SUICIDE AND INFIDELITY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 14, 2 January 1891, Page 29

SUICIDE AND INFIDELITY.

(tfew York Fryman's Journal. November 1 ) AT the average B <ated in a r.cent cab.^ram, the total number cf suicides m Pans for a year would cume to some five hundred It is a frightful r.cord of depravity, and the miud naturally aeeks'to find

vt unhesitatingly say that the cause is to be founi in unbslief >o sane Christian would deliberately throw himself into hell • and that is the meaning ..f suicide. Tbe Christian knows that this is a world of travail and sorrow, merely the rough pathway to his true home and he bears his trials as he may, supported by the help he asks from on high. But when am in has persuaded himself that he has no soul, and has, as a consequence, exhausted all tbe springs of life and possesses only the bitter drege, what more natural than that he should " make vis exit even with a bare bodkin ?" Historically, we are borne out in this view. It was in the glittering phantasmagoria of the Pansian world that Voltaire UM rot, and the Eicyclope lists wrjught ojt their infiiel theonee' * nil- J ean Jacques complemented their infernal labours by spreading discontent wiiu society as it is. Tnere, as from some witch's children rose the fumes of unbeiief aad restless envy whuh have intoxicated such niulti udes to th - present d*y. In America, a? in the Ejropean countiies, we behold the same steady increase in smci lea beyond the increase of population We cannot so easily re.eh the broad cause here as in fans ; yet we may infer that unbelief ]8 the spimg of action. 1q moe cases ou> of ten 01-anedu'cides, there are expressions or indic-mons of unbelief in various stages. Suicide and superstition alike sbow the epread of un . be lef. When men give up their faiib, they are sure to ti.l the void with insane crocaeta like tabU-tappmg. cliirvjydncj. etc., aud mix with such practical devil-worship a ghastly stew of self-murder