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A RATIONALIST REVIEW.
[ESTABLISHED 1885.]
No. 15. (New Series.)
SE PTEM BER 1, 1897.
Monthly; T wopence.
1Rcw publications.
flDr. Iball Cainc’s “ Christian.”
T here appears to be uncertainty as to when the “ I ife ” 0f Professor Huxley, which is being written by his son Mr Leonard Huxley, will be ready for publication. The work' comprising as it does the examination o f an enormous correspondence, is a more laborious undertaking than was originally anticipated. The volume, or volumes, may be published next Spring; but it is more probable that it, or they, will not see the light till the Autumn.
Mr. Joseph McCabe’s new volume on Modern Rationalism is nearly through the press, and it may be expected towards the end o f the present month. The book is crammed full o f facts, and, being written in a popular and unaggressive style, it should be appreciatively read by a larger constituency than generally peruses Rationalist publications.
Mr. Grant A llen has wisely decided to alter the title o f his forthcoming volume from The Evolution o f God to The E v o lu t io n o f the Idea o f God. It should be an important work, seeing that the author is credited with having been engaged on it, off and on, for over twenty-five years.
M r. M. C. O ’B yrne, who will be better remembered by his pen-names of “ Pioneer” and “ Thalassoplektos ” has published, on the other side of the Atlantic, a volume o f verse under the title of Song o f the Ages, and Other Poems. There is no doubt of the exceptional ability o f the author, and it is not altogether surprising that the first edition o f the poems has been nearly exhausted within a month o f publication. Not many poets, great or minor can claim that distinction for their Parnassian soarings but it must be recollected that our Transatlantic brethren are reputedly record-breakers.
M r. R ichard le Gali.ienne has prepared for publication a work with the remarkable title, I f I were God. It will be issued early in the forthcoming publishing season.
Messrs. Williams & Norgate have issued a fourth edition o f Mr. F. Howard Collins’s Epitom e o f the Synthetic Philo sop hy o f Herbert Spencer.
Messrs. H enry & Co. have published a little work on A M odern's Religion, written by “ Ignotus.”
M r. L. C ranmer-Byng, who, as “ Paganus,” has achieved distinction in heterodox circles, has completed his new volume o f poems, and it will be immediately issued under the title o f Voices in the Tw ilig ht.
Messrs. W. Blackwood & Sons are now issuing a sixpenny edition o f George Eliot’s Scenes o f C le rica l L ife .
MR. C . C ohen, the author of A n Outlin e o f Evolutionary E th ic s , has written a very temperate and convincing pamphlet on W hat is the Use o f P rayer ?
“ T he Agnostic Annual” for the coming year is in an advanced state o f preparation. Among the principal contents will be papers by Professor Goldwin Smith, Mr Leslie Stephen, and Mr. Edwin Clodd. Miss Constance E. Plumptre has written at considerable length on “ The Progress of Liberty of Thought during the Queen’s Reign.”
The Christian: A Story, liy I Ia i .i. C a i n e . (Wm. Heinemann.)
452 pp.; 6s. I n tragic fiction Mr. Hall Caine’s masterly faculty is undeniable. While his creations are not always convincing, he at least compels from his audience a tribute of strained and almost breathless interest. He revels in passionate drama and noble protagonists. We praise the romance behind the prose footlights— are grateful for the spell of fascination ; yet return to the world in ethical discontent.
We have read The Christian twice— some chapters thrice. The first reading was resigned to literary appreciation. The second was in critical quest of a moral. It does not, of course, follow, because Mr. Caine is “ a good Churchman,” and was sublimely invited to the dizzy elevation of churchwardenship at Peel, that he is an orthodox Churchman. But it does follow that, if The Christian, in addition to attacking the Church of England, is a modern and human protest against the subjection of modernity and humanity to the visions and impossible ideals of Jesus, one or other motive should be explicitly avowed.
We do not.accuse Mr. Caine of, or even suggest, direct or unconscious plagairism against his fictional notability— which is not fictional immortality. But we do impartially, yet emphatically, affirm that some of the tenderest and some of the more sensational pages of The Christian are, to us, as remodelled pages from four or five books familiar to us. Some three years since we commented elsewhere on the singular similarity in conception between a certain incident in one of Mr. Caine’s most successful books and the leading dramatic incident in Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter. And, however accidental the circumstance, we are unable to resist the conclusion that The Christian has more than an association of ideas with (1) 2 'he Hunchback o f Notre Dame, (2) The Scarlet Letter, (3) Robert Elsm ere, and (4) Joshua Davidson. Hereon it is not our province in these columns to dwell, but we record our opinion for what it is worth.
Nor have we space to outline the romantic movement of the plot. We reserve our principal attention for three figures on the stage of sensation.
John Storm probably inherited from his dead mother a sense of smothered passion she had for an ideal to which she was not wedded. As a boy he “ would cry at a beautiful view in nature, at a tale of heroism, or at any sentimental ditty....... Seeing a bird’s nest that had been robbed of its eggs, he burst into tears; but when he came upon the bleeding, broken shells in the path, the tears turned to fierce wrath and mad rage, and he snatched up a gun out of his father’s room, and went out to take the life of the offender.”
Glory Quayle was an orphan— ten years younger than John— a pretty little witch as a child, and “ bravely indifferent to considerations of truth or falsehood, fear or favour, reward or punishment.’’ Her clerical grandfather used to say of h e r : “ I ’m really afraid the child has no moral conscience ; she doesn’t seem to know right from wrong.” She had a genius for “ make-believe” mimicry and falling in love.
Francis Horatio Nelson Drake was the same age as G lo ry ; fell in with her as a boy on a holiday visit to the Isle of Man ; fired her young imagination with accounts of the wonderful world beyond the heather and the ships in the bay.
John Storm travelled ; returned to the island a Christian Socialist; resolved to live among the poor; obtained a curacy in London through the influence of his uncle, the Prime Minister. This included hospital duty— what more
