ns of literary fecundity and extravagance in the department
of theology. There was no theologian of note who did not take part in
the contest. Pastors of obscure provincial churches, who did not venture
upon a complete life of the Messiah, felt themselves competent either to
originate a new view of one or more of the gospels, or to elaborate a
borrowed one. The excitement was intense. There was no evidence of
system in the rapid movement. But now that the battle is over we read
the philosophy of the whole conflict. Strauss, without any intention on
his part, had shown the church of the present century, its weakness in
failing to comprehend the importance of the evangelical history. The
numerous replies indicated a hopeful attention to the neglected
compendium of divine truth. The friends who rushed to his aid declared
by their impetuosity that their cause would have been better served had
Strauss never penned a word about Christ. They saw their stronghold in
ruins, and looked with tearful eyes upon the future of their creed. The
language which Strauss had applied to his excited opponents upon the
appearance of his work became severely appropriate to his own adherents,
after that production had been faithfully answered. "Their alarm," said
he, "was like the screaming of frightened women on seeing one of their
cooking utensils fall upon the floor." Granting the appositeness of the
illustration, we must add that the alarm mentioned by the critic was of
brief duration; while that of the Rationalists and their adherents is
like the long-standing despair of a circle of chemists, whose laboratory
has been entered through a door left open by themselves, their carefully
prepared combinations destroyed, and all their retorts and crucibles
shattered into irreparable fragments.

After a long absence of twenty-nine years, Strauss has again appeared as
the biographer of Christ. In his former work he wrote for the
theological public, but we are now assured that he had ever kept in mind
a purpose to do for the masses what he had achieved for critical minds.
The last fruit of his pen is his _Life of Jesus Popularly Treated_,
which, following close upon the issue of M. Renan's work, appeared in
1864, in the form of a large octavo volume of more than six hundred
pages.

Strauss was induced to make his second work more popular than the
first, because of the gross injustice which the clergy had meted out to
him in consequence of his former