Professor Barker's Essays
Church, State and Study. Essays by Erma, Barker, Litt.D., I.L.D. (Methuen. 10s. 6d.) PROFESSOR BARKER has published twelve essays and addresses composed at different times, but together of much more than ephemeral value. (Wherefore the volume deserves an index.) To them he has added an obituary notice.of Lord Bryce, which we take to be due to his desire to perpetuate his gratitude to one who helped and inspired him. ..long ago. The essays, selected and arranged as they are, fall by design into a coherent form, so that there'is pleasure and advantage to be gained frani the whole as well as from each part. Professor Barker writes with immense learning, illustrated by a wealth of quotations from writers of the last twenty-three centuries in many lan- guages, but being master of his subjects he is never dull (n laboured. And in these days when so small a fraction of our " literature " is written by literary people, the style and evident scholarship make every page refreshing.
• The earlier essays tell of the origins of Churches and States and how they grew together or apart. The author has an admiration both tender and noble for the ideal of the rcAn ads or CiMtas Uri of the Greek philosophers and of St. Augustine, the one and universal body ; and when in a later essay this good Platonist looks ahead, we feel that he has the (Nodes Dei again in his mind. He happens to be writing of the State, not of the world, when he says that our State " which began in War and continued in wealth, must one day live for wisdom." When all States see that the true end of their life " is not doing : it is knowing—to know even as we are known," cannot we hope for a Civitas Dei ? Possibly the eceasions of his addresses restrained Professor Barker from speaking of modern polities : he only once refers to the League of Nations. We would gladly hear his views upon the approach of the League to a " dear City of God," and the inevitable differences between them. We like to think of the approach and believe that though the League embraces heathen races, yet its spirit is wholly Christian, and that all its motives, except one, are Christian. That one is fear, the instinct for self-preservation which fears a modern war ; an honest and legitimate fear to-day, but distinct from a Christian hatred of War and love of Peace. It never entered the minds of Marcus Aurelius or St. Augustine. It may be an additional strength or a weakness.
• The history here begins with Alexander the Great. His short life was perpetuated by his giving to the civilized world its first notion of unity, with a human being assuming the attributes, oriental in • origin, of a Nor cmeAres, the power of the supreme Divinity vicariously held by one man at the head of the world. In due time Roman Emperors fol- lowed. (We think that Professor Barker makes too little in proportion of the Divine honours to Rome herself, Roma Augusta, Roma )Eterna.) Though in Rome the Emperors at first underwent apotheosis, becoming " Divi " only after death, they were worshipped in the East during their life- time. (What is Professor Barker's explanation of the " Abom- ination of Desolation " at Jerusalem ?) Yet real unity was not thus established permanently. The Stoics, not least the author's favourite, Poseidonius of Apamea, did much to sub- stitute unity of philosophy for diversity of failing religions. But the way was prepared for Christianity, led westward by the greatest of all Hellenists, St. Paul. Then followed the unity, geographically divided at Constantinople, where the State became the Church, and at Rome where the Church became the State. The Eeelesia was no longer " called out " of the world.
Professor Barker gives us two illuminating papers on Non- conformists' revolts, of the Huguenots, and of the Puritans in Great Britain and New England. The address to the Huguenot Society, besides much interesting history, has a learned dis- quisition on the matter and the authorship of the V indiciac contra Tyrannos, published soon after the massacre of St. Bartholomew. We commend another essay, " Christianity and Nationality," to all. It shows how the two can help each other to-day for their own sakes and for the sake of the world.
We wish we could quote from the Inaugural Lecture at Cambridge ; the paper on " History and Philosophy " (which Croce said were one), and from the last three upon public education. Slightly disconnected, but still treated as a matter of political theory, is the essay on " The Rule of Law," written before the War, and dealing with the usurpation of judicial functions by administrative departments. Here our author was many years ahead of the present Lord Chief Justice. Few will read this book without learning much, and none without gaining a stimulus towards history and philosophy, and help to clear thinking upon great problems.
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