Contemporary Literature [pp. 175-196]

1874.] CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE. 175
tors, without one gleam of high or holy tradition to enliven the procession; and for
the future, the prospect that the poor mass of protoplasm which constitutes the
sum of our being, and which is the sole gain of an indefinite struggle in the past,
must soon be resolved again into inferior animals or dead matter. That men of
thought and culture should advocate such a philosophy, argues either a strange
mental hallucination, or that the higher spiritual nature has been wholly quenched
within them. It is one of the saddest of many sad spectacles that our age presents. Still these men deserve credit for their bold pursuit of truth, or what seems
to them to be truth; and they are, after all, nobler sinners than those who would
practically lower us to the level of beasts by their negation even of intellectual life,
or who would reduce us to apes, by making us the mere performers of rites and
ceremonies, as a substitute for religion, or who would advise us to hand over
reason and conscience to the despotic authority of fallible men dressed in strange
garbs, and called by sacred names. The world needs a philosophy and a Christianity of more robust mould, which shall recognize, as the Bible does, at once
body and soul and spirit, at once the sovereignty of God and the liberty of man;
and which shall bring out into practical operation the great truth that God is a
Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. Such a
religion might walk in the sunlight of truth and free discussion, hand in hand with
science, education, liberty and material civilization, and would speedily consign
evolution to the tomb which has already received so many superstitions and false
philosophies." Id. pp. 395-397.
ART. XI.-CONTEMIPORARY LITERATURE.
THEOLOGY.
HiIunalitfy Immortal; or, Clan Tried, Fallen, and Redeemed. By
LAURENS P. HICKOK, D.D., LL.D. Boston: Lee & Shepard. This new
work by Dr. Hickok is the sequel and completion of his "Creator and Creation," which has been noticed in our Review. The two volumes make up
a system of theology, though developed and arranged in a different method
from that of the ordinary text-books. All that pertains to the being, nature
and workings of God was speculatively treated in the "Creator and Creation;"
the "History of Humanity" is the special subject of the present volume.
"The work now before us," says the author, "is to trace, in general outline,
the specific History of Humanity, from its beginnings to its consummation in
the eternal state, with the communings and collisions that may occur with
other orders of spiritual intelligences; taking as our guide the offered light
from speculative reason, and from divine revelation, and, so far as the facts
of experience may be gathered, from the records of past ages. The light
shining from all these sources must give in all readings the same one mean