Those prophetic words, spoken by our Lord shortly before his Passion, reveal to us the very heart and centre of our Catholic Faith. They were echoed by St Peter in his first sermon, on the very day of the founding of the Church, the first Pentecost: 'Therefore let all the House of Israel knoW most certainly that God hath made both Lord and Christ this same Jesus whom you crucified.' And a few days later proclaiming the gospel of redemption, through the death and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth to the Jewish people, probably within tne precincts of the Temple, he summed up his message in these words. 'Neither is there any other name under heaven given amongs men whereby we must be saved.'

When we say that the Bible is the word of God we mean first of all that God is its author. That is to say God inspired human writers to compose the books which we call the Sacred Scriptures. But he did not dictate them: the human authors were not mere secretaries who had no words of their own to utter. But they were inspired, and inspired by the Holy Spirit who is the Truth itself. God used these men as his instruments: he respected, as it were, their own gifts and skill, their mental outlook and their individuality of style and diction. But he preserved them from error, for they were to write of God's own work—and in that there can be no lie. If God exists, then God can neither deceive nor be deceived: he is not merely truthful, he is the Truth, and so the words that are his are true.

Many people have a genuine desire for perfection and consistently strive to become better. Apart from the small failings which are inevitable, they keep up a constant and generous effort with a view to their spiritual progress. Good will is the last thing they lack. It is all the more important, then, that such people should not find that they have made a mistake as to the fundamental direction of their effort. In exhorting them to become increasingly more generous, one has not even begun to tackle the problem, for what they need is not exhortation so touch as direction. We should like to indicate here the main lines along which the spiritual life develops in accordance with prudence, in contradistinction to notions which are perhaps currently admitted, but which, in our opinion, have been insufficiently, examined.

In the case of the majority of saints, sanctity and knowledge seem to be two different things. Our admiration goes to the heroic penances they have imposed upon themselves, the uncompromising apostolate they have carried out, the outpourings of love which have been their heart's expression or the martyrdom which has crowned their life. As a general rule, we do no realize that intellectual excellence may have a connection with tb merits which raise a Christian to the altars. The interest of the case of St Thomas Aquinas is that in him we are compelled to investigate this problem. That the Church solemnly canonize him less than fifty, years after his death is a fact, as is also tn circumstance that his life was given in a remarkable degree to the work of the mind. It was spent in intellectual activity as exclusive and intense as one could wish.

In Advent we go back to the very beginning of the Gospel to St John the Baptist and his message. He has been called the school-master of the Apostles, and later apostles and preachers ought to study no less intently in his school. First, because he was the fore-runner of our blessed Lord, come to make his path straight and smooth before him. He was the remover of obstacles in that path, that would be in the way when the Lord came. This is not the highest power, but a very necessary one. His work was not so much that of a sacrament, which confers grace, as of a sacramental. The preaching an teaching, the rites and ceremonies of religious life with its specia clothes and organization, is of the same kind. All that has tne power of disposing men to come to our Lord; it stands as a witness to his truth and goodness.

If we were to consider the connection between spirituality and art in view of our modern situation we might easily conclude that there is little to tie them together. The world is full of obviously good Christians, devout living, earnest and regular at prayer; while the churches in which they pray are cluttered with hideous objects of piety and resound to the most dismal hymns. Bad sculpture and painting and bad music are associated with devout Christian folk. But it is impossible for man to see his own age in true perspective; we can only guess at what is growing or declining in our own life-times. But when we look back in history patterns begin to stand out before us in clearer outlines. And if we look back at our own English scene we can see examples of spiritual revival and decline and can examine the various arts that accompanied these phases. Thus in the age of Dunstan there was a great revival in the Christian spirit of the country, and in fact this can be detected in its contemporary art.

The Editor asks me to write on ‘the nature of sacrifice, showing how the Mass is a sacrifice’. It sounds quite simple. It is as if I were asked to speak on the nature of buttercup, and show that the flower you have picked is a butter-cup. I can get a dictionary description of Buttercup, show you Pictures of the species of Ranunculus called buttercup, compare your specimen with these descriptions and pictures, prove to you that there is no difference whatever between them, and conclude without a shadow of a doubt that you have picked an authentic, genuine sample of the class ‘Buttercup’.

We might proceed in the same way with this present assignment. We might look up the word ‘Sacrifice’ in a standard dictionary; or start from some good definition of ‘Sacrifice’ from some Doctor of the Church. Then we could take a good look at what happens at Mass, show how it fits the definition, and conclude that Holy Mass is undoubtedly a genuine specimen of the class ‘Sacrifice’.

The onlookers were amazed after the Apostles were filled with the Holy Ghost; they wondered, saying one to another, What meaneth this? Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine. With the commonsense answer, These are not drunk as you suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day, St Peter went on to give his hearers a dogmatic discourse on the incarnation: it was not an uplift exhortation about moral values nor a fine frenzy, but a down-to-the-earth statement of historic fact, followed by the uncompromising advice, Do penance, ana be baptized every one of you. Then, he added, yon shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.There could be no more fitting preface to a series of studies, of which this is the first, on the seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost in the light of scientific Christian theology.

August the 23rd of this year marks the centenary of the decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites by which Pius IX instituted the feast of the Sacred Heart as a common feast for the whole Church. His successor Pius XII takes this opportunity to write his latest encyclical letter in order to explain and defend what has become such a popular devotion of the faithful during the past century. But it is a devotion which has had a much longer history than that, as the Pope is at pains to prove; indeed he here maintains that fundamentally it is an ancient and traditional devotion of the faithful, the only thing new about it being the new form it has taken on during the past three centuries owing to the influence of certain holy men and women. It is this new form which gives reason for the apologetic or defensive character of the encyclical.