could only remain seated or prostrate. It was so cold that they had put hay in them. . . . . From Matins till Prime they remained in prayer there, GOD having given them the grace to be deeply occupied in it, and when they came out to say Prime their habits were often covered with snow, unperceived by them."

In these days of ceaseless activity and importunate begging, equally edifying is it to read these calm words:

"The Sub-Prior (S. John of the Cross) was accustomed to say that there were two especial exercises at which the Superior should always be present, namely, the recitation of the Divine Office and at meals, and whenever the summons sounded to the chapel or refectory, he at once quitted his employment, whatever it might be, to obey it. He was very strict as to punctuality and the observance of minute details, not permitting anything careless or slovenly in the work of building up the spiritual life. He refused to allow any solicitations for alms for the Community, knowing that this custom had given rise to much scandal, and even extortion, relying upon the promises of our Blessed LORD to His Apostles. And his faith was justified, for offerings flowed in with such abundance that he was sometimes obliged to refuse them, lest those under his charge might be tempted to overstep the bounds of holy poverty."

We must pick out another gem from many others :

....

"At one time eighteen of the brethren were ill with fever and violent cold. . . The Procureur, who had charge of the temporal affairs of the house asked leave to go out and beg in order to procure necessary comforts for the invalids. The answer was, 'I greatly desire that the invalids should be treated with all charity, but I would not that we should be importunate to others. We have our LORD JESUS CHRIST always abiding with us; instead of spending our time in wandering about and soliciting our benefactors, let us spend it in praying to Him to inspire them with the desire to help us in our need.' And suiting his action to his words, he went at once to the chapel, and remained long in his usual position of prayer, prostrate before the altar. The following day an abundant supply arrived of those little comforts for the sick which for them had become necessaries, sent by some charitable persons who had heard of their illness."

When forced by his Provincial to return visits of ceremony, which he particularly disliked, the words of the President of the Council at Granada were like music to his ears:

"Father, it is much more edifying to us to see you in your own houses than in ours, and your seclusion engages us to support you more than your visits could do, because then we know that you are keeping the place which GOD has assigned you in His Church, and the less we see of you the more we respect you.' In repeating these words to his brethren, the Prior observed that he wished they could have been uttered in the hearing of the whole order."

Space will not allow us to follow S. John through his wonderfully austere and suffering life. His whole career was little short of miraculous, and he met with the usual fate of a real reformer,-persecution, apparent failure, insults, and neglect. But if any one cares to know what supported him under his persecutions, let him turn to the second part of the work, the Interior Life. Here the secrets of a saintly soul are revealed. It is almost im

possible to select where all is so instructive and so strengthening, but from the mass of religious lessons, we will pick out one, because it happens to be peculiarly suitable to the world and to the present time. It occurs under the head of Temporal Benefits in “The Night of the Memory and the Will :"

"Marriage is only to be rejoiced in when there is a firm and clear determination on both sides that it shall be the means of serving GOD better than heretofore, and a conviction that it is the state in which He has appointed them to serve Him. If either husband or wife set their hearts upon each other rather than upon GOD, then it becomes a positive evil. Upon this subject our Saint quotes the words of S. Paul, and the same rule applies to the desire of children. To those who desire them merely as heirs to property or worldly honours, without any thought of devoting them to the glory of GOD, are applied the words, 'Ye compass sea and land, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.””

...

It is to be hoped that when the work reaches another edition the writer will no longer remain incognito, for the book shows that he is possessed of both a poetical and a spiritual mind, and the Catholic Church in this country will, we are sure, be anxious to thank him for laying before it in an accessible form a life of almost inaccessible beauty. We trust that he may be encouraged to undertake the same duty for S. Ignatius Loyola, for Rodriguez, and other illustrious Spaniards, above all for Luis de Granada, who in spite of his inimitable works, is still a stranger to many devout Englishmen.

The outward appearance of the “Life of S. John of the Cross,” does great credit to Messrs. Mowbray, the white linen cover testifying the purity of his life, and the red cross upon it the intensity of his sufferings. Altogether we deem it a most attractive and valuable gift book, for it is a work to be kept and pondered over, not to be read through and then thrown aside.

resa.

Charles Lowder: a Biography. By the author of "The Life of S. Te(Kegan Paul, Trench and Co.) An excellent life of a most excellent man. It is a book which we should wish every clergyman and every candidate for Holy Orders to read, because it is the picture of one who devoted himself without any reservation to a most difficult work, and had the satisfaction of seeing it crowned with success. At the same time it is as full of interest as it is possible to imagine, comprising as it does those two great outbreaks of Protestant violence, the riots at S. Barnabas', where Mr. Lowder was curate, and those at S. George's, which had of course a close connection with his Mission. These, as well as the cholera visitation in 1866, are described at considerable length. The character of Mr. Lowder was both heroic and saintly, and, if rightly understood, was almost faultless. His early life was marked by purity and industry. Towards his father and mother, his sisters and younger brother, he was uniformly affectionate. And on this foundation he raised a superstructure of strict asceticism, which was always tempered with gentleness and consideration for those who differed from him and opposed him. His misfortune was that he at first was not well supported in the arduous work that he had undertaken. One person who knew him well considers that this was owing to his inability to read character;

another, by implication at least, attributes it to the great reserve which he practised towards his associates. But in point of fact there never was a time when the opportunity was afforded him of choosing whom he would have and whom he would reject; for very few offered themselves. And then as to his manner no one who ever saw him could doubt that kindness beamed in his face. But he started with these two principles firmly engrained in him—first, that he was engaged in a mortal struggle against evil which might at any moment overwhelm and kill him, and secondly, that in such a struggle it would not do to let himself be entangled in any of those effeminacies which have often been found to ruin works of this kind. The key to his whole life we conceive, may be found in a little anecdote related on p. 331 of the Biography. "A young man once asked him if he were not very lonely at S. Peter's, and why he had not a child to live with him or pets. He replied that the main inducement to be a celibate was the being able to devote one's self without distraction to GOD, and at the same time smiled and told me (relates the youth) of the head of a Confraternity who adopted a girl, and when she grew up, to the consternation of the Brotherhood, married her." Mr. Lowder never in his life had a pet, till a few days before his last journey when a friend gave him a little dog. This was the real man; but unfortunately the persons associated with him at the first were of a very different calibre, and so one and another left him, and oddly enough the one who appears most of all to have appreciated him, seems to have since deserted the Mission. Mr. Lowder's whole time was divided between work and prayer, and even in those foreign tours, which he so much enjoyed, and which were doubtless indispensable to him, we find that he never omitted his daily Office, and that he carried with him the materials for frequent Celebrations. It is satisfactory to know that the work is now continued on the same lines, and that in addition to the handsome church of S. Peter, London Docks, which Mr. Lowder saw consecrated, a clergy house, and a house for the Sisters is now to be built by subscription as a memorial to Mr. Lowder. In conclusion we would suggest to the writer and publisher of this volume that a better thing could scarcely be done for the Church than to put forth a very cheap edition of it— at the price of about 2s. 6d. or 2s., omitting all the descriptions of Mr. Lowder's annual tour to the Alps, which amount probably to fifty or sixty pages.

The Rev. Dr. Strachan, one of the oldest and most experienced of the S. P. G. missionaries, has published an interesting account of his journey home. The title of the book is From East to West, (Wells Gardner,)—a title which of course implies that his route was by way of S. Francisco and Canada. The book contains a good deal of information on Missions, and has several good illustrations-to some of which the author seems scarcely entitled, as they belong to places which he did not visit.

Among the manifold publications of all kinds that have been called forth by the Revision of the New Testament, we have seen none which takes precisely the same ground as that to be found in a small pamphlet entitled The Revised Version; its bearing on Catholic Doctrine, by the Rev. T. Chamber

lain, M.A., (Masters and Co.) The view taken of the subject there is extremely valuable, inasmuch as it is not only eminently calculated to tranquillise the minds of those who dreaded any tampering with that which is called the Authorised Version, but it points out the amount of weight which may be safely given to the Revision and the real services which it has rendered to the cause of Truth. The following extracts will give some idea of the manner in which the subject is treated.

"And now, in order to clear the way, it is right to explain that no change is to be looked for in respect to the great doctrinal verities. This, of course, could not be (although incidental doubts and difficulties may be removed) because these have been long since settled in the Creeds of the Church. Those Creeds, it should be well understood, were not framed by some saintly and learned men putting forth their own ideas, as authoritative expositions of Holy Scripture. The whole Church met in Council, so far as was possible, each separate country being represented by its chief Bishops-each of whom declared not his own private opinion, but what was the truth as held by the Church to which he belonged. Thus the nearest approach to certainty that is conceivable was arrived at, to which nothing could be added in ages to come, nor taken from it.

"Neither again may we expect to find change advocated in respect to those usages which have existed immemorially in the Church; for these do not profess to rest exclusively on Scriptural authority. In determining all such matters, history necessarily comes in to our aid as the interpreter of Holy Scripture. Thus we read in the Preface to the English Ordination Service-'It is evident unto all men diligently reading the Holy Scripture and the ancient Authors, that from the Apostles' time there have been these Orders of Ministers in CHRIST's Church; Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.' In other words, the appeal in reference to the Christian ministry, which some persons think to be not clearly defined in Scripture, is to history, concurrently with Scripture; and so also if we wish to learn concerning the observance of Sunday, the method and frequency of worship, the number of the Sacraments, the construction of churches, the vestments of the clergy, and other like things, it is to the traditions of the Church in different localities that we chiefly look. And we know that every available source of information has long since been ransacked; and therefore our practice equally with our faith rests on an immovable basis, such as no textual criticism of Holy Writ can possibly disturb.”—P. 5.

"A more important matter still is the determining for the English reader (as is done by a discriminating translation of the Greek tenses) that Regeneration, Conversion, Justification, and Sanctification (in its initial stage) are things past in the life of the Christian, and all connected with the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. In the Authorised Version to which we have been accustomed, owing to the imperfection of the English language, it was not apparent whether these were events to be looked forward to hereafter, or whether they had already taken place. Now, however, so far as we may consider the Revised Version to possess authority, it is plain we should understand that the Christian has been 'begotten again,' (1 S. Pet. i. 23,) as well as 'justified and sanctified,' and that by the washing' which he has already received in the Sacrament of Baptism (1 Cor. vi. 11.) These passages so accurately translated, will, of course, determine the time intended in other passages which are left indefinite-such as Romans v. 1, and S. Titus iii. 7. Henceforward therefore no one who accepts Holy Scripture, as its meaning is now made clear to us by the best scholars chosen from all schools of theology-including even

some Dissenters-can claim the authority of the Bible for such presumptuous questions as some have been used to ask—'Are you converted?' 'Are you regenerated ?' 'Are you justified?' because all these results are affirmed to follow from baptism, and are consequently the common inheritance of all Christian people. So I venture to think the stage is cleared for a much more general acceptance of Catholic doctrine than we at present enjoy."-P. 7.

Under the modest title of A few Hymns written by a Layman, (Church Printing Company,) we have a little collection of sacred songs which are striking from the earnest devotional feeling and comprehension of the Catholic faith in its fulness which they manifest. They are well adapted for use in church, a tune from Hymns Ancient and Modern being indicated for each one, and they will be found specially serviceable at this time, as some of them deal with our present troubles in a forcible manner. Several of the Eucharistic hymns and those for the Holy Angels and All Saints are especially good. Bennie the Bread-winner, by Nellie Hellis, (John Marr and Sons, Glasgow,) is a really well-written and touching story, which, if we are not mistaken, indicates very great promise in a young writer. It shows refined feelings, high religious principle, and considerable knowledge of human nature. It is impossible not to be strongly interested in the little hero, and the book once begun will not be laid down till his history is happily brought to a close. The attractive red and gold binding makes it very suitable for a gift.

Correspondence.

[The Editor is not responsible for the opinions of the Correspondents.]

To the Editor of the Churchman's Companion.

Answers.

MAGAZINES FOR MISSION PURPOSES.

SIR,-ESLETTA asks me to acknowledge in the February number of the Churchman's Companion receipt from her of that Magazine for 1881, also the "Monthly Packet" for 1881. There must be numbers of persons still who do not utilise their Magazines, especially odd numbers, who would gladly give them for Missions, Hospitals, and Prisons. Will you then kindly allow me once more to make known to your readers that every description of bookmatter is of use. What I prefer is that real friends having any to give away will write to me to that effect, as it is often better for book miscellanea not to come to myself. New books are of course acceptable, but what I am specially anxious to make widely known

is that all kinds, many now lying by as useless as so much lumber and rubbish would if offered to me be of great value. It would be such a comfort too if persons would desist from asking what kind they may send, and understand all and every kind, in any state, any age, language, class; Little Bopeep, Latin Grammars, Medical books, and papers, Sermon, Bible, and other Class notes, French Phrases, ALL are wanted. I cannot close this letter without in the name of the Bishop of Bombay, the Bombay Mission staff, and my own, expressing our sincere thanks for help sent by your readers. I have also received for some years past assistance in money and kind through the Churchman's Companion. The needs are vast, the labourers few, I pray those who read this to consider if they cannot find time to seek out among the many aged, sick,