40 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PARTI 



indeed, may be so metaphysical as Dr. Hatch. A 

 strange way surely of banishing metaphysics, to pro- 

 pose construing God's realisation of Himself to Him- 

 self! The greatest idealists, with Hegel at their 

 head, could not have improved on that programme. 



Dr. Hatch appealed to the history of doctrine ; it is 

 in a different sense that the modern German theolo- 

 gians, to whom he stood nearest, make this appeal 

 "from metaphysics to history." Ritschl and his 

 school have mainly in view one race of mankind, and 

 one epoch of time. They believe that, in the course 

 of human history, truths have emerged and forces re- 

 vealed themselves which satisfy human longings and 

 lead human thought to its highest attainments. It is 

 not merely history as a general survey of human de- 

 velopment which they prize, but that history whose 

 centre is Jesus Christ. Finding in history a revelation 

 of Himself by God, they are able to honour history 

 as the one true light of men. Otherwise unknown, 

 God has here manifested Himself; otherwise un- 

 blessed, mankind here attains to happiness and salva- 

 tion. Of course this sharply cut conception of 

 revelation and its limits gives rise to very grave diffi- 

 culties ; but, amid all these, the appeal to history as 

 urged by Ritschl has a seriousness and a significance 

 which we cannot allow to Dr. Hatch's light-hearted 

 paragraphs. 



So far, there appears no kind of affinity between 

 the Ritschl school and Comtism. Yet there are 

 many symptoms of relationship, and we find traces of 

 them even in the matter now under discussion, 

 even in relation to the appeal to history. Much of 

 the significance of Ritschl's appeal to history lies in 



