Thus, according to Baldensperger, there was an interaction between the historical and the psychological events. And that is right!—if only the machinery were not so complicated, and a “development” had not to be ground out of it at whatever cost. But this, and the whole manner of treatment in the second part, encumbered as it is with parenthetic qualifications, was rendered inevitable by the adoption of the two aforesaid not purely historical conceptions. Sometimes, too, one gets the impression that the author felt that he owed it to the school to which he belonged to advance no assertion without adding the limitations which scientifically secure it against attack. Thus on every page he digs himself into an entrenched position, with palisades of footnotes—in fact the book actually ends with a footnote. But the conception which underlay the whole was so full of vigour that in spite of the thoughts not being always completely worked out, it produced a powerful impression. Baldensperger had persuaded theology at least to admit the hypothesis—whether it took up a positive or negative position in regard to it—that Jesus possessed a fully‐developed eschatology. He thus provided a new basis for discussion and gave an impulse to the study of the subject such as it had not received since the ’sixties, at least not in the same degree of energy. Perhaps the very limitations of the work, due as they were to its introduction of modern ideas, rendered it better adapted to the spirit of the age, and consequently more influential, than if it had been characterised by that rigorous maintenance of a single point of view which was abstractly requisite for the proper treatment of the subject. It was precisely the rejection of this rigorous consistency which enabled it to gain ground for the cause of eschatology. ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ But the consistent treatment from a single point of view was bound to come; and it came four years later. In passing from Weiffenbach and Baldensperger to Johannes Weiss(161) the reader feels like an explorer who after weary wanderings through billowy seas of reed‐grass at length reaches a wooded tract, and instead of swamp feels firm ground beneath his feet, instead of yielding rushes sees around him the steadfast trees. At last there is an end of “qualifying clause” theology, of the “and yet,” the “on the other hand,” the “notwithstanding”! The reader had to follow the others step by step, making his way over every footbridge and gang‐ plank which they laid down, following all the meanderings in which they indulged, and must never let go their hands if he wished to come safely through the labyrinth of spiritual and eschatological ideas which they supposed to be found in the thought of Jesus. In Weiss there are none of these devious paths: “behold the land lies before thee.”