CURRENT LITERATURE.
The British Qsarterly Review. October. (Hodder and Stoughton.)— This number possesses a more than usual variety of interest, and, as we have not been ill-pleased to find, loss than the usual amount of ecclesiastical controversy. For once the scourge is not applied to a corrupt and iniquitous State Church. And with the writers who deal with the "Early Suffer- ings of the Free Church of Scotland," and " Wesley and Wosloyanism," we have no occasion to quarrel. Both of these are appreciative essays, showing genuine sympathy with the movements which they describe, all the more to be praised because there can bo so little in common between the loose aggregate of voluntary and independent com- munities of which the Congregation 1a. body consists, and such highly organized churches as the Free Church and the Wesleyan body. From the second of the two essays we quote a passage which seems to put admirably a long-vexed question:—"People may disclaim and disown the word "liturgy," and substitute for it psalms and hymns, the fact remains the same, psalms and hymns are liturgies in rhyme,—liturgies sung instead of said. Congregations need to be held together ; the voice of a solitary soul is not enough for religious purposes, and eepooially for the pressure of overwrought emotions ; multitudes require something more than a mere monologue." Might we suggest, by the way, to this writer that he is pressing Frederic Faber's words too far when he says that he "consigns White:field to hell" in this passage ?—" St. Philip would have taught him to preach if he had been an Oraterian novice, which, unluckily for his poor soul, he never was." Surely that is not the style in which one man seriously damns another. Ono of the most attractive articles in the number is that on Dr. Carl Ullman, though it has a defect, in that the theological position of Ullman, which presumably all readers of the British Quarterly do not know, is rather taken for granted and referred to than explained. We notice the mention of a curious fact, that the father of the well-known rationalist Paulus was a Lutheran pastor, expelled from his living on account of necromantic practices in which he compelled the young Paulus to take part. The essay on "The Romance of the Rose" shows acquaintance with medimval literature, and there is a pleasant, gossipy article on "Letters and Letter-Writing," in which we find an anecdote of Talleyrand whioliseeme worth quoting. Ile made a point of acknowledging prosentsof books before he read them, while it was possible to talk of the pleasure
which he hoped to find in them. What enmities should we not avoid if we would do the same ! Science is represented by an article on "Aerial Voy- ages " and by an elaborate essay on Darwin's "Origin of Man." The " Ses- sion " contains a notable passage on the subject of Army Reform and the Purchase of Commissions, drawing out at length the Duke of Wellington's opinion of his army. Indiscriminate panegyrists of the old system would do well to weigh the words of the "Great Duke." At the same time, they must not bo taken for more than they really meant. Very often Wellington was really abusing the Ministry at home when he was apparently abusing his army. And sometimes ho cannot bo acquitted of exaggeration and injustice. It was a little too bad, ton days after Waterloo, a battle which, if some military critics are right, his soldiers won for him, to say, "I really believe, that with the exception of my old Spanish infantry, I have got not only the worst troops, but the worst -equipped army and the worst staff that was over brought together." The Purchase System, of course, is dead, and may well be buried ; but we have not got to the end of the question,—how shall we got good officers ? Tho French system, where "every soldier carries in his knapsack a Marshal's baton," used be held up as perfection, and see how it has collapsed I Now the Prussian Army is our ideal, but then we must go back four centuries, and get a fighting, privileged aristocracy. We observe that the writer of the article says that there are a few Radicals in the House who cannot forgive Mr. Gladstone for being a Christian. We would remind him that Mr. Gladstone's most dangerous enemies are the "Christian mon" who are calling out for secular education.
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