• GREAT RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD.
Great Rettig ions of the World. By Various Writers. (Harper and Brothers. Is. 6d.)—This book is a skilful concession to the ,Populaifletnand for treatises dealing with all subjects under the sea which shall not be longer than an average encyclopaedia article. .Here we have the dominant religions of the present day —Christianity, Confucianism, Buddhism, Mahommedanism, Brah- minism, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Positivism, Babism, and Judaism —dealt with -in the compass of three hundred pages by, in all, thirteen experts. Undoubtedly, of course, no student of religion in the true sense of the word will be content with such brief ex- positions, which can at the very best deal, not with the heart, but only with the first principles or superficial characteristics of things. At the 'same time, whatever Professor Herbert Giles has to say on Confucianism, ProfesiIoi Rhys Davids on Buddhism, and Sir A. C. Lyall on Brahminisin—merely to indicate the quality of the expert talent that has been enlisted—is eminently worthy of being read, even by such careful students. The article which will seem freshest to the average cultured 'reader will, no doubt, be
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"Babism," by Mr. W, Professor of Persian in University College, London. The' volume is also valuable as revealing contrasts, not only in faiths, bnt in _ the confidence with whiCh different kinds *of faith. are held. Here is what Cardinal Gibbons has to say on Roman Catholicism :—" She has only deep sorrow and abundant tears for the dissensions of Christendom, knowing well that they are the chief cause of the persecutions it undergoes, the delay of its triumph over the hearts and anis of men, and the rejoicings of its eternal enemies that at last they have fixed the limits of its influence and marked the time of its downfall and ruin." Again, this is what Mr. Frederic Harrison anticipates of Positivism :—" Religion so reconstituted will lose much of its rapturous and ecstatic character. It will gain in solidity, constancy, and breadth. Instead of being a thing of transcendental hopes and fears, stimulated on Sundays and occasional moments, but laid aside, if not doubted, for the rest of man's active time, religion will be a body of scientific convictions, poetic emotions, and moral habits, in close relation with all our thoughts, acts, and feelings, and naturally applying to everything we do or desire or think."
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