and peace, of purity and simplicity. Such a life, with its incomparable
nature and its mysterious depths, does not exhaust itself through
historical effects, but humanity can from hence ever return afresh to
its inmost essence, and can strengthen itself ever anew through the
certainty of a new, pure, and spiritual world over against the
meaningless aspects of nature and over against the vulgar mechanism of a
culture merely human." But while he would appreciate the depth and
richness of the personality of Jesus, he protests against the worship of
Jesus as divine, and the making of Him the centre of religion. The
greatness of Christ is confined to the realm of humanity, and there is
in all men a possibility of attaining similar heights.

Christianity is, in Eucken's view, much more closely bound up with
historical events than any other religion, and it thus suffers more
severe treatment at the hands of historical criticism than any other
religion. Eucken considers such historical criticism to be of great
value. In Christianity as in other religions we find the eternal not in
its pure form, but mixed with the temporal and variable, and historical
criticism will help in the separation of the temporal from the eternal
elements. In so doing it does an immense service, for it frees religion
from fixation to one special point of time, and enables us to regard it
as ever developing and progressing to greater depths.

Eucken emphasises that the _historical basis_ of Christianity is not
Christianity itself, is not essentially religious; and he quotes
Lessing, Kant, and Fichte to support him in his contention that a belief
in such a historical basis is not necessary to religion, and may even
prove harmful to it. The historical basis is, of course, useful as
bringing out into clear relief the personality of Jesus, and the other
great spiritual personalities associated in His work, and Eucken lays