Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/110

 under the limitations of sense; the real disclosure of what He was was given to them by the Spirit, of whom Christ said, “He will lead you into all truth.” “That will first be the truth into which the Spirit will lead you.”

Regarded in this aspect this death consequently assumes the character of a death which is the transition to glory, to a glorified state, which, however, is merely a restoration of the original glorified state. The death, the negative, is the mediating element implying that the original state of majesty is thought of as having been reached. The history of the resurrection and exaltation of Christ to the right hand of God forms part of the history of His death when this comes to have a spiritual signification.

Thus it came about that this little community of believers attained the sure conviction: God has appeared in the form of Man; this humanity in God, and this humanity in its most abstract form, the most complete dependence, weakness in its most extreme form, the final stage of frailty, is just what we have in natural death.

“God Himself is dead,” as it is said in a Lutheran hymn; the consciousness of this fact expresses the truth that the human, the finite, frailty, weakness, the negative, is itself a divine moment, is in God Himself; that otherness or Other-Being, the finite, the negative, is not outside of God, and that in its character as otherness it does not hinder unity with God; otherness, the negation, is consciously known to be a moment of the Divine nature. The highest knowledge of the nature of the Idea of Spirit is contained in this thought.

This outward negative changes round in this way into the inner negative. Regarded in one aspect the meaning, the signification attached to death is that in it the human element has been stripped off, and the divine glory comes again into view. But death is itself at the same time also the negative, the furthest point of that experience to which man as a natural being and consequently God Himself are exposed.