Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XX, Issue 16, 5 February 1892, Page 1

Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

Or the sensational publications with which Mr W. OHOBTBAKD T. Stead has been associated, possibly none sur* fetches. passes that which forms the Christmas number of the Review of Reviews. The supernatural here returns upon ns. Mr Stead, indeed, argues that there is nothing supernatural about the matter, but we take the liberty of differing from him in this opinion. We recognise an old acquaintance of whom we bad been taught to feel ashamed, as out of keeping with the more advanced enlightenment of the age. But is it, in fact, the enlightenment of the age that should feel ashamed, acknowleding itself a false enlightenment, that in its conceit had denied the truth, and stupidly mocked at an existence which it ought to have treated seriously and with respect f Mr Stead cites a motley throng of witnesses — parsons and priests ; ministers of the Establishment and of the bodies that dissent from it ; men ia the past as hard-headed as Lord Brougham, and in the present as brave and manly as Lord Charles Bereaford ; a London solicitor noted for his unsentimental temperament ; a photographer plying his trade in a busy part of Newcastle on Tyne ; a strong-minded woman, the member of a temperance association ; four or five officers of the sth Lancers assembled in a mess-room at Aldershot ; testimony in short, it would seem, of every possible kind, and all to the fact that ghosts and fetches and unearthly appearances are far from uncommonly seen. The photographer mentioned has an interview relating to his business with a van, who, at the very time, lies unconeciouß on his death-bed some miles away ; a matter-of-fact auctioneer, who professes an utter disbelief in ghosts, still firmly asserts that he has walked down a busy street in Glasgow conversing with his father, who had died some years before ; another man has a conversation also in the street, a street in Manchester, and also in the broad day-light, with a publican whom, to his horror, he afterwards remembers has been a long time dead ; a Free Church minister in Dumbartonshire, who is also a member of the Royal Society and of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, as well as a contributor to many learned and popular publications and journals, including the Encyclopedia Britannica, tells a tale vivid and realistic and almost as weird as any to be found in the narrative of Dante — the tale of a ghost who describes the death of the man to whom it had belonged. The narrator vouches for the truth of the story in all its essential parts. If human testimony, in a word, can establish anything, we can hardly refuse to admit tbat this publication to which we refer has established the existence of that old world beyond the confines of our daily experience on which the spirit of the more conceited age had pronounced as unreal and absurd. Mr Stead prefaces his volume with a notice to nervous people not to read it. But nervouß people in the past firmly believed In all such things, and yet were able to live without discomfort. Nay, the time is not so long past as that we cannot personally remember when , in some places ai least, men and women implicity believed tbat it was possible for them at any time, but especially after dark, to see something worse than themselves, and yet they managed to live comfortably enough. If in our enlightened fin de sieele, then, we are forced to accept as proved the possibility of supernatural appearances, we many console ourselves by the recollection that we fare no worse than did the generations that preceded us. To the credit of those generations, moreover, it must be recorded that they were not the fools we at one time took them for, but had the sight of their eyes and the hearing of their earß for the things they believed in. The humiliation of the confession, and the lesson learned generally, perhaps may do us no barm.

The address on the Education Queition, delivered SILLINESS AND on Sunday week to the Catholics at Milton by the BIBALDBY. Most Rev Dr Moran, has, as nsual, unloosed the tongues of the scornful. To a plaintive leader on the subject published by the Otago Daily Timet we refer elsewhere and there is no more to be said on the subject. Here we refer to a baton of letters that have appeared, as usual, in our highly esteemed,

contemporary, the Dnnedin Evening Star. So far we have seen three such letters. They are of the customary kind, each of them the senseless screeching of an empty-headed bigot— and each of them contributed by a scribbler who is apparently, and possibly with reason, ashamed of hit name. The first of these correspondents signs himself " My Brain's Owner." " Lord of himself, that htritage of woe." But, if all this poor nameless body owns be his brains, he must be in a pitiable plight. Let us hope be is more or less skilled in some handicraft by which he can gain a living, and that thus be may avoid the gnawings of &n empty stomach. The second correspondent signs himself " Jeremy Taylor. A more appropriate pseudonym • however, would be, for example, Jeremy Diddler. And as Jeremy Diddler we dismiss him. The third correspondent is a blackguard, who signs himself " Scot," and whose letter conld hardly be found in the columns of any decent newspaper. But tbat does not by any means prevent it from having a most appropriate place in the columns of our contemporary the Evening Star — and perhaps it is an editorial inserted under the disguise of a letter. Still we know there is here and there an unsavoury fellow — hailing from the Gallow-Gate of Glasgow, or some similar locality, who, by accident of birth and race is entitled to take the signature mentioned . Such a character alludesi with a brazen face, to " filth " as existing in any other country than bis own. Who, for instance, are those Scots who have made their countiy stink in the nostrils of the world because of its gross immorality 1 At to material filth — " Sweet Kdinb'ro, I smell thee coo." Let that suffice. Decent Scots, on the other hand, turn to Ireland— as did, for instance, a late Provost ot EdinDungh, for an example of moral cleanliness. We do not, besides, know that the material dirt of any Irish city has formed the subject of a proverbial couplet. A letter, however, palpably betraying the hand of its writer as that of a mere blackguard, is not to be noticed. Wo refar to it only because it appropriately illustrates the disposition of our contemporary, tha Evening Star. No hand is too low for him to avail himself of its aid in flinging dirt at the Catholic religion — in which he also, no doubt recognises the bulwark of Christianity. What letters are still to com* we do not know— nor indeed, do we much care. They must necet£ sarily be of the same kind — either silly or ribald or both in combination. Cur-dogs will persist in yelping at the moon.

But, after all, there is nothing so very novel or A stupid strange in the advice given by the Bishop of upboab. Dnnedin, that Catholics shoald make their demands in the matter of education, the exclusive test in voting for Parliamentary candidates. We have, for example, now before ns a leader from the Liverpool Catholic Times, which deals with the voting in the London School Board election. Oar contemporary does not propose anything of the kind that Dr Moran pro* poses. In fact, he says be thinks it would be worse than futile to undertake to bring about union among the Catholics of England on political subjects — and more, we say, is the pity. All he proposes is tbeir organisation in view of the school board elections. He, however, incidentally mentions that the block vote is elsewhere au established institution. "An illustration of this," he Bays, "isto be found in the voting of some of the Protestant temperance bodies. At Par* limentary elections one of the candidates is usually chosen, for whom the temperance vote it to be solidly cast." The pledge given, it is true, as our contemporary adds, is not uncommonly broken, but the principle is accepted — and certainly we do not find that the tern* perance bodies are, in consequence, condemned as reckless with regard to the general interests of the country, and desirous of retrogression in the direction of the " dark ages." " The Catholic Churcb," says the Otago Daily Tines, "is in the very forefront of those who do battle against the doctrines nf the new Socialism. Does Bishop Moran really mean that Catholics are to stand by with their hands in their pockets while the advocates of such doctrines are endeavouring to force them upon the community ?" But a Catholic education is a chief engine on which the Catholic Church relies in righting the battle, and Bishop Moran, in insisting upon it, is acting consistently with her guidance. The Bishop knows that Catholics would take

ihtir bands out of their pockets in vain to oppose tbe advocates of Socialist doctrines, were they, at the same time, to relinquish the support of their Catholic schools. It would, ia fact, be altogether to tbe advantage of Socialism that these schools were abandoned. With* out the control of religion the people who are now Irish Catholics, or tbe children of such, would certainly swell the Socialist ranks. Such must necessarily be a consequence of tbe treatment under which their race had for centuries laboured. Their tendency would ba to go from one extreme to another. Bishop Moran, in fact, in spite of the Statei is fighting tbe battle of the State against Socialism and every other form of political evil, in insisting on freeing his people from the penalties that make it difficult for them to give their children the education which alone can effectually ground them in moderation and contentment with a wholesome state of affairs. We by no means admit, however, that by not supporting Mr Bell in tbe recent election, wt the Daily Times implies, Catholic voters were standing by idle while Socialists were gaining the day. On the contrary, every vie. lory gained by the plutocracy, whom Mr Bell and the Otago Daily TimfM represent, by tendiog to increase tbe sum of tbe people's legiti. mate discontent is favouring the growth of Socialistic doctrines among thsm — and tbe triumph, let it come sooner or later, undoubtedly will be with the people. But this is beside onr subject. We only intended to quote a case to show that Bishop Moran, ia insisting on the sacrifice of all other issues to the great and fundamental one of Christian education, was not acting a part unheard of hitherto, and of necessity to be condemned. Temperance, for instance, is an issue of less importance than Christian education, which forms its basis, as it does that of every other virtae. But temperance, as we have seen, is made tbe subject of a block vote in England, similar to that which Dr Moran advocates in New Zealand, and no one complains of it as outrageous, or as even in any degree unfair. The plutocrat, nevertheless naturally shouts " Stop thief " against anyone who will not aid him to maintain his monopoly, and the religions bigot would roar " You devil " in tbe face of an angel of light.