luxurious mysticism, and wherein the results of Greek practical
philosophy could find a place. But we must here refer to the fact, which
is already taught by the development in the Apostolic age, that
Christian dogmatic did not spring from the eschatological, but from the
spiritual mode of thought. The former had nothing but sure hopes and the
guarantee of these hopes by the Spirit, by the words of prophecy and by
the apocalyptic writings. One does not think, he lives and dreams, in
the eschatological mode of thought; and such a life was vigorous and
powerful till beyond the middle of the second century. There can be no
external authorities here; for one has at every moment the highest
authority in living operation in the Spirit. On the other hand, not only
does the ecclesiastical christology essentially spring from the
spiritual way of thinking, but very specially also the system of
dogmatic guarantees. The co-ordination of [Greek: logos theou, didache
kuriou, kerygma ton dodeka apostolon] [word of God, teaching of the
Lord, preaching of the twelve Apostles], which lay at the basis of all
Gentile Christian speculation almost from the very beginning, and which
was soon directed against the enthusiasts, originated in a conception
which regarded as the essential thing in Christianity, the sure
knowledge which is the condition of immortality. If, however, in the
following sections of this historical presentation, the pervading and
continuous opposition of the two conceptions is not everywhere clearly
and definitely brought into prominence, that is due to the conviction
that the historian has no right to place the factors and impelling ideas
of a development in a clearer light than they appear in the development
itself. He must respect the obscurities and complications as they come
in his way. A clear discernment of the difference of the two conceptions
was very seldom attained to in ecclesiastical antiquity, because they
did not look beyond their points of contact, and because certain
articles of the eschatological conception could never be suppressed or
remodelled in the Church. Goethe (Dichtung und Wahrheit, II. 8,) has
seen this very clearly. "The Christian religion wavers between its own
historic positive element and a pure Deism, which, based on morality, in
its turn offers itself as the foundation of morality. The difference of
character and mode of thought shew themselves here in infinite
gradations, especially as an