DR. GEORGE MAC DONALD'S THEOLOGICAL STORY.* As a book full

of the deepest and truest religious feeling, divested of every atom of dogma or sect prejudice, Paul Faber, Surgeon, cannot be too highly praised. It is an appeal, not so much to the reason, as to the heart and soul of man, in favour of the existence in us and around us of a sleepless love, working in a thousand different ways, but always in those of infinite wisdom and perfect love. It is addressed both to the pure theist and to the atheist, but it is not so much an argu- ment for Christianity as for the fatherhood of God. We suppose that the book has taken the form of a novel, in order that it may reach those who would never open a professedly religious work ; but we doubt much whether such readers will not lay it down immediately—the more hastily that they will feel that an attempt is being made to cajole them into serious reading ; while the anxious inquirer, eager to be persuaded out of his doubts and scepticism, will hardly dream of finding help in a novel, though he might well have hoped for it in a work professedly on the sub- ject, by so attractive a writer and so well-known a moralist as Dr. Mac Donald. For the same reason, we object to all polemical fictions ; they disgust, or at least disappoint, the seeker for pure * Paul Faber, Surgeon. By George Mac Donald, LL.D. 3 vols. London: Hurst and Blackett.

recreation, and seldom meet the eyes of those interested in the subject discussed. Moreover, how can individuality of character be illustrated, where conversation or essay on the same topic monopolises almost every page and chapter ? Dr. Mac Donald does this, as well as it can be done under such conditions ; but there is nothing in this book resembling the vivid and varied originality of the characters which stand out so distinctly in his previous stories, nor is there anything like the same pic- turesqueness in his scene-painting, usually so impressive. Except the deep religiousness which pervades all his books, we find little in common with his earlier novels, unless it be a certain extravagance of incident which is rather a characteristic of Dr. Mac Donald's, and is not much to our taste. The almost restora- tion to life, twice, of a lovely patient, by the injection into her veins of the surgeon's own vigorous life-current, is an illustration of what we mean ; and the incident is not only very disagreeable, but not original,—Charles Reade introduces a similar one, if we re- member rightly, in Griffith Gaunt. Where every character is either an earnest Christian desirous of converting an unbeliever, or an unbeliever either anxious to be convinced or to convince, we cannot have much variety of any sort ; and least of all, of conversation, which is the staple of the book. Indeed, the dramatis personx are impartially divided into three earnest believers and three unbelievers ; and besides these, there are only three remaining characters of any significance, who are all nominal Christians, and whose eyes are opened to the very conventional measure of their so-called religion, so that they, too, join the ranks of sincere worshippers.

The book is not without dramatic interest, but this is small in quantity, though powerful and telling; and the main force of Dr. Mac Donald's genius is spent on dialogue, re- flection, and sermon, in which the thinker or speaker is unmis- takably the author, whether urging his own high and noble views, or stating forcibly those of the unbeliever, with whose line of argument and condition of mind he has made himself won- derfully familiar. The story, such as it is, is painful, and is meant to teach the lesson that without the conscious presence of God there is no real life, and without a belief in him, no meaning in life. Dr. Mac Donald marshals social duties and social ar- rangements before the tribunal of true and undefiled religion, and judges them there. The value of the clerical profession, the effi- cacy of prayer, sects, caste, commerce, marriage, the _condition of women, vivisection and the rights of animals, the search for wealth, the fear of poverty, suicide, death, science, truth, honour, self-pity, and numberless other subjects, questions and character- istics of our times, claim far more than a passing commentary—are indeed made to illustrate in a most powerful manner his own high and earnest views of the absolutely identical interests of every one of God's creatures, as essential to the oneness and perfection of God, from whom they came, of whom they are, and to whom they go ; to be loved by whom is inevitable, and to love whom is the only true life. Taken as a book of very pure and broad reli- gion, and a: an argument which the honest man of science would find it very difficult to answer, Paul Faber would be entirely delight- ful, were it not for occasional transcendental passages, difficult to understand, and affectations of expression, and new and strange words, or unexplained scientific ones, of which Dr. Mac Donald is too fond. We have, for instance, " feverously," " Katadyomene," "shards," "what-all," " agaric," "menie," " nephelocockygia," " teredo," " testudo-shelter," "actinic impact," &a. There is, too, a sentimental vein cropping up occasionally, or an overdone childishness of simplicity which affects us like sentimentality, as, for instance, in Julia's appeal to Jesus for help, on first recover- ing consciousness after her illness. But we will not quote it, for to do so would be to give an altogether wrong impres- sion of a book which abounds in forcible passages,—pas- sages marked by the ring of only true and manly feeling, and which do not in the least suggest an over-wrought or sensational condition of mind. Some of the little poems in the book, of which there are several, are full of beauty and devotion, especi- ally the one called "Consider the Ravens," supposed to be found in an old book, which, in very quaint and beautiful, though in- tentionally rather halting verse, teaches the lesson of unhesi- tating, uncalculating faith. We cannot mutilate it, and need not apologise for its length :—

"CONSIDER THE RAVENS. Lord, according to thy words, I have considered thy birds ; And I find their life good, And better the better understood : Sowing neither corn nor wheat, They have all that they can eat ; Reaping no more than they sow, They have all they can stow; Having neither barn nor store, Hungry again, they eat more.

Considering, I see, too, that they Have a busy life, and plenty of play; In the earth they dig their bills deep, And work well though they do not heap ; Then to play in the air they are not loath, And their nests between are better than both.

But this is when there blow no storms' •

When berries are plenty in winter, and worms ; When their feathers are thick, and oil is enough To keep the cold out and the rain off : If there should come a long bard frost, Then it looks as thy birds were lost.

But I consider further, and find A hungry bird has a iree mind ; He is hungry to-day, not to-morrow ; Steals no comfort, no grief cloth borrow ; This moment is his, thy will bath said it, The next is nothing till thou haat made it.

The bird has pain, but has no fear, Which is the worst of any gear : When cold and hunger and harm betide him, Ho gathers them not, to stuff inside him ; Content with the day's ill be has got, He waits jest, nor haggles with his lot ; Neither jumbles God's will With driblets from his own still.

Bat next I see, in my endeavour, Thy birds here do not live for ever ; That cold or hunger, sickness or age, Finishes their earthly stage ; The rook drops without a stroke, And never gives another croak ; Birds lie here, and birds lie there, With little feathers all astare And in thy own sermon, thou That the sparrow falls dost allow.

It shall not cause me any alarm, For neither so comes the bird to harm, Seeing our Father, thou bast said, Is by the sparrow's dying bed ; Therefore it is a blessed place, And the sparrow in high grace.

It cometh, therefore, to this, Lord : I have considered thy word, And henceforth will be thy bird."

We cannot even pretend to select the finest from the many fine passages which fill the book. It is one which any thoughtful reader would rejoice to own, in order that he might go to it, not only for help in theological doubts, but for high counsel in the many puzzles and enigmas of life, and for comfort when sorrow

or trouble has drained too deeply the fountains of faith. We recommend Paul Faber warmly as a book of religion of a very high order, by a man of true genius ; but as a novel, it is un- questionably a mistake. Without attempting to select pas- sages relating to the main thesis of Dr. Mac Donald's book, we will quote, in conclusion, a very eloquent one, which has moved us much, on the side question of the rights of animals, and especially in the matter of vivisection ; we commend it not only to every lover of animals, but to every lover of justice. It is part of one of the sermons, of which we said there are several in this novel :— "To return to the animals : they are a care to God ; they occupy part of His thoughts ; we have duties towards them, owe them friend- liness, tenderness. That God should see us use them as we do, is a terrible fact—a severe difficulty to faith. For to such a pass has the worship of Knowledge—an idol vile even as Mammon himself, and more cruel—arrived, that its priests, men kind as other men to their own children, kind to the animals of their household, kind even to some of the wild animals, men who will scatter crumbs to the robins in winter, and set water for the sparrows on their house-top in summer, will yet, in the worship of this their idol, in their greed after the hidden things of the life of the flesh, without scruple, confessedly without compunction, will, I say, dead to the natural motions of the divine element in them' the inherited pity of God, subject innocent, helpless, appealing, dumb souls, to such tortures whose bare description would justly set me forth to the blame of cruelty towards those who sat listening to the same. Have these living, moving, seeing, hearing, feeling creatures, who could not be but by the will and the presence of another any more than ourselves—have they no rights in this their compelled existence ? Does the most earnest worship of an idol excuse robbery with violence extreme to obtain the sacrifices he loves ? Does the value of the thing that may be found there justify me in breaking into the house of another's life ? Does his ignorance of the existence of that which I seek alter the case ? Can it be right to water the tree of knowledge with blood, and stir its boughs with the gusts of bitter agony, that we may force its flowers into blossom before their time ? Sweetly human must be the delights of knowledge so gained! grand in themselves, and ennobling in their tendencies! Will it justify the same, as a noble, a laudable, a worshipful endeavour, to cover it with the reason or pretext—God knows which—of such Lye for my own human kind as strengthens me to the most ruthless torture of their poorer relations, whose little treasure I would tear from them, that it

may teach me how to add to their wealth? May my God give me grace to prefer a hundred deaths to a life gained by the suffering of one simplest creature. He holds his life as I hold mine, by finding himself there where I find myself. Shall I quiet my heart with the throbs of another heart ? soothe my nerves with the agonised tension of a system ? live a few days longer by a century of shrieking deaths ?

It were a hellish wrong, a selfish, hateful, violent injustice It is true we are above the creatures,—but not to keep them down; they are for our use and service, but neither to be trodden under the root of pride, nor misused as ministers, at their worst cost of suffering, to our inordinate desires of ease. After no such fashion did God give them to bo our helpers in living. To be tortured that we might gather ease !—none but a devil could have made them for that ! When I see a man, who professes to believe not only in a God, but such a God as holds his Court in the person of Jesus Christ, assail with miserable cruelty the scanty, lovely, timorous lives of the helpless about him, it sets my soul aflame with such indignant wrath, with such a sense ef horrible incongruity and wrong to every harmony of Nature, human and divine, that I have to make haste and rush to the feet of the Master, lest I should scorn and hate where he has told me to love. Such a wretch, not content that Christ should have died to save men, will tear Christ's living things into palpitating shreds, that he may discover from them how better to save the same men. Is this to be in the world as he was in the world? Picture to yourselves one of these Christian inquirers, erect before his class of students ; knife in hand, he is demon- strating to them from the live animal, so fixed and screwed and wired that he cannot find for his agony even the poor relief of a yelp, how this or that writhing nerve or twitching muscle operates in the busi- ness of a life which his demonstration has turned, from the gift of love into a poisoned curse ; picture to yourself such a one so busied, sud- denly raising his eyes and seeing the eyes that see him !—the eyes of him who, when he hung upon the cross, knew that he suffered for the whole creation of his Father, to lift it out of darkness into light, out of wallowing chaos into order and peace ! Those eyes watching him, that pierced hand soothing his victim, would not the knife full from his hand, in the divine paralysis that shoots from the heart and conscience ? Ah me ! to have those eyes upon me in any wrong-doing ! One thing only could be worse—not to have them upon me."