Note: The numbers in brackets [100] represent the page number from the book for use in footnotes
PREFACE
IT has been the good fortune of this little book not only to enjoy a large measure of public favor both in this country and America, but to be translated into more languages, both European and Asiatic, than the author can remember. Thus, in its humble way, it has been a sign of the worldwide interest in the subject, which, however, has been far more amply evidenced by the stream of new lives of CHRIST which never ceases to flow, those of Furrer, Schmidt and Otto Holtzmann, Gilbert and A. T. Robertson, David Smith, Sanday, Garvie, Bennett, and Selbie representing the recent issue without exhausting it.
In a work just published, Schweitzer's Von Reimarus zu Wrede, an astounding list is supplied of the German works on the subject produced during the last hundred and thirty years. But it can only be attributed to the enthusiasm of youth when the author speaks as if Germany had worked singlehanded at this problem and as if the whole world were now waiting for the verdict at her lips.
This is by no means the case: no country can claim a monopoly of thinking on this subject; and, deep as is the debt we owe to Germany, we in this country and America have good reasons of our own, some of which are only imperfectly appreciated there, for saying that we know Whom we have believed.
ABERDEEN, January, 1909.
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PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1891
SINCE the first publication of this Life of JESUS CHRIST many important additions have been made to the literature of the subject, such as the Lives by Nicoll, Edersheim, Weiss, Beyschlag, Vallings, and Didon. But no other book has, as far as the author is aware, been written on the plan of this one - to exhibit in the briefest possible space the main features and the general course of the Life, so as to cause the well-known details to flow together in the reader's mind and shape themselves into an easily comprehended whole. That, alongside of so many voluminous works, there is room for this little one has been amply proved by a large and steady demand for it up to the present time; and the author hopes that the changes introduced into this new edition, to bring the Notes up to date, may contribute to prolong its course of modest usefulness. Chapter 2 of the former editions has been divided into two chapters.
J. S.
May, 1891