be
called the rationalistic solution; with sympathy in Christ's ethical
teaching, there is relief at minimizing his great claim. So,
brilliantly, Wellhausen's Gospel commentaries and Introduction. (Mark
fairly historical; other gospels' fuller account of Christ's teaching
and claims unreliable.) (ii.) The claim was fraudulent (Reimarus; Renan,
ed. 1; popular anti-Christian agitation). This is a counsel of despair.
(iii.) He was an enthusiastic dreamer, expecting the world's end. This
the apologist will recognize as the most plausible hostile alternative.
He may feel bound to admit an element of illusion in Christ's vision' of
the future; but he will contend that the apocalyptic form did not
destroy the spiritual content of Christ's revelations--nay, that it was
itself the vehicle of great truths. So he will argue as the essence of
the matter that (iv.) he who has occupied Christ's place in history, and
won such reverence from the purest souls, was what he claimed to be, and
that his many-sidedness comes to focus and harmony when we recognize him
as the Christ of God and the Saviour of the world.

To a less extent, similar problems and alternatives arise in regard to
the church:--Catholicism a compromise between Jewish Christianity and
Pauline or Gentile Christianity (F.C. Baur, &c.); Catholicism the
Hellenizing of Christianity (A. Ritschl, A. Harnack); the Catholic
church for good and evil the creation of St Paul (P. Wernle, H. Weinel);
the church supernaturally guided (R.C. apologetic; in a modified degree
High Church apologetic); essential--not necessarily exclusive--truth of
Paulinism, essential error in first principles of Catholicism
(Protestant apologetic).

LITERATURE.--Omitting the Christian fathers as remote from the present
day, we recognize as works of genius Pascal's _Pensees_ and Butler's
_Analogy_, to which we might add J.R. Seeley's _Ecce Homo_ (1865). The
philosophical, Platonist, or Idealist line of Christian defence is
represented among recent writers by J.R. Illingworth [Anglican], in
_Personality, Human and Divine_ (1894), _Divine Immanence_ (1898),
_Reason and Revelation_ (1902), who at times seems rather to
presuppose the Thomist compromise, and A.M. Fairbairn
[Congregationalist], in _Place of Christ in Modern Theology_ (1893),
_Philosophy of the Christian Religion_ (1902). The appeal to ethical
or Christian experience--"internal evidence"--is found especially in
E.A. Abbo