The English Deists, as Bolingbroke and Hobbcs, had regarded religion only from the stand-point of politics. " Man," they held, " can know nothing except what his senses teach him, and to this the intelligent confine themselves ; a revelation, or, rather, what pretends to be one, might be a good thing for the populace." Sec Deism. Lessing came forward, atul, while seeking to make morality synonymous with religion, aye, with Christianity, taught that in revelation only lies man's strength for development. " Revelation," says Lessing, "is to the whole human race what education is to the individual man. Education is revelation which is im- parted to the individual man, and revelation is educa- tion which has been and still is imparted to the human
race Education no more presents everything to
man at once than revelation does, but makes its com- munications in gradual development." First Judaism, then Christianity ; first unity, then trinity ; first hap- piness for this life, then immortality and never-ending bliss. (See the detailed review on these points in Hurst's Hagenbach, Ch. Hist, of 18th and 19th Cent, i, 291 sq.) The elementary work of education was the O. T. The progress to a more advanced book is marked by the timely coming of Christ, " the reliable and ])rac- tical teacher of immortality ; . . . . reliable through the prophecies which appeared to be fulfilled in him, through the miracles which he performed, and through his own return to life alter the death by which he had sealed his doctrine;" whose disciples collected and transmitted in writing his doctrines, " the second and better elementary book for the human race," expecting (according to Bit- ter [Lessing's philosophische ii. religiose Grundsatze, p. 56 sq.]) the complete treatise itself in the fulfilment of the promises of Christianity. Some have interpreted Lessing, because Christianity is spoken of as the sec- ond elementarg work, as anticipating another religion, to be universally enjoyed, to supersede Christianity, but for this we can see no reason, and side with Bitter.
The position of Lessing has sometimes become equiv- ocal by the peculiar interpretation of his Nathan the Wise. In his Education of Humanity, Christianity un- questionably is the highest religion in the scale; in his " Nathan" it is not so. Hence it has been asserted by many. Christian writers especially, that in his later years Lessing had become a most decided Bationalist, and Jacobi even asserted that he had died a Spino/.ist. (Compare the article Jacobi, and the literature at the end of this article.) The former interpretation is due, however, to wrong premises. Lessing wrote Nathan the Wise simply for one object: not to aggrandize and en- noble his associate and friend ^lendelssohn the Jew, not to dei)rive Christianity of tlie best of her beauty, but only
LESSING
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LESSING
to toach liumanity— ay, to the followers of the Christ of the Gospel in the 18rh century, the great lesson of toleration. The great French infidel -jihilosoiiher Voltaire had sought to do this, hut he had failed — had failed utterly — and only because his idea of tolerance ■was rt'dly intohraim. lie meant entirely too much by tolerance, for he demanded of the party tolerating not only to esteem all religions alike, to be content with any and every belief, to have no rights in conflict with an- other in religious matters, but to be obliged to conform to the notions and inclinations of others out of mere politeness; and we do not wonder when Hagenbach (i, 29) says that '• this is the toleration of shallowness, of cowardice, of religious indecision, of religious indiffer- ence— a toleration that finally and easily degenerates into intolerance, which is the hatred of every one who wish- es to hold and to profess a firm and positive religion. Such persons must come at last to regard the tolerating party as unj-ielding and stiff-necked. Such was the toleration of the Itomans, which was so much praised by Voltaire. It soon came to an end with the Chris- tians, because they neither coidd nor would submit to a strange worship. Nothing, however, is more foolish or more opposed to true toleration than precisely this ef- fort to force such toleration upon those who do not agree with us in opinion, for toleration no more admits of force than religion does." Leasing believed that this grand lesson -^vas yet to be taught. He v.ould teach it especially to the Christian, who stood higher in the scale, and could easily influence those below him ; nay, he believed that he should teach it, and that most ef- fectually, by practicing it upon his inferiors in belief. He therefore would sha"me the Christian by examples most noble from religions generally regarded as inferior, and its followers as more fanatical. Yet it must not be forgotten that Lessing never went so far as to ignore his own religion, for these grand specimens of Judaism and Blohammedanism reveal their Christian painter after all, when once the lay brother is made to say, " Nathan, you arc a Christian. Never was a better" (act iv, scene vii, line 2). He would teach us that Chris- tianity is the most perfect of all religions, but that the others also have in them many jiarts which go to make it up ; that as they shall modify in course of time, so shall also Christianity grow on to iierfection (see above, Eitter's view). His principal fault was this, that his peculiar view of revelation led him to believe that no religion is as yet absolutely perfect, and that therefore none of the positive religions could justly claim the char- acter of universality, and of exclusive privileges and riglits ; and hence he regarded all religions as an indi- vidualization of reason, according to time and place, and a product, on the one hand, of the culture of a people, and, on the other, of divine education and communica- tion, thus making Christianity capable also of an objec- tive perfectibiUty. (This is a view which has been ad- vanced of late by many Christian writers of Moham- medanism: comp. Freeman, The Saracens [Oxford and London, 1870, 12mo], lect. i.) Regarding the charge of his Spinozaism, we would say with Mendelssohn, who defended Lessing from this charge after his death: " If Lessing was able absolutely and without all further lim- itation to declare for the system of any man, he was at that time no more with himself, or he was in a strange humor to make a para<loxical assertion which, in a seri- ous hfiur, he himself again rejected" (Jacobi, llV?-A'e, vol. iv, pt. i, ]i. 44 : comp. Knhnis. <!trm. Prof. p. 104 sq. ; Dor- ncr. CiKch. pniti.'il. Tliaih \\ I'l'^^. See Mkndei.ssohn. All that .lacobi had for his assertion that Lessing died a Pantheist was a conversation with him a few years before Lessing's death. Upon this fact I'rof. Nichol justly ob- serves; "The reporting of such conversation must ever bo protested against as breach of confidejncc, and it is almost as certainly a source of misrepresentation. What thinker does not, in the frankness and confidence of in- tercourse, give utterance at times to momentary impres- sions, as if thev were his abiding onesV This much is