I marvel that Schweitzer in his “Concluding Reflections” can dwell so insistently upon one side of Jesus’ eschatology and ignore so completely the other. Jesus’ [pg 053] eschatology, the white light of his conception of the Kingdom of God, has come to us through the medium of history refracted in two rays of different colour and of different direction. One represents more specifically the other-worldly side of Jesus’ preaching, the hope of eternal blessedness beyond death,—which the dogmatic theologians are pleased to call “eschatology,” as though our modern idea really reflected Jesus’ conception in its totality. Commonly this is what we understand by the “Kingdom of Heaven.” To denominate the other ray, Schweitzer has appropriated (with as questionable a right) the “Kingdom of God.” He means to indicate by this simply the moral development of humanity, here and under present terrestrial conditions. We readily understand what he means, because that is what _we_ mean commonly by “the kingdom of God upon earth.” We are convinced that the progress of mankind in true worldly culture and civilisation constitutes a high moral aim which we dare not relinquish; but we have all experienced the difficulty of reconciling this secular enthusiasm with the other-worldliness of Jesus. Schweitzer helps us in a measure to surmount this difficulty. He also makes it in a measure clear to us _how_ (for the fact itself was [pg 054] patent) this enthusiasm for the progress of humanity has been reinforced by Jesus’ preaching. But it is a mistake to expect of this one coloured ray that it can ever give back to us the whole white light of Jesus’ inspiration. We can not return again to Jesus’ conception. History stands in the way—real history, not written narrative. Nor shall we ever be able to combine again in one white light the “broken lights” which have come to us from his teaching. But we have the two rays, and in their separateness they are both familiar to us. Our eyes bear better the coloured light. Celestial blue denotes the heavenly hope; red will do for this earth and our passionate hopes for its betterment. But why behave as if we had only one colour and all of Jesus’ light must be forced into that? Schweitzer ignores the heavenly hope (the thought of life beyond death) as though it were no longer open to the modern man. One may get a notion of what it still may mean to the modern scientific mind from Gustav Theodor Fechner’s _Büchlein vom Leben nach dem Tode,_ or more largely from his _Zend-Avesta,_ or his _Tagesansicht._ Though to be sure it can mean nothing to one who is bound by a materialistic philosophy. At all events it is certain that Jesus’ will and aspiration can be [pg 055] much more readily and fully expressed in these terms than in the terms of ethical and social progress here below. To translate his thought into these terms requires no elaborate effort. The first generation of his disciples did it without knowing what they did.