as John, to bring men of Jewish blood to the acceptance of the idea of an incarnation at all, and many revolted from it finally, to the loss of Christian fellowship and hope. To these men, the chasm which separates the wonder-stories concerning the birth of Isaac, Moses and the other Jewish heroes from the story of a divine incar-nation by birth from a virgin would have been utterly impossible.. The men, who hesitated to sit down at meat with Gentiles, lest it be an innovation upon what they had been taught, would have hesitated and stopped a long way this side of the invention of a Virgin Birth to explain Christ's divine Sonship. Besides, the Gospels were formed and written in an atmosphere of controversy and criticism and not in a period of peace and tranquillity which is required for theological speculation. During the latter part of Christ's ministry,. during the early days of the young church after the Resurrection,and during the entire period of the formation of the canon, the disciples were in the midst of a continual conflict with critics, Jewish and heathen. They were formed to put emphasis upon essentials, to guard every statement, so as not to leave themselves open to misconstruction. They would be loyal to the teachings of the Lord, and to all authentic traditions concerning Him, but they would be certain not to form innovations which might be misconstrued and used against them.

Equally untenable is the supposition that the Virgin Birth narrative was invented in order to increase honor to Jesus or to convince the early Christians of His divinity. It is a well-known fact that among the Jews birth out of wedlock was a fearful disgrace to all. in any way connected with it, and with the family.

The reluctance of Joseph to believe in the possibility of a Virgin Birth must have been shared by every person to whom it is was told.. The doctrine, therefore, would have been the last thing in the world to be invented by the Evangelists, as it would have furnished the Jews and the anti-Christians with a means of discrediting the origin and mission of Jesus, and the character of Mary.

In view of these facts, it is hardly conceivable how Matthew and Luke's narratives of Christ's Virgin Birth should have been the result of Jewish dogmatic speculation rather than the honest and sincere record of a historical event.

GABRIEL OUSSANI.

THE SYLLABUS OF PIUS X

Is is a fine thing to belong to a great wide old Church, if only for the corporate wisdom and patience which it acquires, and in which one can hardly help sharing. It partakes of the unhurrying confident serenity of things vast and everlasting. Those outside may criticise; some within may worry, but the great body moves on about its work unashamed and unafraid. The latest example of this is the reception of the new Syllabus of Pius X. The gentlemen of the press (one thinks of Edmund Burke's parable of the grasshoppers) have all expressed their well matured over-night views on it. Most of the non-Catholic critics said just what we expected them to say-they would have said the same if the Pope had reaffirmed the Ten Commandments or condemned polygamy and idolatry. Here and there an ardent member of the Church has shown how much better a Catholic he is than the Pope by extending the condemnation to include, it would seem, everybody who has studied biology or Hebrew. But the Church Universal is indifferent alike to critics and alarmists. The teaching authority has condemned only extreme views; and the great body of the faithful, bishops, priests, laity, universities, seminaries, reviews have accepted its decisions with unanimity and equanimity. If the "thousand peering littlenesses" had only the wit to see it, they are here in presence of a great fact which shows that faith and hope and brotherly charity are still forces that unite a large mass of human kind.

The nineteenth century piled up a vast array of facts, and not a few theories which were in many instances incompatible with the accepted statement of Catholic, or, indeed, theistic belief. In response to the needs of the situation learned Catholics took up the work of refutation or the still more delicate task of restatement and reconciliation. From the Catholic point of view as manifested in our history, there is nothing deserving of reproof in this undertaking. To condemn it is to condemn Suarez and Aquinas, Augustine and Clement. But it is essentially a difficult and dangerous undertaking since it is the application by a fallible individual of human reason and knowledge to a set of divine truths which are to be safeguarded in the long run by an infallible teaching body. Despite these dangers, however, in the actual working out of that infallible guidance, the preliminary work is done by historians, exegetes, philosophers, theo

logians any one of whom is liable to be mistaken in the solutions he proposes. It would all be easy if we had a new revelation for every difficulty, or if ex cathedra pronouncements were given in every caseof doubt, or even if we could always be sure of having amongst the body of the faithful an Aquinas in whose scientific knowledge and theological fidelity we could place equal confidence. But such helps: are rarely given us. Men must venture on solutions, and men will make mistakes. And there are times when the official caretakersof the faith must "reprove, entreat, and rebuke in all patience and doctrine."

"In omni patientia et doctrina." For a quarter of a century and more this movement of Catholic scholarship has been allowed to proceed almost unchecked by the central authority of the Church. Here and there a book, here and there an individual has been censured. But in the main the settlement of difficulties has been left to the friendly warfare of theological schools within the Church. As is generally the result in such cases, many of the new positions after having been hotly debated, were accepted as safe and true. But still more extreme views were proposed which seemed out of harmony with any orthodox statement of Catholic belief. For the past two years the highest Congregation in the Church has been at work considering such views, and the result of their deliberations has been. the issuing of the list of condemned propositions which has been called the Syllabus of Pius X.

Reactionary, illiberal, obscurantist, extreme-such are some of the epithets applied to this document in the secular and non-Catholic prrss, by men who write as if speaking out of the abundance of their knowledge on the matter. But it is a trifle disconcerting to the believer in journalistic infallibility who has taken the trouble to read through the propositions, to reconcile the fact that thy contain not the slightest reference to economic questions with the oft repeated statement that the views of the Abbate Murri are again condemned. And for one who is acquainted with the works of (for example) Cardinal Newman or Father Lagrange, it requires a grotesque twisting. of words to find in the Syllabus a repudiation of their positions. Now what strikes the Catholic theologian in this document is its moderation. He knows the strength of the language Rome is not using. He reads a list of false propositions which are gently denominated "errors" even though they deserve in many instances the deeper brand of "heresy." The condemnation is promulgated in a way

that is authoritative and effective indeed, but without invoking the infallible magisterium of the Church. And as he reads the lucid and careful statement of the sixty-five propositions that are proscribed, there come up to his mind a number of opinions which the Congregation must have considered, and left uncondemned.

More official statements of Protestant opinion make interesting and curious reading. The Protestant position, or rather the lack of it, is always an odd thing to the Catholic. They seldom seem to recognize that they have the same dilemma as ourselves to solve in the conflict between authority and individualism, the main difference to a bystander being that we have taken up a more definite. and consistent stand. One should expect that, as men who in spite of intellectual difficulties still retain faith in Christ and the Bible, they would welcome a strong pronouncement from the old Church in defense of the common Christian teachings. One should expect that, as members of ecclesiastical organizations, they would have some appreciation of the mind of men who defer to a Church which they have freely accepted as representing divine truth to them. But the old critical and destructive spirit which is the essence of Protestantism is too much for them. So they deplore the tyranny of the Roman Church even though it be defending the basic doctrines of Christianity; and they see in the rational obedience of Catholics only a manifestation of weakness or hypocrisy. If Protestantism were a definite system of any sort, whether of faith or of free thought, one might debate the question. But as things are one can only shrug one's shoulders and regret the lack of logic in men who, by definition, at least, ought to be rational.

The same strange lack of understanding is manifest in the prophecy by some indulged in that this act of authority will lead to a "Los von Rom" movement. If it did, Protestantism would not be the gainer by it. In a famous passage Macaulay notes that "it is surely remarkable that neither the moral revolution of the eighteenth century, nor the moral counter-revolution of the nineteenth, should, in any perceptible degree, have added to the domain of Protestantism.... We think it a most remarkable fact that no Christian nation, which did not adopt the principles of the Reformation before the end of the sixteenth century, should ever have adopted them. Catholic communities have, since that time, become infidel and become Catholic again; but none has become Protestant." It is quite true that during the last 300 years there has been almost no spirit of schism

amongst the religious-minded members of the Catholic Church. Men have dropped away because they abandoned religion entirely. Some have joined Protestant sects, but their motive has been usually political or social, or "for revenue only." It is difficult to find instances of those who have renounced their obedience to the Roman Church to improve their religious condition; the religious movement, in fact, has been in the return direction. And, if we may speak plainly, the deterrent reason has been that Protestantism affords a "horrible example" of what heresy leads to. And, to come to the present instance, we find the need of religious unity strongly asserted in the writings of the men who are most directly affected by the condemnations of the new Syllabus.

More naive, if anything, is the notion that some writers seem to have that the result (if it be not indeed the purpose) of the Syllabus will be the stifling of intellectual activity within the Catholic Church. And of this view we find traces in the less thoughtful and less responsible utterances of some writers in the Catholic press. But such an idea is egregiously absurd. The whole history of Catholic theology, the evident intentions of the Holy Father, the very words of the Syllabus itself are against it. One of the condemned propositions reads: "The Church has shown herself to be hostile to the progress of the natural and theological sciences" (prop. 57); and the third and the last propositions of the Syllabus convey the same view.

Non-Catholics who are so generous with their sympathy for unfortunate Catholic scholars deprived of their liberty might do well to reserve their tears until they find out whether these scholars have lost any liberties which they were anxious to retain. It must be a disconcerting experience to go on a visit of condolence only to find the reputed prisoner enjoying the usual liberties of a citizen or the supposed corpse making merry with his friends. As a matter of fact,. though a few more adventurous Catholic scholars may be affected by the Syllabus, the vast majority of them have been working quite within the lines that it lays down; and the notion that their activities must now cease betrays gross ignorance both of their views and of the condemned propositions. We have in English a number of Catholic publications which treat serious theological problems: In America, the University Bulletin, the Catholic Quarterly, the Ecclesiastical Review, the Messenger, the Catholic World, the Catholic Encyclopedia, the New York Review; in England, the Dublin Review, the Month, the Tablet; in Ireland, the Ecclesiastical Record, the Theological