This is a very small 18mo volume of one hundred and fifty-one pages, containing more solid matter than some large octavos, as any person who knows F. Walworth’s style of writing would naturally expect. It contains a correspondence between himself and the gentleman whose name is given above, who was a classmate of F. Walworth and one of his fellow-members in the Presbyterian church of Union College. This correspondence appeared in the Investigator, a notorious infidel newspaper of Boston, and was called forth by an indignant denial sent to that paper by F. Walworth of a false and utterly groundless report that he had refused submission to the decrees of the Council of the Vatican. Mr. Burr, who has renounced the errors of Calvinism, and embraced those of infidelity and spiritism, took occasion from this denial and the explicit avowal of perfect submission to all the doctrines of Catholic faith involved in it, to question his former classmate in regard to the doctrine of eternal punishment, and to inquire of him how far his present belief in that doctrine agrees with his former belief while a Presbyterian. This brought on a controversy, in which Mr. Burr attempts to argue against the Catholic doctrine by ridiculing and denouncing certain descriptions of the torments of hell given by various writers, both Protestant and Catholic, bringing in at the same time a number of discursive and random remarks about many other topics, which are generally both very silly and altogether irrelevant. F. Walworth, on his side, steadily refuses to be drawn from the proper subject of controversy, or to permit his adversary to make him responsible for the private opinions of any person, Protestant or Catholic, and adduces strong, solid, irrefutable arguments from reason in support of the strictly Catholic doctrine taught authoritatively by the Church and obligatory on all her members. The only point which F. Walworth professes to aim at, and toward which his argument is directed with undeviating logic, is this. The doctrine which the church authoritatively teaches and imposes as obligatory on the conscience of her children is not contrary to reason, but in accordance with it, and capable of being proved by rational arguments. In his statement of what that doctrine is, F. Walworth follows Petavius, Perrone, and Archbishop Kenrick with theological accuracy. He says (pref., p. 9), “I have planted myself simply and purely upon the defined doctrine of the Catholic Church, and what that doctrine necessarily involves.” This is evidently to be understood of doctrine as defined, in the more general sense of definitely and precisely taught by the infallible magistracy of the church, by whatever method the church may exercise this magistracy, and not to be restricted to definitions de fide contained in explicit decrees of popes and councils. The logical deductions following necessarily from that which is precisely the article of Catholic faith are included in the obligatory doctrine. And where these deductions have not been expressly drawn out and defined in ecclesiastical decrees, the authority of the concurrent teaching of theologians is acknowledged in explicit terms by F. Walworth: “Where any questions remain undefined, I bow respectfully to the concurrent opinions of [the church’s] leading theologians. Beyond this I will not be bound” (p. 47). He says further: “All the language of Holy Scripture on the subject must be accepted and maintained” (Pref., p. 8), which is in accordance with a monition of the last Council of Baltimore to Catholic writers on this subject. The same council also admonishes Catholic writers not to diminish the punishment of sin in such a way as to destroy its proportion to the sin. And if any one will examine what F. Walworth has written, he will see that in this respect also he has fulfilled the precept of the Fathers of Baltimore to the letter. The statement of the defined doctrine of the church respecting hell made by F. Walworth is precisely that of Petavius: “There is a hell, and it is eternal.” Into the question of the specific physical nature and instrumental causes of the punishments of hell he does not enter very deeply. The only opinion of a Catholic writer which he expressly opposes is that of F. Furniss, that the torments of hell increase in geometrical proportion throughout eternity—an opinion which, so far as we know, is not supported by any grave authority. Opinions which are matters of lawful difference and discussion are left on their own proper ground within the domain of theology. The point to be proved is that reason cannot show any valid objection to the doctrine of the everlasting punishment of the man who finishes his term of moral probation on the earth in the state of mortal sin. Mr. Burr produces no such objection. His admissions even confirm the truth of F. Walworth’s positions. He admits that a state of intellectual and moral degradation is in itself a state of misery. The sinner is in this disordered state when he dies. If he lives for ever in the same state, this everlasting state of existence is hell. But who can bring conclusive evidence that there is any necessary cause which must bring him out of this state in the future life? Such evidence not being forthcoming, reason has not a word to say against the teaching of revelation, that those who fail in their earthly probation have no other, and must abide for ever the consequences of their own acts.
Some persons may object to the publication of a controversy in which infidel arguments are placed within the reach of Catholic readers. In the present instance, we think the cause of infidelity has alone any reason to fear anything from Mr. Burr’s letters. His reasonings are so weak and rambling, and the replies of F. Walworth so plain and conclusive, that it must do good to any reader who has a Christian belief to see what a wretched, disgusting substitute for divine religion is offered to the dupes of infidel sophistry. Infidelity destroys the mind and the manhood of the human being. In the form of materialism, it makes him a beast; in the form of spiritism, a lunatic. We do not say that books of this kind should be expressly placed in the hands of all readers, especially children and those who never read anything or hear anything except what is good; but we say to those who do hear and read the infidel sophistry and blasphemy of the day, and therefore need a refutation of it: Take the two sides represented in this book—“Look on this picture, and then look on that.”
We must add that there are some most beautiful passages in F. Walworth’s letters; that, as a literary work, they are a gem; and that the appendix on the universal belief of mankind in hell, though brief, is remarkably comprehensive and valuable.
The Threshold of the Catholic Church: A Course of Plain Instructions for those entering her Communion. By Rev. John B. Bagshawe, Missionary Rector of S. Elizabeth’s, Richmond. With a Preface by the Right Rev. Monsignor Capel. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1873.
The first part of this manual contains instruction in the truths of faith; the second part, on sacraments, rites, devotions and similar matters. It is good for candidates for admission into the Catholic Church, for recent converts, and for clergymen, religious ladies, teachers, and others who have converts to instruct.
A Winged Word, and Other Stories. By M. A. T., author of The House of Yorke. New York: The Catholic Publication Society.
This collection of stories, already published separately in The Catholic World, ought to be welcome to all readers of taste and discernment. It is just the book for summer reading, the only companion one could bear in the retirement of the woods, and one whose spirit would never jar upon any of nature’s moods. Fancy reading Miss Braddon or Wilkie Collins under the forest canopy or by the river bank! But here is a book which, at every page, will help you to put your own vague thoughts into words, and will almost make you think that you understand the song of the bobolink and the chatter of the squirrel. And yet it is a book full of human interest, made up of human stories, and treating of sorrow and want as well as of joy and peace. If we did not know that the authoress was a New Englander, we should say she was a German, so subtle and so spiritual are her principal characters, so tender and so chaste her infinitely varied language. There is no passion, no stir, no sensation in her plots, and her words do not pour forth like a lava torrent, suggesting dangerous possibilities, and caressing the animal instincts of our lower nature, like too many of the successful and popular authors of our day. Reading her books, one experiences a sense of coolness, and feels as if transported to a white palace, where a crystal fountain plays unceasingly, and the silent silver bells of lilies hang in clusters over the stream. It would fill all the space we have at command to quote any of her beautiful descriptions of scenes in the woods or by the golden sea-shore; she seems to have gone down into the heart of every flower and learnt its secret, to have lured the confidence of every brooklet, and made every tree sing her some woodland poem.
The stories themselves (except the last) are the merest sketches, made to hang beautiful thoughts upon, just as we plant a slender pole for a scarlet vine to creep over. Yet they are each of them very original, such as only “M. A. T.” would or could write.
One passage in “Daybreak” has been criticised in the Philadelphia Standard as containing the Nestorian heresy. It is found on p. 183: “If you are willing, I would like to teach her to bless herself before praying, and to say a little prayer to the Mother of Christ for your safety. I won’t make her say ‘Mother of God.’” A little attention to the context will make it perfectly evident that this criticism is groundless, and that any Catholic might use this language in a similar instance with perfect propriety. Mr. Granger and his little daughter were Protestants. Margaret had no right to teach the child anything which was against the conscience of her father. He was willing that she should address the Blessed Virgin as the Mother of Christ, but not that she should use the term Mother of God. Mother of Christ is a perfectly proper and orthodox title, and is used by the Church in the Litany of Loretto. Therefore, it was right to teach the child to use it, with her father’s permission, and to abstain from teaching her to use the expression Mother of God, which is really its precise equivalent. S. Basil did not even require certain persons who were estranged from the Catholic fold through the Arian heresy, but who wished to be admitted to the communion of the Church, to profess in express terms that the Holy Ghost is God, but was satisfied with a profession of his divinity in equivalent terms. If an equivalent term may sometimes be admitted in the case of Catholics, much more may it be employed in teaching those who are not Catholics. It is one thing to use terms which are heretical, another to use those which are less explicit, but more easily understood by those who do not know the true meaning of the more explicit Catholic terms.
One of the stories in this collection, “What Dr. Marks Died Of,” might have been omitted without any loss to the volume. It may easily be taken as a shot at the medical profession, and if that was the author’s aim, it is one which we cannot approve. If it was not, the story is an arrow in the air.