NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Sancta Sophia, or Directions for the Prayer of Contemplation, etc. Extracted out of more than Forty Treatises written by the late Ven. Father F. Augustin Baker, a monk of the English Congregation of the Holy Order of S. Benedict; and methodically digested by the R. F. Serenus Cressy, of the same Order and Congregation. Now edited by the Very Rev. Dom Norbert Sweeny, D.D., of the same Order and Congregation. London: Burns & Oates. 1876. (For sale by The Catholic Publication Society.)
Next in importance to the choice of a spiritual director comes, no doubt, the selection of the kind and quality of spiritual reading proper for individual souls. Ordinarily they go together, and, granting the first choice to have been well made, the second should be left to be determined by it. One advantage, however, a suitable book presents even when compared with a suitable director. It is always accessible, a consideration of some importance, when one remembers how urgently spiritual writers seek to persuade the soul that in case wise direction can be had at no less cost, she should travel “a thousand German miles” to find it. It is true that with certain classes of religious reading, and especially with that class to which the
Sancta Sophia belongs, there is danger that indiscreet readers may mistake their own needs, and nourish pride on what is proper food for humility only. Another peculiarity belonging to them is one which we hardly know whether to class as an advantage or a disadvantage. Put into the hands of mature readers for whom they have been esteemed suitable on account of some natural tendency to introversion, and possibly of converts, to which class, by the way, the author of the Sancta Sophia himself belonged, we have observed these charts of the more interior ways of spiritual life to create a temporary difficulty almost as serious as those they were intended to remove. The clearness and certainty with which the road is pointed out, and the obstacles to be surmounted described, fill the mind at first with such a sense of security as one feels who places himself in charge of an experienced guide to travel to regions by report well known but as yet unvisited. The objects of faith assume a new vividness, and the soul, beholding its own struggles and its own weariness reflected in the page before it, takes up its line of march with new vigor and readiness to endure what its predecessors also have endured. But it will be strange if its enemy do not avail himself of the very weapons used against him to raise the contrary difficulty,
and to suggest that the very accuracy with which the internal conflict is described shows that nothing has been really achieved by the spiritual writers except the dissection of the soul itself, and that, considered as evidence for the existence of anything beyond its own struggles, their works are simply worthless. However, to “well-minded souls,” as Father Baker would say, such temptations against faith are not in reality more dangerous than any other, and may, with the help of prayer and prudent counsel, be fled from even while their immediate occasion is retained and put to its uses. For such souls, once firmly grounded in Catholic faith and with a natural predisposition for “the internal ways of the Spirit,” we know no better guide than the Sancta Sophia, now so happily reprinted. No doubt it is not adapted to general reading; the caution of the Benedictine father, Leander à St. Martino, is as necessary to-day as when it was prefixed to the earliest editions of the work. These instructions, he said, “are written precisely, and only for such souls as by God’s holy grace do effectually and constantly dedicate themselves to as pure an abstraction from creatures as may with discretion be practised; … consequently, for such as abstain from all manner of levity, loss of time, notable and known defects, vain talk, needless familiarity, and in a word do take as much care as they can to avoid all venial sins and occasions of them, and all things which they shall perceive or be warned of, to be impediments to the divine union of their souls with God.”
Let us hope that even the strict application of this rule would not too greatly narrow the circle of readers likely to be profited by the reissue of a volume which those well qualified to judge rate as the most solid and valuable work on prayer ever written in the English tongue. A more effectual barrier, perhaps, against indiscriminate readers, is raised by the style of the work itself than by cautions such as these. For while the quaint, sweet sobriety of its manner most happily matches the gravity of its matter, it is marked by an utter absence of all things likely to gratify curiosity simply, and makes no effort to do more than guide souls called to contemplative prayer along the secure road of abnegation and self-denial. Certain blemishes which pertained to the work in its original
state are sufficiently guarded against in this edition by notes; and in its present form the Sancta Sophia is undoubtedly better fitted than before both to the needs of the contemplative orders for whom it was originally written, and to those of devout souls living in the world.
Mitchell’s Geographical Text-Books. Philadelphia: Published by J. H. Butler & Co.
One of the best proofs of the excellence of these text-books is the continual popularity which they have enjoyed, in spite of the publication of so many competing works by other authors. Of course they have been kept up to the times by additions, and improvements corresponding to the increase of geographical knowledge.
The series consists of eight books, two being occupied with ancient geography, and is progressive, so as to suit every age and capacity. For Catholic schools it is, so far as we can see, not open to any objection, and as good as any set of books not expressly written for them can be.
We are particularly pleased with Prof. Brocklesby’s Physical Geography, which forms part of the series. It is full of information for grown persons as well as for the young, is profusely and finely illustrated, as is the rest of the series, and will be found to be a most readable and instructive book.
The maps and charts are throughout the series executed with that clearness and beauty which have always characterized Mitchell’s atlases.
The Life, Letters, and Table-Talk of Benjamin Robert Haydon.
Men and Manners in America One Hundred Years Ago. New York. Scribner, Armstrong & Co. 1876.
These two volumes are the first instalments of the “Sans-Souci Series,” intended as a companion to the “Bric-à-Brac Series.” The life of Haydon the artist is full of painful interest. The present volume is a condensation by Mr. R. H. Stoddard of the larger Engglish life.
Men and Manners in America One Hundred Years Ago, edited by H. G. Scudder, tells pleasantly enough how men and women lived and moved and had their being in this country a century ago.