Missale Romanum. Tours Edition. Royal quarto. 1869. New York and Cincinnati: Benziger Bros.
This is a very fine edition of the Roman Missal. It is carefully bound in morocco, tastefully ornamented, and opens easily. The page is pleasant to the eye, the type being large and clear, and the paper very good. All the recent masses will be found at their proper places in this edition, which is in itself both a convenience and recommendation. At the commencement of the canon there is a very good steel-plate engraving of the Crucifixion. We recommend this missal to the notice of the reverend clergy and members of altar societies.
The History of Rome. By Theodor Mommsen. Translated by the Rev. W. P. Dickson, D.D. With a preface by Dr. Leonhard Schmitz. New edition, in four volumes. Vol. I. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1870.
This is a philosophical history. It is difficult to do justice to the depth and accuracy of the erudition it displays. The style is also singularly happy—especially for a translation. We accept the author's facts, but not all his theories. Some of the latter would account for certain religious beliefs and practices by ignoring, on the one hand, primitive tradition, and attributing, on the other, to peoples but just emerging from barbarism the sublimest poesy and the keenest wisdom. Rationalism will never succeed in accounting for what was true in the religions of Greece and Rome, any more than for Christianity. The great philosophical historian of our age is Professor Leo, of Halle, whose account of Rome is especially admirable. Those who read German will probably find in Leo and Mommsen, together with Niebuhr, all they need to know of the principles, constitution, origin, and historical development of pagan Rome. For a correct and condensed narrative of events, Cantu's Universal History is the best.
Women's Suffrage: a Reform Against Nature. By Horace Bushnell. New York: Scribner & Co. 1869. 12mo, pp. 184.
We agree with Dr. Bushnell, as our readers are aware, in opposing female suffrage and eligibility as repugnant to the law of God, the natural relations of the sexes, and the interests of the family, of society, and indeed of woman herself; but in the course of his essay he uses so many weak arguments, and concedes so much to the women's rights folks, that his conclusions, though just, are not well sustained, and are not likely to carry conviction to the minds of those women who aspire to be men. We do not believe the lot of woman in society as it is can be truly said to be harder than that of men. The curse of our age is its femineity, its want of manliness, its sentimentalism, and its pruriency; and it could only be aggravated by female suffrage and eligibility. "The reigns of queens," said a queen of France to a duchess of Burgundy, "are conceded to be more successful than those of kings." "True," responded the duchess; "but it is because queens follow the counsel of men, and kings the counsel of women." The age, or what is called the age, needs reforming, we grant; for it has been formed by Protestantism, which is simply in principle a resuscitation of gentilism; but not more for woman than for man, and reformed it cannot be without faith in the doctrine and obedience to the commands of the church of God.
The modern economical and industrial system, which enriches the few at the expense of the many, and which is boasted as the grand achievement of modern progress, is the source of most of the evils which our political and social reformers seek to redress. This system, which sees in man only an instrument of producing, distributing, and consuming the material goods of this life, and takes no account of the divine sovereignty, or of man's moral and spiritual wants, we are quite willing to concede is a natural product of the Reformation. It creates wants beyond its power to satisfy, tastes and habits of life which demand for their gratification great wealth, and great wealth can be the lot of only the few. It creates a large class of men and women, especially of women, for whom it does and can make no provision, and who suffer just in proportion to their cultivated and refined habits and tastes. The system is in fault, is based on the false principle that the more wants you can stimulate or develop in a man or a woman the better. Hence, it creates a large class who are ill at ease, misplaced, discontented, and maddened by wants that they cannot satisfy, and prepared to be not reformers, but revolutionists.
There is no way of curing the evil, which was as great in ancient Greece and Rome as it is in modern Britain or America, but by returning to the Christian principle of self-denial, and following the admonition of our Lord, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all things shall be added unto you." Would you make a man happy, study not to increase his possessions, but to diminish his desires. While material riches are held up as the supreme good, and poverty is treated as a disgrace, if not as a crime, there is no remedy for individual, domestic, or social evils, as the history of all heathen nations amply proves. Let the poor be held in honor as our Lord and his church held them, let voluntary poverty for Christ's sake be counted highly meritorious, and the evils our radicals feel, and our women's rights people complain of, will soon disappear, and woman will find her proper place, and man his. No political or social revolution is needed; none will do any good; all that is needed is to substitute the Christian economy for the pagan that now governs modern society.