The Hibbert Journal. Edited by L. P. Jacks, 11.A., and
G. Dawes Hicks, Litt.D. Vol. III. (Williams and Norgate.) —The critic, however familiar he may be with the present-day developments of religious thought, can hardly escape a certain sense of bewilderment when he has to deal with the eight hundred and fifty pages of the Ifibbert Journal. First comes a paper by Sir Oliver Lodge on "Sin." Then we have the view of a "Catholic Priest," who, of course, attributes misconceptions of Christian truth to the blindness and narrowness of Protestantism. That we do not care to controvert, but will only remark that where the "Catholic Priest's" teaching is dominant the Church is even less in harmony with modern thought than it is elsewhere. It is interesting to see what the "Catholic Priest" says about Original Sin. He is silent as to the difficulty of prehistoric man, and builds his theory on the Eden narrative. He tells UB what happens to infants "passing into the other world with this stain still upon them." They do not suffer any positive punishment, but they do not "enjoy the full perfection of happiness, but nevertheless are happy, being wholly unconscious of their loss." There are some, we take it, to whom such teaching does not seem so valuable as it does to the "Catholic Priest." Indeed, to many Protestants this gloss on the religion of Him who bade men to suffer little children to come unto Him, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven, is an insufferable impertinence. Will God deprive His children of any part of His love because of an accident for which they cannot be held responsible? It would be far more consistent for those who regard baptism as working like a charm to transfer the punishment to such as might have secured, but failed to secure, the baptism of those innocents, who share with the Holy Innocents the absence of the baptismal rite. And now we have got to our limits of space, and dealt with but a twentieth part of the volume. We may say generally that it is full of interest, and that while there is much from which we strongly dissent, there is but one article which we could wish away, Mr. C. N. Wheeler's paper, "The Ten Commandments : a Study in Practical Ethics." "A thoughtful man who would re-write the Decalogue would almost certainly . . . ." Why complete the sentence ? Mr. Wheeler, anyhow, wants the sense of humour. "A thoughtful man re-writing the Decalogu.e " !
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