Jesus, fulfilled
its Mission when the Father has been declared to men as he was known by
the Son, and where the life is swayed by the realities and principles
which ruled the life of Jesus Christ. But it is in accordance with the
mind of Jesus and at the same time a fact of history, that this Gospel
can only be appropriated and adhered to in connection with a believing
surrender to the person of Jesus Christ. Yet every dogmatic formula is
suspicious, because it is fitted to wound the spirit of religion; it
should not at least be put before the living experience in order to
evoke it; for such a procedure is really the admission of the half
belief which thinks it necessary that the impression made by the person
must be supplemented. The essence of the matter is a personal life which
awakens life around it as the fire of one torch kindles another. Early
as weakness of faith is in the Church of Christ, it is no earlier than
the procedure of making a formulated and ostensibly proved confession
the foundation of faith, and therefore demanding, above all, subjection
to this confession. Faith assuredly is propagated by the testimony of
faith, but dogma is not in itself that testimony.

The peculiar character of the Christian religion is conditioned by the
fact that every reference to God is at the same time a reference to
Jesus Christ, and _vice versa_. In this sense the Person of Christ is
the central point of the religion, and inseparably united with the
substance of piety as a sure reliance on God. Such a union does not, as
is supposed, bring a foreign element into the pure essence of religion.
The pure essence of religion rather demands such a union; for "the
reverence for persons, the inner bowing before the manifestation of
moral power and goodness is the root of all true religion" (W.
Herrmann). But the Christian religion knows and names only one name
before which it bows. In this rests its positive character, in all else,
as piety, it is by its strictly spiritual and inward attitude, not a
positive religion alongside of others, but religion itself. But just
because the Person of Christ has this significance is the knowledge and
understanding of the "historical Christ" required: for no other comes
within the sphere of our knowledge. "The historical Christ" that, to be
sure, is not the powerless Christ of contemporary history shewn to us
through a coloured biographical medium, or dissipated in all sorts of
controversies,