Its organisation was the Romanising of its life. Its canon and ritual were the externalising, and conventionalising of its spirit and enthusiasm. These are positive and constructive statements of Harnack's main position. When, however, they are turned about and stated negatively, these statements all convey, more or less, the impression that the advance of Christianity had been its destruction, and the evolution of dogma had been a defection from Christ. This is the aspect of the contention which gave hostile critics opportunity to say that we have before us the history of the loss of Christianity. Harnack himself has many sentences which superficially will bear that construction. Hatch had said in his brilliant book, _The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church_, 1891, that the domestication of Greek philosophy in the Church signified a defection from the Sermon on the Mount. The centre of gravity of the Gospel was changed from life to doctrine, from morals to metaphysics, from goodness to orthodoxy. The change was portentous. The aspect of pessimism is, however, removed when one recognises the inevitableness of some such process, if Christianity was ever to wield an influence in the world at all. Again, one must consider that the process of the recovery of pure Christianity must begin at exactly this point, namely, with the recognition of how much in current Christianity is extraneous. It must begin with the sloughing off of these extraneous elements, with the recovery of the sense for that which original Christianity was. Such a recovery would be the setting free again of the power of the religion itself.