Page:Ninety-nine homilies of S. Thomas Aquinas upon the epistles and gospels for forty-nine Sundays of the Christian year (IA ninetyninehomili00thom).pdf/7



For the large circulation which has fallen to the lot of the several portions of these Homilies, now collected into one volume, for the favourable criticism accorded to them by the press, and for the number of private expressions of approval which the Editor has received from fellow Priests, he feels deeply grateful; yet his gratitude is not so much on his own account, or on that of his little book, as that this portion, at least, of the writings of S. Thomas Aquinas is allowed to be capable of supplying one of the wants of the present day - a really sound help to sermon-making. It is a most cheering and encouraging fact, that the men of the present day are willing in any degree to acknowledge, that they can learn something of value from the great Schoolman. Despite all the undeserved contempt and obloquy heaped upon the Schoolmen, both at the time of the so-called revival of letters and ever since; despite the vast advances which have been made during the last half century in every department of theological learning and criticism; and, lastly, despite the growth of that spirit of infidelity, a combined product of the nominalism which accompanied the religious convulsions three hundred years ago, and of the Protestant dogma of right of private judgment - the sermons of the "Angelical Doctor" are