structures of belief, which the childish fancy of men had constructed of truth and poetry, Wahrheit und Dichtung, must be taken down and cleared away, in order that a new erection of more durable materials may be raised. To all earnest seekers after truth, the Leben Jesu of Strauss may be helpful, not as supplying the truth ready to hand, but as stripping the bandages of prejudice from the eyes, and so enabling them clearly to see and rightly to seek it. For these reasons it is obvious that the publication of a new edition of the English translation of this work needs no justification. It is only those who consider the first appearance of the book inexcusable and unfortunate that can call in question the desirability of its republication. But no one can hold such an opinion who is able to follow the course of the history of the religious thought of Protestantism. The critical process which reached its conclusion in Strauss’s book, with its negative or revolutionary results, was latent from the beginning in the life-blood of Protestantism. The theologians of the Reformed Churches of the sixteenth century subjected the traditions of Catholic Church history to keen historical criticism; and if they did not then think of extending its operations to Biblical tradition, we are justified in recognising in the well-known declarations of Luther, as to the inferior value of certain books of the Bible, and as to the unimportance of physical in comparison with spiritual miracles, plain predictions of the line of development which Protestant theology was destined ultimately to take.