CONGREGATIONAL INDEPENDENCY IN SCOTLAND.
A History of Congregational Independency in Scotland. By James Ross. (James Maclehose and Sons, Glasgow. Os.)— This is a useful book, and will be found very valuable by every one who wishes to master every phase of religious thought and ecclesiastical tendency in Scotland. For Congre- gationalism, especially since it was united a few years ago to Evangelical Unionism, has become a power in Scotland, and par- ticularly in the larger cities. This is due in part to the fact that the congregations in cities of the size of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Dundee contain a good number of the wealthier and more capable citizens, and so are able to induce the ablest ministers to come to them ; and also because Congregationalism appears to many Scottish minds the logical development of Presbyterian democracy. There is a sense of incompleteness and imper- fect cohesion about the volume, however, which is due in part, no doubt, to the circumstance that a portion of it took the form originally of magazine articles. Besides, as its author explains, it consists mainly of a history of origins, and most of the record here given deals with the various forms of Christian enterprise on the part of the Churches in their early years. It could not well be otherwise, for, "in the absence of those ecclesias- tical organisations which belong to other religious bodies, and which make their history more or less eventful, it is only in connection with some new departure in thought and activity that Congregational Church life affords materials for historical record." There is not much of what Principal Fair- bairn regards as the "romance" of Scottish Churchism in the history of Scottish Independency, meinly because it was less a home-growth—though perhaps " impl icit " in Presbyterianism —than an importation from England. So Mr. Ross's narrative, though lucid, is not marked by picturesque, much less purple, passages. It is only when we come to the doctrines of the "Glassites" and the " Sandemanians," and to the missionary enter- prises of the brothers Haldane, that his narrative can be said to become very readable. The final portion is the most interesting of all ; in it Mr. Bess retells the very remarkable story of the Cranbrook case in Edinburgh, which seemed to prove that Con- gregationalism has something like a "sectarian creed," and narrates the events which led to the union between the Congre- gational Union and that Evangelical Union which had originated in a secession—on theological grounds—from the Secession Church. Mr. Ross's volume is indeed an excellent handbook. He writes quite impartially, though his tone on disputed points of theology is cautious and conservative.
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