works and ways of God;
and on the side of the exact sciences, the bond consists in the fact that
they bring within the reach of their scientific, historical, literary,
culturo-historical, and exegetical investigations all that which in the
religious realm appears, or in the written word is fixed, as historical
fact. Religion, therefore, concedes to exact sciences the full right of
examining the biblical records as to all the relations of their historical
and literary connections; it even makes these investigations a quite
essential and, at present, very much favored branch of its own science of
theology. On the other hand, religion reserves just as decidedly to itself
the full right of drawing from them, of maintaining, and of realizing, the
whole full _religious_ basis and significance of those records.

We know very well that such a proposition is very simple in principle, but
much more difficult in practice. For the quintessence of that which
constitutes the basis of the Christian religion--namely, the leading back
of mankind to communion with God by means of salvation--is not only a
philosopheme, a theoretical or mystic doctrine, but a _fact_: it comes into
the world as a series of divine _facts_; it is interwoven by innumerable
threads into creation and the course of nature and history; and, as to this
whole aspect of its appearance in the world of phenomena, it falls under
the cognition of the exact sciences. But as soon as any given fact excites
the {293} interest of religion as well as that of exact science, collisions
are possible from both sides. Some advocates of religion, through mistaken
zeal for religious interests, may think it necessary to assert and to
represent as indispensable to religion facts whose cognition as to reality
belongs only to exact science and which are contested by exact science; as,
_e.g._, the creation of the world in six literal days, or the creation of
the single elements of the world without the action of secondary causes.
And some advocates of exact science, from reasons of a superficial analogy,
may erroneously think it necessary to dispute the reality of facts,
otherwise well attested, but wanting analogy, in which religion has a
central interest; as, _e.g._, the reality of the resurrection of Jesus
Christ, or the reality of his miracles. Or they may unjustifiably try, from
our experiences in this world, to forbid glances which religion permits us
to throw beyond the present cours