This volume includes Abbé Gaume’s sweeping overview of creation and human history leading up to the incarnation, offered from the supernatural perspective that “Jesus Christ is the immortal King of ages, the Alpha and the Omega, the center to which all rays converge.” In the dizzying religious indifferentism of our own age, it is bracing to find here the classical doctrine that there is only one true religion, which has existed from the first: “The religion that we profess has always existed, since, from the beginning of the world, the expectation of Jesus Christ has been its soul. ... Faith in Jesus Christ has been the faith of all ages.” One is likewise struck by the many anecdotal glimpses of the “religion and science” debates of the early nineteenth century, and perhaps even more by Abbé Gaume’s claims of how natural science, once “the arsenal in which impiety sought for weapons against the faith,” now “renders homage to religion.” The Catechism of Persevernace is one of the earliest catechisms to address what has now become a veritable cult of “scientism”—and its treatment of the Catholic doctrine of creation is especially intriguing in this regard.

As with all of Abbé Gaume’s works, the whole is characterized by beautiful phrasing and heartfelt conviction, as he seeks to “lift a little the veil which conceals so many wonders.”