and needs, of the civilised West? When M. Renan comes to detail he is as strangely insensible to what seem at first sight the simplest demands of probability. As it were by a sort of reaction to the minute realising of particulars which has been in vogue among some Roman Catholic writers, M. Renan realises too--realises with no less force and vividness, and, according to his point of view, with no less affectionate and tender interest. He popularises the Gospels; but not for a religious set of readers--nor, we must add, for readers of thought and sense, whether interested for or against Christianity, but for a public who study life in the subtle and highly wrought novels of modern times. He appeals from what is probable to those representations of human nature which aspire to pass beyond the conventional and commonplace, and especially he dwells on neglected and unnoticed examples of what is sweet and soft and winning. But it is hard to recognise the picture he has drawn in the materials out of which he has composed it. The world is tolerably familiar with them. If there is a characteristic, consciously or unconsciously acknowledged in the Gospel records, it is that of the gravity, the plain downright seriousness, the laborious earnestness, impressed from first to last on the story. When we turn from these to his pages it is difficult to exaggerate the astounding impression which his epithets and descriptions have on the mind. We are told that there is a broad distinction between the early Galilean days of hope in our Lord's ministry, and the later days of disappointment and conflict; and that if we look, we shall find in Galilee the "_fin et joyeux moraliste_," full of a "_conversation pleine de gaieté et de charme_," of "_douce gaieté et aimables plaisanteries_," with a "_prédication suave et douce, toute pleine de la nature et du parfum des champs_," creating out of his originality of mind his "_innocents aphorismes_," and the "_genre d'élicieux_" of parabolic teaching; "_le charmant docteur qui pardonnait à tous pourvu qu'on l'aimât_." He lived in what was then an earthly paradise, in "_la joyeuse Galilée_" in the midst of the "_nature ravissante_" which gave to everything about the Sea of Galilee "_un tour idyllique et charmant_." So the history of Christianity at its birth is a "_délicieuse pastorale_" an "_idylle_," a "_milieu enivrant_" of joy and hope. The master was surrounded by a "_bande de joyeux enfants_," a "_troupe gaie et vagabonde_," whose existence in the open air was a "perpetual enchantment." The disciples were "_ces petits comités de bonnes gens_," very simple, very credulous, and like their country full of a "_sentiment gai et tendre de la vie_," and of an "_imagination riante_." Everything is spoken of as "delicious"--"_délicieuse pastorale," "délicieuse beauté," "délicieuses sentences," "délicieuse théologie d'amour_." Among the "tender and delicate souls of the