THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
vation, so that the kingdom of God progresses even outside Judaism and Christianity. Leibnitz interpreted the " kingdom of grace " as the dominion of God in the spirit-world, while Semler understood it as the new spiritual reign of God in the Church, and Reinhard conceived it as an ethical brotherhood established by Jesus to include all peoples.
Kant, on the other hand, made morality entirely independent, even regeneration being an act of the individual. Morality leads, however, to a religious faith of reason in so far as the duty is felt to aim at a highest good. The power of morality is insufficient to realize this; and it must,
10. Slant therefore, postulate a moral ruler of and the world, since a society must be es- Herder. tablished according to the laws of virtue for the protection of the individual against the evil principle which surrounds him. This ethical community, which can be realized only as a people of God under laws of virtue, Kant calls the kingdom of God on earth, and uses its idea as a test for the criticism and purification of the empirical Church. Herder considered the kingdom of God to be the development of humanity as it proceeds under the laws of nature or of the goodness, power, and wisdom of God, who furnishes the means and endowments; and he was the first consciously to combine the ethical and religious sense of Christianity with the Greek universal and free development of the entire personality.
The founder of the specific use of the concept of the kingdom of God in modern theology was Schleiermacher. The idea of the kingdom of God forms the basis of his teaching, governing his system both of doctrine and of ethics. The kingdom of God is the purpose and realization of redemption; and it is not only the highest purpose of action, but also the highest blessing
ii. The (Christliche Sitte, Berlin, 1843, p. 78).
Theory of He conceives the kingdom of God after
Schleier- the analogy of the relation between
macher. a ruling king and his obedient subjects, yet so that the king's will is the will of all who serve and live under him. The manner in which the rule of God (or the being of God) is exercised in man is consciousness of God, which is real only as motivating activity or, more specifically (since God is the supreme all-embracing unity) , as the love of all mankind (Glaubenslehre, Berlin, 1821-22, §§ 90, 94). This consciousness of God raises man above the world, and through it is realized the further progress of the kingdom of God throughout the earth. Unlike Kant, Schleiermacher not only conceived moral activity as immediately religious, as having its motive in the consciousness of God; but he was also able to understand human activity as the working of the Divine, in virtue of his ethical fundamental concept of the highest good. By this he understood such a result of moral activity as both included this activity within itself and propagated it. Nevertheless, Schleiermacher's restriction of the blessedness arising from the consciousness of God to those filled with the love of all mankind was, at least in terminology, an ethical narrowing of the concept of the immanent kingdom of God. For Schleier-
macher the realization of the kingdom of God was the work of Christ, in so far as he, through the strength and bliss of his consciousness of God exercised a creative power of attraction which originated a common life ruled by the same impulse of divine consciousness; since before Christ there had never been so great a power of pure consciousness of God, and hence no society comprising all mankind.
In endeavoring to harmonize Christian tradition with the point of view of historical development, Schleiermacher saw, on the one hand, a course of evolution, first realized in Christ, and, on the other hand, he looked upon conditions before Christ as a universal life of sin, i.e., an impediment of human nature contrary to its destiny, and upon the work of Christ in founding the universal life of the kingdom of God as redemption. For both 12. Recon- points of view he presupposed the ciliation of original, or indelible, perfection of Conflicting man and the world. He thus shared Views by the view of primitive Christianity, re- Schleier- garding a kingdom of evil opposed to macher. the kingdom of God, even though he rejected the rule of a personal devil, and replaced the Pauline view of "the flesh" and Augustine's doctrine of original sin by that of universal sin; but he contradicted himself by considering sin a necessary step in development. The kingdom of God becomes real through redemption from sin and evil. The consciousness of God, given by Christ to the believer, is pure and blessed will directed toward the kingdom of God; but this continual inpulse toward the kingdom of God becomes real in the individual only in so far as the spirit of the universal life founded by Christ becomes his own impulse (Glaubenslehre, § 121). This universal life of the kingdom of God coincided for Schleiermacher with his concept of the Church, since for him the existence of the Church was a matter of faith in Christ, who alone can be sure that in a world of sin and evil the empirical Church is a place of goodness and salvation. His position here is similar to that of Luther in so far as he too held that the kingdom of God can not be tested by the legal organization of the Church and does not coincide with the empirical Church. While there is a wide divergence between the concept, both in primitive Christianity and later, that the immanent kingdom of God comes to pass through the miraculous power of the Spirit proceeding from the exalted Christ, and Schleiermacher's view that the personal life of Christ on earth became the motivating power of the universal spirit of the universal life, this divergence is based merely on a changed psychology. On the other hand, there is an essential limitation of Christian hope when it is reduced to an expectation of infinite organic progress, with a rejection of the eternal perfection of the individual and the mass. Schleiermacher marked, however, an important development not only in the doctrine of faith, but also in the doctrine of ethics, since the doctrine of faith developed for him into the ethical impulse to do all that is in our power for the realization of the kingdom of God, while in the religious satisfaction granted by God is found a sufficient motive for mo-