Note (return) — Chapter XIV

Thus the determinations which, through Redemption, fall to the lot of history, as Nitzsch justly remarks, obey the emancipating law of gradual progress. 852 Christianity was preceded by ages of preparation, in which we have a gradual development of religious phrases and ideas, of forms of social life and intellectual culture, and of national and political institutions most favorable to its advent and its promulgation; and "in the fullness of time"--the maturity and fitness of the age--"God sent his own Son into the world."