SOME LIVES OF OUR LORD.*
hr The Mart Christ .Tesus we have "an attempt to depict the human life of Jesus as it appeared to His contemporaries." This is, of course, a bold attempt, and it has always been a source of surprise to us that it has been so often undertaken. To write a biography which shall contain something new when every bit of possible material is known to every possible reader is indeed a hard task, and must of necessity entail a heavy draft upon the imagination. The Four Gospels give us a simple, almost a bare, account of the events of the life of Christ. The preservation of His teaching was evidently the primary aim of the Evangelists, as is proved by the fact that outside His infancy and the three years of His ministry only one of them records a single incident. St. Luke alone gives us a glimpse of our Lord's youth, when at twelve years old He was found in the Temple, and He alone sums up the progress of the divine child in the somewhat startling sentence: He "increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man."
But if the narrative of events contained in the Gospels is far less full than we could wish, it is at the same time striking, simple, and easy to be understood. For the modem writer, therefore, there is nothing else to be done but to fill in the grand outlines of the scenes, incidents, and portraits put before us by the Evangelists. Of course, there remains the whole of Christ's teaching, upon which many thousands of volumes have been, and no doubt still may be, profitably written, but such commentary is hardly a legitimate part of a biographer's task, whose object should be to present a figure rather than a philosophy. It is a curious thing that all attempts to alter, restore, recolour, or render more definite the Evangelical picture of our Lord have hitherto failed, or have had but an ephemeral popularity. Apparently we are in no need of Bacon's warning : "Beware how in making the portraiture thou breakest the pattern." The sceptic may try as Renan tried to change the old outlines, and from the depths of his ornate imagination to evolve a new Christ ; or the orthodox believer may paint over the canvas and bring out into disproportionate prominence every minute detail. Their work alike proves evanescent, and Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John continue undisturbed to hold up to men the only inspiring portrait of that Son of Man whom the Western "world is gone after." The book before us is chiefly remarkable for the testimony it bears to the power and fascination of the original documents from which it was compiled. "It did at one time seem possible," says the author, "to write a Life of Christ from the sole point of view of its human grace and efficiency, but the design was soon rejected as wholly incompetent to the theme." A con. siderable change in the point of view of the writer takes place before the reader is half through his work, to which the tracing of this change lends a considerable interest; but the defect of the book from first to last is that it is too pretty. In a chapter called "Idyllic Days" Mr. Dawson seeks to bring before the mind of his readers an aspect of Christ's mind and teaching which has been, he deplores, very generally neglected, "the aspect of cheerful joyousness, enthusiastic unworldliness, and delight in poverty." The foundation for this point of view is slender, and in spite of a certain literary charm, Mr. Dawson as he elaborates his theory somehow contrives to give a shock to the graver sensibilities of the student of Christianity. Take the following passage : "The return of Jesus fr.= Cana to Capernaum was probably a kind of triumph. Young, gracious, fascinating, He had by a simple act endeared Himself to a multitude of humble people,"—the allusion is to the miracle of Cana of Galilee. "He blamed them for the folly of laborious preparation for a day that might never come. He counselled them to reconcile themselves to the law of the inevitable, the law of limitations which is found in every life. Bounds were set for them which they could not overpass. All the thinking in the world could
(L) The Han Christ Jesus. By W. J. Dawson. London: Grant Richards. ElOs. 601.)—(2.) The Life and Work of the Redeemer. By Twelve Writers. 14ndon : Cassell and Co. ree.]—(3.) The Life of the Master. By Ian Idaclaren. London : Hodder and Stoughton. [.5s.]—(4.) Ruling Ideas of Our Lord. By Charles F. D'Arcy, D.D. London : Hodder and Stoughton. Ds. net.]—(5.) The Son of Han. By Alex Fox. London : Elliot Stock. Ds. J
—746.) The Gospel Stors6 04 t Jesus Christ. By Ida W. Hutchinson. London : . Dent and {4s. —(7 .) The Story of Stories. By the Rev. R. C. Ga.. London: A. and C. Black. Leo..1
not add a cubit to their stature. As He sat beside the lake and saw the hills gay with purple lilies and the birds busy in their innocent and frugal life, Nature herself adorned His discourse with illustrations. The flowers grew, the birds were fed; life and food were all that men could rightfully demand from God, and these things God denied to none. The real wants of men were few, the artificial many. Human misery sprang from the dissatisfactions of an artificial method of life. Blessedness lay not in the gratification of desire, but in its moderation." We think this passage is a fair specimen of the whole of the book, which is more sentimental than pro- found.
The Life and Work of the .Redeemer is a book of sermons by different hands, originally contributed to the Quiver. Most of these sermons deal with the principal incidents in the life of our Lord from His birth to His crucifixion. A strictly chronological order of events is not main- tained, and one or two of the writers depart from the original scheme and attempt a more general review of the life and work of Christ. Among all the papers we think Dr. Lyman Abbott's (of New York) and Dr. Fairbairn's are the beat. The first is entitled "Jesus Christ as Missionary," a title by which Dr. Lyman Abbott tells us he does not indicate any special aspect of His life or even of His character, "the word missionary being generally descriptive of His office." The writer dwells at some length on the complete absence of formalism which appears in the religion which our Lord came to teach. Though He preached in the Synagogue, yet He preached more frequently outside of the sacred edifice. He went where the people were. "His pulpit was now a stone by the roadside, now the prow of a fishing-boat, now a seat at a dinner-table." The fact that He prescribed neither creed nor ritual has been often noted, but, says Dr. Lyman Abbott, "that omission on His part does not forbid us from doing both. It does forbid us from imagining that our creed or our ritual is of the essence of Christianity. The essence of Christianity is life,—the life of God in the soul of man." Dr. Fairbairn begins with a short recapitulation of the story of the Crucifixion. Then he turns the narrative into an allegory. He calls on his readers to look upon our Lord hanging between the two thieves as "Christ in the midst of time and of sin, with a world touched into penitence on His right hand, and a world touched into im- penitence and shamelessness on His left." The idea is striking and it is well worked out. To our mind, a greater atmosphere of reality is preserved by this frank departure from the actual history than is maintained when the details are strictly adhered to, but, as is often the case, are so loaded down with comment and supposed meanings that the account as the Evangelist wrote it sinks under an ocean of verbosity, and the figure of our Lord Himself seems hidden beneath masses of explanatory eulogy. It is impossible but that the human mind should weary of the repetition and amplification of any chain of events, however vital their intrinsic interest, how- ever wonderful and universal their subsequent consequence. St. Paul was wise when he laid stress, not upon the inci- dents of Christ's life and death, but on His character, His teaching, and His resurrection.
Warm admirers of "Ian Maclaren "—amongst whom we rank ourselves—will, we fear, be disappointed in the greater part of his new book. "Ian Maclaren" has written The Life of the Master upon a somewhat new plan. He does not seek to compass every single incident related in the Gospels, nor to harmonise the chronology of the four Evangelists. "Various incidents have been selected, each complete in itself and each affording a facet of the whole." The plan may be admirable, but the incidents have been enlarged and expanded to a wearisome extent. Take, for instance, the account of the marriage in Cana of Galilee. The writer supposes that the bride was the daughter of one of our Lord's elder brethren; that as a child, therefore, she would have been well acquainted with Christ, as "between the children of Nazareth and the gentle Carpenter there would be much pleasant traffic," and "among the children this little maid would be especially dear, as being of His own people," &c. Again, in the chapter entitled "With the Children" we are told that "among the inmates" of a certain house "was a boy—Peter's little lad, we guess." On this " guess " "Ian Maclaren" enlarges, till we finally come to this : "What a kindly, obliging, obedient
little fellow was Peter's boy!" All such extraneous narrative matter is surely of no great value. The best part of the book is outside the author's narrative altogether. A prologue called "The Inevitable Christ" contains some real eloquence; and "Christ and the Proletariat" is full of interesting suggestion, moral, religious, and political.
With these Lives of our Lord may fitly be noticed Ruling Ideas of Our Lord,—a very small book published in a series called "Christian Study Manuals." The first part of it is in reality a treatise on Christian ethics, and is quite admirable, being full of original and suggestive matter. The second part, which deals with doctrinal Christianity, is a clear and succinct statement of those dogmas held in common by most of the Christian Churches. The comments of the author (Dr. D'Arcy) upon the Sermon on the Mount, and his explanations of what Christ meant by the "king- dom of heaven," strike us as perhaps the best parts of a book in which there is hardly a page without interest. With regard to the former, Dr. D'Arcy presses upon his readers the fact of the extreme condensation of Christ's ethical teaching,—a con- densation which forbids an absolutely literal interpretation.
Christ," he says, "did not publish another decalogue ; He taught principles, and showed how to apply them." His short sayings "are real universals." In the mouth of our Lord the "kingdom of heaven" is, Dr. D'Arcy thinks, essentially a social conception. "In its barest elements it consists of the King and those who are subject to His rule." It is not to be regarded "as an order of things so different from the -world as to have no relation to it. In a sense, the kingdom exists for the benefit of the world." For Christ, he continues, the kingdom "was the light of the world,— existing and shining in the world." Space forbids us to quote more. We heartily recommend the manual to our readers.
The object of the book entitled The Son of Man as set forth in the preface (a preface not written by the author) is to put "before Church people a plain and accurate account of the condition of our Lord's earthly life and ministry, and to trace the main outlines of His teaching and its method. It has the great merit of so describing His life as never to lose sight of His divinity." The author adheres closely to the outlines of the Gospel history, adding a certain amount of local colouring and a great deal of somewhat commonplace didacticism and explanation.
The Gospel Story of Jesus Christ and The Story of Stories are two books intended for children. The first is a plain narrative told in the words of the Gospels; nothing is added and nothing is repeated more than once. When any incident is told more fully by one Evangelist than another the two accounts have been pieced together. All matter which might appear unsuitable for very young students of the New Testament is left out.
The Story of Stories is remarkable for its beautiful illustra- tions. The letterpress impresses us less favourably. It is not easy to simplify without commonising the history of Christ, and it is even more difficult to make the simplification touching without making it sentimental. These two tasks have proved too much for Mr. Gillie.
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