CURRENT LITERATURE.
Portuguese Discoveries, Dependencies, and Missions in Asia and Africa. By the Rev. Alex. J. D. D'Orsey, B.D. (W. H. Allen and Co.)—This is a book which is dated and prefaced and appen- dixed "1893," but in point of fact seems to have been written in 1867-68. The substance goes up only to that date, and it has the curiously narrow ideas of that date. Under cover pf a historical aecount of the Portuguese missionary efforts in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it is really an attack from the Low Anglican point of view on Roman Catholic missions in India, their methods and results. The writer is more anxious to reconvert to Pro- testantism not only the Roman Catholic branch of the "abori- ginal" Christians of St. Rumor, the Syrian Church which the Portuguese found in India, but even the Syrian Church itself. Compering the meagre results of Protestant as compared with Roman Catholic missions in India—at all events in nunibers—one cannot but feel that this attempt to discredit their results is somewhat petty ; though it must be admitted that Portuguese methods of conversion, like Portuguese methods of colonisation and conquest, wore singularly like those of the Mahommedans, whom i they followed and ousted for reasons of religious as well as commercial rivalry.
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