HOLY BIBLE ITS USE AND ABUSE BY THE RIGHT REV. MONSIGNOR JOHN S. VAUGHAN BISHOP OF SEBASTOPOLIS AUTHOR OF LIFE EVERLASTING, 66 وو FAITH LIFE AFTER DEATH, 66 "Thinkest thou that thou understandest what thou readest? How can I understand (Acts viii. 31, 2) SECOND EDITION BURNS, OATES & WASHBOURNE, LTD. LONDON 28 ORCHARD STREET W1. 8-10 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 4 MANCHESTER, BIRMINGHAM AND GLASGOW LETTER TO THE AUTHOR FROM HIS EMINENCE CARDINAL MICHAEL LOGUE, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. ARA CELI, ARMAGH, 25th January, 1904. MY DEAR MONSIGNOR VAUGHAN, When I casually read, in the public press, the reports of some of your Discourses on the Holy Bible, it occurred to me that they deserved a wider and more continued circulation than they could possibly receive through the columns of a newspaper. I therefore took the liberty of suggesting to you that, if collected and published in book form, they would furnish most useful instruction to the people. Now that I have had the advantage of reading through the corrected proofs, I am more deeply convinced that, in republishing the Discourses, you will confer upon numerous readers the boon of a good, solid body of instruction upon a most interesting and absorbing subject. Your book furnishes quite sufficient knowledge, on leading points, to enable the people to read the Sacred Text with intelligence, appreciation and reverence. Though you evidently aim at conveying this knowledge in the simplest and most popular form, still no one can read your Discourses without feeling that they are the fruit of earnest and extensive study. You are to be congratulated on the success with which you have treated your important subject. You have been judicious in selecting points of great interest, and have shown great skill in their development. Your reasoning is clear and convincing, your illustrations apt and felicitous and and your language lucid and precise. Hence I believe that, for the great body of our people, who have not the time or qualifications for consulting more abstruse works on Biblical Criticism, your book will supply a very obvious want at a very opportune time. It is true Catholics do not rely on the authority of critics, higher or otherwise, as the foundation of their faith in the Sacred Writings. They rest secure in the conviction that He who, in His bounty, has vouchsafed a revelation to man, has been able, by His providence, to preserve it, whether through the agency of those to whom it was committed under the Old Law, or through the infallible authority of the Church under the New. |