THE GREAT AWAKENING.

Otago Witness, Issue 2528, 27 August 1902, Page 72

THE GREAT AWAKENING.

By E. Phillips Oppexheim.

London: Ward, Lock, and Co. Dunedin: Braithwaite's Book Arcade. In an incredibly short time since the launching of "Mr Bernard Brown" upon the tide of highly sensational fiction Mr Oppenheim provides us with another "startler." This time he eschews the tragedies and mysteries of crime, and sets his nimble imagination to work in the higher and more delightfully limitless regions of psychological mystery. Sir Powers Fiske, Baronet, of unexceptional means and position, and quite exceptional abilities, was educated for the medical profession. His accession to the family title and estates prevented his practising a profession which, with all his soul, he loved. Travel in India turned his attention to some strange metaprysical and psychological questions. The old questions of the transmigration of souls and the possibility of divorcing in life the soul • from the body enthralled him, and under the teaching of a learned Indian mystic he gaw strange things verified. The i.tter and entire obliteration of whole periods of life, embracing some great loss, sorrow, or tragsdy, was proved to him possible. Circumstances intervened. The young man's pursuit of the occult sciences was dropped ; he returned to the conventional monotony of English life, with the tremendous question whose solution had co fascinated him still unsolved. He had dreamed of a method by which the consciousness of some particular period of life might be totally and for ever erased, and the memory of previous states of existence revived and crystallised — it was not Halkar's method, — and it seemed as though an opportunity would never arise in which he might test it.

One night, walking down the Edgware road, behind two respectably-dressed shopgirls, whose conversation he cannot help overhearing, he concludes that he has at last found the very subject for his great experiment. Impelled by the absorbing interest of the point at issue, and aided Ly the tact of a finished man of the world, and the silent freemasonry of perfectly honest intentions, he succeeds in making the acquaintance of the two girls. One is the ordinary type of her class ; the other, it is quickly apparent to Sir Powers Fiske, is a lady by birth, education, and associatien, no matter what her present circumstances or employment may be. Further acquaintance proves that in every respect Eleanor Surtoes, quite alone in the world, poor, friendless, sick unto death ot a life whose utterly uncongenial companionships and petty indignities render existence a daily torment, is the very subject for an experiment whose outcome may be death. The whole case fairly laid before her, the oif-chance of death' is counterbalanced a thousand times by the assurance, if she lives, of a return to the pleasant life of her own class, ample means, and an assured position. Eleanor Surtoes gladly consents to be the subject of Sir Powers Fiske's great experiment. And here we must leave Phillips Oppenheim to unfold to those who elect to become hi.s readers the strange and exciting chain of events which connects the great experiment with "The Great Awakening." We may note, however, that there is a good deal of skill in the drawing of the minor characters, especially the employees, male and female, at Beannam's great emporium. Also, we note with modesfc thankfulness that the ending is a happy one, for we confess to being btrongly in opposition to the utter misery and unhappiness with wliicli the new 'school of novelists overwhelms the puppets, of its passing show. GOD MY NEIGHBOUR. AND MYSELF. By thk Rev. Humptirkv Wightwkk, M.A. Melbourne : Angus and Robertson. Thifa is the title of a blender volume of excellent seimons, five in all, and all good. TJifet were preasfced fro» tlje pulpit of

St. John's Church, Dariinghurst, by i3i9 Rev. Humphrey Wightwicke. The subjects ace the kind to appeal to the everyday life and experience of any congregation, as their titles will exemplify, "gym* pathy," "Influence," "Joyfulness," "Criticism," and "Truth" are all topics of general interest, and if the treatment is not precisely brilliant, neither is it strained nor defaced by pulpit fclang, but clear, practical, pleasant, and convincing. It is, indeed, just such a selection of sermons as we should like to see in the possession of country lay readers who cling with 1 a persistence worthy of better things to then? volumes of discourses which are laid off in sections numbered anything from "firstly" to"tenthly."