Schleiermacher’s Christmas Eve was written five years later than his Monologues. He had now fought through the pain felt on account of Eleonore. This storm did not break him, but rather confirmed his moral energy. His real and deep religiousness and the power of his moral will, carried him safely through that severe conflict. He found reviving and healing influence in his friendships, and especially in the sympathy of noble and spiritually cultivated women, to whom he opened his soul. The Christmas Eve introduces us into this circle, and it closes the period of pain like a reconciling harmony. This work, like the Monologues, was completed in a few weeks as if by a touch of inspiration; and on the evening of Christmas 1805, the last of the manuscript was given to the printer. The whole arrangement of the composition is artistic, and yet it is as simple as it is graceful. It recalls the Dialogues of Plato, with which Schleiermacher at that time was much occupied; and it reflects the manner in which these Dialogues present their earnest and instructive matter graced and enlivened by a social circle of living personalities. So we have here a kind of Christian ‘Symposion’ around the Christmas table, representing a circle of highly cultivated men and women so combined as to adorn the solemn festival with fair blossoms, and to blend into a beautiful harmony a rich variety of different moods and views.
The women introduce the whole in a charming way, and they form, as it were, the accompanying music of the movement. They exhibit the element of deep inward religiousness that is elevated above all theology, and they are shown reconciling and harmonizing all sharp tones and dissonances. Music is spoken of frequently and at some length; and the Dialogue is repeatedly broken by it coming in. The thought is expressed and dwelt upon, that music has the closest affinity with the religious feeling, and that Christianity and music must go together, because they mutually elucidate and elevate each other. The child Sophie exhibits religion in its most original form, as breaking forth directly from the depths of the soul, and as still entirely merged in the musical spirit. The objection first suggested by Henriette Herz, the talented friend of Schleiermacher, has been frequently put forward, that the sketch of the child is a failure, and that she makes throughout the impression of being wise beyond her years, or of being precocious and old-fashioned. We cannot agree with this view, for with all the peculiarity and deep thoughtfulness of her sayings, and with all the romanticism thrown into her dark, expressive eyes, we hold that the charm of originality and unconsciousness is not wanting in her. The conversation proceeds about various matters, which, however, are always connected with the Christmas festival and Christmas feelings, and returns to them again. Remarks are made about what real joy is, about the high significance of art, and especially of sacred music, about the true character of childhood and what constitutes it, as well as about the distinguishing characteristics of the different nature of men and women. The Dialogue is thus carried on, often with witty and argumentative digressions and retorts, as was so characteristic of Schleiermacher, but yet always in such a way that the warm heart everywhere thrills through, and so that the fine aroma of a truly cultured society is felt to permeate everything. The women begin with narratives about past Christmas festivals and the feelings then experienced. Each of them proceeds to give a contribution of her own, a little picture set into the frame of the beautiful festival. When they have ended, the men declare themselves also ready to give each his contribution to the banquet, as a return gift in the English or Greek fashion, and this is done by each of them making a discourse on the theme of the day, the sacred festival of Christmas.
The speeches which thus follow, form the kernel of the whole production; and they contain in germ, and in the most graceful and accessible form, the fundamental thoughts of Schleiermacher’s Christology, and even of his whole Theology. The various sides of Schleiermacher’s nature, and the spiritual tendencies which so wonderfully met in him, are assigned to the several speakers. The opposite representations which here seem to be in conflict, are in truth complementary to each other. It is not a mere historical conjunction of the divergent theological parties of that time that Schleiermacher proceeds to give us; rather it is the different sides of his own theology which are only apparently separated, but are again united at the centre. It is Schleiermacher himself who appears in Protean transformations under the successive names. It is but one light that is here broken up into different colours.
And, in the first place, we have Leonard, ‘the unbelieving knave,’ as he is called in jest by his friends, the ‘thinking, reflective, dialectical, over-intellectual man.’ This figure is sketched with particular fondness. It is Leonard who always adds the salt to the conversation, and who elevates the tone of it when it sometimes becomes too soft and lyrical, by lifting it up into the sphere of the understanding. He is not a mere cold advocate of enlightenment and a rationalist in the style of his time. He is rather to be regarded as the representative of the sceptico-critical spirit which was so powerful in Schleiermacher, and which belonged so inseparably to his nature; the beneficial, health-preserving salt which was so happily associated and mingled with his mystical tendency. Leonard applies his criticism mainly to the historical representations of the birth of Christ as they have been handed down to us by the first three evangelists, the so-called synoptists; and this criticism, it is well known, Schleiermacher never recalled nor minimized, but in this connection he always remained a rationalist. He carried on the critical investigations regarding the origin of the writings of the New Testament and their unhistorical elements, and did so with more pointedness and with the utmost boldness, especially in connection with the miraculous narratives. These investigations had been begun by the rationalists. Leonard comes to the result that the historical basis of the life of Jesus is generally very uncertain and contradictory, and that it is open to the conflict of parties, and especially that the narratives of the birth of Jesus suffer from these contradictions and incredibilities. And hence he infers that the synoptical narratives have not founded the Festival of Christmas; but rather conversely, that this festival with its suggestive customs has become the ground of the faith that is maintained in common, as it so often happens in fact, that the customs of a following age become the means of forming anew and confirming the preceding history. He seeks the significance of the Festival of Christmas, not so much in its ecclesiastical as in its genuinely human relation, in its being the Christmas of the household and of the children; and he will therefore interpret everything symbolically — the Child, the night, the lights, and so on — as presenting beautiful images of the spiritual life and of man’s being born again.
Ernest, on the other hand, brings specially forward the religious side of the festival. He starts from the religious feeling and the need of the community, and he develops from this point of view the significance of the Redeemer and of the redemption. As is well known, this is the very centre of Schleiermacher’s Christology; and, although it is as yet stated only in a simple form, this representation is of special interest to us as regards the construction of Schleiermacher’s view of Christ, and more particularly in reference to His uniqueness and sinlessness, as represented in his later dogmatic system. We are able to recognise these elements of his doctrine here in all their main features, as a postulate of the religious feeling. The birth of the Redeemer is the universal festival of joy, because there is really no other principle of joy than the redemption; and in the development of redemption the birth of Christ is the first clear point in history. Hence it was necessary that the Redeemer should begin as a divine Child in unity with God, whereas we begin with discordance and division. And hence He was already at birth what we only become by regeneration; and thus the special significance of the Christmas Festival consists in this, that we do become conscious of the inexhaustible power of a new undisturbed life. This apparent refutation of the scepticism of Leonard is, however, in truth an acceptance and completion of it, as Ernest himself puts it in the words: ‘However insufficient the historical traces of His life may be when the subject is critically examined in a lower sense, yet the Festival does not depend on this condition of the case, but on the necessity of a Redeemer, as well as on the experience of a heightened sense of existence which can be referred to no other beginning than the one in question.’
While Leonard thus represents historical criticism, and Ernest religious feeling with its necessary return to the beginnings of Christianity, Edward is the representative of the speculative element in Schleiermacher. His preference for the Gospel of John and for that speculation which finds a point of attachment in it, is here expressed. As distinguished from Leonard, Edward will keep to the Fourth Evangelist and to the tender ideal Gospel, in which there is in general little in the way of external and individual facts communicated, and there is no history of the Nativity at all. To him the object of the Festival is not so much the Child as the Word become flesh; it is ourselves we celebrate, that is to say, human nature regarded from the divine principle. For Christ is nothing else than Man in himself, the eternal Being in the process of change and becoming, the unity of the divine and the earthly. This unity is in us too, but only in the form of individuality, of becoming; and it is the task of every individual to elevate himself into human nature, into eternal Being. This is done through the fellowship of the Christian Church, which is at once in process of becoming and is become; and as such it goes back to the point from which the communication of divine being proceeded, to the Man in himself, or the Son of man absolutely. To Him everything in the history of humanity is related. All that came before pointed forward to Him, and all that has followed points back to Him. This speculative view of Christ is evidently closely connected with the religious view of His person; and in the development of Schleiermacher’s dogmatic theology, we find a fundamental metaphysical principle as the ultimate basis of the religious postulate of the uniqueness and sinlessness of Jesus: it is the unity of the ideal and the historical, a consciousness of God of such strength and powerfulness that it was at the same time a being of God in Christ.
Lastly, at the close of the whole Dialogue, Joseph comes forward, having entered quietly during the last speech. He is the representative of the mystical element in all its inward fervour and unbrokenness; he represents, as it were, the Moravianism that remained in Schleiermacher. To him all this discoursing appears foolish. For him all forms are too stiff, all words wearisome and cold. The unspeakable subject demands an unspeakable joy. He will become wholly a child, and only laugh and shout for joy like a child. The religious feeling, in a manner very characteristic of Schleiermacher, thus breaks powerfully and overwhelmingly through all the barriers of artificial reflection thrown up to oppose it like a stream of holy music, and in this music all is resolved. ‘Come, then,’ it is said in conclusion, ‘and let us be glad, and sing something pious and joyous.’