It needs only to be added, that whilst warmly sympathizing with the earnest spirit which pervades the book, the translator by no means wishes to be identified with all the opinions therein expressed.
_December 8, 1863._ CONTENTS PAGE Introduction, by John Haynes Holmes 15 Introduction, in Which the Sources of This History Are Principally Treated 25 CHAPTER I Place of Jesus in the History of the World 67 CHAPTER II Infancy and Youth of Jesus--His First Impressions 81 CHAPTER III Education of Jesus 89 CHAPTER IV The Order of Thought Which Surrounded the Development of Jesus 99 CHAPTER V The First Saying of Jesus--His Ideas of a Divine Father and of a Pure Religion--First Disciples 119 CHAPTER VI John the Baptist--Visit of Jesus to John, and His Abode in the Desert of Judea--Adoption of the Baptism of John 135 CHAPTER VII Development of the Ideas of Jesus Respecting the Kingdom of God 148 CHAPTER VIII Jesus at Capernaum 160 CHAPTER IX The Disciples of Jesus 173 CHAPTER X The Preachings on the Lake 184 CHAPTER XI The Kingdom of God Conceived as the Inheritance of the Poor 194 CHAPTER XII Embassy from John in Prison to Jesus--Death of John--Relations of His School with That of Jesus 206 CHAPTER XIII First Attempts on Jerusalem 213 CHAPTER XIV Intercourse of Jesus with the Pagans and the Samaritans 227 CHAPTER XV Commencement of the Legends Concerning Jesus--His Own Idea of His Supernatural Character 235 CHAPTER XVI Miracles 248 CHAPTER XVII Definitive Form of the Ideas of Jesus Respecting the Kingdom of God 259 CHAPTER XVIII Institutions of Jesus 273 CHAPTER XIX Increasing Progression of Enthusiasm and of Exaltation 285 CHAPTER XX Opposition to Jesus 295 CHAPTER XXI Last Journey of Jesus to Jerusalem 305 CHAPTER XXII Machinations of the Enemies of Jesus 319 CHAPTER XXIII Last Week of Jesus 329 CHAPTER XXIV Arrest and Trial of Jesus 344 CHAPTER XXV Death of Jesus 360 CHAPTER XXVI Jesus in the Tomb 370 CHAPTER XXVII Fate of the Enemies of Jesus 376 CHAPTER XXVIII Essential Character of the Work of Jesus 381 AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION, In Which the Sources of This History Are Principally Treated A history of the "Origin of Christianity" ought to embrace all the obscure, and, if one might so speak, subterranean periods which extend from the first beginnings of this religion up to the moment when its existence became a public fact, notorious and evident to the eyes of all.

Such a history would consist of four books.

The first, which I now present to the public, treats of the particular fact which has served as the starting-point of the new religion, and is entirely filled by the sublime person of the Founder.

The second would treat of the apostles and their immediate disciples, or rather, of the revolutions which religious thought underwent in the first two generations of Christianity.

I would close this about the year 100, at the time when the last friends of Jesus were dead, and when all the books of the New Testament were fixed almost in the forms in which we now read them.