“The chief merits of his book [are] clearness and force with which the problem of morality is stated and the fearlessness with which the author follows out his own solution.”
| + + | Spec. 98: 1004. Je. 29, ’07. 1800w. |
Rauschenbusch, Walter. Christianity and the social crisis. **$1.50. Macmillan.
7–13925.
The author begins his study of tracing the relations of Christianity to the social crisis as far back as the days of the greater Hebrew prophets. He finds reasons for the “halting and groping,” conscience of Christendom, “perplexed by contradicting voices” and finds reasons for “freeing an honest man’s heart” on the maxims of the past and the imperious call of the future.
“Of less value is the later and constructive part of the work where an attempt is made to outline the immediate measures which should be taken to mitigate the evils of our time. Such questions cannot be successfully treated in the form of rhetorical appeals to somewhat vague and elementary feelings and without a mastery of technical economic reasoning which is not revealed in the work itself.” Charles Richmond Henderson.
| + − | Dial. 43: 249. O. 16, ’07. 170w. |
“There is not room here to show the successive stages by which Professor Rauschenbusch builds up his structure of thought to its culmination: we can only say that nothing in it is set down in carelessness or in ignorance, and that it cannot be ignored by any one who would understand the social thought of today.”
| + | Ind. 63: 572. S. 5, ’07. 410w. |