the deservedly
greater name of Schleiermacher. His fundamental position was that truth
in Theology could not be obtained by reason, but by a feeling,
_insight_, or intuition, which in its lowest form he called
_God-consciousness_, and in its highest form, _Christian-consciousness._
The God-consciousness, in its original form, is the _feeling of
dependence_ on the Infinite. The Christian consciousness is the perfect
union of the human consciousness with the Divine, through the mediation
of Christ, or what we would call a Christian experience of communion
with God.

Rightly to understand the position of Schleiermacher we must take
account of his doctrine of _self_-consciousness. "In all
self-consciousness," says he, "there are two elements, a Being ein Seyn,
and a Somehow-having-become (Irgendweigewordenseyn). The last, however,
presupposes, for every self-consciousness, besides the ego, yet
something else from whence the certainty of the same
[self-consciousness] exists, and without which self-consciousness would
not be just this."[52] Every determinate mode of the sensibility
supposes an _object_, and a _relation_ between the subject and the
object, the subjective feeling deriving its determinations from the
object. External sensation, the feeling, say of extension and
resistance, gives world-consciousness. Internal sensation, the _feeling
of dependence_, gives God consciousness. And it is only by the presence
of world consciousness and God-consciousness that self consciousness can
be what it is.

We have, then, in our self-consciousness a _feeling of direct
dependence_, and that to which our minds instinctively trace that
dependence we call God. "By means of the religious feeling, the Primal
Cause is revealed in us, as in perception, the things external, are
revealed in us."[53] The _felt_, therefore, is not only the first
religious sense, but the ruling, abiding, and perfect form of the
religious spirit; whatever lays any claim to religion must maintain its
ground and principle in _feeling_, upon which it depends for its
development; and the sum-total of the forces constituting religious
life, inasmuch as it is a _life_, is based upon immediate
self-consciousness.[54]

[Footnote 52: Glaubenslehre, ch. i. Sec. 4.]

[Footnote 53: Dialectic, p. 430.]

[Footnote 54: Nitzsch, "System of Doctrine," p. 23.]

The doctrine of Schleiermacher is somewhat modified by Mansel, in his
"_Limits of Religious Thought_." He ma