Ecce Homo: such is the title of a work published anonymously, at London and at Cambridge in 1866, which produced on its appearance a great sensation in London, a sensation which still continues: all the papers and reviews, whether religious, philosophical, or simply literary, busied themselves with it, either to praise or attack it; the distinguished chief of the Liberal Party himself, perhaps soon to be the Prime Minister of England, Mr. Gladstone, has just made it the subject of three articles, which are remarkable alike for acuteness, elegance, and eloquence. They appeared in one of the most widely circulated periodicals in his country. [Footnote 50] [Footnote 50: "Good Words," a Monthly Review, edited by Norman Macleod, one of the Chaplains of her Majesty Queen Victoria. The articles referred to appeared in the numbers of January, February, and March, 1868.] "No anonymous book," says he, "since the 'Vestiges of Creation' (now more than twenty years old), indeed, it might almost be said, no theological book, whether anonymous, or of certified authorship--that has appeared within the same interval, has attracted anything like the amount of notice and of criticism which have been bestowed upon the remarkable volume, entitled 'Ecce Homo.'" {214} The anonymous author has expressed in a very short preface his intention in writing this volume, as well as its fundamental ideas. "Those who feel," says he, "dissatisfied with the current conceptions of Christ, if they cannot rest content without a definite opinion, may find it necessary to do what, to persons not so dissatisfied, it seems audacious and perilous to do. They may be obliged to reconsider the whole subject from the beginning, and placing themselves, in imagination, at the time when he whom we call Christ bore no such name, but was simply, as St. Luke describes him, a young man of promise, popular with those who knew him, and appearing to enjoy the Divine favour, to trace his biography from point to point, and accept those conclusions about him, not which Church doctors, or even apostles have sealed with their authority, but which the facts themselves, critically weighed, appear to warrant. "This is what the present writer undertook to do for the satisfaction of his own mind, and because, after reading a good many books on Christ, he felt still constrained to confess that there was no historical character whose motives, objects and feelings remained so incomprehensible to him. The inquiry which proved serviceable to himself may chance to be useful to others.