notists are concerned, illiterate, shallow, incapable of reasoning outside of commercial lines, immeasurably selfish.

But, continues Mr. Clemens, this is not the portrait of Mrs. Eddy as her followers see her; and he proceeds to sketch the "Mother" as she appears to the devoted disciple. Patient, gentle, noble-hearted, a messenger of God.

She has delivered to them a religion which has revolutionized their lives, banished the glooms that shadowed them, and filled them and flooded them with gladness and peace; a religion which has no hell; a religion whose heaven is not put off to another time, with a break and a gulf between, but begins here and now, and melts into eternity as fancies of the waking day melt into sleep.

We could hardly expect Mr. Clemens to draw attention to the contrasts between this view of life and that announced in the New Testament, though the oppositions are obvious.

In his conclusion, Mr. Clemens incidentally makes some se vere strictures on the difference between the private and the public standards of conduct accepted by the American Chris tian which are the most timely in this book.

This is an honest nation-in private life the American Christian is a straight and clean and honest man, and, in his private commerce can be trusted to stand faithfully by the principles of honor and honesty imposed on him by his religion. But the moment he comes forward to exercise a public trust he can be confidently counted upon to betray that trust in nine cases out of ten, if "party loyalty" shall require it. If there are two tickets in the field in his city, one composed of honest men and the other of notorious blatherskites and criminals, he will not hesitate to lay his private Christian honor aside and vote for the blatherskites, if his "party honor" shall exact it. His Christianity is of no use to him and has no influence upon him when he is acting in a public capacity. He has sound and sturdy private morals, but he has no public ones.

Mr. Clemens proceeds to illustrate his general arraignment. by a particular instance:

In the last great municipal election in New York, almost a complete one-half of the votes, representing 3,500,000 Chris

tians, were cast for a ticket that had hardly a man on it whose earned and proper place was outside of a jail. But that vote was present at Church next Sunday the same as ever and as unconscious of its perfidy as if nothing had happened.

Congress, Mr. Clemens goes on to say, is worse than the electorate. If Christian Science can succeed in establishing a Christian public standard, he wishes it success. This needed reform will demand a stronger power than Christian Science.

Within the limits of seventy-five very small pages, Mr. Burrell has compressed a sketch of Mrs. Eddy's career, the origin of her teachings, and a criticism of the vagueness and inconsistencies existing in that doctrine. He notes, also, the adaptations introduced from time to time into Christian Science as the result of the many attacks made upon it. Mr. Burrell's little volume is not one tenth of the size of that of Mark Twain on the same subject, yet it embraces every element of value that is to be found in the larger work, and is just as effective an attack upon the religion of Mrs. Eddy. It enjoys, too, this advantage over Mark Twain's, that it is not open to the very reasonable objection urged by some defenders of Christian Science against the dean of American humorists, that "not only Christian Science, but every other religious belief appeals to his sense of humor, and to his sense of humor only, and this gives rise to the question as to whether the comic point of view is a valuable or even a reliable point of view in the consideration of religious topics."

CHRISTIAN UNITY.

This little volume† is published anonymously, but we shall, perhaps, betray no confidence by mentioning the fact that it is from the pen of Rev. Martin O'Donoghue, a priest well known in the vicinity of the national Capital, for his eloquence in the pulpit and his zeal in the general ministry. We are happy to be able to say that this venture into apologetics is quite worthy of the reputation the author has achieved in other lines of apostolic labor. We hope, too, that, though the main purpose of this effort is to effect conver

*A New Appraisal of Christian Science. By Joseph Dunn Burrell. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.

The Gospel Plea for Christian Unity. Washington, D. C.: Gibson Brothers.

sions of non-Catholics, one of the by products, so to say, may be to stimulate other zealous priests to a like endeavor.

There are too few of such monographs on apologetic topics appearing in America, although there is probably no country where an up-to-date, readable substitute for the old-fashioned tract can do so much good work.

There are a thousand topics available. Father O'Donoghue has chosen the task of demonstrating that the Gospels bear on their surface evident marks of a doctrine and a spirit that is solely Catholic.

His method is rather novel. He selects a sentence or a passage, or even a chapter, from the New Testament, and then, by means of a short, pithy, and often very lively commentary, indicates how closely the gospel teaching is maintained and illustrated in the Catholic life and the Catholic faith. Suffice it to say that such an objective, matter-of-fact method must appeal immediately to all bible-readers who are sincere enough to mark and compare the facts of Catholic life-especially devotional life with the gospel records. Such readers cannot miss. the main point of the author, namely, that the scriptures themselves, taken verbatim, are the strongest possible plea for the unity of faith demanded by Christ and made possible by the Church alone.

HOLY ORDERS.
By Saltet.

Of late years, since Newman's doctrine of development, from being considered a dangerous novelty, has

come to be looked upon and employed as the most effective-indeed the only effective—principle for the defence of doctrinal continuity against the historical critic, our poverty in theological literature of the positive kind has been severely felt. The need is so great that every writer attempting, in however modest a measure, to contribute towards supplying the want has evoked the gratitude of students, teachers, and scholars. Already many noteworthy contributions of a meritorious character have been made; and they have met with so hearty a welcome that competent scholars are encouraged to devote talents and labor to the service of the Church and truth in this line.

The publishing house of Lecoffre has projected a series of studies on the history of dogmas which was recently most auspiciously inaugurated by Abbé Rivière's fine volume on the

dogma of Redemption. Now comes a second study, which is of a quality so high that it would be difficult to overpraise it. The authoritative doctrine concerning the sacrament of Holy Orders is at present, and for a long time past has been, precisely fixed, and can be completely stated in a very small compass. But for a great period of the Church's history no such clear definition of the doctrine existed. And many historical facts, as well as many teachings, more or less authoritative, are on record which could, with great difficulty, be reconciled with one another, or, in some cases, with the doctrine as finally formulated by the modern councils. To the intricacy of the question, and the consequent impossibility of obtaining a satisfactory understanding of it at one particular phase without entering upon a thorough investigation of the process of development exhibited from the beginning by the teaching concerning the repetition of Orders, we owe the present volume.

In the course of a study on the reform of the eleventh century, the author informs us, he found himself face to face with the theological controversies which at that period so profoundly troubled the Church, concerning the transmission of the power of Orders. He found himself obliged to make a personal study of the question. But this inquiry forced him to investigate the chief events and controversies which marked the path of antecedent development-and thus what was intended to be an incidental chapter grew into an independent book. As we may expect from this history of its inception, this study is broad and comprehensive. Its starting point is the two diverse. traditions of the ancient Church regarding the competence of schismatics and heretics to administer the sacrament of Baptism. The divergence between the practice of the African Church and that of Rome, the reordinations of the Novatians and Monophysites, the subsequent abandonment of reordination; the development of the Roman theology by St. Augustine, with the difficulties involved in the treatment of the Arians, are thoroughly discussed in these chapters forming the introductory part of the work.

The author treats with considerable amplitude the many perplexing problems presented by history from the seventh to the eleventh century, especially the reiteration, by order of the

Les Reordinations. Étude sur le Sacrament de l'Ordre. Par l'Abbé Louis Saltet. Paris: Libraire I ecoffre.

Roman Council of 769, of the orders conferred by Pope Constantine; the annulment by Stephen VI. of the orders conferred by his predecessor, Pope Formosus, and the subsequent annulment of Stephen's act by his successors, Theodore II. and John IX., whose proceedings, in turn, received similar treatment at the hands of Sergius III. The author holds that the ordinations of Formosus were incontestably valid. The violent proceedings of the Council of 769, as well as the subsequent action of John XII. in annulling the ordinations of Leo VIII., he treats as of little real interest to the student of theological development, since each case was "but one more act of violence in a period which abounds in others still greater." He does not evade the doctrinal difficulties created by the decisions delivered regarding simoniacal ordinations during the eleventh century, and the still greater ones arising from the action of Urban II., the subsequent influence of which he follows up in the teachings of the school of Bologna. The triumph of that school, by getting practical recognition from the Curia, its influence among the Parisian theologians, who attributed to the process of degradation the power of effacing completely from the soul of the priest the sacramental character; the final establishment of the definitive doctrine by the Scholastics from the middle of the thirteenth century-these are the various phases through which, with a thorough grasp of history, critical acumen, lucid method, and in an admirably dispassionate, frank, sincere temper, Abbé Saltet exposes this intricate and delicate subject, whose embarrassing difficulties have been so frequently ignored. The reordination of the past, he concludes, undoubtedly supposed a notion of the power of orders which is not that of to-day.

It is true that the doctrinal authority of Popes has several times been en cause in the course of these controversies. Το what extent? There will be no hesitation in saying that the decisions of the Popes on these questions have not been clothed with the character determined by the Council of the Vatican for definitions which implicate the sovereign authority of the Popes in doctrinal matters. In the history of reordinations the authority of the Popes is much less involved than it is in the doctrine regarding the relations of the two powers, in which, however, according to theologians, the infallible authority of the Popes is not at stake.