ent millions of years in moulding a
bit of old red sandstone.

[Footnote 5: "I have often thought that the unquestionable inferiority
of German literature about Platonism points to an inherent defect in the
German mind."--_The Philosophy of Plotinus_, p. 13]

Meanwhile we have our cocksure little guides, some of whom say to
us, "That is primitive, therefore it is good," and others, "This is
up-to-date, therefore it is better." Not very wise persons any of
them, I fear.

And again, writing of Catholic Modernism in France:

We have given our reasons for rejecting the Modernist attempt at
reconstruction. In the first place, we do not feel that we are
required by sane criticism to surrender nearly all that M. Loisy
has surrendered. We believe that the Kingdom of God which Christ
preached was something much more than a platonic dream. We believe
that He did speak as never man spake, so that those who heard Him
were convinced that He was more than man. We believe, in short,
that the object of our worship was a historical figure.

I will give a few extracts from _Speculum Animae_, a most valuable and
most beautiful little book, which show the true bent of his mind:

On all questions _about_ religion there is the most distressing
divergency. But the saints do not contradict each other.

Prayer . . . is "the elevation of the mind and heart to God." It is in
prayer, using the word in this extended sense, that we come into
immediate contact with the things that cannot be shaken.

Are we to set against such plain testimony the pessimistic agnosticism
of a voluptuary like Omar Khayyam?

_There was the Door to which I found no Key_. . . .

May it not be that the door has no key because it has no lock?

The suggestion that in prayer we only hear the echo of our own voices is
ridiculous to anyone who has prayed.

The life of Christ was throughout a life of prayer. Not only did He love
to spend many hours in lonely communing with His Father, on the
mountain-tops, which He was perhaps the first to love, and to choose for
this purpose, but His whole life was spent in habitual realisation of
God's presence.

Religion is caught rather than taught; it is the religious teacher, not
the religious lesson, that helps the pupil to believe.

What we love, that we see; and what we see, that we are.

We need above all things to simplify our religion and our i