The author has studied the Jesus of the Gospels to see what light he can bring to our present religious, moral, social and political confusions. His concern is with the Christ who has changed men's lives for nineteen centuries, not the Christ of the statues and the hymns, not the Christ of the theologians, not the Christ that's left when the Scripture scholars have put away their knives, but the Christ of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the carpenter of Nazareth, "the fruit of David's loins". Once he is known, vast light can be got from the scholars; the reader who does not know the Gospel Jesus is at their mercy.