the great spring of our
life and the inspiring power of faith. There is no real inconsistency
between knowledge and piety; they can harmonize beautifully when carried
to their loftiest extent. The religious feeling, which judges truth, is
characterized by absolute dependence. This is not degrading to man, but
his true dignity consists in it. We have different conceptions of God,
derived from the feeling of dependence, which is varied according to the
nature of outward circumstances. Christ must be judged by us not so much
according to the received accounts of his life as by his great relations
to us as Redeemer and Saviour. Our view of him must be deeper than his
mere incarnation. He was concerned in creation just so far as it was not
completed until redeemed. If we would have communion with God we can
enjoy it only through the medium of Christ. The peculiar value of
redemption lies in its applicability to our necessity for salvation. The
very sinlessness of Christ can be in a measure incorporated with our
humanity, and we should aim after the mind that was in Christ. We are
never fully united with Christ until we have a perfect spirit of
dependence. When this occurs, the soul is passing into the glorious
condition of the new birth. The church is the depository of that spirit
of Christ which every believer must enjoy in order to inherit eternal
life. The church, however, is not self-existent. Like the heavenly
bodies, whose motions are constantly maintained by infinite power, the
church is ever dependent upon Christ's agency for its very life. Christ
is the spirit moving in history and controlling all things for the
greatest good. The church is in some sense an organism of which Christ
is the head. This fact is the central point of theology, for without
Christ our faith is vain.[56]

Such teaching was what the times needed. The mind required to be
directed to Christ as the only remedy for skepticism. But we must
confess that, in the midst of some of the most evangelical expositions
of divine truth, Schleiermacher gave expression to serious doubts. He
disclaimed any great authority inherent in the Old Testament in the
following style: "The Old Testament Scriptures are indebted for their
place in our Bible partly to the appeals made to them by the New
Testament Scriptures, and partly to the historic connection of Christian
worship and the Jewish synagogue, without participating, on that
account, in the normal dignity, or