Conjuring with the Pope's Name. ONE of the most successful of rather ancient inventions for innocently killing time was the twisting of words by a terribly slow process into various wonderful contortions, such as anagrams, acrostics, palindromes, and similar oddities. It is far better to spend days and weeks in making such contrivances than to spend them in less innocent amusement, but a certain amount of compassion is certainly due to grown-up people, who being neither invalids nor condemned to solitary imprisonment, can find upon their hands the time required for so much elaborate ingenuity. Still, if anagrams are to be made, it is right that they should be good of their kind; and when they have been made and are good in their kind, it is right that we should hear of their existence. Some of our gossiping contemporaries, in a praiseworthy spirit, desiring to create work for unemployed childen of mature age, have revived these harmless studies, and offer prizes every week for the best performances. How would a youthful reader of The World exult if he could submit to the committee of inspection twelve intelligible sentences formed out of the seventeen letters of the Holy Father's name! In the present instance, considering the sacredness of the subject, it may be lawful to hope that if the twelve combinations are not the outcome of the forced leisure of a College infirmary, they were thrown off under direct inspiration, instead of being painfully hammered out as is the way with worldly anagrams. A hasty analysis of a few of the lines makes it appear that no other liberty has been taken with the chosen words, except the admission of the time-honoured interchange of u and v, which recent dictionaries have discarded, not on principle, but for convenience only. At the College of the Society of Jesus at Colocza, in Hungary, on occasion of the visit of the Papal Nuncio, Mgr. Jacobini, amid other demonstrations of loyalty to His Holiness, a compliment of a very recherché sort was devised. Each one of the letters which make up the words Leo decimus tertius was painted very legibly upon a separate shield, and seventeen boys deputed to carry the seventeen shields, arranged and rearranged themselves, so as to form successively the following sentences, to the great gratification of many illustrious spectators. Acclamations. 1. Sidus ortum, i, electe! 2. Mitteris e sudo, luce! 4. Victores is deletum ! Responses. 1. Electi, sto Dei murus. 3. Tute dulcis ero meis. All the praises and acknowledgments can be construed in one fashion or another, and it would be clearly unreasonable to expect more than that. Recent Publications. Solid Virtue: or a treatise on the obstacles to solid virtue, the means of acquiring and motives for practising it. By Rev. Father Bellecius, S.J. Dublin: M. H. Gill and Son, 1879. This is a translation from the French. It cannot be in these days too often said that the real service of God has nothing in common with sentimental pietism. "If you love Me, keep My commandments." The more we love God the better shall we keep His commandments. These commandments can be kept with the measure of observance which is necessary for salvation, or they can be kept with the generosity which refuses to be satisfied with a restricted allegiance and a limited good-will, and which seeks the "better gifts," striving to attain perfection. Those who take care to avoid grievous infringement of the Divine Law are respectable servants of the Almighty; those who shrink from every lesser fault are most dear children of the Heavenly Father. Venial sin bears no comparison with mortal sin, yet venial sin is the greatest evil after mortal sin. Solid virtue consists in the earnest endeavour to put away whatever is displeasing to God, and to substitute for weak concession to natural tastes and antipathies the steady practice of virtue, until the soul can say with St. Paul: "I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me." Father Bellecius divides his work into three parts, corresponding with the three stages in the spiritual life, the purgative way, the illuminative way, the unitive way. In some respects his treatment of the subject seems, and is, severe, as, for example, when he speaks of the sinfulness of late rising in the morning; but it must be remembered, first, that he is considering the evil in the abstract, apart from special circumstances and individual character; secondly, that he is speaking of faults which would in less accurate language be termed "imperfections;" thirdly, that the entire book is addressed rather to those who take life too easily, than to those who are of timorous or sensitive conscience. The practical importance of promptness in rising can, however, scarcely be too strongly inculcated. Confessors, who might hesitate to say that it is, in itself, a duty binding under positive sin, would seldom hesitate to say that genuine advancement in the way to perfection almost necessarily presupposes a desire to begin each day well by giving the first fruits to God. The Lamb of God; or, Reflections on the Life of our Divine Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. By the Rev. T. H. Kinane, P.P. Dublin: M. H. Gill and Son, 1880.— The Life of our Lord taken from the Gospels, told in simple words, and divided into small portions, is presented to us, not in any arrangement of formal meditations consisting of a set number of points, but more immediately as matter prepared for thoughtful reading. It is not on that account less fitted for the use of those who wish to meditate. Meditation-books should not be all made to one pattern. Since the object for which they are compiled is to make Christians “think well on't," and since different minds expand more readily to different kinds of treatment, the greater the variety of really good meditation-books the better, nor need we fear for some little time to come any embarrassment of too great wealth in this department of English ascetical literature. The high eulogy pronounced by the Archbishop of Cashel and Emly in the Preface and the numerous episcopal commendations are sufficient witness to the character of the book. No. I. St. Thomas Little Books of the Holy Ghost. Aquinas on the Two Commandments of Charity and the Translated, with prayers Ten Commandments of the Law. added, by Father Rawes, D.D. Oates. A larger and a lesser series of books, printed, in the first instance, though of course not exclusively, for the benefit of the members of the Confraternity of the Holy Ghost, are to be published side by side. Both alike start from St. Thomas of Aquin. The first number of the "little books" contains the Angelic Doctor's exposition of the Commandments, to which Father Rawes has added a prayer at the end of each chapter, and two thanksgivings, one appended to the first chapter, in which praise is given to the Blessed Trinity for the sanctification of the saints of the Old Law, and the other forming an appropriate epilogue, in which the great gift of the Ten Commandments is acknowledged, and grace implored to use it well. Abridged Course of Religious Instruction, apologetic, dogmatic, and moral, for the use of Catholic Colleges and Schools. By the Rev. Father F. X. Schouppe, S.J. Translated from the French. Burns and Oates, 1879.-The Church owes some of the most valuable theological treatises in her great library-those of Suarez among the number to that dictate of good sense, no less than of sacerdotal zeal, which induces her learned professors to endeavour to make one and the same course of study doubly fruitful for the glory of God, by communicating their words of wisdom, the result of long and careful thought, to a wider circle than the select auditory gathered in a lecture-room or college hall, to whom they are primarily addressed. The excellent compendium which Father Schouppe has compiled is neither more nor less than a complete course of religious instruction such as is given by word of mouth to young Catholics in colleges, and other young Catholics not in colleges, as well as older men, will certainly derive advantage from the same instructions committed to print, although it will remain always true that in these matters hearing is better than reading. |