"Gossip is the bane of conversation, for it is the name under which injustice makes her entrance into society. There is an element in the breast of the most civilized communities, even in times of great refinement, that explains how man may, under certain circumstances, become a cannibal. It is exhibited in the turns our humor takes in conversation. We are not ill-natured, nor disposed to lay a straw in the way of any one who has not injured us, and yet, when spurred on by the stimulus of talking and being talked to, we can bring ourselves to mimic, revile, and misrepresent others, traduce and destroy their good name, reveal their secrets, and proclaim their faults; and all this merely to follow the lead of others, or for the sake of appearing facetious and amusing, or for the purpose of building up ourselves by running down those whom in our hearts we know and believe to be better than we are.…… But as the gossip attacks the absent because the absent cannot defend himself or herself, shall not we, dear readers, form a society to assist the weak and the persecuted? Shall we not enter into a compact to defend those who cannot defend themselves? Let us answer as a love of fair play suggests. If we are at all influenced by regard for Christian charity, let us remember that it takes two to carry on a conversation against our neighbor, and that if our visitor is guilty of being a gossip, a false witness, or a detractor, we are also guilty by consenting to officiate as listeners."
In a chapter on the "Schooling of the Imagination," Dr. Cummings shows how the imaginative faculty may be made to serve the cause of religion, especially in the practice of meditation, and how dangerous it becomes when it is not held in check:
"We hear songs and the flutters of many wings at Bethlehem, and see the light streaming from heaven upon the face of the new-born Saviour. We look out over the blue waters of the Lake of Genesareth, and see the quaint little bark of Peter as it lay near the shore when Jesus preached to the people from its side, or as it flew before the wind when the sea waxed wroth, and a great storm arose, he meanwhile sleeping and they fearing they would perish. With the aid of this wonderful faculty we see him before us in the hour of his triumph, surrounded by the multitudes singing, 'Hosanna to the son of David,' and in that sad day of his final sorrow, when the same voices swelled the fearful cry, 'Crucify him, crucify him.'"
A GENERAL HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA UNTIL THE PRESENT TIME. By M. L'Abbé J. E. Darras. First American from the last French edition. With an Introduction and Notes, by the Most Rev. M. J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore. Parts 1, 2, and 3. 8vo. New York: P. O'Shea.
This valuable work, which Mr. O'Shea, with a laudable spirit of enterprise, is giving us by instalments, is intended for just that class of readers who stand most in need of a readable and pretty full Church history. When completed it will fill four portly volumes, imperial octavo; yet it is a work adapted more especially to family reading than to the use of the scholar in his closet. The Abbé Darras has judiciously refrained from obstructing the flow of his narrative by minute references and quotations, nor has he suffered his pen to run away into long discussions of controverted questions. What he says of the chronology which he has followed, he might have said, if we have read him [{142}] aright, of his whole work: "We have adopted a system already completed, not that it may perhaps be the most exact in all its details, but because it is the one most generally followed." This seems to be the principle which he has kept before his eyes throughout; and considering the purpose for which he wrote, we think it a good one. With all the simplicity and modesty of his style, however, he shows a thorough knowledge of the intricacies of his subject, and an acquaintance with what the best scholars have written before him. His history, therefore, fills a void which has long been aching.
The translation, made by a lady well known and respected by the Catholics of the United States, reads smoothly, and we doubt not is accurate. It has been revised by competent theologians, and has the special sanction of the Archbishop of Baltimore, beside the approbation of the Archbishops of New York and Cincinnati. The work in the original French received the warmest encomiums from the European clergy, and the author was honored, at the conclusion of his labors, by a kind letter from the Pope.
The mechanical execution of the book is beautiful. The paper is good, and the type large and clear. We thank Mr. O'Shea for giving us so important a work in such a rich and appropriate dress.
THE PROGRESS OF THE AGE, AND THE DANGER OF THE AGE. Two lectures delivered before the St. Xavier Conference of the St. Vincent de Paul Brotherhood in the Hall of St. Louis University. By the Rev. Louis Heylen, S. J. 12mo., pp. 107. Cincinnati: John P. Walsh.
These two lectures formed parts of a course delivered during the winter of 1862-63, by some of the professors of the St. Louis University. They are admirable compositions, redolent of good sense, learning, and ripe thought, and deeply interesting. The style has a true oratorical ring. In the first lecture Father Heylen, after adverting to the fact that every age since the days of Adam has been marked by some special characteristic, examines the claim set forth by our own century to be emphatically the age of progress. In part he admits and in part he denies it. In material progress, and in the natural sciences, especially as applied to the purposes of industry and commerce, it stands at the head of ages. But moral progress is not one of its characteristics. "Here I feel," says he, "that I am entering upon a difficult question. Has there been, in the last fifty years, any marked increase of crime? Is our age, all things considered, really worse than preceding ages? This question I shall not undertake to decide; but there are some forms of crime which appear to me decidedly peculiar to our age." A brief review of these sins of the day leads naturally to the subject of the second lecture. Father Heylen sees our greatest danger in that practical materialism which places material interests and materialistic passions above the interests of the soul and the claims of virtue. He considers successively its extent, its effects, and the means to avert it—the last being, of course, the ennobling and spiritualizing influence of Catholicism.
We advise those who wish to see how a scholar and an orator can throw a fresh charm into a stale subject, to read Father Heylen's review of the startling discoveries of modern science in the first lecture, and his brilliant description in the second of the ruins with which materialism has spread the pages of history and the new life which Catholicism has infused into effete civilizations.