WM. TYRRELL & COMPANY 1908...

   I. Man and His Destiny   II. New Faith Linked with Old  III. The Scope of Evolution   IV. The Limit of Evolution    V. Explanations   VI. The Immortality of the Soul  VII. Is there to be a Revolution in Ethics? The Religious Situation...

The letters collected in this volume appeared, with others, in the New York Sun , to the Editor of which the thanks of the writer for his courtesy are due. Appended is a paper on the same subjects commenting on one by the late Mr. Chamberlain, since published in the North American Review . To the Editor of the North American Review also the writer's acknowledgments are due. There appeared to be sufficient interest in the discussion to call for the publication of a small edition. The age calls fo

Time has passed since I first sought access to the columns of The Sun , ranging myself with the nine thousand who in an English journal had craved for religious light. The movement which caused that craving has gone on. The Churches show their sense of it. Even in that of Rome there is a growth of "Modernism," as it is called by the Pope, who, having lost his mediaeval preservatives of unity, strives to quell Modernism by denunciation. Anglicanism resorts to a grand pageant of uniformity, beneat

A preacher cites a lecture of mine, delivered nearly half a century ago, a part of which has had the honour of being embalmed in the work of that most eminent theologian, the late Dean Westcott, on "The Historic Faith." I turned rather nervously to the lecture to see what it was that I had said. Not that I should have been much shocked had I found that my opinions had even been completely changed. Since that lecture was delivered science and criticism have wrought a revolution in theological bel

In discussing the ground of ethical science some writers appear to hold that evolution explains all; but surely the illustrious discoverer of evolution never carried his theory beyond the material part of man. He never professed to trace the birth of ethics, idealization, science, poetry, art, religion, or anything spiritual in the anthropoid ape. There is here, apparently, not only a step in development but a saltus mortalis , a dividing and impassable gulf. Our bodily senses we share with the

Your last correspondent on the subject of my letters treats the question lightly. Perhaps he is young, enjoying the morning of life and thinking little of its close. On the mind of a student of history is deeply impressed the sadness of its page; the record of infinite misery and suffering as well as depravity, all apparently to no purpose if the end is to be a physical catastrophe. Comtism, while it bids us devote and sacrifice ourselves to the future of humanity, can apparently hold out nothin

Interest is evidently felt in questions which I have been permitted to treat in The Sun , and after the notices and the queries which I have received there are points on which I should like, if you will allow me, to set myself right. I. The leaning to orthodoxy with which I am gently reproached goes not beyond a conviction, drawn from the study not of theology but of history, that of all the types of character hitherto produced the Christian type, founded on a belief in the fatherhood of God and

There appeared the other day in the Washington Herald a notable letter by Mr. Paul Chamberlain on Immortality. It took the same line as an essay on the same question by Mr. Chamberlain's late father, which I had read in manuscript. Both the letter and the essay are on the negative side of the question, which, in the essay at least, is pronounced the happier and better view, as conducive to unselfishness. Unselfishness, it must surely be, of a supreme kind. Annihilation is not a cheerful word. Ba

A revolution in theology and in our conception of the government of the universe such as we are undergoing is sure to draw with it a revolutionary movement in ethics. There lies before me a review article giving an account of a number of books on ethics which are widely at variance, it appears, with the ethics of Christianity. The general tendency of the authors seems to be to reject altogether the Christian type of character as artificial and weak, and to aim at substituting for it something mo