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

In so far as the moral law is made into a moral possession of the person, that is, a constituent element of his personally-moral nature, it becomes to him a moral principle, a life-rule or maxim; without moral principles there is no real morality. As in this union with the personal peculiarity the moral law itself enters into this peculiarity, hence though it is in fact the same always and for all men, still the life-rules that grow out of this law, among different persons and nations and under different conditions in life, must evidently also be relatively different. The correct shaping of the moral law into life-rules correspondent to the peculiarity of persons and circumstances, constitutes the principal work of practical wisdom.—A disregarding of the rights of the personal peculiarity in the moral life, and the exclusive application of general and definitely-expressed laws as direct rules of life, result in a servitude to a legal yoke (rigorism) which is incapable of producing any truly personal morality, and has no save as a temporary disciplinary process in a state of .

The law is not of man, but solely of God; life-rules each person makes for himself, not, however, independently of the law, but as based on it, though peculiarly modified by his moral personality. The life-rule or maxim is the law as incarnated, as having become subjective; in it man has appropriated the law as a personal possession,—has merged it into his flesh and blood. My life-rule, even in so far as it is perfectly correct, is valid in this definite form only for me, and it may legitimately enough be widely different at different life-stages and under different circumstances. The manifoldness of life-rules contributes to the esthetic richness of the collective life of the race; in them the moral idea, though essentially one, yet shapes itself into a variegated diversity, just as the light of day, though in itself essentially colorless, is reflected back from flowers in a thousand varying tints. It is true, the giving scope here for freedom of will involves also a possibility of immoral self-determination; and it is also true that sin, in consequence of its essential deceptiveness, seeks almost always to hide itself under the cloak of pretendedly legitimate life-rules, and thereby attains to its seductive power, and that the free personal shaping of the moral law into life-rules is possible without danger, only as proceeding from pure and human nature, so that consequently the severe discipline of the tutorial law appears as peculiarly appropriate for the divine training of mankind before the full realization of ; but wherever morality is to become perfect, that is, free, there the law itself must become an inner freely-appropriated one,—must be received into the personality as its essential possession, and not as a foreign element, but as one that has coalesced with its essence; and this essence is a personally-peculiar one. Even as natural nutriment does not nourish in its natural crudeness, but only in so far as it is received and really appropriated into the natural organism and into its peculiarity, so is it also with the moral law. From the possible danger of subordinating the unconditional validity of the divine law to individual caprice, there does not follow a condemnation of the personally-peculiar molding of the law, but only the requirement that morality be based not on merely unconscious or obscure feelings or impulses, but upon a positive clear consciousness of God’s will and of one’s own moral condition. The non-governing of one’s self, the yielding of one’s self to immediate natural impulses, the giving rein to the spiritual and sensuous proclivities that already exist irrespective of a knowledge of the divine will, is per se, even where sin does not yet exist as a power of evil, immoral. Moral life-wisdom is not an acquisition attained to in unserious play; and slavish submission to an all-specifying, rigorous law is easier than the free, moral developing of life-rules on the basis of the more general moral law. The less ripe the moral personality, so much the more dictating must be the objective character of the law, so much the more severe must be its discipline [Gal. iii, 24]; and the riper the moral nature of the person becomes, so much the more freely and independently may and should he shape the law into life-rules for himself.

It creates confusion to confound the moral law with personal life-rules; it inevitably leads either to legal bondage or to moral laxity. The Scriptures contain not only moral laws, but also life-rules for particular, not generally existing life-relations, and the regarding these latter as general moral commands or counsels has sometimes led Christian ethics into error. When the apostle recommends celibacy because of the “present distress” [1 Cor. vii,] he gives simply a life-rule for particular, expressly-stated circumstances; and, in order to prevent all misunderstanding, he says, in relation to the unmarried: “I have no commandment of the Lord” [verse 25]. By this, Paul does not mean that he establishes on his own authority a new command without reference to any divine law, but only that this specific life-rule is not itself a divine law, but rather simply a rule of conduct applying the divine law to particular circumstances. The law on which it is based, however, is not: “Thou shalt not marry,” but: Care for the things that belong to the Lord, and not for the things that belong to the world [see verses 32, 34]. Monasticism made of this life-rule an objective law or counsel. The instructions of Christ to the apostles, when sent out to prepare the way for himself [Matt. x, 9 sqq.]: “Provide neither gold nor silver nor brass in your purses,” etc., are not given as a moral rule to the moral man in general, but to the apostles for this specific mission. But the mendicant orders made of this also an objective law. When Christ required of the rich young man to sell all that he had and give it to the poor, it is perfectly evident that this was simply a specific injunction for this particular person, seeing that neither Christ nor the apostles required in all cases, or in any manner, the giving up of possessions, notwithstanding their strong emphasizing of the duty of [Acts v, 4; 1 Tim. vi, 17 sqq.; 2 Cor. viii, 1 sqq.]. The monastic vow of poverty is a perverted application of this injunction. To the same category belong the rules of propriety for women, as given in 1 Cor. xi, 5, 10 sqq., and in part evidently also the resolution of the Apostolic Council [Acts xv, 20, 29]. In all such rules either the assigned or the directly implied reference to particular, but not generally existing and permanent relations and circumstances, distinguishes them very readily from general moral laws, the characteristic of which is to be valid absolutely and always.