ARTICLE XII.

NOTICES OF RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

A HISTORY OF THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE WITH THEOLOGY IN CHRISTENDOM. By ANDREW DICKSON WHITE, LL.D. (Yales, L. H. D. (Columbia), Ph.D. (Jena), late President and Professor of History at Cornell University. In two volumes. Pp. xxiii, 415, xiii, 474. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1896. $2.50 each.

President Andrew D. White enjoys the rather unique distinction of be ing at once a scholar, an educator, a man of the world, a dipiomat, and a publicist. His distinguished services in these various designations entitle all that he writes to careful attention with the presumption in his favor that what he writes is both useful and accurate. So it is at least with the two handsome volumes which bear the title "A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom." And it must be admitted that a more full and careful collation of a mass of curious and interesting information on the subject does not exist, so far as we are aware. A large part of these volumes was published, possibly all of the material was so published, in the Popular Science Monthly, and has now been gathered together in its final form.

It would be impossible here to enter into a detailed discussion of the various questions which Professor White passes in review. For that the book itself must be studied and carefully examined. Its character is, however, well illustrated by the headings of the various chapters, of which we give a few examples. These are, "From Creation to Evolution," "From 'Signs and Wonders' to Law in the Heavens," "From Genesis to Geology," "From Miracles to Medicine," "From 'Demoniacal Possession' to Insanity," "From Leviticus to Political Economy," "From the Divine Oracles to the Higher Criticism," etc. There are others equally suggestive, and the point of view is accurately foreshadowed in the titles of the chapters.

The title of this work is poorly chosen. For the "warfare" here depicted is no more a warfare between science and theology than it is a warfare between science and other science. In fact, it is much more a conflict between the various existing scientific theories prevailing at a given time, than, as it would seem from this title, a warfare exclusively or even distinctively between science and theology. It is precisely by such misleading and utterly false titles as this that so much damage is done, not merely in confirming the ignorant and the hidebound conserv

atives in their ignorance, but also in making enlightened and thoughtful men shrink from a form of statement which seems destructive of all rational and careful advance. To be sure, Dr. White does not share in the belief that the power and authority of the Scriptures have been shaken, and it is to be noted that he calls it a "warfare" as between science and theology, rather than between science and the Bible. But the damage done by this style of campaigning is no less real, though its results are sound, and the comparisons which it yields are fruitful and suggestive. Moreover, the title is itself a scientific error, in that it seems to suggest that a scientific theology is impossible, and he makes no reservations throughout these volumes that would indicate his idea of a possible reconstruction of theology which would really entitle it to strictly scientific consideration. This must be held to be a capital error in a scientific man like the late professor of history in Cornell University. The choice of a title, so important often as to determine the point of view for the casual examiner, is a matter which a careful man should ponder weli. This one certainly will be resented, as at least disrespectful to a large body of the most thoughtful and productive literary men in the world. We can imagine the mental disgust of a theologian like Dr. Everett of the Harvard Divinity School when he contemplates this title with all the inferences which it suggests.

Then, again, there is throughout the work a singular blunder which mars much of the reasoning, while of course all the facts remain. The decrees of churches and the edicts of assemblies and councils are generally considered the only representatives of theology. But there is nothing more striking in the history of the church than the fact that, while councils and assemblies continued their ponderous reiterations of certain forms of dogma and insisted that they were the final forms of religious truth, the real theology of the church was often something very different. The same thing may be seen in Europe to-day, where the decrees of the Council of Trent still stand authoritatively binding, but where the educated, advanced professors of the Roman Catholic Church teach the modern methods of investigation and give substantially all the modern results. One thinks of Dr. Theodor Zahn in this connection, and his magnificent "History of the New Testament Canon," of St. George Mivart and his "Happiness in Hell," a work which is on the Index, to be sure, while its author reposes safely and unmolested within the ranks of the church. It is just here that the defect, so often found when other than theologically trained historians undertake to trace the development of religious thought, becomes glaringly apparent. There is something suggestive of the undergraduate in this form of reasoning about which is the dominant and effective theology of a given period. It certainly has nothing to entitle it to scientific interest or respect.

The same things appear when we note, as we do throughout, that the impression is generally given that "science" is always a unit for the new

idea for which it is striving, and the book seems also to give the impression that in no cases were the theologians the initiators of the reforms in thought, which discoveries of one kind and another implied. Now by simply comparing the "science" of the earlier chapters with the “science" of the later chapters, one is impressed with the fact that science has been about as slow in evolving as theology. Having less standing in the earlier stages of man's development, it had less to alter with the advent of new views, and so could or should have made the changes more readily and with less noise. But such is not the case. Science has in no age been a unit as it is not a unit to-day. And the internal strifes of the scientists have not been less virulent or persistent than those of the theologians. If they did not so often produce martyrdoms, it was simply because they did not have the power to inflict them. Simply this and for no other reason. The unity of science on any point, whether medicine, or astronomy, or geology, or any other branch of scientific inquiry is, strictly speaking, absurd. Yet this book appears to give the impression throughout that here was one continuous struggle, with all the scientists on the one side, and all the theologians on the other, and all the time. It is absurd, of course, and to this extent again the value of the book is seriously impaired.

Still again, we note another curious error in a work which has so notaable a task as the one which President White sets himself to accomplish. It strikes a reader who has been made modest by having seen presumption and vanity so often punctured, that Professor White has too much knowledge upon certain matters which are as yet open questions. If we at all understand the drift of thought among psychologists and other students of mental phenomena, we are led to believe that no one of them who stands in the first rank would venture to take the dogmatic positions about medicine and insanity, hysteria and other kindred subjects, that our author does. He apparently has no doubt that the magic and chemistry and the like are all settled. In fact, many of the phenomena heretofore classified as "magic" and "occult" science are beginning to receive new attention and interpretation. One recalls Professor James's catholic-spirited words on this matter in his endeavor to keep his mind open to all new light upon these questions. So also the accidental character of genuine discoveries is never alluded to, though this is of first importance. Professor Trowbridge's accidental confirmation of the Roentgen ray discovery, by the choice of a certain glass tube, out of thirty-eight or more in his laboratory at Cambridge, when afterward no one of the thirty-seven remaining would yield the same results, illustrates the point. Much of the scientific knowledge of the world has not been the result of rational effort so much as of accident-providential accident, as some of us still believe -but none the less apart from the thought or expectation of the experimenter.

We suppose that this review will be to our author another instance of

what he calls an attempt to "break the force" of the history of which he is the author. Far from it! We have caught the spirit of the age too well for that, and then it is entirely unnecessary. President White's book is itself an echo of a bygone time when there was eternal conflict, and when every day or two somebody was shaking the ark of God, and some scientist was making a new heaven and a new earth. That time is gone and gone forever. Happily, too, and this book really comes like one of those old spooks of a former time to tell us that we used to be afraid. It will not discredit theology, for theology has had the recuper. ative power in modern times to clarify itself, and shake off the encrustations of mediævalism, and come into the sunlight of truth wheresoever it might lead. It will not exalt science, because we have learned that to say a thing is "scientific" is merely to say that it represents the more or less carefully collated results of the labors of a single man or a class of men. No: we have learned better than all this; for we have seen that progress is the law of the human mind, and that the freedom and anxiety to know, in freedom, what is true, and what we can know, and what we may become, will themselves be the constant corrective of what is false or fictitious. President White's book is a very interesting and useful collection of data which some day will be more scientifically and properly used, and then will give a great deal of light. As an argument for an implied thesis it is nil; its encyclopædic worth is very great.

A. A. BERLE.

THE NEWER RELIGIOUS THINKING. BY DAVID NELSON BEACH. 227. Boston: Little, Brown & Co. $1.25.

Pp.

Mr. Beach is the energetic and consecrated pastor of the Plymouth Church, in Minneapolis, Minn., and this volume is made up of a halfdozen sermons substantially as they were preached to his former congregation in Cambridge, Mass., on successive Sunday evenings. There is a synopsis attached to each sermon, and at the end of the volume are some notes which make somewhat clearer occasionally the meaning than the body of the sermons themselves.

There is an atmosphere in this book which is healthy to breathe, giv ing, as it does, the promise and the uplift of a high-minded and thoroughly spiritual man dealing with a subject which can properly be considered in no other spirit. Ostensibly the setting forth of a particular position in theology, the author soon forgets that he is a theologian, and becomes a preacher of spiritual things. The sermons themselves are really the best evidence of what the "newer religious thinking" is, inasmuch as they have that fervent appeal for righteousness, half intellectual, half mystical, and yet always loyal to the Lord Jesus, and endeavoring with a literally fearful earnestness, to bring man to Him in life and love and service.

Theologically the "newer religious thinking" is just what it appears to be in the book before us, a vague mass of generalizations, caring little

apparently for clearness, and being more an appeal to the life and religious consciousness than to the historical sources under the guidance of severe logical consequence. And yet this must not be reckoned an adverse criticism, since it is exactly this vague, living, pulsating life which Mr. Beach seeks to catch and portray. Its watchword is "freedom," and its undercurrent is "consecration." No one can read this volume without being stirred by the superb earnestness of the man, and feel that there is in the thought which he endeavors to explain a mighty movement which, directed and held to the plow of thorough evangelical truth, will make deep furrows in the field of Christian life and enterprise. The spirit is essentially Greek in its joyousness and hopeful intercommunion with divine things, and yet one feels here and there the deep and forceful thrill of the Hebraic righteousness stalking through the lines. It is the highest commendation of the book to say that it has the feeling of the late Phillips Brooks about it in a very marked degree, and seems to present exactly that type of catholicity and evangelical fidelity to Christ as Saviour.

From all this it must be clear that this volume cannot be subjected to the same tests of critical judgment that one would give to a theological work. This is the production of a preacher and a poet and a man among men. It has the breezy, interesting, colloquial tone that makes some parts of Chrysostom's sermons so fascinating. It has the spirit of love and anxiety for truth. If it has a defect in this direction, it is that this anxiety is too frequently apparent in the author's fear of being misunderstood. But he need not fear! Whoever reads the book will lay it down, and seek the open air, and feel that he has been led to a mount of vision; that God is nearer, and man is dearer, and that the whole earth has to the open heart and the receptive mind a message of love and hope for every man. To the minister who is jaded by his daily routine and is longing for a fresh breath and an uplift, we commend Mr. Beach's little book. It is happily made up typographically and neatly bound.

A. A. BERLE.

THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF IMMORTALITY. BY STEWART D. F. SALMOND, M. A., D. D., Professor of Theology, Free Church College, Aberdeen. Pp. ix, 703. New York: Imported by Charles Scribner's Sons. 1896. $5.00 net.

This volume is the outgrowth of the author's "Cunningham Lectures” delivered in Edinburgh in 1895, and is altogether the most readable, thorough, and satisfactory discussion of the Christian doctrine of immortality which has ever been written. The six general divisions of the subject treated are: "The Ethnic Preparation"; "The Old Testament Preparation"; "Christ's Teaching"; "The General Apostolic Doctrine"; "The Pauline Doctrine"; "Conclusions." Under the last division there is a very thorough treatment of "The Contribution of Christianity to the Hope of Immortality"; "Doctrines of Annihilation and Conditional Im