Section LXXVIII. The Inner Revelation and the Conscience. (Concl'd) · SECTION CLII.

The difference, as necessarily existing in every moral communion, of the morally-advanced and the morally less-matured, and which finds its first expression in the relation of parents and children, forms also the basis of organized society. In this society the duty of forming, of guiding and of educating falls mainly to the former; that of appropriating and obeying, to the latter. The guiding rests entirely on morally-religious culture, and aims by general forming to make of society a moral art-work, a moral organism. The difference between the guiding or ruling ones and the guided and obeying ones, is therefore per se strictly identical with the difference between the morally and religiously higher-developed (the prophets and priests) and the as yet to-be-developed, namely, the general public, the body of society. In so far as the moral organism expresses the antithesis of priest-prophets and people-congregation in the sphere of religion, it is the church; in so far as it expresses the antithesis of the ruling and the ruled in the sphere of law or right, it is the state. In a normally constituted and absolutely sin-free society church and state are perfectly identical, and the moral organism appears as a theocracy; its definite popular form would be a fully developed patriarchal state. The religious and the legal commonalty in their perfect unity are the morally developed family; and as its inner law and essence are absolutely the moral law itself, which rules at the same time as a vital power in the hearts of all its members, hence the theocratically-organized religiously-moral society is the historical realization of the kingdom of God on earth, and its perfecting is the goal of all rationally-moral effort, of the individual as well as of society as a whole; and the spiritual and moral development of humanity toward this ultimate end forms universal history.

We have nothing to do here with the actual church and the actual state, which are both essentially conditioned on, and constituted in view of combating, sin, but with the ideal moral community-life which is free of all sin. The family continues to be the moral basis and the pattern. The inner difference between the guiding and the guided can, in a sinless state of things, be only of a very mild and a merely relatively valid character. In a perfect religious community all the mature members are of priestly character, are invested with the duty of spiritual guidance; and in a perfect civil society all the mature citizens participate in the spiritual and moral guidance of the whole; and the more perfect the collective development of all the members, so much the more does the fundamental relation of fathers and children retire into the back-ground, and assume rather the form of the gentler antithesis of the two sexes in marriage.

As in the normal family, religious and moral life are united, and the father is also the spiritual and priestly guide of the religious life, hence in the ideal social organism, church and state are simply one and the same thing; they are but two absolutely inseparable phases of the same spiritual life. All religion becomes social reality, and all social life rests on religion; the normal state is also a church,. and the true church develops out of itself a corresponding social community-life,—as was seen in the early Christian church, and as, in recent times, the Unitas Fratrum, from a correct presentiment of the goal of Christian history, has partially carried out. That the father of the people should also be the chief bishop, is implied in the prototype of the moral commonalty; but whether in this particular the ideal is to be applied to the very unideal present reality of the world, it is not here the place to decide. The patriarchal state is the primitive manner of morally organizing society,—the one most nearly related to the family prototype; and the family-chief of the closely related tribe is at once its chief leader and its priest; lie represents, however, not his single personal will, but the moral will of the whole, which is in turn itself a faithful expression of the divine will. For this simple reason the ideal form of the social state is necessarily and essentially a theocracy; for it is only in a vital communion with God that the rulers of the people have their right, their law, their power; and it is not the mere divine law that is the all-guiding factor, but the living personal God himself, who enlightens and guides his trusting children, and governs directly through his prophets and anointed ones. The divine right of a true magistracy is based on this idea, but is valid as a moral right only in so far as humble submission to God rules in the hearts of the rulers. The theocracy of the Old Testament [Exod. xix, 3-6; Deut. vii, 6 sqq.; xxxiii, 5; 1 Sam. viii, 6 sqq.; Isa. xxxiii, 22] is only a faint shadow of that which was to have been realized in sinless humanity, and of which as partially regained through only glimpses are caught in prophetic vision [Isa. ii, 2; iv, 2 sqq.; ix, 6 sqq.; xi, 1 sqq.; xxxii, 15 sqq.: lxv, 17 sqq.; Ezek. xxxiv, 23 sqq.; xxxvi, 24 sqq.; xxxvii, 24 sqq.]. The mysterious phenomenon of the priest-king of Salem, Melchizedek [Gen. xiv, 18 sqq.; Heb. vii, 1 sqq.; Psa. cx, 4], like a reminiscence of a long-forgotten better age floating down into a totally different present,—perhaps the last scion of those who had remained faithful to the of Noah outside of the family of Abraham,—is in some respects the expression of a true theocracy as it exists in a higher manner only in Christ. With the Israelites royalty and priesthood were in fact separate; Aaron and David represent the two sides of the one theocratical idea; Samuel approximated this idea, but was more a priest than a king. The theocratical form of society was realized in Old Testament times only in its first beginnings, in the family-state of the patriarchs. The people of Israel was both outwardly and inwardly too little at peace both with the world and with God to be able to sustain a theocratical form of government; it is only in “Salem” that the Prince of Peace can rule.

The moral commonalty in its double form as church and state is, on the one hand, a complete preserving and virtualizing of the personal moral freedom of the individuals, in that the collective will, as manifesting itself in laws and in the government, is at the same time the will of the individual, and on the other, a real objective presentation of the moral idea with a determining power for and over the individual, but which acts as a limit to the freedom of the individual only when this freedom has fallen from its harmony with God into irrational caprice. In the ideal state all morality becomes right or law, and all law is a pure expression of morality. When this moral commonalty has become a full reality, then it is the kingdom of God as having attained to historical form and reality. The kingdom of God comes not, it is true, with outward show [Luke xvii, 20, 21], inasmuch as it exists primarily in the hearts of men; but when it has come into the hearts of men—when God has assumed form within them—then will also the kingdom of God itself take upon itself a form, and the collective history of the God-imbued portion of humanity (the true church) is simply this gradually self-developing form. As soon, however, as sin has entered into reality, then church and state at once fall apart, and dissolve themselves in turn into discordant and contradictory subdivisions, and the kingdom of everlasting peace becomes a plurality of kingdoms of endless strife. The moral or ideal destination of universal history is, to be the uniformly undisturbed evolution of the kingdom of God; to confound its criminal reality with the unclouded ideal, is to deny ethical moral truth. But universal history, in its pure and normal form, is the development of humanity as unitary (§ 88); of this humanity the statement would hold good in the most perfect manner, that “the whole earth was of one language and of one speech” [Gen. xi, 1].