THE GOSPEL AND THE MODERN MAN.* ALL those who are
interested in the modern development of Christianity, and who care to see its fitness to regenerate modern society ably defended by a writer who is familiar
with the vast literature of New Testament criticism, should read The Gospel and the Modern Man :—
" Is the gospel of the New Testament to be 'the power of God unto salvation' for the modern man ? Or must it be replaced by a philosophy of religious values that reduces the historical Jesus to a creature of the unwarranted faith of Galilean fisher- men, and changes the church into a polite audience listening to, discussions of social reform ? "
But though Professor Mathews argues for supernatural religion, it is with courage and not with credulity that he
desires to inspire his readers. "Fear rather than intel- lectual doubt is the great enemy of humanity," in Professor Mathews's eyes ; and as cheerfulness is a source of physical health, so faith is a source of spiritual health. "There is no middle ground for an earnest man to take. If he has
come to distrust the essential gospel of the spiritual life,. he must become a neutral, unsympathetic observer of the
world, or a pessimist, the terrified slave of physical nature." This is the choice which, according to Professor Mathews, already confronts the American world, a world whose social side as depicted by our author may be likened to a highly coloured caricature of the world as it is in England. The which deals with the terrible difficulty of reconciling the idea of a God of Love with the facts of a suffering world is more than worth reading. It might, we think, ease in a serious degree shoulders burdened by the perpetual presence of this unanswerable problem.
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