Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/343

 thing is for them to be pious. We cannot know God as object, or get a real knowledge of Him, and the main thing, what we are really concerned about, is merely the subjective manner of knowing Him and our subjective religious condition. We may recognise this standpoint as described in what has just been said. It is the standpoint of the age, but at the same time it represents a most important advance by which an infinite moment has had its due value recognised, for it involves a recognition of the consciousness of the subject as constituting an absolute moment. The same content is seen to exist in both sides, and it is this potential or true Being of the two sides which is religion. The great advance which marks our time consists in the recognition of subjectivity as an absolute moment, and this is therefore essentially determination or characterisation. The whole question, however, turns on how subjectivity is determined or characterised.

On this important advance we have to make the following remarks. When religion is determined from the point of view of consciousness, it is so constituted that the content passes beyond consciousness, and in appearance at least remains something strange or foreign to consciousness. It does not matter what content religion has, this content, regarded solely from the standpoint of consciousness, is something which exists above and outside of consciousness, and even if we add to it the peculiar determination of Revelation, it is nevertheless for us something given and outward. The result of such a conception of religion is that the Divine content is regarded as something given independent of us, as something which cannot be known but is to be received and kept in a merely passive way in faith, and on the other hand it lands us in the subjectivity of the feeling which is the end and the result of the worship of God. The standpoint of consciousness is therefore not the sole and only standpoint. The devout man sinks himself in