A 1 ferment in the minds of the people of Judea. It wrought upon their imaginations, their spirits, their lives. His life began to exert its influence on their lives, and His spirit began to energize their spirits until marvels and wonders sprang up at least in the imaginations of the faithful-on every side to such an extent that, from the standpoint of the supernatural, the resurrection itself becomes commonplace in comparison with this greater miracle. And all thiseven to the recording of it by the evangelists-is, it must be remembered, the work of the spirit of Christ operating on the spirits and lives of the first Christians. It is all the work of Christ and His spirit. All the various conceptions of Christ which the faithful imagined were, as has been seen, fabricated for the express purpose of explaining the experience of faith. "Imaginées pour expliquer le fait, dont la foi chrétienne a une expérience continuelle et toujours nouvelle, que le Christ vit en nous et que c'est lui qui baptise dans le Saint Esprit." And again, as before quoted : "Ressuscité à une vie nouvelle et spirituelle, il nous communique son esprit, c'est-à-dire qu'il vit en nous de sa vie propre, et non pas seulement en nous pris individuellement, mais bien socialement unis dans l'Eglise, nous initiant ainsi a la vie plus haute qui est la vie future." Nay, we are told that in this life of Christ in us is essentially contained the entire essence of Christianity. "Dans cette vie du Christ en nous, vie intérieure par la communication de son Esprit et vie extérieure par l'accomplissement de ses commandements, réside toute l'essence du Christianisme." Consequently the Christ of faith, though never having had a corresponding reality outside the minds of believers, and although in the last analysis it is but a mass of crude faith, imagination, religious excitement and such like, is all nevertheless the work of the spirit of Christ acting on the spirits of the first Christians, and the work of His life operating on their lives. All the exaggerations, overstatements of fact, religious speculation and imaginings which the modernist tells us is not and never was real fact at all (although gravely written down as such by the evangelists in their different Gospels), is directly traceable to the experience continuous and ever new of faith in the soul of the believer vitalized by the soul of Christ working upon it. And now comes the very pertinent question: If the facts of the Gospel are not actual and real, and if the experience of them through faith led the early Christians to believe that they were actual when they were only fanciful and true when they were really false and imaginary-if we are to believe the modernist if all this is due to I modernist is still a devout believer in the Christ of faith, unhistorical though He be. In this Christ he founds his "hopes of life." In the "life of this Christ in us," "interior and exterior," he places "the whole essence of Christianity." In Him he discovers "the Saviour, who, by His death and resurrection, has given us a new life." He regards this Christ as the being "who alone serves for our salvation." What are we to think of this intellectual, moral and religious jugglery? Is not the plain agnostic or rationalistic infidel logical compared with the modernist in his "nouvelles positions," which he has imagined to prevent Christianity from being strangled by the formidable "la critique?" Here is his own profession of faith: "Ce n'est pas de la spéculation théologique en elle-meme, mais du Christ, dont cette spéculation peut nous aider a comprendre la personalité et la valeur, que nous attendons la vie." It is then from speculation instead of from history and revelation that we come to grasp the meaning of Christ's personality; but it is from this Christ, however, the modernist expects life. And we find added: "En lui, par le moyen de l'histoire, nous reconnaissons l'homme qui a parlé et agi pour notre enseignement; et par la foi, la saveur qui, par sa mort et sa résurrection, nous a donné une vie nouvelle." And lastly we read: "Mais avec l'oeil de la foi, soit sous le Christ de l'histoire, soit sous celui de la légende et de la théologie, nous voyons partout le Christ selon l'esprit dont les Evangélistes, en composant leurs livres, ont exclusivement cherché à répandre la connaissance, comme étant celle qui, seule, sert à notre salut." In spite of it all, then, the modernist seeks for salvation through the Christ that was not God, nor mediator, nor Saviour, nor Redeemer; that did not rise from the dead, performed no miracle, established no Church, instituted no sacraments or other means of divine grace, could lay no claim to the supernatural-in a word, who was but the mere Christ of history, a mere man, or, at best, a prophet, yet who nevertheless mysteriously influenced the evangelists that they attributed, in all grave sincerity, all those impossible things to Him, and who so worked on the minds of His followers that He persuaded them that this mass of falsehood and imagination was really divine reality. In spite of it all, the modernist finds in Him all these, marvelous though it may seem, and in Him all his hopes of life and salvation as well. Compared with this new position, the new philosophy of "Pragmatism," which gives such chameleon hues to truth that it shines effulgent even under the rays of darkest falsehood, is logical and plausible. PE Book Reviews CARMINA. By T. A. Daly, author of "Canzoni." 12mo., pp. 193. New Mr. Daly does not need an introduction to persons of good taste. His merit was recognized almost in spite of himself. For a long time he sang for his own amusement, and then for the amusement of a comparatively small circle of friends in The Catholic Standard and Times, which he manages so ably. It can hardly be said that he sought public favor; it would be nearer the truth to say that public favor sought him. Songs like his cannot be confined by time, or race, or country, or station. They cannot be restrained by the narrow limitations of language. They are so human that they appeal to man, who is nine-tenths the same throughout all nations, races and times. The music of the human heart never changes, and it appeals to every human being. Mr. Daly is very skillful with that most perfect musical instrument. It is not surprising that his poems are already known and loved throughout the English-speaking world, and that they are beginning to be sung in foreign tongues. The new collection is almost altogether new. It is divided into four parts-Italice, Hibernice, Anglice and Songs of the Months. The first part is devoted to the inimitable Italian dialect poems, which probably have done more to help persons to see the better side of the Italian emigrant than learned essays could have done. The second part is made up of Irish dialect poems, no less pleasing and useful in their way than the others. In the third part we have poetry of a more legitimate kind, using the word in a technical sense, and the book closes with a song for each month that is full of atmosphere. Mr. Daly is developing every day. While he has already given us much that is very good, the best is yet to come. LE HACHICH. Par Raymond Meunier. Paris, Bloud et Cie, 1909. Pp. 217. It is still one of the unsolved problems both of philosophy and of science why it is that human beings, from the remotest ages down to our own time, and probably not less to-day than of yore, delight in violent and stupifying intoxication. Two answers have been proposed corresponding to the double influence, stimulative or depressive, of toxicants. On the one hand, some seek in their favorite poison surcease of pain or sorrow-"respite and nepenthe |