CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Temptation of Christ. By George S. Barrett, B.A. (Macniven and Wallace.)—It is not easy for a preacher to say anything about the Temptation the substance of which may not be found in Mr. Maurice's admirable sermons on that subject. Still, this volume has a value and a place of its own. We must own that we have not found much profit in the discussion on what is theologically called the " impeccability " of Christ. We can understand something of the intense suffering which the contact with evil must have caused to him, a point on which Mr. Maurice dwells with great force, but beyond this we can hardly go. It is in the application of the lessons of the Temptation to human life that we find the chief excellence of these sermons. The eighth and tenth of their number, entitled "The Life of Temptation" and "Christ's Victory the Pledge and Power of Our Victory over Sin," strike us as being particularly forcible. The writer does not wholly escape the danger which always besets those who write monographs of this kind. What he says about the passage in St. Mark, "He was with the wild beasts," strikes us as being highly fanciful. Is there any need to think of it as anything else but one of the Evangelist's picturesque expressions ? Surely the imagination of "a fierce and bloodthirsty crew of wild beasts of prey, each one intent on his destruction," is not even true to the circumstances of the scene ? But the volume generally is characterised by sound sense, as well as by liberality of view.
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