CURRENT LITERATURE.
Discourses Delivered on Special Occasions. By R. W. Dale, M.A. (Jackson, Walford, and Hodder.)—The world is getting more rational,
if a Nonconformist congregation can bear to be told that the difference between lying and speaking the truth is of infinitely more importance than the difference between Calvinism and Arminianism, and that the
difference between Romanism and Protestantism is less serious than the difference between integrity and knavery. They must have been the more surprised, as this very sensible teaching is by no means in harmony with our author's theory of religion. He propounds the doc- trine of the Atonement in what seems to us a more shocking shape than usual, holding that God himself took upon Himself the punish- - ment of our sins, thus maintaining the moral law, and that henceforth the only sin punishable is want of faith, or the refusal to have the sin forgiven. Thus the typical Dissenter who sanded his sugar and went to prayers.would seem to himself to be adopting quite the line of con- duct that his minister approved of, and must have had his feelings wounded when he hoard this talk about knavery and integrity. But Mr. Dale when he is once clear of his theory says a good many sensible things, and with no small command of rhetoric. H sernions on the relations between. science and faith, on morality and religion, on that law of interdependence which is at once the justification and the reproach of common prayer, as at present conducted, all contain much improving matter.
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