ings."
We call this a gain, without the least intention of discrediting by it the
motives of tolerance and the points of view for the judgment of the
character and religiousness of human individuals, which lay in that
parable, or suspecting the motives of so many of our contemporaries whose
religio-philosophical judgment is entirely expressed in that parable. We
saw ourselves compelled to make a choice either of accepting or of
rejecting ends in the world, and found that the world resolves itself into
a senseless game at dice, and that the phenomena become more unintelligible
the more important they are, if we ignore or even reject teleology. The
acknowledgment of the latter prevented us from seeing in the world and its
events merely the eternal stream of planless coming and going; it prevented
us from accepting such an endless stream of appearance and disappearance,
and therefore also an endless stream of the appearance and disappearance of
new forms of religion in that creature for whose appearance we see all
other creatures are only a preparation, and are even obliged to look upon
them as a preparation in accordance with no other theory more than that of
evolution. It also urged us to inquire as to the ends and designs of
mankind, and we found this end in the disposition of man for a communion
with God, for the state of bearing his image and of being his child. Now we
have fully to acknowledge that Christianity, like all religions which claim
truth and universal acceptance, {406} is to be analyzed with the very same
means of science as all phenomena in the world of facts, and that therefore
it is especially subject to all investigations of religio-philosophical,
religio-historical, and historical criticism, to its fullest extent. But
precisely such an analysis of Christianity leads us to a result which
elevates Christian religion high above all other forms. It also confirms by
means of science what, indeed, is established to a Christian mind as
certainty from his own direct experience, that the quintessence of that
which Christianity offers us, is truth and gives full satisfaction to soul
and mind. For that analysis establishes, in the first place, that
Christianity shows us the idea of God and the nature and destiny of man in
a purity such as no other religion does, and in such a life-creating power
that it is able to satisfy most completely all the nobler desires and
impulses of soul and mind, and to overcome most suc