SOURCE: "Laurence Oliphant and His New Book," in The Critic, New York, n. s. Vol. IX, No. 233, June 16, 1888, pp. 289-90.

In the following review of Scientific Religion, the critic discusses Oliphant's life and his responses to detractors.

A new Timon of Athens, if we are to take him at his own estimate, is among us in the person of Mr. Laurence Oliphant. Timon is never very complimentary to his fellow-creatures, nor do they in turn easily forgive the hand that ruthlessly lays bare their frailties and shouts them from the house-tops. Yet Mr. Oliphant has a very warm place in the hearts of many of these same fellow-creatures, and the sharp whip of criticism, which he has sometimes rather mercilessly laid upon their backs, has seldom recoiled upon his own. The reason for this, we suspect, is that Mr. Oliphant is not the hardened cynic he would have...