CURRENT LITERATURE.
The British Quarterly Review. July. (Hodder and Stoughton.)— The most reads ble article in this number is that on "Bryan Waller Procter," the writer of which has used the lately published autobio- graphy, with the accompanying sketches and letters, to draw a vigorous picture of the poet. The essay on the "Ethics of Evolution " is a valuable contribution to a discussion of pressing importance, in which it is not too much to say that everything that is supremely valuable in human life is at stake. The article on "Future Punishment" has the look of being written rather because the circumstances of the time demand some utterance from the representative organ of Congrega- tionalism, than because the author had anything particular to say. Ho is prepared to concede that "evil natures, when placed under in- vincible restraint, and beat upon by the storm of retributive vengeance, may have a tendency to wear themselves out, and sink—if not into non-entity—into insensibility and permanent un- consciousness." But this is the extreme limit to which he will go. That the heathen will be judged according to that which they have, and not according to that which they have not, and that infants will be saved, are considerations which suffice to satisfy him. Any renewal of probation after death seems to him quite out of the question. He is able to shut his eyes to facts so completely as to see only two classes in the world, "the righteous and the wicked, the children of God and the children of the Devil, the friends of Christ and his enemies." How ninny friends of Christ, persons whose religions ex- periences would satisfy the "messengers " of a Congregational Church, does ho think there are among the three millions of London, how many in the million and a half of Paris ? Of course he will answer that we have no right to ask him for such an estimate. We hold that the question is a necessary test of his theology. The other articles are on " Taine's Philosophy of Art," " The Russian and Turkish War," "Recent History of the Burials Question,"" The Later Greek Nation," and " The Con- gregational View of Religious Communion."
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