Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/243

 into reality the previously determined unity, and the enjoyment of it; so that what is potentially in faith may also be realised, felt, enjoyed. When will appears in this form, worship is practical, and this active process has to begin with the form of limitation and particularity. It is frequently said that in his will man is infinite; while in his understanding, his power of knowledge, he is finite. To say this is childish; the opposite is much nearer the truth. In willing, a man confronts an Other, he isolates himself as an individual, he has in himself a purpose, an intent with regard to an Other, he behaves as if separated from that Other, and thus finitude comes in. In his acts man has an end before him, and such action essentially requires that the content, the end, should exist, should lose the form of an idea, or in other words, that the end in view being, to begin with, subjective, should have this subjectivity taken away from it, and thus at length attain to objective existence.

In so far as worship, too, is an act, it has an end in itself, and this, which is faith, is the implicit concrete reality of the Divine and of consciousness. What worship has to accomplish is not the separation of anything from the Object, or the alteration of anything in it, nor the establishing of its own claims with regard to it. Its end, on the contrary, is essentially absolute reality, and this end is not one which has still to be produced, or created, but one which is only to have actuality in me; it is, therefore, opposed to me, opposed to my particular subjectivity. This last is the husk, which is to be stripped off; I am to be in the Spirit, and the Object is to be in me as Spirit.

Here then is a twofold act, the grace of God and the sacrifice of man. In connection with the act, which we call the grace of God, the mind gets into a difficulty on account of the freedom of man. But the freedom of man just consists in the knowledge and willing of God, and exists only through the annulling of human knowledge