THREE BOOKS ON RELIGION. RELIGION

By EDWARD SCRIBNER AMES. HenryHolt and Company, New York, 1929. Pp. vi, 324.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY GOD? By CYRIL H. VALENTINE. The Macmillan Company. New York, 1929. Pp. 248.

CONFLICTS IN RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. By G. HARKNESS. Henry Holt and Company. 1929, Pp. xv, 326.

Professor Ames, who since 1900 has continuously been pastor of the Hyde Park Church of the Disciples, and a member of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago, has had occasion to combine practical religious work with theoretical philosophy. He represents the humanist and instrumentalist movements, and employs psychological and sociological approaches in his constructive interpretation of God as "Idealized Reality." A group of the Dartmouth faculty are studying this book during the present winter.

Mr. Valentine, an Anglican theologian, insists that the minimum that religion must insist upon, is that God is at the same time objectively real and also personal, responsive in human worship. He frankly faces the philosophical and psychological difficulties, and makes progress in their solution.

Professor Harkness writes clearly and inspiringly, albeit with thorough scholarship, from the standpoint of personal idealism, but without saying much that would not be acceptable to adherents of other philosophical schools. This is a capital book to place in the hands not only of college students, for whom the volume is primarily intended, but all others who are perplexed with religious difficulties of a philosophical nature.

Department of Philosophy.