Let men see that you are ministers because you are men, and they will respect your ministry. Do not fret against the limitations which shut you in with all things noble, and only shut you out from some things pleasant. Be tranquil in the atmosphere of serene truths; be happy in the spiritual companionship of the good among the living, of the sainted among the dead; hold fast the unseen hands of the men who have lived and died for their fellows; and listen for every note of that still, sad music which has breathed, and is ever breathing, from those who have borne the cross, and have found in sacrifice an all-sufficing joy.

ART. II. - UHLHORN'S "MODERN REPRESENTATIONS

OF THE LIFE OF JESUS."

The Modern Representations of the Life of Jesus.

Four Discourses

delivered before the Evangelical Union at Hanover, Germany. By Dr. GERARD UHLHORN, First Preacher to the Court. Translated from the third German edition, by CHARLES H. GRINNELl. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1866. pp. xii, 164.

To those who see in Christianity only one among the more remarkable phenomena of history, and in its founder only a person with a singular "genius for religion," there is presented a continual problem: many centuries have passed, yet the questions touching society or the individual, which arose with Christianity, are still the absorbing themes of discus sion; the life of Jesus is still the most fascinating in history. Why is it that each new attempt to solve the mystery of that life creates a sensation in every class of the community, whether addressed to the scholar or "to the people;" while Clough's "Plutarch," Forsyth's "Cicero," and even Irving's "Washington," fall comparatively unnoticed from the press? Is it because the facts in the life of Jesus are disputed, together with the significance of his work? The same may be said of the career of Mohammed; but omit those grosser details,

which attract indeed like the carrion of the wilderness, and who cares for the life of Mohammed, except the historian? Is it because the life of Jesus gathers an interest from those relations to Christianity into which we are accidentally born, this network of life and civilization about us? If this be conceded, we are only called to the solution of a new problem: What has interwoven Christianity so inextricably with. all the interests of this Occidental life?

It was with no surprise, then, that on the appearance of "Ecce Homo," two years ago, we saw in the murmurs of applause and dissatisfaction from over the water the interest which a new life of Jesus awakened in the minds of English readers. For thirty years we had had the German, and more lately the French, conception of Jesus: we had then to welcome in "Ecce Homo" a thoroughly English one,- English in its popular style, its waiving of the critical method, perhaps also in its theory of the State.

To-day there is a lull. Strauss, Lange, Hase, Renan, Schenkel, and we know not what others, have from various points of view drawn their portraits of Jesus. We have now before us, and propose to notice in these pages, a critical study of the chief of these sketches,-those of Strauss, Renan, and Schenkel, and indeed a survey of the ground and of the foundations of the Christian edifice. The author, Dr. Uhlhorn, of Hanover, though apparently a high Lutheran, speaks for the most part with admirable calmness and dignity. While not disguising his earnest desire to establish the Orthodox view of Christ's life and work, he strengthens his position not a little by his fairness in stating the case of his opponents; by what Martineau, in his "Essay on Mill," calls "a deliberate, intellectual conscientiousness, which, scorning to take advantage of accidental weakness, will even help an opponent to develop his strength, that none but the real and decisive issue may be tried." be tried." We feel that he knows both what he speaks and whereof he affirms, and that he can afford to be quite just to his opponents.

We are indebted to Mr. Grinnell, not only for translating the work, but for putting it into such strong, happily chosen,

and idiomatic English. This adds much to our pleasure in reading the book.

The work contains rather more than the title would lead us to expect. It is not merely an examination of the "Modern Representations of the Life of Jesus:" nearly half the book is taken up with the Gospels and the miracles, treated somewhat independently. There are four discourses whose contents may be briefly stated as follows:

In the first discourse, after tracing the historical preparation in the decline in the first third of our century of the old or "vulgar" rationalism, in the publication of the views of Strauss, and, later, of those of the Tübingen school (both these latter having endeavored to explain the origin of Christianity independently of Jesus), the author comes to the "Life of Jesus" by Renan. Of this he gives a summary, and criticises unfavorably the picture thus drawn. In the second discourse, he does the same for the views of Schenkel and Strauss. In the third discourse, the authenticity of the Gospels is 'discussed. Assuming for the moment, for the sake of the argument, that the miraculous element in these books is no bar to our acceptance of them, he unfolds the evidence of their genuineness; and especially in the case of the fourth Gospel, where both the external and the internal evidence is given at some length. In the fourth discourse the author takes up what he had previously waived, the question of

miracles.

We purpose now to call attention, with comment or query, to several passages which struck us in the reading.

On page 9, as again on pp. 114 seq., and 150, the author presents the chief, perhaps the ultimate and unanswerable, argument for Christianity, the life of its defenders. "Come and see" is an appeal beside which miracles are as nothing. On the same page, the author alludes to the indirect influ ence of such writers as Strauss and Schenkel on many per sons who, from want of time or inclination, have not read the books, but who “content themselves with the knowledge of having it down in black and white, that it is all over with Christianity!" We are reminded of what a biographer of

Pascal tells us, that while the Jesuits in vain essayed to put forth other than the frailest, most absurd replies to the "Provincial Letters," thousands of their adherents and admirers took great comfort from the fact that an answer had been made!

On p. 6, after showing that each new attack on Christianity begins by declaring every preceding one a failure, the author strikingly adds, "It is as if we heard at the door the feet of them who shall come in to carry out those also who lord it over the present day." The point which made perhaps the deepest impression on us in the first discourse was this, that after the ill success of Strauss and of the Tübingen school in explaining the origin and growth of Christianity independently of Christ, both parties seem now agreed to fight the battle upon this narrower ground, the 'person and work of Jesus.

"The attack, therefore, is all the more dangerous, since it is now directed against the very heart of the Christian faith; but the change in the situation is evidence of unmistakable progress. We are at least rid of Christianity without Christ. The ground is cleared; and, though the fight is harder, the issue is fortunately nearer" (pp. 16).

The absurdities of Renan are set forth well, and not without a touch of humor, as on pp. 24, 25. On p. 28, the author shows, as Professor Fisher has so well done in his examination of Renan ("Essays on the Supernatural Origin of Christianity "), that Renan has unconsciously aided the cause he assailed, by reducing the discussion to a dilemma in which an honest and unbiassed mind cannot evade the claims of Christianity.

"We may truly learn from Renan whither one is led, who, on the one hand, admits the records of the evangelists to be historical, even if it is only in their outlines, (and this must be admitted by any one who is not willing to fall into a most unscientific arbitrariness); and, on the other hand, refuses to acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God become man. Then, it is true, one gets a mere man, but most certainly not a purely moral one, a pattern of genuine humanity; but one that is from intrinsic necessity a fanatic and an impostor."

We have, however, a criticism to make. The clause which we have thrown into a parenthesis, because it is not essential to the statement of the dilemma, is really the very point at issue, by denying which the opponent escapes the dilemma. For if the latter were stated in a formal way, it might stand thus: If the Gospels be historical, then either Jesus is the Son of God, &c., or else he is a fanatic and impostor (for the Gospels make him claim to be the Son of God, &c.). On p. 31, the author, after speaking of Renan's attempt to palliate the lying and imposture of which he makes Jesus guilty, pointedly adds,

"Take notice here, that these are the moral foundations of those who talk so much about morality, and plume themselves upon reducing Christianity to its simple moral principles."

In our author's examination of Schenkel, he is at times far from satisfactory. On p. 52 he finds fault with Schenkel for admitting a groundwork in fact for the narrative of miracles, but denying the miraculous itself. But does not our author allow, with some of the keenest of the Orthodox writers, that there is against a miracle a certain presumption, which must be removed; and that some quite natural events have been known in history to take on a miraculous coloring? Again, on p. 62, while charging Schenkel with a wavering view of the sinlessness of Jesus, in that he speaks of great inner struggles and storms which Jesus is supposed to have experienced, our author says, "Where inner storms and temptations are, there is sin." Would he hold, then, that Jesus had no inner struggles? What mean those words attributed to him in the Gospel of John (xii. 27): "Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? [Shall I say], Father, save me from this hour? But for this cause came I unto this hour." Again, on p. 65, the author seems to lay stress on the Godhead of Jesus as essential to our belief in his sinlessness. But, if Jesus was sinless by virtue of his Godhead, what merit in it? Why say any thing about it? If God, could he be otherwise than sinless?