336 Science Religion and Reality 



beliefs, much in the same way as that in which the theosophical 

 fancy of a secret doctrine suggests the ideal already described as 

 congenial to the spirit of Hinduism. Such an ideal would take 

 account of the actual history of religion as something more than 

 a record of the infinitely various masks worn at different times and 

 on different stages by the one eternal Actor, and would see in it 

 rather the story of a single incarnation of God in humanity, culmi- 

 nating in the life and death of Jesus Christ and in His risen life, 

 whereof the Christian Church is the organ and vehicle, with the 

 capacity eventually to assimilate and incorporate the whole religious 

 experience of mankind. But the further elaboration of the nature 

 of this ideal must be postponed until we have considered an im- 

 portant preliminary objection which may be and has been brought 

 against the whole conception of such a universal religion based 

 upon historical Christianity. 



The objection which I have in mind has been lately urged in a 

 very striking manner by one of the most eminent of recent German 

 theologians, the late Ernst Troeltsch, in a lecture written for 

 delivery at Oxford, which, however, in consequence of his lamented 

 death on the eve of departure for England, he never actually 

 delivered.^ 



Some years previously, in a work called " Die Absolutheit des 

 Christenthums,^'' he had pointed out that the Christian religion was 

 singular in claiming for itself an unqualified validity, not merely as, 

 at least by implication, all religions initially do, in that they ignore 

 other revelations than that which they themselves mediate, but as 

 an essential article of its characteristic creed, in full view of the 

 diversity of traditions among the peoples brought into mutual rela- 

 tions by modern civilisation. Subsequent consideration had led 

 him to modify this view. He had been more and more impressed 

 with the importance of the distinct individuality belonging to 

 different civilisations and to the religions associated with them : 

 and, while recognising that the supersession of inferior systems of 

 culture by more advanced must involve a corresponding prevalence 

 of the religious expression of the deepest convictions of the latter 

 over that connected with the lower culture which it had super- 

 seded, he came to believe that we could not reasonably anticipate 



* It has since been published in this country, along with other lectures, 

 intended for other English audiences, in a volume entitled Christian Thought, 

 its Histoty and Application (University of London Press, 1923). 



