;LETTERS FROM AN ABBOT

E On-the-spot, vital guidance by 511111111111111111111 Dom John Chapman IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIr
THE SPIRITUAL LEI I b,RS OF DOM JOHN CHAPMAN (Shoed and Ward, 12c. 6d.).
THE publishers must be thanked for putting into circulation again with another reprint, in a slightly handier format, one of the very greatest spiritual guides of our times. It can be truly said of the letters of the fourth Abbot of Downside that, once possessed, they are picked up again and again to become the best-thumbed book of one's library.
These letters-and one wishes there were many more-were written without the remotest idea of publication, and consequently every paragraph breathes the free air which is too frequently pumped out of formal treatises meant to edify and please authorities and critics. In them the delightful, humorous, deeply spiritual personality of Dom John Chapman is all the time expressed. Yet the Abbot, giving his spiritual advice to a living, individual human soul, usually a religious, remains all the time on the spot-no vague generalities, no cliches.
The right road
Directing. as he was, men and women really intent on serious spiritual progress, he leads them straight along the high road surveyed by the greatest geniuses of the spiritual life and chiefly St. John of the Cross. But he never expects too much. It is not a question of how far, but of being on the right road. His frequent references to his own mistakes give the reader both warning and courage.
His is the dry road of the will, in the spirit of de Caussade and FerneIon, but like the latter master, whom in fact he never mentions, he can make the dry seem sweet and even thrilling. Like him, too, he is remark. able in his insight into human nature.
THE long letters to a Jesuit scholastic in the third part of the book are truly masterpieces of compressed synthesis into the whole scheme and relative position of Catholic philosophy and theology.
One could wish they were at some point required reading for students. They have the stuff of the answer to the problems which the intelligent student must ask himself, even though he may feel it is his duty to repress the awkward questions.
His last words
Dom Roger Hudleston's memoir of the Abbot not only serves to put the letters into their human context but to give the reader a picture of a life, both human and saintly. • It ends with Abbot Chapman's own last words, when Dom Roger asked him to apply to himself his own teaching. "Yes," he answered, "that is true, quite true. If God sees best for me to die, what in the world should one wish to live for?"
May we all achieve a similar abandon to God's Will at that most vital moment of our lives.