WHY DO ENGLISHMEN HATE THEIR MOTHER ?—

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 47, 21 March 1874, Page 10

WHY DO ENGLISHMEN HATE THEIR MOTHER ?—

THE UNDIVIDED CHURCH. (' Tablet.')

Ahy weapon is good enough to fling at the Church. When Eothlng else is at hand, dirt is always available. One kind of dirfc will do as well as another. It never reaches her, and would not soil her purity if it did. J Why, then, are Englishmen among those who hate her ? Has she ever wronged them ? lias she done less for them than for others ? Was it a crime to have won her from barbarism, and made them a people of God ? Were our English forefathers for a thousand years, whose glory it was to call her mother, less noble than we ? Are we happier, more united, nearer to God, thab they were ? Are our works more enduring, our institutions move stable than theirs ? Are we safer at home, more eeteemed abroad ? Have we wiser statesmen than those who gave us Magnet, Charta, more valiant soldiers than those who fought at Creey and Agincourt ? Was Bacon a more up. right Chancellor than More, Parker more like an Apostle than Anselm ? lias a new religion given us Princes of loftier stature, or do the Georges fill a larger place in history than the Plantagenets ? Were William 1., and Richard 1., who were Catholic;, less truly men than William IV., and George IV., who were not ? I3it a proof of our superiority, that while our fathers covered the land with a fabric of matchless beauty, in which the whole nation worshipped as one man • our modern temples are materially only base and ludicrous, whenever they are not a feeble imitation of theirs, and spiritually the very symbols of discord and chaos? Is it "Progress" to have created a brutal population of sullen paupers, for whom God is a phantom and religion a name? Are poor-houses an improvement on Monasteries the Divorce-court purer than the Sanctuary, and the police a more salutary institution than the oommunion of Saints ? If it be 80 let us admit that Englishmen do well to hate the Church.