CURRENT LITERATURE.
JOHN CALVIN.
John Calvin. By Williston Walker. (G. P. Putnam's Sons. 6s.)—Professor Walker, who holds the Chair of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Yale, has given us an excellent piece of work in this volume, one of the "Heroes of the Reformation" Series. The mass of material available for a biographer of Calvin is very large. His works have been published in =tens° ; a great collection of letters written by or addressed to him is in existence ; and many estimates, more or less trustworthy, have been formed of his work and character by friendly or hostile observers. Some points of fact remain, and probably will remain, doubtful. We cannot fix accurately the time of his "conversion," though we may affirm that it could not have been complete till the year 1534, when he resigned the ecclesiastical preferments which he held under the old system. And some questions of conduct will con- tinue to be discussed, most prominent among them being his behaviour in the case of Servetus. Na one can deny that almost all the men who occupied Calvin's standpoint would have acted as he did'; "almost all," we say, because Protestantism had already begun to develop in the direction of toleration, though there were but few who discerned the fact. Servetus himself, in a memorial addressed to the Genevan Government, demanded the death of Calvin and the confiscation of his goods. As to his Romanist adversaries, no one can doubt what their action would have been. Professor Walker puts the case, as he puts every case, with all fairness. His book is admirable in every way.
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