Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/174

 character permeates each living character throughout the work. It preaches Love, Charity, and Brotherhood; it ignores the Church (i.e., sectarian misnomer), so it should have, as it has through so many tongues, its mission.

There is no new creed, no new passion, no new deed under the sun to-day. There is only the same recapitulation in a fresh garb. Our Saints still live to-day. It sounds drastic enough, but Miss Corelli feels this and knows that midst the fair field of fairness there is also the thorn and the poisonous flower any one may cull, or the simple field lily that lifts its face to Heaven, and sees only Heaven in its purity.

Kingsley said, "The history of England is the literature of England." Possibly so. The strong advance of women writers ever since that excellent man's passing has proved much of this. It is to the honor of women to-day. It is proved in the fine grasp of subjects, the faculty of dealing poetically with a theme, so widely known yet always fresh, under new lens, and without which this world to many would be a finite and a joyless place. There is just another quotation from "Barabbas," quite at the conclusion of this remarkable book, which weighs in with this and also with the author's idea,—just an exoneration of the Great