After reading this little book, we felt an ardent desire to tell everybody we had found a treasure. Its title, a rather unusual thing nowadays, is the true exponent of its contents. That God is our Father—our kind, indulgent, beneficent, merciful, loving Father—it proves as we have never seen proved before. We do think, if Voltaire had seen this little treatise, he would not have called God a “tyrant and the father of tyrants,” and he, Voltaire, would not have been a fool and the father of a generation of fools. Some Christians other than Calvinists are accustomed to regard God as a stern judge or an exacting master, ignoring altogether his parental relationship. This way of regarding God not unfrequently produces a morbid spirituality, if not worse. Under its baneful influence, the soul is parched up and rendered incapable of any other sentiment than that of fear. It is true that “fear is the beginning of wisdom”; but it is no less true that “love is the fulfilment of the law” and the sublime summary of the new dispensation. And who can love a being whom he sees only in the light of a stern judge, an exacting master? God, as he is represented in this work, is a being whom you cannot but love. In very truth, the author himself must love much, or he could never write so eloquently of divine love.
To all Catholics who look with a filial confidence to God, and love him as their Father, we recommend this book as a means of strengthening their confidence and increasing their love. To those Catholics, happily few, who see in God only a rigid master, we prescribe the perusal of this work as the best remedy for their dangerous disease. To our separated brethren, who want to get a Christian idea of our common Father, we would respectfully suggest the careful study of this treatise; they will find it sufficiently scriptural and sufficiently simple for their tastes.
We cannot, perhaps, pay the publishers a higher compliment than by saying that the setting is in every way worthy of the gem.
[Lectures] on the Principal Doctrines and Practices of the Catholic Church. By Cardinal Wiseman. New York: P. O’Shea.
These two volumes belong to the uniform series of Cardinal Wiseman’s works now being issued by Mr. O’Shea, and, as we understand, are printed from the same plates as the one-volume edition heretofore issued by Kelly, Piet & Co.
It is a strong evidence of the permanent interest which attaches to Catholic doctrine—the faith ever ancient, ever new—that these lectures are read now with almost equal avidity with that which greeted their appearance almost forty years ago, while as many weeks suffice to lay on the shelf the productions of many a popular preacher of the day.
This course constituted the Lent at S. Mary’s, Moorfields, in 1836, when the Oxford movement had already acquired considerable headway, and the public mind was alive to the subjects discussed. In view of the audience which he addressed, they were doubtless prepared with great care, and may therefore be considered most favorable specimens of the distinguished author’s style.
One is struck, in looking over Cardinal Wiseman’s works, by the fact of the singular diversity of his gifts, and his preeminence in the varied fields of research and discussion—as if he had made each a specialty. His Lectures on the Connection of Science and Religion, delivered the preceding year, has maintained a position in the front rank of works devoted to that subject, and may be said to have become obsolete only in so far as science has presented new phenomena and discoveries for elucidation; while the present work has remained, to our thinking, the most exhaustive popular exposition of Catholic doctrine in the language. His more elaborate historical and critical essays have attracted marked attention, and been thought worthy of publication in separate volumes, while his distinctively belles-lettres works have enjoyed almost universal favor. His Fabiola confessedly stands at the head of Christian fiction. It is a little remarkable that The Hidden Gem, and one of the most acute critiques of the day upon Shakespeare, should have been the production of one who it is fair to infer scarcely ever-witnessed an acted drama.
The same house has brought out in similar style the Four Lectures on the Offices and Ceremonies of Holy Week by the same author, which we hope will prove a valuable aid to the intelligent participation in the devotions of the present season. The interest in the Lectures is enhanced by the fact that they were delivered at Rome, and relate to the ceremonies in the Papal chapels.
The Catholic Publication Society will publish in a few days, from advance sheets, a new work by the author of My Clerical Friends, entitled Church Defence: Report on the Present Dangers of the Church.