Pagans of Society.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13880, 17 April 1909, Page 3 (Supplement)

Pagans of Society.

FATHER BERNARD VAUGHAN DEPLORES '-UNBRIDLED PASSIONS. Father Bernard Vaughan, preaching on belialf of the Soho poor at Farm street, London, said that no thoughtful man could look around, even, if ne limited his horizon to dear England herself, without feeling that they were living in days of terrible social upheaval, when everything seemed out of joint, when the powers of darkness were raising storms of passion among the sons of men.

In society, of course nobody did wrong till he was found out; nobody cared what' happened provided the Press did not get hold of it, and it was kept out of the Law Courts. Self-re-verence and self-control were being regarded superstitions of a bygone day, and woman no less than men, like debauched pagans of old, were crying out, "Let us fill ourselves with costly -wine, let us crown ourselves with roses before they are withered', let no meadow' escape our riot, let none of us go without our part in luxury, let us everywhere leave tokens of joy, for this is our portion and this our lot."

Woman as well as man was so constituted that once she had flung away the reins that alone could hold in passion she was riding a race to hell; and unless in her agony and repentance she cried out. " Lord save me, I perish," her spiritual doom was as certain as the death of one who was carried over a precipice. The present state of unbridled passion abroad, if it were traced to its source, would be found to be due to neglect of Christ and indifference to His laws. In Christianity alone was there to be .found what repressed vice and stimulated virtue. He ventured to think that Low Protestantism, instead of expending its energies in talking about Rome the Babylon and of Pius X. as the Scarlet Woman,-would be better employed in urging/its adherents to say their prayers,' curb their passions, and go to Church on Sunday. And he thought the High Protestants, or Anglican Catholics, if, instead of teaching bad history and saying England, was never at any time Catholic, they said nothing at all about the past but tried themselves to live, and to get others in society to live, in accordance with the gospel of Christ as it was understood bv them. Nothing recruited the ranks of agnosticism so rapidly as the nonsense talked by laity and clergy alike in the innumerable sections which went to make up the Church established by law in this country.