Modern Protestantism is much more modest in its pretensions. The present champions of the Protestant cause characterize, without disguise, the attempt of the Reformers to bring the essence of the true Church historically into manifestation in their communions as a gross error and a backsliding into Catholicism. They will have it, that the characteristic principle of Protestantism lies precisely in the acknowledgment that the true essence of the Church can find its correlative expression in none of the existing churches. The true Church, according to this notion, remains an unattainable ideal as long as the world stands. Not to actualize the idea of the Church, only to strive after its actualization, is the task of a religious communion. The Protestantism of the day accordingly recognizes it as its vocation "to give Christianity precisely the expression and form which best corresponds to the necessities of the time, the demands of an advanced science and culture, the grade of intellectual and moral development of the Christian nations." [Footnote 33] [Footnote 33: Schenkel, "Essence of Prot.," p. 4.] Protestant polemic theology makes the following use of this view. Over against the magnificent historical manifestation of the Catholic Church, the torn and rent condition of the Protestant religious community presents a striking contrast. The proximate conclusion that the true Church can only be found within the circle of Catholicism, they seek now to anticipate on the Protestant side by the observation that already from the outset one makes a false start who would wish to recognize the true Church by her form of historical manifestation. According to the Protestant view, the mark of catholicity verifies itself exclusively in the inner being of the Church, and not in her outward manifestation. For, owing to the constant progress of human development, and the extremely diversified individuality of single nations, the historical manifestation of the Church must be multiform to the same extent as the intellectual and moral wants of the different peoples are various. Nevertheless, in spite of the manifold differences which distinguish the particular churches in their historical manifestation, the members of the same blend themselves together into a great invisible spiritual kingdom. This is the _ideal_ Church. This is the response which modern Protestantism makes when Catholic criticism places before its eyes the melancholy picture of its inward divisions and the history of its variations. From the historical manifestation of a church to its inner being they say the conclusion is invalid. In order, therefore, to make Catholic polemics effective, the relation between the essence and the manifestation of the Church must be first of all theologically {104} established. It is only after this has been done that the comparison between "the Church and the churches" can be exhibited in its entire argumentative force.