[149] Redemption is not
salvation from the curse of a broken law, and Christ did not pay a debt
for man, because the payer must have incurred the debt himself.[150]
But the fruit of his death is the reconciliation of man to God. Man will
have a future life, but it was not the specific object of the Christian
dispensation to satisfy his understanding that he will live hereafter;
neither is the belief of a future state or the rationality of its belief
the exclusive attribute of the Christian religion, but a fundamental
article of all religion.[151]
All attempts to determine the exact theological position of Coleridge
from his own definitions are unsatisfactory. We must derive his real
convictions from the spirit and not from the letter of his works. He was
devout and reverent, never prosecuting his investigations from a mere
love of speculation, but as a sincere inquirer after truth. But his
statements have had their natural result in producing a large and
vigorous school of thinkers. Never bracing himself to write a
philosophical or theological system, but merely stating his views in
aphoristic form--as in the _Aids to Reflection_--he scattered his
thoughts as a careless sower, and left them to germinate in the public
mind.
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