PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1926, 15 January 1891, Page 39

PATER'S CHATS WITH THE BOYS.

Kilkenny. You saw by the cablegrams a week or two back that a little rioting had taken place at this little town on the Nore in the South of Ireland, between the partisans of Parnell and those who think he should give up the leadership of the Irish party in the .British House of Commons. . Have you ever heard of the two Kilkenny cats that fought so ferociously in a saw pit that when the battle was over only the tail of each' was left ? The story is an allegory, the two cats being the councils of Kilkenny and the neighbouring Irish town. About 200 years ago they contended so stoutly about rights and boundaries that they impoverished each other — ate each other np. If I remember rightly Kilkenny has large quarries of fine black marble. Killaloe, a small town on the Shannon, just above Limerick, is another town where the rival parties are treading on the tail of each other's coat. I don't know that the town is anything different from hundreds .of others that thrive on the farming districts surrounding them. York. Did you ever notice in learning your geography that England has two archbishops, one at York, the Primate of England, and the .other at Canterbury, the Primate of All England 2 Now, how came there to be two, and how came it that the former has" to bow to the" authority of the latter ? I am told that this is a question that was asked of a Third Standard in 1 town a couple of years ago. It has been brought to my mind by the death of the Archbishop of York, the state ' of religion past and present in Ireland, and the active' part the Irish clergy are now taking, and, in fact, have always taken, in Irish politics. I daresay you do not see the connection between the Archbishop of York and religion in Ireland, nor will you have a clearer conception of it if I give you the history question, 'What effect had the deliberations of the Synod of Whitby in 664 on the ecclesiastical history of England? The connection and the question will be clear enough to you if you read the first score or so of pages of Moiley'e "English Literature," and a like amount of Green's " Shorter History of the English* People " — the latter in particular. ' After reading the first chapters of those books you will learn that two Christianities have been introduced into England — the ■ first into the North from Ireland about 463 a.d., and the second into the south-east fiom Rome abouc'497 A.d. . . THE FIRST CHRISTIANITY, THAT OF THE t EASTERN CHURCH. >. On a low island of barren gneiss rock off the west coast of Scotland, an Irish refugee, Columba, had raised the famous .monastery of lona, and had while there given refuge to Oswald, a young prince who afterwards became King of Northumbria. On his accession Oswald sent for missionaries from among the monks'. The first sent returned discouraged, declaring that success among a people so barbarous and stubborn was impossible. "Was it their stubbornness or your | severity?" asked Aidan, a brother sitting by. "Did you forget v God's word to give them the milk first and then the meat ? " All eyes were turned on' the speaker as 1 fittest to undertake the abandoned mission, and Aidan,. sailing at their bidding, made his headquarters on the island peninsula of Lindisfarne, afterwards named Holy Island, on account of the sanctity of the monks living in its monastery. I Following Aidan came Cuthbert, the Apostle of the Lowlands. "His patience, his humorous gool sense, the sweetness of his look, his rough Northumbrian burr caught on the banks of the Tweed, his vigorous frame," all specially fitted him for the hard work of a peasant preacher. While the missionaries were travelling moors, mountains, and dales, monasteries sprang up all over Northumbria, and in this way the Christianity of what is called the Eastern Church got firmly established in the North of England. When it got as far south as York, that city, then the capital of the North, seems to have become the seat of the archbishopric. I can account for it in no other way, unless its dates from the time when the Romans made York the capital of England and the headquarters of the Roman army. THE SECOND CHRISTIANITY, THAT OF THE WESTERN CHUBCH. About 33 years after the introduction of Christianity in the North, Augustine and his monks from Rome landed in Kent. " Gregory, a young deacon, had noted the white bodies, the fair faces, and the golden hair- of some youths who stood bound in the market place at Rome. 'From what country do these slaves come?' he asked the traders who brought them. * They are English, Angles,' the slave-dealers replied. The deacon's pity veiled itself in poetic humour. • Not Angles, but Angels,' he said, ' with faces so angel"like I From what country come they 1 ' 'They come/ said the merchants, 'from Deira.' ' Deira ! ' was the untranslatable reply ; ' Aye, plucked from God's ire, and called to God's mercy. And what is the name of

their king?' 'Aella,' they told him, and Gregory seized on the words as of good omen. 'Alleluia shall be sung in Aella's 'land 1 ' he cried, and passed on musing how the angel faces should be brought to sing it." A few years after Gregory became Pope, and an opportunity offered itself that he profited by. Aethelberht, one of the Saxon kings, married Bertka, the daughter of the Frankish king of Paris. Now Bertha was a Christian, and when she se* out for the royal city of Kent, a Christian bishop accompanied her and established himself in a ruined church, the church of St\ Martin. Here was Gregory's opportunity. Augustine and his monks were sent after, and though Aethelberht did not immediately become a Christian he was soon won over, and with thousands of his subjects baptised into the Christian faith.

THB STKUGGLE FOE SUPBEMAOY.

In time the two Christianities met, and when Oswin ascended the Northumbrian throne" a struggle for the supremacy took place at York, which had been the capital of the North from before the time of the Eomans. Oswin's queenjwas a Kentish lady, and had brought with her some Roman friends, who with her formed a party loyal to the Romish ritual of Canterbury. The actual points of difference between the two churches were very trivial— the fashion of wearing the tonsure and the time of keeping Easter. To settle the question as to which church was to be supreme, Oswin in 661 summoned a great council at Whitby, then famous for its monastery and learning. Colman Aidan's successor, and therefore the representative of the first Christianity, appealed to the Authority of Columba, while the representative of the second Christianity appealed to St. Peter. The King at last said to Colman : " You know that Christ gave to Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven — has Ha given such power to Columba ? " The bishop could but answer, "No." "Then I will rather obey the porter of heaven," said Oswin, " lest when I reach its gates he who has the keys in his keeping turn his back on me, and there be none to open." Colman's followers meekly accepted the decision, quitted their monasteries, and sailed back to lona.

Green says the question to which communion Northumbria belonged was of immense moment to the after fortunes of England. Had the Church of Aiden won, the latter ecclesiastical history of England would have resembled that of Ireland. The Celtic Church, devoid of that power of organisation which was the strength of the Roman Church, degenerated into a clan system. Tribal quarrels and ecclesiastical controversies became inextricably confounded; and the clergy, robbed of all spiritual influence, only caused disorder to the State. Hundreds of wandering bishops, a vast religious authority wielded' by hereditary chieftains, the dissociation of piety from morality, the absence of those larger and more humanising influences which contact with a wider world alone can give — this is the picture the Irish Church of later time presents to us. It was from such a chaos as this that England was saved by the victory of Eome in the Synod of Whitby. You now see how, that being the centre of the civilisation of the North, York became the seat of an archbishop, and that could, with justice, claim the title of Primate of England, seeing that the Roman Christianity had died out, and that no other had taken its place. -You can see in the second place, how the Archbishop of York had to acknowledge theTsupremacy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and in the third place you can see the effect of that supremacy on the ecclesiastical history of England. For my information I am largely indebted to Mr Green's History, a book all should read who are fond of literature. I intended writing something of the historical associations that have gathered around the Cathedral City of the North ; but perhaps I'll take that up on some future occasion.