THE JESUS OF HISTORY



CHAPTER I

THE STUDY OF THE GOSPELS

If one thing more than another marks modern thought, it is a new
insistence on fact. In every sphere of study there is a growing
emphasis on verification. Where a generation ago a case seemed to be
closed, to-day in the light of new facts it is reopened. Matters
that to our grandfathers were trivialities, to be summarily
dismissed, are seriously studied. Again and again we find the most
fruitful avenues opened to us by questions that another age might
have laughed out of a hearing; to-day they suggest investigation of
facts insufficiently known, and of the difficult connexions between
them. In psychology and in medicine the results of this new tendency
are evident in all sorts of ways--new methods in the treatment of
the sick, new inquiries as to the origin of diseases and the
possibilities of their prevention, attempts to get at the relations
between the soul and body, and a very new open-mindedness as to the
spiritual nature and its working and experiences. In other fields of
learning it is the same.

To the modern student of man and his history the old easy way of
excluding religion as an absurdity, the light prediction of its
speedy, or at least its eventual, disappearance from the field of