makes a deeper, a more enduring impression, than the perfect tense which expresses the fact of redemption. The redemption is only the result of the suffering; the suffering is the cause of the redemption. Hence the suffering takes deeper root in the feelings; the suffering makes itself an object of imitation;—not so the redemption. If God himself suffered for my sake, how can I be joyful, how can I allow myself any gladness, at least on this corrupt earth, which was the theatre of his suffering?[1] Ought I to fare better than God? Ought I not, then, to make his sufferings my own? Is not what God my Lord does, my model? Or shall I share only the gain, and not the cost also? Do I know merely that he has redeemed me? Do I not also know the history of his suffering? Should it be an object of cold remembrance to me, or even an object of rejoicing, because it has purchased my salvation? Who can think so—who can wish to be exempt from the sufferings of his God?
The Christian religion is the religion of suffering.[2] The images of the crucified one which we still meet with in all churches, represent not the Saviour, but only the crucified, the suffering Christ. Even the self-crucifixions among the Christians are, psychologically, a deep-rooted consequence of their religious views. How should not he who has always the image of the crucified one in his mind, at length contract the desire to crucify either himself or another? At least we have as good a warrant for this conclusion as Augustine and other fathers of the church for their reproach against the heathen religion, that the licentious religious images of the heathens provoked and authorized licentiousness.
God suffers, means in truth nothing else than: God is a heart. The heart is the source, the centre of all suffering. A being without suffering is a being without a heart. The mystery of the suffering God is therefore the mystery of feeling, sensibility. A suffering God is a feeling, sensitive God.[3] But the proposition: God is a feeling Being, is only
- ↑ “Deus meus pendet in patibulo et ego voluptati operam dabo?” (Form. Hon. Vitae. Among the spurious writings of St. Bernard.) “Memoria crucifixi crucifigat in te carnem tuam.”—Joh. Gerhard (Medit. sacrae, M. 37).
- ↑ “It is better to suffer evil, than to do good.”—Luther (T. iv. s. 15).
- ↑ “Pati voluit, ut compati disceret, miser fieri, ut misereri disceret.”—Bernhard (de Grad.). “Miserere nostri, quoniam camis imbecillitatem, tu ipse eam passus, expertus es.”—Clemens Alex. Paedag. 1. i. c. 8.
