God's World and Our Place in It.

God's World and Our Place in It Fulton Sheen Published by Sophia Institute Press pp. 159, ISBN: 1-928832-78-4 $?? CAN

In this book, the late Bishop Sheen reasons with bystanders and edifies those who have already embarked on the Christian life. Through the use of poetry--eleven poems cited, excluding Scripture--his own vivid metaphors, many cogent analogies and the New Testament device of a thrice-repeated teaching suggestive of authority and finality, Sheen appeals both to the reader's mind and affections.

Besides the poets cited, G.K. Chesterton and Francis Thompson among them, the reader may feast on the banquet of Sheen's own abundant imagery. Conscience, he says, is an "interior Sinai," a voice reminding us of what we ought to do "amid the thunder and lightning of daily life." Referring to the religious life, he refers to purity as the "sacristan" of the soul. Sts. Peter and Paul are the "spiritual Romulus and Remus" of Rome, and the real source of her immortality.

Sheen's authoritative three-fold arguments offer satisfying answers to nagging doubts and lingering uncertainties. Just as we "reason backward from creation to a Mind behind the universe," so the conscience with its "counsels and precepts" points to some great "Moral Governor as its source."

Conscience, says Sheen, exercises the same functions as human government which comprises legislative, executive and judicial branches. The legislative branch of conscience issues its laws in the form of "oughts" (never "musts," since we are a free people); the executive branch oversees the "oughts'" corresponding to commissions and omissions; and the judicial weighs "oughts" and actions on the scale of justice and passes judgment.

Similarly, with regard to the forgotten reality of hell, it exists as a demand of justice. There ate three orders to sin against, says Sheen: against conscience (interior order) producing guilt; against the "communion of consciences," or society, resulting in a sentence to prison or to death; and against the source of both, God himself. Hell awaits the unrepentant sinner as naturally "as blindness follows the plucking out of the eyes."

Judgment is a simple matter of recognition by God of a like or an alien soul. As a man resembles his parents, so the baptized soul in a state of grace participates in the life of God and eventually gains heaven. The unregenerate soul is unknown to God and thereby merits hell. Says Sheen, "Heaven is love without pain; Purgatory is love with pain; and Hell is pain without love."

An effective analogy made without the use of the three-fold device is Sheen's answer to the common question, "If God is all-powerful, why did he create this kind of world?" or, "Why does he allow evil to exist?" A work of art is judged not only by the end product, but also by the intent of the artist. It was God's intention, says Sheen, to create a moral universe of spiritual beings. He wanted a "vale of character-making." For that, freedom was essential. God had no wish to reign over an empire of automatons, no matter how good. As the nursery rhyme of the little girl with the curl who, when she was good, was very good and when she was bad, was horrid implies, the ability to choose good or evil intensifies the goodness or evil of all human actions and raises them to a significance they would not have were there no choice involved.

This book is a banquet of vivid analogies, compelling arguments and poetry. Bishop Sheen abundantly succeeds in his aim of apologetics for every man. He engages both the mind and the heart and, though a scholar, is never condescending. Though he argues, he simply trusts his readers to recognize the ring of truth.