' There must be added [to Schleiermacher's theory] the preg- nant truth that this religion, like all religions and all spiritual activities, can only be rightly set forth in the fellowship which, on the presupposition of the redeeming work of the Founder, exists as the sharing and spreading of this redeeming activity. Redemption, the Redeemer, and the Redeemed Community stand for theological knowledge in an inseparable relation ' {Just, and Recon. i. p. 495 f.).
Ritschl's doctrine of the Kingdom is specially worthy of study. The Kingdom of God in his view is at once (a) a moral ideal, (6) a social organization, (c) a religious good. The Kingdom and not the individual man is the object of the Divine electing love. To the Kingdom, the Fellowship of Faith, belongs redemption, which is appropriated by the
believer only as a member of it. And he shares in it in the measure in which he discharges his obligations towards it ; it is as he loves and serves his neighbour that he is justified of God. The reciprocal action and reaction of the community of believers engenders experience of Christ, by which men learn His worth for them. As the value of each is determined by his service to the whole, so is Christ's worth (equivalent in Ritschl's phrase to His nature in so far as it can be known to us) to be estimated by His work.
Oils uch principles, what, then, is the worth of Christ? Christ has the worth of God. He is a prophet sent from God, yet more than all the pre- ceding prophets of the OT. He makes Himself known as, and is, the Son of God.
In the moral world all personal authority is conditioned upon the nature of one's vocation and upon the connexion between one's fitness for his special calling and his faithful exercise of it. Accordingly the permanent significance of Jesus Christ for His community is based, first, on the fact that He was the only one qualified for His special calling, the intro- duction of the Kingdom of God; that He devoted Himself to the exercise of this highest conceivable calling in the preaching of the truth and in loving action without break or deviation ; and that, in particular, as a proof of His fidelity. He freely accepted in willing patience the wrongs which the leaders of the Israelitish nation and the fickleness of the people brought upon Him, and which were so many temptations to draw Him back from His calling. Second, the work of Jesus Christ in His calling or the final purpose of His life, viz., the Kingdom of God, is the very purpose of God in the world, and is thus recognized bj' Christ Himself. The solidaric unity between Christ and God, which Jesus accordingly claims for Himself, has reference to the whole extent of His activity in His calling, and consists in the reciprocal relation between the love of God and the obedience of Jesus in His calling. Now Jesus, being the first to realize in His own personal life the final purpose of the Kingdom of God, is therefore alone of His kind ; for should anj' other fulfil the same task so perfectly as He, yet he would be unlike Him because dependent upon Him. Therefore, as the original type of humanity to be united into the Kingdom of God, He is the original object of the love of God, so that the love of God for the members of His Kingdom also is mediated only through Him. When, therefore, this Person, active in His peculiar calling, whose constant motive is recognizable as unselfish love to man, is valued at His whole worth, then we see in Jesus the whole revelation of God as love, grace, and faithfulness' {Unterricht, pt. i. §§ 21-22). There is a third consideration (§ 23), Christ's lordship over the world and resurrection. 'These relations which are necessary to the full appreciation of Jesus and are apparent in the account of His life, are referred to in the confession of the Godhood of Christ which the Christian community has made from the beginning ' (§ 24).
In sura, Christ's Divinity is confessed when it is seen that His will was in perfect identification with the Divine purpose in things or the will of God ; and that He displayed in the moral sphere the highest Divine attributes. He is the Son of God by His perfect knowledge of the Father's will and by His perfect obedience to it. After this manner He fully revealed the essence of God ; and that in the activities of a human life ; and in a sinless human life. The Divinity of Christ is thus not based, as is usually done, on the supernatural facts of pre-existence, virgin birth, miraculous Avorks, and resurrection. These, however, are not denied ; only, Ritschl would contend, the right appreciation of their truth comes after the moral witness, from reflexion on believing experience.
Ritschlian principles and results have been the subject of violent polemic. It is with their broad effect only that Ave are here concerned. What that is, is obvious. Ritschl has brought back men's thought to Christ as the centre of Christianity, to Christ's character as moral power, and to religion as the builder up of spiritual life by enlightening the conscience and educating the will. Religious truth can be verified by the moral sense. It is a question of fact ; inner fact, no doubt, and not scientific, but truer than what is outAvard. But when the theological reasoner abandons the ground of fact and the safe circle of practical reason for the shifting mirages of speculation, then he uses words Avithout meaning. Christian verity rests primarily on internal experience, and answers to