RELIGION AND MENTAL PHENOMENA.

From the "Christian Union."

Whatever may be said in favour or disfavour of Mr. Edward Maitland's "Story of the New Gospel of Interpretation," it is one of the most remarkable and most fascinating books on mental-visional perceptions of Divine Revelation that has appeared at any time. It is a book that carries the reader away from the materialistic to the mystical and spiritual. The author claims to bring to the old revelation a new interpretation, or more correctly, to restore the original and spiritual interpretation which has been lost through literalism. According to the narrative, the two persons concerned were for some years in reception of revelations which convinced them that they had been enabled "to tap a boundless reservoir of wisdom and knowledge" before the method and source were declared to them.... At length it was made clear to them that the knowledges they had acquired were due to intuitional recollection occuring under Divine illumination. "Inborn knowledge and the perception of things—these are the sources of Revelation. The soul of the man instructeth him, having already learned by experience. Intuition is inborn experience, that which the soul knoweth of old and of former lives." The ordinary mind will doubtless be ready to pronounce it to be strange mental phenomena, and nothing more. But surely mental phenomena of an extraordinary character must have an extraordinary use and purpose. And so few persons know enough of the psyhic powers latent in man, to be able to believe in the reality of these manifestations.... The nature of the results is such as to negative all materialistic explanations. For the knowledges recovered are real, solving problems in the profoundest domains of theology, hitherto given up as mysteries hopeless of solution. And they are being thus recognised far and wide by the profoundest students of spiritual science.... Judge the story of the New Gospel of Interpretation in what light we may, it has in it all the evidences of a marvellous work in its mental and spiritual conception, exposition, interpretation, illustration, and Divine communication. It stands out conspicuously as a fuller development of Biblical truth, such as Cardinal Newman must have anticipated when he said that he saw no hope for religion, save in a new Revelation.

THE RUSKIN PRESS. STAFFORD STREET, BIRMINGHAM, PRINTERS.