Evening star., 1945-10-21
Erskine Portroys
The Life of Jesus
As Mortal Man
THE HUMAN LIFE OF JESUS

By John ErSkine. (MorrolD; $3.)
I have never been an admirer of
John Erskine. His series of "hu-
manizations" of great figures out of
literature has seemed to me, I con-
fess, fairly cheap performance.
So I felt a certain dread when I
saw the title of his present book.
I feared that he had done another,
too malaprop this time to be en-
dured. I was pleased to find that
I had guessed wrong. His Human
Life of Jesus" is serious study of
Jesus life based on the Gospels and
is written in an unmistakably rev.
erent frame Of mind.
Starting with an affirmation of his
belief in Jesus divinity, he says that
his purpose has been to try to trace
His life as man. We have wor-
SHIPPED Jesus so long as God, he
observes, that our thought of Him
as a human being has become OBJ
scured. But, he adds, HE came
among men as one of them, as just
another man. He was not intro
duced to society as god, nor were
his contemporaries asked to SUBJ
scribe to a creed before they could
meet him" Then follows simple
tracing of Jesus career as it is set
down in the Gospels, subject to DR..
Erskines interpretations.
Had such a study been undertaken
in a spirit of mere scholarship it
would have to be put down as a
curiosity, no more. There would
be little point in it. 1t cannot be
doubted, however, that DR.. Erskine
has used the method not for the
sake of his findings but for the
opportunity which it gives him to
write about Jesus. He has some
thoughts about the Son OF Man
which he wants to express and they
are not all inevitably related to his
avowed theme.
Jesus Mission.
He believes, for instance, that
Jesus mission was not to take on
Himself the sins of the world, for
the idea of "vicarious repentance,
he says, does not figure in His
teaching. Instead, He came to teach
and demonstrate that the barrier
between time and eternity is not
insurmountable, that the eternal
life may be known by those who
love God even before death. 1t was
by living. dying and being resur-
rected in the body of a man that
He gave mankind that great knowl-
edge of its possible destiny.
That obviously is DR.. Erskine's
view of the essence of Jesus mission
on earth. Writing of His humanity
in it's details, however, he is not
always clear. He seems to believe
that Jesus human brain functioned
according to human psychological
laws, that Jesus was receptacle OF
God, but a human receptacle in
every sense, thinking out His mis-
sion slowly and gropingly, as man
might think. In His early years,
says DR.. Erskine, He had no definite
concept of the means He must take
to accomplish His great end, but
thought it would suffice for Him
to use His powers in reforming
prevailing abuses. 1t was not until
the time of the TRANSPORTATION that
He recognized the necessity of sac
rificing Himself in order to make
men see His message. In other
words, DR.. Erskine rejects the idea
that Jesus divinity endowed Him
with foreknowledge He tells us
that the Crucifixion was Jesus de-
hberate choice rather than divinely
ordered fulfillment of prophecy.
His division on these terms of
Jesus into human and divine fac
ulties is clear in his premises but
not always so in his arguments.
There are readers, moreover, who
may dislike the implication that 1t
was by means of human faculties
that Jesus reasoned out his divine
mission. I do not think that any
one, however, can doubt the rev.
erence of DR.. Erskine's intention.
His book isswritten from a genuinely
religious, if not wholly orthodox
point of view.