Mr. E. W. Cole, of Melia:tarns, has written and published
the Real Place in History of Jesus and Paul, of which he has given to the public one volume, "complete in itself," as he tells us. Unfortunately fur us, this description is scarcely correct. We are left in absolute ignorance of what Paul's " real place in history " may have been, and as to Jesus, we learn this only, that the commonly received accounts which we call the Gospels are wholly untrustworthy, bat that He was probably a great exorciser. Does Mr. Cole think what he is doing ? Does he believe himself to be justified in sweeping the mind of Europe clear of its hereditary faiths, and leaving it a blank till he is prepared with his second volume ? For ourselves, we shall keep our old belief till we get something better than this " complete " notion of an exorciser, which, after all, is but a very poor sort of thing. But when Mr. Cole is ready with something more definite, we shall be ready to listen to him. At the same time, we mast own that we have not a thorough confidence in his qualifications. He has accumulated a vast amount of information, but does not exercise the least approach to a critical faculty in dealing with it ; and we have conceived a prejudice, possibly an unreasonable prejudice, but still strong, against a writer who talks of a dicta.
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