and especially after his abrupt and violent | were only a few years old? And besides, death, the events of those few pregnant Irenæus had been in his youth a companion years threw themselves into the shapes for of Polycarp, the disciple of St. John. Is it which Judaism had prepared men's minds, credible than St. John's Gospel could have but which in fact had no reality, and for been received by him if it had been never which this preparation had been quite fortui- heard of till A.D. 150? Moreover, about tous. Need we point out, once more, the A.D. 150, Celsus quotes both the synoptical strange discovery which Strauss here makes gospels and St. John, and says, all this I of his essential, though unconscious ortho- have taken out of your own Scriptures.' doxy? The slightest violence done to the About the same date, Theophilus and Tasurface of the philosopher reveals the doctor tian both constructed a Harmony of the of divinity within. For every word of this, Four Gospels; and ten years earlier still, so far as it is affirmative and not negative, Justin Martyr speaks of gospels written by is precisely the doctrine of the Catholic the Apostles and their companions; meanChurch from the beginning. It is the denials ing, there can surely be little question, the only that she denies. It is the negations four as we now have them. Twenty years which she thinks are difficult to prove. Nor before that, Polycarp uses St. Matthew, and has Strauss succeeded in proving them, quotes the First Epistle of St. John, which unless, as before, Hegelianism be allowed to is allowed on all hands to be (under any have blotted out a conscious God from his- supposition) by the same author as the Gostory. All he has done is, to caricature the pel. And about the same period, Papias, a old church theory by a ludicrous exaggera- bishop in Asia Minor, who tells us he took tion; and to conjecture, among the Jews at particular pains to collect oral information that time, such an inflamed condition of the from survivors who had known the Aposfunction above described, as to transcend all tles, describes how Matthew wrote originallikelihood and all nature, and to generate ly in Hebrew, and how Mark drew his Christendom out of a nation of lunatics. materials from St. Peter. The passage is For what mental condition short of lunacy but a fragment preserved in Eusebius, so could have argued, as Strauss supposes the that no sound argument against St. John Apostles to have argued, 'The Old Testa- can be drawn e silentio, any more than ment represents Christ as doing such and against St. Paul or St. Luke. Thus we are such things; therefore, although we neither brought down to about A.D. 100, without a heard nor saw anything of the sort, he did trace of any conciliar action, or of any conthem.' troversy on the subject which cannot easily be explained. The Church emerges from the first century with the sacred book of the four Gospels in her hand. The very earliest apocryphal gospels only attempt to fill up the blanks in their narrative, and never give a competing account. The most ancient of all was held by Jerome, who translated it, to be the Hebrew original of St. Matthew. The Montanists, in their wildest hatred of St. John's Gospel, could only attribute it to his contemporary Cerinthus. And every recent discovery, such as the missing end of the Clementine Homilies (containing a quotation from St. John), and the original Greek of Barnabas (giving St. Matthew's Gospel the honourable title of Scripture'), only tends to corroborate the proof, that we have in the four Gospels the primitive records of Christianity, and a trustworthy means for understanding what the mind and the preaching of the Apostles really were. And if so, we repeat the supposition that the healthiest, simplest, and 6 But,' replies Strauss, we have no notion how the Apostles argued or what they said; for all our accounts are at second hand. Mark and Luke are confessedly so; and Matthew is a translated and expanded work, on the basis of Matthew's genuine collection of discourses; while John is a wholly fictitious gospel, due to some one well versed in the Alexandrian philosophy about the middle of the second century.' Now, without entering into all the perplexed detail of gospel criticism, let the reader simply recollect the following facts, and he will be in a position to judge whether we can depend upon the New Testament or not. Irenæus and Tertullian were two writers in the last quarter of the second century; the former had spent his youth among the churches of Asia Minor, and had migrated among the Christians of Gaul; the latter was a presbyter in the Latin Church of North Africa. Both were strong traditionalists; and both distinctly appeal to the four canonical gospels by name. But would churches so widely remote as those of Smyrna, Carthage, and Lyons, with one accord receive as Scripture four books which sanest form of religion the world has ever | firmation of the woman's heart, "He is risen!' seen, should have taken its rise from such a has been the basis of the world's faith. Get hot bed of fatuity and insanity as Strauss thee gone then, impotent Reason! Presume would have us believe appears to us to make not to apply thy cold analysis to this masterwork of idealism and of love. If Philosophy greater demands by far upon our credulity than the hypothesis it is invented to super- of men, betrayed by fate, let madness approach gives up the attempt to console this poor race sede; and to be fitly suspended upon the fol- and put her hand to the task. Where is the lowing sentence, written for a very different sage who has ever given such joy to the world, purpose: There are things which do not, as the possessed woman Mary of Magdala?' indeed, like miracies, contravene the laws of (Apôtres, p. 13.) nature, but which contradict historical probability; that is, are easier to conceive of as imaginary than as true. (Strauss, p. 402.) The second loophole by which these writers, and especially M. Renan, endeavour to escape from the necessity or believing the testimony of the Evangelists, belongs to the same class of arguments. The object, in both cases alike, is to maintain the Pantheistic against the Theistic view of history; and to elude the recognition of what Theology (in its popular language) calls the finger of God in Christianity, by showing that it can be accounted for by causes which are well within the narrow horizon of our own experience. Little indeed would be gained by success. For a god Pan, who developed himself in such a blundering and ridiculous way as is here supposed, would quickly set people thinking whether he were a god at all; or did not need some better interpreters, at least, who would credit him with an honest walk and conversation along the highroad of Nature and Health, instead of tracking his cloven footsteps among the devious by-ways of disease. It would be an ill exchange, if we were to give up the supernatural Christ for an infranatural one; and, to retort Hume's argument upon himself, it is far more consonant to probability that philosophers should err, than that the world should have been regenerated by myth-bewildered fishermen and hysterical Magdalens, while God was (as it were) asleep, and suffered disease and error to steal a march upon Him, for the endless benefit of the human race. Yet such is, in plain words, the theory of M. Renan. The formation of Christendom,' says be, is the greatest event in the religious history of the world." But only a few pages farther on we read, The glory of the Resurrection belongs then to Mary Magdalene. Next to Jesus, it is she who has done the most for the founding of Christendom. The shadow created by the delicate senses of the Magdalen hovers still above the world. Queen and patron of idealists, she above all others has known how to make her dream a reality and to impose on all men the sacred vision of her impassioned ou. Her grand af If we had not the page lying open before us, it would seem positively incredible that a man of such mental and moral qualities as M. Renan possesses, should be so far the victim of a foregone conclusion as to think this a rational explanation of the literary and historical phenomena of our Lord's Resurrection. Yet after an interval of three years for reflection, this expansion of the hint given in his earlier volume, this revived embodiment of the long-buried calumny of Celsus,*-still seems to this almost-Christian, who, unlike his own Magdalen, loves yet cannot believe in Christ, worth putting down on paper as a sufficient solution of the problem! In Strauss, a person of colder and more masculine temperament, we are prepared for anything. The dissecting knife is for ever in his hands. And he cannot even put together again for the German people' the disjecta membra of their Christ, without perpetually flourishing his favourite weapon, and making a surgical demonstration of every member in detail. The consequence is, they will not believe that a Christ so put together can be alive. M. Renan, on the other hand, presents to his countrymen a thoroughly living and to them, it seems, conceivable Christ. But, alas!we hope we shall be pardoned, for it cannot be otherwise expressed his Jesus is a French mesmerist, and his Magdalens and Maries may be met with any day, in all their gushing and sentimental beauty, kneeling in Notre Dame, or walking on pilgrimage to the wonder-working Lady of La Salette. No wonder that such a Gospel, of sentiment and hallucination should meet with little acceptance on this more prosaic side of the Channel! No wonder that a drama, in which figures take their part that have assuredly never lived in the flesh, but only in French prints or in the waxwork of a convent chapel, should be rejected with disdain by the practical and sober Englishman! No wonder that, in spite of the fascination of its style, the candour and lucidity of its argumentation, and the extreme. - * Cf. Origen c. Celsum, ii. 55. fifth interest and value of its historical sketches especially from the twelfth chapter onwards, where the victory of Christianity over Paganism is described - this second volume must be condemned as a greater theological failure even than the first; to be pardoned only for its important admissions of the genuineness of St. John's Gospel, of St. Luke's two books, and of the seven main Epistles of St. Paul, and for its heartfelt sympathy for all that is freest and noblest in the Christian ideas. It is with feelings of great relief, therefore, that we turn from Strauss and Renan and open the now celebrated work of our own countryman, whoever he may be the author of Ecce Homo.' There are few, probably, of our readers who are not already well acquainted with the book. For not only has it passed through five or six editions, but it has been reviewed in every periodical, been canvassed in every social circle, and been carried by the angry waves of controversy into unnumbered nooks and corners, whither in calmer weather it would assuredly have never found its way. The controversy, indeed, which it has occasioned, is quite as curious and interesting a phenomenon as the book itself, and highly instructive as to the present state of English theological opinion. Nor could we desire any plainer corroboration of the statement laid down at the beginning of this article, than is given by the exhibition that reviewers, quarterly or otherwise, seem to have been compelled to make of their true selves in presence of this graphic and admirable Survey of the Person and Work of Jesus Christ.' But on this subject we shall have more to say by and by. At present we wish simply to draw attention to the salient features of the work, and to show sufficient cause for our judgment that it is, without any exception, the most important contribution towards a restoration of belief that our own generation has seen. Had not the grave closed over the once speaking eye and toiling brain of Robertson of Brighton, there is little doubt that this anonymous book would have been ascribed to him. For the calm and even march of its sentences and the balanced self-control of its bearing, even amid the hottest fire of controversy, does not wholly conceal the martial ardour which glows within; and there are many passages which reveal the scorn of a manly soul for Pharisaism whether of the first or of the nineteenth century, and which indicate abundant vigour to chastise it. There is, too, the same unflinching determination to push through all the cloud of skirmishing polemics, and to arrive at the heart of the question; the same stern resolve to crush the shell of dogma and release the vital term of truth; the same earnest loyalty to Christ, and even to his Church, which gave to Robertson such wonderful power, and have spread his fragmentary Sermons' wherever the English language is spoken. Perhaps our countrymen are, in theology as well as in other things, suspicious of an over-completeness. And therefore the fragmentary_condition and tentitive attitude of Ecce Homo,' too, may have contrbuted to its wide influence. At any rate, we hold ourselves justified in saying that in this book incomplete, undramatic, and not very critical, as it confessedly is - we have the English Life of Jesus,' thoroughly adapted to, and characteristic of, the country whence it sprang; and not only worthy of comparison with the more scientific and more histrionic works which have proceeded from Germany and France, but distinctly taking the lead of them in point of successful handling of the question. That question is: What was the origin of Christianity? Was it human or divine? Was Jesus Christ a great genius, or the Son of God? Now, in the solution of this question, everything depends as we said before on the avenue by which it is approached. Germany has chosen to approach it by the Reason; and entangled at the very outset in an infinite multitude of knotty critical details, has never been able to advance one step; till Strauss, with his rash sword of the Mythical hypothesis,' at length hewed the whole subject into pieces, and left it incoherent and useless for all the practical wants of men. France, on the other hand, has approached it on the side of Imagination; and shrinking from the infinitesimal detail of critical labour, has perhaps with over-haste-grasped at results, and arranged those results by the aid of a totally fallacious canon, viz. that beauty of form is some guarantee for truth of fact. It was reserved for England to make her approaches on the Morai side and to show how, seizing the clue laid down by the Founder of Christianity himself, it was possible to advance at once into the very centre of the labyrinth, to grasp there at one view, not indeed all the details, but the broad grouping of those details and their relative importance to the question and to each other, and from thence, with the tranquil vigour which such a position always inspires, to proceed at leisure and with perfect security to the gradual ur ravelling of the interesting matters that surround the main question in dispute. Thus Ecce Homo' could hardly hope to escape the charge of being an incomplete work. Its incompleteness is its glory. It is not so much a new work as a new method. And a new method is what mankind have long been groaning for: not a mere negative method, such as Strauss thinks good enough, but a positive one which shall lead to a rational tranquillity, and show them how to ride at anchor through the storms of modern doubt and disbelief. res. V. Accordingly the author of this book seizing his clue-plunges at once in medias His critical introduction occupies twelve lines; or rather, is no introduction at all, for it occurs at the beginning of chapter Whereas Strauss's Einleitung' fills no less than 162 pages of closely-packed German type; and Renan's Critique des documents originaux' demands 64 octavo pages. For this he makes no apology. It is part of his method, which he trusts his readers and reviewers will have wit enough to understand, to take these questions last, instead of first; and therefore to delay them till the appearance of the second volume. He acknowledges that. What is now published is a fragment. No theological questions whatever are here discussed. Christ, as the creator of modern theology and religion, will form the subject of another volume.' And accordingly, 'In defining the position which Christ assumed, we have not entered into controvertible matter. We have not rested upon single passages, nor drawn from the fourth Gospel. To deny that Christ did undertake to found and to legislate for a new theocratic society, and that he did claim the office of Judge of mankind, is indeed possible, but only to those who altogether deby the credibility of the extant biographies of Christ. If those biographies be admitted to be generally trustworthy, then Christ undertook to be what we have described; if not, then of course this, but also every other, account of him falls to the ground... The account we have of these miracles may be exaggerated; it is possible that in some special cases stories have been related which have no foundation whatever; but, on the whole, miracles play so important a part in Christ's scheme, that any theory which would represent them as entirely due to the imagination of his followers, or of a later age, destroys the credibility of the documents, not partially but wholly, and leaves Christ as mythical a personage as Hercules. Now the present treatise aims to show that the Christ of the Gospels is not mythical, by showing that the character these biographies portray is in all its large features strikingly consistent, and at the same time so peculiar as to be altogether be yond the reach of invention both by individual genius and still more by what is called the " consciousness of an age.' Now if the character depicted in the Gospels is in the main real and historical, they must be generally trustworthy, and, Christ. In this case the reality of the miracles if so, the responsibility of miracles is fixed on themselves depends in a great degree on the opinion we form of Christs's veracity, and this opinion must arise gradually from the careful examination of his whole life.' (Ecce Homo, p. 41.) In these last words we have the key to the whole book. The author's plan is here distinctly revealed. It is not his intention to begin by discussing miracles or the trustworthiness of the Gospels in detail, and so to hew his way (like a traveller through the tangled growths of a South American forest) to a conviction about Christ. Such a experience has abundantly proved it to be, course seems to him, as it does to us, and as impossible. He chooses the reverse course. Postulating only, in the broadest sense, the general trustworthiness of the only record we possess, he is prepared to evoke from that record, fairly and sensibly handled, a moral conviction of the purity and grandeur of Christ's character, such as shall rise like daylight upon the scene and flood the crannies and the crevices of groping criticism with heathful sunbeams. And nobly has he fulfilled his purpose. Limiting the area of his investigation strictly to the Ministry of Christ, he describes in the first five chapters the object and ideal of that ministry as it existed in Christ's own mind; and proceeds in his remaining chapters to show how that ideal became actually realised in historical fact by the consummate practical wisdom of that same incomparable mind. Chapter vi. opens thus: The first step in our investigation is now taken. We have considered the Christian Church in its idea, that is to say, as it existed in the mind of its founder and before it was realised. Our task will now become more historical and will deal with the actual establishments of the new Theocracy... The founder's plan was simply this, to renew in a form adapted to the new time that divine Society of which the Old Testament contains the history. The essential features of that ancient Theocracy were: (1) The Divine Call and Election of Abraham; (2) the Divine Legislation given to the nation through Moses; (3) the personal relation and responsibility of every individual member of the Theocracy to its Invisible King. As the new Theocracy was to be the counterpart of the old, it was to be expected that these three features would be reflected in it.' (P. 52.) Yet strange, at first sight, to say while the first of these three features occupies our author during the four succeeding chapters, and the second during the thirteen chapters that follow, just when our attention and interest are raised to the highest pitch, and we are preparing ourselves for a full discussion of the third and most decisive question of all-the book abruptly closes The nature of Christ's sovereignty and of his personal relations to the Church has never received any discussion at all; though the fact of his making royal claims has been often incidentally touched upon. How is this? Has the author forgotten his plan? Or rather, have we not, in this abrupt fracture, the intrinsic quality, not only of the fragment which is now in our hands, but also of the whole work in its future completeness, revealed? It appears to us beyond all reasonable doubt, that the alarms and lamentations which have so loudly resounded from the orthodox side over this book are wholly ill-timed and uncalled for. Everything indicates that he has not rashly taken pen in hand, before having made up his own mind. Everything points to the conclusion, that the inquiry which proved serviceable to himself' proved so by convincing him that the faith of his childhood was a reasonable one, and that the homage he had once paid to Christ need not on farther investigation of his claims, be withdrawn. We need only call attention to such passages as the following: symbol of their union? Who can describe ex- With this striking passage our author concludes the present instalment of his work. He has endeavoured to show, and we think he has succeeded in showing, that taking the life of Jesus only in its broadest features, in the mass and not in detail, in those general outlines which must be allowed to belong to it, if we are supposed to know anything about it at all, nothing more is required than a fearless mental freedom and an unclouded moral appreciation, in order to arrive at a profound and tranquil conviction that he is our souls' rightful Lord and King, and—as we cannot hesitate to add by anticipation in some true sense Divine.' And in following him step by step in this truly charitable work at a time of doubt like our own, we pity-far more even than the robbed and half-dead traveller- the supercilious passer-by who sees no need of the oil or wine, has no heart to praise, no intelligence to understand, the saving efforts, nay, spurns the very flask beneath his priestly feet because there is something suspicious about its shape. Yet what has the author done? He has sim'We have found Christ undertaking ply translated the dead formula of orthooccupy a personal relation of Judge and Master doxy into the living language of modern to every man, such as in the earlier Theocracy thought and of men of the world. That is had been occupied by Jehovah himself without representation.' (P. 52.) Within the whole cre to say, he has presented Christianity in the ation of God nothing more elevated or more attrac- only shape in which men will receive it at tive has yet been found than he,' (P. 52.) This the present day, and in which alone it can enthusiasm, then, was shown to men in its most effect the redemption and conversion of consummate form in Jesus Christ. From him their souls. He has dared to call charity it flows as from a fountain. How it was kindled the enthusiasm of humanity;' he has dared in him who knows? The abysmal deeps of to describe the regenerating mission of the personality hide this secret. It was the will of Christian Church as 'the improvement of God to beget no second son like him.' (P. 321.) morality; he has ventured to change the What comfort. Christ gave men. . . by offering to them new views of the Power by which salvation of souls into their restoration to the world is governed, by his own triumph over moral health;' to speak of the Holy Spirit death, and by his revelation of eternity, will be as the Spirit of Holiness,' and of the sacthe subject of another treatise.' (P. 323.) The ramental means of grace as sacred rites,' achievement of Christ, in founding by his sin-essential conditions of membership,' symgle will and power a structure so durable and so bols of that intense personal devotion, universal, is like no other achievement which that habitual feeding on the character of history records. . If in the works of Nature Christ,' without which the health of the we can trace the indications of calculation, of soul' cannot be regained; and all this he a struggle with difficulties, of precaution, of ingenuity, then in Christ's work it may be that has done with imperfections, with occasionthe same indications occur.. Who can al (though very slight) exaggerations, and describe that which unites men? Who has en- with a few (though very glaring) defects of tered into the formation of speech which is the good taste. Yet when all has been said, to |