II. FUTURE PUNISHMENT. BY THE LATE PROFESSOR J. H. JELLETT THE success of a book is often an important phenomenon of the age or generation in which it appears. Due in part to causes peculiar to no place or time, in part, perhaps, to causes which may be called accidental, the success of a book is often truly indicative of the generation which has welcomed it. It is successful, partly for its literary merit, partly too for its truth; but these causes combined are often insufficient to account for the phenomenon. It is successful because it discusses some question which is just then of surpassing interest, or because it gives vivid expression to a conception or a belief which is at that time present to the minds of men with a more than ordinary force. The successful books of a generation furnish, therefore, to the historian of thought, evidence of the highest value. When he has assigned to the genius, the learning, and the truthfulness of the author, all that is justly due to them, and when he has found, as he will often find, that all together were insufficient to produce the effect, he will look for the conspiring causes, not to the author but to his readers, and may thus obtain precious materials for the intellectual or moral history of the time. It is not too soon to speak of Canon Farrar's Eternal Hope as a successful book. Short as the time is which has elapsed since its publication, it has been long enough to leave no doubt of the feeling with which the public have received it. It is not too soon to call a book successful, which ran through its first edition in three weeks. place, to the In seeking the causes of this success, we naturally look, in the first intrinsic merits of the book. Among these, that which is perhaps most conspicuous is the absolute truthfulness of the author. These sermons are stamped throughout with that kind of eloquence which is inspired by earnest conviction, and by that only. They are thoroughly Christian in spirit, and it would be unjust to call them violent; but they are certainly impassioned. The author believes a |