Current Topics.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 329, 8 August 1879, Page 1

Current Topics.

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E never could have believed it had it not come to us upon such unexceptionable authority. But it is from the London Times we hear of these things that " make the angels weep" and his word is not to be contradicted. He tells us, in short, that a rivalry of a most startling kind at present prevails in Scotland ; it is between Episcopalian and Presbyterian, and its

object is to determine who shall build the finest Cathedral. As to the Episcopalians, the Times tells us. it is but naturally to be expected from them, it is what they have ever delighted in ; though, in this particular instance, he considers that they are acting somewhat foolishly. But the Presbyterians he berates soundly, and tells them they are acting against the " grain, against consistency, against antecedents, against all principle." They will not, however, be admonished ; " the third or quarter of a big church with high wooden partitions" will no longer suit them ; notwithstanding the sacrifice of warmth to draughts, aud the advantage of hearing the speaker to the disadvantage of not hearing him, they will have their cathedral, " with its glorious vista, its endless perspective, its mysterious distances, its charming resonance, its play of lights and and shadows, its varied hues, its indescribable something between earth and hearen." The "rhetoric" discharged there may blow up to the moon but, come what will, the Presbyterian of the period must have his cathedral. Well, we wish him joy of it ; we are not one bit surprised, flesh and blood must give out some time or other, and the wonder is, not that he should wish in some way to soften the rigours of his religious lot, but how on earth he ever endured it for half the time he has endured it. Meantime, says the Times, " old Puritans shake their heads and know, or do not know, what it will all come to. But the young Puritans are rather indifferent on that point. They like pretty things and they will have them, which is all that they need trouble themselves about." The old Puritans made their religious fortunes in such premises. "If Dissenters can now build churches and cathedrals, it is because they have had meeting-houses ; and it now remains to be seen whether they will prosper in the palaces of their faith as they have in its cradles and workshops." Thus arises too the pregnant question, " They are finding the meeting-house too homely for their religious feelings. How long will they find any architectural developement sufficient to satisfy their ever-increasing yearnings ?" Unhappy are the people who are driven to seek a satisfaction for their religious feelings in architectural developement or anything of the kind. It was not in this there originated the grand ecclesiastical architecture they seek to imitate or revive, it arose in the desire of a people, whose yearning was fully satisfied, to enshrine the Object of their yearning in temples which, so far as their powers would extend, might be worthy of His presence. This it is which is the true beauty of a cathedral, and no dilettante visions of " its glorious vista, its endless perspective, its mysterious distances, its charming resonance, its play of lights and shadows, its varied hues, its indescribable something between earth and heaven." If these indeed be the things which the Episcopo-Piesbjterian believes capable of satisfying his yeannug he mi, takes husks for nourishing food. Nevertheless let us hope that, even for him, the beginning of "he end has dawned, and that the slight rustling o f which we "would fain believe we hear some tokens, may in reality be caused by the nppioach of a quickening breath to the valley so long filled with diy bones only.

A new congregation has been added to this already much be-congregationed town of ours. It is one that worships within the shadow of the First Church itself ; the top-knot which adorns the summit of that temple's steeple actually may look down upon it while it prays. The Dally Times iuforms us concerning the method of its devotions. Says he, writing on Monday last :— " Yesterday, they held service, one of their number reading the Bible to them, and they say prayers over all the food they take." A Sabbath-keeping

people, a Bible-reading people, a people given to much prayer' measuring their prayers by their appetite for food indeed, which ia more than many of us do ; what can they be but a pious people ? and yet— will it be believed ?— they are not Bible-Christians ; they are Bible-heathens! They are, in short, the Maori prisoners, and disciples of Te Whiti, sent down here from Wellington. We stand amazed ; we understood this ever-so-long, that all that was needed to make all the savages, all the heathen, all the infidels, all the Mahomedans, all the " Papists " in the world, some kind or another of " true Christians " was the open Bible, the Bible alone, nothing but the Bible, the unassisted Word. What does it mean ? Can these people be " evangelicals "in disguise 1 Or, spirit of John Calvin 1 are they reprobate, and impossible of " conversion"? There is more in it than we, in our theology, can fathom. And if these people be reprobate and past praying for, are they an exception to the general rule 1 Or, if there be many other exceptions to it, are there any means ©f discovering them in time, so as to save the pockets of the pioua and avoid much terrible risk to several poor, devoted missionaries t Or, again, are all other heathens, infidels, Mahomedans, and " papists " called, and only waiting for the wink of the word, and the open Bible to be "converted" on the spot. We should like to have every thing explained when explanation at all is vouchsafed us, and we are sure there must be some clue to the matter, for we remember a great deal that learned ministers have said on the subject. Meanwhile, how glorious an opportunity is here ; will not some strong wrestler wrestle with these people 1 Shall they quit Dunedin, the home of orthodoxy, the Presbyterian stronghold in the southern hemisphere, the happy huntingground of the sects still in a state of Bible-heathenism. We trust not ; we are encouraged to trust not when we consider the great things that our eyes have seen accomplished here. Mr. Bright has been shown to be of Judaic race, Moses Hull — suggestive appellation ! —convicted of something— we know not exactly what, for in truth we did not over-caref ully follow the controversy, but of something or another bad ; and Mrs. Britten has even been found to pronounce hard her eh in " enamel," shall not the followers of Te Whiti be shown up in someway " evangelically," and go hence when the term of their imprisonment expires, more or less mortified, and bearing some blessed marks or other of their sojourn beneath the First Church's top-knot ? Perhaps they might even be so far won to " gospel " tenets as to throttle their prophet when they return } the " converted" have ere now behaved in some such manner.

A LECTURE, entitled "The British Empire in India, by Dr. Dollinger, whose separation on one point of doctrine from Rome has certainly resulted in his total loss of faith in Christianity, appears in the June number of the Contemporary Review, and furnishes us with a full insight into the spirit by which its author is now actuated. It displays, indeed, as one of its marked features dislike of the Vatican and the Church, but although it, evidently in this connection, defers a little to Protestantism, it is clear that the man who has written it is no friend of Protestanism any more than he is of the Catholic faith ; he has plainly gone adrift on the sea of rationalism. Amongst other matters, however, of considerable interest this lecture contained some information respecting the present aspect of Mahometanism that is full of instruction. The lecturer informs us " The religion of the Arabian prophet exhibits at present a singular phenomenon. On the one hand it is developing throughout the whole of Asia and Africa a power of expansion and fecundity of proselytism far beyond that of Christianity, while at the same time it betrays symptoms of internal decay, especially in that common disease which threatens all Mahometan States with dissolution, incapacity for Government. . . . But if we look simply at the strong expansive force of the Arabian religion, which is extending itself now almost as rapidly and aa vigorously by the peaceful methods of persuasion as formerly by the sword, we are in the presence of an historical enigma. In Africa it advances like a torrent ; whole tribes in the interior, who yesterday were idolators or fetish worshippers, are to-day believers in the Koran. In Sierra Leone, on the North-Western Coast of Guinea, there is a Moslem High School with 1000 pupils. In China the Mussulmans have already become so numerous that they were able recently to venture on an insurrection. In Tonkin there are 50,000 of them. Among the Malays in the islands of the Indian Archipelago they have, for the first time in our day, made hosts of proselytes.

From Sumatra Islam had spread to Java, and the whole population of nearly 8,000,000 have now for the first time— under the Dutch Government — become Mahometan. The greater part of Sumatra, and at least half of Borneo and Celebes, are won over to Islam. Wherever in the Indian Archipelago a formerly heathen population is under Dutch rule Islam makes gigantic strides, while Christianity, in spite of the missionaries and missionary societies, advances very little if it does not actually lose ground. The chief cause of this astonishing advance — by which the ground is cut away from Christianity for centuries to come, at least, in these countries — is said to be the facility offered by steam navigation for the pilgrimage to Mecca ; for the numerous pilgrims, or ' Hadjis,' who return from thence, as a rule, become zealous emissaries of the Prophet. Moreover, in Eastern Asia and Africa, as elsewhere. Islam has one important advantage over the Christian Churches, from its knowing nothing of that sharp distinction between clergy and laity which is so especially marked in the Roman Catholic Church, so that every Moslem feels bound to take part in the conversion of unbelievers, while Christians are accustomed to treat mission work as a speciality of the clergy, which it is not fitting for them to encroach upon." It is singularly suggestive that under the Dutch Government in the East, sometime the bitter persecutor of Catholic missions, and which succeeded by means of persecuting and driving them out in re-establishing heathenism all but wholly conquered in Ceylon, should now be that under whose auspices the creed of the Arabian imposter is found to thrive and spread so remarkably. But does not the lecturer go somewhat out of his way in order to fling a reproach at the Catholic Church ? Surely for the most part the European Christians to be found in these places where Mahometanism is gaining ground are belonging to Protestant communions, and he really does our " Evangelical " friends a grievous injustice. Every man, woman, and child of them, we know for a fact, is under the most imperious necessityof forcing their tenets down the throats of every one they meet. If they be in the least in earnest they actually " worrit " the senses out of all they come across, and make of the " gospel" a blister and a scourge. Has Dr. DSllingcr really managed to live out his long life unassailed by long-faces, tracts, reproval, sighs^ and groans, or the insolent self-satisfaction of the "saved." If so, Munich must be a singularly pleasant place to reside t in. Oh no, if there were any unfortunate heathen within reach of our "evangelical" friends they would be wpII pestered, that we can vouch for, no dancing dervish or Hadji could be one bit more furiously bent on " conversion at any cost. It is one of the features these good people have in common, however it comes that the Mahometan is the most successful of the two. The lecturer continues, "In British India also, as Garcin reports, there have lately for the first time, been numerous secessors, chiefly in the north-west provinces, and they occur the more easily every day because Brahminist notions and usages have there got mixed up in various ways with the Moslem religion. On the other hand, there are hardly ever conversions from Mahomctani&m to Christianity. Where once this religion, which at bottom is simply a sect and Judaizing perversion of Christianity, has established itself missionaries knock in vain at the doors of the human conscience and need of a religion. It is only by forcible extirpation, as in Spain, that Christianity has hitherto been able to win ground from Islam." And now we reach a passage which we recommend to the gentlemen who periodically declare the glories of the Bible Society ; it will just suit them. "No British statesmen on the spot will indulge the hope that Christian missionaries will succeed in soon softening the deeply ingrained hatred, mingled with contempt, entertained by Mahometans for Christianity. It is, however, a note- worthy sign of the time that lately a Mahometan scholar, Bayid Ahmed Khan,supieme judgeat Ghazipooronthe Ganges, has advertised and commenced a translation of the Old and New Testament, saying that both are mlcs of faith and life for the Mahometans also. He does not mean thereby to 1 enounce the Moslem theology. But hitherto every Mahometan, in spite of his reverence for Christ, has been wont to treat the Now Testament with contempt, on the pretext that — according to Mahomet's infallible declaration—the text has been -tampered with by Christians." Here is a new development of private interpretatirn ; the Bible is to be honoured by being adopted as a prop to the Koran. The Mahometans will now find out that the use of Christianity has been to preserve for them this Book, which they will also twist and turn into whatever signification it suits them. Meantime it will, uo'doubt, delight the Bible Society to print and distribute this Mussulman's version. Ay 1 now we reach a passage which assures us that a man may, with the loud applause and congratulation of the Protestant woild, break off oommunion with Rome without becoming on the .spot a most orthodox '" e\ angohcal," Buch as we were led to eoncludc he must reasonably, and indeed certainly, become."? piear the value Dr. Dollinger sets upon the supernatural power of Christianity : " The Indian mmd needs a substantial nourishment for intellect and heart, only it is a grave question whether it is us yet adequately trained, especially in the higher castes, to be capable of understanding and appreciating Christian doctrine. As far as I can see this is denied by those best acquainted with Hindooism. And when we remember how Christianity was only able to take root in the old world after it had been sufficiently pre-

pared by Hellenism and Hellenised Judaism, while the corresponding preparation and education of the Indian world through English influence was only begun in earnest twenty years ago one will be disposed to agree with them." It appears also that some new modification of Christianity is required for India, but that is a mere trifle^ it will only be a pleasure to some of our inventive geniuses to disco^B it, and we commend it to their immediate attention. TheTe is glory 1 to be gained by the man who confers his name on the future grea* Indian sect : What shall they be ? Smithists, Brownists, Jonesists, or Robisonists ; Tomites, Dickites, or Harryites 1 The lecturer says : " Moreover, men like Max Miiller, Monier Williams, and Bishop Patteson, suggest another ground of hesitation. They think the Christianity offered by the missionaries to the Hindoos is too strongly Western in its colouring, and takes a too specifically English form» while in its primitive, simpler, and therefore more Oriental form it would find an easier entrance." Have we not got in New Zealand some Christian simple enough to devise all that is wanted ? Surely we have many unrivalled in simplicity 1

Thb restoration and burlding of churches have for some years past been the rage amongst English churchmen of refined tastes and high opinions. There are few localities in which there is not to be found some monument of this new phase of Protestant piety, and everywhere whitewash and square pews have yielded to it. Recently the movement has been the cause of widespread indignation ; it seems that the parish of Haworth, in Yorkshire, of which the incumbent was once the Rev. Patrick Bronte, father of the family of sisters, who under such untoward circumstances developed marvellous talent, has of late fallen into the hands of a clergyman possessed by the ruling taste, and that, backed up by an offer of £5000 to be devoted to the purpose, it entered his head to desire the removal of the old church, and the substitution of a brand-new fashionable one in its place. This proposal was received with an outburst of indignation all over the country, where it appears to be held far more honourable to preserve anything that recalls the memory of genius, than to provide a place suitable for the decent conduct of divine service — according to the popular notion of it. The desires of the incumbent, then, and hiß tasteful friend of the £5000, have been nipped in the bud. No one would hear of the demolishing of the old building, made sacred by the sometime presence of the wayward Bronte and his talented children. The church is finally established as a shrine of national veneration and pilgrimage, and under the invocation of the authoresses of " Jane Eyre," " Wuthering Heights," and " The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," must be regarded not only as a church belonging to the English establishment, but as a temple spared at least, if not directly erected, to genius. It is a pity, however, that the spotless morality of some of the works that have gained for this church its fame should ever have been called in question ; it would have been much more edifying, consistent, and altogether extraordinary if the ladies whose intellect expanded within its shadow had written " goody books " of real merit, or even capa ble of being perused by any man in bis sound wits.

The Taranaki Budget informs us that Mr. A. Clayden and his wife were " provided with a cabin passage in the Stadt Haarlem, and will receive £2."50 for lecturing for a year, in any part of the United Kingdom, on the advantages of this colony.'' Now Mr. A. Clayden is the " gent," we use the term advisedly, who lately wrote from Nelson a letter to the Christian World, in which he made the most foolish remarks imaginable respecting every thing connected with this colony. Who on earth is responsible for providing this man with a passage home, and giving him a salary as a lecturer ? Captain Barry was bad enough, but this out-HeroJs Herod. Whose protege^ is this individual ? Who is it that desires to see the introduction here of an interesting class of retired ladies-maids and superannuated valets?^ We had believed our present Government were the enemies of all shoddy aristocracy, but we are undeceived when we find them sending home a special messenger to tout for toadies, and all that is silly and affected. Heie is again a sample of the man's fitness for the office conferred upon him :— " Most of the tradesmen, farmers, Sec, appej^ to have liscn from the ranks of the working community, and, as tH consequence, there is a sad lack of polish and refinement amongst them." This is a pretty immigration agent for us, endowed with a due contempt for the " working community." Nevertheless " Odi 2>rofaninn vulgns" is a mighty queer motto for one placed in the position our discriminating Government has placed this individual in. He had better addtohisfei^n-board a pair of dancing pumps and apair of curling-tongs ; it would be then sine to attract the attention of the gentility we need here, and repel the odious horny-handed.

" Flaneur,"' in the Sydney Freeman's Journal defends a contemporary iiom a charge of plagiarism brought against him by the Herald and gives as an instance of " double thoughts" Bret Harte's Heathen Chinee, the " childlike and bland." He says Herodotus had used the self-same term, childlike, when describing the Chinese of his day. It is indeed both conceited and presumptuous of any writer to

accuse another of plagiarism, merely because of his discerning a similarity of thoughts or terms in what is written by him to those he has himself put forward ; and the chances are ten to one that he in turn, because of the very matter he claims as his own, might be made ►the subject of a like accusation. There are few writers, even of the .ghest eminence in whose writings passages presenting a striking resemblance with those written by other authors may not be found without at the same time suggesting any suspicion of plagiarism. For example, we all know the oft-quoted lines from Shakespeare relative to the gilding of refined gold, etc. We find lines in one of Moliere's burlesques precisely similar in sentiment :— Et entreprenoibam &djoutare Des lumieras au soleillo, Et des etoilas au cielo, Des ondas a I'oceano, Et des rosas au printano. The transition from the sublime to the ridiculous ia somewhat marked when the two passages in question are compared. Meantime no one in the world will suspect Moliere of having borrowed an idea from the great poet across the channel. Again, carrying further also the consideration of sublimity and absurdity, we must not suspect Victor Hugo of trespassing upon the preserves of Moliere when in one of his grandest poems he apostrophises Napoleon,

"Napoleon 1 soleil dont je suis le Meranon."

It will be remembered that Thomas Diafoirus makes in one of his pedantic speeches a like declaration to Angelique. There is a good deal that might be said upon this subject, but George Eliot seems to have disposed of it by placing the following words in the mouth of Sir Hugo Mallinger : " One could not carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves."

The Freeman's Journal, a Catholic weekly, has been set on foot in Auckland. This is as it should be, for every large town should have its own Catholic paper, so that everything of interest that occurs there may be set before Catholic people in a proper light, and there may be on the spot an organ to represent Catholic events truly, and to defend the faith, its ministers, and its professors from the charges so commonly brought against them. It is not necessary for us to enter now into the question of Catholic newspapers. The eloquent and most able sermon of the Rev. Father O'Malley, S. J., of which we publish the conclusion in our present issue, has very fully and clearly discussed it, and our readers will find there much more than we could say, and all that can be said to urge upon them the necessity of supporting the Catholic press wherever it is established. We shall speak then only for our own part, and say that is with unmixed pleasure we hail the publication of our new and excellent contemporary, for we mark in it an evidence of Catholic progress. We do not think there can be any rivalry between Catholic newspapers tiuly so-called, their object is one, the information, defence and amusement of Catholics, the advancement of their interests, and the true representation of their views and habits, and so long as the object of publication is duly fulfilled it matters not whether it is so by one newspaper or another. We sincerely trust, then, that a long and prosperous career lies open before the Freeman's Journal, and, we doubt not, whatever may be the difficulties that attend on its start, such will prove to be the case. Our own beginning was small, much smaller, indeed, than that of our contemporary, whose first appearance is very promising and good, and many obstacles stood in our way. Still they were surmounted, and we have gone on increasing year by year. We shall be glad to find that a progress still more marked attends the career of our contemporary, which we find ourselves most happy in welcoming to the field of Catholic literature.

Some of the Australian journalists seem very much pressed for a joke. Sir Charles Duffy, it appears, lent a piano that had belonged to Moore to be used at the centenary in Melbourne, and another piano, it turned out. which had also been the poet's, was used at Dublin. Hence our wits brought into .service the old Joe Miller

about two skulls the relics of oue man, that is told of ever so many celebrated people. We fail to bee the slightest paiallelism between " the cases, and it is quite clear that, although no man can have a double supply of skull ceit.ain men may have half the due quantity of brains. The explanation given is that both pianos ha-1 bi'cn owned by Moore, each at a different time: though there would still have been nothing very cxtiaoulinary in the iact if he had po-^t^ed them both at once. It is, about the w eakest bottom we ever heard of a joke being based upon.

The question of taxing photographs has been mooted in England, and the Examiner in commenting on it says :: — '• The vanity of human nature . . . isfaii game for taxation." This is undoubtedly true, but is it not already taxed ? We shou'J tny there is nothing in the woj ld more heavily taxed, and with a taxation that increases every year. It is required to pay taxes of many kinds, and the collectors arc of unbending rigour. Is it not a tax <o pinch and trim the human figure in every conceivable way or way inconceivable, to pile the

head with foreign hair, to drag a long tail behind in dust or mud, or submit to the worry of having it gathered up and wagging about your ankles, to fear the healthy breeze that may redden a rose or sully the transparent fairness of cheek or forehead, to weary patience and fingers alike in endeavouring to tie becomingly a white muslin tie, to stand before the glass in agonies over a division or wave in the hair, to wear tight boots and suffer a thousand in the resolution to look charming? What tax paying is more trying than jealousy or envy, than mortification or disappointment, than the myriad torments that attend on vanity and cannot be separated from it. Verily, vanity is already sufficiently heavily taxed ; let Government refrain, " a merciful man is merciful to his beast."