College de France. At the age of 55
he was elected a member of the French Academy. His works
include "A History of Semitic Languages," a "History of the
Origins of Christianity," and a "History of the People of
Israel," besides many volumes of essays and criticism, and
several autobiographical books of great charm. Everybody read
Renan, and disagreed with him. The orthodox rejected his
opinions, and the unorthodox his sentiment. But his books
marked an epoch in religious criticism. "The Life of Jesus"
was the outcome of a visit to Palestine in pursuance of
research studies of Phoenician civilisation. A feature is the
importance given to scenic surroundings which he could so
happily describe. Renan died on October 2, 1892, widely
admired, honoured, and also condemned, and was buried in the
Pantheon.

_THE HOUR AND THE MAN_

The principal event in the history of the world is the revolution by
which the noblest portions of humanity have forsaken the ancient
religions of Paganism for a religion founded on the Divine Unity, the
Trinity, and the Incarnation of the Son of God. Nearly a thousand years
were required to achieve this conversion. The new religion itself took
at least three hundred years in its formation. But the origin of the
revolution is a historical event which happened in the reigns of
Augustus and Tiberius. At that time there lived a man of supreme
personality, who, by his bold originality, and by the love which he was
able to inspire, became the object, and settled the direction, of the
future faith of mankind.

The great empires which succeeded each other in Western Asia annihilated
all the hopes of the Jewish race for a terrestial kingdom, and cast it
back on religious dreams, which it cherished with a kind of sombre
passion. The establishment of the Roman empire exalted men's
imaginations, and the great era of peace on which the world was entering
gave birth to illimitable hopes. This confused medley of dreams found at
length an interpretation in the peerless man to whom the universal
conscience has decreed the title of the Son of God, and that with
justice, since he gave religion an impetus greater than that which any
other man has been capable of giving--an impetus with which, in all
probability, no further advance will be comparable.

_YOUTH AND EDUCATION_

Jesus was born at Nazareth, a small town in Galilee, which bef