The National Gallery in London possesses one of the most fervently religious pictures ever painted. The last picture which Botticelli left to the world, the ‘Nativity’, sums up and expresses the religious sentiments aroused in his soul by the preaching of Savonarola, the visions of Dante's Divina Commedia, and the spiritual quality of Fra Angelico's frescoes at San Marco. It is the only painting executed by him in the last twenty years of his life, his ‘religious’ period, and it embodies the fruit of his contemplations as he contrasted the tragic events of that troubled time in Florence with the peace-bearing message of the Incarnation.

In prayer we have to manufacture our own prayer. ‘Prayer is the raising up of the mind and heart to God’—not the mind and heart but my mind and heart; it is personal—at least, it should be. It is an art like anything else is—an art to be learnt, not some special gift given to one and not to another. We all have it; some have it and don't use it. Take any other gift—memory, reasoning, will-power—we all have them to a certain degree.

Many treatises have been composed to reveal the intricacies of the way to heaven in terms of the ‘three ways’. The division is hoary with age and inescapable in its simplicity. Wherever there is life there must be a beginning, it must grow and develop, and finally it must reach its fulfilment. The beginners, the progressing or proficients and the perfects make the ground plan for the purgative, illuminative and the unitive ways, and for all the other methods of measuring the supernatural growth of a soul in the life of God. But the majority of the treatises, which analyse the stages of the growing Christian, are devoted to one single aspect of Christian life.

Very little seems to be known in England as yet concerning this truly remarkable man. He is, indeed, all the more remarkable that his life attracted little attention, and that all his secular activities and circumstances were those of the most ordinary person, while there was no exterior manifestation of the very unusual, supernatural favours of which, for more than fifty years, he was the recipient.

All works that have been accomplished so far, not only by men, but by all creation, all that will be accomplished until the end of the world, however great and beautiful, are nothing compared with the smallest action of God's grace in a perfect soul, nothing compared with what such a one can do under the impulse and movement of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, just as much as Almighty God surpasses all creatures, just so much are his works infinitely above all deeds, methods, theories, inventions that could be imagined by all men put together.

It is a disconcerting experience to read a book on what is perhaps the most important subject in theology, to be aware that one is making contact at every stage with a powerful mind ranging easily over the whole of the Biblical data, to be grateful for a number of profoundly true observations, and yet to find oneself at the end seemingly very little nearer the heart of the matter. The cause of this failure may be no further to seek than the present reviewer's obtuseness, or at least his habitual inclination to approach these problems in a manner quite different from that of the author; but it is not perhaps only the vanity of self-justification which looks for some other explanation. Dr Thornton is a difficult and obscure writer, but he is never unintelligible; given the necessary sympathy, there is significant meaning to be found in all that he says; there is also much that is rewarding.