Excerpt from Ecce Homo and Its Detractors: A Review

So diverse from their own, the author of Ecce Homo chose the second course, of respecting critical doubts but not discussing them. Hence his cautious tone in regard to miracles, insisting on the reality of the belief in them, both on the part of disciples and enemies, which no one can dispute; but waiving for the pre sent the question of their reality as actual facts. Hence, too, his careful avoidance of the fourth Gospel as a. Basis of argument, which yet he freely uses by way of illustration; his doubtful language concerning the miraculous circumstances attendant on Christ's baptism and temptation his preference for general facts over particular; his exclusion of Apostolic testimony as evidence; and so on. Relying upon English common-sense unhesitatingly to reject all such intrinsically absurd theories as those of the legendary or mythical character of Gospel history, he was well aware that, with respect to many of the details Of that history, and especially its miracles, grave doubts were largely prevalent among all classes of intelligent men; that with respect to St John's Gospel, again, the difference in'tone between it and the others, involving apparently no less difference in doctrine, was so patent to the most superficial observer that it would be unsafe to insist upon its evidence in the present stage Of the inquiry except upon a full discussion of its claims, and explanation of its peculiarities; and that hence on all these points he must, if he would carry his readers with him, for the time concede the Objec tions as possibly valid, and build exclusively upon those portions and those aspects Of the Evangelic narrative which the vast majority at all events of those for whom his book was intended would admit to be irrefragably true. At the same time he lets us see pretty plainly, every here and there, that these doubts are not his own, that he has himself no objection to these grounds of evidence which for the sake of others he at present abstains from using; nay rather, that he looks forward to the removal of such objections, the solution of such doubts, as one Of the results to be expected from'his investigation. Instead of, in fact, like most orthodox advocates, proceeding at once to the debateable ground between the sceptic and believer, and battling Over it inch by inch, he takes the sceptic on his own ground, or rather the ground which is common to him and the believer, and by show ing him how much is involved in this which he does believe leads him to look at that debateable matter from a new stand point, a loftier height, whence its congruity and harmony may be per ceived. In other words, instead of hewing fiercely at the branches, he silently cuts away the root without doubt the most effective, if apparently the less thorough, method.

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