Kenan's Life of Jesus is penetrated by a pro- found feeling of His human personality, its charm, its potence, its pre-eminence, its capability to create a faith. It has been shown to be inaccurate in details, and meagre and uncertain in its know- ledge, especially of the Jewish environment in which Jesus grew up. It displays an excess of precision in the psychology of ilhision, a too ready emotion, and a want of gravitas. Yet withal the book did this service, that it introduced into the reading of Christ's life on its human side a greater sense of reality than modern criticism had hitherto attained. For the action of ideas, as in Strauss and Baur, Renan substitutes the play of individual passion and character. The arid logic of the Germans is absent, and something of the wonder and beauty of the NT story is not wholly lost. It is liere that tlie arrears in the ' scientific ' or ' historical ' Christ have most to be made up. The Apostolic conception of the Saviour, however uncritical and untrustworthy in details at the bar of modern history, embodies in that very super- naturalism whicli is the bete noire of the scientific mind, a spirit so potent as to .seem to those wlio gave the record the most striking reality in His life. To reproduce that spirit in natural terms calls for a depth of feeling and width of experience which the critical movement so far has shown no signs of possessing. There hangs about its Christological creations such a rawness as to tempt one to the .statement that it has not yet found tlie equipment adequate to its task. Christ must be interpreted from within. The interest of His life is in large measure independent of its historical framework, as the orthodox construction has rightly seen, and as criticism itself acknowledges when it starts from tlie teaching of Christ in preference to the events of His career. Higher instincts, therefore, than the merely intellectualist
instincts of 'science' or 'history,' instincts akin to the poet's when he grasps the very spirit of poetry, or the artist's when his unique sensibility unveils a new revelation of beauty, are requisite if the mystery of Christ is not to be profaned. Hostility to the sui)einatural is an unscientific dogmatism. Equally unscientific is the explana- tion of it as ' myth ' or ' vision.' The supernatural in Christ took sucli a hold on the minds of those who gave themselves to Him, as to render them readier than otherwise to reduce His human nature in its interests. The supernatural in Christ is that in Him to which the Church has at all times clung as the sustainer of her intensest faith and hope. It has enriched and not weakened the life of the spirit. What is the secret ? How explain the tenacity with which the supernatural in Christ has fastened on tlie conscience of Christendom ? Is it not that it has shown at all times power to embody men's highest religious hopes and aspirations, and has satisfied them ? And should this not strengthen rather than lessen belief in its reality ? Science has here a problem not to be evaded. In reaching a solution, the psychological trend science has recently taken cannot fail to furni.sh important data. A true ' philosophy of the unconscious ' is a desideratum. Already we have learned many facts having an intimate bearing on the old Christological prob- lems. What they suggest is that within the depths of a single personality there may coexist jiarallel states of spirit-life ; a consideration which, if vindicated, will make us pause before repeating the dogmas of negation which were framed with regard to simpler and narrower facts.
A sense of such necessity is apparent in the most recent phase of ' scientific ' reconstruction of the Life of Christ. The articles of P. W. Schmiedel and others in the Encyclopaedia Biblica, the Jesus of W. Bousset of Gottingen (tr. Williams & Norgate), and the Jesus of Arno Neumann (tr. A. & C. Black), based on essentially rationalist principles, manifest an advance on the old rational- ism. They seek the secret of Jesus in a psycho- logical uniqueness. They are indeed in line with previous radical tradition in rejecting the integrity of the Gospels as a reliable source of information, and in reducing to a minimum the available historical material at their basis, in regarding the major portion of the written record as artificial and adapted, of the nature of pious legend and idealizing poetry, and in asserting the impossibility of considering the claims Christ made for Himself an adequate foundation for such a superstructure as the Church reared in the dogma of His Divinity ; yet they are confident where earlier effort was often in doubt ; they are also more reverent, genial, and expectant. A firm historical founda- tion is acknowledged, and that both in facts regarding His Person and particularly in His words and teaching. They are facts, too, which point to a 'sovereign self -consciousness,' worth to men more than kings and prophets had been, potent over present powers and ottering promise of constant conquest (Bousset, Jestis, p. 96). ' He bound His disciples to His Person as never again one man has bound men.' His uniqueness is not to be confounded with singularity, but denotes unequalled excellence in goodness and greatness. He con.strains not physically but psychically ; He overpowers us inwardly by His spirituality. His purity, truthfulness, and love. He is the blaster of the inner life. ' We niiiy also speak of Him as "the Redeemer."' Not in the sense that His death was a propitiatory sacrifice without wliich the God of love would not have been able to forgive us our sins. Not in this sense : yet it was indeed His special work to redeem by guiding us