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194 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 

havior and the modification of his physical environment. This happy 
inconsistency (as it appears to me to be) seems to have come about, 
in Professor Perry's case as in others, in a simple and natural way. 
His reflection upon the problem of perceptual knowledge early per- 
suaded him that the possibility of such knowledge is inconceivable 
unless the object perceived and the percept " in consciousness " are 
literally identical. This " epistemological monism " (being con- 
strued realistically rather than idealistically) was then converted, 
logically enough, into a psychophysical monism, into the doctrine 
that consciousness, or the content and processes which make it up, 
are " homogeneous " with the physical environment. But having 
thus metaphysically identified " mind " with " bodily systems," 
the new realist then quietly reads into the " bodily systems " the 
contents, relations, and activities which he knows, and everybody 
knows, actually to belong to our experience, however foreign to the 
physicist's conception of the properties and motion of matter. The 
psychical lamb, in short, is supposed to be swallowed by the material- 
istic lion; but when, after blood-curdling growls and the crunching 
of tender bones, the deglutition is finished, what appears before one 
is not a lion but a lamb. Yet the legerdermain by which this reassur- 
ing substitution is accomplished will hardly escape the observant 
spectator; nor can I believe that Professor Perry himself will remain 
permanently unaware of it. 

Ahthur O. Lovejoy. 
Johns Hopkinb Univebsity. 



The Spread of Christianity in the Modern World. Edward Cald- 
well Moore. (University of Chicago Publications in Religious Educa- 
tion. Handbooks of Ethics and Religion.) University of Chicago Press. 
1919. Pp. xi, 352. $2.00. 

In the large and rapidly filling section devoted to " Missions " in 
all the larger institutional libraries there may be found at least a 
couple of shelves of books dealing with the special subject, " History 
of Missions." Here are books attempting to cover the entire history 
as well as monographs treating various periods and fields, like Lemuel 
C. Barnes' Two Thousand Years of Missions before Carey, G. F. Mac- 
lear's History of Christian Missions during the Middle Ages, and 
Julius Richter's History of Protestant Missions in the Near East. A 
brief historical review of the special point of view of these historical 
books will disclose pertinently the nature of the change which has 
taken place in the concept of Christianity and of Christian Missions. 



BOOK REVIEWS 195 

In the first two-score years of the modern period Missions were still 
largely a brave adventure into an almost unknown situation. Ac- 
cordingly the most interesting, and perhaps the most profitable, review 
of their work which could be given at that stage used to be gath- 
ered in reports of heroic journeys to distant lands, thrilling personal 
experiences of pioneers, and many curious bits of information about 
strange peoples. Such was the kind of history which is to be found in 
Smith and Choulis' Origin and History of Missions. After five-score 
years the missionary enterprise was still regarded, and perhaps not 
unnaturally, as quite a distinct process from ordinary worldly affairs. 
Baptized converts needed to be gathered out from heathendom, and 
organized into church communities independently of the rest of the 
world; the value of the Christian Gospel which the missionaries 
were sent out to dispense was believed to be for an other-worldly ap- 
plication. Accordingly, the appropriate method of surveying such a 
series of events was by historical annals of an enterprise largely dis- 
tinct from current events. Such was the kind of history sketched by 
works like D. L. Leonard's A Hundred Years of Missions; though 
the centennial epoch was bringing an appreciation of some of the 
sociological significance of Christian Missions, as in James S. Dennis' 
Foreign Missions after a Century. 

The long story has been rehearsed from many points of interest. 
It has been set forth as an array of facts in chronological succession 
or in geographical areas. There are several chronicles, like George 
Smith's Short History of Christian Missions, F. M. Bliss' Concise 
History of Missions, and A. D. Mason's Outlines of Missionary History. 
There are also larger compendia more crowded with details, like C. H. 
Robinson's History of Christian Missions. But while there exist 
length and breadth in the spread of Christianity in the world, there 
exist also heights and depths and lights and shadows. To make use 
of another simile, there are also intricate interweavings with the 
great web of human events, connections made and long stretches 
dropped, which result in a curious design for Christianity in the out- 
put of the loom of history. In the hands of the erudite German Pro- 
fessor Gustave Warneck an Outline of Protestant Missions from the 
Reformation is simply a special study in modern Church History. 
In the hands of the evangelist and thrilling religious editor, A. T. 
Pierson, The New Acts of the Apostles or the Marvel of Modem Mis- 
sions and The Miracles of Missions or Modern Marvels in the History 
of the Missionary Enterprise (four volumes) are simply a collection 
of wonder-tales, repeating apostolic events, and reporting how a 
supernatural gospel was brought and vindicated to a wicked world. 



196 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 

without much interest in historical relations or even in historical 
accuracy. 

A vital relation between modern Christian Missions and contem- 
porary events was first brought forth with abundance of carefully 
documented facts by a broad-minded successful missionary adminis- 
trator. Dr. Robert E. Speer, Secretary of one of the largest American 
Boards of Foreign Missions. In his substantial two- volume Mis- 
sions and Modern History the connection of the Christian ideal and 
the actual Christian endeavor is shown in the case of thirteen im- 
portant movements selected from the history of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. Since then the method of a large historical orientation of the 
specialized effort to spread Christianity has been variously attempted, 
e.g., by an admirable English book surveying The Expansion of 
Christendom, by Mrs. Carus- Wilson. 

However, it has remained until the agonies of the Great War for 
a Harvard professor, who is the President of the oldest Foreign 
Mission Board in the United States, to envisage the task and the 
accomplishments of Christianity more intimately and more compre- 
hensively by setting the history of The Spread of Christianiiy in the 
Modern World into the vast and intricate framework of modern 
history as a whole. Here the sense of the marvelous, the sacred, 
and the wicked too has not been lost in the swift traversing of great 
events of the whole world. Not quite so frequently as in the narra- 
tives of avowedly miraculous events, yet not infrequently, there do 
occur, here in balanced and sober survey of history, phrases like 
" it is only to be wondered at " (p. 183), " it seems strange " (p. 189), 
and " truly amazing " (p. 207). But what evokes attention is not 
so much individual incidents as the marked contrasts, the mighty 
achievements, and also the incompleteness of the process. Laments 
indeed are expressed, but not so much over the deficiencies of non- 
Christian religious systems and the prospects of the unsaved heathen 
as over the abuses which have been perpetrated by professing Chris- 
tians and the new evils which have been introduced from the West 
into the new situations in Africa and the East (see pp. 82, 270, 
304, 311). Not pessimistically but discriminatingly and with hope, 
it is shown how the processes of advancing civilization have included 
both pathetic failures and gratifying successes. The proselytizing 
task which formerly had been deemed fairly simple, being merely 
" religious," is now seen to be immensely complicated with factors 
racial, social, governmental, economic, and with all the diversities 
in human nature and its environment. 

Professor Moore's book is a product both of researches in the study 
and of experience in administrative headquarters. It is a notable 



BOOK REVIEWS 197 

example and vindication of the best modem interpretation of Chris- 
tianity and its world-wide enterprise. In contrast with the sepa- 
ratist point of view which, not absolutely yet too largely, prevailed 
in the former historians of Christianity and of Christian Missions, 
this latest historian presents a Christian gospel which is more im- 
mediately, more extensively, and more intensively redemptive. The 
situation which needs to be saved is now seen to be not less perilous; 
the genuine results, more glorious; the need of divine empowerment, 
more lu-gent. 

" A world-view is never a substitute for religion. Amelioration is not 
redemption " (p. 88). 

" Religion is the only remedy that we have against an inherent tendency 
of high civilization to destroy character and personality. What is needed 
is still that kind of ministry which none among men has ever so exemplified 
as did Jesus, and which true followers of Christ seek to exemplify. It is 
the alchemy which can make a son of God and a saint out of the most for- 
lorn being in an imtransformed world, but which will also infallibly set that 
saint upon the transformation of his world " (p. 90). 

The book gives a liberal course in modern history as well as a record 
of Christian Missions and an insight into the meaning of Christian- 
ity. The historian's stern task of setting forth a wide sweep of events 
is accomplished with an abundance of narrated facts, fascinating 
pictures of personalities, incisive judgments, and brilliant generali- 
zations. Perhaps the nearest comparison for scholarliness, though 
not of course for material, would be with a treatment which has been 
given to the earliest period in the history of Christianity by Hamack 
in his Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Cen- 
turies. The addition of a map or maps to accompany the course of 
the history, especially of the various geographical areas of the world, 
would leave almost nothing to be desired in a volume which, both in 
form and in spirit, takes a worthy place in a notable series of text- 
books in religion. 

RoBEET E. Hume. 
Union Theological Seminabt. 



Pbogbessive Religious Thought in Ambmca. John W. Buckham. 
Houghton Mifflin Co. 1919. Pp. xii, 352. $2.00. 

To reveal to many the thoughts of their hearts is a service deserv- 
ing gratitude; especially when the thoughts are not individual only, 
and when a development is exhibited with those of others. The 
solitary thinker gains courage and fuller understanding of himself 
when he becomes aware that he is part of a " movement," and the