INFIDELITY AND AVARICE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IX, Issue 434, 5 August 1881, Page 9

INFIDELITY AND AVARICE.

(From the Jubilee Pastoral of Archbishop Lynch, of Toronto.) It has been the constant and earnest endeavour of secular men to banish all religious teachings from the schools, even in our own country and in the United States. What will be th« harvest which society must necessarily reap from a popnlntion educated without religion, its restraints, its hopes and its teachings of future rewards and punishments. It will be Socialism and Nihilism, the workings of which we sue in Russia. The students of the universities are the grievous sores of the body politic of that country. Every country that professedly banishes religion from its schools will reap sooner or later the dire effects of irreligion. The very pagans of India with their religious restraints, though not worshipping the true God, educate their children with more religious feeling than many so-called Christians, and hence parents are treated ■with respect, and their governments have more stability. There is another great evil which has its ramifications in almost every grade of society. It is too great a desire of becoming rich. -" He who hastens to become rich is not without sin," says the Holy Spirit— Prov., 28-29. From the very refined and church-going lady who desires to procure goods and fineries at a lower rate than would furnish the working people with the baTe necessaries of life, to the heavy contractor who, pressed by other contractors, must grind down his workingmen to starvation wages, to make out a good remuneration for his services, all appear to be in too great a hurry to become rich. Children are put to men's work on child's pay. They must work to earn a pittance to enable their parents to rear and support them. Such a state of society is not in a healthy condition ; hence the frequent strikes for higher wages. The competition between contractor and employees is keen, because the gentlemen or the company ■nant to get work done at too low a figure, and hence the root and spring of all the miseries that follow. The generality of people require long and dee[> lessons of justice, honour and humanity. In the true religion alone will be found a remedy for these evils. Religion teackes the powerful rich justice ; to the poor man honest work and a faithful discharge of just contracts and obligations towards their employers. It is the will of God that there should be in this world various grades of society. The young and the old. also the rich and the poor, the weak and the strong, the learned and the less learned, the governors and the governed, some with more talent, others with less, all depending on one another in some degree. These conditions of life through the providence of God change ■constantly, hence the common expression, " the up and downs of life." At last death comes to end all, and we shall go to the house of eternity. Let us all, dearly beloved children of Christ, prepare for that time and avail ourselves of this further grace which God holds out to us in the present Jubilee.