DEAN PARRAR'S NEW LIFE OF CHRIST.*
• The Life of Lives. By F. w. Farrar. London : Cassell and Co. ills.] THE book before us, while it has the familiar qualities which distinguish all the writings of Dr. Farrar, has one great defect in plan that must go far to hinder its usefulness. The writer has evidently not made up his mind at all clearly as to the kind of audience he wishes to address. In the preface,
after explaining that his treatise is to "deal with questions of high importance," he states his aim to be that of " deepening the faith in Christ of all who read it honestly"; ; the first part of which sentence seems to imply that the book is addressed to- professing Christians, while the word " honestly " rather points to sceptics. The writer goes on to appeal to " holy and humble men of heart," and to deprecate criticism upon himself by quoting St. Paul's repudiation of the Corinthians' right to judge him. A more appropriate quotation from St. Paid in the preface to a critical book would seem to us another verse from the same epistle : " I speak as to wise men ; judge ye what I say." We doubt if any good can accrue from the handling of critical questions in an uncritical spirit. Readers who are educated enough to understand the bearing of such questions will expect them to be argued "honestly," and to the best of the writer's power ; any other form of religious argument is best left to the orators in Hyde Park.
The very first chapter of the bool demonstrates conclusively the impossibility of arriving at any serious results from discussing questions of high critical importance by means of popular rhetoric. The problem there proposed for investigation is the virgin birth of our Lord. There are several conceivable ways in which this question might be approached; for example, it might be handled as a fact given on the authority of St. Luke, and his credibility as a historian might be discussed, as it has been discussed lately in regard to our Lord's alleged birth at Bethlehem by. Professor W. M. Ramsay, who, it may be mentioned, ranks it very high indeed. Dr. Farrar's argu- ment is summed up as follows:— "It will be seen, then, that the reason why we believe in the records of that miraculous birth, of those angel melodies, of those bending Magi, is not only because they stand recorded by those who were far too feeble to have invented them, and of whom every one would have said I would rather die than lie '—but because being so recorded they have received the attestation of God Himself, seeing that the whole subsequent history of the world seems to us to have set its seal to the belief that they are true."
It seems poor praise of the Evangelists to rank them as the intellectual inferiors of the writers of the uncanonical Gospels; but leaving that aside, the Dean's argument amounts to this : because the religion of Christ has taken hold of the world, therefore every story related of him must be true ; an argu- ment that would cover all the miraculous tales in the Gospels called apocryphal, and would no less forbid us to deny the least trustworthy traditions about Mahommed or Confucius, provided they are held by a majority of their followers.
Securus judicat orbis terrarum. A reader whom doubt as to the historical evidence for Christ's miraculous birth has
never troubled will not be troubled by Dr. Farrar's method of discussing it ; but the "honest" doubter willonly be confirmed in his doubt. The chapter which he might read, hoping to find some argument that might " deepen his faith," contains nothing more to the point than several lists of kings, poets, philosophers, artists, and men of science who have been
Chins or m some waliifitiiaierUlainty ; and the inference is that what could 'be reasonably held by them may reasonably be held by us. But it hardly needs-pointing out that on the same showing we might be asked to believe in Transubstantiation. Does Dr. Farrar hold this latter dogma because it was assented to by " Giotto and Leonardo, Raphael and Luini, Vittore Pisano and LorenZo di Credi, Giovanni Bellini and Carpaccio," or even by St. Thomas -Aquinas, St. Francis Xavier, and " sweet St. Francis of Aisisi" The day for such apologetics has gone by. Non tali auxilia tempits eget.
A further radical defect of the volume is that even where critical questions are critically discussed, there are so many topics handled, and the author requires so much rhetorical space to turn in, that to no single point can he give enough attention to satisfy any student who consults him upon, it. We have, for example, in the twenty-fourth chapter a point raised of the greatest interest and importance,--namely, the significance of our Lord's title of the "Son of Man." No one who did not already know could possibly discover from Dr. Farrar's discussion of this question that the strangely various uses of the title in the Synoptic Gospels, some cer- tainly being Messianic, and some apparently not, have been a source of grave perplexity to scholars. All that Dr. Farrar has to tell his readers is that there may 'be " a dim and in- direct, a very indirect," allusion to Daniel vii. 13 (which is a remarkable statement considering that the phrase, "coming in the clouds of Heaven," which is twice used by St. Mark in con- nection with this title, is borrowed from that verse in Daniel); and that "the phrase is used ninety times of the prophet Ezekiel, though he never applies it to himself, eighty times by Christ and always of Himself " ; which- piece of information the reader is left to draw any conclusion from that he pleases, while the writer hurries on to discourse about the brotherhood of man. Dr. Farrar's treatment of this Son of Man problem is typical of his treatment of most problems that present themselves in the course of the volume. A certain amount- of disjointed information that has more or less bearing on the subject proposed is thrown together, and then the author rides off on one of his favourite hobbies, usually the danger of sacerdotalism.
The book, therefore, does not merit attention from the serious scholar. The chapters devoted to events in the life of our Lord will be read as a supplement to the corresponding places in the author's well-known Life` of Christ ; and they supply some interesting illustrative passages from the Talmud. And, on the whole, it is in the quotations that_the main interest of the book will be found to lie. Dr. Farrar is a wide reader, and he brings together in these pages a large number of well-chosen excerpts from ancient and modern sources, especially from modern poetry. In a future edition it would be worth while to verify these, as they seem in many cases quoted from memory. It would be well also to omit the very full references to classical passages dealing with Greek and Roman immorality.
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