Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/15

 the form of feeling, idea, sentiment; but it is also partly subjectivity which represents the Notion, thinking reason, the thought of free Spirit, which is free only when it returns into itself.

As regards place or space, the three forms, since they appear as development and history in different places, so to speak, are to be explained as follows. The divine history in its first form takes place outside of the world, outside of finitude where there is no space, representing God as He is in His essential being or in-and-for-Himself. The second form is represented by the divine history in a real shape in the world, God in definite completed existence. The third stage is represented by the inner place, the Spiritual Community, existing at first in the world, but at the same time raising itself up to heaven, and which as a Church already has Him in itself here on earth, full of grace, active and present in the world.

It is also possible to characterise the three elements, and to distinguish them in accordance with the note of Time. In the first element God is beyond time, as the eternal Idea, existing in the element of eternity in so far as eternity is contrasted with time. Thus time in this complete and independent form, time in-and-for-self, unfolds itself and breaks up into past, present, and future. Thus the divine history in its second stage as appearance is regarded as the past, it is, it has Being, but it is Being which is degraded to a mere semblance. In taking on the form of appearance it is immediate existence, which is at the same time negated, and this is the past. The divine history is thus regarded as something past, as representing the Historical properly so called. The third element is the present, yet it is only the limited present, not the eternal present, but rather the present which distinguishes itself from the past and future, and represents the element of feeling, of the immediate subjectivity of spiritual Being which is now. The present must, however, also represent the third element; the Church raises itself to Heaven too,