only so that we can account for the creative originality of the Christian religion. A great spiritual unity like Christianity cannot be the accidental product of a series of misunderstand-ings. It must have had its origin in some great spiritual force; and where is this to be found if not in the life of that Person whom even the rationalist admits to have been the greatest and most original religious genius in the history of humanity ?
And as soon as we set aside these a priori conceptions and approach the study of Christian origins with an open mind, the vital relation between the Church and the teaching of Jesus at once becomes manifest. Christianity did not arise in vacuo as an abstract theory of salvation, like Buddhism or the Gnostic sects ; it was organically and consciously linked with a pre-existing historic religion ; and this religion alone among the great faiths of the world was essentially based on the belief in a Holy Society. The One God had chosen for Himself one people and had bound it to Him by an eternal covenant. Israel was a theophoric community; not only a witness to the Divine unity but the bearer of the Divine purpose to mankind ; for this little people ” despised by man, the servant of rulers,” was to be the source of a universal Kingdom of God, which should embrace all 79