(A brief disclaimer -- Herald Publishing House is the publishing arm of the Community of Christ [nee RLDS Church]. Because of the age of this group, and my love of nostalgia, I will refer to this groups as RLDS. I trust my CofC friends will forgive me.)

The Call at Evening is one of those books you wish folks still wrote. Remember the days of innocence, of celebrated virtue and despised vice? When life was simple, manners were observed, and belief was then norm?

Ward's book takes us to the fictional town of Leesburg, home to the very rich and the very poor. The major employer is a large factory that employs much of the unskilled in this town. Leesburg covers a very small geographical area, placing the very poor just blocks from the very wealthy.

Into this setting, RLDS missionary Alfred Stewart arrives on a preaching tour. Injured during a long walk, he arrives at the home of Marion Burnside, a wealthy business owner, but is turned away when Burnside learns he is a "Mormon." Burnside's daughter, Jenny, takes pity on Alfred, rides her horse to intercept him on the road, and delivers him to the town doctor, Bill Lakeman, who lives with his father.

When they learn that Stewart is a missionary, or "preacher" as he describes himself, the Lakemans express their disdain for religion in general and preachers in particular. This opens the door for Stewart to inquire about their discontent, and learns that it stems from the confusing, sometimes contradictory teachings of the churches. And so begins a series of nightly meetings where Stewart presents the gospel in a systematic, and convincing way.

Many interesting characters populate this book. The extremes of society are represented in a clean, one-dimensional way. In keeping with the times, the main characters are all white, some having black servants. Ward's attempts at imitating "negro" speech patters are reminiscent of the degrading patter of such works as Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Clearly our nation had not yet distanced itself from a need to mock the "negro" way of speaking. Ordinarily, I would find this irritating, but given the provenance of the book, perfectly understandable. It is, after all, a moral tract, and not intended to be either quality fiction or an equal rights manifesto.

Central to the flow of the book is the transformative value of the gospel. A hard-drinking man turns his life around, albeit a bit simplisticly -- we likely would not believe such a character today. And a stern, unforgiving father finds redemption in the religious awakening of his son. Financial disaster, brought about by the destruction of the factory by a major fire, brings the disparate elements of society together in a sweet, but less than believable, way.

Leaving the story-line aside, what fascinated me most were the studies held by our preacher friend. Night after night he teaches important subjects -- the apostasy, the need for a restoration, the centrality of the American continent, the reasonableness of other scripture coming forth, etc. -- and does this by tying together a dizzying array of Bible citations. Certain words and phrases do not appear at all:

• Joseph Smith
• Hill Cumorah
• Angel Moroni

One can hardly imagine a missionary discussion without mentioning Joseph Smith!

I paid close attention to his teaching method. It was more an attack-and-destroy mission than a wait-and-see approach. By this I mean that Alfred Stewart has at his fingertips (or so it seems, since it never mentions him referring to notes) a grand collection of citations from the King James Bible, some of which actually teach what he intends! His fondness for "proof-texting" -- lifting a verse here and there, and sometimes, part of a verse -- in support of a pre-determined conclusion, was a well-known technique among the churches of the day. I hadn't known this was done among the RLDS fellowship.

It wasn't hard to find places where Stewart takes a verse out of context, using it either to buttress his argument or to connect other thoughts. His listeners, however, never catch on. They are entranced by Stewart's impressive command of the Bible and his obvious sincerity.

Indeed, few of us would quarrel with his conclusions. They are solid and well attested. However, his path toward reaching those conclusions is sometimes suspect. It isn't likely that such an approach would escape the critical eye of modern readers.

LDS readers will be fascinated with the legitimate texts Stewart finds to support the Restoration view. Many were new to me in this context. And Stewart's method of rapid-fire text reading, supplying the glue that he sees as tying them together, is a technique not seen very often today.

And, I would ask, how many here could demonstrate the basic teachings of the Restoration solely from the Bible? How many know the scriptures that well? Not many, I would guess.

The Call at Evening was a nice break from my normal reading. Copies are hard to find. Despite its obvious failings when viewed in light of today's social and racial attitudes, I will most remember this book as a fine example of a writing style that has long been out of vogue, a style that sees good as a consistent virtue and evil as consistently destructive, but mostly as a reflection of one man's sincere desire to share the gospel no matter what the cost.