INTO HIS SPLENDID LIGHT

There is a school of pious writers who regard the current spirit of renewal as hardly more than a license not to abandon the old cliches but to superimpose on them a few new cliches. Father Boultwood, a Benedictine monk, with the best intentions in the world, apparently is a charter member of that school. This series of liturgically-cycled meditations abounds in ancient pietisms, creaking quotations, and medieval allegories leavened by the redundancy of such neologisms as the ubiquitous ""individual human person."" It is not to be wondered at that such a book was written, for the old ways die hard--probably more so in a tradition-laden monastery than elsewhere; but one may express astonishment that the book was published, for those old ways died first of all in the marketplace.