The author of this book is better known by his novels than by his religious writings. If he carries his vivid and illuminating imagination into a work so different in its nature from these, as the one before us, the result is certainly to aid in the production of a more attractive and more striking presentment of his subject. The object of The Ten Theophanies is fully set forth in the remainder of the title. As according with the nine Avatars in the Brahmin theology, of which Vischnu was the ninth and most eloquent, we have here a similar presentation of Christ as he appears in the predictions and resemblances of the Old Testament. In noticing the coincidences apparent in the Biblical narrative in this direction, we cannot but be struck with their meaning, as was Dr. Baker; a meaning which he has set forth, however, in diction so varied and poetic, that the title “A Prose Poem,” applied to the work, is hardly an exaggeration.
