"Not the least." "Is it not possible for the Church to remain immovable herself, and yet be very progressive in her influence on individuals and society generally?' "To aid progress the Church must be herself progressive.' * "I have always thought differently. Progress is motion; and if I have not forgotten what my professor of mechanics taught me, there is no motion possible without something at rest. Motion requires a mover, and the mover cannot move unless it is itself immovable. A man cannot make any progress if he stands on a movable foundation, as you may see in the case of the poor fellow in the treadmill. Archimedes, in order to move the world, demanded a whereon to rest the fulcrum of his lever outside of the world he proposed to move. The Church, if herself movable or progressive, could not aid either social or individual progress; she would simply change with the changes going on around her, and could neither aid nor control them.' "But, Reverend Father, you overlook the fact that it is precisely in herself that progress is most needed. She teaches the same dogmas and claims the same authority over the mind, the heart, and the conscience in this enlightened age, and in this free republic, that she did in the barbarous ages under feudalism, and what she teaches and claims ceases to be in harmony with men's convictions, or their sense of their own rights and dignity. "The Church, then, you think, in order to be able to serve the world, should not govern it, but suffer herself to be governed by it, and take care to teach it only what it already believes and holds? This is a very good principle, no doubt, for a journalist, who seeks only a wide circulation for his journal, but do you think our Lord acted on it? Did He find the convictions of the world He came to redeem and save in harmony with His doctrines and claims?.... Did the Apostles teach only such doctrines and put forth only such claims as were in harmony with the sentiments and convictions of their age?'" &c., &c. (pp. 8-13). This is, we think, quite enough to whet the appetite of our readers for the rich repast Dr. Brownson has provided for them. And here, in taking leave for the present of our great old athlete of the faith, we heartily congratulate him on his perfect emancipation from the unworthy ties that fettered him for a time; and, though a mighty ocean rolls between us, we embrace him with all the fervour of that Catholic communion, which binds the children of the faith into one perfect and living body, as closely when half the sphere divides them as if they stood side by side, or knelt together at the same altar. * Dr. Brownson here inserts a well-known anecdote of Dr. Johnson; but, quoting from memory, he gives it inaccurately. The following is Boswell's account (sub anno 1784):-" Johnson was present when a tragedy was read, in which there occurred this line :— 'Who rules o'er freemen should himself be free.' The company having admired it much, I cannot agree with you,' said Johnson; it might as well be said, Vie du R. P. Lacordaire. Par M. FOISSET. 2 volumes. Paris: Lecoffre. 1870. Le Testament du P. Lacordaire, publié par le COMTE DE MONTALEMBERT. Paris Douniol. 1870. A : LTHOUGH many books and brochures have been published on the life and character of the illustrious Dominican to whom religion in France owes so much, yet there was still room for the labours of M. Foisset. It was the wish of Lacordaire himself that his life should be written by the Abbé Perreyre, for whom he entertained the warmest friendship. But the death of Perreyre prevented the accomplishment of this desire, and at the same time deprived the French church of one of the most promising of her younger clergy. M. Foisset was, until lately, a magistrate of the Imperial Court of Dijon; and he has brought to his task the several qualifications of long and intimate personal acquaintance with the great Preacher, of the possession of abundant materials, of a practised and eloquent style, and of an impartial and most Catholic mind. Perhaps his most original contribution to the history of Lacordaire is his Introduction; in which he sketches the varying phases of the religious condition of France, from the time of Voltaire, to the moment when Lacordaire, once more a Catholic, entered the seminary of Issy. The peculiar union of bondage and sterility under which the Church of France laboured from the epoch of the Revolution in 1815 to the Revolution of 1830, though it has been noticed by various writers, has never been brought out better than by M. Foisset. There could not be a better prologue to the recital of Lacordaire's work, and a better key to the understand. ing of his peculiar character, than these pages of contrast between the new and abounding life that was feeling for outlet all over France, and the obsolete ideas of the émigré and absolutist party that was uppermost under Louis XVIII. and Charles X. The history of Lacordaire's connection with La Mennais is given in these pages with a fulness that will seem to some readers tedious. But a historian of a man who has been so much traduced for Lamennaisian principles as the author of the French Dominican revival, may be excused for trying to make the proofs of Lacordaire's rectitude of intention and loyalty to the Holy See as complete and convincing as possible. The same remarks may be made of the details of the Father's political views and acts. It is quite necessary that the writer of his life should explain them and justify them. But the political side of a life like that of Lacordaire is just the side that will be forgotten the soonest, and that even now excites the least interest in all who are not of his own generation. To him politics were but a subordinate episode in that grand idea of human regeneration which he proclaimed to the world on behalf of the Church of Christ. His education had not given him fair means of studying the Church in her true political relation with the world; and his want of acquaintance with the history of the Middle Ages sometimes allowed him, in his youth, to say imprudent things about abnormal states of society. And yet it would not be true to say that he erred as to the real nature of the connection of the State with the Church. Nothing can be more orthodox, as far as they go, than the three letters to Montalembert (given by M. Foisset, among his "Pièces Justificatives," vol. i. p. 559), in which he expresses his ideas on the Encyclical of August 15, 1832-the celebrated "Mirari vos." What English readers will eagerly read in these two volumes is the recital of his oratorical triumphs, and of his religious work. They will seek the genius who gave a world-wide name to the Conferences of Notre Dame. They will seek the ardent and mortified follower of Jesus Christ, already known to them in the pages of Père Chocarne. They will be anxious to know more of the writer of these incomparable letters, so unaffected and yet so exquisitely finished, that are gradually being given to the world. They will be glad to follow once more, by the aid of new lights, the tale of the last years, and of the last days, at Soréze. Lacordaire's "Testament" (the name given to it by Montalembert) is the short autobiography that he dictated upon his deathbed. As a document for understanding his life and character it is of course invaluable. To any English reader who has not yet made acquaintance with those last words of the great orator, we can say, that he will read many things before he meets with pages so noble, so powerful, so calm, and so lofty as this supreme effort of a great mind under the pressure of mortal sickness. We hope to have an article on Lacordaire in October. The Life of S. Teresa of Jesus. IT Written by herself. Translated from the T has been said of S. Teresa, as it is often said of Plato, that she is much quoted and little read. The saying was probably intended to do her honour; and it has this much truth in it, that she is certainly much quoted. But this new translation of her autobiography is of itself sufficient argument to prove that she is also much read. It will surprise many readers to be told that there have been already four English versions of this celebrated work, and that the present is the fifth. Canon Dalton's translation is a wellknown book, for which, and for his labours on the Saint's other works, the thanks of English-speaking Catholics have long been due. To supply the wants of a new generation Mr. Lewis has undertaken the task, on the completion of which we now congratulate him. There is only one book that can be fitly compared with the Life of S. Teresa by herself. The Confessions of S. Augustine, in spite of differences of author and of matter which make them stand by themselves in literature, are yet sufficiently like these Confessions of S. Teresa not to be dishonoured by being placed beside them. S. Augustine, a bishop and a doctor, was a genius who had become a learned man before he became a saint. His eloquence, which is of an intense but incomplete kind, like a fire that burns amid rolling smoke, is a reproduction of the man himself. He is a singular mixture of straightforward sense, of depth, of brilliancy, and of passion. His works are, on the one hand, the code in which the Church's doctors and the Church herself reads the authoritative exposition of a great part of her teaching; and, on the other, furnishes the favourite manuals from which saints of all ages have learned to pray. S. Teresa was a woman, and had no right, therefore," to teach." In all that is called learning she was altogether ignorant. She did not know enough Latin to quote the Psalms of her office correctly. Yet her works, and not least her account of her Life, have a completeness of learning, a genuine eloquence, and a weight of authority such as we find in very few human writings. A reader who was unacquainted with S. Teresa, but who was fairly read in mystical theology, might take up her works for the first time with a sense that he had read their best parts already. In turning over the pages of the work before us, a great portion is not merely familiar, but almost commonplace. This is one great reason, no doubt, why it is so useful to get back frequently to S. Teresa. Her wonderful and inspired instruction on prayer, her hints on practical matters, and even the flights of her highest mysticism, are easily transferred to the pages of an ordinary spiritual manual. But the spirit, the context of holy humility and bashful knowledge, the outbursts of affection, that make her work the genuine production of a real living saint, these are matters that are quite as important; and it would seem, as far as human insight can tell, that it was for the sake of these that the Spirit of God caused her to write, and to write as she has written. It would seem to us, looking back now over the three hundred and eight years that have elapsed since, at the desire of her confessors, she wrote her Life, that she was raised up at a critical moment to be the apostle of true mysticism. S. Teresa wrote her works and lived the most important part of her life in the latter part of the sixteenth century. She founded the first monastery of her reform in 1562. In the same year she finished this book of her Life. She lived twenty years after that date, and died in 1582, after having founded sixteen convents of women and fourteen of men under the severe reform which she introduced. What the world was then will be recalled when we remember that the year 1563 saw the last session of the Council of Trent. During these twenty years that elapsed between the writing of this Autobiography and the saint's death, Philip II. reigned in Spain and Elizabeth in England. In France, it was the era of the religious wars, and the massacre of S. Bartholomew occurred in 1572. The Low Countries, the richest part of Europe, were fighting for their independence against the power of Spain. At the same time, Pius IV. and after him S. Pius V. were anxiously occupied with heresy at one extremity of Europe and with the Turks at the other. It was a time when both goodness and wickedness were showing themselves on a grander scale than had been seen since the Crusades. The Society of Jesus was just born, and some of its first and greatest saints were even then living. Spain and Italy were both prolific in sanctity and Catholic learning. S. John of the Cross, S. Louis Bertrand, S. Thomas of Villanova, S. Paschal Baylon, S. John of God, S. Peter of Alcantara, S. Francis Borgia, Luis of Granada, Bañes, John of Avila, Balthasar Alvarez, Melchior Canus, Soto, are some of the names of S. Teresa's contemporaries, with most of whom she was herself acquainted. At a time when good and evil were struggling together in so marked a fashion, it was to be expected that mysticism, which is the heroic form of Christian prayer, would be also a field for contest and difficulty. False mysticism was very common in the innumerable convents which at that time flourished in the Catholic land of Spain. The sect of the Alumbrados, or Illuminated, arose about 1570, that is to say, eight years after S. Teresa had written her Life; and its manuscript pages were being circulated from convent to convent at the very time that the authorities of the Church were putting their powers into action against the sectaries who were renewing the dangerous teachings of the Gnostics and the Paulicians. Those who have read the Life of Luis of Granada by Muñoz will remember the story of the Prioress of the Anunciada at Lisbon. She deceived her nuns, her superiors, a great number of learned men, among whom was Luis of Granada himself, and her fame had gone abroad over all Spain and a great part of Europe. It is curious that it was the Venerable Mother Anne of S. Bartholomew, S. Teresa's most celebrated disciple and the inheritor of her spirit, who was one of the first to discredit the deception. The name of Sister Mary Magdalen of the Cross, of Cordova, recalls another history of illusion and fraud, worse than that first mentioned. Similar facts are met with in the lives of S. John of the Cross, S. Ignatius, and others. False mysticism did not disappear with the age of S. Teresa. About one hundred years after her death came the celebrated Quietist controversy, when the convents of France were troubled as the convents of the Peninsula had been in the preceding century. The errors that have sprung up under these various shapes have been met by the bishops and doctors of the Church, who have preached and written the true doctrine; but what we have to notice here is that ever since S. Teresa's writings have been before the world, they have been the chief authority and the text-book, so to speak, of Mystical Theology. We need only cite, in order to prove this, three such books as the " Amour de Dieu," of S. Francis of Sales; the "Direttorio Mistico" of Scaramelli; and the "Institutiones Theologiæ Mystica" of Schram. S. Francis, in his preface to a treatise which has done more perhaps than any other work of modern times to introduce the higher form of spirituality into the world (as distinct from the cloister), seizes on the three characteristics of S. Teresa's writings, their eloquence, their strong simplicity (and simplicity meant a great deal to S. Francis of Sales), and their thoroughness of learning, or rather of knowledge. Scaramelli, living after the Church had declared the holy virgin to be a saint, uses her example as the great and peremptory proof, that Mystical Theology may profitably be imparted to all classes of the faithful. Schram, like Cardinal Bona and Scaramelli himself, finds in the words of S. Teresa one of his readiest and most authoritative resources, as may be seen on every page of his Manual of Mysticism. Not even S. John of the Cross is quoted by mystical writers as S. Teresa is. The former, wonderful and magnificent as he is, speaks less as one having authority" than does the glory of Mount Carmel. It is not the place here to speak in detail of the peculiar value of this life of S. Teresa, as a contribution to mystical science. Besides the instructions |