only by embarking on a positive and broadening course of action. But according to the laws of the will, good action for all the ends of society works reflexly in such a way as at the same time to produce personal virtue.

Moral action in our calling is, therefore, the form in which our life-work as a totality is produced as our contribution to the Kingdom of God, and in which, at the same time, the ideal of spiritual personality as a whole in its own order is reached. Thus freedom in the law is realised. But this is homogeneous with the religious functions of faith in providence, patience and humility, and prayer, through which the believer assures himself that he possesses, in virtue of reconciliation, the value of a whole in contrast to the world. These aspects mutually condition one another in such a way that no one of them can occur in an authentic form without the others. One cannot practise action motived by the law of freedom without, in the religious functions, attesting his freedom over the world; and one cannot assure oneself of forgiveness, without exercising love in deed and in truth (1 John iii. 18, 19; vol. ii. p. 348). All this goes to fill out the extent of Christian freedom; so also it forms the content of Christian perfection. As in the religious functions which spring from reconciliation we attain our ideal lordship over the world and are blessed therein as in doing good, so the goal of the moral formation of character is eternal life (Rom. vi. 22). Personal assurance of the indestructibility of spiritual existence always attaches itself to those experiences of the worth of the religious-ethical character. But, finally, Paul is also right in maintaining that the ultimate standing of a person in the Kingdom of God depends on the goodness and the rounded completeness of the life-work he achieves in his moral vocation (vol. ii. p. 367). Although this thought is expressed by the idea of a reward, yet it plainly differs from the meriting of blessedness by good works. The latter combination of ideas is formed on the mould and measure of the law, and even so is unintelligible; for no inner mutual relation can be shown between blessedness and good works. On the other hand, what is posited as result in Paul’s assertion is only what is already produced in the production of a good life-work (Gal. vi. 7, 8). For in doing good we are blessed, and the performance of our vocation assures us of our standing in the Kingdom of God, and that, too, so far as it is the fellowship of blessedness. But this is related to reconciliation as a consequence; with the appropriation of reconciliation, too, the will receives a direction towards the final end of the Kingdom of God. There is, therefore, no contradiction between the assertion that in reconciliation eternal life is bestowed by God through Christ, and completed consistently with the grace of God thus manifested. and the assertion that we reach the consummation of salvation through the development of the religious-moral character, and through the life-performance—perfect in its own order — of our vocation. For we are blessed not only in fellowship with God, but also in fellowship with all the blessed. For the former we have only God to thank; the latter we produce through our personal contribution to the common weal of the Kingdom of God. Thus is evaded the erroneous view that the measure of forgiveness in the case of each individual is determined by the measure of his loving activity (vol. i. p 645). For that much is forgiven to a particular person implies that he had to be brought to God from a greater distance, but not that he is brought nearer to God than another. In forgiveness all are brought near to God, but no one nearer than his neighbour. But the intensity of love and common feeling in the work of life which is provided for in the possible perfection of each individual, is the condition of fellowship with all those who gain the prize of eternal life. Finally, when Paul speaks of the perfect as such, whom he distinguishes personally from others, he does not mean thereby to set up a specific class-distinction; he only indicates the fact that, in accordance with the conditions of growth, all members of the Christian Church do not reach simultaneously that stage of religious and moral formation of character to which all are called.

1. Religious dominion over the world, which constitutes the immediate form of reconciliation with God through Christ, is exercised through faith in the loving providence of God, through the virtues of humility and patience, and, finally, through prayer, and through this last likewise receives common expression.

2. In the exercise of trust in God in all situations of life, in the production of humility and patience—these inward activities, too, supported by prayer—the believer experiences his personal assurance of reconciliation.

3. The freedom of action in the form of a special moral vocation which, motived by the universal final end of the Kingdom of God, imposes a law upon itself by the production of principles and judgments of duty, and serves to confirm the appropriation of reconciliation, forms, together with the foregoing religious functions, that perfection invested with which each believer must show himself to be a whole or a character who occupies a permanent place in the Kingdom of God and enjoys practical experience of eternal life.

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Footnotes

1. Overbeck, Ueber die Christlichkeit unserer heutigen Theologie. Streit- und Friedensschrift, 1873. ↩

2. Adolf Harnack, Das Mönchthum, seine Ideale und seine Geschichte, 2nd edit. 1882. ↩

3. Calvin, Inst. iii. 8. 8: “Neque ea requiritur a nobis hilaritas, quae omnem acerbitatis dolorisque sensum tollat; alioqui nulla in cruce esset sanctorum patientia, nisi et dolore torquerentur et angerentur molestia.” 10: “Haec eo dicere volui, ut pios animos a desperatione revocarem, ne studio patientiae ideo protinus renuntient, quod naturalem doloris affectum exuere non possunt. Quod necesse est evenire iis, qui ex patientia stuporem, ex homine forti et constanti stipitem faciunt. Sanctis enim tolerantiae laudem defert scriptura, dum ita malorum duritia afflictantur, ut non frangantur nec concidant: ita amaritudine punguntur, ut simul perfundantur spirituali gaudio, ita premuntur anxietate, ut dei consolatione exhilarati respirent.” ↩

4. Cf. p. 169. Calvin, Inst. iii. 20. 1: “Postquam fide edocti sumus, agnoscere quidquid nobis necesse est, nobisque apud nos deest, id in deo esse ac domino nostro Iesu Christo, in quo scilicet omnem suae largitatis plenitudinem pater residere voluit, ut inde hauriamus omnes, superest, ut in ipso quaeramus, et ab eo precibus postulemus, quod in ipso esse didicimus.” Petrus Martyr Vermilius, Loci comm. iii. 13: “Hoc est ingenium filiorum dei, ut quam frequentissime orationibus vacent; nam illud est dei providentiam agnoscere.” ↩

5. C. A. xx. 24: “Iam qui scit, se per Christum habere propitium patrem, is vere novit deum, scit, se ei curae esse, invocat eum, denique non est sine deo sicut gentes.” xxvii. 49: “Obscurantur praecepta dei et verus cultus dei, cum audiunt homines solos monachos esse in statu perfectionis, quia perfectio christiana est (1) serio timere deum et rursus concipere magnam fidem et confidere propter Christum, quod habeamus deum placatum, (2) petere a deo et (3) certo exspectare auxilium in omnibus rebus gerendis iuxta vocationem; interim (4) foris diligenter facere bona opera et servire vocationi. In his rebus est vera perfectio et verus cultus dei, non est in caelibatu aut mendicitate aut veste sordida.” Cf. xvi. Apol. C. A. iii. 232, viii. 61, xiii. 37, 45. ↩

6. C. A. xxvi. 8-11: “Christianismus totus putabatur esse observatio certarum feriarum, rituum, ieiuniorum, vestitus. Hae observationes erant in possessione honestissimi tituli, quod essent vita spiritualis et vita perfecta. Interim mandata dei iuxta vocationem nullam laudem habebant, quod paterfamilias educabat sobolem, quod mater pariebat, quod princeps regebat rempublicam; haec putabantur esse opera mundana et imperfecta et longe deteriora illis splendidis observationibus. Et hic error valde cruciabat pias conscientias, quae dolebant se teneri imperfecto vitae genere, mirabantur monachos et similes, et falso putabant illorum observationes deo gratiores esse.” ↩

7. De votis monasticis Lutheri iudicium (1522). Opera lat. ad reform. hist. pertinentia, tom. vi. p. 254: “Perfectionis status est, esse animosa fide contemtorem mortis, vitae, gloriae, et totius mundi et fervente caritate omnium servum.” P. 261: “Haec est vera via salutis subdi deo, in fide ei cedere et silere, ponere tumultum praesumtionis operum, quibus quaerunt impii eum invenire, et sese ductilem praebere, ut ipse in nobis operetur, non nos operemur.” P. 344: “Melior et perfectior est obedientia filii, coniugis, servi, captivi, quam monachi obedientia… . . Igitur si ab imperfecto ad perfectum eundum est, ab obedientia monastica ad obedientiam parentum, dominorum, mariti, tyrannorum, adversariorum et omnium eundum est.” ↩

8. Loc. theol. xvii. § 87, ed. Cotta, tom. vii. p. 109. Cf. vol. i. p. 354. ↩

9. Inst. iii. 2. 16: “In summa, vere fidelis non est, nisi qui solida persuasione deum sibi propitium benevolumque patrem esse persuasus de eius benignitate omnia sibi pollicetur, nisi qui divinae erga se benevolentiae promissionibus fretus indubitatam salutis exspectationem praesumit… . Fidelis, inquam, non est, nisi qui suae salutis securitati innixus, diabolo et morti confidenter insultet, quomodo ex praeclaro illo Pauli epiphonemate (Rom. 8. 38) docemur.” ↩

10. Luther, De libertate Christiana, tom. iv. p. 247: “Si quis scientiam (de iustitia fidei) haberet, facile se posset gerere citra periculum in infinitis illis mandatis et praeceptis papae, quae aliqui stulti pastores sic urgent, quasi ad iustitiam et salutem sint necessaria, appellantes ea praecepta ecclesiae, cum sint nihil minus. Christianus enim liber sic dicet: ego ieiunabo, orabo, hoc et hoc faciam, quod per homines mandatum est, non quod mihi illo sit opus ad iustitiam aut salutem, sed quod in hoc morem geram papae, aut proximo meo ad exemplum faciam et patiar omnia, sicut Christus mihi multo plura fecit et passus est, quorum ipse nullo prorsus egebat.” ↩

11. P. 251: “Occurrunt pertinaces obdurati ceremoniistae, qui sicut aspides surdae nolunt audire veritatem libertatis, sed suas ceremonias tanquam iustificationes iactant, imperant et urgent sine fide (Rom. 14. 23). His oportet resistere, contraria facere et fortiter scandalisare, ne opinione ista impia plurimos secum fallant.” The word scandalisare must here be understood in its original sense; for it is impossible to see how the production of genuine offence in the minds of the opponents described would deprive their assertions of the power to deceive others. This result is attained, however, if they let themselves be tempted by open resistance into doing what is clearly wrong. ↩

12. P. 253: “In summa, sicut paupertas in divitiis, fidelitas in negotiis, humilitas in honoribus, abstinentia in conviviis, castitas in deliciis, ita iustitia fidei in ceremoniis periclitatur. Numquid ait Salomon, ignem quis in sinu gestare potest, ut non comburantur vestimenta eius? Et tamen ut in divitiis, in negotiis, in honoribus, in deliciis, in epulis, ita in ceremoniis id est in periculis versari oportet.” Cf. Luther’s hymn, “Ye Christians, now rejoice together,” with its conclusion— / “Of men’s opinions be thou ware, / They’ll rob you of your treasure fair, / This warning be my ending.” ↩

13. A friend informs me that Hengstenberg once spoke to him with scorn of the “Commit-thou-all-thy-ways” Christianity of a third person. ↩

14. Inst. iii. 19. 5: “Qui legis iugo adstringuntur, servis sunt similes, quibus certa in singulos dies opera a dominis indicuntur. Hi enim nihil effectum putant, nisi exactus operum modus constiterit. Filii vero, qui liberalius et magis ingenue a patribus tractantur, eis non dubitant inchoata et dimidiata opera, aliquid etiam vitii habentia offerre, confisi suam obedientiam et animi promtitudinem illis acceptam fore, etiamsi minus exacte effecerint quod volebant. Tales nos esse oportet, qui certo confidamus, obsequia nostra indulgentissimo patri probatum iri, quantulacunque sunt et quamvis rudia et imperfecta. Neque haec fiducia nobis parum necessaria est, sine qua frustra omnia conabimur; siquidem nullo nostro opere se coli reputat deus, nisi quod in eius cultum vere a nobis fiat. Id autem quis possit inter illos terrores, ubi dubitatur, offendaturne deus an colatur opere nostro.” ↩

15. Cf. Jacoby, Handbuch des Methodismus (2nd edit. 1855), p. 254 ff. ↩

16. Cf. also Apol. C. A. iii. 71, viii. 25, 48–50; further, Calvin, iii. 10. 6: “Satis est, si noverimus, vocationem domini esse in omni re bene agendi principium ac fundamentum, ad quam qui se non referet, nunquam rectam in officiis viam tenebit.” ↩