Jaunty Sermons

THE BIG FISHERMAN (581 pp.)--Lloyd C. Douglas--Houghton Mifflin ($3.75).

If the novels of Lloyd Douglas were not generally based on religious themes, they would make first-rate adventure stories. They are spare, dry, and put together with homely craftsmanship; at their best they have something of the appeal of primitive painting. The Big Fisherman, the eleventh, has all the characteristics of its predecessors that have made Dr. Douglas one of the most popular of living novelists. The story begins in the reign of Herod, with the marriage of his son Antipas to an Arabian princess, Arnon. Herod, fearing that the Romans are going to overrun his country, has arranged the marriage with the King of Arabia, to seal a treaty uniting these ancient enemies. The marriage works out badly. Town life and the elaborate ceremonials of the court distress the Arab girl brought up in freedom on the desert; and when Antipas, bored, takes her to Rome, she is disgusted by his dissipations. Their daughter Fara, however, is beautiful, a favorite of both Arabs and Jews. When Antipas divorces his wife and sends wife & child back to the desert, the Arabs plan revenge. They raid Jerusalem, and ride into Herod's palace, only to find that Herod is already dead. The next attempt is Fara's--at eleven she learns of her mother's tragedy, and at 16 disguises herself as a boy, and sets out to kill Antipas, her father.

Decline & Fall. Dr. Douglas' ancient times have none of the awesome stage effects of Ben-Hur or Quo Vadis, with their baths, slaves, violence and mystery. They are practical and humdrum; the decline of Rome does not mean orgies in the palaces, but higher taxes. The nomadic simplicity of desert life is so contrasted with the hypocrisy of the cities that Dr. Douglas sometimes seems to be loading the dice in favor of the outdoors and in favor of the Arabs as against the Jews. There is another side of Jewish life, however, which Fara discovers when she is befriended by Simon, known as the Big Fisherman, a simple, kindly man who becomes a follower of the religious teachings of a Carpenter.

Christ appears in the novel as a worker of miracles, a preacher whom multitudes follow without quite knowing why. Dr. Douglas' characters, aside from Peter, are usually plain people who have heard something of the story, and who are interested, hopeful, puzzled or skeptical in their response to the message that the kingdom of God is within them.

Disquieting Miracles. The writing about Christ is reverent, but matter-of-fact. And the style is so flat that Dr. Douglas can speak of biblical characters being "in the driver's seat." Dr. Douglas tells a good story, but he has none of the magic-lantern slide color of a Feuchtwanger or the ingenious imagination of a Robert Graves. The miracles he describes sparingly, without dramatizing and without comment; they are made to seem unsettling and disturbing events. It is not the joy of His love that the book stresses, but the disquiet and the puzzlement that word of His teachings brought to people who heard them from afar.

Dr. Douglas' books always combine inspirational moralizing and vigorous action. This gives them the strange, busy air of jaunty sermons. The Big Fisherman is no exception. The ordinariness that makes the book attractive when it deals with the minor characters becomes something of a handicap when it is called upon to picture the disciples together, or the eternal wonder of the Christ story.

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