“THE OVERSHADOWING POWER OF GOD.  A synopsis of a new philosophy concerning the nature of the soul of man, its union with the animal soul, and its gradual creation through successive acts of overshadowing and the insertion of shoots, to its perfection in Jesus the Christ; with illustrations of the inner meaning of the Bible, from the Hebrew roots; offering to the afflicted soul the way of freedom from inharmony and disease.  By HORACE BOWEN, M.D.; transcribed in verse by Sheridan Wait, with chart and illustrations by M.W.  Fairchild.  Vineland, N.J.  New Life Publishing Co., 1883.”

This book of Dr. Bowen’s opens into a field of thought that has heretofore mostly escaped the survey of theologians and philosophers:  classes that are supposed to be in pursuit of essential truth concerning both God and man.  Its leading aim seems to be to present a reliable clew to those truths by an unusual interpretation of the Scriptures as a revelation of creative order.  The author stands with a comparatively small class of ardent explorers who have come to see “the light of the world” under a new radiance; a radiance that actually gives it the breadth and power of its claim.

Dr. Bowen’s personal career in coming to this light, as related in the preface, is full of interest; and this preface is impressively wrought with the system of creative law that he aims to outline, and that the verse of Mr. Wait labors to elaborate.  This author is firmly loyal to the sacred Scriptures as divine revelation, and, as such, he aims to show that, in their inmost sense, they systematically unfold the creative process, which consists of divine operations in the human soul by which, through varied series of growth, it becomes fully conjoined to, and illuminated with creative life—­the light and life of Jesus, the Christ.  The process from Adamic to Christ states of soul, Dr. Bowen finds was effected through successive births by “the overshadowing power of God;” so the immaculate conception of the virgin, that gave “the highest” full embodiment in Jesus Christ was simply a revelation of the ultimation of creative power in outward realms; as such, “was the completion of the plan for the creation of man, through a serial gradation of over-shadowings, or the sowing of seed and the insertion of shoots”—­this “individual case being but the universal method of God in creation.”

Dr. Bowen goes on to show the relation and bearing of this ultimate order of creative life in the human form to the mental and physical conditions of man, and holds it to be the saving term to our human nature, in all respects.