Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/237

 as such only eternal truths of the Spirit. This represents the essential characteristic of religion, and for the rest, whether those positive statutes have to do with the external modes of worship, or whether such commands of God relate to moral actions, it is again the spiritual element, the disposition of mind which is the principal thing. But this religion of commands in its fully developed form is harsh in the extreme, and may become irreligious, and enter into relation with a limited content. What is to be believed must, however, possess a religious, spiritual content.

3. We have now defined faith, and attestation as mediation, to be the inmost element in the conception of worship, or as the first moments in it. In worship, God is on the one side, I am on the other; and the essential characteristic here is that I enclose myself with God within myself, know myself in God as my truth, and God in me. The essential thing is this concrete unity. Theoretical consciousness, too, is concrete in our way of looking at it, but only implicitly. When it becomes concrete for the subject too, it then is practical. Worship is the act of giving to oneself this highest, this absolute enjoyment—there is emotion in it; I am present in it with my individual personality. Thus it is the certainty or sure knowledge of the absolute Spirit in His Church, the Church’s knowledge of its own Essence; this is the substantial unity of Spirit with itself which is essential and infinite form, knowledge in itself. Thus to put it more definitely, subjective self-consciousness is, to begin with, contained in it, but this consciousness, however, is still subjective in a formal manner only, for the consciousness which has reached knowledge of the absolute content is free. That is to say, it divests itself of the reserve and isolation of Being-for-self, which as a unit is exclusive in relation to its object. Thus it knows its Essence, and that this is its Essence; it bears witness of this to the object, and this witness is thus the testimony of Absolute