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Show "The Man ol Galilee." I A New Enquiry, by Dr. George Wendling. ; ; Olcott Pub. Co., Washington, D. C. $2.00. 1; A most wonderful booh. It is Dr. Wendling's ;j great lecture, elaborated. As a mere literary pro- duotion it ranks with tho highest. In reading one 9j instinctively rooalls tho invocation at tho opening J of "Paradise Lost": j i "And chiefly thou, 0 Spirit! that dost prefer jff Before all temples, the upright heart and pure, ! I Instruct me, for thou knowest; thou from the first f Wast present, and with mighty wings outsproad,- Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast abyss, And mad'st it pregnant; what in me is dark i Illumine! What is low raise and support! jj That to the height of this great argument f$ I may assert eternal Providence, ; And justify the ways of God to man." btj The book reads like a stately poem wherein not "A one lino is commonplace; the writer has caught J the happy secret that words are nothing except U through the thought behind them; that if tho thought is one of majesty, the simplest words are In all-sufficient to give them full expression. To j; road stirs the soul like old wine. While the theme is one of the very deepest interest to poor I mortality the reasoning is terse and cold; not i once does the author permit his imagination to i take wing and paint the pictures of enchantment j which must have continually been forcing them-ft them-ft selves upon him while ho wrote. The underlying m idea is that if a truth is to be proved it must bear the very closest investigation and triumph over i all doubt and question. i) The argument is to investigate and if possible I' prove that the Man of Galilee was in truth what P he claimed to be, and that it would be impossible I I for any men, no matter how gifted, to invent I such an one; that in truth he lived and died, and I that by his words he established his full claims I to divinity. I The book is an analytical study of a life that I once existed on this earth, of one who in mortal I; form for a brief season appeared among men and K taught a new faith; of one whom no one exactly W knows when he was born; who never attended school; but in his words revealed that he knew 1 all things; one whose intellectual powers were matchless and whose simple words no scholar can I successfully criticise "the most majestic mind I that the human race has known." The book in- II sists that what he said proved that "he possessed the immeasurable insight, i e infallible judgment, fchjj all-jppmprehending knowledge and the transcendent tran-scendent , prescience .q a Qod." .- One -proof offered is that no crisis of .his life r"ever aast the slightest shadow across the clear; ness oi'his mind." Theft" is cited the fact that all "tho great writ- ' eis of tho ages have weak and commonplace thoughts olid words in places, but jiot one weak lino in all his words. "He is the only teacher -that has appeared among men who can be sufficiently suf-ficiently comprehended without any conscious effort ef-fort of attention." Again, while Buddha and Confucius struggle up to ' their heights through much labor, and while Mohammed is often weak and most commonplace, com-monplace, there is nothing of labor or weakness in the Galilean. He used no logic, no mathematics, mathe-matics, no metaphysics, but what he said made clear that he knew all things. "Thou oomest to my school only to show Thou knpwest all without the books.'' The element of time never entered Jntp Jiis mental operations. ' In the above wo have cited merely tho intellectual intel-lectual power of the Galilean as portrayed by the" author. His personal and moral qualities are all dilated upon; the completed picture of a being be-ing divine is given by the book. The above is not meant as a review, but is meant only .to call attention to it. ,A11 men and women should if possible read it. In no place Should it be more carefully read than in Utah. When finished the reader will turn back and re-read the words of the naturally cynical groat Carlyle, copied on the opening page: "Of quite perennial, infinite character; ;whose significance will ever demand to bo anew inquired into and anew made matUfest." |
