We have no cause to assert that this trait of which we speak
implies conscious distortion of the facts which the author would relate.
The simple-minded are generally those least aware of the bias in the
working of their own minds. It is obvious that until we have reckoned
with such elements as these, we cannot truly judge of that which the
Gospels say. To the elaboration of the principles of this historical
criticism Baur gave the labour of his life. His biblical work alone
would have been epoch-making.

Ferdinand Christian Baur was born in 1793 in Schmieden, near Stuttgart.
He became a professor in Tuebingen in 1826 and died there in 1860. He was
an ardent disciple of Hegel. His greatest work was surely in the field
of the history of dogma. His works, _Die Christliche Lehre von der
Vereoehnung_, 1838, _Die Christliche Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit und
Menschwerdung Gottes_, 1841-1843, his _Lehrbuch der Christlichen
Dogmengeschichte_, 1847, together constitute a contribution to which
Harnack's work in our own time alone furnishes a parallel. Baur had
begun his thorough biblical studies before the publication of Strauss'
book. The direction of those studies was more than ever confirmed by his
insight of the shortcomings of Strauss' work. Very characteristically
also he had begun his investigations, not at the most difficult point,
that of the Gospels, as Strauss had done, but at the easiest point, the
Epistles of Paul. As early as 1831 he had published a tractate, _Die
Christus-Partei in der Corinthischen Gemeinde_. In that book he had
delineated the bitter contest between Paul and the Judaising element in
the Apostolic Church which opposed Paul whithersoever he went. In 1835
his disquisition, _Die sogenannten Pastoral-Briefe_, appeared. In the
teachings of these letters he discovered the antithesis to the gnostic
heresies of the second century. He thought also that the stage of
organisation of the Church which they imply, accorded better with this
supposition than with that of their apostolic authorship. The same
general theme is treated in a much larger way in Baur's _Paulus, der
Apostel Jesu Christi_, in 1845. Here the results of his study of the
book of the Acts are combined with those of his inquiries as to the
Pauline Epistles. In the history of the apostolic age men had been
accustomed to see the evidence only of peace and harmony. Baur sought to
show that the period had been one of fierce struggle, between the narro