Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.
We do not even yet know who Mosley is, but more and more apparent to us becomes what he is. The mystery still unfolds itself, and reveals to our astonished sight the great Balcluthese — philosopher and poet — for who, in this connection, dare speak of ignoramus or angry imbecile 2 And our Mosley is a laughing philosopher. The Tablet, by availrag itself of its high privilege to notice his letter to the ClutJta Leader in a passing sort of way, has thrown this mysterious Mosley into convulsions of laughter. Why, here we have at hand, too, an illustrated paper from London wherein, among various illustrations of the disturbances in Skye, there is a portrait given of the village fool, and the poor wretch seem 9to laugh and laugh again at the marines who surround him. Let us not, then, seek to check our Mosley in his merriment. But our Mosley, as we said, is a philosopher. He has matter at his fingers' ends, and, we doubt not, spirit too. The ultimate molecule he understands, with all its component parts, if it have such, but that he also knows. And for him to tell how many angels could fit on the point of a needle would be a mere trifle. There is, indeed, nothing in heaven or earth of which our Mouley, in his philosophy, does not dream. Nay, he does not confine himself to dreams, but has a broad wide-awake view of all tbese things — and of a great deal more no doubt besides, that makes him fit to search not only the human heart but the very divine nature itself. Our Mosley, then, is hard upon Transubstantiation. The Council of Trent he takes rough hold of, figuratively of couwe, and throttles — convicting of ignorance, folly, and wickedness, every theologian there, as he further convicts Bishop Moran of dishonesty. We Catholics have had our Subtle Doctor, our Angelic Doctor, our Seraphic Doctor, and others, but it remained for Balclutha to produce a champion to vanquish all these doctors— tbe great Balcluthese, the Crushing Doctor, The Crushing Doctor, then, has made mince-meat of the prelates who sat at Trent, and utterly demolished Dr. Moran. Let us not name to him, as men who renounced heretical doctrines to embrace that of Transubstantiation— keen philosophers, such, for example, as the famous German, Frederick von Schlegel, or the English Cardinal, Newman. It would offend the reverence we bear to the memory of the dead philosopher, and the great reputation of the living theologian to see them both reduced to dust beneath the weight of the Balcluthese, and all their arguments pulverised completely by the invincible force of that crushing one. Neither let us venture to mention any man of science, such, for example, as the French chemist Dumas, who firmly held by Transubstantiation. And Dumas surely should have understood the qualities of matter as accurately as our Crushing Doctor. Perhaps, however, it was his knowledge of spirit that was defective, and that in which his failure would have given a victory to the Balcluthese. Let us, however, bring forward some giant or another to cope with our Mosley — say, for instance, Ihe renowned German, Leibnilz, who never had been a Catholic and never became one. He, nevertheless, examines the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation, and, in a course of most acute argument, shows that it cannot be assailed on any philosophic principle. Let our Crushing Doctor, then, confront Leibnitz's great work, " A System of Theology," and we perceive that he has prepared himself for the task by a study of the Latin language, in which the work is written, for the two Latin words quoted by him in bis second letter to the Clutha Leader are quite correctly translated. But, still, why should our Crushing Doctor have troubled himself by the study of Latin ? He is certainly as competent to understand a work without knowing a word of the language in which it is written as he is to explain the doctrines of Transubstantiation and Papal Infallibility without a morsel of instruction on either. As a preliminary, in fact, to all bis controversy, we recommend the Crushing Doctor to obtain at the cost of three half-pence, a Catholic catechism, and with three half-pence worth of genuine information of any kind in his bead, he will find himself quite a different sort of a philosopher from what he is at preEent, and, if he ha an ounce of common sense which,
MOBLEY AND ANOTHER, OB A OF P I^ATj'GHING -PHILOSOPHEBS. 8
indeed we have yet to learn, he will feel delighted at the change.— But our Crushing Doctor has also, it appears, been making a study of history, or, at least, he has found in some controversial handbook or' another, laboriously conned for the purpose, mention made of certain histories by which it is believed that the Catholic Church is put to shame. Our Mosley also like all English boys as he says, of whom no doubt he furnishes us with a bright even if a mature specimen, has read Milton's sonnet on the Piedmontese massacres with indignation because of the •« slaughtered saints "of Protestantism. Let our Crush, ing Doctor reassure himself, however. The saints in question, il they' were slaughtered indeed, were also in some degree slaughtering. Slaughter, in short, entered into their saintly principles and, as the English Protestant historian, Hallam, tells us, persecution was the •« deadly original sin of the Reformation." ' The following extract, again, taken from " Innovations " a lecture delivered in 1868 by Dr. Littledale the well known Anglican Divine, and a notable anti-Catholic controversialist, is very much to the point. "Everybody knows that there was a terrible massacre of the French Protestants on St. Bartholomews^ Day, 1572 ; but few know that the atrocities which the Protestants themselves ten years before had committed atßeaugeney Montauban, Nismes, Montpelier, Grenoble and, Lyons, equalled, if thby did not exceed that terrible crime. Again, Ido not suppose there are ten people in this room who ever heard of the Nones of Haarlem. William the silent, Priuce of Orange, the famous leader of the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain, posted a large body of soldiers round the square of Haarlem one Corpus Christi day when the Catholics were all at Church. As soon as service was over, the congregation streamed out and were hemmed in and massacred by the Protestant soldiery. A slaughter of not much less atrocity signalised the introduction of Lutherism into Sweden by the butcherly tyrant, Gustavas Wasa. Once more, dwell as much as you like on Mary's three hundred victims ; she honestly thought (and shs had a great deal to make her think) that she was saving England from a horde of licentious infidels," Motley, moreover, the author of a book recommended by the Crushing Doctor to the study of colonial youth give 8 us also a few d etails concerning these Protestant saints. Let us take the following for example, " Sonoy, to his eternal, shame, was disposed to prove that human ingenuity to inflLct torture had not been exhausted in the chambers of the blood council (of Alva), for it was to be shown that the reformers were capable of giving a lesson to inquisitors in this diabolical science." (Rise of the Dutch Republic vol. 11l p 32.) Finally the Rationalist writer Lecky, who accepts as proved many calumnious statements concerning the Church, accredits nevertheless the Protestant sects with a more inexcusable spirit of persecution. " But what shall we say of a; Church," he writes, •♦ that was but a thing of yesterday, a Church that had as yet no services to show, no claims upon the gratitude of mankind, a Church that was by profession the creature of private judgment, and was in reality generated by the intrigues of a corrupt court, which, nevertheless? suppressed by force a worship that multitudes deemed necessary to their salvation ; and by all her organs and with all her energies persecuted those who clung to the religion of their fathers ? What shall we say of a religion which comprised at most but a fourth part of the Christian world, and which the first explosion of private judgment had shivered into countless sects which was neverthless so pervaded by the spirit of dogmatism that each of these sects asserted its distinctive doctrines with the same confidence, and persecuted with the same unhesitating violence, as a Church which was venerable with the homage of twelve centuries 1 . . So strong and so general was its intolerance that for some time it may, I believe, be truly said that there were more instances of partial toleration being advocated by Roman Catholics than by orthodox Protestants." — All thi«, we havo some suspicion, may be new to the Crushing Doctor of Balclutha, but, now that he hears of it, he may perhaps feel inclined to recommend it also to the study of the boys and girls in whose mental condition he takes such an interest, lest in that day of which the Doctor prophesies, when the Alps and the hills generally shall begin to vociferate in a rhapsodical sort of a way, they may say something totally unexpected by our ill-informed youth. Meantime, we leave the great Balcluthese to his laughter,— and there still that village fool of TJig stares us in the face, as he stands grinning among the marines, and, evidently believes himself to be the finest fellow in the whole situation,
OUR STUDY OF CALVINISM.
We have cow for some days been engaged in a study of Calviuism. We entered upon the study at the recommendation of the Rev. Mr. Gualtei^ Minister of the First Church, Dunedin, who, speaking one night last week at the Coffee Palace, mentioned some things that had struck him as undesirable and recommended the study in question as a preventive and remedy. As Mr. Gualter, however, is a new light, as well as a shining one of the first magnitude, among us, and has just come from the source and life-spring of ' all that is evangelical and pious iv the Old World, let us quote his very words. Referring to the things that struck him as undesirable, he was reported to have spoken as f ollows :— " One," said he, "was the prominence here of infidelity— the cold negations of infidelity ; and the other was the prominence of Popery — or its seeming future prominence, if they might judge by the magnificent building that was being erected in Dunedin. The people, it seemed to him., wanted earnest instruction in what really constituted the Gospel of Christ. He knew the Presbyterians preached it well, but at the same time he would strongly recommend for all of us a study of Calvinism." — The study of Calvinism, then, is to do what the " Gospel of Christ " well preached by the Presbyterians has failed, and must fail, to do. It is to do away with the " cold negations of infidelity," and to make the Catholic cathedral a mere empty pile. How, nevertheless, the study of Calvinism is to accomplish that in New Zealand which it has proved signally incompetent to perform in Europe is a matter that ■we must leave to the Rev. Mr. Gaalter to explain. Calvinism in Geneva, far from formiug a barrier against infidelity, most effectively paved the way for it, so that at this moment there is no greater stronghold of unbelief in the world than the city of the reformer Who taught the doctrine referred to. The Protestant Church of France, again, which was also originally Calvinistic, is to-day in a great degree permeated by rationalism. As to the effect of Calvinism oa " Popery," that is quite another thing. After a sound study of Calvinism oa the part of the population generally, and the adoption of its principles by them, it is quite probable that the Catholic cathedral would be emptied of its congregation, for a time, at least, or even, it may be, razed wholly to the ground. Calvinism, or the following of Calvin, would, indeed, make short work of all our Catholic institutions, and show but scant mercy to the Catholic people themselves. The whole system of Calvin, in facf, was one of fierce and cruel intolerance. Geneva, under his sway, was a place in which no man's liberty was secure to him. The reformer's first undertaking was that of gaining the mastery over the mechanics and labourers, who resented his intrusion as that of a foreigner. They called him the " French fox," and ridiculed his person and his manners. To put these people, whom he stigmatised as " Libertines,'' down, a code of laws was enacted regulating the conduct of the citizens in even the most minute particulars, and interfering with the rights of the household or the individual in a way that seems almost incredible. The worship of Calvin, moreover, entered largely into the matter, and it was made penal for a man to approach him without uncovering his head, or to venture to offer him a flat contradiction. An ordinance, with which no doubt the Rev. Mr. Gualter will have some especial degree of sympathy, was that by which it was forbidden to so much as smile while the reformer was preaching a sermon — and in accordance with which it is on record that on one occasion three men were imprisoned for gome days on bread and water. Mr. Gualter, who had already told us that the preacher was above the Word itself, would, no doubt, find much justice and edifying conduct in the imposition of such a sentence. And we admit that the re-enactment of the statute under which the sentence was passed might do much to repress that manifestation of impatience that, according to a respectable divine, attends in the Dunedin Presbyterian churches on the preaching of any sermon of longer duration than twenty minutes. But Calvin also employed a large body of spies, who reported to him as to what' took place in the privacy of family-life, and we find that many people were prosecuted, on such information, among other things, for " insults to Calvin," and " offences against the ministers." Of the graver methods in which the reformer insured the predominance of his sj stem, we may refer to the execution at the stake of Servetus, with the recommendation made afterwards to the Marquis de Pouet that he should treat im like manner all "fanatical fellows." " Kiich monsters," wrote the reformer, '"' ought to be strangled, as I did, in the executiou of Michael Servetus, the Spaniard." Poor Servetus, who, said his executioner, triumphing, after a long course of intrigue to get his enemy into his power, " bellowed, after the manner of a Spaniard — ' Mercy, mercy.' " There was also Gruet, convicted of heresy and treason because he had dared in some poetical manner to handle the reformer severely, and after beiog tortured every day for a month, so that he begged for the finishing stroke, beheaded. And many others also were punished and persecuted cruelly. A 9 Dunedin is a healthy place the study of Calvinism, perhaps, might not entail certain other Bufferings entailed by it on the populace of Geneva, who, on the outbreak of the plague in 1543, could not obtain the aid of a minister % bat they cried out for in their dying moments. All the godly preachers
bid themselves on the occasion — only praying that God would give them " more courage inlthe future." liut as to the effect 6n morals of the Calvinistic regime, it 'puts us in miud of that produced, according to Robert Chambers in hi 3 " Domestic Annals,' r under the tyranny of the Kirk in Scotland, where also the study of Calvinism had prevailed. The Protestant historian, Galiffe, testifies as follows to it :— "To those who imagine that the reformer had done nothing that is not good, I will exhibit our registries covered with entries of illegitimate children -(these were exposed at all the corners of the city and country) ; with prosecutions hideous for their obscenity ; with wills in which fathers and mother accuse their own children not only of errors, but of crimes ; with transactions before notaries pnblic between young girls and their paramours, who gave them, in the presence of their relatives, means oE supporting their illegitimate offspring ; with multitudes of forced marriages, where the delinquents were conducted from the prison to the church ;c; c with mothers who abandoned their infants at the hospital, while they were living with a second husband ; with whole bundles of processes between brothers ; with heaps of secret denunciations : and all this in the generation nourished by the mystic manna oi Calvin 1 " (Notices, vol. iii, p. 15.) Such is the knowledge, then, with a little more besides, that we have gained by our study of Calvinism. We have gained such knowledge by it, in short, as induces us to question very strongly the benefit to be gained by the general spread of the system inDunedin. It certainly would njt result in destroying infidelity, for it has bred and nourished it elsewhere. Nor would it destroy "Popery," although it would be very likely to batter down the cathedral, as well as to lead to the fierce persecution of the " Papists." It may be as well, then, if the Key. Mr. Gualter's advice be Deglected, and if Presbyterians merely continue as hitherto to preach the " Gospel of Christ " well. They may, perhaps, not have done much good by their preaching, but neither, we admit, do they seem to have done much harm. And as to the Key. Mr. Gualter himself — however the new broom may for the moment sweep — the best decision to be pronounced concerning him by posterity — or that more immediate portion of it that recollects anything about him— will probably be to the same effect.
IDLE, IGNORANT AND SUPERSTITIONS.
In referring the other day to the measures taken ,in Danedin, with a view towards encouraging the immigration of the Skye crofters into New Zea land, we ventured the opinion that the Imperial Government would find ample employment for their money were they to undertake to procure free passages to the colonies for all the reasonably discontented inhabitants of Great Britain. — The special correspondent of the St. James's Gazette bears us out in such an opinion, for he says that the no-rent banner will soon be raised all through the Western Highlands, and that in the already smouldering Hebrides a " blaze may break oat at any moment." — He adds that the time has come for an inquiry to be made into the condition of the discontented people whom be admits to have real grievances-such, for example, as the inability to obtain sufficient land to feed a family, tyranny and corruption on the part of the factor, usurpation by the landlord of the commons, aad other things but, for his own part, he adds to the list of causes, the idleness, ignorance, and superstition, which, he says, prevail so largely throughout the islands: — "The charge of idleness" he continues " is one which may possibly be regarded with suspicion by those who have only seen the brawny men of Harris and Skye fishing on the East coast or working in the ship-yards of Glasgow. It is not abroad that these fellows are lazy ; and I dire say they are often idle at home merely because their small crofts do not bring sufficient work to their doors. Nevertheless, when, last month, Loch Snizorfc and Loch Pooltiel were full of herring and ling, I more than once saw all the fishing-boats of Uig aad Hamera lying anchored and unmanned close in shore. It cannot, in short, be denied that very many of the fishing crofters are habitually idle, or very nearly so, during the half year ; and of course this idleness renders them discontented as well as poor. Their ignorance accounts for the extraordinary prejudice with which they look upon a policeman* They really imagine that his presence amongst them is a reflection upon their honesty. • Until lately, 1 said John M'Leod, the Uig leader, to me, ' public sentiment was the only force that was considered to be needful here. Popular feeling expelled bad characters from the community and gave up offenders to justice, as personified by the village constable ; and the crofters think that the appearance in their midst ef additional police proves that Skyemen are regarded with distrust.' These words show how the patriarchal idea still survives in the breasts of the islanders. As for the superstitions of the people, they are well nigh incredible. Early in the seventeenth century a man named Coinneach Odhar, who was born at Uig in Lewis, made himself notorious as a patiiotic prophet, and has become widely known in the Highlands as the Brahan Seer because he once uttered some words which have since been twisted into a prediction of the piercing of the Caledonian canal. Every cottar and crofter in the Hebrides pins his faith to Kenneth's predictions*
He implicitly believes that, as the seer prophesied, the Lewis men shall one day drive the Lowlanders across the Tweed ; and I am confident that this ridiculous article of belief is responsible to a far greater extent than can readily be imagined for the attitude which the islanders have of late assumed. That the disaffection has now shown itself in the birthplace of the set r is not a gc>d omen. The English agitators who are secretly directing the movements of these unfortunate people may yet discover that thay set in motiou a force, they are powerless to control." In fact, we might almost suppose that the English correspondent was writing of Catholic Irishmen rather than of Presbyterian Scotchmen.— The strain in which he writes, at least, is one most familiar to us in connection with the Englishman or even the Scotchmn, who takes it upon him to explain the causes of Irish discontent. The question, however, arises as to whether.gopposing this correspondent to speak the unvarnished truth, any great advantage would accrue to New Zealand from the intro.^ption here, even at the expense of the Imperial Government, of an #Re, ignorant, superstitious population. If, however, our Scottish fellow-colonists refuse to accept the testimony of this correspondent or to believe that the crofters are, indeed, idle, ignorant, and euperstitious, would it not be consistent in them also to refuse to give implicit credence to every report that reaches them on a somewhat similar testimony, or even a far more inimical one.concerning the nature of the Irish people, and the sources whence their discontent springs ? Meantime, as we said, there seems but little chance that the Imperial Government will lend a willing ear to the propsah of the crofters' friends among ourselves, that they should provide thess people with free passages to New Zealand. The precedent, under the circumstances described by the correspondent of the St. James' Gazette, would be a dangerous one, and the sum required to carry out all that it would en« tail might seem too large for even the British Government to provide. The colonies, moreover, might be but ill prepared to receive the huge immigration that would pour in upon them.— Not only the population of Skye, but of the Hebrides as well.of the whole Western Highlands, and all idle, ignorant, and superstitious, since idleness, ignorance, and superstition are the conditions, as English and Scotch writers and others have long taught us, under which a people become discontented with starvation and oppression, whether, they be Catholic Irishmen or Presbyterian Scotchmen. The idea is stupendous and overwhelming.
A PHENOMENAL MINISTBB.
" God bless the Pooe." There is a nice sentence to pass the lips of a Free Church minister. Why, it is ten times worse than the vilest imprecation a godly man could be accountable for, and if he had a guardian angel— which, of course, no Free Church minister could possibly admit he haJ— it would be enough to send that spirit rushing for refuge to the uttermost he wen from his side. " God bless the Pope," cries Dr. Muir of Edinburgh— and what in comparison to .that, we shoul I like to know, is the mere elevation of a handsome dtholic cathedral in Dunedin. There is "Popery" with a vengeance for you, and uplifting its bead in the veiy seat of the saints itself. But that does not constitute the whole sum of Dr. Muir's offending. He, also, speaks of the " Holy Virgin,' and doe* not boast that the Mother o£ God was a mere ordinary woman—like your mother or mine, sir— and no more deserving of honour than if she had given to the wond yourjhumble servant— the very acme of a detestable and blasphemous conceit, and a pig-headed grubbing in the mud of a false theology. He speaks, moreover, of he " Most Blessed Sacrament,"' and gives many other sigDS of a tendency towards Rome. And yet he abides in the Frea Caurch pulpit— and it is believed that he will make a struggle to hold his own there -in spite of the heresy hunters who are in full cry upon his track. We do not, however, believe that Dr. Muir will succeed in holding his own. Private interpretation, indeed, prevails in the Free Church as in all others that boast the Protestant connection —but it is private interpretation within certain limits, and those somewhat narrow ones ; no man must dare to transgress the laws that restrain it. The preacher may b 3b 3 above the WorJ, indeed, as we are tolf^e is, bat he must not b 3 above the prejudices o£ his congregation or the bigotry of his brother ministers, and if he attempt to prove so his downfall i 3i 3 determined. A preacher, moreover, may well be above the Word, and yet inferior to the prejudices and bigotry that surround and possess him, for these keep the Word most completely in leading-strings and make it their slave and partisan. We do not, however, feel any very great sympathy for Dr. Muir:— he deserves only so much fellow-feeling a < can be merited by a man who places himself voluntarily in a false pjsittoa. The Free Church pulpit, as he must very well have known, was no place whence he he could lawfully express Christian feeling for the great majority of Christians or their earthly head— or w'aer jhe could venture to speak with any degree of reverence of the Mother of God or of the Sacraments that Christ Himself instituted. The very raison, d'etre of the Free Church.is to maintain a hatred and contempt of all the distinctive truths of the Catholic faith, and when Dr. Muir determined to abandon bis part in such a task, it was his duty as an honest man to
descend from his pulpit and stand boldly in independence npon terra firma. Private interpretati ,n in the Free Church as in every other Protestant conventicle is a vain pretence. There is no such thing, in fact, and no one is more fully acquainted with the falsehood of the profession than theJProtestant ministers themselves who, nevertbeiess. mike it. Dr. Muir, then, by his charity and that inkling of the truth that he io some matters saems to have become possessed of, bas, in our opinion, justly forfeited his right to preach to a Free Church congregation. But let us hope that the better privilege may be his, of proceeding to the goal by the path, on which he gives some signs of at least an attempt to enter, that is, the path which leads to the bosom of the Catholic Church.
SYNODAL ANILITY.
Many and hard are the duties of righteous wives ; not the least difficult is that of bringing unholy husbands to sit under the " Gospel preacher " on Sunday. We have heard of one good lady who spent so much time in this task that she esteemed herself deserving of more than mere heavenly reward for her efforts ; hence among the items presented by her to the trustees of her defunct husband's property, for their consideration in allocating to her a due share, was this : "To time expended in bringing George under a preacher " ! We approve in this matter of the good intentions of the pious sex ; bat we, nevertheless, sympathise with the rec ilcitrant husbands. If these possess a little head and just a scintilla of information, and, at the same time, are not endowed by nature with bumps overflowing with devotion, it is no wonder they offer much resistance to the holy exhortations of their pious partners, and continue in their frequent absence from sermon, and consequent [ungodliness. Barely one looks for anything else in the deliverances of a " Gospel preacher " than a display of anile nonsense and mental imbecility. When these reverend men meet at tea-gathering, conference, or synod, and the individual brooklets of pious ignorance and old maids' cant meet in one current, then the overflow of nonsense and muddy verbosity is appalling. A godly man, with, no doubt, necktie of spotless white, deportment of huge tonnage, and face of orthodox gravity and sanctified elongation, deprecated, in the Presbyterian synod held here last week, the danger to the Protestant missions should the French occupy the New Hebrides. " Past experience," said he in his report, " teaches that wherever that Government has planted its standard, Protestant missions have been made to suffer. Their efforts to improve, and civilise,- and Christianise the heathen have been thwarted. In not a few instances Protestant missionaries have been forced to give place to Popish priests, to the sad deterioration and injury of the natives, both physically and spiritually." ! ! ! It would be too absurd to wasts a sentence in commenting on these last worjis of the reverend man. As to the efforts of the Protestant missionaries in imprjving, civilising, and Christianising the South Sea Islanders, let U3 hear JMr. H. Melville, an intelligent American Protestant traveller ("Typee, a Peep at Polynesian Life"). Deploring the wretchedness of the islanders, ani tracing it to what he deems its source, he writes:— "How little do some, of, these 1 poor islanders comprehend, when they look around them, that no inconsiderable part of theic disasters originate in certain tea-party exciteuaenti, under the influence of which benevolent-looking gentlemen in white cravats solicit alms, and old ladies in spectacles and young ladies in sober russet gowns contribute sixpences towards the creation of a fund, the object of which is,to ameliorate the spiritual condition of the Polynesians, bat whose end has almost invariably been to accomplish theic temporal destruction. Let the savages be civilised, but civilise them with benefits, and not with evils. Let h athenism be destroyed, but not by destroying the heathen. The Anglo-Saxons have extirpated paganism from the greater part of North America ; but with it they have extirpated the greater part of the Red raoe. Civilisation is gradually sweeping from the earth the lingering vestiges of paganism, and at the same time the shrinking forms of its unhappy worshippers. A mong the islands of Polynesia no sooner are the images overturned, the temples demolished, aad the idolators converted into nominal Christians, than disease, vice, and premature death make their appeirincj. The depopulated lands are then recruited from the rapacious hordes of enlightened individuals, who then clamouroasly announce the progress of truth 1 Neat- villas, trim gardens, shaven lawns, spires and cupolas, arise bile he poor savage soon finds himself an interloper in the country of his fathers and that too on the very site of the hut where he was born. . . . Not until I visited Honolulu, was I aware of the fact that the natives had been civilized into draught horses and evangelized into beasts of burden 1 But so it is. They have been literally broken into traces and harnessed to the vehicles of their spiritual instructors, like so many dumb brutes 1 " Melville gives a sketch of an exhibition— not at aU a rare occurrence— of this degradation and brutalizing of the natives by the missionaries themselves. The heroine of tha incident is no leas a personage than a missionary-'s wife, exiled in the caiwe of the " Gospel " and in the interests of Christian civilization ! suffering nobly and generously for the benefit of the benighted heatbtn 1 " Among a multitude ofiaailu exhibition! wblclfl t»w Ithall nfem
forget a robust, red -faced and very lady-like personage, a missionary's spouse, who day after day for months together took her regular airings in a little go-cart drawn by two of the Islanders, one an old gray-headed man and the other a roguish stripling, both being with the exception of a fig-leaf, a? naked as when they were born* Over a level piece of road this pair of draught bipeds, would go with a shambling, unsightly trot — the younester hanging back all the time like a knowing horse, while the old hack plodded on And did all the work. Kittling through the streets of the town in this stylish equipage the lady looks about as magnificently as any queen driven in state to her coronation. A sudden elevation and a sandy road soon, however, disturb her serenity. The small wheels become imbedded in the loose sani ; the old stager stands tugging and sweating whilst the young one does nothing ; not an inch does the chariot budge. Will the tender-hearted lady, who has left friends and home for the good of the souls of the heathen, will she think a |little about their bodies, and get out and ease the wretched old man fcntil the ascent is mounted ? Not she ; she could not dream of it. To be sure she used to think nothing of driving the cows on the old farm at Home ; bat times have changed since then. She retains her seat and bawU out, ' Hookee, hookee ! ' (pull, pal I). The old gentlemaa, frighten id at the sound, labours away harder than ever ; the younger one makes a great show of straining himself, but takes care to keep an eye on his mistress in order to know when to dodge out of harm's way. At last the good lady loses all patience : ' HooTtee ! hoo%ee! y and rap goes the heavy handle of her huge fan upon the naked skull of the old savage, while the young one^hies aside and keeps beyond its range. ' Hookee ! htokee ! ' again she cries, ' Hookee tata, hanaez? (pull strong, men). But all in vain ; she is obliged in the end to dismount, and, sad necessity, actually to walk to the top of the hill. At the towa where this paragon of humility resides there is a spacious and elegant American chapel, where divine worship is regularly performed. Twice every Sabbath towards the close of the exercises may be seen a score or two of little wagons ranged along the railing in front of the edifice, with two squalid native footmen in the livery of nakedness standing by each, aud waiting for the dismissal of the congregation to draw their superiors home. ... To read pathetic accounts of missionary hardships and glowing descriptions of conversions aud baptisms taking place beneath palm trees is one thing, to go to the islands and see the missionaries dwelling in picturesque and prettily-furnished coral-rock villas, while the miserable natives are committing all sorts of immorality around them is quite another thing." This is rather a fair description of the manner in which Protestant missionaries improve, Christianise, and civilize the heathen. We might multiply by the hundred like extracts from Protestant writers. But to what purpose ? Everyorfe who has devoted the least attention to the subject, knows that Protestant missions are foremost among the huge impositions carried on in the name of religion. Notwithstanding the millions of money expended, tne billions of Bibles distributed along the sea-shores and river banks of Asia, America, Africa, and Oceanica, the armies of missionaries, parsons, parson's wives and babies, sent forth year after yearforthe past hundred years, they have not yet succeeded in converting the inhabitants of one island as large as a prtatoe-paidosk ! The missionaries have not improved any people except themselves, their wives and families. It is, indeed, high time that these old ladies who, after the cost of poodles, pets and parrots has been borno, have a little to give towards the civilisation of the heathen, should open their eyes and turn tne silvery current of their surplus sixpenc3S to some better object. "If we compare says a Protestant writer who had devoted special attention to the subject, " if we compare, the visible results obtained with the multiplied machinery, urgency of appeal and vast expenditure, with which the missions are prosecuted, it must be owned they are greatly disproportionate." (Bampton Lectures). This too temperate assertion is amply confirmed by crowds of authorities from all ranks and sects. An influential Protestant organ, the Christian Remembrancer, was compelled even 30 years ago to declare that "We should not allow a few isolated instances of success, here and there, to bliud U3 t^what we must call, to speak plainly, the failure of missionary efi3tts in modern times." The failure becomes far more glaring as time'goes on.
PHILOSOPHER AND THIEF.
We must not be above taking a lesson in philosophy wherever we can obtain it. — If it comes to us from the elevated platform of a Lyceum well and good. — We then recognise that it has emanated from its proper source, and receive it with all due respect. — But if it reaches us from some lower altitude, that must not make us turn away unheeding. Truth remains the truth no matter whence it proceeds, and it is great and will prevail, let it be uttered where it may :— We have long been taught that religion forms the fetters of the soul, that our narrow creeds but cramp the mind, and bind thought in chains lest it should reach the empyrean open only to the enfranchised spirit. This lesson, we say, has long reached us from the" philosophic platform, i*nd in all hnmility we trust that
we have derived all the benefit from it that it is capable of affording. — When the same lesson, then reaches us from another quarter, let us endeavour to do likewise, and to draw all the good out of it which it is possible for us to draw. — Mr. Michael Davitt, in Bhort, has published a book entitled •' Leaves from a Prison Diary : or Lectures to a ' Solitary' Audience " and in which he relates a good deal concerning the degraded class of people into whose company he was thrown during his years of penal servitude.— The book is said to be an extremely interesting one and calculated to shed more light on the nature of the criminal population of England than anything that has hitherto been published.— We hope all in good time to obtain a copy of the work ourselves and to pass our own opinion on it ; but for the moment we are dependent on the reviews given in the Irish newspapers, and more especially on that which we find in United Ireland, — What we are particularly concerned im however, is that passage in which we are told that Mr. Davitt received from a habitual thief almost the lesson which we ourselves have heard so often repeated, and by so many brilliant gems of philosophy, on their own especial platform. — The thief in question, Mr. Davitt tells us, was an educated one ; he was used to quote Pope's " Iliad " and had read some French works in the original. He would have been able to secure for himself a pretty fair positioni tion in life, had he possessed a morsel of moral principle but, failing that, lie had become a skilful burglar. He continued nevertheless a philosopher. — " I could not help looking upon it as a very novel experience, for even this grotesque world," writes Mr. Davitt, " to have to listen to a man who could delight in a literary discussion, quote all the choice parts of Pope's Iliad, and boast of having read Pascal and Lafontaine in the original, maintain, in sober argument that ' thieving was an honourable pursuit,' and that religion, law, patriotism and bodily disease were the real and only enemies of humanity. « Religion,' he would observe, ' robbed the soul 6f its independence, while society's social laws, in restraining the desires and faculties given by Nature to man for the purpose of. gratification declared war against the manifest spirit of the law of our being.' Patriotism he termed ' the idolatry of an idea, in the stupid worship of which the peace of the world, and well-being of its inhabitants, were sacrificed by the law-makers and others who profit thereby. And so on with all other principles and customs that indicate men or society to be progressing toward a higher degree of moral or religious perfection. All men were, according to his conception of man's use of life, but superior animals, and all who warred against the laws which denied to man the gratification of his natural appetites were engaged in an ' honourable ' pursuit." — Religion we have indeed among ourselves also heard coupled with disease as the enemy of mankind, and it was but the other day that the leading Statesman of the Colony allowed such a denunciation to be made under his direct patronage and in his presence. But the pretence of the philosophic platform has always been that with the independence restored of which, as this thief as well as our philosophers tells us, religion robs the soul, patriotism would become more puce and law be better understood, and more intelligently obeyed — that tho animal appetites also would be placed under a more reasonable control. To judge, then, between the decision of our philosophers and that of our thief might perhaps prove somewhat difficult to us were we left to our own unaided wit to determine, but Mr. Davitt supplies us again with a piece of information that is of use to us in considering the matter ; according to him the balk of the criminalpopulation are free from the fetters that religion imposes upon the soul. /' Of religious feeling" writes the reviewer in United Ireland " the vast bulk of the ' magsmen,' ' hooks,' ' snide pitchers,' bogus noblemen, and the rest of the criminal hierarchy, are absolutely destitute." And being destitute of religious feeling; law becomes contemptible to them, and animal enjoyments gain the masrery ; we positively are obliged to decide, if not with our thief, at least against our philosophers. Great, then, is the truth and will prevail, and if philosophy be not true of what avail is it? From the Lyceum platform and the burglar's cell alike testimony is borne to the manne in which religion fetteis the eoul, but the experience of life shows that the burglar has the clearer view of the matter. Let us follow the genuine philosopher.
A remarkable automatic torpedo in the form of a cigar-shaped vessel is being built in Hartford. It is thirty feet long with a diameter in the centre of thirty inches, and combines a powerful explosive with ample propelling and steering machinery. Six engines develop 1,000 revolutions of the screw per minute, the motive power being carbonic acid gas. Moving three or four feet below the surface of the water, and guided by an operator from the shore or vessel by means of an electric wire, it is expected that the speed obtained, which is at the rate of a mile in three or four minutes, will make the almost invisible craft an effective engine of destruction against the most powerful ironclad which is unprepared for its mysterious approach. The torpedo, which is of the well-known Lay-ffaignt pattern, is made of copper. It is to be offered to a foreign Government for trial, with a view of securing a contract for a number of similar weapons,
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Bibliographic details
New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 42, 6 February 1885, Page 1
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7,301Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD. New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 42, 6 February 1885, Page 1
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