VII. NEW BOOKS. The Freedom of Authority: Essays in Apologetics. By J. MACBRIDE STERRBTT, D.D., Professor of Philosophy in the George Washington University. New York and London : The Macmillan Co., 1905. Pp. 319. THIS volume consists of a series of essays which deal critically and con- structively with the problem of authority hi religion. Apparently it is meant to supplement an earlier work by the author entitled Reason and Authority in Religion. Dr. Sterrett maintains "the reasonableness of a man of modern culture frankly and earnestly worshipping in some form of ' authoritative religion ' in any form rather than in no form " ; and in a vigorous and confident way he strives to establish his conten- tion. It was perhaps inevitable that there should be a certain amount of repetition in the book, but it would have gained by compression and careful revision. In the preface, indeed, we are told that the larger part was written "aus einem Gusse, almost at a sitting". There is surely some exaggeration here. But one has no difficulty in believing that the book was hurriedly written, though the cause of the haste is not obvious. The author's message at least is not new. Besides con- taining rather more than the average amount of slips and errors of the press, the volume abounds in clumsy and inaccurate phrases and sen- tences. Some of Dr. Sterrett's feats in the way of word-construction are remarkable, not to say grotesque. For example, "critics cannot so disconscious themselves," " an unuttered un-outered essence," " de- religionising the Church ". But it is right to add that, though the work is destitute of literary form, the author's meaning is seldom or never obscure. It will simplify matters and give a general clue to Dr. Sterrett's argu- ment, if I say at the outset that his standpoint is frankly Hegelian. The unsympathetic will probably complain that there is a good deal of the ordinary Hegelian rhetoric scattered through these pages. Indeed the disappointing thing about the book is, that the author does not realise that some revision of his speculative theory is necessary in order to deal with his problem in a fresh and fruitful way. Dr. Sterrett of course holds that the real is the rational Religion, in its development through institutions and creeds, is a phase of objective reason, which under pressure of the immanent dialectic advances to the full expression of its inner nature. In the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation the absolute principle of religion was first consciously realised in time, and the development of the Church is the process by which the idea unfolds its latent riches and meaning. Hence in conforming to some institu- tional embodiment of Christianity the individual comes under no alien yoke ; he is rising to his true self-fulfilment, or freedom, through sur- render to an objective or divine Reason : Deo parere libertas est. As against the mechanical standpoint of Natural Science and the abstract 18
