ever before. But now, as we are growing better able to form a native clergy, Providence seems to be attracting men of apostolic spirit chiefly to other countries less able to help themselves: chiefly, but not entirely; and happy is it for us that some still continue to give us the benefit of their zeal. We need yet more of them for the accomplishment of this very work of forming a native clergy. To establish new seminaries we want more priests; and these boys of twelve years will not be priests for twelve years more; meanwhile all our present missions must be attended to; and then priests are dying, and new missions opening every day.

"If some unfortunate persons come over here, only because they are deemed at home unfit for the sacred ministry, let us, in speaking of them, be careful to discriminate between their miserable case and the zeal of the truly apostolic men, of times not past but present, coming, not only from France and Ireland, but from Germany, Belgium, Italy, and other countries, and entitling themselves to praise and thanks which cannot be expressed in words. I have met none more earnestly desirous than they of forming a native clergy, none more ready to put themselves to real pains to accomplish it.

“Let us, on all occasions, show that we appreciate their labors, and are grateful for their generosity. Let us all unite our efforts and our hearts, and then we shall succeed in the work which the writer recommends.

“For in union there is strength, and in brotherly love there is God's blessing.

"Your humble servant in Christ,

"WILLIAM HENRY ELDER,

"Sulphur Springs, Mississippi, Nov. 10th, 1860."

"Bishop of Natchez.

We heartily concur in the merit claimed for foreign clergymen by our Right Reverend friend the Bishop of Natchez. Country owes them, and we stated as much in our article on Vocations to the Priesthood." We have urged the necessity of forming and training candidates to succeed them, but we assure the bishop that it is not because we have known unfortunate men" who came from other countries, or intended to make any reference to them. If there are, as he

any

states

Some unfortunate foreigners in this country, there

may be, and there will be, no doubt, unfortunate Americans

as well.

We do not treat the question on the grounds of

comparative personal or national virtue, piety, or merit. We have asked, Is it better to have priests for this mission who are educated especially for it, or priests who are edu

cated for some other place; priests who understand the ways of the country, or priests who do not understand them; in short, priests who are every way fitted for the work to be done, or the reverse? We earnestly desire that the decrees of the Councils of the Church be observed, only, of course, where it is practicable.

The bishop tells us that he knows dioceses where there are excellent priests who have come to them from across the ocean. We can assure him that we are acquainted with no diocese in the country that has not more or less excellent clergymen such as he describes. But we can also show him more than one diocese where there is great room for improvement in the nature of the preparations made to provide successors for its present clergy, and where means are not wanting to make such improvement. We beg to thank the bishop for what he says to encourage this work, so necessary to the progress of the Church, and we shall try to imitate the gravity and moderation of the language he uses in recommending it. We were wrong, perhaps, in using commercial phrases to illustrate our meaning when speaking of the clergy, but we live in a bustling, commercial community, and our neighbors use nothing but commercial and financial talk from morning till night. We have been wrongfully accused, however, of having stated that there were any "cheap priest factories" in Ireland. We know of no such places in Ireland, but, to our knowledge, the evil we complained of does exist where we placed it, namely, "on the continent of Europe." We used these words for the express purpose of showing that we did not mean to apply that paragraph to the Emerald Isle. We deny, too, that we used any disrespectful or unkind phrases in speaking of the students of All-Hallows College. We did not state that they wanted either learning or piety, but we merely said that they had wrong notions about this country, and lacked the ready activity that a man requires to be useful in this new world. We advocate the plan of sending young men from here to be educated at All-Hallows for the American mission. When we visited the institution in 1857, we freely expressed a preference for this plan, and were much gratified to find that the Superiors of All-Hallows College approved of our opinion. In conclusion, we are fully impressed with the truth of Bishop Elder's remark, that it is to the foreign clergy themselves that we must look for the enlightened zeal which will train for the priesthood youths born in this

country. They can address these youths in the words of St. Paul, In Christo Jesu per Evangelium ego vos genui," and they will not fail, we hope, to feel a paternal interest in their spiritual children. Our chief encouragement in writing on the subject of vocations to the priesthood is the knowledge that many of the worthiest and noblest men among the clergy of the United States, though not natives of this country, approve of the movement which we are striving to defend. J. W. Č.

ART. V-An Essay on the Harmonious Relations between Divine Faith and Natural Reason; to which are added Two Chapters on the Divine Office of the Church. By A. C. BAINE, Esq. Baltimore: Murphy & Co., 1861. 12mo, pp. 406.

to our

JUDGE BAINE, we are told, is a distinguished jurist in California, and a convert from some form of Protestantism most holy faith. His work comes to us most cordially recommended by the Archbishop of San Francisco, and with the approbation of the Archbishop of Baltimore, Primate of the Church of the United States. It is an able work, written in a free, popular style, unincumbered by legal, philosophical, or theological teclinicalities and refinements, addressed to the plain common sense of non-Catholics. The author devotes, as his Grace of San Francisco well remarks, "his logical mind to prove, that the Catholic Church is, as she was, the TEACHER, vested with God's commission to impart Christian revelation. This is done in a style rather new, yet forcible; familiar, yet conclusive."

The design of the author is to exhibit the harmonious relations between Faith and Reason,-or rather, to show that the claim of the Church to teach a supernatural revelation with infallible authority is, supposing such a revelation made and committed to her to be taught, in perfect accordance with

reason, and in no sense contravenes the rights of reason, or encroaches on its domain. The whole book is substantially devoted to the development and establishment of this thesis. We cannot say that the author's method of developing and sustaining this thesis is always strictly scientific or rigidly

argument as a whole, without being convinced that it can

not be successfully controverted. The author is not a learned theologian, nor a profound metaphysician, and he is too diffuse, declamatory, and inexact as a writer to satisfy our fastidious taste and habits of mind, but his work will probably be none the less popular or useful on that account. It is not wholly out of the reach of non-Catholics, and it gives them Catholic thoughts in their own tongue, after their own manner, and is more likely to get the truth intelligibly before them than if it were more rigidly exact in its exposition, and strictly scientific in its method. Non-Catholics are exceedingly averse in religious matters from precise statements and exact definitions; and in some measure require an argument to be conducted in a loose, vague, and popular manner, in order to be favorably affected by it. They set their faces against an argument which crushes them from first to last, which leaves them no respite from their torture, and if we would convince them, we must take care not to be too conclusive, so as to give them room to retain a little respect for their own understandings, and to display, in yielding to us, a little generosity. We must give them opportunity to say, in yielding, "We yield not to your arguments, which, upon the whole, are weak, but to the truth, which we see very clearly is on your side."

Judge Baine is, as far as we have discovered, orthodox in his real, honest meaning, but some of his expressions betray a want of familiarity with several important theological questions. Indeed, he uses, from first to last, a line of argument, not peculiar to him, which, rigidly taken, tends rather to shake than to confirm his thesis. His purpose is to show that the method of the Church,-teaching a supernatural revelation by infallible authority,-is in strict accordance with the dictates of reason and common sense. He seeks to do this by showing the incompetency of reason, maintaining that its office is to submit to authority without presuming to form any judgment in the case, which is not showing the harmony between the methods of authority and reason, but placing them in direct antagonism. He futhermore has the appearance of founding the necessity of divine revelation on the fact of the primitive Fall, whereas without divine revelation we could not even assert the fact of the Fall. "The capacities of the human mind," he says (p. 15), "had become so enfeebled by the original disobedience, and the accumulations of error consequent upon the primal crime, that it could not have sustained, or even have embraced, revealed

truth without supernatural aid." Could the human mind. have done it before the "primal crime"? The natural powers of the human mind were no more adequate to the discovery, acceptance, and retention of supernatural truth before original disobedience than they have been since. Man did not, as Luther and Calvin teach, lose by the Fall his natural spiritual faculties, and so become incapable of understanding truth or willing good. The justice or righteousness in which man was constituted before his disobedience, was by supernatural grace no less than the justice to which he is now elevated by the Sacrament of Regeneration. After the Fall, man needed what he did not need before, namely, medicinal grace,-but the grace that reveals supernatural truth, and the grace that elevates man to the plane of that truth, and enables him to believe and conform to it, were as necessary before as after the Fall. The necessity of a revelation of the supernatural, or the necessity of an infallible authority to teach it after it is made, cannot be based on any loss or enfeeblement of our powers by original disobedience or its consequences. The necessity of either cannot be known or conceived till the revelation itself is made, because natural reason in its best estate has of itself alone no conception, anticipation, or prolepsis of a supernatural order. But we let the author speak further on this point for

himself:

"At the institution of the Church she taught the supernatural facts of divine revelation, and denounced judgment upon those who refused to believe, without regard to the plea that reason gave them no evidence of the faith propounded for their acceptance and pracWhat the Church did at her institution, she does yet. She makes no war upon reason, but she sternly rebukes reason when it invades the province of faith. The holy Catholic Church knows,

tice.

and so

measure

instructs the world, that natural reason cannot weigh and the facts of divine revelation by her feeble, limited, and

annulled because puny reason cannot unravel them and weave them ruined capacity. The mysteries of divine revelation are not to be into harmony with her philosophy. These mysteries are the foun

dation

of the Church which was to

teach all nations' whatsoever

Christ had commanded her, before his ascension; and the Church received the Holy Ghost to bring to her remembrance all the things which had been commanded, and to guide her into all truth, and this

Spirit was

of these things are on a level with natural reason. vious more than she

promised to abide with her for ever. It is obvious that none It is equally ob