Book notices

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 21, 31 May 1923, Page 27

Book notices

Devotion to the Sacred Heart, Father Petrovitz, (Per N.Z. Tablet Office).

From a theological as well as a devotional point of view this work is easily the best study in English of the devotion so much recommended by all the recent Popes. The book will please theologians and it will instruct the devout laity.

Dish Fairy Tales, by Edmond Leamy. (Tablet Office). Children delight in fairy tales. Youths who begin to think they are men or women think them too trivial for their superior minds. But older people, who know the value of folk lore, who can feel its poetry and its beauty, return with renewed interest to the tales that please the young. M o doubt if there is a more delightful collection of fairy tales in any language than Edmond Leamy collected in this book.

Ihe Religion of the Primitives, by Monsignor Le Roy. (Per Angus and Robertson, Sydney.) Price, 12/6. Monsignor Le Roy began his career as a foreign missionary fifty years ago. He learned to know Africa as few living men know it. From Somaliland to Mozambique, from the Tana to the Kilimanjaro, from Zanzibar to the Massai plains and the mountains of Taita and Uruguru he crossed the dark continent time and again. He has an unrivalled acquaintance with the tribes that live in the shadows of the equitorial forests and on the shores of the great rivers and lakes of Africa. His work brought him into close connection with the most primitive people, and his mission fitted him peculiarly to study , their religious ideas. All the harvest of his fifty years of research is gathered in this book which is no mere diary but a scientific stud;v prepared as a course of lectures for the inaugural course of the history of religions in the Institut at Paris. It is not a dry work. The lectures on the belief, morality, worship, magic, and social customs of the primitive races are intensely attractive even to the ordinary educated reader, while to the student they are invaluable for the help they give to theologians, ethnologists, and educated Christians. One can see at a glance that Monsignor Le Roy’s work is distinguished by all the Latin qualities of order and clearness, while a study of its pages brings conviction that it is the work of a profound scholar. It is a unique and valuable book.

Holy Cross College, Mosgiel

His Lordship Dr. Brodie, Bishop of f Christchurch, officiated at ordination ceremonies on Saturday and Sunday last in the chapel of Holy .Cross College. The Revs. C. Tylee, T. Linehan, and J. Lennon received the Diaconate, and Minor Orders were conferred on Francis McMahon, Robert McCormack, and Thomas Hally. John McGettigan, Noel O’Sullivan, Peter Breen, Arthur Gregory, and James Maguire received first clerical Tonsure.