Why did Pilate condemn our Lord to the Cross? He knew our Lord was innocent of the crimes brought against him; he knew more: he realised in some way our Lord was not merely man. The Romans believed in gods appearing in human form, in goddesses having human sons, and so on. Quite clearly Pilate was awed by the presence of Christ. Yet he condemned him! There were two reasons for this awful sin: first, Pilate's evil life, his horrible cruelty, had raised up against him many enemies, and given them a handle to bring about his disgrace with the Roman Emperor. The background or Pilate's life was wrong. The second cause was self-love. When Blessed Henry Suso had a vision of his Dominican master in glory he was told that to attain holiness there must be the renunciation of self. From this station I learn that I may sin suddenly and gravely against my Lord unless my life in general is true and spiritually healthy; and that the more I have of self-love the more I shall prefer self to God and his will.

‘On mount Calvary the side of the divine Saviour was transfixed. From that gaping wound blood gushed out, like a torrent, bounding forward over time, cleansing men's souls, expiating their sins, and lavishing upon them the riches of salvation.’ These words written by Pope Pius XII recall his famous encyclical in which he wrote, ‘on the Cross the Church like a new Eve, or mother of all the living, was born from the Saviour's side. Thus St Ambrose, speaking of the pierced side of Christ, says, “Now it is built, now it is formed; now … it is fashioned; now it is created. Now the spiritual house is erected into a holy priesthood.” … By the blood which he shed on the Cross he removed the obstacle of the divine wrath and enabled all the heavenly gifts … to flow forth from the fountains of the Saviour for the salvation of men, and especially of the faithful. It was on the tree of the Cross, finally, that he purchased his Church.’

Easter Sunday is not a feast day standing by itself. It is the culmination of a celebration which may be said to begin on Palm Sunday and which continues through Low Sunday and beyond to Ascension Day, and even to Whit Sunday and its octave. All this is the Pasch or Passover, which we call Easter. It is the Spring Festival, in a sense the New Year—the New Year not of our arbitrary calendars but of nature and of life, vegetable, animal, human and divine.

Easter is the centre and climax of the whole Christian year. But in a sense it is not only a Christian feast, nor does it originate with Christ or in Christendom. We know that the word Pasch or Passover is not a Christian name, nor originally it was a Christian feast: it is a Jewish name and a Jewish feast. By the time of Christ it had come to mean for the Jews principally a commemoration of their passage from the slavery of Egypt to the Promised Land ‘flowing with milk and honey'.

The absence of hermits as a recognised and esteemed element in the life of the Church for the last century or two is an extraordinary phenomenon, for in other ages hermits have always been numerous and accepted. This is not merely that eremitical vocations are lacking, they possibly exist in numbers; but is in part at least to be attributed to the general attitude of suspicion with which the eremitical life is viewed. In the West there is no legal provision made for hermits in canon law, and the difficulties of a religious or priest embracing the eremitical life ar practically insuperable. Spiritual writers rarely treat of eremiticism as a means or state of perfection, and it tends to be regarded as a thing of the past which has no place in the Church today.

There are, however, not lacking signs that this state of affairs may be passing away. The example of Charles de Foucauld and the spiritual personality of St Thérèse of the child Jesus are turning minds to the possibilities of the life of an anchoret, and many writings on the subject are beginning to appear.

Saint Richard, surnamed de Wiche, was born at Wiche in Worcestershire. His father was called Richard and his mother Alice. From his childhood he applied himself so diligently to learning as to excel in a short time all his school-fellows and others of his age. HlS elder brother, during his minority, was under ward, so that he came to his estate in great distress. Richard, pitying his brother's case and being not able to help him in any other way, made himself his servant, tilling his ground and serving him for a long time, with much patience in the meanest and most laborious employments: by which means he so far gained his brother's love and affection that of his own accord he freely settled by deed all his inheritance upon him.

The publication on 30th September, 1952, simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic, of this new edition of the Bible is without a doubt a most important event in the history of English biblical translation.

It is the result of fifteen years’ work by a committee of American scholars, numbering thirty-two in all, assisted by an Advisory Board representing forty Protestant denominations in the United States. Many of the foremost biblical scholars of America have been concerned, and the story of their labours is one of remarkable co-operation between represenatives of almost every shade of Protestant opinion in the land. A Jew was on the committee of the Old Testament side. The New Testament ad been published in 1946, and with it an interesting booklet describing the methods of work and the principles involved. Now the Old Testament has been finished and the Bible published as a whole, but the corresponding book of introduction to the Old Testament was delayed until January, and this is the principal reason for the delayed appearance this review, since it is obviously better to judge a translation in the light of the translators’ own principles, and the committee is to be congratulated on having made this possible.