tard-seed, the Parable of the Leaven, the Pearls of the Net, the Scribe, the Pharisee, and the Publican, the Prodigal Son, and the Marriage Feast.

The truths referring to the Church, its nature, mission, unity, and catholicity, its being the divinely established dispenser of divine grace, its being the divinely constituted authoritative teacher of revealed truth, its being the veritable "tabernacle of God with men," where Christ is really present, and kindred truths contained in the parables selected, are set forth by the author in a lucid and forcible manner. The utter irreconcilability, too, of Protestantism with these truths is also clearly shown. The second part of the volume is occupied with showing, first, that "the persecution to which the Catholic Church is subjected in all ages is an infallible proof that she is the only true Church of Christ;" and, secondly, that, "as the sufferings of Christ proved His divinity and accomplished what the prophets had foretold, so it is by suffering that the Church reaches her destiny and shall be glorified with Him.”

THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER: The Education of her Children and her Prayer. From the German of Rev. W. Cramer. Translated by a Father of the Society of Jesus, with the permission of Superiors. New York, Cincinnati, and St. Louis: Benziger. Brothers, 1880.

She

The Christian mother, in whatever sphere, however humble her condition in life, has a great dignity and a high vocation of her own. is in education the element of primary importance, and on her proper education of the children depends the welfare of the family, of society, and of the state. It would be well if all mothers were deeply conscious of the lofty trust committed to their hands and proportionately faithful in its discharge.

This little book is designed to remind them of their many duties or concurrent parts of one great duty, and to afford them help and counsel how best to perform them. The author lays down vividly, and with not unnecessary plainness, the many difficulties that beset a proper Christian education of the young, owing to the many dangers by which childhood is environed from the very cradle, the negligence, excessive indulgence, and too often the bad example of parents, and gives some wholesome admonitions on these and other points. There are in the end some excellent prayers and pious practices for Christian mothers, amongst others a useful method of assisting at the Holy Sacrifice for their own benefit and that of their children..

SHORT MEDITATIONS FOR EVERY DAY IN THE YEAR, intended chiefly for the Use of Religious. By an anonymous Italian author. Translated by Dom Edmund J. Luck, O.S.B., Priest of the Cassinese Congregation of the Primitive Observance. Prefaced by a recommendation of His Eminence, Cardinal Manning. New York and Cincinnati: Fr. Pustet. 1879.

The wisdom of the Church in its yearly round of Sacred Seasons and the ever varying significance of its Solemnities and Feasts is shown in countless ways. Annually "the whole Revelation of the Faith returns, mystery by mystery, dogma by dogma, precept by precept, upon our intelligence and upon our hearts. The Lex credandi is the Lex orandi, and the worship of the Church preaches to the world without, and to the faithful within the .sanctuary. The best Manuals of Devotion are those that follow the Church as it moves through the Liturgical year. The Manual before us does this. It is a simple and edifying exposition of the eternal truths in which and by which we must live and persevere to a holy death. To use the words of His Eminence, Cardinal Man

ning, who warmly recommends this Manual, "Every one, in every state in the world, in the Priesthood and in the Cloister what is enough for perfection; for perfection consists in the love of God and our neighbor."

STUMBLING-BLOCKS MADE STEPPING-STONES ON THE ROAD TO THE CATHOLIC FAITH. By the Rev. James J. Moriarty, A.M., Pastor of St. Patrick's Church, Chatham Village. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, Barclay Street. 1880.

"From his own personal experience," the author tells us in his preface, "during frequent and almost daily intercourse with persons who are not of the household of faith," he has learned that most of the objections against the Church are based on mistaken notions of her doctrines. He has selected, therefore, as subjects for explanation in this volume, the Mass, the Confessional, the Intercession of Saints, Devotion to the Blessed Virgin, Purgatory, and Infallibility, because these are more frequently assailed and more generally misunderstood.

The style is clear and sprightly, and the work is calculated to do great good, both as a source of instruction to Catholics, and a means by which non-Catholies, willing to learn the truth as regards the Catholic religion, may be enlightened.

SHADOWS OF THE ROOD; or Types of our Suffering Redeemer, Jesus Christ, occurring in the Book of Genesis. Being the substance of a series of moral discourses, delivered in the Church of the Assumption, during the Lent of 1856. By the Rev. John Bonus, B.D., Ph. et LL.D. Second American Edition. corrected by the author. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co., 1878.

Revised and

Devotion to the Cross is the life and soul of all devotion. Discourses, therefore, which explain, so far as they can be explained, and bring home to the mind and heart of the hearer or reader the profound yet precious mysteries comprehended in the passion and death of our Divine Redeemer, touch upon subjects of the deepest interest to every Christian. The little volume before us consists of such discourses. They are exegetical as bringing out the mystical significance of prominent personages under the Old Law, and showing that they were types which our Saviour fulfilled. At the same time these discourses are also moral, in that their chief object is to incite the readers to progress in Christian virtue.

THE LIFE OF ST. BENEDICT, PATRIARCH OF THE WESTERN MONKS. Translated from the Second Book of the Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great, Supreme Pontiff. By P. Aurelius McMahon, O.S.B., Permissu Superiorum. Baltimore: John Murphy & Co., 1880.

The life of a saint, written by a saint, cannot fail to be both instructive and edifying. The work before us has been so highly appreciated and commended in all generations, that it would be superfluous for us to say a word in its praise. It is brief and concise, but its every chapter and page and line is redolent of piety, unction, and the spirit of God. It is a model, too, of simplicity, and has, moreover, a special value as historical evidence of the belief and prevailing religious spirit of the Christian world thirteen hundred years ago, particularly with regard to miracles, the necessity and merit of self-mortification, humility, meditation, and prayer.

SKETCHES OF THE LIVES OF DOMINICAN SAINTS. By M. K. Dublin; M. H. Gill & Son. 1880.

No more interesting, instructive or edifying reading can be found

than the lives of those who, through self-mortification, prayer, meditation, and persevering, heroic striving against sin, have attained perfect sanctity. The little work before us consists of brief yet clear, and in their way, complete sketches of Dominican saints of past ages, and of the companions and disciples of St. Dominic. They bring clearly before the reader the spirit of that grand religious order, and the labors and achievements of its founder and many of his most distinguished followers.

THE METAPHYSICS OF THE SCHOOL. By Thomas Harper, S. 7. London: McMillan & Co. 1879. 8vo., pp. 592, withpp. lxxx of Introduction.

This is one of the most important books that has appeared in English Catholic literature for a long time, and it must be hailed as a most welcome help to the study of scholastic philosophy. The author's attempt to give in English the scholastic terminology is itself a great enterprise, and his success is astonishing. The matter of which he treats is so vast and important that we must reserve it for fuller criticism in

our next.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

THE PASSION PLAY AT OBERAMMERGAU, IN THE SUMMER OF 1871. By the Rev. Gerald Malloy, D.D. Fourth edition. London: Burns & Oates. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son. 1880.

VOICES FROM THE HEART: SACRED POEMS. By Sister May Alphonsus Downing, of the Third Order of St. Dominic, author of Meditations and Prayers in Honor of St. Catharine of Sienna and other Saints. New and enlarged edition. Revised by Right Rev. Doctor Leahey, Bishop of Dromore. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son. 1880.

THE LAST MONARCH OF TARA: A TALE OF IRELAND IN THE SIXTH CENTURY. By Eblona. Revised and corrected by the Very Rev. U. J. Canon Bourke, M.R.I.A. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son. 1880.

THE LIFE OF REV. CHARLES NERINCKX: With a Chapter on the Early Catholic Missions of Kentucky; Copious Notes on the Progress of Catholicity in the United States of America, from 1800 to 1825; an Account of the Establishment of the Society of Jesus in Missouri; and an Historical Sketch of the Sisterhood of Loretto in Kentucky, Missouri, New Mexico, etc. By Rev. Camillus Maes, Priest of the Diocese of Detroit. Cincinnati: Robert Clark & Co. 1880. A very interesting work, received when the last pages of the REVIEW were going to press.

CEREMONIAL INSTITUTIONS: Being Part IV. of the Principles of Sociology. By Herbert Spencer. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1880.

BLONID. By Robert D. Joice, author of Deidre. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1879. THE CRAYFISH: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF ZOOLOGY. By T. H. Huxley, F.R.S. With eighty-two illustrations. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1880. LIFE OF ERASMUS DARWIN. By Ernst Krouse. Translated from the German by W. S. Dallas. With a Preliminary Notice, by Charles Darwin. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1880.

LAYS AND LEGENDS OF THOMOND. With Historical and Traditional Notes.
Michael Thomond. Dublin; M. H. Gill & Son. 1880.

By

THE PATHOLOGY OF MIND. Being the third edition of the second part of The Physi ology and Pathology of the Mind, recast, enlarged and rewritten. By Henry Maudsley, M.D. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1880.

THE REFUTATION OF DARWINISM. By T. Warren O'Neill, Member of the Philadelphia Bar. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1880.

History of European Morals, from Augustus to Charlemagne. By W. E. Hartpole Lecky, M.A. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1877.

Atheistic Methodism.

January, 1880.

T

By W. H. Mallock, in Nineteenth Century.

HEOLOGIANS demonstrate that Unity, Sanctity, Catholicity, and Apostolicity are four characteristic marks of the true Church, as our Lord constituted it. The second of these, sanctity, is intended to be specially considered in this paper. The most elementary authors of theology, even, set forth convincing proofs that in the divine plan the universal and perpetual society established by Jesus Christ was from the beginning destined to be holy in its doctrine and its members. The types of the Old Law which foreshadowed it, the Prophets who described it minutely ages before its birth, the Apostles who were its founders and spokeof it in detail, the Fathers who, in working out its development, never swerved from its original ideal, cannot leave any doubt as to the intention of Christ, that His bride should be forever pure and immaculate.

Passing from the abstract plan to its realization, the historians of the Church prove that the ideal was carried out, not only at the first propagation of Christianity, but during all the nineteen centuries which have intervened; and even the great majority of nonChristian writers admit that, in point of fact, with the era of the VOL. V.-25

birth of Christ commences a period of immense moral progress, and that wherever the new religion made proselytes the most remarkable purity of life distinguished them from their still pagan countrymen.

But our object is not to develop a thesis of Catholic theology. This is indeed presupposed, and the intention is not to either set it entirely aside or lessen its importance. We think it preferable to answer some objections only which non-Catholic writers of talent have rendered popular in our day. To this we shall mainly confine ourselves. Our chief work will be to examine attentively what has always been, and what is at this moment the Church's action on the moral world, in comparison with the various ethical systems which are proposed in this century for the guidance of men. For it is remarkable that in this age extraordinary efforts are being made on every side to settle the morals of mankind on new bases, altogether different from, and often totally opposed to, the old and solid foundations laid down by the Apostles of Christ and their successors. The turn given to the new theories is occasionally calculated to deceive the unwary, and the proposed object of those writers is always to place the Church in an inferior position, and to induce the reader to conclude that the superiority in morals which the Catholic attributes to his religion is not supported by the verdict of history.

And what renders the need of this more urgent is that the new moralists concede in the main that the value of life consists in "virtue," whatever meaning they give to this word. They are often extremely strict in their ethics, and sometimes raise objections which would stagger a venerable professor in our theological seminaries. The time has passed for openly preaching immorality among men, except on the part of a few novelists and dramatists. Among serious writers the French phalansterians were the last to do it, worse than Epicurus ever did. We do not intend to speak of them, nor of the immoral writers of the last century. The school of Voltaire has passed away with the gibes and sneers it lavished on the purest and holiest persons and institutions belonging to our Holy Church. Neither is it our intention to bring into comparison with Catholic sanctity the pagan, Mohammedan, or Buddhistic worlds, which even at this day compose the majority of mankind. The reason of this last exclusion is simply that those dregs of Asia form, confessedly, "the kingdom of moral darkness," which it would be folly to compare with Christian holiness. There are, it is true, some eccentric writers who admire the morality practiced by the followers of Mohammed and of Gautama, and find in the Koran and the folios attributed to Sakya-muni a strict