A REFRESHING VIEW OF RELIGION

On first starting this review, I thought to open with a sentence something like this: "Religion is in the air; not long ago a congress of bishops in Texas etc., etc." But it were better to say that there is much talk of religion in the air (granted that the troubles of Messrs. Coolidge, Fall, Denby and Daugherty have largely replaced it for the moment). To look back a bit, there was the Heresy number of the "Advocate." Then "The Fool" with his rather silly Overcoat Hall came to town--at the theatre. Mrs. Fisher rendered a superb translation of Papini's "Life of Christ" and for a time that was in the foreground. The turmoil started by the bishops in Texas found an echo in the college world after the Indianapolis Conference last December, at which it was discovered again that Harvard is a perfectly godless place; and lot of people are now doing themselves good (probably) by praying for us. Altogether quite a conglomeration of heterodox religious ideas have been competing for believers.

Christ Convincingly Portrayed

To those who have had their thoughts on religion rudely unsettled by the melee, Mr. Hartt brings a great deal of assistance in this study of the life of the Nazarene. For a layman to judge of the accuracy of his conception were folly; but for the writer at any rate, it is the most convincing portrait of Christ that has come into his hands. And that because it seems to be more true than most. The author's method is clearly outlined in the first paragraph of his foreword: "Beginning and keeping on uninterruptedly to the very end, I have been reading a heretical book. It upsets theologies. It demolishes creeds. It sweeps away traditions with a recklessness altogether amazing. It is called the Bible."

And there you have it; Mr. Hartt was at a divinity school where no one had read the Bible all the way through from beginning to end, but only a passage at a time. It was his idea that such manner of reading invited gross misinterpretation. He proves that this is so, and shows us a Man so much more real, so much more believeable, than the traditional figure obscured by myth, that at times one's breath is taken away by the very simplicity of the truth; and by the beauty of it more. For instance, everyone will recall the headlines which ran for a week in last month's papers, and caused them to be carefully hidden from all youthful and tender-minded persons. Now the very convincing answer to the idea of a miraculous birth is found by a careful reading of the Bible; and we find that Mary never claimed such a fact; that in the only reported incident in which Jesus was questioned about it. He allowed his questioners to understand Joseph to be His father. But among the elaborate theologies that were built up after His death, the fact of His miraculous birth began to figure largely--because the old Jewish legend had said that it would be so.

Jesus No Earthly Zeus

One of the most interesting features about this study is the emphasis put upon the fact that Jesus was extremely well read in Jewish law and mythology--that is, in the old testament. He believed the end of the world was at hand, and that all sinners would be sent to burn in eternal fire if unrepentant. Of course He was mistaken on the first point, and if He was right on the second point, only because it is true in a figurative sense (here we interject a layman opinion.) Jesus was a very real human being, and for that very reason He is the more wonderful. After all, it would not have been very difficult for a sort of Zeus to take the form of a man and do the things that He did. It is definitely more remarkable that a mere human saw the truth and had the strength to live by it; such, at least, is the burden of Mr. Hartt's thesis.

It is refreshing; it offsets Mr. Bryan's inanities, or rather the ideas prompted by his inferiority complex, which will not be satisfied unless the Nazarene were a wonderful Messenger sent especially to save mankind. It is eminently a sans book--a book in which such a statement as this, for instance, may be found: "Religion has no quarrel with ascertained knowledge. To say that it has is to make God a liar--which many pietists are now attempting to do, in a strange and profoundly irreligious confidence that so they serve him to good purpose."