Page:Critical Woodcuts (1926).pdf/357

 break out of the lake towns like doves out of a dovecote, and caravans, starting early to avoid the heat of the day, begin to crawl along the Wâdi el Haman. Hours such as this God flowed into him, filled and overfilled him.

The peril of the mystic is fire without an altar, which is a more splendid peril, though none the less a peril, than an altar without a fire. Mrs. Austin's study of the mystical Jesus needs to be supplemented and completed; and an excellent supplement is at hand in Dr. James Moffatt's "Everyman's Life of Jesus." Dr. Moffatt is a distinguished Biblical scholar who has made a modern translation of the Old and the New Testaments. In this book he makes one continuous narrative of the life of Jesus in the words of the four Gospels, arranging the incidents, however, freely in accordance with his own sense. I have long been profoundly averse to revised versions and rearrangements, being firmly convinced that I did not wish my religious poetry "improved" by a modern hand. Dr. Moffatt has temporarily converted me, which means that his Jesus comes alive for me, as for him.

The worth and persuasiveness of this little book reside largely in the introductions which precede each chapter and interpret the material of the Gospel narrative from a point of view which, Dr. Moffatt believes, should make his Jesus accessible and appealing to every man. Jesus himself always implied, he declares, "that true religion is more endangered by 'religious' people than even by the irreligious, and his moral indignation burned against religious leaders who were responsible for the sin of misrepresenting God."

Dr. Moffatt, though both religious and scholarly,