 By playing its own devil's advocate, through voiced skepticism, and keeping the plot more uncertain, the book and its conflicts become more interesting.A Christian might read the story simply to find out how long the fiction of a fleshly Christ, even of the late 1800s / early 1900s, can be sustained.Issues do gradually emerge through the book that date it, however; the book embodies strong Prohibitionist and Temperance views on tobacco, alcohol, college fraternities, and other questions of the period that do not reflect prevailing contemporary approaches to those issues.