Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 75:297 (Jan 1918)
Article: Three Notable Books By Conservative Scholars.
Author: Anonymous

BSac 75:297 (Jan 1918) p. 143

Three Notable Books By Conservative Scholars.

The opening of the nineteenth century witnessed the culmination of a remarkable irruption of freaks into the realms of philosophy, science, and criticism. Agnostic philosophers, materialistic evolutionists, and destructive critics so monopolized the thought of Christian civilization as to produce a general paralysis of the higher activities of the soul. But error is sure to overstep the bounds of reason, and call forth the activities of able champions of the truth. In the three volumes mentioned below,1 we have the ripe product of three of the best-equipped scholars of the age, defending, with a scholarship that is unsurpassed, the main positions respecting God, man, nature, and revelation, upon which Christianity has rested from time immemorial.

Dr. Lindsay’s previous publications are too well known to need any attempt at estimation on our part. In this volume he brings the entire range of his great learning to bear upon the philosophical theories that have had currency from time to time. In eleven chapters he deals exhaustively of Foundations of Idealism: Laws of Logic and Psychology; The God of Theistic Idealism; The Metaphysics of Creation; The Metaphysics of Time and of Eternity; History and Provi-

BSac 75:297 (Jan 1918) p. 144

dence in Theistic Idealism; The Philosophy of Nature; The Philosophy of Science; The Philosophy of Art; Freedom in Theistic Idealism; The Moral Order, and the Spiritual World, in Theistic Idealism; and Immortality in Theistic Idealism. A full index of fourteen pages enables the reader to study any particular subject with ease.

It is interesting to observe in the work both of Dr. Lindsay and of Dr. Gruber how modern materialism approximates a system of pure idealism. In resolving “solid matter” into its constituent elements, it is first melted into a fluid and then resolved into a gas and finally regarded as a mere center of electrical activity, and the atoms are reduced to such small dimensions that if they do not become “nothing “they are “next to nothing,” and are made to present the phenomena of solidity by motions of infinite velocity. But with all this speculation, the objective reality of nature remains as distinct as ever, — the product of a creative fiat. The attempt to substitute evolution for creation does not help matters. In the words of Dr. Lindsay, “Nothing is more fatuous and blind than the frequent moral failure to see that evolution can be no substitute for a Creator. For evolution is only history, . . . Evolution begins with the existent, and if the historical evolution of the world . . . has been discovered, that is not to say that its Cause or causes have been found, or t...