"Though Christ were yearly born in Bethlehem, and never Had birth in you yourself, then were you lost for ever; And if within yourself it is not reared again, The Cross at Golgotha can save you not from pain." Nor are these the words of one who doubted, but those of a Christian, strong in his belief. And his equally fervent predecessor, Meister Eckhart, said in the thirteenth century: "There are some who desire to see God with their eyes, as they look at a cow; and just as they love a cow, so they desire to love God.... Simple-minded people imagine that God may be seen as if He stood there and they stood here. But this is not so: in that perception, God and I are one." These words must not be understood as directed against the investigation of "historical truth." _Yet no one can rightly understand the historic truth of such documents as the Gospels, unless he has first experienced within himself the mystical meaning which they contain._ All such comparisons and analyses are quite worthless, for no one can discover who was "born in Bethlehem" but he who has mystically experienced the Christ within himself; neither can anyone in whom it has not already been erected, decide how it is that "the Cross at Golgotha" can deliver us from pain. Purely historical investigation "can discover no more concerning the mystic reality than the dismembering anatomist, perhaps, can discover the secret of a great poetical genius." (See my book, _Das Christentum als mystische Tatsache_, Berlin, C. A. Schwetschke und Sohn, 1902, or its French translation, mentioned on page 1.) He who can see clearly in these matters is aware how deeply rooted, at the present time, is the "pride" of the intellect, which only concerns itself with the facts of sense. It says: "I do not wish to develop faculties in order that I may reach the higher truths; I wish to form my decisions concerning them with the powers that I now possess." In a well-meant pamphlet, which is written, however, entirely in that spirit of the age which we have already indicated (_What do we know about Jesus?_ by A. Kalthoff, Berlin, 1904), we read as follows: "Christ, who symbolizes the life of the Community, may be discerned within himself by the man of to-day: out of his own soul the man of to-day can create Christ just as well as the author of a gospel created him; as a man he may put himself in the same position as the gospel-writers, because he can reinstate himself into the same soul-processes, can himself speak or write Gospel."