CANTERBURY CATHOLIC LITERARY SOCIETY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 10, 26 June 1885, Page 21

CANTERBURY CATHOLIC LITERARY SOCIETY.

Christchurch, Jane 15. The following is a summary of the third and concluding part of Mr Nolan's lecture on the civilisation of the Romans :-Meetine an objection that was raised by a member to the propriety of rakine np the crimes of those ancient people, the lecturer said : •• You must remember that the world to-day bears traces of the accumulation over four thousand years of the most terrible depravity. The museums and art galleries of the world are filled with the testimonies, the records and the movements of those wrenched times ; the memory of their misdeeds has not yet died out. The traditions and usages of that sad - world-full of horrors still hang like a sable pall over the world of to-day, and confront us at every turn. Such is the connection tint binds all historical eveuts together, that a great deal of what we should naturally expect to have died out in the long course of aces still survives and exercises its influence upon us. Thus we are influence! to-day, not perceptibly perhaps, but still not the less really for that, by the social and religions systems of those wretched people. Unfortunately a large portion,-poetry, their sculpture, and their paintings— have been preserved to us in all their nakedness and obscenity; their arts and sciences and history are made familiar to as in various ways. Their languages are still used in the world as modes of in ercourse ; their impious customs, manners, and habits are familiar to every educated youth ; the nomenclature of our sciences, the divisions of our time, our best models in art, our different orders of architecture— aye, the months of our year and the days of our week have all come to us from the reeking source of unimaginable abomination tmd filth. Nay most of the miseries with which the world is cursed to-day are the entailed inheritance of thoae times. Who, then, can say that we have nothing to do with the crimes of the ancient Romans? But it was not Rome alone who was guilty. That great empire enjoyed no exclusive pre-eminence in guilt. Greece, the most refined of all the nations of antiquity; Greece, from whose shores the rest of the world has been entiched with art treasures } £?■!?• neTe S een . eluallede l ualled 5 Greece who gave us Praxiteles and Phidias, and Zeuxis and Apelles, and Solon and Miltiadea, and Zenophon, philosophers, statesmen, artists, poets, and warriors whose names time has not been able to obliterate ; Greece, who has given the world such rich gifts as the Vatican Laocboa, the O ympian Jove, the Quirmal Horse and Attendant, the Dying Gladiator, the Venus di Medici, and a thousand others equally grand and beautiful. This same Greece was so corrupt ia tL day of her glory that when Themistoeleß h irneased four naked courtesans to his carriage and made them draw him across the Ceramicus in sight of all the people of Athens, it excited neither disgust nor astonishment. But when Greece, as a nation was yet unborn, Egypt could boast of a high state of civilisation, but the filthy mysterie? of Isis and Osiris were imported from that country to Rome and were amongst the foulest of her pagan rites and practices. The Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Persians, were all when in the zenith of their power, enjoying a very high state of civilisation, but we know on undeniable authority, that all those nations, while in the enjoyment of every worldly prosperity, were at the same time living in a state of social and moral degradation of which we at the present day have no conception. In Syria fathers and mothers used to tie their children m sacks and fling them from the pinnacles of the temples, m honour of Baal and of Venus. In Crete and other places chi dren were offered to the frightful Moloch, and burnt at the foot of the huge idol. In various parts of the Old Testament those praceS S a xvil t0 condemned, notably in the book IV. You will, therefore, not be surprised to learn that all the nations of antiquity were swept away like chaff before the wind, when you ►have learned that all the loftiest works, and noblest achievement of tue ancients came forth from the minds and hands of men whose cruelties and crimes far surpassed anything that we caa ?onceTve of them ; men who elaborated nothing more perfectly than their grossly immoral superstitions ; men who, in floe, invented a system of immorahty and superstition that at one time overshadowed t he whole worid What wonder then that they should all be swept away, that Sot should tumble down from the dazzling heights of their prosperity power civilisation and splendour, to those unsightly heaps and mounds rubbish which are to be found around the cradle of our race, and of which serve to-day to gratify the curiosity of wealthy explorers, and to warn all future generations off the rocks and shoals on which they were wrecked. "" The Romans then enjoyed, as I have said, no very great preeminence in guilt beyond the rest of the pagan world ; but as it has been remarked in the course of these lectures that I have been needlessly severe with those people, I beg to call your attention to what has been said of them by a witness which none of you hera will dispute. St. Paul writing of those people in the golden age of their prosperity, says, « For professing themaelves to bf wise, they became fools, ana they changfld the glory of the inaraaptibleW into the

likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts, and of creeping things. Wherefore God gave them up to tbe devices of their heart, to uncleanness, to dishonour their own bodies among themselve Being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, covetouaness, wickedness, full of envy murder, contention, malignity- . . Detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy." - This is most assuredly a heavy charge-sheet drawn up against the highest civilisation that the world has yet beheld by a witness whoae. testimony is unimpeachable. But this is not the whole, nor is it the worst of the unmentionable with which the conquerors of the world , were charged by the great Apostle who was sent to preach the gospel to them. We will draw the veil here ; but so deep was the world sunk in sin at that age, that those words of St. Paul might be written of any nation on earth ;— but no! allow me to correct myself. There was at that time in the far off western ocean, an island whose inhabitants, in the simplicity * of their hearts, poured forth their orisons from grove and valley and mountain tops to the fire-god, which burned continually oa their altars, and sent up their matins and their vesper song to the bright sun above their heads, emblem of that brighter, purer light which was about to be revealed to them. Pagans though they were, their lives were pure, nor could they be oharged with the foul and unnatural crimes which have disgraced the name of Roman. Men brave as Coriolanus, simple as Cincinnatus, and wise as Solon, guarded their liberties, defended their laws, while women, chasteas Lucretia, and fair as they were chaste, roamed in perfect safety through each glen and glade and sunny slope of that fair land, for virtue was allied to bravery, and the sunburst of purity was the brightest and most glorious quarterings on the escutcheon of the nation. Children of a fallen race, they were prone to the frailties of humanity, but their souls had not been sullied by its vices. A brave and simple people, as stainless in their morals as they were generous in their nature, the charges which St. Paul brings against the Romans could never, at any time of their history, have been made against the Irish people. But if not. why not 1 Was it that the Irish people were cast in so pure a mould that they were proof against the contagion which had at those times infested the rest of the world ? Not that. I thiuk that on reflection you will agree with me that we can only attribute the true cause of their preservation from the evils and crimes into which other nations fell to the fact that they were never burdened with power nor cursed with wealth. National wealth is the consequence and result of national power and prosperity ; therefore, 1 maintain that national power and wealth and prosperity, wnen not guided and governed by truly religious principles to be the great if not the one sole operating cause of national depravity and wickedness.* When Rome was obliged to buckle on her strongest armour to conquer such little places as Sora and Algidum ; when she regarded the conquest of Ooriola as something worth giving a name to history ; when she regarded Satricum and Corniculum aB important provinces, places which- in the time of the Caesars were not large enough to make a pleasure-ground for one of her senators ; when in great emergencies she could call her citizens from the cultivation of their' little farms, to take the helm of state, as Cincinnatus was, her people were simple, brave and virtuous ; but when Scipio overthrew Hauuibal on the plains of Zama, and practically made Rome the mistress of the world, her people, intoxicated by power, corrupted by wealth, and enervated by luxury, yielded themselves up to every criminal enjoyment, rioting in sin, both publicly and privately, until at length •« panes et circenses " became the wild delirious cry of a profligate and debased people. We have an almost parallel case to-day in the Italian states. The unification of Italy has brought about nothing so effectually, so perfectly, so absolutely, as the moral and social degradation of its people. From all that you have heard you will, I think, now be prepared to admit that the study of ancient and modern history alike reveals to us the lamentable fact that, exactly as nations become wealthy and powerful, in proportion as they grow in opulence and luxury, so do they increase in social and moral depravity, so do they sink into infidelity^ and crime. The civilisation of the present day does not differ very widely in its aims, objects and tendencies, in its effects and consequences from that of the ancients neither does it differ very widely from theirs in the refinements and luxuries that go to make it what it is. From the light which history has thrown on the subject we are safe in assuming that the constituent elements of pagan civilisation were not very different from those of ours, and as according to immutable lawg, like causes produce like effects, it follows conclusively that had there not been some powerful restraining influence at work the whole human tamily would by this time have been more deeply sunk in crime and wickedness than it was 1800 years ago. As it is we have not a great deal to congratulate ourselves upon, and the words of St Paul would, perhaps, fit us as aptly to-day as they did the Romans' of his time. L ask, therefore, in all earnestness, are the advantages of wealth, of luxury, of civilisation in fact as it is commonly understood amongst us, at all commensurate with the dangers which we always and everywhere see accompany it in public and in private life alike? For example, we know that intellectual pride is essentially the vice of a civilised and intellectual people, and we also kuow that intellectual pride has led to some of the greatest evils with which the world has been cursed in modern times. . . Man can no more exist without worship than he can without air! so when he shuts his ears to the voice of truth and refuses obedience to divine authority, when he feels that he has got on to a higher plane than the Church which presumes to dictate to his conscience, when he can see no reason why he should not be equal to the task

of manufacturing a religion of his own, he constructs a creed for himself, and worships a god of his own creation. He sets up his own lar in his own household, aad this he bows down to and adores.

When Cicero drew his friends around him at Tusculum, they reviled the gods, the Dii fifajores, and laughed at the simple paganism ofNuma, but those men bowed .down before. less illustrious deities, in the Capitol and eugolised a grosser form of worship in the Senate. Cicero, Seneca, Atticus, Lucullus and Varro, have their counterparts in modern society. The Greek philosophy made infidels and unbelievers of the Grecian aristocracy, but the mysteries of Ceres and Proserpine celebrated at Eleusis, and into which the aristocracy and philosophers were alone initiated, was perhaps the hugest superstition that the world has yet beheld. . . • . Religion and morality among the pagans were not only disassociated ; they were things entirely and tot illy distinct, and hence the pagin priesthood felt it no part of their duty to instruct the people in morality. Indeed the pagan priesthood themselves were the most profligate and depraved among the Roman people. Julius Caesar, who was tbe most debased man of bis time, was Pontifex Maxitnus at the time of hit* death, so was the cruel and cold-blooded Augustus, so was Julian the Apostate. Religion among the pagans never was intended to encroach on the domain of tbe philosopher, but philosophy then, as at tbe present day, was entirely unable and unfitted to cope with the evils of society, and utterely incompetent to discharge the functions of religion. In fact, between priests and philosophers Rome became the common cesspool of the world into which all the conquered nations discharged their impurities, a city where every species of wickedness . and crime and loathsome sin were encouraged and practised.

The most awful feature, however, in the condition of pagan civilisation was that tbe evils which it entailed on society were regarded as being as a matter of course, as being irremediable, and that they were constant and wide-spread. But worse than this, all those evils went oa deepening and widening and increasing in guilt exactly in proportion as the people advanced in material prosperity and enlightenment— in fact, as they increase lin civilisation.- Had the world been left to its own management up to thia time ; had we not been blessed by the presence on earth of our Divine Lord ; had the world been allowed to go on as it was going, our unblesssed lot to-night would have been far more pitiful and deplorable than that we have been picturing among the heathens. We are heirs to the same sad legacy of sin that they are, we are prove to the same failings, the victims of the same pas-sious ; if, therefore, we are not sunk so deep in dismal abyss of sin as that in which they rioted, it must be certainly owing to some restraining power, some sustaining hand that bas happily preserved us from such a calamity. If fathers and mothers are not exposing their offspring to the fires of Molocn and of Melcarth to-day as they did in those days of which we speak, it is simply because these is a power on earth, to-day of which the ancients knew nothing, a Cburcb which restrains and guides them. . . . In conclusion, I have now shown you that the highest civilisation which the world has yet beheld was possessed by a people who were at tbe same time sunk in a profound abyss of moral turpitude. The height to which their civilisation rose has never been attained by any modern nation. They wielded over the world a power that may be said to be absolute. From their senate issued edicts on which bung the fate of kings and decided the destinies of nations. In every country they subjugated they left behind them the foot-prints of the conqueror, and the impress of powerful genius was stamped upon all their woiks. In almost every department of art they have left us works which have been the study and the admiration of all succeeding ages. Our most gifted artists, poets, philosophers and scholars are unanimous in bearing testimony to their unrivalled skill, aad to the marvellous beauty, polish, and grandeur of their works. Tbe writings of their potts and philosophers are, even to-day, so highly prized that it is not too much to say that acquaintance with them and the knowledge of them is the measure of a gentleman's education and gives him a passport to polite society. Bat more' than all this, more than their learning, their genius or their skill, the wealth, maguificeuce and luxury of the Romans astonished the world, and gained for them the proud title of " a populace of kings." Yet mark 1 in the midst of all this nazzling splendour and wealth, thi9 national prosperity, this civilisation, those people were immersed in tbe most unspeakable depravity, sanctifying every sensual indulgence, prostituting every power of their body, and every faculty of their soul to the unrestrained indulgence of their passions. Their lives were wasted in a continuous whirlpool of riotous and vicious enjoyments from which notbipg that was human could turn them away. The lacivit us games of the circus and the amphitheatre, the festivals of Bacchus, of Flora, of Ceres, of Venus and of tbe Lupercalia which were frequented and encouraged by the tioman V matrons aud their patrician lords, an.i which were under the supervision of the priests and the patronage of the gods, were so gross and immoral, so intensely debasing, that they seemed to owe their existence to the inventive genius of devils. This is not only true of Rome, but of all the other ancient civilisations whose history has come down to us. The abominations revealed to us id the Bible of

the ancient heathen nations are simply appalling when re id in the light of ancieut history. Tyre, Sedon, Sodom and Gomorrah, Babylon and other placeß, were all at one time or other o£ their history, perched on the very summit of national prosperity and power ; but yet their crimes were to terrible, their wickedness so great, that a long-suffering and patient God telt himself constrained to sweep them off tbe face oE tbe earth, so that the memory of them is all

that remains to posterity There is a lesson ana a moral in their hibtory, and in their sad fate, which the world at the present day can scarcely afford to ignore and which we would do well to study. From tbe knowledge thus gained you will see how

easy it is to combat tbe sophistries of those who draw comparisons between the material prosperity of Protestant and CUtbol'c countries, with the view of establishing an argument in favour of Protestantism by the contrast. You have seen that the most absolute state of

moral debasement may co-exist with the greatest wealth, commercial ' importance, and national greatness. Once more I let it be under-, stood, and it cannot be too well understood that neither wealth nor power, however great, necessarily involve or carry with them the true faith or the grace of God. I may go fuither, and state that from all we can gather from the teachings of history, the very contrary would seem to be the case. I have shown you in this lecture, that nations in the plenary possession of all those things were at the same time walking in loathsome and unshadowed sin, rioting in crime, and debased beyond the comprehension of baptised Christians. Symmachns, the illustrious prefect of Rome, confessed to St. Ambrose that he could not repent in his old age. Alas 1 he had bees so contaminated in his early life, that he needed to go back again into the womb and be' regenerated, before he could become a Christian. This was classical Rome, this was heathen antiquity, pagan civilisation. Mind, I find no fault with the conveniences nor luxuries of civilisation, for, beyond dispute, they increase the pleasures and enjoyments of life, and when used with due moderation, and when they are subordinated to religion, will undoubtedly add to our comfort and wellbeing. But these things are not the stronghold of 'a nation's power. It is not its wealth nor its power, nor the multitude of its inventors, nor the breadth of its dominions, but the virtuous integrity of its people, their probity and rectitude, the purity of their lives, their respect for trnth and its allied virtues, that can call down on any country the blessings of heaven, and save it from the doom of those nations whose fate we have been deploring to-night. . . . Why was not Rome swept away with the other nations of antiquity 1 When she and all her dependencies were sank in an abyss of guilt from which nothing that was human could extricate them. — behold 1 her Saviour and her Redeemer comes, and she is saved. As the first summer sun tinges the earth with beauty and re-animates the drooping form of nature, so the Church of God, fresh from the hands of its Divine Founder and radiant . with the brightness of eternal truth, lights up a benighted world, and restores a fallen race to its loßt inheritance. Coming with tidings of great joy to man, she fills a discordant world with harmony, and out of chaos and confusion draws forth a new creation. Standing, as it were, on the very promontory of the world, she holds out a bright light to the storm- tossed nations and points them to a haven of safety. Opening wide her portals, she offers an asylum to the whole human race, and ' a shelter they cannot find elsewhere. Fulfilling her divine mission, she lifts the needy out of the dunghill, aad brings down the mighty from their thrones, to pay homage to the lowliness of the Cross. All that is beautiful and good in art and in civilisation is of her and from her ; all that is holy, all that is great and glorious on earth and in heaven by divine right belong to her. Fiually, all that we have now, or ever will have of God's best gifts in time or eternity are, and will be given to us through her. What a mother she must be who can be all this to us. Let us hear her, then when she speaks, forjher teacaings lead to a higher, a nobler aad a nore enduring civilisation than was ever possessed by any of the cations of antiquity. . . .