vides the reader with all the information necessary for a proper appreciation of the origin and purpose of the Riwle.

DEVOTION TO THE SACRED
HEART.

By Fr. Hull, S.J.

*

This pamphlet is a fruit of the controversy which, a year or more ago, was carried on in the London Tablet, the Month, and some other periodicals, on the credence to be attached to the revelations of Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, and, particularly, on the authenticity of the Twelfth Promise in favor of the devotion of the Nine Fridays.

After briefly touching upon the scope and excellence of the devotions to the Sacred Heart, and the credibility of the revelations, Father Huil considers the eleven promises in general. In their interpretation, he says, care must be taken to avoid brute literalism. Common sense suggests "that they are not intended as almighty guarantees, arranging a sort of miraculous dispensation of the world, and acting like charms and talismans reversing the order of causation." "They would rather indicate an indeterminate statement of fact, vague in its application, but definite in its tendency; viz., that, though in the various circumstances referred to, Christ does not pledge himself to work miracles by virtue of the promises, still some spiritual and, possibly, temporal advantage will be an outcome of the devotion practised."

The twelfth promise, he teaches, is conditional; the implied condition is that we do not abandon our general good purpose of living well and serving God faithfully. "We must win final perseverance piecemeal, by persevering in good works day by day." He lays down the necessary caution that "in order to avert the possibility of the promise being taken in an absolute sense by children, and to satisfy those whose critical instinct is offended by the promise taken alone, the text should never be circulated without some introductory explanation.".

Father Hull, who writes in a spirit of kindliest charity befitting the claims of the devotion which he advocates, has attached due weight to the criticisms leveled against the absolute character which was alleged to have been, sometimes, assigned to the promise when it was presented to the faithful; so we

Devotion to the Sacred Heart. By the Rev. Ernest R. Hull, S.J. The Catholic Truth Society of Scotland.

may consider his excellent exposition to be an end of the controversy.

Convinced of the necessity of do

LECTURES AGAINST SCEP- ing something towards combating

TICISM.

By Aveling and Gerard.

the spread of scepticism among all classes of society, through the medium of popular rationalistic literature, some priests of Westminster inaugurated, last winter, a series of lectures that should present a popular exposition of the philosophic arguments for the chief basic moral and religious truths. Six lectures were delivered during the present year. One, on The Freedom of the Will, was recommended to our readers in a previous issue. Two others have just been published. In one of them the editor of the series has accomplished the difficult task of presenting, in a brief yet clear and attractive form, the scholastic argument for the immortality of the soul, based on the validity of the concept of substance and the spirituality of thought. In the other, Father Gerard turns the tables on the free-thinkers by demonstrating that they, who charge believers with surrendering their reason to the bondage of baseless assumptions and prejudices, are themselves completely dominated by unwarranted prepossessions in their attitude towards religious truth.

Each volume has two appendices, one consisting of solutions to difficulties and objections that were proposed by members of the audiences to whom the lecture was delivered; the other being a select list of works recommended as bearing on the topic in hand. It is to be hoped that the course of lectures will be continued until the series covers all the fundamental questions of philosophy. The most effective way to counteract the unbelief of the day is not to attempt the almost endless task of confuting separately every form of rationalistic error that appears, but to expel error from the mind by the presentation of truth.

CHRISTIAN SPAIN.
By Leclercq.

When, with zeal and enterprise deserving of unstinted praise, the publishing house of Lecoffre undertook to realize the project,

originally suggested by Leo XIII., of bringing forth a universal

*Westminster Lecture Series. The Immortality of the Soul. By Rev. Francis Aveling, D.D. Modern Free-Thought. By Rev. J. Gerard, S.J.

ecclesiastical history that would reflect the progress of criticism, the immense field was mapped out into divisions, each of which was to be treated by a competent scholar in an independent volume. The African church was allotted to the Benedictine monk, Dom Leclercq, who produced on the subject a study that has won high approbation in the academic circles of France and Germany. The second contribution to the series, no less than the former, is worthy of the grand traditions of the Benedictine order.

The period covered extends from the establishment of Christianity in Spain to the Arab Conquest. Dom Leclercq, in conformity with the scope of the series, has produced, not a textbook, but a work of haute enseignement. With the exception of the recently discovered works of Priscillian, which the writer has turned to account by softening somewhat the lurid colors in which his foes painted the heresiarch, all the documentary and monumental evidence for this period have long ago been gathered and critically appreciated. The exposition of details, too, has also been sufficiently carried out. Aware that in these respects there was but little need for supplementing his predecessors, Dom Leclercq has turned his attention to setting forth the significance of the whole and the dominant characteristics of the time, and to demonstrating the presence, during the initial period, of some strands that run through the entire web, and serve to determine the pattern that is woven into the history of Spain.

Three elements are saliently brought out. The first is the intellectual narrowness that marked the period, and its penury of thinkers. The next is the national character, harsh, violent, and extreme in action, prone to cruelty under slight provocation, proud, self-satisfied, and stubborn, defiant, prompt to substitute force for argument, courageous to fanaticism, equally ready to turn out a martyr or a persecutor. a martyr or a persecutor. The third phenomenon on which Dom Leclercq fixes our notice is the existence of a State religion, and its consequences. State religion, he remarks incidentally, is no invention of the Middle Ages; it goes back to Theodosius, and beyond him; it is a legacy of the pagan world. This union of Church and State, co-operating with the psychologic influences above mentioned, did not prove an unmixed blessing for religion. The identifi

• L'Espagne Chrétienne. Par Dom H. Leclercq. Paris: Victor Lecoffre.

cation of Church and State resulted, our author shows, in closing religion to all metaphysical and moral speculation, so that it became entirely absorbed by ritual and polemics. Churchmen, fired with fanaticism, sought conversions by any means, and at any price. Without any pretense or disguise, they invoked force to propagate the religion of peace and love, and trampled the fallen adversary in the dust: "Arians, Luciferians, Priscillianists, Origenists, are treated by the Councils exactly as the heterodox will be treated by the Inquisition.”

Wherever occasion calls for it, Dom Leclercq displays a refreshing independence of judgment and a disinterested love of truth which strengthen him to ignore prejudices and prepossessions in his distribution of praise and blame.

FRANCISCAN HOMES.
By De Selincourt.

Under the guidance of a person of artistic temperament, and possessed by a genuine, reverent love for the saint of poverty, we make,

in this handsomely finished book, an enjoyable, instructive, and edifying pilgrimage to the places hallowed by their association with St. Francis. We are occasionally reminded, now by a passing stricture on monasticism, or again by a contradistinction drawn between the work of St. Francis and the work of the Church, that our guide does not share the faith in which the poverello gloried. In some instances, too, one notes a failure to catch the Catholic significance of deeds and words. Nevertheless, as we listen to our writer detailing the stories associated, on the authority of good old Brother Leo-the later chroniclers and biographers have failed to obtain recognition here with the old dwelling places, the chapels, villages, woods, and ravines around which linger memories of that great awakening, we are considerably helped to a deeper and more vital understanding of the lives of St. Francis and his close companions. And, rejoicing at the general and the many particular tributes paid to Catholic sanctity, we are satisfied to register an internal dissent from the occasional observations at which St. Francis would have shaken his head.

Homes of the First Franciscans in Umbria, the Borders of Tuscany, and the Northern Marches. By Beryl D. de Selincourt. With 13 illustrations from photographs. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.

By Bagley.

Students of schoolcraft and teach

THE EDUCATIVE PROCESS. ers will find that Mr. Bagley's elaborate account of the processes of education repays careful study. He enters in detail into the psychology of experience-its acquisition; its play in habit, in the formation of concepts, and in judgment; the organization and recall of experience; the transmission of experience and the technique of teaching. In the introductory section, dealing with the function and end of education, Mr. Bagley devotes one chapter to the ethical end of education. He adversely criticises the "bread and butter aim"; "the culture aim"; "the harmonious development aim"; and the "moral aim"; all of which he rejects in favor of the "social aim." This one, he holds, is inclusive of all the others, even of the moral aim, because, "generally speaking, the moral standard is the social standard." Obviously this view is based on the assumption that either the individual has no ethical value, except what attaches to him as an atom in the social mass, or at least none of which education is to take account. But if the unit is valueless in itself, of what importance can the total be? The sum of a line of zeros stretched to infinity is-zero. The philosophy which inverts the relation of man to society, making man a means and society the end, finds itself at a loss when it has to give its reasons for assigning any transcendent value to the well-being of society, beyond the "bread and butter" estimate.

THE SIBYLS.
By Monteiro.

We found Miss Monteiro's volumet on the interesting subject of the Sibyls a rather puzzling affair. For, while in the earlier pages we are told that the Sibylline predictions are genuine prophecy, so that only an infidel criticism could maintain the contrary, we are informed later on that the famous Oracles should not be taken too seriously, and should, in fact, be regarded only as a literary curiosity. To tell the truth, this book, from the point of view of criticism and scholarship, is worthless. The lives of the Sibyls which it relates are the

*The Educative Process. By William Chandler Bagley (Ph.D., Cornell), Vice-President and Director of Training, Montana State Normal School. New York: The Macmillan Company. As David and the Sibyls Say. By Mariana Monteiro. St. Louis: B. Herder.