Redemption_ is their thorough-going exposition in the English tongue.

We have no cause to pursue the philosophical movement beyond this point.
Its exponents are not without interest. Especially is this true of
Schopenhauer. But the deposit from their work is for our particular
purpose not great. The wonderful impulse had spent itself. These four
brilliant men stand together, almost as much isolated from the
generation which followed them as from that which went before. The
historian of Christian thought in the nineteenth century cannot
overestimate the significance of their personal interest in religion.




CHAPTER III

THEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION


The outstanding trait of Kant's reflection upon religion is its supreme
interest in morals and conduct. Metaphysician that he was, Kant saw the
evil which intellectualism had done to religion. Religion was a
profoundly real thing to him in his own life. Religion is a life. It is
a system of thought only because life is a whole. It is a system of
thought only in the way of deposit from a vivid and vigorous life. A man
normally reflects on the conditions and aims of what he does. Religion
is conduct. Ends in character are supreme. Religions and the many
interpretations of Christianity have been good or bad, according as they
ministered to character. So strong was this ethical trait in Kant that
it dwarfed all else. He was not himself a man of great breadth or