re, I had but a few pages
to write. In this manner the book has been composed almost entirely
near the very places where Jesus was born, and where his character was
developed. Since my return, I have labored unceasingly to verify and
check in detail the rough sketch which I had written in haste in a
Maronite cabin, with five or six volumes around me.

[Footnote 1: The work which will contain the results of this mission
is in the press.]

Many will regret, perhaps, the biographical form which my work has
thus taken. When I first conceived the idea of a history of the origin
of Christianity, what I wished to write was, in fact, a history of
doctrines, in which men and their actions would have hardly had a
place. Jesus would scarcely have been named; I should have endeavored
to show how the ideas which have grown under his name took root and
covered the world. But I have learned since that history is not a
simple game of abstractions; that men are more than doctrines. It was
not a certain theory on justification and redemption which brought
about the Reformation; it was Luther and Calvin. Parseeism, Hellenism,
Judaism might have been able to have combined under every form; the
doctrines of the Resurrection and of the Word might have developed
themselves during ages without producing this grand, unique, and
fruitful fact, called Christianity. This fact is the work of Jesus, of
St. Paul, of St. John. To write the history of Jesus, of St. Paul, of
St. John is to write the history of the origin of Christianity. The
anterior movements belong to our subject only in so far as they serve
to throw light upon these extraordinary men, who naturally could not
have existed without connection with that which preceded them.

In such an effort to make the great souls of the past live again, some
share of divination and conjecture must be permitted. A great life is
an organic whole which cannot be rendered by the simple agglomeration
of small facts. It requires a profound sentiment to embrace them all,
moulding them into perfect unity. The method of art in a similar
subject is a good guide; the exquisite tact of a Goethe would know how
to apply it. The essential condition of the creations of art is, that
they shall form a living system of which all the parts are mutually
dependent and related.

In histories such as this, the great test that we have got the truth
is, to have succeeded in combining the texts in such a manner that
they s