But he declared that _there was a Christian Doctrine before there was any New Testament_; and we now know that this came not into existence until thirty, forty, sixty, and in parts as many as 150, years had passed after the great moral teacher of Nazareth had expiated his superiority to the shows and superstitions and errors of his day by the cruel death of the cross. Had biblical criticism become a science a century sooner than it did, the world might now by possibility be nearer the goal of truth as regards the Religious Idea than it is, and grave doubts have sooner arisen as to the competency of the barbarous Jews to solve the mystery of the ‘Something not ourselves’ which we are led by our nature to conceive and think of as _Cause_, and to imagine as over and above this ‘bank and shoal of Time,’ whereon we pass our lives. Quitting physiological discussion for his proper subject, our author approaches the practical part of his theory of Christianity. Faith is the first element, and is spoken of as an emotion rather than a cognition--a spontaneous movement of the heart, not an act of the understanding, its essence being belief in the man Jesus Christ as the Son of God (pp. 297-300). The end and object of the whole New Testament teaching, he says, is to lead men to a belief of this kind (p. 293), whereby they are reconciled and made acceptable to God, conceive a detestation for sin and become exemplars and exponents of the Christian virtues--Love, Hope, and Charity. ‘Faith of this kind,’ he continues, ‘makes us aware of our poverty, of our misery. For if we believe that the man Jesus is the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, we already admit that the world lies in sin and so needs saving.’