Spain of To-day.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 47, 20 November 1902, Page 29

Spain of To-day.

' Certain fellow-travellers ' (writes the Rev. Thomas Van Nees in the Boston ' Christian Register ') ' tell me that Spain is decaying. It may be ; a month'B stay in a foreign country makes it impossible to generalise ; but if Spain is dying, Bbc is showing the mr-st lively energy of any country I know. Take S<n Sebastian for illustration. It is the Court centre durinp the summer nsonthß. Its position, near the French frontier, makes it easily accessible from the north as well as from the south, and just at ths eeafeon it is crowded with fashionable and aristocratic Spaniards. A gentleman from Massachupetts, who has lived in Northern Spain for over 25 years, took me from Biarritz in Franoe to San St bat-tian, and pointed out its many improvements. A river running in from the sea, and corresponding in flow and position to the Charles at Boston, had been embanked on either side with strong granite blocks, and the low tidelands filled in exactly as in the Back Bay of Boston. The work— to my uncritical eight at least — seemed better done, certainly it was more extensive, than that dene either on the Cambridge or Boston 6ide in the last dozen years. Then this splendid stone wall was carried on and down, and built right in the face of the turbulent Bay of Biscay. Near by a hill was being levelled, the surplus soil going to fill in the tidelands. A spacious boulevard with central gardens ran along the eide of the river, reminding me of the new one on the Cambridge eide of the Charles. Along this boulevard elegant and expensive homes were being erected. I had the impression that I was walking in our Boston Back Bay section in the early eighties, when the " building boom " was on.' The Rev. Thomas Van Ness sees very little to admire in the Catholic Church in Spain (says the ' Sacred Heart Review '), which ia of course not to be wondered at, since the reverend traveller iB a Protestant. He finds in Spain a hostility to the Church and its ministers, which he is at a loss to understand, forgetting that there is always in every land the spirit of worldlinesa which stands over against the spirit of God. He finds this dislike exhibited in many ways, and yet he says he is not prepared to Bay what it betokens. He doubts whether it means that Spain is going to swing far from the Church. He does not believe it means that some form of Protestantism will capture the fiild, and he gi\es the unsuecess of the Congregational body in Northern Spain as an example of what little hope Protestantism ha 3of weaning the people away from the Church of their inheritance.