CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Autobiography of an Independent Minister. (Williams and Norgate.)—In noticing this book about five years ago, we observed that although the writer had a practical experience of the evils of his system, he bad not lost faith in it. The present edition, however, contains a preface and six additional chapters, from which we learn that the author, Mr. Martyn, has seceded to the Church of England. There is much in the fresh matter which seems irrelevant, and the controversy with Dr. Alton raised in the preface is wholly destitute of interest to the general reader. It is not because the writer fails to make out his case—upon that we pronounce no opinion—bat that the case, if made out., is of slight public importance. Possibly, since the author has joined the National Church, he will have seen reason for rejecting an opinion formerly expressed, that the almsgiving of her members is " miserably inaignifioant." He has discovered the weak side of the worship of the Independents when he states that "the sermon is the golden calf to which almost everything is sacrificed." He has discovered, too, a blot which Churchmen have long been striving to remove, bat of which Dissenters generally are unconscious, when he observes that "the old pew-rent system is one of the worst possible." In Part I., Mr. Martyn calls himself a Liberationist, and writes as Dissenters are wont to do of Episcopacy wearing the fetters of the State ; in Part IL, we read of the inequality produced by the union of Church and State, but not a word of the fetters.
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