s true spiritual content and
value. This is the road on which speculative and superstitious ideas
have found an entrance into the historical religions. When such is the
case, the spiritual reality is gradually weakened, is lowered to the
level of intellectualistic dogma, until it ultimately becomes, though in
the guise of religion, the worst enemy which spiritual religion has to
encounter. All hard and fixed dogmatic settings of religion usurp the
supremacy of the spiritual life itself.

Eucken shows this in connection with religious
institutions--institutions which were meant by their founders to be
essential but [p.174] still subservient to the needs and aspirations of
spiritual life. Thus, genuine religion is measured by a doctrinal
standard or by a sacrament. These may possess an incalculable value in
religion, when used as means and not as ends; but they may, and often
do, issue in its degradation to a stage which is hardly a spiritual one.
Every historical religion possesses some absolute truth, but does not
possess the whole truth; and also each historical religion possesses
some elements which have to pass away. But this matter will be dealt
with in a later chapter.

The main service of the historical religions is to bring home to us the
fact that in the course of human history a spiritual life above the
world has again and again dawned on mankind through the experiences and
works of great personalities. To realise intensely such a fact is to
realise the fact that all this can happen again in a more concentrated
form than is actually presented in the slow and toilsome effects of the
results of the collective life of the community.

It may be well to refer here to Eucken's classification of the religions
of the world. This classifications consists of _the Religions of Law and
the Religions of Redemption_. The Religions of Law maintain that the
kernel of religion lies in "the announcement and advocacy of a moral
order which governs the world from on high." God has revealed His will
to man; [p.175] if man obeys, rich rewards await him in a future life;
if he disobeys, painful punishment is sure to follow. Man himself has to
select one of the two alternatives, and he believes himself able to
choose. The Religions of Redemption consider such a view false and
superficial. Now, there is no doubt that the Religions of Law are stages
which are of value when men are incapable of grasping the difficulties
and complexiti