Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/122

 the presupposition in which we must believe, to begin with.

I. The rise of the Spiritual Community appears in the form of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Faith takes its rise first of all in a man, a human, material manifestation; and next comes spiritual comprehension, consciousness of the Spiritual. We get spiritual content, a changing of what is immediate into what has a spiritual character. The verification here is spiritual, it is not found in what is sensuous or material; and it cannot be brought about in an immediate, material way; some objection can always be brought against the material facts.

As regards the empirical mode of verifying the truth, the Church is so far right when it refuses to countenance investigations such as those concerned with the appearances of Christ after His death; for investigations of this sort start from a point of view which implies that the real question is as to the sensuous element in the appearance of Christ, as to what is historical in it, as if the verification of Spirit and of its truth was contained in such narratives regarding one who was represented as an historical person and in an historical fashion. This truth, however, is sure and certain by itself, although it has an historical starting-point.

This transition is the outpouring of the Spirit, which could make its appearance only after Christ had been taken away out of the flesh, and the sensuous, immediate present had ceased. It is then the Spirit appears, for then the entire history is completed, and the entire picture of Spirit is present to perception. What Spirit now produces is something different and has a different form.

The question as to the truth of the Christian religion directly divides itself into two questions: 1. Is it really true that God does not exist apart from the Son, and that He has sent Him into the world? And 2. Was this