Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/107

 in-and-for-itself; it is not a strange sacrifice, a sacrifice of what is foreign to man which has been offered, it is not an Other who has been punished in order that there might be punishment. Each one must for himself, starting from his own subjectivity and responsibility, do and be what he ought to be. But what he thus is for himself must not be anything accidental, or be his own caprice; it must, on the contrary, be something true. When he thus accomplishes within himself this conversion and the yielding up of the natural will, and lives in love, this represents the essential fact, the thing in-and-for-itself. His subjective certainty, his feeling, is truth, it is the truth and the nature of the Spirit. The basis of redemption is thus contained in the history spoken of, for it represents the essential thing or fact, the thing as it is in-and-for-itself; it is not an accidental special act and occurrence, but is true and complete. This proof of its truth is the pictorial view given of it in the history referred to, and according to that representation the individual lays hold of, appropriates the merit of Christ. It is not, however, the history of one individual; on the contrary, it is God who accomplishes what is told in it; i.e., the view which it gives is that this history is the universal and absolute history, the history which is for itself.

Other forms, for example, of the sacrificial offering, with which is connected the false idea that God is a tyrant who desires sacrifice, reduce themselves to that conception of sacrifice which has been stated, and are to be corrected by it. Sacrifice means the abolition and absorption of naturalness, of Otherness. It is further said that Christ died for all, and this does not represent an individual act, but the divine eternal history. It is said in the same way that in Him all have died. This is itself a moment in the nature of God; it has taken place in God Himself. God cannot find satisfaction through anything other than Himself, but only through