Mr. Stuart has compressed a great deal of reading and
thought into his survey of religious conception and dogma. He really starts from an obviously deep impression caused by Otto's remarkable work, Das Heilige, and, sketching many forms of faith, naturalistic, moralistic, speculative and mysti- cal, comes to the conclusion that the mysterium tremendum, the " wholly other" of Otto's analysis, finds its sole and final mediation in Christianity, which " is an enthusiastic, trans- forming power greater than any other experienced by human beings." For him, as for Browning, the knowledge of God in Christ solves all human problems so far as humanity can apprehend the solution. There is much and evident thinking in these pages, but unfortunately they are marred by careless- ness here and there. No student of Plotinus could possibly accept the brief summary : " Nco-Platonism, as represented by Plotinus, overstrained the Platonic antithesis of the empirical and ideal and necessitated the instituting of medi- ating powers between the two worlds of matter and spirit." This might be true of the scholastic Proclus. The book also is not free from misprints ; and Greek accents often suffer badly.
Previous page
