Thus occurred, according to the theory of Bousset, the most momentous event in the history of Christianity, one of the most momentous events in the whole religious history of the race. Christianity ceased to be merely faith in God like the faith which Jesus had; it became faith in Jesus. Jesus was now no longer merely an example for faith; He had become the object of faith. The prophet of Nazareth had become an object of worship; the Messiah had given way to the "Lord." Jesus had taken a place which before had been assigned only to God. This estimate of the event of course depends upon Bousset's critical conclusions about the New Testament literature. And those conclusions are open to serious objections. The objections have already been considered so far as the title "Lord" is concerned; that title cannot really be denied to the original disciples of Jesus. Equally serious are the objections against what Bousset says about "faith in Jesus." A consideration of these objections lies beyond the scope of the present discussion. The ground has been covered in masterly fashion by James Denney, who has shown that even in the earliest strata of the Gospel literature, as they are distinguished by modern criticism of sources, Jesus appears not merely as an example for faith but as the object of faith--indeed, that Jesus actually so presented Himself.[229] Christianity was never a mere imitation of the faith which Jesus reposed in God. But it is now necessary to return to the examination of the Antioch Church. [229] Denney, _Jesus and the Gospel_, 1908. The title "Lord," as applied to Jesus, Bousset believes, originated in the meetings of the Antioch disciples--in what may be called, for want of a better term, the "public worship" of the Church. This assertion constitutes an important step in Bousset's reconstruction. But the evidence adduced in support of it is insufficient. The passages cited from the Pauline Epistles show, indeed, that great importance was attributed to the meetings of the Church; they show perhaps that the custom of holding such meetings prevailed from the very beginning. But they do not show that the whole of the Church's devotion to Christ and the whole of Paul's religion were derived, by way of development, from the cult. It is not necessary to suppose either that the individual relation to Christ was derived from the cult, or that the cult was derived from the individual relation. There is also a third possibility--that individual piety and the cult were both practised from the very beginning side by side. At any rate, Bousset has vastly underestimated the importance of the conversion as determining the character of Paul's religious life. The Damascus experience lay at the very foundation of all of Paul's thinking and all of his actions. Yet that experience had nothing to do with the cult.