but Christ as a power and as a life which towers above
our own life, and enters into our life as God's Spirit and God's Word,
(see Herrmann, Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott. 2. Edit. 1892, (i.e.,
"The Fellowship of the Christian with God", an important work included
in the present series of translations. Ed.) Kaehler, Der sog. historische
Jesus und der geschichtliche biblische Christus, 1892). But historical
labour and investigation are needed in order to grasp this Jesus Christ
ever more firmly and surely.

As to the second transition, it brought with it the most important
changes, which, however, became clearly manifest only after the lapse of
some generations. They appear, first, in the belief in holy
consecrations, efficacious in themselves, and administered by chosen
persons; further, in the conviction, that the relation of the individual
to God and Christ is, above all, conditioned on the acceptance of a
definite divinely attested law of faith and holy writings; further, in
the opinion that God has established Church arrangements, observance of
which is necessary and meritorious, as well as in the opinion that a
visible earthly community is the people of a new covenant. These
assumptions, which formally constitute the essence of Catholicism as a
religion, have no support in the teaching of Jesus, nay, offend against
that teaching.

_Supplement_ 3.--The question as to what new thing Christ has brought,
answered by Paul in the words, "If any man be in Christ he is a new
creature, old things are passed away, behold all things are become new",
has again and again been pointedly put since the middle of the second
century by Apologists, Theologians and religious Philosophers, within
and without the Church, and has received the most varied answers. Few of
the answers have reached the height of the Pauline confession. But where
one cannot attain to this confession, one ought to make clear to oneself
that every answer which does not lie in the line of it is altogether
unsatisfactory; for it is not difficult to set over against every
article from the preaching of Jesus an observation which deprives it of
its originality. It is the Person, it is the fact of his life that is
new and creates the new. The way in which he called forth and
established a people of God on earth, which has become sure of God and
of eternal life; the way in which he set up a new thing in the midst of
the old and transformed the religion of Israel