THE NAZARENE.”

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1612, 21 January 1903, Page 28

THE NAZARENE.”

MR ARTHUR ADAMS’S LATEST POEM.

“The Nazarene: The Study of a Man.” Phillip Wellby, Henrietta street, Covent Garden, London; S. and W. Mackay, Wellington.

The Dean of Ripen in a paper on “Natural Christianity” declared recently that the accounts of the Virgin birth of Christ-might he understood without any violation of biological law, that the incarnation and divinity of our Saviour stand oil the firm ground of what He did and thought and what He has been to mankind, and that the Resurrection was not a return to the mortal conditions of this life, hut a manifestation of the spiritual state and the spiritual body. This week (writes our London correspondent, under date 21st November last), while public opinion is still exercised over these utterances of a pillar of the Church, Mr Philip Wellby publishes quite at the psychological mo-

ment Mr Arthur Adams’s latest poem, “The Nazarene: A Study of a Man. Therein the author of “Maoriland, greatly dai'ing, seeks to reveal to us Christ as

“The kindly teacher, the sweet patient man, One of our human family, Mary’s son l" “I will not, 77 so he begins the prelude in which ho expounds his conception ol the Christ,

“I will not have this human story dimmed And shadowed over hy His divinity. ITe was of us, all human, brother, friend, He strove, was vanquished, strove and won —a Man.” A prologue of twenty-four lines prepared the reader for “hasty glimpses, vaguely caught,” of Christ, and. t-lie six sections of the poem give the impressions severally formed of “the sweet familiar Nazarene” by Mary the Mother. John the Baptist. Judas, Sirach at “Gethsemane/ 7 . Pilate and Alary ol Magdala.

“Mary knew the woe of motherhood ;

For Jesus filled to brimming all her heart, Yet in his simple majesty of soul,

Suffused with a fierce love for all mankind, She held one part—no more; and she would have The whole of love—-no less.”

So Mr Adams sums up Mary’s attitude. John the Baptist is pictured in his cell on the eve of his execution, pondering over the Jesus whom he had baptised, and wondering whether the “venger and wielder of the flail,” whose wrathful advent he had prouhesieci. could be the Jesus of whom tales had penetrated his cell-

“The Son of God a bridegroom bringing joy!” Jealousy is made the masterspring ol Judas’s motives. Judas is depicted with Rembrandtesque force staggering through the night from the last supper, mad with jealousy of John ana Mary Magdalene. To him comes a tempter, suggesting that Judas alone rightly comprehends the “dread divinity” of the Saviour and that a betrayal of the Jews "will strip

“This languor from him, make this Man take up His awful burden of omnipotence And blaze forth God.”

Sirach, writhing “beneath his torment of uncertainty” as to the meaning of life, listened to Christ “interpreting all tilings in terms of love.” A new ivorlu opened before him in which he was a child groping for a hand. Hurrying to Gethsemane after the soldiers. Sirach witnessing the betrayal and seizure, expects a miracle “to prove ine Christ’s divinity,” but sees instead “but a common culprit taken and bound.” But in the midst of the throng which marched to Jerusalem, Christ “marched with head erect,”

“Grown taller, nobler, toweringly a King.” Pilate is another forcible character sketch. In a letter he excuses himself to Fabrus the Philosopher, Pilate describes to his friend at court the nature of the proud fanatic race of Jews. He could find no evil in Christ, the Hebrew demagogue, who dared “to doff his race and preach for Man,” and sought to save him from the Jews first by having him scourged and derided —to slink unharmed to obscurity—and then by offering the mob Barabbas. But the Hebrew priests bad Pilate deep-netted in their sophistries. The cost to him. of saving Christ from death would have been —

“The high-priesthood incensed, Rome stirred, Caesar annoyed, and 1 recalled— Perhaps reproved! His life or my career!”

Mary Magdalene is imagined in that silent moment after the body had been taken from the cross and given + o tiie weary and broken-hearted watchers. Thrusting Mary the Mother aside, she “drooped upon” him with a “quivering cry,” claiming the hour as hers. “They drew her reverently away, and swathed With white the body”;

and the poem closes with a pathetic picture of “the Nazarene carried to his rest.”

This outline of the poem is a bald one, hut it will serve to explain the scheme of Mr Adams’s study. The quotations have been selected merely to sum up the pith of each section of in© poem, and give no idea of the beauty and pictfuresqueness of its finest pa*sages, such, for example, as the description in the prelude of the burial of “the sweet humanity that was the Christ” under the splendid trappings of modern worship, or the peaceful, glowing description of Christ’s baptism, recalling a Turner sunset or the vigorous sketches of the prophet-martyrs railing against Jerusalem, of Judas’s face when he realised the consequence of his action, or the final contrast between Christ’s interment and some great funeral of pomp. Whatever controversy the poem may evoke, there is no doubt that Mr Adams has bandied his them© with great reverence and tenderness, restraint and reticence, depth of thought, and keen

insight • into human chameter. I shall be surprised if London literary critics do not admit that a new and genu me poet has arisen in their midst. A marked feature of the poem is the repetition of certain striking passages, by which Mr Adams seeks to emphasise his meaning, much as a counsel migut reiterate his points when addressing a somewhat obtuse jury. I doubt whether the poem is in any way strengrhened by this device, which, effective occasionally, is to my mind resorted to too often. In expressing my regret that Mr Adams has not given us his conception of Simon Peter and of the workings of his mind, I am only expressing the keen interest which his other chameter sketches have awakened m me. We have to thank the publishers lor sending us a copy of the book, which is a volume of some seventy ; ages, printed on thick paper and handsomely bound. It is dedicated by Mr Adams “To my keenest and kindest critic—my father.” The published price is 4s 6d.”