ter, the Catholic appeal prevailed and the following resolution was carried:

"That this application of the English Woman's Guild for a grant of $2,000 be agreed to, on condition they cease their agitation in favor of the alteration of the divorce law."

The grant was accordingly refused by the Woman's Guild.

The influence of Catholic trade unionists is thereby shown. The example is worthy of imitation by the unionists of the United States, who often permit anti-Catholic principles to be injected into the conduct of the labor organizations.

IRELAND

Suspended Action

With the advent of the war in Europe action on the part of the Nationalists and Ulsterites seems, for a time at least, to be suspended. Mr. Redmond in a speech delivered in Parliament has declared that England may withdraw all of her forces from Ireland, as both Catholics and Protestants are determined to stand by the British flag and to forget all differences for the time being.

But a short time ago the United Kingdom was facing a crisis which even the King looked on as involving possible civil war. The conference called at Buckingham Palace had ended in a deadlock. The collapse of the negotiations was reported to the King by the Right Honorable James Lowther and to the House of Commons by Premier Asquith. Thousands of deterThousands of determined men were armed and ready to take action. Matters had indeed reached their climax when 3,000 of the Irish Volunteers, while marching to Howth Harbor, near Dublin, to get possession of 10,000 rifles and 70,000 rounds of ammunition were set upon on their return march at historical Clon

tarf by a battalion of the King's Own Scottish Borderers, who ordered them. to surrender their rifles. Upon the refusal of the Volunteers, twenty of the rifles were taken. Then the hooting crowd followed the regiment. Suddenly, the Scottish Borderers turned and fired, killing four and wounding thirty of the Volunteers. In Parliament the shooting was denounced by the Irish members as murder. John Redmond, in his address, said: "Let the House clearly understand that fourfifths of the Irishmen will no longer submit to be bullied, punished and shot for conduct for which Ulstermen are allowed to go scot free." On the very day the Dublin citizens had been attacked, 5,000 Ulster Volunteers, carrying rifles, had marched through the streets of Belfast without any interference on the part of the local authorities. Now the common danger has united the warring factions.

Ireland has undoubtedly the moral support of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States. The Senate of the Commonwealth has reaffirmed the resolution in favor of Home Rule for Ireland passed in 1905, while in the United States many of the State Legislatures have passed resolutions in favor of the present Home Rule Bill. Mr. Asquith has again promised a speedy solution of the problem.

Surely England must recognize the loyalty of the Irish, when in the hour of danger, they are willing to lay aside party and religious differences and fight in defence of the mother country. A people animated by this spirit must be able to devise some form of local government, some system of relation to the Imperial Government under which they can dwell in peace. Ireland must receive her just rights in due time for she deserves them.

The "Catholic Library" is pursuing its good work of giving us, besides original studies on subjects that occupy the minds of men to-day, reprints of the old Catholic classics of the English language. Already we have had an opportunity of recommending a new edition of Cardinal Allen's "Defence of Catholics," Southwell's "Triumph Over Death" and Campion's "Ten Reasons." To-day we have an edition of "The Religious Poems of Richard Crashaw, with an introductory study by R. A. Eric Shepherd." (12mo. pp. 136. B. Herder, St. Louis, Mo. Price 30 cents.)

Perhaps the inclusion of Crashaw's works in this "Catholic Library" will recall to men's minds that the poet was a loyal and sainted child of Holy Mother Church. The publication of his poems should arouse us to a realization of the fact that he holds an unique place in English letters as the greatest religious poet of our language.

Crashaw should, indeed, become popular to-day for he is the greatest mystic singer. And if ever the mystic was in a fair way of coming into his own it is precisely in our own days when a revolt has manifested itself everywhere against the crass, coarse materialism. which, having subdued everything else, made bold to lay unholy hands on religion and the things of the spirit.

When we say that Crashaw is the greatest mystic among English poets, we are saying in other words that he is our greatest English religious poet.

But what do we mean by a religious poet? Eric Shepherd, in his brilliant introduction to Crashaw's poems, gives us as good a definition as we could desire when he says that "religious poetry is poetry written in a religious spirit about religious subjects." It occupies itself with those things that belong to the soul and essence of religion. It is

the growing familiar with the spiritual realities of the world. It is not a pious homily (as Francis Thompson, for instance, would have it) on some religious topic, or a bit of spiritual symbolical interpretation of earthly things. Mysticism is the art that leads us to the supernatural. It shows us that the world is empty and hollow, because there is a supernatural world of eternal verities and spiritual values for which we were destined and which we can attain. This world is illusory, fascinating to the senses, befogging to the soul's eyes, as Crashaw points out:

Say, gentle soul, what can you find
But painted shapes,
Peacocks and apes,
Illustrious flies,

Gilded dung hills, glorious lies,
Goodly surmises

And deep disguises,

Oaths of water, words of wind.

The world, then, is not the place the mystic sings of because he despises it in his search for another. He wishes to go aside for awhile to hear the whispers of heaven bidding him go to a land where flourish, as Crashaw sings:

Reverent discipline and religious fear, Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep, Silence and sacred rest, peace and pure joys, Kind loves, that nestle close and make no noise;

With room enough for monarchs, while none swells

Beyond the kingdoms of contentful cells.

The soul that wishes to reach the mountain of mysticism must perforce push on his way through the "Dark Night of the Soul" as St. John of the Cross called the time during which the disordered impulses of the will are ruthlessly put to death by the shafts of divine love manifesting itself in sorrow, spiritual darkness and dryness and dereliction. As Crashaw puts it beautifully

The fairest of first-born sons of fire,
Blest seraphim, shall leave their quire
And turn love's soldiers, upon thee
To exercise their archery.

Oh, how oft shalt thou complain

Of a sweet and subtle pain,
Of intolerable joys,

Of a death, in which who dies

Loves his death, and dies again,

And would forever so be slain,

And lives and dies, and knows not why To live, but that he thus may never leave to die.

When, then, the soul has put under its evil inclinations, when the will is purified and sublimated by prayer and suffering, it begins to see how sweet is the Lord's yoke, how admirable are His condescensions, how rich and varied is "the kingdom of God that is within you:"

*

* that sacred store
Of hidden sweets and holy joys.
Words which are not heard with ears
(Those tumultuous shops of noise)
Effectual whispers, whose still voice
The soul itself more feels than hears,
Amorous languishments, luminous trances,
Sights which are not seen with eyes,
Spiritual and soul-piercing glances.
Whose pure and subtle lightning flies
Home to the heart, and sets the house on fire
And melts it down in sweet desire,
Delicious deaths, soft exhalations

Of soul, dear and divine annihilations;
A thousand unknown rites

Of joys and rarefied delights

For which it is no shame

That dull mortality must not know a name.

From these few extracts we can see that Crashaw is a real genuine mystic, formed in the school of St. Theresa and the saints. He is ecstatic because he is filled up with the assurance that "the life hid with Christ in God" is a life of the wildest romance. And this ecstasy accounts for the many bad lines that have stuck fast in his poetry. For he was, first of all, a mystic, then only a poet. Poetry was secondary with him. He sang because he could not help it. Perhaps, had he had his choice he would not have sung.

Critics have accused Crashaw of exaggeration and "conceits." First let it be remembered that all poets of his day indulged in these literary artificialities. Crashaw was not beyond his age in this. But, unlike his contemporaries, he did not make use of these "conceits" to win an audience. He did this because he was ecstatic. For ecstasy is love at the highest point, and when was love ever sober and measured? "Lift up your lean hearts" he prayed somewhere, and it were a good prayer to offer up for most of his critics. To evaluate a poet you may criticize him. To get at his mind and heart you must interpret him. You cannot make a poet walk when the wings of song are carrying him on high. This is what most people do when reading Crashaw. And it is not to be wondered at, for most people are not ecstatically in love with their faith and Christ.

Chief amongst these critics is none other than Francis Thompson. He does Crashaw a gigantic uncharity, for none could have appreciated him better. In his essay on "Shelley," Thompson calls his poetry "cold," "frosty" "artificial."

Now, as to Crashaw's artificiality, we have seen that it can be easily and satisfactorily explained by the fact of his being an ecstatic mystic.

But in what way was his poetry cold and frosty? Because he soars at once

into a white light (he was fond of the adjective white) where his rapture is that of a disembodied spirit. There is nothing material about it. It is like sight. Thompson, too, can soar to the heavens, but unlike Crashaw he makes spiritual splendors burn before our eyes or take a thousand forms of beauty. He interprets all he sees and feels and experiences. It is always Thompson who undergoes these experiences. As Edward Herrman has well said, Thompson was rather priestly than mystical in his poetry. "He is an interpreter and a liturgist." "For him everything has a subtle symbolism. Crashaw, on the other

hand, was a prophet and a seer. He plunges into the white light and carries us along by the sheer charm of his song. Little it matters to him whether we emerge or not. He has led us to the mountain of the mysticthat is all.

It is earnestly to be hoped that this new edition of Crashaw will bring him into favor amongst Catholics. It is surely a great pity that we allow this great singer of Catholic themes to go unappreciated amongst ourselves. Since we have so few masters of literature, we cannot afford to overlook one whom critics have agreed to call a master-singer of our tongue.

It has practically become an axiomatic truth that whenever men begin to reason logically they end finally by arriving at those great underlying principles which the Church has maintained. from the beginning. There is a vast army of those who have joined the "spirit" of the Church, if not her actual professing "body," in this way.

Among the latest to arrive at a Catholic conclusion is Dr. Richard C. Cabot of Boston, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard and member of the staff of the Massachusetts General Hospital. In his latest publication, “What Men Live By," he declares four things necessary to a properly balanced lifework, play, love and worship. He says:

Every human being, man, woman, and child, hero and convict, neurasthenic and deepsea fisherman, needs the blessings of God through these four gifts. *** A generally held supposition is that civilization has fused the demonstrative and emotional side of religion into daily work, play and affection. But this is theory, not observation. matter of fact, the doctor, social worker, or teacher who believes that all true religion

As a

can be woven into work, play, or affection, falls into the same fallacy as these who think English composition can be taught by weaving it into the courses in history, science and philosophy.

Experience shows, I think, that vital religion and the ability to write good English are not acquired in this incidental way. Scientists, economists and historians often write barbarously. We must practice the art of writing directly as well as incidentally, else we shall duplicate the catastrophe of our public school system, wherein the conscientious effort to avoid proselyting, to abolish sectarian teaching, and let religion take care of itself, has now brought us perilously near the French secularism.

And Dr. Cabot does not stand alone in his advocacy of religious education. Mr. Bird S. Coler, former Comptroller of the City of New York, in a remarkable address recently delivered at St. Patrick's Academy, Watervliet, N. Y., took for his subject the Catholic Parochial Schools, to which he paid a very high tribute. He frankly confessed that he was at one time among those who believed that the segregation of children of one religion in special schools was

hostile to American institutions and foreign to the American spirit. A more intimate acquaintance with the work of the Catholic schools, however, disabused him of this opinion. In the course of his address Mr. Coler pointed out that the trouble with the public school system is its neglect of the essentials which contribute to characterbuilding, and lauded the wiser course followed by the Church in these words:

I have found in the parochial schools the saving principle, which has been eliminated in the public school system. I have found in them a secular education which, in every recent test, has shown superior efficiency over the public school education. I have found the idea of authority dominating moral instruction, and the idea of divinity vitalizing moral instruction. I have found the idea of personal responsibility to God pressed home upon the mind of youth. I know no other way of making good citizens. I can say that, in its parochial school system, your Church has built an institution that makes for the conservation of the American ideal of life and government.

Among the more recent converts to Catholic ideals is Professor W. H. T. Dau, of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Mo., an excerpt from whose pamphlet entitled "Why Lutheran Schools?" appears in the last report of the Commissioner of Education. We quote the following significant words:

Children with immortal souls must not be educated for this world only, but especially and principally for eternity. In view of this, they must be daily and diligently instructed in the saving truths of Christianity. This is the foremost aim of the Lutheran parish school. The Lutherans believe that every education making any claim to completeness must include religious training. A mere moral training will not suffice them. Moral education, dealing with the theories of right and wrong, considers personal education in its efforts upon the welfare of self and others, whether good or evil. But moral teaching, apart from religion, is like a tree separated from its roots. The moral education, therefore, must be founded on and issue out of a religious training, because the latter supplies the only real basis for true morality. Religious instruction is the only safe

and solid foundation of an education, because it trains the child to know when its behavior is beneficial or harmful to himself or his neighbor. * *The Lutherans believe and know that if they succeed in making their children true citizens of the Kingdom of Christ, they will at the same time

have made them true citizens of the United States. * * * The Lutheran schools are therefore not a menace but a blessing to the liberty of our country.

With these Catholic arguments before us, coming as they do from non-Catholic sources, must we not somehow question the sincerity of those "broadminded" liberal Catholics who still insist on the superior advantages of secularized schools? May our appeal to parents to consider seriously this vital problem not be made in vain! September means the re-opening of schools and colleges. Let the name of the institution you choose spell Catholic.

It is with profound gratitude that we note the final silencing in the House of Representatives of anti-Catholic bigots whose sole object was the dismissal of the Sisters from the Government Indian schools by an act of legislation.

One million, four hundred and forty thousand dollars had been apportioned

for support of Indian day and industrial schools not otherwise provided for, and for other educational and industrial purposes in connection therewith, provided that no part of this appropriation, or any other appropriation provided for herein or hereafter, except appropriations made pursuant to treaties, shall be paid any employe in any position in the Indian school service, who does not hold a certificate showing that such employe has passed the necessary examination required by the Civil Service Commission for such position, etc.

The Sisters, not having entered the Civil Service by means of examinations, but under a ruling of the Civil Service Commission, would therefore have been ousted from the Government schools together with certain other employees. An effort was made by many members