t is not a repetition of what the Founder said
concerning religion. What the Founder said cost him enormous labour to
discover and to possess. We shall gain so much and no more of the same
spiritual substance as we put the same kind of energy in motion. In
order that we may unravel the complexities of our day, a spirit similar
to his spirit must become ours. When such a spirit ceases to exist,
Christianity will become merely a [p.179] name; its power will have
disappeared, and men can delude themselves into believing that they
possess it when in fact they are the possessors of but little of its
spirit and of much of its form. But the possession of the same spirit as
that of Jesus constitutes the further development of Christianity, and
this further development is nothing other than what we have already
seen--the experience and efficacy of an eternal order of things in the
midst of all the changes of time. Thus we are thrown back once more, not
upon our bare individual selves, but upon the presence of the Divine
within the spiritual life itself. Christianity is therefore not
something that has been completed in the past, but the highest mode of
conceiving and of experiencing Life in the present; it becomes an
inward, personal and spiritual experience; and its duration and
expansion depend upon the increase and depth of such a spiritual
inwardness.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XI [p.180]

CHRISTIANITY

It has been noticed how "Characteristic" or "Specific" religion means
the carrying farther of the implications of "Universal" religion. It is
not only necessary to know the "grounds" of religion, as these reveal
themselves within the conclusions of the intellect: we have to plant
ourselves upon these "grounds"; we must _be_ what they _mean_. Thus,
religion becomes a personal task--something that can never be realised
until the whole nature comes to constant decisions of its own and acts
upon those decisions in the light of what has expressed itself in the
form of those over-personal norms which have further developed into a
conception of, and communion with, the Godhead. We have noticed further,
how this essence of religion was realised in the lives of great
personalities in history, as well as in the religions which they helped
to found.

Eucken does not hesitate to affirm that the highest of these religions
is the Christian [p.181] religion. The core of the Christian religion
consists, a