Strictly Personal

Each individual believer and unbeliever has no doubt a different conception of the humanity of Christ, his appearance, his character and activities beyond that limited survey which we derive from the Gospels. It is a strong temptation to each of us to make Him in our own image. To one who is in the strict sense a believer the accuracy of his private image is not of prime importance; but it is all-important to one who does not believe in Christ’s divinity. Upon its accuracy depends his sense of moral security; for he must feel that the Man was of such a kind that He would have held the same view of life as himself andpage 231 accepted his interpretation of Christian ethics.

Upton Sinclair presents us with an interesting historical Jesus – though most interesting as a guide to the personality of Upton Sinclair. His chronicle is constructed in three parts – ‘Youth’, a simple and moving account of what may well have been the outward circumstances of Jesus’s boyhood, as a member of a wandering group of carpenters; ‘Mission’, an interpretation of the Gospel narratives; ‘Spirit’, a somewhat harsh and controversial exposition of the growth of the Christian Church.

The second and third sections are vastly inferior in style and content to the first, for in them Upton Sinclair becomes the first pamphleteer. He sees Jesus as a politically-minded evangelist, and summarily rejects the Gospel of St John – ‘If the Son knew all these things it was easy indeed for Him to die, but why should He die, since the Father had all power, and could have saved Him and all the rest of mankind without going through such an unpleasant procedure?’ Why, indeed, unless love is the hardest of all things for men to grasp and understand? There is some love behind Upton Sinclair’s book; but it is strained through a political sieve.

1955 (109)