What sort of systematic theology is left us, when the perverted historical method is made the only clue to the labyrinth of Scripture? There is but one answer: No such thing as systematic theology is possible. Science is knowledge, and to have a system you must have unified knowledge. The historical method so called can see no unity in Scripture, because it does not carry with it the primary knowledge of Christ. It simply applies in its investigations the principles of physical science. Physical science begins with the outward and visible, not with the inward and spiritual, with matter and not with mind. Laplace swept the heavens with his telescope, but he said that he nowhere found a God. He might just as well have swept his kitchen with a broom, and then complained that he could not find God there. God is not stars, nor dust. God is spirit, and he is not to be apprehended by the senses. Laplace should have taken man's conscience and will for his starting-point. And just as physical science can find no God in the universe by the use of the forceps and the microscope, so this historical method can find no Christ in the Scriptures, because it looks there for only human agency. The result is that it finds only a collection of seemingly contradictory fragments, with no divine Spirit to harmonize them and bind them together. Its method is purely inductive, whereas its induction should always be guided by a knowledge of Christ, gained before investigation begins, and furnishing the basis for a deductive process as well. Differentiation and not harmonization is its rule, and this makes its criticism destructive rather than constructive. Many a passage is set aside, because it will not fit in with a skeptical interpretation. Christ's own words with regard to his being "a ransom for many," and with regard to his having "all power committed to him in heaven and in earth," are held to be later words attributed to him by his followers. The whole New Testament story comes to be regarded as a mythical growth, like that which gradually placed haloes about the heads of the apostles. The Gospel of John is not accepted as historical, but is said to be a work of the second century. Jesus, it is said, never himself claimed to be the Messiah, since it is only John who reports his saying to the woman of Samaria, "I that speak unto thee am he." Paul is set aside, as being the author of a rabbinical theology which has no claim upon us; and that, in spite of Christ's own declaration that there were many things which he could not teach while he was here in the flesh, but which he would teach, by his Spirit, after his resurrection, and ascension.