This is the road on which speculative and superstitious ideas have found an entrance into the historical religions.  When such is the case, the spiritual reality is gradually weakened, is lowered to the level of intellectualistic dogma, until it ultimately becomes, though in the guise of religion, the worst enemy which spiritual religion has to encounter.  All hard and fixed dogmatic settings of religion usurp the supremacy of the spiritual life itself.

Eucken shows this in connection with religious institutions—­institutions which were meant by their founders to be essential but [p.174] still subservient to the needs and aspirations of spiritual life.  Thus, genuine religion is measured by a doctrinal standard or by a sacrament.  These may possess an incalculable value in religion, when used as means and not as ends; but they may, and often do, issue in its degradation to a stage which is hardly a spiritual one.  Every historical religion possesses some absolute truth, but does not possess the whole truth; and also each historical religion possesses some elements which have to pass away.  But this matter will be dealt with in a later chapter.

The main service of the historical religions is to bring home to us the fact that in the course of human history a spiritual life above the world has again and again dawned on mankind through the experiences and works of great personalities.  To realise intensely such a fact is to realise the fact that all this can happen again in a more concentrated form than is actually presented in the slow and toilsome effects of the results of the collective life of the community.

It may be well to refer here to Eucken’s classification of the religions of the world.  This classifications consists of the Religions of Law and the Religions of Redemption.  The Religions of Law maintain that the kernel of religion lies in “the announcement and advocacy of a moral order which governs the world from on high.”  God has revealed His will to man; [p.175] if man obeys, rich rewards await him in a future life; if he disobeys, painful punishment is sure to follow.  Man himself has to select one of the two alternatives, and he believes himself able to choose.  The Religions of Redemption consider such a view false and superficial.  Now, there is no doubt that the Religions of Law are stages which are of value when men are incapable of grasping the difficulties and complexities of religion.  The whole of religion on this level of Law is a replica of the relations which obtain on a smaller scale between a sovereign and his subjects, or between a master and his slave.  Authority is something purely external.  The two Religions of Redemption—­the Indian and the Christian—­seek the meaning of religion in a very different manner.  They both agree that human capability, which seems so evident to the Religions of Law, is the most difficult and important of all questions.  They agree further that the essence of religion does not consist in guiding