Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XX, Issue 43, 12 August 1892, Page 1

Current Topics

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

Ay article in the Forum for Jane, by President William De Witt;Hyde, of Bowdoin College, Branswick, Maine, gives as some carioas information abont the condition of the Protestant religion in the country districts of New England. The writer inquires as to whether a state of paganism is to be the final result. " Statistics," he says, 11 recently gathered, by the Maine Bible Society, show that Waldo County, Maine, has 6,987 families, divided in religious preference as follows :— Ad ventiet, 239; Baptist, 713 ; Christian, 159; Congrega« tional, 691 ; Episcopal, 24 ; Free-will Baptist, 734 ; Methodist, 1,818 ; Roman Catholic, 136 ; Unitarian, 126 ; Universalist, 619 ; other denominations, 541 ; without preference, 1,046 ; not recorded, 141. "Of the total," he continues, "4,850 report themselves as not attending church. Oxford County contains 7,283 families, of which 4 577 report that they attend nochurcb. The combined statistics of 35 counties show that of 133,445 families, 67,842 are not attendants upon any church." The writer explains that in the rural districts — of which Waldo County is an example— there are oo strong, vigorous churches. The ministers, besides, though devoted and self-sacr firing, are inefficient, mistaken means of promoting religion are adopted, and the churches are in debt. "In addition to these natural difficulties* nearly every town has inherited its church quarrel or church scandal ; the churches are engaged in rivalry with each other, or the membars of a single church are divided against themselves. " The writer gives the following bb a typical case :— " la and about the village of I there are between 800 and 1000 people. The religious opinions have always been pretty evenly divided between the Free-Will Baptist Congregational, Methodist, and Universalist denominations. For a time all worshipped together in a union church, hiring in turn a clergyman of each denomination. Thus, each moDth one portion of the congregation bad its own theological taste satisfied, although, as one good lady remarked, "yo-a conld not tell which was which by the preaching ,' Sectarian ambition, caused first the Universalists, then the Methodists to withdraw ; and alleged immoral conduct on the part of the Baptist clergyman compelledfthe separate organisation of a Congregational church. The latter were swindled by their first minister, who sold them the plans of their church at an exorbitant price. The Methodist church occasionally has a resident pastor, and some years it has none. The Baptist and Universalist churches are supplied by ministers who drive over on Sunday afternoons from neighbouring towns. The Congregationalist church has a student from the seminary three months in the summer. The strongest churches are the Universalist, with its membership of chirteen women and one man ; and the Congregational, with its membership of twenty women and four men, There is bardly a representative man in any of these four churches, though the Masonic lodge gathers from this and neighbouring towns its hunired members." The writer, further, adduces the experience of a friend who went as a home missionary in a small town in Minnesota. " After a few months," he says, " spent in rivalry with Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Methodist, and Baptist brethren, who each had his little struggling church witbia a stone't- throw of his own, he wrote back to his friends at the seminary that the only mission for any man out there was to go up and down the State, burning half the chnrches." We are given the following details. Our readers will perceive how fully they answer to Catholic predictions as to what Protestant doctrine must produce :—": — " (1) Excessive emphasis upon the transcendence as distinct from the immanence of God is the deeply buried and far-reaching root ; extreme individualism is the decaying and unsightly trunk ; supervfluonßv fluonß sects are the gnarled and knotty branches ; doctrinal abstractions are the dry and juiceless leaves ; artifical and unreal sermons are th 9 blighted and bitter fruit, which together constitute the tree which is now cumbering the ground of rural Christianity. (2) God is regarded as a Being who laid down certain laws, made certain covenants, drew up a certain plan of salvation, was a party to certain transactions, published certain books two or three thousand yaars ago.

FHTJITB OF THE REFORMATION.

(3) Each man feels especially commissioned to discover God's will both for himself and for everybody else ; each man must experience the grace of God in the conscious movements of his own breast, and judge himself and everybody else by the standard which he therein discovers ; each man must assent with his own intelligence to a compreheneive creed, and require every other intelligence to assent to the same creed ; each man mast go to Heaven his own way and make everybody else follow. Since it is practically impossible to have as many churches as individuals, the next best thing is to have as many as can either support themselves or get others to do it for them. (4) Having for itß subject-matter the relations between a far-off God and the mysterious entity the boul of man, the theology taught in these churches lacks vitality and is incapable of development. The same abstract formal relations are true of all men, at all times, and under all circumstances." The writer goes on to propose a remedy for all this, but his plan seems pretty much that of one who would fulfil the folly condemned by our Blessed Lord, and patch old garments with new pieces or pnt new wine into o'd bottles. His conclusion is particularly notable — relating, as it does, to a country once the stronghold of fervent Evangelical Protestantism, but where now for many years a secular system of education has prevailed. " Whether paganism," be says, "shall take the vacant place, or there shall be planted there a broader, richer, nobler church, is the most serious spiritual problem that confronts American Christianity to-day."

OUB EXPLANATION.

No, no ; there is nothing carious ia the matter. Surely our festive friend must know that It is not incumbent on an editor who publishes a clipping ia his paper to express a consciousness of its bearings on any particular case. We clipped tha.t paragraph about the Canadian Trappists and the field-mice from another paper, and left its application to our readers. " Civis," aa we see, has rather misapplied it. He wants us to explain why the rabbit-plague in New Zealand cannot be similarly cured. Did our " Civis " never attend & Sunday school ? Has be, for example, never heard of the widow of Sarepta who waa preferred before the many widows who were in Israel 1 Has he never heard of Naaman the Syrian ? Many lepers were in Israel in his days, b-t he was cured — not they. Surely, even though it may need a stretch of the memory on his part, our " Civis " can recall so much as this, that he has somewhere or another heard. But if he asks us what ia the difference thateupernaturally exists between the waters of tha Abana and the Pharphar and those of the Jordan, we confess we are unable to inform him. Our " Civic," besides, may, with another effort, recollect that to the working of miracles faith is necessary, ' And he wrought not many miracles there because of tbeir unbelief." And is there no difference between field-mice in Canada and rabbit 9in New Zealand ? Were it proposed miraculously to destroy our rabbity some Mr Cruncher, for instancy, might protest. What would become of the rabbiters ? What would be tho effect on the agents who deal in rabbitskins, or, yet again, on the rabbit-tinners ? We can fancy a whole chorus echoing Mr Cruncher's disgustful word?, "Wnat do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me ? " Decidedly there are two sides to the rabbit question. At any rate even our " Civis " must acknowledge that a community of Trappist monks, working hard with their own hands, and changing the wilderness into a garden, differ widely from the solitary squatter, who could not do a hard day's work to save his life, and who makes use of all his iufluence to preserve the wilderness in its pristine desolation. Poasibly tbe rabbits are that threadbare entity, the blessing in disguise, and, by routing the monopolist they may eventually bring on the one thing needful, the l»na fide settlement of the land, a matter that would soon make an end of them. As to the American blight, the codlin moth, and tbe Calif orniao thistle, which our " Civis " also proposes for our mot tification, he may consider them likewise in the light thrown upon the subject by tbe passages of Holy Scripture to which we htva referred. If we make our festive friend acquainted, for the first time, with the existence of such passages, we are quite consoled for any suspicion of a want of faith on our part he may have entertained, Wer« be acquainted with those passages he could hardly be accountable for the stuff written by him. We hope we have made our explanation sufficiently clear.

ALL IK THE SPELLING.

" That there bird over in the Australian bush." — There, says our " Civis," is the ne phis ultra of contemptible writing. After that the writer has not a word to say that can be listened to. 11 Et lee moindres defauta de cc greasier genie Sont on le pleonasme, ou la cacophonie." —But wherein lies the outrage ? It must be in the spelling. Yes ; that's it. We wrote " that there " instead of •' that 'ere." Tbe sound of Bow-Bells was not quite familiar enough to our ears. Certainly one so deeply versed in the immortal works of the brilliant " Joe Miller as our " Civis," could never question the grammar of the sentence. He would know the proof of its correctness adduced by that learned author as given by a famous wit. " That air," said he, pointing to an open window, and then laying his hand on the side of bis head, 11 is bad for this ear." That ia as plain as Vaugelas or Lindley Murray could make it. Our •• Civis," then, cannot question the grammar. He cannot dispute with a source whence so many of his little jokes are derived. We Bhall refrain in future from hurting his susceptibilities. We shall use the apostrophe next time. And "jackass "is a shocking word. So much the worse for the thing the word represents then. But we protest that the very Governor's wife herself, who, we suppose, is the pink of fashion over there, must use it if she would make herself understood. Mrs " Civis," perhaps, would use the zoological or the ornithological term — bnt it is not every lady who tnjoys the pedantic privileges that Mrß " Civis " shares. And if laughing ]ackass why not musical jackass ?— Why not jackass pure and simple, for people cannot always have their adjectives in their mouths? Let us, therefore, take our jackass neat. The animal in his native simplicity appears at his best. — Nor can we regret it if we have, for once, sent our " Civis " to consult the learning of the saints, even through the medium of a magazine writer, a member of a class, by the way, whose members are often as stupid as tbe very scribblers of notes for the newspapers themselves may occasionally be. However, we must remember our apostrophe. The next time we have agrain of salt to put on the tail of a jackass we shall be neither pleonastic nor cacophonious. We shall leave out the " th." Anything to ensure harmony and satisfy an elongated ear.