CARDINAL MANNING ON THE MISERY OF LONDON.

Timaru Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 3967, 25 June 1887, Page 3

CARDINAL MANNING ON THE MISERY OF LONDON.

* In a pastoral letter just issued, Cardinal Manning says : — "We are in a third Babylon,as great as Rome. It is the capital of a Christian people. Isits peopleJChristian? We are responsible for all that is Catholic scattered in this wilderness of five millions of men; and we are debtors to labour with even more unselfish love and denial of self than other men, and that in all works of humauity and sympathy with those who suffer, be they ours in faith or not. They are our brethren ; they share the same sufferings and sorrows. We are their debtors in all the seven works of spiritual and of corporal mercy. Upon multitudes among us there is an unconsciousness like sleep. They have never known poverty or want. Their well-provided life is, they think, the lot of all, or might be, and therefore ought to be, so that they will not even read or listen. They do not know the conditions of our poor ; but the fault is their own. Others again there are who know the truth, but they are so confident in their theories of social scionce that they give no prompt salvation to those who are not in conformity with rule. The laws of the moral world are indeed inflexible, because they are divine ; but tha state of the moral world is always abnormal, and to- a large extent immoral. Nevertheless we are debtors to all men ; and hunger and misery have rights, even in the worst of men. And we have duties, even to those whom we may never be able to save. But into this largo field of Christian obligation it is not necessary to enter. Only two words shall be added. We have never sounded the deep sea of the misery of London ; nor will these soundings be ever taken until the efforts of official search be largely helped by the spontaneous personal service both of men and women devoted to the works of Christian and human benevolence."