L. Harold De Wolf reviews This Life and the Next, by Peter T. Forsyth.

Born and educated in Aberdeen, Scotland, Peter T. Forsyth later studied in England and Germany. After several pastorates in England he became principal of Hackney College, Hampstead (Divinity school of the University of London) where he served for twenty years prior to his death in 1921. He brought to his writing a clear, penetrating mind, a sensitive feeling for the finer values and a concise but graceful style.

This Life and the Next is the first of several works by its distinguished author scheduled for republication here and in England. Originally written during the First World War it has lost nothing of timeliness and is well worth reissuance. This book is not devoted to evidences for belief in immortality but to “the reaction of that belief upon this life” (p. 1). He concedes the bad effects wrought by unintelligent and unworthy belief. He is especially opposed to the superstition and the magnification of trivialities exploited by spiritualistic mediums. That, he says, is not Christianity. “It is another religion and a debased” (p. 35). But the Christian faith in an elevated and growing lie hereafter with God is here and now a comfort and dynamic inspiration.

A neglected and welcome note is sounded when Dr. Forsyth deplores the dwelling of religious thought upon the human person, with his fears and hopes, almost to the exclusion of thought about God and duty and the kingdom. At times the reader might think the author had heard the recent psychologizing in some American pulpits, in which Dale Carnegie has displaced the gospel. In thought about immortality, as in the interpretation of present experience, only a faith which is God-centered is either theoretically or morally sound.

This review first appeared in Journal of Bible and Religion, Vol. 17, No. 1. (Jan., 1949), 46.

The thing that most stands out to me about this review is that it contains one of too few acknowledgments of Forsyth’s clarity of writing style: ‘He brought to his writing a clear, penetrating mind, a sensitive feeling for the finer values and a concise but graceful style’. To be sure, Forsyth is not always ‘easy going’ (why should theology be?) but those who persist with him can not fail to hear what he is saying with almost frightening penetration, for in that hearing one is being addressed by the living God clothed in his gospel.