Those English critics who, like Dr. Conybeare, have declaimed so loudly of a consensus of critics and of historical common-sense on the side of a "historical Christ," are simply fulminating from the standpoint of the German "liberalism" of thirty years ago. Nine-tenths of what they violently affirm has been definitely and destructively rejected by the latest German representatives of the critical class, in the very name of the defence of the historicity of Jesus. Orthodox Germans, on the other hand, have been pointing out that the "liberal" view is no longer "modern," the really modern criticism having shown that the Gospel-figure is a God-figure or nothing. Vainly they hope to reinforce orthodoxy by the operations of a strict critical method. [224] Our English "liberal-conservatives," all the while, are fighting with obsolete (German) weapons, and in total ignorance of the real course of the campaign in recent years. In such circumstances, those of us who did our thinking for ourselves, without waiting for new German leads, have perhaps some right to appeal anew to readers to do the same. There is no race quarrel involved. But perhaps those students in the English-speaking countries who in the past have been wont to follow the German leads of the generation before their own, may now realize that they were unduly diffident, and proceed to make that use of their own faculties which Germans were always making from time to time. NOTES [1] See Christianity and Mythology, 2nd ed. p. 179, note. [2] That is, even supposing the Annals to be genuine. Professor W. B. Smith speaks of a contention "of late" that they are forged by Poggio Bracciolini, but refers only to the work of Ross, 1878. The thesis has been far more efficiently maintained in a series of works by Hochart (1890, etc.), which are worth Professor Smith's attention. [3] See the collection of illustrations in Mr. Joseph McCabe's Sources of the Morality of the Gospels (R. P. A., 1914), and his excellent chapter on "The Parables of the Gospel and the Talmud." [4] The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, ed. by R. H. Charles, 1908, pp. lxxx, 97, 122, 213, 214. [5] Id. pp. lxxxi, 213. [6] Id. pp. xciii-xciv. [7] Id. Test. Iss. v, 2; Dan. v, 3; Iss. vii, 6. [8] Id. p. xcv. [9] Id. p. 210 sq. [10] Bain, J. S. Mill, p. 139. [11] Letter to W. S. Lilly, cited in his Claims of Christianity, 1894, pp. 30-31. [12] Das Christenthum ... der drei ersten Jahrhunderte, 1853, pp. 35-36. (Eng. trans, i, 38.) [13] Prof. Flint in "St. Giles Lectures" on "The Faiths of the World," 1882, p. 419. [14] Jésus et la tradition évangélique, 1910, p. 45. [15] It should be explained that in using, for convenience sake, the traditional ascriptions of the four Gospels, I do not for a moment admit that these hold good of the Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John of the tradition. In not one case is that tradition historically valid.