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LITERARY NOTICES

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 30, 1903

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 29, No. 52.

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LITERARY NOTICES.

“The Standard Dictionary and Condensed Cyclopedia with Atlas of the World,” Latest Edition. (Sold only by Subscription.) Funk & Wagnalls, 30 Lafayette Street, New York; 44 Fleet Street, London.
We noticed this prodigious and magnificent work when it was first projected and when it was first published. It met all the promises of its publishers, and more, when it first appeared. We then said it was the best all-round dictionary of the English language, and after years of using and comparing with the four others of America’s best we have no reason to change our opinion. We are fully persuaded that those who do not like it are those who will not take the time to become acquainted with it. It makes use of new principles in lexicography, which have demanded new methods of treatment, and it is worth while to learn the principles and get acquainted with the methods and plans; they are not at all difficult.
The first edition contains over 2,300 pages, 5,000 illustrations made expressly for this work; and 304,000 vocabulary terms, nearly 80,000 more than in any other dictionary of the language. Nearly 250 editors and over 500 readers for quotations were engaged upon this great work. The Appendix contained a Language Key, Principles and Explanations of the Scientific Alphabet (by the use of which pronunciation is more exactly indicated than by the old diacritical marks). A list of Proper Names in Bibliography, Bibliology, Biography, Fiction, Geography, History, and Mythology, etc., etc., Glossary of Foreign Words and Phrases in English Literature, Disputed Spellings and Pronunciations, etc., etc., etc.
The new edition is a thorough revision of the old, a new list of 17,000 new vocabulary terms and additional meanings; a Pronouncing Vocabulary of Bible Proper Names, according to the best authorities; Formation of the Plural of Nouns, with rules and an exhaustive list over which questions might arise. It contains 37 full page Plates and Illustrations, some of them of marvelous beauty. Eight of these are portraits of many of the great educators of the world. One plate is a beautiful lithograph in natural colors, of 93 butterflies and moths; two others of the uniforms in color of the armies of Europe and of the Army of the United States respectively; one of typical woods; another gems and precious stones; and many others equally beautiful and valuable.
The Atlas of the World contains 88 up-to-date full-page maps with a Standard Cyclopedia of closely-packed information of the world.
The above is the subscription edition, substantially and splendidly bound in red Russia leather, with Denison’s patent index. It is a complete library in itself.
“The Living Temple.” By J. H. Kellogg. 568 pages, 21 chapters, over 50 illustrations. Good Health Publishing Company, Battle Creek, Mich.
The author tells us in his preface that it is his object “to present in a simple but comprehensive way, those facts which are of great interest and importance in relation to the structure, the functions, and the proper care and training of the body;” and that “it has been no part of the author’s purpose to write a theological treatise, but simply to study man from a physiological standpoint; hence in the use of the word ‘temple’ as it appears upon the title-page and in numerous places in the work, the physiological, or literal, sense is to be understood.”
We heartily wish the author had held to his purpose. The book, to our mind, would have been an invaluable treatise; for very few indeed are better qualified than he to properly present the subject from that standpoint. But in less than two pages even in the preface—which seems after all a postprandial defense of the literary menu which follows—the author is pleading his cause wholly from a religious view-point.
The chief objection which presents itself to our mind—a view we do not wish to believe is held by the author—is the essentially pantheistic view that is again and again thrust in. Whether consciously so to the author or not it is decidedly un-Biblical in its teaching and trend. We are told “that man [in general] . . . is a son of God, the image and representative of his Creator,” and that the “divine Spirit” is “within him,” “maintains him,” “shares his griefs and sorrows and all his earthly experiences,” etc. And while this is true of the man connected with God by faith in Christ Jesus, it is not true of the man who knows not God or His Gospel. Much stress is laid on “the brotherhood of being,” “the one common life;” “that animal and vegetable are not merely kindred lives, but are really one and the same;” but we are not told that another equally important truth is that the element of law as well as life enters into every individual in every scale of being from distinctive mineral to man; and that man, the primal prince of earth, transgressing the law of his own life, perverted every law of being in every plane of existence below himself, from mammal to mineral; and that in consequence the life from the great Fountain of Life enters every individual in every scale of being through the channel of perverted law and is therefore perverted life. Perverted law issues in destruction. Perverted life issues in death. Sin breaks all normal connection with God’s life, and only the renunciation of sin and the yielding of God’s highest law can truly bring God’s life into the soul. Therefore, the apostle Paul truly says of the wicked that they are “separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world,” “alienated from the life of God.” Eph. 2:12; 4:18. The condition and character of the individual’s life is dependent on the degree of harmony or inharmony of the law of his being with the law of God’s life, the great and only moral law of the universe. It is abhorrent to us to say that the Spirit of God shares the experiences of the drunkard and rake. The “vain life” of the sinner God prolongs in mercy that the sinner may yield to God and by faith “lay hold on eternal life.” But he who does not so yield we are expressly told, “shall not see life;” that is, God’s life, eternal life. If every man now have that life, if earth’s sentient and insentient beings now possess it, then Christ died in vain, and faith is nothing more than a recognition of the fact that we have in ourselves what cost Heaven so much to bring to us!
Divine intelligence and guidance is argued from the marvelous displays of animal “intelligence,” as in “the skill of the bee,” and the “intelligence” of plants. But if it is God in the bee that enables it to construct with such precision its cell, it would seem that the same “intelligence” would know when a cell was full or empty of honey, and would not be content in making just so many deposits of honey, and then capping the cell, when the cell was still empty, as has been demonstrated. It would also seem that the same “intelligence” would enable the bee to liberate itself from a tube held against a light window with the other end open toward the dark, instead of beating out its life against the glass. Yet the common house-fly can get out all right. It would seem that the carnivorous-eating plants, if guided by God, would not seize upon cheese as readily as they do flesh, although it is fatal to them.
In all these things they are following their originally God-implanted instincts, more or less perverted by sin, affected by environment, more or less taught by experience, and sometimes guided by God’s angels.
But to say that God is in insect and tree and flower is to justify all of Egypt’s idolatry.
God is a personal God, a heavenly Father, having central throne and habitation, not because such a conception is essential to man’s religion, but to the very unity of the universe. But God forbid that we should even seek to measure Him or describe His glorious person dwelling in unapproachable light, or on the other hand to belittle Him or change His glory into birds or beasts or insects or vegetation.
The physiological and hygienic teaching of the book is excellent, but its theological instruction is unscriptural and pantheistic. Our hope is that the author does not believe it.
“More Money for Public Schools.” By Charles W. Eliot. Price, net, $1.00. Doubleday, Page & Co. New York.
This little volume is composed of addresses by President Eliot, of Harvard University, and at the time these addresses were delivered (1902), of the American Educational Association. In them, in a comprehensive way, the author sums up the results of public education, its benefits and its shortcomings, its defects and its needs. He clearly shows what the public schools have not done. He hopes more from public education morally than they will ever meet in fruition. Morality must be the work of religion. But the addresses are instructive, and the facts presented are just what every educator ought to know.
“My Old Maid’s Corner.” By Lillie Hamilton French, author of “Homes and Their Decorations,” etc. 16 mo., 227 pages, with headbands by Granville Smith, printed in color. Price $1.00 net. Postage 6 cents. The Century Co., New York.
A bright little book, and the “corner” we are told actually exists in the midst of busy, bustling New York. The “old maid” found the secret of happiness when she learned that a corner was to look out of and not into, and that while old maids could not do much for the world (the author’s own thought), “we can keep an atmosphere about us in which the best of young hearts can grow.” A few stories down was the noisy, bustling street filled with its noisy traffic, but to the dweller in that corner, that which received the shine of the sun by day and of the stars by night, “the sky in its beauty,” seemed “nearer than the street.” It is a cheery, human, helpful little book.
“Manhood’s Morning. A Book to Young Men between Fourteen and Twenty-eight Years of Age.” By Joseph Alfred Conwell. 308 pages. $1.00 net. New Revised Edition. The Vir Publishing Co., Philadelphia, Pa.; London, England; Toronto, Canada.
It is a book designed to point out the dangers which beset young men, and to help them to form right characters. It contains many striking facts and old truths in new settings.
“The Best American Orations of To-day.” Compiled by Harriet Blackstone. 292 pages. $1.25. Hinds & Noble, New York.
The leading thought of the book is in its title. The men mostly quoted are those still in the field of action, and most of the selections are made by the authors themselves. It presents selections from over threescore and ten men on as many different subjects, some of which are of vast importance.
“Just for To-day” is another song which has come to our table. Rather, it is Canon Wilberforce’s poem set to new music by Asa Smith and M. T. Garland. It is simple and sweet. Copies may be obtained for 20 cents a dozen, post-paid of Asa Smith, 12th and Castro Streets, Oakland, Cal.