s might be the year of the publication of
his first great work, _Kritik der reinen Vernunft_, in 1781.[1] Kant was
indeed himself, both intellectually and spiritually, the product of
tendencies which had long been gathering strength. He was the exponent
of ideas which in fragmentary way had been expressed by others, but he
gathered into himself in amazing fashion the impulses of his age. Out
from some portion of his works lead almost all the paths which
philosophical thinkers since his time have trod. One cannot say even of
his work, _Der Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft_,
1793, that it is the sole source, or even the greatest source, of his
influence upon religious thinking. But from the body of his work as a
whole, there came a new theory of knowledge which has changed completely
the notion of revelation. There came also a view of the universe as an
ideal unity which, especially as elaborated by Fichte, Schelling and
Hegel, has radically altered the traditional ideas of God, of man, of
nature and of their relations, the one to the other.

[Footnote 1: In the text the titles of books which are discussed are
given for the first time in the language in which they are written.
Books which are merely alluded to are mentioned in English.]

We shall have then, secondly, to note the historical and critical
movement. It is the effort to apply consistently and without fear the
maxims of historical and literary criticism to the documents of the Old
and New Testaments. With still greater arbitrariness, and yet with
appreciation of the significance of Strauss' endeavour, we might set as
the date of the full impact of this movement upon cherished religious
convictions, that of the publication of his _Leben Jesu_, 1835. This
movement has supported with abundant evidence the insight of the
philosophers as to the nature of revelation. It has shown that that
which we actually have in the Scriptures is just that which Kant, with
his reverence for the freedom of the human mind, had indicated that we
must have, if revelation is to be believed in at all. With this changed
view has come an altered attitude toward many statements which devout
men had held that they must accept as true, because these were found in
Scripture. With this changed view the whole history, whether of the
Jewish people or of Jesus and the origins of the Christian Church, has
been set in a new light.

In the third place, we shall have to deal with