Blackfriars, a month late owing to war conditions in production, wishes to join its voice with the innumerable tributes that have honoured and mourned the passing of Cardinal Hinsley. Catholics all over the country have expressed their gratitude to him for making Catholicism acceptable to their fellow countrymen, showing that it is no ‘Italian Mission ‘but has continued as much a part of England from time immemorial as his Catholic village home in Yorkshire. They have recognized the great qualities of this old Country Catholicism incarnate in the Cardinal, essentially straightforward with a hatred of the underhand and a love of fair play which represent the best in the English tradition. Many have recalled how this Yorkshire directness was elevated by a strongly Christian life that grew out of a deep personal love of our Lord and made his actions clearly Christo-centric. It was this Christian life that explained his warm-hearted attitude to non-Catholics which was already clear in his teaching days at Ushaw and culminated in his personal relations with Dr. Cosmo Lang and Dr. George Bell in particular. Blackfriars can add nothing new to what has been said in this way, but we are grateful to Dr. Bell, Bishop of Chichester, for consenting to write the memoir of this issue and so enabling us to pay our own tribute to the Cardinal’s memory in a way that he would appreciate. We are grateful, too, to Sir James Marchant for contributing another generous Anglican tribute. May the co-operation that the Cardinal implemented continue to bear an increasing fruit as a permanent memorial to his name.

The death of Cardinal Hinsley brings a sense of grievous loss to innumerable men and women outside his own flock. His championship of right, his outspokenness, his love of England, his pity for the suffering, all inspired by a deep religious faith, combined to make a remarkable impression on the public mind. A story he told me of his first meeting with Mr. Churchill throws a flood of light on the bonds which bound him to his fellow countrymen. It was just after the fall of France, when there was a widespread belief that anything might happen. ‘I am glad we’re alone,’ he said to the Prime Minister, ‘and have not to rely on France.’ ‘Why? ‘asked Mr. Churchill, much surprised. He replied, ‘Englishmen fight best when they have got their backs to the wall.’ It was very fitting that when the Cardinal died, nearly three years later, Mr. Churchill should express his deep sympathy with English Roman Catholics ‘in the loss of a leader of character and courage, a great patriot, and a true lover of justice and freedom.’

There is another campaign in the leadership of which the Cardinal’s death will be most keenly felt. It is the campaign for a regeneration of Britain and Europe and a building up of a new social, economic and political system on just and moral foundations. Staunch Roman Catholic though he was, he saw that in a world so divided as our own the gathering of all forces looking in the same direction was indispensable for such a purpose. Accordingly, in August, 1940, profoundly stirred by the moral collapse which caused France’s down fall, he inaugurated the movement of ‘The Sword of the Spirit ‘to ‘deal with the issues raised by the present war.’

I had just finished reading in his firm flowing handwriting, but with here and there a marked break, what must have been, alas ! one of his last personal letters, when the sad news came through of the heart attack from which he did not recover. He confessed that he had been having a rather bad time lately and was incapable of real work.

Then his thoughts reverted to the subject of unity, one of the clear notes of his episcopacy, rarely absent from his serious mind, and to our grievous disunities. ‘In the mission field, I found,’ he writes, that the awful confusion due to disunion was the obstacle to the spread-of the Kingdom of God. In Europe our enemies—the enemies of Christianity, he calls them—make capital out of our divisions. But the mere mixing together, so to speak, of varying creeds and of different ways of worship would be a mechanical union, not the one body of Christ.’ He develops the I heme again and says that our prayers for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit sent to lead us into all truth must be ceaseless. It was the theme of one of his letters from the Collegio Inglese after his elevation, whilst he waited to take up his great task—’ At my age what can I do? ‘But as a soldier he obeys. ‘

The troubled years and the awful movement of evil events have revealed that the Holy Father was divinely guided in his choice of a messenger. As the Public Orator of Oxford declaimed, ‘Cardinal Hinsley has become a true leader, not only in his own Church but in the nation at large.’ His broadcast after war broke upon us showed that he spoke with the voice of the nation—sad, stern, courageous, unfaltering.

I have been asked to speak on the Christian leaven in the University. It is an important subject and one on which I myself feel strongly. The view which I am going to put forward will not I know be generally accepted ; it does not claim to be the only view which can be taken of the situation, but it is one which, in my opinion, is at the present time too little stressed ; I may therefore be forgiven if in this short space I state my case rather strongly, and I should like to apologise beforehand to all those whom I am now about to provoke. I do not mean to be offensive, but it is difficult to put what I want to say shortly and clearly without seeming to be so.

I propose in this paper to exclude all other considerations, and to state as forcibly as I can just one, perhaps rather narrow, view, essentially a convert’s view, of what the Christian Leaven is, and what it might be. I speak moreover not merely as a convert from Protestantism to Catholicism, but from Paganism to Christianity, and this is a far more revolutionary conversion, different not only in degree but almost in kind. ... St. Augustine as compared with Cardinal Newman. It is necessarily of more significance for the modern world in as much as the modern world itself is overwhelmingly pagan and not protestant and for this reason it is important to try and realise what is in fact involved in such conversion; it is not merely a question of Apostolic Succession or the validity of Anglican Orders which is at issue, but our entire conception of existence, the question of God’s existence and the nature of man.

Little is kown about the outer life of Meister Eckhart. Born somewhere in Thuringia about 1260, he probably entered the Dominican Convent at Erfurt as a youth. His great intellectual gifts were soon recognised, for he was sent to Paris to complete his education at the fount of medieval scholarship. On his return to Germany he was elected Provincial of his Order. As such he was entrusted with the supervision of all Dominican convents in Northern Germany, and, after some time, with the reform of the houses in the Bohemian Provinnce as well. About 1310 he was relieved of these administrative duties, and again sent to Paris as teacher of his Order. Three years later he returned to Germany, living first at Strasbourg and afterwards at Cologne, where he became one of the most influential preachers. As, at that time, one of the chief duties of the Dominicans was the spiritual direction of numerous communities of religious women, Meister Eckhart’s sermons were mostly addressed to them. In these communities an exuberant inner life had sprung up, and Eckhart, reared in the intellectual discipline of St. Thomas, brought his great learning to the task of leading the devout women away from visions and ecstatic experiences to the heights of mystic contemplation.

But in these heights human language becomes sadly inadequate. It was Meister Eckhart’s tragedy that he tried to express the inexpressible, and in doing so had to use paradoxical statements that savoured of false doctrine. So the last years of his life were overshadowed by a trial for heresy, which eventually led to the condemnation of twenty-six of his theses, though most of these were admitted to be susceptible of an orthodox interpretation.

The great, attraction exercised by the writings of the mystics on all who sincerely love God is a fact of everyday experience. Richard Rolle in our own country, Ruysbroeck in the Netherlands, Saint Catherine of Siena in Italy, Saint Teresa in Spain, these and a host of others have a numerous and sympathetic following. But there is one exception for which it is difficult to account : St. John of the Cross. Undoubtedly the greatest of them all, he is nevertheless generally regarded by average readers with something akin to fear and repulsion. When they pick up the Ascent of Mount Carmel for the first time and become aware of the sacrifices, the detachment and the denudation of spirit which he demands they are filled with consternation and dread. Such teaching seems to lead more to death than to life : and urged by the instinct of self preservation rather than by lack of generosity they recoil from putting it into practice.

This impression, derived solely from the Ascent, is, to a certain degree, comprehensible. The relentless logic with which St. John of the Cross drives his principles to their conclusions, the merciless insistence on the absolute validity of certain Gospel truths, the absence of all compromise and indulgence, these and other traits of a like nature strike a chill into the heart of uninitiated readers. They feel that the saint must have been devoid of all sensibility, out of touch with common humanity and limited in his outlook on the world. And they put down the book with the conviction that such counsel is not for them because it is utterly inhuman.

[St. Thomas treats of poverty in his Contra Impugnantes Dei Cultum (c.6), in the Contra Gentiles (III, 131-135) and in the Summit (II-II, 186, 3 and 188, 7). All these passages are important and will be considered elsewhere. But it seemed worth while to call attention to the little-known sermons translated here which have special qualities of simplicity and directness. Further matter of a similar kind will be found in Sermones Dominicales 48, 80 and 125 and in the Exposition of the Lord’s Prayer under Panem nostrum.]

Remember that thou didst receive good things in thy lifetime, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and thou art tormented. Lk. 16: 25.

In these words four things are shown us. First the temporal prosperity of the reprobate : Remember that thou didst receive good things in thy lifetime. Second, the brief adversity of the just in this world : Likewise Lazarus evil things. Third, the eternal blessedness of the just : But now he is comforted. Fourth, the perpetual misery of the wicked : And thou art tormented.