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78 THE NATIONAL DEMOCRAT
g June, 1907
which the full resources of contemporary political
statecraft are at the service of the men of Ireland.
O’Neill was master of the culture of the day, and
was none the less effective patriot. The Supreme
Council, however futile in the end, allords us the
satisfaction for a time of watching a native adminis-
trative body exercise all the complex functions of
an independent State with dignity and effect.
Its failure was the result of certain radical defects
in its constitution, but in a much larger degree
of its attitude towards English politics. It is this
which makes the study of its proceedings so
profitable. “That which hath been,” says the
Preacher, “is that which shall be”. There
are certain typical figures that embody themselves
here and take shape again to play the same success-
ful parts at later periods in the history of this
country of political Bourbons. VVe have space only
to catalogue the changing symbols. A King, well-
disposed, it is whispered, and willing to translate
his personal predilections into effect if he were
allowed; a Church that wishes to bend the
political action of Ireland to the recovery of
England to the fold ; a king’s agent with a
mission-he was then called Glamorgan--with
a secret treaty in his despatch box. These
treaties are always unilateral. VVhen one of the
contracting parties has completed his side of the
bargain, there is an untimely revelation of the con-
tents of the despatch-box, and the secret agent flits
from the stage--protesting always. There is a
spider Ormonde, “subtle in understanding”, unlike
Rinuccini’s Irish, “quite unskilled in negotiation”.
And there are the Irish representatives at Oxford-
or wherever the seat of influence is not-agents of
the Supreme Council, agents of the Privy Council,
Ussher and agents of the Protestant royalists, Coote
and agents of the Puritans-there is never a
scarcity of agents. At the back of all, on one side,
the sullen hatred and contempt of an English
'Parliament and people, and on the other a thwarted
and unrealised nation.
r MICHAEL GAHAN.
Nwvvwwmmw
RE-CONSTRUCTIVE CATHOLICISM
OIL AND WINE. By the Rev. George Tyrrell.
London : Longmans. 55. net.
AFTER the nineteenth century twilight of the gods
men are craving again for some work-a-day view of
life capable of bringing the working day into prac-
tical relation with the transcendental existence
, which is at last forcing its reality upon the imagina-
tion of our age. The dangerous popularisation of
new Bhuddism in England and elsewhere (as Fr.
Tyrrell insists, the popularisation of transcendental
philosophy is at least as dangerous as it may be
necessary) is one method ofassuaging thesoul-hunger
of a flock without a shepherd. But this particular
philosophy, with its haughty renunciation of action,
its high denial of the will to live, is too far aloof
from the common life of work and play to comfort
the humble seeker after such a spirit life as may
inspire and sufluse with the glow of eternal incan-
ing the dullest labour and heat of the day. After
the weariness of the flesh, overpowered by barren
materialism and the spirit’s enervation through irre-
sponsible aimless mysticism, comes this new gospel
of gently persuasive force to pour oil upon the
wounds of the inflamed imagination, to minister
vivifying wine to a world-intellect exhausted by the
subtle dialectic of dogmatic rationalism as well as
of rationalistic dogmatism.
So far as he is destructive, Father Tyrrellls latest
attack is levelled against dry, unproductive intellec-
tualism in religion, the formalism of the schools
which would adhere to the letter even when the
letter of the law may cramp and choke the expan-
sion of the spirit. In a series of short and
charmingly readable discourses he develops the
conception of Catholic faith as an act of the will
rather than of the intellect. “The Creed is an ex-
pression of resolve on the part of the will far more
than an expression of an intuition on the part of
the mind.”' Christian belief, according to Fr.
Tyrrell, becomes real and living through the
cumulative effect of repeated acts of assent by the
will--assent to truths which are not mathemaically
cogent. For dogma is not intellectually satisfying,
and the acceptance of dogma is an essential condi-
tion, but not the essence itself, of living faith. In
the absence of any intellectually convincing truth
conscience demands the acceptance of certain
dogmas, at the beginning and as a beginning of the
assimilation of faith. It is by working out those
accepted beliefs in practice, by building our lives
upon realised truths, that we turn this barren sub-
mission of will and intellect into one great continuous
expression of faith and hope and charity divine.
Our beliefs are “not ours fully until we have
worked them into the fabric of our life and
thought.”
llut the formalisatioir of our transcendental
‘philosophy is confined by the limitations of our
human insufliciency. VVe cannot express divine
revelation more definitely than by inadequate
analogy ; we cannot image forth God to man more
clearly than by shadowy symbols. It is the spirit
divine, informing our crude human language, which ‘
redeems the letter of the law. The spirit world