When man determines to adopt a Religion he asks himself, "What is the ground of my faith?" The Christian Religion replies - "The Spirit's witness to its content." Christ reproved the Pharisees for wishing to see miracles; the Spirit alone comprehends Spirit, the miracle is only a presentiment of that Spirit; and if the miracle be the suspension of natural laws, Spirit itself is the real miracle in the operations of nature. Spirit in itself is merely this comprehension of itself. There is only one Spirit, the universal divine Spirit. Not that it is merely everywhere; it is not to be comprehended as what is common to everything, as an external totality, to be found in many or in all individuals, which are essentially individuals; but it must be understood as that which permeates through everything, as the unity of itself and of a semblance of its "other," as of the subjective and particular. As universal, it is object to itself, and thus determined as a particular, it is this individual: but as universal it reaches over this its "other," so that its "other" and itself are comprised in one. The true universality seems, popularly expressed, to be two - what is common to the universal itself and to the particular. A division is formed in the understanding of itself, and the Spirit is the unity of what is understood and the understanding person. The divine Spirit which is comprehended, is objective;the subjective Spirit comprehends. But Spirit is not passive, or else the passivity can be momentary only; there is one spiritual substantial unity. The subjective Spirit is the active, but the objective Spirit is itself this activity; the active subjective Spirit is that which comprehends the divine, and in its comprehension of it it is itself the divine Spirit. The relation of Spirit to self alone is the absolute determination; the divine Spirit lives in its own communion and presence. This comprehension has been called Faith, but it is not an historical faith; we Lutherans - I am a Lutheran and will remain the same - have only this original faith. This unity is not the Substance of Spinoza, but the apprehending Substance in self-consciousness which makes itself eternal and relates to universality. The talk about the limitations of human thought is futile; to know God is the only end of Religion. The testimony of the Spirit to the content of Religion is itself Religion; it is a testimony that both bears witness and at the same time is that witness. The Spirit proves itself, and does so first in the proof; it is only proved because it proves itself and shows or manifests itself.
It has farther to be said, that this testimony, this inward stirring and self-consciousness, reveals itself, while in the enshrouded consciousness of devotion it does not arrive at the proper consciousness of an object, but only at the consciousness of immersion in absolute Being. This permeating and permeated Spirit now enters into conception; God goes forth into the "other" and makes Himself objective. All that pertains to revelation and its reception, and which comes before us in mythology, here appears; everything which is historical and which belongs to what is positive has here its proper place. To speak more definitely, we now have the Christ who came into the world nearly two thousand years ago. But He says, "I am with you even unto the ends of the earth;where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there will I be in the midst." I shall not be seen of you in the flesh, but "The Spirit of Truth will guide you into all Truth." The external is not the true relation; it will disappear.
The two stages have here been given, the first of which is the stage of devotion, of worship, such as that reached in partaking of the Communion. That is the perception of the divine Spirit in the community in which the present, indwelling, living Christ as self-consciousness has attained to actuality. The second stage is that of developed consciousness, when the content becomes the object; here this present, indwelling Christ retreats two thousand years to a small corner of Palestine, and is an individual historically manifested far away at Nazareth or Jerusalem. It is the same thing in the Greek Religion where the god present in devotion changes into prosaic statues and marble; or in painting, where this externality is likewise arrived at, when the god becomes mere canvas or wood. The Supper is, according to the Lutheran conception, of Faith alone; it is a divine satisfaction, and is not adored as if it were the Host. Thus a sacred image is no more to us than is a stone or thing. The second point of view must indeed be that with which consciousness begins; it must start from the external comprehension of this form: it must passively accept report and take it up into memory. But if it remain where it is, that is the unspiritual point of view: to remain fixed in this second standpoint in this dead far-away historic distance, is to reject the Spirit.
The sins of him who lies against the Holy Ghost cannot be forgiven. That lie is the refusal to be a universal, to be holy, that is to make Christ become divided, separated, to make Him only another person as this particular person in Judea; or else to say that He now exists, but only far away in Heaven, or in some other place, and not in present actual form amongst His people. The man who speaks of the merely finite, of merely human reason, and of the limits to mere reason, lies against the Spirit, for the Spirit as infinite and universal, as self-comprehension, comprehends itself not in a "merely" nor in limits, nor in the finite as such. It has nothing to do with this, for it comprehends itself within itself alone, in its infinitude.
