It was in the Lutheran Reformation that the great revolution appeared, as, after the eternal conflicts and the terrible discipline which the stiff-necked Germanic character had undergone and which it had to undergo, mind came to the consciousness of reconciliation with itself, a reconciliation whose form required that it should be brought about within the mind. From the Beyond man was thus called into the presence of spirit, as earth and her bodily objects, human virtues and morality, the individual heart and conscience, began to have some value to him. In the church, if marriage was not held to be immoral, self-restraint and celibacy were considered higher, but now marriage came to be looked on as a divine institution. Then poverty was esteemed better than possession, and to live on alms was considered higher than to support oneself honestly by the work of one’s hands; now, however, it becomes known that poverty is not the most moral life, for this last consists in living by one’s work and taking pleasure in the fruits thereof. The blind obedience by which human freedom was suppressed, was the third vow taken by the monks, as against which freedom, like marriage and property, was now also recognized as divine. Similarly on the side of knowledge man turned back into himself from the Beyond of authority; and reason was recognized as the absolutely universal, and hence as divine. Now it was perceived that it is in the mind of man that religion must have its place, and the whole process of salvation be gone through—that man’s salvation is his own affair, and that by it he enters into relationship with his conscience and into immediate connection with God, requiring no mediation of priests having the so-called means of grace within their hands. There is indeed a mediation present still by means of doctrine, perception, the observation of self and of one’s actions; but that is a mediation without a separating wall, while formerly a brazen wall of division was present separating the laity from the church. It is thus the spirit of God that must dwell within the heart of man, and this indwelling spirit must operate in him.