Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/149

 we must have God in our heart. Heart is indeed more than feeling. This last is only momentary, accidental, transient; but when I say “I have God in my heart,” the feeling is here expressly represented as the continuous, permanent manner of my existence. The heart is what I am; not merely what I am at this moment, but what I am in general; it is my character. The form of feeling as something universal thus means the principles or settled habits of my existence, the fixed manner of my way of acting.

In the Bible, however, evil, as such, is expressly attributed to the heart, and the heart—this natural particularity of ours—is, as a matter of fact, the seat of evil. But goodness, morality, do not consist in the fact that a man enforces the claims of his particularity, his selfishness, or selfness. If he does so, he is evil. The element of self is the evil element which we generally call the heart. Now when it is said, as above, that God, justice, &c., must exist in my feeling, in my heart, what is meant is only that these are not to be merely something of which I form ideas, but are to be inseparably identical with me. I, as actual, as this definite individual, am to be so determined completely and entirely; this definite nature is to be my character, is to constitute the whole manner of my actual existence, and thus it is essential that every true content should be in feeling, in the heart. Such is the manner in which religion is to be brought into the heart, and it is here that the necessity for the religious education of the individual comes in. The heart, feeling, must be purified, educated; and this education means that another, a higher mode of feeling is the true one, and comes into existence with the individual. Yet the content is not true, not self-existent, good, inherently excellent, simply because it is in feeling. If what is in feeling be true, then all must be true; as, for example, Apis-worship. Feeling is the central point of subjective, accidental Being. To give his feelings a