WHAT is it that changes the world? Events? Ideas? or men? Not mere inhuman events, certainly. An earthquake, even of Messina; a volcanic eruption, even of Mont Pelee; the sinking of a, Titanic, do not jerk the globe off its axis. Doubtless the advent or recession of a Glacial Period; the depression of a continent below sea-level or its reappearance would alter history; but these processes are too gradual or too wholesale to be given, in its ordinary sense, the name "event." Therefore, not just the cannon-ball at the bygone siege, of which we shall have to tell, is, half-jestingly, to be offered as the cause of that tremendous influencing of the world's history we aro to speak of, though it had its rebound from the battered wall never wounded Don Inigo of Loyola, who can foresee his career Ideas, then? That is far nearer truth. It was the ideas set sailing down the wind by a Rousseau, for instance, which, far rather than any grinding tax or aristocratic privilege, settled maddeningly in men's brains, and bred the Revolution?

Saint Cajetan lived in Rome in the early 1500s. He went to Venice and then returned to Rome to found the order of the Theatines.

Saint Teresa of Avila wrote many letters, which are collected here. Her correspondence was most extensive, including bishops, archbishops, kings, ladies of rank, gentlemen of the world, abbots, priors, nuncios, her confessors, her brothers and sisters, rectors of colleges, fathers provincial of the Society of Jesus, nuns and superiors of her convents and monasteries, learned doctors of different religious orders, and even most eminent saints, such as .St. Peter of Alcantara, St. Francis Borgia, St. John of the Cross, &c. In the Letters of St. Teresa it seems to me that all her admirable endowments, both of nature and of grace, can be more clearly discovered than in any of her other works. When we peruse her Life, or The Interior Castle, one is at first inclined to imagine that the Saint was altogether unearthly, unfit for the cares and troubles of life that all her time must have been spent in holding sweet converse with her Beloved, and sighing for the hour when she should be united with Him for ever, and that visions and raptures must have engrossed all the powers of her soul. Others, again, might fancy that the Saint must have been very grave, austere, solemn, exceedingly scrupulous, and given to melancholy. Some might also be inclined to believe that she was quite an enthusiast, led away by the ardent temperament of her character, or the vagaries of an unsteady imagination. But how quickly are such erroneous ideas scattered, when we read her admirable Letters. They soon convince us that the Saint possessed what we call common sense" in a most remarkable manner that so fur from being an enthusiast, she was endowed with a solidity of judgment, and a prudence and sweetness in all her actions, which won the admiration of everyone; that she was so careful to guard against melancholy, as never to allow any one to enter the Order who seemed to be the least infected with it. With regard to herself, we shall see, by perusing her Letters, that she was cheerfulness itself, even in the midst of her greatest trials and afflictions, and withal exceedingly witty, lively, and jocose; indeed, her naivetr is one of the greatest charms of her Letters. These will show us, too, that her raptures and visions did not, in the least, interfere with her ordinary duties, for she was an excellent and most admirable woman of business. Considering her numerous labours, duties, journeys, sicknesses, and infirmities, is it not surprising how she could find time to carry on such an extensive correspondence? Juan de Palafox, the celebrated bishop of Osma, remarks, "that it was principally by her Letters the Saint was enabled to effect the reform of the Carmelite Order."

The story runs curiously parallel with the Tractarian movement, Oxford having its counterpart in Strasbourg. It throws up its leaders who, once become Catholics, do not altogether agree in their policies for the diffusion of the Faith; it is composed almost wholly of undergraduates and professors; it creates a new religious Institute (if one may be allowed this inaccuracy when speaking of so venerable a body as the Oratory); it reacts upon the religious community from which it came out. But this group is led by Ratisbonne (1802-1884) instead of Newman (1801- 1890), shepherded by Bautain instead of Wiseman, preceded by Goschler and Level instead of Ward and his friends. Moreover the Strasbourg movement is earlier. Ratisbonne had been a priest already three years when Keble preached his Assize Sermon on July 14,1833; and the Institute of Notre Dame de Sion received Episcopal sanction in Newman's critical year of 1845. But curiously, in the year 1847, the Constitutions of the Institute were approved by Mgr. Affre and Newman's Oratory began. The two men do not seem ever to have met, though Abbe Ratisbonne came to England in 1858, 1863, 1867, and had already known Manning, Faber, Gaisford, and others of the Tractarians. Finally in May, 1879, Newman was created a Cardinal by Leo XIII., and in May, 1880, the same Pontiff raised Ratisbonne to the rank of Protonotary Apostolic. But these, perhaps forced, coincidences cannot conceal many differences in the movements inseparably connected with the names of these two great men; especially in this, that there has been a gradual slackening of the Jewish movement towards the Church, while the Anglican movement has grown in force. So at least we should have said years ago. But now? To some of us it looks as though the older prophecies were coming true, more nearly to our own time than we could have dared to hope: "He that scattered Israel shall gather him, and He shall keep him as a shepherd doth his flock" (Jer. Xxxi. 10). May this story of great faith and hope and greater charity help to lead many a " wandering Jew" to the Feet of Christ " There remaineth therefore a rest for the children of God."

"Verily Thou art a hidden God, thc God of Israel, the Saviour " cries out the prophet Isaias (xlv. 15), Yes, undoubtedly, God is a more hidden God in the Eucharist than anywhere else. His greatness lies concealed under the littleness of a host, His power under the feeble species, His universality under an atom, His eternity under a moment, His wisdom under an apparcnt folly, There indeed is He the hidden God; more hidden than in Mary's womb, more hidden than in the crib, more hidden than under the darkness of Calvary, more hidden than in the gloom of the Sepulchre. For here His humanity, His divinity, His glory, His beatitude- all, are hidden. '1'0 all un believers and heretics lie is hidden indeed. To many luke-warm Catholics, nay, even to many of those who stand at His altar and touch His sacred body He is hidden. Alas, that that adorable sacrifice and sacrament of the altar should be to so many a hidden treasure; that there should be so many who have eyes and see not, although to them is granted to behold what kings and prophets, and patriarchs and saints have sighed in vain to gaze on Alas that there should be so many who deserve the reproach which our Lord made to his disciples, "I was a stranger, and you received me not." "Your little faith in my presence in the blessed sacrament made Me appear to you a stranger, although quite near. Our appreciation of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is not as much as it should be. This book will prove quite useful in increasing our appreciation of this magnificent gift from God.

The doctrine of hell is one of the four last things. Father Schouppe gives a terrifying presentation of this doctrine that will inspire people to avoid this horrible place and to save their soul. We need to study this truth carefully so that we realize just how important it is to become a Saint. Let us consider this story: The following incident happened in 1837. A young under-lieutenant, being in Paris, entered the Church of the Assumption, near the Toilers, and saw a priest kneeling near a confessional. As he made religion the habitual subject of his jokes, he wished to go to confession to while away the time, and went into the confessional. "Monsieur l'abbe," he said, "would you be good enough to hear my confession?" "Willingly my son; confess unrestrained." "But I must first say that I am a rather unique kind of a sinner." "No matter; the sacrament of penance has been instituted for all sinners." "But I am not very much of a believer in religious matters." "You believe more than you think." "Believe? I? I am a regular scoffer." The confessor saw with whom he had to deal, and that there was some mystification. He replied, smiling: "You are a regular scoffer? Are you then making fun of me too?" The pretended penitent smiled in like manner. "Listen," the priest went on, "what you have just done here is not serious. Let us leave confession aside; and, if you please, have a little chat. I like military people greatly; and, then, you have the appearance of a good, amiable youth. Tell me, what is your rank?" "Under-lieutenant." "Will you remain an under-lieutenant long?" "Two, three, perhaps four years." "And after?" "I shall hope to become a lieutenant?" "And after?" "I hope to become a captain." "And after?" "Lieutenant-colonel?" "How old will you be then?" "Forty to forty-five years." "And after that?" "I shall become a brigadier general." "And after?" "If I rise higher, I shall be general of a division." "And after?" "After there is nothing more except the Marshal's baton; but my pretensions do not reach so high." "Well and good. But do you intend to get married?" "Yes, when I shall be a superior officer." "Well There you are married; a superior officer, a general, perhaps even a French marshal, who knows? And after?" "After? Upon my word, I do not know what will be after." "See, how strange it is " said the abbe. Then, in a tone of voice that grew more sober: "You know all that shall happen up to that point, and you do not know what will be after. Well, I know, and I am going to tell you, After, you shall die, be judged, and, if you continue to live as you do, you shall be damned, you shall go and burn in hell; that is what will be after." As the under-lieutenant, dispirited at this conclusion, seemed anxious to steal away: "One moment, sir," said the abbe. "You are a man of honor. So am I. Agree that you have offended me, and owe me an apology. It will be simple. For eight days, before retiring to rest, you will say: 'One day I shall die; but I laugh at the idea. After my death I shall be judged; but I laugh at the idea. After my judgment, I shall be damned; but I laugh at the idea. I shall burn forever in hell; but I laugh at the idea ' That is all. But you are going to give me your word of honor not to neglect it, eh?" More and more wearied, and wishing, at any price, to extricate himself from this false step, the under-lieutenant made the promise. In the evening, his word being given, he began to carry out his promise. "I shall die," he says. "I shall be judged." He had not the courage to add: "I laugh at the idea." The week had not passed before he returned to the Church of the Assumption, made his confession seriously, and came out of the confessional his face bathed with tears, and with joy in his heart.

I AM persuaded, said Claude Bernard, that the day will come, when the man of science, the philosopher and the poet will all understand each other. Whatever we may think of this prophecy, we most of us feel that the one-sided absolutism of the past, whether religious or scientific, is no longer possible. The inevitable vehemence of the reaction against bigotry and superstition has, in a measure, spent itself, and the best minds of the present, influenced by the spirit of Socrates' claim to wisdom, are cautiously and tentatively feeling their way to a nicer adjustment of the scales of thought. That these should ever be poised in perfect equilibrium is no doubt impossible in this world of clashing categories; but the undoubted truths to be found in extremes are beginning to be recognised as partial and relative, as only fragmentary elements in the ultimate synthesis. From the conviction that the whole truth is not to be found in any partial utterance of humanity, the passage is easy to the opinion, that for a really philosophical appreciation of our nature, an impartial examination of all the sides, of man is necessary. The philosopher, the scientist, the artist, the saint must all contribute. Contemporary non-religious thought, like its predecessor of an earlier day, is becoming persuaded that some good. thing may come even out of Nazareth. The thin, dry optimism of sectarian Christianity and of official materialism we see now to be not so much erroneous as unthinkable. We have done, it may be hoped for ever, with If the proofs which proved, and the explanations which explained nothing. A hundred years ago truth seemed a simpler matter to our fathers. They stood on the threshold of the modem industrial world, to them a coming golden age tipped with the brightness of rising science. Exact knowledge and universal education were to make men happy and wise and good. Kings and priests were gone, or, at least, the back of their despotism was broken; these incubi, the causes of all his misery, removed, man, a well-meaning creature, and more than capable of taking care of himself, would begin at last to live, and, in the normal exercise of his natural functions, hitherto artificially strapped down by theological and political tyrants, would find true satisfaction and, consequently, the perfect happiness of his being. But they counted without machine-looms or the law of heredity, of which they derided the theological expression in the doctrine of original sin. The true value of the Revolution did not lie in the supposed sagacity of its political wisdom, and even less in its social results, which we have with us today, but in the indomitable hope and faith which animated some of its greatest illustrations. It is impossible to read the best French moralists of the Revolutionary period-say, Vauvenargues and Condorcet-without being struck by the deep spiritual earnestness which underlay much in them that was flimsy as argument, mistaken as fact, frothy and unreal as sentiment.

This book is a translation, the only one from the Latin, of the Preces Gertrudianae, a manual of devotions compiled in the seventeenth century from the Suggestions of Divine Piety of St. Gertrude and St. Mechtilde, nllns of the Order of St. Benedict. Of this work Alban Butler says, in his life of St. Gertrude, that it is perhaps the most useful production, next to the writings of St. Teresa, with which any female saint ever enriched the Church. Care has been taken to preserve, not only the substance, but, as far as might be, the form, of the original prayers; and a few others, well known and much valued, have been added as an Appendix. Let us consider this advice: When you are distracted in prayer, commend it to the Heart of Jesus, to be perfected by him, as our Lord Himself taught St. Gertrude. One day, when she was nluch distracted in prayer, he appeared to her, and held forth to her his Heart with his own sacred hands, saying: Behold, I set My Heart before the eyes of thy soul, that thou mayest commend to it all thine actions, confidently trusting that all that thou canst not of thyself supply to them will be therein supplied, so that they may appear perfect and spotless in my sight. Remember always to say the Gloria Patri with great devotion. The hermit Honorius relates that a certain monk who had been accustomed to say his office negligently appeared to another after his death and being asked what sufferings he had to undergo in punishment of his carelessness, he said that all had been satisfied for and effaced by the reverent devotion with which he had always said the Gloria Patri.

THE present generation in the fervour of its repentance is like to cast off too much. So many false principles and hasty deductions have been offered to its parents and grandparents in the name of science that it is becoming unduly suspicious of the scientific method. A century ago men's minds were sick unto death from too much science and too little mysticism. To-day the danger is that even the drawing-rooms are scented with a mysticism that anathematizes Science. At no time since the days of S. Thomas was the saint's scientific method more lacking. Everywhere there is need for a mystic doctrine, which in itself is neither hypnotism nor hysteria, and in its expression is neither superlative nor apostrophic, lest the hungered minds of men die of surfeit following on starvation. The message and method of S. Thomas are part of that strange rigidity of the thirteenth century which is one of the startling paradoxes of the ages of faith. It is surely a consolation that these ages of a faith which moved mountains, or at least essayed to remove the Turk. were minded to express their beliefs in the coat of mail of human reason. The giants of those days, who in the sphere of literature were rediscovering verse and inventing rhyme, and who in every sphere of knowledge were bringing forth the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, were not so blinded by the white light of vision as to disown the Greeks. They made the Ethics of Aristotle the four-square walls of the city of God; they expressed the mysteries of the Undivided Three in terms of the Syllogism. Thus they refused to cut themselves off from the aristocracy of human genius. They laid hands-but not violent hands-on the heritage of the ages. No philosophers have ever equalled their bold and lowly-minded profession of faith in the solidarity of human reason For this cause S. Thomas, who is their spokesman, has now become an absolute necessity of thought. Unless the great Dumb Ox is given a hearing, our mysticism will fill, not the churches, but the asylums and the little self-authorized Bethels where every man is his own precursor and messiah. That S. Thomas is to be accepted as a master of mysticism may be judged from the following facts in the life of a mystic of the mystics, S. John of the Cross: It has been recorded that during his studies he particularly relished psychology-; this is amply borne out by his writings. S. John was not what one could term a scholar. He was, however, intimately acquainted with the Summa of S. Thomas Aquinas, as almost every page of his works proves . . . . He does not seem to have ever applied himself to the study of the Fathers. . .. As has already been stated, the whole work (The Ascent of Mount Carmel) is based upon the view S. Thomas Aquinas takes of the essence and operations of the senses and of the faculties of the soul, and upon his treatise on the virtues."l S. Thomas hardly needs an imprimatur after six centuries of full trust. But in the hard matters of mysticism, which he has treated as a scholar should, it is reassuring to know that he has the approval, not only of the scholars, but of the mystics.