CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Celtic Church of Scotland. By John Dowden, D.D. (Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.)—This is a handy little volume by the Bishop of Edinburgh, upon a comparatively little-known subject, but showing here and there in its style evidences of its origin in lectures "intended chiefly for those who, while possessing such general information in regard to the his- tory of Scotland as may be reasonably looked for in persons of education, have not made any special acquaintance with the early history of the Church in this country." Of necessity, Dr. Dowden
travels over ground that is familiar to many Scotsmen. Thus he retells the story of Ninian and Whithorn, Columba and Iona, the Culdees, and Saint Margaret of Scotland. But he says what he has to say very clearly, and not in an ultra-controversial spirit. All the same, he adheres tenaciously to the opinions he holds, such as that" there is not the smallest shred of evidence for the notion that the Culdees differed from the rest of Christendom at the period, either in regard to faith or in their views of Church government," and that "they probably originated in an attempt to aim at the perfections of an ascetic life." Dr. Dowden's chapters on the discipline and doctrine of the early Celtic Church are interesting and carefully written, and on the whole his little volume may be regarded as a very convenient text-book on the subject of which it treats,—one, too, which Presbyterians will require to take with only a very few grains of salt indeed.
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