Book Reviews [pp. 223-224]

Book Reviews.
"I am Sorrow, and must wander forever," said
the little one sadly. "Who are you?"
"I am Labor. Do you not see how healthy I am
and what strong arms I have? " and she took Sorrow in her arms like a little child, and ran across the
field laughing with glee.
A soft blush crept over Sorrow's pale face as she
said with a smile, "Come with me! I can never
rest and yet I am often so tired."
"I cannot, dear sister, for I must sleep at night
that I may work when day comas again. I am in
all places,- everywhere and nowhere,- and must
laugh and be happy. If I see your eyes my laugh
will die. But whenever you call me, I will come
and stay where you part, to mike the faces of the
sad bright again."
Sorrow wandered on in the sunny morning and
through the wide world. Patience and Labor have
kept their promise and become her true comrades.
Often they gather at evening in the ivy-covered house
by the lake and read or write in the Book of Life.
Robert Dar;-oc/l.
BOOK REVIEWS.
William and Lucy Smith.
PERHAPS the most arresting and monopolizing
book of the year is George S. Merriam's Story of
William and Lucy Soizith. The editing of the copious
extracts from the husband's books and from the wife's
memoirs and letters is done with obvious skill, and
the extracts themselves are not dulled by anything
less than just appreciation and worthy comment
upon these exalted lives.
His work will be grateful to every one who read
"Thorndale" thirty years ago, and has often recurred
to that notable book. In it William Smith, an unknown name, cast sincere illumination upon the three
great problems,- God, Fate, Immortality. It has
taken many feet from dead paths and turned them to
the ways of life. It is a singularly natural, gracious,
inspiring book. It presented the argument from
every side, and made choice inevitable from the mere
contrast. It is the fruit of reasonable hope rather
than of belief, and suggested a vista.
Years afterwards, William Smith wrote "Gravenhurst," and carried on the high thought beyond
"Thorndale." In the Progress of Humanity he
found the key to the old problems, and without recasting his old conclusions, simply opened them more
widely. These two books, rather than his earlier
works or his lifelong task as a reviewer in Blackwood
and the Quarterlies, give William Smith a permanent
place in literature.
In this Story we see him in other relations. All his
life shy, introspective, free from common thoughts,
he knew no home or friend out of his own sex until
he met a woman far advanced in middle life who had
never desired earler marriage. They married at the
ripe ages of fifty-three and forty-three, and the love
story of the next eleven years until he died is an in
1The Story of William and Lucy Smith. Edited by
George S. Merriam. Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.: Boston:
E889. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson &
Co.
struction to those who think that none except the
young know how to love. So far as we can see, the
sympathetic touch was perfect.
The chapters of those eleven years are keenly delightful. It is more than worth while to know that
people have so lived and can so live. Then follows
an equal period of mourning, in which the widowed
mate, sick with grief, strong in hope, pours out her
words about him, his thoughts, his ways, his ever
presence in absence. Of the few who can omit much
of the extracts on the grave subjects of" Thorndale"
and "Gravenhurst," not one will omit a line of the
tender mourning of Lucy Smith.
Two Unitarian Books.
Two books of sermons by Unitarian divines are at
hand. Jesus BrouMht Back2 is an effort to portray
Jesus from the standpoint of "reverent ration alism."
The believer, however, whose mind is "vitiated by
the bias of traditional theology," will find this a new
sort of reverence. Jesus is not the Messiah, not
The Christ, not the Logos, not the Lamb of God.
He was not born at Bethlehem, was heralded by no
star in the East, never went to Egypt, performed no
miracles. More than this, he was a very ignorant
man, of limited intellectual power, and still more, he
was not morally perfect, being given to bursts of unreasonable anger, and being continually unjust to the
Pharisees and others.
This will seem a painful process of destructive
criticism to "orthodox" people, but not many such
will read farther than Mr. Crooker's preface, if they
happen to take up so heretical a book. To another
class it may prove helpful,-those who have unwillingly given up belief in the Bible and in Jesus because they find the idea of miracle or the supernatural untenable. These will be comforted to find how
2 Jesus Brought Back. By Joseph Henry Crooker.
Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co. i889.
1889.]
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