644 HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH 



concurrence, but everywhere in religious scholarship historical and 

 critical studies became so preponderating that they have nearly 

 displaced all others. Look at the programmes of whatever theo- 

 logical or higher religious school. You will certainly observe that 

 all professors teach history or practice historical and philological 

 criticism: the professor of dogmatic grounds his teaching upon 

 the history of dogma, the professor of exegesis upon the history 

 of the text or upon the historical explanation of the personality of 

 the author, of his ideas, of his style, and so further in all branches 

 of theological teaching. 



In the department of religious science as well as hi all other moral 

 sciences, the second half of the nineteenth century has been, before 

 all, the age of the historical method, that is, of the scientific and 

 critical method, even with those men whose dogmatic or philosoph- 

 ical convictions seem to require other agents in history than the 

 forces of rational determinism which historical criticism requires. 

 The historian who now relies on miracle or upon arguments of a 

 confessional kind is, so to say, disqualified amongst all those who 

 are not imbued with the same confessional faith. So the most noto- 

 rious supernaturalists and the most decided partisans take great 

 care commonly not to ground their historical conclusions on dog- 

 matic reasons. 



Philosophical speculation is also no longer appreciated by the 

 ecclesiastical historians of to-day. Hegel's dialectical evolutionism 

 has been amended by that of Darwin or of Spencer, and Aug. Comte's 

 positivism lias influenced us all, even those amongst us who are 

 not positivists. Under a myth or under a legend we want to dis- 

 cover the real fact which gave rise to it. The great development of 

 experimental sciences has reacted upon moral sciences and increased 

 the sense of reality and the need of precision. Now records are more 

 strictly respected -and the authority of duly ascertained facts has 

 taken root in the historian's mind more deeply than before. Theories 

 are mistrusted, even when they are supported by the most powerful 

 dialectics. What we require essentially from ecclesiastical as well 

 as from all other historians, if they aim at any authority for their 

 works, is: to inquire as completely as possible after all records or 

 testimonies, interpreting them by the most firmly established rules of 

 philology, subjecting them to a most severe criticism, but without any 

 prejudicial view, analyzing them minutely so as to see things as they 

 are and not as we may want them to be; to search for truth in 

 itself without any apologetical prepossession; to replace men of the 

 past in their real life and not in an abstract outline ; to discover for 

 each event, for each fact, for each action of men the reason sufficient 

 to explain them rationally and to place them in the universal con- 

 catenation of all phenomena. 



