Straw Crusade
Ross, Irwin
Moral Evolution The Private Lives of the Prophets, by Brooke Peters Church. Rinehart. 246 pp. $3. Reviewed by Max C. Otto EARLY SPRING is a tantalizing time of year. It is especially so for...
...A good many of us are more or less familiar with this or that saying of some Hebrew prophet...
...Ah, curiosity...
...Well, I won't even open the package...
...Was that a killdeer I just heard...
...The "true greatness of these men," says the author, "lay in their development of the idea of God, and for this we must be eternally grateful...
...Unfortunately just then the postman drove up to our mailbox...
...Of course she has not said the last word...
...I bolted for the door...
...Thereby they molded the cultural and moral evolution of mankind...
...That's why I've telephoned or written enthusiastically to friends not to miss reading it...
...The Hebrew prophets, who were passionately and courageously devoted to reforming the religious ideals and practices of their day, rather than to making oracular predictions of future events, gradually transformed the concept of deity...
...Ah, curiosity...
...The hepaticas must be in bloom where the sun is warm on the hillside...
...No one could do that, and she makes no pretense of having done the impossible...
...W^hat harm in just taking a look...
...And, unacquainted as I was with the author's previous writings, I had no clue to her spirit or workmanship...
...It included a book sent by a publisher...
...Having the book in my hand, what more natural than to open it and read a few pages...
...At any rate, here was a book I wouldn't read...
...This theme is set forth graphically and with a wealth of details...
...Nothing to do but return inside with the mail...
...Some people argue that there is no such thing in reality as will power...
...Yes, read this book...
...I stuck to it—until I heard the call of a meadowlark...
...Is it true that they influenced world history profoundly...
...Ignorance is of considerable advantage in jumping to a conclusion...
...Another book," I groaned, "and I'm already way behind with books I've promised to read...
...and fewer still have ever tried to find out what manner of men these were who so profoundly influenced the course of world history...
...But she has written a book of exceptional value for everyone who is concerned about man's upward striving past or present...
...The book can easily be wrapped up again and returned...
...That was too much...
...Discover for yourself how interesting yet authentic the writer of it has made the story...
...I resolutely stuck to my job...
...The title repelled me...
...She has worked widely in much scholarly literature, but this has not smothered her keen interest in the living material...
...It is especially so for those whose work keeps them indoors but whose thoughts are continually escaping outside...
...Yet something in me resisted these enticements outdoors...
...That's why I've called up bookstores advising them to hurry up and stock it if they had not already...
...For such readers, the Hebrew prophets and the conditions under which they labored, far too little known, will take on a reality they never had before, and which hereafter they are not at all likely to lose...
...They started off over 3,000 years ago, with the primitive notion of god as a local, then a tribal divinity, quite lacking in moral or spiritual attributes, and gradually changed this early concept until they had achieved the God-idea of the Western world, the idea of God as universal and as pure Spirit...
...They may be right...
...So it goes...
...I decided offhand that this was just another amateurish psychoanalysis of historical worthies about whose intimate lives practically nothing is known...
...Wonder if the pasque flowers are up out there on the drumlin...
...Publishers seem to think you haven't anything to do but read their books...
...Few of us, however, have any knowledge of their teachings, not to mention any understanding of their work...
...Read this book...
Vol. 17 • May 1953 • No. 5
