Practical Philosophy of the Christian Life; Human Misery; Death; Eternity; the Moral Life; Christian Friendship; Spirituality and Asceticism; Church and Christianity; Apologetics; Miscellanies; Prayers. Many of these paragraphs are like sparks struck from the red-hot iron. They reveal a mind of the first order and a priestly heart beating to the noblest aspirations, the tenderest and holiest emotions. Few prayers are more touching, more expressive of confiding devotion to God, to Jesus, and to His blessed mother, than those that are here given from his pen. No wonder that those who knew him best in the days of his Catholic faith did not cease to pray for him after his death, in the fond hope that the merits of his earlier years may have secured for him in his death agony the saving grace of repentance.

CHARLES F. AIKEN.

Dictionnaire Apologétique de la Foi Catholique, sous la Direction de A. D'Alès. Fascicule VII. Paris: C. Beauchesne, 1911.

The seventh part of the new Apologetic Dictionary, constituting the opening pages of the second volume, brings to the reader a number of articles bearing on highly important subjects and treated with the care and breadth of scholarship that they deserve.

In the first article, Georges Goyau gives an excellent historic account of the futile efforts of Protestant writers from Dumoulin to Count von Hoensbroech to fasten on Jesuit teaching the dictum that the end justifies the means. Then follows a masterly exposition of Faith and Fideism, to which the author, the Abbé Bainvel, devotes no less that thirty-six pages. With a rich indication of literature, given at the end of each important division, he sets forth the Catholic doctrine, and refutes the erroneous views of Protestants, Modernists and Rationalists, subjecting their principal arguments and objections to a thorough criticism. Especially timely is his refutation of Sully Prudhomme, whose thesis that Catholic faith involves contradictions has been set forth with more than usual subtlety in his recent work, La vraie religion selon Pascal.

The long article on Free Masonry by Gustave Gautherot, professor at the Catholic Institute of Paris, offers a richly documented account of this evasive subject that for thoroughness and trust

worthiness stands in the front rank. The different solutions of the problem raised by the Gospel terms, the brother, brothers, sisters, of Jesus, are treated in a scholarly manner by Father Durand, S. J. Then follows an erudite study of the famous trial and condemnation of Galileo. This article, to which the author, Pierre de Vergille, devotes twenty-two pages, is destined to supersede all previous accounts by other scholars, for it is based on the Vatican documents of the trial, published for the first time in their integrity in the recent work of A. Favaro, Galileo e l'Inquisizione, Firenze, 1907.

Another article of great value and interest is that on Gallicanism, the joint work of two authors, the Abbé Dubruel and the Abbé Arquillière. In this scholarly treatise of forty pages, the antecedents of Gallicanism are carefully traced, and its different phases with their respective forms of condemnation are described. It is a help of great value in the study of the relations of Church and State. In an article of ten pages, Father Brucker, S. J., gives a careful treatment of the main difficulties raised against the historic value of the Book of Genesis, and the Abbé Duchesne follows with an article on Gnosis, describing the chief forms of this heretical teaching, which disturbed the Church of the first few centuries. Few will quarrel with the article on the ground that it is an excerpt from a chapter of his Histoire ancienne de l'Église, recently put on the Index; for the passages that gave occasion for the condemnation do not bear on the subject here treated. The closing pages of this excellent number are given to part of Father Neyran's article on Church Government, the completion of which will be found in number eight, soon to be published.

CHARLES F. AIKEN.

MISCELLANEOUS.

An Irish Homily on Confession: Text and Translation.

In the Homily on Poverty printed in the Bulletin of last month, we had an example of a loosely constructed composition made up of a series of quotations from writers of authority. There follow immediately in the Rennes Ms. two pieces having Confession as their subject, which are given below. That they are of an entirely different character from those which precede is evident at once. For they give in a form which admirably combines succinctness with detail a complete summary of Catholic doctrine on the subject mentioned. The first presents the matter in a theoretical way; the second gives a concrete illustration of the manner in which one should confess his sins. Their completeness and the fulness of detail with which the various points of doctrine are exposed indicate on the part of the author a thorough grasp of his subject. Yet, as far as style and the characteristics of the language used are a trustworthy standard of judgment, we can conclude with reasonable probability that they have the same author as the Homilies on the Passion, the Resurrection, and Poverty already published from the same source.

We see in this Homily additional reason to believe that this manuscript is only a copy and not the original. There was pointed out in the Homily on the Resurrection the strange use of the word subailchi where a word similar in appearance would naturally be expected. This Homily presents two more instances of a like confusion of words: in one, neamda, "heav

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enly," is found where it is evident that naemta, "holy," is the word intended; in the other, we have catæirib, "chairs, or seats," where cataisib, "vigils," is required by the sense. It is possible, of course, that these errors are due to the first author, but it seems far more likely that they were made by a copyist. There is, besides, the fact that several times the references, though explicit, are erroneous. A mistake in the reference is hardly to be attributed to the carelessness of the original author when the quotation is so accurate as to suppose a first-hand citation of the source mentioned. A copyist, on the contrary, not having made the extract himself, would be more likely to be inexact in such a point.

As to the sources from which the matter contained in this Homily is drawn, it is to be remarked that the initial reference is misleading. In the first place, it is not clear just what is meant by it, unless we take " fifteenth distinction " to be a correction of the preceding " fifth distinction." Besides, it is not certain that s-r-quartum sumarum is to be equated with Quartum Sententiarum Collectum, the terms in which the title of the Supplement of the Summa Theologica refers to the Commentary on the Fourth Book of the Sentences. However, no alternative presents itself. But even supposing this correct, Distinction XV of this commentary supplies little if any of the matter sought. It has for its titles, "De Satisfactione, et de Partibus Ejus, de Eleemosyna, de Jejunio, de Oratione." Moreover, the verses referred as containing the sixteen qualities of a good confession are not found there, but in the Supplement, Qu. ix, Art. IV, entitled, "Utrum sexdecim conditiones assignatæ requirantur ad confessionem." These lines (which limp, as memory lines are apt to), are given by Saint Thomas not as a key to his presentation of the Catholic doctrine, but merely as summarizing the requirements according to the "Masters."

He accepts them only with reservations, and does not develop the subject according to their order. Here only the fundamental questions concerning the virtue and the sacrament of penance are treated.

The resemblance, however, between our Homily and two of the Opuscula is so striking both in thought and in language that it seems impossible not to consider the latter as sources extensively drawn upon. They are entitled "De Modo Confitendi, et Puritate Conscientiæ," and "De Officio Sacerdotis," and in the Roman Edition are numbered LXIV and LXV respectively.

The Irish author, nevertheless, was not a mere translator. He laid the Summa under contribution extensively, as might have been shown by references if it had been thought useful, and he threw the whole into a form distinctly his own. His presentation of the doctrine of the Church in regard to Confession is for the most part in accord with Saint Thomas's views. On a few points, however, he diverges. For instance he seems to make satisfaction in the state of grace necessary for the validity of the sacrament, as if it were an essential part, whereas Saint Thomas says clearly that it is only an integral not an essential part. He differs likewise in saying that one who has fulfilled his penance should go directly into heaven, a doctrine not to be found in the Summa, though the Angelic Doctor recognizes its possibility in particular cases. The author of the Homily evidently confused the satisfaction required by God for the sins committed, with the satisfaction imposed by the confessor as a part of the sacrament. This view is easily understood considering the gravity and length of the penances imposed at the time when he wrote. It is to be noted here that he speaks of these penances as likely to inspire fear in the penitent.