THE SORROWS OF SATAN.

A Defence of Marie Corelli.

THE Rev. Dr. C. A. Berry, of Wolverhampton (Eng.), who not long ago visited Australia, has been lecturing to the members of the Young People's Guild, of Queen-street Church, Wolverhampton, on Marie Corelli's "remarkable and audacious" novel "The Sorrows of Satan." Having explained (says the Independent) at the outset that he approached the consideration of the bold and brilliant masterpiece of fiction not from any mere literary standpoint, but as a believer in God, and a preacher of the Gospel of Christ, Dr. Berry gave it as his opinion that the book was more than a piece of literature—was, in fact, a scorching specimen of ethical denunciation, and an eloquent insistance upon the very foundations of religion and human society. Only an artistic genius; only an original and undaunted thinker, could have created, or could have presented with such consummate skill and symmetry a conception of Satan which captivated the imagination, while it traversed the ideas of 90 per cent. of those who contemplated it. As a work of art it was almost perfect. Had it been given to the world in an essay or sermon, in a scriptural monograph or a magazine article —apart from the exigencies of a story, or the ethical purposes of a writer with an object—it would have created a reputation for its author, and a theological storm for the delectation of the ungodly. Marie Corelli did not write this book in order to vent her spite and spleen upon critics as a class, or upon woman authors as such. Again, it must be admitted that there was much vigorous denunciation of both these classes of writers in the volume. Indeed, judged from a literary standpoint, the book was marred by a somewhat monotonous and too frequently repeated onslaught upon literary log-rollers, dishonest publishers, and hungry—not to say thirsty— critics. But while the book was open to fair criticism on this point, it was asking too much when Mr. Stead and others bade us believe that no small part of the motive in writing the story was to lampoon these people, the authors of which had suffered some injustice at their hands. He (Dr. Berry) could not believe that the genius displayed in this book could be deliberately guilty of risking art to vent spleen. But what he did believe was that the time was more than due when some competent pen should declare and denounce the hypocrisies, the intrigues, the squalid enmities, the malicious hatreds, the inartistic and immoral passions, which lie behind much of modern literary journalism. And, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the greatest and most pressing of our literary necessities in these days was a voice that could denounce with as much authority as indignation, those literary gutter birds—both male and female —who, under the guise of realism, have degraded literature and spread among the people the subtle poison of infidelity and indecency. That Maria Corelli has written with such a pen, and spoken with such a voice, ought to earn for her the gratitude of all decent people, and to make her sublimely superior to the critics who aver that she wrote in ill-temper, inspired by wounded pride and envenomed spleen. Dr. Berry then declared that Marie Corelli's purpose was, in his judgment, threefold—viz. (1) to reimpress this materialised and worldly generation with the reality and proximity of the spiritual world—of God, of the soul, of judgment, of heaven and hell ; (2) to lift the mirror up to modern society to let it see itself in the light of the Eternal, to show it what it has become and is becoming through denial of God and love of pleasure ; (3) to indicate and denounce in the present literature of the decadent and realistic school one of the most powerful and diabolic agencies of moral disaster and ruin.
 Barrier Miner 18 April 1896,