Such a life, with its incomparable nature and its mysterious depths, does not exhaust itself through historical effects, but humanity can from hence ever return afresh to its inmost essence, and can strengthen itself ever anew through the certainty of a new, pure, and spiritual world over against the meaningless aspects of nature and over against the vulgar mechanism of a culture merely human." But while he would appreciate the depth and richness of the personality of Jesus, he protests against the worship of Jesus as divine, and the making of Him the centre of religion.

The greatness of Christ is confined to the realm of humanity, and there is in all men a possibility of attaining similar heights.
Christianity is, in Eucken's view, much more closely bound up with historical events than any other religion, and it thus suffers more severe treatment at the hands of historical criticism than any other religion.

Eucken considers such historical criticism to be of great value.

In Christianity as in other religions we find the eternal not in its pure form, but mixed with the temporal and variable, and historical criticism will help in the separation of the temporal from the eternal elements.

In so doing it does an immense service, for it frees religion from fixation to one special point of time, and enables us to regard it as ever developing and progressing to greater depths.
Eucken emphasises that the _historical basis_ of Christianity is not Christianity itself, is not essentially religious; and he quotes Lessing, Kant, and Fichte to support him in his contention that a belief in such a historical basis is not necessary to religion, and may even prove harmful to it.