Cash for Theology

Most religious books make little money, but one published this week has already made its author $15,000. The title: Christianity: An Inquiry Into Its Nature and Truth (Scribner; $2.50). The author:

Methodist Theologian Harris Franklin Rail of Garrett Biblical Institute at Evanston, Ill.

Dr. Rail owes his windfall to the will of a pious Presbyterian, spade-bearded Chicago Publisher William Bross. who left $40,000 to Illinois's Lake Forest College in 1890 and stipulated that once every 50 years a super-award of $15,000 be given "the best single book on the connection and relation of the humanities and practical science with the Christian religion." Donor Bross's purpose, explained President Herbert McComb Moore of Lake Forest in handing Dr. Rail his check last June, "was to reward more adequately those who make great contributions to man's intellectual and religious progress."

Professor Rail's book (chosen out of 214 entries from ten countries by three anonymous judges) will not go down in history as the great religious book of a half-century. It will please many religious men, stir no one to wild enthusiasm or opposition. For it is not the book of a prophet but of a scholar and a man of understanding, who, unabashed by the modern scientific temper and the disintegrating influences of modern life, sticks to the middle of the road. He avoids a retreat from religion into simple moral idealism and a countermovement toward supernaturalism and authority. Disliking what he calls "either-or" theologies, he sticks close to a "both-and" view of things -- reason& -faith, individual-& -social, permanence& -change.

A.D. 1940 has been a year of celebration for Dr. Rail. In it he not only won the Bross Award but rounded out 40 years in the Methodist ministry, 30 years of teach ing and 25 years as head of Garrett's department of systematic theology. Last March his friends and former students helped mark this triple anniversary by publishing in his honor a volume of essays, Theology and Modern Life. Still a top-notch teacher at 70, he turns his lectures into free discussions because he thinks students should bring up anything that pops into their heads.

Wispy, steely-haired, chuckling Theologian Rail, who is only five-feet four, makes light of his small stature by putting a hand under his goatee, quoting David Lloyd George, "You should measure men from here up." His hobby for 40 years:

raiding the woods round Evanston for plants to grace his indoor gardens. When he got his prize, Dr. Rail promptly tithed it, put the remaining $13,500 into Government bonds. Says he cheerily: "Theology professors don't get much money and I shall be able to do very nicely with it."

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