With regard to the miraculous narratives of the Gospels, the advance of more recent criticism beyond the first book of Strauss has been in two directions. First, these questions no longer constitute the central point of historical interest, but are subordinated in importance to the problems of the religious consciousness of Jesus. Secondly, we do not now seek to interpret these narratives so exclusively and without distinction from the one motive of the transference to Jesus of the types of the Old Testament; but the great difference between the various narratives of miracles is clearly recognised, and various clues are accordingly used in their explanation; whilst in one narrative we observe merely symbols of religious and dogmatic ideas, in others we discover, behind the glorifying tendency to idealism, some background of historical fact, for instance, in the miracles of healing, as is now very generally acknowledged. It cannot be denied, it is true, that with this perfectly legitimate endeavour is connected the peril of falling back into the old abuses of rationalistic artifice. Even Keim has not quite escaped this danger, inasmuch as he abandons the basis of strict history in the case of the story of the resurrection of Jesus, and makes concessions to supernaturalistic dogma; as the sequel of which the old doctrine of miracles may be readmitted into Lives of Jesus, as is really the case in the works of Beyschlag and Weiss. In this danger appears the necessity for the continued prosecution of the negative work of criticism, a duty as yet by no means supererogatory. The inclination to sink into the slumber of dogma is so natural to every generation that the most uncompromising critical intellect must without intermission stand upon the watch against it. And as this task was performed by Strauss in his first Life of Jesus in a manner that may serve as a model for all time, the book, like every truly classical work, must ever retain its value. Strauss’s criticism broke down the ramparts of dogmatism, new and old, and opened to the inquiring mind the breach through which the conquest of historical truth might be won. Otto Pfleiderer. Certior factus ex Britannia, librum meum, quem de vita Jesu XI abhinc annis composui, virorum ejusmodi studiis faventium cura in linguam Britannicam translatum, brevi illic in publicum proditurum esse, lælitia anxietate temperata commoveor.