This paper re-examines G. W. F. Hegel's early criticism of abstract legality and his proposed attempt to conceive of communal life in the form of religion beyond the form of law, most explicitly developed in the fragmentary treatise The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate, with regard to the question of equality. In Hegel's early writings there are two distinct conceptions of equality (Gleichheit): (1) formal equivalence premised on a heterogenous law which imposes equality through purely abstract legal grounds and therefore supresses those qualities which transcend legal distinctions and (2) equality proper as emerging immanently from within the ethical whole, wherein the unequals can become equal or exhibit a consummated likeness between each other only in relation to their similarity to God through love which, as the power immanent to the whole, mediates all differences. For young Hegel, the form of law itself, be it legal or moral, is a problem to be surpassed in a beautiful religious community, since in the former the abstract equivalence of particular subjects vis-à-vis abstract universal norms necessitates a transcendent position of power (Macht) heterogenous to ethical life. Hegel shows how an abstract conception of equality - equivalence - harbours within itself the most profound inequality - the absolute domination of particulars by the universal. Nevertheless, by explicating Hegel's arguments for the alternative to abstract equivalence, the paper will show why this alternative is ultimately unsustainable and why Hegel by his own admittance is forced to abandon it and comes to reconsider law philosophically in Jena. Finally, the question of community and communisation of spirits will be addressed by discussing Hölderlin's fragment "The Communism of Spirits" in relation to young Hegel's project of a religious community beyond legality.