“Can there be an heroic humanism?” It is to ask, in effect, whether Christian humanism is possible, a humanism not merely compatible with sanctity, but essentially directed to the achievement of sanctity as to the achievement of its own purpose. But the adjective is significant. Heroism implies a more than human effort, a strain therefore and tension; and the persistent presence of tension implies for the Christian humanist two outstanding dangers: forgetfulness of divine transcendence, forgetfulness of irremediable human sorrow.

The things that are seen have a directness of appeal to the heart that the greater glories miss for being hidden in the obscurities of faith. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard.” “It remains, then,” wrote Joannes a Sancto Thoma, “that the captive soul, bound in the bonds of faith to its clouded object, can be illumined only by the flame of love.” And there is no mysticism without tears. “I sought Him Whom my soul loveth, I sought Him and I found Him not.” But the beauty that is not God is ever present, and pulls at the heart to such purpose as to become potential rival of divinity. So the discovery of God often entails a first reaction against the things which before had distracted attention from the search for Him.

In 1934, when it was known that André Gide had turned to Communism, the news excited much attention. Gide had stood for an extreme individualism. Had he not, in a popular phrase, exalted the morals of the aesthetic? Had he not glorified that type of individual merely in order to portray a personality pure and real, beyond all moral ties? Had he not always been in search of truth, in praise of truth, despising all dogma, all belief in the possibility of a traditional authority capable of comprising the truth? And now André Gide, the descendant of an old French family, the symbol of an over-refined intellectualism, had become the follower of revolutionary dogmatic Moscow. Did this fact alone not signify that the bourgeoisie was at the end of its power and influence?

André Gide was a model to all those intellectuals, coming out of the bourgeoisie, to whom the existing order had become so unbearable that they took in earnest the promises of Communism, sometimes even knowing, as Gide knew, that the world of Communism was in reality a contradiction of their own being.

The second volume of Lord Halifax’s life completed a first-rate biography of a striking and dynamic personality. It gives to the many who only knew him externally, in his chivalrous championship of Reunion ideals, and in the part he played in the domestic politics of his own Church, a vivid picture of the whole man. Mr. Lockhart sketches with skilful pen Lord Halifax’s mental background, his temperament and character, his inner spiritual life and his family, social and ecclesiastical relationships. And this complete portrait, seen by most of us now for the first time, will compel thoughtful Catholics to search afresh for the answer to the question: What was it that kept so exceptionally gifted a man, whose high principle and personal integrity no one could question, unwaveringly faithful to the Church of England through a long life of incessant preoccupation with Catholicism, during which he came to hold almost every doctrinal truth which the Church proposes to the faith of its members? The answer to this question, if it could be found, is likely to provide the answer to another of great moment: Do the causes which operated to keep this one man faithful to the Church of England operate also to keep many others, similarly circumstanced, to the same allegiance?

If any new proof were required to establish the rapid decay of the society in which we live, none more convincing could be adduced than the increasing volume of appeals to reason which have been issued by competent authorities of late years. It is an unhappy reflection that this iteration is made necessary by the disregard with which they have been met; for it is axiomatic that the frequency of such appeals is governed by the heedlessness with which they are received.

A recent issue of the Tablet contained a report of the moving address made by the Pope, from what was thought to be his death-bed on Christmas Eve, as well as a careful commentary on the Recall to Religion made a short time previously by the Archbishop of Canterbury. On another page news was given of the latest book written by the Master General of the Order of Preachers. Appel au Bon Sens has created something of a sensation in France and it will, perhaps, not be out of place to suggest some reasons for this; particularly as the book is not likely to have a wide circulation among English readers.

The dominant note of English Dominican life from the accession of Elizabeth to the end of the Penal days was heroism. Often with a prison for a convent and a dungeon for a cell the friars suffered all cheerfully for the salvation of souls. They kept alive the Province not for the sake of the Province but for the maintaining of Catholic Faith in their native land. Reduced to the rank of a Congregation for want of a central house, they sent their recruits to foreign Provincials who in splendid charity trained them for the religious life and apostolate.

Heroism of the highest order is seen in the life of the martyr, the Venerable Robert Nutter, the English Dominican nearest to the supreme honours of the Church. He, and his brother John who was beatified in 1929, were Lancashire men and members of Brasenose College, Oxford, and both were admitted to the English College at Rheims, where Robert, though reputed the younger, was ordained priest on January 6th, 1582, nine months before his brother. Immediately following his ordination he set out for England and landed on the south coast, probably at Portsmouth, from whence he made his way into Hampshire where he worked until his first arrest, February 2nd, 1584.