A good deal of misunderstanding appears to exist upon the subject of the Stations of the Cross in Westminster Cathedral, and there is danger that works which should be regarded simply as a necessary part of the furniture of the Cathedral Church—a via dolorosa by which the devout person retraces in spirit the holy procession to Calvary—should become not a means to devotion so much as an occasion for idle sightseeing. It would be deplorable if it became the custom in the Cathedral to “make” the Stations in a spirit similar to that in which a person from the country goes round Westminster Abbey ; and that such a possibility may be obviated I offer the following suggestions.

First, then, let us dispose of the vexed question of style. The Westminster Stations are not carved in imitation of a bygone style—Byzantine or any other. Let the would-be worshipper put any such idea resolutely away from him. A visitor in the house of a friend, being invited to sit down, does not approach the proffered chair in the state of mind of a connoisseur at a sale. Neither should a worshipper entering a church think it “up to him” to feel critical.

It has taken two editors and six volumes to complete the biography of Disraeli. The last two volumes enjoy the advantage of the freedom which the war has brought to those who search the faded purples and tinsels of the Victorian ash heap. The love letters of a Premier are not generally disclosed forty years after his death. However, as Lady Beaconsfield was dead, Catholics need only smile at his septuagenarian infatuation for Lady Bradford, illustrated in letters which outcloy even his coy adulation of the Queen. Lady Bradford he could not marry because Lord Bradford lived, and Lady Chesterfield her sister refused to marry him, though they were single, while the Queen, who was both single and devoted to Disraeli, could not have married him without putting Gladstone into office and perhaps their hate of Gladstone was their strongest bond.

Bishop-making is always a fascinating pursuit, even more for the makers than for the made. That Anglican Bishops are elected by the Grace of God and the favour of Downing Street has always added to the piquancy of the pursuit.

The modem theory of the supremacy of the State in all departments of life disposes of the fundamental principle of the Family as an independent unit of society. Prominent Socialists have pointed out the logical conclusion that State Ownership of Property is State Ownership of the Family. H. G. Wells has publicly said that the State would have no more scruples about taking over the Family than it would in taking over the private gasworks. Hence we have an altogether new conception of Society based on the idea of the State Family. As to how this will work out in practice remains to be seen. The Family is a natural institution, and mankind must inevitably return to it or perish. Meanwhile we can see the beginnings of the new system at work.

It is everywhere presumed in modem legislation that the State and not the parent is the final arbiter of the welfare and upbringing of the child. Nowhere, for instance, in our elementary educational system is there any reference to the parent’s wish as to what his children are to be taught. Attendance of children is compulsory and the law is stretched beyond its limits in forcing such attendance contrary even to the parents’ will. Thus frequently a mother may keep a child away from school because it is delicate or because there is some domestic emergency making it necessary for it to be at home.

“Jack, be quiet,” cried Mrs. Beeby to her husband. “Can’t you see I’ve got an idea !” She was sketching rapidly and intently the first rough outlines of a drawing. All Mrs. Beeby’s drawings were exquisite.

The Professor sniggered.

“You never had an idea in your life, my sweet,” he said. “Given an idea, you wouldn’t be a woman—much less the adorable woman that I love.”

The Professor was wrong, as professors frequently are. But the excitement of a brilliant course of lectures in metaphysics was still upon him, and he was unconsciously soothing himself by making playful (and erroneous) application of things he had read and thought and spoken about of late, copiously and in the orthodox abstract professorial way.

He said much more, and his wife, for all her industrious drawing, contradicted him cleverly. Yet their pretty war of words is of no more concern to us here than the prettier truce of hearts of which it was a graceful camouflage. For this, good reader, by your leave, is not a love story. It is a solemn attempt to discuss, in a practical and homely way, some of the very big things professors expound grandiloquently and in moods not always consonant with common sense.

A fine book, but a still finer play. That, I think, . will be the final judgment of those who know both intimately.

For drama—if it be real drama—does, after all, reveal what the printed word does not. It gets home to the heart in a lightning flash. At the play, the audience is tense and concentrated in a moment of great emotion. There is no likelihood of such interruption as disturbs us, more often than not, by some fantastic freak of nature, when we near the climax of a book. We are gripped, hypnotized almost, by the actor’s art. The actual intonation of the spoken word, the dumb appeal of stricken human figures, only a few feet distant, move us more nearly than the vision of suffering evoked but for the few out of mere letterpress. Theatrical effects are broader, cruder, made by a terser medium. When poignant, as in the case of The Garden of Allah, they are unforgettable.

Admirable in its tone and temper, entirely lucid in statement, and very thorough in its examination of the writings relative to the subject, the value of Dr. O’Brien’s work, as a contribution to our knowledge of Catholic teaching in the Middle Ages, can hardly be rated too highly. The value is the greater to-day when the minds of many, their hearts perturbed by the strife of capital and labour, are turned to the ages of faith for light and guidance.

What was the Christian teaching in the Middle Ages on the economic relations of man to man? Wherein did it differ from the political economy taught in schools and colleges in the nineteenth century?

The first thing to note is that scientific economics as such were unknown to the great medieval teachers, for whom economics did not exist as a separate study. Much was written on labour, property, usury, and trade ; but all these things were subject to the laws of justice and charity, and the economic relations of man to man were governed by the Christian teaching on morals. Our modern political economy is something entirely different from this, for it distinctly and definitely excludes the moral question.

One would think that it was unnecessary to commend the study of history to Catholics, and that they would be quick to recognize the historical action of the Church upon the world of secular society as the chief formative influence in European civilization. Especially interesting would be the study of the “Middle Ages,” as those centuries witnessed some of the most specific developments of essentially Christian ideas.

By the Norman Conquest the Church in England was invigorated ; the development of Feudalism was more than counterbalanced by the creation of the system of Law and Administration ; while the conflict between Church and State, which everywhere took place, assumed in England an exceedingly interesting and important form. Nowhere was the idea of Liberty better understood or more strenuously vindicated than by such champions as Becket, Langton and De Montfort. Imagination might sometimes be stimulated by the thought that we ourselves have seen history made, and that the recent startling changes in the map of Europe bring it back again to a strange resemblance of what it was five hundred years ago.