In the incomplete version referred to the beggar-man is changed into a spirit of the air like the genii of the Arabian Nights, the Blessed Virgin, it is needless to say, makes no appearance at all, and the beautiful touch at the end, possible only in a Catholic legend, by which Mao and Liçzenn receive the crowning reward of their virtue on being translated to Paradise, is altogether omitted; so that all that is truly significant and characteristic in the story is lost.
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Philochristus. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1878.
The peculiar merits of this book cannot be too highly valued by any sincere lover of Christ. Its sweet, earnest, intensely religious tone leads the reader through its learned pages over a most delightful walk of spiritual and intellectual recreation. Dry and unsatisfactory discussion is wholly avoided, and the all-absorbing subject, the human life of the divine Redeemer, is pictured in a light glowing with fascinating love and luminous with precise intelligence. Assuming the character of a disciple who actually lived with and followed Christ until the Ascension, the author represents himself as writing in Alexandria ten years after the destruction of Jerusalem, and when, he says, “almost all those disciples who with me saw the Lord Jesus in the flesh are now fallen asleep.” He admits the impossibility of portraying Christ “as he was in himself,” but he “determined rather to set forth an history of mine own life, wherein, as in a mirror, might perchance be discerned some lineaments of the countenance of Christ, seen, as by reflection, in the life of one who loved him.”
The book opens with a brief but strikingly graphic statement of the condition of Judea, both religiously and politically, at the time of our Lord’s public appearance. Its subjection to Roman domination had eliminated its existence as an independent state, whilst the excessive love of ceremonial into which the law had degenerated betokened the need of a new law and a new law-maker. For to be pious in those days meant “to be obedient to the light precepts of the law, such as the laws concerning the exact observance of the Sabbath, and concerning purifications, and concerning the consumption of nail-parings and the like” (p. 27). The nicety to which these casuistic pietists carried their human observances is shown from the example of one of them, Abuyah, who extolled the Law of the Tassels as most perfect; and so, he says, “once, because I had chanced to tread upon a portion of the fringe of my garment, going up a ladder, I steadfastly refused to move from the spot where I stood till such time as the rent had been repaired.” It was this same pious man that chid his mother “because she wore on her dress a ribbon that was not sewn but only fastened to her vesture, for thus she transgressed the law by bearing burdens on the Sabbath.”
Bringing in Philo and some Alexandrine Jews, with an exposition of their philosophical opinions, adds much interest to the narrative. The patriotic spirit of the enthusiastic Galileans who hastened to gather around Jesus, whom they thought to have come for the restoration of the ancient glory of Israel, is well depicted, and shown to have been the chief motive leading so many from that province to follow him. How slowly even the disciples learned the true mission of our Redeemer appears from the fact that Philochristus himself had no definite conception of it in the beginning. Conversing with Gorgias, a travelled Jew, he sees advancing the tetrarch’s Thracian guard, whose description, as well as that of the Roman soldiers, is admirable: “I looked and saw a band of about three hundred men, of a wild and savage aspect, bearing targets and girt with scimitars. But Gorgias, noting, as I suppose, the anger in my countenance, answered: ‘These dogs (may the Lord destroy them root and branch!) are swift indeed to shed the blood of women and children, but they are as naught compared with the Romans. Couldst thou see a Roman legion how they march, these would seem unto thee but as jackals at the lion’s tail. Mark but how the dogs straggle. But when the Romans march the spears in their hands all point one way, and the swords by their sides hang all after one fashion, and even their stakes and tools (which they carry behind their backs) do all swing to one time, and their feet, arms, and heads, yea, even to the winking of their eyes, go all together after the manner of a five-banked corn-ship of Alexandria, with her five hundred oars all keeping time; and when they charge, they charge like ten thousand elephants clad in iron.... Verily these Roman swine are all as children of Satan; but a Roman legion is as Satan himself’” (p. 126). As he had been listening to Christ teaching that whosoever would enter the kingdom should become as little children, it seemed not easy to him to reconcile this with the temporal restoration of Israel, and “methought,” he says, “it would be very hard to overthrow these Thracians, and much more the Romans, by becoming as little children” (ibid.)
Although the work does not come out as a Catholic production, it is very encouraging to those who desire the spirit of Christ to be more universally diffused to find such books receiving extensive circulation. Dogmatic or formally doctrinal propositions are not to be found in it, yet the substantial doctrine of the Gospel is clearly discernible in the body of the work. Excepting the brief exposition of the doctrine of divorce at p. 213, there appears nothing in the whole book inconsistent with a candid, Catholic exegesis of Scripture. The beautiful exposition of Peter’s faith and the founding of the church thereupon, at p. 249, could not be easily surpassed. It is a good sign when Protestants have such works placed in their hands, and the publishers deserve well of the public for the creditable manner in which they have brought out this admirable volume. No professing Christian can read it without very much profit, and, indeed, he will be filled with the author’s declaration concerning Christ: “For in his presence I find life; but to be absent from him is death” (p. 242).
Holy Church the Centre of Unity; or, Ritualism compared with Catholicism. Reasons for returning to the True Fold. By T. H. Shaw. London: R. Washbourne. 1877.
This pamphlet is not a little remarkable among those which issue from the pens of converts. It is very different from what its title leads us to expect. But perhaps it will take the Protestant mind all the better for its peculiarities. We confess, for our own part, to being disappointed at the same time that we are pleased. There is occasionally an exhibition of something like bad taste. There is extravagant use of italics—the effect of which is always weakening. There are outbursts of pious sentiment—a thing never suitable to polemical pages. Then, too, there is no continuity of argument. Each chapter stands by itself and needlessly repeats what other chapters have dealt with. Still, in spite of these defects, there is an earnestness from beginning to end which cannot fail to impress the mind of a real inquirer. And together with this earnestness there is a force in the way some of the arguments are put which is greater, by contrast, than it would appear in pages of the usual style of controversy.
The writer begins by telling us that he has been “for nearly fifty years a member of the Church of England.” He is therefore no hot-brained undergraduate. He adds that his “misgivings were first aroused as early as the year 1851”; and that his “convictions have become matured by means of earnest prayer for Divine guidance.” Here is a mental process that ought to strike a Protestant, and make him ask his conscience: “Am I seeking that I may find? Am I praying for light as this man did? Can I believe that such persistent prayer has ended in delusion?”