Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/268

 is to subject himself to a strict obedience; he is to abide in the condition of will-lessness; and more than this, he is to be selfless in his conscience too; in his faith, in his deeper inner life, he is to renounce himself and cast away his self.

When religion lays its arrest on the active life of man in this manner, it can prescribe peculiar rules to him which are in opposition to the rationality of the world. In contrast to this action of religion, worldly wisdom, which recognises the element of truth in the sphere of reality, makes its appearance, the principles of its freedom are awakened in the consciousness of the Spirit, and here the demands of freedom are seen to enter into conflict with the religious principles which required that renunciation. Such is the relation in which religion and the State stand toward one another in Catholic States when subjective freedom awakes in men.

In connection with this contradiction, religion expresses itself in a negative way only, and requires of man that he should renounce all freedom; put in a more definite form, this contradiction means that man in his actual or secular consciousness generally is essentially without rights, and religion recognises no absolute rights in the domain of actual or secular morality. So enormous is the change which has in consequence of this made its appearance in the modern world, that it is even asked whether the freedom of man is to be recognised as something which is really and essentially true, or whether it may be repudiated by religion.

It has been stated already that it is possible that there should be harmony between religion and the State. This is the case in a general sense in Protestant States so far as the principle is concerned, though indeed the harmony is of an abstract kind; for Protestantism demands that a man should only believe what he knows, that his conscience should be regarded as a holy thing that is not to be touched or interfered with. In connection with the working of divine grace man is no passive being; he