CURRENT LITERATURE.
A History of the Early Church. By the Rev. J. Pryce, M.A. (Long- mans.)—This is a manual, written from the point of view of a High Churchman, but moderate in tone, and fairly comprehensive and philo- sophical. Mr. Pryce has taken pains to compress much valuable infor- mation into a small space. His first chapter deals with the history, his second with the constitution of the Church. In the latter we notice the translation of a very interesting document, the Liturgy of St. James, one of the things from which we get a more practical acquaintance with the tone of thought in the Church than from almost any other source. The fault that we have to find with Mr. Pryce is that his knowledge is not al ways of the newest. Wo do not underrate, for instance, the Vindicice Ignatiance of Bishop Pearson, but the authority on the subject of the genuineness of the epistles is unquestionably Dr. Cnreton. And we do not think, again, that a thorough study of the history of the time would lead to the conclusion that " Marcus Aurelius persecuted the Christians with a cruelty which equalled that of Nero." A vigorous prince, had he been minded to do so, would have repeated the persecutions of Southern Gaul all over the Empire.
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