thousand years ago in the terms respectfully reviewed and sold of Wall Street. His jargon is by the thousand. Had it not the jargon of the North Ameri- received the reward of a wide can Stock Exchange, and in publicity, it had not been every phrase that he uses, he noticed here. outrages the proprieties of time and place. Nowhere else, save in one or two books on the Bible written by compatriots of this author, can we match his impudent slang. You may find examples of his vulgarity and ineptitude upon any page, and one example might serve as well as another; but perhaps his masterpiece in this kind is his sketch of Judas, which will give our readers a clear idea of the American method. "Not a bad fellow at heart, he had the virtues and the weakness of the smallbore business man. He was 'hard-boiled,' and proud of it; he looked out for Number One.' It was no easy job being treasurer for a lot of idealists, Judas would have you know. He held the bag, and gave every cent a good tight squeeze before he let it pass. When the grateful woman broke her box of costly ointment over Jesus' feet the other disciples thought it was fine, but he knew better. 'Pretty wasteful business,' he grumbled to himself. The big talk of the others about thrones' and 'kingdoms' and 'victory' did not fool him; he could read a balance-sheet, and he knew the jig was up." Thus the author of The Man Nobody Knows' allows his 'humour " to crawl like a slug over the greatest narrative in the world, and his comic Testament is He calls his book 'The Man Nobody Knows,' and if he implies by his title that nobody knows Jesus, he should place himself first among the ignorant. Being a business man, he cannot but cast the Jesus that he pretends to know in any other mould than his own. He calls Jesus "the Founder of Business." He accepts in a literal and a modern sense the words which Jesus spoke in reply to his mother, who had sought him sorrowing: "Wist ye not that I must be about my father's business? Upon these words he establishes his argument about Jesus, and seeks parallels to Him in George W. Perkins, Theodore N. Vail, and other heroes of finance. He finds no justification for this irrelevancy either in the English of the Authorised Version, or in the Greek of the Gospels. The translators of King James's version did not use the word "business in the American sense; and the author of the travesty, had he consulted the Greek text (ev Tоîs Tоû TаτρÓS μov), which may mean simply "in my Father's house," would have found no warrant for his monstrous interpretation. Truly it is but nonsense that he talks, and nonsense offensive to those who have appreciated the quiet selflessness of the Gospels. And the worst is not yet. Now that Jesus has been represented as a business man of New York, we shall be asked presently to contemplate Him as a proprietor of newspapers, that he may justify the craft to him who next essays the impudent task of biography. 66 66 But the author whom we are considering is as yet only on the threshold of commonness. Not content with describing the life of Jesus as "the finest most exalted success-story," he, an advertising man," claims that, were He alive to-day, Jesus would be a national advertiser, as He was the great advertiser of His own day." Again, he reveals with equal clearness his vulgarity and his ignorance. "Let us begin," says he, "by asking why He was so successful in mastering public attention." But this is precisely what Jesus never was. He made no effort to master public attention. When He died upon the Cross, He was known only to a few. The words which Anatole France puts into the mouth of Pilate Jesus of Nazareth, I don't remember Him express a profound truth. Very few remembered Him, and His teaching, which presently travelled all the world over, was accepted with difficulty and after a long delay. But our author, intent upon degrading Jesus to the level of modern New York, does not trouble to discover the truth; he assumes that Jesus was concerned only with making Himself known. He asserts, without any evidence, that Jesus "recognised the basic principle that all good advertising is news," that a twentyfour hours' schedule of what Jesus did would "bristle with front-page news." And So, heaping offence upon offence, he sketches the headlines of an imagined issue of the Capernaum News,' and finally pronounces that the Parable of the Good Samaritan is the greatest advertisement of all time. Poor man! Miserable advertiser ! He cannot imagine how or why noble words should be said, or noble deeds done, without a reporter standing by, ready to degrade them into vile and monstrous headlines. Here, then, is an advertiser who esteems nothing in life so highly as "success-stories" and great advertisement, confronted with the simple life of Christ, and he cannot interpret it to himself or to others except by bringing it down to the level of commercial America. He is interested only in big business and loud acclamations. He does not know that a new thought is never wasted, that if it be spoken to half a dozen it may reach the ends of the earth without the advertisement of his adulation. "A man might stand and preach for years at Charing Cross and Piccadilly," says our author, "and only one in a hundred thousand would ever know that he lived." A fate which, were it incurred by any one foolish enough not to beat the drum loud enough, would, in the eyes of the author of 'The Man Nobody Knows,' be well deserved. But it is not true, as Jesus of Nazareth proved when He spoke in places far more remote and less populous than Charing Cross or Piccadilly, and sent His lightest words, without advertisement and at leisure, to the ends of the earth. Our author is one who moves with the times. He thinks that the voice as an instrument is out of date. He is sure that in a place which "only only a tiny fractiny fraction of the city's people pass at any given point on any given day" is far too small for him who asks to be heard; and he will probably never learn that an authentic whisper of the truth murmured in a desert will have a better chance of survival than the sound of a megaphone blazed forth at once on a million housetops. Advertisements may beguile the fool into buying what he doesn't want; they may force us to listen for a moment to what is not worth hearing. Only the real need of the thing sold, or the enduring wisdom of the word spoken, will make them the general heritage of of a nation. Except that they help a mob of unimportant persons to get rich quickly, a very doubtful boon to the world, advertisement has served no purpose at all. Yet when our author thinks of its possibilities, he becomes almost lyrical. "No," he exclaims at the top of his voice, "the present-day marketplace is the newspaper and the VOL. CCXXI.—NO. MCCCXL. magazine. Printed columns are the modern thoroughfares; published advertisements are the cross-roads where the sellers and the buyers meet. Any issue of a magazine is a world's fair, a bazaar filled with the products of the world's work." Yet when the magazine is cast away, the advertisement seems vain and empty. And the things and the words that need no acclaiming go gaily on their way along the road of time. Why, then, should the author of 'The Man Nobody Knows,' whose real interest is in the advertising columns of the newspaper and the magazine, give a thought to Jesus of Nazareth, whom he knows not, and whose quietness and security are unheard in the midst of his striving and his crying? He has written a book whose intermittent blasphemy and constant offensiveness are not palliated by any quick understanding or any sound knowledge. His book, let us hope, will prove an awful warning to those who would attempt to rival him in a work which is far beyond his reach and theirs, and which will certainly give offence to all those who are not besotted with false humour, and who lack the virtues of decency and respect. The Gospels are still an open book to those who will read with humility and understand with reverence. And with them at our elbow, we can cheerfully do without the humour of Chicago and the intolerable slang of Wall Street. 2 K INDEX TO VOL. CCXXI. A. B. H.: HOUSEKEEPING AND LIFE IN A BORDER AFFAIR, 287. ADVENTURES AND VICISSITUDES OF A A.I., K. R. &, 801. ALICE W, 567. CONCERNING A PRIVATE OF MARINES, CRAUFURD, Captain Q. C. A., R.N.:— CONCERNING A PRIVATE OF Marines, PRIMITIVE METHODS, 589. AMAZING REVELATION OF MR BROWN, CRAWFORD, L. I.: A STUDY THE, 329. AMONG THE KUKIS, 814. Art, exhibition of Belgian and Flemish, BAKER, ARTHUR, C.B.E.: ALICE W 567. THE TERCENTENARY OF, 186. K. R. & A.I., 801. THE PROTECTor, 176. "BÊTE NOIRE," Sir Walter Scott's, 214. Bolshevik propaganda, 555-bandying CAILLOUX, POUSSE: ▲ BORDER Affair, CAVES OF ALTAMIRA, IN THE, 824. CHART-MAKERS, THE, IV., V., 243- CHINA BY SUBMARINE, To, 711. CLIFFORD, SIR HUGH, G.C.M.G.: PRO- CLOUDS, A NIGHTMARE IN THE, 640. STANDARDS, 62. IN DAVSON, CYRIL W.: THE ELUSIVE DAY WITH WORDSWORTH, A, 728. Democracy, the burden of, in England, DIRTY DOGS' CLUB, THE, 229. ELUSIVE TRAIL, THE: I. The Devil's ENCYCLOPEDIA, THE FIRST ENGLISH, EVANS, F. P.: THE TRUE CAUSE OF FIRST CRUISE OF THE "CHOTA-PEG," FIRST ENGLISH ENCYCLOPEDIA, THE, FIRST NAVAL KITE-BALLOON, THE, 464. THE CLOUDS, 640. AMONG THE KUKIS, 814. THE SCOURGE OF GENDA, 547. 'Last Days at Tsarskoe-Selo,' notice of 'Life and Letters of Lord Bryce,' by MACKWORTH, JOHN: THE FIRST NAVAL MACNICHOL, KENNETH : BROTHER MARINES, CONCERNING A PRIVATE OF, MARTYR, WESTON :— A SAVAGE ISLAND, 481. MINING CAMP IN RETROSPECT, A, 832. 131-February, 275-March, 415- New Testament, a travestied, 852 et seq. OLDEST INDUSTRY IN THE WORLD, THE, 'Origins of the War, British Documents OUR IMPOTENCE AT JUTLAND, THE PARKER'S PASS, 313. PEMBROKE HALL, THE JUBILEE AT, IN PERILOUS ADVENTURES AND VICISSI- POWELL, T. A.: To CHINA BY SUB- PRIMITIVE METHODS, 589. PROTECTOR, THE, 176. PULOWANIA, 76. RETROSPECT, A MINING CAMP IN, 832. ROE, SIR THOMAS, 382. ROGERSON, SIDNEY: THE OLDEST IN- SALVING OF THE "CHANG CHU," THE, |