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PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 395 This, although it is selMncurred, may be called natural and innate, and consists (not in the sensibility merely, but) in a freely chosen reversal of the moral order of our max- ims, in virtue of which the maxim of duty or morality is subordinated to that of well-being or self-love instead of being placed above it, and that which should be the supreme condition of all satisfaction is degraded into a mere means thereto. Morality is therefore a conversio7i from the evil to the good, and requires a complete revolution in the dis- position, the putting on of a new man, a " new birth," which, an act out of time, can manifest itself in the tem- poral world of phenomena only as a gradual transforma- tion in conduct, as a continuous advance, but which, we may hope, is judged by him who knows the heart, who regards the disposition instead of particular imperfect actions, as a completed unity. (2) By the eternal Son of God, for wliose f^ake God cre- ated all things, we are to understand the ideal of the per- fect man, which in truth forms the end of creation, and is come down from heaven, etc. To believe in Christ means to resolve to realize in one's self the ideal of human nature which is well pleasing to God, or to make the divine disposi- tion of the Son of God our own, not to believe that this ideal has appeared on earth as an actual man, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The only saving faith is the belief of reason in the ideal which Christ represents, and not the historical belief in his person. The vicarious atonement of the ideal man for those wlio believe on him is to be inter- preted to mean that the sufferings and sacrifices (crucifixion of the flesh) imposed by moral conversion, which are due to the sinful man as punishment, are assumed by the regen- erate man : the new Adam bears the sufferings of the old. In the same way as that in which Kant handles the history of Christ and the doctrine of justification, all biblical nar- ratives and ecclesiastical doctrines are in public instruction (from the pulpit) to be interpreted morally, even where the authors themselves had no such meaning in mind. (3) The Church is a society based upon the laws of virtue, an ethical community or a people of God, whose members confirm each other in the performance of duty by example