ous, as in little children who have known no contradiction between duty and desire; and perhaps involuntary in the perfect saint, to whom all duties are desirable, who has ended the contradiction by willing himself God's will, and thus becoming one with God. It may be conscious, as with many men whose strife is not yet over. It seems the highest and completest mode of Religion must be self-conscious,—free goodness, free piety, and free, self-conscious trust in God.[1]
Now there are two tendencies connected with Religion; one is speculative: here the man is intellectually employed in matters pertaining to Religion, to God, to Man's religious nature, and his relation and connection with God. The result of this tendency is Theology. This is not Religion itself. It is men's Thought about Religion; the Philosophy of divine things; the Science of Religion. Its sphere is the mind of men. Religion and Theology are no more to be confounded than the stars with astronomy.[2]
While the religious element, like the intellectual or the moral, or human nature itself, remains ever the same, the Religious Consciousness of mankind is continually progressive; and so Theology, which is the intellectual expression
- ↑ See Parker's Sermons of Theism, &c., Serm. V. and VI.
- ↑ Much difficulty has arisen from this confusion of Religion and Theology; it is one proximate cause of that rancorous hatred which exists between the theological parties of the present day. Each connects Religion exclusively with its own sectarian theology. But there were great men before Agamemnon; good men before Moses. Theology is a natural product of the human mind. Each man has some notion of divine things—that is, a theology; if he collect them into a system, it is a system of theology, which differs in some points from that of every other man living. There is but one Religion, though many theologies. See de Wette, Ueber Religion und Theologie, Part I. Ch. I.-III.; Part II. Ch. I.-III.; his Dogmatik, § 4-8.
are formed to a similitude and likeness of Himself.” Kant: “Reverence for the moral law as a divine command.” Schelling: “The union of the Finite and the Infinite.” Fichte: “Faith in a moral government of the world.” Hegel: “Morality becoming conscious of the free universality of its concrete essence.” This will convey no idea to one not acquainted with the peculiar phraseology of Hegel. It seems to mean, Perfect mind becoming conscious of itself. Schleiermacher: “Immediate self-consciousness of the absolute dependence of all the finite on the infinite.” Hase: “Striving after the Absolute, which is in itself unattainable; but by love of it man participates of the divine perfection.” Wollaston: “An obligation to do what ought not to be omitted, and to forbear what ought not to be done.” Jeremy Taylor: “The whole duty of man, comprehending in it justice, charity, and sobriety.” For the opinions of the ancients, see a treatise of Nitzsch, in Studien und Kritiken for 1828, p. 527, et seq.
