THE FREE REVIEW A Monthly Magazine EDITED BY G. ASTOR SINGER, M.A. Um VOL. VII OCTOBER, 1896, TO MARCH, 1897 LONDON SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & Co. LIMITED. THE FREE REVIEW OCTOBER 1, 1896 GLADSTONE THE THEOLOGIAN. I. It is an odd turn of destiny that brings up Mr. Gladstone as the expounder and defender of Butler. However complete be the logical failure of the Bishop, it is certain that he is the most comprehensive of Christian dialecticians; the most judicial in his manner and, save · for his vast assumptions, in his habit of mind; the least wordy and on the whole the most candid-seeming. In other words, he is almost the typical opposite of Mr. Gladstone as a religious reasoner. For while a just critic will always recognise in the latter a sincere concern for truth and righteousness, as he wants them to be, no one save his partisans has ever credited him with either the scientific manner or the scientific mind-the attributes which in any inquirer serve in advance to win a critical outsider's faith in his candour. And, indeed, it is probably the very difference in their spirits that brings such a disciple to such a master. To Mr. Gladstone, so long driven hither and thither by unforeseen gales of politics, painfully educated into something like rationalism in public action by the battle of life, and inwardly conscious of the value of a coherent method, there must be something sustaining and comforting i Butler's measured way of surveying the ground and laying the plan of battle between what men call belief and unbelief. There are always plenty of those who may be described as the perorative defenders of the faith. Much less numerous are they who have intelligence enough to see in part the rational force of any critical attack on their creed, and to frame a tolerably reasonable answer. But few indeed are they who can No. 1, VOL. 7. B |