LAW OF CREEDS IN SCOTLAND.
The Law of Creeds in Scotland. By Alexander Taylor Innes. (W. Blackwood and Sons. 10s.)—This is a new edition of what has come in Scotland to be regarded as the text-book of its subject, though, as its author takes care to remind us, it is not "a book of Church law, but a book of the civil law of Scotland in its relations to the Church." Mr. Innes, who is a member of the United Free Church, which is non-Established, uses the word " Church " in- differently of Dissenting and " Erastian " Presbyterianism. So in his volume he indicates the action—it might be rash, or at least "contentions," to say the interference—of law and of Courts in the history of Presbyterianism. Everybody knows the results of that action in 1848, when the Free Church came into exist- ence. Mr. Innes, however, deals with it both before and (in his new edition) after that memorable epoch, with the Church " within " and with the Church " outside " Establishment. Not
the least interesting portions of his work are those based on the new material of history which has accumulated during recent years. Of the final result of researches into the interaction of Church and State let Mr. lanes speak:—" Thirty years ago Mr. Gladstone, discussing with passionate eloquence the problems raised in the first issue of this book, said to me, 'The truth is the law will never be right till it makes a distinction between a man's principles and his opinions.' It is a true and even a profound distinction, but the difficulty of applying it (largely illustrated in the speaker's own history) returns in so many forms when law deals with the principles and the limits of
e deviation of a Church that the final demarcation will be a triumph of jurisprudence." There are few mistakes of any note in this work. But why does Mr. Innes persistently speak of the present Member for the Universities of Glasgow and Aberdeen as "Sir James Campbell" ?
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