Note 9 — THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM OF THE PRESENT

In such an interpretation and development of the Christian conception of redemption “historical continuity” is preserved just as decidedly as it is in the one-sided making into history of that thought on the side of liberal Protestantism. What is in opposition to it is, on the one hand, completely unhistorical belief in an historical Jesus; on the other hand, the prejudice against the “immanent God,” or against Pantheism. But this prejudice is based entirely on that fiction of an historical “mediator” and the hypothesis contained therein of a dualistic separation of world and God. The representatives of the monistic conception—who began to organise themselves a short time ago—should be clearer as to the significance of that conception than they are for the most part even at the present day. They must perceive that the true doctrine of unity can only be the doctrine of the all in one. There must be an idealistic monism in opposition to the naturalistic monism of Haeckel, which is prevalent even to-day. This monism must not exclude but include God’s existence; and its present unfruitful negation of all religion must deepen into a positive and religiously valuable view of the world. Then, and not till then, will it be able to effect a genuine separation from the Church, and the monistic movement, still in its childhood, may lead to an inner improvement and renovation of our spiritual life in general. It requires much short-sightedness on the part of the exponents of a purely historical Christianity to suppose that the soulless and poor faith in the personal, or as it is considered better expressed to-day, in the “living” God, in freedom and immortality, supported by the authority of the “unique” personality of a man Jesus who died two thousand years ago, will be in a position permanently to satisfy religious needs, even when the metaphysic of redemption, still connected with it at all points, and the pious attitude based upon this are completely stripped off from it. The earlier the orthodox Christians, by giving up their superstition in an historical Jesus, and the Monists, by sacrificing their equally fatal superstition in the sole reality of matter and in the redeeming truths of physical science which alone can give happiness, come to a mutual reconciliation, the better it will be for both. The more surely we shall avoid the total obliteration of the religious consciousness; and the civilised nations of Europe will be saved from the loss of their spiritual ballast—towards which loss there seems at the present day to be a continuous movement on all sides. At present there are only two possibilities—either to look on quietly while the tidal wave of naturalism, getting ever more powerful from day to day, sweeps away the last vestige of religious thought, or to transfer the sinking fire of religion to the ground of Pantheism, in a religion independent of any ecclesiastical guardianship. The time of dualistic Theism has gone by. At present all the advancing spirits, in spheres most widely different, concur in striving towards Monism. This striving is so deeply grounded and so well warranted, that the Church will not be able to suppress it for ever.9 The chief obstacle to a monistic religion and attitude is the belief, irreconcilable with reason or history, in the historical reality of a “unique,” ideal, and unsurpassable Redeemer.