the Hegelian logic and metaphysics should be related to eacli otiier as the form is to the contents. This claim Strauss overthrew as being wliolly unfounded {Streit- srhr. No. 3; GlaubtiisUhre, Introd. !< 2). From the po- sition to wiiich be had now attained, Strauss was obligtd to condemn the dogmatic method of the old Ilegeliau>, as illustrated in Marlieineke's hoymatik. He demand- ed, as the first step in a scientific method, that tiie con- ception underlying a scriptural statement, as it existed in the mind of the writer, should be ascertained; that this should then be followed through the various hereti- cal perversions until it becomes crystallized into n Church doctrine; andthat t he doctrine should be passol throuirh the crucible ofdeistic and rationalistic polemics in order to its ]>uritication and ultimate restoration to tlie form of the original idea. In the light of this new concep- tion of the relation between the idea anil its apjirehtn- sion, he came to regard a study of the life of .lesus as the most important work to which he could <levote his powers. His celelirated book accordingly grew up on Hegelian ground, and not, as has lieen frecpiently as- sumed, on the ground of Schleiermacher. The book pro- duced a universal sensation. It was discussed, printed in numerous editions, popularized, and translated into French and English. Its significance, in a scientific point of view, lies in the fact that it closes the epoch of undecided criticism in the field of Gospel history, and begins the epoch of radical [)hilosophical rationalism. The eifect produced by the book is primarily to be ex- plained by the fact that this rationalism pronounced clearly and confidently the final words of negation which its predecessors had timidly withheld; to some extent also by the skill and acumen displayed in its pages; and lastly by the utterance of a confident ex- pression of victory on the part of criticism at the very time when the Church was awaking to new life and was no less confident of victory than her antagonist. The " enlighteimient" of the period had brought down the supernatural elements of the Scripture narratives to the level of ordinarv occurrences. It had discovered a relationship between the myths of classical antiquity and the histories of the Old Test., and it held that the myths originated prior to the composition of the Old -Test, books. All the wonders of the Old Test, were incontinently classed as myths, and so many of the New as had not been directly witnessed by the ajiostles. This was the position upon which Strauss found the vulgar rationalism intrenched. He saw tluit its weakness lay in the admission of Christ's resurrec- tion, and he refused to be content with what seemed to him a half-light, making the surrounding darkness more intense. He entered the way opened by the anony- n)ous author of OJhibnruvf/ mid J/ythdlix^ic ( 1790\ and sought to bring the entire life of , lesus under llie mythi- cal theory. As the most ini|)ortant objection to his views, he regards the composition of two gospels by eye-witnesses of the incidents they record, and the im- probability of the intrusion of unhistorical elements into writings of so undeniably early a date as the two remaining gospels. This he en<leavors to refute, though in a manner totally inadequate when contrasted with the consecpiences to which its removal would lea<l ; and after this preliminary he conceives liimself warranted to subject the narrators to an examination of character as furnishing tlie test by whicli to determine the his- torical claims of the gospels, with the result that he finds in the latter no testimony derived directly from eye-witnesses, but only effusions from the impure source of oral tradition. The predispositions with which a writer approaches a work of such profound and far- reacliing cousecpienee for religion and the Church are of vital importance, and .Strauss brought predispositions to bear upon the criticism in which he engaged. He ilid not, as some reviewers have asserted, claim "entire freedom from predispo>itiiiii," but ''only that philosophi- cal stuily had delivered him from certain religious and dogmatical assumptions," and he stated (3d cd. p. 97
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