can be found
in any human being. I think, therefore, that if we knew no more we
should {186} know by no means little about Him. But as a matter of
fact the foundation-pillars are but the starting-point for our study of
the life of Jesus.'[4] And this study, he concludes, gives us nothing
less than 'pretty well the whole bulk of Jesus' teaching, in so far as
its object is to explain in a purely religious and ethical way what God
requires of man and wherein man requires comfort and consolation from
God.' The standpoint of Professor Schmiedel is not the standpoint of
the Church as a whole: he fearlessly and aggressively endeavours to
remove any misconception on that subject: all the more remarkable that,
renouncing so much, he incontrovertibly establishes so much,
incontrovertibly establishes, we may not unreasonably contend, a great
deal more than he admits: he cannot, we may think, stop logically where
he does. All this may, or may not, be legitimately argued: there can
{187} be no doubt that one whose dislike of traditional dogmas is
excessive, and whose scrutiny of the Gospel records is minute and
unsparing, forces us to say of Jesus, What manner of Man is this?

It is the same with the general tendency of modern criticism. From the
day that Strauss accomplished his destructive work, the Figure of Jesus
as a Historical Reality has been more and more endowed with power.[5]
No age has so occupied itself with Him, none has so endeavoured to
recall the features of His character, to apply His teachings to the
solution of social questions, as this age of ruthless inquiry. The
inquirers may have abjured tradition, but almost without exception they
have profoundly reverenced, if they have not actually worshipped, Jesus
of Nazareth, and they have found in His Gospel moral and spiritual
light and life.

{188}

Some thirty years ago, M. Andre Lefevre, a fervid disciple of
Materialism, an uncompromising and bitter opponent of every symptom of
religious manifestation, could not help discerning 'with the
clairvoyance of hatred,' the influence of Christianity in modern
thought. 'Descartes, Leibnitz, Locke, Condillac, Newton, Bonnet, Kant,
Hegel, Spinoza himself, Toland and Priestley, Rousseau, all are
Christians somewhere.... Voltaire himself has not completely
eliminated the virus: his Deism is not exempt from it.'[6] The same
thing is still occurring. In the most unexpected quarters we find the
fascination of Christ