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1 "Insight into the past, without reference to the present; solely with the view to ascertain by means of detailed research work in the sources, what a course events actually took, i. e., to reconstruct as much as possible with the skill of an artist the course of events, after considering all the things that limited the life of the individual as well as the development of the whole" — thus Kolde characterizes the Rankean School (Hauck's Realenzyk, vol. 23, p. 325). When Preserved Smith says in his useful work, "Luther's Correspondence and Other Contemporary Letters," 1913, vol. I, p. 5: "By the great Ranke and his school the sources of history most esteemed were public documents — the treaty, the legislative act, the contract, the charter, the edict. There is now a reaction from this method. The memoir, the journal, the private letters are coming into favor again, if only as necessary interpreters of the public act," he does not judge the Rankean School correctly.

2 "For work in church history there is not, and there can not be any other method than the one long since employed in secular history" — Kolde, "Ueber die Grenzen des historischen Erkennens," 1891, p. 4. Since 1874 he worked according to this principle; about Reuter cf. Kolde's article in Hauck's Enzyk., vol. XVI.

3 "Since my unforgettable teacher, H. Reuter, pointed out to the modern study of church history new paths in this direction, it is commonly acknowledged to-day, that the church historian must in no small measure take the secular history of the Christian period into the confines of his researches" — Kolde, "Ueber die Grenzen, etc.," p. 4. "It is commonly acknowledged nowadays that secular and church history do not run parallel to each other like two streams, that only touch, when one of them overflows its banks, but, that they continually permeate and limit each other, and that the history of countries, of society, and of the entire intellectual life are no less of the highest importance for