life of Christ is all mythical or all historical.
He enumerates the philosophical myth, the historical myth, mythical
history, and history with traditional parts. It is to the last of these
that he assigns the gospel history. He propounds the dilemma, whether
the church has conceived a poetical Christ, or whether Christ is the
real founder of the church? He accepts the latter, and invokes all
history in proof of his argument. Weisse, in his _Gospel History treated
Philosophically and Critically_, dwells upon the relative claims of the
four gospels. At least one of the gospels is original and the authority
for the rest. This is Mark's; and it is not mythical, but historical and
worthy of credence. Matthew is a compilation of a later day; and Luke
and John are of still less importance. But the miracles related by Mark
are purely natural events. Christ's miraculous cures were owing to his
physical powers. His body was a strong electric battery, which, in his
later life, lost its power of healing. Else he would have saved himself
from death. His early life is unadulterated allegory.

But there were numerous writers against Strauss, among whom may be
mentioned Schweizer, Wilke, Schaller, and Dorner. Dorner's _History of
the Person of Christ_, 1839, was an attempt to show the totality of
Christ as a universal character. The human conception of species is of a
world of fragments, but in Christ we find them completely united. All
single, individual prototypes coalesced in him. He is the
World-Personality. Bruno Bauer wrote his _Criticism of the Synoptical
Gospels_ in reply to Strauss, though a few years afterward he changed
his ground entirely. His position in this work was as mediator between
reason and revelation. He brought into the conflict concerning Strauss'
_Life of Jesus_ an element of heated argument, and egotism, which
ripened into his subsequent antagonism to the supernatural school. His
entrance upon this field of strife may be comprehended by Schwartz's
comparison of him with Carlstadt and Thomas Munzer, who had lived in the
exciting period of the Reformation.

An enumeration of the titles of the works which appeared at frequent
intervals during the ten years succeeding the issue of Strauss' _Life of
Jesus_, indicates that toward the close of this period the controversy
was directed more to the particular gospels than to the life of Christ
as a unit. The many theories advanced exceeded all the ordinary
illustratio