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Let us add what seems to be wanting; and say that religion is the "worship of higher powers from a sense of need"! This will remind the reader of Schleiermacher's definition "a sense of infinite dependence." It was always objected to that definition, that it made religion no more than a sentiment, a mood, but that besides this, it is both belief and action.
One has to read Schleiermacher's phrase, 'the senses' here, as we read Paul's phrase, 'the flesh. On the other hand, the preponderance of the consciousness of God, the willing obedience to it in every act of life, becomes to us the secret of strength and of blessedness in life. This is the special experience of the Christian. It is the effect of the impulse and influence of Christ.
The proof that religion has its habitation in feeling is the more deserving of thanks since it by no means induced Schleiermacher to overlook the connection of the God-consciousness with self-consciousness and the consciousness of the world. Schleiermacher's theory, moreover, may be held correct without ignoring the relatively legitimate elements in the views of religion which he attacked.
Nevertheless, it may be practically potent. The degree in which a given man may justly identify his own consciousness and experience with that of the Christian world is problematical. In Schleiermacher's own case, the identification of some of his contentions as, for example, the thought that God is not personal with the great Christian consciousness of the past, is more than problematical.
As the old man, however, would take no refusal, the question was put to the Lot; the Lot gave consent; and to Niesky Schleiermacher and his brother came. Above all, he learned from the Brethren the value of the historical Christ. The great object of Schleiermacher's life was to reconcile science and religion.
This view of Schleiermacher's as to the Church is suggestive. It is the undertone of a view which widely prevails in our own time. It is somewhat difficult of practical combination with the traditional marks of the churches, as these have been inherited even in Protestantism from the Catholic age. In a very real sense Jesus occupied the central place in Schleiermacher's system.
He piled up books that he had got in New York, little Reclams and other volumes, among them a copy of Schleiermacher's translation of Plato, which he had borrowed from Peter Schmidt. In front of an old Dutch sofa covered in leather, which Lamping, the druggist, had brought over from Leyden, his birthplace, stood a large, round table.
Philosophy may, and in fact does, possess an individual origin; theology is necessarily collective. Schleiermacher's theory, which attributes the origin, or rather the essence, of the religious sense to the immediate and simple feeling of dependency, appears to be the most profound and exact explanation.
The common representations of immortality, with their hope of future compensation, are far from pious. The true immortality of religion is this amid finitude to become one with the infinite, and in one moment to be eternal. Schleiermacher's optimism well harmonizes with this view of the relation between God and the world.
There was pietistic influence in Ritschl's ancestry, as also in Schleiermacher's. Ritschl had, however, reacted violently against it. His attitude was that of repudiation of everything mystical. He had strong aversion to the type of piety which rested its assurance solely upon inward experience.
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