arrived at the idea, which was at that time epidemic, [1] that He was Himself the expected Messiah, and in consequence of this met His fate."
It is to be regretted that a mind like Eduard von Hartmann's should not have got beyond the externals of the history, and made an effort to grasp the simple and impressive greatness of the figure of Jesus in its eschatological setting; and that he should imagine he has disposed of the strangeness which he finds in Jesus when he has made it as small as possible. And yet in another respect there is something satisfactory about his book. It is the open struggle of the Germanic spirit with Jesus. In this battle the victory will rest with true greatness. Others wanted to make peace before the struggle, or thought that theologians could fight the battle alone, and spare their contemporaries the doubts about the historical Jesus through which it was necessary to pass in order to reach the eternal Jesus-and to this end they kept preaching reconciliation while fighting the battle. They could only preach it on a basis of postulates, and postulates make poor preaching! Thus, Julicher, for example, in his latest sketches of the Life of Jesus[2] distinguishes between "Jewish and supra-Jewish" in Jesus, and holds that Jesus transferred the ideal of the Kingdom of God "to the solid ground of the present, bringing it into the course of historical events," and further "associated with the Kingdom of God" the idea of development which was utterly opposed to all Jewish ideas about the Kingdom. Julicher also desires to raise "the strongest protest against the poor little definition of His preaching which makes it consist in nothing further than an announcement of the nearness of the Kingdom, and an exhortation to the repentance necessary as a condition for attaining the Kingdom."
But when has a protest against the pure truth of history ever been of any avail? Why proclaim peace where there is no peace, and attempt to put back the clock of time? Is it not enough that Schleiermacher and Ritschl succeeded again and again in making theology send on earth peace instead of a sword, and does not the
- ↑ Eduard von Hartmann ought, therefore, to have given his assistance to the others who have made this assertion in proving that there really existed Messianic claimants before and at the time of Jesus.
- ↑ "Jesus," by Julicher, in Die Kultur der Gegenwart. (An encyclopaedic publication which is appearing in parts.) Teubner, Berlin, 1905, pp. 40-69. See also W. Bousset, "Jesus," Religionsgeschichtliche Volksbucher. (A series of religious-historical monographs.) Published by Schiele, Halle, 1904. Here should be mentioned also the thoughtful book, following very much the lines of Julicher, by Eduard Grimm, entitled Die Ethik Jesu, Hamburg, 1903, 288 pp. The author, born in 1848, is the chief pastor at the Nicolaikirche in Hamburg. Another work which deserves mention is Arno Neumann, Jesu wie er geschichtlich war (Jesus as he historically existed), Freiburg, 1904, 198 pp. (New Paths to the Old God), a Life of Jesus distinguished by a lofty vein of natural poetry and based upon solid theological knowledge. Arno Neumann is headmaster of a school at Apolda.
