Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/245

 supremely necessary to bring faith near to men, and if religious talk is constantly directed toward producing a sense of wretchedness, and together with this the belief that God exists, this is not only not worship, but this persistent effort, implying that religion has first to be created, is something outside of religion. The truth rather is that worship is within religion, and the knowledge that God and reality exist is the fundamental truth which I have only to assimilate to myself. Oh, unhappy age, which must content itself merely with being continually told that there is a God!

Since the truth rather is that worship presupposes the essential existence of the final purpose of the world, and yet sets out from this presupposition to oppose empirical self-consciousness and its particular interests, a negative moment or stage is contained in it, but of such a kind that it is really the practical activity of the subject itself, by which it discards particular subjectivity. Such, then, is the notion or conception of worship in general, whose foundation is the determination of what is known as faith.

II.—The Definite Character and Special Forms of Worship or Cultus.

In faith is contained the notion or conception of absolute Spirit itself.

To begin with, this content exists as the Notion for us; we have conceived of it as such, but that does not imply that it is already posited in existence as such. The Notion is the inner, the substantial element, and as such it is through us that it is present in us in the knowledge which grasps its object. The Idea, however, does not as yet possess this shape and content in existing self-consciousness generally. At first, therefore, the Idea is like the Notion, like the Substance which is identical with subjective self-consciousness, so that subjective self-consciousness has its Essence, its truth in the object. In the Idea