Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 20, 15 May 1902, Page 1

Current Topics

An • Evangelist ' in the Pulpit. There is a time for everything, says a wise man, a time to laugh and a time to pray ; but surely no one with any sense of reverence and propriety would pretend that the appropriate time for laughing is during public worship when preaching or hearing the Word of God. Yet that seems to be the idea with which one 'Evangelist' Geil, who has been engaged by some Protestant churches in Australia to carry on extensive missions in all the large centres, seems to be imbued. Mr. Geil has just been conducting a huge * simultaneous mission ' in Melbourne, and it is claimed that his ministrations have been attended with phenomenal success. If the reports of his utterances which have come under our notice are fair specimens of his style we would not be at all surpiised to learn that his meetings have been largely attended and greatly enjoyed by that very considerable section of the public who always appreciate a good comic ' show,' but that the work of God could be promoted in any real and genuine way by the methods adopted by this up-to-date ' Evangelist' from Yankee-land, it is very difficult to believe. Judging from the reports of his meetings Mr, Geil seems to enlertain peculiar ideas of humor in dealing with sacred subjects ; and however much his inanities may ' tickle the ears of the groundlings ' for the time, they must most assuredly ' make the judicious grieve.' We give a few samples of Mr. Geil's utterances, taken from reports appearing in the daily papers and quoted by our contemporary the Melbourne Advocate. They aie interesting in view of his probable early descent on New Zealand, as showing precisely what manner of man he is.

Even the secular papers seem to have looked upon the ' Evangelist ' as little better than a showman, for they publish his addresses under such headings as ' Disquisition on Blankets,' 'Jonah in a New Light,' etc. At an early stage in the ' sermon ' on Jonah, the preacher expresses the desire of his ' natural man ' to ' knock that fellow as flat as a pancake,' and later on he comes to a story winch he describes as ' a baldheaded, long-whisketed lie.' When Jonah appears on the scene the comic element in Mr. Geil is allowed full play, According to this ' Evangthst,' God said to Jonah : ' You go north-east ' ; and Jonah said : ' No, I won't ; I'll go south-east and pay my own fare' ' Then Jonah, in the choice language of the reverend gentleman, ' stretched himself on his spinal column ; and I reckon that he snored like a North River foghorn.' When the storm came on, and Jonah was awakened, he 'guessed his ticket was all right. 1 The throwing overboard of • friend Jonah/ as Mr. Geil familiarly terms him, is described in the follow ing terms : ' One got him by the head, and one by the right foot, and another by the 'tit foot, and they gave him a swing, and he went over head first into the water.' Then the whale is brought on, and he too is put in as entertaining alight as possible for ' If ever a whale wriggled his tail and flopped his fin and headed for shore it was that particular monstei that swallowed Jonah.' And finally, according to Mr. Geil, when the prophet ended his journey and reached the shore, ' he shouted " north-east," and rushed off as fast as he could leg it.'

rhis is the sort of thing which is expected to brinir a blessing to multitudes hungering for the bread of life. Even in the mouth of Mark Twain or Mr. Dooley such stuff would be received with disrelish and disappointment ; on the lips of a man professing to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ it simply excites disgust. Such a type of ' Evangelist ' is entirely foreign alike to Catholic tradition and Catholic ideal, and we are wholly of Cowper's mind when he wrote : I seek divine simplicity in him Who handles things divine, and all besides. Though learu'd with labor, and though much admired By curious eyes and judgments ill-informed, To me is odious — as the nasal twang Heard at conventicle, where worthy men, Misled by custom, strain celestial themes Through the pressed nostril speotacle beatrid.

Equal to the Occasion. There is a certain type of people of the ' would-be ' sort who affect to despise the ' ignorant Irish ' and who think it a clever and smart thing to make rude and contemptuous remarks about the Irish and their way of life. So far does their illmannered ignorance carry them that they do not hesitate at times to work off their alleged funnyisms on Irishmen themselves and then they are generally sorry for it. They get taught a lesson. An instance of this sort occurred the other day in San Francisco when a journalist of some reputation but little manners was completely ' flattened out ' by a quickwitted Irish lady. 'Here is the story as given in a New York daily of recent date : Mr. A B , while out in San Francisco visited the new house of an old friend, a gentleman of Irish extraction. The hostess evidently took great pride in the house, the' furnishings cf which were new and beautiful, and gave evidence of much taste and refinement. Mr. B , who has an eye for the beautiful, gave unstinted praise to everything he saw. ' But,' he said, ' I am sorry to see that your house, beautiful as it is, lacks one ornament which no Irish house should be without.' ' What is that? ' she asked, unsuspiciously. ' A pifc,' replied Mr. B , with a satisfied chuckle. The hostess 5 eyes sparkled. •It did," she said indignantly, ' but you have supplied the want.' It was a hard knock but it was richly deserved. There is one newspaper man in America who will "speak and write more respectfully of the Irish for the rest of his natural life.

Another little story, illustrating in much the same way the Irish readiness of retort in cases of ignorant rudeness, is also going the rounds of the Press just now. The incident is described in a Philadelphia paper, which declares that Archbishop Ryan was recently about to take a train tor Boston at the Broad street station, \\.hen a young mm accosted him, saying : — ' Your face is familiar, where in hell have I seen you? ' ' I really don't know,' icplied the Archbishop, blandly ; 'what part of hell do you come from ? ' This stoty is not without an element of improbability, but it is worth telling as furnishing a good specimen of quick and happy retort.

We had not intended to commence a collection of stories illustrative of Irish wit, but the latest to come under our notice — a story from the seat of war — is so good that we cannot refrain from adding it. It is told by ' The Flaneur,' the genial and entertaining contributor to the Sydney Freeman. In the last number of the Freeman to hand ' The Flaneur ' says :—: — Amongst the items of war from ' the front ' to-day is a good one which tells of a raw recruit, one Tim Murphy, who joined the Rangers, although the only horses he ever had any experience of were the saw-horse and the clothes-horse his mother owned. Along with the rest of his awkward squad Tim was taken out to drill one fine day, and as luck would have it he was allotted one of the worst ' buckers ' in the whole regiment. ' Now men,' said the sergeant, as the crowd was lined up, ' remember this — no man is to dismount before he receives the order from his superior officer — mind that now.' Then off they went for a jaunt, but Tim was ' off ' first of all ; in fact, he had barely thrown his leg over his vicious brute before he was shot aloft like a rocket and came down with a sickening thud that shook every bone in his body. Presently the sergeant came along to where Tim was dusting his clothes, and shouted: ' Hello, Murphy, you've dismounted, I see ? ' ' Yes, sir,' said Tim dejectedly. ' And did you get an order to do so from headquarters?' demanded the officer. ' No, sir,' replied the ready-witted Irishmen, ' I got my order from the hindquarters, and, by gannies, I never obeyed an order half as quick before in all my born days.'

Lessons from Catholic Canada. Mr. Robertson James, an eminent American student of sociology and a brother of Prof. William James, of Harvard, has recently been studying- the political and social life of the people in the great Catholic Province of Quebec and has just published in the Boston Transcript some""of the results of his investigations. Mr. James's articles are, to Catholics at least, specially interesting reading, furnishing as they do a complete vindication of the Church from the charge — which ignorant and ill-read Protestants are so fond of levelling against her — of being the necessary and deadly foe to freedom and good citizenship. So far from this being the case Mr. James shows, what historians before him have often shown, that the Church is the true champion and friend of freedom and social order, and he declares that in no country in the world is there a higher level of civil liberty and good citizenship than in Catholic Quebec. Here are his own words : ' It would be difficult to find evidence in French Canada to substantiate the claims sometimes made by moralists that Rome keeps a nation in material and political servitude and blinds the ignorant to what to-day is called civilisation. Probably in no country under the sun can a greater measure of political privilege be exercised than is to-day exercised by the most obscure citizen of the Province of Quebec; and it would be difficult to find a million and a half of people elsewhere who exhibit a like degree of thrift, content, courage, and respect for laws. At Quebec and Montreal there will naturally be found a body of police, but it does not appear that the vocation of a constable is an arduous one. The statistics of the Recorder's Court in Montreal, just published, show an extraordinary decrease in crime during the last 10 years, especially in the pirticular of drunkenness. . . . And yet Montreal, which may be said to exhibit largely the fruits of Catholic influence, governs itself without either the aid of Dr. Parkhurst or Mr. Croker, and looks not for gifts from Carnegie or Rockefeller.' And Mr. James does not hesitate to plainly ascribe the credit for this happy state of things to the Catholic Church. If the American traveller, he says in eflect, desires to know what the spirit is which has developed this stubborn democratic and apostolic civilisation, let him investigate the lives and teaching of the clergy and he will derive certain knowledge which establishes the fact that Canadian political freedom is due to the influence of the priests.

Still more weighty and important is the lesson taught by Mr. James's investigation into the educational system of Quebec. In Quebec there are separate State-paid schools for Catholics, and Mr. James gives the following valuable testimony to the successtul working of this system 'Above all,' he says, 'does the history of French Canada illustrate the fact that it i-> not dangerous to the stability of a State to commit the religious education of its future citizens to the religious teaches. In the Pio\mce of Quebec, with an enormous majority of Catholics on the Board of Education, the right of a Protestant child to benefit by the Stale fund applied to a Protestant education is most zealously and most jealously guarded. Indeed there appears to be no nligious nvalry ot any kind.' An ounce ol fact i-, woith a ton of theory, and tins one solid fact from C mad i, gnen on the authority of a disinterested non-C .ltliolu mvt Mi>;,)ior, disposes once and for all ot the ■•illy political parm'.-c ly which we hear so often in this country that it is ' not ift- ' and ' not feasible ' to make provision in our education for sepai ate State-paid schools

for the Catholic portion of the community, though it is both ' safe ' and ' feasible ' to tax Catholics for the maintenance of the secular institutions.

The Real ♦ Reign of Terror.' Even the most ardent believers in the Conservative policy for Ireland might well feel ashamed of the Coercion system as it is at present being carried out in that most distressful country. It is the simple truth to say that the system which is now in full swing in Ireland is a mere travesty of justice and a disgrace to any civilised nation. Never before has coercion been applied with so little shadow of justification or excuse. In spite of the 'faked' yarns, spun by newspaper correspondents, about 'murders' and 'outrages,' it is a well-known fact, admitted by all who are acquainted with the state of the country, that Ireland is to-day practically crimeless. Ordinary crime is entirely absent, while even agrarian crime has all but disappeared. Yet in face of all this, in order to conciliate the landlord interest, the hateful Crimes Act has been revived and is being administered in a spirit of bitter and savage vindictiveness. Not only so, but in cases where the evidence is not sufficient to secure a conviction under the Crimes Act an obsolete Statute of King Edward 111. is resorted to and the accused is required to give bail for good behaviour as being a person of bad character, or if he declines to accept the stigma implied in this he is promptly sent off to gaol. Here is a typical instance, taken from the Dublin Freeman, of the actual working of the system : ' Eleven United Irish Leaguers were prosecuted in Clare for illegal assembly. The Removables could find no evidence against them. But the statute of Edward 111. proved more elastic than the Coercion Act. Those men, against whom the evidence was admittedly insufficient, were required to give bail for good behaviour as persons of bad character. Refusing to accept the disgraceful imputation implied in the order, they were sent to prison for three months.' By every principle of law and justice these men were undoubtedly entitled to an acquittal ; but the emissaries of the Castle, by straining the law to suit their own purpose, managed to secure a conviction of some sort and thus helped to still further swell the records of Irish ' crime.'

A still more recent instance, and one which admirably illustrates the ridiculous way in which obviously trumped-up charges are made to serve as an excuse for sending innocent people to gaol, was referred to by Mr. Asquith in one of his latest speeches. It is reported by the London correspondent of the Melbourne Age, a source which very rarely supplies information at all favorable to Ireland, and is quoted by our contemporary the Melbourne Advocate. The extract is as follows :—: — ' A story told by Mr. Asquith in his latest political speech illustrates in a rather grimly humorous fashion the sort of lowcourt justice that is thought good enough for Irish people. In England if a man is charged with conspiracy or unlawful assembly he goes before a grand jury. In Ireland he can be taken before two local magistrates, who may be — often are grossly ignorant as regards the law they have to administer, and summarily dealt with by them. Mr. Asquith's instance one of recent date — was as follows :—": — " A couple of persons gave information to the police to the effect that they were being boycotted. 1 hereupon a summons was taken out, and the case brought before two resident magistrates. The complainants, when they came into the witness-box, withdrew the statements they had previously made, and said that they had not really been boycotted at all. Therefore they were committed for contempt of court. The defendant was acquitted of the crime with which he was charged, but was required, upon no evidence whatever, to find a surety to be of good behaviour, and, not being able to get the surety, he was sent to prison for three months at once." ' Coercion of this sort is most palpably a blunder as well as a crime, and it is only to be expected that such petty and galling persecution should, in the words of the Dublin Freeman, prove now, as it has ever been, a tonic and stimulant to more \igorous agitation.