Review of Bevieai, Vdl06. 



Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



WHAT THINK VE OF CHRIST? 



Sir Olh'Er Lodge s Answer. 

 In the Hibbcrt Journal tor April there is a very 

 noteworthy article by Sir Oliver Lodge on " The 

 Divine Element in Christianity.' It is a clear and 

 explicit answer to the challenge which is addressed 

 to every man. It will horrify many; it will bring a 

 welcome ray of light to others. For his faith in the 

 Divinity of Christ demands as a foundation a denial 

 of what manv regard as the fundamentals of the 

 Christian creed. In Sir Oliver Lodge's conception 

 of the Divinity' of Christ it is es-sential that He 

 should not have been miraculously conceived, that 

 He should not have been miraculously resurrected, 

 and that He should not have ascended up into 

 heaven. Instead of being a man unique, excep- 

 tional, apart, the whole significance of the Incarnation 

 lies in what Sir Oliver Lodge calls the ununiqueness 

 of His ordinary humanity. I do not take it that Sir 

 Oliver Lodge denies the possibility of the concep- 

 tion by the Virgin or of the resurrection or of the 

 ascension. He merely maintains that, if such 

 things happened in the case of Christ, they are pos- 

 sibilities latent in humanity, and may yet become 

 the common experience of mankind. Sir Oliver 

 Lodge says : — 



The exceptional glorification of his body i3 a pious heresy 

 — .% heresy which miss&s the truth lying open to our eyes. 

 His humanity is to be recognised as real and ordinary and 

 thorough and complete ; not in middle life alone, but at 

 birth and at death and after death. Whatever happened 

 to him may happen to any one of us. provided we attain 

 the appropriate altitude; an altitude which, whether within 

 our individual reach or not, is assuredly within reach of 

 humanity, 



SIX KINDS OF CHRISTIANITT AXD OXE MOEE. 



Sir Oliver Lodge describes six kinds of Chris- 

 tianity, and then adds his own. The first is the 

 Evangelical or Pauline; the second the Sacerdotal, 

 which claims to have Peter as its patron saint ; the 

 third is the practical school, with James as its law- 

 giver ; the fourth the mystical or emotional, asso- 

 ciated with St John ; the fifth the Christianitv of 

 M. Pobiedonostseff, which he calls " governing or 

 hierarchical Christianity," and which he regards as 

 the special offspring of the Evil One: the sixth is 

 the Christianity of Jesus of Nazareth. To these six 

 Sir Oliver Lodge adds his own, which, he claims, 

 embodies the essential truth of all pagan and of all 

 other religions. That sixth form of Christianity is 

 the pantheistic, which recognises Christ as Di\'ine, 

 because it sees in Him the highest point yet reached 

 of the manifestation of the God who is immanent 

 in all things. The Incarnation is the intensification 

 of the doctrine of Immanence. 



THB ESSENTIAL ELEMENT OF CHEISTIANnTY. 



Sir Oliver Lodge inclines to the belief that the 

 kind of religion taught and intended by Jesus Him- 

 self was a blend of numbers one and three, or a 

 Paul-James mixture. The worship of God as a 

 spirit and the ser\'ice of man as a brother are the 

 warp and 'woof of the pure Christian faith, but its 

 fundamental substratum lies in the conception of a 

 human God, a crucified God, not apart from the 

 universe, but immanent in every part of it revealed 

 in the Incarnation. Evolution is the emerging of 

 God in and through matter. Man is the highest 

 point reached, and Jesus the loftiest peak of hu- 

 manity. WTiat He reached we may all hereafter 

 attain. In Sir Oliver Lodge's eyes the whole value 

 of Christianity Hes in the denial of the supernormal 

 difi'erence between Christ and the ordinary man. 

 Usually theologians level Jesus up to the Infinite. 

 Sir Oliver Lodge levels the Infinite down to man, 

 Jesus is the mean term, the meeting point at which 

 the nature of one and the possibilities of the other 

 are most fully revealed, 



"THE INCARNATE SPIRIT OF HrMANirY." 



What is the God whom Christ revealed ? It is 

 '■ the incarnate spirit of humanity, or rather the 

 incarnate spirit of humanity is recognised as a real 

 intrinsic part of God," In the life blood of Chris- 

 tianity this is the most vital element, and it is the 

 root fact underlying the superstitions of idolatry 

 and all varieties of anthropomorphism. Sir Oliver 

 Lodge says : — 



The Christian idea of God is not that of a being outside 

 the universe, above its struggles and a4vances. looking on 

 and taking no part in tlie process, iolely exalted, beneficent, 

 self-determined and complete: no, it is also that of a 

 God who loves, who yearns, who stiffers. who keenly 

 laments the rebellious and misguided activity of the free 

 agenta brought into being by Himself as part of Himself, 

 who enters into the storm and conflict, and is subject to 

 conditions as the Soul of it all ; conditions not artificial 

 and transitory, but inherent in the process of producing 

 free and conscious beings, and essential to the full self- 

 development even of Deity. It is a marvellous and be- 

 wildering thought, but whatever its value, and whether 

 it be an nltimate revelation or not, it is the revelation of 

 Christ. 



This may seem heretical to many. Sir Oliver 

 Lodge consoles himself by reflecting that it certainly 

 seemed blasphemous to the contemporaries of 

 Christ, but " this was the idea He grasped during 

 those forty days of solitary communion, and never 

 subsequently let go." 



In Macmillan's for February- Mr. H. L. Puxley 

 enumerates the horrors that spring from contamina- 

 tion of milk, either by ordinary dirt or by preserva- 

 tives, and insists that cleanliness is all that is needed 

 to ensure a healthy milk supply. 



