And since such is the case with it, since Christianity is not mere cold thought, but a unitary religious life, a fullness of life, it is therefore an obvious error to do as the critical theology is ever seeking to do, and to conceive this life in terms of certain stale notions and catch-words, such as that of the Fatherhood of God, or of inwardness, or the near coming of the Kingdom, and to talk of a Christianity of Christ, of the primitive community, of the Hellenistic communities, and of a Johannine or Pauline Christianity, as though these were not expressions and manifestations of the one original life of Christ, but rather complexes of new ideas, of their nature alien to Christianity and derived from external sources. In reality Christianity is an intimate organic unity, a vital unity, which unfolds itself indeed to its fullness progressively, and yet in all the stages of its unfolding is a unity and a whole, the Christianity of Christ. Just as I first appreciate the totality of that potential life which is in the acorn when I see before me the mature oak, fully developed in all its grandeur, in a way that no mere study of the embryology of the acorn can enable me to realize it, so can I first discern the width and depth of Christ’s Gospel, the whole vast richness of His mind and His message, His “fullness,” when I have before me the fully-developed Christianity, and then only in the measure in which I appreciate its inner unity. The history of dogma has established these three facts. First, that Catholic Christianity has developed in a direct line, without interruption and without violent distortion. Secondly, that this development has not been effected by individual enthusiasm or individual inspiration, but by the one spirit of the whole Christian community, guided by the apostolic teaching. The conception of the community fashioning dogma as so much fable and myth is an absurd one and there can be no room for such a wild phantom within the line of the apostolic succession and within the one living community spirit. And in the third place, it is evident that Catholic Christianity has throughout the centuries anxiously resisted all that appeared to its consciousness as innovation, that it has held fast doggedly and rigidly to that which was handed down, and that it has observed as a sacred trust the injunction of the apostle to Timothy, “Guard that which has been committed to thee” (2 Tim. i, 14). History attests with exactitude, from Ignatius onwards, the principle of apostolicity, of most rigid conservatism, of utterly scrupulous continuity with the traditional revelation. So there is in Catholic Christianity a unitary life-stream, a life of unity in fullness, a single mighty life. And if I would determine the content of the original cell of this life, the content of the Christianity of Christ, I must not approach the tree of Christianity with the knife of the critic and mutilate it in order to discover this original cell. On the contrary I must accept the Christian life as a whole and appraise it as a whole. Unlimited criticism, faulty and sterile historical or philological research: these things do not conduct us to the mystery of Christ. But we attain to Him by steeping ourselves lovingly in the abundance of life which has gone forth from Him, which has attested its inner organic unity throughout the centuries, and which today as in the beginning is nothing else, desires to be nothing else, than a life lived in the strength of Christ, a Christian life.