THE CRUCIFIXION

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21714, 22 February 1936, Page 17

THE CRUCIFIXION

Why Jesus was Crucified; By the Rey. A. J. Walker, "SLA. Eyre and Spottiswoode. 179 pp. (5/- net.) This interesting study in the Gospel History has a commendatory preface by the Regius Professor of Divinity of the University of Cambridge. Dr. Raven finds that.Mr Walker has avoided that pitfall of Imany New Testament scholars—a purely subjective reconstruction of the text. Mr Walker maintains that, Christ proposed to eat the Passover i with His disciples and then to challenge the Roman Procurator. He would approach Pilate with.a mesi sage of peace and goodwill. From 1 the hierarchs and scribes He expected nothing but denunciation, and, if Pilate listened to them, a sen-, i tence of death. Jerusalem was disI turbed by the Barabbas insurrec- ' tion, when Jesus arrived at the Holy ! City. He therefore could not give His sign of the universal character of Messianic peace and goodwill; so i He agreed to be brought before the Governor as a prisoner in order that the sign might be given in another manner. For this reason, the significance of the sign as actually given can only be seen in the light ofthje; Holy Spirit, which was manifested ! subsequently in the joy of the earliest Christian communities. The author's thesis is expounded at length with a careful examination of the evidence. However much the details of his criticism may be questioned, the general moral of his book is undoubtedly sound. The sign of Jesus is that His priests "should never make a stand for the authority of their religion, but rely solely on the irresistible power of the Spirit to assert His own authority in due time."

AN ADVENTUROUS WANDERER

Wanderings Among South Sea Savages. By H. Wilfrjd Walker. Witherby. 242 pp. (7/8 net.)

Mr H. Wilfrid Walker was the most tantalising subject for an interviewer that has. ever come to Christchurch. When he was here some years ago, someone told a reporter that he was a great traveller, and the reporter tried to find out about it, and did, a little. Whether the country mentioned was Celebes or Bilil, Sarawak or Formosa, -the Philippines or Brazil, Mr Walker knew it, had been there collecting birds and learning strange things about the native peoples. He admitted (under pressure) having met practically every variety of pigmy that there is, having known cannibals and head-hunters, and having been in mortal peril from them. But some wretched overseas cricket team was touring New Zealand, and the results of its matches and what its slow bowlers could do seemed to Mr Walker the only interesting topics of discussion. In 1909 Mr Walker wrote a book that has just been reissued. It does not cover all his wanderings; but it reaches further on the map and into stranger places than many much more pretentious travellers' tales. The birds' nest caves in Borneo, the negritos of the Philippines, the savages of Papua, are little better known now than they were when Mr Walker visited them, and more strange peoples, more wonders, more adventures, would be hard to find in as many pages of any other book. There *is special interest in the book for Canterbury people, for in NewGuinea, where Mr Walker and his companions nearly gave up hope of collecting any more birds, or writing books, Major L. G. D. Acland was one of the beseiged party. UNUSUAL YOUNG MAN Sneak-Thief on the Road. By Hippo Neville. Jonathan Cape. 343 pp. (8/6 net.) Mr Hippo Neville is a young man of whom —death or other accidents apart—more will ; be heard. To become a tramp, making a start in the trade by the theft of twopence in a church, to live for many months, a tramp, with the army of English tramps, and to finish, temporarily, with a gaol sentence for a second theft, is not usual for a young man of undoubted capacity. Still less is Mr Neville's book a usual one for a young man to write. Parts ot it are sheerly brilliant, descriptions of sensations and of encounters, reports of conversations and of people. Parts of it would have been altered if Mr Neville had, kept the manuscript a few years before leaving it. without address, at Jonathan Cape's. These are the parts where emotions seem to have taken the author, to a view to which some day he will see a logical road. Sometimes,, too, his love of doing outlandish things with words—which usually have remarkable results—leads him into incoherence. These faults are not important. What is important is that the book is alive and strongly kicking, a promise of even more remarkable successors, a proof that here is a young man of talent or genius deeply interested in important things. It is a book to, read, and everyone who reads it will wait for whatever Mr Neville .writes when he can spare the time from the electric washing machines which his publishers tell us he is now selling.