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A RATIONALIST REVIEW.

[ESTABLISHED 1885.]

No. 13. (New Series.)

JULY 1, 1897.

Monthly; Twopence

IRcw publications. T hf. Rev. Dennis Hird’s new novel, In Search o f a Religion, deals with religion as a part of the total evolution of man. The author does not show hostility to religion, but offers an explanation of its origin and power. In this explanation of religious force as a branch of hypnotic influence some startling facts of religious life are given, and our two great schools, whether High Church or Low, are represented as excrescences, hiding the teaching of Jesus. These two points, the naturalness of religion and the disregard of Jesus shown by our modern religions, are the key to the inquiry.

T he collection of early writings by Thomas Carlyle, about to be published by James Gowans and Son, under the title of Montaigne and other Essays, chiefly Biographical, were contributed to Brewster’s Edinburgh Encyclopaedia between 1820 and 1823. They are the first writings of Carlyle’s which were printed, and have never been issued in book form. The volume extends to about three hundred pages, and will contain an introduction by Mr. S. R. Crockett.

Mr. B e r n a r d Q u ar it ch has published a new work by Major-General Forlong, the author of Rivers o f L ife . It is entitled Short Studies in the Science o f Comparative Religions, embracing more especially those of Asia. It is d e scrib ed as a work of great learning and research, yet so clearly written as to suit inquiring minds of every religious denomination. The volume includes chapters on Jainism and Buddhism ; Trans-Indian Religions ; Zoroastrianism ; Hinduism, Vedas, and Vedantism ; Lao-tsze and Tao ism ; Confucius and his Faith ; the Elohim of Hebrews ; the Jehovah of Hebrews; Sacred Books of the West; Mahamad, Islam, and Maka ; Short Texts of all Faiths and Philosophies.

Mrs. Annie Besant has issued, through the Theosophical Publishing Society, a booklet on Four Great Religions.

T he Rev. Dennis Hird has, under the title of P u lp it Science : I s Immortality a Physical Fact ? written a reply to the Rev. Prebendary J. W. Reynolds’s The World to Come.

Messrs. Longmans have issued Mr. William James’s The W i l l to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. The same firm also announce that they have in the press the third part of the late Dr. Romanes’s Darw in and A fte r Danvin. It mainly deals with isolation and physiological selection.

Messrs. Blackwood & Sons will shortly publish the first series of Professor Tiele’s Edinburgh Gifford Lectures, under the title of The Science o f Religion in its H isto rical Development. The volume will treat of the morphological part of that science.

Mr. F isher Unwin has issued a volume on The Place o f Death in Evolution. According to the author, the Rev. Dr. Newman Smyth, “ the one regnant, radiant fact of nature is life ; and death enters and follows as a servant for life’s sake.” Dr. Smyth aims to reconcile religion and science, and he relies upon Darwin, Weismann, and other contemporary writers to validate his argument.

Mr. David Wilson, a Commissioner in Burmah, has written a work entitled M r. Froude and Thomas Carlyle, dealing with the historian’s alleged misrepresentations of the sage of Chelsea.

Mr. R. Forder will publish immediately an English edition of Colonel IngersoN’s masterly oration on Shakespeare.

Mu. G. W. Foote is writing a detailed reply to Dean Farrar’s latest work, The B ib le : I ts Meaning and Supremacy. The booklet will probably be issued early in the autumn.

T he second and concluding part of The Woman's B ib le is on the eve of publication. It has been prepared almost entirely by Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, her former assistants being unable to withstand Christian criticism. Mrs. Stanton will subsequently publish her Reminiscences.

S?cy in IR d io io n .

The God-idea o f the Ancients ; orySex in Religion. By Eliza Burt

Gamble. (Putnam’s.) 339 pp.; 10s. 6d. T his is a book of exceptional merit. On every page there is evidence of the author’s complete mastery of her subject — a circumstance very rarely met with in women who venture into even the lighter, to say nothing of the scientific and philosophic, branches of literature. This is not Mrs. Gamble’s first book. So, indeed, we learn from the preface to the present volume. She has written a work on The Evolution o f Woman, which appears to have met with a most favourable reception. It was when Mrs. Gamble was preparing her former work for the press that much of the material for this volume was collected. In fact, it was her intention to include within The Evolution o f Woman this branch of her investigation; but, wishing to obtain certain facts relative to the foundations of religious belief and worship which were not immediately accessible, and knowing that considerable labour and patience would be required in securing these facts, she decided to publish the first part of the work, withholding for the time that portion of it pertaining especially to the development of the Godidea. Her object here is to furnish an outline of religious growth, and to show the effect which each of the two forces, female and male, has had on the development of our present God-idea. Nowhere, as Mrs. Gamble rightly contends, is the influence of sex more plainly manifested than in the formation of religious conceptions and creeds :—

With the rise of male power and dominion, and the corresponding repression of the natural female instincts, the principles which originally constituted the God-idea gradually gave place to a Deity better suited to the peculiar bias which had been given to the male organism. An anthropomorphic God like that of the Jews— a God whose chief attributes are power and virile might— could have had its origin only under a system of masculine rule.

Mrs. Gamble insists that, in an attempt to understand the history of the growth of the God-idea, the fact must be borne in mind that, from the earliest conception of a creative force in the animal and vegetable world to the latest development in theological speculation, there has never been what might consistently be termed a new religion. “ On the contrary, religion, like everything else, is subject to the law of growth ; therefore, the faiths of to-day are the legitimate result, or outcome, of the primary idea of a Deity developed in accordance with the laws governing the peculiar instincts which have been in the ascendancy during the life of mankind on the earth.” Then there is the erroneous