gospel to the first three. Until this has been done, no one is
competent to write on the subject; and it is because he has done
this so imperfectly, that Renan's work is, from a critical point
of view, so imperfectly successful.

The anonymous work entitled "The Jesus of History," which we have
placed at the head of this article, is in every respect
noteworthy as the first systematic attempt made in England to
follow in the footsteps of German criticism in writing a life of
Jesus. We know of no good reason why the book should be published
anonymously; for as a historical essay it possesses extraordinary
merit, and does great credit not only to its author, but to
English scholarship and acumen.[19] It is not, indeed, a book
calculated to captivate the imagination of the reading public.
Though written in a clear, forcible, and often elegant style, it
possesses no such wonderful rhetorical charm as the work of
Renan; and it will probably never find half a dozen readers where
the "Vie de Jesus" has found a hundred. But the success of a book
of this sort is not to be measured by its rhetorical excellence,
or by its adaptation to the literary tastes of an uncritical and
uninstructed public, but rather by the amount of critical
sagacity which it brings to bear upon the elucidation of the many
difficult and disputed points in the subject of which it treats.
Measured by this standard, "The Jesus of History" must rank very
high indeed. To say that it throws more light upon the career of
Jesus than any work which has ever before been written in English
would be very inadequate praise, since the English language has
been singularly deficient in this branch of historical
literature. We shall convey a more just idea of its merits if we
say that it will bear comparison with anything which even Germany