which died for them and rose again.

For God made Him to

be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."

This, we think, then, is one great defect in the remarkable work before us. It does not sufficiently recognise the fact of sin as one of the universal facts of human nature. It does not sufficiently recognise the sense of sin, and what Butler calls the "perception of sin as of evil desert," as the special fruit of the discipline under which Israel (and in a very inferior degree Greece and Rome also) had been placed before Christ came. And consequently it does not sufficiently recognise the truth that Jesus Christ, revealed as the Saviour of his people from their sins, was the charm which above all drew souls to follow Him. It does not give anything like sufficient importance to the central truth of the Atonement, as the ground of that filial relation to God which our Lord proclaimed to all men. Without the recognition of the Atonement, which is its true basis, the belief of the filial relation becomes incompatible with the belief that man is sinful and God is holy. Those who deny atonement must also either deny the love of God, or extenuate the guilt of sin. We say only that the author does not give sufficient prominence to the Atonement, not that he denies or ignores it. There are incidental references to the truth, though they are indistinct; and probably the author reserves a fuller exposition for his intended discussion of the theology of Christ's teaching. We are far from wishing to hold him to any particular form of expression. We do not claim more from him than that he should give to the fact of the Redemption from sin that prominence which the teaching of the Apostles unquestionably gives to it. But this he has not done. And we must think it a capital defect that the author has not placed distinctly among the very first of the causes which drew men to Christ, his claim to be regarded as having power on earth to forgive sins. Even while yet on earth He revealed Himself, He was more distinctly revealed afterwards, as One who reconciles and makes it possible to unite the deepest sense of sin with the firmest confidence of a love of God for sinners; and this because "He suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God." "He bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead unto sins, might live unto righteousness." And "by his stripes we were healed."

There is yet another of the chief attractions to Christ which the author has failed to estimate at all adequately, if he has not left it altogether without recognition. Weighed down by the consciousness of guilt, men felt also most painfully that they were powerless to emancipate themselves from sinful habit. They found that, even when they would fain do good, evil was present with them. They

saw that too often even the desire to do right was wanting, and that they could not rekindle it in themselves or in their sinful neighbours. And to men feeling this, Jesus offered Himself as sent to baptize them with the Holy Ghost and with fire;-as the source and fountainhead of the converting, regenerating, sanctifying Spirit of God, the spirit of holiness and of adoption, the spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind. This offer, once believed to be real, had an unspeakable attraction for all who felt, as all who were not quite sunk in worldliness or sensuality did feel, the misery and degradation of sin. Surely, then, in any worthy estimate of the attraction of Christ's Gospel, this essential element should on no account be disregarded. Surely, in explaining the secret of the power by which these were won to Christ, this great element should have found emphatic recognition. And it is almost wholly omitted. The recognition of the work of the Holy Spirit is faint and indistinct to a degree most strange and disappointing in a book which says so much, and so nobly, of personal devotion to Christ as the Christian motive, and the spirit of Christ's example as the Christian law.

Therefore, interesting and beautiful as the book is, we cannot accept it as an adequate treatment of the great questions which it aims to answer. To ourselves it seems that its permanent value as an addition to Christian literature will be found rather in an apologetic argument suggested (as we think) throughout, though it is seldom brought to the surface. We venture to attempt to trace this in distinct outline, first quoting a very striking passage, which seems to indicate that it has really been present to the author's mind, whatever may be the reasons which have led him to cast his book into a form which does not obtrude this collateral purpose upon the reader.

The passage on which we found our conception of the apologetic argument which seems to us to be distinctly suggested by the author, but to deserve and require a fuller development than he has given to it, will be found in the chapter on "Christ's Credentials." No reader can fail to regard the whole chapter as one of the most remarkable portions of the book, but we must be content to quote only the few lines which are to our immediate purpose :

"Now the present treatise aims to show that the Christ of the Gospels is not mythical, by showing that the character those biographies portray [sic] is, in all its large features, strikingly consistent, and at the same time so peculiar, as to be altogether beyond 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 if so, the responsibility of miracles is fixed on Christ. In this case the reality of the miracles themselves depends in a great degree on the opinion we form of Christ's veracity; and this opinion must arise gradually from the careful examination of his whole life. . . ."-(P. 43.)

The argument indicated, if we conceive it rightly, is of the following nature. From any one of our Gospels taken singly an outline of our Lord's life and teaching may be obtained, which, when carefully considered, ought to furnish a picture of his character. Let each Gospel be thus examined. The result will be, first, that the conception of our Lord's character thus obtained from each Gospel alone will be found to be wonderfully distinct, vivid, and consistent with itself. The principles of action and teaching will be seen to be in perfect harmony with each other. Now very few biographies which are not essentially truthful will bear this first test of reality-the impression of unity in variety, simplicity of motive, consistency in action,-in a word, of a real personality, as the object of the representation. If the character depicted be in itself singularly unlike every one of the ordinary types of human individuality, and yet has underneath a deep basis of real humanity,-if the conception of the character as a whole seems scarcely to have been present to the mind of the biographer, is nowhere painted in words, and must be formed by the reader for himself as the unforced result of patient study of details,-if when formed it is manifestly most unlike the type of character which those men embodied whom the Jews of the first century, or even the Christians of the second, were most apt to count worthy of admiration,-if it stands before us in the majesty of a strength, simplicity, gentleness, dignity, and purity unknown elsewhere, unconceived but in that one ideal of Godlike humanity,-then surely the inference is not precarious that the facts, from the combination of which the image of that wonderful character is reflected, are themselves not fictitious but real.

Let this process be repeated with each of the other two "synoptic” Gospels. If then the result be, as it will be, that the ideal obtained from each is not another, but manifestly one and the same, while yet the different selection of facts related, and the variations in the way of relating the same central fact, exclude the supposition that either drew from the other, or even took his view of the object represented from the same point from which the other regarded it, then certainly the inference becomes greatly strengthened. The proof of reality, arising from this unity in diversity, this harmony as of different notes in the same chord, becomes a proof which technical logicians may perhaps despise, but which no mind, having anything of the practical instinct which distinguishes truth from falsehood in history, can disregard.

And when we go on to notice further that the same conception of Christ's character which we derive from the first three Gospels, evidently underlies the whole of the constantly recurring allusions to the Lord's example and work in the Book of Acts and the Epistles, it

becomes still more impossible to dispute the substantial truth of that history, without which presupposed, the very existence, and still more the triumphant progress, of the early Church, becomes an effect without a cause.

But the argument gains yet more in cumulative force when we turn at last to that fourth Gospel, which even Renan dates before the close of the first century, and admits to be the genuine (though, as he persists in maintaining, the only partly historical) work of the Apostle John. There we have scarcely a single incident which is recorded in the other Gospels, and (as objectors continually remind us) a teaching remarkably unlike on the surface, in form and even in its topics, to that which they report. We have the account of a ministry conducted not in Galilee alone, but in great part at Jerusalem or in Judæa. And yet no candid student will deny that underneath this diversity of outward form he meets still the same Divine yet human personality. The things said, the things done, are mainly other than those said and done in the three Gospels; but the speaker is himself one, the actor one essentially. The character of Christ is still the same. He is as truly man, "of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting;" as truly, and not more certainly, revealed to be the Son of God, the Saviour of the world; He is as patient with sin and waywardness in those who are willing to be taught; as severe toward the arrogant self-assertion of Scribes and Pharisees; as considerate of others, as forgetful of himself; as much and scarcely more conscious of Divine Sonship, and of the authority which belongs to the appointed Judge of all men; as truly, and not more truly, the Good Shepherd, who giveth his life for the sheep; as ready to forgive sin to the penitent, as stern in warning those who harden themselves wilfully against the truth; as plainly, and not more plainly, revealed as the Lord of nature, of human life and death, and of the world to come; as full of sympathy with human sorrow and suffering, as truly Himself a sufferer, as is the Christ of the first three Gospels.

Can it be, then, that the portraits which so differ in every accessory, are so evidently taken from distinct points of view, and yet so wonderfully agree in all which gives the expression and meaning of the face and form, have really no original, no archetype at once Divine and human? Or is it not plain that He whom we have learnt to know from them, and whom the Church from its earliest days has worshipped, such as He is revealed in them, did indeed live once on earth, and died for us, and rose again?

The argument of which we have sketched an outline above, and which we think is the clue running through and connecting all parts of the book before us, and giving purpose and meaning to its multifarious details, will lead us (as indeed the author suggests in the

passage already quoted) to important conclusions with regard to the narratives of miraculous action with which all the Gospels abound. It will be observed that we have not assumed the truth of those narratives in their details. We assume only, with the author, that it is impossible to doubt that his disciples believed our Lord to have wrought many miracles, and that our Lord himself claimed the power of working them. But having now vindicated our right to believe that the character of our Lord is thoroughly historical, entirely real, not the product of human imagination, and is such as each one of the Gospels presents it to us, we ask further, first, whether it is credible that He of whom we speak would advance any claim, or allow others to ascribe to Him any power, which He did not truly possess? Was He one who could deceive, or allow others to practice deception for Him, or could be Himself deceived in such a matter? And we ask, secondly, whether any miracle recorded in our Gospels be half so wonderful as the appearance on earth of Him, the reality of whose life and death is established beyond all reasonable doubt? If the life and character of our Lord be historical, as we believe that they may be proved to be by stronger evidence than can be produced in support of any other fact in history, then the Son of God did indeed come upon earth, as truly made man. Is any miracle harder to believe than the Incarnation itself, which must be real unless the whole life and teaching of our Lord be a baseless fable? Can we believe this, and refuse to believe its necessary adjuncts and concomitants? The Divine Actor is greater than the divinest act. Believing Him, we cannot think any work ascribed to Him incredible.

We have indicated, we fear very imperfectly, what we believe to be the general drift of the argument present to the author's mind. But the peculiar form in which it appears to have been most distinctly apprehended by him is that of a singularly subtle harmony between the character of our Lord, as reflected in his recorded actions, on the one hand, and in his practical teaching or legislation for others, on the other hand. We could wish that the idea had been more distinctly expounded. If apprehended, it gives to the author's treatment of his subject a unity which it might otherwise have seemed to want. His analysis of our Lord's legislation, in the second part of the book, is really in its results an exhibition of our Lord's own character as meant to be reproduced in his disciples. The teaching is just such as grew naturally out of the character of the Teacher. The character of the Teacher is the exemplification of the law He gave to others. He who so taught, and with such results, must Himself have been all that our Gospels tell us He was. And yet there is scarcely anything in our Lord's recorded words to call attention to this coincidence. His biographers seem almost unconscious of its existence. It is pre