These are the days of companies and trusts, when the individual is lost sight of. To-day, the capitalist is no longer responsible, and the firm can do no wrong. In these latter times, the foreman acts for the employer, and the agent for the slum landlord. The result is a sweated people. It is a state of things which does not tally with Christian teaching. Indeed, under a Catholic régime the position would be untenable.

In pre-Reformation days, the sweating system was unknown, for fair wages and fair work have always been the doctrine of the teaching Church. According to St. Thomas Aquinas there is no living wage. What he advocates is a wage which will ensure the comfort and well-being of the toiler, as also that of his dependents. And Carlyle, who views the question from a humanitarian standpoint, insists upon the duty of social justice from man to man.

It is the absence of this justice in great cities which cannot but strike the modern sociologist. It is this crying injustice which causes half the crime and most of the discontent. Here in the depths of London, one man's life means another man's death. It is a struggle for a bare existence. It is a hand-to-hand encounter, in which the hungry generations trample over the bodies of the slain. They are fighting for life. They struggle and kill. It is the panic of the

stricken.

They see it
But not for

Before their eyes pass the riches of England. all go by the grain, the wool, and the bullion. them is the golden corn nor the warm cloth stuffs, not for them the power of purchase. What then? For them-rags and starvation. So the wealth of the empire flows past along the highroad to the muttered curses of the British poor.

Had any one told me of the existence of such a world of privation and sorrow, I would have answered with the unbelieving disciple: "Unless I see." And as to him, so unto me the sight was given-perchance that I, too, might tell what I had seen. The experience was not gained without pain, for what I saw in those three years was like so many glimpses into the Inferno.

Sometimes the sights and scenes were such that I shrank back in fear, thinking I had leaned too far over the edge of hell. And what struck me most was the almost universal disregard for what lay beyond, the contempt of humanity for the

eternal issues. It was a toiling, struggling world, from which the Deity was all but banished.

To my mind the outlook was such as to recall the passage in Richter's essay, where the earthly pilgrim, who journeys from star to star in the nebula of Orion, is overwhelmed by a sense of great vastness; of that limitless, unfathomable vault, unplumbed and unmeasurable, wherein lightening suns whirl through darkest night, and where millions of worlds swing in the blue. Then it was that the spirit of man ached under infinity. For the infinity was void-empty of God. And being weighed down by the loneliness of a universe which owned neither Maker nor Ruler, the pilgrim was unable to bear the burden of thought. And covering up his face he sank down; and from the depths of his soul a cry of anguish broke forth: "Father, where art thou ?"

In the modern world of labor the same cry might be uttered with equal truth. For, though the angel of God has set his mark upon the lintel of a few doors, the spirit of unbelief has set his seal upon the remainder; and with lying finger has scrawled the words: "God is dead!"

So the inhabitants of London slums, having been robbed of the faith which was their birthright, live as they can-or die if they must-not as believers should die, with their faces to the east, whence cometh the light, but like the beasts of the field, crouched down in the shadow, without sorrow and without hope. To the majority of the toilers death is the

end.

How different is this from the passing of a pagan soul whose exit is described by Michael Fairless:

"Socrates faced death with the magnificent calm bred of dignified familiarity. He had built for himself a desired heaven of color, light, and precious stones-the philosophic formula of those who set the spiritual above the material, and worship truth in the beauty of holiness. He is not troubled by doubt or fear, for the path of the just lies open before his face. He forbids mourning and lamentations as being out of place; obeys minutely and cheerfully the directions of his executioners and passes with unaffected dignity to the apprehension of that larger truth, for which he had constantly prepared himself. His friends may bury him, provided they will

remember that they are not burying Socrates, and that all things may be in order, a cock must go to Esculapius."

Thus died the ancient who knew not God. But shall we blame the outcast of great cities if his manner of dying is unbecoming a follower of the Way? Shall we despair of mercy for the victim of economic disorder, who is what his surroundings have made him? Or rather, shall we not think with Robert Browning:

Would I fain with my impotent yearning

Do all for this man;

And dare doubt he alone shall not help him
Who yet alone may?

To this end Calvary was strewn with briars and the King was crowned with thorns, and across the ages comes the voice of the Great Reformer: "I have compassion on the multitude." Like a ray of light, the sentence of pity penetrates the surrounding darkness, bringing with it mercy and pardon. As Plato says: "Umbra Dei est lux." And in the refulgence of this light thrown from the Cross, I seemed to see a world of men, of whom each was made in the image of his Maker.

And, lo! as I gazed, each soul bore a burden of sorrow; each was wrapped in a mist of tears. Then the words of the Celtic poet resounded in my ears: "Man has wooed and won the world and has fallen weary; and not," as he adds, "for a time, but with a weariness that will not end until the last autumn, when the stars shall be blown away like withered leaves," and the harvest of souls is garnered into the barns of eternity.

THE CHURCH AND HER SAINTS.

BY JAMES J. FOX, D.D.

Most of all should writers bear in mind that the first law of history is, never to dare say what is not true, and then never to fear to say what is true, that no suspicion of favor or of malice may fall upon their writings.-Leo XIII.

I see no serious motive for distinguishing from popular tra ditions those which are sometimes designated by the name of ecclesiastical traditions, because they are mainly current in ecclesiastical circles, such as in monasteries or among the clergy, and even consecrated by liturgical monuments.-Rev. P. C. De Smedt, S.J.*

The chief fault of the ultra-conservative spirit in these matters is that it does not consider the historical beginning and development of the numerous errors which appeared and were spread, mostly quite in good faith, in the past.--Rev. Hartmann Grisar, S.J.†

La critique historique appliquée à la vie des saints est arrivée à des resultats qui n'offrent rien de bien surprenant pour quiconque est habitué à manier les textes et à interpréter les monuments, mais qui ne laissent pas de déranger les idées du plus grand nombre. --Hippolyte Delahaye, S.J., Bollandiste.

A

I.

FEW months ago THE CATHOLIC WORLD published some papers which had for object to expose how the advance of biblical criticism, instead of injuring the position of the Catholic Church, has materially strengthened it, by relegating to their proper place some traditional interpretations and opinions, which, having failed to bear the searching light of modern critical methods, were bringing obloquy on authoritative teaching and proving a serious stumbling block to many Catholics.

Summer-School Essays. Vol. I. Chicago: D. H. McBride & Co.

Church History and the Critical Spirit. By Hartmann Grisar, S. J. Professor of Church History at the University of Innsbruck. London: Catholic Truth Society.

Les Legendes Hagiographiques. Par Hippolyte Delahaye, Bollandiste. Bruxelles: Bureau de la Société des Bollandistes.

Some inquiries which, in consequence of these papers, have reached the writer of them suggest that a similar survey of the work of our critics in the field of Church history, or, to be more precise, in that particular section of Church history called hagiology, or the biographies of the saints, will be neither untimely nor unprofitable. While the opponents of Christianity in general and of all supernaturalism have exploited the Bible, those who aim specially at the Catholic Church have found a large supplementary arsenal in the histories of the saints, their shrines, relics, and some particular forms which popular devotion to them has taken. If our antagonists were correct in their assumption that the Church is compromised every time that a spurious relic is detected, or some miraculous story is shown to have only a purely imaginative basis, the days of the Church would be numbered. Many, no doubt, who use these arguments are convinced of their efficacy. They have, let us say, established by critical study, the fact that some palpable error underlies the devotion paid to some saint's name; they may even have shown that no such person ever existed. Or, the claims of some place of pilgrimage, or some diocese, are shown to involve a glaring anachronism. They trace to a comparatively recent origin some legend that purports to be a reliable contemporary account of events that happened many centuries ago. In each case they treat their discovery as one which clinches the charge against the Church of fostering superstition and deliberately propagating error.

Sometimes, now-a-days, when toleration has become good form, a writer is content merely to mention the detection of the fraud. Or again, we may find a scholar whose knowledge of Catholic doctrine instructs him to train his ordnance on the very corner stone of the Catholic system; he points out how the error disposes once and for all of the Church's claim to infallibility.

At one time the writer is wrong both in his facts and in his arguments.

In other cases, the facts are, in the main, indisputable, but a false interpretation has been put on them which makes them yield false conclusions. It is instances of this latter kind that are most harmful in strengthening outside prejudice, and in creating uneasiness, if not doubt, in the minds of Catholics. For the truth of the facts imparts an undeserved dignity to the