SUICIDE OF CHILDREN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 5, 31 October 1890, Page 29

SUICIDE OF CHILDREN.

(New York Freemarts Journal, September 26.) Wb find the follow ng in a letter from Berlin :— " Since January let sixty-two children, forty-six boys and sixteen girls, have committed suicide in this city. Of this Dumber twentj-foar had attained the age of 16, fourteen their 14th year, nine their 13ih, while seven were only 12 years old, and one bad not attained the age of 7. In punt of the cases the immediate cause of the tragedy remains a secret, t^t from surrounding circumstances it may be assumed to have been dne to exceptional severity on the part of servants or teachers." Berlin is one of the most purely Protestant towns in the world, and has been so ever since the so-called information. The Catholics in that city as so few that they do not count in the census of tbe population. It is for this reason that we see in this epidemic of child suicide deeper causes than those stated in tbe above extract. From the time the Berlin child arrives at the age of reason he is tortured by many of the doubts of hia elders and gropes in the same spiritual darkness. No longer is his little sml comforted, nourished, guided, and illuminated by the beautiful reasonableness of a living and smybolic faith, designed by the Creator to guard him from the cradle to the grave. Most likely he was never baptised, and without the tbield of the confession 'l, the fresh and radiant innocence of youth, which the most hardened man cannot look upon unmoved, is soon tarnished by sin ani becomes the familiar home of the Bvil One. Another significant fact. A few days ago the pupils in a large Berlin school rusbed in a panic from the buiHing, all of them cryi >g " The O-iostl " »nd declaring that a spectre was tryiDg to grasp them by the throat. Now in Berlin the gen -sis of the Protestant revol' has gone no far that most Americans would c\U the people pure infidels. TJobelievers ara fond of accusing Catholics of superstition. Yet, as indicated by the fact quoted, and by obssrvation, uobelievers have always been the most superstitious of per oos. They fill the void of their souls with figments of the fancy. No doubt superstition played some psrt in thit gloomy record of child suicide.