deavour to appropriate the world, had been
appropriated by the world in far greater measure than its adherents
knew. It had taken up its mission to change the world. It had dreamed
that while changing the world it had itself remained unchanged. The
world was changed, the world of life, of feeling and of thought. But
Christianity was also changed. It had conquered the world. It had no
perception of the fact that it illustrated the old law that the
conquered give laws to the conquerors. It had fused the ancient culture
with the flame of its inspiration. It did not appreciate the degree in
which the elements of that ancient culture now coloured its far-shining
flame. It had been a maker of history. Meantime it had been unmade and
remade by its own history. It confidently carried back its canon, dogma,
organisation, to Christ and the apostles. It did not realise that the
very fact that it could find these things natural and declare them
ancient, proved with conclusiveness that it had itself departed from the
standard of Christ and the apostles. It esteemed that these were its
defences against the world. It little dreamed that they were, by their
very existence, the evidence of the fact that the Church had not
defended itself against the world. Its dogma was the Hellenisation of
its thought. 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 s