satisfaction to investigation in a world which, without this possession, contains for us only transitory and fleeting, and therefore only unsatisfactory, things, but which stands before us as the work and the theatre of revelation of a God and Father, and therefore gives to investigation inexhaustible joy and satisfaction when we look upon it from those stand-points. In like manner as, at the outset of our investigation, we perceived in organic species creations of God, and in spite of this, or rather on account of it, looked upon the attempts at exploring their origin with so much deeper interest, we also see ourselves, in the still more direct religious realm, not at all condemned to stagnation when we acknowledge Christianity as absolute religion. This very acknowledgment alone makes a real progress possible for us. For every progress, in order to be a real progress, needs a firm starting-point and a certain goal; hence that which is shown and offered to mankind in Christianity. From this {409} starting-point and toward this end there are tasks enough for religious progress. The ever more definite investigation of the facts and doctrines of Christianity, the improvement and ever more complete reproduction of the scientific image in which these facts and doctrines are reflected in the mind of man the progressing adaptation of ecclesiastical life in divine service, and organization to the substance and the need of Christian religiousness, the harmonizing of our possession of faith with all other elements of culture of each period, the working up of that which is given to us in Christianity into the spiritual and ethical acquisition of a single personality and its ever more complete representation and realization in the individual and the common life, the progressing penetration of generations by the transfiguring light of religion and morality, and the progressive overcoming of the likewise progressingly developing kingdom of evil--in short, all that which the language of religion calls the growth of the kingdom of God, is work and progress enough, but certainly work and progress on the ground of a certain basis as the starting-point given to us by God, and work and progress toward a certain goal set for us by God.