ECCLESIASTICAL AND GENERAL HISTORY 635 



of something else. It is what the Christian religion describes as the 

 New Birth that inner, moral, new creation which transmutes all 

 values, and of the slaves of compulsion makes the children of freedom. 

 Not even in the history of the church can any one get a direct vision 

 of this inner evolution accomplished in the individual, nor by any 

 external facts whatever can any one be convinced of its possibility and 

 reality. But the light which shines from it throws its rays on what 

 happens on the stage, and lets the spectator feel in his heart that the 

 forces of history are not exhausted in the natural forces of the world, 

 or in the powers of head and hand. This is the Heimlichkeit of the 

 history of the church because it is the Heimlichkeit of religion. 



