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their strong, true teaching to the adopting of tactics of retaliation which would not have been easily distinguishable from frightfulness." The intrepid Cardinal of Malines and a hundred others never have hesitated to set forth the Church's attitude towards this war and the true basis of a permanent peace. In our own land it is beyond doubt that the Church more than any other factor swayed the nation to take its righteous stand.

BUT

UT at a crisis in the war within a few weeks one particular voice has addressed itself to all the nations with the implied claim to be listened to as uniquely decisive. Benedict XV, the Bishop styled Pope by an accommodation of terms which does not concede any underlying claims, has set forth proposals looking towards peace, and the world at large and to some extent the religious world is frankly at a loss what weight exactly is to be accorded to this appeal with its implication. The confusion results from a historical confusion whereby several prerogatives claimed are treated as equally ancient and authoritative. Without discussing the document set forth by His Holiness on its own merits, we may, in the interest of clear perception of some of the points involved, analyze the situation.

It is doubtful if the Pope could expect to be heeded above all other voices at the present juncture were it not that he is able to speak in some sense as a neutral sovereign. There is just enough of a shadow remaining from the former status before the consolidation of the kingdom of Italy to give plausibility to this contention. Some of the European nations still give a complimentary recognition to the Sovereign of the much reduced papal territory. But we are carried back in the annals of the Roman See to the tenth and eleventh centuries when imperialism in the State was in rivalry with the theory of imperialism in the Church with varying successes and fortunes on each side, king and Roman Bishop alternately rising on the shoulders of one another, until the genius of Hildebrand, Gregory VII, asserted and in a consider

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able degree achieved supremacy over all other powers in Church and State as inherent in the Roman Bishop. A skillful and strategic playing off of the spiritual and political together has many times given a fictitious prestige to the occupant of the Roman See, and history is again in certain aspects repeating itself in our day, as we note the deference which the Central Powers apparently give to the Pope's proposals and the utterances of the religious Roman Catholic press to some extent, claiming Benedict XV as the one voice that all should heed. What a pity that such a voice has not been heard before; was not heard two or even three years ago, if entitled to such deference and consideration! We seem to remember that the predecessor of the present Pontiff, speaking purely in his spiritual capacity, did attempt to dissuade Austria from its course. Apparently the spiritual mandate was not held to be in any sense coercive. The old claim to world supremacy has not been much exploited since the pontificate of Boniface VIII, in the fourteenth century. Students of history will recall much in the centuries between the ninth and the sixteenth which will throw light upon the actual tenableness of that claim.

BU

UT it is doubtful if the unique position of the Roman Bishop as having a primacy of dignity, coupled with this vague supremacy, would be sufficient to affect the minds of many with any power by his recent pronouncement, were it not that confused with these other factors is the theory that the Pope is always right and must be right and is uniquely right, so that if the present Pope suggests certain courses of procedure and passes judgment upon the past, "the cause is finished." In other words the neutral sovereign pleading a cause in his spiritual capacity claims to be infallible in what he proposes and decides. So an added prestige is given. But our genial Mr. Barrie, in his play of last winter-"A Kiss for Cinderella," has given a new turn to infallibility in the case of the tests used by the London policeman which the latter describes as “infallíäble.” The "infallíäble "tests need

to be tested. That always has been the difficulty with the Dogma of Infallibility since the Vatican Council. In the present instance any serious examination of the analysis of the situation as made by Benedict XV discloses such weakness and unfounded assumptions mingled with devout and Christian prayers and suggestions as to indicate either defective perception or inadequate information or a bias and prompting in a certain direction that go very far to nullify the weight of the appeal. The religious world of the Allies has listened respectfully, but without much enthusiasm. A good man and an influential Bishop with a tremendous audience has spoken. But there is nothing in his actual prerogatives acknowledged which requires the world to accept his overtures as final. We wish he had acted at least three years ago, to gain or lose by doing so, but with an unquenchable determination to champion the right, no matter where military victory might lie. The world that is fighting to destroy imperialism in the State is distrustful of anything that looks like imperialism in the Church.

I think that we shall agree that the first duty of the Church is to teach man's relation to God, and certainly one phase of such relation is that man should live rightly because God loves righteousness. But we must recognize this fact also: that a man, to please God, must be moral because he wants to be, not because he has to be. The laws and government compel morality, but that is not the morality God desires; and so it is not, it seems to me, the morality which the church should strive after. There is the higher type which is essentially religious. If a man is thoroughly grounded in his religious convictions and in his knowledge of the divine nature, his morality and, indeed, his whole attitude toward society and its institutions will be sound. The province of the Church, as I conceive it to be, is to give men the right attitude toward God and man by teaching them the great spiritual truths which God communicated to mankind by inspiration and through Jesus Christ. Robert Lansing.

BOOK REVIEWS

The Reserved Sacrament: Handbooks of Catholic Faith and Practice, by Darwell Stone, D.D. London: Robert Scott, 1917. $1.00.

Whatever is written by so accurate and cautious a catholic theologian as Dr. Darwell Stone, the Head of Pusey House, Oxford, must carry great weight. In this brief sketch, Dr. Stone has carefully traced the history of two separate practices one, the Reservation of the Sacrament for purposes of communion and the other the use of the Reserved Sacrament for devotional purposes from the first to the present century. The conclusion reached in regard to the first practice is that "reservation in a parish church, as distinct from a private chapel for reservation in which leave certainly is required, does not require any direction or sanction from the bishop." In regard to the second practice Dr. Stone subdivides the subject as follows: Access to the Reserved Sacrament, Prayers, public or private, before the Reserved Sacrament, Procession of the Blessed Sacrament, Exposition of and Benediction with the Reserved Sacrament. The important point of the book is the carefully weighed conclusions reached on all these subjects except Processions. Dr. Stone states in regard to the worship of our Lord in the Consecrated Species that "the reservation of the Sacrament and the approach of Christians to it in private prayer do not appear to require in parish churches positive episcopal sanction," and adds that "the question as to whether to private prayers there may be added common devotions is rather a matter of expediency than of principle," on the ground that "it would be difficult to maintain an essential difference between the spiritual acts of a number of individuals and those of a congregation." Then comes the question of Services of Exposition and Benediction. For these Dr. Stone states that " the permission or at least the allowance of the bishop of the diocese is required" inasmuch as they are public services. Again, granting episcopal sanction, the lawfulness of a service of Exposition appears to follow from commendation of private prayers in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament," and the author favors the granting of the needed episcopal sanction with carefully guarded regulations where there is a genuine demand for these services.

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The book is replete with references to the practice of the Church in every century showing that perpetual reservation is and has been the normal practice of the Catholic Church and therefore, in the absence of anything of a prohibitive nature, is still permissible, if not actually

required, in the Anglo-Catholic Church. As regards the practice of worshipping the Reserved Sacrament, instances are frequent from the eleventh century on in the west, and the point is clearly made that this practice, though not certainly known to be primitive, is a perfectly legitimate development of Catholic doctrine and must therefore be maintained and the fact that the Eastern Church shows little or no signs of outward reverence to the Reserved Sacrament is rather a defect to be avoided than a virtue to be imitated.

A crying need of the church at the present day, if she is to be faithful to her Lord in feeding God's Family with food in due season, is to have the Holy Sacrament perpetually reserved so that none may be deprived of the Divine Food, whenever it is needed, by day or by night, in sickness or in health. This book will strengthen the hands of priests who, out of a true sense of obligation to their ordination vow to feed the flock of Christ, are now reserving the Holy Sacrament perpetually, and will also tend to lead others to regard Reservation as much their duty, as priests of the church, as preaching sermons or visiting the sick.

A. R. K.

Peace and War. Notes of Sermons and Addresses. By Paul B. Bull, M.A., Priest of the Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield. Longmans, Green & Co., London and New York. 1917. Pp. 127. Price, $.90 net.

This is a book of sermons and addresses of the straightforward, plainspoken kind which we have learned to expect from Father Bull. His long experience as Chaplain to the British forces, not only in this war but in the Boer campaign of fifteen years ago, gives him a better right to speak about war than most of the people who write books about it. His still longer experience in preaching the truths of the Christian Religion qualifies him to do what he attempts roughly in this volume. His preface, and the first and longest address in the book, imply that his main antagonist is the "conscientious objector," a person with whom we in America are just beginning to get acquainted. But, of course, he goes farther than this. The book is not a mere answer, but a positive setting forth of basic principles whereon war may be rightly waged and peace finally established.

Chief among these principles, which we on this side of the water are slow to understand, and which Father Bull's brother in religion, Father Figgis, has so brilliantly set forth, is the clear recognition in human society of the two Orders, the Order of Nature and the Order of Grace.

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