The New Adam; or, Ten Dialogues on our Redemption and the Necessity of Self-Denial.
Edited by the Very Rev. Z. Druon, V.G., and approved by the Right Rev. Bishop of Burlington.
Claremont, N. H. 1868.
This little book was first published in Paris, A.D. 1662. From a second and more complete edition, the present translation was prepared and edited. The subjects of the "Ten Dialogues" are as follows:
I. The State of Original Righteousness.
II. Adam's Fall.
III. The Penance of Adam and Eve after their Fall.
IV. The State of Penance we are in is preferable, in some respects, to the earthly Paradise.
V. The Infinite Perfection with which Jesus Christ, the new Adam, performed the penance imposed on the old Adam.
VI. Self-Denial.
VII. Obligation of Self-Denial.
VIII. Imitation of the Self-Denial of Christ.
IX. Scriptural texts concerning Self-Denial.
q X. The Self-Denial of Jesus Christ.
From this view of its contents, and the cursory glance we have been able to bestow upon its pages, we believe it to be, as its editor claims, "well grounded on the Holy Scriptures, sound in doctrine, remarkable for its clearness and depth of thought, full of pious and practical reflections, instructive, and, at the same time, interesting and pleasing."
The Life Of St. Thomas À Becket, of Canterbury.
By Mrs. Hope, author of The Early Martyrs, etc. With a Preface, by the Rev. Father Dalgairns, of the London Oratory of St. Philip Neri.
16mo, pp. xxiv., 398.
London: Burns, Gates & Co.
New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
Veneration for the memory of St. Thomas, of Canterbury, has undergone recently a remarkable revival in England, and this meritorious compilation by Mrs. Hope is one of the fruits of it. She has drawn most of her materials from the more elaborate biographies by the Rev. Dr. Giles and the Rev. John Morris, and from the Remains of the Rev. R. H. Froude, and, of course makes no pretension to the rank of an original investigator; but she has done a very serviceable work nevertheless, and, upon the whole, has done it well. Her narrative is interesting and rapid. The style possesses the merit—rare with female writers on religious subjects—of directness and simplicity; the story being unencumbered by either ambitious rhetoric or commonplace reflections. From this reason, as well as from the care with which she seems to have studied the subject, the book not only gives us an insight into the saint's personal character, but leaves on the reader's mind a very clear comprehension of the nature of that long struggle for the rights of the Church and for the independence of the spiritual order which resulted in his martyrdom, and which modern historians have done so much to obscure. Mrs. Hope is rather too fond of telling dreams, which she apparently half-believes and half does not believe to have been prophetic inspirations, although most of them were like the answers of the pagan oracles—susceptible of almost any interpretation, and only to be understood in the light of after-events; but that is a habit which she borrowed of the mediaeval chroniclers, and she shares it with a very large class of modern biographers. Of course, God may speak to man in a dream as well as in other ways; but when the dreams are clearly referable to distinct physical causes, as some of those recorded in this book are, when, in fact, they are just like ordinary nightmares, the attempt to elevate them to the dignity of supernatural visions is more pious than prudent.
The preface, by Father Dalgairns, comprises a very effective answer to some of the misrepresentations in Dean Stanley's life of the saint, contained in the Memorials of Canterbury.