THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY. Vol. I.

AMONG Continental theologians of the younger generation there are few, if any, that occupy a more distinguished place than Professor Wernle of the University of Basel, and his work on the Beginnings of the Christian Religion, which is now presented to the English-speaking public, is the most matured and exhaustive product of his scholarship. It may not be possible for all of us to see eye to eye with him in the vast and sometimes obscure field covered by his brilliant study; but it is impossible for any one to withhold admiration from the freshness, the vivacity, the vitality, the penetrating insight which Professor Wernle exhibits in his handling of the origin and primitive development of the Christian faith. The book is addressed to all who are prepared to accept the bolder results of New Testament criticism, and the central idea running through the whole of it is a very simple one. It is first of all to ascertain what the Gospel is as seen in the teaching and character of the Redeemer; and secondly, to measure all the later expositions of the Gospel, contained in the teachings of the New Testament writers, by the Gospel itself. In order to ascertain what the Gospel really is, Professor Wernle considers it necessary to liberate its eternal substance from the historic forms in which it is expressed. The Gospel arose under a certain definite set of historic circumstances, and had to act upon the world through the medium of historic conditions. These conditions and circumstances are of necessity of a temporary and transitory character: they are not the Gospel itself, but only its historic envelope, and Professor Wernle strips off this envelope in order to seize hold of the imperishable substance of Christ's message to mankind. How far he has succeeded in separating the substance from the form of the Redeemer's message and personality, and (considering the fragmentary nature of the sources) how far it is possible to do so on purely historical grounds, it is for the attentive reader to judge.