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 moral character, as to whether the faith of Christians be feigned or genuine. So far as classes are concerned, faith knows already whom God will place on the right hand, and whom on the left; in relation to the persons who compose the classes faith is uncertain;—but that believers are heirs of the Eternal Kingdom is beyond all doubt. Apart from this, however, the God who distinguishes between believers and unbelievers, the condemning and rewarding God, is nothing else than faith itself. What God condemns, faith condemns, and vice versâ. Faith is a consuming fire to its opposite. This fire of faith regarded objectively, is the anger of God, or what is the same thing, hell; for hell evidently has its foundation in the anger of God. But this hell lies in faith itself, in its sentence of damnation. The flames of hell are only the flashings of the exterminating, vindictive glance which faith casts on unbelievers.

Thus faith is essentially a spirit of partisanship. He who is not for Christ is against him. Faith knows only friends or enemies, it understands no neutrality; it is preoccupied only with itself. Faith is essentially intolerant; essentially, because with faith is always associated the illusion that its cause is the cause of God, its honour his honour. The God of faith is nothing else than the objective nature of faith—faith become an object to itself. Hence in the religious consciousness also the cause of faith and the cause of God are identified. God himself is interested: the interest of faith is the nearest interest of God. “He who toucheth you,” says the prophet Zachariah, “toucheth the apple of His eye.” That which wounds faith, wounds God, that which denies faith, denies God himself.

Faith knows no other distinction than that between the service of God and the service of idols. Faith alone gives