BOOKS.

THE FAITH AND MODERN THOIJGHT4 Tars book contains six apologetic lectures delivered by Mr. William Temple, a son of the late Archbishop of Canterbury, to men and women students at meetings of the London Inter- collegiate Christian Unions. In a brief introduction Professor M. E. Sadler, who was, we believe, a boy under Dr. Temple at Rugby, says :—

"Those who heard the course were impressed by the personality of the lecturer, by the simplicity of his words, the candour of his reasoning and the directness of his appeal. They felt that they were listening to one who, with courage and independence of `mind, had faced the issues for himself and who spoke out, without flinch- ing, the truth to which he had fought his way. Step by step he led them along the path which he had found firm under his own feet. He inspired them with the confidence which a climber feels ina strong young guide. Other ways up the mountain there might be, but this he' had found and knew. Along it; steadily • and cheerfully, he led those who followed him and who, as they followed, learned to trust his strength of character and his know- ledge of the ground. Character, said Goethe, makes character. Spirit kindles spirit. Thought with life and courage in it makes those who come under its influence more real in their thinking and braver in their quest of the truth. Lectures .like these leave the mind ashamed of lingering among half-beliefs. They impel it to a decision."

No reader of the lectures can disagree, we think, with those words. After studying the book we find ourselves wondering whether the reaction against " half-beliefs " is already setting in among the most cultivated minds of the young generation. In France we see certain of the brightest intellects among the writers of to-day turning away from the rationalism which

t The Faith and Modern Thought : Sirs Lectures. By TrIllisla Vethp114- • •

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• Justici: a Tragedy in Four Acts. My John Galsworthy. London :, Duck- worth and Co. [2s. net and I.. 6d. net.] has been so lurid an adornment of French literature—from Voltaire, Rousseau, Renan—and seizing with professions of almost childlike simplicity upon the beauties of the faith

which their literary predecessors rejected. Possibly they are not innocent of some of the bravado of paradox; or, again, by one of the revolutions of literary feeling to which experience has accustomed us all, they may take a delicious pride in allowing a personal capacity for emotion to conquer the cold logic of the national mind. Whatever the explanation, the fact is transparent. And may not the hour be ripe for a

similar manifestation in the different conditions of English thought? The oldest objections to Christianity have reasserted themselves with considerable clamour under the title of -the "New Theology." Plus cc' change, plus c'est la mime chose ;

we shall never be without the Celsuses who have material explanations for the greatest miracles, or the Porphyrys who graciously admit that Christ was the greatest of the philo- sophers. Mr. Temple commands his audience to return to the whole faith and nothing but the faith, if Christianity is to mean anything. Without the miracles of the Incarnation and the Resurrection Christianity is null and void.

The method Mr. Temple adopts is that of any scientific procedure. He says :—

"I suppose everybody here knows that no science exists which quite conforms to what the logic text-books call deductive and inductive methods. Those things are possibly useful, certainly fictitious. All thinking proceeds by bringing together general principles, which have been reached as the result of past experi- ence, and all the new facts bearing upon the subject which can be found ; and I am hoping to show that we always, as a matter of fact, set out with a certain ideal of knowledge before us, namely a coherent and comprehensive statement of the whole field of fact ; but that coherence at any rate is a demand which comes solely from reason, for we have no ground in experience, so far as I know, for insisting that the world shall be regarded as coherent, as all hanging together and making up one system. But we do demand it. And I am further to show that, as our knowledge stands at the present moment, this ideal of reason and the facts of experi- ence stand over against one another in hopeless and irreconcilable antagonism, unless all the essential points of the whole of dogmatic Christianity are true; that is to say, if you like to put it so, that Christian theology is the only hypothesis that meets all the facts. That is what I shall try to show.'

The first evidence to the religious man of the existence of God is, as Mr. Temple says, his own religious experience. But, it may be said, "religious experience" is only a passing

emotional state, a kind of self-hypnotism. People who do not deny the reality of the experience as such still believe that they have only been the victims of nervous illusion. The need of answering such misgivings puts the theologian in a curious position as compared with the professors of all other sciences :—

"All the other sciences at least assume the existence of their subject matter. The physicist is not called upon to prove that mechanical forces exist. The geometrician is not called upon to prove there is such a thing as space. He is allowed to assume it and no one quarrels with him. But when the theologian begins to try to develop a theory of the world on the basis of this experi- ence, he is at once challenged with the question : How do you know that this experience is really a valid guide to fact? And that question must first be answered, because it is undoubtedly true that some people have very little or even none at all of this Specifically religions experience.

Here Mr. Temple begins deliberately to follow the line of argument which investigators in all other sciences lay down for themselves. Physical science makes the colossal assump- tion that the world is rational in this sense, "that when you have thought out thoroughly the implications of your experi- ence the result is fact." The electrical theory of matter is believed on the sheer evidence of reason. Science, in fact, cannot advance at all without a mighty assumption,—the assumption that everything in the material world fits into a coherent, rational scheme, and that only a higher power of thought is required to discover all the principles of that scheme. The theologian, adopting the scientific method, is free to assert that knowledge is a fact, like any other fact, and as such must be fitted into the rational scheme of the universe. The knowledge of every one who has had any religious experience, then, has to be accounted for because the scientific mind is utterly intolerant of detached and unex- plained phenomena. Thus a kinship appears between the mind of man and the universe in which he lives. So far so good.

But in this scheme there is, as it has been stated, as yet no principle of will or purpose. Why should we believe that there is any such will or purpose P The answer is that the existence of purpose is the only condition which meets the scientific demand for complete intellectual satisfaction. Grant that, and the whole of experience becomes coherent. Mr. Temple, in fine, finds it necessary to take an hypothesis in the scientific manner and then test it by experience. "Here is this hypothesis of purpose," he says in effect. "Let me live in the light of it and see what happens." If this attitude is scientific, it is clear that agnosticism is hopelessly unscientific.

We cannot follow Mr. Temple through his whole argument. In every chapter the reader will find something well said and worth pondering, even when Mr. Temple appears to forget temporarily his " scientific " method and offers us arguments which suggest rather the weapons of the Hai-ac Paulinae. Because Mr. Temple's argument is in the main scientific" it follows that it is reasoning of the a posteriori class. It need hardly be said that that is only one way of examining Christian truth. Whether one argues a priori or a posteriori the same conclusion can be arrived at, which is only another way of saying that the complete argument is a combination of both methods.- But that does not concern us here ; what does concern us, and is highly interesting, is that an application of the " scientific " methods which are a feature of the thought of our generation seems to a distinguished intellect like Mr. Temple's the most satisfying way of consolidating his faith. His lectures, written in language highly characteristic of the society in which he lives, boldly prefer reason to faith for the beginnings of the soul's discipline. The old theologians used to say that you must believe before you can understand. The point of the attack on Christianity shifts with the genera- tions, and this book is one of those tactical changes of front necessary to meet a new movement.