piety, in the heavy weight of ancient tradition, above all in the economic, social, and practical relations which unite our churches with the past! Faith in the future of Christianity is still built not so much on the persuasive inner truth of its doctrine, but much more on the inborn religious feeling of the members of the community, on the religious education in school and home, and the consequent increasing store of metaphysical and ethical ideas, on protection by the State and--on the law of inertia in the spiritual life of the mob. For the rest, in pulpit, in parish papers, and in public life, a method of expression is used which is not essentially different from that of orthodoxy, but is so adapted as to allow every man to think what he deems best for himself. We are enthusiastically told that thus we are able to keep the rudderless ship of Protestantism still a while above water, and that we have "reconciled" faith with modern culture in "the further development of Christianity." Thus nineteen hundred years of religious development were completely in error. Is no other course open to us but a complete break with the Christian doctrine of redemption? This doctrine, however--such was the result of our previous examination--is independent of the belief in an historical Jesus. Its centre of gravity lies in the conception of the "incarnation" of God, who suffers in the world but is finally victorious over this suffering; and through union with whom Mankind also "prevails over the world" and gains a new life in a higher sphere of existence. That the form of this divine Redeemer of the world coalesced, in the minds of the Christian community, with that of a man Jesus; that, consequent on this, the act of redemption was fixed as to time and place, is only the consequence of the conditions under which the new religion appeared. For this reason it can only claim, in and for itself, a transient practical significance, and not a special religious value; while on the other hand it has become the doom of Christianity that just this making into history of the principle of redemption makes it impossible for us still to acknowledge this religion. But then the preservation of historical continuity or the "further development" of Christianity in its proper sense probably does not consist in separating this chance historical side of the Christian doctrine of redemption from its connection with the whole Christian view of the world and setting it up by itself, but only in going back to the essential and fundamental idea of the Christian religion, and stating its metaphysical doctrine of redemption in a manner more nearly answering to the ideas of the day.