A NATION OF SHOPKEEPERS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 9, 2 March 1899, Page 31

A NATION OF SHOPKEEPERS.

In the course of an address in the Holy Name Churoh, Manchester, on New Year's eve, the Very Key. Father Barnard Vaughan, S.J., said:— We are a nation of great shopkeepers, but with a navy that can ride triumphant over every sea, knit together, and tinder generalship to be matched by no other England boasts to-day that this is the result of her open Bible. It may be that England has a Bible open. But not every page of it. She opens it to meet text? that suit her complaint. She might read other texts which ought to force her to bow her head and walk in sackcloth and ashes through the length of her island home. Only in November last the Lord Chief Justice of England, speaking to the Chief Magistrate of London, reminded him of the moral iniquity of the city over which he rules, and of some 50 millions of pounds lost through roctcn and fraudulent companies floated by men seeking to fill their own pockets, the loss falling mostly upon those who can least afford to bear it. It is well for us to look to both sides of the medal, and when we wear it to remember that there are two sides to the case, knowing that, if we have much to be proud of, perhaps we have more of which to be ashamed. We may be made of five fighting stuff ; perhaps there is no nation which can work up so many ruw materials into fabrics and into useful articles of commerce. And perhaps there is no nation that knows so well how to get over others, how to throw upon ths market go A da that will not wabh, that will run and will not h"ld their colours, Perh-ips there is no nation who speaks so much the written Word of God, and who, speaking it and preaching it on Sunday, at the close of the service put the Book under their arms and open other books during the week not written by the same hand and not inspired fron Above, but perhaps from below. We are a great nation, but we are a little nation, too. We have a fine physique. We are proud of our men and women, of our boys and girls, and of our homo life. Bat, brethren?, it is well for us to remember that the standard of excel -

lence by which we shall be judged is not to be taken from on 'Change, is not to be found in the last quotations of the mirket, not from the dissenting pulpit or the Protestant pulpit, but each one will ba weighed in the scalej of the sanotury.