the Gospels; I have visited Jerusalem, Hebron, and Samaria; scarcely
any important locality of the history of Jesus has escaped me. All
this history, which at a distance seems to float in the clouds of an
unreal world, thus took a form, a solidity, which astonished me. The
striking agreement of the texts with the places, the marvellous
harmony of the Gospel ideal with the country which served it as a
framework, were like a revelation to me. I had before my eyes a fifth
Gospel, torn, but still legible, and henceforward, through the
recitals of Matthew and Mark, in place of an abstract being, whose
existence might have been doubted, I saw living and moving an
admirable human figure. During the summer, having to go up to Ghazir,
in Lebanon, to take a little repose, I fixed, in rapid sketches, the
image which had appeared to me, and from them resulted this history.
When a cruel bereavement hastened my departure, I had but a few pages
to write. In this manner the book has been composed almost entirely
near the very places where Jesus was born, and where his character was
developed. Since my return, I have labored unceasingly to verify and
check in detail the rough sketch which I had written in haste in a
Maronite cabin, with five or six volumes around me.

[Footnote 1: The work which will contain the results of this mission
is in the press.]

Many will regret, perhaps, the biographical form which my work has
thus taken. When I first conceived the idea of a history of the origin
of Christianity, what I wished to write was, in fact, a history of
doctrines, in which men and their actions would have hardly had a
place. Jesus would scarcely have been named; I should have endeavored
to show how the ideas which have grown under his name took root and
covered the world. But I have learned since that history is not a