FARRAR'S LIFE OF CHRIST.*
WE have had Lives of Christ presented to • us under forms of German philosophy and French sentiment, and now we have one in that most popular English style, the style of the. Daily Telegraph. " The Life of Christ by a Special Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph" may sound, irreverent, but if so, the fault is not ours. The book is full of learning and knowledge, though we cannot say that it is " without o'erflowing full," for, to use an American • The Life of Christ. By Frederic W. Farrar, D.D., F.B.S., late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. 2 vole. Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, London, Paris, and New York. phrase, " it slope round pretty considerably." Dr. Farrar is familiar with the scenes and the customs of Palestine and its in- habitants, from his personal observation as well as from the accounts of other travellers ; he is acquainted—as his notes con- stantly show—with all the authorities, ancient and modern, orthodox and rationalist, whose names he arrays in a long list ; he is devoutly Christian in his faith ; moderate and liberal after the manner of our English-Church divines ; desirous " to aid the cause of truth and righteousness" by what he writes ; and with these qualifications, intellectual, moral, and religions, he pours forth the torrents of rhetoric which form these two volumes, and which we can only characterise as we have done, and as we justify our doing by the following quotation, from the chapter headed "Jesus as He lived in Galilee ":— " Ho walked in Galilee. It was the brightest, hopefallest, most active episode in His life. Let us, in imagination, stand aside and see Him pass, and so, with all humility and reverence, set before us as vividly as we can what manner of man He was.
Let us, then, suppose ourselves to mingle with any one -fragment of those many multitudes which at this period awaited Him at every point of His career, and let us gaze on Him as they did when-He was a man on earth.
We are on that little plain that runs between -the Hills-of Zebnlon and Naphtali, somewhere between the villages of Kefra Kenna, and the so-called Kane-el-Jan A sea of corn, fast yellowing to the harvest, is around ns, end- the bright, innumerable flowers that border -the wayside are richer and larger than those of home. The path on which we stand leads in one direction to Accho and the coast, in the other, over the summit of Hattin to the Sea of Galilee. The land is lovely wah all the loveliness of a spring day in Palestine, but the hearts of the eager, ex- cited crowd, in the midst of which we stand, are too muoh,occupied by one absorbing thought to notice its beauty ; for some of them are blind, and sick, and lame, and they know not whether to-day a finger of mercy, a word of healing—nay, even the touch of the garment of this great Unknown Prophet as He passes by—may not alter and gladden the whole(complexion of their future lives. And farther back, at a little distance from the crowd, standing-among the wheat, with covered lips, and warning off all who approached them with the cry of ' Tame, Tame,' —'Unclean unclean !'—clad in mean and scanty garments, are some fearful and -mutilated figures, whom, with a shudder, we recognise as -lepers. The comments of the crowd show that many different motives have brought them together. Some are there from interest, some from curi- osity, some from the vulgar contagion of enthusiasm which they cannot themselves explain. Marvellous tales of Him—of His mercy, of His power, of His. gracious words, of His mighty deeds—are passing from lip to lip, mingled, doubtless, with suspicions and calumnies. One or two Scribes and Pharisees who are present, -holding themselves a little apart from the crowd, whisper to each other -their-perplexities,` their indignation, their alarm.
Suddenly over the rising ground, at no great distance, is seen the cloud of dust which marks an approaching company, and a young boy of Magdala or Bethsaida, heedless of the scornful reproaches of the Scribes, points in that direction, and runs excitedlyforward-with the
'shouts of ,Alalka Afeschichah! llialka Meschichah The-King Messiah! the King Messiah l'—which even on youthful lips must have quickened the heart-beats of a simple Gallia= throng. And now the throng approaches. It is a motley multitude of young and old, composed mainly of peasants, but with others- of higher rank interspersed in their loose array,—here a frowning Pharisee, there a gaily-clad Herodian whispering to some Greek merchant or Roman soldier his scoffing comments on the enthusiasm of the crowd. But these are the few,.and almost every eye of that large throng is eon- stoutly directed towards one who stands in -the centre of-the-separate group which the crowd surrounds.
In the front of this group walk some of the newly-chosen Apostles; behind are others, among whom there is one whose restless glance and saturnine countenance-accord but little with that look of venttess and innocence which stamps his comrades as honest men. Some of those who are looking on whisper that he is a certain Judas of Kerioth, almost the only follower'of Jesus' who is not a Galihean. A little futther in the rear, behind the remainder of -the Apostles, are dour or five women, some on foot, some on mules, among whom, though they. aro partly veiled, there are some who recognise the once wealthy and dis-
solute, but now repentant, Mary of Magdala • and Salome; wife of -the fisherman Zabdia ; and one of still higher wealth end position, Joanna, the wife of Chum, steward of Herod Antipas.
But He whom all eyes seek is in the very centre of the throng • and though at His right hand is the strong Peter of Bethsaida, and at His 'left the more youthful and graceful figure of John, yet every glance is absorbed by Rim alone.
He is not clothed in soft raiment of -byssus or purple, 4like Herod's courtier; or the luxurious friends of the Procurator Pilate ; He does not wear the white ephod of the Levite, or the sweeping robes of the Scribe. There are not, on his arm and forehead, the rephyllin TIT phy- lacteries, which the Pharisees make so broad; and though-there hist -each corner of His dress the fringe and blue riband which the law enjoins, it is not worn of the ostentatious size affected by those who wished to parade the scrupulousness of their obedience. He is in the ordinary dress of his
• time end country. He is not bare-headed—as-painters usually repre- sent Eim—for to move about bare-headed in the Syrian sunlight is impossible, but a white keffeyeh, such as is worn to this day, covers his hair, fastened by an aghal or fillet round the top of the head, and falling back over the neck and shoulders. A largo blue outer robe or tallith, pure and clean, but of-the simplest -materials, covers his entire person, and, only shows occasional glimpses of tho.ketoneth, a seamless woollen tunic of the ordinary striped texture, so common in the East, which is confined by a girdle round the waist, and which clothes !aim from the meek almost down to the sandalled feet. -But these simple garments do not conceal the King ; and though in His bearing there is nothing of the self-conscious haughtiness of the Rabbi, yet in its natural nobleness and unsought grace it is such as instantly suffices to check every rude tongue and overawe every wicked thought. And His aspect? He is a man of middle size, and of about thirty years of age, on whose face the purity and charm of youth are mingled with the thoughtfulness and dignity of manhood. His hair, which legend has compared to the colour of wine, is parted in the middle of the forehead, and flows down over the neck. His features are paler and of a more Hellenic type than the weather-bronzed and olive-tinted faces of the hardy fishermen who are his Apostles; but though these features have evidently been marred by sorrow—though it is manifest that these eyes, whose pure and indescribable glance seems to read the very secrets of the heart, have often glowed through tears—yet no man whose soul has not been eaten away by sin and selfishness can look unmoved and un- awed on the divine expression of that calm and patient face. Yes, this is He of whom Moses and the Prophets did speak,—Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Mary, and the Son of David ; and the Son of Man, and the Son of God. Oar eyes have beheld the King in his beauty. We have beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. And having seen Him, we can well understand how, while he spake, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice and said, 'Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps that thou hest sucked l' 'Yea, rather, blessed,' He answered, in words full of deep and sweet mystery, are they that hear the word of God and keep it."
Dr. Farrar modestly desires to share the merit of this piece of gushing rhetoric with Dr. F. Delitzsch, by whose " exceedingly beautiful and interesting little tract" on the same subject it has been suggested. But we must say that in no page of these two large volumes does Dr. Farrar fall much short of the standard which he here reaches. Nor are we among those whom he fears " may perhaps consider that both Dr. Delitzseh and be have given too much scope to the imagination "; our complaint is of the want of imagination, and the substitution for it of swarms of trivial fancies which characterise the whole book. Read the gorgeous as well as impassioned eloquence of Burke, and youfeel that a " shaping spirit of imagination " is present, and pouring out thoughts deeper than adequate words can be found for ; but here the words are too big for the thoughts, and the poverty of the fancies is not concealed by the tinsel epithets with which they are tricked out. Dr. Farrar has been a distinguished and doubtless a sue- cessf til teacher these many years; yet he has not taught himself that fundamental, law of style—deduced from the practice of all the great poets and orators—that epithets must not be introduced for ornament, but only to add real and pregnant meaning to the sentence; nor has-he taken to heart, while yet there was time, the advice of the cynic,—" Whenever you have written anything particularly fine, be sure- to scratch it out." But Dr. Farrar's word-painting, or picture-writing, is not only inferior in its kind, say in comparison with that of a Macaulay or a. Stanley, but it is in a graver sense unsuited to its subject,—the Life of Christ. The concluding sentences of the quotation we have given from Dr. Farrar's book express what- it is and what it should not be. He can "well understand," for his whole book is in harmony with, the earth-bound thoughts and hardly more than animal sympathies of the poor woman, but he is insensible to the reproof —decided, though gentle—with which Jesus met her outburst of. feeling. From the mean and ugly frontispiece (interior of a car- penter's shop at Nazareth, by Mr. Holman Hunt), to the thirty pages which describe the cruelties and the sufferings of the Crucifixion in hideous detail, the book is of the earth, earthy. It reverses the lesson of the angels at the sepulchre, who said, "Why seek ye the living among the dead ? be is not here, for he is risen ;" and followed the invitation to " Come, see the place where the Lord lay," with " Go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead." Its spirit is the opposite to that of St. Paul, when he declared that though he had known Christ after the flesh he would thenceforth so know him no more. We know that the Son of God took on himself not only our human, but our earthly and animal nature, but we want no more of the details of his human and earthly life than suffice to give us the sense that it was real. It is true of Jesus, as it is of Socrates or Cicero, that the characteristics of the man would be obscured, not made clearer, by more knowledge than we have of his daily life ; and it is not less true that a more complete acquaintance with even the human mind of Jesus would binder rather than help our faith in him as the Christ of God. We read Dr. Farrar's detailed and, no doubt, exact description of the peasant children of Nazareth and their homes as he has actually seen them, and we feel that he does not help us to any such vivid conception of the Child Jesus as we get from the pictures of the great Italians, with their fictitious and erroneous accessories but with their embodiment of the ideal and universal traits of our common humanity. He who has entered into the meaning of the Seggiola or the Cardellino, or that sketch, attributed to Michael Angelo, in which the child raises himself on
his mother's foot to peer into the book she reads, as if in order that he too may see what "is written of him in the volume of the book," will pot wish to exchange his conception of the divine child for any to be gathered from the appearance and habits of any number of children now living in Palestine, pretty and pleasing aa they no doubt are.
We look at this book with sincere regret. We think what might have been done with all this undoubted learning, piety, moderation, and love of the good and beautiful which are shown. in every page, if they had been employed in some less fantastical, some more simple and reasonable, manner to help us to the full understanding of the life of Christ as recorded in the Gospels- As it is, the learning is there, for those who like it " uttered in great swarths," or are willing to pick it out of them. Nay, as the student of Shakespeare, whose poetical feeling is shocked and pained by seeing his plays only vulgarised by being acted with all the thoroughly correct accessories of scenery and dresses, yet, hopes that something of his poetry may through this coarse vehicle reach the minds of those who would never read him at home, so we hope that the multitudes who are calling for the suc- cessive editions of Dr. Farrar's book with the avidity with which. they turn to their daily sensational newspaper, may learn some- thing which their mental habits have unfitted them for looking for in the simple Gospel narratives themselves. And it will, no doubt, open the eyes of some to the truth that the scantiness of detail and other apparent deficiencies which they may have often lamented in those narratives are, after all, not faults, but rather necessary helps to knowing. Christ as ho is, and realising the vital. truth, " He is not here, for he is risen."
Previous page
