Friedrich Schleiermacher · 10 of 15

Fourth Speech. Association in Religion, or Church and Priesthood

Those of you who are accustomed to regard religion simply as a malady of the soul, usually cherish the idea that if the evil is not to be quite subdued, it is at least more endurable, so long as it only infects individuals here and there. On the other hand, the common danger is increased and everything put in jeopardy by too close association among the patients. So long as they are isolated, judicious treatment, due precautions against infection and a healthy spiritual atmosphere may allay the paroxysms and weaken, if they do not destroy, the virus, but in the other case the only remedy to be relied on is the curative influence of nature. The evil would be accompanied by the most dangerous symptoms and be far more deadly being nursed and heightened by the proximity of the infected. Even a few would then poison the whole atmosphere; the soundest bodies would be infected; all the canals in which the processes of life are carried on would be destroyed; all juices would be decomposed; and, after undergoing such a feverish delirium, the healthy spiritual life and working of whole generations and peoples would be irrecoverably ruined. Hence your opposition to the church, to every institution meant for the communication of religion is always more violent than your opposition to religion itself, and priests, as the supports and specialty active members of such institutions are for you the most hated among men.

But those of you who have a somewhat milder view of religion, regarding it rather as an absurdity than as an absolute distraction, have an equally unfavourable idea of all organizations for fellowship. Slavish surrender of everything characteristic and free, spiritless mechanism and vain usages are, you consider, the inseparable consequences of every such institution. It is the skilful work of persons who with incredible success make great gain from things that are nothing, or which at least every other person could have done equally well.

Were it not that I strive to bring you in this matter to the right standpoint, I would very unwillingly expose my heart to you on such a weighty matter. How many of the perverse efforts and the sad destinies of mankind you ascribe to religion, I do not need to recount. In a thousand utterances of the most esteemed among you it is clear as day. And I will not pause to refute those charges in detail and derive them from other causes. Rather let us subject the whole idea of the church to a new consideration, reconstructing it from the centre outwards, unconcerned about how much is fact and experience.

If there is religion at all, it must be social, for that is the nature of man, and it is quite peculiarly the nature of religion. You must confess that when an individual has produced and wrought out something in his own mind, it is morbid and in the highest degree unnatural to wish to reserve it to himself. He should express it in the indispensable fellowship and mutual dependence of action. And there is also a spiritual nature which he has in common with the rest of his species which demands that he express and communicate all that is in him. The more violently he is moved and the more deeply he is impressed, the stronger that social impulse works. And this is true even if we regard it only as the endeavour to find the feeling in others, and so to be sure that nothing has been encountered that is not human.

You see that this is not a case of endeavouring to make others like ourselves, nor of believing that what is in one man is indispensable for all. It is only the endeavour to become conscious of and to exhibit the true relation of our own life to the common nature of man.

But indisputably the proper subjects for this impulse to communicate are the conscious states and feelings in which originally man feels himself passive. He is urged on to learn whether it may not be an alien and unworthy power that has produced them. Those are the things which mankind from childhood are chiefly engaged in communicating. His ideas, about the origin of which he can have no doubts, he would rather leave in quiet. Still more easily he resolves to reserve his judgments. But of all that enters by the senses and stirs the feelings he will have witnesses and participators. How could he keep to himself the most comprehensive and general influences of the world when they appear to him the greatest and most irresistible? How should he wish to reserve what most strongly drives him out of himself and makes him conscious that he cannot know himself from himself alone? If a religious view become clear to him, or a pious feeling stir his soul, it is rather his first endeavour to direct others to the same subject and if possible transmit the impulse.

The same nature that makes it necessary for the pious person to speak, provides him also with an audience. No element of life, so much as religion, has implanted along with it so vivid a feeling of man’s utter incapacity ever to exhaust it for himself alone. No sooner has he any sense for it than he feels its infinity and his own limits. He is conscious that he grasps but a small part of it, and what he cannot himself reach he will, at least, so far as he is able, know and enjoy from the representations of those who have obtained it. This urges him to give his religion full expression, and, seeking his own perfection, to listen to every note that he can recognize as religious.

Thus mutual communication organizes itself, and speech and hearing are to all alike indispensable.

But the communication of religion is not like the communication of ideas and perceptions to be sought in books. In this medium, too much of the pure impression of the original production is lost. Like dark stuffs that absorb the greater part of the rays of light, so everything of the pious emotion that the inadequate signs do not embrace and give out again, is swallowed up. In the written communication of piety, everything needs to be twice or thrice repeated, the original medium requiring to be again exhibited, and still its effect on men in general in their great unity can only be badly copied by multiplied reflection. Only when it is chased from the society of the living, religion must hide its varied life in the dead letter.

Nor can this intercourse with the heart of man be carried on in common conversation. Many who have a regard for religion have upbraided our times, because our manners are such that in conversation in society and in friendly intercourse, we talk of all weighty subjects except of God and divine things. In our defence I would say, this is neither contempt nor indifference, but a very correct instinct. Where mirth and laughing dwell, and even earnestness must pliantly associate with joke and witticism, there can be no room for what must ever be attended by holy reserve and awe. Religious views, pious feelings, and earnest reflections, are not to be tossed from one to another in such small morsels as the materials of a light conversation. On sacred subjects it would be rather sacrilegious than fitting to be ready with an answer to every question and a response to every address. Religion, therefore, withdraws itself from too wide circles to the more familiar conversation of friendship or the dialogue of love, where glance and action are clearer than words, and where a solemn silence also is understood.

By way of the light and rapid exchange of retorts common in society divine things cannot be treated, but there must be a higher style and another kind of society entirely consecrated to religion. On the highest subject with which language has to deal, it is fitting that the fulness and splendour of human speech be expended. It is not as if there were any ornament that religion could not do without, but it would be impious and frivolous of its heralds, if they would not consecrate everything to it, if they would not collect all they possess that is glorious, that religion may, if possible, be presented in all power and dignity. Without poetic skill, therefore, religion can only be expressed and communicated rhetorically, in all power and skill of speech, and in its swiftness and inconstancy the service of every art that could aid, is willingly accepted. Hence a person whose heart is full of religion, only opens his mouth before an assembly where speech so richly equipped might have manifold working.

Would that I could depict to you the rich, the superabundant life in this city of God, when the citizens assemble, each full of native force seeking liberty of utterance and full at the same time of holy desire to apprehend and appropriate what others offer. When one stands out before the others he is neither justified by office nor by compact; nor is it pride or ignorance that inspires him with assurance. It is the free impulse of his spirit, the feeling of heart-felt unanimity and completest equality, the common abolition of all first and last, of all earthly order. He comes forward to present to the sympathetic contemplation of others his own heart as stirred by God, and, by leading them into the region of religion where he is at home, he would infect them with his own feeling. He utters divine things and in solemn silence the congregation follow his inspired speech. If he unveils a hidden wonder, or links with prophetic assurance the future to the present, or by new examples confirms old truths, or if his fiery imagination enchants him in visions into another part of the world and into another order of things, the trained sense of the congregation accompanies him throughout. On returning from his wanderings through the Kingdom of God into himself, his heart and the hearts of all are but the common seat of the same feeling. Let this harmony of view announce itself, however softly, then there are sacred mysteries discovered and solemnized that are not mere insignificant emblems, but, rightly considered, are natural indications of a certain kind of consciousness and certain feelings. It is like a loftier choir that in its own noble tone answers the voice that calls.

And this is not a mere simile, but, as such a speech is music without song or melody, there may be a music among the saints that is speech without words, giving most definite and comprehensible expression to the heart.

The muse of harmony, the intimate relation of which to religion has been long known, though acknowledged by few, has from of old laid on the altars of religion the most gorgeous and perfect works of her most devoted scholars. In sacred hymns and choruses to which the words of the poet are but loosely and airily appended, there are breathed out things that definite speech cannot grasp. The melodies of thought and feeling interchange and give mutual support, till all is satiated and full of the sacred and the infinite.

Of such a nature is the influence of religious men upon each other. Thus their natural and eternal union is produced. It is a heavenly bond, the most perfect production of the spiritual nature of man, not to be attained till man, in the highest sense, knows himself. Do not blame them if they value it more highly than the civil union which you place so far above all else, but which nevertheless will not ripen to manly beauty. Compared with that other union, it appears far more forced than free, far more transient than eternal.

But where, in all that I have said of the congregation of the pious, is that distinction between priests and laity to which you are accustomed to point as the source of so many evils? You have been deluded; this is no distinction of persons, but only of office and function. Every man is a priest, in so far as he draws others to himself in the field he has made his own and can show himself master in; every man is a layman, in so far as he follows the skill and direction of another in the religious matters with which he is less familiar. That tyrannical aristocracy which you describe as so hateful does not exist, but this society is a priestly nation, a complete republic, where each in turn is leader and people, following in others the same power that he feels in himself and uses for governing others.

How then can this be the home of the envy and strife that you consider the natural consequences of all religious associations? I see nothing but unity and, just by means of the social union of the pious, the gentle mingling of all the differences found in religion. I have called your attention to two different types of mind and two different directions in which specially the soul seeks its highest object. Do you mean that from them sects must of necessity arise, and unconstrained fellowship in religion be hindered? In contemplation, where there is severance because we comprehend only in sections, there must be opposition and contradiction, but reflect that life is quite different. In it opposites seek each other and all that is separated in contemplation is mingled. Doubtless persons who most resemble will most strongly attract each other, but they cannot on that account make up a whole by themselves, for there are all degrees of affinity, and with so many transitions there can be no absolute repulsion, no entire separation, even between the remotest elements.

Take any body that by characteristic power has its own organic structure. Unless you forcibly isolate it by some mechanical means, it will not be homogeneous and distinct, but it will show at the extremities transition to the qualities of another body. Pious persons at the lower stage have a closer union, yet there are always some among them who have a guess of something higher, who, even better than they understand themselves, will be understood by a person belonging to a more advanced society. There is thus a point of union, though it may yet be hidden from them. Again, if persons in whom the one type of mind is dominant, draw together, there will be some among them who at least understand the two types and, belonging in a certain sense to both, are connecting links between two otherwise divided spheres. Thus a person better fitted to put himself in religious communion with nature is not, in the essentials of religion, opposed to a person who rather finds the traces of the Deity in history, and there will never be a dearth of those who walk with equal ease on both ways. And if you divide the great domain of religion otherwise, you will still return to the same point. If unconstrained universality of the sense is the first and original condition of religion, and also, as is natural, its ripest fruit, you can surely see that, as religion advances and piety is purified, the whole religious world must appear as an indivisible whole.

The impulse to abstract, in so far as it proceeds to rigid separation, is a proof of imperfection. The highest and most cultured always see a universal union, and, in seeing it, establish it. Every man is only in contact with his neighbour; but on every side and in every direction he has neighbours and is thus inseparably bound up with the whole. Mystics and physicists in religion; those to whom the Deity is personal and those to whom He is not; those who have risen to a systematic view of the Universe, or those who only see it in its elements or as dim chaos should all be united. A hand encloses them all and they cannot be quite separated, except forcibly and arbitrarily. Each separate association is a mobile, integrate part of the whole, losing itself in vague outlines in the whole, and it must ever be the better class of members who feel this truth. Whence then, if not from pure misunderstanding, is the wild mania for converting to single definite forms of religion that you denounce, and the awful watchword, “No salvation save with us”?7

The society of the pious, as I have exhibited it and as from its nature it must be, is occupied purely with mutual communication, and subsists only among persons already having religion of some kind. How can it be their business to change the minds of those who already profess to have a definite religion, or to introduce and initiate persons who have none at all? The religion of this society as such is simply the collective religion of all the pious. As each one sees it in others it is infinite, and no single person can fully grasp it, for it is in no one instance a unity, not even when highest and most cultivated. If a man, therefore, has any share in religion, it matters not what, would it not be a mad proceeding for the society to rend from him that which suits his nature, for this element also it should embrace and therefore someone must possess it? And how would they cultivate persons to whom religion generally is still strange? Their heritage, the infinite Whole they cannot communicate to them, and any particular communication must proceed from an individual and not the society. Is there something general, indefinite, something common to all the members that a non-religious person might receive? But you know that nothing in a general and indefinite form can actually be communicated. It must be individual and thoroughly definite, or it is nothing. This undertaking would have no measure and no rule. Besides, how would the society ever think of going beyond itself, seeing the need which gave it birth, the principle of religious association, has no such bearing? Individuals join and become a whole; the whole being satisfied with itself, abides in itself, and has no further endeavour.

Religious effort of this kind, therefore, is never more than a private business of individuals, and is, if I might so say, rather in so far as a man is outside the church than as he is within. When, impelled by sacred feelings, he must withdraw from the circle of religious association where the common existence and life in God affords the noblest enjoyment, into the lower regions of life, he can still bring all that there occupies him into relation with what to his spirit must ever remain the highest. On descending among persons limited to one earthly aim and effort, he is apt to believe—and let it be forgiven him—that, from intercourse with gods and muses, he has been transported among a race of rude barbarians. He feels himself a steward of religion among unbelievers, a missionary among savages. As an Orpheus or Amphion he hopes to win many, by heavenly melody. He presents himself among them as a priestly figure, expressing clearly and vividly his higher sense in all his doings and in his whole nature. And if there be any response, how willingly he nurses those first presentiments of religion in a new soul believing it to be a beautiful pledge of its growth, even under an alien and inclement sky, and how triumphantly he conducts the novice to the exalted assembly! This activity for the extension of religion is only the pious longing of the stranger for his home, the endeavour to carry his Fatherland with him, and find again everywhere its laws and customs which are his higher, more beauteous life. The Fatherland itself, blessed and complete in itself, knows no such endeavour.

After all this, you will possibly say that I seem to be quite at one with you. I have shown what the church ought to be. Now, by not ascribing to the ideal church any of the qualities which distinguish the real, I have, almost as strongly as you, condemned its present form. I assure you, however, I have not spoken of what should be, but of what is, unless, indeed, you deny the existence of what is only hindered by the limits of space from appearing to the coarser vision. The true church has, in fact, always been thus, and still is, and if you cannot see it, the blame is your own, and lies in a tolerably palpable misunderstanding. Remember only—to use an old but weighty expression—that I have not spoken of the church militant, but of the church triumphant, not of the church that fights against what the age and the state of man place in its way, but of the church that has vanquished all opposition, whose training is complete. I have exhibited a society of men who have reached consciousness with their piety, and in whom the religious view of life is dominant. As I trust I have convinced you that they must be men of some culture and much power, and that there can never be but very few of them, you need not seek their union where many hundreds, whose song strikes the ear from afar, are assembled in great temples. So close together, you well know, men of this kind do not stand. Possibly anything of the sort collected in one place is only to be found in single, separate communities, excluded from the great church. This at least is certain, that all truly religious men, as many as there have ever been, have not only had a belief, or rather a living feeling of such a union, but have actually lived in it, and, at the same time, they have all known how to estimate the church, commonly so-called, at about its true value, which is to say, not particularly high.

The great association to which your strictures properly apply, is very far from being a society of religious men. It is only an association of persons who are but seeking religion, and it seems to me natural that, in almost every respect, it should be the counterpart of the true church. To make this as clear to you as it is to myself, I must, alas! condescend upon a mass of earthly and worldly things, and wind my way through a labyrinth of marvellous confusions. It is not done without repugnance, but it is necessary, if you are to agree with me. Perhaps if I draw your attention to the different forms of religious association in the visible and in the true church, you will be convinced of my opinion in essentials. After what has been said, you will, I hope, agree that in the true religious society all communication is mutual. The principle that urges us to give utterance to our own experience, is closely connected with what draws us to that which is strange, and thus action and reaction are indivisibly united. Here, on the contrary, it is quite different. All wish to receive, and there is only one who ought to give. In entire passivity, they simply suffer the impressions on their organs. So far as they have power over themselves, they may aid in receiving, but of reaction on others they do not so much as think. Does that not show clearly enough the difference in the principles of association? They cannot be spoken of as wishing to complete their religion through others, for if they had any religion of their own, it would, from the necessity of its nature, show itself in some way operative on others. They exercise no reaction because they are capable of none; and they can only be incapable because they have no religion. Were I to use a figure from science—from which, in matters of religion, I most willingly borrow expressions—I would say that they are negatively religious, and press in great crowds to the few points where they suspect the positive principle of religion. Having been charged, however, they again fail in capacity to retain. The emotion which could but play around the surface very soon disappears. Then they go about in a certain feeling of emptiness, till longing awakes once more, and they gradually become again negatively electrified.

In few words, this is the history of their religious life and the character of the social inclination that runs through it. Not religion, but a little sense for it, and a painful, lamentably fruitless endeavour to reach it, are all that can be ascribed even to the best of them, even to those who show both spirit and zeal. In the course of their domestic and civil life, and on the larger scene of which they are spectators, there is much to stir persons with even a small share of religious sense. But those emotions remain only a dim presentiment, a weak impression on a soft mass, the outlines of which at once become vague. Soon everything is swept away by the waves of the active life, and is left stranded in the most unfrequented region of the memory, where it will soon be entirely overlaid by worldly things.

From frequent repetition, however, of this little shock, a necessity at length arises. The dim something in the mind, always recurring, must finally be made clear. The best means, one would think, would be to take time to observe leisurely and attentively the cause. But it is not a single thing which they might abstract from all else, that works on them. It is all human things, and among them the different relations of their life in other departments. Then, from old habit, their sense will spontaneously turn to those relations and once more the sublime and infinite will, in their eyes, be broken up into single, miserable details. Feeling this, they do not trust themselves, but seek outside help. They would behold in the mirror of another person’s representation that which in direct perception would soon dissolve.

In this way they seek to reach some higher, more defined consciousness, yet at the end they misunderstand this whole endeavour. If the utterances of a truly religious man awake all those memories, if they have received the combined impression of them, and go away deeply moved, they believe that their need is stilled, that the leading of their nature has been satisfied, and that they have in them the power and essence of all those feelings. Yet they have now as formerly, though it may be in a higher degree, but a fleeting, extraneous manifestation. Being without knowledge or guess of true religion, they remain subject to this delusion, and in the vain hope of at length attaining, they repeat a thousand times the same endeavour, and yet remain where and what they were.

If they advanced, and a spontaneous and living religion were implanted in them, they would soon not wish any more to be among those whose one-sidedness and passivity would no longer accord with their own state. They would at least seek beside them another sphere, where piety could show itself to others both living and life-giving, and soon they would wish to live altogether in it and devote to it their exclusive love. Thus in point of fact the church, as it exists among us, becomes of less consequence to men the more they increase in religion, and the most pious sever themselves coldly and proudly. Hardly anything could be clearer than that man is in this association merely because he is but seeking to be religious, and continues in it only so long as he has not yet attained.

But this proceeds from the way in which the members of the church deal with religion, for suppose it were possible to think of a one-sided communication and a state of willing passivity and abnegation in truly religious men, there could not possibly be in their combined action the utter perversity and ignorance you find in the visible church. If the members of the church had any understanding of religion, the chief matter for them would be that the person whom they have made the organ of religion communicate his clearest, most characteristic views and feelings. But that is what they would not have, and they rather set limits on all sides to the utterances of individuality. They desire that he expound to them chiefly ideas, opinions, dogmas, in short, not the characteristic elements of religion, but the current reflections about them. Had they any understanding of religion, they would know from their own feeling that those matters of creeds, though, as I said, essential to true religious union, can by their nature be nothing but signs that the previously attained results agree, signs of the return from the most personal impressiveness to the common centre, the full-voiced refrain after everything has been uttered with purely individual skill. But of this they know nothing. Those matters for them exist for themselves and dominate special times.

The conclusion is, that their united action has nothing of the character of the higher and freer inspiration that is proper to religion, but has a school-mastering, mechanical nature, which indicates that they merely seek to import religion from without. This they attempt by every means. To that end they are so attached to dead notions, to the results of reflection about religion, and drink them in greedily, that the process that gave them birth may be reversed, and that the ideas may change again to the living emotions and feelings from which they were originally deduced. Thus they employ creeds which are naturally last in religious communication, to stimulate what should properly precede them.

In comparison with the more glorious association which, in my view, is the only true church, I have spoken of this larger and widely extended association very disparagingly, as of something common and mean. This follows from the nature of the case, and I could not conceal my mind on the subject. I guard myself, however, most solemnly against any assumption you may cherish, that I agree with the growing wish that this institution should be utterly destroyed. Though the true church is always to stand open only to those who already have ripened to a piety of their own, there must be some bond of union with those who are still seeking. As that is what this institution should be, it ought, from the nature of the case, to take its leaders and priests always from the true church. Or is religion to be the single human concern in which there are to be no institutions for scholars and beginners?

But indeed the whole pattern of this institution must be different, and its relation to the true church must take an entirely different aspect. On this matter I may not be silent. Those wishes and views of mine are too closely connected with the nature of religious association, and the better state of things that I imagine, conduces too much to its glorification for me to reserve my notions. By the clear-cut distinction we have established, this at least has been gained, that we can reflect very calmly on all the abuses that prevail in the ecclesiastical society. You must admit that religion, not having produced such a church and not exhibiting itself in such a church, must be acquitted of every ill it may have wrought and of all participation in its evil state. So entirely should it be acquitted that the reproach that it might degenerate into it, should not once be made, seeing it cannot possibly degenerate where it has never been.

I grant that in this society a disastrous sectarian spirit exists and must exist. Where religious opinions are used as methods for attaining religion, they must, seeing a method requires to be thoroughly definite and finished, be formed into a definite whole. And where they are something that can only be given from without, being accepted on the authority of the giver, everyone whose religious speech is of a different cast, must be regarded as a disturber of quiet and sure progress, for by his very existence and the claims involved, he weakens this authority. Nay, I even grant that in the old Polytheism, where naturally religion could not be summed up as one, but willingly submitted to all division and severance, this sectarian spirit was much milder and more peaceable, and that in the otherwise better times of systematic religion it first organized itself and displayed its full power. Where all believe they have a complete system with a centre, the value of details must be vastly greater.

I grant both; but you will admit that there is no reproach to religion in general, and there is no proof that the view of the Universe as system is not the highest stage of religion. I grant that in this society there is more regard to understanding and believing, to acting and to perfecting customs than is favourable to a free development of religious perceptions and feelings, and that in consequence, however enlightened its teaching be, it borders on some superstition and depends on some mythology; but you will admit, that, in that degree, its whole nature is distant from true religion. I grant that this association can hardly exist without a standing distinction between priests and laity as two different religious orders. Whosoever has cultivated in himself his feeling to dexterity in some kind of presentation, characteristically and completely, cannot possibly continue a layman, or conduct himself as if all this were wanting. He would be free, nay, bound, either to forsake this society and seek the true church, or to allow himself to be sent back by the true church to lead as a priest. This, however, remains certain, that this spirit of division with all that is unworthy in it and all its evil consequences, is not brought about by religion but by the want of religiousness in the multitude.

But here you raise a new objection, which seems once more to roll back those reproaches upon religion. You would remind me that I myself have said that the great ecclesiastical society, I mean this institution for pupils in religion, must take its priests only from the members of the true church, because in itself the true principle of religiousness is wanting. How then can those who are perfect in religion, endure so much that is utterly contrary to the spirit of religion where the have to rule, where all things obey their voice, and they obey only the voice of religion! Nay, how do they produce so much that is evil, for to whom does the church owe its regulations, if not to the priests? Or if things are not as they should be, and the government of the dependent society has been rent from the members of the true church, where then is the high spirit that is justly to be expected in them? Why have they administered so badly their most important province? Why have they allowed base passions to make that a scourge of humanity, which in the hands of religion would have remained a blessing? And yet they are the persons whose most joyful and sacred duty, as you confess, is to guide those who need their help!

Truly, alas! things are not as I maintained they should be. Who would venture to say that all, that even the majority, that even the foremost and notablest of those who for many a day have ruled the great ecclesiastical assembly, have been accomplished in religion or even members of the true church?

Yet do not take what I say in excuse as mere subterfuge. When you attack religion, it is usually in the name of philosophy, and when you upbraid the church, it is usually in the name of the state. You would defend the politicians of every age on the ground that the interference of the church has made so much of their handiwork imperfect and ill-advised. If now, speaking in the name of the religious, I attribute their failure to conduct their business with better success, to the state and to statesmen, will you suspect me of artifice? Yet if you will but hear what I have to say of the true source of this evil, you will not, I hope, be able to deny that I am right.

Every fresh doctrine and revelation, every fresh view of the Universe that awakes the sense for it on some new side, may win some minds for religion who by no other way could be introduced into a higher world. To most of them naturally this particular aspect then remains for them the centre of religion. They form around their master a school of their own, a self-existent, distinct part of the true and universal church which yet only ripens slowly and quietly towards union in spirit with the great whole. But before this is accomplished, as soon as the new feelings have permeated and satisfied all their soul, they are usually violently urged by the need to utter what is in them that they be not consumed of the fire within. Thus everyone proclaims the new salvation that has arisen for him. Every object suggests the newly discovered Infinite; every speech turns into a sketch of their peculiar religious views; every counsel, every wish, every friendly word is an inspired commendation of the sole way they know to salvation. Whosoever knows how religion operates, finds it natural that they all speak, for otherwise they would fear that the stones should surpass them. And whosoever knows how a new enthusiasm works, finds it natural that this living fire should kindle violently around, consume some and warm many, and give to thousands the surface imitation merely of a heart-felt glow.

And it is those thousands that work the mischief. The youthful zeal of the new saints accepts them as true brethren. What hinders, they say all too rashly, that these also should receive the Holy Ghost? Nay, they themselves believe that they have received, and, in joyous triumph, allow themselves to be conducted into the bosom of the pious society. But the intoxication of the first enthusiasm past, the glowing surface burnt out, they show themselves incapable of enduring and sharing the state allotted to the true believers. Compassionately the saints condescend to them, and, to go to their help, relinquish their own higher and deeper enjoyment. Thus everything takes that imperfect form. This comes to pass without outward causes through the corruption common to all human things. In accordance with that eternal order, the corruption most quickly seizes upon the most fiery and active life, that any section of the true church which might arise in isolation anywhere in the world, might not remain apart from all corruption, but be compelled to participate in it and form a false and degenerate church. In all times, among all peoples, in every religion this has happened.

Yet if things were only left quietly to themselves, this state could not anywhere long endure. Pour liquids of various gravities and densities, having small power of mutual attraction, into a vessel; shake them violently together till they seem to form one liquid, and you will see, if only you leave it quietly standing, how they will divide and only like associate itself to like. So would it have happened here, for it is the natural course of things. The true church would quietly have separated itself again to enjoy the higher, more intimate fellowship of which the rest are not capable. The bond among those that remained would then have been as good as loosed, and their natural dulness would then have had to look for something from without to determine what should become of them. And they would not have been forsaken by the members of the true church. Besides them, who would have had the smallest call to care for their state? What attraction would be offered to the regard of other men? What were to be won or what fame to be obtained from them?

The members of the true church could, therefore, have remained in undisturbed possession and might have entered upon their priestly office among them in a new and better appointed form. Every man would then have gathered around him those who best understood him, who by his method could be most strongly stirred. Instead of the vast association, the existence of which you now bewail, a great crowd of smaller, less definite societies would have arisen. In them men would in all kinds of ways, now here, now there, have tested religion. They would have been only states to be passed, preparatory for the time when the sense for religion should awake, and decisive for those who should be found incapable of being taken hold of in any way.

Hail to those who shall first be called when, the simple way of nature having failed, the revolutions of human affairs shall, by a longer, more artificial way, lead in the golden age of religion! May the gods be propitious to them, and may a rich blessing follow their labours in their mission to help beginners, and to smooth the way for the babes to the temple of the Eternal—labours that in our present unfavourable circumstances yield us such scanty fruit.

Listen to what may possibly seem an unholy wish that I can hardly suppress. Would that the most distant presentiment of religion had forever remained unknown to all heads of states, to all successful and skilful politicians! Would that not one of them had ever been seized by the power of that infectious enthusiasm! The source of all corruption has been, that they did not know how to separate their deepest, most personal life from their office and public character. Why must they bring their petty vanity and marvellous presumption into the assembly of the saints, as if the advantages they have to give were valid everywhere without exception? Why must they take back with them into their palaces and judgment-halls the reverence due to the servants of the sanctuary? Probably you are right in wishing that the hem of a priestly garment had never touched the floor of a royal chamber: but let us wish that the purple had never kissed the dust on the altar, for had this not happened the other would not have followed. Had but no prince ever been allowed to enter the temple, till he had put off at the gate the most beautiful of his royal ornaments, the rich cornucopia of all his favours and tokens of honour! But they have employed it here as elsewhere. They have presumed to decorate the simple grandeur of the heavenly structure with rags from their earthly splendour, and instead of fulfilling holy vows, they have left worldly gifts as offerings to the Highest.

As soon as a prince declared a church to be a community with special privileges, a distinguished member of the civil world, the corruption of that church was begun and almost irrevocably decided. And if the society of believing persons, and of persons desiring belief, had not been mixed after a wrong manner, that is always to the detriment of the former, this could not have happened, for otherwise no religious society could ever be large enough to draw the attention of the governor.

Such a constitutional act of political preponderance works on the religious society like the terrible head of Medusa. As soon as it appears everything turns to stone.

Though without connection, everything that is for a moment combined, is now inseparably welded together; accidental elements that might easily have been ejected are now established for ever; drapery and body are made from one block and every unseemly fold is eternal. The greater and spurious society can no more be separated from the higher and smaller. It can neither be divided nor dissolved. It can neither alter its form nor its articles of faith. Its views and usages are all condemned to abide in their existing state.

But that is not all. The members of the true church the visible church may contain, are forcibly excluded from all share in its government, and are not in a position to do for it even the little that might still be done. There is more to govern than they either could or would do. There are worldly things now to order and manage, and privileges to maintain and make good. And even though in their domestic and civil affairs, they did know how to deal with such things, yet cannot they treat matters of this sort as a concern of’ their priestly office. That is an incongruity that their sense will not see into and to which they cannot reconcile themselves. It does not accord with their high and pure idea of religion and religious fellowship. They cannot understand what they are to make out of houses and lands and riches, either for the true church to which they belong, or for the larger society which they should conduct. By this unnatural state of affairs the members of the true church are distracted and perplexed.

But besides all this, persons are attracted who otherwise would forever have remained without. If it is the interest of the proud, the ambitious, the covetous, the intriguing to press into the church, where otherwise they would have felt only the bitterest ennui, and if they begin to pretend interest and intelligence in holy things to gain the earthly reward, how can the truly religious escape subjection? And who bears the blame if unworthy men replace ripe saints, and if, under their supervision, everything creeps in and establishes itself that is most contrary to the spirit of religion? Who but the state with its ill-considered magnanimity?

But in a still more direct way, the state is the cause why the bond between the true church and the visible religious society has been loosened. After showing to the church this fatal kindness, it believed it had a right to its active gratitude, and transferred to it three of its weightiest commissions. More or less it has committed to the church the care and oversight of education. Under the auspices of religion and in the form of a congregation, it demands that the people be instructed in those duties that cannot be set forth in the form of law, that they be stirred up to a truly citizenlike way of thinking, and that, by the power of religion, they be made truthful in their utterances. As a recompense for those services, it robs it of its freedom, as is now to be seen in all parts of the civilized world where there is a state and a church. It treats the church as an institution of its own appointment and invention—and indeed its faults and abuses are almost all its own inventing; and it alone presumes to decide who is fit to come forward in this society as exemplar and as priest. And do you still charge it to religion that the visible church does not consist entirely of pious souls?

But I am not yet done with my indictment. The state pollutes religious fellowship by introducing into its deepest mysteries its own interests. When the church, in prophetic devoutness, consecrates the new-born babe to the Deity and to the struggle for the highest, the state will take the occasion to receive it from the hands of the church into the list of its protégés. When it gives the stripling its first kiss of brotherhood, as one who has taken his first glance into the sacred things of religion, this must also be for the state the evidence of the first stage of civil independence; if with pious wishes, it consecrates the union of two persons who, as emblems and instruments of creative nature, would at the same time consecrate themselves as bearers of the higher life, it must also be the state’s sanction for the civil bond. The state will not even believe that a man has vanished from this earthly scene, till the church assures it that it has restored his soul to the Infinite and enclosed his dust in the sacred bosom of the earth. It shows reverence for religion and an endeavour to keep itself perpetually conscious of its own limits, that the state bows before religion and before its worshippers when it receives anything from the hands of the Infinite, or returns it again, but how all this works for the corruption of the religious society is clear enough. In all its regulations there is nothing directed to religion alone, nothing even in which religion is the chief matter. In the sacred speeches and instructions, as well as in the most mysterious and symbolical doings, everything has a legal and civil reference, everything is perverted from its original form and nature. Hence there are many among the leaders of the church who understand nothing of religion, but who yet, as servants of the state, are in a position to earn great official merit, and there are many among its members who do not even wish to seek religion, and who yet have interest enough to remain in the church and bear a part in it.

It is very apparent that a society to which such a thing can happen, which with false humility accepts favours that can profit it nothing and with cringing readiness takes on burdens that send it headlong to destruction; which allows itself to be abused by an alien power, and parts with the liberty and independence which are its birthright, for a delusion; which abandons its own high and noble aim to follow things that lie quite outside of its path, cannot be a society of men who have a definite aim and know exactly what they wish. This glance at the history of the ecclesiastical society is, I think, the best proof that it is not strictly a society of religious men. At most it appears that some particles of such a society are mixed in it and are overlaid with foreign ingredients. Before the first matter of this boundless corruption could have been admitted, the whole must have been in a state of morbid fermentation in which the few sound portions soon utterly disappeared.

Full of sacred pride, the true church would have refused gifts it could not use, well knowing that those who have found the Deity and have a common joy in knowing Him, have in the pure fellowship in which alone they would exhibit and communicate their inmost nature, really nothing in common the possession of which could be protected by worldly power. On earth they require nothing but a speech by which to make themselves understood and a space in which to be together, things requiring no prince’s favour.

But if the true church have nothing to do directly with the profane world, and if there must be a mediating institution whereby to come into a certain contact with it, as it were an atmosphere, both as a medium for purification and for attracting new material, what form must this institution take and how is it to be freed from the corruption it has imbibed? This last question time must answer. Sometime it will certainly be done, but it may be done in a thousand different ways, for, of all sicknesses of man there are various ways of cure. Everything in its place will be tried and have its effect. The goal only I can indicate in order to show you more clearly that here also it has not been religion and its endeavour to which you should have manifested your repugnance.

The fundamental idea of such an auxiliary institution is to exhibit to persons who in any degree have a sense for religion, though because it is not yet apparent and conscious, they are not fit for incorporation into the true church, so much religion as such that their capacity must necessarily be developed. Let us now see what there is in the present state of things that hinders this from taking place. I will not repeat that the state chooses according to its own wishes which are more directed to the extraneous matters in the institution, persons to be leaders and teachers, and that in the view of the state a man can be a highly intelligent educator and a single-minded effective teacher of duties to the people without, in the strict sense of the word, being religiously affected at all, and that therefore persons whom it reckons among its worthiest servants, may easily fail utterly. I will grant that everyone it appoints is truly influenced and inspired by piety, if you will grant that no artist can communicate his art to a school with any success, if there is not among his pupils some equality of preliminary knowledge. This is more necessary in respect of our subject where the master can do nothing but point out and exhibit, than in art where the scholar progresses by exercise and the teacher is chiefly useful by criticisms. All his work will be in vain if the same thing is not only intelligible to all, but suitable and wholesome. The sacred orator must obtain his hearers by a certain similarity of talents and cast of mind, and not by rank and file, not as they are counted out to him by some ancient distribution, not as their houses adjoin, or as they are set down in the police list.

And assuming that only persons equally near religion assemble round one master, they may not all be near in the same way. It is, therefore, most preposterous to wish to limit any pupil to a single master. There is no one so universally cultured in religion, nor anyone who can exercise all kinds of influence. No man is in a position to draw by his representation and speech from all who come before him the hidden gems of religion to light, for the sphere of religion is far too comprehensive. Remember the different ways by which men pass from consciousness of the individual and particular to the Whole and the Infinite: remember that, by this very mode of transition, a man’s religion assumes its own distinct character. Think of the various influences whereby the Universe affects man, of the thousand single perceptions and of the thousand ways of combining them and showing one in the light of the other. Reflect, that if religion is actually to stir a man’s own feeling, he must meet it in the definite form that suits his capacity and his point of view. It is, therefore, impossible for any master to be all things to all, and to become to every man what he needs. No one can be a mystic and a scientist at the same time. He cannot be a master in every sacred art whereby religion is expressed, initiated at once into prophecies, visions and prayers, into presentations from history and from experience and into many other things too numerous to mention, all the glorious branches into which the crown of the heavenly tree of priestly art is divided. Master and disciples, therefore, must, in perfect freedom, be allowed to seek and choose what profits them, and no one must in any way be obliged to give except that which he possesses and understands.

But it is not possible for a man to limit his teaching to what he understands as soon as, in the very same transaction, he must have something else in view. Without question, a priestly man can present his religion with zeal and skill as is fitting, and at the same time remain faithful to some civil business and accomplish it effectively. Why then, if it suits, should not a person, having a call to the priesthood, be at the same time a moral teacher in the service of the state? There is nothing against it. He may do both, only not the one in and through the other; he must not wear both natures at the same time, not accomplish the two concerns by the one action. The state may be satisfied, if it so pleases, with a religious morality, but religion rejects consciously and individually every prophet and priest that moralizes from this point of view. Whosoever would proclaim religion must do it unadulterated.

It is opposed to every sentiment of honour of a master in his business, and more particularly of a master in religious purity, if a true priest has to do with the state on such unworthy and impossible conditions. When the state takes other workmen into its pay, whether for the better cultivation of their own talents or to attract pupils, it removes from them all extraneous business, nay, it makes it incumbent upon them to refrain. It recommends them to give themselves chiefly to the special section of their art, in which they believe they can accomplish most, and then it allows their nature full scope. With the artists of religion alone, it does exactly the contrary. They must embrace the whole compass of their subject, and it prescribes to them what school they shall be of and lays upon them unseemly burdens. It will not even, along with attention to its business, grant them leisure for special cultivation of some kind of religious presentation which yet is for them the chief matter, nor free them from burdensome constraints. Even after it has, as in every case it must, set up for itself a school of civil duties, it still will not allow them to follow their own ways. And yet, though it cannot be unconcerned about the priestly works, it employs them neither for use nor for show like other arts and sciences! Away then with every such union between church and state! That remains my Cato’s utterance to the end, or till I see the union actually destroyed.

Away too with all that has even a semblance to rigid union of priest and laity, whether among themselves or with each other! Learners shall not form bodies, for, even in mechanical trades, it can be seen how little that profits. And the priests, I mean as such, shall form no brotherhood among themselves. They shall neither divide their work nor their knowledge according to corporations, but let each man do his own duty without concerning himself about others, or having in this matter closer connection with one than with another. Between teacher and congregation also, there shall be no firm outward band. According to the principles of the true church, the mission of a priest in the world is a private business, and the temple should also be a private chamber where he lifts up his voice to give utterance to religion. Let there be an assembly before him and not a congregation. Let him be a speaker for all who will hear, but not a shepherd for a definite flock.

Only under such conditions, can truly priestly souls take charge of seekers for religion. Thus only can this preparatory association actually lead to religion and make itself worthy to be regarded as an adjunct and vestibule of the true church, for thus only it can lose all that in its present state is unholy and irreligious. By universal freedom of choice, recognition and criticism, the hard and pronounced distinction between priest and laity will be softened, till the best of the laity come to stand where the priests are. All that is now held together by the unholy bond of creeds will be severed. Let there be no point of union of this kind, and let none offer the seekers a system making exclusive claim to truth, but let each man offer his characteristic, individual presentation. This appears the sole means for putting an end to the mischief. It is a poor, if old device, capable only of alleviating the evil for a moment, when ancient formulas were too oppressive or were too varied to consort in the same bonds, to cut up the church by partition of the creed. Like a polypus, each piece grows again into a whole, and if the character is contrary to the spirit of religion, it is no improvement that several societies should bear it. The visible religious society can only be brought nearer the universal freedom and majestic unity of the true church by becoming a mobile mass, having no distinct outlines, but each part being now here, now there, and all peacefully mingling together. The hateful sectarian and proselytizing spirit which leads ever farther astray from the essentials of religion, can only be extinguished when no one, any more, is informed that he belongs to a distinct circle, and is for other circles of a different faith.

In regard to this society, you see, our wishes are identical. What is obnoxious to you opposes us also. Permit me, however, always to add that this would not have been as it is, if we had only been left alone to occupy ourselves in our own proper work. Our common interest is to have the evil removed, but there is little we can do except to wish and hope. How such a change will take place among us Germans I do not know. Will it be, as in neighbouring countries, only after a great commotion and then everywhere at once? Will the state, by an amicable arrangement and without the death and resurrection of both church and state, break off its unhappy marriage with the church? Or will it endure that another, more virginal institution arise alongside of the one that is for ever sold to it? I do not know.

But till something of this kind do happen, a heavy fate must lie upon all holy souls, who, glowing with religion, would seek to exhibit their most holy things even in the profane world, that something might thereby be accomplished. I will not delude the members of the state privileged order into making much account of what in these circumstances they can accomplish by speech for the dearest wish of their heart. And if many of them believe themselves bound not to be always speaking only of piety, nay, not even frequently to speak chiefly of it and to speak of it alone only on solemn occasions, if they are not to be untrue to their political calling, I know little to say against it.

But this cannot be taken from them, that they can proclaim by a priestlike life the spirit of religion, and this may be their consolation and their best reward. In a holy person everything is significant; in an acknowledged priest of religion everything has a canonical meaning. They may, therefore, in all their movements exhibit the nature of religion. Even in the common relations of life nothing may be lost of the expression of a pious mind. The holy ardour with which they treat everything shows that even in trifles that a profane spirit skims over thoughtlessly, the music of noble feelings resounds in them. The majestic calm with which they equalize small and great, shows that they refer everything to the Unchangeable and in all things alike perceive the Deity. The bright serenity with which they pass every trace of decay, reveals to all how they live above time and above the world. The utmost ease of self-denial indicates how much of the limits of personality they have already abolished. The constantly open and active sense that neither the rarest nor the commonest escapes, shows how unweariedly they seek the Deity and listen for His voice. If in this way the whole life and every movement of soul and body is a priestlike work of art, the sense for what dwells in them may by this dumb speech be awakened in many.

And not content to express the nature of religion, they must also in a similar way destroy the false appearance of it. With childlike ingenuousness, and in the high simplicity of utter unconsciousness, seeing no danger, and feeling no need of courage, they disregard what base prejudices and subtle superstition have surrounded with a spurious glory of sanctity. Unconcerned as the infant Hercules, they let themselves be hissed at from all quarters by the snakes of solemn calumny, being able to crush them quietly in a moment. To this holy service they may devote themselves till better times, and I think that you also will have reverence for this unassuming worth, and will augur well for its influence on men.

But what am I to say to those to whom you refuse the priestly robe because they have not gone through a definite course of science in a definite way? Whither shall I direct them with the social bent of their religion not directed alone to the true church, but also outward to the world? Having no greater scene in which, in any striking way, they might appear, they may rest satisfied with the priestly service of their household gods. One family can be the most cultured element and the truest picture of the Universe. When quietly and securely all things work together, all the powers that animate the Infinite are thus operative; when all advances in quiet joyousness, the high World-Spirit rules in it; when the music of love accompanies all movements, the harmony of the spheres resounds, resounds in the smallest space. They may construct this sanctuary, order it and cherish it. In pious might they may set it up clearly and evidently; with love and spirit they may dispose it. By this means many will learn to contemplate the Universe in the small, obscure dwelling. It will be a Holy of Holies in which many will receive the consecration of religion. This priesthood was the first in the holy and infant world, and it will be the last when no other is any longer necessary.

Nay, at the end of our future culture we expect a time when no other society preparatory for religion except the pious family life will be required. At present, millions of men and women of all ranks sigh under a load of mechanical and unworthy labours. The older generation succumbs discouraged, and, with pardonable inertness, abandons the younger generation to accident in almost everything, except the necessity straightway to imitate and learn the same degradation. That is the cause why the youth of the people do not acquire the free and open glance whereby alone the object of piety is found. There is no greater hindrance to religion than that we must be our own slaves, and everyone is a slave who must execute something it ought to be possible to do by dead force. We hope that by the perfecting of sciences and arts, those dead forces will be made serviceable to us, and the corporeal world, and everything of the spiritual that can be regulated, be turned into an enchanted castle where the god of the earth only needs to utter a magic word or press a spring, and what he requires will be done. Then for the first time, every man will be free-born; then every life will be at once practical and contemplative; the lash of the task-master will be lifted over no man; and everyone will have peace and leisure for contemplating the world in himself. It is only the unfortunate to whom this is wanting, from whose spiritual organs all nourishing forces are withdrawn, because their whole being must be spent untiringly in mechanical service that need individual, fortunate souls to come forward and assemble them about them, to be their eye for them, and in a few swift minutes communicate to them the highest content of a life. But when the happy time comes and everyone can freely exercise and use his sense, at the very first awaking, of the higher powers, in sacred youth, under the care of paternal wisdom, all who are capable will participate in religion. All communication that is not mutual will then cease, and the father, well repaid, will lead the stout son, not only into a more joyful world and a lighter life, but straightway into the sacred assembly also of the worshippers of the Eternal, now increased in number and activity.

In the grateful feeling that, when this better time has come, however far off it may still be, the efforts to which you have devoted your days, shall have contributed somewhat to its coming, permit me once more to direct your attention to the fair fruit of your labour. Allow yourselves to be led once more to the exalted fellowship of truly religious souls. It is dispersed and almost invisible, but its spirit rules everywhere, even where but few are gathered in the name of the Deity. What is there in it that should not fill you with admiration and esteem, ye friends and admirers of the good and beautiful? They are among themselves an academy of priests. The exhibition of the holy life, which for them is the highest, is treated by everyone as his art and study, and the Deity out of His endless riches apportions to each one his own lot. To a universal sense for everything belonging to the sacred sphere of religion, every man joins as artists should, the endeavour to perfect himself in some one department. A noble rivalry prevails, and a longing to produce something worthy of such an assembly makes everyone with faithfulness and diligence master all that belongs to his special section. In a pure heart it is preserved, with concentrated mind it is arranged, by heavenly art it is moulded and perfected. Thus in every way and from every source, acknowledgment and praise of the Infinite resound, everyone bringing, with joyous heart, the ripest fruit of his thinking and examining, of his comprehending and feeling. They are also among themselves a choir of friends. Everyone knows that he is both a part and a work of the Universe, in him also its divine life and working being revealed. He, therefore, regards himself as an object worthy of the attention of others. With sacred reserve, yet with a ready openness that all may enter and behold, he lays bare everything of the relations of the Universe of which he is conscious and what of the elements of humanity takes individual shape in him. Why should they hide anything from one another? All that is human is holy, for all is divine. Again, they are among themselves a band of brothers—or have you perhaps an intenser expression for the entire blending of their natures, not in respect of existence and working, but in respect of sense and understanding? The more everyone approaches the Universe and the more they communicate to one another, the more perfectly they all become one. No one has a consciousness for himself, each has also that of his neighbour. They are no longer men, but mankind also. Going out of themselves and triumphing over themselves, they are on the way to true immortality and eternity.

If in any other department of life, or in any other school of wisdom, you have found anything nobler than this, impart it to me; mine I have given you.