Eucken and Bergson, Their Signifacance for Christian Thought (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 Excerpt: ...but a blinding vision on the road to Damascus in answer to a moral conflict and disaster in his own spirit, that was seminal to his theory of the death of Christ. Even in Augustine, whose "Confessions " teem with his wanderings " from empty shrine to empty shrine, from creed to creed," the Cross did not come in relief of doubt, however vitally and not merely intellectually that doubt be conceived, but as a deliverance from the lust that warred against his soul. That theories of the Atonement were not only coloured but determined by the nature of the problems that shook men's minds, and by the way their age conceived them, goes without saying. But in every such theory there is not only something which intellectual and moral environment cannot account for, but something that runs counter to such environment, and whose explanation must be sought in an experience which connected forgiveness and moral renewal indissolubly and beyond the reach of argument with the Person and death of Christ. We may be at liberty to say that this was a mistake; that while their experience was real their perception of it was faulty; that they, in fact, misnamed the God whom they ignorantly but rightly worshipped. But such a verdict can only be received with respect if it is ccme to after a patient, thorough, inwardly sympathetic examination of every available characteristic instance of this classic experience. Eucken has all the qualifications for such an enquiry in the highest degree. He is emphatically a spirit in noble kinship with such experience, and one cannot but hope that he may yet be induced to write a companion volume to ' The Truth of Religion " on the basis of such an enquiry. Meanwhile, his work, as far as it goes, is invaluable to the modern ...