340 Science Religion and Reality 



of Jesus in Christianity ; and it is the unique position assigned in 

 the latter religion to its Founder — a position the abandonment of 

 which would transform it beyond all recognition — which is the 

 great obstacle to its absorption in a religion, such as Kant sketched 

 in his " Religion innerhalh der Grenzen der blossen Femunft" which 

 should teach none but moral truths which appeal to .the universal 

 conscience of mankind, independently of all circumstances of time 

 and place. Yet not only, as I have already said, is the more 

 intimate implication of Christianity with history the ground of its 

 prerogative position as the historical centre of the religious develop- 

 ment of mankind, but (if I may quote words of my own written 

 elsewhere) " the importance of the historical element in Chris- 

 tianity — and its importance there is greater than in any other 

 religion — though it of course exposes it more than any other 

 religion to that particular kind of doubt which we call historic, yet 

 does not stamp it as a less philosophical religion than those which 

 are not so much exposed to this sort of doubt. Rather it stamps it 

 as a more philosophical. For the problem of the relation of abstract 

 or universal significance to concrete or historical fact is a question 

 in fighting shy of which philosophy does but refuse, so to say, to 

 take its last hurdle, and surrenders the hope of winning its race. 

 Religions which remain in the region of the universal and treat the 

 individual and the historical as something illusory may seem to 

 afford to the philosopher a quieter shelter than Christianity ; but 

 only at the cost of abandoning the supreme venture to which, as a 

 philosopher, he is committed — that of understanding not merely 

 universal principles rapt away into a solemn rest ' above the smoke 

 and stir of this dim spot which men call earth,' but the real world 

 of historical individuals, in which alone these principles can live 

 and move and have a genuine existence." ^ The philosophy of 

 the present day in particular, in Bergson, in Croce, in Troeltsch, 

 in Alexander, in Whitehead — among all the differences which 

 divide these thinkers from one another, and whatever their own 

 quarrels with Christianity — will certainly, by insistence on dura- 

 tion, on history, on the indissoluble union of time with space, on 

 the event as the true unit of reality, discourage him from being con- 

 tent to pay this price for an inglorious peace. A religion which 

 does not see in history a mere symbol or illustration of eternal 

 truths, but the genuine manifestation of God, is better adapted to 

 1 Philosophy and the Christian Religion, Oxford, 1920, p. 17. 



