CURRENT LITERATURE.
Analogy Considered as a Guide to Truth and Applied as an Aid to Faith. By James Buchanan, D.D., LL.D. (Johnstone, Hunter, and Co.)— Bishop Butler, in his famous philosophical work, assumed the existence of analogy as a law of thought. It was not, he said, his design to inquire into its nature, to explain why it produces conviction, or to guard against the errors to which it is liable. This omission the author of the ponderous treatise before us has set himself to supply. His work is divided into three parts, in the first of which he treats of the general doctrine of analogy so very generally that while he objects to all other definitions he offers us none of his own to supply their place ; in the second he enumerates the sources of analogy in matters of faith ; and in the third he applies this method of reasoning to various modern religions questions. Everywhere the author seems to 118 to write about his subject rather than on it, and to leave its real difficulties altogether unsolved. Unless a reader has a great passion for the metaphysics of theology he cannot be recommended to grapple with this portly octavo.
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