AFTER DEATH—WHAT?

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVII, Issue 45, 28 February 1890, Page 13

AFTER DEATH—WHAT?

(Brooklyn CatJtolic Review,')

This is the question posed, though not answered, by the school of unscientific philosophy represented to-day by the somewhat learned Messrs. Kenan and Huxley, and the comparatively unlearned " Bob " Ingersoll and Johann Most. There is an answer. Let us hear it ai it comes from the unwilling lips of the dead.

Everyone remembers Paul Bert— a famous man among men who would prefer not 1 to be called infamous. The son of a good Catholic father and mother, ha gained a worldwide notoriety as the noißy followerof ihe conscienceless leader of that atheistic radicalism whose first principle was self, and whosa second and last was the exploitation of the ignorant, the mercenary, the vicious, ia the interest of ungodliness, tricked oat as liberty and progress. During this century no apostate showed a more bitterly ingenious enmity to the Church and to all religion than Bert. His shameful writings, his war against God and Christian morality in the schools were— are — a blot on civilisation, and their evil effect on the youth of France can only be measured fully in the future. To Christians ia France there came a moment of sad joy when the necessities of bad government banished Bart to Tonquin : but we can readily imagine how little comfort the news of his coming brought to the faithful missionaries who were labouring there. What, indeed, is the savagery of an ignorant pagan compared with that ot an intelligent hater of Christ 1 Btrange to say the new governor seemed to have put off the old man. To a devout Catholic, M. Vial, he entrusted native Christian affairs. When M. Puginier, head of the French missions in Western Toaquin, paid Bert a visit of courtesy, he was kindly received, and the visit was promptly returned. Three months later, the man wto as Minister re-echoed tbe brutal cry of his master against " clericcalism," went to Keso, the Cathedral town, to assist at the consecration of a new bishop, Mgr. Pineau. Did all this mean a change of heart, or merely of politics ? Probably we shall never know. In September, 1886, Bert went to Hud to see the Emperor DongDang. A steamer failed him, the rainy season came out of time, the roads were broken up, the streams overflowed. Bert was impatient, and insisted on making the journey by iand. He was overcome by fatigue ; a dysentery from which he had suffered for several months now became acute. He reached Hanoi. There he died on NovemA few months after his death the rumour spread that Bart had made his peace with the Church on his death-bed. Stranger things bave happened. Catholics were only too ready to believe the story. Tney are always rejoiced when a lost sheep returns to the fold. In dne time the story was denied ; but it is only in a recent number of Le Correspondent, November 10, 1889, tnat we have met with an authomative statement of the facts. In a valuable and interesting article on " Christianity in Tonkin," M. Pierre de L'Huys— a name that was once more familiar iban it ia of late— reports that when he was at Hanci in the April following Bert's death, he saw Father Lepage, procurator of the mission, and questioned him about Ben's end. " Paul Bert died without the sacraments," Said Father Lepage. "The Bishop and I called to see him twice during his illness. Onourflrst visit we saw Mme. Bert, who informed us that her husband did not need our services. The second time we called we called we saw M. Chailly, his son-in-Uw, who gave us the same answer. All we could do was to withdraw." Would it were otherwise 1 Bert's friends made aa sure of his ending aa Victor Hugo's f nen ds made of the poet's. There are friends and friends, thank God ? Now comes the strangest, saddest, most instructive part of M. de L'Huy's narrative. Of course there was no Christian prayer, no blessed light, no Cross, no holy rite. But the family admitted a Buddhiet priest, if priest we dare call him. Ia the chamber of death aa altar was set up before a graven image of the Buddha, and the flames and the fumes of burning bamboo arose as lucense and praise in its nostrils. A tragedy, indeed 1 A man of intellect, God-gifted, and yet too proud when living to acknowledge the One, True, Merciful God ; and there his lifeless body pays forced tribute to a stock, a stone, a fool's deity, that, wheu living, he would have despised himsJf for worshipping. . Messrs. Huxley, Ingersoll, Most, right reason and revelation long ago answered your terrible question 1 After death God— or the devil. From Paul Bert's corpse there issue 3 a warning voice giving a to less solemn answer. Hark ye 1 " After death— the glory of the Cross, of the loving Redeemer, or the shame of a senseless, heartless, grinning idol."

At a mission given by Jesuit Fathers iv Altoona, Pa., a few weeks ago, ten Protestants were received into the Church.