In a recent number of The Harvard Theological Review, Professor Douglas Clyde Macintosh of the Yale Divinity School outlines in a very interesting manner the religious system to which he gives his adherence. For “substance of doctrine” (to use a form of speech formerly quite familiar at New Haven) this religious system does not differ markedly from what is usually taught in the circles of the so-called “Liberal Theology.” Professor Macintosh has, however, his own way of construing and phrasing the common “Liberal” teaching; and his own way of construing and phrasing it presents a number of features which invite comment. It is tempting to turn aside to enumerate some of these, and perhaps to offer some remarks upon them. As we must make a selection, however, it seems best to confine ourselves to what appears on the face of it to be the most remarkable thing in Professor Macintosh's representations. This is his disposition to retain for his religious system the historical name of Christianity, although it utterly repudiates the cross of Christ, and in fact feels itself (in case of need) quite able to get along without even the person of Christ. A “new Christianity,” he is willing, to be sure, to allow that it is—a “new Christianity for which the world is waiting”; and as such he is perhaps something more than willing to separate it from what he varyingly speaks of as “the older Christianity,” “actual Christianity,” “historic Christianity,” “actual, historical Christianity.” He strenuously claims for it, nevertheless, the right to call itself by the name of “Christianity.”

It is a matter of common knowledge that during the last ten years the Churches of all denominations in France have been passing through a profound crisis. Such convulsions are not inevitably the death-agony of religion. Only the world's contempt or the world's forgetfulness could kill the Christian faith; but it is apt to be quickened rather than deadened by struggles for its life. Yet religion has a more subtle danger to encounter than the opposition of public authorities however violent. It is not impossible for the Church to be unconsciously seduced into imitation of her adversaries. She may come to make use of their methods. She may gradually slip downwards to the level of their spirit. So that, while prophesying among men as if she were the voice of God, her actions may be indistinguishable from those of a godless world. That is the danger. It is threatening the Church at this moment, and is more or less a menace to religion, everywhere and always.

In these volumes, Mrs. Rhys Davids has added to the debt which all students of Buddhist literature are under to herself and her husband. The two volumes of Psalms are canonical, while the Compendium of Philosophy is an interesting and esteemed epitome of that third section of the Buddhist canon, the Abhidharma, about which the sects differed so much.