BOOK NOTICES

Pacific Press Publishing Association

The Best of the World's Classics. Editor-in-Chief, Henry Cabot Lodge, who also writes the introduction. Ten volumes. Price, cloth, $7.50; full Levant, $20.00. Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York.

Mr. Lodge is well known as the able, scholarly gentleman who has for many years represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate. He is also the author and editor of several valuable works. In his compilation of the world's best classics he has been assisted by Francis W. Halsey, the well-known editor, author, and lecturer. These volumes contain over 500 selections of what is considered the best of more that 200 of the world's greatest authors. The object is to give examples from all periods and languages of Western civilization of what is best in their prose literature. Poetry is excluded.

The work is chronologically arranged by countries, beginning with Greece, and so proceeding with Rome, Great Britain, Continental Europe, and America. Biographical sketches are given of each author.

Four rules have guided the editors in their selections: (1) examples of great writings which have influenced the world; (2) examples from writers historically important; (3) examples representative of various literatures and periods; (4) examples from the masters of English in Great Britain and America, showing what can be done in the matter of thought expression by our splendid Anglo-Saxon. One may not always find his favorite author of some particular period; it would be impossible in a work of this kind to give all that all would desire. But the editors have covered a remarkable field, and have done great service to the millions who would like to know somewhat of the literature of the world. Then, too, the volumes are convenient pocket size, easily carried, and permit the reader to obtain a general knowledge of the world's literature in what might otherwise be and often are idle moments. The work could well find a place in the literary curriculum of our schools as well as in private and public libraries.

"The Trial of Christ.—In Seven Stages." A Poem. By Brayshaw Kaye. Cloth, price, $1.00, net. Sherman, French and Co., Boston, Mass.

It is to be expected in a book of this kind that the author must to a large extent draw on his imagination, as well as the Scripture; and so Mr. Kaye has done, and in some of these conceptions he may be criticized for stepping outside of man's conception of truth, or overstraining the Bible thought itself; but all will agree who read the poem—written in blank verse—that we are given a strong, sympathetic, beautiful picture of the unjust trial and awful cruelty which our Lord suffered for the sins of men. The seven stages covered by the poem are: first, the Betrayal, Arrest, and Hearing before Annas. Judas in his sorrow is represented as telling us this part of the story. The second stage, Before Caiaphas; the third, Before the Sanhedrin; the fourth, Before Pilate; the fifth, Before Herod; the sixth, Before Pilate Again; the seventh, The Crucifixion. To quote at random from the scene of Jesus' arrest:

"But Christ turning to Peter calmly saith: 'Put up again thy sword into its place, For all that take the sword shall thereby perish.' Now doth He touch the ear of him so smitten, Saying, 'Suffer thou thus far,' and made him whole. Thus doth He good still to His enemies."

Again, as brought before Herod:

"Unto the court of Herod Antipas, Many of His accusers, small and great, Following like hungry hounds to bay Him down With the wild howls of the untired deriding. Yet He spake not, but step by step bore up The heavy burden of His mortal frame, Staggering along in wearied consciousness, His lips amove at times as tho in prayer For strength, and for His ruthless enemies."

Every devout soul will read it again and again with sad pleasure and great profit.

"The Seven Essentials to Life and Health." By George D'Estin Ballon, Opt. D. Price $1.50. Modern Hygiene Publishing Co., Los Angeles, Cal.

This book, neatly bound and well printed, is the simplification of health principles, and is designed to be a practical and primary treatise on hygiene, told not in technical medical terms, but in ordinary English that the common layman can understand. The author has been for thirty years a student of hygiene, and lecturer on health and allied topics, and he has here set forth what he believes to be simple and practical principles and methods of retaining health or regaining it if lost. The seven essentials upon which the book is builded are, "sunlight, air, water, food, clothing, exercise, and rest." These seven things the author believes "include everything necessary to the regaining of one's health, except miracles."

"Artificialism, man's disposition to invent," he tells us, "has quite fully hidden from our eyes the great truth that they constitute the complete environment of life and health." The book consists of 15 chapters and an appendix, in which are considered, The Laws of Life; Drugs, Stimulants, Narcotics, and Patent Medicines; Gifts of Healing and Miracles; Disease and Its Causes; Mental Causes and Mental Remedies; Physical Remedies for Disease; Treatment of Diseases; Habits; Life and Labor; Transformations; Reforms and Extremes. It will help the reader to see the hollowness and shallowness of modern "mind" fads. There is a copious index which enhances the usefulness of the book. Address the publishing company, or the author, at Los Angeles.

"Modern Light on Immortality." By Henry Frank. Cloth, 8vo, $1.85; by mail, $2.00. Sherman, French & Co., 6 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.

This work is declared to be an original excursion into historical research and scientific discovery pointing to a new solution of the problem of immortality. The author is not unknown. "The Kingdom of Love" and "The Mastery of Mind" are among the books of his pen. He declares that before he began this research he had freed himself from all traditional predilections. One is made to query not the honesty of the averment, but its fact. Yet in all his research the author "does not profess to have advanced an argument which finally proves the immortality of the human soul." Nor does he stand on the other side of the question.

The first half of the book carries with it a negative result; or in other words it presents nothing of value in favor of the soul's immortality, and the author himself feels this and frankly says so. Neither did he find it in his study of the Bible, in which he is not a believer. Yet it is true that the Bible does not teach the immortality of the soul; it does, however, teach the immortality of those who have been transformed in character through Christ; that immortality coming through the second coming of Christ and the resurrection. His next attempt is to learn what modern science and research reveal. But he is forced to admit, when he reaches his last chapter, that with all the light he can draw from the history of the doctrine and the hope of man through the ages, and from modern science and psychic research, the argument is still incomplete and not wholly convincing. We learn that the soul aspires after immortality, hungers for existence, shrinks from death, but the question is still left unsolved, and in the darkness of uncertainty; and every candid human research will result in the same. We wish that the author could have heartily pointed us to the only uncovering of the dark, dismal future, in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In that we have life and immortality brought to light; but it comes not through the inherent immortality of man, but through the gift of God by Christ Jesus.

"Our Darlings' A B C Book." By Isabel C. Byrum. Gospel Trumpet Company, Anderson, Ind.

The aim is to make a little book of A B C's in color in which the letters are in bright red and very large, with rhymes of Bible facts on the one page of the opening, while on the other side is a little story concerning the person or thing brought out in the rhyme. For instance, "B" stands for bears, and on the other side is the story of Elisha and the children. "C" is for Cain, and on the other side is the story of how Cain slew his brother. Illustrations accompany these pictures. It seems to us it would have been worth more if the small form of the letters had been in colors as well as the capital letters.

There is somewhat of the usual exaggeration in the telling of the Bible stories. For instance, David the strong young man who slew the giant Goliath, is represented as "a little boy" who saw a giant trying to scare God's people. But on the whole it will be an interesting, helpful book to the children; one that the little ones will prize for its bright coloring as well as its Bible stories.