CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Mosaic Origin of the Pentateuch Considered. By a Layman of the Church of England. (William Skellington.)—If a proof were wanted of the great good which Bishop Colenso's books have effected, we would name this work. It is not merely that now, when the storm of virulent and intolerant trash which the Bishop's first volume provoked, has blown over, controversialists write, as does "A Layman," with temper, sense, and charity. But we venture to say that "A Layman " not only would not but could not have written this book three years ago. Ho combats the Bishop from first to last, and his work is dedicated by permission to an archbishop, and yet he admits in terms that the Pentateuch is a compilation of documents derived from six sources, of which ho thinks about three-fourths are either pro-Mosaic or contemporaneous with Moses. When the compilation assumed its present form he does not pretend to say. This is no admission of the soundness of the Bishop's conclusions, in which, like "A Layman," we do not believe ; but it is an admission that the popular theory of the infallibility of Scripture is untenable, and that gain is immense.
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