CURRENT LITERATURE.
There is an air of dryness about The Church and the People (gee- niven and Wallace, Edinburgh), which is the sixth series of "The St. Giles's Lectures," in connection with, and in support of, the Church of Scotland. For this, however, the subjects of the lectures, and not the calibre of the lecturers—who include some of the best known of Scotch clergymen, such as Principal Cunningham, the late Principal Tulloch, Professor Taylor, of Edinburgh, and the late Dr. Donald Macleod, of Glasgow—must be blamed. They deal very largely with topics of controversy, such as "The Progress of Voluntaryism," "The Church of Scotland and Religious Equality," " Disestablish- ment and Disendewment," and "The Union of Scottish Presbyterians." The authors of these lectures write with amenity and ability. Mr. Gray, the lecturer on religious equality, in particular shows himself to have studied both the late Mr. John Stuart Mill's work on "Liberty," and Mr. Justice Stephen's criticisms of it. But one needs the freedom of a party platform to do thorough justice to tepics that rouse party feelings. We like best, therefore, the lectures which, if polemical at all, are only indirectly so, such as "The Parochial System," by Dr. Macleod, and "Free-will Offerings and Tithes," by Principal Cunningham, for both lecturers write as if they had elbow- room, and were certain that they had a right to speak freely and en- thusiastically. All things considered, however, this volume is as fair and full a statement of the whole case for the Church of Scotland at the present crisis in its history as has yet appeared, or is perhaps needed.
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