Introduction

86 „Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord*).“

87 Thus saith the Lord! Thus He has spoken, thus He will speak, and thus He speaks to all who do not recognise His glory, who exalt themselves and will not perceive that they are only men; thus He speaks and thus He casts down from their dreamed height those who would be like Him or who said (in their hearts and in their books): He is not He, He is rather not at all and only they are the lords and kings of All, only man, the ego, is the lord, the all-knowing, all-powerful and the uniquely great. Thus saith the Lord: „I will bring thee down.“

88 The hour has struck when the worst, the proudest, the last enemy of the Lord is to be cast to the ground. This enemy, however, is also the most dangerous. The French — that people of the Antichrist — had with shameless publicity, in broad daylight, on the market-place, in the sight of the sun which had never seen such outrage, and before the eyes of Christian Europe, thrust the Lord of eternity down to non-existence, as they murdered the Anointed of God; they had committed idolatrous adultery with the harlot, *) Obad. V. 4. 44 Introduction. of reason; but Europe, full of holy zeal, strangled the abomination and united itself in a holy alliance to strike the Antichrist in fetters and to erect again to the true Lord His eternal altars.

89 Then came — no! then was summoned, then was cherished and fostered, then was protected, yes honoured and salaried, the enemy whom one had conquered without, in a man who was stronger than the French people, a man who raised the decrees of that hellish Convention again to legal force, gave them new, firmer foundations and procured them entry under the flattering title of philosophy, especially seductive for German youth. One summoned Hegel and made him the centre of the University of Berlin! This man, if we may still give him a human name — this man of perdition, filled with hatred against everything divine and consecrated, now began under the shield of philosophy the attack against everything that should be high and sublime to man. A host of disciples joined him and never — not in the whole of history — has one seen such obedience, such attachment, such a blind trust as his disciples and adherents bestowed upon him. They followed him whither he led them, they followed him into the battle against the One.

90 „Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people*).“

91 Alas! how many has he slain! The strength and flower of youth has he slain and robbed us and our cause of the best power. Even beyond the grave his efficacy extends, yes in death his infernal power seems only to have grown. Innocent seems the efficacy of him and his school to have been in the first period, if we compare it with the antichristian activity with *) Jer. 9, 1. Introduction. which the enormously grown host of disciples in our days vies, to level all that is high and valid, to pull down the sublime and to set self-consciousness — as they call it — on the throne of the Most High. The governments, warned by the danger, wish to re-establish Christianity, love, fidelity, patience and gracious trust, and that terrible rabble loosens the old bonds all the more and wishes to set adulterous reason, the abomination of desolation, in the sanctuary. Church and state are made to totter by their hellish missiles.

92 Let no one believe that the rabble with which the Christian state has to fight in our days follows a different principle and confesses other doctrines than the master of deceit set forth. It is true, the younger school is significantly distinguished from the older one which the master gathered: it has cast away shame and all divine content, it combats openly and without reserve state and church, it overturns the sign of the cross as it wishes to shake the throne — all sentiments and hellish deeds of which the older school seemed not capable. But it only seems so, or it was perhaps only accidental constraint and limitation that the earlier pupils did not rise to this diabolical energy: fundamentally and in the matter, i.e., if we go back to the principle and the actual doctrine of the master, the later ones have set forth nothing new: they have rather only taken away the transparent veil in which the master sometimes wrapped his assertions and — shamelessly enough! — uncovered the nakedness of the system. It was only the cunning of the old serpent — that serpent which brought our first parents to the fall — which gave to the diabolical inventions and thoughts the appearance of the Christian, the churchly and the godly. This appearance deceived the earlier adherents, lured them on, entangled them in the dangerous nets of the system, infected them with the creeping poison of the principle, and thus it came about that the leaven of this philosophy spread ever further, until at last it had leavened everything, made sour sentiment, heart, breast, thought Introduction. and knowledge, poetry and endeavour, and obtained sole dominion. Everything has now become sour in the disciples, the appearance of sweetness and heavenly mildness has fallen! Everything is sour!

93 „Their mouth is full of bitterness*).“ Ha! Here is „the sword of the Lord and of Gideon!“ We strike, so that the appearance, which has become a fall to so many, may vanish, the deception fall, and to all who still mean well the true shape of this worldly wisdom may appear.

94 Away with the appearance! Let no one deceive himself! The judgment has come which will make manifest the hidden. Only courage! Arm yourselves with strength, that you may endure the sight of the hidden, the sight of this mysterium iniquitatis. It is the mystery of the serpent of primeval time!

95 We go at once to the central point, to the philosophical explanation i.e. destruction of religion, so that afterwards, when we have separated the kernel from the apparent husk, we may draw all the consequences of this system undisturbed into the light.

96 O! the poor and unhappy ones who have let themselves be deceived, when it was whispered to them: the object of religion as of philosophy is eternal truth in its objectivity itself, God and nothing but God and the explication of God**);“ the poor ones, who gladly heard that „religion and philosophy coincide***),“ who thought they still retained their God when they heard and accepted that religion is „the self-consciousness of the absolute spirit+),“ namely that self-consciousness in which the divine spirit knows itself present in its saints and believers and *) Rom. 3, 14. **) Phil. of Rel. 1, 21. (We cite according to the second „improved“ edition.) ***) Ibid. +) Ibid. I, 200. Introduction. these know themselves accepted in God and by God. The poor ones! They have not heard rightly, not seen rightly, they have not remembered the saying: „he that hath ears to hear, let him hear!“ They resemble rather those of whom it is written*): „that seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand.“

97 **) Phil. of Rel. 1, 21. (We cite according to the second „improved“ edition.)

98 Hegel has dissolved and destroyed religion — we mean for himself and for his adherents, for in itself it is inaccessible to his fiery missiles and the truly believing are protected by the shield of faith, with which they can quench all the fiery darts of the wicked**)“ — he has prepared the downfall of religion. Over his work of destruction, however, he has drawn a twofold veil, which only the critical knife of faith can remove. We shall now show this. Very often, countless times, on almost every page of his work on the philosophy of religion, Hegel speaks of God and almost always it seems as if by God he understands that living God who was before the world was, to whom alone reality belongs, who „is the one true reality***),“ who as the „Triune“ existed before the creation of the world and in Christ has revealed His love to men.

99 The remnant of Christian piety which moved the older Hegelians (a Göschel at their head) to stop at this conception of God and prevented them from proceeding to the dangerous points of the dialectic where this conception is killed — this remnant of pious sentiment we shall indeed recognise, as is only right and proper; but we would make ourselves ridiculous if we wished to take special pains to dissolve this first, most superficial appearance. It falls of itself when we remove the second *) Mark 4, 9. 12. **) Eph. 6, 16. ***) Phil. of Rel. I, 92. 48 Introduction. veil which surrounds the kernel of the system, namely when we demonstrate how it is annihilated by the negative dialectic of the principle itself and finally, even when it wishes to count for itself as the thing itself or to assert the appearance of its validity, is directly excluded by the general determinateness of the principle.

100 This second veil — Strauss and some of the bolder among the older pupils have for the most part clothed themselves with it, so that only here and there the kernel of the principle shows through — this second appearance consists in this, that religion is grasped in the form of the substantiality-relation and as the dialectic in which the individual spirit surrenders itself, sacrifices itself to the universal, which as substance or — as it is still more often called — as absolute idea has power over it, gives up its particular individuality and thus posits itself in unity with it.

101 That is the more dangerous appearance — to it, therefore, the stronger spirits have also surrendered themselves — it is the appearance of pantheism; but more dangerous than this appearance is the thing itself, which immediately confronts every knowing and open eye, if it only exerts itself somewhat: namely that conception of religion according to which the religious relation is nothing but an inner relation of self-consciousness to itself and all those powers which as substance or as absolute idea still seem to be distinguished from self-consciousness are nothing but its own moments, only objectified in the religious representation.

102 That is the terrible, horrifying, all piety and religiosity killing kernel of the system. Whoever has tasted this kernel is dead to God, for he holds God for dead; whoever has eaten this kernel has fallen deeper than Eve when she ate the apple and Adam was seduced by her; for Adam hoped to become like God, but the adherent of that system lacks even this — albeit sinful — pride, he no longer wishes at all to become like God, he wishes only to be I — I and to gain and enjoy the blasphemic infinity, freedom and self-sufficiency of self-consciousness. This philosophy wants no God, no gods, like the heathens; it wants only men, only self-consciousness, and everything is to it mere self-consciousness.

103 As a warning for all well-disposed persons we shall now present how that conception of religion as the substantiality-relation is dissolved by Hegel himself and infinite self-consciousness is the only thing that remains.