The Wife's Secret. By Mrs. Ann S. Stephens, Author of 'The Rejected Wife,' 'Fashion and Famine,' 'Tho Old Homestead,' 'Mary Derwent,' etc., etc. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Brothers, 306 Chestnut street.
Mrs. Stephens has considerable ability in the construction of her plots and their gradual development. Her stories are always interesting. The wife's secret is well kept, and the dénoûment admirably managed. The fatal want of moral courage, the suffering caused by mental weakness, the strength of love, the sustaining power of intellect, are portrayed with ability in the book before us. The moral is unexceptionable throughout.
The Veil Partly Lifted, and Jesus Becoming Visible. By W. H. Furness, Author of 'Remarks on the Four Gospels,' 'Jesus and His Biographers,' 'A History of Jesus,' and 'Thoughts on the Life and Character of Jesus of Nazareth.' Boston: Ticknor & Fields. For sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York.
Investigations into the life and character of Christ Jesus are everywhere multiplying around us. Attempts to account for the marvels of His glorious Being on a simply natural plane are made in apparent good faith, and with considerable ability. Mr. Furness approaches his subject with reverence: he has studied the man, Jesus, with his heart. The human phases of His marvellous character are elaborated with skill and patience. He regards Christianity as a 'natural product, a product realized, not against, or aside from, but in the established order of things; that were we competent to pronounce upon the purposes of the Infinite Mind, which we are not, we might say that, so far from His being out of the course of nature, nature culminated in Christ, and that, of all that exists, He is the one being profoundly human, preëminently natural.' In the dove which descended at His baptism, Mr. Furness 'discovers the presence of a common dove divested of its ordinary appearance, and transfigured by a rapt imagination into a sign and messenger from heaven.' He says 'there is no intrinsic impossibility in supposing that Jesus was naturally possessed of an unprecedented power of will, by which the extraordinary effects attributed to him were produced.' 'The bloody sweat is an evident fiction—how could blood have been distinguished in the dark?' He pronounces the story of 'the wise men from the east an evident fable.' Mr. Furness puts no faith in the miraculous conception, but believes in the resurrection. He says: 'Bound by irresistible evidence to believe that Jesus was again alive on that memorable morning, I believe it will hereafter appear that He came to life through the extraordinary force of will with which He was endowed, and by which He healed the sick and raised the dead; or, in other words, that consciousness returned to Him by an action of the mind, in itself no more inscrutable in this case than it is in our daily waking from sleep.'
We deem that there is more difficulty in admitting that Christ rose from the dead by extraordinary force of will, than in admitting the truth of the record that He was the only Son of the Father, with full power over life and death. We thank Mr. Furness for the skilful manner in which he has brought to light the infinite tenderness and divine self-forgetfulness of the Redeemer, but we cannot think he has succeeded in lifting the veil of mystery which surrounds the birth, miracles, crucifixion, resurrection, and atonement of the Redeemer. Meantime let Christians who accept revelation in its integrity, throw no stumbling blocks in the way of earnest and candid inquirers, such as Mr. Furness. Is it not true that, dazzled by the Divine, we have been too little touched by the exquisite, compassionate, faithful, and child-like human character of our Master? Truth seeks the light, and it cannot fall too fully on the perfect; every ray serving but to reveal some new perfection. Let those of fuller faith rejoice in the beauties forever developing in the character of the Holy Victim. Let them patiently pray that those who love Him as an elder brother, may gaze upon His majesty until they see in Him the risen God.
We have found this book interesting and suggestive. It is disgraced by none of the flippant and irreverent sentimentalism which characterizes M. Renan.
Contents: 'Wherein the Teaching of Jesus was New;' 'How the Truth of the History is made to appear;' 'His Knowledge of Human Nature;' 'His Wonder-working Power;' 'His Child-likeness;' 'The Naturalness of His Teaching;' 'The Naturalness of certain Fables found in His History;' 'The Genesis of the Gospels.'
The Campaner Thal, and Other Writings. From the German of Jean Paul Friedrich Richter. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. For sale by D. Appleton & Co., New York.
The "other writings" in the work before us are: Life of Quintus Fixlein, Schmelzle's Journey to Flätz, Analects from Richter, and Miscellaneous Pieces. The Life of Quintus Fixlein and Schmelzle's Journey to Flätz are both translated by that ardent admirer of Richter's genius, Thomas Carlyle; a sufficient guarantee that the spirit and beauty of the original are fully rendered. The Analects are translated by the brilliant writer, Thomas de Quincey.
Richter died while engaged, under recent and almost total blindness, in enlarging and remodelling the Campaner Thal, or Discourses on the Immortality of the Soul. 'The unfinished manuscript was borne upon his coffin to the burial vault; and Klopstock's hymn, Auferstehen wirst du! 'Thou shalt arise, my soul!' can seldom have been sung with more appropriate application than over the grave of Jean Paul.'