In the apostolic words we read, there are evidently contained two premises. First, “The end of the commandment is love.” In the preceding deliberation we developed this when we associated the deliberation with anothér expression, that “Love is the fulfillment of the law.” But next there follows in our text: if love is to be the end of the commandment, then it must be from a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of an unfeigned faith. Nevertheless, we prefer to focus our attention on the one provision, that love is a matter of conscience, in which the other two are essentially contained, and to which they essentially refer. That a certain kind of Christian love is made a matter of conscience is familiar to everyone. We speak about marriage. Before the minister unites the two in the wedlock which has been their hearts’ choice, about which, however, he does not ask them; he asks them first, each one individually: “Have you consulted with God and with your conscience?” Hence the minister refers the love to conscience, as he speaks in a manner strange to them, without using the familiar “thou”; he lays upon the hearts of the two, each one in particular, that it is a matter of conscience; he makes an affair of the heart into a matter of conscience. More clearly and definitely this cannot be expressed, and yet there is still an expression for the same consideration in the form of a question, or in that which each one is specially asked. To ask—the individual is the more general expression for the conscience-relation, and therefore it is also Christianity’s essential consideration of the human race, first and foremost to consider all these countless numbers each for himself, each especially as the individual.

Consequently, the minister asks the two, each severally, whether he has consulted with God and his conscience. This is the infinite change which in Christianity takes place in all love. It is, like all Christian transformations, so gentle, so secret—because it belongs only to the inwardness of the hidden man, to the incorruptible essence of a soul at peace. What abominations has not the world seen in the relation between man and woman, so that she, almost an animal, was a contemptible being in comparison with the man, a being as of another kind; what a battle there has been to give woman equal rights with man in worldly matters: but Christianity brings about only the change of the infinite, and therefore in all stillness. The external remains in a manner the old; for the man must be the woman’s lord, she submissive to him. But in inwardness everything is changed, transformed by the aid of this little question to the woman, as to whether she has consulted with her conscience, so that she will have this man—for lord, for otherwise she does not get him. Still the question of conscience about the matter of conscience makes her in inwardness before God absolutely equal with the man. What Christ said of His kingdom, that it was not of this world, applies to all things Christian. Like a higher order of things, it will everywhere be present, but not apprehended. As a friendly spirit everywhere surrounds those dear to it, follows their every footstep, but may not be pointed out: so will the Christian spirit be a stranger in life because it belongs to another world, a stranger in the world because it belongs to the inner man. Foolish men have foolishly busied themselves in the name of Christianity to make it evident to the world that woman should be installed in equal rights with man: Christianity has never asked or desired this. It has done everything for women, if she will in a Christian spirit be satisfied with the Christian; if she does not wish this, then she gains only a moderate compensation, for what she loses in trifling externals she can in a worldly sense gain by threats.

So with marriage. But because Christianity through marriage has made earthly love into a matter of conscience, it still does not seem to follow that on the whole it has made love into a matter of conscience. However, there are some who are of a different opinion, in error concerning the Christian teaching. Christianity has not made earthly love, with rare exceptions, into a matter of conscience, but because it has made all love into a matter of conscience, earthly love has also been included. And besides, if any kind of love would be difficult to transform into a matter of conscience, then surely earthly love which is based on impulse and inclination. For impulse and inclination seem to be alone sufficient for the decision of the question of whether love is present or not, and insofar seem to object as strongly to the Christian as the Christian does to them. If, namely, two human beings love each other, something they themselves must know best, and there is otherwise nothing to prevent their union, then why raise difficulties, as Christianity nevertheless does, by saying: “No, they must first answer the question as to whether they have consulted with God and their conscience”? Christianity never cares to make external changes, it never wishes to abolish impulse and inclinations; it wishes only to make an infinite change in the inner man.

And the change of infinity (which is the inwardness of the secret man, which has its direction inward toward the God-relationship, and so is different from the inwardness that is directed outward) Christianity wishes everywhere to bring about; therefore it wishes also to transform all love into a matter of conscience. Therefore it is a wrong conception of Christian love that thinks it is an individual kind of love which, as a rare exception, is made a matter of conscience. After all, one cannot make any individual thing into a matter of conscience; either one must make everything so, as Christianity does, or else nothing at all. Conscience has the inward power of expansiveness, like the omnipresence of God: one cannot restrict it to a single place and say that God is omnipresent in that single place, for that is simply denying His omnipresence. And in the same way to restrict the conscience-relation to something in particular is really to deny the conscience-relation. If we were to consider a starting point for the teaching of Christianity about love (although it is impossible to fix a starting point in a circular motion), then we cannot say that Christianity begins by making earthly love a matter of conscience, as if this matter had primarily attracted the attention of scholars, who have something quite different to think about than getting people married. No, Christianity began with fundamentals, and therefore with spiritual teaching about what love is. In order to determine what love is, the teaching begins either with God or with the neighbor, which is the essential Christian teaching, since in order in love to find one’s neighbor one must start from God, and in the love for the neighbor must find God. Starting from this fundamental principle Christianity now seizes upon every expression of love, and is zealous for itself. We can therefore just as well say that it is the teaching about man’s God-relationship which has made earthly love into a matter of conscience, as to say that it is the teaching about love to one’s neighbor. Both statements are equally the Christian protest against the willfulness of impulse and affection. Because man primarily belongs to God before he belongs to any other relationship, he must first be asked whether he has taken counsel with God and with his conscience. Likewise with the woman. And because man, even in relation to the beloved woman, is primarily her neighbor and she is primarily his neighbor, therefore both he and she must be asked severally whether they have consulted with their consciences. In the Christian understanding there is an equality between all men before God, and in the teaching about loving one’s neighbor there is equality of all men before God. One perhaps believes that love for a neighbor is something like a castoff earthly love; alas, love for one’s neighbor is the last and the highest love, and must therefore be assured a place before the first and highest moment of the lovers themselves.

This is the Christian love. The idea on the contrary, that we should first busy ourselves in finding the beloved, so that in loving the beloved we shall first love the neighbor, is very far from being Christian love. To impulse and inclination this is certainly a strangely chilling preposterousness; but still it is the Christian idea and not more chilling than the spirit is with respect to the sensual or the sensual-psychical, while for the rest it is simply a spiritual attribute to be burning without blazing. Primarily your wife must be your neighbor, the fact that she is your wife is then a closer definition of your special relation to each other. But that which is the foundation of the eternal must also lie at the bottom of every expression of the special.

I1 this were not so, then how could one find a place for teaching about love for one’s neighbor?—and yet one quite commonly does forget it. One speaks heathenishly, without really even noticing it, about earthly love and friendship, arranges his own life in this respect as if he were a heathen, and then one adds a little of the Christian teaching about loving one’s neighbor, that is, some other men. But he who does not take care to see that his wife is his neighbor before she is his wife, will never come to love his neighbor, no matter how many men he loves; he has made his wife an exception. This exception he will now either love too ardently his whole life through, or he will at first love her too ardently and then too coldly. For certainly a wife is loved differently from the friend, and the friend differently from the neighbor, but this is not an essential difference, for the fundamental likeness lies in the category “neighbor.” It is with “neighbor” as with the category “human.” Every one of us is human, and is thus again the difference he especially is; but the fact of being “human” is the category. No one must look too long at the difference, so that, cowardly or arrogantly, he forgets that he is human; no man through his special dissimilarity is an exception to the fact of being human, but he is first human and then he is the specially different. So Christianity has nothing against the husband loving his wife specially, but he must never love her so specially that she is excluded from being his neighbor, which every human being is; for then he disturbs the Christian category: then his wife is not his neighbor, and therefore the rest of men are not his neighbors. If there were a single living man who by his dissimilarity was excluded from being human, then would the concept “human” be confused: the exception is not human, and neither are the other men human,

One talks about a man loving his own wife conscientiously, or his friend, or his nearest kin; but one often speaks in such a way that what he says involves a great error. Christianity teaches that you shall love every human being, therefore also your wife and your friend, conscientiously; it is a matter of conscience. When, on the contrary, one speaks about loving his wife or his friend conscientiously, then one generally means in the discriminatory sense, or, what amounts to the same thing in the sense of the context, in loving them so preferentially that one has nothing at all to do with other men. But this kind of conscientiousness is from the Christian viewpoint, unconscientiousness. We see too that it is the wife or the friend who will consequently determine whether the love manifested is conscientious. Herein lies the falsity, for it is God who by Himself and by the help of the middle term, “neighbor,” looks to see whether the love for wife or friend is conscientious love. Only then is your love a matter of conscience; but still this is clear, that one can only be truly conscientious in a matter that involves the conscience, for otherwise one might speak of being conscientious in receiving stolen goods. Love must first be determined to be a matter of conscience before there can be anything said about loving conscientiously. But love is not defined as a matter of conscience until either God or the neighbor is the middle term, hence, not in earthly love and friendship as such. But if the love in the earthly love and friendship, as such, is not defined as a matter of conscience, then is the so-called conscientiousness precisely increasingly doubtful, the more firmly established the connection is.

Christian love must not be regarded as a more precise definition of what in paganism and elsewhere has been called love, but as a fundamental change. Christianity has not come into the world in order to teach you some change or other as to how you shall specially love your wife or your friend, but in order to teach you how in common humanity you shall love all men. And it is also this change which in a Christian way changes earthly love and friendship.

One sometimes hears it said that to ask one about his earthly love is an indiscreet question. But frequently this is not understood quite correctly. The reason it is an indiscreet question is because a man in his earthly love primarily belongs to God. Therefore no one is angry when the priest asks this, for he asks it in the name of God. But this is usually not considered; on the contrary, they only suggest that love is such a personal matter that any third person is an irrelevance, any third person—even God, which from the Christian standpoint is a lack of conscience. Still it is an indiscreet question, altogether inconceivable regarding a matter in which a man does not have a God-relationship; for a God-relationship simply means having a conscience. Therefore a man could not have anything upon his conscience if God did not exist, for the relationship between the individual and God, the God-relationship, is the conscience, and that is why it is so terrible to have even the least thing upon one’s conscience, because one is immediately conscious of the infinite weight of God.

Love is a matter of conscience, and hence is not a matter of impulse and inclination; nor is it a matter of emotion, nor a matter for intellectual calculation.

Worldly or merely human reflection is familiar with many kinds of love, and is well-informed about every individual difference, and how the individual differences mutually differ from each other: worldly reflection absorbs itself in the difference of the differences, loses itselfthat is, if it is ever possible to lose one’s self in superficiality. In Christianity the converse is the case. It really knows only one kind of love, spiritual love, and it does not pay much attention to elaborating on the different ways in which this fundamentally common love may manifest itself. All the distinctions between the different kinds of love are essentially swept away in the Christian love.

The merely human consideration interprets love either merely as purely immediate love, as impulse, inclination (earthly love), as affection (friendship), as emotion and affection with one or another discriminating additions of duty, natural relations, custom and so on, or as something which is to be aimed at and acquired, because the reason perceives that being loved and favored is an earthly good, just as having men one loves and favors is an earthly good. All this Christianity is not really concerned with, either with the immediate kind of love, or with the convenient kind. Christianity allows all this to have validity, to have its own significance in external matters; but at the same time it wishes through its teaching about love, which is not calculated on convenience, to let the transformation of the infinite take place inwardly. There is something wonderful, and perhaps for many something strange, something incomprehensible, in the fact that the eternal Christian power is so indifferent to recognition in externals, something wonderful in the fact that this is precisely earnestness, that the inwardness just for the sake of earnestness thus plays “stranger” in worldliness. There have therefore been times in the course of Christianity when people have believed that it was necessary to betray the secret, and thereby secure Christianity a worldly expression in worldliness. So someone wished to abolish marriage and lived no doubt—hidden in the cloister. Nevertheless, the secret of inwardness, or the inwardness of the hidden man who “holds the mystery of faith,” is a far more certain hiding place. The concealment of the cloister in the solitude of the forest, or remote on the inaccessible mountain top, and the hiding place of the quiet dweller in the cloister, were therefore childishness compared with the true Christian inwardness, a childishness like that of a child who hides itself—so that someone shall come and find it. The cloister’s hidden occupant informed the world that he had hidden himself, that is, from the Christian point of view he had not seriously hidden himself, but he was playing hide-and-seek. By a similar misunderstanding of the Christian teaching, by a similar childishness, people then believed that it was Christian to betray the mystery, worldly to express the Christian indifference to friendship, to family relations, to patriotism—which nevertheless is untrue, for Christianity is not indifferent to anything secular, on the contrary, it is solely spiritually concerned for everything. Still to express indifference in such a way that one is eager that those concerned should get to know about it, is not exactly to be indifferent. Such an indifference is as when one man goes to another and says: “I don’t care about you.” Whereupon the other replies: “Then why do you take the trouble to tell me so?’ That, too, would be childishness, it would be a childish way of being conscious of the Christian teaching. But Christianity is too earnest to notice this. Externally it does not wish to bring about any change at all in the external; it wishes to understand the external, to purify it, to consecrate it, and so make everything new, while everything remains old. The Christian may freely marry, freely love his wife, especially as he ought to love her, freely have friends and love his fatherland; but nevertheless there ought to be in all this a basic understanding between himself and God in the Christian sense, and this is Christianity. For God is not like a man; it is not important to God to inspect the matter, to see for Himself whether His cause triumphs or not; He sees in secret just as well. And it is far from necessary for you to help God to learn that it is He who must help you to learn whether you are weaned from the worldliness which wishes a demonstration. Had Christ felt any need of a demonstration, then would He indeed have acted, He would have summoned the twelve legions of angels. This He simply did not want; on the contrary, He rebuked the disciples who wished to act in the matter because they did not know what manner of spirit they were when they wished for a decision in the external. Christianity simply does not wish a decision in external matters (except insofar as it wishes to establish one or another symbol, which is to worldliness a sign of offense, as, for example, the sacraments); it wishes, on the contrary, in the absence of this, to test the faith of the individual, to prove whether the individual will hold and be content with the mystery of faith. The secular always presses for a decision in externals; distrustful, it does not believe that otherwise there is a decision. But the cause of this distrust is precisely the temptation in which faith must be tested. From the worldly point of view, would it not be a far more certain way to decide, and to make it absolutely certain that God exists, to have an image of Him set up—so that one might then see that He existed? or that a false god existed, which yet does not exist?

Would it not have given a far greater assurance to worldliness if Christ in an external manner, perhaps by showy processions, had tried to prove who He was, instead of assuming the humble form of a servant, yet always inconspicuously, so that He looked exactly like any other man, and from the worldly point of view utterly failed in His task? But this is just the temptation by which faith is tested. And so, too, as touching the Christian interpretation of love. Worldly misunderstanding is insistent to have it expressed in an outward way that Christian love is spiritual love—alas, but this cannot be expressed outwardly in any externality, for spiritual love is precisely inwardness. But this is an offense to worldliness, like everything Christian, and therefore, as it were, the opposite, so that Christianity makes one arbitrarily external symbol the sole decision in the external, like the water in baptism. The world is always dead against; where Christianity wishes to have inwardness, there will secular Christendom have the external; and where Christianity wishes to have the external, there secular Christendom will have inwardness, which may be explained by the fact that where the Christian is, offense stands at his side. Nevertheless, Christianity knows only one kind of love: spiritual love; but this can lie at the bottom of and be present in every other expression of love. How strange! For this, the Christian thought of life, has something in common with the thought of death. Imagine a man who wished to gather together all his impressions of the discriminations of life, as between men, which he had seen, and then, when he had reckoned these up, would say, “I see all these different men, but I do not see the man.” It is the same with Christian love in relation to the different kinds of love; it is in them all, that is to say, it may be, but the Christian love itself you cannot point out. You know earthly love by the fact that a woman is the beloved, friendship by the friend, love for the fatherland by the object; but the Christian love you cannot even know by the fact that it loves its enemy, for this manifestation of love may also be a secret form of resentment, as if someone did it for the sake of heaping coals of fire on his head. Nor can you know it by the fact that it hates the beloved, for it is really impossible for you to see this, if you are not the one concerned, and you are in the secret with God. From God’s side, what confidence, in a certain sense, in a man, and what earnestness! We men, we take care to have certain and infallible signs by which love is known. But God and Christianity have no distinguishing marks—is this not having great, moreover all possible confidence in men! When we in regard to some man waive the sign by which his love is known, then we say that we show unbounded confidence in him, that we will believe in him in spite of all appearances. But why do you think that God shows such confidence? Is it not because He sees in secret? How earnest!

But you never see, nor has any man ever seen, the Christian love, just as no one has ever seen the “human.” Nevertheless, “human” is the essential category, and Christian love is the essential love, as, from the Christian viewpoint, there is only one kind of love. For, to repeat, Christianity has not changed anything in what men had formerly learned about loving the beloved, the friend, and so on; it has neither added a little to it, nor taken anything away, but it has transformed everything, has transformed all love. And only to the degree that this fundamental change is followed by a change of inwardness in love and friendship, only insofar has it changed those. And it has done this by making all love a matter of conscience, which with respect to earthly love and friendship, and so on, can just as well indicate a cooling of the passions as it indicates the inwardness of eternal life.

Love is a matter of conscience, and must therefore be of a pure heart and of an unfeigned faith.

“A pure heart.” Generally we mention provisionally that a free heart is required for love or in order to give itself up in love: This heart must not belong to anyone or anything else; moreover, even the hand which gives it away must be free; for it must not be the hand which takes the heart by force and gives it away, but on the contrary, it must be the heart which gives away the hand. And this heart, free as it is, will then find complete freedom in giving itself away—not the bird you release from your hand, not the arrow released from the bowstring, not the branch which has been bent, when it recovers its direction, nothing, nothing is as free as the free heart when it freely gives itself. For the bird is still free only because you release it, and the arrow speeds forth only because it leaves the bowstring, and the branch again grows erect because the restraint ceases; but the free heart does not become free by the cessation of resistance; it was free, it had its freedom—and yet it found its freedom. Beautiful thought, blessed freedom, which finds what it has! However I talk almost like a poet, which may also be permissible if the main point be not forgotten, if it is done precisely to illuminate thisfor this is why we endeavor to speak ingratiatingly, if possible, about what it generally pleases men to hear, precisely so that it may not tempt anyone, as if it were lack of sense or ability to speak about this, which held us back from speaking about it, or from speaking exclusively of it as of the highest, forgetting the principal thing: the Christian freedom.

A pure heart is not in this sense a free heart, or it is the free heart which does not here come under consideration, for a pure heart is first and last a bound heart. Therefore it is not as pleasant to speak about it as it is to speak about the blessed self-esteem of freedom, and the blessed pleasure of the self-esteem in the boldness of renunciation. A bound heart, moreover in the most profound sense a bound heart—no ship which lies at anchor is so bound as that heart must be which will be pure—this heart must be bound to God. And no king who bound himself by the harshest charter, and no man who bound himself by the most rigorous pledge, and no day-laborer who bound himself for every day, and no private tutor who bound himself for every hour, is so bound. For everyone thus bound can still say how far he is bound, but the heart must be bound illimitably to God, if it will be pure. And no power can bind like this; for the king can die and escape his charter, and the lord can die so the pledge of the day-laborer ceases, and the time of instruction can pass—but God does not die, and the bond which binds to Him is never broken.

Thus must the heart be bound. You who burn with the desire for earthly love, or with the craving for friendship, remember that what you say about freedom has never been denied by Christianity; but yet there must first be this infinite bond, if the heart of the beloved and your own will be pure! Consequently, first the infinite binding, and then the talk about freedom may begin. There is a strange word which is much used in philosophy, but even more in ordinary business; it is heard so often in the streets and alleys, in business circles and in the mouths of businessmen: it is the word “priority”; for philosophy talks much about God’s priority, and businessmen talk about priorities. So let us use this strange word to express the thought so that it will most certainly make the right impression; let us say: Christianity teaches that God has the first priority. Philosophy does not speak quite this way about God’s priority; it would rather forget what businessmen know about priorities, that a priority is a claim. God has the first priority, and everything which a man owns, is pledged as a security for this claim. If you remember this, then for the rest you may talk as much as you please about the pleasure of freedom. Oh, but if you really remember this, then this pleasure will not tempt you.

The free heart has no consideration for anything; heedless, it plunges into the pleasure of renunciation; but the heart infinitely bound to God has an infinite consideration; and not even the one who every moment must use the most manifold consideration is so bound by consideration as the heart which is infinitely bound to God. Wherever it is, in solitude by itself, or filled with the thought of others or with others, whatever an infinitely bound heart otherwise occupies itself with, it is always considerate. You who speak so beautifully about how much the beloved means to you, or you to the beloved, remember that this consideration must first be in your soul as in the beloved’s, if a pure heart will be given away in love! This consideration must be the first and the last; from this consideration there can be no separation without guilt and sin.

The free heart has no history; when it renounced itself it acquired no history of its love, happy or unhappy. But the heart infinitely bound to God has a preceding history, and therefore it understands that earthly love and friendship are but an interlude, a contribution to this, the sole history of love, the first and the last. You who know how to speak so beautifully about earthly love and friendship, if you understood that these constitute only a very little section within that eternal history: how brief you would be compared with the brevity of the section! You begin your history with the beginning of love and you end with a grave. But that eternal history of love began far earlier; it began with your beginning, when you came into existence from nothing, and as truly as you do not become nothing, so truly the history does not end with the grave. For when the deathbed is prepared for you, when you have gone to bed, never more to rise, and they only wait for you to turn to the other side to die, and the stillness grows about you—when gradually the nearer friends go away, and the stillness grows because only the dearest remain, while death comes nearer you; then when the dearest go softly away, and the stillness grows, because only your own family remain: and when then the last one has bent for the last time over you and turns away, for now you turn to the side of death: there yet remains One by that side, He the last at the deathbed, He who was the first, God, the living God—if for the rest your heart was pure, which it became only by loving Him.

There is this to be said about the pure heart and about love being a matter of conscience. If love and earthly love constitute the chief pleasures of life, so that the happy man can say with truth: “Now for the first time I live,” so it is the joy of life merely to hear the lover talk about his happiness, about life, that is, about its pleasure: then must the dead speak about that conscientious love, the dead who, it is well to note, did not become tired of life, but simply won the joy of eternity. But it is a dead man who speaks, and this seems so forbidding to many that they dare not listen to his glad message, while everyone is glad to listen to one of whom we say in a superior way, “He is alive.” And yet death must come, and just at the moment when his contemporaries are joyfully wishing the happy man a long life, eternity says, “Die,” if otherwise your heart will be pure. For no doubt there was someone who became happy, indescribably happy, or unhappy, by loving a human being; but no man’s heart ever became pure unless it became so through loving God.

“An unfeigned faith.” Could there ever be any more abominable combination possible than love—and duplicity? Still such a combination is an impossibility, for to love deceitfully is to hate. And this not only holds true about duplicity, but it is impossible to associate the least lack of sincerity with the idea of loving. As soon as any sincerity is lacking, then there is always something concealed, but the selfish self-love hides itself in this concealment, and insofar as this self-love is present in a man, he does not love. In sincerity the lover offers himself to the beloved; and no mirror is so accurate in catching the least trifle as sincerity is, if it is true sincerity; or if in the lovers there is the true fidelity which is reflected in the mirror of sincerity, which love holds between them.

But now if two men are thus able to become in sincerity intelligible to each other, is it not somewhat arbitrary for Christianity to speak about an unfeigned faith in another sense, insofar as by that it means sincerity before God? Is it not exactly necessary, if two men are to love each other in an unfeigned faith, that this must be preceded by an individual sincerity toward God? For is there dissimulation only when a man consciously deceives himself or others? Is it not also dissimulation when a man does not know himself? And can such a man promise love from an unfeigned faith, or can he—keep what he promises? Aye, he may do that, but if he cannot promise, can he then keep what he cannot even promise? And one who does not know himself cannot promise love from an unfeigned faith.

The thought of confidence contains in itself a reduplication, and it is this: the one with whom a man has the most intimate relationship, hence the relationship which best fitted him to be the object of confidences, or of confidential communications, only in him can this man really confide or trust, or open his heart to him in confidence. But thus the confidence keeps itself to itself, and thus there is, as the essential in the confidence, the unutterable, instead of a man having to believe that the confidence lay in the stating of it. Thus if, humanly speaking, a wife has her most inward relationship with her husband, she may reveal one or another thing in confidence to her parents, but this confidence is a confidence about something confidential. The wife will therefore feel that she is far from being able to confide everything to them or to coafide it to them as she confides it to her husband with whom she has her most intimate relationship—but also her most confidential one, and to whom alone she can really open her heart concerning her most intimate relationship, which is her relation to him. Business affairs and unimportant external matters one cannot talk about confidentially, or at least only foolishly and irresponsibly. But see, if a wife wished to tell someone else about her most intimate concern, her relation to her husband, she would herself perceive that there was only one in whom she could completely confide, and this one was the same as the one in whom and with whom she has this relationship.

With whom now has a man his most intimate relationship, with whom can a man have his most intimate relationship? Is it not God? But hence all confidence between men finally becomes only confidence about confidence. Only God is confidence, just as He is love. When then two men sincerely pledge their faith to each other, is this then to promise faith to each other, if they first, each one severally, promise and have promised their faith to another? And yet, on the other hand, this is necessary if they, in the Christian sense, would love from an unfeigned faith. If two men absolutely confide in each other, is it absolutely confiding in each other if they first, each one individually, have confided in a third? And yet this is necessary if they wish absolutely to confide in each other, even if in each individual’s confidence in God there is the unutterable, which is exactly the sign that their relation to God is the most inward, the most confidential.

How inviting, how attractive the talk sounds about the confidence of two lovers in each other, and yet there is dissimulation in this speech as in this confidence. But if love from an unfeigned faith is to be spoken about, then must the dead speak, and it sounds at first as if it wrought a division between the two, although they will still be united in the most intimate and confident companionship. Moreover it is like a separation, and yet it is the confidence of eternity which is set between them. Many, many times two have become happy in a confidential relation to each other, but never has any man loved from an unfeigned faith except through the confidence of the separation in God, which is also God’s consent to the confidence of the lovers.—Only when it becomes a matter of conscience is there love from a pure heart and from an unfeigned faith.

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