THE SEED IS THE WORD The prodigious use constantly made of Holy Scripture by the Catholic Church is a salient fact which in its fulness few persons comprehend, even among those within her fold. It is like a vast landscape which lies before us in its beauty day by day yet ever unfolds new beauties from an apparently exhaustless store. It were vain to attempt in one brief article a complete portrayal of this fascinating subject, the Church's use of and reverent love for the Inspired Word of God. A few instances must now suffice. Let a man enter one of our churches at any hour,-what does he see? Along the walls runs the pathetic story, in pictured representation, of his Saviour's sufferings endured for him. There he beholds the condemnation pronounced by Pilate, the cruel scourging endured by Jesus, the thorn-crowning, the nailing to the cross, the dying on that hard bed of pain, the taking down from the cross, the burial in the garden tomb. At the sanctuary he finds statues of our Lord's dear Mother and His faithful foster-father. If it is Christmas time he finds there, too, the pretty representation of the crib, the Infant Jesus, the ox and ass, the shepherds, the wise men, the star. Over the altar is the crucifix, always. Everything he has seen is preaching, silently, to the people who throng those churches as their special home and abiding place from childhood to old age the Scriptural message, St. John iii. 16: "For God so loved the world, as to give His only begotten Son: that whosoever believeth in Him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting." Let us enter one of our Catholic city churches, to watch what is going on. In the early morning, Mass is said; the worshippers gather, few or many as the case may be. They have come to assist at that tremendous sacrifice of which Malachias (i. 11.) foretold in Holy Writ: "In every place there is sacrifice and there is offered to My name a clean oblation." But when all "services" are done, is the church closed, locked, unvisited, till another "service" begins? By no means. People linger, though to outward sight "nothing is going on." Keep up your watch through all the long hours of the day. A child comes in, and making its toddling way to the crib, studies the story of Bethlehem silently with wondering eyes. An old man comes in, and kneels long at the altar; an aged woman tells her beads; a young girl makes the Way of the Cross; a boy doffs his cap, bends his knee, and says something no one. hears, to-God,-a noisy, laughing, active boy, subdued for the moment into absolute silence, then off like a dart to game and jest and work. A laboring man leaves his dinner-pail at the door, to pray; close to the altarrail, someone in deep mourning is sobbing softly; Sisters come gently in, each one with her own prayer, her own need. What does it all mean? It means simply that the Real Presence of Jesus is on the altar. It means simply the Catholic Church's constant repetition to her people of the words of her Lord, treasured by her in Holy Scripture: "This is My Body. This is My Blood. Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world." However poor and sad our dwellings, however noisy and troubled our surroundings, we have one peaceful holy home where we may go unquestioned, and its doors stand ever open; we have one place where peace is perfect, and where one Friend waits for us always, to hear our prayer. Our shopgirls, our accountants, our school children, our old people, may not always be able to tell you just how many books there are in the Old Testament, or how many epistles in the New Testament; but they do know that their Church opens her motherly arms wide to them, and how she tells them that the Lord they love, and of Whom the Scriptures are full, is "in this place." The discretion of the Catholic Church is a marvelous factor in her marvelous make-up. She does not insist on her people knowing the Bible from cover to cover. She perfectly agrees with St. Peter, in his second epistle, iii. 16, that there are in the inspired writings, as anyone might easily surmise there would be, "certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest to their own destruction." With the awed reverence that Catholics treat the house of God they also treat the Word of God, for there is in either of them an indwelling Spirit before Whom the wise, strong angels veil their faces with their wings. But the Jesus, the Redeemer, of Whom the Scriptures plainly tell, Him the Catholic Church keeps ever before her children's eyes and in their thoughts; and that is one reason why her houses of worship are thronged on Sunday and are not left alone and unvisited on week-days, because the Lord of the Scriptures is always in His holy place. -Sacred Heart Review. 慫 HOW TO LIVE LONG From time immemorial smart men have tried to solve the riddle, "How to Live Long," but none have ever succeeded. The nearest approach to a sensible solution was published recently in the Pittsburg Observer. There are no expensive mud-baths in it, no costly trips to mineral springs or new climes. The recipe, as given by the writer, is: "Live a natural life, eat what you want, and walk on the sunny side of the street." plain. Eat what the body needs to build it up and fit it for the requirements of your work, not what a perverted or unnatural appetite may crave. 3. And then, "Walk on the sunny side of the street." This has more than a figurative meaning. It means, in the first place, that it is an actual physiological fact that it is better for every person to get on the sunny side of the street, even if he has to go out of his way, whenever there is a sunny side, because the sunshine is Nature's great rejuvenator, purifier and builder. If a man could always be in the sunshine with uncovered head, there would be no bald heads; no hair fall out, and no disease comes to a scalp constantly exposed to the sun. Ninety per cent. of man's ailments may be traced to the fact that he is so persistently an indoor animal. The man who lays gas mains in front of your house, and whose work is out of doors winter and summer, has no need of hair tonics, or any other kind of tonics. He comes very near to living a natural life. 1. Living a natural life, of course, means a conformity with the law of nature. A man cannot eat or drink things that destroy the body or impair the vital forces and live a "natural life." He cannot eat things that have no nutriment in them; he cannot deprive himself of the oxygen that is stored in the outdoor air and live a natural life. 2. "Eat what you want," not what you wish. The meaning of this is But the injunction to keep on the sunny side of the street had a much wider application in its figurative significance. If you would live long, keep in the sunshine; be sunny, cheerful, amiable, tranquil. Keep out of the deadly doldrums. There's no breeze for the sails of the human craft that drift into the doldrums. No use to try to carry all the burdens and derelictions of frail and fallible humanity. No use to waste the years in worry over the poor soul who is determined to go down the toboggan slide to perdition. Help him if you can. Contribute to the extent of your ability to ameliorate the condition of the destitute and the oppressed. But don't be grumpy, sour and glum. Keep out of the dark shadows. Nothing grows in them. Flowers don't flourish in the cellar. Keep in the sunshine, and if you do that you can't help but be "sunny"-and that means long life. It Old age creeps on unawares. comes as come the autumn days-we find they are upon us because the boughs of the trees are growing thin. The Christian grows old peacefully, calmly. In growing old he becomes more noble, more tender. Because of his comforting hope in God, his life is still sweet and sunny, full of songbirds and joy. Growing old with him is growing ripe. Fruits in autumn ripen beautifully. They grow ruddy with sunshine and dew, and then drop into the basket of the fruit-gatherer. As fruits in autumn ripen, so does the Christian grow old. As his eyes grow dim to earthly sights, he sees in clearer vision the things that are to come. As his ears grow deaf to human voices, he hears more distinctly the whispers which come out of the invisible. In finishing his life, he goes down in the shadow without fear. With him there is no shrinking as he watches the sunset, because he sees bright stars rise, and he knows that he is going out into a larger, fairer world under those stars. Old age should be sweet and fair and serene as quiet a process as the sunset. The ideal death is that which comes to old age. We go to the harbor to bid adieu to our friend who is going on a journey to Europe. We are glad our friend is going to have the pleasure and the privilege of such a journey, and we bid him good-by without heartbreak or heartache. Even so when one has reached a ripe old age and his work is done, and the time has come for him to get into the mystic boat which moves out into the invisible, we can go down to the shore, and see him push off with no more of heartbreak or heartache than we have when at the harbor we say "Good-by" to our friend starting on his European journey. We know that for him it is unspeakably better farther on. The best is yet to be. Browning says: "Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was SWEETS AND TEMPERANCE Give children plenty of pure sugar, taffy and butterscotch and they'll have little need of cod-liver oil, said Dr. Woods Hutchinson. In short, sugar is, after meat, bread and butter, easily our next most important and necessary food. You can put the matter to a test very easily. Just leave off the pie, pudding or other desserts at your lunch or midday dinner. You'll be astonished to find how quickly you'll feel "empty" again, and how "unfinished" the meal will seem. You can't get any working man to accept a dinner pail without pie in it. And he's absolutely right. The only thing that can take the place of sugar here is beer or wine. It is a significant fact that the free lunch counters run in connection with bars furnish every imaginable thing except sweets. Even the restaurants and lunch grills attached to saloons or bars often refuse to serve desserts of any sort. They know their business! The more sugar and sweets a man takes at a meal, the less alcohol he wants. Conversely, nearly every drinking man will tell you that he has lost his taste for sweets. The more candy a nation consumes, the less alcohol. I. By Caryl Coleman The Gates That Shall Not Prevail (The Nun*) To an American the attitude of the government of the French Republic toward Christianity is a mystery, and to all appearance without an explanation, until he realizes that the party in power is the very incarnation of iniquity, and that its loudly proclaimed motto: "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity is the height of irony. A French Republican, wise in his own conceit, perverse of heart, is as a rule an irreligious sensualist; intolerant of all who dare think differently from him; to whom liberty is an occasion to the flesh; whose justice is a mockery of truth, whose arguments are scoffs and gibes, whose highest aims are material: ever living in enjoyment of the moment; who fears for his children ignorance less than the training of nuns and the teaching of priests; hence the logical outcome of a government controlled by such men is of necessity antiChristian. These men are fitly described by the following words of St. Catherine of Siena: "Sensuality and self-love they have enthroned as the mistress of their soul-they wear injustice on their breast as a buckler, which injustice both proceeds from, and is clasped with their own selflove, through which they commit injustice against their own soul and God-depriving Him of glory, and themselves of honor." And through self-love, the Saint tells us, "the virtue of justice has died out in monarchies and republics alike." And some one else has wisely said: "Show me a bad man, show me an infidel, show me a sensualist, show me a man indifferent to religion, and I will show you an enemy to the Teaching Orders, and one who will deny that their object is good, or holy or useful. istence in France of men like these, and their domination in politics, each one looking to his own private advantage and not to the general weal, would take us too-far-a-field from the object in view, namely, a brief notice of a remarkable book published in Paris a year or more ago, and reissued again and again, appearing almost every week in a new edition, now in its sixtieth, and recently translated into English, German, Italian, and Spanish. To give the reasons for the ex *The Nun (L'Isolee) from the French of René Bazin of the French Academy. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908. 8Vo. Pp. 243. The book was written by a distinguished member of the French Academy, and has to do with the secularization of the Church schools, the sequestration of the property of the teaching orders, and the dispersion of the religious. René Bazin's book is not, however, a treatise upon the new scheme of education and its compulsory enforcements, but is simply a novel, in which some of the evil results of the scheme are graphically and truthfully described. The author brings before the reader a small community of nuns, whose occupation was that of teaching the children of the poor and administering charity to the needy. "The five nuns of St. Hildegarde lived together in a house noisy by day, silent at night-fall. All over-worked. The daily recitation of the Office after evening school, the meditation and Mass of every morning, the care of a certain number of pupils who took their mid-day meals within the Convent, the correction of school exercises, and then-for the elder ones especially-the innumerable affairs of the poorer quarter of the city to which they ministered, and in which their good will was called upon to excess, to exhaustion-these things filled all the days, the months, the years. Throughout this incessant occupation, in their forgetfulness of self, and in this poverty, they enjoyed the sweetness, little known outside convent walls, that comes of companionshipalbeit often silent-with elect ones, being entirely worthy of love, whose energies are all at the command of charity. They formed a group more closely united than a family; none the less had they gathered from dissimilar places and condition, and for causes that differed also. Sister Justine urged by her faith and by her love of action; Sister Daniella moved by her zeal for spiritual perfection and drawn by the invisible; Sister Edwige called by love for the poor; Sister Léonide by her humility; Sister Pascale led by her distrust of herself and her desire that among saints, and in face of their example, her days might be counted in unassailable security." This devoted band of self-sacrificing women, and hundreds of others like them throughout France, were compelled by the new laws to give up their noble work, to have their beloved pupils torn from them and thrust into Godless schools; their works of charity brought to naught; their property stolen from them; and they, themselves, evicted from their own houses, where in the right of ownership and all justice they should have remained; and lastly their community life destroyed: individually thrown back upon the world, all unfit for it, never having made "the novitiate of the worldly life." And for what reason? Because materialism and sensuality are ever impatient of spirituality and virtue; because the impious hate the friends of Christ; because these women spent themselves for Christ and His poor; because they aimed, as Sister Edwige expressed it, "To carry our Christ through the world, not to let Him die within us; to lift Him up as in a monstrancelet Him shine not often, but to through, always, habitually-our one Love." Bazin not only pictures most beautifully the community life at St. Hildegarde, and sympathetically the characters of the several nuns, but he also describes most pathetically their trials and sufferings, their after life in the world, most particularly that of Sister Pascale, the youngest of all, of whom he says, "No sudden illumination, no mystic ardour, no vapour of incense, no dazzle of azure and gold, no miraculous love of self-sacrifice led Pascale to the cloister, but only the deliberate conviction that no other way of life could so well develop what was good in her and so well safeguard what was perilous." Poor little Sister Pascale, the lamb of the flock, did not long withstand the allurements of the world, when she lost the example, the pure and intelligent love of her Sisters, the restraining force of the Rule. It is a sad and wonderful picture the author gives of the awaking of this tender loving soul to the bitterness of sin. the despair of hopelessness; and equally as wonderful is the portrail of the love her Sisters bear her, as they earnestly strive to call back the gentle heart of their darling to the Heavenly Bridegroom she betrayed. Although the novel has no plot to speak of, nevertheless it holds the attention of the reader, is absorbingly interesting; and in parts dramatic and intense; and with all a convincing arraignment of the French Government, for its brutal and unjust treatment of the religious, who have given their lives to the cause of education; but whose chief offense is that they are When will the friends of Christ. world learn that the God of heaven has set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail? II. With Her Whole Soul The publishing house of Charles Scribner's Sons, of New York, have again placed the Catholic public in their debt by issuing another novel by René Bazin, which they have pleased to call "Redemption." Just as the former publication, "The Nun," dealt with a momentous *Redemption. ("De Toute Son Ame.") By René Bazin. Translated by Dr. A. S. Rappoport. New York. Charles Scribner's sons, 1908. |