AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

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I HAVE for many years cherished a secret inclination to attempt a delineation of the life of Jesus. It is to my present official situation, however, that I am indebted for leisure and opportunity to realize this idea. I think it necessary to state this, for the sake of preventing erroneous constructions, and especially such as might attribute the polemics of my work rather to my external relations than to my internal convictions.

The fact that multitudinous works on the life of Jesus have followed each other in a succession which at present seems endless, has not availed to turn me from my purpose. The conviction that I also am called upon to promote the knowledge of this great subject, is accompanied by a good conscience, and forbids all false and conventional apologies, and only allows me to offer them for my defective fulfilment of a work entrusted to me. It seems to me, moreover, that there can be no reason for any uneasiness at the appearance of so many works on the life of Jesus. The fact that, even by professional and official theologians, direct and repeated insult has of late been done to the Gospel history, the pride and boast of Christendom, and that the attempt has been made to form this insulting theology into a distinct school, which shall institute a new treatment of the Gospels, has evoked this phenomenon. The various Lives of Jesus; of the better sort form a new theological consecration, which we may hope is not yet concluded. The old custom, however, of connecting a consecration with a fair, applies in this case also; and we must reconcile ourselves to the connection of this consecration with the motley fair of a mass of works on the life of Jesus, furnished in answer to external motives.

The plan which is to guide the work begun in this volume bears reference to the foundation, the peculiar characteristics, and the development of the evangelical history, and hence to its root, its stem, and its branches.

With respect to the foundation of the Gospel history, the attempt has been made, in the present Book, to furnish a clear representation of two of its essential relations: its relation, on the one hand, to the ideal and its multiform phenomena, and on the other, to criticism.

In the second Book follows a continuous and synoptic exhibition of the life of Jesus. In this I hope to give distinct prominence to the chief particulars of the articulation by which the four Gospels are united into one actual history.

In the third and last Book, I propose to sketch the life of Jesus in its broader features, according to that development of its infinite rich ness which is presented by the peculiar views of each separate Gospel. In this work, the assumption (which is still too widely prevalent) that the essential Gospel history is injured, and has become a spoilt joint history, will be emphatically opposed. The prejudice, that the four accounts are the source of a want of unity, will be met by the proof that they rather exhibit the richness of this unity. If the Lord give me health and strength, the execution of the work shall not be delayed.

The relation of the Gospel history to that criticism which is antagonistic to it, is already happily and ecclesiastically decided. It is, however, the task of Theology to explain the same scientifically; and the author will feel happy if he shall in any wise have contributed to its accomplishment. It may here, however, be once for all remarked, that too sharp a distinction cannot be made between criticism in a Christian sense, and the Antichristian nuisance which now assumes that name. Christianity is, in its absolute trustworthiness and infinite depth of spiritual light and vigour, identical with true criticism. Never let us attribute to a sincere and candid testing of the Gospels, and of Holy Scripture in general, the evils appertaining to criticism falsely so called. Even the most certain facts of faith are not, in the fullest sense, our own possession, till the sharpest, most vigilant, and most practised spiritual intellect has freely admitted and appropriated them. If man is to be fully blessed, his understanding, no less than his other powers, must be fully satisfied.

his pure interest has, in any case, less to do with those highly partial dialectics which would now obtrude upon it as 'Criticism' than, William Tell with John the Parricide; for it is the interest of 'Criticism' of this kind always to sever the ideal as widely as possible from the real. Hence arose the canon, that if any narrative of the Gospels shows a gleam of ideality, or betrays any symbolical light, its historical nature is doubtful. This monstrous error, followed out to its results, denies Christianity itself. For what is Christianity but the announcement of the Incarnate Word, and the glorification of the historical Christ in the light of the Spirit? This error, however, in its milder forms, has been widely propagated. It has beguiled even pious and sincere critics, such as Schleiermacher and others. When Schleiermacher, e.g., remarks (on the writings of Luke,  P. 47), in contesting the historical character of the narrative of the visit of the magi, 'Has it not, in its deepest foundations, a character wholly symbolical ?' &c.—his remark is quite in accordance with this canon. It is the very thing we demand of the primitive facts Of Christianity, that they should have a wholly symbolical character that the universe should be mirrored in them, and that not only in their deepest foundations, as if this crystal were still obscured by its crust of dull ore. Thus Von Ammon, too, lays down the rule (die Gesech, des Lebens Jesu, vol. i. p. 4): Though even history only attains connection and keeping through the ideal and tendency of the world, yet the too intimate union of the ideal and the real, of the natural and supernatural, is prejudicial to the actuality of events/ Certainly, it may be answered, the old commonplace reality may, and even must, be prejudiced by the (but not too) intimate union of the ideal and the real, it must at last perish; but this is in order that this ordinary reality, this reality invaded by the illusions of unreality, may not for ever prejudice the ideal in the realization of the true reality. Weisse, in his Evang. Gesch., repeatedly returns to the above-mentioned proposition. The historical revelation of God in the Gospel (it is said, vol. i. p. 231) loses nothing of its holy contents, if a part of these contents, instead of being viewed as direct fact of a kind in which divinity exhibits itself more in jest than in earnest, and carrying on, so to speak, a paradoxical, half poetic, half prosaic jest with its own sublimest work, is rather recognised as the genial and intellectual work, in which the group of men to whom the divine revelation of Christianity was first addressed, preserved a productive creative consciousness of that Divine Spirit which descended among them, and of the mode of His agency. It is such a consciousness which has found its thoroughly fitting expression in the sacred legend' Here, then, the productive creative consciousness of a group of men is to surpass the productivity of the Spirit which descended among them, so that the revelation of the Logos is again overgrown by a new mythology. If Weisse had duly estimated the paradoxical, half poetic, half prosaic game of divinity in the Gospel history as the manifestation of God,—a manifestation, on one side wholly ideal, on the other wholly actual, and therefore specifically Christian,—his writings would not have furnished so many germs, which, growing in rank luxuriance in the works of Bruno Bauer, have shot up under the assumption, consistently developed by the latter, that the creative consciousness of the group of men to whom the revelation was at first addressed produced the whole work of the Gospels. In Strauss and Bruno Bauer this severance between the ideal and reality, so far as the latter is to be described in its full force as individual reality, appears in the form of a well-defined principle.

Strauss will not allow that the ideal was in Christ also the historical (vol. ii. p. 690), though the divine consciousness is said to have been in absolute force in Him (p. 689). It cannot, indeed, be understood how the absolute force of divine consciousness should remain behind the representation of the ideally historical, unless it had to contend with the inflexible material of an obscure primitive substance, in which case the absolute force is mere word. At length Bruno Bauer found the matter of reality so obstinate, that he found it most convenient to view the Gospel history as originating in the vacant space of the fixed idea of the Evangelists, instead of suffering it to struggle in that swamp of Ahriman, which reality seemed to him to form. 'The author' says he in his Kritik der Evang. Gesch., &c., vol. i. p. 57, speaking of the presentation of Jesus in the temple yes, the author has been at work here. Reality does not manage matters as easily as he does. Reality does not present the appearance of being a work of art, in which, whether in a picture or on the stage, all that is forcible is artistically arranged, so as to suit the spectators and its own component parts; it inter poses a dull and scarcely penetrable mass it interposes years and conflicts with the refractory material of the intellectual public, between its heroes and those with whom they stand in historical connection, &c. Criticism, it is said, p. 59, is constrained to point out the true historical reality of the ideal, in opposition to the nullity of the supposed facts' Thus, however, the reality of the ideal re mains, though contrasted in a shadowy manner to the nullity of the facts. Criticism, however, is progressive; for in vol. iii. p. 311, it is said, If we so view the Gospels as to overlook their mutual contradictions, i.e., if we abstract from their confused .contents a general image, as simple, unprejudiced faith is wont to do, we shall be in the highest degree amazed that they could have possibly occupied mankind for the space of eighteen centuries, and indeed have so occupied them that their secret was not discovered. For in not one, not even in the shortest paragraph, are there wanting views which injure, insult, and irritate mankind. Here, then, even the ideals which the Gospels contain are condemned as culprits.

But the same author informs us, vol. i. p. 82, how the Gospels must have originated. He leads us into the factory of an Evangelist, in which the religious self-consciousness is occupied with the work of creative self-development in the production of a Gospel. How then is this work going on? As religious self-consciousness, it is entirely possessed by its own matter: it cannot live without it, nor without continually producing and stating it; for it possesses therein the experience of its own certainty. But as religious consciousness, it views itself, at the same time, as entirely distinct from its essential matter, and so soon as it has developed, and at the same moment that it develops and exhibits it, this matter becomes to it reality, existing independently, above and beyond itself, as the absolute and its history. That this is said with reference not to the gradual productivity of the Church, but to the literary labour of the Evangelist, is proved by the whole context, and especially by the following remark: 'Belief in these productions is further secured by the fact, that the incentive to their composition, and the first material used therein, was furnished from without, and even by the belief of the whole Church.

If the above psychological portraits of certain religious authors were laid before a medical college of our days for their opinion, and the precaution used of naming neither the originals nor the artist they could scarcely pass any other judgment then that these authors were deranged

The author had already thus depicted the Evangelists before the decision of the Evangelical Theological Faculty of Prussia had appointed him to his theological office.

The critical tendency here pointed out proceeds, then, from a philosophical principle opposed to the perfect union of the actual and the ideal. This tendency has already settled down into the constant practice of suspecting a Gospel fact to be unhistorical, if similar facts occur in the Old Testament. Neither, in this respect, has it been thought sufficient to compare together mere accessory incidents of the Old and New Testaments. When, e.g., in the one, Moses, coming down from the mount, finds the people in the midst of wild amusements, and in the other, Christ, descending from the mount of transfiguration, finds a helpless multitude, perplexed disciples, and in the midst of the sad group the demoniac boy and his afflicted father, this is said to be a similarity which makes the New Testament narrative suspicious. (Bauer, vol. iii. p. 59.) Moses, indeed, when he ascended the mountain, left Aaron and Hur and the seventy elders below, that whoever had any matter might apply to them. So also were the disciples left at the bottom, while the Lord was on the mount, and so was a matter actually brought before them. It is well known, too, how the later books of the Old and New Testament, and similarly related phenomena, have been placed in battle array against each other. Such a mode of procedure must, however, be protested against for the sake of the ideal itself. If in proportion as history becomes rich in significance, refers in its accounts of great persons to still greater, alludes in its statements of extraordinary events to the most extraordinary, and, being more and more penetrated by the eternal light, points with increasing plainness to the rising of an eternal sun of reconciliation between the ideal and the actual, it is to be viewed with suspicion, this amounts, however unconscious the organs of such criticism may be of the fact, to a progressive theoretic brutalization of reality;—a process at first confined to its memorials, but, after their destruction, extended to its very self. (See Apokal. xiii.)

We now pass from the theoretic to the ethical motives of this criticism. It is evident that many of the assumptions lately made in criticising the Gospels, and the Scriptures in general, can only be explained on the supposition that those who hold them must occupy a doubtful position with relation to the moral sublimity of primitive Christianity and its instruments. If any one were to assert that Schiller, in his Wilhelm Tell, intended to depreciate the Germans in comparison with the Swiss, that Göthe, in his Faust, intended to undervalue German students and citizens, every one would zealously protest against points of view so very subordinate and insufficient. If, moreover, an acute observer were to maintain that he could still perceive in the glowing ruby traces of its material basis, the clay, and that in its ruddy hue he still saw the remains of the red soil, or that in the sparkling diamond he could recognise its primitive parent, the common black charcoal, -so acute a natural philosopher would be dismissed with a smile. The canon would be acted on, that in the matured phenomena of a higher grade of existence, the agents of the decidedly surpassed grade can no more appear as factors, or in unbroken masses and forms. It is according to this rule also, that we must judge those critical representations which suppose they have discovered in the fourth Gospel, now a neglect of Peter in comparison with John, now an over-estimation of Andrew; or in the third, a miserable tendency to a compromise between Pauline and Ebionitic Christianity; or in the Acts, an effort to exalt Paul by the juxtaposition of his history with that of Peter. Did not the disputes of the disciples for precedence end with Good Friday? Can we doubt their maintenance of their new point of view, when they could so freely confess their old one to the world, and speak of it as the sinful folly of a former time? Could they have again so pitiably sunk from the sublime height of suffering and triumphing with Christ? Is it not rather this over-refined criticism, which insists on seeing the red clay in the ruby, which must be designated as deeply degenerated as fallen from the heights of Christian theology, which believes in the article of the Holy Ghost in the Church, to the point of view of 'Kabale und Liebe' to a condition in which it discovers even in the Gospels the well-known fruits of literary intrigue, because it seeks everywhere only its own flesh and blood? Hence arises the miserable assumption, which seems to have almost formed itself into a school, that primitive Christianity was radically an Ebionite, and therefore a mutilated Christianity; and that it was not till afterwards that a pure catholic Christianity cast off this mutilating element.

It cannot be denied that Ebionite elements existed as accidental, suppressed, restrained principles in many members of the pentecostal Church. But if even the fundamental principles of this Church had been attacked by this Ebionitish nightmare, we should then obtain an image of a redeeming, world-moving fact, which had itself entered the world crippled and needing redemption. But primitive Christianity passes by such observations in its pure New Testament purity, and it is the task of true criticism to get rid of combinations which transform into moral caricatures the glorious forms of the Gospel narrative. It is in the nature of things that the methods of spurious criticism should correspond with its principles. We have said what seemed most necessary in this respect in the body of the work, and have also adduced proofs; while for the more detailed corroboration of our assertions we have referred to the best known works on this subject. As, however, it might seem to many but reasonable that more copious proofs should be adduced, we here cite some which are met with in the works of Strauss and Bruno Bauer, contrasting the actual facts with the treatment they have experienced at the hands of the above-named writers.

Papias, one of the Fathers, expresses himself in the following manner concerning a Gospel of Matthew: 'Matthew wrote λόγια (a Gospel writing) in the Hebrew language. And this every one explained (or translated) as best he could. Thus Papias refers (1) o a Hebrew Gospel of Matthew; (2) to efforts at explanation, or translation of the same, of varying value. This fact is thus treated by Strauss: The Fathers, indeed, referred this testimony expressly to our first Gospel; but there is not only no (it should have been no decided) reference thereto in the words of the apostolic Father, but the apostolical writing of which he speaks cannot be directly (this directly is needless) identical with it, because, according to the evidence of Papias, Matthew wrote eἑβραί διιαλέκτῳ, while the fact that our Greek Gospel of Matthew is a translation of the original Hebrew, is merely assumed (it ought to have been added, in agreement with the evidence of Papias) by the Fathers.

The same Papias says of St Mark, that, as companion and interpreter to Peter, he received his Gospel orally from that apostle, and afterwards committed it to writing. The above-named critic says, Our second Gospel cannot have been derived from remembrances of the tradition of Peter, and thus from an original source peculiarly its own, because it is evidently compounded from the first and third, even if only from recollections of these. Here we have (1) the much disputed hypothesis, that St Mark's Gospel was de rived from St Matthew's and St Luke s, laid down as an established fact; (2) it is represented as an impossibility that a man's own remembrances should take the same form in which others had expressed the same experiences. Two wonderful delusions!

Again, there is no evidence existing that Polycarp, the disciple of the Apostle John, knew the fourth Gospel, or described it as the work of that apostle. Irenaeus, the disciple of Polycarp (who, how ever, mentions St John as the author of the fourth Gospel), adduces no such evidence. An early statement of the critic is as follows: There is no evidence given by Polycarp, who is said to have known John, not even in what remains of his writings (viz., a single short epistle), that John was the author of this Gospel: even Irenaeus, the disciple of Polycarp, cannot appeal to one sentence of his master in favour of its genuineness (directly opposed to fact). In a later statement he says, It must excite surprise that Irenaeus, who already had to defend John's authorship of this Gospel against opponents, neither on this, nor any other occasion, &c., appeals in this matter to the most important authority of this apostolic man. Would, then, this appeal to his own youthful reminiscences have been a public means of proof? His declaration at least leaves this reminiscence to be inferred. But what if Irenaeus, in proof of his own declaration, had said: It is the case, for Polycarp once told me so?

Once more, Mary receives the message of the angel that, by the miraculous agency of God, she shall become the mother of the Messiah, and is found with child of the Holy Ghost. Joseph learns her condition, probably from herself, though we are not told so; he mistrusts her, and is about to put her away; but the information of an angel gives him the confidence he needed. The critic says, They who insist that Mary did not act in the manner which the Evangelists certainly do not assume (viz., concealing the secret from Joseph), must suppose her to have communicated the angelic message to her betrothed immediately after its reception, and that he gave no credence to her information, and will then have to find some way of clearing the character of Joseph. What kind care for the character of Joseph! The critics would certainly have believed the most extraordinary event on the word of the pious Virgin. Joseph did not, which made him a character, and preserved him, by the bye, from the opposite reproof of the critic, that he was without a character. According, however, to the present requirements of the critic, Joseph ought, on the mere assurance of his betrothed, to have met the reproaches of the whole world, and said: The miracle is certain, for Mary herself tells me so!

Again, Christ did not, when dealing with the Jews, appeal to His miraculous origin. The fact is easy of explanation. This mystery is conceivable only by those who are initiated into the depths of the Christian faith, and is one which could not be announced to the profane, as being, more than any other, liable to profanation. Our critic says, All his contemporaries esteemed Him a son of Joseph (as indeed in a civil point of view He was), and not seldom (twice at least) was this contemptuously and reproachfully expressed in His presence, and a decided opportunity thus afforded Him of appealing to His miraculous conception! That is to say, of declaring: This mystery is true; my mother Mary told me so. Certainly 'Criticism' would forthwith have believed Him.

According to the Gospel of St Luke, a family relationship existed between Mary and the family of John the Baptist. It might consequently be presumed that John was acquainted with Jesus before the Baptism of the latter. This seems, too, to have been actually the case, since, according to Matthew, the Baptist, on the appearance of Jesus, immediately uttered an exclamation expressive of the deepest reverence. According however, to the fourth Evangelist, the Baptist said, with a retrospect to a time prior to that when the heavenly manifestation at Jesus baptism had accredited Him as the Messiah: I knew Him not. The remarks of our critic are as follow: If John were personally acquainted with Jesus, in conformity with Luke's account of the relationship existing between them, it is impossible that he should not early enough have received the information, how solemnly Jesus had been announced as the Messiah, both before and after His birth; nor could he have subsequently said that he knew nothing of it (I knew Him not!) till he received a sign from heaven, but would have stated that he had not believed the account of the former signs, one of which had actually occurred to himself (as he perhaps remembered, in his mother's womb). That is to say, that unless the Baptist wished to appear as an un believer, incredulous even concerning his earliest impressions, in his mother's womb, he would, in consequence of his youthful reminiscences, have announced with prophetic confidence and authority that Jesus was the Messiah; and if questioned concerning his divine assurance and credentials, have answered: My mother Elisabeth told me so. Thus would criticism have it, assuring us it would have given more credit than believers in the Bible could have done to the assurances of the pious women in this great theocratic vital question, nay, that it would have inconsiderately believed them, and, with an entire misconception of its office, have preached the mystery upon their authority. How sublime, on the contrary, is the conscientiousness of the Baptist when he says, I knew Him not! But after the striking sign from heaven he knows Him. In the kingdom of God affairs are conducted with more diplomatic exact ness than most critics imagine.

One of the most pointed and sublime of the sayings of Jesus is that recorded by St Luke (ch. xiii. 33): I must walk to-day, and to-morrow, and the day following; for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. Every unprejudiced reader must at once feel and understand the greatness of this saying. The critic Bruno Bauer makes the remark, Where is the dogma written, that no prophet can perish out of Jerusalem, or what antecedents could lead Jesus to a dogma of this kind?

If Christ demands of His hearers, at one time, that they should believe, at another, that they should watch and pray, or even that they should fast with anointed face, we are nevertheless convinced that His demands are everywhere identical, because prayer is the expression of faith, and fasting is to be grounded on the heartfelt devotion of faith. The same critic observes, concerning the narrative of Mark ix. 14-29, It is certainly a contradiction, when the Lord, in the same breath, requires faith, and fasting, and prayer, as the condition of one and the same work.

According to Matt, xviii. 1-5, Jesus places a child in the midst of His disciples to reprove their ambition, and says the words: Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven/ The critic says, in answer to the childish question of the disciples, Jesus takes a child we should like to know where it came from, since, according to the original narrative, the transaction took place in the house in which Jesus and His disciples were resting after their journey; we should like also to have seen the perplexed face of the poor child, placed in the midst of the disciples, to serve for a lecture to them and after He had set it in the midst of His disciples a piece of cake would have pleased it better, He said, &c. We should like to know where it came from! A horse, a horse! my kingdom for a horse! As the fugitive despairing king cries out for a horse, so does the critic seem here to be crying out for a child to save the veracity of the Gospel history, which has been committed to his keeping. Or does not the matter rather stand thus: if in this place a child were anywhere to be had, if a child should but have stepped into the midst, the critic is annihilated.

We must indeed remark, that all the regular mental activity which, under the name of criticism, has presented so strange and meteor-like an appearance in the province of New Testament theology, has surpassed itself in misrepresentations, contemptuous jokes and blasphemies, in the third vol. of Bruno Bauer's Kritik der evangclischen Geschichte.

It were much to be wished that some young theologian, endowed with a sufficient amount of good-humour, would bring out a harmony of the principal modern critics of the Gospels. If the great discrepancies of these writers were collected together, or arranged lor contest with each other in only a moderately striking manner, a sad exhibition would be presented. It would be seen that here, as formerly in the camp of the Philistines (1 Sam. xiv. 20), every man's sword was against his fellow, and there would be a very great discomfiture. The scene would, however, be followed by the conviction, that there is in this world nothing more uncertain than a certain 'knowledge' viz., the knowledge of those knowing ones who, as a reviewer in Tholuck's Anzeiger strikingly remarks, make their inferences with arguments like blackberries. It may be hoped that times more propitious for the scientific development of the theological material of the Gospel history will very soon appear, when the produce of decidedly antagonistic criticism may be disposed of in very short archaeological foot-notes. Meanwhile, the contest must be carried on, on this field, in spite of the ill-will and disgust of him who wages it. It must not, however, be forgotten, that the first and more formidable leaders of antagonistic criticism have not concerned themselves with mere Gospel pictures alone, but also with the frames in which the older harmonistic theology had enclosed them. The steady, clear, and discerning eye of a connoisseur will not indeed let itself be prejudiced against the tranquil beauty of an old picture by the inappropriateness of its frame; but the frame may, by its contrast of tawdry finery and repulsive dirt, prejudice even against the picture one who bestows upon it a more hasty though candid inspection. Those critics who have misconceived the Gospel, must take it into account that anxiety with respect to the agreement of the evangelical records was already in the house before they so violently assaulted the door, and that the anxiety disappeared in proportion to the violence of their attack. The first unbelief was ecclesiastical official zeal, which forced the letter of the Gospels into harmony, because it had neglected, nay, almost forgot ten, their internal unity.

The work which I have commenced shall, by God's help, take its part in the efforts now making to exhibit the internal unity of the Gospel history. The first part is sent forth with a lively feeling of its known and unknown defects. The book, however, certainly stands prepared to be annihilated by one party, to be possibly ignored, or even unworthily treated, by another. They who, with the author, recognise the manifestation of eternal life in the centre of humanity, of the world, and of time, or who at least have not suffered the great and simple sense of this eternal life to be perplexed by the phantom-like contest of ancient and modern delusions in our days, will receive the work in a friendly spirit. May it, if in ever so small a measure, contribute to those signs of spring which foretell an approaching vernal season to the Church!

THE AUTHOR.

ZURICH, Nov. 5, 1843.