continuous and unbroken testimony of the Church, from the days of the Apostles to those of the Reformation, in favor of certain doctrines and observances, as those which CHRIST actually enjoined or sanctioned, and which by Him were intended to be permanent and universal? This is Catholic Dogma; this is the Catholic Faith; and for ourselves we have no hesitation in adopting the article of the Athanasian Creed which avers that except a man keep the Catholic Faith, whole and undefiled-the Trinity in unity, the mysterious Incarnation, the Vicarious Sacrifice, the resurrection of the dead, etc.,-—he cannot be saved. If in this a restriction is imposed, it is imposed by CHRIST; if a difficulty is created, it is created by those who refuse submission to CHRIST'S authority and belief in CHRIST'S person and doctrine, and who, in the vanity of their minds and the depravity of their hearts, would exalt themselves in the Temple of GoD above all that is called GOD. We do not think that Bishop McLaren's reviewer belongs to this class. has, on the contrary, given evidence of sincere attachment to the Bible and the Church. But he is mistaken in his estimate of the Bishop's work, and in his depreciation of a mode of reasoning which is general and valid.

He

There was need for such a work as Catholic Dogma. The argument might have been amplified with advantage, and the whole work made more extended and complete. But it has met a public want, and has opened up a way for the solution of many religious doubts, and for the attainment of spiritual peace. It is not by flippancy and sophism, much less by arrogance and dogmatism, that the skeptical tendencies of the age will be counteracted, and Christian confidence and unity be restored. There is needed something more solid, more rational, more certain-a something which appeals to the loftier instincts of humanity, and in which both the intellect and the soul will find satisfaction and repose. This "one thing needful" can never be supplied by a materialistic philosophy, or a godless science, however ingeniously its dogmas may be woven together, or popular the men whose sanction it has ob

tained; this rock of certitude, this spring of comfort, will never be found among the endless divergences of dissent, or the mechanical uniformity and aesthetic worship, and metaphysical subtleties and contradictions, of the Church of Rome. It must spring from a diviner source; and as a message coming direct from GOD, it must meet the highest aspirations and deepest longings of the human soul. Only in GoD can the universal craving for rest be satisfied; and faith in GOD is based upon the authority of GOD himself, as exemplified in His Word and in His Church. Hence, Catholic Dogma is simply Christian Faith; and the validity of that Faith is attested by many infallible proofs," drawn from personal experience and universal history, from the depths of our religious consciousness, and the uniform course of GOD in the government of the world.

THOMAS S. CARTWRIGHT.

CURRENT LITERATURE.

N

BIOGRAPHY.

ATHANIEL Hawthorne and His Wife [James R. Osgood & Co.].--It is not often that a son makes a good biographer of a father, for the simple reason that his judgment as to his parent must be more or less warped by his affection. Yet probably in other respects none is better fitted for the task, as nowhere but at home can a father be truly known and understood. Mr. Julian Hawthorne has proved his capacity for the difficult task-to him, of course, a labor of love, all the easier in that the family cupboard contained no skeleton, nor the records of Nathaniel Hawthorne's singularly pure and blameless life anything to hide. All, therefore, that his son had to do was to exercise his discretion as to what should and what should not be published. What good taste would exclude he has excluded, and what common sense pointed out as likely, not only to interest the public, but also to show the world a typical man and wife, and, by consequence, a typical household, he has faithfully chronicled. This the author effects by allowing the subjects of the biography and their friends to speak for themselves without undue reticence, and at the same time without undue garrulousness. Mr. Julian Hawthorne's comments are few and short, serving rather as connecting links between the component parts than as dissertations on the virtues of those whose lives he is setting out before the public gaze. He delivers a plain, unvarnished tale, the simple record of two lives whose true love for each other and mutual married happiness stand in no

need of vindication. Of Mr. Hawthorne as an author he says little or nothing. He has no need. His father's works have been the property of the whole English-speaking race for well-nigh half a century. The verdict passed by the earlier has been confirmed by the later generations, to be again and again confirmed by the judgment of posterity. It dubs him a writer whose fame shall die only with the Anglo-Saxon tongue. So long as the English speech is heard throughout the world, so long will Nathaniel Hawthorne be classed among the Immortals, and wherever AngloSaxons are found, there in their literary temple of honor will be seen the monumental record of his worthDignum laude virum Musa vetat mori.

A New Englander by birth and a Puritan by descent, the hereditary tendencies of his race to gloom and solemn-facedness were added to by his mother's morbid aversion to society, that grew with her growth and strengthened with her strength during her forty years' widowhood, which began when she was but twentyeight years of age. Add to this the strictness of her Calvinistic principles, her straitened means, the narrow social and moral prejudices of the limited society in which she did move, and the tyranny of the traditions and precedents of the locality in which he lived-and the marvel grows that Nathaniel was endowed with any breadth of view at all. That in after years he escaped being a bigot, a recluse, "a wretch concentred all in self," was due to the fact that, in spite of his mother's influence, he, being a conventional American boy, and not one of the goody-goody-Sundayschool-story-book type, insisted on mingling with other boys, playing with them in the streets, making friends, even fighting with them, as the fit seized him or his companions. We are told that in his boyhood days his judgment was cool and discriminating, with a keen sense of the ridiculous, and more than an inclination to satire. He soon acquired an ascendency over his companions, and maintained it, when necessary, by a recourse to his fists. "He was daring, but never reck

less; he did not confound courage with foolhardiness." His vivid imagination was affected and stimulated by his mother's solitary habits, and was further nourished by the tales of the Revolution and the War of 1812, told him by his elders, many of whom doubtless bore the scars won in "freedom's battle," whose forefathers, like his own, had boldly withstood the tyranny of the Stuarts in England, and earned for themselves a reputation whose tradition still survived as a something sacred to be bequeathed from sire to son. Thus to his robust bodily powers was united a high and sensitive organisation, whose outcome were those fascinating tales and romantic stories which have rendered his familiar name a household word in men's mouths. Of his wife's ancestry but little is said. She was a Peabody, of Yorkshire descent, whose forebears came to New England in 1640, and from whose stock descended Dr. Andrew Peabody, of Harvard College fame; and George Peabody, the millionnaire, who esteemed the decent and healthy housing of the London poor of higher importance than that of his fellow-countrymen of the same class now cooped up in death-traps, in the shape of tenement-houses, in this and other large cities on this continent. Dr. Nathaniel Peabody, the father of Sophia Amelia, afterward the wife of Hawthorne, was a dentist practising in Salem and Boston, and was a man of great versatility and much activity of nature. Her mother, Elizabeth Palmer, was the granddaughter of General Palmer of the Revolutionary Army, whose wife was a Miss Hunt, of Watertown, Mass. Sophia, the youngest daughter, was an invalid from her early childhood, a sufferer from chronic, acute, nervous headache, but quick-witted, high-strung, enthusiastic, prone to extremes, and apt to form sweeping judgments of people and things founded upon intuitive impressions. All this was chastened by sickness, which rendered her a most lovable character, a helpmeet for her husband, of whose talents and excellence she was duly appreciative. Her influence over him was unbounded-one that transformed his semi-hermit life into one of remarkable