individuality, inasmuch as it abolishes personality and imposes upon every votary passive obedience to the powers above him. Christianity neither is hostile to the world nor mingles with it, and has therefore neither an optimistic nor a pessimistic bias; it values and commends the utmost self-denial, and renunciation of everything for a pious object, but it condemns aimless self-abnegation, fasting, and abstinence for their own sake, as if they were meritorious in themselves. It contrasts the austere prophet of repentance, in his raiment of camel's hair, who ate nothing but what the desert afforded, with the far greater "Son of Man, who came eating and drinking," the kindly Master who sat at feasts and marriages with Pharisees and publicans, with friends and disciples. It proclaims itself as the light of the world, the salt of the earth, pervading and hallowing everything by the leaven of its spirit.

I do not maintain that the reconciliation of these antinomies, the confluence of these divergent tendencies, has been fully accomplished in historic Christianity. We still often find them there, side by side, or in conflict; sometimes one, sometimes another, religious idea is cultivated with special preference, embodied in different churches and sects, and advocated by biassed adherents. But we also find -and this distinguishes it from all other ethical religions, even the most universalistic of which have indeed but one norm of religious life we also find within the pale

of Christianity all the different tendencies, and all appealing with some right to the same authority.

I am therefore far from saying that the reconciliation of all the religious differences which have hitherto divided mankind has been accomplished. This work has been carried on in the Christian world for nearly nineteen centuries, partly unconsciously, partly designedly; but although it has yielded fruit, it is far from being completed. The whole history of religion, externally viewed, is the history of a succession of a great variety of one-sided forms of religion, in which the religious elements are differently mingled, and which vie with each other, spring up, flourish, and perish, or at least cease to grow. The history of Christianity is the continuation of that earlier history, but in a more perfect, many - sided, and comprehensive form. I simply mean that, if we take the trouble to penetrate to the kernel of the Gospel, in which all the varieties of Christian life originate, we shall there find the solution of these conflicts in its germ and principle. I do not say this from partiality to the religion which I myself profess. Were I to express my full religious conviction, I should confess that true religion, the religion of humanity, has been revealed in Christ, a religion which creates ever new and higher forms, yet ever defective because they are human, and which thus develops more and more in and through humanity. But this is a matter of faith, and I must here

maintain my purely scientific and impartial position. But even from this point of view, and as the result of historic and philosophic investigation, I maintain that the appearance of Christianity inaugurated an entirely new epoch in the development of religion; that all the streams of the religious life of man, once separate, unite in it; and that religious development will henceforth consist in an ever higher realisation of the principles of that religion.

LECTURE VIII.

LAWS OF DEVELOPMENT.

I HAVE several times alluded in passing to the laws of development. Do such laws exist? And if we

must assume that they do, are we in a position to discover them with the means at our command? In other words, do they lie within the scope of human science?

More than twenty years ago I answered this question unhesitatingly in the affirmative. In the Theologisch Tijdschrift' of 1874 I wrote an article on "The Laws of the Development of Religion," which attracted attention at the time, even beyond Holland, and was assented to by many, but impugned by others. It was a first attempt to deduce from the religious phenomena, not a single such law-which had already been tried by others --but a complete system of laws of development. Was this too bold or rash, or was it a proof of the presumption of our still youthful science? But, unless science

is to stand still, we must now and then grapple with difficult questions, and at least try to answer them. If the answer is unsatisfactory it may serve as a stimulus to further research, and it need not make us despair of ultimately finding the true solution. Much of what I then wrote I should now formulate otherwise, and I have indeed several times modified my university lectures on the subject accordingly. And I must now admit that the title of the article was not quite accurate. I should not have said "Laws of the Development of Religion," but "Laws of Development in their Application to Religion." For in point of fact I only meant even then to maintain that the laws which govern the development of the human mind hold true of religion also, though their application may differ in form and in details. But I still adhere to the article as a whole, and have not altered my opinion in point of principle. If such laws-or call them the rules, forms, necessary conditions, if you will, by which spiritual development is bound-did not exist, and if we were unable to form some idea of them corresponding with reality, it would be better to give up the science of religion altogether as a fond illusion. We should not even be entitled to speak of development at all, for this idea necessarily involves that of rules and laws.

There is a school of historians of merited repute who have conducted historical research into new paths, and