RADIANT LIVING.

By Stanwood Cobb03. Washington, D.C.: Avalon Press,1970. 310 pp. $3.90.

Mr. Cobb, a most prolific author of works on religious subjects, has written a new book whose title is a bit misleading since the work is only in part devotional. A size- able section of it is speculation about religion, albeit speculation of a popular sort addressed to an audience of interested laymen. Mr. Cobb has read widely and thoughtfully in secular as well as in religious literature, eastern and western, and has brought together a great amount of material. His style is lucid and direct, his tone pleasantly mellow, and the result is a book several cuts above what can ordinarily be expected in the "inspirational" genre.

The first of three parts takes up rather abstract problems: the place and function of religion within an evolutionary framework and the need to "modernize" religion in the face of what Mr. Cobb views as the present "crisis" of humanity. He predicts a universal religion based on a "scientific" approach to religious feeling, to that "inner world" of spiritual experience which he sees as underlying all the great historical traditions. This new approach, he argues, will not reduce religious experience to illusion but will ground it firmly in nature and thus make it genuinely universal.

The middle section comprises the devotional part of the book. There the author discusses, largely in anecdotal form, those "spiritual values" - intuition of transcendence, meditation, and prayer - which he posits as the content of the religion of tomorrow.

The brief concluding section, "The World of the Future," presents, despite all the anguish of our time, a remarkably positive vision of a coming planetary "civilization" and the role of religion within it. Mr. Cobb, who is approaching his ninth decade of life, reveals an utterly serene optimism about the human race and its ultimate well being. Even those whose faith may be less tranquil than his must salute him for it.

Mr. Stinson is a Research Instructor in Religion at Dartmouth.