64 REV. A. E. WHATELY, D.D., ON THE DEMAND 



is to have speculative supremacy, and is itself based on 

 experience, we are bound to give to the formulated theology, 

 which is the primary expression of that experience, the priority 

 over all other forms of thought. Of course such theology must 

 make good its claims in terms of general philosophy : but the 

 point is that theology must be allowed to posit its essential 

 ideas at the outset, and philosophy, on its side, must try and do 

 all the justice it can to those ideas as the vehicles of corporate 

 experience, before it deals with them in their relation to logic 

 and psychology. To be sure there must be an initial sympathy 

 and even provisional acceptance : but this is only to say that 

 no Christian philosophy will ever satisfy which does not spring 

 from the heart of specifically Christian experience. 



Eucken stops short of this. He does not set himself to 

 interrogate the Geisteslehen and to interpret its deliverances. 

 Though a Theist, he has little to say even about Theism. 

 Indeed, Mr. Waterhouse goes so far as to remark : " Professor 

 Eucken's system is by no means inevitably a religious idealism, 

 and if some future Left Wing develop it upon non-theistic 

 or even anti-theistic principles, it will cause me no surprise."* 



As regards, then, the general relation of this philosophy to 

 Christianity, I think there is no room for doubt. Affinity in 

 certain points we undoubtedly find : notably in his views- 

 respecting the " negative movement,'' corresponding to the 

 Christian conception of the Xew Birth. But the idea of a 

 historical Eedemption, in the Christian sense, could not, I think, 

 even be worked into his system, much less drawn from it. An 

 exceedingly friendly critic in Germany, Dr. von Gerdtell, has 

 examined Eucken's views on Christianity in a pamphlet,t and 

 has, it seems to me, shown this clearly. It is particularly 

 evident in Eucken's conception of history. " We must 

 endeavour," he says, " in history to separate the past and the 

 abiding and to extract from it a spiritual present.''^ This is 

 relatively true, almost indeed a truism, but as the ultimate truth 

 it certainly conflicts with the Christian belief that the Eternal 

 has, as such, entered time. And I think it is true to say that 

 Eucken applies this principle to Christianity all along. He 

 explicitly refuses to identify the absolute religion with any of 

 the historical religions. And as against this, surely we cannot 



* Modern Theories of Religion, p. 258. 



t Rudolf Euckens Christentum. 



\ Geistige Strdmungen der Gegenwart, p. 258. 



