Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/88

 connection with these interests and activities; in so far as he feels himself to be in a condition of physical dependence, and has to provide for his own support, &c., his thoughts are taken away from his spiritual interests through his being bound to Nature. The stage of immediate existence is, however, contained in Spirit itself. The essential characteristic of Spirit is that it should advance to this stage. The natural life is not simply an external necessity; on the contrary, Spirit, as subject in its infinite reference to itself, has the characteristic of immediacy in it. In so far, accordingly, as the nature of Spirit happens to be revealed to Man, the nature of God in the entire development of the Idea must be revealed, and thus this form must also be present here, and that is just the form of finitude. The Divine must appear in the form of immediacy. This immediate presence is merely a presence of the Spiritual in that spiritual form which is the human form. This manifestation is not true when it takes any other form, certainly not when it is a manifestation of God in the burning bush, and the like. God appears as an individual person to whose immediacy all kinds of physical necessities are attached. In Indian pantheism a countless number of incarnations occur; there subjectivity, human existence, is only an accidental form; in God it is simply a mask which Substance adopts and changes in an accidental way. God as Spirit, however, contains in Himself the moment of subjectivity, of singleness; His manifestation, accordingly, can only be a single one, can take place only once.

In the Church Christ has been called the God-Man. This is the extraordinary combination which directly contradicts the Understanding; but the unity of the divine and human natures has here been brought into human consciousness and has become a certainty for it, implying that the otherness, or, as it is also expressed, the finitude, the weakness, the frailty of human nature is not