Professor Loofs on "What Is the Truth About Jesus?"

Church Historyin the University of Halle-Wittemberg, as second only to Harnack in mastery of the development of Christian doctrine, and as the author of a number of technical works on various recondite questions in dogmatics and criticism, has en- riched the growing literature of the Jesus-Question with a volume of 240 pages, published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, and consisting of six Haskell Lectures delivered between the 26th of September and the 4th of October, 1911, under the auspices of the Theological Department, at Oberlin College.The lectures are pleasingly written, temperate in tone, reason- ably fair though often seriously inadequate in statement, and comprehensive though of necessity painfully sketchy in treatment.Such themes as "Jesus a Real Man of Our History," "The Liberal Jesus- Picture," "The Liberal Jesus-Research," "Jesus not Merely a Man," "The Ancient Christology Untenable," "Modern Forms of Christol- ogy," can not be satisfactorily handled each in an hour, in 40 small and double-leaded pages.The hearers must have left the hall, as the reader lays down the book, with an unsatisfied feeling, as if they had been regaled with specimen morsels rather than sated with a full meal.Nevertheless, the work is in many ways worth observation, and the adherents of the new criticism must be especially grateful to the author, to the authorities of Oberlin, and to the enterprising publishers who have brought it out.For it is not only the word of a very competent scholar and high authority, but of an honest and candid man, who is trying hard to be just even to views with which he is least sympathetic.The Eng- lish reader of this very readable book will find it pervaded by a spirit