It is a striking instance of the wondrous ways of Divine Providence that the city whose past renown circled round its false cult of ‘great Diana of the Ephesians’ should be the place whence should be proclaimed to the world, and for all time, the Divine Maternity of Mary, παναγíα θεοτόκος, the All-holy Mother of God.

The Council of Ephesus, the fifteenth centenary of which occurs this year, is in importance second only to the Council of Nicaea. That earliest Oecumenical Council affirmed against Arius the Divinity of our Blessed Lord. This Synod of Ephesus by proclaiming the Divine Motherhood of Mary, affirmed against Nestorius, God-Incarnate, One Person in Two Natures, and that Person Divine.

In the controversies that led up to both these Councils the very existence of the Christian Faith was at stake. It was saved in the one by the test-word όμοούσιος (of one substance); it was saved in the other by the touchstone of orthodoxy θεοτóκος (Mother of God).

Nestorius, monk and priest of Antioch, became Patriarch of Constantinople in 428, and soon after, in his presence, the priest Anastasius preached violent diatribes against the term Theotokos.

‘It was impossible,’ cried he, ‘that God should be born of a woman. Let no one call Mary Theotokos, for Mary was but a woman.’ The people were roused. But the Patriarch, instead of showing them that there was little to fear in a term which everyone used, and which had been employed for at least two centuries by great writers, such as Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Didymus, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, Theophilus of Alexandria, and others, himself endorsed the sermons of his chaplain and began to commit to writing and to circulate widely his objectionable doctrines.

The name Burney,’ Hazlitt once said, ‘is a X pass-port to the Temple of Fame. Those who bear it, wits, scholars, novelists, musicians, artists, are by birthright free of Parnassus.’ And the Burneys were full as loveable as they were cultured. ‘I love all that breed,’ cried Dr. Johnson, ‘and I love them because they love each other.’

Now of books about the Burneys there have been of recent years no end. Most of them, of course, are concerned with Madame D’Arblay, from Austin Dobson’s splendid edition of her Diary to the entertaining gossip; of Hill and Seeley. And her father, Dr. Burney, and her brother Charles, the great Greek scholar, and her sisters, have not passed unnoticed. Yet, until this present time, one hundred and ten years after his death, no one had thought of writing the Life of her sailor-brother James. He has had, indeed, to wait long for his Biography, but perhaps happily, for now that it has come at last it is an ideal one, graphic in style and based on much hitherto unpublished matter, altogether worthy of a man whose career was a romance and who is the connecting link between the great Johnsonian Circle and that other very different coterie of which Charles Lamb was the shining light.

There are several reasons why one should visit Roscoff, apart from the good and sufficient reason —for those who like to take their travelling individually—that nowadays one rarely does. I doubt if the real Brittany—the Bretagne bretonnante of speech, clothing and song—is anywhere less sophisticated; while for an Englishwoman who is one-half Welsh, Roscoff has old affinities, historical and domestic, romantic and homely, but all harmonious and affectionate.

A small granite fishing-haven on the northerly seaboard of Finistere, Roscoff owes the fig-trees and magnolias of its walled gardens to the Isle de Batz, some three miles of rocky island, surmounted by a tall white lighthouse, which lies couchant across the entrance to Roscoff’s almost landlocked harbour. Only a mile or so of channel intervenes between Batz and the mainland; and you can sail across, if you will, and see the island’s only treasure—the stole of St. Pol-de-Leon laid carefully by since the sixth century. It is said to be a Byzantine stole of blue silk tissue, cheerfully embroidered with huntsmen, dogs, horses and falcons; and its accredited owner, St. Pol, was one of those genuine but legend-bedizened evangelists between Wales (or Cornwall) and Armorica, whose antecedents and exploits were (as I have been informed and believe) the bane of the learned compilers of the Dictionary of National Biography. Being entirely incompetent to sift the views of the D.N.B., of the Bollandists, and of the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould, all of whom have lavished themselves with different results on St. Pol, I will only submit that Paulus Aurelianus of Pen hoen in Glamorganshire (or Cornwall) seems to have fled from the onus and honor of a British bishopric, only to be tricked (by a sealed letter borne by himself) into accepting a French one.

Commodities often belie the promise of their labels, a failure noticeable in other things as well. Philanthropy turns out to be rather unfriendly, industrialism does not make for industry, a libertarian state denies the right of free association, and expels the Jesuits.

The name ‘Rationalism’ conveys the impression of something hard-headed and matter-of-fact, which scrutinizes everything in the cold light of reason, and is not averse from giving a cold douche to the emotional postulates of piety and idealism—and all that.

Accordingly, a Catholic, picking up The Rationalist Annual for 1932, might perhaps be expected to fortify himself with the thought that still le coeur a ses raisons .... But as he reads, and especially if he is a Thomist, the conviction grows that in reality the roles are reversed. He begins to feel like Charles Kingsley’s East Wind blowing into a centrally-heated hall. He must mind his manners, for he has entered a religious edifice charged with all the earnest feeling of of an ethical society; an atmosphere (to argue like a Rationalist) heavy, not with the fumes of incense, but the steam of damp umbrellas and goloshes. And if he stays, he must resist the temptation to scoff.

In the new religion of science God is supposed to have had the goodness to invite man to profiteer upon the universe.’ When Daedalus found he could fly he got too far above himself—and the vanquished world: his wings melted in the sun’s heat and, being dust, he unto dust returned.

The science of the world, it would seem, is in fair way to conquering the world. Having measured the world, it cannot but think it has measured the master of the world. It re-edits its theology to suit the newer enlightenment, and ‘the God of Mr. Pupin, we are given to understand, is a God who serves.’

Mr. Ransom sketches the religious history of East and West in terms of an Eternal Triangle. There was the bearded, inscrutable God of Thunder : the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. There was the Logos : Reason, the Patron of Science. There was the Pneuma, the Paraclete, the Ghost. There came a day, says Mr. Ransom, when the Logos, the Demigod, was substituted for ‘the Pneuma, the Holy Ghost, the Tetragram, the God of Israel.’ ‘And this was the very beginning of Occidentalism.’ We cast out the thunder : we could make our own. We wanted something sane yet soothingly sentimental. And so we chose the Logos. homely, serviceable scientist like ourselves. We fashioned the ‘soft modern version of Christ.’ We had been left with too remote a Reason : we said : ‘Not on bread alone doth man live’ (We neglected to add ‘Nor on butter’).