WATTS’S LITERARY GUIDE B E I N G A M O N T H L Y R E C O R D O F L I B E R A L A N D A D V A N C E D P U B L IC A T IO N S .

I

No. 104.]

JU L Y 15, 1894.

[ P r ic e On e P e n n y .

N E I V P U B L I C A T IO NS.

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M e s s r s . Watts & Co. have issued a cheaper edition of the late G. H. Martin’s “ Antidotes to Superstition ” (6d.). The work, which covers 160 pp., and is tastefully got up, had the singularly good fortune, on its first production, to be warmly commended by the whole of the Freethought Press. There are few books we could more unreservedly recommend for propagandist purposes, and those of our readers who are disposed to subscribe for fifty or more copies will be supplied at half the published price.

We are glad to hear that Moncure Conway’s new edition of the works of Thomas Paine is progressing. One volume has already appeared. The second volume is to be published in September. The work will probably include four volumes. The way has been prepared for it in a great measure by Mr. Conway’s two-volume biography of Paine. Political, sociological, and literary topics are the chief subjectmatter. The books show that the first American AntiSlavery Society was the result of Paine’s efforts for the emancipation of the blacks in America. The Society was founded in Philadelphia in 1775. Besides the ordinary edition of the collected works, Messrs. Putnams’ Sons are publishing a limited edition uniform with the volumes containing the writings of Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, and other founders of the Republic.

P ro fesso r F. W. N ewman will publish at an early date a new controversial work, entitled “ Christianity Before and After Paul of Tarsus, with the Tales Accepted as Sacred in the Anglican Church.”

T h e long-promised “ Life of Charles Bradlaugh,” by his daughter, Mrs. Bradlaugh-Bonner, with chapters on his later public career by Mr. J . M. Robertson, will be published in October by Mr. Fisher Unwin.

Mr. G. W. F oote has written an Introduction to Hume’s essay on “ Suicide ” (2d.), which is published by Mr. Robert Forder.

M e s s r s . W. S t ew a rt & Co. are issuing a new and revised edition of Saladin’s “ Woman : Her Glory, Her Shame, and Her God ” (5s.).

M e s s r s . Watts & Co. have added an excellent cabinet portrait of Professor Huxley to their collection of literary celebrities.

T h e New Science Review is the title of a new magazine, the price of which is 2s. Mr. Moncure D. Conway contributes to the first issue a paper on “ Thomas Paine and the Republic of the World,’’ and Julian Hawthorne one on “ Scientific Creation.”

Mr. A. J . B alfo u r is engaged upon a second part of “ Philosophic Doubt.”

OUR L I B R A R Y S H E L V E S .

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L ast May we noticed the late Professor Kuenen’s “ Religion of Israel,” a work issued in 1873. In 1882 Kuenen was chosen by the Hibbert Trustees to deliver lectures on Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and Buddhism, under the title of

“ natio nal r e l ig io n s and u n iv e r s a l r e l ig io n s ” (Williams & Norgate; 18 8 2 ; 339 pp. ; 10s. 6d.). By “ universal ” Kuenen means overflowing the limits of a particular nation. Thus Islam arose among the Arabs, but it has been reverently adopted by Aryans, Tartars, Malays, and Negroes. Perhaps “ international ” would be a more accurately descriptive term. This religion of Islam, affirms the Professor, rests entirely upon the personality of Mohammed. “ Remove Mohammed, and neither Islam, nor anything like it, comes into existence.” And the impulse which moved Mohammed was a detestation of the religious chaos produced by Arabian polygamy, and an enthusiasm for the doctrine of the one supreme God. But the new religion fell short insomuch as its expression was restricted to Arabian forms of devotion and modes of speech. The mysticism of the Sufi sect is not native to Islam. On the other hand, the Wahhabi reform, which arose about 1745, is a true revival of the faith and practice of the seventh century.

The second and third lectures review the history of the Yahvehism of the Jews, with special stress on the prophetic movement of the eighth century b .c ., and the ground covered is much the same as that traversed in the “ Religion of Israel.”

The fourth lecture deals with “ Judaism and Christianity.” Kuenen may be thought a trifle conservative in his maintenance of the proposition that Christianity sprang from the soil of Palestinian Judaism, and that none of its essential elements were blown by the four winds of heaven from extraneous sources such as the classic Paganism of Seneca or the speculations of Philo, or Buddhism, or Hellenistic Judaism, or even Essenism. Nor will Kuenen have anything to do with Hartmann’s theory that Jesus of Nazareth founded a Jewish sect, whose doctrines were ripened and expanded by the genius of the apostle Paul. The birth of Christianity was aided by the religious earnestness of the Pharisees, the gradual increase of the hope in a coming Messiah, the warmth of the zelotism which drove the Jews of the first Christian century to heroic sacrifice for the sake of their religion, and the proselytising spirit which led the Hebrew people to cast the net of their religion over the earth. The work of Jesus was to give voice and emphasis and orderly direction to all these motive forces.

Lastly, Kuenen glances at Buddhism. The Professor urges that Buddhism was a development from, not a completely new and counter movement to, Brahmanism. As to the reality of the Buddha with which legend has made us familiar, that is a doubtful matter altogether; and possibly Buddha may be resolved into a solar myth. In any case, the actual origin of the great Asiatic religion