nd power and from its faults, to be for modern France
what the work of Strauss was for Germany, the standard expression of an
unbelief which shrinks with genuine distaste from the coarse and
negative irreligion of older infidelity, and which is too refined, too
profound and sympathetic in its views of human nature, to be insensible
to those numberless points in which as a fact Christianity has given
expression to the best and highest thoughts that man can have. Strauss,
to account for what we see, imagined an idea, or a set of ideas,
gradually worked out into the shape of a history, of which scarcely
anything can be taken as real matter of fact, except the bare existence
of the person who was clothed in the process of time with the
attributes created by the idealising legend. Such a view is too vague
and indistinct to satisfy French minds. A theory of this sort, to find
general acceptance in France, must start with concrete history, and not
be history held in solution in the cloudy shapes of myths which vanish
as soon as touched. M. Renan's process is in the main the reverse of
Strauss's. He undertakes to extract the real history recorded in the
Gospels; and not only so, but to make it even more palpable and
interesting, if not more wonderful, than it seems at first sight in the
original records, by removing the crust of mistake and exaggeration
which has concealed the true character of what the narrative records;
by rewriting it according to those canons of what is probable and
intelligible in human life and capacity which are recognised in the
public whom he addresses.

Two of these canons govern the construction of the book. One of them is
the assumption that in no part of the history of man is the
supernatural to be admitted. This, of course, is not peculiar to M.
Renan, though he lays it down with such emphasis in all his works, and
is so anxious to bring it into distinct notice on every occasion, that
it is manifestly one which he is desirous to impress on all who read
him, as one of the ultimate and unquestionable foundations of all
historical inquiry. The other canon is one of moral likelihood, and it
is, that it is credible and agreeable to what we gather from
experience, that the highest moral elevation ever attained by man
should have admitted along with it, and for its ends, conscious
imposture. On the first of these assumptions, all that is miraculous in
the Gospel narratives is, not argued about, or, excep