"What is now published is a fragment. No theological questions whatever are here discussed. Christ as the Creator of modern Theology and Religion will make the subject of another volume; which, however, the author does not hope to publish for some time to come. In the meanwhile, he has endeavoured to furnish an answer to the question, 'What was Christ's object in founding the Society which is called by his name, and how is it adapted to attain that object?'" {215} On merely considering, even after a first perusal, the brief words which I have here extracted, it is, I think, impossible not to perceive how much there is that is artificial and embarrassed, I had almost said how much there is that is false, not only in the position in which the Author has placed himself at the very outset, but in the special intentions which he avows. To study the life and the aim of the life of Christ without considering him "as the Creator of Modern Theology and Religion," to defer all examination and conclusion upon this last subject; to aspire to know the person and the mind of Christ after thus separating him from his work; to inquire what he meant to accomplish when living, without considering what he in effect accomplished in the ages which followed his passage through the world; to treat him, in short, and to examine him as we should treat and examine a person unknown to us--a fossil man, so to say, of which the features might be traceable in some contemporary document, showing that he once existed, but who has left no other trace to supply us with argument or proof of what he intended, or what he performed;--this, undoubtedly, is a strange manner of proceeding, one which holds out very little chance of an accurate and true comprehension of the immense fact called Christianity, thus mutilated in its very cradle, Christianity of which the writer limits himself to a bare search after the germ in the nascent thought of its owner, whereas it might have been observed, and its nature verified in its positive and vast development. {216} This is a species of decomposition, of which the great facts of history and morality do not admit. We are not here, like anatomists, describing the autopsy of a corpse. To know and comprehend such facts really, we must study them in their different elements and in all the development of their life. They form a drama in which we are actors, not a manuscript which we are deciphering.