THOMAS À KEMPIS, the greatest devotional writer since apostolic times, was born at Kempen, in Rhenish Prussia. His father, whose name was “Hammerken,” was a poor peasant, but his mother (“sparing in her words, and modest in her actions,” as he tells us she was), was well enough educated to teach the village school for young children. To her influence, no doubt, the world owes the “De Imitatione Christi,” which “has been translated into more languages than any other book except the Bible.” After leaving his mother’s school, Thomas became a pupil of Radewyn at Kempen, and took the name of the school instead of that of his family. Joining the Augustinian order, he entered the convent of Mount St. Agnes, where he remained until his death at the age of ninety-one (August 8th, 1471). He was first subprior and then prior of the convent; but after his promotion to the priorship, he was reduced to subprior again, as having too little shrewdness for business management. His authorship of the “Imitation of Christ” has been questioned, and the controversy over it is likely to continue. The arguments which would make his authorship of so remarkable a work incredible, because of his simplicity of mind, would apply even more strongly against St. John’s authorship of the Fourth Gospel. The “De Imitatione Christi” is not a work of talent, but of that inspired genius which has taken hold on the central realities of life through its own suffering.