each other in the
performance of duty by example and by the profession of a common moral
conviction; we are all brothers, the children of one father. Ideally there
is only one (the universal, invisible) Church, and its foundation the pure
faith of reason; but in consequence of a weakness peculiar to human nature
the foundation of an actual church required the addition of a statutory
historical faith, with claims to a divine origin, from which a multitude of
visible churches and the antithesis of orthodox and heretics have sprung.
The history of the Church since the establishment of Christianity
represents the conflict between the historical faith and the faith of
reason; its goal is the submission of the former to the latter, as, indeed,
we have already begun to perceive that God does not require a special
service beyond the practice of virtue.

(4) The true service of God consists in a moral disposition and its
manifestation: "All that man supposes himself able to do in order to please
God, beyond living a good life, is _false service_" False service is the
false subordination of the pure faith of reason to the statutory faith, by
which the attainment of the goal of religious development is hindered
and the laity are brought into dangerous dependence upon the clergy.
Priestcraft, hypocrisy, and fanaticism enter in the train of fetich
service. The church-faith is destined little by little to make itself
superfluous. It has been necessary as a vehicle, as a means for the
introduction and extension of the pure religion of morality, and it still
remains useful for a time, until humanity shall become of age; with man's
entrance on the period of youth and manhood, however, the leading-string of
holy traditions, which in its time did good service, becomes unnecessary,
nay, finally, a fetter. (This relative appreciation of the positive element
in religion, in antithesis to the unthinking rejection of it by the
Illumination, resembles the view of Lessing; cf. pp. 306-309.) Moreover,
since it is a duty to be a co-worker in the transition from the historical
to the pure religious faith, the clergy must be free as scientific
theologians, as scholars and authors to examine the doctrines of faith
and to give expression to dissenting opinions, while, as preachers in the
pulpit, speaking under commission, they are bound to the creeds. To decide
the articles of belief unalterable would be a crime against human
nature, whose primal dest