The New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 1906 REAPING THE WHIRLWIND

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 11, 15 March 1906, Page 17

The New Zealand TABLET

THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 1906 REAPING THE WHIRLWIND

To promote the cause of Religion and Justfte by the ways of Truth and Peace. Leo. XIII. to the N.Z. Tablet

WRITER who spent some years among the ■'^J/nmtfl fuzzy-headed tribesmen of South Africa says *J»siwrv of some of them.: -' According to Kaffir '.-^2»s2fi£fr custom, no woman may pronounce the '-&%ix£&s names of any of her husband's male rela~*jsifcg^ tives in the ascending line, nor even pro- - nounce an y word in which the principal ■ & syllable of her father-in-law's name occurs. She has therefore to manufacture another word, the , meaning of which has -to be judged by the context, as, standing alone, it is meaningless.' • In the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, 1 a somewhat similar ' tapju ' exists in regard to the

'great national systems' at' , primary ..instruction. A class of journalists and professional poti>icforas . : ' <havg their fingers on the hair-triggers of -iheir, heaviest anathema maranathas for those, who.' dare to 'describe-'/, our glorious system ' aa ' gacltess/ • destructive' ,6.f ' % 4po.ral fibre,' ' calculated to ' produce a generation to whom religious belief will be a stranger.' This is an accurate description. But the great Kaffir-like _• !tapu-' will at best only permit you to refer to it by any other newfangled term or roundabout .redundancy of phrase that will servq to conceal Its true name and character— as though the deadly nightshade were to be made sweeter by calling it a rose. But so far as the purely secular systems go, their ' moral teaching ' can never! .rise abeve such vulgar deterrents as , social ostracism, or fines, or tho prison cell, or the- flagellator's triangle, or the hangman's rope. They cannot well- (while true to Uiemselves) soar .Beyond - Spencer's,, of Huxley's, or Clodd's vague platitudes about ' Humanity ' and the 'Unknowable,' which 4 jiever. yet kept man cr boy from stealing a pin's worth. Clumsy or pusillanimous > statesmanship has grasped at the Secularist * ideal in education. That ideal is one of the evil legacies- ' lef t us by the European Revolution. Other countries galore have solved the problem of religious education in a satisfactory way. Our crude statecraft of a generation ago failed to meet an educational situation squarely. It ended by putting asunder what God had joined— it divorced the secular and the religious training of the little ones ; it drove God out of the place where He rightly belongs, and where He has been down the course of ages.

The mills of God grind slowly. - And it takes the glacier long to rasp the valley smooth. But it ' gets there, 1 like the tramp of time. It is even so in the moral order. Even children pick 1 up at last and •apply the lesson of the Secularist education fad—that the three R's are everything in education, that' vulgar fractions are of greater importance than moral principles, that the main thing is to c get on,' and that if the idea of a Oreatcr and of responsibility to Him is to be barred out of school life, why should it not likewise bo excluded from) '.the larger life that opens when the schooldays have closed ? Even a chimpanzee can be taught something like the semblance of counting its digits. Children, with their quick young human brains, are not slow to learn the logic of a Secularist system of public instruction. Good home Influences and other causes may fori a time combine tr put oft the evil day when a godless school training will produce its full and-nat-ural measure of evil. But the day comes at'Jast. In America itl shows itself by an increase of ' criano, and specifically, of juvenile crime. A number of educationists (among them the Pennsylvania State Superintendent of schools) recently met in Philadelphia to consider the situation. As a practical ■ result of their conference (safs the _' Aye Maria ') a circular containing the following statement was issued :—

' Statistics seem to . show, an abnormal , increase of crime within the 'past ttyenty-nve years, which has grown four times as fast as the population. If this be true, arej we' not face to face with a 'national ' (leril of most serious character ? May we not< retfkoiui&niorig/the causes leading to this condition the.- 'absence of definite moral instruction in the schools of . this country ? '

President Schurrraan of Cornell (non-Catholic) University .made, a few weeks .ago, the following remarks in point :—: — -.

llt is a- generation . which has- nc fear of God before its • eyes ; . . it' fears no.helL; :' it . fears- ncttliing* but the criminal court, thejjenitentiary, .and the scaffold. To escape these ugly avengers of civil societies' its only categorical imperative, "the- only. Jaw with wjvbich its-Sjnai thunders. To get ,. there "apd not J get; pau'ght is its only golden rule. "'To " get-rich-'tfuick^'theißnan-ciers of .; this .age will > rob s the -isfeWow* <aMd rthe~6rphan, grind) -the .faces? pfi poor,' "«pecu>&tei:inuitrjisfe- funds) and- purchase , injinjunity by,,, using. _)Qtherj,^)epple's \ money to bribe legislators/judges; and magistrates.'

Judges Tierney and Lawlor, in the course of recent utterances, spoke, each from a different standpoint, of the decadence of present-day American domestic and public life. Well, Uncle Sam, like some of his younger brothers, sowed the wind. His sickle is now in the whirlwind. And the harvest of the ethers is beginning to turn yellow.