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A RATIONALIST REVIEW.
[E STA B L ISH ED 1885.]
No. 2. (New Series.)
A U G U ST i, 1896.
Monthly ; T wopence.
mew publications.
T h e Ju ly issue o f the M o n is t has several deeply interesting papers. Professor Woods Hutchinson writes on “ The Holiness of Instinct Professor Rudolf Eucken explains “ Philosophical Terminology and its History Professor F . Jo d i contributes a [learned article on “ The Origin and Import o f the Idea of Causality;” Dr. Paul Topinard continues his chapters on “ Science and Faith while the Editor, Dr. Paul Carus, deals with “ The Problem o f Good and E v il.”
P ro fesso r B u r y is issuing, through Messrs. Methuen, a new edition of Gibbon, in seven volumes, the first of which is published. He pronounces the D ec lin e a n d F a l l to be “ the greatest history of modern times,” and, while admitting that Gibbon is behind date in many details and in some departments of importance, declares that he is secure of immortality, and “ in the main things he is still our master, above and beyond ‘ date.’ ”
M e s s r s . C hapman & H a l l intend to issue a new uniform edition of Carlyle’s works, in three-and-sixpenny volumes.
M e s s r s . M a cm il la n & Co. have issued a revised translation, by Amelia Hutchinson Stirling, o f Spinoza’s unfinished T ra c ta tu s de I n t e l l e c t s Em endation e .
M e s s r s . D. N u tt & Co. will issue in the autumn the third volume o f Mr. E . Sydney Hartland’s L eg en d o f Perseu s . It will be entitled The Rescue o f Androm eda
M e s s r s . Watts & Co. have issued a new and enlarged edition o f Mr. Gustav Spider’s Songs o f L o v e a n d D u ty , f o r the Young. The first edition was very cordially received by the Ethical Societies and similar organisations.
M r . T . F i s h e r U nwin has issued a cheap edition of Professor Villari’s work on The L i f e a n d Tim es o f G iro lam o S a v o n a ro la .
P ro fesso r M a x M ü l l e r is preparing for the press a new work, in two volumes, to be entitled Contribu tio ns to the Science o f M ythology. I t will be published towards the end o f the year.
M e s s r s . M acm il la n & Co. have in the press a small work, entitled E v i l a n d E v o lu t io n : A n A ttem p t to T u rn the L ig h t o f M odern Science on to the A n c ie n t M y s te ry o f E v i l by the author o f The S o c ia l H o r iz on .
T h e next volume o f Messrs. Ward, Lock, & Bowden’s “ Nineteenth Century Classics ” will be C a r ly le 's H eroes a n d H e ro -W o rsh ip, with an introduction by Mr. Edmund Gosse.
(Slafcstonc on Butler. S tu d ie s S u b s id ia ry to the l l 'o r h s o f B u t le r. liy the RIGHT IION.
W. E . G ladstone. (Clarendon Press.) 370 pp.; 4s. 6d. I n George the Second’s time the rural village of Stanhope had a pious incumbent, who spent his time in the quietude of his parsonage, the duties of his office, and the innocent pleasure of riding about the lanes on a black pony. Beggars often so pestered him that he fled prematurely homewards, and took refuge in his library. From the hand of this much-musing and benevolent scholar came two famous works, The A n a lo g y o f R e lig io n to the Constitution a n d Course o f N a tu re , and a volume of ethical discourses usually known as the F ifte en Serm ons.
Bishop Butler died in 1752, and now, in 1896, the Right Hon. W. E . Gladstone, retired from the applauding senate and all the clamours of the political world, pores reverently over the Bishop’s devout dialectic, and, with appreciative comment, recommends Butler’s works to a doubting age. Mr. Gladstone hopes to check the pride of Rationalism, and to wake again the meek spirit of faith in God and scripture and immortality. No man misunderstands the purity of his intentions. If, indeed, the Christian cathedral is the seat of truth, Mr. Gladstone does well in seeking to attract the intellect o f Europe and America into the cloistered shade o f the cathedral close. There let us spend our serene days, forgetful of the affirmations of science and Biblical criticism, and meditating on the blessedness of the Atonement and the prospects of the World to Come : such feeble doubts as may intrude upon our solitude will vanish at the touch of Butler, or, when Butler fails, Gladstone will put in the auxiliary word.
But can we, or dare we, forget the message of modern thought ? We are bound to give heed to its momentous evangel, its revelations o f knowledge, its discoveries as to the literary origin of the Bible. Mr. Gladstone, on his side, ought to dissuade us from adhesion to that evangel by proving that Butler’s works stand good against Darwin and Spencer, against Strauss and Kuenen. Mr. Gladstone does no such thing. He blots out the nineteenth century, and the latter half o f the eighteenth. The scholarship and the scientific achievements of the last one hundred and fifty years he conspicuously ignores. He takes us to 1752 , when the epitaph to the Bishop of Durham had not yet been engraved in Bristol Cathedral, and expounds to our reluctant ears a method which is not adapted to our conditions, and conclusions o f which we do not allow the premises.
There is no question, however, that Mr. Gladstone has most conscientiously, and with a minute skilfulness, repolished and re-set the philosophic gems o f Butler’s system. If, in any direction, he has given inadequate notice, it is in that of Butler’s ethical method. The Serm ons will probably outlive the A n a lo g y , and for a reason which Mr. Gladstone has, in a shrewd moment, hit upon :—
T h e Rev. T . B. Strong’s Bampton Lectures for 1895 will be issued by Messrs. Longmans under the title of C h r is t ia n E th ic s .
M. Zola’s new work, P a r i s , will conclude the history of the Abbé Froment, begun in L ou rd e s and continued in Rom e .
T h e Rev. Charles Voysey has issued a little volume on The Testim ony o f the F o u r Gospels Concerning J e s u s C hrist.
Mr . C h a r l e s Watts has compiled The S e cu la r is t 's Catechism, being an exposition o f Secularist principles, and showing their relation to current political and social problems.
There is, and can be, no superannuation in the Sermons, which deal with human nature as it is, and the most important parts of which might evidently have been written, to a large extent, independently of that belief in God which Butler everywhere pre-supposes. From this point of view it may he doubted whether the atheistical reasoner has ever done as much for himself as Butler has done for him, not in abetting his denials, but in constructing on his behalf something in the nature of a religion founded upon the constitution of man. The “ atheistical reasoner ” entertains due gratitude to Butler, though he has no mind to disown his debt to Hume, Bentham, Mill, Spencer, etc. When, elsewhere, Mr. Gladstone sets apart a paucity of pages to Butler’s “ Positive Teaching,” he does not appear to take up the ethics with such relish as he does the A n a lo g y . Perhaps,
