TRÜBNER & CO., 57 & 59, LUDGATE HILL.

NOTTINGHAM: STEVENSON, BAILEY, AND SMITH, PRINTERS.

M.DCCC.LXXXVI.

Reclass. 1-24-0Q, no.

17 Feb.16

B. &..

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.

UNDER pressure of criticism I hav enlarged Chapter VIII., not without misgiving. I hav long thought that we must wait for another generation, before any complete. review of the character and work of Jesus, who has left not a scrap from his own pen, can be successfully undertaken. Therefor I wished to narrate nothing but what the narrators say who ar received as sacred, and by no means all that they say. I hav confessed, and I again confess, on how slippery ground we hav to proceed.

In the problem of pp. 62-3 below, I hav overlooked one possibility; viz., that Jesus himself at some moments thought himself commissioned to overrule and discard the law of Moses, but was not permanently sure enough to avow this distinctly. Thus his parables of patching a threadbare garment with new cloth, and of pouring new wine into old skins, suggest that he then was imagining an overthrow of Mosaism; and equally when he said that no eating of food defiles a man. Nevertheless, he

may hav been unable at all times to maintain so high a claim, or to declare to his disciples that God through his voice abolished the law of Moses. Without a positiv and distinct avowal from himself that this was his aim, it was impossible for them to admit the thought, while he lived to teach them.

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