lect, of science[1]—is regarded by religion as lying outside man and Nature, in a special, personal being. All good, but especially such as takes possession of man apart from his volition, such as does not correspond with any resolution or purpose, such as transcends the limits of the practical consciousness, comes from God; all wickedness, evil, but especially such as overtakes him against his will in the midst of his best moral resolutions, or hurries him along with terrible violence, comes from the devil. The scientific knowledge of the essence of religion includes the knowledge of the devil, of Satan, of demons.[2] These things cannot be omitted without a violent mutilation of religion. Grace and its works are the antitheses of the devil and his works. As the involuntary, sensual impulses which flash out from the depths of the nature, and, in general, all those phenomena of moral and physical evil which are inexplicable to religion, appear to it as the work of the Evil Being; so the involuntary movements of inspiration and ecstasy appear to it as the work of the Good Being, God, of the Holy Spirit or of Grace. Hence the arbitrariness of grace—the complaint of the pious that grace at one time visits and blesses them, at another forsakes and rejects them. The life, the agency of grace, is the life, the agency of emotion. Emotion is the Paraclete of Christians. The moments which are forsaken by divine grace, are the moments destitute of emotion and inspiration.
In relation to the inner life, Grace may be defined as religious genius; in relation to the outer life as religious chance. Man is good or wicked by no means through himself, his own power, his will; but through that complete synthesis of hidden and evident determinations of things which, because they rest on no evident necessity, we ascribe to the power of “chance.” Divine grace is the power of chance beclouded with additional mystery. Here we have
- ↑ Here and in other parts of this work, theory is taken in the sense in which it is the source of true adjective activity,—the science which gives birth to art,—for man can do only so much as he knows: “tantum potest quantum scit .”
- ↑ Concerning the biblical conceptions of Satan, his power and works, see Lützelherger’s “Grundzüge der Paulinischen Glaubenslehre,” and G. Ch. Knapp’s “Vorles. über d. Christl. Glaubensl.” §62-65. To this subject belongs demoniacal possession, which also has its attestation in the Bible. See Knapp (§65. iii. 2, 3).
