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 number of 1863 a critical analysis by Havet who hailed Renan's work as a great achievement, and criticised only the inconsistencies by which he had endeavoured to soften down the radical character of his undertaking. Later on the Revue changed its attitude and sided with Renan's opponents. In the Protestant camp there was an even keener sense of distaste than in the Catholic for the sentimental gloss which Renan had spread over his work to make it attractive to the multitude by its iridescent colours. In four remarkable letters Athanase Coquerel the younger took the author to task for this. From the standpoint of orthodox scholarship E. de Pressense condemned him; and proceeded without loss of time to refute him in a large-scale Life of Jesus. He was answered by Albert Reville, who claims recognition for Renan's services to criticism.

In general, however, the rising French school of critical theology was disappointed in Renan. Their spokesman was Colani. "This is not the Christ of history, the Christ of the Synoptics," he writes in 1864 in the Revue de theologie, "but the Christ of the Fourth Gospel, though without His metaphysical halo, and painted over with a brush which has been dipped in the melancholy blue of modern poetry, in the rose of the eighteenth-century idyll, and in the grey of a moral philosophy which seems to be derived from La Rochefoucauld." "In expressing this opinion," he adds, "I believe I am speaking in the name of those who belong to what is known as the new Protestant theology, or the Strassburg school. We opened M. Renan's book with sympathetic interest; we closed it with deep disappointment."

The Strassburg school had good cause to complain of Renan, for he had trampled their growing crops. They had just begun to arouse some interest, and slowly and surely to exercise an influence upon the whole spiritual life of France. Sainte-Beuve had called attention to the work of Reuss, Colani, Reville, and Scherer.