What that place was and how the Church filled it has been told in a multitude of historical books. The history of Christianity is not the story of a developing idea, but a record of the achievements of an idea developed, organized, instituted. From the date of the established religion, the writings of the New Testament became the literature of the earliest period. In the western world the mind of Christendom expanded to deeper and wider thoughts, a new literature was originated of great richness, affluence and beauty, and gave expression to ideas which, in the primitive period could not have been formed. The Greek and Latin Fathers, the schoolmen, the catholic theologians, Italian, Spanish, French, the German mystical writers, the Protestant divines and preachers, have produced writings unsurpassed in intellectual strength and spiritual discernment. The possibilities of speculation have been exhausted; the abysses of reflection have been sounded; the heights of meditation have been scaled. The christian idea of salvation has been applied to every phase of human experience, and to every problem of social life. The rudimental conceptions have been distanced; the original limitations have been overpassed. Rites have been charged with new significance, symbols loaded with new meanings, doctrines interpreted in new senses. Christianity as the modern world knows it, is a new creation. The name of Messiah is spoken, but with feelings unknown to the Jews of the first and second century. The New Testament is regarded as a store house of germs, a magazine of texts to be interpreted by the light of the full orbed spirit, and unfolded to meet the needs of an older world. The cord which connected the religion with the mother faith of Israel was broken and the faith entered on an independent existence. To the cradle succeeds the cathedral. IX. JESUS.