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Xtterarv (Butbe
A RATIONALIST REVIEW.
[ESTABLISHED 1885.]
No. 9. (Nf.w Series.)
MARCH 1, 1897.
Monthly; T wopence.
Ittew publications.
Dr. Godwin Smith's Guesses.
U n d e r the title of B r i t is h M o ra lis ts , Mr. L . A. Selbv-Bigge has prepared fo r publication by the Clarendon Press,’ in two volumes, a series of selections from writers principally of the eighteenth century. Among the moralists represented are Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Butler, Adam Smith, Bentham Samuel Clarke, Balguy, and Richard P r ic e ; and extracts are given from Hobbes, Locke, Cudworth, Wollaston, Brown J . Clarke, Paley, and others. ’ ’
T he Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge has issued a volume on The B e a r in g o f the Theory o f E vo lu t io n on C h r is t ia n Doctrine.
Messrs. G. P. Putnam’s Sons will shortly issue a work on The G od-Idea o f the Ancients, written by Mrs. Burt Gamble. The same firm has also in preparation a volume by Dr. Wood Seymour, treating of The Cross in T rad itio n H is to ry , a n d A r t . ’
T he new volume of Messrs. Kegan Paul’s “ Philosophical Library ” is J . G. Fichte’s Science o f E th ic s .
T he next volume of the collected works of Friedrich Nietzsche will be entitled A Genealogy o f M o ra ls : Poems It will be issued almost immediately by Messrs Hen and Co. ^
T he title of The Tenth Muse, a satire on religious and other superstitions — the early publication of which we announced last month—has been altered to I n an Ancient M i r r o r ; the former title having already been used bv Sir Edwin Arnold. ^
Mr. J ohn Beattie Crozier, author of C iv iliz a tio n and P ro g re ss , has a new work in the press, entitled A H is to ry o f In te lle c tu a l Developm ent. The first volume contains a history o f the evolution of Greek and Hindoo thought, o f Graeco-Roman paganism, of Judaism, and of Christianity down to the closing of the schools of Athens by Justinian
Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein & Co. will issue this month a new and beautifully illustrated work by ])r Henry Smith. It will be entitled Steps to the Temple o f H appiness, and will consist of thirty true moral stories for the young. A leading feature of the book will be the absence of any reference to religion or to religious subjects.
M r . J oseph McC aiie’s paper in The Agnostic A n n u a l recounting his conversion to Rationalism, has elicited a rejoinder from Mr. Walter Sweetman, B.A., and it will be shortly issued by Messrs. Watts & Co., under the title of C h r is t ia n R a t io nalism .
A cheap edition is issued of Dr. Paul Carus’s The Gospel o f B u d d h a . The book presents an admirable outline of Buddhism, and of the life-history of its founder.
Messrs. T. & T . Clark have in the press a series of essays on The Ancien t F a it h in M odern L ig h t . The subjects include-such topics as "Theism ,” “ The Bible,” “ S in ” “ The Incarnation,’’ and “ The Atonement.”
Messrs. Archibald Constable & Co. are issuing a work, in two volumes, dealing with The P o p u la r Relig ion a n d F o lk lo re o f N o rth ern In d ia , written by Mr. William Crooke.
Guesses at the K id d le o f Existen ce ; am i Other Essays on K in d red
Subjects, l i y G oi.dw in S m it h , D .C .L . (Macmillan.) 244pp.; 6s. T h e rats are quitting the sinking ship. Day by day Mother Church loses her intellectual sons. Lot is hastening from—well, the metaphor may fly too low; and we will simply observe that Dr. Goldwin Smith, however dubious he may feel on some topics, makes it abundantly clear that he wishes to be classed among the unorthodox. We will cheerfully undertake to vote him a diploma for heresy on the strength of the following passage :—
It seems inconceivable, if the salvation of the world were to depend on belief in miracles, that Providence should have failed to provide records for the assurance of those who were not eye-witnesses, equal in certainty to the evidence afforded eye-witnesses by sense. Are the records of the miracles which we possess unquestionably authentic and contemporaneous? Were the reporters beyond all suspicion, not only of deceit, but of innocent self-delusion ? Were they, looking to the circumstances of their time and their education, likely to be duly critical in their examination of the case ? Is there anything in the internal character of the miracles themselves—the demoniac miracles, for example ” ----A break in the quotation is of no consequence. When a writer adopts this slightly supercilious air on the subject of the “ demoniac miracles,” we all think of Huxley and the Gadarene episode, and we know we are in the presence of scepticism. But Dr. Goldwin Smith makes his position manifest enough by stoutly assailing a threeheaded monster of modern apologetics, and the three heads (to speak in the style of the Apocalypse)—are Drummond, Kidd, and Balfour. This doughty feat forms the main task of the first essay.
In the chapter on “ The Church and the Old Testament ” the Doctor crosses the Rubicon of Biblical criticism, and stands on the other side impatiently beckoning the Church to follow. No reader of a moderate amount of recent advanced literature will detect a single new point. The distinguished essayist simply tells a larger public what inquiring Rationalists knew years ago. The Elohist and the Jehovist, familiar figures to the readers of this Review, are here introduced upon the stage of discussion ; and we hear the tale re-told of the inconsistency of “ Mosaic” science with nineteenth-century science, and ancient Hebrew morality with the ethics of latter-day civilization. The situation is becoming humorous. Goldwin Smith is telling the truth. Acceptance of the Bible as an inspired guide now ranks among the laughable impossibilities. Yet here we have an army of bishops, priests, deacons, pastors, missionaries, elementary school teachers—all going on as if nothing had happened. Every day this make-believe army solemnly beats the drum in honour of King Orthodoxy ; and all the time poor Orthodoxy lies in a museum, dried, stuffed, and labelled by the critics.
The third essay propounds the sempiternal riddle, “ Is there another life ?” The author speaks with a delicate mingling of sadness and candour. Very resolutely, but very quietly, he flings over the precipice the old materials of the dogma of immortality— the Resurrection, the fancies of Plato, the Nirvana of the Buddhists, the credulities of Spiritualism—and then he turns to listen to the whispers of the Positivism which tells how, in posterity, we still may live on ; and he shakes his head. The reader, too, sighs with Goldwin Smith ; but there is more dignity in such a sigh than in the feeble rhapsody of the orthodox claimant to a place in an aerial Zion.
Over that same precipice, also, the Toronto Professor hurls (in his fourth essay) the whole of the New Testament
