Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/279

 demand more, since with us the idea of reconciliation is of a higher kind, and because we are conscious that this conversion can occur in the inner life, whereby that which is done can be rendered undone.

The man who is “converted” gives up his one-sidedness; he has extirpated it himself in his will, which was the permanent seat of the deed, the place of its abode; that is, he destroys the act in its root. It is congenial to our way of feeling that tragedies should have conclusions which have in them the element of reconciliation.

(b.) Worship as Service.—If the real point accordingly is that subjectivity should consciously pronounce its identity with the divine which confronts it, then both parts must give up something of their determinateness. God comes down from his throne of the universe and delivers Himself up, and man must, in the act of receiving the gift, accomplish the negation of subjective self-consciousness—that is, he must acknowledge God or take the gift with an acknowledgment of the essentiality which is in it. The service of God is consequently a reciprocal giving and receiving. Each side gives up something of the particularity which separates it from the other.

I. The outward relation of the two sides to one another in its most extreme form is that God has in Himself a natural element, and exists independently relatively to self-consciousness in an immediate definite fashion; or, to put it otherwise, God has His existence in an external, natural manifestation. In this relation the service of God is on the one side an acknowledgment that natural things are an Essence in themselves. On the other side, the deity offers itself up, sacrifices itself in the power of Nature in which it appears, and allows itself to be taken possession of by self-consciousness.

If then the divine powers give themselves up as gifts of Nature and graciously offer themselves for use, the