II
At about the middle of a man’s life, and often the most quickly in the case of the best and most successful lives, there comes a moment of dissatisfaction with all that has hitherto been attained. This is more frequently the case among the cultured than among the other classes, because the continuous struggle of the latter for existence partly spares them this dissatisfaction and more clearly shows the way to free themselves from it. When, at this time, any one stands quite at the exit-gates of earthly existence, all human concerns appear to him literally nothing worth, and he would never feel kindly toward them again, even in their highest activities, if the wisdom of this world did not bring him back into the belief that these are only morbid sensations that must be overcome by a feeling of robust vitality. This, to be sure, they must do, but not unless a real death of the selfish nature precedes; upon such a death the most in every human life depends, although this event does not always come to pass in just the same form. The same feeling, however, is present in all nobler souls, that they do not get forward with their “intentions to do better,” but daily find new hindrances in themselves and in the surrounding world; and that, in their own nature, what is lacking is not the dream, indeed, but the power of attaining an existence truly worthy of man. Those are conditions that often last for years; in their later period arise thoughts which, to some, make this process seem to resemble the ascent of a mountain.
But this ascending of the mountain does not always lead to the true summit it is designed for, even in the case of the best men, and in this respect, also, one is tempted to believe in predestination. Another mountain-peak which is sometimes attained is a noble scepticism, such as Gottfried Keller gives expression to in the touching words that, at some time or other in life, one must accustom himself to the thought of a real death, and that if he then gathers himself together, he does not become any the worse man therefor. Certainly not, only he is no perfectly satisfied man, with the thirst for truth and eternal life slaked; that is a goal which the most beautiful sceptical philosophy never reaches.
Doubting thought stands on a still higher plane in “The Holy Grail” of Tennyson:
“Thereafter, the dark warning of our King,
That most of us would follow wandering fires,
Came like a driving gloom across my mind:
Then every evil word I had spoken once,
And every evil thought I had thought of old,
And every evil deed I ever did,
Awoke and cried: ‘This Quest is not for thee.’”
Beyond this thought the most earnest and sincere souls would never get, if it were not for the solution which the English poet himself offers at the conclusion of his profound poem:
“Let visions of the night or of the day
Come, as they will; and many a time they come,
Until this earth he walks on seems not earth,
This light that strikes his eyeball is not light,
This air that smites his forehead is not air
But vision—yea, his very hand and foot—
In moments when he feels he can not die,
And knows himself no vision to himself,
Nor the high God a vision, nor that One
Who rose again.”
It is very strange that a matter that has been in existence for almost two thousand years, that has already busied the minds and hearts of millions of teachers and writers, and that has been borne with great cost and exertions over seas and preached to nations to whom it was unknown, has become unfamiliar in its own place of dominion and among the most cultured nations of the globe. Or can we asseverate that the spirit, or, let us say, even the thought, of Christianity is something that is generally known and acknowledged in our European states?
Far removed from this view, some within so-called Christendom, like the Roman procurator Festus, hold Christianity to be a sort of more or less harmless superstition concerning “one Jesus, who was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive”; others regard it as a society which it is the proper thing to belong to, without necessarily having any further interest in it; a third class looks upon it as a hierarchy of priests which, for reasons mostly external, they either reverence or abhor. To yet others it is a science called theology, to penetrate which there is need of very long courses of study and many examinations. And when they come to the particulars in the “structure of doctrine,” not many among the learned wholly agree as to what faith is, or mercy, or the significance of the “sacrifice of Christ,” whether there is predestination and eternal punishment, or a “restoration of all things,” or what are the methodical steps one must take, to be saved. Every one who ventures into these labyrinths of theological and philosophical thought, without at the same time possessing a very decided aspiration toward the highest truth and a very sound understanding of human nature, is apparently in danger of losing the one or the other. And so, thousands of the most cultured men of our day have, in fact, given up making any further trial of what seems to be joined with only trouble, contention, doubt, and renunciation of the natural enjoyments of life, only to lead, at the end, to nothing other than a kind of human slavery, without any better assurance than before. Christianity is now, for the greater part of Christians, a doctrine of the churches and the schools, which one listens to as long as one must, but from which a cultured man will inwardly free himself as quickly as possible, even if he still outwardly believes he must allow himself to fit into forms of the social life when once they have become historical.
The simple answer to this is that we can neither dispense with Christianity nor put something in its place. We do not know (and it would be useless to wish to discover) what would have become of the civilized world, if Christianity had not appeared in it when it did; but it is certain that we can no longer get away from it now, nor ignore it, but we must reckon with it as with something that will endure, yet can not be wholly explained by science. True, science can not be prevented from discovering, as completely as possible, everything that is knowable, or from extending the sphere of the knowable as widely as possible; that is its right and its duty. With this there goes, in the conception of particular minds, the supposition that everything is knowable that concerns mankind, or that, at any rate, everything can be made knowable in time. This is the basis of a considerable part of the courage and the perseverance found in scientific investigation. But just as little may it be forbidden us to doubt that men will ever succeed in completely fathoming human nature in all its relationships to the universal Being and in its connection with all things; but even so, it is the duty (and of cultured people most of all) nevertheless, to stand firm, and in particular to put away the presumption with which imperfect knowledge, or even mere hypotheses, are wont to be set up in the place of the inward conviction as to the existence and worth of super-sensual things.
Highly as humanity has cause to value science and its steady advance, it would, nevertheless, take a tremendous backward step, if one should be able to remove from the sphere of its life and from the motives of its actions everything that is not scientifically provable. This is the ideal of many educated people of our time, but it is a false and a very inadequate one.
Our knowledge is patchwork, and will remain such. We shall scarcely ever be able to know even everything that concerns ourselves. Nor do the strongest motives of our best actions spring from the sphere of knowledge; otherwise the most learned people must always be the most perfect, which is by no means the case. Our spiritual Ego is rooted rather in the Unexplainable, and experience shows that if this something unexplainable is ever taken from the Ego in questions of faith, it tries to make up for the loss by adopting some superstition or other.
Of all the objects of faith, however, faith in Christ is historically the best established, humanly the most intelligible, and as a matter of personal experience the most easily found to be true. If in any man it is not all this, truly and enduringly, then the cause lies in his own will, or absence of will, for which the Gospel of John finds the correct expression, “as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God.” Luther also truly says: “Because the expression ‘to trust God and serve Him’ must be so elastic that every man follows after his own thoughts, and one thinks so and the other thus, therefore He has fixed Himself to a certain place and to a certain person, since He wants to be found and met in such a way that one may not miss Him.” A man’s faith is, therefore, itself no force or power, else superstition must also be such, but all true power in spiritual things is the property of God. But he summons this power and makes its appearance upon earth possible.
Only, this is likewise true, that Christianity has no effect in a man whose spirit is unbroken, who has no inner humility, but then it remains an empty form at best. If it is then united with the office of teaching, or with some other pretension of a special position or distinction, it conduces to the man’s destruction. What is regarded in the outer life as an irreparable harm, “a broken existence,” a rent that runs through all the plans of life, is not at all such in the inner; on the contrary, that is the soil in which faith in Christ best prospers, and they of all men are most to be pitied who despair just at the moment when they find themselves in such a position and can not grasp how near they are to salvation.
From this moment of humility there enters into man the real regenerative power of the good, which springs from that true righteousness which “counts” with God.
His further journey is, on the one hand, much easier than is often represented, for nothing more is now required of the man for which he has not power and insight in sufficient measure, together with a gladness of hope that can no longer be wholly troubled, and with a special, personal guidance that lightens all. But, on the other hand, it is more difficult than is, in this first moment, believed. For life is yet far from its termination; indeed, now is its real starting-point, and there begins a long series of occurrences which all have the purpose of showing man his real nature more clearly than he was in position to bear earlier, and of gradually being no longer indulgent toward him in any respect, as was hitherto in great measure the case. For “Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness.” But all this happens only in the following, or even, now and then, in the final, period of life; before, it would have been quite impossible.