The Union review - v. 4 Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Encyclical to the Sermons on the " Freedom of the Spirit," or the " Law of Progress," in this volume, is like passing from the sickly atmosphere of a crowded bal... more »l-room, or the fumes of a deserted banquet-hall, into the freshness of the morning air. The change, both intellectual and moral, is of kind rather than of degree. Yet Mr. Liddou is no half-hearted or faltering champion of dogmatic truth. But he has not forgotten that even heresy may have its lessons for us, and that the precept of charity is not limited in application to those who share our creed. If he had forgotten it, we will venture to assert that the enthusiastic crowds of young Englishmen who thronged the benches of St. Mary's to hear him would have gone away with little increase in their zeal for orthodox belief, and still less in their respect for its professors. Another general observation suggested by these Sermons is the following,:—Most of them deal more or less directly—two of them very directly, with the claims, limits, and meaning of the dogmatic principle ; or, as the motto from Goethe prefixed to the volume expresses it, the "conflict" between faith and unfaith, which runs indeed through all human history, but is in a special system the touchstone of our own age. Of this principle of dogma within its own sphere, and rightly understood, the author is an unflinching champion. But he brings to its discussion, besides that temper of moderation, candour, and chivalrous consideration towards opponents which we have already alluded to, the command of wide and varied learning, not only in the domain of theology, strictly so called, but of the higher philosophy and literature of the day. He has not forgotten that Moses, the man of God, was versed in ah' the wisdom of the Egyptians, and that a greater than Moses,...« less