Your ShelfYour Projects

Literary Notices

6%

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 25, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 52.

Read the full edition

Literary Notices.

“GLORIA DEO,” a collection of Hymns and Tunes for Public Worship, in all Departments of the Church. 8vo, cloth sides, leather back. Price $1.25. Funk and Wagnalls Company, 30 Lafayette Place, New York.
This work of 767 hymns with an appendix of fifty responsive Scripture readings makes claim to the following excellences: (1) Every page is arranged to aid the singer; every hymn in the book is given on the same page with the music. No hymn is printed separate from the music. Each syllable of each line of each verse is, with very few exceptions, right in connection with the note to which it is to be sung. Surely this is a great help to eye and mind, and will greatly help in securing better time. (2) It aims to contain the good tried hymns, sufficient in number, comprehensive in scope and field, adapted to various church requirements, and of good musical quality to satisfy varied tastes. (3) The church, the Sunday-school, young people's organizations are all remembered in the one book, the better to unite all these interests, and familiarize all with the best hymns of the church. (4) The psalter, or responsive readings, is bound with the hymn book, thus saving the cost of an additional book. “Gloria Deo” is designed to be strictly undenominational. It would be too much to expect to find a book free from that unscriptural dogma, the natural immortality of man, and the fair face of this book is also marred by that error as well as some others. We are still asked to sing that we have “a never-dying soul to save,” but saved from what? But in its arrangement it is the best general hymn book we know. It has the following indexes: Table of Contents, General Index of Topics, Index of First Lines, Index of Tunes, and Index of Subjects.
Five books from the Henry Altemus Company, Philadelphia, all of unique and striking cover design, nicely illustrated, and beautifully printed, designed for young folks and children. The uniform price of each is one dollar. The books are as follows:—
“GALOPOFF, THE TALKING PONY.” By Tudor Jenks. Illustrations by Howard E. Cott. The story of a Russian pony, and his conversation with two girls and others.
“CAPS AND CAPERS.” By Gabrielle E. Jackson. Illustrations by C. M. Relyea. A story of boarding-school girls.
“THE LITTLE LADY—HER BOOK.” By Albert Bigelow Paine. Illustrations by Mabel Humphrey and others. The story of a little girl.
“TOMMY FOSTER’S ADVENTURES.” By Fred A. Ober. Illustrations by Stanley M. Arthurs. A boy’s adventures in the southwestern part of North America, among Mexicans, Indians, etc., giving much information in an interesting way. It is the most worthy book of the lot.
“FOLLY IN FAIRY LAND.” By Carolyn Wells, illustrated by Wallace Morgan.
We frankly say that the books generally are entertaining and that is about all. Largely that is all they are written for. There is little moral worth in them, and the good there is is often hidden or obscured by mere fancy. The children of the age are getting altogether too much of such unwinnowed provender, made up into attractive candy balls.
“THE MYSTERY OF BAPTISM.” By Rev. John Stockton Axtell, Ph. D. 12mo, cloth, 401 pages. Price, $1.20, net. New York and London: Funk & Wagnalls Company.
We have not space in this brief notice to review this book. Suffice to say that nearly 400 pages are used to obscure a glorious Scripture ordinance in meaning and mode. There are truths taught in the book, but even these are obscured in the effort to teach what Bible baptism is not, a sprinkling. The author tells us that the Scriptures do not mention the mode, when it is indicated by the very Word itself. Forty-two pages in Madison C. Peters’s little book, “Why I Became a Baptist,” is worth the ten times that number in Mr. Axtell’s work, in the elucidation of Bible truth.
“THE AFFIRMATIVE INTELLECT.” By Charles Ferguson. 12mo, cloth, 264 pages, 90 cents, net. New York and London: Funk & Wagnalls Company.
A very bright book, full of studied talking periods. It is an optimistic book, projected on wondrously bright, fetching lines, which will end in the fog of oblivion. Mr. Ferguson believes that “the kingdom is at hand.” The primal and spiritual impulse he finds in faith—the faith of the affirmative intellect. Its outward manifestations he sees, in embryo, in three social organisms: the Church, the Political Party, and the University. The positive organization of society, he believes, will consist in a blending of the three: the Church de-dogmatized; the Party humanized by the abolition of the political machine, and the University democratized by an infusion of the modern practical spirit. All of which would be good if true; but according to the Divine Word is not true. The kingdom of Christ will not enter through “the gateway of politics,” or “the affirmative intellect” of American university life. It is a brilliant dream, but only a dream, “as when a hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty; or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite.” It is not the evangel of “the American Spirit” that the world needs, but the everlasting Gospel of Jesus Christ. And yet Mr. Ferguson says some good things, and shatters many idols that he may erect his own, clothed with the garb of the Divine.
The Discourse of the Rev. Geo. Thos. Dowling, D. D., delivered a few weeks ago in Christ Episcopal Church, Los Angeles, Cal., of which he is Rector, and which is published by his Vestry, on “Romanizing Tendencies in the Episcopal Church,” has reached its ninth thousand.
“A NEW AMERICA.” Alumni Oration at the Centennial Celebration of the University of Georgia, June 18, 1901, by Emory Speer, LL. D. A glorification of the past South and the future America linked with England.