TWIN VICES.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IX, Issue 454, 23 December 1881, Page 18

TWIN VICES.

An Italian, savant has beea at pains to compile statistics on the matter of suicide, a crime that like divorce is on the increase every year in countries that esteem themselves highly civilized. Of course suicide like divorce, may be the distinguishing feature of the coming civilziation ; but, like divorce, it has certainly neither part nor parcel in the civilization founded by Christ. Both are diametrically opposed to Christian doctrine and practice from the beginning. Both rua very near each other. In countries calling themselves Christian, where divorce or civil marriage is most practiced, will be found a larger crop of suicides than in those where such practice is not allowed or is not common. We draw no inference from this, but simply note a fact which has not been stated by the Italian savant. If an inference is to be drawn, it would be this : that where there is decay of Christian faith there will be decay of public morals, on a large scale. People will live ostensibly within the law up to a certain point. They will not openly commit acts that would condemn and make them shunned of their fellows. They must live in and of the world ; and the world being a social community demands and exacts certain laws of public observance for its own preservation. For to the mass as to the individual the wages of sin is death. The history of the decay of once mighty empires and peoples tell this one story. The rise by hardy virtue, courage, self sacrifice, ambition, faith : the fall by inches, corruption, enervation, sin. There is a long succession of deluges in this world. If God does not wipe out the race for their crimes as he did before Noah, they perform the work of self-annihilation themselves. Natural suicides may be slow, but they are effective in the end. Statistics show that suicides are most numerous in countries where the Christian faith, and consequently the Christian laws have weakened their hold on the masses of the people. Germany heads the list, France, Austria, England, Italy follow in close order. Ire land stands very low down, within one or two of the last which is Croatia. The United States are pushing rapidly to the front, while in the matter of divorces we are still best in the world. France, Austria, and Italy, which stand so high on this black list will of course be set down as Catholic countries. Well, we do not say that Catholic countries are exempt from vice any more than Protestant countries. But in France, Austria, and Italy from the last century down terrible blows have been struck at the Christian Church by the monarchs and statesmen of those lands. In France the Revolution destroyed the Church altogether for the time being, and the Napoleons only restored it with the view of making it a sort of appendage of their throne. In Austria Joseph 11., tried to convert it into a Church of his own creation, a miserable, swaddled State affair. In Italy all the world has seen what befell the Church. So that while there are multitudes of Catholics and very good ones happily in all these nations, the tendency of the ruling power has been against the freedom and development of the Christian Church. Moreover, it is an acknowledged fact that suicide and divorce are equally rare among practical Catholics. The suicide is a person who has lost practical faith in this world or the next. Thinge have gone badly with him. He has been living badly. He had a run of pleasure. The pleasure soon palled, and left him a wreck, with nothing more to whet his jaded appetite. Life was actually no longer worth living to him, so he took in bis own hands, what he had so persistently abused, and cut the thread that bound it to living humanity. It appeared the easiest exit from a world in which he only saw a miserable future. Let the hereafter see to itself. For it is not poverty and suffering for misfortune's sake alone that incite to suicide. It is chiefly loss of faith in a helping God and loss of the little sweetness that a man forgetting God finds in life. There is no greater general poverty and suffering in all the world than in Ireland ; yet there the percentage of suicide is singularly small as compared with more prosperous countries and peoples. The reason is that the Irish have a strong and abiding faith in God, and having that, they have a strong and abiding faith in themselves and in their own future. So with them while there is life there is hope though they sit by an empty table and a fireless hearth. The encreasing number of suicides in this country is alarming. Misery cannot be assigned as a cause. It will be found in the greater number of cases to be that misery which is brought on by steady indulgence in vicious habits. These drain all that is good and noble in man and leave him among the husks of swine. While our public press is congratulating the country as being on the whole a very superior country and the people a very superior people, it loses sight of these salient features of our advanced state. If money and an abundance of the good things of life are all that our ambition and hope care to attain, that we have already, as other peoples have had before us. But if we only use these materials to indulge sensuality of whatever kind the fruit garnered in our national barn will soon turn to ashes on our lips. Greater than all wealth or worth is bumble faith in a Creator and Lord ; in otic above us all, who is at once a Saviour and a Judge. Judging by the signs of the times, public faith in Him is undergoing a rapid decay. Even the Churches that we build, saving the Catholic, partake more of a business enterprise than an act of divine worship. A good church and a good preacher pay, as does a good restaurant or a good theatra. But the faith that alone makes a nation steadfast and srood is dwindling into an experiment. The result ia apparent. Wo make ourselves the judges of what is good and evil. When we tire of wife or husband, we leave them, the law of the land doing all in its power to help us. Whf n we tire of life we take it, and people are not surprised. — Catholic Review.

Mr. Thomas James, of Wcstporr, has sent iv his resignation of the agency of the N.&. Tablet Company. The sum of £51 35., subscribed at Addison's Flat in aid of the Laud League, has becu forwarded to the Archbishop of Cashel.