The Right Historical Use of the Bible.
The principle of development involves also the existence of a latent germ of being—a capacity or potentiality striving to realize itself.... What Spirit really strives for is the realization of its Ideal being.....
The profoundest thought is connected with the personality of Christ—with the historical and external; and it is the very grandeur of the Christian religion that, with all this profundity, it is easy of comprehension by our consciousness in its outward aspect, while, at the same time, it summons us to penetrate deeper.
Hegel: "Philosophy of History," pp. 57, 344. [Bohn.]
Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences go on gaining in depth and breadth, and the human mind expand as it may, it will never go beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity as it glistens and shines forth in the gospel!
Goethe: "Conversations," March, 11,1832.