Modem German Catholicism has a quality of its own
There is a breadth and sobriety in its, best writers, an absence of sentimentalism, a firm hold on reality, which specially
commend them to the English mind. Professor Karl Adam's chief works are already well known here, and appreciated by many readers who are not of the Roman obedience. His brilliant essay on St. Augustine, the Odyssey of His Soul (Sheed and Ward, 2s. 6d.) will delight all admirers of the Saint ; for it gives one of the best and most convincing accounts of the development of a spirit who has had a determining influence on Christian thought. Professor Adam is well acquainted with modern psychology. He turns its methods to good purpose in exhibiting the process by which Augustine's childish impressions of religion, received from his mother, St. Monica, grew in the hiddenness and finally won the victory over all adverse influences ; transforming the restless and unruly African scholar into a Father of the Christian Church. He shows, too, how the particular path which Augustine trod to freedom and full life conditioned the special gifts which he made to the Mind of the Church. By " salting with Christ's salt " the philosophy of the Neo-platonists he gave Christian mysticism a philosophic framework. By his doctrine of the essential nature of the Church, as a living and supernatural organism, the City of God, he established Christi- anity as above all a corporate experience, a social and spiritual life. If, says Professor Adam in conclusion, we are to achieve that profound " renewal from the ultimate source of our being " of which all branches of Christendom now stand in need, it can only be through a revival of Augustinian religion, with its strong corporate sense, and its deep consciousness of dependence on supra-sensible sources of power.
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