The Child, the Wise Man, and the Devil. By Coulson
Kernahan. (James Bowden.)—The success of "God and the Ant" has, rather unfortunately, tempted Mr. Kernahan to write a sequel—or, as he prefers to say, a "companion "—to it, although, by the way, one is relieved to learn, "I think it very unlikely that I shall write another book—long or short—on religion again." He has undoubtedly a command of that special rhetoric which easily lends itself to the exposition not so much of piety as of religiosity. But it may be seriously doubted if he has an imagination of a very high order. At all events he can hardly be said to reveal it in this picture of a Christless world. There is undoubtedly some vigour in "the proem," in which is told the story of the deposition of " Jesus the Deceiver." Even here we have too much mere fine writing of this sort :—" Then, like an overcharged bosom up- gathered in a sob, the swelling dome of the great cathedral gave utterance to a sullen, sudden, reverberant note of woe—the death- knell of a God—and at the sound a strange hush, which was not silence, but palpitated as it were with the pent-up breathing and tumultuous heart-beating of a multitude, fell upon the assembly." The attempt to realise a Christless world—especially in the story of the agonised father who commits his dying child to Jesus and then remembers that there is no Saviour—is not very successfuL On the whole, it is to be hoped that Mr. Kernahan will stick to
his present purpose and cease to write little books of this sort upon religion. There is a risk, to say the least, of such work degenerating into mere claptrap.
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