Man in closest fellowship with the highest must be for you all an object of esteem, nay, of reverence. No one capable of understanding such a state can, when he sees it, withhold this feeling. That is past all doubt. You may despise all whose minds are easily and entirely filled with trivial things, but in vain you attempt to depreciate one who drinks in the greatest for his nourishment. You may love him or hate him, according as he goes with you or against yon in the narrow path of activity and culture, but even the most beautiful feeling of equality you cannot entertain towards a person so far exalted above you. The seeker for the Highest Existence in the world stands above all who have not a like purpose. Your wisest men say that, even against your will, you must honour the virtuous who, in accordance with the laws of the moral nature, endeavour to determine finite concerns by infinite requirements. And were it even possible for you to find some thing ridiculous in virtue itself, because of the contrast between the limited powers and the infinite undertaking, you still could not deny esteem to one whose organs are open to the Universe, who is far from strife and opposition, exalted above all imperfect endeavour, responsive to the Universe and one with it. You cannot despise when you see man in this supreme moment of human existence and the clear beam is reflected in its purity upon you.
But whether the picture of the nature and of the life of religion I have drawn has claimed your esteem I do not inquire. Because of false conceptions and devotion to nonessentials esteem is too often refused, but I am sure of the power of the subject, as soon as it is freed from its distorting drapery. Nor do I ask whether my thoughts on the coherence of this indwelling capacity with all that is sublime and godlike in our nature, have stimulated you to an intenser study of our nature and possibilities. I also pass the question, whether you have taken the higher standpoint I showed you, and have recognized from thence, in that nobler fellowship of spirits, so much misjudged, wherein everyone freely surrenders himself, not regarding the glory of his self-will, nor the exclusive possession of his deepest, most secret individuality, that he may regard himself as a work of the eternal, the all-fashioning World-Spirit, even the holy of holies of fellowship, higher far than any earthly fellowship, holier than the tenderest tie of friendship. In short, I do not ask whether all religion, in its infinity, its divine power, has compelled you to adoration, for I leave the matter itself to work upon you.
At present I have something else to deal with, a new opposition to vanquish. I would, as it were, conduct you to the God that has become flesh; I would show you religion when it has resigned its infinity and appeared, often in sorry form, among men; I would have you discover religion in the religions. Though they are always earthly and impure, the same form of heavenly beauty that I have tried to depict is to be sought in them.
The divisions of the church and the difference of religion are almost always found together. The connection seems inseparable. There are as many creeds and confessions as churches and religious communions. Glancing at this state of things, you might easily believe that my judgment on the plurality of the church must also be my judgment on the plurality of religion. You would, however, entirely mistake my opinion. I condemned the plurality of the church, but my argument presupposed the plurality of religion. I showed from the nature of the case that in the church all rigid outline should be lost, that all distinct partition should disappear. Not only did I hold that all should be one indivisible whole in spirit and sympathy, but that the actual connection should have larger development and ever approach the highest, the universal unity. Now if there is not everywhere plurality of religion, if the most marked difference is not necessary and unavoidable, why should the true church need to be one? Is it not that everyone in the religion of others may see and share what he cannot find in his own? And why should the visible church be only one, if it is not that everyone may seek in it religion in the form best fitted to awake the germ that lies asleep in him? And if this germ can only be fertilized and made to grow by one definite kind of influence, it must itself be of a definite kind.
Nor can these different manifestations of religion be mere component parts, differing only in number and size, and forming, when combined, a uniform whole. In that case every one would by natural progress come to be like his neighbour. Such religion as he acquired would change into his own, and become identical with it. The church, this fellowship with all believers which I consider indispensable for every religious man, would be merely provisional. The more successful its work, the quicker would it end—a view of the institution I have never contemplated. I therefore find that multiplicity of the religions is based in the nature of religion.