Let us rather submit the whole conception of the church to
a new examination, and from its central point, throughout its whole
extent, erect it again upon a new basis, without regard to what it has
actually been hitherto, or to what experience may suggest concerning
it.
If religion exists at all, it must needs possess a social character;
this is founded not only in the nature of man, but still more in the
nature of religion. You will acknowledge that it indicates a state of
disease, a signal perversion of nature, when an individual wishes to
shut up within himself anything which he has produced and elaborated
by his own efforts. It is the disposition of man to reveal and to
communicate whatever is in him, in the indispensable relations
and mutual dependence not only of practical life, but also of his
spiritual being, by which he is connected with all others of his
race; and the more powerfully he is wrought upon by anything, the more
deeply it penetrates his inward nature, so much the stronger is this
social impulse, even if we regard it only from the point of view of
the universal endeavor to behold the emotions which we feel ourselves,
as they are exhibited by others, so that we may obtain a proof from
their example that our own experience is not beyond the sphere of
humanity.
[Illustration: FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER]
You perceive that I am not speaking here of the endeavor to make
others similar to ourselves, nor of the conviction that what is
exhibited in one is essential to all; it is merely my aim to ascertain
the true relation between our individual life and the common nature
of man, and clearly to set it forth.
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