In general, however, “the theologians of the present day skim lightly over the eschatological material in the Gospels because it does not chime in with their views, and assign to the coming of Christ upon the clouds quite a different purpose from that which it bears in the teaching of Christ and His apostles.” Inasmuch as the non‐fulfilment of its eschatology is not admitted, our Christianity rests upon a fraud. In view of this fact, what is the evidential value of any miracle, even if it could be held to be authentic? “No miracle would prove that two and two make five, or that a circle has four angles; and no miracles, however numerous, could remove a contradiction which lies on the surface of the teachings and records of Christianity.” Nor is there any weight in the appeal to the fulfilment of prophecy, for the cases in which Matthew countersigns it with the words “that the Scripture might be fulfilled” are all artificial and unreal; and for many incidents the stage was set by Jesus, or His disciples, or the Evangelists, with the deliberate purpose of presenting to the people a scene from the fulfilment of prophecy. The sole argument which could save the credit of Christianity would be a proof that the Parousia had really taken place at the time for which it was announced; and obviously no such proof can be produced. Such is Reimarus’ reconstruction of the history. We can well understand that his work must have given offence when it appeared, for it is a polemic, not an objective historical study. But we have no right simply to dismiss it in a word, as a Deistic production, as Otto Schmiedel, for example, does;(18) it is time that Reimarus came to his own, and that we should recognise a historical performance of no mean order in this piece of Deistic polemics. His work is perhaps the most splendid achievement in the whole course of the historical investigation of the life of Jesus, for he was the first to grasp the fact that the world of thought in which Jesus moved was essentially eschatological. There is some justification for the animosity which flames up in his writing. This historical truth had taken possession of his mind with such overwhelming force that he could no longer understand his contemporaries, and could not away with their profession that their beliefs were, as they professed to be, directly derived from the preaching of Jesus.