justly identify
his own consciousness and experience with that of the Christian world is
problematical. In Schleiermacher's own case, the identification of some
of his contentions as, for example, the thought that God is not personal
with the great Christian consciousness of the past, is more than
problematical. To this Schleiermacher would reply that if these
contentions were true, they would become the possession of spiritual
Christendom with the lapse of time. Advance always originated with one
or a few. If, however, in the end, a given portion found no place in the
consciousness of generation truly evidencing their Christian life, that
position would be adjudged an idiosyncrasy, a negligible quantity. This
view of Schleiermacher's as to the Church is suggestive. It is the
undertone of a view which widely prevails in our own time. It is
somewhat difficult of practical combination with the traditional marks
of the churches, as these have been inherited even in Protestantism from
the Catholic age.

In a very real sense Jesus occupied the central place in
Schleiermacher's system. The centralness of Jesus Christ he himself was
never weary of emphasising. It became in the next generation a favorite
phrase of some who followed Schleiermacher's pure and bounteous spirit
afar off. Too much of a mystic to assert that it is through Jesus alone
that we know God, he yet accords to Jesus an absolutely unique place in
revelation. It is through the character and personality of Jesus that
the change in the character of man, which is redemption, is marshalled
and sustained. Redemption is a man's being brought out of the condition
in which all higher self consciousness was dimmed and enfeebled, into
one in which this higher consciousness is vivid and strong and the power
of self-determination toward the good has been restored. Salvation is
thus moral and spiritual, present as well as future. It is possible in
the future only because actual in the present. It is the reconstruction
of a man's nature and life by the action of the spirit of God,
conjointly with that of man's own free spirit.

It is intelligible in Schleiermacher's context that Jesus should be
spoken of as the sole redeemer of men, their only hope, and that the
Christian's dependence upon him should be described as absolute. As a
matter of fact, however, the idea of dependence upon Christ alone has
been often, indeed, one may say generally, associated with a conception