The question of saving something would scarcely arise unless first it were worth preserving, and secondly in danger of neglect or oblivion. That the biblical interpretation of the Fathers is worth preserving in general, need not be laboured; but lest this fundamental premise should be evaded, it may be useful to quote the authoritative pronouncement of Leo XIII in his encyclical Providentissimus Deus. He quotes the Council of Trent ‘that it is permitted to no one to interpret Holy Scripture .. . against the unanimous agreement of the Fathers’, and later he adds in his own words, ‘The holy Fathers are of supreme authority whenever they all interpret in one and the same manner any text of the Bible, as pertaining to the doctrine of faith and morals; for their unanimity clearly evinces that such interpretation has come down from the Apostles as a matter of Catholic faith. The opinion of the Fathers is also of very great weight when they treat of these matters in their capacity of doctors, unofficially; not only because they excel in their knowledge of revealed doctrine, but because they are men of eminent sanctity and ardent zeal for the truth, on whom God has bestowed a more ample measure of his light. Wherefore the expositor should make it his duty to follow their footsteps with all reverence, and to use their labours with intelligent appreciation.’

Far the largest category in the psalter are the ‘Individual Laments’, the psalms in which an individual Israelite—as opposed to the whole community—complains to Yahweh of some distress, and pleads to be rescued from it. In the very nature of the case the attitude here must be more self-conscious than in the hymns of praise. He who praises strives to lose himself in his awareness of Yahweh; he who supplicates strives to find himself in Yahweh’s awareness of him. Before it was a question of man reaching up to Yahweh; now it is a question of Yahweh bending down to man. Yet still the focus of attention is fundamentally the same. Still Yahweh is there among his people, united to each single member by the covenant-bond. Still the soul of the suppliant Israelite is dominated by the overwhelming consciousness of Yahweh listening, and Yahweh there.

What is in the mind of that suppliant, standing in the presence of his God, praying not quietly in his heart but at the top of his voice, with every resource of human eloquence, with wild gestures and with tears?

During recent decades the power and prestige of the trade union movement have been greatly increased. In the years between the two wars, the trade unions enjoyed full legal recognition, and even a privileged position at law. (They could induce workmen to break their contracts of employment, for example, without being liable to be sued for damages by the employers, and this meant that in no circumstances could the union be prevented from striking, however unreasonably, by any threat to its funds.) The achievement of full employment during and since the war has naturally increased their bargaining power. Many employers now welcome the co-operation of an organized body representing their workmen where previously they had only grudgingly accepted the existence of the trade unions. The consultations between the Government and trade unions on certain matters of economic policy have continued in the post-war period, though it would not be true to say that there has always been real co-operation.

Christian unity is the concern of all these three books, and they are all of some importance; the first two for an understanding of the place of the Catholic Church in the ecumenical scene, and the third for the explanatory light it throws, from the Anglican side, upon the complex and debatable question of the Church of South India.

Mr J. M. Todd sets out to explain the relationship of Catholicism to the Ecumenical Movement. His book, the first of its kind in English and one which supplies a great need, includes a synopsis of the history and scope of this almost universal emergence, in the non-Catholic world during the past fifty years, of thought and action for Christian unity. It is written with a wide knowledge of the whole subject and with a deep conviction of the urgent importance of the ecumenical spirit as an essential element in the apostolate of the Catholic Church in the modern world. The essence of ecumenism is understanding; to seek out what is true in the beliefs, practices and values of those who differ from us and to make that the starting point of work for unity. We do not attempt, nowadays at least, whatever we may have done in the past, to convert the Chinese or the Hindu without the closest and most sympathetic study of what they already believe, and of the ethics and culture from which their beliefs issue and in which they are held and practised. We proclaim the Christian gospel as the true fulfilment of the aspirations which arise from these beliefs, and we take care to present it, as far as possible, in the atmosphere, idiom of thought and the clothing characteristic of the existing culture of those to whom we preach.