THE LAST DAYS OF CONTROVERSY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 61, 27 June 1874, Page 9

THE LAST DAYS OF CONTROVERSY.

Thb following interaating article we extract from the fading column* of the Sjdney ' Freeman? Tho days of religious controversy are over, lien no longer dispute about sacramental confession or communion under two kinds> or justification by faith alone. Here and there, in the Anglo-Saxon speaking world, there are zealots, generally half-educated men from the north of Ireland or the land of Knox, who delight in fighting imaginary antagonists upon such subjects, but the educated world only smiles at, or pities them. The fact is the world has become either too honest or too logical for such byplay. Controversially we have returned fo the early days of Christianity, and the modern apologist for true Christianity has to turn for bis weapons to the pages of those early Fathers, who had to overcome the objections and difficulties of a Pagan intellect, and prove the existence of a divine, and, therefore, an infallible authority upon supernatural matters. Only the other day we read in the ' Times ' a letter from its Roman correspondent — a man well known where known at all for his anti-Catholic prejudices — an apostate priest — the expression of a conviction that the Bible Society had no chance of sucoess in Italy, for the simple reason that the Italian mind was quite satisfied that the Church of Borne, was either the one Church which had a claim to Divine authority, or that there was no Church at all In France and Germany it is the same. In England and America (we scarcely know whether to rejoice with some of our Bishops, or to be sorry with the Venerable Dr Newman) it is the same. The absurdity of the position of every form of Protestantism, which necessaiily starts with the tejection of the authority of the Church of Some — protesting against it — and then either sets ittelf up as an infallible authority, or leaves to each of its illiterate members that right of deciding upon the gravest supernatural matters which it denies to the collective wisdom of a thousand educated bishops of the Charch of Home presided over by the Pope — has told long ago upon the logical Celtic mind, and is beginning at last to make itself felt, even in illogical utilitarian temporising England, and those peoples which speak her language, and have inherited more or less her mental proclivities. Mr Fitcjtmes Stephen, Q.C., in a recent article in the ' Contemporary Review,' an article in which he attacks vehemently and ■trougly, but we think ineffectually, the position taken up by Archbishop Manning in defence of Catholicism, expresses the opinion of the deepest and most uninterested English thinkers, when he oonfesses that then is no alternative between t ubmission to tbe claims of tbe Roman Catholic Church and the rejection of every form of Christianity. We taid before, and we repeat, that we soaroely know whether to rejoioe or mourn over the change that is taking place in the minds of English speaking son-Catholic Christians. On the one hand we know that the transition will end ultimately in bringing over to us bund, eds, perhaps thousands, of those minds that are best able to appreciate and do honor to Christ's teaching j but we know, too, that it will end in banishing all faith from hearts xhat are now honestly and conscientiously trying to do what they believe to be Christ's will. Our »nly desire is to promote God's honor ; — we leave mere proselytizing for proselytising sake to ninetenth century Pharisees, — and it U because we have a metaphysical doubt about which will bo best for God's honor, that we leave the question to men more learned in theology than ourselves. This is the question of the day, and we place it before our readers merely as a matter of fact and a matter of news, which must be ot the deepest interest to them — whether they be Catholics or Protestants.