SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 186, 20 October 1876, Page 8

SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

As straws show the way the wind blows, so newspaper paragraphs demonstrate the tendency of their editors and of a large class of their readers. We have been treated within the past week to a few curious items of no small significance. Two notabilities passed away recently — Mr. " Speaker" K>rr and Miss Harriet Martineau, the English authoress. When Mr. Kerr was dying, the papers informed us, a valued friend wished to put a few religious questions to him : " Did he believe in a future state ? " He bowed his head affirmatively. Then he was asked if he believed in the Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. He shook his head to express his disbelief. The papers which narrated this event hastened at once to express their approval by declaring that this gesture indicated the advanced freedom of the dying man's opinions, his nice discrimination, and his love of truth. In a word, he receives at the hands of a leading journalist in a country which still pretends to be Christian, applause for denying Christianity. If Mr. Kerr did not believe in the Incarnation it was a sad misfortune for him. But it seems to us that even nominally Christian journalists ought to express horror at such a death rather than laud it as an instance of enlightenment worthy of admiration. That a secular journal should commend this attitude was, however, not so singular. When Miss Martineau died it is reported that her last words were to the effect that she did not believo in a future state. " She had had enough of life in this world, and saw no reason for a perpetuation of Harriet Martineau in the next." We cannot help smiling at Miss Martineau's idea that there might, notwithstanding her expressed reluctance, by some remote chance, be a possibility of her everlasting perpetuation as shs was in the flesh. Nevertheless, we cannot forbear shuddering at the hopelessness expressed in the dying speech so universally accredited to her. What makes the matter worse is the fact that whereas almost every paper throughout the land has published sketches of her life and death, and the widest circulation has been given to the last speech she is said to have made, there has been but one protest made against so awful an utterance. No one seems shocked at it. On the contrary, a kind of tacit admiration has followed its publication. Possibly these words are untruly attributed to Miss Martineau, for they rest on the testimony of that not very scrupulous person, Mr. M. D. Conway, who is strongly suspected of likinosensational tales which redound to the supposed credit of frei thought and free thinkers more than he loves plain truth. But true or false, the widest possible circulation has been given them, and even the story papers and the fashion bulletins repeat them without a hint of dissent or blame. Another instance of the incessa.nt free thought propaganda in this community we noticed in the ' Graphic' a few days since. It published a full paged illustration representing Mr. Huxley, the English materialist, at present visiting this country, with the word "atheism" on his boot, kicking at a priest who is running away, in company with other clergymen of various denominations, rather than engage in a controversy with so formidable an antagonist^ A poem flourished under the picture much to the honor of Mr. Huxley. But we could multiply examples of this kind of anti-Christian propaganda ad infinitum. There is no end to them. They crop up at every turn and in every kind of non-Catholic publication. Aud, unquestionably, they denote danger. — ' Catholic fteview.'