t all the
effect which he anticipated. The issue of the furious controversy which
broke out was disastrous both to Strauss' professional career and to his
whole temperament and character.

David Friedrich Strauss was born in 1808 in Ludwigsburg in Wuerttemberg.
He studied in Tuebingen and in Berlin. He became an instructor in the
theological faculty in Tuebingen in 1832. He published his _Leben Jesu_
in 1835. He was almost at once removed from his portion. In 1836 he
withdrew altogether from the professorial career. His answer to his
critics, written in 1837, was in bitter tone. More conciliatory was his
book, _Ueber Vergaengliches und Bleibendes im Christenthum_, published in
1839. Indeed there were some concessions in the third edition of his
_Leben Jesu_ in 1838, but these were all repudiated in 1840. His _Leben
Jesu fuer das deutsche Volk_, published in 1866 was the effort to
popularise that which he had done. It is, however, in point of method,
superior to his earlier work, Comments were met with even greater
bitterness. Finally, not long before his death in 1874, he published
_Der Alte und der Neue Glaube_, in which he definitely broke with
Christianity altogether and went over to materialism and pessimism.

Pfleiderer, who had personal acquaintance with Strauss and held him in
regard, once wrote: 'Strauss' error did not lie in his regarding some of
the gospel stories as legends, and some of the narratives of the
miraculous as symbols of ideal truths. So far Strauss was right. The
contribution which he made is one which we have all appropriated and
built upon. His error lay in his looking for those religious truths
which are thus symbolised, outside of religion itself, in adventurous
metaphysical speculations. He did not seek them in the facts of the
devout heart and moral will, as these are illustrated in the actual life
of Jesus.' If Strauss, after the disintegration in criticism of certain
elements in the biography of Jesus, had given us a positive picture of
Jesus as the ideal of religious character and ethical force, his work
would indeed have been attacked. But it would have outlived the attack
and conferred a very great benefit. It conferred a great benefit as it
was, although not the benefit which Strauss supposed. The benefit which
it really conferred was in its critical method, and not at all in its
results.

Of the mass of polemic and apologetic literature which Strauss' _Leben
Jesu_ called forth, li