the Divine easier, gives intimacy to the idea of redemption, and offers
support for human frailty. But he points out that there is an
intolerable anthropomorphism involved in the idea, that it removes the
Divine farther away from man, and that the union of Divine and human is
held to obtain in one special case only--that of Christ. He urges that
in a religion of mediation, one or other, God or Christ, must be chosen
as the centre. "Concerning the decision there cannot be the least doubt;
the fact is clear in the soul-struggles of the great religious
personalities, that in a decisive act of the soul the doctrinal idea of
mediation recedes into the background, and a direct relationship with
God becomes a fact of immediacy and intimacy."

So Eucken will have nothing to do with the idea of mediation in its
doctrinal significance--pointing out that "the idea of mediation glides
easily into a further mediation." "Has not the figure of Christ receded
in Catholicism, and does not the figure of Mary constitute the centre of
the religious emotional life?"

He does, however, lay great store by the help that a man may be to other
men in their upward path: "The human, personality who first and foremost
brought eternal truth to the plane of time, and through this
inaugurated a new epoch, remains permanently present in the picture of
the spiritual world, and is able permanently to exercise a mighty power
upon the soul ... but all this is far removed from any idea of
mediation."

Eucken believes in _revelation_, but through action, and not through
contemplation. To the personality struggling upward, with its aims set
towards the highest in life, the spiritual life reveals itself. He does
not confine revelation to certain periods in time, and believes that