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sufficient virility to defend its institutions against the attacks of acknowledged enemies, openly advertising their ultimate objects. Related, and leading to anecdotal misrule, is the coarse and common form of ballad, transferred from vaudeville stage to social gathering, portions of which have nothing worse to answer for than stupidity, by some held cheaper than bright ^depravity, which we deny is true, though admitting it to be less endurable. A doggerel reciting the antics of an inebriated laborer, a turkey and a fashionable woman, now commands popular favor and makes its entrances and exits amid loud applause from pit and gods. In these days of discovery when origins are painfully, and with much circumlocution, traced out and published for general benefit, a special chapter might profitably be devoted to describing the psychological operation which temporarily deprives respectable people of the complete use of their mental faculties on these occasions. Indeed the subject is not without its investigators, for the public press recently announced the interesting fact that a professor of a local university had resolved to devote the remainder of his life to studying the psychological aspects of crowds; that is, how it comes to happen that in the aggregate a crowd wnll follow a course of action diametrically opposed to its belief, which its units, taken separately, would not consent to on any terms, or under any stress of circumstances. Careful investigation requires to be given so serious a subject, and we must forego the attempt to answer it until the professor is through; but the united wisdom of a crowd is probably the direct outcome of what its units are accustomed to practice, rather than what they are accustomed to profess as a matter of belief.

Practice, we have had occasion to point out, in these remarks, is yet lagging painfully in the rear of belief, but pointing morals and didactically indicating consequences is not the work of the essayist, and must be left to the preacher, whose province the world universally concedes it to be.

Chicago, III. Daniel P. Cahill.

THREE NEW BOOKS.

The Symbol Of The Apostles, A Vindication Of The AposTolic Authorship Of The Creed On The Lines Of CathoLic Tradition. Bv The Very Rev. Alexander Mac DonAld, D. D., Vicar-general Of The Diocese Of Antigonish, Nova Scotia. New York Christian Press Association. 1903.

The Rector Of Hazlehurst, And Some Others Of The Cloth. By E. W. Gilliam, M. D. Baltimore. John Murphy ComPany.

Belinda's Cousins. A Tale Of Town And Country. By Tviaurice Francis Eagan. H. L. Kilner & Co., Phila.

Dr. Mac Donald in the Symbol, attempts to show the probability at least that the Apostles' Creed, as we call it in these days, came down to the Church from the days of the Apostles; that it is their united work and word. He is at one with modern scholarship iit discarding as untrustworthy the idea or notion that each one of the Apostles contributed a separate article, so making up the tw elve articles of the Creed, but he insists, through 360 pages of able reasoning that the Creed as a whole is the work of their united minds speaking as one mind, guided by the Holy Spirit.

He practically admits that his position can hardly claim to be proven by strictly historical methods, in fact he shows conclusively what sorry work Harnack and others of his school have made of this question and must continue to make of it and other similar questions, so long as they apply strictly the historic method alone, and, being without faith, discard the testimony of tradition.

While admitting that from the very earliest times there were verbal varieties in the Apostles' Creed he claims that these varieties of language are explainable on the ground that the Creed, as we now call it, or the symbol of baptism, as it was known in the early Church, or the first and simplest form of Christian belief was not written in words or learned from any writing or printing of it but was given by the Apostles and the apostolic successors, for some centuries, verbally only to the Catechumens or candidates for admission to the Church at their baptism: that in fact there was what he calls "a discipline of the Secret," that is, that the symbol or Creed indicated was a secret which the Apostles and their successors did not write themselves and that converts and others of the faithful were forbidden to write it and were instructed by word of mouth till the symbol was in their hearts and in their minds as a part of their very being; hence that in this oral and traditional learning and teaching of the symbol what could be more natural than that teachers and learners, apostles, bishops and others should in time give other than one exact form of words, but he holds, which seems to me to be the simple truth, that the symbol always has been one, that Harnack was altogether wrong in holding that it had ever been lost to the Roman or Western Church by the substitution of the Nicene in place of the Apostles' Creed, that, in fact the Eastern Creed or formula, in every variety of orthodox utterance of it including the varieties of the Athanatian and all primal creeds accepted and defended by the true Catholic Church has simply been such varieties as would inevitably spring into being from the condition of the secret, already mentioned, or from the fact that the Fathers, as well as ourselves when referring to any special section or paragraph of the Creed did not always quote or record the whole of it, nor, perhaps, always the exact words of it, but gave any one article or more of it in their own words, or again from the fact that as one phase of heresy after another made its appearance in the Church, the Church by its assembled teachers, made additions to the symbol to meet and cover and refute more explicitly the special or specific form or phase of error at the given time lifting up its head. Thus the greater amplification and explicitness of the Athanatian Creed, especially in its christological articles was simply to meet the vitiating and explicit errors of Arius and the Arian heresy, and was never intended to be anything more than an amendment or addition to or an amplification of or a new edition of the old Apostles' Creed, and not as a new Creed at all or a substitute for the old one.

Now, in all this it seems to us that Dr. Mac Donald simply follows the true lines of historic fact and reason; at the same time we have always questioned the wisdom of making the Athanatian Creed as separate and Athanatianistic as it was and is, and with this very danger in mind, viz, lest it should be looked upon as a substitute for the earlier Apostles' Creed; for while never having had any questioning as to the detail of the Athanatian Creed ourselves, we have always believed that the Apostles' Creed or symbol of faith, here under discussion was ample, explicit and full enough for all purposes concerned and have alwrays been willing to grant the same sort of charity toward a weak or lax belief that we all grant toward a- weak or lax morality; and all the more so in regard to dogmas in definition of and concerning subjects or questions that the human mind, ecclesiastical or other, is at best unable to comprehend or explain or define; whereas the questions of morality are plain and simple enough, and to break through such principles has always seemed to me a far more serious offense against God and man than any mere questioning or swerving from or doubting the exactness and completeness of a shade of meaning or a sentence in a creed which attempts to define the absolutely undefinable. I am aware that this is not the traditional Catholic view, but I believe it to have been the spirit of Christ our Master, and I believe that the trend of modern Catholic thought and feeling is in the same direction.

There is still another consideration. It is a well known historic fact that in the various break offs from the true Catholic Church, the followers of the founders of various heretical or quasi heretical sects have been called by the name of their founder, as Arians from Arius—that is, they called themselves or were called Arians or Arian Christians, or later, Lutherans, or Lutheran Christians, or Calvinists or Calvinistic Christians, or again they have had and accepted the name of the nation in which the heresy sprang up, as the Greek Church, or the Church of England, or again they have been called after some prominent or peculiar notion or dogma or form of government of their own, as Episcopalians, or government by bishops, etc., or Baptists, believing in one form of baptism, or Presbyterians, Quakers, Methodists, Unitarians, or Universalists, etc., etc., to the end of the chapter, while steadily, from the day that Christ died and Peter denied Him, from the day of Pentecost and the Council of Jerusalem there has steadily, without break or hindrance, held its way, the one and only true Catholic Church founded by Christ and his Apostles.

Now while we think that Dr. MacDonald makes out his case, and that the Athanatian or other brief or symbol or Creed or abstract compendium of the Christian faith is but an amplification or otherwise; and we might add a needless amplification of the Apostles' Creed, we always have held that there was danger of splitting the faithful into finer sects by such hair splitting as was done in the Athanatian Creed, and in fact to this day there is the danger that too severe an insistence upon your interpretation of the Creed or the Gospel may cause your brother to offend, quite as seriously as his laxity of interpretation may cause you to offend. Do we not hear all the while of secular and regular priests of various orders following more or less closely after the founders of said orders, and of liberal and more strictly orthodox Catholics? Believe me, brethren, there is danger in all this. And while one says he is of Paul and another of Peter and another of Augustine, and another of Dominic. I ask was Paul or Dominic crucified for you? Is any one of these your Lord and Master, or a perfect example for any man? And may not such simple Christian souls as have lived martyr lives in their own sects or in their own liberal creeds only half believed in but whose souls have kept true to the spirit of Christ through all their lives, that is, as true as orthodox Catholics or more so, may not they be nearer the eternal kingdom of true companionship with the heart of Christ than your flaming and much-decorated Athanatian prelate of the most ultra, ultra Athanatian creeds.

Thou believest, thou doest well—Devils also believe and tremble. But we are wandering a little. The Catholic Church and its Apostles' Creed are simple, and ample enough to fold in the bosom of God, and to guide every human soul inclined to the truth. God bless her and under her new Pope Pius X make her glorious and triumphant in all nations of the world. Now will some snarling, snapping thumb-screw creed compeller say to me: "Yes, but you said so and so, or did or failed to do so and so." Mr. Emerson once said to such snarling animals: "Consistency—stuff a rag in thy mouth" and be silent, at least. In a word there may be danger of splitting the Church again.

We think D*. MacDonald makes entirely too much of the socalled "discipline of the secret." We think that he is entirely too much inclined to lean toward the old Platonic and Asiatic schools of teachers and prophets in this that because they had an esoteric and an exoteric school of teaching Christ and Christianity aiso had to have the same. We believe that he is all wrong in this. Was Plato, Emanuel or God with us, incarnate, absolute and entire? Was Buddah or Zoroaster the only begotten Son of God —Light of Light, very God of very God, etc.? Why make such comparisons? Christ and Christianity while the soul of infinite mystery, are at the same time the revelation of God to man. Not merely to Peter and the Popes, the simplification of God to man; not merely to Athanatians, and we hold, with all reverence for tradition, with simple faith in the Catholic Church as the one inspired and infallible spiritual guide of the human race; that in Christ's coming and at His death every partition between the heart of God and the soul of man was broken down—that the heavens literally and spiritually were opened, that the light of the world, the light of the universe might shine into the innermost recesses of the soul of man; that every veil of every temple was rent in »twain, and that henceforth the only secret or mystery was and is the great and boundless mystery of God incarnate dying on the Cross of Calvary for the redemption of the world.

I hold that your Creeds have neither simplified, explained or made more holy or more mystic this one open fact which outshines all the lights of the world.

Beyond question, in the earliest days of Christianity there was need of carefulness in the writing or in the verbal utterances of any Christian Creed. The world was pagan, and for the Christian to open his mouth, or to write his belief was often to thrust himself into the jaws of death. All the secret, underground worship in temples hewn in the rocks was proof of the necessity for secrecy. When every pagan was made to twist the words of the Christian into something that might cost the Christian his life, simple prudence taught and impelled secrecy. I sometimes think that this blasphemy of pagan persecution, extending in one form or another to our own day, may explain to some extent the very general temerity and lack of free and full expression among: Catholics even in our own day and nation. But be that as it m-iv, temerity, lack of heartiness, free outspokenness, lack of common trust in their fellows was the inevitable state of mind and state of action among the Christians of the first three centuries. Of ccurse, I understand that then as now, when a Christian was called upon to confess or deny his Master he confessed and simply died, if necessary. And this deeper "discipline of the secret," wherein every man felt pursued as by a host of detective fiends ready to seize upon him, is a palpable enough fact of early Christian history, but that there was any such discipline of the secret as amounted to an esoteric and exoteric Christianity I hold as an insult to God in Christ Jesus, and hence unworthy the efforts of a scholar to prove it in these last days.

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