There is but one serious obstacle in the way of its becoming a universal favorite with those who have a taste for solid spiritual food. It is food of the most simple, dry, and hard quality, served without sauce or condiments of any kind――pure nutriment, like brown bread, wheaten, grits, farina, or Scotch porridge. It is most wholesome and conducive to spiritual growth, but altogether destitute of the eloquence which we find in Tauler, the deep philosophy and sublime poetry of St. John of the Cross, the ecstatic rapture of St. Teresa. Whoever studies it will have no stimulus but a pure and simple desire for instruction, improvement, and edification. The keynote to the entire mode and measure of the book is given in the chapter, borrowed from Father Walter Hilton, on the spiritual pilgrimage: “One way he knew, which, if he would diligently pursue according to the directions and marks that he would give him――though, said he, I cannot promise thee a security from many frights, beatings, and other ill-usage and temptations of all kinds; but if thou canst have courage and patience enough to suffer them without quarrelling or resisting, or troubling thyself, and so pass on, having this only in thy mind, and sometimes on thy tongue, _I have naught, I am naught, I desire naught but to be at Jerusalem_, my life for thine, thou wilt escape safe with thy life, and in a competent time arrive thither.” Father Baker attempts nothing but to furnish a plain guide-book over this route. For descriptions of the scenery, photographic views of mountains, valleys, lakes, and prospects, one must go elsewhere. A clear, methodical, safe guide-book over the route he will find in _Sancta Sophia_. This is not to say that one should confine himself exclusively to its perusal, or deny himself the pleasure of reading other books in which there is more that pleases the imagination and awakens the affections, or that satisfies the demands of the intellect seeking for the deepest causes of things and the exposition of sublime truths. The most important and practical matter, however, is to find and keep the right road. And certainly many, if not all, of those who are seeking the straightest and safest way to perfection and everlasting beatitude, will value the _Sancta Sophia_ all the more for its very plainness, and the absence of everything except that simple and solid doctrine which they desire and feel the need of amid the trials and perplexities of the journey of life.