THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18894, 8 January 1927, Page 13

THE WORLD OF BOOKS.

HALF HOURS IN A LIBRARY. (specially WRITTBS FOE THZ pbzss.) By A. H. Grilling, CXLIX.—ON A NEW YEAR AND A NEW' LIFE. A clue to Mr Middleton Murry's ideas on religion is afforded in his lecture on "The English Bible and the Grand Style," one of a series delivered in the School of English Literature at Oxford on the invitation of the late Sir Walter Raleigh, in the summer term of 1921. Speaking of the realm of religion, he says: "Any deeply religious man is habituated to thoughts and feelings of a kind utterly remote from those which are the accompaniments of his practical life. A man who really believes in a just and omnipotent, a merciful and omniscient God has for his constant companion a conception and an emotion which are truly tremendous. No suggestion of the poet or the prose writer can possibly surpass them in force or vehemence." Continuing in this strain, Mr Murry says

■\Vhen an old Hebrew prophet wrote: "And tho Lord said," he had dona everything. Tho phraso is overwhelming. NoIhing in "Pnradiso Lost" can compare vith it.

"When tho most High Eternal Father from His secret cloud. Amidst His thunder utlered thus His. voice'

is almost trivial by its side. "And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in tbo garden in tho cool of tho day." Two thousand years oE Christian civilisation bend our minds to those words; wo can not resist them. Nor can wo refuse to them the title of great style. All that we have as critics of literature, to remomber, is that style of this kind ib possible only when the appeal 1b to a habit of feeling and thought peculiar to religion. Possibly that very phraso "And the Lord said" might ceem even ridiculous to one brought up in one of the transcendental religions of the £ast, just as somo of tho most poignant verses of tho New Testament are said to bo grotesque to an educated Mahommedan.

Mr Murry advances this as a reason why we should bo on our guard against tht familiar suggestion that the English Bible is, aa a whole the highest achievement in English prose stylo. He does not deem the statement altogether untruo, but he takes exception to the manner in which the verdict is sometimes pronounced. on tho subject, ho says:—"Tho Bible is a very heterogeneous book. Throughout, the Authorised version has the high qualities of simplicity .and firmness in phrasing. But there is all the difference in the world between tho underlying stylo of Genesis, and Job and Matthew. The stylo of Genesis is possible only to a. strict and almost fanatical monotheism; its tremendous simplicity overwhelms us, and I suppose it overwhelms a Jew even more. Tho style of Job, on the other hand, is that of high and universal poetry. The pod of Job is not left to our religous imagination; he expresses himself m language so creative and compulsive that—to use the phraso of Voltaire—if he did not exist it would be necessary to invent him."

All this leads up to a passage which has a direct bearing upon the method employed by Mr Murry in his new "Life of Jesus." I have dubbed it ' A New Life for the New Year" because I believe the book is destined to exert a profound influence upon the thinking done during 1927. The other day I picked up a copy of a weekly religious paper which has a good circulation in Australia, the editor _of which prides himself upon theological views of the fundamental type. This editor proceeded to demolish Mr Murry and his "Life of Jesus'' on the ground that the book showed an ignorance of the A.B.C. of theology; and after two or three vitriolic paragraphs came tho frank admission that the critic had not seon, much le3S read, the book; his criticism was based upon a two-column review which appeared in "Tlie Times," and which the critic complained was much too favourable. I found myself wondering whether this Australian editor's theology was any better based than was his criticism. This by the. way. Mr Murrv goes on to point out that the style of the Gosnels of the New Testament is quite distinct from the style either of Genesis or Matthew, and he says:—

In the 27th chapter of Matthew there are two masterly effects—l hardly know whether to call them effects of style. They aro contained in t«'o quite simple statements: "Then all the disciples left Him and lled"i and the words about Peter, after his third denial "And ho went out and wept bitterly." This appoaches to the condition of "And the Lord said" of Genesis, in the sense that the emotional suggestion is not in tho words themselves; but thoy diffor from those simple evocations of an awful conception of God; tho reserves of emotion which Matthew's simple statemont liberates in us_|tave been accumulated during tho reading of tho narrative. The personality and tho circumstances of Christ have been given to us: no words, no art, could intensify the effect of the sudden, utterly unexpected statement: "Then nil the disciples left Him and lied." The situation given, tho force of the words is elemental. So too, .nothing moro needs to be told ns of Peter than that "ho went out and wept' bitterly." We know what ha felt; to attempt to de-

«cribe or define it would only be to take away from that which we know. And all through the Gospel narratives there are these phrases charged with a simple emotional significance. "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Jlei' is surely the most terrible cry the world has ever heard: put it back into the Hebrew, the only words of Hebrew most of us know, "Eli, Eli, lijpi saboc thani"—its fores is hardly less. We know what it- means.

Mr Murrv explains that the Jesus Whom he has presented in his ' Life, is simply the Jesus Who is real to him, the Jesus in Whose real existence ho can and ho does believe. In order to present this Jesus clearly he has been bold enough—without warning or apology —to exclude incidents in the familiar story which he holds to be apochryplial, as well as putting on one side many sayings and incidents which, while authentic, would only have obscured the narrative from the writer's standpoint. His aim lias been simply to establish a point or view from which the profound and astonishing unity of the lite and teaching of Jesus can be grasped. Mr Murrv insists that Jesus was above all a man of genius; at the same time he admits that to many, Jesus was above all a supernatural being, but he adds. ''l cannot share that belief cause I do not know what it means.' He illustrates his point in a striking fashion. Ho takes the childhood of Jesus and describes it as "a iull and happy childhood," and says, "It is unlikely that there was anything extraordinary about Him; men of commanding genius are seldom extraordinary children," —"What happened to Him in the fateful years between twenty and thirty is hidden from us ; wo only know that He becamo what He was the profoundest teacher, the bravest hero, the most loving man that this world has ever known."

Mr Marry gives way to imagination in order to speculate as to the early influences which made .Jesus what He became, and ho regulates that imagination according to the common conception of how tlio greatest men arc made. "One or two things we may say for certain. He- plunged into the world; direct, first hand experience of life, and moro than village lifo, speaks in all His sayings. He suffered; He was hound to suffer. No man learns infinite love save through infinite of suffering. And a third thing which is certain is that Ho sinned. No man was ever less of a humbug than Jesus. When Ho wont out to be baptised by John, He went out to bo baptised for 'the remission of His sins.' Ho was the last man on earth to seek such a baptism had He not been conscious of sin. No man despised mere ritual and empty ceremony more profoundly than He. Ho was baptised for His sins because Ho had sinnod." Mr Murry qualifies what at first blush seems a startling statement: —

But sin is a vacua word. . The Bins of a great man aro not us the sins of a little one; and tho mo6t grievous sin of a sensitive man would he imperceptible to a callous conscience, Jesus' sins were tho sins of a supremo spiritual genius, who knew and taught that tho outward act was loss significant than tho inward attitude. To such a man an inward despair concerning the exlstenco of God would bo far more terrible than any .lawless living in which the inward despair should find its utterance.

It would bo foolish to speculate further on the naturo of Jesus's sin. Enough that in his inward conviction he liad sinned and that on the news of tho appearanco of John, preaching tho imminent end of the world nnd a baptism for the remission of sins ho went down from Nazareth to a desert place by the side of the Jordan to bo baptised by him. He was then about thirty years of age. At that ago and in that plaeo Jesus first enters the pages of history. With his baptism by John our real knowledge of him bogins.

In the chapter headed "Tlio Man in tho Synagogue," Mr Murry points out that wliilo the phrase, "a man with an impure spirit," is strange to a modern mind, tho reality is not. ."Ho was a man posseßsod by a power greater than himself who did what ho would not and spoke what ho would not. For all such supersessions of the active and controlling personality in Jesus' day, there was a single name and theory: the man was possessed by a spirit or daemon. The spirit could bo pure or impure; good or evil. By the pure spirit, which was the spirit of God, a man was inspired and a prophet; by the impure spirit, which was the Spirit of Evil, he was simply possessed and mad. To distinguish between these spirits was as difficult than as it is to-day. Wo do not know how to distinguish between the genius and tho madman in themselves: the only test we have is that which Jesu3 himself applied to others and claimed for himself, "By their works you shall know them." The comment which follows is characteristic: —

The decision was easy for the Pharisee, who was convinced that the day of the prophets was past. For liim nil spirits were impure spirits. It was his sentence upon Jesus and upon John the Baptist, before Him. In the eyes of organised religion of their day John before and Jesus after, Had each a spirit indeed, but it was a spirit of evil. That has always been tho judgment of organised religion upon those of its children who claimed to be directly inspired by God; for the position of organised religion has always been the same. Because it is religion God has revealed Himself directly unto men; because it is organised that direct revelation can never be renewed. A new revelation cannot ho suffered because it strikes direct at the heart of authority. It is and must bo condemned as Bubversivo and heretical. Therefore it is held to' he tlio inspiration of the Evil One, and is punished as such.

I commend this New Life for New Year reading. It is -not likely that many will be found to subscribe to every aspect of the presentation of Jesus which Mr Murry lias set down in these pages. At least they will find tho book one of great charm. More important still, it is possible that many men will learn the way to conceive a Jesus in Whom they can bolieve, and if only such a belief becomes universal, the long expected Tevival of religion may manifest itself. Mr Murry's final words carry a profound significance: "The spiritual body of Jesus exists and is immortal. Some make their life-giving contact with it through the Eucharist; for others that contact is impossible. But they, through the effort of making tho earthly life of Jesus real to themselves, find their souls possessed by love and veneration for the Prince of Peace. A fount of living water is unsealed in them. And it may be that this and this alone is the great Christian experience, ultimate and eternal, though our way to it must be our own. Of these ways we may say this, that if they shall truly bring us to the Jesus Who is eternal, they must be. ways that do not compel us to make sacrifice of aught we truly believe and know and are. Of one thing we may bo certain: that Jesus would rather be denied by a true man than professed by a liar. He would not have us less than men: and we shall lose nothing by remaining men of our own century and our own country. At the last we'shall greatly gain. We shall look like ] _n on the man JesusHe will stand our scrutiny. Keep v--our heads as high as we can, they sh,«i be bowed at the last. And without abating one jot of what we truly believe and know and are, we shall v, "h absolute sincerity make the words or the great doctor of the English Church our own: "Look upon Him till He w ol j s back upon us again." For so He wi .

Although his hands are botli "dead," as the result of war wounds, an artist has recently shown some of his pictures in London. His work also appeared in the Royal Academy.