read. But he was no "cloistered scholar." His learning had been severely tested. For a dozen or more years he was the rector of a very large parish in a busy manufacturing city of New England where he gained a deserved reputation as preacher and citizen. This contact with many minds served him well in later years. His knowledge was tried out; how thoroughly, the pages of this volume abundantly testify. For twenty years he ably filled the Chair of Apologetics, first at Philadelphia and later at Alexandria. The experience of the class room still further tested his knowledge. It is out of the ripened experience of a well-filled mind that this book on apologetic theism comes. It may lack the profundity of Flint and the philosophic breadth of Royce, but Dr. Micou's treatment of his chosen theme has distinct value and deserves, as it certainly will receive, a careful reading.

In the brief limits of a review an exhaustive examination of its contents is out of the question, though the temptation is strong to take up one and another of its chapters and deal with it in extenso. We must be content with the bare intimation of its general subject compressed in a sentence or two.

This volume was designed to be the Introduction to a series of Studies which should embody the matured thought in one and another of the departments of Theology he had made peculiarly his own. This book has a pathetic interest as but "the beginning of an unfinished task,' whose excellence increases our sorrow at his untimely death. For what he had in mind, Dr. Micou has laid deep and strong foundations. Mr. Balfour, in his Foundations of Belief, declares "The decisive battles of theology are fought beyond the frontiers." On this principle Dr. Micou properly begins with the two essentials for any abiding faith, the personality of God and the personality of man. These he rightly asserts are the primary postulates of theology, intuitions, "without which there can be no religion." The reading of the book, to be intelligent, may well begin with the study of the Note A of the Appendix, a wonderfully lucid treatment of Postulates and Intuitions. From this premise he proceeds to a thorough and systematic treatment, first of the Idea of God, with its denials; and then of the Spiritual Idea of man and the attempts to negative it. Each of these, while incapable of mathematical demonstration, he insists are supreme ideas of reason, confirmed as necessities of thought by their rationality and universality." From this follows the scientific method of a sound theistic study, which must be three-fold: "Observation, the historic and scientific; Reasoning, the philosophical; Intuition, the spiritual." This is the basis of his

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analysis and indicates the general division of the study. In the consideration of the successive themes one is struck with an all too rare combination of profound reverence and intellectual courage. Dr. Micou really believes in the reason of man; of it he is never afraid; but he is never its slave. This makes his method so singularly appealing. His is the method of the Greek Church Fathers with their appeal made to the spiritual nature of man with the underlying conviction of the adaptability of the human soul for direct human knowledge. But the witness of the reason in its final summing up clearly is this, the unequivocal position of our author, "Christianity is essentially the response of the spirit in faith and self-surrender to the revelation of God in Christ, and not the conclusion of any process of reasoning or of intellectual analysis."

BENJAMIN S. SANDERSON.

Conduct and the Supernatural: By Lionel Spencer Thornton. Longmans, Green & Company, 1915.

The old question whether the Gospel can justify its dogmatic claim has given place in these latter days to a more searching criticism on the part of unbelief. Not only are historic foundations at stake, but the very ideals of Christianity, its rule of conduct and its standard of goodness, are challenged. The attack has shifted from theoretical to practical grounds and merely gained in cogency, and the old method of defense, as it appears in traditional apologetics, seems singularly flat and ineffective. The merit of Mr. Thornton's book lies largely in a clear appreciation of this fact. The author is concerned to establish the validity of the life revealed in Jesus Christ as the only solution of the problem of human conduct. Thus his appeal is of immediate and pressing interest, and one turns eagerly to his argument as germane to all that is of intimate importance to society as well as to the individual.

The old sequence of method holds, the first half of the book is concerned chiefly with criticism, the latter part alone is constructive. But whereas often the critical portion of such treatises is strong and clear, and one is destined to disappointment when the author begins to build on the foundation which he has prepared, the exact reverse is true in the present instance. Nietzsche, John Davidson, Shaw, Wells and H. S. Chamberlain are successively passed in review as representative of the attempt to evolve a working philosophy of life on a purely naturalistic basis. The treatment of Nietzsche is more sympathetic than that accorded to the others in the list; indeed an underlying ele

ment of agreement with the Christian ideal, when this ideal is rightly understood, is discovered in the doctrine of this avowedly embittered opponent. This is what might have been expected in a writer of Mr. Thornton's affiliations, and is probably a more just and discerning judgment than the unqualified condemnation which is commonly meted out by those who have but a superficial knowledge of that strange and erratic genius. We would commend a telling quotation from "Thus spake Zarathustra," on page 279 of the present volume, to all ease-loving Christians who are enamoured of the ways of compromise.

But in trying to extract a logical system of ethics from the brilliant and paradoxical utterances of Mr. Shaw and H. G. Wells one is on somewhat uncertain ground. Doubtless a case is made out against the theory propounded. But one feels that the subtle appeal of these writers to the popular mind is not adequately met, that the real underlying strength of their argument is evaded. The fact is that they do not lend themselves to methodical refutation, and the laborious proof that they fail to furnish an adequate moral system in place of the Christian scheme which they reject is somewhat like wasted energy.

When, however, the argument passes from this negative phase to direct exposition of the main thesis of the book we get more effective results. There is no coquetting with semi-rationalistic concessions,no dividing of the ground between "natural" and "revealed ” in the sphere of morals. To the Christian the centre must needs be Christ, and the whole of life is irradiated by the truth which He has revealed. The centre of motive is shifted from self to Christ, and thus the whole moral ideal is grounded not in individual or social well-being but in Heaven, that is in God and the life of the soul as it is hidden with Christ in God. The key-note of conduct is found in the Pauline phrase "in Christ (èv Xpior.) The author makes no apology or explanation for his use of the word "supernatural." All the fine verbal byplay to which we have grown used, by which the word is emptied of all that might offend, is conspicuously absent. Man is conscious of sin, not merely of shortcoming and imperfection. If he is to lead the good life he needs not only knowledge of the good but power from outside himself whereby he may accomplish it. And this power comes from incorporation in the living Christ, whereby his whole orientation is changed. He no longer lives for self but for Christ, other-worldliness is not a dream of the future but a present experience, his "citizenship is in Heaven."

With all its solid value it must be admitted that the book is hardly likely to convince those who are not already assured of the substantial

truth of the Christian position. Its style is somewhat hard and lacking in persuasiveness. But as teaching Christians where their true strength lies, namely in a bold assertion of the unique quality of the Christian claim and a refusal to soften down the hard sayings of the Gospel in the hope of conciliating waverers, the book is of high value and significance. One wonders a little, however, that the author misses the evident opportunity to emphasize the corollary of his argument, that when Christians live the supernatural life, then and not till then will the skeptic be convinced.

WILFORD L. ROBBINS.

The Will to Freedom, or The Gospel of Nietzsche and the Gospel of Christ. By John Neville Figgis, D.D., Litt.D. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1917. $1.50.

These lectures were delivered by Dr. Figgis at Lake Forest College on the Bross Foundation in May, 1915. Since then the text has been rewritten and many notes have been added. Dr. Figgis wishes it to be understood that his interest in Nietzsche is not due to the war, and does not date from 1914. He has not touched upon the question as to what extent Nietzsche may be held responsible for the ruling ideas of modern Germany. The fact that he was lecturing in a neutral country was a sufficient reason for not entering upon any such discussion. The reader however is free to draw his own inferences; and one need not read far to discover that Nietzsche's teaching contains many ideas with which we have of late become distressingly familiar. These lectures therefore are nothing if not seasonable.

This is just the book we have long desired. Nietzsche's attack on Christian morality has undoubtedly had an undermining influence in many souls; and it required a scholar of the learning and lucidity of Dr. Figgis to make a popular defense of the Christian system. Nietzsche's contention was that Judaism and Christianity were slave religions, and that they succeeded in making dominant in the world a slave system of morality. Both Jews and Christians have always been an impotent, decaying folk; and they have sought to obtain revenge upon their tyrannical masters by destroying the classic ideals of morality as exhibited in the strong men of antiquity, and substituting for them the virtues of the weak. Nietzsche said, "Morality is the idiosyncrasy of the decadent revenging themselves upon life." In his opinion all morality is decadence. Ascending life is ever pitiless and proud.

Dr. Figgis answers Nietzsche's criticism of Christianity by proving, in his most incisive manner, that much of Nietzsche's attack is due to a misconception of Christianity.

In the first place, Nietzsche confuses Christianity with the pessimism of Schopenhauer. It is true that both teach self-denial and asceticism; but the ultimate purpose of self-denial is different in the two systems. Schopenhauer, like the oriental pessimists, aimed at the annihilation of personality; while Christianity aims at its complete development. Nietzsche hated Christianity because he foolishly thought that it culminated in the destruction of the will to live. But our Lord said, "I am come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly."

In the second place, Nietzsche thought that Christianity was too soft in teaching pure altruism, and in carrying sympathy too far. The effect of such teaching he held would be to make material comfort the idol of civilization. Here again he entirely misconceived the Christian position. Christians are continually being blamed because they are callous to suffering, as for example when they refuse to condemn all war, and adhere strictly to monogamic marriage. Christianity in fact is a very strict and severe religion, and makes short shrift of sentimentality.

In the same manner Dr. Figgis deals with Nietzsche's attack on Christianity as hostile to culture, as paying special homage to the tame anaemic virtues, and as making all souls equal before God and thereby denying the aristocracy of character. Moreover Nietzsche thought he was attacking Christian morality, when he was really attacking the ethics of Kant and all others who would construct Christian moral codes. As Dr. Figgis well says, "Christianity is not a code, but a spirit. Love to God and to our neighbor is the principle. The ordinary rules of morals are merely formulae, which express the application of this principle under normal conditions. There are cases when they do not apply. That is the excuse for casuistry, which discusses all these cases on the edge."

Dr. Figgis however does not believe that Nietzsche was "only a Christian who had lost his way." He shows how many points Nietzsche had in common with Catholic Christianity; his mystical attitude toward life, his condemnation of pessimism, his recognition that man is in a bad plight and needs a change of nature, his idealization of heroism, and his use of suffering. Indeed Dr. Figgis is most generous in his appreciation of the many fine qualities of this misguided genius. But when all is said in Nietzsche's favour that can be said, the fact remains that his idea of redemption by the superman is fundamentally anti-Christian.