character to
Jesus, who, like him, proclaimed a system of elevated morality, has even
now almost twice the number of followers, although his missionaries
never sought converts in the West. [168:1] Considered as a scheme
Divinely devised as the best, if not only, mode of redeeming the human
race and saving them from eternal damnation, promulgated by God himself
incarnate in human form, and completed by his own actual death upon the
cross for the sins of the world, such results as these can only be
regarded as practical failure, although they may not be disproportionate
for a system of elevated morality.

We shall probably never be able to determine how far the great Teacher
may through his own speculations or misunderstood spiritual utterances
have suggested the supernatural doctrines subsequently attributed to
him, and by which his whole history and system soon became transformed;
but no one who attentively studies the subject can fail to be struck by
the absence of such dogmas from the earlier records of his teaching. It
is to the excited veneration of the followers of Jesus, however, that we
owe most of the supernatural elements so characteristic of the age and
people. We may look in vain even in the synoptic Gospels for the
doctrines elaborated in the Pauline Epistles and the Gospel of Ephesus.
The great transformation of Christianity was effected by men who had
never seen Jesus, and who were only acquainted with his teaching after
it had become transmuted by tradition. The fervid imagination of the
East constructed Christian theology. It is not difficult to follow the
development of the creeds of the Church, and it is certainly most
instructive to observe the progressive boldness with which its dogmas
were expanded by pious enthusiasm. The New Testament alone represents
several stages of dogmatic evolution. Before his first followers had
passed away the process of transformation had commenced. The disciples,
who had so often misunderstood the teaching of Jesus during his life,
piously distorted it after his death. His simple lessons of meekness and
humility were soon forgotten. With lamentable rapidity, the elaborate
structure of ecclesiastical Christianity, following stereotyped lines of
human superstition and deeply coloured by Alexandrian philosophy,
displaced the sublime morality of Jesus. Doctrinal controversy, which
commenced amongst the very Apostles, has ever since divided the unity of
the Christian body. T