. By this method he is able to omit all mention of the cruder
features of the Gospel story. When Jesus played the devil with the pigs,
for instance, Mary Magdalene was absent, and the incident forms no part
of her narrative. Apparently, too, she was absent, or deaf, or thinking
of something else, when he preached hell-fire and "believe or be
damned." And as this pretty method of Mary-Arnold selection is pursued
throughout, it will easily be seen that the poem is an arbitrary piece
of highly-colored fiction, in which Jesus Christ is made to serve the
author's purposes. In short it is "Christ Up to Date."

Sir Edwin's second piece of strategy is still more transparent. Mary
Magdalene is represented as several ladies rolled into one, and her
house is a perfect museum of relics. She is Mary Magdalene, Mary of
Bethany, the woman who anointed Christ's feet, and the Mary who helped
to embalm him. She keeps the famous alabaster box in her cabinet; she
boards and lodges the young woman that Jesus raised from the dead; and
her brother Lazarus is also on show when required. Lazarus, too, is many
single gentlemen rolled into one. He is the resurrected man, the young
man who was told to sell his property and give the proceeds to the poor,
and the young man who fled stark naked at the arrest of Jesus, leaving
his clothes in the hands of his pursuers. This is a very convenient
plan. It is history made easy, or the art of poetical bam-boozling.

Mary Magdalene has a long talk with Pontius Pilate, who is haunted by
the memory of the pale Galilean. Afterwards she has several days' talk
with an old Indian, who turns out to be the sole survivor of those three
wise men from the East, come to find out all about the King of the
Jews. His two colleagues had died without satisfying their curiosity.
He himself did without news for thirty-six years, and only went back to
Palestine after the King of the Jews had ended his career; the visit, of
course, being timed to suit Sir Edwin Arnold's convenience.

Throughout the poem Mary Magdalene talks. Arnoldese. Here is a typical
passage.

"It may be there shall come in after days--When this Good Spell is
spread--some later scribes, Some far-off Pharisees, will take His
law,--Written with Love's light fingers on the heart, Not stamped
on stone 'mid glare of lightning-fork--Will take, and make its code
incorporate; And from its grace write grim phylacteries To deck the head
of dressed Authority; And fr