From the historical point of view these lives are not such contemptible performances as might be supposed. There is much penetrating observation in them. Bahrdt and Venturini are right in feeling that the connexion of events in the life of Jesus has to be discovered; the Gospels give only a series of occurrences, and offer no explanation why they happened just as they did. And if, in making Jesus subservient to the plans of a secret society, they represented Him as not acting with perfect freedom, but as showing a certain passivity, this assumption of theirs was to be brilliantly vindicated, a hundred years later, by the eschatological school, which asserts the same remarkable passivity on the part of Jesus, in that He allows His actions to be determined, not indeed by a secret society, but by the eschatological plan of God. Bahrdt and Venturini were the first to see that, of all Jesus’ acts, His death was most distinctively His own, because it was by this that He purposed to found the kingdom. Venturini’s “Non‐supernatural History of the Great Prophet of Nazareth” may almost be said to be reissued annually down to the present day, for all the fictitious “Lives” go back directly or indirectly to the type which he created. It is plagiarised more freely than any other Life of Jesus, although practically unknown by name. V. FULLY DEVELOPED RATIONALISM—PAULUS _Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus._ Das Leben Jesu als Grundlage einer reinen Geschichte des Urchristentums. Heidelberg, C. F. Winter. (The Life of Jesus as the Basis of a purely Historical Account of Early Christianity.) 1828. 2 vols., 1192 pp. Freut euch mit Gottesandacht, wenn es gewährt euch ist, Dem, so kurz er war, weltumschaffenden Lebensgang Nach Jahrhunderten fern zu folgen, Denket, glaubet, folget des Vorbildes Spur! (Closing words of vol. ii.) (Rejoice with grateful devotion, if unto you ’tis permitted, After the lapse of centuries, still to follow afar off That Life which, short as it was, changed the course of the ages; Think ye well, and believe; follow the path of our Pattern.)