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 "Die of m master' 
 
 Jls Published by 
 
 mceiure's magazine 
 
 (may, 1900, €fc.) 
 
 BY 
 
 EI3AVI:N a. WILSON 
 
 SPRINGFIELD, ILL. 
 
 1903 
 
 
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 .V747 
 
 Section 
 
REVIEW 
 
 OF 
 
 Rev. John Watson's 
 
 <Ian Maclaren) 
 
 (( 
 
 Life of the Master 
 
 AS PUBLISHED IN 
 
 McCLURE'S MAGAZINE 
 
 (May 1900, Etc,) 
 
 EDWIN A. AATII-SON 
 
 Springfield, Iix, 
 1903. 
 
"THE LIFE OF THE MASTER" 
 
 There is but one authentic 'source from which 
 to gather into story, anything that Is helpful ana 
 trustworthy as "a life of the Master." The 
 Sacred Scriptures contain all that is revealed of 
 the Father concerning Hi3 Son, .Jesus Christ. Any 
 attempt of the imagination which undertakes to 
 m )re than set forth the divine utterance in its 
 relation to the Godman, is but a work of super- 
 erogation, and every effort to produce a life of 
 our Lord which does not involve every line that 
 is written of Him by the divine penman, and no 
 more, is incomplete, misleading and satanic. 
 
 To write of Christ to editlcation, one needs 
 to be Spirit-taught; the Spirit's channel of such 
 communication to men is the Word; knowledge 
 of and subjection to the Book of Books are essen- 
 tial elements in equipment for such service. A 
 further condition precedent is faith in what must 
 be admitted is above nature, and only to be ap- 
 prehended by faith, as taught by the Spirit— rev- 
 elation, not reason, the basis; any life of Jesus ' 
 which does not honor the Sacred Writings by ac- 
 counting for every phenomena in what is writ- 
 ten, rather than in the imagination, comes short. 
 If the advent of Jesus was planned in the coun- 
 cils of eternity, and the Holy Ghost has chron- 
 icled sufficient of the details in the sacred volume 
 to give a connected history of "The Master," why 
 does the Reverend gentleman proceed to mislead 
 the popular reader by leaving out points of salient 
 interest: First as it relates to an elemental thought 
 of Him, as found in Gen. 3:15. "Her seed," or 
 second, "Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear 
 a Son, and shall call His name ImmanueP' (God 
 with us). Is. 7:14. Third, "and behold thou shalt 
 conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a Son, 
 and shall call His name Jesus; and the Holy 
 
Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of 
 the Highest shall overshadcw thee: therefore 
 also that holy thing which shall be born of thee 
 shall be called the Son of God."' Luke 1:31-35. 
 To pass by without notice what lias been writ- 
 ten concerning the origin and only explanation 
 of the personal presence in the likeness of men; 
 of One in whom so much of intense interest has 
 centered for time and eternity, is criminal. It 
 banishes to the domain of uncertainty and un- 
 reliability every line written by this reverend 
 doctor. 
 
 Dr. John Watson's language, it is readily 
 confessed, is most chaste and elegant, his 
 imagery is charming, but when he becomes a 
 mere romancer and indifferently invades the 
 sacred precincts of divinity, he becomes a factor 
 for evil and not for good. In his efforts to fur- 
 nish pabulum for the popular taste, he reads 
 his own misconceptions into the divine revela- 
 tion, while should he confine himself to the 
 ancient and honored Record, the Holy Script- 
 ures, he would at once lose what he is seeking, 
 the applause of men. 
 
 We are not then surprised at the low plane 
 of the merely human, upon which he bases his 
 opening thoughts concerning "The Master. " 
 Authority and accuracy are the dual pillars 
 which must support a fabric that is to be 
 symmetrical and substantial. If the Bible then 
 is not his only source of information and literal 
 lines followed in its transcription, his whole 
 life of the Master is an unworthy production. 
 Error in one part suggests inaccuracy every- 
 where; if he accepts the teaching on one page 
 of the Bible, and rejects that of another part, 
 he presumes to sit in judgment upon it all, 
 and lience is unfitted to discuss any part of 
 this wonderful Record. To add to what ia 
 written is as reprehensible as to take from what 
 is written. Luke 2:9 says "and the angel of 
 the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the 
 Lord shone round about them,"' but nowhere 
 
does the sacred historian say "and a star rested 
 above Bethlehem." Matthew does, however, 
 say "and the star which they saw in the east 
 went before them till it came and stood over 
 where the young child was." The annunciation 
 sent the shepherds to Bethlehem in haste, 
 where they found Mary, Joseph and the babe, 
 according to Luke. 
 
 But He was circumcised on the eighth day 
 and His name called Jesus according to Luke, 
 and in harmony with Lev. 12:3, thirty-three 
 days after He was presented to the Lord, in 
 the Temple, at Jerusalem; hence we know from 
 Luke 2:39, that after this, when the babe Jesus 
 was perhaps forty-two or three days old, they 
 went to their own city, Nazareth, and not 
 again to Bethlehem's manger. 
 
 Matthew and Luke give the place of nativ- 
 ity. The wise men led by the star came in 
 search of the newly born King of the Jews. 
 We do not know how many wise men, from 
 whence they came, or their names. We know 
 that ihe star stood over where the young child 
 wa^; where this was we are not told, save that 
 it was in a house (Matt. 2:11); but we know 
 that Herod basing his conclusions upon what 
 he had learned of the wise men (Matt. 2:16) 
 slew all the children from two years old and 
 under in Bethlehem and the coasts thereof. 
 
 The wise men did not seem to do homage 
 to the babe of Luke, but to the child of Mat- 
 thew. The visits of the shepherds and that of 
 the wise men must have occurred at different 
 times and places.' 
 
 It might be accepted as^good logic that the 
 beautiful in almost any lad's life might be 
 readily traced to his mother, and to wise men 
 in halls of learning; not so, however, would 
 this be true in the case of the child Jesus, 
 who, at the age of twelve years, was not only 
 at home in His Father's house, but about His 
 Father's business, and absolutely untrammeled 
 as the son of God by any human relationship. 
 
We note with pleasure, and commend as praise- 
 worthy, Dr. Watson's tribute to the Book, which 
 all might profitably heed, wherein he says "For 
 Jesus there could be only one book, but it was 
 the best" For the nonce divestinj^- iiimself of 
 the taint of hi^lier criticism the Doctor here 
 indites a commendable word for the Book of 
 Deuteronomy. 
 
 Dr. Watson's tribute to labor as he finds it 
 exemplified in the carpenter, deserves more than 
 a passing word, though he persists in lowering 
 the exalted standard, from the divine to the 
 human, as he traces much of the grandeur and 
 loveliness he beholds in this wonderful Saviour 
 to His home and mother. 
 
 Again as lie came forth in response to the 
 divine call, it is no where affirmed that He came 
 to establish the Kingdom, even thougli the am- 
 bitious mother of Zebedee's children sought tiie 
 best places for her sous. Jesus was born King, 
 His lineage in Matthew is traced to prove him 
 Kingly, a King indeed, but without a Kingdom, 
 a King, but in rejection. The Apostles were 
 looking for place and preference in it, but like 
 many others of that and this day, including Lhe 
 reverend doctor, they were not in this respect 
 taught of God; the Apostles looked into IHs 
 sweet face, belield His miracles, and even after 
 His resurrection were as "fools and slow of heart 
 to believe all that the prophets had spoken." 
 The dying thief was better equipped than our 
 author; his fund of Kingly lore surpassed that 
 of the great Scottish teacher, for as a thief hang- 
 ing by His side, he recognized Jesus as the com- 
 ing King, and prayed to be remembered when 
 He should come in His Kingdom. Jesus' first 
 coming to the earth was with reference to the 
 question of sin (Matt. 1-21). His second coming 
 to the earth will be in connection with the King- 
 dom, not as the Lamb wliich taketh away the 
 sin of the world, but as the Lion of the tribe 
 of Judah exercising Kingly prerogatives in His 
 
omnipotence, which riglits they refused Him 
 when He came in weakness, poverty and humili- 
 ation (John 1:10-11). 
 
 These popular taking articles of Dr. Watson 
 in McClure's are possessed of great literary merit, 
 but they are failures as moulders of right tiioughts 
 of God; unreliable in inference and assertion, and 
 found by careful analysis to be mere figments 
 of a diseased brain, very poorly illustrating the 
 reputed knowledge of the Word of this eminent 
 Scot, hence Dr. Watson's readable lines are full 
 of pitfalls, and to the uninstructed, fraught with 
 great danger; 95 per cent, of the un Spirit taught 
 will accept what is written as truth, and will 
 not subject to careful, painstaking comparison 
 Dr. Watson's words with the Words of the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 The advent of our Lord was in absolute har- 
 mony with what was written aforetime, and Dr. 
 Watson's insinuations to the contrary proves 
 how poorly he has gathered the mind of the 
 Spirit who has fully transcribed the details of 
 His birth as to time, place and circumstances, 
 involving the Virgin Mother with sufficient par- 
 ticularity to enable the Chief Priests and scribes 
 to satisfy the wicked Herod. 
 
 Dr. Watson's eloquent tribute to the sover- 
 eignty of God as he. traces the prophets to Him, 
 causes a regret for presuming to offer a criticism 
 of the writings of this eminent man: but he 
 descends from the sublime to the ridiculous when 
 he tells us that the mouth of Zacharias was open 
 that he might call him John, when the converse 
 is true, for we read, "when he had written 'His 
 name is John,' his mouth was opened immedi- 
 ately, and his tongue was loosed, and he spake 
 and praised God." Luke l:6.M-64. The reverend 
 John Watson cannot be relied upon when he is 
 found thus corrupting the Word: his fancy plays 
 with the truth; subjection to what is written 
 and all that is written furnishes the necessary 
 fitness for witnessing for God in time and eter- 
 nity. 
 
8 
 
 The Bible's author says "there was a man 
 sent from (Jod whose name was John." Any 
 word painting in derogation of this testimony 
 is unworthy of consideration: when we learn 
 whence John came, we are prepared to believe 
 John's words, "l saw and bear record that this 
 is the ISon of God." John taught of God was 
 qualified to recognize the S">n of Gud, not other- 
 wise. Dr. Watson would have us believe that 
 John used to tremendous advantage his eyes, 
 ears, feet, solitude, heart and mind, as he made 
 them do duty in tracing out the God man, while 
 John traces it all to the Father; for J(»hn was 
 neither misled by sunshine or sh idow (John 
 1:3.3). Dr. Watson agrees with Henry Drummond 
 in his misleading teacliing, when he says "that 
 the Inspiration of nature luust make less obscure 
 the inspiration of Revelation." Dr. Watson 
 carries other perverse marks to indicate his sym- 
 pathies in the field of higher criticism. His 
 references to the two Isaiah's prove him "wise 
 above that which is written." John looked for 
 Jesus at the Jordan, and at His Baptism, and 
 found Him in harmony with what is written. 
 John's knowledge of God's mind, and His prac- 
 tical application of God's inerrant rule, re- 
 sulted in his recognition of, and testimony con- 
 cerning Jesus, as" God's Lamb, "which taketh 
 away the sin of the world." John arrogates 
 nothing to liimself. his simple faith was honored 
 of God, and God honoring: he was but a voice 
 repeating what he had heard. It was not a vision 
 of the soul after the Spirit, he was not arrested 
 by the visible holiness of Jesus, and thus iden- 
 tified Him with the Christ; not his fine spiritual 
 conception, nor the inherent glory of Jesus, but 
 the application of the truth of God the Father, 
 to the Person of God the Son, in the one place 
 of the Jordan, and in the singular act of bap- 
 tism. John's imagination played no part in the 
 recognition of God's Son, for he had the word of 
 God, which with John tas all sutTicient. Jesus 
 was proved divine, John as heaven sent. There 
 
9 
 
 were but two elements involved in John's bap- 
 tism, the fulfillment of all righteousness, and 
 the manifestation of Jesus to Israel. (Matt. 3: 
 15; John 1:31. 
 
 Doctor John Watson links the name of Jesus 
 with all that is worth remembering in connec- 
 tion with the lovely villages in which he wrought 
 and taught in the Holy Land, and he tells us, 
 no matter how prosperous or famous a town 
 might be, that, unless Jesus honored it with his 
 presence, it could have no place in sacred his- 
 tory. But the reviewer is not disposed to offer 
 criticism concerning any mere extravagance of 
 utterance, which seems to characterize Dr. Wat- 
 son, so long as he is found to be in harmony 
 with what is written in the sacred volume. 
 However, where the Holy Spirit is silent, man 
 may well be dumb, with feet and head bare, for 
 the ground on which he treads is holy ground. 
 There are full too many flagrant departures from 
 the truth to occupy our time upon what might 
 be considered mere trivialities. 
 
 In the consideration of this section we come 
 to Jesus at the Jordan. At John's baptism, ac- 
 cording to Dr. Watson, in the sinners' place. 
 Jesus, the Lamb of God, spotless and impeccable, 
 now manifested to Israel, through John's bap- 
 tism, was without sin, though in all points 
 tempted as we are— for it is here that God the 
 Father confesses Him as one in whom He is well 
 pleased, which He could not do if Jesus had sin 
 in Him or on Him. This was also true on the 
 Holy Mount, when Jesus spoke of His exodus, 
 which he would shortly accomplish at Jerusa- 
 lem; for the Father audibly owned Him, in whom 
 He was still well pleased. There came a time 
 when our sins were laid on Him, for the Lord 
 laid on him the ini'^uity of us all. "He was de- 
 livered for our offen-ses." On that dark night 
 when Jesus said to Judas, "This is your hour, 
 and the power of darkness;" then the satan-filled 
 traitor was to do his worst. For the time is fast 
 approaching when Jesus is to be numbered with 
 
10 
 
 tbe transgressors, "bear our griefs, carry our 
 sorrows, be stricken, smitten, atHicted, wounded 
 for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities: 
 the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, 
 with His stripes we are healed;" the Lord is to 
 lay on Him the iniquity of us all, to bruise Him, 
 put Him to grief, make His soul an offering for 
 sin, for He is to pour out His soul unto death, 
 to bear the sins of many, made to be sin. He 
 is to bear our sins in His own body on the tree. 
 Once and once only was He to be offered to put 
 away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Christ, our 
 true passover, is to be sacrificed for us: the cul- 
 minating moment is hastening with rapid stride, 
 for He is to be made a curse for us, for it is 
 written, "cursed is every one that hangeth on 
 a tree." Gal. 3:13. His atoning work began and 
 ended at Calvary; the darkness and terror of 
 this awful hour betokened the averted face of 
 the Father, when the Son was forsaken by God. 
 
 Here the crisis was reached, somewhere in 
 time, between the compassionate prayer of a 
 suffering Saviour, "Father forgive them for they 
 know not what they do," and the despairing, 
 agonizing cry, "My God, My God, why hast Thou 
 forsaken Me." . 
 
 Jesus bore our sins. It was the sin on the 
 sinless One, that shrouded into darkness the 
 noonday sun, that rent the veil of the temple 
 in twain; that made the earth to quake and the 
 rocks to rend. Jesus condescended to the sinners' 
 place, whom He came to save. It was In accord 
 with the wiles of the devil from the beginning 
 to attack the Word of the Father, whether in 
 Eden or the wilderness. He found weakness in 
 the first Adam, he looked for it in the last Adam 
 who came from the Jordan with tbe benediction 
 of the Father, full of the Holy Ghost. Satan 
 could not shake the confidence of the Son in the 
 Word of the Father. 
 
 How precious to contemplate One, who, 
 stooping from the divine height to the limitless 
 depth into which sin had brought depraved man, 
 
11 > 
 
 and then could yet touch without taint every 
 condition of the sinner, as He sought to woo and 
 win him; tempted that He migiit sympathize 
 with the woman accused by the Pharisees, in 
 John eight, while in faithfulness He rebuked her 
 accusers; that He might deal in tenderness with 
 poor, self-reliant, Lord-denying Peter, as he ap- 
 points time and place for a meeting on the res- 
 urrection side of the tomb. 
 
 In the temptations of our Lord, as recorded 
 in Matthew and Luke, it is true that satan's first 
 temptation was directed through the body of our 
 Lord. Hunaanly speaking, had He been but man. 
 He had been most susceptible, but His person- 
 ality had the marks of Godhood; these, John in- 
 structed of the Father, recognized; Jesus had 
 been in no spiritual trance. His were the per- 
 fections of manhood, the fullness of the God- 
 man — a consciousness that never found Him off 
 His guard. No surprise ever awaited Him. Jesus 
 chooses from his own armory weapons offensive 
 and defensive, "it is written," must suffice; the 
 foe is from without, whether it be the lust of 
 the flesh, the lust of the eye, or the pride of life, 
 for from within there is no response, nothing to 
 fit the case. 
 
 Dr. WatsoQ gives expression to lofty senti- 
 ments in the following elegant, though obscure 
 way: "Is not the very heart of religion faith in 
 God, a faith so unreserved, so truthful and lov- 
 ing, that it will leave the person absolutely in 
 the presence of God?" But our writer, who 
 abounds in aphorisms, is so handicapped by his 
 environments that he will not allow the fifth 
 book of Moses to furnish the sole and only de- 
 fence used by our Lord in His conflict with the 
 evil one. One could bear with the author of 
 ''The Life of the Master" in his sublime raph- 
 sodies as to the divinity of our Lord, if he did 
 not persistently deal with the divine as if it 
 were merely human; we might soar in ecstatic 
 joy with the eloquent Scotchman, did we not 
 find hini in the realm of fancy, rather than faith, 
 
12 
 
 affecting: to be occupied with a high type of man- 
 hood, while dealing with the only true concep- 
 tion of Godhood. We do not hesitate to affirm 
 again that any life of our Lord other than the 
 inspired Word is utterly untrustworthy; to sub- 
 stitute a man's imagination is to mar all, and 
 18 an affront to the Author, God; to account for 
 God's unique acting on the low plane of mere 
 man is God dishonoring, and unworthy a place 
 in so-called Christian literature. 
 
 Dr. Watson's third paper transcends the pre- 
 vious ones in weakness; the relationships sug- 
 gested are absurd in the extreme; that of Mary 
 and Salome is puerile, and furnishes no clue to 
 the child of faitii as to how the one John became 
 the disciple of the other. The words quoted 
 by the doctor as introducing John to Jesus are 
 weak and silly: John presents Jesus to Israel in 
 words most memorable and by the Spirit's power 
 soul convincing. "Behold the Lamb of God 
 which taketh away the sin of the world," these 
 are too tame for the doctor. It is not purity and 
 sacritice which saves the world; this is a mere 
 glittering generality. The Kingdom had not 
 begun; the very opposite is proven, for when the 
 crowd witnessed His miracles and would come 
 by force and make Him King, He withdrew to 
 the mountain alone. 
 
 There is no warrant in the Scripture to base 
 an argument "that almost evf^ry man could be 
 reached by reason." The Pharisees reasoned 
 among themselves and continued in alienation 
 from God. There is but one way to reach man, 
 that is God's way in the gospel: there is only 
 one way to reach God, faith in Jesus Christ— 
 "neither is there salvation in any other." Jesus 
 knew the issue of reasoning and rebuked it; of 
 faith, and commended it. The way into the 
 Kingdom of God pointed out to Nicodemus by 
 Jesus is the new birth; the way of salvation to 
 the characterless Samaritan is to drink of the 
 water of life; Nicodemus and the woman at tlie 
 well confronted obstacles that only faith, not 
 
13 
 
 reason, could overcome: Jesus could find no whit 
 more upon which to build in the Ruler of the 
 Jews than in the Samaritan adultress. 
 
 But Mr. Watson with his reason would trace 
 the issue of the new creation to "lasting and 
 spiritual friendship:" what fallacy, how mislead- 
 ing, how soul-destroying, are Dr. Watson's hom- 
 ilies. 
 
 Again, Jesus entered so to speak His official 
 course at the Jordan, not at Cana of Galilee, as 
 assumed by Dr. Watson. The beginning of the 
 gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Mark 1:1) 
 John and the Jordan, the voice of the P'ather, 
 the baptism of water, and of the Holy Ghost, 
 these are familiar to the Bible student and as- 
 sociated together at the very threshold of tlie 
 official life of Jesus the Anointed One. 
 
 Dr. Watson, as usual, loses sight of the only 
 authority for basing an argument, and intro- 
 duces his own ideas in place of the Word, weav- 
 ing with malice prepense, out of whole cloth, 
 line after line, misleading any one foolish enough 
 to come to him for instruction, for he spins out 
 of his fertile brain, without a warrant in the 
 Word, things hidden to all but himself: he tells 
 us that the Mother of Jesus and family had re- 
 moved to Cana, refers with flagrant presumption 
 to the elder brothers of Jesus to account for the 
 bride of Cana as absurdly related to the Lord; 
 rudely thrusting fancy into the face of fact; 
 speaks of the pleasant traffic between Jesus and 
 the children of Nazareth but lately removed to 
 Cana, and so fills out a purely Watsonlan con- 
 ception: tells of Jesus flinging some gay word 
 to these children as they loitered by His door. 
 How worse than absurd not to say profane, to 
 speak of the erstwhile little maid as the child 
 of Jesus' elder brother, and the bride of Cana's 
 wedding feast, and this with rude effrontery, in 
 the face of the facts as found in Luke. 
 
 Behold, also, the strong corroborative proof 
 of the fallacy of this infamous mis-statement 
 of Dr. Watson as seen in Luke 2:7, "and she 
 
14 
 
 brou^'ht forth her first born Son." Thus the 
 preacher attacks the citadel of the divine in the 
 life of our Lord, and seeks to place Hini side by 
 side with His brethren, all younger than He, but 
 who, according to John seven, did not believe 
 in J^lim. and were like the wo"rld about them 
 (John 7:5-7). Tresurnably this feast of Cana fur- 
 nishes an opportunity lor the worldly taught 
 Scotchman to bring in the inspiration of nature, 
 and in a deft application of it, eliminate some 
 of the so-called obscurities of the inspiration of 
 Revelation. Such fiction is accepted by men as 
 more reasonable than faith, and in ha^^te they 
 turn away from the truth of God; led captive 
 by satan at his will, they plunge heedlessly into 
 the whirlpool of error, find no pleasure in the 
 profound and beautiful, but revel in the gross, 
 misleading vaporings of men who call themselves 
 reverends and doctors, but who yet with silly 
 pride, in ignorance become blind leaders of the 
 blind. 
 
 Dear reader do not permit yourself to accept 
 anything about the Word of God which is not 
 found in the Word of God. Man is incapable of 
 adding to or taking from the Word of God with- 
 out debasing the creature and dishonoring the 
 Creator: no work of God is incomplete in any 
 sense. If Dr. Watson can add to it with profit 
 or take from it in wisdom, not a line of it is 
 worth considering. Not a word from Genesis to 
 Revelation worthy a moment's thought. If any 
 man living can make less obscure the Book of 
 Revelation by the application of reason through 
 the sin beclouded church, or by the introduction 
 of natural law into the domain of the spiritual 
 world, then discard the whole without hesita- 
 tion. There was but one way for Abel and 
 Abraham: Moses and Elias: Peter and Paul: this 
 was the way of faith, with God its Author and 
 finisher, "For without faith it is impossible to 
 please Him."' 
 
 Increased privileges and extended opportu- 
 nities add ever increasingly to our responsibili- 
 
15 
 
 ties. It may be mucli short of the truth to say 
 that the ilev. John Watson, in liis "Life of the 
 Master," has not less than a million readers. 
 Not one-thousandth part of these can be called 
 discriminating Bible students, nearly, if not all, 
 accepting indifferently any religious writing 
 without hesitation and without question; not 
 one hundred subjecting the magazine fiction to 
 anything like such a critical comparison with the 
 Bible as would reveal the contrast between the 
 truth and a lie. This is one of the many proofs 
 of alienation to God among men. Perhaps no- 
 where is this so apparent among classes as is 
 found among the ordinary church membership; 
 the legitimate issue of the seeds of error sown 
 broadcast in the world bat constituting the 
 the world's estimate of truth because of its en- 
 vironments. Reverend and doctor being synon- 
 omous with, though very far, often, from the 
 Christian's only text book, and this will con- 
 tinue so long as pious lies are found more and 
 more readable and attractive: no disintegrating 
 wedge has ever operated so disastrously in sep- 
 arating the Christian from the Bible, as the 
 class of lies represented by "Gyrus," and the 
 genus of writers of the Shelden stamp. Any 
 religious book, magazine or article which be- 
 comes more fascinating to the Christian than 
 the Bib;e, is a curse, and proves itself of satanic 
 origin, no matter who the human author may be. 
 Popular articles of this class are of ever in- 
 creasing interest to a careful observer, for the 
 reason that first impressions are here made for 
 weal or woe; it is infinitely easier to secure a 
 good crop from virgin soil than to reap with joy 
 the seed of one's sowing in a field pre-empted 
 by weeds. A humble reviewer of what is osten- 
 sibly a good book, lays himself open to criticism 
 and principally because with the many tinsel is 
 accepted for gold. The authenticity of sundry 
 drama and poetry is considered a legitimate field 
 for discussion, but to insist that much that is 
 dubbed religious is devilish, shocks the sensibil- 
 
16 
 
 ities of many who claim to be religious, but who 
 know nothing of Ood or the Bible. Magazine 
 articles of late years have made more familiar 
 than ever the great ones in history; tlie names 
 of Cromwell, Napoleon and others have become 
 In a sense common to many men and women 
 who knew little of them from the hii^toric pages. 
 Behold how ready the writers of tlie day are to 
 criticise any departure from what are consideied 
 the facts of history; all have the same data to 
 draw from, but some are disposed to make more 
 of trivialities than others. Herein is the trend 
 of the age seen, writers and readers accepting 
 without hesitation anything and everything 
 written in the past of the world's celebrities, 
 while hesitating on the threshold of Truth to 
 accept what was written aforetime for our learn- 
 ing in the Book of God; and much more fully 
 attested through time by men who have put its 
 promises to the test, than any work of man down 
 through the ages. 
 
 "The Life of the Master" can get its con- 
 ception from one source only, just one Book; a 
 hated Book, a neglected Book, a rejected Book. 
 If the "Life of the Master" was divested of 
 the fanciful, while given in tlie simple language 
 of the Sacred Scriptures, which would give it all 
 the marks of truth and genuineness, it would be 
 no more popular than the Book it claims to issue 
 from. All found in the old Book is truth, any- 
 thing added to "what is written" is false. 
 Though "truth is stranger than fiction," yet is 
 invention prized the more. Where thousands 
 might read the Bible in even a cursory way, with- 
 out a wrong impression, hundreds of thousands 
 preferring fancy, are misled by the half truths 
 as uttered by such writers and preachers as Dr. 
 Watson. 
 
 Our writer says "Jesus was born in Bethle- 
 hem, He was educated in Nazareth, He was cru- 
 cified at Jerusalem. In a general way this is 
 true, and yet we are told, as if he were dealing 
 with the life of a mere man, that "in none of 
 
17 
 
 these arrangements had He any voice." What 
 misleading, soul-destroying nonsense. No com- 
 mon man — accepted idea — can be introduced with 
 reference to the God-man; no human language 
 adequately expresses the truth about Jesus Christ 
 save as it is written by inspiration of (Jod. To 
 picture Jesus Christ as a puppet, so handicapped 
 by weakness as to be at the mercy of man, is 
 the veriest presumption; not one thing is known 
 of Him for twelve years from His birth; a glimpse 
 at Him then reveals His Godhood, and another 
 eighteen years passes without a word of IHm, 
 when he is introduced as the Son of God, and 
 equal with God; His subjection at Nazareth was 
 in harmony with His obedience to the cruel tree 
 and to death, and never an indication of weak- 
 ness. Had He chosen He could have arrested the 
 opposition to Him and the culmination of that 
 conspiracy in the garden. Jesus did what no 
 other man ever did. He forgot Himself; He was 
 at Bethlehem, at Nazareth, at Jerusalem, be- 
 cause it was written of Him; He had a will, but 
 not against God, for He was God. .The parts He 
 acted were planned with Himself in council in 
 eternity, and while He was recognized as the 
 sent One, it is true, also, that He came out from 
 God, and wrought for God in every act, whether 
 in subjection in life or in triumphing over death. 
 He came with an intelligent apprehension of 
 whence and why He came, and the work He came 
 to do— "Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God." The 
 infinite for the moment might be obscured by 
 what appeared to be but finite, yet it was God 
 acting throughout, after the council of His own 
 will. 
 
 Dr. Watson admits that for three years or 
 so he could arrange His life as he pleased; does 
 he forget that Jesus had all the marks of man- 
 ifest Godhood at His birth when worshipped by 
 angels, by shepherds and by the wise men? Did 
 not Simeon, long waiting for the consolation of 
 Israel, witness to His divinity as he made ready 
 to depart, when at forty days of age Jesus was 
 
18 
 
 revealed to him by the Holy Ghost in the tem- 
 ple, as maaifestly as He was identified through 
 John at the Jordan by Goi the L\it,her and God 
 the Holy Ghost? Does the language of Simeon in- 
 dicate that he held but a helpless babe in his 
 arms? Instructed ones found in Him all "the 
 brightness of (God's) glory, and the express image 
 of His Person." Dr. Watson may or may not 
 admit that at the age of twelve He was the ar- 
 biter of His own action, tho' still in the place 
 of weakness and apparent subjection, tho' at His 
 own volition, pobsessed of power without limita- 
 tions; for He was maker, upholder and owner of 
 the universe of God, yet He voluntarily chose 
 poverty's vale. He had power, He exercised it 
 for all but Himself. It is intiniiely more sensi- 
 ble and more reasonable to reject all "that is 
 written" as the veriest bosh than to tamper with 
 the message of Go(t. How chapter and verse will 
 rise up as the veriest goblins to these men who, un- 
 wisely and officiously corrupt the Word with their 
 own small minds. The writer of this simple re- 
 view would rather drop into a nameless grave in 
 some dishonored part of God's acre, than to in- 
 ject his meagre mind into the mind of God as 
 it is found written upon the page of God. The 
 great God is not an intangible essence, but an 
 intelligent personality— who says what He means 
 and means what He says 
 
 Dr. Watson speaks of Christ's first act of 
 freedom as involving the choice of a city, in 
 which to fix upon for the sphere of His labor 
 and the centre from which He would evangelize. 
 According to our learned doctor, Jesus was pos- 
 sessed of the attractive force of a state fair, or 
 had the elements of popularity possessed by the 
 site of a modern western county seat. The pre- 
 sumption is, according to his short-sighted, self- 
 engendered theory that they had their respective 
 committees and all sorts of arguments were ad- 
 vanced, together with a premium for the favor 
 that Jesus stood ready to bestow upon the local- 
 ity which could offer the greatest inducements^ 
 
19 
 
 How God dishonoring, how absurd; for such a 
 travesty of the truth to issue from the lips of a 
 reverend is appalling; not a word in all the Book 
 indicates a movement on the part of any town 
 or city to induce Jesus to make His home there. 
 Nazareth, where He was brought up, drove Him 
 from their synagogue and city on the occasion^ 
 probably, of His first sermon, which, but for His 
 superhuman power had ended His career. (Luke 
 4:28-29.) 
 
 iSo one knows why He chose and called 
 Capernaum His own city, exalted in privilege 
 by His presence, and blessed through His mir- 
 acles, this city of His choice, who showed less 
 appreciation than Sodom and Gomorrah had they 
 been so blessed; mentioned in all the gospels six- 
 teen tiiaes oniy, and yet Jesus appjeciatefl His 
 privileges in His own city so little that He would 
 not accept the place as one of her children, but 
 preferred as a stranger to pay tribute, and they 
 appreciated Him less than He did them in asking 
 Peter if his Master did not pay tribute. (Matt. 
 17'.2i-27.) Jerusalem never wanted Him. never 
 bid for His coming, formed aconspira«y early in 
 His brief otlicial life so that He couJd not walk 
 in Jewry, for the Jews sought lo kill Him (John 
 7:1); not a reason is assigned by our blessed Lord 
 for choosing Capernaum; almcst every argu- 
 ment introduced in this pretended life of the 
 Master is based upon shallow subterfuge, to the 
 utter disgust of every man, woman and child who 
 reads and believes what is in the Bible. 
 
 We are told that Jerusalem was to be His 
 by the conquest of the cross; divested of the 
 silliness of such a sentence we ask how can men 
 commit such sacrilege apparently in the name 
 of the Lord? Jerusalem hated Him, conspired 
 against Him, slew Him; they called Him Beel- 
 zebub while He lived and He blessed them. 
 They traced His power and compassionate use of 
 that power to the devil, and after His igno- 
 minous death they referred to Him as "that 
 deceiver." (Matt. 27:63.) So far as we know He 
 
20 
 
 did not pass a night in Jerusalem, save the part 
 of one, perhaps, when arrested and brought by 
 force from Gethsemane to Annas. "He came 
 unto His own (possessions) and His own (people) 
 received Him not." He was born in Judea, but 
 became a Galilean by adoption: but neither had 
 a place nor a welcome for Him. 
 
 Tbe reviewer's path is sometimes a thorny 
 one, his purposes not understood; his intentions, 
 whatever he may avow, misconstrued. A review 
 of "The Life of the Master'" is found interesting 
 or otherwise in proportion to the interest had 
 in the theme, and the time given to its consid- 
 eration. A glance at the review or a superficial 
 examination of the original subject is of little 
 value. What we have before us purports to com- 
 prehend the life of the God man, Christ Jesus; 
 if it comes short of that which the caption in- 
 volves, it is of little worth: neither the name of 
 the writing nor the fame of the writer can save 
 it from oblocjuy. The reviewer would not bring 
 his bias to warp his vision as he scans the pages 
 of this popular story, but without prejudice he 
 would gather any gems prone upon the surface 
 or hidden beneath the word painting which may 
 enfold them. The impressions made in the re- 
 view of this wonderfully worded series, with its 
 false and true statements, have been varied — 
 surprise, pain, admiration, sorrow and disgu t 
 have clamored for recognition as Dr. Watson's 
 lines have been examined. The reader is not ad- 
 vised to reject "The Life of the Master" as un- 
 trustworthy, until he has subjected the same to 
 a careful comparison with that which "is writ- 
 ten" and found it so. If these simple reviews 
 will drive men to the application of God's in- 
 errant scale, which will surely test the value of 
 these papers, he will have accomplished his pur- 
 pose, otherwise they will have little worth. 
 
 One can but glance at the word pictures as 
 painted by this master in rhetoric, in fiction, 
 charming; in history, misleading; in inspiration, 
 profane. It will be impossible to consider in de- 
 
21 
 
 tail this travesty upon truth in our limited 
 space. The purpose is to test by the only correct 
 rule what is found in glancing here and there. 
 If our writer was a common every day man the 
 world would accept it as a figment of the ima- 
 gination and pass on unimpressed by it, he might 
 read his great fund of fiction into the divine Rec- 
 ord and furnish no surprise to any one, he might 
 adventure rough shod into the circumscribed 
 limits of God's domain where He (God) is pleased 
 to tread alone, and no one would say Him nay; 
 but our reverend writer, in a certain sense pre- 
 sumes to stand for God, and his office and sub- 
 ject, in a certain way cause his utterances to be 
 accepted as authoratative, his vantage ground 
 thus assured causes him to appear to the unin- 
 structed as God's oracle. 
 
 Men were in alienation to God, and Jesus 
 came to make peace with God, to establish a 
 basis for atonement; through His death and res- 
 urrection, Jesus did not stoop to the sinner's 
 place to white-wash him. and apply some semi- 
 christianizing, humanizing, civilizing process, 
 which might appear to men to lift some nearer 
 to God than others; but His coming, His dying, 
 His rising, was to lift men out of the awful mess 
 into which through sin they had fallen. God's 
 purpose in renewing man was to cause him to 
 conform to the image of His Son (Rom. 8:29). 
 This explains the presence of the sinless One 
 among sinners; without Him all was lost, with 
 Him the two classes were seen in bold relief, 
 saved and lost, reconciled and unreconciled, all 
 the latter lost. Some knew it; the ninety and 
 nine secure in their ignorance and self-right- 
 eousness, but when Jesus came they could have 
 no cloak for their sin. The popular idea, and 
 probably that held by our Scotch author, involves 
 a bloodless atonement; it originated with Peter, 
 and is of the devil (Mark 8:31-33). It does not 
 require a heresy hunter to detect marks of dis- 
 cipleship in this school of error, when he says, 
 "when a Jew desires to express his dislike of any 
 
22 
 
 man with whose theology he does not agree, he 
 calls him a Samaritan, just as people of our day 
 are apt to call any teacher a Unitarian who does 
 not hold their theory of atonement.'" Why atone- 
 ment forsooth? if he were not supersensitive 
 along these lines. The honest searcher after 
 truth, loyal to what he finds in the only book 
 which can intelligently deal with the question, 
 will accept no man's theory, when the Holy 
 Scriptures tell us "He was delivered for our offen- 
 ses, and raised again for our justification" (Rom. 
 4:25) he believes no departure possible either in 
 faith, precept or practice from the testimony of 
 God, when we read ''Christ died for our sins ac- 
 cording to the Scriptures. 
 
 These simple passages are unanswerable, and 
 corrupting theories of the Word of God cannot 
 be accepted even though it shocks the divines. 
 Dr. Watson tells us that Jesus was of pure Jewish 
 blood; it is admitted that if Jesus was not a Jew 
 by birth, he was by circumcision; but humanly 
 speaking Jesus was no more a Jew than was Tim- 
 othy, whose father was a Greek. The national- 
 ity comes from the father, not ihe mother; His 
 Father was God, from whence the purely divine, 
 not Jewish strains issued; most likely His visage 
 or garb betokened Him a Jew. The woman of 
 Samaria recognized Him as one by His speech, 
 or in some such way, but it cannot be said that 
 He was of pure Jewish blood. Incidentally He is 
 proven a Jew in "coming to His own" (see also 
 Rom. 9:5) but pure strains are sought in the sire; 
 of Himself He could say "I proceeded forth and 
 came from the Father." God was His Father, 
 Jesus His only begotten Son, hence the language 
 used has no foundation in fact; besides while He 
 had all the marks of Godhood, He got through 
 Joseph His ostensible father. His nationality 
 from Abraham, His kingship from David. Could 
 His human descent be traced in the face of what 
 is written through Joseph and Mary, He could 
 not be said to be of pure Jewish blood, which 
 Dr. Watson could easily know had he taken time 
 
23 
 
 to examine the record, for we know that He was, 
 humanly speaking, of Jewish, Gentile, lowly,* 
 holy, royal, perfeco, imperfect, mortal, immortal 
 descent. He could trace His lineage by name 
 through two Jewesses, two Gentiles, two harlots, 
 and added to these an adultress, which brought 
 Him after nature from the lowest state of human 
 society, but He could trace with ease His true 
 place into God's family, even as a man, and to 
 Godhood at the Jordan and the Holy Mount. 
 While as God He became a compas'^ionate Saviour, 
 as man, His human relationship brought Him in 
 touch with sin and shame. 
 
 Again we are misled by our learned, man- 
 taught writer, as to the Samaritan problem; he 
 tells us the Samaritan was too much in evidence 
 to be ignored. How so? The record disproves It. 
 Samaria; Samaritan and its plural, occur in the 
 gospels but thirteen times; some of these are re- 
 petitions. The woman of Samaria, the Samari- 
 tan leper and He of Luke ten, are the only personal 
 references, they rarely, if ever, intruding upon 
 our Lord. The leper got cleansing and thanked 
 Him; the woman of Sychar heard His message 
 and received it. His own unique service in the 
 world He exemplified in the other: yet in pass- 
 ing from Judea, ''He must needs go through 
 Samaria,'" intruding His own blessed presence 
 upon those whom Jews with the purest blood 
 despised as Gentile dogs. Yet, with all, the doc- 
 tor is touchingly tender, as he links Jesus of 
 Nazareth with the hated Samaritan; and still 
 the doctor is bound to be a misleader in sacred 
 things; at Jacob's well amidst its hallowed pre- 
 cincts, he seeks to leave impressions for which he 
 has no warrant,— edifying here, misleading there, 
 thus never reliable; for in grouping these two 
 elements as of a common Father, he would teach 
 the deceiving heresy of the Fatherhood of God. 
 Speaking of the illiberality of the Jew in his 
 hatred of the Samaritan, he says "why in the 
 name of God and reason should he rail at his 
 brother?" for beneath all the diversities of the 
 
24 
 
 race and creed lies the deeper unity of human 
 brotherhood." Human brotherhood, not one but 
 two incongruous parts at the beginning, tlie one 
 in alienation headed by Eve's tirst born son, 
 (Jain, the other by Abel, the man of faith. 
 These diverse elements have been dominated by 
 good on the one hand and evil on the other to 
 the present. The Fatherliood of God embracing 
 only such as have been introduced into God's 
 family througli faith in Jesus Christ: the other 
 in alienation to God, of their father the devil; 
 the one exemplified by the pure, unselfish, gentle, 
 Christ-like woman missionary in inland China, 
 the other by the ignorant, blood-thirsty Boxer, 
 who would, in ignorance and hate, murder and 
 defile her: or in the greed-getting Englishman's 
 invasion of South Africa, with as deep but more 
 intelligent hate, to kill and destroy in a more 
 modern warfare, his professedly Christian bro- 
 ther, the Boer. 
 
 Dr. Watfcon belittles dogma, quotes Jesus 
 as indifferent to doctrine, wiiile despising ritual, 
 charging that He suffered persecution because 
 He would not come to terms with religious so- 
 ciety. If dogma involves authoritative utter- 
 ance, "never man spake like this man." "He 
 spoke as one having authority.'' See John 3:36, 
 5:24, 6:47. 
 
 As to ritual, He proved Himself a Jew in 
 conformity to its requirements as a babe, child, 
 man. meeting every demand of the law; circum- 
 cised the eighth day, keeping the Passover His 
 last night. It was not dogma nor ritual, but 
 hypocrisy which separated our Lord from the 
 Pharisees. He came to save, not to consort with 
 all the diverse religionists of the day to prove 
 His breadth, nor to pamper their pride by laud- 
 ing their empty traditions. If they wanted any- 
 thing of Him they could learn it at His feet, as 
 sinners; but they refused the gilt of eternal life, 
 while the common people heard Him gladly. 
 
 Again we are told, without scriptural author- 
 ity, that Jesus passed by the respectable in 
 
25 
 
 Jericho, and passed the night with Zaccheus, a 
 statement which might pass unnoticed if the 
 same measure of mis-statement did not charac- 
 terize almost every utterance of this Scotch Doc- 
 tor of Divinity. He spealis of men being per- 
 plexed with Jesus; perplexed because rebuked in 
 faithfulness by the One who could read the heart; 
 there was no perplexity but that which issued 
 from unbelief; there was no perplexity with 
 Mary of Bethany; there may have been with the 
 rich young Ruler. Theret-was no r.oom for per- 
 plexity where there was receptivity; religious 
 bigots despised Him; sin sick sinners needing 
 compassion received it. 
 
 Our Doctor in one of his flights pays a sweet 
 tribute to Je&us as He turns sinners to saints, 
 a beautiful gleam of white light amidst many 
 shadows, but uninstructed in the Word, untaught 
 hy the Spirit, he continues to handle the Word 
 of God deceitfully as he refers to Jesus and the 
 Pharisees. Jesus calls them whitened sepulchres, 
 denounced them while sitting in Moses' seat and 
 binding burdens on men which they would not 
 move with one of their lingers. Yet we are told 
 that they weie not bad, but simply looked at 
 things from a different standpoini. He tells us 
 that one day when the critics were especially 
 severe, Jesus seized the occasion and made His 
 great apologia in the titleenth of Luke. In this 
 connection Jesus is made to say that "the sinners 
 were certainly waste and dangerous stuff * * * 
 but it was culpable wabte, the result of imper- 
 fect religious processes," but nowhere is Jesus 
 found to give expression to such sentiments. 
 Jesus did not regard them as mere integral parts 
 of the body poluic, dangerous to its peace, need- 
 ing to be civilized and christianized lor the sake 
 of the community. Jesus never referred to them 
 as a dangerous class because of their disposition 
 to prey upon others, or likely to become a curse 
 to any but themselves 
 
 Keligion operated in Jesus' day as an insu- 
 perable obstacle in the way of reconciliation to 
 
26 
 
 God; sinners saw tlirough it and refused it. No 
 processes can operate to elevate men nearer to 
 God than that which is involved in their birth, 
 born after the fiesh, children of wrath, born after 
 the Spirit, children of God; the gift of God is 
 eternal life, not religion. The more religion men 
 get, the more radical!}' they become what Dr. 
 Watson calls "dangerous stuff." 
 
 The Master is said to make His appeal 
 through reason, and yet His presence in the 
 world, His methods were all above reason and 
 not susceptible of being understood on any hy- 
 pothesis suggested by man. Pie never asked for 
 men's support, never appealed to men to stand 
 by Him or approve Him; what He did ask was 
 that they would come to Him, receive Him not 
 because His view was most fitting, but because 
 they were lost without Him; He never made a 
 defense of Himself or His principles, or offered 
 an apology for His action. 
 
 The silly twaddle about the prodigal has the 
 merit of originality. He came back neither hon- 
 est, humble nor peniteni: among the swine in 
 his hunger, wretchedness and tilth he remem- 
 bered three things— his father's hired servants, 
 abundance of bread accessible to them, and his 
 perishing condition, followed by a three-fold 
 purpose as to where he would go, what he would 
 do, and say, what he would be; the height of 
 his ambition being to get into his father's house, 
 and with his father's servants, that he might 
 get the bread which they had, and to spare. 
 Not a thought above his poor empty stomach: 
 he was not looking for a son's place, but a ser- 
 vant's place; while the father was occupied v»ith 
 the son, just as he was; knew what was in his 
 heart, but was longing to provide the kiss, the 
 robe, the ring, the shoes: there was no opening 
 for his son among the servants, but there was 
 In his father's heart. All this is the Father's 
 provision in grace, not the reward of merit, 
 neither is it a romance as the doctor would have 
 it, but the Spirit's testimony of a certain man 
 
27 
 
 with two sons, reoeated by our Lord to tlie 
 Pharisees, who stood unmoved so far as the rec- 
 ord j?oes. ISo softer, no more tender, no kind- 
 lier feelinj?s, they hated Him withoutacause, they 
 were unmoved by His faithfulness, they rejected, 
 despised, slew Him. Jesus had never followed 
 the story of the prodigal's father, with Luke 
 sixteen had a change been wrought in His ene- 
 mies. 
 
 The Scotch doctor is an inventive genius, 
 abounds in originalities, perhaps nowhere does 
 he reach his climacteric in the absurd as in 
 connection with the woman of John eight, and 
 the selection of a publican as one of the twelve, 
 he introduces his readers to St. Mary Magdalene. 
 Dr. Watson is not symmetrical: his disposition 
 to fly off at tangents and to follow abnormal 
 lines in the discussion of the wonderful charac- 
 ter he professes to write of, shows him but poorly 
 taught in the Word. 
 
 The realm of an imagination, inflamed by a 
 loose rein thrown to the consci«nce, with slack 
 conceptions erf the Divine in inspiration, coupled 
 with a moral judgment, untutored by the Spirit, 
 is an unsafe and an unsound place into which 
 scholars in God's school may be safely introduced. 
 Let the Bible be divested of its sanctity: let vain 
 foolish man imagine that he may invade its 
 sacred precincts without marring its symmetry 
 and beauty with his silly utterances: for if you 
 would bring God's book down to the level where 
 man has been a factor in its production, then 
 you at once rob it of its grandeur and majesty. 
 
 Rev. John Watson at his pleasure drops from 
 its wonderful pages its noblest utterances and 
 in turn injects into its lovlely confines, his own 
 silly details, which mars the whole and reacts 
 upon himself, though it may cause him to 
 contemplate with pride the improvements 
 he thinks he has wrought, while the faithful 
 Bible student, with increasing sadness, beholds 
 the fair and lovely page debauched by the ruth- 
 less and presumptuous hand of man. Thus we 
 
find Doctor Watson without qualification or fit- 
 ness to write of, or deal helpfully with the life 
 of the most important Person in the whole uni- 
 verse of God. To ruthlessly t'ov^e his way into 
 this Holy of Holies, and trample under foot the 
 sacred and heavenly as it clusters about His sa- 
 cred Person, is brutal. The beautiful and the 
 true which his friends admire in him will not 
 compensate for the persistent, recl^less, inex- 
 cusable departure from the truth which per- 
 meates near and remote almost every part of what 
 he presumes to call "The Life of the Master." 
 
 The realm of mystery and apparent obscurity 
 which is common in many parts of the Divine 
 utterance, suggests no occasion for embarrass- 
 ment or hesitation to the fascinating IScotch 
 preacher, who with ease and facility assumes to 
 supply all the needful explanation. But "ven- 
 geance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord''— 
 "his mischief will return upon his own head, and 
 his violent dealing come down upon his own 
 pate."' The danger would be small, compara- 
 tively, if his readers could be induced to place 
 his wares in God's scales; if they could be made 
 to line them up with a "Thus saith the Lord," 
 then the true and the false would be apparent, 
 but thousands accept such writings as in har- 
 mony with what is written, only to find them- 
 selves alienated from God and His most Holy 
 Word. God has revealed all men need to know, 
 to add to it or take from it is of the evil one. 
 
 Distinctions through priestly caste, heredi- 
 tary rank or vast endowments as admired by men, 
 had no place with Jesus Christ. Two classes con- 
 fronted Him, saved and lost; those wlio were 
 for Him, and those who were against Him. Tlie 
 latent enmity in man was awakened by God's 
 presence in the Person of His Son, the Spirit- 
 born and Spirit- taught believed in Him, received 
 Him. 
 
 Half truths are all lies, and correspondingly 
 more vicious. Jesus was not averse to respect- 
 ability; His wonderful interview with Nicodemus 
 
29 
 
 was as fruitful as His equally marvellous dealing 
 with the woman of Sychar's well; faithfulness 
 characterized Him with the Ruler of the Jews 
 and the Samaritan adultress; neither really 
 more susceptible to His teachings than the other. 
 The man who came to Him by night had no 
 more moral fitness to receive Him than the 
 woman of Samaria, of whom He asked a drink 
 at high noon. Jesus had but one gift to bestow 
 upon respectable and outcast, "for there is no 
 difference." By one man sin entered the world 
 and death by sin, and so death passed upon all 
 men for that all have sinned; one man brought 
 in sin and every man begotten through him had 
 the same characteristics; one Man brought in 
 life, there was no life apart from Him, no one 
 good enough without it, none too bad to be out 
 of reach of it. "The wages of sin is death, but 
 the gift of God is eternal life thro' Jesus Christ 
 our Lord." 
 
 Jesus had nothing of the natural antipathy 
 of man, who simply judged by what he could 
 see; He hated hypocrisy and He only could see 
 the heart; while He hated sin, He loved the 
 sinner; when He died it was to save sinners, re- 
 spectable and otherwise. Jesus proved His wil- 
 lingness to receive the prodigal; the elder brother 
 pilloried himself with all the other respectables, 
 who conspired to kill the Lord because of Hi» 
 readiness to save the lost. The respectables 
 joined hands, Pharisees, Herodians, Sadducees, 
 Romans, to compass His death because He re- 
 ceived sinners and ate with them. The right- 
 eousness which the respectables brought to John 
 Baptist- was also brought to Jesus and rejected 
 by Him; for in their ignorance they refused to 
 submit themselves to the righteousness of God 
 while they went about to establish their own 
 righteousness. The Pharisee extolled his virtues; 
 the Publican saw himself a sinner the one under 
 conviction, the other in the temple of God, but 
 not brought under the power of God, and Jesus 
 was no more affected by the Pharisee's recital 
 
30 
 
 of his virtues than by their comparison with the 
 alleged vices of the Publican. That which 
 pleased the Lord and justified the Publican was 
 found in his takintr his place as a sinner. In the 
 estimation of men one was worse than the other, 
 but they were both alike until the one took his 
 place as a sinner. This grave him the precedence 
 and preference with God. (Luke 19:10.) These 
 distinctions still exist, practically the Publican 
 was no worse than the Pharisee. Their lives, 
 in their alienation to God, had simply taken on 
 and reflected their environments, one in religion, 
 the other without, both equally godless. If the 
 Pharisee had known the hoUowness of his own 
 unreconciled, sinful nature, he never would have 
 flattered himself and slandered his neighbor. 
 The alleged extortion and injustice of the one, 
 no more offensive in the sight of God than the 
 , outbreaking hate and hypocrisy of the other, the 
 conduct of the Publican not nearly so subversive 
 of the Jewish national life as the bigotry and 
 self-righteousness of the Pharisee who pretended 
 to stand for God. The most despicable class in 
 all the universe is found among those who wear 
 religion as a cloak, but whose hypocritical lives 
 speak louder than their profession; what they are 
 is not what they seem; among this class are those 
 who, in their ignorance, grade sin in the face of 
 what is written "whatsoever is not of faith is 
 sin" and to him who knoweth to do good, and 
 doeth it not to him it is sin." The Pharisees 
 condemned themselves in judging and condemn- 
 ing the Publicans. The Lord Jesus was not 
 swayed for a moment by the estimate they placed 
 upon those whom they desired to stigmatize as 
 the "hated class," and whose unsupported ex- 
 parte testimony Dr. Watson affects to believe 
 and stands ever ready to give it currency. The at- 
 titude of the Pharisees toward Him who was the 
 express image of God, and who had come out 
 from God, furnished but a poor equipment for 
 fitting them for sitting in the place of judge. 
 These ultra respectable religionists, who cursed 
 
31 
 
 the land "hated Ilim without a cause;"' they 
 covenanted with Judas for the price of a slave 
 for the betrayal of One who came to bless and 
 save. 
 
 Our learned doctor in his efforts to discount 
 the testimony of Jesus, "who needed not that 
 any should testify of man, for He knew what 
 was in man," stands ready to degrade to the 
 lowest human level the Publican, and elevate to 
 the highest mortal conception the Pharisee, and 
 this in the face of the anathemas of the Son of 
 God, pronounced against them. John denounced 
 them as a generation of vipers before Jesus had 
 testified against them: what have we then? The 
 Pharisees against the Publican; the Lord against 
 the Pharisees! Let us examine the score; we 
 have the character of the witnesses, whose tes- 
 timony could be easily impeached; according to 
 the slanderous attack in the temple, in the pre- 
 tense of a prayer, offered by the Pharisee; it is 
 only by inference that this part of his address 
 could appear to involve the Publican whom he in- 
 troduces this wise, and may or may not apply to 
 him. "Gcd I thank Thee that I am not as other 
 men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as 
 this Publican." For the sake of argument let 
 us accept the whole as applying to the "hated 
 one' who stood afar off and cried "God be mer- 
 ciful to me, a sinner," but who, rather than the 
 other, went down to his house justified; after 
 all, it is not adultery, injustice or extortion that 
 shuts men out of heaven, but unbelief. This 
 unbelief was the heritage of the Pharisee, while 
 the key that unlocked the kingdom of God, and 
 which admitted the Publican, was faith, which 
 the religionist lacked. 
 
 There is nothing to convict Zaccheus in his 
 confession; it was meet having received Jesus 
 that he should confess his faith and give assur- 
 ances for the future, and he does not do this as 
 a representative of a class, but as a sinner saved 
 
by grace; he could say what any other might, 
 "Behold if I have taken anything from any man 
 by false accusation, 1 restore four-fold." 
 
 Let us analyze the respective elements in 
 the two classes in whom, according to God's 
 testimony, there was no difference. The respect- 
 able was a viper, a hypocrite, a whitened sepul- 
 chre, a conspirator, betrayer, murderer, on the 
 witness of the Word, while not a word of testi- 
 mony or stigma was ever entered against the 
 Publican by any but the Pharisee, it follows that 
 both classes were sinners, before God; the Pub- 
 licans, humanly speaking, open to conviction; 
 the Pharisees not; the religion of the one could 
 avail no more with God than the irreligion of 
 the other. The taint in the blood would be 
 found the same in both, begotten in the likeness 
 of Adam, after his alienation and no whit an 
 improvement over Eve's first born; no moral 
 decency in the accuser or accused. The Phari- 
 sees in their unbelief neglected, rejected and 
 slew the Son of God: In building the tombs of 
 the prophets, they confessed themselves in their 
 words (Matt. 23:31) the children of those who 
 killed thp! prophets. The Pharisee despised the 
 Publican because he was disloyal to their nation, 
 while the Pharisee himself was disloyal to the 
 God of that nation. 
 
 In Dr. Watson's appeal for popular favor, he 
 introduces all sorts of vagaries into Luke 18, and 
 undertakes to throw numerous oriental sidelights 
 into Simon's feast as given in Luke 7. In hivS 
 bid for popular applause he loses the benediction 
 of God, for no lie is of the truth 
 
 An altogether fair and conscientious re- 
 viewer, who undertakes to make in some degree 
 a critical, though of necessity in this case, a 
 somewhat superficial examination, should be in- 
 telligent in his comparisons, honest in his con- 
 clusions, charitable in his discussions, while he 
 strives to exhibit the same geutleness in com- 
 bating error, that characterized our Lord, in His 
 wonderful interview with the woman of Sychar, 
 
33 
 
 and while he gives in simplicity the results of 
 his investigation, he must neither be broader 
 nor narrower than the Word of God, the only rule 
 for trying any and every utterance of men. 
 
 Now under such circumstances to speak of 
 regrets would be incongruous, and yet to traverse 
 so many lines, one is sure to find much that is 
 charming, and while to be honest one must re- 
 buke error, one confesses to occasional pangs of 
 remorse, as he comes face to face with some 
 sweet tribute to the homeless Nazarene by our 
 eloquent, popular, but misleading Scotch preach- 
 er. Such pangs are but momentary, for while 
 one is chagrined for having criticised at all, 
 radical lines of departure from the truth claim 
 attention, and one is convinced of the unrelia- 
 bility of the products of such a pen. At the 
 threshold of the number under consideration, 
 occasion is found for stumbling, in Dr. Watson's 
 references to the "innocency and simplicity of 
 the Eden state," involving also his beautiful tri- 
 bute to the children, his touching words con- 
 cerning Jesus and His unselfish love for the little 
 ones. 
 
 Dr. Watson proves himself untaught in mat- 
 ters involving the church, for while in the mind 
 of God it had a name and place from the foun- 
 dation of the world, yet it had no visible exist- 
 ence among men during the days of our Lord's 
 life in the earth. The element to whom Jesus 
 came, and with whom He dealt directly and 
 almost exclusively, was the Jew, one of the three 
 divisions into which Paul, by the Holy Ghost, 
 afterwards grouped the world. -'The Jew, the 
 Gentile and the Church of God," Jesus could 
 not in His life deal with the church, as it grew 
 out of His death and resurrection, and the prom- 
 ised enduement by the Spirit of the Father. 
 Even after the foundation was laid for this super- 
 structure the apostles were in obscurity as to 
 the part which they were expected to perform, 
 and methods peculiarly and almost exclusively 
 Jewish, characterized what was done, until, 
 
34 
 
 through persecution and other diyine interposi- 
 tions involving object lessons of one kind or an- 
 other, they were led into God's purposes, who 
 by the Spirit began calling out the Church from 
 Jew and Gentile alike, who lost their identity as 
 such, in the Church of God, as they became 
 members of the body of Christ, and members one 
 of another. 
 
 It would be interesting to take up and ex- 
 amine in the light of the Word, the Lord Jesus 
 in His relation to the children, as described in 
 four scenes in the Gospel, in which all sorts of 
 unscriptural and un-Christlike things are intro- 
 duced by Dr. Watson: much of fancy and less of 
 fact, the former dominating, the latter meagre, 
 the two misleading and corrupting, tilling living 
 temples with demoralizing and debasing error, 
 which might otherwise be adorned with gracious, 
 life-giving, life sustaining. God-glorifying truths, 
 drawn in their freshness from God's store-house, 
 suited to the needs of each particular one; sal- 
 vation and healing to the sinner, instruction and 
 comfort to sons. Man's conceptions are but 
 stumbling blocks in the way of the sinner, hurt- 
 ful, distressing error for the saint. 
 
 We shall examine somewhat, in the light of 
 Scripture, the arguments of Dr. Watson in rela- 
 tion to the three classes which he ha-i chosen to 
 represent by three notable characters introduced 
 into the sacred page by the Holy Ghost, but 
 used by our inventive doctor along lines which 
 have no foundation in the facts, as set forth in 
 the divine Record. Nathaniel, Nicodemus and 
 Zaccheus, critic, formalist and sinner, are made 
 to serve purposes and do service in a strange and 
 unique way. Born in the brain of this candi- 
 date for popularity, it had been better had they 
 "died a horning," rather than that boys and girls 
 get their impressions of God and these New Tes- 
 tament worthies, in this uncertain caricature of 
 that which is holy. 
 
 The only scriptural premise laid for making 
 a critic out of Nathaniel, is found In John 1:46, 
 
35 
 
 "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?"' So 
 far as we have it iu the Word of God, Philip 
 preaches the gospel of the Old Tehtament to 
 Nathaniel, identities Jesus of Nazareth, the son 
 of Joseph, with the promised Messiah: to which 
 Nathaniel hesitates apparently but a brief mo- 
 ment, asks one simple question, and straightway 
 responds to the invitation of Philip, "Come and 
 see." This man of letters attempts to build out 
 of a chimera a colossal edifice of pure Action, 
 the objective point being to prove Nathaniel a 
 critic like himself. 
 
 To Nicodemus he assigns the role of ••fornial- 
 ist," in an equally gratuitous way, tells us "that 
 he was the most honest Pharisee Jesus met,'^ 
 ''that this meeting took place at his first visit 
 to Jerusalem," ' that he had a reputation for the- 
 ology " Zaccheus stands for the sinner, even 
 tho' nowhere in the Word are Publican and sin- 
 ner found synonomous, the Holy ISpirit us^ually 
 coupling the Publican and the sinner together, 
 which would not be found so, if they could be 
 used interchangeably or were identical in mean- 
 ing. 
 
 Dr. Watson very kindly gives us the hither- 
 to unknown details in the life of Nathaniel, 
 tells us where he lived, what he was, his stand- 
 ing and habits, that he stood aloof from the 
 movements of John the Baptist, and why: that 
 Philip did go to the Jordan because there were 
 a multitude; one a mjstic, the other a man of 
 affairs. That Nathaniel was a "quiet, mrdest, 
 diffident, questioning person, and he stayed at 
 home." "gathering what was written about 
 the Messiah in Scripture, accumulating, compar- 
 ing, reconciling evidence, and creating a portrait 
 which would satisfy his reason, and by wliich 
 he would identify the coming One." To recon- 
 cile evidence to meet one's reason, has in it none 
 of the characteristics of faith; faith believes, 
 does not reconcile: searching for proof, compar- 
 ing Scripture with Scripture, help'ul; but the 
 microscope and knife are not the instruments 
 
36 
 
 for helpful, restful research, . but suggest some- 
 thing lacking in the record,— hints of supple- 
 mental work through reason, the introduction 
 of natural law and the application of science in 
 the spiritual world. We are told that Nathaniel 
 was learned, speculative, conscientious, and that 
 he would see Jesus for himself; but for Philip, 
 who hears and believes, a simple child of faith, 
 the great doctor has no kindly mention. That 
 which pleased God does not give pleasure to 
 Doctor Watson, while Nathaniel, the doctor 
 would have us believe, was occupied with his 
 senses in perplexity and sadness, adjusting that 
 which was written, discounting the Messiah's 
 claim on him: he finds no help from uncritical 
 Philip, who is so easily satisfied, and hence no 
 criterion for him. His estimate of the ancient, 
 honored, the oldest and best Book is seen in 
 this query, "and yet is the question of Jesus to 
 be settled by the ancient books? There is not 
 an element in this sketch of Nathaniel in har- 
 mony with the Divine record. 
 
 The only way out of. darkness into light is 
 by faith; reason as remote as a means to this 
 end as the silly nonsense of a congress of relig- 
 ions. Jesus will satisfy no man who will not 
 believe in Him. The Pharisees got nothing 
 from Him: Mary found everything to meet her 
 every need in Him. Faith always, reason never, 
 brings the sinner enrapport with Jesus Christ. 
 Deliverance from sjn. its power and its penalty, 
 comes through simple, child-like faith in the 
 crucified and risen One, and no other way. The 
 simple and the critic go in at the same door, 
 and the former is not retarded l>y his lack of 
 mind, the latter not helped by his superabun- 
 dance. 
 
 We now come to the consideration of the 
 pen portrait of Nicodemus, "the formalist," by 
 this untrustworthy caracaturist, who prostitutes 
 the Word of God as a presumable basis for 
 "Tiie Life of the Master," but who ignores 
 what is written and substitutes his ov^d ideas 
 
37 
 
 in the place of God's words. The Holy Ghost 
 gives all we can possibly know of tliis "man of 
 the Pliarisees, — name, office, time and interview 
 of Jesus, the conversation of John three; the 
 brief word of John seven; a supplemental line 
 or more in John nineteen. Tnis satisfies the 
 child of faith, who is fully persuaded that all 
 he needs to know has been revealed by the 
 Spirit, and for the learned doctor to intimate 
 "that Nicodemus would miss a certain academic 
 flavor in Jesus' speech dear unto scholars," is 
 but to fling into the face of the omniscient 
 Christ an insult too base to be chronicled; such 
 sacrilege is without precedent, save in the 
 mouths of the profane and vile. This covert 
 attack upon the divinity of our Lord obscures 
 all the pretty touches found in the preceding 
 papers. The divine man who shocked ISicode- 
 mus with his provincialisms, this irreverend 
 and unsafe teacher inconsistently tells us in 
 another place "knew the thoughts of the Phar- 
 isees and confused them in ills dealings with 
 them." Doctor Watson forestalls what is writ- 
 ten on the sacred pages as he injects his faulty 
 words into the face of Him who knew all 
 things; for Nicodemus without fear or favor, 
 confessed himself to be in the presence of one 
 who came from God, and who had God with 
 Him, which while not up to the mark, was at 
 least greatly in advance of the one who dares 
 to write this parody upon the life of the Mas- 
 ter. Who but Doctor Watson would dare to 
 insinuate that God would even send an un- 
 tutored man to earth to represent Him, much 
 less that this was He who came out from God 
 with all His attributes who could be trammeled 
 by weakness or ignorance? Nicodemus found 
 no occasions for criticism, no child of faith 
 dare hint at failure anywhere in Jesus. He 
 heard Jesus' words, he believed them. The 
 "how can these things be"' of Nicodemus in 
 keeping with the woman of John four "from 
 whence then hast thou this living water?" 
 
38 
 
 Both are scholars in the same school with the 
 same Teacher, at ditterent time and place, 
 drinking in their simplicity, at the same tount- 
 airi: one a riiarisec, the other an adultress; 
 and ''Lhere is no ditlerence,"' for without Christ 
 one is no more lost than the oLher, but one 
 channel to Himself, opened up by Himself, by 
 which in His own way both may have access 
 through falLh. 
 
 Jesus, "the provincial,'' propounded the 
 most profound truths ever uttered; no such 
 words ever fell up.ia the ears of this Ruler of 
 tlie Jew!5 before; bat we know nothing of his 
 past, his attitude toward empty rights, hack- 
 neyed phra-es, barren methods, etc. Still we 
 are told that 'one honest man recognizes 
 another." Was it only a man whom Nicodemus 
 mety Do the facts given prove according to 
 John seven that this ruler of the Jews was 
 bound to act in concert with h'n colleagues? 
 
 The paper under consideration is out of 
 harmony with that which is written; errors read 
 in, truths read out; the divine utterance marred 
 by misstatement, the casual reader mislead, the 
 little one offended, God dishonored, man deified, 
 as entertainment is furnished for the thought- 
 less and ignorant; no one edified, stumbling 
 blocks of Satanic make and mould injected 
 ruthlessly into the pathway of the unwary pil- 
 grim, through misrepresentatioti to trip the 
 feet of. (rod's little ones. Nicodemus became a 
 bH'liever and learner when born into Gurls fam- 
 ily; Jesus preached the Word, the man of the 
 Pharisees believed the message, passed from 
 death unto life. Nathaniel was a sinner, as 
 was Ncodemus and Zaccheus, no more, no less, 
 born the saiue way, under condemnation, with- 
 oiitiCnrist, without hope; the same measure of 
 gill I secured equal judgment through the pen- 
 alty of a law given by the hands of a sin hat- 
 ing God: there was no reaching out after God 
 in either apart from the Spirit. The first 
 
39 
 
 Adam brought them nothing to help them 
 God ward. What is your relation to the second 
 man, the Lord from' heaven? 
 
 The name of Zaccheus occurs three times in 
 Luke only, all that is known of him is tokl in 
 ten brief verses of less than forty Jines. The 
 last verse of the ten is the key that unlocks 
 the mystery of the life of our Lord in the 
 earth. The seeking Saviour looks for and finds 
 Zaccheus; the latter do3s noL tind Je-us. As 
 usual tiie imagination plays the most important 
 pirt in the sk-tch of this intere«iting character 
 as given by our writer; as a matter of fact we 
 cannot surely know an antecedant incident in 
 the life of Zaccheus, whether practically he was 
 worse or better than his class, nor the attitude 
 of the thronging multitude, then, or before. 
 We do know that; he received Jesus; that he 
 came down out of the sycamore tree in obedi- 
 ence to the command of Jesus, and further that 
 he received Him joyfully, we surely know just 
 what this involves from John 1:12; and that his 
 confession is the first aspiration of the new 
 life, which by faith in the Son of God he has 
 but just now begun to live. The closing 
 thought of the paper before us is not in har- 
 mony with God's way of putting things. As 
 long as Zaccheus was unreconciled to .lesus he 
 could present no attraction to the Ijord of life 
 and glory, save as he drew forth compassion 
 from the blessed Son of God, as Jesus found 
 him in weakness and sin. Zaccheus was saved 
 because he believed in Jesus, not because Jesus 
 believed in him. 
 
 Giving the sense of Scripture is incomparably 
 vicious; the finite tampering with the Infinite, 
 a potent evil, misleading millions as it lays the 
 foundation for deceiving unborn millions more. 
 Traditional rendering is increasingly popular, 
 because the mind of man is ever more accept- 
 able to men than the mind of God; human in- 
 genuity is needed to blunt its force and effect, 
 and crush out the life-giving principle con- 
 
40 
 
 tained in the message as it comes from its 
 divine source. Men instructed in tlie Word will 
 rarely, if ever, undertake to give the significa- 
 tion for the very reason that they prize the 
 Word of God too highly to undertake to mar 
 its beauty by an error; haphazard methods may 
 commend themselves to men, but an immortal 
 soul must not be jeopardized by an incorrect 
 rendering of God's unique message to man. The 
 Lord may dignify man in using him as a mes- 
 senger, but it is that he may bear the Lord's 
 message, not a grouping of words, an admixture 
 of the humau and divine, purporting to be 
 what it is not, but a communication from the 
 Infinite One. To mislead a soul in the careless 
 misuse of words is reprehensible, but to delib- 
 erately read the divine out and the human into 
 God's testimony, is God dishonoring and soul 
 destroying. Perhaps nowhere in modern litera- 
 ture can be found such flagrant departure from 
 what is written on the sacred pages as charac- 
 terizes Dr. John Watson, with his disjointed, 
 disconnected, emasculated, broken paragraphs, 
 pieced out from scripture to suit the case, and 
 given as a premise for his so-called '"Life of the 
 Master," as in the role of a romancer he ven- 
 tures into sacred precincts already hallowed by 
 the presence of one who spake as never man 
 spake. But what shall we say of deliberate 
 falsification, interpolation, emasculation but 
 that it is the corrupting trail of the serpent, 
 and infinitely more God dishonoring than a 
 mere slip of the tongue, or the utterance of one 
 who ignorantly affects to give the sense? These 
 papers under review reek with silly sentiment, 
 unsavory and nauseating, demoralizing thou- 
 sands of superficial readers, who are perhaps to 
 get their first and only impression of God as 
 they find it issue from the false and uncertain 
 lines of one who is seeking the applause of 
 men, and apparently does not court the divine 
 benediction. 
 
41 
 
 We are told that "one rich man after 
 another stands out in his place and can be 
 identified." The first (he says) is given without 
 disguise, because he was an acquaintance of 
 His, and figured in a romantic incident." This 
 twaddle the untaught will accept as truth, be- 
 cause of the holy calling of this reverend 
 writer. We are told again that this young 
 Ruler was from the country, belonging to the 
 higher class in society, father wealthy, character 
 of good principles and solid worth quickened 
 by spiritual ideas, unworldly instincts, fine vein 
 of enthusiasm and a habit of self-forgetfulness, 
 which were very taking; again, born heir to 
 dangerous advantages and competing tempta- 
 tions, he v?as neither a profligate nor a prig, 
 but a well-liking, cultivated, high spirited, 
 rev-*-rent gentleman." Discriminating readers 
 will see at once the need of subjecting these 
 lines to careful scrutiny and painstaking com- 
 parison witn that whicn "is written," for the 
 manner of the man makes it all the more nec- 
 essary that his words shall be truth, for thou- 
 sands of superficial readers much prefer to 
 accept scripture references second-hand. Not 
 considering their value nor demanding marks 
 of genuineness; and thus it comes to pass that 
 what might be a stepping stone God ward into 
 an eternity of blessing, degenerates into stum- 
 bling blocks over which men are cast into per- 
 dition. Brilliant, but blind, is our Scotch 
 author, eloquent as A polios, perversive as 
 Elymas; but we can only glance at these pict- 
 ures thrown upon the canvas by this master in 
 fictitious art. 
 
 The second rich man we are told "is a very 
 unlovely character;" as one gathers from his 
 increase in wealth and coarseness in tone, he 
 had not been heir to riches and position, as 
 was the young Ruler, and he had not, there- 
 fore, his fine instincts and graciousness;" he 
 speaks with freedom of his "hard struggle from 
 poverty to afiluence, a progress not from knowl- 
 
42 
 
 edge to knowledge, nor from character to char- 
 acter, but from barn to barn.'' And so the 
 uninteresting, unlikely details are raad into 
 this life of tliis fool of whom his soul had been 
 required. The reviewer tias no disposition to 
 cavil at the steps that this lover of money is 
 made to take in his rise from poverty to riches, 
 but of the audacity which presumes to supply 
 a bill of particulars wliere the Divine Penman 
 is silent. 
 
 •'The third man of riches is a stronger fig- 
 ure and a more complicated character"' we are 
 told; also that "he was not a sordid wretch, 
 like the man of barns,"' "nor a student like the 
 young Iluler, but he rather stands for the lux- 
 ury and magnificence of riches," "no leisure for 
 private charity," "but there was in him a gen- 
 erous heart,"' "would have done kindly things 
 if he had thought; so great that he did not 
 notice a beggar,"' "among his easy environments 
 his imagination had died,'" "could not put him- 
 self in his brother's place, etc" But our 
 author passes by the wonderful scene portrayed 
 by our Lord and throws his own false sketch 
 upon the canvas, which suffers by comparison; 
 the changes wrought as the result of their 
 changed conditions is glossed over; the hell and 
 torment of the one: the convoy of the angels 
 and the goal in Abraham's bosom of the other. 
 In the false conception of Rev. Watson the tire 
 that is to shake tliis victim of prosperity out 
 of self and set him free from the grip of riches 
 and their insiduous and deadening power is 
 apparently an influence brought into his life 
 rather than a fixed condition in death. 
 
 According to Dr. Watson, the wonderful 
 words spoken by our Lord with reference to "a 
 certain rich man'' (without a name) and a 
 certain beggar named Lazarus" separated by a 
 great gulf fixed"" do not suggest any particular 
 dilflculty, tho' the one that had received his 
 good things and he that liad received evil 
 things have changed places for all eternity; but 
 
43 
 
 the doct r, true to his bent, gives it no consid- 
 eration; nothing of tlie water, of the torment, 
 the flame; nothing of sending the once despised 
 beggar, now comforted, as one from the dead 
 back to his father's iiouse to warn his brothers 
 lest they also come into this place of torment; 
 nothing of Abraham's tribute to the authority 
 and value of the Word as found in Moses and 
 the Prophets over and above the testimony of 
 one rising from the dead. 
 
 This "Life of the Master" is fiction; it 
 reflects the man Watson, not the man Christ. 
 The truth he passes over and the fancy he 
 throws in proves him as holding lightly to that 
 which is divine in the Son of God, but revelling 
 always and everywhere where a loose rein can 
 be thrown to the imagination. Read "The Life 
 of the Master" by all means, but with an open 
 Bible before you; compare every utterance of 
 Doctor Watson with what is found written 
 there; form your own estimate of the value of 
 such work as has been wrought by this fancy 
 monger. But behold three men ruined not by 
 "fastidious refinement, coarse greed or unre- 
 strained luxury," but through the love of 
 money, issuing from being born wrong, and go- 
 ing wrong from birth and ending up in reject- 
 ing God's only way of salvation through Christ. 
 Tlie rich young Ruler under law heard the mes- 
 sage, from the Law Giver, rejected it; the rich 
 man of Luke sixteen had Moses and the proph- 
 ets, but he rejected God's way through them; 
 all laid up treasure toward themselves and 
 neither were rich toward God. 
 
 The Holy Spirit's words are unmatched in 
 kind, excellence and signification in their con- 
 nection. This whole unique testimony, the 
 truth, the whole truth and nothing but the 
 truth, comprehending in its singularity all the 
 mind of God. as expressed in the Holy Script- 
 ures in Words of His choice, and each particular 
 letter chosen by Himself with which He in- 
 tended to form a part of speech, as the symbol 
 
44 
 
 of His own thoughts; its true meaning often 
 incomprehensible apart from its setting, and 
 altogether meaningless to man when viewed as 
 an abstraction, or when associated with things 
 not germane. It is God's message to man, to 
 be received, believed, applied, lived; to be 
 tested by the application of its precepts and 
 promises in the life, but not to be discussed; 
 neither is it to be woven into fiction to give it 
 character. The men who penned it could only 
 do so as borne along by the Spirit; the men 
 who expound it powerless apart from the Divine 
 Author. Dr. John Watson gives half truths in 
 disjointed excerpts, in his own words, and suc- 
 ceeds in robbing God of honor: the Book of 
 glory, as he saps the life out of what is found 
 Written on the sacred page. This world which 
 slew the Son of God is a religious world; occu- 
 pied with the form, they deny the power; if 
 the message smacks of religion they concern 
 themselves precious little about the Scripture 
 connection, or literality. A magazine may 
 quadruple its issue because it contains a semi- 
 religious story without any significance what- 
 ever, as to the character of the story, or the 
 motive of the subscribers. Pious phrases are 
 more or less acceptable in proportion to the 
 state of the physical health. 
 
 The semi-religious worldling boasts of his 
 liberality, his breadth of charity. The Bible 
 Christian demands literality, the inerrant Word, 
 the only safe channel of communication between 
 God and man, he declines to accept reasons 
 estimate and application, counts it unsafe as a 
 means to an end, and insists that the Word of 
 God is the only authoritative rule for the life 
 which now is, and that which furnishes equip- 
 ment for the life which is to come. 
 
 The paper before us opens in language 
 without scriptural sanction, as follows: "It is 
 inevitable that any prophet who sets himself 
 to regenerate society shall face the problem of 
 riches." Our writer and the unregenerated 
 
45 
 
 blind beggar of John nine agree in according 
 Jesus the place of a prophet; hence a mere 
 man, though after receiving his sight the njan 
 blind from his birth does not worship Him. 
 But when Jesus propounded those searchintr 
 words, "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" 
 he quickly responds, "Who is He, Lord, that 1 
 might believe on Him?" Jesus answers. "Thou 
 hast both seen Him, and it is He that talketh 
 with thee." And he said, "Lord, I believe," 
 and he worshipped Him. Recovering of sight to 
 his eyes he traces to a prophet. To a being 
 worthy of his faith, he accords worship. Jesus 
 said of John the Baptist, "Yea, I say unto you 
 (he is) much more than a prophet." John says 
 of Jesus, "I saw and bear record that this is 
 the Son of God." No Scripture data can be 
 given to prove that Jesus came to regenerate 
 society. Jesus did not deal with the mass, but 
 with the individual, often in solitary places, 
 at night, at noonday, alone. Jesus was in no 
 sense a reformer; out of the mass of corrupting, 
 sinning humanity, Jesus came to call men, indi- 
 viduals to repentance; He could do nothing for 
 the ninety and nine, but He could go after that 
 which was lost until He finds it; He could lay 
 it on His shoulders with rejoicing and bring it 
 home. Men needing salvation must be dealt 
 with as units; society is soulless; the burning 
 question is "what shall a MAN give in exchange 
 for his soul?" 
 
 The problem of riches was easily solved by 
 the all-knowing One. He only knew how cor- 
 rupting a force gold would become in alienating 
 men from their Maker. The poverty of the 
 poor not nearly so soul destroying as the wealth 
 of the rich. Jesus, the Maker and upholder of 
 the world, was the possessor of it all; He was 
 rich, yet for our (your) sakes became poor, that 
 we (ye), through His poverty, might be rich. 
 There was no comparisons drawn by Him as to 
 His surroundings as set over against the rich; 
 if "His duty led Him into the houses of the 
 
46 
 
 rich people," it is preposterous to suppose that 
 "He was made to feel in many ways that an in- 
 vitation to a rich man's house was an honor to 
 be thankfully and humb'y used.'' lie recognized 
 no justly distinguishing marks according pre- 
 eminence because of riches; it was not the honor 
 and distinction which great possessions brought 
 men that awed and humbled Jesus, but the hurt- 
 ful effect upon their own souls which He well 
 knew was inevitable, and that the love of money 
 was almost sure to follow the aggregation of 
 wealth. We have no means of knowing that 
 Simon, the Pharisee of the seventh chapter of 
 Luke, was rich, or even in d fferent circum- 
 stances from Jesus' mother; it was not his 
 wealth or lack of it that caused him to with- 
 hold the common courtesies: it was the s^me 
 ignorance and unbelief which today robs Jesus 
 of divinity and refuses to accord our divine 
 Lord that measure of homage which flowed out 
 in spontaneity through the tears of that hith- 
 erto sinful, though now repentant woman, who 
 stood at His feet behind Him, weeping and 
 washing His feet with he.- tears, and in contra- 
 distinction to the treatment accorded the Lord 
 of life and glory made in the likeness of sinful 
 flpsh by Dr. John Watson in his effort to pro- 
 duce a life of the Master. 
 
 Again we read, "It is laid on His heart to 
 speak to the rich as no prophet has done since." 
 Jesus spoke as God. knowing the end from the 
 beginning, not with the envy born of covetous- 
 ness. nor with the reproach and invective — born 
 of silly thoughts about the relative conditions 
 existing between classes because of scant or 
 abundant resources. It was not the riches of 
 the rich nor the poverty of the poor which 
 occupied Jesus, only as in the former case it 
 was seen to be inevitably a stumbling block in 
 the way of Godlines«?, and a snare in devouring 
 all hope in time for an eternity with God. 
 Jesus proves His coming to deal with Individ- 
 nals in His dealings with the rich. In the case 
 
47 
 
 of the rich youn^^ Ruler, many false lines are 
 read into his life, in the face of his decision 
 to reject the answer of Jesus tf) his ([uestion 
 as to what he should do to inherit eternal life. 
 Dr. Watson tells us "that he was a reverent 
 gentleman, one to whom Providence ujay well 
 give riches and who may be rich with safety." 
 He declines to obey Jesus,- but good Dr. Watson 
 commends him. he tells us "he would be weary 
 unto death of the religion of the day and the 
 insincerity of the religious people." The young 
 Kuler may have had an admiration for the Lord, 
 but he had no faith in Him, nor use for His 
 Words; he may have been too courteous to refuse 
 Him water for His fe»^t had He been a guest, 
 but he turns away in sadness from the Lord of 
 life and glory to his corrupting possessions and 
 allowed them to crowd out all thoughts of 
 eternal life. He might yield the lowly Galilean 
 an empty civility through a servant, but will 
 not accord his personal allegiance if it cost a 
 sacritice. Dr. Watson is so enamored with the 
 man whom he clothes with such refinement and 
 virtues that he stoops, by way of comparison, 
 to pay a gratuitous insult to Peter and Mat- 
 thew, 'neither," says he, "having souls of spec- 
 ial refinement," and yet they followed Jesus to 
 the end; while this Ruler "of finer clay" prefers 
 his gold to his God. 
 
 Jesus, who was very man and very God, had 
 no disappointment to conceal at the refusal of 
 the young Ruler; Jesus knew what his decision 
 would be: it was not for His sake that the test 
 was made, but that the young Ruler and all 
 about him might behold the seductive power that 
 bound the young man, siren like, to the prom- 
 eathan rock which was to work his absolute un- 
 doing. 
 
 Dr. Watson, as a reasoner, is an absolute 
 failure, and ttie problems he works out and the 
 lessons he deduces from the scripture narrative 
 of the rich young Ruler, proves him ab-olutely 
 incapable of rightly dividing the Word of truth; 
 
48 
 
 his word painting cannot save this money lover 
 with his presumably single, serious, fatal lack, 
 with his back to the Son of God: he in no wise 
 differed in his "fastidious refinement'' from the 
 one "of greed"' or the one of "unrestrained luxuiy." 
 
 This trio made equally notorious by Scripture 
 mention, diverse in habit, but one in selfish aim 
 and greedy purpose, stand out conspicuously as 
 representatives of the class to which they be- 
 long. The same genus, with different charac- 
 teristics. 
 
 Truth stands unmoved as a mighty bulwark 
 against which the errors of the ages have beaten 
 iu vain, for truth is real, in conformity to fact; 
 any want of adherence to established rule, is 
 error; any statement that does not possess the 
 elements of exactness is unreliable: verity is not 
 chimera: if communications between men must 
 be free from exaggeration, it is of infinite mo- 
 ment that a restatement of God's uni(iue record 
 shall be characterized by Scriptural accuracy. 
 
 Any title conferred by man upon his fellow, 
 betokening isolation and a supposed official rela- 
 tion to God, suggests increased responsibility as- 
 sumed, and demands that every utterance em- 
 bracing the heavenly message shall be but a 
 conscientious iteration. It is a well known fact 
 that men presuming to stand for the Deity, 
 whetlier in Christian or anti-Christian countries, 
 appear to some to be panoplied with a certain 
 glamour which not only magnifies the office, but 
 seems to give authority to the utterance. All 
 will admit this statement susceptible of proof, 
 hence the title "reverend," is accepted as a 
 guarant.y of faithfulness in the discharge of pre- 
 sumed heavenly functions. If this claimant for 
 confidence corrupts the message of which he is 
 simply the bearer, he bears the same relation to 
 those to whom he ministers that a defunct sure- 
 ty company's bond does to its patrons. Every 
 word inspired by God. the Holy Ghost, and "all 
 Scripture is given by inspiration of God," in- 
 volves the highest conception of authority of the 
 
49 
 
 triune God— Father, Son and Holy Ghost. To 
 touch it at any point is to mar it, to add to it, 
 to take from it is but to suffer the just wrath 
 of a righteous God, whose unique words are all 
 pervasive, all wise, all powerful. 
 
 The number now under consideration, 
 abounds in ll-igrant departures from the truth. 
 We are informed that He (Jesus) stayed at John's 
 modest lodging in Jerusalem, as well as used the 
 "upper room" of a wealthier friend; we are told 
 of"the room in the Publican's house in Caper- 
 naum which was made sacred because Jesus had 
 feasted there, and sealed, as in a sacrament, the 
 salvation of Levi. "The romance of Bethany" 
 Is, perhaps, the silliest of all his senseless pro- 
 ductions, where Simon, the Pharisee of Luke 
 YII, is through a judgment for his lack of cour- 
 tesy and his hardness and exclusiveness toward 
 Jesus made to become Simon, the leper, of Mark 
 XIV; and thought to be father of Lazarus, Mar- 
 tha and Mary. In the house of the later Simon, 
 Martha is made to amend her father's lack of 
 hospitality; Mary is so affected with the unbid- 
 den, sinful, weeping woman at Simon, the Phar- 
 isee's house, that she will annoint Jesus also. 
 His head and His feet, in the house of Simon, 
 the leper (her father). Dr. Watson would have 
 us believe Simon, the "Pharisee," as separated 
 from his friends and his family, stricken with 
 the symbol of sin, the awful scourge of leprosy, 
 which compelled him to leave his home, his city, 
 his associates, his children, and pass into seclu- 
 sion,"' and this is what the careless reader istobe 
 wheedled into accepting, led captive by Satan at 
 his will, who stands in the forefront ready to 
 abet every effort to rob (rod of His glory in re- 
 ducing the force and effect of His Most Holy 
 Word. 
 
 There is nothing really known of the per- 
 sonnel of the New Testament which is not found 
 written there; to add to it or to take from it is 
 to' cast insult into the face of God. "But ven- 
 geance is mine, 1 will repay, saith the Lord." 
 
50 
 
 If changing the force and eflEect of man's words 
 naay prove a misdemeanor, how much more 
 heinous lo corrupt- the Word of God. Such an 
 attitude toward the Word of God suggests a 
 failure to comprehend llim. Tlie men who es- 
 teem it incomplete and susceptible of improve- 
 ment at their hands, rush with unseemly haste 
 into the very presence of God and with audacious 
 etirontery inject their silly supplemental para- 
 graphs into what they esteem defective. 
 
 '•The destructioa of the poor is their pov- 
 erty." With rare exception poverty is thought to 
 stand an insuperable obstacle to advancement. 
 The Son of Man and those possessing Flis Spirit 
 refuse to recognize the distinctions which wealth 
 suggests. In the bill of items embraced in the mes- 
 sage delivered by our Lord to the disciples of John 
 the Baptist for his comfort and their instruc- 
 tion, perhaps nothing was fraught with more 
 interest than the seventh and closing: thought, 
 "to the poor the gospel is preached." This would 
 reassure John, for this, too, was in harmony with 
 the prophetic utterance. 
 
 The glamour of wealth has a far reaching 
 influence with our learned doctor. If inherited, 
 "it was the symbol of refinement and gentle- 
 ness;" "if tlie issue of toil and business effort, 
 it stood for coarse greed;" but the man with 
 money possessed a potent factor quick to win his 
 way to the lieart of the author. Money made 
 possible, in his estimation, culture and refine- 
 ment. These were paramount. The danger as- 
 sociated with riches, though magnified by our 
 Lord, suggests no occasion for worriment with 
 Dr. Watson. 
 
 The Lord loved sinners. He came, the ex- 
 pression of God's love; He recognized no man- 
 made distinctions. Rich men were not noted in 
 the record as quick to cast in their lot with the 
 One of whom it wis said "the foxes have holes, 
 the bird>» of the air have nests, but the Son of 
 Man hath not where to lay His head." When 
 the disciples went to their homes, Jesus went to 
 
51 
 
 the Mount of Olives. "If a penny is needed to 
 illustrate His answer to a question, He had to 
 ask for one; when the temple tax is wanted, a 
 miracle provides it. It was with the rich in His 
 death," because it was written. ''He came to 
 seek and to save that which was lest"— the poor, 
 the maimed, the blind, humanly speaking, more 
 susceptible to the Spirit's wooing. His dealiogs 
 with the blind beggar of John IX, gives us t?ome 
 of the sweetest episodes in His life. It was just 
 before reaching Jericho, and at the time of Jei«us' 
 wonderful discovery of the little rich sinner in 
 the sycamore tree, that He blessed a blind beg- 
 gar. Jesus gave the best He brought to the 
 poor; He was not dazzled by the rich, but He 
 withheld nothing from them which they were will- 
 ing to receive. It might be pertinent in asking 
 what would Jesus do, to question whether He 
 would speak a few pious words in a hovel atd 
 permit the mourners in their sorrow to bear 
 their dead to the Silent City alone, while spend- 
 ing days in preparing to laud some Christless rich 
 because of their money. 
 
 Our learned Scotchman's rhapsodies over 
 "the rich young Ruler" and his apologies for "the 
 unrestrained luxury" of him of Luke XVI, proves 
 his susceptibility to the power of wealth. Kiches 
 may prove the sad undoing of both, but their 
 votaries receive much more attention than the 
 blind beggar of John IX, and the lowly fisher- 
 man whom Jesus dignified by calling them to be 
 with and near Him. Dr. Watson commisserates 
 and excuses the rich young Ruler in his rejection 
 of Jesus because of his riches, which he esteems 
 a virtue, compared to the fishing boat which 
 Peter gave up when he came to Jesus, or the 
 custom house which Matthew deserted, when he 
 left it to follow the Lord. The 'ingenuous 
 prayer of the young ruler was no prayer, it was a 
 question. Jesus loved him as He loved evprv 
 other sinner who needed eternal life, not for 
 his nobility, l^icodemus, his peer, needed to be 
 born again. The young Ruler, a self-righteous 
 
Pharisee, who loved his money more than dis-] 
 cipleship, professed to have kept all the com- 
 mandments, while his decision proved he had not| 
 kept the first; but he had riches, and this ex- 
 cused him, even though he prefers his money tol 
 everlasting life. A cultured life, and "assured] 
 position" go far with the doctor to condone the] 
 offense, and his hero is made to sink into th< 
 pit with his social equals, men of the same habit 
 as himself, rather than enter into life with mei 
 his peers, save in dollars. "He wanted an atmos 
 phere of refinement, freedom from petty cares;! 
 it would be a shame that he be asked to reducel 
 himself to poverty and become companion of] 
 fishermen, whose ways were not his ways, and 
 wander abiut the country who had lived in aj 
 home." From a human standpoint thousand! 
 beholding only the life which is, might be ex- 
 cused for refusing to give up their possessions,] 
 but Jesus was dealing with eternal interests, 
 and there was nothing in the fleeting pleasures 
 which dollars would bring, compared with the] 
 divine beusdiction here and eternity with God| 
 hereafter. 
 
 The rich young Ruler under law desires 
 know what he shall do to inherit eternal lifeJ 
 and it is only on this principle that Jesus tells) 
 him to keep the commandments. 
 
 FBEE ON APPI.ICATION 
 
 Also by same author. 
 
 Pages 
 
 'Inspiration," ^^ 
 
 •The Word of God" 4 
 
 •The Lord's Day," J 
 
 'All Not of Grace Goes," 16 
 
 'Pulpit, Pew, Hell," Etc 48 
 
 'Dry Bones," 4 
 
 'Christian Living and Giving," 16 
 
 Two Natures," Etc 32 
 
 • Vnd It Was Night." 4 
 
 •Christianity vs. Judaism." 32 
 
 'The Lord's Supper," 8 
 
 Address EDWIN A. WILSON, 
 
 Springfield, Illinois. 
 
BS2420 .W747 
 
 Review of Rev. John Watson's Life of the 
 limiiTr°" ^^^°'°9'"' Seminary-Speer Librat7 
 
 1 1012 00052 4597