Giovanni Papini’s “Story of Christ” is, to put it on its lowest level, the literary sensation of the moment in Italy. Within one week after publication ten thousand copies were sold, and very shortly afterwards the whole of the first edition of twenty thousand was exhausted—this with a serious and by no means sensational book of over six hundred pages. The reason may perhaps partly be sought in the fact that the curious wished to see what would be made of the Gospels by a writer who, whatever the intellectual distinction of his other work, had certainly been guilty of uttering defiant anti-Christian sentiments and had, in addition to the legitimate effect produced by his works of imagination, exerted a definite influence against religion among the young intellectuals of Italy. But no one who looks beyond the immediate circumstances will account for all the popularity of Papini’s book in this way. He will add the further important facts—first, that this is a rewriting of the Gospel-story by a poet; secondly, that the act of faith uttered by Papini in this book corresponds to the profoundly Catholic and Christian sentiments of the Italian people, the younger generation not by any means excepted—for the war has driven many a doubter to serious reflection and self-examination, with spiritual results similar to those which were produced in Papini himself. By its literary qualities, then, and by its appropriateness to the prevailing religious emotions of men in Italy and in other countries which passed through the war, Giovanni Papini’s “Story of Christ” bids fair to become one of the most notable books of the century.