Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/227

 and so the idea of free-will does not appear either. God, the absolute Idea, and then property, and possession, represent three different stages. Here the uniting middle term, property, drops away, and the possession is taken up into the divine will in an immediate form. It is this empirical individual possession which is to have value as such and as thus authorised, and it is taken out of the reach of the free act of designation on the part of the individual, who cannot sell it but can only pledge it for some time, and always only until the year of Jubilee.

The other side, namely, the negative relation, corresponds to the affirmative side. The recognition of Power as constituting the negative side must also be defined empirically or externally in reference to property. Particular acts of conduct, real ways of acting, must in the same way have their negative side as the acknowledgment of the Lord. There must be a service, not simply fear, but an act of surrender in particular things. This is the other side of the covenant, which, on the one hand, has possession as its effect, but, on the other, demands service also, so that just as this particular country is attached to this particular nation, the nation itself is bound by the obligation of rendering the service required by the Law. These laws, looked at from one side, are family laws, have reference to family conditions, and have a moral content; but looked at from the other side, the main point about them is that what is inherently moral in them is regarded as something which has been laid down in a purely positive way, and so naturally we have joined on to this a large number of external accidental regulations which are simply to be observed. The irrationality of the service corresponds to the irrationality of the possession, and we thus have an abstract obedience which does not require any inwardness in respect of any definite character belonging to it, since its justification for existing is an abstract one. Just because God is absolute