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

Inasmuch as man becomes perfect only through the perfect all-sided development of all his life-phases, and as ally exclusive realization and culture of one, or simply some, of them works a disturbance of the inner harmony, hence every person should, in so far as his circumstances admit of it, realize every form of moral appropriation and moral culture. He who allows his life to be devoted exclusively to particular forming and appropriating,—to toil and enjoyment, has fallen out of moral harmony, and is consequently immoral. General, and hence, essentially, religious, forming must attend the work hand in hand; and the ordination of the along-side of the days of labor has not simply a religious, but essentially also a moral significancy. Moral resting from labor is a rising to ideal self-culture, an exalting of the temporally-particular into the eternal, the holy, the general, the divine; the celebrating of the is the higher and moral transfiguring of the temporal prosaic individual life by the poesy of the ideal and the infinite.

In particular forming man merges himself into objective existence; primarily he has not the object in his own possession, but the object possesses him; hence the danger, especially in a state of sinfulness, that the person lose himself in his labor,—that, as in sensuous enjoyment, he passively surrender himself to the creature [Eccles. vi, 7, in the Hebrew text]. Man should, however, hold fast to himself and to his Creator,—should withdraw himself from his absorption in finite things, collect himself in spiritual repose,—should obtain fresh moral strength for the particular forming of industry, in the general forming which springs of enthusiasm. Even as God, though merging himself into the world while creating it, yet did not lose and forget himself in it, but returned to himself and to his infinite self-sufficiency, and ever retains himself in eternal unchangeable majesty above all that is created, so also is it a moral requirement that man, in his creating of the finite and particular, should not forget himself as a personality gifted with eternal destinies; it is for man’s sake that the was made [Mark ii, 27]. It is very suggestive that in the Scriptures the repose of God after creation is made the prototype and basis for the celebration of the [Gen. ii, 3; Exod. xx, 8 sqq. ]. It is thereby implied that it is our innermost God-likeness that calls for the rest of the ,—the truly rational, religiously-moral essence of man, and not the mere natural need of repose and enjoyment. That which is with God only two phases of his eternal life itself, and not an alternation in time, namely, creative action and self-possession, this falls, in the case of the finite spirit, at least partially, into such an alternation,—into labor and -rest. God blessed the day; there rests upon its observance an especial, an extraordinary benediction, an impartation of heavenly goods, even as the blessing upon labor is primarily only an importation of temporal goods. The has not merely a negative significancy, is not a mere interruption of labor, but it has a very rich positive significancy,—it is the giving free scope to the higher, time-transcending nature of the rational God-like spirit, the re-attaching of the spirit that had been immersed by labor into the temporal, to the imperishable and to the divine. Where God is conceived of as swallowed up in nature, as with the Chinese and in the unbelief of our own day, there exists no ; there is to be found only a discretionary alternation of labor and sensuous enjoyment. The celebration of the belongs to morality per se, and does not depend on the fact of the state of from sinfulness; but where sin is as yet a dominant power there its observance is necessarily less free, legally more strict, than where the freedom of the children of God prevails.

From the fact that all moral working is attended also with a general forming, it follows manifestly that, for him who is truly morally free, the antithesis of -rest and labor is not of an absolute character,—that every day and all labor have also their , and that, on the other hand, also the does not absolutely exclude all work. It is perfectly clear, however, that, in general, only such works consist with the observance of the as express a general formative activity,—as bear an artistic character in the noblest sense of the word. In this category belong those healings of the sick by which the Lord incurred the reproach of -breaking. Such works are not labor, but, as a restoring of the disturbed order of the universe, ate of general and spiritual significancy.