Beside the polemic advantages to be gained in the course which has been suggested, there is another in the interest of pacification. Under the rubbish of the Protestant Church-idea there still lies buried a remnant of {105} Catholic truth. We ought not to shun the trouble of bringing this to light. It is the Christian truth contained in his confession which binds the believing Protestant to it. Catholic theology has to reclaim this as its own property. It has the mission intrusted to it to show how the religious satisfaction, which the deeper Protestant mind thinks it finds in the doctrinal conception of its confession, is imparted to it in richer abundance and morally purified through the dogma of the Church. Through this conciliatory method, an understanding of the Catholic truth can be much more easily and effectually imparted to the unprejudiced Protestant mind than by a rough polemical method. This end is most essentially served by the distinction between the essence and the manifestation of Catholicism. Protestant piety makes a great boast of its deep spirituality. The modern ideal theory of the Church owes a great share of its popularity to its aptitude of application in this direction. By means of this conception, the Protestant Church is expected to exhibit itself in a new light as the church of the interior and spiritual life. Does one attain the same depth of view from the Catholic stand-point? All doubt on this point must disappear on thorough consideration of what we have above named, the inner side of Catholicism. There is another ground for the favor with which this ideal theory of the Church is at present received. Protestant theology regards it as a means of its own resuscitation. The old doctrine of justification by faith alone has in great part lost the charm it once exercised over the hearts of the German people. The once mighty battle-cry of inward, subjective faith is no longer to the taste of our age. Therefore, in our time, instead of the antiquated idea of immediate union with Christ, the world-moving power of the mind, the creative power of the idea, is set up as the distinguishing principle of Protestantism. The latter is thus made to appear as the most powerful protector of the liberal aspirations of the age.