Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XI, Issue 34, 21 December 1883, Page 1

Current Topics

AT ROME AND ABROAD.

A DEBASING ASSOCIATION.

A GREAT PROTESTANT MONUMENT.

ENGLISH ' MISSIONARIES, IN - MADAGASCAR.

The .hostility shown by the French Press to Mr t Shaw, the English missionary whom Admiral Pierre treated so cavalierly, is not in the least to be explained by the fact that he was engaged in ministering to the Hovas as a Protestant pastor. The French have long looked, and probably with good reason, on the English missionaries as the rulers- of the Hovan realm, and, therefore, in attacking them they naturally consider that they are carrying the war into the very inmost headquarters of the enemy. M. George Valbert, for example, told us in a recent number of the JRevue des Deux Mondes that these missionaries had succeeded, by prodigies of industry and activity in making themselves masters as well of the Government as of the consciences of the people in question. — After having preached Jesus and peace, he adds in effect, the English missionaries in Madagascar inflamed dissension and war. Having had the happiness of converting the Hovas, they encouraged them to reduce their neighbours to vasselage. Whoever interferes with their catechumens ranges himself against the Lord, and they at once adopted the unjust cause of the Hovas when, disowning the rights of France, they became embroiled with her. — It is not the fault of the missionaries, in a word, if England and France have not had recourse to hostilities in order to settle the matter. — The missionaries, nevertheless, do not belong to the Anglican Church . — Members of the High Church party, the writer informs us, would consider it beneath them to visit these missionaries on arriving at Tananarive They do not look upon them as gentlemen, which, however, does not prevent their considering them useful subalterns, whom they would be the first to recommend to the protection of the Foreign Office, if they found them to be interfered with— and that although, as he tells us, they would not exchange with them what he calls, in a form of expression that defies all attempts at translation — des shake hands. The missionaries have, indeed, done these people some good ; they have succeeded in weaning them from certain barbarous and cruel practices, and they are trying to put an end to slavery ; they have, moreover, conferred great benefits by their influence on English merchants- If they had been content only to teach their converts that when two friends meet it is more reasonable for them to touch one another's hand than to rub the nose of the one against that of the other, commerce would not have been much the better for their teaching. — But they taught them to reform their dress, and, instead of a garment called a lanba in which they were used to clothe them« selves, that they should don — the women each a cotton gown, the men a shirt and trousers. iTor English missionaries are very frank, and do not hide that they mingle heavenly things with worldly interests, and a spirit of business with piety. — Mr. Sibree, in fact, a writer on Madagascar, computes from statistics that since the introduction of Christianity into Polynesia, each missionary has been worth, to American, and European commerce, ten thousand pounds sterling a year. The missionaries in Madagascar, indeed, haye • not reached so high a sum, but their value may fairly be fixed at two or, three thousand pounds of annual importation. — It was in 1869 that ±he English missionaries carried the day. In the February of that the Queen Ranavalona 11. was publicly baptised by them, together with her Prime Minister, and she immediately sent messengers through all the villages to announce that she had chosen her religion. The effect of the ukase was immediate ; the people rushed to baptism, and the whole province of Imerina which had been fetichist in the morning, in the evening had become Christian. As to what the conversion is worth the missionaries know it, and Mr. Sibree makes no mystery concerning it. Sometimes the news is spread abroad that tne Queen is about to change her mind, and immediately the chapels that have been crowded are left empty. — Ranavalona is, nevertheless, a puppet whose Richelieu holds the wires. — The Government of the Hovas is an absolute monarchy tempered by the omnipotence of a Prime Minister, who obliges his sovereign to say and do only what pleases him, and be, in his turn, desires nothing without first having

A HORBIBLE STATE OP THINGS.

consulted those who converted him His queen is the prisoner of a prisoner.— Bnt whatever may be the merits of missionaries, they are still men, and puffed up by their success they abused it. They determined to rule without any partners, and decided that France must be expelled. They had forgotten that if they were installed at Tananarivo since 1820, the French had had interests in Madagascar for at least two centuriea— that they possessed the Isle of Nossibe on the north-west coast, that of St. Mary ori the east coast, that they had always stipulated for their countrymen and colonists at Bourbon the right of settlement in the Hovan conntry, and that by the treaties of 1841 the Sakalavag had recognised their protectorate, which they had themselves solicited. — The writer further goes on to charge the missionaries with having persuaded the Hovas to set France at defiance owing to her altered position in Europe. — They persuaded the Prime Minister, he says, that eiace the disasters she had suffered, France is no longer France, that, like the lion loaded with years, she is reduced by them to weep for her former prowess, and in her weakness feels insnlts no more, that were she to become incensed, England and Germany would lend the strong hand to her insulter. Under such circumstances, and such being the opinions common among the French, we cannot wonder at the treatment given to Mr. Shaw, nor at the angry tone of the French Press o in writing on the subject.— The wonder is, perhaps, that the Government of the Republic undertook to make him any amends for the hardships he suffered . A few years ago an English prelate—the Archbishop of Canterbury, indeed, if we recollect aright — having referred to the heathenism of India at some meeting in London, was replied to, and Ma utterances criticised in a very unexpected manner by some heathen natives of the country referred to. We do not say that the Archbishop had the worst of the argument, for that would be to admit a form of Christianity to be lower than heathenism) which we are not prepared to do, but it was at least proved that, whatever may have been the beliefs of the pagans who took up the defence of their own religious system, they were very capable o£ judging as to the weaknesses apparent in the creed the Archbishop would have propagated among their fellow-countrymen. It was, besides, somewhat startling to find that in the capital, where aach loud boasts are wont to be heard as to the missionary work done by England, heathendom made bold to lift its voice? A somewhat similar incident is reported by the Aryus to have taken place lately at a meeting of the Melbourne Presbytery —although in this instance we conclude, the foreigner referred to is a Christian — but he also appears to have a due appreciation of matters, and to perceive that the reforming work Christians are called upon to do does not lie wholly without the boundaries of what is called Christendom : — "Mr. Cheok Hong Cheong appeared as a commissioner from the Fitzroy congregation in support of a call. Mr. Cheong has been walking about with his eyes open, and the result of his observations is that he has arrived at the conclusion that Fitzroy presents a vast field for missionary enterprise. Several venerable members of the Court arched their eye-brows at this unlooked-for announcement of the shrewd Celestial, but their astonishment was intensified when Mr, Cheong proceeded to express his conviction that there were more heathens in Fitzroy than on any island in the New Hebrides. The young ministers smiled significantly, but the • fathers of the Church* looked grave, for the conversion of the New Hebrides is one of their pet projects. The inferential suggestion that the missionaries sent to the New Hebrides would be more usefully employed within a mile or two of Collins street was evidently not relished by the 'fathers and brethre n,' and the plain-spoken Celestial sat down in silence.' Now we confess that the fact of Melbourne's being a very wicked city, and containing streets and districts \vh re a very abominable condition of things may obtain, is not wholly conclusive against the sending of missionaries among people who do not profess to be Christians. It would, for example, have been a poor reason for keep ing St. Francis Xavier from going out to convert the Bast to have pleaded that a great pait of Europe had turned its back upon theFaith, and that until it was regained for the Church, nothing ought

to be done for the salvation of far off heathen lands. If it can, however, be shown that such a condition of things as that alluded to by the Chinese gentleman in Melbourne exists, all uninterfered with and that, while they are wholly neglectful of it, the members of the Presbytery are ardently engaged in aiding missions abroad, the case becomes different ; then their inconsistency is to be much blamed, and their sincerity, moreover, is to be greatly doubted. ' Meantime, whatever may be the case in Melbourne, while Exeter Hall has been occupied with the affairs of foreign missions, and while volumes have been published as to the success of English missionaries abroad, we have ample reason to believe that a very culpable neglect of a state of things hardly to be surpassed in any heathen country has been going on withia earshot of its platform. It is something, nevertheless, if even thus late in the day, a Protestant society has penetrated into the dark parts of London and revealed to the public the horrors to be found there— let us hope for their complete removal and remedy. But of this, we must say, we should feel more hopeful had not the state of things now fully revealed been already, for many years, in great part known, and were we not accustomed to hear every now and then of exposures made of evils that seemed only exposed for a time to be once more forgotten and allowed to continue as before. The state of things, however, now published concerning London, is almost beyond belief, and such as may well alarm all the dwellers in that great city, and even in the country of which it is the capital.— Misery, filth, vice, infamy— all that is unspeakable, and almost unimaginable, has been brought to light. Take, for example, this picture : " Few have ny adequate conception of what the pestilential human rookeries are where tens of thousands of the London poor are crowded together To get into them you have to penetrate courts reeking with poisonous and malodorous gases arising from accumulations of sewage and refuse scattered in all directions, and often flowing beneath your feet ; courts which the sun never penetrates, and -which are never visited by a breath of fresh air. You bave to ascend rotten staircases which threaten to give way beneath every step, and which, in some places, have already broken down, leaving gaps that imperil the limbs and lives of the unwary. You have to grope your way along dark and filthy passages swarming with vermin. Then, if you are not driven back by the intolerable stench, you may gain admittance to the dens in which these thousands of beings herd together. Should you ascend to the attic, where, at least, some approach to fresh air might be expected to enter by the open or broken windows, you find that the sickly air which finds its way into the room has to pass over the putrefying carcases of dead cats or birds, or viler abominations still. Here is a hole in the wall which has been repaired by the landlord. He has done it by nailing a few pieces of an old soap-box over the place,and for this has put threepence a week on the rent ! And this is the best paying property in London ! Three shillings, four and sixpence, as much as six shillings a week is readily paid for one of these horrible rooms. Houses that have been condemned by the authorities as unfit for habitation are very gold mines to sleek' speculators who fatten upon the wretchedness of the poor." And yet again : " Every room in these rotten and reeking tenements houses a family, often two. In one cellar have been found a father, mother three children, and four pigs ! In another is a man ill with th small-pox, his wife just recovering from her eighth confinement, and the children running about half naked and covered with dirt. Here are seven people living in one underground kitchen, and a little dead child lying in the same room. Another apartment contains father, mother, and six children, two of whom are ill with scarlet fever. In another nine brothers and sisters, frsm 29 years of age downwards, live, eat, and sleep together. Here is a mother who turns her children into the street in the early evening because she lets her room for immoral purposes until long after midnight, when the poor little wretches creep back again if they have not found some miserable shelter elsewhere. In many cases matters are made worse by the unhealthy occupations of those who dwell in these habitations. Here yon are choked as you enter by the superfiuous fur pulled from the skins of rabbits, rats, dogs, and other animals, in their preparation for the furrier. Here the smell oE paste and of dry match-boxes, mingled with other sickly odours, overpowers you ; or it may be the fragrance of stale fish or vegetables, not sold on the previous day, and kept in the room overnight. Who can wonder that young girls wander off into a life of immorality ? Who can ! wonder that the public houses should still be the ' Blysian field of the tired toiler 1 " — Who can wonder, indeed, that erety sense of decency j is dead, and that the brutal conditions of their surroundings only form a fit index to the minds and natures of those who live among them I—The1 — The standing of England, then, as a missionary nation may well be questioned. In her own proud and far-famed capital are to be found hordes whose debasement exceeds that of the lowest savages, and whose misery is unequalled, and what has she done to reclaim them or what is she about to do ? Perhaps, indeed, the exposure made by this Protestant Society may be as little relished by Exeter Hall as, according to the Argus', was the suggestion of Mr, Cheong by the elders of the Melbourne presbytery, and we may find that conquests in Madagascar, and prayer>meetings in the New

A SOURCE OP DANGER.

Hebrides are still preferred before the conversion of the brethren near at hand— as appears to be the state of affairs in Melbourne. The question, moreover, arises as to what, in addition to the disgrace of the state of things reported in connection with London, may be the danger of it. That a great portion of the people so situated are vicious and criminal in the extreme, we are told, and such a people stirred to violence, would be of reckless brutality and cruelty. That, again, those people who have remained untainted by crime or grosser vices among the baser crew are still callous nnd indifferent of necessity to the infamy of what goes on around them we learn from another source, for we had already seen in the Pictorial World, a London newspaper, a series of sketches entitled " How the poor.live," in which the publication of this Protestant Society already alluded to had been in many particulars forestalled. The following details, for example, we owe to the newspaper in question : — The constant association of the poor and the criminal class," says the writer, •« has deadened in the former nearly all sense of right *nd wrong. In the words of one of them, ' they can't afford to be particular about their choice of neighbours.' I was but the other day in a room in this district occupied by a widow woman, her daughters of seventeen and sixteen, her sons of fourteen aid thirteen, and two younger children. Her wretched apartment yJS^ on the street level, and behind it was the common yard of the tenement. In this yard the previous night a drunken, sailor had been dreadfully maltreated and left for dead. I asked the woman if she had not heard the noise, and why she didn't interfere. • Heard it?' was the reply ; « well, we ain't deaf, but they're a rum lot in this here house, and we're used to rows. There ain't a night passes as there ain't a fight in the passage or a drunken row ; but why should I interfere? 'Tain'tno business of mine. Asa matter of fact, this woman, her grown-up daughters, and her boys mast have lain in that room night after night, hearing the most obscene language, having a perfect knowledge of the proceedings of the vilest and most depraved of profligate men and women forced upon them, hearing cries of murder and the sound of blows, knowing that almost every crime in the Decalogue was being committed in that awful back yard on which that broken casement looked, and yet not one of them had ever dreamed of stirring hand or foot. They were saturated with the spirit of the place, and though they were respectable people themselves they saw nothing criminal in the behaviour of their neighbours." It is evident, then, that in London the poorer classes are heing trained in a school where they cannot bat learn all the qualities that shall fit them for red revolution, and to take a suitable part in whatever convulsions may eventually disturb society. In the country, also, as Dr. Jessop has recently told us, the peasantry are being similarly schooled, and the leadership of a few demagogues seems all that is needed to set both country and town ablaze. But that the leaders may not long be wanting there are many things to warn us. The temper of the times is singularly favourable to their growth, and the small philosophers, paltry, mischievous, conceits, and self -sufficient ignorance of the day cannot fail to produce them any more than rottenness does to produce its particular mould or fungus. The condition of the classes referred to, then, is not a question for Exeter Hall only, but of much wider interest, and to be remedied by something more efficacious than an effete and anile piety, or the pretence of it. Another picture, which, we borrow also from the writer in the Pictorial World, a gentleman who had accompanied the Board School officer for a certain district in his rounds, has a bearing on the dangers that children are exposed to in the State schools. It is this :— " Wait outside while we knock at this door. Knock, knock. No •nswer ? Knock, knock, knock. A child's voice, answers, ' What is it ? ' We give the answer — the answer which has been onr • open seßame ' everywhere — and after a pause a woman opens a door a little and asks us to wait a moment. Presently we are admitted. A woman pleasing looking and with a certain refinement in her features holds the door open for us. She has evidently made a hurried toilet and put on an ulster over her night attire. She has also put a brjvsfl chain and locket round her neck. There is a little rouge left nri^r cheeks and a little of the burnt hairpin colpur left under her eye) from overnight. At the table having their breakfast are two neat and clean little girls of seven and eight. They rise and curtsey as we enter. We ask them a few questions, and they answer intelligently — they are at the Board School and are making admirable progress — charming children, interesting and well-behaved in every way. They have a perfect knowledge of good and evil— one of them has taken a scripture prize — and yet these two charming and intelligent little girls live in that room night and day with their mother, and this is the den to which she snares her dissolute prey. I would gladly have passed over this scene in silence, but it is one part of the question which directly bears on the theory of State interference. It is by shutting our eyes to evils that we allow them to continue unreformed so long. I maintain that such cases as these Are fit ones

A SEER AT TIMARU.

for legislative protection. The State should have the power of rescuing its future citizens from soch surroundings, and the law which protects young children from phyeical hnrt should also be so framed as to shield them from moral destruction." But not only does the law refrain from protecting the children that are so miserably situated but, by means of its compulsory education, in common schools, it forces into association with them, and »a a necessary consequence into a participation more cr less in their corruption, children whose homes are respectable and pure. — These facts are sufficient without any further comment. At a meeting of the Timaru School Committee held the other day, one, Mr. Gibson, in opposing a motion for Bible-reading in the school, predicted that " the free, secular, and compulsory system o* education would stand the test of time." Now, we do not know upon what the prediction of this Mr. Gibson was based, nor do we know what the gentleman's claims to a clear prevision may be. It is said, we are indeed aware, that there are, or have been, people endowed with a power known as that of second sight, and to whose possessors the future lies revealed. But whether Mr. Gibson is so enor not it has not been revealed to üb. If, without the power of second sight the gentleman in question ventured to foretell the enduring nature of the secular system he relied on his opinion only, and from that it may be possible, perchance, for a man to differ without egregious presumption. Nor could experience have guided Mr. Gibson in his decision, for, wherever a system of secular education has prevailed for a sufficient time, it has been found sadly deficient. At this moment, for example, we have before us the testimony of competent judges to the result of the system alluded to in America, and there it has proved a remarkable failure. The New York World, then, in a couple of its recent issues has dealt with the system, and shown certain important points in which it has failed. The common complaint among parents is, as this newspaper tells us, that their children are learning nothing, and all the pretence of teaching made in the costly schools, is so much -vain show. But Mr. Dorm Piatt in his Commercial Gazette, makes a still more serious arraignment of the system. " There -never mas moh a fraud and delusion as the common-school system," he writes. " Based on a proposition that is communism in its simplest and most direct form, which says that the property of the rich shall be taken to educate tbe children of the poor, it is really the reverse in its effect. Labour pays all, and instead of the wealthy being taxed to educate the children of labourers, labour is taxed to educate the children of the rich. They are hotbeds of iniquity. ... My honoured father was the first, he being then a member of the Ohio Legislature, to introduce a bill inaugurating this monstrous fraud. He lived to regret his work. It is communism in its worst form. It seeks to rob the rich for the benefit of tbe poor, and ends in burdening labour for the uses of wealth. Instead of the rich being taxed to educate the children of labour— labour, that pays all, is taxed for the benefit of the rich. Its practical outcome is an infamous outrage. What child of a day labourer carrying his pick and shovel can graduate in your High School? We are a nation of phrase eaters, and because this system of irreligious teaching is hid under a few choice phrases, no man dares even to investigate its senseless extravagance." Mr. Gibson, also, in his turn, seems to be somewhat of a " phrase eater," and because to him apparently the sysis one displaying what he calls "the " Christianity of Christ," and what we should judge from the manner of his argument to be no Christianity at all — or, verily, to be a " sham "—notwithstanding Mr. Gibson's asserted detestation of such—for what greater sham is there on earth than the pretended benevolence and justice of those men whose firm determination it is to force upon their unwilling neighbours any system that it may please them from various motives to support ? — And it is this true " sham " and utter imposture that we often hear them blasphemously identify with the Christianity of Christ.-~What right, again, has any man to pronounce his neighbour's religion a sham, and to insist that his neighbour shall not teach his religion to bis children ? But Mr. Gibson, as we said, is possibly possessed of second sight, and, knowing much more than iris neighbours, is admirably qualified to lay down the law for them. Without the gift of second sight the gentleman in question might be accredited with self-sufficiency and rashness, and even, perhaps, with no small degree of presumption. The London Times in an article on the Jesuits, not only repeats all the time-worn calumnies made against the Order, and takes an opportunity of assailing the Catholic Church generally, but also makes a boast or two intended to reflect honour on Protestantism, but which may, perhaps, be otherwise understood without much difficulty. " Tbe Jesuits," he says, " used the New World to restore the balance of the Old, and the most illustrious of Loyola's disciples all but achieved the impossible feat of bringing Japan, China, and even Hindostan into obedience to the See of Rome, But that the Protestant Powers pursued them even to the ends of the

world, it is conceivable that they might have succeeded in making all the races of the earth Christian after their fashion, involving the most astonishing compromises between the new creed and the ancient superstitions." How honourable, then, it is to the Protestant Powers that they should have preserved to Vishnu and Buddha, and all the gods of the heathen, their ancient empire— that they should have been the means of saving from destruction every abominable heathen rite, and every vile heathen observance. What a monument to the Protestant Powers aie, for example, human sacrifices, the degradation of women, and the innumerable infamous things that are attendant on the different forms of heathenism. Truly they are to be congratulated on the marks they have left of their empire in all the quarters of the world, and who shall henceforward deny that the glorious Beformation has been suitably upheld by them. But let us note for our warning and admonition the spirit that the great organ of English opinion displays in the passage we have quoted. We have frequently been told of late that in no countries of all the earth does the Catholic Church enjoy greater consideration or more liberty than she enjoys within the limits of the British Empire. Tet the Times prefers to the obedience to the See of Rome into which, he says the Jesuits might have brought the whole heathen world, the continued reign of heathen abominations. — Can a more bitter hatred, a deeper contempt than this be shown towards the Church, and is it not manifest that the toleration displayed towards her by those who entertain such feelings is one on which no Catholic can reckon, and one for which he need feel no gratitude—knowing that it is but the fruits of accidental circumstances, and which may any day be withdrawn ? The boast that the Protestant powers by their persecution of the Jesuits, have baffled the Holy See, and renewed the strength oi heathenism is an ominous one for Catholics, and proves to them that the hatred of their religion is in the very blood of Protestantism--and if in that of Protestantism, how much more in the blood of its advanced and more xancoroua children, Freethought and Atheism f so that the position of Catholics is at all times precarious. Meantime, it is consistent with the boasting of the Tvnies to find that what the Jesuits have been prevented, as he says, from doing, is not likely to be accomplished by Protestant missions. The monument that the Protestant Powers have raised up for themselves is one that is likely to last in all its beauty, and honour them, perhaps, till the end of time, or, at least, until the final triumph of the Church on earth has brought about an acknowledgement of what Protestantism has really been, and the Protestant Powers have discovered the true nature of all their anti-Catholic undertakings and successes. Bat the Times, indeed, might have boasted still more loudly—he might have claimed for England not only that she had had her share in persecuting the Jesuit missionaries, and so re-establishing heathenism in all its strength, but he might have proudly reminded his readers that in the heathenism of India England has an exclusive monument belonging to herself alone, and that bears ample testimony to her antiCatholic spirit, since it is anti- Christian.— ilarshall, in his Christian Missions, for example, maintains that the English Government in India very fervently restored and supported the native worship. He gives many instances of cases in which this was done, and supports his statements by competent English testimony. Let us take, for example, the following passages :— " « The disgusting and gory worship of Juggumaut,' says Mr. Howitt, ' was not merely practised, but was actually licensed and patronised by the English Government. It imposed a tax on all pilgrims going to the temples in Orissa and Bengal, appointed British officers, British gentlemen, to superintend the management of this hideous worship aud the receipt of its proceeds.' They even became ingenious, it seems, iv multiplying such sources of revenue ; for a Protestant missionary informs us that they also imposed a tax on those ' who desire the privilege of drowning in the Ganges,' and that this scheme was ' calculated to yield two hundred and fifty thousand rupees.' . . . And as late as 1857, we find the Protestant Bishop of Carlisle declaring in a public address, that the same proceedings still continue. In one of the presidencies for the support of idolatry and Mahometan superstition, upwards of fifty thousand pounds are regularly expended every .year by this country for the maintenance of that idolatrous and superstitious worship. This is no negative work, It is not a question whether we should have discountenanced it or not ; but here is a positive and downright encouragement of it. Again he writes, " One more witness to these singular facts shall be quoted, because he is supposed to represent, more accurately than any other writer, the opinions of the majority of Englishmen. < The company,' says this great authority, —beginning with a skilful limitation.—' seem to have thought that they held their possessions in India upon much the same terniß as the Dutch held their footing in Japan, — by tenure of trampling on the Cross.^ Practically, they worshipped those ugly Indian deities more servilely than their own votaries did . Their only anxiety was to show them what they should salute, what they should respect ; and they honoured, saluted, and respected accordingly. This idola^ try of other men's superstitious prevalent among the officers of the Bast Indian service is a mania by no means yet extinct.' (The Times* March 16, 1859) this, maeed, is the most wonderful fact of all,— that such things were still possible in the year 1859. < Some time ago,

Bays the correspondent of the Times, 'an officer marched down his regiment to slaughter the goats sa'crifieed on the occasion of one of their festivals.' He adds that at these religious festivals ' the colours were actually carried in front of the idols, and blank cartridges were issued by the commanding officers from the Government magazines ! The Sepoys attended in full uniform, worshipped the images, and called on them to bless the standards and the arms which they bore in the Company's service.' Mr. Bussell might well say, ' For a Christian people we did very odd things in India ; ' and perhaps it may even be doubted whether this light rebuke, which appears to have satisfied his temperate indignation, was altogether adequate to the occasion." Is it any wonder, then, to find the Times making its "boast that the Protestant powers preserved the heathenism of the world, and how far are the Jesuits disgraced by the enmity this newspaper displays towards them ? — Their persecution may very fitly go to adorn the monument that heathenism forms to the glory of Protestantism, and in which, as we see, Bible-loving England has a principal part. — Bat that it is so should have a peculiar meaning for thoughtful men.