At this writing Professor Schweitzer is already at work as medical missionary in Africa. It is of interest to know that his plan is to return after three years to Europe, and again after an equal period; to Africa. On account of the radical character of his critical works he was not accepted as a fellow-worker in any of the German missions and is labouring in conjunction with (though independently and at his own expense) the station of the Paris Evangelical [pg 024] Missionary Society at Lambarene in French Equatorial Africa—the country which used to be called the French Congo. “Schweitzer as Missionary” is the title of an article in the _Hibbert Journal_ for July 1914 based upon the printed circular letters which he sends to his friends and supporters. In a letter to the translator he speaks of his efforts to mitigate the scourge of leprosy and the sleeping sickness as an example of “practical eschatology.” 2. The Significance of Schweitzer’s Work. The opportuneness of Schweitzer’s eschatological interpretation of the life of Jesus appears the more manifest the more one knows of the recent history of Gospel study. To bring that out clearly is the special purpose of the Author in his _Quest of the Historical Jesus,_ particularly in chapters I, XIX, and XX. It could not be done better. At all events such a task is obviously beyond the scope of this introduction. Here it need only be pointed out that Schweitzer’s theory, striking as it is, did not spring into being without roots in a soil prepared for it. The eschatological question itself had been sharply brought to the fore. Contention for and against the recognition of it as an important [pg 025] element in the Gospels was the order of the day. All that tended to concentrate attention upon the problem of the personal consciousness of Jesus (as, in particular, Baldensperger’s work),_(_6_)_was a direct preparation for Schweitzer. Johannes Weiss had already stood out as the foremost champion of eschatology in the Gospel._(_7_)_His recognition of eschatology was confined, however, to the _teaching of Jesus._ Hence he did not avail himself of it for the solution of the historical problems. For this reason he cannot be regarded as an exponent—to use Schweitzer’s phrase—of “thoroughgoing eschatology” (konsequente Eschatologie). But the solution Schweitzer proposed was already “in the air,” as he said himself in his preface. That presentiment was strikingly fulfilled in the fact that in the selfsame year Wrede published a book with a title almost identical, which envisaged the same problems in the same way, only that it sought to solve them by eliminating eschatology as an intrusion in the historical narrative, thus resulting in “thoroughgoing scepticism.” Schweitzer is justified in insisting that his work and [pg 026] Wrede’s cannot be played off against each other, but constitute a combined attack, so far as concerns the criticism of the common, liberal life of Jesus.