reason, for this alone can be shared by the convictions of every man. But, because of the peculiar weakness of human nature, we can never reckon enough on this pure faith to build a Church on it alone, for men are not easily convinced that the striving after virtue and an irreproachable life is every thing which God demands: they always suppose that they must offer to God a special service prescribed by tradition, in which it only comes to this—that he is served. To establish a Church, we must therefore have a statutory faith historically grounded upon facts. This is the so-called faith of the Church, In every Church there are therefore two elements—the purely moral, or the faith of reason, and the historico-statutory, or the faith of the Church. It depends now upon the relation of the two elements whether a Church shall have any worth or not. The statutory element should ever be only the vehicle of the moral. Just so soon as this element becomes in itself an independent end, claiming an independent validity, will the Church become corrupt and irrational, and whenever the Church passes over to the pure faith of reason, does it approximate to the kingdom of God. Upon this principle we may distinguish the true from the spurious service of the kingdom of God, religion from priestcraft. A dogma has worth alone in so far as it has a moral content. The apostle Paul himself would with difficulty have given credit to the dicta of the faith of the Church without this moral faith. From the doctrine of the Trinity, _e. g._ taken literally, nothing actually practical can be derived. Whether we have to reverence in the Godhead three persons or ten makes no difference, if in both cases we have the same rules for our conduct of life. The Bible also, with its interpretation, must be considered in a moral point of view. The records of revelation must be interpreted in a sense which will harmonize with the universal rules of the religion of reason. Reason is in religious things the highest interpreter of the Bible. This interpretation in reference to some texts may seem forced, yet it must be preferred to any such literal interpretation as would contain nothing for morality, or perhaps go against every moral motive. That such a moral signification may always be found without ever entirely repudiating the literal sense, results from the fact that the foundation for a moral religion lay originally in the human reason. We need only to divest the representations of the Bible of their mythical dress (an attempt which Kant has himself made, by moral explanation of some of the weightiest doctrines), in order to attain a rational sense which shall be universally valid. The historical element of the sacred books is in itself of no account. The maturer the reason becomes, the more it can hold fast for itself the moral sense, so much the more unnecessary will be the statutory institutions of the faith of the Church. The transition