and child. But the very fact that the two elements are inseparably related proves and rests on the consciousness that there is a unity which lies beyond the distinction. All our conscious life as individuals rests on or implies a consciousness that is universal. We cannot think, save on the presupposition of a thought or consciousness which is the unity of thought and being, or on which all individual thought and existence rest.

"Our conscious life as individuals rests on or implies a consciousness that is universal." "We might even say that, strictly speaking, it is not we that think, but the universal reason that thinks in us." "A true solution can be reached only by apprehending the Divine and the Human, the Infinite and the Finite, as moments or members of an organic whole, in which both exist in their distinction and their unity." Such are some of the forms in which Dr. Caird states the relation of the human spirit to the Divine. This is not the place to consider the difficulties that have been raised regarding what we take to be the central principle of this work. A powerful and able book has been written by Professor Seth,1 in which he holds that this organic relation of the finite to the Infinite Spirit is fatal to both the personality of God and man. "Each self is a unique existence, which is perfectly. impervious, if I may so speak, to other selves." "The unity of things cannot be properly expressed by making it depend upon a unity of the self in all thinkers. So far from a principle of union in the sense desired, the self is in truth the very apex of separation and differentiation."

But a consideration of the chapters in the Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, in which Dr. Caird points out the utter inadequacy of formal logic to express the truth of the spiritual life, would probably weaken the force of some of Professor Seth's arguments. From the point of view of the logical understanding, matter and mind, and nature, man and God are isolated from each other, each in a hard, self-identical individuality, and must be regarded as independent entities existing side by side, or only outwardly and mechanically related to each other. We are compelled to rise above such a conception. "Religion is not the pantheistic identification of the finite spirit with the Infinite; on the contrary, it is in religion that the individuality of each human spirit reaches its intensest specification. But as no adequate conception of the individual human spirit can be formed apart from its relation to other finite spirits, so must any representation of the finite spirit be inadequate and incomplete apart from its relation to the Infinite." 2

That we have in this system of thought an absolutely adequate and final statement on the deepest of all problems-the relation of the human spirit to the Divine-no one who has considered the development of thought in the past will suppose. We shall await with lively interest the works we may look for both from Professor Edward Caird as well as Principal Caird, for both are Gifford Lecturers. But that we have already in the work we have 1 1 Hegelianism and Personality, pp. 216, 217.

Pp. 199, 200.

been considering some of the most precious and permanent contributions to philosophical and religious thought which this age has produced, we are sure. Many difficulties will remain, many unsolved problems will still be left, even to one who has absorbed and mastered the teaching of this profound book; but we are sure that no one can earnestly read it without rising the better for the perusal, that many old doubts will cease to perplex, and that God will seem more real, and personal, and near, and human life more Divine. All who read it with attention will easily understand the profound influence which the distinguished author has had upon susceptible minds.

THE BOOK CRITIC.

THE PROBLEM OF IMMORTALITY. By E. PETAVEL, D.D. With a Prefatory Letter by CHARLES SECRÉTAN. Translated from the French by Frederick Ash Freer. London: Elliot Stock. 1892.

DR. PETAVEL is known in England chiefly on account of his little book The Struggle for Eternal Life, which attracted some attention during the earlier days of the Conditional Immortality controversy. The present volume is a translation of the greater part of two volumes devoted to the exposition and defence of the Conditionalist hypothesis. It consists of twelve chapters and twenty-three Supplements, most of the Supplements dealing with side-issues or with matters of detail. It may be said at once that the author throws little fresh light upon the subject he discusses. Perhaps this was hardly to be expected after the elaborate and exhaustive treatise of Mr. Edward White, and the scholarly work of Prebendary Row on Future Retribution. Yet this work has its own place, and its own distinctive point of view. Mr. White as a teacher of a new doctrine was bound to explain and support his system on all sides. The title of his volume, Life in Christ, indicates that he is specially anxious that the positive aspects of his theory should have due prominence. Mr. Row takes for his subject the destiny of the finally impenitent. Dr. Petavel's chief care is to show that man is naturally mortal, and that therefore extinction of being is the ultimate doom of the lost. He writes with the din of controversy in his ears, and seems always conscious of the presence of his foes. One result of this mental attitude is that he turns in all possible directions for allies, and attaches immense importance to every vestige of agreement with his theories on the part of Christian and semi-Christian philosophers. Hence the volume is wearisomely overloaded with quotations, some not quite pertinent, and others merely the expression of individual opinion. We are troubled also with frequent repetitions, justifiable enough, perhaps, in a book designed for popular reading, but altogether out of place in a treatise specifically addressed to theologians by a theologian.

Nevertheless, despite all deductions, Dr. Petavel is an able polemic, a foemen worthy of the steel of the most doughty champion of "traditionary opinion." He argues with all the fervour of intense conviction. He possesses almost a German capacity for taking pains. He puts his case so as to make every point tell separately, and all to combine into a well-knit whole, and he misses nothing which can in any way serve his purpose. Having heard him, we may be sure that the last word has

been said in favour of the position he espouses. Nor is he unmindful of the relation of his hypothesis to the entire scheme of Christian doctrine. He boldly faces the changes and difficulties involved.

The main arguments relied upon are four. First, it is urged that the Conditionalist is the only theory as to Future Retribution that does not do violence to man's moral sense. Universalism, we are told, is incompatible with human freedom and responsibility. The doctrine of Eternal Punishment, it is said, exposes itself to fatal charges of injustice and cruelty, and, by postulating the permanence of evil, leads to Dualism, as Universalism issues in Pantheism. But Dr. Petavel completely overlooks that Conditionalism has its own peculiar difficulties of a similar sort. He does not perceive that the origin and present partially triumphant existence of evil raise questions of as great moral complexity as the permanence of evil. All are equally opposed to our à priori conceptions of what ought to be; and he takes scant notice of the recoil caused by the notion that creatures destined to cease to be are preserved, and their bodies raised from the grave, solely that they may suffer excruciating tortures before the inevitable end arrives. Second, we are warned that neither physical nor metaphysical science can demonstrate man's immortality, or, indeed, furnish any valid objection to the mortality of both body and soul. There is no need to dispute this, even though it be stated somewhat too strongly. The Bible assures us that Christ brought life and immortality to light by the Gospel, and this implies the failure of all human searching. But it is one thing to admit that physical and metaphysical science do not demonstrate; it is quite another to admit that they disprove. This obvious fact Dr. Petavel makes no allowance for. Third, it is pressed emphatically that death-the deprivation of life-necessarily denotes the deprivation of existence, inasmuch as the fundamental conception of life is existence. Put thus nakedly, the plea practically refutes itself. Because there can be no life without existence, it by no means follows that there can be no existence without life. To argue that life does not mean happiness, and death does not mean suffering, simply confuses the issue. The point is whether, in regard to the soul, life and good, death and evil, are not inseparably associated; whether there is no sense in which death is compatible with the continuance of consciousness; whether "life" and "death" must be limited to their narrowest significations; whether "dissolution" is not as true a synonym for "death as "extinction." Fourth, we are bidden to interpret "destroy," "perish," and other Biblical terms descriptive of the destiny of the ungodly, with rigid literalism. A theory that demands such an exegetical canon stands self-condemned from the first, as it can never be self-consistent. This book repeatedly refers to "hyperbole " and "metaphor" to explain the very terms employed by the Scriptures when speaking of Future Retribution. Until preliminary questions respecting primary and secondary sources are settled, Conditionalist appeals to "grammar and lexicon" and derivation of words are worse than useless, they are utterly misleading. We must first ascertain how grammar and lexicon and etymology are to be used.

Dr. Petavel is particularly indignant that the hypothesis of Conditional Immortality should be accused of Materialistic tendencies. Nevertheless, it does tend dangerously in that direction, though its Materialism is subtil and refined. At least, it turns the thought from moral and spiritual to ontological change. Supplement xxi. treats of "the specific divinity of Jesus Christ from the Conditionalist point of view." Christ the Saviour from sin as moral evil gives place to Christ the Saviour from extinction of being. Conversion is no longer primarily a change of heart, it becomes essentially the attainment of a power to exist for ever. In like manner, Baptism sets forth not death to sin and life to God, but deliverance from physical death and burial

as the deserved penalty of sin. And the Lord's Supper is no longer a symbol of feeding on Christ in our hearts by faith with thanksgiving, but the means whereby immortality of nature is sustained (see chap. vi.). On Conditionalist principles there is no escape from this terrible degradation of the Sacraments.

A great effort is made to show that the Fathers held Conditionalist principles. Doubtless some of them did. But, here as elsewhere, Dr. Petavel falls into the mistake of trying to prove too much. Often he ignores inconvenient evidence, or mentions it without allowing to it any weight. His treatment of the argumentum e silento borders upon absurdity. Because, for example, the Didache does not speak of the immortality of the soul or of eternal punishment, therefore its author, or authors, were Conditionalists! At such an assumption one can only smile. An almost identical error is committed with regard to modern writers. It is taken for granted that every man who believes that man is a contingent creature must accept the underlying principles of Conditionalism, just as though all creatures, qua creatures, were not contingent. Once more our author fails to distinguish between things that differ. God may have conferred upon His intelligent creation indefectible immortality, so far as immortality means permanent individual survival. Clearly Dr. Petavel has not proved his case. This is as far as we need go at present.

Mr. Freer's translation is nearly all that could be wished. His rendering of hymns and other poetry so catches the spirit and rhythm of the French that one wishes that he would do more work of the same kind.

J. ROBINSON GREGORY.

THE LEADING IDEAS OF THE GOSPELS. By WILLIAM ALEXANDER, D.D., D.C.L., Brasenose College, Oxford, Lord Bishop of Derry and Raphoe. Macmillan & Co. 1892.

THIS is a new edition of a work which was published twenty years ago; but it has been to so large an extent re-written that it is almost a new book. In 1870-71 the Bishop was Select Preacher at Oxford, and the substance of the dissertations in the volume before us was preached from the University pulpit. The sermons, as he then delivered them, were deeply coloured by the events of the time, especially by the disestablishment of the Irish Church, which he felt very keenly. The subsequent admission of laymen to the right of voting upon important doctrinal questions, and even of introducing the discussion of them, in the synods of the disestablished Church, filled him with alarm; and he took the opportunity of expressing his opinion on these and kindred subjects while discussing the characteristics of the Gospels in the University Church. All these polemical and controversial passages have been struck out, together with the purely hortatory portions, which (however necessary in a sermon) are somewhat out of place in a critical treatise. These omissions are compensated by important additions, especially in the case of the Third Gospel, in discussing which a new principle of division has been introduced, based upon the circumstances, training, and endowments of the Evangelist; and an examination of the alleged Ebionitism of St. Luke has been inserted. A pretty full synopsis of the contents of the volume and an index to the details add considerably to its usefulness. The writer acknowledges his obligations to three writers in particular, two of whom are well known to English readers; to Lange in his Life of Christ, to Bishop Wordsworth in his Commentary on the Gospels, and Riggenbach in his Life of the Lord Jesus.

The main thesis of the volume is to be found pp. 6-11, from which we take the following extract:

"In St. Matthew we have Christ's earthly existence as a life freely moulding itself in a NO. II.-VOL. II.-THE THINKER,

L

pre-designated form; in St. Mark as a strong life; in St. Luke as a tender life; in St. John as literally a Divine life, the life of God humanified, lived under human conditions, and to some extent limitations. In the first, we see Jesus as the Messiah; in the second, as the Son of God; in the third, as the Son of Man; in the fourth, as the God-Man. With St. Matthew, the chief factor is the conception of prophecy; with St. Mark, the conception of power; with St. Luke, the conception of beauty; with St. John, the conception of Divinity. In the first, the predominant elements are fulfilment and sacrifice; in the second, action and conquest; in the third, forgiveness and universal grace; in the fourth, idealism and dogma. St. Matthew will ever appeal most powerfully to the Old Testament scholar; St. Mark to the ecclesiastical organizer, to him who is attracted to the outward things of Christ; while St. Luke has a voice of charm for the imaginative and tender; and St. John supplies the chosen food of the mystic and of the sacramental instinct. . . . St. Matthew must always be our chief guide through the Hebrew porch of the Church. St. Mark's spirit is with those who have fitted outward symbols to the Church's organic life, as expressive of inward ideas. St. Luke has the largest part in the galleries of sacred art, in the utterances of sacred poets, in the austere joy of canticles and liturgies, with missionaries, with workers in hospitals, with those who are devoted to the service of poverty and the help of penitents. St. John has the largest share in the vast volumes of dogmatic theology" (pp. 10, 11).

The most valuable portion of the treatise is that which treats of the leading ideas of St. Luke's Gospel, to which the Bishop devotes nearly one-third of the whole work. The Third Gospel is treated under five heads. We are asked to consider what leading ideas the life of Jesus would be likely to suggest to such a man as St. Luke, who was (1) a Gentile convert, (2) a physician, (3) endowed with a sense of beauty. This analysis is then applied in detail to (4) the narrative of the Incarnation, and, in conclusion, we have a discussion of (5) St. Luke's view of the dangers of riches and the blessings of poverty, a view which is defended from the charge of Ebionitism. Bishop Alexander rightly considers that Luke was a Gentile, and was not one of the Seventy; but he labours (not very successfully) to show that he was one of the two disciples who walked with the risen Lord on the road to Emmaus. He thinks that in his preface St. Luke separates himself, not from all who were eye-witnesses, but only from those who were eye-witnesses from the beginning, and he asks how it is possible that a narrative characterized by such indescribable sweetness, fulness, and familiarity, "could have been written by any one but an eye-witness." This style of argument would prove that Luke was an eye-witness of all that is recorded in the first two chapters, and of a good deal more in the Third Gospel. That St. Luke obtained the narrative from one of the two disciples is probable enough. Why does not St. Luke here, as in the Acts, simply adopt the first person plural if he himself was present? And does not Luke xxiv. 21, 27, 32, show that both the disciples were Jews?

There are valuable remarks scattered up and down the volume, sometimes in the text and sometimes in the notes, of which the following may serve as specimens. "Sacred art," says the writer, "must awaken at the touch" of such a Gospel as that of St. Luke :

"There are good people who sometimes ask, Will nothing ensure us a régime of ugliness in public worship? Such a régime is, they think, mysteriously connected with purity of doctrine. It is safe from its uninteresting placidity. Above all, it is very cheap" (p. 143).

Again, in the last dissertation :-

"The Church has no theory of inspiration. Criticism is perpetually busy; it untwists every thread and fibre of the language of the Gospels. It seeks to read the mystery of their origin. But neither the recognition of Leading Ideas in the Evangelists, nor any other result of study, disturbs this result. The Gospels are Divine at least up to this point—that they present the Church sufficiently with the earthly life and teaching of her Master" (p. 289).

One criticism must be offered-a comment which the present writer has heard