Yesterday, I referenced a forum where a discussion on religious experiences at U2 concerts is happening. This morning, I have been reading Schleiermacher’s autobiography (as you do) and came across this related entry to Henriette von Willich to Schleiermacher:

I cannot tell you what a strange state of mind I was in while at church; how vividly you were present to me, although my whole soul was full of devotion; how, in the moments of profoundest worship in the sanctuary, I was so conscious of my love for you, that the feeling of the divine character of this love penetrated me anew, and filled me with rapture. One doubt, however, arose in my mind, and I determined to speak to you at once about it. It is whether I am wrong in calling those feelings religious which are awakened in me by the music in church? For I must confess that I feel quite differently when the service is not accompanied by music. I cannot describe to you how my soul is borne aloft, as it were, by the tones; what a feeling of freedom is developed in me, what a consciousness of the holy and the infinite seems to pervade me.

Now I’m trying to imagine the young Friedrich at a U2 concert.