The Elements of Negro Religion. By W. J. Edmonston Scott.
(Edmonstou Scott and Co, Edinburgh. 6s. net.)—The word "negro " has here a meaning which is somewhat unexpected. About 4000 B.C., we are told, the Indo-Bantu race lived in Bengal, where it is now represented by the ICol negroes. Elsewhere it is to be found in the Bantus of Central and Southern Africa and in the Basques. Then we are told that these negroes are the "direct descendants of the antediluvian negro." If we are to take the word in its ordinary sense, any such deseent is impossible. All this is obscure; but when we are told that "the fundamental principles of religion remain immutable throughout all the ages," ire are moved to active rebellion. No assertion, it seems to us, could be more paradoxical. "God is not subject to evolution " : very true. But how about man's conception of God ? Was there no process of development between the tribal God of the early Hebrews and the Jehovah of Isaiah ? Our author has collected a vast amount of curious information which doubtless will have its uses ; but we cannot accept the principle in which his speculations begin.
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