BOOKS RECEIVED.
From Scribner, Welford & Co., New York: Sermons bearing on the Subjects of the Day. By John Henry Newman, B.D. New edition. Rivingtons: London, Oxford, and Cambridge. 1869.
From Roberts Brothers, Boston: A Day by the Fire; and other papers hitherto uncollected. By Leigh Hunt. 1870.
From Carleton, New York: Strange Visitors.
From P. Fox, Publisher, 14 South Fifth street, St. Louis: Letters on Public Schools, with special reference to the system as conducted in St. Louis. By the Hon. Charles R. Smythe. 1870.
From the University, Ann Arbor: Report on a Department of Hygiene and Physical Culture in the University of Michigan, by a Committee of the University Senate. 1870.
From Murphy & Co., Baltimore: General Catechism of the Christian Doctrine; for the Use of the Catholics of the Diocese of Savannah and Vicariate Apostolic of Florida. 1869.—Peabody Memorial. January, 1870.
From James Miller, 647 Broadway, New York: History of American Socialisms. By John Humphrey Noyes.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XI., No. 62.—MAY, 1870.
CHURCH AND STATE.[21]
Il Signor Cantù is one of the ablest men and most distinguished contemporary authors of Italy. He is a layman, and has usually been reckoned among the better class of so-called liberal Catholics, and certainly is a warm friend of liberty, civil and religious, a sincere and earnest Italian patriot, thoroughly devoted to the holy see, and a firm and fearless defender of the rights, freedom, independence, and authority of the spiritual order in its relation to the temporal.
We know not where to look for a truer, fuller, more loyal, or more judicious treatment in so brief a compass of the great and absorbing question in regard to the relation of church and state, than in his article from the Rivista Universale, the title of which we give at the foot of the page. He is an erudite rather than a philosopher, a historian rather than a theologian; yet his article is equally remarkable for its learning, its history, its philosophy, its theology, and its canon law, and, with slight reservation, as to his interpretation of the bull Unam Sanctam of Boniface VIII. and some views hinted rather than expressed as to the origin and nature of the magisterium exercised by the popes over sovereigns in the middle ages, we believe it as true and as exact as it is learned and profound, full and conclusive, and we recommend its careful study to all who would master the question it treats.
For ourselves, we have treated the question of church and state so often, so fully, and so recently, in its principle and in its several aspects, especially in relation to our own government, that we know not that we have any thing to add to what we have already said, and we might dispense ourselves from its further discussion by simply referring to the articles, Independence of the Church, October, 1866; Church and State, April, 1867; Rome and the World, October of the same year; and to our more recent articles on The Future of Protestantism and Catholicity, especially the third and fourth, January, February, March, and April, of the present year; and also to the article on The School Question, in the very last number before the present. We can do, and we shall attempt, in the present article, to do, little more than bring together and present as a whole what is scattered through these several articles, and offer respectfully and even timidly such suggestions as we think will not be presumptuous in regard to the means, in the present emergency, of realizing more perfectly at home and abroad the ideal of Christian society.