NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12301, 19 June 1903, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

CAPTAIN MA HAN* AND PERSONAL RELIGION. Captain Mahan, of the U.S. Navy, the celebrated writer on naval subjects, at a recent meeting of the Church Club of New York, read a paper on "The Apparent Decadence of the Church's Influence." His address, which proved to be a trenchant criticism of prevailing religious tendencies, has aroused unusual interest. Why is it, he asks at the outset, that church membership seems to be standing still; that there is a lack of candidates for the minis try; that the Christian influence, as a whole, is so "languid and defective?" His answer is:—"ln my judgment, the Church of today, laity and clergy, have made the capital mistake in generalship of reversing the two great commandment? of the law; the two fundamental principles of her war, established by Christ himself. Practically, as I observe, the laity hold, and the clergy teach, that the first and great commandment is 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.' Incidentally thereto, it is 1 admitted, 'Thou shouldest love the Lord thy Cod.' It is of course too egregious on absurdity openly to call that the second commandment. It is simply quietly relegated to a secondary place." Irs it not a fact, continues Captain Mahan, that within the last 30 years the Church has been teaching .hat a "man's personal piety is of small consequence, alongside of his external benevolent activities?" Has not the Church come to stand, consciously or unconsciously, for the idea that external activities, outward benevolence, are not merely the fruit of Christian life, but the Christian life itself?" We quote further: —"Is not the judgment of the world expressed, and is it not a true judgment, m the words of indifferent contempt for a man who is trying to save his own soul his miserable soul, as I have sometimes read? And yet what is a man's soul? It is the one thing inexpressibly dear to God, for which, if there had been but one, He was content to give His Son, and this He nas entrusted to the man as his own particular charge; I do not say his only charge, but the one clearly and solely committed to him to make the most of. It is the talent which he is to multiply by diligent care; not that he may delight in it himself, but that he may present it to God through Jesus Christ. . . Because care of one's own soul, by internal effort and discipline, seemed selfish, men have rushed to the extreme of finding in external action, in organised benevolence, in philanthropic effort, in the love of the neighbour— particularly of the neighbour s body, for the neighbour's soul was naturally of not more account than one's own—not merely tho fruit of Christian life, but the Christian life itself. That the kingdom of God is within you, as an individual matter primarily and in essence, and only in consequence, and incidentally external, as all activity is but a manifestation of life, and not life itself : ll this was forgotten. This I conceive to be the state of the Church now. I mean as an organisation; for I doubt not the multitudes of earnest cultivators of their own souls for the glory, of Godperfecting holiness, as St. Paul says, in the fear of the Lord," There is only one remedy, declares Captain Mahan, and that is the restoration of "personal religion"—"the direct relation of the individual soul to God—to that) primary place ia the Chris-

tian scheme which it has momentarily lost." We quote, in conclusion: —"Within this generation there has been, given much vogue to a secular phrase, the prevalence of which seems so indicative of the. temper of the day as to point just where the sagacious Christian warrior, crafty as St. Paul was to seize opportunity and capture men with guile for Jesus Christ, may lay hold upon men's hearts and minds. Self-cul-ture, we have all heard much of it : sweetness and light, and all the rest of it. No new thing; the Stoics cultivated themselves, their personality, that they might reach self-snfScingness, winch, being attained, could be presented to themselves in the form of self-content-ment. Let this bum an conception receive consecration. What is self-culture, but deliverance from evil unto good—salvation from sin? And who shall , thus save his people? Who but Jesus Christ? And what is personal religion but the co-opera-tion of man's will with the power of Jesus Christ, that man's soul, man's whole being, may be saved; not for his own profit chiefly, but that he may lay it, thus redeemed, thus exalted, at the feet of Him who loved him and gave Himself for him." THE TRADE IN* BABBITS. It will no doubt surprise the average citizen (remarks the Sydney Daily Telegraph) to learn to what an extent the " noxious" rabbit is being turned to profitable account. The trade is now worth £500,000 a year to Victoria. On the estimate of the largest of exporters it should easily, and in a short time, be worth a. round million a year to New South Wales. In Victoria the industry is now- apparently on as regular and settled a basis as is the butter industry. In New South Wales the exploitation of bunny on a large commercial scale is comparatively recent, but it has already assumed considerable proportions, and is growing daily. The packings for export for the month of May, for instance, totalled nearly 11,000 crates of 24 rabbits each. This is exclusive of what has been sent away tinned. As a taste for rabbit is only in course of acquirement among Sydney people, the local trade as yet does not absorb probably more than about 5000 pairs a day. The arrival of the " rabbit trains" are now the chief events of Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays at Darling Harbour. The fact that the Railway Commissioners now run a rabbit train just as they would a sheep train is itself enough to make the worried occupier of an "infested" holding rub his eyes and think. The freightage, however, is stated to run out at an average of about a penny per pair, and as some 1300 pairs can be stowed away in a truck, it is probably not such bad business for the railways. On the testimony of a large buyer, there are a few very expert and industrious trappers who make as high as £4 10s and £5 per week. Those of average expertness make from. £2 10s to £3 10s per week. There are many more, of course, whose exertions yield them but a bare living. So much for the "primary producer." Does this trade in rabbits put any premium on their increase? The general run of land occupier will probably be disposed to say yes. The rabbit buyer says no. Mr. CI. E. Siddall, the largest individual buyer, both here and in Victoria, puts it in this way:—"We are all agreed that it would be better if we had no rabbits. But the rabbits are here, and poison and do what else you like, they are going to remain here. Therefore, 1 say, as we have got the rabbit, why not catch him, and get money for him instead of spending money to poison him, and get nothing for him? I believe we could keep the rabbits down quite as well by trapping as by poisoning them, and when I state my certain belief that there is room in New South Wales for 8000 to 10,000 men to be profitably employed as trappers, would we not be all the richer? In Victoria there are at present fully SCCO men engaged in connection with the rabbit trade, and whereas not so long back the Victorian Government expended £160,000 a year in coping with the pest, the expenditure to-day is only at the rate of £14,000 a year, and it need not. be so much as that." Last year Mr. Siddall paid out £62,000 for rabbits caught in Victoria. He is at the present moment buying in New South Wales at the rate of £1000 a week. Assuming prime rabbits can be landed in London at 6d each, Mr. Siddall is of opinion that the market for them is practically unlimited.

the zoo. In an article on the London Zoo and its managers, a writer in the Pilot says:As soon as you have been to the Zoo often enough to feel the personality of the creatures, the perpetual unhappiuess of many of them, apparent- at first, becomes even painful. Visitors to the Zoo, like other staider mortals, are so constituted that the discomfort of their friends affects them above the misery of the species. There is an old vulture in the third cage whose far-seeing eye is myopic with misery. While he rests still and watchful on his perch lie preserves a vestige of his native dignity; but to see him move ! The great wings as they swing out scrape the side of the cage ; the strong feathers that could carry him secure in a gale above the clouds are tousled and tarnished. It is "the way of a bird in the air " that makes us admire, that keeps wonder alive, that gives pleasure in the sight. But with that eagle it is as if a man were imprisoned in the stocks without liberty to move his legs.. His wings have never felt his weight, he is as a swan 011 land ; ugly, converted from beauty to its contrary by the same stroke, as from freedom to imprisonment. Does any man, woman, child, beast, brute, or bird-collector gather any plea-sure, profit or knowledge from the sight of him '! He would bo prettier stuffed, for he would be clean. I must always believe that when Tennyson wrote his grim line of " nature red in tooth and claw" he had in his mind the red clawed vulture tearing with a sort of voracious disgust one of the bloody hunks of meat that lie about his cage. Whether any way it may be possible to keep these birds may be doubted. The Zoo contains, it is true, "the Great Aviary;" but even those who spoke of "the great" Boer war used the attribute with less irony. In summer it contains a happy family enough, and the vivid imagination of a child may jump from Regent's Park to East Africa at the sight of the strutting ibises. But the "Great Aviary," what is it'! a bit of fish netting enclosing (a low space hardly bigger than a room. And this is the nearest approach to a presentation of birds in their haunts yet achieved in gardens that have ambitions to be the best in the world. But the birds, the eagles excepted, are much better off than the beasts. Happiness in man, the sensation of pleasure in other animals, comes largely from fulfilment- of function, the free play of life. The Zoo is the place where the eagle has never' flown, the kangaroo never leapt its utmost, where the. lion, tiger, and the restless vagabonds and gipsies of the wilds have never crouched from sight or leapt for food or ran for joy of movement. It is not possible that they should do all this; one cannot corner a prairie or epitomise a forest, in Regent's Park; but some other scope may be given these beasts than the three yards of prison frontoge-along' which^w jth meaning-

less accuracy, they perpetually renJT? '' iterated chase. To give a fingie ,5* !? t,r . even on the present m «> aad f o r t? 1, sent "population corridor* mi e jT ' * stitnted for the , qilr , ro cellg^ V **■ haunt for the kennels. '"rofaig -i OT-p. TAIiT.K .w.ws. . : The military it„ii„„ i„ , %TO|iht • causing some uneasiness. (v,;, r-1,, '* force, which was reported to I* i * in. is now stated to be on ran } 1 the Berbera-Bohotle lines are bS * d Hied by tit* Somali?. I'.«info tMm 4, real ' been sent from Aden, and lv * have been mad* to send a .nd British force Iron, India V^ turn of Prince Peter as King 0 , 3" lit.. MM srat " nlmbm <• Mo ™ negro. Ihcre are nimonts that the Sen-'" army is seeking to assume a military T tatorship, At present it b the °' c " preme power, and controls the affair. , thecountry. The SkuptFchina, no dou u! ' at. its instigation, has granted immunity to the conspirators, and ibis believed that fearing trouble, the Kin, vi grant tb' assassins an amnesty. At a " service in the cathedral it Belgrade St},! Metropolitan congratulated the nation on the restored dynasty, and enlogased *hs action of the army. He refused a requiem mass for the late King and Queen. Th despatch sent by Governor Baw son of New South Wales, at the, request of' hj. Ministers, endorsing Mr.j Chamberlain's preferential scheme, and 11;. Seddon's m . politic. threat to enter into reciprocal commercial treaties with foreign nations un!»is Great Britain ions en to preferential trade with the colonies, have both fan made the subject of discussion i:i the House of Commons. The _ English press endows Mr. Chamberlain action regarding the employment of coloured British subjects ca British mail steamers.