The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] If we compare what has emerged in the course of human development in terms of spiritual life and views of the spiritual world and the world in general, we truly see, on the one hand, a picture of meaningful progress—progress in the development of all humanity across the entire Earth. And when we trace this progress using the methods of spiritual research and Spiritual Science thinking, we gain the impression that the human being, as a single individual, participates in the overall progress of humanity by passing through the successive periods and epochs with his soul in the successive reincarnations of his existence, and thereby has the opportunity, on the one hand, to carry over what he has acquired in his soul in ancient and more recent times, but also, on the other hand, has the opportunity to participate in everything, so to speak, when he has lived with his soul in a particular cultural epoch—not to disappear from the overall development of the Earth, but to remain in order to participate again in what the Earth has achieved in later times. We perceive such an overall progress. But we need only recall a few things that have often been emphasized in our reflections on Spiritual Science, and we will see that progress is not a simple, linear process—one that begins with simple, primitive things and rises ever higher—but rather that progress and the entire process of development are, in general, complex matters.

[ 2 ] When we consider the post-Atlantean era, we gain an insight into how, following the great Atlantean catastrophe, there was initially a cultural epoch—which we refer to as the ancient Indian—of such a high level, with such a deep insight into the spiritual world, that has not been attained again since that time, and which will not be reached again until the fifth and sixth post-Atlantean cultural epochs have passed and the seventh has returned. Thus, with regard to certain aspects of humanity’s spiritual development, we find a periodic descent, followed by an ascent. We find, for example, the Greco-Roman culture, of which we say that it represents, in a certain sense, a pinnacle in terms of the Greek people’s union with art and in terms of the institutions of Greek and Roman state life, such that a certain harmonious coexistence of humanity with the physical plane was achieved. But we also see that this epoch is characterized by a saying of the great Greek: “Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shadows!” — That is to say, in this epoch of humanity’s highest splendor on the physical plane, there is only a limited awareness of the significance of the spiritual world that lies beyond the physical plane. And since that time, we see a diminishing of humanity’s direct fusion with the physical plane, a diminishing of what was achieved in this regard, but in its place we also see a gradual growing into the spiritual worlds. This is said to characterize the fact that the course of human development is a complex one, and that when one emphasizes the advantages and bright sides of one epoch, one need not by any means imply that other epochs, which do not possess these qualities, are to be regarded as inferior in an absolute sense. When we often speak of what Christianity has brought into the world, we know that we are only at the beginning in this regard and that those spiritual heights attained in the East before the time of Christianity have not yet been regained. We must take all this into account so that no impression arises that, in highlighting the merits of one era, we are somehow being unfair to the greatness and significance of other eras. In this sense, I ask you to also understand a distinction that does not seek to characterize an advantage on one side and a disadvantage on the other. I wish merely to point out a difference when I seek to characterize the distinction between certain developments in non-Christian—and not merely ancient Hebrew, but pre-Christian Oriental cultural development—and Christianity itself, specifically Christianity as we see it emerging anew through the deepening of Spiritual Science concerning this Christianity.

[ 3 ] When we look into the Eastern worldview, we see that it had one thing on which it stood firm, to which it referred again and again, and which Christianity, in its development to date, has taken less into account. The Eastern worldview held that very idea, that great law of the universe, which we are now reclaiming through Spiritual Science: the concept of the human being’s return in various earthly lives and the law of karma. While Christianity, for centuries, has reckoned only with the human life between birth and death and a — following on from this, continuous — simple life in heaven, we already have in the Eastern world the clear recognition of the return of the human being in repeated earthly lives. And the significance of Eastern worldviews is always drawn from this great law of human development. Through this, a concept emerged in Eastern teaching regarding the leaders, the great teachers, and the heroes of human development that fundamentally differs from everything that has developed within Western thought regarding great leaders and heroes. Within Eastern worldviews, we find references to beings about whom we are told from the outset that they return again and again, and that the significance of their work can be recognized precisely through the significance of their successive earthly lives.

[ 4 ] We see Gautama Buddha standing before us, and we can already discern what is essential from his very name. For “Buddha” is not a proper name, as “Socrates,” “Raphael,” or other proper names are, but rather a title. And within the worldview from which the Buddhist teachings arose, one speaks of many Buddhas. Buddha is a title of honor. We have often emphasized that before Gautama Buddha, as the prince of Suddhodana, became the very Buddha of whom the Eastern worldview speaks today, he was a Bodhisattva. That is to say, the Eastern worldview looks at the individuality passing through the various incarnations, observes how the individuality ascends from incarnation to incarnation, and then reaches that height attained with the dignity of Buddhahood. And then the individuality, with all that it has accomplished of significance, is not designated by a proper name. Only rarely in Buddhism, when speaking of the Buddha’s uniqueness, is Prince Siddhartha mentioned; rather, it is mostly a dignity that is spoken of—but a dignity to which not he alone has ascended, but to which everyone can ascend. Thus, when the Eastern worldview points to the great leaders, it points to that which runs through repeated earthly lives, and it attributes the very greatness and significance of its leaders to what they have acquired through repeated earthly lives.

[ 5 ] Let us compare this phenomenon with what Western cultural development has set out to achieve. There we hear tales of the greatness of Plato, of the greatness of Socrates. There we encounter a figure such as Paul. Indeed, we can begin as early as the Old Testament, where a figure like Moses appears before us. Further on, we encounter figures such as Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and others. In the West, one speaks of the individual personality, without having in mind the individuality that runs through repeated earthly lives. One does not turn one’s gaze to what goes from birth to death, from death to birth, but rather speaks of what, as an individual human personality, stood and lived from this year to that year. Thus we see that the Eastern worldview focuses more on the continuous individuality that passes from incarnation to incarnation, whereas Western culture has paid little attention to what, for example, Socrates was in earlier earthly lives before he became Socrates, or what he will become in later lives. We do the same with Paul or others. This is a significant difference. It is simply a matter of characterizing the situation by saying: The very essence of the West has hitherto consisted in placing particular emphasis on the significance of the personality, on the significance of the individual human life. Only now, as we stand on the threshold of a great upheaval in spiritual life, do we begin after having, so to speak, acquired within Western culture a standard for judging the individual personality, to rise again to what in the Eastern worldview underlies the contemplation of the human being as a matter of course, to rise again to what lives in the individual personality as individuality and has passed from life to life. There, something peculiar appears to us as a significant perspective for the future. And humanity will need this perspective for the future more and more.

[ 6 ] Thus we see that, in the Christian worldview, we had indeed lost something that the East already possessed, and which we are only now beginning to reclaim. The course of human development is such that certain old elements must be cast aside, new ones must be added, and the old must be reclaimed through the new. Thus, in primeval times, all of humanity once possessed a primal clairvoyance. This had to be cast off. It was then replaced by a purely external perception-based view of the world. And later, what future clairvoyance is will be added back to this perception-based view. This is true both in the grand scheme and in the details, but something of immense significance will grow out of this for humanity. It had to be so at one time that, for the West, the view of humanity broke down into individual personalities. But now that humanity stands before the necessity of deepening itself, it will of its own accord find the longing to connect the individual fragments that emerge in human life between birth and death. And then an immense understanding will radiate from this regarding progress, regarding the forces that develop through the current of individual and also human progress. We can examine this in a single case.

[ 7 ] You will recall the lecture “The Prophet Elijah in the Light of Spiritual Science” delivered on December 14, 1911, in Berlin. You will recall that I pointed out at the time how, through occult research, this image of the prophet appears before us in a most remarkable way. I do not wish to go into the details further now; I only wish to say that occult research has revealed through this image of the prophet that it was Elijah who pointed out with particular intensity and force that what humanity can call the Divine can actually only be beheld in its very own form—namely, in the deepest center of the human being— in the human being’s true self. So that, in summary, we can characterize Elijah’s great prophetic word as follows: From him came the realization that everything that can be taught to us by the external world is merely a parable, and that knowledge of the true nature of the human being can only arise within one’s own self. — Only Elijah did not come to recognize the power and significance of the individual self, but rather established, as it were, a divine self standing outside of the human being. But one should recognize this divine self; one should recognize that it shines into the human self. That it rises within the human self and unfolds its full power—that is the achievement of Christianity. Thus the activity of Elijah appears as something of a herald for Christianity. One might speak in this way when investigating through occult means and characterizing the individual life of Elijah as it stands in the history of human development.

[ 8 ] One can then proceed to characterize yet another life—that of the figure known to you as John the Baptist—and have the opportunity to learn how, through the words of John the Baptist, humanity was to be informed of what was to come in the very near future. “Change the state of your souls!”—these were, roughly, the words of the Baptist—“Look no longer back to the times when the divine was sought only at the starting point of human development; look into your own souls and into what lies deepest within them, and then you will recognize that the kingdoms of heaven have drawn near!” This means that the development has taken place whereby the ego can indeed find the divine within itself. We see a kind of heralding of Christianity that has changed over time compared to Elijah. When we characterize the outer personality of John the Baptist, we see how he actually presents something quite different to us. But now, through Spiritual Science, we have come to know—and are living more and more deeply into these things—that it is the same being who stood in the prophet Elijah and who was revived in John the Baptist. To understand the individual life, we add what the East already possessed. Only, it did not emphasize the power of the individual personality in such an extraordinary way.

[ 9 ] Let’s continue. We then have the opportunity to characterize that remarkable figure who lived between 1483 and 1520, who was born on Good Friday in 1483 and thereby, as it were, placed himself alive—announcing it already through his birth—into the Mystery of Golgotha. We thus come to know the figure of the great painter Raphael. In Western art history, one is of course accustomed to viewing Raphael in isolation. But precisely when one considers the figure of Raphael today, it must be said that, in the light of a more comprehensive, deeper view of the world, it will soon become apparent that the Western perspective on Raphael is actually hardly sufficient. To those who strive to view things more deeply, this remarkable figure of Raphael appears strange. It is as if his talent were born with him. We see him, as it were, “being born” on Good Friday—one might put it that way—in order to show, so to speak, how he places himself within the Mystery of Golgotha. Then we see that we cannot help but regard him as if, even in his very earliest stages, everything had already been foreshadowed that would later reappear in his greatness. Orphaned at an early age, he is cast out into the world, thrown into the splendor and glory of Rome. There we see him rising step by step, in a short life, to an immense height.

[ 10 ] What, then, was Raphael’s life like? It seems strange to us. We need only consider the environment into which Raphael was born. Consider that he was born at the turn of the 15th to the 16th century, a time of the most extensive religious disputes, when Christianity was divided into sect upon sect across the entire earth, and when the most powerful—but also the most terrible—battles regarding Christianity were taking place. We now consider his paintings. How strange his paintings appear to us! We cannot look at them without recalling what was happening all around in Christianity at that time, and we see something most peculiar shining out at us: the jubilation over the greatness of Christianity’s power, as it intervened in the development of humanity! Today we stand before a picture such as the “School of Athens,” as it is commonly called; we see there those remarkable figures whom the philistines identify by picking up a Baedeker guidebook and now know: this one is Socrates, that one is Diogenes, and so on, while it tells us absolutely nothing in terms of art appreciation. But we feel one thing when we simply take up the Gospel and read the Acts of the Apostles attentively: that before us stands, in a single image, the full force of the difference that existed between the pre-Christian views in Greece and those of Christianity itself. This also confronts us in the other painting, in the “Disputa,” as it is called, but should not be called. It is true that in the “School of Athens” we have before us that scene from the Gospel where the Greeks hear that a figure has arrived who says: You have heard of all kinds of gods until now. But the divine does not express itself in images. You have spoken great things of the living gods. There is something even greater: the greatness of the God who died on the cross and rose again! — And we feel his power and stand before the painting called the “School of Athens,” and look at the remarkable heads of the philosophers, who are listening attentively as Paul speaks. And then, in the face of this immediate sight, the philistine interpretation—which was only given later—fades away: that we are dealing here, in the center, with Aristotle, Plato, and so on. We sense that Raphael actually wanted to depict that very moment when Paul stepped among the Greeks. Indeed, if you look closely in the Gospel, you will even find in that figure with the significant, pointing gesture a personality from the Gospel. So that one could even identify in the Gospel the model for a personality in this painting: namely, the personality of Paul!

[ 11 ] And so we move from painting to painting, forgetting what has happened around us, because a great power speaks from the paintings, and we have the feeling: Christianity lives on in its greatest power in the paintings Raphael created; there lives a Christianity about which there can be no dispute; there lives a Christianity over which one cannot split into sects. — In the near future, however, one will not know much about this Christianity that lives on through Raphael’s paintings. If one looks at them even more closely, one has another feeling as well, a feeling as if the one who painted these pictures had wanted to depict the eternal youthfulness, the eternal triumph of Christianity. And then, perhaps, as we look at these pictures, we ask ourselves: What, then, was the lasting impact of these pictures?

[ 12 ] We need only recall that the time soon came when an artistic despot like Bernini, who did so much to promote the externalization of art, warned against imitating Raphael; one might even speak of Raphael being forgotten. And in Germany and Western Europe, the situation regarding Raphael and the understanding of Raphael looked peculiar in the 18th century. Read all of Voltaire, and you will hardly find anything about Raphael. You can also look at another figure, who later, however, came to a different view. You can reflect on how strangely Goethe felt when he first visited the Dresden Gallery. Perhaps you will assume, when you stand before the “Sistine Madonna,” that a bright delight at this painting arose in Goethe’s soul. You might assume so, given all the praise with which he later spoke of the “Sistine Madonna.” But we must remember what he had heard from the Dresden gallery officials and from those who were the official custodians of this painting. There he heard that the child in the mother’s arms, in whose eyes we see that extraordinary clarity of vision, was painted in a common, realistic style; it could not have been by Raphael, but must have been overpainted by someone else. And in particular, the little angels could not have been painted by Raphael. It was not a triumphant entry when the “Sistine Madonna” arrived in Dresden. However, it was to Goethe’s credit that, having come to appreciate Raphael, he contributed to the understanding of the “Sistine Madonna” and of Raphael in general.

[ 13 ] Let us now examine the course of development in the 19th century. Let us set aside for the moment what took place in Catholic countries and focus solely on Protestant regions, where the dogma of Mary is, by virtue of their denomination, foreign to them. Let us see there what a triumphal march took place, not only with the “Sistine Madonna” but with all of Raphael’s Madonnas. There we can then observe—even if we do not now have the originals before our eyes but think of the many engravings produced in the finest manner—how people strive to present Raphael’s entire oeuvre to humanity in the most perfect way possible. Few people, after all, have the opportunity to always see the originals at their places of origin. Of course, one cannot see what is truly artistic in an engraving; to believe that would be sheer barbarism. But something else has entered into the development of humanity: a form of Christianity has taken root in regions that wanted nothing to do with the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, independent of all denominational differences. People have fought out these denominational differences in theories and systems. And while they were doing this, a unified image of this great mystery—one might say: in occult script—has entered the reproductions of Raphael’s art, reviving this mystery. A herald of Christianity stands before us once more. Great and immense things will yet develop from this in the future. And if we have an understanding of this, the feelings that have penetrated humanity will come to our aid: what radiates from the image of the “Sistine Madonna,” from the “Madonna of the Fish” and other Madonnas, or from the “School of Athens,” the “Disputa,” and other paintings by Raphael. Without realizing it, people today carry in their souls the sentiments of an interdenominational Christianity that lives within this wondrous occult text.

[ 14 ] Once again, someone has proclaimed and laid the groundwork, like a herald, for a new resurgence of Christianity: Raphael, even though people did not understand him at first. Through occult research, we learn that the same individuality that once worked through Elijah and later through John the Baptist has lived on Earth once more in Raphael. Through this, we come to understand how the forces develop from life to life within the same soul, and we come to understand many things as the effects of earlier causes. The Baptist was beheaded. His work only blossomed anew in what his great successor did. The Baptist’s new heraldry in Raphael was forgotten for long ages. It blossomed anew in what we also have to say, from a perspective of Spiritual Science, about the Christ impulse. How infinitely enlightened our understanding becomes when we connect the characteristics of what passes through the individual personalities, and how vividly the individual personality then becomes to us!

[ 15 ] I said that Raphael’s paintings strike us as a celebration of the power of Christianity. Raphael, of course, is grounded in the events of Christian history; but he embodies this in a very unique way, drawing on specific emotions. We let our gaze wander and ask ourselves: Raphael has achieved so much in terms of the artistic embodiment of Christian power; what has Raphael not painted? — He has not painted a scene on the Mount of Olives; he has not painted a Crucifixion. When he painted a Carrying of the Cross, it turned out to be a very poor painting: we see that it was created as if on commission. Nor did he paint any of the scenes that preceded the Crucifixion. It is only there that Raphael rises to his full greatness, when he has to embody the figure of the great successor to John: the figure of Paul in the painting “The School of Athens,” or when, bypassing the other Christian events, he paints the Transfiguration. From what Raphael did not paint, we gain a certain understanding of how far removed he was from painting what had first taken place as an event on earth—this does not refer to the spiritual world—after he had been beheaded in his previous life. One immediately senses why Raphael painted fewer of these pictures. Indeed, when one looks at these paintings, one has the sense, with regard to everything dating from the time after John’s beheading, that—unlike the other paintings—they did not arise from earlier memories.

[ 16 ] When you take all of this into account, however, you may come to a different conclusion. You might then ask yourself: What will become of humanity in the centuries to come—you don’t even need to think in terms of millennia—with all these images that have served as such great, powerful symbols? — We will certainly have the reproductions for a long time, but not the originals for much longer. Anyone who looks today with a sense of melancholy at Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “The Last Supper” gains an insight into what will eventually become of the physical substance of these images. Yes, on the other hand, one also gains an insight: that only when one can gain an understanding, through Spiritual Science, of what Raphael, for example, painted in “The School of Athens” and in “The Disputation,” can one truly appreciate these paintings. For what one sees today on the walls of the Vatican in Rome is, after all, already something quite corrupted by the many restorations and so on. One can no longer have the original mental image of the originals; for through the many restorations, an immense amount has already been corrupted. So what will become of it in a few centuries? All of humanity’s conservation arts will not suffice to protect the material of the paintings from decay. It will have vanished in a few centuries. People will certainly know the subjects; but what Raphael achieved as his own unique creation back then will fade away. This gives rise to the thought: Is the development of humanity really nothing more than things continually coming into being, only to then sink into nothingness?

[ 17 ] Our gaze wanders further, and we come to the youthful figure of the German poet Novalis. When we engage with Novalis, we see, first of all, in his writings the wondrous resurrection of the Christ idea in a unique way—but in a quite remarkable way that we might characterize as follows: If we immerse ourselves today in Spiritual Science and, using all the means it provides, seek to understand the insertion of the Christ impulse into human development, and seek to understand everything we need to grasp the Christ impulse, and then turn to Novalis, we see everywhere something that we need only touch to allow it to blossom in our soul. Everywhere we find the most magnificent inspirations regarding matters of Spiritual Science, which appear like the greatest scientific dreams, yet which can blossom in our soul and live on there. There we can see that he offers something that, like seeds, takes root within humanity and can blossom in the future. Once again, something like a herald for Christianity! In a similar way, a beginning—despite all differences—just as what John the Baptist accomplished was a beginning. And we ourselves find the impulse to turn to the remarkable figure of Novalis, and we feel how living theosophy flows forth from him, yet everywhere under Christian inspiration. Then one feels that there is once again something here that serves as a herald for the future of Christianity.

[ 18 ] Occult research shows us that it is the same individuality that was at work in Elijah, in John the Baptist, and in Raphael, which reappears in Novalis. We add once more what passes through the individual personalities as the individuality. We find a new resurrection of the work of John the Baptist in Raphael and say to ourselves: Raphael himself can ensure that his work does not perish, even though what Raphael painted on the walls will perish—just as he ensured that the other did not perish. Yes, we can say: Just as he ensured that a new form of what he once had to proclaim to humanity has been resurrected, so will he be able to do so again and again in his subsequent reincarnations.

[ 19 ] In this way, human individuality is able to carry forward what it has once accomplished into the realm of eternity.

[ 20 ] Perhaps more than the mere external teachings of Spiritual Science, or the mere contemplation of laws, it is in such concrete cases—which will, after all, increasingly supplement the mere abstract laws—that we come to understand what a theosophical view of the world and of life will be: as comprehensible as the things we encounter in the external world. And one then experiences quite remarkable feelings and sensations when, in the face of precisely such concrete examples, one contemplates what takes place more in the secret of human soul development. Of course, since spiritual research itself is a recent revelation, people who have hitherto regarded Raphael could know nothing of what Raphael carries through the turning of the ages, what his power is. But now that the idea of the reincarnation of the human being must dawn, even if one knows nothing in concrete terms, it may happen that a vague feeling arises, as if something were at play.

[ 21 ] A curious example of this came to my attention in the past two weeks. I was reminded once again of how a very prominent Raphael scholar speaks about Raphael: the insightful art historian Herman Grimm. When he spoke of Raphael and characterized him, he naturally knew nothing of Spiritual Science; he considered Raphael’s life, observed Raphael’s fame across the centuries, saw his fame wane and rise again, and, in connection with this, the continued presence of Raphael through the centuries in his works. Then a curious thought occurred to Herman Grimm, which he enshrined in his book on Raphael—a work he intended to write but which remained a fragment. There, expressing a feeling, he said quite instinctively: When one considers everything that is to live on in the development of humanity, and gains a perspective on the future, the thought might occur to one that one will relive all of this! — Such a thing is infinitely significant, significant of how, in those who contemplate the development of humanity thoughtfully and with feeling, the idea of re-living instinctively arises in their souls like a longing, because it presents itself as something without which the rest makes no sense. That is so infinitely significant. And when one considers such things, one gains an idea—a beautiful and justified idea—of what Spiritual Science will be able to give to human development and what it has to give, and what enrichment human life in all its forms will experience through such an understanding of the law of reincarnation and karma.

[ 22 ] If, however, humanity is to experience such an enrichment of life, then it will have to accustom itself to observing the spiritual with the same precision with which one otherwise observes the physical; it will have to observe how the repetitions of the physical are a great law of all existence, and that repetition—like the return of the soul into the body—is also a law of the return of the various contents of life. But there are certainly preparations for this as well; there are certainly, one might say, human longings, human hopes, and human instinctive knowledge that have gradually developed in recent years. We need only take up where this left off, and Spiritual Science appears to us as if it had developed gradually, as if people did not know that they had already been dreaming of it, that they had instinctively felt it. But where they have reflected on spiritual life, they have pointed to what they could sense of the great rhythmic course of the recurrence of phenomena, and of the recurrence of the phenomenon of the human soul itself.

[ 23 ] It is interesting, then, to highlight a phenomenon that I could easily multiply a hundredfold, because it confronts us in all those minds that have allowed the course of human development to take its course and, in doing so, have gained a sense of what the rhythmic repetition, the rhythmic recurrence of events, is. Let me point out one thing to show how this idea takes hold, yet at the same time stirs something in the soul, even though the person in question could not yet have been a modern theosophist. For the phenomenon I am describing is contained in an artistic work from the year 1835. He could not yet have known how the future of human development presents itself in the sense of Spiritual Science. Nevertheless, something wells up within him that is like a dream, something that presents itself to him as a vision of humanity’s future, something grounded in the contemplation of the repetition of human existence. It is the German-Austrian poet Anastasius Grün whom I have in mind; in 1835 he published his poem “Schutt,” in which there is a depiction where, through five recurrences, he traces a phenomenon: the return, in a certain rhythm, of the spiritual message that works within humanity. Anastasius Grün points out how Christ spiritually revisits the Mount of Olives every year on the first day of Easter to see all the places where he lived and suffered. Grün speaks of five such recurrences in his poem “Schutt,” four of which lie in the past and the fifth in the future. The first takes place in the time after Jerusalem has been destroyed. The second, he believes, occurs “as Christ watches the Crusaders conquer Jerusalem” and looks down to see what is happening at the sites he once walked. The third return falls in the time when Islam is extending its power over Jerusalem, the fourth in that time when humanity is divided into all manner of sects and is at odds with one another regarding what emanated from Christ.

[ 24 ] Grün describes all this with a certain vividness. Then a vision dawns on him of a far, far-off return of Christ on a future Easter Day. Even if this seems outwardly dreamlike, even if it is utopian, one must still recognize that these feelings —regardless of the content—contain something of the bliss that the human soul can receive, what can become of it through occult research, particularly since the 13th century, when it looks toward the future, where blessings are spread through the great spiritual culture in contrast to the struggles and devastation. And Grün sees this bliss in the culture of the future and depicts a future return of Christ on the first day of Easter on the Mount of Olives, portraying it as it appeared to him in his imagination. He imagines children playing on Golgotha, how they have dug up the earth and found a strange object—made of iron—whose nature they do not know; later it turns out to be a sword. And a blissful feeling comes over him, so that he says to himself: There will come a time when people will have forgotten the purpose that such an object, resembling a sword, once served. They will gaze in wonder at the sword as if it were a strange object. And then he says: The iron was used for the plowshare. — And Grün imagines the feeling that wells up in him from the rhythmic recurrence of the appearance of Christ on the Mount of Olives. Then the children continue digging, and what they dig up—what has already been forgotten, but what will be regained in the apparition—is a stone cross! One has already forgotten it. One picks it up again, and he says that one does something special with the cross to indicate what role the cross will play from now on. And so he depicts what he feels when the children, at the return of Christ, dig up a cross and then show this cross to all humanity, and what the function and power will be that the cross will have for all humanity:

Though they do not know it, it stands full of blessing
Upright in their hearts, in eternal charm,
Its seed blooms all around, along every path;
For what they never knew was a cross!
They did not see the struggle and its bloody mark,
They see only the victory and its wreath.
They did not see the storm with its fierce winds,
They see only the radiance of its rainbow!

The stone cross, they set it up in the garden,
A mysterious, venerable antiquity,
Around it roses and flowers of every kind
Climbing upward, winding round and round.

So stands the cross amid splendor and abundance
On Golgotha, glorious, heavy with meaning:
It is completely hidden by its mantle of roses,
Long ago, one could no longer see the cross behind the roses.