detail can possibly get rid of them, without absolutely obliterating the whole record. It is this leading idea, or cluster of ideas, to be gained by intent gazing, which the writer disengages from all questions of criticism in the narrow sense of the word, and sets before us as explaining the history of Christianity, and as proving themselves by that explanation. That the world has been moved we know. "Give me," he seems to say, "the Character which is set forth in the Gospels, and I can show how He moved it":-- It is in the object of the present treatise to exhibit Christ's career in outline. No other career ever had so much unity; no other biography is so simple or can so well afford to dispense with details. Men in general take up scheme after scheme, as circumstances suggest one or another, and therefore most biographies are compelled to pass from one subject to another, and to enter into a multitude of minute questions, to divide the life carefully into periods by chronological landmarks accurately determined, to trace the gradual development of character and ripening or change of opinions. But Christ formed one plan and executed it; no important change took place in his mode of thinking, speaking, or acting; at least the evidence before us does not enable us to trace any such change. It is possible, indeed, for students of his life to find details which they may occupy themselves with discussing; they may map out the chronology of it, and devise methods of harmonising the different accounts; but such details are of little importance compared with the one grand question, what was Christ's plan, and throw scarcely any light upon that question. What was Christ's plan is the main question which will be investigated in the present treatise, and that vision of universal monarchy which we have just been considering affords an appropriate introduction to it.... We conclude then, that Christ in describing himself as a king, and at the same time as king of the Kingdom of God--in other words as a king representing the Majesty of the Invisible King of a theocracy--claimed the character first of Founder, next of Legislator; thirdly, in a certain high and peculiar sense, of Judge, of a new divine society.