It is equally plain that Father Baker’s method of the prayer of interior silence is not liable to the censure which Dr. Sweeney attaches to the one of De Rojas when he remarks that “we can at once see what danger accompanies such an exercise, if that can be called an exercise where all activity ceases and prayer is really excluded.” “_Since an intellectual soul is all activity_,” says Father Baker, “so that it cannot continue a moment without some desires, the soul then rejecting all desires toward created objects, she cannot choose but tend inwardly in her affections to God, for which end only she put herself in such a posture of prayer; her tendence then being much like that of the mounting of an eagle after a precedent vigorous springing motion and extension of her wings, which ceasing, _in virtue thereof the flight is continued for a good space with a great swiftness_, but withal with great stillness, quietness, and ease, without any waving of the wings at all or the least force used in any member, being in as much ease and stillness as if she were reposing on her nest.” For the further defence of Father Baker’s doctrine from the other parts of _Sancta Sophia_, and in general from his known method of personal conduct and his direction of others, what his learned Benedictine editor has furnished amply suffices. We are not content, however, with simply showing that Father Baker’s method of conducting souls to perfection by means of contemplative prayer is free from the errors of Quietism and the illusions of false mysticism. The _Sancta Sophia_ is not merely a good book, one among the many English books of devotion and spiritual reading which can be safely and profitably read. We think Canon Dalton’s opinion that it is the best book on prayer we have in the English language is correct. It is a guide for those who will scarcely find another book to fill its place; and we venture to affirm that the very part of it which we have been specially criticising is not only defensible, but positively in accordance, even to its phraseology, with the doctrine of the most approved authors, and of special, practical value and importance.