∙BOOKS! •BOOKS ·! YOU ARE THE HOPE OF THE WORLD, by Herman Hagedorn, New York. The Macmillan Co., 1917. Price, 50c net. Europe is crumbling, millions dying, youth, genius and power are being laid waste upon the vast fields of battle. Whence then is there hope? The writer turns to the boys and girls of America and announces with telling conviction, "You are the hope of the world." Dull lethargy, idleness, sloth, indifference, carelessness and selfishness must give way. There is too much of these corroding influences summed up in the "I don't care" and "What's the use?" attitude of our American boys and girls. Now is the time for the awakening. The burden is one that entails the opportunity to succor the rest of the world with gifts of restoration, hope, inspiration. To rise to this opportunity there must be a renaissance of the spirit of our forefathers. He invokes the spirit of '76 in a catchy fashion-the great worthies of the American revolution are passed in review and their deeds set forth in compelling terms. To the boys and girls the breezy style of the narrative will make an unerring appeal. He leads them on to an insight into the spirit of Democracy. He pulls autocracy to pieces and spills the sawdust of this toy of Kings all about the place. He arouses enthusiasm by a narrative of our most daring experiment as a nation with the most progressive and modern form of government. There is a drive and force about his style, an admixture of the rough and tumble of boyish symplicity that will carry through this message to young readers. THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS, by Charles D. Williams. New York. 1917. The Macmillan Co. Price, $1.00. This is an important discussion of the problem, all the more acceptable because it is a little book of 133 pages, demanding but a few hours of our time. The author is very gentle and restrained in his language to the churches. Nevertheless a terrible indictment is contained in such phrases as, “We have largely lost the masses who followed Jesus and won the classes who crucified Him" (p. 60). The author sees the fundamental injustice which underlies our plutocratic society. Though he does not wish clergymen to preach Socialism, he does try to stir the Christian conscience and the ministry to an attack on injustice, on wrong, on robbery, on social inequality of opportunity. The chapters on "The True Radicalism" and "Some Practical Agenda" are of direct practical helpfulness. This book is true and fair. There is none of the indefinite haze of rhetoric, used in most books on social questions, to becloud the issues. Ministers and laymen of all denominations will find the book immediately useful. RELIGION IN A WORLD AT WAR, by George Hodges. New York. 1917. The Macmillan Co. Price, $1.00 net. The reconciliation of war and religion is always a problem for the Christian moralist. Doctor Hodges says just about what we all feel ought to be said. Needless to say that, as usual, he says it rather better than any of the rest of us are saying it. This little book is a series of short sermons, preached during war time and largely on the days of special significance: Easter, Memorial Day, All Saints', and Christmas. There is a loyalty to the Gospel throughout these pages, which we do not always find no war sermons. No attempt is made to deny or overlook the real character of war: "the argument which Cain used with Abel" (p. 11). Yet, "when the last walls of our Christian patience are beaten down, and we come to the pass of which our Master spoke when He said, 'I come not to send peace but a sword'; when there must be war for the defence of our liberties, for the protection of our homes, or for the punishment of intolerable crimes against God and man; God give us grace to meet it with courage and a clear conscience" (p. 12). The book is really fervent. The Memorial Day's and All Saints' addresses are particularly inspiring. Many will find that this book helps. to orient their Christian conscience in the midst of the real ethical difficulties raised by the storm of the world war. PRIMITIVE WORSHIP AND THE PRAY ER BOOK, by the Rev. Walker Gwynne, The general matter of this book is historical and such as we are sufficiently familiar with in other works on the subject. The arrangement is clear and definite. The book is popular rather than learned and might be used by those who like it for advanced work in the Sunday School. Of course, as one might expect, the book is largely an apologetic for the Prayer Book and for liturgical worship. "A BISHOP'S MESSAGE," by the Right Rev. Ethelbert Talbot, D. D., LL. D. Philadelphia, 1917. George W. Jacobs & Co. Price, $1.25 net. This handsome little book, bound in purple and with a gilt coat of arms on the outside, is quite as episcopal as it looks. The reverend clergy are gently lectured on their devotional life, their studies, their visiting the parishioners, their business methods, and so forth. Probably everything the author says is true. For instance this splendid piece of advice to the country rector: "Let him live within his income, be it large or small" (p. 81). This is the kind of neglected truth our bishops are rediscovering for us. Again, in the chapter on "Making Use of the Laity," the bishop tells us that, "One of the most anxious problems that confronts the clergyman in small parishes is to secure teachers for the Sunday School" (p. 121). The book is full of sharp and searching observations like the above, the force of which we believe every clergyman must recognize as soon as he reads it, if not long before. "FAITHFUL STEWARDSHIP AND OTHER SERMONS," by Father Stanton. New York 1917. George H. Doran Co. Price, $1.35 net. A number of verbatim reports of the sermons of one who, probably, was a greater pastor than preacher, and that is what we have before us, may serve for Lenten reading in some parishes, but can hardly be searched for very much illumination. BACK TO CHRIST, by the Rt. Rev. Charles Fiske, D. D., LL.D. New York. 1917. Longmans, Green & Co. Price, $1.00 net. This is an excellent book for its purpose, only it is evident that the title should be, Back be, Back to the Episcopal Church. For every line of reasoning, however sweetly it opens the appeal to you, always leads right into that historic denomination of which the entertaining author is a humble bishop. SEVEN DOUBTS OF A BIOLOGIST, by Stewart McDowall, B. D. New York. 1917. Longmans, Green & Co. Price, 40 cents net. An effort is here made by a clergyman to express the fundamental doubts most men feel some time or other in more or less biological terms and to answer them from the evolutionary point of view. The subjects of doubt are God, sin, atonement, the goodness of God, prayer, heaven, and the holy Trinity. The book has considerable suggestiveness and apologetic value. It is beginning to appear to many that modern science is patient of Christianity, even if we can never prove the faith by science. ISAIAH, by A. Nairne, D.D. New York. 1917. Longmans, Green & Co. Price, 36 cents. The story of the book of Isaiah is told with the largest recognition of the achieved results of criticism, yet with the deepest reverence for the sacred record. The spiritual evolution of Israel and Judah through the ministry of prophecy is reviewed in the first chapter. The three periods of Isaiah's ministry are described in the proper historical setting. Half the book is thereafter devoted to the Great Unknown (chaps. 40-66) and other prophecies. The critical arguments are given in the simplest, but convincing form. Through the whole breathes a sympathetic enthusiasm for the pure ethical monotheism of prophetic religion. THE LAW AND THE WORD, by T. Troward. New York. 1917. Robert M. McBride & Co. Price, $1.50 net, postage 10 cents. Is modern thought issuing in a revived Gnosticism, or Neo-platonism? It has been pointed out that there are close parallels between those final results of ancient philosophy and the philosophy of Bergson. The New Thought is another case case in point. Judge Troward, a respectable interpreter of New Thought, has been hailed by some of his followers as an English Bergson. He himself hardly knew Bergson, it seems, but they arrived, in different ways, at not altogether dis similar doctrines. Physical science has at last resolved everything into one thing - the ether. This is the Greek hyle, or apeiron, filling all space. Vibrations in the ether center in the elektrons. These build up atoms, molecules, and masses. Other vibrations organize the universe, as as electricity, heat, light, sound. The problem is: given the ether, whence the vibrations? The author recognizes the ether as the domain of law. The Word is free. The Word, life, movement sets up the vibrations in the ether eternally, freely evolving the universe in harmony with the understood and hence controlled laws of matter. Man is the microcosm. His material and psychic nature is subject to law. The free Word, or personality in man can, if he have faith, understand, hence control, his nature and develop freely the psychic personality. To this controlling Word inner and outer relations will conform. Success comes by confirming faith and eliminating doubt from the back of the mind. We see here how readily this New Thought, like the old Gnosticism, may develop thaumaturgy. Proceeding on Biblical lines, the author expects the power of thought, the free Word, to remake men. He looks forward to the Second Coming to exalt the higher life in this sense and to overthrow the powers of evil in man. The book is certainly interesting. It is a popular book. Yet it is really much more profound than some slips in the use of philosophical language and the like lead us at first to suppose. HAND BOOK OF THE NEW THOUGHT, by Horatio W. Dresser. New York. 1917. G. P. Putnam's Sons. Price, $1.25 net. It has been for some time evident that the Christian Science denomination had neither exhausted nor absorbed the entire force of the ideas from which that denomination originated. The Emanuel Movement demonstrated that there was a certain extension of these tendencies 155576A even within the Episcopal Church. The New Thought is a larger and freer movement than either the Emanuel Movement or Christian Science. Just because it has not become a denomination it is able to work under the cover of many denominations, fostering a tendency, a point of view, a faith, which will surely contribute elements to the religion of the future. For this reason New Thought ought to be more generally understood. It is much more important to understand New Thought than to understand Christian Science. The latter is a denomination. People either are or are not Christian Scientists and, for those who are not, the denomination is one of the groups that have gone wrong. New Thought, on the contrary, is a body of faith and practice, beliefs and tendencies, which, working almost anywhere, may bear fruit at last almost everywhere. Probably there is nothing really new about New Thought. The roots of it might be sought in the Antinomianism of the Baptist sects at the Reformation. or farther back among the sectaries of the Middle Ages. Yet, so far as it is a form of Mysticism, it has a more respectable parentage. "The silence" is a remnant of monastic religion preserv Swedenborgian, and his conversations with Quimby may have made the connections plain" (p. 193). These historic roots are worth our investigations. They partly explain the growth and rapid spread of these views. Christian Science in particular, when it arose, simply crystalized the opinions of thousands of people who had inherited the tendencies of decaying sects. The book before us is an excellent and orderly presentation of New Thought. It begins with a historical sketch and then discusses extensively "the silent method," "the mental theory of disease," and related topics. Finally comes a meaty section on "practical suggestions." Many who disagree in dogma, may find wisdom and help among the practical suggestions of New Thought. 1917. THE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION OF AN some are ed within Protestantism by the Quakers. ing of them or he is convinced that Quakerism, Swedenborgianism, and Transcendentalism had wonderfully prepared the ground of New England, and of the West which was peopled from New England, for this movement. The author recognizes the relation of Quimby, the original teacher of the whole movement, including Christian Science, to the Swedenborgians. "Mr. Quimby had some acquaintance with Swedenborg's views, gained through conversation with a New Churchman in Portland, and his ideas at certain points are closely in line with Swedenborg's concerning the divine wisdom, the spiritual world, and the life after death. Moreover, Mr. Evans, who visited Quimby as a patient, was a these and other definite faiths must fail to hold their people under American influences. He is presenting what he wishes might be the religious education of an American and what he evidently prophesies must be in the long run. For the child, this education is little more than a surrounding of kindly and altruistic influences, with some occasional references to a heavenly Father. The problem of the boy is the problem of giving the boy a good home. In college, the thing that appeals to men is service. That is the place to develop the social conscience. Further on, the experiences of life promote idealisms, spiritual perspective, and discipline. There is supposed to result some sort of American ideal, which, is in a sense, the American's religion. This is more or less true of some Americans. Others will insist on a very different kind or kinds of religion. Which or whether any one of them will eventually predominate, is a question about the distant future concerning which Professor Peabody really knows no more than any one else knows. CYCLES OF PERSONAL BELIEF, by Waldo Emerson Forbes. Boston. 1917. Houghton Mifflin Co. Price, $1.25 net. In a book on cycles of personal belief it is natural, as in a novel, to turn to the last chapter. We should like to know how the author comes out. This is not in sympathy with our author, however, for his last sentence reads: "The struggle is not over; the problems are not solved." So we infer that his personal belief is still circling about that center, where he perhaps finds life comfortable and interesting. The soul moves on, he tells us. We gather that his personal belief is not definite, at least not dogmatic. "Our moments of peace are given for the reception of new visions, and these, however gently the hint at first is given, are each and all incentive to action" (p. 149). We believe this sentence is a key to the author's thought. First, there are no fixed truths. It is all in flux. The inspirations are "visions." There is no test to convict a "deceiving dream," such as Homer imagined. In the great fog of doubt sometimes a strange wind lifts the cloud for a moment, sometimes a gentle ray of sunlight steals through, sometimes lightning flash reveals the landscape. After these hurried and necessarily confused prospects, we stumble on, guided by the latest illumination. a Secondly, the author's interest is ethical: "incentive to action." We demur that where there is no fixed principle there can be no fixed ethic. The chapter on immortality suggests the same appreciation. "The soul needs no assurances in the beyond, needs no justification of its existence. It is careless of immortality, it is too happy to care" (p. 121). This is more or less what we understand by paganism. The trouble is that, while it is undoubtedly true of the writer, it is absolutely false of most of mankind. The writer may have led a materially sheltered life, a life which, perhaps, was, at least to some extent, sheltered spiritually as well. We imagine that if he would go among the tenements of some great city or the Colorado mining districts he might find eventually souls not "too happy to care." Christianity, whether true or false, has at least always understood the average human problem better than the aristocratic paganism, which talks about being "too happy to care." The underlying philosophy is perhaps an unsystematic, sceptical idealism. Yet, though we think the chief interest is ethical, we cannot see anything in it to afford any ethical help to any one. At last, in refined thought and polished expression, it yields the author, but few others, a sort of excuse for following his own high impulses. An excuse, we say, for there is nothing in such "personal belief" to impel any man to follow one impulse rather than another. THE AMATEUR PHILOSOPHER, by Carl H. Grabo. New York. 1917. Charles Scribner's Sons. Price, $1.50 net. Our volume begins in an autobiographical form, with a preface and chapters on "Youthful Heresy" and the "Disillusionments of College." "Socialism and Utopia," "Social Ideals," and the "Place of Literature" are other chapters showing how largely the book is the mirror of an individual mind. Men write these books on the supposition that they will help other people more than the less individual writings of more technical thinkers. The technical thinker, however, is seeking to appeal to all other thinkers, whereas |