p. 11 | LITERARY NOTICES

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 11, 1903

LITERARY NOTICES.

“Raymund Lull, First Missionary to the Moslems.” By Samuel M. Zwemer, D.D., F.R.G.S. Illustrated. Cloth, 12mo, 172 pp. Price, 75 cents, net. Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York and London.

Raymund Lull was, of all great men of the middle ages, the most versatile in character and strenuous in endeavor. His achievements in any single line of activity would of themselves make a considerable volume. He was poet, novelist, scientist, philosopher, theologian, evangelist in Christian lands, and missionary to the heathen. One of his biographers states that the works of Lull numbered four thousand. Of his writings in Latin, Catalonian, and Arabic, it is said that one thousand were extant in the fifteenth century. Less than fifty are extant to-day in printed form; the many unpublished manuscripts are to be found scattered through the libraries of Europe.

This book deals chiefly with Lull’s work as a missionary. It tells of his wonderful conversion in a church which was at that time devising the Inquisition. He was a Christian not because of his church, but in spite of it. Dr. Zwemer, whose book, “Arabia, the Cradle of Islam,” is the standard authority on that country, says in his preface to Lull’s life, “Since the twentieth century is to be pre-eminently a century of missions to Moslems, we should rescue the memory of the pioneer from oblivion. His philosophical speculations and his many books have vanished away, for he knew only in part. But his self-sacrificing love never faileth and its memory can not perish. His biography emphasizes his own motto: He who lives by the Life can not die. It is this part of Lull’s life that has a message for us to-day, and calls us to win back the Mohammedan world to Christ.” The book should be read by those interested in Moslem missions.

“The Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer. A Sociological Study.” By Ferdinand S. Schenck, D.D. New edition, 246 pages. Price $1.00, net. Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York and London.

One is impressed with the loyalty of the writer to the Word of God. He brings into his book no “higher criticism,” no question as to the divine authorship of the wonderful Law. He grasps the spiritual nature of the law, and shows its far-reaching authority on all the motives and actions of the individual man, in public and private life, in personal and corporate capacity. We can not understand why he can not see that no civil power can enforce or attempt to enforce the great spiritual law. The chapter on the Fourth Commandment is everywhere Biblical in that it is applied to the Sabbath, which is ever and always the seventh day. Mr. Schenck gives no intimation that a change had ever taken place. There are but two places in the chapter which would indicate that he meant that the chapter should refer to Sunday; Sunday is named in an illustrative anecdote, and he declares that “it is clearly within the province of State laws to command the observance of the Rest Day,” something that no well-instructed Christian Sabbath-keeper could believe. Apart from this principle of religious legislation, which has crept in a few times, the book may be read with much profit.

“In Happy Far-Away Land.” By Ruth Kimball Gardiner, from Tales Told by Frances Palmer Kimball. Illustrated by Howard Smith. 108 7x9½ pages. Price, $1.50. Zimmerman’s, 156 Fifth Ave., New York.

The aim of these stories, charmingly told and beautifully illustrated, is to place on a seeming basis of truth and reasonableness a number of senseless old nursery rhymes, like “Old King Cole,” “Little Bo-peep,” etc. In a literary and artistic way the book is a success; but we know that stories based on the truth of God’s Word, Bible stories fashioned to the minds of the children, stories in real life, are better foundations for character building. The little ones get enough of semblance and make believe in every-day life to feed their fertile imaginations, without the fostering ideas of non-existent fairies, and folk lore tales. “In Happy Far-Away Land” is, however, a tremendous improvement on Mother Goose.

“Swords and Plowshares.” By Ernest Crosby. 5½x8½ in. Cloth, 126 pp. $1.00, net. Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York.

Mr. Crosby is well known from his book of poems, “Plain Talk in Psalm and Parable,” and the story which followed, “Captain Jinks, Hero,” strikingly setting forth the follies of war and so-called military “glory.” This volume is a collection of poems and word pictures against war and oppression, the overflowing of a soul filled with the hatred of bloodshed. Very strong and well-aimed, bloodless blows this American disciple of Tolstoy wields in the first part of his book, but the latter part has a deal of nonsense in his mixture of Christianity and nature-worship and pantheism.

“Pagan Counterfeits in the Christian Church.” By Charles A. S. Temple, Lebanon Springs, N. Y. Published for the author by the Pacific Press Publishing Company, Oakland, Cal.

This is a most striking arraignment of many customs in modern Christianity. In the ten chapters of which this pamphlet is composed the author presents mighty arguments and strong proof from Scripture and history against the pagan counterfeit in the church, held generally unconsciously. Emblems, festivals, days, are all treated. Every Bible teacher should have it. Every Christian would do well to read it. The price is 25 cents.

“The Gospel of Cause and Effect.” By Thos. H. Nelson, Evangelist. 120 pages. Paper covers. Price, 50 cents. Grace Publishing Company, Indianapolis, Ind.

The object is to set forth the “philosophical principle upon which God detects and rewards righteousness and punishes iniquity, through the desires of the actors; the law by which, in the very nature of things, men are forced to register their true inner lives upon their physical organism, by the penciling of their desires.” The problem of physical formation involves more than one’s desires. Sometimes there is a large inheritance of physical good or evil which an inner mental and spiritual nature constantly belies.