The Reviews Reviewed. 



THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. 



The political interest is dominant in the July number. 

 Several of the chief articles have been noticed 

 separately. 



THE STATE AS LANDOWNER. 



Mr. Ellis \V. Davies, M.P., discusses the proposals of 

 the Departmental Committee on the position of tenant- 

 farmers in England and Wales. He points out that 

 though England is commonly assumed to be a country 

 of large farms, as a fact two-thirds of the holdings in 

 England and Wales do not exceed fifteen acres. To 

 meet the difficulties of the tenant-farmer two remedies 

 were suggested— the granting of loans to turn tenants 

 into owners ; the other was the acquisition of landed 

 estates by the State. It was found that tenant-farmers 

 do not, .save as a last resort, desire to acquire their 

 farms. State ownership was recommended by the 

 majority of the Committee. The State as owner can 

 fix its own rents, and can have regard not to the 

 market value of the land, but to its capacity to afford 

 the cultivator a living under fair conditions. The 

 inevitable tendency of the subdivision of land is to 

 raise rents. 



CATASTROPHES IN NATURE, AND FAITH. 



The wreck of the Tttaiiic leads the Rev. Robert 

 Christie to discuss the compatibility of highly sinister 

 contingencies with faith in God. After arguing that 

 contingency in Nature is a condition of moral freedom, 

 and therefore of moral development, he concludes :— 



Even with our limited wisdom, can we say that even our worst 

 physical evils have no compensation ? Is the heroism which 

 they have inwrought into the spirit of man no gain? The 

 captain ami crew of the sinking ship, for example, who slay at 

 their posts till the last boatful has disengaged itself, and then, 

 in Frederick Robertson's langu.ige, "go down into the m!>jcs'.y 

 of darkness crushed but not subdued :'' do they not become for 

 ever an informing, uplifting presence in the human heart ! So 

 far, then, our conclusion must be this. Our Christian faith that 

 God is love would not lead us to expect Nature to be so very 

 different from what science reveals it to be. \Yc should expect 

 it to be terrible, beautiful, stupendous, but in no sense a cosmos 

 finished and complete ; rather a transitory phase in the develop- 

 ment of the divine purpose, for the perfection and redemption 

 of immortal spirits. On the whole, this is what Nature seems 

 to be. At its worst, it ha» been the mighty anvil of the human 

 race, on which m.an's successive generations are battered " with 

 the shocks of doom to shape and use." 



DR. ADI-ER'S successor. 



" Aronidcs " discusses the problem before .\nglo- 

 Jcwrv caused by the death of Dr. Adler. There is great 

 uneasiness amongst the f|uarter of a million Jews in 

 the United Kingdom. They arc afraid of " Reform," 

 which in the United States has produced forms of 

 ludaism indistinguishable from Christianity. Vet " the 

 blunt truth is that cerUin Jews are tired of Judaism." 



Twenty years more may see great changes ; but at 

 present the writer thinks a continuance of the old 

 regime, with certain administrative modifications, is 

 the only safe course to pursue. The candidates selected 

 to succeed Dr. Adler are five in number :— Dr. Joseph 

 Abrahams, of Melbourne ; Dr. Moses Gaster, the Chief 

 Rabbi of the small Spanish and Portuguese community 

 in England ; Dr. Hermann Gollancz, of the Bayswater 

 Svnagogue ; Dr. Joseph Hertz, of New York ; and 

 Dr. Moses Hyamson, President of the Ecclesiastical 

 Court. 



SWEDENBORG'S ANTICir.\TIONS. 



Sir W. F. Barrett describes the Swedish savant-seer, 

 and notes how many of his great scientific ideas have 

 been adopted by modern science. Towards his con- 

 clusions on the spiritual significance of Nature 

 enlightened Christian thought is, the writer thinks, 

 at the present time assuredly tending : — 



We tind Swedenborg anticipating teUfathy, that is the trans- 

 mission of ideas from one mind to another independently of the 

 known channels of sense. He tells us that whilst angels can 

 iind do speak audibly to each other, " it is one of the wonders 

 of the other life that the thoughts and affjctions of men and 

 angels are known to one another, so much so that no one needs 

 to ask another what he thinks" ; and .igain, " in the other life 

 hearts speak, and not lips." And again, " the speech of spirits 

 among themselves is not one of words but of ideas, such as are 

 those of human thought without the words, and therefore it is 

 the universal of all languages." 



OTHER ARTICLES. 



Mr. Joseph King, M.P., expounds and supports the 

 Franchise Bill, and urges that it should pass into law 

 this Session. The differences amongst supporters of 

 women's suffrage, he says, endanger not so much the 

 Bill as the inclusion of women. Mr. Collison-Morley 

 writes on D'Annunzio as a national poet, and declares 

 that the war has drawn the nation together as nothing 

 else has done since the Union, and has found in 

 D'Annunzio a singer well worthy of the occasion. Mr. 

 Reginald D'Arcy Irvine defends the French Legion 

 from the charges made against it, chiefly in German 

 quarters. He shows that ^o per cent, of its members 

 are French, and onlv from 20 to 15 per cent. German. 

 Two-thirds of the officers are taken from the French 

 regiments. 'I'herc is keen competition among them tp 

 get to the Legion, which is considered a crack regiment. 

 Dr. Dillon expresses the surprise which has been caused 

 bv the Catholic victories in the Belgian elections. He 

 savs that under clerical domination non-clerical 

 schools have dropped from 4.7!^7 to 4/^84, whc-rcas the 

 clerical schools have risen from 10 to 2,go6. Ihe 

 struggle will now be for universal, equal, and dircvt 

 suffrage. At present there arc 128.942 electors who 

 have more than one vote, and 193-^05 who possess but 

 a single vote. 



