CHAPTER V: THE MORAL ACTIVITY.

THE MORAL ACTIVITY.
SECTION XCVIII.

LOVE works the accomplishment of the lovingly-willed end; the moral motive and the accomplishing of the end belong, therefore, morally, inseparably together. The moral element lies neither exclusively in the motive, nor exclusively in the action; neither exclusively in the intention or end, nor exclusively in the means to the end, but in the unity of both. A good end does not sanctify the means, nor do good means sanctify the end, but a good end is accomplished morally only by good means; all end which actually can be realized by immoral means, is itself immoral.

As the moral is a free realizing of a rational end, the question naturally rises, wherein the moral element properly lies, namely, whether in the end and in the motive? or in the means to the end, that is, in the acts that lead to the realization of the end? or whether in both at the same time,--that is, whether we are to judge of an act exclusively from the intention, or exclusively from the action itself, or in fact from both together? The first of these queries has been answered affirmatively by the Jesuits--though this is not peculiar to them, but is involved more or less in all perverted moralizing, especially in that of worldly society at large; outside of the sphere of Christian earnestness there prevails every-where in fact a tendency to distinguish between the morality of the end and that of the means.

From the very idea of the moral it follows necessarily that the conscious end, and hence the intention, occupies with good right the chief place in determining the moral judgment, and that consequently only that action can be good which aims at a good end--one in harmony with the moral order of the world. Whatever accomplishes such an end must consequently be in harmony with the moral order of the world, and hence be itself good; when therefore the axiom: "The end sanctifies the means" is understood to mean "that the means which answer to a really good end are necessarily also good," then it is entirely unobjectionable; it becomes false only when either the end is only seemingly good, or the means only seemingly appropriate, or where it is assumed that the means, that is, the actions, are per se morally indifferent, and receive a moral character only from the intention. As, however, all free action falls within the sphere of the moral order of the world, and as the reality that is produced by this action is either in harmony or in disharmony with this order, hence also the action, per se and irrespectively of its end, is either good or bad,--though indeed, in order to its full moral appreciation, its end also must be taken into the account. He who sets a house on fire from negligence may have had no evil intention, but he is punished nevertheless, and justly so, for his action was per se evil, and might have been avoided by him. If we suppose instead of an absolutely good end, that is, such a one as is a part of the highest good, simply particular ends, the goodness of which consists only in their subordination to the order of the whole, then the axiom: "The end sanctifies the means," is false, in so far as the end or means do not consist with the order of the whole. He who burns down a house in order to drive the rats out of it attains indeed his end, but at the same time he destroys the super-ordinate end of the house. The question becomes difficult only when bearing upon moral action in a sinful world, in which evil, and hence the infliction of evils for punishment, for discipline and defense, has a legitimate place. But of this we can only speak further on.

Moral action, as flowing from love, may be considered from two points of view: first, in itself, according to its inner differences, that is, moral action as such; secondly, in relation to the different moral objects in virtue of the differences of which the moral action itself assumes a different form.

SUBDIVISION FIRST.

THE MORAL ACTIVITY PER SE IN ITS INNER DIFFERENCES.

SECTION XCIX.

As moral action always seeks to effect a harmony between the acting person and the moral object, hence it stands in relation, on the one hand, to the former as its starting-point, and, on the other, to the latter as the goal aimed at by the life-movement. This harmony can consequently be effected in a twofold manner,--either in that the object becomes for the subject, or the subject for the object, that is, either by appropriation or by formation. As, however, every entity, in so far as it is good, has a right in and of itself, hence it has such a right also as bearing upon the morally active person, so that neither the appropriating nor the forming is without some degree of limitation, but both must respect this right of the object. The two forms of moral action have therefore, as a necessary limit, a third form of moral bearing, namely, a bearing by which the moral object is preserved in its rights,--moral sparing.

This third form of the moral bearing, which, as an activity of the will, has of course a moral character, has been very largely ignored in ethics, or at least left in the back-ground, and it is even severely criticised in its defenders, and yet it is a sphere of very essential duties, duties which can be classed into other spheres only by manifest violence, and which yet consist, in fact, neither in appropriation nor in formation. When I check my foot in order not wantonly to crush an ant that is crossing my path, this is in fact a moral self-limitation, but it cannot be properly classed as moral forming, seeing that the end of this action is very evidently the to-be-spared animal, and not the acting person. But every moral action without exception is also a moral self-forming, a self-cultivating, without, however, that this self-culture should always appear as the end proper. Without the proper respecting of the duty of sparing, appropriation and formation would become violence. But the moral motive of all right action, namely, love, implies in its very nature also the exercising of preservative sparing; man cannot love an object, and yet not seek to preserve it in the beloved peculiarity of its being. Sparing is not of a mere negative character, a mere limiting of another action, but it is essentially different from all other action; it is of a negative character only in form but not in contents. When I do not severely reproach a person who is inwardly and deeply ashamed and humiliated because of his sin, but tenderly spare him, this is not a mere non-doing of that which I might do, not a mere limiting of my punitive activity, but it is the very opposite of this. There results here from the moral motive, that is, love, not a positive acting upon the other, but a restraining of such action; and if I thereby heap coals of fire upon the head of an enemy, and thus profit him morally, still this is not a real influential forming on my part, but a giving place for the moral self-forming of the other; my sparing procedure here is indeed mediately a forming, as, on the other hand, it is also a self-mastering; per se however, it is an action different from both. When, in the sphere of the freedom of rational creatures, God restrains his immediate action in order to preserve them in their freedom,--when God spared Cain, and, after the flood, promised henceforth to spare living creatures as a whole [Gen. iv, 15; viii, 21; ix, 11 sqq.],--this is simply a divine example of moral sparing. To spare is often more difficult morally than to appropriate or to influence, for in the latter cases the person has a lively consciousness of self, and stands forth prominently with his own rights and his enjoyment of activity; but, in sparing, it is the right of the object that stands in the foreground, and the actor must recognize and respect this right, and must morally overcome his personal will and his pleasure in self-assertion. Sparing is the preservative, the "conservative," phase of the moral life, and its carrying-out presupposes greater moral maturity than the exercise of the appropriating or forming activities; for the youthful zeal of the morally immature spirit, its practice is exceedingly difficult; not to crush the bruised reed, nor to quench the smoking wick [Matt. xii, 20], is more difficult, and involves a higher moral wisdom, than to destroy or to create anew.--As the sparing procedure is logically the most immediate course of conduct, and rather a withholding than an express acting, hence it is more appropriate to treat of it first.

I. MORAL SPARING.
SECTION C.

Moral sparing is a self-limiting of personal action in the interest of the rights of the object; the latter is neither appropriated nor formed by the person, but simply let alone in its peculiar being and nature. The duty of sparing rests upon the right of every natural or spiritual and historical entity to its existence and its peculiarity, in so far as these are good, and hence upon love to the object as being good,--consequently, in the final instance, upon a pious world theory, upon love to God. The entity is spared because it bears in itself the impress of the Eternal,--is an expression of the will of God; hence sparing is moral only in so far as it relates to the good and the divine ill existence, and not to that which by virtue of its ungodly nature should be an object of moral hatred.--The higher the perfection of an object, so much the higher is also its right to moral sparing; the less the perfection, the more the object falls within the sphere of appropriation and formation. The highest object of moral sparing among created things is man, and whatever exists through and for him; but, above all, his moral personality itself, and hence also his honor. God himself cannot indeed be an object of moral sparing in the strict sense of the word, but lie is such, however, in the forms of his revelation in time, and in all that symbolically represents him.

An indiscriminate sparing would be simply spiritual and moral sloth or indifference, and hence immoral. The sparing of the anti-godly is a sinning against God, is the withholding of moral love. An evil existence has indeed also, in so far as any good still inheres in it, a right to be spared,--only, however, in that which it has of good. The right to be spared is not, of course, in the case of finite existences, of an unlimited and unconditional character, and in the case of nature-objects it is much more limited than with personal beings, though indeed it never sinks entirely to zero. It is true, nature is destined to service under the dominion of the rational spirit, and, in so far as it reaches this destination, man has in fact a right to pass beyond the limits of mere sparing restraint, and actively to lay hold on the very existence of nature, transforming and appropriating it. Where the right of the personal spirit is not recognized, where God is conceived of as a mere nature-entity, there pious morality manifests itself in a wide-reaching sparing of natural objects, far beyond the measure of what is required of us; so is it with the Brahmins and the Buddhists; and, especially in the case of the former, this over-delicate sparing of natural objects is associated with a cruel un-sparingness toward themselves.

As the duty of sparing rests on the right of each particular being to its own peculiarity, hence this duty as well as this right rise in scope in proportion to the degree of the individual perfection. That which is absolutely perfect bears the character of eternity and unchangeableness, and though it may indeed be spiritually appropriated, yet it cannot in any respect be formed or changed. In the process of education, the dictating influence upon the child falls into the background in proportion as the child grows toward moral maturity. Lifeless matter has no claim to sparing. When the Brahmin does not allow himself causelessly to crush the least earth-clod, this is simply because he regards it as the sacred body of Brahma. Plants have a better claim to be spared than inorganic objects, and the more so the higher their organization, and especially as they stand in a closer relation to man; to injure fruit-trees and other edible vegetation, without cause, is regarded as sinful even by uncultured tribes. The more an object enters into the sphere of man's spiritual life, the more it bears the impress of the spirit, constituting, as it were, a sort of larger corporeality for man, so much the higher is its claim upon sparing. This is especially the case with the human body itself, as the organ of the spirit, as a "temple of the Holy Ghost;" in the next rank stand all such natural objects as hold a relation to the spiritual life, and which are mementos of important events and of spiritual effort in general,--every thing, in fine, that has been actually produced by the human spirit, and the more so in proportion as it is of a spiritualized character,--and hence, especially, all products of industry and art. But the highest right to sparing is possessed by the personal spirit itself in its personal peculiarity; to assail the honor of another is to wound his moral being; the higher the moral culture and maturity of a person, the higher is also his right to moral sparing; by sin this right is necessarily largely forfeited.

While the heathen idol falls, of course, within the sphere of human sparing, the eternal and almighty God stands beyond the scope of this activity. Nevertheless there are sacred duties which express, in a certain sense, a sparing of the divine; the name of God and his honor are to be held sacred; and whatever is a symbol of the divine, or is a reminder of God's presence, has an especial claim to moral sparing; even uncultured tribes practice a reverential sparing in regard to all that is sacred or stands in relation to the divine in contradistinction to the worldly and the profane. From the simple fact of the sparing of whatever stands in real, or even in symbolical, relation to God, it is very evident, of how great significancy is piety for morality. The pious mind finds God's being and providence in all things and in all life, and whatever is not hostile to God is, for it, sacred and an object of pious sparing. The higher the piety of the person, so much the higher becomes the worth, and hence also the right, of all existence, in so far as this existence is good. He who is impious has no reverence for created things,--no tenderness toward them. Not to spare that which has a right to sparing, is moral rudeness. The immoral and the impious are uniformly rude and coarse; they have indeed fear but no awe.

Sparing is, as a non-doing, only then moral when it is a conscious and freely-willed withholding of a real out-going action, that is, when it is an inner activity, a moral self-controlling out of respect for another's right, and when it is in real harmony with moral forming and appropriating, so as not in any manner to interfere therewith,--that is, when it is the virtualizing of the real rights of the moral object. The formable or cultivable object has, however, just as good a right to be formed as it has to be spared. In so far as sparing is a mere non-influencing of the objective entity, it is not yet moral, and may even also be evil. The spiritually indolent declines even this form of activity, not, however, from love to the object, but from mere selfishness. Only that sparing is morally good which rests on love to the object, and which therefore implies a conscious self-limitation and self-controlling, and which is, consequently, only in outer form, but not in inner essence, a mere non-doing; mere non-doing would be per se sinful, inasmuch as the moral life must always be active, and it is only the seeming non-doing which, however, is an inner-doing, that can be moral. True moral sparing is, in relation to beings that are. formable and in need of formation, uniformly also a formative influence, namely, in that it gives proper play for legitimate self-forming on the part of the object. A tyrannical education that extends its tutorial dictation into all the minute details, produces not a moral character but only servile-mindedness. All right education must also practice, in the interest of the training of moral freedom, a wise sparing,--must allow the child the possibility of determining itself independently, and of thereby maturing itself toward moral freedom. As the sparing of a growing plant is at the same time also a furthering of it, so also, and even in a higher degree, is this true of sparing as exercised toward rational beings; the pardoning of an offense exercises frequently a very fruitful influence on the moral development of him who is pardoned.

II. MORAL APPROPRIATING.
SECTION CI.

In the appropriating activity man effects his unity with the objective entity, by taking it up into himself,--by uniting it with himself, by making it an element of his own nature. This moral activity differs both in regard to what element of the object is appropriated by the actor, and in regard to how this takes place.

(a) According to what element of the object is appropriated, the appropriating is either natural or spiritual; the latter is the more comprehensive, and extends itself to all objective existence,--also to God.--Natural appropriation relates as well to the existence and preservation of the individual person as to the existence and preservation of the species, and is the necessary condition of both. In both respects, therefore, man is bound to nature and stimulated by natural instinct, and although in this respect he is freer than the brute, and all the freer the higher his personality is developed, nevertheless in respect to the preservation of the existence of the subject, this freedom is still always of a limited character, and the law of nature is, in many respects, stronger than the will, though, however, not so potent as to force the will to the immoral.

All natural existence is at the same time also of spiritual significance,--is a realized thought, the expression of an idea. But as, on the other hand, not every spiritual entity is connected with a natural one, hence spiritual appropriating is of greater compass and higher significancy than the merely natural. The higher moral worth of the former appears also from this, that it preserves the objective existence in its reality, whereas natural appropriation more or less destroys it. With the increase of moral and spiritual growth, natural appropriation constantly gives place more and more to the spiritual; with the child the former predominates; but what is normal in the child becomes immoral in mature age.

In natural appropriation there is manifested a real and normal limitation of free self-determination. When hunger predominates, the spiritual forces subside, and at last it becomes even mightier than the free determinations of the will. Nevertheless this power of nature over the will is neither unlimited nor absolutely definitive, but the moral will is capable of asserting its autonomy against it. It may indeed enfeeble the bodily force and therewith also the spiritual, but it cannot absolutely determine the will. Christ cried out indeed on the cross: "I thirst;" but when hungering in the desert he resisted the temptation. The fact that from grief or despair persons have starved themselves to death, proves at least that the will is capable of being stronger than nature, even under its most overpowering phases. He who in the last desperation of famine lays hold on human life to satiate his hunger [Lev. xxvi, 29] commits a crime even in the eyes of human law, and the violence of hunger forms no excuse. That also in this respect a great difference is to be made between man as unfallen and man as enslaved to sin, we have already observed.

SECTION CII.

Natural appropriating per se is not yet a moral activity, but it is extra-moral, and therefore when it appears in and of itself as the substance and chief-end of life, it is immoral. It becomes morally good only when it is the expression of an under-lying spiritual appropriating, that is, when it does not rest on mere sensuous impulse, but on conscious love, not so much to the sensuous object per se as rather to God who lovingly gives it to us. This implies further that, with a moral person, the natural appropriating should never predominate over the spiritual,--that not the attendant sensuous enjoyment per se should be regarded as the essential and proper object of effort, but rather the rational God-willed end of the sensuous, so that consequently the sensuous enjoyment should be aimed at only in so far as the moral purpose admits of it.

There is per se forbidden to man, irrespective of his sinfulness, no natural temperate sensuous appropriating; this is plainly seen in the account of Paradise and in the example and deed of Christ at the wedding of Cana. Thankfulness to God sanctifies even the sensuous appropriation of his gifts [1 Tim. iv, 3-5]. The Christian custom of saying grace at meals, after the example of Christ [Matt. xiv, 19; xv, 36], which prevailed also generally in the ancient church [Acts xxvii, 35; Tert. Apol., 39], has a high moral significancy; it rescues the natural enjoyment from the stage of mere sensuousness,--elevates it into the sphere of the moral. As even in the opinion of worldly society the significancy of social repasts consists not in the sensuous enjoyment, but in the intellectual entertainment and interchange of sentiment, so according to Christian morals the significancy of all sensuous appropriation consists in its relation to God,--in the appropriating of the divine in and through the bread and wine of daily food. "Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God" [1 Cor. x, 30, 31]. But man does not give God the glory when he forgets Him and finds pleasure merely in the sensuous. God neither forbids nor begrudges to man the enjoyment of the sensuous, but he forbids a beastly merging of one's self into it. He who forgets the Giver in the gift sinks below the sphere of the moral and even of the human. The world at large is not fond of grace-saying, and yet even the heathen made his libations to the gods at his repasts. Even Schleiermacher (Christl. Sitte, Beil., p. 33) found in the just-cited words of Paul simply an assumption of the animal element--food-taking--"into the sphere of social pleasure," "in order to chasten mere sensuous desire," and he is unable to discover any significancy in the saying of grace.

The observing of moderation in natural appropriation, the regarding it as a mere means to the rational end of preserving the individual as well as the species, is not merely a moral preserving of the person but also of the object,--is a doing of justice toward the object. He who is temperate simply, e. g., in order not to injure his health, is not yet moral, but only self-seeking. Appropriation finds its measure in the moral duty of sparing. All natural appropriating is more or less a destroying of the objective entity; and, as the latter has per se a right to sparing, it follows that the limit of appropriation is not a merely subjective one. The nightingale-tongue pies of the Roman epicures are not mentioned with detestation simply because they are a mere immoderation, but because they involved an injustice against the right of nature to be spared. And many modern table-luxuries are not of a much more innocent character.

In sexual appropriation the moral is conditioned not merely, as in the use of natural objects, on thankful love to God as the giver, but--inasmuch as the object appropriated is itself a moral personality--also on personal love to the same. Without this love the person of the object would be treated as a mere impersonality, as a mere nature-object, and its validity as a personal moral spirit ignored. Upon this moral recognition of the personality Scripture lays great emphasis. "Adam knew Eve, his wife;" the same expression (yd) is very frequently used of wedlock communion, also on the part of the woman [Gen. xix, 8; Num. xxxi, 17]. This is usually explained as a mere euphemism, but it is in fact the appropriate expression to the essence of the matter. The persons mutually recognize each other as personalities bound to each other in full reciprocal possession,--recognize, each, himself in the other and the other in himself--recognize the complete belonging of each to the other in virtue of a mutual love which precludes every thing that is strange or disuniting, so that consequently the two constitute truly one soul and one flesh. The expression to "know," to recognize, refers therefore primarily solely to legitimate wedlock cohabitation, and was applied only subsequently and improperly also to sinful.

Sexual appropriation also is in part a destruction, a despoiling of the person, which finds a compensation only in the fact that the one person belongs to the other as an inalienable possession--that both persons are united to an indissoluble life in common. Hence the commerce of the sexes without marriage is self-profanation; and virginity is esteemed among all, not absolutely barbarous nations as an inviolable treasure to which only that one has a right who is united in his whole personality to the person of the virgin. And even within the limits of marriage each party has a right to sparing, and should not be degraded into a mere object of sensuous pleasure; also here there is a measure that is conditioned on the end, and the transgressing of which is a dishonoring, a degrading. of the consort.

SECTION CIII.

2.--Spiritual appropriation relates to all objective existence, nature included, and takes up the spiritual contents thereof into the being of the self-conscious subject,--makes it its personal possession. The moral subject enlarges thus its own spiritual being,--receives the universe as well as God into itself,--forms for itself an inner world which, as a copy of the real world, realizes under its subjective phase the moral end, namely, the effecting of the harmony of existence.

In spiritual appropriation, as the far richer field of this activity, the appropriated object is in no wise destroyed, but on the contrary preserved, nay, brought to its higher truth, namely, in that its spiritual contents not only exist per se, but also exist for the spirit, and have now in the spirit a continued existence even after the object itself outwardly perishes. That which has become a part of history and science has thereby attained to imperishableness. That which externally perishes, the natural existence, is the inferior, the less essential; that which is capable of becoming a possession of the immortal spirit is, in fact, the higher,--the essence, the idea, the spiritual contents of existence. In virtue of their spiritual contents even natural objects receive a sort of immortality by being appropriated by the rational spirit; in a still higher degree is this true of the facts of history. Spiritual appropriation is related to natural appropriation as the spirit to the body; the latter must therefore always be subordinate to the former,--must absolutely serve it.--As all nature is created not only by spirit but also for spirit, and as whatever is spiritually created is likewise for the spirit, hence it is but justice to both natural and historical existence,--but a simple right of the same upon the rational spirit,--that it be appropriated by the latter, and it is a perfectly moral requirement that spiritual appropriating be made an essential part of the moral activity. Only savages know nothing of history, of the permanent preservation of the transitory. The preservation of that which belongs to the spirit, that which has been appropriated by it, is the earliest evidence of the spiritual, the historical character of a people,--of human culture. The most ancient historical nations of heathendom, the Chinese and the Egyptians, place their chief interest in the preserving of transpired events; the Egyptians sought to rescue from perishing even the bodies of men, as the tabernacles of the spirit,--sought to appropriate them to history. The art of writing has as its original purpose, not mutual personal intercourse, but history,--was committed not to perishable leaves but to the rock; and also the most ancient products of architectural skill were consecrated, not to purposes of dwellings, but to purposes of history.

SECTION CIV.

(b) The difference of spiritual appropriation in respect to how it takes place, appears, on the one hand, in this, that the appropriating person is active as a rational spirit in general,--as at one with all other rational spirits, and hence in such a manner as that the appropriation might be made in like manner by any other spirit,--general appropriation; and, on the other, in this, that the person is active as a single personality for himself,--appropriates the object to himself as an individual, makes it his exclusive possession,--particular appropriation.--(1) General (universal) appropriation is cognizing or learning. The object is indeed received by the individual spirit and into it, not, however, as its exclusive possession; on the contrary, in this receiving, the person divests himself at the same time of his isolated character,--has the appropriated not as a mere particular possession for himself, but as a possession of the rational spirit in general,--as universally-valid. The so appropriated spiritual possession is truth; now truth has the destination and tendency to become a common possession. Learning or cognizing is therefore moral: (a) in that it seeks to appropriate to itself the real spiritual contents of existence, that is, seeks after truth; (b) in that it makes of truth, not a personal isolated enjoyment, but strives to communicate it to others.

All learning is spiritual appropriating, but not all spiritual appropriating is general; we here consider spiritual appropriation under another phase than in the preceding section. Where the love of sensuous enjoyment prevails to a sinful extent, there the love of truth declines. The desire of knowledge is a characteristic of the moral spirit. Man, as called to dominion over nature, is also called to the spiritual appropriating of the same, and of all existence. The striving after truth is a seal of man's God-likeness. Even as to God every thing is open, and all truth is known, so also is man only then truly a spirit when he strives after truth and seeks cognoscitively to appropriate to himself all things. This is a legitimate striving after possession,--after the possession of an inner world, a true copy of the real one; and it is among the most essential sources of the bliss of the perfected, that they know the truth and constantly appropriate to themselves cognoscitively more of it. The acquiring of the truth is a becoming free from the limits of a merely individual existence,--a divesting ourselves of the mere state of nature, an assuming of a more general character, an entering into the life and essence of the self-concordant All, an appropriating of the objective outgoings of spirit in general. "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free," says Christ to such as shall continue in his word [John viii, 32]. Even as light breaks down the isolation of individual being, and throws up a bridge to that which is outwardly separated from it, thus causing all separate objects to exist in some sort for each other, so the knowledge of truth frees man from the bonds of a merely isolated being, opens for him the totality of existence as his life-sphere,--throws a unifying bond around deity and the totality of his creatures. As no life of the earth is without light, so also is there no life of the spirit without the knowledge of truth; and it is not this or that truth that makes man free, rational, and blessed, but the truth; and the Spirit of the Lord strives to lead his disciples into all truth. Whoever seeks to set limits to the moral thirst for truth, whoever declares any truth as indifferent or unworthy of effort, he resists the outgoings of the spirit of truth. Moreover, there is no particular truth which stands isolated and for itself, and does not first receive its validity from the truth which springs from the eternal Spirit of God; and he who thinks to satisfy the thirst of the soul for truth with certain separate morsels of truths from the sphere of the finite and transitory, knows not the truth but only falsehood.

All true knowing is of such a nature that every other rational spirit can and must know in precisely the same manner, and hence has a significance beyond the possession of the individual,--is general appropriation. Hence, as moral, it is also directly connected with a tendency to make that which is appropriated by the individual person a general possession of all rational beings. The moral man cannot wish to retain the truth for himself alone, but the truth which has become his possession impels him, by virtue of its general character, freely to communicate it to others [Luke ii, 17; 1 John i, 1 sqq.]. The duty of secret-keeping has a validity and significancy only on the supposition of predominant sinfulness,--is inconceivable save on the presupposition of sin; and the weakness of being unable to keep a secret springs, in some sort at least, from a correct feeling of that which ought to be. Goodhearted persons are usually poor secret-keepers; and for innocence there is no secret. The truth, like light, cannot hide itself; it is only with designing effort that either can be concealed. Truth, morally considered, belongs not to the mere understanding but to the heart; and with that of which the heart is full, the mouth overflows [Luke vi, 45]. He to whom the truth belongs, belongs also himself to the truth,--must also bear witness of the truth. "We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard," said Peter and John in the presence of the chief council [Acts iv, 20], and they only express the inner moral necessity of such a witnessing of obtained truth. Whoever feels nothing of such an inner impulsion to witnessing either possesses not the truth, or the truth possesses not him. With the witnessing of the truth it is in some sense as it is with the first ante-moral love; the person may indeed resist the inner impulse, but if he does not do so then his immediate love of the truth will spontaneously induce him to witness for it without any need of a special effort of the will. "Ye also will bear witness (as well as the Holy Ghost), because ye have been with me from the beginning," says the Lord to his disciples [John xv, 27]; this is not an injunction but a promise; they will not be able to do otherwise; the truth is stronger than the command. Hence he who is of the truth needs no longer the law; for the truth impels him to bear witness of itself through his life.

SECTION CV.

(2). Particular (individual) appropriating is enjoying. Here the object exists solely for me in so far as I am an individual being,--becomes my special possession. In enjoyment I do not, as in cognizing, have the object purely as such, but I have it as it stands in accord with my peculiarity, as it has become an element of my own being. In enjoyment I have, therefore, always also myself as in some way affected by the object; hence the sphere of enjoyment is essentially feeling, namely, the feeling of pleasure. Enjoyment is either sensuous or spiritual; the former is never moral per se, but only with and in the latter.--As the personal spirit has an independent right, in and of itself, and as true enjoyment rests on love to the object, and consequently is a virtualization of this love, hence enjoyment is also a moral right, and therefore also relatively a duty. The morality of enjoyment consists primarily in a conscious and complete subordinating of merely sensuous enjoyment to spiritual; and furthermore in the fact that it be always a pure expression of moral love, and hence also of thankfulness, and that it rest on joy in God,--that it stand in proper harmony with the formative activity; and also in the fact that, by virtue of the agreeable feeling manifested in it, it awake also communicative love, namely, the tendency to extend the enjoyment to others.--The highest enjoyment consists in the consciousness of the filial relation to God, that is, in the perfect appropriation of life-communion with God; and in fact to the child of God, only that is a real enjoyment, in which also God has pleasure. In association with this enjoyment of the filial relation to God, every other enjoyment is sanctified.

In learning, or cognizing, I throw into the back-ground my isolated individuality,--let the truth, as general, rule over me; my mere isolated being has no validity; in enjoying, on the contrary, I come with my separate individuality into the fore-ground; the object per se has no validity; in learning I have myself only as a member of the whole, but in enjoying I have myself as an individuality distinct from the whole. Hence enjoyment, as of such and such a form, is not communicable; de gustibus non est disputandum. Whatever one rational person cognizes as true, that must be cognized by all as true; but that which is an enjoyment for one is not necessarily such for another. All enjoyment is love, and the highest earthly love is conjugal and maternal love; but this love which is at the same time the highest earthly enjoyment, belongs to this or that particular person,--is by no means personally-communicable; a child can be loved by no one else as it is by its mother. As knowledge naturally impels to communication, so enjoyment, on the contrary, impels rather to isolation; the pleasure-seeker would fain have every thing for himself; if he seeks society, it is only in so far as society becomes to him an object of enjoyment. Enjoyment readily gives rise to jealousy, whereas knowledge tends to a liberal imparting of the acquired truth; even maternal love knows jealousy.

Christian morality begrudges not enjoyment to man, not even the sensuous, for "the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof" [1 Cor. x, 6; Psa. xxiv, 1; comp. Gen. ii, 9]. The pious reference of all enjoyment to God as the Giver of all good, and thankful love to him, render even sensuous enjoyment moral, in so far as it is sought in the divinely-ordained manner,--spiritualize it, in fact, by the heart-disposition of the subject, and place the joy proper in the spiritual associations of the sensuous. So soon as sensuous enjoyment is sought purely for itself, apart from the spiritual and from love to God, it becomes at once immoral, seeing that it then interrupts (§ 102) the spiritual life, which by its very nature is continuous; of the relation of enjoyment to forming, we will speak hereafter.

The communication of enjoyment,--a constituent element of its morality,--springs not from the essence of the same, but from love to man in general. It can only take place in so far as thereby the essence of the enjoyment is not affected; the enjoyment that lies in the family-life can never be made a common possession; and the fact that in the case of a few rude tribes, hospitality is extended to a communicating even of marital rights, [12] is evidence simply of a perversion of the moral. Manifestly, however, wedlock-happiness and that of the family in general require, in order to their being moral, that they be communicated to others, not, however, as a direct enjoyment, but through hospitality,--through the throwing open of the family to friendly intercourse, through the permitting of others to share in the inner peace of the domestic life. Hence there is not lacking a moral back-ground for the custom of reserving the higher sensuous enjoyment of repasts for hospitable occasions, in which the spiritual intercourse, and hence spiritual enjoyment, occupies the fore-ground, while the sensuous enjoyment appears only as an attendant in the back-ground. The idea of Paradise is the epitome of the entire circle of true enjoyments,--it is not a mere crude or childish fancy-creation, but the very truth itself. Christian morality is not averse to enjoyment; it favors man's taking delight in this world of reality. But Paradise exists only where man is in filial communion with the divine Father,--where love to God sanctifies all earthly enjoyment. "The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy, in the Holy Ghost" [Rom. xiv, 17]. Christianity knows no other joy than joy in the Lord; "Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice" [Phil. iv, 4]. He who rejoices in the Lord, takes true delight in all that comes from the Lord [Deut. xxvi, 11]. To man as sinful many enjoyments are forbidden, because he is able to enjoy them only sinfully; to the pure the sphere of morally-pure enjoyment is much wider and richer [Titus i, 15]. The child of God has enjoyment in every thing, and every thing is to him a moral enjoyment, save alone the violation of God's law; to him the world is a paradise, for it is God's, as is also himself; and he loves not the world without God, but only in God and with God. The blessedness of the children of God, the unspeakable enjoyment of true heart-devotion in fervent prayer, in which man knows himself at one with his God, and rests in the peace of God, is not a subject for scientific synthesis and analytical description; it belongs to the sphere of the inner life, and needs to be experienced rather than described; the world knows nothing thereof.

III. MORAL FORMING.
SECTION CVI.

Moral forming works the harmony of existence, in that thereby man impresses upon objective existence the peculiarity of his own spirit,--makes it an expression thereof, that is, spiritually shapes it. The object is destroyed not in its existence, but only in its isolation and peculiarity,--receives the peculiarity of the acting spirit, is imbued with, and thus bound to, it. Forming is morally good not when it is an impressing of the merely individual and as yet not morally-rational spirit upon the object (for this would be injustice to the object, a non-sparing of its legitimate being), but when it is an impressing of the spirit as moral, as rational and as in harmony with God, that is, when the object itself is formed toward a complete harmony with the morally-rational collective spirit. Moral forming must therefore always be associated with moral sparing, and all the more so the higher the spiritual significance and worth of the object that is to be formed. As related to the moral spirit, therefore, all moral forming is an educating, which latter is never an absolutely all-determining forming, but a forming that respects the rights of the personality that is to be formed.

The outward-going formative activity can neither be arbitrary and purposeless, nor a mere destroying of that which exists, but must have a rational end and a right of its own. In view of the wants of the moral activity, therefore, created existence cannot be, primarily, at once and definitively completed and perfected, though indeed it is good, but it stands in the presence of the activity of the rational spirit as formable material to which man, as active, has a right, and the final completion of which is an end for human activity. It is only through forming that man makes the objective world his own, namely, in that he impresses upon it his stamp, and makes it by moral activity into a likeness of himself, and therefore into his own possession. "Do your own business (prassein ta idia) and work with your own hands" [1 Thess. iv, 11]; man really possesses nothing as his own but that which he has produced by working and forming; and it is not a curse but an original moral law of the universe, that the true existence of man, bodily as well as spiritually-moral, is conditioned on formative working, on labor. Even the first man was not placed in Paradise simply to enjoy its delights, simply to appropriate to himself, naturally and spiritually, that which already existed, but he was to cultivate the garden [Gen. ii, 15]. Man is called to dominion over nature, to be a creator of a spiritual World; this is both a wide and also a privileging and obligating field for the moral. The play of the child is a forming; that of the brute has no objective significancy; and wherever by virtue of an instinct, the brute exercises a formative activity, there we are simply presented with a natural symbol of the moral, as in the case of the bee, the ant, etc.

Forming, as compared to sparing and appropriating, appears at once as the higher, and generally more difficult, form of activity; sparing is a mere checking of the outward-going activity; appropriating, according to its kind, either annihilates the objective existence, or leaves its substance untouched; but forming interferes positively with the existence and peculiarity of the object. There is need here, on the one hand, of a considerate respecting of the right of the object to its own peculiarity, so that the forming may not become an unjust perverting and destroying, and, on the other hand, of a proper and clear consciousness of the rational purpose of the transforming. Appropriating begins earlier in the spiritual development of man than forming; the latter always presupposes some degree of moral maturity; forming as exercised by an immature spirit is a destroying. The formative activity of the child appears as a rending-asunder of whatever falls into its hand; the historical activity of savage or half-civilized tribes, bears also this childish character. Unripe youth have also, as relating to society and the state and to historical reality in general, great pleasure in destruction; and the revolutionary spirit of boisterous young men is only a higher degree of the destructive proclivity of the child; but on the supposition of the attainment of higher spiritual maturity, that which is innocent in the child becomes a culpable lack of judgment. Moral forming must necessarily always have also a preserving phase, inasmuch as in all that which is to be formed there is also something that has a right to existence, and hence a claim upon sparing; and an education which ignores this right in the pupil, is violent and therefore immoral.

SECTION CVII.

Moral forming differs likewise in two respects. (a) According to that which is formed in the object, it is either a sensuously-natural or a spiritual forming.--1. Natural forming is a shaping of nature-material for the human spirit by virtue of the mastery of the spirit over nature, to the end either of practical utility or of a manifesting of spirit in art-work. Nature, as created, is indeed per se good and perfect, but it becomes a true home for, a true organ of, the spirit and of history, only by becoming imbued with spirit. Natural forming is moral and rational only in so far as it is the sensuous expressing of a spiritual forming.

All dominating is necessarily a forming, inasmuch as the dominated is more or less an expression of the will of the dominating power. A natural entity can bear this expression only in virtue of being shaped by man and at the same time for man. In natural forming the difference between man, as a moral creature, and the brute, becomes at once plainly visible. The activity of the brute is predominantly a sensuous appropriating; that of man is predominantly a forming, and indeed primarily a sensuously-natural forming. The appropriating of nature is primarily permitted by God to man, and is limited by a prohibition only in one respect; the forming of nature is enjoined upon him [Gen. i, 28; ii, 15]. The mere letting alone of even a Paradisaical nature in its given condition, is for man per se immoral; he is called to form it into a home for himself by his personal activity.--But man cannot morally accomplish a natural forming save on the condition that there exists already in him an antecedent moral forming. The artist cannot create a work of art unless it has already been spiritually formed in his soul; and each and every object that is shaped, is to be, in its entire purpose, not a mere solitary something existing for itself, but rather one of the stones of a greater and essentially-spiritual structure,--the structure of history. Man shapes nature not for its own sake but for humanity, namely, into a home for man's spiritual life, into an expression of historical reality,--which is essentially the product of spiritual forming. Hence natural forming has always the purpose simply of serving the spiritual, even as the nourishment and development of the body take place not in the interest of the body, but of the spirit.

SECTION CVIII.

Spiritual forming relates to the spiritual essence of the object, and hence predominantly to the conscious spirit; it is a communicating of the spiritual possession of the subject to the object, a shaping of the object according to the rational idea of the subject, a putting of the former into harmony with the moral person of the latter. Each man has the duty of helping spiritually to form every other one who comes into spiritual relation with him, that is, of communicating to him his own moral nature, of revealing himself to him; this holds good even of the as yet morally immature in relation to the morally mature. All morally-spiritual communicating is a forming, and all spiritual forming is a communicating. Communicating is, however, only then a moral forming, when the communicating spirit itself stands in harmony with God, is itself morally good, and when its motive is love.

Also spiritual forming extends in a certain sense to nature-objects, in so far as these are not a mere sensuous existence, but have also spiritual contents. The training and ennobling of domestic animals is not a sensuous but a relatively-spiritual forming, inasmuch as their inner nature is raised to a higher plane. The chief sphere of spiritual forming is, however, the personal spirit. Man has neither the right nor the liberty to develop himself as a mere isolated individual,--he cannot develop himself morally save when in spiritual life-relation with the moral community; and each stands with every other in such a moral relation. And this relation is a mutual forming and appropriating, at the same time. Man is formed only by appropriating to himself spiritual elements, that is, in that another spirit reveals itself to him. Forming cannot take place morally by the imbuing of thoughts and sentiments that are foreign to the subject himself into the spirit that is to be educated, for this would be deception, and would not establish a spiritual communion; it can be done only by a self-revelation of the moral spirit. Only the morally-formed spirit can itself form; the immoral spirit can only pervert, and can do this successfully only when it affects morality. However, it is not necessary that the formative spirit should be already mature; also the child exerts a formative influence upon its elders.--In the condition of sinlessness the formative activity has no need of art or of a calculated plan; mere self-manifestation exercises a formative influence directly and of itself. All artfully-planned manners of influencing are evidence of lost purity, and cannot, however cunningly contrived, exert the power of the moral reality. The moral spirit lets its light shine before men that they may see its good works, and this light directly illumines and enlightens the spirit of others. This self-revelation, however, would be immoral, that is, hollow and empty, were it to spring from self-complacency instead of from love to others. It is love alone that divests this letting one's light shine of an appearance of parade. Loving souls hide themselves not from each other; true love impels to a full and genuine self-communication; and moral love has nothing that it would gladly or necessarily conceal.

SECTION CIX.

(b) According to the manner in which the objective entity is formatively influenced, we have to distinguish between particular and general forming.

1. Particular forming forms single objects for the service of the earthly wants of single or several persons, that is, for use for temporal ends. It is therefore labor, in the proper and narrower sense of the word. Labor relates not merely to natural matter, but also to the individual spirit, in so far as the latter is to be formed for the temporal earthly life, and hence is spiritual as well as natural forming.

All utility relates to the particular; that which is for the common utility is simply that which is useful for many particular persons. When the Rationalistic school spoke of the "common utility" of religion, it manifested simply very bad taste; religion is thus placed on a par, e. g., with a public fountain or an advertising sheet. Labor concerns the individual; works for the common utility, such as roads or canals, look not to the good of humanity as a whole, as a unity, but to the many individual persons whom they are to benefit; for him who does not use them, they have no significancy and are perhaps even offensive. Their utility and enjoyment fall to the individual as such, but not in virtue of his being a man, a rational spirit. In a work of art, however, one has pleasure precisely in his character of rational spirituality; although from another stand-point this work is of no "use" to him whatever. That which is to exalt the heart must be more than labor. Products of labor may indeed excite a general and rational interest, as, for example, a machine or other superior fruits of skill; here, however, it is not the work itself that is admired, but the art to which the handicraft has been exalted,--the spiritual power of invention, that is, the power of spirit,--not the utility, but the beauty or ingenuity,--not the merely individual element, but the spiritual, which, as such, bears upon itself the stamp of general significancy and validity. The actual work on a machine is performed not by the ingenious inventor, the master, but by the manual laborer; and in that which this laborer executes there is little else to admire than the industry, but nothing of a general interest. The end of a work of art is not, to be used by the individual, but to be enjoyed and admired universally; and it is properly regarded as a sign of spiritual unculture when a particular age takes delight only in the merely useful, in mere labor, and not also in that which transcends labor, namely, in art,--when the age does not also exalt labor into art. In the time of Rationalistic illuminism many "useless" art-structures of the Middle Ages, magnificent castles and churches, were converted into magazines and factories,--art was turned into a hand-maid of labor; this was certainly very "useful," but it was at the same time also an evidence of shameful unculture. The spirit of mere utility is but little removed from barbarism.

Labor is not mere manual toil. Common usage is perfectly right when it speaks also, and not merely in the stricter sense of the word, of spiritual, intellectual, labor, and of intellectual laborers, in distinction from a higher spiritual and intellectual activity. The highest results to which the spirit can attain are not effected by labor; the delicate, etherial image which delights our astonished gaze was not painfully wrought out by the sweat of the multitude, but sprang forth at once from the brain of genius; but, as distinguished from this ideal activity of the spirit, there is another which is entitled to be called work in the strict sense of the word, and which consists in a strictly-particular forming. All spiritual activity which looks to the mere benefit of individuals is labor; thus, we speak of the labor of pupils, of official labors, etc. The pupil labors in order, by the appropriation of particular scientific material, to form himself as an individual for a calling in life; the teacher labors upon the pupil for the same end. All spiritual forming which looks to success in the world, to obtaining a position in it, is labor; hence also we may speak of a scientific industry; there is an immense difference between science as manual labor, and science as an art. When the learner, however, elevates himself to a more ideal activity,--when, inspired with enthusiasm for the true and the good, he soars above the merely particular, or when the teacher seeks to awaken an enthusiasm of this character in him, then the activity ceases to be labor and becomes a higher kind of forming. It is true, we sometimes speak, though in a less strict sense, of a laboring in the sphere of purely spiritual things, as, for example, in that of religion and of active love [Rom. xvi, 6, 12; 1 Thess. i, 3; Heb. vi, 10; 1 Cor. xv, 58; 2 Cor. vi, 5; xi, 27; Rev. ii, 2, 3; xiv, 13]; Paul says, "I labored more abundantly than they all" [1 Cor. xv, 10], and the pastor and the messenger of the Word may speak of their labor on souls [1 Cor. xvi, 16; 2 Cor. x, 15; xi, 23; 1 Thess. iii, 5; v, 12; 1 Tim. v, 17]; however, in this essentially figuratively-used expression [see John iv, 38; 1 Cor. iii, 8] reference is had not to the activity per se, but to the trouble in overcoming obstacles (hence the words kopos and kopia) which lie not in the matter itself, but in other circumstances, such as the enmity of sinful men, the feebleness of the actor himself, etc.

SECTION CX.

2. General forming forms the object for a general, that is, a rational end,--not merely for a particular need, for temporal utility. but for the rational and moral spirit in general,--forms it for rational enjoyment, for moral approbation, i. e. into a beautiful and good product,--is artistic forming, in the largest sense of the word. It may be a sensuous as well as a spiritual forming. The natural entity receives a spiritual form,--becomes an expression, an image, of the rational spirit, an expression of harmony in general,--a work of art. The spiritual entity is formed into an essentially God-answering, truly rational character, into a beautiful soul, into a child of God. Religious and ideal culture in general differs essentially from education for a worldly calling,--aims not to make man into a "useful" and serviceable being, but into one in whom both God and men have pleasure, and who has himself pleasure in God and in all that is divine and beautiful,--seeks not to mold him into a merely isolated being, a mere citizen, a mere professional man, but seeks to bring to development that which is purely and truly human in him,--seeks to make the merely natural person into an image of the moral spirit, into a true image of God, into an expression of the truth. All that which is created by general forming is art-work; and when this forming, as distinguished from professional working, creates a science, then this science becomes itself a work of art. Hence, no general forming is possible without moral enthusiasm, that is, without being imbued with and prompted by a universal spirit which divests itself of all individual narrowness, and of all selfishness, and aspires to a universal divine ideal (§ 96).--A special phase of general forming constitutes the typical or symbolical activity, under which falls also the morally becoming.

The fruit which is aimed at in mere work is only for the benefit of the individual; works of art, and the beautiful and good in general, are for the spiritual enjoyment of rational man as such. Also the angels must rejoice in heaven, not only over a sinner who repents, but also over all that is truly beautiful. Man forms himself into a useful, a skillful, a learned member of society by labor and pains-taking, but into a beautiful soul only by enthusiasm; this is indeed not the beautiful soul as improvised by sentimental novelists, but the soul that is beautiful in the eyes of God and of all of God's children,--the child-soul of a child of God, full of love and enthusiasm,--the soul of him who is pure of heart, and which inwardly beholds God, because God looks upon it with pleasure. Hence the Scriptures look upon the higher artistic endowment as a special gift from God [Exod. xxxi, 3, 6; xxxvi, 1, 2].

Art in its deepest ground and essence is religious, as in fact historically it is a birth of religion; this holds good. without exception of all nations. No religion is without art, without an ideal embodying of the highest ideas. Architecture, plastic art and song, among all nations, have sprung from religion, and are the subservient attendants of religion [Exod. xxxi, 2 sqq.; xxxv, 1 sqq.]; and it required all the ungenial one-sidedness and bald reflective tendency of Zwingli to banish art from the Church,--a wrong against Christian humanity which has, at least in some degree, been disavowed in most of the branches of the Reformed Church. Even worldly art, in so far as it has not, untrue to its essential nature, entered into the service of sin, is closely related to religion. It also elevates man above the merely individual and sensuously-natural; and, itself a birth of enthusiasm, it awakens also in man enthusiasm for the beautiful and the noble,--for that which raises him out of his isolation and self-seeking, and up to that which finds response in all moral souls. Love to art banishes rudeness,--makes the heart receptive also for the morally beautiful and divine. Hence the culture of art is so important an element in education and in the life of nations. But for this reason also art becomes such a demon-power, when, forgetting its nobility, it stoops to the role of pandering to corrupt pleasure, and when, instead of inspiring enthusiasm for the truly beautiful, it only aims to intoxicate and seduce by lustful appeals to the senses. Wherever there is a healthful religious life, there art and religion stand in intimate and mutual relations. Where faith is alive in the heart, there it utters itself in "psalms and spiritual songs," there it celebrates the glory of its God in a becoming ornamentation of his altars and courts [Exod. xxxv, 21 sqq.], and wherever true art prevails there it consecrates the most beautiful of its products to the honor of God. Religion created for the Greeks poets and artists, and the poets and artists created for the Greeks their gods; and however much there may have been of heathen error in these creations, still this much at least is here exemplified, namely, that the divine makes its nearest approaches to man in the words, the songs and the works of artistic inspiration. The prophets of the Ancient Covenant were also unable to bring down to the plane of mere simple prose, the visions which they had spiritually beholden; and also the Prophet of the New Covenant publishes his visions under the drapery of boldly-constructed symbols. He who finds fault with this knows neither art nor religion.

General moral forming does not necessarily take place directly and immediately; as relating to the free spirit, it consists essentially in the fact that, by the moral activity of the subject, the object is so incited and inspired as to bring about self-development through his own spontaneity and strength. In this consists the true art of education and governing, namely, in that the guiding power hides itself in some respect from the spirit that is to be molded,--does not permit its influence upon it to appear as a limiting, overpowering force, but rather simply gives scope for free and independent self-development. This does not take place, however, by a simple "letting alone" of the one who is to be guided, but by the fact that the moral and rational consciousness is quickened and strengthened in him,--that he is brought to feel and know himself, not as a mere non-obligated individual, but as a personality inspired by a holy and moral spirit,--that a moral disposition and an ideal enthusiasm become in him an actuating power, which in turn itself forms him to a higher development and perfection.

There is an important sphere of moral activity, namely, symbolical forming--to which belongs also the practicing of the becoming,--which can be understood only from the stand-point of general artistic forming;--a sphere of stumbling and offense to all champions of the merely prosaically useful. The morally-good, is not simply to become real, but the real is also to be an expression, a manifestation of the morally-good,--is to bear witness in its entire outward appearance to an inner ideal quality, and every single good is to show itself not merely as per se good, but is also to point to a higher good beyond itself. Even as in nature, the good, as a regulated means to an end, is associated with a beauty more significant than the mere fitness for an end,--even as the flower not merely possesses the fructifying organs and the delicate tissues that protect them, but also, in its graceful form, its hues and its fragrance, delights man, and, as a symbol of the eternally beautiful, reminds him of divine love and of the glory of God,--even as the birds of song not only nourish themselves and propagate their race, but also praise the goodness of the Creator in strains that touch the heart,--even as God not only causes the sun to shine and to awaken life, and the clouds to drop rain, but also paints on the skies the color-resplendent bow as a pledge of his faithfulness and grace,--in a word, as God himself decks his creation with such grandeur that the heavens proclaim his glory, and with such beauty that the understanding is incapable adequately to comprehend it, but only the adoring heart to feel and love it,--so also man, as God-like, not only forms that which is useful for the temporal life, but also that which, as a significant sign, points to a higher good,--forms reality into a type of the true and good,--creates the poetry of reality. Every artistic product is such a sign or symbol, but all symbolical forming is not properly artistic in the stricter sense, though it is indeed poetical. The clothing of man is not simply for a protection against the weather, but also largely a suggestive expression of the inner life; all adornment as well as cleanliness has a spiritual suggestiveness. For him who knows not this symbolical, poetical phase of the moral, a very important and essential part of morality remains incomprehensible. A large portion of the moral precepts of the Scriptures look not to a direct and simple realization of a good, but to the expressive suggesting of a moral element not directly contained in the matter itself,--have a symbolical character; and lightly to esteem this phase of things is an indication of moral obtuseness. Doubtless it was not very "useful" when Mary, the sister of Lazarus, took a pound of pure and costly ointment and anointed the Lord's feet; and the harsh reproof of Judas was perfectly well-grounded from the stand-point of mere utilitarianism, but the Lord judged very differently from Judas [John xii, 3 sqq.; comp. Mark xiv, 3 sqq.]. To this category belong almost all the precepts of the Old Testament in regard to the clean and the unclean, to food and clothing,--in which case the object of the forming is man himself,--and also in regard to the form of worship and whatever is therewith connected, such as circumcision, etc., as well as in regard to agriculture [Lev. xix, 19; Deut. xxii, 9, 10] and to the treatment of animals [Exod. xxi, 28, 29, 32; xxiii, 19; Lev. xx, 15, 16].

The becoming is the outward, beautiful or symbolical form of the moral,--in a certain sense its esthetic phase. To celebrate the Lord's day in the spiritual-exalting of the heart to God, is a moral duty; to give expression to the celebration by sacred art and by a worthy outward appearance, is becoming. The ungodly world is prone to substitute in the place of the moral substance an outwardly and externally gracious form--the becoming; the suggestion: "That is not becoming," is with the irreligious world of much more weight than: "It is sinful." The outward form may indeed be hypocritically assumed in the absence of the substance, but he who holds fast to the moral substance, must observe also the form; he only is morally-cultured who not only observes the substance of the general precepts, but also aims at the morally-becoming; and this is in fact a general and artistic forming on the part of the moral activity. The becoming stands not along-side of the moral precept, but is essentially contained in it, as, in fact, without it man remains coarse and rude. Almost all of the above-mentioned precepts of the Old Testament are precepts of the becoming, and the New Testament also lays great stress on the becoming [1 Cor. xi, 4 sqq.; 1 Tim. ii, 9, and others].

SECTION CXI.

Appropriating and forming are, in a right moral development, ever in association with each other, and that too all the closer the higher their character. No spiritual appropriating is without spiritual self-forming, and no forming of an objective entity is without a spiritual appropriating of the thing formed; and in fact the forming of one's own spirit is per se necessarily an appropriating. The measure of appropriating and especially of enjoying stands in all right development, always in strict relation to the measure of the forming; and the two modes of forming are associated not only with each other, but also with the two modes of appropriating, as are in turn the latter with each other.

The fruit of labor and still more the work of art, are the property of the laborer and the artist; they call it their own; they have appropriated it to themselves in the very process of producing it. The outward-directed activity turns thus about and flows back into the acting person. In forming an objective entity, man forms his own self; he has the work not merely as his own, as a copy of his thought, but he is also himself spiritually and morally promoted both by the working and by the work. All forming is self-forming; and inasmuch as man stands to his fellows in a spiritual relation,--reveals himself to them through his culture,--hence all self-forming is directly also in turn a forming of others.--All particular forming, all work, should as moral include in itself also at the same time an element of general forming; without this the laborer falls into spiritual and moral deterioration. When the laborer unites the useful with the beautiful,--gives to his work a graceful form,--when song accompanies the work, when the heart mounts up from the work that serves a temporal end, toward the Eternal One, and thus puts into earnest practice the precept: "Pray and labor," then the particular forming is exalted and transfigured by the general. The more isolated, the more limited, the work is, so much the more preponderates the merely useful phase of it; hence no work is so dangerous, nay, so detrimental, to the harmoniously-moral culture of man as the spiritless mechanism of factory-work; and white slavery works here often much more ruinously than the black. The uninterrupted monotony of the narrow routine of the work paralyzes the spirit and subverts morality.

Furthermore, all forming is not only a general appropriating, formative of the subject himself, in that he recognizes the product of his influence, but also a particular appropriating, in that he enjoys it. The divine prototype of this is seen in the account of creation, where we read that God looked upon all that he had made, and found that it was very good. All moral work, and still more, all general forming, are, in and of themselves, also enjoyment, and that too the highest and purest enjoyment, even as in the above utterance of the Creator his own bliss was implicitly expressed also. But also the sensuous enjoyment that is not directly included in the formative activity itself, is nevertheless, in virtue of the moral order of the world, associated with it. Adam was first to dress and care for the garden, and thereafter to eat of its fruits [Gen. ii, 15, 16]. "If any one will not work, neither should he eat" [2 Thess. iii, 10]; this is a morally unassailable principle; and where the practice is otherwise, there the social relations are corrupt; and the grudge of the suffering laborer against the luxurious idler has a very just foundation. In proportion to the degree of productive activity, rises or falls the moral right to enjoyment in general, and to personal position in society. Hence the admonition: Let each labor to produce with his own hands something good [Eph. iv, 28; comp. Acts xx, 34, 35; 1 Thess. iv, 11; ii, 9].

SECTION CXII.

Inasmuch as man becomes perfect only through the perfect all-sided development of all his life-phases, and as ally exclusive realization and culture of one, or simply some, of them works a disturbance of the inner harmony, hence every person should, in so far as his circumstances admit of it, realize every form of moral appropriation and moral culture. He who allows his life to be devoted exclusively to particular forming and appropriating,--to toil and enjoyment, has fallen out of moral harmony, and is consequently immoral. General, and hence, essentially, religious, forming must attend the work hand in hand; and the ordination of the Sabbath along-side of the days of labor has not simply a religious, but essentially also a moral significancy. Moral resting from labor is a rising to ideal self-culture, an exalting of the temporally-particular into the eternal, the holy, the general, the divine; the celebrating of the Sabbath is the higher and moral transfiguring of the temporal prosaic individual life by the poesy of the ideal and the infinite.

In particular forming man merges himself into objective existence; primarily he has not the object in his own possession, but the object possesses him; hence the danger, especially in a state of sinfulness, that the person lose himself in his labor,--that, as in sensuous enjoyment, he passively surrender himself to the creature [Eccles. vi, 7, in the Hebrew text]. Man should, however, hold fast to himself and to his Creator,--should withdraw himself from his absorption in finite things, collect himself in spiritual repose,--should obtain fresh moral strength for the particular forming of industry, in the general forming which springs of enthusiasm. Even as God, though merging himself into the world while creating it, yet did not lose and forget himself in it, but returned to himself and to his infinite self-sufficiency, and ever retains himself in eternal unchangeable majesty above all that is created, so also is it a moral requirement that man, in his creating of the finite and particular, should not forget himself as a personality gifted with eternal destinies; it is for man's sake that the Sabbath was made [Mark ii, 27]. It is very suggestive that in the Scriptures the repose of God after creation is made the prototype and basis for the celebration of the Sabbath [Gen. ii, 3; Exod. xx, 8 sqq. ]. It is thereby implied that it is our innermost God-likeness that calls for the rest of the Sabbath,--the truly rational, religiously-moral essence of man, and not the mere natural need of repose and enjoyment. That which is with God only two phases of his eternal life itself, and not an alternation in time, namely, creative action and self-possession, this falls, in the case of the finite spirit, at least partially, into such an alternation,--into labor and Sabbath-rest. God blessed the Sabbath day; there rests upon its observance an especial, an extraordinary benediction, an impartation of heavenly goods, even as the blessing upon labor is primarily only an importation of temporal goods. The Sabbath has not merely a negative significancy, is not a mere interruption of labor, but it has a very rich positive significancy,--it is the giving free scope to the higher, time-transcending nature of the rational God-like spirit, the re-attaching of the spirit that had been immersed by labor into the temporal, to the imperishable and to the divine. Where God is conceived of as swallowed up in nature, as with the Chinese and in the unbelief of our own day, there exists no Sabbath; there is to be found only a discretionary alternation of labor and sensuous enjoyment. The celebration of the Sabbath belongs to morality per se, and does not depend on the fact of the state of redemption from sinfulness; but where sin is as yet a dominant power there its observance is necessarily less free, legally more strict, than where the freedom of the children of God prevails.

From the fact that all moral working is attended also with a general forming, it follows manifestly that, for him who is truly morally free, the antithesis of Sabbath-rest and labor is not of an absolute character,--that every day and all labor have also their Sabbath consecration, and that, on the other hand, also the Sabbath does not absolutely exclude all work. It is perfectly clear, however, that, in general, only such works consist with the observance of the Sabbath as express a general formative activity,--as bear an artistic character in the noblest sense of the word. In this category belong those healings of the sick by which the Lord incurred the reproach of Sabbath-breaking. Such works are not labor, but, as a restoring of the disturbed order of the universe, ate of general and spiritual significancy.

SUBDIVISION SECOND.

THE MORAL ACTIVITY IN ITS DIFFERENCES AS RELATING TO ITS DIFFERENT OBJECTS.--I. IN RELATION TO GOD.

SECTION CXIII.

As God sustains to man an essentially active and creative, but not a receptive, relation, hence in the strict sense of the word he is an object only of moral appropriating.

(a) The moral appropriating of God is directly at the same time also the highest moral self-forming of the moral person, and contains two necessarily associated elements: first, that God becomes for us, and secondly, that we become for God; that is, that, on the one hand, we take up into our moral consciousness the ever present divine, and that, on the other, we elevate our moral consciousness to God,--form it into the divine life; the former is faith, the latter is worship; neither can exist without the other. Believing is the lovingly-willed and lovingly-willing, that is, the pious recognizing of God as lovingly revealing himself to us as our Lord and our Father, and to whom we are obligated to unconditional obedience and submissive love,--it is the self-consciousness of man as having come to its rational truth, namely, in that man regards himself no more as a mere isolated individual, but thinks of himself constantly and strictly in his relations to God.

As believing is essentially the particular appropriating of God, so the knowing, the cognizing of Him is the general appropriating; and hence the striving for this knowledge is a high moral duty; this duty is fulfilled not without believing, but only through and in virtue of the same,--is a spiritual receiving and a true appropriating of the divine revelation imparted to us through the channel of faith, in regard to the nature, power, and will of God. The correct knowledge of God is not the antecedent condition, but the goal of the moral striving, and hence without it there can be no perfection of morality.

God is indeed per se already present in every creature; but in order that he shall be truly present for man, that is, in a manner called for by his rational nature, it is necessary that man shall freely appropriate to himself this presence of God. I possess rationally only that which I rationally and morally appropriate. All appropriating, and hence all faith, pre-supposes a difference, and at the same time a mutual life-relation between its subject and its object; what I already am, in and of myself, that I cannot appropriate to myself. That the appropriating of God is a moral act, arises from the fact that man may fully admit his difference from, and yet not heartily recognize his life-relation to, God,--may cling to himself as independent of God, may sinfully aspire even to become like God. It is a moral activity when man raises his self-consciousness, which is primarily merely individual, into a truly rational one, and conceives of himself not merely as an isolated being, but as conditioned by God, that is, as created by and obligated to God; it is only this religious self-consciousness that is moral, and this is in fact faith. Faith is not a mere regarding as true, not a mere religious knowledge, or a mere objective consciousness, but it is a morally-conditioned believing, a willing, and hence a loving, recognition; in faith we will to have God and a consciousness of him in us, and we desire this consciousness as divine, that is, as a full and true life-force, and hence as operative, as realizing the divine. The notion of faith combines, therefore, loving and willing with knowing,--is not identical with one of the three, but is the unity of them,--is not an affair of the mere understanding but of the heart (§ 53). Faith is the thankful reflection of the divine love; he who is loved by God, turns himself lovingly toward the loving One. Without the love of God to man there would be no love of man to God; man believes because he becomes conscious of the divine love; he who would only recognize received love, but not reciprocated it with his heart, is immoral; a mere recognition of God without heart-faith is sinful.

"Faith is the substance (the sure confidence) of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" [Heb. xi, 1]; it is not a confidence of that which falls within the immediate scope of experience, but of that which lies beyond it, not of that which already exists in realization but of that which is yet, in virtue of faith, to be realized into fact, though indeed it already exists in germ. The really complete life-communion with God, the full appropriating of the divine, is at first only an object of hope,--can be really brought about only through faith; and faith lays hold, in full confidence of success, upon the divine as lovingly revealing itself to it. Faith stands, therefore, not by the side of knowledge, as if not including this within itself, nor yet below it, as if it were but a lower degree thereof, and would cease with the increase of knowledge, but in fact above it, inasmuch as it is a loving knowing, a lovingly-willed and lovingly-willing knowing of God, so that consequently it includes within itself both feeling and willing as essential constituent elements. Believing leads to knowing, but also precedes actual knowing, and hence is not conditioned thereon.

As particular appropriating, believing or faith is, so to speak, an enjoying of the divine,--belongs essentially to the personality itself, and is therefore not communicable, whereas knowing may, on the presupposition of faith, be communicated by instruction. In the entire sphere of the religious life, believing precedes knowing, for without faith God would no more exist for us than would sensuous objects without our senses; believing includes, it is true, some degree of knowing, but is not per se complete knowing. And for the simple reason that believing includes knowing as an essential element, it is a moral requirement to bring our knowing to its highest possible perfection, and thereby also to heighten and strengthen faith. The divine revelation as received by faith becomes real knowledge by a proper spiritual merging of ourselves into it, by a full appropriating of its contents into our entire spiritually-transformed being, so that the knowing becomes thus a powerful moral motive to the loving of God and to obedience to his will [Psa. lxiii, 7 sqq.; Jer. xxix, 13, 14; John viii, 32; Acts xvii, 27; Col. i, 11; Eph. i, 17, 18]. The knowledge of God consists not merely in the, as yet, only imperfectly attainable [1 Cor. xiii, 9, 10; 2 Cor. v, 7; Isa. lv, 8, 9] knowledge of God's being [Rom. i, 19, 20], but also of the divine will as to us [Col. i, 9, 10; Eph. v, 15-17] and of the divine providential activity in nature and in human life, and of the holy purpose of his world-government. Though indeed a proper and ripe knowledge of God leads to a higher perfection of the moral life, still knowledge is not, as faith, the antecedent condition of the moral in general; for only he can know the truth of God who is pure of heart [Matt. v, 8].

SECTION CXIV.

The second phase of the moral appropriating of God is, that man becomes for God,--that he exalts himself toward God by a moral act in order to unite God actually, and not simply in inner recognition, with himself,--in order to permit the divine activity to be influential upon him; this is in fact the worshiping of God, which is at once a religious and a moral, and hence a holy, activity. The worship of God is either purely spiritual and at the same time affirmative, namely, in that man puts himself spiritually into direct relation with God,--rises to God in pious devotion, which is prayer,--or it is of a rather virtual and at the same time more negative character, namely, a free moral turning away from the ungodly and the unholy,--sacrifice. These two phases of the worshiping of God belong inseparably together; there is no prayer without sacrifice, and no sacrifice without prayer.

Faith is the purely inward phase of the moral appropriating of the divine,--the woman-like self-opening of the soul for the in-shining of the divine light; in this receiving, the person remains strictly in and with himself. Worshiping is more objective; the person goes forth out of himself,--lets his own light beam forth toward the divine original light, even as the flame of the sacrifice, when once kindled by the heavenly fire, mounts up toward heaven again. All worshiping of God presupposes faith, though it is itself more than faith. When man has by faith received the divine into himself, and imbued himself therewith, he still yet distinguishes himself as a creature from God,--puts himself into moral relation to God, raises himself by a moral action to God as to one different from himself; and this is the worshiping of God. To the pure mystic all worship falls away, for he loses sight of the distinction between the Infinite and the finite.

Worship is the immediate actual outgoing of faith; it is a religious activity which aims at making the already naturally-existing communion of God with us into a consciously-willed communion of ourselves with God; it is a sacred activity as distinguished from the worldly or profane,--from that which deals only with temporal things. In a normal moral condition of humanity, all activity whatever would bear a sacred character, and the distinction between the sacred and the "profane" could only assume the form of a conditional outward difference of a temporally-alternating occupation with earthly things, on the one hand, and with eternal interests on the other; with labor and with the Sabbath-rest of the soul during the continuance of the earthly life, and that, too, only in so far as consistent with the fact that all earthly occupation is constantly exalted and sanctified by a positive and conscious relation to the eternal. Our sacred activity relates either immediately to God,--is a purely affirmative uniting of the human to the divine; or it relates only mediately to God, but immediately to the ungodly, namely, in that by refusing the ungodly, it sets up a barrier against it,--turns the heart away from the evil, and toward God. These two features can never be separated; prayer without sacrifice, without a rejecting of the ungodly both within and without us, is morally impossible; in exalting ourselves to God in prayer we at the same time distinguish the divine from the anti-divine, and withdraw ourselves from the latter; we cannot truly pray without at the same time renouncing the worldly,--without giving up, without sacrificing, the pretentious emptiness of finite things.

SECTION CXV.

1. Prayer, as resting on faith in the personal God, is the free moral uniting of the believing heart with God, in such a manner that the moral personality is in fact not lost, but, on the contrary, exalted in and by God; it is the free and conscious recognizing that God knows all our thoughts, and the joyful wish that such be the case; it exalts our natural communion with God into a spiritual and moral one, the being of God in man into a being of man in God. As it is alone in this being at one with God that the true life of the rational spirit consists, hence in the moral man, at least a prayerful disposition, if not express praying in words, must be strictly unceasing. Prayer has only then moral worth when it really springs of a praying heart, and hence, when it is offered with devotion; and as it unites the person with the Father of all men, hence it leads to a communion of prayer, and the higher form of prayer is therefore social prayer.

In prayer man enters into personal communion with God, and in loving confidence expressly communicates to him as the All-knowing One, his pious thinking, feeling, and willing; only that which is pious can be communicated to God; a consciously unpious prayer is blasphemy. Prayer is absolutely conditioned on a believing recognition of the divine omniscience; it is not, therefore, so much a means of making our thoughts known to God,--for God knows our thoughts from afar, and of what we have need before we ask therefor,--as rather an expression of our belief that God knows, and our joyful willingness that he should know thereof. A prayer that should spring from the thought that God himself needed it in order to know our inward state, would be per se impious and in self-contradiction; but every thought and every act that we are not willing that God should know, and that we would hide from him, is impious, and the degree of our piety is measured by the degree in which we have the desire that all our acts and thoughts should be known of God. The intermission of prayer does not shut out our inner life from the divine knowledge, it simply shuts out the divine blessing from us. Prayer reveals not our being to the divine knowledge, but it reveals the divine all-knowing presence to us,--brings not God down to us, but elevates us to God; it is for us the means of uniting ourselves truly with God, inasmuch as thereby not only is God, as the Omnipresent One, with us, but also we, by a religiously-moral act of will, are with God; and only when God is himself with us, not merely naturally and without our desire, but upon our express prayer and seeking therefor, are we in real saving life-communion with him. Without prayer there can be only a natural, but not a moral and spiritual communion with God; and this merely natural communion is, on the supposition that it rises no higher, in antagonism to the essence of a moral creature, and hence leads to the casting off of man by God. For him who cannot pray, God's presence is judicial and condemnatory. As in prayer man exalts himself to the highest object of the moral activity, so is prayer also the highest moral act; and all other moral action receives its moral worth solely from its relation to this,--solely as morally consecrated by prayer.

In prayer, man gives utterance to his highest moral privileges and to his free personality, inasmuch as thereby, with full and joyful freedom, he wills, recognizes and heightens that which already existed without prayer, though indeed only in an immediate, natural ante-moral manner, but which could not so remain without turning into antagonism and unblessedness, namely, the divine omnipresent domination. Only to those who desire it is God's presence a blessing, and only by those who love is the loving communion of God experienced; "draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you" [James iv, 8; comp. Psa. cxlv, 18, 19]. It is the sublime significancy of prayer that it brings into prominence man's great and high destination, that it brings to expression his free personal relation to God, that it heightens man's consciousness of his true moral nature in relation to God; and as all morality depends on our relation to God, prayer is, in fact, the very life-blood of morality. The true freedom, and hence also the true morality of man, manifests itself not in his arbitrarily choosing that which is fleeting or baseless, but in the fact that with conscious free-will and glad assent he recognizes and confirms that which lies in the holy constitution of the world itself. To the limited natural understanding, prayer seems useless and therefore irrational; for this understanding is not capable of comprehending the spiritual. It is true, God causes his sun to rise upon the good and the evil, gives rain to the just and the unjust, furnishes food to man and beast,--in a word, He "gives to all men their daily bread" even without prayer; but the significancy of such prayer is the fact of our recognizing Him as the Giver of all, of our receiving his gifts with thankfulness. That God's presence and gifts be not only about us but also for us, that they become a blessing to us, a bond of love between God and us, a living fountain of godly-mindedness,--that they be not foreign to us, not in antagonism to us, but in fact our own and in harmony with us,--that God's being in us be also our being in God,--all this is the fruit of prayer.

Prayer is so intimately connected with the morally-religious life that it appears, under some form, even among those nations where, because of the relative ignoring of the personality of God, it has almost lost all shadow of meaning, as, for example, in India. Greek and Roman philosophers often introduce their disquisitions with prayers (Socrates, Plato); the Romans prayed on occasion of all important state-events, on the election of magistrates, the enactment of laws, etc. Of course in heathen prayer there could never exist the proper earnestness, inasmuch as the idea of God was always imperfect; no heathen could ever pray as could a pious Israelite. The first real opposing of prayer, if we except the frivolous Epicureans, was on the part of Maximus of Tyre, a Platonist of the second century after Christ; it was also opposed by Rousseau, though for very superficial reasons (because the order of the universe could not be changed by individual wishes), and, with astonishing lack of insight by Kant, who even finds in the Lord's Prayer, as given by Christ, a very clear suggestion to substitute in the place of all prayer simply a determination to lead a good life (Relig. innerh., etc., 1794, p. 302). In Pantheism the rejection of prayer as absurd, is a matter of course.--The Scriptures present prayer as one of the most essential moral requirements [Psa. cxlv, 18, 19; Matt. vii, 7; Mark xi, 24; James i, 5 sqq.; 1 Tim. ii, 1-3; Eph vi, 18]. The injunction to pray without ceasing [Luke xviii, 1-7; 1 Thess. v, 17; Rom. xii, 12; Col. iv, 2; 1 Tim. ii, 8; comp. Psa. lxiii, 7] implies the constant aspiring of our heart to God as to Him whose will alone is our law, and who gives his blessing to whatever is done in his name.--Where sin is not yet dominant, any other than a devotional prayer is inconceivable. Devotion in prayer is not merely the absence of distraction, but it is the praying out of a true, earnest and upright heart-disposition. Devotion cannot be required as a special duty, for it is necessarily included in the very idea of prayer; the Scriptures simply allude to the earnestness of prayer, and to the liability of self-deception in well-meant prayer [Isa. xxix, 13; Psa. cxlv, 18; Matt. xv, 8; vi, 5-7; James v, 16].

It is not as a merely moral, but as a religious, activity that prayer leads to communion, for religion is essentially socializing, not directly, however, but in virtue of the communion which it establishes with God. Mere individual prayer has its proper justification as bearing on the personal relation to God; it is in fact the primary and most obvious form [Matt. vi, 6]; but prayer attains to its highest, though never exclusive, character as the single-hearted prayer of the believing communion or church-society. And this not simply because such prayer hightens the feeling of the unitedness of the faithful, but because, in virtue of the throwing off of personal isolation and of its flowing out of the holy spirit which pervades the society, it has a guarantee of greater purity, and consequently the promise of special blessing [Matt. xviii, 20; Acts ii, 42; Eph. v, 19; Col. iii, 16].--Christ himself gives the moral pattern of prayer; he prayed out of the full consciousness of life-communion with God, and consequently with full confidence of being answered [Heb. v, 7]; he prayed often in solitude [Matt. xiv, 23; xxvi, 36, 42; Mark vi, 32; Luke vi, 12; ix, 28], and often in the presence of others [Matt. xxvi, 39; John xi, 41 sqq.], and in communion with his disciples [John xvii, 1 sqq.].

SECTION CXVI.

All prayer is primarily, either expressly or in virtue of its necessary presuppositions, a confession, a recognition of God as the unconditional Lord, and as the all-knowing, all powerful and all-loving Father. In as far as in it we are always conscious of ourselves as loved by God, prayer is at the same time also thanksgiving. In so far as in prayer we have respect not only to the past and present, but also to the goal of moral effort, the realization of which we regard as not in our own power independently of God, nor yet in an unfree nature-necessity, but in the will of God as co-operating with us, prayer becomes petition--the climax of the inner religiously-moral life, wherein the true filial relation of man to God finds its expression; and as the moral end is of a rational, and hence not merely individual, character, consequently the petition is essentially also intercession--the highest religious expression of our love to man. As only the all-embracing wisdom of God is capable of fully seeing the appropriateness of earthly things and relations to the attainment of the highest good, hence the petition for earthly goods, though per se entirely legitimate, can never be more than of a humbly conditional character; and there is no petition other than that for the per se unquestionably eternal good, that has no other condition than the willing, believing obedience of the subject. The promise of answering is based on the condition of believing and of humble confidence.

Prayer is per se a recognition of God,--it is adoration and confession both to God as the all-ruling One, and also before God as the all-knowing and holy One. In this recognizing confession itself, there is involved a thanksgiving, which consequently is included, though it may be but implicitly, in every prayer; in the Lord's Prayer it lies in the very address. All thanksgiving [1 Sam. ii; Psa. cvi, 1; Rom. xv, 6; 1 Tim. iv, 4, 5; Phil. iv, 6; Col. iii, 17; iv, 2] is at the same time a petition for the bestowal of the good for which it is offered; and the petition is, in virtue of the soul-uniting filial relation to God, necessarily also intercession for others and for the whole kingdom of God [Matt. vi, 10; John xvii, 9 sqq.; Eph i, 16; vi, 18; 1 Tim. ii, 1-3; Col. i, 9; iv, 3; Phil. i, 4; James v, 16; Heb. xiii, 18]. So long as prayer remains of a merely individual character, it comes short of true prayer,--rests not yet on a consciousness of the filial relation to God, for this consciousness is inconsistent with self-seeking exclusiveness; the children of God have their home only in the kingdom of God.

Prayer as petition is the profoundest enigma for the merely wordly finitely-occupied understanding; for the religious heart, however, it is the beginning and the center of the spiritual life. He who cannot offer petitions to God is not of God. All intellectual doubts as to the nature and efficacy of petitioning prayer, have as their back-ground a doubt of the personality of God, although they may assume to be a vindication of the eternal order of the world. A God who cannot answer petitions is not a personal spirit, but only an unconscious nature-force. In the believing petition the Scriptures promise answers [Psa. 1, 15; x, 17; xxii, 4, 5; xxxiv, 15; lxii, 1 sqq.; lxv, 2; xciv, 9; cii, 17; cxlv, 18, 19; Prov. xv, 8; Isa. lxv, 24; Matt. vii, 7; xviii, 19; xxi, 22; John ix, 31; xvi, 23, 24; 1 John iii, 22; v, 14; James i, 5; iv, 8; v, 13-18; 1 Pet. iii, 12]; to the impious and foolish petition they refuse it [Job xxvii, 9; xxxv, 13; Psa. lxvi, 18; Prov. xv, 8, 29; xxviii, 9; Isa. i, 15; John ix, 31; James iv, 3, and others]; and confident faith in an answer is itself the condition of the answer [Mark xi, 24; James i, 6, 7]. As the fuller development of the subject belongs to dogmatics, we here subjoin but a few general observations. The answering of prayer is not unconditional; it is conditioned, on the one hand, on the loving wisdom of God, which is higher than that of man [Eph. iii, 20], and, on the other, on the prayer-spirit of him who prays. And the answer is not a merely seeming one, so that prayer would be superfluous, but the answer is given on the basis and in virtue of the prayer [Luke xi, 5-13; xviii, 1 sqq.,--the lesson of which is, that if earnest prayer is effectual even with unloving men, how much more is it so with the all-loving One who gladly hears such petitions; Gen. xviii, 23 sqq.; Exod. xxxii, 9 sqq.; Num. xiv, 13 sqq., 20; xvi, 20 sqq.; Isa. xxxviii]. Prayer does not change the eternal counsel of God; this counsel is itself not unconditional, but it is determined by the all-knowing One in view of the free conduct of his creatures; and, consequently, one element of it is, that prayer is eternally destined to be answered. Every pious prayer is answered, although only in the manner most wholesome to him who offers it, and hence not always in the special manner in which the answer is expected [2 Cor. xii, 8, 9.] If man deceives himself as to the sought good, still he receives the good,--not, however, the false one which he had in mind, but the true one which he had in heart. Hence no believing prayer, in so far as it relates to earthly goods, can be or should be more than a conditional petition, and the manner of the fulfillment must be submitted to the wisdom of God. If even Christ prays in this conditional manner to the Father [Matt. xxvi, 39, 42; Luke xxii, 42], by how much more should man so pray, whose knowledge is so limited; true faith is in fact a confidence that God knows best what serves for our peace, and brings it about; childlikeness and humble confidence give power and truth to prayer [Rom. viii, 15; Gal. iv, 6]. Under this condition, prayer for particular earthly goods is not only allowed to man, but is also willed by God and with promise of answering [Matt. vi, 11; vii, 7 sqq.; Phil. iv, 5, 6; Eph. vi, 18; James v, 14 sqq.]; and the confidence of obtaining the object sought, even in such special petitions rises to confident assurance wherever the prayer goes forth from a complete life-communion with God, and in the, power of the Holy Ghost,--wherever it is prayer "in spirit and in truth" [John iv, 24; Rom. viii, 26, 27; Gal. iv, 6; Eph. vi, 18; comp. John xiv, 13; xvi, 23]; for, the more complete the union of the pious heart with God, so much the more does it partake of the illuminating power of God, and God's knowledge of the future begets in him who partakes of God's Spirit a presentiment of the divine counsel in regard to him; and the presentiment rises to a prayerful longing, an unshaken faith; and the true petition to a prophecy. The fulfillment of the petition is felt by anticipation in the prayer itself; he who truly prays is a prophet; and God is the fulfiller of the prophecy, because he is the author of the counsel. Here also Christ himself furnishes the pattern: "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me," etc. [John xi, 41]; his prayer related to what he had already prophetically beholden and predicted [verses 11, 23]. The primary and most essential element of true prayer is, of course, the petition for the filial relation to God and for the coming of the kingdom of God [Matt. vi, 10, 12; John xvii, 15; Luke xi, 13]. Man should beware, however, of sinning in prayer itself; but by self-seeking narrowness he does this; to pray in the spirit of God, is to pray for the kingdom of God. Model prayers are the Lord's Prayer and the high-priestly prayer of Christ.

As God's eternal decree to answer prayer is conditioned on the actuality of the prayer, hence prayer is not simply moral appropriation, but also, though not in a direct and strict sense, moral forming, seeing that, though indeed not God himself, yet in fact the particular temporal manifestation of his world-government, is conditioned on prayer. God's essence is indeed not subject to change; his doing and acting in the world, however, are, in virtue of his righteous love, conditioned on the free conduct of his rational creatures, and hence also on prayer. The real forming, however, which is directly connected with prayer relates to the personal religiously-moral being of the subject. The blessing efficacy of prayer beams back from God upon the offerer, namely, in that in virtue of the prayer not only his being in God comes more vividly to his consciousness, and has a more efficacious influence, but also God's being in him comes to a higher reality. Faith in prayer and in the answering of prayer, heighten the divine life of the children of God.

SECTION CXVII.

2. The negating and rather virtual phase of the service of God, is the actual or symbolical manifesting of the real or conditional vanity of earthly things and relations, as contrasted with God or with the God-loving, pious state of the heart, namely, in sacrifice, the essence of which is self-denial or renunciation. In the unfallen state of man sacrifice consists essentially simply in a free giving-up of that which is naturally pleasurable, out of regard to the divine will and far the sake of the higher good, the moral end; hence it consists in the subordinating and giving up of earthly desire. The appropriating of the divine requires the rejection of all that is ungodly, and therein the person accomplishes, at the same time, a high moral culture of himself.

As contrasted with the highest good and with God, every thing finite appears as relatively empty and void; the actual manifesting of this nullity, out of love to the divine, is sacrifice,--a notion that is fundamental to all religions, and that constitutes the focal point of all religious life, and which is still recognizable even in the most utter perversions of the truth. [13] There is no love without sacrifice; the higher the love, so much the higher the readiness to sacrifice for the sake of the beloved; sacrifice is the test of love; maternal love sacrifices repose and enjoyment for the sake of the child; this is not figurative language,--the sacrifice is real and true. As God's highest love expresses itself in the giving up of his Son, so man's love to God is manifested in the sacrificing of that to the enjoyment of which man has in general a right. As, however, in the sinless state of humanity, there would exist no really untrue and vain object from which man would have actually to turn away in moral abhorrence, but only a merely relatively such, namely, the merely natural and transitory as in contradistinction to the spiritual, hence in this case sacrifice would not consist in the destruction of an entity, but in the renunciation of an enjoyment, an abstaining from the merely worldly. In the interest of his spiritual freedom, of his moral growth, man is not to give himself over to nature, but must by obedience renounce some degree of the enjoyment of nature and of his personal discretion. He is to sacrifice whatever tempts him from God, whatever binds him to the merely natural or to the non-divine; also of unfallen man it was required that he should realize his spiritual freedom by the free renunciation of a merely natural enjoyment. Christ's fasting in the wilderness was not a part of his atoning self-sacrifice, and yet it was a sacrifice on the part of the Son of man, even as was also required of unfallen man. In yielding himself to enjoyment without moral discrimination, man loses hold on the spiritual; lie must renounce in order to be free. In the unfallen state sacrifice has essentially an educative end and a symbolical form. God certainly did not forbid man to eat of the designated tree because it was a bad tree, for to sinless beings there could be nothing evil in the entire circle of God-made nature; but in his educative wisdom, God required of man a sacrifice, for the simple reason that no moral life is possible without self-restraint, no religious life without sacrifice. Man stands in the presence of nature and God, both are good; but nature is a created object and may not be placed on an equal footing with God. When man enjoys nature for its own sake and without reference to God, he sins; for he ought to belong, not to nature, but to God. Hence he should recognize, and manifest in moral acts, the truth that nature per se is not the true being and the true goal of moral aspiration, namely, the highest good, but only a means to this end. Hence his moral relation to nature and to the sensuous, is, as in contrast to his relation to God, of a negative character. This "no" in regard to nature, man pronounces morally when he subordinates his relation to nature to his higher relation to God, when he says to sensuous desire: "Thou mayest not, shalt not absorb and dominate my thinking and willing;" he must freely hold in check the merely sensuous, for the sake of the spiritual,--must restrain himself from the former in order that he may possess and perfect himself as a moral spirit, and that he may rise to spiritual-mindedness.

It is the antagonism of the spirit to the flesh that lies at the basis of sacrifice; in the interest of the spiritual, the spirit sacrifices the fleshly. Also man as normal and not yet sinful, had to crucify his flesh with the affections and lusts thereof [Gal. v, 24], although this flesh and its desires were not yet immoral; but to have sought the flesh as an end, as a good, would have been sinful; and God put upon him a requirement of abnegation in order that he might recognize and actually learn this fact,--that he might break away from the merely sensuous, and develop in himself the image of God. Simple obedience to this requirement, without a why or wherefore, was the purest and best of sacrifices. This Paradisaical germ of all sacrifice is, therefore, self-denial in obedience to God, a renouncing not a destroying, a giving up, out of love to the spirit, of that which is dear to the flesh; and this idea pervades all forms of sacrifice, even the emphatic sin-offering; only that which is dear to man can be to him a sacrifice; and because of the simple fact that the first man would not bring the light sacrifice required of him, it became necessary for him afterward to make severer ones; and from the hour of the fall and thenceforth the morally-religious consciousness of humanity finds satisfaction only in a series of progressively more violent and more terrible sacrifices, culminating in the offering of human victims, and that too not merely among the rude, but even among the most civilized of gentile nations.

In the idea of sacrifice it is always implied that that which the person gives up is per se good and right, that primarily lie has a right to its enjoyment, but that he gives it up for the sake of a higher end; to give up that which is per se bad, is not to sacrifice; the offering that was presented to Jehovah had to be pure and spotless; and the worth of the sacrifice rises with the worth of the object offered. Thus, sensuous enjoyment is per se good, but it must be restrained and limited, and often refused, in order that not it but the rational spirit may be the master. But man has also to bring, in the interest of the moral, purely spiritual sacrifices. It was not the sensuous per se that was the temptation to Eve, but the representation made to her that the tree would render her "wise;" it was her duty, as it is the duty of man in general, to renounce the desire of obtaining from the creature that wisdom which only God can impart--which can be learned only in believing obedience to God.

The sacrifice that was required of unfallen man implied in its renunciation at the same time, a confession, namely, to God as the highest good and the highest love, and this again implied thankfulness for the love received in communion with God. Inasmuch as every good gift is from God hence the thank-offering of the believer can only be symbolical, expressive of his readiness to give up in the interest of the eternal even that which is dearest of all to him, in the consciousness that in the communion with God for whom it is given up, the real and true life is in fact preserved; in the presence of God none is to appear empty [Exod. xxiii, 15; xxxiv, 20].

Sacrifice appears in the Old Testament in its more definite form as early as in the case of Cain and Abel; we find no indication of its express institution by God; and we might therefore regard it as an immediate and natural expression of the religious consciousness; however, a positive divine prescription is the more probable. It is certainly not probable that sacrifice was first made from a consciousness of guilt; the offerings of Cain and Abel, consisting of the products of the field and of the flock, seem rather to be thank-offerings than sin-offerings; Abel's bloody offering is expressly designated [Gen. iv, 4] by the word minchah (present, gift) by which are subsequently designated the bloodless thank-offerings in contradistinction to the bloody, and, for the most part, atoning offerings, namely, the sebachim; the offering of Noah appears expressly as a thank-offering [viii, 20] The burning up of the material of the sacrifice signifies the renunciation and the eradication of the earthly desires of him who sacrifices; the pure heavenward-mounting sacrificial flame symbolizes the exaltation of the heart from the earthly to the heavenly,--the union with God. Thus sacrifice becomes a symbol of the alliance of man with God; and in the case of Noah and the patriarchs, a sign of the Covenant, and hence also a sign of the union of the Israelites who escaped from Egypt, into one people [Exod. iii, 12]. And, therefore, subsequently in the fully-developed sacrificial service of a sinful people, the essence of the sacrifice was in fact not placed in the outward rite, but in the submission of the heart, in the renunciation of an earthly self-seeking mind, in the complete giving up of all earthly love for God's sake [Gen. xxii, 16]; obedience is better than [outward] sacrifice; God-pleasing sacrifices are a broken spirit and a contrite heart, and "to do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice" [1 Sam. xv, 22; Psa. xl, 6; 1, 8-15; li, 16, 17, 18; Hos. vi, 6; Eccl. iv, 17; Prov. xxi, 3, 27; Isa. i, 11; Jer. vi, 20; comp. Matt. ix, 13; xii, 7; Mark xii, 33]. In the case of the very first sacrifices God warns man against the error of supposing that the essence of the sacrifice lies in the outward act; Abel's offering He graciously accepts, that of Cain He disregards. Sacrifice is an appropriating of the divine, inasmuch as in the turning away from the non-divine there is necessarily implied a turning to the divine.

SECTION CXVIII.

The moral sparing of the divine, has direct reference not to God himself; but to the forms under which He is revealed. Every thing whereby God becomes for us is sacred as distinguished from merely created objects per se. In the unfallen state of humanity all created objects are at the same time also sacred, namely, in so far as they are considered an expression of the divine will; and whatever is sacred is in the highest degree an object of moral sparing,--should be treated as sacred. This sparing springs from moral humility,--is an express respecting of the sacred in virtue of a holy awe, springing from a lively consciousness, on the one hand, of the divine glory even in the humbler forms of its manifestation, and, on the other, of our own existence as a limited one and as resting solely on divine grace. The objects of this sacred awe, and hence of moral sparing, are both the immediate, full and actual self-revelations of God, and also all mediating instrumentalities of His revelation and communication, as well as also every thing that relates to the reverencing of God on the part of man.

The distinction between the sacred and the non-sacred is, for the unfallen state, of a merely conditional character; it is in fact, simply the same thing considered under two phases; in all things we can behold both the created and the Creator. He who is truly pious sees himself every-where surrounded by the sacred,--he prays to God not merely in the temple of Jerusalem, or on Mount Gerizim, but every-where in spirit and in truth. Now, in so far as objects that are imbued with the divine are temporal and finite, they are capable of being abused and desecrated,--hence the moral duty of sparing. The direction of God to Moses on occasion of the revelation in the burning bush [Exod. iii, 5], suggests the proper moral bearing of man; he must put away from himself all that bears upon itself the character of the common, the unholy, the dross of earth. The duty of sparing, as relating to the sacred, is not. a mere non-doing, but, like every other form of this duty, it is a self-restraining out of regard to the higher right of the sacred object; a sparing from mere indifference would be sinful.

The objects of this sparing are: (1) The immediate personal revelations of God himself. Here there is no room for a mere passive bearing; here the mere non-doing, the mere not respecting the divine presence, is an offending of God himself; and moral sparing passes over at once into adoring reverence; here the declaration of Christ holds good: "He that is not for me is against me;" the not-concerning ourselves about God is a dishonoring of God.--(2) God's revelation and self-communication through his Word should be recognized as absolutely sacred, and distinguished in every respect from whatever is merely human and natural; it is disesteemed and dishonored by doubt, unbelief, and disobedience, and by trifling or irreverent use, by ridicule or neglect; the divine Word as sacred is to be treated entirely differently from the merely human; it calls for unconditional faith and reverent submission.--(3) The name of God [Exod. iii, 14] and other symbolical designations of God must be treated with sacred awe and sparing,--may not be associated with the common and thus subjected to irreverent use, may not be misused in sport, or frivolity, or for deception [Exod. xx, 7; Lev. xix, 12; xxii, 32; Matt. vi, 9]. A name is not a mere empty sound; it is the body of a thought; and as the human body is not an object of indifference for the spirit, and as to dishonor it is to insult the spirit, so also is a misusing of the divine name a dishonoring of God himself. In the awe of the Jews as to the pronouncing of the name of Jehovah, there lay a deep moral significancy, though indeed this peculiarity rendered also possible an outward evasion of the command itself. That the precept to revere God's name appears as one of the chief commandments of the Mosaic law, evinces its high moral importance. Where there exists reverential love, there the name of the beloved will not be desecrated by triflingness and frivolous sport. And what is true of the name is also true of all symbols of God, as, for example, in the Ancient Covenant, of the covering of the ark of the Covenant (the mercy-seat), of the pillar of fire, etc. In a more general sense every form of sin is a dishonoring of the name and image of God, inasmuch as man himself bears God's name and image in himself, and should therefore spare and respect these in his own person [comp. Rom. ii, 24]; and all morality may be summed up in the keeping sacred of the divine image in ourselves,--as expressed by Jehovah: "Ye shall sanctify yourselves and be holy, for I am holy" [Lev. xi, 44], or in the words of Peter: "Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts" [1 Pet. iii, 15].--(4) The human organs of divine revelation, the prophets and the called heralds of the divine Word in general, have a moral right to reverential sparing, though this sparing refers essentially not to them as men, but to God in whose name they speak. [Psa. cv, 15; Matt. x, 40, 41; comp. xi, 49-51; 1 Thes. v, 12, 13; Heb. xiii, 17]; the persecuting and killing of the prophets is frequently spoken of in Scripture as among the most heinous of offenses. Also in a sinless development of humanity all those would be regarded in the light of prophets of God, who, having attained to higher spiritual knowledge, should bear witness of divine truth; they would stand not strictly on an equal footing with those whom they should teach and train; and their recognition as divine messengers would beget a greater willingness to give heed to them. Wherever there is a really moral communion, there the ministers of God are honored; not to respect them is a sign of deep moral declension; but the deepest degradation of all is where they themselves do not respect their calling. No prophet of God was ever without moral self-denial and constant humiliation before God,--without the deeply felt consciousness of Moses: "Who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh, and bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?"--but also no prophet of God was ever without the sacred right to be recognized and respected as God's messenger, provided only that he be found faithful.--(5) All that relates to the worshiping of God,--the holy seasons, places, and things, are, as sacred, to be distinguished from the non-sacred, and to be honored accordingly, and not to be placed on an equal footing with that which serves only temporal, individual ends. The Sabbath is to be treated quite otherwise than the day of labor; it has a right to be respected, for it is God's day, set apart to his special service. Its celebration by actual divine worship is only one of its phases, the other is its being sacredly spared. Every thing is to be avoided on the Sabbath which disturbs the devout frame of the soul,--attracts it back to the merely earthly and sensuous, impresses upon it a mere every-day character. lie who does not honor the day of the Lord, honors also not the Lord of the day. Holy places and things, being consecrated to heavenly purposes, should not be profaned to worldly entertainment and to merely temporal uses. Though we do not recognize any mystic power in a special consecration, yet we hold fast to the principle that holy places and things belong exclusively to the service of the Lord. God himself ordained, in the Old Testament, particular sacred things and a special consecration of them [Exod. xxv, sqq.; xxx, 22 sqq.]. Even as the "burning bush" [Exod. iii, 5] and the mount of legislation and the holy of holies in the temple were separated from all that was not sacred, so also is it with every place that is dedicated to the holy One [Lev. xix, 30]. The significancy of this setting apart, and the importance of this respecting of the sacred, increase with the actuality of sin.

Note. God cannot of course be an object of moral forming in the strict sense of the word. Though prayer is in fact a moral influencing of God, inasmuch as it finds hearing, still no change is thereby wrought in God, and that which is realized by the efficacy of prayer is not so much in God as in us and in the world. But in a remote sense we may speak of a forming of the divine, namely, in so far as God is expressed in sacred symbols and in sacred art, and in so far as, by our witnessings for God, the knowledge and love of God are implanted in the souls of men; all this, however, is in reality simply a forming of the finite and the human into an image of God, and not a forming of God himself.

II. THE MORAL ACTIVITY, IN RELATION TO THE MORAL PERSON HIMSELF.

SECTION CXIX.

(a) The duty of moral sparing is here the preserving of one's own existence and of its normal peculiarity and development, as prompted by a consciousness of the divine will, and hence also the warding off of all therewith-conflicting and disturbing or destroying influences on the part of nature or of the spiritual world. To this end it is necessary that in all things the true relation of the body, as a serving power, to the rational spirit, as the dominating power, be preserved, and that the image of God, which though originally inherent in man. is yet in need of fuller development, be preserved pure even in its corporeally-symbolical manifestation.

The moral sparing of one's self is the higher moral application of a law that pervades the entire totality of being. That which is cohesion in a nature-body, and the law of gravitation in the natural world in general, and the instinct of self-defense and of self-preservation in the animal world, becomes with man a moral duty. When man seeks to preserve himself, to ward off injury and death, out of mere natural instinct, his action is not yet moral; it becomes moral only when it springs from a consciousness that it is God's will,--that God has pleasure in our existence as his own creative work, that He has a purpose in us which we are morally to fulfill. Of a duty of self-destruction there can never be any possibility; and for a duty of entire self-sacrifice, of the giving up of life for the sake of a higher end, there is, in a state of sinlessness, also no possibility; otherwise the divine government would be in anarchy. God who gave existence to man wills also its preservation,--has willed it as a moral end, and not simply as a means to an end. Death is simply the wages of sin, and not a condition of virtue, save alone where on account of sin there is need of a sacrifice.

In a sinless state the duty of self-sparing is of easy fulfillment, partly for the reason that it corresponds to a natural law immanent in all living creatures, and partly because disturbing influences are conceivable only where they are occasioned by the fault of man himself,--for example, when he presumptuously exposes himself to such natural influences as he is not yet able to resist,--which is in fact possible seeing that, also for the unfallen state, the complete mastery over nature is presented as a condition yet to be attained to by moral effort. Also from the influence of spiritual beings an injuring of the moral person is possible, so long as the rational creature has not as yet attained to its ultimate perfection, so that here also there is place for the duty of watchfulness, in order that the diverse personalities that are as yet in process of development may not act hinderingly upon each other. And this duty of sparing watchfulness is still more increased when the moral person stands no longer in the presence of simply sin-free beings, but is assaulted by spiritual temptation, as in the case of Adam and Eve; here the duty of self-preserving sparing assumes at once the form of a positive warding off.--In the Scriptures the duty of sparing one's self, even in relation to the corporeal life, is presented as per se strictly valid; "no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church" [Eph. v, 29]. Man is also to exercise this duty of sparing in view of his own possible sinning; in protecting his moral innocence, man protects also the image of God as created in him.

SECTION CXX.

(b) Moral appropriating is, as regards the moral person himself, directly at the same time also a moral forming of the person into a progressively more perfect expression of the moral idea,--into a personally-peculiar realization of the moral end; and in proportion as the moral person appropriates to itself its own self, puts itself into possession of itself, it accomplishes upon itself also a moral forming.

(1) Not the body is to appropriate to itself the spirit, but the spirit is progressively more and more to appropriate to itself the body, and to form it, and thereby also to form itself; hence the spirit alone is the appropriating factor, and the body is simply to be appropriated and formed. Even as nature stands to God in a twofold relation, namely, in that, on the one hand, God accomplishes his will in it, makes it good, and, on the other, reveals himself through it, makes it into his image, into an object of beauty, so also has the body in relation to the spirit the twofold destination of being its organ and its image; the former it becomes essentially by particular forming, the latter by general forming (§§ 109, 110).

(a) The body is formed and appropriated to itself by the spirit as its true absolutely subservient organ, in that (1) it is strengthened and rendered apt in accomplishing every service for the rational will, through the mediating and carrying out of all appropriating and forming action of the rational spirit as bearing upon the external world; (2) in that, in its sensuous impulses, it is held under the discipline of the spirit, and is never allowed to have an independent right for itself; in both these respects realizes itself the complete domination of the spirit over the body.

It is characteristic of the true moral nature of man, that he is capable, not merely, as is the case with the brute, of appropriating and forming external objects, but also himself. The brute is formed by nature, not by itself, and it appropriates to itself only nature, but not itself; but man in his first-given condition does not as yet really have himself, but must first learn to possess himself,--must attain to moral ownership of himself.

Man virtualizes his god-likeness primarily in this, that he glorifies God even in his body as the temple of the Holy Ghost [1 Cor. vi, 19, 20], and that he presents this body to God as a living, holy, and well-pleasing sacrifice [Rom. xii, 1.] The preliminary manifold dependence of the spirit on the body, and through the body also on external nature, is to be overcome and changed into spiritual freedom; the spirit is itself to make the body truly its own body, to appropriate it to itself as a moral possession, to form it into the perfect organ of the spirit,--in a certain sense, to create it spiritually. The original foreignness of the body to the spirit is to be overcome; its as yet partially-actual independence is to be broken; the body is to be thoroughly permeated by the spirit, and all that is merely objective and unfree in it, to be done away with. The dominion of the spirit over nature, which is set before it as a moral goal, is to realize itself first on its own nature, that is, on the body. That this is a moral task is plainly indicated by nature itself. The brute is much earlier self-supporting and mature than man, and needs no training in order to attain to its greatest skill; all the skill that man attains to he has to get by learning, to acquire by moral effort; and all learning is an appropriating through consciousness; man must in some manner first comprehend his body, before he can really form it and take it under his control; he who is spiritually dull usually remains also physically clumsy; man as coming from the hands of nature is the most helpless and most unskillful of creatures; all that he ever becomes is by the spirit,--by free moral activity; that his nascent life is much more helpless than that of any of the animals, is simply an incident of his high moral dignity. That which he has from nature is indeed good, but if it remains as mere unspiritualized, undominated nature, then it becomes for him evil,--becomes something of which he is to be ashamed. This rendering the body skillful is a personally-particular forming--a working of the spirit upon the body; thereby the spirit forms the body into its own true possession; it aspires to have it for itself, to have it entirely in its control. Herein consists also the true particular appropriating, the enjoying, of the body; man enjoys it when he has it fully in his power. This is the secret of the rich enjoyment of young persons, when, in free corporeal movement, in skillful playing, in skating, in rhythmical muscular action, etc., they feel themselves masters over their bodies; it is the consciousness of freedom, of acquired mastery; for, all consciousness of mastery is a feeling of happiness, and that, too, a per se legitimate one.

Man is to form and appropriate to himself his body in two respects; for as a spirit lie stands to the outer world in the double relation of receiving and of influencing,--through the senses and through the organs of motion. The cultivation of the senses is more an appropriating than a real forming; the senses must first be brought under the control of the spirit; the seaman and the huntsman have not always a really sharper natural eye than others, but their seeing is more skilled,--they see many objects from which others may indeed receive exactly the same light-impressions, but yet not actually perceive them, for the reason that they overlook them; seeing is an art, and many, though with open eyes, see comparatively little. An uncultured person hears, in a beautiful piece of music, little more than confused sounds, for the reason that he does not know how to hear. It is a moral duty of man to develop his senses to perfection, fully to appropriate them to himself, for they were given to him by God as channels through which to appropriate to himself the outer world; and it is unthankfulness to God for man to be willing to see and hear little or nothing in God's nature,--for him to have no open eyes for the glory of God as resplendent in creation, and no ear for the beautiful harmonies of nature and art. Rudeness and unculture are sinful in every respect, and hence also in respect to the senses.

The appropriating training of the organs of motion to vigorous skillfulness, not merely as a pleasure but also as a duty, is brought about under normal circumstances not so much by calculating art as by spontaneous natural activity; and it takes place chiefly during youth. While it was an error of many former educators entirely to neglect the training of the body to skillfulness and grace, still, on the other hand, there is danger of overestimating the worth of regulated gymnastics. The unnatural physical life of our city populations may render necessary a systematic process of corporeal exercise, notwithstanding its manifold unesthetic and even repulsive joint-wrenchings; but where the young people can have scope for indulging in more natural and frolicksome muscular recreation, regular gymnastics are doubtless quite superfluous; the learned cramming of overcrowded schools needs them indeed as a sanitary complement, but it is dangerous to substitute mere medicine for daily bread. It is a morbid condition of society, when that to which nature itself prompts us has to be made a school-requirement.

The complete subordinating of the sensuous impulses to the discipline of the spirit, that is, the training of the body by the spirit to temperateness in respect to all sensuous enjoyments, and to such activity as is necessary to its being a proper organ for the spirit, is also, at the same time, an appropriating and a forming; the members are to be formed into "instruments of righteousness unto God" [Rom. vi, 12, 13]. Paul represents the complete dependence of the body on the moral spirit as a dependence, not on the merely individual spirit, but on the spirit as morally subordinating itself to God. Man, as consecrated to God, is not to permit the per se legitimate caring for his body to become a fostering of the sensuous desires [Rom. xiii, 13, 14], but is strictly to subordinate the nurturing of the body and the indulgence in sensuous enjoyments to the rational purposes of the moral spirit, so that they shall simply be means for the spirit and never ends, in themselves [Luke xxi, 34; Rom. xiv, 17; Eph. v, 18; 1 Thess. v, 6; 1 Tim. iii, 2; Tit. ii, 1 sqq.; 1 Pet. iv, 7, 8]. Temperateness, however, does not imply the taking of the least possible quantity of food and drink, nor indeed indifference to the sensuous pleasures of the table; this would in fact be unthankfulness toward the goodness of God who has prepared for us also this pleasure; it does, however, require the observance of that measure which is conditioned on the needs and health of the body, and on the properly understood social relations of the person. Excessive indulgence is not only a degradation of the person himself, but also uncharitableness toward the destitute.

SECTION CXXI.

(b) The body is to be formed into an image or symbol of the rational spirit,--to become a revelation of the spirit in the external world; that is, it is to be shaped into an object of beauty, into a spiritualized expression of the moral personality. This takes place: (1) immediately,--in that the body, without the express and conscious activity of the person, is formed into a true expression of the morally-cultured spirit; (2) mediately,--in that the body, which though per se possessing the highest nature-beauty, is yet not to remain in simply that state, is formed by means of a spiritually-expressive characterizing adornment into an expression of artistic beauty,--into a symbolical expression not merely of the spiritual in general, but also of the personally-moral character in particular,--and in that, with moral carefulness, it is kept free from whatever would present it in the light of an object that is disesteemed or given over to natural unfreedom, and cast off by the spirit,--the virtue of cleanliness. Adornment, both under its positive and its negative phase, is a moral duty, not merely out of regard to others, as the true moral presentation and revelation of self to others, but also out of regard to the moral person himself.

The natural perfection of the body is not yet the true,--is to be exalted from natural beauty to spiritual. As the spirit (exists primarily only in a germinal form, hence the body cannot, from the very beginning, bear the full impress of the same; the spiritual expression of the body is at first not that of the personally-formed, but only of the as yet impersonal, spirit in general. The expression of the countenance becomes really spiritual, truly beautiful, only by and through a personal character-development, which is, in turn, reflected back from this personal peculiarity. The spirit must already have behind it a moral history, before it comes to expression in the features. A general beauty without character, is meaningless; a personally-spiritual beauty is winning and magnetic. The body becomes truly beautiful only through the complete appropriating of the same by, and for, the spirit; and the true secret of beauty consists in a genuine spiritual and moral culture. Where falseness has not yet gained firm foothold, there the countenance is the mirror of the soul; and, for the skilled look, even disguising falseness is transparent. There lies at the basis of "physiognomics" a deep truth; but this truth is not expressible in definite words and lines. It is not by mere chance that for certain historic personalities, such as those of Christ and the more prominent of the apostles, certain very definite forms and casts of countenance have found their place in Christian art, and by which every one recognizes them at first glance. The true character-expression of the cultured body is, in some sense, spirit-imbued,--is sensuous and supersensuous at the same time; neither words, nor outlines, nor even the photographic pencil of nature, is capable of reproducing it, but only the spirit-guided hand of the artist; spirit is recognized and grasped only by spirit; no photograph of a spiritual, character-imbued face attains to the fidelity of an artistic portrait. In a sinless state, the beauty of the spirit would necessarily reveal itself in beauty of body. So also must it have been in the case of Christ,--and the erroneous notion that for a time prevailed in the early church, to the effect that in Christ there had been no physical comeliness, was soon dissipated by the correct consciousness of Christian art. The heavenly soul of Christ must have depicted itself in his countenance [comp. Psa. xlv, 3]; and the reason why the children approached Him with glad confidence and shouted: "Hosanna!" is doubtless because of a direct impression which Christ's person made upon them; children have a wonderful capacity for reading character in the external appearance. Female vanity, in laying such great stress on corporeal beauty, is guilty simply of applying to sinfully-perverted reality, the thought, that is correct for the unfallen state of humanity, namely, that beauty of body is evidence of a beautiful soul. The moral task in relation to this culture of bodily expression, is, happily, not an immediate intentional forming of the body, but rather the moral forming of the soul, which then, in turn, of itself impresses itself on the body.

The ornamentation of the body, including the exclusion of all uncleanliness, is a very important moral duty, and one that is very definitely emphasized in the Scriptures. On the subject of nudity and clothing, there has been, both from the moral and from the artistic stand-point, much disputing. Greek art, in its golden age, represented some of the gods nude; at a later period, when it had stooped to the service of worldliness rather than of religion, it expressed itself predominantly in the nude. Still, however, only such gods appear nude as represent a certain degree of moral and spiritual unripeness or sensuousness; Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, appear almost always draped; for spiritually-developed and historical characters, also among human beings, nudity was an artistic impossibility. This suggests the true law in the case. Nudity represents merely the naturally-beautiful, not the spiritually-beautiful, merely the human in general, not the personal in particular,--is that which is alike in all persons, not that in which they spiritually differ. That portion of the body which does not express the merely general, that is, the countenance, is, in fact, uniformly left free of clothing. The very sense for the morally-spiritual gives even a stronger expression to the personal through the medium itself of clothing. Who could bear the thought of a nude Caesar or Homer! Christian art rejected the nude, for the good reason that it had spiritual characters to represent. Moreover, mere nudity is artistically beautiful only in the form of lust-repellent, colorless sculpture; in painting it becomes licentious and, therefore, un-beautiful. It is a very false opinion, that clothing really conceals beauty; clothing, as an expression of the spiritual, as a free artistic creation, is in fact the higher beauty. This appears very clearly when man is represented not as an individual, but in groups; a bathing-place, swarming with nude figures, presents assuredly no beautiful spectacle, even if they were so many Apollos; precisely where man appears in his higher truth, namely, in society, there a beautiful scene is presented only by the help of diversified, character-expressive clothing. It is true, clothing is beautiful only where it is really expressive of a character, whether of the nation or of the person. The slavish copying after journals of fashion, is evidence of a want of sense and of character, and of a lack of esthetic perception.

Clothing did not first become necessary because of sin. The Biblical account implies only, that it became necessary prematurely, and for another than its normal reason,--namely, before the development of personal character had led to its invention as an adornment. The sin of the first pair effected only that the hitherto-innocent consorts felt, now, shame in each other's presence, and that clothing, the proper object of which is ornamentation, was turned into a garb of penance. Clothing was not the very first want of persons living as yet in the most primitive simplicity; nor was yet its lack the characteristic trait of the Paradisaical state; clothing would have become a moral requirement also in the unfallen state so soon as man had grown into families, and the riper character of parents appeared in the presence of children [comp. Gen. ix, 21 sqq.] The nudity of savages is not innocence, but shameless rudeness.

Animals do not decorate themselves, they are decorated already; man exalts himself above the animal by ingenious decoration. The tawdry ornamentation of savages exemplifies this, under a rude form; with them, the mere changing of the natural form is regarded as a beautifying; the notion of ornamentation is conceived under an essentially negative form; the unnatural itself is regarded as beautiful. There is a higher significance in the hunter's hanging about himself the skins of the bear or lion;--this is to him essentially a decoration of honor, a sign of his courage. Thus also, in the simpler forms of civilized life, it is an honor for a woman personally to weave and to prepare her own clothing and that of the family; it is natural for man to display his work, the fruit of his skill; but he also loves to manifest his spiritual idiosyncrasy under an esthetic form in the ornamentation of the body. Clothing and ornamentation in general, when of a normal character, manifest, in part, the general element, the natural peculiarity, and, in part, the personal peculiarity; hence in the style of the clothing we can to a certain extent recognize the personal character; the distinction between male and female clothing among all civilized nations has a deep moral ground [comp. Deut. xxii, 5]; and just as, on the one hand, it is usually foolish and vain for an individual to break entirely with a general national custom, so, on the other, it is evidence of spiritual imbecility to make one's entire outward appearance a piece of mere imitation, without personal peculiarity.

The Scriptures attach some importance to a befitting adornment, especially in its moral significancy. Jehovah himself prescribes a worthy garb for those who officiate in his worship [Exod. xxviii and xxxix; Num. xv, 38 sqq.]; a holy adornment becomes those who offer worship to the Lord [Psa. xxix, 2; comp. Exod. xix, 10; Ezek. xxiv, 17]. When Christ in his parable [Matt. xxii, 2 sqq.] characterizes the not putting on of the wedding-garment as a serious fault, he manifestly does more than allude to a mere worthless custom [comp. Gen. xli, 14]; and the apostle does not consider it unimportant to commend to the societies a becoming adornment [1 Tim. ii, 9, 10].

That cleanliness of body and of clothing is regarded not only in the Old Testament [Exod. xix, 10; xxix, 4; Lev. viii, 66; Num. viii, 6 sqq.; xxxi, 21 sqq.; comp. Prov. xxxi, 25], but also in all the higher heathen religions and in Islamism, as an important moral and religious duty, so that in fact a large part of the worship consists in washings, with direct symbolical reference to moral purification,--is a plain indication of the deep moral significancy of bodily purity. The sanitary interest is here merely incidental; the essential point is the outward expressing of the spiritual. Man is to bear, in his entire inner nature, as well as in his outward manifestation, a spiritually-moral impress,--is to be, in all respects, an expression of free self-determination, is to have upon himself nothing which has attached itself to him merely outwardly or fortuitously, as something belonging not to him, but to an extraneous nature-body,--is to be a purely spiritual creation. Uncleanliness is the expression of unfree nature,--of a dependent, passive belonging to mere outward nature, an evidence of self-abandonment, self-disesteem and dishonor, and is regarded among all cultivated nations as a symbol and actual indication of sin; it has never been any thing other than isolated spiritual perversions of humanity who have found an especial wisdom and greatness of soul in an open display of uncleanliness. Sensual pleasure-seeking, riotousness and moral degradation usually lead to corporeal filthiness; and it is a very wise principle of education in the case of the morally abandoned, and in missions among rude tribes, to place a very high value on bodily cleanliness. The precepts as to cleansing, in the Old Testament, are based on this ground; Christianity expressly declares carefulness about outward cleanliness as a virtue intimately connected with religion [Matt. vi, 17; comp. John xiii, 4 sqq.].

To the gracefulness and beauty of the physique, belongs also that manner of movement or bearing which answers to the spiritual character, to beauty of soul; the cultivation of skillfulness of movement leads directly to the culture of esthetical motion. The beauty of movement consists in the fact that it expresses the perfect mastery of the soul over the body, and thus presents, in the body, not merely the organ of the will, but also, through the element of the beautiful, an image of the self-harmonious spirit,--in youth an expression of heart-gladness, in age that of earnest dignity. The dance is esthetic only in youth, in the mature it is repulsive.

SECTION CXXII.

(2) Moral appropriating and forming, as bearing upon the spirit itself, that is, the moral striving of the spirit to have and to possess itself as its own moral product, takes place through conscious, free activity, although indeed in the unconscious nature of the personal spirit there exists an impulse ill that direction. In so far as man is a rational spirit he has before him his own self as a moral task,--is to form himself into a moral personality, into a character; all non-advancement is here retrogression. This appropriating and forming relates to the spirit both as cognizing, as feeling, and as willing, and looks to the harmony of these three phases of the spirit-life.

It is only when the spirit makes itself into its own possession,--forms itself into a truly rational spirit, that it is a moral spirit. He who is only a product of other spirits, who allows himself passively to be molded merely by the spirit that for the time being prevails in society, is, even when this spirit is a good one, not yet morally mature, but is in moral nonage; he is not yet a person, not yet a character. What Christ says [Matt. xxv, 14 sqq.] of putting to use the talents received, holds good also of the moral endowments of man; he dare not leave them idle, but must put them to moral usury,--must mold himself by spiritual appropriation into richer self-possession. He who "has not,"--who leaves idle his received talent, who makes it not into a vital possession,--does not retain it even as an unproductive power, but loses what he already has, and for the simple reason that it is a general law that a life-power, if unawakened into activity, dies away and perishes; it is only in virtue of a vital progressive development that the spiritual can be preserved,--even as water is saved from stagnation only by motion. The state of innocence cannot be preserved by mere non-doing; moral indolence would let even the trees of life in Paradise wither away. By the leaving idle of that which is destined to development, man sinks to moral dullness and insensibility; the spiritual condition of savages is a manifestation of the consequences of burying the received talent.

The culture of self by the appropriation of truth, that is, the forming of self to knowledge and wisdom, is presented in the Scriptures as one of the highest moral duties, and it is inadmissible to limit this appropriation to merely religious and moral truth, though of course this is the principal thing (§ 104). God actually directed the first man to the acquirement of knowledge by the fact of his referring him to the objective world about him (§ 60), and in the fact that He made known himself and his will to him. But the knowledge of good and evil was forbidden to man, for the reason that a real knowledge of the latter was possible only by its realization; he was indeed to know what he should not do, but not to know of a real evil, and only a real entity can be truly known; but the woman sought after a wisdom [Gen. iii, 6] apart from true wisdom, and consequently fell.

Feeling is primarily of an immediate, involuntary character; but man is not to be under the power of unfree feelings; he is rational only when he develops his feelings into moral ones,--brings them under the control of his rational knowledge and of his moral volitions. There is absolutely no place in the human mind or heart for any thing that is not morally willed or conditioned. Hence it is a moral duty to cultivate our feelings into moral integrity, so that they may never incur the liability of being reproached by the moral consciousness,--never, even involuntarily, entertain envy, and the like. In the ante-sinful state such feelings of course do not yet exist; but non-moral feelings become very soon sinful ones unless they become developed. And even the, as yet, uncorrupted feelings are primarily still in a crude state and in need of culture. The feeling of delight, and hence of happiness, rises with the increase of culture; the first human beings could not be so happy in their first days as they could have been after further moral development. They too were liable to have morally false feelings. It is true there was as yet nothing immoral before their eyes which could have become an object of immoral delight; but they had, before them, themselves as in need of further development; hence if they had felt perfectly contented in this state of need, instead of thirsting after a higher perfection, this feeling would have been immoral. On the other hand, they were capable of feeling displeasure at the divine,--as in fact actually occurred in view of the divine prohibition. And the pleasure which Eve felt in the words of the tempter was already decidedly immoral, seeing that it implied a will not to follow the will of God, and was essentially the fall itself.

But feeling must be formed not merely as to its quality, but also as to its degree of liveliness. If only the more prominent phases of good and evil make an impression upon us, while the less prominent ones pass before us unnoticed, then our moral feeling is obscure and obtuse. The fact that feeling, like the bodily senses, is affected at first only by the stronger impressions, implies of itself the duty of making it sensitive--sensitive even for the most delicate features of the godly or the ungodly. And this can be brought about only by a constantly increasing growth in knowledge,--by an attending to whatever takes place within and without us; we must prove all things and hold fast to the best, the good, and that too not merely as knowledge but also as the possession of our heart, as our delight and joy.--Our feelings, as moral, stand not outside of, but also under our will. The notion that the heart cannot be commanded, is absolutely immoral,--is an assertion of man's irresponsibility. Natural feeling does indeed precede the will, but moral feeling is, under one phase, determined by the moral will [§ 93]. It is not left to the hearts of children whether they will or can love their parents, they are bound to love them; and the same is true of wedlock-love, of our love to our calling, to our rulers, to our country. The first promptings of feeling are as yet extra-moral, but in that by this first excitation the will becomes free and is set into activity, it then in turn directs its activity also upon the feelings and the affections.

That willing is in harmony with knowing and feeling, is primarily strictly natural; in man, however, as distinguished from the much earlier self-possessing animal, this agreement is primarily only approximative; the will must be exercised in order to be sure of itself; man must first learn how to use it. There is need of a moral will in order that the will nay become moral. This has all the appearance of a vicious circle, but it is not; the fact is, I must in general, and as a principle, have a will always to follow the truth, in order that, in particular, I may actually form my individual will morally, and make it subject to recognized truth. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak; this is relatively true also in a normal development of mankind; this flesh is, however, not merely sensuousness, but also the spirit itself, the will, in so far as it has not as yet become veritably free. The will of the spirit must become something which it is not, as yet, from the very start,--truly free; and it is free only when that feebleness, which is primarily merely a sort of clumsiness, is overcome,--when the spirit is not only in general willing to do God's will, but also shows in each particular case the same unwavering willingness. That which, in a state of sinfulness, becomes a self-conflicting double will [Rom. vii, 15 sqq.], exists also in the ante-sinful state, at least in so far as to constitute a difference between the will as purely individual and the will as truly rational, God-consecrated, and self-denying. The former is not to be done away with, but to be harmoniously subordinated to the latter; the will must be so formed as that we can say at every moment: I will, and yet not I, but God who dwells in me. The will should not be a willful will, but must be molded into an obedient one,--into obedience to the divine will, which, in virtue of our love to God, becomes at one with our own will. In obeying, man distinguishes indeed his own will from God's will, but he subordinates his will, not lothfully but in loving willingness, to the lovingly-appropriated divine will,--transfigures the former, more and more, by his love of the latter, so that finally there are no longer two wills, but only one,--and that, not in virtue of any destruction, but simply in virtue of love, not by violence but through freedom,--by following the example of Christ in the constant practice of the principle: "Not my will, but thine be done" [Luke xxii, 42; Matt. vi, 10; John v, 30; Psa. xl, 8; Jer. vii, 23; Matt. vii, 21; xii, 50; 1 John ii, 17; Heb. xiii, 21]. Every moral will must say with Christ: "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me" [John iv, 34]; obedience is the food of the soul,--forms and strengthens the will to an increasingly freer and holier manner of willing. Only those are the children of God who are led by the spirit of God,--who permit themselves freely to be guided by Him, who will only in and through Him [Rom. viii, 14].

Hence also in the forming of the will we have to distinguish between the quality and the degree. A will may in fact be good in quality, may aim at the good and detest the evil, and yet be lacking in strength and in steadfastness,--may shrink before difficulties; it may begin well and yet not bring to perfection; good resolutions do not necessarily imply a truly good will; in fact, the road to hell is said to be paved with good resolutions. He who has a good will only at first, but does not really carry out any thing, is as yet unfree in his will,--has it not under his control, and is yet a moral minor; he does not actually will at every particular conjuncture that which he wills in general. Hence it is man's duty to place his will entirely under the dominion of moral reason, to mold it to freedom, in order that in particular cases it may not offer resistance to good resolutions in general,--in a word, that a will of the flesh may not oppose itself to the will of the spirit.

III. THE MORAL ACTIVITY AS RELATING TO OTHER PERSONS.

SECTION CXXIII.

(a) The moral sparing of others consists in a real recognition of their moral personality, and hence of their personal independence, freedom, and honor.

(a) Man's personal independence and freedom, which are the expression of his morally rational essence, may be limited by others only in the interest of higher moral ends, namely, either in order to train the as yet morally and spiritually immature toward real freedom, or in the moral interests of the moral whole or society.--(b) The personal honor of our fellow-man is preserved when we recognize and treat him as a morally-rational being called to God-likeness and God-sonship, and hence as capable of, and entitled to, moral communion with us,--when we do nothing toward him which is inconsistent therewith,--which would stigmatize him as non-moral, or, undeservedly, as immoral and irrational; this is the duty of respecting our neighbor, and as implied therein of respecting the personal dignity of man in general,--the duty of sparing and protecting the good name of our neighbor.--(g) From these two duties follows the duty of a sparing respect for whatever appertains to our neighbor,--belongs to him as a possession, is his property in the broadest sense of the word, that is, whatever he has a right to call his own,--and hence a positive avoidance of all action whereby it would be damaged or alienated from our neighbor.

Even as our personal morality does not consist in undisciplined arbitrary discretion, but in the controlling our own will by the will of God, so also there is no moral influencing of our fellow-man without a limiting of his individual will, of his individual liberty, and that too in the very interest of his higher personal freedom. The child cannot be educated without that in many respects limits be set to its, as yet, unripe, unintelligent will; in the person of the educator it is confronted with the principles of moral order under which it is to bow its individual will; it is in fact an essential part of the duty of sparing the personality of the child, that it be not allowed to grow up in rudeness. As the child is related to its parents, so is the individual person to the moral whole. He whose calling it is to govern, must confine the liberty of the individual within the order of the whole,--must in some measure limit it in order that all may become truly free; in an organized moral community it is each member's duty to co-operate in the realization of moral order, and hence to hold within bounds both his own will and the will of others. Hence the moral sparing of others is never of an unconditional character, but finds a limit in the duty of moral culture; but within this limit the duty of sparing becomes all the more imperative. The limiting may never be such as to reduce the object to a mere will-less creature of arbitrary discretion; the right of the object of education or guidance to be an independent moral personality with a moral purpose of its own, may never be ignored. He who is as yet morally a minor may never be treated as if he were always to remain such,--never as a mere means to an end,--but he must be treated as having an end in himself. A slavish education is sinful; despotic government is immoral, whether exercised by a single individual or by a minority-crushing majority. Whatever apology may be made for slavery in a sinful world, in the sphere of pure morality it is absolutely anti-moral.

The sparing and respecting of the personal honor of others, appears among the chief commands in the Old Testament [Exod. xx, 16; Lev. xix, 16], and is presented also in the Gospel as one of the most essential of duties [Matt. v, 21, 22]. My neighbor has upon me a claim to respect for his honor, for his good name. Man is not a mere isolated unit, but a vital member of a moral whole; the personal honor, the good name, of each is the moral bond which holds together the community; he who has lost respect in society stands outside of the scope of its common-life,--is a broken-off leaf soon to wither away.--The sparing of the possessions of others [Exod. xx, 15, 17; Lev. xix, 35, 36; Deut. xxv, 13 sqq.; xxvii, 17; 1 Thess. iv, 6] is only a special phase of the sparing of the person of others. In his property man creates for and about himself a little world which as the product of his labor, belongs to him, which he calls his earnings, and for which he has consequently a moral right to recognition and respect on the part of others.

SECTION CXXIV.

(b) The moral appropriating and the forming of others are, in virtue of the mutual moral relation of men to each other, always associated together in a normal state of things,--each being and involving at the same time also the other; and both take place at the same time in the moral act of love. In active love toward his neighbor, man brings about also love toward himself, for the beloved person becomes united to, and appropriated by, him who loves; the active love of one's neighbor is therefore an appropriating and a forming at the same time, both in respect to the neighbor and in respect to the loving person himself. The exercise of love breaks down the antithesis of individual persons, but at the same time respects their moral rights and moral independence.

It is noteworthy that in the Scriptures we never read of the love of mankind, but always of the love of neighbor; [Matt. vi, 14, 15 is only a seeming exception to this, as here "men" stand in contrast to God]. Christ's love to us is indeed called love to man or to the brethren, but never love to neighbor; but our love to man in general, and not merely to our Christian brethren, is always called love to neighbor. In this very circumstance the moral relation of men to each other is directly indicated. My fellow-man does not stand before me as a mere isolated individual, but as one who, by God's will, is near to me,--who belongs to me for my full love, belongs to me so intimately that there ought to be nothing strange or uncongenial between him and me. In love, my neighbor becomes mine, and I his; hence love is a mutual appropriating; and by the fact that I thereby enlarge both my life-sphere and his own, it is at the same time a mutual forming. Love seeks not merely the welfare of the other, but also his love. In the act of love I form the other, in that I impart myself to him as loving, and that too in my moral character; I rejoice him and exalt his moral life, in that I stimulate him to reciprocal love. At the same time also I exercise a formative influence on myself, in that by this communion I am myself exalted and promoted in my spiritually-moral existence,--in that I spiritually appropriate to myself an other spiritual being.

The law of love is presented by Christ as the highest of all commands, and love of neighbor as the substance of all moral duties toward our fellow-man [Matt. xxii, 39, 40; John xiii, 34, 35; xv, 12, 17; comp. Rom. xii, 10; xiii, 8-10; Gal. v, 14; Eph. v, 2; 1 Thess. iv, 9; 1 Cor. xiii, 1 sqq.; 1 Pet. i, 22; iv, 8; 1 John iii, 11; James ii, 8; Heb. xiii, 1]. All fulfilling of duty toward our neighbor is an exercise of love; when not so it is but deception; that which springs not of love, is not only morally worthless, but also immoral, because counterfeit. Love is the test of true God-sonship [1 John iv, 12, 13], "for love is of God, and every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God" [1 John iv, 7]; human love is thankful reciprocation for that love which first loved us,--is true religion [James i, 27]; and love to God must necessarily manifest itself also in love to the beloved of God [1 John iv, 20, 21; v, 1, 2]. The precept of love to neighbor is presented even in the Old Testament as a chief duty [Lev. xix, 18], and is expressly extended to non-Israelites [verse 34; Deut. x, 19; Micah vi, 8; Zech. vii, 9]; what a contrast this forms to the boasted "humanitarianism" of the Greeks to whom every non-Greek was a right-less barbarian! Thou shalt love thy neighbor "as thyself;" this is not a mere comparison of two parallel forms of love,--both are at bottom but one love; a truly moral love of one's self as a moral personality, necessarily manifests itself also as love to other moral persons through whom in fact one's own rational being is heightened; true love of neighbor is also at the same time true self-love. This holds good even of the false love of neighbor; every one seeks, in some form, friendship and love, and feels himself unhappy in isolation; hence our Lord says: "If ye love [only] them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the Publicans the same?" [Matt. v, 46, 47; comp. Luke vi, 32]. If now even a false love of neighbor is at the same time a love of self, how much more so is the true love of neighbor!--not however, of course, in such a sense as that I love my neighbor only for my own sake, for that would be self-seeking, but in the sense that I love my neighbor for God's sake, and in this love of God exalt at the same time my own moral life, and find in the love of neighbor true moral enjoyment.

The symbolical expression of mutual union in love is bodily touching, especially the giving of the hand [2 Kings x, 15; Gal. ii, 9], and in a higher form the kiss, which evinces a more intimate equality of love the more it is reciprocal; the kiss on the forehead or cheek is rather the sign of a condescending and more distant love, the kissing of the hand that of a reverential love, the kissing of the feet that of a humbly submissive love [Luke vii, 38; Isa. xlix, 23], the kiss on the lips that of a mutual, confidential, intimate love, and hence especially expressive also of sexual love. In the Scriptures the kiss appears as the sign of love between parents and children [Gen. xxvii, 26, 27; xxxi, 28, 55; xlviii, 10; l, 1; Exod. xviii, 7; Ruth i, 9; 1 Kings xix, 20; Luke xv, 20], between brothers and sisters and relatives [Gen. xxix, 11, 13; xxxiii, 4; xlv, 15; Exod. vi, 27; Ruth i, 14], between friends [1 Sam. xx, 41], as an expression of homage [1 Sam. x, 1; Psa. ii, 12; Luke vii, 38], and as an expression of love in other respects [2 Sam. xx, 9; Matt. xxvi, 48 sqq.; Luke vii, 45; Acts xx, 37]; hence it is also a symbol of reconciliation [Gen. xxxiii, 4; 2 Sam. xiv, 33: Luke xv, 20]; and the fraternal kiss was, in the early church, a general custom [Rom. xvi, 16; 1 Cor. xvi, 20; 2 Cor. xiii, 12; 1 Thess. v, 26; 1 Pet. v, 14.]

SECTION CXXV.

Active love is a self-impartation of the subject to the object,--an imparting of what is one's own to another in order to exalt his life. Hence it manifests itself in service-rendering, in benefiting; all moral community-life is a reciprocal service of love; every act of love is a sacrifice. Sympathizing love imparts every thing which is dear to it:--(a) It imparts its own spiritual possessions in order thereby to promote the spiritual life and the spiritual possessions of the other, and this, in virtue of an honest and truthful self-communication. To this communication corresponds, on the part of the object, the answering and accepting love of confidence, that is, a willingness to let himself be formed by the appropriation of the spiritually-communicating love of his fellow,--a being receptive for self-revealing truthfulness. (b) Love imparts also its material possessions, and is hence a devoting of our personal productive forces to the aid of the needy, in the fulfillment of the duties of charity and personal assistance. In imparting and devoting itself, love acquires a right to the reciprocating love of the other,--to thankfulness in heart and act.

Love imparts lovingly to the beloved that which itself loves; only that in which I myself have pleasure, can I lovingly impart; for this reason every true act of love is a sacrifice, and a sacrifice that is not hesitatingly and stumblingly brought; love makes it easy; but every sacrifice must be made to God; only he who practices love for God's sake brings a proper offering. To do good and to communicate is expressly declared in the Scriptures as a God-pleasing sacrifice [Heb. xiii, 16]. The mite of the poor, when offered in love, avails more than the rich gift of the thoughtless spendthrift; in fact he who does not morally love his legitimately-obtained possessions, cannot in the nature of things make therefrom a sacrifice.

Christ gives as the determining rule for our conduct toward our neighbor the general formula: "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets" [Matt. vii, 12]. Hence true self-love is the pattern and measure of love to neighbor; our own rational striving shows us what is the striving of others, and ought to put itself into harmony with the latter; that which I would acquire for myself as a right upon others, ought first to be a duty toward them. By this rule Christ implies, at the same time, that love begets answering love, and hence reverts back upon him who exercises it. This is a practical life-rule in answer to the question: flow shall I exercise love in each and every particular case? and it gives as the answer: Just as I should wish that it should be done to myself,--a very safe rule, provided always that my own moral consciousness in general is not beclouded, so that I should no longer know what would really serve to my peace. The precious is purchased only by the precious,--love only by love. All love seeks to serve; love of neighbor is ministering love. "Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister, and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant, even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many" [Matt. xx, 26 sqq.]. Christ's love, the highest pattern, is itself the highest love-service, and has brought the greatest sacrifice; all love to God is a service of God; all neighbor-love is a God-serving in the service of the neighbor. "Let no man seek what is his own, but every man what is another's" [1 Cor. x, 24]; love to self must not become a separating of ourselves from others, nor a self-seeking using of them; self-seeking must be sacrificed in order to attain to true self-love in the love of neighbor. "Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive" [Acts xx, 35]; giving makes happier in the very love-act itself, and, though a sacrificing, is yet at the same time a receiving, an enkindling of reciprocal love, an imitating of God and of Christ who out of love gave all; it is more blessed than receiving,--not that we are simply to give acts of love, and not also thankfully to receive them,--for he who cannot, out of love, receive, is unable also to give out of love, and he who, because of pride, will not receive, gives in fact only out of pride; but that kind of receiving is not blessed and does not render blessed, which is not willing also to give, but only to have, and in which the person regards only the bestowment as such, and not the love which makes it,--inclines only to possess the gift, but not to recognize the love and to reciprocate it in love. The moral person receives also gladly, out of love, from love, not however for the sake of the gift but for the sake of the giver,--desires indeed to receive love, but only for the reason that he himself loves. The giving of presents is a universally recognized sign of love, even where the moral consciousness appears under its rudest forms [Gen. xii, 16; xlv, 17 sqq.]; there is no love which does not seek to impart itself,--which would not gladly offer liberally, for the delight and enjoyment of the other, that in which the loving one himself has delight and enjoyment, and thus prove itself genuine by sacrifice [Gen. xxiv, 22, 53; xxxii, 13 sqq.; xlii, 25; xliii, 11; xlv, 22 sqq.; 1 Sam. ix, 7 sqq.; xviii, 4; Prov. xviii, 16]. Among certain rude tribes it is customary for friends to interchange names, as is, in fact, the case with one of the parties, even now, in Christian marriage; this is also a love-offering.

Communicating love imparts indeed all that it has, but it does not give away all; the spiritual possession grows in imparting itself. The communicating of one's own spiritual possessions is the exercise of truthfulness. The rational spirit has, in virtue of its own duty of spiritual appropriating, an absolute right to truthfulness in the self-communications of. others, though indeed not an unconditional right to the communication of all that is known by others. Love admits of no falseness; and though there may be things in the life, even of the righteous, especially inner states, which may not and should not be communicated indiscriminately to every one,--for example, to the as yet morally immature,--still, this silence is essentially different from falsifying. In the Scriptures truthfulness is based on love; "speak every man truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another" [Eph. iv, 25], that is, because we are united as vital organs to a single moral body,--belong to each other, should he transparent to each other. "To this end," says Christ, "was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth" [John xviii, 37]; this is true of Christ also in his character of Son of man, and hence also of all men; now Christ came into the world out of love, and out of love he bore witness to the truth. Truth is the good, the divine, as relating to spiritual communicating. Whatever exists is for the personal spirit, and each personal spirit exists for all other personal spirits,--must be perfectly transparent to them, in so far as sin throws into it no shadow, in order that spirit in general, the essential nature of which is to unite the separated, may attain to the truth [Matt. v, 37; comp. Job xxvii, 4; Zech. viii, 16; Psa. xv, 2; xxxiv, 14; Rev. xiv, 5]. Where sin is not yet predominant, but love prevails, there truthfulness is easy and natural; it becomes difficult only where sin predominates.

The formative influencing of others through the living-out of a moral character is to be regarded simply as a phase of the truthfulness of loving self-communication, and not as constituting a special duty of giving a good example [Matt. v, 14-16; Rom. xiv, 19; xv, 2; Phil. ii, 15; iii, 17; Titus ii, 7; 1 Pet. ii, 9, 12, 15; comp. 1 Cor. iv, 16; xi, 1; Phil. iv, 9; 2 Thess. iii, 7]. No one may wish to be moral in order to appear moral; that would be downright hypocrisy; but also no one should desire to conceal that which in his character is truly moral; this would likewise be untruth. But in order to the formative influencing of others through moral self-manifestation, it is of course not enough simply to be inactive, simply as it were to let one's self be contemplated, but there is requisite, in view of the diverse characters that are to be influenced, a selection of special manners of self-communication; as bearing upon children the manner must be other than with the morally mature; from this, however, it does not follow that this self-impartation is to sink to a mere self-complacent display of self,--an intentional presentation of self as a moral pattern, in any respect whatever. This would be, even in a saint, a violation of becoming humility,--a tempting of hearts from Him who alone is the perfect type of holiness.

Spiritual self-communicating, even when perfectly truthful, is not per se of a moral character, for, in view of the limitedness of men as individual persons, it is in fact a direct necessity; for this reason, perfect solitude is so great a torment; the recluse endures his freely-chosen solitude solely because he is engaged in a continuous spiritual self-communicating, namely, to God in prayer; a non-praying, unpious solitary would either be suffering the severest punishment or would be spiritually deranged. Self-impartation may even be sinful, as in purposeless, thoughtless gossip; it becomes moral only when it is a practicing of love. Loving self-communication seeks not its own but that which is another's. Falsehood is hatred, is lovelessness; where true love is there falsehood is impossible; hence the deep pain occasioned by falseness on the part of the beloved one.

From the fact that truthfulness is an expression of love, it is entitled to answering love from the other party, to a ready welcoming, to confidence. It is true, confidence in men is generally presented in the Scriptures as deceiving [Psa. cxviii, 8; Jer. xvii, 5, 6, etc.]; here, however, the question is only as to an unpious confidence which builds not upon God but upon man, and of the state of sinfulness in general. But where sin is not yet in the mastery, there mutual confidence is the necessary antecedent condition of all moral communion, and a necessary out-going of love. Distrust paralyzes love. The truthful have a moral right to confidence in their word; confidence is the reverse side of truthfulness. Even as Christ uniformly required faith and confidence in himself, because he was the Truth, so may every one who is of the Truth lay claim to confidence; hence confidence is not a discretionary state of the mind, but a moral act. The little child that was proposed to the disciples as a moral type, is such also in respect to trust and confidence.

The more outward form of self-imparting through service-rendering [Gen. xxiv, 18 sqq.; xxxiii, 12, 15; Exod. ii, 17; Deut. xxii, 1 sqq.; Matt. xxi, 3; John xii, 2; xiii, 4 sqq.; Acts xxviii, 2; Gal. v, 13; 1 Pet. iv, 10; Heb. vi, 10; xiii, 16, etc.] which, on the supposition of a state of sinfulness, includes in itself also beneficence, is not as yet in the unfallen state a showing of pity, for misery does not exist save in a state of sin; but there is always need of mutual assistance so long as the last degree of perfection is not yet reached, and hence there is always also the duty of helping, through the imparting of our own forces and means,--of mutually complementing our possessions which largely vary according to the personal peculiarity of the possessors.

Love is in its very nature communion-forming,--calls for the love of the other. And unreciprocated love presupposes sin. Love gives itself over, but it does not give itself away; it desires to find itself again in the beloved, even as light never shines without being reflected. The loving reflection of love, namely, love as the fruit of love, is thankfulness. He to whom thankfulness or unthankfulness is indifferent, has no love; even the Lord himself wept over Jerusalem when it spurned his love. The warmer the love, so much the more sensitively is felt the chill of thanklessness; only a taking refuge in the love of God can assuage this pang. But only he is entitled to thankfulness whose love is itself humble thanks to the loving God; without this the pretended right is simply presumptuous self-seeking. The moral worth of thankfulness and the despicableness of thanklessness are recognized even among the rudest tribes, as in fact even in brutes thankfulness is manifested by brightened looks; and hence Christ represents this duty as valid even among the heathen,--as instinctively commending itself to the natural consciousness, and as also practiced by man in his natural state [Matt. v, 46; Luke vi, 32, 33; comp. Exod. ii, 20; Josh. vi, 22 sqq.; 1 Sam. xv, 6; 2 Kings v, 16, 23; Ruth ii, 10 sqq.; Luke xvii, 16; Acts xxiv, 3]. But only love has a right to thankfulness; a benefit which does not flow from love, which merely seeks thankfulness, does not deserve thankfulness, for it is inwardly false.

SECTION CXXVI.

At an equal stage of spiritually-moral maturity, men are related to each other as mutually-forming and appropriating each other to a like degree; but the more there is a difference in this maturity, so much the more predominates on the part of the morally higher-developed the formative influencing, and on the part of others the appropriating. However, the right and duty of formative influencing on the part of the morally less-developed never sinks to zero;--even the as yet morally immature inevitably exert a measure of moral influence upon the morally higher-developed and upon the totality of society.

A complete moral equalization of all men as to their moral influencing of others would be an irrational reversing of all moral order, a dissolving of all historical life into unorganized individual units. Children never sustain to their parents a relation of perfect equality; their relation to them is always rather appropriating than formative; the resistance of children to the higher moral validity of the parents is regarded among almost all nations as a flagrant outrage, and reverence for age as a high virtue. But society at large is a moral whole, and here also the higher-advanced have and exercise naturally a guiding and an educative influencing-activity over and upon the others, and the totality has a higher validity than the individual. The higher-developed moral individual sustains to the morally-immature the right and duty of educative influencing; a perfectly holy man would enjoy per se a right to spiritually-moral dominion; and for this good reason, and not simply in virtue of his being the Son of God, is Christ our legitimate Lord. Nevertheless the right and duty of moral forming never sinks, even in case of the most immature, to absolute nothing; childish innocence has disarmed many an evil intent; the direct impression of guileless confidence, of unsuspicion, strikes the malicious purpose with shame. The pious simplicity of the faith-word of a child has often proved a heart-stirring awakening for vain wisdom-boasting unbelief.--Also toward the moral community, the individual sustains the right and the duty of moral influencing, though in a normal development of the community-life this influencing would give place very largely to appropriating; moreover it varies according to the varying social stations of the individual.

IV. THE MORAL ACTIVITY AS RELATING TO OBJECTIVE NATURE.

SECTION CXXVII.

(a) The moral sparing to which nature, in virtue of its essence as God's perfectly created work, and as an expression of the divine love and wisdom, has a right, requires that man, in the exercise of the moral dominion over nature to which he is called, regard this, its divine phase, with due respect,--that he avoid all purposeless and wanton changing or destroying of natural objects, and that, on the contrary, he exercise toward nature a considerate love, especially in its higher manifestations, by preserving them in their peculiarity. The duty of considerate sparing rises in proportion as the nature-creature comes into actual relation to human life, and enters into the sphere of his moral activity as a helping factor.

Moral love to nature is thankfulness to God who gave it to us for moral enjoyment and for moral dominion; to man, as pure, God gave not an uncongenial and fear-awakening nature, but a Paradisaical nature. God loves nature as he made it, and from its bosom God's creative love beams out toward us, and he has even impressed manifold natural suggestions of the moral upon it; Christ himself requires respect for nature, for the heavens are God's throne and the earth is his footstool [Matt. v, 34, 35], and it is in virtue of this religious conceiving of nature that there can be moral duties also toward nature (as against Rothe, Ethik, 1. ed., iii, § 866). With the exception of the Indians, who adore nature as the revealed divine essence itself, no people has manifested so high a respect for nature as the Israelites; the legislation of the Old Testament surpasses all other systems in a considerate sparing of nature. Domestic animals especially are placed under the sparing protection and care of the law [Prov. xii, 10]; the mouth of the threshing ox is not to be muzzled [Deut. xxv, 4]; on the Sabbath cattle, also are given rest Exod. xx, 10]; and in the Sabbatical year both cattle and beasts are to pasture on the fallow lands [Exod. xxiii, 11; Lev. xxv, 6, 7, in the original text]; the beast of another that falls under its burden, or loses its way, is to be helped [Exod. xxiii, 5; Deut. xxii, 1 sqq.; comp. Matt. xii, 11]; animals may not be castrated or otherwise maimed [Lev. xxii, 24; even the crossing of animals of different kinds is, in high moral recognition of the rights of nature-creatures, forbidden [Lev. xix, 19]. With the greatest tenderness of feeling, a merely symbolical cruelty is not allowed; "thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk" [Exod. xxiii, 19; xxxiv, 26; Deut. xiv, 21]; it makes the impression of cruel mockery when the milk which is destined to nourish the young is used in connection with its death. Under the same category falls the prohibition of killing the calf, the kid, and the lamb, on the same day with its mother [Lev. xxii, 28], and of taking an incubating mother-bird at the same time with the nest [Deut. xxii, 6, 7]. The touching account of the care of God for the animals at the time of the deluge, is an emphatic illustration of the moral sparing of animals as it should be exercised by man; God includes also animals in his covenant with Noah, and promises to spare them [Gen. ix, 10, 15]. Christ himself illustrates his own relation to the body of believers in a gracious picture of a shepherd loving his flock [John x; comp. Matt. xviii, 12, 13].

The piety-inspired careful sparing of whatever contributes to the nourishment of man, is so natural an expression of the moral consciousness that it prevails among almost all, and even barbarous, nations. Christ sanctions this significant carefulness [John vi, 12]. This sparing has essentially a symbolical meaning,--is an evidencing of thankfulness for the good gifts of God,--a thankfulness which suffers not that these gifts of love be destroyed in wanton thoughtlessness and in purposeless waste, or contemptuously thrown away.

SECTION CXXVIII.

(b) The moral appropriating of nature is either of a purely spiritual, or of an actual character.--1. Spiritual appropriating consists, in addition to the legitimate striving after the highest possible knowledge of nature considered as a manifestation of divine power, love and wisdom, mainly in the reflective contemplating of nature in its symbolical suggestiveness of the moral,--God having implanted in it natural symbols of the moral.

The thoughtful, moral contemplating of nature is at once of a pious and of a poetical character; [14] it is not a mere play of the fancy, it is veritable reality. Nature is not moral, but it is the work of Him who is himself perfect morality. Nature as created by the holy God must necessarily reflect this holiness as from a mirror; it is the high and mysterious charm of nature that it is not mere nature, but that everywhere the Spirit whispers out of its bosom and broods over its expanse. Nature reveals to us not only God's creative power, wisdom and glory [Rom. i, 20; Job xxxvii, sqq.; Psa. xcvii; civ; cxi, 2; cxlvii, 8 sqq. ], [15] the heavens not only declare God's glory [Psa. xix, 1 sqq.], but also God's love is made known to us in nature [Matt. vi, 26 sqq.; Acts xiv, 17], and the bow on the clouds [Gen. ix, 12 sqq.] and the bespangled vault of the skies are symbols of the divine faithfulness [Gen. xv, 5]. But the moral consciousness finds still more than this; the phases of beauty that are perceived in nature are suggestions of spiritual beauty. It is not a groundless fancy when the mind discovers moral ideas symbolically suggested even in plants; we feel at once the kindredness of impression upon the sensibilities that is made by a delicate rose and by modest virginity, by a violet and by childlike humility, by an oak and by firmness of character. And the fact that animals so frequently directly remind us of human moral qualities, is simply evidence that the holy creative Spirit rules in them and discovers to us; in that which is merely natural, embryonic premonitions of the moral. The ant, the bee, etc., are natural emblems of the virtue of industry [Prov. vi, 6]; it is God who causes them busily to care for a common want,--who works in them in order to speak to man an unmistakable word of exhortation and instruction. The care of birds for their young, the fidelity of the dog and of the horse, are manifestations of a deeply suggestive character in nature. The quiet gentleness and the patient sufferance of the lamb are applied as types even to Christ [Isa. liii, 7; John i, 29, 36; 1 Pet. i, 19; Rev. v, 6, and elsewhere]; Christ himself uses the dove as a symbol of uprightness of heart [Matt. x, 16]. The animal-fable has something of the mystical in it and contains deep truth. The attractive and convicting element thereof is this inner mysterious fact, that something of the divine rules in the animal, and looks out upon us,--a moral element unconsciously immanent in nature itself; and that which appears in the brute as a type of human sin, is more than a mere fancied resemblance,--is in fact the root of that which in man actually becomes sin, whereas in the animal it is simply a normal limitedness.

SECTION CXXIX.

(2) The actual appropriating of nature-objects for nourishment, and thereby at the same time for sensuous enjoyment, involving the destruction of living natural objects,--rests upon the moral right of man over nature; and the limitations to the enjoyment of the nature-objects which serve for food, lie less in the nature-objects themselves than in the degree to which they are used and in the moral state of the person, as also in the thought of the morally-becoming. Also the flesh of animals is allowed to man for food) and hence also the killing of the same for such purposes, although in connection therewith all cruelty and all wanton levity is to be avoided. The chase is moral only in this sense, and not for diversion.--As drink man is permitted to use not only the strictly natural fluids, but also such as are prepared by skill, including the vinous; it is simply their misuse for inebriation that is immoral.

What things are per se appropriate as means of nourishment, is not a moral but a physiological question. Although for the state of sinfulness, the disciplinary law of God required man also in this sphere to distinguish between clean and unclean, and forbade to him a number of per se appropriate means of nourishment, still this law of limiting discipline had no validity for humanity while as yet unstained by sin. Here are applicable the words of Christ: "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man" [Matt. xv, 11; comp. Titus i, 15; Acts x, 15; Rom. xiv, 1 sqq. 20; 1 Cor. x, 25 sqq.]. It is not the object per se that renders an article of food sinful, but the disposition of the eater, the manner of enjoying it,--namely, when one forgets God in the sensuous, forgets his own moral dignity in the pleasure, aims not at the satisfying of the want, but only at the enjoyment, and does not observe the measure prescribed by the purpose of nourishment.

The admissibility of flesh-food, though very clear from a physiological stand-point, has yet been contested from a moral point of view. Asceticism has in all ages laid great stress on abstinence from flesh; the Indians reject flesh-food unconditionally, inasmuch as, in consequence of their Pantheistic philosophy, they regard the slaughtering of animals, otherwise than for sacrifice, as a blasphemous outrage. [16] The Manichees (and Essenes?) abstained likewise from all flesh. The rejection of flesh-food in seasons of fasting has less an objective than an inner ground. According to St. Jerome flesh and wine were originally not allowed, and were first permitted after the deluge, but they are not permissible under Christianity. [17] Paul mentions similar views [Rom. xiv, 2]. Jehovah expressly conceded to man after the deluge also animals for food [Gen. ix, 3], whereas in the blessing after creation [Gen. i, 29] there is mention only of plants as food; from this circumstance some have inferred that, previously, flesh-food was not in fact allowed; but we find no trace of a previous prohibition, and we can discover no reason for a change; rather would there lie in the progressive corruption of mankind a reason for a limiting of former rights; God's direction to Noah has in fact all the appearance of an express confirmation of a former right; and the privilege conferred at creation, of ruling over the fish of the sea, etc., would hardly have any significance if it did not also include the right to eat them. Abel brought offerings of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat [Gen. iv, 4]; now as it was uniformly that which was most precious to man that was offered as a sacrifice, hence it is probable that flocks were kept also for the sake of flesh-food, to which in fact the "coats of skins" [Gen. iii, 21] seems to allude. Were flesh-food simply a concession to sinfulness, which in fact would have no comprehensible reason, it would certainly not be prescribed in connection with the Passover and with sacrifices, and above all Christ himself would have abstained from it, whereas we know that the contrary was the case [Matt. xi, 19; comp. Mark ii, 19; John ii, 2 sqq.; Matt. xxvi, 17 sqq.]. Paul declares abstinence from flesh as a weakness of faith [Rom. xiv, 2; comp. 21; 1 Cor. x, 25]; to Peter animals are expressly offered in a vision for food [Acts 11 sqq.], and animals are spoken of as destined to be slaughtered [2 Pet. ii, 12; Deut. xii, 15, 20]. It is true man can live without flesh, and he certainly has reason not needlessly and out of mere wantonness to multiply the destruction of animals; still, however, as it is grounded in the very constitution of nature that animals serve for food to each other, hence it must be allowable also for man to take food for himself out of the animal kingdom. And should there seem to lie in the killing of an animal something inconsistent with the original peace between man and nature, and with man's instinctive feelings, and should it be inferred therefrom that it is only the changing of the original relation of things, as alluded to in the blessing upon Noah, that rendered flesh-food morally possible,--still the force of this difficulty will vanish so soon as we reflect upon the very ancient, pious, and significant custom,--wide-spread even among heathen nations and suggested in the laws of Moses [Lev. xvii, 3 sqq.],--namely, of slaying the nobler animals in general only for purposes of sacrifice, and of receiving back the flesh, thus consecrated to the Deity, only out of His own hand. In regard to the primitive usage it is most probable, therefore, that before the deluge the devout children of God partook indeed of flesh-food, but only of animals offered in sacrifice, and that too only seldom, as indeed pastoral people in general use but little flesh-food. Noah might, in view of the sensuality of the perished world, have doubted the propriety of flesh-food, and hence God sanctions it expressly.

It is indeed not to be denied that in the practice of the slaying of animals in general there lies a moral danger; it tends to blunt our feelings of natural compassion; and it is not a mere morbid sensibility, that makes it repugnant to some persons, e. g., to wring off the head of a dove; moreover it is a well-known fact that those who are engaged for the most part in the slaughtering of animals are liable to become hardened and cruel; it does not follow from this, however, that the slaughtering of animals for food is per se wrong, but only that the manner of the slaughtering is not a matter of indifference,--that it should be done with the least possible suffering, and that not every animal is equally appropriate therefor. It is in fact repugnant to our moral feelings to slaughter such domestic animals as by their fidelity to and fondness for us, have become in some respect our home-companions; it has the look of treachery on the part of man,--of a betrayal of the confidence which the animal had placed in him, in a word, of a breach of faith. The iron necessity of our evil-fraught actual condition may excuse it; but it is surely not the proper relation of things; and the fact that the general feeling of almost all cultured nations has a horror of the butchering of dogs and horses, man's most faithful companions, has its foundation surely not in any notion of the unwholesomeness of their flesh, but in a very legitimate moral feeling,--a feeling the disregarding of which is no mark of a special refinement of culture. Much more natural, and less questionably morally, is the killing of wild animals, and of such animals of the flock as have not as yet stood to man in a close relation of confidence. We cannot here as yet discuss in full the subjects of food and drink.

SECTION CXXX.

(c) The formative working upon nature, the shaping of it into an organ for man, is at the same time also an exalting of nature into the service of the moral life, and hence a forming of it into an expression of the human spirit,--an educating of nature whereby it is raised above its immediate naturalness. and is made to receive the impress of human action, of spiritual discipline. Man ennobles, spiritualizes, nature, and makes it into his spiritual possession, into his freely-formed home,--and in forming nature he appropriates it at the same time to himself.

If the dominating of man over nature,--to which God expressly called the first man [Gen. i, 28; Psa. viii], and which still holds good in a somewhat modified manner even in the state of sinfulness [Gen. ix, 2, 3]. and which is promised again in the fullest degree for the yet to be recovered perfect state [Isa. xi, 6 sqq.],--is not to be regarded as a mere figure of speech, then it must also imply a forming of the same. Man forms nature into an obedient instrument of the spirit, and gives to it a spiritual, historical impress. Nature, in its wild state, stands to man in an unhomelike, not to say hostile relation,--it is only in its form as shaped and disciplined by his skill that he feels at home. God gave nature to man as a theater for his moral activity, but man is not at liberty simply to sport with it, simply to admire and enjoy it,--he should really rule over it; but all ruling is at the same time an appropriating and a forming. Man is to make of nature something which as yet it is not,--is himself to form it into a spiritually-molded home for himself. This forming of nature is either a forming of it into a useful object for the individual, and hence in the service of labor (§ 109), or a forming of it into an image of the spirit, into a thing of beauty, into a work of art (§ 110). A hill-side cavern is not a dwelling-place for man; his home-protection, he must construct for himself. If even the bird builds its nest in a way of its own, so that it bears an impress peculiar to the bird, how much more must man spiritually shape nature into a home for himself! Of course the forming of nature does not consist in an abuse of it,--e. g., in a forcing of trees to be square, in cropping the tails of horses and the ears of dogs,--but in the further development of the natural beauty and perfection already existing in nature. The cultivated rose is more beautiful than the wild one; the improved fruit tree is better in many respects than the wild-growing one; the domesticated animals have become in many respects quite other and more perfect creatures than they were in their wild state; they have attained not only to higher soul-capacities, but also to a nobler and stronger physique; the wild dog and the wild horse cannot in any respect bear favorable comparison with those which have been cultivated by man. The fidelity of these creatures,--which indeed they show almost exclusively toward man, to whom they attach themselves much more closely and affectionately than to their own kind,--is an evidence of the normal dominion of spirit over nature, and a positive ennobling, and is the thankfulness of the animal for its culture.

The task of overcoming the wild forces of nature that stand in the way of individual human life, and of subjecting them to the discipline of the spirit, is a powerful stimulus to moral activity; and they are in fact, in virtue of the divine creative plan, perfectly overcomable by the rational spirit,--if not always by the individual, yet at least by the collective, spirit. Though it is not true that all nature-objects exist merely for the outward use of man, nevertheless they are in fact for man, in a still higher sense,--for his moral delight, for spiritual enjoyment, for the service of the moral life. The dominion and discipline which man can and should exercise over the animal world, does not in the original purpose imply that he is to surround himself in his domestic life with animals of every sort, but it does imply that he ought not (as, however, has actually taken place) to acknowledge them as a power over against himself, and before which he has to tremble, and against which he can secure himself only by strategy and deadly violence; on the contrary, he should rise to a consciousness of his all-sufficient dominating power over them; but to destroy is not to dominate. That nature-creatures should become to man a torment, a plague, a death-bringing danger, and that man in the interest of his self-preservation should have to carry on a war of extermination against a large portion of them,--all this is, according to the Scripture view, a consequence of the disturbance of the harmony of creation; hence, as it is a result of sin, we cannot as yet, here, treat of it. Even in the fallen state, however, we can still discover clear traces of the true relation of things; even the lion and the tiger cannot bear the steady, fearless look of man, and they throw off their natural awe of man only after having tasted of human blood. Man can and may, however, actually realize his dominion over nature, only when he permits himself to be ruled over by the holy Originator and Lord of nature.