Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/136

 the Spiritual Community, but the Spiritual Community as actually existing and as maintaining itself.

The actual, permanent existence of the Spiritual Community is its continuous, eternal becoming, which is based on the fact that it is the very nature of Spirit to know itself as eternal, to liberate itself so as to form those finite flashes of light which make the individual consciousness, and then to collect itself again out of this finitude and comprehend itself, and in this way the knowledge of its essence and consequently the divine self-consciousness appear in finite consciousness. Out of the ferment of finitude, and while it changes itself into foam, Spirit rises like a vapour.

In the Spiritual Community as actually existing, the Church is emphatically the institution in virtue of which the persons composing it reach the truth and appropriate it for themselves, and through it the Holy Spirit comes to be in them as real, actual, and present, and has its abode in them; it means that the truth is in them, and that they are in a condition to enjoy and give active expression to the truth or Spirit, that they as individuals are those who give active expression to the Spirit.

The Church viewed in its universal aspect means that the truth is here presupposed as already existing—not as if it were just originating, and the Holy Spirit were being poured out for the first time, and was being brought into existence for the first time, but rather that the truth exists as actually present truth. For the subject this means an alteration of the relation in which it stood to the truth at the beginning.

1. This truth which is thus presupposed is actually present; it is the doctrine of the Church, the Faith, and we know what the content of this doctrine is; it is, in one word, the doctrine of reconciliation. We have no longer to do with the fact that this one man has been elevated by the outpouring, the decree of the Spirit, so as to have an absolute signification, but with the fact that this signification is consciously known and recognised.