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“It kept your attention all the time and was such a beautiful story that you and hope to find more like it. ”
“This is a very outstanding love story as well as thriller....It seems that I could not put it down once I started reading.... ”
Originally published in 1917, this book -- while obviously a product of the era in which it was written -- rivals the best Christian fiction being published today. Like in all Christian fiction, you've got some idea of what is going to happen (a main character who thinks about becoming a Christian isn't going to suddenly change his mind in these books, for example), but Hill's story-telling is unexpectedly fresh and vibrant. Her evil people are evil. Her good people are squeaky clean. Her struggling believers really struggle. It's easy to see why these books have passed the test of time and are still known and read today after much of what was published alongside them is forgotten.
Paul Courtland is a young college man who has discarded the vague Christianity of his youth for the "realities, laws, and science" popular among his college friends and professors. When a Christian classmate, Stephen, dies bravely in the aftermath of a college prank (which, yes, briefly blinds Paul), he feels a "presence" and resolves to better know "Stephen's Christ." Note: if you're a Stephen in a Christian novel and there is an unbeliever named Paul around, you're gonna die. But on the bright side, you're going to inspire him ... so it all balances out The main obstacle to Paul's quest for spiritual improvement is Gila Dare, a young woman who is about as evil as evil can be ("Had she not tossed so many a hapless soul that had come like a moth to singe his wings in her candle-flame, then laughed at him gaily as he lay writhing in his pain; and toss after him, torn and trampled, his own ideals of womanhood, too; so that all other women might henceforth be blighted in his eyes."). Will Paul fall for Gila's seductive schemes? Also in the mix: Bonnie, a poor (but beautiful and good) woman and Stephen's parents, Mother and Father Marshall, total paragons of corn-fed downhome goodness ("'Now, wouldn't it be just beautiful if we had telephones to heaven! Think, if we could get word from Stephen to-day, how happy we'd be!' 'Why, we have!' said Father. 'Wait!' and he reached over to the little stand by the window and grasped the worn old Bible. 'Here! Listen to this!'"). Hill's descriptions are amazingly vivid and really bolster the story.
Groundbreaking? Absolutely not. But as a completely enjoyable example of early 20th-century Christian fiction, you can't do better and I dare you to try.
One element of this novel that I did find unexpected was the author's strong call for social justice, not something that is a frequent player in Christian fiction nowadays. Paul sees his duty not just to preach to the poor, but to seek positive changes in their material lives as well -- things like eight-hour days, workplace safety, etc. Christians are presented as lobbying for changes to the economic order and are tied to the Progressive movement. For example, after an unsafe factory burns to the ground, Hill tells us: "The model factory was gone! But the money that had built it, the money that it had made, was still in existence to build it over again, a perpetual blind to the lawmakers who might have otherwise put a stop to its abuses! It would undoubtedly be built again, more whited, more sepulchral than before." How unexpected would this be in today's Christian fiction?
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