The fear of Strauss had, indeed, a tendency to inspire Protestant theologians with catholicising ideas. One of the most competent reviewers of his book, Dr. Ullmann in the _Studien und Kritiken_, had expressed the wish that it had been written in Latin to prevent its doing harm among the people.(50) An anonymous dialogue of the period shows us the schoolmaster coming in distress to the clergyman. He has allowed himself to be persuaded into reading the book by his acquaintance the Major, and he is now anxious to get rid of the doubts which it has aroused in him. When his cure has been safely accomplished, the reverend gentleman dismisses him with the following exhortation: “Now I hope that after the experience which you have had you will for the future refrain from reading books of this kind, which are not written for you, and of which there is no necessity for you to take any notice; and for the refutation of which, should that be needful, you have no equipment. You may be quite sure that anything useful or profitable for you which such books may contain will reach you in due course through the proper channel and in the right way, and, that being so, you are under no necessity to jeopardise any part of your peace of mind.” Tholuck’s work professedly aims only at presenting a “historical argument for the credibility of the miracle stories of the Gospels.” “Even if we admit,” he says in one place, “the scientific position that no act can have proceeded from Christ which transcends the laws of nature, there is still room for the mediating view of Christ’s miracle‐working activity. This leads us to think of mysterious powers of nature as operating in the history of Christ—powers such as we have some partial knowledge of, as, for example, those magnetic powers which have survived down to our own time, like ghosts lingering on after the coming of day.” From the standpoint of this spurious rationalism he proceeds to take Strauss to task for rejecting the miracles. “Had this latest critic been able to approach the Gospel miracles without prejudice, in the Spirit of Augustine’s declaration, ‘dandum est deo, eum aliquid facere posse quod nos investigare non possumus,’ he would certainly—since he is a man who in addition to the acumen of the scholar possesses sound common sense—have come to a different conclusion in regard to these difficulties. As it is, however, he has approached the Gospels with the conviction that miracles are impossible; and on that assumption, it was certain before the argument began that the Evangelists were either deceivers or deceived.”