124 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1868- 



sin brought in a real alienation between God and man. 

 As the objective effects of sin run through the whole 

 human universe, the work of redemption is also a many- 

 sided work. This is not the place to attempt an analysis 

 of the various forms in which God s redemptive activity 

 presents itself ; but this at least must be common to all 

 these forms that they set before us an action of God 

 upon human personality. Not an organic but a personal 

 redemption of the world is what Christianity teaches. 

 Man is not saved without his own personality, much less 

 in spite of his personality, but in and through his 

 personality. This is the reason why the work of re 

 demption is a gradually progressive work. A personal 

 redemption cannot be effected at a blow by external 

 forces ; for personality cannot be shaped from without, 

 but must be developed from within by its own self- 

 determining power. And so the redemptive agencies must 

 be brought down among men and work historically upon 

 men age after age, gradually moulding the whole universe 

 through no magical force from without, but by the moral 

 influence of the presence in history of a divine personality. 

 &quot; The Christian religion,&quot; says Rothe, &quot; is characteristic 

 ally distinguished from all other religions as the essenti 

 ally moral religion and accordingly as morally, i.e. 

 personally, mediated. In virtue of this, Christianity is 

 the truly human, the truly spiritual, in every sense the 

 true religion, and so the diametrical antithesis of the 

 heathenish or magical religions ; for in the sphere of the 

 spiritual the magical is just that which is not personally 

 or morally mediated.&quot; 



This canon, which virtually coincides with the con 

 ception of the supernatural in Christianity developed 

 above, enables us to work out more fully the nature of 

 the Christian revelation ; and on this point I shall follow 

 somewhat closely the ideas laid down in the epoch-making 

 work of Rothe. That I should do so is indeed inevitable, 

 for it was from Rothe that my first clear insight into 



