The eschatological interpretation of the Gospels does not thrust Jesus so far from us as we are prone to think: rather calls us to approach nearer to him, to share again more closely “the mind which was in Christ Jesus” and which in one form or another has been at all times the chief inspiration of the Church. In his “Concluding Reflections” Schweitzer says: “Every full view of life, cosmic philosophy, _Weltanschauung_ (the German word it is impossible to translate) contains side by side elements which are conditioned by the age as well as others which are unconditioned, for it consists in the very fact that a penetrating _will_ has pervaded and [pg 047] constituted the conceptual material furnished it by history. This latter is subjected to change. Hence there is no _Weltanschauung,_ however great and profound it may be, which does not contain perishable material. But the will itself is timeless. It reveals the unsearchable and primary nature of a person and determines also the final and fundamental definition of his _Weltanschauung._ May the conceptual material alter never so much, with consequent diversity between the new _Weltanschauung_ and the old, yet these in reality only lie just so far apart as the wills which constitute them diverge in direction. The differences which are determined by the alteration of the conceptual material are in the last analysis merely secondary in importance, however emphatically they may make themselves felt; for the same will, however different be the conceptual material in which it manifests itself, always creates _Weltanschauungen_ which in their nature correspond with one another and coincide. “Since the time when man attained the conditions precedent to such an apprehension and judgment of things as we might call in our sense a _Weltanschauung_—that is, since the individual learned to take into consideration the totality of being, the world as a [pg 048] whole, and to reflect as a knowing and willing subject upon the reciprocal relations of a passive and active sort which subsist between himself and the All—no far-reaching development has really occurred in the spiritual life of humanity. The problems of the Greeks turn up again in the most modern philosophy. The scepticism of to-day is essentially the same as that which came to expression in ancient thought. “The primitive, late-Jewish metaphysic in which Jesus expressed his _Weltanschauung_ aggravates exceedingly the difficulty of translating his ideas into the formulas of our time. The task is quite impossible so long as one tries to accomplish it by distinguishing in detail between the permanent and the transitory. And what results as the consequence of this procedure is so lacking in force and conclusiveness that the enrichment it contributes to our religion is rather apparent than real.