CURRENT LITERATURE.
What is Faith? By "A. B.," a Layman. (Hardwicke.)--This is a very singular and rather incomprehensible book. It is designed as an answer to a letter which appeared in the Times about two months ago, in which the Rev. Dr. Baylee, head of St. Aidan's College, offered to maintain against Bishop Colenso the position that the Bible, being the written word of God, must be, not only historically, but literally true. The lino which "A. B." takes is rather curious. He begins by asserting that truth much necessarily be comprehensible, that to say it is in- comprehensible involves a contradiction of terms, and that it is absurd to talk of believing what we cannot understand. The conclusion which he draws from this axiom is not, as might, perhaps, be expected, that the revealed doctrines of Christianity are not true because they are incomprehensible, but that because Christians regard these truths as incomprehensible, therefore they do not really believe them. For the truths of revelation, so far from being incom- prehensible, are quite easy to be understood when you know how to set about it. "A. B." himself understands perfectly, not only all that are mentioned in the Bible, but also many others to which no allusion is made therein; and he pledges himself to render any or all of them quite intelligible to any one possessed of ordinary common sense. In the volume before us, however, he does nothing whatever towards redeeming this pledge. This is the more to be regretted, as he appears to be quite aware that the claim which he puts forward is one which no one will be prepared to admit on the mere assertion of its author. While he complains that he is deprived, by the reluctance of publishers to undertake a book on the subject, of the means of making his views known to the world, it is odd that it has not occurred to him that the most effectual way of removing this reluctance would be to have devoted a portion of the volume before us to the ex- planation of any one of the truths of Christianity which are commonly regarded as incomprehensible by the human intellect. A single instance, if dealt with completely and satisfactorily, would have been quite suffi- cient, and would have enabled us to form a more satisfactory estimate of the value of a book which, in spite of the occasional flashes of truth with which it is illuminated, we cannot but regard, in its present state, as a production of a very misty and uncertain nature.
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