CURRENT LITERATURE.
It is as pleasant now as it was to Chaucer to see the new corn coming up year by year from the seed first sown by wise and good men; and an instance comes tons from America in a recent (August) number of The Outlook : a Family Paper. Under the head of "The Prophets of the Christian Church," the Rev. A. G. V. Allen, D.D., gives an admirable estimate of the life and writings of Frederick Maurice. Among the salient points of this essay are the forma- tion of the youthful theologian's character under the good influence of the father and mother—and he might have added, of the not less excellent sisters—under which the two great truths of the Fatherhood of God and of His absolute Will became the master-thoughts of his life and teaching ; the growth of his character under the double training of Cambridge and Oxford, —Oxford being put first by what is probably only a misprint—his habit of looking everywhere for facts, and not for notions and theories about facts. This last habit of mind was specially exemplified in his practical life as a teacher, by his never dis- cussing conjectures as to the origin of evil, but instead recog- nising the fact of its existence as sin ; and the absolute need of fighting with it to the uttermost, and the intellectual side of this habit of looking at facts instead of notions about facts is shown by the whole method of his teaching of moral and metaphysical philosophy.
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