vast critical apparatus, and with nothing but | fact and reality, and their success in reaching the four Gospels in his hand, to arrive at a it. This leads us into the domain of conconclusion, strictly philosophical, as to the temporary literature-to a comparison of origin of Christianity and the claims of its the religious and the secular writers; into Founder. questions touching the philosophy, morality, the social state and customs of that age; and the very treatises accessible to the student of history are for the most part written in some special interest, and are the product of some foregone conclusion. But suppose our critical apparatus complete, and the historical inquiry ended, the very question which we had hoped to solve by history returns in all its magnitude, as a problem of philosophy. Therefore, since it must in any case remain for solution after the critical inquiry is closed, its study may validly precede any attempt thus to ascend the stream of history. In short, the function of historical criticism seems to lie in an intermediate region between the preliminary question of the supernatural (which is one of speculative philosophy) and the problem to which we must in any case return,-the religious significance of the life of Christ (which is a philosophical inference from certain unique moral phenomena.) Historical study cannot solve the questions which the course of Church history has raised. Those who have gone most deeply into the problems of modern criticism are convinced that mere archæological research cannot clear up any controversy touching the supernatural. Erudition is not needful for the determination of the main question at issue. The critical questions are as to the authenticity of date and authorship, and the competency of the historians; as to when and by whom the books claiming an apostolic origin were written, and whether their authors were competent witnessbearers. To solve these questions we must proceed backwards up the stream of Time, studying century by century, examining the quotations of successive commentators and opponents, that we may be sure that the books have come down to us unimpaired. We have to pierce through the accumulated literary strata of eighteen centuries. With out much difficulty we can traverse fifteen of these. When we come, however, to the second, or even to the third century, we find the ground less firm, while the air grows gradually dim with mist. The further back we travel, our authorities are fewer and less trustworthy, less scientific, more given to gossip, less able to distinguish between fact and rumour. The age of the first two centuries of our era was one of manifold literary activity, but the majority of its records have perished, and its testimony is on the whole obscure. Hence the difficulty of reaching the solid ground of scientific certainty by the processes of historical criticism alone. We must satisfy ourselves that the writings of the early Fathers, which allude to the gradual formation of the canon, are themselves authentic; we must discover the qualifications which these writers possessed for forming a judgment on the matter in question, the range of their critical in sight, their freedom from bias, their love of *On this point we have the testimony of Strauss himself. In the Preface to his New Life of Jesus, written for the German populace, he says, "It is a mere prejudice of caste to fancy that ability to comprehend these things belongs exclusively to the theologian or the man of learning. On the contrary, the essence of the matter is so simple that every one whose head and heart are in the right place [N B.] may well rest assured that whatever, after due reflection and the proper use of accessible means, still remains incomprehensible to him, is in itself of very little value." (Page viii. of Preface, Eng. Trans.) The idea of rewriting the Life of Jesus, already written in the Gospels, is a thoroughly modern conception. So long as the doctrinal conclusions of the Church as to the person of Christ were more valued than the facts of the sacred Biography itself, and so long as the work of our Lord overshadowed his life, anything approaching to a psychological analysis of his character and acts seemed an idle, if not an irreverent procedure. It is not too much to affirm that the divinity of our Lord for ages overshadowed his humanity, so as to cast it into the shade. But during the latter portion of the eighteenth, and more particularly from the beginning of this century,-mainly through the influence of Schleiermacher, the attention of theologians has been increasingly turned towards the human life, in its relation to the age in which it appeared, and the revolution which it has accomplished in the world. And it is only in its humanity, as a life exhibiting the signs of growth and progress, that a historical or biographic study is possible. Within the last hundred years, innumerable "Lives of our Lord" have been written by friend and by opponent; and it is singular that while in each case we must mainly revert to the four original recorders, alike for our materials and for the touchstone by which to try any new commentary or analysis, such is the hidden wealth of these four biographies, that it has been impossible for any one mind, or for any single generation, to exhaust their fulness, and, by drawing it understanding his ideal greatness. Little as they understood him, they felt that they were in contact with a character far above themselves. Their adoration, though imperfect, would restrain them from putting into the lips of their Master what he did not really say, or recording what he did not really do. Exaggerate his greatness they could not; diminish it they dared not. But the fact that Plato, a philosophic thinker of equal calibre and greater comprehensiveness, was the recorder of the moral teaching of his predecessor (much of which he rejected and superseded),-instead of being, as Strauss asserts, a guarantee of impartial ity and historical veracity, might easily lead the founder of the Academy into ex aggerations to which the fishermen of Galilee were not exposed. It was of less consequence to Plato and to Platonism that the dialogues should exactly reproduce the oral teaching of Socrates, than it was to the disciples (who had no philosophy but that of their Master), to draw a photographic portrait of his life. We have alluded to the peculiar difficulty we encounter in ascending by the light of history to the apostolic age, from the dim fully forth, to supersede the need of future commentary. It is equally evident that the four biographers, being contemporaries of our Lord, and addressing a contemporary audience (while ignorant of the vexed controversies as to their record that would arise in the future), would necessarily take much for granted, would leave many gaps in their narrative, unimportant in themselves, but which would give room for future study and reverent conjecture. They present us, it is true, with more than a skeleton record, yet they leave much for the tact of a wise interpreter in collecting the fragments of their narrative, and illustrating their significance as a whole. The task of those who attempt this work anew is thus to transplant themselves to the apostolic age, and to re-state, in the light of their own time, the distinctive features of that "life which is the light of men." The very multiplication of these "lives of our Lord" has become an indirect testimony to the grandeur of the Original. Successive historians exhaust the life of an ordinary man, and future recensions of it become tedious, repetitive, and bald. For example, if we compare the two biographic sketches of the greatest Greek of the ancient world, the Socrates of Plato and of the Mem-ness of some of the intervening links, from orabilia, with the manifold attempts to write the Life of Christ, the contrast is arresting. Strauss has indeed asserted that the picture of Socrates is the clearer of the two; and that a comparison of Xenophon and Plato with Matthew and John is unfavourable to the latter. Such an assertion is not surprising from one who has had the hardihood to affirm, that however consistent the testimony for the apostolic origin of the latter might be, he could put no faith in it, simply because it bears witness to the supernatural. But this much is self-evident, that the world has not welcomed so many lives of Socrates as of Christ; and biographers have not attempted to write them, because, in the former case, they have not found the moral uniqueness, the many-sided and mysterious grandeur, which has drawn successive interpreters to the latter. And we affirm with confidence that the issue of new lives of our Lord will never cease. Each future generation will be impelled by an inner necessity to travel backwards for itself along the stream of history to the fountain-head, carrying thither the burden of its perplexities for solution. the breaks in the continuity of the stream. In addition to this, the very growth of theological opinions and creeds, the vener able edifice of systematic thought. and the endlessly divergent commentaries of churchmen, prevent us from seeing the first age with our own eyes as clearly as we would wish; and if they do not at times confuse our vision, they become at least "something between a hindrance and a help." But we are in reality much nearer the age of the apostles and of our Lord than we are to the two subsequent centuries, and much nearer (except in actual time) than were the critical inquirers of the third and fourth centuries. We can understand it better than we under stand some of the periods of modern history. No age can measure itself. It must be subjected to the sifting scrutiny of the future before it becomes intelligible. And though we have lost some of the links in the process of transmission, the fact that Christianity, thus sifted and winnowed, now gives forth a clearer light as to its origin, while it holds its ground in the forefront of modern enlightenment, is an indirect testimony to the divinity of its birth. Subjected to the We have a guarantee, in the very nature extreme rigour of critical analysis, the life of of the case, that the biographers of our Lord Jesus is surrounded with a new halo of would be more faithful to their original glory; its significance is enhanced by the than the friends of Socrates were. Far strain it has endured, and the assaults it has from attempting to idealize their Master, resisted. And our remoteness in time, our they were from the first incapable of distance from the apostolic age, enables us to compute the historical triumph of Christianity by the silently increasing monument which the Ages are building to its Founder. Remote from the apostles, we do not breathe the atmosphere of a time when the very haze of floating philosophies and vague aspirations, with the obscure origin of the new religion, might have hid its divinity from us; and while we do not rest the evidence of our faith upon a process of critical inquiry, the fact that the efforts of destructive criticism have continually failed in tracing Christianity to a natural source, is an accumulation of testimony the other way, and reduces to a minimum the likelihood of any future discovery adverse to the faith of Christendom. The conclusion which we reach, independently of historical criticism, is not likely to be shaken by a series of puzzles which criticism itself is yearly diminishing. There are other reasons which lead us to prefer the psychological to the critical study of the Gospels. When the merely critical instinct is predominant, it usually renders the mind as unfit for weighing moral evidence wisely, as the exclusively mathematical intellect is incompetent to deal with probable evidence. It sometimes checks the more sacred instinct of worship, and, sharpening one faculty, it blunts another. It may disqualify a man for duly appreciating some of the grander facts of history, of which the causes are hid, because they have their origin in the mystic region of personality. It may diminish reverence for what is obscure only because it is deep and fathomless, and may conceal the latent glory of those phenomena of human history which point upwards to the supernatural. The best antidote to this one-sidedness will be found in a devout study of the facts of our Lord's life on earth, in their sequences and harmonies, in the relation of the parts to the whole, and of the whole to the parts, in their origin, import, and final purpose. In these facts, theologians of the most opposite tendency, and who have reached very opposite conclusions as to detail, will find their common meeting-ground and rallying-point. The theory or doctrine of inspiration which they may chance to hold is of less consequence than their treatment of the facts which the inspired documents authenticate. And the theology that is by each successive system-builder derived from a fresh, patient, and earnest study of these facts, will be at once larger and deeper, more exact and more profound, than any that tradition can transmit or criticism construct. Theology becomes a series of wise inferences from the words and acts, from the scope and tendency, of our Lord's life; not a mere articulated skeleton formed by the juxtaposition of texts, but a living body of interdependent truths,-in a word, the interpretation of fact. But to accomplish this many things are needed: the patient skill of an interpreter, "one among a thousand," who can appreciate the divinest elements in human life,the far glance of the religious seer,-freedom from bias and preconception of what the life ought to be, or to accomplish,-humility wedded to insight,-intellectual integrity in alliance with the docile spirit that has learned its own ignorance, and, we must add, an appreciation of the world's need of light, as well as a readiness to welcome the supernatural ray. A brief glance at some of the efforts to write a harmonious narrative of the life of our Lord may suffice to bring out the points of resemblance and contrast between them and this latest British work. We must confine ourselves to a few, excluding the commentaries and dissertations, however excellent. The bibliography of the subject is very fully given in the fourth edition of Hase's Life of Jesus. In patristic times theologians merely sought to arrange the facts of the sacred biography in a harmonious order. Criticism was then unknown, The mediæval Churchcommentary was tedious and fantastic, consisting chiefly of catenas from the Fathers; while the tendency to write legendary lives of the saints led some to add apocryphal stories to the narrative of the four Gospels. Not even at the time of the Reformation was the theological mind turned with any freedom to the human side of our Lord's life. It may even be said that the idea of a psychological explanation and study of it is foreign to the genius of all the Christian centuries till we come down to the last hundred years. The Great Exemplar of our English bishop, Jeremy Taylor, however excellent in design and felicitous here and there in detail, is circumlocutory, diffuse, full of irrelevancies, and burdened with superfluous learning. It may be doubted whether any reader of that treatise ever reached a more enlarged and luminous view of our Lord's life as a whole by means of it. It is only just, however, to remember that the great English prelate speaks most humbly of his work, as but "an instrument and auxiliary to devotion." He was "weary," he tells us, "and toiled with rowing up and down the sea of controversial questions," and therefore turned to that "which is wholly practical, and which makes us wiser, because it makes us better." Shortly after the middle of last century. J. J. Hess of Zürich published an admirable biographic sketch, in which we recognise two noteworthy features. The value of the miraculous element in the Gospel histories he considers as entirely subservient to the moral results to be attained. As a mere display of power, apart from these results, it could have no inherent value. Hess was also one of the first to signalize the ideal beuty of our Lord's life, and the satisfaction it affords to the purest æsthetic sense, as one evidence of its origin. He was a careful, reverent compiler, and whenever a miracle can be explained as an acceleration of natural phenomena he abstains from supposing any other agency at work in the process. In 1796, Herder published a treatise on the synoptics, and a sequel in the following year on the narrative of St. John. He concentrated his attention almost exclusively on the moral and spiritual aspects of the divine life, and their influence on humanity, striving also to harmonize the different records. The miraculous element he thought of little moment, incapable either of proof or of disproof by a later age. All the miracles that could (in his estimation) be explained by natural causes, such as the exorcism of evil spirits, the transfiguration, the phenomena attendant on the baptism, etc., he thus accounted for; others, such as the cure of the sick, the transformation of water into wine, and the resurrection of Lazarus, he explained as symbolical of the spiritual truth of Christ's influence over the lives of It is difficult to understand Herder's exact position in reference to this second class of miracles. Possibly it was not clear to his own mind. He seems to admit the reality of the resurrection, yet he attaches little value to its outward form. The spiritual and continuous miracle of moral resurrection which it symbolized is to him the main point in the narrative. Nevertheless he firmly maintained the divinity of the life of Christ. men. Paulus, in his Gospel Commentary and subsequent Life of Jesus, further develops the view of Herder, carrying it however to a one-sided extreme. A disciple of Spinoza and of Kant, he rejected entirely the idea of the miraculous as supernatural. He seems to regard it as a later addition to the original record of the text, appended by unwise interpreters. The evangelists he thinks make nc assertion of supernatural power attending the works of Jesus; they rather hint that he employed natural means to effect his ends. He does not wish to ex plain away the reality of remarkable works (such as cures of the sick, etc.), but only to put these on an intelligible basis. For this purpose he endeavours to divest the recorded miracles of a certain clothing of opinion which he imagines to have been wrapped around them-subsequent accretions to the original fact-forgetting that in the narra tive of the evangelists these details are the very substance of the story. He was followed by Schleiermacher, one of the most powerful intellects and one of the noblest men that Germany has produced. He held fast by the divine element in the life, but denied the violation of natural law in the miracles; and to account for these he stretched the idea of the natural to its widest limits. He endeavoured to account for Christ's foresight by supposing an organi zation marvellously susceptible. The heal ing of the sick he explains by the simple forth-putting of unique power upon the minds of the diseased, which in turn reacted on their organism. Miracles were wrought by the supernatural might of one who was above nature, but that power effected its end through natural agency. However we may dissent from his explanations of the miraculous, we cannot forget the reverence and faith of Schleiermacher. He has contributed perhaps more powerfully than any single mind in modern times to direct the current of theology to the person of Christ, and to the ethical significance of his work. His influence is everywhere traceable in subsequent theological literature. Unknown In the year 1829, Hase offered an important contribution to German theology in his Manual. Following Schleiermacher in his rational explanation of the miraculous, as far as that is possible, and attributing our Lord's works of healing to the power of the will over the body, the raising of the dead to the restoration of suspended animation, he nevertheless held that all these works were strictly miraculous, "the clear dominion of spirit over nature; no interruption of Nature's laws, but only a restoration of her pristine harmony and order." powers, possessed alone by Jesus, accelerated natural processes; this sinless perfection giving him an unique control over the mate rial, a power of which sin had bereft the race. "In every matter of fact," he says, "which has been handed down as a miracle, it belongs to science to search for its natural causes; when these cannot be shown with historic truth and certainty, then the miracle indicates either the limits of our natural powers and natural knowledge, or else those of the age in which the miracle is recorded." He thus defines the fundamental thought of his book, "that a divine principle revealed itself in Jesus, but in a purely human form." | later idealized conception of him, "a legendThe reports of our Lord's words and acts, ary deposit of contemporaneous messianic however, he thinks may contain minor inac- ideas, the latter, perhaps, partially modified curacies, due to the imperfect narration, and by his peculiar individuality, his teaching, the blending of their own opinions by the and his fate." historians. Hase, even more than Neander, represents the via media in German theology, midway between a frigid naturalism and a blind uncritical supranaturalism.. Six years later, in 1835, Strauss issued his famous Life of Jesus, intended only for the learned; and, after twenty-nine years, he has followed it by a New Life of Jesus, designed for the populace. The aim of the former treatise, as defined in the later, was to show that "all attempts to conceal or explain away the supernatural in the Gospel details were vain, and that consequently they were not to be claimed as strictly historical." The miraculous element was to be rejected a priori, and in addition a number of "contradictions and inconsistencies" could be freely pointed out. But how to account for the origin of the Gospel image of Jesus was the special puzzle which Strauss set himself to solve. His solution is well known as "the mythical theory." He admitted an original substratum of fact in the narratives, but round that nucleus of fact an imaginary series of myths had gathered, and the function of the historian was to separate or disintegrate the two. The original fact might be somewhat as follows:-There existed at the time of Christ's birth a special messianic hope in Palestine. A remarkable Jew appeared, and conceived the idea of morally revolutionizing his age, in accordance with the prevalent hope that God was about to interpose in behalf of the nation in some signal manner. His early popularity led some of his followers enthusiastically to call him the Messiah. He received the homage reluctantly at first, but afterwards willingly. Coming into collision with the traditional Jewish party, he, without difficulty, foresaw his own death, past instances of the prophet's fate perhaps suggesting it. After his death, his disciples, mourning his lot, began most naturally to idealize their departed master. They found in the books of the Old Testament words which they twisted into messianic predictions of what had actually happened. They believed that their late teacher was not really dead; and by their excited imaginations spectral visions of his presence were easily mistaken for the reality. They proceeded, under the delusion of his continued existence, to magnify the events of his previous life, freely to idealize them, and to attribute to him the highest conceivable greatness. Thus Strauss finds in the four Gospels, instead of the history of the real Christ, a The fundamental assumption which runs through Strauss's work is the impossibility of any history of a being other than one "entirely and clearly human. A personage half human and half divine may figure in poetry, but never in fact." Miracles are absolutely and inherently impossible. Miracle he repeatedly defines as "that heterogeneous element in life that resists all historical treatment." He refuses to believe in its real occurrence on any conceivable evidence whatever. To hear testimony from an eye-witness "would do no good; we should tell him downright that he was tri fling, that he must have dreamt it, if we did not lose our opinion of his honesty, and accuse him of absolute falsehood." As to the evangelical miracles, "not one has been recorded by an eye-witness, but, on the contrary, by those who were disposed to do anything rather than try their tradition by a critical test." He therefore proceeded to apply the same principle of explanation to the Gospel miracles which had been applied so successfully by Welcker and others to explain the growth of Greek legends and Oriental fables. They were a series of later myths, which the reverence of an after age had created, and by which it had surrounded a remarkable man with a halo of posthumous glory! And these myths had been, by the same process, historically displaced, and thrust, like a fault in geologic strata, backwards in time. The Christian myths were "not, in their original form, the conscious and intentional invention of an individual, but a production of the common consciousness of a people or religious circle." The term "myth " Strauss would limit "exclusively to those original unconscious formations which arose as by necessity." But gradually other stories palpably unreal were invented. In the narratives of the fourth Gospel, in particular, he has the hardihood to assert that we meet with much that is conscious and deliberate invention,— mere fraud, in short. In his later work, Strauss acknowledges that, "mainly in consequence of Baur's hints, he allows more room than before to the hypothesis of conscious and intentional fiction." Retaining only the fundamental ideas of his former work, the principal if not the sole consideration is to decide what the gospel history is not. The negation consists in this, "that in the person and acts of Jesus no supernaturalism shall be suffered to remain: for |