THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN AND TEMPERANCE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVII, Issue 45, 28 February 1890, Page 7

THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN AND TEMPERANCE.

On Sunday evening, December 22, the annual retreat for the members, of the Third Order of St. Francis in the Church of St. Francis, Dublin, closed in the presence of an immense congregation. His Grace the Archbishop presided, and in concluding an •ddress made by him, spoke as follows : I said to yon in the beginning that my reason for speaking to you here at all this evening was that I might stir up your zeal in thecanse of temperance, that I might put before you some thought of the special duty, the special part that you will be called upon to take in the work which, with God's blessing, will be begun amongst us next Passion Sunday. Now that I have all but ended, it may seem to some amongst you that I have not spoken upon this at all. But, dearly beloved, does not all that I have been saying bring very plainly before you the thought of what it will be your duty to do 1 The members of the Third Order of St. Francis, in tba days of its earliest fervour and perfection, were amongst the chief instruments in the hands of God in the overthrow of the empire that had been built up by Satan on the false principles of the world as opposed to the Gospel truth. Must not you feel, dearly beloved, that in our own time you are called to a specitl responsibility in the work of overturning the power established in our midst by Satan through the temptation, whether of drink or of any other sinful indulgence f You are to do your part in this great work mainly by the example of your lives. Do not give way to the delusion that you are faithful to the principles of your Order, merely because you are devout and regular in your prayers and practices of devotion, merely because you come here at stated times, merely because you frequent the Sacraments, and gain the indulgences with which the Holy See has so richly endowed yo«. That would, indeedd.be a fatal error. It would show a strange forgetfulness of what St. Francis aimed at when he placed by far the greater number of bis followers and disciples as outposts in the midst of the corruptions of the world. Your duties are not the duties of the sanctuary or of the cloister. They are the duties of men and women of the world. What, then, does St. Francis expect of you ? Is it that you should bo live as to be looked upon by those around you as persons devoted to some peculiar manner of life, altogether outside the reach of those whose time is of necessity taken up with worldly cares, and whose lives are of necessity spent in the midst of worldings ? No, dearly beloved, the spirit of your holy founder is far different from this. It is that you should so live as to make it plain to every one of those around you that they are called, just as you are, to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ. It is that you should so live as to make it plain to all that there is no reason why their lives should not show forth, as your lives, if you are faithful in this to the spirit of St. Francis, cannot fail to show forth, examples of the practice of every Christian virtue. This, then, will be your part in the great work that is before us all. It will be your privilege to lead men on, by your example, to the steadfast observance of the Christian law of temperance. Amongstyou, I have no doubt, there must be many who will feel called upon, as members of this Third Order, to practise taat virtue in some degree of excellence, and so to render your example a more powerful means of grace to those around you. Thousands of our people will do so, and you surely must not be behind-hand in so good a work. In the meantime the immediate daty of the hoar is the duty of prayer. I will ask you, then, to make it a subject of your prayers from day to day, that God, without whose aid our best efforts must be fruitless, may be pleased to bless the efforts that will soon be made to root out the sin of drunkenness from amongst our people, and that He may so bless that work that it shall not pass away with those whose care it will be to watch over it in its beginning, but that, on the contrary, so long as any need for it may last, it shall hold a foremost place amongst the most enduring works of religion and of Christian virtue in our faithful Irish Church.

The number of priests in Great Britain was, according to the new is3ue of the Catholic Directory, 2721 a year ago ; now it is 2791. The churches a year ago were 1630, and are now 1641. Thus the new missions have increased by eleven, but the clergy by no leas than seventy, indicating that the new foundations are not the main measure of success, but that the old missions have grown, and have made petitions for new workers not to be resisted by bishops, however pressed for priests in new districts. Scotland has kept pace with England in the year's buildings, having five of the new churches out of the total eleven ; but her increase of priests is six as against sixty-four. Of religious Orders and charitable institutions there is no diminution ; and though Oscott has gone — and all regret it — from the list of our colleges, it baa only changed ita sphere of usefulness, and not been loßt to the Church in England, in the history of whose revival it must ever remain a landmark. — Weekly Register.

Major Serpa Pinto, who has just been trying to convince the Makololo of the blessing? of the Portuguese rule by means of his Gathn? guns, is the came gentleman who, a good many years ago, published an account of his journey from a point south of the mouth of the Congo through the heart of Africa, south-east of the Transvaal, and thence to Durban, Natal. There were, remarks the Echo, not a few cynical people who were inclined to rank the traveller with the class to which Munchausen and Sir John Mandeville belonged. Some of Pinto's stones were sufficiently remarkable. Ha met a Portuguese naturalist in the heart of Africa, dressed in a white shirt and swallow-tail coat, who invited the traveller to tea, which was served in cups manufactured at Sdvres. A notorious robber waa tamed by the explorer, who taught him astronomy and the use of the globes ! One of his best '• finds " was a race of men as white as himself, but their heads were covered with wool instead of hair, and the wool was white. These curly-pated savages were so Btrong, according to Pinto, that they could bury an arrow up to the feather in an elephant's flank 1 Of his personal adventures, one of the most remarkable was his suspension by his mutinous followers over a cataract on the Zambesi 560 feat high— whether by the neck or the heels ia not on record.