Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/855

 REVIEWS 839

The Fundamental Ideas of Christianity. The Gifford Lectures. By John Cairo, D.D., LL.D., late Principal and ViceChan- cellor of the University of Glasgow. With a Memoir by Edward Caird, D.C.L., LL.D., Master of Balliol. 2 vols. Vol. I, pp. cxli+232; Vol. II, pp. 297. The Macmillan Co., 1899. 84.50.

These lectures are devoted to a discussion of natural and revealed religion, faith and reason, the Christian idea of God, the origin and nature of evil, the possibility of moral restoration, the idea of the incarnation and the atonement, the kingdom of the Spirit, and, finally, the future life. They consist in a philosophical interpretation and appreciation of the traditional dogmas of the Christian church. One who is interested in theological discussion based on Hegelian presup- positions, but finds Hegel himself inaccessible, or in a literary way harsh and intolerable, may turn to these volumes assured that he will find nothing better of their kind, probably nothing so good in our language. It is not meant that Caird slavishly follows Hegel, but that he independently sets forth in beautiful and luminous English, but also in a masterly way, scarcely second to Hegel himself, the Hegelian philosophy of religion.

But it is not e.xpected that this Journal shall give a critical review of Caird's theology. Sociological questions, however, are treated only in the most inferential manner; rather, are alluded to only in the most incidental way. From this it must not be inferred that he had no interest in the question, whether from the practical or the theoretical point of view. On the contrary, his memoir describes his practical pioneer work in his own land, opening a girls' school of industry during his early ministry, on whose building and equipment he spent much time and pains. "Girls grow up," so he writes of his early parish, "utterly ignorant of the commonest sorts of household work, are unfit for domestic servants, even of the rudest kind, still more unfit to manage their own houses when they marry. They have no habits of personal neatness, no taste for order, cleanliness, domestic comfort; they never aspire to anything beyond the mere eking out of their coarse, scanty, comfortless life, and their only pleasures are sensual indulgence and scandal I am determined to do some- thing to help them." And so he founded this school.

On the theoretical side one gathers here and there from his volumes that he would emphasize (a) the impassable limits beyond which