THE EPIC OF SAUL.*

Tam is a very interesting poetic effort. There is life in it, though there are many faults. One is aware that the writer has put his own life into it, and the result is that, in spite of blank verse that is frequently dragging, of a conception of the character of Saul before his conversion which is to our mind demonstrably unjust, and of the introduction of a. Jewish tempter into the story for whose existence Mr. Wilkinson's imagination is wholly responsible, and who gives rather a melodramatic air to his poem, The Epic of Saul, far from being difficult to read, is decidedly impressive and attractive. The character of Shimei, the cunning and malig- nant tempter in question, detracts, we think, from the simplicity and majesty of the main theme, and suggests the author's need of a stage villain. But the other fanciful cha- racters of the story, Saul's sister and Stephen's wife and children, are introduced with a certain dignity and pathos which reconcile the reader to the engrafting of imaginary figures and incidents on a scenewith the real characters of which the hearts of men have so often and so eagerly busied them- selves. In spite of the ambitions character of the effort, and the reader's consciousness that to the principal figure in it very much less than full credit is given by the author, one never wants to lay the book down, and reads it through with increasing rather than flagging interest.

Of the real figures, by far the most satisfactory to our mind is Gamaliel. His genuine suspense of mind, his strong pre- possession against the new faith, and yet the impression made upon him by the bearing of the Apostles when brought before the Sanhedrim, are delineated with a meditative sim- plicity that seems to bear out the hint given us in the Amts of the Apostles, and yet to deepen and complete it. Here is the picture, which seems to us a fine one, of Gamaliel's state of mind :—

"Something not earthly in those prisoners mien, tone of more than human in their words, A majesty, as of omnipotence Patient within them, ready to break forth,

But patient still, to brook how much was need—

So much, no more l—this awed one watchful heart Prepared amid that council now to heed ; Gamaliel inly pondered, 'Is it God ?'

The clear simplicity, the perfect faith, The steady, prompt obedience, the serene Courage that dared, without defying, all The terrors brandished by the Sanhedrim- This spirit, strange in those despisAd men, As with a soft and subtle atmosphere Enfolding and suffusing him, subdued The solid temper of his mind, the strong Set of his resolution grim relaxed, Undid the hard contortions of his nerves, And supple made the will so firm before. His steadfast poise of confidence perturbed,

Gamaliel trembled with uncertainty."

His speech in the Council (as usual where the verse gives a direct paraphrase of Scripture) is not impressive, but the four lines which describe the effect of that speech are so :— "Gamaliel spoke and ceased ; but, while he spoke, His speaking was like silence audible,

Rather than sound of voice; and when he ceased, His silence was as eloquence prolonged."

Gramaliel's suspense, not merely of judgment but of spiritual attitude in relation to the new faith, is throughout given with true imaginative power; but we do not find the tame insight in dealing with the hero of the poem. Saul is represented as a man full of personal ambition, whose hope it had been to identify his own name with a spiritual revival of his people, and as led away by that temptation into a perverse resistance to the Spirit of God :— - "He never yet Had shown to any, scarce himself had seen, The true deep master motive of his soul, • The Epic of Saui. By William Cleaver Wilkinson. New York and London: Funk and Weignells.

That fountain darkling in the depths of self Whence into light all streams of being flowed. Saul daily, nightly, waking, sleeping, dreamed Of a new nation, his beloved own, Resurgent from the dust, consummate fair,

And, for chief corner-stone, with shoutings reared To station in the stately edifice—

Whom but himself? Who worthier than Saul ?"

Now, St. Paul tells the Council (and all his letters tell the same story) that he had lived "in all good conscience before God until this day." Mr. Wilkinson, so far from making him live in all good conscience, makes him an accomplice, more

or less unwilling, in the suborning of false witnesses which brought Stephen to his death,—makes him, indeed, harden his heart against the glimpses which he obtained of the true light, and makes him even tamely accept the guidance of one

whose evil nature he plainly perceived. All this is meant to be the prompting of the selfish and ambitions element in an otherwise lofty nature ; but of all this there is not a trace in St. Paul's own accounts of himself, while there is much which is. quit* inconsistent with it. The language which he uses when he is quite conscious that he had been a persecutor of the true Church, is still the language of one who had persecuted it in honest zeal and ignorance. "I verily thought with myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth," he says in his apology to King Agrippa. And in the account which he gives of his conversion in the letter to the Galatians, there is not a hint of consciousness that he had resisted the true light from any selfish and ambitious motive. He is, in a sense, even proud of his Jewish zeal while he was still a Jew. "You have heard," he says, "of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the Church of God, and wasted it ; and profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers." That is not the language of a man who had discovered the selfish and ambitious taint in

his persecuting zeal which Mr. Cleaver Wilkinson delineates. On the contrary, it is the language of a man who, though be

knew that he had misinterpreted the traditions of his fathers, was still persuaded that his zeal for them had been both genuine and pure. Mr. Wilkinson paints it as a mixed pro- duct of religious zeal, self-deceit, and blind ambition. And hence he seems to us to misconceive Saul's Jewish character altogether.

Nevertheless, there is much in the poem that impresses us as the work of a poetic as well as of a spiritual mind. The following short description of the silence that fell on the Sanhedrim after Saul's vehement speech, when Stephen first raised his voice in reply, has in it much serene beauty :—

"The tumult grew a tempest when Saul ceased : No single voice of mortal man might hope, Though clear like clarion and like trumpet loud, To live in that possessed demoniac sea

Of vast vociferation whelming all, Or ride the surges of the wild uproar.

What ailed thee, 0 thou sea, that thy mad mind So suddenly was soothed? Did 'Peace, be still !' Dropping, an unction from the Holy One, Softly as erst on stormy Galilee, Wide overspread the summits of the waves And sway their swelling down to glassy calm ? Stephen stood forth to speak, and all was still."

And Stephen's speech itself is more like what we should have looked for from such a convert at such a moment than the speech as actually recorded in the Acts, which, we cannot help thinking, has less in it of the evidence of inspiration than any other recorded speech in the New Testament. Not only does its historical detail present the utmost difficulty to Scripture harmonists, but the substance of it is, to the super- ficial glance, unwontedly tame and irrelevant. Mr. Wilkinson has given us a speech which, while founded upon it, goes beyond it and includes what we may very fairly suppose that Stephen really said or conveyed to his audience, without all the redundant detail of the rather long-winded historical resumi.

That Mr. Wilkinson can put into Stephen's month some- thing like a poetic and imaginative expression of the true Christian faith, let the following passage, which, though it has no fire, has, at least in its closing lines, true spiritual depth and pathos, show :—

"That such a Ruler should be such as He Whom we proclaim, the Man of Nazareth, The Carpenter, the Man of Calvary, Affronts your reason, tempts to disbelief—

Doubtless ; but all the more shown absolute His sovereignty, transcendent, passing quite Limit of precedent or parallel, As nothing in Him outwardly appears To soothe your pride in yielding to His claim.

Always the more offended pride rebels, Is proved his triumph grbater who subdues. Deep is our human heart, and versatile Exceedingly, ingenious past our ken, Inventive of contrivances to save Fond pride from hurt. But here is no escape ; Pride must be hurt and bleed, unsolved her wounds.

She may not conquer crouching, she must crouch Conquered ; nor only so, she must be glad To be the conquered, not the conqueror ; Thus deeply must the heart abjure itself, Thus deeply own the mastership of Christ.

Christ will not practise on your self-conceit And lure you to obey illusively.

Obedience is not obedience

Save as, obeying, you love, loving, obey—

The chief of all obediences, love."

The chief defect of the poem is the frequently leaden weight of the blank verse. Blank-verse metre requires genius to give it life and force, and Mr. Wilkinson does not seem to us to wield such a genius, though the rhythm of the later books is certainly better and has more movement in it than the rhythm of the earlier. We should find it difficult, however, to read any of the following lines except as plain and somewhat heavy prose :- "Is less satisfactory. On this point who doubt." (p. 32.) "Yet this puissant soldier of the truth." (p. 232.)

"Or one goaded, and wildly seeking fast." (p. 272.) These no doubt are exceptionally bad, but there are a good many which require either a false accent to subdue to the rhythm, or which weigh upon the voice like a leaden chain. Of the former kind is the line,

"And there stoned him calling upon the name." (p. 297), where, to make the line accommodate itself to blank verse, the reader must put a false emphasis on "him." Of the latter kind are such terribly flat passages as these, which are much too

numerous :— "Others deemed Public dispute mistaken precedent Teeming with various mischief—sure to breed Insufferable pretensions in the crowd, So taught to count themselves fit arbiters On Scriptural or traditional points of moot, And, by close consequence, a serious breach Endanger in their own authority; Yet others felt, whatever fruit beside Was borne of Saul's proposed experiment,

Two things at least were safe to reckon on—

In its own dignity, the Sanhedrim Must needs incur immedicable hurt, So plainly scandalous a spectacle Exhibiting, a councillor enrolled Of their own number stooping to debate On equal terms with ignorant fishermen ; Then, on their aide, those flattered fishermen, Far from indulging proper gratitude

For being publicly confounded quite

At such illustrious hands, would be instead Inflated out of measure, nigh to burst, With added pride at complaisance so new From their superiors, while the common herd Would give them greater heed accordingly."

Nevertheless, and in spite of many such passages, we have found Mr. Wilkinson's effort full of interest, chiefly, we think, because his own heart has been thoroughly identified with it, and because he has the command of a gentle though genuine pathos, which gives to many of the scenes an air of true

spiritual insight.