just as well be brought into accord with the modern mind as that of the New Testament." [511] We have no occasion to weep for the complete collapse of such a "religion." This form of Christianity has already been proved by Hartmann to be worthless from the religious point of view; [512] and it is only a proof of the fascinating power of phrases, of the laxity in our creeds, and the thoughtlessness of the mob in religious matters, that it is even yet alive. For such reasons it is even allowed, under the lead of the so-called critical theology, to proclaim itself as the pure Christianity, now known for the first time. Thus it finds sympathy. This unsystematic collection of thoughts, arbitrarily selected from the view of the world and of life given by the Gospels, which even so requires to be rhetorically puffed out and artistically modified before it is made acceptable to the present age,--this unspeculative doctrine of redemption, which at bottom is uncertain of itself,--this sentimental, æsthetic, Jesus-worship of a Harnack, Bousset, and the rest on whom W. v. Schnehen so pitilessly broke his lance; [513] this whole so-called Christianity of cultured pastors and a laity in need of redemption, would have long since come to grief through its poverty of ideas, its sickening sweetness, if it were not considered necessary to maintain Christianity at all costs, were it even that of the complete deprivation of its spiritual content. The recognition of the fact that the "historical" Jesus has no religious interest at all, but at most concerns historians and philologists, is indeed at present commencing to make its way into wider circles. [514] If one only knew a way out of the difficulty! If one were only not afraid of following a clear lead just because one might then possibly be forced beyond the existing religion in the course of his ideas--as the example of Kalthoff showed! If only one had not such a fearful respect for the past and such a tender "historic unconsciousness" and such immense respect for the "historical basis" of existing religion! The reference to history and the so-called "historical continuity of the religious development" is indeed on the face of it merely a way out of a difficulty, and another way of putting the fact that one is not desired to draw the consequences of his presuppositions. As if there can still be talk of a "historical basis" where there is no history, but pure myth! As if the "preservation of historical continuity" could consist in maintaining as history what are mythical fictions, just because they have hitherto passed for historic truth, though we have seen through their purely fictitious and unreal character! As if the difficulty of the redemption of present-day civilisation from the chaos of superstition, social deceit, cowardice, and intellectual servitude which are connected with the name of Christianity, lay in a purely spiritual sphere and not rather in the sentiment, in the slovenly