The fact that mankind is on its knees before the reverse of that which formed the origin, the meaning and the rights of the gospel; the fact that, in the idea Church, precisely that is pronounced holy which the messenger of glad tidings regarded as beneath him, as behind him one might seek in vain for a more egregious example of world historic irony Our age is proud of its historical sense: how could it allow itself to be convinced of the nonsensical idea that at the beginning Christianity consisted only of the clumsy fable of the thaumaturgist and of the Saviour, and that all its spiritual and symbolic side was only developed later?