SHORT EXTRACTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12269, 13 May 1903, Page 2 (Supplement)

SHORT EXTRACTS.

Next to a requited attachment, one of the most convenient things that a young man can carry about with him at the beginning of his career is an unrequited attachment;— Kipling.

Economy is going without something you do want in case you should some day want something which you probably wont want.—Anthony Hope.

The cult of certain preachers is one of the few observances of Lent which still prevail in society, writes " A Countess," in the Outlook, and fashionable women hover round the pulpits of favoured divines much in the same way as they embrace Paderewski at the stage door, or shower bouquets on Kubelik. Society to-day in search of some fresh sensation flocks to hear its manifold follies denounced from the pulpit, and the more outspoken the preacher the more it enjoys his discourse. Times have changed since the clay when Lord Melbourne walked out of church in disgust after a rousing sermon on the consequences of sin, exclaiming, " Things have come to a pretty pass when religion is allowed to invade the sphere of private life."

We have never been advocates of elaborate ritual in English churches ; some of its recent eccentricities have been silly in the extreme; sometimes they are aesthetically repulsive, and very often they leave an impression of spurious unreality: that is, they do on us. Sometimes, too, they are out of harmony with the inhabitants of the parish. On the other hand, no honest person can help seeing that on the whole the most prominent ritualistic churches are extraordinarily successful, and especially ir>. very poor parishes. It is absolutely false to say that these services appeal only to women ; as a fact hardly any church services but these appeal to the men of the very poor districts of London at all. Judged by the test of influence on the character of the people around, of attendance at church and the number of communicants, of local respect for the clergy, the ritualistic churches of London and'other large towns are singularly successful. And their clergy are among 'the most devoted in the world; that is admitted on all sides. So that, while we do not wish to see any elaborate development in ritual, we could not agree to any policy of general repression by law, even* if such repression were possible.—Saturday Review.

Of the thousands of brilliant and elegant persons like ourselves who believe roughly in the Darwinian doctrine, how many are there who know which fossil or skeleton, which parrot's tail or which cuttlefish's stomach, is really believed to be the conclusive example and absolute datum of natural selection. We know scarcely anything of the Darwinian facts thai lead to conversion; what we know is much more important: the Darwinian facts that come after conversion. What we know, to use a. higher language, are the fruits of the spirit. We know that with this idea once inside our heads a million things become transparent as if a lamp were lit behind them; we see the thing in the dog in the street, in the pears on the wall, in the book of history we are reading, in the baby in the perambulator, and in the last news from Borneo. And the fulfilments pour in upon us with so natural and continual a cataract that at last is reached that paradox of the condition which is real belief. We have seen so many evidences of the theory that we have forgotten them all. The theory is so clear to us that we can scarcely even defend it. If we walked up to the nearest rationalist we know and asked him to prove evolution, he would be dazed, like a man asked to defend justice.—G. K. phesterton.