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witness. What better fitted to support his position that Jesus was the eternal Logos in the flesh dwelling among men? The fact is that some of the critics who depend much upon this argument, when it suits them, on other occasions perfectly ignore it. When Wellhausen wants to find proof that a certain kind of religious feast was in existence before the days of Amos and Hosea, not finding it, he says, "Amos and Hosea, presupposing as they do a splendid cultus and great sanctuaries, doubtless also knew of a variety of festivals but they had no occasion to mention any of them." This is a strange somersault for a man to take who is always declaring, as Wellhausen is, that when a prophet does not mention a thing he knew nothing of it because it did not exist.

We might discuss some other principles of scientific biblical criticism, but our space is more than exhausted. It will not declare without reason that similar events are different accounts of the same thing and then declare that differences are discrepancies; it will not unduly insist that ignorance of laws, neglect of them or violation of them necessarily implies their non-existence; must not assume without warrant that either a writer or editor is a fool or a forging knave; must not think itself at liberty to manufacture discrepancies where there are none unless the accounts are torn limb from limb; must not overlook the power of personality in history; must not take possibilities for certainties; must not declare that by calling an argument cumulative it can transform zeros into integers or small probabilities into known facts; will not try to browbeat the opposition by epithets or a parade of great names of "all the scholars" instead of weighing arguments; and, finally, will not assume that because a theory is popular today it is surely true. Let us not forget the lesson of the Tübingen school of New Testament criticism.

Gev. H. Trever

ART. V. A PROPHET OF GOOD CHEER

THE poet has long been recognized as prophet. In our age of transition, scientific awakening, intense living, we sadly need the medicine of calm, relaxation and cheer. The incandescent has robbed us of sleep, the telephone of fresh air, steam heat of the open fireplace, and our crowded smoky cities of fresh air, green fields and open sky. Welcome the man who can make us pause, who, like David with deft fingers on golden harp strings soothing the perturbed spirit of Saul, can bring us in again to cheer and faith and knit up for us once more the raveled sleave of care.

James Whitcomb Riley is this David. He is the poet of good cheer. Like the shepherd lad of old he is a native of the soil. He is poet of fireside and nursery, of green fields and running brooks, laughter and shout; free as the air, unbound as the wave; the poet of democracy, of our common people, our universal humanity. "The whole tatterdemalion company," to quote from Mr. Bliss Carman's appreciative essay on Mr. Riley, "of his Raggedy Men, Bee Fesslers, Tradin' Jos, and their comrades, as rollicking and magnetic as Shakespeare's own wonderful populace, he finds right here at home. Nothing human is alien to him. Indeed, there is something truly Elizabethan, something spacious and robust in his humanity quite exceptional to our fashion plate standard." He pictures people "Jes' as they air-in country and in town." He writes with that touch of nature which makes the whole world kin; that stroke of sympathy which is the bond of kindred hearts. He tells us in his own words: "I went among the people: I learned their wants, their sufferings, their joys, and I put them into rhyme." He writes in their own language-the Hoosier dialect. He has done for the Hoosier what Burns did for his mither's tongue. In no small degree we see the justice of the claim to his title the Burns of America. He has the instinct and love for nature and all animate life of his famous predecessor. Burns turns down a daisy with his plow and stops to immortalize in song the little blow of white and gold. He sees a mouse fleeing in fright and stops to sing to it a lay. Riley turns up a hop-toad with his

spade and pauses to sing a song of cheer-"Howdy, Mister HopToad, How-dee-do!" He wades out "Knee deep in June," spies a primrose in his path and loses his heart to it, for he asks,

"Could there be a sweeter thing

Than a primrose blossoming?"

Out of school at fifteen, dropping Blackstone to roam the country with a medicine man, trying his hand at journalism for a while, he at length came to himself as poet and prophet. Like Amos he was unschooled, the prophet of the common people, but like Amos he proved himself worthy of the ranks of the schooled. Yale was keen to perceive his worth and confer upon him her Master of Arts, and the University of Pennsylvania made him a Doctor of Literature. But the people have done more for him than can any dispenser of honors-the people read his work with ever-increasing appreciation and delight. No living American poet has such supremacy in the minds and hearts of the people as James Whitcomb Riley.

Riley's religion is as sweet, simple and unassumed as his art. For this very reason some might not stop to think of him as a religious poet at all, who yet unconsciously drink in the aroma of his humble walking with the Unseen Presence. But "there are some of us," recently said Senator Albert J. Beveridge, "who owe more personally to James Whitcomb Riley for that priceless thing-an unquestioning faith in God and Christ and immortality-than can well be put in words." Meredith Nicholson has also paid loving tribute to the faith of his fellow author in the words, "He has brightened the path of duty and brought the goal of honor near. He is a great teacher in the labor house of the brotherhood of man. He has touched old and neglected virtues with new life and light. Into his songs he has wrought the golden rosary of the beatitudes." Riley's gospel is the good news of cheer in its broad and large significance. It was Robert Louis Stevenson who said, "To be happy is the first step to being pious," and the first article of Riley's creed is, Blessed are the glad. It is an ideal sadly needing to be worked. "Joyfulness has never been the ideal of the Christian world," writes Dr. William L. Watkinson, "nor is it now.

The mass of Godly people feel there is something malefic in humor, that laughter partakes of the nature of sin; and a snore in the congregation is more easily condoned than a smile." Riley looks amused at a long-faced piety, assumes the Hoosier tone and

answers,

"As it's give' me to perceive,

I most certainly believe

When a man's jest glad plum through
God's pleased with him same as you."

So in "A Christmas Carol" he says:

"Then waste no tear, but pray with cheer,
This gladdest day of all the year.

O Brother mine, of birth divine,
Upon this natal day of thine
Bear with our stress of happiness;
Nor count our reverence the less
Because with glee and jubilee

Our hearts go singing up to thee."

Joy is the keynote, then, of Riley's gospel: joy for joy's sake is religious. To the note of joy he tunes his lyre and sings:

"Hi and whoop-hooray, boys,

Sing a song of cheer:
Here's a holiday, boys,

Lasting half a year!

Round the world and half is
Shadow we have tried.

Now we're where the laugh is,

On the sunny side!"

This good cheer of laughter and song, of sympathetic heart and worshipful spirit runs the gamut from God's good world of green fields and running brooks to the One who himself broods over all with loving eye and tender care. Swinging lazily in a hammock, under protection of the afternoon shade, the poet muses:

"I swing enwrapped in some hushed glee,
Smiling at all things drowsily."

His delicate sympathy with the smallest things is seen when he

says:

"The sun bust forth in glee

And when that bluebird sung my heart

Hopped out o' bed with me!"

Riley carries his sympathy on his sleeve, and nowhere has he better portrayed the joyousness and gladness he sees in nature than in

"Knee Deep in June." Here he strikes his truest key and reaches his highest proficiency as poet:

"But when June comes clear my throat

With wild honey! Rinch my hair

In the dew! and hold my coat!

Whoop out loud and throw my hat-
June wants me and I'm to spare!
Spread them shadders anywhere—
I'll git down and waller there,

And obleeged to you at that!"

It is this same sympathetic spirit which makes him the poet laureate of childhood. His heart is the heart of a child. He believes "all children good, ef they're only understood." He approaches the child life on the side of faith, love and joy.

Riley's humor is infectious; it is as fresh as the morning dew. Like Holmes he is never acrid nor bitter. How delicious this touch of humor in "A Summer Day"!

"The sweetest tiredness on earth

Is to git home and flatten out-
So tired you can't lay flat enough,
And sort o' wish that you could spread

Out like molasses on the bed

And jest drip off the aidges in

The dreams that never come again."

Could wit be gentler and yet sharper pointed than in these lines to a captious critic

"The bee sings: I confess it

Sweet as honey, heaven bless it!
Yet he'd be a sweeter singer
Ef he didn't have no stinger."

Or again—to quote the poet's own explanation of his lines "On the night of the marriage of the foregoin' couple, which shall be nameless, these lines was ca'mly dashed off in the album of the happy bride, whiles the shivver-ree was goin' on outside the residence":

"He was warned against the woman

She was warned against the man-
And ef that won't make a weddin',

W'y they's nothin' else that can."

This joy of the Hoosier poet is not a passing spell of laughter from some effervescent emotion, but is welled in the soul-deep which reaches the Source of all joy:

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