1. First, then, taken with the sense of the likeness of men, it can hardly be doubted that sociology's strong feeling of the mutual influence of men deepens for theology the thought of the real, not the mechanical, unity of the race. The theologian believes, more than he did, in a race whose unity is preëminently moral, rather than physical or mystical. The truly scientific position for the theologian seems to be, to make no mysterious assumptions, where well-known causes are sufficient to account for the facts; and those causes which the social consciousness clearly sees to be at work seem, in all probability, adequate to account for the facts in discussion so far as those facts are finite at all.[78] The theologian knows, then, a true moral universe, with a unity which is that of the close personal, mutual relations of like-minded spiritual beings. The natural goal of such a race, the only one in which they can truly find themselves, is the kingdom of God. This conception of Christ is first thoroughly at home with us, when we see that the true unity of the race is that of personal moral relation. So far as men turn from that goal, this same racial unity of the inevitable and most intimate personal relations converts them into something approaching Ritschl's conception of an opposing "kingdom of sin." Are we prepared to be thoroughly loyal to just this conception of the unity of the race throughout our theological thinking; and so to give up cherished ideas of "common," "transmitted," "inherited," or "racial" sin or righteousness, of "mystical solidarity," and racial ideal representation, etc.? It probably may be said with truth that few, if any, theological systems have been thus loyal. Indeed, under what seems a mistaken application of the social consciousness, and particularly under the misleading influence of the analogy of the organism, men have believed themselves attaining a deeper theological view, when they have, in fact, turned away from the sober teaching of the social consciousness.