Thus the existing history of Jesus enlightens us more and more upon the object of his conduct and teaching, which entirely correspond with the first idea entertained of him by his apostles, i. e., that he was a worldly deliverer. It enlightens us also upon the fact that they had good reason to believe in him as such so long as he lived. It also shows that the master, and how much more his disciples found themselves mistaken and deceived by the condemnation and the death, and that the new system of a suffering spiritual Saviour, which no one had ever known or thought of before, was invented after the death of Jesus, and invented only because the first hopes had failed.