Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/166

 Substantial as Another and a Higher over against itself. It is only when it has taken up a definite position toward the absolute power, toward the awe-inspiring Object, and thereby has come outside of itself in it, freed itself from itself and yielded itself up, that Spirit truly returns to itself. That is to say, the fear of God is the presupposition of true love. What the essentially True is must reveal itself to the heart as an independent existence, in relation to which it renounces itself, and only through this mediation, through the restoration of itself, wins true freedom.

When the objective truth exists for me, I have emptied myself of myself, I have kept nothing for myself, and have at the same time conceived of this truth as mine. I have identified myself with it, and have maintained myself in it, but as pure passionless self-consciousness. This relation—Faith—as the absolute identity of the content with myself, is the same thing as religious feeling, but with this difference, that it at the same time expresses that absolute objectivity which the content has for me. The Church and the Reformers knew perfectly well what they meant by faith. They did not say that men are saved by feeling, by sensation (αἴσθησις), but by faith, so that in the absolute object I have freedom, which essentially includes the renunciation of my own will and pleasure, and of particular conviction.

Now since, as compared with feeling, in which the content exists as a specific state of the subject, and consequently as contingent, idea implies that the content is lifted up into objectivity, it is in connection with the latter of these that the content should justify itself on its own account on the one hand, and on the other, that the necessity of its essential connection with self-consciousness should be explained.

It is to be observed here, however, in reference to what primarily concerns the content itself, that the value which it has in idea is that of something given, of which