Current Topics. AT HOME & ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 309, 21 March 1879, Page 1

Current Topics. AT HOME & ABROAD.

tE this week return as we promised to Mr. W. H. Malfock's article, of a portion of which we gave an abstract in our last. There is another set of misconceptions that tend to fix an imaginary gulf between the Church and the world. These refer to a riwnber of legends and beliefs prevalent amongst Catholics, but for which the Church does not vouch. „„. „ . " She * 8 no m( >re pledged to them than she is to an untenable view of the So l ar system." She has, indeed, long lived S^T dam r ongSt SUch °P iniona an(l «* external eye has taken them for a part of her. She can, however, cast mX.M • , dODe S ° in Some and may a^mnnJ Sai 5 ° f° ; " DOfc iQ an * P etulant * h S* r > but with a composed and gentle quiet, as some new light gravely dawns upon Her If the world forgets this it may find itself in the position of a man who engages to fight another, believing that his strength and movements v. ill be hampered by a number of cloaks and wrappages, which he wears as he enters the n ng , but which suddenly, if the occasion calls for it, he flings ti! ™ * ™? auait > and 8te P s f orth as free of limb as his challenger." ±ne Church is not compromised, as Sir James Stephen would have it, because Bellarmine professed a belief that hell was situated in the middle of the earth, or because certain travellers have asserted that they had seen lost souls lamenting their torment at the edge of Mount ileclas crater. If we would judge the chance Catbolicis-m has of again becoming a power in the world, we must separate its teachings from the "opinions of Catholics ; the miracles it vouches for from the miracles they believe in ; its temper from their temper." These difficulties then will be seen not to be truly formidable, but there are worse difficulties yet left for us; there are "certain moral objections to her scheme altogether, and objections of science and common sense to other necessary parts of it. The moral objections consist principally of these : the exclusiveness of the ctmrch; . . . the Church's doctrine of rewards and punishments ; ... and the doctrine of a vicarious satisfaction for sin. Lastly besides these, there is the entire question of miracles." The Cburch teaches that the natural order is sometimes interfered with : if we reject tins teaching we reject her. As to the exclusivencss of the Church it must be acknowledged that it is perplexing to be forced to think of the most saving truths and precious helps being confined to a minority of mankind. But if any real importance be attached to a knowledge of the truth, until the whole human race are unanimous about what we hold to be the supreme truths of life, we must regard a part as condemned to disastrous error. Catholicism does the most to alleviate this perplexity. "Of all religious bodies, the Roman Church has the largest hope and charity for these outside her own pale. fehe condemns men not for not accepting her teaching, but only for rejecting lt ; and they cannot reject it until they know LZT 2 - lS '7, IUSI US inUer Spirit ' as weU as its out ™ rd S and foimulas. Irejudices may have blinded them, and if blind they have no sin. They may plead invincible ignorance ; the Church condemns only those who have known and hated her. « Nor is it too much to say, that a zealous Catholic can afford to harbour more hope for an mfidel, than a zealous Protestant can afford to harbour for a Catholic. The Christian doctrine of rewards and punishments is condemned for two reasons: "first, because they tend to make all virtue venal ; and secondly, because the punishments threatened are vindictive and barbarous ; and the rewards either ridiculous or degrading, or else unthinkable." The Catholic Church is not responsible for the absurd views put forward on these matters The notion that the hope or fear of a future will make virtue venal is based on a radical misconception. Heaven and hell are not an arbitrary payment for certain classes of acts, but their inevitable con- ' eequenccs ; consequences which can only be augured here, not realized . . . « is the very essence of the supernatural conception of virtue' that it contains^potentially more than it can actualize here. It brings peace it 13 true, to those that possess it ; but the peace comes to them

like a bud,>ot like a blossom or [a. fruit. The fruit, as the Church teaches, is the full sight of God ; the sight of God is the very,essence of heaven. . . . Virtue, therefore, is no more rendered venal by being practised with a view to heaven than a painter need be because he makes his rough sketch with a view to completing his picture. With future punishment the case is just the same. The essence of the punishment is not something alien to the acts that have merited it. There is.sometbing in sin itself that at the moment of its commission is creating hell for the sinner. Hell in its essence is nothing but a state of intense self -consciousness ; the sight of what we have ourselves done to ourselves ; a sight which we can now have only through a glass darkly, but then face to face. The entire doctrine on this subject cannot be expressed more clearly than it has been in a very remark* able sonnet called "Lost Days," by Mr. D. G. Rosetti, beginning thns : — ' The lost days of my life until to-day, "What were they, could I see them in the street Liens they fell?' And it ends with these memorable lines :—: — " I do not know them now but after death God'knows I know the faces I sliall see ; Each one a murdered self, with last low breath, ' I am thyself , what hast thou done to me ? And I, and I thyself, to each one eaith • And thou thyself to all eternity.' " Could any hell be a truer hell than this, or any more deserved > How shall we be able to arraign its justice, when we ourselves shall be our own tormentors, and it is our own inexorable auger, under which we shall be for ever cowering V The Cburch, however, may menace sinners with some positive pcena senms, in addition to the internal tortures dwelt on. But there is nothing in this that need shock the moral sense if we remember two points : first, the prospect of such a form of punishment may be necessary as a beginning. It may lash the soul away from lower things, and at least drive it within the sphere of the attraction of those that are higher. Besides the scourge must in a great measure be self-applied. " The vengeance threatened is remote ; and unless we make some effort ourselves, it may easily fade out of our imagination. When imagined it may be unspiritual ; but there is something spiritualising in the laborious effort that is required effectually to imagine it. Nor can such fear as is thus engendered properly be called servile or degrading, when we ourselves, of our own free-will, become a part of that which terrifies us and arc ourselves assessors of the judge before whom we tremble." Bat what of the doctrine of vicarious satisfaction frequently called immoral, or morally impossible. This is a great difficulty, but we can only get rid of it by giving place to a greater one. For let us once acknowledge the importance of virtue, and realise how hard it is to attain to it, and we shall become conscious of the enormity of sin and of the extent to which we are sullied by it. " Further, as no act dies barren and without its consequences, we shall feel that our sins, whether only against ourselves, or against others, arc still surviving in their effects. They have passed beyond our control." Thus we recognise that we have bound ourselves to the evil of the world. "We cannot rise towards God. In this situation what is to be done 1 Our burthen is greater than we oan bear. If it is to be borne at all it must be borne by another. But how ? The thing is impossible. It can only be done by a moral miracle ; and by a miracle that in its very nature is absurd and unthinkable. Precisely : and such a miracle is the central doctrine of the Church — a doctrine as unthinkable, but not more bo» than is God's power and goodness, when we confront these attributes with the existence of pain and evil." And now as to the question of miracles ; can the world with its eyes opened by science ever again yield assent to these ? Our impulse is to reply — Never. The late Dr. Arnold said hi would as soon believe in Jupiter as in the Pope ; yet he believed in the Divine nature of Christ, and in his miraculous birth. " What then will the present generation think of his logic, who have been brought up to regard Christianity with the same unsympathising criticism that he applied to Popery ? It is surely a greater tax on our credulity to believe that Christ was tht son of God, than, having believed that, to believe that the Pope is the representative of Christ." In a few years we may be seen to have been condemning religion in general as illogically as we judge Dr. Arnold to have condemned a particular form of it. Our advanced thinkers repudiate all faith in Christianity, but they talk of morality and moral responsibility ; all their reverence is consecrated to these. But it

' seems quite possible that in the course of years we slwiU feel certain teachings of science more strongly than at present. ° And then perhaps we shall grow to see that, in the face of that unvaried necessity, that inevitable sequence of things that science alone reveals to us, every notion of choice and of moral responsibility will be seen to be as antagonistic to reason as is the story of the birth and resurrection of Christ. To the eye of reason could the world only bring itself to regard the matter steadily with that, the existence of free will, and therefore of morality itself, may seem as much a miracle as any grotesque cmc or transformation related in the Ada Sanctorum, Looking, then, at the Church of Rome from a strictly logical standpoint, it is hard to see how, if we believe in free-will and morality iv the face of these modern discoveries, which, as far as they go, show us all life as nothing but a vast machine — it is hard to see how we can consider the Church of Eome as logically in any way wounded, or crippled, or in a condition, should occasion offer, to be less active than she was in the days of her most undisputed ascendency."

Some one or other has considered it worth his while to favour us with a pamphlet containing a dreadful prosing read some years ago before a meeting of the Otago Schoolmasters' Association by Mr. J. B. Park, and now published under the auspices of the Bible in Schools Association. Our would-be instructor has, moreover, expended a penny in forwarding us this brilliant document through the post ; concerning which extravagance we feel our duty towards our neighbour obliges us to remonstrate with him. That penny might indeed have been much better expended : could it not have gone to swell the contents of some good little child's missionary box, or otherwise been made to profit the needy in matters temporal or spiritual 1 It was a grievous waste to throw it away in sending us a pamphlet that we utterly deny to be worth one half the money, and which we declare we would not take six times the amount to read from cover to cover. We are not fond of mawkish studies, and never voluntarily undertake them, therefore we have only glanced here and there over this precious production, so as to see in what line its peculiar twaddle might lie. We have seen just enough to inform us, then, that the writer is a very imperfectly educated person, a fact not to be wondered at in a mere schoolmaster when we consider the light thrown on even pretensious profundity amongst us ; that he makes a prodigious clucking over matters he knows nothing whatever about ; and that, if he be a fair sample of the Government schoolmasters of Otago, they are men not calculated by any means to rea» up pupils capable of setting the Thames on fire, and most especially unworthy to be entrusted with the care of Catholic children. This is all we have learned ; is our would-be instructor satisfied ?

Ajjrojwi of the argument to which attention has lately been drawn here, and which states that it is impossible to prove a miracle, we find in the Month for January. 1877, an article by the llev. John llickabj-, and which, under the heading " The explanation of Miracles by Unknown Natural Forces," deals very ably with the matter. The writer proceeds to the following effect, and it may be as well for us to state that in making abstracts like the present, although we all through keep as close as possible to the language used by the writer whom we follow, it is only when quoting passages of any length without curtailing them in any way that we employ inverted commas. To commence, then, men in search of difficulties against explaining admitted facts by definite causps find very convenient the hypothesis of unknown possible agencies, and a man of prudence may sometimes find this his only possible refuge. The late Professor dc Morgan thus ac otn.tod for spirit manifestations ; thinking it likely tbat the universe may contain half a million agencies of which no man knows anything, he suspected that a small proportion of them might account for all the phenomena observed. But how will it answer to apply de Morgan's principle to the question of Christian miracles ? There may, it is true, be a debatable land between the two domains, but this docs not prove that there is no territory clearly owned by neither ; our contention is that there are events manifestly traceable to miraculous or natural causes, and not lying dubiously between the two. But besides tlic threefold classification of phenomena into natural, supernatural, and ambiguous, it may be well to point out that the first member is again subdivisible into two parts, the one comprising events in the ordinary course of nature, the other embracing thote effects which though out of the usual order, yet present no character whereby to make good their title to transcend nature." There are many curious occurrences narrated which belong to this description, and no one pretends that it is necessary to have recourse to the miraculous in accounting for them ; but when we ascend a step higher we meet with cases more nearly resembling the preternatural. If a dispute arises concerning these, our opponents declare, a priori, that natural causes are sufficient to account for them ; we frequently can only say that we do not know. But occasionally we are decided, and boldly assert a miracle. We select the following as a specimen of the evidence wo have for some of our facts, and which we affirm can only be denied by a man prepared to deny all he wishes to be untrue. The instance is given in Dr. Northcote's " Sanctuaries of the Madonna. 1 " During the time of Napoleon's interference with Italy in

1796 the eyes of several pictures were observed to move, the bishops ' and priests in various localities at'" once instituted inquiries, and at length the matter was taken up by the Cardinal- Vicar. ' The Process' lasted four months, during which time the miraculous manifestations were continued. This is a simple fact to establish ; if testimony be inadequate for its establishment, history, bearing witness in law courts, and even social intercourse must become doubtful. It remains only to determine whether, in broad daylight and in brilliant candlelight • before thousands of spectators, viewing the phenolhena in^cvery possible way, the eyes of certain images and pictures did or did not move. Nearly one thousand people swore to the fact of the motion and they were representative of many countries and all grades of life, -. and conditions of education and intelligence. " Every conceivable precaution which the most jealous suspicion, and sometimes even the most resolute incredulity, could dictate was actually taken by some one or other of the most numerous witnesses that were examined." Some Jews and an English gentleman were converted by the manifestations ; and even a Turk made to " the Lady." the offer of his scimitar. " A man who will not yield to evidence like the above, has no logical resort but in complete historical scepticism. For if he will not believe that several thousand pairs of human eyes are competent to vouch for the,appearance of an obvious movement, I am puzzled to see what title he has to. believe the, existence of Napoleon the ."First, or anything at all except perhaps his own obstinacy, of which he may have the fullest testimony .'" . . . Is it reasonable to seek the explanation of facts so attested in the working of unknown forces, or in the abnormal working of known forces ?" Unprejudiced mankind answers, No. Take the following instance as a proof : suppose several poisoning cases to have occurred and to call for the punishment of some of the culprits, in order to deter the rest from persisting in their practices, even if undetected. The prisoner is tried, and the case against him is so strong that all are amazed to hear the foieman of the jury return the verdict of " Not Guilty." The foreman, however, explains the matter m a letter to the 'limes. Eleven of the jury, he says, were unanimous for the condemnation, but the twelfth was a professor famous for his consistency and his conscientiousness. " Now Ms consistency told him that as on his perusal of M. Lasserre's book on Lourdes, he had sapiently concluded that water not chemically medicinal, by reason of occult causes, had wrought several cures, as well on imaginations conceivably excited as on the certainly not excited imaginations of infants ; so now he must at least allow that a drug, not in itself poisonous, might by virtue of similarly occult causes, have accidentally brought about the death of several persons. For if occult causes are so often beneficial, it is highly probable that they may, just for once, have varied proceedings and turned mischievous." His consistency told the professor this, and then his conscience stepped in and prevented him consenting to an adverse verdict ; thus the other members of the jury were induced to change their minds. But what would the British public say to such a case as this ? Still the pro- | fessor was only true to his principles, and it remains for him 'to reflect whether principles that lead to absurd results can in themselves be 1 otherwise than absurd. If occult causes be introduced into the details I of ordinary life as they are into the explanations of our best established miracles they will be found seriously to threaten the course of human transactions. But no science could stand against the philosophy of occult causes. The results of spectrum analysis, of which modern scientists are so proud, could not, for instance, stand against it. The '• minute philosopher of occult causes", demolished the matter at once : " How do you know," be asks with a chuckle, " that the metals are in the stars themselves ? They may exist in vapour somewhere in the intermediate space. . . Then I don't sec why, because certain lines belong to certain metals on this earth, the same lines may not have quite a different cause in another region. For just think : some of the philosophers of your school tell us that two and two may make five in the planet Jupiter. Now Sirius, mind you. is much further off than Jupiter, and, therefore, I do not see why Sodium lines on earth may not indicate some very different substance in the Dog Star." Again, a person given to supposing everything supposable, before venturing out in a steamer on a calm day. would have to examine as to whether a storm might not arise at a moment's notice, or an undiscovered rock lie in the vessel's path, or whether the laws of specific gravity would certainly prevent an alteration in the density of the water so that the steamer might not sink. Such a person would be regarded as almost a lunatic ; but how comes it when events as naturally impossible as those alluded to do take place that we must deny the cause to have been supernatural 1 But a wellworn objection might be advanced : "We hold as a primary article of our faith that the laws of nature are uniform, and tbat like effects have like causes. When, then, we are told that several people have been poisoned by a harmless substance, or that a captain has lost his ship by a failure in the laws of specific gravity, we reject with scorn the c silly excuses. But when you Christians come with your asserted miracles, some at least of us who are open to conviction, dare not deny your facts, else we would have to give up human testimony altogether. But we slightly modify our argument. We still keep to our gruml principle, that the laws of nature are uniform, but we add

that there may be certain occult forces rarely called into play : or, it may be, that ouly known forces are acting, but in a strange combination, so that the exception is apparent — not real." But the laws of nature arc only known to be uniform by experience : and if these laws on rare occasions had not acted uniformly, this also could only be known by experience. " But how if the experience of uniformity, being the stronger, should have denied all force to the experience of the rarer exceptions .' Why, that would have been blind tyranny of might over right — it would have been against reason. Now, this blind sacrifice of the weaker to the stronger is precisely the thing of which we complain. On the sole strength of general uniformity, (^occasional non-uniformity, no matter how clear its claim, is refused all recognition, and declared to be only uniformity in disguise." But very good reason should be given for assigning unnatural effects to natural causes. It would be sufficient to trace the events to the forces that produce them, or to show that such forces, though occult, must exist in nature, from the demonstrated fact that no supernatural force ever can be, or is exerted in the universe. " Now, no' one attempts the first of these two plans, otherwise the forces would no longer be occult. Neither does any one pretend to have given proof according to the requirements of the second method of defence. For no man — that is, no reasonable man— tries to make believe that he has demonstrated these propositions : That God does not exist ; that God did not create the primal elements of matter, and give them their forces and laws ; that God cannot interfere with the universe a little more effectually than men interfere with that small portion which is subject to their dominion." Nescience on these subjects is the most that is asserted, but when awkward facts are brought against this theory they argue, not from the know-nothing point of view, but from certain knowledge that God does not and cannot interrupt in any instance the settled course of nature.

We learn from a Dally Times telegram that the Auckland Free Pre** thanks us for obtaining for it several new subscribers. This is nether gall nor wormwood to us, much less both combined. We have not the least objection to furious bigots having their orgau ; in short, we rather prefer it, we prefer to see our enemies '• weeping and gnashing their teeth" in public, rather than have them plot and plan in the dark against us, and make themselves ready to do us an ill turn when, perhaps, we should least expect it. Besides, a paper like the Auckland Free Press may act favourably on the rest of the press of the country ; it may so disgust all journalists of decent tastes as to make them think twice before they write any sentence that should seem to smack of its infirmities, and, in consequence, Catholics may find less that is displeasing to them in the columns of other newspapers. In short, we beg of all the furious bigots in the colony to subscribe at once to the Auckland Free Press, they will find it a most worthy exponent of their views, and quite capable of expressing tbc rage that devours them in language fitted to such a purpose.

Ouit contemporary, the Xeir Zvalander, finds himself in a position (o prove that secular education by no means is a cause of larrikinism, as affirmed by Archdeacon Stock, because a boy. named Jones, having been drowned, his parents declared that they had had no control over him since the early age of four had been attained to by him. Our contemporary says :— " To the pernicious habit many parents of the lowest class have of abandoning all control over their children, and allowing them to roam the streets at all hours of the day and. night, is due the growth of the army of hoodlums which infest San Francisco, and who have attained such numbers that they rank as a power in that city.' ' We are not disposed by any means to dispute this statement, but we are unable to discern bow it tends to prove the superior excellence of godless education, or to

' off that such nn education may not help to render parental authority weaker, by failing to inculcate the obedience that relision teaches to be due to it. It is a fact frequently recorded that children religiously instructed in school have been the means of re-establishing order at home, and awakening neglectful parents to a sense of their responsibilities, but it yet remains to be established that the three It's arc capable of counteracting the natural love of the haunts of mischief, or of accomplishing any thing more than furnishing scamps with increased powers of hurting themselves and others. Jn fact, it is clear to us that, at least so far as our contemporary the Ketr Zenlander is concerned, the argument of Archdeacon Stock has received no sufficient answer whatsoever.

The question of the Bible in schools is not only distracting our worthy folk here at present, whose superstition it is to worship a book they are totally unable to vindicate from the " oppositions of science," on ever}' side brought against it, but people's minds in America aie also divided upon it. We find the Knv York Poxt deal with the matter thus—" It has always seemed to us that the Catholic claim, that pccular education onght to be combined with religious instruction, is substantially conceded by Protestants when they insist upon leading the Bible iv the common schools, or upon introducing any religious excrciscb whatever there." This is the common -bcn&e a icw

to take of the matter, and it is vain to pretend that schools in which the Bible is read are not denominational. They become distinctly Protestant — understanding the term in its religious sense— and it matters not whether any particular sect predominates there or not. Protestants by advocating the measure referred to, ipso facto, recognise th j justice of the Catholic claims, but their object where Catholics are concerned is not justice but proselytism, or in its stead rancorous oppression. Apropos of the matter we perceive that the secular system continues to be warmly denounced in the States : the Boston Pllot'i uruishes us with the following paragraph :—": — " Rev. Professor David Swing, the Presbyterian minister, whose trial for heresy was a transient sensation a few years ago, preached a week ago on education, and characterised the public schools as wholly unsatisfactory. He has the largest and most cultivated congregation in the West, — but as he is not suspected of Popery, he has not been denounced by the press or slandered by his brethren in the pulpit."

We clip from the San Francisco correspondence of the Daily Times the following paragraph taken from a speech of Denis Kearney's :—": — " When this insufferable coxcomb, Thomas Guard, challenged Bob Ingersoll to a discussion, his shallowness was soon discovered to be measured only by his conceit. Everyone who heard him felt that he had given away the Christian faith to infidel Bob, through his want of ability to answer, just as he gave it away, without challenge at all, to the Chinese consul on Wednesday last. His own people found him out then, for the great Dr. Thomas Guard, light aud guide of San Francisco Wesleyans, was dropped like a hot potato, and quietly unshipped ; and now that wandering star, «to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever,' is browsing upon short commons in Oakland, and seeks to fill his clerical crib with corn from the Chinese bin, and offerings from their heathen altars. That is a nice specimen of a Christian minister for you ; — one of the men who would preach a funeral oration over Judas Iscariot ' because he was a thief and carried the bag,' and would mock at the life of love, beauty, and truth of Sister Frances because she was a nun." It is not now for the first time we have heard of Dr. Thomas Guard, and we recognise the justice of the portrait Kearney has painted. But we find iv the preacher one of a numerous class, people who oppose to the free thought of the day none but the feeblest utteringsof a superannuated cant, and who reserve all their vigour for furious and unscrupulous attacks upon the Catholic Church, unabashed by the lives of '• love, beauty and truth," into which &he has. guided many such as ' Sister Frauces, 1 and makiug these the subject of their malevolent raillery aud unfounded calumnies. Meanwhile freethought grows apace, and is nourished by the hypocrisy, secret unbelief, and malice that it readily detects.

Oxe of the most amusing transitions in the expression of journalistic opinion that we remember to have met with for some time is that we find occasioned in the columns of the Times by the Holy Father's encyclical, which we publish in this issue. On January 10th the correspondent of the journal alluded to, writing from Home, speaks of the Pope in terms o£ the highest respect an/I admiration.be says, referring to the letter of his Holiness tv the Archbishop of Cologne : " Whatever may bo the quality of the wisdom the Pope possesses, his gentleness in its application is untiring, and were he speaking as simply the great pastor of the most widely extended branch of the Christian Church, were all possibility of the ambitious aims of the Sovereign Pontiff and King excluded, bis words would — a.s, indeed, they must for their great prudence — command the attention and consideration of all thinking men. Of course the Pope speaks, as all Popes must, from the conviction this Pope has most uncompromisingly declared, that there neither is nor can be any other Church but the lloman. . . But it is the acuteness of the political insight shown by Leo XIII. in the choice of the road by which to accomplish his purpose, the skill with which he seizes the opportunities the actual condition of things affords him, which make hi utterances this Christmas especialty worthy of attention." Meantime the encyclical appears, and all is altered : the words of the Pope no longer display " great prudence" nor "command the attention and consideration of all thinking men." Neither does his Holiness show any particular '• skill "in seizing the opportunities the "' actual condition of things afford him."' On the contrary, in one short week our contemporary discovers that the Pope is a mere common-place Pope, a little more civil than his predecessor, but nothing more enlightened, or at one with the spirit of the age. In a leader of Junuaiy 17th, he says :—: — " Precisely the same things were said by the late Pope. Indeed, the only difference between the epistles of Leo XIII. and those of Pius IX. is that the newer documents are somewhat more urbane. Both bear the stamp of the Vatican. Both arc written in that curious style of mingled unction and vagueness which is as much a hereditary possession as the regulations of the Papacy. It seems to matter little whether the Pope has or has not any sympathies with modern society, for he signs his name to the same set of phrases. It would be fooli&h to blame or even to wonder at a literary and theological monotony which is entirely akin to the whole spiiit of the Papacy, An jnstituliuu which would be always consistent with itself, aud which would

address all Christian peoples, must above everything avoid originality. 1 ' Our great contemporary, in short, is very cross and exceedingly filled with disgust ; but, being what he is, may many more, and still stronger disgusts of a kindred nature overtake him.