Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 2, 12 January 1899, Page 1

Current Topics

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

MOUNT COOK : 1 NO THOROUGHFARE !

Therf is a fool-slayer sorely needed either at Wellington or at Mount Cock. To all intents and purposes Govt rnment, through its servants or agent-, is erecting, or permitting the erection of a barrier on the road to the famous Alpine resort of Mount Cook, and surrounding it with the legend • ' No thoroughfare, except to owners of bloated money-bags.' At the Government huts the cheapest and nastiest fare is said by an English tou ist to be provided at the rate of ten shillings per day, including such a durable commodity as canned beef ' which no knife in the woi Id would cut into,' and sardines ' of the cheapest and rottenest variety, procurable at about is 6d a dozen tins.' It reminds one of, I think, Dickens's definition of a boarding-house. 'An accumulation of miseries at the dearest possible rate.' Tourist traffic is to our Switzerland of the South what it is to its great European counterpart — a solid and steadily-growing national asset. Apart from the mere miserly churlishness of this year's Mount Cook arrangements, the new policy of fleecing the tourist is calculated to injure vested interests along this famous route, and to exercise a deterrent effect upon tourist traffic generally. Longfellow wrote the following I impoon on the extortionate and not over-clean ' Raven ' hotel in Zuiich .—. — Beware of the ' Raven ' of Zurich, Tl3 a bird of o;nt>n ill With a noipy and an unclean nebt, And a very, very long bill. The American poet had a fine revenge, for it is said he put up, or all but put up, the shutters ol the ' Raven.' A few more complaints about Mount Cook fare and Mount Cook charges mieht all but close the door for a few years to one of the wildest bus of s<_enic grandeur in New Zealand. It is high time for common-scn->e to take the place of grasping penury at the Government huts, Mount Cook.

THE MONK.

Ihk hands of old king Time's clock keep moving round. His hours are centuries. Kvery tick-tock of his big pendulum has of late years marked a kinder and still kinder appreciation of the monks of old who restored and preserved the civilisation of Europe in the evil days that followed the invasions of the northern hordes. The labours ot Ors. Brewer, Kitchen, and Jessop, Mr. Clarke, Father Ga'-quet, etc., have resulted in hosing off much of the mud that a silly tradition of three centuries had Hung upon the monk. It is one of the signs of the times to read in the latest issue of Cci^sell's Magazine a splendidly illustrated, well informed, and wholly sympathetic article on the present-day li!e and labours of the Casthusian monks. It concludes as follows • — And so day follows day — calmly, peacefully, yet not without a certain joy. The life is iudeed a hard one, but it has its compensations. The monk has none of the pleasures of the world ; nor has he its sorrows and its trials. His life is one uncea-ing round of prajer and praise to God and of service to bis neighbours. He dies in tie habit as he lived and is laid to rest by the hands of bis brethren in the pre bounded by the cloisters he so often tiod aud beneath the shadow of the Church where, night al'ier nipht, the invitation yhall ring- loud and clear : — Ycntte, t-ctd-ttmux I), iiiiiiio, jubilriiniit J)m ■•.ali/fun nn.stro; pra'occujti mus facie hi <jus in coi'Jt jwii/ii , ct in /iMitmh /uhilri/mx vi.

CANO N mcmurray's TILT AT ST. PET F K.

Canon McMurray has been preaching- in the Anglican Cathedral, Pdrnell. The announcement is not a very sensational one. But as irtv as I can judge lrom the extracts of his sermon received from my Auckland correspondent, the good Canon was in one of those humours in which a man feels he must deny something — it does not matter particularly what. We have all known men

that, when under a ' seizure ' of this kind, would snap )ou up sharp on any statement you please, like Jim Smiley of the Jumping Frog in the matter of bets. Canon McMurray has been running amuck in a strong revelry of fierce negation. Among the multitude of his hot denials there is one that so far covers the ground of all the rest that a brief reference to it will not be out of place. 'St. Peter,' said the Canon, • was never Bishop of Rome.' There are minds to which a loud and thundering, though bald, denial appeals with some appearance of force. But these are not educated minds. A gratuitous assertion is fairly met with a gratuitous denial. But the fact of St. Peter's Roman episcopate stands on a higher plane. It is one of the best authenticated facts in the whole range of the history of the early Church. The external evidence in support of it is at least as strong as that on which Canon McMurray accepts the inspiration and canon of the sacred Scriptures. It is, and has ever been, the unbroken belief of the Eastern and the Western Church. It is moreover, the conviction of Protestants whose power in the realms of historic research will be freely admitted by Canon McMurray himself. Such an overwhelming body of testimony is not to be set aside by the bold and hasty denial of one thus far so unknown to fame as our friend the Auckland Canon.

Canon McMurray can scarcely be ignorant of the manner in which St. Peter's Roman episcopate is testified to by such eatly writers as Tertullian, Cyprian, Pjpe Stephen, Optatus, St. Jcromt", Sulpitius St. Augustine, etc. The Anglican Bishop Pearson adduces a great amount of Patristic evidence which proves the fact of St. Peter's connection with Rome (Mi uor Theol. Works, vol. i). Dr. Lirdner, the great Nonconformist writer, bears ample witness to the unbroken belief of the early Church that St. Peter was Bishop of Rome. The distinguished Protestant writer Cave declares: ' That Peter was at Rome and held the See there for some time, we intrepidly affirm with the whole multitude of the ancients ' (Script. Reel. Hist. Lit., p. 5). The celebrated German scholar Lipsius is even moie outspoken. The Anglican Bishop Bramhall of Armagh and the distinguished Anglican historian, Dean Milman (Hist, of Early Christianity, vol. iii.), fully acknowledge how unanimous the voice of antiquity is, where and when it speaks, in acknowledging the Roman episcopate of St. Peter. Two such shining lights of Protestantism as Grotius and Leibnitz have even gone so far as to admit the absolute need and the actual existence ot the Primacy of the See of Rome.

Incredulity such as that of Canon McMurray is a doubleedged folly. Ihe Roman Kpiscopate of St. Peter is in possession, and the facts of history are not to be lightly tampered wuh nor to be swept away by a gay and empty denial. I would venture to remind the worthy polemic that his principles of criticism would leave him without a Bible, and would wipe out many such well-known facts of history as Hannibal's invasion of Italy. Canon McMurray asks us to accept his unsupported denial as against the voice of antiquity, and the judgment of distinguished Protestant scholars. Hia contention is intelligible, but not particularly intelligent, and not convincing. The worthy Canon characterises as ' encroachments ' the undoubted admission and exercise of Papal jurisdiction in Anglo-Saxon and Norman England. ' Encroachments/ like 'aggression,' • superstition,' and the rest, is a very pretty word. But in this connection it is a mere vulgar question-begging epithet — one of the favourite resorts of people who have a bad case and are conscious of the fact. It takes for granted the very thing we deny, and that the Canon has to prove. And to attempt such proof he must fling himselt unarmed against a bnstl.ng array of plain historic lacts as threatening as a forest of pointed bayonets. Canon McMurray has either read history through a wire-screen or a distorting-glass, or, in this mattei , he has taken advantage of his audience's unacquaintance with the elements of logic and the plain facts of the relations between Rome and England up to the days when Henry I VIII. saw the light of the new faith in the eye of Anna Boleyn.

THE MONKEY AND THE CATS.

A London magazine just to hand has an article on long-winded law cases. The writer regards the celebrated Demelra will case as the most fearfully and wonderfully protracted lawsuit in the ken of histoiy. It arose in 1768 over estates left by the Anglican Bishop Demetra, and exercised the jawbones of a long succession of lawyers till the year of grace 1890. Then it ended. At the beginning of the historic case there was a sum of £250,000 available for distribution among the litigants. When the lawsuit closed, the munificent sum of one pound sterling fell to the share ot each of their grandchildren ! The writer of the article is, however, mistaken in stating that the Demetra case is the record for protracted lawsuits. As far as my knowledge goes, Bavaria holds the belt for ' the law's delays.' As far back as June 21, 15<)5, a beautiful little legal tussle arose between the market community of Burginn and the Lord of Thiingen, over the ownership of a forest. The lawsuit has been kept up gallantly ever since. For a tew years in the present decade there was a short pause for breath. Then, in the beginning of 1896, the lawyers went at it again with fresh hammers and tongs. They are, I believe, at it still. The case will probably end at the crack o' doom. Successive generations of lawyers have fobbed by the transaction as much money as would purchase a decent forest of silver. They have probably got the forest timber too. It is the old story of the monkey adjudicating between the cats.

CATHOLIC \ ALOUR.

Thk Edinburgh Catholu Herald thus neatly scores the notorious Primmer, who has been going into hysterics in Scotland over the unspeakableness of 'Jesuit training'- — 'It was' the Duke of Wellington who said that without Catholic blood and Catholic valour no victory could have been obtained. History repeats itself. One of the recent aw aid-, of the Victoria Cross for conspicuous courage, fell to a young officer who had won it in the North-Western Frontier Campaign ; and one of the four latest recipients ot the Cross tor signal courage and dash at Omdurman was Captain Paul Aloysius Kenna, ot the 2 1st Lancers. Both had been educated at Stonyhurst. That is what "Jesuit training '' can do, Mr. Primmer.'

OUR SCHOOL EXAMINATIONS.

Thkre was a deeper philosopoy than he was aware of in the mind ol the small boy who prayed as he went to bed one night ' Lord, make me strong, like lions an' timers an' things, 'cos I've got to lick a boy in the morning.' 1 lei e is a goed little text for a pood little homil} to the bo\s— ,ind why not to the girls ° — whose names ha\e been figui ing va^-l in the school columns of the N.Z. T\)i/.> i tor the p ist tew weeks If they want to ' lick' true success in life, the> w.mld do well to pray, not for genius, but for strength — fcr r.ipai ity !oi uoik. work, work. For genius has been desuibed as a capacity lot hard, methodical, persevering work. A navvy or a hodman can better aftord to loaf and l.i/.e than the youth who would be a skilled mechanic or a lawyer or a writer. It takes longer to learn how to use brain-tools than to use hand-tools, sulli as sheares or shovels or lasts or planes. The price ol the best success is ever work, work, work. There is nothing for nothing, and little for little, and much for much. Steady, plodding work with the brain-pot is what in most cases makes so great after-life differences between boys that stood on a level in class. Meyerbeer worked fifteen hours a da\ , Handel is said to have done the work of twelve men. Huntrr, the great medical scientist, slept only five hours out of the twentyfour; and I-ord Brougham's work was great th.it Sydney Smith recommended him to transact only as much business as three strongmen could get through. These arc extreme cases; but they serve to illustrate my point. * ♦ * The genial 'Flaneur' of the Sydney Freeman has the following observations on this theme .—. — Those interesting: ceremonies (some cull them ' awful inflictions '), the school exams., are now in lull twiujf. ;in<l the usual abundance of ' promising taltnt ' is visible on cv( ry eide. Where it all pets to in after-life is a iny^ttry, but it is a sad hut that most of the children who have ' proniHiuir futures' before them <-eein to turn back after leivingr school, or r-it down on the road of lite and ytay there. On the other hand, many youngsters who^e school address was near'y always at thu top of the dunce's stool or at the bottom of their class turn out to be mighty smart men and women when compelled to go out "on their own' and njjht the great battle of life ; and then again, some of the ablest men the \vi rid ever held never went to school at all. Premier Reid, Sir George Dibbs, and hundreds of other successful men were compelled to leave school and strike out for themselves at the a^e of i:> years. The list might be easily enlarged. Newton, Wellington, Napoleon, Smeaton, Watt, Stephenson, Hogarth, Wilkie, Peel, Scott, Chattel ton, 'Stuttering Jack Cunan,' Swilt, <jeneral Ulysses Grant (his mother called him ' useless Cirant '), were all termed dull boys m school. Their lives are a ray of hope to the average youth. Unfortunately, tuo many

of our boys do with their books after school-days are over what their sisters do with their music and painting after their days of single blessedness aie over: they fling them aside. They turn their minds to grass and leave them there. That is how so many ' promi-ing futures' never keep their promise, and how so many bright mental tadpoles never grow into honest trogs. So many people forget that school and college education is and can only be a beginning. Its main use is the training of soul and mind, instilling the habit of work, teaching how to study, and how to educate one's self after one has left school. Tin- school or college that dors so murli for its pupils has done exceedingly well. For the world is the mightiest school ot all, and the wisest men aie those that arc learners to the end. And at the end. even the united brains of the Royal Society have only touched the outer ftinge or hem of human knowledge.

FLOWERS \r H'NERAI-S.

I'oli.y at the graveside has taken various shapes at various times. The old method of fen sting- and gormandising- over the body of the dead has lived long and is dying hard. As far back as the days of Jo^ephus the funeral feasts of the Jews were so burdensome that they frequently reduced the heirs of the deceased to beggary. The old time Irish ' wake ' was a survival of an evil custom. Baked meats are to this hour associated, in the minds of a large class of Knglish poor, with a ' slap-up funeral.' Said Mrs. Brown to Mrs. Potter, in the old north-country story : ' Old Wilson killed his pig early this year, didn't he*" 'Well,' replied Mrs. Potter, 'don't you know that he expects his wife's funeral in October, and he wants to get the hams ready.' This silly feasting is simply a barbarous exhibition of the foolish pride that glories in an hour's vulgar display of seeming wealth. There is neither common sense nor Christian feeling in it. There is quite as litlle in the present cumbersome display ot flowers at funerals. It has its source in the same idea. Its ultimate object is the same. In the United States the lavish expenditure has been stamped out, as far as Catholics are concerned. A crusade has been started against the practice in Australia by the venerable Bishop of Maitland. ' This fashion of flowers,' said Dr. Murray, ' is a worldly pomp which is getting into very great abuse, and on and after the first day of January next no flowers will be permitted to enter the church with a coffin, and no priest will assist at funerals where this unbecoming custom ot flowers is adopted. The clergy, of course, could not interfere with people in their own homes. They have, however, authority over the church and over the consecrated ground of God's acre, and are determined there will be no flowers permitted to enter either of these pi ices in connection with funerals after the first day of the New Year.' 1 he custom of showenng bloom upon the dead is a pagan one. Pic sturdy Rom. in senatot or his dame left the stage of lile smioundud Ijv (lowers !,ke a smiling modem prinia donna making her best bow .it the il>sij ot her Imcst hnivura. They went out tn triumph like conquerors, laden with crowns and garlands. Iho Rom, in custom came from the Greeks, who embalmed their dead as best they could, and ior seven long days kept them on exhibition, cl.id in white gaiments, their forheads adorned with g<u lands and their resting-place gaily bedecked with (lowers. Mowers arc described as 'nature's smiles — symbols essenti illy ol sweetness and brightness.' They appear at e\ cry feast. They arc as out of tune with a place ol weeping as a step-dance, or a clown in baggy breeches at a funeial. Canon Moser — an authority upon this subject — writes : The dominant note of the Christftri death is fcur rind bupplio-i-tion, an acknowledgement ot tin- awful rigours of (rod's inscrutable justiec. tempered with confluence in the merit-, of His dolorous pih-sion. So lony; as the Church is not certain that her children havn arrived in heaven's <ra.io. *h<> has not the heart to rejoice. And. therefore it ih that flowers — niture's symbol* of |oy — at modern mtermentd are in flagrant contradiction with the .spirit of the liturgy. The united testimony of writers bears witness to the fact th.it, even in the dawn of the Christian Church, flowers or wre iths nc\cr pl.ijed a p.ntm the ceiemomesol interment. And so long as the '-pint ol C tthol.e liturgy was observed, no flowers appeared at hineials. The old p igan custom was, according to Canon Mosei, revived in the evil days of the I'rench Revolution, when the bodies oi the infidel Voltaire and of the bloodthirsty Jacobin, Mat at, were consigned to the Pantheon adorned with flowers. # ■;:■ * ' Another aspect of this cv torn,' says Canon Moser, ' which <-hould condemn it is that these flowers are associated with and air supposed to suggest the thought, that the dead oic is already happy. It amounts to canonisation. In civil funerals, the conviction that the delunet is already in glory, is e\pi essfel m most ol the ri I , ionises made at the gr.ive. Puigatoiy does not e\M. No need of prajcrs, no need of Masses. One doe-, not pi ay lor lho->e m heaven —and then the expense has been already so eonbideiablc. A new theology

is invented, from which all idea of expiation is conspicuously absent ;vand the old theology that true love for the'dead meant giving relief to their souls, is buried beneath masses of bloom. And for this very reason the custom we are speaking about seems to us to be radically anti-Christian. Let us be children of the 'Church. Affection, legitimate sorrow, respect for the dead, will not suffer for it. Again we say, let the cemeteries be well kept— let graves be made as beautiful as you like— but at funerals- let the spirit of the ecclesiastical ritual be followed.'

THE IRISH DIFFICULTY.

The sickly and half-hearted Irish Local Government Act is good so far as it goes. The trouble is that it doos not go nearly far enough towards meeting a situation which can only be effectually dealt wiLh by a full and proper measure of Home Rule. Some of its failings were thus chalked up by Mr. Dillon at a recent meeting of the Irish National Federation ' in Dublin. The Act, as Mr. Dillon pointed out, 'limps far behind the measure accorded to England more than a decade ago. The English County Councils have control of the police; the Irish County Councils have not. The Irish County Councils are controlled by a castie-nominated body, the Local Government Board ; the English County Councils within the wide field of their powers and jurisdiction enjoy complete freedom. The Irish people have purchased even this small instalment of liberty at the cost of three hundred thousand pounds a year paid as blackmail to the Irish landlords. By the Act itself a body of Irishmen, which includes the most able and enlightened of Irish Nationalists, are insultingly excluded from membership of District or County Council. In this context Mr. Dillon glanced for a moment at the fact that the Government was encouraged in this exclusion by the little corterie which poses as the sole repository and champions of Catholic interests, and which ventured to represent the Catholic bishops and priests as favouring the policy of excluding the clergy, a policy against which the bishops themselves have entered their solemn protest by an emphatically-worded resolution.'

MAXIM AND MISSIONARY.

The Catholic priests and nuns in the Soudan did not trouble to come in out of the rain in 1885. Hence they lived to feel the worst horrors of captivity in the Madhi's camp. They are at their posts again. No non-Catholic missionaries were trapped by the victorious Madhi. Now the Madhi is 'smashed,' the coast is clear, the sky serene. Two Anglican missionaries have therefore put out from port and sailed for the Soudan. They are the first that left for those sultry regions since 1875. In a comment on the new enterprise, the Daily News tells all the world and his wife that ' the three great agents of British expansion now-a-days are the Missionary, the Maxim, and the Merchant. In this case.' the Daily News continues, ' it is the Maxim which has cleared the road tor the other two.' This shows the Maxim gun in a new light. It undoubtedly has opened up a new field for missionary enterprise of a kind. But, as a preliminary, the field was strewn with the putrefying bodies of the dead. It made work easier for the missionary by diminishing the number of heathens to whom he should preach the Word. The new method of ' conversion yis Mahomed's, not Christ's. But that is a mere matter of detail. Vogue la gal ere!

why don't TROTE.sTAN'ib protest?

' It isn't calling your neighbours names that settles a question.' So says the Widow Carey, wiih considerable shrewdness, in DiMacli's Sybil. Some Protestant Societies don't know as much as the Widow

Carey. Such, for instance, are those who believe, or affect to believe, that low and indecent lying about the Catholic Church is the whole law and the Prophets —a sort of dirty short-cut to Paradise. Some weeks ago I referred to the discreditable career of one of the ' champions' of this extremely peculiar form of Christianity. The individual in question is an old gaol-bird named Riordan. He found it convenient to paste over his real name with a fresh label, and now goes by the name of Ruthven. He also professes to be an 'ex-prie^t,' which he most emphatically is not, and is perambulating England just 'now coining into convenient shekel-, n certain taste for the monstrous and the prurient. London Truth (November 17) which has exposed so many wandering frauds —has the following note on the unsavoury adventurer :— A man calling himtelf 'Ruthven,' and lecturing about the country in the character of an ' Ex-pnca of Rome, 1 s-eema to hiive quite out-Kensited Kcnsifc in the an, of exploiting indecenty ;n; n the guise of religion. The niin is sull leciurii g, mhe was when 1 referred to him the other day, at Southampton, and on a bill which I have before me he announced a lucturo 'to men only' for last Saturday evening, the title of which could have been chosen for no conceivable purpose except to attract the pmrient and filthyminded. For admission to this delectable entertainment Ruthven charged the price of one shilling, which is sufficient in itself to show the motive which prompts to his crubacle. A lecture with a slightly less explicit, but sufficiently suggestive title, and obviously inspired by similar motives, was anuounctd for the afternoon at the price of sixpence.

It is the old, old story of Widdovvs and Chiniquy"and flattery et hoc genus ovine. * * * . ' ' ; " I learn from the, same issue of Truth that • Ruthven's advertisement bills are all drafted in the style of a showman shouting outside a booth at a fair. Moreover, this nq-Popery Ue Rougement declares in his bills that he was arrested « five times during the past year' (1897) at Victoria arid British Columbia. Whereupon Mr. Labouchere remarks : "'■ - » If it (the cause of his arrest) was anything of the same nature as the charges against him in the United States. I can only aay that the local police very much neglected their duty if it was left to the Church of Rome to get him arrested. Let us not be mistaken. For years past a set of frauds, gaol-birds, convicts, blackguards, and fallen women have been coming clinking shekels by vulgar and indecent appeals to the impure passions of the lowest class of Protestants. They have carried on their foul and degrading work under the segis of recognised Protestant Church associations, and of societies like the Orange Society, established for the advance, preservation, or defence of Protestantism. This form of blackguardism in the sacred name of Christ has been going on since the days of Maria Monk and Achilli. Yet up to this moment not one Protestant Church or Protestant Association has entered a protest against the outrages levelled in the name and interest jot Protestantism, against the Catholic Church, by these gaolbirds, convicts, fallen women, and convicted liars. Protestants do not protest. By their silence they have acquiesced in the degrading campaign of vilification, falsehood, and indecency. Ihe old saying : < O liberty, what crimes have been committed in thy name ! needs to be recast. It should run : 'O Protestantism, what crimes have been committed, without protest, in thy name! The filthy class of writers and 'lecturers ' I reter to has furnished our Protestant friends with conversation and literature that, without such aid, they could find only in houses of ill fame— if even there. Really, the gaol-birds and fallen women have been very obliging. Such things must stink in the nostrils of respectable Protestants. But why, in the name of truth and decency, don't they protest ?