as by Schenkel and others, to paedagogic motives; it was necessary that Jesus should first educate the people and the disciples up to a higher ethical view of His office. In the stress which he lays upon the eschatology Hase has points of affinity with Keim, for whom he had prepared the way in his Life of Jesus of 1829, in which he had been the first to assert a development in Jesus in the course of which He at first fully shared the Jewish eschatological views, but later advanced to a more spiritual conception. In his Life of Jesus of 1876 he is prepared to make the eschatology the dominant feature in the last period also, and does not hesitate to represent Jesus as dying in the enthusiastic expectation of returning upon the clouds of heaven. He feels himself driven to this by the eschatological ideas in the last discourses. "Jesus' clear and definite sayings," he declares, "with the whole context of the circumstances in which they were spoken and understood, have been forcing me to this conclusion for years past."
"That lofty Messianic dream must therefore continue to hold its place, since Jesus, influenced as much by the idea of the Messianic glories taken over from the beliefs of His people as by His own religious exaltation, could not think of the victory of His Kingdom except as closely connected with His own personal action. But that was only a misunderstanding due to the unconscious poesy of a high-ranging religious imagination, the ethical meaning of which could only be realised by a long historical development. Christ certainly came again as the greatest power on earth, and His power, along with His word, is constantly judging the world. He faced the sufferings which lay immediately before Him with His eyes fixed upon this great future."
The chief excellence of Beyschlag's Life of Jesus consists in its arrangement. [1] He first, in the volume of preliminary investigations, discusses the problems, so that the narrative is disencumbered of all explanations, and by virtue of the author's admirable style becomes a pure work of art, which rivets the interest of the reader and almost causes the want of a consistent historical conception to be overlooked. The fact is, however, that in regard to the two decisive questions Beyschlag is deliberately inconsistent. Although he recognises that the Gospel
- ↑ Das Leben Jesu, von willibald Beyschlag: Pt. i. Preliminary Investigations, 1885, 450 pp.; Pt. ii. Narrative, 1886, 495 pp. Joh. Heinr. Christoph Willibald Beyschlag was born in 1823 at Frankfort-on-Main, and went to Halle as Professor in 1860. His splendid eloquence made him one of the chief spokesmen of German Protestantism. As a teacher he exercised a remarkable and salutary influence, although his scientific works are too much under the dominance of an apologetic of the heart. He died in 1900.
