LITERARY NOTICES. 



847 



LITERARY NOTICES. 



Natural Religion. By the author of 

 u Ecce Homo."' Boston: Roberts Broth- 

 ers. Pp. 251. Price, $1.25. 



This little book, by Professor J. R. See- 

 ley, of the Cambridge University (England), 

 deserves the most serious consideration on 

 the part of all who care for the higher 

 questions of modern controversy. Some of 

 its chapters first appeared in " Macmillan's 

 Magazine," and were reprinted in the 

 "Monthly," while the author's name was 

 unknown. But they were evidently by a 

 man of power, insight, independence, and 

 great catholicity of spirit ; and they handled 

 the exciting and even the exasperating 

 questions of the time, not only with a strik- 

 ing originality, but with a forecast of new 

 agreements most encouraging to all who 

 are concerned about the religious progress 

 of mankind. The great distinctions and 

 differences over which people are quarrel- 

 ing and disputing in the religious and anti- 

 religious world Professor Seeley does not 

 regard as finalities. Under severe critical 

 examination, they diminish and are found 

 to have no justification in the truth of 

 things. The work is one of the most com- 

 posing and harmonizing that has appeared 

 in this age. That the writer deals with the 

 most radical problems of religious thought 

 is shown in the titles of his chapters. In 

 Part I the subjects treated are: (1) "God 

 in Nature," (2) " The Abuse of the Word 

 Atheism," (3) The words "Theology and 

 Religion," (4) "The Three Kinds of Re- 

 ligion," (5) " Natural Religion in Practice," 

 while in Part IT the questions discussed 

 are : (1) " Religion and the World," (2) " Re- 

 ligion and Culture," (3) " Natural Christian- 

 ity," (4) " Natural Religion and the State," 

 (5) " Natural Religion and the Church." 



Holding this book to be of unusual im- 

 portance, we are desirous of conveying to 

 our readers a fuller account of it than we 

 can p'repare, or are in the habit of allowing 

 in these pages, and we therefore reprint 

 the review of it which appeared in the Lon- 

 don " Athenaeum " of July 29th : 



If it be the function of genius to interpret 

 the age to itself, this is a work of genius. It 

 gives articulate expression to the higher striv- 

 ings of the time. It pts plainly the problem 

 of these latter days, and so far contributes to 



its solution ; a positive solution it scarcely 

 claims to supply. No such important contri- 

 bution to the question of the time has been 

 published in England since the appearance, in 

 1866, of "Ecce Homo." That the same man 

 should have written both books, that none but 

 himself can be his parallel, argues a unique 

 order of mind. He is a teacher whose words it 

 is well to listen to. His words are wise but sad; 

 it has not been given him to fire them with faith, 

 but only to light them with reason. His readers 

 may at least thank him for the intellectual illu- 

 mination, if they can not owe him gratitude for 

 any added fervor. 



The object of this book, one might say with 

 logical precision, is to extend the connotation 

 of the term "religion." It groups together all 

 the great idealisms art, science, culture and 

 claims that these are natural religion. Thus, ac- 

 cording to this author, everything that takes us 

 beyond and above our selfish aims is religion. 

 The opposition between science and theology 

 becomes vain and of no effect: both are forms of 

 religion. The indifference of art for the conven- 

 tions is but another form of the struggle against 

 worldliness, and here again art and religion join 

 hands. " Wer Wissenschaft und Kunst beeitzt," 

 said Goethe, and our author repeats the saying 

 with approval, " hat auch Religion." Professor 

 Huxley and Mr. Burne Jones will be somewhat 

 surprised to find themselves regarded as great 

 lights in the religious world. The old triad of 

 ideals the good, the true, and the beautiful- 

 are classed by this observer under the one genus 

 of religion. 



Turning to the practical side of the book, we 

 have the demand that the Church should learn 

 the error of her ways in not recognizing her 

 two companions in the struggle against the 

 lower life, and should renounce the parts of her 

 doctrine that conflict with their ideals. The 

 idea of development must be applied to religion 

 as to everything else, and the conception of 

 prophecy be revived in the modern form of a 

 philosophy of history. Let the cultured classes 

 teach culture, which is religion, to the lower 

 classes, who will otherwise lapse into Nihilism; 

 and let the cultured nations of Christendom 

 spread the light of religion till one great bond 

 of civilization span the earth. Above all. if we 

 wish to master the art of life, let us study the 

 experiments that have been made by time in the 

 field of history, and learn the lessons of ' philos- 

 ophy teaching by example." 



Such, in main outline, are the theorems and 

 problems of this brilliant book. The boldness 

 of the eirenicon can not but strike every reader; 

 but the age is bold in these matters, and this 

 quality is only another mark of the timeliness 

 of the book. In looking at its practicability, 

 however, a critic has to remember that, while it 

 takes two parties to make a quarrel, it also re- 

 quires two to patch one up. Our author is want- 

 ing in one of the qualities of the peace-maker 

 that are almost necessary for the due perform- 

 ance of his office : he lacks sympathy with one 

 of the sides. He is entirely on the side opposed 



