REASONABLE FAITH

The Philosophical Bases of Theism. By G. Dawes Hicks, M.A., Litt.D. (Allen and Unwin. Ss. 6d.)

PROFESSOR DAWES Hicxs' Hibbert Lectures are designed by declaration for the general public, and not for specialists in

philosophy. They are particularly addressed to :

" the large number of persons who find themselves unable to accept the creeds of Christendom as they are familiarly presented and who are yet persuaded that the spiritual life is a reality, and that they largely owe their sense of its reality to the teaching of Christ and the Christian Church."

For these—and indeed we might add for many alert minds within the bounds of orthodoxy—the philosophic approach to religion has become a necessity. Only by its help can modern

man hope to correlate the various aspects of his complex experience ; • hence the statement in plain and untechnical terms of the case for theism from the point of view of pure thought is one of the most promising forms of apologetic. The eight lectures in this volume discuss man's place in Nature, the characteristics and meaning of his religious experi- ence, the cosmological and teleological arguments for the existence of God, values and the argument from ethics, and the respective claims of pantheism and theism. Unfortunately the problems of evil and suffering, which so deeply disturb the modern soul, are not dealt with ; nor is there any discussion of the relation between supra-sensible realities and their sensible expression, on which the whole case for doctrinal and institutional religion rests. Perhaps the most valuable feature of. the work is the fact that its quiet and reasoned argument leads up to a vigorous refutation of pantheism, alike on philo- sophic and on religious grounds ; and the insistence that philosophy no less than faith requires, not the identification of God with the Absolute, but the independent personal Being of pure theism—an Existent among other existents-in no way to be identified with creation, though closely concerned with it. The claim that God's infinity involves His identification with the universe is admirably met :

" The mind of Peter Bell was limited and imperfect not because it was other than the primrose, but because it failed to appreciate the primrose ; the poet was free from that limitation, not because the primrose was in any sense part of him, but because he could appropriate its beauty and experience the joy of such'app,optiation. And so likewise in regard to the world, God may be infinite," not because He is the world, nor because the world is part of Him ; but because in and through Him the world has meaning and sig- nificance - because His knowledge of it is complete, and His solicitude for it perfect."

This conclusion is the more impressive because the Professor is by no means friendly to the intuitive aspect of religious

experience, in so far as its results are contrasted with those achieved by the intellect. He is keenly critical of mysticism, at least in its more extreme forms, and makes short work of the late Professor Otto's theory of the numinous. He appears to have little use for the concept of a Supernatural Reality which is accessible to love but not to thought. In fact, that peculiar sense of the " otherness " of the Transcendent, and its mysterious demand and attraction which is characteristic of the awakened religious consciousness, is hardly considered here. Any separation of feeling and knowing, any attempt to isolate religious from rational and moral experience is, he considers, dangerous. Together with his definition of faith as " impliCit

reason " all this suggests that the author -is rather more at home among the thinkers than he is among the artists and the

saints.

In spite of the fact that this book contains a particularly careful and discriminating criticism of positivism, and ' (with

some crushing quotations) of its modern form, American humanism, on the whole the religious man, seeking here for readons for the faith that is in him, will probably feel its tone to

be too moderate, reasonable and anthropocentric, its ceiling too low and its account of the essence of religion correspondingly incomplete. For the religious soul can never allow 'that his experience of God " rests on insight." It does not begin with

him, and could never have been achieved by him ; but is due to the prevenient action of the Transcendent. Nor would he agree that religious experience is adequately described as " a pervading influence in the lives of Earth's largest and most balanced souls." Rather is its peculiar quality and startling power disclosed in those lives which it breaks up, transmutes and enslaves ; and which demonstrate again and again to an astonished and disgusted generation that the wisdom of the

world is foolishness with God. EVELYN LTNDERHILL.