n connection with the
betterment of the social situation,'but we shall never heal the wounds
of individuals and of nations until they are [p.188] brought to the
depth of the spiritual life revealed in Christianity as Eternal Love. "A
warm love towards all humanity runs through Christianity; it longs to
redeem every individual; it gives man a value beyond all special
achievements and on the other side of all mental and moral deeds; it has
been the first to bring the pure inwardness of the soul to a clear
expression. But it has also, through the linking of the human to a
Divine and Eternal Order, raised life beyond all that is trivial and
merely human with its civic ordinances and social interests. He who,
with the best intention, views Christianity as a mere means for the
betterment of the social situation, draws it from the heights of its
nature, and deprives it of the main constituent of its greatness--the
emancipation from the petty-human within the depths of the human itself.
It is essentially the nature of Christianity that it transplants man
into a new world over against the world that is nearest to our hands; it
has planted the fundamental conviction of Platonism of the existence of
an Eternal Order over against the world of Time amongst a great portion
of the human race, and has given a mighty impetus to all effort. But it
has, though it separated the Eternal from Time, brought it back again
into Time; and through the presence of the Eternal it has, for the first
time, proposed to mankind and to each individual a fundamental inner
renewal, [p.189] and through this has inaugurated a genuine
history."[63]

Acknowledging such a nucleus as constituting the very substance of
Christianity, Eucken proceeds to show the necessity of preserving and
unfolding the nucleus against the changes of Time. The nucleus has to be
preserved over against Nature. It has been noticed in previous chapters
how modern science has presented us with a view of Nature immensely
vaster than that presented in Christian theology. Such a view has
destroyed for ever a large number of the theological conceptions of the
past. The earth has been reduced to a subsidiary place within the
cosmos; and any attempt to return to the old conceptions is bought at
too high a price. A new mode of thought in regard to the interpretation
of the physical universe has come to stay, and the sooner the Christian
Church comes to an understanding with it the better for