th his
humanity. Now, when their view of him shall have been faithfully
answered by presenting his divine character to the common understanding,
who will say that the present generation of Christ's skeptical
biographers have written in vain? Those authors, having seen the
necessity of a popular understanding of Christ, describe him as a man
like ourselves. They have written from a wrong stand-point, but if their
labors can suggest to evangelical theologians the immediate necessity of
a popular view of Christ as our Redeemer, we will not believe that
their labors, though exerted for a different purpose, are without good
fruits. The people need to perceive clearly the character of Christ--not
to look upon him as far off, but near at hand, not to regard him as the
cold, indifferent observer of our conduct, but as that Friend who, being
our Elder Brother, enters into sympathy with the humblest of his
followers, and suffers not a sparrow to fall without his notice.

We are confirmed in our opinion of the ultimate advantages from Renan's
representation of Christ by the testimony of M. de Pressense. This
distinguished theologian was recently returning from the Holy Land,
whither he had gone "to seek to lay hold of the holy likeness of Christ
that he might present it to his countrymen," when he stopped at
Altenburg to attend the session of the Evangelical Church Diet of
Germany. Speaking of the indirect service of Renan, he used the
following earnest language: "I too wish to expose to you the advantages
of the recent attacks against our faith, for, in my eyes, they by far
outweigh the inconveniences and the perils. Without doubt, this
falsification of the holy type which we adore may well deceive the
public mind, for it fell into a community of religious ignorance, into a
country in which modern Catholicism--I mean to say Italian, or rather
Roman Catholicism, which has but too much prevailed over that of our
Pascals and our Bossuets--had more and more reduced religion to a
servile submission towards the Papacy and superstitious worship of the
deified creature, thus preventing the direct intercourse of the soul
with the gospel and with him who fills the gospel. And then, M. Renan's
book at bottom flattered all the bad contemporaneous instincts; it made
the apotheosis of that melancholy and voluptuous skepticism which covers
up with a certain distinction and a certain charm the most positive
materialism; it flattered our languid