It is always attractive to make a comparison between mystics differing in their nature and formation; and a study of their experience, fundamentally the same, in its different interpretations, helps us to discover lights and shades, tones and accents, individual peculiarities that may escape our notice when we consider one mystic alone. This is so in the case of Catherine of Siena. Set by the side of other women mystics her world becomes more distinct, and her own figure takes on clearer outline. Compared with St Gertrude, for instance, she is more ecclesiastically-minded; compared with St Hildegarde, more positive; with St Teresa, more subtle; while perhaps she outstrips them all in enthusiasm and eloquence.

If we consider the ideas of St Thomas and Dame Julian on divine charity we find that there are similarities and differences. As might be expected, St Thomas is more analytical; however, Dame Julian has some ideas the sources of which may perhaps be found in her contemporary European mystics. Whereas St Thomas works out his ideas from his theology and on a developed plan, Dame Julian's thoughts are the result of her visions and come in the order of their occurrence.

St Thomas writes: ‘God's love as a divine gift is eternal and immutable, yet as regards the effect it imprints upon us it may at times be interrupted in so far as we at times fall away from him and again return to him. Now the effect of the divine love in us—which is taken away by sin—is grace whereby a man becomes worthy of eternal life; from this, however, sin shuts him out.’ (I-II, 113.)

St Thomas puts very briefly the difference between a free-man and a slave, when he says: ‘a free-man is one who is the cause of what is his, but a slave owes everything he has to another'. (De Reg. Prin. I, i.) Thus in a sense we are all the slaves of God. Our Lord brought friendship into that relation; yet for all that, we did not cease to be God's servants. Terms like ‘military service', ‘civil service’ and ‘foreign service’ are apt to create the impression that ‘divine service’ is likewise limited to a particular kind of work, such as going to church on Sundays. It is easy to miss the real meaning of what Christ said— ‘You cannot serve two masters', or of what St Paul said— ‘All whatsoever you do in word or in work do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him'. (Col. 3.)

Tradition has always surrounded marriage with ceremony and feasting even among the most primitive races and countries. Being the climax of human love it is not surprising to find this very natural instinct expressing itself thus. This tradition has almost inevitably found its way into the Christian mode of life and the liturgical spirit of the Church.

Mere love of pageantry is not a sufficient explanation of the full ceremonial of Christian marriage. The Nuptial Mass, which should always form part of any full Christian marriage, has a much deeper significance and reason, especially for the parties concerned. It is not just a kind of luxury, something added to fill out and prolong the festivities, still less should it ever be the privilege of the rich. It is more than an adornment or a frill, for it is deeply concerned with the very essence of marriage.

Christian chastity and purity, therefore, look towards God, and by a development in this direction can become a new virtue, that of vowed virginity or perfect and perpetual continence. Virginity consists in the will to abstain totally from sex for God, the will to be immune from sexual pleasure. It is destroyed by deliberate consent to such pleasure, though restored by penitence, in the sense that there can return a will to remain virgin and to have remained virgin, though the fact of indulgence cannot be done away with. Bodily integrity is not essential. Perfect perpetual continence is the same will to abstain from all use of sex, but only in the future, in those who take the vow after voluntary experience of sex. While those who take the vow before any such experience can reiterate their former good will even after losing the virtue, and so regain its formal element in the will, though not the material element of never having experienced sex, those who vow after such experience cannot will virginity, except as a might-havebeen.

Fr Victor White has contributed so frequently to The Life of the Spirit that any attempt to avoid a slightly domestic atmosphere in this account of his work would be forced and unnatural. Not that this present collection of his essays contains more than one which has appeared here already. Some day, we hope, the others which have been published here may also be collected into a book. Such a work would be more concerned with the theological side of the frontiers of psychology and theology than is God and the Unconscious, where psychology is at least the starting-point—thougli never the terminus. Much of the material will be familiar to the readers of Blackjriars, Dominican Studies, and the Guild of Pastoral Psychology pamphlets. But there are several important new chapters; all the essays have been re-worked; and the result is a book of surprising unity.