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The researches of Mommsen, Ritschl, and others, have added considerably to their number. And from these we see that the old language of the early inscriptions was subjected to a twofold process of growth.

There lay the secret of Spangenberg's power; and there the secret of the services rendered by the Brethren when pious evangelicals in Germany trembled at the onslaught of the new theologians. For these services the Brethren have been both blamed and praised. According to that eminent historian, Ritschl, such men as Spangenberg were the bane of the Lutheran Church.

For the modernists to begin with are Catholics, and usually priests; they are pledged to a fixed creed, touching matters both of history and of philosophy; and it would be a marvel if rationalistic criticism of the Bible and rationalistic church history confirmed that creed on its historical side, or if irresponsible personal speculations, in the manner of Ritschl or of M. Bergson, confirmed its metaphysics.

It rings devoutly if we say Christ is our guide. Yet, as Ritschl describes this guidance, in the exigency of his contention against mysticism, have we anything different? What becomes of Confucianists and Shintoists, who have never heard of the historic Christ? And all the while we have the sense of a query in our minds.

When it comes to the constructive portion of his work, it is, of course, impossible for Ritschl to build without the theoretical supports which philosophy gives, or to follow up certain of the characteristic magnitudes of religion without following them into the realm of metaphysics, to which, quite as truly as to that of religion, they belong.

And his master, Albrecht Ritschl, himself says: "The question regarding the necessity of justification or forgiveness can only be solved by conceiving eternal life as the direct end and aim of that divine operation.

Volkmar's original paper was supplemented by an elaborate volume in 1852, and Hilgenfeld, in like manner, has reasserted his conclusions. Baur and Ritschl professed themselves convinced by the arguments brought forward, and retracted or greatly modified their views.

Had not Kant and Schleiermacher, Coleridge and Channing sought, does not Ritschl seek, to remove religion from the realm of metaphysics and to bring it within the realm of experience? They had, however, pursued the same end by different means.

Some would feel that in Ritschl's remedy the loss is greater than the gain. This historical character of revelation is so truly one of the fountain heads of the theology which takes its rise in Ritschl, that it deserves to be considered somewhat more at length. The Ritschlian movement has engaged a generation of more or less notable thinkers in the period since Ritschl's death.

And if Krause struck some roots here more numerous and more permanent than is commonly supposed it is because Krause had roots in pietism, and pietism, as Ritschl has demonstrated in his Geschichte des Pietismus, has specifically Catholic roots and may be described as the irruption, or rather the persistence, of Catholic mysticism in the heart of Protestant rationalism.