For Believing Christians Who Do Not 
Know the Language of Philosophy ” 

“I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that 
repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repen- 
tance” (Luke 15:7). 

This word of the Lord may easily come to mind when one 
speaks of Schelling; for in him have wonders of God’s mercy been 
manifested, so that the name of the Lord should be exalted. For 
He has shown mercy to him as once He showed mercy to Paul, 
who also, before he was converted, went and made havoc of the 
churches and breathed out threat and slaughter against the 
disciples of the Lord. But as he was on his way to Damascus, 
suddenly there shone around him a light from heaven and he fell 
to the earth; but the Lord spake ‘to him and drew him to Him so 
that he became a believer at that very hour, let himself be baptised 
and bore the name of the Lord before all nations and became a 
chosen vessel of the Lord. So also the grace of the Saviour has 
imposed its hand on Schelling, and when the time had come a 
great light shone for him. For who could ever have foretold 
according to human understanding that the man who at the 
beginning of the century, with his friend of that time, the 
notorious Hegel, laid the foundations of that vile worldly wisdom 
which now no longer prowls in the dark but whose darts spoil at 
midday—that this man would yet take up his cross. and follow 
Christ? But that is how it has come to pass. The Lord, who guides 
the hearts of men like runnels of water, had elected him too in 
His grace and only waited for the right hour to draw him to Him. 
And now He has done so, He has enlightened him and made him 
one of His fighters against unbelief and godlessness. There is no 

longer any doubt; he himself calls from the rostrum to the 
believers: Come and see, and praise the mercy which the Lord has 
done to me! Nay, the guardian in Israel neither sleeps nor 
slumbers, the old God is still alive, in spite of all the mockers, and 
still gives signs and works wonders for all who want to see. They 
make a clamour, the godless, and say in their hearts, there is no 
God, but He who dwells in heaven laughs at them, and the Lord 
pours scorn on them. He has triumphed over them as long as the 
world has stood and will triumph over them in all eternity. With 
His strong arm He has held His regiment and has awakened 
vessels for Himself in all places to glorify His name. And now He 
has once more brilliantly triumphed over the philosophers who 
have been an abomination to Him at all times, since He has raised 
the best and cleverest of them, the true founder of their doctrine, 
out of their midst and made him His servant. For that formerly 
Schelling himself was most pitiably deep in this so-called pan- 
theism, in this deification of the world and of himself, is as clear as 
daylight from his earlier books. He had not yet seen everything 
rightly in its connection and did not rightly know where this road 
would lead. May he thank the Lord that He has taken him from 
this road and guided him along the narrow path which leads to 
heaven, and thereby has proved on him most clearly His might 
over all enemies of faith. Now they can no longer say: Where is 
your God? What does He do? Where does He roam? Why does 
He no longer work wonders? For here He is, His arm strikes 
down like lightning in their own flock and makes fire out of water, 
white out of black, just out of unjust. Who can still deny that this 
is God’s hand? 

But that is not all. By calling Schelling the Lord has prepared 
for us another triumph over the ungodly and blasphemous. He 
has elected none other than Schelling since he, being familiar with 
the wisdom of this world, was best suited to refute the proud and 
haughty philosophers, and in His immeasurable grace and love He 
has opened a way for them by which they can come to Him again. 
Can one ask more from Him? To those who curse Him, who rage 
against His existence, who are His most furious, most raving, most 
impenitent enemies, instead of rooting them out from the earth 
and casting them into the deepest abyss of hell, He offers again 
and again a rescuing hand to draw them up to the light out of the 
abyss of corruption wherein they lie; nay, the grace of God is as 
wide as the heaven from sunrise to sunset, and there is no end to 
His mercy. Who could resist such forbearance and love? But their 
hearts are so impenitent and hardened in sin that even now they 

Schelling, 
det Philofoph in Chrifto, 

ober 

de Becisarwng 

ber Weltweisheit gue Gottesweisheit. 

Fix glaubige Chritter 
Benen Ber philefopbifhe Spradgebraud undefannt ift. 

Serlin, asae. 
Verlag von U. Cyffendarbt. 

Title-page of Engels’ pamphlet Schelling, 
Philasopher in Christ 

Schelling, Philosopher in Christ 247 

reject the hand that wants to save them; so dazzled are they by the 
lusts of this world and the devil of their own pride. They dig for 
themselves wells with holes and scorn the source of life which runs 
in the blood of Christ. They shut their ears against the salvation 
peer comes from above, they lust for that which displeases the 
Lord. 

“The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare 
their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! for they have rewarded 
evil unto themselves” (Isaiah 3:9). 

But still the Lord has not ceased to call them to Him, so that 
they have no excuse. Through Schelling He has shown them how 
weak and vain is human reason. If they are not converted now, it 
is their fault alone, and they cannot say that they did not know the 
Gospel. : 

Since now God has done such a great thing and has given such 
a comforting sign to all Christendom that He is close to it and will 
not abandon it in need or in the struggles of this world, so it must 
be near to the heart of every believer to announce the glad tidings 
to his fellow Christians. And since Schelling has now professed his 
belief in Christ in his lectures, this, on the one hand, became 
known to only a few, on the other, is couched in such a difficult, 
artificial, philosophical language that only those can understand it 
who have occupied themselves with worldly wisdom for a long 
time; in the third place, however, much is meant for philosophers 
and other things for believers, so that the simple Christian would 
have difficulty in finding his way. Hence the writer of these lines, 
not to stand idle in the Lord’s vineyard, did not think it entirely 
superfluous to present this in short, simple words, for all those 
who have neither the time nor the inclination to enter into the 
fruitless study of worldly wisdom and yet would like to know what 
there really is to the famous Schelling. May the Lord give His 
blessing to it so that it may prosper to the benefit and advantage 
of His kingdom. 

But first it must be remarked that for all he has done for true 
Christianity, Schelling cannot quite get rid of his old, perverse 
wisdom. He still has various views which make us believe that he 
cannot entirely suppress the arrogance of his own reason and that 
he still hesitates a little to face the world and confess his complete 
conversion in all gladness and gratitude to Christ. We will not 
blame him too much for this; He who made grace break through 
in him so splendidly will wash away these stains too; He who 
began the work will bring it to completion. But let the courageous 

fighter for truth of whom we speak remember this thorn in his 
flesh when the devil of pride comes over him and tempts him. 
May he put away all pride in his former philosophy, which has 
borne only ungodly children, and only take pride in Him who in 
His free, immeasurable grace has saved him from this corruption. 

The first thing Schelling did here on the rostrum was that he 
immediately and with open visor attacked philosophy and cut away 
its ground, reason, from under its feet. With the most striking 
arguments, taken from its own armouries, he proved that natural 
reason is incapable of proving the existence of even a blade of 
grass; that all its demonstrations, arguments and conclusions do 
not hold water and cannot lead up to the divine, since in its 
heaviness it always remains prostrate on the earth. Now we have, 
of course, known this for a long time, but the hardened 
philosophers have never been told it so well and clearly. This he 
has done in a whole lengthy system of so-called negative 
philosophy, where he demonstrates to them as clearly as daylight 
that their reason can only comprehend possibilities and nothing 
actual, least of all God and the mysteries of Christianity. The 
trouble to which he went over such a fruitless subject, the airy 
phantoms of worldly wisdom, deserves the highest thanks for the 
sake of the kingdom of God. For so long as these philosophers 
could still presume on their reason, nothing could be done with 
them. Now, however, when they have been convinced from their 
own standpoint that their reason is altogether unfit to cognise 
truth and can bring to the surface only empty, hollow phantoms, 
which have no right whatever to exist, it would really need a 
hardened head, grown grey in sin, to persist in the pagan 
doctrine, and it is quite possible that with the aid of divine grace 
one or the other of them will be converted from his evil ways. It is 
very true and must always be repeated that the darkened reason 
of man is altogether incapable and lacks the fame it should have 
before God, for that is the main bulwark of the unbelievers that 
their reason tells them other things than the word of God. But it is 
an outrage against the Almighty to want to comprehend Him, the 
enemy of all sin, with reason that is stained with sin and blinded, 
nay, to set this reason which is subject to all the lusts of this world, 
all the temptations of Satan, above God Himself; and yet that is 
what the worldly wise do when they criticise the word of God with 
that corrupt reason, throw out whatever does not please them, 
nay, lay their wicked hands on and deny not only the holiness of 
the Bible, but even the existence of God Himself so as to make 
themselves God in His place. These are the natural consequences 

Schelling, Philosopher in Christ 249 

of setting reason upon the throne of God, like that whore of old 
in the gory days of the French Revolution, and presuming to 
criticise the dispositions of the Almighty Lord of the world. Here 
it is that we must heal, not on the surface, but at the root of the 
evil. Do men put a piece of new cloth unto an old garment? How 
does Christ come to terms with Belial? It is not possible, and it is 
blasphemy to try and grasp by natural reason the Lord’s death of 
salvation, the resurrection and the ascension. Then let us set to 
work in earnest with Schelling, and cast reason out of Christianity 
into paganism, for there it belongs, there it can rise against God 
and take as divine the world with its lusts and desires which we 
have renounced, excuse all sins and vices, the abominations of 
gluttony and lasciviousness as virtues and service to God, and 
present as models for mankind the suicide of a Cato, the 
unchastity of a Lais and Aspasia, the parricide of a Brutus, the 
Stoicism and Christian-persecuting rage of a Marcus Aurelius. 
Then, of course, it frankly opposes Christianity and everybody 
knows where he is with it. But it has been a chief stratagem of the 
adversary to smuggle it into Christianity, where it thereupon has 
given birth to such choice bastards as Pelagianism and Socinian- 
ism, rationalism '* and speculative theology. 

“But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise” 
(1 Corinthians 1:27); hence “the natural man receiveth not the things of the 
Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him and must be spiritually dis- 
cerned” (1 Corinthians 2: 14). 

So it is a truly Christian endeavour when Schelling, in the pure 
science of reason, which is, of course, the negative philosophy, 
deeply humbles and humiliates reason instead of allowing it any 
measure of presumption, so as to bring it to acknowledge its 
weakness and sinfulness and make it turn in penance to grace, for 
only this can sanctify and enlighten it and let it be born again so 
that it becomes capable of knowing God. To crucify reason is 
harder, and therefore more, than to crucify the flesh. For the 
latter is subject to conscience, which has been given even to the 
pagans to restrain their lusts and be the internal judge of their 
sins; reason, however, raises itself above it and even gets on with it 
quite well, and it is only given to Christians to submit it to the mild 
yoke of faith. But that is what Scripture demands of us, and there 
can be no objections or subterfuges here: either let your reason 
surrender to faith or go over to the left side, to the goats (for the 
worst of these self-worshippers call themselves as in mockery: the 
left side), there you are in your place! 

With that Schelling has now cleared the ground for himself. All 
the survivals of paganism which in our time are being brought out 
again and are supposed to be the new truth, all the misshapen 
abortions of unchaste, lascivious reason have been removed, and 
his hearers are now ready to receive the milk of the Gospel. That 
is the right way. The pagans could be got hold of by their worldly 
lusts and desires; but our philosophers pretend, at least today, that 
they still want to acknowledge Christian morals. Hence, if the 
apostles demanded of the pagans a penitent, sorrowing, battered 
and contrite heart, so a penitent, humble, battered reason must be 
demanded of the proud worldly-wise men of our time before 
they are ready to enjoy the grace of the Gospel. So also Schelling 
could only now really judge his former comrade in godlessness, 
the notorious Hegel. For this Hegel had such a pride in reason that 
he expressly declared it to be God when he saw that with it he 
could not come to another true God, higher than man. Hence also 
Schelling frankly declared that he wanted nothing more to do with 
this man and his doctrine and no longer bothered with him. 

Since reason has now humbled itself and shows the desire to 
accept salvation, it can be exalted again and enlightened by the 
spirit of truth. This happens in positive philosophy, where by a 
free, that is, enlightened, thinking with the aid of divine revelation 
it is admitted to the grace and favour of Christianity. Now that the 
understanding of the higher world has been opened up to it, it at 
once discerns the whole marvellous connection in the history of the 
kingdom of God, and what formerly was incomprehensible to it is 
now clear and comprehensible as if it could not be otherwise. For 
only the eyes which the Lord has enlightened are true eyes and 
seeing; but where darkness reigns and the lusts and desires of this 
world have their way, nobody can see anything. Schelling expresses 
this effect of grace when he says that this philosophy is only for 
the willing and the wise, and that it finds its proof in revelation. 
Hence this philosophy is not for him who does not believe in 
revelation. In other words, this thing is not a real philosophy at 
all, and this name has only been chosen for the sake of the worldly 
wise, aS it is written: “Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and 
harmless as doves” (Matthew 10:16); for the rest, however, it is a 
right and real Christianity, as we shall soon see. Schelling has 
brought back the good old times when reason surrenders to faith, 
and worldly wisdom, by becoming the handmaid of theology, of 
divine wisdom, is transfigured into divine wisdom. 

“And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble 
himself shall be exalted” (Matthew 23:12). 

Schelling, Philosopher in Christ 251 

Along this road of enlightened thinking the dear man of whom 
we are speaking comes at once to the true fundamental doctrine 
of all Christianity, namely, the Trinity of God. The godfearing 
reader cannot be expected to accompany him on this road, for he 
knows and believes that this road only can lead to truth; this is 
only said for the unbelievers to show them how they can come to 
truth and how much their reason must be purified and sanctified 
to be able to discern and comprehend salvation in Christ Jesus. 
Hence we shall pass over these things which have no value for the 
discernment of salvation by the faithful. Schelling then describes 
according to Scripture how God created the world from nothing 
and how man, seduced by Satan in the shape of the serpent, lost 
his first way of life and became the slave of. the Prince of 
Darkness. Thereby he tore the whole world from God and 
brought it into the power of Satan. All the forces which before 
were kept together by divine unity now fell apart and came into 
savage hostility, so that Satan could play havoc in the world to his 
heart’s delight. One must not be dazzled by the philosophical 
manner of expression of our theologians. In our ungodly times 
the worldly wise no longer understand the simple language of 
Holy Scripture inspired by God Himself; they must be taught in 
their own way until they are again ripe for the understanding of 
the Bible, for it is written: 

“I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these 
things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes” (Matthew 
11:25). 

Hence Schelling calls the “angels which kept not their first estate, 
but left their own habitation” (Jude 6), calls the devil and his 
godless hosts cosmic powers, which means as much as princes of 
this world. Now God can, of course, have no further pleasure in 
the world. In His justice He rejects it, and where He works in it 
He does so in His wrath and without His full free will. But the 
Eternally Merciful cannot let go of it; the word through which “all 
things were made and without which was not any thing made that 
was made” (John 1:3), the only begotten Son of God with his 
immeasurable love and grace remains in the poor, rejected world. 
His state of suffering begins with the fall of man and not just with 
his becoming man under Herod, for with the fall he is completely 
thrust out of mankind, in which he lived still more than the 
Father. Nay, by placing himself between the angry God and the 
fallen world, which the former wanted to destroy, and taking its 
side, he separated himself from the Father and so was in a sense 

jointly guilty and could not claim any part of the divine splendour 
so long as the Father was not reconciled. This great work of 
reconciliation, the struggle against the prince of this world, he now 
began in this form, neither divine nor human, in this separation 
from the Father which makes up his suffering and his pain. That 
this interpretation is founded on Holy Scripture is most clearly 
shown in Chapter 53 of the Prophet Isaiah, which speaks of 
a present, not future suffering. This great struggle is now begin- 
ning both among the Jews and the pagans. How the Lord 
subjugates the Jews unto Himself is shown in the history of 
the people of Israel in the Old Testament, and the splendid 
guidances by which the Lord led His people are well known to 
Christians. But among the pagans? Was not the devil precisely 
the God of the pagans? We shall try to answer this as clearly 
as possible without deviating from the pronouncements of Holy 
Scripture. 

Everybody will have already heard that among the pagans, too, 
in the books of the Sibyls '? and elsewhere, there were prophecies 
about Christ. Here we see already that they were not quite so 
forsaken by God as is the usual view, for the prophecies are of 
divine origin. But now this is not enough. Why should the Lord in 
His mercy let them go so far astray and fall into the devil’s 
clutches? He lets rain fall on good and evil alike and the sun shine 
on the just and the unjust! Nay, if the pagans had been so entirely 
without God’s protection and guidance in the power of the evil 
enemy, would their sins not have been greater and more outra- 
geous than they actually were? Would not then all the shameful lusts 
and unnatural desires, the sins of the flesh and other sins, 
murder, adultery, fornication, thieving, roguery, unchastity have 
cried to high heaven so that God would have had to exterminate 
them without hesitation? Nay, would they themselves not have 
slain and devoured each other? It already follows from this that 
God must have had mercy even on the pagans and given them 
some light from above; and this consists in their having been led 
gradually and without noticing it through all stages of idolatry to 
the worship of the true Christ, but without their knowing that 
their God and that of the Christians was one and the same, and 
that He who was hidden in paganism was now revealed in 
Christianity. Now those who failed to realise this when the Gospel 
was preached to them no longer worshipped the hidden Christ, 
since they persecuted the revealed one, but their god was now the 
enemy of Christ, the devil. It is Schelling’s great merit that he is 
the first to devote himself to tracing the guidance of God among 

Schelling, Philosopher in Christ 253 

the pagans and so prepares new praise of the love of Christ for 
sinful men. 

Since now the Jews consciously and the pagans without knowing 
it and in a false form were brought to the knowledge of the true 
God, when the proud palaces of the Greeks lay in ruins and the 
iron hand of the Roman Emperor lay upon the whole world, the 
time was fulfilled and God sent His Son so that all who believe in 
Him should not perish but have eternal life. This happened in the 
following manner. Since Christ had subjected paganism unto 
himself, he was its God, but not the true God, which he could not 
be without the Father. So he had wrested the world from the devil 
and could do with it what he wished; he could keep it for himself 
and rule over it alone in this form of God; but out of free 
obedience he did not do so, but handed it over to his Father by 
divesting himself of the form of God and becoming man. 

‘...Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 
But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and 
was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he 
humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” 
(Philippians 2 : 6-8). 

There are many other passages in Holy Scripture which declare 
this interpretation to be the right one and prove it; moreover, one 
can in this way take everything quite simply and literally, without 
need for a lot of subterfuges and erudition. 

For what is great in Christ’s obedience is that the Saviour could 
have possessed the whole world for himself and dissociated 
himself from the Father, and that he did not want this, but laid 
the world he had wrested from the devil at his Father’s feet and 
suffered death for the sake of atonement for many. 

Here we also see the meaning of the story of Christ’s tempta- 
tion. Had it not been in Jesus’ free choice to submit or not to 
submit himself to the Father, the devil could not have tempted 
him at all, for he must have known that it would be in vain. Hence 
the above interpretation by Schelling is certainly correct. 

Thus we have heard that Christ is the true God, and now our 
authority passes on to the second nature of the same Christ, the 
human. He also is of the firm belief that Christ was truly a true 
man and not, as many heretics think, a mere apparition or the 
Spirit of God which had descended on an already existing man. 

In representing the world before God, standing surety for it, 
Christ stepped out of God and confronted Him. So long as the 
world was not reconciled again with God, Christ was not God, but 
in a middle state which took the form of God through the 

conquest of paganism, but was not itself the true state of divinity. 
To put himself back into this, Christ had to hand over to his 
Father the world he had wrested from the devil, divest himself of 
the form of God and submit humbly to the Father, so as to take 
upon himself the punishment for the iniquity of the world. This 
humility he showed by becoming man, born of woman, and being 
obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. No purifications 
or sacrifices could reconcile God; they were merely preludes to the 
one great sacrifice in which not only evil was extirpated, but God’s 
wrath reconciled. The latter could only be reconciled by the 
greatest, most freely rendered, most humble submission, and that 
could only be done by the Son, not by a man compelled to 
submission by fear and the torment of conscience, the threatening 
wrath of God. Christ could now also represent the people before 
God, since he had become their Lord, their defender, through the 
worship they paid him without knowing it. So as now really to 
bear punishment in place of man, who had deserved it, he became 
man; the decision to become man is a miracle of the divine spirit. 
So he who in the beginning was with God, nay, was God Himself, 
and after the Fall was in the “form of God”, was now born in 
Bethlehem as man, namely, of Mary through the Holy Ghost 
without the agency of any man. 

Who would have dared hope that in the year 1842 a 
philosopher, nay, the founder of the new school of blasphemy, 
would make such a pleasing conversion and acknowledge so gladly 
the main doctrines of Christianity? That which was always the first 
to be attacked by doubt, which half-Christians have always rejected 
and which is nevertheless the corner-stone of the Christian faith, 
the birth of Christ by Mary without the agency of any man—the 
fact that this too has been asserted by Schelling as his conviction, is 
one of the most gratifying signs of the times, and the favourite of 
God who has had the courage to do this has a claim to the 
gratitude of every believer. But who does not recognise here the 
hand of the Lord in this marvellous, wonderful dispensation? Who 
does not see that He is giving a sign to His Church that He has 
not forsaken it and remembers it day and night? 

On the death of the Lord Schelling pronounces himself in a no 
less truly Christian and edifying manner. This is said to have been 
decided from the beginning of the world in the Council of the 
Guardians and to be a sacrifice demanded by the divine spirit. 
God is said to be just even to Satan and so fully to have allowed 
him his rights that He delivered His own Son up to death so that 
all who believed in Him should not perish but should have eternal 

Schelling, Philosopher in Christ 255 

life, so that the devil should not have even the slightest grounds 
for saying he had been overthrown by the greater might of God, 
and unjustly. It is the majesty and splendour of the Lord Himself 
which does not tolerate even the least semblance of such a 
blemish. For this reason Christ had to become man and had to 
take upon himself the iniquity of mankind forsaken by God and 
suffer the death on the cross so that through the death of one 
many would come to life. For this reason the Lord in his grace 
and mercy had to sacrifice himself for us, to stand surety for the 
sinners to his Father and to pay our debt, so that we might again 
have access to the throne of grace. The other men also, it is true, 
are one and all delivered over to death, but none has died like the 
Lord, none has suffered such a death of salvation as Jesus Christ. 
And so also this crown of faith, the purification from sin in the 
blood of Christ, is once again marvellously saved from the claws of 
the old dragon who now roams in the form of worldly wisdom 
and the odious spirit of the times, and the Lord has once again 
kept the precious promise that the gates of hell shall not prevail 
against His Church. Further, Schelling says of Christ very beauti- 
fully: this death is such a great miracle that we would never dare 
believe it were we not so certain of it. At his death all mankind 
was represented; Jews and pagans were present, and they were the 
two sides of the whole human race. The principle of the pagans, 
as Christ had become in paganism through his struggle with Satan, 
had to die the death of the pagans, the death on the cross. His 
crucifixion is only the resolution of the prolonged tension in which 
he found himself among the pagans, that 1s, the extra-divine 
position of the Lord was resolved and by death he again became 
one with God, as it is written: 

“He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his 
generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of 
my people was he stricken” (Isaiah 53:8). 

But of the Lord’s resurrection Schelling says it was proof that 
Christ had not taken on his humanity for appearance’s sake but 
had become man in earnest and forever, and that God had again 
accepted into grace the human form and the human essence, and 
indeed not the humanity in Christ alone, but the whole of 
humanity, of whom Christ had merely been the representative. 
For not the individual sin displeased God so much that He 
therefore had to abandon mankind, the worst was rather the 
whole iniquitous state of all mankind, sold to the evil one, and 
therefore God finds displeasure in man even before he has sinned, 

so that before God it was equivalent to a sin to be human. Hence 
no goodwill pleasing to God, not a single good deed that was just 
in the eyes of God, could be found in the world before Christ had 
died, and hence even now only believers can do good works and 
be of goodwill. But by the resurrection of the Lord the human 
state is vindicated before God and recognised by God as purified 
from sin, and so the vindication is completed only by the 
resurrection. So Christ has been raised up to heaven and sits on 
the right hand of God the Father as true man and true God, 
representing mankind before the Father. 

The resurrection is further a proof to us of the immortality of 
our own soul and the resurrection of the flesh. Schelling acknowl- 
edges this also and adds that if during this life the flesh 
dominates the spirit, then a second must follow, where the spirit 
has overcome the flesh, and finally an equalising of both sides is 
necessary. This accords wholly with the teaching of Scripture, for 
the last state after the resurrection and the Last Judgment, after 
the transfiguration of the body, is nothing but what Schelling calls 
the equilibrium between soul and body. About the condition of the 
impenitent and damned who have passed away in unbelief, 
hard-heartedness and sin, Schelling offers a surmise too. He holds 
the second, eternal death for an eternal dying without ever being 
able to come to real death. It seems better to refrain from 
pondering over this and to leave it to the Lord to decide how He 
wishes to punish and torment His contemners and blasphemers. 

Finally, the dear Schelling delivers the following priceless tes- 
timony to the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ: 
This resurrection is a stroke of lightning from inner history to 
outer. Whoever denies such facts, to him the history of the 
kingdom of God remains a mere series of external, accidental 
occurrences without any divine content, without the transcendental 
(which goes beyond reason), which alone is history proper. 
Without it history is merely a matter of superficial memorising, 
not true, complete knowledge of the events — That is a beautiful 
and Christian word, but the talk of the worldly wise about God 
being in the history and development of the consciousness of the 
species is sheer filth and blasphemy. For if these proud seducers 
of youth have their god in the history of all human sins and 
crimes, how can God remain outside those sins? These mockers 
will not understand that the entire history of the world is a jostling 
succession of all kinds of injustice, malice, murder, adultery, 
fornication, thieving, blasphemy, profanation, anger and rage and 
drunkenness; they would without fail hurl themselves into hell and 

Schelling, Philosopher in Christ 257 

the whole world with them if one did not see everywhere the 
saving hand of God, which restrains and prevents the evil; and 
this shameful scene of blasphemy is their heaven, their whole 
immortality, they have said so frankly themselves. But these are 
the fine consequences of casting all divine action out of history. 
God avenges Himself on them by closing their minds against His 
true essence and letting them make a god for themselves who is 
even less than a deaf idol of wood and straw, who is a vague 
phantom of air, a so-called world spirit and spirit of history. We 
have seen what is the outcome of such a view of history, of which 
the chief preacher is that Hegel, who is in evil repute with all good 
Christians; let us hold against that the picture of history outlined 
by a man of God like Schelling. 

Among the Twelve, Schelling says, who were always near the 
Lord and whom He appointed apostles, there were in particular 
three whom he favoured before the others at every opportunity, 
Peter, James and John. In these three the models of the whole 
Christian Church are given if we substitute as successor for James, 
who was earlier killed for the sake of Christ, Paul, who was 
converted at about the same time. Peter, Paul and John are the 
rulers of three different periods of the Christian Church, as in the 
Old Testament Moses, Elijah and John the Baptist were the three 
representatives of three periods. Moses was the lawgiver through 
whom the Lord laid the foundation; Elijah the fiery spirit who 
brought the inert, apostate people back to life and activity; John 
the Baptist was the accomplisher who led the Old Testament into 
the New. So also for the Church of the New Testament, Peter was 
Moses, the founder, through whom the Jewish essence of the 
times was represented in the Christian Church; Paul the driving, 
fiery Elijah who did not let the faithful become lukewarm and fall 
asleep and who represented the essence of paganism, culture, 
learning and worldly wisdom — insofar as it submitted to faith; but 
John will again be the accomplisher, the one who points to the 
future, for to those whom the Lord loves He gives the task of 
completing. So John in his lifetime, already pointing to the future, 
wrote the Revelation. The Church of the apostle Peter is now the 
Catholic Church, whose ceremonial service as well as its teaching 
of good works corresponds to the Jewish Law; and it cannot be 
denied that the word of the Lord: “Thou art Peter, and upon this 
rock I will build my Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail 
against it”,? refers to the Church he founded. As he thrice denied 

2 Matthew 16: 18.— Ed. 

the Lord, so it can be shown that the Roman Church thrice denied 
the Lord. First, when it strove for worldly domination, then when 
it used worldly power for its own purposes, and lastly, when it lent 
itself to the worldly power as a means to its ends. The second 
Church, that of the apostle Paul, is now the Protestant Church, in 
which prevail erudition and all godly wisdom, that is, the essential 
spirit of those Christians who came over from paganism, and into 
which, instead of the established permanence of the Catholic 
Church, there enters the driving, partisan life of the Evangelical 
Church, split into many sects. Who knows whether the thoughts 
and aspirations of these pagan Christians will not in the end be 
more beneficial to the kingdom of God than those of the Jewish 
Christians! 

But neither of these two parties is the true, last Church of the 
Lord; this will be only the one which from Peter’s foundation will 
penetrate through Paul to John and so prepare the last times. This 
last Church is the Church of love, as John was the messenger of 
love, the consummation of the Church, in whose times will be the 
great apostasy which has been foretold for the end, to be followed 
by the Last Judgment. Many churches have been built for all the 
apostles, but relatively very few for St. John. If I had to build a 
church I would consecrate it to him; one day, however, a church 
will be built for all three apostles, and this will be the last, the true 
Christian pantheon. 

These are the words with which the first truly Christian 
philosopher concluded his lectures, and so we will have followed 
him to the end. The author of these lines believes that he has 
sufficiently shown what a chosen vessel the Lord has awakened for 
His Church in this worthy man. This is the man who will drive out 
the pagans of the modern world who there pursue their practices 
in many forms, as men of the world, Young Germans,!*° 
philosophers, and what else they may call themselves. Indeed, 
when one entered the hall where Schelling was lecturing, and 
heard these people mock and make fun of the Elect among the 
worldly wise, one had to think of the apostle Paul when he 
preached in Athens. It is just as if history were repeating itself, as 
it is told in The Acts of the Apostles 17:16 ff. where it says the 
following: 

“Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when 
he saw the city wholly given to idolatry. Therefore disputed he in the synagogue 
with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that 
met with him. Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, 
encountered him. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He 

Schelling, Philosopher in Christ 259 

seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, 
and the resurrection.” 

Well might Schelling, too, grow angry, here in Berlin, since he 
saw the city so wholly given to idolatry. For where is there more 
worshipping of things of the earth, of Mammon and the honour 
of this world, of one’s own dear Ego, and where is the true God 
more thrust aside, than precisely here? Where has the life of the 
world with its opulence, its luxury and its hollow, vain pomp, with 
its glittering vices and embellished sins, reached a higher pitch 
than precisely here? Did not your scholars, your shallow un- 
Christian writers wish to flatter you when they compared your city 
so often to Athens? Oh, what bitter truth they told you! Yes, 
Athens, full of pagan, proud culture and civilisation which blinds 
your eyes to the simple truth of the Gospel; Athens, full of 
brilliance and glamour and earthly splendour, full of the life of 
pleasure and comfortable idleness which stretches and yawns on a 
soft bed of dissoluteness and finds the word of the cross much too 
boring and penance much too strenuous; Athens, full of voluptu- 
ous, wild ecstasy and intoxication of the senses, in which the loud 
voice of conscience is shouted down and drowned, the inner 
unrest and pain concealed beneath a bright covering. Yes, indeed, 
Athens, full of proud worldly-wise men who rack their brains over 
Being and Nothing and other stale things and have long finished 
with God and the world but who laugh at the word of humility 
and poverty of spirit as a folly and curiosity of past times; Athens, 
full of accomplished scholars who know by heart all the kinds of 
infusoria and all the chapters of Roman Law but forget the eternal 
salvation which is the bliss of the soul. There a Schelling might well 
get angry as once Paul did when he entered such a city. And when 
he arrived there the worldly wise spoke just as once the 
Epicureans and Stoics did in Athens of old: What will this babbler 
say? They already spoke ill of him before he opened his mouth, 
they reviled him even before he entered their city. But let us see 
what Holy Scripture reports further: 

“And they took him, and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know 
what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is? For thou bringest certain strange 
things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean. (For all the 

Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but 
either to tell, or to hear some new thing.)”* 

Now, is that not the Berliners to the very life? Are they not also 
bent on nothing but to hear and see some new thing? Just go into 
your coffee-houses and pastry shops and watch the new Athenians 

* The Acts of the Apostles 17: 19-21.— Ed. 

running after the newspapers while the Bible lies at home 
gathering dust, and nobody opens it; listen when they gather 
together whether their greetings are anything but: What is the 
news? Nothing new? Always something new, always something that 
never happened before, otherwise they are bored to death with all 
their culture, their pomp and their enjoyments. Whom do they 
think amiable, interesting and notable? Him who is most en- 
lightened by the Holy Ghost? No, him who always has the most news 
to tell. What worries them most? Whether a sinner has been 
converted, at which the angels of God rejoice? No, what scandals 
have occurred during the night, what has been reported from 
Berlin in the Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung! Above all the brood of 
vipers of politicians and beer-parlour orators is the worst and most 
obsessed by news. These hypocrites interfere most loudly in the 
government instead of leaving unto the King what is the King’s 
and never for a moment do they worry about the salvation of their 
immortal souls; they want to remove the mote from the eye of the 
government, and will not notice the beam in their own, unbeliev- 
ing eye which is blind to the love of Christ. These most especially 
are like the Athenians of old, who also spent all day lounging 
around in the market-place and ferreting out news while the old 
truth was lying untouched in their closets. What did they want of 
Schelling but to hear something new, and how they turned up their 
noses when he gave them nothing but the old Gospel! How few 
were they who were not looking all the time for something new, 
but only demanded from Schelling the old truth, the word of 
salvation through Christ Jesus! 

And so it is with the whole of history, as there with Paul so here 
with Schelling. They listened to his sermon with critical faces, now 
and then gave a superior smile, shook their heads, exchanged 
meaningful glances and then looked pityingly at Schelling, “and 
when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked” 
(The Acts of the Apostles 17:32). Only a few took his side. For as 
it was in Athens so it is today: the resurrection of the dead is their 
chief stumbling-block. Most of them are honest enough not to 
want to know anything about any immortality; the minority admits 
a very uncertain, vacillating, nebulous immortality of the soul, but 
leaves the body to rot forever, and they are all unanimous in 
scorning the real, definite and open resurrection of the flesh and 
in holding it to be a matter of impossibility, as if it were not 

It still remains for us to make one more remark if we return to 
the history of the Church of Christ presented to the believing 

Schelling, Philosopher in Christ 261 

reader as it is typified in the three apostles Peter, Paul and John. 
It follows from this that it is a most grievous wrong and a sin 
against the ordinance of God Himself if we, as many do even 
today, were to despise and disparage the Catholic Church in 
comparison with ours. For it is pre-ordained in the divine counsel, 
just as the Protestant Church, and we have much to learn from it. 
The Catholic Church still has the old Apostolic Church discipline, 
which with us has been completely lost. We know from the 
Scriptures that the apostles and the churches expelled from the 
communion of the Holy Ghost unbelievers, false teachers and 
sinners who were a cause of offence to the church. Does not Paul 
say in 1 Corinthians 5: 3-5: 

“For I verily, as absent in body, but present in spirit, have judged already, as 
though I were present, concerning him that hath so done this deed, in the name of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the 
power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such an one unto Satan for the 
destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” 

Did not Christ say to Peter: 

“And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever 
thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose 
on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16: 19). 

Did he not say after the resurrection to all the disciples: 

“Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever 
sins ye retain, they are retained” (John 20:23). 

Such passages in Holy Scripture point to strong church discipline, 
as it flourished in the Apostolic Church and still persists among 
Catholics, and if the Apostolic Church is our model and Holy 
Scripture our guide, we also must endeavour to assert again that 
ancient institution, and considering the fury with which the evil 
enemy today persecutes and attacks the Church of the Lord, we 
would do well to be armed not only inwardly with faith and hope, 
but also outwardly through the strengthening of the community in 
spirit and the expulsion of false prophets. The wolf must not be 
allowed to come among the flock without being driven out again. 
Moreover, the celibacy of Catholic priests is also not to be entirely 
condemned. It is written in Matthew 19: 10-12: 

“His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not 
good to marry. But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save 
they to whom it is given. For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from 
their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of 
men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom 
of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.” 

Again, 1 Corinthians 7 deals from beginning to end with the 
advantages of the unmarried over the married state, and I will 
only quote from it a few passages: 

7:1-2. “It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid 
fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own 
husband.” 

7:8. “I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they 
abide even as I.” 

7:27, “Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife.” 

7:32-33. “He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, 

how he may please the Lord: But he that is married careth for the things that are 
of the world, how he may please his wife.” 

7:38 ff. Finally, “he that giveth her in marriage doeth well; but he that giveth 
her not in marriage doeth better. The wife is bound by the law as long as her 
husband liveth; but if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom 
she will; only in the Lord. But she is happier if she so abide, after my judgment: 
and I think also that I have the Spirit of God.” 

These utterances are surely clear enough, and it is difficult to 
understand how, with such precepts, the single state could come so 
much into disrepute among Protestants. So we see that the 
Catholic Church is in many respects closer to the Scriptures than 
we, and we have no cause to despise it. On the contrary, our 
brethren in the Catholic Church, insofar as they are believing and 
godfearing, are closer to us than the apostate and un-Christian 
Protestants, and it is time for us to begin to prepare the Church of 
John by uniting with the Catholics against the common foes who 
threaten the whole of Christendom. It is no longer the time to 
quarrel over the differences between the various denominations, 
we must leave that to the Lord, since we humans have been un- 
able here to reach clarity in three hundred years; we must watch 
and pray and be prepared always, 

“having our loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of 
righteousness; And our feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; 
Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith we shall be able to quench all the 
fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the 
Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:14-17). For the times are evil, and 
“the adversary ... as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” 
(1 Peter 5:8). 

And if the author may be allowed to express his humble opinion 
where so many godly and enlightened men could speak, then he is 
of the opinion that the Church of John, and with it the last days, 
are at the door. Who has watched the events of the last years with 

* These quotations are slightly modified — Ed. 

Schelling, Philosopher in Christ 263 

the Lord in view and has not noticed that great things are 
approaching and the hand of the Lord commands the affairs of 
kings and countries! Since the dreadful French Revolution a 
wholly new, devilish spirit has entered a great part of mankind 
and godlessness raises its insolent head so impudently and proudly 
that one is forced to think the prophecies of Scripture are about to 
be fulfilled. But let us see again what Scripture says about the 
godlessness of the last times. The Lord Jesus says in Matthew 
24:11-14: 

“And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because 
iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure 
unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be 
preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end 
come.” And in 24: “For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall 
shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive 
the very elect.” And Paul says, in 2 Thessalonians 2:3 ff.: “that man of sin shall be 
revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is 
called God, or that is worshipped; ... after the working of Satan with all power and 
signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them 
that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be 
saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: 
That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in 
unrighteousness.” And in 1 Timothy 4:1. “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that 

"in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, 
and doctrines of devils.” 

Is that not as if the Lord and Paul saw our time before their 
eyes, large as life? The general falling away from the kingdom of 
God is ever increasing, the godlessness and blasphemy is daily 
becoming more impudent, as Peter says, 2 Peter 3:3. 

“Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after 
their own lusts.” 

All enemies of God are coming together and attacking the 
believers with all possible weapons; the indifferent ones who 
indulge in the lust of this world and to whom the word of the 
cross was too boring, pricked by conscience, are uniting with the 
atheist worldly wise and by their doctrine are trying to lull the 
worm within to sleep; the latter, for their part, deny with 
barefaced impudence everything that cannot be seen with the eyes, 
God and all life after death, and so, of course, it follows that for 
them this world is supreme, this world with its enjoyments of the 
flesh, with feasting, boozing and whoring. They are the worst 
pagans who have made themselves hardened and stiff-necked 
against the Gospel and of whom the Lord says that the Last 
Judgment would be more tolerable for the people of Sodom and 

Gomorrah than for them. It is no longer an indifference and 
coldness in respect of the Lord, nay, it is open, declared hostility, 
and instead of all the sects and parties we now have only two: 
Christians and Anti-Christians. But he who has eyes to see, let him 
see and not blind them; for now is not the time to sleep and resort 
to subterfuges; where the signs of the times speak so clearly, there 
is need to pay heed to them and to search in the words of the 
prophecy, which has not been given us for nothing. We see the 
false prophets in our midst, 

“and there has been given unto them a mouth to speak great things and 
blasphemies: and they open their mouths in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme 
his name and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. And it is given unto 

them to make war with the saints and” (it almost seems) “to overcome them.” 
Revelation 13:5-7. 

All shame and respect and reverence have vanished out of them 
and the abominable mockeries of a Voltaire are child’s play 
compared with the horrible earnestness and the deliberate blas- 
phemy of these seducers. They roam about in Germany and want 
to sneak in everywhere, they preach their satanic doctrines in the 
market-places and carry the devil’s standard from city to city, 
enticing the poor youths after them, to cast them into the deepest 
abyss of hell and death. Temptation abounds as never before, and 
it cannot be without special purpose that the Lord permits it. Shall 
it be said even of us: 

“O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the 
signs of the times?” Matthew 16:3. 

Nay, we must open our eyes and look about us; the times are 
important and it is meet to watch and pray, so that we enter not 
into temptation and the Lord, who will come like a thief in the 
night, may not find us sleeping. Great trouble and temptation will 
befall us, but the Lord will not forsake us, for He has said, 
Revelation 3:5: 

“He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not 
blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my 

Father, and before His angels.” And in 3:11: “Behold, I come quickly: hold that 
fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.” 

Amen! 

asses MBeini(he Seitung === 

Politit, HPaudel und Gewerbe. 

Tt? 102. Kiln, Dienftag ten 12. April 1842