The Project Gutenberg EBook of On Prayer and The Contemplative Life, by
St. Thomas Aquinas

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Title: On Prayer and The Contemplative Life

Author: St. Thomas Aquinas

Translator: Hugh Pope

Release Date: August 10, 2007 [EBook #22295]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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ON PRAYER AND THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE

BY

S. THOMAS AQUINAS

BY THE

VERY REV. HUGH POPE, O.P., S.T.M.

AUTHOR OF "THE CATHOLIC STUDENT'S 'AIDS' TO THE BIBLE," ETC.

WITH A PREFACE BY

VERY REV. VINCENT McNABB, O.P., S.T.L.

R. & T. WASHBOURNE, LTD.
PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
AND AT MANCHESTER, BIRMINGHAM, AND GLASGOW

1914 _All rights reserved_

Nihil Obstat.
J.P. ARENDZEN, D.D.,
Censor Deputatus.

Imprimatur.
EDM. CAN. SURMONT,
Vicarius Generalis.

Westmonasterii,
_Die 20 Septembris, 1913._

"Te Trina Deitas unaque poscimus
Sic nos Tu visita, sicut Te colimus:
Per Tuas semitas duc nos quo tendimus,
Ad lucem, quam inhabitas!"

S. Thomas's Hymn for Matins on the
_Feast of Corpus Christi_.

PREFACE

The present generation in the fervour of its repentance is like to cast
off too much. So many false principles and hasty deductions have been
offered to its parents and grandparents in the name of science that it
is becoming unduly suspicious of the scientific method.

A century ago men's minds were sick unto death from too much science and
too little mysticism. To-day the danger is that even the drawing-rooms
are scented with a mysticism that anathematizes science.

At no time since the days of S. Thomas was the saint's scientific method
more lacking. Everywhere there is need for a mystic doctrine, which in
itself is neither hypnotism nor hysteria, and in its expression is
neither superlative nor apostrophic, lest the hungered minds of men die
of surfeit following on starvation.

The message and method of S. Thomas are part of that strange rigidity of
the thirteenth century which is one of the startling paradoxes of the
ages