a handy popular treatise on the doctrine and use of Indulgences published by authority at Rome.
This Edition has been conformed to the latest Roman Raccolta approved July 23, 1898, and the Supplement, approved July 31, 1902; and contains also the Indulgences and decisions since recorded in the Acla Sanclce Sedis up to the present time.
The immediate occasion of Father St John's death was an act of neighbourly kindness, which led him to assist one very hot day as Deacon at the Festa of St Paul of the Cross, to which he had been invited by the Passionist Fathers at Harborne, his health being at the time very uncertain. He had recently translated from the German Dr Fessler's True and False Infallibility ', a work approved by the Holy See, which Dr Newman thought of great importance in the controversy which had arisen out of Mr Gladstone's Vaticanism ; the work had been done against time, and the effort, made in the midst of multifarious duties, had proved a great strain. The High Mass at Harborne was celebrated in a large conservatory, then in use as a tempo- rary church, and the sun, beating down through the glass, brought on a kind of sunstroke and brain fever, to which he succumbed. Dr Newman in replying to a letter of condolence says: " I do not like not to acknowledge your kind sympathy in my sorrow, but I am so pulled down that I cannot write without bringing on a flood of tears — not I trust from want of resignation, but from love of him I have lost, so I say only a few words. You who have undergone bitter losses will make allowance for me."
Their friendship is recorded in the concluding sentences of the Apologia, in which that work is offered as a memorial of affection and gratitude to the Fathers of the Oratory: "And to you especially, dear Ambrose St John, whom God gave me when He took everyone else away; who are the link between my old life and my new; who have now for twenty one years been so devoted to me, so patient, so zealous, so tender; who have watched me so narrowly, who have never thought of yourself if I was in question."
Father St John was buried in the private cemetery of the Oratorian Fathers at Rednal, and Cardinal Newman left strict injunctions that he himself should be laid in his friend's grave. A single head-stone bears their brief epitaphs. In the present issue of the Raccolta, brought up to date, the editor would claim for them and for himself, from all who use this book, a remembrance in their prayers.
R.G.B.
The Oratory, Birmingham,
November 2, 1908.
