which a saved man does, or ought to do,
in the life of the world and among his fellows, of the institution in
which this attitude of mind is cherished and of the sum total of human
institutions and relations of which the saved life should be the inward
force. There is room even for a clause in which to compress the little
that we know of anything beyond this life. We have written in
unconventional words. There is no one place, either in Ritschl's work or
elsewhere, where this grand and simple scheme stands together in one
context. This is unfortunate. Were this the case, even wayfaring men
might have understood somewhat better than they have what Ritschl was
aiming at.

It is a still greater pity that the execution of the scheme should have
left so much to be desired. That this execution would prove difficult
needs hardly to be said. That it could never be the work of one man is
certainly true. To have had so great an insight is title enough to fame.
Ritschl falls off from his endeavour as often as did
Schleiermacher--more often and with less excuse. The might of the past
is great. The lumber which he meekly carries along with him is
surprising, as one feels his lack of meekness in the handling of the
lumber which he recognised as such. The putting of new wine into old
bottles is so often reprobated by Ritschl that the reader is justly
surprised when he nevertheless recognises the bottles. The system is not
'all of one piece'--distinctly not. There are places where the rent is
certainly made worse by the old cloth on the new garment. The work taken
as a whole is so bewildering that one finds himself asking, 'What is
Ritschl's method?' If what is meant is not a question of detail, but of
the total apprehension of the problem to be solved, the apprehension
which we strove to outline above, then Ritschl's courageous and complete
inversion of the ancient method, his demand that we proceed from the
known to the unknown, is a contribution so great that all shortcomings
in the execution of it are insignificant. His first volume deals with
the history of the doctrine of justification, beginning with Anselm and
Abelard. In it Ritschl's eminent qualities as historian come out. In it
also his prejudices have their play. The second volume deals with the
Biblical foundations for the doctrine. Ritschl was bred in the Tuebingen
school. Yet here is much forced exegesis. Ritschl's positivistic view of
the Scripture and of the whole ques