Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 351, 9 January 1880, Page 1

Current Topics

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

A lady who writes in a recent number of the NineEBLIGIOK AND teenth Century, replying to Mr. Mallock's articles, moba^jtt. speaks as follows :— « Of course, if religion alone Jtap* produced morality, or even if it alone has rewarded morales special sacrifices and efforts, we may justly expect that, on the decline of religion and tbe wearing ont of inherited religious habits of thought, we shall lose all our chances of continuing a .virtue-loving or a morally discriminating race. Again, if religion has had a greater share than any other agency in the institution and vindication of moral restraints, we, of course, miss the greater part of the force of those restraints in losing religious belief " And then she asks : " But is this so?" Well, we very firmly hold it to be so. We shall not, however, now enter into any argument on the subject; we shall simply quote the following passages as especially pregnant and confirmatory of our views, from a notice of La Gwdta Cattolica, which we find in the October number of the Dublin Review.—" The first fact which appears from the official statements is the deplorable primacy of Jtaly in deeds of blood. From a comparative table of the number of the homicidal convictions in the different European States during the year 1875, it results that in Italy they exceeded those of England, for instance, sixteen times in proportion to population. To pass from comparative to absolute numbers, it may be added that to the year of 1878, Zanardelli assigns about 4,000 homicides and 20,000 injuries by wounds— 4,ooo killed and 20,000 wounded ! It is like the slaughter of a regular battlefield. Our horror is increased when we examine the sub-division into classes of these offences, and note the large proportion of parricides, fratricides, infanticides, and murders of husbands and wives. Now, this great increase in crime, which is equally true of other moral offences besides those of murder, has been progressive, and dates from the revolutionary inle in Italy, which was to introduce a new order of things and bring light, civilisation, and true morality to a people barbarized under the yoke of preceding governments and degraded by superstition. New maxims and new institutions were to take the place of those Christian maxims which had hitherto constituted the basis of public morality, and of those numerous institutions, ecclesiastical or animated by the spirit of Christianity, which nad so powerfully helped to maintain it. This system has been steadily carried out since the date of its inauguration, twenty years ago, which must be considered as ample time for ascertaining its practical results ; and what have these been ? A continually ascending scale of crime, the progressive deepening of a corrupt and cankerous wound in the bosom of society, appalling the very Liberals themselves, and a brand of shame imprinted on the face of Italy in sight of all civilized nations. It is hard to conceive how any soberminded person can fail to deduce the legitimate consequences as regardß the merits of the Liberalistic r'egimc. There must surely be some radical vice in a system which bears such fruits. Let us pass over the miserable exhaustion of the country through maladministration, which might be indulgently laid to the charge of the signal incapacity of those men whom this party have unfortunately selected tor public offices ; let us not stop to inquire whether in matters of political economy Liberalism be not a system ruinous to the material prosperity of the people, there is no denying, at least, that in proporto the diffusion of its principles and the multiplication o£ its .flsfatuhous has been the increase of vice and of crime amonest the population."

Another wise man has spoken on the subject of JOHN bright education, and by his speech we are again informed ON of the all-importance of providing a religious eduedtjcation. cation for om children. Mr. Bright, in a word „ __ , waß Present on October 31st at a soiree given by the Mayor of Birmingham to the Primary School teachers of the city in question, and he delivered an address on the occasion that is full of instruction. Our concern at present, however, is only with those portions of his speech that bear upon the importance of religious

teaching, and of them the first runs as follows :— " It has always been a subject, not of wonder, but of grief, that I have been compelled to believe that there is hardly any effort-so great effort-in any direction with so little result as the effort that is made by the ministers and teachers of religion. I have read a rather curious explanation of this from a great American divine. He said that as people get older there is an ossification of the outward man, a hardness and boninees that grows, and unless great care is taken and religion be pursued from youth there is a great fear that the spiritual man also becomes ossified, and the result is generally that, as ministers of religion hare to speak mainly to and teach adults, they have a material that is not plastic and upon which they can make little impression. I think there is hardly anything more to be lamented, to feel more sorrowful about, than the knowledge that many men should work hard as ministers of religion and produce so little effect upon tnose among whom they minister. I heard another minister once say that he found in his experience that very many persons who had not had any special regard to religion by the time they became thirty years of age found it extremely difficult for the religious sentiment to be created in their minds at a later period of life. I will not dispute that, I will not argue about it. I will not affirm it to be true ; but I will say that the teachers in your schools are in an entirely different position. They have a plastic material on which they are able to impress their minds and their sentiments, and there is no doubt whatever that, though that plastic material may be moved and worked and impressed for evil as well as for good, seeing that, I hope, the great mass of the teachers in all our schools tend infinitely more to good than evil, we may expect that they may make an impression of lasting benefit upon the young minds with which they constantly come in contact." From this, then, we may gather the folly of those' who believe that religion is necessary for men's well-being and happiness, and who yet consent to shut out from its influences during the whole period in which they are liable to become subject to them the children they are interested in. The " plastic material" of which Mr. Bright speaks must necessarily accept the impression of at least the greater importance of that secularism in pursuit of which by far the greater portion of its tune is spent, and, even in those instances where it might be attempted to make up for the godlessness of the schools by a few hours' of religious instruction given elsewhere, the season of " ossification," '• hardness and boniness " would set in upon a soil well prepared to receive its influences. Again, Mr. Bright spoke of the influence exercised over the minds of children by the example of their teachers, and this is very important. He said : " But what I want to say, and I will not take up your time many moments, is that I think with regard to teachers they have two entirely different branches of labour : they have that of instructing their pupils from books, and they have that of instructing them from their own conduct and their own manner. You want to teach a child— l must say it is better than book-learning —you want to teach a child to be gentle; not the gentleness that is weakness, for there is a perfect gentleness which is combined with great force. ("Hear, hear.) You want humanity— humanity to animals is one point. (Hear, hear.) If I were a teacher of a school, I would make it a very important part of my business to impress every boy and girl with the right of his or her being kind to all animals. Well, then, there is the quality of unselfishness. There is much selfishness in families. Selfishness in families is tbe cause of misery and the cause of great injustice. Unselfishness and a love of justice, these are qualities which come, if you offer them, to tbe child's or the young person's mind with a special invitation ; tleir very nature is such that they cannot receive them except with liking and approbation, and I have no doubt that it is possible for the teachers in the elementary schools in Birmingham during the next 10 years or so, during which they will have two or three generations of children under their care— it is possible for them so to impress their mincts on these subjects that, twenty years hence, it will be seen Jmd felt over the whole of the town that there is an improvement in these respects in the general population. (Applause.) Now, these are things which I think it behoves the teacbers of these schools to bear in mind. They cannot possibly have too high a sense of the responsibilities of their position and of their duties. (Hear, hear.) " What is here said concerning gentleness, humanity, unselfishness, ami a love of justice, may be said, with equal force at least, toucLing

religion. There is nothing which it is harder for a man who has a contempt for it to hide than is that contempt. There is nothing which it is easier for a man to convey to those minds subjected to his influence than his own feelings of indifference on this great subject. Those parents, then, who desire to bring up their children as Christians must be careful to commit them only to Christian teachers, and to Christian teachers not bound by the rules of godless schools to dissemble their Christianity, but so placed as to show openly in their lives what are their hopes and their belief.

Mr. Paenell, it appears, has gone to the United distress States, and has been accorded a hearty reception IN ibeland. there by his fellow-countrymen. The reason of his tour is stated to be that he may appeal for aid for the sufferers from want in Ireland. This is, indeed, a much more rational reason than would be afforded by any intention of evoking sympathy in America for any political movement in Ireland, and which we confess we should regard with anything rather than a favourable eye. Some years ago when Mr. Froude went over to excuse the Irish policy of England to the Americans the English Press condemned his action strongly ; but a much stronger feeling of indignation would be excited were the object of Mr. Parnell's visit held to be that of stirring up rancour abroad. It would seem like an appeal for the intervention of foreigners in the internal policy of the country that it would be difficult to justify ; and it might most powerfully be availed of for the purpose of persuading the English masses of the irreconcileable hostility of the Irish— means much resorted to for the support and continuance of a harsh and unjust Government. It would retard the attainment of true liberty and consequent prosperity in Ireland. But on the other hand we should not have thought there would have been any need for Mr. Parnell to go to America in order to solicit relief for the famine-stricken at home : the Irish in America, we have every cause to believe, are already extremely anxious to contribute towards the aid of their suffering fellow-countrymen, and hardly any more can be done than has already been done to awaken their sympathies— never very dull in such a case as this. The London Times, speaking of the distress in question well remarks : " On Ireland itself the first shock of the burden of relief must fall. Irishmen will be expected to help Irishmen ; not that Ireland and England as such know any difference of obligation to benevolence, but because a sufferer's neighbours should set the precedent of assisting him. Irishmen are Irishmen's nearest neighbours in the same sense that Lancashire men are the nearest neighbours of Lancashire men. When the cotton famine ■ starved the operatives of Lancashire, Lancashire stood foremost in bearing the brunt." We, however, give to the word Ireland its broadest signification, and include under it the Irish people scattered throughout the world. It is in their power to do a peat deal to save their kindred from starvation, and undoubtedly it is their bounden duty to do all that lies in their power for such a purpose. But to come to a point of the question that most nearly concerns us here in New Zealand. The season is advancing, and we are informed that the distress is becoming more aggravated, while as yet nothing of the least importance has been done by us in helping towards its relief. It is not becoming of us to sit quietly looking on with buttoned pockets, whether or not comforting ourselves with the assurance that liishmen in America are exerting themselves with more or less success to lighten the evil. They can do much, perhaps, but still much will remain to be done. It is not a town, or a district, or a province even, that is in destitution, but an entire nation. However much there may be done towards its relief, there will be a huge amount of suffering to be borne without alleviation. And the time is gc ig on ; unless some active steps be at once taken here, it will be toy late, and the Irish of New Zealand must for ever hereafter bear the conscience, and sustain the reputation of these who have signalised themselves by holding aloof, when throughout the whole world their fellow-countrymen were everywhere extending a helping hand towards their famine-stricken kinsmen at home.

The longer we live the more we learn. Up to this cremation, we had had no notion in the world that it ever by any chance occurred to an Anglican clergyman officiating at a grave, in the " sure and certain hope " which has occasioned so much discussion, and caused co much embarrassment, that he was engaged in making a deposit of manure. A like idea had indeed been mooted. It had occurred to at least one economical mind that the bodies of the dead might be utilised, but the mind in question was that of an infidel writer, and from such quarters we know anything may be expected. Molescott, in a word, haa written as follows in 1852 : "We may confidently predict that the need of man, which is the supreme reason of rights, and the most Bacred source of customs, will one day make us look on cemeteries with the same eye with which we now look on a peasant burying his dollars in the ground instead of putting out at interest, in some form or ether, his hard-earned money." This, it will be seen, is a remarkable passage, not only

justifying much that might be accounted unjustifiable by less enlightened intellects, but hinting at new and profitable industries and pursuits. It, however, as we said, comes, from a quarter whence it might rationally h&ve been expected. The matter which astonishes us is to find an Anglican dignitary seeming to agree with some such sentiments, and introducing into the consideration of death and burial notions that might furnish the material for lines even stranger and more whimsical than any already to be found in the many queer epitaphs to be met with in English churchyards. To come to the point, then, we clip the following from a contemporary :—": — " As to cremation, the Bishop of Manchester, England, said in his address at the Social Science Congress, that, though himself greatly preferring burial, which, among other advantages, restores to the earth her fertility, he regarded cremation as a system which might ultimately have to be adopted, and repudiated the mtion that 'any Christian doctrine could be affected by the method in which this mortal body is disposed of.'" The bishop ,4 indeed, differs from the writer whose prediction we have .quoted, inasmuch as he regards the cemeteries as the great emporiums whence fertility is dispensed to the surrounding country rather than as the hidden treasuries containing so much valuable material unutilised. We leave His Lordship, however to regard the bodies of his flock in a manner that people of delicate sensibilities might, perhaps, think even more objectionable than the "boney light" that excited so much horror in the mind of one of Dickens's koines. Neither shall we enter upon a theological discussion in order to determine whether the bishop is unassailable in his assertion that no doctrine of Christianity can possibly be affected by the manner in which the body is, after death, disposed of. We shall confine ourselves to a notice of some of the authorities by which inhumation and cremation are respectively supported, and of at least one objection that may be brought against the proposal to reduce the- dead body at once to ashes. Burial, then, was the method by which corpses were disposed of amongst the Jews. To be deprived of it was considered a disgrace. " Go," said Jehu of Jezabel, " and see after that cursed woman, and bury her : because she is a king's daughter." But when they went to do as he ordered they found her eaten by the dogs. " And coming back, they told him. And Jehu said : It is the word of the Lord, which he spoke by his servant Elias, the Thesbite, saying : In the field of Jezrahel the dogs shall eat the flesh of Jezabel. And the flesh of Jezabel shall be as dung upon the face of the earth in the field of Jezrahel, so that they who pass by shall say :Is this that same Jezabel ?" We may, however, remark en passant that the Bishop of Manchester evidently has scripture for his idea concerning the fertility of the soil. Again Isaias pronounces the deprivation of burial a heavy curse upon the King of Babylon, " All the kings of the nations, all of them, lie in glory ; every one in his own sepulchre ; but thou art cast out of thy grave, like to an abominable branch ; like the raiment of the slain thrust through withaswofl that go down to the stones of the pit. As a carcase that is tioduen under feet, thou shalt not be joined with them in burial." The early Christians also male use of burial. It wai attempted to show that they did so from superstitious motives but from this they were defended. St. Jerome mentions burial as usual in his time, and Bt. Ambrose speaks of it as general. On the other hand its opponents have been mout suspicious men. Julian the Apostate advocated cremation as adverse to Christianity. The men of the French Revolution were loud as to its benefits, and Garibaldi is said to have appointed it to be applied to his own body. But apart from all other considerations, and there are many that may be opposed to it, cremation would dangerously affect the concealment of crime. This was made clear by Signor Burci, an Italian senator, speaking on the subject in 73, and with his argument we shall conclude. " Cremation," he said, " from the juridical point of view, would not be advisable, for it is not always sure, as soon as a man dies, that his remains may not be a necessary or a useful factor for the ends of justice. It often happens that bodies buried for one or more years even have been dug up and the traces of a crime detected in them. And here I may be allowed to relate a fact well known to me. A certain doctor had occasion to speak to a mayor of a town in France, who was at the moment watching the translation of some human bones from one cemetery to another. While speaking to him, he noticed a skull which was unearthed. He exclaimed directly, ' Why, that man has had a severe blow on the head 1' As in France the bodies in cemeteries are all numbered, it -was easy to refer to th^ book? md see what cause was assigned for the death of the person i& question. The statement was that this person had died of apoplexy, suspicion thus aroused, further inquires were instituted ; and after the lapse of ten years the murdeio 1 - ■c^ rr . VI, arrested, and convicted by the aid of this circumßtfn • ' .< ace."

Is not the Daily Funes in a tantrum over the late faibly bazaars ! Their fair promoters, according to his kuined ! showing, are only fif for the •• stone jug," and nothing else has led to the incarceration of certain criminals, who should otherwise have aaorned society, than the carry.

ing round of cushions and wax-dolls at exorbitant prices during their tender years. It is a dreadful thing to think about. The poor public nas been nicely taken in ; even the editorial pocket has been turned inside out, and a complimentary season ticket has proved to have been no more than a " delusion, a mockery, and a snare " — a part, in fact, of the general "swindle" most religiously carried out. Iti B pretty religion, indeed, that provides a man of wisdom, politics and literature, with twopence worth of Berlin wool purchased over night in the full flush of gallantry at a cost of half-a-sovereign, but viewed in the morning in the cold day-light, and under the supervision of the " missus" in all its naked deformity. Palled gallantry is the most awful dregs in the world, and it is no wonder it makes the man afflicted with it as cross as the cats, and ready to eat up every lady he ever saw. These bazaars then, must be done away with ; if we needs must practise charity, let us go through with it, after its kind, Y&h long faces, and hearts unbeguiled, even for a moment, of their rtpurness. It is very disagreeable to have to give away money at all ; and it is bad enough to have to give away as little as you can,— not to speak of being obliged to part with as much as ever all sorts of bewitching wiles can manage to get out of you in a soft moment. But what shall we do with our " swindlers"? Must they really be provided with suites of apartments alongside of those poor fellows ruined in their infancy by just such iniquity wreathed in smiles and adorning silks and laces as they themselves represent. We see no other way to do it." Sunny hours are approaching for our worthy governor, Mr. Caldwell. His "All Nations Hotel" bids fair to surpass in popularity all the other hotels m the city. We have no doubt he has already seen the propriety of making due preparations, and has, it may be, even already introduced among his warders the curling-tongs, and other appliances productive of spruceness. By all means let the whole bevy of bazaarpromoters be secured and withheld from mischief ; until this has been done complimentary tickets must continue to be regarded with deep distrust in the office of our contemporary the Daily Times,

We do not know that a strike is necessarily " altothe gether unpardonable." It depends upon the usage telegbaph that has been received by the parties striking, and strike. the prospects they can see, or rather perhaps cannot see, of their circumstances being ameliorated. The telegraph officials, it is admitted on all sides, have not been well treated ; hard work and scanty pay have been their portion, and unless they themselves had taken some emphatic step to mend matters, it is probable that they might have continued to occupy the unenviable position in which they found themselves. We cannot see that they were by any means bound in conscience to do any such thing. It is, however, a pity that matters should have been so pushed to extremities ; the disposition to enslave is not a commendable one wherever it may be found, and undoubtedly to act upon it can be productive of nothing but evil. The telegraphic department is one of the most important in the Colony, and one on which the comfort, and in many instances the rital interests, of the public depend ; it is, therefore, but a foolish management to conduct it by means of men possessed of a just grievance, and we hope the Government may see their way to deal with the matter in a right spirit. It is a mean thing to try and compel men to serve on terms that are injurious to them ; and we hold that in a new country where a great deal depends upon the energy of the inhabitants, any measure that so tends to subdue and break down the independence of any class is an offence attempted against the community at large. '