CURRENT LITERATURE.
With its June number, the Scottish Church enters upon the second year of what promises to be a vigorous life. As this is in Scotland the specially ecclesiastical period of the year, the editor has given his readers an abundance—perhaps a surfeit—of timely papers, including "Our Present Duty," "On Some Statements and Statistics of the Disestablishment Party," and "Promotion in the Church." We gather from the last, which is tersely written, that the abolition of patronage has not been an unmixed blessing, at all events to the licentiates of the Church of Scotland. Something like Mr. Schnadhorst's system of government by committees has been introduced into the Church, and the writer of the article we have mentioned gives this advice :—" The first thing is for committees chosen to recommend ministers to the congregations, to put all the applications they receive in the fire. In this way they will get rid of about 30 per cent, of their candidates, all unfit and unsuccessful men, who apply at every vacancy, and who will never get a church though they should live to the age of Methuselah. They will save the dignity of needy ministers scrambling like ragged youths at a wedding to pick up coppers thrown out of a window, some of which are found to scorch their fingers." Of the non-ecclesiastical papers, perhaps the best, or, at least, the most readable, is an admirable Auvergne landscape—in words. A new feature is to be found in this number of the Scottish Church in the shape of notices of books under the title of "Current Literature." They are evidently written by a critic who has both an eye and a mind of his own.
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