16. All our Gospels together present us with a view of the life and words of Christ to which, if we did but know it, there would be much to be added. The first Christians were acquainted with many particulars under both heads which to us are entirely lost. These particulars contributed in an important degree to the total impression which they formed of the Person of Christ. 17. The conception was naturally fullest and most adequate in the Mother Church, i. e. in the Church in which the immediate followers of Christ were for the longest time collected. It was here, and nowhere else, that that conception of His Person was formed which dominated all parts of the Church, and which carried with it certain corollaries as to the nature of God and his dealings with men that became a permanent body of belief. 18. St. Paul no doubt developed certain portions and aspects of this body of belief, but it is quite impossible and contrary to the evidence that he can have invented its main propositions. 19. We may be sure that St. John did not draw directly from St. Paul, but, firstly, from his own recollections, and in the second place, from the store of common memories and common doctrine that was the possession of all Christians and especially of those who had been nearest to the Master. 20. If we attempt a reconstruction of the main lines of the progress of the Church in the early and in subsequent centuries, such reconstruction ought to be worthy of its subject. In other words, it ought to be one in which we can really see the finger of God. 21. The workings of Divine Providence, as we have experience of them, do not indeed always correspond to what we should antecedently expect. They are such as belong to a world, not of perfect, but of imperfect beings. The Divine purpose as we see it, does not take effect at once, but by slow and gradually expanding degrees. 22. In a world so mixed and chequered progress also has been mixed and chequered; it has not been exactly what we, with our limited faculties, could at once recognize as ideal. It has been progress by tentative experiment, by gradual formulation, by description, at first rough and approximate, but improved little by little as time went on. Any reconstruction of Christian history which agrees with these broad conditions is legitimate, I mean, any reconstruction which recognizes the tentative, experimental, imperfect but gradually improved formulation of Christian belief. It is incumbent upon us, in our own day, to take our part in the attempt to formulate our conceptions of truth, whether historical or doctrinal, with all the accuracy in our power; and we may be quite sure that future generations will improve upon anything that we leave behind us.