29 AUGUST 1885, Page 22

CURRENT LITERATURE.

The Scottish Church, which has recently been started to defend the Northern Establishment,, and still more to give expression to the literary talent that exists in, or is not out of sympathy with, that Establishment, continues to be conducted with great vigour and ability. It is plain, from the tone of the more controversial articles that have appeared in the July and August numbers, as also from the significant attitude taken up by many Liberal candidates for con- stituencies in Scotland, that Chnrchmanship, especially Liberal Chnrchmanship, is a political force that will have to be reckoned with. A very clever and amusing paper indeed, is one in the August number entitled " The Latest Liberationist." It is a criticism of a magazine article by Lord Lorne, to the flippancy of which we have already had occasion to allude. If this paper is sharply gladiatorial, Lord Lorne is himself to blame. The July and August numbers of the Scottish Church also contain papers on Northern literature and scenery which are at once remarkably care- ful and remarkably fresh. The Highland question is being dealt with in a series of papers, as also is that of the condition of the poor. There is a great deal of reserve power, too, in the serial story, "The Story of a Quiet Life." But to our thinking the gem of the magazine up to the present time is another chapter in the history of " The Little Pilgrim in the Seen and the Unseen," which appears in the July number. It exhibits, like its predecessors, a serious moral purpose in a narrative setting of " supernatural realism." It teaches once more that the anchor of human hope is the Universal Fatherhood of God, and that the essence of human brotherhood is an all-embracing pity. We have too little of this teaching in the market-place at the present time ; certainly none so delicately conveyed.