chair, and his withdrawal from the pels, and to invalidate the miracles country. He was compensated for the contained in them. To this task he loss of office by a government pension. brings a vast amount of theological His name, in consequence of these com- and biblical learning, a coolness and motions, became famous throughout impassibility that are truly wonderful, Europe; and "Das Leben Jesu" assumed a penetrating judgment, much precision an importance and reached a circulation of style, though we cannot add much which it otherwise would not have ac- candour or fairness. In the strict scruquired. The theological mind of Ger- tiny to which he subjects the inspired many, for some years hence, was narratives, he not only finds the diffiengrossed with these bulky volumes. culties and apparent discrepancies which Such veteran antagonists as Tholuck, honest criticism had previously discoNeander, and Müller entered the field vered, but he contrives by a system of and did effective service against the perversions to bring forth contradictions. great Goliath. More recently, younger One thing, moreover, Strauss always men, such as Ebrard and Wiesler, be- acknowledges in his exploring voyage, tween whom the palm is said to lie, and that is the presence of miracles. have severely battered his strongholds He admits the gospels to be miraculous and exposed his foundations. Strauss narratives. Miracles, as Dr. Newman has necessarily been thrown on the de- remarks, "form the substance and fensive. In his advocacy he has be- groundwork of the narrative, and, like trayed something of the instability of the figure of Phidias on Minerva's water. The preface to the third edition shield, cannot be erased without spoilof his great work contained some im- ing the entire composition." But beportant admissions as to the modifying cause the gospels are miraculous, or influence which the writings of Neander narrate events above the ordinary and others had exerted upon him. laws of human experience, he argues These admissions he has retracted in that they cannot be true. In the introthe fourth edition. He felt himself ad- duction to his work he lays it down as vancing beyond his philosophical prin- a first principle, that a narrative is not ciples. A farther advance or a retreat historical, i. e. the things related did not became inevitable. Hegelianism has take place in the manner in which they brought him back to his first love. He are set down, when the narrated events has, to use his own expression, whetted are inconsistent with the known and out of his good sword the notches which universal laws which regulate the prohe himself had hacked on its edge. cession of events. The impossibility of Hegel has driven him farther than ever miracles he coolly takes for granted. His from Christ; and, for aught we know to pantheistic philosophy allows not the the contrary, he still rests in the cold nega- special intervention of God. tion, that a life beyond the grave is the chain of endless causation," he says, last enemy which speculative criticism has" can never be broken.” The claims of to combat, and, if possible, to overcome." the gospels are thus prejudged before Our space permits but a very con- they are examined. densed view of Strauss' work, and a few brief remarks on it. The title of a book is generally an index of its contents. It is not so, however, in the case before us. The " Leben Jesu" of Neander is really, what it pretends to be, a life of Christ in its historical connection and development. The "Leben Jesu" of Strauss is a complete misnomer. It is neither a history nor a biography. In all honesty it should have been entitled, "The Life of Christ reduced to nought from a philosophic stand-point, or the Four Evangelists made unworthy of credit."

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His great aim in this work is to destroy the historical credibility of our Lord's life as narrated in the four gos

"The

But who will grant him the assumption on which he proceeds to his work of demolition the impossibility of miracles? No enlightened theist can do it; because, if we admit that God intervened in bringing the material universe into being, we cannot refuse to believe, on clear evidence, that he has subsequently intervened in the introduction of such a momentous era as the gospel dispensation. No true philosopher can do it; not only because geology furnishes evidence of distinct creative acts having all the nature of miracles, but because it is really unphilosophical-a vulgar illusion, diametrically opposed to that modesty and caution which characterise genuine wisdom.

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the opinions and expectations prevalent among the Jews at the time of Christ's appearing. The meek, and lowly, and crucified Jesus of the gospels, with his kingdom not of this world, is not the development of the common views and feelings of a people who were anxiously waiting for a temporal Messiah. The image on the coin does not, in this case, correspond with the stamp that is alleged to have made it.

The age, both in its intellectual and moral characteristics, was perhaps the least favourable of all ages to the growth of a mythical religion. This was," says M. Coquerel, "throughout antiquity, the epoch which most resembled our eighteenth century; an age of doubt, of unbelief, of continual derision and scorn, wanting in respect for all ancient faiths; an age when every thing was questioned, when novelty was desired in all things; an age, of which the true representative is Lucian, he who has been called the Greek Voltaire — Lucian, the celebrated author of 'Dialogues of the Dead,' 'Dialogues of the Gods and Goddesses,'

But in granting Strauss the middle of the second century for the composition of the gospels, we grant him too much. It has been satisfactorily shown by citations from Papias and Justin Martyr, who lived in the early part of the second century, that the gospel his tories were received as apostolic, and were circulated among the Christians long before the date which Strauss would assign to them. Nor is this all. The theory, already so much damaged, has received its death-blow, in so far as historic evidence is concerned, by the appearance of the famous work of Hippolytus "On all Heresies." Hippolytus, bishop of Pontus near Rome, a man of eminence and a distinguished writer, who lived during the latter part of the second century and the earlier part of the third, introduces, in this work, Basilides, who is supposed to have written about the year 117, as giving quotations from John's gospel as a book of established authority at that period among the disciples of Christ. John himself had died only about twenty years before. The man, therefore, who can believe that the contemporaries of the Lucian, who jested with Olympus, reapostles, or those that were nearly so, gardless of the Pantheon at Rome, received gospels of a mythical and le- which was filled with innumerable gendary character as if they were histo- divinities. It was in unbelieving rical and real, is a man prepared to Europe that Christianity at once took swallow any paradox, however extrava- root, and established itself in a decisive gant and preposterous. To this pass manner without delay. It was in the most Straussianism is now driven. The his- civilised, the most corrupt, the most torical conditions of the mythical theory learned cities-Corinth, Athens, Rome, are all a-wanting. Sand lies at the that the gospel found its first confoundation instead of rock; and, unless verts and its first martyrs. Strange men mean to persist in an unreasoning contradiction, that the people who beunbelief, they must now place Straussian- lieved nothing-of whose thoughts ism in the obituary of extravagant and Pilate was the very echo, when he scornfantastic forms of scepticism. fully asked, 'What is truth?'-should so quickly learn to construct a new religion, by the assistance of some worn-out legends of the East. Strauss in vain combats this overwhelming reply,— that a mythology can be established only in a simple, ignorant, and credulous age, and not in one of dispute and doubt.'

The state of society in which these myths are said to have arisen is, as we have already hinted, another damning evidence against the theory. One of the canons which Strauss brings to his critical inquiry is, that "if the substance of a narrative strikingly agrees with certain ideas which prevail in the circle in which it is born, and which appears to be rather the product of preconceived opinions than the result of experience, then it is, according to circumstances, more or less likely that the narrative has a mythical origin." The myth must be an expression of the age in which it is said to have arisen. Now the substance of the gospel narratives is strikingly at variance with

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In short, the more the problem is investigated, the more evident will it be, that not one of the conditions in which a mythology is possible can be found in the case of Christianity. Strauss' theory fails to account for its origin. It fails also to account for its reception. Strauss admits that the belief in Christ's resurrection contributed to the reception of the gospel by multitudes. But the resurrection itself he resolves into a myth.

This is only shifting the difficulty far-lence, is a practical ideal. It is a chather back. The resurrection of Christ racter which, though divinely excellent, was no more an embodiment of the pre- is still human. He does the will of his vailing belief and feeling of the people father. He goes about doing good. respecting the Messiah, than was his death. Every supposition framed to account for it, except the one that Christ actually did rise from the dead, is burdened with such absurdities as no man would tolerate unless he were determined, at any cost, to get rid of Christianity as a historical and supernatural religion.

But what justice could the gospels meet with at the hands of Dr. Strauss, who has come to the study of them with a preconception against them? His foregone conclusion, that miracles are impossible, has led him to refine away historical personages, and to transmute a table-land of historic facts into a region of dreams and fables. On Strauss' principles, all history may be resolved into an illusion. Instead of having a firm footing in the past, we might be left to wander among nothing but phantoms; and, in grasping at real historical personages, we might find that we had been laying our hands on fictions. Learned Germany has seen this to be the inevitable result of Straussianism. Hence the growing discredit which, in the land of its birth, has come upon this mythic theory. Men have shrunk back from it as from a horrible pit, in which could be perceived no bottom.

If the mythical theory fails to account for the footing which Christianity had among the Jews, its failure is not less in accounting for the success of Christianity among the Gentiles. The gospels- a compound, as is alleged, of Jewish myths and legends—to have made such wonderful triumphs among nations whose whole prepossessions and prejudices were against everything that had a Jewish origin and impress! no idea can be more extravagant and preposterous. "In truth," as has been well remarked, "nothing less than a universal lunacy of the nations will account, under such Good often comes out of evil. Every circumstances, for its reception by them." assault which infidelity has made on If the external evidence all goes to Christianity has only shown the strength demolish this fantastical theory, the in- and divine supremacy of the gospel. ternal contributes to the same result. When the smoke and dust of the battle The gospels have no appearance what- have cleared away, we have been sumever of a mythology. No one can ho- moned to walk about Zion, to tell the nestly read them without being im- towers thereof, to mark well her bulpressed with their intense historical warks, and to consider her palaces. reality. It is the calm simplicity of di- So has it been in the case before us. rect narrative, not the stirring, wrought-Strauss has given a blow to the frigid up scenes of fable. There is such a naturalist school of Paulus- a school minute fidelity of detail, and such a which resolved the Bible miracles into truthful impress of individuality in the merely natural occurrences-from which personages, as belong to no mere com- it can never recover. He has given a pilation of ideas, as accord with no com- strong impulse, in Germany and elseposition of a mythical and legendary where, to the study of the gospels. character. It has often been remarked They have been made to pass through that the introduction to Luke's gospel such an ordeal of close and severe cri-characterised as it is by such calm-ticism as no other book has passed; and, ness and caution-is contrary to the way in which mythologies open, and in keeping with this is the spirit of detail that pervades the whole narrative. There are two characters in the New Testament, not to mention others, which, for their historic reality, are a direct proof against the mythic theory of Strauss. These are the character of our Lord and that of Paul the apostle. They are no mythical legendary heroes. Paul's character bears all the impress of historic truth. Jesus, the holy, harmless, and undefiled One,-the ideal of all excel

in coming out of the trial, they have been powerfully declared anew to have come from God. In driving the old rationalism out of the field, Strauss has brought his mythic scheme to occupy its place and to receive a no less decided overthrow. Such men as Neander and Ebrard have exploded the myths, as he himself had defeated the pure naturalism. The gospel of Christ towers above the scene, like the everlasting mountains; while Strauss, once so terrible with his Leben Jesu," now appears

66 Umbra magni nominis."

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WILLIAM TYNDALE.

Ir was a time of general movement. | after knowledge, whose researches disEurope was awaking from the long closed new and living motives. night of ages; and all things portended At this period WILLIAM TYNDALE apa moral revolution. A pure and intel- peared on the scene. He was born ligent religion was slowly germinating about 1484 at Hunt's Court near North in England. Wickliffe had assailed Nibley, a village situated on a gentle errors that few had seen, or, if they saw, slope almost at the foot of Stinchcombe had dared to condemn errors vene- Hill, and opposite the town and castle rable from their antiquity, and dreaded of Berkeley. Here was his boyhood from their adherents, supported by all passed, and often doubtless did he wanthe power, rank, and wealth of the land, der now beside the Severn and through and the more formidable, because en- the valleys, and then over the green hills, throned by superstition in the hearts of gazing on the extensive and picturesque the populace; and, greatest of all his scenery, where rich woodlands and achievements, he had given the Bible to fields were interspersed, and convents his mother tongue, thus, as his adver- and churches met the eye in every direcsaries complained, making for ever com- tion. This spot of all others in England mon to the laity "what was before the was most in subjection to the Pope. It chief gift of the clergy." Persecution was his richest garden, and had borne had commenced, and all classes of so-him goodly fruit. Four Italian bishops ciety had furnished victims. And now in succession luxuriated in it. Monks men quailed; and, concealing them- of all orders, and religious houses of selves from an infuriate priesthood, sought in seclusion to satisfy their spiritual desires.

every name so abounded there, that it was a common and profane proverb, "As sure as God is in Gloucestershire." A mighty enemy was being nurtured in the nest and beneath the wing of the papal vulture.

Another influence was meanwhile developing. A new life had re-animated the intellect of the world. Literature and the arts were again objects of inter- Tyndale went early to Oxford, where est. Printing had been discovered, and, he studied philosophy and grammar at as if to intimate its lofty destiny, the St. Mary Magdalen's Hall, adjoining the first book issuing from the press was the college of that name. His progress was Latin Bible. Erasmus, the champion rapid, and his success in the acquisiof letters, the knight-errant of reviving tion of languages especially great. The intelligence, had gratified the court of first classical scholars of the age were Henry VIII. by his genius and learn- his tutors; but in the regions of subing; he had watched the storm career-limer knowledge he had another guide ing round him in fury and pride till he began to fear, and then had retreated to the shelter of some less conspicuous station. But from the presses of Bâsle there came a book, the fruit of his vigils, which was signally to triumph where he had failed. This was the New Testament, now first published in Greek, with a fresh translation in Latin. It crossed the Channel, and was welcomed in the colleges and halls of England.

Thus, then, was the way prepared for a Reformation. There was on the one hand a people ready to receive the truth, and on the other an instrumentality for its diffusion. There were consciences writhing under oppression ready at the first impulse from without to assert their liberty, and there were minds aspiring

-the Holy Spirit, originator and interpreter of celestial truth. The Greek Testament of Erasmus had reached the university before him. He was attracted to it by the learning it displayed, or at least as a manual well fitted by its beauties and pathos for devotional exercises. He read it, and the divine energy of the word becoming daily more apparent, transformed the youth, and led him to recognise and love it as the reve lation of his Lord and Saviour. Of bold and active disposition, he did not hesitate to declare his feelings. The purity of his character and conversation, the correspondence between his tenets and his life, soon drew the younger students about him. He began to instruct them out of the Scriptures.