Eberhard Arnold

Young People Today  Their Religious Feeling

[Arnold, Eberhard and Emmy papers – P.M.S.]

[Draft Translation by Bruderhof Historical Archive]

EA 18/9

Young People Today  Their Religious Feeling

by Eberhard Arnold

A lecture given at the 27th General Christian Student Conference in Eisenach, 1918

The catastrophe opened up by the World War [of 1914-1918] hammers over and over again into our consciousness the fact that our era is one of transition. Stephan George, friend and leader of wide circles of our young people, expects a new and better time to dawn after the passing of the present age, this age which seems to him of so little value. He hopes that the forces dormant in a new youth will conquer all obstacles towering ahead. "Mayhap behind those mountain ridges a young hope slumbers all unseen, ready to waken at the first breath of spring." Ever and again, youth is the cable stretched between the man of yesterday and the man of tomorrow.

Among youthful people today, therefore, that movement is bound to be strongest which turns against the limitless overestimation of material and outward things, of rational and scientific things, that has been so dominant in recent generations. A hundred years ago a growing romantic awareness of supernatural relationships rose up in opposition to prosaic rationalism, and in the romanticism of those days the human soul, free and all encompassing, turned against all enslaving regulations and authorities. Similarly, today's young people have a religious longing to experience a religiously oriented feeling for the world, and a religiously perceived awareness of the world, in contrast to the abandonment of and hostility to God of this age of materialism and intellectualism. The religious seeking of today's young people, therefore, does not expect the intellect, whether theologically or materialistically oriented, to provide any help for them in their longing. This can be expected only from the deep wellspring of feeling for the soul and for the world.

What our young people want to embrace, with wide open hearts, is the inward connection between Nature and Mankind. The current flooding through them today is not trying to get away from reality in nature and in mankind, any more than the early nineteenth century Romantic movement did. Rather, the young people who are part of this stream want to experience and unveil the supersensory mystery at the world's core, so as to be able to live naturally in nature and to fulfill their task in the real world as men and women of reality. It is a vigorous and pulsating life, physical and emotional, living in woods and on hilltops in mutual friendship, trying to penetrate the depths of their being. Aware more than ever of their corporal state, they conceive all bodily life as determined and sustained by emotional forces. It is to the emotional body, permeated by the divine Spirit, that their religious ardor is dedicated.

It is a religion of this world; without dogma, without priesthood, to be lived ever afresh rather than to be believed. As Friedrich Schlegel expressed it, it is the "very intimate, utterly unwearyingly, voracious participation in all life." Just as in the romanticism of a former day, so today too, the real religious need is for the all-embracing spirit of life. This urge to comprehend everything as a whole makes it possible, in Tieck's words, to see through the world with the vision of a seer. The whole of life, in all its diversity, is what the romanticist, and with him the new youth, seeks.

This goal must place them both in opposition to the false reality of random snippets of existence. Isolated bits of nature, an individual experience of the senses, detached scientific research  none of these is capable of guiding anyone to a religious grasp of the universe; the sole and only thing that will do this is the experience of a supernatural, all embracing spirit. Becoming one with the absolute, eternal, and infinite foundation of the world by means of which matter, nature, and humanity are ruled and guided, gives to this religious attitude transcendency as well as immanence. The universal striving of today's youth wants to see the rulership of soul and spirit over the collective mass of matter, and it therefore longs for a Gothic [`gotischen', ? supernatural' ?] man of the future.

These young people seek to structure their lives on the broad and sure foundation of the earth; and yet they want to lift it up above the dust with bold arches and pillars that soar aloft. They want to set in inward order everything that belongs to life, and carry it upward on this journey. Our young people in their longing have a glimpse of a unified organic order formed from within. They see the Gothic [?] `romantic' spirit and the character of the future in the free rulership of supernatural spiritual powers over all natural relationships and circumstances.

The mysticism that desires to uplift the ideal of man is a life affirming one. It experiences the universe as an ordered whole. It is a question of the whole of humanity as well as of the whole universe. Such a youth movement can therefore not limit its scope to national concerns. Nationalism is seen in many quarters as the accepted way to reach the goal that is sought. But the goal itself is far above any national limitations. For Jewish youth Martin Buber proclaims close fellowship now, and the practical realization of final certainties. This is just what German idealists proclaim. Just as those influenced by Buber wish to combine the religious renewal they seek with a Jewish national rebirth, so too, strong currents among our German youth have sought to bring on the new humanity by developing and extending German nationalism.

Here and there are some who subordinate all morality and all religion to the nationalistic point of view. A number of groups withdraw so one sidedly into the narrow sphere of their own nationalism that the common human ideal appears endangered.  There, Germans in their longing seek a German God and turn against everything from abroad and also against everything eastern in the Christian religion. To this self-idolizing nationalism, Germany appears as the holy land, the Rhine as the holy water, Brocken and the Wartburg as the holy mountains, the Edda and Faust as the holy books. The new terrestrial world religion of the universal spirit is supposed to be born out of German faith. One's own nation is to be affirmed just as one's own self is to be affirmed.

However, just as this new German religion seeks  in widely varying degrees  to amalgamate with the worship of Wotan or with the acknowledging of Christ, similarly there are wide circles of present day youth who are seeking, in their all-¬embracing feeling for the world, to find the element common to all religions, of the Indians and Persians, of the Chinese and the primitive peoples. The elevation of national instincts into the realm of religion and their contamination with religious intolerance has never been a general characteristic of our German youth. There exists absolutely no generally recognized religion among today's youth. What characterizes the religion of young people today as a whole is not a common religious confession, but a common devotional frame of mind, a holy consecration and emotional dedication.

"Their idealism is based on longing." This saying, once spoken by Friedrich Theodor Vischer about the Germans in general, has rightly been enlisted in a special way for Germany's young people today. It is the longing for something better and purer, for all-embracing wholeness, for the divine and eternal, which has alienated young people from civilization, as they know it so far. It is the longing for a deeply based center for one's own soul and for the world that has brought our youth into sharp opposition to the old way of education for position and property, to the prevailing overvaluation of irreligious scholarship. The age now coming to a close is perceived as the self-disintegration of humanity, as a deadening of the soul and as a struggle for existence without life, because its generation sinned against the religious depth of existence. The life of previous generations is considered materialistic and meaningless because neither their individualism nor their social movements found any relationship with the soul of the whole.

The longing of the present day therefore drives the young person into his innermost soul, and for this very reason he no longer sees the isolated self as the center of the world. "The way, full of mystery, leads inward," said Novalis. For him too, the heart was "the key to the world and to life." It is in the heart of man that the inmost interrelation of the world will be disclosed. Just as the Romantics sought to experience in the Ego the oneness of nature and consciousness, of life and thought, so in the same way present day longing is a desire for inner oneness in the soul, for the experience of inner harmony with the universe.

It is the nature of all genuine young people to seek, of their own accord, harmony between the world without and the world within. For this reason Fichte's message of idealism has made such an impression among youth today, just as it did a hundred years ago. The young person wants to remain in harmony with himself in every way, and he has faith that this is how order and harmony will be achieved in the world. He wishes to assert himself and consciously to be himself. But he seeks the shape of this self in the whole of the world. Selfhood overcomes what is individual and becomes the primeval fount of all existence. Again and again the world is experienced as a self, and nothing exists outside of this self. The youthful person senses the religious might of this great self. At the same time he himself wishes to be the self that lives and shapes the world according to his own inner "must." The longing that caused Novalis to say, "The individual soul must be brought into harmony with the world soul," was as much religious as it was personal.  Here lies the mystery of the enormous tension in today's youth  that on the one hand they lay claim to the individual self, its autonomy and its religious uplift, while on the other hand they seek nothing more ardently than the soul of the world, the spirit of the cosmos, the all¬-embracing Spirit of the Deity.

Once again a youth has awakened that wishes to make man's highest and most godlike inner calling an outward reality, independent of all outward coercion, and in opposition to all that is base and ugly. Precepts that may or may not have been valid for earlier generations cannot guide us to this calling; the only thing that can do it is the life of one's own inner conscience, the new religious world feeling, the instinctive sureness of an instinctive decision. Because of this, one hears afresh today the words that once were printed in the Athenaeum, the periodical of the Romantic movement: "Morality's first stirring is opposition to dead legality and conventional rectitude." The creating of one's own law, as the slogan "autonomy" may be translated, is the urge to see every action determined by inward purity and integrity, in contrast to pleasure seeking and instability.

The search is for the direct experience of the inner self, for the conscience of the better self, for the holy `Shall I’, which is to govern the individual as well as everyone together in all-inclusive love. What our youth are fighting to attain is the ideal of the free and truthful personality, it is love, it is to be human in a deep and living way.

In the wandering life, as contrasted with city life and its meaningless bustle, youth has found the opportunity to stay young and true like children and thus to be close to unsophisticated humanity. In this the overwhelming majority of them find the new life direction of inspired inwardness that comes without taking thought. Only a spiritually gifted group of leaders will seek to sum all this up in clear concepts. What we have here is a new return to nature and a new discovery of what is genuinely human. Out under the open sky and in the company of the like-minded, young people have found it easier to be true to themselves and to become the person they long to be. They have managed to free themselves from the diseased life of the big cities and yet not to lose themselves in solitude. Their romantic spirit demands flight from the degenerate world just as much as it demands the intimacy of a group where it is possible to share one's feelings.

In the fresh air of the mountains and in the intimate circle of friends, young people found their own life style of brotherliness and truthfulness which previous generations so often had to do without. Through an inner liberation from the untruthfulness of conventional social and professional life they experienced the naturalness and genuineness upon which alone true community can be built up. In undisturbed youthful friendship they were able to find themselves inwardly, and by experiencing the youthful spirit as such, they could win through to the self-esteem of youth.

What is meant here by youthfulness is a freeing for that individual independence without which morality and religion can in no way exist. Hence it means freedom from all restrictive regimentation and from the enslavements of tradition. This essential character of youthfulness is best expressed in the struggle for the independent values of unconditional duty, in the struggle for the free self-determination of the spirit. Physical fitness and a natural deepening of the feeling for life are means, which are to help attain this final goal of highest and purest manhood and womanhood. Youth wants to confront a new life with a new man. Free of the misgivings of the older generation, it wants to dedicate itself to its ideal in all genuineness. Again and again it is the same passionate rebellion against tradition and authority, (rather as in the storm and stress [`Sturm und Drang'] of Goethe and Schiller, or of the young Germany of the Romantic Movement), that has to place its own feelings, the unfettered enthusiasm of its own soul, above all the misgivings that others may have.

Young people know the power and significance of their emotions and will not allow them to be taken away or corroded. In the youth movement of today there is much talk about the unconscious; but the unconscious wants to become conscious of its own life-values and of its own life-strength. Young people respect the incontestable validity of dark, unconscious emotions, as Wackenroder, spokesman for the Romantics, at one time had to say: "It is a great grace of God that He sent down to us these genuine witnesses of truth."

The unconscious appears as what is most genuine and true because, like a wave of infinity and eternity, it submerges all limitations and restrictions. Emotion is seen as the basic element of life. Thinking and knowledge are also carried along by this wave. It is recognized that what is primary and decisive cannot be ideas and concepts, but rather the unadulterated feelings and experiences of life itself  of life in its incomprehensibility and boundlessness. And yet there is a resistance to the words of Friedrich Schlegel, who, on the question of this basic sentiment of the Romantics, proclaimed, "Whoever wants something infinite does not know what he wants."

It is a matter of a feeling for one's self and a feeling for the world. Both of these merge into one and the same sensation in which man's self, in its infinite depth, feels at one with the soul of the cosmos, with the primeval origin of the world. As the subconscious element of the soul widens out into eternity, man's innermost being becomes one with the innermost center of the world. This deep contact between one's own inner being and the core of the eternal world, is the religion of large circles of our youth.

All genuine young people must strive to attain a relationship of their own to life in its entirety. Since only love is able to find such an attitude, Eros is the watchword of the young. It means the overcoming of the original sin of isolation. They want to draw every consequence from the fact that "sin" comes from "sundering," as Baader once stated. This is also the deepest reason why just Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Werfel, and Stephan George have to be the `big three' of contemporary poetry to whom young people most like to turn for guidance on their way. For they all, each in his own way, seek for a religious freeing from the narrow individualism of past times; they strive for the inner harmony that should unite the emotional experience of the Ego with the entire world, with its life and suffering.

Youth wants to blast away the walls which have been erected between "I" and "Thou." It is clear that in such a struggle one must speak consciously of a religious experience. For the forces that are fighting to free the strengths of the soul are religious in character. In contrast to the self that is unessential and split, the true unified self of the soul wants to penetrate through to the light of the divine being.

The deep going contact of today's youth with nature becomes a symbolic impulse towards this deepest ideal. "We have not searched for God outside of nature," they assert, and "We have not found Him in nature"; then they continue, "But by receiving into ourselves the harmony of nature we have been led to the God within us." The youthful person, profoundly moved by nature's imprint upon him, finds in the depths of his own emotional life that which is divine and essential, and on that basis he attains an all-encompassing view of the world. It is his experience that no intellectual interpretation or research is able to bring about or explain this feeling the soul has for the world. A new born child is full of a feeling for life, and yet is not in the least able with his intellect to investigate his life sphere, and in just the same way the emotional experience of nature, which liberates the soul hitherto shut in upon itself, has nothing to do with a scientific explanation of nature and of the life of the soul.

"The fetters of the intellect have fallen," Werfel exclaims, "and my spirit is but one gigantic sentiment." The imprisonment of the soul within itself, brought about by the intellect and its logic, is broken asunder. Instead of the bloodless "I am", the "We are" has stepped in, brimful of the spirit of the universe. The "Thou" with which we feel united remains indeed unknown to us, yet by boundlessly rejoicing with all the sunlit life around us, and by sharing to the full all the suffering and pain in the world, the soul strives to find the God of the universe and at the same time seeks to be one with His world. The greatest and highest one longs for is to be free from one's isolation.

"You too, O Word that I use in ignorance,

Rain down, pour forth unhindered through the universe

The word, `We are'."

The "We" is to conquer the "I." It is "God" that this "We" wants to embrace; and in becoming one with Him the "We" seeks to affirm everything in the world:

"But, O Lord, you come down even to me

and have shared the thousand fold torment,

Every woman has given birth to you,

You have died in filth, in every paper scrap."

So if, with Franz Werfel, we want to find God in all things  as seed in the small things, as great in what is great, as torment in all that is ugly, and as happiness in all that is sublime, we can come to no other experience of God than that expressed by Rainer Maria Rilke:

"You are the unknown, the mysterious one,

From eternity to eternity."

If we want to comprehend the primeval origin of the world as that which is divine, without separating good from evil and light from darkness, the soul of the cosmos becomes a mixture of God and the devil. One wants everything  the darkness of every fall as well as the shimmering light and joy of every climb upwards; one desires to be stretched out through the world, so as to feel and experience simultaneously everything  in every animal and tree, in every person and object. But in this way the inner conflict of one's own soul is intensified to such boundless enormity that Werfel, experiencing it, has to cry out: "Why have You created me with this enemy, my Father? Why have You made me to be thus divided? Why have You not given me oneness and purity?"

It is obvious that God's own self cannot be found along this way. Neither therefore can the self of one's own soul ever win in this way the necessary inner unity. By trying to clutch at everything at once, one loses oneself and every possibility of attaining the divineness one longs for. It is shown inexorably that the riddle of existence defies solution as long as one avoids the great Either Or. With an attitude of "both...and..." we shall not fathom the mystery of life and of the world.

Yet the fight for the wholeness of the universe can and must nevermore be given up. Some kind of a solution must be found. The young feel impelled to struggle for the soul of the world and must not let themselves be deterred by the evil they find in it. They must seek to win through to the core of life, for they are unwilling to live without becoming one with it.

Hence we must know where the end of that way of religious longing, on which wide circles of our youth are going, is to be found. So long as we try to enlarge our own self so that it becomes the world, so long as we persist in seeing the meaning of the world in a random uniting with all the elements of the universe, our merging with God remains an impersonal one. The desired personal worth is not won either for God or for our own self on this road. We ourselves remain without the integrity which alone makes a personality. And we have no living, personal God.

All that we are holding in our empty hands is something neutral and impersonal. It is in this mood that Stephan George has to sing:

"I lose myself in sounds  gyrating, weaving.

I am immersed in His great breathing.

A mere spark am I, from out the holy fire,

A mere echo of the holy voice."

He is bound to come to the disappointing conclusion: "God is a delusion, if you yourselves are burnt up." Putting it the opposite way, Wackenroder had to say: "By myself I cannot reach firm ground." And yet basically it is just the human personality that the struggle is all about. The individual personality is to embrace the whole wealth of life, in an integrity which is beyond dispute. We feel and know: "Only what is personal is self-fulfilling," and yet we remain stuck in the impersonal.

The attempt to merge, without discrimination and without restriction, with all the world's elements can never lead to the desired inner harmony, nor to the unity which we believe to be necessary. The deepest reason for this is to be found in the realities of the spiritual world. For what is at work in the world around us and within us is not only God and the living Christ, but, in opposition to them, other spirits which are quite different in their inmost nature. The world is not only a world of light and life; it is just as much a world of death and of darkness. Every struggle for the highest and purest in life means war against the powers that are low and filthy.  Nietzsche, who wanted to say `yes' to everything, however questionable, confessed: "That, that is my edge of the abyss and my peril, that my gaze leaps upwards to the heights, while my hand would hold onto and shore up the depths." Honesty urges him to warn his followers: "Your evil impulses also thirst for freedom. He whom the Spirit has set free must also still be cleansed." The soul is the mirror for all the relationships of men. Every touching of the unclean and putrid pollutes the inner and inmost being, with the result that the stream of destructive elements, let in from without, rips up and chokes with its mud, as if forever, the desired unity and wholeness.

Among today's youth, too, many do not get beyond this boundless religious confusion, where men want to embrace at one and the same time everything alive in the world - light and darkness, beauty and ugliness, good and evil. The urge of wanting to possess everything robs our vision of its power of discernment. It makes the heart an indiscriminating sea, receiving into itself all manner of rivers, whereas it ought to be a light in which everything becomes revealed and undergoes the necessary sifting. It is the murky darkness of the crowd spirit, of the god of this world who has here blinded and infected the inner eye. People want the light of truth, yet they remain in the twilight of lying. They want life in its fullness, yet are unable to distinguish the murderer of man from the prince of life.

Certainly there are many who move up and down between the different stages of religious experience. Their religious view of the world changes according to the perspective of their momentary inner situation. Of course there is a correlation of the innermost kind between the different religious experiences of one group and the other.

Yet there is one group which stands out most clearly from the indistinguishable mass. Its members, full of joy in life, bear witness to another and purer experience. Here, too, it is a question of the whole. Here, too, it concerns the ideal of personality. But the image of the new man and of his character is much more clearly and definitely expressed. The achievement of absolute unity, which is perceived here too as the redemption one is seeking for, has consciously become a religious and moral demand of the human personality. In clearly-defined contrast to the antagonistic world, a supreme value is here assumed, namely the direct feeling of the soul on which our youth knows they are carried. The higher instinct of the inner man is resolutely asserted to be the ultimate and decisive source of evaluation. The absolute and immediate values which the whole youth movement seeks are here witnessed to as the moral and religious liberation of souls.

A strong faith in the divine calling of the human soul is at work, in which the longing for a liberation of the spirit, for a cleansing of the heart and for the eternal value of life is seen as that which is deepest and most living in every conscience. The feeling for the world is guided by the inner feeling for the life of the soul. Only the conscience can determine what is good for the soul and what is beneficial to life. And the conscience seeks certainty about what is eternal. The innermost core of the universe is grasped from within the soul. It is the "Thou shalt" of the conscience which unites the eternal and infinite with the self determination of the spirit.

Only our own religious experience makes it possible to attain such an optimistic faith. Only hearing the voice of the All-¬Highest is able to bring about such a deep going, moral and religious basic conviction. Even though wide circles of youth have no clarity about the divine personality which is the origin of this voice  one thing they do know. It is only by experiencing the created primeval Spirit that we can find liberation for our souls. What matters is an intuition of the all renewing Spirit of God, a hearing of the voice of His will. Stephan George expresses this experience in a picture taken from the working of mines. After long hours of strenuous work there is suddenly the surprising fulfillment: "Without wishing or signal, a ray as of pure silver streams through the crack into their dungeon. Now speaks the Eternal One, 'I will, thou shalt!'"

It is the two elements of the "I" and the "Thou" that make up the essence of this experience. One of these two elements is the direct experience of the inner self, the highest calling of man from within, the primeval sense of endless development and doing, the conscience of the real and better self  the holy "I must." The second element of this same experience is unity of the highest order, ultimate strength and purest love, an absolute and unequivocally committed will. It is the meaning of life and of the world, it is the Thou of the living God- ¬the holy "Thou shalt."

"Only he is wise whose wisdom comes from God," says Stephan George. And Friedrich Schlegel, as spokesman for the Romantic movement, has given here too a fitting summary: "So in the strictest sense I can respect as religion only that which is thought and written and lived in a Godly way; where people are full of God; where a breath of worship and enthusiasm is poured out over our whole being; where nothing is done as a duty, but everything out of love, simply because one wants to do it; and where one wants to do it because God says so  that is to say, God within us." Only the voice of God is able to call forth this holy will of love. Although we do not see His figure, yet it is His personal influence which here begins to direct the soul. The soul does not yet feel confronted by His countenance, His eye and His heart. But it hears His call. We do not yet see the God we hear. We are unable to confess anything about Him other than that mystical word of inmost uncertainty, "The God in our own breast, none other lives for us."

It is not sufficient to want to portray this basic experience of today's more serious minded youth as being no more than Kant's understanding of personal freedom.. Certainly at first glance it seems to be nothing but the self determination of one's own responsibility. Certainly it is a question of the will that is a law unto itself, independent of all preoccupation with the state of things [`von aller Beschaffenheit der Gegenstände des Wollens' ] and above all independent of any influences exerted by authority and tradition. And certainly they want the rules of conduct of this will, the inner guide-lines governing its actions, to have virtually the validity of a legislative body. Above all, however, it is the concern of today's movement that not the logical clarity of the guide-lines be decisive, but that each individual conscience hears the voice of God anew. The holy "Thou shalt" is experienced not only as freedom from authority and from research relying on observation alone, but above all as something which is independent of mere thought. The holy will we are experiencing derives from a world that proves to be unconditionally superior to the logic of our thoughts. It is therefore all important that we should let nothing hinder or obstruct our recognizing and experiencing the character of the living God just as He reveals it to us.

All this shows: only the personal experience of God can be discovered without any intermediary, and can be grasped as the absolute. Herein we get a glimpse of the real essence of the independence which today's young people are seeking. They can acknowledge as sure and certain only that which is immediate in the strictest sense, hence only that which is happening to me now. They will follow no other direction than the absolute, as it is revealed in the holy "Thou shalt" of the soul. Youth seeks certainty about its own nature, certainty about the meaning of our life and certainty about the world in its entirety. Outside the immediate and absolute element of religious experience there can be no such certainty. Karl Heim's "The certainty of faith" shows us how much this struggle for ultimate certainty clearly means a religious attitude. This book, by uncovering and answering the ultimate questions arising here, is for inwardly moved young people a guidepost which they should not unheedingly pass by.

Karl Heim, with all the earnestness proper to philosophers and seekers after knowledge, concerns himself with the decisive question: How in the momentary content of our own narrow consciousness   ¬a content which after all can be given to us alone - how, in a single point of time, the desired and all-embracing view of what is whole, eternal and infinite can be given. How can a point be infinite? How can a moment embrace eternities? To possess the unlimited within limits   this possibility can exist only in the unconditional "Thou shalt." For it unveils for me my eternal destiny. This destiny, as a binding obligation of the holy "Thou shalt," is absolute and boundless.

Only an eternal reality is able to impose an unconditional obligation which is over and above my consciousness. Only an infinite consciousness knows of an unlimited "thou shalt." So it is faith in an eternal will that arises from this experience. In the "thou shalt" the primeval source of life opens up, in which man rediscovers both himself and the God he has lost. Man wins God only by doing His will. Jesus said when speaking of his mission: "If anyone wants to do God's will, he will know whether  my teaching is from God or whether I speak on my own authority."

And as I come to know God alone in His will, so it is alone by doing His will that I arrive at my own will, at myself. By knowing myself at one with the ever present will that is God, I recognize myself as coming from God, I recognize the particular character of my present situation as given to me by God. It is in this experience and nowhere else that the self comes to value its existence as a personal will, as a self-governing ego, as a soul. By winning God I win my soul, I win my personal life. The experience of God unveils for me the eternal meaning of my present situation and the divine reality of my own self. For it reveals to me the God given significance of my presence, of my being there.

The inner gift of experiencing "thou shalt" is thus just as free from high-handedness and coercion as is the fact that I am I and that I now find myself here. Every other consideration of, and conditioning by, men and circumstances cannot but stain or choke the holy "thou shalt", and turn free self-determination (autonomy) into slavish dependence on outside factors (heteronomy). Submission to God's will, however, means in truth the awakening of inner independence and of human freedom. Only the inner essence of eternity gives significance and worth to my own self. Without that it is but sound and fury   futile and senseless. Only if I know why and for what purpose I am in the world, only if I recognize and experience my holy task, can there be a genuine affirmation of life. This affirmation consists in surrender to the task, in an inward sensing of the divine "thou shalt."

The connection between the infinite and the finite   so ardently craved   has here finally become tangible. That for which the youth of today is in revolt, like the earlier Romantic movement, has in the holy "thou shalt" entered into the soul. Here the central view for which they have been searching is attained in its wholeness. The longed for insight into the depths of reality has been found. In this way alone the experience of the core of all life is at the same time the experience of the worth of one's own soul. The limitations of self are torn down; and just in this way selfhood is won. Imprisonment in space and time has been overcome; and thereby it has become possible to endure life in space and time and joyfully to affirm it. For this central view means immediate certainty about a reality which is valid everywhere and always and for all. For the will of God reveals the unchangeable character of His being. Here the spiritual emerges from the sphere of unconscious emotion, and yet does not freeze up into the icy coldness of the intellect. For the spiritual here opens up the personal element in God as well as in my own self. It becomes aware of its own self as well as of the self of the core of life. Integrating infinite variety into a unified whole is experienced as the holiest value of one's own soul. This integration brings the longed for freedom from all inner division. The all-embracing riches of the infinite God is experienced in its wholeness.

Our earlier experiences and the usual rules of thinking available to us cannot help us to grasp such a happening. It lies outside and beyond these spheres. Nor is intuition equal to its depth and width. Artistic expressionism demonstrates how inadequate our means of presentation are here. Nevertheless this movement in art, which is an idea of the future, seeks to overcome materialism and impressionism, and it may help some to understand more clearly the nature of that direct insight which is meant here  an insight that pierces through to the whole, the eternal and the infinite. No longer the individual and separatist, no longer the "what", but rather the "how," shall decide the depth and wholeness of the world. It is not a question of a vision in space, but rather the mystery underlying all visions. As in the case of the inner religious "thou shalt", it is a question of the harmonious integration of the infinite variety of the entire world, of the unity which embraces and encloses all subjects, all points in space and time. Here we sense, more clearly than in any other field of experience, that in the past few years a new time has been in course of preparation. For along this way individualism, formerly so dominant, is now turning into a hated heresy  because it is now oneness and wholeness which stand in the center, whereas individualism meant seeking ones own self in its detached isolation.

From the solitude of his individual existence man has arrived at an awareness of the all-pervasive and all-encompassing Spirit of God. Only the degree is different to which the clarification of this awareness has taken place. Many struggling for a new concept of life became infatuated with a mystical twilight, and so never get beyond Stephan George's confession:  "It is as if a gleam glimmers in the gloom." There is more involved here than the ethical demand of the conscience. It is not just that a voice is heard, something far more personal is seen: the gleam of an eye. And yet it is a gleam in the dark. The Personal Being we are searching for does not yet emerge from the shadow in which we ourselves have veiled Him. While our own nature hides from our eyes the image of the All Highest, we lack the means of unveiling it. We can never grasp in terms of human concepts the inner and living character of the divine being, for it is a question of powers which cannot be understood in words at all, or, at best, only in words full of contradictions. Man on his own is unable to draw near to God. The youth of today has the right feeling for the old modesty and natural reserve of all deep religious feeling, and in this sense one hears it expressed once again: "There is a Name which is not to be named."

What is involved here can only be expressed in paradoxes, in the language of contradictions. God gives Himself to the soul without doing violence to its will, and without its un-restrainedness having forced Him. The subjective is here the objective. Many-ness has become one ness. The gatheredness of being within oneself includes being one with all. How the experience of these contradictions can be expressed in logical terms cannot be discussed here. This deepest mystery is capable of solution only if the contradiction inherent in the world of appearances is recognized and acknowledged. 

At any rate it is shown here that the intellectual attempt to think logically does not lead to the goal, any more than do the firm propositions of tradition. Nothing other than the inner "thou shalt" of the divine will is able to lead us up to the heights we seek. Even though the poets among our youth, in varying confessions, reflect today's religious ferment in all its unclarity, even though theirs is a tangle of the most contradictory elements of religious powers, yet they all feel surrender to the creative divine will to be the only solution for their unspeakable inner tension. Thus Stephan George is able to say:

"Aglow with Thy grace,

Crushed by Thy greatness,

Take and shape me as Thy vessel,

Fill me, I lie and listen!"

Yet it remains to be seen to what extent this inspiration by the divine "thou shalt" has led to having direct and absolute certainty. It is certain that a considerable proportion of today's youth fall by the wayside at this point. By intellectual abstractions they try to gloss over the fact that the inner "thou shalt" demands, without question, a purpose which is to be found within themselves. The empty vessel finds its destiny only when it is filled up. It is not enough for the Ego to be told that it is to have a purpose of which it is ignorant and unaware. It is much less able, however, to accept someone else's experience as definitive; the self must make an attempt of its own to win the essential content of the depths of its soul, and of the core of life which is found in God.

This content, which is to lead the very strong will of the soul toward the unfolding of the true self, can only be one will. Coming to know God in the deepest personal relationship of voluntary community is alone able to supply the essence of the experience for which we are searching. Again it is Stephan George who, with deep insight, compares this highest stage of knowledge with the birth of a child and with the first awakening of consciousness:

Three are the stages of knowledge.

Only the deluded thinks he can skip them:

The first is Birth and body.

The second, equally needful, is to see and to comprehend.

The last is known alone to him who has communed with God." It is the eternal and infinite here and now of the will, present in the soul, that is alone able to give content to bodily life and to spiritual perception. It is God Himself whom we only come to know and experience by fulfilling the holy "thou shalt," by doing His Will.

Since birth and body, the first requirement of the Ego, can only be given in the realm of matter; since perception and comprehension of the world and of life by the spirit is only possible in real life, so likewise it is only in the realm of matter that there is a direct disclosure of the will of God. In spite of the deepest experiences, the content of the divine character and of the divine will would be absolutely incomprehensible if in the existence of the earth and of history there was not a reality that contains within it His character and will.

A generation has now arisen among us which knows this factual reality, and which speaks to us directly of God the Absolute. In the youth of today there lives a religious devotion that is filled with Christ and grounded in Christ. Here the holy "thou shalt," the great encounter with the divine will, is experienced and grasped as a personality. The historical effect of this figure draws near to us in men gripped by Him, and also in the Bible  the one book imbued with the pure, direct experience of God. Jesus is here seen as the one historical personality who has brought the boundless wealth of life to an integral unity, in untroubled harmony. He is the sought for substance of the direct feeling for life and of the absolute "thou shalt." He is witnessed to as the Man, the new man whose holy "I shall" was never broken, never debased by his practical behavior. In Him alone can God be found, for He remained at all times in unclouded unity with Him.

Our idealistic, romantically stirred youth longs for leaders, for creative individuals who are able to waken and keep alive in each heart that which is deepest and purest - the higher self and its divine calling. Those young people whom Christ has gripped are sustained by the witness of having found this leader in Jesus.  Jesus does not walk over the soul like an alien authority, or like a compulsion exerted from without. Instead, He awakens the holy "thou shalt" and "I must" in the soul itself.

By becoming one with His purity and wholeness, with the energy of His love, the conscience of the better self is roused to an undreamed-of strength and capability. The Jew Franz Werfel has said it: "Of all the teachings which have been given to the world, the Christian teaching is perhaps the only one that affirms man's self to the hilt. For it raises the self to the best viewing point of the supreme battle." It is for this reason that among the young people who struggle for the meaning of the pure self - even where they cannot yet confess to personal unity with Christ - the cry is heard: "What we lack is a new Christ. We have enough Marxists. Institutions are easier to change than souls."

What they are seeking is nothing other than the life- energy and character of this one Man, who has shown that the strongest and freest personal life is inner unity with God and the powerful working of love. To do the will of God was His food. All He did sprang directly from the holy "I must" of his soul, from the unconditional "thou shalt" implicit in his oneness with God. The youth of today knows that the kernel of life that it seeks, as well as the realization of its energy, can only be given in the creative power of a personality. This personality is Jesus. It is He, in his integral wholeness and abundant riches, whom the youth of today yearns for.

Communion with God was the emotive basis for His whole life. All His activity was instinct with an overflowing feeling for life, with a feeling for the world expressing itself in a compassion of infinite intensity, the exuberance of a love that made all things possible. In his last deed He bestows on us his greatest gift   an unimpeded view right into the center of the universe, in all its darkness and all its light. Having overcome all the hostile spirits and their destructive and deadly powers, He is the hope for the longed for unity of the cosmos. In the small world of our own souls we gain through Him a comprehensive certainty for the great cosmic world, for He brings God himself as power and love into our hearts.

Only in the mystery of His presence is such an experience possible. The inwardly-felt presence of Christ bridges the hampering distance of time by letting us experience His words and His deeds here and now in our own souls. It overcomes the decisive separation of space by uniting us with the infinity of His world. Christ's presence breaks through the limitations of manifold variety by making us one with Him and with all who have Him. Like the gift of my unalterable self, which neither my desire nor any alien power can replace by another self, so too the gift of His presence comes neither by coercion nor by my own capricious will. It is rather the soul-¬freeing, all  embracing insight and penetration into the center of all life and being.

Among the poets of present day youth there is also a sensing of this ultimate and greatest fulfillment of youth's yearning. They feel that the appearance of Jesus cannot be disregarded as something belonging to the past, nor merely resigned to the future:

"Am I one who awaits the coming of salvation?

The Saviour does not come  He is ever-present!"

Everything depends on the extent to which we experience His presence as a personal one. We hear His voice; we understand it as the deeply-searching "I will, you shall." He awakens our conscience through the primeval challenge inherent in our destiny. We experience Him as the will of God come near to us, as the heart of creation. But we see more of Him than just a glimpse into the darkness; out of His words there draws near to us a clearly outlined character, a distinctly recognizable figure. The more we inwardly make His character our own, the more we, with our hearts renewed, do His will, the more we shall see Him as He is. For only in the "thou shalt" experience of our conscience, only by doing His will, do we encounter His presence, His aliveness. The reality of Jesus is the certainty we need, if in our search for God we are not to grope about in darkness. His reality can impart to the soul the holy "Thou shalt" as an unbroken revelation and an uncurtailed gift.

The stage of life we attain in Him means something so completely new and different compared to our previous existence that Jesus speaks for the first time here of the actual beginning of life. Only this "being born from above" enables us to inwardly possess our own life in its entirety, whereas previously we were at best only able to look from the outside at the mystery of existence. Rebirth opens in us the door through which the light of the divine world streams in. It plucks at our heartstrings, and the resultant clang awakens within us the harmonies of infinite spheres. No faculty of mine was able to bring about this experience, which embraces not only my soul and its destiny but equally the inmost core and utmost hope of the world. I see that this impossibility arises because I cannot, like a despot, induce this experience any more than it could ever have been forced upon me. It is given to me, just as my own personality, my own self is given.

Such a renewal can therefore not be regarded as a further development of pre-existent factors, or as the sum of small changes, each resulting from the other, an improved continuation of the old. It is rather a turnabout and transformation, a shattering and renewal which from the root spreads out into all branches of existence. It cannot take place without a collapse of the old, without the death of the false life. Hence the deepest prayer of Franz Werfel has to be this: "Free me, cleanse me, my Father! Kill this enemy, kill me, drown this 'me'!" Here the word of Jesus comes to life anew: "He who loves his life will lose it, but he who loses his life for my sake, will find it." So the same writer (Werfel) has to say: "I tell you, self-preservation in the spirit is self-destruction, whereas self-destruction is self-preservation."

The youth of today is aware of the soulless and dehumanizing existence of our externalized society and our mechanized professional lives. In its rebellion against the big city spirit of death, lying and impurity, youth has turned to nature for genuine life, to the experience of its own soul for unclouded truthfulness, and to the love of God for unstained purity.

The self-annihilation by war on the part of civilized nations has strengthened youth's conviction that the ordinary life of present day civilized man is actually no life, and is not conducive to life. Many young people moved by Christ understand the deeper reasons for this hurt. For they see clearly that sins, thoughts, deeds, and habits hostile to life are the tools of death which Jesus had to fight against.

Today the old word of prophetic insight comes to life anew; "He who sins harms his soul." Sin is recognized by the effect it has on the soul. Once again large circles of our youth have thus been struck by the decisive word of Jesus: "What good is it for a man to gain the whole world and harm his own soul!" Everything is sin that destroys inner truthfulness, pollutes the purity of the soul, paralyses our creative energy and the strength of love.  It is sin against life and against the core of life that must now be recognized as guilt.

Once again Jesus and the living movement of the Spirit in early Christianity prove to be a reality which is effective today. The cowards and the unfaithful, the drunkards, fornicators, and degenerate weaklings, the liars and magicians against whom the spirit of the primitive Christian movement turned, stand revealed as life destroying factors   by their licentiousness and debauchery as by their half-heartedness and weakness of character. Every movement arising from the inward life has to turn against these. It is a question of a new creation. The life-¬destroying nature of sin  this dead load which drags us down, this decisive weapon of death which wants to corrupt the purest and highest within us  must be recognized in the clearest possible way if the living death connected with it is to be overcome.

Even the most optimistic romanticist has to admit that the inner "thou shalt" demands the rejection of outward coercion and calls for mastery over the obstinate tendencies in our own nature. Again and again the jubilant, life affirming cry of "We are" is interrupted by the deadening, chilling lamentation, "Woe to us that we are as we are!" Every attempt to affirm life indiscriminately, to regard nothing as evil and unworthy of love, in actual fact amounts to a merciless killing and destruction of one's self.

The romanticists of earlier times strove to embrace and experience everything equally, but they had to confess: "There is only a hair's breadth between good and evil, between the pietist and the blasphemer." If we recognize what is within us with unconditional truthfulness, we find our heart to be as completely evil as it is truly good. Thus the ultimate clarity of rebirth, the real liberation of life's energy, the unhindered life of the personality attained in God, all this can be brought about only by our acknowledging also the final debasing alloy, the most painful contradiction of all.

Utter badness and real goodness, boundless strength and lamentable weakness, unfathomable suffering and exuberant joy, possessing and yearning, life and death  to embrace all this in one experience is the ultimate and deepest achievement of which the soul is capable. It appears that George was given a glimpse also into this extreme abyss:

We pray and we gaze

In radiant strength,

In consuming pain,

In flaming ecstasy,

And we die in unending longing.

This is the corner-stone of the Cross which each one finds placed in his path. It is the holy "die and live" which is given us in the death of Jesus as the unconditional "thou shalt," as the unimpeded flash into the center of existence. The Cross discloses, at one and the same time, the deadly power of evil and the life giving power of good.

We are dealing here with the experience that was given to Luther, in which unclouded unity with Christ meant at the same time the deepest possible separation between Him and the burdened soul. The realization of such a unity is only possible when a {S.58} total exchange takes place: our own sin is laid wholly on Christ, and Christ's purity belongs wholly to us. In this experience, which is as contradictory as it is evident, the Either Or has at the same time become an As Well As. In this paradoxical experience which proves to be the most real thing in life, one has to say with Luther: "Thou hast taken to Thyself what is mine, and hast given me what is Thine. Thou hast taken that which Thou wast not, and given to me what I was not." Hence Luther can say boldly: "I am Christ. All He has is mine." And he has to recognize Christ as so much one with him, that he can put these words into His mouth: "I am this poor sinner, that is to say: all his sin is my sin, and his death is my death."

In this surrender of the soul to Christ, in the belonging- to Christ of the soul, the dualism of human existence is overcome, and the true self asserted against all destructive instincts. In Christ the visionary self rules over the psychic self, the higher calling over the lower passions, Spirit over matter. In Him the enslavement of the Spirit under the rule of material things and of sensual urges has come to an end: "The Lord is the Spirit. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom."

This freedom implies that the soul has a part in the whole sphere of the creative power of Christ, without whom nothing that is and lives has come into being. In this Spirit we attain to that all-embracing affirmation of life which is active in joyful, unstinting energy in the resistant world. The Spirit needs matter to work on. Love has won form and shape in Christ. His Word desires to become deed in our lives. The love of God is poured out into our hearts. By experiencing His love for us, we are enabled to love. Translating the strength to love into reality means action.

Because the life of Jesus was service dedicated to all, His presence within us calls forth the activity of love. We have recognized that love is the only direct and unconditional essence of that holy "thou shalt". Love makes use to the utmost of our gifts, powers, and goods. Love fulfils the personal life of the man renewed in Christ in his whole being  body, soul, and spirit. The youth of today tries to grasp the spiritual meaning of the life of the body; it wants to affirm the powers of body and soul as being the essence of our life. So too early Christianity in its vitality accorded highest dignity to the body, because it alone is the temple of God. Hence the holy "thou shalt" of the soul united with Christ is to glorify God with the body.

A religious attitude determined by Christ means affirming life just in this sense: that all the strength and vitality of the body comes to expression in work and activity among men, and in a life close to nature. The strong yearning for nature which animates our youth finds its fulfillment in Christ. Christ's deeply felt communion with God means that He has a highly conscious relationship to God's creation  the creation which He, Christ, himself fills and pervades. For the first Christians there was nothing in nature which had not come into being through Christ the Logos, nothing which did not have His life. It was not only that Jesus ever again gazed with love at birds and flowers, at dogs and sheep, at a field and the seed sown in it, at the vine and the corn, at trees and the lake, at towns and mountains, earth and sky; not only that He used them as an everlasting picture of all religious, all-embracing truths. It was that He also opened the eyes of His own, and laid upon them the obligation to rule and possess the earth. Such a central affirmation of life, reaching down into the life of all things, can never lose itself in languid enjoyment, but means glowing dedication to life for the purpose of joyful service and intensive activity.

In Jesus, life has become outpouring love, super-abundance of life. In the perfect love of His overflowing heart He converts into reality our highest calling. Thus He proves to be our leader in personal life, in the desired life content of the conscience. The pulsing of a healthy life may be recognized by the upwelling stream, by the fruits. When the inner being of our soul has gained endless life, this must show itself in a relationship of love to God as the core of life, as well as to all living beings. Only in love to God and love to one's neighbor does religious life prove itself. For it is the character of the holy "thou shalt" that it must bring forth deeds of holy love. Love is movement, love is deed. Life will prove, and deeds will decide where the impulses of God's power are strongest, where God is able to work most freely among our young people who are so moved by such varied religious influences.