Hardly another poet in the whole course of English literature has met with such violent and continuous partisanship as Robert Browning. When Wordsworth put forth his epoch-making little volume of Lyrical Ballads, he too met derision, but it lasted only twenty years. By the time he reached middle age his position as a master was assured, and his limitations were well understood. Over Browning disputation has continued longer. Throughout his life and during the quarter-century since his death he has had ardent assailants and just as ardent defenders. Persons of standing declare the man a barbarian, who broke into the fair fields of verse with poetry cacophonous in sound, obscure in expression, and shocking in subject. On the other hand, there are those who regard Browning as half divine. He is a prophet, they say, and has so disclosed to them the significance of their personal lives that they cannot hear any criticism of him without a shiver. Sometimes Browning is set up in laudatory antagonism to Tennyson, or Tennyson in antagonism to Browning; and certainly these poets do differ fundamentally. But are their differences disparaging or supplemental? I believe I shall find the safest approach to my heated subject if, without praise or blame, I coolly note some of the points of contrast between the two.

John Stuart Mill once declared that Coleridge and Jeremy Bentham were the two creative minds in the English thought of their time. It was characteristic of Mill to take the impartial standpoint from which such dissimilar thinkers could be likened in originality and eminence. One fears that neither of them could have been equally dispassionate in judging the other, and it would be hard to say which would have felt the deeper resentment if he could have foreseen the company in which he was to be placed. The period to which they belong was not rich in speculative talent so far as England was concerned, and few will dispute the justice of Mill's compliment to the two men who really left an enduring mark. It will be the purpose of this article to look at Coleridge in his special relation to the progress of theology, an aspect of his writings by which he would himself beyond all doubt have been most anxious to be appreciated. Julius Hare declared that by his work in this field he had shown himself “the true sovereign of modern English thought.” Kingsley at his moment of deepest doubt on religious matters received Aids to Reflection with “utter delight.” The leaders of the Cambridge Apostles — particularly Maurice and Sterling — could find no words to express their indebtedness but those which St. Paul judged fitting in Philemon towards himself, and acknowledged that they owed to Coleridge their very souls. But while all are agreed that his influence was significant, perhaps beyond that of any one else, upon the development of thinking at that time in the English Church, there are reasons which make his precise place somewhat difficult to specify.

Frederic Palmer's account of Angelus Silesius, published in the April number of this Review, portrays admirably the struggles of a German mystic of some three hundred years ago, to attain the unattainable, to give utterance to the unutterable. Three and twenty hundred years ago, the like struggles were making part of the spiritual history of distant India. Perhaps Dr. Palmer's essay may lend a certain timeliness to an endeavor to interest Occidental readers in those sombre followers of the Mystic Way, who—time out of mind—have held retreat for meditation in the solemn stillness of the forests “lapped by the storied Hydaspes.”

Parallel with the main current of the Protestant Reformation there ran from the very beginning another powerful current which has always received far less consideration from historians than it deserves. Some have supposed it to be a mis-guided, if not a monstrous, undertaking. Others have considered it one more among the many “lost causes” about which history is more or less silent. Neither of these positions is, however, quite tenable. It was, like Bunker Hill in the American Revolution, “a battle lost but a cause won,” since nearly everything which these minor reformers aimed at has since been achieved or is on the way to achievement.

Eusebius in his Life of Constantine, chapters xxxvi f., gives an account of the MSS. of the Scriptures prepared in Cæsarea at the command of the Emperor for the use of the churches in Constantinople, owing to the remarkable increase in the number of Christians after the conversion of the court. His account ends with a sentence which according to Schwartz, whose opinion seems obviously correct, is unfortunately incomplete. ταῦτα μὲν οῦν βασιλεὺς διεκελεύετο αὐτίκα δ᾽ ἔργον ἐπηκολούθει τῷ λόγῳ, ἐν πολυτελῶς ἠσκημένοις τεύχεσιν τρισσὰ καὶ τετρασσὰ διαπεμψάντων ἡμῶν….

The rise and fall of early free-thinking societies in America offers a picture of considerable interest. The background is that of eighteenth-century deism—with the neutral tints of unbelief; the high lights are furnished by the fires of the French Revolution, the shadows by the dark fires of reaction. Across this canvas march many figures—rationalists like Franklin and Washington, ardent innovators like Jefferson, and a host of lesser characters—Frenchmen like Genêt and his Jacobins, Anglo-Americans like Paine and Houston, plain Americans like Elihu Palmer, with his Principles of Nature, English reformers like Robert Owen and his sons with their liberalizing communism; and ever opposing this army of radicals, the conservative elements—heads of colleges, leaders of the bar, and, as particular defenders of the faith, the clergy of New England.

More than a year ago, in a letter to the present writer, an eminent French savant, M. Alfred Loisy, contrasted the parts played by the Pope and the President of the United States respectively in the war. “Maintenant c'est Wilson qui devient pape, et qui fait la morale aux belligérants, en nous appuyant de son crédit politique, financier, militaire. Vive le pape Wilson!” The contrast was just. “Faire la morale aux belligérants” — this is what we expect a Pope to do. We have been disappointed; it is exactly what he has not done. On the other hand, the President is the one politician on either side who has risen to the level of a statesman, and has gained, not lost, in reputation during the last four years. It must be remembered that he came late into the firing line, and has therefore been less exposed than his European colleagues to the test of time under which so many of them have broken down. But more than any one man now in public life, he stands for the combination of Reason and Energy.

Neo-Realism, we shall all agree, has come to stay. Though the most recent of philosophical movements, it has already made an abiding impression on contemporary thought. Less noisy than Pragmatism, less fashionable than Bergson's Intuitionism, it has yet quietly won over to its side a far larger number of the younger students of philosophy than one would suspect from the comparatively small amount of Neo-Realistic literature. What is even more striking, its criticisms of Idealism have had at least this effect, that many thinkers who are commonly labelled “Idealists” have hastened to dissociate themselves once more in the most explicit terms from that sort of Idealism of which the watchword is Berkeley's esse est percipi. The so-called “Objective Idealists” have become noticeably more objective. To have compelled this re-alignment is in itself no small achievement to the credit of Neo-Realism.

It takes perhaps some boldness of assertion to maintain that the life-story of an author relatively unknown—at least to the English-reading world — deserves to rank with those acknowledged masterpieces of religious autobiography, the Apologia pro Vita Sua of John Henry Newman, and the Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse of Ernest Renan. Renan and Newman were born leaders of men, each drawing after himself a train of zealous disciples, and followed by an admiring public. Both were consummate artists in words, knowing full well how to make the most of the dramatic and human element that chance or their own choice had woven into their careers. Each produced a long row of eloquent volumes, and their writings not only enjoyed the widest vogue in their own day but are among the works of the nineteenth century whose significance is still far from being exhausted. Each was a convert — the one into Roman Catholicism, the other out of it — and so their self-revelations appeal to the psychological interest of such a process, when the subject of it is a man of genius, and no less to the historical interest attaching to any conspicuous individual whose career has become interwoven with the Church of Rome. The Choses Passées of Professor Alfred Loisy assuredly did not originate in any conscious imitation of these two famous writers, although both were conspicuous among his formative influences. But his book belongs in the same class with theirs, and in its distinction of style, its dramatic and human appeal, and its psychological and historical interest, as I shall try in this article to show, falls no whit behind. It is my confident belief, at least, that Choses Passées bids fair to become in its turn a classic to be placed beside the Apologia and the Souvenirs on the shelf of the student of religion, as a document of outstanding significance for the intellectual and religious evolution of the last quarter-century.

During the last quarter-century more investigation than ever before has been going on into the unconscious activities of the human mind, or, as the investigators have preferred to call it, the sub-conscious mind. This has led in psychology to the study of apparitions and the various forms of telepathy, and in religion to a revival of Quietism. Religious bodies as far from Quakerism as the Episcopal Church are holding retreats for meditation, silent prayer, “the practice of the presence of God.” The exclusion of worldly thought is pointed to as the means for the opening of the soul to the incoming of the Divine; and some are following the Mystic Way through its steps of Purgation, Illumination, and Ecstasy to its goal of absorption into God in the Unitive Life.

St. John tells us that when Jesus was parting with his friends he comforted them with the assurance that, though for a little while they should not see him, the time would come when they should have a deeper understanding of his life.

It is twenty-five years since Phillips Brooks died, and as we think of what he was to those who knew him, how great our loss has been, let us hope that some such experience as John prophesied has been ours in our relation to our great friend.

The approaching tercentenary of the founding of Plymouth incites, not to say compels, a review of the remarkable developments and departures from the doctrines of the fathers that have taken place in these three hundred years and calls for a conscientious consideration of what these changes ought to lead to in theological and ecclesiastical readjustments. It is a task which overawes as well as invites and one in which there is need of wide coöperation.

Professor C. C. Torrey's recent monograph on The Composition and Date of Acts has placed in the hands of New Testament scholars a new and fascinating instrument for exegesis. By his demonstration of a document in Aramaic, underlying Acts 1 1b–15 35 and translated by Luke with painful fidelity into Greek, he has opened up a whole new field for the criticism of the book of Acts. Things which no sober critic would have dared to suggest on the basis of the Greek text alone become not only possible or plausible but even certain on the basis of the Aramaic. A few results of a reading of these chapters in the light of the new theory are here presented.

Through the pages of its Mittheilungen, of which 55 numbers appeared prior to 1915, the German Orient Society has kept its members informed concerning the excavations which since 1899 it has been conducting in the East. The more technical details have from time to time appeared in the Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen issued by the Society. That Assyria and Babylon have been a field of special attractiveness seems natural for a Society the inception and direction of which have been in large measure the work of the eminent Assyriologist Friedrich Delitzsch. It is due to his enthusiasm that the Society has secured such large financial support that it could project and execute plans on a scale and with a degree of thoroughness not seen before in the Babylonian-Assyrian territory. The friendly relations between the German and Turkish governments have likewise greatly eased the path of the explorer.

In regard to Western scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages, every one repeats the laconic judgment, that it is “philosophy in the service, under the sway and direction, of Catholic theology.” It could be nothing else; and it seems that one has said everything after announcing this clear-cut formula. This current definition, susceptible of the most different meanings, is found on the first page of a recent book, published during the War, on the philosophy of the Middle Ages; and though the author gives a very mild interpretation of it, it is offered to the reader as an abridged thesis, in which one finds condensed all that is important to know on the subject. “Scholasticism is Philosophy placed at the service of already established ecclesiastical doctrine, or at least philosophy placed in such a dependence on this doctrine that it becomes an absolute Rule when both meet on common ground.”

Now this current definition of scholastic philosophy in the Middle Ages defines it very badly, because it is a mixture of the true and the false, of accuracy and of inaccuracy. It must be distrusted, like those equivocal maxims which John Stuart Mill calls “sophisms of simple inspection,” which by force of repetition enjoy a kind of transeat or vogue in science without being questioned.

The most interesting contribution to New Testament criticism in recent times has come from a scholar in another field. Professor Torrey, a student of Semitics and particularly of the Aramaic, the language of the common people in Palestine before and after the Christian era, has propounded a new theory regarding the Book of Acts. Chapters 1 1b —15 35 are thought by him to have comprised an Aramaic book written about 49 or 50 A.D., which Luke later procured in Palestine and translated as faithfully as he was able, at the same time adding the remaining chapters himself in Greek on the basis of his own knowledge and investigation. The two parts of the book are accordingly designated I and II Acts, respectively. The evidence for the hypothesis is primarily linguistic. A striking series of Aramaisms and of mistranslations which can be plausibly corrected on the basis of the Aramaic, is found in I Acts, while in II Acts the reflections of Aramaic idiom are rare and instances of mistranslation are wholly lacking. The literature of the subject is not yet large, but a careful résumé and discussion of the new theory has appeared from the pen of Professor Foakes-Jackson. Since he questions the validity of Professor Torrey's more important deductions—conclusions whose correctness had been accepted almost without qualification by the present writer—a further consideration of their claims to credence may be permissible.