Hegel admits with Schelling the absolute unity of all things and the identity of the subject and object. But while Schelling, in order to explain how everything is derived from this unity, takes his point of departure in the Absolute, Hegel starts from the Idea (German, Idee), and professes by the force of dialectic alone to make all things spring from the Idea. The Idea in- cludes the Absolute (which is the pure idea considered in itself and in an abstract manner). Nature (which is the idea manifested and become object), and Spirit (which is the idea turning back on itself and beholding Itself as soul, as societj', as God). The whole course of history is the coming to consciousness of the Absolute as Spirit, an august process which culminates in religion. The world of concrete finite experience is not outside of God, but is a moment in His consciousness. History is not un-Divine, but is the manifestation of God, a process within His infinite Spirit. Religion is the function of the human spirit through which the Absolute comes to full self-consciousness, and as such is the synthesis of finite and Infinite. Its highest form is the Christian religion.
In the eternal Idea there is but one Son, who exists in the first place simply for the ' thinking speculative consciousness,' but who, in order to be universally accessible, must also exist for the 'sensuous representative consciousness,' must be seen to sensible intuition as an historical event. The Idea must realize itself in fact if all men are to be made conscious of it and the unity of Divine and human it stands for. ' It must become an object in the world. It must appear, and that in the sen- suous form appropriate to Spirit, which is the human ' (Phil, of Religion, Eng. tr. p. 336). This is what has happened in Christianit}'. ' Christ has appeared ; a Man who is God ; God who is Man.' Christianity centres in the historic Christ. 'The manifestation of God in the flesh took place at a determinate time and in this particular indi\idual.' In consequence of the Incarnation of God in Christ, man has learned the universal truth that it is eternally and essentially characteristic of God to be and to become man, that God's true existence is in humanity which is termed His Church, and that man is essentially one with God.
It is unquestionable that the broad effect of such speculation was to evaporate the facts of Chris- tianity, and to substitute a ' somewhat else ' [erepov euayyeXiov) for the firm truths of a revealed religion. A (jod personal only in man, such as the Absolute, clearly implies that God is not personal. An ideal relation without personality has been likened to a painted horse which you cannot ride ; and when the abstraction of the metaphysician interwoven in the universe is offered to us as the object of Cliristian belief, one who feels anything of the burdens and problems of life will turn away like Jacobi, little caring to know of a God who made the eye but sees not, the understanding but neither
knows nor wills. An Incarnation which maintains a continuous manifestation of God, of which all men are the bearers, which is never complete, and which dismisses Christ's pre-existence, sinless birth, resurrection, Divine authority and sole mediation, is not only irreconcilable with Scripture statements, but wholly inadequate to the requirements of the Christian consciousness.
But whatever view be taken of the speculative movement as a whole, certain outstanding services to Christological theory cannot be denied it. It has revolutionized the study of Christ's Person, and in so doing reacted on the whole theological field. By constructing a theory in which the In- linite and the finite, the Divine and the human, are not exclusive of each other, it demonstrated tlie rationality of the Incarnation. By its discovery of the spiritual principle in Nature, History, Man, as the truth which gives them all their reality and unity, and by the identification of this principle witli Incarnation, it showed the naturalness of Christ's Incarnation. By its insistence on the truth that the organon of religion is not different in kind from that of philosophy, it has, so to speak, rehabilitated the validity of religious facts, the treatment of which with the contemptuous indiffer- ence characteristic of the previous age becomes hereafter an unphilosophical dogmatism. It has vastly widened the range and deepened the bases of belief in the Incarnation, and made possible a fresh and thorough investigation, in the way of criticism and understanding, into the data which support that belief.
(2) The Christ of Experience. — The Christian facts and the Christian consciousness assert them- .selves in the experiential theology initiated by Schleiermacher (1768-1834). As Kant inherited the sturdy conscience of the Lutheran Reform in his ' categorical imperative,' so Schleiermacher embodies its religious fervour in his ' feeling of dependence,' or experience of God. When Kant describes the essence of religion as the recognition of all our duties as the commands of God, he says the same thing in balder language, in language less mystically attractive, than that of Schleier- macher when he asserts that the essence of the religious life is the sense of utter and all-round dejjendence on God. From his training among the devout brethren of Herrnhut, and by a natural tem- l>erament of warm susceptibility, Schleiermacher was more akin to Schelling than to Kant, who reiterates the essentiality of duty as Kant does, but of duty inspired by something higher than Kant dreamed of. What is this something higher? Schelling had termed it 'faith,' 'fidelity to your- self and God.'