New Jesus

"Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" So said Jesus Christ to his mother, Mary. Bruce Barton, famed advertising agent, President of the advertising firm of Barton, Durstine & Osborn, puts business in italics. This is the contribution to theology made in a recent book* of his, in which Agent Barton genuflects before a Saviour who was, in his opinion, the Founder of Modern Business. Agent Barton has small regard for the painters who have shown Christ as "a frail man, undermuscled, with a soft face--a woman's face, covered by a beard --and a benign but baffled look. ..." It was no such individual who whipped into efficiency "a haphazard collection of fishermen and small-town businessmen and one tax collector. . . . " 'Walk !' Do you suppose for one minute that a weakling, uttering that syllable, would have produced any result? If the Jesus who looked down on that pitiful wreck had been the Jesus of the painters, the sick man would have dropped back with a scornful sneer and motioned his friends to carry him out." Jesus was an outdoor man ". . .a tall broad-shouldered man towers above the crowd . . . listen, hear his laugh!" Jesus was a deft advertiser. He did not bulletin such clumsy blurbs as JESUS OF NAZARETH WILL

DENOUNCE THE SCRIBES AND PHARISEES

IN THE

CENTRAL SYNAGOGUE

TONIGHT AT EIGHT O'CLOCK

SPECIAL MUSIC

He made his deeds advertise him. His message, uttered through Agent Barton's lips, is: "This is my Father's business and He needs your help."

Rapid in style as a circus poster, with about the same literary value; sound in doctrine because it is concerned with the concrete thing, the life of Christ, instead of the cloudy figuration, Christianity; unsound because it is totally uncritical, this book is an earnest attempt by Mr. Barton to make Christ in his own image.

*THE MAN NOBODY KNOWS--Bruce Barton --Bobbs-Merrill ($2.50).