"some chapel on the Irish hills." In the early year the world's Pentecost comes with the rolling music of winds above the woods, and with the leaves fired beneath by "the golden-tongued and myriad light;" and when the year draws to a close the autumn colours are glorified as "hues pontific." It is a noble thought thus to show the world most beautiful in perfect unison with our faith and with our worship. If we seek for the same spirit in the "Legends of the Saxon Saints," we shall find it still abiding. In the description of St. Cuthbert's life on the "little rocky islet" of Farne, an image is taken from nature, to tell how earthly thoughts and memories crossed, without disturbing, his contemplation; for he had not separated himself from the world beyond; his brethren were still in his heart, and his hermitage was accessible not only to them but to the sinful and sorrowful. Yet his prayer went on, and his soul was firm in peace; the things of the external world tell us how, and show what symbols they may become for one to whom they are interpreters of truths unseen. We are told::

He saw by day

The clouds on-sailing, and by night the stars;
And heard the eternal waters. Thus recluse
The man lived on in vision still of God

Through contemplation known; and as the shades
Each other chase all day o'er stedfast hills,
Even so, athwart that Vision unremoved,
For ever rushed the tumults of this world,

Man's fleeting life, the rise and fall of States,
While changeless measured change.

And when he returns to his hermitage in his last days the image is reversed, and he is said to have seen

Once more, like lights that sweep the unmoving hills,
God's providences girdling all the world

With glory following glory.

The reflection of Religion from Nature is given with perfect ease in the parables of Cuthbert the Bishop to his peasant flock; but we find it reappearing abundantly, if less avowedly, elsewhere; and it comes with good effect when the death of Ceadmon is approaching, and the monks hear the great deep roaring in the distance and sobbing round "Whitby's winding coast" :

They heard, and mused upon eternity,

That circles human life.

There are, no doubt, in other poets countless examples of sacred types drawn from Nature, and of glimpses of its worship of the Creator; but we know of none who so often betrays, as

a constant habit of mind, the tracing of heavenly truth through earthly beauty. The loving loyalty to the Church, which distinguishes all his work, has in this manner its outcome in many of the smallest details. His poetry and his Catholicism are inseparable.

We have long ago expressed our opinion that there is yet no great poet among our Catholic writers. We are sure they one and all agree with us; and there is amongst us no writer of verse in whom the knowledge of truth and the appreciation of its beauty has not called forth a yearning for one far more gifted than himself to be sent to do the grand work possible for a great Catholic poet. Such there may be in the times to come -a man of faith, with a "heart of hearts" and with the might of eloquence, turning to its highest use the most sublime and the most powerful art known to man. What are the other arts beside it but faint, and limited, and transitory? It can speak to the whole world, and to all time, and it alone can give anything like full interpretation of one human soul to all the rest. It is unlike every other art in its power over men. Have not nations marched to war with pulses quickened by a few words, sung first at the home-hearth and last by the watch-fire? Has not the rage of a city in tumult been increased by rhymes at the barricades? How many are there for whom the spell of a few verses was the beginning of darkness and error! The atheism of our days, the doubt that robs nations of their inherited faith, the love of luxury that saps their strength, all these are spread by an army of poets and poetasters, whose share is large and continuous in the unholy work. May we not, then, by its force for evil calculate what might be the force for good of this marvellous, much-abused gift? It is no unfruitful boon that we desire, no airy possibility of blessing, but a very tangible good, when we long to have our times and our country feel the influence of a great Catholic poet. While yet it is not granted to us, all praise to those who give their energy, heart-whole so far as it goes, to the praise of Christian truth and the glory of the Church. And of this much at least we can be sure, that the Heaven-sent poet of the future, if ever he come, will have his course foreshadowed by two characteristics of a writer of to-day. He will see creation in light reflected from the knowledge and worship of its Creator; and he will find the key to Nature's "sanctuaries and shrines" in the veneration of her who was praised in the "May Carols." He will be in supreme excellence for after days what in a lesser degree the author of the "Legends of the Saxon Saints" is for ours-the lover of Nature illumined by Faith, and one of Our Lady's laureates.

ART. VII.-POPE LEO XIII. AND MODERN STUDIES.

1. Encyclical Letter of Pope Leo XIII. on the Restoration of Christian Philosophy. Translated by F. RAWES, D.D., with a Preface by his Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. London: Burns and Oates.

1879.

2. Der Heilige Thomas von Aquino. Von Dr. KARL WERNER. Drei Bänder. Regensburg: G. J. Manz. 1859.

3. Elementa Philosophia Christianæ. Auctore P. F. ALBERTO LEPIDI, O.P. 2 vols. Parisiis: Lethielleux. 1875.

4. Institutiones Philosophia Speculativæ ad mentem Sti. Thoma Aquinatis. Auctore, J. M. CORNOLDI, S.J., in Latinum versæ a Dominico Agostini, Venetiarum Patriachâ. Bononiæ. 1878.

T

HE important Encyclical of the Holy Father, Æterni Patris, has now been before the world for five months, and theologians, scholars, and devout Catholics generally have had time to analyze it and to understand its drift and its recommendations. It has become quite clear that it is intended to effect a very great work; to bring about unity in Catholic philosophy, and this by the universal adoption of the philosophic teaching of St. Thomas of Aquin. We say philosophic teaching, rather than theological; because theology, as a science, depends upon philosophy. In theology, even taking that word in a sense much wider than the science of "Catholic" truth, Catholic divines may be said to be agreed. There are numerous controversies, no doubt, in the treatises on God and on the Incarnation, on Grace and on the Sacraments; but they are not controversies which affect ultimate conclusions; and they will always, or nearly always, be found to rest on differences in philosophy.

It cannot be that Pope Leo XIII. intends to extinguish for ever all disputes in the Schools of the Catholic Church. That would be neither practicable nor, it may be said, desirable. But the field of human speculation, growing wider, as it does, with every generation of thinkers, is so vast that the unassisted lights of the average Catholic flock are insufficient to distinguish the good from the bad, the valuable from the dross, the poisonous from the pure; and, therefore, the Popes have been accustomed, from epoch to epoch, to interfere and to narrow the limits of legitimate discussion. Sometimes it has been that Catholic thinkers have broached dangerous doctrines, or put forth pernicious novelties; sometimes it has been that the brilliant

but unsound speculations of non-Catholics have seemed to be making too great an impression on Catholic teaching; and again at other times it has been that occasion has been taken to praise particular doctors or to commend particular books. It is the office of the Holy See to defend and protect Catholic truth. In the execution of this office it is infallible beyond the limits of strictly theological matter; and even where its infallibility technically ceases, its voice must command the assent and adhesion of those who belong to the fold of Christ's Church.

In a very true sense the Church has been long committed to the Scholastic Philosophy. The terminology of the Church's detailed doctrine is entirely Scholastic and Aristotelian. In the Holy Scriptures terms are used loosely, and there is no trace of "science," except in some of the writings of St. John. Even the "science" of the fourth Gospel, however, falls in marvellously with the Aristotelian terminology. In the centuries before St. John of Damascus there was immense speculation and interminable discussion. That discussion cannot certainly be said to have been altogether about words and terms; the development of the Creed remains to attest the contrary; but it may safely be said that if there had been a recognized meaning for a certain half dozen terms there would have been much less discussion and much less deceiving of the unwary. Yet no one can have even an elementary knowledge of how St. Thomas of Aquin uses the early Fathers without being aware that all their commendable terminology is easily reducible to the terms of Aristotle's philosophy. When St. John of Damascus gave the Church in the eighth century the first scientific body of theology, he proceeded avowedly on the lines of the same philosophy. Before St. Thomas or even St. Anselm had put pen to paper, the doctrine of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Holy Eucharist, the Sacraments, and Grace was developed into an orderly "science" by means of Aristotelian teaching on "Person," "Generation," "Substance," "Matter and Form," and "Habit." What was effected by Peter Lombard, and, in an infinitely more finished measure, by St. Thomas himself in the "Summa," was to extend, complete, and correct the exposition of doctrine in the terms of Aristotle. He dispersed the mist by procuring and using the best copies of the master; he showed in greater detail the connection of present with past; his width of view unexpectedly removed a host of difficulties, and his acute analysis discovered a thousand new points of agreement. The Church has, therefore, been committed in a very important seuse, to the Aristotelian philosophy for many centuries before Pope Leo XIII. spoke in commendation of St. Thomas. But it never was true, and it is not true now, that the Church has committed herself to any point, proposition, or

doctrine of that philosophy, except in as far as she has adopted it in detail. Aristotle is not, and never was, the Church's teacher. She found his terms, the very best scientific terminology that human thought had conceived and wrought out, ready to the hand; and since it was absolutely essential that she should use some set of terms, she chose Aristotle's.

The term "Scholastic" philosophy differs from the term "Aristotelian" philosophy. But they only differ as a tree from its trunk. The Scholastic philosophy is that wide scientific application of Aristotelian terminology to the development of theological teaching-including the purely philosophical matters preparatory to it-which has been going on from the days of John of Damascus to those of Franzelin and Zigliara. And therefore it is no reversal of Catholic tradition, but the opposite, when the Pontiff offers us for our use the works of St. Thomas. And we admit, as has already been stated about Aristotle, that what the Pope commits us to is not "St. Thomas," but the "truth" and the "wisdom" of St. Thomas. But the solemn act recently performed would undoubtedly have very little meaning if it did not mean that the Pope holds and asserts that St. Thomas, throughout his works, except in unimportant details, simply teaches what is wise and true.

The questions which, more than any others, are occupying the minds of theologians and of Catholics generally at this moment are principally two: viz., first, Why has the Holy See spoken so strongly at this particular time, in commendation of the philosophy of St. Thomas of Aquin? and secondly, What, in brief, is the philosophy of St. Thomas of Aquin? It will be well to attempt an answer to each of these inquiries.

It would be to misconceive the spirit and scope of the Encyclical to think that it was intended to bring about some violent change or to sound the warning signal of a revolution. There is no special crisis in philosophical matters at the present moment. The sickness of the age is one which is both chronic in its character and more fundamental than any question of the schools. When serious thinkers deny the possibility of knowing whether there is a God or not, of distinguishing matter from spirit and man from the universe, the precise refutation or the demonstration which is to convince them will hardly be found in any "Summa" of the Middle Ages. Yet the present moment has been chosen by Pope Leo to issue a strong exhortation to cling to the "philosophy" of St. Thomas of Aquin, and it is not difficult to understand that the moment has been chosen well. What Catholic thinkers want is, Unity in truth. Not unity only, nor mere essays and trials after truth; but a clear hold of