The Westminster Review (Volume 102) (Paperback)

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1874. Excerpt: ... r.io Contemporary Literature. THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY. IT is perhaps slightly presumptuous to criticise a work which, according to our copy, has already reached a seventh edition,1 but popularity is not an infallible test of merit. Those who buy this book on the supposition that it is what we ordinarily mean by a "Life" will be bitterly disappointed. This is said in no unkindly or contemptuous spirit. The author passes judgment on himself in the preface in the following terms: -- "It is perhaps yet more important to add that this 'Life of Christ' is avowedly aud unconditionally the work of a believer. Those who expect to find in it new theories about the divine personality of Jesus, or brilliant combinations of mythic cloud, linked by the sunset imagination of some decadent belief, will look in vain. It has not been written with any direct and special reference to the attacks of sceptical criticism. It is not even intended to deal, otherwise than indirectly, with the serious doubts of thos3 who, almost against their own will, think themselves forced to lapse into a state of honest disbelief. I may indeed venture to hope that such readers, if they follow me with no unkindly spirit through these pages, may here and there find considerations of real weight and importance, which will solve imaginary difficulties and supply an answer to real objections. Although this book is not mainly controversial, aud would, had it been intended as a contribution to polemical literature, have been written in a very different manner, I do not believe that it will prove wholly valueless to any honest doubter who reads it in a candid and uncontemptuous spirit. Hundreds of critics, for instance, have impugned the authority of the Gospels on the score of the real or supposed contradictions to he found in t...