Sbc (3uibe A RATIONALIST REVIEW.

[ESTABLISHED 188S.]

NOVEM BER r, 1897.

No. 17. (New Series.)

flew publications. Mr. J oseph McCabe has another book almost ready for publication. It will be issued through Messrs. Smith Elder, & Co., and will be entitled Tw e lv e Years in a M onastery. The work will give a circumstantial account of the author’s experiences, and deal specially with the novitiate, studentship, priesthood, and the confessional.

P rofessor A. C. B radley and G. R. Benson have edited the P h ilo so ph ic a l Lectures an d R em a in s o f R ic h a rd L e w is JVettleship. The volumes are prefixed by an interesting biographical sketch.

M r . W. B. C live has published a revised and enlarged edition o f J . S . Mackenzie’s A M a n u a l o f E th ic s .

M r . Walter Scott has issued a volume of E s sa y s o f S ch op en h au e r , translated by Mr. Rudolf Dirks, with an introduction. The subjects o f the essays a re : “ Author ship and Style,” “ Education,” “ Reading and B ooks” “ Women,” “ Thinking for Oneself,” “ Immortality,” “ Re ligion,” “ Metaphysics of Love,” “ On Physiognomy,” “ On Suicide,” “ On the Emptiness of Existence,” etc.

Messrs. K egan Paul have published Fichte’s The Science o f E th ic s , a s based on the Science o f Know ledge.

T h e long-promised work of Mr. Grant Allen, on The E v o lu t io n o f the Ldea o f G o d : A n In q u ir y in to the O rig in s o f R e lig io n s , will be published immediately. The greater part o f the volume is new, but certain chapters appeared in the form of review articles in the Fortn ig h t ly and the Contemp o r a r y . The book is o f considerable length, extending to nearly 500 pages.

Messrs. G. P. Putnam’s Sons have issued, under the title of R e lig io n s o f P r im it iv e Peoples, the second series of American lectures on the History of Religions, delivered in 1896-1897 by Professor D. G. Brinton.

Messrs. L ongmans have published the Bampton Lectures for 1897, dealing with Aspects o f the O ld Testament.

M o n th l y ; T w o pen c e .

popular IRclioious fallacies. The Dynam ics o f R e l ig io n : A n E ssa y in E n g l is h Culture H isto ry. By M. W. Wiseman. (The University Press, Limited.) 340 pp.;

7s. 6d. A r e m a r k a b l e example of the irony of fate is afforded by the fact that a descendant of Cardinal Wiseman has, within half a century after the death of that eminent Roman Catholic, written a volume on the culture history of England for the express purpose of exposing popular fallacies regarding the doctrines and history of the Christian Church. The Cardinal and the layman are, on religious matters at least, poles apart. Mr. Wiseman’s Rationalism is as thoroughgoing as the most ardent advocate of reason could desire. In the prologue a rational view of religious progress is clearly stated; and throughout the pages of his book the author maintains it with a fearless energy and a wealth of argument that prompt in us a charitable feeling of relief that his pious namesake is no longer alive to grieve over such uncompromising heresy.

One of the principal objects of Mr. Wiseman is to demonstrate, on historical grounds, that the main governing principle of all religious movements is an economic, not a spiritual, one ; in other words, that that form of religion which can claim vested interests and political support has a hundred chances to one of crushing out any other form, however intrinsically desirable, which a heretical minority may endeavour to propagate. Mr. Wiseman begins his argument with the plain assertion that “ man is not a veridical animal,” and proceeds to expound the view that we should bring “ our actual knowledge of the doublemindedness of the average man and the average priest in our own day to the explication of the religion-makers and mongers of the past.” He traces the religious changes in England from the Reformation to the present day ; and his final result is that “ the real sustaining forces at work all along are certain bases of primary superstition, religious and political; certain vested interests in the direction of these; and certain varying political forces disturbing or controlling these interests.” Mr. Wiseman, in the course of his three hundred or so pages, gives the reader ample historical evidence in support of his main contention.

T he University Press announce as ready Mr. John MRobertson’s new volume on Montaigne and Shakespeare.

P rofessor W. H. Bennett has issued through Messrs Methuen A P r im e r o f the B ib le . The work sketches the history o f the books which make up the Bible, in the light of recent criticism. It gives an account of their character origin, and composition, as far as possible in chronological order, with special reference to their relations to one another and to the history of Israel and the Church. The formation o f the Canon is illustrated by chapters on the Apocrypha (Old and New Testament); and there is a brief notice of the history of the Bible since the close of the Canon.

Mr. R . Forder announces that the S ecu la r A lm anack with contributions from the leading militant Freethinkers’ will be published immediately. The same publisher has recently issued, under the title of The House o f D eath the funeral orations, addresses, etc., delivered by Colonel Ingersoll.

R^:° WAY is now issuing a sumptuous edition o f taire s Candtde, under the supervision of Mr. Walter Jerrold. i

The book is divided into three parts— the first dealing with the Reformation, the second with the Deistic movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the third with the progress of modern Rationalistic thought. In treating of the Reformation, the author dispels many of the misconceptions with which Protestant and other historians have surrounded this interesting period. He protests against the view that the Reformation, either in Germany or in England, was the substitution of religious truth for traditional error, or that it was actuated by a great moral revival in a disinterested search for the true faith. The success of Luther’s revolt against the Papacy was, he argues, due almost entirely to the restiveness of the mass of the people under the money exactions of the Roman Church. In England the same motives were at work, complicated by the peculiar political conditions existing in the reign of Henry V I I I .

There had previously been some agitation among the aristocratic legislators to confiscate the endowments of the Church ; and this movement, combined with the aforementioned objections of the people to the demands of the priests, tended to encourage popular support in any attempt of the king to throw off the incubus of Papal power. The divorce of the queen not being granted by the Pope, the