The essence of religion consists in the feeling of an absolute dependence.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that true religion stems from an individual's recognition of their complete reliance on a higher power.
Friedrich Schleiermacher's quote emphasizes that at the core of religious belief is the profound awareness of one's dependence on something greater than oneself. This can be interpreted as a recognition of humanity's connection to the divine or transcendent, asserting that this sense of dependency is fundamental to the practice and experience of religion, rather than mere adherence to doctrines or rituals.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the nature of faith in a philosophy class.
The first, that their pretensions to this possession of an art properly so called in their art of speaking are entirely unfounded; and the second, that they are involved in a profound mistake in their confusion of the good with the pleasant.
Whenever I find a spark of that hidden fire that will sooner or later consume the old and create the new, I am drawn to it with love and hope, regarding it as a sign of my future home.
Either the translator leaves the author in peace, as much as is possible, and moves the reader towards him: or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author towards him.
The essence of the religious emotions consists in the feeling of an absolute dependence.
Now the relation which, in the sphere of nature, being and semblance or sensation bear to one another in this antithesis, is the same as that which in ethics exists between good and pleasure or feeling.
Belief must be something different from a mixture of opinions about God and the world, and of precepts for one life or for two. Piety cannot be an instinct craving for a mess of metaphysical and ethical crumbs.
The most vulnerable and yet most unconquerable of things is human vanity; nay, through being wounded its strength increases and can grow to giant proportions.
It's a great responsibility before God, the judge who guides us, who draws us to truth and good, and in this sense the church must unmask evil, rendering present the goodness of God, rendering present his truth, the truly infinite for which we are thirsty.
Part of the oncoming demise (of New York during its terrible fiscal crisis) is that none of us can simply believe it. We were always the best and the strongest of cities, and our people were vital to the teeth. Knock them down eight times and they would get up with that look in the eye which suggests the fight has barely begun.
Loss; is the returning of what never actually belonged to us in the first place.
The Church is designed to nourish the imperfect, the struggling, and the exhausted.
Nobody in the developing world is going to take, as an answer to their aspirations, the developed world's reply: 'Sorry, you can't; we've already used it all up.' To earn the right to look the developing world in the eye and start this conversation, we need a reassessment of how we live and what we want.
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