Schleiermacher separates
the province of religion from those of action and of knowledge. Religion
is not morality, it is not science. Its seat is found accordingly in
the third element of our nature--the feeling. Its essential is a right
state of the heart. To degrade religion to the position of a mere
purveyor of motive to morality is not more dishonorable to the ethics
which must ask than to the religion which will render such
assistance.... The feeling Schleiermacher advocates, is not the
fanaticism of the ignorant or the visionary emotion of the idle. It is
not an aimless reverie shrinking morbidly from the light of clear and
definite thought. Feeling, in its sound condition, affects both our
conception and our will, leads to knowledge and to action. Neither
knowledge nor morality are in themselves the measure of a man's
religiousness. Yet religion is requisite to true wisdom and morality
inseparable from true religion. He points out the hurtfulness of a union
between church and state. With indignant eloquence he descants on the
evils which have befallen the church since first the hem of the priestly
robe swept the marble of the imperial palace.
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