[91] The Author's theory is a false application of the principle of development. He attempts to show that the essence of Christianity is a gradual development during the first century and the first decades of the second century through "the growing consciousness of the Church". This "growing consciousness" had no real historical ground to rest on. It created out of the historical and real Jesus an unhistorical and unreal one. In this theory I fail to find any historical or psychological possibility. That is not the way in which great events and great religious awakenings come into being. It is the moving force of some wonderful personality that makes the power of a new religion or of a religious revival. I can understand how the im pulse given by the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel [92] and of the whole New Testament moved the world during the first century, and made those great personalities, such as John, Peter, Paul, and others, by imparting its power to them through their intense belief in what they had seen and known; and yet how they were not able to make in their turn a continuous succession of great personalities living on the same level to which their belief had raised them. The impulse seemed to die out, and yet did not die, but was able from time to time to move and to mould those great personalities who felt the spirit of Jesus, and kept the Church alive and progressive.

That historical process is to me intelligible; but I find no analogy to or justification for Dr. Moffatt's theory of a creative "consciousness of the Church," impersonal, working anonymously, hidden from the world behind false names for whom it created false personalities and incredible histories. How did this creative "consciousness" come into existence? Whence did it derive its force? Not from truth, because it makes falseness and loves concealment and [93] shrouds itself in mist. How and why did this "creative consciousness" come to an end? Or has it come to an end? It is all a phantasm, a fancy, a fiction, irrational and incredible.

The New Testament describes a "growing consciousness of the Church," but it is a totally different thing from that which Dr. Moffatt postulates. The Apostles, who had known Jesus without really knowing Him, gradually came later to recognize Him in His real character. Their eyes were opened, and they saw. That is a consciousness of the real meaning of real events. Dr. Moffatt dreams of a "consciousness" which falsely imagines events that never happened.