Part 7 — NEW PUBLICATIONS.

A History of the Christian Councils. From the Original Documents, to the close of the Council of Nicæa, A.D. 325. By Charles Joseph Hefele, D.D., Bishop of Rottenburg, formerly Professor of Theology in the University of Tübingen. Translated from the German, and edited by William R. Clark, M.A. Oxon., Prebendary of Wells and Vicar of Taunton. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 38 George Street. 1871. New York: The Catholic Publication House, 9 Warren Street.

The merits of Dr. Hefele's great but still unfinished work are well known and universally appreciated. Certain portions of it rise to the excellence of a masterpiece, and really exhibit a genius almost, if not quite, equal to that which is shown in the Athanasius of Möhler and the History of the Arians by Dr. Newman. We refer especially to the parts treating of the Arian and semi-Arian controversies, and of the history of the Council of Constance, with the other synods preceding and connected with it. We cannot, however, consider the work of Dr. Hefele as faultless. In our opinion, he has signally failed in his treatment of the celebrated cases of Liberius and Honorius. In the present volume there are, as it appears to us, two manifest errors in regard both to fact and doctrine. The first one is found in the statement that confirmation by a schismatical or heretical bishop is invalid, and was judged to be so by Pope Stephen and the bishops of his time. The second is the assertion that the baptism of the Paulianists was rejected because of the heresy professed by them, and not because they had vitiated the baptismal formula. It is strange that so learned a professor could not see that, if baptism in the name of the Trinity was made invalid by the fact that the Paulianists understood by the terms Father, Son, and Holy Ghost something different from the true, Catholic sense of the church, the baptism of the Arians, and of all sorts of Unitarians, would be made invalid by the same reason. Almost all German authors have a tone and an air as if everything has to be proved from the beginning anew, and this proof sharply criticised by an infidel professor in the next room. Dr. Hefele has this air about him whenever he writes about the constitutive principles of the Catholic Church, and only loses it when he has fairly plunged into his subject and become carried away by it. There is, moreover, a perceptible, though not very deep, tinge of what we may call ante-Vatican theology in the introduction, although one passage has been corrected by the author since the council. The learned and illustrious author was always animated by an orthodox and pious spirit, which he has manifested by a truly apostolic exercise of his episcopal authority in sustaining and enforcing the decisions of the Council of the Vatican. Notwithstanding the accidental defects of his great work, it is a monument not merely of ecclesiastical learning, but of sound Catholic doctrine, in which the supremacy of the Holy See, and the justice of its cause as against all heretics, schismatics, and rebels, are maintained with victorious logic and overwhelming evidence. Its critical character makes it especially valuable for those who are studying the history and constitution of the church, and we are, therefore, sincerely glad that one volume has been translated into English and published, and can only hope that the others may follow.

The translation has been made by a Protestant dignitary and published by a Protestant firm, as the title at the head of this notice has already informed our readers. This seems rather odd. We are glad to see a taste for works like this arising in the educated world, but can scarcely understand what could induce a Protestant, sincerely and firmly attached to his own doctrine, to promote their circulation. The author's motives are, however, his own affair, and the affair of his own ecclesiastical connection. We have only to criticise the manner in which he has done his work, and for that we are bound to accord him great praise. Most judiciously, and to our very great satisfaction, he has refrained from giving us his own opinions in prefaces or notes, and has left Bishop Hefele in the state in which he found him of pure, unadulterated text. The translation is undoubtedly substantially correct, and, so far as we have seen, exact and accurate in detail, while at the same time it is smooth, readable English. We have noticed only one mistranslation, and that is one which is wholly indefensible. This is the substitution of Roman Catholic for Catholic. We protest against this alteration of Bishop Hefele's language, and condemn it as contrary to literary honesty, and a real falsification of the text. The volume is admirably printed, and is for sale at The Catholic Publication House, and we most cordially recommend it to the attention of all students of ecclesiastical history who are unable to read the work in German or French.

The Priest on the Mission. A Course of Lectures on Missionary and Parochial Duties. By Frederick, Canon Oakeley, etc. London: Longmans & Co. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 9 Warren Street. 1871.

Whoever has the happiness of knowing Canon Oakeley will think he sees him and hears him talking when he reads this book. Canon Oakeley was well known many years ago as a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and one of the most distinguished of the brilliant band of converts from that university. As a Catholic priest, he has been one of the most laborious and successful among the parochial clergy of London. His long experience and eminently practical mind make him unusually well fitted for writing a work like the present. It is full of admirable directions and suggestions, among which those on preaching especially attracted our attention. Canon Oakeley's very remarkable merits as a writer are too well known to need our commendation. The style of the present volume is well worthy of the venerable author's best days, and makes the book delightful reading. We think it is one which even the most experienced pastors will find useful and interesting, and which will be found to be of the highest value to young clergymen and ecclesiastical students.

Catholic Hymns and Canticles, together with a Complete Sodality Manual. By Rev. Alfred Young. Sixth edition. New York: The Catholic Publication House. 1871.

Father Young's hymn-book, well known to many of our schools and confraternities for the past eight years, is now enlarged by the addition of twenty-four hymns to its first edition. The best thing we can say of the collection is that, of the one hundred and thirty-one hymns which it contains, not more than half a dozen are beyond the capacity or unsuited to the tastes of the youth for whom it was designed. The majority of the melodies are original, and not to be found in any other book of the kind. Every season and festival of the year is represented by a choice selection of appropriate hymns, and the present edition is enriched with the popular congregational hymns sung in the church of the Paulists during Lent, and at the meetings of their Rosary and Christian Doctrine Societies. We have no hesitation in saying that it is the most complete and satisfactory hymn-book for our schools and sodalities that has been issued in the English language.

American Religion. By John Weiss. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1871.

Precisely what it was that Mr. Weiss proposed to himself in writing the series of essays which he dignifies by the title of "American Religion," we do not find it easy to say. He is one of those more unhappy admirers of Mr. Emerson who, in paying him the ready tribute of a more or less perfect imitation of the style of his speech and the manner of his thought, have so far beggared themselves as to leave their readers in doubt as to what their own thinking and their own statement might have been, had they in fact retained that individuality the rights of which it seems now only a part of their imitation to assert. Mr. Emerson's style, which is the fit expression of the character of his mind, and in its way perfection, has the unfortunate peculiarity of being so mannered that the least of his disciples can successfully, and apparently unconsciously, travesty it. Just what it was, therefore, that Mr. Weiss had in his mind concerning the new religion which he desires to see adapted to the supposed needs of America, we do not know; but through the fog in which his readers are perforce doomed to flounder, it seems as if he believes that the three thousand miles of sea-water which lie between his native land and the Old World were a sufficient layer of regeneration for those born on the hither side of it. The sense of sin, the need of an atonement, the efficacy of prayer, are effete ideas which have served their purpose in the past, but which an American citizen is better without. Why should Yankee Doodle, who, as all the world knows, is the latest and fullest expression of what Mr. Weiss likes to call the "Divine Immanence," bewail sins which are after all either purely imaginary or the result of a defective organization for which he is not to blame; or think himself in need of a mediator with an offended God, when the real truth is that he has only to step up to the nearest square inch of looking-glass to behold the Divinity in himself and settle all outlying accounts by word of mouth? Perhaps we do Mr. Weiss an injustice, and, in the twelve essays which form this volume, he may have embodied more and better ideas than the only one which a tolerably attentive reading has enabled us to gather from them. But to us his book seems likely to be as barren of suggestion to those who would willingly agree with him as it is to ourselves. Its prevailing cloudiness is here and there broken in upon by a sort of inane audacity of expression when he refers to our Lord and his miracles; but otherwise it offers an unbroken uniformity of platitude. It betrays, too, an amusing ignorance of all modes of thought alien to either the orthodoxy or the rationalism of New England, the provincialism of which is in very pretty keeping with the significant title which Mr. Weiss has chosen for his work.

THE CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XIII., No. 78.—SEPTEMBER, 1871.[158]