More and more are the students of St. Thomas coming to realise his deep insight, and indeed foresight, into modern biblical problems. A striking example of this insight is to be found in his treatise on the Incarnation. We make no apologies for reproducing the bulk of the article [3a Qu. 42, Art. 4.]

Taken out of the Apology of that right excellent learned, man Fredericus Staphlius, Counsellor to the late Emperour Ferdinandus, almost word for word: and exceeding profitable for this perillous tyme.

It is an interesting experiment to take ten Catholics at haphazard and to ask them two questions :

1. Do you buy a Catholic weekly paper?

2. What chiefly do you buy it to read?

The experiment is interesting and even illuminating because of the curious judgements passed, the strange motives given, and the individual character of the replies.

First, to Question i the majority answered that they did not buy it themselves, but that they usually ‘saw’ a Catholic paper, though they could not honestly say that they read it through. They ‘looked at it,’ which seemed to mean that they scanned headlines and sometimes for some particular reason read an article or heard bits of an article read out to them at home. Indeed, the usual answer given to Question i was, ‘No, I don’t buy it myself, but they usually take it at home.’ Naturally Question produced a far greater variety of answers. Here it would not be possible to give any ‘majority report’ ; almost each had a different reason for buying it. Those who bought a Catholic paper for themselves and regularly, answered for the most part that their chief motive was that they supposed it was the proper thing to do. You went to Mass and ate fish on Fridays, and sent your children to a Catholic school and had a Catholic paper in the house, and you did these things more or less as part of the general scheme of salvation. Duty, not pleasure, was evidently the dominant motive for supporting the Catholic press!

In the sixteenth century a new Christendom,outside the obedience of the Holy See and owning no Papal authority, a union of all the newly-created Protestant Churches, a pan-Protestant confederation, was the vision of Archbishop Cranmer. Several attempts were made to bring together German Lutherans and Swiss Zwinglians and Calvinists. The formularies of the Church of England, to be read in the Book of Common Prayer, were framed deliberately that all Protestants who accepted the Creed of Nicea might be members of the established church; and not unskilfully framed, since Lutherans, Zwinglians and Calvinists alike were included in the Anglican episcopate of Queen Elizabeth’s appointment. But the efforts to secure a European Protestant confederation failed. The policy of Cranmer was frustrated. On the reformed doctrine of the Lord’s Supper a common denial of the Mass and Transubstantiation could not bring peace between Lutherans, who held to a Real Presence, and Zwinglians, who as stoutly maintained the contrary. On the questions of discipline and Church government the followers of John Calvin were not to be persuaded to accept the rule of princes in matters of faith and morals. International rivalries and the clash of political interests irritated and still further divided the various schools of Protestantism. When the ‘new religion,’ its forms defined and settled, was established in England and Scotland, in Holland, Switzerland, North Germany and the Scandinavian countries, minorities who would not conform to the religion of the State were penalized and dissent made an offence at law.

How hymns have been serviceable to man in the service of his Creator who needs to be told? The words et hymno dicto resound in the memory . . speaking to one another in psalms and hymns. . . The Liturgy has used more hymns in the past than it does to-day. Those who know Dreves’ Analecta Hymnica must conceive hymns as in tens of thousands. The many of what have been are no longer wanted; yet the Dreves collection may serve the divine worship at some later day.

Hymns and spiritual songs are needed too for private and semi-private use. What have we for those of English speech? It is better to let this rhetorical question hang without its pendant. To ask why there is no English hymn in this or that authorized collection which a Christian could without blushing sing, for example, before the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, equals a more direct question : Whose office is it to write English hymns? Suggested answer: Dryden, Crashaw, Southwell, Coventry Patmore, Michael Feld, Lionel Johnson, Gerard Hopkins. Lengthen the list to fancy.

I choose great and reputable names of poets who could make some defence against the charge of neglect to perform an obvious duty. Can living men and women who have inherited the charge return even so supportable an apology as their predecessors?

In this meagre collection it would seem as if the stones had cried out. ‘If those wont, some one must’ is almost legible in Mr. Sainsbury’s brilliantly printed and ornamented pages.

The phrase ‘class war’ is in common use, and like many another phrase is more readily uttered than defined. Daily do we read of the ‘preaching of class war’ or the denouncing of class war, and vague but decidedly horrible visions are projected of arson, murder and red terror. (‘All Sir Leicester Dedlock’s old misgivings relative to Wat Tyler, and the people in the iron districts who do nothing but turn out by torchlight’ may be recalled, and ‘the obliterating of landmarks, opening of floodgates, and all the rest of it.’)

The trouble with metaphors is that they will conjure up such vastly different and often such very shocking visions. Other military metaphors in common use are less disturbing. The ‘hotly-contested fight’ of the cricket field, or the by-election, suggests no bloodshed. The vigorous campaign of the politician is not more fearful than the ‘fierce attack’ of the forwards, or the ‘stubborn defence’ of the goal-keeper in the football season. As for leading ‘forlorn hopes’ and the readiness to ‘die in last ditches,’ we may approve the sentiment even when we find the metaphor somewhat absurd. That the motto of the famous Middlesex Regiment should be calmly appropriated by a section of one of our political parties, that ‘Die Hard’ should come to be used for a set of opinions, is perhaps the most glaring example of this fondness for military terms in civil life.

It is not easy to find the word descriptive of that hold which the external can exercise in favourable conditions through the senses upon man’s spirit. There might be a successful plea that this influence is more real than is supposed, necessary to men if human dignity is to be upheld; such is not here advanced; but rather one or two practical questions, modestly constructed, are submitted with deference, as : Is not the vague, unnamed, very real relation between man and his inanimate correspondent subject to all the varieties and discriminations allowed to ‘taste’? Again, in discourse of this matter the word beauty must sooner or later be used; very well, but man is beautiful, though this is only a memory. Regrettez vous le temps où le ciel sur la terre marchait et respirait dans un peuple de dieux? The little we can say at present is : man might harmonize with the created beauty external to himself; but the fact is that his presence is seldom tolerable and yery rarely acceptable. Shrinking, he has lost a function; he is reduced to a spectator, and can no longer be wedded to bosquet and glade except in spirit, Walt Whitman’s endeavours and other’s non-obstant. It is by chance that man and his are not feyesorrow, distraction, hindrance, scandal, discord among the elements where he might have wonted place.

Having been all my life a great lover of Italy, I have to while away the time when I am not actually in ‘the land of lands’ by reading books about it. I prefer the books old, because they are usually better written; and I like genuine memoirs packed with things seen rather than novels garnished with travel-pictures. This is not to say that I cannot relish Hans Andersen’s Improvisatore or Hawthorne’s Marble Faun; but I own that their Falstaffian ratio of sack to bread makes them unsatisfactory fare for a reader of my sober tastes. The Italian portions of Evelyn’s Diary used to stand me in good stead; but Evelyn, although I shall never wholly abandon him, is now relegated to a remoter shelf. I have discovered Richard Lassels.

Richard Lassels, author of The Voyage of Italy, was a Catholic priest. He was born (perhaps) in sixteen hundred and three, and he died (undoubtedly) in sixteen sixty-eight. In the interval he mostly travelled —in the capacity of tutor to young noblemen and by preference in Italy. He came (says Antony à Wood) ‘of genteel parents,’ Catholics and loyalists. His kinsman, Henry Lassels, was that devoted Cavalier, Colonel Lane’s Cornet, who rode with King Charles the Second from Bentley to Trent after the battle of Worcester. Charles was disguised as Mistress Lane’s tenant’s son; and Henry Lassels, among other good offices, gave up his own bed at Cirencester and slept on the truckle-bed designed for the King. His kinsman, the priest, would have done the same; for he was a steadfast champion of his own convictions, popular or unpopular, though a model of good temper and fair dealing where those of others were concerned.

Good will be found in the man whose recreation is walking. The moralist means certainly subathletic walking, a true exercise of this form of progress, a test which hopes to be marked high. Results of it can only be compared in their productivity of good. While you experience the pleasant muscular soreness for which you have waited only after the twelfth mile, your mother may be satisfied for the day when she has reached the eighth. A walk in the sense indicated seems to connote for a lady twelve, for a man twenty, flat miles in Great Britain.

Restorative exercise, nay, prophylactic, for fatigues must needs be dispersed and ease insured, cannot, when there is hardly an acceptable substitute to propose, suffer seasonal restriction, accept hyemation. Why should they? On the contrary.

External dispositions fit you rather for winter walking. You are becomingly shod by the very circumstance; and even legal clothing may seem too much in summer. Winter allays; and the walker is not without persecutors. ‘No heat, no dust, no flies’ you will hear your hobnails sing upon the frost-resilient road. And the eyes find more than variety in the winter scene; they learn to choose dead-bracken-clothed steeps and pronounce their food ‘incomparable’ when the blue of the mist deepens to the desired concord.

Although, in the distribution of mandated territory, considerable ingenuity was utilised in reconciling vested and imperial interests, the general public were not particularly interested in the matter, and in consequence very little publicity was given to the question. This is to be regretted, in that, in the opinion of the writer, that question more vitally affects every inhabitant of the British Isles than any scheme of Reparations, any theory of Balance of Power, or any dream of a League of Nations. If this opinion, and the grounds upon which it is based, can be sufficiently advertised, there will be possibly more attention paid to what is one of the greatest practical problems of the peace than has hitherto been the case, and more sympathy displayed in the struggles of those who, in bad climates at times, and under bad conditions always, are endeavouring to retain in a healthy condition those industries that will in the future become more or less the life-blood of the Empire.

As the standard of living improves in temperate climates, the cost of production of raw materials in those regions increases almost proportionally, retarded only by the small economies that machinery, improved methods and co-operation in the provision of power can effect. The use of substitutes from the tropics is therefore essential, if the standard of living is not to retrogress under economic pressure. Imperially speaking, then, the conservation and development of our tropical assets is a paramount duty. Whether that duty has not been seriously neglected in the past may be an open question, but that it is entirely overlooked at the present moment—Exhibition or no Exhibition —is a tragically patent fact.

It was a happy thought of the Holy Father to associate the present Jubilee Year with a Missionary Exhibition in the Vatican grounds, for among the modem activities of the Church the foreign missionary movement undoubtedly holds a conspicuous place. The initiative of the Holy Father, however, in convoking the Vatican Exhibition, was not the mere official action of the Holy See rightly guaging, with true statesmanlike instinct, the pulse of the times; it was something of a much more personal nature : the natural prompting of an intense personal interest, which has already gained for him in some measure the reputation of being the ‘Missionary Pope.’

Apart from the general scheme of the Exhibition, it was the Holy Father’s express desire that the picturesque element should not be excluded, in order to make it no mere ‘dry as dust’ statement of statistics, but rather a stirring and pictorial record of missionary enterprise that would attract and arrest the interest of the ordinary visitor. So well have the various Congregations concerned in the work—whose response to his appeal far exceeded all anticipation—succeeded in carrying out his wishes that the attractiveness of the exhibition admits of no gainsaying. It has indeed achieved in no small degree the desirable result of conveying matter of high educational value in a manner so attractive that it can scarcely fail to impress even the least intellectual visitor. Especially is this the case with regard to the realistic oil paintings, statuary of remarkable beauty, and particularly the numerous groups of life-size wax figures which illustrate the national habits, costumes and characteristic surroundings of the many races of the globe, from the frozen north to the torrid zone.

Before the Revolution of 1917 religion in Russia was very real; the people, as a whole, were pious and God-loving, and a stranger would have been struck by the intense piety which existed in town and country alike. The vast solitudes of his native land have had their effect on the character of the Russian peasant, filling him with an extraordinary spirit of mysticism. Young and old seemed possessed by some strange power of detachment from external influences while engaged in prayer. They appear to be raised into a state of ecstasy, and I have often noticed quite young children, apparently lost to their surroundings, praying with a fervour which is astonishing to a Western mind.

Up to the year 1917 there was little or no religious freedom in Russia; then followed a few months of liberty, after which the Catholic Church was subjected to a persecution which could only have been originated by the spirit of darkness. Very few Catholics outside Russia know anything of the sufferings of their brothers and sisters in the faith. Perhaps here I may be allowed to quote from the introduction to Princess Almedigen’s book, The Catholic Church in Russia To-day : ‘ Go to Russia and see how Catholics live there, and then come back and tell me whether people whose beliefs are not founded on the rock of truth can stand one-tenth of what they endure.’

During those critical years, 1914 to 1920, I lived in Moscow, and there I found a little band of workers who, in God’s mercy, had been gathered together to carry on his work in this time of stress.

In a previous article an account was given of the five years’ exploration work carried out by the Rev. John MacEnery, F.G.S., a Catholic priest of Torquay, in the extensive series of limestone caves, known as Kent’s Cavern. Beneath the thick stalagmite floor, he found the bones of mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, cave hyena, bear, lion, etc., and in association with them, worked flints which were clearly the tools, or weapons of war, of some prehistoric race of men. As these investigations were carried out a century ago, when scientific opinion was not prepared to accept the possibility of such a fact, it is of interest to relate MacEnery’s attempts to publish an account of his cavern researches. Of this intention we have ample evidence.

Writing to Sir W. C. Trevelyan, June 19th, 1826, MacEnery says :

On December 6th of the same year, Dr. Beeke (later the Bishop of Bath and Wells), in a letter to Sir W. C. Trevelyan, says:

It has of late been almost taken for granted that the Anglo-Catholic movement within the Church of England was in danger of forfeiting its claim to scholarship. The early Tractarians from whom the movement began had left names like Keble, Newman, Pusey, which might almost overawe into silence the men whom their genius organized into a school of action rather than of thought. On the other hand, the stalwarts of Biblical exegesis—Hort, Westcott, Light-foot—had captured a position in the world of scholars which few could rival. Moreover, to the credit of the Anglo-Catholics it may be said that, scorning academic delight, they have lived laborious days, often in the slums of England or the poverty of foreign missions, building up the ‘Catholic Church of England’ ; which is not yet, but is to be. Much of the reason why the scholarly output of recent Anglo-Catholics has not equalled the old is written in Fr. Knox’s pathetic words of introduction : ‘For my impertinence in presenting to the public a book on such a subject, which has been composed for the most part in the intervals of parochial work in London, I can only offer my humblest apologies.’

The modern scholar is to be seen or felt in every page of this work written against the overwhelming odds of a London parish. So high a level of conscientious scholarship is reached that even those who find themselves in disagreement with many of his views must find themselves in admiration of the dogged zeal which has packed his book with toil and thought.

A navigator in charge of the steering of aship, in addition to the compass and other aids, has to keep a constant look-out for rocks, some of which are visible, others submerged. The locality of these submerged rocks is as a rule well known and is marked on the chart, but from time to time we read that a ship has struck on some uncharted rock or reef and has gone down, or at least has suffered some damage.

There is something analogous to this in the life of a human being. He has a course to steer, a goal to reach; he has rocks to encounter and keep clear of. As long as these are visible—as long as he is conscious, that is to say, of these rocks—it is an easier matter; but from time to time he strikes something which, so to speak, is not on his chart and yet profoundly influences his life. Disturbance of an emotional character may ensue, the root of which lies in the uncharted rocks of the sub-conscious mind.

This is merely a simile introduced by way of illustration to show the fundamental thought which runs through this treatise on the psychology of emotion.

The part which emotion—or, as older writers would say, passion—plays in human life is so obvious that the fact is barely worth mentioning. Without emotion life would resemble the existence of an oyster, fixed on its bed, immovable, impervious to any stimulation other than that which procures for it its daily diet of animalculae. It is in the quality of the emotional life that we find those oscillations of the personality which are familiar to us all.

It is a commonplace that, prior to the nineteenth century, communication between one part of Europe and another was never so safe or so rapid as under the Roman Empire. The Roman roads were the cement of the ‘pax Romana,’ and the ‘pax Romana,’ as has been well said, is an ideal which the modern world has not yet been able to realise.

As far as the problems of communication are concerned, the invention of the steam and internal combustion engines establishes an absolutely rigid gulf between the modern age and all previous ages. Before the nineteenth century mechanical transport was unknown, and Napoleon could command no greater facilities than Julius Cæsar.

Any consideration, therefore, of the relative efficiency with which the past ages dealt with these questions must stop at the nineteenth century. From then onwards the whole nature of the problem is revolutionised, and resources become available, whose potentialities we have, as yet, hardly begun to realise. Whether they are capable, in concert with other agencies, of giving some kind of unity to a world from which social, moral and political unity have entirely vanished, is a question which the future alone can decide.

It has been suggested, with very probable truth, that the Romans derived many of their ideas of practical statesmanship from their contact with the Persian Empire ; and it is well known that the Persians were magnificent road-makers. For our purpose it is sufficient to note that, under the Roman dominion, the first serious attempt was made to unite Europe, and that as the Imperial frontiers were pushed outward, the continent was gradually covered by a network of splendid roads, many of which are in use at the present day.

Neither the Luddite fires kindled by starving operatives nor the fires that blazed in southern England twenty years later were of Cobbett’s making. He understood the provocation and cried aloud against the wickedness that drove the English labourer to violence ; but always was Cobbett for constitutional reform. Were his writings inflammatory? His enemies said so; and Cobbett, for his part, hoped and believed they ‘really were inflammatory; for they inflamed the people against the corruption, bribery, fraud, and perjury, which had been the great cause of all their miseries.’

But no revolutionary was William Cobbett. Always he took his stand on the old things, which he loved, and railed fiercely against the new, which he detested. Never till his death could he be persuaded to turn republican, though no man assailed more sharply the occupant of the throne. It was enough for Cobbett that monarchy belonged to the old England of the ages of faith. The Commonwealth, with its prohibition of mince pies, its puritanism and its cant of ‘godliness,’ was the only republic England had known, and to Cobbett the reign of Cromwell was a nightmare.

‘I knew my countrymen well,’ Cobbett wrote; and his boast was justified. He knew them well. His very prejudices were theirs. He is as English as Dickens in his hatred of charity schools and all that pertained to the new commerce.

It is not the purpose of this article to ventilate any particular theory, or to criticise any particular system of educational practice, this not being in any way within the competence of the writer to discuss. Psychology, however, looms large on the intellectual horizon at the present day, and whatever the views one may hold as to the efficacy of psychological study with regard to the problems of education, one will be ready to admit that between the two, psychology and education, there exists an important relation, though it may not be easy to state this relation in precise terms.

Then, again, we have to reckon with the fact that empirical and experimental psychology has to be taught in some at least of our training colleges, in order to meet the demands of educational authorities, who expect prospective teachers to receive some instruction in psychology in its bearing on educational practice. It is doubtful, perhaps, whether without this external compulsion, much attention would be paid to modern psychology; it becomes, therefore, all the more necessary to enquire whether after all there is not some justification for insisting on this subject having a place in the curriculum of the training college, and whether teachers and educators in general may not benefit to some extent thereby.