Reason in Religion
By . Boston : Walker, Fuller, & Co.
THE various essays which are brought together under this title discuss questions of theology, and the opinions which mankind hold upon the most interesting philosophical and spiritual themes. The author’s aim is, to state as fairly as he can conflicting views, and to propound his own solution. In this labor Dr. Hedge appears to represent that condition of Unitarian thinking which prefers a rational to a traditional ground of authority in matters pertaining to the spiritual life, and strives to interpret and accommodate the sacred history without forsaking it.
It would not be possible, within the limits of a book notice, to treat fitly all the questions which are raised by these highly suggestive essays. Hr. Hedge’s clear and chiselled statements cut all the jesses of our thoughts, and they rise unhooded into his still air. Providence, Prayer, Free-Will, and Retribution, Evil, Immortality, and Faith,— such themes stock this volume, and they are all treated in a way to command the attention of the reader, to bid him ponder, to contribute glad assent, or to pay the equally flattering tribute of awakened criticism. The style is simple, and comprehensible at a glance : the pen has gathered no superfluities upon its journeys into these remote domains, no scholastic terms cling to it, no ambitious rhetoric. It is never heated, but it is never dull: the cool and equable flow brings down thought enough from scholarly and Well-spent years to exhilarate and satisfy. The temper is perfect in which opinions most discordant to the writer’s fine intelligence are set forth : all his hostility to them appears in the justness of his comprehension. So that it would be difficult to find a volume that contains a greater number of impartial and exhaustive statements of creeds, dogmas, and tendencies of thinking. And where they cannot wan agreement, they extort respect.
The essay upon “ The Regent God ” is a fine specimen of intellectual defining in combination with a gentle, tender self-forgetfulness, as it Dr. Hedge would fain feel all the gifts of the mind and heart absorbed in the Infinite Presence. Perhaps the essay upon “ The Cause of Reason the Cause of Faith” contains the most vigor ; it is a favorite subject, set forth with great freedom of movement, and with more illustration than Dr. Hedge usually indulges. How refreshing is the boldness with which he claims the word Rationalism for the service of Religion ! Elsewhere there are rich sentences in respect of illustration. What a finished metaphor on page 371 ! where, in allusion to the belief of the earliest Christians that some might fall asleep in Christ, but only to be caught up with him at his coming, he says,— “Their sun of life might decline, but only as the sun of the Arctic midsummer skirts an horizon where evening and morning club their splendors to furnish an unbroken day. In their horizon there was no dissolution of the continuity of life.”
But we have as little space to devote to admiration as to dissent. We might show cause for our opinion that Religion appears, in this volume, to be too closely confined to aspiration, to just thinking, and a sense of human dependence ; in vindicating Reason against Tradition, through all the judicious and thorough discussion of various doctrines, the author waives, or perhaps only postpones, his opportunity to identify Religion with the divineness of all knowable and appreciable things. The most enlightened worship is only one spiritual act or gesture. The broadest and most limpid thinking is but the morning freshness to a day full of God’s necessities, who works at our morals, our politics, our society, our science, and our art. Religion is the recognition and acceptance of all knowable phenomena of human life; in these man finds his God, God reveals himself to man. We hope to find that the last essay, upon the “ Moral Ideal,” is prelusive to another effort in this direction.