It is generally agreed that the writer of the Fourth Gospel took for granted in his readers an acquaintance with the narrative or the tradition of the Synoptic Gospels. He would not have written unless he had some new light to throw upon the figure of Jesus, or some deeper insight into His personality and work. The photograph and the portrait may not perhaps agree in their mechanical measurements, but to one who knows the subject the portrait may reproduce the original as faithfully, and even more adequately, than does the photograph. Each is useful for its own purpose, but both together are needed to give us the body and the soul, the exact features and the expression, the total impression of the personality. The criticism of the Gospels has thrown the figure of Jesus into strong relief, not only against the background of His time, but against the background of humanity in general. In its recent developments, it has left us practically with the choice between the Christ of the four Gospels or a shadowy figure to be found in none of them. The true historical Jesus that criticism has brought before us is clad in the coarse garments of Galilee, but with the glory of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. The searchlight of modern knowledge is the fierce light that beats upon the throne. As nature and the human soul and the relationships of thought and the phenomena of religion and the book of revelation are more fully studied, the majesty and beauty of the central Figure in history is more clearly revealed. Each age sees a new glory in Jesus Christ. "It is one of the evidences of the moral greatness of Jesus," says Peabody, "that each period in Christian history, each social or political change, has brought to view some new aspect of His character and given Him a new claim to reverence." The modern age sees in Him and in His Cross of love and sacrifice the guide and inspiration of its ethical and social advance. It sees in Him and in His Cross the solution, so far as ultimate solution may be possible, of its deepest intellectual problems. It sees in Him not merely a Guide and a Revealer, but a Redeemer from sin and the Giver of Eternal Life. Bibliography of Recent Important Works _For Chapter I_ HARNACK, A. Das Wesen des Christentums, 1900, 2d ed., 1908; What is Christianity? 1901, 2d ed., 1910. Sprüche und Reden Jesu, 1907; The Sayings of Jesus, 1908. Aus Wissenschaft und Leben, 2 vols., 1911. LOISY, A. L'Évangile et l'Église, 3d ed., 1904; The Church and the Gospel, 1903. BOUSSET, W. Was wissen wir von Jesus? 1904. Kyrios Christos; Geschichte des Christusglaubens von den Anfängen des Christentums his Irenæus, 1913. SCHUMACHER, H. Die Selbstoffenbarung Jesu bei Mat 11, 27 (Luc 10, 22), 1912 (Freiburger Theologische Studien, Heft 6). SCHWEITZER, A. Von Reimarus zu Wrede, 1906; The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 1910.