Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIV, Issue 20, 22 September 1898, Page 1

Current Topics

AT BOMS AND ABROAD.

Under date July 25 the Holy Father issued an THE pope AND important Encyclical Letter to the Bishops of Scotland. Scotland. We hope to publish the full text of this important document in our next issue. It is a touching Encyclical, issued in view of the writer's approaching dissolution. It deals largely with the question of the interpretation of the Scriptures. In this connection a welcome sign of the drift towards Catholic principles is pointed out by the Scotsman, which has shown how the United Presbyterian Churches have so far appropriated the principle of authority vs. private judgment as to require its adherents to express their belief that, although the Scriptures are the ' only rule of faith and life,' the ' doctrine of the Church ' nevertheless ' expresses the sense in which they understand the Holy Scriptures.' Here, indeed, is a big removal from the oldprinciple of bald and thorough-going private judgment.

Yet another Encyclical from the Pope. The latest the pope and one is addressed to the Italian clergy, and deals Italy. with the relations of the Church to the State iv the distracted and Masonic-lodge ridden Peninsula. It gives a fresh impetus to the old principle of Pius IX. — ne eletti ne elettori : the complete abstention of Catholics from political life, as a protest against the invasion of Rome by the Piedmontese. ' Judged as a Papal achievement,' says the T lvies, ' the Encyclical is unimpeachable in literary style, and is marked by a- vigour which men younger than the Pontiff might envy. Indeei, it will probably rank as one of the most forcible utterances of Leo XIII.' The newspapers that, at the time this encyclical was written, were preparing for the Pope's funeral, now find him voluminously alive.

The nagging difficulties that surround the introthe bible in duction of the Bible into the State schools of this the schools. Colony are apparently beginning to force their attention on the minds of some members at least of the very body that have made it the rallying flag for the next electoral campaign. The Bunedin Evening Star has the following in point : — ' The question of the Bible in schools came up at the last meeting of the Christchurch Presbytery, when the Rev. W. Scorgie asked if it was not possible for them to take some practical steps in the matter. Dr. Erwin pointed out that the question had been under consideration for six years now, but nothing 1 had matured. He thought if the ministers showed themselves really in earnest the people would soon follow. The Rev. Gordon Webster said the matter had presented many difficulties, and similar ones were being met with in Victoria. In that colony the agitation was now in the direction of making the religious teaching of the general reading books of a more satisfactory character, and he thought it quite likely that such a proposal here would have the effect of uniting their forces again. The matter was referred to a subcommittee."

The proposal to introduce Bible lessons into the State schools of Victoria met with an overwhelming defeat at a plebiscite some two years ago. It is not likely to be brought up again for some time. The movement that has taken its place may result in removing to some extent the rank and uncompromising godlessness of the State system in Victoria. Such a movement, if extended to New Zealand, would not, however, solve the difficulties of the school question. From the Catholic standpoint, some of the strongest objections to 'religious teaching' would apply with equal fores whether such teaching was given — as, for instance, by

non-Catholic teachers — from the Bible direct or from 'general reading-books.' Moreover, the religious instruction which might be of 'a more satisfactory character ' to the Presbyterian mind, might be deoidely less so to Catholic, Anglican, Jew, or Socinian. The solution of the school difficulty lies not that way.

Wak, pestilence, the foreign mission-field — these priests ok are the occasions when the value of a celibate the clergy is so evident that the man who runs may battlefield, read. The celibate has no regrets — no one tugging at his coat-tails. The married clergyman — whatever his personal bravery and goodness of heart — has wife and little ones barring the path to that heroic charity which faces all, risks all, defies all with a heavenly rapture of self-sacrifice. It came out in front of Santiago as it did at Liverpool in 1848, at Madras during the bubonic plague, at New Orleans in its periodical visitations of yellow fever, in the leper-isle of Molokai. The Protestant soldier, Joseph Prauke, of Company C, Sixteenth Eegulars, told the story as he lay wounded in the Bellevue Hospital, Nevv York :—: — 'If it had not been for the Catholic chaplains in the Santiago campaign, many more of our men would have lost their lives. I have seen them pick up wounded m^n in their arms and carry them out of the firing lines while the bullets whizzed all around them. Then they bound the wounds and gave the sufferers food and drink. I did not see the chaplains of any o.ther denomination on the firing line.'

The Irish. Tourist Development Association are bringing doing a patriotic work. They are making John them and Sandy better acquainted with Pat, and thus, neabeb. in a measure, helping to break down the adamantine barrier of race and religious prejudice which were the root-cause of that long course of evil legislation which made the word Sassenach a sound of bitterness and reproach in the mouths of so many Irishmen. The Irish Tourist Development Association have h<. lped to turn Ireland — formerly the Cinderella of the holiday -seeker — into one of his favourite and most delightful resorts. They have improved and increased the hotel accommodation all over the Green Isle, and otherwise wrought with such conspicuous success that, as I learn from the Times of July 30, the British tourists for that one month were fully fifty times more numerous than in the corresponding period of 1897. This is a mighty change, which is bure to work further good for Ireland. Not many years ago a rare English tourist went to Conneujara or the highlands of Donegal as one might go to bandit-ridden Corsica» expecting to find a blunderbuss peeping out from behind every hedge and bush and stone wall. Mr. Herbert Gladstone long ago declared that Ireland is the tafest country in Europe to travel in, and that its peasantry take high rank aaiong.st the most polite and hospitable people to be met with anywhere. It is pleasant to know that our friends over the water are beginning to realise this. There are happy possibilities in all thisj. Ie would by no means surprise me if Ireland and thiug9 Irish become like the Scottish novel) quite the fashion.

If so, the piogreesoE remedial legislation for Ireland will be facilitated to a wonderful degree— and the days of the stage Irishman will be numbered. He will be recognised by Soot and Angle as a gross caricature of what an English traveller termed ' the politest peasantry on earth.' He must go before the light — with his apish face, and the ' shtick* in his ' fisht,' and the pipe in his hat-band, and the crownless cavbcen, and the wild whirroo in his mouth, and his hair done up with a curry-comb : a creature one never meets with in real life, either in Ireland or elsewhere. And the so-called Irish ' comic ' song must go, too — and a thousand plagues go with it, for I have heard it on St. Patrick's nights for many a year till my heart is sick. For the life of me I never could never see where the fun came in of representing- an Irishman in song or play or

story as a rough-and-tumble fellow with a club in his fist, and for ever * spilin' for want of a batin' ' — employing his spare time opening peoples brain-boxes at fairs ; at wakes manifesting marked disrespect for the corpse ; and at evening parties beating his host on the head with heavy articles of furniture and wooden legs (every Irishman has a wooden Jeg), and leaving his nose on the mantelpiece and his eyebrow on the floor. How Irish audiences have so long endured the stage rowdy's libellous antics is more than I can tell. How they could encourage them by their laughter, applause, and recalls, passes my comprehension. I venture the devout hope that the day is coming fast when the idiotic and unmannerly bully that thus besmirches the Irish character on the stage may be soundly pelted with last year's eggs. And if our English and Scottish friends join in the fusillade — or start it— why, so much the better. At any rate there lies a big and wider hope in the work of the Irish Tourist Development Association.

In Bishop Milner's days the question of Catholic THE TWO camps, vs. Protestant doctrines wa9 fought out in England by the followers of the Pope on the one side and of the Establishment on the other. But other times, other manners. It is now being fought out by two great parties in the Church of England itself. The Catholics sit on the grand stand and look on. The 'Protestant parly' denounce the ' Romanising ' of the High Church party. These, in turn— like Rev. H. H. llenson in the National lie view— denounce the ' Protestant reaction,' the ' obselete dogmas of Protestantism,' and ' the arrogant assumptions of one bishop who condemned sacerdotalism.' According to the Times of July 30, the differences between the two parties has led to trouble at what is known as ' the Home,' at All Souls Church, Hastings. It all arose out of a publication entitled A Catechism for Catholics in England. The book advocates confession to the minister, inculcates the doctrine of indulgences, teaches that the Sacrifice of the Eucharist is the same as that of Calvary, maintains that Protestant Dissenters are in schism, and, not having- apostolical succession, have no right to preach. These doctrines had decidedly too strong a flavour for the Bishop of Chichester and his Diocesan Association. They removed the Home from the dangerous precincts of All Souls parish, Hastings, and set it up elsewhere. Men like the rector of All Soulb are, however, consciously or unconsciously, doing much to familiarise English Protestants with Catholic doctrines, devotions, and modes of thought. God ordinarily works by human instruments. Who shall say at this hour of the day, in view of the history of the Oxford movement, that the conversion of England is — even on merely human grounds — impracticable ?

TEE last few weeks have bronchi forth a fat crop A DANGEROUS of Alpine guide-books and Alpine accidents. There amusement, is closer connection between thetwo things than is apparent on the surface. The familiar dangers of high Alpine climbing I—showers1 — showers of falling stones or ice, deep crevasses covered with thiu and treacherous coatings of frozen snow, and thundering- avalanches — have recently swept not merely individuals, but whole families- and parties, into eternity. And such deaths ! In 18(io, for instance, Lord Douglas fell 4,OOOfeet. His three guides fell four-fifths of a mile. In August, 1895, Professor Schmidt dropped from the highest point of the Iriglar, and never stopped till his battered remains had fallen 9,000 feet. When you drop from one of those great heights, you generally b imp a few times against the jagged sides of an ice or stove precipice, and have fragments of your anatomy clinging to them, ft is doubtful if that does you any good. Without guides, high mountain-climbing is a form of suicide. With them — :md the aid of alpenstocks, ropes, ladders, snow-goggles, veils?, hob-nailed shoes, icu-axes, wraps, and all the rest — it is only for persons of great nerve and endurance. For women — many of whom ['erished lately — not at all.

Why do people go mountain clirabinjr ' Y>u miiiht as well ask one why people get Gerovm measles iti Orago or influenza in Auckland. Because it's epidemic. It is the s-invner mania in Switzerland as it will be some d yin the sweet by-and-hy in Xew Zealand. You get it as you get Vw whoopin/-cou,rh. Like Lo-igfellow's young 1 man, your motto is ' Excel&i. r ' : you in i.«t go v lull or die—sometimes you do both. Aivl what do yon do when you gft on top? Just 'slither' down again, g t your bruise paintel with tincture of iodine and your hone* rapture 1, an.l iro up ig in in h higher place. And so on da cap >. Ladies get vcy bad attauK* v( the inountainclimbing mania— the la*e Kinprcss, of Au fri.i \v is a daring climber They sometimes (as in the reoent accdents) i'olh) v the stern, r sex to a fearful death by the ice-fall or the avalanche — fliiked into eternity off the steep pre ipices just as you flick a fly off a wall. Aud what is the use of it all 1 It is said by *>oino to be a remedy iv the early stages of consumption. It is recommended for people

who are troubled with what doctors terra an undue accumulation of adipose tissue— polite people call it ' flesh' ; plain people ' fat. It also affords a certain number of foolish people a great many different ways of breaking their foolish necks. For scientists it has its use. I know of little to commend it to the man or woman in the crowd. They had better remain below, or, if they must climb, let them do it as Mark Twain did— by deputy.

As far back as 1745, Mr. Samuel Laing, a Scottish the geave of Presbyterian, eaid in his Notes on the German the reformed Catholic Church : ' The Lutheran and Calvinistio faith.' Churches in Germany and Switzerland are in reality extinct. The sense of religion, its influence on the habits, observances, and life of the people, is alive only in the Roman Catholic population.' Similar statements as regards the decline of religious life among the followers of the Reformers in Germany were made in 1879 by Vizetelly in his Berlin Under the New Empire ; by Rev. Baring Gould, in the same year, in his Germany Past and Present ; and, among others, by the non-Catholic author of Religious Thought in Germany ; while the Edinburgh Review of October 1880, in testifying to the active spread of Catholicism in the Fatherland, stated that ' the land which was the cradle of the Reformation has become the grave of the reformed faith.' The English Deism of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-turies-of Herbert, Hobbes, Shaftesbury, Toland, Collins, Woolston, Bolingbroke, and others, gave rise (according to Villemain and Rev. Dr. Harold Browne) to the infidel French philosophy of the last century. It produced, through this, the Rationalism of Paulus, the Pantheism of Hegel, and the historical myth of Strauss, which left the Protestant Churches of Germany with scarcely a vestige of Christian belief.

The English Protestant magazine, Sunday at Home, for August, gives the following melancholy tale of the decline of church-going in the political capital of the German Empire, Berlin : 'With a population exceeding a million and three-quarters, Berlin has only sitting accommodation for 86,000, a state of affairs which exists in no other city in the world. Her Protestant population exceeds one and a half million ; for these there are only 78,000 sittings. But the saddest part of the state of affairs is, that 'the churches are apparently more than sufficient for the people who care to attend divine service. While the churches of two or three popular preachers are always filled to overflowing, the vast majority of the others are only scantily attended. The Empress feels this sad condition of affairs very deeply, and, owing chiefly to her initiative, 19 new churches have been built since the present Emperor began his rei^n. It is not, however, new churches that are wanted, for many of thos>e that exist are half empty on Sundays, but the breath of life inspired into the church services. It is the rarest thing in the world to hear a real gospel sermon preached from a Berlin pulpit. What is here said of Berlin is true also of Hamburg and other large centres of population.'

It is an old complaint. As far back as 1858 or 1859, Pastor Kuntze complained before the Evangelical Assembly of Berlin that out of the then population of Berlin (440,000) less than 4,000 attended divine worship. With the majority of those, said the court-preacher Krummacher, who was present, 'it was simply an affair of parade, a sort of theatrical piety.' Twenty years later (in 1879) Rev. Baring Gould gave alarming statistics showing the decline of church-going ainon^ the non-Catholic denominations in every part of the Empire. The Protestant author of Religious Thought in Germany (p 127) puts his finger squarely on the two causes which have contributed to produce this melancholy result. They are : (I) Loss of belief in Christianity ; and (2) The practical application of the principle of private, judgment to the Bible, and the Bible only. (1) He states that ' the vast majority of the Protestant middle classes, and even a large proportion of the lower strata of society, are estranged from the religion of their ancestors.' (2) 'In proportion as belief in the letter of Holy Writ has been insisted upon as the primary duty of man. the churches have become empt-er, until, broadly sp.-akitig, they are attended only by the few sha' ing these strict opinions, and the uneducated, whose religion is one of feelin.T and habit rather than reflection. In Berlin, e.g., mo'tt of the churches are invariably empty, although the accommodation provides only for 2VOOO out of a population of 800,000 souls.'

Pave in the rapid spread and activity of the Catholic Church in the Empire, th< re is, humanly speaking, bjt little hope of remedy for a btate of things which Catholic and earnest Protestant must alike deplore. IndiffereniHiii and infidelity h.ive seized the clergy of the Evangelical Church of Germany, and ' if the salt become unsavoury, wherewith will you season i! /' In his recent book, Christ inn Life in Germany (published at the close of last year)), a sympathetic American Protestant writer, Rev. F. Williams, D.D.,

says : ' In the universities no theological professor thinka of opening his lectures with prayer, as in our seminaries for the training of young men for the ministry. Nor in these great schools are there, even for theological students, anything like the " prayers " of our colleges, or social meetings for the cultivation of one's spiritual life. . . . Life in the other departments of the university, as well as in professional and technical schools, though not openly infidel, is yet practically godless. Neither teacher nor student expresses his religious faith, nor. except on rare occasions, is he seen in the house of God. . . . While it is generally true that theological professors attend Church with tolerable regularity, as much cannot be said of theological students.' The same authority states : 'It is said by persons who have made careful examination, that only about one-third of chose who die in Berlin in any given year are buried with religious rites.'

There is urgent need for a new Reform in Germany. Such Reform is not, however, likely to come from a generation of prayerless theological students. The hope must come from elsewhere. It lies in the same author's words : ' Nowhere in the world is the Roman Catholic Church doing better work,' so much so that a Band or League has been formed — a kind of Dame Partington's mop — to keep out the inflowing tide of ' Popery ' which is forcing its way in through every chink and crack and crevice in the Evangelical Church of Germany.