RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.
The Idea of God. By C. Augustine Beckwith. (Macmillan. 103. 6d. net.) This is a very long study, by an American professor, of the idea of God as an object of thought, treated with all the resources available to rational inquiry. Reason, experience, tradition, metaphysics, psychology, Christian history, science, economic theory : all categories have been combed for material to enrich this idea. The ambition which inspires the author is that of the presentation of an idea of God which would enable it to function under the changed conditions and revolutionary conceptions of present-day life. And he plunges boldly into the latest social and economic theories and into the neo-phases of philosophico-scientific development in his enthusiastic research. Naturally, the author's concep- tion of the Deity as a Purposive Will is ultimately an act of faith. As he himself puts it : "This is the reality which must be, if our hopes are to attain their fruition." The conception seems to have brought him confidence, and even intellectual satisfaction.
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