The late Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford has published what we must call a scholarly and painful book. Only a scholar brought up in the atmosphere of a modern University could have written as Bishop Headlam has written on ‘Jesus the Christ.’ Even the ‘Map,’ which is duly heralded on the title-page, has that note of scholarship which the older Universities, with their dogged craftsmanship, keep amidst a machine-mad world.

It goes without saying that there is a long, well-documented account of ‘Modern Criticism,’ which the Bishop chivalrously calls ‘learned criticism.’ As his Lordship does not altogether agree with the findings of the learned criticism, he therefore saves us from the charge of paradox in our having suggested that a work can be at once scholarly and painful;

i.e. the fruit of research, yet wide of the truth, or, in other words, learned but wrong.

Everywhere is seen the scholarly hand of the Biblical archeologist. We have most fascinating accounts of the road-system, which indeed has a place of honour in the Appendix. In a book of some 340 pages, more than a half are given over to that geographical, political and ecclesiastical learning which naturally springs up in an atmosphere of modern books. The student, therefore, who is seeking an almost cinematically vivid picture of the times of Jesus Christ will be grateful to the Bishop of Gloucester for his book. We have said much in saying that there are pages in it as thrilling as a work of fiction.