appointing to read the next paragraph ; ' Yet I cannot persuade myself that on strictly historical grounds these statements could be definitely established."
§ See, e.<i., Fairbairn, Christ in Modern Thenlorjy, pp. 18, 21 ; and Sir Oliver Lodge in Uibberl Journal, Apr. 1906, p. 644, where he 'accepts the general consensus of Christendom as lestifyuig to the essentially Divine character of Christ.'
ever else, in Wernle's view, we may learn from St. Paul, we may at all events learn this, that in Jesus, notwithstanding the fact that He died a death of shame on the cross, St. Paul saw his own life and that of the world divided, as it were, into two parts — with Jesus, without Jesus. In Jesus we behold a man who helps us to under- stand aright ourselves, the world, and God ; who accompanies us as the truest friend and guide in the needs and struggles of the present, and to whom we can entrust ourselves witli all confidence for the future. In the same series Professor Pfleiderer, who discusses the preparation for Chris- tianity, finds in the sentence, ' The Word was made flesh,' the dividing line between the many and varied speculations of philosophy and the full and actual manifestation of the Divine Logos in the life of the Son of God ( Vorbereitimg des Chris- tentums in der Griechischen Philosophie, p. 66). Another writer, Dr. Bousset, to whom reference has been made, and who is also well known to English readers, expresses himself in the little book Was ivissen tvir von Jesus ? , which H. Holtz- mann recommends as the best guide-book for the German laity, in almost rapturous language :
'Gradually there rises before us a Form in which the soul rejoices, the Form of the great liberator, the mighty opponent of all forms of Pharisaism, and at all times the great upholder of simplicity in religion. And more even than this : there stands before us the Form of Jesus the friend of sinners, the preacher of the forgiveness of sins, who in all the greatness of His own moral strength condescends with all the tenderness of a woman to the lost and the outcast, the Form of One who, conscious of victorj-, could unite His disciples to Himself by an everlasting bond when the last sad night of His earthly life had come and death stood before His eyes.'
In this Personality Bousset finds the true origin of Christianity. Other factors no doubt contri- buted, but there was one factor above and beyond them all, the Person of Jesus. Jewish Messianic hopes, Greek philosophy, the social conditions of the Roman Empire, the organization and the spirit of the religious social clubs and of the mysteries, all these contributed. One by one, in a few graphic pages, Bousset passes them in review, and show,s how each of them was insufficient alone, because each of them wanted the distinctive power which made Christianity all-sufficient and all-victorious, the power of a life-giving Personality, the possessor and the bestower of new spiritual agencies, the bringer of life out of death. In words of almost evangelical fervour Bousset proclaims the presence in history of this unique personal power. None can doubt the power of personality in the religious life, and all religions which occupy the foremost place in the world testify to this in some measure more or less.*
In face of such acknowledgments, we cease to wonder that von Soden in his recent Die wich- figsfen Fragen im Leben Jesu, 1904, devotes so much of his book to a consideration of the Personality of Jesus (p. 82 ft'.). Amongst other matters of varied interest, he points out that there is no evidence that Jesus was influenced in any direct manner by Buddha or Plato, or by Philo and his predecessors (p. 108). He was the child of His people and country. He knew no foreign litera- ture (p. 109), He was far removed from any asso- ciation witli the hard and gloomy character of Pharisaic piety, but at the same time His life was in harmony ^^^tll all that was best in the Jewish and
* This insistence upon the importance of the personal in- fluence is again notablv marked m one of the most recent of popular • Lives ■ of Jesu's by Dr. Furrer of Ziirich. See. e.g., the closing page of his Lebcn Jesu, 1905, p. 261, in which, after insisting upon regarding Jesus as man, he ends, as he himself expresses it, with the confession of the centurion, ' This man was the Son of God.' Furrer's treatment of liis theme is marked by reverence and sympathy, and he rightly points out that, until the heart is in sympathy, no justice can be done to the holiest portraiture of humanity (,Vorwort, p. v).
CROSS
Greek types of humanity, and von Soden concludes his hook (p. Ill) hy saying that this Personality which was beyond the invention of the Evangelists, and which is presented to us in a picture which knows no flaw, is an irrefutable, integral fact, and the wonder of wonders in the world's history rich in wonders. (See, further, the same writer's Ur- christliche Literatnrgcschichte, p. 5).
Once more ; we turn to H. Wendt, another German well known in England, not only by his works on the Teaching of Jesus and the Gospel of St. John, but by two lectures delivered in this country in 1904. He speaks of the signi- ficance of Jesus in revelation (The Idea and Reality of Revelation, p. 28 ft'.). Jesus is for him the highest revelation of God, although not the only one.* At the foundation of all the forms of Cliristianity there is a reverence for Jesus Christ as Saviour and Mediator. And Wendt concludes by assuring us that a large number of the German theologians of to-day aspire to lead Christianity back to its original form, to the simplicity and sublimity of the primitive teaching of Jesus (p. 91). There is much in such acknowledgments which carries us back to the confession of A. Reville. For him ' Jesus is supremely great,' and he adds, ' Let us fear nothing as to the glory of the Son of Man. We owe it to Him, to the Divine ideal dwelling within Him, that we know ourselves to be the children of God ; it is in His pure heart that love between God and man has been realized, and in this He possesses a croAvn which none can ever take from Him ' (History of the Doctrine of the Deity of Je.ftis Christ, Eng. tr. p. 164).